Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 42: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

668 we had the big fellow staked to the ground long before he came to. As I sat there on the ground, panting be- side our hogtied victim, I thought of some- thing that hadn’t occurred to me before. He hadn’t fought like a drunken man. Fact was, he fought like about six entire- ly sober men. But his first words, when his blinking in the dim light of the lantern the girl had brought showed he was com- ing to, proved he was a moonshiner. With a string of blankety blanks, he said: “You whisky slecths thinks you got me, but you got a long ways to go yit before ever you put me in jail to stay.” “Why, paw!” piped up the girl. “Who you pawing?” The man on the ground wallowed around wiildlike. “See ”—the girl turns to me—“ he don’t even know his own little Susie when he gets in that horrible condition.” The prisoner had another fit. “Susie, nothing! I ain’t got no kids,” he roared. “Why, paw, you know I’m your own little Susie Broadbent,” she told him softly. He’d have bit off about four fingers of the hand she extended caressingly toward him if I hadn’t jerked it back for her. Then I put my own face in jeopardy, getting close to his. I wanted a good whiff of his breath. “ This fellow ain’t drunk,” I told Susie. “ Ain’t you wise! "Course I ain’t,” he proclaims, getting madder and madder. “ Poor paw! So many years of boozing has gone to his head,”’ she commented. “My head! My head—just turn me loose one minute, mister, while I whale that pesky brat for claiming me for a dad!” he pleaded. I felt his knots again to make sure he was all right and then I led the girl back to the old beer hall to get some breakfast, for it was glimmering in the east. I was afraid that bewhiskered old reprobate would have a stroke of apoplexy if we stuck around. ‘“He’s dead set he wen’t own you for his kid,” I says to make conversation, over the leavings from my grub basket. ‘““He’s a idjit,” she announced. ‘“ Maybe,” I answered. “What ’d you mean, maybe?” Again ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. there was the old snap in her voice. “ You doubting it?” “T wouldn’t say so out loud, if I was,” I replied as I dodged out of the door. I started down to the man on the river bank, wanting to hold private converse with him. But the girl came along. There the three of us sat until plumb daylight and long after, nobody saying a word, just glar- ing at each other in mutual suspicion, Along about eleven o’clock there was a painful chug-chugging coming up the river that I recognized. The gang was coming back. I perched on a bulkhead and raised the signal of surrender and distress. They steered in. On the prow with the boat hook was Harry Thomas, who is a deputy sheriff. I was glad he was still along, for I’'d been counting on Harry. I could turn my pris- oner over to him. The girl, I figured, would be about enough for me to look after. She was standing beside her paw on the ground where he was tied when the boat pulled in, but all of a sudden, when I hap- pened to look around, she turned up miss- ing. “Holy smoke! What you got here?” Harry says, looking at the prisoner like he was a museum exhibit he’d come miles to see. ‘‘ Old Wambold himself!” “Old Wambold!”” My legs began to get shaky and I could feel my face turning chalky. Old Wambold was the most no- torious bootlegging moonshiner in the State. He was reputed to have killed three officers and no one knew how many private enemies. “Quit your joking,” I finished, mighty limp. ““Old Wambold is no joke,” Harry said, poking at him playfully with a foot. ‘“ Are you, Wammy?” The bound man spit at him spitefully. I tried to perk up a little of my oozing spunk. ‘““ He’s *most as snappy as his little girl that was here a minute ago,” I managed to say, wondering how I happened to be alive and feeling of myself, quietly, to see if I was all there. “Tf you mean Nancy Grey, that just dodged behind those pines, she’s about as far from being Wambold’s daughter as I am from being his godfather,” Harry went eomnlelaoolks (C@