Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 122: what you’re looking at

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

so different? _ skate never doing no harm to nobody, that _- she had a right to cherish and protect, and ~ her making him sorry his mother hadn’t __ throwed him away. And, Sam, that needed ae killing—only we didn’t have i it in us to do : “after a while Bunt raises himself and walks - it too. He didn’t look mad or nothing, y ‘under- stand; just sort of dizzy. He carried that look around with him two-three days step- ping wide and careful whenever Sam- was exploring around on the lot. A clam was a _calliope them days compared with him. He could say nothing longer and quieter than anybody you didn’t ever hear. Maybe he was thinking. Maybe he was only remem- bering what Mina says to him last time -and the time before that, which was a hatful if he kept it all in his head. Or maybe he -. was just listening for Mina to bust loose again. “You'd think stepped on. She said enough for two. it was her had been She said enough for a harem, and a few dozen odd throwed in. Bunt heard everything she ever knew about him. Maybe a half of one per cent of what she thought she knew might have been true. If any more of it had been we could of made an exhibit of Bunt—‘“ Bobo, the wonder; -_ without a spine—drop a pea in a hole at the back of his neck and hear it rattle all the way ‘down—yellow all over, including hair, teeth, and the whites of his eyes—a thin -. dime to observe the smallest human insect the man ever displayed for the instruction and S _ amusement of an amazed public!” And if we could of kept Mina going we wouldn’t ~~ needed any other spieler ‘than her. - Bunt took that, too, laying down, and standing up, and wherever he happened to be at the time. He got more attention out of Mina than he’d had for years, and __ he’d never wanted it less. _- she wasn’t hammering the ear of her law- _ ful husband with hard words, she was talk- ~ ing to Sam, the big stiff, or listening like And whenever a mesmerized hen while he made his brags to her. Only thing good about it was Sam had kind of laid off on us. For a while he was real good natured—for him. It’s funny, ain’t it, how women can be Here’s Bunt, a decent little ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. with a mug he’d ought to wore a veil over it, and her filling his tin ears full of mush. Him, that never was anything but feeble from the neck up, getting simpler every day, thinking his rough stuff was get- ting ever strong with that peroxide frail. Can you beat it? What her big idea was anybody could guess a hundred times and just that many times they’d be wrong. Sam has gone goofy, even forgetting to beat up more than one or two of us in a week. And Mina playing wink-um with that half-civilized dynamite. And Bunt, the mutt, not even beefing at the perform- ance. He lamps the whole show, and makes a noise like a deaf and dumb beggar, thank- ful if he don’t draw no big attention to him. It’s that there same triangle thing that gets the rich in the papers, It can’t last, and it don’t. T’ll say it don’t! We hear, like somebody is always slipping around such information, that Sam is teasing Mina to beat it with him. Though what he’d be running from, and for what, that ain’t explained. He’s got everything his own way where he is, and how he’d get past anywhere except in a freak show, he ain’t got brains enough to look ahead that far. He don’t know his pay stops when he quits. fall for it. Maybe. she ain’t real wise to Sam’s vacuum system in the head, but she can’t help knowing that ain’t no face to take anywhere, And sometimes a married husband is a convenience, even if he is a poor shrimp like Bunt. Even such as him is a help to talk at when a lady’s feelings is hurt, or any time when she feels like spilling a mouthful into an ear that’s hooked up so it can’t wander away. She sticks with the show. That makes Sam wild, which, that week, there was eight casualties among the troops. It was pretty tough for us, but we couldn’t blame Sam. It must be a mean feeling when you’ve got the world flat against the ropes and gasp- ing for air—and you hear there ain’t no prize to follow the applause. Sam had paid his money, but there wasn’t going to be no show. So he starts in to wreck the ticket wagon, quite natural. When he holers to Mina, Mina gives = the razz. The more he yawps, the more - Anyway, Mina don’t — com choo S col