Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

= the 08k of ine evening ie —— at in = the back yard beneath a big locust. There Was | a hammock; not fastened to the locust. a which is free heros ins its limbs, but. at- ~ tached to crosspieces Tucker had set up. ‘There was also an old rocker; but oftener : — | than not they sat on the grass and talked. = ~The Slapper had a way with women. It had always been easy for him to “ make” ve : SS 2S _ them, to win their interest with his rapid —— fire kidding, his brisk repartee, the hints of -.. desperate deeds down the alley. He built Se a his biography, ef course, as men do; slurred his failures, changed names aca ~ dates, enlarged upon the parts he had Sek mae See = = ae he could make himself out as a dan- ~ Quite early i in their acquaintanceship he = 2s ‘became aware that his stories were not go- ing across as he had expected. If he could RE: 5 _ ranted in suppe osing that to y this pretty little = hick he would one with a real though ~~ sinister splendor. It was a shock to him iss ~~ ae a ee: learn that Letty’s attitude was one of __- pity. She seemed tolike him, but he sensed = as ‘Slight: contempt. tober. - She re seadiscretions ~ that he might ree outgrow. and which meantime were better left untold. Never before had the Slapper suffered = = pits: froma girl. = ‘Sympathy over some bit z = “of hard luck, yes; but nothing like pity! — __ And as his stock of small talk was about = eabansted when his own deeds were told, while the ‘cue anes ‘did not even stir to an offshore breeze, that his own patroniz- = ing regard of the hired girl as one who had = ‘ever gone farther afield than Bangor, was = Dean was the orphaned daughter ee of a sea captain n. Her -blood ran with the = _ current of voyagers. Strange countries were - familiar to her. —— ‘she had been taken by an uncle, also a ee and had with him for several — oe. When his imagination was working — —— intrigue the cagey. sity dames, he was war-- Obviously, the things: le had dwelt in Wedlock. The odd thing was After her mother’s death ao with little Chinese girls while he uncle’s ship was loading at some treaty port. She had been far enough north to be able = to read until midnight off the Norwegian coast; and had crossed the line many times. She had never read one of the popular South Sea novels, but had many times gone swimmine with Kanaka maidens. She had beheld Vesuvius at night, smoking sullenly; the pavements of Liverpool and Valparaiso were known to her, and—leaning over the taffrail—she had bartered for queer fruits with coal black natives off the-Gold Coast. She opened her small trunk and showed him curious shells and trinkets, old coins, funny headgear, wicked looking knives, things made of bamboo and ivory and tor- toise shell and feathers of. birds, picked up all over creation, She could say things in a dozen languages and dialects; not many, because all this had happened long ago— she explained—and when she was only four- teen she had been dropped ashore at Wed- lock, to go to school. Her uncle had been her teacher up to then; she could box a compass, read charts, knew something of astronomy, and much of geography and his- tory. Her first-year ashore, the uncle had — been lost. t with all his crew; thereafter she she did not seem to feel cramped, or lone- some. She had almost a thousand dollars in the bank at Millerville; some day she might use it to go to the Normal School. -There was no hurry. She was only nine~ teen. Meanwhile, her interest money was accumulating; and she liked the Tuckers. After learning all this, a matter of several evenings, the Slapper felt abashed at his own immaturity. It was he, rather than she, who was the hick! She had seen a man stabbed to death on the Marseilles water front; had been aboard when her uncle’s crew had fought off a junk load of Malay pirates. What, to her, was a gang fight in the back room of a saloon! place. At first he was sulky; but the girl’ s irresistible good nature soon healed the sting. She was simple enough, for all her = = _ experiences; and they, he learned later, were not so unusual SS. a Maine ‘coast town. eS 3 Not tomention => a session with the mitts at Porky Regan: 2S