Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 104: what you’re looking at

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

894 just a little battle with the manager that wouldn’t ever amounted to anything if all these hicks hadn’t butted in. Then there was a crowd come to this lady’s house where we was took, and the fellow that carried Marie into the drug store was with ’em, and they talked a lot where we couldn’t hear ’em, and whispered some, and looked at us like we was some- thing in a cage at the zoo. I could tell they was cooking something up, and pretty soon they sprang it on us. They had fixed it up that they would give me and Marie a home there in the town with one of these hicks— the woman that first asked me was I hurt, it was—and we could stay there and every- thing would be lovely. I started to squawk, but Marie give me the eye to lay off, and she made ’em a speech and said how fine that would be, and how happy we would be there and everything like that. The old lady that they had fixed it up for us to live with was all smoked up. She was a widow lady, and didn’t have no chil- dren and not much sense, but quite a lot of money, and she was kind of nice at that. You’d think she was at a wedding or a funeral or something the way she acted. She cried 2 little bit, and said she had al- ways wanted a couple of daughters, and she would do a lot for us, and we would be happy and tverything like that. So when me and Marie got alone together in the room they give us, I says to her, I says: “‘ What’s the idea?” I says, and she says to me I don’t know when I’m well off. She says here we’re going to have a good home and live like regular people and be somebody, and get away from all those cheap people like we had to be with when we was in the profession. “Ves” ¥ says to her. “ That will be fine. We will live here a while, and when we feel like we want to have a party we will walk down town and back and maybe get an ice cream soda. It will be a wild life,” I says to her. She says to me I was born in the city and ain’t got sense. She says I am just like a hop head because I got the habit of being with shows and having a party now and then and thinking I was having some fun. She says if I live there a while in a ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, different kind of life pretty soon I will be happy, and I will wonder how did I ever live the way I did before. So we stayed there with the old lady, and her name was Mrs. Gavin. The stage manager took charge of the show till another guy could come out from New York, and the manager we had the fight with got fined five hundred dollars and sent to the pen for six months, and his wife that was in the cast got a divorce and married one of the chorus men, and the last I heard of them they was in vaudeville doing small time out on the Coast some place, and the fellow that told me about ’em said that they was fighting like cats and dogs. So we stayed on there at Blueville at Mrs. Gavin’s, and every once in a while Marie says to me wasn’t I getting happy, and I says no. It was all right for Marie, because the fellow that picked her up and took her into the drug store kept coming around for her a lot and taking her out in his car and treating her like a lady, and acting like he was going to marry her. His riame was Jim Farnsworth, and for a hick he had a lot of money. He owned a lot of farms, and would rent them out to boobs who would work on ’em and give him money for it; and then he owned a lot of mortgages, too; and a coal and a lumber yard where they sold coal to burn and boards to build houses with; and then he owned part of a bank, and did something or other in the church. He wasn’t a preach- er, but he was one of the people that is just below the preacher. Of course he didn’t get any money for what he did in the church, but he had plenty anyhow. He kept coming for Marie, and Marie would go out with him, and that was all right, but if I went out with anybody Mrs. Gavin threw a fit, and the whole town got out the frying pan and put. me on the fire. Nice people are funny that way. Just because they are nice themselves, they act like they think nobody else is. Every time i would look at a fellow everybody in town would be scared and say they guessed I was going back to my old ways. Can you beat it? I had been running around with shows and having a good time COTRnicloookSsse©