Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 152: what you’re looking at

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

By KARL W. DETZER Engine Ten; commanded in a squeak- ing voice and with epithets that shamed the fires he fought. Five feet two from the mole on his forehead to his rheu- matic instep, loose-hung and disjointed, making untidiness of person a virtue, he never had been a pretty fireman. But after forty years of gongs and broken sleep; of zero weather on ice-enameled walls, of smashed shoulders, flying glass and smoke filled iungs, mothers in the neighborhood of Engine Ten used his name to frighten unruly youth into obedience. And had you looked inquiringly at his right hand, with its stumps where three fingers should have been, and a white scar that ran raggedly up the wrist, he might answer your inquiry, or might not. “Tt was ate off!” he explained sharply if his temper were good, and let it go at S pen AGE SULLIVAN commanded 782 that. Only on the dog watches, when his rheumatics had gone to bed with him and refused him sleep, would he talk of the fire at Box 816. Stone Age Sullivan’s story is colored, pre- judiced, one-sided, as are all tales of bold deeds written too close to the memory. You must inquire among the hundred others who labored in the snow back of the river that March night two years ago. Yes, and of those who attended the banquet of the Fire Fans Club six months before, when Stone Age Sullivan upset his glass and the ugly affair had its thoughtless beginning. Engine Ten was the last of its kind. It was also the prize joke of the fire depart- ment, with its four panting horses, its re- stricted territory, its old hose wagon and its shiny, played-out steam pumper. And Stone Age Sullivan was antiquated, entirely as antiquated as the equipment on which he GComichbooks