Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 158: what you’re looking at

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

948 pression of him, a good looking youth, with eyes of daring blue, white teeth, and a free and easy air. He talked with a jest- ing ease strange in men to this diffident country girl. He told her who and what he was, asked her name and where she lived and how she came to be so pretty. She blushed, and listened in silence or an- swered in a few and stumbling words. And he was gone, hastening away to his train. Later of Sundays as the freight waited for the reénforcing engine she saw and talked with the brakeman until his image came to fill her thought. Then he was transferred to the local freight train, and though it passed daily, it did not stop, and Edna could merely wave and smile a greeting. Impatiently she lingered now, wanting to see Walter, yet reluctant to be late at the barnyard. Again her mind roved back to that Sun- day months ago. She reviewed once more the unforgettable scene of their first meet- ing, saw the gay sunshine on the vivid green of grass wet with morning dew as they two loitered there while the mating birds sang about them. A harsh scream resounded over the fields, quiet in the haze of afternoon, recalling Edna out of the past and telling of the local freight’s approach. The great, lowering engine pounded by, the red-faced driver, pipe in mouth, lolling with greasy sleeved elbow on the sill of the cab window, the doubled-up figure of the fireman filling his shovel with coal. The tender and car after car bumped past, here a steel gasoline tank, now a crib crowded with stolid steers, cars with names denoting their assemblage from the ends of a con- tinent, Southern Pacific, Boston and Maine, Chicago Great Western, Grand Trunk, Oklahoma and Gulf, Sault Ste. Marie. Edna stood reading the names, some of which she knew so well and others of which she had never heard, her eyes not alone on the garish lettering, but ranging along above the cars for Walter. Where was he? The young girl’s heart slumped at thought that perhaps he was not aboard, that he had been taken off the local as he had been the through freight. Then ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. her face lighted up at glimpse of a figure erect and jaunty, striding over the tops of moving cars. He smiled that gay, care-free smile, and waved his cap at her. Edna waved back at him as the train carried him past where she stood. The brakeman stopped abruptly and his reckless curse rang out: “Get offa here, you bum!” he shouted. The girl saw the form of a man crawl over the side of a grain car and cling there with his feet on some hold beneath. The trainman looked at Edna and noted her orbs upon him. Laughing loudly, he kicked the tramp’s hands loose. The hobo yelled and pitched off headlong into a clump of weeds along the track, a high crowned hat rolling after him. The brakeman laughed still more loudly and waved again at Edna. She motioned a good-by and set off for home behind her cows, her mind full of Walter, forgetting the tramp kicked from the train into the sunflowers. i. RAYS of a rising sun were shining through the kitchen window of the Gilpin home. Everything was very clean, the polished oil- cloth cover of the table, the whitewashed plaster walls, the steel of the range. Edna, in her starched gingham apron, stood bent over the stove, stirring the oatmeal, her- self as neat as the rest of the domestic scene. A stout, elderly woman, neat like the girl, stepped into the room with abrupt motion, her hands full of dishes, which she placed on the table. Her countenance, her tread, her air vibrated energy. Her eyes of animated, kindly brown surveyed Edna with impatience. “I told you to put on the big kettle for the oatmeal,” she scolded in a tone in which harshness and motherly fondness were oddly blended. ‘‘ You know we have the new man to breakfast.” “Yes, ma,” absently replied the girl, still stirring the oatmeal. Her mother’s voice rose sharply: ‘“T do believe you are mooning over that CoOmiclooks.€©