Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 66: what you’re looking at

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

great effort over to a far corner of the great room. 3 There he stooped suddenly and picked -up in his big hand the puppy she had come to see. He held it by the scruff of the neck, and bore it to another corner of the room where, from a littered table he procured a pair of enormous shears. Then he came ‘back to her and placed the puppy on a packing box beside her chair, holding it by the loose skin about its shoulders. “There!” he said with the strange, dis- turbing grin upon his face. ‘‘ Now you look what I’m doin’. I’m goin’ to trim this pup’s ears, an’ I’m goin’ to clip his tail, an’ IT want you should tell him of it when you see him!” She jumped to her feet and drew away from him. “ But why should I?” she cried. She divined that behind the glisteniny malice of his eyes lay something of greater significance than this trivial matter of trim- ming a puppy’s ears. And he was not loath to betray it. “There ain’t no wickedness like the wickedness of a boy to his father!” he cried bitterly. ‘‘ An’ to save a brute beast its proper treatment, he’d undo the work of my life. “JT want him to know that the pup got its sufferin’ anyway. I want you should tell him how it yelped an’ cried when the shears cut into its flesh. How it howled in pain in spite of his playin’ the fool.” He fastened upon her a smile which was a leer, and she stood transfixed by this revelation of the tortuous pathways of the old man’s mind. It seemed incredible that he meant thus to triumph over his son, but she didn’t know that a passion more crafty than the sense of triumph was at work. She didn’t know, for instance, that Old Man Parmelee, confident that David would see this girl before ever he thought to return to his father, counted upon her recital of this scene to bring David hurrying home. It is possible, indeed, that Old Man Parme- lee was not as blind to the peculiarities of his son’s ardent temper as he seemed. He grasped the puppy with needless vio- lence, bunching in his great hand the loose skin about its shoulders, hurting it so that ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. it wriggled in protest but gave forth no — whimper of pain. ‘Torture, he called it,” he Se as he raised the shears. ‘Like a woman would. I want you should tell him how his puppy squealed.” She gazed upon him with eyes wide open, her face blank in puzzlement. ‘“ But that dog won’t squeal!” she cred. ‘It’s an English bull terrier. They never cry out!” . The shears clanged as he dropped them on the box. and leaned there with one hand heavily upon the board. He stared at the girl as if he were a child and she _ his teacher, inflicting a distasteful lesson. “Tt won’t?” His tone was so lugubrious that she smiled as she answered him. ‘““ Mercy, no. It would take more than a trimming to make that puppy cry. His father is Shropshire Rex the Third.” She caught her breath suddenly, appalled by the cloud that fell upon him. Sweeping the un- fortunate animal up in his hand he looked at it as if it were a thing accursed. “Won't cry?” he roared. “TI say it wll cry! J want it should cry! Il make it!” And hurling it to the ground, he kicked at it viciously. “Don’t do that!” she cried, and seized him by the arm. “ That’s mean! That’s brutal!” He brushed her hand from him, and in an excess of rage, jabbed at the puppy with his heel. “Velp! Yelp out! Howl!” he cried. ‘““Y want he should know that it hurt.” The puppy, having injured a leg in its fall, and further tortured by the man’s vindictive foot, edged away, snarling and limping; but it did not cry out, nor did it run away. Instead it hurled an infantile defiance at the man, growling bravely through its clenched milk teeth at the brute which kicked it. Madge, impotent against the man’s fury, cried out one angry, inarticulate cry, and darted forward to take the dog from his way, but Old Man Parmelee pushed her aside with a warning. “Git away!” he cried. ‘I'll kill the little rat.” And he would have done so, too; killed it or maimed. it. in his insensate _