Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 7, 1925 — page 154: what you’re looking at

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

: be he — §24 wagged his head. of mental darkness about this and that, did met fad is as CRAniAN he Lgl Ay Vy MAD tid ef in the lockup last night that this Sheriff Vardaman’s meditatin’ searchin’ these mills. You know it’s bein’ told around that all the bootleggin’ in. Polk County centers around Lem’s talk’s got me wore : Blackwater. Ler about Pete Slavvery: == “Eyuh?” William Elder’s bearded chin pushed out confidentially across the lawn - mower handle. Solemn, mysterious, weird, was the expression of his bearded face, like that worn by a patriarchal goat. “Eyuh!” Calomel stared at William and Never, in his. moments William fail obliquely to point him toward some sort of light. — William’s cackling voice sank to a confi- dential murmur: “Cal, if that fool*sheriff gets after Pete he’s due to find out somethin’! — Cryptic always were William’s utterances. It would have been hard for Cal to explain specifically just how, when and where they helped, but afterward he always felt that_ they did. He went away toward the mills, vaguely comforted. While, on the green plaza which faced the road to tewn, William Elder resumed pushing the lawn mower round and round and round, under the smil- ing midsummer sun. Past the heaping cones of spruce pulp wood, cut in short lengths, walked Calo- mel Bly and over the narrow railed bridge into the finishing room where a Tow of pert young girls counted the layers of - “ flat’? news sheets all day long. Cal paused at the head of the long table. There sat the prettiest, the pertest, the peppiest of the lot. She was Mattie Briscoe, the head counter. Speed, precision and de- pendability had speedily placed her at the top of the table, at a dollar fifty more wages per week than her mates, earned. She wore reddish freckles, the hue of her bobbed hair, and possessed a positive en- thusiasm for life. “Well, Mattie,” inquired Bly, pausing at her chair, ‘“ what’s the happy word?” “ Grand Rapids consignment packaged in the shipping room,” she told him blithely, her slender fingers never pausing in their lightning flippings of the sheets. “ This rush New York order under way, Mollie Hem- - ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. inway 's off with the measles. "Liza Waite’s given a week’s notice, goin’ t’ be married.” “ Run in an extra girl to supply for Mol- lie and hire her regular to replace Liza, if she’s any good.” “T have. She is. ‘That's her, down at the end, the new cross-eyed one. But she’s fast. I don’t pick dead ones.” Bly walked on toward the machine room. He wished he had one foreman in the Black- water plant that was as reliable as this slip of a girl of eighteen years. Jenny-on-the- spot; “that was Mattie Briscoe, daughter of the cleverest wood pulp mill oss the mills had ever had. Briscoe and his wife had been killed in an omnibus accident two years previously; their only child had left school and gallantly gone to work. She lived alone in the tiny cottage that her father had nearly paid for. It was among a cluster that formed the village of Black- water and which the paper making com- pany had erected. She was avowedly a bachelor maid. -Swains aplenty came courting, but she said them nay. No sooner had Bly left the finishing room than one of these rejected ones came bothering anew. In fact, Pete Slavvery had been repeatedly rejected. He was the grinding room boss, the successor to Mat- tie’s father. At first sight of Mattie, Pete had been fearfully smitten, which was all the good it had done him. _ Pete wallowed into the finishing room. He was a tub of a man, squat and enor- mous, clad unconventionally in undershirt -and trousers, after the habit of paper and pulp mill employees on the job. He had been ~ delving around the beaters in the cellar be- low. The fiber “ pudding” was fresh on his forearms and in his stubby brown mus- tache were shreds of dessicated spruce. He had a pear-shaped face, terminating in bulg- ing jowls. Upon the crest of the cone that was his head shreds of drab hair were past- ed, with a center part. Big, blue, bulging eyes, at sight of Mattie, rolled their own. Twin have they were of gentle reproach. “ Girlie,’ husked Pete, close to Mattie’s little ear, “if you’d marry me, like I’ve asked you, you could cut out this cheap job!” He sighed asthmatically, pouting with displeasure. JA Eomicbook: af