Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 42: what you’re looking at

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

__ pird with just these two dogs. Before I met them I was beginning to wonder myself. ‘What’re their names?” ‘ Pegey and Timmy.” “ Brother and sister?” “No; -I bought. them for breeding. They’re pedigreed stock—registered.” She nodded. ‘Oh, I could smell that.” “ You could—what?” I gasped. Alvina snapped her fingers, and Timmy almost turned a somersault. “J can see things and smell things and hear things,” she said in a deep, dreamy voice, ‘ordinary people can’t. Did you see the puff of pale green smoke go out of that snake’s mouth the very second it died?” “Stop kidding me,” I said. For a moment she looked at me as if she were angry. Then she shrugged her beauti- ful shoulders. “Well, sheriff, people do say I have an unusual sense of humor.” And she laughed. But I didn’t. She was swinging her arms freely as she walked and occasionally, by accident or de- sign, one of her hands brushed mine. Now I am not susceptible to every pretty girl I meet, but I will have to admit that by the time we had reached the commissary , T wasn’t thinking of anything but how it would feel to wrap Alvina in my arms and kiss her on those blood-red lips; and she knew it, too. I have always thought that - women as a whole are given credit for intui- tion that they don’t possess; some are more and some are less sensitive to passing feel- ings and emotions in other people, and Al- vina was simply, decidedly of the former class. She could catch, or register, zephyr changes in the mood of a man, and in her possession this ability was a dangerous weapon. I am sure she knew what I was thinking as we went up the steps to the commissary porch and I pulled open the screen door for her. She was grinning up at me, and there was mystery in those pale diamond eyes, and the old, old lure. But I already knew that the man who took up with Al- vina Barnes was taking up with dynamite— dynamite with a mighty short fuse. And subsequent events did nothing if not uphold my snap judgment. 'ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, I wonder if I have given you the wrong idea of Alvina Barnes. It is hard to sum her up in a few words, but in introducing her I have picked the incidents that seemed to me to reveal what must have been the dominant side of her queer personality. She was beautiful, mysterious, cruel and dangerous. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. I don’t want you to think that she was coquettish; that she used the common tricks of the cheap flirt. She didn’t use common tricks and she wasn’t a cheap flirt. She simply appreciated the power she had over men and she didn’t hesitate to use it to get what she wanted done. Maybe that is only another way of describing a flirt in action, but it seems to me there is some distinction. : There was a sign hanging up on one of the commissary roof posts that I had had lettered for the benefit of transient trade. One of the easiest and quickest ways for a backwoods grocery store keeper to fail in business is to give too much credit. Some time before Alvina came to Vingo I had stopped all but a few charge accounts and had that sign printed. It said: PAY ME TO-DAY AND PLL TRUST YOU TO-MORROW And while Alvina was ordering the rations she wanted she was every now and then glancing up at that sign with a mischievous smile. It was a large order, including every- thing in the staple groceries line to start housekeeping with-—beginning with salt and ending with pots and skillets—and it made a mound that almost filled the counter. “Tf you'll just put it in crocus sacks and boxes,” Alvina said, “I'll send our black man around for it and he can tote it home. He went to Ormond with Jeff to pick up a team of mules and a wagon and they ought to be back by supper time.” | I totted up her purchases on a slip and said that the bill came to seventeen forty- five. She gave me her most seductive smile. ‘« Sheriff,” she said huskily, “that sign you have up there is a mighty curious sign, but it doesn’t apply to white people, does it?” “Tt applies to everybody,” I said. “TI- - Jost nearly two hundred dollars last year 2A oO Eomichooks.com