Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 46: what you’re looking at

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

806 “Has that C. O. D. from Sears Roebuck come yet?” Clayburn wanted to know. I carried the counter lamp into the -partitioned-off corner of the store where post office affairs were conducted. I found -his parcel. He paid and signed for it. Then they spoke of wanting cigarettes and snuff. Old man Clayburn used snuff, black mammy style—a wad tucked in between his upper lip and upper gum; the twins were cigarette smokers. And not a word did they say of Alvina Barnes! Didn’t I mention the word insidious? They had only laid eyes on her once, and she was already at work on them like yeast. I asked casually, “‘ How’re the girls?” Oh, the girls were fine. Everything was fine. When was I coming out to see the new shingle mill in operation, and when J came would I bring Belinda that book of hers I’d borrowed on the diseases of poultry? I went as far as the porch with them, and when they were gone, I spent half an hour looking off in the direction of Big Cypress Swamp, which always is black and ugly and threatening by starlight, and listening te the grandaddy ’gator who lived in there grunting because the water was low in his wallow. . And suddenly, from the negro quarters across the tracks, a sound came that sent little needles down my spine and started my heart to pumping double-quick. It was a sound that was supposed to have been left behind in Africa when the bplack- birders brought those poor devils over here. Short and sharp, like a fingernail snapping against a goatskin drum: ‘“ Tum-tum-tum —tumpa-tum-tum!” Yes, sir; things were mighty unsettled in that little Florida swamp village of ours. TE Ir was Belinda and Christine Clayburn who brought me in the news that things weren’t exactly what they ought to have been out on that Tomoka plantation. Belinda and Christine were the daughters of old man Clayburn and the fiancées, re- spectively, of Jim and Ed Randolph, and ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. they were fine, nice girls—the kind of girls who will some day bring the South back to where she belongs. They had been born and brought up on -that isolated farm and, save for a few years of schooling in Ormond and Daytona, they had had little experience with the outside world. A high-bred Southerner—the kind who stands up and sheds a tear when a band plays “ Dixie ” and who is responsible for a lot of outworn and useless romantic traditions about the South—would have called Belinda and Christine “ crackers,” and meant that they were cheap white trash, while, as a matter of fact, the Belindas and the Christines are the backbone of the new South. They were ambitious, intelligent girls, pretty in a wholesome, healthy way; strong and sturdy and willing. Either Belinda or Christine could cruise timber, or load a carload of logs, or keep a buzzsaw working as well as old man Clayburn himself. They were good housekeepers and good business women, and they would make the Randolph twins good wives. Each had had her romance, and I had reasons to know that each cherished it, as every girl should. One of Jim Ran- dolph’s first acts when he came down to Vingo from Michigan was to rescue Belinda from drowning in the Tomoka. She was fishing from a small dateau in the deep water off Indigo Island and in trying to haul in a gill-net, lost her balance and upset the boat. ; Jim was watching her from the old Yorkshire plantation, and it was mighty fortunate that he was a good swimmer. Belinda could not swim a stroke, and when the boat went over under the weight of that fine catch of mullet, she became tangled in the net. Now, the Tomaka is always full of alligators, and Belinda’s position, taking everything into considera- tion, was pretty ticklish. She did ‘not see Jim throw off his coat and take a running dive into that dangerous water. She was strangling and trying to scream when something grabbed her by the hair and yanked her toward shore. Her last clear thought was that a ’gator had got her, and when she came to she was cuddled up in Jim Randolph’s arms with Eomichbooks (S@)