Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 52: what you’re looking at

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

== The antics of the twins had stopped. ; ‘They were looking at the floor. _ big square faces were as red as fire and Their _ shining with sweat. “T guess we'd better be goin’ along home,” Ed mumbled. ‘,! A fi) MeO cious!” _ mule-of-all-work, laid back his ears and re- _ “ Guess we had,” Jim agreed in the same muffled voice. As if on a signal, Belinda and Christine spun around toward the door, flicking up their dresses toward Alvina in the trick these backwoods girls use in place of cuss- words, and they stalked to the porch with their chins in the air, the twins following with the same sprightly manner you see in intelligent dogs that have been caught raiding the hencoop. They climbed into the old Clayburn buggy, Belinda and Jim in the front seat: Christine and Ed in the back. Jim picked up the reins and said, “‘ Geddap!” in a tone of voice compared to which the most powerful cussword known would have sounded about as forceful as ‘‘ Oh, gra- And Rabbit, the old Clayburn fused to budge. Well, sir, if that situation hadn’t been so chuck full of drama, it would have been mighty funny. Belinda and Christine scrunched down in their corners as far away from their twins as they could get; Jim and Ed sitting up as straight as cavalry officers on parade, their shiny, shaved faces redder than the reddest thing I ever saw, their mail order clothes and their shaggy blond hair making them look like a pair of solemn comedians in a musical comedy. I heard a strangled sort of sound, and looked around to see Alvina leaning against a wall stud, both hands clapped over her mouth, her skin a blazing pink from her forehead to her finger tips. She seemed so weak from her emotion she could hardly stand up. ““Geddap!” Jim roared. “ Giddup!” roared Ed. “ Giddyap!” Belinda said impatiently. “ Gittyup!” Christine snapped. “ Git — ged — gid!” Alvina bleated. = “ « Shake—shake a leg, Pegasus!” _ The Clayburn girls turned in their seats ‘ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, and sent looks at her that should have turned Alvina into a shrinking cinder. ‘* Maybe she’s sound asleep,” Alvina sug- gested sweetly. “‘ Why don’t you-all address her a little louder?” ‘““We—” Christine began in a scathing voice, and stopped with the rest of her impulse mysteriously unused. Then she Jeaned forward and whispered something to Belinda, and each turned her head and looked at her twin as if he had suddenly joined some branch of the reptile family. - They had each discovered that Jim and Ed had been drinking neither wisely nor well, and—well, all things considered, a deaf man could have heard the breakers @ pounding on a rockbound coast. Jim took the whip out of the socket and gave Rabbit a real sharp belt. It sounded like a rifle report, and you could see the hide under Rabbit’s mangey fur turn red. A spirited horse would have started out at a wild gallop, or driven his hind hoofs up through the floor of the buggy. Rabbit just twirked one ear, let out a sigh and started plodding for home. Alvina and I watched until that stiff and formal party had crossed the tracks, then we turned and looked at each other. Little imps were dancing in her diamond eyes and her red lips were curved into their saint- liest smile. It was the same old story. When Alvina looked like that you didn’t have time to think of anything else.. I was going to call her down properly for mixing in with the love affairs of those two nice girls, but, well, no man I ever knew had a chance when Alvina was preparing to grind an ax, “ Gittyap!” she giggled. And we started laughing. We laughed until tears came and we were too weak to laugh any more. I had sat down on the counter, and she pulled herself up and sat down beside me. She turned her beautiful head and looked up at me as innocently and adoringly as if she were a little girl and I were Santa Claus. And I was, in a way, but I didn’t know it. With her sitting there close beside me, I. was in a rosy trance. 3 ‘“ Sheriff,” she said, in that soft, alluring musical voice, “are the twins engaged to those two kids?” oO EComichoo cS (E)