Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 62: what you’re looking at

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

372 force met an immovable body. But Jim landed what looked like a clean upper- cut to the jaw. Ed went stumbling back. He knocked over a stand of brooms with one wild swing of his left arm as he tried to balance himself, but that didn’t stop him. He kept going until he struck the sheet iron stove. I had nailed the legs to the floor the winter before, but they were detachable, and his impact forced them out, and the stove shot off its tin plate into the back of the store, spilling soot and ashes as it went; then the sheet iron stove- pipe began coming down in sections all around him. - He was sitting down and looking be- wildered and Jim stood over him ready to strike at the first move. “ That’s enough!” I yelled. rest of your fighting outside.” “Come on outside, you sneak,” Ed mut- tered and climbed up. They went outside to a cleared spot in the broom sage field, and they started in again. They fought until they were so tired they could only hang onto each other and claw and gouge. Then they went over to the depot, sat down and started wran- gling, and in a few minutes they were fight- ing again. It was almost dark when they declared another armistice and started off— without their rations. Next morning I got all the reports on that fight from the blacks who had followed _ them home. I have never heard of an- other fight quite like it. Stopping every now and then, it took them until after mid- night to reach the tumbledown old shanty they had moved into, and once there they quarreled and fought at intervals until al- most daylight. They had to stop finally from sheer exhaustion; and old Uncle Dan Vickus, who had followed the fight from the railroad depot to daybreak, told me that their faces were so battered you could not tell them apart. It was a depressing thing to hear about. I asked Uncle Dan if at any time he heard them mention anybody’s name in particu- lar, and he’grinned his red-gummed old grin and said: ‘““No, suh, nubuddy’s but de name ob ouah heabenly Fatheh!”’> “Do the ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, Alvina Barnes said that she sensed some- thing terrible was happening. She and the fox terriers were sitting in a row on the commissary steps when I went down to the commissary early that morning and opened up. Uncle Dan was there, too, giving her the full details of that all-night fight. The sun was up, but it was hidden behind a bank of pale green mist. It was a queer morning, and I have good cause to re- member it well. The swamps were steam- ing and this steam hung in little greasy, pale-colored clouds over the black clusters of cypress. Here and there were long, open lanes of transparency through the mist. Everything seemed blurred and unnatural. It reminded me of the way things look some- times when you wake up suddenly and things won’t come into focus. You felt that by blinking hard you could drive the mist away. It was chilly and quiet. Miles away the ocean was drumming on the beach, and the ground seemed to be trembling. Alvina had a blue scarf about her shoul- ders, and she was all hunched together, as » if she was cold. She looked up at me dreamily, without smiling. And there was a question in her eyes. “Well?” she said. “Well?” said I. “I knew something was happening,” she went on. “Something terrible. I don’t know what tells me these things, but I knew. I couldn’t sleep all night, and that grandaddy ’gator who’s got himself parked in that deep swamp in front of our house was moving around and grunting all night. This drought.has dried up his wallow, and he grunts all the time. He came out into the moonlight last night, and he sort of looked things over. I never saw him before, and in the moonlight, with the mist and all, it was like a night on earth a million years ago. He came up out of the swamp leaving a trail of mud behind him. He walked all around the house without stopping until he came to his trail again, then he put his head back and looked up at the moon, and his eyes looked as if they had little green electric lights behind them. I thought I was dreaming. But I knew something was wrong.” The lovely, velvety voice stopped; and COMME OO KS 5€C) \