Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 11, 1925 — page 102: what you’re looking at

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

256 “TJ never wanted her as I do now,” he admitted. “I want her even if I can get her only by forte.” CHAPTER XXIII. THE BREAKING POINT. ESHER SKIDMORE’S farm lay only a few miles from Little Flinty and the house of Wade Murrell, and yet it was far enough away to dominate a stretch of country so inhabited by Skid- mores and Skidmore connections that the clan head was loosely ringed about and surrounded by stalwarts of his own blood. In the house itself, which overlooked the waters of Hard Times Fork near the mouth through which it emptied into Big Flinty, Lesher was just now dwelling alone. The Skidmore leader was a widower and child- less, and a widowed sister kept his house for him, but in these days she had adven- tured on a long journey to visit a married daughter in far-away Oklahoma. Even mountain concepts of tidiness had gone to pot in this womanless abode, and the petty feudal despot was living in “ sich a plumb mess thet everything was kerflum- mixed erbout stanchways an’ si-godlin,” if the whispers of neighboring housewives could be trusted. Also, if one took his in- formation from the same source, there was other and even more regrettable demoraliza- tion under that roof. It was intimated that Lesher, who not _ only led, but domineered over the fighting _ men of the Skidmore clan, bowed in a sort of hen-pecked obedience to the older sister who kept his house, and now that her keen and shrewish eye no longer raked the place like a cold search light, a sense of ex- -__ pansive freedom enveloped the man. ~ Now not only were things left lying in ~ disarray where they fell, but the big jug, that ordinarily reposed under a concealing pile of fodder in the barn, stood blatantly and unabashed on the kitchen table and the tin cup beside it was rarely dry. - Lesher Skidmore was on the loose, and Bes: strangely enough, his most constant com- = -panion in — was not a fellow Skid- ‘ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, Cas Harley went over there, not openly along the road that followed the creek beds of Big Flinty and Hard Times, but by a short cut through the“ la’rel hells,” and his customary approach to the place was from the rear. Usually, he came at night when Lesher was sitting in pleasurable real- ization with his shoes off before the fire and with the jug at his elbow. Since such a precaution obviated com~- — plications, it was understood between these two that the note of a whippoorwill, thrice repeated just back of the house, shouid stand in lieu of the lifted voice asking ad- mittance—a voice which others might also hear, It chanced that Harley, besides his ad- vantages of education in a school “ down below ” and his vaulting ambitions for state- craft preferment, was gifted with a power to make a fiddle sing, and in these periodic sprees, when Lesher’s spirit was soaring free and untrammelled, he loved nothing more than to sprawl at ease in his chair with the tin cup often replenished and his eyes on the crackle of the hickory logs, while his minstrel fiddled for him. Through these evenings Cas Harley of- ficiated as the vassal musician, seeking to clinch into effectiveness the strength of this friendship, and teasing music from the rosined catgut until the Skidmore chief- tain’s head dropped sleepily on his chest. — When he had roused himself several times, each time with a glassier eye, and had finally stumbled over to pitch like a dead man on to his unmade bed, Cas Harley, who never drank, would sit by the fire awhile with his thoughts. 7 Then Harley, hating the whole degraded squalor of the scene, but choking back his disgust and playing his game, would lie down on the bed of the absent sister and sleep until morning. The superabundant vigor of Lesher Skid- more made it possible for him to rise with the sun, after a debauch that had been almost night-long, with.a clarified eye and - a steady hand, and in the morning there: were rehearsals back of the barn, In these rehearsals, young Cas, aspirant for membership in the body of the State’s lawmakers, was being trained for murder.