Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 11, 1925 — page 150: what you’re looking at

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

or ee x Se ae pee Se i on OE REL ee POET 304 bundled round by oilskins, his sou’wester pulled low and buttoned under his chin; he was shapeless as a barrow of fish, a bulky shadow plodding unhesitatingly through the lesser darknesses of the dunes. Net reels flung about hilariously near the docks, squeaking in an ill-tuned chorus. Shore ice crunched. Hard, high breakers drummed the sand. The nine dingy shan- ties of the fishing fleet, each with its warped dock in front and its ragged icehouse be- hind, huddled about the entrance to the harbor. The first of these belonged to Robin Peterson. All of them were dark. At the second, Casper Clause, letting his one good eye do the work of two, fitted a key to the padlock, jerked at the hasp, and stepped in. Ernie Jaynes and fat little Walt Cook followed. . “ Lock the hook,” Casper ordered. “ I'll burn the lamp.” He touched his match to an old ship lamp, chained to a beam of the dirty ceil- ing. It sent down a rich yellow light upon the tidy, ill-smelling cleaning room of the shack. Empty kegs were heaped in a corner, empty fish barrows in another. A stack of recumbent net buoys, their flags hanging limp, lay under strings of wooden floats, like fat, shellacked sausages. The room once had been whitewashed. “Hell and high water!” said Casper Clause. “ Will you take a look at that?” The husband of Minna Peterson sprawled on the floor, his head pillowed on a fish net, _ He awakened, startled; arose, awkwardly passed a hand across his forehead, and set- tled unsteadily against the wall. He was a small man, cut to a neater pat- -tern than most of his fellows of the coast. Minna liked small men. All her life, until Robin drifted down from Grand Traverse way, she had known only big ones, awkward fellows, with long arms and heavy hands and a way of squeezing you half to death if they had to touch you. Robin Peterson was spare without excessive thinness. His eyes were blue, the pale kind of blue. “ What’s the fuss?” he asked of the silent, = disapproving circle. _ “ No fuss.” . a —. > t ” ~ —. Ses ae 7 ~s ~—— , va “ E eg 5 —d wa. tS 4 7S. Wy a — 4 e a ee ee eS ee Pe Ey ar Oe EO I age Pe EN ae Fee Te ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. ‘Then why you stand round like a pack of missioners? I need a drink of water.” Casper Clause waddled toward a bucket in the corner, unhooked.a dipper, and car- ried the drink across, Robin Peterson swallowed it in one gulp. ‘Minna, your woman, she’s been lookin’ for you,” Ernie Jaynes said. | “What for?” “Supper, I guess.” Devil with supper!” Peterson slipped on his feet: ‘I don’t want no supper!” Casper Clause dropped the dipper with a clatter to the floor and reached his rheu- matic fingers toward the younger man’s throat. They fastened in like so many an- chors, pinched, and then cast away. ‘““They’s times, Peterson, you ain’t fit the chokin’!” he growled. ‘“ Now, home with you, or by the Mackinac, I’ll smack you the whole way! Get out, out my fish shanty!” IIT. MINNA PETERSON had finished with her biscuits when footsteps sounded on the snowy back porch. She wiped the last flour from her round, red hands and ran to open the door. Robin would be tired to-night. Lifting nets on the 12th of December! She wrenched the door in toward her, against the wind that strove to pull it out. Robin had found it hard work walking. The gale had been in his face, and weak- ened his legs at the same time it blew the liquor out of his head. He crossed un- steadily to the tin bucket and poured out a drink of water. “Why, Robin!” Minna said. And then, simply: “I been waiting supper.” “And runnin’ up and down the town askin’ where I’m at! Listen, Minna—TI’ll take care myself and don’t you go talkin’!”~ His cold face flushed. Minna’s own be- came unnaturally white and they ate in si- lence, Minna looking straight at her plate, Robin at his, She had lived all her life on the fishing coast; twenty years, long enough to rec- ognize drunkenness in all its forms and stages. It held no terror for her; her father had sailed the lakes, and her uncles, ue) =} (@) << aa ei a ee a TT c= ore ig ——e,