Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 11, 1925 — page 151: what you’re looking at

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

PETERSON PRIDE. all of them decent men, and had they not taken what they called a nip whenever they wished it? Of course, Robin was dif- ferent. Why else had she married him? She looked across at him when she thought he would not notice. He showed fatigue under his pale eyes. A soft pity went through her. For Robin to work so ‘hard, in such weather, out there on that icy lake that he must come home drunk! Of course he was different from those other men! They couldn’t even feel the cold! “ Robin,” she ventured, “ it must’ve been awful out there to-day. I thought of you every minute. I couldn’t wait, hoping you’d get through and get in—” She paused. He did not answer. ‘ The biscuits are not bad, you think? I told Ernie Jaynes he’d have to stay out nights if he was going to haul in as much as you do!” Robin looked up suspiciously. “Better do your tellin’ at home,” he ad- vised morosely. He went to bed abruptly at eight o’clock, leaving Minna awake by the stove. She felt lonely in the kitchen by herself. At nine she arose despondently and polished an old brass ship’s lamp, a task that she had planned to do next day. It was unthink- able to go to bed. Outside the windows the wind ranted with a stubborn, maniacal fury. A hard night on the lakes! Minna thought remi- niscently of a time when she was a very little girl, and her father, a big man like Casper Clause, put on His slicker at three o'clock and took out his sloop rig alone to help a little shingle schooner having trouble. No gasoline engines those days. _ Well, Robin was like that. Go if needed! The alarm clock pointed to one when she climbed the stair to the chill little room above the parlor. It was still snowing. Robin awakened, asked the hour, and went back to sleep immediately. Minna was just making coffee next morn- ing when Mrs. Casper Clause, her woolen skirts whipping in the wind, ran up the path to the kitchen door. Minna saw her ap- proach and lifted the latch. Snow stood _ boot-deep on the level and heaped up into - three-foot ridges across the dunes. “Hear ’bout last night?” Mrs, Clause 305 asked. She shook her skirts by the kitchen stove and stood, panting, while chunks of snow melted on the floor. She was a heavy, short-winded old woman. ‘“ Steamer got lost over Pyramid way, couldn’t see for storm—did get on the bar—” Minna poured two cups of coffee deliber- ately and set them on the back of the stove. “All the men, Casper and Walt Cook and Ernie and the Hedges boys, they took Walt’s boat and run out to her. No need. She got off without no trouble—only looked bad for a bit.” Minna Peterson felt a dull numbing throb in the muscles of her throat. “All the men!” She swallowed, but could not dis- lodge the thing that choked her. “ All the men!” There smothered over her a strange and intangible blanket of anger that was not anger, of heart-burning animosity toward Mrs. Clause, of despairing and inconsolable misgiving. ‘* All the men!” All the fat old loafers in Johnnie Clause’s store, his mother meant. There was a fine son for a fisherman’s family. Selling sugar! Robin had no guts for a loutish job like that, thank Heaven! Still, she wished he had gone. Every man was need- ed in a storm like last night’s. She knew. For the first time a tiny, uncomfortable doubt clouded her admiration, her pride fal- tered. : “Steamer got off safe,” she said, wiping the snout of the coffeepot with unnecessary caution. ‘‘ There wasn’t any need going out.” “Who could tell that?” asked Mrs. Clause. Her eyes were intent upon Minna’s colorless cheeks. She had always said Minna Peterson had no cause to be so up- ish. ‘“ Couldn’t tell—just everybody went.” Minna spun about. “Robin would of gone if it wasn’t for me!” she cried. ‘“ Said all along he better go down and see what’s doing! But I—I wasn’t very well-like. I told him he couldn’t, said he had to stay with me, just made him stay! Still in bed he is, never got there till after one o’clock.”’ “No. We see your lights when we passed on our way home,” Mrs. Clause agreed. : 10 A a ee ee ‘comicbooks. ee, . oa ae pee Ss ed gh = —— SS = _ -_- - >» rm ee - = = ; ra ate = eS Fe es ae oe <> ; eas a a < => — eS ee —— ne a, = = a el Se ae C35 ae ee ie ee a aS oe eee > ee ee ee eR To Sl es a ee i ee ee ee, a Noth nt a en =; See ino ie