Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 11, 1925 — page 152: what you’re looking at

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

306 ' Minna stood a long time looking out across the untracked snow after Casper Clause’s wife had gone. Again she felt the - swelling in her throat. The night had hurt her somehow. It had brought a momentous trouble into her untroubled life, as intangi- ble as it was absorbing, illogical, intuitive. ‘She could not understand it. Robin had hurt her silly pride. That was all. And what was pride? Certainly old Mrs. Clause could boast of no pride. Look at her landlubber, Johnnie! Com- pare him with Robin! Yet doubt arose like a mist upon the face of water, doubt that her husband still stood high-headed about his fellows, doubt of his absolute su- periority. “‘ All the men!” And he lay home abed —sleeping a drunken sleep, all evening while other fishermen labored splendidly upon the lake. As the drifts piled higher and the blasty winter wore on, Robin Peterson snored many nights in his own or some neighbor’s fish shanty. He staggered home on blus- tery mornings, wearing a sorry face, his eyes paler than ever. Each time Minna helped him with his boots, made him hot coffee, and when she heard him tumble into bed she climbed the stair quietly, brought down his clothes, sponged them, pressed them out, and laid them back upon the chair beside him. : She put on a gay, familiar front before Mrs. Casper Clause and the other women of the fleet. She told of Robin’s diligence at the workbench in the cellar, and dis- played the towel rack he made for the kitch- en, She scrubbed her house until it shone; . baked, cooked, lived excitedly hunting duties for her hands. Even alone in her kitchen she sang. But the nights were bad. She lay awake and told herself fiercely that Robin Peterson was the best husband in Cathead village. As for those other women—again and again she asked herselfi—what had they to boast about? Casper Clause—what a homely brute he was, with his one eye and no neck! And Ernie Jaynes’s nose! And that fat Walt Cook, with his wheezes! Nels Nielson? Well, he was a good enough fellow and not so bad looking. He ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. saved his money. But to think of being married to him! To think of being the wife of any one except Robin, good old waggish Robin! 3 She began to listen when she heard him mount the porch. Did he stamp his feet or drag them? Did he grip the latch or fumble for it? IV. Ice hugged the lake shore that spring through a blustery March far into April, and still floated determinedly in the wash the rst of May. For two months the men of the fleet had been busy at their boats, patching ribs, scraping, calking, painting, tuning up the engines, mending nets, cut- ting fresh buoys, splicing ropes. Casper Clause was the first of them all to light a fire under the big tar kettle upon the sand. Soon there was a racket of hammering about the flat-faced gasoline boat drawn upon the ways at Ernie Jaynes’s shack. The others, in dungarees, labored daily at this task and that. All except Robin Peterson. “How about the boat, Robin?” Minna asked in March, and twice again in April, and once more on the ist of May. “Boat’s good enough. No need to do anything to it.” *¢ She'll leak.” **T can bail,” her husband countered. When the season did open, with a luxury of warm winds out of the southwest, Robin | Peterson came down one noon from the pool hall and went heroically to work upon the broad, thirsty seams of his boat. She was not a graceful craft, this King- fisher; she lacked care and white lead, oakum and attention. Three days Robin labored, sweating in the sun while other fishermen sat comfortably in the shade. But the third day, with the work unfinished, he tossed back his yellow hair, left a paint brush in the pail, and stalked up the un- tidy street of the village. It was nine that night when he came home, a dissolute, sog- gy wreck of a man, and Minna put him to bed He had blustered about Johnnie Clause’s_ - store half the evening, forced a quarrel with a visiting coast guardsman, had been beaten oKoXe) * 4 ne