Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 11, 1925 — page 9: what you’re looking at

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

THE BIG GUN. permit the imparting of any dying advice to his only son and sole heir. Cyrus, however, felt little doubt of what his course should be. Chiefly, it must be one that would force Linkersport to a full realization of the unexampled virtues of the late Mr. Bullitt. Cyrus was far from satisfied with the esteem in which his paternal parent had been held by his fellow townspeople. He recalled the record of twenty years, as he knew it: the arrival of Andrew Bullitt from the West, where he had been a cowboy or a gold miner, or something; his marriage, in his forties, with Melinda Narwearing, the governess in the home of Mr. Harper; their rather flamboyant start in leasing the American House, where the elder Bullitt continued for some years, where Cyrus was born, where his mother died; the leasing of the Grand Opera House, with Bullitt as manager; then the shift of fortune; leaving the American House; House; operating a livery stable until the automobile rendered livery stables obsolete; the taking over, only five years before, of the shooting gallery; their life nm the rooms above—an idyllic life in its way—and the puttery ways of the gallery, tending the targets, oiling the guns, keeping the markers clean. Linkersport did not appreciate a shooting gallery, his father had often said. They ought to move to a bigger city, where some of the old American spirit was alive and people knew they ought to keep their hands in by handling a trigger regularly. But enough money came in to pay for the canned goods and the occasional meat they ate. Cyrus never participated in those monthly sessions his father had with the teller in Mr. Harper’s bank, but he felt a vague resentment against Mr. Harper, and other prominent citizens, also. Once these prominent. citizens had honored his father; he had been one of them; but not-of late. He avoided them; they did not come to see him. This had been all wrong. Cyrus felt it more keenly than anything else. How could he reverse this condition? How could he make them see what he had seen in that departed spirit, a gentleman of the finest leaving the Opera | 163 sense of honor, an affection of the tenderest memory, a quality of mind set clearly on a rock above the mutations of life? CHAPTER II. OVER THE RADIO. HESE reflections were rudely startled by the entrance into the darkened room of two fellows. One rudely shouted, “ Hello, Cy! How about a string of twenty-twos? Mart’ says I can’t spot him, but I'll show him!” Cyrus lit the kerosene lamp above the targets and faced Mart Kennedy, the ex- press clerk, and Jim Baggerly, from the drug store. He was about to pass over to them the .22 rifles when a sense of their disrespect smote him. He stiffened, to them unaccountably, and said curtly, “‘ Sorry, boys, but the gallery’s closed to-night. Come around to-morrow,” To their nalf-ashamed apologies, muttered indistinctly, he bade.them good night, fol- lowed them to the door and locked up. Then he climbed the stairs to his bedroom with a heavy heart. It seemed to him that somehow Mart and Jim had added another, an unnamable insult to the memory of his father—lacking the decency to wait until at — least a day after his funeral before picking up his worn target rifles in play practice. As he was lighting his lamp, however, a loud and persistent knocking came from the street door. At first he paid no attention, but it was repeated. He descended and opened. 3 It was Judge Villas, his father’s friend. “Evenin’, Cyrus,” said the judge. “If ye ain’t gone to bed thought I’d come in a spell.” AE course, judge. Glad to see you, sir.” Cyrus led the way to the sitting-room over the gallery. The judge sat down and lit a stogie. “ Radio workin’?” he asked, looking toward the corner where the one tube emplaced in an old cedar chest was wired up through the window into a gs ze boring tree. _ “ Ought to be,” Cyrus answered, moving © toward his pha rose “Tl tune in, if you like.” See comicbooks.