Argosy All-Story Weekly, December 4, 1926 — page 154: what you’re looking at

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

464 That was two years ago. I stuck. I promised her I would, and I stuck. But sometimes, in the spring, when the park was bursting out in a glory of gold blossoms, and the grocer recommended dandelion greens, I would feel the old urge. Up in my attic room, in between calls for ice water and fresh bath towels, I’d sit, playing dream music on an accordion of folder postcards. Pictures of Yosemite they were, and the old Santa Fe, and spring in the Sierras. All of them places I’d seen in my younger days, from the cracks in the baggage car doors. Sometimes I’d walk the tracks all night in the light of a May moon, with the rails shining ahead of me like a silver ladder to heaven. And I dreamed of how I would go again some day, when I’d finished doing my duty by the boarding house. But not in the old, wild, rough way. Poached eggs and pancakes in the mornings had cured that. De luxe, classy, genteel, I’d go over the old trails once more, seeing the world from a comfortable lower berth. I was saving money. Id have enough when the time came. There was only one bug in the ointment—a cunning, little one with big, saucy eyes and pert chin, and the kind of haircut that made you want to say to her, “ Hey, young feller, what are you doing, parading around in sister’s clothes?” Frankie LaMarr was her name, and she made up music, third floor rear, and wouldn’t pay her rent. I couldn’t turn her out, though. You can’t turn out girls with real folks back in Ohio, even if they are independent and making their own way in the city, except for contributions of fudge and five dollar checks from back home. It was them checks that interested me. I used to go to her mornings when the mail come in, pleasant but meaningful. “Some more mail from home, Frankie?” I’d inquire, polite. “You bet your pet toupee, old thing!” she’d retort, friendly. “That ain’t a check there, is it?” I’d inquire, not appearing interested. “Tf it isn’t, I’m a cross-eyed Hottentot,” she’d answer, shaking the letter for signs of more. 3 Miss ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY.. “Well, I was just thinking, Miss Frankie,” I continued, embarrassed but resolute, “that if you didn’t mind, you might be putting a little of it on your back rent.” She widened her gray eyes and looked at me reproachfully. ‘“ Oh,” she intoned. ‘“‘ Oh, and then what about the piano?” “Yeah, and what about it?” I swal- lowed. “Don’t you know that if I don’t put every cent I have on it, the men’ll come and haul it away and I can’t finish the song and get the cool thousand Myers promised me? Don’t you know that? Do you want ’em’to take away the piano?” From my recollection of the kind of music it produced and still smarting under several complaints issued by my prize guests re- garding said instrument, it wouldn’t have been a bad idea. ‘“And make me give up my career?” she went on, her eyes even bigger, “and lose the thousand, and not be able to pay you any rent—and have to go back to Ohio a failure? Do you want that, Wild Willie McGuire?”’ “No,” I gulped. ‘‘ No, Miss Frankie. I was just suggesting a small payment. But Vil wait till you get your thousand. It can’t be long now.” “You bet it can’t be long,” she breezed. ‘ All IT have to do is duplicate my first hit, you know—the ‘ Yama Yama Mamma ’— and Myers ’ll come across. Then when my slips come in—” “That’s all right, Miss Frankie.” “You're a real Western gentleman, Wild Will,” she smiled, and flounced up to her room whence presently emerged a flock of sounds that would make a den of lions listen like a choir of larks. Spring in the Sierras! Gentians on the hillsides! Bacon fried in the cool tang of October on the mesas! A bell buzzed. I wended my way up one flight to the second floor front. It was Caroline Beamish. Like myself, she was traveled. Before her marriage to the gone but not forgotten Mr. Beamish, she had once taken a Cook’s tour to Europe 9 A Eboo (COLA cS) (©)