Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 189, No. 4 — page 51: what you’re looking at

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

THE BULLY OF eter about with her. Her early reports were disheartening. “ Twenty-five and a half! wood!” She would pick up an armful and stag- ger off into the smoke. It struck Teddy that she was a heroic figure. He could not reconcile this brave girl with the vindictive, cruel creature whom all his previous deal- ings had concerned. By the time the first cold steely light of dawn striped the eastern horizon, Teddy was exhausted. He swore he couldn’t lift that ax up for another stroke. His lungs were burning dry; his throat, despite fre- quent visits to a water bucket, was parched, and his eyes felt swollen and inflamed. The girl’s eyes were red-rimmed and al- most shut, and her complexion was negroid. The white shirt was slate-gray and tattered. Her voice, from smoke and superhuman ef- fort, had become almost a husky whisper. The temperature in the grove had crept up to twenty-nine and a half. If they could keep it above that point until the sun came up, the grove would be saved. The aching efforts of that dreadful night, with the irritating events which had pre- ceded it, were a little too much for the young Northerner. When the first ray of the sun struck into the fog of smoke, he collapsed. And he care- lessly selected as a spot on which to fall, one not a yard from where Georgia Wood- stock sat on an upturned crate with her head in her hands. TX. Chop more CONSCIOUSNESS began again with the clammy sensation of an icy rag being swabbed over his face. It took Teddy Armbister several long seconds to adjust himself to the amazing discovery that Georgia Michigan Woodstock, the girl with- out a heart, held his head in her lap and was weeping bitterly over him even while the work of restoration went forward. It seemed to Teddy, as his brain cleared, that things had progressed very naturally and nicely to the only possible conclusion. He had been in love with her ever since the- night Cesar had sent him flying into the lemon tree’s branches, and his growing BISCAYNE BAY. 521 hatred of her had been nothing but an in- verted kind of love. Now everything was cleared up; the freeze had brought them together; bygones would be bygones, and they would work out their destiny hand in hand and heart to heart. It was this gratifying line of reasoning that brought Teddy Armbister to his feet and at once precipitated the folly that fol- lowed. She was drying her own eyes on the same rag with which she had swabbed him back to consciousness when he put the impulse into motion. Teddy looked for an inspired moment at that slender, beloved figure; at the tousled hair, full of twigs and leaves, at the de- plorable shirt. Her face, in the rising sun, was pink under the layer of soot. He thought she looked adorable. Miss Woodstock wasn’t aware of his ad- vance until he had gathered her fiercely into his arms and had tried to kiss her. And for a supreme moment he was happy with the sensation of her, hot and limp and yielding, in his arms. : Then she struck him on the nose with her fist. She struck him with such vio- lence that he reeled and staggered back four or five steps before he recovered his balance. ; She summed him up in a cutting, coarse backwoods phrase as he stared dazedly at her. ‘You’re lower than a snake’s stomach!” “But—” Teddy protested, gasping. “For the love of Mike, Georgia, I love you!” Her swollen eyes blazed at him with fury. “You haven’t a right to try anything like that. If you don’t know by this time that I don’t like you, you never will! TI suppose you think I came over here and helped you keep this grove from freezing because I’m crazy about you!” She got some control over herself then. The rage left her, and she was again her cold, suspicious young self. He muttered: enough about you!” ‘““T came over here,” she said, between (E(0) VOOKS AAI “God knows, ?’m crazy (E)