Argosy All-Story Weekly — "Sea Marauders" — page 51: what you’re looking at

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

TROUBLE RANCH. that guy walks away with murder. He wouldn’t last half a day in this office if he wasn’t the boss’s son.” “ Cheese it!” the other ordered in a low whisper. “ Here he is now.” “Pipe the lump on his jaw!” the first clerk muttered, prudently speaking through one side of his mouth. “ What a wallop somebody handed him last night! Three ringing cheers for the fist behind the punch!” Young Spofford had a private room of his own, where he made a rather feeble pretense of doing business for the firm, and toward this he headed, looking neither to the right nor to the left. Before he could reach its shelter the message from his father was delivered. “ Say what he wanted?” young Spof- ford grunted sourly. “No, sir,” was the discreet response. “ All he said was that he’d like to see you.” “ All right,” Spofford, Jr., grum- bled; but instead of going immediately, he turned the key of his own office, dis- appearing from sight of the two clerks, who grinned and winked with malicious satisfaction at each other. Spofford tossed an expensive four- gallon hat to the desk, and sprawled limply in a chair. His eyes were heavy and bloodshot, his hair disheveled, and he badly needed a shave. “Boy, but Pve got a peach of a head!” he muttered, passing nervous fingers through the hair that clustered damply above his temples. In tender solicitude he felt of the lump that dis- figured his jaw. “Damn that broncho forker! He'll sweat before [’m through with him! Wonder what the hell the governor wants now.” Young Spofford left his chair, pull- ing open a filing cabinet, from which he extracted a whisky flask. He drank copiously, and this restored in some slight degree his shattered morale. “Might as well get the agony over with,”’ he mused in no enthusiasm, and 473 without further postponement of the evil day passed on down the hallway to his father’s office. . POFFORD, SR., looked up as his son entered, with a slow contemp- tuous glance that took in the younger man from head to heels. “Harrumph!” was Banker Spof- ford’s salutation. | “Morning, governor!” the youth re- sponded, with an attempt at sunny cheerfulness that, strange to say, fell | sadly flat. : “You're a fine-looking specimen!’ Spofford, Sr., remarked witheringly. “A fine-looking specimen! What hap- pened to your jaw? A mule kick you —or something?” His son achieved a sheepish sort of grin. ‘““T bumped a door—in the dark,” he explained. “Yes, ve heard of doors that do things like that,” the banker answered grimly. “ Do you know who hit you, or were you too drunk to have even that much sense left?” Young Spofford merely grunted by way of reply, unable to meet the stern gaze of his outraged parent. “ Put a filthy, ragged suit of clothes on you, rub a handful of cinders into your hair, smear your face with axle grease—and you'd be a dead ringer for some bum kicked off the brake rods of a freight train! “How much longer do you think I’m going to stand for your damned non- sense—for this everlasting hell-raising you indulge in? Don’t you ever expect to settle down and behave yourself?” Banker Spofford selected a cigar, which he lighted with fingers that shook from the displeasure and indignation which mastered him. “T know I’ve made a fool of my- self,” J. M., Jr., rejoined humbly, “ but don’t rub it in. I’m on the straight and narrow now.” “ Harrumph!” snorted. Banker Spoftord aes o Ss eceatt - = mnicbooks.com —