Argosy All-Story Weekly — "Sea Marauders" — page 66: what you’re looking at

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

, ; 488 tened intently, caressing his little bunch of*whiskers. His eyes grew bright. I got out, that’s all. HE next day I went out to Sallie’s to ask her about it. Thank Heav- en, none of my activities has ever been hampered by over-modesty. By and large I’ve known Sallie Logan long enough to speak my mind. Even in the dusk I could see the brightening gleam in her eyes. “Do you know what’s happened to the Handsome Panther mine?” she in- quired. I didn’t know. “It’s petered out—that’s what. We're flat, dad and I. Another thing, we've been making good to a lot of in- vestors that—well, that we got to come in. Alavardo doesn’t know how broke we_are. He’s put up a proposition to us, and—” “Don’t touch it!” I cried. “Why did you say that?” Sallie asked queerly. [ was puzzled a moment myself. I knew, naturally, that Alavardo was crooked; but there was something else in it, too, intuition, perhaps. “ Anyway, it’s too late to talk about it now,” Sallie told me in her practical little way. ‘ Dad has gone South—lett yesterday. He’s going across to look at the proposition. Alavardo gave him letters of introduction that will take him through all right. If it looks as good as Alavardo tells it we’ll raise the money somehow.” I groaned. can reach him to stop him?” Sallie has also what they call com- mon sense. “ You take your hat and go home,” she said with a smile. “I won't have you putting terrible ideas in my head.”’ T happened just like I knew it would. Alavardo broke the news to Sallie and she broke it to me. ‘There was no newspaper stuff; none of this hokum from Washington. It was strictly con- fidential, “Ts there any way you — : - pee ie th na SE SS a tee hes are SE < — = - =— = . e en Ne a Se : ; oy a = ae Pe ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. The bandits had old Logan down there in the mountains, and they want- ed twenty-five thousand dollars for him. Otherwise it was the firing squad at the end of another week unless they heard good news via Sefior Ramon Al- avardo. That’s the kind of a raw deal it was. “What are you going to do?” I asked Sallie. = “Do you mean what am I going to dor” she came back. ‘ Why, I’m go- ing to get poor dad out of it, of course.” “But you haven’t twenty-five thou- sand dollars, nor anywhere near that much,” I told her. The thing hit me like a chunk of ice: “ Alavardo’s been making love to you!” I have never again seen her eyes so hard, like baked blue enamel. “He’s asked me to marry him. He thinks we have money.” ‘The air seemed to me like it was ripping apart. “Poor dad; he’d go through fire for me. It sees like the sporting thing to do, doesn’t it? If I can only keep Al- avardo thinking we have money—” SHOULDN’T have blamed Men- dez, but I did. He decided to remain in town until the storm blew over. I found later that he was “in laces” in one of our department stores. [he re- vulsion against everything Latin was complete, without discrimination. I kept away from him three or four days, and at last he looked me up. He threw his hands up in dismay. “ Holy Mother—what is the mat- matter?” { told him and I told him plenty; the whole kit and kaboodle of ’em, and if the U. S. was a regular nation we’d take an army carrying sprayers loaded with vermin exterminator and wipe out the whole blooming outfit. Mendez got the color of a dirty side- walk, after I’d got through, and we were both breathing hard. He was the first to come out of it. The pallor went out of his face and he put his hand on my shoulder. ] —. (€ . mate te heal : 1\— ~ eee were — oa: > ee ee ee a ves At ae i =F et ae > ~~ ye vy =~ “ ee Pa eS a EO a ee FOF D = a = | C4 Ld as 7 nes = ; > c# Ti ta