The Argosy, Vol. 75, No. 4 — page 202: what you’re looking at

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

904 There had been trouble between Pete and Jim Miles of the Dugout Merchan- dise Company over an unpaid grocery bill. Miles, a soft-muscled fop with gone wind, had thrashed her stalwart husband unmercifully and laid open his head with a pinch-bar. True, she had vindicated Pete’s honor by publicly trouncing the braggart merchant, but as a result Barr, the con- stable, had tendered them the alterna- tives of leave town or go to jail. Since Pete’s standing in the commu- nity was without value or influence, they had come away with their shame and their belongings, bound for the far settlement of Calaverite, which place Pete had named as the portals to an honorable life. Then had come the cloud-burst. She remembered how Pete’s bushy head had looked and how the rain had streamed into his collar. She had been too hard on Pete. The incident at Dugout, while it was a hu- miliation of the meanest sort, had not entirely warranted the severity of her reproaches, Moreover, she had not be- lieved him so seriously hurt. The worst that could have been said of the wound in his head was that it would be more. painful than dangerous. : Besides, fussiness had been one of Pete’s foremost characteristics. She recalled his way of shamming, how he could screw up his face in seeming dis- tress, and moan and tremble and shed tears on occasions to win her sympathy. ~ Pete had been a shammer, and, like the fabled boy who cried “ Wolf!” had lost her confidence in the hour of his real need. But, then, Pete was dead, and for all his weaknesses and short- comings he had been her husband. Poor Pete! Overwhelmed by her emotion, she wept, while her mysterious brown- skinned companion eyed her in glum in- decision. He waited impatiently, though with the determined air of one who will see a situation to its end; and when at last Peggy dried her tears he dragged a THE ARGOSY. camp-stool near and occupied it. That minute he turned strangely confidential. “Seftora Gilbert, I frien’ to you. Feliciano Machado my name. I know Pete well. Heem an’ me compameros, pardners, lak brothers, shuah—fife years. Heem tole you, maybe—no?.” As he spoke his expression changed to one of designing intent, though veiled in a great measure by a rare eagerness of manner, so obvious as to rouse Peg- gy from her abstraction. She regard- ed him suspiciously, and he fawned. “ TI sor-ry fo’ you, sefiora. Dios mio! You ha’f moch tr-rouble, I know. I bury Pete—an’ you’ wagon an’ muulas, I got’m. I tak’ ’im that day. It is better fo’ you stay in the leetle tent an’ no get wet. But you go. I come back an’ no fine you. Mil demonios! How [ look fo’ you! [look all day. I know thees camp. In the nigh’ I come, an’ you are here, sick. Now, Pete, my ver good frien’—no? So I wan’ to be frien’ to you. I lak help my frien’s!”’ If he had hoped to create an im- pression by these assurances of good will, his failure must have been plain to him. In Peggy’s estimation he fitted the part of an extraordinary rascal so thoroughly as to fill her with no little apprehension, She knew as well as if he had told her that he had secured his visit against interruption; that her benefactor was even then miles away, or given over to some employment that precluded the possibility of his unexpected return. All of which went to convince her of the evil underlying this man’s pur- poses, and that, whatever its nature, it was to find egress through her. Yet, in the face of her increased alarm over this presentiment, two things stood out boldly in her mind— the likelihood of his statements and the fact that they were clearly -given to prepare her for further information. In the short silence that followed his narrative she decided to meet his ad- vances with a show of friendship, if for no other reason than to gain time—an important factor in her present straits, Gomichoo (C cS (E@)