The Argosy, Vol. 82, No. 3 — page 191: what you’re looking at

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

OL! Pretty soon the door opens and Wolfin- ger comes in. “Wie gehi’s, Mr. Himmel,” he says to me. “Wie geht’s, Hezekiah. Trink oop!” In a minute he sets his glass down and looks at Hartmann and says: “‘ How soon you going to haul out that cordwood?” “ Next week,’ Hartmann tells him. “ Well, don’t you think you oughter pay me first for hauling it across my land?” “Asa, you told me I could do it for nothing.” ‘““ Excuse me, Mr. Hartmann, you got a mistake. I said I would make no objec- tions, and I won’t neither, only you gotta pay me so much by the load.” “Well, how much?” Hartmann asks, thinking maybe that Wolfinger would charge him ten oder five cents a load. “One dollar a load,” Wolfinger says. “Wass? One dollar a load?” Hartmann yells. “‘ Du geht’s weck—go on, you! By Jersey, Wolfinger, I ain’t no sucker, and you can’t trim me like you trim every- body else. Where is my profit if I pay a dollar a load?” “ All richi, Mr. Hartmann. If you don’t want to pay it, you don’t got to, and that wood can stay there. Es is’ aus damit— there’s an end to it.” “Yah, it can stay there till it rots,” says Hartmann. “T think maybe you would change your mind, yes?” Wolfinger says, and goes out by the door. ‘““ What a swindler he is!” says Hart- mann. “I hope he gets trimmed goot him- self some time.” “What are you going to do now?” I asks. ‘What can I do, Mr. Himmel? I gotta pay him what he says. It would take me and my hired man a month positively to cut a wagon-trail out to the mountain- road. No, sir, Mr. Himmel; I gotta haul that wood quick and start my spring plow- ing. If he had told me I must pay to cross his land before I would never have cut that wood, But it is too late now.” Wouldn’t you think, now, that when a man trimmed another fellah once like that it would be plenty for him? But Wolfin- ger, he got a yellow conscience; so after he stung Hartmann fifty-six dollars for hauling that wood across his land, he sees another chance to sting him again. I must say that fellah is a slick crook. OL!! OL!!! 565 Hartmann he adwertised some A-1 seed- potatoes to sell, so Wolfinger drove over to look at them. He found Hartmann in the barnyard rubbing down his colt. “Wie geht’s, Hezekiah?” he says. ‘So you got it some seed-potatoes to sell. Let me see them. Maybe I would buy some.” “ Gewiss! Kommst du nach der haus, Asa,” Hartmann says. When they come up out of- the cellar after looking at the potatoes Wolfinger sees an old grandfather clock standing in the hallway. “That looks like an old clock, Heze- kiah,” he says. “ Wie ali is it?” “Ish weiss es nichts —I don’t know,” Hartmann tells him. ‘“ But it is nichts goot. It won’t run any more.” “So? What is the matter with Maybe I should look at it,” Asa says. “Look at-it all you want to, Asa; but excuse me, that colt won’t stand long it? without trying to roll down,” and Hart- mann went back to the barnyard. Wolfinger got busy with the clock, be- cause he likes to tinker mit machinery, and took it all to pieces before he found what was wrong with it. Then, when he was putting it together again, he found a kind of sliding panel in the floor of the clock. He pulled it out and puts his fingers in- side werry careful, thinking maybe it might be a mouse-nest. He found a long, flat package, and pulls it out to look at it. It was all done up in oiled silk and tied mit a leather shoestring. ‘Oi, 01, oi! Wass is’?” he says to him- self. He opens it and sees a lot of paper money in treasury bills, as fresh almost as when they came from the mint. Wolfinger he can’t read American, but he knows fig- ures, you betcha, and he counts them in a hurry, and finds seven hundred and four- teen dollars in that bunch. He hears Hartmann coming back, so he wraps up the money quick and puts it back again. Now Wolfinger is a crook, all right. | He’s got a yellow conscience. But he don’t think it is right to steal that money exactly. He thinks he is an honest man. Well, maybe he is. I ain’t saying. He keeps in- side the law, and maybe that is being hon- est, but I don’t think so. Trimming people ain’t being positively honest, and that’s the way I feel about it. (e() NOOLKS (E@)