Argosy, Vol. 111, No. 1 — page 105: what you’re looking at

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RESURRECTING feminine charms. To the contrary, his dreamy ethereal nature was susceptible to brief spasms of agony and delight in the presence of beautiful women, especially if he was in his cups. As might be suspected of one of his meager anatomy, he secretly admired the large, stately type of the opposite sex. And just such a one was dancing before him now. : Slim had eyes for no other. She was well dressed, too—a superb, imperial- looking woman. Several times Slim watched her dance around the hall before he ven- tured to ask another on-looker who she was. The answer knocked him flat: ‘‘ She’s Miss Thompson.” ‘“ What’s her first name?” asked Slim. “Minnie,” was the answer—‘‘ Minnie Thompson. She’s Fatty Trigg’s step- daughter.” For an instant Slim lost the power of speech. That stately, exquisitely dressed woman his daughter—Little Minnie? It was incon- ceivable. Why, she had grown out of her class; neither he nor her mother had ever looked that way. At first he felt a tinge of resentment, which was followed by a feeling of pride and tenderness. After all, to whatever fine company she might climb, or however fine she might dress, she was still flesh of his .fiesh and bone of his bone. His own little Minnie. At the end of the dance he caught her away from the crowd, going from one stove to the other. He wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been drunk. “Don’t yer know me, Minnie?” he ad- dressed her anxiously. ‘‘ Course not,” his jumbled thoughts rushed on; “I was jes’ a little kid when you lef’. I’m yer father, Minnie.” The girl drew back, frightened and angry. ‘You old drunken fool!” she quavered. ‘“‘ Get out of my way!” Whatever her fright was, it was nothing to compare to Slim’s. He had blabbed when drunk, and his nimble imagination ALABAMA SLIM. 95 leaped to consequences. It might mean a horse-whipping for him; he even might pay for his indiscretion with his life. There was no plumbing the depths of Fatty Trigg’s anger. ‘Don’t tell nobody,” he beseeched Min- nie as she brushed by him. Just then he saw the fiddler hand his fiddle to another man and rise. Thinking that perhaps the gigantic, one-eyed musi- cian’s rising might have been occasioned by his foolish blunder, Slim backed out of the hall and struck a bee-line for the foundry. Incidentally, his blunder and premature exit saved him from participating in a har- rowing scene a few minutes later. He had no more than reached the foundry when the fiddler,. a one-eyed giant with a lionesque reputation, laid out three men with his fists, shot out the lights, threw down his guns, and, armed, only with a bottle of castor oil, defied arrest, and forced officers and revelers alike to dance to his liking till after midnight. The incident has no part in this story, except to show what the mild, timid Slim lost in the way of entertainment by his drunken gab. The next evening he was made to trem- ble for his indiscretion. Fatty Trigg came into the yard in a bad temper, swearing volubly between clenched teeth. ‘“'Y’ know, Slim,” he said, with embel- lishments, “my stepdaughter Minnie come back from the dance last night tellin’ of some man sayin’ he was her father.” “That so!” ejaculated Slim, changing color. ‘“‘ Sho’. She told her mother, an’ Dovie went into one of ’er tantrums. Said that she hadn’t been married but once afore me, an’ he was dead. You c’n see for vourself, Now what d’you think about that?”’ ‘““T think he were a fool,” faltered Slim; “ prob’ly drunk.” é “Yep; Minnie said he was stewed. She didn’t know him; never had set eyes on him before. He was a liar, Slim, whoever he was. Dovie’s got a high temper, an’ all that, but she’s not that kind of a woman, Slim.” Slim was infinitely relieved to learn that the identity of the fool was not known. cComicloool CO