Argosy, Vol. 111, No. 1 — page 131: what you’re looking at

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

WHAT GOD shirt-sleeves, his check coat tossed beside; him. Sweltering in the thick steam heat, he started to uproll his right sleeve. Tat- tooed upon the muscular forearm showed the initials ‘“‘ H. M.” Henry Meigs, with a startled glance to- ward the curtained entrance to make sure that nobody was passing, reached forward and swiftly pulled down the sleeve. ‘“ Don’t be a damned fool, Herb!” he growled low. ‘‘ You ain’t drunk enough for that yet!” Herb’s heels kicked back against the side of a battered russet bag, thrust under the seat, under his legs. He performed the action mechanically, as if to reassure him- self of its presence. ‘‘ Sick of—rotten business!” he growled with tipsy disgust. ‘‘ Been goin’ straight for seven years—an’ now Con Bagley’s got me, like he always did. How can I help it? He got it on me—in Manitoba!” ‘“‘ Shut up!” hissed Hank Meigs in alarm. “You cheap quitter!”” But the thickened voice droned on, great, drowsing chest tones that were drowned, however, by the merged roar of the train and the storm. “Wish I’d—told him to go—to hell! I could have lit out; let him do his own dirty business, the big, bum coward! But the old stuff got me; I’d been good too long,” he sneered. He turned a wavering glance toward the fidgeting gray man as he tore away the shirt from his sweating, hairy chest. ‘“ Hot’s a furnace in here!” he rumbled, reaching out an unsteady hand. “ Gimme that bottle, Hank!” Meigs hesitated. ‘‘ You’ve had enough, Herb. Better turn in now.” ‘‘ Gimme that bottle!” deepened, with an ugly note. to bust it over your head?”’ Hank passed it over. ‘‘ Drink hearty!” In an undertone he added: “ It might get you ready to sleep. But how much does it take?” The ‘tall, red-faced fellow, a splendid physical specimen, took a long, deep swal- low. ‘“ Have another!” urged his com- panion. Herb leered at him cunningly, his eyes watering and blinking from the effects of the fiery draft. The voice had ‘Want me DESTROYS. 121 “Get me drunk, eh?” he asked in a sharper tone that dwindled to drowsiness as he proceeded. ‘I sh’d say not! Every one’s after me! Bagley—then you— Say, what’s there to it, huh?” He laughed discordantly above the bel- low of the storm. ‘‘ You—the joker! Bag- ley ’ll be tickled to death, won’t he, when he finds out the good job you done for yourself, spyin’ on me? An’ he don’t know there’s such a man as you! When he knows it’s got to be split three ways—wow!”’ The gray man had leaped up, his seedy figure in sharp contrast to Herb’s well- made if rather flamboyant garments. His nervous hand clapped over the larger man’s mouth. ‘For God’s sake, keep still!” he urged in a sharp undertone. ‘‘ Some one com- ing—”’ As the negro porter came in to distribute some fresh towels in the rack, he was again handing Herb the bottle. He was satis- fied that the black man had heard nothing of his companion’s mumbling reminiscences. Stolidly staring at the. porter, the drunken man retained sufficient precautionary sense to remain quiet till he had left. Then he began muttering again, now in broken snatches, with hiccuping intervals between. His words grew fewer; he mulled with knitted brows a recurrent problem, and kicked backward to assure himself that the battered satchel remained under the seat. Then he would talk again, wildly; cursing sin and virtue impartially; sneering at the man who awaited him up the line, and at the seedy Meigs, who was unex- pectedly accompanying him; maudlinly tearful over days when he had been honest, futilely angry over this lapse into crime after seven years. Meigs, fearing his mighty muscles, had to bear with him, straining his keen ears for the possible approach of other footsteps; thankful that the passengers in the car were few and apparently asleep; hoping that the porter would not return till after Herb had quieted sufficiently to allow him to lead him to his berth. Meanwhile the train drove on through the black night, straight north from To- ronto, in the teeth of the ravening storm. CONMUC NOOLK