Argosy, Vol. 112, No. 2 — page 25: what you’re looking at

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

CROSSES OF STEEL, The big man was quick to take advan- tage of the excuse. “I did, Hogan,” he admitted with a rare grin. “I just got word that the best girl in the world is com- ing on the next arrival of the Reina de Barbados to marry me!”’ Hogan indulged some profanely cheering congratulations. “But say,” he finished, “ thank Gawd the missus didn’t hand me her answer on top of no bridge frame. I reckon she’d ’a’ been a widow before we got married if she had.” As Grout started away he turned back again. “Say, Hogan—if you don’t mind, keep that about the girl as strictly confidential. There are—a lot of slips in things, you know.” ‘““ Not the missus, even?’’ Hogan asked, a shade of disappointment on his face. ‘“‘ She’d be tickled to hear it.” ‘Oh, I hardly think so,” Grout objected, “Td rather nothing was said-at all yet.” He went off puzzled. He could not un- derstand that the men who came nearest him loved him, made their women love him by their praise of him, and set them wish- ing for him that which every woman thinks every man should have—a wife. But he did not puzzle long over this. He had other puzzles on his mind. Three weeks later Duncan Grout awoke at four in the morning exactly as if the alarm-clock had been set to rouse him. He had planned to sleep late. He needed to do so, could do so. For he had given his men a holiday in which to assist him to celebrate his marriage! But the waking habit held him. He tried to get what rest there is in lying awake. For once he was not atingle with the fever to be up and doing; for once, too, there were things to think of worth the luxury of lying still to think them. “It was his wedding day! The coasting steamer, Reina de Barbados was due in Guayaquil Bay at one o’clock. Every ar- rangement was completed to the last detail. A train, duly decorated in honor of the oc- casion, would start him for Machala at ten. At twelve he would board a launch. He would meet the ship the instant it turned the point and slowed down to thread its . way into the bay’s channels. And Norma was on it. She had come to him. Together—together—they would hurry back to the city. All had been arranged for their wedding at the convento—it had been no mean job to arrange it with the requisite dispensations, and to find the good, jolly little padre who could and would make an English job of all but the essentially Latin parts of the ceremony. The little padre’s congregation would lack nothing for fireworks and decorations on the next fiesta. And Norma would be his. Together— united—man and wife—he and Norma would come back up here on the train. Together, with his bride tucked under his arm for protection, they would run the gauntlet of confetti, a band, and fireworks, to their bungalow. Their bungalow! His /iome at last! Funny that the brightness of the dream- picture went dim at this, the climax of his life-dreaming. Three weeks ago he had started to erect a tiny cottage. Each day had enlarged his ideas of it, seen him send for more workmen. He had thought he might sell the house to the railroad when he was through with it to make a shack for the bridge watchmen. Now he knew the native officials of the road would vie for its possession as a rural hacienda. It was a country place for a governor. Little wonder that he needed sleep, after supervising its erection in ad- dition to his regular man-sized job on the bridge. But—would she like it? Would its necessary tropical accommodations depress her with their strangeness? Would she sit opposite him at the won- derful mahogany table—over the dinner prepared by the Chinese woman he had bribed from the house of a state secretary— and feel anything to reciprocate what he thought he would feel, that just to be there with her was an incomparable feast? Her face, her eyes, her hair for him; but what was she going to see in him that would not — inspire terror at the very thought of finding herself in his power? (E(0) .OO 191 \ | wy : aa hA:4 oy Jaren ai aol sy 6’ , ht x al WN + ; ’ a _ dane ; al , L se sé.) ) A wi? wa)! bee