Argosy All-Story Weekly — "The Purple Limited" — page 29: what you’re looking at

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

\ BAD BILL STARK. the country where his heart was. The sex was good enough, and the army had shown him places that he liked wet! enough; but the stern- browed, granite mountains, and the clean taste of the north in his mowth were his own folks, even a8 were the men and wotrien who lived on Ripley Road. This night, therefore, he walked with joy. The moon drew the mountains in black silhouette against the sky, and his spirit rose to meet the beauty of them—just as his body thrilled to the November air. He opened the sheepskin coat that he had come by without payment of moneys, and let the night flow against the O. D. wool shirt that strained over his arched chest. The collar was unbuttoned to re- HMeve a neck that ran straight down from the ears: ft was the neck of a wrestler, and it supported a wedge-shaped jaw that had commanded respect among men of various races and conditions. Bill was not 4 big. man, bot all of him that there was had been traitied and developed to be wseful in the hour of battle. Lights from every window in Papineaw’s rickety house spotted the night, and the capering strains of the host’s fiddle danced omt to meet the ears of Stark. His own steps quickened. Near the barn, full in the moonlight, he saw a man with a jug over his shoulder, drinking, and at the same time the droning, nasal voice of the “ cafler off” for the quadrilles carne through a half-open window: “ Right hand to pardner an’ left hand back, an’ swing with the gifl behind ye!” Bill chuckled. It was going to be fust Hike old times; he put his hand to the latch end stepped, blinking, into the bright, reek- ing kitchen and stood still by the deorway m order to get his bearings. Time had not written any new record upon the face of Daddy Papineau: his sun- cured countenance and bony frame ap- peared unchanged as he sat in his splint- bottomed rocking-chair with the greasy leather cushion and scraped at the fiddle that he loved. A glass, a pitcher, and a cob pipe were forgotten upon a table at his side. All this might have been ten years ago. . Seark wae glad. He had come back ungfacefully ° searching for something eaten 5 by & craving that he could not name. The mourtains partly satisfied it; the lights, the familiar mrasic, and the sight of old Papineau eased it. After a time he would try the cider-= and that, by the unsteadiness of some of the dancers, should have enough kick to put him right. But among those who danced and those who sat along the wall things were not un- changed. A new generation had grown up, crowding his own along toward maturity, since Stark had been in the house of Pap- ineau, or attended a kitchen tunk, or drunk hard cider with the jug thrown over his shoulder. Young, new faces, flushed and stniling, stared at brim; and the ones that he recognized seemed 4 little blurred by. what ten years of living had done to them. He wondered if he himself were that way, like an apple that has been left just a little too long on thetree instead of being picked in all ita rich freshness. The women had been round-cheeked girls whten he went away, tempting to 4 man: afd now othet rounded cheeks and brighter eyes had taken their places. Marie Delage sat in a comet, alone; she whose feet had been the lightest, and whowe beaux had been unnumbered. Soazie How- atd, 40 known because of his resemblance im manners afd physique to the pig, had increased im bulk. . Judd Dickinson, who called off through his long nose, was gray; and his wife, Betsy, sat knitting instead of dancing. Knitting! - It was a trifle sad, and yet very good to the eyes of Stark. The tobacco smoke © hung in layers below the blackened plaster of the ceiling: the smell of alcohol and of cheap perfume blended and = strtiggled against the wholesome night wind—for somebody had thoughtfully opened the windows to provide ways of retreat im case of @ fight. Before long the cook-stove would be thrown out of doors to make room for another “set” of dancers. least it had beeri so in the old daya ‘“ Bad Bill Stark, or 1’ll eat my shirt!’’ The words rumbled into his. car with the swelling volume of thunder, and he knew, even before he tumed, that the stoop. shouldered, goriliaitike bully of Ripley CORVIG NOOK At-“ CO