Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 6, 1923 — page 120: what you’re looking at

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

902 Mina made change for the glass blowers, and when the ballyhoo boy had steered in a tent full, she run the raffle inside. I will say for her that when she was on the job she had a smile that was worth millions. Maybe she’s throwed one of them loose smiles at that big ape just to keep in prac- tice when nobody else was in sight. But after that to see him crying around after her you’d think he was following the fun- eral of all his relations, and they hadn’t left him a cent. Sweet Mary! It was awful! Mind it from the start Sam had as much chance of making a hit with that dame as a simp has to win a twenty buck plaster on a ring pitch. But he couldn’t see it that way; he was short on brains. So one night he pulls some wise crack and tries to make her when she was beating it away from the lot. Mina knocks the big stiff for a goal, and tells where he gets down after that. *“¢ Wake up!”’ she says. ‘* Come to life! You got a nerve trying to get fresh with a lady, and you with that mess you’ve got where you call it a face! Be a man if you got it in you, and lay off lamping me around. That sick Willy business, neither your amateur rough stuff, gets across any with me!” That done it. Be a man, she told him, and what did he know about something he wasn’t, and didn’t have it in him to be? Be aman! Him, that had been scared to talk out loud for fear somebody might call him mean names, he gets the only idea he ever had, which is to go bump somebody. Which same he does. Here’s Butch Anderson, spieler for the anaconda, comes in on the tail end of the performance. He gets an earful when Mina gives Sam the razz. Being gifted that way for slinging a nasty tongue, he hands it to Sam: “ Wowie! What a jab! Now you know—” Poor Butch! Sam never did like him much. That big gorilla cuts loose, which he ain’t never done before. There’s a wreck and an earthquake and a massacre, and about a week after Butch wakes up and asks which way the herd of elephants went when they’d ruined him. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. ‘“‘T’m telling it, though, that week Butch was dreaming we wasn’t wasting any feel- ings on him. We was too busy. That Greek cyclone had got wise. He’d found his strength was good for something besides wrestling cannon balls. The discovery tickled him stiff. Which is just the way we wasn’t, being in the same show. There’s Jinky Collins owes this husky ten beans. The longer he owes it the less it gives him a pain. Sam bones him the morning after he slaughtered Butch. “T want that ten,” he says quiet enough. Jinky starts the usual: “TI ain’t got it this morning. You better see me again the end of the week.” Sam seen him right then. He up-ends him, and shakes everything out of him he’s got, then dumps him down by a tent. Jinky hollers, while Sam gathers in what he wins. Jinky claims Sam robs him of sixty iron men with his ticker and slang. Sam ex- plains careful that he couldn’t took noth- ing, because Jinky said he hadn’t nothing to take. That was some argument. Sam puts his foot on Jinky and says he’ll push it if Jinky don’t fasten his face. Seems to us like that’s funny. We laugh all afternoon. In the evening Sam frames a knockout on Larry Ronstein, the spieler for the Circassian Beauties from the Bronx. That’s because Larry calls him for shoot- ing gab at the girls. That wasn’t so funny. We don’t know where it ‘ll stop. Quite a bunch got theirs before the end of the week. By that time we walked around that stiff. He had everything we didn’t want, and he passed it around real free. One night Sam beat up Blinker Thompson just claiming that Blink had got in his way. Some of us hollered to Pete Girston. “Crown him,” says Pete. ‘‘ What do you rough-necks let him run over you for? If one can’t do it, gang up on him.” We tried it—once. Six of us. With tent pegs. The casualties was two busted arms and a collar bone. None of them be- longed to Sam. ‘There’d been more only three of the push beat it after Spider Dolan went out and Pink Weitzner bumped the ground with his beezer when he bounced off the top of a tent. EO NOOK AMUC (©