Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 6, 1923 — page 121: what you’re looking at

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

CAVE Crown him! Hot baby! Gentle amuse- ment like kissing a crocodile or taking sam- ples of whiskers a man-eating lion likes to wear under his chin! Something simple, like walking in front of a subway express and whispering stop! All this time that big bruiser pays no attention to Mina. Why? Ask me.I won’t tell you. Maybe he’s too busy being a man. So Mina begins to take some notice of him. He strolls around looking cheer- ful, knocking us for a row. Mina meets him one morning, gives him one of them gold plated smiles, and says: ‘‘ Good morning, Mr. Sam.” It made him feel fine. About noon we carted Tim Kelly off to the hospital. Tim run the engine for the merry-go-round. Mina had slipped an- other good morning to him. Yes, them three crabbed the show. It was worse than that. It looked like there wasn’t going to be any show. Sam was putting the whole works in hock. Them ballyhoo boys got so they was scared to holler out loud, for fear they’d say some- thing Sam didn’t like and he’d hear them. In which case Sam never cared how soon he let us know. What Bunt Simpson was thinking all this time wasn’t important. Maybe he wasn’t thinking anything except to keep out of Sam’s path, same as the rest of us. He was plenty busy with his peanut and pop- corn stand. Sam gets a new idea. When he ain’t got a yen to work he don’t work. He quits the pitch and goes over passing the gas with Mina. That stops her business. Maybe she likes it. We don’t none of us know. Sam talks, not that he’s got any swell line of conversation. Mina listens. A sample gets handed around by the glass blower’s ballyhoo man: “ Mr. Sam,” says Mina, “ you’d ought to see that I’m busy. When I’m working you oughtn’t to come hanging around this way.” Sam looks at her through the window of the ticket booth, smiles mean, and says: ‘Shut up, if that’s all you got to say to me.” He goes on talking, throwing the bull about what a great man he is. And Mina MAN STUFF. 903 takes it. Why? Say, why is a woman? What makes them goofy? How do they get that way? If anybody knows, they know the book. Sam is hipped on Mina. But it would take a looloo to be hep to what’s fussing the frail to make her stand for him. Pick the first hunch and it’s thir- teen and the odd you guess wrong. It don’t help to dope it hearing Mina throw the hook into Bunt, who dares tell her he’d be better pleased if that big gee stayed further away. ‘‘ Tf you was half a man,” she tells Bunt, ‘‘ you’d tell him yourself. But before you’d do that you’d let him insult me all day. If you was a man instead of—” No use going any further with that. Then that’s married has heard it. Them that ain’t hadn’t ought to be discouraged so soon. Anyway Bunt, maybe, gets to thinking that over. There’s a gag about hooch that gives a rabbit nerve to spit in a wildcat’s face. Bunt must of drunk some. Or maybe he wanted to die quick, being tired of living in misery with Mina making a sap out of him. In three or four days here he goes up to Sam, his knees banging together the way they like to broke his legs. “T want,” he says, “that you would keep away from my wife!” Sam looks at him with his jaw dropped down. He hears it, but he don’t believe it. There ain’t nobody lately give him any gab like that. “ ‘You want—” Sam says. “You got to keep away from Mina,” Bunt gets out. ‘“‘ Who says so?” “TY do! I got a right, ain’t I?” “You got a right to get your can knocked off,’ Sam tells him. “ You better go away!” He gives Bunt a push, and goes right on talking. ‘Go on away.” Then he pushed him some more. “I don’t want to hit you.” Push! “I'd ought to spoil you”—push—“‘but I want to save you”— push—“‘to play with when I’m felling punk some day! ” Push! Every time Sam shoves, Bunt goes back about ten feet. Sam follows him up and shoves again. Bunt ends up sitting in a puddle alongside of the tank wagon. And COMiiclooe (©