Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 6, 1923 — page 125: what you’re looking at

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

CAVE MAN her from this here man-eating baboon what busts up two-fisted scrappers like they was job lots of eggs. And this Sam frothing at the mouth he’s that wild, slamming across the lot just as if he knew what he was going to do with that frail. Bunt steps in his path. “Oh, Bunt, hit him with someting! she wails. What sort of a hope did she - think he had? But he does it. Not saying nothing, he does it, with a rock that’s about all the weight he can heave. It takes Sam in the neck, and just makes him a little wilder than what he was before. He drops the jane and makes a bull rush at Bunt. Bunt runs. Well, what would anybody do that had brains? Them that Bunt had he wasn’t crazy to lose. He’s a good run- ner, Bunt is, and he had a fair head start of Sam. : By that time we’re all turned out—not that we know what to do—and it seems like Bunt’s time has come. Bunt is splitting the air toward his pea- nut and popcorn stand. Sam gains on him fast. three of the girls which has forgot they ain’t ready to show yet is trying to pick Mina up, but they ain’t got the same strength as Sam. Once I saw a big ape in ihe movies reach out and snatch a man. That’s what is about to happen to Bunt. He is pretty _close to his stand, but there ain’t nothing to climb up on or get under there. thirty seconds of life ahead of him when he starts clawing up on the counter and reach- ing down like he’s taking a header behind. All of a sudden he kicks loose and comes up again. 7 Then we seen it. away when Bunt throws down on him and turns loose with the gun. It takes Sam in the middle. We hadn’t been looking to see no mur- — Not even if that hard boiled We ders done. thug did have it coming-to him. | didn’t have time to figure it out that Sam was fixing to lay little Bunt out cold when — Mina sits where she’s been dropped, — having thé strikes on the ground. ‘Two or Still, it looks like he’s trying. He’s maybe got There was a shotgun in Bunt’s hand. Sam is maybe fifteen feet — STUFF. | 907 Bunt got in first. Anyway Sam _ stops, roaring as loud as the gun. He straightens — up and keeps coming. talk again. 3 Hell has tore loose. That second shot Bunt makes the gun -knocks all the roar out of Sam. But all of us is yelling at Bunt, and Mina makes as much noise as all the rest of the outfit. Sam is down on his knees, and starts crawl- ing away. Then he staggers to his feet and gets running, - “Just for luck!” howls Bunt, who seems to have gone off his bean. He’s jarimed an- other shell into that oar gun, and let’s drive again. That Sam had more life in him than seven wild cats. Kill him? Say, when that third wad takes him in the back he cuts loose a yell like a lion if an elephant hap- pened to step on its tail—makes one dive under the water wagon—comes up on the other side—smashes into a tent—takes down, a whole row of bob-wire fence on the far side of the lot, and smashes down forty dollars’ worth of nice corn stalks when he come to a field where it looked like he could hide away. No man ever did run till this Sam showed us how fast = a gink that’s been murdered can make a swift get-away. And Bunt laughs. Yes, sir, he laughs like a fool with that shotgun still in his — —— hands until Mina chokes him off with both arms throwed around his neck. She tells him things he ain’t never heard before. She gets mushy. He’s all the heroes there is. _He’s her pet and her blue-eyed baby savior —she even manages to find a new line or two. “ You’re disgraceful!” says Bunt. ‘ Go on back in that tent and put on some decent clothes.”’ - : And she goes! Just like that! “Somebody,” says Pete, as soon as he got over being surprised, “had better go dig Sam’s corpse out of that corn field be- fore some Rube trickles along with a bill of damage to pay. And the best thing you can do, Bunt, is to beat it, unless you aim to Ewe yourself up to the cops ight away.” “What for?” asks Bunt, meek enough talking to Pete. 3 im} WG