Argosy All-Story Weekly, March 15, 1924 — page 61: what you’re looking at

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

YOUNG Do you know that I was kind of pleased . at that. You can see that Jimmie was go- ing up in my regard. He would therefore go up in the regard of the rest of his fellow townsmen and townsladies. Why not? So it proved to be. Folks coming along stopped to look, to admire, and to ask ques- tions. Flyless, dustless! Jimmie played the harp on them two words till you’d have expected the flies to die of shame and the dust to collect in little shivering huddles and never ride the wind again. Germs! Jimmie told his hearers how many germs there. was on a gain of dust and on a fly’s whiskers till I was ashamed of him, I could have stood for it if he had referred to them germs in terms of thousands, but-- well, he didn’t even use millions, Billions was his nice, safe and sane figure. And, for a fact, ’most everybody nodded their wise heads in agreement. It was funny how widespread the knowleage of germs sudden- ly become, — ‘“ And a brand new stock,” says Jim- mie. ‘‘ Not just at first, but always. A quick turnover means a new stock all the © time and the ambition of my life will be to - give my customers a quick turnover.” The people .he had been making this speech to passed along, and for a minute there wasn’t nobody with us. Then a voice back of me says: ‘“‘ Somebody must have been givin’ you a quick turnover, sport. Look at your face.” For a fact folks had been looking at Jim- mie’s face all. along, but they had been so interested in the new store that they hadn’t been able to divide their interest and won- der what made the marks on Jimmie’s face. They had come from some of them blows that Billy had landed. I turned around to see who was butting in, and Jimmie wheeled in one big revolve. It was Ike, as I-had suspicioned it was. He was standing out in the street grinning a yellow toothed grin. “ Why, hello, Ike!’ Jimmie says. “ Come up here.” Surprised, Ike come up to the curb. _ Jim: mie put a hand on his shoulder and give a real loud laugh. “ Funny about my face, isn’t it, Iker” he asks. 4A about. ‘Yes, yes, very funny, Makes you ee REBELS. 689 laugh, doesn’t it?’ I give Jimmie’s face a glance and I see that while he was laugh- ing his eyes was blazing. “ Ha, ha; Ike!” he goes on, and then his voice drops. “ You dirty bootlegger,” he says, “ if you say any- thing more to me or. about me, I’ll bust you wide open! You get me?” Ike goes goggle eyed and backs away. Jimmie’s fingers only bit into his shoulder. ‘“‘J—I get you,” Ike kind of whispers. “ Beat it, then,” says Jimmie. Ike done so, immediate. I stared at Jim- mie. I felt like he must have had one of these here reincarnations that you hear He wasn’t the same Jimmie he had always been, not nohow: He was as differ- ent as.an airplane is from a stage coach. Our next visitor was “Lije. I had seen him: peeking out of his door and getting up his nerve to come and have a closer look. In one of his peeks he seen that my eye was on him and that all was lost, so he let himself down from the sill and wad- dled up to us. “What you up to, Jimmie?” he asks in a faint, thin voice. “ How Many guesses, says. | “I s’pose you are figgerin’ on startin’ a, grocery store?” ’Lije says, mournful. Lije?” Jimmie ‘‘T am starting a grocery store,” Jimmie ~ comes back. long ago.” ‘Now, Jimmie—” ’Lije starts. : “Stow it, Lije!”’ Jimmie breaks in. “TI know you are going to say that. there isn’t room in this town for two first class grocery stores. I know it. That’s why I’m starting this one. Besides competition is the life of trade. J’ll give you a run for your money, ‘Lije. Tl at least make you invest in a mop and a broom. Let the best man win and may the devil take the hindmost.” _ *Lije stood looking at Jimmie with his jaw sagging down. He acted like he had never met Jimmie before, and at that he hadn’t—not this Jimmie. “Are you intoxicated, Fraser?” he asks, “Exactly!” Jimmie laughs. “T am in- toxicated with the first big drink from the goblet of anticipated success.” “7’d say some of Ike’s white licker,” says *Lije. “I passed the figuring stage ‘@G ) 1NOO CO