Argosy All-Story Weekly, March 15, 1924 — page 79: what you’re looking at

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

NS 4 708 the chow. Her face had a pretty flush on it... Her eyes had a pretty twinkle in them. Her lips had a pretty smile on them and, taken all in all, and admitting that I’m a better judge of horse flesh than I am of women, I’d say that she was just about the prettiest woman I had ever seen— too pretty, I kept thinking, to be hanging . around a place like Warrenship’s. - ‘©Are you, hungry?” she asked as she dished up a bow! of steaming cornmeal mush and put it in front of me. ' “No, ma’am,” I replied, “ my appetite’s ~ sort a busted out of its corral.” “It’s just as well,’” she says, “ Biecallse I’m not much of a cook. ” -““ Reckon yowre good enough for me,” I said,that coming as near something gallant as I could think of on the spur of the mo- ment. As soon as I had said it I decided it didn’t sound like it ought to, so I tried to nx it up. ‘““T mean it don’t take much of a cook for me. I’ve been eating sand and sage- TANS brush mixed up with beans and bacon so — long that I don’t suppose I'll appreciate home cooking.” By that time it “began to dawn on me that it might be better to let her do the talking, which I did and became so in- terested that I didn’t notice I had put away . two bowls of mush, eight flapjacks, two fried eggs, several strips of bacon, and was on my third cup of Java when I came to, the coming to part of it being about like this: Everybody present, myself inclusive, was having a perfectly delightful time, when all of a sudden those twinkling eyes of hers lost their fire and sort of dulled with an anxious expression. > '“ Mr. Bronson,” she said, “ may I asks you a rather direct question?” Well, 1’d have: told her the story.of my past and misspent life if she’d ask me in that tone. of voice;’ so I told her to go ahead and shoot. _ “Do: you think Mr. Tuey had anything to do with—well, with Mr. Jaimson’s ac- cident?” “ First place, Princess, it wasn’t an ac- cident,” I told her. “ Whoever drilled Rip through the neck meant to do it. In the evidence against any one. | ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, | next place, I was over in Squire Glynn’s place when the shooting was done, and by the time I got over here there wasn’t much , If Rip can’t tell us something about it when he gets to where he can talk, we’re going to be up against it for a likely clew. ” “You're not talking like you think,” she | said, smiling across the narrow table which seemed to get. narrower the more she’ smiled. “I’m afraid you haven’t much faith in women, Mr. Bronson.” * Well, Princess, : there was a time when my favorite source of edification was games of skill, and the last game I got precipitated into was a ceiling limit play. at the old Monarch; and I would have walked out of that dump that night with seventeen hundred dollars if I hadn’t put my faith in a queen. I already had three of them, and I thought.I had a date-to meet the fourth one, but the old girl.didn’t show up. May- be Dve got good reasons for not having faith. In women.” “Very well,” she says, laughing at me over the narrowest table that ever separated aman from a pretty woman, “ I have some faith in some men, and IJ just want to whis- per to you that the one man in this. town I . wouldn’t trust is Tuey.” “Do you feel that way about itr” I asked, choking down the impulse to slap her on the back, the which I knew wasn’t quite the thing to do with a woman even though she’d said something that had taken a big load off your soul, assuming for the sake of argument that an ex-horse-wrangler and a minion of the law has a soul. “Tm sure I am not wrong, Mr. Bron- | son,” * And while I don’t know much. about. . Tuey, and don’t want to know any more, I’d:be willing to gamble my old hoss, Na-. poleon, against a Navaho goat, the which is my ar of nothing for a white man to own, that-you are richt. yO “I just wanted to be sure that you were watching him, Mr. Bronson.” “ But he’s a friend of your brother, »T said; and before the words were’ out of _ - my mouth I wished that some rip-snortin’ ~ maverick had knocked them down my throat and all my teeth along with them. COMicaooa An