Argosy All-Story Weekly, March 15, 1924 — page 80: what you’re looking at

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

MINIONS OF THE LAW. ~~ The Princess winced as if I had struck her in the face. She turned red and would not‘ look at me, and all I could do was to sit there and think cuss words and call my- self names. “So you know,” she said, after what seemed to me about seven years of silence. ‘And does he know?” she asked nodding her head toward the next room. “ Princess, I’m nothing but an old des- ert cactus with a red head. I’ve stepped in a gopher hole and said something that I didn’t want to say. And now what I want to say I don’t know how to say. Yes, I know because I heard you tell Jim Bar- ber last night, and Rip Jaimson knows be- cause, he’s been watching you ever since you came to this range; and, too, I and Rip being two stirrups to the same saddle and something closer than brothers, and not quite as close as twins, he knows everything that I do: “ And, Princess, the more we know, the more we want to be your friends. That’s all the cards, and seein’ as how I’m giving you a look at iny hand, I wish you would not call me Mr. Bronson any more. Can’t you just make it Red, like Rip does, and let it go at that?” That oration made me dizzy, and I thought I was going to take a header off the soap box I was using as a chair before she spoke again. ‘“ He-is-not a friend of my brother, and I think you realize it,” she said, shying at the question I had asked her. tends to be, and-my brother doesn’t see through him. It is the man’s pretended friendship for my brother that makes me afraid, and, Red, ’m~- Look out, you’re spilling your coffee!” Being reminded sudden like that way that my coffee was pouring over the wrong side of my saucer, I dropped the saucer, and by the time law and order had been restored I didn’t have the nerve to go back to a subject which I was convinced she could not discuss without pain to herself. While I tried to help her do up the dishes we talked mostly about Rip Jaimson, the which is a subject I can talk about, r-d maybe we’d have put in the rest of the day: on that interesting and informing subject 109 if Doc Sandow hadn’t made his second call and rudely pulled me out.of the clouds. Well, Doc went over his patient again, and insisted that he was doing as well as could be expected: “Any signs of complications?” I asked, ‘“ None,” says Doc; which made me won- der what was wrong with his eyesight. ‘“ Rip’s got a wonderful constitution, and he’s going to pull through in a hurry. He must not talk for a couple of days. Don’t try to say a word. Just let the muscles of that throat relax and rest. I/l have you out of bed in a week, and six weeks from now you'll be ready to get shot again.” Aftér Doc had gone the Princess sat down beside Rip’s cot and again began to fan him with the sombrero. I sat down on the case of canned corn, and soon was so lost in the contemplation of a pleasant picture that I fell off and landed more or less in a cluster on the dirt floor. ‘You poor man!” the Princess exclaimed in a low voice as I picked myself up and wondered how.on earth I could have gone to sleep so quickly. ‘ You’re dead for sleep. Why don’t you get some rest while I’m here?”’ “When there’s a strange woman in the house,” I said, “ a minion “of the law ought to keep his eyes open.” She laughed at that and went over to my cot and smoothed out the blanket. “ Please get a little rest. You know you'll have to be awake all. night.” IT went into the kitchen and- removed my boots and hung my belt and Old Betsy on the peg near the kitchen ‘door, and then I flopped on my old cot and in less than a minute I was riding old Napoleon across the desert, hell-bent for election, following . a couple of men, the which should have.been in a circus because one of them was twelve feet tall and the other one was so small that he looked no bigger than. a horse-fly perched on the apex of his cayuse. I did not seem to gain much on the two, but, hav- ing a lot of faith in my hoss, Napoleon, I ‘believe I might have caught up with those two freaks if the Princess hadn’t awakened me before the race was over. “Goodness,” says the Princess, surely sleep soundly.” ce you. comicloookks CO