Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 3, 1924 — page 150: what you’re looking at

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

940 realized she knew my name. ‘I was sick of dancing in a hick town. You know those smart city kids, and those big footed coun- try goofs. They never saw me dance. All they saw was---was legs. So I come down the river! Prob’ly I was a fool, only I wasn’t. No, indeed! The first thing, in less’n ten days I heard your music—” That’s the way we found it down old Mississip’. Lots come down who don’t neveh find what they aches for. Men trip down an’ down, an’ floats, rollin’ along the bottom into the gulf at last. Women is thataway, too—young ones an’ old ones. - But I knowed a preacher once who’d lost his hold, an’ a business man who’d mixed in scandal, an’ others what tried to lose themselves down the riveh—an’ firstest they knowed the gates of happiness spread wide open for them. Probably we understood each otheh that night as well as eveh we would. There wan’t much talkin’ an’ explainin’. We jes’ had hit in ouh hearts. She stepped back, swung the chair clear, an’ stepped four five measures without any music but the voices of the riveh dark—which she heard, an’ I heard. She opened the bow door, bowed @ pretty curtsy to me, an’ shut the wind out the cabin. I caught up a lantern to hand to her, but she had one of her own under the skiff tarpaulin hood. Lawse, but that were a cozy eddy that night! Well, suh, next day we had breakfast to- getheh. She read some music I had, all kinds that I’d picked up for my fiddling. Course, when I came on the riveh, if music wasn’t classic I sort of despised hit. But I’d been growing careless. I’d took to ad- miring the music river fiddlers played, some of it awful to listen to, but always, two three measures, perhaps one piece would be right out of the river’s heart. I’d learn that piece. I’d maybe have to smooth it up, for my ear, account of somebody not knowing how to run the times together, or maybe breaking the refrains or splitting up the melodies the way mountain fiddlers do. Well, anyhow, everv fiddler fixes his music oveh, according to his notions, the way I did. An’ when we'd settled our breakfasts, resting around, I brought out the old fiddle ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, to tighten up and tune the strings, an’ she stepped, exercising to take out the kinks the cold an’ sleeping on the bottom of her skiff’'d hooked into her knees an’ joints. An’ her dancin’ scales was purtier ’n some steppin’ of lots of heel-an’-toe folks. May Gardner was sure wonderful, even in those days, and patient. If some step bothered her, she’d work at it, steady, min- utes, hours till she had it to the lift and fall of a ripple, while I played the music she wanted, steady, oveh an’ oveh again. I hadn’t practiced so much as I’d played. I used to let some hard places go. She made me go at those measures till my fingers and my bow’d walk through them, same as her dancing went through the swing, turn and change, the balance and the mark, the beat and the sway— Lawse, man! Hit wan" no work for me, but she’d toil along till she dropped into a chair, plumb wore out. “Lucien!” she exclaimed, ‘“ you’re so good tome. You don’t know what it means —this chance to practice thisaway!”’ You’d think one day was like anotheh, down the reaches and bends. We had to drop down pretty well, account of winter coming on. J remember when the fresh meat was gone, and we was down to sow- belly and corn, for I’d neglected providing, We hadn’t any money. I was looking along for a flock of shoats on a bar, or maybe a steer caved down at a river bank; you know what I mean. I’d be’n on the riveh so long, staying my appetite thataway, never care- less or being caught, that prob’ly I didn’t rightly think about hit, the way I should of. I told her I’d have to lift a pig. “Lucien Prenaux!” she turned on me, hard and set. ‘“ You shan’t!” We had hit out. She’d rather starve ’n steal, she said, and I hadn’t. She had her way. Course, one way, it wan’t none of her business how I found my grub. We weren’t nothin’ to each other, ’ceptin’ we was professional partners. But in a way, we were eating together, floatin’ down to- gether, an’ you mout say, tol’ably close to- gether—if we hadn’t be’n, her an’ my boat tied together, we’d be’n miles apart, cut away by the current. So we jawed two three days, me not graftin’ any meat, an’ she arguin’ there must be some honest way. COMGDOOo! ©