Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 3, 1924 — page 153: what you’re looking at

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

A RIVER COMBINE—PROFESSIONAL. man come to her, with flowers, saying it, as they tell around. I sure despised that up-the-banker. He wan’t fitting for May. The bestest man in the world wasn’t fit for her. He come to me once. He wanted to know if May wasn’t my wife? I told him, the same as I would anybody, how it was. We were only professional people. Those were mighty lonesome days for me. Seemed just like May an’ me was being tore apart, stretching the aching strings of my heart. Course, I jes’ knowed hit didn’t matter to her. She was thinkin’ about her dancing. She was busy having new clothes made and was studying the new life that was opening up to her. ‘“* Lucien!” she told me one day, down on the boat. “ Just think—the world wants us!” “Us!” I laughed, but it hurt. “ Hit’s you!” She gave me one of those quick, birdlike looks as though I was plumb ridiculous. I knowed I was, too, or she wouldn’t be mak- ing fun of me, as if I was much more’n jes’ somebody to mark time for her. She could dance to “ Patting Juba,” making it sound like the “ River Voices” when old Joe Parmer plays hit. I had some jobs fiddling at private houses; ten, twenty, fifty dollars they'd pay me. They paid May five hundred dollars one night to dance at a business men’s dinner, on the table. She came down to the boat crying mad. I don’t know what hap- pened. She scolded me, rearing right down on me, “Don’t you know what I want?” she told me. ‘“ Don’t you see what they think? Oh, you poor idiot—have I got to say it?” “Say what?” I asked; an’ then she reared at me. She’d been awful patient with me, one time and another. I couldn’t always he’p showin’ her what I thought, even if it was insulting for me to love her. I just couldn’t bring myse’f to ask her to marry me, account of when you do that to a girl she’s always sorry for you, an’ she promises to be your sister an’ don’t know you the next time you meet her. If I asked her to marry me, course, she’d cut loose, prob’ly go uptown, an’ all that'd be left for me would he to trip off down 943 the river, with just her picture on my heart, a picture burned in deep, beautiful, but a scar as big as a Texas brand. I didn’t feel like I could ever stand a hurt like that —the hurt of losing her, never seein’ May again, not her dancing, nor her eyes brim- ming with laughter and sympathy—and her lips that smiled free for me, until she be- gun to dance, and we needn’t to wonder if we'd have enough for breakfast the next morning to eat. That woman I was telling about come down to the ferry in her automobile one day. May’d gone uptown, so she asked Jim Horseshoe to come up the bayou to bring me down. I come down, course, so she took me with her account of May not, being there, she said, my music being good, if there wasn’t anybody to dance but her. She was an awful high-toned woman, an’ you know she wanted to dance herself, try- ing the riveh music. So I played for her. Course, if you dance riveh music, you got to know the riveh—know the rocking of the boat in the eddies an’ the swing of the current. But this Alice Haven was quite a stepper at that. She said my music just carried her right along. She danced bold, though, not the way May did. Course, she was a good flinger an’ had a little kick to her that was graceful—but she didn’t have to be professional. She was rich. And ‘when she was tired, she come and laid her head on my shoulder for a breathing spell. That kind of thing neveh made any man feel bad, course. But the way May acted when this Alice Haven brought me back in her car like a cabin boat! ““She’s trying to break up our combi- nation!” May said, talking more spiteful than I ever did get to hear her talk before. I was s’prised. I'd been worrying my heart out, fearin’? May’d see how no ‘count T was to her, an’ be shut of me like I was an old hat. When she talked thataway, letting on she feared we'd break up, my heart jes’ grew so big it hurt, like it would burst. May didn’t want to lose me! She was so mad at the thought, she lashed me with her tongue, stinging, biting, slighting, scolding words. But, shucks! Theh’s no joy so sweet as the raw wounds a woman gives a man, account of her being jealous. COMIGD OOo! S (©