Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 25, 1924 — page 136: what you’re looking at

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

By ERIC HOWARD Fi» minutes before he had been hap- py; now he was miserable. Then, everything was roseate; now the lone- ly, deserted forest road was the gloomiest place in the werld. Bob Adams sat on the running-board of his small car, and held his head in his hands. It was a good head, ordinarily, but at this moment it was entirely occupied by an unsolvable puzzle. What the devil should he do? What could he do? He had been humming along as smoothly as if his car were a Rolls-Royce, which it was far from being, and as if the dirt road through the redwood forest were the finest boulevard. He was on the last lap of a two weeks’ vacation. And what a vacation it had been—until now! He had planned en making this trip half the year. It was his one chance to see the country he had long dreamed of seeing. And, as it happened, it gave him an op- portunity to show old Spear — of Spear, Gray & Company—that he was a man of resource and ability, a man capable of being intrusted with any ifportant busi- ness. 3 If, in combining business with pleasure, he made good, he would be made a Buyer. Bob always spelled it with a capital B. And as a Buyer, most of his time would be spent driving the little car up and down the State. Besides, there would be more money than there was in the desk job he had held fer two years. And more money meant, in Bob’s case, what it often means in the life of a young man—a girl. Old Spear had assured him that if he showed resource — the eld man’s favorite word—he would be made a Buyer. When Bob announced that he meant to spend his vacation on a long trip up the coast and down the valley, Spear had suggested that he attend to a little business along the way. Bob had left the office with a large bundle of bills to be collected from merchants. “ And if you get a chance to buy any- thing,” said Spear, “at the right price, do it. Especially peaches and prunes. Use yeur own judgment, but be sure you’re COMMICLOOOKS (E@)