Argosy All-Story Weekly, June 13, 1925 — page 137: what you’re looking at

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

HONEST FOOL. woods—well, he feels kinder outer water. With that, an’ one thing an’ another, I’d just as Hef folks didn’t know you got a sailor workin’ for you, skipper. I been in hospital. I—well-—” ‘That goes,” said Lem kindly. “ We be white men here, includin’ Mrs. Skellog. If there’s one thing can be said about yer face, Bill, it is that if it ain’t honest it ain’t nothin’. I never see an honester face, Jad, nor a more harmless one. Soldier or sailor or lumberjack, no man could git himself in to mischief with a face like that.” “You said it, skipper. If it ever wrecked a home it would sure be my own—if I ever had one.” Tom Skellog laughed and the others smiled, but the stranger did not twitch so_ much as the ghost of a beginning of a smile. The stranger showed improvement as an axman next day, and rested less frequently than on the day before and took more time to the chewing of his victuals. What of Dills Mumphy and Louis Gerou? Louis left Mumphy’s room and the board- ing house and hung on and off outside, with an eye on the front door. He had not long to wait for the flabby gent who was in- quiring after Jules Perdu, or d’Ance, or whatever the big buttinsky’s name was. Together they passed through the village. Louis left Mumphy outside a rambling and dilapidated string of buildings which clung among rocks and big spruces between the road and the river, below the former and almost overhanging the latter, and disap- peared for several minutes. Mumphy felt uneasy. He began to regret this adventure with the big bushwhacker. The dark shad- ows, the humped and overshot bulks of blackness disclosed and enlarged around him by glimmering veins of snow, and the hoarse and sobbing complaint of the swift water through the steaming vent of an air hole somewhere close in against the rugged bank, chilled his spirit and weighed on his courage. He fingered a small automatic pis- tol in a pocket of his fur-lined coat, and kept his eyes and ears strained. But nothing worse happened than the reappearance of Louis. 9 A 609 Two minutes later Mumphy was com- fortably seated in a small room bright and warm with fireshine and lamplight. He had laid aside his overcoat—but not before he had transferred the pistol, with clever sleight-of-hand, to a side pocket of his inner coat. He had been introduced to and shaken hands with Mr. Paul Griffou, a small but piratical looking man with a black mustache coarse-haired as a horse’s mane and shaped like a hay rake. This was a private room. Louis, with his fur cap still on his head and pulled down to his ears, informed Mumphy that it was not every Jake and Pat and Pierre could sit in here. Not by a jugful. This room was reserved for Griffou’s special, ad- mired friends, and their friends. Mr. Grif- fou retired by way of an interior door. Mumphy and his new friend lit cigars from Mumphy’s vest pocket. The door by which the proprietor had retired, opened, and admitted a beautiful young woman carrying a tray. On a tray stood a bottle and two glasses. This beauty was intro- duced to Mumphy as Griffou’s daughter. Mumphy acknowledged the introduction by Struggling to his feet and bowing. He was impressed as greatly by the expression of -kindness and honesty in the girl’s face and the frank innocence of her manner as by her beauty. Marcel placed the tray on a convenient corner of the table, stepped to the open stove, and added a stick to the blaze, then went to the door; and as she closed the door behind her she heard Louis say something about “ dat strong feller, Jules Perdu.”’ The stove in the room of Paul Griffou’s riverside house, in which Dills Mumphy and Louis Gerou drank their whisky, did not, at that time, stand where it had for- merly stood. Years before, that stove had occupied a position at the other side of the room, sixteen feet away, and its pipe had crossed the ceiling of the room above before entering the chimney. It had been moved to its present place, against the chimney, for the improvement of the draft; but the hole in ceiling and floor, through which the pipe had formerly passed to the chamber above, remained. Marcel went Nightly upstairs, lightly oO CoOMmichoo S CO