Argosy, Volume XXIII — Index Page, 1897 — page 164: what you’re looking at

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

HOODOO SAM. The story of a mysterious disappearance intertwined with the case of an objectionable lover 3 —Tragic consequences of that lover’s efforts to straighten the tangle, and the revelations made thereby. H ETTY DARKE was making banana pies in the little shed kitchen of her cabin home. It was a midwinter day; but the mocking bird sang in the lemon tree by the window, and the scent of yellow jessamine came in on the breeze. For this was in Florida—down on the eastern side of the peninsula, near the wonderful Indian River, which is no river at all, but a sound, shut from the Atlantic by long, narrow islands, fringed with mangroves and palm trees. Hetty’s lashes were wet, and there was a pathetic droop to her pretty mouth. Her hands moved mechanically at their task. All at once, they stopped. She had suddenly thought about her little brother. She stepped to the window, and called ‘‘Rob, Rob!’’ There was no reply. She called again in a louder key. The mocking bird ceased to sing, as if to catch the answer; but no answer came. | | Hetty laid down the knife and went out of doors. ‘‘ Rob,’’ she called sharply, ‘‘ where are you?”’ The stillness that followed was disturbed only by the moan of a dove in the bushy top of a pine tree. Hetty’s face took on an expression of anxiety and remorse. What if some harm had come to the little brother she had sent away an hour ago, neglecting to charge him not to go into the woods, where rattlesnakes lurked under the palmettoes and wire grass, and on no account to go near the Sink. She had forgotten this, her usual warning, in her haste to get him out of the kitchen before Hardy Brock—whom she saw approach- ing through the orange trees—should come and make a last appeal to her to go away with him. ~ She had kept a lookout for her lover. She was sure he would come when he discovered that her father and brothers, who had forbidden him to enter the house, had gone at daybreak to hunt wild turkeys. There was no harm, she told herself, in seeing him this once. It would be the last time. He was going away—so far away—to California. It was not right for her father . and two tall brothers to hate him and forbid her to marry him because of an old quarrel. Yes, she would see him once more and part from him kindly. He was dreadfully hurt because she would not go with him. But how could she: leave her father, who had no one else to keep house for him? Above all, how could she desert Rob, the child her dying mother had left to her care? _ The interview between the iovers was short. Brock went away angry Eomichooks =z) (€(0)