The Argosy — page 190: what you’re looking at

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

Red River Gully. cpa “¢T’ve got one ’bout that size, I guess,’ said a voice, so husky that the men hardly recognised it. ‘‘ Reproachful eyes were turned on him. “¢T¢ J’d got one I shouldn’t be here, foolin’,’ growled Kent. “Nor I,’ said a chorus of voices. “Them as has women-folk and children to home, ain’t no business in Red River Gully,’ said Black Joe, bending a gloomy look on the fire. I learnt afterwards as he’d lost his wife and two purty children before ever he come to the gold-diggin’s. «“¢T guess I’ll go and see my old mother,’ said one of the men, with an uneasy look at Dick Kent. “Ves! Go,’ says he; ‘and as God sees you, never come back to this place no more.’ Soon after this one of the men, as had been a sailor, turned over the table, and made a place there as would do for a bed for the child, and just then the other fellers come in carrying Ralph, and I had to go back to the camp ; so I didn’t see no more that night. ‘Wall, boys,there wasn’t no ‘ Devil’s Own’ after that. Dick Kent, he’d had good luck, and had made considerable, and as soon as the boy was well enough to travel, he set out with them two children and took ’em to Boston. ‘The relatives there looked pretty shy on them, and wanted to send little Milly to some institution; but Dick he wouldn’t hear of it, and he adopted both of ’em. “‘T was to Boston some years ago, and I seen Kent one Sunday mornin’ a-goin’ to church. I follows after and slips in, and takes a good look at him. I seen Milly and a fine fellow, her husband, I suppose, there, and some children, and there was one little, yaller- haired gal as sat close to Kent, and as he seemed to watch over like the apple of his eye. She was but a bit of a creature, and before the service was over she was asleep with her head on Dick’s breast. Her mother, a beautiful woman she’d growed to be, smiled round at her husband, as if ’twas very pleasant to her to see her old friend a carin’ for the child. Wall, wall, I seemed to forget I was in church. All as I could see was a little child, sleepin’ in those same arms amidst those reckless men as called themselves the ‘ Devil’s Own.’ ‘‘ Perhaps ’twas my thinking so much of him as made Dick turn round and take a long look at me with his deep black eyes. I could not tellif he knowed me, till we come out of church, and he put his hand on my shoulder and spoke tome. That warn’t all; he took me home with him, and I guess I stayed a week in his beautiful house. Long enough, boys, to see that the Lord had done His work in His own way, and the night as brought that little child safe to the door of the ‘ Devil’s Own,’ brought also an angel of light to the heart of Dick Kent, and, maybe, others of that gang.” CORNICELOO cS (SO) am