Argosy, September 1955 — page 41: what you’re looking at

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

1 x A oy oe ie = At, TN A _ -- 7 i a - —% a ny t - i ~ - em : » “te . 6d — Tyas ~, ; - ss “a ee SUMMER IN SALANDAR 39 , He had never been able to make up his mind how old she was and now, excited, her skirt drawn up above bare smooth legs, her x eyes enormously shining, he thought she seemed much younger _ than she had done down in the scorching, withering period of the _ leste, in the town. She seemed to have left behind her restlessness. oh Oh! it’s marvellous, and it really wasn’t far, was it?’ she said. ‘‘ It didn’t seem an hour. It was easy after all.” 5 He said he didn’t think it had been far either and he was aware suddenly that Manuel had gone ahead. ‘The impossible waiter- = suit, mule-mounted, was almost at the verandah steps. A hundred = _ yards separated him from Manson and Miss Vane, and again an. overpowering sense of intimacy came over Manson, so that he felt . - tremulously stupid and could not speak to her. 4 ur Sr, poh aecvael a ‘“* Now aren’t you glad I made you come? ”’ she said. 4 “Yes,” he said. , ‘“* Back there I thought you were mad with me.”’ ** Not the smallest piece? ” F rs He shook his head. ‘ Not a little bit,’’ he said. The smile went temporarily out of her face. The mule jerked nervously ahead. “I really thought you were mad,” she said, and it did not occur to him until long afterwards that she might have hoped he had been. From Manuel, during the rest of that day and the succeeding day, came an almost constant sound of whistling that jarred and irritated Manson like the scrape of a file. ‘The rest-house, neat s and clean, with something not unlike a chapel about its bare white- . washed coolness, was divided into three parts. mnie ; In the large central room Manson and Miss Vane ate, at a long mahogany table, the meals that Manuel prepared in a kitchen that ran along the north side like a large bird-cage made of gauze. In this cage Manuel kept up the whistling that continued to infuriate Manson even at night-time, as he tried to sleep in the third part, _ composed of his‘:own bedroom and Miss Vane’s on the western side. Miss Vane was a woman who hated trousers. “1 was born a woman and I[’ll dress like one,”’ she said. So she had ridden astride the mule in a loose cool white dress instead of the slacks Manson thought would have been more suitable, even though he disliked them. And all that day and most of the next, Sunday, she lay in front of the rest-house in a sun-suit of vivid = green, boned so tight to the shape of her body that it was like an extra, gleaming skin. As she lay in the sun Manson was aware of two sorts of feeling about her. When she lay on her back he saw the Miss Vane he ~ had met on the ship; the Miss Vane of the hotel and the town, a of the advancing, blistering leste; the Miss Vane incorrigibly and restlessly prodding him into coming to the mountains. She was the Miss Vane with the startling, discomforting tongue of yellow comiclbooks.conn