Argosy, Vol. 85, No. 3 — page 138: what you’re looking at

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

480 you can do for grief like hers?” came back from my old chum’s lips. ‘‘ You’ve got a wonderful respect for your imagination, it seems to me. I suppose you imagine you love her.” “It’s none of ‘your business if—” “Say,” he cut me off, “haven’t you really ever heard of the way she came to be down here in the first place?” “ Why—why, no. I.don’t think she has told me,” I confessed. “Well, I'll tell you. Rudy and those other two—there were six of them at the start—got wind of the existence of this coaling station somewhere down here. All of them were reserve men, of course. They hadn’t much money; but they had a whole lot of patriotism that wasn’t get- ting the slightest exercise up in the United States. ‘So they concocted the fool scheme to sail down the Keys from Florida in a rickety old cat-boat with a kicker in it. That wouldn’t have been any worse than lots of other things, only Mamie wouldn’t let Rudy come unless he’d bring her along; and he was still loony enough about the thing to bring her in order to get here himself. | ‘And even that might not have been so bad—in fact, we’ve been seeing it work out very nicely in the end. But some- thing went wrong with the engine of the cat-boat just when there was a ten-day calm for which they’d been too low in funds to provide against with decent ra- tions for the two days they’d figured for the run they were making. ‘“ And—well, I’m not going to go into details right now; I haven’t time. They got ashore finally. It was Rudy that managed to sail the boat into some sort of port. And two of the men were dead— three more and the girl were in a delirium of starvation. And the folks that got them out of their boat made a queer dis- covery. “The girl still had plenty of food. She had it tucked in a little bag she carried on her lap. It was her food, too—her por- tion of the rations they doled them- THE ARGOSY. selves out when the bunch began to real- ize its plight. And somehow, by one lie one time and another lie another time, ‘she had kept Rudy _ eating — something, enough to hold soul and body and brain together—right along. And he hadn’t known that she’d gone without herself to accomplish it. ‘Do you think you’ve got anything to console that sort of a love with? Don’t you think there’s a time somewhere when your cheap flirtations are a bit out of place?” ‘“Flirtations!” I echoed indignantly. After all, he had but added a cap-sheaf to my own estimate of the girl. ‘“ Maybe I’m something of an ass; but I’ve meant to marry that girl if anything could ever induce her to take me.” ‘““ Marry her!” Louie’s jaw dropped. He stared at me in blank non-comprehen- sion. “‘ Well, maybe you could now. But —before now? Why, what do you mean?” ‘Well, I don’t know as Ig let you stop me. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to let our baron lieutenant chap back there take her away from me. And I don’t see why her brother should seriously object to me if she didn’t.” “Brother? Who?” Louie insisted crazily. “ My God! You didn’t think Rudy was her brother, did you?” And, before my bewildered brain could even then grasp the truth it was borne in upon me in the tone of a woman’s voice. It was a voice dead and hollow with long vigil and strain and anxiety, hoarse and weak and thin. The girl was at the rail again as she cried eut—her fingers point- ing toward something none of us could as yet see or hear. “Rudy! Rudy!” It was a voice to call a man back from the dead. And the cheerful-looking, rather over-enthusiastic and _ distinctly sensation-loving young man who was swimming toward the lights of our boat ~was her husband. “Well,” he spoke simply, as we got him aboard, “I guess now [ got to fight for my new country.” comicloool C©