The Argosy, Vol. 90 No. 1 — page 122: what you’re looking at

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

116 can’t ye, Sagebrush?” I said. “ He won’t get it; not here!” But my subtile sarcasticism is lost on that slag-huntin’ primate, whose bone-ribbed dome is impervious to the rapyahs of wit. The only kind of humor what would dent it would have to fall ten stories. “‘ Let’s see what wants a good room!” he growls, leadin’ the way to the register on which representatives of every tribe except chop sueys has been inkin’ their alphabets for the past few months. For Cactus City was by way of bein’ cosmolopian. There’s his name, slung together in the fist of a man who grips a penholder like he’d choke it. And his residence also, which is unusual. LEONARD HASWELL, Back East. Ever study the kinks of a trouble-hunter? They’re like the yarn mother has been knit- tin’ for socks for the soldiers when Fido has got into it. Sagebrush lamped that funny scrawl. Immediate his Cossack map, what you could see of it, turned the colors of the Painted Desert. He batted his saffron eyes and the pupils circled. He brung down his fist on the desk like he’d split it. “Back East!” he snarled. ‘‘ Men, this here’s an insult! Back East! You all seen him, you seen him look around. He comes into the swellest hotel in Coyote County, christened sweller than any bunk-house in the land—the Au Claire de la Loon, which is named so by Mine Host Prevost after ‘ Trilby ’ has hypnotized him—and he gives it the Apache eye like it was a dog-house! “And never a howdy do, an’ ‘ what ’1l it be, gents?’ Naw! ’Stead o’ that, it’s ‘Gim’me a good room!’—the damn dude! —and then fistin’ his home, ‘ Back East ’!”’ “Yes, Sagebrush,” I insinuated, “but maybe he wanted to show us that he is but a stranger and a sojourner, as all his fathers was. Maybe he wished to inculcate to us the information that this Western world is not his home, and that he’s lonely, and for us to take him to our bosoms like.” But if Sagebrush was ever reasonable I’d flop the other way. I’d consider my ethics had suddenly gone wrong. The man had just gone plumb grand THE ARGOSY. stand nuts with hatred of that innocent cause up-stairs. So he further orated his antipathy. ‘Take him to our bosoms, hey? Leave him as much as roll an eye at me, an’ I'll take him to my bosom so he’ll know he’s took! Jl bosom him! Like a grizzly bosoms a hound! Our world is not his home, hey? Well, God help him in the next if he gets tangled up with me. He’ll be twangin’ a tunin’-fork for the angels!” By this time Jake was roarin’ like an irri- gation ditch with the sluice open. Which- upon he sloshed into his peroration. ‘““Somethin’s goin’ ‘ back East’ on ice if he mixes with me! It ll be Rest in Pieces for him! They’ll be carvin’ a busted col- yum on his tombstone and the birds ’Il chirp their evensong over his turf. I’m sorry for his family, but they had ought to kept him to home! He don’t want none of my game!” ‘Shut up!” hisses Ike Friddell. ‘‘ There he comes down!” We all turned our heads. The stranger was comin’ down, as Ike said, deliberate and slow, with measured tread. And Jake had shut up, like he was told. Just why, we didn’t know, for he never had before, whether any one had asked him to or hadn’t. But now he was silent as re- quested, glarin’ surly at the fellow as he come down the stairs. Maybe it was the stranger’s face that shut off Jake’s lingual faucet, and that Jake thought there might be doin’s in a minute. For his fist stole into his coat-pocket, from which he was wont to shoot through when there was symptoms of unharmony extant. For Jake realized, as well as every one else, that the fellow had heard every word up in his room. It was a frame hotel, skele- ton built, and besides that, Jake’s dulcet tones, when he got impassioned, was uni- formly audible in the next county. So all of us opined that there might be trouble, especial when we gazed speculatin’ at the stranger’s face. No; he didn’t look mad at all. It wasn’t that. Lampin’ it, I could only think of a blend of two maps; a poker player’s that might be holdin’ all the way from a hand o’ deuces to a royal flush, and one o’ them oO Comicbooe S CO