The Argosy, Vol. 90 No. 1 — page 123: what you’re looking at

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

THE WILD EAST. gilt-edged boxers, whose map in action is a graven image. The stranger’s is one 0° them clean cut, smooth, steady faces from which any emotion is sponged off before it’s started, and he’s got you continually guessing what he’d be likely to do next. Well, while we waited he came down and walked right toward us. I noticed he wa’n’t very tall—about five foot eight—and he wa’n’t very big. Jake would ha’ made two of him, an’ the top of his head would have about met Jake’s chin up among the whiskers. He walked along brisk, never. by the bat of an eye lettin’ on he’d seen us at all, passed us an’ went on outdoors to see the sights of Cactus City. Jake looked at us an’ we looked at Jake. The features of that apostle of evil was triumphant. “What did I tell ye?” he crowed. “ That Eastern inshoot don’t want none of my game!” And bein’ a philosopher like I was, I had to admit that it didn’t look no ways as if he did. Jake, growling, departed to pursue his several ways, and the rest of us followed suit. It was that mild May evenin’ after sup- per that E had a hand in cinchin’ the sad- dle girth of Fate, though I couldn’t have known then that I had done it, or that a few words spoken from man to man, and leadin’ quite naturally along the old blazed trail to woman, would contain the makin’s of this story. I’d had supper at Prouty’s, an old pal o’ mine, and was saunterin’ down Bonanza Street, our main thoroughfare, on which the Au Claire de la Loon Hotel was by way of being situated. Peacefully pickin’ my fangs with my knife, I drew near to the Steps thereof. On them, sadly squattin’, was the Stranger. He hailed me after a fashion which showed the gulf in speakin’ which is always fixed between the East and the West. His voice was middlin’ deep and kind o’ quiet and pleasant. ‘‘ Mister,” he syllabled, which no son of the Golden West would have used that dull- drab term, ‘“‘ my stomach has always been 117 a friend o’ mine, and I can’t begin to pick on it now.” I grinned, knowing from sad experience what he meant. The kewzeen of the Au Claire de la Loon sure puts a crimp in the tolerably fair reputation of Cactus City. “How far did you get in the menu?” I asked him. “I looked at the first of it comin’ onto the table. That was enough. I got out. Why should I insult my interior? Could you direct me to some joint where a man could get Hned right?” I nodded and p’inted down the street to the only illuminated sign in town that didn’t hover over a dance-hall or gamblin’-hell. “See that sign, stranger? The one that says ‘Feed Up’? That’s Alf Mangan’s eatery, an’ between I an’ you it’s the only public hashery in a radius of fifty miles that you don’t need a pepsin course to top off with.” “Yours truly, old man,” he says, and slides in that direction, walkin’ easy in his dark serge scenery, with a little gray go-to- hell hat pulled over his eyes, and his shoul- ders that square you could lay a ruler flat against ’em behind. A fine set-up citizen, I opine, and regret- tin’ that Sagebrush Jake had started feelin’ mussy against him for no reason to speak of, Seeing as how Jake, who didn’t have brains enough to forget a thing, would be inclined to follow up his irritatin’. Which I de- plored, feelin’ that it outraged our Western hospitality. J Say a half-hour later I happened to be strollin’ down the thoroughfare an’ looked in at the window of Mangan’s refectory. With his elbow on the counter by the cash-register stood this Haswell person, toy- ing with death. ‘You’d never guessed it. “If that be death,” you’d suggested, “ lead me to it.” For little Gussie Lindley was some cheru- bim. But Sagebrush Jake Carroll, who clung to a forlorn hope of makin’ her Mis- sus Jake, had swore he’d make a seraphim out of any cross-eyed, spavined, cow-faced maverick that dared to shine up to her. So when he was in town nobody shone. But here was this back-easter lookin’ earnest into Gussie’s eyes while she chat- oO Comicbooe S CO