Argosy, Vol. 118, No. 4 — page 94: what you’re looking at

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

SOI he 1 a eres DEE RIOTS IEEE Courtney T took a guy like me to get along with Ed Steele. Not that Ed was rough, tough or ugly. But he had a conscience, and if there’s anything that can cause trouble just at the psychological moment when you’ve got the sucker all primed to sign on the dotted line, and thereby put his John Henry on what seems to be a contract for a gilt-edged, double-decked, washing, drying and clearing machine, but what is really a six months’ promissory-note, dis- countable at any bank, it’s one of those blamed New England consciences. And Ed had one, rock bound, copper riveted and with asbestos padding between all the seams. Conscience may be all right in its place. I’m not saying anything about that. Proba- bly we couldn’t get along without it in the general scheme of things, but with Ed and me it was a thing of juty and a jaw forever. I guess Ed and me ’ve used up enough con- versation over that blamed conscience of his to sell the New York subway eight times over. 7 Why, one day in Denver, I saw that man sit down and actually cry after we’d gotten up at five o’clock in the morning and argued a bird from Fort Collins into the belief that the Larimer Street viaduct was our own private and personal property, bringing in five thousand dollars a month on tolls, and that the only reason we were selling at a sacrifice was because the altitude was bad We Se % Fete ‘ on our hearts, and the doc had said we ought to go to a lower climate. Actually cried, that man did, with the tears rolling down on the hunk of bills we’d taken away from the Fort Collin’s Horn o’ Plenty, and then, what’d he do but up and buy one of these ‘‘ There’s No Place Like Home ” mot- toes and send it to the sucker to ease off that conscience. ‘Maybe it ll teach him a lesson,” says Ed mournful-like, as we mailed it in the depot. ‘‘ Maybe, if he’d had one of those things on the wall, he’d never left home. And if he’d never left home, he’d never got hooked up with us and bought that viaduct. And, as long as I can think that maybe I’m keeping him out of trouble in the future, I don’t feel so bad about selling him some- thing that the city of Denver spend a couple of years building and naturally wants to hang on to, no matter what some guy from Fort Collins may say.” So, from that, it’s a cinch to get a slant on what kind of a bird Ed Steele was. Other people might say that he was as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, and willing to trim any- thing from a hat to his best friend; but I know better. Ed never took anything away from anybody in his life that he didn’t give something back. Which leads up to the case in point, as the last lawyer who got us out on bail used to say. We’d pulled just about everything that was pullable, from legs to the green-goods 564 | (C(O) (C 6)(6) QO) im S (C(C)