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Updated: May 17, 2025
"'S right!" murmured the pale one imperturbably. "Fond of tomatoes?" enquired Ravenslee. "Aw!" answered his neighbour, "quit foolin' talk sense!" "Certainly! Why do you follow me, Soapy?" Soapy's eyes grew narrower, and the pendent cigarette stirred slightly. "Know me, hey?" he enquired. "Heaven forbid! 'T was a bolt at a venture a shot in the dark."
M'Ginnis jerked aside the roll-top desk and falling on his knees before a small but massive safe built into the wall behind, set the combination and swung open the heavy door, talking to his companion as he did so and quite unconscious of the pale face that watched him through the dingy window. "That dam' Soapy's gettin' ugly," he was saying, "an' it don't do t' get ugly with me, Heine, boy!
He could dispose of the most profound questions almost before they were out of the speaker's mouth. His answer to "Soapy's" query was a broad grin, for he had detected a sly twinkle in the speaker's eye. He also shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands, and, to clinch the matter, he winked.
Beyond was a crowd, very silent now, who drew back to give him way, but Soapy paused in the doorway and leaned there a moment. "What's doin'?" cried a voice. "Say, run f'r a doctor, somebody quick Soapy's hurt bad, I reckon " "Hurt?" said Soapy, in soft, lazy tones. "'S right! But say fellers, there's a son of a dog in there waitin' f'r a spade t' bury him!"
"You ain't tellin' what she said when she give you your'n," said a voice. There was a laugh, through which the youth emerged smiling broadly. "No," he said, "I ain't tellin'. But she told Soapy here that she was lookin' for local color. Wanted to know if he was it. Since then Soapy's been using a right smart lot of soap, tryin' to rub some color into his face." Color was in Soapy's face now.
But as he read the humble entreaties, the passionate pleading of those written words, blotted and smeared with the bitter tears of a woman's poignant shame and anguish, Soapy's pendent cigarette fell to the floor and lay there smouldering and forgotten, and his lips were drawn back from sharp, white teeth pallid lips contorted in a grin the more awful because of the great drops that welled from the fierce, half-closed eyes.
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