Hero of Hicksville

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17835, 1 May 1926, Page 17 (Supplement)

Hero of Hicksville

How Young Alf Higgins Won

Love with a Pitchfork.

(Scenario by H.N.H.)

YOU have often seen Hicksville, or somewhere just like it, on the movies. It was a sleepy little town, and lay drowsing in the summer sunlight. So did the sheriff. So did the storekeeper, and the barman, and the proprietor of the local flivver, anti the Fire Brigade, and several dogs. Young Alt Higgins, driving the farm buggy to town for the mail, stopped in front of somewhere just like it, on the movies, the post office . He was a simple son of the soil. There was quite a lot of it on his hands. He wore overalls and a large straw hat, with a ragged hole in the top of the crown. He gazed about him, and caught the flutter of a white dress on the sidewalk down the street. His heart leaped, and he got out of the buggy. It was Mary Carter, a simple, pure country girl, who lived with her uncle, the post master. Her father had been simple too, and was now spending his days in the County Asylum, labouring under the delusion that he was a loaf of bread. Alf blushed painfully as the girl approached, swinging her sun-bonnet ■with innocent abandon. He bent his head, and drew circles in the dust with the toe of his boot. “Hello, Alf!” she greeted brightly. Alf draped himself across a fence rail, took a straw from behind his car, and started to chew it (the straw), lie said nothing, but threw occasional glances at the girl. She did not seem to find anything unusual in this. She probably expected it, having lived among hicks all her life. “I'm glad to see you, Alf,” she said. Aif wriggled ecstatically. He felt he was becoming a bit of a dog. “You don’t say?” he remarked. Just like that. Easy, effortless. Once get them under way, and simple hayseeds will show Rudolph Valentino a few things. Beneath Alf’s rough exterior beat a manly heart. “Let's take a walk, Alf,” suggested Mary. They started, Alf walking in an easy, graceful attitude, his arras swinging loosely, his dungarees falling in folds over his boots. Here, one felt, was a man to whom the call of the free winds and the great open spaces was the breath of life. A powerful, expensive car purred into the town. Cars like that always purr. Make a noise like a cat, in fac*. It stopped in front of the hotel, and the driver went into the hotel carrying two bags. He came out again ■without any. The sheriff woke up, and made an entry in his note book. It said that a stranger had come to town and had engaged a room at the hotel. Clever things like that came easily to the sheriff, who had a quick mind. Practice did it. The stranger was a city man, and obviously a villain. The only city men who go to places like Ilicksville are villains or Secret Service men on the track of bootleggers, and this man’s moustache gave him away. He made , a bee-line for the girl, of course. Maty shrank away from his bold I gjze. A crimson blush rushed like a irlal wave from her neck up to the r< )ts of her hair, and stayed there. Al. shrank away too: he felt Siangan, constrained by the cultured presence of this unknown man. ' Hello, cutie,” said the stranger, with ■wcllbred grace. ' food afternoon, sir,” Marv answered 1 ashfully. "My name’s Lomax,” he said. ‘‘Melville Lomax. Like to come riding?” I Fis name wasn’t really Lomax at all. It was Smith, and he was a Bowery

master crook, snake in the grass. He seized Mary’s arm, and though something in the touch made the unsophisticated girl shudder from two feet up, she let him lead her to the car. It

Alf remained where he was for quite half an hour, chewing straws until his supply was exhausted. His eyes were, closed, he was hitched to the fence by his braces, and the casual observer might have gained the impression that he was asleep. But he was not; he was thinking, brooding; jealousy was stirring. He finished the last straw, got into the buggy, woke up the horse, aftd drove slowly away. Any cart harnessed to that horse went slowly. Aif had forgotten the mail, weightier matters occupied his mind. A young man’s cross-roads. (End Part 1.) (Part II.) Alf got up at six the next morning, and went out to the chores. After that he had to milk .the cows. He did not dash out into the farmyard whistling blithely, and turn his face to the new sun, thanking God for the freedom of the country; only people on a week’s holiday do that sort of thing. It is too much to expect a man to rush forth carolling gaily and swinging his milk bucket after twenty years’ experience. He finished the chores, and collected the eggs. Breakfast over, he drove into town again, after the mail. Alf went into the post office, and asked Uncle Dan, the post master, where Mary was. He was told that she was out riding with the city feller. Alf turned away, his mind reeling, dazed, sick; he staggered into the saioon, and leaned against the bar. lie was good at leaning against things. The urge to do something desperate was in him. He ordered a lemonade, and drank it feverishly. lie drank seven lemonades and a sarsaparilla, and then went and weighed himself. The lemonade began to go to his head. Alf had never sworn before, but he did now, and it eased him. “Dang him!” he said, “dang, dang, dang! Dang his hide!” savagely. He drank another lemonade, and weighed himself again, recklessly. lie wanted to vent his rage somehow, and looked

at the barman. The barman was big; so Alf went out into the barn, and bit hay. He felt primaeval; the thin veneer of civilisation had been stripped off. He went out to the street again, and came face to face with Mary. Gone now was all hesitation; he grabbed her arm, fiercely. “Where have you been?” he barked. It may seem hard to bark a sentence like that, but Alf did it. “With Melville,” she retorted with spirit.

“Melville?” A striking imitation of a bloodhound, this time. “Yes, and I'm going to run away with him to-night, too! So there ! ” I told you Mary was simple. This proves it. “Oh, are 3*ou? Ha-ha, you jade!” Alf turned, and went back to the saloon, where he drank more lemonade. The real man was coming to the surface. He went out again, and sat in the hotel parlour, watching the stranger’s car. Alf was not going to take this lying down.

The shades of night were falling fast, as out the village bank there passed, a man. It was Melville, and he walked in an ostentatiously cautious manner, carrying two handbags, from which proceeded a faint jingling sound. The truth was obvious. Melville had burgled the bank, and was now leaving with the proceeds; he was going to take Mar\' too, although she had been an afterthought. That he proposed to marry her revealed an honest, kindly streak in the man; he was going to do his best to make her happy. He was going to make her the Queen of the Underworld. A gentle thought. Melville approached the car, and hissed gently. There was no response, and after some minutes of futile hissing, lie gave up, and mopped his brow. Hissing in the real conspiratorial style is fatiguing. Then a faint figure appeared in the dusk, carrying a carpet-bag. “Good God,” he exclaimed, “what’s that thing?” “My clothes, Melville,” she murmured simply. Melville shuddered slightly. lie was a man of quite nice tastes. What v r as this girl, anyway? Did he love her, rube as she was? He was not sure. Silence fell. Smith, king of the Underworld, was thinking. A sudden sound, and Melville whirled, in the correct crouching attitude, one hand at his hip. Alf stood revealed in the glare of the headlights, holding a hay-fork. A figure of destiny. He stood with his weapon at the ready* The robber’s indecision vanished. With a single bound he reached the car, another bound saw him in his seat, and, still bounding, he threw in the clutch.

“Stand aside!” he shouted. Not out of any special consideration for Alf’s feelings, but he did not want to damage the machine. He took such final steps as were necessary, and trod on the accelerator. Alf took steps—long ones—for the side-walk. Melville roared past, and disappeared from their lives forever.

How changed was Alf in his hour of conquest. He flung away his pitchfork with the air of Napoleon distributing marshal’s batons, and took Mary’s arm, quite roughly. “Come walking,” he ordered, abruptly, and against the purple haze of a velvet Texan night they went. Thus did trial harden a young man’s soul and temper his manhood, make him a man of action.