A regular part of The Railroad Man’s Magazine was their “True Story Series.” This was number forty-six in the series. It was prefaced with the following introduction.

Whenever railroad men fall to discussing shotgun runs and long-distance record-breaking specials, the conversation is sure to veer around to the trip of the Coyote Special over the line of the Santa Fe between Los Angeles and Chicago, 2,265 miles in forty-four hours and fifty-four minutes. That was railroading. Where have they beaten it?

Yes, Scotty was the man who did it. Have your own opinion about him, but there is one thing which you cannot take away from Scotty, and that is the distinction of having bought and paid for the fastest ride over the Rockies and across the plains ever made possible by steam and steel. The Coyote’s record still stands and it is likely to stand for some time.

How the craving for notoriety and love of the unusual, of a California miner, brought about the fastest long-distance run ever made in the history of railroading.

The flight of the Coyote Special

Published in The Railroad Man’s Magazine, 1910.

Walter Scott has well been called the man of mystery, and a lot of people are still puzzling their brains about him.

Some say that he was hired by the Santa Fe to advertise the road; they say he was a train-robber; they say he was a counterfeiter, and wonderful tales have been told of his cache of thousand-dollar notes in a cave in Death Valley.

As a matter of fact, Scott, whom every one in the West calls “Scotty,” was a young man who was clever enough to sell something which he never proved he had to a lot of Eastern millionaires. His appearance as a man of mystery was an accident.

One night a husky young man in the outfit of a cow-puncher walked up to a Los Angeles cigar clerk and asked for a fifty-cent cigar.

He tendered in payment a one-hundred-dollar note. The clerk said he could not change it.

“Well, change half of it!” said, the stranger, whereupon he tore the bill in two, left half of it on the show-case, and walked away. But he remembered the number; for, whatever may have been the matter with him, Scott was not crazy.

A reporter happened along, saw the torn bill, and, not being able to find Scott and talk with him, went away and wrote him up as the man of mystery.

Scotty, believing everything he saw in the papers, at once made up his mind that there must be something mysterious about himself; and thereafter he did his best to live up to the part. There is your explanation of Walter Scott in a nutshell. As for his amazing supply of money, he got it in the most prosaic manner in the world—in the form of drafts upon New York banking institutions; and the men who sent him the drafts were convinced that he had a mine.

In the first place, Scotty liked notoriety; that is, he liked it before he got too much of it. In the second place, he had something to sell. It may have been a mine, and it may have been conversation about a mine; at any rate, it was for sale, and Eastern men bought it.

The Coyote Special grew out of two things—Scott’s love for notoriety, and his desire to convince people that he had a good thing. As a matter of fact, he had two good things; but it would be unkind to print their names. They furnished the money, and it bought themselves an interest in a gold-mine.

They were buying an interest in themselves, but they did not know that until afterward. It is the general opinion out West that if a man is smart enough to sell a gold brick to an Eastern millionaire, he is entitled to the proceeds.

Now, about that train. After the incident of the torn one-hundred-dollar-bill—and that trick belonged to the justly celebrated Steve Brodie, who also went back after the pieces—Scotty began to appear next to live reading matter in the public prints. When he could not think of anything else to do, he hired a special train from Barstow to Los Angeles—a matter of one hundred and forty-one miles over the Cajon Pass, and through the garden-spot of southern California.

Scotty broke the record with a whoop and a hurrah, and he liked the sensation so well that inside of ten days he slipped quietly out to Barstow; and I received a telegram from there, saying that the man of mystery was in the office at that point, arranging for a second special train. I wired him that he was crazy; he wired back:

Pay no attention! I’m coming in to arrange for a special train from Los Angeles to Chicago to lower the record made by the Peacock Special.

That was news. Scotty came rolling in from Barstow, stripped to the waist, and working on the engine with Finley, the crack driver of the division. With his usual blast of trumpets, he announced that he was going over to Chicago in forty-five hours.

The Santa Fe was annoyed. The record of the Peacock Special, which had made the fastest time over the road, east bound, was fifty-seven hours and fifty-six minutes; and that was railroading to any man who knows what the Santa Fe grades are like in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado.

For a few days Scotty talked and the Santa Fe figured. Every little while Scotty would “spur the ole Santa Fay in the shoulder,” as he called it and Eastern newspapers began to wake up and send in queries asking when the train was to start.

On Saturday, July 8, 1905, Scotty walked into the office of John J. Byrne, general passenger-agent of the Santa Fe in Los Angeles, and laid down a roll of thousand-dollar bills.

“I’ve come to buy speed!” said he. “What’ll you take to do forty-five hours?”

That was the beginning of a two-hour confab. Byrne had an idea what the road could do, for the wires had been humming for four days. Every division superintendent along the entire route had made a report; Byrne had the figures under his hand. It was his opinion that to attempt anything like a forty-five-hour schedule would be suicide.

“I think I am safe in saying that we will better fifty hours for you,” said he. “That would lower the record by almost eight hours for the east-bound run.”

No. Wouldn’t do. Wouldn’t do at all. Scotty wanted speed. As for that Peacock Special, he knew all about her; and Byrne’s eyes opened wide when Scotty began to tell about the number of times she had been put in the hole for hand-cars, as Scotty expressed it;

“I know what this road can do if I get the engines I want,” said the man of mystery. “And I want the right of way over every train on the road, with the switches spiked half an hour in front of me.”

“See here,” said Byrne, “how do you come to know so much about prairie types, balance compounds, and grades, and things?”

“I ought to know a little,” said Scott. “I beat my way over your old road about thirty times. I know every foot of it.”

In the end, Passenger-Agent Byrne agreed to arrange a forty-six-hour schedule for the two thousand two hundred and sixty-five miles, giving the special the right of way over everything on wheels, including the palatial limited, the pride of the road.

As soon as the money was paid over, Byrne sent out a flood of telegrams. “All right; get ready,” they said. That happened late on Saturday afternoon. At noon the next day the Coyote backed into the yard, ready to start at one o’clock.

There were four passengers—Walter Scott, his wife, Frank Holman, a friend of mine who went along for the fun of the trip, and the writer.

When the minute-hand of the clock crept to the top of the dial, Conductor George Simpson gave Engineer John Finley the finger, old 442 coughed once, slid rapidly over the clattering switches, and the great run for the record was on.

From the first minute of the trip we began fighting that forty-six hour schedule. Finley had been allowed three hours and twenty minutes in which to make Barstow—one hundred and forty-one miles away, over the steep Cajon Pass—the record time for the run. At San Bernardino, sixty miles out, we were to pick up a second engine for the climb up grade, drop her by a flying-switch, and go on down the other side to the Mojave Desert.

All that it needed to get Finley’s fighting-blood into action was a four-minute stop on account of a hot tank-box; after that he knocked out miles under forty-five seconds, and came booming into San Bernardino four minutes ahead of the schedule.

Leaving San Bernardino with an extra engine, the Coyote tackled the first of the five mountain ranges; and Conductor Simpson, who had been in-charge of the Peacock Special and the Lowe Special, which established the west-bound record, kept his watch in his hand and one eye on the mile-posts.

The run to the summit was made in faster time than it had ever been made before; the second engine jumped ahead, took a flying-switch, and was in the clear as the short train came pounding by, topping the crest of the first range of hills.

The track twisting down to the desert was a dangerous place on which to attempt speed; but Finley knew every inch of it, and he let the Coyote out to the danger-limit. His best mile was done in thirty-nine seconds flat from Summit to Helen, thirty-five miles on a bad grade, his time was thirty-three minutes. With old 442 screeching like a lunatic, the special whirled around the long curve into Barstow twenty-five minutes ahead of the forty-six hour schedule.

Scotty rode the engine from Summit to Barstow, and he came back into the Pullman spattered from head to foot with grease and oil.

“We give the ole girl fits on that grade!” was his comment.

Barstow was Scotty’s stamping-ground—the point at which he outfitted for his many trips out into the Death Valley country. The desert rats had their own opinion of Scotty and his mine; but they were all on hand to give him a cheer, and “sic him” onto the record.

Those fellows knew Scotty when he ate his meals at a fifteen-cent lunch-counter; and, while they had an opinion that they had entertained the king of the bunco men, they were not too proud to wish him well.

Then Engineer Gallegher took command for the run over the Mojave Desert. The thermometer in the car registered one hundred and twenty degrees, and the silver-gray dust of the desert, following the train like a cloud, sifted in at every crack. Mrs. Scott retired to the drawing-room, as the motion of the train made her ill.

With our coats and vests laid aside, the rest of us haunted the water-cooler; and I remember that Gallegher took the horseshoe curve outside of Bagdad at such a terrific clip that it knocked us all out of our seats.

At 6.38 that evening we went through Fenner at better than a mile a minute, and on the switch was the east-bound overland which had left Los Angeles at 7.30 that morning. With her start of five and a half hours we had run her down in five hours and thirty-eight minutes, averaging twice her speed. By schedule we were due in Needles at 7.30. Gallegher brought us in at 7.17, and grieved because he had not done better.

Needles made a record for a short stop. Gallegher took 1005 away, and 1010—the new engine, with a wild man named Jackson at the throttle—had the Coyote moving again in exactly sixty seconds by a stop-watch. Trainmaster Mills had rehearsed the whole program.

“This fellow Jackson,” said the new conductor, “came down and just naturally bullied ’em into letting him haul this train. Drives her like there wasn’t a curve on the line, hey?”

Jackson did. We were trying to eat a salad when Jackson hit the abrupt curve on the California side of the Colorado River. My salad landed in my lap, and the table was swept clean. Glasses were smashed, plates flew about the floor, and the two waiters, turned from black to gray, hung on with both hands. Scotty liked that.

“Do you know what Finley and his fireman were doing when they were coming down the Cajon this afternoon at ninety miles an hour? They were shaking hands and holding her old nozzle wide open. Me for them!”

In the dark the Coyote took to the mountains on the Arizona side of the line. At Seligman, four hundred and sixty miles out, we picked up mountain time, and the watches reported us eleven minute’s ahead of the schedule.

Everybody knew that it was on the mountain divisions that the fight must be won or lost. On the Santa Fe “race-track” east of La Junta the balance compounds were waiting, and, as Scotty told Byrne, “You ain’t got a man on your road knows how fast them balance compounds can go.”

If the mountain divisions could deliver the goods and snake the Coyote into La Junta within the forty-six-hour schedule, the balance compounds across Kansas could be depended on for the rest.

Between sunset and sunrise the Coyote streaked across Arizona, a night of fighting against heavy grades. The small Arizona towns flickered by the windows of the Pullman like a hatful of sparks tossed out into a gale, and Division Superintendent Gibson held his watch in his hand most of the night.

Gibson is a great railroad man; nothing surprises him. Nothing gets a rise out of him. When he hoisted himself aboard the train at Williams he did not congratulate anybody, or make any talk about what his division was going to do.

“What delayed you?” was all he asked; and he put that question to men who had been knocking the spots out of the best running time ever made on a mountain division.

I did not sleep any the first night. Scotty, being built of whalebone and India-rubber, went to his berth and snored. Holman prowled up and down between the diner and the Pullman, not being able to make up his mind which would be the best place on the train in case of a smash.

Geyer, the German chef, who deserves a medal, prepared a midnight lunch for Holman, and while we were eating, the train came to a stop at some unknown place in the hills. Out in the dark, high-pitched and clear, like the bark of a coyote, came a voice:

“Ohée, Scotty!”

The man of mystery was snoring in the Pullman, and did not respond.

“Oh, Scotty! Come outen that and show yourself!”

No answer.

“You ain’t all swelled up because you got money, are you? I knowed you when you was poor. Come out and say howdy!”

Silence from the train.

“Hey, there! I’m thirsty, I am! I ain’t got no fool pride like some people! I’d take a drink with a hawss-thief, I would! Ha-a-a-ay, Scotty!”

Then the train began to move, and the unseen serenader gave vent to his feelings with some of the most remarkable profanity a man ever shuddered to hear.

“I guess that must have been Bill,” said Scott, the next morning. “Friend of mine.”

Superintendent Gibson had given his word to knock half an hour off the best time ever made over his division, the Lowe Special holding the record. His men made us a present of an additional four minutes, for we were in Albuquerque at 9.30 Monday morning, 888 miles from Los Angeles. We made our longest stop at a station in Albuquerque, where they restocked the diner and picked up a new outfit, which included Train-master Jim Kurn, a fine specimen of a mountain railroad man.

“It’s a lot easier to be on a plain’s division,” said Kurn; “but I like this mountain country, even if we do have to put in twenty-two hours a day fighting these grades. We’ll show you some regular railroading when we get down on the Glorieta.”

Railroad men the country over know about the Glorieta Pass. Ed Sears is the name of the engineer who took us from Lamy to Las Vegas, up one side of the Glorieta and down the other, and a three per cent grade on both sides. There was some repairing being done on the far side of the Glorieta, and Sears had two slow orders to four miles an hour. He rolled them up into a little ball and dropped them out of the cab-window.

“If they pick us up in the ditch,” said Sears, “never let it be said that they found any slow orders on us. We’re off!”

Sears jerked the Coyote up Apache Cañon at forty-five miles an hour. We had a passenger on this part of the run a young man whose uncle was one of the high officials of the road. When the Coyote crossed the top of the ridge and started down the other side, Sears showed us the railroading that Jim Kurn had been talking about. Kurn was out to make up the time which Arizona had lost and send us out of the mountains with a chance to beat forty-six hours into Chicago.

Down the eastern slope of the Glorieta Pass the road is one long succession of compound curves laid out on the side of a mountain strewn with immense boulders. The first time that Ed Sears slammed into a compound curve, the wheels on one side of the Pullman lifted about two inches from the track and came down again with a bang that made the dust spurt out of the cracks in the woodwork of the car.

That was the program all the way down the side of the mountain. I looked at Jim Kurn. He was doubled up in a ball, with his watch in his hand. I ventured to ask him what would happen if the train should leave the track on one of those dangerous curves.

“The only question,” remarked Kurn, “would be the size of the splinters. Don’t talk about it.”

The Pullman leaped and swayed from side to side as it righted itself around the curves; Scotty tried to walk down the aisle, and his shoulder went through one of the windows. Our passenger did not seem to be enjoying himself, and—I speak for myself—there was one man aboard who was trainsick.

There was a piece of track on the side of that mountain where it seemed that we were running over choppy water. That was one of the places where the track was being repaired; one of the four-mile-an-hour “slow orders.” Ed Sears ran over at a mile a minute.

“This is what you call fancy railroading,” remarked Kurn, when the engine whistled for Las Vegas. “They laid me out a tough schedule, but we’ve gained eight minutes on her, and you’ve had the fastest ride down the Glorieta that any people ever had that came out alive.”

As we pulled into Las Vegas, the passenger came over to say good-by.

“I want to get over into Kansas in a hurry,” said he, “and I’m no quitter, but I’ve had all this sort of thing that I want. I’d rather ride on a slow freight than on this train. Send me the newspaper clippings, will you?”

The porter on the Pullman also announced himself after that Glorieta joy-ride.

“Ridiculous; plum ridiculous!” he said.

From Las Vegas to Raton, over the mountains, and then a tremendous sprint from La Junta and the beginning of the “race-track” and the balance compounds. Hud Gardner brought us into La Junta exactly even with the revised schedule. To do it he gave her nine notches and threw away the lever.

Engineer Dave Lesher took the Coyote out of La Junta, and his actual running time for the first 120 miles was 111 minutes. It is 202 miles from La Junta to Dodge City, and it was done in 198 minutes, including three stops caused by a hot box on the diner.

Scotty worried about that hot box, and, because of it, elected to ride in the diner, with a bucket of cracked ice always within reach. Once, when the Coyote was forced to stop, Scotty was packing chunks of ice into that hot box before the wheels were through turning.

Somewhere between Newton and Kansas City, after midnight, I was in the diner, trying to find something to eat. One of the crew of the special, a train master, I think, dropped in after a sandwich. Like most of the men east of La Junta, he had never heard of Walter Scott, and had not the faintest idea as to why the run was being made. He had heard, in a hazy way, that the man who bought the train was a mining millionaire.

At the same time, Scott came in from the engine, stripped to his shirt and trousers, and sat down.

“Well,” said the train master, “what kind of dash-blank fool is it that’s hiring this train? What’s his idea?”

Scotty winked. I said that, so far as I could judge, the idea was to get to Chicago as soon as possible.

“Man must be crazy,” said the train-master. “Raving crazy. Nobody but a fool would want to run this fast. Ain’t that so?” And he appealed to Scotty himself.

“Don’t put it up to me, mister,” said Scotty. “You see, I happen to be that darn fool you’ve been talking about.”

The train master was still qualifying his remark the last we saw of him.

At 3.37 in the morning we pulled into Kansas City, stopped just long enough to make a flying change of engines, and we were off again. With daylight we figured that we had a chance to reach Chicago in forty-five hours. The original schedule had been smashed to bits after leaving La Junta.

At Fort Madison, with 239 miles still to go, we were turned over to a big, quiet German named Losee, the engineer whom the officials of the road had selected to set the high-speed mark for the trip. He had one mile in thirty-nine seconds to beat, and that mile was made by the first engineer in charge, of the train, John Finley.

Scott asked Losee what he thought he could make the distance in, and Losee shook his head.

“Wait!” he said. “I’ll tell you when we get to Chicago.”

Between the two little stations of Cameron and Surrey, in Illinois, there is a slight down-grade. The distance is two and eight-tenths miles. It was here that Losee was to let her out and see what a balance compound could do. There were three split-second watches on the train, brought along for the purpose of timing that dash between Cameron and Surrey. Losee made the two and eight-tenths miles in 1.35 flat, or a trifle better than 108 miles an hour. Trouble with his engine laid him out for ten minutes, but he did the 239 miles in 244 minutes, including three stops.

The Coyote, dusty and smelling to heaven of scorched waste, limped into the Polk Street Station in Chicago at ll.54 on Tuesday morning, thirteen hours and twelve minutes ahead of the best time ever made by an east-bound special, and seven hours and fifty-five minutes ahead of the time of the Lowe Special, west bound. She had bettered fifty miles an hour between the points, and a thousand miles of the distance had been a tremendous battle with mountain grades.

The thing which pleased Scotty the most was that he had beaten forty-five hours, a thing which General Passenger-Agent Byrne had said was impossible. Here is the telegram he sent Byrne reminding him of that circumstance:

“Forty-four; fifty-four! I guess I’m crazy!”

The man who beats it will have to be crazy.

The message to Buckshot John

Published in Munsey’s Magazine Magazine, 1912.

One

The Great Gilmore, founder of the fashionable cult of Purified Thought, known outside the advertising columns as Dr. Buchanan Gilmore, and to a select few as “doc,” disposed his white-flanneled legs under an immense mahogany table, armed himself with a jade-handled paper-cutter, and attacked his morning’s mail.

The rich, heavy furniture, the tapestries, the thick Persian rugs, the graceful but inconspicuous bronzes, and the gorgeously clad Oriental attendant spoke eloquently of prosperity. The Great Gilmore himself, arrayed from head to foot in spotless white, a single rare jewel winking from his cravat, struck a high, clear note in the midst of this effective stage setting.

It was characteristic of the man that, whatever his surroundings, he managed to be the most conspicuous thing in sight. When he had a chance to set the scenes himself, the effect was irresistible and compelling. A marvelous stage-director was lost in the Great Gilmore, and the shrine of Purified Thought was all that limited money and unlimited taste could make it.

“Really, my dear,” said one Denver lady, while breathlessly describing her visit to the eminent savant, “his consultation-room is wonderful! So well is it arranged that one carries away nothing but the sense of simple elegance. Positively, my dear, the man’s taste is marvelous! And such a personality! Such an expression of power in his eyes! No, brown, my dear! I remember most distinctly!”

The Great Gilmore, having set his trap for money, used money as a lure. Everything in his office was genuine—that is to say, everything but the man himself. Even the velvet-eyed, catlike servant was a genuine Hindu from over the seas, vainly endeavoring to forget that he had ever been a snake-charmer with a medicine show. Dr. Buchanan Gilmore—doubters might see his diploma displayed in the waiting-room—believed in a “good front” as firmly as he believed in the great truth that for every fleecy lamb born into this world the shears are appointed and the time set.

Gone were the hard days when the “doc” strained his musical voice in order to persuade the proletariat of the kerosene belt to part with twenty-five cents for a bottle of his justly celebrated Snake Oil, a solid gold friendship ring and a silk handkerchief being thrown in with each and every purchase. As Questo the Hypnotist, the vaudevilles knew him no more. Legerdemain, palm-reading, ventriloquism, astrology, and materializing séances he had put sternly, behind him, along with several temporarily assumed names for which he now had no further use.

This grub had become a butterfly, disdaining all but hothouse blossoms. As the expounder of Purified Thought, Dr. Buchanan Gilmore never “gave sittings.” He “made appointments.” The difference showed plainly in the figures upon the weekly bill, rendered to his clients upon neatly engraved linen bond.

Purified Thought appealed to a rich clientèle. There was in the very name a subtle magic which attracted those whom the doctor was pleased to describe as “the better classes.” If he had learned nothing else from his lean and hungry years—his petty-larceny period, he called it—the Great Gilmore had made certain of the fact that the possession of much money does not change human nature. A rich woman, seeking advice in matters of the heart, would accept precisely the same counsel as her sister behind the notion-counter, who spares fifty cents in exchange for an interpretation of the lines in her palm. And the more the rich woman paid for her advice, the more valuable it would seem to be.

Purified Thought was the same old goods. The difference was in the package, and the market was hungry.

The Great Gilmore’s mail was a heavy one, for he knew something about newspaper advertising. Some newspaper advertising is for sale, and some is not; and the latter is by far the more desirable. The doctor bought just enough of the first to be sure of the second, and in the news columns he frequently jostled the youngest society bud or the oldest political rascal for prominence. It was an excellent way of getting business, for people are more or less prone to believe that the man who is often in the public prints must amount to something.

The doctor’s long, nimble fingers flew as they sorted out the mail, but there was one letter which held him for a second reading. It was written in pencil upon two sheets of dirty, yellow paper, and was postmarked “Canyon City, Colorado.” This is what it said:

Deare Sir, i am a convick heare in the statesprisun and sinct i hav gott religin i beleave things i didnt befoar. i read in an old kansas city paper wheare you talked with spirrits and mayby you can help me. i gott something on my mind wich wont let me sleep nites in the line of property wich was not come by honest but wich was stole, i want to no what to do with it. my pardners are all dead and if i could talk to them they would tell me what to do. i want to go clean wen my time comes and i gott enuf to anser for anyway wich was done in my sinfull days long ago. if you are a god feering man wich beleaves in a hearafter, come to see me. yrs,

John Moran, No. 1113.

p. s.—i hav been a bad one in my time wich was long ago but i have repentit of my sins and am leding a beter life but i aint easy in my mind aboutt what i ought to do with that property.

p. s.—if you write the warden dont say you gott a leter from me. this was smugled outside, ask if you can see John Moran privitly. they let others and they ought to let you.

The Great Gilmore leaned back in his chair for a few seconds, and then dropped the letter with a short laugh.

“Some petty larcenist with a tender conscience,” he thought. “He’d better send for the prison chaplain.”

But the memory of the letter lingered. After he had finished his mail, he took down his telephone, called up the editorial rooms of a local newspaper, and asked for Mr. Dacey.

“Hello, Jimmy!” said he. “Come over to the Brown Palace for dinner to-night, will you? No, nothing special. I’m in for a lonesome evening, and I thought— All right, Jimmy! Seven o’clock!”

Two

Jimmy Dacey was a middle-aged reporter on a morning newspaper, a walking gold-mine of miscellaneous information, and the owner of a memory like a filing-cabinet. All sorts of interesting things were stored away in his head, to be turned up at the price of a question. Privately, he believed that the Great Gilmore was the cleverest fraud out of jail, but since the doctor was “getting away with it,” Dacey gave him the credit due under the circumstances.

Dacey interested the doctor; the doctor interested Dacey. It was an even exchange. Neither man asked or expected perfect confidence.

The chat over the coffee and cigars ranged far and wide, and touched upon many things, from politics to petty larceny—not so great a journey, perhaps, after all. Then the doctor dropped a chance remark into the tide of conversation.

“By the way, Jimmy,” said he, carelessly, “those were very clever articles you wrote about the new penitentiary system and the warden’s ideas of handling the prisoners. I read them with deep interest. It seemed to me it was a pity to waste them on a daily paper.”

“Uh huh!” said Dacey, noncommittally. “Wish I could strike a magazine-editor who thought so!”

“You had pretty much a free hand down there,” said Gilmore. “Talked with a lot of the convicts and that sort of thing?”

Dacey nodded.

“I wonder,” Gilmore continued, blinking dreamily, “if, in the course of your work, you came into contact with a convict named—Horan? No, that’s not the name! I’ll get it in a minute. Moran, is it? John Moran?”

“Buckshot John?” ejaculated Dacey. He flashed a swift glance at the doctor, but his host was carefully removing a band from a fresh cigar, a feat which seemed to require all his attention. “That old scoundrel?” continued Dacey. “I should say I have come in contact with him! Why, I’ve interviewed the old coot three times in the last fifteen years. He’s supposed to know something about all that money and stuff that the Kennedy outfit got away with. What made you ask about him, doc?”

“I don’t know. My recollection is very hazy, but it seems to me I saw the name in a newspaper somewhere. Don’t recall where it was. What was the Kennedy outfit? A bunch of pickpockets?”

Dacey snorted indignantly.

“Where have you been the last fifteen years?” he demanded. “Pickpockets! They never went up against anything softer than a bank or an express-train! Why, doc, you surely don’t mean to tell me that you never heard of Bad Jake Kennedy’s gang?”

Gilmore flicked the ash from his cigar and beckoned to the hovering waiter.

“Why, certainly!” he said. “‘Bad Jake,’ sounds familiar. I’d forgotten that he had a last name.”

There, at least, he spoke the truth. Time was when Bad Jake’s name had been exceedingly familiar, particularly in the inter-mountain States. Kennedy and his cutthroats had been the scourge of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, where for a brief but bloody period they made life interesting for railroads, express companies, overland passengers, and small bankers. Retribution had finally come to them on the flying hoofs of a posse.

In the rapid scene-shifting of a new Western State, Bad Jake and his men, though less than fifteen years in their dishonored graves, were now no more than an uneasy tradition of the border—a story with which to frighten tourists. Gilmore had often read of their evil record, and he listened once more to the brief but stirring narrative of the wiping out of “the Bad Jake bunch.”

“For about two years,” said Dacey, “they simply ripped the southern end of the State to pieces. They stuck up trains just for the fun of the thing, and kept their hand in by cleaning out little banks. Then they got too gay, and went after a bigger bank in broad daylight, and the whole county swarmed after ’em. They were surrounded over by Clayton, but they put up an awful fight. They didn’t want to be taken alive, and they killed six of the posse and wounded a lot more. The boys played even by getting Mexican Frank, Curly Dupree, Joe White, the Whistling Kid, and a couple more who were lucky enough to be killed outright. Bad Jake, Charley Elms, Hairtrigger Jordan, and this fellow Buckshot John were taken alive, all more or less wounded. That accounted for the whole works.”

“A nice clean-up,” commented Gilmore. “It doesn’t happen very often that they get ’em all at the same time. What did they do to Kennedy?”

“The usual,” said Dacey. “The boys got impatient. The prisoners were brought into Clayton about dark, and that evening the citizens busted into the calaboose, got Bad Jake, Jordan, and Elms, and hung ’em to the same tree. Jake died game, and so did Jordan, but Charley Elms went all to pieces and cried like a baby. Buckshot John told me once that he always knew Elms had a yellow streak. He was only a kid, anyway, but he had an awful record—four notches on his gun, not counting Mexicans.”

There was a short silence.

“And where,” inquired the doctor, idly watching the smoke of his cigar, “was your friend Buckshot John when all this took place?”

Dacey chuckled.

“That’s a good story in itself,” he said. “Moran was all shot to pieces when they brought him into town, and old Doc Pattee, who had been out with the posse, took him to his own house and went to work to fix him up. When the doc got wind of the evening’s entertainment, he got out his old muzzle-loading scatter-gun, oiled her up, and filled her clean to the ears with slugs. Then he sat down on the front steps of his house and waited for the committee with the gun in his lap. When the boys came along, looking for John, he announced himself. Said he hadn’t had a patient in six months, and if they took this one away from him, he’d just naturally be forced to let drive where the crowd was biggest, and get some new ones, if he had to make ’em himself. They knew the doc would do it, too, so they let him alone. Anyway, nobody thought Moran would live through the night. No sense in hanging a dying man.

“The express companies and the bankers put up a terrible squeal about that lynching. You see, Bad Jake had a world of money and stuff hid away in the hills somewhere. When he cleaned a train, he cleaned it right down to the rings off the passengers’ fingers. They thought Jake should have been given time to make a confession and tell where the stuff was cached. But the boys were kind of peevish—six of their friends had been bumped off by the gang—and they stepped in and made a tidy job of it. To this day, they’ve never been able to get back a splinter of the loot. It’s down there in the hills yet, I suppose.”

The doctor lifted his tiny brandy-glass and twirled it thoughtfully between finger and thumb.

“Of course,” he said, “this man Moran doesn’t know where it is, or they would have brought pressure to bear on him long ago.”

“They brought pressure, all right,” admitted Dacey, “but it didn’t do any good. He’s told the same story all the way through. He claimed that Bad Jake never let them have anything but the small money, and kept all the big express shipments and the bank stuff hid in a private cache, under agreement to split it when they got ready to leave the country. That was his way of holding ’em together, it seems. Buckshot John stood his trial, lying on a cot in the court-room, and because they thought he’d die anyway and they couldn’t fasten any of the real killings onto him, he got off light—with thirty years. For a long time the Bad Jake treasure was our star mystery story, and I’ve been after Buckshot about it three separate times. He always hands out the same story. If I’m any judge, he’s telling the truth when he says he doesn’t know where Bad Jake hid the stuff.

“But the old rascal fooled ’em; he got well after all. Must have had the constitution of a grizzly bear. I didn’t see him the last time I was down at Canyon City, because he was out with a road gang. He’s been a ‘trusty’ for years, and the warden tells me the old coot has got religion now. What do you know about that for a combination?”

“Strange,” remarked Gilmore, “but the more abandoned the life a man has led, the stronger he takes to religion when it does hit him. Now, I knew a case once in Pittsburgh—”

Half an hour later, the doctor was pulling on his gloves in the lobby.

“The cleaning up of that Kennedy gang must have been a wonderful newspaper story,” said he thoughtfully. “Every element that goes with the making of a romance—treasure, adventure, sudden death—everything! Jimmy, that ought to be worth looking up in the files.”

“It certainly was a great chance,” assented the reporter. “We had a man on the spot with the posse, and the presses were held for him that night. He turned it loose all over two pages. Come over to the office some time when you haven’t anything to do, and I’ll have the old files dug up for you.”

“I’d like it immensely!” said Gilmore. “Look here, why not to-night? I haven’t a thing to do, and I’m interested in the psychology of the Western bad man. Fascinating study, I’ve always found it.”

Dacey’s evening assignment kept him busy until after midnight, but when he looked through the door into the little private room where he had left the doctor, surrounded by dusty, volumes of the middle eighties, he was amazed to find the Great Gilmore still there, hat and coat off, and buried to the elbows in the files. A great stack of index cards lay in front of him, by the aid of which he had been able to trace the Kennedy gang from its first appearance in print to the sensational finish.

As Dacey looked in at the door, Gilmore was making entries in a small leather notebook. The reporter opened his mouth to speak, changed his mind, and withdrew silently. By a visit to the filing-cabinet, he ascertained that every card on John Moran had been taken out of its place.

When at length the doctor stood up and struck his dusty palms together, he had read every word that had been printed about Buckshot John and his pocket note-book bore a complete record of the history of the Bad Jake gang. He was fortified with names, dates, incidents, and a neatly tabulated list of stolen property, the sum total of which ran well into six figures.

Gilmore was slightly surprised to find Dacey waiting for him in the city room.

“Well, doc,” said Jimmy innocently, “you’ve made a night of it, haven’t you?”

“I have been admirably entertained,” said Gilmore simply. “Admirably! Wonderfully well written stories. Nothing like the old-time reporters, these days! You know; a man in my line of—research should be interested in life in all its phases. Human nature, Jimmy! Ah, there isn’t a study in the world like it!”

“And that’s right, too,” said the reporter.

Dacey stood on the corner, waiting for his car, and watched the Great Gilmore swing down the street, twirling his cane.

“Something doing here!” said the reporter to himself. “Something coming off, as sure as a gun! Now what is it? Guess I’ll study a little human nature myself!”

Three

Dusk was closing in on the camp at Sand Creek, which marked the temporary residence of the convict laborers engaged in blasting a State road out of the Rocky Mountains. Prisoners with good records were eligible for this interesting pastime. It was a reward of merit, and a part of the new warden’s policy in the handling of his men. “Trusties” were permitted to do the work, under a strong guard.

The evening meal was over, and most of the men were loafing about in front of the bunk-house, enjoying their pipes under the eyes of the guards, while the captain in charge checked up his account-books in his small quarters, fifty yards away.

A cloud of dust rose in the growing darkness, and the whining of wheels heralded the approach of a vehicle of some sort. Presently a tall figure stepped into the circle of light by the cook-house, and was promptly challenged by a guard. A moment later there was a knock at the captain’s door.

“How do you do?” said the visitor, affably. “Did the warden telephone you that I would call to see No. 1113?”

“Oh, you’re the fellow, are you?” asked the captain. “Another reporter?”

The stranger glanced down at the sheaf of paper which protruded from his breast pocket.

“Well,” said he, “not a reporter, exactly. I’m a sort of a special writer.”

“I suppose you want to see Moran alone,” the captain went on. “Let’s see—your name is—?”

“Harrison,” prompted the visitor. “A. L. Harrison, of Chicago. Yes, thank you, I would like to see him alone if it could be arranged.”

He glanced meaningly about the small room as he spoke

“You can have him in here if you like,” said the officer. “These trusties have privileges, more or less. They’re picked men. I’ve got to walk over to the railroad-station and get some mail.”

“Take my rig,” said the “special writer” quickly. “The boy will drive you over.”

“Thanks!” said the captain heartily. “Sorry I can’t offer you anything, but it’s against the rules.”

The man of letters silently produced a heavy silver flask.

“I am always prepared,” he said gravely. “Tell me what you think of that stuff.”

The captain smacked his lips.

“Pretty fine!” he said. “Well, Mr. Harrison, make yourself at home. You won’t be disturbed. I’ll send Moran to you. He’s over in the bunk-house reading the Bible. That’s about all he does these days—that and praying. Don’t get him started on religion, or he’ll run all night. Funny old duck, but the best prisoner in the bunch. I wish some more of these ‘cons’ would get religion, if it would make ’em as easy to handle as John! “

The captain disappeared. The Great Gilmore glanced about the small, bare room, his quick eye taking in every detail. He moved one chair slightly, pulled up a second until it faced the first from the other side of the table, and taking the lantern from the peg placed it where the light would fall strongest upon the second chair and its occupant.

No sooner had he set his rude stage than a heavy step sounded on the threshold, the door swung silently open, and Convict John Moran, No. 1113, entered and closed the door behind him. Moran was short and thick-set, and the close-cropped hair over his temples was nearly white. His face, heavy, dull, and almost stupid, was deeply lined with wrinkles, and his pale gray eyes were lusterless and weary. In his left hand he carried a small black book, into which he had thrust one stubby finger as a marker.

He shook hands without a word and sat down at the table, regarding Gilmore with the steady, unblinking gaze of a tired old animal.

“I told the captain my name was Harrison,” began the doctor. “This was best for many reasons. He thinks I am a newspaper man, but my name is—”

“I know you all right enough,” rumbled Moran in a deep bass voice. “I saw your picture in a paper once. I thought—somehow—you’d be an older man.” There was a note of disappointment in his tone.

“That,” said Gilmore gently, “is a fault which time will remedy.”

Moran did not answer the smile which went with that remark. He placed the book upon the table, locked his powerful hands together, and, blinking slightly in the beams of the lantern, began to speak in the level, monotonous tone of the man who knows exactly what he must say, and with the air of one anxious to make haste with an unpleasant task.

“I didn’t believe in this kind of thing once,” he said. “I’ve lived hard and careless, and before I came here I done many a wrong. Nobody will ever hear me say that it wasn’t right and just to put me here. It was coming to me. I deserved more’n I got. Since I’ve been locked up, I’ve had time to do a lot of thinking. I’ve had time to be sorry. I want to do what’s right, mister. I want to go clean when my time comes, and not be afraid. There’s something I want to know first.”

He paused for a moment, and then, lowering his voice until it was no more than a whisper, put his question.

“Do you think, if a man has been a bad man, and wants to be square, and he’s in dead earnest, he can—get a message from—the other side?”

The Great Gilmore said that sincerity was a prime requisite, and that previous conditions mattered little if the heart was right.

“And if I should get a message,” persisted the convict, “how would it come? How would it get to me? What shape?”

The doctor was evidently much surprised.

“Have you never consulted a medium before?” he asked.

“Mister,” said the convict earnestly, “I told you that I didn’t use to believe in these things. If I ever saw one before, I didn’t know it.”

“Then I see I must explain everything from the beginning. Messages from the spirit land may come in many forms, according to the control. The ones which come through me are written while I am in a trance state.”

“Written?” questioned the man. “How written? Regular stuff that a man could read?”

“Yes,” said the doctor; “just ordinary writing. You understand, when I pass into a trance state, I am controlled by a spirit. That spirit has the power to communicate with other spirits and to direct the movement of my hand—to use it to write with while I am unconscious. When I come out of the trance state, I am, of course, unable to remember what has been written. My brain has been asleep. If the influences are right, the messages come of themselves. Now I have told you all I know about it. Where these messages come from, who sends them, why they are sent—I cannot say. Dishonest mediums sometimes claim to know more.”

The convict sat in deep thought, rubbing his big hands nervously together.

“So that’s the way!” he said at last. “All right, mister; I’m satisfied. Now I suppose first you’ll have to know who I want to talk to, and what about.” He spoke hesitatingly.

The Great Gilmore lifted a graceful hand in protest.

“I beg of you,” he said earnestly, “to keep your secrets. Tell me absolutely nothing about yourself—nothing at all.”

Moran gulped once and passed one hand over his face.

“That’s—that’s straight?” he asked at length. “You mean you don’t want—I don’t have to give no information nor nothing? Why, I thought I’d have to sort of—”

The man paused, struggling with a new thought. Relief, incredulity, and blank amazement were in his eyes.

“The less I know,” said Gilmore, “the more perfect the spirit control should be. I came here simply in answer to your letter. You seemed to be in trouble. If I remember, it was something about property. Property might be anything, so my mind is open on that point. I know nothing of your past; I shall not ask you a single question about yourself. Once or twice men have made the mistake of talking too freely, and I have never been able, under such conditions, to deliver a message for them. It was their fault, not mine. If I knew what is in your mind, that knowledge might interfere with the true transmission of the message—subconscious mental action, we call it. My mind must be free and open. I must ask you, as a favor to me, not to talk about your case. Do you understand?”

Moran nodded his head, but his eyes showed that he was still bewildered. Slowly his muscles relaxed, as if tension had been removed. Evidently the man dreaded to talk, and was thankful to escape the ordeal of confession.

Gilmore spoke briskly.

“Now we are ready,” he said. “I will place these sheets of paper upon the table, with this pencil. If I shall be successful in passing under control, you will know it at once by the movement of my hand. You must then place the pencil in my fingers, and if there is a message from the spirit land, it will be written on this paper.”

“And do I read it?” asked Moran in a low voice.

“You read it and destroy it. I must warn you not to interfere in any way with the transmission of the message. I mean by that that you must not try to wake me. The shock to the nervous system might produce collapse. There have been cases where it has produced death. Simply watch your message. Now, if you will fix your mind upon the subject about which you wish to communicate, we will make the attempt. I hope we shall be successful, but one never knows in advance.”

Four

Moran passed his hand over his face once more, blinked a .few times, laid his powerful hands upon the table in front of him, and his eyes became vacant. He was plainly “fixing his mind” to the best of his ability and the operation seemed to require considerable muscular rigidity. There was a short period of complete silence, broken at last by a hoarse, barking laugh from the distant bunk-house. The State’s road-builders were making merry. Moran winced and shook his head in evident annoyance.

“It is beginning,” whispered Gilmore drowsily. “The influences must be—exactly right. Control is very strong—very strong—yes, I feel it—I feel—”

His body began to twitch gently, his head fell back, and a sigh came from his lips. His eyes closed until they showed nothing but threads of white. From time to time he groaned and struggled slightly, and the convict, between fright and fascination, sat rigid in his chair, staring straight in front of him, hardly daring to breathe.

Into the deep quiet of the room there came a strange humming sound, a faint, far-away singing in the air, like the first whining of the steel rails at the approach of an express-train. In the beginning, Moran was not sure that he heard anything. The sound increased slightly, and the convict’s head jerked back to an attitude of attention. It couldn’t be a bottle-fly; yet it was something, and it was in the room! What was it?

Moran stared at the relaxed form across the table. He could not see that it breathed. The face was calm; the lips were set in a peaceful line, and closed.

Even as he stared at those quiet lips, the sound swelled into a sobbing wail until the very air throbbed with it. John Moran leaped from his chair, and, as he whirled to face the shadows behind him, out of the dark corner there came a voice—a woman’s voice, no more than a breath from a great distance, but the pain in every word cut like a knife.

“Oh, Billy! Billy! Why didn’t you give them the keys?”

It turned John Moran into a statue of terror, done in gray stone—terror in every frozen line of his crouching body, terror in his crooking fingers, dumb terror in his pale gray eyes. The written message was to be expected, bad as it might be; but this woman’s voice!

It took him back sixteen years to a boy bank-cashier lying murdered in the street, and the fair-haired girl wife who ran to him, screaming. Billy Hayden had shown fight, and John Moran and the Whistling Kid had fired at the same instant. The Kid had always taken the credit, but Moran had never been sure. And now he knew!

Were all the ghosts coming home? It seemed so, for there was a low, rustling sound in the room. Buckshot John turned in his tracks, ready for flight, but it was only the paper on the table, disturbed by groping fingers.

The convict hesitated an instant, and then, setting his teeth, forced himself to obey orders. He placed the pencil in the clawing hand and immediately it began to move in regular lines. Moran, breathing in great gasps, saw the message begin with the rude drawing of a heart with a knife thrust into it. Underneath were the initials “B.J.K.” It was Bad Jake’s receipt, the only one he ever gave, and the symbol which, out of sheer bravado, it had been his practise to leave upon splintered express-cars or rifled safes before he rode for the hills.

Moran clutched the edge of the table for support, as the fingers wrote in a large, open script:

Hello, Buckshot, old boy! Getting nervous in your old age, ain’t you? This party is all right. I’ve been trying to get word to you for years, and this is the first chance. We left you in such a hurry that night at Clayton that we didn’t have time to say good-by. The boys wouldn’t wait.

Moran’s pale gray eyes were wide with horror, but to save his life he could not have taken them from the pencil as it hitched across the sheet.

We heard them say you were dying anyway, but I reckon old Doc Pattee must have pulled you through. It would have saved you a lot of trouble, John, if he hadn’t been so game with that old shotgun of his. Well, old boy, it wasn’t such a bad way to go, after all, but that yellow cur of an Elms lost his nerve, just as you always said he would when his time came.

The pencil reached the bottom of the sheet. The hand groped for an instant; then a twitch of the fingers sent the written sheet flying, and the pencil began on a fresh page. There was not a sound in the room but Moran’s labored breathing as he crouched over the table.

I suppose they told you I died game. Jordan did, too. The last thing he said before they strung him up was “Good-by, Jake! See you later!” He did, too. Then they let me go last, after they got through with Charley. That Trinidad sheriff was all right. He handed me his flask. One big drink, and then it was all over. After the first choking, it was just like going to sleep.

Moran moistened his dry lips, and one hand stole up to his throat. He turned his head slightly, and looked intently into Gilmore’s calm face. The sightless eyes were turned toward the ceiling; the features were as expressionless as a wax mask. There was no sign of breathing, or of life itself, save in the steady twitching of the hand and forearm. The convict’s eyes returned to the paper again.

You remember the night we held up the D. and R. G. West-bound and killed that fireman? We ought to let him live. He was a game man, or he wouldn’t have went after Jordan with a shovel.

Big drops of sweat stood out on Moran’s forehead. Slowly he stretched out his right hand, and his fingers closed over the pocket Bible with a crushing grip.

And Billy Hayden, the bank-cashier. He left a young wife and a kid. You remember how she came running out into the street when the shooting commenced?

Once more from the corner of the room came the woman’s voice, calling for “Billy,” and Moran threw his arms across his face, trembling like a leaf.

“Take ’em away!” he sobbed. “Take ’em away!”

The hand continued to write steadily.

John, if I could live my life over again, I never would have left my wife and the kids in Texas. I’d act mighty different. So would you, I reckon. Listen, John. Listen!

From the dark corners of the room came half-intelligible whispers, audible mutterings. Something seemed to be whimpering under the table. To one man, at least, the bare little room was uncomfortably full of the ghosts of the dead. A third voice spoke faintly from the air over Moran’s head—a man’s voice, high-pitched and defiant, but barely audible.

“Shoot, you dirty thief! You’ll have to kill me before you get at this safe!”

Buckshot John cried out in the midst of his torture.

“I never shot you, Cullen!” he gasped. “Honest! It was Charley Elms did that!”

Thus he was made to remember Pat Cullen, an express messenger who met his death in an almost forgotten hold-up, nearly seventeen years before. Quivering on the verge of total collapse, Buckshot John dropped to his knees and began to pray aloud. Tears were streaming down his gray cheeks.

“Tell me what I must do!” he begged. “I’ll do anything, anything! Only take ’em away!”

Gradually the whisperings and the mutterings ceased. The gasping of the tortured man kneeling by the table was the only break in the silence. Something struck the pine board three sharp raps. Buckshot John stiffened to meet this new manifestation, but it was only the hand, writing again.

What’s the use of your praying, unless you tell the truth about that stuff?

Every nerve in Moran’s body tightened, as a violin-string answers the twisting-peg. Here was his message at last.

You’ve been lying for fifteen years.

As the accusation was spread on the paper. Buckshot John bowed his head and wrung his hands.

You’ll never be able to die clean unless that money and stuff goes back to the owners. Give it back to the people we stole it from. Mind, no lawyers and no sheriffs! Send a man you know you can trust. You talk to this medium about it. I don’t suppose he’d want to touch dirty money, or mix up with a murderer, but this is a job that needs an honest man. If you get that stuff back to the people we robbed, your mind will be easy, and you won’t lay awake so much nights.

Buckshot John drew a deep breath and expelled it with a sigh that was almost a groan of relief. Little by little the lines of suffering faded out of his face, and into that heavy mask there crept a strange expression. By the look in his tired eyes, he might have been another man. The pencil wrote on.

You’ll do the square thing, John. But don’t make any mistakes. It won’t do any good to have it stole again by some lawyer. SEND THE RIGHT MAN.

The last sentence was laboriously printed in capitals. There was nothing more but another drawing of the heart and the knife, and the initials underneath it. Plainly the communication was at an end. The doctor stirred slightly, and began to groan as if in pain. Once he muttered to himself:

“Yes! Yes! I’ve delivered the message. Let me go!”

Buckshot John seized the written sheets and crushed them in his hand, retreating to a far corner of the room. The figure in the chair continued to writhe and groan and cry out at intervals; but at last it yawned, stretched, blinked sleepily for several seconds, and then jerked itself into an upright position.

Hello!” said Gilmore, thickly, in the tone of one aroused from deep sleep. “Is it over? Did you get a message?”

Five

Buckshot John dragged himself across the floor to the table. His face was white and drawn, and his fingers still twitched spasmodically. He breathed quickly in short, fierce gasps, as if he had been running a race, and his heart was bumping against his ribs.

“I got it!” he whispered hoarsely. “I got it straight from headquarters! Handwriting and voices and people right here in the room! Right here, I tell you! I heard ’em!” He shuddered and passed his sleeve across his eyes.

“Voices?” queried Gilmore, with some surprise. “Why, they never come unless the communication is important.”

“It was important!” whispered Moran. “I’ve got to talk to you—got to tell you something. You’d help a man to square himself and go clean when his time comes, wouldn’t you?”

There was a note of piteous entreaty in his voice. The Great Gilmore returned that lead with admirable tact and compassion. He spoke of the broad creed of the brotherhood of man—it was a portion of one of his old lectures, and very beautifully worded. Buckshot John listened to those soul-compelling sentiments with glistening eyes.

“I know you’re on the level!” he said huskily. “They didn’t need to tell me! I’ve seen things to-night, aye, and I’ve heard ’em too! No faker could have brought me word like that! It ain’t possible! This was real! And now I’m going to tell you something no living soul knows but me!”

He stepped quickly to the door, threw it open, and looked out into the night. Then, closing the door silently, he tiptoed back to the table. Leaning down, he whispered the words into Gilmore’s ear.

“I’m going to tell you where to find the money and stuff that me and Bad Jake Kennedy hid up in the Cedars country fifteen years ago—pretty near two hundred thousand in paper, and a whole handful of diamonds that Jake and me picked out of rings and things. I never knew what to do with it till to-night, and now I’ve got it straight! I’m going to give it back to the owners!”

It was on the tip of the doctor’s tongue to ask to be excused, but he caught the expression on Buckshot John’s face and checked the impulse. The convict wanted to talk; his heart was open at last, and the truth would come now. Time enough to put in the fancy touches when the well of information had gushed itself dry.

In a whispering stream the confession poured out, one crime tripping upon the heels of the next. Buckshot John was making a clean breast of it and sparing himself in nothing. As he talked, the knuckles of his right hand showed white as he gripped the pocket Bible.

While he told the story, the doctor jotted down notes and directions. It was not until the hiding-place had been described, and the route thereto carefully mapped out, that Moran drew a long breath, and Gilmore played his last trump. He suggested sending the proper authorities.

“No!” whispered Moran fiercely. “No! I was warned! Why couldn’t you do it? It’s asking a lot, but—”

“But you know nothing of me,” urged Gilmore. “I might—”

“There’s been them here to-night that do know you!” said the convict earnestly. “You’re good enough for me. Bad Jake told me I had to send the right man, and that’s you!”

The doctor closed his eyes for several seconds, and Buckshot John bowed his head reverently. When he looked up again, the Great Gilmore’s face was radiant with an expression of high resolve.

“It is a heavy task, my friend,” he said gently. “Yet I am not sure that I do not owe it to humanity—owe it to you. All men are brothers.”

“And you’ll do it?” begged the convict.

The Great Gilmore rose to his feet and extended both hands. No audience of one ever saw a finer bit of acting.

“If I die trying!” he said simply.

Buckshot John crushed the long, slender fingers, but he could not drive the smile from Gilmore’s lips.

“You don’t know what you’ve done for me!” he said brokenly. “This thing has been driving me almost crazy ever since I’ve been trying to be—different. Once I thought thirty years would pay for everything. I feel better already. I—I got a kind of a lightness in here.”

He touched his breast. The rattle of wheels sounded from the road.

“And you’ll come back just as soon as you get the stuff into safe hands?” asked the convict. “You’ll help me figure out some way to divide it square among the owners?”

“I will,” said Gilmore solemnly, and it was as if he had taken an oath. “Just as soon as I get it in safe hands.”

Convict John Moran, No. 1113, stood in front of the bunk-house and listened to a wagon creaking away into the darkness. His pale gray eyes were fixed on the stars, and his heavy shoulders were thrown back as if freed from a burden.

“Go to sleep, John,” said the captain kindly.

“Aye!” said Buckshot John. “I will sleep to-night!”

He lifted the latch and entered the dimly lighted room where his fellow prisoners were preparing for bed. He was smiling when he stepped into the rays from the lanterns.

“What’s the matter, John?” asked one of the older men. “You been out there a prayin’ again?”

“No, Tom,” said Moran, and at the sound of his voice every man in the room peered at him through the shadows. “No—but I’ve found what I’ve been praying for.”

There was a short silence, broken by a sneer from a youngster who was serving his first penitentiary sentence.

“And what have you found, old-timer? That money that Bad Jake and you got away with?”

“I’ve found peace,” said Buckshot John softly. “That’s it—peace!”

Six

Dr. Buchanan Gilmore was not the only one who found human nature an interesting study. James Edward Dacey may not have been quite so ardent a student of his fellow man, but in his quiet way the reporter allowed few things to escape him. He flavored all his research with the salt of suspicion. Denver newspaper men used to say that Jimmy Dacey was the best man in the business when it came to putting one and two and three together and making twelve. That was Jimmy’s specialty.

He was displeased with himself when he recalled how deftly the doctor had extracted information from him without arousing suspicion. But for the incident of searching the files, Dacey would never have given the matter a second thought.

It was while turning the problem over and over in his mind on the day following the dinner at the Brown Palace that Dacey made it convenient to drop in at the headquarters of Purified Thought. That was on a Thursday afternoon. The Great Gilmore was not there, nor had he been there that day. The Hindu servant said he did not expect the doctor until Friday.

“He will be very sorry, sar,” said the faithful retainer. “Shall I leave the card, sar? Very well, sar.”

“So soon?” thought Dacey to himself, as he stepped into the elevator and was dropped toward the street. “I think I’ll just run over to his hotel.”

“Doc Gilmore?” said the desk clerk. “He got out about eight this morning. Had a valise with him. I think he caught the D. and R. G. express.”

Dacey walked down the street with his chin on his chest and his cigar sagging at a dispirited angle.

“It’s me to keep cases on this bird for a few days!” he said to himself. “It may be nothing but a coincidence, but I’ll be John-at-the-rat-hole, just the same!”

Dacey watched the rat-hole so closely that he knew when Gilmore returned, also the number of the train which brought him back to Denver. He made it his business to call at the Purified Thought headquarters daily, and on Monday he was rewarded with more food for reflection. The Great Gilmore was going away on a vacation.

“My work has been wearing of late,” said he, with a weary smile. “I find myself in need of a complete rest. I shall close my office for two weeks and take a flying trip, possibly to California. I wish you could go along!”

“Why, maybe I can!” said Jimmy hopefully. “I’ve always wanted to make a trip to the coast. Suppose I arrange it?”

“But I am leaving the first thing in the morning,” said the doctor rather hurriedly. “I am really not sure where I am going. I might change my mind.”

“You’re starting away to-morrow, and you don’t know whether it’s East or West?” demanded Jimmy.

“My dear fellow,” said Gilmore, with his most charming smile, “half the pleasure of a holiday lies in wandering about without any definite end in view. When the time comes, I shall probably flip a coin to decide whether it shall be San Francisco—or Chicago, for instance. It will be entirely as the fancy takes me.”

“Well, in that case,” said Dacey firmly, “I’ll have to pass. I hope you have a pleasant trip. Shall I come down to see you off?”

“That’s very good of you,” said the doctor gratefully, “but how can you when I don’t know myself what train I shall take?”

Dacey got up early on Tuesday morning, in order to be on hand when the D. and R. G. express pulled out of the Union Station. He watched the gates carefully, but the Great Gilmore did not put in an appearance. The hotel clerk informed him, later in the day, that the bird had flown on Monday night, carrying two large suit-cases with him.

Now James Edward Dacey, while an accurate mental calculator, was not particularly swift in the process. He spent several days in deep thought. Old Joe Lord, the greatest city editor that Denver ever saw, remarked that Jimmy was suffering from the pip or the sleeping sickness, and doctored him with four assignments a day in consequence.

A whole week rolled by. On the following Monday night, Dacey leaned over Lord’s desk, while that able citizen pawed through a pile of copy paper and made remarks about his hired hands.

“Joe,” said Dacey slowly, “I think I’d like to take a spin down to Canyon City.”

“So would I!” barked the city editor. “But I’ve got to stay here and work like a dog—and so have you! Some more of that rotten Sunday feature stuff, is it?” Joe’s voice rose in an aggrieved howl. He always howled when he talked about Sunday feature stories. They were his pet abomination. “I’ve had my department shot all to pieces, just because some of you fellows think you’ve got Rudyard Kipling skinned when it comes to throwing language! What I want in this city room is a reporter or two!” And he hammered upon the desk to show how much he meant it.

“This won’t be any Sunday story, if it pans out, Joe,” said Dacey. “If it comes through, it’ll be the biggest news thing that’s busted around here in a year.”

“Well, tell it to me! Whisper it!” howled the city editor. “I’m supposed to be a judge of news stories!”

“I haven’t got far enough into this one yet,” said the reporter, “but I’ve got a strong suspicion, and enough facts to start on. It’s a thing that must be worked absolutely under cover. The minute the warden or any of the folks down there got wind of it, they’d blow it up in a flash, and away we’d go. No, Joe; I’ve got it bottled up so far, and it’s going to stay that way. I tell you, if this story breaks, it will rip this State wide open, and we’ll have it all to ourselves. You remember, I told you the same thing about the McMillan case.”

Dacey paused. The city editor grunted, which with him was a sure sign of mental effort. Then he reached into a pigeonhole and drew forth a printed form.

“How much do you want?” he asked in a resigned tone. Joe Lord had known Dacey for twelve years, and respected him for an absolutely trustworthy man with excellent judgment of news values. “How much, Jimmy?”

“Fifty,” said Dacey promptly.

“Fifty red devils!” howled the city editor. “You’ll take twenty-five!” And he made it so upon the order-blank.

“I’ll be back Wednesday or Thursday at the outside,” said Dacey, as he pocketed the order upon the cashier.

“You better had!” snapped the city editor.

Seven

On Tuesday afternoon, the warden of the State penitentiary at Canyon City was delighted to greet his old friend, James Edward Dacey, journalist. For some time the conversation dealt with the health of the latest occupant of the condemned cells, and kindred topics.

“Boss,” asked Dacey casually, “have you let any one see Buckshot John lately? Any visitors?”

“Why, yes,” said the warden. “Week before last, I think. Tall, nice-looking chap. He’s a magazine writer, getting up a series of character studies of convicts. I sent him over to see Buckshot John myself.”

“You?” interrupted Dacey. “Didn’t he ask to see him?”

“He hadn’t heard of him,” said the warden. “You see, we had been talking about cases where the worst criminals made the best prisoners, and I mentioned John Moran as a remarkable example. You know, we can trust that old fellow absolutely. This Mr. Harrison was very much interested in the story, and I telephoned over to Connolly to let him see John alone and have a talk with him. Very intelligent fellow, with excellent ideas upon discipline in penal institutions. He gave me some hints which I shall certainly use. I imagine he must be quite a writer.”

“I’ll bet he is!” said Dacey. “It’s funny in a way, because I’m after old John myself this trip. This makes my fourth crack at him. I suppose I can see him?”

“My boy,” said the warden heartily, “there isn’t a door in this place that will ever be locked to you!” He prodded Dacey playfully in the ribs. “Mind you don’t steal Harrison’s thunder!”

“Not his thunder,” said Dacey, shading the last word almost imperceptibly. “You’ll notify Connolly over at Sand Creek?”

“I’ll do better than that,” said the warden. “I’ll have my son drive you over in the car.”

When the road-makers returned to camp that afternoon, Dacey was sitting on a bench in front of the bunk-house. Buckshot John recognized him at once; but after the first glance, the convict turned his eyes away.

“Another visitor for you, John,” said the guard. “You’re popular these days!”

Moran approached slowly, and without any perceptible pleasure in the meeting. He did not smile as he took the reporter’s hand.

“Well, here we are again, John!” said Jimmy heartily.

“Yes,” said the convict stolidly. “What is it this time? Ain’t you pestered me enough?”

“Not quite,” said Dacey amiably. “Now, see here, John, you know me. You know I’ve always been fair with you, and have written the truth about what you said. Isn’t that a fact?”

Buckshot John had seated himself on the bench and was looking out across the hills. He grunted by way of reply.

“All right!” said Dacey briskly. “I won’t beat about the bush with you. I’ll lay all the cards on the table.” He lowered his voice confidentially, eying the convict narrowly as he continued. “I know the man who was here a week ago Thursday. I know he lied to the warden about his name and his business. Magazine writer! That fellow ain’t any more of a magazine writer than you are. That was Doc Gilmore!”

Buckshot John closed his eyes. His face bore an expression of patient resignation. Dacey’s first shot had missed the mark, and he felt it, without knowing why.

“John,” said he suddenly, “I want to know what’s coming off here. You needn’t look so sanctified or shocked. I tell you, I know that fellow, and he isn’t the sort to be wasting his time on a rusty old ‘con’ like you unless there’s something in it for him—something big. You can believe me, Buckshot, old boy, the doc is no piker. How did he get at you, anyway?”

Buckshot John opened his eyes. They were vague and untroubled. He seemed hardly interested in the conversation.

“I asked him to come,” he said simply. “I never saw him before, and he never saw me before. He didn’t know me from Adam when he came here.”

“What’s that?” demanded the reporter sharply.

“I say,” repeated Buckshot John patiently, “that he didn’t know anything about me, or my record, or anything else.”

Dacey began to laugh.

“Wake up, John!” he said. “Wake up! The doc didn’t know anything about you, eh? He was here on a Thursday night, wasn’t he?”

Moran held up one hand and ticked off the fingers slowly.

“Yes,” he said at last. “What of it?”

“Oh, nothing!” said Dacey with a sarcastic grin. “Only he put in about half of the Wednesday night before up in our office, reading everything that was ever printed about the Bad Jake outfit. He didn’t know you from Adam, eh? Why, John, he wrote it all down in a book! When he lit here he was loaded up with enough stuff about you to fill a freight-car! Didn’t know you? Come on, now, what are you two trying to frame up?”

Moran sat perfectly still. His eyes were half closed; not a muscle of his face twitched. One might easily have believed that he had not been listening.

“Don’t you fool yourself, John,” persisted the reporter. “You’re up against one of the smoothest confidence men in the country. I’ve known him for years, off and on, and this is the first time I’ve ever had a real line on him. He’s been everything in the way of a grafter—hypnotist, conjurer, palmist, street faker—and as a trance medium there isn’t his equal in the country. I’ve seen him, pull stuff at a séance that made my hair stand on end, and I was on to him at the time—ventriloquism, and all such stunts as that. Oh, he’s a bird, John, a bird!”

“What’s ventriloquism?” asked Buckshot John.

“Why,” said Dacey impatiently, “he can throw his voice all over the room—he can make it come from anywhere. He’s a marvel at that sort of thing. Used to be on the stage. Now, see here, John. Three days after he got back from seeing you, he closed up his place and disappeared. Putting all these things together, it looks bad, mighty bad. If you’ve told the doc anything—if you knew anything to tell him—”

Dacey paused. Buckshot John’s face told him nothing. The convict was staring straight in front of him, expressionless as if he had been carved out of wood.

“If you think for a minute that you can trust a man of that kind, John,” urged the reporter kindly, “you’re making a mistake. If there was anything to be split up, and the doc had the ax, your end wouldn’t be big enough to buy swimming-trunks for a water-bug. You’re in bad, I tell you—awful bad. This fellow will shear you like a sheep. He makes his living trimming smarter people than you ever saw!”

Buckshot John rose and stretched himself wearily. Dacey, watching him like a hawk, was beginning to waver. The convict had not given him so much as the crook of a forefinger or the twitch of a muscle.

Now Moran began to speak, slowly and earnestly, weighing every word.

“It was writing that that man came to see me about. That’s the truth, and you can believe it or not. And I’ll tell you another thing that’s true—he never asked me to tell him anything!”

“I’ve come too soon!” thought Dacey. “Gilmore is taking his time!”

He studied the convict a long time before he spoke. Buckshot John met the reporter’s eyes squarely and without blinking. It was impossible not to believe that he was telling the truth.

“That’s true, is it John?” Dacey asked at length.

The convict put his hand into his pocket and drew out a worn, black book.

“As true as this book!” he said solemnly.

Buckshot John took a few steps toward the bunk-house. Then he came back and held out his hand.

“Mister,” said he with simple earnestness, “I’m trying hard to be square; and there ain’t no more I can tell you.”

Dacey held the convict’s big paw for several seconds.

“All right, John!” said he. “If you won’t, you won’t, and that’s all there is to it. But if you think I’m going to overlook the other end of this sketch, you’re mistaken, that’s all. The Great Gilmore for mine!”

As the warden’s automobile whirled around a bend in the road. Buckshot John raised both his hands as high as his shoulders, and the great fists were clenched until they looked like knotted hammers. For a few seconds he stood unmasked, a statue of impotent fury and despair. Then the hands dropped at his sides, and he sank down on the bench with his head on his breast.

“The thieving skunk!” he muttered. “And I put it right in his hands! Right in his hands!”

Jimmy Dacey walked into Joe Lord’s small sanctum at four o’clock the next afternoon. The city editor greeted him with a yelp of applause.

“Good boy!” he said. “I guess you landed it all right!”

“Landed—nothing! ” growled Jimmy.

Joe Lord looked up with a puzzled expression on his round face.

“You started something, anyhow,” he said, fumbling about his desk. Picking up a telegraph-blank, he read aloud: “‘The last man who talked with Convict Moran was J. E. Dacey, a Denver reporter.’”

The city editor looked up expectantly.

“The last man!” ejaculated Jimmy. “The poor old coot ain’t dead, is he?”

“You bet the poor old coot ain’t dead!” chuckled the city editor. “He’s come to life! Vamosed, skipped by the light of the moon, escaped! You must have put a bee on him somewhere, Jimmy!”

Jimmy Dacey’s knees gave way under him, and he dropped into a chair with a groan.

“Suffering mackerel!” he groaned. “And the story was at that end, after all!”

Eight

A lone horseman appeared upon the horizon, and looked down over the rolling shoulder of the hills at the shiftless little huddle of one-story frame buildings known to the railroad maps as Silver Tip.

It was not much of a name, and it was not much of a town, but to the man on the sky-line Silver Tip seemed an enchanted oasis and the home of all delights. The lone horseman was hungry and very, very tired. In addition to these discomforts, every muscle in his body ached in revolt at the saddle, and he had not slept well for five nights. He rode slowly, and wasted some very brilliant profanity upon a totally unappreciative packhorse, which ambled behind, groaning under the handiwork of an amateur packer.

Silver Tip had seen the rider before, and had been very much interested in him. He had outfitted there some two weeks before, announcing that he was about to take a trip into the hills in search of geological specimens for an Eastern university. His name he said, was Hardy—Peter B. Hardy, of Springfield, Massachusetts.

He was returning with the specimens, as the packhorse bore unwilling witness; for, in order that Silver Tip might not gossip too much, Mr. Peter B. Hardy brought a sufficient quantity of miscellaneous rocky fragments to allay suspicion. These would be left where Silver Tip might see and marvel at the foolishness of scientific men. One of the canvas bags, however—a stout brown affair which locked like a mail-bag—would not be placed upon exhibition.

The trip had been a hard one, but the task itself had been almost absurdly easy. The discovery of the Bad Jake cache, to a man who knew where to look, had been as simple a matter as matching a blue ribbon in a New York department-store. Gilmore followed instructions, found his landmarks, and rode straight to the entrance of the rocky gorge which Buckshot John had described. The convict had mapped out a route covering every foot of the way from Silver Tip to the Cedars country. Two hours after the doctor dismounted at the foot of the gorge, he was back in the saddle once more, and his horse’s nose was pointed toward home.

The return journey was the hardest part of the expedition. The traveler did not dare to sleep soundly by the wayside, and he fled out of the hills with his hand on the butt of his pistol, like a man pursued by enemies. It was not that his conscience troubled him. Far from that; but he was aware that he was now well worth killing, and the thought brought no comfort with it. He drew his first long breath when he looked down on Silver Tip and the line of the railroad.

Thus far he had made only a casual inspection of the treasure. Most of the currency was still in the heavy express packages, and Gilmore had not broken the seals. It was enough to slash the wrappings and thumb the crisp, bluish-green edges of the bank-notes. The amounts contained in the packages were written on the outer wrappings, and by a swift estimate he reckoned the currency at rather more than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, all in bills of large denominations.

The diamonds proved equally diverting. These he had found tied up in a dirty red bandanna handkerchief, a flashing handful of fiery drops which blazed in the sunlight. Bad Jake had evidently been a good judge of stones, for he had managed to make a very creditable collection—seventy-eight of them in all. The doctor counted them into the buckskin bag which he carried about his neck.

Five days of nervous haste, five nights of real fear, during which time the Great Gilmore came to know that a lively imagination could be a curse to its owner, and then—Silver Tip in the distance, and safety at last. There would be no passenger-train until the morning, but the traveler remembered, with gratitude too deep for words, that there was at least one good bed in the Occidental Hotel—and money would buy it. The thought of that bed had been much with him in the last ninety-six hours.

The Great Gilmore had no elaborate plans for the future. First of all he wanted sleep and rest from his twanging nerves, and after that, Denver, a hot bath, clean linen, and leisure to plan another artistic but necessarily disappointing interview with a foolish old man at Sand Creek.

And then? Well, the plan-makers were in the brown sack!

Nine

The sun was setting as Gilmore rode up the main street of the town—Silver Tip insisted that it was a street. He waved his hat in response to the many greetings from the sidewalks. No doubt about it, Silver Tip was glad to welcome him back. On his former visits he had entertained the inhabitants vastly with tales of his wanderings through Alaska in search of the bones of a mammoth for a German university. He had been a godsend to that sleepy little hamlet.

As he alighted stiffly in front of the Occidental Hotel, the proprietor rushed out to greet him.

“Well, Mister Hardy! Glad to see you again! Did you get some good specimens?”

“Some very good stones, thank you,” said the geologist truthfully. “Here, let me carry that sack! Got some clothes in it that I want. Now, if you will put the other things in the office, I can arrange for their shipment in the morning. Tell the livery-stable man to come after the horses. Howdy, boys? All well?”

He hobbled painfully indoors, carrying the brown sack in his arms. The best room in the house was waiting for him—a tiny, affair with one small window looking out upon an alley. The professor’s suit-cases stood at the foot of the bed, and the kerosene lamp flickered a feeble welcome.

Once in the room, Gilmore tried the key in the door, and was pleased to note an extra iron bolt which was in working order. He then examined the window. It was very small, and locked with an old-fashioned spring catch. The doctor tugged at it with all his might; it creaked a bit, but did not give a fraction of an inch.

“Not what you might call a safe-deposit vault,” said Gilmore to himself, “but she’ll have to do. Anyway, these folks might kill a tourist once in a while, but they’d never rob one. That’s a cinch!”

He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at the brown bag. Then he looked at his suit-cases. He turned down the blankets and put the bag into the bed, throwing his coat over it.

“Better pack it into the suit-cases in the morning,” he said.

Then he began to yawn and untie his boot-laces.

Out in the “office,” the citizens of Silver Tip gathered about the canvas bags and prodded them inquisitively.

“He says as how he’s got some nice stones here,” said one, cautiously “hefting” a sack. “And he told me he had a fine trip. Reckon I’ll have to ask the packhorse how he made out. They’s enough rock here to break a elephant’s back! Ain’t that him yellin’?”

It was. The proprietor scurried away, and returned almost immediately.

“He’s all wore out,” said that good man. “He wants to eat in his room and then turn in. Don’t make any noise, boys, because he’s plumb wore to a frazzle. And he gimme a dollar for the cook! Reckon he don’t know my ole woman does the cooking!”

That was where the host reckoned without his guest. Gilmore did know who did the cooking. Hence the silver dollar.

Half an hour later, the Great Gilmore, clad only in a nightshirt and a buckskin bag which hung about his neck, spun the cylinder of his forty-five, placed it under his pillow, tiptoed over to the window, tried the catch again, placed the back of a chair under the knob of the door, and, sighing heavily, blew out the light.

As he crawled between the rough sheets, the brown canvas bag rasped against his body, and he reached down and patted it as he might have patted an animal. Then he grunted luxuriously, and stretched himself until his aching joints cracked.

Through his tired brain there floated a recollection of a convict down at the Sand Creek road-camp, but there was nothing disquieting in that thought. The shearer is never afraid of the lamb, either before or after the wool-gathering. He never considers the lamb at all; it is only the price of wool which interests him. But there was a streak of sentiment in the Great Gilmore—not enough to interfere with business, but enough to make him shiver occasionally out of appreciation for the plight of the shorn ones. And these are the thoughts which made him smile into th; darkness.

“Kind of a shame to hand Buckshot all that old stuff,” he mused dreamily. “Very artistic, though—and how he did eat it up! It’s up to me to give him another whirl—another message from the spirit land. Guess I better side-track Bad Jake the next time. John would think that Jake should have known that somebody beat me to that cache. No perfectly good spirit—would send an honest man out looking for—something that wasn’t there. I’ll have to tell John that so long as he meant well, he can go as clean as a whistle. That’ll satisfy him—it isn’t money he wants—it’s a clean conscience. He wanted to make restitution—I’ll restitute him all right—and we’re square all around—he gets to sleep nights, and—I get the stuff—fair exchange!”

The train of thought stopped. At this precise point the soul boat launched itself gently into a placid sea of unconsciousness.

Hark! Was that surf on the shore? No, only the snoring of a sorely tired human animal.

Ten

Some six hours later, the soul boat grounded upon an uncharted reef. There was no sudden jar, no shock, no disturbance of any sort, but the boat was aground and the journey was over. Little by little, consciousness began to steal back to the man in the bed.

In that shadowy border-land between dreaming and waking where there are neither realities nor unrealities, there came to Gilmore an undefined sense of discomfort. Something distressed him, but so vague was the impression that he did not know whether it was mental or physical or both.

After some little time he identified it as a sensation of oppression. Gradually it took the definite form of a heavy weight which seemed to be bearing down upon him. He lay perfectly still with closed eyes. Once his left hand moved slightly, and touched something rough in the bed beside him; without knowing why, he found the contact reassuring.

The sense of security was short-lived. He began to toss about restlessly, in an attempt to throw off the thing which seemed to hang over him. It was then, with the first dawn of consciousness brought about by the movement of his body, that he realized that the weight was there. It was real!

The brain began to reason. If the weight was there, it was on the bed. There had been nothing on the bed when he went to sleep; nothing in the room. The door was locked and barricaded; the window was secure. Manifestly, it was outside of the possibilities that something should have crept into the room; and yet reasoning did not remove the strange sense of physical oppression.

He determined to make sure. Slowly he moved his leg toward the side of the bed. The covers drew tight over it, and then the movement was met and blocked by a steady pressure.

His whole body suddenly grew cold. He opened his eyes. Buckshot John was sitting on the edge of the bed!

The lamp on the table was burning dimly, turned down to the barest edge of flame, but there was light enough for Gilmore to see the close-cropped hair, the heavy features, and the peculiarly sinister expression in the pale-gray eyes.

A hoarse whisper broke the stillness.

“I didn’t wake you too sudden for fear of busting that delicate nervous system of yours,” it said. “I was afraid you might be in another one of them trance states!” The tone of the voice, more than the words, drove Gilmore’s hand toward his pillow.

“Aye!” said Buckshot John. “Look for your gun if you want to. I got it here!”

The figure on the side of the bed made a sudden gesture, and there was a flash of dull metal in the half light.

The Great Gilmore was no coward, but the cold shudders were fluttering up and down his spine. It is a sensation which may come to any one at two o’clock in the morning. It cost him a great effort to find his greatest asset—his tongue.

“You!” he muttered thickly. “You! What are you doing here?”

Buckshot John waved the pistol toward the window.

“That’s how I got in,” he said gravely. “I didn’t make much noise, and I didn’t bust nothing but the catch. If there hadn’t been no other way, I’d have took down the side of the house.” He looked at Gilmore with a thoughtful air. “You act kind of surprised,” he said. “I should have thought that the spirits would have told you that I was coming, and that the whole bunch of ’em couldn’t stop me from getting you!”

Again the ugly undertone behind the words. The Great Gilmore grew numb with the sense of impending disaster. He fought for time with a question.

“How did you get here?”

“I walked,” said Buckshot John quite simply. “Mostly at night.”

The mental picture of that heavy, sinister figure striding through the darkness was not a pleasant one. Gilmore still played for time.

“You—escaped?”

“Call it anything you like,” said the convict calmly. “The main thing is that I’m here—in time. I thought it all over, and I didn’t see no other way; so I just picked up and come along.”

A sudden hope flashed into Gilmore’s brain. The brown bag was in the bed. Moran could not have seen it. But he did see the light in the Great Gilmore’s eyes, and he killed that hope while it was in the process of birth into words.

“Now then!” said Buckshot John. His voice was hard, and his eyes were harder than the voice. “Gimme that bag you’ve got around your neck! And that sleeping companion of yours! Hand ’em over!”

“What for?” said Gilmore weakly. “They are all right here. You couldn’t—”

“Pity you quit the stage,” said Buckshot John grimly. “People are missing a lot. What for? Why, you don’t think I took all this trouble to let a petty-larceny bunco-steerer fool me again, do you? Hand ’em over!”

Gilmore opened his mouth to say something, and it remained open. Buckshot John accompanied his last word with a forward thrust of the revolver, and Questo, who had hypnotized others, was himself hypnotized by a round, black eye which looked unwinkingly into his.

“Come on, you sneak-thief! You thirty-cent patent-medicine faker! Shell out!”

The Great Gilmore shelled out. There was nothing else for him to do. The brown bag came first. Buckshot John stepped back from the bed and laid the revolver upon the table. With one movement of his powerful hands he tore the lock from its fastenings, and pulled out one of the packages.

“This is it!” he said quietly.

He dropped the express package back into the bag, and thrust it behind him with a movement of his foot. Then he carefully felt the bed from end to end. The gun was in his hand again, and Gilmore said nothing, but fumbled with the strings about his neck.

Buckshot John shook the small pouch speculatively. Then he opened the bag and thrust in a finger.

“Are they all here?” he asked suddenly.

“Of course they’re all there!” snarled Gilmore. “Say, what’s the matter with you?” he continued querulously. “Didn’t you ask me as a favor to go and get these things? You can see that I’ve done everything I promised to do, and then you come here by night, break into my room, and threaten me with a gun! You and your conscience! I didn’t think I was dealing with—”

Buckshot John stopped that tirade with the muzzle of the revolver, which he wagged like a forefinger.

“Shut your gab!” he ordered sternly. “I’m going to talk a while. You remember you told me that night that you didn’t know nothing about me, or my record, neither? You remember, before you went into that trance, you said I mustn’t tell you nothing, because your mind had to be open? You remember that?”

“What has that got to do with it?” demanded Gilmore sullenly.

“Everything!” ejaculated the convict. “You lied to me, and a man that will lie will steal! You had me dead to rights when you come down there, and the only thing you didn’t know about me was the thing you framed up to find out!”

There was still a fighting chance, and there was pluck enough left in Gilmore to take it.

“There must have been some mistake—” he began bravely, but the sentence ended with a gulp. Buckshot John had produced the silencer.

“You bet there was a mistake!” There was a ring of finality about the convict’s voice. “And you made it when you went to that newspaper office in Denver on a Wednesday night!”

Every word in the last sentence was cold when Moran dropped it, and the chill struck home to the heart of the listener. So that was it! Buckshot John knew about the searching of the files!

Eleven

There was a short period of silence. The convict was thinking. After some time, Gilmore, reflecting upon old newspaper files, remembered that the public library would have been absolutely safe and just as effective. It was not a comforting conclusion.

“When I found that out,” continued Buckshot John solemnly, “it nearly knocked me off my feet. It made me sick all over. I never let on, but I was sick. I shut up. I wanted to get away somewhere and think what I must do. Then I began to understand a lot of things.” He paused reflectively, for he had been talking more to himself than to his hearer. There was a trace of bitterness in his tone as he continued. “I was pretty easy, wasn’t I? Pretty easy for your fake trance, and for the voices that you got out of the newspapers! Now, you keep your lying tongue quiet a while. Think all you want to, but don’t say nothing!”

Buckshot John arose, and passed about the room with a catlike tread, examining the Great Gilmore’s traveling wardrobe. The convict was dressed in a tattered pair of overalls and a jumper.

“This big coat will do,” he said quietly; “and these pants, if I can get into ’em. And I want this soft hat.”

“Help yourself,” said the owner savagely. “I’ll promise you you won’t get very far. I’ll have every officer in the State after you before daylight!”

Buckshot John dropped the clothes in a heap and stared incredulously. Then he picked up the revolver and walked slowly back to the bed.

“You don’t think I expect to get away, do you?” He paused, struggling for words. “I ain’t trying to do anybody any wrong. I’m trying to do right!”

Gilmore sneered. Buckshot John continued to talk in a low, heavy monotone.

“It won’t be nothing new to have ’em all on my trail,” he said. “They been after me ever since I got loose, dogs and all. I don’t know how I ever got this far, unless it was because I prayed. I could have stayed back there at Sand Creek and let you get away. I could have set officers on you and then what would have become of all this money? The wrong people would have got it!”

He paused, wrestling with the explanation of his motive.

“There wasn’t only the one thing to do, and I did it. If I can’t find an honest man to take this stuff back, I’ll have to do it myself. I ain’t had bite nor sup for two days, except water.”

He paused again, and fingered the revolver thoughtfully.

“You want to give me up. All right, go ahead! It won’t help you much, and it won’t harm me no more’n I’ve harmed myself. I had a lot of good conduct credits coming to me down there. I lost ’em by coming here; now I got to serve my full thirty years—maybe more; I don’t know.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed and passed his hand over his face. Gilmore wriggled uneasily, but Buckshot John calmed him into quiet with an impatient jerk of the revolver.

The convict was thinking. After a long time he raised his head.

“You’re doing a pretty good bunco-steering business up in Denver?” he inquired. “You’re making a good living?”

“What’s that to you?” asked the founder of Purified Thought sullenly.

“Answer me!”

Gilmore wriggled again.

“I suppose so,” he said weakly. “Yes, I’ve been very—successful.”

Buckshot John nodded his head as if relieved.

“That’s good,” he said. “Maybe I oughtn’t to let you run loose, but I’ll make a bargain with you. You let me alone, and I’ll let you alone. You keep quiet, and inside of three days I’ll be back in Canyon City of my own free will—in the cells again. Solitary confinement, they’ll give me for this! Well, no matter! I’ve broke the law; they got the right to punish me for it. Now, I’ve got reasons for wanting to give this stuff up, rather than have it took. It’s got to go to the right people, and if it’s took from me, I’ll never be easy in my mind about who got it. And they wouldn’t believe me if I said I was only carrying it back. They’d say I was trying to steal it again.”

The man’s mind was working slowly.

“You give me the chance to get to Denver, and I’ll let everybody think I went and got the stuff myself, and I’ll never mention your name. You set ’em on me to-night, and as sure as there’s a God in heaven, I’ll tell what kind of a rat you are, and, what’s more, I’ll name the man who can prove it! You’d do a fine bunco-steering business after that got out on you, wouldn’t you? If they didn’t jail you, you’d have to jump the State and change your name.”

Buckshot John paused and watched Gilmore’s face. There was no answer to that argument. The doctor was thinking hard, and he saw every sharp tooth of the trap into which he had fallen.

“Figger it out any way you like,” said the convict earnestly, “and there ain’t no way you can ever get a cent of this money. Whether they get me here, in this room, or somewhere else, not a splinter do you get! All I want is the chance to leave to-night. I promise you that if I’m taken before I get to Denver, I’ll tell all about your part of this. That’ll keep you from sending any telegrams, I reckon. Now, then, will you keep your hands off, or won’t you?”

He paused for an answer. The Great Gilmore shoved one open hand down the blanket, as if scraping something away.

“Take the pot!” he said. “You win!”

Buckshot John jumped to his feet. He took off his overalls, and carefully inserted himself into Gilmore’s trousers. They were inches too long, but he turned them up and ripped the rear seam until they met in front. He tucked the buckskin bag inside his jumper, and slipped on the heavy ulster, turning up the high collar and buttoning it in front.

The whistle of a locomotive sounded in the distance. Buckshot John crammed the soft hat on his head. The Great Gilmore then made his first really sensible suggestion.

“There’s a name inside that coat,” he said. “You’d better rip it out.”

Buckshot John smiled as the tailor’s tag fluttered to the floor. Then he broke open the revolver and pocketed the cartridges.

“You’ll find your gun outside the window,” he said. “There’s a freight-train due here in a few minutes. If I make it all right, I’ll be in Denver some time tomorrow. The next day,” he added grimly, “I’ll be on my way back—to serve my full time. The cells again! They won’t trust me no more.”

He shook his head and muttered to himself. The engine whistled once more—nearer this time.

“Anyway,” said Buckshot John, as if arguing with himself, “I’ll be able to sleep nights!”

He picked up the canvas bag and blew out the lamp. For some time there was silence in the room. Gilmore thought that Moran had gone. He was mistaken. A low voice came from the window.

“I don’t hold nothing against you,” it said. “The Book says I got to forgive you, and I do. You didn’t mean to help me do the square thing, but you have, just the same. I reckon you’ve been one of the Lord’s instruments the chaplain talks about so much.”

There was another brief silence, and then the Great Gilmore caught the last words he was ever to hear from the lips of Buckshot John Moran, train-robber, murderer, and repentant sinner—a benediction, a farewell, and a speculation, all in one short sentence.

“Maybe,” said the voice reverently, “He can’t be too particular; like as not He has to use what instruments He can get.”

Then silence shut down. A sudden gust of cold air swept into the room, tossed the curtain for a few seconds, and ceased.

Later a freight-train roared up the grade and came clanking to a standstill. After a time the engine hooted forlornly, coughed a few times, and went wheezing on its way, carrying one soul nearer to its expiation, and leaving another one, the unpremeditated and accidental instrument of a worthy deed, to purify its surging thoughts at the fierce fires of bitter humiliation and regret.

Twelve

Two days later the dean of Purified Thought was back at his mahogany table. He was rather pale; under his eyes were dark circles which spoke of sleepless nights and nervous strain; and he limped a little when he walked. However, business is business, and checks usually come by mail. So the Great Gilmore was at work with his jade-handled paper-cutter once more.

Into the hush of the inner chamber came James Edward Dacey, humbled, chastened in spirit, all previous calculations rejected, earnestly seeking information. He took some rare old Scotch instead, the sad-eyed and silent Hindu serving it from a silver tray into monogrammed glasses of crystal.

Dacey hoisted his glass with a smile.

“Human nature, doc!” he said. “The most interesting study in the world!”

They drank that broad toast in meditative silence.

“That was wonderful about old Buckshot John!” said the reporter at last, in the tone of voice of one continuing an argument. “You’ve seen the newspapers?”

Gilmore shook his head wearily.

“Just the head-lines,” he said.

“Just imagine that old coot running around the State with all that money!” said the reporter. “Every sheriff after him and about a million private detectives, and yet he marches right into Denver with that stuff in a sack, and turns every nickel over to a trust company! He wanted ’em to give bond or something, guaranteeing to divide it square among the owners.”

Dacey paused and shook his head. The wrinkles deepened between his eyebrows.

“I’ve been working on this case ever since Buckshot John disappeared from Sand Creek,” he said, “I thought I knew something once; now I don’t know. This restitution business knocks my theory higher than a cocked hat. And old Buckshot won’t say anything except that he wanted to bring it back himself, and that’s why he ran away from Sand Creek. I’ve misjudged that old boy, and I told him so. I’ve had the wrong angle on this case from the start. Blamed if I don’t believe that old coot has got religion after all! What do you think about it, doc?”

The doc thought a great deal, but he said nothing. A slight shake of his head indicated that the impulses of the convict breast were too complex for him.

“Oh, yes,” said Dacey, “I’ve just seen the old boy off on the train for Canyon City. They had him ironed all over. Looked as happy as if he was going to his own wedding. Funny old devil! Darned if I don’t like him!”

Still the Great Gilmore refused comment. Dacey cleared his throat, set down his glass, and leaned over the table, thumping the mahogany from time to time with the heel of his fist.

“Now, then, doc,” he said confidentially, “let’s come down to cases. No use your trying to stall with me. I’m on! You’ve been all tangled up with this affair from the start, and I’ve cut your trail in three distinct places—the night you read up the dope in the files, the visit you made to Sand Creek the next night, and I know you’ve seen Buckshot John since he got away and before he came into Denver with the junk. That last one made you jump a little, doc. You see, you’ve got a habit of lending that overcoat of yours. You loaned it to me once, and I spilled some ink on the sleeve. When John turned up with that coat, I knew he’d seen you somewhere. I thought I knew the reason he ran away, and I thought I knew who told him something that scared him into it; but when he turned up here with the stuff—well, my theory busted, that’s all. You went away for a complete rest, and you come back here a physical wreck. You’re stiff and sore from riding a horse. You didn’t have very much of a pleasure trip, doc. I’ve pumped away at old Buckshot John until I’m tired. He won’t mention your name; he won’t answer questions about you. I deserve something, doc, because a week or so ago a mighty ugly story might have been written about your connection with this case, and I held you under cover. I’d like to know something, doc. I know where you got on, but how far did you ride and where did you get off?”

Doc Gilmore could play a four-card flush about as hard as any man in the world, but he also knew when to slip one back into the deck.

“Jim,” said he, “I’ve got to hand it to you! You’re immense—a regular Hawkshaw. Now, I’d really like to tell you all about this business, but there’s a mighty good reason why I can’t. I can tell you something, though, and I know you’ll respect the confidence as sacred.”

He paused expectantly. Dacey raised his right hand and nodded his head.

“Jimmy,” said the Great Gilmore, weighing each word impressively, “if it hadn’t been for little Buchanan here, that money would have stayed out in the hills until it rotted!”

The reporter leaped from his chair with a startled ejaculation.

“You had a hand in the actual recovery of the stuff, doc?” he demanded excitedly.

Gilmore lifted both hands, mutely offered them in evidence, and dropped them with a sweeping gesture more expressive than words.

“Can you prove that?” cried Dacey breathlessly.

“I can,” said the Great Gilmore calmly, “but I won’t. I promised a man that I’d keep my hands off entirely and not let myself be known. It was a compact.”

“Compact, nothing!” ejaculated the reporter. “Why, man alive, there’s thirty thousand dollars’ reward for the return of that stuff, and all you’ve got to do is prove your claim and demand it! They couldn’t pay it to Buckshot John, but they could pay it to you!”

The Great Gilmore dropped back in his chair, limp and nerveless.

“I never heard of it,” he said weakly. “What reward?”

“The old express company rewards,” cried Dacey. “When the news came that Buckshot John had escaped, everybody believed that he had gone after the stuff, and would try to get out of the country with it. Right away quick, the express companies and the banks came to the front with the announcement that the old rewards still held good. Don’t you see, man? All you’ve got to do is just get Buckshot to say that you had a hand in it, and there’s thirty thousand dollars, as good as wheat! Wake up!”

The Great Gilmore took his head in his hands, and steadied it amid the crash of a new disaster. The noiseless Hindu removed the tray and the glasses. Dacey, furiously performing sums in mental addition, was getting farther and farther away from the real answer, and he realized it.

Down in the street an ambulance gong clanged and clanged again. The Great Gilmore did not hear it. He had found a sentence somewhere in that remarkable brain of his—a sentence which kept repeating itself over and over, and every word fell like the stroke of a hammer.

“Figger it out any way you like, and there ain’t no way you can ever get a cent of this money!”

Between the Great Gilmore and thirty thousand legitimate dollars there stood the forbidding figure of a shabby, middle-aged man with close-cropped hair and pale-gray eyes—Convict No. 1113.

It was some time before Gilmore looked up and faced his inquisitor. His handsome face was haggard and drawn and seamed with the lines of suffering. It is enough to make a man look old to kiss two fortunes good-by inside of three days.

“Jimmy,” said the founder of Purified Thought, “I guess you’ll think I’m a fool. Maybe I am; but a promise is a promise. I’m peculiar that way, I suppose, but sooner than break faith with—one who trusted me, I’d close up this place. Whether you believe it or not, that’s the solemn truth. Yes, Jimmy, this is one case where virtue must be its own reward—its own reward. And that’s the devil of it!” he added softly.

When thieves fall off

Published in Popular Magazine, 1912.

Playing the racing game in the alkali circuit. How Isaiah, the star of the Curry stable and probably the most erratic beast that ever drove an official starter to drink, makes a bid for fame in a steeplechase. An exciting and amusing story of the race track.

Old Man Curry said the hand of of Providence was in it, which was as accurate a guess as he ever made in connection with a horse race. It goes to show that a man may be well posted on all the prophets of Israel, and still not know a great deal about the sport of kings. Steeple-chasing particularly. Providence might stand some sort of an outside chance in a dash over the flat, with everybody trying; hut over the sticks? Ne-ver! The jumping riders settle things before the race, thus eliminating Providence and the mischance of jogging to the post with the wrong ticket in the bootleg. It is only when the riders fail to name the caucus nominee that complications arise. And Old Man Curry, bless his simple, honest heart, thought it was Providence!

Speaking from a professional angle, Old Man Curry had about as much business on a race track as a tender squab at a Third Avenue banquet—and almost as much of a chance. In the first place, a man who can recite the Old Testament backward, and who reads the Psalms of David and the Song of Solomon instead of the form charts and the sporting pages is quite apt to find himself outgeneraled by the unregenerate in the matter of placing race horses one-two-three at the wire. To make it worse, Old Man Curry didn’t have a horse in his barn worth talking about with a straight face.

If an honest man hopes to win two-hundred-dollar purses along the alkali circuit, there is only one way in the world for him to do it—and that is to get away flying, and fly ill front all the way—so far in front that the wizened little tobacco-chewing burglars on the other horses cannot catch him and bump him over the fence. But what is a man to do who can neither outrun nor outguess his competitors?

Old Man Curry had four horses—Elijah, Nehemiah, King David, and Isaiah—“the Bible class,” as the touts called the Curry Stable.

Elijah was a chunky, short—coupled, thick-necked brute of a sorrel gelding, with two bad legs and a chronic weariness which met him at the head of the stretch.

Nehemiah was a gaunt, hungry-looking, aggravating sort of an equine hermit. He could run fast enough to suit anybody, the only trouble being that he insisted on running alone. If he happened to get away from the post with the others, he sulked and quit; it was only when he had been left flat-footed that Nehemiah came to life, and ran like a Roseben—two hundred yards behind the others. He was absolutely no good, being too thin for soap fat.

King David was a stately chestnut, a confirmed stall walker, a malingerer from his yellow heart.

Isaiah—well, Isaiah was the star of the stable! He was a tall, big—boned, coal-black rascal about the size of a dromedary, as suspicious as a hawk, and as savage as a wasp. He was probably the most erratic beast that ever drove an official starter to drink; and Sid, the negro jockey who rode all the prophets in Old Man Curry’s stable, never knew when the barrier went up whether Isaiah was going up the track, down the track, or over the side fence. The black scoundrel had been known to do all three—in one race. Once in a great while it pleased Isaiah to behave himself and run second or third in some selling event, but his appearances “in the money” were rare.

There wasn’t a breadwinner in the stable, nor anything which looked like one; and quite naturally Old Man Curry was a rank outsider—the last man on the track to know when anything was going on or coming off—a nice, respectable, soft-spoken old gentleman with white whiskers, who ran his bad horses to win, and gave every one else credit for “trying.” No one paid any attention to Old Man Curry; and because he was harmless, from an owner’s point of view, no one took the trouble to explain matters to him.

If the judges at a small Western bush track had not seen fit to order Isaiah on the “schooling list” after two atrocious performances at the barrier, Old Man Curry would have had no occasion to refer to the hand of Providence. Horses which shy at the barrier and refuse to break when the webbing flies up are put on the schooling list, and it is part of the duties of the assistant starter to train these wild creatures until they learn how to comport themselves at the post. It was after Isaiah broke sidewise, knocking two real horses into the fence, that the judges sent for Old Man Curry, and broke the news to him that Isaiah’s entry would be refused until the animal had been schooled at the barrier. Old Man Curry was innocent enough to attempt an explanation, but how could he be expected to know that the judges had ten dollars apiece on one of the horses which Isaiah put out of the race?

The next morning Clem Newby, the assistant starter, looked down from his perch near the five-eighths pole upon the usual bunch of two-year-olds and one immense black horse with a negro upon his back. Isaiah looked all of ten feet high among the colts and fillies, and Clem Newby, who had a date with the girl who waited on the table at the Bonton Restaurant, sighed as he beheld the negro’s futile attempts to control his mount. A few feet away from the starter’s platform, Old Man Curry sat on the top rail of the fence, chewing a straw and meditating silently.

“Here’s that crazy son of a gun that busted up the start for us the other day,” said Clem Newby to Butch Flynn. Butch, with a blacksnake whip, was aiding Newby from the track.

“I see him,” said Butch. Then he went on to give his unbiased opinion of Isaiah, his breeding, his antecedents, and a few other things which occurred to him as he warmed into his work!

“Mr. Starter,” said Old Man Curry gently, “I wisht you wouldn’t cuss that hoss of mine. He ain’t ust to stich language, an’ it ain’t fitten he should be. Isaiah’s right gentle when he’s used kindly.”

“S-a-a-y!” demanded Newby angrily. “Who’s doing this? If I was the judge at this track, I’ll promise you you wouldn’t start that black hound around here no more! He acted to me like he was full of hop the other day.”

Old Man Curry took the straw out of his mouth, but he changed his mind, and preserved silence.

“Now, then,” bawled Newby, “bring that filly up on the outside. Easy, there! Come on with that chestnut! Whatche think this is—a quadrille? You, dinge, where you tryin’ to go with that black camel? Stand still with him. Stand still, I tell you! No, no! You can’t break that way! Butch, bring up that chestnut. Steady! Now! You’re off!”

B-z—zip! went the barrier, and away went the two-year-olds like frightened snipe. Isaiah seemed to squat in his tracks for the fraction of a second; then he whirled with a tremendous snort, like the blast of an auto horn, and ran the wrong way of the track, narrowly missing Butch Flynn in the maneuver.

“Yes,” said Newby, with a sneer, “he is a right gentle horse, ain’t he? As gentle as a wild cat! Keep a—stickin’ around here with him, and he’ll kill some of us yet.”

“Mister,” said Old Man Curry earnestly, “I wisht you wouldn’t abuse Isaiah like that. What’s the use to cuss him? He’s a good hoss, but he can’t seem to get the hang of that rubber-rope dingus. He ain’t used to it. It gets him fretted up and scares him. Once he finds out it won’t hurt him none he’ll be all right. Back where he comes from they start hosses with a flag. He don’t know no other way.”

“Well,” said Butch Flynn, as he labored with the heavy spring of the starting machine, “far be it from me to set my stack in at the wrong time; but you better take this Isaiah back where they start races with flags, because if anything happens to me, my heirs’ll sue you for damages. If I hadn’t been right there with that Jim Corbett side-step, Isaiah would have gone over me like a steam roller. You don’t keep him hopped all the time, do you?”

“That hoss don’t know what a drug is!” said Old Man Curry. “He’s only nervous and scairt. He’ll get ust to it in time. He’s a smart hoss, that Isaiah. Try him again.”

Newby tried him again. The two-year-olds broke as before, and just as the barrier rose, Butch Flynn, who believed in experimenting upon refractory horsefiesh, curled the lash of his blacksnake whip around Isaiah’s hams. The big fellow wheeled at right angles, and soared over the side fence, pitching Sid twenty feet into an alfalfa patch. It was not such a low fence, either, but Isaiah cleared it like a bird on the wing, and, after separating himself from Sidney, he ran away, switching his tail and snorting angrily.

“Goshamighty!” ejaculated Old Man Curry. “Look what you did by hittin’ him with that whip!” He clambered down from the fence, and started toward the negro, mumbling as he went: “He ain’t ust to bein’ hit with a whip, Isaiah ain’t. It made him mad. ‘Tain’t no way to treat a high-keyed hoss. Did he hurt you any, Sid?”

The negro rose, and looked about him, grinning foolishly.

“Naw, suh,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. “Naw, suh, he didn’ hu’t me none, an’ he didn’ do me no good, nuther. Shook me up some. I’d ought to have stayed with him, Mist’ Curry, an’ I cert’n’y would, only he was li’l’ bit too sudden faw me. I didn’t know whut he was aimin’ to do twell he done gone done it. Yes, suh, he’s a mighty sudden hawss, that Isaiah. Too quick a thinker faw me—yes, suh.”

“He’ll think you into the morgue one of these days if you keep on fooling with him,” said Newby, as he climbed back to his perch.

“Well, Sid,” said Old Man Curry, “go catch him up, and take him back to the barn. His feelin’s are hurt, and he’s all fretted up an’ excited from bein’ hit with that whip. He’ll have to be cooled out. Take him back to the barn.”

Sid departed, rubbing his shoulder and chuckling.

Butch Flynn was staring at Isaiah’s hoof-marks upon the track.

“Here’s where he took off,” said Butch, “and over yonder is where he lit. And he’d have cleared that fence if it had been twice that high. Sufferin’ Salvator, what a jump!”

“You did Isaiah a wrong to hit him with that whip,” said Old Man Curry patiently. “Whippin’ a hoss ain’t no way—”

“Say,” interrupted Butch suddenly, “has this horse ever been over the jumps?”

Old Man Curry shook his head.

“How far can he run?” demanded Butch.

“Well,” said Old Man Curry, “his daddy was a four-mile champion. Isaiah can go one mile, two miles, three miles-makes no difference to him. All these races round here are too short for him.”

“Old man,” said Butch earnestly, “lemme tell you something: Make a jumper out of this horse. If he’ll take hurdles the way he took that fence he’ll win you a nice pot of money. You could take him to some track where they’ve got a steeplechase course, and clean up with him.”

“Yes,” said Newby maliciously, “and they start jumping races with a flag, too!”

Old Man Curry removed his slouch hat and mopped his forehead.

“Goshamighty!” he said, half to himself. “I never thought of that!”

He ambled away toward the stables with his head bent at a reflective angle. Newby looked after him with a short laugh.

“What’s on you, Butch?” he asked. “Are you framing up to get some jumping jock killed, or what?”

“Ho!” said Butch. “One of them crooks more or less wouldn’t matter much! But, on the level, bo, did you see the way that big brute sailed over this fence? Looked to me like he went ten feet in the air. Why, that bird must have wings!”

“He better have,” said Clem grimly, “an’ use ’em to fly away from here. Get those kids back, and let’s get through some time to-day.”

Several months later the alkali circuit season ended; Butch Flynn and Clem Newby, no longer track officials, found themselves wintering in California, and attempting to pick up a living “from the ground.” Clem, with a few dollars in his pocket, was giving a poor imitation of a gentleman of leisure and independent means. Butch, being financially straightened—“embarrassed” is no word to convey the proper impression of Butch’s exceeding ruin—was “hustling” as best he could.

Hustling upon a race track is a many-sided occupation including everything in the world but real work.

Part of the time Butch assisted a “clocker” who worked for a book-maker, and in this way came to have some sort of a line on most of the early-morning work—outs. With the knowledge thus secured, Butch set up as a tout on a small scale, operating with one nervous eye on Sig Buetler, of the Pinkerton Patrol.

One afternoon Flynn and Newby met on the promenade in front of the grand stand.

“Who do you think is here?” asked Butch. “Nobody but that old joker and that Isaiah bird. And that ain’t all. He took my advice, and made a jumper out of his horse.”

“Him?” said Newby scornfully. “How come he to get on a real race track with those lizards of his?”

“He didn’t get stable room,” said Butch. “He’s got ’em bedded down outside somewhere. From what he tells me, he’s laying to put Isaiah over on ’em at a price.”

Newby chuckled.

“Daffy as a cuckoo bird,” he said. “I suppose the old boy doesn’t know that some of the best jumpers in the country are out here this season? Molestar, Arabi, Prince Wang, and that bunch. A swell chance old Isaiah will have in that kind of company!”

“Wel-l-l,” said Butch judiciously, “a jumpin’ race ain’t ever a cinch for anybody not even the best jumper that ever lived. Too many things can happen. And, then, the riders are always doing business—framing up among themselves. You never know what those burglars are going to do, or which horse they are going to shoo in. I’d hate to bet a jumping race—with counterfeit money.”

“Right-o!” assented Newby. “Those jumping jocks are pretty tough propositions; but, then, look at the chances they take. Man ought to be allowed to steal something if he risks his neck to do it. Which of ’em is going to ride for the old sport?”

“Not any,” said Butch. “He’s went and made a steeplchase jock out of the coon.”

“Good night!” said Newby, with explosive emphasis. “Why, McGuire and Duffy and the rest of those mick riders will murder him the first time around the field!”

“That being the case,” said Butch, “it’s up to us to send flowers about Sunday week. Isaiah is entered for a week from Thursday. He ain’t got a thing to beat except Prince Wang and Arabi—the two best jumpers that ever came West. And the joke of it is,” concluded Butch, “the old man tells me he’s going to take the woolen string off the roll and set in the checks on Isaiah—to beat Prince Wang and Arabi. What do you know about that?”

“A fool and his money gathers no moss,” laughed Newby.

“Even so,” said Butch cheerfully, “that won’t keep me from ribbing up some suckers to bet a few piasters on Isaiah—to come third.”

“If the coon lives that long,” said Newby.

“Of course,” said Butch. “We got to take chances on him getting broke in two.”

The grand stand overflowed on Thursday afternoon, the steeplechase being responsible for the added attendance. The balance of the day’s card was given up to cheap selling races for cheap horses, and Charlie Comford, “outside man” for one of the big book-makers, and turf philosopher in what spare time he found, stared hard at the human swarm in the stand, and extracted the pith of the situation in a few brisk sentences.

“Look at ’em up there,” said Charlie. “And there won’t be any Rosebens runnin’ here to-day, either. They’ve all come out to see some poor devil of a jumpin’ jock break his neck. Same proposition as a parachute leap. I’ve seen a million of ’em, but I always walk a mile to see another one, because’ I’m figuring that this may be the time when the umbrella won’t open. We ain’t half as civilized as we think we are.”

A steeplechase breaks up the monotony of the daily racing card and fattens the daily attendance, but the bookmakers and the professional gamblers have small use for a jumping contest. There is never any real certainty of knowing how the riders are betting, and in a long race “over the sticks” almost any sort of a miracle may pass unquestioned by the judges.

There was once a man who figured out fifty ways in which the best horse in a race might be beaten; and it was a flat race he was using as the basis of calculations. In a steeplechase there are five hundred ways. In a flat race, when there is to be a “shoo in,” it is the owners who lay their heads together and make the arrangements. In a steeplechase, the riders often assume this responsibility; therefore, when the jumpers are on their way to the post the hardened gamblers sit in the stand, with no interest save in the spectacle, and the bookmakers handle what they call “the sucker money”—tens, twenties, and other small change. And the only bookmakers who will take a great deal of any kind of money on a jumping race are the ones who think they know how the riders are going to bet.

Down near the paddock, in the jockeys’ room, Mr. Sidney Albert Johnson, slightly heavier than in the days of the alkali circuit, sat in a far corner, and eyed the other jumping riders with furtive distrust. He knew some of them by reputation, and was therefore not reassured to any great extent. There was “Durable” Duffy, so called because it was said of him that in a long and shady career he had broken all the bones in his body save the ones in his crooked spine. There was “Molly” McGuire, another steeplechase rider of great reputation, not exactly unknown as a welterweight prize fighter; and “Corkscrew” Kelly, just out of the hospital after his last fall, walking with a slight limp, but cursing fluently. They were a tough crowd, and Mr. Sidney Albert Johnson did not like their looks or the glances which they shot in his direction. Some of them spoke to him as he took his place in line at the weighing machine.

“Little dark meat to-day,” said Duffy, with a meaning smile.

“About the third jump for his,” said McGuire.

“Lemme tell you something, Mistah Johnson,” said Corkscrew Kelly: “If you come anywhere near me I’ll spill you. I’m from a State where we don’t like your kind of people.”

Sidney Albert, saddle and weight pads on his arm, weighed in silently, and faded away to his corner again, his eyes big with foreboding.

“This ain’t no good place faw me,” he repeated over and over to himself. “No, suh! All shanty Irish. Lawd, you got to watch out faw li’l’ Sid today. Look like he’s got into ba-a—ad company.”

Out in the paddock, Old Man Curry led Isaiah into his stall, and stood quietly patting the big black horse on the neck. Butch Flynn, unobtrusive as a shadow, drifted to the old man’s side.

“How about you?” said the tout. “Think you’ve got a chance?”

“This hoss,” said Old Man Curry, “has always got a chance. He’s a right nice hoss, Isaiah.”

“Yes—but look what he’s got to beat,” argued Flynn. “Arabi’s six to five in the ring, and Prince Wang is three to one. They kind of stick out in this company. Isaiah’s twenty, eight, and two. Think you can come third with him?”

Somewhere a gong clanged, and the paddock announcer bawled:

“Saddling bell! Saddle up!”

“Can he be third?” persisted Butch.

“He can be first if he wants to,” said Old Man Curry, with calm conviction. ~

“Daffy as a cuckoo bird!” said Butch to himself, as he moved over to inspect Prince Wang. “Now, if I only knew which one they’re going to bet on today—”

Once more the gong clanged, and a flood of bright color burst from the door of the jockeys’ room. Sidney Albert Johnson, conspicuous in canary yellow and peacock blue, was last in the line, his serious countenance in strong contrast with his gaudy attire. He seemed gloomy and preoccupied, and there was an appealing look in his eyes as he rolled them upon his employer.

“Sid,” said Old Man Curry, as he gave the “tack” its final inspection, “I might spoil some of them Egyptians in the bettin’ ring to-day. They’re layin’ too long a price against this hoss. Do the best you can with him.”

“Yes, suh,” said Sidney Albert, without enthusiasm. “I’ll be tryin’, Mist’ Curry.” Then, after a short silence: “But these Irish jumpin’ jocks, they— they seem to took a notion agin’ me.”

He climbed into the saddle, set his boots in the stirrups, and looked about him.

“Yes, suh,” he repeated gloomily, “they sort of took a distaste to me.”

A bugle blared, and there was a sudden stir in the paddock; the horses began to move. Old Man Curry stood looking after Isaiah for several seconds. Then, straw in mouth, he walked slowly toward the betting ring.

There were seven horses in the race—Prince Wang, Arabi, Blue Peter, Doctor Boggs, Gondolier, Ugly Joe, and Isaiah. Arabi, because of a sensational performance the last time out, was the favorite, backed from eight to five to even money. Prince Wang, easily outclassing all the others in the race, was the strong second choice at three to one; and Blue Peter, Doctor Boggs, Gondolier, Ugly Joe, and Isaiah were quoted at tempting odds, the prices being amply Justitia by information, belief, and past endeavor. There was no “form” on Isaiah, but the information secured by the bookmakers’ assistants did not disconcert those suave individuals.

“Isaiah? Isaiah?” said Phil Hennessey, the ring plutocrat, who set the pace in the matter of opening prices. “First time over the jumps. Oh, well, make him fifteen to one till we see how he shapes up. Like’s not he ought to be fifty.”

At fifteen to one there was no demand for Isaiah, so the price lengthened to twenty, and later a gentle old man with white whiskers wandered through the betting ring, sowing a crop of crumpled five—dollar notes at odds of one hundred to five. No one paid the slightest attention to him; few remembered having seen him before. When he had accumulated a fat packet of pasteboards the old man went down by the fence, and unshipped a battered field glass.

By this time the seven jumpers had reached the starting point, opposite the grand stand, in the infield, the steeple-chase course stretching in a large figure eight before them. The starter, with a red flag, was stationed some distance in front of the horses; and the assistant starters, armed with whips, were herding the nervous animals into something like a straight line. Arabi and Prince Wang, being seasoned campaigners, and knowing what was expected of them, stood perfectly still, refusing to waste their strength in wild plunges and ineffectual dashes down the course. The hoarse voice of the starter came faintly to the crowded grand stand—a rumbling, complaining monologue:

“No, no! I won’t let you go that way! Dugan, you want me to fine you? Don’t talk back to me? I ain’t blind! Get that black horse into line. Walk ’em up, now. That’s it! All together! Come on!”

A thousand-voiced grunt burst from the grand stand as the seven big horses leaped into a lumbering gallop. Old Man Curry, leaning heavily upon the fence, took a fresh grip upon his straw, and sighed his relief. It was as fair a start as an honest owner could wish to see.

When the red flag fell Ugly Joe sprang to the front, and rushed recklessly at the first barrier. Jockey Hennessey cursed savagely, and sawed at the bit; he might as well have argued with a thunderbolt. Duffy, on Arabi, was directly behind the crazy animal, and, scenting calamity, pulled sharply to the right, with a shrill yell of warning. McGuire, on Prince Wang, also sheered violently, and the Prince carromed into Isaiah, knocking the big black horse out of his stride. Isaiah promptly shuffled out of the pack, and dropped to the rear, thrashing his tail angrily.

“Them Irishmen cert’n’y don’t waste no time,” thought Sidney Albert bitterly, wherein he wronged Duffy and McGuire. The bumping of Isaiah had been an accident, and a fortunate one, it turned out to be, else Sidney Albert and Isaiah would have been involved in the smash which followed. The whole thing happened so quickly that even the judges were not sure as to the sequence of events.

Ugly Joe, attempting the almost impossible feat of taking the first obstacle without slackening speed, sailed over the barrier like a red streak, but could not hold his footing, and crashed heavily to the turf. Hennessey turned a complete somersault, and came to grass in a sitting posture, more surprised than hurt. Doctor Boggs, next inside, shied, took off short, and, jumping sidewise, collided with Blue Peter in midair. Both horses went down, and Corkscrew Kelly and Dugan joined Hennessey on the ground.

Dugan’s collar bone was broken—not a new experience for Dugan—but Kelly, rolling rapidly to the edge of the track, escaped without a scratch, and was able immediately to sit up and express an unexpurgated opinion of Hennessey’s qualifications as a steeplechase rider.

Prince Wang and Arabi went over the jump neck and neck; Gondolier blundered after them. Last of all came Isaiah, feelings outraged, temper ruffled, jerking his head from side to side, and snorting his protest. Sidney Albert spoke reassuringly to him, and the black horse cleared the jump handily, and went on down the course, fifty yards behind Gondolier.

Ugly Joe, the wicked cause of all the trouble, scrambled to his feet, and set out after the others, the empty stirrups banging at his sides. Doctor Boggs rose stiffly, shivering as he hobbled away on three legs. Blue Peter never moved after he struck the ground. Thus, in a single breath, the spectators had been given their glimpse of turf tragedy—a crippled rider groaning in the dirt; three horses out of the race, two of them for all time; and far down the course went Arabi and Prince Wang, neck and neck.

After a few heart palpitations, a few ejaculations, a few sympathetic groans from the females present, the spectators turned their eyes to the survivors. There were_other jumps on the course, other risks to be taken, other chances for a spill. Comford’s philosophy wasn’t so far wrong, after all. Few in the grand stand heard or understood the distant pop of the pistol which ended the career of Doctor Boggs.

Ugly Joe, having furnished tragedy, now essayed comedy. The grand stand roared as he galloped past Isaiah and ranged alongside Gondolier. In effect, Ugly Joe seemed to say:

“What’s a rider more or less? Bet you I can outrun you to the next jump.”

“Slim” Sweeney, on Gondolier, cursed heartily, and aimed a cut at Ugly Joe with his whip. The riderless brute dodged it, and pressed closer. At the second jump he swerved into Gondolier, and both horses fell, Sweeney’s nose plowing a furrow in the turf. That put another horse out of the running, and Isaiah, seeing this accident from afar, had to be coaxed over the second barrier.

“Come on, big hoss!” urged Sidney Albert pleadingly. “jump cautious, and we got third money cinched.”

Away out in front, Arabi and Prince Wang, first and second money at their mercy, were running close together, eating up the course in long, easy strides.

Old Man Curry heard a voice in his ear.

“All you got to do,” said Butch, “is to keep going, and I win a show bet.”

Isaiah’s owner shook his head disconsolately.

“They rammed into my hoss at the start,” he complained. “Bumped him clean outen his stride. He knew that wasn’t right, and it’s made him mad. He’s awful sensitive, Isaiah is. He won’t stand to be trifled with.”

“He’d never do better’n third against jumpers like those in front,” said Butch. “Look at ’em out there. I’d like to know what Duffy and McGuire are talkin’ about, wouldn’t you? They got it all fixed up between ’em.”

As the leaders swung into the great oval which marked the last circuit of the course, Duffy pulled Arabi a bit closer to Prince Wang, and opened a conversation with McGuire.

“Come on, Molly,” he said, “ride that horse out! I got a good bet on him.”

“You what?” demanded McGuire, with suitable profanity. “Quit your kiddin’! Why, my folks are bettin’ on you!”

For the fraction of a second, the boys eyed each other; amazement and incredulity numbed all other sensations.

“Why,” faltered Duffy, “I thought it was the other way; I thought—and I got fifty bucks of my own on that one.”

“Thought—rats!” snarled McGuire. “Didn’t we fix it up night before last? You crossed me—for the price!”

“You lie!” almost screeched Duffy. “And I got a man from Seattle bettin’ a chunk! You got to ride him out.”

For a few seconds neither spoke. McGuire’s eyes were on the jump ahead of them. Duffy, stealing a glance at his quondam accomplice, surprised a flickering light in his eye—a light which kindled an immediate suspicion.

“You ride that horse out, or I’ll break your neck!” screamed Duffy.

“I’ll break your Seattle friend first,” said McGuire ominously, measuring the approaching obstacle shrewdly.

The trick was most artistically done, but unless practice makes perfect of what virtue is it? From the distant grand stand it seemed that Prince Wang faltered in front of the barrier, and then blundered ever so slightly in his leap. A touch of the knee, a shift in the saddle—these were two things which the grand stand overlooked, as did the judges. MicGuire, acting his part perfectly, whirled through the air, struck upon his side, rolled over once, and stretched out at full length, limp and apparently lifeless. A coroner might have been deceived by his attitude. But Duffy was not deceived. A nasty, mocking laugh pursued him as Arabi thundered down the course alone.

“Cross me, will you?” murmured McGuire. “Go on now, and cash my ticket.”

“The crook!” panted Duffy. “He makes me lose a real bet, and I’ve got to ride this one for his money.”

Away in the rear, Sidney Albert cast a pair of wide eyes on jockey McGuire, still motionless in the grass. Men were running toward him. Out in the middle of the track several roustabouts were pursuing Prince Wang to remount and ride him home for the short end of the purse. At the fence rail, Butch Flynn was pounding Old Man Curry on the back.

“You run second!” he shouted. “All down but nine! Set ’em up again!”

Jockey Duffy, on the last half mile, with one more jump before him, and then nothing but the flat stretch to the wire—Jockey Duffy, huddled up on the favorite—steamed with impotent rage. What could he do? Nothing. That was the worst of it. Duffy’s financial interest in the race was gone beyond recall. His fifty-dollar ticket wasn’t worth five cents, nor were all the tickets which the man from Seattle was to buy in the pool rooms downtown. Gone—all gone! And why? Because that thief of a McGuire got his wires crossed, and put down a piking little bet on the wrong horse! Earnestly jockey Duffy consigned all the McGuires to everlasting flame.

“I’m standin’ to cop five or six hundred for my bit,” thought Duffy, “and that louse of a McGuire won’t even wait long enough to ask me will I split with him. He goes and does a Brodie for his petty-larceny bet. Oh, why didn’t I beat him to it?

“I could have done it at that first jump,” reflected Duffy, “only I was afraid of being jumped on by the others. Why didn’t I take a chance? Now I got to bring this one home—for McGuire.”

About here jockey Duffy’s face grew brick red. Over his shoulder he saw Prince Wang, still eluding pursuit, and the black horse and the black boy. If they could catch Wang, and the black should fall—and why should Duffy oblige a petty larcenist like McGuire? These considerations whirled in Duffy’s brain. There in front of him was the last jump. Jockey Duffy ducked his head, and stole a look behind him. Four men were carrying McGuire from the track toward the paddock.

“Stall, you burglar!” thought Duffy. “I’ll give you something that will make you sick. Now, what’s your ticket worth?”

Arabi rose lightly to the last barrier, and Jockey Duffy, also a finished actor, rose with him—too far. As Arabi’s hoofs struck turf again Duffy pitched forward upon the horse’s neck, clung desperately for a few seconds, and then slipped easily to the ground.

“And I guess that’ll hold you for a while!” he said to himself. “Go cash your ticket now.”

Sidney Albert Johnson, riding Isaiah cautiously, with a prayer for each jump, heard the deep roar from the grand stand which marked the concluding incident. Then he saw Arabi, with empty saddle, careening down the course.

“My Lawd!” breathed Sidney Albert. “Come on, you black hoss—for all the money! For all the money! Put your feet to the ground, and come on!”

For the first time in the race, Sidney Albert sat down on Isaiah, and began to ride him.

“Old man,” yelled Butch Flynn, “you win! You win!”

Old Man Curry swallowed his heart when Isaiah took the last jump in safety, and through a mist which nearly blinded him he saw Sidney Albert draw his whip for a whirlwind finish. The grand stand yelled with laughter as the lone black horse crossed the line, ridden out to the last inch.

A little later Old Man Curry climbed the steps to the judges’ stand. Three gentlemen, their faces set and stern, desired to question him. Later they would interview Duffy and McGuire.

“Mr. Curry,” said the presiding judge, a tall Kentuckian of distinguished appearance and soldierly bearing, “we didn’t like the looks of that jumping race a little bit. No, suh. So we thought we’d talk to you about it. Mr. Curry, did you—bet on your horse to-day?”

“Why, yes, judge,” said Isaiah’s owner slowly. “I bet quite some money on him.” He put his hand into his pocket, and brought out a fistful of tickets. The judges glanced at them hastily.

“All to win, I see,” said the Kentuckian; “and to beat good horses. Why?”

“judge,” said Old Man Curry earnestly, “I bet to win because I thought my Isaiah horse had a right nice chance to come home in front. That’s the only reason I know. He’s a good hoss, judge, and—”

“Certainly,” said the tall judge impatiently. “But doesn’t it strike you as suspicious that both the boys on the short-priced horses should fall off to let you win?”

“Yes,” put in another judge, “we’d like to know what you think about that?”

“What do I think?” repeated Old Man Curry, turning his slouch hat in his hands. “Why, gentlemen, it looked to me like the hand of Providence!”

The judges quite naturally took very little stock in the hand-of-Providence theory, so they sent for and examined the bookmakers’ sheets on the jumping race, and what they found there led them still deeper into darkness. Next they sought information as to Old Man Curry’s record, and the record of the right nice horse, Isaiah, and there they found nothing to nourish their suspicions. Then they cross-questioned Sidney Albert Johnson, and found their efforts vain and fruitless. Last of all, an assistant judge gave McGuire and Duffy a miserable half hour, and returned to the stand shaking his head. Those scalawags, case-hardened by experience, fearing neither man nor his brief authority, stood pat; and the bookmakers’ sheets furnished no clew to the mystery so far as Duffy and McGuire were concerned.

The tall judge summed up in short sentences.

“Gentlemen,” said he, “we have examined the sheets from the betting ring. They show that Mr. Curry was the only man who bet on Isaiah to win. If these other owners were in cahoots with him, they would have hammered that price to death. If McGuire and Duffy had been betting on this long shot we should have found the record of it here. No question but those two rapscallions were up to something, gentlemen, but what was it? I give it up.”

“I guess,” said one of the assistant judges, with a grin, “the old man was about right when he said it was the hand of Providence.”

“Hm-m!” said the Kentuckian thoughtfully. “Providence better not mix up in any more jumping races at this track, or somebody will get himself ruled off for life.”

The one thing the judges missed was the bare-knuckle fight that evening between Duffy and McGuire. The referee said that it was a draw.

For Brodie’s benefit

Published in Popular Magazine, 1916.

Big Tom O’connor strolled into Shaughnessy’s place about ten minutes after the proprietor finished decorating the west wall of the establishment with his most recently acquired work of art, the same being a full-length, life-size portrait of Robert Emmet Brodie, heavy-weight, done in oils and also to a turn. That the artist had never seen his victim might possibly be regarded in the light of a mitigating circumstance; at any rate, he had drawn Brodie’s classic outlines from a half tone in a pink illustrated weekly, and his inspiration from a quart bottle kindly furnished by Shaughnessy. The result of these two drawings caused Tom O’Connor to gasp and pass his hand before his eyes.

“And me off the hard stuff for a week!” said Big Tom. “What have you there, Denny? Is it a fighter or is it a Spanish omelet?”

“Have yer joke, Tom,” responded Shaughnessy, with a nervous grin, for Big Tom’s jokes were often akin to violence. “Have yer joke, lad. Ye will, annyhow, but I take it hard ye do not recognize Bob Brodie when ye see him on the wall.”

“Bob Brodie!” howled O’Connor. “Brodie? And what right has he got to be hangin’ on a wall, I’d like to know? Brodie! A great, big four-flushin’ piece of cheese like him! Who did he ever lick?”

“He put away a lot of them boys in the East,” said Shaughnessy. “Have a drink, Tom?”

O’Connor waved away this friendly invitation.

“Yeh, he put away a lot of dubs,” growled Big Tom, eying the work of art truculently. “Dubs, all dubs. Brodie never licked a good man in his life, and you know it. Why, he can’t even lick me!”

“Ah, well,” said Shaughnessy, wisely avoiding the personal note in the argument, “maybe it ain’t so much what he has done as what he’s goin’ to do.”

“You’re whistlin’!” remarked O’Connor shortly. “And I’m the lad can tell you what he’s goin’ to do. He’s comin’ down off that wall. He’s comin’ down if I have to pull him down!”

“Now, Tom, don’t be gettin’ rough,” pleaded Shaughnessy, who was a small man, and informed of his weak heart. “Don’t be startin’ anything in here, there’s a good—”

“He’s comin’ down, I tell you!” repeated O’Connor, in tones which reached the street. “Only a champion of the world has got a right to be in a gold frame, with a brass plate under him. Will you take him down yourself, or—”

Shaughnessy squeaked and made a dash for the street door to summon assistance, but Big Tom executed a surprisingly swift flank movement and cut him off, herding the terrified proprietor to the rear of the saloon, where he took refuge among the empty beer kegs. This little matter attended to, the censor of art turned his attention to the offending portrait. He dragged it from the wall and balanced it against a table.

Plainly O’Connor’s first impulse was to kick several holes in the canvas, but as he stood facing the life-size and shrimp-pink prize representation of a fighter, a change came over his mood, and his lip curled in scornful amusement. With mocking deliberation Big Tom copied the painted pose, left hand advanced, right arm drawn back, a thunderbolt in reserve. He feinted and skipped and side—stepped, now creeping up on the portrait, now retreating as from an attack, and his clumsy left jabs grazed Brodie’s pink nose. While thus employed, he addressed the portrait, as follows:

“Huh! Think you’re a whale of a feller, eh? Think you’re a fighter, don’t you? Been talkin’ about fightin’ the heavyweight champ, ain’t you, hey? You—make—me—sick! They tell me you’re clever with your mitts—but I’m givin’ you a tip. Lay off of me, Brodie! Yes, lay off of me, you big bum—because if I ever git you in a barroom, an’ nobody to yell ‘Foul’ or call time, I’ll beat you to death! Yes, that’s what I said—to death! I’ll lick you the same as I used to lick you when we was kids in school. Maybe I couldn’t do it in a ring—but in a barroom! Why, listen to me, you ugly man’s dog—in a barroom—I’d murder you alive! Think not, hey? Well, smell of this, once!”

Having talked himself into a state of mind demanding more physical expression than may be found in futile left jabs, Big Tom feinted twice in rapid succession, and, stepping in, let fly with the heavy artillery. His right fist shot forward, with two hundred pounds of O’Connor behind it, full into the painted countenance of Robert Emmet Brodie. There followed a dull thump, a splitting, tearing crash, a wail from the wretched Shaughnessy, dodging among the empty beer kegs, and Big Tom O’Connor strode out into the street, blowing upon his knuckles. The canvas had been reënforced with a backing of pine boards.

Shaughnessy’s next customer found him mourning over the life-size portrait of a fighter without a face.

“Save us from harm!” ejaculated Mr. Casey, peering at the ruin. “Has the Germans been usin’ that thing for a target, or what? An’ whose picture was it before the bombardment come off?”

“It was Bob Brodie’s,” replied Shaughnessy.

Mr. Casey sucked in his breath with a cluckiug noise.

“An’ a grand likeness!” said he. “The legs is done fine. You could almost tell ’em annywhere. Who busted him?”

“Tom O’Connor took a punch at it just for meanness,” said Shaughnessy bitterly. “He was showin’ me how he could lick Brodie—in a barroom.”

Mr. Casey brightened visibly.

“Has Tom got a spite agin’ Brodie?” he asked.

“Look at what he done to the oil paintin’ an’ ask me that!”

“But what for?” persisted Casey.

“How should I know? By what I could make out, he used to lick Brodie when they was kids in school.”

“Ah, he did that!” chuckled Mr. Casey. “An’ like as not, he’s sore because he can’t lick him now. It makes him mad to be stickin’ in the gas house when Brodie’s gone up in the world! What you goin’ to do about it?”

“I was thinkin’ I might have him pinched,” said Shaughnessy thoughtfully, as he surveyed the headless gladiator.

“No,” said Casey, “don’t do that. They would only let him go with a small fine, an’ then some night when he’s got a skate on he’ll come in here an’ move the saloon out into the alley. There’s a better way.”

“Tell it to me.”

“Put the picture in the back room, just as it is. Jerry Brodie has had a letter from Bob, an’ he’s comin’ home for a visit. When he gets here, we’ll show him the insult that has been done on him. He’ll go out—”

“An’ knock the face off the big bully!” chirped Shaughnessy. “Oho, but that’ll be better than havin’ him pinched, an’ when they come together—may I be there to see!”

“I’m wonderin’,” mused the crafty Casey, “I’m wonderin’ if there ain’t a way to fix it so’s we can all be there.”

Two

The prophet, we are told on the very best of authority, has no honor in his own country, and frequently the artist finds that the same rule applies in his case. The actor, returning from metropolitan triumphs, sometimes encounters a black frost in the town which remembers him only as Old Man Jones’ boy Willie; the prima donna has trouble in pleasing the critics who sang with her in the old church choir; the author—oh, well, an author gets no credit anywhere and pays cash or goes without—but the home-coming gladiator, ah, here we have one hero who is sure of an admiring populace!

For two days Robert Emmet Brodie did little else but shake warm, kindly hands and listen to words of praise. He was a large, overdressed, bejeweled, lop-eared young man with a deep dent where the bridge of his nose should have been, and he spoke briefly, if at all out of the extreme corner of his mouth. Somewhere on his travels he had acquired the art of listening without visible embarrassment to middle-aged men who wished to tell him how much he reminded them of the great and only John Lawrence Sullivan in his prime. It is only fair to Brodie to state that he usually dissented from this opinion, in manner as follows:

“Listen to me, guy. You’re way off there—way off. I seen a picture of John L. when I was a kid, an’ he had a mustache. You don’t see no mustache on me, do you? And that ain’t the only difference, either. From what they tell me, Sullivan was a rough, knock-’em-dead slugger—no science, no fancy stuff, no cleverness, nothin’ but the big wallop in the belly or on the jawr, an’ good night. I don’t see where you git that stuff ’bout me bein’ like him. Now, I ain’t that kind of a fighter at all. I box ’em, I do; I jab the faces off of ’em, an’ then—wham!”

From Robert Emmet’s unwillingness to be compared with john L. Sullivan the reader will deduce at least one deduction—at least, we hope so. It will save us the trouble of saying that under no circumstances would Robert Emmet ever become extremely bored with himself. He lorded it over the young men of his home town, and, in conversation with his manager, referred to them as “hicks” and “jaspers.” The young men enjoyed his patronizing manner and continued to feed his vanity until Mr. Brodie came near the bursting point.

On the evening of the second day it suited him to favor Denny Shaughnessy’s saloon with a visit. Robert Emmet brought his Greek chorus with him, and the silver dollar which he slammed on the bar bounded at least two feet into the air.

“See what everybody’ll have to take!” ordered Brodie. “Let ’em all in on it, Denny, an’ git in yourself.”

Now, one of those who was let in on it was Casey, who edged his way to Brodie’s side. “We got something in the back room to show you, Bob,” said he, with an ingratiating smile. “An oil painting, ain’t we, Denny?”

“We have so,” answered the proprietor.

Robert Emmet yawned ostentatiously, openly, as openly as the end of the Hoosac Tunnel.

“I seen a lot of them things when I was East,” said he. “Oil paintings is old stuff to me.”

“Come over here a minute,” said Casey, tugging at Robert Emmet’s sleeve. “Come over here an’ listen. This ain’t the kind of an oil paintin’ ye think it is at all.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “It’s a paintin’ of you, Bob!”

“Eh! What?” exclaimed Brodie, beginning to show signs of interest. “Who done it?”

“Ye mean who painted it?” asked Casey, and Robert Emmet nodded.

“It ain’t so much a question of who done it,” explained Casey, “as who done something to it. A dirty, black shame an’ a disgrace. Come on an’ I’ll show it to ye. No, never mind callin’ the gang, Bob. ’Tis a private exhibition—for reasons we got.”

His curiosity roused, Robert Emmet entered a back room, and the language which burst from his lips when he beheld the desecration of art was all that Casey had hoped for—and more.

“Accident?” chirped Shaughnessy, from the doorway. “Ye can bet your sweet life it wasn’t an accident! It was done a-purpose. A friend of yours come in here one day, just after I hung it on the wall, an’ he put a right swing through it—if ye call that an accident!”

“Who was it?” demanded Brodie. “Tell me his name, an’ I’ll beat him to a pulp! I’ll lick him within an inch of his life!”

“It was Thomas O’Connor—Big Tom,” said Casey. “An’ what was it he said about Bob when he done it, Shaughnessy?”

“He said ye never licked a good man, an’ never will. He said he used to make ye quit when he was a kid an’ he could do it anny time. He said ye always had a streak as wide as the Mississippi River, an’—”

“He said enough,” interrupted Robert Emmet, from the extreme corner of his mouth. “He said a-plenty. Big Tom, hey? So he done that to me picture? Humph! I ain’t seen him yet. Where does he keep himself?”

“Oh, he’s round about somewheres,” answered Casey.

“Likely stayin’ out of yer way,” supplemented Shaughnessy.

“But where does he hang out? Where can I find the big bum?”

“Well, this was the way we figured it all out,” explained the diplomatic Casey. “Suppose ye ketch him in a saloon an’ tear his block off. The bartender will have a treat, but the rest of us’ll miss it. Suppose ye pile into him on the street. Only them that happens to be takin’ a walk will see the show. Now, what ought to happen to Tom O’Connor is a public lickin’—the more public the better. Now, this is what we was thinkin’ of: next Friday night the boys is goin’ to pull off a benefit for ye down to Freeman’s Hall.”

“Yeh,” growled Brodie shortly. “I know. Go on.”

“We was goin’ to have some boxin’ on the program,” continued Casey, “an’ we thought it would be just the ticket to rib O’Connor up to go on an’ spar four rounds with ye.”

“Make it six!” interrupted Brodie, an eager sparkle in his eye. “Gimme time to cut him up till his own mother wouldn’t know him. I’ll jab his face to ribbons an’ then knock him out!”

“Well, then, six rounds. Ye can act friendly when ye meet him, an’ he’ll never suspect there’s annything doin’ in the way of a job. Then, with the whole town lookin’ on, ye can play even for this here outrage.”

“Yes,” said Shaughnessy, “give him a lovely trimmin’ an’ let him guess why.”

“It listens good enough,” said Robert Emmet, with deep corrugations on his brow, which, had he the gray material necessary, would have indicated thought. “It sounds all right, but how do you know this big bum will fall for it? Chances are he ain’t lookin’ for even a friendly bout with a real scrapper.”

“Don’t be worryin’ on that score,” said Shaughnessy. “The joke of it is, Bob, O’Connor really thinks he can lick ye.”

Brodie laughed uproariously.

“Plenty more of ’em have had the same notion!” said he. “I knocked it out of their fool heads in jig time. Now, here’s the frame—up. I’ll meet Tom and I won’t let on that I’m sore. I’ll even let him bluff me a little if he wants to. Then, Casey, you go to him an’ tell him you can fix it for him to get on with me at the benefit. Tell him I’m all out of trainin’ an’ he’ll have to promise not to tear into me rough. He’ll eat that up, and when I get him into the ring—well, say!” Robert Emmet completed the sentence with a very effective bit of pantomime, consisting of three left jabs and an annihilating right cross which, placed in the right spot, would have jarred the entire O’Connor family for generations.

The next day Casey, the fixer, called at the gas works and found Big Tom O’Connor raking coke out of the furnace.

“Your pal Bob Brodie is back in town,” said Casey, after remarking on the state of the weather.

“So I’ve just heard,” said O’Connor gruffly.

“I was wonderin’ if I could git ye to do something for him.”

Big Tom rose, wiped his grimy hands on his stiff shock of hair, and essayed a bit of shadow boxing, mostly composed of giant swings. When satisfied that his right arm was in working trim, he tried his right leg, and went through the motions of “putting the boots” to a fallen foe.

“Will I do something for him?” he repeated, breathing hard from his exertions. “With all the pleasure in life! Where is the big bum keepin’ himself?”

Casey seemed astonished.

“Why, I thought you boys was friends!” said he.

Big Tom tossed his forelock out of his eyes and his lower lip protruded.

“If I’m a friend to that stiff, he better pray never to have an enemy,” said he.

“But couldn’t you forget that for a while?” asked Casey.

“When I’m down among the daisies, maybe. Not till then.”

“Too bad,” said Casey, sighing. “We all thought you’d be just the man.”

“The man for what?”

“Why, the boys are givin’ Brodie a benefit next Friday night at Freeman’s Hall—”

“The big bum don’t need no benefit,” interrupted O’Connor. “He’s big enough to work.”

“Well, be that as it may, Tom, we want a man to go on an’ spar with him. Six rounds.”

“Yeh?”

“A man that won’t be too rough.”

“What’s the idea?”

“Well, to tell ye the trut’, Bob ain’t in trainin’ an’ he’s kind of soft—no wind to speak of. He’d want to go kind o’ easy. Now, if ye could forget this ill will, ye’d be doin’ Bob a favor, an’ the committee a favor, an’ everybody a favor.”

“I’d rather have it out with him in a barroom,” said Tom.

“Man, ye can do that afterward!” cried Casey.

“You’re sure he ain’t just wantin’ to show me up?”

“I tell ye, he don’t want to show anybody up! He ain’t able.”

“That’s different again,” said Big Tom thoughtfully. “I’ll take a chance.”

“Remember now,” said Casey, as he took his leave, “no rough stuff. It’s a benefit.”

“Yeh,” said Big Tom. But to himself he said: “I’ll benefit him, the big bum! I’ll benefit him till he hollers for the police!”

And when Robert Emmet Brodie heard that the despoiler of art was willing to crawl through the ropes with him, he smiled a smile which threatened to engulf his lopped ears, and advised all his friends to secure front seats.

Three

The Brodie Benefit, judging by the attendance, promised to be a brilliant success, for Freeman’s Hall was crowded long before the opening number on the program, the overture from “William Tell,” was executed in cold blood by the local orchestra. Fully half the spectators were women, and the star of the evening grinned as he looked through the peephole in the curtain.

“So much the better,” said Brodie to Isaac Marx, his manager.

“Better leave the tea-lead out of the bandages then,” advised Isaac. “Women don’t like the sight of blood, and when you start cutting him up with that left hand they’ll make trouble.”

“They got no business here, then,” said Brodie. “The tea-lead goes, and I only wish I could slip a horseshoe in the right mitt!”

“You’re bloodthirsty to-night,” said Isaac.

“This big tramp thinks he can lick me,” said Robert Emmet, “an’ I’m goin’ to change his notions if I have to kill him to do it.”

An outsider with knowledge of ring-craft would have been amazed could he have peeped into two dressing rooms and seen the preparations being made for this friendly, six-round sparring bout for points. He might even have thought that mutilation and murder were among the points desired, for in one dressing room Isaac Marx was binding adhesive tape about Brodie’s left hand, and putting a strip of tea-lead under each wrapping. Now, a left jab, reënforced by a sufficient amount of tea-lead, will gash the human countenance even through a heavy boxing glove—and it was Brodie’s intention to wear the lightest gloves permitted by law. In another dressing room “Red Eddie” O’Day, retired bantamweight boxer and bosom friend of the ponderous O’Connor, was also busy with bandages, but he scorned anything as coarse and brutal as tea-lead—oh, my, yes! He dipped inch-wide strips of cloth into a bowl containing a pasty, white substance, and bound them about O’Connor’s hands. The soft, wet covering thus secured looked innocent enough, and would remain innocent until the plaster of Paris had time to harden, when the soft bandage would become a deadly weapon. Needless to say, the only witnesses to these activities have been mentioned.

The gladiators met in the wings shortly before going on the stage. They did not shake hands, probably because of the boxing gloves, but Robert Emmet smiled in a very friendly fashion.

“You’re lookin’ fit, big feller,” said he, his glance taking in the massive details of O’Connor’s undraped figure.

“Ah-r-r!” growled Tom, wishing he had a turkey-red bath robe like Brodie’s.

“Don’t be scared of the crowd,” continned Robert Emmet patronizingly. “Don’t pay no ‘tention to the audience at all.”

“Huh!” snorted Big Tom, tossing his heavy forelock.

“And whatever you do, don’t get mad an’ start roughin’ it.”

It was at this point that Tom grinned, and five minutes later he was blinking at the footlights and hearing himself mentioned by Casey, the official announcer, as “Big Tom O’Connor, the pride of the gas house.” There was-a thin sputter of applause, for Tom was no public idol, and he allowed Red Ed-die to lead him to his corner, where he sat down to wait for Brodie.

Robert Emmet had a fair sense of the fitness of things. He knew that a certain amount of delay whets the public appetite; too much delay leads to impatient demonstrations. He timed his entrance to the exact second and marched upon the stage with a flourish of the tail of his turkey-red bath robe. The house rose at him, and he bowed three times, but refused to respond to the loud yells for a speech. Casey introduced him as the man who needed no introduction—the next heavyweight champion of the world, and Big Tom snorted in his corner.

Brodie tossed off his bath robe and skipped lightly about the ring, pivoting on his toes and shooting tentative left jabs into the air. Big Tom watched this display of agility with a curling lip.

“Pipe the big stiff showin’ off!” he whispered to O’Day.

“He ain’t showin’ off,” answered O’Day. “He’s testin’ the floor.”

“He’ll test it with his head when I git a smash at his jaw,” said Big Tom.

Butch Dillon, the referee, motioned the men to the middle of the ring and delivered his instructions, with a special clause for O’Connor. Butch had not been let in on the secret.

“You wanna box nice now, Tom,” said he warningly. “Remember, they’s ladies present!”

“Sure!” grunted O’Connor, rolling his eyes toward the footlights. “Sure, Butch!”

Dillon then took the referee’s privilege and made the final announcement, dwelling at length upon the friendliness of the bout and mentioning the Marquis of Queensberry in complimentary terms. Big Tom listened to this in his corner, gloves on his hips. Red Eddie whispered in his ear:

“Right off the reel now, big guy! Right off the reel! Beat him to the punch an’ you’ve got him!”

As the gong clanged Big Tom walked slowly to the middle of the ring, his right hand carried carelessly at his side. Now, according to custom, all friendly bouts for points, and many bouts which are not friendly, begin with a handshake, but as Robert Emmet advanced he noted the position of O’Connor’s right hand and read violence in his eyes.

“He thinks he can sneak one over, the big stiff!” thought Robert Emmet. “If that’s his notion—”

Thus it happened that the friendly bout for points began with two terrific right-hand blows, delivered simultaneously. Robert Emmet’s uppercut crashed against O’Connor’s chin, but Robert Emmet did not duck his head soon enough to avoid the plaster of Paris entirely, and Big Tom’s sturdy haymaker landed full on Brodie’s ear. If it had found a spot only two inches lower the entertainment would have been jolted to an abrupt close; as it was, the first five seconds of this friendly bout found both principals on the floor—Brodie on his face near the ropes, and O’Connor on his haunches in the middle of the ring, slightly puzzled as to how he got there.

Butch Dillon did not know how to meet such an emergency or which man to favor with the count, and, in his excitement, he made a serious error. He rushed over to O’Connor and shook his fist at him.

“That ain’t boxin’ for points!” he yelled. “What you tryin’ to do—kill somebody?”

Now, no man should argue with an Irishman named O’Connor who has been knocked down by a trick which he hoped to practice himself. Big Tom rose to his feet and cuffed Dillon soundly with his open glove, knocking him flat. A tremendous uproar came from the audience, and there was no note of commendation in it. Tom started for the ropes with a hazy idea of explaining his position, but on the way he encountered a wild-eyed human thunderbolt, which in sane moments passed for Robert Emmet Brodie. The tea-leaded left caught him fairly on the bridge of his nose, and Big Tom began to fight.

Some who were in the front of the house remember that women fainted and strong men raced up and down the aisles, whooping deliriously. A very few recall that Butch Dillon found his feet and tried to force his way between the infuriated gladiators, and Butch’s memories of the evening ended abruptly at that point. None can tell who fathered the cruel stroke which knocked him headfirst through the ropes and out into the orchestra pit, where he put his right shoulder through the bull fiddle. Above the shrill screams of hysterical women and the shouts of excited men, Big Tom heard one voice—that of his second and adviser, Red Eddie O’Day:

“Tear into um, boy! Don’t let um get set! On toppa him alla time, Tom! Thassa stuff!”

And in the midst of all this riot and turmoil and clamor Robert Emmet Brodie and Thomas Martin O’Connor devoted themselves each to the other with an increasing devotion. There had been a referee, there had been certain rules of combat, perhaps even ethics, but these they cast into the discard. There was still a gong, which clanged wildly under the trembling hand of Isaac Marx, but they paid not the slightest attention to it. They had forgotten the signal to cease firing.

It is a fact that when fighters lose their heads they forget the left hand and the science its use demands, employing it, if at all, as a flail. Brodie and O’Connor stood toe to toe in the middle of the ring and battered each other with wild swings. Once the plaster of paris connected solidly with the chin and Brodie dropped to the floor, but was up again before O’Connor could kick him in the face. Once Big Tom went reeling to the ropes, but when Robert Emmet rushed after him, he stepped squarely into a pile—driving right swing which had no particular aim, and for that reason caught Brodie in the pit of the stomach and made him very sick for a few seconds.

“Downstairs, Tom! The belly! The belly!” shrieked O’Day, but O’Connor was past advice, past everything but the red desire for slaughter, so, instead of following up an advantage, he plastered Robert Emmet heavily about the head until he ducked his jaws below his shoulders and so weathered the storm.

Big Tom’s face suffered terribly, but he fought doggedly on with his left eye closed to a blue slit, and Brodie was unable to find a vulnerable spot, though he found all the others and left his autograph upon them.

Nobody knows how long that first round lasted; upon that subject the official timekeeper is dumb. To Robert Emmet it seemed an eternity; he was used to three minutes of fighting and one minute of rest. Tom O’Connor was hardened to barroom brawls with no call of “Time!” but he found this encounter quite long enough for his liking. Robert Emmet began to give ground; O’Connor crowded him to the ropes and Brodie clinched. O’Connor lowered his head and drove short rights and lefts crashing into unprotected territory below the breastbone. He literally hammered Brodie out of the clinch, and for a second the men stood facing each other, each with the right hand poised. It was the last shot in Robert Emmet’s locker, and he knew it. As his eye caught the first movement of O’Connor’s fist, he threw every remaining ounce of vitality into an attempt to beat him to the punch. So intent was he on sending his own blow home that he made not the slightest attempt to protect himself in the exchange.

Six seconds later Tom O’Connor awoke from a troubled dream and lifted his battered face from the canvas. As if from a great distance, he heard men yelling and women screaming. Blinking his one undamaged eye, he looked about for Brodie and discovered a human leg tangled with his arms. His first impression was that the leg belonged to him. Slowly he turned his head, and there, beside him on the canvas, a thousand fathoms deep in merciful oblivion, was Robert Emmet Brodie, the next heavyweight champion of the world, for the present unavoidably delayed.

Big Tom O’Connor hoisted himself to his feet and stood erect, swaying unsteadily. He looked at Brodie again, oddly enough without any desire to kick him. For once in his life Tom O’Connor had had all the fighting he wanted—perhaps more than he really needed. His face felt that way, at least. He helped several men to carry the unconscious Brodie to his corner, and then heaved himself through the ropes and disappeared.

While Red Eddie was ministering to his battler the door of the dressing room opened and Isaac Marx looked in.

“I’ll make you a business proposition,” said he, with commendable brevity. “Let me be your manager, and I’ll get you more coin that you ever saw. You can fill the dates I had fixed up for Brodie.”

“Let Brodie fill his own dates,” mumbled Big Tom through his swollen lips.

“He can’t,” said Marx. “That last punch you took at him busted his jaw like an eggshell. Maybe he won’t never be no good again.”

Big Tom O’Connor stared at Marx for several seconds. Then he began to laugh, rocking himself back and forth in his chair.

“Ho, ho!” he chuckled. “I guess I done what I started out to do, at that! Ho, ho!”

“And what did you start out to do?” asked Marx.

“I wanted to fix this big bum so he’d need a benefit, and I guess I done it!”

“Correct as hell!” said Marx. “But how about this proposition I made you?”

“Forget it!” said O’Connor. “I got a steady job down to the gas house!”

Tales of the Midnight Club

The Midnight Club is the house of peace and harmony. It is the place where actors of rival companies meet and pass each other judicious compliments; it is the place where reporters on rival papers bury their hammers and forget to refer with proper pride to their past scoops; it is the neutral ground where all good men are good friends. There is a rule which provides that the man who starts any unpleasantness loses ten numbers and must buy the next two rounds, but this rule has never been enforced, because it has never been broken.

Mr. Blackwood, of the Belasco, dropped in the other night just in time to hear Thomas Oberle close a learned dissertation on mind reading, thought transference and other occult subjects.

“And that’s why I know there’s no fake about it,” said Thomas, absent-mindedly pouring half a bottle of tomato catsup on the white cat’s back. The outraged feline immediately leaped into MacVicars’ lap and shook himself violently, whereat the Irish giant turned a back flip in a vain endeavor to save his new serge suit. A new suit is no joke with Mr. McVicars, for the tailors measure him twice and charge him accordingly.

After Mr. Oberle had been fined one round of Pilsener for this atrocity and Alphonse had removed a fair half of the sticky mess from MacVicars’ waistcoat, the culprit proceeded:

“This mind reader was the talk of Washington—he had ’em all buffaloed! He answered all our sealed questions, called us out by name and things like that, you know. He came from India, but he had an English name—Sir—Sir—”

“Sir Russell Dequi,” suggested Mr. Blackwood, quietly.

“Now, how in the deuce did you know that?” sputtered Tommy excitedly. “Did you know him?”

“A little over seven thousand dollars worth,” grinned Belasco’s manager. “I ought to know him. I put him in the business.”

“Mr. Chairman!” bawled Oberle, rising and addressing the still fuming MacVicars. “I move that Mr. Blackwood tell us the true story of the Simla seances!”

The motion was seconded with a rush and carried with a roar, and after Oberle had been fined one more round on general principles and another one for taking unwarranted liberties with the house cat, Mr. Blackwood lighted a nine-inch perfecto and proceeded:

“About five years ago I was in Washington ahead of a show—”

“How much ahead?” innocently asked Mestayer, the child wonder.

For this bit of impertinence Harry was justly fined two oyster stews and a package of cigarettes.

“As I was saying,” continued Mr. Blackwood, “I was in Washington ahead of a very bum comedy company. They stranded in Baltimore, and though nominally ahead of them, I found myself behind, if you understand me. I needed the money.

“Now Washington is the greatest place in the world for fakes of every kind—fake palmists, bum mind readers and phony psychists. They’re everywhere. As I was walking down the street one day wondering how long I could stall my landlord, I saw a sign which said that the future would be revealed and sealed questions answered for twenty-five cents. Now it struck me that I would be willing to give a quarter to see my finish, and I went in. I wrote my question all right, sealed it, and then the man came back into the room, smote his forehead with the palm of his hand and told me exactly what I had written. I had been looking for some mirror arrangement or other, but there was nothing of that kind in sight, and I was a trifle dazed.

“I had some talk with the man, whose name was Simmons—a long thin, cadaverous chap with a seldom-looking black mustache. I found out afterward that he used to beat his wife, but that’s a detail. I said to him. ‘You’ve got a good money-making graft here—why don’t you put it on the stage? Why don’t you get hundreds instead of quarters?’

“Simmons pulled me into the back room and talked a blue streak. That was the very idea he had been figuring on for months, only he didn’t know how to go about it. He showed me how the whole business was worked—stuffed bull’s head on the wall—bull’s eyes were the biggest magnifying glasses you ever saw in your life—made a sheet of paper six feet away look as big as a house. Simmons just ducked into the other room, and while you were writing your question on the one table in the reception room, he was on a step ladder with his head poked through into that bull’s head, reading off every letter as it was put down.

“Simmons was crazy to stage that act, and as he was a loose, free talker, I made up my mind to take a chance. Joe Luckett had the Columbia theater on F Street, and I cracked the scheme to him. Joe had been putting on a lot of rummy concerts Sunday nights, and I showed him where we could all make a little money. I booked my mind reader for a week from Sunday and began to get busy. I had to furnish the paper, and I finally found an old darkey with a foot press who was willing to wait a week for the money. He printed me about a million hand bills advertising Sir Russell Dequi, the White Mahatma, the Adept of the Himalayas, the Wonder of the Century.

“Say, we just painted Washington with those bills. I wasn’t a newspaper man once for nothing, and of all of the boosting you ever saw, those posters were the limit. Sir Russell Dequi in his great Simla Seances—thanks to Kipling, a lot of people knew where Simla was, and were interested right away—Sir Russell Dequi, a titled English gentleman, famed as the most adept of the age, would repeat his old world triumphs before a cultured Washington audience. He would reveal the past, explain the present and foretell the future. He would answer sealed questions, and that there might be no deception—that last was in big type, no deception—people were urged to write their questions at home and bring them sealed to the theater. He would answer all questions relating to love, matrimony, business, lost treasure, reveal the whereabouts of missing ones, and everything else I could think of at the time.

“That was a great bill, and the language of it would have turned a Pike barker green with envy. Then, just to make the play strong again, I wound up with press notices from London, Paris, Madrid, Vienna, Hong Kong and other towns. I had one from the Calcutta Mail and another from the Simla Advertiser, boosting Sir Russell as the most wonderful adept in the world. I wrote ’em all in a hall bedroom in Washington—that’s what metropolitan journalism did for me, gentlemen.

“Well, the first night the theater was jammed to the roof—those handbills did the trick. We had a nice program, lecture by the Professor—we always called Simmons that—then a lot of sleight of hand tricks which he told the people he had learned from the Yogis up at the monasteries in Thibet—! I think he called ’em Yogis, but never mind that, it was a good spiel, anyway—and then the answering of sealed questions. Honest, that man Simmons was a gold mine! He had more useless information in him than forty encyclopedias and the way he shot the bull was a wonder! He sent that crowd home talking in whispers, and every one of them swearing to come back the next Sunday night.

“How did he do it? The easiest thing in the world. He sat on a small elevated platform in the middle of the stage—no draperies, no curtains, no deception anywhere. The chair was a plain wooden one so there could be no deception. We courted investigation on that no deception gag—in fact, we courted it so strong that nobody seemed to want to investigate. That chair was just like all other chairs except that the back of one of the legs was hollowed out and a simple little tin tube ran up into the seat and from there to the top of one of the arms. The rest of that tube went through the stage floor into the basement, and ended in a big phonograph horn suspended over a table.

“Simmons wore the yellow robes of the Indian Fakir and on his head he had a smashing big yellow turban. It hid him completely with the exception of his eyes, nose and mouth, and that was providential because he had a couple of phonograph clips in his ears with a rubber tube running down the back of his neck and from there down his right sleeve to wrist. When he sat down, he just rested one hand naturally on the arm of the chair, poked the rubber tube into the end of the tin one and then he was ready to hear from the other world.

“How did he get the questions? Easy again. When the Professor called for volunteers to collect the sealed envelopes, four of our boosters jumped up in the front of the house and got busy. They came down the aisles toward the back of the house and at the head of each aisle another booster was stationed. These fellows were always in evening dress, with their overcoats over their arms. Inside their hats, they had a hundred envelopes or so, all of them sealed and addressed, but there was nothing in them. The collectors would stop an instant as if to pick up another envelope, the transfer would be made, and then the collectors would carry a lot of dead ones up on the stage and put them in the wicker basket on the table, where they were in plain view of the audience every minute of the time. No deception again, you see.

“While the Professor was handing out the Simla talk, Joe Luckett and I were down in the cellar opening those envelopes and planning what talk we would shoot upstairs to his nibs in the chair.

“I’ll never forget a question we got that first night. It said, ‘Where is the purest water in Washington found?’ and it was signed ‘Dr. Barton.’ I wanted to throw that one out, but Luckett, who had lived in Washington all his life and knew that town like a cat knows a back fence, wouldn’t hear of it.

“‘There’s a well up by the Convention Hall where the water is said to be absolutely pure,’ said he. ‘We’ll take a chance.’ Then he ‘phoned to the professor that the water question was a good one and for him to play it up to beat the band. I sneaked upstairs to watch him. I wish you could have heard Simmons—he was immense.

“‘I receive the impression,’ said he, ‘that Dr. Barton is present. Will you please stand up, doctor? Thank you.’ The Doctor stood there and looked foolish and wondered what was coming next.

“‘Unless I am mistaken, Doctor, your question is about water is it not? Ah, I thought so. You wish to know, as near as I can make out, where the purest water in Washington is to be found? Ah, yes, quite so.’

“And then that fakir Simmons tore off a rambling long-winded spiel about different springs, Carlsbad, Saratoga, every spring you’ve ever heard of, and he knew just about enough to get away with the bluff. But he wound up strong: ‘The purest water in Washington, Doctor, is in a well near Convention Hall on K Street!’

“Dr. Barton got red in the face and climbed up on his chair. ‘This is marvelous!’ he roared, ‘Marvelous! The Professor is absolutely right!’

“Now wasn’t it lucky that Luckett knew about that spring?

“One woman wanted to know if she was to marry again. Luckett looked at the signature and thought a minute. Then he grabbed the tin horn and began to talk.

“‘Here’s a beaut, Simmons! Mrs. Opdyke wants to know if she will marry again. She had a pretty warm divorce suit about six years ago. Here are the details.’ And when the Professor began to receive revelations about that divorce suit, Mrs. Opdyke jumped up and ran screaming from the house. Oh, it made a sensation, I tell you!

“For six Sundays we packed the Columbia every time. Raised the price on them after the second Sunday, but it was ‘Standing Room Only’ every time. The papers cut in on it and interviewed Sir Russell Dequi until he was black in the face. He talked mind currents and special revelation until the reporters were dizzy and of course that made the game better every time.

“But it couldn’t last forever. We got ours at last, and this is how it happened. The sixth performance had all fashionable Washington in the house. Sir Russell Dequi was the reigning fad. The Professor made his usual request that the envelopes be collected, and I was simply paralyzed to see four big Johnnies in evening clothes tumble out of the stage boxes and bump our boosters out of the way. They thought it would be a great joke to collect the cards, and they did it. Our boosters followed them, but they made a clean sweep and didn’t leave a thing. I looked over at Luckett and he looked back at me and we both knew that it was all off with the Simla seance. I tried to stop the man who collected in my aisle and tell him that I would put the letters on the stage, but he only grinned and said:

“‘Oh, I guess not! I’m doing this!’

“Two minutes after I met Luckett under the stage and he was blue around the nose. He worked the wireless and told the professor how things stood, and then I ducked up on the stage to see how Simmons would get out of it. I was afraid he would be mobbed if he lost his nerve.

“Right there was where I underestimated the Professor—he was a peach if there ever was one. He made a great business of rubbing his forehead with his hand, and all the time he was talking he kept nodding his head like a man dead for sleep. All at once, right in the middle of a sentence his voice trailed away to nothing and he did a face fall out of his chair that was a wonder! It was the finest stage fall I ever saw, and it ought to be, for it broke the Professor’s nose in two places. But he kept right on rolling until the footlights stopped him. The house was in an uproar and the first thing I knew I was out on the stage with my hand raised.

“The plan came to me like a flash of light. It was a long and desperate chance, but I had to take it.

“‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’ I said, ‘I implore you to keep your seats. Sir Russell has only fallen into a trance. As you doubtless know, the Adepts of the Himalayas go into trances and sometimes remain unconscious for many days. Sir Russell has been working very hard of late, and the strain of these performances has been too much for his nerves. Last week he was in a trance for eight hours, and this being the second one within ten days, it is impossible to say when he will awake. Your money will be returned at the door.’

“Then I gave the orchestra leader the high sign and he played the loudest march he had in stock. We got away all right, but the Professor’s nerve smashed along with his nose. We couldn’t get him to try it again in New York, and the last I heard of Simmons he was revealing futures at twenty-five cents a throw, via the bull’s head. He was a grand fakir, but he lacked ambition. Let’s have another stein all around. Oberle, it’s up to you to buy!”

Buck Parvin and the movies

Buck Parvin and the movies was published in 1917 by George H. Doran Company

The extra man and the milk-fed lion

When Tommy Dennis began to love the beautiful and talented Myrtle Manners he was an Arab trader squatting in the shade of a date-palm, and she was a Christian maiden—a captive in the harem of Sheik Abdallah, the Scourge of the Sahara.

When first he saw her face at the barred window, lovely in spite of the fear and grief it depicted, Tommy was conscious of a sudden delightful shock that fluttered to the tips of his fingers and toes; and when she stretched out her arms and wept, every sob went straight to Tommy’s susceptible heart.

He held his breath as he watched her make a perilous descent from the roof of the harem by means of a rope ladder furnished by a faithless slave, the same who later paid for his treachery to his cruel master, the sheik, by being hurled from that very roof upon the spears of the tribe.

Tommy Dennis was among those present when the beautiful stranger fled from the sheik’s oasis on Sharkey, the trained camel; and he murmured a brief but fervent prayer that the ungainly brute might not stumble. After a fashion of his own the Scourge of the Sahara offered up the same supplication—but it was Sharkey’s lame foreleg he was thinking of, and not the neck of the Christian maiden. Camels are expensive beasts, requiring time and patience in training; and Abdallah, besides being a sheik and a scourge, was also heavy actor and producing director for the Titan Company and, as such, responsible for its animal stuff.

Later, as a wild Bedouin, armed with a bell-muzzled weapon and mounted upon a milk-white steed that manifested true Arabic love for its master by biting him severely upon the knee-cap. Tommy scoured the plain in pursuit of the lumbering Sharkey, again securing fleeting glimpses of the lovely stranger as she clung desperately to the camel’s saddle. Sharkey’s footwork was very erratic, consisting of two speeds forward, one sidewise and an abrupt reverse.

After several spirited sprints over dunes and across dry river bottoms, all of which Sharkey managed to win by a neck under shrill protest, the Bedouins, led by Sheik Abdallah, engaged in mortal combat with French troops—and Tommy Dennis was shot dead at the first fire. He did not mind this at all, being used to it; but he was very much annoyed at his Arab steed for kicking him as he fell. Neither were his feelings soothed to any great extent by alighting heavily upon the belled muzzle of his ancient weapon.

Tommy was resurrected in a short blue jacket, which puckered abominably under the arms, and motheaten red trousers several sizes too small for him—a private in the corporal’s guard and an eyewitness to the affecting reunion of the lovers inside the French lines, the sandy river bottom doing duty as the Desert of Sahara.

He saw the beautiful Christian maiden fall fainting from Sharkey’s back into the arms of her sweetheart, a tall, handsome fellow in the uniform of a captain of the Foreign Legion—he who had just slain the wicked Abdallah in a thrilling encounter with cavalry sabers, it being well known that a sheik never fights with anything else if he can help it.

Tommy was not pleased with the ardent manner in which the gallant officer clasped the limp and yielding form to his bosom and pressed the parted lips with a neatly waxed mustache and imperial. The late Abdallah was not pleased either, judging by his comment. “That was rotten!” he shouted. “No good at all! Myrtle, you forgot to register a recognition before you pulled the fall. Jack, you cloaked the best part of the action with your shoulder when you ran in. Do it again, and try to get some real feeling into it—if you know how.”

“Oooo-issch!” sneezed the long-suffering Sharkey, nipping the director upon the arm.

“Ouch!” yelled Mr. Abdallah, whose other name was Jimmy Montague. “Get that fool brute back where he belongs! Now then, all set, Myrtle? Take up a few feet of waste on that film…. Ready—action—go!… What’s the matter with that infernal camel! Come on with him!… Look down at Jack, Myrtle!… Now fall!… Oh, hold her close to you, man! That’s something like it!… Well, it went better that time, but it’s still rotten in spots. Throw out your arms when you fall, Myrtle. Don’t flop down like a sack of meal. And sprinkle some water here—Sharkey kicks up an awful dust when he stops quick.”

Seven times the beautiful maiden fell into the arms of her beloved before the Scourge of the Sahara announced himself as satisfied, and Sharkey was led away, bubbling and gurgling with rage and indignation. Seven times Tommy Dennis stood stiffly in the corporal’s guard, blushing behind his makeup, trembling in every fiber of his being.

This was the lady of his dreams; he had found her at last. What difference did it make to Tommy’s fluttering heart that she was the Queen of the Movies, at a salary of one hundred dollars a week, and he but a despised extra man at three dollars a day? Cupid, careless little rascal with his bow and arrow, might take the blame for that. Tommy had found her—that was the main thing—and having found her he was forced to endure seeing her kissed back to consciousness by a supercilious person who wore a handkerchief in his cuff and addressed all extra men as “Here, you!” Tommy had not liked the handsome leading man any too well to begin with. He loathed him now.

It was a slight source of comfort to note the businesslike way in which the young woman freed herself from Jack La Rue’s embraces the instant the camera man’s hand ceased to move. Tommy also observed that at the finish of the scene she walked away toward the temporary dressing tent, without so much as a word or a glance behind her.

“I’ll bet she doesn’t like him!” thought Tommy, with a swift fluttering sensation under the blue coat. Then later: “I don’t see how any nice girl could!”

Tommy Dennis was twenty—he stood six feet in his stockings ; his nose was straight; his eyes were clear; and, better than all else, his heart was clean. He knew as soon as he saw Myrtle Manners at the barred window of Abdallah’s harem that he had never really loved before. He realized that his high-school affairs, which had seemed so serious at the time, were but the silly flirtations of childhood; and the brief but burning passion for the lunch-counter waitress was a youthful indiscretion. By the same process of reasoning he was not more than seven minutes in convincing himself that he would never love again.

When one is twenty it is easy to believe that true love is the only real thing in the world, and fame and fortune but the tinsel stage settings for the One Big Scene, in which the right man plays opposite the right woman forever, and there are no makeovers, no cut-ins and no fogged films.

He wondered as he discarded the dusty uniform of the Legion and washed the paint from his face whether she had noticed him at all. He decided that it was within the range of possibility. He recalled that she was standing behind the camera when the Bedouins swept yelling upon the French outpost. She must have seen the rider who plunged from his saddle at the first volley; and on the whole he was rather glad that his horse had kicked him. It was the sort of thing to draw the spectator’s attention. He ceased to regret the bruise on his hip where he had fallen upon his gun. She might have seen that he was painfully hurt as he limped away—might even have been sorry for him. A bruised hip was a small price to pay for a pitying glance from those soft brown eyes. He pictured her as asking questions about him and receiving truthful replies:

“Who is that good-looking young man over there—the one who made such a daring fall?’

“That is Tom Dennis, quite an unusual sort of an extra man. He is a fearless chap; never stops at anything when it comes to making a good picture. He’s going to be a great stunt actor some day—that boy.”

Tommy was recalled from a dream of imaginary conversation by some of the genuine article close at hand. Buck Parvin was speaking. Buck was a moving-picture cowpuncher, acting during every waking moment. His street costume consisted of a widebrimmed hat of gray felt, a blue flannel shirt, a red bandanna for a cravat, a leather vest thickly studded with shining disks of brass, lavender trousers tucked into high heeled boots; and on special occasions he wore angora chaps and enormous spurs, which tinkled musically as he walked. His hatband was made of rattlesnake skin, and distributed about his person he wore several pounds of Indian beadwork and Mexican silver jewelry. Buck Parvin was one character actor who never left his makeup in the dressing room at the end of the day’s work, having, as he said, but three complete changes of wardrobe—put on, take off and go without.

“Well, kid,” said Buck, “what do you think of the new leading lady? Quite a doll, ain’t she? Pretty soft for that big stiff. La Rue! I’d like to have his job for about a week. I bet ole Jimmy Montague wouldn’t have to bawl me out for not huggin’ her hard enough. I’d play that scene for nothing. Yes, sir! Myrtle is certainly some dolly!”

“Aw, put the diffuser on that kind of talk!” growled Tommy. “You’ve got an awful nerve calling her by her first name.”

“Oho!” chuckled Buck. “You kind of like her your own self, don’t you, kid? I reckon you’ll be round here to-morrow acting all over the place. Maybe they’ll have a makeover on some of them chases and you’ll get a chance to pull another phony fall. Take it from me, Tommy, throw away that slide-trombone of a gun next time, unless you want to bust yourself plumb in two. And lemme tell you something else: Whenever you’re on the ground, with horses coming behind you, lay still! They’ll all jump over you. You began to crawl and ole Pieface just missed you by an inch.”

“Darn it!” said Tommy. “I wasn’t crawling; I had to get off that gun.”

“Now if you want to catch the lady’s eye,” said Buck mischievously, “do a real fall! I got mine—right in the eye of the camera too. I thumbed ole Pieface in the neck and he went straight up like he was goin’ over backward; an’ I slid off him as easy as rolling out of bed. Not a bruise on me. And, believe me, the lady seen me do it; she was lookin’ right at me!”

“You make me tired!” said Tommy, grinning in spite of himself. “I fell like a man that was shot.”

“You limped like it too,” said Buck with a chuckle. “We both of us might have broke our necks and it wouldn’t have made any difference. You and me ain’t got a Chinaman’s chance for a pleasant look from her! They won’t be no extry men in Myrtle’s picture a-tall. None whatever! If she’s going to fall for anybody round here it’ll be La Rue.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Tommy stubbornly. “Why, she hardly speaks to him.”

“Listen at our banty rooster crow!” mocked Buck. “Tommy, you’re a lovely little feller, and I like you; but there’s a whole lot you don’t know about women. Yes, when it comes to females I should say you was consid’able ignorant. Let your Uncle Buck steer you. He’s a pretty wise Injun on this skirt thing.”

“Huh!” snorted Tommy. “What do you know about women?”

“Everything,” said Buck calmly. “Everything what is. I ought to. Women have throwed me higher in the air than you’ve ever been away from home. Tommy. Yes, sir; they cert’n’y had their fun with ole Buck—but he got a line on ’em, you bet! Take it from me, it’s the dough that counts with the dolls—the dinero; the iron men; the large, smilin’ yaller boys. We ain’t got no bankroll, Tommy, and we’re safe. The camera ain’t focused on us at all—see? We’re way over yonder on the other side of the hill, plumb out of the picture. As soon as this jane finds out that La Rue drags down one-fifty a week, she’s goin’ to go ropin’ for him.”

“Pshaw!” said Tommy. “The trouble with you, Buck, is that you haven’t met the right kind of women.”

“I ain’t, hey?” demanded Parvin, as he fastened his bandanna with the huge silver ring set with turquoise matrices. “Oh, no; I suppose not. There’s the women what likes you and there’s the women what don’t; and they’re the only kinds what is. Take it from me, I’ve met a many of both varieties—an’ they was all out for the dough.”

Two

Love at first sight is a beautiful theory; but in every-day life there is such a thing as taking a long critical second look. Tommy took several, and each time he saw Myrtle Manners in a new part he discovered added charms. An extra man may look at a moving-picture queen if he has the luck to be selected by the director for a day’s work.

Each morning Tommy reported faithfully at the Titan headquarters, and when Jimmy Montague crooked his forefinger and said, “I want you, kid!” that day was ringed on Tommy’s calendar with a circle of gold. When the director shook his head and said, “Nothing doing!” Tommy slouched away, with his lower lip drooping and his hands crammed deep in his pockets, a picture of blighted hope.

As the Cattle Queen, in sombrero and short riding skirt, Miss Manners captivated Tommy by her dash and daring in the saddle, and even Buck Parvin admitted that she “sat up in the middle of a hawss” like a cattle queen born. As the brave but heartbroken hospital nurse in the Civil War picture, All for Dixie, she plumbed unsuspected depths of sentiment; but when she played the deserted wife and mother in The Cashier’s Disgrace, and wept over the borrowed baby, she touched Tommy in his tenderest spot. He was all hers from that moment.

Then came the wonderful day when she spoke to him. The performers had gone out “on a location” to the outskirts of the city and had been delayed beyond the noon hour. Tommy volunteered to find the nearest restaurant and bring back food.

“Two ham sandwiches and a pint of milk, please,” was what she said to him; but Tommy walked in a daze for the rest of the day.

He read a dozen meanings into that innocent remark and was pleased with every one of them.

An actor employed by the Titan Company and working under Director Jimmy Montague had no sinecure. Montague had a reputation as a producer of sensational film dramas. He spent his nights in thinking up new and thrilling stunts for his actors to perform, and in devising scenarios to fit the stunts.

Jimmy’s people never knew, when they reported for work on a new picture, whether they would be required to leap off a cliff into forty feet of water, go up in a balloon or track a real lion to the camera’s eye. Montague’s leading man had to box like a Corbett, wrestle like a Muldoon, ride like a Cody, swim like a fish, climb crags like a goat, dress like a Brummel, make love like a Sothern, and face wild animals like a—Colonel.

Jimmy’s specialty was animal stuff. After his tremendous success with The King of Beasts—a three-reel production that appeared in nearly every country under the sun and yielded a dollar harvest which remains a record to this day—the Titan owners saw a great light and began to invest in wild animals.

They had objected when Jimmy insisted on buying a mangy, toothless lion for use in a single production; the poor old brute turned out to be the most profitable investment the company had ever made, paying some eight thousand per cent. With one lion as a nucleus the Titan people rapidly acquired quite a respectable menagerie, and Jimmy Montague’s animal stuff became known from St. Petersburg to Tasmania.

There was Selim, the elephant—a star in The Rajah’s Revenge and The Heart of Hindustan. Selim was a Hamburg-trained pachyderm, with a fair working knowledge of the German language and a painstaking attention to detail that made him a remarkable moving-picture actor. No desert scene was complete without the camels—Sharkey, Old Blue, Betsy and Mame—unwilling but efficient performers. The lions—King, Duke, Bertha and Babe—had thrilled audiences all over the world; and the monkeys, wolves, snakes, coyotes, elk, deer, hyenas, and the nearsighted comedy tapir, also contributed their bit to the entertainment of the masses.

Every time Sam Packard, the purchasing agent, had a chance to buy a wild animal he snapped it up and looked confidently to Jimmy Montague to invent a scenario to fit the creature.

One morning Montague received a telegram from the head of the firm in New York.

“Jungle stuff worked to death,” it read. “Get new scenario quick. Use all animals.”

“There’s gratitude for you,” growled Jimmy as he tossed the telegram to Jack La Rue, who happened to be present. “How the deuce can I ring in lions and elephants and camels without a jungle scenario?”

“Blest if I know!” said La Rue, lighting a cigarette. “You never see ’em anywhere else except in a circus, and—”

“Bully boy!” shouted Montague. “Great suggestion, Jack!”

“What suggestion?” demanded the amazed leading man.

“Why, the circus!” said Jimmy. “It’s never been done. We’ll make a circus picture and it’ll be a knockout!”

“You’re a wizard, Jimmy!” said La Rue. “Give you a toothpick to start with and you’ll have a lumberyard in ten minutes. How do you do it?”

Jimmy Montague pressed three buttons. The stenographer was first to appear.

“Send a telegram to the house in New York and ask ’em if they’ve got any stock films of circus parades. Get that off quick! That parade stuff will do fine for cut-ins,” said Montague.

Ben Leslie, the property man, and Joe Bates, in charge of the wardrobe department, entered together.

“Joe,” said the director, “Jack here wants some silk fleshings—full tights; white or pink will do. Manners ought to be a bareback rider, I suppose—no; hold on. Maybe we can’t get anybody to double for her in a real riding act. I’ve got it! Why not make her a lion tamer? The very thing! Joe, get Manners a Spanish outfit and a lion-tamer’s whip. I’ll need some ringmaster’s boots. That’s all I can think of now; but it’s enough to get busy on. I’ll give you a list later.”

“Goin’ to do a circus picture?” asked Ben Leslie. Ben was a lean, saturnine individual, as remarkable a personage in his way as any member of the company. Had he been ordered to produce the Kohinoor immediately he would have nodded twice, shifted his fine-cut from one cheek to the other and gone out without a word. And he would have brought back the Kohinoor—or the next best thing. Nothing surprised him; nothing daunted him.

“Yes,” said Jimmy Montague, “we’re going to do a circus picture. Get busy on it, quick! Ward Brothers’ Circus is wintering down at Santa Monica. You can borrow a lot of junk from them. You know Billy Ward, don’t you?”

“Sure!” said Ben. “Worked for him once.”

“Gee-whiz!” said Montague. “Is there anybody in the world you haven’t worked for—once?”

“Reckon not,” said Ben, and departed.

“This will be some scenario!” remarked Jimmy to his leading man.

In his brilliant mind the toothpick was already expanding into a telegraph pole; the lumberyard would come later.

“Yes, but I don’t get you,” said La Rue. “What am I supposed to be in this picture? An acrobat!”

“Bareback rider,” said Jimmy succinctly. “In love with the lion tamer. So am I. I’m the ringmaster. We can work up a lot of jealousy stuff. I crab your act. Hit your horse with the whip when you go to do a jump-up. You fake a fall—all that ‘Cur-rse you, Jack Dalton!’ business. I ain’t got it straightened out, yet, of course; but for the blowoff Myrtle’s lion-taming stunt goes wrong, I get cold feet, and you tear in and save the lady. Ain’t that great?”

“Me?” said La Rue, laying one hand upon his breast. “Me—save the lady? Me—in the cage with a lion? Not on your life! Suppose something goes wrong and he takes a wallop at me?”

“Forget it!” said the director. “We’ll use old Duke for the cage scenes. You know what a gentle animal he is! Brought up on a bottle, Kelly tells me.”

“So was I,” said La Rue; “but I’ll eat meat now. That milkfed business doesn’t signify anything, Jimmy.”

“Oh, rats!” said Montague. “Duke’s got the disposition of a great big dog.”

“No, he ain’t,” said the leading man earnestly. “He’s got the disposition of a great big cat—and the claws and the teeth, and all the rest of it. Because he hasn’t killed anybody yet is no sign that he won’t before he’s through. Nix on this tame-lion stuff—they’re all wild, I tell you! And Manners wouldn’t want to work with a lion either.”

“She’s done animal pictures before,” said Jimmy. “That girl ain’t afraid of anything.”

La Rue passed over the slur.

“There’s such a thing as being too brave for your own good,” he insisted. “I’m as game as anybody, Jimmy, but it wouldn’t get me anything to be clawed up by a milkfed lion. If Duke doesn’t look right to me you’ll have to double me in that cage scene. I won’t work. I’m an actor, not an animal trainer.”

“Oh, well,” said Montague, “If it comes right down to cases we can let that Dennis kid double you and pull off the rescue; but there ain’t any need of it. I’ve been in the cage with Duke a dozen times myself. He wouldn’t harm a fly. You ought to know that I never ask you to take chances. I never got you hurt yet, did I?”

“Oh, no; not at all,” said La Rue with sarcasm. “I suppose I wasn’t hurt that time when I got pounded on the rocks by the surf up on the Malibu coast. There wasn’t a spot on me as big as your hand that wasn’t cut or bruised; but of course that didn’t hurt! I just thought it did—that’s all.”

“The trouble with you. Jack,” said Montague, “is too darned much temperament. Beat it out of here! I’m going to rib up this scenario.”

“You remember, now,” warned La Rue. “If Duke doesn’t look right to me—nothing doing! You’ll have to double me in that scene.”

“Get out of here!” said Montague.

Left alone with his toothpick he drew a sheet of paper to him and scrawled upon it.

“The Jaws of Death,” said he with a grin. “I guess that’s a perfectly miserable title!”

Three

At eleven o’clock Jimmy Montague pushed his chair back from his desk and gazed upon a masterpiece completed.

“If that ain’t doping out canned drama while you wait I don’t know what is,” he remarked with a satisfied sigh. “If the two big stunts in the lion’s cage stand up all right I’ve got another grand picture for the poor old boss. If they fizzle—good night! We’ll try fifty-one and fifty-three first. If Duke won’t work with a woman I can turn the lion-taming stunt into something else and still have a circus picture.”

One very fine thing about the moving-picture business is that no shred of an idea is ever wasted. Scenarios and action plots are subject to change at an instant’s notice. A camera-caught accident often forms the basis of a new film drama. Jimmy Montague had once written a scenario round a leading man’s broken leg. The picture of the fall from the roof was too good to waste.

The Jaws of Death, as articulated on paper by J. Montague, called for two reels of film, seventeen separate backgrounds or locations—as they are always called when the photographs must be made outside of the studio—and fifty-five scenes. The two big stunts in the lion’s cage were numbered fifty-one and fifty-three—almost the closing scenes of the picture. These would be photographed first for economic reasons.

In Jimmy Montague’s early days with the Titan Company, when the moving-picture business was in its swaddling clothes and all the men connected with the infant enterprise were learning something daily from the best and the bitterest teacher in the world, Jimmy worked forty men and women for two weeks, consumed miles of film leading up to his one big stunt scene; and he found when he got to it that it was a physical impossibility. The Titan people paid the bills, but the telegrams from New York were hot enough to melt the glass insulators in their flight. Jimmy managed to hold his job, but it was a close call; and after that he decided to make sure of his stunts first. If they succeeded, well and good. If they failed, the loss in time, money and raw film was trifling; and the scenario was deftly twisted about to meet the limitations of man or beast.

This time the limitations were those of Duke, the performing lion; and the circus drama as originally planned would stand or fall upon that brute’s behavior. Scenes fifty-one and fifty-three, marked simply Interior Cage, were the crucial ones; so Jimmy set about his newest sensational production tail-first as it were.

In the darkened theater devoted to the Movie Muse the pictures flit upon the screen, incident fitting smoothly into incident to tell a connected story; but in the making a photo-play is the wildest crazy-quilt imaginable—a headless, tailless, cubist affair without form or coherence.

Scenes are photographed with an eye to back-ground or location and no regard for sequence. The complete plan exists only in the magnificent mind of the producing director. Picking up the plot of a moving picture by following the actors at their work would be as easy a task as unraveling Monte Cristo by reading chapters at random. This is one reason why seasoned moving-picture actors seldom ask questions. The director tells them what to do and they do it. Thus Myrtle Manners did not ask questions when she was given a Spanish costume, though she wondered what she was to do with the short rawhide whip.

Jack La Rue did not need to ask questions. He scowled as he inserted his manly form into pink silk fleshings. Jack did not like animals of any sort, and animals did not like him.

Tommy Dennis, picked out of the squad of extra men at the usual morning inspection, asked but one question as he tugged at another suit of pink silk fleshings.

“Say, Buck,” said he, “is—is Miss Manners in this picture?”

“I dunno,” said Buck, gloomily surveying a clown costume. “All they told me was that I got to ride that ornery trick mule. Jimmy Montague is fixin’ to get my head kicked off, I reckon. Look at the clothes they wished on me! What are you made up for, Tommy? The flyin’ trapeze or just a parachute jump? Where do these fool pants hook on to the shirt!”

Tommy Dennis, however, had lapsed into dreamy silence. Miss Manners, he reflected, had never seen him in tights. He looked down at his symmetrical limbs with a grave air of satisfaction. A costume of this sort—silk—ought to make a difference.

Charlie Jennings, a retired stock actor of long experience and no small skill with grease paints, entered the extra men’s dressing room, carrying a makeup box and a black, curly wig.

“You’re elected to be made handsome, Tommy,” said he. “Montague says for me to make you up to double La Rue.”

To double the leading man! Tommy’s heart skipped a beat and then hurried wildly as if to catch up.

“S-a-a-y!” exclaimed Buck, suddenly jealous. “What’s coming off here? If this is goin’ to be ridin’ stunts, why can’t I double it? Tommy can have the mule. I can pull stuff on a hawss that La Rue—the big dub!—never knowed was in the book! I’m going to make a holler about this! I’m a rider; I ain’t no rough-and-tumble comedian. There’s favoritism in this joint!”

“Oh, I guess you don’t want this job so bad as you think you do,” said Jennings as he darkened Tommy’s eyebrows. “I’ve got an idea you’d pass it up if they offered it to you.”

“What’s the stunt?” asked Tommy, trying his best to appear blase and unconcerned.

“Lion stuff!” said the old actor. “Hold that eye still! How do you expect I’m going to make you up if you wiggle all over the place?”

“Lions!” ejaculated Buck. “Excuse me a minute till I put my cue back in the rack. Tommy, you win a job and welcome. I’ll take a chance with the mule. Ole Buck here is awful careless, but he ain’t mislaid no lions lately. Huh-uh!”

“Are you afraid of lions, kid?” asked Jennings. “Would you go in the cage with Duke?”

“Which one is Duke?” asked Tommy.

“The big one. Think you’d be afraid!”

“Did La Rue pass it up!” Tommy had no intention of committing himself until he knew more of the details.

“Well,” said Jennings with tact, “I don’t know as Jack’s really leary; I heard him tellin’ Miss Manners just now that she might be a lion tamer, but he thanked God he was an actor.”

“Is that little gal goin’ into a lion’s cage!” demanded Buck incredulously.

“Sure!” said Jennings. “She’s game as they make ’em.”

“I never was much afraid of lions,” said Tommy. “Even when I was just a little shaver I used to look ’em right between the eyes and make ’em turn away.”

“Ho!” sniffed Buck. “But you was outside the cage when you done that hypnotic stuff. It makes a heap of difference to a lion whether you’re outside lookin’ in or inside with him tryin’ to get out. Don’t overlook that, son!”

“Well, you needn’t worry about Duke,” said Jennings. “He’s kind and gentle, and works fine in a picture. I wouldn’t be afraid to lead him right down the middle of the street by his whiskers.”

Buck cackled derisively.

“My! My! That actor man sure don’t need no press agent!” he said. “Tommy, you know me! I’m your friend. I like you; but you don’t resemble no Daniel-in-the-den to me, and don’t you let nobody kid you into pullin’ no lion’s whiskers. It ain’t bein’ done this season at all. You could put a million dollars in a cage with a lion—an ole, sickly lion—a lion that had run round nights and dissipated, and never took no kind of care of himself, and wasn’t enjoyin’ good health—you could stack that dough right up to the roof, and do you think I ‘d go in there after it? Not in four thousand years! No, sir! A lion has got something on you any time he starts—an’ he don’t say nothin’ to you before he starts neither. Just b-zing!—and first thing you know you ain’t got no face left. I claim I’m gamer ‘n any man ought to be and have good sense. I’ve had the cold chills sometimes thinkin’ about the darn fool chances I’ve took; but little ole Buck Parvin in a cage with a lion? Huh-uh! My folks raised me to know better!”

“What are you trying to do—scare somebody?” snapped Jennings. “Don’t pay any attention to him, kid. This is a tame lion.”

“Tame— hell!” snorted Buck. “They ain’t no tame lions!”

Four

Duke woke up when Tim Kelly and the crew of the animal farm began to trundle his cage toward the canvas studio. He blinked lazily, shook a fly off his nose, yawned twice, and prepared to take a languid interest in his surroundings. It was as if he said:

“Well, boys, what new foolishness is this?”

Nothing that men might do could surprise Duke very much. Beginning life under the canvas of a circus tent, he had seen human beings since the day his eyes opened. Even before he saw them he had smelled them. He had studied them covertly for years, without arriving at a definite conclusion regarding them; there was about him something of the impartial air of one who suspends judgment until all of the evidence has been presented. He looked upon the entire human race with a mixture of grave dignity, quiet patience and noble condescension.

Certainly these two-legged animals were queer creatures—the moving-picture ones queerest of all—but they were good to him; and Duke recognized a certain obligation on his part. He did not know why they wished him to do foolish and undignified things, but it was plain to him that these things pleased his friend Tim Kelly, the boss animal man; so whenever he was called upon, Duke stalked gravely through his part like the obliging old gentleman he was.

Duke liked the animal farm. He liked the long, lazy California days. There were no jolting street parades; no stuffy circus tent with its endless stream of gaping faces; no irritating rattle and thunder of night freights. If Duke had planned a Heaven for tired old lions it would have been like the animal farm, with its kindly attendants, large, comfortable cages, good food and long stretches of drowsy inactivity.

He had but one disquieting memory left him from his circus days—the memory of a swarthy man who made him leap through a fiery hoop, stand on his hind legs, and roll over. Before every performance the swarthy man came into the cage and beat Duke unmercifully with a rawhide whip.

This memory returned vividly whenever Duke saw a whip in a trainer’s hand. At such times he would sit up and strike at the rawhide, growling ferociously and showing his teeth, as he had always done when the swarthy man whipped him. He continued to do this long after he learned that, though Tim Kelly might sometimes show him a whip, he never struck him with it.

“Poor old felly!” Tim would say in his soft, crooning voice. “’Tis not me ye’re scoldin’ at, darlin’; it’s the whip. Ye’ve been abused, Juke—bad luck to the brute that done it to ye!”

Then Tim would toss the whip out of the cage and rub the short hair on Duke’s nose; and Duke would stretch himself luxuriously, making gentle dabs at Tim with his great cushioned paws by way of explaining to him that habit bound lions too, and that his growl did not really mean anything of a personal nature. Upon this habit Jimmy Montague had built his scenario. If Duke would growl at a whip in the hands of a woman the picture was as good as made.

Once in the studio Duke looked about him with a patronizing stare, sniffed once or twice, and then, dropping his nose between his paws, composed himself for a nap. He had been fed heavily early in the day and he was very sleepy.

“Ah!” said Jimmy Montague, very elegant in a ring-master’s shining tile, cutaway coat, white moleskin breeches, and top boots. “That’s my notion of the ideal moving-picture actor! He rolls in, on time to the dot; rubbers round once to see that everything is all right, and then goes to sleep till he’s wanted. He never forgets his makeup and doesn’t try to do any of the director’s thinking for him.”

Jimmy crossed toward La Rue, who was sitting on a bench, Ms pink-silk legs crossed and the eternal cigarette between his lips.

“You see how quiet he is,” urged Montague. “He’s as easy to get along with as a Newfoundland puppy.”

La Rue scowled and shook his head.

“The only lion I’ll ever go in the cage with will be a dead one,” said he. “He’s asleep now, Jimmy; but I’ve seen these tame wild animals wake up at the wrong time—and so have you.”

Miss Manners, more beautiful than ever in the Spanish costume, a single yellow rose in her dark hair, looked at Duke anxiously. Tommy Dennis, modestly smothering his silken grandeur in a shabby raincoat, took up a protecting position beside her. After a time he dared to speak, feeling that his elevation to the part of understudy to the leading man permitted him a certain amount of latitude.

“Aw, he’s all right!” said Tommy, nodding toward the sleeping beast. “He never hurt anybody in his life. Miss Manners. He’s what they call a milkfed lion.”

The girl indulged him with a smile.

“He looks peaceful enough now,” said she. “I’m always a little nervous with animals, though. Are you?’

“I never have been yet,” said Tommy, skirting the thin edge between truth and fiction.

“Did you ever work with this lion before?”

“Not with this one,” said Tommy, allowing the lady to draw her own conclusions from the slight shading of the adjective.

“You’re doubling La Rue, aren’t you?” asked the girl, glancing at the wig. “You don’t look much like him.”

“I thank you,” said Tommy, and they laughed together. Immediately he felt a subtle bond of sympathy between them and risked a bold stroke. “You don’t care very much for him yourself, do you?” asked Tommy, marveling at his own audacity.

“I’m not answering questions this morning,” smiled Miss Manners.

“You don’t have to,” said Tommy bluntly. “I know!”

“Indeed?” The slow, rising inflection warned Tommy that it was time to change the subject.

“Say, what about this stunt we’re going to do?” he asked. “All they told me was that it was lion stuff.”

He said it with the airy nonchalance of one to whom lions were nothing—the merest trifle—an every-day affair.

“I don’t know what the action is myself yet,” said the girl. “You’re not in the first scene, I believe; but in the next one you’re to carry me out of the cage.”

“Great!” ejaculated Tommy, who at that moment would not have exchanged places with any living man, lion or no lion. “That ought to make a swell picture!”

“Yes,” said Miss Manners; “but don’t you forget that it’s my face that you want to keep toward the camera. I don’t want anybody to think that I had to be doubled in this scene!”

“Leave it to me!” said Tommy. “I don’t care whether they see me or not, so long as I can help you make a good picture of it. And let me tell you something: When you go in there, look at that lion right between the eyes! Whatever you do, don’t turn your head away for a second! Just keep your nerve with you; and remember that a lion can’t do a thing so long as you look him square in the eye.”

“I’ve heard that before,” said the girl.

“Sure you have, and it’s true! I’ve pulled that eye stuff on lions and things ever since I was a kid, and it ‘s worked every time.”

Five

While Tommy was gilding the dull edges of fact with the glittering alloy of fancy Jimmy Montague had not been idle. His first task was to superintend the placing of the cage—a long, narrow receptacle, constructed with an eye to the focal limitations of a camera lens. The inclosure was swung about so that the narrow front end of the cage, in which was the door, rested opposite the steep tier of bleacher seats upon which the audience was already seated.

A single bar at the back end of the cage was then removed to permit the entrance of the camera. The lines of focus sweeping fanwise from the lens embraced the entire width of the receptacle at the front end, with the door as the exact center of the stage, and broadened out to embrace the audience as a background. Between the bleacher seats and the cage was an open space in which a certain portion of the action must transpire.

The completed picture, when flashed upon the screen, would present to the beholder an unobstructed foreground of the interior of the cage, beyond which the actors appeared against a solid wall of faces, the latter conveying the impression of a crowded circus tent.

“Now then!” said Jimmy Montague briskly, “all you people who are not in this first scene get back over the lines and keep still! Dennis, that means you. Beat it!”

“Remember about keeping your eye on him!” whispered Tommy as he faded away, and the girl nodded.

Tommy took up a position in the far corner of the studio, where for the first time he became conscious of the shabby raincoat. He removed it, deeply regretting that he had not done so sooner.

Into the space between the cage and the bleachers Montague summoned Miss Manners, La Rue and Tim Kelly, conversing with them in low, earnest tones. Tommy could not hear what the director was saying and, to tell the truth, he was not interested in the action of scene fifty-one. He was already playing the hero in scene fifty-three, inventing a dozen methods of rescuing the beautiful lion tamer at risk of life and limb. He wondered if Jimmy Montague would order him to kiss her, and the one drop of bitterness in his cup was the thought that La Rue would probably do that.

“Now here’s the action of the first scene,” Jimmy was saying. “Myrtle, you’re to go into the cage. This old lion is whip-shy. Pull the rawhide on him and he’ll begin to act. He’ll sit up on his haunches and growl, and make passes with his paws; but he’s only bluffing.”

” ’Tis what he always does when ye show him the whip,” said Tim. “An’ it ain’t meanness wid him, miss—it’s fear! He’s been abused in his time an’ he can’t forget it. He’ll git up on his hunkers an’ show his teeth an’ make an awful powwow; but, bless ye, he don ‘t mean anything by it. So long as he can see the whip he’ll keep on actin’—remember that.”

“Good!” said Montague. “Now, Myrtle, as soon as the lion begins to work you register fear. Keep the whip in your hand where he can see it, and back away from him toward the side. Put one arm over your face—like this. Better crouch down against the bars and stay there till the end of the scene. The camera is cutting in the whole front end of the cage, so you won’t have to worry about getting out of focus. Jack, when she kneels down by the bars you come forward to the door of the cage and establish yourself. Then register great fear that the lion’s turned bad. I want you to get that right square into the camera’s eye. That’s all; we cut there with an announcement: Dolores Loses Her Nerve—Love to the Rescue.”

“Is that the end of the scene?” asked Miss Manners.

“Yes. Then you stand by, and Kelly will make the lion lay down and play dead—and the double will carry you out. Afterward I can make a closeup of La Rue grabbing a pistol out of my pocket, shooting through the bars and running. That’ll come after the announcement—to establish that the lion was shot by La Rue. That’s all, I guess—except that we won’t rehearse this because the lion won’t work more than once a day. We’ll just go ahead and make the picture.”

“You’re sure about this lion, are you?” asked Miss Manners.

“Absolutely! Tim and the other animal man will be right outside the door and they could get you out in a flash. Oh, by the way, Tim, it would be a pretty good touch if you and George got a couple of those iron prods you had for the leopard and held ’em up as if you expected to use ’em. We want to make Duke look as ferocious as possible.”

Tim Kelly grinned.

“Ye’re slandherin’ the poor old dog,” said he; “but it’ll look grand in a picture!”

Montague next turned his attention to the camera man. A producing director is responsible for everything, from the newest extra man to the high-salaried and capable expert who handles the camera.

“Oh, Charlie!”

“Yep!” answered Dupree, the little photographer.

“Got your focus nice and clear, so there won’t be any fuzzy backgrounds in this? Camera all threaded up! And be sure you’ve got a full box there, because I’m going to make these two scenes together, all in one piece.”

“Right-oh!” answered Dupree.

Montague turned to the bleachers:

“You extra people, sit still and don’t act! And I’ll fine anybody a day’s pay that makes a noise. I want absolute quiet in this scene—remember!”

The director then became the heavy actor, twitched at the collar of his coat, straightened his tie and moved into position.

“All right, Tim! Wake up the star!”

Six

Tommy Dennis watched the animal man as he rattled the bars of the cage. Duke raised his head inquiringly.

“Up! Git up, Juke!” commanded Kelly, and the big beast heaved himself erect with a sigh. He fixed his sleepy yellow eyes upon Tim’s face with an expression of patient resignation plainer than words.

“I haven’t the slightest idea what this is all about, said the yellow eyes, “but I am in the hands of my friends. Let’s get it over with as soon as possible.”

“Gee! He’s a whopper when he stands up!” thought Tommy Dennis.

“Get him a little farther back from the door, Tim,” whispered Montague. “That’s better…. Hold up the iron prods, boys!… Now, then, Myrtle! Ready—action—go!”

Duke had often heard the three words that move the movie world. In his mind they were associated with unusual happenings and sudden developments. He pricked up his ears, for in the dead silence he could hear the ticking purr of the film as it sped past the lens into the takeup box; and turning slightly he caught the glint of the camera’s eye at the far end of the cage.

Miss Manners stepped bravely forward, Tim Kelly threw open the door and Duke became aware that he had a visitor. Beyond a slight lifting of his head, Duke remained motionless, regarding this charming stranger with polite and respectful interest. To tell the truth, Duke was rather partial to women. He remembered that in his circus days they had never prodded him with canes or umbrellas, and he placed that to their credit. Over in his corner Tommy Dennis drew a deep breath. It was a milkfed lion, after all!

“The whip! Show him the whip!”

Obedient to the whisper, Miss Manners drew the rawhide from a fold of her skirt and shook it under Duke’s nose. Instantly the big brute rose upon his haunches, snarling and striking with his paws and filling the place with his angry protest.

“Ar-r-r-ugh! R-r-r-ugh!” scolded Duke, thinking of the swarthy man with the bad eye.

“Ye’re doin’ fine, Juke! Bully f’r you!” whispered Tim. “He’s only bluffin’, miss.”

Tommy Dennis took a step forward, his knuckles whitening through the tan as his fingers closed convulsively.

“Don’t lose your nerve!” he breathed. “Look him right in the eye!”

Even as the words were on his lips the transformation came. The girl wavered; the whip lowered uncertainly, and she turned slowly from the lion to the camera. Tommy read terror in the staring eyes—in the blind groping of the free hand—in the whole cringing attitude. He sensed panic in the sudden shifting of Montague and La Rue.

“She’s afraid!” he groaned. “Why don’t they do something?”

There was worse to come. Miss Manners crept toward the side of the cage, where she knelt cowering against the bars. Duke ceased to growl, but he could still see the whip; and, like the dependable actor he was, he continued to register emotion. He squatted on the floor to await developments, and his tail whisked in swift, nervous circles.

“Swell!” whispered Jimmy Montague. “That crouch makes him look as if he was going to do a jump. Establish yourself, Jack!”

Then it happened.

Charlie Dupree, counting his film foot by foot and congratulating himself upon an artistic success, caught a glimpse of a thunderbolt in pink-silk fleshings that shot into the picture from the void beyond the focal lines. Before Dupree could cry a warning, Jack La Rue, establishing himself at the cage door, was hurled violently to the ground, and high over the wild howls and imprecations of director and camera man rose a clarion call:

“It’s all right! I’m coming!”

Being an animal man by instinct and training, Tim Kelly was geared up to meet emergencies rather more than halfway. As La Rue was doubled up by his double, Tim launched himself at Tommy’s legs; but silk is slippery stuff, and not for nothing had Tommy been the star halfback of a football team. The flying tackle crumpled in a limp heap; Tommy snatched the iron bar from the petrified George, and the next instant he was inside the cage, brandishing the weapon.

Old Duke, still crouching, looked up just in time to receive a terrific blow full upon the tip of his sensitive nose.

“You would, would you!” howled Tommy.

The king of beasts covered his afflicted head with his paws, tucked his tail between his legs and humped his back to the storm. His piteous clamor took on a shrill note of hysteria.

“Run, Miss Manners! I’ve got him going!”

The command fell on deaf ears. Myrtle had given one terrified glance over her shoulder and fainted, thereby blocking entrance to the cage for several seconds.

To the everlasting credit of Charlie Dupree let it be recorded here that his good right hand did not miss a single revolution of the crank.

“Hey! Keep him in the corner!” yelled Dupree. “Swing round more! You’ll cloak the action!”

Tommy Dennis was beyond orders, however, and Duke was past remaining in any corner. There was only one idea left in the lion’s battered head, and that was to tear down the bars and escape from this maniac who pursued him so relentlessly and hit him so hard. The cage rocked to Duke’s frantic assaults, and at each thump of the iron bar his agonized cries grew louder. His wildly roving eye fell upon the gap that had been made to admit the end of the camera—and Duke leaped for it, plunging his nose into the aperture below the ticking black box. Charlie Dupree grew suddenly pale, but his right hand did not falter.

“Back!” he roared. “You’re out of the picture! Back!”

Then Tommy Dennis, reeling and dizzy, exhausted by violent exercise and excess of emotion, added a finishing touch to a remarkable performance. He aimed his valedictory at the top of Duke’s head, between the ears, putting into the blow the last remaining ounce of his strength. The heavy bar descended squarely upon the top of the camera, smashing the delicate mechanism into a thousand pieces; and Charlie Dupree, festooned with ruined film but faithful to the last, continued to turn the piece of crank that remained in his hand.

The next thing Tommy knew the iron bar was whisked from his grasp and he was plucked backward, going down underneath an avalanche of striking, swearing humanity. Five strong men sat upon various portions of his person, and the one astride his shoulders seized him by the ears and banged his head upon the floor of the cage. This was Director J. Montague. Duke was whimpering in the far corner, his head in Tim Kelly’s lap; and the animal man was weeping and cursing by turns.

“Kill him f’r me!” he raved. “The murdherin’ scut has fair slaughtered the best actor we got!”

Tommy Dennis was sullenly collecting his few personal effects when Buck Parvin burst into the dressing-room, out of breath and panting.

“What’s this I hear? What’s this! Tommy, they tell me you saved the lady, all right; but you saved her so strong that the whole gang had to tear into the cage to save the lion! What kind of a guy are you anyway? Just my fool luck to be down at the hawss corrals and miss a show like that! Did they can you for it?”

Tommy nodded. Then, after a silence:

“What do they say about it?”

“Well,” said Buck judiciously, “different people says different things. Now there’s Tim Kelly. I seen him before I come away from the farm. Tim says Duke won’t never get his tail out from between his legs if he lives to be older ‘n Methuselah, an’ that, as a movin’-picture lion, he’s through—loss o’ confidence, and all that stuff. I don’t know ’bout the confidence part of it; but, from what I seen, Duke sure is shy a lot of scalp, an’ he’s got a couple of front teeth that might’s well be on a watch-charm as where they are.”

“Darn it!” said Tommy. “I think they might have told me what the action was going to be!”

“Ye-ep, they might, at that,” said Buck; “but how could they figure you was goin’ to go for that lion the way you did? Then there’s Dupree, the photographer guy. I seen him cryin’ over what’s left of his tick-tick. He says he could forgive you for doublin’ La Rue at the wrong time, and he ain’t got no kick on what you done to the lion; but when you caved in that box it looks like you lost a wellwisher. He ‘lows as how he hadn’t missed a move you made an’ was gettin’ a wonderful picture of you a-fannin’ that ole snoozer on the bean, when—blooie! And there he was, kneedeep in busted glass and loose film. You’d better try not to meet that guy when you go out—he’s hostile! Then there’s Montague. Jimmy says you made a bum of the grandest scenario he ever wrote.”

“Did anybody else say anything?”

“Well, yes,” said Buck. “Myrtle—she was kind of mentionin’ you in spots—a little.”

“What did she say?”

“I heard her tellin’ La Rue that you’d spoiled the best piece of actin’ she’d ever done, an’ then beat up the lion so horrible they couldn’t never get no makeover on it. What made her sorest was that you’d been ribbin’ her up to keep her nerve an’ then you went an’ lost yours!”

“Me?” demanded Tommy. “Lost my nerve—after what I did to that lion!”

“That’s what the lady said,” remarked Buck, rolling a brown-paper cigarette. “The way she figures it out, you got scared and went kind of daffy!”

There was a silence of two full minutes while Tommy crammed his belongings into his suitcase.

“That does settle it!” he said bitterly. “And I thought I was risking my life—for that!”

Buck Parvin peered at the boy through the smoke as it rose from his nostrils. When he spoke there was something almost like sympathetic understanding in his tone.

“Son,” he said, “Uncle Buck—he knows how you feel. He tried to do a lady a favor once by beatin’ up her husband when he had a beatin’ coming. Spanish lady she was—down in the Pecos country. Ever seen that scar across my ribs?… That’s the thanks I got!… Women an’ lions—lions an’ women—look out for ’em, Tommy! Both of ’em scratch!”

The international cup

David Seligman, the vice-president of the Titan Company, with offices on Fifth Avenue, studios in Chicago and Los Angeles, and films at work the wide world over, was more of a sport than a sportsman.

His knowledge of athletics was confined to baseball, as witnessed from a box at the Polo Grounds on a warm Saturday afternoon. What he knew about the national game would not have filled a volume; but what he knew about all other sports and pastimes might have been written in a large round hand upon the back of a postage stamp. Still his reading of the daily papers included a casual survey of the sporting pages; for said he:

“You never know when an idea for a picture is going to hit you or where it is going to come from.”

In proof of this statement he laid down his paper one morning and fired a question at his secretary, Marco Lazarus.

“This polo thing—what is it?”

“Polo?” said Marco. “That’s a game, Mr. Seligman.”

“Sure it’s a game! I didn’t think it was a business. What I want to know is this: How do they play it?”

“With horses,” said Marco, “and long-handled hammers, and a white ball. Once I saw it out at Van Cortlandt Park; and, believe me, there was fine action to it.”

“Horses!” said Seligman. “That’s right in our line. Send a wire to Montague that he must make a polo picture at once. With all these English lords and dukes coming here next month to play for a cup, and the papers full of it already, everybody is going to be interested in polo. It’s new stuff too. A good picture ought to make a mint of money. Tell Montague to rush it!”

“Cert’nly,” said Lazarus; “but what if Montague can’t get any big league polo players in Los Angeles? You know how hard it is to get anything in them small Western towns, Mr. Seligman. Maybe they don’t know what polo is out there.”

“A man who lives in Yonkers should know about California!” grunted Dave with withering sarcasm. “Take a trip sometime and go West until you wet your feet in the Pacific Ocean, and everywhere you find skyscrapers and apartment houses, and electric lights and turkey-trotting. And even if Jimmy Montague was sitting on a deserted island in the middle of Salt Lake he would get us what we want. If the fellow falls down on the real stuff he sends us a fake so much better than the original that there is no comparison at all. Wire him at once!”

Jimmy Montague, producing director for the Titan Company and maker of miracles to order, bit hard upon his stubby cigar as he read that telegram.

“Here’s a hot one!” said he to Sam Packard, the purchasing agent. “Seligman wants a polo picture and he wants it quick! Now who ever told him there was such a game as that in the world? ‘To take advantage of interest in international cup series,’ is what he says. Confound Dave! I wish he’d let me alone. Here I’m giving him a picture a week regular as clockwork, and I’ve got my plans made a month ahead. Next week I wanted to do some water stuff over at Catalina, and here comes this fool telegram—and I have to drop everything. A polo picture! Have we got a polo expert round here?”

“Not that I know of,” said Packard. “I tried to stick through one polo match, but it outgamed me. When they began to serve afternoon tea I beat it. Imagine stopping a fellow in the middle of a hot mixup to ask him whether he’d have lemon or cream in his oolong!”

“That’s the very thing that is going to make this a tough stunt to get away with,” said Montague. “We’ve got to have the afternoon-tea atmosphere to this picture or it won’t get by with the people who know. Polo is a rich man’s game—an Englishman’s game—and I don’t see how we can get any of the real people to fall for us! Our cowpunchers can ride all right enough, but they’d look awful bad in a tea-drinking scene, and they haven’t got the right kind of horses either. I know just the sort of men I want, but how the deuce am I going to get ’em? Gee! I wish Dave Seligman would go to Europe again and the boats would quit running for about a year! Every time he horns in with one of his royal commands there’s trouble. He put the curse on the jungle stuff, and what happened? Old Duke, the lion, got such a flailing he won’t ever be any good in a picture again—and we lost a new camera. I wonder if Ben Leslie knows anything about polo? I’ll ask him.”

Ben Leslie was the property man—a person of few words and many amazing experiences, each one of which had taught him something worth remembering. He appeared, thoughtfully chewing fine-cut tobacco—an expression of settled melancholy upon his thin features.

“Say, Ben, do you know anything about polo?” asked Montague.

“That horseback croquet?” Leslie shook his head. “I should hope not! Ask Buck Parvin. He claims he invented it.”

“I knew I’d get some sort of a tip from Ben,” said Montague. “He knows everything in the world—that fellow! Where’s Buck?”

Buck was discovered in the extra men’s dressing-room at work on a new hatband, an intensely patriotic affair, heavy with red, white and blue beads. Parvin was expecting to work in a Western picture; consequently he was attired in full regalia—angora chaps, spurs, leather vest, and a remarkable collection of cheap silver ornaments. A quirt gay with beadwork hung from his wrist as he jingled into the director’s office.

“Welcome, little one!” said Montague. “They tell me you know something about polo.”

“Whoever told you that sure spoke a mouthful for once,” said Buck modestly. “I reckon I ought to know something about polo! Why, say, man—me and old Butch DeVries wrote the game!”

“Quit kidding!” said Montague. “I want to know.”

“And I’m telling you,” said Buck. “Polo? Didn’t I have a job down on the DeVries Ranch, at Saspamco, trainin’ polo ponies for the New York market! And didn’t our bunch go over to the fort at San Antone and whale the everlasting socks off the best cavalry team in the country? No—I reckon I just fell asleep and dreamed that! You ask them cavalry people if Buck Parvin knows anything about polo. They’ll tell you it’s my middle name. Why, look here, Jim—I can do stuff with them wooden balls that ain’t possible nohow! I can—”

“Yes, yes!” said Montague. “I’ll take your word for it. We want to make a polo picture in a hurry. Can you get the stuff?”

“All but the players,” said Buck. “Them Pasadena stables are chock-full of brokendown polo ponies; they rent ’em to tourists for saddle animals. They look all right, but they can’t play polo no more—knees busted up mostly. Then we’ve got to have some of them flat saddles—English postage stamps I call ’em. I know where I can land a few. Gimme five big iron dollars to oil up a friend of mine what works at the Polo Club and he’ll come through with pith helmets, mallets and balls for further orders. Gimme ten and I’ll make him borrow some boots for us.”

“Nothing could be fairer than that,” said Montague. “We can fake up something that’ll look like a game.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” said Buck. “You can’t fake polo strong enough to fool anybody that ever saw the real game. Believe me, the worst-looking thing in the world is a guy tryin’ to fourflush on one of them flat English saddles. You can’t get by with a fake, Jim; you got to have a few players. Now, what you ought to do is to hire some of them skinny Englishmen. They not only play the game to beat the band but, doggone ’em, they look it! There’s something about a lean, blond boy with a loose chin and buck teeth that sort of reminds me of polo—just like a dago makes me think of a hand-organ.”

“Holy cat!” ejaculated Montague. “If I could only pick up a typical Englishman or two I could put this picture across and call it ‘The International Cup.’ I wonder if we could get a few of ’em to stand for a movie stunt? Do you know any, Buck?”

“Not no more, I don’t. We had one down to the ranch at Saspamco. I sailed in to lick him once for saying that George Washington wasn’t so much and that the best he ought to had was a draw. If those old time Englishmen that come over here to rough-house us for puttin’ salt water in their tea could fight like the bird I tangled up with, my hat is off to George—that’s all! He must have been there forty ways from the middle of the deck! Yes, sir; ole Cuthbert sure taught me to appreciate history.”

Montague paused for reflection.

“Any polo games coming off round here soon?” he asked.

“Not till next month,” said Buck. “The Kanakas are going to play here then.”

“Can’t wait that long,” said Jimmy. “I was thinking we could get permission to put a camera on the field and use the pictures of a real match for cut-ins. We’ll have to do the best we can with cowpunchers. If I could only land an Englishman or two ! One typical London Johnny would help a lot.”

“Why not advertise?” suggested Packard. “You might pick up a remittance man. Those younger sons are always broke.”

“And proud as Lucifer!” said Montague. “Still, we might try it, though. You never can tell. I’ll stick an ad in the morning papers, giving the street address. If you’d say moving pictures’ to an Englishman he’d drop dead!”

“Lovely billiards!” said Buck. “I hope you get enough for a mess. And lemme give you a million dollars’ worth of advice for nothing: If you should happen to gaff a sure-enough Englishman don’t go braggin’ to him about what a great fighter George Washington was. That’s how I come to get showed up that time. Just let George stand pat on the record book. Why, say, that crazy Cuthbert galoot made me stand up in the bunkhouse with nothing on me but a shirt and sing God Save the King! to the tune of My Country, ’Tis of Thee. And if that ain’t rubbing it in I don’t know what is. Then he made me save the whole royal family—one at a time—with a sawed-off shotgun. You listen to your Uncle Buck! Some of them Englishmen are so plumb ignorant and bigoted that they don’t give a damn whether the Revolutionary War is over yet or not.”

Two

Mr. Kenneth Clifford Devenham sat on the edge of the bed in his lilac-silk pajamas and made a mental inventory of his possessions, beginning with the flat pocketbook on the table and ending with the fat wardrobe trunk in the corner. Somewhere between the two he arrived at the conclusion that he was facing a grave crisis in his temporal affairs.

“Silly ass—to spend all that money at the Grand Cañon!” said Kenneth Clifford to himself. “Now I presume I shall have to go to work—or something of the sort. It won’t be for long, of course; and I dare say I shall find it interesting—as an experience.”

Having settled the matter in his own mind, the young man rose, treated himself to a refreshing cold shower and dressed with scrupulous care. He was fortunate in possessing youth, optimism, a sunny disposition and a good appetite. These assets were untouched by temporary financial disaster, and he was not particularly dismayed by the thought that, for a time, he must depend upon his own resources. This was California, was it not—the land of opportunity?

True, the money that should have lasted for six months had vanished in four, but Kenneth Clifford had enjoyed every day of the vanished period. He had met many charming people in America and had done his best to repay hospitality in kind. The money had taken wings, but it had fluttered gloriously before flying away.

It was also true that he might have sent an urgent cablegram to Battersby, his solicitor; but there were several reasons why it was best that Battersby should know nothing of his predicament. The memory of Kenneth Clifford’s last interview with that excellent old gentleman was still green. He recalled it now in painful detail.

“Remember, Mr. Devenham,” Battersby had said, “it was your father’s express wish that his estate should be so administered that the disbursing periods occur semi-annually. His orders were definite—I might almost say positive—that under no circumstances should they be shortened. Under no circumstances! I believe it was his idea that these extended periods would teach you to live within your means.”

Battersby had looked searchingly at Kenneth Clifford; and the young man, flushing slightly, had replied to the effect that the “guv’nor” had always entertained an entirely erroneous opinion as to his business capacity.

“You shall see,” he had remarked with a somewhat lordly air, “that these—er—precautions are quite unnecessary. Quite! I have no intention of making an ass of myself and going beyond my means. I shall get on very comfortably under the present arrangement, I assure you.”

“Comfortably is not the word!” Battersby had squeaked. “Luxuriously, my dear sir—luxuriously! The amount you are to receive in a lump sum twice a year is more than ample for one without incumbrances of any sort. I sincerely trust you may find it so.”

“You may have no fear.” Kenneth Clifford had said this in his most positive manner, striking the floor smartly with his stick to show how much he meant it.

“How long do you expect to remain in America?”

“That I cannot say,” the young man had answered. “Possibly I may never return to England at all; in fact, I think it is quite likely. I may marry in the States and grow up with the country—and—and all that sort of thing, you know.”

“That would be a pity!” Battersby had said. “A very great pity!”

Kenneth Clifford had thought so himself and, what was more, had devoutly hoped that Alice Burwell might think so, too, seeing that the hardness of that young woman’s heart was driving him to lands afar.

The statement to his solicitor as to matrimonial probabilities did not quite coincide with one he had made the night before, when he had asked a certain young woman a certain question for the ninth time in six months, and had received a certain answer.

“I shall go away,” Kenneth Clifford had murmured in broken tones—for at least he had done his best to break them—“I shall go away and not annoy you any more. India or South Africa or the States—somewhere. You will never see me again, Alice. Never!” Then, as the lady had not urged him to reconsider when the cue had been so plainly given, he had added rather hastily: “Unless, of course, you change your mind. One word, dear, and I’ll catch the first boat…. No; I shall not write. Too much like—er—prolonging the agony. Old Battersby will know my address; I shall keep in touch with him wherever I am. Would you mind if I kissed you just once—for good-by! I beg your pardon! I suppose I should have known better. I thought—but it really doesn’t matter what I thought, does it? Quite right! Don’t forget, Alice, that Battersby will know where I am, and one word from you—eh? I assure you, on my honor, that I am quite serious! This time it is really good-by.”

Kenneth Clifford thought of all these things as he got into his clothes. In a way it was a bit unfortunate, he reflected, that he had gone so strong with Battersby as to future intentions; but having committed himself there remained nothing but to “play the game,” as he would have expressed it.

If pride had been unable to stay his hand from the cablegram blank there was another and more powerful incentive to take his medicine in becoming silence. Battersby was also Miss Burwell’s solicitor, and Kenneth Clifford had reason to believe that the old gentleman regarded Alice with a fatherly eye. What if he should so far sink the professional in the paternal as to mention the fact that young Devenham—silly goat!—had squandered two thousand pounds in four months? Kenneth Clifford shuddered at the thought. He happened to be well acquainted with Miss Burwell’s views on wasters.

Battersby, then, besides being the disbursing agent, was the last line of communication left open between the young man and the object of what he was sadly pleased to term a hopeless but undying affection. Battersby might even become a friend at court—and Kenneth Clifford knew that he stood in sore need of one.

Certainly there was nothing about the young man’s manner of ordering breakfast that suggested mental strain.

“Melon, pot of coffee, rolls, rasher of bacon, three soft-boiled eggs. Oh, I say, waiter! If you were out of a situation what would you do?”

The waiter was Irish and therefore equal to emergencies.

“I should go down to union headquarters, sir.”

“Ah!” Then, after a pause: “Quite so. But if there were no union headquarters?”

“In that case, sir,” said the intelligent waiter, “I think I should buy a morning paper and look in the Male Help Wanted columns, sir.”

“Yes, of course—of course!” said Kenneth Clifford. “I should never have thought of that.”

An hour later, newspaper in hand, he approached the desk clerk, his manner a mixture of surprise and mild indignation.

“I say, look here!” said Kenneth Clifford. “Do you really mean to tell me that you have professional polo teams in this country? Upon my word, I never heard of such a thing!”

“Neither did I,” said the clerk; “but it’s getting so now in this country that everybody’s out for the dough. Professional polo? I don’t believe it’s played round here.”

“Read this!” said Kenneth Clifford accusingly. He spread the paper on the desk and indicated a paragraph.

WANTED—Polo players; Englishmen preferred. Good money to right parties. Apply to J. Montague, 1525 B Avenue, City. 9 a. m. to 4 p. m.

“Well, what do you know about that!” ejaculated the clerk.

“My dear fellow,” expostulated Kenneth Clifford, “I know nothing about it, else I should not have troubled you. Professional polo! It’s the most extraordinary thing I ever heard of in my life! Most extraordinary!”

“Why don’t you look into it?” suggested the clerk, who was used to providing entertainment for world-worn tourists.

“I shall—this very day. Call me a taxi!”

Three

“Say, Jim! There ‘s a fellow in the front office who looks like seven million dollars! He came out in one of them multiplication tables on wheels, and it’s waiting for him. He wants to see you, but he won’t say what for.”

“Send him in!” said Montague, interrupted in the middle of his polo scenario.

Jimmy Montague had a wonderfully quick eye for detail, as every successful director must have. Even as his thumb-nail grated inquiringly over the engraved surface of the card, his trained eye appraised the visitor from the top of his sleek, blond head to the soles of his heavy shoes. “What a type!” he thought. “Oh, what a comedy type!” But aloud he said:

“What can I do for you, Mr.—Devenham?”

“You can give me work, I hope,” was the totally unexpected response. Kenneth Clifford, with British bluntness, had gone straight to the heart of the matter.

Even then Jimmy Montague failed to comprehend the situation. He was temporarily dazed by an atmosphere of money, taste—and something else he would have characterized as “heaps of class.” Extra men seldom call in taxicabs.

“Work?” said Jimmy. “Are—are you an actor?”

“Eh? I beg pardon. An actor, did you say?”

“Yes. Can you act? Have you had any experience?”

Kenneth Clifford blinked his pale blue eyes and stared vacantly.

“Oh, I say!” he remonstrated. “I’m dashed if I see what acting has to do with it—I am, really! I’ve done a bit in the way of amateur theatricals and all that sort of thing—every fellow has, you know—but, hang it all, what has acting to do with polo?”

Jimmy Montague took his turn at staring.

“Are you a polo player?” he demanded.

“I am,” said Kenneth Clifford. “That is what I came to see you about.”

Jimmy Montague leaned back in his chair and roared. Kenneth Clifford rose rather stiffly.

“You will pardon me,” he said. “If this is an American joke—”

“Hold on!” said Montague hastily. “Don’t go away mad! Sit down! I want to talk with you.” Kenneth Clifford seated himself on the extreme edge of a chair and regarded Montague steadily. “Now, then,” said the director, “do you know what sort of a place this is?”

The young man shook his head. Politeness kept him from expressing the opinion that it was a private madhouse.

“It’s a moving-picture studio,” said Montague.

“Oh, I say!” cried Kenneth Clifford. “Is it—really! Where they make the films—eh? I’ve never seen one before!”

He looked about him with wide-eyed interest.

“Yes, this is where we make the films. And if it’s work you’re after, you’re engaged now.”

“Look here,” said Kenneth Clifford, “how do you know I’d suit?”

“You’ll suit, all right!” said Montague with a grin. “And if you’ll only be natural in front of a camera you can’t help being a tremendous hit.”

Kenneth Clifford bent his cane across his knee and rocked back and forth, laughing until the tears came into his eyes.

“This is ripping!” he gasped at last. “I came here to play polo and now I’m an actor! Haw! Haw! Haw! You do things so fast in this country!”

“We have to in this business,” said Jimmy Montague. “You’ll have a chance to play polo too. We’re going to make a polo picture, and you’re exactly the type I’ve been looking for. I’d have picked you out of a thousand men. How are you fixed for riding clothes?”

“Fixed?” said Kenneth Clifeord. “I have them—if that is what you mean.”

“Bully!” said Montague. “Got a frock coat and a silk hat!”

“Of—course!” said Kenneth Clifford, feeling very much as if he had been asked whether he owned a change of underwear.

“Move all your junk out to the Marchmont Hotel, in Pasadena,” said Jimmy. “Most of the pictures will have to be made out there—the polo scenes and the high-society stuff, you know. We pay all expenses. You’ll get five, dollars a day clear. How does that strike you?”

“That will do very nicely.”

“It’s rather more than we pay extra men, as a rule,” said the director; “but I’m going to, write you a part in this picture. It’ll give you a chance to show what you can do.”

“That’s very kind, I’m sure,” said the young man—and he took his whirling brain out into the open air.

“What a lark!” he chuckled. “A moving-picture actor! This is an experience! I wonder what I shall look like in the films?”

This last point was one upon which Jimmy Montague had no doubts.

“Oh, that face!” said the director as he tore a half-finished scenario into bits. “A typical bloody, bloomin’ Britisher, don’t ye know! You couldn’t mistake him for anything else. Write him a part? He’s going to be the whole bally show!”

Whereupon Mr. James Montague set about writing a moving-picture drama round his one Heaven-sent Englishman—just as he would have written a scenario round a giraffe or a hippopotamus, or any other queer creature at the animal farm. Canned drama to order was Jimmy Montague’s specialty, and he knew his business.

Four

All went well with “The International Cup.”

The manager of the Marchmont Hotel, scenting advertising from afar and esteeming publicity no less than his right eye, was more than willing that porches and lawns should serve as locations for the high-society stuff; and many of the guests entered into the affair so thoroughly that Charlie Dupree complained aloud.

“Never saw so many goats in my life!” said the camera man. “Soon as they see me turn the crank they want to run and get in the picture, and wave their hands and holler: ‘Oh, you!’ They must think this is a joke and film doesn’t cost anything.”

Buck’s friend at the Polo Club inclined his ear to reason and disgorged pith helmets, mallets with warped handles, chipped balls and second-hand boots.

The club members themselves—when it was pointed out to them that a moving picture would bring Southern California polo prominently before the eyes of the world—saw no reason why they should refuse the use of the clubhouse and playing field to such a suave gentleman as Mr. Montague.

Buck Parvin collected a noble aggregation of dickey-legged ponies, which looked all the polo they were no longer able to play; and, to Jimmy Montague’s great joy, Buck also unearthed three English grooms. When incased in riding breeches, tan boots, silk shirts and pith helmets they came near resembling the real thing—and, with Kenneth Clifford, they were to represent Old England before the camera; while Buck Parvin and three cowpuncher friends were to bear the Stars and Stripes gallantly through countless feet of film.

“It won’t be so awfully rotten,” said Montague to Buck judicially as he watched Kenneth Clifford Devenham twisting a wiry little red pony in and out between the goal posts, back of which Charlie Dupree was at work focusing his camera.

“Huh!” said Buck, whose bowlegs were painfully apparent in English riding breeches. “It won’t be rotten at all. If the ponies don’t play out on us we ought to get some darned good action stuff. Take Lord Algy over there—he sure is some polo player! The flunkies ain’t so worse when you take a quick flash at ’em, and my boys have been workin’ out on them postage stamps for three days. They’ll get by all right, but a flat English saddle gets a cowpuncher’s goat at first. That Lord Algy—say, he’s the pure quill in Englishmen, ain’t he? Yes, sir—the clear catnip! You won’t make any mistake if you shove that mug of his right up against the camera—they won’t take him for no Swede—I tell you those, Jim! Now you know what I meant when I said some Englishmen remind me of polo. He’s one.”

“Yes; he’s the type,” said Montague. “Did you see him make that backhanded swipe a while ago? Caught the ball right in the air!”

“Oh, he savvies what side of a hawss to get on at!” said Buck. “And he sure does recognize a polo pony when he sees one. Them grooms—they was all for pickin’ out the good-lookers; but Algy, he nosed through the bunch, tried out a few, and then froze to that homely little red runt—the best polo pony in the string. That’s Brandy—used to belong to a rich guy down at Riverside. If we knew as much polo as that little red trick, we could write a book about it…. You know, Jim, I kind of like that Englishman! He’s so darned wide open and simple, and talks right off his chest. I was askin’ him a few questions just to feel him out. He says he started in to buy the Grand Cañon on the installment plan, but there was too much of it and his dough petered. That’s why he’s working. Didn’t make no bones about it at all and takes the whole thing as a joke. Yes, sir; he’s all right! I reckon he knows the war is over. How was he in that high-society stuff over at the hotel this morning? Did he deliver?”

“Right square in the camera’s eye,” said Montague enthusiastically. “Fell into it as if he hadn’t done anything else all his life. When it comes to wearing clothes as if they’d been made for him, and doing the little social stunts, he makes the rest of us look like a lot of hack-drivers dressed up.”

“Shucks!” said Parvin. “There’s a lot in the way you’re raised. Now me—I never even seen one of them claw-hammer coats till I was risin’ nineteen; and the first one I ever had on my back was when you made me work in that poker scene. I was scairt stiff for fear the darn thing was goin’ to come undone somewheres. It sort of made me feel that I had to begin to act and be genteel, and stick my little finger out when I took a drink; but Lord Algy—say, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s been dressed up so often that he don’t mind it at all! It’s come to be second nature with him.”

“He’s a bully find!” said Montague. “If he sticks long enough I’ll have him in a lot of pictures. “We could do some Western stuff, with him as the tenderfoot—have him ride a bucker, and all that sort of thing…. Buck, how do you score in this fool game?”

“You lam the ball through between the posts!” said Parvin. “Who’s got to win, Jim—or does the dope call for a winner?”

“English team wins,” said Montague.

“I like your crust,” grunted Buck. “I reckon you don’t know what an elegant trimming them hands across the sea got the last time they was over here. What’s the idea? Algy wins and cops out the swell heiress?”

“Something like that,” said the director-author. “He wins Myrtle.”

“Why don’t you let me win Myrtle once in a while?” demanded Buck. “Fix up a love scene that’ll let me hold that leadin’ lady’s hand for about a thousand feet and you won’t have to gimme no dough for it!… All right! Pay off on Lord Algy! Put them English flags up on the goal posts, and me and the rest of the American citizens will crowd in and wallop a few hot ones for Algy to stop. That shows him defending the English goal—see! Then we’ll stick up the American flags, and Algy and the noble grooms can shoot a few goals through me. That shows ’em winning. I reckon I better whang a few in there myself to make it look like a close game, and don’t forget to tell them boneheaded extry people in the automobiles to wave the right flags and yell every time the ball goes between the posts. How about me faking a fall!”

“Go to it!” said Montague. “Only don’t forget that Algy is the star. You always were a frightful film-cannibal, Buck.”

“Oh, I don’t know!” said Parvin. “I ain’t got much on you when it comes to bein’ a footage-hog. I’ve seen you eat up sixty or seventy feet just to die in—many’s the time.”

“But I play the heavies, and the villain always dies hard,” grinned Montague.

“Yes; and you write the pieces too,” said Buck. “I notice these scenario writer-actors don’t take none the worst of it.”

“All right, Charlie!” said the director, moving over behind the camera. “I want both the goal posts in.”

“You’ve got ’em,” said the camera man.

“Buck, get on a pony and stand there between the posts!” ordered Montague. “We want to get the horse-height. And don’t cut any higher over his head than you have to, Charlie. I don’t want too much sky in this picture.”

Thanks to Buck’s vociferous coaching and Kenneth Clifford’s clean, sweeping strokes, the polo scenes passed off successfully.

Buck, who would not be cheated out of his specialty, improvised a thrilling bit in which he raced straight at the camera, Kenneth Clifford in pursuit, with orders to turn the ball at the last instant if possible. Just as Devenham thundered alongside, Buck pitched clear out of the saddle; and Kenneth Clifford capped the climax with a slashing backhand stroke, executed so close to the camera that Charlie Dupree heard the smash of the mallet as it descended. Even the blasé Jimmy Montague yelled at this hair-raising bit of action; but, as soon as the camera man ceased to turn, Kenneth Clifford was out of his saddle and bending over the prostrate Buck.

“Charlie, get some of that quick!” cried Montague. “It ain’t in the scene, but it’s great stuff!”

“My dear fellow!” said Kenneth Clifford. “That was a nasty tumble! I hope you’re not hurt!”

Up to this time Buck, with true dramatic instinct, had not moved a muscle. As he felt Kenneth Clifford’s arm about him he sat up and spat out a mouthful of dirt.

“Hurt!” he said. “It’s worse than that. Here I go and pull one of the swellest falls of my life and you swing in across me and cloak the action. We got to do it over again, Algy; and, for the love of Mike, gimme a chance to register that fall on the film! Let the camera see me do it!”

At last everyone was satisfied, including Buck, who got his fall in; and Montague assembled the entire company and the extra people for the final scene on the polo field.

Miss Myrtle Manners, the leading woman, very lovely in a trim-fitting afternoon gown and a picture hat, left the high-wheeled trap in which she had been sitting and approached the sidelines.

“Now, then,” said Montague, “here’s the blowoff. This is supposed to take place at the end of the game. Devenham, what’s the customary thing to do just at the finish?”

Kenneth Clifford blinked.

“Why,” said he, “everyone has a brandy and soda.”

“Good idea!” said Montague. “I don’t know whether the censors will stand for that, but we’ll try to put it over on ’em. But what do they do on the field?”

“Oh!” said Kenneth Clifford. “The losers cheer the winners—swing their mallets, and all that sort of thing. Then the winners cheer and everybody shakes hands.”

“That’s what I want!” said Montague.

“Now here’s the action: Myrtle, you stand here on the sidelines. The players will bunch up on the field and cheer. When they do that, Myrtle, you register joy and pride. Then, Devenham, you break away from the bunch and ride over here as fast as you can. See this little piece of paper on the ground? That’s where you dismount. Then you cross over this way, toward the camera, and take Miss Manners in your arms—”

“Oh, I say!” expostulated Kenneth Clifford. “It’s not done on the polo field—that sort of thing! Really, it isn’t!”

“It is in this case,” said Montague. “You’re supposed to be in love with this lady and she’s supposed to be in love with you.”

“Oh, I say!” murmured Kenneth Clifford again, staring at Miss Manners.

“That’s the action,” said Montague. “Better rehearse it a few times…. Not at all like it!” said the director after the first attempt. “You’re too stiff, Devenham! Watch me once!”

Montague embraced the lady fervently, much to Kenneth Clifford’s amazement; but he profited by the lesson, and after the third rehearsal the director signaled the camera man to make the picture.

“Say, Jimmy,” said Miss Manners, “don’t you think it would be better if he kissed me? That would be the natural thing to do, you know.”

Kenneth Clifford gasped.

“Sure!” said Montague. “As soon as you put your arms round her, Devenham, kiss her—and don’t cloak the action when you do it.”

“Do I really kiss her—or just make believe?” asked Kenneth Clifford. “It seems such a cheeky thing to do—rather.”

“Use your own judgment,” said Buck. “If it was me I’d give that lady a real good smack and take a chance on a bawl-out afterward. Jimmy Montague, he always kisses her on the square when he’s workin’ in a love scene with her; but then—Jim’s the director.”

“Ah!” said Kenneth Clifford.

“Ready—Action—Go!” shouted the director.

Kenneth Clifford did not kiss the beautiful leading lady, though he was sorely tempted to do so. It would have taken a film expert to tell the difference, however; and as his lips grazed hers he murmured something that caused the young woman to hide her face upon his shoulder to cloak a smile.

“Only fancy, Miss Manners!” he whispered. “They actually pay me a pound a day—for this! I should pay them—really!”

Five

The first time Alice Burwell refused to marry Kenneth Clifford she was convinced that she meant her “No” to be final. The second time she was not quite so sure; and the other seven times she refused him purely from habit.

Kenneth Clifford’s broken good-by did not move the lady to any great extent. That also had become a habit. Beginning with the fourth refusal, he had not once failed to conclude the ceremony with a touching little speech of farewell, always with the same little quiver in his voice. On one occasion he had been quite certain he was going to India to be eaten by tigers; again it had been Johannesburg; and the third time he favored New Zealand. After the eighth refusal he purchased a ticket to Paris. These things being so. Miss Burwell was the least little bit indignant when she learned that Kenneth Clifford had really sailed for America.

She waited confidently for a letter, but no such missive arrived. At the end of two months Miss Burwell’s surprise was entirely swallowed up in indignation.

Still, if he did not care to write she would never be the one to break the silence. Having satisfied herself upon this point, Miss Burwell called upon Battersby—on business, of course—and Kenneth Clifford’s name was mentioned, quite by accident.

“Yes,” said the solicitor; “I hear from him regularly. His latest plan is to buy a ranch in the Rocky Mountains near Chicago. He says America is a vast country and the people are most charming.”

“Indeed!” said the young woman. “He will remain abroad indefinitely then?”

“So he leads me to believe,” remarked Battersby. “It seems a pity, my dear.”

“Not at all,” said Miss Burwell. “He is old enough to know his own mind; and if he prefers America to England—”

After she had gone Battersby shook his gray head and sighed.

At the end of five months Miss Burwell went to London to visit her aunt. She had reached a state of mind bordering on acute exasperation. Fortunately for London, the young woman was not in the least interested in the Militant Suffrage movement, else had she become what our harassed English cousins term a Bashibazoukess—a lady with a hammer in one hand and a suitcase full of petrol in the other. Alice Burwell was ripe for window-smashing and fiery demonstrations. One may refuse a young man often enough to form the habit, but it is most exasperating to have that young man calmly accept the habit as incurable. The best thing about our habits is the firm belief that we can break ourselves of them at any time.

In London Alice met many young men, some of whom were bright, some stupid, some timid and some overbold. None pleased her; but this would have been hard to guess by her feverish gayety when in company. When alone she played the piano softly in the twilight and sang old songs in an indifferent contralto voice.

One afternoon Miss Burwell slipped into a moving-picture theater. She did not like moving pictures, for they usually made her head ache; but the posters outside depicted the hazards and hardships of life in the Wild West, and she was interested in the subject.

The picture flickering upon the screen was a disappointment. Instead of cowboys and Indians she saw men in pith helmets and white riding breeches careening furiously about a polo field. She closed her eyes to wait for the Indians.

“Look sharp there! He’ll ride you down!”

A voice spoke behind her in accents of warning, and Alice opened her eyes. Two players swept into the foreground—one slightly in advance, the other in pursuit. There was a collision; the first rider pitched out of his saddle, and through the dust haze a single figure came dashing, mallet flung aloft. Alice Burwell saw nothing but the face of the rider, life-size upon the canvas, and seemingly so close that she might have touched it by stretching out her hand. There was no mistaking a single feature of that honest and not too handsome countenance. She recognized it at once—would have recognized it anywhere. The man on the polo pony was none other than the recreant Kenneth Clifford. Miss Burwell’s fingers closed convulsively upon the handle of her parasol; and if all the truth must be told she made a noise like a startled hen.

The picture disappeared and in its place was an announcement—Love Triumphant.

Again Kenneth Clifford came riding straight into the picture. She saw him fling himself from his pony and leap forward eagerly—and then, and not till then, she saw the girl. With the smile she knew so well, Kenneth Clifford took the stranger in his arms and—yes—he kissed her! Kissed her with all those people looking on! Shame! Before the girl hid her face upon Kenneth Clifford’s shoulder there was ample time to see that she was very, very beautiful.

That was enough for Miss Burwell. She left the theater and went for a long walk.

The next afternoon she dodged a bridge party and went back to the moving-picture theater. This time she saw the entire film—Kenneth Clifford arriving at the hotel in a smart trap; Kenneth Clifford escorting the lovely stranger over the lawn; Kenneth Clifford in an earnest tête-à-tête upon the veranda—oh, if she only understood lip-reading! Kenneth Clifford drinking tea, which she knew he loathed and had always refused at her hands! Again she saw him flashing about the polo field—again she saw him ride toward the sidelines; but this time she was watching the girl. What sort of woman was it who would actually return a kiss before such a cloud of witnesses?

One of the theater attachés was an obliging youth, who answered as many of her questions as he could.

“Carn’t say, miss; but she’s some American actress…. Yes, miss; they ‘ave regular companies, same as in the theaters. We recognize the faces from seein’ ’em so frequentlike…. ‘I’m? A new one, miss…. Clever actor, ain’t ‘e? Somewheres in the States…. Titan Company is wot they calls it…. Thank you, miss!”

Alice went straight to the nearest telegraph office, where she addressed a brief message to Hubert Battersby, Solicitor.

Six

“Why, listen to reason, Algy!” argued Buck. “What do you want to blow the job for? Extry man a couple of months ago, an’ now you’re playin’ a line of special leads while La Rue is on his vacation. Seventy-five a week! Pretty soft—if you ask me! What do you want, anyway?”

They were sitting outside the studio at the Titan headquarters, dressed in the regulation Western garb as it is seen in the movies. Jimmy Montague was putting the finishing touches on a work of art entitled “My Lord the Tenderfoot,” with Kenneth Clifford in the name part.

He had been tossed in a blanket by hilarious cowpunchers, dumped into a creek, thrown off a bucking broncho, and treed by Jeff, the tame bear from the animal farm. He had rescued the ranchman’s daughter from drowning, saved the property from foreclosure, foiled the wicked foreman, and had but one more scene to play, in which he was to win the lovely Myrtle Manners for the seventh time since he had been an actor. Jimmy Montague was not the man to waste a perfect type when he had one.

“What do you want to quit for, Algy!” persisted Buck. “Feet itchin’ to be travelin’ again, or what!”

“My dear fellow,” said Kenneth Clifford, “I’ve had a charming experience. I shall never forget it—really; but the truth of the matter is, I’ve a bit of money coming, which should be here to-morrow. It’s from my father’s estate—a matter of four thousand a year.”

Buck whistled.

“Four—thousand—dollars!” said he reverently. “No wonder you want to quit! If I had four thousand cents I’d quit with you.”

“Not dollars. Buck—pounds, old fellow—pounds!”

Parvin’s chin sagged and his tobacco sack slipped from his fingers.

“Wait a minute!” he pleaded. “Look me right between the eyes—I think my mind is going. Now, then, hand it to me easy; there’s heart disease in my family. Four thousand pounds a year! Is that twenty thousand dollars in our money, or do I just think so?”

“Something like that,” said Kenneth Clifford, grinning.

Buck slid limply off the bench, wiggling his fingers feebly.

“Air!” he murmured. “Gimme air! My socks have got holes in ’em! When I eat I got to count my dough first to see if I’ve got enough for pie. I drink bartenders’ mistakes even; but this guy here—he gets twenty thousand a year just for bein’ alive! Air!”

“Oh, I say, Buck! Don’t be a silly ass! Money isn’t everything.”

“That’s what I’ve been tryin’ to kid myself into thinkin’ for the last twenty years,” said Buck, rising and shaking the dust from his clothes. “But if I had all the dough I could spend I reckon I could get along without the things it won’t buy.”

“Money,” said Kenneth Clifford soberly, “will buy you everything in the world but the one thing you want most.”

“Is that so? “What do you want that you can’t get for twenty thousand a year?”

“A girl,” said Kenneth Clifford.

“Excuse me for buttin’ in, Algy,” said Buck after a pause. “I hadn’t no right to ask that question.”

“Never mind, old chap,” said Kenneth Clifford. “It’s all right; but—”

“Hey! You fellows gone to sleep out there? Come on! We’re ready for this scene.”

It was the voice of authority speaking through the lips of J. Montague, director.

“Right-oh!” said Kenneth Clifford.

“And get a wiggle on you!” said Montague. “The light’s changing and I want to get it over quick. This is the action: Buck, you come in with the mail and find Dev sitting on the porch alone. You hand him this letter and go on into the house. Dev, you open the letter and register surprise. Hold that while I count five. We’ll make a cut-in of the letter, showing that you’ve succeeded to the title and the estates and have been called home to England. You come in at five, Myrtle. Ask him what’s the matter. Dev, you hand her the letter; and while she reads it you register that you’d propose to her if you wasn’t afraid. Start to say something and quit, and turn away with your head down—like this…. Myrtle, you ask him if he’s going back to the old country. Dev, you nod your head—yes. Myrtle, do you remember that bully line in Arizona? ‘You’re going to ride away—without one word—to me!’ Hand him that speech. Dev, you grab the letter out of her hands, crumple it up and throw it on the floor, and stamp on it. You give up the title for the girl—see? She holds out her arms to you—! Bing—into a clinch. You kiss—and that’s the end of the scene. Got it? All right! Run through it a couple of times.”

At the end of the second rehearsal a messenger boy entered, whistling discordantly.

“Say, w’ich of de ginks is named Dev—Dev—aw, some kind of a ham? Dey sent me out from de hotel. W’ich is him?”

“You’re a pretty fresh guy for a feller your size,” said Buck, taking the boy by the ear. “Telegram for you, Algy!”

“Ah-r-r! Leggo me ear!” growled the lad, kicking at Buck. “Youse movin’-pitcher Jesse Jameses gives me a pain!”

Kenneth Clifford, seated and ready for the final scene, was still staring at the cablegram when Jimmy Montague’s voice brought him back to America and the business in hand.

“Come out of it, Dev!” he urged. “We’re going to make the picture this time. All set, Buck? Got the letter! Ready—Action—Go!”

Buck swaggered into the focal plane, handed Kenneth Clifford a square envelope, slapped him on the shoulder and passed through the wall representing the front of a Western ranch house.

“Gee!” he whispered to Miss Manners. “Algy got some kind of a jolt in that telegram. He’s white as a sheet. You know, that guy has got—”

“Three—four—five!” Montague counted for the cut-in. “Come on, Myrtle!… Oh, wake up, Dev! Get in the picture. Hand her the letter…. Now, then, register hesitation!… That’s all right!… ‘You’re going to ride away—without one word—to me!‘… Grab the letter, Dev!… That’s right!… Bully! Folks, that comes pretty near being a swell little love scene! Dev, I didn’t know you had it in you!”

Miss Manners stepped back and looked up at Kenneth Clifford with a question in her eyes.

“Well, Algy!” she said at length. “Why the realism, may I ask?”

Kenneth Clifford blushed.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I—I’ve made believe to kiss you so often, my dear, that I thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind if—if I had a real one for once—just for good-by, you know.”

“Good-by!” said Miss Manners. “Are you going away?”

“Well, rather!” said Kenneth Clifford, drawing the cablegram from his pocket. “You remember I told you something about—a girl? See what she says: ‘Stop being an actor and come home!’ What I can’t understand is this: How in the world did she know what I was doing over here? I haven’t told a soul. Most extraordinary thing!”

Miss Manners laughed.

“Why,” said she, “the polo picture went to England, of course. I’ll bet she saw it and recognized you!”

“Oh, I say!” murmured Kenneth Clifford, aghast. “I should never have thought of that!”

“She couldn’t have missed that close-up of you and me at the end of the picture,” said Miss Manners mischievously. “Young man, I think you’ll have something to explain when you get home!”

“Ah!” said Kenneth Clifford. “In that case I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb!”

And he kissed the lovely Miss Manners when the camera was not looking, which goes to show that Kenneth Clifford was not so slow, after all.

Man afraid of his wardrobe

Mr. Buchanan Parvin, moving-picture Westerner by profession and extra man by force of circumstance, dropped his heavy rifle, shifted his blanket roll and haversack, removed his ancient fatigue cap and offered a perspiring brow to the cooling breeze.

“Nothing to it!” said Buck querulously. “Uncle Billy Sherman sure knew something when he called the turn on the war business. The real thing was bad enough, I reckon; but it wasn’t a patch on this moving-picture Civil War stuff. In Uncle Billy’s time if a man was winged he could lay down and take a rest, or else go to a hospital and have a pretty nurse hold his hand; if he was killed he was through for the day. There’s some sense to that kind of a war, but this bushwhacking that we’re doing ain’t got no beginning or no end.

“Take me, for instance. I’ve been killed on every steep hill in Los Angeles County and wounded every little while reg’lar; and I’m still packing this confounded blunderbuss around. I’ve helped to capture more cannons than Napoleon ever saw. I’ve crawled miles and miles on my stomach, collecting red ants and wood-ticks that I couldn’t scratch because the camera was looking at me. I’ve charged till I was black in the face. I’m a veteran of Bull Run, Antietam, Lookout Mountain, Shiloh, the Wilderness, Gettysburg—and I held Grant’s hawss at Appomattox and loaned him the makings of a cigarette. I’ve been in Libby Prison twice.

“Phil Sherman and me is pals. I showed him how to make that ride and rehearsed the hawss four times. I fought under Grant, Lee, Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, Bragg, McClellan, Hooker, Ben Butler, Jim Montague—and a-many more that I disremember right now. I’m a Yank one day and a Johnny Reb the next; I get it on both sides, so to speak; and what Uncle Billy said about this business goes double for me. I ought to have about a million dollars comin’—in pensions—but I’d swap the whole works for a nice cool scuttle of beer. What fool started this here war anyhow?”

The camera had run out of film and, while the photographer was reloading, the Union troops rested and cursed history. A portly gentleman in gray wig and beard and the uniform of an infantry colonel grinned at Buck from the ground where he had thrown himself.

“Cheer up, old horse!” said the colonel—behind his beard he was Charlie Jennings, a retired stock actor and assistant to James Montague, the producing director—“Cheer up! This will be the last of the war pictures for a couple of months. We’re going back to the wild and woolly in a day or two.”

“Western stuff?” asked Buck. “Good news! Who told you so?”

“Jimmy Montague,” replied Jennings. “He got word this morning to fix up a lot of Western scenarios quick. The boss in New York has signed A. Lester Hale to work in ten pictures—special Western leads. Ever hear of him—A. Lester Hale?”

“Sure!” said Buck. “He’s the stage cow-puncher, ain’t he? Since when has he been in the movies?”

“This is his first experience,” said Jennings; “and what I can’t understand is how the boss came to hook him. Hale is a tremendous success on the stage. Years ago he made a hit as a cowpuncher, and he hasn’t played anything but cowpunchers since. Mighty good at it too. He’s been starring with his own company for the last six seasons. His name on the billboards will make these Western pictures go like a house afire. The women are simply crazy about him. They think he’s the only actor in the world.”

“Huh! They do, eh? What do the men think about him?”

“Well,” said Jennings slowly, “I guess Hale’s all right. I played with him once in summer stock in Denver; and, though he ain’t the sort of man that would ever really hate himself to death, he may be a good fellow at that. I never got close enough to him to get a real line, because he was always a little bit upstage. Most stars are that way, Buck. But the women—he certainly is an ace with them!”

“Uh-huh!” said Buck, rolling a brown-paper cigarette. “I’ll do my level darndest not to let that prejudice me agin him. Never take a woman’s judgment about any man but yourself, Charlie. Ten times out of nine they’re wrong. If they like your hair or your teeth they’re liable to overlook a heap of dark spots in your character. Now when I was down in the Pecos country I knew a feller named Pete McCaskey.

“Mac was a right nice quiet sort of a guy until he got about seven or fifteen drinks under his belt, and, then he’d go home and lick his wife. Not because he didn’t like her, you understand, but just because it was a kind of habit with him. Whenever I’m tanked right I get a craving to whale a street-car conductor. I don’t know why—it’s just a fool notion I get. Mac, he used to pike for home when he got about so much and give his wife a dressing down. Great big fat woman she was, with blue eyes. He called her Birdie.

“By and by Mac couldn’t get enough action with his fists, so he took to using the furniture; and old Doc Bowen would have to go over and patch Birdie up. One night Mac got familiar with a new brand of booze and went after Birdie with a bed slat. Doc Bowen told me that woman’s back looked like one of them old-fashioned crazy quilts—black and blue and green and yellow. The doc, he fixed her up the best he could, and then he handed her some advice.

“‘Look here, Mrs. McCaskey,’ he says. ‘Why don’t you tell Pete this rough stuff has got to stop? These parties he’s giving you are comin’ too regular. Last week he nearly broke your arm; week before that it was your leg. Now he’s got your back all marked up like a zebra. You tell Pete he’s got to behave or you’ll quit him.’

“‘Why, doc,’ says Birdie, beginnin’ to bawl, ‘you don’t understand Pete. You don’t know what a good feller he is. In lots of ways he’s the most considerate man in the world!’

” ‘Considerate!’ says the doc. ‘Your back looks like he was considerate, ma’am! It’ll be black and blue for a month. I wish you could see it.’

” ‘I know it will,’ says Birdie, snuffling and wiping her eyes. ‘I know it will, doc; but, even when Pete’s drinking and roughest with me, he’s awful thoughtful in some ways. Believe it or not, in all the years we’ve been married he ain’t never yet so far forgot himself as to put a mark on me where anybody could see it!’

“And that’s the way a woman figures,” concluded Buck. “Their bein’ strong for Hale don’t make him real, you know. I got to see the bird before I make up my mind…. Come on, you noble heroes! The camera guy has got the box threaded up and ready for business. I’ll bet anybody three to one we have to make that last charge all over again.”

Two

James Montague, producing director for the Titan Company and a person of considerable importance in the moving-picture world—which is rather a larger world than most people think—put on kid gloves and a stiff hat and went downtown to call upon A. Lester Hale as soon as he was advised that the star had arrived from New York. Jimmy was the sort of a man who would go barehanded before kings and emperors; but he felt it necessary to put on gloves for one who was to receive ten thousand dollars for working in ten moving pictures.

After some delay he was ushered into a three-room suite in the most expensive hotel in Los Angeles, where he discovered a tall, handsome young man in smoking jacket and furred Russian slippers, who found it too great an exertion to rise or shake hands, but waved a gold-tipped Cairo cigarette in languid welcome.

“You’ll excuse me, mister—mister—I believe I’ve mislaid your card—but the newspaper men were just here and, of course, I had to get rid of them. Awful bore to be interviewed every time one turns round, isn’t it! And they positively cost me a fortune in photographs.”

“You’ve got a few left, I see,” said Montague, looking about him. No less than eight different poses of the great stage Westerner were displayed in various parts of the room. “If the newspaper men hunt you it’s better than hiring a press agent to hunt them.”

“I dare say,” remarked Hale carelessly. “It’s a nuisance, though. Reporters run in at all times; they seem to have no respect for privacy, no finer feelings, no—”

A thin, sad young man came in from the other room and waited at Hale’s elbow.

“Well, James, what is it now?”

“Beg pardon, sir, I telephoned all the newspapers, sir. Three of them wouldn’t send reporters, but said they might print the photographs if—”

“That will do, James!” said Hale sternly. “You may go.”

“Yes, sir,” said the valet, disappearing noiselessly.

“Stupid fellow!” fumed Hale. “I don’t know where he got that idea—oh, may I offer you a drink?”

Montague grinned at the clumsy attempt to cover up an unfortunate situation.

“Not so early in the morning,” said he.

“Ah—perhaps I can do something for you?”

“No, I guess not. You see, I’m the producing director for most of the Western stuff that we put out—sort of a stage manager; and I dropped in to get acquainted and talk over the kind of work that will show you to the best advantage.”

“Oh, yes,” said Hale. “A very good idea. Perhaps, though, Mister—”

“Montague,” said Jimmy.

“Perhaps, Mr. Montague, it would be better if I should have a chat with your—dramatist, do you call him? I might suggest to him a few ideas and—”

“I’m the dramatist,” said Jimmy cheerfully. “I dope out most of the pictures.”

“Indeed!” said Hale, elevating his eyebrows. “I presume the things you are about to produce will be written round my impersonation of the Westerner—the cowpuncher type, you know. Of course you are familiar with the parts I play?”

“No,” said Montague. “I may have seen you somewhere, but I don’t remember it.” If not actually turning, the worm was twisting slightly. “Can you ride a horse?”

Mr. A. Lester Hale flicked the ash from his cigarette with a gesture that dismissed the subject utterly.

“Anything that wears a bridle,” said he.

“Fine! What sort of an outfit did you bring with you?”

“My stage costumes, ” said Hale. “I brought my own saddle and rope, and all that sort of thing.”

“You handle a rope, then?” Montague was interested.

“Oh, yes,” said Hale. “I had to use one in my play two seasons ago. I thought it might come in handy, so I brought it along.”

“Bully!” said the director. “I can write a whole picture round a roping scene. We have twenty or thirty steers out at the farm that we use in Western pictures—Texas longhorns—and you can rope one of them.”

“Of course I’ve never done any range work,” said Hale—“not with real cattle, you understand; but the principle of the thing is the same.”

“Ever had any experience with movie stuff—watched pictures being made, I mean?”

“Oh, dear, no!” said the actor. “This is my first offense, I assure you. I had some open time this summer; I wanted to see the West, and—here I am. It’s a nice way to make expenses during the dull season, isn’t it? I presume, on the whole, moving-picture work is much simpler than acting—no strain on the voice.”

“Yes,” said Jimmy Montague, “it’s dead easy when you get the hang of it. Here is the address of the studio. If you will be there to-morrow at nine and bring all your things with you—”

“Nine!” exclaimed Hale. “Isn’t that very early?”

“Not for moving-picture people. The light is better then. I’ll bid you good-morning.”

Jimmy Montague rolled back to the studio in one of the company’s automobiles, talking to himself.

“And that’s the fellow that plays cowpuncher parts!” he soliloquized. “Ten thousand dollars in real money for ten pictures—expenses during the dull season! It’s a high price for cheese.”

The next morning A. Lester Hale, bag, baggage and valet, arrived at the Titan studio. Jimmy Montague, in a dirty slouch hat, disreputable chaps and high-heeled boots, welcomed him cheerfully.

“I play the heavies in the “Western pictures,” said Montague in explanation. “That’s why I’m made up. This will be your dressing-room, Mr. Hale.” It was the one the director had just vacated, consequently the best allotted to the men. “Get on your cowpuncher togs and don’t make your face up very much.”

The star looked about him and sniffed.

“This dressing-room is too small,” said he. “Have you nothing larger?”

“Miss Manners has the largest dressing-room,” said Montague. “She is our leading woman.”

A. Lester Hale sat down on one of his trunks and fumbled with a gold cigarette case. He had the air of one who prepares to stand a long siege.

“Simply out of the question!” said he. “I should stifle in a coop of that size. Why, there isn’t room enough for me to hang up my things! And then I have my man!”

So Miss Manners was turned out of her dressing-room, a process involving a great deal of hard work for a young woman without a maid. Hale took possession at once, and forgot to thank her.

“Jimmy,” whispered that very angry little lady, “your new leading man may know how to act, but if you cast him for a gentleman you’ll have to rehearse every scene with him.”

“I’m awfully sorry, Myrtle,” apologized the director, “but you see how it is. He’s got the theater idea about the star dressing-room and he thinks he’s entitled to it here. Wait till I get him out on a location somewhere when there ain’t any women round—and I’ll make him change his clothes in a bunch of cactus or behind a horse!”

“Pass out your saddle, Mr. Hale,” called Montague. “I’ll have one of the boys put it on Teddy. He’s the best-looking horse we’ve got. We’re going to make the outdoor stuff first, while the carpenters get the interiors ready. We’ll go into the hills and make some runs.”

Buck Parvin was the man who did the saddling. His eyes opened wide as he inspected Hale’s equipment.

“I’ve dreamed about saddles like this,” said Buck, “but doggone me if I ever thought I’d hold one in my hands! Look at her, Jim! Ain’t she a humdinger? Hand-stamped leather, bucking rolls, Visalia tree, and—holy Moses, Jim, d’you reckon that plate on the cantleboard is gold? ‘To A. Lester Hale from admiring friends.’ Gee! No champion broncho-twister even won a hull like this!… Braided-hair bridle, single loop; headstall and cheekstraps all covered with silver dewdads—and A. L. H. on every one of ’em! Wowie!… Spanish spade bit! Reckon I better loosen up the chinstrap or he’ll bust Teddy’s jaw…. Bearskin saddle-pockets, with silver name-plates on ’em. That’s poor, I s’pose; yes, perfectly miserable!… And feel of these blankets! Navajo, Jim, and as soft as silk!

“Why, say, you could cinch this saddle on to me and I’d be proud to have anybody ride me plumb downtown! The only thing that looks bad about the outfit is this braided-leather rope. She’s a beauty, but she’s been hangin’ in the tiestraps for so long that she’s ‘most cracked in two from lack of use. Yes, sir—that rope is sure lashed permanent. If he ever made a cast with it and took a dally or two round the horn, zing!—good night, rope! Just wait till I show all this class to that Teddy hawss, and he’ll be so puffed up he won’t never look at the rest of them ordinary plugs!”

The favorable impression created by Hale’s saddle was sustained and strengthened by his appearance as he stepped out of his dressing room. His legs were cased in white angora chaps, which had been curried and brushed until each long silky hair was in its place. His trousers were of whipcord and the boots of soft leather with Mexican heels. His spurs were of silver, with an eight-inch shank and a two-inch rowel; and the chains dragged full six inches behind his heels as he walked.

About his slender waist was strapped a heavy cartridge belt, from which swung a stamped-leather holster, sheltering a pearl-handled and gold-plated forty-five caliber revolver—the same that had barked death to many a villain in the last act, and caused thousands of matinée girls to cover their ears and squeak with pleasurable fright.

His light-blue shirt was of silk, with a large embroidered monogram on the pocket. His crimson bandanna was also of silk, and the ends were passed through an immense gold ring, in which a two-carat diamond sparkled. His sombrero was of the softest gray beaver, eighteen inches across the brim, with a twelve-inch crowm—price, thirty-five dollars. The band was of gold filigree, studded with tourmalines. His quirt was stiff with gold cord.

Buck Parvin took one long look and went out behind the developing room to express his feelings.

“Don’t cuss like that, Buck,” said Ben Leslie, the property man. “You won’t catch no fish.”

“Look at me!” said Buck tragically. “I used to be the niftiest thing on the Coast in the cow-puncher line, didn’t I? I had ’em all breakin’ their necks to rubber when I went by. Folks used to say: ‘There goes the real thing! Considerable class to that!’ It was a mistake. I ain’t real, Ben. I’m a bum negative—that’s what I am. I’m full of pinholes, fogged on both ends, and light-struck in the middle. They wouldn’t run me in a five-cent house—not even for a chaser. These clothes of mine looked pretty good an hour ago, but now I’m just sort of lingering round, waiting for the garbage wagon to come along—and then I’m going to climb aboard and say: ‘Home, James!‘… Don’t laugh—doggone you! Can’t you see your Uncle Buck’s heart is cracked plumb in two?”

“What cracked it?” asked Leslie, a man of few words but keen perceptions. “Got a new lookin’-glass in the extry men’s dressing room?”

“I’ve seen the difference between a phony and the real thing,” said Buck. “So will you when you get a flash at that new leadin’ man. Chaps lined with kid—hair on ’em a foot long; solid gold smoke-pole; Kansas City boots; silver spurs that weigh a couple of pounds apiece; diamonds all over him, like a pawnbroker’s bride. Why, say, Ben, if I could steal them clothes and wear ’em just once at the Cheyenne Frontier Day—if I could put ’em on and kind of stroll down and stand in front of the Interocean Hotel along about train time and let the boys look me over—I’d be ashamed to ask to go to Heaven when I die I It would be stretching the luck too far. Yes, sir—this guy has got the richest and the best what is, and all what is, I reckon; and if he ever throws that hatband away ole Buck will jump after it if it’s a thousand feet straight down!”

“Well,” remarked Ben Leslie “handsome is as handsome does.”

“Like hell it is!” said Buck savagely. “I sprung that chestnut on a cross-eyed woman once, figuring to comfort her a little bit.”

“Did it work?” asked Ben.

“Got action on it right away quick!” said Buck. “She grabbed a skillet off the stove and just flattened it on my face. Folks that has to take second money get sore when you remind ’em of it.”

Three

It was late in the afternoon when the moving-picture Westerners returned to the studio. The new leading man dismounted stiffly and hobbled toward his dressing-room, looking neither to the right nor the left. There was in his stride a mixture of lofty reserve, wounded dignity and saddle soreness that caused Ben Leslie to grin as he sat in the doorway of the property room, checking off a list of props with a carpenter’s pencil.

After Buck’s horse was in the barn he sought out Leslie and borrowed a generous portion of fine-cut tobacco, a sure sign that he had a tale to unfold. Ben assisted him with a casual remark.

“Solomon-in-all-his-glory just got back,” said he. “At first I thought it was a stepladder getting off the horse; but I looked again and I see it was your friend with the dude buckaroo clothes.”

“I guess he walked kind of lame, did he?” chuckled Buck.

“Lame! He went to his dressing-room like a tragedy queen with the spring-halt. Struck me as funny, because I heard him telling Charlie Jennings that he could ride anything with hair on it.”

“Ride!” said Buck. “Say, Ben, that guy couldn’t ride a hair mattress. He couldn’t ride in a box car with the door shut. All he’s got is the clothes. No more real Western ability than a canary bird. I got his number as soon as we started out this morning. I had Teddy all saddled up for him, but Mister Four Flush wouldn’t ride to the location with the rest of us. Huh-uh! He went out in the automobile with Montague and the camera man; and he took that dough-faced valet of his along. One of the boys had to lead his hawss. That was where he tipped his mitt to me.”

“How did he make out?” asked Ben.

“He didn’t make out at all,” said Buck. “Don’t rush me, son. I got to tell this slow or I’ll spill it. This is too good to be told without music. The first run we made was down a little pitch in the road and off into the brush. We was chasin’ a hawss thief—that Mexican extry man. Well, sir, Mister Four Flush takes a look at the hill we had to come down and begins to holler. He said it was too steep. After that he had to know whether Teddy was surefooted. That was a warm one to pull on the best stunt hawss in the movie business, hey?

“Well, Jim finally got him ribbed up to make the run. There wasn’t no rehearsal—didn’t need none, for it was just straight riding stuff. All we had to do was follow the Mex on the keen jump, whirl our hawsses where he whirled his, and take up the side of the hill through the brush and weeds. We’d be out of the picture as soon as we got off the road.

“Four Flush, he was to lead the posse, of course. The first time Jim yelled for us to come on, he didn’t get started and we like to run over him. There was a fine mix-up, and the Mex had to come back and do it over, and Charlie Dupree had thirty or forty feet of wasted film on his hands. The next time Jim hollered I was right close to Four Flush and I nicked Teddy with the spur. Away goes Mister Good Clothes, pulling leather with both hands and yelling Whoa! Whoa! When he got close to the camera he mighty nigh bent Teddy double, and the way he jounced round in that gold-plated saddle was pitiful to see!

“It’s a darned good thing for him that I left that chin-strap loose, or else he’d have yanked Teddy over backward and most likely got a broken neck for it. He some close to falling off at the place where we had to take to the woods; but Teddy handled him nice, and into the brush he went, the rest of us stringing along behind.

“I was on the tail-end of the run, making one of them Snapper Garrison finishes and a-fannin’ ole Pieface between the ears for all there was in it; and just as he was making the turn, hangin’ on by one spur, out of the brush comes Four Flush—on foot, mind you—yelling like he was snake-bit! He goes for Montague, square into the picture, of course, and spoiled the whole run—and you’d never guess what ailed him, Ben.”

“Somebody rode into him from behind and bumped him?”

“No,” said Buck. “The poor unfortunate feller had gone through cockleburs and got some in his chaps!”

“Now see here,” said Ben reproachfully, “I like a liar, and always did, but there’s times, Buck, when you suit me too well.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die! I wouldn’t have believed it, either, if I hadn’t seen it. ‘Get back!’ Jim yells at him. ‘Can’t you see you’re spoilin’ this picture?’

” ‘What do I care for your darned ole picture?’ howls Four Flush. ‘You told me to ride through them weeds and I done it. Now look at these chaps! They’re a solid mass of stickers.’

” ‘That’s what chaps are for,’ says Jim. ‘Don’t you know that film costs money? And you ought to have waited until the run was over!’

“Well, they had it hot and heavy; but there wasn’t nothing to it. Percy wouldn’t make the run again until we scouted out a place without burs, and Dupree had to shift his camera and establish new lines. What he said about Harold would have blistered a horny toad; and, with Jim Montague helpin’ him with suggestions now and then, there wasn’t much language left when they got through. Honest, I was afraid Jim was going to bust an artery or something. Little Casino, the valet, he had a swell job following Four Flush round and gathering a quart or so of cockleburs whenever he got a chance!

” ‘I can never wear ’em on the stage again!’ says Harold.

“Well, when noon came we dug out our lunches, but Four Flush didn’t have none—nobody had told him to bring one. Jim did the right thing—he offered him his own lunch; but Four Flush wouldn’t touch it, and, while the rest of us was eating, him and Little Casino had a party all to themselves. They was off under a tree gatherin’ another mess of burs out of them angora chaps.

“In the afternoon we made one run through water—shallow water at that. Four Flush balked again.

” ‘But I’ll get wet!’ he says. ‘I might catch cold. I got to protect my voice. Why can’t you stop the camera just as I get to the bank and leave something to the imagination?’

“Montague had been getting sorer and sorer; and he turned loose in that quiet, raspy way of his that kind of makes a fellow feel as if he’d been touched up with the hot end of a bull whip.

” ‘Mr. Hale,” he says, ‘please remember that in this business we don’t leave nothing to the imagination. This ain’t the stage,’ he says. ‘This is real scenery and real water. We don’t have no canvas rivers in the movies. When we go into the water we get wet. I’ve had my whole company overboard in the Pacific Ocean. This creek is only three feet deep and I guess you can stand it. We’ll make the run now, if you please.’

“Well, Four Flush wasn’t the least mite tickled, but he saw he was up against it; so he climbs down off his hawss and begins to peel his chaps.

” ‘Whatever happens,’ he says, ‘I ain’t going to have these all sopped up! I couldn’t ever wear ’em on the stage again.’

“It took Jim half an hour to explain that he’d already established them chaps in the other runs—and, water or no water, he had to wear ’em.

” ‘But that’s only a detail,’ says Four Flush, sulkylike.

” ‘You’ll find there’s a whole lot of details to this business,’ says Jim.

“He went into the water at last, but he was about as tickled over it as a sick hen. He held both feet up as high as he could and kept looking down to see how his chaps was getting along. that’ll give a film the real Western flavor, I reckon. While he was kicking about getting wet the auto started back for the studio with the first load. Being some damp he couldn’t wait, so he tore out on hawssback. He come home standing up in the stirrups, because it pained him to set down. What do you know about that? And him the hero of all them Western plays!”

“Why, he won’t do at all, will he?” asked Ben.

“Hush, man! Don’t make me laugh. The poor sucker can’t even set still on a hawss without worryin’ all over his face. What would he do in some of them real tough runs and chases that Jim Montague frames up for us—lickety-split down the side of a cañon! They get my goat once in a while, them runs do; and what chance would this feller stand? Suppose Jim asked him to pull a fall? He’d break his back sure! And he was telling Jennings he could ride, hey? I wonder what sort of a hawss he’s used to.”

“I know,” said Ben. “I worked one of them Western shows once that had an awful lot of riding in it. The horses they used can he bought at any fruit stand. A couple of cocoanut shells and a board out in the wings—Tunk-a-tunk! Tunk-a-tunk! Then the actor hollers Who-o-a! and goes stampin’ on to the stage, brushing the dust off his clothes or hitting his pants-legs with a whip. That’s the sort of a rough rider Hale is.”

“You sure spoke an armful then!” said Buck. “Montague usually figures on twenty or twenty-five runs a day. This Clarence guy fooled round so much that we only did five—one down the hill, one through water, and three dinky little gallops on level ground, ‘most as exciting as a female riding school out for the afternoon. A whole day’s work wasted—all them extry men to pay; and it’s my bet that we’ll get make-overs on the entire bunch.”

“Didn’t he show up pretty good in the other stuff?” asked Ben.

“Good and rotten!” said Buck. “We made one scene, dismounted, after we’d ketched the hawss thief and was about to string him up. Four Flush was to pull his gun and prevent the lynching. I wish you could ‘a’ seen the way he went after that forty-five—by slow freight! When he finally got it out of the holster he shoved it at us full arm-length instead of whipping it up from the hip for a quick cover. Honest, I could have loaded a cannon single-handed and shot him full of holes while he was getting that gun into action! It was awful! And all the time he was jimmy-in’ round so he could look straight into the camera. I’ve seen some extry men that was pretty tol’able anxious to take a pretty picture, but he skinned ’em all! Jim had to keep bawling him out for that every few seconds, and we had to make the scene five times before he could forget there was a camera round.”

“The boss will lose a lot of money on him,” said Ben.

“It ain’t the firm’s bankroll that worries me,” said Buck; “but whenever I think of them elegant clothes—wasted—just naturally squandered on a guy like that, I get kind of sore at Providence. Hale’s got as much use for them things as Baldy Bradley had for the presents his sister sent him from Boston after he had the fever that time. Baldy had quite a long spell o’ sickness, and it left him without a hair on his head and stone deaf.”

“What did he get!” asked Ben.

“A phonograph and a pair of silver hair-brushes!” said Buck.

Four

A few days later two men sat in the darkened projecting room, the tiny theater where moving pictures make their first and often their last appearance upon a screen. As soon as a scene is photographed the film goes to the developing room, and when the negative is dry it is flashed upon a screen and scrutinized for defects. At times the action of the players is at fault or the camera man has erred, but more often the condition of the film itself presents a reason for rejection. Pinholes; tiny electric flashes generated inside the camera, known and bitterly cursed under the name of static; blisters upon the emulsion side of the film; and the queer perpendicular scratches called rainstorms—these are only a few of the unavoidable things that cost moving-picture concerns small fortunes in makeovers.

One man passes upon all the film turned out by the various directors, and his word is final. A shake of the head may cancel days of hard work and entail additional expense of hundreds of dollars. On this particular day Bill Cartwright, projecting-room expert and also the Western representative of the Titan Company, had summoned Jimmy Montague to the theater of judgment, there to witness, in a completed and assembled picture, the initial appearance of A. Lester Hale as a movie star.

“Jim, I want you to look at this stuff,” said the expert. “The negatives are good, but the picture itself is hopeless. Your runs and chases haven’t got any life in ’em. You’re away over on your footage, and this fellow Hale is impossible. Yes—worse than that! Even in the studio stuff he kills half the scenes he gets into. What’s the matter with him? Can’t you beat anything into his conceited head?”

Jimmy Montague sighed and took a fresh grip upon his cigar. The criticism was not unexpected.

“I’ve bawled him out until my throat is sore,” said he wearily. “Of course the runs are dead! Why wouldn’t they be? Hale has to set the pace, and I can’t make him ride fast. I rehearse the studio scenes a dozen times with him and he’s all right in the rehearsals; but the minute the camera man begins to turn Hale starts to look pretty and pose, and works with one eye on the box. Give him a chance in the middle of the stage on a ‘close-up’ and he’ll eat a mile of film; and that’s why I’m over on the footage. I don’t know what to do about it, Bill.”

“Pictures like these,” said Cartwright, “will hurt the company’s reputation if we put ’em out. The boss certainly made a fine bloomer when he gave this false alarm a contract!”

“I might write some scenarios that wouldn’t call for much but studio work on his part,” suggested Montague.

“We couldn’t get away with it,” said the expert. “It’s action that people want, Jim. And don’t forget that this fellow’s stage reputation will make ’em expect to see him do the wild and woolly. A few years ago we faked the Western stuff and got by with it, but nowadays audiences are too well educated and too wise. They’ve been brought up on the real thing and they won’t stand for the hunk. Every company out here has got real riders and ropers, and everybody will be looking for Hale to do the same sort of stuff—and he can’t! By the way, have you had any more trouble with him lately?”

“Not since day before yesterday,” chuckled Jimmy. “He won’t speak to me! You remember the fight I had with him in the bunkhouse set? He’d been beefing and kicking all day, insulting everybody right and left; and he finally got me sore. When we rehearsed the fight I pulled my punches the same as we always do; but when we made the picture I let one go through—hang on his chin. It was the only way I had of getting back at him. He walked of the side lines and it took me a long time to explain to him that once in a while a man had to take a real punch in order to register it on the film.

“He said he was an actor and not a pugilist, and I had to promise to go easy in the fight scene. I did, and he had the nerve to start a haymaker for my jaw. I clinched and tore the shirt off his back.”

“And well I know it!” growled Cartwright. “He put in a bill for ten dollars. I could buy a lot of shirts for that. We’re up against it, Jim! He’s got us on that contract and, unless he breaks it himself, I see a big loss in time and money.”

A long, thoughtful silence followed that remark.

“Well,” said Montague at length, “stranger things than that have happened.”

“Than what?” demanded Cartwright.

“Never mind,” said Montague. “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. Now, as I understand it, you regard this Hale person as a total loss to the concern. Eh?”

“Ab-so-lute-ly!” said Cartwright dismally. “He’s a ten-thousand~dollar joke, but you and we won’t do any of the laughing. You can add to that all it costs to keep the company going, because these pictures won’t have any sale after they’re out of the release houses. They’re so much dead film.”

“If he should see fit to quit us,” hazarded Montague, “could he get action on his contract? Sue us for damages—or anything like that?”

“Not if he quits of his own accord,” said Cartwright

“Uh-huh!” grunted Montague thoughtfully. “Bill, I think I’ll go and do some authoring. I’ve got an idea that I might write a stunt picture—oh, a lot of stunts, one in every scene. It ought to be a money-saver if it works. How much will you stand for?”

“If you’re thinking about what I’m thinking about,” said the Western representative, “you can go as far as you like, and the company will he behind you in anything but murder in the first degree. Ten thousand dollars is a lot of money.”

“So I’ve been told,” remarked Jimmy, “and it seems to me that a man who saves it ought to be entitled to salvage.” He took his departure, chewing earnestly on an unlighted cigar.

Jimmy Montague did not go authoring; he went motoring instead, which, for a moving picture director, is much the same thing. All the world is truly a stage for those who ransack it for the scenery round which the flickering dramas are built.

There are seasons of the year when deep running water is scarce in Southern California, hut Jimmy Montague knew where to look; and in a rugged cañon miles from Los Angeles he discovered a promising series of locations.

That same evening Buck Parvin received sealed orders.

“Buck,” said Montague, “do you remember where we made that Indian picture last spring—the place where the horses had to swim?”

“I reckon I’ll never forget it. I can feel that cold water yet?”

“Meet me there at one o’clock to-morrow afternoon. Put an old saddle on Teddy and lead him. Wear old clothes and take a change along—because you might get wet.”

“Oho!” said Buck. “Lead Teddy, hey? Is Man-Afraid-of-His-Wardrobe going to be in this?”

“Speaking as one human being to another and in strict confidence,” said the director, “he is. Away over his head!” Montague looked steadily at Buck for several seconds and then he winked—a slow, deliberate closing of the left eye. “Yes, Mr. Hale is going to be in it. For a starter he’ll swim the creek on Teddy and get shot off his back in about ten feet of ice water—with his boots and chaps on. Then he’ll do a jump from the top of that great big rock. More ice water. Then we’ll make a close-up of him, stranded on a sandbar with only the end of his nose sticking out. Still more ice water. And then—”

“Say, hold on!” interrupted Buck. “Are you trying to kid me or are you kidding yourself? You know Percy ain’t got no use for ice water—except on the side, as you might say; and this time of the year, with that snow up above and beginning to melt, a man might just as well be froze to death as chucked into that creek. He won’t go through with it.”

“And then,” continued Montague—“if he lasts that far—he’ll do some fancy riding down the side of the cañon. After that we can think up something else. Right offhand, I’d say that to-morrow is going to be his busy day.”

“I wish you’d put the cards on the table,” said Buck. “Do you want to drownd this bird, or what? Because I’m a guy that can be trusted to go along way for a friend.”

“Buck,” said Montague in his professional tone, “I knew a man once—about your size and complexion-who got a steady job with a director because he saw a lot of things and forgot about ’em afterward. Are you on?”

“If that’s a promise,” said Buck, “you can depend upon a loss of memory complete. You said something about this bird being shot off his hawss. As a favor to me I’d like to make that gunplay.”

“I thought I’d do it myself.”

“Please let me,” urged Buck. “I ain’t never shot a leadin’ man yet—and then there’s other reasons. Remember yesterday—when I got my hand between his face and the camera for about a second, and how he beefed to you about it? When we got off the scene he tore into me again. Jim, that big hunk of uselessness called me a confounded, impertinent, insignificant, bowlegged supe! Yes—and worse than that. I may not look it, Jim, but I’m terrible sensitive. My feelings are easy hurt and my hot Southern blood boils mighty quick. I’d like to see myself in a picture shooting this Jasper.”

“Oh, very well!” said Montague. “And if you’re five minutes late, I’ll fine you a day’s pay—understand?”

“Huh! I’ll be there with my hair in a braid!” said Buck.

Five

As the big studio touring car bummed swiftly along the foothill road Jimmy Montague, in the tonneau with A. Lester Hale, his valet and two suitcases, maintained a cheerful flow of conversation, apparently unmindful of the somewhat sulky silence of his star.

“There is really not the slightest danger in the world,” said Montague. “In the first place the horse can swim like a—”

“But I understood you to say the water wasn’t deep!” interrupted Hale.

“Six or eight feet—a mere trifle!” said Jimmy. “You swim, of course?”

“Not for several years,” said Hale uncomfortably. “Why wouldn’t it be better merely to suggest that scene without making the horse swim?”

“We suggested too many things in the first picture,” said Montague, “and that was why Cartwright turned it down. Suggestion is all right on the stage, but in the movies people expect realism. They won’t stand for anything else. We’ve got to pull some stunts in order to make this next picture stand up. This swimming stuff is easy. You know how a horse acts when he gets beyond his depth, don’t you?”

“Not—not exactly,” said Hale.

“Well, it practically amounts to the same thing as walking on his hind legs. He’s feeling for bottom—see?—and kind of treading water. Soon as you feel him going out from under you take hold of the pommel with one hand and let him tow you. Then, when you’re almost across, Buck jumps out of the willows and fires once. That’s your cue to let go, throw up your hands and sink.”

“Sink!” ejaculated Hale.

“Just bob under for a second,” said Montague reassuringly.

“But why is it necessary for me to go under at all?” objected Hale. “Why wouldn’t it be much more effective for me to fall forward on the horse’s neck and let him bring me out—wounded?”

“Because it would crab the next scene,” said Jimmy glibly. “That shows you washed up on a sandbank, unconscious.”

“But I don’t like the idea of going into the water with all these heavy clothes on,” persisted the leading man.

“Of course they’ll get wet; but you can change right away,” said Montague. “That’s one reason why I loaned you my old chaps. They’ve been wet so many times that it won’t hurt ’em.”

“I’m not worrying about your ratty old togs,” said Hale with a scornful glance downward. “As a boy I was subject to cramps.”

“My dear fellow,” said Montague with acid sweetness, “surely you know I wouldn’t ask you to do anything I haven’t done myself. This is a very simple moving-picture stunt. You go under water for a second and the scene ends there. Buck throws you a rope and we pull you out. Why, when we put on the pirate picture I walked the plank blindfolded and dropped forty feet into the ocean.

“In another water picture I went head first off the yardarm of a vessel. They tossed me off the San Pedro Breakwater tied up in a sack, and I had to cut my way out before I could begin to swim. This thing I’m asking you to do is dead easy.”

“Easy for you, maybe,” said Hale with a sneer. “I’m not a swimmer or a high diver.”

Jimmy Montague’s face slightly reddened, but he replied quietly enough, and his very calmness would have carried a threat to a less self-centered and egotistical individual. “In the movies,” said he, “a man has to do almost everything—well.”

By this time the automobile was climbing the cañon road. On each side were towering walls, flecked with patches of brush. Below, in the willows, a swift mountain stream hurled itself over its rocky bed, swirling into deep green pools and racing over pebbly shallows. A cold wind ripped down the narrow canon, bringing a chilling hint of melting snow in the heights above. Hale shivered and drew his coat closer about him.

As the road dipped away toward a ford Montague signaled to the chauffeur.

“We’ll get out here,” said he.

It was a lonely spot, deep in the cañon. There was no sound save the rushing cluck of the water and the thresh of the willows whipped by the keen breeze. Montague, carrying the tripod, led the way up the bank of the stream. Charlie Dupree, the camera man, came next, with his box and paraphernalia. Hale and his valet lagged in the rear. The chauffeur, to whom stunt pictures were no novelty, elected to take a nap in the tonneau. At times Jimmy Montague, crashing through the brush, caught snatches of conversation behind him and smiled grimly.

“It’s not legitimate work!… Confounded slapstick effects!… Too cold!… An artist is entitled to some consideration, even in moving pictures.”

Evidently Hale was pouring his troubles into a sympathetic ear, as attested by a low commiserating mumble from the faithful James. In a bend of the stream the party halted, and Buck Parvin, sitting upon a rock and examining his battered forty-five-caliber revolver, gave them a noisy and cheerful greeting.

“Quite some swimming pool we’ve got here,” said he. “I was just thinking if you didn’t show up pretty soon I’d take a dive for luck.”

At the bend the stream was perhaps seventy-five feet wide. Shallow at the other bank, it sloped away into deep water, where the current was scarcely perceptible. Hale looked down into the pool, dipped his fingers into the water and promptly entered a vigorous protest.

“It’s too cold!” said he.

“Nonsense!” said Montague. “You’ll only be in the water a few seconds.”

“Couldn’t you double me in this scene?” he asked anxiously.

“Impossible! I can only double you in scenes where your face does not show clearly. You are so well known that any audience would spot the double in a second…. Charlie”—this to the camera man—“set your camera here. I want that stretch of sand on the other side. Shoot low, because I want as much water as I can get. It’s a clear day; so don’t open your lens too wide. Use your light meter for your aperture and time your shutter to it.”

“Well,” said Hale, “If you are really going to insist on this foolishness I suppose I must go through with it. You are responsible if anything happens. James, get my dry things out of the suitcases. You are a witness that I do this under protest.”

“Yes, sir,” said James. “I am.”

“Your horse is over there in the willows,” said Montague. “The water above is shallow—so you can cross there. When I give the word ride through that break in the brush on the other side and come into the water between the two white stones. You can leave the rest to Teddy—he’ll swim straight for the camera. Don’t try to stay in the saddle after you get into deep water. Trail along and let Teddy tow you—and when Buck shoots let go. All I want you to do is to go under water if only for a second; and you’ll be so close to the bank that we can have you out in a jiffy. No mistakes on this—unless you want to make it over.”

“But we always make a scene twice!” said Charlie Dupree, and paused suddenly as Montague’s heel descended upon his toes.

Charlie was an experienced camera man and he had seen many strange things in his time. He subsided, muttering:

“What is this—a joke?” he growled as he fiddled with the shutter.

Plainly it was no joke to A. Lester Hale, gingerly splashing across the shallow ford above the pool. Neither was it a joke to James, shaking out bath towels and fresh underwear with the troubled manner of one upon whom a great responsibility had been laid. It was evident that James, like his master, feared the worst.

Jimmy Montague and Buck Parvin, conferring in whispers, grinned at each other.

“It’s no josh about that water being cold!” said Buck. “You ought to brought an oil-stove along to thaw him out afterward.”

“I don’t know how this will end,” said the director; “but back me up in anything I start.”

“Sure!” said Buck. “I’m after that steady job you was talking about.”

The first time Montague gave the word Hale rode slowly down to the bank of the stream and stopped his horse to remind all present that he was working under strong protest. The second time he asked for additional instructions; but the third time he entered the water.

“Come on, Teddy!” yelled Montague. “Good horse! Come on!”

He produced an apple. Teddy saw it and headed straight for the director, entirely disregarding a strong nervous pull on the bit. Not for nothing had the horse played star parts in dozens of film dramas. Hale’s face whitened as the icy water swirled about his knees.

“Oo-o-h!” he gasped. “I—I can’t do it! I can’t! Tell the horse to go back! It’s —it’s too cold!”

“Come on with him, Teddy!” called Montague; and Teddy having seen the apple, came on.

Suddenly Hale felt the saddle sinking under him and the water rose to his shoulders. With a howl of fright, he threw himself forward, clutching blindly at the only portion of the horse still above water. One hand found Teddy’s left ear and fastened upon it with a desperate grip. The other one was tangled in the mane.

“What are you trying to do?” yelled Buck. “Want to drownd that hawss? Leggo his ear, you fool, and give him a chance to swim!”

Advice and insult went unheeded. Hale’s eyes popped out and his chin receded until it was all but invisible. His face froze into a perfect mask of terror. For once in his life he forgot he was being photographed.

“Help!” he cried. “Help!”

“Let go!” roared Montague.

That was the last thing Hale meant to do, however. He tried to pull himself forward upon the horse’s head, and Teddy’s fore legs beat the air wildly as his nose disappeared under the water.

“Rope him!” shouted Montague to Buck. “He’s drowning Teddy!”

“I got something better than that,” replied Parvin; and whipping his revolver from the holster he leveled it and fired. At the crashing report Hale’s hands went high over his head, and with a bloodcurdling scream he sank from view.

“He’s murdered! You’ve killed him!” shouted James, the faithful, jumping up and down on the bank.

“Murdered your grandmother!” snarled Buck. “The wad must have hit him, that’s all.”

“Don’t let that fool flunky get into the picture!” yelled Dupree, making a fine photograph of a swimming horse and a few bubbles behind him.

Jimmy Montague was the first to appreciate the gravity of the situation. With a reproachful look at Buck Parvin, the director stripped off his coat and plunged into the pool. After what seemed a long time he reappeared, his fingers twined in Hale’s long hair.

“The rope—quick!” gasped Montague. “He’s hurt!”

Buck drew them both to shore, and on a level stretch of sand Jimmy Montague applied first aid to the drowning. As he pumped vigorously at Hale’s arms he shot a question at Parvin.

“What was in that gun—rock salt?”

“Nah!” said Buck. “Just a little candlewax on the wad. Look here!” He ripped open the silk shirt and laid his finger on a small red mark upon the chest. “That’s some shooting!” he whispered. “I nailed him when he was trying to climb up between Teddy’s ears. He ain’t hurt, Jim. He’s stalling with you.”

“Not on your life he ain’t stalling!” said Montague. “He’s on the level with it. You scared him almost to death!”

After a time Hale began to moan and toss his head from side to side. Jimmy Montague drew a relieved breath.

“He’s all right now,” said he to the frightened James. “It was the shock that got him, and he didn’t swallow much water.”

The leading man opened his eyes and stared about him wildly. Then he clutched his breast and groaned.

“I’m shot through and through!” he sobbed. “Get a doctor—quick!”

“oh, rats!” said the unfeeling Montague. “It was only the wad from the blank cartridge that hit you.”

“But I—I felt it. I feel it yet!” said Hale.

“Never even put a hole in your shirt,” said Buck consolingly. “Look and see.”

It took twenty minutes to convince Hale that he was in no danger of immediate death; when assured upon this point he consented to sit up, resting his head upon the shoulder of the faithful James. It was then that Jimmy Montague had an inspiration.

“Take it easy for a while,” said he, “and then we’ll make the scene over. Your valet jumped into the picture and cloaked the action. Tough luck!”

“W-what?” Hale forgot himself to such an extent that he sat up without support.

“You’ll have to do it again,” said Montague. “Your valet here lost his head and—”

“I’m to go into that water again?” Hale’s voice rose shrill with hysteria. “Risk my life for your fool picture? Not for anything in the world!”

“But your contract calls for—”

“What do I care about a contract?” sputtered Hale. “You can’t hold me to it! I quit! I quit now! I’ve got a witness here!”

“Yes, sir,” said James. “You have.”

“Well,” said Buck Parvin, thumbing the cylinder of his forty-five, “I don’t know’s I blame you a darned bit. Too much is plenty!”

“Jim,” said Bill Cartwright, “you’re the eighth wonder of the world! He says we can sue him if we want to, but he’ll never fill that contract. How did you do it?”

“Easy!” said Montague. “It’s a poor director that can’t dig up a scenario to fit an emergency, Bill. But if you’re shy a stage cow-puncher you might give a real Westerner a job. I’ve put Buck on the payroll.”

Water stuff

Buck Parvin, moving-picture cow-puncher, arrayed in the conspicuous habiliments of his calling, sat on the steps outside the main building of the Titan Company and thrust forth his new boots for all the world to admire. Fashioned of the choicest materials, with the squarest of square toes and the highest of high heels, the midleg portions scroll-stitched in graceful and intricate designs, and surmounted by broad bands of glittering patent leather, they were, indeed, boots to challenge the eye and demand the respectful attention of the most casual observer.

Since his promotion to a position on the weekly payroll at a salary that amazed him afresh every Saturday afternoon, Buck had been able to indulge his passion for expensive gauds and trappings. The new sombrero was a dream in gray beaver, the silk shirt a poem in Nile green; but the Kansas City boots were the very apple of Buck’s eye. They marked the floodtide of gratified ambition and made him one with leading men, champion broncho busters, street medicine fakers and proprietors of Wild West shows.

Such boots are to be seen in shop windows in Cheyenne, Denver, Fort Worth, Oklahoma City and Las Vegas. They are seldom encountered east of the Mississippi River, and nowhere are they common or likely to become so, for they cost a great deal more than a suit of ready-made clothes and something less than a good saddle. In this day of inflated food values those who can afford such luxurious footwear are scarce. There are cheap imitations of course, but they are just that and nothing else, and serve but to make the genuine article more desirable.

For the further edification of the assembled extra people. Buck rolled a brown-paper cigarette, employing none but the fingers of his left hand—and those who do not believe this feat requires dexterity and practice should try it at their leisure.

As he gave the flimsy cylinder a final twist and flourish Buck paused, eyes upturned and ear inclined toward an open window whence issued a mournful chant, pitched in a low, rumbling key. The window looked out from the private office of James Montague, scenario author, heavy actor and producing director, in whose narrow littered sanctum film dramas were born.

Ben Leslie, the property man, slouched across the yard and Buck summoned him with a jerk of his head.

“Some kicks, boy—some kicks!” said Leslie approvingly. “You didn’t find those new boots hanging on a bush, I’ll bet!”

“Not so you could notice it,” said Buck with modesty. “Just got ’em out of the express office—made to order. But that ain’t what I wanted you for. Listen here a minute and see if you can get this.

“Many brave hearts are asleep in the deep;So beware! Be-e-e-e-ware!

“What’s biting Jim now?” continued Buck, with a trace of anxiety in his tone.

The property man, a lean, melancholy person of much assorted experience, given at times to economy in language, rose, hitched his trousers fore and aft and gravely performed the first steps of the dance known to musical comedy as the sailor’s hornpipe.

“Doggone it!” sighed Buck. “I had a hunch that was what ailed him. Some more of that rotten water stuff, eh? It’s a pity Jim wouldn’t get a company of square-faced Swede sailors and mermaids and be done with it!

“For many a stormy wind shall blo-o-o-wEre Ja-hack—comes home—again!”

“He’s full of it this morning,” said Leslie. “Genius must be burning like a fire in a furniture factory. Do you know what he’s doing, Buck? Jim is trying to warble himself into thinking that he’s the Clark Russell of the movie business; but he doesn’t know one end of a ship from the other. That’s temperament, son—temperament.”

“Uh-huh!” Buck shuddered slightly. “Let him sing his fool head off! Believe me, them songs about bounding billows and raging mains was never written by a guy with a weak stomach. Do you reckon Jim will hire that ratty old ship again and stake us all to some more seasickness!”

“The Alden Besse? She’s already hired.”

“And me a regular member of the company!” groaned Buck.

“Well, you would be an actor!” grinned the unfeeling Ben.

“Listen!” said Buck. “If I have to go to sea any more in that old tub all the acting in the world won’t keep me from laying right down on the deck so soon as we get outside the San Pedro breakwater. After that I’ll be just the same as dead—only not near so comfortable. Montague makes me sick! Here he’s got all the dry land in California to work on—and he chooses the Pacific Ocean! You know, Ben, sometimes I think a movie director ain’t human!”

“He’s got to give the public what it wants,” said Leslie, quoting Article I, Section 1, of the Showman’s Creed. “The other water picture is getting a lot of money. That’s the answer, old horse!”

“If it gets a million it won’t break me even for what it done to my stomach, ” said Buck morosely. “I’m a game guy, Ben—and you know it. Everybody knows it. I don’t mind taking fool chances with my life; but monkeying with my stomach is another proposition. Put me on ole Pieface and I’ll ride him as high and handsome as anybody. I’ll take as hard a fall as Jim Montague can frame up for me—and he’s framed some jimdandies!

“When it comes to runs through brush or over boulders I can make all them Spring Street cowboys and film Cossacks quit like sheep in a blizzard—but salt water? Deep salt water? No, sir! You never heard of a guy named Buck that was a sailor. Me—I begin to get seasick as soon as I buy my steamer ticket. There’s something about the look and smell of the ocean that hits me right where I live. Green ain’t no healthy color for water, Ben—and you know it. I’ve come down some terrible steep hills for Jim Montague and never cheeped about it; but if he’s quit the cavalry and joined the navy I reckon I’ll have to ask for a change of venue.”

“Shucks!” said the property man. “A little attack of seasickness is the healthiest thing a man can have. It tones up your whole system—acts like a tonic.”

“A tonic, eh?” sneered Buck. “Now you’ve said something! Doc Bowen gave Baldy Bradley a tonic when lie was getting over the fever that time down in the Pecos country. It looked like harness oil, it smelled like a burnt boot, and it tasted like both of ’em, with a few other things thrown in to make it more difficult. Whenever it come time to slip Baldy a jolt of the stuff it took five able-bodied men to turn the trick—three to set on him, one to hold his nose, and one to steer the spoon.

“‘Doc,’ says Baldy one day, ‘what in Sam Hill do you put in that stuff that makes it taste so bad?’

” ‘Why, several things,’ says the doc, blowing out his double chin like a pelican. ‘That’s a tonic to build you up. I take it myself sometimes.’

” ‘Take it now, doc,’ says Baldy, ‘and keep it! Gimme the fever back again; I’d relish it more.’

“And that’s your Uncle Buck on this seasick thing. If I’ve got to yo-heave-ho to be healthy I’d choose to remain an invalid like I am now. I’d rather be a well extry man and stay on dry land than play special seasick leads at a hundred a week.

“Rocked in the cradle of the deep,I lay me down in peace to sleep.”

“Gosh!” said Buck. “You don’t reckon Jim figures to keep us on that water all night?”

“Forget it!” said Ben Leslie, rising. “You might have a good part in this next picture.”

Buck regarded his friend reproachfully

“I had a good part in that last one,” he said; “but my breakfast got jealous of me and busted into the film. How can a man act when his stomach is acting, too?”

“Don’t ask me!” said the property man. “Ask Jim—here he is.”

Montague stood on the steps and surveyed the morning gathering of extra people with the cold appraising eye of the experienced director—the connoisseur in features and types.

Broken-down actors, with frayed collars and cuffs, trying to hide a pathetic eagerness behind a calm, professional exterior; gum-chewing girls in cheap finery, powdered and painted within an inch of their lives; young men smitten with an ambition to smirk before a camera and call themselves actors forever afterward; a sprinkling of the down-and-outs of both sexes—it was the typical motley assemblage. To some of them an appearance in a moving picture was nothing more than a joke or a new experience; to others it meant three dollars a day and bread and butter.

“You girl on the end—with the green feathers!” said Montague briskly. “Can you swim?”

The young woman laughed loudly and flirted her flumes.

“Swim!” she answered. “Well, I should say not! I’m an actress, Mr. Montague. I was with the Worldwide and the Transcontinental people; and the—”

“Good night!” said Jimmy. “Nothing doing if you can’t swim.”

He descended to pass among the applicants and the line shifted uneasily.

“Water stuff! Water stuff!” the whisper ran.

“Well, what do you know about that!” demanded the young woman with the green feathers. “There was a time in this business when talent got you something, but now they don’t use nothing but acrobats!” And by the manner in which she glared at Montague’s back it was plain that she did not hold him guiltless of this decadence in art.

Slowly the line of applicants melted away.

“Nothing but swimmers this morning!” said Montague. Some of the young men qualified and were engaged. “I must have more women,” muttered the director. “How about you?”

Montague paused before a girl who sat twisting a handkerchief nervously between her fingers. Her cheap blue serge skirt was shiny at the seams, her tan shoes were run down at the heels and her hat was of the obsolete peach-basket variety. There was a frightened look in her brown eyes as she raised them.

“Can you swim, kid!” asked Montague not unkindly.

“I—yes, sir,” stammered the girl.

“Good!” said Jimmy. “Ever had any experience in pictures? No? Well, that doesn’t make much difference. Be at the electric depot at six o’clock next Thursday morning. Bring along a change of clothes and some towels. You get five dollars for the water stunt. What’s your name?”

“Jennie Lee.”

“All right, Jennie. Go to the office and have them fill out a card for you. That’s the way we keep in touch with our extra people; and when we need you again we can notify you.”

“Thank you, sir,” said the girl as she moved away.

“Scared stiff!” thought Montague as he looked after her. “Little shopgirl or something. Not much like the rest of these actresses. A fine type and she’ll photograph well. Pretty thin, but she’s got nice eyes.”

A few moments later Buck Parvin, sunk in fathomless melancholy, became aware that a young woman was addressing him.

“Excuse me, sir,” and the face under the peach-basket hat flushed crimson, “but do you know whether I shall be expected to bring a bathing suit?”

“Huh? What’s that?” Buck looked up, and what he saw prompted him to rise and remove his sombrero.

“I’m sorry, miss,” said he, “but I don’t know any more about this next picture than the man in the moon. If you’ll wait I’ll find out for you.”

He was back again almost instantly.

“You’ll want bloomers, but no skirt. The rest of the stuff will be furnished by the company. It’s a costume piece. Reckon you’re kind of new at this business, ain’t you?”

“Yes, sir. I thought perhaps you could tell me what I should be expected to do.”

Buck laughed.

“Nobody knows that but the director,” he said. “He’ll tell you in plenty of time. Say, do you ever get seasick!”

“I—I don’t know,” said the girl. “I’ve never been on the ocean.”

“Gee, but you’re lucky!” said Buck.

Two

Jack La Rue, leading man of the Titan Company and, as such, privileged to ask questions and annoy directors, insinuated himself into Jimmy Montague’s private office, where he found that capable person perspiring over a list of properties for the new picture.

“Oakum; red-fire; smoke-pots,” read La Rue over Montague’s shoulder. “What are you framing up for us now, James? Something tough, I suppose.”

“No,” said Jimmy, intent upon his task. “This one is going to be dead easy.”

La Rue sniffed audibly.

“Yeh!” said he. “All your pictures are dead easy—to hear you tell it. That Mexican war thing, for instance. That was going to be a cinch; no rough stuff, no stunts at all—straight acting. I had to jump off the top of a ‘dobe house, ride down the side of a cliff, swim a river in all my clothes, and do an Alexander Salvini out of a window into a brushpile. I’ve been picking cactus spines out of myself ever since. Heaven is my witness, Jim Montague, never again will I jump into a brushpile head first without looking to see what’s in it!”

“Always kicking!” said Montague pleasantly. “You wouldn’t be a great actor if you couldn’t roar at the director every few days. I suppose I planted that cactus in the brushpile for your especial benefit!”

“I wouldn’t put it past you,” said the leading man. “But, come, what’s the new stunt to be? You can’t sidetrack me with an argument.”

“Another water picture—and a bird, if I do say it as shouldn’t! I’m going to pull something new—something that hasn’t been done before—a fire on a ship at sea.”

“You don’t call that new, do you?” demanded the actor. “It’s been done to death and nobody ever got away with it.”

“It was done with miniatures,” said Montague sternly, “and that’s the reason the pictures were frosts. People are on to that fake stuff. Jack. You can’t build a boat four feet long and burn her in a mud puddle and fool anybody into thinking she’s a regular ship. It would go once, but not now. Audiences are too wise for miniatures and the magic-lantern stuff. They want the real thing. I’ll have a real ship—a real ocean—”

“You won’t have a real fire though. How will you get the effect of one?”

“You should worry about my effects!” snapped Montague angrily. “Smoke-pots all over the place—in the rigging and on deck. For the flame we’ll touch off a lot of oakum on sheets of galvanized iron. That’ll give us a real blaze all along the deck line. Red fire for aglow—and there you are! A fire effect? I’ll get one that will knock their eyes out! The old Alden Besse will look as if she was burning from stem to gudgeon. Can’t you see what a background that will make for the people as they jump overboard? Can’t you see that thick smoke rolling up, and the flames shooting along the rail, and the reflection in the water, and—”

“Oh, that’s it!” interrupted La Rue. “I jump overboard, do I?”

Montague paused, his enthusiasm suddenly chilled. He drew a long breath through his nose.

“Say,” drawled Montague at last, “It must be awful to hate yourself the way you do! You’re the whole works round this place, ain’t you? Nobody else counts at all! Here I sweat blood and dope out a really great picture—something original and startling—something that all these other directors will try to copy—and I can’t even tell you about it! Can’t get a ripple of enthusiasm out of my leading man! His little bit is all that interests him!”

“But I jump, do I?” persisted La Rue, who was a young man of few ideas and direct methods.

Montague threw up both hands in token of surrender.

“Yes—confound it—you jump! You’re the captain of an emigrant ship back in the fifties, bound round the Horn to California. You fall in love with one of the cabin passengers—that’s Myrtle. Fire in the hold. Women and children first—and all that sort of thing. Not enough boats. Life raft is put over the side, but breaks loose and drifts away. That’s where the jumping comes in. Myrtle in her cabin, overcome by smoke. You rescue her—a studio scene, of course—run to the rail and do a Brodie with her in your arms—the last two people off the ship. Then you swim straight into the camera, and—”

“Just a second!” said La Rue. “You’ve got a great picture there, Jim—a bully picture; but don’t forget that the old Besse stands up out of the water like a church. It’s a long jump from her rail. Doing it single would be easy, but I’m not stuck on trying it with a woman in my arms. Myrtle is no featherweight, you know; and if she overbalances me it’ll look rotten in the film. Why can’t I throw her overboard and jump after her—or else let her down with a rope? It seems to me—”

“Nothing of the sort!” Montague burst into a sudden rage. “Who’s running this company? You’ll jump with her in your arms—in your arms! Do you understand? I’ve listened to all the kicking that I’m going to take from you, La Rue! The next time you try to edit a scenario for me I’ll—”

“Oh, all right—if that’s the way you feel about it!” said the leading man as he reached for the doorknob. “Have it your own way; but I was thinking—”

“What with?” rasped Montague. “Who’s paying you to think? You ‘re an actor—a great actor—and that lets you out. Be a good fellow and beat it, Jack! Can’t you see that I’ve got work to do?”

Buck Parvin chose this inauspicious moment to ask a favor. He creaked into the room, grinning ingratiatingly and trifling with the brim of his sombrero.

“Well!” said Montague gruffly. “What do you want?”

“Jim,” said he, “my health—it ain’t been very well lately. I may not look it, but I’m a sick man. This studio stuff is breaking me down. I been used to the open air, and I—”

“What you need,” said Montague, without looking up, “is a little sea trip. I’m writing you a nice fat part in the next picture. You’re going to be the first mate of the Alden Besse.”

“But, Jim,” expostulated the unhappy Buck, “you know how sick I got the other time! I can’t do no acting on the water. If you had my stomach—”

“I’d be an ostrich!” finished Montague. “You’re almost as much of a nuisance as Jack La Rue. On your way before I bounce a paper-weight off your head!”

“And you won’t let me off?”

“Certainly not. What do you think I pay you thirty dollars a week for?”

Buck grunted and moved toward the door. There he faced about and emptied the locker of its last despairing shot.

“If I must, I must!” said he dolefully. “But listen to reason, Jim, and don’t cast me for a first mate. Write in a part for a corpse and let me play that. I won’t need no rehearsing at all!”

Three

The good ship Alden Besse rocked at her moorings, groaning and sighing as she lifted with the rush of the tide. She groaned because she was very old, and she sighed because her hull was deeply incrusted with the barnacles of other days, which tore the moving water into tiny ripples, producing a low, hissing sound.

Built by honest but shortsighted men who had no vision of steam, the Alden Besse was paying the penalty imposed on archaism by an age of progress and invention. The world had moved on and left her behind. She had outlived her pride; but her too-solid construction forced her to linger beyond her day—a relic of the vanished period when American clipper ships spread their sails to every wind that blew across the Seven Seas.

Hongkong and Canton knew her well in the sixties and the seventies, when she was new and listed as one of the fast Cape Horners. Rich cargoes were her portion in those days—tea, silks and spices for the New York market—and she poured gold into the coffers of her owners. Then progress dealt her the first blow. The Clyde-built iron barks invaded the Orient and the wooden clipper ships were forced to fight for a share of the trade. They could no longer pick and choose. A few years of fierce competition ushered in the tramp cargo steamers, with their lower freight rates, superior speed and greater tonnage; and the Alden Besse, together with all other sailing ships, faced the beginning of the end.

She loafed about the Far Eastern ports for several months before she fell into the hands of the Japanese Government, which reënforced her teak with an armor-belt of oak timbers, mounted guns on her deck, and made of her a naval training ship.

It was an easy berth, but it could not last. The old order changed—wooden ships-of-war gave place to swift steel cruisers and the stick-and-string navies of the world became obsolete. Japan followed the lead of other nations and the Alden Besse was sold for a song.

She next appeared on the other side of the Pacific, where she was engaged in the sugar trade, plying between Honolulu and San Francisco. Again steam drove her out and she dipped into the South Seas, trafficking in copra, cocoanut fiber, vanilla and coffee. She became a sort of maritime panhandler, haunting strange ports, thankful for small favors and bartering her self-respect for a pittance. At lengthening intervals she crept through the Golden Gate, dirty and dingy, and smelling to Heaven of mixed cargoes. Her last voyage brought her to San Pedro Harbor, where she was sold for dock charges—an ignominious ending of a long career.

For months the old ship lay at her moorings, deserted save by the watchman, stripped of her sails and most of her fittings—a sorry spectacle, at which the steam craft of the harbor hooted in derision. Useless in any sort of coastwise trade and valueless except for her solid timbers, the Alden Besse was doomed to destruction; but progress, having ruined her, intervened to save her from this final shame.

There came a keen-eyed young man—a director in the employ of a moving-picture company. He had a scenario that demanded a ship—and a ship he would have. He saw the Alden Besse and fell in love with her stately lines and towering spars.

“Just the ticket!” said he. “I’ll rent her by the day, put a couple of cameras aboard and stage this picture right.”

“Not the All-done Besse? said the seafaring men. “Why, that old tub ain’t got no sails!”

“That’s a mere matter of detail. I can hire a tug and have her towed to sea.”

“She’ll tow like a brick house! There’s tons of barnacles on her bottom.”

“The barnacles,” said the director, “will not show in the picture.”

“There’s no ballast in her. She’s high out of the water and as light as a feather. She’ll roll something awful!”

“Let her roll!” said the young man calmly.

The seafarers abandoned the landlubber to his lunacy and went away shaking their heads; but, in spite of pessimistic prophecies along the waterfront, the old ship’s first film appearance proved a tremendous success, artistically as well as financially. It was something new and a movie audience dearly loves a novelty.

Other directors, quick to see possibilities in the Alden Besse, besought their scenario editors for sea stories, and the venerable clipper became the marine arm of the movie industry—a piece of renting property worth owning.

For a time pirate pictures were all the rage, and the Alden Besse carried more buccaneers than ever sailed the Spanish Main. On her hitherto respectable decks scenes of mortal combat were enacted. Cutlasses flashed along the rail and ancient firelocks spat from the rigging, Blindfolded prisoners bravely walked the plank, prodded thereto by inhuman captors with rings in their ears and daggers in their teeth. Beautiful maidens were rescued at risk of life and limb—or, failing in this, came at last to love the pirate chief and reform him.

Then mutiny upon the high seas engaged the attention of the scenario departments. The cutlass gave way to the marline-spike and the firelock to the bulldog revolver. Cruel captains were dealt with according to their deserts and bucko mates reaped the rewards of demerit. At the beck and call of many producing directors the Alden Besse led a busy life, cutting strange capers in her old age.

On this particular morning she stared down coldly on a laughing, chattering crowd that advanced along the wharf. James Montague was in the van, flanked on each side by a camera expert.

“Bully light to-day!” said the director, squinting at the sun.

“Yep!” said Charlie Dupree, one of the camera men. “Better not waste any of it. Where do we set up first?”

“Right here on the wharf. Cut in the gangplank and as much of the ship as you can get. Look out for your background and don’t get any buildings in it, because this is supposed to be Glasgow or Liverpool. Departure of the emigrant ship. Weeping and wailing—and all that sort of stuff. Affecting farewells on the pier.”

“I get you,” said Dupree. “Cast Buck Parvin for an emigrant. He and that girl he’s picked up are about the saddest things in the bunch. He was grouching all the way down in the car.”

“Huh! Buck thinks he’s going to be seasick,” said Montague. “Now, then, all you extra people, hop aboard and get made up. No time to lose!”

“Women dress in the cabin and men on the deck!” bawled Jennings, Montague’s assistant. “Hustle, now!” As a production The Emigrant Ship was an ambitious undertaking, requiring seventy extra people besides the regular members of the company and the entire working force of the Titan studio.

Over one hundred strong, men and women and laughing girls swarmed up the gangplank; and the decks resounded to the swift tapping of high-heeled shoes and the joyful whoops of the youthful extra men, who regarded the entire expedition as a lark. “They’ll be singing another tune before long!” Thus Buck Parvin darkly, lagging in the extreme rear with Jennie Lee.

“Is the water very deep—where we swim, I mean?” asked the girl.

“Moving-picture actors,” said Buck, “ain’t got no regular swimming places like other folks. We hit the water wherever the director says. It wouldn’t surprise me none if Jim Montague heaved us all overboard a couple of miles out to sea and made us swim ashore. He ain’t got no more consideration for an actor’s feelings than a billy-goat. Once he made me—why, hello! You ain’t getting sick already, are you?”

“No,” said the girl quickly. “No, I’m all right, Mr. Parvin.”

“You look kind of white round the mouth,” said Buck critically. “Does your stomach feel sort of restlesslike? That’s the way it starts with me.”

“No, it isn’t that; only—only I’m afraid I can’t swim very far. I never tried it, and—”

“Oh, I was just kidding about that,” said Buck. “It’ll be a short swim; they always are—just a flash in the water and out again.”

“Perhaps I ought to tell the director. What shall I do, Mr. Parvin?”

“Do nothing!” advised Buck. “If you tell Jim he’ll give you a bawling out. What he don’t know won’t hurt him. And say, I wisht you ‘d call me Buck. They all do—it’s shorter.”

“But Buck is such a queer name.”

“Hush! I’ve got a queerer one. My mother named me Rollo; but the old man, he tacked on the Buchanan—to take the curse off, I reckon. Rollo! Ain’t that a noble name for a full-grown man?”

Montague stood at the gangplank counting noses. His quick eye noted several things and he saluted the stragglers with appropriate remarks.

“Don’t let that film cowboy scare you, Jennie!” said he. “The trouble with him is that he’s opposed to water in any form. The only people who are ever seasick are the ones who are afraid they’re going to be. Hurry along and get ready!… You, Buck! Didn’t I tell you to dress a first mate? What sort of boots are those for a sailor to wear!”

Buck halted with a conscious downward glance. In order that no part of their glory might be wasted he was wearing his treasures with the trousers stuffed into the stiff, stitched tops.

“What have you got against these boots?” demanded Parvin, glaring at the director. “They cost me twenty-seven dollars and express charges from K. C, Missoury. Made to order! No first mate ever had a better pair—you can win a bet on that!”

“Cowpuncher boots—at seal” howled Montague. “Why, man, those high heels will register a mile away! Get some shoes—confound you! What do you want to do—burlesque this picture?”

Buck passed up the gangplank, muttering mutinously. He sat down on a spare spar lashed in the scuppers and examined the boots carefully. No—he would not discard them—director or no director. He would compromise by drawing the trousers down over the gorgeous tops. As he was about to offer this sop to authority a passing tug set the Alden Besse to bobbing merrily up and down, and from that very moment boots and all other professional considerations passed out of Buck Parvin’s mind.

Later, when he was prone upon the deck, spent and empty, his head pillowed upon his arms, he heard as from a great distance the voice of James Montague commanding him to come and be a first mate, a man, a mouse, or a long-tailed rat; but Buck was beyond insult, and the director went away, trailing lurid remarks behind him.

“Buck’s a quitter—that’s what he is!” said Montague to Ben Leslie.

“Oh, no, he ain’t!” said the property man. “You can’t quit until you’ve started—and Buck ain’t going to start.”

Four

At three o’clock in the afternoon a calm fell on the deck of the Alden Besse, while Jimmy Montague, hoarse and hatless, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, conferred with his assistant, checking up the amount of work accomplished. The old clipper, just outside the breakwater and in tow of a tug, heaved and tossed to the long, oily groundswells that shouldered in from the Pacific, and her aged rigging creaked dismally with every plunge.

It had been a lively day on the deep. Montague, mindful of his enlarged payroll and anxious to complete the water stuff in one day, drove the company at top speed, scene following scene with bewildering rapidity. The extra people, herded here and there like sheep and used as a human background for the principals in the cast, were given no time in which to analyze physical sensations. Two cameras clicked constantly—a precaution against makeovers—and while Montague rehearsed and directed one scene Jennings busied himself preparing the next.

“Pretty fast work, Jim!” said the assistant, consulting his memorandum book.

“Not so bad!” said Montague, wiping his brow. “That’s about all of the deck stuff, I guess. Flag the captain of the tug and have him take us inside the breakwater. We’ll want a smooth sea for the swimmers. Tell the people who are going into the water that they can take off their shoes—no use in spoiling ’em. This stunt is just a quick flash overboard, and the stockings won’t register. They’ll be able to swim better without their shoes, too. Where’s Ben? I want to see him.”

The property man hoisted himself out of the companionway, imperturbable as ever, hitched his trousers fore and aft in true nautical style, and came to a rigid salute.

“Got the smoke-pots in the rigging, Ben?”

“Aye aye, skipper!”

“Oakum ready?”

“All it needs is the match. When do we pull the big smudge?”

“As soon as we get inside. Listen now! I’m going to cut in the stern of the ship for he jumps and I’ll want plenty of smoke, but not enough to hide the people as they come to the rail.”

“That’s easy. The wind is off shore.”

“Turn loose a little of the oakum where the ship is cut down on the side—”

“The waist, skipper—the waist!” corrected Leslie.

“All right—the waist. A little fire there, but not much—just enough to make a showing. Touch off the smoke-pots on the rear mast—”

“Holy sailor!” ejaculated Ben. “The mizzenmast, Jim! Be technical, can’t you?”

“Never you mind the technicalities!” said Montague. “You give me the sort of a fire effect I want and let it go at that. Then, after the jumps, we’ll go still farther away with the tug, so we can cut in the whole ship; then turn loose the whole works—smoke-pots, oakum, red-fire and all. Give her everything you’ve got; and see that none of your stooges show their heads over the rail. The Alden Besse is supposed to be deserted by that time. Do you get me?”

“Absolutely! Leave it to me and I’ll smoke her up to the queen’s taste.”

“How’s the quitter getting along?” asked Montague.

“Better,” said Ben. “He was able to cuss me the last time I poked him up. Pretty soft for Buck! That pretty little new girl is sitting beside him and holding a cold towel on his head.”

“Humph!” grunted Montague. “He’s not game—that’s what ails him! Now there’s little Dupree—seasick as a dog all day—but he never missed a turn of the crank except when he had to run to the rail.”

At the same moment Buck was detailing his symptoms for the benefit of the faithful Jennie.

“I’ve got a fierce headache and black spots floating in front of my eyes,” said the stricken one, essaying to sit up. “My stomach feels like somebody had used it to churn sour milk in and there’s a dark green taste in my mouth. I’ve got palpitation of the heart and I’m as weak as a cat; but otherwise there ain’t a thing the matter with me. I reckon I’ll live till night, at least. It was mighty nice of you to stick round the way you did. I won’t forget it; and if you’re ever seasick—”

“Oh, but I was—this morning.”

“And went on working just the same?” cried Buck. “Well, they say that a woman can stand more suffering than a man. I reckon it’s true. Doc Bowen used to say—”

“Come on, you swimmers! Get ready!”

“That’s Jennings,” said Buck. “Better run along and—why, see here, sister, what’s the matter? You ain’t scared, are you?”

“I—I’m afraid I am,” quavered the girl. “I didn’t think it would be like this—away out on the ocean!”

“But you said you could swim!”

“Only a little—and I’ve never been in deep water in my life. It—it frightens me!”

“Oh, shucks! There’s nothing to be scared of. There’ll be somebody handy to grab you if anything goes wrong. Once you get wet all over, you won’t notice it at all.”

“And you’re sure there’ll be somebody there?”

“Why, of course! “Whoever heard of a moving-picture actor getting drownded?”

The girl went away reluctantly, leaving Buck to speculate upon the inconsistencies of feminine nature.

“She’s seasick and never lets a yip out of her,” thought he; “but the notion of getting wet stampedes her plumb off the reservation! Women are too various for me—I give ’em up!”

Five

Before the tug drew alongside to receive the director and the camera men, Montague addressed the entire company from the after deck-house of the Alden Besse, Buck being the only absentee.

“Now this is the action,” said Jimmy—“and pay attention to me, because I haven’t got time to repeat it. We will first make the boats rowing away from the ship. You folks who were in the deck struggles and the launching scenes, take the same places in the boats that you had before—dressed the same way too. The men at the oars will pull over toward the tug and across the sidelines. Be careful you don’t drift back into the picture. As you leave the ship be looking back at her—all of you—and register grief—like this.”

Here Montague registered grief—a very simple matter when one knows how.

“You women, wring your hands and cry. Here’s a ship—burning up at sea. It’s a terrible thing! All your friends and loved ones are left on her; you may never see ’em again. Try to get something of that fear into the picture—and if I catch you looking at the cameras it’ll cost you a day’s pay! You look at the ship—and keep on looking at her until you’re over the sidelines.

“Next we’ll do the liferaft, drifting away from the side. Jennings, you coach ’em in the action—it’s only about ten feet or so.

“Now, then, here’s the big stunt of the day! Where are all those swimmers? Come down here in front so I can see you. This water scene won’t run much over thirty feet in all, but it’s the most important one in the picture and I don’t want any boneheads or smart Alecks crumbing it up for me—remember that! The liferaft will be over between the tug and the ship. When you hear me holler Go! you’re to start jumping. Go overboard from the waist there—it’s lower. Don’t all jump at once—two or three at a time; and keep on coming. When I say jump I mean jump! I don’t want any exhibition dives or posing on the rail—no headfirst stuff. This ship is supposed to be red hot and you’re getting off of her as quick as you can. Never mind making it pretty—you hit the water feet first.

“I want a couple of girls to register fear—you, Anderson; and you, Lee. When you climb on the rail look down and hesitate—sort of shrink back; make it look as if you were afraid. Then jump. And another thing—when you get into the water cut out the fancy swimming. No showing off and no skylarking. You boys, remember that! Tear out for the raft as if your lives depended on getting there in a hurry. That’s all for you extra people.”

“And when do I jump?” asked Jack La Rue.

“I’m getting round to you now. At the beginning of the jumping scene, Jack, I want you to establish yourself at the rail there—up above the waist. Give a quick look round and then register that you’ve just missed Myrtle. Rush over and duck behind that little coop where the stairs go down.”

Here Ben Leslie emitted a sepulchral groan and took his head in his hands.

“Myrtle, you be waiting for Jack there. When the extra people are all in the water I’ll give you a signal, Jack, and you carry Myrtle to the rail—the same place where you established yourself before. Register exhaustion—you’ve been breathing smoke, remember. Ben, I want you to plant one of your stooges in that coop with a couple of smoke-pots, so that we’ll get the effect of Jack coming through the thickest of it.”

“Aye, aye, commodore!” said Leslie. “But don’t call it a coop. That’s the after companion-hatch.”

“Say, where do I jump from?” demanded La Rue.

“From the rail up above—there’ll be less smoke there.”

“And farther to go before I hit the water!” grumbled the leading man. And he scowled at the lovely Myrtle Manners, who was to be his partner in the plunge.

“It’s a straight falling jump,” said that practical young woman, “and not a fancy dive. We oughtn’t to have any trouble.”

“We! We!” sneered La Rue. “I’m the one that’s got to do it all! And you’re liable to turn me over in the air—”

“Not if you know your business!” said Miss Manners tartly.

La Rue retorted in kind and Montague’s voice blared above the argument.

“Swim for the raft, Jack, and keep hold of Myrtle all the way. We’ll pan you right down the middle of the picture to the raft; and—oh, for the love of Mike, quit jawing, you two! Anybody would think you were married!… Now, then, the boat scene first. There ‘ll be no rehearsals; so don’t make any mistakes!”

Six

The boats had pulled away from the side, freighted to the gunwales with duly registered grief and fear; the liferaft had been maneuvered into position midway between the tug and the ship, and a hush of expectancy fell on the Alden Besse, Over the water came a hoarse bellow. James Montague, on the tug, was megaphoning his compliments to the property man.

“What in the double-dash, blankety-blank-blank is the matter with that smoke? More pots there, Ben! Touch off the oakum!”

Ben Leslie and his assistants—stooges, in the vernacular of the profession, the same being short for students—swarmed over the after part of the ship, distributing stubby roman candles, which when lighted belched forth great quantities of acrid, yellowish vapor. These were the smoke-pots, without which there would be few film fires.

The oakum flared suddenly in the waist and a dense black smoke-cloud rolled along the deck, enveloping Buck Parvin, who had suffered a temporary relapse. He crawled out of the fire zone, strangling and choking and wiping his eyes. From a safe distance he looked back upon the made-to-order inferno.

“Gosh-all-zicketty!” he coughed. “I always knowed Jim Montague could raise hell; but this is the first time he ever raised her so high that I could see her! What in thunder is coming off here?”

Through the swirling smoke Buck caught glimpses of the after part of the ship. La Rue, very imposing in his captain’s uniform, waited at the rail to establish himself, while Myrtle Manners sulked behind the hatch and examined her makeup with the aid of a pocket mirror. Jennings and the swimmers were grouped below on the deck. The assistant director was gesticulating violently and portions of his harangue reached Buck’s ears:

“No funny business!… You jump when I tell you to!… Never mind having your picture taken!… The bigger the splash, the better!”

A sudden gust of wind cleared the deck of smoke for an instant and one figure stood out, clear and distinct—a slender girl, her face white save for the splash of carmine on her lips, her hands clenched at her sides. Then the smoke hid her again.

“Good Lord!” groaned Buck; “has that kid got to jump as well as swim?”

“Heads down, you stooges!” bawled Leslie. “How is she now, Jim?”

“Better!” floated back over the water. “We’ll make it now. Ready!—Action!—Go!”

The two cameras upon the tug began to click in unison as the first of the extra men flashed over the bulwarks and dropped like a plummet, feet first, making a tremendous splash.

“Lovely!” said Montague. “It’s a better effect than I thought it was going to be. Faster, there, you boneheads! Faster!”

On board the Alden Besse, Jack La Rue strode from the rail and disappeared in the smoke, determination to do or die written large upon his heroic shoulders. Jennings, bent double behind the bulwarks, drove the extra people to their task.

“You next! And you—and you! Jump!”

Buck Parvin, watching the thinning ranks of the swimmers, crept down the deck, bending low to escape the cameras. Jennie Lee was the last to go. Jennings reached out and took her by the arm.

“Get up there and register fear! Hurry!”

The girl mounted the bulwarks, looked down over the side—twenty feet to the green water—and cringed, shuddering.

“That’s Lee!” said Montague, on the tug. “A born actress! You’d think, to look at her, that she was scared to death!” Then, through the megaphone: “Don’t overact! That’s enough! The picture’s waiting on you! Jump!”

Buck Parvin, crouching below, looked up and saw the terror in the girl’s eyes.

“You’ve got to go now!” he urged. “You’re established on the rail! If you don’t jump you’ll spoil the picture!”

“Oh, I’m afraid! I’m afraid!” whimpered Jennie. “There’s nobody down there to help me if I sink! I’m afraid—and it’s so far too!”

Jennings raged on the deck; Buck pleaded; and hoarse, inarticulate howls of rage came from the tug.

“Jump!Jump!”

Jack La Rue, squatting behind the hatch, saw nothing of all this, but he heard Montague’s voice uplifted profanely.

“He means us!” said La Rue; and picking up the young woman he staggered to the rail. At the sight of him James Montague grazed death by apoplexy; and Charlie Dupree, who knew something of dramatic values, sucked in his breath with a whistling sound.

“Good-night, nurse!” muttered Dupree. “Jack has crumbed this scene for fair! Why didn’t the fool stay back there?” But, like the dependable photographer he was, he continued to make his two revolutions a second, counting the film, foot by foot.

By precedent and every rule of stagecraft the hero is entitled to the center of the stage and, in his one great moment, the undivided attention of the audience. La Rue, by blundering into the picture at the wrong time, was dividing the big scene with a cowering extra woman—and taking the short end of it. Montague gurgled and estimated the cost of another day’s work.

With the singleness of purpose that stamps a selfish man as well as a great one, La Rue looked neither to the right nor to the left. He planted one foot on the rail, cast an imploring glance heavenward and floundered over the side—making a very bad jump, indeed. At the same instant Jennings, who had not seen La Rue at the taffrail, pushed Jennie Lee violently outward, and she fell, twisting and screaming, into the water.

“You’re a fine stiff, Jennings!” said Buck as he rushed to the bow, where he could look over the side without fear of getting into the picture. Jack La Rue was swimming steadily toward the raft, towing Miss Manners; Jennie Lee was struggling in the water—once she disappeared entirely. Buck ran back to the waist.

“That kid can’t swim!” he cried. “What shall we do?”

“Maybe they can trim her out of the film!” said Jennings.

“She’s drownding, I tell you!” shouted Buck.

There came a bubbling cry for help, followed immediately by a terrific blast from the megaphone.

“Somebody go in after that girl!”

Buck Parvin placed one hand on the bulwarks and vaulted over the side. Two vigorous strokes carried him into action. Exhausted, helpless and frightened out of her wits, the girl grasped Buck round the neck and clung to him with the last ounce of her strength, dragging him below the surface of the water. Buck fought himself free from that strangling embrace and, seizing her by the hair, struck out for the raft, yelling for help.

“Get that, Charlie! Get that! It’ll save the picture!” screamed Montague, dancing up and down. “Come on with her, Buck! Right for the raft! Pan ’em in, Charlie! Get all that! It’s great stuff!”

It is a good director who can turn even an accident to account, and a good camera man who does not lose his head or his count in emergencies. Dupree, one eye in the viewfinder and both hands flying, tilted the black box slightly and with the panorama attachment held Buck in the exact center of the picture—a maneuver that drew roars of protests from the leading man.

“Hey! What are you doing there?” yelled La Rue.

“Shut up!” barked Montague. “I’m saving the picture that you ruined!”

Ordinarily it would not have been a hard swim, but Buck was below par physically, empty and weak and shaken; and the girl, crazed with fear, fought him desperately every stroke of the way. He had gone into the water fully dressed and his twenty-seven-dollar boots, filling with the first plunge, weighed him down like anchors. Strangling and spitting, Buck reached the raft at last; and Myrtle Manners—as much woman as actress—drew the half-conscious and hysterical girl to safety. Buck managed to hook one foot over the top of the raft and hung there panting.

“A lift. Jack! I’m all in!” he gasped.

“It’s a wonder to me you wouldn’t wait till I got through!” snarled the leading man. “That fool girl crabbed my jump and you crabbed my swim!”

“Too darned bad!” wheezed Buck. “I should have let her drown to oblige a stiff like you!”

“The poor child has fainted!” cried Miss Manners.

“Yes, and this poor child is going to faint too, unless he gets help!” said Buck.

La Rue seized the boot and tugged with all his might. Two or three of the extra men grasped Buck by the shoulders and heaved him up on the raft, where he lay, face downward, suffering a last rending attack of his old enemy.

“How much did she run?” asked Montague when the cameras ceased clicking.

“Eighty-two feet,” said Dupree; “and about fifty of it was Buck and his lady friend. Gee, but that rescue scene was bully! I thought Manners could do the best drownding stuff in the world, but that skinny little extra woman hung it all over Myrtle! Fought like a wild-cat, didn’t she?”

La Rue sat on the edge of the raft, scowling at a boot he held in his hands. He had torn it from Buck’s foot while hauling him aboard. It was soggy and limp and dripping—a sad ruin of its former beauty, for cowboy boots are not made to hold salt water. After some time La Rue allowed the boot to slip over the side of the raft. It gurgled once and found bottom at twelve fathoms.

Seven

James Montague came from the projecting room whistling like a meadow lark. He paused to speak a few words to Buck Parvin, who sat on the studio steps gazing mournfully down at a pair of aged and disreputable boots.

“I’ve just seen the negatives of the water stuff,” said the director. “The rescue scene came out great, and so did the ones I made of you and Jennie afterward. That was a good idea—writing in parts for you and the girl. It switched the picture all round and put La Rue’s nose out of joint; but it was the only thing to do.”

“Did the films show what became of that other boot?” demanded Buck, betraying sudden interest.

“Are you going to start that argument all over again?” asked Montague.

“I want a new pair of boots,” said Buck doggedly. “One of ’em I lost and the other is plumb ruined. Twenty-seven bucks them boots stood me, and express charges from K. C., Missoury!”

“You won’t get any twenty-seven-dollar boot item on my expense account!” said Montague. “But, just to show you that my heart is in the right place, turn in a bill for five dollars and I’ll O. K. it.”

“Keep your five dollars! And the next time any of your extry people start drownding on you, fish ’em out yourself!”

“That’s a fine thing to say! Most anybody else would have been proud of saving a girl’s life. That little Lee kid—”

“Yeh!” said Buck bitterly. “I was out to see her the other night. Her mother accused me of throwing her off the ship a-purpose, so I could make a grandstand play! Called me a low, degraded theater actor, and slammed the door in my face. For years I’ve been wanting to do just two things—save somebody’s life in front of a camera, and own a pair of them swell K. C. boots. I get the boots, all right; then I lose ’em saving a girl’s life—and now I’m in bad with her folks!”

“Tough luck!” said Montague. “Only one man ever had it tougher. I had a pal down in the Pecos country named Scott Hastings. Queer duck, he was; but all right in spots when you found out which spots they was. Scotty always said that when he got the dough from his old man’s estate he was going to have a ringtailpeeler of a time. His notion of a blow-out was to harness himself up in a boiled shirt, with a celluloid collar and cuffs, and paint the town red. Scotty got the dinero finally—six hundred and thirty dollars, it was, all in a chunk—and I went to town with him to help spend it. First thing he did was to stake himself to a boiled shirt, a big, high celluloid collar, and celluloid cuffs.

“‘Now that I’m all dressed up like a horse,’ says Scotty, ‘we’ll have a big five-cent seegar apiece; and then we’ll pile this town up in heaps and run rings round her!’

“He struck a match to light the seegar and the head flew off and lit the collar instead. The cuffs chimed in about the same time. Talk about your pillars of fire! Scotty went down the middle of the street like a runaway comet, and if Dud Baxter hadn’t roped and throwed him he’d have run his fool self to death! They took Scotty to the hospital and did him up in cotton batting and linseed oil for about three months. When they let him out his bill was exactly six hundred and twenty-eight dollars and ten cents. Darned good thing they didn’t make it fifteen or Scotty would have had to owe ’em the nickel!

“That come from setting his heart on some thing and getting it. I’m going to quit wishing for things, Jim, because it seems like the minute I get ’em luck comes along and switches the cut on me.”

“You haven’t been wishing for any cash bonus, have you!” asked Montague.

“No. Why?”

“Well, that’s all right, then,” said the director, grinning. “I can’t charge the boss twenty-seven dollars for boots; but I did slip over a little fifty-dollar bonus for you, Buck. It’s not coming to you because you lost the boots or because you saved the girl’s life. You saved the Titan Company a makeover and another day’s pay for seventy extra people! Sabe?”

“Fifty bucks!” breathed the cowpuncher reverently. “Bill Cody himself won’t have a thing on me now!”

Buck’s lady friend

The members of the Titan Company, comparing notes, agreed that something was the matter with Buck Parvin, though opinion was divided as to what that something might be. A subtle change had come over the spirit of that casual and careless son of the silent drama, a change that manifested itself in many ways and was, therefore, open to many interpretations by his associates.

Jimmy Montague, director, actor and mainspring of the western branch of the Titan Company, noticed it first. A director notices everything first, which is the reason why he holds his job.

Buck began to develop distressing lapses of memory, forgetting the business of his scenes, thereby costing the company something in wasted film and drawing heavily upon Montague ‘s small stock of patience.

“No, no, no! I told you to hand Jack the letter before you made the exit! I rehearsed you twice, and you go sleep-walking over the sidelines and ball up the entire scene! What’s the matter with you lately, Buck? Get on to yourself, and for pity’s sake don’t jump so when I speak to you!”

When reproved while the camera was clicking, Buck would start guiltily and look toward the director, thus committing another crime beyond excuse or pardon. In the movies, where everything goes by looks and gestures, nothing registers quite so heavily against realism as a startled glance in the wrong direction. It makes an awkward break in the action of the scene and attracts undue attention to the machinery, which for the sake of the illusion should remain hidden. Hamlet, pausing in his soliloquy to exchange ribald greetings with the stage-hands, could do no worse.

Charlie Dupree, artist with a camera and aware of it, noticed a growing inclination on Buck’s part to linger in front of the lens and register full-face photographs rather than action.

“What’s got into Buck lately?” he complained. “That mug of his would stop an eight-day clock, but every chance he gets he shoves it square in front of the box and holds it there. He can’t think he’s pretty, so what ails the sucker?”

“I know,” growled old Jennings, the assistant director. “Buck is beginning to think that he can act. So long as he was just an ordinary extra man you could depend on him to do as he was told. Then Montague went out of his way to put him on the regular payroll with the rest of us, and now, confound it, the rough-neck actually thinks that he’s an actor!” Jennings, a graduate from the legitimate, could never forget that he had been two seasons on the kerosene circuit with Keene. The memory of those distant triumphs was often with him. At such times he lowered his voice a full octave, swore strange oaths, said “me” instead of “my,” and treated the entire company with lofty condescension.

Bill Cartwright, presiding genius of the projecting and assembly rooms, where negatives are scrutinized for defects and the strips of film trimmed and patched together in order that they shall tell a smooth and connected story, was amazed to receive a request from Buck for scraps of waste film, always from scenes in which he had played a part.

“You can have as many of ’em as you like, Buck,” said Cartwright; “but I’m blest if I see what you want of ’em! They’re only negatives, you know.”

“They’ll do fine for souvenirs,” said Buck, putting the scraps carefully away in his pockets. “And, say, when you trim up the courtroom scene that we made to-day—the one with me on the witness stand—save me a strip of that, will you!”

“That’s funny,” thought Cartwright. “Buck Parvin’s been working here for a couple of years off and on and he never asked me for any film before. “Wants to lug it round and show it to his friends, I suppose. A regular kid’s trick!”

Jack La Rue, the leading man, who was not popular with Buck but was nevertheless so popular with himself that the general average did not suffer, noticed that Buck’s sombrero was adorned with a large celluloid button upon which was a bald statement of fact and a some- what impertinent query:

“I’m somebody’s baby; whose baby are you?”

A rush of judgment to the head warned La Rue to withhold comment until Buck was out of earshot, thus postponing the crisis.

Myrtle Manners, the leading woman, as wise as she was pretty, and once an object of dumb adoration on Buck’s part, noticed that his eyes no longer followed her, and being a woman she drew certain conclusions from that. Being a sensible woman she said nothing.

Ben Leslie, the property man and Buck’s chum, a lean, loose-jointed individual with two eyes that were open most of the time, noticed all these things and many more, shaking his head over some of them.

“Nothing to it—Buck’s got it bad,” he reflected. “All I hope is that it ain’t a widow woman with children. A ready-made family is the worst kind of a family what is, and Buck’s just the particular kind of a darn fool that would fall for a widow.”

The finishing touch was added when Buck appeared at the studio one Monday morning, disguised in a starched pink shirt, a high white collar and a flowing crimson necktie. Buck’s taste ran joyfully to violent pot-pourris of color, but a white collar and a stiff shirt were things that demanded explanation.

“Your nose is bleeding, Buck,” began Leslie, by way of opening the subject.

“It is not!” said Buck, startled into putting his hand to his face.

“Oh, beg pardon, that’s a necktie, ain’t it? Why, of course it is! And a white collar too! What are you made up for this morning, Buck?”

“This ain’t no makeup. Can’t a feller buy any new clothes without getting bawled out for it? I paid for ’em; that’s all you need to know.”

Jack La Rue appeared, trim and natty as a leading man should always be, swinging a light bamboo cane. He was in time to catch the last sentence and his dark eyes took in the situation at a glance, twinkling mischievously as they rested upon the collar.

“Howdy, Ben! Who’s your friend!… Why, as I live, it’s Buck! And all dolled up like a sore thumb! Now you’re getting some sense. When are you going to scrap-heap those Kansas City boots and that cowboy hat?”

Buck grunted deeply, but did not reply.

“What’s the celebration!” persisted La Rue. “Why the boiled shirt and the collar?”

“No celebration at all; just something to make little boys ask questions.”

“Oh, well, if that’s the case I’ll ask you one: Who is she?”

“That’s some more of your business!” was the reply.

La Rue grinned at Leslie.

“I’ll bet Buck has been telling her that he’s an actor,” said he, and there was malice behind the bantering tone. “A regular actor, eh, and now he ‘s got to dress the part to make good. What?”

The shot went home. Buck’s face flamed suddenly, shaming his cravat.

“I reckon I got as much right to call myself an actor as some folks I could name,” said he doggedly. “It wasn’t me that quit in that last stunt picture, and I didn’t holler for a double in the riding stuff because I had a toothache. I can still manage to set up in the middle of a hawss without using my teeth to hang on by.”

La Rue laughed mockingly and sauntered away toward his dressing-room. Buck looked after the handsome leading man with sullen eyes.

“Ben,” said he, “I can stand just so much of that feller’s society and then he goes against me. I ain’t hunting trouble, but one of these days Mister La Rue is going to crowd the limit too far and I’ll swing an uppercut on him. Yes, sir, I’ll move his nose up on top of his head so the rain ‘ll run into it and drownd him. Who give that four-flusher any license to meddle in my private affairs! Has he been made chicken inspector round this town, or what!”

“Then it ain’t a widow,” said Leslie, immensely relieved. “It’s a girl.”

“I ain’t said if it is or it ain’t,” replied Buck. “I ain’t said a word, but take it from me there’s class to her.”

“Uh-huh,” said Leslie. “Blonde or brunette!”

“What difference does that make? They all look pretty good to me. I ain’t never had so many of ’em on a string that I could afford to be partickler about a color. I’m in luck if I can ketch ’em one at a time…. Say, Ben!”

“Say it; your mouth’s open.”

Buck glanced behind him and lowered his voice mysteriously.

“She’s red-headed, Ben,” he whispered, “and, believe me, she’s some woman!”

The property man received this interesting confidence in a singular manner. He rose to his full height, which was considerable, and solemnly extended his hand.

“Red-headed!” said he huskily. “Good-by, Buck. Good-by, old scout. I thought you had a chance until you pulled that line on me. It’s all off now. Good-by.” And Ben sat down suddenly with the air of one who will not trust himself to speak further.

“SSa-a-y, where do you get all this good-by stuff?” demanded Buck. “I ain’t going anywheres that I know of.”

“That’s the pitiful part of it,” said Leslie, wagging his head slowly from side to side. “You’re on your way, but you don’t know it yet. You won’t know until it’s too late.”

“Won’t know what?” asked Buck, bewildered as much by Ben’s manner as by his words. “I’m surprised at you,” continued the property man. “At your time of life and with your experience! Didn’t anybody ever tell you that strawberry blondes are dangerous?”

“How do you mean—dangerous!” asked Buck suspiciously.

“Why,” said Ben, “everybody knows that red-headed women have got the marrying bug in the most aggravating form. It’s always been that way with ’em. Didn’t you ever read history?”

“Nothing but ‘The Life of Jesse James,’” said Buck. “What’s history got to do with it?”

“A whole lot. Look at Cleopatra and Sappho and Helen of Troy and the Queen of Sheba and all those female kidnapers! Red-headed, wasn’t they?”

“How in Sam Hill do I know?” said Buck. “They was before my time.”

“Well, it would pay you to look ’em up,” said Ben. “All red-headed women are the same. If a fellow comes along and they like his looks, they nail him before he can bat an eye. Just bing! and they’ve got him. It seems to go with the color of the hair. They’re natural-born wives, every one of ’em, and they can’t help it.”

“Aw, rats!” said Buck uneasily. “I don’t believe it!”

“You can laugh at me, but you can’t laugh at history, and while I think of it here’s an argument you can ‘t beat. Did you ever see a red-headed old maid? Speak up quick now, did you?”

“Why, I— I—wait a minute till I think.” For several seconds Buck ransacked a memory not too well stocked with women, in search of a solitary old maid with red hair. At length he was forced to admit defeat. “I don’t seem to remember any just now, Ben,” said he.

“Aha! Ain’t that the answer? You don’t remember any because there ain’t any—there’s no such animal. Red-headed grass widows are plenty. Buck, but you won’t ever see a red-headed old maid. They all manage to get married somehow. That’s because they know what they want and they go grab it. I can see your finish. She’ll have you up before a justice of the peace with your right hand in the air, and you won’t get it down till you swear to love, honor and obey her whole family—and support ’em too!”

“Gimme a chance to talk, will you?” sputtered Buck with some heat. “I ain’t said anything about getting married, have I? I ain’t even figuring on it.”

“You bet you ain’t!” said Ben. “No man figures on it. It’s the other end of the sketch that does the figuring every time. Some fine evening this girl will take you for a walk and stop in front of a furniture store window. She’ll show you a sign that says: ^You furnish the girl; we furnish the home. A dollar down and a dollar a week.’ A fat chance you’ll have after that ! Anything that you might say would be used against you…. Oh, well, maybe it would be a good thing for you to settle down and marry this girl and raise a family and stay home nights and—”

“But ain’t I told you,” interrupted Buck in sudden panic, “that I’m just keeping company with her? I dunno’s I’d call her a girl either. She’s old enough to know her own mind. I don’t like ’em when they’re so awful young. All the time I’ve been going with her I ain’t said a word that she could figure was serious. That’s on the level, Ben; honest, it is!”

“You may think you haven’t, Buck, but she knows better. You’re probably compromised right up to your neck. You’re as good as a married man this minute.”

“Don’t you bet no money on it!” said Buck warmly. “I’m over seven and I’ve been round the block several times. Nobody ain’t kidnaped me yet. Georgine’s all right in a lot of ways and mighty refined for a woman that works in a soap factory, but—well, I dunno, Ben. I’m a little skittish of that till-death-do-us-part thing. A feller might live an awful long time. And he might want a change once in a while.

“Now there was ole Four-finger Simpson down in the Pecos country. He was so mean and ornery that a yeller dog wouldn’t live on his ranch. He got laid up with inflammatory rheumatism so bad that he couldn’t even wiggle his ears. Doc Bowen rustled round and dug up a trained nurse for him—six feet tall, she was, and would weigh about fifteen pounds to the running foot. Her face and disposition matched up with the rest of the scenario. She was every bit as easy to look at and as nice to get along with as old Four-finger himself, and I couldn’t say any worse about her if I tried.

“Well, you’d never guess what she put over on Simpson. She rung in a traveling preacher and pulled a wedding ceremony on the ole coot when he was plum’ out of his head. He always claimed he said ‘I do’ because he thought they was asking him if he wanted a drink. She didn’t tell him anything about it until he was well enough to stand the shock. By that time he didn’t have no more use for a trained nurse, and of course he hadn’t never had no use for a wife. Ole Four-finger r’ared and pitched something awful when he found he was a sure-enough, bridegroom, but Mrs. Simpson hung on like a burr in a cinch, and finally he had to pungle up five thousand dollars to get rid of her. Then Four-finger up and died suddenlike—got as drunk as a minister’s son and was kicked by a mustang—and come to find out, he’d left all the rest of his property to found a home for the indignant poor. When I come away that ole woman was wearing black for him and lawing to bust the will. The boys was betting three to one that she’d do it. Huh-uh! No wedding bells for Buck! Marriage is fine, Ben, if you can pick the right party, but with millions of women running round loose and only one out of the entire bunch the right one for you, there ‘s an awful heavy percentage against a feller before he starts.”

“Better not start then,” said Leslie. “By the way, have you got to the hand-holding stage yet, Buck?”

“Not yet,” said Buck; “but at that I think she’d stand for it.” He heaved a gusty sigh and thoughtfully fingered a red spot on his neck where the collar had chafed him. “Georgine is certainly some woman!” said he slowly, and lapsed into dreamy silence, during which Leslie regarded him with mingled resentment and compassion, holding his tongue because he found no language sufficiently strong to do justice to the combination.

“I’m going to meet her this evening,” resumed Buck, still in pleasant reverie. “That’s why I’m kind of dressed up a little. I’m rehearsing this collar and shirt. Georgine, she don’t like soft shirts. She says they ain’t refined.”

“Dream on, Romeo, dream on,” murmured Leslie.

“We’re going to a moving-picture theater,” said Buck. “Do you remember that two-reel Western thing, with Jim playing the sheriff and me in the posse, where I ride lickety-cut right up to the camera, pull ole Pieface up on his hind laigs, and light on the ground like a circus acrobat with my hat in my hand?”

“Do you mean ‘The Sheriff’s Pal’?” asked Leslie.

“That’s the baby. It’s been released and gets its first run this week. Georgine hasn’t ever seen me in a picture. She’s been wanting to, but I stalled her off, waiting for a Western one to come along.”

“That riding stunt was about all you had to do in the entire picture,” said Ben.

“I know it,” said Buck. “It was a small part, but what there was of it was star stuff. Right square in front of the camera too. And with my hat off and all. She couldn’t very well overlook me, eh?”

Leslie sniffed and made a clicking noise with his tongue, far more expressive than words.

“Say, Ben … do you think it would make any difference to her … being there beside me and … seeing me in the picture? You know how hard women fall for actors.”

“Don’t let her miss it,” said Ben quickly. “If she knows a real actor when she sees one, it may save your life.”

Buck ignored this unkind thrust.

“I sort of figured that might make me strong with her,” said he with a shameless grin.

Leslie groaned dismally and rose, prepared to abandon the field.

“Some people ain’t worth saving,” said he. “Go to it, Don Juan, but don’t expect me to be your best man. I serve notice on you now that I won’t do it.”

“I ain’t going to need a best man,” said Buck. “Haven’t I told you that she was just my lady friend? But say, Ben?”

“Well?”

“She sure is some woman!”

Two

On the following morning Buck was early at the studio in a soft shirt and an extremely unpleasant frame of mind. The other members of the company, coming cheerfully to the day’s work, gave him light greetings and received black scowls or grunts in return.

Ben Leslie, bursting to ask questions, took one look at his friend’s face and retired to the fastnesses of the property room, where he leaned against the wall and abandoned himself to unseemly mirth.

At last Jimmy Montague came into view, walking briskly and puffing at a briar pipe, revolving great projects in his remarkable mind. To him went Buck, chin thrust forward, fire in his eyes and strutting like an enraged turkey-gobbler.

“Hello, Buck!” said the director. “How’s tricks?”

“That was a fine thing that they put on at the Criterion last night,” said Buck, ignoring the morning salutation. “That was a swell piece of cheese to hand the public!”

“‘The Sheriff’s Pal’!” said Montague. “Why, I caught it on the late run and it looked all right to me.”

“Bah!” said Buck scornfully.

Now “The Sheriff’s Pal” was one of Jimmy Montague’s pet productions. Not only had he written the scenario and directed the making of the picture, but he had played the star part of the rascally sheriff; and played it very well, so it seemed to him. He was astonished and rather mystified at Buck’s criticism.

“I thought it was pretty good,” said Montague.

“Pretty good and rotten!” snapped Buck.

“Why, what was wrong with it?” asked Montague, between amazement and anger.

“It was cut all to pieces—that was what was wrong with it. The best stuff in it was trimmed out.”

“Well, the footage ran over and we had to trim it some in spots, but I thought it got the story across all right. The audience liked it.”

“Yah! A bunch of Eastern tourists! “What do they know about Western stuff? You can hand them anything and they’ll like it. Trimmed some in spots! I tell you, Jim, that picture was butchered in the projecting room—just butchered!”

“I don’t get you, Buck,” said Montague.

“Well, get me now. You remember that location stuff we did on the Verdugo road? Them chases and things?”

Montague nodded.

“You remember that scene where you had me come riding down behind the posses and do the fancy dismount?”

“Ye-es, said Montague. “I remember that. What of it?”

“Well, they trimmed it out—that’s what of it! They cut that scene as much as fifteen feet. There I was, just coming in sight up the road and so far away that you couldn’t tell who I was, and zip! she was cut off short! They slaughtered me in cold blood with a pair of shears. It put the whole picture on the bum.”

“There goes your artistic temperament again!” smiled Montague. “It didn’t hurt the picture at all, because that bit of yours didn’t have any bearing on the plot. It was spectacular and all that, and if we hadn’t been away over on the footage it would have been left in, but it wasn’t necessary to the story and they trimmed it out.”

“Yes, and you let Jack La Rue hog sixty feet in one scene, and all he did was load his gun and set down on a table! Fifteen feet would have saved my life, but I get trimmed out! What’s the use of hiring swell Western ability if you won’t feature it? There ain’t another man in the business could have done that stunt any better than me!”

“Pshaw!” said the director. “You must have got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, Buck. What do you care so long as you get your money every week! Forget it!”

“Don’t you think I’ll forget it! When you trimmed me out of that scene you made me a lot of trouble.”

“Why, how was that!”

“Never mind how it was, ” said Buck darkly. And not another word would he say.

To tell the truth, Montague did not press him. He had other and more important matters on his mind, and attributing Buck’s outbreak to temperament he passed on into the studio.

It was Ben Leslie who got the whole story at the price of a little sympathetic silence. Ben could be wise as a serpent upon occasions, and he knew the value of a listener to one who has need of unbosoming himself. That day was taken up with location work, and during the lunch hour Ben smoked cigarettes with Buck under a pepper tree in Eastlake Park and waited for that which he knew could not long be delayed.

It began abruptly with a wild tirade against all directors everywhere, their heirs and assigns forever, touched with searing emphasis upon foot-hogs and favoritism, and wound up with a blistering curse laid heavily upon projecting-room experts and their assistants.

“Yes,” said Ben, picking his cue deftly out of the air when Buck paused for breath, bankrupt of invective, “they cut and slash a film right and left, and the worst of it is that they never seem to know what to take out and what to leave in. They trim at the wrong place every time.”

“And they don’t know a real riding stunt when they see one,” said Buck, and Ben, satisfied that he was fairly launched at last, rolled a fresh cigarette and nodded grave approval.

“Now take this sheriff picture, for example,” said Buck. “I’d been waiting for weeks for that to come along. I’d been sort of promising Georgine a real treat. I didn’t tell her what the stunt was going to be, because that would have spoiled it, and I wanted to surprise her. And there was other reasons why I wanted her to see me in that picture. You know that this town is full of cheap counterhoppers that go round telling every girl they meet that they’re moving-picture actors. It sounds big, and they get away with it until the girl gets anxious to see ’em on a film somewhere, and then they’re smoked out because they can’t make good.

“Now Georgine’s awful wise in some ways. You can kid her along just so far and then she has to be showed. She never said nothing right out about it, but it didn’t take me long to tumble that she classed me with the bogus bunch. First time I told her I was an actor she called me right off my perch.

“‘What company!’ says she quick.

” ‘The Titan,’ I tells her.

“‘Haven’t they got a film running somewheres in town?’ she says. ‘Let’s go down on Main Street and hunt one up. I’m crazy to see you act. Mister Parvin.’”

“Smart woman,” said Leslie.

“You know it! Georgine, she wasn’t going to waste no time on a dead one. She’d met them conversational moving-picture people before. Well, I stalled her along and I had a tough job doing it. I might have taken her to see me in one or two pictures, but there wasn’t anything worth seeing in ’em. No star stuff and no hawssback stunts. The first time that she ketched me in a film I wanted her to ketch me right.”

“You wanted her to see you at your best,” prompted Leslie craftily.

“That’s the ticket, Ben—at my best. I reckon you’d have felt the same way about it. It’s natural to want to make a good impression at the go-off. I know I don’t cut much ice in a soldier coat or afoot in a crowd, but gimme my chaps and put me on ole Pieface and I’m there forty ways from Sunday. Ain’t I?”

“You surely are, Buck. None better.”

“Well, I waited for this picture. I had it all doped out just what would happen. Here she’d be, setting beside me and waiting all through two reels, not recognizing me in any of the scenes and getting sorer and sorer all the time and making up her mind what a liar I am—see! And I’d be saying: ‘Wait now, this is going to be good. Stick around, kid. Don’t go away.’ And Georgine, madder and madder every minute, would be handing it back to me strong. And she ain’t like a woman that couldn’t do it neither.

“Then all at once here comes someone ripping along the road like a cyclone, hitting nothing but the high spots and mighty few of them, and hanging on by one spur coming round the turn. I nudge Georgine and say: ‘Get this now; watch it close!’ Right to the camera this bird comes, lickety-clip, up goes ole Pie in the air, pawing with his front feet like he always does. ‘Mercy!’ says Georgine, ‘that man will be hurt!’ And zingo! there I am out in front of the whole bunch with my hat in my hand and laughing! Can you imagine how that would make her feel—with me setting right there beside her all the time?

“I figured to give her a chance to get her breath and then I was going to lean over and whisper: ‘I’ll bet you never met that feller up there, did you? Wouldn’t know him from a side of sole-leather maybe? I reckon I can’t act at all nor ride a hawss nor nothing, eh?’ Oh, I’d thought up quite a lot of good lines to pull on her.”

Buck paused and, scooping a handful of scarlet pepper berries from the ground, began to flick them into the air. The bright light of romance faded from his eyes and his lower lip drooped. Ben Leslie remained discreetly silent, but his attitude expressed sympathy.

“That’s how I doped it to happen,” resumed Buck with a heavy sigh. “It was some little scenario, only—only the film come out of the box a blank. They trimmed my stunt out of the picture.”

“You don’t say so!”

“Just butchered me. I wouldn’t have minded that so much if it hadn’t made such a horrible sucker out of me before Georgine, after I’d been ribbing her up all the evening and promising her that she was going to see something great. She got mighty sarcastic toward the end of the first reel when she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of me in the picture.

“‘Lovely make-up you must have, Mister Parvin,’ says she. ‘Your own mother wouldn’t know you. Are you sure that this is the company you’re with and do they know it?’

“I had all I could do to keep her in the theater until my scene was due. ‘Wait!’ I’d say. ‘You’re going to be sorry for these cracks you’re making at me. Stick for the big show!’”

“And then!” suggested Leslie.

“I tipped her off at the proper time,” said Buck. “‘Here it comes at the end of this scene,’ I told her. ‘Watch that road close and don’t miss a bit of it!’ And just as I was starting to make the ride, away off in the distance and no bigger ‘n a red ant, whack! off goes the film into an announcement!”

There was a long silence after this remark, delicately broken by Leslie:

“Was she—sore?”

Buck laughed, a strident cackle in which there was no mirth.

“Oh, no, not at all! She wasn’t a bit sore. I only had to follow her four blocks with my hat in my hand before she’d as much as look at me, and it was an hour before she’d speak. I certainly did some tall explaining. I reckon I expounded the movie business from one end to the other. Sore? I should say not!”

“Did you finally get it fixed up?”

“Sort of. I’m on probation with her now. I can’t play in her yard no more unless I show her I’m a sure-enough actor, and she says there’s only one way I can do it and that’s to bring her out to the studio some day and let her see me act with her own eyes. She says she’ll believe it then, but she won’t never trust a film again if she lives a thousand years.”

“Are you going to do it?”

“I’m going to square myself with her somehow,” said Buck moodily. “You ain’t got no idea how small that woman made me feel. She had me thinking I was the little end of nothing. I ain’t had such a wholesale bawling-out since I was weaned. She sure tromped my pride underfoot some, Ben. Yes, I’d make good with Georgine now if it took a laig.”

“What’s pride amount to when you’ve just escaped matrimony by the skin of your teeth?” demanded Leslie impatiently. “Don’t be a fool, Buck. Let the bet go as it lays.”

“You can say that all right,” remarked Buck, rising and stretching himself with a cavernous yawn; “but you ain’t never had a bawling-out from Georgine, and I have. That woman hurt my feelings something scandalous, and I’m going to make her apologize to me if it’s the last official act of my life—sabe? I’m going to make her say she’s sorry; and then, like as not, I’ll throw her down so hard that she’ll bounce!”

“Look out she don’t bounce into a furnished flat,” warned Ben. “If a redhead can get you to forgiving her it’s all off. Remember Cleopatra and Sappho and—”

“Trot ’em all out!” said Buck. “In a straightaway tongue-lashing contest I’ll back Georgine to win, hands down and on the chin-strap, from the whole darn smear. She sure is some woman!”

Three

The dressing-rooms at the Titan studio are situated behind the glass-walled stages where the interior scenes are photographed. A number of narrow, dingy closets extending along a gallery serve to house the wardrobes of the regular members of the company, and in the smallest of these two resplendent creatures, partially clad in court costumes of the seventeenth century, were struggling before a mirror. The gorgeous white periwigs, the satin breeches, the silk stockings, the high-heeled slippers with jeweled buckles and the lace at wrist and throat contrasted oddly with the other articles of wearing apparel scattered about the room. Chaps, woolen shirts, bandannas, sombreros, cartridge belts and boots were everywhere, for the dressing-room belonged to none other than Buck Parvin.

Charlie Jennings, a stick of grease paint in his hand, jabbed viciously at the corner of Buck’s left eye. It was one of the detested duties of the assistant director to make up the extra men and such actors as could not be trusted with pigments.

“Say, hold still, can’t you, Parvin? Confound it, I’d rather paint an eel’s face than make you up! Never mind trying to see yourself in the glass. I’ll make you as handsome as possible.”

Buck squirmed upon his stool in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the rhinestone buckles upon his slippers, his glance traversing a pair of rose-colored legs, satin to the knee and silk to the ankle.

“Say, Charlie, I don’t look so terrible bow-laigged, do I?” he asked anxiously.

“I’ve seen worse, but I don’t know where. You could catch a pig in an alley, all right—with the aid of a net.”

“These short pants and stockings kind of show a feller up, don’t they? I look pretty nifty in ordinary street stuff, but skin me down to tights and I reckon most people could tell that I’ve spent a lot of time in the saddle.”

“Stand sideways to the camera and it won’t show—much,” said Jennings absently.

“I—I wasn’t thinking about the camera. Say, does this pale pink look all right on me? Seems to me it’s awful quiet. I like colors with some kick to ’em, colors that hit you right in the eye. Red and yellow and some shades of green. Say, don’t I get one of them little patches of black sticking-plaster on my face? La Rue’s going to wear one.”

“You’ll get all that’s coming to you,” said Jennings wearily. “You’re a French nobleman in the picture. I don’t know why Jim cast you for one, unless it’s because you’re on the regular payroll and he hates to waste money.”

“Do I get that patch!” repeated Buck.

“Yes, yes, yes! The Lord knows it’ll take a lot of patching to make you look the part!”

“Cut it in the shape of a heart, will you?” asked Buck. “I got a reason. And say, a little more powder wouldn’t hurt, would it?”

“Who’s doing this?” growled Jennings. “I was handling grease paint before you ever saw a theater. When I was with Tom Keene I had to make up two and three times at every performance, and—”

“Yeh, in ‘Richard the Third.’ You told me about it before,” said Buck hastily, forestalling a monologue on a favorite subject.

“I guess you’re fixed now,” said Jennings as he settled the periwig upon Buck’s powdered brow. “I’ve done all that art can do for you. Try not to teeter so when you walk. They’d spot you for a cowpuncher the minute they saw you. Go out in the back yard and practice a while. Get used to that lace and stuff. Here! Look out for that coat! Do you want to split the back out of it? Those things cost money!”

Buck cautiously eased himself into a wonderful rose-colored garment of brocaded silk, surveyed as much of his magnificence as was visible in a square foot of mirror, and then with an inflation of the chest that threatened the glass buttons on his flowered waistcoat he hobbled out into the sunshine, where he paced slowly to and fro rolling a brown paper cigarette and trying hard not to notice the sensation created by his appearance. After a time he lifted up his voice in song, crooning an almost forgotten classic of the varieties:

“Aw, my baby, tell me true,Do you love me-e-e as I love you?”

Ben Leslie, in jumper and overalls, drew near, bowing low, with his hand on his heart.

“Greetings, Marcheese, greetings! To think that I should live to see my old pal Buck with a sticking-plaster heart on his face! What’s the matter? Got a pimple?”

“Oh, get out!” grinned Buck. “How do I look?”

“About the same as you feel—darned uncomfortable.”

“Shucks! I mean do I look the part?” persisted Buck.

“You do, in spots. You resemble a marquis quite a considerable round the back of your neck.”

“But the clothes, the clothes!” said Buck impatiently. “Ain’t this a humdinger of an outfit? Ain’t there class to it?”

“Well,” said Leslie judicially, “there’s a difference of opinion about clothes. Some say they don’t make a man and some say they do, but it’s the biggest cinch in the world that they don’t make a marquis. At that you might be able to get away with it if yon keep your hands in your pockets and stand behind tables and things. Jimmy Montague ought to have his head examined for casting a bow-legged man in a piece of this kind. Those warped shafts of yours will register awful strong if the camera gets a look at ’em. Maybe you’ve got a comedy part though. In that case the worse your legs look, the better.”

“My laigs seem to be troubling a lot of people round this joint,” said Buck. “They suit me all right. I ain’t got no fault to find with ‘em…. Say, Ben?”

“Well.”

“Remember what we were talking about last week over in the park?”

“Georgine?”

“Uh-huh. Well, she’ll be here pretty soon. I’m expecting her any minute. This is the big day, Ben.”

Leslie took a critical survey of his friend, beginning at the periwig, lingering long between waist and ankle and finishing with the rhinestone shoe-buckles. Then he leaned against the gallery railing and laughed himself limp—laughed until the tears came.

“Don’t mind me! Enjoy yourself!” said Buck petulantly. “What’s so darned funny about that, hey? La Rue’s friends are always coming out to watch him do studio stuff. You had a skirt hanging round for a month and I never said anything about it, did I? Georgine’s the first woman I ever asked out here. I know this short-pants part ain’t exactly in my line, but Georgine, she thinks there ain’t anything like it. She seen a play once where everybody dressed like this and done a lot of sword fighting, and that’s her notion of the pure quill in acting. Western stuff don’t make any hit with her; she says it ain’t refined. The other night I was telling her how to bulldog a steer and she pretty near fainted. Now when she sees me in this get-up she’ll have to admit that I’m an actor, won’t she?”

“She surely will,” said Ben, wiping his eyes. “She won’t know you from James K. Hackett or— Judas Priest! Somebody left the gate open and look at the crowd pouring in! Boom! Boom! There’s a battleship entering port!”

A huge overdressed Amazon came waddling resolutely across the yard. She wore an immense picture hat, burdened with scarlet flowers and nodding plumes, and her somewhat redundant figure was draped in billowy white. The sun glinted on masses of copper-bronze hair, and under the shade of heavily penciled brows bold eyes roved searchingly, taking in every detail of the unfamiliar surroundings.

“You darn fool!” ejaculated Buck. “That ain’t no battleship! That’s Georgine!” He hastened away to receive his guest, leaving Leslie open-mouthed and dumfounded.

“‘Some woman’ is right!” murmured Ben at last. “She’s forty if she’s a day and she’s big enough to lick the Mexican standing army! Poor old Buck!”

“Humph, it’s you, is it?” was Georgine’s rather ungracious greeting to her cavalier. “It’s a wonder you wouldn’t have told that person at the gate to let me in. He tried to stop me, the fresh thing, but I give him a piece of my mind.”

“Doggone it, Georgine,” said Buck contritely, “I been so busy getting dressed and made up that I forgot it.”

“That’s no excuse for putting a lady in bad,” said Georgine acidly.

“Well, I had to get into all this stuff, you know,” explained Buck. “How do you like it?”

“Turn round slow,” commanded Georgine. “No, not sideways; all the way round. M-m-m-m. That’s a right nice piece of silk in the coat, but I don’t think much of the lace. It’s imitation, and cheap imitation at that. The pants don’t fit you.”

“But take it all together,” pleaded Buck, “it ain’t so worse, is it?”

Georgine snickered.

“It might look all right on some people,” said she. “You must have been awful heavy when you was a baby or else your ma let you start walking too early. Mercy! Ain’t you simply roasting with that rats’ nest on your head? Take me somewheres where I can set down in the shade, and get me a glass of ice water and a fan. I declare I feel’s if I was about to melt.”

It was a very crestfallen Buck who escorted the fair visitor into the studio and placed a chair for her in a far corner, facing the stage and behind the camera.

“You can see everything from here,” said he. “I’ll be back in a minute. Make yourself to home.”

When Buck returned La Rue, a graceful, elegant figure in black silk, was chatting with Montague in the center of the stage.

“Say!” whispered Georgine excitedly, “ain’t that the man that was in the sheriff picture? He’s one of the regular actors, ain’t he?”

“Yes, he’s with us,” said Buck carelessly. “He calls himself La Rue, but they tell me his real name is Flaherty.”

“I guess he can have a stage name if he wants to,” said Georgine, rolling her eyes at La Rue over the rim of the glass. “Most actors change their names. He’s a handsome wretch, ain’t he?”

“He thinks so,” was the grim reply. “He’s awfully stuck on himself.”

“He’s got reason to be,” said Georgine calmly. “Any man with his eyes and his figure has got plenty of excuse. I’ll bet he’s a terrible flirt.”

“He’s worse than that,” said Buck shortly.

“Oh, well,” said Georgine, “it might not be the poor boy’s fault. Most likely there’s a lot of women running round after him all the time.”

“Yeh, women are fools about actors, but nobody with any sense would fall for that feller.”

“Oh, I don’t know’s I’d say that. He looks to me as if he might be right good company. He ain’t married?”

“No, divorced.”

“Prob’ly she didn’t understand him.”

“She did, though—that’s why she brought suit. Say, lemme tell you a stunt he pulled a few weeks ago. We was making a Western picture and he had to ride down a steep hill and jump his hawss over a creek. It wasn’t what you’d call hard. I could have done it bareback. La Rue took a look at the water and quit cold—said he had a toothache. Montague had to double him in the scene and one of the extry men made the ride, a feller fixed up to look like him.”

“I’ll bet they never gave you that job,” said Georgine with a laugh.

“Who, me? Say, I’ve doubled La Rue as many as forty times!” boasted Buck.

“It must have been at a distance,” said Georgine. “And I don’t see why he should be taking foolish chances. Suppose he’d get hurt or something?”

“A moving-picture actor has got to be game,” said Buck, “and La Rue ain’t. He’s got a streak as wide as the Mississippi River!”

“You can’t get me to believe that,” smiled Georgine, still exasperatingly calm. “You’re just jealous, that’s all.”

“What?” cried Buck in genuine amazement. “Jealous—of him? Why, say, he never saw the day that he could do my stuff! He ain’t got the nerve to try it even! Wasn’t I telling you that I was two seasons with the Bill Show, riding outlaws! Two Step, Aeroplane, Rocking Chair, Ole Steamboat—I’ve rode all them hawsses. There ain’t many can say as much. I was—”

Georgine yawned openly.

“I wish’t you wouldn’t talk about yourself so much,” said she. “I do despise a conceited man above all things. Oh, here comes the rest of ’em! What are they going to do now?”

The studio began to fill up with powdered gentlemen in wigs and ruffles. The stage carpenter added the finishing touches to a rich parlor setting and withdrew, mopping his brow. Buck rose hastily with something very like a sigh of relief.

“We’re going to rehearse a scene,” said he. “I don’t know what it’ll be, but I’m in it as big as a wolf. You want to watch close.”

“I like the way Mr. La Rue walks,” said Georgine, who had not given heed to Buck’s remark. “I do believe he’s the most graceful thing I ever saw. Seems to me it wouldn’t be any more than polite for you to introduce him.”

“He ain’t the kind of a man I’d care to introduce to any of my lady friends,” said Buck sternly.

Fate, which often uses the wireless telegraphy of the human eye to bring about its ends, chose this moment to strike the spark of jealous anger deep into Buck’s wounded vanity. Jack La Rue, idle and mischievous, glancing casually about the studio, spied Georgine and stared hard at her. Interpreting his curiosity as an awakening interest, Georgine tossed her plumes with bovine coquetry and, if a woman weighing one hundred eighty-nine pounds can be said to simper, Georgine simpered.

“Bless me!” thought La Rue. “Buck’s friend is trying to start something!”

Still holding her with his eyes, and conscious of Buck’s strained attitude and sullen demeanor, the handsome leading man favored Georgine with a slow, deliberate smile.

“Well, of all the nerve!” she cooed in a delighted flutter. “Did you see that? I declare, I knew that man would flirt the minute I laid eyes on him! Oh, ain’t he the rascal!”

“Well, he better not flirt with you!”

“You’d do something about it, I s’pose?”

“Yes, I’d do something about it!”

“You think you could stop him flirting with me if he really wanted to!” asked Georgine dreamily.

“I reckon I could try!” snapped Buck.

Four

“Scene forty-two, Dupree,” said Montague. “Got your background clear? I want all of the stairs and the landing above. Be careful you don’t cut off Jack’s head when he makes his entrance.”

“All set,” said Dupree.

“Now, then,” said the director, addressing the male members of the company, “I want the extra men in the background. Two or three of you go over there by the mantelpiece and talk among yourselves. Never mind trying to act. Just stand naturally, chatting and laughing. Oh, yes, you might hand round the snuffbox. That’s always good stuff in a costume piece. Where is that snuff-box, Ben?”

“Coming up,” said the imperturbable property man.

“Jennings,” continued Montague, “take three more of the extra people and be playing cards at the table. Buck, sit down here at the desk and be reading this letter. Look up, crumple the letter in your hand and register surprise and then anger. Straighten in your chair and hit the desk a rap with your open hand. You’ve just made up your mind to do something desperate, see?… Jack, that’s your cue. Come across the landing and stop at the head of the stairs. All the rest of you turn and look at him. Those of you that are sitting down get up, because he’s a duke of royal blood. Buck, you get up last and face the stairs. You might be able to play a marquis with your back to the camera, and the tails of that coat will hide your legs some. Jack, you smile and bow to everybody, then come down the stairs and walk straight up to Buck with your hand held out. Give him the line: ‘I congratulate you, marquis.’ You look at his hand, Buck, but instead of taking it you slap him across the cheek. Not a hard slap, you understand; you’re just doing it as an insult. All the rest of you jump and register great surprise when the duke gets slapped. Jack, you take a step backward and go after your sword; Jennings and his three extra men will grab you and the others will collar Buck. I don’t want anybody in front of Jack in this struggle scene, because I want him to be registering surprise. Make that strong, Jack. And, remember, not too much of a struggle. This isn’t ‘Ten Nights in a Barroom.’ These two men are gentlemen. You’re all gentlemen. Don’t forget it. No football tackling will go. Simply hold their arms and look shocked and drag them apart, and don’t get in front of Jack’s face while you’re doing it. That’ll be the end of the scene. We’ll run through it a couple of times to get the business right. Take your places.”

The action progressed smoothly to the point where Buck looked up from the letter.

“Not right into the camera!” instructed Montague. “Look beyond it. Now, then, register surprise—oh, fine stuff, Buck!”

At that moment Buck could not have registered anything but surprise had his life depended upon it. His glance, traveling beyond the camera, rested on Georgine, fair, fat and faithless. She was smiling coyly and waving a handkerchief, but, alas, for feminine constancy, her eyes were directed toward the point where La Rue was standing waiting for his cue.

“Bully!” cried Montague. “Immense! Now the anger. That’s it! Hit the desk. Good work, Buck! Come on, Jack!”

La Rue strode across the landing and paused at the head of the stairs. His eyes were dancing with mischief and he bowed to the company with gay abandon.

“Up! All up!” cried Montague, and Buck was the first man on his feet. His right hand, falling at his side, knotted into a fist.

“Watch that sucker act!” crowed Dupree. “He ain’t as rotten as I thought.”

The duke tripped lightly down the stairs and across the carpeted floor, a mocking smile upon his face.

“I congratulate you, marquis,” said he, and then, under his breath: “Who’s your fat friend. Buck?”

“I’ll show you!” roared Buck, and launched his fist from the hip. La Rue, taken entirely by surprise, went down like a shot rabbit, upsetting chairs and card-table, but he was on his feet again in an instant, meeting Parvin’s infuriated attack with a very workmanlike right cross which rocked that hero to the very heels. In the twinkling of an eye the entire foreground filled with silken coattails, powdered wigs, hooks, jabs, uppercuts and swings, and many a peacemaker found that it is indeed more blessed to give than to receive. Above the mêlée rose Buck’s voice, shrill with rage:

“I’ll learn you not to get gay with my girl!”

The battle, furious while it lasted, was a short one. With his own capable hands Jimmy Montague dragged his leading man back toward the camera, while a mound of arms and legs marked the spot where the extra men were struggling with Buck. It was then that a large figure in white swept majestically through the door and out into the yard.

“Call that acting?” said Georgine. “It looks more to me like a roughhouse. I ain’t going to stay no place where people don’t act gentlemanly!”

Five

The late marquis sat in his dressing-room contemplating a swollen nose and an angry puff under the left eye. Ben Leslie appeared to say that a piece of raw beefsteak had been ordered

“It was worth a week’s lay-off to lick that smart Aleck,” said Buck. “I ain’t worrying none about that. I wanted a vacation anyhow. But say, Ben?”

“Well?”

“What become of Georgine? I looked all round for her, but I couldn’t find her.”

“She beat it,” said Leslie. “Told the man at the gate to let her out because some hoodlum had started a free-for-all.”

“Some hoodlum!” repeated Buck bitterly. “That’s the best I get, is it? Oh, well, Georgine she was always too refined for me. And fickle too. I reckon she’ll stay sore for good this time, but if it’s true about them red-headed women, maybe I’m lucky.”

“Huh!” said Leslie. “You needn’t have been worried about Georgine.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing. Only that red hair of hers come out of a bottle. She wasn’t the real article in red-heads.”

There was a long silence after this remark.

“Well, anyhow,” said Buck, “she was some woman!”

“She was that!” said Ben Leslie.

Desert stuff

“Pete,” said the editor of the Sunday supplement to his staff, “can’t you bring your feature story for next week a little nearer home? Russian court scandals are all right in their way and the inside dope on the Hohenzollern family is immense, but our readers don’t know these grand dukes and princes personally. See if you can’t fix up something with a Southern California flavor to it. Give us a touch of that Southland stuff.”

“Everybody likes to read about royalty,” said the staff sulkily, who liked to write about it. He was a pale, blond youth, addicted to ready-made cigarettes, alliteration and watery eyes. “And, besides,” he complained, “that slush about the Southland makes me sick.”

“Sure it does,” said the editor soothingly—“you and me both, Pete. It makes all the natives sick, but these Californians from Indiana and Pennsylvania like it. These hardy forty-niners from Cedar Rapids and Emporia eat it alive. We’re developing a race of professional Californians, and the Southland is their Dixie. It’s a pity they haven’t got a song about it so that these adopted Argonauts can stand up in the caféterias and yell when the orchestras play it. But they read our paper and that’s the answer.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” said the staff, smiting his corrugated brow.

The mission of the Sunday supplement of a newspaper is not to instruct or to entertain, but to astound those weary souls to whom the Sabbath is a day of rest and mental relaxation. The young men who write the supplement articles are resourceful as well as clever. They have need to be, for they explain the inexplicable, invent the impossible, spin mysteries out of cigarette smoke, outride Rider Haggard and entrap the reader in a mesh of plausible fiction soberly presented as fact.

When invention fails and imagination flags, the Sunday Munchausens have recourse to the stock stories of the trade. These have been written and rewritten until they are as threadbare as a schoolmaster’s coat, but like the coat they are always ready for one more public appearance after the high lights and gray shadows have been freshly touched with ink.

In such a predicament the Sunday supplementeer turns to three old friends. He may discover the lost Charlie Ross once more, which is safe enough provided one locates him far beyond the circulation belt of the paper; he may unravel the mysteries surrounding the death of the Mad Prince, or he may summon out of thin air a witness who has seen the wild camels upon the Great American Desert. And since Charlie Boss and the Mad Prince entail a trip through the files, the odds are with the wild camels.

These are without doubt the most reliably unreliable camels of which we have any record. They have driven the sea-serpent of the Atlantic coast into permanent retirement and caused the all-alive mastodon of Alaska to hide his head for shame. No man has ever seen them save with the eye of faith, yet at regular intervals they gallop through the pages of our Sabbath literature, invariably disappearing in a cloud of dust, for these camels are swift as well as wild.

No one knows what fertile brain sired these animals and gave them sanctuary upon the western boundary of Utah; it is enough to say that the wild camels, existing at first in the wilder imagination of some nameless genius of the press and nurtured by scores of imitators, are now very real to those who believe that everything in a newspaper is true.

As a matter of fact, there are no wild camels, never have been wild camels and never will be wild camels at large upon the Great American Desert, but a thousand times we have been told how they came there and why they are wild. In all probability we shall continue to receive reports of them, for they are to the Sunday-supplement author what rags and virtue are to the melodramatist and the slapstick is to vaudeville—a sure-fire hit.

Thus Pete, smiting his corrugated brow, struck forth the spark of a brilliant idea. Something local, eh! Something with a touch of the Southland? Oh, very well. He would import the wild camels, bringing them across Nevada into California. He would locate them in the vast, sandy waste—here Pete reached for the atlas—the vast, sandy waste south of Death Valley. He would multiply their numbers, adding camel colts and a gaunt, white leader with a bell tinkling at his shaggy neck.

“I guess that’ll be poor!” said Pete to himself as he tossed a sheet of paper into the maw of his typewriter. He clattered into print as follows:

“Yesterday Thomas Smith, better known as Honest Tom, an aged desert prospector who has spent forty years of his life in search of the Peg-leg Mine, returned from a trip to the Panamint country with a marvelous tale which has caused a flare of excitement in every desert camp between”—here Pete took another look at the map— “between Yermo and Ivanpah. Mr. Smith, when seen at the residence of his sister, on Olive Street—”

And then three thousand words about the wild camels.

Two

James Montague, producing director for the Titan Company and author of many famous scenarios, was not a boastful man, but he often remarked that all he needed was a start.

“Plots come easy to me,” he explained. “Give me the germ of an idea and I’ll coax it along until I get a picture out of it. Start me to thinking along a certain line and the plot unfolds without any trouble. The tough part of it is to get started on something new.”

Since the germ of the idea gave him the most trouble Jimmy sought it everywhere. Frequently the monthly magazines furnished inspiration. Montague was no pirate, and he knew too much about the copyright law to lay his company liable for damages, but he was an artist at borrowing something which the author would never miss and transforming it into something which he would never recognize. The daily newspapers also gave many valuable hints and Jimmy read them religiously.

On a Monday morning Montague arrived at the studio, brimming over with enthusiasm. He patted the office boy on the back, smiled at the telephone girl, and shouted a greeting at Buck Parvin, who was sunning himself in the back yard outside the studio.

“That means trouble,” remarked Buck to Ben Leslie, the property man. “Any time Jim comes in so brash on a Monday morning, look out. He’s thought of something new and all his new stunts are hard. That feller ain’t ever real happy unless he’s cranking up trouble for us poor actors.”

“Poor is the right word,” said Leslie sarcastically, “though I don’t know as I’d go so far as to say actor. If they make ’em any poorer than you are, Buck, I never saw any. Too darned bad about you overworked Thespians! You lead a dog’s life for a fact; nothing to do but lay around in the sun and get fat. Now if you had my job there might be some excuse for hollering. Jim rang me up at mid-night last night and rousted me out of bed, and what do you think he wanted?”

Buck shook his head.

“I wouldn’t undertake to say what he’d want at any hour of the day or night. Elephants, maybe?”

“Pretty near as bad,” said Ben. “He wanted to know if I could get him some more camels.”

“More camels!” ejaculated Buck. “Why, the jumping Jee-rusalem! There’s a lot of camels over at the animal farm now. Sharkey and Ole Blue—”

“And Betsy and Mame,” finished Leslie. “You’d think that would be enough camels for a mess; but no, he wants more. So he drags me out of the hay at midnight to tell me about it. Tom Platt never ought to have had the name of the Easy Boss. Jimmy Montague is it.”

“But what does he want with camels?” asked Buck. “The last time I had to do a camel stunt Sharkey stumbled and heaved me forty feet. That old feller can’t get out of a walk without stepping on his upper lip. A white man was never intended to ride one of them biscuit-footed outrages, Ben.”

“That’s me, ” said Leslie. “I wouldn’t keep a camel in my back yard if I had room for a steamboat. I could arrange to stand it if I never got another pleasant look from one as long as I live. Nix on that ship-of-the-desert stuff for mine.”

“I’d ship ’em all to the desert if it was up to me,” said Buck. “What kind of a song and dance did you give Jim?”

“What do you think? I’m the property man for this outfit, ain’t I? Jim Montague says to me: ‘I want this and I want that; go get ’em’—and I do. That’s what I’m paid for, and Jim hasn’t stumped me yet, though he’s had me worried a lot of times. This was easy. ‘Oh, you want some more camels?’ I says, just like that. ‘I can get you camels in all sizes and colors, with one hump or two humps, as preferred. Will you have ’em delivered right away?’ That’s what I told him.”

“Yes, but you can’t make good,” protested Buck.

“That’s where the laugh comes in—I can,” said Ben. “Ward Brothers’ Circus is wintering at Santa Monica. Billy Ward has got camels to burn, eating their heads off and doing nothing. I can get anything Billy owns, from a hippopotamus to a red bandwagon. Him and me are as close as two fingers on one hand. Oh, I can get the camels, all right. Which kind of a camel would you prefer to ride. Buck, one hump or two?”

“I wouldn’t wish to ride none of ’em, ” said Buck. “I’d just as soon straddle the walking-beam of a ferryboat—yes, a heap sooner, because you can most generally tell where that’s going. I get along with some animals first rate, but I couldn’t waste any affection on a camel—not on a bet. That Selim elephant and me hit it off bully; he’s almost human. I got a lot of respect for a lion. A lion has got his faults, but he’s no hypocrite. He ain’t your pal one minute and taking a swipe at you the next. A lion don’t like you at no time whatever and you don’t expect nothing from him, but a camel now, he’s different. A camel has got a bad heart and a breath that would knock you down. I reckon I honeyed round that brute of a Sharkey for pretty near a month, feeding him and rubbing his nose and trying to make myself solid with him. As long as I kept my eye on him he was all right, but the first time I turned my head to spit—whoosh! and here he come. I busted the world’s record for the standing jump, and I had to do it or Sharkey would have bit my ear off. Take it from me, Ben, a camel is just as deceitful and lowdown and ornery as he looks—and that’s going some.”

While this discussion was taking place James Montague, in his private office, was calling the animal farm, the moving-picture menagerie owned by the Titan Company.

“Girlie, get me Tim Kelly at the animal farm,” said he.

“Something doing,” said the operator behind her hand to the office boy. “Maybe he’s thought of a way to use those alligators that Mr. Packard bought. They’d be lovely in a picture, and new stuff too. Hello! Just a minute, Mr. Kelly.”

“That you, Tim?” said the director. “This is Jim talking. I tried to get you last night. Come over right away, will you?… Yes, a new animal stunt…. As soon as you can, then.”

Ben Leslie was next summoned from the property room.

“How soon can you get those camels?” asked Montague.

“Any time,” said Ben. “How many do you want?”

“All I can get.”

“Nothing could be clearer than that,” said Leslie calmly. “I’ll get you camels till you can’t rest. What’s the stunt?”

“I’m going to make a real desert picture. We’ve been fooling along, using a dry river-bed and a sandpile for a desert and getting away with it, when we might just as well give ’em the real thing, with the desert itself for a background. I’ve got a picture in mind that’ll have a lot of scenery in it, and when I get through I dare anybody to say that it wasn’t made in the Sahara. We can ship a couple of carloads of camels to one of the little desert towns, hop out and make the stuff and be back inside of three days. It won’t cost much, but we’ll get a desert picture that will have atmosphere and color and—all that stuff. By the way, Ben, where are you going to get those camels? From Ward’s circus!”

“Sure thing. Billy Ward has got a whole slew of camels—more camels than anything else. Did you ever see that big white dromedary that leads the bunch in the street parade? That’s old Aladdin, and take it from me he’s some camel.”

“A white camel!” exclaimed Montague. “You don’t say so!”

“But I do say so. Maybe they doped him up with peroxide or something, but he’s the whitest camel you ever saw.”

“That’s a queer coincidence,” said Montague. “Look at this.”

He drew out a copy of the Sunday supplement of a local paper and spread it open upon the desk. The artist, collaborating with Pete, had produced a riot of camels across seven columns, and the flying leader was an immense white brute with a single hump. Above the illustration was a flaring line in large type:

Guided by Ghostly Leader

Wild Camels Invade the Southland

“Holy cat!” ejaculated Leslie. “If that ain’t a ringer for old Aladdin I’ll eat him!”

“Do you think Billy Ward will let us have him?”

“Of course. He’ll come in mighty handy too, because these circus camels have been trained to follow him just like sheep. Wherever Aladdin goes the bunch will go. That’ll save you a lot of trouble.”

“Lovely!” said Montague. “Think of the effect we can get with a silhouette run, pulled off against the skyline, that old white fellow in front and all the others trailing him! We can use a telescopic lens and catch ’em as far away as a mile. That’ll give us a chance to ring in a big stretch of desert for a foreground. Stain the film for a sunset glow and that’ll be poor, eh?”

“It ought to make a swell picture,” said Ben, “but there’s one thing you mustn’t overlook. Somebody has got to ride Aladdin, and you’d better pick the right man for the job. Jack La Rue is all right on a horse, but he’s pretty rough with livestock, and a camel won’t stand to be yanked round the way Jack yanks a horse. Billy Ward was telling me about Aladdin; he’s awful touchy, and they have to handle him just so or he gets peeved and won^t work. Far be it from me to butt in, Jim, but Billy Ward is going to hold me responsible for those camels and particularly Aladdin. Billy thinks more of that old white rascal than anything in the show, and he’d never forgive me if something happened to him. If you let La Rue do the riding he’ll get impatient, the way he always does, and boot Aladdin in the slats a few times, and the first thing you know there’ll be camels scattered forty ways and it won’t be any picnic to round ’em up again. If it was up to me, Jim, I’d put the best rider in the company on Aladdin.”

“How about Buck?” asked Montague.

“That’s the man I’d pick,” said the treacherous Leslie.

“I’ll fix it up,” said the director, eager to be at work upon the new scenario. “You go and make arrangements with Billy Ward. We’ll pay him anything in reason, but we must have that white camel. If he wants to send his own animal man along he can. Better dig up a few camel saddles while you’re about it, and if Ward has got any Arab costumes, grab ’em.”

“They’re as good as grabbed,” said Ben. “I’m off.”

“What’s the dope?” asked Buck, following Leslie into the property room.

“I don’t know what the picture is going to be,” said Ben, “but if you’ll show me your hand I’ll tell your fortune.”

“Shoot!” grinned Buck, extending his palm.

“Ah! See this line here? That’s a journey, Buck. You’re going away from here—on a railroad train. Somewhere on the trip you’ll meet an animal…. It looks like a camel…. By golly! It is a camel…. A white camel with a black heart and one hump…. I see you riding that camel, Buck…. My, oh, my! Look at all those little crisscross wrinkles! They mean trouble. You won’t like that camel and he won’t like you. You’ll have an accident. You and that white camel are going to get into a jam of some kind—”

“You see these?” demanded Buck, doubling up his fist and patting his knuckles. “See these four little lumps? They mean trouble, too, and you’re going to run your eye into ’em if I find out that you’ve framed this camel thing on me. You big long-legged scarecrow! I reckon you and Jim put your heads together and fixed up a job.”

“Nothing like that,” said Leslie. “It’s fate for you and that white camel to meet. Furthermore, I’ll state that I know that camel personally and he’s the meanest camel that ever dipped his face into a bale of hay. The man who takes care of him wears shinguards and a baseball mask.”

“Is that on the square?” asked Buck anxiously.

“Everything is on the square but the camel, and he never was on the square in his life. You ask any circus man about Aladdin. They all know him. The old sucker has got a reputation for pure cussedness that reaches from one end of the country to the other.”

“He’s bad, is he?”

“Bad? Why, say, a Bengal tiger is a gentleman and a scholar and a sucking dove beside him! You’re always blowing about what a great rough rider you are, and here’s where you show me. If you take my tip you’ll wear a suit of armor and put shock absorbers in your hip pockets.”

“Uh-huh,” said Buck slowly. “I get you on the shock absorbers, but why the armor, Ben?”

“Oh, nothing, only this Aladdin bites like a wolf.”

There was an ominous silence, during which Buck rolled a cigarette. When he spoke his voice was soft as silk and his manner almost apologetic.

“You been kind enough to tell me what’s going to happen to me,” said Buck, “so I’ll tell you what’s going to happen to you. If this camel friend of yours bites me and I find it out you get some shock absorbers fitted to your jawbone because that’s where you’ll need ’em. As to my riding, I don’t know as I blow so terrible much. I claim I can set up in the middle of anything that has to light on the ground once in a while. I’ll ride this Aladdin camel, you can bet on that, but if he bites me watch out for yourself. And if you think anything of him at all you better breathe it in his ear that it won’t be healthy for him to grab no free lunch off Buck Parvin. As a general thing I aim to be kind to dumb animals, but a feller has got to draw the line somewhere, as Doc Bowen said when he found the skunk in his kitchen. Being camel-bit is the extreme tip of the limit with me, and if your friend Aladdin starts anything coarse I’ll whang him over the head with the butt of my gun. Yes, I’ll hang a couple on his eyebrow that he won’t be able to wipe off in a hurry. And after I’ve learned him manners I’ll run you plumb breathless for wishing him on to me. You sabe that, amigo?”

Three

The Occidental Limited, eastbound from Los Angeles to Chicago, clicked over the rails at an average speed of forty miles an hour, a wheeled palace flying through the heart of the desert. The lone tourist on the observation platform stared at the two shining lines of steel, rippling away toward the horizon straight as the leveled finger of God. On either side of the roadbed there was nothing but sand and sagebrush, sloping gently upward to the distant mountains, grim, saw-toothed ridges of rock, bare and brown and without a sign of verdure.

“What a frightful country!” sighed the tourist.

“Huh!” said the brakeman. “You ought to see her in July.”

“I don’t believe I’d care to,” said the tourist, rising. “Have you read the Sunday paper?”

“Saw it this morning,” said the brakeman. The tourist threw his newspaper overboard and went inside to get a cooling drink. We need not follow him, our business being with the newspaper, settling to rest in the sand beside the track.

Three days later a wrinkled little old man passed that way, urging a pair of heavily laden burros before him.

“Well, well!” he cackled, slapping his knees. “Look here, Jimmy, at what we’ve found! A newspaper as sure as you’re born! Ain’t been here long or it would have got sunburned. Yes, sir, it’s fresh! Somebody must have throwed it off the train. You reckon they knew we’d be along about this time? We’ll have to read all about what’s going on outside, won’t we, Jimmy? Yes, sir, you sure said an armful then; we’ll read her from kiver to kiver. Ain’t she a whopper though? Colored pictures too. Don’t it beat the Dutch how they think up things to fill the newspapers, Jimmy? Don’t it though?”

Still mumbling and talking to himself, the old man thrust the paper in among his cooking utensils and prodded his shaggy little beasts into motion. His course was not a direct one, for he picked up bits of rock here and there and made wide detours to examine every new gully-worn by the winter rains, for Uncle Jimmy Belcher was a prospector.

The desert, they say, claims one man out of every three who visit it. There is an indefinable charm in its far horizons and crystal-clear atmosphere, a mysterious lure in its wonderful starlit nights. Little by little the desert absorbs the chosen one and, when it has put its seal upon him, forgets him, for he is safe. He will never be content anywhere else and if he “goes inside” he will be forced to return. He is a desert rat for life.

Uncle Jimmy Belcher was seventy years old, but he looked younger in spite of his wrinkles and sun-dried appearance. His limbs were still spry and every tooth in his head was sound.

“How come I ain’t lost no teeth,” said Uncle Jimmy once when questioned upon the subject. “Because I scour ’em with gunpowder twice a week reg’lar as clockwork. That’s a trick I learned from the Sioux Injuns when I was soldierin’ on the plains with old Crook. You never see an Injun with the toothache, did ye? No, and you won’t either. And then I use a plenty of eating tobacker and that preserves the gums.”

Uncle Jimmy made an early camp. He unpacked his burros, built a fire of sagebrush and set about preparing his evening meal. As he was squatting over the frying-pan, watching the bacon, the faint yelp of a coyote floated down from the hills, each quavering note as distinct as the trill of a meadow-lark. Uncle Jimmy shook his fist at the gathering darkness.

“Oh, I knowed you was out there somewhere!” he said with the air of one resuming an ancient controversy. “I was expecting you to tune up about now. You ain’t fooled me none. You and your grandfathers before you have been a-setting round watching me nights and singing to me, but you ain’t got me yet and you never will. I’m going to fool you. I ain’t going to die on the desert; I’m going to die in a bed, I am, and be planted six feet deep in a sure-enough graveyard. Then what’ll you do, hey? Sing, you son-of-a-gun! I hear ye!”

After supper Uncle Jimmy piled fresh fuel on the fire, spread his blankets and settled himself to read the newspaper. The colored cover of the Sunday supplement attracted his attention and he turned the pages to look at the pictures.

“Hello!” he said. “Jimmy, them are camels, ain’t they? “Why, sure they’re camels! Is it a circus maybe! We’ll have to look into this!”

He began to read, spelling out the long words, and a puzzled frown nested between his bushy eyebrows.

“This is coming pretty close home, Jimmy,” he muttered. “Yes, sir, pretty close home. ‘Thomas Smith, better known as Honest Tom, an aged desert prospector.’ Honest Tom—we don’t know no such feller as that, do we? There’s Shorty Smith and Baldy Smith— Hold on! Baldy’s dead. And ole Zack Smith; we know all them, Jimmy, but Honest Tom No, he ‘s surely a new one on us! And it says he’s been here forty years! Well, ain’t that sing’lar! If we hadn’t seen it in the paper we never would have believed it, would we, Jimmy? No, I reckon not. We thought we knew all the old-timers too. Just goes to show what a mighty big place this desert is. Room enough for all. Oh, well, maybe he hung out up round Moharvey.”

A few moments later Uncle Jimmy grunted aloud and moved closer to the fire. This is what he read:

How long Mr. Smith slept he does not know. He found himself sitting bolt upright beside the ashes of his camp fire, his revolver in his hand. The sky was filled with drifting clouds. The moon had risen and the faraway mountain peaks were flooded with silver. The desert itself was bathed in a soft mellow light, so strong that a moving object was plainly visible at a distance of one hundred yards—

“Hah!” said Uncle Jimmy. “Been on the desert forty years and can’t see no further than that—by moonlight? We could see a horny toad turn over as far off as that the darkest night that ever shone, couldn’t we, Jimmy?”’ He returned to his reading:

Sitting thus, with every nerve strained and every faculty alert, Smith became aware of a faint tinkling sound as of a bell at a great distance. Turning his head to the east he made out a white object which seemed to be moving in his direction. The white object came nearer and Smith was able to distinguish several dark ones behind it. There was no sound save the faint tinkling of the bell. The prospector’s first thought was of strayed cattle, but he soon dismissed that explanation as improbable.

Swinging steadily forward at an even gait, the ghostly leader bore down upon Smith’s camp. Towering gaunt and spectral in the half-light, it might have been a creature from another world. There was menace in its silent advance, a threat in the shadowy shapes which trooped behind it.

The moon passed behind a cloud, and when it shone out again in all its brilliancy a gigantic white camel loomed above the ashes of the fire. Smith declares that the brute was so close that he saw the whites of its eyes and the tiny silver bell around its neck.

Another stride and the prospector would have been crushed, but the instinct of self-preservation intervened. Leaping to his feet. Smith emptied his revolver in the air. With a snort and a bellow the white camel veered to the south, disappearing at incredible speed. The other camels followed their leader and Smith narrowly escaped death under the flying hoofs of the frantic creatures. Long after the desert had swallowed them up he heard the tinkling of the bell…. Smith says that he did not count the camels, but, judging by the tracks in the sand, he is convinced that there were no less than thirty full-grown animals in the herd.

Uncle Jimmy dropped the paper and drew a long breath.

“Goshamighty!” he said. “Thirty full-growed camels all in a bunch! Running loose and rampaging round nights too! Why, Jimmy, it’s getting so that it’s dangerous to be safe, ain’t it? Don’t you reckon we better go hobble them jacks so they won’t get stampeded! Yes, sir, let’s go do that very thing! Camels on the desert! Seems to me the Gover’ment had some of ’em down in Arizony once. Maybe it’s the same bunch, but how in thunder did they get across the Colorado River! Hey? S’pose they do come hiking along, are we a-going to lay still like a hoptoad and let a white camel tromp the eternal gizzard out of us? Not if we see him first, we ain’t. That would be a fine finish, wouldn’t it? The coyotes would get us for sure, then, wouldn’t they, Jimmy? Yes, they would for a fact. Are we going to be run over by a whole damn circus parade and not have nothing to say about it? We’re just full of them tricks, ain’t we, Jimmy? We’d begin shooting before that, wouldn’t we? Why, to be sure! And we didn’t shoot none in the air when we was with old man Crook, did we?”

Three hours later the old man was still mumbling by the fire, but he was not reading the paper. He was polishing an ancient service revolver, which he patted lovingly and addressed as “Sitting Bull.”

“Now, then, let ’em bring on their white camels!” said he as he slipped the heavy weapon back in its holster. “Let ’em come any hour of the day or night and we’re hooked for ’em. Are we going to be run out of this country by a stray menagerie? No, sir; we was here first, wasn’t we, Jimmy? We ain’t a-going to be stampeded by nothing, not while old Sitting Bull can spit a mouthful of lead!”

He stretched himself upon his blankets and closed his eyes. Once more the unseen coyote lifted his querulous plaint.

“Yes, I s’pose you’re in with ’em,” murmured Uncle Jimmy sleepily, “but it won’t get ye nothing. The camel that tries to ketch us asleep better not wear no bell. You wait round a while and you’ll find out how camel meat tastes!”

Four

A special train of three cars twisted its way up the Cajon Pass, the big ten-wheeler coughing over the steep grade. One of the cars was a Pullman sleeper; the others bore the red and gilt of Ward Brothers’ Circus.

In the Pullman the members of the Titan Company amused themselves in various ways. Myrtle Manners, the leading woman, read a novel and munched chocolates. Jack La Rue, the leading man, scowled out of the window at the scenery and said unflattering things about realism when carried to extremes. Charlie Dupree, the camera man, pretended to listen to him, but was really much more interested in a take-up box that needed repairing. In the drawing room, with the door locked against intruders, Jimmy Montague, author, director and sometimes actor, wrestled with his desert scenario, a delicate little figment of the imagination introducing love, jealousy, treachery, hate, and a few other human emotions besides battle, murder, sudden death and camels, but particularly camels. At the other end of the car a lively poker game was in session. Buck Parvin, shin in his hands and an unlighted cigarette depending from his lower lip, watched the shifting chips apathetically.

“Why don’t you set in and do yourself some good?” asked Ben Leslie.

“I couldn’t pay the first installment on a postage stamp.”

“Broke! What did you do with that fifty-dollar bonus?”

Buck yawned and stretched.

“Easy come, easy go, as the soldier boy said when he blowed his month’s pay in one night—the whole thirteen bucks.”

“Did you see that white camel?” inquired Ben.

“Uh-huh. I give him the once-over when they loaded him into the car. You’ve been slandering that ole boy. He went aboard like a lamb.”

“He always does,” said Ben, “but that ain’t saying he’ll unload like one. Has Jim told you anything about the stunt yet?”

Buck nodded and lighted his cigarette.

“I’m the fair-haired boy in this picture,” said he. “I got the part of the villain. So far as I can make out from what Jim tells me, I’m jealous of La Rue. That’s why I steal the camels and leave Jack and Myrtle afoot in the desert and forty miles from water. Jim has got a fool notion about using a telescope lens and getting a picture of me beating it, with the entire bunch strung out behind single file. It can’t be done. How am I going to herd them camels in a straight line, I ask you?”

“That’ll be easy,” said Leslie. “Just ride Aladdin and the others will follow.”

“Well, I’ll ride him all right,” said Buck boastfully. “He don’t look like no Bengal tiger to me.”

“Wait,” said Ben quietly. “He hasn’t started yet.”

“He better not start with me,” remarked Buck. “I got my ole smoke-pole along and the first time Mr. Aladdin gets fresh—whang! right on the crust. I’ll tame him or cave in his roof!”

Daggett is a sleepy little town on the edge of the desert, where sensations are few and far between. The arrival of the Titan special was a great event to the elderly gentlemen sun-drying themselves in front of the general store, and several of them mustered up sufficient ambition to walk across to the sidetrack where the camels were being prodded down a cattle chute into a corral.

“Is this a circus, mister?” asked one of them.

“Not yet,” said Ben Leslie, his eye upon Aladdin, who was being coaxed down the chute by Tim Kelly and three men from the animal farm. “Not yet, but stick around, old timer. The show is liable to start at any time.”

A weatherbeaten native stood beside the corral, leaning his elbows upon the top rail. He was industriously chewing tobacco and the movements of his jaw were communicated to his patriarchal white beard, which hung down inside the fence, waving gently like a flag of truce.

Aladdin, his feet on solid ground once more, blew a long whistling breath through his nostrils and sidled along the barrier, soft-footed as a cat, the very picture of innocence. As he came abreast of the tobacco chewer his white neck darted out with the speed of a striking snake, there was a flash of yellow teeth, a savage click and the native leaped backward with a scream in which acute pain, astonishment and rage were mingled. Aladdin continued on his way, his eyes half closed as if in meditation. Several wisps of white hair hung from the corner of his mouth.

“Where’s the town marshal!” howled the outraged citizen. “That there white cam-u-el bit the whiskers right off my face! I’ll sue your show for damages!”

“Ye’ll sue nothing,” said the alert Tim Kelly. “Kape yer whishkers on the right side of the fence. Ye had no business tor-r-mentin’ the poor dumb baste wid the sight of so much alfalfa!”

The laugh which this sally raised was short lived. A terrific hubbub arose in one corner of the corral. Aladdin had discovered Sharkey and was resenting the latter’s presence with every means at his command. The animal farm attendants leaped into the squealing, bubbling melee and at last succeeded in forcing Aladdin into a neutral corner, where he remained quivering with rage. Buck Parvin was a pop-eyed spectator.

“Thunder and guns!” he murmured. “He pulled enough whiskers out of that old guy’s face to stuff a sofa pillow!”

“Yes, and he came within an ace of getting his nose,” said Ben Leslie pleasantly. “Did you bring that suit of armor?”

“No,” said Buck, “I didn’t, but I’ve got something just as good.” He patted a suspicious bulge over his right hip. “If you think I’m going to let that white hyena bite me and get away without a receipt for it you’re crazy. Acting is one thing, but being cannibalized by a camel is another. I declare myself right now, and it goes too. If that brute bites me I’ll get him!”

“You better not hurt that camel,” warned Leslie.

“Huh!” grunted Buck. “Put it the other way round. That camel better not hurt me.”

Five

An hour later a strange procession passed down the single street and out into the desert, headed by James Montague and Jack La Rue, the former in his shirtsleeves and the latter in a flowing white burnoose and sandals. Most of the actors appeared in costume, but Buck Parvin carried his burnoose over his arm and his sandals in his pocket.

Behind the members of the company came the camels, escorted by Tim Kelly and his assistants from the animal farm, also in burnooses. Aladdin stalked in front, a competent hand upon his bridle, and a rickety express wagon brought up the rear, loaded with “props.” Ben Leslie was on the seat with the driver. Behind the wagon trooped the entire population of Daggett, silent and curious.

“Look here, Jim, do I work with that white camel?” demanded La Rue.

“You don’t have to ride him, if that’s what you mean; but he’s in some scenes with you.”

“Those scenes will have to be cut out,” said La Rue with firmness.

“What’s the matter now, Jack? More artistic temperament?”

“No, common sense. That white camel is vicious, Jim. You saw what he did to that old man. You haven’t any right to ask an actor to take a chance with a savage brute like that. Suppose he disfigures some one for life?”

“But he won’t bite you,” soothed Montague.

“That camel will bite anybody!” snapped the leading man. “I’ll quit the company before I’ll work in a scene with him. I don’t want to get my chin bit off, Jim.”

“But, confound it, we’ve got to use him!” stormed Montague. “He’s the bull-cow of the herd. They’ll all follow him!”

“They will, eh?” La Rue stopped and tossed the hood of his burnoose back over his shoulders. “Wait a second, I’ve got an idea.”

“It’ll die of lonesomeness,” was the sarcastic rejoinder.

“See how this strikes you,” urged La Rue. “The way the picture is doped out now. Buck is one of our own people and he gets up in the night and steals the camels out of jealousy. That’s always good stuff for a heavy, but it doesn’t make enough use of the white camel. Why not have Buck a sort of a desert thief? He owns this white camel, see? The brute has a peculiar influence over other camels—they follow him the same as if they’re hypnotized. Buck knows about this white camel’s power, and—”

“I’ve got it!” cried Montague, suddenly inspired. “You’ve struck a great idea there and you don’t know what to do with it. It’ll change the whole picture, but it’s worth it. I’ll play the heavy—Buck can’t do it. He can double me in the riding scenes. I’m a Bedouin chief, sort of an outlaw. Poor as Job’s turkey, but I’ve got this white camel. You’re a rich trader and we’re both in love with Myrtle. I steal the camels from your caravan because I want to get you out of the way—want you to die on the desert. I come riding by at night on my white camel and your camels get up and follow him. Great moonlight effect there—film stained blue—camels kneeling in the foreground—tents behind them—lovely! In the morning you start out with your party to walk to the nearest water—we’ll have to dope out some excuse for your not having any. Oh, yes, I can empty the barrels before I steal the camels. We’ll make a lot of scenes of you and Myrtle on the desert, after the others have all died one by one. You get weaker and weaker and finally give up in despair. Then we cut to the tents again. I come back on foot to see how much merchandise has been left behind. On the ground I find a shawl—the same one that I give Myrtle in an earlier scene. See the punch developing, Jack? I didn’t know that Myrtle was with you and all at once I realize that in trying to put you out of the way I’ve condemned her to death as well. A great chance for some real acting there, what! I go crazy with grief and the old R. E. Morse thing and rush out on foot to find her.”

“Why all this ‘on-foot’ stuff? asked La Rue suspiciously.

“For the sake of the finish! I find you in the nick of time; I see that you’re the one she loves. Big renunciation scene. I give you my water bottle and her my farewell blessing and die of thirst while you make a getaway with the girl. How’s that?”

“Fine—for you!” growled La Rue. “That ain’t a heavy; that’s a lead. I give you the idea and you hog the picture!”

Montague did not hear him. He was already dismantling his scenario and rebuilding it along other lines.

“The first thing we’ll make is the silhouette run,” said Montague to Tim Kelly. “I want to test the camels on this following stunt. That ridge over there is the very place to pull it.”

“Good enough,” said the chief animal man, “but I misdoubt whether our camels will follow this white man-eater.”

“We’ll have enough without our four,” said Montague.

The saddling of Aladdin was not accomplished without bloodshed. One of the attendants relaxed his vigilance for an instant and suffered a painful nip on the shoulder.

“Aisy!” said Tim Kelly. “I’ve been told that Billy Ward starves his livestock and I believe it.”

“Now, Buck,” said Montague, “I want you to ride over about half a mile and then turn and go straight along that ridge against the skyline. The other camels will follow, so you won’t have to worry about them. I’ll keep these people back out of the way so there won’t be anybody within half a mile of you to make Aladdin nervous. Take your time about it and finish with a run.”

“I’ll do my best, Jim,” said Buck, whose eyes were fixed upon the attendant’s shoulder; “but I warn you, if this camel bites me his name is mud. I’ll get him sure!”

“Rats! You talk like a child! Keep your legs back out of the way and he can’t hurt you.”

“The deuce he can’t!” sneered Buck. “He’s got a neck made out of rubber!”

“All set!” said Tim Kelly. “The noble ship o’ the desert is ready to sail.”

Three men held Aladdin’s head while Buck swung himself between the high horns of the camel saddle and thrust his sandals into the stirrups.

“Better say good-by to us, folks,” he called. “One of us might not come back. Leggo of his head. Hup, you!”

Aladdin heaved himself to his feet with a racking series of convulsions, whistled through his nostrils, shook his head from side to side, made a futile though earnest attempt to reach one of Buck’s knees and then lumbered forward, the circus camels following in his wake.

“Fine!” said the director. “Charlie, be ready to catch ’em as soon as they straighten out along the ridge. Get as much of the foreground as you can and mighty little sky.”

“Even so,” said the camera man.

“Buck doesn’t seem to be having any trouble, ” remarked Montague. “It’s the first time I ever knew him to kick about a riding stunt. Said he’d kill the camel if he got bit.”

“Oh, well,” said Leslie reassuringly, “you know how Buck is. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, but he likes to talk.”

The string of camels grew small in the distance, turned at a right angle and swung up the ridge, the white leader plodding along at a sedate pace.

“That’s the stuff!” said Montague. “They ought to be moving a little faster than that though. Why doesn’t he hurry ’em up a little?”

Evidently the same idea occurred to Buck, for he was seen to flap his elbows and kick Aladdin violently in the ribs. The white neck curved backward in protest and at the same instant the camel made a mighty leap, lurched in his stride and fell headlong. Before his knees crumpled under him the other camels were in full flight, and the wind bore the short, crashing report of a heavy revolver.

“He shot him! Buck shot him!” yelled Ben Leslie, starting to run.

The population of Daggett surged forward like a wave.

“Out of the picture! Keep out of the picture!” bellowed Montague.

“Too late,” said the imperturbable Dupree. “Ben spilled the beans. He cut across in front just as the camels started to scatter.”

All things considered, it was a very complete case of circumstantial evidence.

Ben Leslie and Jimmy Montague, distancing the field and finishing a stride apart, found Aladdin dead upon the ground with a ragged hole in the side of his head. Buck Parvin, a trifle white about the lips, was sitting beside the body of the camel, examining an ugly wound below his right knee.

“You fool! What did you shoot him for?” panted Leslie.

“Me?” said Buck blankly. “I never did no such thing! I was booting him to make him run and he reached round and took a chunk out of my leg. Just as he got me—Pow! and down he goes like a landslide! I lit on my head and was sort of knocked silly for a minute, and when I came to I looked all round, but I couldn’t see a thing. That’s straight goods.”

Montague shook his head.

“It sounds fishy to me. You said you’d do it if he bit you. Let me see that gun!”

Buck handed over his weapon with a sickly grin.

“Jim,” said he, “I was only bluffing about that; honest, I was. I’m telling you right; I didn’t shoot him and I don’t know who did.”

By this time the audience was arriving. The citizens of Daggett surrounded the dead camel and filled the air with ejaculations and profane comment.

“He said one of ’em mightn’t come back!”

“Don’t look like he’d bite anybody else in a hurry.”

“Deader’n a nit!”

“Camels is expensive critters, ain’t they?”

“Been me, I’d just banged him on the head with the butt. No need to kill him. Shame, I say!”

“Loaded with cartridges,” said Montague, “and one empty.”

“Well, I can explain that,” said Buck, looking about him at a circle of accusing faces. “I loaded her because I thought I might get a shot at a coyote or something. When she’s loaded I always carry her with the trigger on an empty. She’s safest that way. Jim, on the level, you don’t think I shot that poor ole camel, do you? Ben, you know I wouldn’t do a trick like that, no matter how bad he bit me. I was just talking, that’s all; I—”

“There’s no need for you to talk any more, Parvin,” said the director. “You’ve killed an animal that was worth a lot of money and you’ve ruined a fine picture. You’re through, so far as working with this company is concerned.”

“Canned, am I?” Buck rose and stripped off the burnoose, which he threw on the ground at Montague’s feet. “Seems to me, Jim, we’ve worked together long enough for you to give me the benefit of the doubt. No!”

He laughed recklessly.

“Oh, well, it’s all in a lifetime, I reckon. The truth ain’t good enough for some people. You might do me one favor though: Keep that gun till you get cooled out and sensible, and then let any of these old-timers tell you whether she’s been fired lately.”

Montague turned on his heel without a word or a look.

Buck was left alone with Aladdin. He looked down at the sprawling legs and the grotesquely twisted neck and shook his head.

“You poor ole son-of-a-gun!” said Buck. “I didn’t like a bone in your head and I talked rough to you, but I wouldn’t have bushwhacked you like this!”

Six

The desert moon shone down on two men sitting upon a baggage truck in front of the depot.

“It’s too good an idea to waste,” said Montague. “Of course it won’t be quite as effective without the white camel, but the picture can be worked out some other way. It’s up to us to make as much as we can out of the trip. What do you think Ward will soak us for Aladdin?”

“Enough,” said Ben Leslie, “and he’ll probably want to kill me. Billy thought a lot of that white camel.”

“Have you seen Buck?”

“Yes. He’s down at the saloon, telling his troubles and waiting for the midnight train. I lent him ten dollars and then he offered to kick me.”

“Still denying it, is he?”

“Absolutely! That was why he wanted to fight. You know, Jim, it ain’t like Buck to lie, and he sticks to it that somebody else fired the shot.”

“No chance!” said Montague. “Didn’t he say he’d kill the camel if he bit him? Didn’t he have an empty shell in his gun? If anybody else was round there, why didn’t we see him?”

“Good evening, gentlemen!” piped a thin voice. A small figure approached, coming from the direction of the corrals. “Here’s Uncle Jimmy back again! The coyotes ain’t got him yet and they never will— Oh, excuse me! I didn’t notice you was strangers!”

“That’s all right,” said Leslie carelessly. “How’re you making it?”

“Fair,” said Uncle Jimmy. “Fair to middlin’. Can’t complain. I still got my jacks and my outfit, and that’ll be enough to bury me when the time comes. Just got back from a trip. I see they captured them wild camels; got a whole corral full of ’em over yonder.”

“Wild camels?” said Montague, suddenly interested.

“Why, yes, wasn’t you readin’ about them wild camels in the newspapers!” The little old man cackled and slapped his knees. “By jocks, they never would have got ’em if it hadn’t been for me! Yes, sir, they got Uncle Jimmy to thank for that job!”

Ben Leslie nudged Montague.

“What job was that?”

“Why, rounding up them camels,” said Uncle Jimmy, sitting down upon the baggage truck. “You see, I was warned about ’em. Out here about a week ago I picked up a newspaper and there was a whole page in it about them camels. It seems they had a leader, a big white feller, and he used to roam round nights trying to find somebody to tromp on. Come awful clost to getting a feller named Tom Smith. I knowed there was only one thing to do and that was to keep my eye peeled for that white camel, him being the leader and havin’ it in for prospectors, as you might say. I was afraid he’d come loping along some night, flatten me out like a flapjack and leave me for the coyotes. I got so I’d set up waiting for him, but nothing come of it.

“When I got pretty clost to town I figgered that I was safe and sort of forgot about them wild camels. This afternoon I was out here a ways, the other side of a little rise of ground, following up some float. My jacks was over about a mile away in a draw. All of a sudden I heard a noise and I looked up—I was on my hands and knees, gentlemen—and there was that white camel right on top of me! Yes, sir, and what’s more there was a ghost ridin’ him—I seen him as plain as I see you.”

“And so you’re the—” Montague stopped, for Leslie nudged him again.

“Don’t you see he’s crazy?” whispered Ben. “Let him talk! Go on, old-timer. You saw the camel and the ghost riding him. What did you do then?”

“Why, gentlemen,” said Uncle Jimmy, “I grabbed for ole Sitting Bull—that’s the gun I had when I was fightin’ Injuns with Crook—and I cut her loose and down he came like a thousand of brick. I don’t rightly know what happened after that because it just rained camels all round me. There must have been a million of ’em and they come from everywhere! I knowed they was after me for shooting that white leader, and I bet no jackrabbit could have out-run me gettin’ away from there. Yes, sir, I certainly sifted some sand—”

Ben Leslie chuckled and leaped from the truck, disappearing in the direction of the saloon. Uncle Jimmy paused, startled.

“I might have knowed nobody would believe me,” said he. “But I didn’t dream it, else how come they to have a whole corral full of camels over yonder? And the thing that gets me is where did all them people come from so quick! I looked back once and—”

Sounds of argument came out of the darkness.

“You leggo my arm, Ben Leshlie!” said a thick voice. “You ain’t no frien’ of mine! You said I shot poor ol’ ‘Laddin—you said it and Montague said it. I never hurt dumb alimal my whole life! Leggo my arm!”

“It’s all right, Buck!” Ben’s voice rang out cheerfully. “You didn’t shoot him; it was an old nut of a prospector. We’ve got him over here at the depot.”

“Wha—wha’s that?” roared Buck, immediately militant. “You got him—fell’r shot ‘Laddin? Killed that ol’ white camel? Where is he? Show’m to me, Ben! We’ll fix him!”

Uncle Jimmy Belcher slid off the baggage truck with surprising agility for one of his ripe years and backed swiftly away into the shade of the depot building, fumbling at his hip. Buck, coming up at a run and being in no condition to distinguish friend from foe, hurled himself upon Montague with a triumphant whoop.

“Here he is! Fetch a rope, Ben! Doggone you—you won’t—murder no more—movin’ pitcher— amelsh!” And at every other word he banged Montague’s head upon the baggage truck.

Uncle Jimmy Belcher, pausing at the far end of the freight shed, heard the request for a rope and the uproar which followed it. He did not linger, but slipped inconspicuously round the corner and faded away in the direction of the corrals, Sitting Bull unlimbered for immediate action.

“Too darn much going on round here to suit us, Jimmy!” he wheezed. “What say we git our jacks and leave this fool town flat on its back? Yes, sir, let’s do that! Too many camels and eediots in Daggett this evening! You reckon we better hurry some? Why, yes, Jimmy, you surely ain’t forgot how to run, have you?”

“Well, o’ course, Jim,” said Buck, rocking unsteadily upon his high heels, but slightly sobered by violent exercise, “you’ve ‘pologized to me and I’ve ‘pologized to you and they ain’t no more to be said. You fired me this afternoon for killin’ a white camel and I bumped your head just now, and it turns out that we was both after another fell’r and he got away. You got a sore head and I got a sore leg. That makes us even. No hard feelings? Shake!”

“No hard feelings,” said Montague, touching a lump back of his ear. “I’m sorry I accused you of shooting the camel, Buck, but the evidence—”

“She did look bad, for a fact!” said Buck magnanimously.

“You’d better go to bed now,” advised Montague. “You’ve got a hard day’s work ahead of you.”

“I still got my li’l ol’ job?” asked Buck.

“Yes, and to-morrow we’ll pick out a camel that won’t bite.”

“Nothin’ could be fairer than that—abs’looly!” said Buck, making a dignified exit upon the arm of Ben Leslie.

Jimmy Montague remained seated on the baggage truck, wrapped in thought. He was patching together the old, old hodge-podge of cause and effect.

“By golly!” said he at last, “I’d like to get my hands on the fellow who wrote that article about the wild camels! He’s responsible for everything!”

Three shadowy figures slipped into the desert and headed toward the east. The faint night breeze carried a yelping, snarling chorus. Uncle Jimmy Belcher smiled as he whacked his burros with a barrel stave.

“Got a reg’lar camp meeting to-night, ain’t you!” he cackled. “Well, you can thank me for it. Camel meat’s pretty good, hey? Jimmy, what say we sleep out here somewhere? Why, seein’ that they’ve got the rest of them wild camels hived up in a corral I reckon it would be safe enough. Yes, sir, this is the place for us—right out in the sand. We never did care much for city life nohow.”

Author! Author!

David Seligman, vice-president of the Titan Company and a prince in the moving-picture realm, had reached his position of eminence solely by reason of his ability to keep abreast of the times. No other branch of industry has developed with such astounding rapidity, but the changes, as they came, found David in step with the drum-beat of progress.

“Do something new, and do it first!” was his motto; and he clung to it, though he drove directors to the point of emotional insanity. From his office on Fifth Avenue, in New York, he kept an eagle eye on the field, and if he could not always be the standard bearer he was seldom far behind the flag as it moved forward.

A film pioneer, he had watched the evolution of the moving picture from the days of its very raw infancy, when anything that could be thrown on a screen was good enough to get the money, and the cost of photography was the largest item of expense. Then the novelty wore off and audiences began to demand something more than a plotless jumble of pictures. David took thought and issued a proclamation to his managers and directors.

“We’ve got to quit making up these picture plays as we go along,” said he. “Up to now we have been getting away with it, because people didn’t believe it possible to make photographs that move; but they come to see ’em and are satisfied. The game is getting too big for the bunk stuff; the public won’t stand for a film without a story in it. Art—that’s what they want; and we’ll give it to ’em. Let’s have real plays and real actors from now on.”

Company payrolls doubled and trebled, actors were enticed from the stage, and scenario departments came into existence. Art entered into the making of moving-picture films, and this sufficed for many years; but original ideas became scarce, competition grew keen and the flag moved again.

“Names!” said David Seligman. “That’s what they want now; good stories by regular writers and names to carry ’em. Some of the other fellows have been dramatizing novels and getting away with it—old moth-eaten novels tat are out of date. A dead writer is no business. Me for one that’s alive!”

A few days later Seligman touched an electric button and summoned his secretary, Marco Lazarus.

“You don’t read much fiction—novels—do you, Marco?” he began.

“Where would I get any time to read?” asked Marco.

“You should take time,” said David reprovingly. “You got your nights to yourself.”

“A good musical comedy show is better than any book, ” said Marco with the air of one dismissing a subject.

“So you think,” said David. “Now this book here”—he touched a flaring cloth-bound volume as he spoke—“which was written by a party named Peckinpaw—Marcellus M. Peckinpaw—maybe you never even heard the name of it—eh?”

Marco shook his head.

“The name of it is ‘The Lure of the West,’” said Seligman. “I am surprised at you, Marco. It’s a best seller and they advertise it everywhere, like a circus. Everybody is talking about it. I read it the other night and I don’t wonder at it at all. It’s got more action than a dog fight. In every chapter there is shooting…. Do you know any authors, Marco?”

“I seen one once at a theater,” said Marco, “but nobody could have told it to look at him.”

“Did you think maybe he would carry a pen behind his ear?” asked Seligman. “Now this Marcellus M. Peckinpaw is a little man with glasses and a cough. If you ask me I would say he is absolutely the extreme end of the limit.”

“How do you know he is?”

“Didn’t I have him to dinner last night at the Astor? And didn’t I sign him up for the moving-picture rights to his novel? Five thousand dollars it cost me before he would do business at all. And what do you think this party insists we shall do?”

“How should I know?” Authors and their ways were beyond Marco.

“I had to write it in the contract that he must be consulted about making the picture; and that, Marco, was a compromise. What this Marcellus M. Peckinpaw wanted was that we should let him take full charge and do the directing himself—and he never saw the inside of a studio in his life. Think of that for nerve! He says that we are liable to spoil the atmosphere of the book!”

“Atmosphere! What’s that?”

“I don’t know exactly, but in this case I think it is mostly gunpowder and cowboys and Indians. All the Indians I ever saw had plenty of atmosphere. You couldn’t stay in the same room with one.”

“Huh!” said Marco scornfully. “For five thousand dollars he should worry about a little thing like atmosphere!”

“Just what I told him—absolutely; but he would not sign any other way. He was going away mad and I had to meet his terms. I am paying his expenses to Los Angeles. I will advise Montague about the atmosphere, and Montague will get along with him somehow.”

“Montague will be sore,” prophesied Marco.

“Montague is always sore at this office,” said David. “He kicks more than all the other directors we got ; but he also delivers the goods. I sent him a night letter that he should get the book and read it and have a five-reel scenario ready when this Peckinpaw gets out there…. Would you like to read the book, Marco?”

“I’d rather see the picture,” was the cautious reply.

“So would I,” said Seligman. “Montague will make improvements on the story. He always does. “What I can’t understand is how a man living in New Jersey knows so much about cowboys and Indians. The book is full of ’em, Marco!”

“There ain’t no Indians in New Jersey,” said the secretary skeptically.

“Not outside of Princeton,” said Seligman; “but this Peckinpaw, now, he knows regular Indians—feathers and yellow paint. He told me so. And he writes about a cowboy so natural that you almost see him. With everybody reading the book and talking about it, a five-reeler should get the money.”

“Montague will be sore,” repeated Marco. “You know he thinks he shall be the whole pig or none.”

“Take a letter,” said David. “You see, Marco, in order to land this Marcellus M. Peckinpaw I had to let him think that Montague would be a kind of office boy to him. I will explain to Montague that he must humor the fellow as much as possible. They will fix it somehow.”

Two

Ben-Leslie and Buck Parvin, property man and moving-picture cowpuncher, were loafing in the shade outside the Titan Company’s studio building, smoking brown-paper cigarettes and exchanging reminiscences.

“And so I told him,” said Buck, “pretty much what I thought of him. ‘You are the most ignorant guy I ever saw in my life,’ I says. ‘You don’t know nothing and always will; and you ought to be careful or the hawgs will eat you up. You come round here telling me my business and some day I will get annoyed and hit you. I don’t like your shape, your feet don’t track, and there’s something wrong with that wart on top of your shoulders.’ ‘You mean my head?’ he says, kind of sore. ‘Head!’ I says. ‘Don’t kid yourself, Percival! That ain’t no head. Your neck just naturally growed out and haired over.’ And that was how it started. He picked up a whippletree—”

Buck’s narrative suffered an interruption in the shape of a small, narrow-shouldered gentleman, at sight of whom Buck’s eyes and mouth opened and remained fixed in a combination stare and gape.

The stranger wore a slate-colored corduroy riding suit, reinforced with leather; pigskin puttees; a broad gray sombrero, very new and stiff as to crown and brim; a soft white shirt; a flowing tie, and immense round spectacles with heavy rims of dark tortoise-shell. His features were mild enough, but the spectacles imparted to his countenance somewhat the look of a startled ground owl.

“I—I beg your pardon,” said the stranger, enunciating very clearly and peering at Buck’s chaps and green silk shirt; “I beg your pardon, but perhaps you can inform me where I shall find a Mister—Mister—” He paused and, fumbling in an inner pocket, drew out an envelope, glanced at it and resumed: “Oh, yes—a Mr. James Montague. I have a letter of introduction to him.”

“Straight ahead, first turning to the left and down the hall,” said Leslie.

“Thanks very much,” said the stranger, and entered the building. Ben and Buck exchanged amused glances.

“Name it and you can have it,” said Ben.

“Thanks very much, old chap,” mimicked Buck, “but I ain’t collected any curios since I was a kid. Did you pipe that make-up? And I bet I saw something that you missed: The little sucker had a handkerchief up his sleeve an’ a watch strapped on his wrist. He did, on the level!”

“And I saw something that you missed,” said Leslie. “I got a slant at that envelope and it was from the New York office—old man Seligman’s private stationery.”

“No! Maybe the high boss is tryin’ to saw off a comedian on Jim. Or maybe this is a shipment to the animal farm, Ben. Him and that long-nosed anteater ought to be great little pals—eh?”

Ben thumped his knee, with a sudden exclamation.

“I’ve got him pegged, Buck! You know that five-reel Western picture that Jim has been working on for a week—the one he’s making over from a novel? Remember how he was cussing round here about Seligman shipping the author out to help us put it on? Well, this is the fellow. Jim has been expecting him.”

“That little billy-owl!” said Buck. “Get out!”

“I’ll bet you the drinks. The round eye-glasses tipped his mitt. Authors wear ’em because they think it gives ’em that literary look.”

“Him—write a Western novel?” scoffed Buck. “Why, where would he get it? It can’t be done!”

In this Buck was mistaken. It had been done. Marcellus M. Peckinpaw—for it was indeed that renowned genius—had written a Western novel and a best seller. Western critics—crude fellows of the baser sort, no doubt—had hinted that Mr. Peckinpaw’s knowledge of the noble savage had been gleaned from the works of Mr. Fenimore Cooper. They had also pointed out that his cowpunchers conversed in a dialect unknown on land or sea; but these innuendoes were unfair as well as unkind.

Marcellus M. Peckinpaw knew his West and freely admitted it whenever possible. He had made one trip from ocean to ocean; men have written volumes on less. True, it was warm and dusty in the Pullman after the train left Kansas City and the curtains had been down during the daylight part of the journey; but, in spite of this slight drawback, Mr. Peckinpaw had managed to see a great deal of the sandy Southwest.

At Albuquerque, for instance, he had spent a fascinating half hour in careful inspection of the wooden-faced, pottery-peddling aborigines. The Indians had also inspected Mr. Peckinpaw; so the benefits, if any, had been mutual.

He had lingered one whole week in a tourist hotel on the Pacific Coast, dressing for dinner each evening and absorbing local color and atmosphere. Then, returning home by another route, he had seen the broad-hatted and bow-legged sons of Wyoming; in fact, had even spoken with one on the depot platform at Green River.

Nor was this all—far from it! “The Lure of the West” had been written under direct inspiration.

Mr. Peckinpaw, commissioned to do a magazine article dealing with the various places of amusement in the city of New York, had visited a Wild West Show in Madison Square Garden. The press agent of the establishment, scenting high-class publicity, had taken Mr. Peckinpaw below stairs to view the West at close range.

He had seen real Indians, feathered and smeared with ochre, reclining on bales of hay. He had been introduced to Chief Singing Mule, and had grasped the hand that had grasped the hand of the late lamented Sitting Bull. He had the press agent’s word for it. He had seen a mangy buffalo; had heard a cowpuncher from Springfield, Massachusetts, warble the opening stanza of “The Cowboy’s Lament”; had made obeisance before the sole surviving scout of the plains—and the very next week the first chapter of “The Lure of the West” had been written. It was a great novel. If there be doubters let them ask for a copy of Mr. Peckinpaw’s royalty statement and thereafter hold their peace.

Mr. James Montague, himself a genius whose fame as a producing director girdled the globe, took a pipe out of his mouth to greet the distinguished visitor. It cannot be said that Montague was in a pleasant frame of mind. For four days he had wrestled mightily with “The Lure of the West,” endeavoring to stretch it into five reels; and the things he had said about Mr. Seligman and Mr. Peckinpaw came hot from his heart.

After the usual polite nothings, during which the men took stock of each other, Mr. Peckinpaw came abruptly to business.

“I presume you are ready to begin the—er—photography, Mr. Montague,” said he. “My time is limited. I should like to finish by Saturday night, if possible.”

“By Saturday night!” ejaculated the amazed director. “Holy Moses, man! Saturday night! How long do you think it takes to put on a five-reel feature?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea, I’m sure,” said Mr. Peckinpaw, stifling a yawn. “It’s merely a matter of turning a crank, isn’t it!”

Montague threw himself back in his chair and howled until the windows rattled.

“Merely a matter of turning a crank!” he said after recovering his breath. “That’s good! That’s immense! Say, look at this pile of typewritten pages, will you? That’s only a piece of the scenario—just a beginning. Then, when everything else is fixed, I’ll have to move the entire company out into the hills and pitch a camp. We may have to stay there a couple of weeks, getting the location stuff. After that we’ll come back here and make the studio scenes. By Saturday night! If we have a lot of luck we may get through with it in a month! It’ll take a week to get the extra people together.”

“It seems a long time,” said Mr. Peckinpaw; “but why bother with all these things?” He pointed to the typewritten pages. “Why can’t you start at the beginning of the book and work through, chapter by chapter? That would seem to be the simplest way.”

Montague ‘s pipe sagged in his mouth and he stared hard at his visitor.

“Say, are you trying to kid me?” he demanded.

“Most certainly not. I was merely offering a suggestion.”

“Oh, that was a suggestion, was it? I thought it was a joke. Well, Mr. Peckinpaw, I haven’t the time just now to explain why all this preliminary work is necessary to the making of a moving picture. You can take it from me that laying out the ground plan of a five-reel feature is quite some job. It’s not a thing you can go at hit or miss. I’ll call on you at your hotel this evening and we’ll go over the scenario together as far as I’ve got. Meantime, you might look round the plant and amuse yourself.”

“But,” said Mr. Peckinpaw, stiffening slightly, “Mr. Seligman told me I was to superintend this work. I have a copy of my contract at the hotel. Mr. Seligman said—”

“Dave is a great kidder,” said Montague. “What he meant was that you should assist with your ideas as to the way the scenes should be played, and all that sort of thing. I’ll be glad to have your suggestions when we get to the acting; but this mechanical work must be done first. You can’t help me with it because you’re not a moving-picture director. You’re an author.”

Something in the way Montague pronounced the last word brought a flush to Mr. Peckinpaw’s sallow cheeks.

“My contract ” he began.

“Yes, yes,” said Montague soothingly; “I’ll look at your contract this evening. If there is anything in it about your succeeding me as director of this company—”

“I didn’t say that!” snapped Mr. Peckinpaw, nettled. “Mr. Seligman told me—”

“I wouldn’t believe Dave Seligman under oath. Greatest kidder in the world! But we can thresh that out this evening. Meantime, this junk”—Montague’s hand fell lightly on a copy of “The Lure of the West” as he spoke; it may have been an accident—“must be licked into shape. If it was up to me I’d only make a one-reel picture out of the book. Where did you say you were stopping?”

Mr. Peckinpaw gave the name of his hotel and rose to go.

“One thing I shall certainly insist on,” said he firmly, “I wish to select the actors. I am a believer in type, Mr. Montague.”

“You’ve got nothing on me,” was the rejoinder. “Picking types is one of the best things I do. I’m noted for it.”

“Now, for instance,” said Mr. Peckinpaw, to whom no remarks were quite as important as his own, “there is the character of Shining Cloud, my young Indian chief. I shall require the perfect Indian type—high cheek bones, prominent nose, and—er—all that sort of thing. I positively will not permit a white man to play Shining Cloud. I must have an Indian.”

“Calm yourself!” said Montague. “I’ve got the very man you want. His name is Peter Lone Wolf; he’s a full-blooded Oglala Sioux, and he’s about the typiest type of Indian that you most ever saw. He can act too. See you later. Good-day!”

At eleven o’clock that night Mr. Montague stepped out of the elevator into the lobby of the hotel that had the honor of housing Mr. Marcellus M. Peckinpaw. He walked straight to the telegraph desk, scribbled a message on a night-letter blank, flung it at the operator and marched out, his heels clattering on the tiled floor.

Ten minutes later Mr. Peckinpaw appeared and hurried to the telegraph desk. After considerable thought he also composed a message. The next morning Mr. David Seligman chuckled as he handed two telegrams to Marco Lazarus, who read as follows:

What have I ever done to you that I should have a nut like Peckinpaw wished on me? If you want to turn this studio over to pin-headed authors you can count me out. Wire him to mind his own business.

Montague.

Situation here extremely difficult. M. seems disposed to question terms of contract—even suggests adding characters and incidents not in book and altering plot. Will never consent to this! Wish to avoid open clash if possible. What do you advise?

M. M. Peckinpaw.

“I knew you would start something!” said Marco. “How are you going to straighten it out?”

David Seligman grinned and winked at his secretary.

“I am a diplomat,” said he. “I wired ’em both to hurry up with the picture. Only loafers have time for fighting.”

Three

Mr. Seligman’s telegrams produced the desired effect, and the open clash which Mr. Peckinpaw dreaded was averted by a narrow margin. Montague found it wise to drop the subject of certain changes his experience told him were necessary to the success of the picture; and the author, believing he had carried his point, became, as Montague remarked, almost human in spots.

The dove of peace found the director’s small office more crowded than usual, because Mr. Peckinpaw insisted on having a table in one corner, where he toiled manfully at something Jimmy Montague was pleased to call the character scenario. He gravely assured the author that this was of the utmost importance.

“Of course, Peckinpaw, I get an idea from reading the book what these folks ought to be like,” explained Montague, “but I don’t want to trust my own judgment. You created these characters and it stands to reason you know ’em better than anybody else. Write everything out in full—how you think these people ought to look and walk and talk. The more I have to work on, the better.”

“And, if you’ll believe me,” said Montague to Charlie Jennings, his assistant, “he fell for it! It keeps the little devil out of mischief; he lets me alone and he actually thinks he’s helping me! He’s writing his fool head off. Yesterday he wanted me to read nine pages about that Injun of his!”

“Shining Cloud?” asked Jennings, who had found it necessary to read “The Lure of the “West.”

“That’s the bird—Shining Cloud. He says that all the people who wrote him letters about the book were stuck on the Injun. Some of ’em said he was the noblest character in fiction.”

“On the level, Jim,” said Jennings, “do you think this fellow ever saw a regular Indian in all his life?”

“Darned if I know! Judging by the book I’d say he hadn’t. He’ll see one this morning, though. Peter Lone Wolf is just finishing up that Western picture for the Alpha Company down the street. He’s going to come over in all his make-up. Peckinpaw is daffy to see him; he’s afraid Peter won’t come up to the plans and specifications of Shining Cloud. You know, Charlie, this little shrimp has been patted on the back so much about his book that he ‘s come to think that those characters of his are real! He talks about Shining Cloud as though he was alive.”

It was on this very morning that Mr. Peckinpaw ceased his labors to offer another suggestion.

“Mr. Montague, I believe I have found the very man to play Deep Creek Jordan, the cowboy lover,” said he.

“So-o?” from Montague, with a rising inflection.

“It’s that chap who hangs round here all the time—typical Westerner—quaint sort of individual. He wears a green shirt and—”

“Oh, Buck Parvin! He can’t play Deep Creek—that ‘s a part for the leading man. Buck can ride and do stunts, but he’s no actor. Never will be. Jack La Rue is the fellow. He’ll not only look Deep Creek but he’ll play him like a streak. Jack is some lover—take it from me!”

“I’m sorry,” said Peckinpaw. “You see, in a way I had promised the part to this Buck, as you call him.”

“Been making friends with Buck, have you?”

“Rather! We had quite a chat yesterday. He was telling me some of his experiences among the Indians—quite thrilling they were.”

“I’ll bet!” said Montague dryly.

“He has read my book,” said Peckinpaw, “and he asked for an autographed copy. I rather suspect he intends making a present to a lady. Women seem to prize autographed copies. He says—”

What else Mr. Parvin said is not known, for the door of the director’s office swung open and a tremendous and imposing figure entered. It was Peter Lone Wolf, moving-picture Indian, all six feet of him bravely decked out in buckskin, beads and feathers. Mr. Peckinpaw, taken entirely by surprise, gazed on this colorful vision of savagery and made a noise like a frightened duck.

“Hello, Peter!” said Montague.

The young Indian nodded his head slightly in acknowledgment of the salutation and the feathers of his towering war bonnet swept the ceiling. He did not speak, but Mr. Peckinpaw did.

“Wonderful! Magnificent! What a noble bearing! What expression! He is the living image of Shining Cloud—by heaven, he is Shining Cloud! Does—does he understand English, Mr. Montague?”

Montague did not answer; he was watching the Indian. Peter Lone Wolf turned his head slowly and looked down at the little author as an eagle might look at a linnet. His grave and beady scrutiny took in every visible detail of Mr. Peckinpaw’s attire, and was focused at last on the large round spectacles. Mr. Peckinpaw experienced the sensation of shriveling physically; he felt himself growing smaller and smaller under that piercing regard. Some unidentified instinct prompted him to back into the corner of the room, but those unwinking eyes held him captive. He could not move hand or foot, but he did manage to hunch one shoulder.

Peter Lone Wolf seemed to swell and grow larger. His head lifted; his chin thrust itself forward. Then, still staring at Mr. Peckinpaw, he folded his arms on his chest and broke the silence with a terrific grunt, which seemed to come from the very soles of his moccasins:

“Woof!”

Mr. Peckinpaw’s heart fluttered against his ribs and, ostrich-wise, he closed his eyes; but as nothing happened to him he opened them again in time to witness a dignified and majestic exit. Peter Lone Wolf, his arms still folded on his chest and his eyes on Mr. Peckinpaw to the last, backed slowly out of the room and departed, grunting at every stride.

“Well,” said Montague, “how do you like my Indian?”

“Superb! Glorious!” Mr. Peckinpaw was recovering from a nervous chill and was chatteringly voluble. “What native grace! What insolent pride! Why, the man might have been a king, the way he looked at me! And he positively makes one feel his physical superiority! I wish I might have talked with him in his own tongue—gotten his viewpoint on life and what it means to him. There must be a mind behind such eyes! And what a wonderful face—so stern and sad, and yet so brave! All the sorrows of a vanishing people are written on it; all the records of a hopeless struggle against a superior race…. But are we a superior race, Mr. Montague? Are we? Where have we a specimen to match this magnificent savage in physique, in simple dignity, in—in—”

Not having his Dictionary of Synonyms handy, Mr. Peckinpaw stranded, gasping. Montague bent his shaking shoulders over his work, but said nothing.

Later Mr. Peckinpaw found pleasure in emptying himself of sensations and adjectives for the benefit of Buck Parvin, who listened soberly enough, but with eyes dangerously bright and twinkling.

“Civilization,” said Mr. Peckinpaw in conclusion, “has never produced such a type. It cannot!”

“And a darn’ good thing!” said Buck. “Listen to me! I know this Injun—knew his ole daddy too. He was Chief Curly Wolf. You remember him, don’t you?”

“The—the name is familiar,” said Mr. Peckinpaw. “I cannot quite place him.”

“That’s funny—and you made a study of Injuns too! Ever heard of Sitting Bull?”

Here Mr. Peckinpaw was on established ground. Eagerly he spoke of the intimate relations with Chief Singing Mule and the hand that had grasped the hand of Sitting Bull.

“Well,” said Buck, “Curly Wolf was the guy that put the Bull in Sitting Bull. Sitting Bull got all the press notices, but the Injun that deserved the credit was Curly Wolf. He was the worst ole murdering cutthroat that ever turned a rancher inside out to see what made him tick! Him and Sitting Bull was as close as two fingers on a glove; and, if it hadn’t been for this Curly Wolf, Sitting Bull would have been as tame as a nanny goat. Curly Wolf used to rib him up to commit all them meannesses and then go along with him to see that he didn’t weaken. Sitting Bull wouldn’t no more think of going on the warpath without his pardner than he’d fly to the moon!… Kind of unfortunate about this Peter Lone Wolf; but, seeing who his daddy was, I reckon he comes honestly by it.”

“Comes honestly by what?” asked Mr. Peckinpaw, all ears.

“Why, his habits. Every so often he goes sort of bug—crazy; paints himself for war; gives the death yell, and wants to butcher somebody like his daddy did. He was born while his family was up in the Little Big Horn country pulling off the Custer Massacre. Maybe that’s got something to do with the spells he takes.”

“Prenatal influence unquestionably,” mured Mr. Peckinpaw.

“Hey? Well, whatever it is, it comes on him just so often, same as a periodical souse. Sometimes he gives warning; sometimes the only warning you get is the death yell. I see you mention the death yell in your book, so you know about it.”

“Does he ever—hurt anybody?” asked Mr. Peckinpaw timidly.

“Well, no—he don’t seem to aim to torture ’em none; his notion is to kill outright,” was the reassuring answer.

“And—has he?”

“As to that,” said Buck judicially, “some say he has and some say he hasn’t. It depends on whether you count Mexicans. Some do and some don’t. It’s all a matter of how you’re raised. Personally, myself, I never seen him get that far. We gener’ly rope an’ hawg-tie him before he gets a good start. In a day or so it wears off and he’s all right again. I thought I’d tell you, so you wouldn’t go pesticating round him too much. He ain’t very strong for Easterners; it was an Easterner that filled his daddy full of buckshot.”

“Why, he’s dangerous!” said Mr. Peckinpaw. “He has the homicidal mania!”

“He’s got all that,” said Buck cheerfully. “The best way is to keep an eye on him all the time. If you hear him cut loose with that war whoop of his don’t stop to ask any questions. Fade right away while your hair is on your head. Why, he even tried to scalp me once!”

“He did! What did you do?”

“Busted him on the head with the butt of my gun. I’d have shot him—I wanted to—but Montague wouldn’t let me. The Injun was working in the picture and it wasn’t finished yet. And say, speaking of Montague”—Buck paused and his embarrassment was quite evident—“speaking of Montague, I’d like to ask a favor of you.”

“Anything at all. Buck,” said Peckinpaw.

“I wish you wouldn’t tell him that I tipped off this Peter proposition to you. He—he didn’t want you to know or else he’d have told you himself. If Jim should find out that I done it—good-by. Buck, that’s all! He’d fire me in a minute.”

“I promise you I won ‘t mention it to a soul!” said Mr. Peckinpaw earnestly. “Not a soul!”

“Thanks,” said Buck. “I’ll kind of keep an eye on this Lone Wolf, and if I see any signs of it coming on I’ll tell you the first one.”

“I wish you would, Buck,” said Mr. Peckinpaw. “You won’t forget?”

“You bet I won’t! You’ve called me Buck; so I’m going to call you Marcellus. No; I reckon I’ll call you Marsh for short. Is that all right?”

“Call me anything you like,” said Mr. Peckinpaw, “but watch that Indian!” That night the author of “The Lure of the West” did not rest well. He dreamed of Peter Lone Wolf and gory scalps, and waked to find himself in a cold sweat.

Four

It was early evening at the field headquarters of the Titan Company. It had once been a deserted ranch house—lonely buildings lying at the foot of the low California hills—but now horses whickered in the corrals, lanterns flashed in the barn, men and women sat under the great oaks or moved about the porch; and from the kitchen came tempting odors telling of ham and eggs and coffee.

Tents were pitched in the yard and the meadow beyond; and in one of them a celebrated author sulked and waited for the dinner call, while in another and larger tent James Montague swore softly as he checked off the list of scenes made that day. He swore because the list was shorter than it should have been—and there was a reason.

Charlie Jennings entered the director’s tent; but, seeing that his chief was in a savage humor, he held his tongue. Montague finished his work, threw the papers into the table drawer, slammed it shut and looked up.

“Where is he, Charlie?”

“In his tent.”

“Well, I wish he’d stay there!” said Montague. “I’m getting good and sick of his nonsense. I thought, from the way he acted after the first run-in we had, he was going to show a little sense about the changes I’ve made in his story; but ever since we’ve been here it’s fuss, fuss, fuss! He’s as persistent as a mosquito.”

“You can slap a mosquito,” said Jennings.

“Yes; and I’ll slap this New Jersey pest if he doesn’t let me alone!” said the exasperated director. “I’ve got the entire company and two hundred extra people out here, forty miles from nowhere, under heavy expense, and Peckinpaw seems to think I haven’t got a thing to do but argue with him! The little runt! Here I give him the finest Western outfit that ever went on location—more Indians, more cowpunchers and more prairie schooners than we’ve ever used before—and he doesn’t even know it! And he’s holding up an outfit of this size to quibble about things not being in his damned book!

“I’ve told him a thousand times—you’ve heard me, Charlie—that I can’t make a good five-reeler out of the book as it stands. I’ve explained why we have to put in stunt stuff; I might as well talk to an Indian squaw about eugenics or deliver a stump speech to a hitching post! He doesn’t get any part of it and he argues right back to the point where he started—it ain’t in the book; and that settles it for him. Now to-day, when we were working in the canon, he ran right in front of the camera to give La Rue a bawling out—and La Rue was playing the scene exactly as I told him to play it. We had to make it over again; and when I asked him whether he didn’t know any better than to run in front of the camera he batted his eyes at me and said that La Rue was doing something that wasn’t in the book.”

“When do you pull the burning-barn stunt?” asked Jennings.

“To-morrow; and I suppose there’ll be an awful row over it. Peckinpaw will have a fit. I told him yesterday when I caught him running through my script that if there wasn’t a burning barn in his book there should have been. He nearly went through the ceiling—told me I didn’t know anything about art. To-day he was threatening to sue us for damages and hold up the film in the courts. I guess he overlooked the little joker in his contract about ‘a suitable film production.’ Maybe he’s only trying to run a sandy on me; but he’s got me nagged till I’m almost off my nut, and he’s driving the actors crazy with his continual butting in.”

“All but Peter,” said Jennings. “He lays off of Shining Cloud, I notice. For some reason or other he won’t go within gunshot of the Injun; and if Peter comes into the dining-room while he’s there Peckinpaw gets up and goes out.”

“Peter got his goat the first time he saw him—that’s why. I wish I had it. Confound Dave Seligman! He shipped me an elephant that went crazy in the middle of a picture and I stood for it; he sent me some nice tame wolves which bit everybody that worked with ’em, and I stood for that; but if he sends me any more temperamental authors I’m through! There’s a limit to what a man can stand!”

“Ain’t it the truth!” said Buck Parvin, at the tent flap. He had heard part of the conversation. “There’s a limit to how much cold a man can stand, Jim. I want some more blankets. I like to froze to death last night.”

“Go steal ’em from the extra people,” said the director. “What do you think I’ve got here—a general store?”

“Say,” remarked Buck, still lingering, “little Marshie is kind of gumming the cards, ain’t he? I got a new girl now and she ain’t used to me being away like this. Somebody’ll win her from me while we’re fussing with this author. Can’t you invite him to take a walk and not come back?”

“I wish I could,” said Montague. “He won’t even take a day off to go trout fishing, he’s so afraid I’ll slip over something that ain’t in the book!”

“Do you want him to leave this place?” asked Buck.

“Do I! I’d give a thousand dollars to have him away from here to-morrow while we pull the barn fire.”

“Make it a hundred, Jim—make it fifty and mean it—and you’re on!” said Buck.

“The fifty goes,” said Montague; “but Peckinpaw won’t. He’ll stick!”

“Bet you next week’s salary!” said Buck.

“I won’t rob you,” said the director. “The only way he’ll leave is in a box. He’s just that stubborn in his narrow way!”

“He’ll go,” said Buck. “Little Marshie will go away from here of his own accord. He’ll likely stay away all day and there won’t be any comeback at you. That’s good enough, ain’t it?”

“Too good to be true!” said Jennings.

“Wait and see if it is,” chuckled Buck.

“Don’t you get him hurt!” warned Montague.

“Who, Marshie? My little pal? Why, I wouldn’t harm a splinter on his head! He’s going to put me in his next book. Then maybe Seligman will buy the movie rights. I’ll play the lead; Marshie will come out and help us put it on, and—”

Here a boot whizzed past Buck’s head and he withdrew, laughing. It was nearly dark by this time, but there was light enough for him to make out a tall figure pacing up and down under the oaks.

“Pete, ole boy,” said the cowpuncher to himself, “I wonder how game you are? I reckon the best way to find out is to ask you.”

Five

Marcellus M. Peckinpaw rose from his cot when the sun was streaking the east with gold. All about him was perfect peace and there was a great quietness; Mr. Peckinpaw was the one disturbing note in the symphony of the dawn, for as he rose he girded himself for war.

He had spent the larger portion of the night in thinking up many cutting things he would say to James Montague, and he could scarcely wait to give them tongue. What? Butcher his inspired work to please low-browed ten-cent audiences! Sacrifice his art to pander to the depraved taste of the rabble? Not if he died for it! At any cost that barn should not burn. It had not burned in the book.

Mr. Peckinpaw stepped out of his tent and looked on the sleeping camp. To a man with eyes and imagination, the sight was worth while.

First, there were the tents of the regular members of the company — soldier tents, pitched with military precision. Indeed, they were later to serve as the tents of General Crook’s command, and even the feeblest imagination might easily have peopled them with cavalrymen; but this eye-witness was not thinking of tents—he was thinking of a barn.

Beyond and toward the meadow, looming white and ghostly in the half light, were the prairie schooners—those huge, lumbering vehicles that rutted the Overland Trail in the fifties and sixties. They were drawn up in a circle, after the fashion of emigrant trains in the Indian country, and under the curving canvas tops men and women were sleeping. Here again imagination might have helped—might have suggested that these people were pioneers, sleeping with their guns at their sides in fear of an Indian attack. Imagination might have done this; but Mr. Peckinpaw knew that the sleepers were extra people, earning three dollars a day and drawing two dollars more as a traveling allowance. A little knowledge can be a deadly thing.

At the lower end of the meadow, close to the running stream, were the tepees of the Indian village, their smoke-blackened tops rising sharp against the dawn. Hobbled ponies—shaggy, wiry little brutes—grazed near by. Lean dogs prowled among the tepees, snarling over scraps of bacon rind. A fat squaw, a papoose strapped on her back, waddled into view and knelt on the ground. It was Four Ax Handles, spouse of Chief Spotted Elk, building the morning fire exactly as her maternal ancestors had built fires on the plains before the white man came. The ascending smoke hung, a thin blue ribbon, in the quiet air.

An emigrant train, an Indian village, a soldiers’ camp, a typical ranch house and outbuildings; corrals full of horses and long-horned cattle; a wonderful background of sage-covered hills—and Marcellus M. Peckinpaw, celebrated author of Western fiction, saw only the stage setting of a film drama! There was no kindly soul to tell him that the scenery and the properties were real, and that these people, though actors, were actually living the lives of the characters they assumed before the camera. There was no one to tell him this; had there been, it might have passed unheeded, for Mr. Peckinpaw was thinking of a barn and seeing himself in the attitude of a Casabianca.

Perhaps this was a pity, for, in that brief space before the camp woke and took on its all too evident flavor of theatricism, the atmosphere and true romance of a vanished frontier were there before him. The West that he had never seen—the West that Wister knew and Remington left to us on canvas—lived again in those few moments, to vanish, like a ghost, with the rising of the sun. Mr. Peckinpaw saw but did not understand. He compared the scene unfavorably with the basement of Madison Square Garden and rehearsed the speeches with which he would rebuke a presumptuous director.

From the barn and corrals came a faint and drowsy Yip-yip-yip-e-e-e! The first moving-picture cowpuncher was astir and the illusion was fading fast—would soon be gone. The real cowpuncher takes no special pride and sees no virtue in sleeping on baled hay—he will have a comfortable bed or know why; but his film brother, who never knew the range, covers himself with a horse blanket, uses his saddle for a pillow, and boasts inordinately of the toughness of his fiber.

From the back yard of the ranch house came a steady whacking sound. The cook’s assistant was chopping wood for the breakfast fire. An extra man rolled out of a prairie schooner and saluted the day with a succession of resounding yells. Chief Spotted Elk came out of his tepee, glanced shrewdly at the sky and, squatting in the doorway, proceeded to paint his face, like the dependable moving-picture actor he was. Almost immediately the corrals swarmed with cowpunchers grooming and saddling their horses. Jack La Rue, the leading man, thrust his head into the open and bawled to Jennings, who was seated on a camp-stool in front of his tent, making up his face for the part of the cattle baron.

“Oh, Charlie! What clothes do I put on first?”

“Your puncher outfit,” answered Jennings; “and you’d better leave off your chaps. It’ll be easier for you to jump out of the barn loft without ’em.”

“Jump out of the barn loft!” Mr. Peckinpaw drew himself up to five feet three inches of bristling indignation. There was nothing in the book about Deep Creek Jordan’s jumping out of a barn loft! What new outrage was this?

Mr. Peckinpaw was the first man in the dining-room at the ranch house. He had formed the habit of breakfasting early because he had noticed that Peter Lone Wolf breakfasted late. Peter was a privileged Indian. He shared a tent with Buck Parvin and took his meals in the house with the leading people. He never went near the tepee village unless in the performance of a scene, and he utterly ignored the men and women of his race.

Mr. Peckinpaw had studiously avoided the Indian since Buck’s warning, but the Indian had not avoided him. A dozen times a day the author looked up to find that steady, beady stare on him, boring through him—a calm and incurious but, nevertheless, disconcerting regard. It seemed to Mr. Peckinpaw that the Indian took a certain solemn pleasure in making him uncomfortable; and in the presence of Peter Lone Wolf the author’s clothes felt too large for him and uncertain tremors traveled up and down his spine. This had happened once at breakfast and Mr. Peckinpaw had resolved that it should never happen again. Under certain circumstances a knife, or even a fork, might become a deadly weapon. An alarm clock, a five-dollar bill to the cook, and the risk of eating in the same room with a homicidal maniac had been averted.

Mr. Peckinpaw was buttering his wheat cakes when Buck Parvin entered and, bending over him, whispered hoarsely:

“Look out, Marsh!”

“Look out for what?” asked Mr. Peckinpaw, with a sinking sensation where his appetite should have been.

“For the Injun! He was yipping a little bit in his sleep last night. He said something about Owlface—that’s what he calls you. It’s a bad sign and I thought you ought to know.”

Mr. Peckinpaw dropped knife, fork and appetite with a crash.

“Does—does he begin that way?” He found some difficulty in pronouncing his words, for his mouth had gone suddenly dry.

“Sometimes he does,” said Buck.

“Don’t leave him for a minute!” pleaded Mr. Peckinpaw. “I—I rely on you, Buck.”

“I sure’ll watch him like a hawk,” was the reply.

Mr. Peckinpaw looked at his wheat cakes, picked up his knife, dropped it again, and, rising, hurried from the room. Buck finished the wheat cakes, regarding them as the spoils of war. Then he drank three cups of coffee, rolled a cigarette and strolled out in search of Mr. Peckinpaw. The author was nowhere to be found.

“So soon?” thought Buck. “Why, this is too easy!”

James Montague, tousle-headed and unshaved, appeared in the open and glanced at the sky.

“Not a cloud!” said he. “We ought to get a lot of work done if that little pest will only let me alone.”

“Morning, Jim!” said Buck. “Got that fifty handy?”

“What fifty?” asked Montague. “Oh, I remember. No such luck. Peckinpaw will never miss this chance to make trouble.”

“All the same, the fifty goes?” questioned the cowpuncher.

“Sure—but there’s no chance.”

An hour later Ben Leslie and his assistants swarmed through the barn, planting smoke pots and red fire. In a dark corner they came on the distinguished author of “The Lure of the West.” He had been hiding behind a grain bin.

“What are these things for?” he asked.

“Fire picture,” said Ben. “Better get outside; you can’t see it from here. It’ll be worth while too…. All set, boys? Smoke her up good when you get the word!”

Fear is a compelling motive; but so is a sacred duty to one’s art. The titanic struggle between them was a short one; it left Mr. Peckinpaw weak and shaking but resolved. With all the firmness he could muster, which was not enough to keep his knees from trembling under him, Marcellus M. Peckinpaw marched out of the barn and confronted the entire company just as Montague was giving his final instructions to the actors.

“Jack, you make the jump from the loft window,” said he. “It’s an easy one and I’ve had the ground spaded up and straw spread on it. Come straight down, with your hands over your head. Then run—”

Mr. Peckinpaw cleared his throat and moistened his lips with his tongue.

“Mr. Montague, ” said he, “I cannot permit this. I will not permit this!” He addressed the director, but his wandering eye took note of Peter Lone Wolf slipping into the dressing tent. Buck Parvin was at his heels; and at sight of the cowpuncher, faithful to his trust, Mr. Peckinpaw took heart and courage. “I—I forbid you to do this!” he said.

“Oh, see here now, ” cajoled Montague; “this is childish, Peckinpaw! Ridiculous! I am making this picture.”

“You are making a picture, but you are not making it from my book. I object—I must object—to these unwarrantable liberties! The picture is to be advertised in my name. I am responsible to the public for this production. My name guarantees it. My contract reads—” He quoted copious extracts from that legal document.

The actors looked at each other and grinned; it was Montague’s trouble—not theirs. The director lost his temper and raged—the author lost his temper and raved; and they raged and raved together up and down in front of the camera while the assembled multitude looked on.

“Ah-h, quit chewin’ the rag and let’s get busy!” pleaded Charlie Dupree, the camera man. Then, under his breath: “Go on, boss! Paste him one for me!”

“It’s an outrage!” spluttered the author. “It’s a breach of contract! I appeal to you all—to your sense of what is fair and right! You know this man is taking liberties with the text! You have read the book—”

“Yes,” interrupted Montague, with a sneer; “they’ve read the book—I made ’em do it. They think as much of your book as I do. They know that unless we stiffen this picture with stunt stuff it won’t stand up—it won’t be any better than your damned book—and that means it’ll be rotten! Now will you get out of the way and let me go on with this scene!”

“I will not!” screamed Mr. Peckinpaw, fairly dancing with rage. “I know my rights and I will stand here and fight to the last! I will not move from this spot! I dare you to touch me! I’ll sue— “

Clear and high above Mr. Peckinpaw’s agitated tenor there arose a startling and ear-piercing howl, soaring in a succession of wild ululations and ending in a long-drawn whoop. The author paused, his bold defiance dying to a rattle in his throat; his chin sagged, and he turned a chalky face toward the dressing tent in time to see Buck Parvin burst into the open, running, terror in his bulging eyes.

The flaps of the tent were dashed aside and Peter Lone Wolf leaped into view, yelling as he came. Naked, save for a breech-clout, moccasins and streaming war bonnet, streaked and splashed with all the colors of the rainbow, a butcher’s knife in one hand and a tomahawk in the other, he was indeed an eye-filling, nerve-paralyzing spectacle; and—horror of horrors!—he was heading straight for Mr. Peckinpaw!

Moving-picture people are trained to grasp the action of a scene without loss of time, and this probably explains why Mr. Peckinpaw had a few yards the worst of the general start. In the midst of a frenzied stampede of cowpunchers, actors, extra people and one director, a single figure remained rooted to the spot—Charlie Dupree, true to tradition, did not desert his beloved camera; but he clung to it for support.

“Run, Marsh!” yelled Buck. “For the love of Mike, hump yourself! He’s got ’em again—and he’s after you!”

And Marsh ran. Two men were in a position to witness his amazing burst of speed. Charlie Dupree afterward declared that the celebrated author ran the first mile in nothing flat. Buck Parvin said he lowered all world’s records up to ten miles. The truth may lie somewhere between the two statements. It is certain the author was almost immediately swallowed up by the nearest canon, distant some two hundred yards. Later he was seen passing over a low ridge half a mile away, his short legs flying like drumsticks. They had need to fly, for ten feet behind him loped Peter Lone Wolf; and the wind brought back the echoes of his terrible death yell.

“What is it all about?” asked James Montague, crawling out from under a prairie schooner. “Is Peter pickled, or what?” Then he saw Buck Parvin smiling at him—a meaning and virtuous smile.

“You owe me fifty, Jim,” said Buck.

“You darned fool!” yelled Montague. “Why didn’t you tell me what was coming off? Don’t you know I’ve got a weak heart?”

Six

Black dark hung over the encampment, but in the director’s tent there was a light. This much was observed by one who peered through the brush at the edge of the clearing. With halting steps and many pauses for listening, he drew near; voices came to him and the click and rattle of poker chips.

The reader is a good guesser; he knows we have here a celebrated author returning from a journey into the hills. Mr. Peckinpaw’s clothes were torn and dirty; he had lost his hat; his hair was matted with burs; his face was scratched, and he walked with two separate and distinct limps—one for each leg. He was about to lift the tent flap when he heard a voice that gave him pause. Buck Parvin, his friend and protector, was speaking:

“As a writer he may be a joke—I’m no judge; but as a runner—say, what would he do to one of them Marathons? Put an Injun behind him and he’d run first, second and third—that’s all! I’ll bet he ran so far that it’ll take him a month to walk back. You reckon he’ll want to sue somebody for this?”

“No chance!” This was Montague speaking. “Don’t you think he knows how much fun the newspapers can have with this story! An author chased by one of his own creations! No; he’ll never tell that on a witness stand. They’d kid him to death. He won ‘t sue!”

“The modern Frankenstein, eh?” A third voice took up the strain—a deep, vibrant voice, which Mr. Peckinpaw told himself he had never heard before. “Yes, that would make fairly good reading. Somehow it isn’t the fellow’s manner that I object to, offensive as it is. He doesn’t know any better! Some communities turn out creatures of his sort by the gross—and it takes a gross of ’em to make a man. Peckinpaw is as God made him, and I excuse a great deal on that account; but I do hold him criminally liable for that piffling book. I read it when it first came out. That it sold at all is proof of the decline of our literary standards; that it became a best seller is a fearful indictment against public taste. I can excuse lack of plot; I can wink at ignorance of subject matter; I can even read a Western novel with Fenimore Cooper Indians in it—but sheer, bad workmanship is where I draw the line! Peckinpaw is a pitiful little literary hack. What he mistakes for attainments are the cheap tricks of the penny-a-liner, and his sentence construction is vile. He has been taught not to split his infinitives, but as for the rest—phew!… Gentlemen, I will now crack this pot for a large shining dollar. Come in, Buck! Faint heart never filled a spade flush, which is the best thing I learned at Harvard.”

Mr. Peckinpaw’s face flushed painfully in the darkness and his hand fell away from the tent flap; but it returned again. At any cost he must know who dared call Marcellus M. Peckinpaw a pitiful little literary hack. Cautiously he moved the canvas a fraction of an inch and applied his eye to the aperture. Three men were sitting at the table. Two of them he had recognized by their voices. The third man was speaking again.

“Ah, Buck! That’s a bad habit you have—trying to beat threes with a four flush. It has been done, but in the long run the practice is ruinous.”

The man who was speaking—the owner of the deep, vibrant voice and Harvard prejudice against poor literary workmanship—was none other than Peter Lone Wolf, moving-picture Indian.

Mr. Peckinpaw gulped and stole quietly away in the darkness.

The next morning the distinguished author returned to civilization in one of the company’s automobiles. He explained to James Montague that he had washed his hands of the movies, once and for all time.

Peter Lone Wolf, feathered and painted within an inch of his life, waiting to play a scene with Miss Manners, the leading woman, watched Mr. Peckinpaw’s departure with the changeless expression of his race.

“I think he is on to us. Buck,” said Peter. “I tried the hypnotic eye on him again this morning, but there was nothing doing. I even woofed a few woofs and stamped my foot, but he only glared at me. He looked as though he wanted to stick out his tongue. I have lost my power over him. I wonder why!”

“Well,” said Buck, “even Rip Van Winkle had to wake up some time.”

“I have had a lot of fun with him,” said the Indian, rising and stretching himself, “and I shall miss him. It was worth the strain of playing the wild and untutored savage—on and off, as it were…. By the way, Buck, if we ever get that fifty out of Montague, how do we split it?”

“Fifty-fifty,” was the prompt answer.

“And I ran five miles and howled myself hoarse!” murmured Peter Lone Wolf. “It just shows that the Indian always gets the worst of it from the white man…. Yes, Mr. Montague! Coming!

Snow stuff

The night train, westbound to the Coast, deposited a single passenger upon the Truckee Station platform and slipped clicking down the railroad yards, its brilliant tail-lights gleaming above the snow. “Winter air in the Sierra Nevadas is brisk and biting, and the lone gentleman thrust his fat hands into his overcoat pockets and looked about him with a mixture of curiosity and condescension. Plainly here was one unused to the provinces, and, by the curl of his lip, not particularly impressed with his surroundings.

On one side of the track was the short main street of Truckee, with its thirty-seven saloons. On the other side was the swiftly flowing river, mirroring the lights of the Ice Palace beyond. The stranger shivered and drew his overcoat closely about him. In cold weather the overcoat proclaims the man, and this garment spoke loudly of Broadway check rooms and brighter lights than Truckee’s. Its shell was of the finest melton, lined with undyed sealskin, while the rolling collar and the wide cuffs were of astrakhan. Of the man inside the coat it is sufficient to say that he wore too many diamonds, had a bulge where his jawline should have been and dimples in place of knuckles. Everything about him suggested fatness and softness, and he wheezed when he lifted up his voice querulously:

“Here, you! Can I get a carriage in this God-forsaken hole?”

The station loafer whom he addressed chuckled from his perch upon a baggage truck:

“A carriage, mister? What for?”

“To take me to the hotel, of course. What did you think I wanted it for?”

The loafer jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

“Hotel’s right across the street,” said he. “Folks mostly walk it.”

The man in the fur coat grunted, picked up his suitcase and then put it down again.

“Carry this for me!” he commanded.

“Sure!” said the loafer, scenting a quarter. “Why, of course!”

As they were crossing the slushy street, the newcomer planting his patent leathers gingerly, a startling succession of noises rose on the quiet air. First came a long-drawn howl, and before the sound had died away among the pines and tamaracks a dozen tongues answered it. The stranger paused, irresolute. The clamor swelled and grew in volume until the whole night seemed to quiver with it. The man in the sealskin coat recognized the sound. He had once staged a Broadway musical comedy called “The Queen of Saskatchewan,” and the phonographed howlings of a wolf pack had been the hit of the piece.

“Wolves!” said he, and looked back at the depot as if meditating flight.

“Naw!” said the loafer, grinning. “Not wolves, but the next thing to it. There’s a movie outfit up here makin’ Alaska stuff, and every stable in town is full of them darned malemutes and huskies. They fight all day and howl all night, but outside o’ that I guess they’re all right.”

“Oh, the dog teams, eh?” said the stranger, evidently relieved. “They belong to the Titan Company, don’t they?”

“Yeh, that’s the name of the outfit. There’s been five or six companies here this winter makin’ snow pictures, but this is the biggest of the bunch. They got skin canoes, seven or eight sledges, fifty dogs, fur clothes till you can’t rest, an’ even a lot of Japs that they dress up like Eskimoses.”

“And what do you think?” said the loafer five minutes afterward to the keeper of the bar in one of the thirty-seven saloons. “Here I’m givin’ all this information to the general manager of the company—the Main Finger, just out from New York. Golly! He sure did jump when them malemutes started singin’!”

While the loafer was spending his newly acquired quarter in a manner that seemed good to him, Mr. I. Gordan—for so he wrote himself upon the hotel register—was asking the clerk the usual question of his kind.

“What’s doing in town to-night?”

“Well,” said the clerk, “there’s the saloons and the Ice Palace. That’s about all.”

“The Ice Palace?”

“That’s the building across the river from the depot—they flood the floor with water and let it freeze. Best ice skating in the West. You’d better see that, it’s worth while.”

“New York is full of ice rinks,” said Mr. Gordan.

But a night-owl cannot go to bed as long as the lights are burning, and as the thirty-seven saloons were not inviting, to the Ice Palace Mr. Gordan wended his way. There was a visitors’ gallery, but Mr. Gordan believed in being seen as well as in seeing, so he sat on one of the benches reserved for the skaters and his overcoat created a mild sensation among the mackinaws and sweaters. He was too fat to skate, and soon he regretted that such was the case. The regret came after the discovery of a trim young person in a woolly white sweater and a short skirt, who skated alone, performing miracles of grace upon the glassy floor. Mr. Gordan was an expert on feminine charms—had he not selected the broilers for many a musical comedy show!—and his piggy eyes brightened as they followed the lithe, darting figure.

“One swell little gal!” said Mr. Gordan to himself. Then he addressed the man who sat on the bench beside him. This was a weather-beaten individual in a mackinaw coat, heavy boots and a knitted cap. In this northern disguise his best friends would never have recognized Mr. E. Buchanan Parvin, moving-picture cowpuncher. In fact, Buck often had difficulty in recognizing himself.

“Who’s the chicken skating alone?” Mr. Gordan spoke with Forty-second Street familiarity. “The one in the plaid skirt.”

Buck looked sharply at Gordan before he replied.

“What if I said it was my wife?”

Mr. Gordan became almost confused, but only because Buck continued to regard him with an unwavering eye.

“I didn’t know—I didn’t mean—” he began, stammering.

“Well, as it happens she ain’t my wife,” said Buck, “and she ain’t no chicken neither. Here’s a tip that won’t do you a bit of harm. This ain’t a chicken country. It’s only once in a great while that we see a pig out here too.”

Having made his meaning very plain Buck turned his back upon the stranger.

“Huh! The village cut-up!” said Mr. Gordan.

“No-o,” said Buck, who was rolling a brown-paper cigarette; “but if you want to do well in this town you better tread light and sing low.” After his cigarette was lighted he turned and puffed the smoke into Mr. Gordan’s eyes. Mr. Gordan moved to the other side of the rink.

Being a person of one idea at a time and persistence along certain lines, he was rewarded by the information he sought.

“She’s an actress—the leading lady with the movie company. Kind of cute, ain’t she?”

Mr. Gordan smiled a fat and oily smile.

“I knew I’d seen her before!” said he to himself. “That’s Manners, of course!”

An actress! Mr. Gordan sat down to wait, for he knew all about actresses. Of a type unfortunately not rare in certain brightly lighted precincts directly south of Yonkers, he had been associated with musical-comedy productions for many years, hence that knowledge.

“The legitimate, the merry-merry and the movies, they’re all alike,” mused Mr. Gordan, watching Myrtle Manners cutting figure eights in the middle of the floor. “They ‘re all alike!”

Mr. Gordan was scarcely qualified to speak for the movies, as his experience of film people was limited. An uncle with a keen nose for the dollar had left him a block of stock in the Titan Company, and it was this block of stock, together with a persuasive line of conversation, that had won for Gordan the position of general Western manager, with powers extraordinary.

“Montague and the rest of the directors are spending entirely too much money,” said Gordan. “I’ll go out and look round a while on the quiet and see where expenses can be cut down.”

“Well, be careful,” warned Seligman, the vice-president and actual head of the company. “Don’t make any changes without consulting me. A director is a kind of a czar, Izzy. Montague is worse than a czar and he spends money like a Pittsburgh millionaire, but he makes great pictures. “Whatever you do, don’t antagonize Montague. The fellow has got now offers from three or four other concerns, and we can’t afford to lose him.”

Mr. Gordan may have seemed half asleep as he sat upon his bench, but he knew when Myrtle Manners left the floor. He was waddling at her heels when she started for the hotel.

“Oh, Miss Manners! One minute!” he called.

The young woman paused, estimated Mr. Gordan with a swift glance and resumed her way.

“Wait! It’s all right!” he wheezed reassuringly. “It ain’t what you think at all. Wait!”

Miss Manners waited and Gordan approached.

“My name is Gordan,” said he. “I’m the new Western manager. I guess you’ve heard of me, all right. Just got in on the train, and I saw you skating and recognized you from the pictures.”

The young woman bowed, but she did not see the fat hand that was offered her.

“You acted as if you thought I was trying to kidnap you,” chuckled Gordan. “We might as well get acquainted now as later, hey? How’s Montague getting along with the snow stuff?”

“He is at the hotel working on a scenario,” said Miss Manners. “He can tell you better than I can.”

“Oh, never mind him now,” said Mr. Gordan. “Plenty of time for business to-morrow. Kind of quiet up here, ain’t it? Nothing to do in the evenings. I suppose there ain’t a restaurant in this town where we could have a little supper, hey?”

“If you are hungry,” said the young woman, “you can get sandwiches in the railroad eating house.”

“What do you do for a good time?” demanded Gordan.

“We work mostly,” said Miss Manners. “That reminds me that we make an early start in the morning. You’ll excuse me, I’m sure. Good-night.”

This time there was no catching her. Mr. Gordan chuckled as he watched the indignant swirl of the plaid skirt.

“Got a temper, have you, girlie?” said he to himself. “Well, I’ve seen ’em with tempers before.”

As he prepared for bed Mr. Gordan told himself that Truckee would not be so bad after all.

“They’re all alike—actresses,” said he, as he turned off the light. “They’re always upstage until they know you. Now this Manners, I’ll bet she’s a good feller when she gets acquainted.”

Two

If Mr. Gordan had been an early riser he would have witnessed an interesting sight in the departure of a moving-picture company equipped for snow stuff. The historic Donner Lake was to be the scene of the day’s work, but at the hour of starting the general Western manager was peacefully slumbering, and nothing short of a cannon would have roused him.

The gray dawn brought the sound of wheels and a six-horse coach, which drew up in front of the hotel. The conveyance was for the leading people and the extra women. A dozen Japanese coolies, carefully selected for their heavy features and high cheekbones, plodded by muffled in furs. These were the moving-picture Eskimos. Each Jap’s face was painted a ghastly yellow in order that the natural brown of the skin might not offer too great a contrast when photographed against a snowy background.

Next came the dog teams, three in number. Buck Parvin, driving a gee-pole team, was in the lead, maneuvering seven tail-curled and frisky malemutes for the benefit of the few spectators upon the sidewalk. Buck was made up as an Alaskan musher. He wore a drill parka, a long loose garment that covered him from neck to knee, serving as a protection against wind and cold. The hood and cuffs of his parka were of fur and his feet were incased in mukluks, rude sealskin boots bound about with thongs. The snowshoes he would wear later were strapped upon the sledge. With one eye on his audience and one eye upon the malemutes, Buck straddled the tug behind the wheel dog, and the pop of his thirty-foot whip mingled with his sharp commands.

“Mush—mush on!” he yelled, and the dogs leaped into their collars, moving ahead in a straight line.

“Mush—haw!” The lead dog swung obediently to the left.

“Mush—gee!” The malemutes turned to the right.

“Whoa!” Every dog stopped in his tracks, seemingly waiting for something. There are only five commands that move an Alaskan dog team, and the most important one is the one which Buck forgot to give. Almost immediately the third dog in the line nipped his neighbor smartly on the haunches and in less than two seconds the seven malemutes were piled in a furry heap, rolling, yelling, snapping, snarling and biting.

“Darn it!” said Buck. “I forgot it again!”

He leaped into the midst of the mêlée, kicking and striking right and left with the butt of his whip. The sidewalk loafers came reluctantly to his aid, for an angry malamute bites promiscuously, and order was at last restored and the traces untangled.

“Down!” yelled Buck. “Down, you devils!” The dogs dropped in the snow, whining, fur bristling, quivering with eagerness to renew the combat, but obedient to the fifth and most important command.

“They’re just like football players,” explained Buck. “If you don’t holler ‘Down’ as soon as they stop moving they begin scrapping among themselves. They’re the fightin’est dawgs in the world. I reckon I’ve refereed fifty battles this week and been bit a million times. You, Skookum, down!”

“Yes, and some day they’ll kill each other and I’ll have to dock you a hundred apiece for ’em!”

Thus spoke fur-clad authority in the person of James Montague, director. The loafers looked upon him with awe, and not without reason, for he cut a dashing figure. His parka was of reindeer skin, double thickness, the inner slip being of reindeer fawn, soft as velvet. The immense hood of the garment was lined with fox tails, and the skirt was bordered eight inches deep with patches of many-colored furs sewed in intricate patterns. This border represented months and perhaps years of patient labor by the light of a blubber lamp. It was the parka of a great chief and Montague wore it like one, for was he not a czar? Then, too, he had cast himself for the heavy in the picture he was making, and, directorlike, he was dressing that villain in the best the company wardrobe afforded.

“Mush on, Buck!” said he. “You should have been started an hour ago.”

Miss Manners, also in parka and furs, touched the director’s arm.

“Jim,” she said; “Gordan is in town.”

“I know it,” said Montague. “He left his card for me. Who told you about it?”

“He introduced himself last night.” Montague read the meaning behind the words and cocked one eye at his leading woman.

“He did, did he? What’s he like?”

“Just about what you said he’d be. I suppose he’ll want to see you this morning.”

“If he wants to see me,” said the czar, “he can come to Donner Lake. I’ll leave word for him.” He plunged into the hotel and reappeared almost immediately, fuming. “I can’t waste a whole morning’s good light jawing with a man who doesn’t know enough to stay in New York, where he belongs. Come on, folks! All aboard!”

By eleven o’clock Montague had completed five scenes and was rehearsing a sixth—a ticklish bit of action involving the upsetting of a loaded sledge upon a steep side hill. Four times he had attempted to get the desired effect, but without success, and he was perspiring under the fox tails and using language. Perhaps this was why he did not see a fat gentleman roll out of a sleigh and flounder through the snow toward him.

“Try that again, Buck!” shouted Montague. “I want that sledge to turn clear over and start down the hill. And you go headfirst into the snow—and stay there!”

Buck started his dogs, and Montague, conscious of a puffing and wheezing at his elbow, turned to confront Mr. Gordan.

“Well?” said the director, who had forgotten all about the general Western manager. “What do you want?”

Mr. Gordan introduced himself, and it seemed that he wanted several things, including an explanation of Mr. Montague’s conduct.

“You got my card; why didn’t you wait at the hotel?”

“Because I can’t waste the entire morning,” said the director shortly. “No, no, Buck, not a bit like it! Rotten! Have I got to come up there and show you how to make a fall?”

“But I left my card,” sputtered Mr. Gordan. “I’ll talk to you presently,” said Montague; “just now I’m busy. Stand back, please.”

In this Montague was within his rights. During the actual making of a picture the director is absolute and brooks no interference. A stage manager listens to the voice of the angel who pays for the production; a moving-picture director spends thousands to obtain novel effects, and holds himself accountable only to the high court of results achieved. It is of record that a director once pulled the nose of a great magnate, pulled it in the presence of the entire company and five hundred extra people, and the magnate apologized. He had tried to tell the director his business.

“Stand back, please!” said Montague. “Now then, Buck—”

Mr. Gordan stood back. After a time he spied Miss Manners sitting on a blanket under a tamarack, and Montague was allowed to proceed in peace.

Noon came and the lunch was unpacked. Mr. Gordan drank scalding coffee out of a tin cup and gave further proof of the authority vested in him.

“I see that you had a six-horse team to come out here with,” said he. “Is that necessary?”

“What do you want these people to do—walk?” demanded Montague. “They’d get here so tired that they wouldn’t be able to work. In the time it would take ’em to walk it I can make three scenes worth a thousand apiece to the company. The coach costs me twenty dollars a day. Anything else you’d like to know?”

In the afternoon Mr. Gordan established unfriendly relations with another important member of the company. Snow stuff tests the patience as well as the resource of a camera man, and Charlie Dupree had been sorely tried that day. He had just succeeded in planting his wooden triangle and setting the tripod upon it, preparatory to “shooting across” an expanse of virgin snow. Miss Manners, fleeing from the villain, was to cross that unbroken surface on snowshoes.

When everything was in readiness for the scene Mr. Gordan, thinking of something he believed Miss Manners would be pleased to hear, trudged heavily across the snow in the line of focus, and Dupree squealed with rage.

“Ah, now you’ve tracked it all up!” he cried. “Don’t you see I got to make another set-up? If you want to walk round get behind the camera!”

“Don’t be fresh, young man!” said Mr. Gordan sternly.

It was Miss Manners who said the last word on the subject of the general Western manager. Returning from her nightly spin at the Ice Palace she saw a light in the hotel parlor that Montague used as an office, and tapped on the door. Montague came out into the hall, a pipe between his teeth. His usually jolly face was haggard and lined with weariness. A director who is also an actor and a scenario author leads a hard life and burns his candle at both ends, physical and mental.

“Well, girlie,” said he, “what is it?”

“Jim,” said the young woman, “I’m not finicky like some of these moving-picture actresses, am I?”

“Not a single finick!” said Montague heartily. “You’re a good little sport, Myrtle.”

“I try to be; but there’s a limit. I know the movie game, Jim—the woman’s end of it. We all have to stand for unpleasantnesses once in a while, annoying little things from people who don’t understand. It’s all in the day’s work; but—”

“See here, what’s the matter?” interrupted Montague. “Tell your Uncle Jimmy, and he’ll fix it up in two shakes.”

“I don’t know whether you can or not. It’s Gordan.”

“What?” ejaculated the director. “Has he been bothering you?”

“Only in little ways so far. He seems to think that his position with the company gives him privileges.” The girl laughed nervously. “Jim, I don’t in the least mind holding hands with a nice man—I rather like it; but this fat, soft creature—B-r-r-r! He gives me the shivers!”

Montague whistled softly to himself.

“I’m not a baby, Jim. I can take care of myself, as you know. If he was an ordinary masher I could slap his face and send him about his business; but he’s the Western manager and that makes it difficult. He can make trouble for all of us, and he’s the kind of a man that’ll do it. How strong is he with Seligman?”

“Pretty strong, I’m told,” said Montague ruefully. “He owns a chunk of stock in the concern; but if he owned it all he wouldn’t have any right to annoy the women in my company. I’ll give him a good bawling-ont the first thing in the morning.”

“No, don’t do that, Jim; there’s a better way. I’ll avoid him as much as possible. You see, he doesn’t know any better. Chorus girls are the only stage people he knows anything about, and his ideas are wrong. He thinks that all he has to do is to flash his diamonds and make a conquest. Don’t say a word to him, but keep your eye on him.”

“I’d like to punch his head!” said Montague.

“He wouldn’t know what he was being punched for, and you mustn’t get in bad on my account, Jim. Perhaps he won’t stay but a day or two longer. If I can’t make him keep his distance I’ll come to you.”

“All right,” said Montague. “But don’t you take any more freshness from him, understand?”

“I won’t. And don’t stay up any later, Jim. You ought to be in bed. You look worn out.”

“I’m fit as a fiddle!” said the director with a grin. “I could lick all the Gordan family—and I will if this fellow bothers you any more. Good-night, dear.”

‘Good-night, Jim, and thank you.”

The director watched his leading woman until her door closed behind her. Then he turned back into his office, and sitting down at the table dropped his chin in his hands.

“This moving-picture game is like a lot of other things,” he soliloquized. “It would be all right but for some of the people in it!”

Three

“What next? For the love of Mike, what next?” complained Buck Parvin, as he sat upon his sledge and eyed the seven malemutes reproachfully. “I thought I’d done about every fool stunt that a movie actor could do, but this snow stuff has got me treed and out on a limb!”

“What ails you now?” asked Ben Leslie, the property man. “Seems to me you’re always kicking about something!”

“I reckon you’d kick, too, if Jim made you the fall guy,” said Buck. “The first time we get a good snowstorm he wants me to lay out in it till I’m all covered over. I says to him: ‘Be reasonable,’ I says. ‘Why can’t you pile a lot of snow on me and get through with it quick?’ ‘Because,’ he says, ‘It’s got to be drifted snow, and we can’t pile it so it’ll look natural.’ ‘Have a heart, Jim,’ I says. ‘I’ll freeze sure!’ He only laughed. ‘You’re supposed to be froze,’ he says, ‘and I want you to look the part when they dig you out!’ Can you beat that, Ben? Jim is too darned technical to suit me. There ain’t one man in a million that knows what snow looks like when it drifts over a body, but Jim he makes bis picture for that one man!”

“That’s why he’s an artist, ” said Ben.

“Maybe so,” said Buck sullenly; “but if they go planting me in the snow for a couple of hours they’re liable to have a sure-enough corpse when they dig me out.”

“Well,” said Ben, “Jim has got his troubles too.”

Buck looked across toward the river, where the camera was planted. Montague was detailing the business of a scene to Miss Manners, and proceeding under difficulties by reason of the fact that the general Western manager was interrupting him with suggestions and loudly voiced opinions.

“I never saw Jim take so much gab from anybody,” said Leslie. “I guess it’s because this bird is a big mogul in the New York office.”

“Ain’t he the pest, though?” grinned Buck. “I’ve seen towns where they’d throw such a smoke on that feller that it would darken the sun for forty-eight hours. And fresh? Holy cat, do you know what he calls Myrtle? Little One! He does, on the level! He better not get too gay with that lady or she’ll haul off and poke him in the nose. She’s husky, that girl is, and hard as nails, and I’ve seen her give that fat man a couple of looks that would have stopped anybody with a nickel’s worth of sense. How does a man like that get a job managing anything?”

“I give it up, ” said Ben.

“Now, then, Myrtle,” Montague was saying, “we’ll rehearse that struggle scene. You’ve fired the last shot in your gun and I’m closing in on you. You stop on the bank of the river and face me, registering fear. Just before I step over the line to grab you, club your pistol—take it by the barrel. As I come to you with my arms out strike at me hard. I’ll dodge it. When I take hold of you resist all you can—fight me away from you. It ought to run about thirty feet, and at the end of the scene you sink down in the snow in a faint.”

Together they ran through the scene and Montague stepped toward the camera to give instructions to Dupree.

“One minute!” said Gordan. “I—I wasn’t quite satisfied with the way you played that scene, Montague.”

“You—what?” Montague turned on him like a flash.

“You didn’t put enough snap into it to suit me,” explained Gordan. “Not enough fire. I know how such a scene should be played, and there was something lacking. Miss Manners, she did fine; but your work—well, it didn’t get across with me, that’s all.”

It was the last straw. Manager or no manager, this was the end. Montague opened his mouth, but before he could speak Miss Manners was tugging at his parka. He turned to look at her and was arrested by a singular gleam in her eye. There was a reason for that gleam. Mr. Gordan, pursuing his usual system with “actresses,” had passed from words to deeds. During the lunch hour he had attempted to kiss her behind a pine tree, and had laughed when she raged at the insult.

“You’ll get over it, dearie,” he had said. “They always do.”

“Jim,” said she sweetly, “if you will let Mr. Gordan show us what he means he may be able to suggest something that will strengthen the scene.”

The general Western manager puffed out his chest.

“Now you’re talking!” said he. “I can show you, all right. I don’t know as I could put it into words exactly, but I could act it out for you, Montague, A little more fire; a little more snap. Get me?”

A swift glance passed between director and leading woman; the latter nodded almost imperceptibly.

“Go ahead!” said Montague gruffly.

Mr. Gordan stripped off his overcoat and tossed it behind him. Then he buttoned his cutaway coat and patted his chest.

“Now, then, girlie,” said he, “get back there by the river bank and fight just as hard as you want to.”

Miss Manners took up her original position, the swift water of the Truckee River behind and below her, and turned to register fear.

“That’s great!” said Gordan, removing his hat and throwing it after his overcoat. “Keep looking right at me, girlie! Now, Montague, here’s the way I’d play this scene.”

Mr. Gordan advanced over the side line, crouching as well as a fat man may, his pudgy hands hooked in front of him like claws. From a distance of five feet he sprang, which was not exactly what Miss Manners expected, and the revolver was pinned at her side. One fat arm encircled her waist, its mate wrapped itself about her throat. She struggled violently to free herself, but Gordan only laughed and held her closer.

“This is what I mean, Montague!” he panted, and forcing the girl’s head back bent to kiss her. Montague leaped forward, but he was not needed. Miss Manners freed her right arm with a desperate jerk, and using the heavy revolver as a hammer struck with all her strength. The general Western manager grunted like a smitten ox, and reeling blindly backward plunged into ten feet of melted snow water.

Half an hour later a very wet and vastly uncomfortable fat man awoke, to find himself careening toward Truckee behind seven malemutes.

“Don’t wiggle so much!” commanded Buck Parvin. “I had to tie you on to keep you from falling off…. What happened? Why, you forgot the business of that scene you was playing. You was to dodge when she swung the gun, and you didn’t do it…. Huh? Why sure it was a accident! You don’t think a lady like Miss Manners would bust you that way a purpose! I was standing right there and I heard Jim run over the scene with her. ‘Hit at me hard,’ he says. ‘I’ll dodge it.’ Then you set Jim’s cue out and went in to show him how, but you forgot to duck your head. It all comes of not sticking to your own game. I reckon you know plenty about regular stages that they have inside of theaters, but you don’t sabe the movies. On the regular stage they only pretend to hit you. In this business the wallops you get are on the level. And then you’re a manager. You ought to stuck to managing. Reminds me of a feller I used to know down in the Pecos country—Red-Eye Riley was his name. Red-Eye could ride a hawss in all the languages what is—Harry Brennan never did have nothing on that bird. Well, Red-Eye joins out with one of them rough-rider shows to be a actor. First day he worked he got to flirting with a pretty girl in the reserves, and was doing right well for himself till he got so interested in the girl that he forgot he was on a bad hawss, and he ain’t been able to ride nothing but a wheelchair ever since. Now Red-Eye he would have been a good actor if he hadn’t tried to make a mash… Huh? Hurry more and talk less? Why, yes, we’ll hurry more if you say so, but don’t holler if we have a spill. It’s hard to keep one of these fool sleds right side up. Mush—mush on! Hi-yah-yah-yah! Little speed there, Skookum!”

It is rather difficult to keep a dog sledge on even keel. Given a fat man for a load, complications multiply. Malemutes are uncertain brutes. This may explain why Mr. Gordan took nine headers into snowdrifts and became involved in three desperate dogfights on the way to the hotel.

The same road was traveled later by James Montague and Myrtle Manners.

“Jim,” said the young woman, “when I gave you the nod I didn’t mean to hurt him—much. I meant to tap him on the head before he could get his hands on me and blame it on to the business of the scene. He—he needed a lesson. Then when he jumped at me and was so rough and nasty I think I would have killed him if I could, the beast!”

“He got what was coming to him,” said the director grimly.

“And now there’ll be trouble!” wailed the girl. “Do you think it would do any good to write Mr. Seligman exactly what happened and why?”

“Dave is a mighty decent old coot,” said Montague, “but he’s bound to listen to Gordan, I think there’s a better way than a letter, but at any rate you needn’t worry your head. Seligman won’t do anything to me because he needs me in his business, and as long as I’ve got a company you’ve got a job. Is that plain to you?”

“Jim,” said the leading woman, patting his arm, “you’re an angel!”

“Uh-huh,” said the director; “but most of my wing feathers have molted.”

Four

Mr. Isadore Gordan returned to Fifth Avenue with inflammatory rheumatism in his joints and a three-cornered cut on his forehead that promised to leave a permanent scar. He credited the rheumatism to Truckee’s damp climate. The cut upon his forehead, he explained to David Seligman, was a memento of a railroad wreck in the Far West.

Mr. Gordan’s verbal report consumed almost an entire morning and contained everything but recommendations to mercy. David Seligman, old and wise and an excellent judge of human nature, smoked black cigars and pondered before he rendered his verdict.

“Well, Izzy,” said he, “you must have been a busy man. If I am to do what you say we will have no company left in Truckee at all. To begin with the camera man, he is fresh. Maybe so, but he is the first man to discover that keeping his camera frozen prevents static troubles. He has saved us thousands of dollars by that trick alone, so he can be as fresh as he likes and keep his job. He might think of something else that will save us money. And this Buck Parvin, I know him well. Every time I go West he makes me laugh. I would keep him for that alone.

“With regard to Montague, you can’t knock him to me and get away with it. Your personal troubles with him are nothing to mine. I fight with that fellow every time I see him, and then I raise his salary to keep him from thinking that I meant what I said. He is the best director in the country and he stays with us. That is final.

“Now about this leading woman—you may be right. She ain’t a star and she owes everything to Montague. I have seen him work an hour with her on one scene until she played it to suit him. If you are sure you can get Miss Delmar away from the Elkay people I will agree to let Manners go. This much I will concede, Izzy; but you can’t touch Montague or the rest of the company, so you might as well quit talking. Manners we can spare if we can replace her with Delmar.”

An office boy appeared.

“Mr. Seligman,” said he, “they’re ready to run that snow stuff now. You said you wanted to see it.”

“Come along, Izzy,” said Seligman. “You ought to be interested in this. It’s some that you saw made. Montague writes me that he would like to have your opinion.”

They went to the small projecting room, where for half an hour they watched snow scenes as they were thrown upon the screen—commenting, criticizing and commending. No connected story was told by the film; the reels that were shown were made up of miscellaneous scenes from three different pictures.

“Manners isn’t so bad in this stuff,” said Seligman. “That love scene now—that was well done and she got the points over in good shape.”

“Too stiff—not natural enough,” said Gordan.

“It was natural enough for me,” said Seligman stubbornly. “There she is again!”

There flickered upon the screen the picture of a girl in parka and hood. Behind her was the dark, swiftly flowing Truckee River, and the far background was a snow-covered slope, ragged with tamarack, pine and fir. Mr. Gordan stirred uneasily in his chair.

“She’s pretty anyway,” said Mr. Seligman. “That’s one point that you can’t take away from her—her looks.”

“She ain’t as pretty as Delmar,” said Gordan. “And Delmar is smarter.”

“Manners is a nice little thing—a perfect lady,” said Seligman. “I wonder why she’s holding that pistol by the barrel?… Ah, now she registers fear…. Nothing the matter with that acting, eh!… Hello, who’s this?”

A fat gentleman in a cutaway coat came crouching into the picture. Mr. Gordan gasped. For an instant an unmistakable profile was silhouetted against the white background, and David Seligman shouted with laughter.

“Well, Izzy,” he cried, “since when have you been an actor?”

“Stop that film!” bawled Gordan. “Stop it!”

“What for?” asked Seligman. “Go ahead and run it, boy; I want to see it.”

Mr. Gordan subsided, gurgling. The fat gentleman on the screen moved again, closer to the girl.

“You look like you are getting ready to do the Apache dance with her,” commented Seligman. “Were you trying to scare her to death?”

“I was showing Montague how to play the scene,” muttered Gordan.

“You? You can’t show that man anything about acting! He—Good Lord, what’s this?”

There came the spring, the embrace and the scuffle. Mr. Seligman stopped chuckling and his voice grew stern.

“What’s the idea, Izzy? Do you think you’re a grizzly bear?”

The swaying bodies were clearly defined against the whiteness of the snow. David Seligman leaned forward; not a detail of that struggle escaped his keen eyes. It was also given to Mr. Gordan to see himself as others had seen him, and the sight was not a pleasant one.

“Hit him, kid, hit him!” murmured Seligman. “Why don’t you hit him?”

Slowly the fat man forced the girl’s chin upward, and as he bent over her David Seligman gave vent to an ejaculation of disgust.

“You showing Montague how to play the scene! You just wanted an excuse to kiss the girl. Bah!”

Suddenly there was a flash of a fur-clad arm, the fat man’s head snapped as if on a hinge, and Mr. Gordan saw himself reel over the bank and disappear with a mighty splash.

“Oh, good!” shouted Seligman. “Good for you, kid! Hoo-ray!”

“She hit me on purpose,” mumbled Mr. Gordan, naming the particular bit of action that interested him the most. “Anybody can see she did. It was a frame-up!”

“Sure she hit you on purpose!” cried Seligman. “Bless her little heart, of course she did! Do you think because we make you a Western manager it gives you a license to pull stuff like that? You would have had no kick coming if she had shot you! And that’s why you say she can’t act, eh?”

An argument rose in the projecting room, waxed loud and lasted long. Tempers went to smash and the naked truth had an airing.

“I tell you this, Dave,” shouted Gordan. “Whatever I did makes no never-minds with me. She goes or I go, and that is all there is about it!”

David Seligman scratched his chin.

“Well, Izzy,” said he, “I am sorry you put it that way, because now I wouldn’t fire that little woman under any circumstances. Not if she was the worst actress in the world! I got to have better reasons than that she hit you on the head. I always said that she was a perfect lady. And so that was your train wreck! Ho, ho!”

Mr. Gordan’s sudden resignation as general Western manager of the Titan Company provoked a great deal of comment in the moving-picture world and speculation as to the cause went wild and unbridled. A rumor traveling westward said that an unauthorized strip of film, appearing with the day’s batch—perhaps by accident—had shuffled the seat checks of the mighty, but the young man who was in a position to deny or affirm continued to freeze his camera nightly and keep his own counsel. It took a point-blank question from Buck Parvin to get anything out of him.

“Kid,” said the cowpuncher, “It was a smooth piece of work. I was standing right there at the time, and I didn’t see Jim give you the office to turn the crank on his royal fatness. When was that little job cooked up?”

“It wasn’t cooked at all,” answered Charlie Dupree. “I’d been watching that lobster and I knew what he was up to. I thought maybe Seligman would like to know too. You can put a man on the witness stand and he’ll lie; but if you pull a moving picture on him—good night! Jim didn’t know what I was going to do and he didn’t see me swing round to get the focus, but he tumbled as soon as he heard the camera begin to click, and I guess that’s why Gordan wasn’t licked on the spot.”

“I got to hand it to you,” said Buck admiringly. “You’re a bear!”

“Huh!” said Dupree. “I know action when I see it. Maybe that’s why the old man raised my salary.”

“He’d have raised mine, too, if there ‘d been any pictures of that sled trip back to Truckee,” said Buck. “There was sure some action there! But I never have no luck. It’s going to snow to-day and Jim is going to freeze me. If I’m dead when they dig me out you send a strip of the film to my girl, will you?”

“This is the life!”

Mr. Elmer Gribble pecked at the heart of a cantaloupe and soberly regarded the vacant chair on the opposite side of the breakfast table. He was thinking of the time when his wife would not have trusted a servant to pour his morning coffee for him. Once on the backward trail, Mr. Gribble’s memory slipped easily to the honeymoon period when there had been no servant to trust—the honeymoon, when Addie did her own cooking.

Mr. Gribble recalled the breaded veal cutlets of his early married life and his mouth watered. He was a very ordinary person, entirely human, and he found it hard to accustom himself to promiscuous parsley decorations and pink tissue-paper frills on the shank of a lamb chop. Prosperity had brought Elmer Gribble nothing which he would not have exchanged for the simple but solid comforts of the honeymoon days—mashed potatoes with brown country gravy, for instance.

Boggs, the butler, entered with stealthy tread and noiselessly deposited a covered dish upon the table before Mr. Gribble.

“That’ll be all, ” said the master of the house, and Boggs, murmuring deferentially, withdrew to the kitchen. Mr. Gribble did not like Boggs—never had liked him.

“He makes me nervous,” was Gribble’s usual complaint. “I like my bread with gravy on it and I haven’t got the nerve to eat it with that lantern-jawed scarecrow hanging over me and watching every bite!… Oh, I know he’s right about it! He’s always right and that’s what ails him. Bread and gravy may not be used in the best circles, but, confound it, Addie, I was raised on it and I like it! I wish you’d fire that fellow!”

But Boggs remained, Mrs. Gribble insisting that a manservant lent tone to the establishment. Mrs. Gribble had her own way in most things. Mr. Gribble offered futile suggestions, fussed a little and paid the bills, this last being the end for which he was created.

After Boggs had disappeared Mr. Gribble cautiously lifted one edge of the silver cover and a groan escaped him.

“Another omelet!” said he. “And I’ve got salesmen that I pay less money than Addie pays that infernal cook!”

Enter Adeline Gribble, almost forty, almost fat, yawning lazily into the sleeve of an elaborate dressing sack. A lace and ribbon boudoir cap did its best to conceal a hastily twisted mass of blonde hair, the escaping wisps in strong contrast with the darkly penciled brows. The lady, passing behind her lord but by no means her master, bent and touched her lips to his bald spot.

“I thought you’d be gone by this time,” said she. “It isn’t a legal holiday, is it?”

“Addie,” said Mr. Gribble, suddenly, “do you remember the breaded veal cutlets that we used to have the first year we were married?”

Mrs. Gribble shuddered and rolled her eyes theatrically.

“Never mention that year to me!” she exclaimed. “When I think of the hours I put in over that miserable gas stove, I declare it makes me ill. Mercy! I wouldn’t work that hard again for the best man on earth!”

“You didn’t seem to mind it so much in those days,” suggested the husband.

“That was because I wasn’t used to anything better. “There were moments when Mrs. Gribble forgot herself and was frank. “I worked like a slave because you couldn’t afford to hire a girl, but I notice the minute you got able we had one. A wife ought to help her husband when he needs it but after he gets his start and can afford a cook and servants—”

“Of course!” interrupted Mr. Gribble. “Of course. Have I ever refused you anything?”

“It wouldn’t be healthy for you, my dear,” smiled the lady, leisurely beginning on her cantaloupe. She was as soft and dainty and indolent as a pampered white cat and Mr. Gribble watched her face with the anxious manner of one who scents an unpleasant topic in the air.

“I’ve spoiled you, Addie,” said he. It was an unfortunate remark.

Mrs. Gribble sniffed.

“I’m not the spoiling kind,” said she, “and you know it. I might even become very famous and it wouldn’t spoil me.”

Mr. Gribble’s head went back between his shoulders as if he had received a blow.

“For pity’s sake! You haven’t got that fool idea in your head yet, have you?”

“It’s not a fool idea, my dear,” said Mrs. Gribble with calmness. “It’s a very sensible idea. There’s many a leading woman who hasn’t my natural talent. Nothing but my voice kept me off the stage when I was a girl. I ruined it squalling ‘Cash!’ when I was in that wretched department store—”

“Oh, don’t say that,” interrupted Mr. Gribble, vainly hoping to turn the conversation into other channels. “Don’t say that. It was there that you met me, my dear. Do you remember—”

“Absolutely ruined it,” continued Mrs. Gribble, thus proving herself a lady of single ideas and simple mental processes, “but now that the movies have come in, the voice doesn’t matter. It’s the face and the acting. Last night I went to three picture shows. I saw that big five-reel feature at the Coliseum and the woman who took the part of the adventuress was terrible—simply terrible! If I couldn’t do better than that I’d be ashamed of myself. She didn’t get her points over at all—no more expression in her face than there is in a piece of putty! Anne Amber had the other woman’s part. I can’t see for the life of me why they’re always raving about her. They say she’s got film charm and screen magnetism and all that sort of thing. Rubbish! She’s got big eyes and when you’ve said that you’ve said everything! She can’t act, and thin? Why, it’s pitiful to see her! If people like that can get big reputations, why can’t I?”

“Now, Addie, you’re not really taking this thing seriously, are you?” Mr. Gribble’s face expressed deep concern. “Why should you want to paint yourself up like a cigar store Indian and cavort around in front of a camera? Haven’t you got everything you want? A big house and servants and two automobiles and—”

“Everything, Elmer,” said Mrs. Gribble, “but a career.”

“A career!” exploded her husband. “What business have you got with a career? I’m your career!”

Mrs. Gribble smiled pityingly.

“You don’t understand,” said she. “A woman has got to have some aim in life. That’s why so many of ’em join Shakespeare Clubs and take up suffrage. I’m tired of doing nothing but amusing myself—tired of being idle. Sometimes it seems as if I can’t stand it another day.”

“If that’s the case,” said Mr. Gribble, “you might go out in the kitchen and teach that cook a few things. There’s a regular job for you, any time you want to tackle it.”

“I think I see myself!”

“Well,” said Mr. Gribble, “It isn’t as hard work as being an actress, Addie.”

“Next week,” said Mrs. Gribble, calmly ignoring this remark, “I am going over to the Titan Studio and have a talk with Mr. Montague. I’ve seen him in the pictures so often that I feel as if I know him. I’m going to ask him if he can find a place for me.”

“You’re what?” ejaculated Mr. Gribble, startled.

“Mr. Montague is a director. He uses a number of people. Directors are always in search of types—”

“Let ’em search, but you keep away from those places!” Mr. Gribble actually raised his voice.

“Why, Elmer,” said the wife, “are you prepared to take the responsibility for interfering with my development? Are you?”

“You bet I’m prepared!” said Mr. Gribble. “You ain’t going to develop into a darned fool if I have anything to say about it! My wife—an actress? I won’t stand for it, and you might just as well hang up your fiddle now, d’ye hear?”

Warm words followed, and in the end Mrs. Gribble wept and called heaven to witness a very unhappy woman. Heaven had already witnessed a very unhappy man.

“I d-d-don’t see how you can be so c-c-cruel!” sobbed Mrs. Gribble, snuffling behind her handkerchief.

“I don’t either, Addie,” said her spouse, miserably, “but it’s for your own good.”

“I w-w-wanted to go into this with your c-c-consent,” quavered Mrs. Gribble, “but now you force me to g-g-go without it!”

Mr. Gribble threw up both hands and left the room. He recognized defeat when he met it, even if he did not salute it with a bow.

Again the Gribbles at table, though not in the breakfast room this time. Mr. Gribble had been late for dinner but his carefully rehearsed excuses were not needed. The lady of his household was so filled with important tidings that she could not possibly have contained a syllable of reproach. The news began to spill over the edges as Mr. Gribble entered the room.

“It’s all settled!” she cried. “I’m to start next Thursday!”

Mr. Gribble tucked his napkin into the front of his waistcoat and waved Boggs from the room. Then he asked the question which opened the flood-gates.

“Start what?” said he.

“Why, work, of course—a special two reel feature for the Titan Company—star part, Elmer, think of that!—saw Mr. Montague to-day—oh, my dear, you must meet him—he’s exactly the sort of man you^d like and so clever—he had a scenario which exactly fits my personality—the very thing for me—he said as soon as he saw me that I was the perfect type—and he was on the verge of giving up hope of producing it because he hadn’t been able to get the woman to look the lead and play it too—the minute I walked into his office he knew that I was the one he’d been hunting for—just as quick as that—didn’t even have to ask him for an engagement—he offered this part to me of his own accord—it’s a mining camp story with a strong heart interest and wonderful opportunities for emotional acting—he says no young girl could possibly play it and—”

“Wait! Wait!” Mr. Gribble waved his hands over his head. “That’s enough! Now what in Sam Hill is this all about, Addie?”

“Why, I’ve got an engagement!”

“A job, you mean.”

“An engagement,” corrected Mrs. Gribble. “I’m to have the star part in the picture!”

“Good Lord!” groaned Mr. Gribble. “So soon?”

“Now, Elmer, let’s not go all over that again,” said the wife. “It won’t do the least good. My mind is made up.”

Mr. Gribble sighed and selected a fork—the wrong one.

“Well,” said he, heavily, “if you must, you must, though why you want to make yourself ridiculous is more’n I know.”

“I won^t make myself ridiculous, my dear,” said the lady, “and you needn’t be afraid that I’ll disgrace you. I’m taking a stage name, of course. Adeline Aldine. Mr. Montague thought that would be better than Gribble.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” The worm turned sharply at this bit of information. “Too bad about that. I suppose you’ll still use the name of Gribble when you’re having things charged at the stores, eh!” This sarcasm was wasted.

“Certainly. Aldine is only a stage name. Don’t be silly.”

“I hope that you told this Montague that you’re a married woman!”

“Why should I tell him anything of my private affairs? And, anyway, a big director like Mr. Montague hasn’t time for anything but business.”

“He better not have!” growled Mr. Gribble, and his wife squealed with delight.

“Why, Elmer, would you really be jealous of me?” she cried.

Mr. Gribble ceased investigating his shrimp cocktail and spoke with feeling.

“I’m jealous of anything that takes you away from me,” said he. “I’m jealous of this crazy notion of yours, Addie. But since you’ve set your heart on it and you’re determined to try it, I won’t stand in your way. You’ll have to have your fling at it and then you’ll find that your home is a pretty good place after all. Go ahead, Addie, but don’t expect me to wish you luck!”

“You’re a darling!” said Mrs. Gribble, blowing him a kiss. “I’ve always said there never was a man just like you, Elmer!”

“M-well,” said Mr. Gribble, slowly, “maybe there’s more to me than appears on the surface.”

Two

On Wednesday afternoon there was considerable bad language at the studio of the Titan Company. The name of James Montague, director, came in for frequent mention and Buck Parvin, moving picture cowpuncher, voiced a general sentiment.

“Talk about your slave drivers!” said he. “Jim Montague can play Simon Legree without a makeup—all he needs is the bull-whip. Last Monday he told me that I wouldn’t have to show up here to-morrow and on the strength of that I framed up a little trip to the beach and asked my girl to go along. Jim waits until to-day and then changes his mind. ‘All members of the company on the job at eight o’clock!’ My girl is kind of haughty and high-spirited, she is. If I make a date with her, I got to keep it or dig up a better alibi than I’ve had yet. I don’t reckon she’ll stand for this. Think I could sue Jim for alienatin’ her affections away from me, Ben?”

Ben Leslie, the property man, was not informed upon the legal point, but he was positive about some other points which he mentioned.

“Something has happened to Jim’s schedule,” said he, “but I don’t know what it is. He expected to loaf Thursday and Friday, but this morning he handed me a long list of junk that he wants first thing to-morrow morning. A kitchen set, a red-hot stove and a dishpan full of pancake batter. He says the hotter the stove the better. Now what do you know about that?”

“Not a thing;” said Buck, “except that he won’t need it if this weather holds. Those pancakes will just naturally fry in the sun. But seems to me I heard that this picture was going to be a costume affair.”

“It is,” said Ben. “Shirts of mail, tin helmets and all that sort of stuff. That’s why I can’t figure out why Jim wants a mop, a scrubbing brush, a washtub and boiler, laundry soap and a rubbing board. Oh, yes, and some dirty clothes.”

“Huh!” said Buck. “Jim must be going to stage the beginnin’ of some of our best families! I got a lot of dirty clothes up to my room. If this scenario calls for a sure-enough cleanin’ I’ll bring ’em along.”

“You will not,” said Ben. “If anybody is going to beat the laundry out of some dough, it will be me. Nothing like taking advantage of the realism in a moving picture.”

“Yeh,” said Buck, “If they’re goin’ to have pancakes on tap here to-morrow, I see where I save lunch money.”

“You?” chuckled Ben. “You never saved a nickel in your life!”

“I know it,” said the cowpuncher. “All silver is quicksilver to me and the only stuff that ever slips between my fingers any faster is gold. I’m like a friend of mine named Billy Williams. Billy used to say that he was born without a nickel and still had it. “Well, so long. I’m goin’ to break the news to my girl. The feller that invented the telephone sure saved the rest of us a lot of hair, eh?”

Three

The arrival of Mrs. Gribble at the studio was something of an event. At seven-thirty came an express wagon and a solemn-visaged mulatto woman who superintended the unloading of two trunks and three suitcases. Ben Leslie, tinkering with an old-fashioned cook stove, was the only human in sight at that unearthly hour and to him the mulatto woman appealed.

“Yere’s Miss Aldine’s stuff. I got to git it unpacked right away. Whah do it go?”

The promptness with which Ben answered the question indicated that he had received definite information of some sort. He led the way to the smallest, stuffiest dressing room in the line, and opened the door. It was unoccupied save by two cockroaches, scurrying in agitated circles.

“Land o’ Goshen!” ejaculated the woman. “Miss Addie, she gwine dress in dishyer nasty lil cubby-hole? Why, dey ain’ room to hang her gownds, let ‘lone me an’ her! Dis de bes’ ‘commodations y’all got fo’ a leadin’ lady? Common folks mus’ have to dress in de street, I reckon…. Oh, well, show me a broom till I sweep up dis trash!”

Promptly at eight o’clock an electric coupé drew up at the street door and Mrs. Gribble descended, faultlessly attired in a blue walking suit, with turban to match. Buck Parvin eyed both lady and coupe with speculative interest.

“Walks like a tragedy queen,” was his comment, “but drives up to the door in her own car.” Then, after thought: “It can’t be done!”

It became evident that the stranger knew her way to Montague’s office and the mystery deepened.

“She’s been here before, ” said Buck. “Maybe it’s a society queen, wanting to see how she looks on a screen. Maybe it’s commercial stuff. Ben ought to know. I’ll ask him.”

Mr. Montague nodded approvingly at sight of the newest member of his company, but wasted little time in idle conversation. He was, indeed, all business, and spoke in brisk, clipped sentences.

“Ah, Miss Aldine! Prompt, I see. Dressing room eleven, please. The first scene shows you as the keeper of a boarding house in a mining town—a hard-working woman in reduced circumstances. It’s a kitchen scene and you are cooking breakfast for the men. Change at once, please.”

“But, Mr. Montague,” protested the lady, “don’t you think I should know something more about the story—the plot—or how can I do the part justice? You ought to tell me—”

“Not necessary at all,” interrupted the director, bending over a typewritten document. “I never allow my actors to read the script. It only confuses ’em and they get their ideas mixed with mine. I will outline each scene as we come to it—explain the business and rehearse the action. The first thing you must learn is to do exactly as you are told. No questions. No objections. Implicit and immediate obedience. Oh, Jennings! Show Miss Aldine to her dressing room. And remember, not too much makeup on the face—about as you are, I should say—but dress a boarding-house keeper in reduced circumstances. Change quickly, please. The stage is waiting for you.”

“Is he always—that way?” asked Mrs. Gribble, as she meekly followed Montague’s assistant across the stage toward the dressing rooms.

“Huh!” said Jennings. “He’s mild this morning—for him. If you want to hear him cut loose, talk back to him or keep him waiting on a scene. He drives a company harder than any man in the world, but he gets results. Sometimes we do forty scenes a day.”

After the lady had disappeared, Montague strolled out upon the great stage. The kitchen setting was complete, the carpenter was at work upon a parlor interior, the stove was drawing well and Ben Leslie, who made his boast that he had never yet been asked to do an impossible thing, was mixing an immense quantity of batter in a dishpan, measuring milk and water with a practiced hand. Buck Parvin stood at his elbow, offering advice. A stagehand rushed up to Montague.

“What’s this about no diffusers this morning, Mr. Montague?”

“Don’t want ’em,” said the director. “We want all the sun we can possibly get. The hotter the better. And remember what I told you last night. I’ll murder the man who laughs.”

“Yes, sir,” said the stagehand.

“Oh, Buck!” called Montague.

Parvin approached, grinning.

“Go and borrow Jennings’ dress suit. Put on a black mustache and get a cigarette and a cane.”

“Aw, say,” wheedled Buck, “let me in on this, Jim. Who is the beautiful lady?”

“She thinks she’s an actress and so far as you’re concerned, she is one. Get me! Do exactly what I tell you, don’t burlesque anything and ask no questions.”

“And you won’t come through?” said Buck.

“I’ll come through with a right swing if you don’t get into that clawhammer.”

“I don’t know where I ‘m going,” said Buck, cheerfully, “or why, but I’m on my way. Giddap!”

In the meantime temperament, the eternal feminine and the stern realities of stage life were clashing in an already overcrowded dressing room. Budding ambition about to burst into bloom alone kept the eternal feminine from tears after Mrs. Gribble had squeezed herself into her narrow quarters.

“What a dreadful place!” she cried. “Quick, Martha! My pink house dress and boudoir cap. Do hurry! The stage is waiting.”

“De stage kin wait, Miss Addie,” said the mulatto woman, calmly. “It kain’t go nowhar ‘thout y’all on it, I reckon. Yo ‘spect I’m gwine th’ow yo’ cloze onto yo’ any whichaway? A actress got to look like quality folks.”

Followed a period of breathless exertion which was interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Hurry, Miss Aldine! We are waiting on you!”

“Coming!” cried Mrs. Gribble, frantically powdering her nose. “The cap, quick, Martha! That’s the director himself! Just a minute, Mr. Montague!”

The one minute lengthened into seven before a pink silk vision appeared upon the stage, aflutter with lace and ribbons. Being entirely a woman, Mrs. Gribble was prepared to create a sensation and she did, but the sensation was not exactly of the sort which she had expected.

Jimmy Montague was standing by the camera, conferring with Charlie Dupree, the Titan Company’s film wizard. Hearing the tap of high-heeled slippers, the director whirled in his tracks and Mrs. Gribble’s conception of a boarding-house keeper in reduced circumstances smote him in its gorgeous entirety. Montague staggered and tore his hair.

“Not a bit like it!” he shouted. “Is that your idea of a kitchen slavey, Miss Aldine? You are cooking for twenty miners in Blue Butte, Montana! You don’t own a scrap of silk and you’ve never seen a high-heeled slipper in your life! Go back and take those fluffy-ruffles off and dress the part!”

“I—I’m sorry,” said Mrs. Gribble, humbly. “I thought—”

“I’ll do the thinking for you!” stormed Montague. “Go back and put on a gingham dress, a dirty one for preference…. You haven’t one? Wait a minute!” He raced across the stage and plunged into the wardrobe room, returning immediately with a checkered atrocity known as a Mother Hubbard and a pair of knitted slippers.

“Take off those corsets,” he commanded, “and do your hair up in a little knob on the back of your neck! It’s contrast I’m after, woman, contrast! I want you to make yourself just as unattractive as possible because in the second reel we show you in your mansion on Fifth Avenue—the butterfly escaped from the chrysalis! As an artist, you must learn to subordinate everything to art—even your personal appearance. It’s contrast I must have! Now hurry!”

Much abashed, Mrs. Gribble returned to her dressing room where she wept and explained matters to Martha, who was unpacking the suitcases. The faithful servitor listened with open mouth and saucer eyes.

“Miss Addie, yo’ ain’ neveh gwine get yo’ picture tooken in dis rag?” said she.

“I must. The director says so,” wailed the poor lady.

“I’d direct him!” snapped Martha. “Yo’ lemme go talk to dat man!”

This time the wait was a long one, but when the Blue Butte boarding-house keeper appeared she was wearing the Mother Hubbard and her hair was neatly coiled at the back of her neck.

Montague surveyed her critically.

“Well, that’s some better,” said he, grudgingly, “but you look too clean—too tidy. Oh, Langdon!”

The scenic artist whooped from his work room.

“Send a stooge here with a brush and some black paint,” ordered Montague. A disreputable looking youth obeyed the summons. “Slop that dress up,” said the director. “And you might put a little dab on her nose while you’re about it. That hair will never do, either.” He laid violent hands upon the neat coil and shook it this way and that until the loose ends appeared in a golden aureole and one braid hung down the lady’s back.

“That’s more like it,” said Montague. “In a picture, we strive for absolute fidelity to life. You are an overworked woman; you have no time to spend on primping—boy, put a little paint on these hands!”

“While Langdon’s apprentice splashed away with his brush, Mrs. Gribble found time to look about her. The stage was filling up with the members of the company and her heart leaped as she recognized her film favorites in the flesh—handsome Jack La Rue, the leading man, and Myrtle Manners, the leading woman. She even recognized Buck Parvin, in spite of the almost impenetrable disguise of evening dress, mustache and cane. These were the real actors, the movie stars, and they were to appear in her support! Their listless half-interested attitude went far to convince her that everything which was happening to her was part of the routine and all in the day’s work. The thought comforted her immeasurably.

“Now then, to the stove, Miss Aldine!”

She drew a deep breath and advanced, one eye upon the camera. Under skilful stoking the ancient wood-burner was throwing off a surprising amount of heat. Even the stagehands gave it a wide berth.

“You are making pancakes,” said Montague, consulting his script. “By the way, I am assuming that you know how to cook?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Gribble. “I can cook.”

“Good!” said Montague. “But can you flip a pancake in the air! That is purely a western trick. It comes under the head of atmosphere, local color. Do you know how to do that?”

“I never tried it,” said Mrs. Gribble.

“Try it now. We’ll rehearse the scene. First you grease the pan with the bacon rind. Then you pour the batter. When the times comes to turn the cake you pick up the frying pan, so, and toss the cake into the air. That stamps you at once as a western woman. This is one of the first scenes in the picture and I want as much atmosphere in it as possible. Try it, please.”

Mrs. Gribble bent over the stove. The terrific heat made her gasp, but obedient to stage directions, she greased the pan, spooned out the batter and leaned over the fiery furnace until her very soul seemed to be shriveling in the blast.

“It’s about ready now,” said Montague. “Flip it!”

Now those who have tried it know that flipping a pancake is an art acquired only by long practice. Mrs. Gribble’s first attempt splashed upon the floor.

“Too bad,” said Montague. “Make another, please, and save all the cakes. We will need them later for the breakfast scene.”

A second attempt fell upon the stove, contributing an unappetizing odor. The third, fourth and fifth also met with disaster. Mrs. Gribble’s face was crimson where it was not black; her makeup was furrowed with tiny rivulets; she was rapidly being reduced to a liquid state and all the while Montague, in the shade and not too close to the stove, was patience itself.

“You must keep on until you learn. Again, please,” and he spoke of the sacrifices necessary for art’s sake. At last the perspiring martyr mastered the technique and the camera man took his place at the crank.

“Now we’ll make it,” said Montague.

“Ready—action—closer over the stove, Miss Aldine!—go!”

The camera clicked as a camera will even when the magazine is empty, and Mrs. Gribble bent bravely over the despised frying pan. The batter bubbled and widened on the greased surface, grew firm and the bubbles changed to tiny holes. Mrs. Gribble grasped the handle firmly, a toss and a jerk sent the cake flying into the air, it described a perfect half circle and fell back into the pan—

“Stop!” yelled Montague. “You looked at the camera and registered triumph! You must never look at the camera, never! Do it again, please, and watch nothing but the pan. Ready?”

At last the director announced himself as pleased and Mrs. Gribble collapsed into a chair, panting for breath and mopping her face with the sleeve of her Mother Hubbard.

“Next we have a parlor scene,” said Montague, briskly. “Your ball dress, please, and at once.”

Jennings pounded on her door at least half a dozen times before Mrs. Gribble appeared. She was entirely satisfied with herself until she felt the estimating eye of the director upon her.

“Not so bad,” said Montague, glancing at the Paquin gown. “Your shoulders are a little beefy, though…. Oh, Buck!”

“That’s me!” answered Parvin, swaggering forward, twirling a cane.

“And this is Mr. Parvin?” gushed the lady. “Do you know, I’ve seen you do so many wonderful things—on the screen, of course—that I feel as if—”

“Attention, please!” said Montague. “Now this is the business of the scene. You are in your drawing room in New York. This man holds the secret of your past. He comes to you threatening exposure. You plead for mercy. He laughs. You drag yourself to him on your knees. You seize his hands and weep. He spurns you and hurls you to the floor. Then he exits. Rehearse it, please!”

With much prompting and advice, Mrs. Gribble struggled through the scene. Buck’s natural weakness for the softer sex asserted itself in the spurning process and Montague yapped savagely.

“I said hurl her, Parvin, and I want you to do it! Slam her down hard!”

“Real hard?” asked Buck.

“You bet your life. You’re not only a bad man; you’re a brute. Remember that. Understand, Miss Aldine, when a moving picture actor takes a fall, it’s a real fall. That’s the only way we can make it register. No slides and no subterfuges. Don’t try to save your dress and fall as hard as you can. Again, please.”

Five times the lady dragged herself after Buck, was by him spurned and hurled to the floor and at last Montague announced himself as satisfied. Mrs. Gribble was more than satisfied. Art is art, but a bruised hip is another matter and so is a ruined gown.

“I—I’m all out of breath!” gasped Mrs. Gribble. “It—it’s hard work, isn’t it?”

“This emotional actin’ ain’t nothing,” grinned Buck. “Wait till we get to the stunt stuff. You never can tell what a director’ll ask you to do. Once I played a outlaw and it was in the script that I had to be lynched—”

“Mercy!” exclaimed Mrs. Gribble.

“They put a rope round my neck, tied it to a limb an’ led my hawss out from under me. I come pretty near chokin’ to death before Jim got the effect he wanted and then the darned censors cut the hangin’ scene plumb out of the film. This emotional stuff is a cinch! Wait till they ask you to fall off a hawss or something like that!”

“Hurry, Miss Aldine!” called Montague. “Get back into that gingham thing. You’re in the boarding house again.”

The rest of the morning was a cruel nightmare. Mrs. Gribble choked in the steam above a boiler, she draped herself over a tub and renewed her acquaintance with the corrugated surface of a washboard, she ironed four shirts, she scrubbed a floor, she washed a mountain of dirty dishes and dried them upon an unclean towel. Every soft muscle ached, every dainty instinct cried out against these outrages. Her spirit alone sustained her. She was thinking of the second reel and hoping that the promised contrast would be striking enough to make up for the physical discomforts of the first.

“Half an hour for lunch!” called Montague. “Get busy on that dining room set, boys!”

Mrs. Gribble dragged herself to the dressing room and fell in a limp heap upon her trunk.

“Yo’ call dat actin’?” demanded Martha. “Looks mo’ to me like plain pot-wrastlin’!”

“It will show contrast,” sighed Mrs. Gribble.

“An’ dat ain’t all!” sniffed Martha. “Yo’ wouldn’t even let Mist’ Gribble see yo’ in a nasty rag like whut yo’ got on an’ dese folks done tooken yo’ picture in it fo’ eve’ybody to laugh at! Dat’s contrast, I reckon! I declah to goodness, Miss Addie, I dunno whut yo’ see in dishyer movie business to be so crazy ’bout!”

“Be quiet, Martha!” snapped Mrs. Gribble. “Your opinion is not called for!”

“Yas’m, Miss Addie, but I’m tellin’ yo’—”

“Will you hush? Take this filthy thing off and get me a kimono.”

In an inconceivably short space of time Montague’s fist was hammering on the door.

“All ready for you, Miss Aldine! As you were in the last scene, please!”

Mrs. Gribble groaned as Martha assisted her into the loathed Mother Hubbard, and she limped out to serve twenty miners with cold, greasy pancakes, an unsavory mess of pork and cabbage and steaming coffee. It was some slight satisfaction to find that the handsome La Rue was one of her boarders and Buck Parvin’s eyes twinkled at her above a thicket of moving picture whiskers, but the presence of professional talent was more than offset by the odor of pork and cabbage which almost made Mrs. Gribble ill. She was thankful that it was her duty to serve the food and not to eat it, but in this she reckoned without James Montague, director.

“You will eat in the kitchen, Miss Aldine,” said he.

And eat she did, though her stomach revolted and her soul rebelled. Mrs. Gribble had never liked pork and cabbage, even when she knew who cooked it.

“Is there—very much more of this?” she asked.

“Why, we’ve only begun,” said Montague. “You’ll have a change now, though. We’ll do some location stuff. The boys are all in their costumes so we might as well make the chases.”

“Chases!” said Mrs. Gribble.

“It won’t be a real moving picture without chases,” said Montague. “Audiences like ’em and expect ’em. This is where you get a chance to show how fast you can run.”

“I—I don’t think I can run very fast,” said Mrs. Gribble.

“You’ll have to.” Montague referred to his script. “See all these figures? They represent chases. The miners suspect that you have sold information to a Wall Street syndicate. They drive you out of the camp. You flee into the hills. They follow…. Better put on some thick shoes with low heels and take along a cloak to wear between times so that you won’t catch cold. Don’t change that gingham dress. It’s a good thing to run in.”

“I haven’t done any running since I was a girl,” said Mrs. Gribble.

“You’ll soon get hardened to it,” said Montague, encouragingly. “A moving picture actress has to be a good runner. It’s one of the first things she learns. You will be ready to leave in my auto in five minutes and you may take your maid with you.”

Mrs. Gribble learned to run. She ran until she could run no more, always with a mob of miners in close pursuit. She ran through the streets of small suburban towns and the inhabitants swarmed to the sidewalks with ironical cheers and yells of “Go to it, Fatty! We’re bettin’ on you!” She ran on mountain roads covered with sharp, flinty stones; she ran through deep sand; she ran uphill, downhill and ‘cross country. Art is long but Mrs. Gribble’s breath was short and when it failed her she begged for mercy.

“I—I c-c-can’t run another step!” she wailed. “I simply can’t!”

“You’re a bit fat for this sort of thing,” remarked Montague, impersonally, “but you’ll soon sweat it off. You waddle too much now; I’m afraid an audience would mistake these scenes for comedy relief. Get your wind and then I’ll rest you with some climbing stuff.”

The climbing stuff was even more tiring than the runs. The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak and soft and oh, so weary!

“Straight up that hill and over the skyline,” said Montague. “We’ll tilt the camera and keep you in the picture. Ready—action—go!”

Up, up, up she went, spurred on by yells from the heartless director and howls from the bloodthirsty miners.

“Faster! Faster!“shouted Montague. “Make it snappy, Miss Aldine, make it snappy!”

Sick, dizzy and blinded by the streaming perspiration, Mrs. Gribble endeavored to make it snappy. She put the last ounce of her strength into a desperate attempt to reach the summit of the hill, but a loose boulder turned as she stepped on it and she fell heavily, rolling into a patch of whitethorn. Sputtering incoherently, Martha scrambled to the rescue, followed by Montague and Buck Parvin.

“Your maid spoiled a great scene by running in on it,” said the director. “Take a rest and then we’ll try it again. “

“Look yere, man,” snapped Martha, “whut yo’ tryin’ to do, kill dis lady? Kain’t yo’ see she’s all in?”

“That will do, Martha!” panted Mrs. Gribble. “Hold your tongue!”

“Lots of gameness but no sense,” murmured Buck Parvin. “I’ve seen men that was troubled that way but mighty few women…. Well, ma’am, this is the life!”

Mr. Gribble spoke the truth when he said that there was more to him than appeared upon the surface. Not least of his uncatalogued virtues was the ability to see much, say little and bide his time. Greater men than Elmer Gribble have lacked this gift.

When his wife answered him in monosyllables and dozed at the dinner table he said nothing; when she decided to retire immediately after dessert, he sat alone and grinned at the smoke as it curled upward from his cigar. Later he poked his head in at the door of his wife’s room.

“Tired, Addie?” said he.

“Not in the least,” sighed Mrs. Gribble. “I’m only relaxing, that’s all.”

“You like this movie business then?” said he.

“Simply mad about it!”

“Ah hah,” said Mr. Gribble.

“Yas’m, Miss Addie,” said Martha, “but y’all betteh lemme rub yo’ wif dis linimint or yo’ won’ be able to act none to-morrer.”

Mr. Gribble, thus banished to the hall, executed something remotely resembling a double-shuffle.

Four

On the morning of the second day the electric coupé delivered a cargo of aches and pains at the Titan Studio and Buck, watching the lady’s progress, rolled a cigarette and mused aloud.

“She walks like that lame camel out to the animal farm,” said he. “Yes, she sure favors that nigh hoof a lot…. Good mornin’, Miss Aldine. How do you like actin’ as far’s you’ve gone?”

“It’s lovely!” said Mrs. Gribble. “This is the life, Mr. Parvin!”

“Yeh,” said Buck to himself as the lady hobbled into Montague’s office, “this is the life, you bet, but not for fat people.”

Again Mr. Montague was all business.

“Ah! Gingham again this morning, please, Miss Aldine!”

Mrs. Gribble was disappointed and showed it.

“I thought we might begin the second reel to-day,” she pouted.

“Did you! Why, we’ve hardly begun the first one. It has something like seventy scenes in it. We haven’t even touched the stunt stuff yet.”

Stunt stuff! Mrs. Gribble recalled Buck Parvin’s cheerful prophecies with a slight sensation of uneasiness. There was an anxious note in her voice as she spoke.

“Are—are the stunts any harder than the ones I did yesterday?”

Montague laughed.

“You didn’t do any stunts yesterday,” said he. “That was just the usual run of picture stuff. A stunt is something that requires muscle—nerve—courage. Of course, I try to eliminate as many chances of injury as I can. I do not like to have our people hurt. In case they are, the company stands the hospital bills, but even so, a stunt actress is hard to find. Most women lack your courage. I will be frank with you, Miss Aldine. In straight parts you will probably never amount to anything because your acting is very bad, but the stunts will carry you through. If you stick to me, I will make you the leading stunt actress of America.”

This was news indeed, but it did not make Mrs. Gribble happy. It made her distinctly uncomfortable.

“And what will I be expected to do?” she asked.

“Oh, pretty much everything in the athletic line,” answered Montague, carelessly. “Ride a horse, swim, do a jump once in a while, work with wild animals—”

“Oh!” cried Mrs. Gribble. “I never was on a horse in my life, I can’t swim and I’m deathly afraid of animals!”

“You can learn to ride and swim and you’ll get used to animals,” said Montague. “Just as it happens you won’t have to ride or swim in this picture and the scenario does not call for animals. The stunts are easy ones. You will escape from a burning building by means of a rope—the boys will tie it round you and let you down to the ground—you will climb a few fences and do one falling jump into water—oh, that’s all right. It won’t be over your head, Miss Aldine. Perhaps it would be more spectacular if you could manage a head-first dive—”

“I can’t! I can’t! I know I can’t!” cried Mrs. Gribble.

“Never say you can’t do anything until you’ve tried,” said the director. “You will jump on a moving train and off again; you will be in a taxicab collision and a few little things like that. Positively no danger, I assure you, but would you believe that eight women refused to play this part before you turned up? They hadn’t the nerve.”

“I—I think you might have told me!” said Mrs. Gribble.

“I’m telling you now,” said Mr. Montague.

The afternoon shadows were long among the trees of a wooded valley when two men crashed through the underbrush and stood upon the edge of a black pool of water, its surface covered with weeds and moss. This particular spot is an old friend and favorite location of moving picture directors and has appeared in countless films, sometimes as an impenetrable swamp, sometimes as the scene of bloody conflict, but more often as the spot where the unfortunate comedian takes his involuntary bath.

“It’s the last hurdle,” said one of the men. “If this doesn’t finish her, I swear I don’t know what to do next.”

“Too game for her own good,” murmured the other. “When we let her down from the roof and left her hanging in the air for fifteen minutes while Charlie fooled with the camera, I thought she’d surely quit. And she climbed those fences like a scairt cat. What’s the idea, Jim?”

“The idea is a cure for film infatuation,” said the other. Then, lifting up his voice: “This way with the camera!”

Other figures drew near and last of all came a woman, worn and weary and clad in a gingham dress. She limped painfully to the edge of the pool, looked at the water and the weeds and then at James Montague.

“I’m to jump into this—this mudhole?” said she.

“Yes, Miss Aldine. Off the limb of that tree right Into the middle of it,” said the director.

“But … it’s dirty water!” said Mrs. Gribble, faintly.

“Ah, but look at the location!” said Montague. “The background is wonderful and the water isn’t more than four feet deep.”

“I won’t!” cried Mrs. Gribble. “I can’t!”

“You must,” said the director, with firmness. “I can’t spoil this picture just because you’re squeamish about a little dirt. We will help you into the tree. Hurry, please, the light is failing.”

The habit of obedience prevailed; Mrs. Gribble was assisted into the tree, complaining bitterly.

“It’s so far!” said she, looking down at the pool.

“What? A little jump like that?” said the director. “Now we can’t rehearse this because we haven’t another costume for you. We’ll make it the first time. Get out on the limb as far as you can and when I give the word, jump. Make as much of a splash as you can and exit on the other side of the pool. Got the lines, Charlie? All right. Now, Miss Aldine, as soon as you are ready, please.”

“I’m afraid!” said the lady. “It’s too far!”

“Kain’t yo’ see yo’ got her scairt to death?” demanded Martha, from the brink. “She ain’t no divin’ Venus, she ain’t! Miss Addie, le’s quit dis play actin’ an’ go home!”

“Silence!” commanded Montague. “Now then, Miss Aldine!”

“Miss Aldine!” sniffed Martha. “Yo’ wait till her husban’ hears ’bout dis foolishness!”

“Ready?” shouted Montague. “Now then—jump!”

Mrs. Gribble looked at the branches above her head, at the pool below and closed her eyes.

“I ca-an’t!” she quavered.

“Why don’t you jump?” bellowed Montague.

Mrs. Gribble loosed her hold and fell; the black water closed over her head with a mighty splash. She reappeared, festooned with green tendrils and moss, half strangled and sputtering.

“Out! Out on the other side!” yelled Montague.

Mrs. Gribble dragged herself to the bank, a bedraggled spectacle calculated to win pity from any masculine heart. Martha ran to her with the blanket which Montague had provided. Mrs. Gribble, weeping hysterically, allowed herself to be led to a tree and leaned against the trunk for support.

“Dis is enough monkeyshines!” said Martha sternly. “Yo’ heah me, Miss Addie? Dis is enough!”

Montague and Dupree had their heads together in close consultation.

“Oh, Miss Aldine!” said the director.

“Yes,” answered a weak voice. “What is it now?”

“Get that dress washed to-night,” said Montague, “and have it ready the first thing in the morning. We’ll have to make this scene over again. Charlie ran out of film.”

Mrs. Gribble slipped to the ground in a faint.

Five

Elmer Gribble sat by the side of the bed and held his wife’s hand. A smaller man might have found the opportunity to say “I told you so.”

“I do not know anything about such matters,” said Mr. Gribble, “but it seems to me that you are legally bound to fill this engagement. It would be regarded as a—a sort of a contract—”

“I didn’t agree to let that brute Montague drown me!” wailed Mrs. Gribble. “Oh, Elmer, if you could have seen that filthy mudhole! If you care anything for me at all—anything at all!”

“There, there, Addie,” said Mr. Gribble, soothingly. “If you’re sure that you won’t want to go back next week—”

“I hope I’ll never see a moving picture studio again!” cried Mrs. Gribble. “I hope I’ll never see a film again! Oh, Elmer, get me out of this scrape and I’ll never say ‘movie’ to you as long as I live!”

“I will do the best I can,” said Mr. Gribble. “I will see this man Montague to-morrow morning.”

Mrs. Gribble wept and fell asleep to dream that Buck Parvin and the camera man were trying to throw her into the Grand Canyon of the Colorado while James Montague stood by and talked of Art and the courage required of a stunt actress. Mr. Gribble still held her hand, patting it gently from time to time. His emotions did not appear upon the surface, but inside of him there was an immense satisfaction and, at wicked intervals, a desire to laugh.

The next morning Buck Parvin, adjusting a shirt of mail in the door of his dressing room, observed another stranger who seemed to know the way to Montague’s office.

“There goes prosperity on the hoof,” said Buck to Ben. “Head up and tail over the dashboard, too. You reckon he wants to have a picture made of himself?”

Mr. Montague looked up at his visitor and grinned.

“It worked, did it?” said he.

“Like a charm!” said Mr. Gribble. “I am to tell you that you are a brute. Accept my thanks and congratulations on a very complete job.”

“I did have to be a bit rough with her,” said Montague, “but you said the case was desperate. I think the cure will be lasting.”

“I am sure of it,” said Mr. Gribble, taking out his pocketbook. The check which he laid in front of the director bore a signature but was otherwise blank. “Fill it in yourself,” said Mr. Gribble, “and go as far as you like. It’s worth it.”

James Montague folded the check carefully and tearing it across, dropped it into the wastepaper basket.

“A laugh is the scarcest thing in the world,” said he, “Your wife has handed me several. Shall we consider our original agreement void and the account closed?”

That evening Mr. Gribble searched high and low but could not find his wife. The servants were also missing. As a last resort he entered the kitchen and there discovered Mrs. Gribble in the act of frying a pan of breaded veal cutlets.

“Addie!” said he.

“I told Boggs and the cook that they could take the afternoon and evening off,” said she. “We’ll have an old-fashioned dinner, Elmer.”

“With brown gravy?” said Mr. Gribble.

“Yes, and mashed potatoes…. There, Elmer, that’ll do! You mustn’t hug the cook. She’s busy!”

This may or may not be the reason why James Montague is wearing a very handsome diamond ring.

Fore!

Fore! was published in 1918 by George H. Doran Company

Gentlemen, you can’t go through!

There has been considerable argument about it—even a mention of ethics—though where ethics figures in this case is more than I know. I’d like to take a flat-footed stance as claiming that the end justified the means. Saint George killed the Dragon, and Hercules mopped up the Augean stables, but little Wally Wallace—one hundred and forty-two pounds in his summer underwear—did a bigger job and a better job when the betting was odds-on-and-write-your-own-ticket that it couldn’t be done. I wouldn’t mind heading a subscription to present him with a gold medal about the size of a soup plate, inscribed as follows, to wit and viz.:

W. W. Wallace—He Put the Fore in Foursome.

Every golfer who ever conceded himself a two-foot putt because he was afraid he might miss it has sweated and suffered and blasphemed in the wake of a slow foursome. All the clubs that I have ever seen—and I’ve traveled a bit—are cursed with at least one of these Creeping Pestilences which you observe mostly from the rear.

You’re a golfer, of course, and you know the make-up of a slow foursome as well as I do: Four nice old gentlemen, prominent in business circles, church members, who remember it even when they top a tee shot, pillars of society, rich enough to be carried over the course in palanquins, but too proud to ride, too dignified to hurry, too meek to argue except among themselves, and too infernally selfish to stand aside and let the younger men go through. They take nine practice swings before hitting a shot, and then flub it disgracefully; they hold a prayer meeting on every putting green and a post-mortem on every tee, and a rheumatic snail could give them a flying start and beat them out in a fifty-yard dash. Know ’em? What golfer doesn’t?

But nobody knows why it is that the four slowest players in every club always manage to hook up in a sort of permanent alliance. Nobody knows why they never stage their creeping contests on the off days when the course is clear. Nobody knows why they always pick the sunniest afternoons, when the locker room is full of young men dressing in a hurry. Nobody knows why they bolt their luncheons and scuttle out to the first tee, nor where that speed goes as soon as they drive and start down the course. Nobody knows why they refuse to walk any faster than a bogged mooley cow. Nobody knows why they never look behind them. Nobody knows why they never hear any one yell “Fore!” Nobody knows why they are so dead set against letting any one through.

Everybody knows the fatal effect of standing too long over the ball, all dressed up with nowhere to go. Everybody knows of the tee shots that are slopped and sliced and hooked; of the indecision caused by the long wait before playing the second; of the change of clubs when the first choice was the correct one; of the inevitable penalty exacted by loss of temper and mental poise. Everybody knows that a slow foursome gives the Recording Angel a busy afternoon, and leaves a sulphurous haze over an entire course. But the aged reprobates who are responsible for all this trouble—do they care how much grief and rage and bitterness simmers in their wake? You think they do? Think again. Golf and Business are the only games they have ever had time to learn, and one set of rules does for both. The rest of the world may go hang! Golf is a serious matter with these hoary offenders, and they manage to make it serious for everybody behind them—the fast-walking, quick-swinging fellows who are out for a sweat and a good time and lose both because the slow foursome blocks the way.

Yes, you recognize the thumb-nail sketch—it is the slow foursome which infests your course; the one which you find in front of you when you go visiting. You think that four men who are inconsiderate enough to ruin your day’s sport and ruffle your temper ought to be disciplined, called up on the carpet, taken in hand by the Greens Committee. You think they are the worst ever—but wait! You are about to hear of the golfing renegades known as the Big Four, who used to sew us up twice a week as regularly as the days came round; you are about to hear of Elsberry J. Watlington, and Colonel Jim Peck, and Samuel Alexander Peebles, and W. Cotton Hamilton—world’s champions in the Snail Stakes, undisputed holders of the Challenge Belt for Practice Swinging, and undefeated catch-as-catch-can loiterers on the Putting Green.

Six months ago we would have backed Watlington, Peck, Peebles and Hamilton against the wide world, bet dollars against your dimes and allowed you to select your own stakeholders, timekeepers and judges. That’s how much confidence we had in the Big Four. They were without doubt and beyond argument the slowest and most exasperating quartette of obstructionists that ever laid their middle-aged stomachs behind the line of a putt.

Do I hear a faint murmur of dissent? Going a little strong, am I? All right, glad you mentioned it, because we may as well settle this question of supremacy here and now.

To save time, I will admit that your foursome is slower than Congress and more irritating than the Senate. Permit me to ask you one question: Going back over the years, can you recall a single instance when your slow foursome allowed you to play through?… A lost ball, was it?… Well, anyway, you got through them…. Thank you, and your answer puts you against the ropes. I will now knock you clear out of the ring with one well-directed statement of fact. Tie on your bonnet good and tight and listen to this: The Big Four held up our course for seven long and painful years, and during that period of time they never allowed any one to pass them, lost ball or no lost ball.

That stops you, eh? I rather thought it would. It stopped us twice a week.

Two

Visitors used to play our course on Wednesdays and Saturdays—our big days—and then sit in the lounging room and try hard to remember that they were our guests. There were two questions which they never failed to ask:

“Don’t they ever let anybody through?”

And then:

“How long has this been going on?”

When we answered them truthfully they shook their heads, looked out of the windows, and told us how much better their clubs were handled. Our course was all right—they had to say that much in fairness. It was well trapped and bunkered, and laid out with an eye to the average player; the fair greens were the best in the state; the putting greens were like velvet; the holes were sporty enough to suit anybody; but——And then they looked out of the window again.

You see, the trouble was that the Big Four practically ran the club as they liked. They had financed it in its early days, and as a reward had been elected to almost everything in sight. We used to say that they shook dice to see who should be president and so forth, and probably they did. They might as well have settled it that way as any other, for the annual election and open meeting was a joke.

It usually took place in the lounging room on a wet Saturday afternoon. Somebody would get up and begin to drone through a report of the year’s activities. Then somebody else would make a motion and everybody would say “Ay!” After that the result of the annual election of officers would be announced. The voting members always handed in the printed slips which they found on the tables, and the ticket was never scratched—it would be Watlington, Peck, Peebles and Hamilton all the way. The only real question would be whether or not the incoming president of the club would buy a drink for all hands. If it was Peck’s turn the motion was lost.

As a natural result of this sort of thing the Big Four never left the saddle for an instant. Talk about perpetuation in office—they had it down to a fine point. They were always on the Board of Directors; they saw to it that control of the Greens Committee never slipped out of their hands; they had two of the three votes on the House Committee, and no outsider was even considered for treasurer. They were dictators with a large D, and nobody could do a thing about it.

If a mild kick was ever made or new blood suggested, the kicker was made to feel like an ingrate. Who started the club anyway? Who dug up the money? Who swung the deal that put the property in our hands? Why, Watlington, Peck, Peebles and Hamilton, to be sure! Could any one blame them for wanting to keep an eye on the organization? Cer-tain-ly not. The Big Four had us bluffed, bulldozed, buffaloed, licked to a whisper.

Peck, Peebles and Hamilton were the active heads of the Midland Manufacturing Company, and it was pretty well known that the bulk of Watlington’s fortune was invested in the same enterprise. Those who knew said they were just as ruthless in business as they were in golf—quite a strong statement.

They seemed to regard the Sundown Golf and Country Club as their private property, and we were welcome to pay dues and amuse ourselves five days a week, but on Wednesdays and Saturdays we were not to infringe on the sovereign rights of the Big Four.

They never entered any of the club tournaments, for that would have necessitated breaking up their foursome. They always turned up in a body, on the tick of noon, and there was an immediate scramble to beat them to Number One tee. Those who lost out stampeded over to Number Ten and played the second nine first. Nobody wanted to follow them; but a blind man, playing without a caddie, couldn’t have helped but catch up with them somewhere on the course.

If you wonder why the club held together, you have only to recall the story of the cow-puncher whose friend beckoned him away from the faro layout to inform him that the game was crooked.

“Hell!” said the cow-puncher. “I know that; but—it’s the only game in town, ain’t it?”

The S.G. & C.C. was the only golf club within fifty miles.

Three

When Wally Wallace came home from college he blossomed out as a regular member of the club. He had been a junior member before, one of the tennis squad.

Wally is the son of old Hardpan Wallace, of the Trans-Pacific outfit—you may have heard of him—and the sole heir to more millions than he will ever be able to spend; but we didn’t hold this against the boy. He isn’t the sort that money can spoil, with nothing about him to remind you of old Hardpan, unless it might be a little more chin than he really needs.

Wally’s first act as a full-fledged member of the club was to qualify for the James Peck Annual Trophy—a pretty fair sort of cup, considering the donor.

He turned in a nice snappy eighty-one, which showed us that a college education had not been wasted on him, and also caused several of the Class-A men to sit up a bit and take notice.

He came booming through to the semi-finals with his head up and his tail over the dash-board. It was there that he ran into me. Now I am no Jerry Travers, but there are times when I play to my handicap, which is ten, and I had been going fairly well. I had won four matches—one of them by default. Wally had also won four matches, but the best showing made against him was five down and four to go. His handicap was six, so he would have to start me two up; but I had seen enough of his game to know that I was up against the real thing, and would need a lot of luck to give the boy anything like a close battle. He was a strong, heady match player, and if he had a weakness the men whom he had defeated hadn’t been able to spot it. Altogether it wasn’t a very brilliant outlook for me; but, as a matter of fact, I suppose no ten-handicap man ever ought to have a brilliant outlook. It isn’t coming to him. If he has one it is because the handicapper has been careless.

Under our rules a competitor in a club tournament has a week in which to play his man, and it so happened that we agreed on Wednesday for our meeting. Wally called for me in his new runabout, and we had lunch together—I shook him and stuck him for it, and he grinned and remarked that a man couldn’t be lucky at everything. While we were dressing he chattered like a magpie, talking about everything in the world but golf, which was a sign that he wasn’t worrying much. He expected easy picking, and under normal conditions he would have had it.

We left the first tee promptly at one-forty-five P.M., our caddies carrying the little red flags which demand the right of way over everything. I might have suggested starting at Number Ten if I had thought of it, but to tell the truth I was a wee mite nervous and was wondering whether I had my drive with me or not. You know how the confounded thing comes and goes. So we started at Number One, and my troubles began. Wally opened up on me with a four-four-three, making the third hole in a stroke under par, and when we reached the fourth tee we were all square and my handicap was gone.

It was on the fourth tee that we first began to notice signs of congestion ahead of us. One foursome had just driven off and beckoned us to come through, another was waiting to go, and the fair green on the way to the fifth looked like the advance of the Mexican standing army.

“Somebody has lost the transmission out of his wheel chair,” said Wally. “Well, we should worry—we’ve got the red flags and the right of way. Fore!” And he proceeded to smack a perfect screamer down the middle of the course—two hundred and fifty yards if it was an inch. I staggered into one and laid my ball some distance behind his, but on the direct line to the pin. Then we had to wait a bit while another foursome putted out.

“There oughtn’t to be any congestion on a day like this,” said Wally. “Must be a bunch of old men ahead.”

“It’s the Big Four,” said I. “Watlington, Peck, Peebles and Hamilton. They always take their time.”

From where we were we could see the seventh and eighth fair greens. There wasn’t a player in sight on either one.

“Good Lord!” said Wally. “They’ve got the whole United States wide open ahead of ’em. They’re not holding their place on the course.”

“They never do,” said I, and just then the foursome moved off the putting green.

“Give her a ride, old top!” said Wally.

I claim that my second shot wasn’t half bad—for a ten-handicap man. I used a brassy and reached the green about thirty feet from the pin, but the demon Wally pulled a mid-iron out of his bag, waggled it once or twice, and then made my brassy look sick. When we reached the top of the hill, there was his ball ten feet from the cup. I ran up, playing it safe for a par four, but Wally studied the roll of the green for about ten seconds—and dropped a very fat three. He was decent enough to apologise.

“I’m playing over my head,” said he.

I couldn’t dispute it—two threes on par fours might well be over anybody’s head. One down and fourteen to go; it had all the earmarks of a massacre.

We had quite an audience at the fifth tee—two foursomes were piled up there, cursing. “What’s the matter, gentlemen?” asked Wally. “Can’t you get through?”

“Nobody can get through,” said Billy Williams. “It’s the Big Four.”

“But they’ll respect the red flags, won’t they?”

It was a perfectly natural question for a stranger to ask—and Wally was practically a stranger, though most of the men knew who he was. It brought all sorts of answers.

“You think they will? I’ll bet you a little two to one, no limit, that they’re all color-blind!”

“Oh, yes, they’ll let you through!”

“They’ll ask you to come through—won’t they, Billy? They’ll insist on it, what?”

“They’re full of such tricks!”

Wally was puzzled. He didn’t quite know what to make of it. “But a red flag,” said he, “gives you the right of way.”

“Everywhere but here,” said Billy Williams.

“But in this case it’s a rule!” argued Wally.

“Those fellows in front make their own rules.”

“But the Greens Committee——” And this was where everybody laughed.

Wally stooped and teed his ball.

“Look here,” said he, “I’ll bet you anything you like that they let us through. Why, they can’t help themselves!”

“You bet that they’ll let you through of their own accord?” asked Ben Ashley, who never has been known to pass up a plain cinch.

“On our request to be allowed to pass,” said Wally.

“If you drive into ’em without their permission you lose,” stipulated Ben.

“Right!” said Wally.

“Got you for a dozen balls!” said Ben.

“Anybody else want some of it?” asked Wally.

Before he got off the tee he stood to lose six dozen balls; but his nerve was unshaken and he slammed out another tremendous drive. I sliced into a ditch and away we went, leaving a great deal of promiscuous kidding behind us. It took me two shots to get out at all, and Wally picked up another hole on me.

Two down—murder!

On the sixth tee we ran into another mass meeting of malcontents. Old Man Martin, our prize grouch, grumbled a bit when we called attention to our red flags.

“What’s the use?” said he. “You’re on your way, but you ain’t going anywhere. Might just as well sit down and take it easy. Watlington has got a lost ball, and the others have gone on to the green so’s nobody can get through. Won’t do you a bit of good to drive, Wally. There’s two foursomes hung up over the hill now, and they’ll be right there till Watlington finds that ball. Sit down and be sociable.”

“What’ll you bet that we don’t get through?” demanded Wally, who was beginning to show signs of irritation.

“Whatever you got the most of, sonny—provided you make the bet this way: they got to let you through. Of course you might drive into ’em or walk through ’em, but that ain’t being done—much.”

“Right! The bet is that they let us through. One hundred fish.”

Old Martin cackled and turned his cigar round and round in the corner of his mouth—a wolf when it comes to a cinch bet.

“Gosh! Listen to our banty rooster crow! Want another hundred, sonny?”

“Yes—grandpa!” said Wally, and sent another perfect drive soaring up over the hill.

Number Six is a long hole, and the ordinary player never attempts to carry the cross-bunker on his second. I followed with a middling-to-good shot, and we bade the congregation farewell.

“It’s ridiculous!” said Wally as we climbed the hill. “I never saw a foursome yet that wouldn’t yield to a red flag, or one that wouldn’t let a twosome through—if properly approached. And we have the right of way over everything on the course. The Greens Committee——”

“Is composed,” said I, “of Watlington, Peck and Peebles—three members of the Big Four. They built the club, they run the club, and they have never been known to let anybody through. I’m sorry, Wally, but I’m afraid you’re up against it.”

The boy stopped and looked at me.

“Then those fellows behind us,” said he, “were betting on a cinch, eh?”

“It was your proposition,” I reminded him.

“So it was,” and he grinned like the good game kid he is. “The Greens Committee, eh? ‘Hast thou appealed unto Cæsar? unto Cæsar shalt thou go.’ I’m a firm believer in the right method of approach. They wouldn’t have the nerve——”

“They have nerve enough for anything,” said I, and dropped the subject. I didn’t want him to get the idea that I was trying to argue with him and upset his game. One foursome was lying down just over the hill; the other was piled up short of the bunker. Watlington had finally found his ball and played onto the green. The others, of course, had been standing round the pin and holding things up for him.

I took an iron on my second and played short, intending to pitch over the bunker on my third. Wally used a spoon and got tremendous height and distance. His ball carried the bunker, kicked to the right and stopped behind a sandtrap. It was a phenomenal shot, and with luck on the kick would have gone straight to the pin.

I thought the Big Four would surely be off the green by the time I got up to my ball, but no, Peck was preparing to hole a three-foot putt. Any ordinary dub would have walked up to that pill and tapped it in, but that wasn’t Peck’s style. He got down on all fours and sighted along the line to the hole. Then he rose, took out his handkerchief, wiped his hands carefully, called for his putter and took an experimental stance, tramping about like a cat “making bread” on a woollen rug.

“Look at him!” grunted Wally. “You don’t mind if I go ahead to my ball? It won’t bother you?”

“Not in the least,” said I.

“I want to play as soon as they get out of the way,” he explained.

The Colonel’s first stance did not suit him, so he had to go all through the tramping process again. When he was finally satisfied, he began swinging his putter back and forth over the ball, like the pendulum of a grandfather’s clock—ten swings, neither more nor less. Could any one blame Wally for boiling inside?

After the three-footer dropped—he didn’t miss it, for a wonder—they all gathered round the hole and pulled out their cards. Knowing each other as well as they did, nobody was trusted to keep the score.

“Fore!” called Wally.

They paid not the slightest attention to him, and it was fully half a minute before they ambled leisurely away in the direction of the seventh tee.

I played my pitch shot, with plenty of back-spin on it, and stopped ten or twelve feet short of the hole. Wally played an instant later, a mashie shot intended to clear the trap, but he had been waiting too long and was burning up with impatience. He topped the ball, hit the far edge of the sandtrap and bounced back into a bad lie. Of course I knew why he had been in such a hurry—he wanted to catch the Big Four on the seventh tee. His niblick shot was too strong, but he laid his fifth dead to the hole, giving me two for a win. Just as a matter of record, let me state that I canned a nice rainbow putt for a four. A four on Number Six is rare.

“Nice work!” said Wally. “You’re only one down now. Come on, let’s get through these miserable old men!”

Watlington was just addressing his ball, the others had already driven. He fussed and he fooled and he waggled his old dreadnaught for fifteen or twenty seconds, and then shot straight into the bunker—a wretchedly topped ball.

“Bless my heart!” said he. “Now why—why do I always miss my drive on this hole?”

Peck started to tell him, being his partner, but Wally interrupted, politely but firmly.

“Gentlemen,” said he, “if you have no objection we will go through. We are playing a tournament match. Mr. Curtiss, your honor, I believe.”

Well, sir, for all the notice they took of him he might have been speaking to four graven images. Not one of them so much as turned his head. Colonel Peck had the floor.

“I’ll tell you, Wat,” said he, “I think it’s your stance. You’re playing the ball too much off your right foot—coming down on it too much. Now if you want it to rise more——” They were moving away now, but very slowly.

“Fore!”

This time they had to notice the boy. He was mad clear through, and his voice showed it. They all turned, took one good look at him, and then toddled away, keeping well in the middle of the course. Peck was still explaining the theory of the perfect drive. Wally yelled again; this time they did not even look at him. “Well!” said he. “Of all the damned swine! I—I believe we should drive anyway!”

“You’ll lose a lot of bets if you do.” Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that. Goodness knows I didn’t want to see his game go to pieces behind the Big Four—I didn’t want to play behind them myself. I tried to explain. The kid came over and patted me on the back.

“You’re perfectly right,” said he. “I forgot all about those fool bets, but I’d gladly lose all of ’em if I thought I could hit that long-nosed stiff in the back of the neck!” He meant the Colonel. “And so that’s the Greens Committee, eh? Holy jumping Jemima! What a club!”

I couldn’t think of much of anything to say, so we sat still and watched Watlington dig his way out of the bunker, Peck offering advice after each failure. When Watlington disagreed with Peck’s point of view he took issue with him, and all hands joined in the argument. Wally was simply sizzling with pent-up emotion, and after Watlington’s fifth shot he began to lift the safety-valve a bit. The language which he used was wonderful, and a great tribute to higher education. Old Hardpan himself couldn’t have beaten it, even in his mule-skinning days.

At last the foursome was out of range and I got off a pretty fair tee shot. Wally was still telling me what he thought of the Greens Committee when he swung at the ball, and never have I seen a wider hook. It was still hooking when it disappeared in the woods, out of bounds. His next ball took a slice and rolled into long grass.

“Serves me right for losing my temper,” said he with a grin. “I can play this game all right, old top, but when I’m riled it sort of unsettles me. Something tells me that I’m going to be riled for the next half hour or so. Don’t mind what I say. It’s all meant for those hogs ahead of us.”

I helped him find his ball, and even then we had to wait on Peebles and Hamilton, who were churning along down the middle of the course in easy range. I lighted a cigarette and thought about something else—my income tax, I think it was. I had found this a good system when sewed up behind the Big Four. I don’t know what poor Wally was thinking about—man’s inhumanity to man, I suppose—for when it came time to shoot he failed to get down to his ball and hammered it still deeper into the grass.

“If it wasn’t for the bets,” said he, “I’d pick up and we’d go over to Number Eight. I’m afraid that on a strict interpretation of the terms of agreement Martin could spear me for two hundred fish if we skipped a hole.”

“He could,” said I, “and what’s more to the point, he would. They were to let us through—on request.”

Wally sighed.

“I’ve tried one method of approach,” said he, “and now I’ll try another one. I might tell ’em that I bet two hundred dollars on the suspicion that they were gentlemen, but likely they’d want me to split the winnings. They look like that sort.”

Number Seven was a gift on a golden platter. I won it with a frightful eight, getting into all sorts of grief along the way, but Wally was entirely up in the air and blew the short putt which should have given him a half.

“All square!” said he. “Fair enough! Now we shall see what we shall see!”

His chin was very much in evidence as he hiked to Number Eight tee, and he lost no time getting into action. Colonel Peck was preparing to drive as Wally hove alongside. The Colonel is very fussy about his drive. He has been known to send a caddie to the clubhouse for whispering on the bench. Wally walked up behind him.

“Stand still, young man! Can’t you see I’m driving?”

It was in the nature of a royal command.

“Oh!” said Wally. “Meaning me, I presume. Do you know, it strikes me that for a golfer with absolutely no consideration for others, you’re quite considerate—of yourself!”

Now I had always sized up the Colonel for a bluffer. He proved himself one by turning a rich maroon color and trying to swallow his Adam’s apple. Not a word came from him.

“Quiet,” murmured old Peebles, who looks exactly like a sheep. “Absolute quiet, please.”

Wally rounded on him like a flash.

“Another considerate golfer, eh?” he snapped. “Now, gentlemen, under the rules governing tournament play I demand for my opponent and myself the right to go through. There are open holes ahead; you are not holding your place on the course——”

“Drive, Jim,” interposed Watlington in that quiet way of his. “Don’t pay any attention to him. Drive.”

“But how can I drive while he’s hopping up and down behind me? He puts me all off my swing!”

“I’m glad my protest has some effect on you,” said Wally. “Now I understand that some of you are members of the Greens Committee of this club. As a member of the said club, I wish to make a formal request that we be allowed to pass.”

“Denied,” said Watlington. “Drive, Jim.”

“Do you mean to say that you refuse us our rights—that you won’t let us through?”

“Absolutely,” murmured old Peebles. “Absolutely.”

“But why—why? On what grounds?”

“On the grounds that you’re too fresh,” said Colonel Peck. “On the grounds that we don’t want you to go through. Sit down and cool off.”

“Drive, Jim,” said Watlington. “You talk too much, young man.”

“Wait a second,” said Wally. “I want to get you all on record. I have made a courteous request——”

“And it has been refused,” said old Peebles, blinking at both of us. “Gentlemen, you can’t go through!”

“Is that final?”

“It is—absolutely.”

And Watlington and Peck nodded.

“Drive, Jim!”

This time it was Hamilton who spoke.

“Pardon me,” said Wally. He skipped out in front of the tee, lifted his cap and made a low bow. “Members of the Greens Committee,” said he, “and one other hog as yet unclassified, you are witnesses that I default my match to Mr. Curtiss. I do this rather than be forced to play behind four such pitiable dubs as you are. Golf is a gentleman’s game, which doubtless accounts for your playing it so poorly. They tell me that you never let any one through. God giving me strength, the day will come when you will not only allow people to pass you, but you will beg them to do it. Make a note of that. Come along, Curtiss. We’ll play the last nine—for the fun of the thing.”

“Oh, Curtiss!” It was Watlington speaking. “How many did you have him down when he quit?”

The insult would have made a saint angry, but no saint on the calendar could have summoned the vocabulary with which Wally replied. It was a wonderful exhibition of blistering invective. Watlington’s thick hide stood him in good stead. He did not turn a hair or bat an eye, but waited for Wally to run out of breath. Then:

“Drive, Jim,” said he.

Now I did not care to win that match by default, and I did everything in my power to arrange the matter otherwise. I offered to play the remaining holes later in the day, or skip the eighth and begin all square on the ninth tee.

“Nothing doing,” said Wally. “You’re a good sport, but there are other men still in the tournament, and we’re not allowed to concede anything. The default goes, but tell me one thing—why didn’t you back me up on that kick?”

I was afraid he had noticed that I had been pretty much in the background throughout, so when he asked me I told him the truth.

“Just a matter of bread and butter,” said I. “My uncle’s law firm handles all the Midland’s business. I’m only the junior member, but I can’t afford——”

“The Midland?” asked Wally.

“Yes, the Midland Manufacturing Company—Peck, Peebles and Hamilton. Watlington’s money is invested in the concern too.”

“Why,” said Wally, “that’s the entire gang, isn’t it—Greens Committee and all?”

“The Big Four,” said I. “You can see how it is. They’re rather important—as clients. There has been no end of litigation over the site for that new plant of theirs down on Third Avenue, and we’ve handled all of it.”

But Wally hadn’t been listening to me.

“So all the eggs are in one basket!” he exclaimed. “That simplifies matters. Now, if one of ’em had been a doctor and one of ’em a lawyer and one of ‘em——”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded.

“Blest if I know!” said Wally.

So far as I could learn no official action was taken by the Big Four because of conduct and language unbecoming a gentleman and a golfer. Before I left the clubhouse I had a word or two with Peebles. He was sitting at a table in the corner of the lounging room, nibbling at a piece of cheese and looking as meek as Moses.

“We—ah—considered the source,” said he. “The boy is young and—rash, quite rash. His father was a mule-skinner—it’s in the blood—can’t help it possibly. Yes, we considered the source. Absolutely!”

I didn’t see very much of Wally after that, but I understood that he played the course in the mornings and gave the club a wide berth on Wednesdays and Saturdays. His default didn’t help me any. I was handsomely licked in the finals—four and three, I believe it was. About that time something happened which knocked golf completely out of my mind.

Four

I was sitting in my office one morning when Atkinson, of the C. G. & N., called me on the phone. The railroad offices are in the same building, on the floor above ours.

“That you, Curtiss? I’ll be right down. I want to see you.”

Now, our firm handles the legal end for the C. G. & N., and it struck me that Atkinson’s voice had a nervous worried ring to it. I was wondering what could be the matter, when he came breezing in all out of breath.

“You told me,” said he, “that there wouldn’t be any trouble about that spur track along Third Avenue.”

“For the Midland people, you mean? Oh, that’s arranged for. All we have to do is appear before the City Council and make the request for a permit. To-morrow morning it comes off. What are you so excited about?”

“This,” said Atkinson. He pulled a big red handbill out of his pocket and unfolded it. “Possibly I’m no judge, Curtiss, but this seems to be enough to excite anybody.”

I spread the thing out on my desk and took a look at it. Across the top was one of those headlines that hit you right between the eyes:

SHALL THE CITY COUNCIL

LICENSE CHILD MURDER?

Well, that was a fair start, you’ll admit, but it went on from there. I don’t remember ever reading anything quite so vitriolic. It was a bitter attack on the proposed spur track along Third Avenue, which is the habitat of the down-trodden workingman and the playground of his children. Judging solely by the handbill, any one would have thought that the main idea of the C. G. & N. was to kill and maim as many toddling infants as possible. The Council was made an accessory before the fact, and the thing wound up with an appeal to class prejudice and a ringing call to arms.

“Men of Third Avenue, shall the City Council give to the bloated bondholders of an impudent monopoly the right to torture and murder your innocent babes? Shall your street be turned into a speedway for a modern car of Juggernaut? Let your answer be heard in the Council Chamber to-morrow morning—‘No, a thousand times, no!’”

I read it through to the end. Then I whistled.

“This,” said I, “is hot stuff—very hot stuff! Where did it come from?”

“The whole south end of town is plastered with bills like it,” said Atkinson glumly. “What have we done now, that they should be picking on us? When have we killed any children, I would like to know? What started this? Who started it? Why?”

“That isn’t the big question,” said I. “The big question is: Will the City Council stand hitched in the face of this attack?”

The door opened and the answer to that question appeared—Barney MacShane, officially of the rank and file of the City Council of our fair city, in reality the guiding spirit of that body of petty pirates. Barney was moist and nervous, and he held one of the bills in his right hand. His first words were not reassuring.

“All hell is loose—loose for fair!” said he. “Take a look at this thing.”

“We have already been looking at it,” said I with a laugh intended to be light and carefree. “What of it? You don’t mean to tell me that you are going to let a mere scrap of paper bother you?”

Barney mopped his forehead and sat down heavily.

“You can laugh,” said he, “but there is more than paper behind this. The whole west end of town is up in arms overnight, and I don’t know why. Nobody ever kicked up such a rumpus about a spur track before. That’s my ward, you know, and I just made my escape from a deputation of women and children. They treed me at the City Hall—before all the newspaper men—and they held their babies up in their arms and they dared me—yes, dared me—to let this thing go through. And the election coming on and all. It’s hell, that’s what it is!”

“But, Barney,” I argued, “we are not asking for anything which the city should not be glad to grant. Think what it means to your ward to have this fine big manufacturing plant in it! Think of the men who will have work——”

“I’m thinking of them,” said Barney sorrowfully. “They’re coming to the Council meeting to-morrow morning, and if this thing goes through I may as well clean out my desk. Yes, they’re coming, and so are their wives and their children, and they’ll bring transparencies and banners and God knows what all——”

“But listen, Barney! This plant means prosperity to every one of your people——”

“They’re saying they’ll make it an issue in the next campaign,” mumbled MacShane. “They say that if that spur track goes down on Third Avenue it’s me out of public life—and they mean it too. God knows what’s got into them all at once—they’re like a nest of hornets. And the women voting now too. That makes it bad—awful bad! You know as well as I do that any agitation with children mixed up in it is the toughest thing in the world to meet.” He struck at the poster with a sudden spiteful gesture. “From beginning to end,” he snarled, “it’s just an appeal not to let the railroad kill the kids!”

“But that’s nonsense—bunk!” said Atkinson. “Every precaution will be taken to prevent accidents. You’ve got to think of the capital invested.”

Barney rolled a troubled eye in his direction.

“You go down on Third Avenue,” said he, “and begin talking to them people about capital! Try it once. What the hell do they care about capital? They was brought up to hate the sound of the word! You know and I know that capital ain’t near as black as it’s painted, but can you tell them that? Huh! And a railroad ain’t ever got any friends in a gang standing round on the street corners!”

“But,” said I, “this isn’t a question of friends—it’s a straight proposition of right and wrong. The Midland people have gone ahead and put up this big plant. They were given to understand that there would be no opposition to the spur track going down. They’ve got to have it! The success of their business depends on it! Surely you don’t mean to tell me that the Council will refuse this permit?”

“Well,” said Barney slowly, “I’ve talked with the boys—Carter and Garvey and Dillon. They’re all figuring on running again, and they’re scared to death of it. Garvey says we’d be damned fools to go against an agitation like this—so close to election, anyhow.”

I argued the matter from every angle—the good of the city; the benefit to Barney’s ward—but I couldn’t budge him.

“They say that the voice of the people is the voice of God,” said he, “but we know that most of the time it’s only noise. Sometimes the noise kind of dies out, and then’s the time to step in and cut the melon. But any kind of noise so close to election? Huh! Safety first!”

Before the meeting adjourned it was augmented by the appearance of the president and vice-president of the Midland Manufacturing Company, Colonel Jim Peck and old Peebles, and never had I seen those stiff-necked gentlemen so humanly agitated.

“This is terrible!” stormed the Colonel. “Terrible! This is unheard of! It is an outrage—a crime—a crying shame to the city! Think of our investment! Other manufacturing plants got their spur tracks for the asking. There was no talk of killing children. Why—why have we been singled out for attack—for—for blackmail?”

“You can cut out that kind of talk right now!” said Barney sternly. “There ain’t a nickel in granting this permit, and you know it as well as I do. Nobody ain’t trying to blackmail you! All the dough in town won’t swing the boys into line behind this proposition while this rumpus is going on. And since you’re taking that slant at it, here’s the last word—sit tight and wait till after election!”

“But the pl-plant!” bleated Peebles, tearing a blotter to shreds with shaking fingers. “The plant! Think of the loss of time—and we—we expected to open up next month!”

“Go ahead and open up,” said Barney. “You can truck your stuff to the depots, can’t you? Yes, yes—I get you about the loss! Us boys in the Council—we got something to lose too. Now here it is, straight from the shoulder, and you can bet on it.” Barney spoke slowly, wagging his forefinger at each word. “If that application comes up to-morrow morning, with the Council chamber jammed with folks from the south end of the town—good-a-by, John! Fare thee well! It ain’t in human nature to commit political suicide when a second term is making eyes at you. Look at our end of it for a while. We got futures to think of, too, and Garvey—Garvey wants to run for mayor some day. You can’t afford to have that application turned down, can you? Of course not. Have a little sense. Keep your shirts on. Get out and see who’s behind this thing. Chances are somebody wants something. Find out what it is—rig up a compromise—get him to call off the dogs. Then talk to me again, and I’ll promise you it’ll go through as slick as a greased pig!”

“I believe there’s something in that,” said I. “We’ve never run into such a hornets’ nest as this before. There must be a reason. Atkinson, you’ve got a lot of gumshoe men on your staff. Why don’t you turn ’em loose to locate this opposition?”

“You’re about two hours late with that suggestion,” said the railroad representative. “Our sleuths are on the job now. If they find out anything I’ll communicate with you P. D. Q.”

“Good!” ejaculated Colonel Peck. “And if it’s money——”

“Aw, you make me sick!” snapped Barney MacShane. “You think money can do everything, don’t you? Well, it can’t! For one thing, it couldn’t get me to shake hands with a stiff like you!”

I was called away from the dinner table on the following Friday evening. Watlington was on the telephone.

“That you, Curtiss? Well, we think we’ve got in touch with the bug under the chip. Can you arrange to meet us in Room 85 at the Hotel Brookmore at nine to-night?… No, I can’t tell you a thing about it. We’re asked to be there—you’re asked to be there—and that’s as far as my information goes. Don’t be late.”

When I entered Room 85 four men were seated at a long table. They were Elsberry J. Watlington, Colonel Jim Peck, Samuel Alexander Peebles and W. Cotton Hamilton. They greeted me with a certain amount of nervous irritability. The Big Four had been through a cruel week and showed the marks of strain.

“Where’s Atkinson?” I asked.

“It was stipulated, expressly stipulated,” said old Peebles, “that only the five of us should be present. The whole thing is most mysterious. I—I don’t like the looks of it.”

“Probably a hold-up!” grunted Colonel Peck.

Watlington didn’t say anything. He had aged ten years, his heavy smooth-shaven face was set in stern lines and his mouth looked as if it might have been made with a single slash of a razor.

Hamilton mumbled to himself and kept trying to light the end of his thumb instead of his cigar. Peck had his watch in his hand. Peebles played a tattoo on his chin with his fingers.

“Good thing we didn’t make that application at the Council meeting,” said Hamilton. “I never saw such a gang of thugs!”

“Male and female!” added Colonel Peck. “Well, time’s up! Whoever he is, I hope he won’t keep us waiting!”

“Ah!” said a cheerful voice. “You don’t like to be held up on the tee, do you, Colonel?”

There in the doorway stood Wally Wallace, beaming upon the Big Four. Not even on the stage have I ever seen anything to match the expressions on the faces round that table. Old Peebles’ mouth kept opening and shutting, like the mouth of a fresh caught carp. The others were frozen, petrified. Wally glanced at me as he advanced into the room, and there was a faint trembling of his left eyelid.

“Well,” said Wally briskly, “shall we proceed with the business of the meeting?”

“Business!” Colonel Peck exploded like a firecracker.

“With—you?” It was all Watlington could do to tear the two words out of his throat. He croaked like a big bullfrog.

“With me,” said Wally, bowing and taking his place at the head of the table. “Unless,” he added, “you would prefer to discuss the situation with the rank and file of the Third Avenue Country Club.”

The silence which followed that remark was impressive. I could hear somebody’s heart beating. It may have been my own. As usual Colonel Peck was first to recover the power of speech, and again as usual he made poor use of it.

“You—you young whelp!” he gurgled. “So it was——”

“Shut up, Jim!” growled Watlington, whose eyes had never left Wally’s face. Hamilton carefully placed his cigar in the ashtray and tried to put a match into his mouth. Then he turned on me, sputtering.

“Are you in on this?” he demanded.

“Be perfectly calm,” said Wally. “Mr. Curtiss is not in on it, as you so elegantly express it. I am the only one who is in on it. Me, myself, W. W. Wallace, at your service. If you will favor me with your attention, I will explain——”

“You’d better!” ripped out the Colonel.

“Ah,” said the youngster, grinning at Peck, “always a little nervous on the tee, aren’t you?”

“Drive, young man!” said Watlington.

A sudden light flickered in Wally’s eyes. He turned to Elsberry J. with an expression that was almost friendly.

“Do you know,” said he, “I’m beginning to think there may be human qualities in you after all.”

Watlington grunted and nodded his head.

“Take the honor!” said he.

Wally rose and laid the tips of his fingers on the table.

“Members of the Greens Committee and one other”—and here he looked at Hamilton, whose face showed that he had not forgotten the unclassified hog—“we are here this evening to arrange an exchange of courtesies. You think you represent the Midland Manufacturing Company at this meeting. You do not. You represent the Sundown Golf and Country Club. I represent the Third Avenue Country Club—an organization lately formed. You may have heard something of it, though not under that name.”

He paused to let this sink in.

“Gentlemen,” he continued, “you may recall that I once made a courteous request of you for something which was entirely within my rights. You made an arbitrary ruling on that request. You refused to let me through. You told me I was too fresh, and advised me to sit down and cool off. I see by your faces that you recall the occasion.

“You may also recall that I promised to devote myself to the task of teaching you to be more considerate of others. Gentlemen, I am the opposition to your playing through on Third Avenue. I am the Man Behind. I am the Voice of the People. I am a singleton on the course, holding you up while I sink a putt. If you ask me why, I will give you your own words in your teeth: You can’t go through because I don’t want you to go through.”

Here he stopped long enough to light a cigarette, and again his left eyelid flickered, though he did not look at me. I think if he had I should have erupted.

“You see,” said he, flipping the match into the air, “it has been necessary to teach you a lesson—the lesson, gentlemen, of courtesy on the course, consideration for others. I realized that this could never be done on a course where you have power to make the rules—or break them. So I selected another course. Members of the Greens Committee and one other, you do not make the rules on Third Avenue. You are perfectly within your rights in asking to go through; but I have blocked you. I have made you sit down on the bench and cool off. Gentlemen, how do you like being held up when you want to play through? How does it feel?”

I do not regret my inability to quote Colonel Peck’s reply to this question.

“Quit it, Jim!” snapped Watlington. “Your bark was always worse than your bite, and it’s not much of a bark at that—‘Sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ Young man, I take it you are the chairman of the Greens Committee of this Third Avenue Country Club, empowered to act. May I ask what are our chances of getting through?”

“I know I’m going to like you—in time!” exclaimed Wally. “I feel it coming on. Let’s see, to-morrow is Saturday, isn’t it?”

“What’s that got to do with it?” mumbled Hamilton.

“Much,” answered Wally. “Oh, much, I assure you! I expect to be at the Sundown Club to-morrow.” His chin shot out and his voice carried the sting of a lash. “I expect to see you gentlemen there, playing your usual crawling foursome. I expect to see you allowing your fellow members to pass you on the course. You might even invite them to come through—you might insist on it, courteously, you understand, and with such grace as you may be able to muster. I want to see every member of that club play through you—every member!”

“All d-damned nonsense!” bleated Peebles, sucking his fingers.

“Shut up!” ordered Watlington savagely. “And, young man, if we do this—what then?”

“Ah, then!” said Wally. “Then the reward of merit. If you show me that you can learn to be considerate of others—if you show me that you can be courteous on the course where you make the rules—I feel safe in promising that you will be treated with consideration on this other course which has been mentioned. Yes, quite safe. In fact, gentlemen, you may even be asked to play through on Third Avenue!”

“But this agitation?” began Hamilton.

“Was paid for by the day,” smiled the brazen rascal, with a graceful inclination of his head. “People may be hired to do anything—even to annoy prominent citizens and frighten a City Council.” Hamilton stirred uneasily, but Wally read his thought and froze him with a single keen glance. “Of course,” said he, “you understand that what has been done once may be done again. Sentiment crystallises—when helped out with a few more red handbills—a few more speeches on the street corners——”

“The point is well taken!” interrupted Watlington hurriedly. “Damn well taken! Young man, talk to me. I’m the head of this outfit. Pay no attention to Jim Peck. He’s nothing but a bag of wind. Hamilton doesn’t count. His nerves are no good. Peebles—he’s an old goat. I’m the one with power to act. Talk to me. Is there anything else you want?”

“Nothing,” said Wally. “I think your streak of consideration is likely to prove a lasting one. If not—well, I may have to spread this story round town a bit——”

“Oh, my Lord!” groaned Colonel Peck.

It was a noble and inspiring sight to see the Big Four, caps in hand, inviting the common people to play through. The entire club marched through them—too full of amazement to demand explanations. Even Purdue McCormick, trudging along with a putter in one hand and a mid-iron in the other, without a bag, without a caddie, without a vestige of right in the wide world, even Purdue was coerced into passing them. At dusk he was found wandering aimlessly about on the seventeenth fairway, babbling to himself. We fear that he will never be the same again.

I have received word from Barney MacShane that the City Council will be pleased to grant a permit to lay a spur track on Third Avenue. The voice of the people, he says, has died away to a faint murmuring. Some day I think I will tell Barney the truth. He does not play golf, but he has a sense of humor.

Little poison ivy

One

The leopard cannot change his spots—possibly he wouldn’t if he could; and, this being the case, the next best thing is to overlook as many of his freckles as possible.

Yesterday I sat on the porch at the Country Club and listened while the Dingbats said kind and complimentary things about young Ambrose Phipps, alias Little Poison Ivy, alias The Pest, alias Rough and Reddy. One short week ago the Dingbats would have voted him a nuisance and a menace to society in general. Yesterday they praised him to the skies. It just goes to show that good can be found in anybody—if that is what you are looking for.

Understand me: there has been no change in Ambrose. He is still as fresh as a mountain breeze. Unquestionably he will continue to treat his elders with a shocking lack of respect and an entire absence of consideration. He was born with a deep depression where his bump of reverence should have been located, and neither realises nor regrets his deficiency.

He will never change. It is the Dingbats who have changed. The whole club has changed, so far as Ambrose is concerned.

We are all trying to overlook the dark spots in his character and see good in him, whether it is there or not.

Now as to the Dingbats: if you do not know them you have missed something rich and rare in the golfing line. There are four of them, all retired capitalists on the shady side of sixty. They freely admit that they are the worst golfers in the world, and in a pinch they could prove it. They play together six days a week—a riotous, garrulous, hilarious foursome, ripping the course wide open from the first tee to the home green; and they get more real fun out of golf than any men I know. They never worry about being off their game, because they have never been on it; they know they can be no worse than they are and they have no hope of ever being better; they expect to play badly, and it is seldom that they are disappointed. Whenever a Dingbat forgets to count his shots in the bunkers, and comes home in the nineties, a public celebration takes place on the clubhouse porch.

Yesterday it was Doc Pinkinson who brought in the ninety-eight—and signed all the tags; and between libations they talked about Ambrose Phipps, who was practising brassy shots off the grass beside the eighteenth green.

Little Poison Ivy was unusually cocky, even for him, and every move was a picture. At the end of his follow-through he would freeze, nicely balanced on the tip of his right toe, elbows artistically elevated, clubhead up round his neck; and not a muscle would he move until the ball stopped rolling. He might have been posing for a statue of the Perfect Golfer. When he walked it was with a conscious little swagger and a flirting of the short tails of his belted sport coat. He was hitting them clean, he was hitting them far, he had an audience—and well he knew it. Ambrose was in his glory yesterday afternoon!

“By golly!” exclaimed Doc Pinkinson. “Ain’t that a pretty sight? Ain’t it a treat to see that kid lambaste the ball?”

“Certainly is,” agreed Old Treanor with a sigh. “Perfect form—that’s what he’s got.”

“And confidence in himself,” put in Old Myles. “That’s the big secret. You can see it in every move he makes. Confidence is a wonderful thing!”

“And youth,” said Daddy Bradshaw. “That’s the most wonderful thing of all. It’s his youth that makes him so—so flip. Got a lot to say, for a kid; but—somehow I always liked him for it.”

“Me too!” chimed in Doc Pinkinson. “Doggone his skin! He used to make me awful mad, that boy…. Oh, well, I reckon I’m kind of cranky, anyway…. Yes; I always liked Ambrose.”

Now that was all rot, and I knew it. What’s more, the Dingbats knew it too. They hadn’t always liked Ambrose. A week ago they would have marked his swaggering gait, the tilt of his chin, the conscious manner in which he posed after every shot; and they would have said Ambrose was showing off for the benefit of the female tea party at the other end of the porch—and they wouldn’t have made any mistake, at that.

No; they hadn’t always liked young Mr. Phipps. Nobody had liked him. To be perfectly frank about it, we had disliked him openly and cordially, and had been at no pains to keep him from finding it out. We had snubbed him, insulted him and ignored him on every possible occasion. Worst of all, we had made a singleton of him. We had forced him to play alone, because there wasn’t a man in all the club who wanted him as a partner or as an opponent. There is no meaner treatment than this; nor is there anything more pathetically lonely than a singleton on a crowded golf course. It is nothing more or less than a grown-up trip to Coventry. I thought of all these things as I listened to the prattling of the Dingbats.

“Guess he won’t have any trouble getting games now, hey?” chuckled Old Treanor.

“Huh!” grunted Doc Pinkinson. “He’s dated up a week ahead—with Moreman and that bunch! A week ahead!”

“And he’ll make ’em step!” chirped Daddy Bradshaw. “Here’s to him, boys—a redhead and a fighter! Drink her down!”

“A redhead and a fighter!” chorused the Dingbats, lifting their glasses.

Yes; they drank to Ambrose Phipps, and one short week ago they wouldn’t have tolerated him on the same side of the course with them. Our pet leopard still has his spots, but we are now viewing him in the friendly shade cast by a battered old silver cup: namely and to wit, the Edward B. Wimpus Team Trophy, permanently at home on the mantelpiece in the lounging room.

Two

Going back to the beginning, we never had a chance to blame Ambrose on the Membership Committee; he slipped in on us via the junior-member clause. Old Man Phipps does not play golf; but he is a charter member of the club and, according to the by-laws, the sons of members between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one enjoy all the privileges of the institution.

Ambrose was nineteen when he returned rather hurriedly from college. He did this at the earnest and unanimous request of the Faculty and, it was whispered, the police department of the university town. He hadn’t done much of anything, but he had tried very hard to drive a touring car and seven chorus girls through a plate-glass window into a restaurant. The press agent of the show saw his chance to get some publicity for the broilers, and after an interview with the Faculty Ambrose caught the first train for home.

Having nothing to do and plenty of time in which to do it, Ambrose decided to become a golfer. Old Dunn’l MacQuarrie, our professional, sold him a large leather bag full of tools and gave him two lessons. Thus equipped and fortified, young Mr. Phipps essayed to brighten our drab lives by allowing us to play golf with him. Now this sort of thing may be done in some clubs, but not in ours. We do not permit our sacred institutions to be “rushed” by the golfing novice. We are not snobbish, but we plead guilty to being the least bit set in our ways. They are good ways, and they suit us. The club is an old one, as golf clubs go in this country, and most of the playing members are men past forty years of age. Nearly all of the foursomes are permanent affairs, the same men playing together week after week, season in and season out. The other matches are made in advance, by telephone or word of mouth, and the member who turns up minus a game on Saturday afternoon is out of luck.

We do not leap at the stranger with open arms. We do not leap at him at all. We stand off and look him over. We put him on probation; and if he shapes up well, and walks lightly, and talks softly, and does not try to dynamite his way into matches where he is not wanted, some day he will be invited to fill up a foursome. Invited—make a note of that. Now see what Ambrose did.

With his customary lack of tact, he selected the very worst day in the week to thrust himself upon our notice. It was a Saturday, and the lounging room was crowded with members, most of whom were shaking dice for the luncheons. With a single exception, all the foursomes were made up for the afternoon.

A short, sturdily built youngster came through the doorway from the locker room and paused close to the table where I was sitting. His hair was red—the sort of red that will not be ignored—and he wore it combed straight back over the top of his head. His slightly irregular features were covered with large brown freckles, and on his upper lip was a volunteer crop of lightish fuzz, which might, in time, become a moustache. His green sport coat was new, his flannel trousers were new, his shoes were new—from neck to sole he fairly shrieked with newness. Considering that he was a stranger in a strange club, a certain amount of reticence would not have hurt the young man’s entrance; but he burst through the swinging door with a skip and a swagger, and there was a broad grin on his homely countenance. It was quite evident that he expected to find himself among friends.

“Who wants a game?” he cried. “Don’t all speak at once, men!”

A few of the members nearest the door glanced up, eyed the youth curiously, and returned to their dice boxes. The others had not heard him at all. Harson and Billford looked at me.

“Who’s the fresh kid?” asked Billford.

“That,” said I, “is Ambrose Phipps, only son of Old Man Phipps.”

“Humph!” grunted Harson. “The living, breathing proof that marriage is a failure. What’s he want?”

Ambrose himself answered the question. He had advanced to our table.

“You gentlemen got a game?” he asked, laying his hand on Billford’s shoulder.

Now if there is anything that Billford loathes and detests, it is familiarity on short acquaintance. He hadn’t even met this fresh youth; so he shrugged his shoulder in a very pointed manner and glared at Ambrose. The boy did not remove his hand.

“‘S all right, old top,” said he reassuringly. “It’s clean—just washed it. Clean as your shirt.” He bent down and looked at Billford’s collar. “No,” said he; “cleaner…. Well, how about it? Got your game fixed up?”

“We are waiting for a fourth man.” I answered because Billford didn’t seem able to say anything; he looked on the point of exploding.

“Oh, a fourth man, eh? Well, if he doesn’t turn up you know me.” And Ambrose passed on to the next table.

“Insufferable young rotter!” snarled Billford.

“Quite so,” said Harson; “but he’ll never miss anything by being too bashful to ask for it. Look! He’s asking everybody!”

Ambrose made the entire circuit of the room. We could not hear what he said, but we felt the chill he left in his wake. Men glanced up when he addressed them, stared for an instant, and went back to their dice. Some of them were polite in their refusals, some were curt, some were merely disgusted. When he reached the table where Bishop, Gilmore, Moreman and Elder were sitting, they laughed at him. They are our star golfers and members of the team. The Dingbats were too much astonished to show resentment; but when Ambrose left them he patted Doc Pinkinson on the head, and the old gentleman sputtered for the best part of an hour.

It was a discouraging tour, and any one else would have hunted a quiet corner and crawled into it; but not Ambrose. He returned to our end of the room, and the pleased and expectant light in his eyes had given way to a steely glare. He beckoned to one of the servants.

“Hey, George! Who’s the boss here? Who’s the Big Finger?”

“Misteh Harson, he’s one of ’em, suh. He’s a membeh of the Greens Committee.”

“Show him to me!”

“Right there, suh, settin’ by the window.”

Ambrose strode across to us and addressed himself to Harson.

“My name is Phipps,” said he. “I’m a junior member here, registered and all that, and I want to get a game this afternoon. So far, I haven’t had any luck.”

Harson is really a mild and kindly soul. He hates to hurt any one’s feelings.

“Perhaps all the games are made up,” he suggested. “Saturday is a bad day, unless your match is arranged beforehand.”

“Zat so? Humph! Nice clubby spirit you have here. You make a fellow feel so much at home!”

“So we notice,” grunted Billford.

Ambrose looked at him and smiled. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant smile. Then he turned back to Harson.

“How about that fourth man of yours?” he demanded. “Has he shown up yet?”

Billford caught my eye.

“Some one must have left the outside door open,” said he. “Seems to me I feel a strong draught.”

“Put on another shirt!” Ambrose shot the retort without an instant’s hesitation. “Now say, if your fourth man isn’t here, what’s the matter with me?”

“Possibly there is nothing the matter with you,” said Harson pleasantly; “but if you are a beginner——”

“Aw, you don’t need to be afraid of my game!” grinned Ambrose. “I’ll be easy picking.”

“That isn’t the point,” explained Harson. “Our game would be too fast for you.”

“Well, what of it? How am I ever going to learn if I never play with anybody better than I am? Don’t you take any interest in young blood, or is this a close corporation, run for the benefit of a lot of old fossils, playing hooky from the bone yard?”

“Oh, run away, little boy, and sell your papers!” Billford couldn’t stand it any longer.

“I will if you lend me that shirt for a make-up!” snapped Ambrose. “Now don’t get mad, Cutie. Remember, you picked on me first. A man with a neck as thick as yours ought not to let his angry passions rise. First thing you know, you’ll bust something in that bonemeal mill of yours, and then you won’t know anything.” Ambrose put his hands on his hips and surveyed the entire gathering. “A nice, cheerful, clubby bunch!” he exclaimed. “Gee! What a picnic a hermit crab could have in this place, meeting so many congenial souls!”

“If you don’t like it,” said Billford, “you don’t have to stay here a minute.”

“That’s mighty sweet of you,” said Ambrose; “but, you see, I’ve made up my mind to learn this fool game if it takes all summer. I’d hate to quit now, even to oblige people who have been so courteous to me…. Well, good-by, you frozen stiffs! Maybe I can hire that sour old Scotchman to go round with me. He’s not what you might call a cheerful companion, but, at that, he’s got something on you. He’s human, anyway!”

Ambrose went outside and banged the door behind him. Billford made a few brief observations; but his remarks, though vivid and striking, were not quite original. Harson shook his head, and in the silence following Ambrose’s exit we heard Doc Pinkinson’s voice:

“If that pup was mine I’d drown him; doggone me if I wouldn’t!”

Young Mr. Phipps, you will observe, got in wrong at the very start.

Three

Bad news travels fast when a few press agents get behind it, and not all the personal publicity is handed out by a man’s loving friends. Those who had met Ambrose warned those who had not, and whenever his fiery red head appeared in the lounging room there was a startling drop in the temperature.

For a few weeks he persisted in trying to secure matches with members of the club, but nobody would have anything to do with him—not even old Purdue McCormick, who toddles about the course with a niblick in one hand and a mid-iron in the other, sans bag, sans caddie, sans protection of the game laws. When such a renegade as Purdue refused to go turf-tearing with him Ambrose gave up in disgust and devoted himself to the serious business of learning the royal and ancient game. He infested the course from dawn till dark, a solitary figure against the sky line; our golfing Ishmael, a wild ass loose upon the links, his hand against every man and every man’s hand against him.

He wore a chip on his shoulder for all of us; and it was during this period that Anderson, our club champion and Number One on the team, christened Ambrose “Little Poison Ivy,” because of the irritating effect of personal contact with him.

Ambrose couldn’t have had a great deal of fun out of the situation; but MacQuarrie made money out of it. The redhead hired the professional to play with him and criticise his shots. The dour old Scotch mercenary did not like Ambrose any better than we did, but toward the end of the first month he admitted to me that the boy had the makings of a star golfer, though not, he was careful to explain, “the pr-roper temperament for the game.”

“But it’s just amazin’, the way he picks up the shots,” said Dunn’l. “Ay, he’ll have everything but the temperament.”

As the summer drew to a close the annual team matches began, and we forgot Ambrose and all else in our anxiety over the fate of the Edward B. Wimpus Trophy.

Every golf club, you must know, has its pet trophy. Ours is the worn old silver cup that represents the team championship of the Association. A pawnbroker wouldn’t look at it twice; but to us, who are familiar with its history and the trips it has made to different clubhouses, the Edward B. Wimpus Trophy is priceless, and more to be desired than diamonds or pearls.

When the late Mr. Wimpus donated the cup he stipulated that it should be held in trust by the club winning the annual team championship, and that it should become the property of the club winning it three times in succession. For twenty years we had been fighting for permanent possession of the trophy, and engraved on its shining surface was the record of our bitter disappointment—not to mention the disappointment of the Bellevue Golf Club. Twice we had been in a position to add the third and final victory, and twice the Bellevue quintet had dashed our hopes. Twice we had retaliated by preventing them from retiring the Wimpus Trophy from competition; and now, with two winning years behind us and a third opportunity in sight, we talked and thought of nothing else.

According to the rules governing team play in our Association, each club is represented by five men, contesting from scratch and without handicaps of any sort. In the past, two teams have outclassed the field, and once more history repeated itself, for the Bellevue bunch fought us neck and neck through the entire period of competition. With one match remaining to be played, they were tied with us for first place, and that match brought the Bellevue team to our course last Friday afternoon.

I was on hand when the visitors filed into the locker room at noon—MacNeath, Smathers, Crane, Lounsberry and Jordan—five seasoned and dependable golfers, veterans of many a hard match; fighters who never know when they are beaten. They looked extremely fit, and not in the least worried at the prospect of meeting our men on their own course.

They brought their own gallery, too, Bellevue members who talked even money and flashed yellow-backed bills. The Dingbats formed a syndicate and covered all bets; but this was due to club pride rather than any feeling of confidence. We knew our boys were in for a tough battle, in which neither side would have a marked advantage.

Four of our team players were on hand to welcome the enemy—Moreman, Bishop, Elder and Gilmore—and they offered their opponents such hospitality as is customary on like occasions.

“Thanks,” said MacNeath with a grin; “but just now we’re drinking water. After the match you can fill the cup with anything you like, and we’ll allow you one drink out of it before we take it home with us. Once we get it over there it’ll never come back. It’s not in the cards for you to win three times running…. Where’s Anderson?”

“He hasn’t shown up yet,” said Bishop.

“He’s on the way out in his car,” added Moreman. “I rang up his house five minutes ago. He’d just left.”

“Oh, very well,” said MacNeath, who is Number One man for Bellevue, as well as captain of the team. “Suppose we have lunch now, Bishop; and while we’re eating you can give me the list of your players and I’ll match them up.”

In team play it is customary for the home captain to submit the names of his players, ranked from one to five, in the order of their ability. The visiting captain then has the privilege of making the individual matches; and this is supposed to offset whatever advantage the home team has by reason of playing on its own course.

Bishop, our captain, handed over a list reading as follows: 1—Anderson; 2—Moreman; 3—Bishop; 4—Elder; 5—Gilmore. MacNeath bracketed his own name with Anderson’s, and paired Crane with Moreman, Lounsberry with Bishop, Smathers with Elder, and Jordan with Gilmore.

After luncheon the men changed to their golfing togs; but still there was no sign of Anderson. Another telephone call confirmed the first message; his wife reported that he had left his home nearly an hour before, bound for the club.

“Queer!” said MacNeath. “Engine trouble or a puncture—possibly both. It’s not like the Swede to be late. Might as well get started, eh? Anderson and I will go last, anyhow.”

A big gallery watched the first pair drive off, Gilmore getting a better ball than Jordan, and cheering those who believe in omens. Then at five-minute intervals, came Lounsberry and Bishop, Smathers and Elder, and Crane and Moreman. Each match attracted a small individual gallery, but most of the spectators waited to follow the Number One men. MacNeath, refusing to allow himself to be made nervous by the delay, went into the clubhouse; and many and wild were the speculations as to the cause of Anderson’s tardiness. The wildest one of them fell short of the bitter truth, which came to us at the end of a telephone wire located in the professional’s shop. It had been relayed on from the switchboard in the club office:

“Anderson blew a front tire at the city limits. Car turned over with him and broke his leg.”

A bombshell exploding under our noses could not have created more consternation. There we were, with four of the matches under way, our best man crippled, and up against the proposition of providing an opponent for MacNeath, admittedly the most dangerous player on the Bellevue team. Harson, as a member of the Greens Committee and an officer of the club, assumed charge of the situation as soon as he heard the news.

“No good sending word to poor old Bishop,” said he. “He’s the team captain, of course; but he can’t do anything about it. Besides, he’s already playing his match, and this would upset him terribly. Is there any one here who can give MacNeath a run for his money?”

“Not unless you want to try it,” said I.

“He’d eat me alive!” groaned Harson. “We might as well forfeit one match, and put it up to the boys to win three out of four. Oh, if we only had one more good man!”

“Ye have,” said MacQuarrie, who had been listening. “Ye’ve overlooked young Mister Phipps.”

“That kid?” demanded Harson. “Nonsense!”

“Ay,” said Dunn’l; “that kid! Call it nonsense if ye like, sir, but he was under eighty twice yesterday. This mor-rnin’ he shot a seventy-seven, with two missed putts the length o’ your ar-rm. He’s on top of his game now, an’ goin’ strong. If he’ll shoot back to his mor-rnin’ round he’ll give Mister MacNeath a battle; but the lad has never been in a competition, so ye’ll have to chance his ner-rves.”

“Ambrose!” I exclaimed. “I never should have thought of him!”

“Of course ye wouldn’t,” said MacQuarrie. “Ye’ve never played with him—never even seen him play.”

“But he’s such a little rotter!” mumbled Harson.

“Ay,” said Dunn’l; “an’, grantin’ ye that, he’s still the best ye have. He’s in the clubhouse now, dressed an’ ready to start, once the crowd is out of the way.”

“And he really did a seventy-seven this morning?” asked Harson.

“With two missed putts—wee ones.”

I looked at Harson and Harson looked at me.

“You go in and put it up to him,” said he at last. “I can’t talk to him without losing my temper.”

I found our little red hope banging the balls about on the billiard table, carefree as a scarlet tanager.

“Young man,” said I, “your country calls you.”

“I’m under age,” said Ambrose, calmly squinting along his cue. “Don’t bother me. This is a tough shot.”

“Well, then,” said I, “your club calls you.”

“My club, eh?” remarked the redhead with nasty emphasis. “Any time this club calls me I’m stone-deaf.”

“Listen to me a minute, Phipps. This is the day of the big team match and we’re up against it hard. Anderson turned his car over on the way out and broke his leg. We want you to take his place.”

“Anderson,” repeated Ambrose. “Ain’t that the squarehead who calls me Little Poison Ivy? Only his leg, eh? Tough luck!”

“You bet it is!” I exclaimed, ignoring his meaning. “Tough luck for all of us, because if we can’t dig up a man to take Anderson’s place we’ll have to forfeit that particular match to MacNeath. We’d set our hearts on winning this time, because it would give us the permanent possession of the team trophy that we’ve been shooting at for twenty years——”

“Let your voice fall right there!” commanded Ambrose. “Trophies are nothing in my young life. This club is nothing in my life. Everybody here has treated me worse than a yellow dog. Go ahead and take your medicine; and I hope they lick you and make you like it!”

I saw it was time to try another tack. Ambrose had used one word that had put an idea into my head.

“All right,” said I. “Have it your own way. Perhaps it was a mistake to mention MacNeath’s name.”

“What do you mean—a mistake?” He fired up instantly.

“Well,” said I, “you must know Mac by reputation. He’s one of the best golfers in the state and a tough proposition to beat. He’s their Number One man—their star player. He shoots pretty close to par all the time.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” asked Ambrose.

“Why, nothing; only——”

“Only what?”

“Well, they all said you wouldn’t want to go up against such a strong player.”

“Who said that?”

“Oh, everybody. Yes; it was a mistake to mention his name. I’m frank enough to say that I wouldn’t tackle him without a handicap. MacNeath is hard game.”

“Look here!” snapped the redhead. “You’re off on the wrong foot entirely. You’re barking up the wrong tree. It’s not because I’m afraid of this MacNeath, or anybody else. I licked that sour old Scotchman this morning, and I guess you’ll agree he’s not soft picking. It’s just that I don’t feel that this club ought to ask a favor of me.”

“A favor! Why, man alive, it’s a compliment to stick you in at Number One—the biggest compliment we can pay you!”

“Well,” said Ambrose slowly, “if you look at it in that light——”

“I most certainly do…. But if you’d rather not meet MacNeath——”

Ambrose dropped his cue with a crash.

“You don’t really think I’m yellow, do you?” he cried.

“If you are,” said I, “you’re the first redhead that ever got his color scheme mixed.”

The little rascal grinned like a gargoyle.

“Listen!” said he confidentially. “You’ve used me pretty well—to my face, anyhow—and I’ll tell yon this much: I don’t care the snap of my fingers for your ratty old cup. I care even less for the members of this club—present company excepted, you understand; but I can’t stand it to have anybody think I’m not game. Ever since I was a runt of a kid I’ve had to fight, and they can say anything about me except that I’m a quitter…. Why, I’ve stuck round here for nearly five months just because I wouldn’t let a lot of old fossils drive me out and make me quit—five months without a friend in the place, and only MacQuarrie to talk to.

“If I’d been yellow it would have shown that first Saturday when everybody turned me down so cold. I wanted to walk out and never come back. I wanted to; but I stuck. Honest, if I’m anything at all I’m game—game enough to stand the gaff and take the worst of it; and I’ll prove it to you by playing this bird, no matter how good he is. I’ll fight him every jump of the way, and if he licks me he’ll have to step out some to do it. What’s a licking, anyway? I’ve had a thousand of ’em! Plenty of people can lick me; but you bet your life nobody ever scared me!”

“Good kid!” said I, and held out my hand.

After an instant’s hesitation Ambrose seized it. “Now lead me to this MacNeath person,” said he. “I suppose we ought to be introduced, eh? Or has he been told that I’m the Country Club leper?”

It was a sorely disappointed gallery that welcomed the substitute—disappointed and amazed; but the few Bellevue members were openly jubilant. They had reason to be, for word had been brought back to them that Lounsberry and Crane were running away with their matches. Between them and the cup they saw only a golfing novice, a junior member without a war record. They immediately began offering odds of two to one on the MacNeath-Phipps match; but there were no takers. The Dingbats held a lodge of sorrow in the shade of the caddie house and mournfully estimated their losses, while our feminine contingent showed signs of retreating to the porch and spending the afternoon at bridge.

MacNeath was first on the tee—a tall, flat-muscled, athletic man of forty; and, as the veteran was preparing to drive, Ambrose and MacQuarrie held a whispered conversation.

“I’d like to grab some of that two to one,” said the boy.

“Don’t be foolish,” counseled the canny Scot. “Ye’ll have enough on your mind wi’out makin’ bets; an’ for pity’s sake, remember what I’ve told ye—slow back, don’t press, keep your head down, an’ count three before ye look up. Hit them like ye did this mor-rnin’ an’ ye’ve a grand chance to win.”

MacNeath sent his usual tee shot straight down the course, a long, well-placed ball; and Ambrose stepped forward in the midst of a silence that was almost painful.

“Mighty pretty,” said he with a careless nod at his opponent. “Hope I do as well.”

“Ye can,” muttered old Dunn’l, “if ye’ll keep your fool mouth shut an’ your eye on the ball!”

As Ambrose stooped to arrange his tee he caught a glimpse of the gallery—a long, triple row of spectators, keenly interested in his next move—expectant, anxious, apprehensive. Something of the mental attitude of the audience communicated itself to the youngster, and he paused for an instant, crouched on one knee. When he rose all the nonchalant ease was gone from his manner, all the cocksureness out of his eyes. He looked again at MacNeath’s ball, a white speck far down the fairway. MacQuarrie groaned and shook his head.

“Never mind that one!” he whispered to himself savagely. “Play the one on the tee!”

Ambrose fidgeted as he took his stance, shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and his first practice swing was short and jerky. He seemed to realize this, for he tried again before he stepped forward to the ball. It was no use; the result was the same. He had suddenly stiffened in every muscle and joint—gone tense with the nervous strain. He did manage to remember about the back swing—it was slow enough to suit anybody; but at the top of it he faltered, hesitating just long enough to destroy the rhythm that produces a perfect shot. He realized this, too, and tried to make up for it by lunging desperately at the ball; but as the club-face went through he jerked up his head and turned it sharply to the left. The inevitable penalty for this triple error was a wretchedly topped ball, which skipped along the ground until it reached the bunker.

“Well, by the sweet and suffering——”

This was as far as Ambrose got before he remembered that he had a gallery. He scuttled off the tee, very much abashed; and MacNeath followed, covering the ground with long, even strides. There was just the thin edge of a smile on the veteran’s lean, bronzed face.

Moved by a common impulse, the spectators turned their backs and began to drift across the lawn to the Number Ten tee. They had seen quite enough. Old Doc Pinkinson voiced the general sentiment:

“No use following a bad match when you can see a good one, folks. Gilmore and Jordan are just driving off at Ten. I knew that redhead was a fizzer—a false alarm.”

“Can’t understand why they let him play at all!” scolded Daddy Bradshaw. “Might just as well put me in there against MacNeath! Fools!”

MacQuarrie obstinately refused to quit his pupil.

“He boggled his swing,” growled Dunn’l; “he fair jumped at the ball, an’ he looked up before he hit it. He’ll do better wi’out a gallery. Come along, sir!”

I followed as far as the first bunker. Though his ball was half buried in the sand, Ambrose attempted to skim it over the wall with a mashie, an idiotic thing to do, and an all but impossible shot. He got exactly what his lunacy deserved—a much worse lie than before, close against the bank—and this exhibition of poor judgment cost him half his audience.

“What, not going already?” asked Ambrose after he had played four and picked up his ball. “Stick round a while. This is going to be good.”

I said I wanted to see how the other matches were coming on.

“Everybody seems to feel the same way,” said the redhead, looking at the retreating gallery. “All because I slopped that drive! I’ll have that audience back again—see if I don’t! And I’ll bet you I won’t look up on another shot all day!”

“If ye do,” grumbled MacQuarrie, “I’ll never play wi’ye again as long as ye live!”

“That’s a promise!” cried Ambrose. “One down, eh? Where do we go from here?”

Four

Our team veterans did not lack sympathetic encouragement on the last nine holes, and all four matches tightened up to such an extent that we wavered between hope and fear until Crane’s final putt on the seventeenth green dropped us into the depths of despair.

Gilmore, setting the pace with Jordan, gave us early encouragement by maintaining a safe lead throughout and winning his match, 3 to 2. First blood was ours, but the period of rejoicing was a short one; for the deliberate Lounsberry, approaching and putting with heartbreaking accuracy, disposed of Bishop on the seventeenth green.

“One apiece,” said Doc Pinkinson. “Now what’s Elder doing?”

The Elder-Smathers match came to Number Seventeen all square; but our man ended the suspense by dropping a beautiful mashie pitch dead to the pin from a distance of one hundred yards. Smathers’ third shot also reached the green; but his long putt went wide and Elder tapped the ball into the cup, adding a second victory to our credit.

“It’s looking better every minute!” chirped the irrepressible Doc Pinkinson. “Now if Moreman can lick his man we’re all hunky-dory. If he loses—good-a-by, cup! No use figuring on that red-headed snipe of a kid. MacNeath has sent him to the cleaner’s by now, sure!”

The gallery waited at the seventeenth green, watching in anxious silence as Crane and Moreman played their pitch shots over the guarding bunker. Both were well on in threes; but the Bellevue caddie impudently held his forefinger in the air as a sign that his man was one up. Moreman made a good try, but his fourth shot stopped a few inches from the cup; and Crane, after studying the roll of the green for a full minute, dropped a forty-foot putt for a four—and dropped our spirits with it.

“That settles it!” wheezed Daddy Bradshaw. “No need to bother about that other match…. Oh, if Anderson was so set on breaking his leg, why didn’t he wait till to-morrow?”

“Then he could have busted ’em both,” remarked the unfeeling Pinkinson, “and nobody would have said a word. Might’s well pay those bets, I reckon. We got as much chance as that snowball they’re always talking about. If it didn’t melt, somebody would eat it.”

He turned and looked back along the course. Two figures appeared on the skyline, proceeding in the direction of the sixteenth tee. The first one was tall, and moved with long, even strides; the second was short, and even at the distance it seemed to strut and swagger.

“Hello!” ejaculated Pinkinson. “Ain’t that MacNeath and the kid, going to Sixteen? It is, by golly! D’you reckon they’re playing out the bye holes just for fun—or what?”

“It can’t be anything else,” said Bradshaw. “The boy couldn’t have carried him that far.”

Somebody plucked at my sleeve. It was a small dirty-faced caddie, very much out of breath.

“Mister Phipps says—if you want to see—some reg’lar golf—you’d better catch the finish—of his match. He says—bring all the gang with you.”

“The finish of his match!” I cried. “Isn’t it over? You don’t mean that they’re still playing?”

“Still playin’ is right!” panted the caddie. “They was all square-when I left ’em.”

All square! Like a flash the news ran through the gallery. The various groups, already drifting disconsolately in the direction of the clubhouse, halted and began buzzing with excitement and incredulity. All square? Nonsense! It couldn’t be true. A green kid like that holding MacNeath to an even game for fifteen holes? Rot! But, in spite of the doubts so openly expressed, there was a brisk and general movement backward along the course, with the sixteenth putting green as an objective point.

It was a much augmented gallery that lined the side hill above the contestants. All the other team members were there, our men surprised and skeptical, and the Bellevue players nervous and apprehensive. There was also a troop of idle caddies, who had received the word by some mysterious wireless of their own devising.

“MacNeath is down in four,” whispered one of the youngsters; “and Reddy has got to sink this one.”

Ambrose’s ball was four feet from the cup. He walked up to it, took one look at the line, one at the hole, and made the shot without an instant’s hesitation—a clean, firm tap that gave the ball no chance to waver, but sent it squarely into the middle of the cup. MacQuarrie himself could not have shown more confidence. MacNeath’s caddie replaced the flag in the hole, dropped both hands to his hips, and moved them back and forth in a level, sweeping gesture. His sign language answered the question uppermost in every mind. Still all square! A patter of applause gave thanks for the information and Ambrose looked up at us with a quizzical grin. I caught his eye, and the rascal winked at me.

He was first on the seventeenth tee, and this time there was no sign of nervous tension. After a single powerful practice swing he stepped forward to his ball, pressed the sole of his club lightly behind it, and got off a tremendous tee shot. I noticed that his lips moved; and he did not raise his head until the ball was well down the course.

“He’s countin’ three before he looks up!” whispered a voice in my ear; and there was MacQuarrie, the butt of a dead cigar between his teeth, and his eyes alive with all the emotions a Scot may feel but can never express in words.

“Then he’s really been playing good golf?” I asked.

“Ay. Grand golf! They both have. It’s a dingdong match, an’ just a question which one will crack fir-rst.”

MacNeath’s drive held out no hope that he was about to crack under the strain of an even battle. He executed the tee shot with the machinelike precision of the veteran golfer—stance, swing and follow-through standardised by years of experience.

Our seventeenth hole is a long one, par 5, and the approach to the putting green is guarded by an embankment, paralleled on the far side by a wide and treacherous sand trap, put there to encourage clean mashie pitches. The average player cannot reach the bunker on his second, much less carry the sand trap on the other side of it; but the long drivers sometimes string two tremendous wooden-club shots together and reach the edge of the green. More frequently they get into trouble and pay the penalty for attempting too much.

The two balls were close together; but Ambrose’s shot was the longer one by a matter of feet, and it was up to MacNeath to play first. Would he gamble and go for the green, or would he play short and make sure of a five? The veteran estimated the distance, looked carefully at his lie, and then pulled an iron from his bag. Instantly I knew what was passing in his mind—sensed his golfing strategy: MacNeath intended to place his second shot short of the bunker, in the hope that Ambrose would be tempted into risking the long, dangerous wooden-club shot across to the green.

“Aha!” whispered MacQuarrie. “The old fox! He’ll not take a chance himself, but he wants the lad to take one. ‘“Will ye walk into my parlor!” says the spider to the fly.’ Ay; that’s just it—will he, now?”

Ambrose gave us no time for suspense. MacNeath’s ball had hardly stopped rolling before his decision was made—and a sound one at that! He whipped his mid-iron from the bag.

“’Fraid I’ll have to fool you, old chap,” said he airily. “You wanted me to go for the green—eh, what? Well, I hate to disappoint you; but I can’t gamble in an even game—not when the kitty is a sand trap…. Ride, you little round rascal; ride!”

The last remark was addressed to the ball just before the blade of the mid-iron flicked it from the grass. Again there were two white specks in the distance, lying side by side. If MacNeath was disappointed he did not show it, but tramped on down the course, silent as usual and absorbed in the game. Both took fives on the hole, missing long putts; and the battle was still all square.

Our home hole is a par 4—a blind drive and an iron pitch to the green; and the vital shot is the one from the tee. It must go absolutely straight and high enough to carry the top of the hill, one hundred and forty yards away. To the right is an abrupt downward slope, ending in a deep ravine. To the left, and out of sight from the tee, is a wide sand trap, with the father of all bunkers at its far edge. The only safe ball is the one that sails over the direction post.

Ambrose drove; and a smothered gasp went up from the gallery. The ball had the speed of a bullet, as well as a perfect line; and, at first, I thought it would rise enough to skim the crest of the hill. Instead of that, it seemed to duck in flight, caught the hard face of the incline, and kicked abruptly to the left. It was that crooked bound which broke all our hearts; for we knew that, barring a miracle, our man was in the sand trap.

“Hard luck!” said MacNeath; and I think he really meant to be sympathetic.

Ambrose looked at him as a bulldog might look at a mastiff.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that!” he answered, rather stiffly. “I like to play my second shot from over there.”

“You’re welcome!” said MacNeath; and completed our discomfiture by poling out a tremendous shot, which carried well over the direction post and went sailing on up the plateau toward the clubhouse.

No man ever hit a longer ball at a more opportune time. As we toiled up the hill I tried to say something hopeful.

“He may have stopped short of the trap.”

“Not a hope!” said MacQuarrie, chewing at his cigar. “He’ll be in—up to his neck.”

Sure enough, when we reached the summit there was the caddie, a mournful statue on the edge of the sand trap. The crowd halted at a proper distance and Ambrose and MacNeath went forward alone. MacQuarrie and I swung off to the left, for we wanted to see how deep the ball was in and what sort of a lie it had found.

“Six feet in from the edge,” muttered Dunn’l, “an’ twenty feet away from the wall. Lyin’ up on top of the sand too. An iron wi’ a little loft to it, a clean shot, a good thir-rd, an’ he might get a four yet. It’s just possible.”

“But not probable,” said I. “What on earth is he waiting for?”

Ambrose had taken a seat on the edge of the trap; and as he looked from the ball to the bunker looming in front of it, he rolled a cigarette.

“You don’t mind if I study this situation a bit?” said he to MacNeath.

“Take your time,” said the veteran.

“Because I wouldn’t want to use the wrong club here,” continued Ambrose.

The caddie said something to him at this point; but Phipps shook his red head impatiently and continued to puff at his cigarette. He caught a glimpse of me and beckoned.

“How do the home boys stand on this cup thing?” he asked.

“All even—two matches to two.”

“That,” said Ambrose after a thoughtful pause, “seems to put it up to me.”

At last he rose, tossed away the cigarette end and, reaching for his bag, drew out a wooden club. Again the caddie said something; but Ambrose waved him away. There was not a sound from his audience, but a hundred heads wagged dolefully in unison. A wooden club—out of a trap? Suicide! Sheer suicide! An iron might give him a fighting chance to halve the hole; but my last lingering hope died when I saw that club in the boy’s hand. The infernal young lunatic! I believe I said something of the sort to MacQuarrie.

“Sh-h!” he whispered. “Yon’s a baffy. I made it for him.”

“What’s a baffy?”

“Well, it’s just a kind of an exaggerated bulldog spoon—ye might almost call it a wooden mashie, wi’ a curvin’ sole on it. It’s great for distance. The lie is good, the wind’s behind him, an’ if he can only hit it clean—clean!——Oh, ye little red devil, keep your head down—keep your head down an’ hit it clean!”

I shall never forget the picture spread out along the edge of that green plateau—the red-headed stocky youngster in the sand trap taking his stance and whipping the clubhead back and forth; MacNeath coolly leaning on his driver and smiling over a match already won; the two caddies in the background, one sneeringly triumphant, the other furiously angry; the rim of spectators, motionless, hopeless.

Everybody was watching Ambrose, and I think Old MacQuarrie was the only onlooker who was not absolutely certain that the choice of a wrong club was throwing away our last slender chance.

When the tension was almost unbearable the redhead turned and grinned at MacNeath.

“I suppose you’d shoot this with an iron,” said he; “but the baffy is a great club—if you’ve got the nerve to use it.”

Ambrose settled his feet firmly in the sand, craned his neck for a final look at the flag, two hundred yards away, dropped his chin on his chest, waggled the clubhead over the ball, and then swung with every ounce of strength in his sturdy body. I heard a sharp click, saw a tiny feather of sand spurt into the air, and against the blue sky I caught a glimpse of a soaring white speck, which went higher and higher until I lost it altogether. The next thing I knew, the spectators were cheering, yelling, screaming; and some one was hammering me violently between the shoulder blades. It was the unemotional Dunn’l MacQuarrie, gone completely daft with excitement.

“Oh, man!” he cried. “He picked it up as clean as a whistle, an’ he’s on the green—on the green!”

“Told you that was a sweet little club!” said Ambrose as he climbed out of the trap. “Takes nerve to use one though. On the green, eh? Well, I guess that’ll hold you for a while.”

His prediction soon had a solid backing of fact. MacNeath, the iron man, the dependable Number One, the match player without nerves, was not proof against a miracle. Ambrose’s phenomenal recovery had shaken the veteran to the soles of his shoes.

MacNeath’s second shot was an easy pitch to the green, but he lingered too long over it; the blade of his mashie caught the turf at least three inches behind the ball and shot it off at an angle into the thick, long grass that guards the eighteenth green. He was forced to use a heavy niblick on his third; but the ball rolled thirty feet beyond the pin. He tried hard for the long putt, but missed, and picked up when Ambrose laid his third shot on the lip of the cup.

By the most fortunate fluke ever seen on a golf course our little red Ishmael had won for us the permanent possession of the Edward B. Wimpus Trophy.

MacNeath was game. He picked up his ball with the left hand and offered his right to Ambrose. “Well done!” said he.

“Thanks!” responded Ambrose. “Guess I kind of jarred you with that baffy shot. It’s certainly a dandy club in a pinch. Better let MacQuarrie make you one.”

MacNeath swallowed hard and nearly managed a smile.

“It wasn’t the club,” said he. “It was just burglar’s luck. You couldn’t do it again in a thousand years!”

“Maybe not,” replied the victor; “but when you get back to Bellevue you tell all the dear chappies there that I got away with it once—got away with it the one time when it counted!”

At this point the gallery closed in and overwhelmed young Mr. Phipps. Inside of a minute he heard more pleasant things about himself than had come to his ears in a lifetime. He did not dispute a single statement that was made; nor did he discount one by so much as the deprecating lift of an eyebrow. For once in his life he agreed with everybody. In the stag celebration that followed—with the Edward B. Wimpus Cup in the middle of the big round table—he was easily induced to favor us with a few brief remarks. He informed us that tin cups were nothing in his young life, club spirit was nothing, but that gameness was everything—and the cheering was led by the Dingbats!

Now you know why we feel that we owe Ambrose something; and, if I am any judge, that debt will be paid with heavy interest. Dunn’l MacQuarrie is also a winner. He has booked so many orders for baffles that he is now endeavoring to secure the services of a first-class club maker.

As Ambrose often tells us, the baffy is a sweet little club to have in the bag—provided, of course, you have the nerve to use it.

The Major, D.O.S.

One

I despise the sort of man who gloats and pokes his finger at you and reminds you that he told you so. I hope I am not in that class, and I would be the last to rub salt into an open wound; still I see no harm in calling attention to the fact that I once expressed an opinion which had to do with Englishmen in general and Major Cuthbert Eustace Lawes—D.S.O., and a lot of other initials—in particular. What is more, that opinion was expressed in the presence of Waddles Wilmot and one other director of the Yavapai Golf and Country Club.

“You can’t tell much about an Englishman by looking at him.”

Those were my very words, and I stand by them. I point to them with pride. If Waddles had listened to me—but Waddles never listens to anybody. Sometimes he looks as if he might be listening, when as a matter of fact he is only resting his voice and thinking up something cutting and clever to say next.

Speaking of Waddles, the fault is not all his. We have indulged him with too much authority. We have allowed him to become a sort of autocrat, a golfing Pooh-Bah, a self-appointed committee of one with arbitrary powers. He began looking after the club when it was in its infancy, and now that the organization has grown to quite respectable proportions he does not seem to know how to let go gracefully. He still looks after us, whether we want him to or not, and if it is only the getting out of a new score card Waddles must attend to it, having the first word, the last word and all the words between.

If any one presumes to disagree with him Waddles merely snorts in that disdainful way of his and goes on talking louder and louder until finally the opposition succumbs, blown down by sheer lung power, as it were, gassed before reaching the trenches. Wind is all right in its place, and in moderation, but a steady gale gets on the nerves in time. Waddles is a human simoom, carrying dust, sand and cactus.

I say this in all kindness, for I am really fond of the old boy. He has many admirable qualities, and frequently tells us what they are, but consideration for others is not one of them; and when he plays golf the things he does to an opponent are sinful. He is just as ruthless and overbearing on the links as he is in committee meeting—but of this, more anon—much more. I made my remark about Englishmen a month or so after the Major became a member of the club. We understood that Lawes was a retired infantry officer in poor health, and when he arrived in our part of the world he brought with him a Hindu servant with his head wrapped up in about forty yards of cheesecloth, an unquenchable thirst, some gilt-edged letters of introduction from big people, and a hobnail liver. He was proposed by two of our financial moguls and passed the membership committee without a whisper of dissent.

“This old bird,” said Waddles, “is probably a cracking good golfer. Nearly all Englishmen are. We can use him to plug up that weak spot on the team.” And of course he looked straight at me when he said it. Goodness knows, I never asked to be put on the club team, and I play my worst golf in competition.

Some of the other men thought that the Major would lend a bit of tone to the organization. I presume they got the idea from the string of initials after his name.

As to his golfing, the Major proved a disappointment. He did not seem in any haste to avail himself of the privileges of active membership, and when at the club he spent all his time sitting on the porch and staring at the mountains in the distance. I don’t remember ever seeing him without a tall brandy highball at his elbow.

Personally, the Major wasn’t much to look at. You could just as easily have guessed the age of a mummy. He was long-legged and cadaverous, with thin, sandy hair and a yellowish moustache that never seemed to be trimmed. His mouth was always slightly ajar, his front teeth were unduly prominent, and his chin was short and receded at an acute angle. A side view of the Major suggested a tired, half-starved old rabbit that had lost all interest in life. His eyes were a faded light blue in color and blinked constantly without a vestige of human expression. He was freckled like a turkey egg—freckled all over, but mostly on the neck and the forearms. When he spoke, which was seldom, it was in a thin, hesitating treble, reminiscent of a strayed sheep, and he had an exasperating habit of leaving a sentence half finished and beginning on another one. He could sit for hours, staring straight in front of him and apparently seeing nothing at all. When addressed he usually jumped half out of his chair and said something like this:

“Eh? Oh! God-bless-me! God-bless-me! What say?”

Socially he was a very mangy-looking lion, but we understood that he was very well connected in the old country and not so stupid as he seemed. He couldn’t have been, and lived. He was a bachelor of independent means; he bought a bungalow on Medway Hill and a six-cylinder runabout, which the servant learned to drive, after a fearsome fashion. This put the Major out of the winter-visitor class—which was reassuring—but as the weeks passed and he was never seen with a golf club in his hands Waddles began to worry about that weak spot on the team.

Three of us were watching Lawes one afternoon through a window of the lounging room, which commands a view of the porch. The Major was spread out in a big wicker chair, and, save for certain mechanical movements of the right hand and arm, was as motionless as a turtle on a log. As usual, Waddles was doing most of the talking.

“Ain’t he the study in still life, eh?… With the accent on the still—get me? Still! Ho, ho! Not bad a bit…. Gaze upon him, gentlemen; the world’s most consistent rum hound! He hasn’t moved a muscle in the last hour except to lift that glass. Wonderful type of the athletic Englishman, what-oh? Devoted to sports and pastimes, my word, yes! He wouldn’t qualify for putting the shot, but for putting the highball I’ll back him against all comers.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Jay Gilman, who is a conservative sort of chap and knows Waddles well enough not to believe everything he says. “I don’t know. The old boy makes a drink last a long time. He doesn’t order many in the course of an afternoon. I’ve never seen him the least bit edged.”

“Fellow like that never gets edged,” argued Waddles. “The skin stays just so full all the time. Can’t get any fuller. Did you ever try to talk with his royal jaglets? Sociable as an oyster! I tried to get him opened up the other day. He’s been in India and Africa and everywhere else, they tell me, and I thought he might want to gas about his experiences. War stuff. Nothing stirring. A frost. Kidded him about the Boers, and the way the embattled farmers hung it on perfidious Albion. Couldn’t even get a rise out of him. All he did was stare at me with those fishy eyes of his and make motions with his Adam’s apple! Ever notice the way he watches you when you’re talking to him? It’s enough to make a man nervous! A major, eh? If he was a major, I wonder what the shave-tail lieutenants were like! D.S.O.! They got the initials balled up when they hitched that title to him. It should have been D.O.S.!”

“All right,” said Gilman; “I’ll bite. I’ll be the Patsy. Why D.O.S.?”

“Dismal Old Souse, of course!” cackled Waddles. “Fits him like a glove, eh?”

It was then that I expressed my opinion, as previously quoted: “You can’t tell much about an Englishman by looking at him.”

But Waddles only laughed. He usually laughs at his own witticisms.

“D.O.S.,” said he. “Impromptu, but good. I’ll have to tell it to the boys!”

Two

But for Cyril, I suppose the Major would have remained a chair warmer indefinitely.

Cyril was the Major’s nephew, doing a bit of globe trotting after getting out of college, and he dropped in out of a clear sky, taking the Major entirely by surprise. We heard later that all the Major said was, “Bless me, it’s Cyril, isn’t it?”

Looking at the boy, you knew at once what the Major had been like at twenty-five or thereabouts; so it goes without saying that Cyril was no motion-picture type for beauty. He was tall and thin and gangling, his feet were always in his way, his clothes did not fit him and would not have fitted anything human, his cloth hats were really not hats at all but speckled poultices, and he was as British as the unicorn itself. He was almost painfully shy when among strangers, and blushed if any one spoke to him; but his coming seemed to cheer the Major tremendously. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but I presume the D.O.S. had been lonely for his kind. Cyril was his kind—no question about that—and the pair of them held a love feast which lasted all of one afternoon. Waddles witnessed this touching family reunion and told us about it afterward, but it is likely he handled the truth in his usual nonchalant manner. Waddles would never spoil a good story for the sake of mere accuracy.

“It was great stuff!” said he. “They sat out there on the porch and gabbled terribly. A dumb man couldn’t have got a word in edge-wise. The Major was never at a loss for a topic of conversation. As fast as one was exhausted he would look in his glass and say, ‘Shan’t we have another, dear boy?’ Friend Nephew never missed his cue once. ‘Rawther!’ he’d say, or ‘Right-oh!’ Then the Major would hoist signals of distress and make signs at the waiter. Oh, it was lovely to see them taking so much comfort in each other’s society—and so much nourishment.”

“What I want to know is this,” put in Jay Gilman: “Did it liven ’em up any?”

“Not so you could notice it with the naked eye. For all the effect that anybody could see, the stuff might just as well have been poured into a pair of gopher holes. They went away at six o’clock, solemn and dignified, loaded to capacity but not even listing the least bit from the cargo they’d taken on. A lot of raw material wasted. That sort of thing is inhuman—uncanny. It must be a gift that runs in families—what?”

Before long we had a real sensation—the Major blossomed out into a playing member. A mummy doing a song and dance wouldn’t have created any more excitement round the clubhouse. Even the caddies were talking about it.

Sam broke the news to me while I was practising mid-iron shots on the other side of the eighteenth green. Sam has carried my bag for years. He is too old to be a caddie, too young to be a member of the Supreme Court, and too wise for either job. He shoots the course in the seventies every time he can dodge the greens keeper—play by employes being strictly prohibited. He has forgotten more golf than I shall ever know, and tries hard to conceal the superiority he feels, but never quite makes the grade. You know the sort of caddie I mean—every club has a few like Sam.

“There you go again! What did I tell you about playin’ the ball too far off your right foot? Stiffen up those wrists a bit—don’t let ’em flop so. Put some forearm into the shot, and never mind lookin’ up to see where the ball goes…. Say, that long, thin gentleman, him with the nose and teeth—the one they call the Major, that sits on the porch so much liftin’ tall ones—I caddied for him this morning.”

“You don’t tell me so!”

“Yeh, I do. Sure! Him and his relative—the young fellah. Serial, ain’t it? Well, they was both out early this morning, the Major beefin’ a little about losin’ his sleep, and sayin’ he wouldn’t make a fool of himself for anybody else on earth; but after he connected with a few shots he began to enjoy it and talk about what a lovely day it was goin’ to be. You know how it is: any weather looks good to you when your shots are comin’ off.”

“Can he play at all?”

“Who, the Major? A shark, I tell you! That old boy has been a great golfer in his day, and it wasn’t so long ago neither. To look at him you wouldn’t think he had a full cleek shot in his system, but that’s where he’d fool you. What’s more, he knows where it’s goin’ when he ties into it. The young fellah plays a mighty sweet game—mighty sweet. He hits everything clean and hard and right on the line, but give the Major a few days’ practice and he’ll carry my small change every time. Knows more golf than Serial—got more shots, and he’s a whale with his irons. He’s a little wild with his wood off the tee—hooks too much and gets into trouble—but when he straightens out that drive he’ll have Serial playin’ the odd behind him. Say, it’d be great to get ’em both into the Invitation Tournament, eh?”

Now our Invitation Tournament is the big show of the year in golfing circles. Waddles sees to that. All members of the association are eligible, but visitors have to have a card and an invitation as well.

Waddles always scans these visitors very closely, and if a man is known as a cup hunter no amount of pressure can get him in. The Major, being a member of the club, was automatically invited to participate, but Cyril must be classed as a visitor.

I went to Waddles and told him what Sam had told me, suggesting that here was the chance to coax the Major off the porch for good, and perhaps get him onto the team later. I said that I thought it would be a graceful thing to issue an invitation to Cyril without waiting for a request from the Major.

“You poor fish!” said Waddles. “I was going to do that anyway. Do you think I’m asleep all the time?”

That is the way with Waddles. He can catch an idea on the fly, and before it settles he has adopted it as his own. He doesn’t care a brass-mounted continental who scared it up in the first place. Before it lights it is his—all his. He said he didn’t believe the Major was half so good as his advance notices, and, as for the full cleek shot, he pooh-poohed that part of the story entirely. Waddles has never mastered the cleek, but he is a demon with a bulldog spoon or with a brassy.

“I’ll do this thing—as a common courtesy to a member,” said Waddles; “but I’m not counting on the Major’s golf. A man can’t lay off for months and come back playing any sort of a game.”

So the invitation was issued in Cyril’s name, and we went in search of the Major. He was on the porch and Cyril was practising putts on the clock green.

Waddles can be very formal and dignified and diplomatic when he wants to be, and as a salve spreader he has few equals and no superiors. He pays a compliment in such a bluff, hearty fashion that it carries with it an air of absolute sincerity.

“Major,” he began, “I can’t tell you how delighted I am to hear that you have taken up the game again. Aside from the pleasure, it is bound to benefit your health.”

“Eh?” said the Major, staring at Waddles intently. “Oh, yes! I’m feeling quite well at present, thanks.”

“And you’ll feel better for taking exercise,” continued Waddles. “We are hoping that you will enter our Invitation Tournament next week. You’ll get a number of good matches, meet some charming people and make some friends. Play begins on Wednesday.”

“Ah!” said the Major.

“You can pick your own partner in the qualifying round.” And here Waddles brought out the envelope containing the invitation. “I thought likely you might want to play with your nephew.”

The Major took the envelope and opened it. After he had read the inclosure he looked up at Waddles and smiled.

“Very kind of you, I’m sure,” said he. “Most kind. Cyril will appreciate this…. Shan’t we have a drink?”

“Can you beat him?” said Waddles to me when we were back in the lounging room. “Just about as chummy as an oyster!”

“Either that or very inattentive,” said I; “but just the same I think he’ll play. Cyril will persuade him.”

“I don’t care a whoop whether he plays or not,” growled Waddles. “I hate a man who can’t loosen up and talk!”

“There is only one thing worse,” said I, “and that is a man who talks too much.”

Waddles took my remark as personal and wolfed at me for half an hour. Why is it that the man who has no consideration for your feelings is always so confoundedly sensitive about his own?

Three

Flashing now to a close-up of the scores for the qualifying round, there were two strange faces in the first sixteen—Cyril’s and the Major’s—and Cyril walked off with the cup offered for low man. His seventy-three created quite a commotion among the Class A men, but the Major’s eighty-one was what knocked them all a twister. Even Waddles was amazed. Waddles had turned in an eighty-five, which barely got him into the championship flight, but medal scores are nothing in Waddles’ life. Match play is where he shines—match play against a nervous opponent.

“The old rum-hound must have been shooting over his head,” said Waddles. “I’ll bet he holed a lot of niblick shots.”

I might have been in the fourth flight if I had not picked up my ball after playing eleven in the ditch at the fifth hole, and by that act eliminated myself from the tournament. I finished the round, of course, and signed my partner’s card, becoming thereafter a mere spectator and a bit of the gallery.

Sam was disgusted with me—so much so that he refused me advice or sympathy. As a usual thing Sam walks up on a drive and selects the club which he thinks I should use. I may disagree with him, but I notice that in the end I always make the shot with the club of his selection. If I am short he tells me that I spared the shot; if I am over he says I hit it too hard.

After the catastrophe at the fifth hole Sam stood the bag on end and turned his back, a statue of silent contempt. When he allows me to pick out a club I know that he has washed his hands of me; when he will not accept a cigarette I am past praying for. I can think of nothing more keenly humiliating than to feel myself a disappointment to a caddie like Sam, but I have disappointed him so often that he should be getting hardened to it by now.

The first and second rounds of match play took place on Thursday, and the pairings put Cyril at the top of the drawing and the Major at the bottom. When the day was over the first flight had assumed a distinctly international aspect, for the semifinalists appeared as follows:

Waddles versus Cyril; Jay Gilman versus the Major.

Cyril had won his matches quite handily and without being pressed, but the Major had caught a brace of seasoned campaigners, one of whom took him to the twentieth hole before he passed out on the end of a long rainbow putt.

Gilman had played his usual steady game—nothing brilliant about it, but extremely dependable; and, as for Waddles, he had staggered along on the ragged edge of defeat both morning and afternoon, annoying his opponents as much as possible and winning quite as much with his head as with his clubs.

The time has come to say a few brief but burning words about the way friend Waddles plays the royal and ancient game of golf when there is anything in sight for the victor. I trust that when he reads this he will have the decency to remember that he had already cut my handicap to the quick, as it were.

To begin with, Waddles has no more form than an apple woman or a Cubist nude. He is so constructed that he cannot take a full swing to save his immortal soul. Everything has to be wrist and forearm with Waddles, but somehow or other he manages to snap his foolish little tee shots straight down the middle of the course, popping them high over the bunkers and avoiding all the traps and pits. The special providence that cares for taxicab drivers, sailors and drunken men seems to take charge of Waddles’ ball in flight, imparting to it a tremendous overspin that gives it distance. I never saw Waddles square away at a drive without pitying him for his short, choppy swing; but he usually beats me about ten yards on account of the run that he gets. I never watched him jab at a putt without feeling certain that the ball was hit too hard to stay in the hole; but stay it does. Waddles actually putts with an overspin, and his ball burrows like a mole, dropping into the cup as if made of lead.

His brassy shots are just pusillanimous—there is no other word which describes them accurately—but somehow they keep on bouncing toward the pin. His irons run half-way and creep the rest of the distance. He always gets better results than his shots deserve, and complains that he should have had more. This one little trick of his is enough to drive an opponent crazy. Every golfer knows the moral—no, immoral—effect of going up against some one who gets more out of every shot than he puts into it, and still is not satisfied. It is like sitting in a poker game with a man who draws four to a deuce, makes an ace full, wins the pot, and then wolfs because it wasn’t four aces.

I never played with Waddles without feeling certain that I could show him up on the long game, and it was straining to do it that ruined me. Trying to pick the tail feathers out of that lame duck has ruined many a golfer, the secret being that the duck isn’t as lame as he looks. Waddles makes ’em all press—a big factor in his match play; but there are others, and not nearly so legitimate.

Playing the game strictly on merit, observing all the little niceties of demeanour and the courtesies due an opponent, Waddles would be a desperately hard man to beat; but he does not stop at merit. When he is out to win he does not stop anywhere. He has made a lifelong study of the various ways in which an opponent may be annoyed and put off his game, and he is the acknowledged master of all of them.

For instance, if he plays Doc Jones, who is chatty and conversational and likes to talk between shots, Waddles never opens his mouth once, but plods along with a scowl on his face and his lower lip sticking out a foot. Before long the poor little Doc begins to wonder whether he has said anything to hurt Waddles’ feelings—and that is the end of Jones. But if Waddles plays Chester Hodge, who believes that the secret of a winning game is concentration, he is a perfect windmill, talking to Chester every minute, telling him funny stories, asking him questions, and literally conversing him off his feet.

Bill Mulqueen is nervous and impatient and hates to wait on his second shots; so when Waddles plays him he drives short and takes five minutes to play the odd, while Bill fumes and frets and accumulates steam for the final explosion, which never fails to strew the last nine with his mangled remains. On the other hand, old Barrison is deliberation itself, and Waddles beats him by playing his own shots quickly and then crowding Barry—hurrying him up, nagging at him, riding him from shot to shot, trying to speed up an engine that can’t be speeded without racking itself to pieces. Joe Bowhan hates to have any one moving about the tee when he is setting himself to drive. Waddles licks him by washing his ball fresh on every hole. Joe can’t see him, but he can hear him scouring away behind him. “Hand-laundered out of the contest again” is what Joe tells us when he comes into the clubhouse.

Perhaps the cruelest thing Waddles ever did was in the finals of the Spring Handicap against young Archie Gatter. The kid was inclined to think fairly well of himself and his game, but on the day of the match Waddles lugged a visiting golf architect round the course with him, planning improvements in the way of traps and bunkers, discussing various kinds of grass for the greens, arguing about soil, and paying no attention whatever to the wretched Archie—not even watching him make his shots. It broke the boy’s heart to be ignored so completely, and he shot the last nine holes in a fat fifty-seven, finishing a total wreck.

These are only a few of Waddles’ little villainies, and the fact that he is a consistent winner at match play bears out the theory that the best study of golf is golfers—splitting it fifty-fifty with the late Mr. Pope.

The most exasperating thing about Waddles is the bland, unconscious manner in which he perpetrates these outrages upon his opponents. He never seems aware that he is doing anything wrong or taking an unfair advantage; he pleads thoughtlessness if driven into a corner—and gets away with it too. You have to know Waddles very well before you are certain that every little movement has a meaning all its own and is part of a cold-blooded and deliberate plan of campaign.

With all these things in mind, I had a hunch that Friday’s match with Cyril would be worth watching, and I was at the clubhouse at nine in the morning. Cyril and the Major were already there, driving practice balls. It was generally understood that the matches in the semi-finals would start at nine-thirty, and promptly on the dot Jay Gilman and the Major were on their way—both of them off to perfect drives.

I waited to follow Cyril and Waddles—and a long, weary wait it was. There is nothing which secures the angora so neatly and completely as to be all dressed up and keyed up with nowhere to go. Have you ever seen a boxer fretting and chafing in his corner, waiting for the champion to put in an appearance; and did you ever stop to think that the champion, in his dressing room, was counting on the effect of that nervous period of inactivity? Golf is a game which demands mental poise, and Cyril was losing his, minute by minute. He prowled all over the place, searching for Waddles; he walked out and looked down the road toward town; he practiced putting—and hit every shot too hard. If he had not been an Englishman, and schooled to keep his feelings to himself, I think he would have said something of a blistering nature.

It was eleven-fifteen when Waddles arrived, dripping apologies from every pore. Had Cyril understood that nine-thirty was the hour? Well, wasn’t that a shame—too bad he hadn’t telephoned or something! Waddles stated—and there was and is no reason to doubt his word—that he thought the matches were scheduled for the afternoon. He dawdled in the locker room for a scandalously long time, while Cyril made little journeys to the first tee and back again, growing warmer and warmer with each trip.

When Waddles finally emerged, neatly swathed in flannels, he suggested lunch. Cyril replied a bit stiffly that he never took food in the middle of the day.

“And a hard match in front of you, too,” said Waddles. “I couldn’t think of starting without a sandwich. Do you mind waiting while I have one?”

Cyril lied politely, but it was a terrible strain on him, and Waddles consumed a sandwich, a glass of milk and forty-five minutes more. Then he had to have one of his irons wrapped where the shaft had split—another straw for the camel’s back. By this time the Major and Jay had finished their match, the Major winning on the sixteenth green. They joined the gallery, after the usual ceremonies at the nineteenth hole.

“Are you ready?” asked Waddles, breezing out on the first tee—and that was rather nervy, too, seeing that Cyril hadn’t been anything else for three mortal hours.

“After you, sir,” said the boy, short and sharp. He knew that he was getting “the work,” and he resented it.

It always suits Waddles to have the honor. He likes to shoot first because his tee shot usually makes an opponent sore. He popped one of his dinky little drives into the air, but instead of dropping into the bunker it floated beyond it to the middle of the course and ran like a scared rabbit.

“No distance!” grumbled Waddles, slapping his club on the tee. “No distance. I’m all out of luck to-day.”

Well, that was no more than rubbing it in by word of mouth. It produced the desired effect, because Cyril nearly broke himself in two in an attempt to beat that choppy half-arm swing. He swung much too hard, didn’t follow through at all, and the ball sliced into a trap far up to the right.

“Do you know what you did then?” asked Waddles. “You tried to kill it, you didn’t follow through, and——”

“And I sliced. I know perfectly, thanks.” And Cyril started down the course, with Waddles tagging at his hip and telling him what was the matter with his swing. Coming from a man who never took a full-arm wallop at a ball in his life, criticism must have seemed superfluous. I couldn’t see Cyril’s face, but his ears reddened.

Waddles slapped a brassy to the edge of the putting green, but Cyril, trying for distance out of a heel print, took too much sand and barely got back on the course again. His third reached the green, whereupon Waddles promptly laid his ball dead for a four. Cyril missed a twenty-footer and lost the first hole.

Again Waddles spatted out a drive that narrowly escaped a cross bunker, but it struck on a hard spot and ran fully one hundred yards before it stopped. Waddles knows every hard spot on the course and governs himself accordingly.

Cyril followed through this time—followed through so vigorously that the ball developed a hook. A cross wind helped it along into the rough grass, leaving him a nasty second shot over shrubbery and trees. It hadn’t stopped rolling before Waddles was talking again.

“You know what you did then? Too much right hand; and your club head——”

“Precisely,” said Cyril, and left the tee almost on a dog-trot; but Waddles trotted with him, explaining what had happened to the club head. He was so earnest about it, so eager to be of assistance, so persistent, that Cyril did not know how to take him. Then, to add to the boy’s discomfiture, Waddles played a perfect spoon shot, taking advantage of the wind, and the ball stopped six feet from the pin. Only a miracle could have saved Cyril after that, and there were no miracles left in his system. His ball carried low from the rough, struck the limb of a tree and glanced out of bounds. He played another, which dropped into thick weeds, and then picked up, conceding the hole. All the way to the third tee Waddles expounded the theory of the niblick shot out of grass, pausing only to spat another perfect ball down the course.

It was here that Cyril left the wood in his bag and took out a cleek. He wanted distance and he needed direction, our third hole calling for a well-placed tee shot; but he sliced just enough to put him squarely behind the largest tree on the entire course.

“I was sure you’d do that,” said Waddles, sympathetically. “It’s really a wooden club shot, and when you took your iron I knew you were afraid of it. Changing clubs is always a sign of weakness, don’t you think so?”

Cyril mumbled something and started down the path, and at this point the old Major, who had been lingering in the background, swung in behind him with his first and last bit of advice.

“Keep your hair on, dear boy,” he bleated. “Keep your hair on. Whatever happens, don’t get waxy.”

Cyril grunted but didn’t say anything, and the Major dropped to the rear again, making queer little noises in his throat.

“Now the ideal—shot on this—hole,” panted Waddles, overtaking his victim, “is a little bit—farther to the left. A hook—doesn’t hurt you—as much—as a slice——”

“I’m not hurt yet!” snapped Cyril.

“Why, of course not!” cried Waddles with the heartiest good nature. “Of course not—but if your ball—had been farther to the left—you wouldn’t have to play—over that tree—and——” There was more, but Cyril did not wait to hear it.

Waddles, executing his second with mechanical precision, carried the deep ravine with his mashie and put the ball on the green for a sure four. Off to the right Cyril prepared to do likewise, but the tree loomed ahead of him, his nerves were unstrung, his temper was ruffled, and instead of going cleanly under the ball he caught the turf four inches behind it and pitched into the ravine, where he found a lie that was all but unplayable.

“Tough luck!” said Waddles.

Cyril turned and looked at him. I expected an outburst of some sort, but the boy was evidently trying to keep his hair on.

“I didn’t hit it,” said he at length, swallowing hard. I heard an odd choking noise behind me. It was the Major, attempting to remain calm.

“Of course you didn’t hit it!” agreed Waddles. “You took a hatful of turf; and you know why, don’t you?”

Cyril groaned and plunged into the ravine.

Why follow the harrying details too closely? With the Major as chief mourner, and Waddles holding sympathetic postmortems on all his bad shots, Cyril suffered a complete collapse. I could have beaten him—any one could have beaten him—and as a matter of fact he beat himself. Having found his weak spot, Waddles never let up for an instant. Talk, talk, talk; his flow of conversation was as irritating as a neighbour’s phonograph, and as incessant. I wondered that Cyril contained himself as well as he did, until I remembered that it is tradition with the English to lose as silently as they win.

The Major, who saw it all, addressed but one remark to me. It was on the tenth hole, and Waddles was showing Cyril why he had topped an iron shot.

“Look here,” said the Major, jerking his thumb at Waddles, “does he always do this sort of thing? Talk so much, I mean?”

I replied, and quite truthfully, that it depended on the way he felt. The Major grunted, and that ended the conversation.

The match was wound up on the thirteenth; Cyril shook hands, complimented Waddles on his game, and made a bee line for the clubhouse. Nobody could blame him for not wanting to finish the round. Waddles tagged along at his elbow, gesticulating, explaining the theory of golf, even offering to illustrate certain shots with which Cyril had had trouble.

The Major spent the rest of the afternoon on the porch, nursing a tall glass and looking at the hills. After a shower Cyril joined him.

“The blooming Britons are holding a lodge of sorrow,” said Waddles, who was in high spirits. “What’s the betting on the finals to-morrow?”

“I’ll back the Major,” spoke up Jay Gilman, “if you’ll promise not to talk the shirt off his back.”

“Another dumb player, eh?” asked Waddles, grinning.

“Never opened his mouth to me but once the entire way round,” answered Jay.

“And what did he say then?”

“As near as I recall,” replied Jay, “he said ‘Dormie!’”

“I hate a man who can’t talk!” exclaimed Waddles.

“How you must hate yourself,” I suggested, and was forced to dodge a match safe.

“Just the same,” persisted Jay, “I’ll take the Major’s end if you’ll promise to keep your mouth shut.”

“I’ll accept no bets on that basis,” Waddles announced. “I like a friendly, chatty game.”

“I’ve got you for fifty, then, and talk your head off!” And Jay laughed until I thought he would choke. As a matter of fact, he laughed all the rest of the afternoon.

Four

Quite a gallery turned out for the finals, and this time there was no delay. Waddles was on hand early, and so was the Major. There was considerable betting, for Jay Gilman insisted on backing the Major to the limit.

“You’re only doing that because he beat you,” said Waddles in an injured tone of voice.

“Make it a hundred if you want to,” was Jay’s come-back.

“Fifty is plenty, thanks.”

“What? Not weakening already?” asked Jay. “A hundred, and no limit on the conversation!”

“Got you!” snapped Waddles.

He would have taken the honor, too, if the Major had not beaten him to it. The old fellow ambled out on the tee, helped himself to a pinch of sand, patted it down carefully, adjusted his ball, and hit a screamer dead on the pin, with just enough hook to make it run well. Then he stepped back, clapped his hands to his waist and cackled—actually cackled like a hen.

“Do you know,” said he, addressing Waddles—“I believe I’ve burst my belt! Yes, I’m quite certain I have; but don’t fear, old chap. I sha’n’t be indecent. I have braces on. Ho, ho, ho!”

Waddles paused with his mouth open. At first I thought he was going to say something, but evidently nothing occurred to him, so he teed his ball and took his stance.

“It was an old one,” said the Major. “I’ve worn it for ages. Given me by Freddy Fitzpatrick. Queer chap, Fitz…. You don’t mind my babbling a little, do you? Dare say I’m a bit nervous.”

“Oh, not in the least,” grunted Waddles, addressing his ball. He hit his usual drive, with the usual result, but his ball was at least forty yards short of the Major’s.

“Very fortunate, sir!” bleated the Major, following Waddles from the tee. “Blest if I see how you do it! Your form—you don’t mind criticism, old chap?—your form is wretchedly bad. Atrocious! Your swing is cramped, your stance is awkward, yet somehow you manage to get over the bunkers. Extraordinary, I call it. Some day you shall teach me the stroke if you will, eh?”

Waddles didn’t say a word. He tucked his chin down into his collar and made tracks for his ball, but there was a puzzled look in his eyes. He didn’t seem to know what to make of this sudden flood of conversation. The Major was with him every step of the way, blatting about his friend Fitzpatrick.

“He had a stroke like yours, old Fitz. Frightfully crippled up with rheumatism, poor chap! Abominable golfer! No form, no swing, but the devil’s own luck…. I say, what club shall you use next? I should take a cleek, but you don’t carry one, I’ve noticed. Too bad. Very useful club, but it calls for a full, clean swing. You’d boggle a cleek horribly…. You’re taking a brassy? Quite right, old chap, quite right. I should, too, if I couldn’t depend on my irons.”

Waddles waved the Major aside, and pulled off his shot; but it seemed to me that he hurried the least little bit. Perhaps he was expecting another outburst of language. His ball stopped ten yards short of the putting green.

“Ah!” said the Major. “You stabbed at that one, dear boy. Old Fitz stabbed his second shots too. Nervousness, I dare say; but you haven’t the look of a man with nerves. Rather beefy for that, I should think. Tight match, and all. Too much food, perhaps. Never can tell, eh? Old Fitz was a gross feeder too…. Now I’m going to take an iron, and if you don’t mind I wish you’d stand behind me and tell me how to shorten my swing a bit. I’m inclined to play an iron too strong…. A little farther over, if you please. I don’t want you where I can see you, old chap, but I sha’n’t mind your talking.”

The Major pulled his mid-iron out of the bag and Waddles obliged with a steady stream of advice, not one item of which was heeded:

“Advance that left foot a little, and don’t drop your shoulder so much! Come back a bit slower, keep your eye on the ball, start your swing higher up——”

At this point the blade of the mid-iron connected with the ball and sent it sailing straight for the pin—a beautiful shot, and clean as a whistle. A white speck bounded on the green and rolled past the hole.

“You see?” cried the Major. “Too strong—oh, much too strong!”

“You’re up there for a putt!” snorted Waddles. “What did you expect—at this distance?”

“With your assistance,” continued the Major, ignoring Waddles’ sarcasm, “I shall shorten my swing. You’ve the shortest swing I’ve ever seen. Shorter than poor old Fitz’s. I’m sorry about that belt, but I sha’n’t be indecent. I have braces on—suspenders, I believe you call them.” He squinted at his ball as he advanced. “Too strong. Never mind. I dare say I shall hole the putt…. You’re taking a mashie next? Tricky shot—very, especially on a fast green.”

Waddles composed himself with a visible effort and really achieved a very fine approach shot. The ball had the perfect line to the hole, but was three feet short of the cup.

“Never up, never in!” cackled the Major, and proceeded to sink a three—a nasty, twisting twelve-footer, and downhill at that. There was a patter of applause from the gallery, started by Gilman and Cyril. The Major marched to the second tee, babbling continually:

“I owe you an apology. Never had a three there before. Never shall again. Stroke under par, isn’t it? Not at all bad for a beginning. Better luck next time. Wish I hadn’t broken this belt. Puts me off my shots.”

“What do you mean—better luck next time?” demanded Waddles, but got no response. The Major had switched to his friend Fitzpatrick, and was chirping about rheumatism and gout and heaven knows what all. He stopped talking just long enough to peel off another tremendous drive, and if he had taken the ball in his hand and carried it out on the course he couldn’t have selected a better spot from which to play his second.

It was on this tee that Waddles tried to hand the Major’s stuff back to him, probably figuring that he could stand as much conversation as his opponent, and last longer at the repartee. He began to tell the story of the Scotch golfer and his collie dog, which is one of the best things he does, but I noticed that when it came time for him to drive he grunted as he hit the ball, and when Waddles grunts it is a sign that he is calling up the reserves. He got the same old shot and the same old run, and would have finished the same old story, but the Major horned in with a long-winded reminiscence of his own, and the collie was lost in the shuffle. Another animal was lost too—a goat belonging to Waddles. He spoke sharply to his opponent before playing his second, and then sliced a spoon shot deep into the rough.

“Ah, too bad!” chirruped the Major. “And the grass is quite deep over there, isn’t it? Now I shall use the mid-iron again, and you shall watch and tell me about my swing—that is, if you don’t mind, old chap.”

Waddles didn’t mind. He told the Major enough things to rattle a wooden Indian, and just as the club had started to descend he raised his voice sharply. It would have made me miss the ball entirely, but it seemed to have no effect on the Major, who did not even flinch but lined one out to the green.

Waddles wandered off into the rough, mumbling to his caddie. The third shot was a remarkable one. He tore the ball out of the thick grass, raised it high in the air and put it on the green, six feet from the cup. The Major then laid his third shot stone-dead for a four. Waddles still had a difficult putt to halve the hole, but while he was studying the roll of the green the Major spoke up.

“I shan’t ask you to putt that,” said he. “I concede you a four.”

Waddles stared at him with eyes that fairly bulged.

“You—what?” said he. “You give me this putt?”

The Major nodded and walked off the green. Waddles looked first at his ball, then at the cup, and then at the crowd of spectators. At last he picked up and followed, and a whisper ran through the gallery. The general impression prevailed that conceding a six-foot putt at the outset of an important match was nothing short of emotional insanity.

Of course since he had been offered a four on the hole Waddles could do nothing but accept it gracefully—and begin wondering why on earth his opponent had been so generous. I dare any golfer to put himself in Waddles’ place and arrive at a conclusion soothing to the nerves and the temper. The most natural inference was that the Major held him cheaply, pitied him, did not fear his game.

I thought this was what the old fellow was getting at, but it was not until they reached the third putting green that I began to appreciate the depth of the Major’s cunning and the diabolical cleverness of his golfing strategy.

Waddles had a two-foot putt to halve the third hole—a straight, simple tap over a perfectly flat surface—the sort of putt that he can make with his eyes shut, ninety-nine times out of the hundred. The Major had already holed his four, and I knew by the careless manner in which Waddles stepped up to his ball that he expected the Major to concede the putt. It was natural for him to expect it, since he had already been given a difficult six-footer.

Waddles stood there, waggling his putter behind the ball and waiting for the Major to say the word, but the word did not come. This seemed to irritate Waddles. He looked at the Major, and his expression said, plain as print, “You don’t really insist on my making this dinky little putt?” It was all wasted, for the Major was regarding him with a fishy stare—looking clear through him in fact. The expectant light faded out of Waddles’ eyes. He shrugged his shoulders and gave his attention to the shot, examining every inch of the line to the cup. It seemed to be a straight putt, but was it? Waddles took his lower lip in his teeth and tapped the ball very gently. It ran off to the left, missing the cup by at least three inches.

“Aha!” chuckled the Major. “You thought I would give you that one too, eh? Old Fitz used to say, ‘Give a man a hard putt and he’ll miss an easy one. After that he’ll never be sure of anything.’ Extraordinary how often it happens just that way. Seems to have an unsettling effect on the nerves. Tricky beggar, Fitz. Won the Duffers’ Cup at Bombay by conceding a twenty-foot putt on the sixteenth green. Opponent went all to little pieces. Finished one down, with a fifteen on the last hole. Queer game, golf!”

“Yes,” said Waddles, breathing hard, “and a lot of queer people play it. Your honor, sir.”

The Major smacked out another long one, but Waddles, boiling inside and scarcely able to see the ball, topped his tee shot and bounded into the bunker.

“You see what it does,” said the Major. “You were still thinking about that putt. The effect on the nerves——”

“Oh, cut it out!” growled Waddles. “Play the game right if you’re going to play it at all! Your mouth is the best club in your bag!”

The Major did not resent this in the least; paid no attention in fact. He toddled away, blatting intermittently about his friend Fitz, and Waddles knocked half the sand out of the bunker before he finally emerged, spitting gravel and adjectives. Sore was no name for it! He lost the hole, of course, making him three down.

The rest of the contest was interesting, but only from a psychological point of view. Evidently considering that he had a safe lead the Major cut out the conversation and the horseplay and settled down to par golf. There was no lack of talk, however, for Waddles erupted constantly. Braced by the thought that he was annoying his opponent by these verbal outbursts, he managed to halve four holes in a row, but on the ninth green he missed another short putt. In the explosion that followed he blew off his safety valve completely, and the rest of the match degenerated into a riotous procession, so far as noise was concerned.

The thing I could not understand was that the Major held on the even tenor of his way, unruffled and serene as a June morning. The louder Waddles talked the better the old fellow seemed to like it. Never once did he seem disturbed; never once did he hesitate on a shot. With calm, mechanical precision he proceeded to go through Waddles like a cold breeze, and the latter was so busy thinking up things to say that he flubbed disgracefully, and was beaten on the thirteenth green, seven and five.

Well, Waddles may have his faults, but losing ungracefully is not one of them. He will fight you to the very last ditch, but once the battle is over he declares peace immediately. He walked up to the Major and held out his hand. He grinned, too, though I imagine it hurt his face to do it.

“You’re all right, Major!” said he. “You’re immense! You licked me and you made me like it. If I had your nerves—if I could concentrate on my shots and not let anything bother me——”

Some one behind me laughed. It was Jay Gilman.

“It has been a pleasure, dear chap,” said the Major. “A pleasure, I assure you!”

Several of us had dinner at the club that night, Jay offering to give the party because of the money he had won from Waddles. When the coffee came on, America’s representative in the finals attempted to explain his defeat.

“The Major began the gab-fest,” said Waddles. “He started off chattering like a magpie and trying to rattle me, and naturally I went back at him with the same stuff. Fair for one as for the other, eh? I’ll admit that he out-generalled me by giving me that putt on the second hole, but the thing that finally grabbed my angora was his infernal concentration. Never saw anything like it! Why, he actually asked me to stand behind him and criticise his swing—while he was shooting, mind you? Asked me to do it! And when I saw that he went along steady as the rock of Gibraltar—well, I blew, that’s all. I went to pieces. The thing reacted on me. I’ll bet that old rascal could listen to you all day long-and never top a ball!”

“You’d lose that bet,” said Jay quietly.

“How do you mean—lose it?” demanded Waddles, bristling. “I talked my head off, and he didn’t top any, did he?”

“No; and he didn’t listen any, either. As a matter of fact, you could have fired a cannon off right at his hip without making him miss a shot.”

“You don’t mean to tell me——” said Waddles, gaping.

Jay laughed unfeelingly.

“You had a fat chance of talking the old Major out of anything!” said he. “He hasn’t advertised it much, because he’s rather sensitive about his affliction; but he’s——”

“Deaf!” gulped Waddles.

“As a post,” finished Jay.

Waddles’ jaw dropped.

There was a long, painful silence.

Then Waddles crooked his finger at the waiter.

“Boy!” he called. “Bring me this dinner check!”

A mixed foursome

One

When the returns were all in, a lot of people congratulated the winners of the mixed-foursome cups, after which the weak-minded ones sympathised with Mary Brooke and Russell Davidson.

Sympathy is a wonderful thing, and so rare that it should not be wasted. Any intelligent person might have seen at a glance that Mary didn’t need sympathy; and as for Russell Davidson, there never was a time when he deserved it.

And in all this outpouring of sentiment, this hand-shaking and back-patting, nobody thought to offer a kind word to old Waddles. Nobody shook him by the hand and told him that he was six of the seven wonders of the world. It seems a pity, now that I look back on it.

Possibly you remember Waddles. He was, is, and probably always will be, an extremely important member of the Yavapai Golf and Country Club. Important, did I say? That doesn’t begin to express it. Omnipotent—that’s better.

To begin with, he is chairman of the Greens Committee, holding dominion over every blade of grass which grows on the course. He is intimately acquainted with every gopher hole, hoof print and drain cover on the club property. Policing two hundred broad acres is a strong man’s job, but Waddles attends to it in his spare moments. He waves his pudgy hand and says: “Let there be a bunker here,” and lo! the bunker springs up as if by magic. He abolishes sand traps which displease him, and creates new ones. The heathen may rage, and sometimes they do, but Waddles holds on the even tenor of his way, hearing only one vote, and that vote his own.

Then again, he is the official handicapper—another strong man’s job—with powers which cannot be overestimated. Some handicappers are mild and apologetic creatures who believe in tempering justice with mercy and pleasing as many people as possible, but not our Waddles.

Heaven pity the wily cup hunter who keeps an improved game under cover in order that he may ease himself into a competition and clean up the silverware!

Waddles hates a cup hunter with a deep and abiding hatred and deals with him accordingly. There was once an 18-handicap man who waltzed blithely through our Spring Handicap, and his worst medal round was something like 85. His fat allowance made all his opponents look silly and he took home a silver water pitcher worth seventy-five dollars.

This was bad enough, but he crowned his infamy by boasting openly that he had outwitted Waddles. The next time the cup hunter had occasion to glance at the handicap list he received a terrible shock.

“Waddy,” said this person—and there were tears in his eyes and a sob in his voice—“you know that I’ll never be able to play to a four handicap, don’t you?”

“Certainly,” was the calm response.

“Then what was the idea of putting me at such a low mark?”

“Well,” said Waddles with a sweet smile, “I don’t mind telling you, in strict confidence: I cut you down to four to keep you honest.”

The wretched cup hunter howled like a wolf, but it got him nothing. He is still a four man, and if he lives to be as old as the Dingbats he will never take home another trophy.

Not only is Waddles supreme on the golf course but he dominates the clubhouse as well. He writes us tart letters about shaking dice for money and signs them “House Committee, per W.” Really serious matters are dealt with in letters signed “Board of Directors, per W.” The old boy is the law and the prophets, the fine Italian hand, the mailed fist, the lord high executioner and the chief justice, and if he misses you with one barrel he is sure to get you with the other.

You might think that this would be power enough for one weak mortal. You might think that there are some things which Waddles would regard as beyond his jurisdiction. You might think that the little god of love would come under another dispensation—you might think all these things, but you don’t know our Waddles. He is afflicted with that strange malady described by the immortal Cap’n Prowse as “the natural gift of authority,” and such a man recognises no limits, knows no boundaries, and wouldn’t care two whoops if he did. Come to think of it, the Kaiser is now under treatment for the same ailment.

Since I have given you some faint conception of Waddles and his character I will proceed with the plain and simple tale of Mary Brooke, Bill Hawley and Russell Davidson. Beth Rogers was in the foursome too, but she doesn’t really count, not being in love with any one but herself.

Two

Ladies first is a safe rule, so we will start with Mary. My earliest recollection of this young woman dates back twenty-and-I-won’t-say-how-many-more years, at which time she entertained our neighborhood by reciting nursery rimes—“Twinka, twinka, yitty tar,” and all the rest of that stuff.

I knew then that she was an extremely bright child for her age. Her mother told me so. I used to hold her on my lap and let her listen to my watch, and the cordial relations which existed then have lasted ever since. She doesn’t sit on my lap any more, of course, but you understand what I mean.

I watched Mary lose her baby prettiness and her front teeth. I watched her pass through that distressing period when she seemed all legs and freckles, to emerge from it a different being—only a little girl still, but with a trace of shyness which was new to me, and a look in her eyes which made me feel that I must be growing a bit old.

About this time I was astounded to learn that Mary had a beau. It was the Hawley kid, who lived on the next block. His parents had named him William, after an uncle with money, but from the time he had been able to walk he had been called Bill. He will always be called Bill, because that’s the sort of fellow he is.

As I remember him at the beginning of his love affair Bill was somewhat of a mess, with oversized hands and feet, a shock of hair that never would stay put, and an unfortunate habit of falling all over himself at critical moments. He attached himself to Mary Brooke with all the unselfish devotion of a half-grown Newfoundland pup, minus the pup’s rough demonstrations of affection.

He carried Mary’s books home from school, he took her to the little neighborhood parties, he sent her frilly pink valentines, and once—only once—he stripped his mother’s rose garden because it was Mary’s birthday. It also happened to be Mrs. Hawley’s afternoon to entertain the whist club, and she had been counting on those roses for decorations. If my memory serves me, she allowed Mary to keep the flowers, but she stopped the amount of a florist’s bill out of her son’s allowance of fifty cents a Week. The Hawley’s are all practical people.

Mary’s father used to fuss and fume and say that he hoped Bill would get over it and park his big clumsy feet on somebody else’s front porch, but I don’t think he really minded it as much as he pretended he did. Mrs. Brooke often remarked that since it had to be somebody she would rather it would be Bill than any other boy in the neighborhood. Even in those days there was something solid and dependable about Bill Hawley; he was the sort of kid that could be trusted, and more of a man at sixteen than some fellows will ever be.

During Mary’s high-school days several boys carried her books, but not for long, and Bill was always there or thereabouts, waiting patiently in the background. When another youngster had the front porch privilege Bill did not sulk or rock the boat, and if the green-eyed monster was gnawing at his vitals there were no outward signs of anguish. We always knew when one of Mary’s little affairs was over because Bill would be back on the job, nursing his shin on Brooke’s front steps and filling the whole block with an air of silent devotion. I suppose he grew to be a habit with Mary; such things do happen once in a while.

Then Bill went away to college, and while he was struggling for a sheepskin Mary entered the débutante period. Some of the women said that she wasn’t pretty, but they would have had a hard time proving it to a jury of men. Her features may not have been quite regular, but the general effect was wonderfully pleasing; so the tabbies compromised by calling her attractive. They didn’t have a chance to say anything else, because Mary was always the center of a group of masculine admirers, and if that doesn’t prove attraction, what does?

In addition to her good looks she was bright as a new dollar—so bright that she didn’t depend entirely on her own cleverness but gave you a chance to be clever yourself once in a while. Mary Brooke knew when to listen. She listened to Waddles once, from one end of a country-club dinner to the other, and he gave her the dead low down on the reformer in politics—a subject on which the old boy is fairly well informed. I think his fatherly interest in her dated from that evening—and incidentally let me say it was the best night’s listening that Mary ever did, because if Waddles hadn’t been interested—but that’s getting ahead of the story.

“There’s something to that little Brooke girl!” he told me afterward. “A society bud with brains! Who’d have thought it?”

Bill came ambling home from time to time and picked up the thread of friendship again. It grieves me to state that an Eastern college did not improve his outward appearance to any marked extent. He looked nothing at all like the young men we see in the take-’em-off-the-shelf clothing ads. He was just the same old Bill, with big hands and big feet and more hair than he could manage. He danced the one-step, of course—the only dance ever invented for men with two left feet—but his conception of the fox trot would have made angels weep, and I never realized how much hesitation could be crowded into a hesitation waltz until I saw Bill gyrate slowly and painfully down the floor. Mary always seemed glad to see him, though, and we heard whispers of an engagement, to be announced after Bill had made his escape from the halls of learning. Like most of the whispering done, this particular whisper lacked the vital element of truth, but the women had a lovely time passing it along.

“Isn’t it just too perfectly ideal—sweethearts since childhood! Think of it!”

“Yes, we so seldom see anything of the sort nowadays.”

“There’s one advantage in that kind of match—they won’t have to get acquainted with each other after marriage.”

“Well, now, I don’t know about that. Doesn’t one always find that one has married a total stranger? Poor, dear Augustus! I thought I knew him so well, but——”

And so forth, and so on, by the hour. Give a woman a suspicion, and she’ll manage to juggle it into a certainty. Shortly before Bill’s graduation, the dear ladies at the country club had the whole affair settled, even to the probable date of the wedding, and of course Mary heard the glad news. Naturally, she was annoyed. It annoys any young woman to find the most important event of her life arranged in advance by people who have never taken the trouble to consult her about any of the details.

At this point I am forced to dip into theory, because I can’t say what took place inside Mary’s pretty little head. I don’t know. Perhaps she wanted to teach the gossips a lesson. Perhaps she resented having a husband pitchforked at her by public vote; but however she figured it she needn’t have made poor old Bill the goat, and she needn’t have fallen in love with Russell Davidson. Waddles says it wasn’t love at all—merely an infatuation; but what I’d like to know is this: How are you going to tell one from the other when the symptoms are identical?

Three

Personally, I haven’t a thing in the world against Russell Davidson. He never did me an injury and I hope he will never do me a favor. Russell is the sort of chap who is perfectly all right if you happen to like the sort of chap he is. I don’t, and that’s the end of the matter so far as I am concerned.

He hasn’t been with us very long, and still it seems long enough. He came West to grow up with the country, arriving shortly before Bill’s graduation, and he brought with him credentials which could not be overlooked, together with an Eastern golf rating which caused Waddles to sit up and take notice.

Ostensibly Russell is in the brokerage business, but he doesn’t seem to work much at it. Those who know tell me that it isn’t necessary for him to work much at anything, his father having attended to that little matter. Some of the dear ladies were mean enough to hint that Mary had this in mind, but they’ll never get me to believe it.

At any rate the gossips soon had a nice juicy topic for conversation, and when Bill came home, wagging his sheepskin behind him, he found the front-porch privilege usurped by a handsome stranger who seemed quite at home in the Brooke household, and, unless I’m very much mistaken, inclined to resent Bill’s presence on the premises.

It just happened that I was walking up and down the block smoking an after-dinner cigar on the evening when Bill discovered that he was slated for second-fiddle parts again. Russell’s runabout was standing in front of the Brooke place, there was a dim light in the living room, and an occasional tenor wail from the phonograph. I heard quick, thumping footsteps, a big, lumbering figure came hurrying along the sidewalk—and there was Bill Hawley, grinning at me in the moonlight.

“Attaboy!” he cried, shaking hands vigorously. “How’re you? How’re all the folks? Gee, it’s great to be home again! How’s Mary?”

“She’s fine,” said I. “Haven’t you seen her yet?”

“Just got in on the Limited at five o’clock. Thought I’d surprise her. Got a thousand things to tell you. Well, see you later!”

He went swinging up the front steps and rang the bell.

I was finishing my cigar when Bill came out again and started slowly down the walk. His wonderful surprise party had not lasted more than twenty minutes. I had to hail him twice before he heard me. We took a short walk together, and reached the end of the block before Bill opened his mouth. On the corner Bill swung round and faced me: “Who is that fellow?” It wasn’t a question; it was a demand for information.

“What fellow?”

“Davis, or Davidson, something like that. Who is he?”

There wasn’t a great deal I could tell him. Bill listened till I got to the end of my string, with a perfectly wooden expression on his homely countenance. Then for the first, last and only time he expressed his opinion of Russell Davidson.

“Humph!” said he. And after a long pause: “Humph!”

You may think that a grunt doesn’t express an opinion, but as a matter of fact it’s one of the most expressive monosyllables in any language. It can be made to mean almost anything. A ten-minute speech with a lot of firecracker adjectives wouldn’t have made Bill’s meaning any clearer.

The two grunts which came out of Bill’s system were fairly dripping with disapproval.

“It’s a wonderful night.” I felt the need of saying something. “Must be quite a relief after all that humidity in the East.”

“Uh huh.”

“I understand you played pretty good golf on the college team, Bill.”

“Uh huh.”

“We’ve made a lot of improvements out at the club. You won’t know the last nine now.”

“Uh huh.”

I couldn’t resist the temptation of slipping a torpedo under his bows. I thought it might wake him up a trifle.

“Mary is playing a better game now. Davidson has been teaching her some shots.”

Bill wanted to open up and say something, but he didn’t know how to go about it. He looked at me almost piteously and I felt ashamed of myself.

“I’ll be going now,” he mumbled. “Haven’t had much sleep the last few nights. Never sleep on a train anyway. See you later.”

That was all I got out of him, but it was enough. It wasn’t any of my affair, of course, but from the bottom of my heart I pitied the big, clumsy fellow. I felt certain that Mary was giving him the worst of it, and taking the worst of it herself, but what could I do? Absolutely nothing. In life’s most important game the spectators are not encouraged to sit on the side lines and shout advice to the players.

As for Bill, I think he fought it out with himself that night and decided to return to his boyhood policy of watchful waiting. It wasn’t the first time that he had lost the front-porch privilege, and in the past he had won it back again by keeping under cover and giving the incumbent a chance to become tiresome. Bill declined to play the second-fiddle parts; he took himself out of Mary’s orchestra entirely. He did not call on her any more; but I am willing to bet any sum of money, up to ten dollars, that Bill knew how many times a week Russell’s runabout stood in front of the Brooke place. Five would have been a fair average.

Russell had things all his own way, and before long we began to hear the same vague whisperings of a wedding, coupled with expressions of sympathy for Bill. Bill heard those whisperings too—trust the dear ladies for that—but he listened to everything with a good-natured grin, and even succeeded in fooling a portion of the female population; but he didn’t fool Waddles and he didn’t fool me. Bill met Mary at dinner parties and dances now and then, and whenever this happened the women watched every move that he made, and were terribly disappointed because he failed to register deep grief; but Bill never was the sort to wear his heart outside his vest. Russell was very much in evidence at all these meetings, for he took Mary everywhere, and Bill was scrupulously polite to him—the particular brand of politeness which makes a real man want to fight. And thus the summer waned, and the winter season came on—for in our country we have only two seasons—and it was in November that old Waddles finally unbuttoned his lip and informed me that young Mr. Davidson would never do.

It was in the lounging room at the country club. We had finished our round, and I had paid Waddles three balls as usual. It never costs less than three balls to play with him. We were sitting by the window, acquiring nourishment and looking out upon the course. In the near foreground Russell Davidson was teaching Mary Brooke the true inwardness of the chip shot. He wasn’t having a great deal of luck. Waddles broke the silence by grunting. It was a grunt of infinite disgust. I searched my pockets and put a penny on the table.

“For your thoughts,” said I.

“They’re worth more than that,” said Waddles.

“Not to me.”

There was a period of silence and then Waddles grunted again.

“Get it off your chest,” I advised him.

“That fellow,” said Waddles, indicating Russell with a jerk of his thumb, “gives me a pain.”

“And me,” said I.

“I thought Mary Brooke had some sense,” complained Waddles; “but I see now that she’s like all the rest—anything with a high shine to it is gold. Now the pure metal often has a dull finish.”

“Meaning Bill?” I asked.

“Meaning Bill. He isn’t much to look at, but he’s on the level, and he worships the very ground she walks on. Why can’t she see it?”

“Why can’t any woman see it?” I asked him.

“But somebody ought to tell her! Somebody ought to put her wise! Somebody——”

“Well,” I interrupted, “why don’t you volunteer for the job?”

“Oh, Lord!” groaned Waddles. “It’s one of the things that can’t be done. Tell her and you’d only make matters that much worse. And I thought Mary Brooke had brains!”

There was a long break in the conversation, during which Waddles munched great quantities of pretzels and cheese. Then:

“I wasn’t much stuck on that Davidson person the first time I saw him!” His tone was the tone of a man who seeks an argument. “He’s a good golfer, I admit that, but he’s a cup hunter at heart, he’s a rotten hard loser, and—well, he’s not on the level!”

“You’ve been opening his mail?” I asked.

“Not at all. Listen! You know the Santa Ynez Gun Club? Well, he’s joined that, among other things. He’s a cracking good duck shot. I was down there the other night, and we had a little poker game.”

“A little poker game?” said I.

“Table stakes,” corrected Waddles. “Davidson was the big winner.”

“You’re not hinting——”

“Nothing so raw as that. Listen! Joe Herriman was in the game, and playing in the rottenest luck you ever saw. Good hands all the time, understand, but not quite good enough. If he picked up threes he was sure to run into a straight, and if he made a flush there was a full house out against him. Enough to take the heart out of any man. Finally he picked up a small full before the draw—three treys and a pair of sevens. Joe opened it light enough, because he wanted everybody in, but the only man who stayed was Davidson, who drew one card. After the draw Joe bet ten dollars for a feeler, and Davidson came back at him with the biggest raise of the night—a cool hundred.”

“Well,” said I, “what was wrong with that?”

“Wait. The hundred-dollar bet started Joe to thinking. He had been bumping into topping hands all the evening, and Davidson knew it.

“‘If I were you,’ says Davidson in a nice kind tone of voice, ‘I wouldn’t call that bet. Luck is against you to-night, and I’d advise you, as a friend, to lay that pat hand down and forget it.’

“Joe looked at him for a long time and then he looked at his cards; you see he’d been beaten so often that he’d lost his sense of values.

“‘You think I hadn’t better play these?’ asks Joe.

“‘I’ve given you a tip,’ says Davidson. ‘I hate to see a man go up against a sure thing.’

“‘Well,’ says Joe at last, ‘I guess you’ve done me a favor. It wasn’t much of a full anyway,’ and he spread his hand on the table. Davidson didn’t show his cards—he pitched ’em into the discard and raked in the pot—not more than fifteen dollars outside of his hundred.”

“And what of that?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing,” said Waddles; “nothing, only I was dealing the next hand, and I arranged to get a flash at the five cards that Davidson tried to bury in the middle of the deck.”

“What did he have?”

Waddles snorted angrily.

“Four diamonds and a spade! A four flush, that’s what he had! The two sevens alone would have beaten him! And all that sympathetic talk, that bum steer, just to cheat the big loser out of one measly pot! What do you think of a fellow who’d do a trick like that?”

I told him what I thought, and again there was silence and cheese.

“Do you think Mary is going to marry that—that crook?” demanded Waddles.

“That’s what they say.”

More cheese.

“I’d like to tell her,” said Waddles thoughtfully, “but it’s just one of the things that isn’t being done this season. I’d like to give her a line on that handsome scalawag—before it’s too late. I can’t waltz up to her and tell her that he’s bogus. There must be some other way. But how? How?”

Waddles sighed and attacked the cheese again. You’d hardly think that a man could get an inspiration out of the kind of cheese that our House Committee buys to give away, but before Waddles left the club that evening he informed me that a mixed-foursome tournament wouldn’t be half bad—for a change.

“You won’t get many entries,” said I. “You know how the men fight shy of any golf with women in it.”

“Don’t want many.”

“Then why a tournament?” I asked. “The entry fees won’t pay for the cups.”

“I’m giving the cups,” said Waddles, and investigated the cheese bowl once more. “Two of ’em. One male cup and one female cup. About sixteen dollars they’ll set me back, but I’ve an idea—just a sneaking, lingering scrap of a notion—that I’ll get my money’s worth.”

And he went away mumbling to himself and blowing cracker crumbs out of his mouth.

Four

Of course you know the theory of the mixed foursome. There are four players, two men and two women, and each couple plays one ball. It sounds very simple. Miss Jones and Mr. Brown are partners. Miss Jones drives, and it is up to Mr. Brown to play the next shot from where the ball lies, after which Miss Jones takes another pop at the pill, and so on until the putt sinks. Yes, it sounds like an innocent pastime, but of all forms of golf the mixed foursome carries the highest percentage of danger and explosive material. It is the supreme test of nerves and temper, and the trial-by-acid of the disposition.

In our club there is an unwritten law that no wife shall be partnered with her husband in a mixed-foursome match, because husbands and wives have a habit of saying exactly what they think about each other—a practice which should be confined to the breakfast table. There was a case once—but let us avoid scandal. She has a new husband and he has a new wife.

Waddles’ mixed-foursome tournament was scheduled for a Thursday, and it was amazing how many of the male members discovered that imperative business engagements would keep them from participating in the contest. The women were willing enough to play—they always are, bless ’em!—but it was only after a vast amount of effort and Mexican diplomacy that Waddles was able to lead six goats to the slaughter. Six, did I say? Five. Russell Davidson needed no urging.

The man who gave Waddles the most trouble was Bill Hawley. Bill was polite about it, but firm—oh, very firm. He didn’t want any mixed foursomes in his young life, thank you just the same. More than that, he was busy. Waddles had to put it on the ground of a personal favor before Bill showed the first sign of wavering.

When I arrived at the club on Thursday noon I found Waddles sweating over the handicaps for his six couples. Now it is a cinch to handicap two women or two men if they are to play as partners, but to handicap a woman and a man is quite another matter, and all recognized rules go by the board. I watched the old boy for some time, but I couldn’t make head or tail of his system. Finally I asked him how he handicapped a mixed foursome.

“With prayer,” said Waddles. “With prayer, and in fear and trembling. And sometimes that ain’t any good.”

I noted that he had given Mary Brooke and Russell Davidson the lowest mark—10. Beth Rogers and Bill Hawley were next with 16, and the other couples ranged on upward to the blue sky.

“Of course,” I suggested, “the low handicap is something of a compliment, but haven’t you slipped Davidson a bit the worst of it?”

“Not at all,” growled Waddles. “He was just crazy to get into this thing, and he wouldn’t have been unless he figured to have a cinch; consequently, hence and by reason of which I’ve given him a mark that’ll make him draw right down to his hand. He won’t play any four-flush here.” Waddles then arranged the personnel of the foursomes, and jotted down the order in which they would leave the first tee. When I saw which quartette would start last I offered another suggestion.

“You’re not helping Bill’s game any,” said I. “You know that he doesn’t like Davidson, and——”

Waddles stopped me with his frozen-faced, stuffed-owl stare. In deep humiliation I confess that at the time I attributed it to his distaste for criticism. I realize now that it must have been amazement at my stupidity.

“Excuse me for living,” said I with mock humility.

“There is no excuse,” said Waddles heavily.

Bill turned up on the tee at the last moment, and if he didn’t like the company in which he found himself he masked his feelings very well.

“How do, Mary? Beth, this is a pleasure. How are you, Davidson? Ladies first, I presume?”

“Drive, Miss Rogers,” said Davidson.

Now a fluffy blonde is all right, I suppose, if she wears a hair net. Beth doesn’t, and her golden aureole would make a Circassian woman jealous. Still, there are people who think Beth is a beauty. I more than half suspect that Beth is one of them. Beth drove, and the ball plumped into the cross bunker.

“Oh, partner!” she squealed. “Can you ever forgive me?”

“That’s all right,” Bill assured her. “I’ve often been in there myself. Takes a good long shot to carry that bunker.”

“It’s perfectly dear of you to say so!”

“Fore!” said Mary, who was on the tee, and the conversation ceased.

“Better shoot to the left,” advised Russell, “and go round the end of the bunker.”

Mary stopped waggling her club to look at him. If there is anything in which the female of the golfing species takes sinful pride it is the length of her drive. She likes to stand up on a tee used by the men and smack the ball over the cross bunker. She wouldn’t trade a two-hundred-yard drive for twenty perfect approach shots. She may be a wonder on the putting green, but she offers herself no credit for that. It is the long tee shot that takes her eye—the drive that skims the bunker and goes on up the course. Waddles says the proposition of sex equality has a bearing on the matter, but I claim that it is just ordinary, everyday pride in being able to play a man’s game, man fashion.

Coming from a total stranger, that suggestion about driving to the left would have been regarded as a deadly insult; coming from Russell——

“But I think I can carry it,” said Mary with a tiny pout.

“Change your stance and drive to the left.” The suggestion had become a command.

“Fore!” said Mary again—and whacked the ball straight into the bunker—straight into the middle of it.

“Now, you see?” Russell was aggravated, and showed it. “If you had changed your stance and put that ball somewhere to the left you might have given me a chance to reach the green. As it is——”

He was still enlarging upon her offense as they moved away from the tee. Mary did not answer him, but she gave Beth a bright smile, as much as to say, “What care I?” Bill trailed along in the rear, juggling a niblick, his homely face wiped clean of all expression.

There wasn’t much to choose between the second shots—both lies were about as bad as could be—but Russell got out safely and Bill duplicated the effort.

Beth then elected to use her brassy, and sliced the ball into the long grass. Of course she had to wail about it.

“Isn’t that just too maddening? Partner, I’m so sorry!”

“Don’t you care,” grinned Bill. “That’s just my distance with a mashie. And as for long grass, I dote on it.”

Mary was taking her brassy out of the bag when Russell butted in again—with excellent advice, I must confess.

“You can’t reach the green anyway,” said he, “so take an iron and keep on the course.”

There was a warning flash in Mary’s eye which a wiser man would not have ignored.

“Remember you’ve got a partner,” urged Russell. “Take an iron, there’s a good girl.”

“Oh, Russell! Do be still; you fuss me so!”

“But, my dear! I’m only trying to help——”

The swish of the brassy cut his explanation neatly in two, and the ball went sailing straight for the distant flag—a very pretty shot for any one to make.

“Oh, a peach!” cried Bill. “A peach!”

“And you,” said Mary, turning accusingly to Russell, “you wanted me to take an iron!”

“Because you can keep straighter with an iron,” argued Davidson.

“Wasn’t that ball straight enough to please you?” asked Mary with just a touch of malice.

“You had luck,” was the ungracious response, “but it doesn’t follow that all your wooden-club shots will turn out as well. The theory of the mixed foursome is to leave your partner with a chance to hit the ball.”

“Oh, dear!” sighed Beth. “Now you’re making me feel like a criminal!”

“Lady,” said Bill, “if I don’t mind, why should you?”

“I think you’re an angel!” gushed Beth.

“Yep,” replied Bill, “I am; but don’t tell anybody.”

While Mary and Russell were discussing the theory of the mixed foursome old Bill made a terrific mashie shot out of the grass, and the ball reached the edge of the green. Beth applauded wildly, Mary chimed in, but Davidson did not open his mouth. He was irritated, and made no secret of it, but his irritation did not keep him from dropping the next shot on the putting green.

Bill didn’t even blink when Beth took her putter and overran the hole by ten feet. Beth said she knew he’d never, never speak to her again in this world, and she couldn’t blame him if he didn’t.

“Well,” said Bill cheerfully, “you gave the ball a chance, anyhow. That’s the main thing. It’s better to be over than short.”

“You’re a perfect dear!” said Beth. “I’ll do better—see if I don’t.”

Mary then prepared to putt, Russell’s approach having left her twelve feet short of the hole. “And be sure to get it there,” cautioned her partner. “It’s uphill, you know. Allow for it.”

Mary bit her lip and hit the grass an inch behind the ball. It rolled something less than four feet.

“Hit the ball! Hit the ball!” snapped Russell angrily. “What’s the matter with you to-day?”

Mary apologized profusely—probably to keep Russell quiet; and she laughed too—a dry, hard little laugh that didn’t have any fun in it. Bill glared at Davidson for an instant, and his mouth opened, but he swallowed whatever impulse was troubling him, and carefully laid his ball on the lip of the cup for a two-inch putt that not even Beth could have missed. Russell then holed his long one, which seemed to put him in a better humor, and the men started for the second tee. In mixed foursomes the drive alternates.

Mary and Beth took the short cut used by the caddies, and I followed them at a discreet distance. Mary babbled incessantly about everything in the world but golf, which was her way of conveying the impression that nothing unusual had happened; and Beth, womanlike, helped her out by pretending to be deeply interested in what Mary was saying. And yet they tell you that if women could learn to bluff they would make good poker players!

As I waited for the men to drive I thought of the Mary Brooke I used to know—the leggy little girl with her hair in pigtails—and I remembered that in those days she would stand just so much teasing from the boys, and then somebody would be slapped—hard. Had she changed so much, I wondered?

On the third hole Russell began nagging again, and Bill’s face was a study. For two cents I think he would have choked him. Mary tried to carry it off with a smile, but it was a weak effort. Nothing but absolute obedience and recognition of his right to give orders would satisfy Russell.

“It’s no use your telling me now that you’re sorry,” he scolded after Mary had butchered a spoon shot on Number Three. “You won’t take advice when it’s offered. I told you not to try that confounded spoon. A spoon is no club for a beginner.”

Mary gasped.

“But—I’m not a beginner! I’ve been playing ever and ever so long! And I like that spoon.”

“I don’t care what you like. If we win this thing you must do as I say.”

“Oh! So that’s it—because you want to win?”

“What do you think I entered for—exercise? Nothing to beat but a lot of dubs—and you’re not even trying!”

“Bill is no dub.” Mary flared up a bit in defense of her old friend.

“Ho!” sneered Russell. “So you call him Bill, do you?”

I lost the thread of the conversation there because Mary lowered her voice, but she must have told the young man something for the good of his soul. Anyway he was in a savage frame of mind when he stepped on the fourth tee. He wanted to quarrel with some one, but it wouldn’t have been healthy to pick on old Bill, and Russell probably realized it. Bill hadn’t spoken to him since the first hole, and to be thus calmly ignored was fresh fuel on a smoldering fire.

There was another explosion on Number Four—such a loud one that everybody heard it.

“There you go again!” snarled Russell. “I give you a perfect drive—I leave you in a position where all you have to do is pop a little mashie over a bunker to the green—and see what a mess you’ve made of it! I’m sorry I ever entered this fool tournament!”

“I’m sorry too,” said Mary quietly, and walked away from him leaving him fuming.

It must have been an uncomfortable situation for Beth and Bill. They kept just as far away from the other pair as they could—an exhibition of delicacy which I am sure Mary appreciated—and pretended not to hear the nasty things Russell said, though there were times when Bill had to hide his clenched fists in his coat pockets. He wanted to hit something, and hit it hard, so he took it out on the ball, with excellent results. And no matter what Beth did or did not do Bill never had anything for her but a cheery grin and words of encouragement. They got quite chummy, those two, and once or twice I thought I surprised resentment in Mary’s eye. I may have been mistaken.

Russell grew more rabid as the round proceeded, possibly because Mary’s manner was changing. After the seventh hole, where Russell said it was a waste of time to try to teach a woman anything about the use of a wooden club, Mary made not the slightest attempt to placate him. She deliberately ignored his advice, and did it smilingly. She became very gay, and laughed a great deal—too much, in fact—and of course her attitude did not help matters to any appreciable extent. A bully likes to have a victim who cringes under the lash.

The last nine was painful, even to a spectator, and if Russell Davidson had been blessed with the intelligence which God gives a goose he would have kept his mouth shut; but no, he seemed determined to force Mary to take some notice of his remarks. The strangest thing about it was that some fairly good golf was played by all hands. Even fuzzy-headed little Beth pulled off some pretty shots, whereupon Bill cheered uproariously. I think he found relief in making a noise.

While they were on the seventeenth green I spied old Waddles against the skyline, cutting off the entire sunset, and I climbed the hill to tell him the news. You may believe it or not, but up to that moment I had overlooked Waddles entirely. I had been stupid enough to think that the show I had been witnessing was an impromptu affair—a thing of pure chance, lacking a stage manager. Just as I reached the top of the hill, enlightenment came to me—came in company with Mary’s laugh, rippling up from below. At a distance it sounded genuine. A shade of disappointment crossed Waddles’ wide and genial countenance.

“So it didn’t work,” said he. “It didn’t work—and I’m sixteen dollars to the bad. Hey! Quit pounding me on the back! Anybody but a born ass would have known the whole thing was cooked up for Mary’s benefit—and you’ve just tumbled, eh? Now then, what has he done?”

Briefly, and in words of one syllable, I sketched Russell’s activities. Waddles wagged his head soberly.

“Treated her just the same as if he was already married to her, eh? A mixed foursome is no-o-o place for a mean man; give him rope enough and he’ll hang himself. How do they stand?”

I had not been keeping the score, so we walked down the hill to the eighteenth tee.

“Pretty soft for you folks,” said Waddles with a disarming grin. “Pretty soft. You’ve only got to beat a net 98.”

“Zat so?” asked Bill carelessly, but Russell snatched a score card from his pocket. Instantly his whole manner changed. The sullen look left his face; his eyes sparkled; he smiled.

“We’re here in 94,” said Russell. “Ten off of that—84. Why—it’s a cinch, Mary, a cinch! And I thought you’d thrown it away!”

“And you?” asked Waddles, turning to Bill.

“Oh,” said Russell casually, “they’ve got a gross of 102. What’s their handicap?”

“Sixteen,” answered Waddles.

“A net 86.” Russell became thoughtful. “H’m-m. Close enough to be interesting. Still, they’ve got to pick up three strokes on us here. Mary, all you’ve got to do is keep your second shot out of trouble. Go straight, and I’ll guarantee to be on the green in three.”

Mary didn’t say anything. She was watching Waddles—Waddles, with his lip curled into the scornful expression which he reserves for cup hunters and winter members who try to hog the course.

Russell drove and the ball sailed over the direction post at the summit of the hill.

“That’ll hold ’em!” he boasted. “Now just keep straight, Mary, and we’ve got ’em licked!”

Bill followed with another of his tremendous tee shots—two hundred pounds of beef and at least a thousand pounds of contempt behind the pill—and away they went up the path. Russell fell in beside Mary, and at every step he urged upon her the vital importance of keeping the ball straight. He simply bubbled and fizzed with advice, and he smiled as he offered it. I never saw a man change so in a short space of time.

“Well, partner,” apologized Beth, “I’m sorry. If I’d only played a tiny bit better——”

“Shucks!” laughed Bill. “Don’t you care. What’s a little tin cup between friends?”

“A tin cup!” growled Waddles. “Where do you get that stuff? Sterling silver, you poor cow!”

Bill’s drive was the long one, so it was up to Mary to play first. Our last hole requires fairly straight shooting, because the course is paralleled at the right by the steep slope of a hill, and at the bottom of that hill is a creek bed, lined on either side by tangled brush and heavy willows. A ball sliced so as to reach the top of the incline is almost certain to go all the way down. On the other side of the fair green there is a wide belt of thick long grass in which a ball may easily be lost. No wonder Russell advised caution.

“Take an iron,” said he, “and never mind trying for distance. All we need is a six.”

“Boy,” said Mary, addressing the caddie, “my brassy, please.”

“Give her an iron,” countermanded Russell. “Mary, you must listen to me. We’ve got this thing won now——”

“Fore!” said Mary in the tone of voice which all women possess, but most men do not hear it until after they are married. Russell fell back, stammering a remonstrance, and Mary took her practice swings—four of them. Then she set herself as carefully as if her entire golfing career depended on that next shot. Her back swing was deliberate, the club head descended in a perfect arc, she kept her head down, and she followed through beautifully—but at the click of contact a strangled howl of anguish went up from her partner. She had hit the ball with the rounded toe of the club, instead of the flat driving surface, and the result was a flight almost at right angles with the line of the putting green—a wretched roundhouse slice ticketed for the bottom of the creek bed. By running at top speed Russell was able to catch sight of the ball as it bounded into the willows. Mary looked at Waddles and smiled—the first real smile of the afternoon.

“Isn’t that provoking?” said she.

Judging by the language which floated up out of the ravine it must have been all of that. Russell found the ball at last, under the willows and half buried in the sand, and the recovery which he made was nothing short of miraculous. He actually managed to clear the top of the hill. Even Waddles applauded the shot.

Beth took an iron and played straight for the flag. Russell picked the burs from his flannel trousers and counted the strokes on his fingers.

“Hawley will put the next one on the green,” said he, “and that means a possible five—a net of 91. A six will win for us; and for pity’s sake, Mary, for my sake, get up there somewhere and give me a chance to lay the ball dead!”

Waddles sniffed.

“He’s quit bossing and gone to begging,” said he. “Well, if I was Mary Brooke——Holy mackerel! She’s surely not going to take another shot at it with that brassy!”

But that was exactly what Mary was preparing to do. Russell pleaded, he entreated, and at last he raved wildly; he might have spared his breath.

“Cheer up!” said Mary with a chilly little smile. “I won’t slice this one. You watch me.” She kept her promise—kept it with a savage hook, which sailed clear across the course and into the thick grass. The ball carried in the rough seventy-five yards from the putting green, and disappeared without even a bounce.

“That one,” whispered Waddles, sighing contentedly, “is buried a foot deep. It begins to look bad for love’s young dream. Bill, you’re away.”

Russell, his shoulders hunched and his chin buried in his collar, lingered long enough to watch Bill put an iron shot on the putting green, ten feet from the flag. Then he wandered off into the rough and relieved his feelings by growling at the caddie. He did not quit, however; the true cup hunter never quits. His niblick shot tore through that tangle of thick grass, cut under the ball and sent it spinning high in the air. It stopped rolling just short of the green.

We complimented him again, but he was past small courtesies. Our reward was a black scowl, which we shared with Mary.

“Lay it up!” said he curtly. “A seven may tie ’em. Lay it up!”

By this time quite a gallery had gathered to witness the finish of the match. In absolute silence Mary drew her putter from the bag and studied the shot. It was an absurdly simple one—a 30-foot approach over a level green, and all she had to do was to leave Russell a short putt. Then if Beth missed her ten-footer——

“It’s fast,” warned Russell. “It’s fast, so don’t hit it too hard!”

Even as he spoke the putter clicked against the ball, and instantly a gasp of dismay went up from the feminine spectators. I was watching Russell Davidson, and I can testify that his face turned a delicate shade of green. I looked for the ball, and was in time to see it skate merrily by the hole, “going a mile a minute,” as Waddles afterward expressed it. It rolled clear across the putting green before it stopped.

Mary ignored the polite murmur of sympathy from the gallery.

“Never up, never in,” said she with a cheerful smile. “Russell, I’m afraid you’re away.”

Waddles pinched my arm.

“Did you get that stuff?” he breathed into my ear. “Did you get it? She threw him down—threw him down cold!”

Russell seemed to realize this, but he made a noble effort to hole the putt. A third miracle refused him, and then Beth Rogers put her ball within three inches of the cup.

“Put it down!” grunted Russell. “Sink it—and let’s get it done with!”

Bill tapped the ball into the hole, and the match was over.

“Why—why,” stuttered Beth, “then—we’ve won!”

At this point the hand-shaking began. I was privileged to hear one more exchange of remarks between the losers as they started for the clubhouse.

“We had it won—if you’d only listened to me——” Russell began.

“Ah!” said Mary, “you seem to forget that I’ve been listening to you all the afternoon—listening and learning!”

That very same evening I was sitting on my front porch studying the stars and meditating upon the mutability of human relationships.

A familiar runabout drew up at the Brooke house, and a young man passed up the walk, moving with a stiff and stately stride. In exactly twelve minutes and thirty-two seconds by my watch the young man came out again, bounced down the steps, jumped into his car, slammed the door with a bang like a pistol shot, and departed from the neighborhood with a grinding and a clashing of gears which might have been heard for half a mile.

The red tail light had scarcely disappeared down the street when big Bill Hawley lumbered across the Brooke lawn, took the front steps at a bound and rang the doorbell.

Not being of an inquisitive and a prying nature, I cannot be certain how long he remained, but at 11:37 I thought I heard a door close, and immediately afterward some one passed under my window whistling loudly and unmelodiously. The selection of the unknown serenader was that pretty little thing which describes the end of a perfect day.

“Similia similibus curantur”

One

The front porch of our clubhouse is a sort of reserved-seat section from which we witness the finish of all important matches. The big wicker rocking-chairs command the eighteenth putting green, as well as the approach to it, and when nothing better offers we watch the dub foursomes come straggling home, herding the little white pills in front of them.

We were doing this only yesterday—Waddles, the Bish and yours truly—and Waddles was picking the winners and losers at a distance of three hundred yards. The old rascal is positively uncanny at that sort of thing; in fact, he rather prides himself on his powers of observation. The Bish was arguing with him, as usual. Of course he isn’t really a bishop, but he has a long, solemn ecclesiastical upper lip and a heavy manner of trundling out the most commonplace remarks, so we call him the Bish, and there is nothing he can do about it. In justice to all parties concerned I feel it my duty to state that in every other way he is quite unlike any bishop I have ever met.

“Hello!” said Waddles, sitting up straight. “Here’s the Old Guard—what’s left of it, at least.”

Away down to the right of the sycamore trees a single figure topped the brow of the hill and stalked along the sky line. There was no mistaking the long, thin legs or the stiff swing with which they moved.

“Walks like a pair of spavined sugar tongs,” was Waddles’ comment. “You can tell Pete Miller as far as you can see him.”

A second figure shot suddenly into view—the figure of a small, nervous man who brandished a golf club and danced from sheer excess of emotion, but even at three hundred yards it was evident that there was no joy in that dance. Waddles chuckled.

“Bet you anything you like,” said he, “that Sam Totten sliced his tee shot into the apricot orchard. He’s played about four by now—and they’re cutthroating it on the drink hole, same as they always do…. About time for Jumbo to be putting in an appearance.”

While he was speaking a tremendous form loomed large on the sky line, dwarfing Miller and Totten. Once on level ground this giant struck a rolling gait and rapidly overhauled his companions—overhauled them in spite of two hundred and sixty pounds and an immense paunch which swayed from side to side as he walked.

“Little Jumbo,” said Waddles, sinking back in his chair. “Little Jumbo, with his bag of clubs tucked under his left arm—one driver and all of three irons. He carries that awful load because his doctor tells him he ought to reduce. And he eats four pieces of apple pie à la mode with his lunch. But a fine old fellow at that…. Well, I notice it’s still a threesome.”

“Notice again,” said the Bish, pointing to the left of the sycamores.

Waddles looked, and rose from his chair with a grunt of amazement. A fourth figure came dragging itself up the slope of the hill—the particular portion of the slope of the hill where the deepest trouble is visited upon a sliced second shot. Judging by his appearance and manner this fourth golfer had been neck-deep in grief, to say nothing of cactus and manzanita. His head was hanging low on his breast, his shoulders were sagging, his feet were shuffling along the ground, and he trailed a golf club behind him. When a man trails a club to the eighteenth putting green it is a sure sign that all is over but the shouting; and the wise observer will do his shouting in a whisper. Waddles sat down suddenly.

“Well, as I live and breathe and run the Yavapai Golf and Country Club!” he ejaculated, “there’s my old friend, Mr. Peacock, with all his tail feathers pulled out! The deserter has joined the colors again, and the Old Guard is recruited to full war strength once more! They’ve actually taken him back, after the way he’s acted, too! Now what do you think of that, eh?”

“If you ask me,” said the Bish in his booming chest notes, “I’d say it was just a case of similia similibus curantur.”

“Nothing of the sort!” said Waddles, bristling instantly; “and besides, I don’t know what you mean. Bish, when you cut loose that belly barytone of yours you always remind me of an empty barrel rolling down the cellar stairs—a lot of noise, but you never spill anything worth mopping up. Come again with that foreign stuff.”

“Similia similibus curantur,” repeated the Bish. “That’s Latin.”

Waddles shook his head.

“In this case,” said he, “your word will have to be sufficient. While you were hog-wrastling Cæsar’s Commentaries I was down in the Indian Territory mastering the art of driving eight mules with a jerk line. I learned to swear some in Choctaw and Cherokee, but that was as far as I got. Break that Latin up into little ones. Slip it to me in plain unvarnished United States.”

“Well, then,” said the Bish, rolling a solemn eye in my direction, “that’s the same as saying that the hair of the dog cures the bite.”

“The hair of the dog,” repeated Waddles, wrinkling his brow. “The hair—of—the—dog…. H’m-m.”

“Oh, it’s deep stuff,” said the Bish. “Take a good long breath and dive for it.”

“The only time I ever heard that hair-of-the-dog thing mentioned,” said Waddles, “was the morning after the night before. Peacock doesn’t drink.”

The Bish made use of a very unorthodox expletive.

“Something ailed your friend Peacock,” said he, “and something cured him. Think it over.”

Slowly the light of intelligence dawned in Waddles’ eyes. He began to laugh inwardly, quivering like a mould of jelly, but the joke was too big to remain inside him. It burst forth, first in chuckles, then in subdued guffaws, and finally in whoops and yells, and as he whooped he slapped his fat knees and wallowed in his chair.

“Why,” he panted, “I saw it all the time—of course I did! It was just your fool way of putting it! The hair of the dog—oh, say, that’s rich! Make a note of that Latin thing, Bish. I want to spring it on the Reverend Father Murphy!”

“Certainly—but where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“Me?” said Waddles. “I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. I’m going to raise a man’s handicap from twelve to eighteen!”

He went away, still laughing, and I looked over toward the eighteenth green. Pete Miller was preparing to putt, Sam Totten and Jumbo were standing side by side, and in the background was Henry Peacock, his hands in his pockets, his cap tilted down over his eyes and his lower lip entirely out of control. His caddie was already on the way to the shed with the bag of clubs.

“From twelve handicap to eighteen,” said I. “That’s more or less of an insult. Think he’ll stand for it?”

“He’ll stand for anything right now,” said the Bish. “Look at him! He’s picked up his ball—on the drink hole too. Give him the once over—‘mighty somnambulist of a vanished dream!’”

Two

As far back as my earliest acquaintance with the royal and ancient game, the Old Guard was an institution of the Yavapai Golf and Country Club—a foursome cemented by years and usage, an association recognized as permanent, a club within the club—four eighteen-handicap men, bound by the ties of habit and hopeless mediocrity. The young golfer improves his game and changes his company, graduating from Class B into Class A; the middle-aged golfer is past improvement, so he learns his limitations, hunts his level and stays there. Peter Miller, Frank Woodson, Henry Peacock and Sam Totten were fixtures in the Grand Amalgamated Order of Dubs, and year in and year out their cards would have averaged something like ninety-seven. They were oftener over the century mark than below it.

Every golf club has a few permanent foursomes, but most of them are held together by common interests outside the course. For instance, we have a bankers’ foursome, an insurance foursome and a wholesale-grocery foursome, and the players talk shop between holes. We even have a foursome founded on the ownership of an automobile, a jitney alliance, as Sam Totten calls it; but the Old Guard cannot be explained on any such basis, nor was it a case of like seeking like.

Peter Miller, senior member, is grey and silent and as stiff as his own putter shaft. He is the sort of man who always lets the other fellow do all the talking and all the laughing, while he sits back with the air of one making mental notes and reservations. Peter is a corporation lawyer who seldom appears in court, but he loads the gun for the young and eloquent pleader and tells him what to aim at and when to pull the trigger. A solid citizen, Peter, and a useful one.

Frank Woodson, alias Jumbo, big and genial and hearty, has played as Miller’s partner for years and years, and possesses every human quality that Peter lacks. They say of Frank—and I believe it—that in all his life he never hurt a friend or lost one. Frank is in the stock-raising business at present, and carries a side line of blue-blooded dogs. He once made me a present of one, but I am still his friend.

A year ago I would have set against Henry Peacock’s name the words “colorless” and “neutral.” A year ago I thought I knew all about him; now I am quite certain that there is something in Henry Peacock’s nature that will always baffle me. Waddles swears that Peacock was born with his fingers crossed and one hand on his pocketbook, but that is just his extravagant way of putting things. Henry has shown me that it is possible to maintain a soft, yielding exterior, and yet be hard as adamant inside. He has also demonstrated that a meek man’s pride is a thing not lightly dismissed. I have revised all my estimates of H. Peacock, retired capitalist.

Last of all we have Samuel Totten, youngest of the Old Guard by at least a dozen years. How he ever laughed his way into that close corporation is a mystery, but somewhere in his twenties he managed it. Sam is a human firebrand, a dash of tabasco, a rough comedian and catch-as-catch-can joker. Years have not tamed him, but they have brought him into prominence as a consulting specialist in real estate and investments. Those who should know tell that Sam Totten can park his itching feet under an office desk and keep them there long enough to swing a big deal, but I prefer to think of him as the rather florid young man who insists on joining the hired orchestra and playing snare-drum solos during the country-club dances, much to the discomfiture of the gentleman who owns the drum. You will never realize how poor Poor Butterfly is until you hear Sam Totten execute that melody upon his favorite instrument.

These four men met twice a week, rain or shine, without the formality of telephoning in advance. Each one knew that, barring flood, fire or act of God, the others would be on hand, fed, clothed and ready to leave the first tee at one-fifteen P.M. If one of the quartette happened to be sick or out of town the others would pick up a fourth man and take him round the course with them, but that fourth man recognized the fact that he was not of the Old Guard, but merely with it temporarily. He was never encouraged to believe that he had found a home.

Imagine then, this permanent foursome, this coalition of fifteen years’ standing, this sacred institution, smitten and smashed by a bolt from the blue. And like most bolts from the blue it picked out the most unlikely target. Henry Peacock won the Brutus B. Hemmingway Cup!

Now as golf cups go the Hemmingway Cup is quite an affair—eighteen inches from pedestal to brim, solid silver of course, engraved and scrolled and chased within an inch of its life. Mr. Hemmingway puts up a new cup each year, the conditions of play being that the trophy shall go to the man making the best net score. A Class-B man usually wins it with a handicap of eighteen or twenty-four and the Class-A men slightingly refer to Mr. Hemmingway’s trophy as “the dub cup.” Sour grapes, of course.

I remember Mr. Peacock’s victory very well; in fact, I shall never forget it. On that particular afternoon my net score was seventy-one, five strokes under our par, and for half an hour or so I thought the Hemmingway Cup was going home with me. I recall trying to decide whether it would show to best advantage on the mantel in the living room or on the sideboard in the dining room. Numbers of disappointed contestants offered me their congratulations—they said it was about time I won something, even with the assistance of a fat handicap—and for half an hour I endeavored to bear my honors with becoming modesty. Waddles brought the Hemmingway Cup over and put it in the middle of the table.

“‘S all yours, I guess,” said he. “Nobody out now but the Old Guard. Not one of them could make an 88 with a lead pencil, and that’s what they’ve got to do to beat you. Might as well begin to buy.”

I began to buy, and while I was signing the first batch of tags the Old Guard came marching in from the eighteenth green. Sam Totten was in the lead, walking backward and twirling his putter as a drum major twirls a baton. Frank Woodson and Peter Miller were acting as an escort of honor for Henry Peacock, and I began to have misgivings. I also ceased signing tags.

The door of the lounging room crashed open and Sam Totten entered, dragging Henry Peacock behind him. Miller and Woodson brought up the rear.

“Hey, Waddles!” shouted Sam. “What do you think of this old stiff? He shot an eighty-two; he did, on the level!”

“An eighty-two?” said I. “Then his net was——”

“Sixty-four,” murmured Mr. Peacock with an apologetic smile. “Yes—ah—sixty-four.”

“The suffering Moses!” gulped Waddles. “How did he do it?”

“He played golf,” said Peter Miller. “Kept his tee shots straight, and holed some long putts.”

“Best round he ever shot in his life!” Woodson chimed in. “Won three balls from me, but it’s a pleasure to pay ’em, Henry, on account of your winning the cup! Who’d have thought it?”

“And we’re proud of him!” cried Sam Totten. “I’m proud of him! He’s my partner! An eighty-two—think of an old stiff like him shooting an eighty-two! One foot in the grave, and he wins a cup sixteen hands high and big as a horse! Cheers, gentlemen, cheers for the Old Guard! It dies, but it never surrenders!”

“Here,” said I, thrusting the rest of the tags into Henry’s limp and unresisting hand. “You sign these.”

“But,” said he, “I—I didn’t order anything, and I won the drink hole.”

“You won the cup too, didn’t you?” demanded Waddles. “Winner always buys—buys for everybody. Boy, bring the rest of those tags back here and let Mr. Peacock sign them too. Winner always buys, Henry. That’s a club rule.”

Mr. Peacock sat down at the table, put on his glasses and audited those tags to the last nickel. After he had signed them all he picked up the Hemmingway Cup and examined it from top to bottom.

“Can you beat that?” whispered Waddles in my ear. “The old piker is trying to figure, with silver as low as it is, whether he’s ahead or behind on the deal!”

“Well, boys,” said Sam Totten, standing on his chair and waving his arms, “here’s to the Old Guard! We won a cup at last! Old Henry won it; but it’s all in the family, ain’t it, Henry? Betcher life it is! The Old Guard—drink her up, and drink her down!”

Frank Woodson dropped his big ham of a hand on Henry Peacock’s shoulder.

“I couldn’t have been half so tickled if I’d won it myself!” said he. “You see, you never won a cup before. I won one once—runner-up in the fifth flight over at San Gabriel. Nice cup, silver and all that, but you’ve got to have a magnifying glass to see it. Now this Hemmingway Cup, Henry, is a regular old he cup. You can’t put it where your visitors won’t find it. You can be proud of it, old son, and we’re proud of you.”

“Same here,” said Peter Miller, and his face twisted into something remotely resembling a smile. “Did my heart good to see the old boy laying those tee shots out in the middle every time. We’re all proud of you, Henry.”

“Proud!” exclaimed Sam Totten. “I’m so proud I’m all out of shape!”

Peacock didn’t have much to say. He sat there smiling his tight little smile and looking at the silver cup. I believe that even then the idea of desertion had entered into his little two-by-four soul. There was a thoughtful look in his eyes, and he didn’t respond to Totten’s hilarity with any great degree of enthusiasm.

“What was it the admiral said at Santiago?” asked Sam. “‘There’s glory enough for us all!’ Wasn’t that it?”

“Mph!” grunted Waddles. “Since you’re getting into famous remarks of history, what was it the governor of North Carolina——”

“I think I’ll take my bath now,” interrupted Henry Peacock, rising.

“You will not!” cried Sam Totten. “I’m going to buy. Jumbo here is going to buy. Pete is going to buy. Where do you get that bath stuff? We don’t win a cup every day, Henry. Sit down!”

An hour later Waddles emerged from the shower room, looking very much like an overgrown cupid in his abbreviated underwear. Henry Peacock had been waiting for him. The Hemmingway Cup, in its green felt bag, dangled from his wrist. My locker is directly across the alley from Waddles’, and I overheard the entire conversation.

“I—I just wanted to say,” began Henry, “that any cut you might want to make in my handicap will be all right with me.”

Waddles growled. He has never yet found it necessary to consult a victim before operating on his handicap. There was a silence and then Henry tried again.

“I really think my handicap ought to be cut,” said he.

“Oh, it’ll be cut all right!” said Waddles cheerfully. “Don’t you worry about that. Any old stiff who brings in a net of sixty-four has a cut coming to him. Leave it to me!”

“Well,” said Henry, “I just wanted you to know how I felt about it. I—I want to be quite frank with you. Of course, I probably won’t shoot an eighty-two every time out”—here Waddles gasped and plumped down on the bench outside his locker—“but when a man brings in a net score that is twelve strokes under the par of the course I think some notice should be taken of it.”

“Oh, you do, do you? Listen, Henry! Since we’re going to be frank with each other, what do you think your new handicap ought to be?” Waddles was stringing him of course, but Henry didn’t realize it.

“I think ten would be about right,” said he calmly.

“Ten!” barked Waddles. “The suffering Moses! Ten! Henry, are you sure you’re quite well—not overexcited or anything?”

“All I had was four lemonades.”

“Ah!” said Waddles. “Four lemonades—and Sam Totten winked at the bar boy every time. Why, if I cut you from eighteen to ten that’ll put you in Class A!”

“I think that’s where I belong.”

“I’ll have to talk with the head bar boy,” said Waddles. “He shouldn’t be so reckless with that gin. It costs money these days. Listen to me, Henry. Take hold of your head with both hands and try to get what I say. You went out to-day and shot your fool head off. You played the best round of golf in your long and sinful career. You made an eighty-two. You’ll never make an eighty-two again as long as you live. It would be a crime to handicap you on to-day’s game, Henry. It would be manslaughter to put you in Class A. You don’t belong there. If you want me to cut you I’ll put you down to sixteen, and even then you won’t play to that mark unless you’re lucky.”

“I think I belong at ten,” said Peacock. I began to appreciate that line about the terrible insistence of the meek.

“Get out of here!” ordered Waddles, suddenly losing his patience. “Go home and pray for humility, Henry. Lay off the lemonade when Sam Totten is in the crowd. Lemonade is bad for you. It curdles the intelligence and warps the reasoning faculties. Shoo! Scat! Mush on! Vamose! Beat it! Hurry up! Wiki-wiki! Chop-chop! Schnell!”

“Then you won’t cut me to ten?”

“I—will—not!”

Henry sighed and started for the door. He turned with his hand on the knob.

“I still think I belong there,” was his parting shot.

“Might as well settle this thing right now,” said Waddles to himself. Then he lifted up his voice in a howl that made the electric lights quiver. “Send Tom in here!”

The head bar boy appeared, grinning from ear to ear.

“Tom,” said Waddles, “don’t you know you oughtn’t to slip a shot of gin into an old man’s lemonade?”

“Ain’t nobody gits gin in his lemonade, suh, ‘less he awdeh it thataway.”

“What did Mr. Peacock have?”

“Plain lemonade, suh.”

“No kick in it at all?”

“Not even a wiggle, suh.”

“That’ll do,” said Waddles; and Tom went back to his work. There was a long silence. By his laboured breathing I judged that Waddles was lacing his shoes. Once more he thought aloud.

“Tom wouldn’t lie to me, so it wasn’t gin. Now, I wonder…. I wonder if that old coot has got what they call ‘delusions of grandeur’?”

Three

On the Monday following the contest for the Hemmingway Cup I met the Bish at the country club. We arrived there between nine and ten in the morning, and the first man we saw was Mr. Henry Peacock. He was out on the eighteenth fairway practising approach shots, and the putting green was speckled with balls.

“Hello!” said the Bish. “Look who’s here! Practising too. You don’t suppose that old chump is going to try to make a golfer of himself, this late along?”

I said that it appeared that way.

“One-club practice is all right for a beginner,” said the Bish, “because he hasn’t any bad habits to overcome, but this poor nut didn’t take up the game till he was forty, and when he learned it he learned it all wrong. He can practice till he’s black in the face and it won’t do him any good. Don’t you think we’d better page Doc Osler and have him put out of his misery?”

It was then that I told the Bish about Henry’s desire to break into Class A, and he whistled.

“It got him quick, didn’t it?” said he. “Well, there’s no fool like an old fool.”

Half an hour later this was made quite plain to us. Henry came into the clubhouse to get a drink of water. Now I did not know him very well, and the Bish had only a nodding acquaintance with him, but he greeted us as long-lost brothers. I did not understand his cordiality at first, but the reason for it was soon apparent. Henry wanted to know whether we had a match up for the afternoon.

“Sorry,” lied the Bish; “we’re already hooked up with a foursome.”

Henry said he was sorry too; and moreover he looked it.

“I was thinking I might get in with you,” said he. “What I need is the—er—opportunity to study better players—er—get some real competition. Somebody that will make me do my best all the time. Don’t you think that will help my game?”

“Doubtless,” said the Bish in his deepest tone; “but at the same time you shouldn’t get too far out of your class. There is a difference between being spurred on by competition and being discouraged by it.”

“I shot an eighty-two last Saturday,” said Henry quickly.

“So I hear. So I hear. And how many brassy shots did you hole out?”

“Not one. It—it wasn’t luck. It was good steady play.”

“He admits it,” murmured the Bish, but Henry didn’t even hear him.

“Good steady play,” he repeated. “What a man does once he can do again. Eighty-two. Six strokes above the par of the course. My net was twelve strokes below it—due, of course, to a ridiculously high handicap: I—I intend to have that altered. Eighty-two is Class-A golf.”

“Or an accident,” said the Bish rather coldly.

“Steady golf is never an accident,” argued Henry. “I have thought it all out and come to the conclusion that what I need now is keener competition—er—better men to play with; and”—this with a trace of stubbornness in his tone—“I mean to find them.”

The Bish kicked my foot under the table.

“That’s all very well,” said he, “but—how about the Old Guard?”

The wretched renegade squirmed in his chair.

“That,” said he, “will adjust itself later.”

“You mean that you’ll break away?”

“I didn’t say so, did I?”

“No, but you’ve been talking about keener competition.”

Henry was not pleased with the turn the conversation had taken. He rose to go.

“Woodson and Totten and Miller are fine fellows,” said he. “Personally I hold them in the highest esteem, but you must admit that they are poor golfers. Not one of them ever shot an eighty-five. I—I have my own game to consider…. You’re quite sure you won’t have a vacancy this afternoon?”

“Oh, quite,” said the Bish, and Henry toddled back to his practice. It was well that he left us, for the Bish was on the point of an explosion.

“Well!” said he. “The conceited, ungrateful old scoundrel! Got his own game to consider—did you hear that? Just one fair-to-middling score in his whole worthless life, and now he’s too swelled up to associate with the fellows who have played with him all these years, stood for his little meannesses, covered up his faults and overlooked his shortcomings! Keener competition, eh? Pah! Would you play with him?”

“Not on a bet!” said I.

On the following Wednesday the Old Guard counted noses and found itself short the star member. Lacking the courage or the decency to inform his friends of his change of program, Peacock took the line of least resistance and elected to escape them by a late arrival. Sam Totten made several flying trips into the locker room in search of his partner, but he gave up at last, and at one-thirty the Old Guard drove off, a threesome.

At one-thirty-two Henry sneaked into the clubhouse and announced that he was without a match. The news did not create any great furore. All the Class-A foursomes were made up, and, to make matters worse, the Bish had been doing a little quiet but effective missionary work. Henry’s advances brought him smack up against a stone wall of polite but definite refusal. The cup winner was left out in the cold.

He finally picked up Uncle George Sawyer, it being a matter of Uncle George or nobody. Uncle George is a twenty-four-handicap man, but only when he is at the very top of his game, and he is deaf as a post, left handed and a confirmed slicer. In addition to these misfortunes Uncle George is blessed with the disposition of a dyspeptic wildcat, and I imagine that Mr. Peacock did not have a pleasant afternoon. The Old Guard pounced on him when he came into the lounging room at five o’clock.

“Hey! Why didn’t you say that you’d be late?” demanded Sam Totten. “We’d have waited for you.”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Henry—and he looked like a sheep-killing dog surprised with the wool in his teeth—“I’ll tell you. The fact of the matter is I—I didn’t know just how late I was going to be, and I didn’t think it would be fair to you——”

“Apology’s accepted,” said Jumbo, “but don’t let it happen again. And you went and picked on poor old Sawyer too. You—a cup winner—picking on a cripple like that! Henry, where do you expect to go when you die? Ain’t you ashamed of yourself?”

“We’ve got it all fixed up to play at San Gabriel next Saturday,” put in Peter Miller. “You’ll go, of course?”

“I’ll ring up and let you know,” said Henry, and slipped away to the shower room.

I do not know what lies he told over the telephone or how he managed to squirm out of the San Gabriel trip, but I do know that he turned up at the country club at eleven o’clock on Saturday morning and spent two hours panhandling everybody in sight for a match. The keen competition fought very shy of Mr. Peacock, thanks to the Bish and his whispering campaign. Everybody was scrupulously polite to him—some even expressed regret—but nobody seemed to need a fourth man.

“They’re just as glad to see him as if he had smallpox,” grinned the Bish. “Well, I’ve got a heart that beats for my fellow man. I’d hate to see Peacock left without any kind of a match. Old Sawyer is asleep on the front porch. I’ll go and tell him that Peacock is here looking for him.”

It has been years since any one sought Uncle George’s company, and the old chap was delighted, but if Henry was pleased he managed to conceal his happiness. I learned later that their twosome wound up in a jawing match on the sixteenth green, in which Uncle George had all the better of it because he couldn’t hear any of the things that Henry called him. They came to grief over a question of the rules; and Waddles, when appealed to, decided that they were both wrong—and a couple of fussy old hens, to boot.

“Just what I told him!” mumbled Uncle George, who hadn’t heard a word that Waddles said. “The ball nearest the hole——”

“No such thing!” interrupted Henry, and they went away still squabbling. Waddles shook his head.

“He’s a fine twelve-handicap man!” said he with scorn. “Doesn’t even know the rules of the game!”

“Twelve!” said I. “You don’t mean——”

“Yes, I cut him to twelve. Ever since he won that cup he’s been hounding me—by letter, by telephone and by word of mouth. He’s like Tom Sawyer’s cat and the pain killer. He kept asking for it, and now he’s got it. He thinks a low handicap will make him play better—stubborn old fool!”

“And that’s not all,” said the Bish. “He’s left the Old Guard, flat.”

“No!”

“He has, I tell you.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Waddles. “He may be all kinds of a chump, but he wouldn’t do that.”

The Old Guard didn’t believe it either. It must have been all of three weeks before Totten and Woodson and Miller realized that Peacock was a deserter, that he was deliberately avoiding them. At first they accepted his lame excuses at face value, and when doubt began to creep in they said the thing couldn’t be possible. One day they waited for him and brought matters to a showdown. Henry wriggled and twisted and squirmed, and finally blurted out that he had made other arrangements. That settled it, of course; and then instead of being angry or disgusted with Henry they seemed to pity him, and from the beginning to the end I am quite certain that not one of them ever took the renegade to task for his conduct. Worse than everything else they actually missed him. It was Frank Woodson, acting as spokesman for the others, who explained the situation to me.

“Oh, about Henry? Well, it’s this way: We’ve all got our little peculiarities—Lord knows I’ve a few of my own. I never would have thought this could happen, but it just goes to show how a man gets a notion crossways in his head and jams up the machinery. Henry is all right at heart. His head is a little out of line at present, but his heart is O. K. You see, he won that cup and it gave him a wrong idea. He really thinks that under certain conditions he can play back to that eighty-two. I know he can’t. We all know he can’t; but let him go ahead and try it. He’ll get over this little spell and be a good dog again.”

The Bish, who was present, suggested that the Old Guard should elect a new member and forget the deserter.

“No-o,” said Frank thoughtfully; “that wouldn’t be right. We’ve talked it over, the three of us, and we’ll keep his place open for him. Confound it, man! You don’t realize that we’ve been playing together for more than fifteen years! We understand each other, and we used to have more fun than anybody, just dubbing round the course. The game doesn’t seem quite the same, with Henry out of it; and I don’t think he’s having a very good time, hanging on the fringe of Class A and trying to butt in where he isn’t wanted. No; he’ll come back pretty soon, and everything will be just the same again. We’ve all got our little peculiarities, Bish. You’ve got some. I’ve got some. The best thing is to be charitable and overlook as much as you can, hoping that folks will treat you the same way.”

“And that,” said Bish after Jumbo had gone away, “proves the statement that a friend is ‘a fellow who knows all about you and still stands for you.’ How long do you suppose they’ll have to wait before that old imbecile regains his senses?”

They waited for at least five months, during which time H. Peacock, Esquire, enrolled himself as the prize pest of the golfing world. The Class-B men, resenting his treatment of the Old Guard, were determined not to let him break into one of their foursomes, and the Class-A men wouldn’t have him at any price. The game of pussy-wants-a-corner is all right for children, but Henry, playing it alone, did not seem to find it entertaining. He picked up a stranger now and then, but it wasn’t the season for visitors, and even Uncle George Sawyer shied when he saw Henry coming. The stubbornness which led him to insist that his handicap be cut would not permit him to hoist the white flag and return to the fold, and altogether he had a wretched time of it—almost as bad a time as he deserved. Left to himself he became every known variety of a golfing nut. He saved his score cards, entering them on some sort of a comparative chart which he kept in his locker—one of those see-it-at-a-glance things. He took lessons of the poor professional; he bought new clubs and discovered that they were not as good as his old ones; he experimented with every ball on the market; and his game was neither better nor worse than it was before the Hemmingway Cup poured its poison into the shrivelled receptacle which passed for Henry Peacock’s soul.

Four

One week ago last Saturday, Sam Totten staged his annual show. Totten Day is ringed with red on all calendars belonging to Class-B golfers. It is the day when men win cups who never won cups before. All Class-A men are barred; it is strictly a Class-B party. Those with handicaps from twelve to twenty-four are eligible, and there are cups for all sorts of things—the best gross, the best first nine, the best second nine, the best score with one hole out, the best score with two holes out, and so on. Sam always buys the big cup himself—the one for the best gross score—and he sandbags his friends into contributing at least a dozen smaller trophies. The big cup is placed on exhibition before play begins, but the others, as well as the conditions of award, remain under cover, thus introducing the element of the unexpected. The conditions are made known as the cups are awarded and the ceremony of presentation is worth going a long way to see and a longer way to hear.

On Totten Day three of us were looking for a fourth man, and we encountered Henry Peacock, in his chronic state of loneliness. The Bish is sometimes a very secretive person, but he might have spared my feelings by giving me a hint of his intentions. Henry advanced on us, expecting nothing, hoping for nothing, but convinced that there was no harm in the asking. He used the threadbare formula:

“Any vacancy this afternoon, gentlemen?”

“Why, yes!” said the Bish. “Yes, we’re one man short. Want to go round with us?”

Did he! Would a starving newsboy go to a turkey dinner? Henry fell all over himself in his eagerness to accept that invitation. Any time would suit him—just let him get a sandwich and a glass of milk and he would be at our service. As for the making of the match, the pairing of the players, he would leave that to the Bish. He, Henry, was a twelve-handicap man; and he might shoot to it, and again he might not. Yes, anything would suit him—and he scuttled away toward the dining-room.

I took the Bish into a corner and spoke harshly to him. He listened without so much as a twitch of his long solemn upper lip.

“All done?” said he when I had finished. “Very well! Listen to me. I took him in with us because this is Totten Day.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Everything. As a Class-B man he’s eligible to play for those cups. If he tears up his card or picks up his ball he’ll disqualify himself. I want to make sure that he plays every hole out, sinks all his putts and has his card turned in.”

“But you don’t want that old stiff to win a cup, do you?”

“I do,” said the Bish. “Not only that, but I’m going to help him win it. That old boy hasn’t been treated right. ‘Man’s inhumanity to man’ is a frightful thing if carried to extremes. And anyway, what are you kicking about? You don’t have to play with him. I’ll take him as my partner, and you can have Dale.”

When our foursome appeared on the first tee there was quite a ripple of subdued excitement. The news that Henry Peacock had finally broken into Class-A company was sufficient to empty the lounging room. Totten, Miller and Woodson were present, but not in their golfing clothes. Sam was acting as field marshal, assisted by Jumbo and Pete. It was Woodson who came forward and patted Henry on the back.

“Show ’em what you can do, old boy!” said he. “Go out and get another eighty-two!”

“I’ll bring him home in front,” said the Bish. “Of course”—here he addressed Henry—“you won’t mind my giving you a pointer or two as we go along. We’ve got a tough match here and we want to win it if we can.”

“I’ll be only too happy,” chirped Henry, all in a flutter. “I need pointers. Anything you can tell me will be appreciated.”

“That’s the way to talk!” said the Bish, slapping him on the back and almost knocking him down. “The only golfer who’ll never amount to anything is the one who can’t be told when he makes a mistake!”

Well, away we went, Dale and I driving first. Then the Bish sent one of his justly celebrated tee shots screaming up the course and made room for Henry. Whether it was the keen competition or the evident interest shown by the spectators or the fact that the Bish insisted that Henry change his stance I cannot say, but the old man nearly missed the ball entirely, topping it into the bunker.

“Don’t let a little thing like that worry you,” said the Bish, taking Henry’s arm. “I’ll tell you how to play the next shot.”

Arriving at the bunker Henry armed himself with his niblick.

“What are you going to do with that blunderbuss?” asked the Bish. “Can’t you play your jigger at all?”

“My jigger!” exclaimed Henry. “But—it’s a niblick shot, isn’t it?”

“That’s what most people would tell you, but in this case, with a good lie and a lot of distance to make up, I’d take the jigger and pick it up clean. If you hit it right you’ll get a long ball.”

Now Chick Evans or Ouimet might play a jigger in a bunker and get away with it once in a while, but to recommend that very tricky iron to a dub like Henry Peacock was nothing short of a misdemeanour. Acting under instructions he swung as hard as he could, but the narrow blade hit the sand four inches behind the ball and buried it completely.

“Oh, tough luck!” said the Bish. “Now for a little high-class excavating. Scoop her out with the niblick.”

Henry scooped three times, at last popping the ball over the grassy wall. The Bish did not seem in the least discouraged.

“Now your wood,” said he.

“But I play a cleek better.”

“Nonsense! Take a good hard poke at it with the brassy!”

And poke it he did—a nasty slice into rough grass.

“I could have kept it straight with an iron,” said Henry reproachfully.

“Well, of course,” said the Bish, “if you don’t want me to advise you——”

“But I do!” Henry hastened to assure him. “Oh, I do! You can’t imagine how much I appreciate your correcting my mistakes!”

“Spoken like a sportsman,” said the Bish, and followed at Henry’s heels. By acting upon all the advice given him Henry managed to achieve that first hole in eleven strokes. He said he hoped that we would believe he could do better than that.

“Sure you can!” said the Bish with enthusiasm. “One thing about you, Peacock, you’re willing to learn, and when a man is willing to learn there is always hope for him. Never let one bad hole get your nanny.”

“Eleven!” murmured Henry. “No chance for me to win that big cup now.”

“Aw, what’s one cup, more or less?” demanded the Bish. “You’ll get something to-day worth more than any cup. You’ll get keen competition—and advice.”

Indeed that was the truth. The competition was keen enough, and the advice poured forth in a steady stream. The Bish never left Henry alone with his ball for an instant. He was not allowed to think for himself, nor was he allowed to choose the clubs with which to execute his shots. If he wished to use a mashie the Bish would insist on the mid-iron. If he pulled the mid-iron from his bag the jigger would be placed in nomination. The climax came when the Bish gravely explained that all putter shots should be played with a slight hook, “for the sake of the extra run.” That was when I nearly swallowed my chewing gum.

“He’s steering him all wrong,” whispered Dale. “What’s the idea?”

I suggested that he ask the Bish that question; but we got nothing out of that remarkable man but a cool, impersonal stare; and for the first time since I have known him the Bish kept a careful record of the scores. As a general thing he carries the figures in his head—and when you find a man who does that you have found a golfer. Henry’s score would have been a great memory test. It ran to eights, nines and double figures, and on the long hole, when he topped his drive into the bottom of the ravine and played seven strokes in a tangle of sycamore roots he amassed the astonishing total of fifteen. From time to time he bleated plaintively, but the Bish, sticking closer than a brother, advised him to put all thought of his score out of his head and concentrate on his shots. Henry might have been able to do this if he had been left alone, but with a human phonograph at his elbow he had no chance to concentrate on anything. He finished in a blaze of glory, taking nine on the last hole, and the Bish slapped him violently between the shoulder blades.

“You’ll be all right, Peacock, if you just remember what I’ve told you. The fundamentals of your game are sound enough, but you’ve a tendency to underclub yourself. You must curb that. Never be afraid of getting too much distance.”

“I—I’m awfully obliged to you,” said Henry. “I’m obliged to all you gentlemen. I hope to have the pleasure of playing with you again soon—er—quite soon. I’m here nearly every afternoon. And anything you can tell me——”

Henry continued to babble and the Bish drew me aside.

“Hold him in the lounging room for a while. Don’t let him get away. Talk to him about his game—anything. Buy him soft drinks, but keep him there!”

Immediately thereafter the Bish excused himself, and I heard him demanding to know where he might come by a shingle nail.

The Totten Day cups were presented in the lounging room with the usual ceremonies. Sam made the speeches and Jumbo acted as sergeant-at-arms, escorting the winners to the table at the end of the room. By selecting an obscure corner I had been able to detain Henry for a time, but when the jollification began he showed signs of nervousness. He spoke of needing a shower and was twice on the point of departure when my good fairy prompted me to mention the winning of the Hemmingway Cup. Immediately he launched into an elaborate description of that famous victory, stroke by stroke, with distances, direction and choice of clubs set forth in proper order. He was somewhere on the seventh hole when Totten made his last speech.

“So I thought it all over, and I decided it was too far for the mashie and not quite far enough for the——”

There was a loud, booming noise at the other end of the room. Over the sea of heads I caught sight of the Bish mounting a table. He had a large green felt bag under his arm.

“Gentlemen!” he shouted. “Gentlemen—if you are gentlemen!—I crave your indulgence for a moment! A moment, I beg of you! I have here an added trophy—a trophy which I may say is unique in golfing history!”

He paused, and there was a faint patter of applause, followed by cries of “Go to it, Bish!” I glanced at Sam Totten, and the surprised expression on his face told me that this part of the program was not of his making.

“All the cups presented to-day,” continued the Bish, “have been awarded for a best score of some sort. I believe you will agree with me that this is manifestly one-sided and unfair.”

“Hear! Hear!” cried a voice.

“Throw that twenty-four-handicap man out!” said the Bish. “Now the cup which I hold in my hands is a cup for the highest gross score ever made by a twelve-handicap man in the United States of America.”

Henry Peacock jumped as if his name had been called. If I had not laid my hand on his arm he would have bolted for the door.

“I take great pleasure, gentlemen,” said the Bish after the uproar had subsided, “in presenting this unique trophy to one who now has a double distinction. He is the holder of two records—one for the lowest net score on record, the other for the highest gross. Mr. Henry Peacock shot the course to-day in exactly one hundred and sixty-seven strokes…. Bring the gentleman forward, please!”

There was a great burst of laughter and applause, and under cover of the confusion Henry tried to escape. A dozen laughing members surrounded him, and he surrendered, sputtering incoherently. He was escorted to the table, and the double wall of cheering humanity closed in behind him and surged forward. I caught a glimpse of his face as the Bish bent over and placed the green bag in his hands. It was very red, and his lower lip was trembling with rage.

“Open it up! Come on, let’s see it!”

Mr. Peacock cast one despairing glance to left and right and plunged his hand into the bag. I do not know what he expected to find there, but it was a cup, sure enough—a fine, large pewter cup, cast in feeble imitation of the genuine article and worth perhaps seventy-five cents. And on the side of this cup rudely engraved with a shingle nail, was the record of Mr. Peacock’s activities for the afternoon, in gross and detail, as follows:

Holes

Par

Peacock

1

4

11

2

4

9

3

4

8

4

5

8

5

3

7

6

6

15

7

5

9

8

4

8

9

4

12

10

5

12

11

3

7

12

4

8

13

4

9

14

3

7

15

4

8

16

4

9

17

5

11

18

5

9

Total

76

167

As Henry gazed at this work of art a shout came from the back of the room. Waddles had come to life.

“Winner buys, Henry! Winner always buys! It’s a rule of the club!”

“The club be damned!” cried Henry Peacock as he fought his way to the door.

“Bish,” said Frank Woodson, “that was a rotten trick to play on anybody. You shouldn’t have done it.”

“A rotten case,” replied the Bish, “requires a rotten remedy. It’s kill or cure; even money and take your pick.”

As it turned out it was a cure.

Henry Peacock is once more a member of the Old Guard, in good standing and entitled to all privileges. Totten, Woodson and Miller received him with open arms, and they actually treat the old reprobate as if nothing had happened. I believe it will be a long time before he reminds them that he once shot an eighty-two, and a longer time before he breaks a ninety.

A cure for lumbago

One

Colonel Jimmy threatens to resign from the club. He says it was sharp practice. Archie MacBride says it wasn’t half as sharp as the lumbago trick which the Colonel worked on him as well as several of the other young members. Colonel Jimmy Norman is one of the charter members of our golf club. He is about as old as Methuselah and he looks it. That is what fools people. It doesn’t fool the handicap committee, though. They’ve got the Colonel down to 8 now and he hasn’t entered a club competition since for fear they’ll cut him to 6. Respect for age is a fine thing, I admit, but anybody who can step out and tear off 79’s and 80’s on the Meadowmead course—72 par and a tough 72 at that—isn’t entitled to much the best of it because he can remember the Civil War and cast his first vote for Tilden.

Mind you, I don’t say that Colonel Jimmy shoots 79’s every day, but he shoots ’em when he needs 79’s to win, and that’s the mark of a real golfer. And bet? The old pirate will bet anything from a repainted golf ball to a government bond. He has never been known to take his clubs out of the locker without a gamble of some sort. The new members pay all the expenses of Colonel Jimmy’s golfing, as well as the upkeep of his limousine—the old members are shy of him—and the way he can nurse a victim along for months without letting him win a single bet is nothing short of miraculous. I ought to know, for I am one of Colonel Jimmy’s graduates, and, while I never beat him in my life, he always left me with the impression that I would surely rook him the next time—if I had any luck. Somehow I never had the luck.

Colonel Jimmy has the gentle art of coin separation down to an exact science. Perhaps this is because he made his money in Wall Street and applies Wall Street methods to his golf. After every match he waits around until he collects. He always apologises for taking the money and says that he hopes you’ll be on your game the next time.

The Colonel is a shrewd judge of how far he can go in shearing a lamb, and when he sees signs that the victim is getting bare in spots and is about ready to stop betting with him, he cleans up all the spare fleece with the lumbago trick. I’ll never forget how he worked it on me. I had been betting him five and ten dollars a match and winning nothing but sympathy and advice and I was about ready to quit the Colonel as a poor investment.

The next time I went out to the club I found Colonel Jimmy sitting on the porch in the sun and I heard him groan even before I saw him. Naturally I asked what was the matter.

“Oh, it’s this cursed lumbago again! I must have caught cold after my shower the other night and—ouch!—just when I’d been looking forward to a nice little game this afternoon, too! It’s a real pleasure to play with a young man like you who—ouch! O-o-o!”

After a while he began to wonder whether light exercise would do him any good. I thought it might and he let me persuade him. If I would give him my arm as far as his locker—ouch!

All the time he was dressing he grunted and groaned and rubbed his back and cursed the lumbago bitterly. He said it was the one thing the devil didn’t try on Job because it would have fetched him if he had. He worried some because he would have to drive with an iron, not being able to take a full swing with a wooden club. Then when he had me all ribbed up properly, he dropped a hint where I couldn’t help but stumble over it.

“You have always named the bet,” said Colonel Jimmy. “Don’t take advantage of my condition to raise it beyond reason.”

Up to that time the idea of making a bet with a cripple hadn’t occurred to me. It wouldn’t have seemed fair. I got to thinking about the fives and the tens that the old rascal had taken away from me when the advantage was all on his side and—

“I suppose I shouldn’t expect mercy,” said Colonel Jimmy, fitting his remarks to my thought like a mind reader. “I have been quite fortunate in winning from you, William, when you were not playing your best. This seems an excellent opportunity for you to take revenge. This cursed lumbago——”

The match was finally made at five dollars a hole, and if I hadn’t been ashamed of taking advantage of a cripple I would have said ten.

Colonel Jimmy whined a little and said that in his condition it was almost a shame for me to raise the bet to five dollars a hole and that he couldn’t possibly allow me any more than five strokes where before he had been giving me eight and ten. He said he probably wouldn’t get any distance off the tees on account of not being able to take a full swing, and I agreed on the basis of five strokes, one each on the five longest holes.

I went out to the professional’s shop to buy some new balls. David Cameron is a good club maker, but a disappointing conversationalist. He says just so much, and then he stops and rubs his left ear. I told David that I had caught Colonel Jimmy out of line at last and would bring him home at least six or seven down.

“Ay,” said David. “He’ll be havin’ one of his attacks of the lumba-ago again, I’m thinkin’. Ye’ve raised the bet?”

I admitted that the bet had been pressed a little. “Ye’re not gettin’ as many str-rokes as usual?”

I explained about the Colonel’s not being able to take a full swing with his wooden clubs.

“Ay,” said David, beginning to polish his left ear.

“I wish you’d tell me what you think,” said I.

“I’m thinkin’,” said David, “that ye’ll not have noticed that the climate hereabouts is varra benefeecial to certain for-rms o’ disease. I’ve known it to cure the worst case o’ lumba-ago between the clubhouse an’ the fir-rst tee. The day o’ meeracles is not past by ony means,” concluded David, rubbing his ear hard.

I suspected then that I had a bad bet. I was sure of it when I saw Colonel Jimmy pulling his driver out of the bag on the first tee.

“I thought you said you’d have to drive with an iron.” I reminded him of it anyway.

“I might as well try the wood,” said Colonel Jimmy. “I’ll have to shorten up my swing some and I suppose I’ll top the ball.”

He groaned and he grunted when he took his practice swing, and said that he was really afraid he’d have to call the bet off, but when he hit the ball he followed through like a sixteen-year-old, and it went sailing down the middle of the course, a good 200 yards—which is as far as Colonel Jimmy ever drives.

“Well, I’ll declare!” he crowed. “Look at that ball go! I had no idea I could do it! And with this lumbago too!”

There’s no use in prolonging the agony with a detailed account of the match. The old shark was out for the fag end of the fleece crop so far as I was concerned, and he surely gave me a close clip. He made a 79 that day and I had to hand him my check for forty dollars. It might not have been so much, only on every tee the Colonel whined about his lumbago and got me in such a state of mind that I couldn’t keep my eye on the ball to save my life.

When we got back to the clubhouse, David Cameron was sitting in the door of his shop, rubbing his left ear thoughtfully. He knew it wouldn’t have been safe for him to ask about the match. Colonel Jimmy, confound him, blatted right along, apologising to me for playing “better than he knew how” and all that sort of rot. He said he hoped we could have another match soon, and perhaps I was a little crusty with him. At any rate he was satisfied that my forty-dollar check was the last contribution he would ever get from me, and he took up with Archie MacBride, who had just joined the club and was learning the game.

Archie hails from out West somewhere and he has the Eastern agency for a lot of stuff manufactured in Chicago. In the beginning he didn’t know any of the younger members at Meadowmead and that made it easy for the Colonel to take him under his wing. The old rascal has rather a pleasant manner—in the clubhouse at least—and he talked Chicago to Archie—what a wonderful city it is and all that stuff. He talked the same way to me about Cincinnati.

I watched the shearing proceed to the lumbago stage, but I didn’t interfere. In the first place, it wasn’t any of my business. In the second, I hadn’t been introduced to MacBride. And, besides, I had a sort of curiosity to know how he would act when he was stung. He looked more like a goat than a lamb to me.

One day I was sitting on the porch and MacBride came out of the locker room and sat down beside me. Colonel Jimmy was over on the extra green, practicing sidehill putts. Somehow we drifted into conversation.

“Did you ever play with that old fellow over there?” said he.

“A few times.”

“Ever beat him?”

“No-o. Nor anybody else. His methods are—well, peculiar.”

“Darned peculiar! I don’t know but that the grand jury ought to investigate ’em. If you shoot 110 at him, he’s just good enough to win. If you make a 90, he’s still good enough to win. He’s always good enough to win. The other day I came out here and found him all doubled up with——”

“Lumbago, wasn’t it?”

MacBride held out his hand immediately.

“Both members of the same lodge!” said he. “I feel better now. He nicked me for an even hundred. What did he get you for?”

Nothing cements a friendship like a common grievance. We had both been rooked by the lumbago trick and we fell to discussing the Colonel and his petty larceny system of picking on the new members.

“Far be it that I should squeal,” said Archie. “I hope I’m a good loser as far as the money goes, but I hate to be bunkoed. I handed over one hundred big iron dollars to that hoary old pirate—and I smiled when I did it. It hurt me worse to smile than it did to part with the frog-skins, but I wanted the Colonel to think that I didn’t suspect him. I want him to regard me as a soft proposition and an easy mark because some day I am going to leave a chunk of bait lying around where that old coyote can see it. If he gobbles it—good night. Yes, sir, I’m going to slip one over on him that he’ll remember even when they begin giving him the oxygen.”

“He’ll never be trimmed on a golf course,” said I.

“He’ll never be trimmed anywhere else. It’s the only game he plays. If he sticks around this club, I’ll introduce him to the Chicago method of taking the bristles off a hog. I’m not sure, but I think it’s done with a hoe.”

“It can’t be done with a set of golf clubs,” said I.

“Don’t be too sure of that. By the way, my name’s MacBride. What’s yours?… If you don’t mind, I’ll call you Bill for short. We will now visit the nineteenth tee and pour a libation on the altar of friendship. We will drink success to the Chicago method of shearing a hog. Simple, effective, and oh, so painful!”

Two

Colonel Jimmy picked up a new pupil after Archie quit him and Archie paired off with me. We played two or three times a week and often ran into the Colonel on the porch or in the locker room. The old reprobate was always cordial in his cat-and-canary way—infernally cordial. I couldn’t resist the temptation to inquire after his lumbago occasionally, but it was next to impossible to hurt his feelings. The old fellow’s hide was bullet proof and even the broadest sort of hint was lost on him. Archie was more tactful. He used to joke the Colonel about a return match, but he was never able to fix a date. The Colonel was busy anyway. His latest victim was a chinless youth from Poughkeepsie with money to burn and no fear of matches.

One afternoon Archie brought a friend out to the club with him—an immense big chap with hands and feet like hams. Everything about him was beyond the limit. He was too beefy to begin with, though I suppose that wasn’t his fault. He wore a red tie and a yellow vest. He talked too much and too loud. Archie introduced him to me as Mr. Small of Chicago.

“Small but not little!” said Small. “Haw!”

“Mr. Small is an old friend of mine,” said Archie. “He is taking a short vacation and I am putting him up at the club for a week or ten days. He doesn’t look it, but his doctor says he needs exercise.”

“Yeh,” said Small, “and while I’m resting I think I’ll learn this fool game of golf. Think of a big fellow like me, whaling a poor little pill all over the country! I suppose all there is to it is to hit the blamed thing.”

Colonel Jimmy was sitting over by the reading table and I saw him prick up his ears at this remark. He always manages to scrape an acquaintance with all the beginners.

Small went booming along.

“I can remember,” said he, “when people who played golf were supposed to be a little queer upstairs. Cow-pasture pool, we used to call it. It’s a good deal like shinny-on-your-own-side, ain’t it?”

Archie took him out to David to get him outfitted with clubs and things, left Small in the shop, and came back to explain matters to me.

“You mustn’t mind Small’s manner,” said he. “He’s really one of the best fellows in the world, but he’s—well, a trifle crude in spots. He’s never had time to acquire a polish; he’s been too busy making money.”

“Excuse me”—Colonel Jimmy had been listening—“but is he in any way related to the Caspar Smalls of Chicago and Denver?”

“Not that I know of, Colonel,” said Archie.

“You spoke of money,” said I. “Has he so much of it, then?”

“Barrels, my dear boy, barrels. Crude oil is his line at present. And only thirty-five years of age too. He’s a self-made man, Small is.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say except that he must have had a deuce of a lot of raw material to start with—and if I put the accent on the raw it was unintentional.

“Well,” said Archie, “his heart is in the right place anyway.”

When you can’t think of anything else to say for a man, you can always say that his heart is in the right place. It sounds well, but it doesn’t mean anything. Archie proposed that we should let Small go around with us that afternoon. I didn’t like the idea, but, of course, I kept mum; the man was Archie’s guest.

Small got in bad on the first tee. I knew he would when I saw who was ahead of us—Colonel Jimmy and the chinless boy. Like most elderly mechanical golfers, the Colonel is a stickler for the etiquette of the game—absolute silence and all that sort of thing.

Archie introduced Small to the Colonel and the Colonel introduced us to the chinless boy, who said he was charmed, stepped up on the tee and whacked his ball into the rough.

While the Colonel was teeing up, Small kept moving around and talking in that megaphone voice of his. Colonel Jimmy looked at him rather eloquently a couple of times and finally Small hushed up. The Colonel took his stance, tramped around awhile to get a firm footing, addressed the ball three times, and drew his club back for the swing. Just as it started downward, Small sneezed—one of those sneezes with an Indian war whoop on the end of it—“Aa-chew!” Naturally Colonel Jimmy jumped, took his eye off the ball and topped it into the long grass in front of the tee.

“Take it over,” said the chinless boy, who was a sport if nothing else.

“I certainly intend to!” snapped the Colonel, glaring at Small. “You—you spoiled my swing, sir!”

“Quit your kidding, Colonel!” said Small. “How could I spoil your swing?”

“You sneezed behind me!”

Small laughed at the top of his voice. “Haw! Haw! That’s rich! Why, I’ve seen Heinie Zimmerman hit a baseball a mile with thirty thousand people yelling their heads off at him!”

“Yes,” said Archie, “but that was baseball. This is golf. There’s a difference.”

“Gentlemen,” said the Colonel, “when you are through with your discussion, I would really like to drive.”

Three

I played with Small all the afternoon without yielding to an impulse to slay him with a niblick, which speaks volumes for my good disposition. It was a harrowing experience. Small proceeded on the usual theory of the beginner, which is to hit the ball as hard as possible and trust to luck. The most I can say for his day’s play is that I never expect to see golf balls hit any harder. His wooden club shots hooked and sliced into the woods on either side of the course—he bought a dozen balls to begin with and was borrowing from us at the finish—he dug up great patches of turf on the fair greens, he nearly destroyed three bunkers and after every shot he yelled like a Comanche.

We caught up with Colonel Jimmy at the eighteenth tee. The Colonel was in a better humor and was offering to give the chinless boy a stroke and play him double or quits on the last hole—sure proof that he had him badly licked. The chinless boy took the bet.

“Now, there’s some sense to that!” said Small. “I never could play any game for fun. Make it worth while, that’s what I say! Archie, I’ll bet you a hundred that I beat you this hole!”

Colonel Jimmy was picking up a handful of sand from a tee. He dropped it and began to clean his ball.

“I’d be ashamed to take the money,” said Archie. “You wouldn’t have a chance.”

“You mean you’re afraid to take one. Be a sport!”

“I am a sport. That’s why I won’t bet on a cinch.”

They had quite a jawing match and finally Archie said that he would bet Small ten dollars.

“Huh!” said Small. “I wouldn’t exert myself for a measly ten spot. Make it twenty-five!”

“Well, if you insist,” said Archie, “and I’ll give you two strokes.”

“You’ll give me nothing!” said Small. “What do you think I am? I’ll play you even and lick you.” And he was so nasty about it that Archie had to agree.

The Colonel turned around after he played his second shot to watch us drive. Small took a tremendous swing and hooked the ball over the fence and out of bounds. He borrowed another and sliced that one into the woods. When he finally sunk his putt—he took 17 for the hole and that wasn’t counting the ones he missed—he dug up a wallet stuffed with currency and insisted on paying Archie on the spot.

“I don’t feel right about taking this,” said Archie.

“You won it, didn’t you?” said Small. “If you had lost, would you have paid?”

“Ye-es,” said Archie, “but——”

“But nothing! Take it and shut up!”

Colonel Jimmy, waiting on the porch, was an interested witness. In less than five minutes by the watch the chinless boy was sitting over in a corner, alone with a lemonade, and the Colonel had Small by the buttonhole, talking Chicago to him. I have always claimed that Colonel Jimmy has all the instincts of a wolf, but perhaps it is only his Wall Street training that makes him so keen when a lamb is in sight.

“Yes, Chicago is a live town all right,” said Small, “but about this golf proposition, now: I’m getting the hang of the thing, Colonel. If I didn’t lose so many balls——”

“You have a fine, natural swing,” said the Colonel in a tone soft as corn silk. “A trifle less power, my friend, and you will get better direction.”

Well, it was too much for me. I didn’t care much for Small, but I hated to see him walk into ambush with his eyes open. I left him and the Colonel hobnobbing over their highballs, and went into the locker room, where I found Archie.

“Look here!” I said. “That old pirate is after your friend. Colonel Jimmy heard Small make that fool bet on the eighteenth tee, and you know what a leech he is when soft money is in sight. He’s after him.”

“So soon?” said Archie. “Quick work.”

“Well, don’t you think Small ought to be warned?”

Archie laughed.

“Warned about what?”

“Don’t be more of an ass than usual, Archie. The Colonel has got him out there, telling him about Chicago. You know what that means, and a fellow that bets as recklessly as Small does——”

“I can’t do anything,” said Archie. “Small is of age.”

“But you wouldn’t let him go up against a cinch?”

“Small has been up against cinches all his life. That’s how he made his money.”

“That’s how he’ll lose it, too. I’ll put a flea in his ear if you don’t.”

“Bill,” said Archie, “I’ve made it a rule never to open my mouth in any gambling game unless my money was on the table. Understand? Then, whatever happens, there’s no come-back at me. Think it over.”

“But the man is your guest!”

“Exactly. He’s my guest. If you see fit to warn him——” Archie shrugged his shoulders.

Well, what could I say after that? I took my shower bath and dressed. Then I went into the lounging room. Small was, if anything, a trifle noisier than ever.

“Any game that I can bet on is the game for me,” said he, “but I hate a piker. Don’t you hate a piker, Colonel?”

“A man,” said Colonel Jimmy, “should never bet more than he can afford to lose—cheerfully.”

“Cheerfully. That’s the ticket! You’re a sport, Colonel. I can see it in your eye. You don’t holler when you lose. Now, Colonel, what would you consider a good stiff bet, eh? How high would you go? This kindergarten business wouldn’t appeal to either one of us, would it? You wait till I go around this course a few times and I’ll make you a real bet—one that will be worth playing for, eh? What’s the most you ever played for, Colonel?” It was like casting pearls before swine and he wasn’t my guest, but I did what I could for him.

“Mr. Small,” said I, “if you’re going in to town there’s room in my car for you.”

“Thanks. I’m stopping here at the club. Archie fixed me up with a room. The Colonel is going to stay and have dinner with me, ain’t you, Colonel? Surest thing you know! He’s met a lot of friends of mine out West. Small world, ain’t it? Going, eh? Well, behave yourself!… Now then, Colonel, gimme a few more days of this cow-pasture pool and I’ll show you what a real bet looks like!”

I left the wolf and the lamb together, and I don’t mind admitting that I liked one as well as the other.

Business took me out of town for ten days, and when I returned home I was told that Archie had been telephoning me all the morning. I rang him at his office.

“Oh, hello, Bill! You’re back just in time for the big show…. Eh? Oh, Colonel Jimmy is due for another attack of lumbago this afternoon…. Small telephoned me last night that he was complaining a little…. The goat? Why, Small, of course! The chinless boy is playing alone these days; better pickings elsewhere…. Yes, you oughtn’t to miss it. See you later. ‘Bye.”

Four

Now, very little happens at Meadowmead, in the clubhouse or on the links, without David Cameron’s knowledge. The waiters talk, the steward gossips, the locker-room boys repeat conversations which they overhear, and the caddies are worse than magpies. David, listening patiently and rubbing his ear, comes by a great deal of interesting information. I felt certain that he would have a true line on the wool market. I found him sitting in front of his shop. He was wearing a collar and tie, which is always a sign that he is at liberty for the afternoon. “You’re dressed up to-day, David,” said I.

“Ay,” said he, “I’m thinkin’ I’ll be a gallery.”

“Is there a match?”

“Ay, a money match. The ter-rms were agreed on at eleven this mornin’. The Cur-rnel is gruntin’ an’ groanin’ with the lumba-ago again. Muster Small has taken a cruel advan-take of the auld man. A cruel advantage.”

“What are they playing for?” I asked.

David rolled his eyes full upon me and regarded me steadily without blinking.

“A thousan’ dollars a side,” said he quietly.

“What?”

“Ay. Posted in the safe. Muster Small wanted to make it for two. It was a compr-romise.”

“But, man, it’s highway robbery! One thousand dollars!”

David continued to look at me fixedly.

“Do ye ken, Muster Bell,” said he at last, “that’s precisely what I’m thinkin’ it is mysel’—juist highway robbery.”

“What handicap is he giving Small?”

“None. Muster Small wouldna listen to it. He said the Cur-rnel was a’ready handicapped wi’ auld age, lumba-ago, an’ cauld feet. His remarks were quite personal, ye’ll understand, an’ he counted down the notes on the table an’ blethered an’ howled an’ reminded the Cur-rnel that he had lost three hunder to him the last week. The auld gentleman was fair be-damned an’ bullied into makin’ the match, an’ he was in such a towerin’ rage he could scarce write a check…. Ay, I’m thinkin’ it will be a divertin’ match to watch.”

Archie arrived just as Small and Colonel Jimmy started for the first tee. We formed the gallery, with David Cameron trailing along unobtrusively in the rear, sucking reflectively on a briar pipe. The Colonel gave us one look, which said very plainly that he hoped we would choke, but thought better of it and dropped back to shake hands and explain his position in the matter.

“Pretty stiff money match, isn’t it, Colonel?” asked Archie.

“And surely you’re not playing him even!” said I. “No handicap?”

Colonel Jimmy had the grace to blush; I wouldn’t have believed he knew how. I suppose if you should catch a wolf in a sheepfold the wolf would blush too—not because he felt that he was doing anything wrong by his own standards, but because of the inferences that might be drawn from the wool in his teeth. The Colonel didn’t in the least mind preying on lambs, but he hated to have a gallery catch him at it. He hastened to explain that it was all the lamb’s fault.

He said that he found himself in an unfortunate situation because he had allowed his temper to get away from him and had “answered a fool according to his folly.” He blamed Small for forcing him into a position where he might falsely be accused of taking an unfair advantage. He whined pitifully about his lumbago—the worst attack he remembered—and earnestly hoped that “the facts would not be misrepresented in any way.” He also said that he regretted the entire incident and had offered to call off the match, but had been grossly insulted and accused of having cold feet.

“It isn’t that I want the man’s money,” said he, “but I feel that he should have a lesson in politeness!”

On the whole, it was a very poor face for a wolf to wear. He groaned some more about his lumbago, which he said was killing him by inches, and went forward to join Small on the tee.

“The old pirate!” said Archie. “He wasn’t counting on any witnesses, and our being here is going to complicate matters. Did you get what he said about hoping the facts would not be misrepresented? He’s wondering what we’ll tell the other members, and for the looks of the thing he won’t dare rook Small too badly. Our being here will force him to make the match as close as he can.”

“Yes,” said I, “there ought to be some pretty fair comedy.”

Small came over to us while the Colonel was teeing his ball. He looked bigger and rawer than ever in white flannel, and he didn’t seem in the least worried about his bet. He was just as offensive as ever, and I could appreciate the Colonel’s point about giving him a lesson in politeness.

As early as the first hole it became evident—painfully so—that Colonel Jimmy was out to make the match a close one at any cost. It would never do to give Small the impression that his pockets had been picked. In order to make him think that he had had a run for his money, the Colonel had to play as bad golf as Small—and he did it, shades of Tom Morris and other departed golfers, he did it!

Bad golf is a depressing spectacle to watch, but deliberately bad golf, cold-blooded, premeditated and studied out in advance, is a crime, and that is the only word which fits Colonel Jimmy’s shameless exhibition. His only excuse was that it needed criminally bad golf to make the match seem close. The old fellow’s driving was atrocious, he slopped and flubbed his iron shots in a disgusting manner, and his putting would have disgraced a blind man. Lumbago was his alibi, and he worked it overtime for our benefit. After every shot he would drop his club, clap his hands on his back, and groan like an entire hospital ward.

The only noticeable improvement in Small’s playing was that he managed somehow or other to keep his ball on the course, though the lopsided, thumb-handed, clubfooted way he went at his shots was enough to make angels weep. Then, too, he didn’t have so much to say and didn’t yell after he hit the ball.

Thirteen holes they played, and I venture the statement that nothing like that match has ever been seen since the time when golf balls were stuffed with feathers. By playing just as badly as he knew how, getting into all the bunkers, and putting everywhere but straight at the cup, Colonel Jimmy arrived on the fourteenth tee all square with Small. They had each won two holes; the others had been halved in scandalous figures.

I could tell by the way the Colonel messed the fourteenth hole that he wanted to halve that too. He certainly didn’t try to win it. Small’s fifth shot was in the long grass just off the edge and to the right of the putting green. Colonel Jimmy laid his sixth within three feet of the cup.

“Boy, give me that shovel!” said Small, and the caddie handed him a niblick. It wasn’t really a bad lie, but the ball had to be chopped out of three inches of grass.

“In a case of this kind,” said Small, “I guess you trust to luck, what?” He played a short chop shot and the ball went hopping toward the pin, hit the back of the cup with a plunk, and dropped for a six. Of course it was a pure accident.

“Fluke!” said Colonel Jimmy, rather annoyed.

“Sure!” said Small. “But it wins the hole just the same!”

I knew then that the comedy was over for the day. Four holes remained to be played, and the Colonel was one down. It was never his policy to leave anything to chance. He would run the string out at top speed. David Cameron came up from the rear.

“They’ll play golf from here in,” he whispered.

“They!” said I. “One of ’em will!”

“Do ye really think so?” said David.

Our Number Fifteen is 278 yards long, over perfectly level ground. There are bunkers to the right and left of the putting green and a deep sand trap behind it. It is a short hole, but the sort of one which needs straight shooting and an accurate pitch. Of all the holes on the course, I think it is the Colonel’s favorite.

“My honor, eh?” said Small. “That being the case, I guess I’ll just rap it out of the lot!”

He didn’t bother to measure the distance or take a practice swing. He didn’t even address the ball. He walked up to it and swung his driver exactly as a man would swing a baseball bat—tremendous power but no form whatever—and the wonder is that he hit it clean. A white speck went sailing up the course, rising higher and higher in the air. When the ball stopped rolling it was 260 yards from the tee and on a direct line with the pin.

“Beat that!” said Small.

Colonel Jimmy didn’t say anything, but he grunted whole volumes. It takes more than a long drive to rattle that old reprobate. He whipped his ball 200 yards down the course and stepped off the tee so well satisfied with himself that he forgot to groan and put his hands on his back. Small laughed.

“Lumbago not so bad now, eh?” said he.

“I—I may be limbering up a bit,” said the Colonel. “The long drive isn’t everything, you know; it’s the second shot that counts!”

“All right,” said Small. “Let’s see one!”

Colonel Jimmy studied his lie for some time and went through all the motions, but when the shot came it was a beauty—a mashie pitch which landed his ball five feet from the cup.

“Beat that one!” said he.

“I’ll just do that thing!” said Small. And he did. Of course he had a short approach, as approaches go, but even so I was not prepared to see him play a push shot and rim the cup, leaving his ball stone dead for a three. Colonel Jimmy was not prepared to see it either, and I have reason to believe that the push shot jarred the old rascal from his rubber heels upward. He went about the sinking of that five-foot putt with as much deliberation as if his thousand dollars depended on it. He sucked in his breath and got down on all fours—a man with lumbago couldn’t have done it on a bet—and he studied the roll of the turf for a full minute—studied it to some purpose, for when he tapped the ball it ran straight and true into the cup, halving the hole.

“You’re getting better every minute!” said Small. “I’m some little lumbago specialist, believe me!”

Colonel Jimmy didn’t answer, but he looked thoughtful and just the least mite worried. One down and three to go for a thousand dollars—it’s a situation that will worry the best of ’em.

Number Sixteen was where the light dawned on me. It is a long, tricky hole—bogey 6, par 5—and if the Colonel hadn’t made another phenomenal approach, laying his ball dead from fifty yards off the green, Small would have won that too. They halved in fives, but it was Small’s second shot that opened my eyes. He used a cleek where most players would try a brassie, and he sent the ball screaming toward the flag—220 yards—and at no time was it more than ten feet from the ground. I was behind him when he played, and I can swear that there wasn’t an inch of hook or slice on that ball. The cleek is no club for a novice. I remembered the niblick shot on the fourteenth. That was surely a fluke, but how about the push shot on fifteen? English professionals have written whole books about the push shot, but mighty few men have ever learned to play it. Putting that and the cleek shot together, the light broke in on me—and my first impulse was to kick Archie MacBride.

I don’t know who Colonel Jimmy wanted to kick, but he looked as if he would relish kicking somebody. He had been performing sums in mental addition, too, and he got the answer about the same time that I did.

“It’s queer about that lumbago,” said Small again.

“Yes,” snapped the old man, “but it’s a lot queerer the way you’ve picked up this game in the last two holes!”

“Well,” and Small laughed, “you remember that I warned you I never could play for piker money, Colonel—that is, not very well.”

Colonel Jimmy gave him a look that was all wolf—and cornered wolf at that. He answered Small with a nasty sneer.

“So you can’t play well unless big money is bet, eh? That is exactly what I’m beginning to think, sir!”

“At any rate,” said Small, “I’ve cured your lumbago for you, Colonel. You can charge that thousand to doctor bills!”

Colonel Jimmy gulped a few times, his neck swelled and his face turned purple. There wasn’t a single thing he could find to say in answer to that remark. He started for the seventeenth tee, snarling to himself. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I drew Archie aside.

“I think you might have told me,” I said.

“Told you what?”

“Why, about Small—if that’s his name. What have you done? Rung in a professional on the old man?”

“Professional, your grandmother!” said Archie. “Small is an amateur in good standing. Darned good standing. If the Colonel knew as much about the Middle West as he pretends to know, he’d have heard of Small. Wonder how the old boy likes the Chicago method of shearing a pig?”

The old boy didn’t like it at all, but the seventeenth hole put the crown on his rage and mortification. Small drove another long straight ball, and after the Colonel had got through sneering about that he topped his own drive, slopped his second into a bunker, and reached the green in five when he should have been there in two. I thought the agony was over, but I didn’t give Small credit for cat-and-mouse tendencies.

“In order to get all the good out of this lumbago treatment,” said he, “it ought to go the full eighteen holes.” Then, with a deliberation that was actually insulting, he played his second shot straight into a deep sand trap. I heard a queer clucking, choking noise behind me, but it was only David Cameron doing his best to keep from laughing out loud.

“Muster Small is puttin’ the shoe on the other foot!” said David. “Ay, it’s his turn to waste a few now.”

“Cheer up, Colonel!” said Small. “You fooled away a lot of shots early in the match—on account of your lumbago, of course. I’m just as generous as you are when it comes to halving holes with an easy mark.” To prove it Small missed a niblick shot a foot, but pitched out on his fourth, and, by putting all over the green, finally halved the hole.

When Small stood up on the eighteenth tee for his last drive he looked over at the Colonel and nodded his head. “Colonel?” said he.

Colonel Jimmy grunted—rather a profane grunt, I thought.

“Dormie!” said Small.

“Confound it, sir! You talk too much!”

“So I’ve heard,” said Small. “I’ll make you a business proposition, Colonel. Double or quits on the last hole? I understand that’s what you do when you’re sure you can win. Two thousand or nothing?… No? Oh, all right! No harm done, I suppose?”

Colonel Jimmy had a burglar’s chance to halve the match by winning the last hole, and he fought for it like a cornered wolf. They were both on the green in threes, Small ten feet from the cup and the Colonel at least fifteen. If he could sink his putt and Small should miss his, the match would be square again.

The old man examined every blade of grass between his ball and the hole. Three times he set himself to make the putt, and then got down to take another look at the roll of the green—proof that his nerve was breaking at last. When he finally hit the ball it was a weak, fluttering stroke, and though the ball rolled true enough, it stopped four feet short of the cup.

“Never up, never in!” said Small. “Well, here goes for the thousand-dollar doctor bill! Lumbago is a very painful ailment, Colonel. It’s worth something to be cured of it.” Colonel Jimmy didn’t say a word. He looked at Small and then he turned and looked at MacBride. All his smooth and oily politeness had deserted him; his little tricks and hypocrisies had dropped away and left the wolf exposed—snarling and showing his teeth. I thought that he was going to throw his putter at Archie, but he turned and threw it into the lake instead—into the middle, where the water is deep. Then he marched into the clubhouse, stiff as a ramrod, and so he missed seeing Small sink his ten-foot putt.

“An’ ye were really surprised?” said David Cameron to me.

“I was,” said I. “When did you find it out, David?”

“Come out to the shop,” said the professional. He showed me a list of the players rated by the Western Golf Association. A man by the name of Small was very close to the top—very close indeed.

We don’t know whether the Colonel is going to lay the case before the committee or not. If he does, we shall have to explain why he has not had an attack of lumbago since.

The man who quit

One

Mr. Ingram Tecumseh Parkes squinted along the line of his short putt, breathed hard through his prominent and highly decorative nose, concentrated his mighty intellect upon the task before him, and tapped the small white ball ever so lightly. It rolled toward the cup, wavered from the line, returned to it again, seemed about to stop short of its destination, hovered for one breathless instant on the very lip, and at last fell into the hole.

Mr. Parkes, who had been hopping up and down on one leg, urging the ball forward with inarticulate commands and violent contortions of his body, and behaving generally in the manner of a baseball fan or a financially interested spectator at a horse race, suddenly relaxed with a deep grunt of relief. He glanced at his opponent—a tall, solemn-looking gentleman—who was regarding Mr. Parkes with an unblinking stare in which disgust, chagrin and fathomless melancholy were mingled.

“Well, that’ll be about all for you, Mister Good Player!” announced Parkes with rather more gusto than is considered tactful at such a time. “Yes; that cooks your goose, I guess! Three down and two to go, and I licked you”—here his voice broke and became shrill with triumph. “I licked you on an even game! An even game—d’you get that, Bob? Didn’t have to use my handicap at all! Ho, ho! Licked a six-handicap man on an even game! That’s pretty good shooting, I guess! You didn’t think I had it in me, did you?”

The other man did not reply, but continued to stare moodily at Mr. Parkes. He did not even seem to be listening. After a time the victor became aware of a certain tenseness in the situation. His stream of self-congratulation checked to a thin trickle and at last ran dry. There was a short, painful silence.

“I don’t want to rub it in, or anything,” said Parkes apologetically; “but I’ve got a right to swell up a little. You’ll admit that. I didn’t think I had a chance when we started, and I never trimmed a six-handicap man before——”

“Oh, that’s all right!” said the other with the nervous gesture of one who brushes away an unpleasant subject. “Holler your fat head off—I don’t care. Give yourself a loud cheer while you’re at it. I’m not paying any attention to you.”

Mr. Parkes was not exactly pleased with the permission thus handsomely granted.

“No need for you to get sore about it,” was the sulky comment.

The vanquished golfer cackled long and loud, but there was a bitter undertone in his mirth.

“Sore? Who, me? Just because a lopsided, left-handed freak like you handed me a licking? Where do you get that stuff?”

“Well,” said Mr. Parkes, still aggrieved, “if you’re not sore you’d better haul in the signs. Your lower lip is sticking out a foot and you look as if you’d lost your last friend.”

“I’ve lost every shot in my bag,” was the solemn reply. “I’ve lost my game. You don’t know what that means, because you’ve never had any game to lose. It’s awful—awful!”

“Forget it!” advised Parkes. “Everybody has a bad day once in a while.”

“You don’t understand,” persisted the other earnestly. “A month ago I was breaking eighties as regular as clockwork, and every club I had was working fine. Then, all at once, something went wrong—my shots left me. I couldn’t drive any more; couldn’t keep my irons on the course—couldn’t do anything. I kept plugging away, thinking my game would come back to me, hoping every shot I made that there would be some improvement; but I’m getting worse instead of better! Nobody knows any more about the theory of golf than I do, but I can’t seem to make myself do the right thing at the right time. I’ve changed my stance; I’ve changed my grip; I’ve changed my swing; I’ve never tried harder in my life—and look at me! I can’t even give an eighteen-handicap man a battle!”

“Forget it!” repeated Parkes. “The trouble with you is that you worry too much about your golf. It isn’t a business, you poor fish! It’s a sport—a recreation. I get off my game every once in a while, but I never worry. It always comes back to me. Last Sunday I was rotten; to-day——”

“To-day you shot three sevens and a whole flock of sixes! Bah! I suppose you call that good—eh?”

“Never you mind!” barked the indignant Mr. Parkes. “Never you mind! Those sevens and sixes were plenty good enough to lick you! Come on, take a reef in your underlip and we’ll play the last two holes. The match is over, so you won’t have that to worry about.”

“You don’t get me at all,” protested the loser. “Not being a golfer yourself, you can’t understand a golfer’s feelings. It’s not being beaten that troubles me. It’s knowing just how to make a shot and then falling down on the execution—that’s what breaks my heart! If ever you get so good that you can shoot a seventy-eight on this course, and your game leaves you overnight—steps right out from under you and leaves you flat—then you’ll know how I feel.”

“There you go!” complained Parkes. “Knocking my game again! I’m a bad player—oh, a rotten player! I admit it; but I can lick you to-day. And just to prove it I’ll bet you a ball a hole from here in—no handicap—not even a bisque. What say?”

“Got you!” was the grim response. “Maybe if I hit one of my old-time tee shots again it’ll put some heart in me. Shoot!”

Twenty minutes later the two men walked across the broad lawn toward the clubhouse. Mr. Ingram Tecumseh Parkes was in a hilarious mood. He grinned from ear to ear and illustrated an animated discourse with sweeping gestures. His late opponent shuffled slowly along beside him, kicking the inoffending daisies out of his way. His shoulders sagged listlessly, his hands hung open at his sides, and his eyes were fixed on the ground. Utter dejection was written in every line and angle of his drooping form. When he entered the lounging room he threw himself heavily into the nearest chair and remained motionless, staring out of the window but seeing nothing.

“What’s the matter, Bob? You sick?” The query was twice repeated before the stricken man lifted his head slightly and turned his lack-lustre eyes upon a group of friends seated at a table close at hand.

“Eh? What’s that?… Yes; I’m sick. Sick and disgusted with this double-dash-blanked game.”

Now there comes to every experienced golfer a time when from a full heart he curses the Royal and Ancient Pastime. Mr. Robert Coyne’s friends were experienced golfers; consequently his statement was received with calmness—not to say a certain amount of levity.

“We’ve all been there!” chuckled one of the listeners.

“Many’s the time!” supplemented another.

“Last week,” admitted a third, “I broke a driver over a tee box. I’d been slicing with it for a month; so I smashed the damned shaft. Did me a lot of good. Of course, Bob, you’re a quiet, even-tempered individual, and you can’t understand what a relief it is to break a club that has been annoying you. Try it some time.”

“Humph!” grunted Mr. Coyne. “I’d have to break ’em all!”

“Maybe you don’t drink enough,” hazarded another.

“Cheer up!” said the first speaker. “You’ll be all right this afternoon.”

The afflicted one lifted his head again and gazed mournfully at his friends.

“No,” said he; “I won’t be all right this afternoon. I’ll be all wrong. I haven’t hit a single decent shot in three weeks—not one. I—I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I’m sick of it, I tell you.”

“Yep; he’s sick,” chirped the cheerful Mr. Parkes, coming in like an April zephyr. “He’s sick, and I made him sicker. I’m a rotten-bad golfer—ask Bob if I ain’t. I’m left-handed; I stand too close to my ball; I book every tee shot; I top my irons; I can’t hole a ten-foot putt in a washtub; but, even so, I handed this six man a fine trimming this morning. Hung it all over him like a blanket. Beat him three and two without any handicap. Licked him on an even game; but I couldn’t make him like it. What do you think of that, eh?”

“How about it, Bob?” asked one of the listeners. “Is this a true bill?” Mr. Coyne groaned and continued to stare out of the window.

“Oh, he won’t deny it!” grinned Parkes. “I’m giving it to you straight. Then, at Number Seventeen I offered to bet him a ball a hole, just to put some life into him and stir up his—er—cupidity. I guess that’s the word. No handicap, you understand. Not even a bisque. What did he do? Why, he speared a nice juicy nine on Seventeen; and he picked up his ball on Eighteen, after slicing one square into the middle of Hell’s Half Acre. Yes; he’s sick all right enough!”

“He has cause—if you beat him,” said one of the older members.

“I wish I could win from a well man once in a while,” complained Parkes. “Every time I lick somebody I find I’ve been picking on an invalid.”

“Oh, shut up and let Bob alone!”

“Yes; quit riding him.”

“Don’t rub it in!”

Mr. Coyne mumbled something to the effect that talk never bothered him, and the general conversation languished until the devil himself prompted one of the veteran golfers to offer advice:

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong with you, Bob. You’re overgolfed. You’ve been playing too much lately.”

“You’ve gone stale,” said another.

“Nonsense!” argued a third. “You don’t go stale at golf; you simply get off your game. Now what Bob ought to do is to take one club and a dozen balls and stay with that club until he gets his shots back.”

“That’s no good,” said a fourth. “If his wood has gone bad on him he ought to leave his driver in his bag and use an iron off the tee. Chick Evans does that.”

“An iron off the tee,” said the veteran, “is a confession of weakness.”

“Bob, why don’t you get the ‘pro’ to give you a lesson or two? He might be able to straighten you out.”

“Oh, what does a professional know about the theory of golf? All he can do is to tell you to watch him and do the way he does. Now what Bob needs——”

Every man who plays golf, no matter how badly, feels himself competent to offer advice. For a long ten minutes the air was heavy with well-meant suggestions. Coming at the wrong time, nothing is more galling than sympathetic counsel. Bob Coyne, six-handicap man and expert in the theory of golf, hunched his shoulders and endured it all without comment or protest. Somewhere in his head an idea was taking definite shape. Slowly but surely he was being urged to the point where decision merges into action.

“I tell you,” said the veteran with the calm insistence of age, “Bob ought to take a lay-off. He ought to forget golf for a while.”

Coyne rose and moved toward the door. As his hand touched the knob the irrepressible Parkes hurled the last straw athwart a heavy burden.

“If ever I get so that I can’t enjoy this game any more,” said he, “I hope I’ll have strength of character enough to quit playing it.”

“Oh, you do, do you?” demanded Coyne with the cold rage of a quiet man, goaded beyond the limit of his endurance. “Well, don’t flatter yourself. You haven’t—and you won’t!”

The door closed behind this rather cryptic remark, and the listeners looked at each other and shook their heads.

“Never knew Bob to act like this before,” said one.

“Anything can happen when a man’s game is in a slump,” said the veteran. “Take a steady, brainy player—a first-class golfer; let him lose his shots for a week and there’s no telling what he’ll do. Nothing to it—this is the most interesting and the most exasperating outdoor sport in the world.

“Just when you think you’ve learned all there is to learn about it—bang! And there you are, flat!”

“He’s been wolfing at me all morning,” said Parkes. “Kind of silly to let a game get on your nerves, eh?”

“You’ll never know how a real golfer feels when his shots go bad on him,” was the consoling response. “There he goes with his bag of clubs. Practice won’t help him any. What he needs is a lay-off.”

“He’s headed for the caddie shed,” said Parkes. “I’d hate to carry his bag this afternoon. Be afraid he’d bite me, or something…. Say, have you fellows heard about the two Scotchmen, playing in the finals for a cup? It seems that MacNabb lost his ball on the last hole, and MacGregor was helping him look for it——”

“I always did like that yarn,” interrupted the veteran. “It’s just as good now as it was twenty years ago. Shoot!”

A dozen caddies were resting in the shed, and as they rested they listened to the lively comment of the dean of the bag-carrying profession, a sixteen-year-old golfing Solomon who answered to the name of Butch:

“And you oughta seen him at the finish—all he needed was an undertaker! You know how good he used to be. Straight down the middle all the time. The poor sucker has blowed every shot in his bag—darned if it wasn’t pitiful to watch him. He ain’t even got his chip shot left. And on the last hole——”

“S-s-s-t!” whispered a youngster, glancing in the direction of the clubhouse. “Here he comes now!”

Because Mr. Coyne’s game had been the subject of full and free discussion, and because they did not wish him to know it, every trace of expression vanished instantly from the twelve youthful faces. The first thing a good caddie learns is repression. Twelve wooden countenances turned to greet the visitor. His presence in the caddie shed was unusual, but even this fact failed to kindle the light of interest in the eye of the youngest boy. Coyne gave them small time to wonder what brought him into their midst.

“Butch,” said he, speaking briskly and with an air of forced cheerfulness, “if you had a chance to pick a club out of this bag, which one would you take?”

“If I had a what?” asked Butch, pop-eyed with amazement.

“Which one of these clubs do you like the best?”

“Why, the light mid-iron, sir,” answered the boy without an instant’s hesitation. “The light mid-iron, sure!”

Mr. Coyne drew the club from the bag.

“It’s yours,” said he briefly.

“Mine!” ejaculated Butch. “You—you ain’t giving it to me, are you?” Coyne nodded. “But—but what’s the idea? You can’t get along without that iron, sir. You use it more than any other club in your bag!”

“Take it if you want it, Butch. I’m going to quit playing golf.”

“Yes, you are!” exclaimed the caddie, availing himself of one of the privileges of long acquaintance. “Nobody ever quits unless they get so old they can’t walk!”

“Very well,” said Coyne. “If you don’t want this club, maybe some of these other boys——”

“Not a chance!” cried Butch, seizing the mid-iron. “I didn’t think you meant it at first. I——”

“Now then, Frenchy,” said Coyne, “which club will you have?”

“This is on the square, is it?” demanded Frenchy suspiciously. “This ain’t Injun givin’? Because—me, I had my eye on that brassy for some time now. Weighted just right. Got a swell shaft in it…. Thank you, mister! Gee! What do think of that—hey? Some club!”

At this point the mad philanthropist was mobbed by a group of eager youngsters, each one clamouring to share in his reckless generosity. So far as the boys knew, the situation was without parallel in golfing history; but this was a phase of the matter that could come up later for discussion. The main thing was to get one of those clubs while the getting was good.

“Please, can I have that driver?”

“Aw, mister, you know me!”

“The mashie would be my pick!”

“Who ast you to pick anything, Dago? You ain’t got an old brass putter there, have you, sir? All my life I been wantin’ a brass putter.”

“Gimme the one that’s left over?” “Quitcha shovin’, there! That’s a mighty fine cleek. Wisht I had it!”

In less time than it takes to tell it the bag was empty. The entire collection of golfing instruments, representing the careful and discriminating accumulation of years, passed into new hands. Everybody knows that no two golf clubs are exactly alike, and that a favorite, once lost or broken, can never be replaced. A perfect club possesses something more than proper weight and balance; it has personality and is, therefore, not to be picked up every day in the week. The driver, the spoon, the cleek, the heavy mid-iron, the jigger, the mashie, the scarred old niblick, the two putters—everything was swept away in one wild spasm of renunciation; and if it hurt Coyne to part with these old friends he bore the pain like a Spartan. “Well, I guess that’ll be all,” said he at length.

“Mr. Coyne,” said Butch, who had been practising imaginary approach shots with the light mid-iron, “you wouldn’t care if I had about an inch taken off this shaft, would you? It’s a little too long for me.”

“Cut a foot off it if you like.”

“I just wanted to know,” said Butch apologetically. “Lots of people say they’re going to quit; but——”

“It isn’t a case of going to quit with me,” said Coyne. “I have quit! You can make kindling wood out of that shaft if you like.”

Then, with the empty bag under his arm, and his bridges aflame behind him, he marched back to the clubhouse, his chin a bit higher in the air than was absolutely necessary.

Later his voice was heard in the shower room, loud and clear above the sound of running water. It suited him to sing and the ditty of his choice was a cheerful one; but the rollicking words failed to carry conviction. An expert listener might have detected a tone smacking strongly of defiance and suspected that Mr. Coyne was singing to keep up his courage.

When next seen he was clothed, presumably in his right mind, and rummaging deep in his locker. On the floor was a pile of miscellaneous garments—underwear, sweaters, shirts, jackets, knickerbockers and stockings. To his assistance came Jasper, for twenty years a fixture in the locker room and as much a part of the club as the sun porch or the front door.

“Gettin’ yo’ laundry out, suh? Lemme give you a hand.”

Now Jasper was what is known as a character; and, moreover, he was a privileged one. He was on intimate terms with every member of the Country Club and entitled to speak his mind at all times. He had made a close study of the male golfing animal in all his varying moods; he knew when to sympathize with a loser, when to congratulate a winner, and when to remain silent. Jasper was that rare thing known as the perfect locker room servant.

“This isn’t laundry,” explained Coyne. “I’m just cleaning house—that’s all…. Think you can use these rubber-soled golf shoes?”

“Misteh Coyne, suh,” said Jasper, “them shoes is as good as new. Whut you want to give ’em away faw?”

“Because I won’t be wearing ’em any more.”

“H-m-m! Too small, maybe?”

“No; they fit all right. Fact of the matter is, Jasper, I’m sick of this game and I’m going to quit it.”

Jasper’s eyes oscillated rapidly.

“Aw, no, Misteh Coyne!” said he in the tone one uses when soothing a peevish child. “You jus’ think you goin’ to quit—tha’s all!”

“You never heard me say I was going to quit before, did you?” demanded Coyne.

“No, suh; no.”

“Well, when I say I’m going to quit, you can bet I mean it!” Jasper reflected on this statement.

“Yes, suh,” said he gently. “Betteh let me put them things back, Misteh Coyne. They in the way here.”

“What’s the use of putting ’em back in the locker? They’re no good to me. Make a bundle of ’em and give ’em to the poor.”

“Mph! Po’ folks ain’t wearin’ them shawt pants much—not this season, nohow!”

“I don’t care what you do with ’em! Throw ’em away—burn ’em up—pitch ’em out. I don’t care!”

“Yes, suh. All right, suh. Jus’ as you say.” Jasper rolled the heap into a bundle and began tying it with the sleeves of a shirt. “I’ll look afteh ’em, suh.”

“Never mind looking after ’em. Get rid of the stuff. I’m through, I tell you—done—finished—quit!”

“Yes, suh. I heard you the firs’ time you said it.”

The negro was on his knees fumbling with the knot. Something in his tone irritated Coyne—caused him to feel that he was not being taken seriously.

“I suppose a lot of members quit—eh?” said he.

“Yes, suh,” replied Jasper with a flash of ivory. “Some of ’em quits oncet a month, reg’leh.”

“But you never heard of a case where a player gave all his clubs away, did you?” demanded Coyne.

“Some of ’em breaks clubs,” said Jasper; “but they always gits new shafts put in. Some of ’em th’ow ’em in the lake; but they fish ’em out ag’in. But—give ’em away? No, suh! They don’ neveh do that.”

“Well,” said Coyne, “when I make up my mind to do a thing I do it right. I’ve given away every club I owned.”

Jasper lifted his head and stared upward, mouth open and eyelids fluttering rapidly.

“You—you given yo’ clubs away!” he ejaculated. “Who’d you give ’em to, suh?”

“Oh, to the caddies,” was the airy response. “Made a sort of general distribution. One club to each kid.”

“Misteh Coyne,” said Jasper earnestly, “tha’s foolishness—jus’ plain foolishness. S’pose you ain’ been playin’ yo’ reg’leh game lately—s’pose you had a lot o’ bad luck—that ain’ no reason faw you to do a thing like that. Givin’ all them expensible clubs to them pin-headed li’l’ boys! Lawd! Lawd! They don’t know how to treat ’em! They’ll be splittin’ the shafts, an’ crackin’ the heads, an’ nickin’ up the irons, an’——”

“Well,” interrupted Coyne, “what of it? I hope they do break ’em!”

Jasper shook his head sorrowfully and returned to the bundle. While studying golfers he had come to know the value placed on golfing tools.

“O’ course,” said he slowly, “yo’ own business is yo’ own business, Misteh Coyne. Only, suh, it seem like a awful shame to me. Seem like bustin’ up housekeepin’ afteh you been married a long time…. Why not wait a few days an’ see how you feel then?”

“No! I’m through.”

Jasper jerked his head in the direction of the lounging room.

“You tol’ the otheh gen’lemen whut you goin’ to do?” he asked.

“What’s the use? They’d only laugh. They wouldn’t believe me. Let ’em find it out for themselves. And, by the way—there’s my empty bag in the corner. Dispose of it somehow. Give it away—sell it. You can have whatever you get for it.”

“Thank you, suh. You comin’ back to see us once in a while?”

“Oh, I suppose so. With the wife and the kids. Well, take care of yourself.”

Jasper followed him to the door and watched until the little runabout disappeared down the driveway.

“All foolishness—tha’s whut it is!” soliloquised the negro.

“This golf game—she’s sutny a goat getteh when she ain’ goin’ right. Me, I ratheh play this Af’ican golf with two dice. That’s some goat getteh, too, an’ lots of people quits it; but I notice they always comes back. Yes, suh; they always comes back.”

Two

As the runabout coughed and sputtered along the county road the man at the wheel had time to think over the whole matter. Everything considered, he decided that he had acted wisely.

“Been playing too much golf, anyway,” he told himself. “Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, Sundays and holidays—too much!… And then worrying about my game in between. It’ll be off my mind now…. One thing sure—Mary’ll be glad to hear the news. That old joke of hers about being a golf widow won’t go any more. Yes, she’ll have to dig up a new one…. Maybe I have been a little selfish and neglectful. I’ll make up for it now, though. Sundays we can take the big car and go on picnics. The kids’ll like that.”

He pursued this train of thought until he felt almost virtuous. He could see himself entering the house; he could picture his wife’s amazement and pleasure; he could hear himself saying something like this:

“Well, my dear, you’ve got your wish at last. After thinking it all over I’ve decided to cut out the golf and devote myself to the family. Yes; I’m through!”

In this highly commendable spirit he arrived at home, only to find the shades drawn and the front door locked. As Coyne felt for his key ring he remembered that his wife had said something about taking the children to spend the day with her mother. It was also the servant’s afternoon off and the house was empty. Coyne was conscious of a slight disappointment; he was the bearer of glad tidings, but he had no audience.

“Oh, well,” he thought; “it’s been a long time since I had a quiet Sunday afternoon at home. Do me good. Guess I’ll read a while and then run over to mother’s for supper. I don’t read as much as I used to. Man ought to keep up to date.”

Then, because he was a creature of habit and the most methodical of men, he must have his pipe and slippers before sitting down with his book. Mary Coyne was a good wife and a faithful mother, but she abominated a pipe in the living room; and she tolerated slippers only when they were of her own choosing.

Now there are things which every woman knows; but there is one thing which no woman has ever known and no woman will ever know—namely, that she is not competent to select slippers for her lord and master. Bob Coyne was a patient man, but he loathed slippers his wife picked out for him. He was pledged to a worn and disreputable pair of the pattern known as Romeos—relics of his bachelor days. They were run down at the heel and thin of sole; but they were dear to his heart and he clung to them obstinately in spite of their shabby appearance. After the honeymoon it had been necessary to speak sternly with his wife on the subject of the Romeos, else she would have thrown them on the ash heap. Since that interview Mrs. Coyne—obedient soul!—had spent a great portion of her married life in finding safe hiding places for those wretched slippers; but no matter where she put them, they seemed certain of a triumphant resurrection.

Coyne went on a still hunt for the Romeos, and found them at last, tucked away in the clothes closet of the spare room upstairs. This closet was a sort of catchall, as the closets of spare rooms are apt to be; and as Coyne stooped to pick up the slippers he knocked down something which had been standing in a dark corner. It fell with a heavy thump, and there on the floor at his feet was a rusty old mid-iron—the first golf club Coyne had ever owned.

He had not seen that mid-iron in years, but he remembered it well. He picked it up, sighted along the shaft, found it still reasonably straight and unwarped, balanced the club in his hands, waggled it once as if to make a shot; then he replaced it hastily, seized the slippers, and hurried downstairs.

The book of his selection was one highly recommended by press and pulpit, hence an ideal tale for a Sunday afternoon; so he dragged an easy-chair to the front window, lighted his pipe, put his worn Romeos on a taboret, and settled down to solid comfort. In spite of the fact that the book was said to be gripping, and entertaining from cover to cover, Coyne encountered some difficulty in getting into the thing. He skimmed through the first chapter, yawned and looked at his watch.

“They’re just getting away for the afternoon round,” said he; and then, with the air of one who has caught himself in a fault, he attacked Chapter Two. It proved even worse than the first. He told himself that the characters were out of drawing, the situations impossible, and the humor strained or stale.

At the end of Chapter Three he pitched the book across the room and closed his eyes. Five minutes later he rose, knocked the ashes from his pipe, and went slowly upstairs. He assured himself he was not in search of anything; but his aimless wanderings brought him at last to the spare room, where he seated himself on the edge of the bed. He remained there for twenty minutes, motionless, staring into space. Then he rose, crossed the room and disappeared in the clothes closet. When he came out the rusty mid-iron came with him. Was this a sign of weakness, of deterioration in the moral fiber, an indication of regret! Perish the thought! The explanation Mr. Coyne offered himself was perfectly satisfactory. He merely wished to examine the ten-year-old shaft and ascertain whether it was cracked or not. He carried the venerable souvenir to the window and scrutinized it closely; the shaft was sound.

“A good club yet,” he muttered.

As he stood there, holding the old mid-iron in his hands, ten years slipped away from him. He remembered that club very well—almost as well as a man remembers his first sweetheart. He remembered other things too—remembered that, as a youth, he had never had the time or the inclination to play at games of any sort. He had been too busy getting his start, as the saying goes. Then, at thirty, married and well on his way to business success, he had felt the need of open air and exercise. He had mentioned this to a friend and the friend had suggested golf.

“But that’s an old man’s game!” Yes; he had said that very thing. His ears burned at the recollection of his folly.

“Think so? Tackle it and see.”

He had been persuaded to spend one afternoon at the Country Club. Is there a golfer in all the world who needs to be told what happened to Mr. Robert Coyne? He had hit one long, straight tee shot; he had holed one difficult putt; and the whole course of his serious, methodical existence had been changed. The man who does not learn to play any game until he is thirty years of age is quite capable of going daft over tiddledywinks or dominoes. If he takes up the best and most interesting of all outdoor sports his family may count itself fortunate if he does not become violent.

Never the sort of person who could be content to do anything badly, Bob Coyne had applied himself to the Royal and Ancient Pastime with all the simple earnestness and dogged determination of a silent, self-centred man. He had taken lessons from the professional. He had brought his driver home and practiced with it in the back yard. He had read books on the subject. He had studied the methods and styles of the best players. He had formed theories of his own as to stance and swing. He had even talked golf to his wife—which is the last stage of incurable golfitis.

As he stood at the window, turning the rusty mid-iron in his hands, he recalled the first compliment ever paid him by a good player—the more pleasing because he had not been intended to hear it. It came after he had fought himself out of the duffer class and had reached the point where he was too good for the bad ones, but not considered good enough for the topnotchers.

One day Corkrane had invited him into a foursome—Coyne had been the only man in sight—and Corkrane had taken him as a partner against such redoubtable opponents as Millar and Duffy. Coyne had halved four holes and won two, defeating Millar and Duffy on the home green. Nothing had been said at the time; but later on, while polishing himself with a towel in the shower room, Coyne had heard Corkrane’s voice:

“Hey, Millar!”

“Well?”

“That fellow Coyne—he’s not so bad.”

“I believe you, Corky. He won the match for you.”

“Thought I’d have to carry him on my back; but he was right there all the way round. Yep; Coyne’s a comer, sure as you live!”

And the subject of this kindly comment had blushed pink out of sheer gratification.

A pretty good bunch, those fellows out at the club! If it had done nothing else for him, Coyne reflected, golf had widened his circle of friends. Suddenly there came to him the realisation that he would have a great deal of spare time on his hands in the future. Wednesdays and Saturdays would be long days now; and Sundays——Coyne sighed deeply and swung the rusty mid-iron back and forth as if in the act of studying a difficult approach.

“But what’s the use?” he asked himself. “I haven’t got a shot left—not a single shot!”

He sat down on the edge of the bed, the mid-iron between his knees and his head in his hands. At the end of twenty minutes he rose and began to prowl about the house, looking into corners, behind doors, and underneath beds and bureaus.

“Seems to me I saw it only the other day,” said he. “Of course Bobby might have been playing with it and lost it.”

It was in the children’s playroom that he came upon the thing, which he told himself he found by accident. It was much the worse for wear; nearly all the paint had been worn off it and its surface was covered with tiny dents. Bob Junior had been teaching his dog to fetch and carry and the dents were the prints of sharp puppy teeth.

“Well, what do you think of that!” ejaculated Mr. Coyne, pretending to be surprised. “As I live—a golf ball! Yes; a golf ball!”

He stood looking at it for some time; but at last he picked it up. With the rusty mid-iron in one hand and the ball in the other, he went downstairs, passed through the house, unlocked the back door and went into the yard. Behind the garage was a smooth stretch of lawn, fifty feet in diameter, carefully mowed and rolled. In the center of this emerald carpet was a hole, and in the hole was a flag. This was Mr. Coyne’s private putting green.

“Haven’t made a decent chip shot in a month…. No use trying now. All confounded foolishness!”

So saying, the man who had renounced Colonel Bogey and all his works dropped the ball twenty feet from the edge of the putting green. The lie did not suit him; so he altered it slightly. Then he planted his disreputable Romeos firmly on the turf, waggled the rusty mid-iron a few times, pressed the blade lightly behind the ball, and attempted that most difficult of all performances—the chip shot. The ball hopped across the lawn to the smooth surface of the putting green and rolled straight for the cup, struck the flag and stopped two inches from the hole.

“Heavens above!” gasped Mr. Coyne, rubbing his eyes. “Look at that, will you? I hit the pin, by golly—hit the pin!”

At dusk Mrs. Coyne returned. The first thing she noticed was that a large rug was missing from the dining room. Having had experience, she knew exactly where to look for it. On the back porch she paused, her hands on her hips. The missing rug was hanging over the clothesline, and her lord and master, in shirtsleeves and the unspeakable Romeos, was driving a single golf ball against it.

Whish-h-h! Click! Thud!

“And I guess that’s getting my weight into the swing!” babbled Mr. Coyne. “I’ve found out what I’ve been doing that was wrong. Watch me hit this one, Mary.”

Mrs. Coyne was everything that a good wife should be, but she sniffed audibly.

“I’ve told you a dozen times that I didn’t want you knocking holes in that rug!” said she.

“Why, there isn’t a hole in it, my dear.”

“Well, there will be if you keep on. It seems to me, Bob, that you might get enough golf out at the club. Then you won’t scandalise the neighbors by practising in the back yard on Sunday afternoons. What do you suppose they’ll think of you?”

“They’ll think I’m crazy,” was the cheerful response; “but, just between you and me, my dear, I’m not near so crazy right now as I have been!”

Three

Jasper was cleaning up the locker room—his regular Monday-morning job. As he worked he crooned the words of an old negro melody:

“Ole bline hawss, come outen the wilderness, Outen the wilderness, outen the wilderness; Ole bline hawss—”

The side door opened and Jasper dropped his mop.

“Who’s that?” he asked. “This early in the mawnin’?” But when he recognized the caller he did not show the faintest symptoms of surprise. Jasper was more than a perfect servant; he was also a diplomat. “Good mawnin’, Misteh Coyne.”

The caller seemed embarrassed. He attempted to assume a cheerful expression, but succeeded in producing a silly grin.

“Jasper,” said he, “I was a little bit sore yesterday——”

“Yes, suh; an’ nobody could blame you,” said the negro, coming gallantly to the rescue.

“And you know how it is with a man when he’s sore.”

“Yes, suh. Man don’ always mean whut he say—that is, he mean it all right at the time. Yes, suh. At—the—time. ‘N’en ag’in, he might change.”

“That’s it exactly!” said Coyne, and floundered to a full stop.

Jasper’s face was grave, but he found it necessary to fix his eyes on the opposite wall.

“Yes, suh,” said he. “Las’ month I swo’ off too.”

“Swore off on what?”

“Craps, Misteh Coyne. Whut Bu’t Williams calls Af’ican golf. Yes, suh, I swo’ off; but las’ night—well, I kind o’ fell f’um grace. I fell, suh; but I wasn’t damaged so much as some o’ them boys in the game.” Jasper chuckled to himself. “Yes, suh; I sutny sewed ’em up propeh! Look like I come back in my ole-time fawm!”

“That’s it!” Coyne agreed eagerly. “I’ve got my chip shot back, Jasper. Last night, at home, I was hitting ’em as clean as a whistle. I—I ran out here this morning to have a little talk with you. You remember about those clubs?” Jasper nodded. “That was a foolish thing to do——” began Coyne.

“No, suh!” interrupted Jasper positively. “No, suh! When a man git good an’ sore he do a lot o’ things whut awdinarily he wouldn’t think o’ doin’! Las’ month I th’owed away the best paih o’ crap dice you eveh saw. You givin’ away yo’ clubs is exackly the same thing.”

“That was what I wanted to see you about,” said Coyne with a shamefaced grin. “I was wondering if there wouldn’t be some way to get those clubs back—buying ’em from the boys. You could explain——”

Jasper cackled and slapped his knees.

“Same thing all oveh ag’in!” said he. “I th’owed them dice away, Misteh Coyne; but I th’owed ’em kind o’ easy, an’ I knowed where to look. So, when you tol’ me ’bout them clubs I—well, suh, I ain’ been c’nected with this club twenty yeahs faw nothin’. If I was you, suh, I think I’d look in my lockeh.”

Coyne drew the bolt and opened the door. His clothes were hanging on the hooks; his shoes were resting on the steel floor; his golf bag was leaning in the corner, and it was full of clubs—the clubs he had given away the day before! Coyne tried to speak, but the words would not come.

“You see, Misteh Coyne,” explained Jasper, “I knowed them fool boys would bust them clubs or somethin’, an’ I kind of s’pected you’d be wantin’ ’em back ag’in; so I didn’t take no chances. Afteh you left yestiddy I kind o’ took mattehs in my own hands. I tol’ them caddies you was only foolin’. The younges’ ones, they was open to conviction; but them oldeh boys—they had to be showed. Now that light mid-iron—I had to give Butch a dollah an’ twenty cents faw it. That brassy was a dollah an’ a half——”

Ten minutes later the incomparable Jasper was alone in the locker room, examining a very fine sample of the work turned out by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing at Washington, D. C. Across the bottom of this specimen were two words in large black type: Twenty Dollars.

“Haw!” chuckled Jasper. “I wisht some mo’ of these membehs would quit playin’ golf!”

The Ooley-cow

One

After the explosion, and before Uncle Billy Poindexter and Old Man Sprott had been able to decide just what had hit them, Little Doc Ellis had the nerve to tell me that he had seen the fuse burning for months and months. Little Doc is my friend and I like him, but he resembles many other members of his profession in that he is usually wisest after the postmortem, when it is a wee bit late for the high contracting party.

And at all times Little Doc is full of vintage bromides and figures of speech.

“You have heard the old saw,” said he. “A worm will turn if you keep picking on him, and so will a straight road if you ride it long enough. A camel is a wonderful burden bearer, but even a double-humped ship of the desert will sink on your hands if you pile the load on him a bale of hay at a time.”

“A worm, a straight road, a camel and a sinking ship,” said I. “Whither are we drifting?”

Little Doc did not pay any attention to me. It is a way he has.

“Think,” said he, “how much longer a camel will stand up under punishment if he gets his load straw by straw, as it were. The Ooley-cow was a good thing, but Uncle Billy and Old Man Sprott did not use any judgment. They piled it on him too thick.”

“Meaning,” I asked, “to compare the Ooley-cow with a camel?”

“Merely a figure of speech,” said Little Doc; “but yes, such was my intention.”

“Well,” said I, “your figures of speech need careful auditing. A camel can go eight days without a drink——”

Little Doc made impatient motions at me with both hands. He has no sense of humor, and his mind is a one-way track, totally devoid of spurs and derailing switches. Once started, he must go straight through to his destination.

“What I am trying to make plain to your limited mentality,” said he, “is that Uncle Billy and Old Man Sprott needed a lesson in conservation, and they got it. The Ooley-cow was the easiest, softest picking that ever strayed from the home pasture. With care and decent treatment he would have lasted a long time and yielded an enormous quantity of nourishment, but Uncle Billy and Old Man Sprott were too greedy. They tried to corner the milk market, and now they will have to sign tags for their drinks and their golf balls the same as the rest of us. They have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs.”

“A minute ago,” said I, “the Ooley-cow was a camel. Now he is a goose—a dead goose, to be exact. Are you all done figuring with your speech!”

“Practically so, yes.”

“Then,” said I, “I will plaster up the cracks in your argument with the cement of information. I can use figures of speech myself. You are barking up the wrong tree. You are away off your base. It wasn’t the loss of a few dollars that made Mr. Perkins run wild in our midst. It was the manner in which he lost them. Let us now dismiss the worm, the camel, the goose and all the rest of the menagerie, retaining only the Ooley-cow. What do you know about cows, if anything?”

“A little,” answered my medical friend.

“A mighty little. You know that a cow has hoofs, horns and a tail. The same description would apply to many creatures, including Satan himself. Your knowledge of cows is largely academic. Now me, I was raised on a farm, and there were cows in my curriculum. I took a seven-year course in the gentle art of acquiring the lacteal fluid. Cow is my specialty, my long suit, my best hold. Believe it or not, when we christened old Perkins the Ooley-cow we builded better than we knew.”

“I follow you at a great distance,” said little Doc. “Proceed with the rat killing. Why did we build better than we knew when we did not know anything!”

“Because,” I explained, “Perkins not only looks like a cow and walks like a cow and plays golf like a cow, but he has the predominant characteristic of a cow. He has the one distinguishing trait which all country cows have in common. If you had studied that noble domestic animal as closely as I have, you would not need to be told what moved Mr. Perkins to strew the entire golf course with the mangled remains of the two old pirates before mentioned. Uncle Billy and Old Man Sprott were milking him, yes, and it is quite likely that the Ooley-cow knew that he was being milked, but that knowledge was not the prime cause of the late unpleasantness.”

“I still follow you,” said Little Doc plaintively, “but I am losing ground every minute.”

“Listen carefully,” said I. “Pin back your ears and give me your undivided attention. There are many ways of milking a cow without exciting the animal to violence. I speak now of the old-fashioned cow—the country cow—from Iowa, let us say.”

“The Ooley-cow is from Iowa,” murmured Little Doc.

“Exactly. A city cow may be milked by machinery, and in a dozen different ways, but the country cow does not know anything about new fangled methods. There is one thing—and one thing only—which will make the gentlest old mooley in Iowa kick over the bucket, upset the milker, jump a four-barred fence and join the wild bunch on the range. Do you know what that one thing is?”

“I haven’t even a suspicion,” confessed Little Doc.

Then I told him. I told him in words of one syllable, and after a time he was able to grasp the significance of my remarks. If I could make Little Doc see the point I can make you see it too. We go from here.

Wesley J. Perkins hailed from Dubuque, but he did not hail from there until he had gathered up all the loose change in Northeastern Iowa. When he arrived in sunny Southern California he was fifty-five years of age, and at least fifty of those years had been spent in putting aside something for a rainy day. Judging by the diameter of his bankroll, he must have feared the sort of a deluge which caused the early settlers to lay the ground plans for the Tower of Babel.

Now it seldom rains in Southern California—that is to say, it seldom rains hard enough to produce a flood—and as soon as Mr. Perkins became acquainted with climatic conditions he began to jettison his ark. He joined an exclusive downtown club, took up quarters there and spent his afternoons playing dominoes with some other members of the I’ve-got-mine Association. Aside from his habit of swelling up whenever he mentioned his home town, and insisting on referring to it as “the Heidelberg of America,” there was nothing about Mr. Perkins to provoke comment, unfavorable or otherwise. He was just one more Iowan in a country where Iowans are no novelty.

In person he was the mildest-mannered man that ever foreclosed a short-term mortgage and put a family out in the street. His eyes were large and bovine, his mouth drooped perpetually and so did his jowls, and he moved with the slow, uncertain gait of a venerable milch cow. He had a habit of lowering his head and staring vacantly into space, and all these things earned for him the unhandsome nickname by which he is now known.

“But why the Ooley-cow?” some one asked one day. “It doesn’t mean anything at all!”

“Well,” was the reply, “neither does Perkins.”

But this was an error, as we shall see later.

It was an increasing waistline that caused the Ooley-cow to look about him for some form of gentle exercise. His physician suggested golf, and that very week the board of directors of the Country Club was asked to consider his application for membership. There were no ringing cheers, but he passed the censors.

I will say for Perkins that when he decided to commit golf he went about it in a very thorough manner. He had himself surveyed for three knickerbocker suits, he laid in a stock of soft shirts, imported stockings and spiked shoes, and he gave our professional carte blanche in the matter of field equipment. It is not a safe thing to give a Scotchman permission to dip his hand in your change pocket, and MacPherson certainly availed himself of the opportunity to finger some of the Dubuque money. He took one look at the novice and unloaded on him something less than a hundredweight of dead stock. He also gave him a lesson or two, and sent him forth armed to the teeth with wood, iron and aluminum.

Almost immediately Perkins found himself in the hands of Poindexter and Sprott, two extremely hard-boiled old gentlemen who have never been known to take any interest in a financial proposition assaying less than seven per cent, and that fully guaranteed. Both are retired capitalists, but when they climbed out of the trenches and retreated into the realm of sport they took all their business instincts with them.

Uncle Billy can play to a twelve handicap when it suits him to do so, and his partner in crime is only a couple of strokes behind him; but they seldom uncover their true form, preferring to pose as doddering and infirm invalids, childish old men, who only think they can play the game of golf, easy marks for the rising generation. New members are their victims; beginners are just the same as manna from heaven to them. They instruct the novice humbly and apologetically, but always with a small side bet, and no matter how fast the novice improves he makes the astounding discovery that his two feeble old tutors are able to keep pace with him. Uncle Billy and Old Man Sprott are experts at nursing a betting proposition along, and they seldom win any sort of a match by a margin of more than two up and one to go. Taking into account the natural limitations of age they play golf very well, but they play a cinch even better—and harder. It is common scandal that Uncle Billy has not bought a golf ball in ten years. Old Man Sprott bought one in 1915, but it was under the mellowing influence of the third toddy and, therefore, should not count against him.

The Ooley-cow was a cinch. When he turned up, innocent and guileless and eager to learn the game, Uncle Billy and his running mate were quick to realize that Fate had sent them a downy bird for plucking, and in no time at all the air was full of feathers.

They played the Ooley-cow for golf balls, they played him for caddy hire, they played him for drinks and cigars, they played him for luncheons and they played him for a sucker—played him for everything, in fact, but the locker rent and the club dues. How they came to overlook these items is more than I know. The Ooley-cow would have stood for it; he stood for everything. He signed all the tags with a loose and vapid grin, and if he suffered from writer’s cramp he never mentioned the fact. His monthly bill must have been a thing to shudder at, but possibly he regarded this extra outlay as part of his tuition.

Once in a while he was allowed to win, for Poindexter and Sprott followed the system practiced by other confidence men; but they never forgot to take his winnings away from him the next day, charging him interest at the rate of fifty per cent for twenty-four hours. The Ooley-cow was so very easy that they took liberties with him, so good-natured about his losses that they presumed upon that good nature and ridiculed him openly; but the old saw sometimes loses a tooth, the worm turns, the straight road bends at last, so does the camel’s back, and the prize cow kicks the milker into the middle of next week. And, as I remarked before, the cow usually has a reason.

Two

One morning I dropped into the downtown club which Perkins calls his home. I found him sitting in the reception room, juggling a newspaper and watching the door. He seemed somewhat disturbed.

“Good morning,” said I.

“It is not a good morning,” said he. “It’s a bad morning. Look at this.”

He handed me the paper, with his thumb at the head of the Lost-and-Found column, and I read as follows:

“Lost—A black leather wallet, containing private papers and a sum of money. A suitable reward will be paid for the return of same, and no questions asked. Apply to W. J. P., Argonaut Club, City.”

“Tough luck,” said I. “Did you lose much?”

“Quite a sum,” replied the Ooley-cow. “Enough to make it an object. In large bills mostly.”

“Too bad. The wallet had your cards in it?”

“And some papers of a private nature.”

“Have you any idea where you might have dropped it? Or do you think it was stolen?”

“I don’t know what to think. I had it last night at the Country Club just before I left. I know I had it then, because I took it out in the lounging room to pay a small bet to Mr. Poindexter—a matter of two dollars. Then I put the wallet back in my inside pocket and came straight here—alone in a closed car. I missed it just before going to bed. I telephoned to the Country Club. No sign of it there. I went to the garage myself. It was not in the car. Of course it may have been there earlier in the evening, but I think my driver is honest, and——”

At this point we were interrupted by a clean-cut looking youngster of perhaps seventeen years.

“Your initials are W. J. P., sir?” he asked politely.

“They are.”

“This is your ‘ad’ in the paper?”

“It is.”

The boy reached in his pocket and brought out a black leather wallet. “I have returned your property,” said he, and waited while the Ooley-cow thumbed a roll of yellow-backed bills.

“All here,” said Perkins with a sigh of relief. Then he looked up at the boy, and his large bovine eyes turned hard as moss agates. “Where did you get this?” he demanded abruptly. “How did you come by it?”

The boy smiled and shook his head, but his eyes never left Perkins’ face. “No questions were to be asked, sir,” said he.

“Right!” grunted the Ooley-cow. “Quite right. A bargain’s a bargain. I—I beg your pardon, young man…. Still, I’d like to know…. Just curiosity, eh?… No?… Very well then. That being the case”—he stripped a fifty-dollar note from the roll and passed it over—“would you consider this a suitable reward?”

“Yes, sir, and thank you, sir.”

“Good day,” said Perkins, and put the wallet into his pocket. He stared at the boy until he disappeared through the street door.

“Something mighty queer about this,” mused the Ooley-cow thoughtfully. “Mighty queer. That boy—he looked honest. He had good eyes and he wasn’t afraid of me. I couldn’t scare him worth a cent. Couldn’t bluff him…. Yet if he found it somewhere, there wasn’t any reason why he shouldn’t have told me. He didn’t steal it—I’ll bet on that. Maybe he got it from some one who did. Oh, well, the main thing is that he brought it back…. Going out to the Country Club this afternoon?”

I said that I expected to play golf that day.

“Come out with me then,” said the Ooley-cow. “Poindexter and Sprott will be there too. Yesterday afternoon I played Poindexter for the lunches to-day. Holed a long putt on the seventeenth green, and stuck him. Come along, and we’ll make Poindexter give a party—for once.”

“It can’t be done,” said I. “Uncle Billy doesn’t give parties.”

“We’ll make him give one,” chuckled the Ooley-cow. “We’ll insist on it.”

“Insist if you want to,” said I, “but you’ll never get away with it.”

“Meet me here at noon,” said the Ooley-cow. “If Poindexter doesn’t give the party I will.”

I wasn’t exactly keen for the Ooley-cow’s society, but I accepted his invitation to ride out to the club in his car. He regaled me with a dreary monologue, descriptive of the Heidelberg of America, and solemnly assured me that the pretty girls one sees in Chicago are all from Dubuque.

It was twelve-thirty when we arrived at the Country Club, and Uncle Billy and Old Man Sprott were there ahead of us.

“Poindexter,” said Perkins, “you are giving a party to-day, and I have invited our friend here to join us.”

Uncle Billy looked at Old Man Sprott, and both laughed uproariously. Right there was where I should have detected the unmistakable odor of a rodent. It was surprise number one.

“Dee-lighted!” cackled Uncle Billy. “Glad to have another guest, ain’t we, Sprott?”

Sprott grinned and rubbed his hands. “You bet! Tell you what let’s do, Billy. Let’s invite everybody in the place—make it a regular party while you’re at it!”

“Great idea!” exclaimed Uncle Billy. “The more the merrier!” This was surprise number two. The first man invited was Henry Bauer, who has known Uncle Billy for many years. He sat down quite overcome.

“You shouldn’t do a thing like that, Billy,” said he querulously. “I have a weak heart, and any sudden shock——”

“Nonsense! You’ll join us?”

“Novelty always appealed to me,” said Bauer. “I’m forever trying things that nobody has ever tried before. Yes, I’ll break bread with you, but—why the celebration? What’s it all about?”

That was what everybody wanted to know and what nobody found out, but the luncheon was a brilliant success in spite of the dazed and mystified condition of the guests, and the only limit was the limit of individual capacity. Eighteen of us sat down at the big round table, and sandwich-and-milk orders were sternly countermanded by Uncle Billy, who proved an amazing host, recommending this and that and actually ordering Rhine-wine cup for all hands. I could not have been more surprised if the bronze statue in the corner of the grill had hopped down from its pedestal to fill our glasses. Uncle Billy collected a great pile of tags beside his plate, but the presence of so much bad news waiting at his elbow did not seem to affect his appetite in the least. When the party was over he called the head waiter. “Mark these tags paid,” said Uncle Billy, capping the collection with a yellow-backed bill, “and hand the change to Mr. Perkins.”

“Yes sir,” said the head waiter, and disappeared.

I looked at the Ooley-cow, and was just in time to see the light of intelligence dawn in his big soft eyes. He was staring at Uncle Billy, and his lower lip was flopping convulsively. Everybody began asking questions at once.

“One moment, gentlemen,” mooed the Ooley-cow, pounding on the table. “One moment!”

“Now don’t get excited, Perkins,” said Old Man Sprott. “You got your wallet back, didn’t you? Cost you fifty, but you got it back. Next time you won’t be so careless.”

“Yes,” chimed in Uncle Billy, “you oughtn’t to go dropping your money round loose that way. It’ll teach you a lesson.”

“It will indeed.” The Ooley-cow lowered his head and glared first at one old pirate and then at the other. His soft eyes hardened and the moss-agate look came into them. He seemed about to bellow, paw up the dirt and charge.

“The laugh is on you,” cackled Poindexter, “and I’ll leave it to the boys here. Last night our genial host dropped his wallet on the floor out in the lounging room. I kicked it across under the table to Sprott and Sprott put his foot on it. We intended to give it back to him to-day, but this morning there was an ‘ad’ in the paper—reward and no questions asked—so we sent a nice bright boy over to the Argonaut Club with the wallet. Perkins gave the boy a fifty-dollar note—very liberal, I call it—and the boy gave it to me. Perfectly legitimate transaction. Our friend here has had a lesson, we’ve had a delightful luncheon party, and the joke is on him.”

“And a pretty good joke, too!” laughed Old Man Sprott.

“Yes,” said the Ooley-cow at last, “a pretty good joke. Ha, ha! A mighty good joke.” And place it to his credit that he managed a very fair imitation of a fat man laughing, even to the shaking of the stomach and the wrinkles round the eyes. He looked down at the tray in front of him and fingered the few bills and some loose silver.

“A mighty good joke,” he repeated thoughtfully, “but what I can’t understand is this—why didn’t you two jokers keep the change? It would have been just that much funnier.”

Three

The Ooley-cow’s party was generally discussed during the next ten days, the consensus of club opinion being that some one ought to teach Poindexter and Sprott the difference between humor and petty larceny. Most of the playing members were disgusted with the two old skinflints, and one effect of this sentiment manifested itself in the number of invitations that Perkins received to play golf with real people. He declined them all, much to our surprise, and continued to wallop his way round the course with Uncle Billy and Old Man Sprott, apparently on as cordial terms as ever.

“What are you going to do with such a besotted old fool as that?” asked Henry Bauer. “Here I’ve invited him into three foursomes this week—all white men, too—and he’s turned me down cold. It’s not that we want to play with him, for as a golfer he’s a terrible thing. It’s not that we’re crazy about him personally, for socially he’s my notion of zero minus; but he took his stinging like a dead-game sport and he’s entitled to better treatment than he’s getting. But if he hasn’t any better sense than to pass his plate for more, what are you going to do about it?”

“‘Ephraim is joined to idols,’” quoted Little Doc Ellis. “‘Let him alone.’”

“No, it’s the other way round,” argued Bauer. “His idols are joined to him—fastened on like leeches. The question naturally arises, how did such a man ever accumulate a fortune? Who forced it on him, and when, and where, and why?”

That very afternoon the Ooley-cow turned up with his guest, a large, loud person, also from the Heidelberg of America, who addressed Perkins as “Wesley,” and lost no time in informing us that Southern California would have starved to death but for Iowa capital. His name was Cottle—Calvin D. Cottle—and he gave each one of us his card as he was introduced. There was no need. Nobody could have forgotten him. Some people make an impression at first sight—Calvin D. Cottle made a deep dent. His age was perhaps forty-five, but he spoke as one crowned with Methuselah’s years and Solomon’s wisdom, and after each windy statement he turned to the Ooley-cow for confirmation.

“Ain’t that so, Wesley? Old Wes knows, you bet your life! He’s from my home town!”

It was as good as a circus to watch Uncle Billy and Old Man Sprott sizing up this fresh victim. It reminded me of two wary old dogs circling for position, manœuvring for a safe hold. They wanted to know something about his golf game—what was his handicap, for instance?

“Handicap?” repeated Cottle. “Is that a California idea? Something new, ain’t it?”

Uncle Billy explained the handicapping theory.

“Oh!” said Cottle. “You mean what do I go round in—how many strokes. Well, sometimes I cut under a hundred; sometimes I don’t. It just depends. Some days I can hit ’em, some days I can’t. That’s all there is to it.”

“My case exactly,” purred Old Man Sprott. “Suppose we dispense with the handicap?”

“That’s the stuff!” agreed Cottle heartily. “I don’t want to have to give anybody anything; I don’t want anybody to give me anything. I like an even fight, and what I say is, may the best man win! Am I right, gentlemen?”

“Absolutely!” chirped Uncle Billy. “May the best man win!”

“You bet I’m right!” boomed Cottle. “Ask old Wes here about me. Raised right in the same town with him, from a kid knee-high to a grasshopper! I never took any the best of it in my life, did I, Wes? No, you bet not! Remember that time I got skinned out of ten thousand bucks on the land deal? A lot of fellows would have squealed, wouldn’t they? A lot of fellows would have hollered for the police; but I just laughed and gave ’em credit for being smarter than I was. I’m the same way in sport as I am in business. I believe in giving everybody credit. I win if I can, but if I can’t—well, there’s never any hard feelings. That’s me all over. You may be able to lick me at this golf thing—likely you will; but you’ll never scare me, that’s a cinch. Probably you gentlemen play a better game than I do—been at it longer; but then I’m a lot younger than you are. Got more strength. Hit a longer ball when I do manage to land on one right. So it all evens up in the long run.”

Mr. Cottle was still modestly cheering his many admirable qualities when the Perkins party went in to luncheon, and the only pause he made was on the first tee. With his usual caution Uncle Billy had arranged it so that Dubuque was opposed to Southern California, and he had also carefully neglected to name any sort of a bet until after he had seen the stranger drive.

Cottle teed his ball and stood over it, gripping his driver until his knuckles showed white under the tan. “Get ready to ride!” said he. “You’re about to leave this place!”

The club head whistled through the air, and I can truthfully say that I never saw a man of his size swing any harder at a golf ball—or come nearer cutting one completely in two.

“Topped it, by gum!” ejaculated Mr. Cottle, watching the maimed ball until it disappeared in a bunker. “Topped it! Well, better luck next time! By the way, what are we playing for? Balls, or money, or what?”

“Whatever you like,” said Uncle Billy promptly. “You name it.”

“Good! That’s the way I like to hear a man talk. Old Wes here is my partner, so I can’t bet with him, but I’ll have a side match with each of you gentlemen—say, ten great, big, smiling Iowa dollars. Always like to bet what I’ve got the most of. Satisfactory?”

Uncle Billy glanced at Old Man Sprott, and for an instant the old rascals hesitated. The situation was made to order for them, but they would have preferred a smaller wager to start with, being petty larcenists at heart.

“Better cut that down to five,” said Perkins to Cottle in a low tone. “They play a strong game.”

“Humph!” grunted his guest. “Did you ever know me to pike in my life? I ain’t going to begin now. Ten dollars or nothing!”

“I’ve got you,” said Old Man Sprott.

“This once,” said Uncle Billy. “It’s against my principles to play for money; but yes, this once.”

And then those two old sharks insisted on a foursome bet as well.

“Ball, ball, ball,” said the Ooley-cow briefly, and proceeded to follow his partner into the bunker. Poindexter and Sprott popped conservatively down the middle of the course and the battle was on.

Battle, did I say! It was a massacre of the innocents, a slaughter of babes and sucklings. Our foursome trailed along behind, and took note of Mr. Cottle, of Dubuque, in his fruitless efforts to tear the cover off the ball. He swung hard enough to knock down a lamp-post, but he seldom made proper connections, and when he did the ball landed so far off the course that it took him a dozen shots to get back again. He was hopelessly bad, so bad that there was no chance to make the side matches close ones. On the tenth tee Cottle demanded another bet—to give him a chance to get even, he said. Poindexter and Sprott each bet him another ten dollar note on the last nine, and this time Uncle Billy did not say anything about his principles.

After it was all over Cottle poured a few mint toddies into his system and floated an alibi to the surface.

“It was those confounded sand greens that did it,” said he. “I’m used to grass, and I can’t putt on anything else. Bet I could take you to Dubuque and flail the everlasting daylights out of you!”

“Shouldn’t be surprised,” said Uncle Billy. “You did a lot better on the last nine—sort of got into your stride. Any time you think you want revenge——”

“You can have it,” finished Old Man Sprott, as he folded a crisp twenty-dollar note. “We believe in giving a man a chance—eh, Billy?”

“That’s the spirit!” cried Cottle enthusiastically. “Give a man a chance; it’s what I say, and if he does anything, give him credit. You beat me to-day, but I never saw this course before. Tell you what we’ll do: Let’s make a day of it to-morrow. Morning and afternoon both. Satisfactory! Good! You’ve got forty dollars of my dough and I want it back. Nobody ever made me quit betting yet, if I figure to have a chance. What’s money? Shucks! My country is full of it! Now then, Wesley, if you’ll come out on the practice green and give me some pointers on this sand thing, I’ll be obliged to you. Ball won’t run on sand like it will on grass—have to get used to it. Have to hit ’em a little harder. Soon as I get the hang of the thing we’ll give these Native Sons a battle yet! Native Sons? Native Grandfathers! Come on!” Uncle Billy looked at Old Man Sprott and Old Man Sprott looked at Uncle Billy, but they did not begin to laugh until the Ooley-cow and his guest were out of earshot. Then they clucked and cackled and choked like a couple of hysterical old hens.

“His putting!” gurgled Uncle Billy. “Did he have a putt to win a hole all the way round?”

“Not unless he missed count of his shots. Say, Billy!”

“Well?”

“We made a mistake locating so far West. We should have stopped in Iowa. By now we’d have owned the entire state!”

Four

I dropped Mr. Calvin D. Cottle entirely out of my thoughts; but when I entered the locker room shortly after noon the next day something reminded me of him. Possibly it was the sound of his voice.

“Boy! Can’t we have ‘nother toddy here? What’s the matter with some service? How ’bout you, Wes? Oh, I forgot—you never take anything till after five o ‘clock. Think of all the fun you’re missing. When I get to be an old fossil like you maybe I’ll do the same. Good rule…. You gentlemen having anything? No? Kind of careful, ain’t you? Safety first, hey?… Just one toddy, boy, and if that mint ain’t fresh, I’ll …. Yep, you’re cagey birds, you are, but I give you credit just the same. And some cash. Don’t forget that. Rather have cash than credit any time, hey? I bet you would! But I don’t mind a little thing like that. I’m a good sport. You ask Wes here if I ain’t. If I ain’t a good sport I ain’t anything…. Still, I’ll be darned if I see how you fellows do it! You’re both old enough to have sons in the Soldiers’ Home over yonder, but you take me out and lick me again—lick me and make me like it! A couple of dried-up mummies with one foot in the grave, and I’m right in the prime of life! Only a kid yet! It’s humiliating, that’s what it is, humiliating! Forty dollars apiece you’re into me—and a flock of golf balls on the side! Boy! Where’s that mint toddy? Let’s have a little service here!”

I peeped through the door leading to the lounging room. The Dubuque-California foursome was grouped at a table in a corner. The Ooley-cow looked calm and placid as usual, but his guest was sweating profusely, and as he talked he mopped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt. Uncle Billy and Old Man Sprott were listening politely, but the speculative light in their eyes told me that they were wondering how far they dared go with this outlander from the Middle West.

“Why,” boomed Cottle, “I can hit a ball twice as far as either one of you! ‘Course I don’t always know where it’s going, but the main thing is I got the strength. I can throw a golf ball farther than you old fossils can hit one with a wooden club, yet you lick me easy as breaking sticks. Can’t understand it at all…. Twice as strong as you are…. Why, say, I bet I can take one hand and outdrive you! One hand!”

“Easy, Calvin,” said the Ooley-cow reprovingly. “Don’t make wild statements.”

“Well, I’ll bet I can do it,” repeated Cottle stubbornly. “If a man’s willing to bet his money to back up a wild statement, that shows he’s got the right kind of a heart anyway.

“I ought to be able to stick my left hand in my pocket and go out there and trim two men of your age. I ought to, and I’ll be damned if I don’t think I can!”

“Tut, tut!” warned the Ooley-cow. “That’s foolishness.”

“Think so?” Cottle dipped his hand into his pocket and brought out a thick roll of bills. “Well, this stuff here says I can do it—at least I can try—and I ain’t afraid to back my judgment.”

“Put your money away,” said Perkins. “Don’t be a fool!”

Cottle laughed uproariously and slapped the Ooley-cow on the back.

“Good old Wes!” he cried. “Ain’t changed a bit. Conservative! Always conservative! Got rich at it, but me I got rich taking chances. What’s a little wad of bills to me, hey? Nothing but chicken-feed! I’ll bet any part of this roll—I’ll bet all of it—and I’ll play these sun-dried old sports with one hand. Now’s the time to show whether they’ve got any sporting blood or not. What do you say, gentlemen?”

Uncle Billy looked at the money and moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue.

“Couldn’t think of it,” he croaked at length.

“Pshaw!” sneered Cottle. “I showed you too much—I scared you!”

“He ain’t scared,” put in Old Man Sprott. “It would be too much like stealing it.”

“I’m the one to worry about that,” announced Cottle. “It’s my money, ain’t it? I made it, didn’t I? And I can do what I damn please with it—spend it, bet it, burn it up, throw it away. When you’ve worried about everything else in the world it’ll be time for you to begin worrying about young Mr. Cottle’s money! This slim little roll—bah! Chicken-feed! Come get it if you want it!” He tossed the money on the table with a gesture which was an insult in itself. “There it is—cover it! Put up or shut up!”

“Oh, forget it!” said the Ooley-cow wearily. “Come in and have a bite to eat and forget it!”

“Don’t want anything to eat!” was the stubborn response. “Seldom eat in the middle of the day. But I’ll have ‘nother mint toddy…. Wait a second, Wes. Don’t be in such a rush. Lemme understand this thing. These—these gentlemen here, these two friends of yours, these dead-game old Native Sons have got eighty dollars of my money—not that it makes any difference to me, understand, but they’ve got it—eighty dollars that they won from me playing golf. Now I may have a drink or two in me and I may not, understand, but anyhow I know what I’m about. I make these—gentlemen a sporting proposition. I give ’em a chance to pick up a couple of hundred apiece, and they want to run out on me because it’ll be like stealing it. What kind of a deal is that, hey? Is it sportsmanship? Is it what they call giving a man a chance? Is it——”

“But they know you wouldn’t have a chance,” interrupted the Ooley-cow soothingly. “They don’t want a sure thing.”

“They’ve had one so far, haven’t they?” howled Cottle. “What are they scared of now? ’Fraid I’ll squeal if I lose? Tell ’em about me, Wes. Tell ’em I never squealed in my life! I win if I can, but if I can’t—‘s all right. No kick coming. There never was a piker in the Cottle family, was there, Wes? No, you bet not! We’re sports, every one of us. Takes more than one slim little roll to send us up a tree! If there’s anything that makes me sick, it’s a cold-footed, penny-pinching, nickel-nursing, sure-thing player!”

“Your money does not frighten me,” said Uncle Billy, who was slightly nettled by this time. “It is against my principles to play for a cash bet——”

“But you and your pussy-footed old side-partner got into me for eighty dollars just the same!” scoffed Cottle. “You and your principles be damned!”

Uncle Billy swallowed this without blinking, but he did not look at Cottle. He was looking at the roll of bills on the table.

“If you are really in earnest——” began Poindexter, and glanced at Old Man Sprott.

“Go ahead, Billy,” croaked that aged reprobate. “Teach him a lesson. He needs it.”

“Never mind the lesson,” snapped Cottle. “I got out of school a long time ago. The bet is that I can leave my left arm in the clubhouse safe—stick it in my pocket—and trim you birds with one hand.”

“We wouldn’t insist on that,” said Old Man Sprott. “Play with both hands if you want to.”

“Think I’m a welsher?” demanded Cottle. “The original proposition goes. ‘Course I wouldn’t really cut the arm off and leave it in the safe, but what I mean is, if I use two arms in making a shot, right there is where I lose. Satisfactory?”

“Perkins,” said Uncle Billy, solemnly wagging his head, “you are a witness that this thing has been forced on me. I have been bullied and browbeaten and insulted into making this bet——”

“And so have I,” chimed in Old Man Sprott. “I’m almost ashamed——”

The Ooley-cow shrugged his shoulders.

“I am a witness,” said he quietly. “Calvin, these gentlemen have stated the case correctly. You have forced them to accept your proposition——”

“And he can’t blame anybody if he loses,” finished Uncle Billy as he reached for the roll of bills.

“You bet!” ejaculated Old Man Sprott. “He was looking for trouble, and now he’s found it. Count it, Billy, and we’ll each take half.”

“That goes, does it?” asked Cottle.

“Sir?” cried Uncle Billy.

“Oh, I just wanted to put you on record,” said Cottle, with a grin. “Wesley, you’re my witness too. I mislaid a five-hundred-dollar note the other day, and it may have got into my change pocket. Might as well see if a big bet will put these safety-first players off their game! Anyhow, I’m betting whatever’s there. I ain’t sure how much it is.”

“I am,” said Uncle Billy in a changed voice. He had come to the five-hundred-dollar bill, sandwiched in between two twenties. He looked at Old Man Sprott, and for the first time I saw doubt in his eyes.

“Oh, it’s there, is it!” asked Cottle carelessly. “Well, let it all ride. I never backed up on a gambling proposition in my life—never pinched a bet after the ball started to roll. Shoot the entire works—‘s all right with me!”

Uncle Billy and Old Man Sprott exchanged significant glances, but after a short argument and some more abuse from Cottle they toddled over to the desk and filled out two blank checks—for five hundred and eighty dollars apiece.

“Make ’em payable to cash,” suggested Cottle. “You’ll probably tear ’em up after the game. Now the next thing is a stakeholder——”

“Is that—necessary?” asked Old Man Sprott.

“Sure!” said Cottle. “I might run out on you. Let’s have everything according to Hoyle—stakeholder and all the other trimmings. Anybody’ll be satisfactory to me; that young fellow getting an earful at the door; he’ll do.”

So I became the stakeholder—the custodian of eleven hundred and sixty dollars in coin and two checks representing a like amount. I thought I detected a slight nervousness in the signatures, and no wonder. It was the biggest bet those old petty larcenists had ever made in their lives. They went in to luncheon—at the invitation of the Ooley-cow, of course—but I noticed that they did not eat much. Cottle wandered out to the practice green, putter in hand, forgetting all about the mint toddy which, by the way, had never been ordered.

Five

“You drive first, sir,” said Uncle Billy to Cottle, pursuing his usual system. “We’ll follow you.”

“Think you’ll feel easier if I should hit one over into the eucalyptus trees yonder?” asked the man from Dubuque. “Little nervous, eh? Does a big bet scare you? I was counting on that…. Oh, very well, I’ll take the honor.”

“Just a second,” said Old Man Sprott, who had been prowling about in the background and fidgeting with his driver. “Does the stakeholder understand the terms of the bet? Mr. Cottle is playing a match with each of us individually——”

“Separately and side by each,” added Cottle.

“Using only one arm,” said Old Man Sprott.

“If he uses both arms in making a shot,” put in Uncle Billy, “he forfeits both matches. Is that correct, Mr. Cottle?”

“Correct as hell! Watch me closely, young man. I have no moustache to deceive you—nothing up my sleeve but my good right arm. Watch me closely!”

He teed his ball, dropped his left arm at his side, grasped the driver firmly in his right hand and swung the club a couple of times in tentative fashion. The head of the driver described a perfect arc, barely grazing the top of the tee. His two-armed swing had been a thing of violence—a baseball wallop, constricted, bound up, without follow-through or timing, a combination of brute strength and awkwardness. Uncle Billy’s chin sagged as he watched the easy, natural sweep of that wooden club—the wrist-snap applied at the proper time, and the long graceful follow-through which gives distance as well as direction. Old Man Sprott also seemed to be struggling with an entirely new and not altogether pleasant idea.

“Watch me closely, stakeholder,” repeated Cottle, addressing the ball. “Nothing up my sleeve but my good right arm. Would you gentlemen like to have me roll up my sleeve before I start?”

“Drive!” grunted Uncle Billy.

“I’ll do that little thing,” said Cottle, and this time he put the power into the swing. The ball, caught squarely in the middle of the club-face, went whistling toward the distant green, a perfect screamer of a drive without a suspicion of hook or slice. It cleared the cross-bunker by ten feet, carried at least a hundred and eighty yards before it touched grass, and then bounded ahead like a scared rabbit, coming to rest at least two hundred and twenty-five yards away. “You like that?” asked Cottle, moving off the tee. “I didn’t step into it very hard or I might have had more distance. Satisfactory, stakeholder?” And he winked at me openly and deliberately.

“Wha—what sort of a game is this?” gulped Old Man Sprott, finding his voice with an effort.

“Why,” said Cottle, smiling cheerfully, “I wouldn’t like to say off-hand and so early in the game, but you might call it golf. Yes, call it golf, and let it go at that.”

At this point I wish to go on record as denying the rumor that our two old reprobates showed the white feather. That first tee shot, and the manner in which it was made, was enough to inform them that they were up against a sickening surprise party; but, though startled and shaken, they did not weaken. They pulled themselves together and drove the best they knew how, and I realized that for once I was to see their true golfing form uncovered.

Cottle tucked his wooden club under his arm and started down the course, and from that time on he had very little to say. Uncle Billy and Old Man Sprott followed him, their heads together at a confidential angle, and I brought up the rear with the Ooley-cow, who had elected himself a gallery of one.

The first hole is a long par four. Poindexter and Sprott usually make it in five, seldom getting home with their seconds unless they have a wind behind them. Both used brassies and both were short of the green. Then they watched Cottle as he went forward to his ball.

“That drive might have been a freak shot,” quavered Uncle Billy.

“Lucky fluke, that’s all,” said Old Man Sprott, but I knew and they knew that they only hoped they were telling the truth.

Cottle paused over his ball for an instant, examined the lie and drew a wooden spoon from his bag. Then he set himself, and the next instant the ball was on its way, a long, high shot, dead on the pin.

“And maybe that was a fluke!” muttered the Ooley-cow under his breath. “Look! He’s got the green with it!”

From the same distance I would have played a full mid-iron and trusted in Providence, but Cottle had used his wood, and I may say that never have I seen a ball better placed. It carried to the little rise of turf in front of the putting green, hopped once, and trickled onto the sand. I was not the only one who appreciated that spoon shot.

“Say,” yapped Old Man Sprott, turning to Perkins, “what are we up against here? Miracles?”

“Yes, what have you framed up on us?” demanded Uncle Billy vindictively.

“Something easy, gentlemen,” chuckled the Ooley-cow. “A soft thing from my home town. Probably he’s only lucky.”

The two members of the Sure-Thing Society went after their customary fives and got them, but Cottle laid his approach putt stone dead at the cup and holed out in four. He missed a three by the matter of half an inch. I could stand the suspense no longer. I took Perkins aside while the contestants were walking to the second tee.

“You might tell a friend,” I suggested. “In strict confidence, what are they up against?”

“Something easy,” repeated the Ooley-cow, regarding me with his soft, innocent eyes. “They wanted it and now they’ve got it.”

“But yesterday, when he played with both arms——” I began.

“That was yesterday,” said Perkins. “You’ll notice that they didn’t have the decency to offer him a handicap, even when they felt morally certain that he had made a fool bet. Not that he would have accepted it—but they didn’t offer it. They’re wolves, clear to the bone, but once in a while a wolf bites off more than he can chew.” And he walked away from me. Right there I began reconstructing my opinion of the Ooley-cow.

In my official capacity as stakeholder I saw every shot that was played that afternoon. I still preserve the original score card of that amazing round of golf. There are times when I think I will have it framed and present it to the club, with red-ink crosses against the thirteenth and fourteenth holes. I might even set a red-ink star against the difficult sixth hole, where Cottle sent another tremendous spoon shot down the wind, and took a four where most of our Class-A men are content with a five. I might make a notation against the tricky ninth, where he played a marvellous shot out of a sand trap to halve a hole which I would have given up as lost. I might make a footnote calling attention to his deadly work with his short irons. I say I think of all these things, but perhaps I shall never frame that card. The two men most interested will never forget the figures. It is enough to say that Old Man Sprott, playing such golf as I had never seen him play before, succumbed at the thirteenth hole, six down and five to go. Uncle Billy gave up the ghost on the fourteenth green, five and four, and I handed the money and the checks to Mr. Calvin D. Cottle, of Dubuque. He pocketed the loot with a grin.

“Shall we play the bye-holes for something?” he asked. “A drink—or a ball, maybe?” And then the storm broke. I do not pretend to quote the exact language of the losers. I merely state that I was surprised, yes, shocked at Uncle Billy Poindexter. I had no idea that a member of the Episcopal church—but let that pass. He was not himself. He was the biter bitten, the milker milked. It makes a difference. Old Man Sprott also erupted in an astounding manner. It was the Ooley-cow who took the center of the stage.

“Just a minute, gentlemen,” said he. “Do not say anything which you might afterward regret. Remember the stakeholder is still with us. My friend here is not, as you intimate, a crook. Neither is he a sure-thing player. We have some sure-thing players with us, but he is not one of them. He is merely the one-armed golf champion of Dubuque—and the Middle West.”

Imagine an interlude here for fireworks, followed by pertinent questions.

“Yes, yes, I know,” said Perkins soothingly. “He can’t play a lick with two arms. He never could. Matter of fact, he never learned. He fell off a haystack in Iowa—how many years ago was it, Cal?”

“Twelve,” said Mr. Cottle. “Twelve next July.”

“And he broke his left arm rather badly,” explained the Ooley-cow. “Didn’t have the use of it for—how many years, Cal?”

“Oh, about six, I should say.”

“Six years. A determined man can accomplish much in that length of time. Cottle learned to play golf with his right arm—fairly well, as you must admit. Finally he got the left arm fixed up—they took a piece of bone out of his shin and grafted it in—newfangled idea. Decided there was no sense in spoiling a one-armed star to make a dub two-armed golfer. Country full of ’em already. That’s the whole story. You picked him for an easy mark, a good thing. You thought he had a bad bet and you had a good one. Don’t take the trouble to deny it. Gentlemen, allow me to present the champion one-armed golfer of Iowa and the Middle West!”

“Yes,” said Cottle modestly, “when a man does anything, give him credit for it. Personally I’d rather have the cash!”

“How do you feel about it now?” asked the Ooley-cow.

Judging by their comments, they felt warm—very warm. Hot, in fact. The Ooley-cow made just one more statement, but to me that statement contained the gist of the whole matter.

“This,” said he, “squares us on the wallet proposition. I didn’t say anything about it at the time, but that struck me as a scaly trick. So I invited Cal to come out and pay me a visit…. Shall we go back to the clubhouse?”

I made Little Doc Ellis see the point; perhaps I can make you see it now.

Returning to the original simile, the Ooley-cow was willing to be milked for golf balls and luncheons and caddie hire. That was legitimate milking, and he did not resent it. He would have continued to give down in great abundance, but when they took fifty dollars from him, in the form of a bogus reward, he kicked over the bucket, injured the milkers and jumped the fence.

Why? I’m almost ashamed to tell you, but did you ever hear of a country cow—an Iowa cow—that would stand for being milked from the wrong side?

I think this will be all, except that I anticipate a hard winter for the golfing beginners at our club.

Adolphus and the rough diamond

One

Now that Winthrop Watson Wilkins has taken his clubs away and cleaned out his locker some of the fellows are ready enough to admit that he wasn’t half bad. On this point I agree with them. He was not. He was two-thirds bad, and the remainder was pure, abysmal, impenetrable ignorance.

Windy Wilkins may have meant well—perhaps he did—but when a fellow doesn’t know, and doesn’t know that he doesn’t know and won’t let anybody tell him that he doesn’t know, he becomes impossible and out of place in any respectable and exclusive golf club. I suppose his apologists feel kindly toward him for eliminating Adolphus Kitts and squaring about a thousand old scores with that person, but I claim it was a case of dog eat dog and neither dog a thoroughbred. I for one am not mourning the departure of Windy Winkins, and if I never see him again, I will manage to bear it somehow.

They say that every golf club has one member who slips in while the membership committee is looking the other way. In Windy’s case the committee had no possible excuse. There was an excuse for Adolphus Kitts. Adolphus got in when our club absorbed the Crystal Springs Country Club, and out of courtesy we did not scrutinise the Crystal Springs membership list, but Windy’s name was proposed in the regular manner. All that was known of him was that he was a stranger in the community who had presumably never been in jail and who had money. The club didn’t need his initiation fee and wasn’t after new members, but for some reason or other the bars were down and Windy got in. The first thing we knew he landed in our midst with a terrific splash and began slapping total strangers on the back and trying to sign all the tags and otherwise making an ass of himself. He didn’t wait for introductions—just butted in and took things for granted.

“You see, boys,” he explained, “I’ve always been more or less of an ath-a-lete and I’ve tried every game but this one. Now that I’m gettin’ to the time of life when I can’t stand rough exercise any more, I thought I’d kind of like to take up golf. I would have done it when I lived in Chicago, but my friends laughed me out of it—said it was silly to get out and whale a little white pill around the country—but I guess anything that makes a man sweat is healthy, hey? And then my wife thought it would be a good thing socially, you know, and—no, waiter, this round is on me. Oh, but I insist! My card, gentlemen. That’s right; keep ’em. I get ’em engraved by the thousand. Waiter! Bring some cigars here—perfectos, cigarettes—anything the gentlemen’ll have, and let it be the best in the house! I don’t smoke cigarettes myself, but my friends tell me that’s the next step after takin’ up golf! Ho, ho! No offense to any of you boys; order cigarettes if you want ’em. Everybody smokes on the new member!”

Well, that was Windy’s tactful method of introducing himself. Is it any wonder that we asked questions of the membership committee? No out-and-out complaints, you understand. We just wanted to know where Windy came from and how he got in and who was to blame for it. Most of the information was furnished by Cupid Cutts.

Cupid is pretty nearly the whole thing at our club. In every golf club there is one man who does the lion’s share of the work and gets nothing but abuse and criticism for it, and Cupid is our golfing wheel horse, as you might say. He is a member of the board of directors, a member of the house committee, chairman of the greens committee, and the Big Stick on the membership committee. He is also the official handicapper, which is a mighty good thing to bear in mind when you play against him. I have known Cupid to cut a man’s handicap six strokes for beating him three ways on a ball-ball-ball Nassau.

Cutts is no Chick Evans, or anything like that, but, considering his physical limitations, he is a remarkable golfer and steady as an eight-day clock. He is so fat that he can’t take a full-arm swing to save his life, but his little half-shot pops the ball straight down the middle of the course every time, and he plays to his handicap with a persistency that has broken many a youngster’s heart. Straight on the pin all the time—that’s his game, and whenever he’s within a hundred yards of the cup he’s liable to lay his ball dead.

There are lots of things I might tell you about Cupid Cutts—he’s a sort of social Who’s Who in white flannels and an obesity belt, and an authority on scandal and gossip, past and present—but the long and short of it is that it would be hard to get on without him, even harder than it is to get on with him. Well, we asked Cupid about Windy Wilkins, and Cupid went to the bat immediately.

“Absolutely all right, fellows, oh, absolutely! A little rough, perhaps, a diamond in the rough, but a good heart. And all kinds of money. He won’t play often enough to bother anybody.”

That was where Cupid was wrong two ways. Windy played every day, rain or shine, and he bothered everybody. He was just as noisy on the course as he was in the locker room, and when he missed his putt on the eighteenth green the fellows who were driving off at No. 1 had to wait until he cooled down. And when he managed to hit his drive clean he yelled like a Comanche and jumped up and down on the tee. He did all the things that can’t be done, and when we spoke to him kindly about golfing etiquette he snorted and said he never had much use for red tape anyway and thought it was out of place in sport.

He tramped around on the greens and bothered people who wanted to putt. He talked and laughed when others were driving. He played out of his turn. He drove into foursomes whenever he was held up for a minute, just to let the players know that he was behind ’em.

He was absolutely impossible, socially and otherwise, but the most astonishing thing was the way he picked up the game after the first month or so. Windy was a tremendously big man and looked like the hind end of an elephant in his knickers; but for all his size he developed a powerful, easy swing and a reasonable amount of accuracy. As for form, he didn’t know the meaning of the word. His stance was never twice the same, his grip was a relic of the dark ages, he handled his irons as a laboring man handles a pick, he did everything that the books say you mustn’t do, and, in spite of it, his game improved amazingly. And he called us moving-picture golfers!

“Every move a picture!” he would say. “You have to plant your dear little feet just so. Your tee has got to be just so high. Your grip must be right to the fraction of an inch. You must waggle the club back and forth seven times before you dare to swing it, and then chances are you don’t get anywhere! Step up and paste her on the nose the way I do! Forget this Miss Nancy stuff and hit the ball!”

When Windy got down around 90 he swelled all out of shape, and the next step, of course, was to have some special clubs built by MacLeish, the professional. They were such queer-looking implements that Cupid joked him about them one Saturday noon in the locker room. It was then that we got a real line on Windy, and Cupid found out that even a rough diamond may have a cutting edge.

“You’re just like all beginners,” said Cupid. “You make a few rotten shots and then think the clubs must be wrong. The regular models aren’t good enough for you. You have to have some built to order, with bigger faces and stiffer shafts. Get it into your head that the trouble is with you, not with the club. The ball will go straight if you hit it right.”

“Clubs make a lot of difference,” said Windy. “Ten strokes anyway.”

“Nonsense! A good, mechanical golfer can play with any clubs!”

“I suppose you think you can do it?”

“I know I can.”

“And you’d bet on it?”

“Certainly.”

Windy didn’t say anything for as much as two minutes. The rascal was thinking.

“All right,” said he at last. “Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll make you a little proposition. You say you can play with any clubs. Give me the privilege of pickin’ ’em out for you, and I’ll bet you fifty dollars that I trim you on an even game—no handicap.”

“Yes, but where are you going to get these clubs for me to play with? Off a scrap pile or something?”

“Right out of MacLeish’s shop! Brand-new stuff, selected from the regular stock. And I’ll go against you even, just to prove that you don’t know it all, even if you have been playin’ golf for twenty years!”

It was a flat, out-and-out challenge. Cupid looked Windy up and down with a pitying smile—the same smile he uses when an 18-handicap man asks to be raised to 24.

“I’d be ashamed to rob you, Wilkins,” said he.

Windy didn’t say anything, but he went into his locker and brought out a roll of bills about the size of a young grindstone. He counted fifty dollars off it, and you couldn’t have told the difference. It looked just as big as before. He handed the fifty to me.

“It would be stealing it,” said Cupid, but there was a hungry look in his eye.

“If you get away with it,” said Windy, “I won’t complain to the police. Put up or shut up.”

Well, it looked like finding the money. We knew that Windy couldn’t break a 90 to save his life, and Cupid had done the course in an 84, using nothing but a putting cleek.

“How many clubs can I have?” asked Cupid with his usual caution in the matter of bets.

“Oh, six or eight,” answered Windy. “Makes no difference to me.”

“I’ll take eight,” said Cupid briskly. “And if you don’t mind, I’ll post a check. I’m not in the habit of carrying the entire cash balance in my jeans.”

“Fair enough!” said Windy. “You boys are all witnesses to the terms of this bet. I’m to pick out eight clubs—eight new ones—and Cutts here is to play with ’em. Is that understood?”

“Perfectly!” grinned Cupid. “It’ll just cost you fifty fish to find out that a mechanical golfer can lick you with strange weapons.”

Windy went out and Cupid promised us all a dinner on the proceeds of the match.

“I don’t want the fellow’s money,” said he, “but Windy’s entirely too fresh for a new member. A beating will do him good and make him humble. Eight clubs. If he brings me only two or three that I can use—a driver, a mid-iron, and a putter—I’ll hang his hide on the fence too easy. He’s made a bad bet.”

But it wasn’t such a bad bet after all. Windy came back with eight clubs in the crook of his arm, and when Cupid caught a glimpse of the collection he howled himself purple in the face, and no wonder. Eight nice, new, shiny, mashie niblicks!

You see, nothing was said about the sort of clubs Windy was to pick out, and he had selected eight of the same pattern, no good on earth except for digging out of bunkers or popping the ball straight up in the air! Harry Vardon himself can’t drive with a mashie niblick!

“What are you beefin’ about?” asked Windy. “Eight clubs, you said, and here they are. Play or pay.”

“Pay! Why, man alive, it’s a catch bet—a cinch bet! It’s not being done this year at all! It’s like stealing the money!”

“And you thought you could steal mine,” was the cool reply. “You thought you had a cinch bet, didn’t you? Be honest now. Eight clubs, by the terms of the agreement, and you’ll play with ’em or forfeit the fifty.”

Cupid looked at the mashie niblicks and then he looked at Windy. I looked at him too and began to understand how he got his money. His face was as hard as granite. “You’d collect that sort of a bet—from a friend?” It was Cupid’s last shot.

“Just as quick as you would,” said Windy.

“I’ll write you a check,” and Cupid turned on his heel and started for the office.

Windy tried to turn it into a joke—after he got the check—but nobody seemed to know where to laugh, and following that little incident he found it a bit hard to get games. Whenever Windy was hunting a match the foursomes were full and there was nothing doing. A sensitive man would have suffered tortures, but Windy, with about as much delicacy as a rhinoceros, continued to infest the course morning, noon, and night. When he couldn’t find any one weak-minded enough to play with him he played with himself, and somehow managed to make just as much noise as ever with only a caddie to talk to.

This was the state of affairs when Adolphus Kitts returned from the East, barely in time to shoot a 91 in the qualifying round of the Annual Handicap. We had hoped that he would miss this tournament, but no; there he was, large as life—which is pretty large—and ugly as ever. Grim and silent and nasty, he stepped out on No. 1 tee, and Cupid Cutts groaned as he watched him drive off.

“That fellow,” said Cupid, “would hang his harp on the walls of the New Jerusalem and come back from the golden shore just to get into a handicap event, where nobody wants him, nobody will speak to him, and every one wishes him an ulcerated tooth! Why didn’t he stay in the East?”

There were about four hundred and seventy-six reasons why Adolphus was unpopular with us; a few will suffice. In the first place, he was a cup hunter. He had an unholy passion for silver goblets and trophies with the club emblem on them, and he preferred a small silver vase—worth not to exceed three dollars, wholesale—to the respect and admiration of his fellow golfers. Heaven knows why he wanted trophies! They are never any good unless a man has friends to show them to!

In the second place, Adolphus didn’t care how he won a cup, and, as Cupid used to say, the best club in his bag was the book of rules.

If you don’t know it already, I must tell you that golf is the most strictly governed game in the world, and also the most ceremonious. It is as full of “thou shalt nots” as the commandments. There are rules for everything and everybody on the course, and the breaking of a rule carries a penalty with it—the loss of a stroke or the loss of a hole, as the case may be. Very few golfers play absolutely to the letter of the law; even those who know the rules incur penalties through carelessness, and in such a case it is not considered sporting to demand the pound of flesh; but there was nothing sporting about Adolphus Kitts.

He knew every obscure rule and insisted on every penalty. Question him, and he fished out the book. That book of rules stiffened his match play tremendously, besides making his opponents want to murder him. It was rather a rotten system, but Kitts hadn’t a drop of sporting blood in his whole big body, and the element of sportsmanship didn’t enter into his calculations at all. He claimed strokes and holes even when not in competition, and because of this he found it difficult to obtain partners or opponents.

“He’s a golf lawyer, that’s what he is—a technical lawyer!” said Cupid one day. “And I wouldn’t even play the nineteenth hole with him—I wouldn’t, on a bet!”

Come to think of it, that is about the bitterest thing you can say of a golfer.

Two

Our Annual Handicap is the blue-ribbon event of the year so far as most of us are concerned. The star players turn up their noses at it a bit, but that is only because they realize that they have a mighty slim chance to carry off the cup. The high-handicap men usually eliminate the crack performers, which is the way it should be. What’s the good of a handicap event if a scratch man is to win it every year?

Sixty-four members qualify and are paired off into individual matches, which are played on handicaps, the losers dropping out. The man who “comes through” in the top half of the drawing meets the survivor of the lower half in the final match for the cup, which is always a very handsome and valuable trophy, calculated to rouse all the cupidity in a cup hunter’s nature.

When the pairings were posted on the bulletin board Kitts was in the upper half and Windy in the lower one. Kitts had a handicap of 8 strokes, and was really entitled to 12, but Cupid wouldn’t listen to his wails of anguish. Windy was a 12 man, and nobody figured the two renegades as dangerous until the sixty-four entrants had narrowed down to eight survivors. Kitts had won his matches by close margins, but Windy had simply smothered his opponents by lopsided scores, and there they were, in the running and too close to the finals for comfort.

We began to sit up and take notice. Cupid read the riot act to Dawson, who was Windy’s next opponent, and also had a talk with Aubrey, who was to meet Kitts. “Wilkins and Kitts must be stopped!” raved Cupid. “We don’t want ’em to get as far as the semi-finals, and it’s up to you chaps to play your heads off and beat these rotters!”

Dawson and Aubrey saw their duty to the club, but that was as far as they got with it. Windy talked from one end of his match to the other and made Dawson so nervous that any one could have beaten him, and Kitts pulled the book of rules on Aubrey and literally read him out of the contest.

After this the interest in the tournament grew almost painful. Overholzer and Watts were the other semifinalists, and we told them plainly that they might as well resign from the club if they did not win their matches. Overholzer spent a solid week practicing on his approach shots, and Watts carried his putter home with him nights, but it wasn’t the slightest use. Windy tossed an 83 at Overholzer, along with a lot of noisy conversation, and an 83 will beat Overholzer every time he starts. Poor Watts went off his drive entirely and gave such a pitiful exhibition that Kitts didn’t need the rule book at all.

And there we were, down to the finals for the beautiful handicap cup, sixty-two good men and true eliminated, and a pair of bounders lined up against each other for the trophy!

“This,” said Cupid Cutts, “is a most unfortunate situation. I can’t root for a sure-thing gambler and daylight highwayman like Wilkins, and as for the other fellow I hope he falls into a bunker and breaks both his hind legs off short! Think of one of those fellows carrying home that lovely cup! Ain’t it enough to make you sick?”

It made us all sick, nevertheless quite a respectable gallery assembled to watch Wilkins and Kitts play their match.

“Looks like we’re goin’ to have a crowd for the main event!” said Windy, who had put in the entire morning practicing tee shots. “In that case I’ll buy everybody a little drink, or sign a lunch card—whatever’s customary. Don’t be bashful, boys. Might as well drink with the winner before as well as after, you know!”

At this point Adolphus came in from the locker room and there was an embarrassed silence, broken at last by Windy. “Somebody introduce me to my victim,” said he. “We’ve never met.”

“You don’t tell me!” exclaimed Cupid. “Of all the men in this club, I’d think you fellows ought to know each other! Kitts, this is Wilkins—shake hands and get together!”

Among the other reasons for not liking him, Adolphus had a face. I’m aware that a man cannot help his face, but he can make it easier to look at by wearing a pleasant expression now and then. Kitts seldom used his face to smile with. As he turned to shake hands with Windy I noticed that his left hip pocket bulged a trifle, and I knew that Adolphus was taking no chances. That’s where he carries the book of rules.

“How do,” said Kitts, looking hard at Windy. “I’m ready if you are, sir.”

“Oh, don’t be in such a hurry!” said Wilkins. “We’ve got a lot of drinks comin’ here. Sit down and have one.”

“Thank you, I never drink,” replied Adolphus.

“Well, then, have a sandwich. Might as well load up; you’ve got a hard afternoon ahead of you.”

“Thanks, I’ve had my lunch.”

“Then let’s talk a little,” urged Windy. “Let’s get acquainted. This is the first time I ever had a whack at a cup, and I don’t know how to act. I play golf by main strength and awkwardness, but I get there just the same. They tell me you’re a great man for rules.”

Windy paused, but Kitts didn’t say anything, and Cupid stepped on my foot under the table.

“Now, I don’t go very strong on the rules,” continued Windy wheedlingly. “I like to play a sporty game—count all my shots, of course—but damn this technical stuff is what I say. For instance, if you should accidentally tap your ball when you was addressin’ it, and it should turn over, I wouldn’t call a stroke on you. I’d be ashamed to do it. If I win, I want to win on my playin’ and not on any technicalities. Ain’t that the way you feel about it, hey?”

Kitts looked uncomfortable, but he wouldn’t return a straight answer to the question. He said something about hoping the best man would win, and went out to get his clubs.

“Cheerful kind of a party, ain’t he?” said Windy. “I’ve told him where I stand. I ain’t goin’ to claim anything on him if his foot slips, and he oughtn’t to claim anything on me. If he’s a real sport, he won’t. What do you boys think?”

We thought a great deal, but nobody offered any advice.

“Well,” said Windy, getting up and stretching, “he’s got to start me 2 up, on handicap, and I’m drivin’ like a fool. I should worry about his technicalities!”

Three

Our No. 1 hole is somewhere around 450 yards, and the average player is very well satisfied if he fetches the putting green on his third shot. It is uphill all the way, with a bunker to catch a topped drive, rough to the right and left to punish pulls and slices, and sand pits guarding the green. Windy drove first, talking all the time he was on the tee.

“Hope the gallery doesn’t make you nervous, Kitts. I always drive best when people are watchin’ me, but then I’ve got plenty of nerve, they say. You may not like my stance, but watch this one sail! And when I address the ball I address it in a few brief, burnin’ words, like this: ‘Take a ride, you little white devil, take a ride!’” Whis-sh! Click! And the little white devil certainly took a ride—long, low, and straight up the middle of the course—the ideal ball, with just enough hook on it to make it run well after it struck the ground. “Two hundred and sixty yards if it’s an inch!” said Windy, grinning at Kitts. “Lay your pill beside that one—if you think you can!”

“You’re a 12-handicap man—and you drive like that!” said Kitts, which was, of course, a neat slap at Cupid, who was within earshot.

“Cutts is a friend of mine,” bragged Windy. “That’s why I’m a 12 man. I really play to a 6.”

Kitts saw that he wasn’t going to get any goats with conversational leads, so he shut up and teed his ball. He was one of those deliberate players who must make just so many motions before they pull off their shots. First he took his stance and his practice swings; then he moved up on the ball and addressed it; then he waggled his club back and forth over it, looking up the course after every waggle, as if picking out a nice spot; then, when he had annoyed everybody, and Windy most of all, he sent a perfectly atrocious slice into the rough beyond the bunker.

“Humph!” grunted Wilkins. “A lot of preparation for such a rotten shot! Looks like I’m 3 up and 17 to go. Probably won’t be much of a contest——”

“Do you expect to win it with your mouth?” snapped Kitts, and Windy winked at the rest of us.

“His goat is loose already!” said he in a stage whisper. “He can’t stand the gaff!”

Adolphus got out of the tall grass on his third shot, but dropped his fourth into a deep sand pit short of the green.

“With a lot of luck,” said Windy, reaching for his brassy, “you may get an 8—but I doubt it. Pretty soft for me, pretty soft!” And with the sole of his club he patted the turf behind his ball, smoothing it down—three gentle little pats. “Pret-ty soft!” murmured Windy, and sent the ball whistling straight on to the green for a sure 4. Then he turned to Kitts. “D’you give up?” said he. “Might just as well; you haven’t got a burglar’s chance!”

“I claim the hole,” said Adolphus calmly, fishing out the book of rules.

“You—what?”

“Rule No. 10,” said Kitts, beginning to read. “‘In playing through the green, irregularities of surface which could in any way affect the player’s stroke shall not be removed nor pressed down by the player——’ You patted the grass behind your ball and improved the lie by smoothing it down. I claim the hole.”

Windy went about the color of a nice ripe Satsuma plum. His neck swelled so much that his ears moved outward. “You don’t mean to say that you’re goin’ to call a thing like that on me when you’re already licked for the hole?” He spoke slowly, as if he found it hard to believe that the situation was real.

“I claim it,” repeated Adolphus monotonously. “You can appeal to Mr. Cutts, as chairman of the greens committee.”

“Hey, Fatty! All I did was pat the grass a few times with my club, and this—this gentleman here says he claims the hole.”

“You violated the rule,” shortly answered Cupid, who may be fat but does not like to be reminded of it so publicly.

“And you’re goin’ to let him get away with that?” demanded Windy. “I’m on the green in two, and he’s neck-deep in the sand on his fourth——”

“Makes no difference,” said Cupid, turning away. “You ought to know the rules by now. Kitts wins the hole.”

Well, Windy finally accepted the situation, but he was in a savage frame of mind—so savage that he walked all the way to the second tee without opening his mouth. There he stepped aside, with a low bow to Kitts.

“Your honor, I believe,” said he with nasty emphasis.

No. 2 is a short hole—a drive and a pitch. Windy got a good ball, and it rolled almost to the edge of the green. Kitts’s drive was short but straight, and he pitched his second to the green, some thirty feet from the pin, and the advantage seemed to be with Windy until it was discovered that his ball was lying in a cuppy depression of the turf.

“That’s lovely, ain’t it?” growled Windy. “A fine drive—and look at this for a lie! I was goin’ to use a putter, but a putter won’t get the ball out of there. Hey, Fatty, had I better use a niblick here?”

“I claim the hole,” said Kitts, reaching for the book.

“But I haven’t done anything!” howled Windy. “How can you claim the hole when I haven’t played the shot?”

“You asked advice,” said Kitts, reading. “‘A player may not ask for nor willingly receive advice from any one except his own caddie, his partner, or his partner’s caddie.’ This is not a foursome, so you have no partner. Advice is defined as any suggestion which could influence a player in determining the line of play, in the choice of a club, or in the method of making a stroke. You asked whether you should use a niblick—and you lose the hole.”

Windy, knocked speechless for once in his life, looked over at Cupid, and Cupid nodded his head.

“The match is now all square,” said Kitts as he started for the third tee.

“And squared by a couple of petty larceny protests!” said Windy. “Hey, Mister Bookworm, wait a minute! I want to tell you something for your own good!”

“Oh, play golf!” said Kitts, over his shoulder.

Windy strode after him and took him by the arm. It wasn’t a gentle grasp either.

“That’s exactly what I want to say. You play golf, Mr. Kitts! Play it with your clubs, and forget that book in your hip pocket. If you pull it on me again, I’ll—I’ll——”

Adolphus tried to smile, but it was a sickly effort.

“You can’t intimidate me,” said he.

“Maybe not,” said Windy, quite earnestly, “but I can lick you within an inch of your life—and I will. Is there anything in the book about that? If you read me out of this cup, you better make arrangements to have it sent direct to the hospital. It’ll make a nice flower holder—if you’ve got any friends that think enough of you to send flowers!”

“You gentlemen are witnesses to these threats,” said Kitts, appealing to the gallery.

“We didn’t hear a word,” said Cupid. “Not a word. Go on and play your match and stop squabbling. You act like a couple of fishwives!”

The contestants walked off in the direction of the tee, with Windy still rubbing it in.

“A word to the wise. Keep that damn’ book in your pocket, if you don’t want to eat it—cover and all!”

“Suppose they do mix it?” said Cupid, mopping his brow. “Sweet little golfing scandal, eh? Can’t you see the headlines in the newspapers? ‘Country Club finalists in fist fight on links!’ And some of these roughneck humourists will congratulate us on golf becoming one of the vital, red-blooded sports! Oh, lovely!”

“Bah!” said I. “There will be no fight. No man will fight who smiles like a coyote when he is getting a call down.”

“But a coyote will fight if you put it up to him, don’t make any mistake about that. And Kitts will spring the book on Windy again, I feel it in my bones, and if he does—choose your partners for the one-step! Oh, why did we ever let these rotters into the club?”

Four

I see no reason for inflicting upon you a detailed description of the next fifteen holes of golfing frightfulness. Golf is a game which requires mental calm, and the contestants were entirely out of calmness after the second hole and could not concentrate on their shots.

Windy began driving all over the shop, hooking and slicing tremendously, and Kitts manhandled his irons in a manner fit to make a hardened professional weep. Neither of them could have holed a five-foot putt in a washtub, and they staggered along side by side, silent and nervous and savage, and if Windy managed to win a hole Kitts would be sure to take the next one and square the match. But he didn’t take any holes with the book. When Windy broke a rule—which he did every little while—Kitts would sneer and pretend to look the other way. He tried to convey the impression that it was pity and contempt that made him blind to Windy’s lapses, but he didn’t fool me for a minute. It was fear of consequences.

And so they came to the last hole, all square, and also all in.

Our eighteenth has a vicious reputation among those golfing unfortunates who slice their tee shots. The drive must carry a steep hill, the right slope of which pitches away to a deep, narrow ravine—a ravine scarred and marred by thousands of niblick shots, but otherwise as disgusted Nature left it. We call it Hell’s Half Acre, though the first part of the name would be quite sufficient.

The only improvements that have ever been made in this sinister locality have been made by golf clubs, despairingly wielded. Hell’s Half Acre is full of stunted trees with roots half out of the ground, and thick brush and matted weeds, and squarely in the middle of this desolation is a deep sink, or pit, known as the Devil’s Kitchen. Hell’s Half Acre is bad enough, believe one who knows, but the Devil’s Kitchen is the last hard word in hazards, and it is a crime to allow such a plague spot within a mile of a golf course.

At a respectful distance we watched the renegades drive from the eighteenth tee. Kitts had the honor—if there is any honor in winning a four hole in eight strokes—and messed about over his ball even longer than usual. His drive developed a lovely curve to the right, and went skipping and bounding down the hill toward the ravine.

“And that’ll be in the Kitchen unless something stops it!” said Cupid with a sigh of relief. “I was afraid the blighters might halve this one and need extra holes!”

Now with Adolphus in the Devil’s Kitchen all Windy needed was a straight ball over the brow of the hill—in fact, a ball anywhere on the course would be almost certain to win the hole and the match—but when he walked out on the tee it was plain to be seen that he had lost confidence in his wooden club. Any golfer knows what it means to lose confidence in his wood, and Windy had reason to doubt his driver. His tee shots had been fearfully off direction, and here was one that had to go straight.

He teed his ball, swung his club a couple of times, and shook his head. Then he yelled at his caddie.

“Oh, boy! Bring me my cleek!”

Now, a cleek is a wonderful club if a man knows how to use one, but it produces a low tee shot, as a general thing. It produced one for Windy—a screamer, flying with the speed of a rifle bullet. I thought at first that it was barely going to clear the top of the hill, but I misjudged it. Three feet higher and the ball would have been over, but it struck the ground and kicked abruptly to the right, disappearing in the direction of the Devil’s Kitchen. We heard a crashing noise. It was Windy splintering his cleek shaft over the tee box.

“Both down!” ejaculated Cupid. “Suffering St. Andrew, what a finish!”

We arrived on the rim of the Kitchen and peered into that wild amphitheatre. Kitts had already found his ball, and was staring at it with an expression of dumb anguish on his face. It was lying underneath a tangle of sturdy oak roots, as safely protected as if an octopus was trying to hatch something out of it.

Windy was combing the weeds which grew on the abrupt sides of the pit, too full of his own trouble to pay any attention to his opponent.

“If it’s a lost ball——” said Cupid.

But it wasn’t. Windy found it, half-way up the left slope, hidden in the weeds, and not a particularly bad lie except for the fact that nothing human could have taken a stance on that declivity. Having found his ball, Windy took a look at Kitts’s lie and then, for the first and only time in his golfing career, Wilkins recognized the rules of the game. “You’re away, sir,” said he to Kitts. “Play!”

Adolphus took his niblick and attacked the octopus. His first three strokes did not even jar the ball, but they damaged the oak roots beyond repair. On his eighth attempt the ball popped out of its nest, and the next shot was a very pretty one, sailing up and out to the fair green, but there was no applause from the gallery.

“Countin’ the drive,” said Windy, “that makes ten, eh?”

A man may play nine strokes in a hazard, but he hates to admit it. Adolphus grunted and withdrew to the other side of the pit, from which point he watched Windy morosely. With victory in sight the latter became cheerful again; conversation bubbled out of him.

“Boy, slip me the niblick and get up yonder on the edge of the ravine where you can watch this ball. I’m goin’ to knock it a mile out of here. Ten shots he’s had. If it was me, I’d give up. How am I to get a footin’ on this infernal side hill? Spikes won’t hold in that stuff. Wish I was a goat. Aha! The very thing!”

Suddenly he delivered a powerful blow at the slope some distance below his ball and three or four feet to the left of it. Cupid gasped and opened his mouth to say something, but I nudged him and he subsided, clucking like a nervous hen.

“What’s the idea?” demanded Kitts.

“To make little boys ask questions,” was the calm reply. “I climbed the Alps once. Had to dig holes for my feet. Guess I haven’t forgotten how, but diggin’ with a blasted niblick is hard work.”

“Oh!” said Kitts.

Windy continued to hack at the wall, the gallery looking on in tense silence. Nobody would have offered a suggestion; we all felt that it was their own affair, and on the knees of the gods, as the saying is. When Windy had hacked out a place for his right foot he cut another one for his left. The weeds were tough and the soil was hard, and he grunted as he worked.

“Yep—that Alps trip—taught me something. Comes in—handy now. Pretty nifty—job, hey?”

I suppose a mountain climber would have called it a nifty job. Cupid began to mutter.

“Be quiet!” said I. “Let’s see if Kitts has nerve enough to call it on him!”

With the shaft of his niblick in his teeth, Windy swarmed up the side of the wall, found the footholds and planted himself solidly. Grasping a bush above his head with his left hand, he measured the distance with his eye, steadied himself and swung the niblick with his powerful right arm. It was a wonderful shot, even if Windy Wilkins did make it; the ball went soaring skyward, far beyond all trouble.

“Some—out!” he panted, looking over his shoulder at Kitts. “I guess that’ll clinch the match!”

For just a second Adolphus hesitated; then he must have thought of the cup. “I rather think it will,” said he. “You’re nicely out, Wilkins—in forty-seven strokes.”

“Forty-seven devils!” shouted Windy. “I’m out in two!”

“In a hazard,” quoted Kitts, “the club shall not touch the ground, nor shall anything be touched or moved before the player strikes at the ball.” At this point Adolphus made a serious mistake; he reached for the book. “Under the rule,” he continued, “I could claim the hole on you, but I won’t do that. I’ll only count the strokes you took in chopping a stance for yourself——”

That was where Windy dropped the niblick and jumped at him, and Cupid was correct about the coyote. Put him in a hole where he can’t get out, attack him hard enough, and he will fight.

Adolphus dropped the book and nailed Windy on the chin with a right upper cut that jarred the whole Wilkins family.

“Keep out of it, everybody!” yelled Cupid with a sudden flash of inspiration. “It’s an elimination contest! More power to both of ‘em—and may they both lose!”

Inside of two seconds the whole floor of the Devil’s Kitchen was littered up with fists and elbows and boots and knees. They fought into clinches and battered their way out of them; they tripped over roots and scrambled to their feet again; they tossed all rules to the winds except the rule of self-preservation. The air was full of heartfelt grunts and sounds as of some one beating a rag carpet, and the language which floated to us was—well, elemental, to say the least. And through it all the gallery looked down in decent silence; there was no favorite for whom any one cared to cheer.

When Windy came toiling up out of the pit alone, but one remark was addressed to him.

“Aren’t you going to play it out?” asked Cupid.

“Huh?” said Windy, pausing. His coat was torn off his back, his soiled white trousers were out at the knees, his nose was bleeding freely, and his mouth was lopsided.

“Aren’t you going to finish the match? You’ve only played 46. Kitts made a mistake in the count.”

“Finish—hell!” snarled Windy. “You roosted up here like a lot of buzzards and let me chop myself out of the contest! I feel like finishin’ the lot of you, and I’m through with any club that’ll let a swine like Kitts be a member!”

Oddly enough, this last statement was substantially the same as the one Adolphus made when he recovered consciousness.

The wily Cupid, concealing from each the intentions of the other, and becoming a bearer of pens, ink, and paper, managed to secure both their resignations before they left the clubhouse that evening, and peace now reigns at the Country Club.

We have been given to understand that in the future the committee on membership will require gilt-edged certificates of character and that no rough diamonds need apply.

Nobody won the handicap cup, and nobody knows what to do with it, though there is some talk of having it engraved as follows:

“Elimination Trophy—won by W. W. Wilkins, knockout, one round.”

Old Man Curry

Old Man Curry was published in 1917 by George H. Doran Company

Levelling with Elisha

The Bald-faced Kid shivered as he roosted on the paddock fence, for the dawn was raw and cold and his overcoat was hanging in the back room of a pawnbroker’s establishment some two hundred miles away. Circumstances which he had unsuccessfully endeavored to control made it a question of the overcoat or the old-fashioned silver stop watch. The choice was not a difficult one. “I can get along without the benny,” reflected the Kid, “because I’m naturally warm-blooded, but take away my old white kettle and I’m a soldier gone to war without his gun.”

In the language of the tack rooms, the Bald-faced Kid was a hustler—a free lance of the turf, playing a lone hand against owner and bookmaker, matching his wits against secret combinations and operating upon the wheedled capital of the credulous. He was sometimes called a tout, but this he resented bitterly, explaining the difference between a tout and a hustler. “A tout will have six suckers betting on six different horses in the same race. Five of ’em have to lose. A tout is guessing all the time, but a hustler is likely to know something. One horse a race is my motto—sometimes only one horse a day, but I’ve got to know something before I lead the sucker into the betting ring…. What is a sucker? Huh! He’s a foolish party who bets money for a wise boy because the wise boy never has any money to bet for himself!”

Picking winners was the serious business of the Kid’s life, hence the early morning hours and the careful scrutiny of the daybreak workouts.

Bitter experience had taught the Kid the error of trusting men, but up to a certain point he trusted horses. He depended upon his silver stop watch to divide the thoroughbreds into two classes—those which were short of work and those which were ready. The former he eliminated as unfit; the latter he ceased to trust, for the horse which is ready becomes a betting tool, at the mercy of the bookmaker, the owner, and the strong-armed little jockey.

“Which one are they going to bet on to-day?” was the Kid’s eternal question. “Which one is going to carry the checks?”

Across the track, dim in the gray light, a horse broke swiftly from a canter into the full racing stride. Something clicked in the Kid’s palm.

“Got you!” he muttered.

His eye followed the horse up the back stretch into the gloom of the upper turn where the flying figure was lost in the deep shade of the trees. One shadow detached itself from the others and appeared at the head of the straightaway. The muffled thud of hoofs became audible, rising in swift crescendo as the shadow resolved itself into a gaunt bay horse with a tiny negro boy crouched motionless in the saddle. A rush, a flurry, a spatter of clods, a low-flying drift of yellow dust and the vision passed, but the Bald-faced Kid had seen enough to compensate him for the early hours and the lack of breakfast. He glanced at his watch.

“Old Elisha, under wraps and fighting for his head,” was his comment. “The nigger didn’t let him out any part of the way…. Oh, you prophet of Israel!”

“What did that bird step the three-quarters in?” asked a voice, and the Kid turned to confront Squeaking Henry, also a hustler, and at times a competitor.

“Dunno; I didn’t clock him,” lied the Kid.

“That was Old Man Curry’s nigger Mose,” continued Squeaking Henry, so-called because of his plaintive whine, “and I was wondering if the horse wasn’t Elijah. I didn’t get a good look at him. Maybe it was Obadiah or Nehemiah. Did you ever hear such a lot of names in your life? They tell me Old Man Curry got ’em all out of the Bible.” The Kid nodded. “Bible horses are in fine company at this track,” chuckled Squeaking Henry. “I been here a week now, and darned if I can get onto the angles. I guess Old Man Curry is the only owner here who ain’t doin’ business with some bookmaker or other. Look at that King William bird yesterday! He was twenty pounds the best in the race and he come fifth. The jock did everything to him but cut his throat. What are you goin’ to do when they run ’em in and out like that?… Say, Kid, was that Elijah or was it another one of them Bible beetles? I didn’t get a good look at him.”

The Bald-faced Kid stole a sidelong glance at Squeaking Henry.

“Neither did I,” said he. “Why don’t you ask Old Man Curry which horse it was? He’d tell you. He’s just foolish enough to do it.”

Halfway up the back stretch a shabby, elderly man leaned against a fence, thoughtfully chewing a straw as he watched the little negro check the bay horse to a walk. He had the flowing beard of a patriarch, the mild eye of a deacon, the calm, untroubled brow of a philosopher, and his rusty black frock coat lent him a certain simple dignity quite rare upon the race tracks of the Jungle Circuit. In the tail pocket of the coat was something rarer still—a well-thumbed Bible, for this was Old Man Curry, famous as the owner of Isaiah, Elijah, Obadiah, Esther, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Elisha, Nehemiah, and Ruth. In his spare moments he read the Psalms of David for pleasure in their rolling cadences and the Proverbs of Solomon for profit in their wisdom, which habit alone was sufficient to earn for him a reputation for eccentricity.

Old Man Curry clinched this general opinion by entering into no entangling alliances with brother owners, and the bookmaker did not live who could call him friend. He attended strictly to his own business, which was training horses and racing them to win, and while he did not swear, drink liquor, or smoke, he proved he was no Puritan by chewing fine-cut tobacco and betting on his horses when he thought they had a chance to win and the odds were to his liking. For the latter he claimed Scriptural precedent.

“Wasn’t the children of Israel commanded to spile the Egyptians?” said he. “Wasn’t they? Well, then! the way I figger it times has changed a lot since then, but the principle’s the same. There’s some children of Israel making book ‘round here that need to be spiled a heap worse’n Pharaoh ever did.” Then, after thought: “But you got to go some to spile bad eggs.” As the little negro drew near, the blackness of his visage was illuminated by a sudden flash of ivory. Elisha snorted and shook his head from side to side. Old Man Curry stepped forward and laid his hand upon the bridle.

“Well, Mose?” said he. The small rider gurgled as he slipped from the saddle:

“Nothin’ to it, nothin’ to it a-a-atall. ‘Is ‘Lisha bird, he’s ready to fly. Yes, suh, he’s prepaihed to show all ’em otheh hawsses which way ‘is track runs!”

“Went good, did he, Mose?”

“Good! He like to pull my ahms off, ‘at’s how good he went! Yes, suh, he was jus’ buck-jumpin’ all ‘e way down ‘at stretch. ‘Ey kin all be in front of him tuhnin’ fo’ to-morreh, an’ he’ll go by ’em so fas’ ‘ey won’t know which way he went!”

Old Man Curry nodded. “Elisha ain’t no front runner,” said he. “He’s like his daddy—does all his running in the last quarter. He comes from behind.”

“Sure does!” chirped Mose. “All I got to do is fetch him into ‘e stretch, swing wide so he got plenty of room to ambulate hisse’f, boot him once in ‘e slats, an’—good night an’ good-by! Ol ‘Lisha jus’ tip his to ’em otheh hawsses an’ say: ‘’Scuse me, gen’elmen an’ ladies, but I got mos’ uhgent business down yondeh ’bout quahteh of a mile; ’em judges waitin’ faw me.’ ‘At’s what he say, boss. Nothin’ to it a-a-atall.”

“Give him plenty of room, Mose.”

“Sutny will. Won’t git me nothin’ stickin’ on ‘at rail. ’Em white bu’glahs don’t seem to crave me nohow, no time; ‘ey jus’ be tickled to death to put me an’ ‘Lisha oveh ‘e fence if we git clost ‘nough to it. Yes, indeed; I ‘low to give ‘is hawss all ‘e room whut is on a race track!”

Old Man Curry led Elisha toward his barn, the little negro trailing behind, addressing the horse in terms of endearment. “You ol’ wolf, on’iest way to beat you to-morreh is to saw all yo’ laigs off. You as full of run as a hydrant, ‘at’s whut you are, ain’t you, ‘Lisha?”

Two horsemen were standing in the door of a feed room as the queer procession passed. They interrupted a low-toned conversation to exchange significant glances. “Speak of the devil,” said one, “and there he goes now. Been working that horse for the last race to-morrow.”

“It won’t get him anything,” said the other. “You can forget that he’s entered.”

The first speaker was short and stout, with no personal beauty to be marred by the knife scar which ran from the lobe of his left ear to the point of his chin, a broad, red welt in the blackish stubble of his beard. This was Martin O’Connor, owner of the Sunrise racing stable, sometimes know as Grouchy O’Connor.

His companion was a smooth-faced, dapper, gold-toothed blond, apparently not more than twenty-five years of age. Innocence circled his sleek towhead like a halo; good cheer radiated from him in ceaseless waves. His glance was direct and compelling and his smile invited confidences; he seemed almost too young and entirely too artless for his surroundings. The average observer would have pitied him for a lamb among wolves, and the pity would have been misplaced, for Al Engle was older than he looked by several sinful semesters and infinitely wiser than he had any honest right to be. His frank, boyish countenance was at once a cloak and an asset; it had beguiled many a man to his financial hurt. He was shrewd, intelligent, unscrupulous, and acquisitive; the dangerous head of a small clique of horse owners which was doing its bad best to remove the element of chance from the sport of kings. In his touting days he had been given the name of the Sharpshooter and in his prosperity it clung to him.

“Forget that he’s entered, eh?” repeated O’Connor. “Elisha—Elisha—I don’t seem to place that horse.”

“His name used to be Silver Star,” said the Sharpshooter.

“That dog?” said O’Connor, disgustedly. “Let’s see; wasn’t he at Butte last season?”

“Yes. Cricket Caley owned him.”

“The little old jock that died last spring?”

“Same one. This horse Silver Star was all he had and Cricket used to ride him himself. Rank quitter. I’ve seen Caley boot and kick and slash this bird until he wore himself out; he’d quit just the same. Wouldn’t run a lick after he got into the stretch.

“Then one day Cricket slipped him over at a long price. Don’t know how he did it. Hop, most likely. Got somebody to bet on Silver Star at 25 to 1 and took quite a little chunk of money out of the ring. That was Caley’s last race; he’d been cheating the undertakers for years. Before he died he gave the horse to Old Man Curry. They’d been friends, but if a friend of mine gave me a horse like that and didn’t throw in a dog collar, he couldn’t run fast enough to get away from me. Curry put in an application to the Jockey Club and had the name changed from Silver Star to Elisha. Won’t have anything but Bible names, the old nut!

“Curry hasn’t won with him yet, and I’d hate to be hanging by the neck until he does, because if ever there was a no-account hound masquerading with a mane and tail, it’s the one you just saw go by here. He won’t gather anything to-morrow. Forget him.”

O’Connor hesitated a moment; he was a cautious soul. “Might tell Grogan and Merritt to look after him,” he suggested.

“No need to. And that bullet-headed little nigger wouldn’t like anything better than a chance to holler to the judges. The horse ain’t got a chance, I tell you. Wouldn’t have with the best rider in the world. Forget him.”

“Well—just as you say, Al. Broadsword’s good enough to beat him, I reckon.”

“Of course he is! Forget this Elisha. Go on and figure just the same as if he wasn’t in the race.”

The Sharpshooter and his friends, through their betting commissioners, backed Broadsword from 4 to 1 to even money. The horse was owned by O’Connor and ridden by Jockey Grogan. Bald Eagle, Amphion, and Remorseful were supposed to be the contenders, but their riders jogged blithely to the post with Broadsword tickets in their bootlegs and riding orders of a sort to make those pasteboards valuable.

Jockey Moseby Jones, on Elisha, was overlooked when these favors were surreptitiously distributed, but his bootleg was not empty. There was a ticket in it which called for twenty-two dollars in case Elisha won—a two-dollar bet at 10 to 1. It was put there by Old Man Curry just before the bugle blew.

“Bring him home in front, Mose,” said the old man.

“Sutny will!” grinned the negro. “You betting much on him, boss?”

“I visited a while with the children of Israel,” said Curry gravely. “Remember now—lots of room when you turn for home.”

“Yes, suh. I won’t git clost ‘nough to ’em scound’els faw ’em do nothin’ but say ‘Heah he comes’ an’ ‘Yondeh he goes.’ Won’t slam me into no fence; I’m comin’ back by ovehland route!”

Later O’Connor, who had been bidden to forget Elisha, remembered him. Broadsword led into the stretch by four open lengths, hugging the rail. Mose trailed the bunch around the upper turn, brought Elisha smartly to the outside, kicked the bay horse in the ribs with his spurs and said:

“Whut yo’ doin’ heah? Go ‘long about yo’ business!”

Jockey Grogan, already spending his fifty-dollar ticket, heard warning yells from the rear and sat down to ride, but it was too late. Elisha, coming with a tremendous rush, was already on even terms with Broadsword. Three strides and daylight showed between them. It was all over but the shouting, and there was very little of that, for Elisha had few friends in the crowd.

“Hah!” ejaculated the presiding judge, tugging at his stubby grey moustache. “Old Man Curry put one over on the boys, or I miss my guess. Yes, sir, he beat the good thing and spilled the beans. Elisha, first; Broadsword, second; that thing of Engle’s, third. Serves ’em right! Hah!”

Martin O’Connor standing on the outskirts of the betting ring, searching a limited vocabulary for language with which to garnish his emotions, felt a nudge at his elbow. It was the Sharpshooter.

“Go away from me! Don’t talk to me!” sputtered O’Connor. “You make me sick! I thought you said that dog couldn’t run! You’re a swell prophet, you are, you—you——”

Al Engle smiled as he slipped his binoculars into the case. “I may not be a prophet,” said he, “but I’ll have one in my barn to-night.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, nothing, only that’s too good a horse for Curry to own. I’m going to take Elisha away from him.”

“Going to run him up?”

“As far as the old man will go.”

“Well, look out you don’t start a selling-race war.”

The Sharpshooter sneered. “Curry hasn’t got nerve enough to fight us,” said he.

Now the “selling race” is an institution devised and created for the protection of owners against owners, the theory being to prevent the running of horses out of their proper class.

An owner, entering a selling race, must set a price upon his horse—let us say five hundred dollars. Should the horse win, it must be offered for sale at that figure, the owner being given the right to protect his property in a bidding contest.

In case the animal changes hands, the original owner receives five hundred dollars, and no more. If the horse has been bid up to one thousand dollars, the racing association shares the run-up with the owner of the horse which finished second. It will readily be seen that this system discourages the practice of entering a two-thousand-dollar horse in a five-hundred-dollar selling race, but it also permits a disgruntled owner to revenge himself upon a rival. Some of the bitterest feuds in turf history have grown out of “selling-race wars.”

Little Mose brought Elisha back into the ring, saluted the judges, and, dismounting, began to unsaddle. Old Man Curry came wandering down the track from the paddock gate where he had watched the race. He was chewing a straw reflectively, and the tails of his rusty black frock coat flapped in the breeze like the garment of a scarecrow. Mose, with the saddle, bridle, blanket, and weight pad in his arms, disappeared under the judges’ stand where the clerk of the scales weighed him together with his tackle.

The associate judge came out on the steps of the pagoda with a program in his hand. Mose bounced into view, handed his tackle to Shanghai, Curry’s hostler, and started for the jockeys’ room, singing to himself out of sheer lightness of heart. He knew what he would do with that twenty-two-dollar ticket. There was a crap game every night at the O’Connor stable.

“All right, judge!” called the clerk of the scales. “Shoot!”

The associate judge cleared his throat, nodded to Old Man Curry, fingered his program, and began to speak in a dull, slurring monotone, droning out the formula as prescribed for such occasions:

“Elisha—winner’v this race—entered to be sold—four hundred dollars—— Any bids?”

“Five hundred!”

Old Man Curry, leaning against the top rail of the fence, started slightly and turned his eyes in the direction of the sound. The Sharpshooter flashed his gold teeth at him in a cheerful smile. Old Man Curry shrugged his shoulders and rolled the straw from one corner of his mouth to the other. The associate judge looked at him, asking a question with his eyebrows. There was a stir in the crowd about the stand. A bidding contest is always an added attraction.

“Friend, you don’t want this hoss,” expostulated Old Man Curry, addressing Engle. “He ain’t a race hoss; he’s a trick hoss. You don’t want him.”

“What about you, Curry?” asked the associate judge.

“Oh, well,” said the old man, slowly. “And five.”

“Six hundred!”

Old Man Curry seemed annoyed. He combed his beard with his fingers.

“And five,” said he.

“Seven hundred!”

Old Man Curry took time for reflection. Then he sighed deeply.

“Maybe you want him worse’n I do, friend,” said he. “And five.”

“Eight hundred!”

Old Man Curry smothered an impatient ejaculation, threw away his straw and ransacked his pockets for his packet of fine-cut.

“Might as well make it a good one while we’re at it,” said he. “And five.”

“One thousand!” said the Sharpshooter, his smile broadening. “Pretty fair price for a trick horse, eh, Curry?”

The old man paused with a generous helping of tobacco halfway to its destination. He regarded Engle with unblinking gravity.

“‘The words of his mouth were smoother than butter,’ he quoted, ‘but war was in his heart.’ That’s from Psalms, young man…. Now, it’s this way with a trick hoss: a lot depends on whether you know the trick or not…. One thousand!… Shucks! Now I know you want him worse’n I do!” Old Man Curry hoisted the tails of his coat, thrust his hands into the hip pockets of his trousers, hunched his shoulders level with his ears and turned away.

“You ain’t quitting, are you?” demanded the Sharpshooter.

“Friend,” said Old Man Curry, “I ain’t even started yet. It appears upon the face of the returns that you have bought one big, red hoss…. A trick hoss. To show you how I feel about it, I’m going to throw in a bridle with him…. Good-by, Elisha. The Philistines have got ye … for a thousand dollars.”

It was dusk and Old Man Curry paced up and down under his stable awning, his hands clasped behind his back and his head bowed at a meditative angle. The Bald-faced Kid recalled him to earth by his breezy greeting, and what it lacked in reverence it made up in good will. Old Man Curry and the hustler were friends, each possessing trait which the other respected.

“Well, old-timer, you put airing your lace curtains a little?”

“Eh? What? Oh, good evening, Frank, good evening! I been walking up and down some. You know what it says in Ecclesiastes: ‘In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider.’ I been considering.”

“Uh, huh,” said the Bald-faced Kid, falling into step, “and you sure reached out and grabbed some adversity in that third race to-day, what? I had a finnif bet on friend Isaiah—my own money, too; that’s how good I thought he was. They pretty near bumped the shoes off him in the back stretch and they had him in a pocket all the way to the paddock gate, and even so, he was only beat about the length of your nose. Adversity is right!” Old Man Curry nodded. “Say,” said the Kid, lowering his voice, “I just wanted to tell you that next Tuesday the Engle bunch will be leveling with Elisha.”

Curry paused in his stride and eyed the youth intently.

“Who told you?” said he.

“Never you mind,” said the Kid, airily. “I’m a kind of a private information bureau and detective agency ‘round this track, and my hours are from twelve to twelve, twice a day. I shake hands with the night watchman when he comes on duty and I’m here to give the milkman the high sign in the morning. They tell me things they’ve seen and heard. I’ve got a drag with the bartenders and the waiters in the track café and the telegraph operator is my pal.

“Now Engle has had Elisha for two weeks. He’s started him three times and Elisha hasn’t been in the money once. People are saying that when Engle bought the horse he didn’t buy the prescription that goes with him…. Don’t interrupt me; everybody knows you never had a hop horse in your barn…. It’s my notion that Elisha can win any time they get ready to cut him loose for the kopecs. Engle has been cheating with him to get a price and using the change of owners for an alibi. They’ll get their price the next time out and clean up a barrel of money. You can gamble on this tip. It’s straight as gospel.”

“That’s pretty straight, son.” Old Man Curry squared his shoulders and looked over the Kid’s head toward the track, where the empty grand stand loomed dark against the evening sky. “Next Tuesday!” said he. “Just about what I thought … but tell me, son, why did you bring this to me?”

The Bald-faced Kid laughed harshly.

“Well, maybe it’s because you’re the only man ‘round here that calls me Frank—it’s my name and I like to hear it once in a while. Maybe it’s because you staked me once when I was broke and didn’t take my right eye for security. Maybe it’s because I figure we can both get something out of it for ourselves. If Engle is going to cut a melon, we might as well have a knife in it too.”

“Ah!” said Old Man Curry, and he paced the entire length of the barn before he spoke again.

“Well, you see, son, it’s this way about cutting a melon. You want to be sure it ain’t green … or rotten.”

“Huh?”

Old Man Curry placed his hand on the Kid’s shoulder.

“My boy,” said he, kindly, “you make a living by—by sort of advising folks what to bet on, don’t you? If they’re kind of halting between two opinions, as the Book says, you sort of—help ’em out, eh!”

The Bald-faced Kid grinned broadly.

“I guess that’s about the size of it,” said he.

“Well, if you’ve got any reg’lar customers, don’t invite ’em to have a slice of Engle’s melon next Tuesday. It might disagree with ’em.”

“But I don’t see how you’re going to get away from Elisha! He’s fit and ready and right on edge. You can throw out his last three races. He’s good enough to win without any framing.”

“I know he is, son. Didn’t I train him? Now you’ve told me something that I’ve been trying to find out, and I’ve told you something you never could find out. Don’t ask me any more…. No use talking, Frank, Solomon was a great man. Some time I hope to have a race hoss fit to be named after him. I’ve never seen one yet.”

“Where does Solomon get in on this proposition?” demanded the youth.

Old Man Curry chuckled.

“You don’t read him,” he said. “Solomon wrote a lot of advice that hossmen can use. For instance: ‘A prudent man foreseeth the evil and hideth himself, but the simple pass on and are punished.’ I’ve told you this Engle melon ain’t as ripe as they think it is. You be prudent and don’t ask me how I know.”

“If the frame-up goes wrong, what’ll win?” asked the Kid.

“Well,” said the old man, “my hoss Elijah’s in that same race, but it’s a little far for him. I ain’t going to bet anything. Sometimes it comes handy to know these things.”

“You spoke an armful then!” said the Kid. “Well, I’ve got to be going. I’ll keep this under my hat.”

“So do, son,” said Old Man Curry. “So do. Good night.”

The Bald-faced Kid reflected aloud as he departed.

“And some people think that old fellow don’t know the right way of the track!” he murmured. “Gee! I’d give something to be in with what he’s got up his sleeve!”

Old Man Curry was still tramping up and down when little Mose returned from his nightly foray upon the crap games of the neighborhood. The boy approached silently and with lagging gait, sure signs that fortune had not been kind to him. When the dice behaved well it was his habit to return with songs and improvised dance steps.

“Talk ’bout luck!” said he, morosely. “You know ‘at flat-foot Swede whut swipes faw Mist’ O’Conneh? Hungry Hanson, ‘ey calls him. Well, he goes crazy ‘ith ‘e heat an’ flang ’em bones jus’ like he’s got ’em ejicated. Done tossed out nine straight licks, boss. Seems to me ‘at’s mo’ luck ‘an a Swede ought to have!”

“Mose,” said Old Man Curry suddenly, “Job was no hossman.”

“I neveh ‘cused him of it,” replied Mose sulkily.

“A hossman wouldn’t have wanted his adversary to write a book. If he’d said make a book, now … but the best way to get square with an adversary is to have him start a hoss in the same race with you, Mose.”

“I’ll take yo’ word faw it, boss,” said Mose. “When you go talkin’ ’bout Job an’ Sol’mun an’ ’em Bible folks, you got me ridin’ on a track I don’t know nothin’ ’bout. Nothin’ a-a-atall.”

It was Tuesday afternoon and little Mose was struggling into his riding boots. The other jockeys dressed in the jockeys’ room at the paddock inclosure, but Mose found it pleasanter to don the silks in the tack room of Old Man Curry’s barn, which also served him as a sleeping apartment. The old man sat on the edge of Mose’s cot, speaking earnestly and slapping the palm of his left hand with the fingers of his right, as if to lend emphasis to his words.

“The big thing is to get him away from the post. I want Elijah out there in front when you turn for home. With his early speed, he ought to be leading into the stretch. Elisha will come from behind; Engle is smart enough for that. He’ll have to pass you somewhere, because Elijah will begin to peter out after he’s gone half a mile. Pull in as close to Elisha as you can, but not so close that Merritt can claim a foul, and—you know the rest.”

Mose nodded soberly. “Sutny do, boss. But I neveh knowed ‘at ol’ ‘Lisha——”

“That’ll do,” said Old Man Curry sternly. “There’s lots of things you don’t know, Mose.”

“Yes, suh,” said the little negro, subsiding. “Quite a many.”

Later the Bald-faced Kid came to Old Man Curry in the paddock.

“Elisha looks awful good,” said he, “and they’re commencing to set in the checks. He opened at 4 to 1, went up to 6, and they’ve hammered him down to 2 to 1 now. I hear they’re playing the bulk of their money in the pool rooms all over the coast…. Elisha looks as if he could win, eh?”

Old Man Curry combed his beard.

“You can’t always tell by the looks of a melon what’s inside it, my son.”

“Engle is telling everybody that the horse ain’t quite ready,” persisted the hustler. “Of course they don’t want everybody betting on him and spoiling the price.”

“He’s doing ’em a kindly act without knowing it,” said Old Man Curry. “That’s ’bout the only way he’ll ever do one, Frank, unbeknownst like.”

“You’re not betting on this one?” asked the Kid.

“Not a thin dime’s worth. It’s too far for him.”

“I give it up.” The Kid shook his head, hopelessly. “You’re too many for me.”

The presiding judge came out on the platform in front of the stand and watched the horses dance along the rail on their way to the post, coats glistening, eyes flashing, nostrils flaring—one of the prettiest sights the turf offers to its patrons. “Merritt on Elisha again,” said the judge. “Merritt. Hm-m-m. That young man is entirely too strong in the arms to suit me. It struck me the last three times he rode this horse. But somebody is betting on Elisha to-day. That may make a difference, and if it does, we may have to ask Mr. Sharpshooter Engle a few questions.”

“Leave it to him to answer ’em,” said the associate judge. “It’s the best thing he does. That fellow is like a hickory nut—smooth on the outside, but hard, awfully hard, to get anything out of…. Old Man Curry is in this race with Elijah. Little far for him, isn’t it?”

In the very top row of the grand stand Grouchy Martin O’Connor waited for Al Engle. Just as the horses reached the post, the Sharpshooter slipped in, breathless and fumbling at the catch of his binocular case. “He was 6 to 5 when I came through the betting ring,” said Engle. “Well, any old price is a good price. He’ll roll home.”

“He better. He owes me something,” growled O’Connor.

“This is where he pays you.”

“I hope so.”

“I saw Old Man Curry out in the paddock,” and Engle smiled at the recollection. “What do you think the old coot said to me?”

“What do I care what an old nut says?”

“Nobody cares, of course, but this was kind of funny. After the horses started for the post he came up to me, solemn as a judge, and says he: ‘Remember, I told you this was a trick horse.’ Just like that. They ought to have a look at his head. He’s got an attic for rent, sure.”

“Must have. But what does he mean by that trick-horse stuff? He pulled it on you a couple of times when you ran Elisha up on him.”

“Darned if I know. I guess that’s just his way of kidding…. Hello! They’re off!”

“Yes, and that thing of Curry’s got away flying.”

“He’ll quit about the time he hits the head of the stretch,” said Engle. “He gets his mail there…. Merritt has got Elisha in on the rail, taking it easy, as I told him to. Believe me, that baby is some stretch runner!”

“It cost me enough to find it out!” said O’Connor shortly.

Engle peered through his binoculars.

“Unless he breaks a leg, or something”—here O’Connor hastily knocked wood—“we’ll clean up,” said Engle, critically. “Elisha is fighting for his head—wants to run. I don’t care where he is, turning for home. He’ll run over that bunch in the last quarter.”

“Yes, but look at that Elijah go!” muttered O’Connor.

“Let him go!” said Engle, with a trace of irritation. “He’ll come back; he always does. Bet you fifty he’s last!”

“Got you!” snapped O’Connor. “You may not know any more about this one than you did about Elisha last month!”

The dots of color skimmed around the upper turn, one of them so far ahead that it seemed lonely. This was Elijah, burning his early speed, jack-rabbiting ten lengths in front of his field, but beginning to notice his exertions and feel the swift pace.

“‘Lijah,” remarked little Mose, looking back over his shoulder, “if eveh you finds a race track whut’s got a short home stretch in it, you’ll be ‘notheh Roseben. Sutny will. On’iest trouble ‘ith you, ‘Lijah, ’em stretches built too long faw you. Put ‘e judges’ stand up heah whah we is now, an’ yo’ neveh lose a race!… Uh, huh! Heah come ‘Lisha now; ’em otheh jocks lettin’ him th’ough on ‘e rail…. Come on, honey blossom! We’s waitin’ faw you. Come on!”

Said the presiding judge: “That thing in front is quitting to nothing … and here comes Elisha through on the rail…. Yes, he’s a real race horse to-day. Better see Engle about this. Have to teach him that he can’t run his horses in and out at this track!”

Said Al Engle: “What did I tell you? Running over horses, ain’t he? He’ll have that Elijah grabbed in a few more jumps…. Take it easy, Merritt! Don’t win too far with him!”

Martin O’Connor heaved a great sigh of relief. Like all cautious souls, he never ceased to worry until the last doubt was dispelled. The weary, staggering Elijah was the only barrier between Elisha and the goal. O’Connor’s practiced eye saw no menace in that floundering front runner; no danger in a shaft already spent. “He wins! He wins easy!” breathed Martin.

“Just rolls home, I tell you!” said the Sharpshooter, putting away his binoculars. “I knew he would.”

By leaps and bounds the stretch-running Elisha overhauled his former stable companion. Poor, tired Elijah was rocking in his gait, losing ground almost as fast as Elisha was gaining it; his race was behind him; he could do no more.

Mose, keeping watch out of the tail of his eye, saw the bay head bobbing close behind. Now it was at Elijah’s heels; the next stride would bring it level with the saddle…. The next stride.

All that anyone ever saw was that Jockey Moseby Jones leaned slightly toward the flying Elisha as Merritt drew alongside, and very few spectators saw this much. Who cares to watch a loser when the winner is in sight? Old Man Curry, waiting at the paddock gate, saw the movement and immediately began to search his pockets for tobacco.

Jockey Merritt, strong of arm but weak of principle, was first to realize that something had happened. Elisha’s speed checked with such suddenness that the rider narrowly escaped pitching out of the saddle…. Had the horse stumbled … or been frightened?… What in the world was it?… Merritt recovered his balance and quite instinctively drove the spurs home; the only response was a grunt from Elisha. The long racing stride shortened to a choppy one. The horse was not tired, nor was he quitting in the general acceptance of the term; he was merely stopping to a walk with all possible speed. Merritt was seized with panic. He drew his whip and began slashing savagely. Elisha answered this by waving his tail high in the air, a protest and a flag of truce—but run he would not. His pace grew slower and slower and at the paddock gate he was on even terms with the drooping Elijah. “What ails that horse?” demanded the presiding judge. “He won’t run a lick! Acts as if he’s taken a sulky streak all at once!”

“Yes,” said the associate. “The Bible horses are having a contest to see which one of ’em can quit the fastest…. Queer-looking race, judge. And they bet on Elisha this time, too.”

“I’m glad of it!” exploding the other. “It serves ’em right. I like to see a frame-up go wrong once in a while!”

Side by side Elijah and Elisha fell back toward the field, little Mose grinning from ear to ear, but industriously hand riding his mount; Jockey Merritt cursing wildly and plying rawhide and steel with all his strength. The other horses, coming on with a closing rush, enveloped the pair, passing them and continued on toward the wire.

Only one remark of Martin O’Connor’s is fit for quotation. It came when his vocabulary was bare of vituperation, abusive epithet, and profanity.

“You can slip me fifty, Engle. That darned trick horse of yours was last!”

An inquisitive soul is an itching thing and the gathering of information was the Bald-faced Kid’s ruling passion. He called at Old Man Curry’s stable that evening with a bit of news which he hoped to use as the key to a secret.

“Greetings!” said he at the tack-room door. “Thought you’d like to know that Engle has sold Elisha. Pete Lawrence bought him for three hundred dollars. Engle says that’s two-ninety-five more than he’d bring at a soap works.”

Old Man Curry had been reading by the light of the tack-room lantern; he pushed his glasses back on his forehead and smiled at his informant.

“Oh, Elisha!” said he. “Yes, if you look in the second stall to the right, you’ll find him. He’s been straying among the publicans and sinners, but he’s home again now where he belongs. I asked Pete to go over and buy him for me.”

“Good work!” said the Kid, seating himself. “There’s quite a mass meeting over at Engle’s barn.”

“So?” said Old Man Curry.

“Yes indeed! They’ve got Jock Merritt up on the carpet and they haven’t decided yet whether to hang him to a rafter or boil him in oil. Some of ’em think he pulled Elisha to-day. Merritt is giving ’em a powerful argument. Says he never rode a harder finish in his life, but that the horse took a sudden notion to quit and did it. Didn’t seem to be tired or anything, but just stopped running. O’Connor gets the floor once in a while and rips and raves about that ‘trick-horse thing.’ He thinks you know something. Engle says you don’t and never did, but that Elisha is a dog, same as he said at first. Wouldn’t surprise me none if they got into a free-for-all fight over there because they’re all losers and all sore. Jock Merritt is sorer’n anybody; he bet some of his own money and he thinks they ought to give it back to him…. Now, just between friends, what happened to that horse to-day? You told me he wouldn’t win, but at the head of the stretch he looked like a 1 to 10 chance. I thought he’d walk in. Then all at once he quit running. He wasn’t pulled, but something stopped him and stopped him quick. What was it?”

Old Man Curry stroked his beard and regarded the Bald-faced Kid with a tolerant expression.

“Well, now,” said he at length, “seeing as how you know so much, I’m going to tell you something more ’bout that ‘Lisha hoss. He used to have another name once.”

“Silver Star,” nodded the Kid. “I looked him up in the form charts.”

Old Man Curry nodded.

“Eddie Caley—him they called the Cricket—owned the hoss in the first place. Raised him from a yearling. Now understand, I ain’t excusing the Cricket for what he done, and I ain’t blaming him neither. He was sick most of the time, and a sick man gets his notions sort of twisted like. Maybe he figured the race track owed him something for taking away his health. I don’t know. He wasn’t no hand to talk.

“Anyhow, he had this one hoss and always the one idea in his head—to slip him over at such a long price that he could clean up enough to quit on. Caley was doing his own training and riding. I kept an eye on the hoss, and it seemed to me Silver Star worked good enough to win, but every time he got in a race he’d quit at the head of the stretch. That struck me as sort of queer because he come from stretch-running stock. His daddy was a great one to win from behind. Well, six or seven times Silver Star quit that way, and from the head of the stretch home the Cricket would lay into him, whip and spur both. Wouldn’t make the slightest difference to the hoss, but everybody could see that Caley was doing his best to make him run. Folks got kind of sorry for him, sick that way, only one hoss and him such a dog.

“Then one day Caley came to me and wanted the loan of some money. He said the price had got long enough to suit him, but that he didn’t have anything to bet. Happened I had the bank roll handy and I let him have two hundred. I can see the little feller now, with the red patches on his cheeks and his eyes kind of shining with fever.

“‘This is the biggest cinch that ever came off on a race track!’ he says to me, coughing every few words. ‘Don’t let the price scare you. Don’t let anything scare you. He’ll be a good hoss to-day. Win something for yourself.’

“It’s this way ’bout me: I’ve heard that kind of talk before. When I bet, it’s got to be on my own hoss. I thought two hundred was plenty to lose. Silver Star was 25 and 30 to 1 all over the ring and a friend of Caley’s unloaded the two hundred in little driblets so’s nobody would get suspicious and cut the price too far. The Cricket got out of a sick bed to ride the race and Silver Star came from behind and won by seven lengths. Could have made it seventeen easy as not. I reckon everybody was glad to see Caley win—everybody but the bookmakers, but they hadn’t any right to kick, seeing as he beat a red-hot favorite.

“Caley went to bed that night and didn’t get up any more. I used to read to him when he couldn’t sleep. Maybe that’s how he come to give me the hoss, along with a little secret ’bout him.”

Old Man Curry paused, tantalisingly, and rummaged in his pockets for his fine-cut. The Bald-faced Kid squirmed on his chair.

“It was a trick that nobody but a jockey would ever have thought of, son. Caley taught the colt to stop whenever a certain word was hollered in his ear. Dinged it into him, morning after morning, until Silver Star got so’s he’d quit as soon as he heard it, like a buggy hoss stops when you say ‘Whoa’ to him. Best part of the trick, though, was that all the whipping and spurring in the world couldn’t get him to running again. Caley taught him that for his own protection. It gave him an alibi with the judges. Couldn’t they see he was riding the hoss as hard as he knew how? I don’t say it was exackly honest, but——”

“Oho!” interrupted the Bald-faced Kid, “now I know why you had a front runner in that race! Between friends, old-timer, what was it Mose hollered at Elisha when he came alongside?”

“Well,” said Old Man Curry, “that’s the secret of it, my son, and it’s this way ’bout a secret: you can’t let too many folks in on it. I reckon it was a word spoken in due season, as Solomon says. Elisha, he won’t hear it again unless he changes owners.”

Playing even for Obadiah

Old Man Curry, owner of race horses, looked out of his tack-room door at a streaming sky and gave thanks for the rain. Other owners were cursing the steady downpour, for a wet track would sadly interfere with their plans, but Curry expected to start the chestnut colt Obadiah that afternoon, and Obadiah, as Jockey Moseby Jones was wont to remark, was a mud-running fool on any man’s track. The Bald-faced Kid, who lived by doing the best he could and preferred to be called a hustler rather than a tout, spoke from the tack-room interior. He was a privileged character at the Curry barn.

“How does she look, old-timer? Going to clear up by noon?”

Old Man Curry shook his head. “Well, no,” said he. “I reckon not. Looks to me like reg’lar Noah weather, Frank. If a man’s got a mud hoss in his barn, now’s the time to start him.”

The Bald-faced Kid grunted absently. He was deep in a thick, leather-backed, looseleaf volume of past performances, technically known as a form book, generally mentioned as “the dope sheets”—the library of the turf follower, the last resort and final court of appeal. The Kid’s lower lip had a studious droop and the pages rustled under his nervous fingers. An unlighted cigarette was behind his ear.

“What you looking for, son?”

“I’m trying to make Gaspargoo win his race to-day. He’s in there with a feather on his back, and there’ll be a price on him. He’s been working good, too. He quits on a dry track, but in the mud he’s liable to go farther. His old feet won’t get so hot.” Curry peered over the Kid’s shoulder at the crowded columns of figures and footnotes, unintelligible to any but the initiated, and supposedly a complete record of the racing activities of every horse in training.

“Hm-m-m. Some folks say Solomon didn’t write Ecclesiastes. Some say he did—after he got rid of his wives.”

The Bald-faced Kid laughed.

“You and your Solomon! Well, get it off your chest! What does he say now?”

“I think it must have been Solomon, because here’s something that sounds just like him: ‘Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.’ It would weary a mule’s flesh to study them dope books, Frank. There’s so many things enter into the running of hosses which ought to be printed in ’em and ain’t. For instance, take that race right in front of you.” The old man put his finger upon the page. “I remember it well. Here’s Engle’s mare, Sunflower, the favorite and comes fourth. Ab Mears wins it with the black hoss, Anthracite. Six to one. What does the book say ’bout Sunflower’s race?”

The Kid read the explanatory footnote.

“‘Sunflower, away badly, and messed about the first part of the journey; had no chance to catch the leaders, but closed strong under the whip.’”

“Uh-huh,” said Old Man Curry. “Good as far as it goes, but that’s all. Might as well tell a lie as part of the truth. Why not come right out with it and say that Engle was betting on Anthracite that day and the boy on Sunflower rode the mare to orders? That’s what happened. Engle and Mears and O’Connor and Weaver and some of the rest of ’em run these races the night before over in O’Connor’s barn. They get together and then decide on a caucus nominee. Why not put that in the book?”

“Speaking of Mears,” said the Bald-faced Kid, “he thinks he’ll win to-day with Whitethorn.”

“Well,” said the old man, “I’ll tell you, Frank; it’s this way ’bout Whitethorn; he’ll win if he can beat Obadiah. The colt’s ready and this weather suits him down to the ground. He surely does love to run in the slop. Only bad thing ’bout it, Engle and Weaver are both in that race, and since I trimmed that gang of pirates with Elisha they’ve had it in for me. Their jockeys act like somebody’s told ’em there’s an open season on my hosses. They bump that little nigger of mine every chance they get. Pretty near put him into the fence twice last week.”

“Why don’t you holler to the judges?”

“They haven’t done any real damage, son. And here’s another angle: these judges won’t give a nigger any the best of it on a claim of foul agin a white boy. My Mose is the only darky rider here, and the other boys want to drive him out. Between Engle and his gang after me, and the jockeys after Mose, we got our hands full.”

“I’ll bet. Going to gamble any on Obadiah to-day?”

“If I like the price. None of the bookmakers here will ever die of enlargement of the heart. If Obadiah is shorter than three to one, he’ll run for the purse alone. The hoss that beats him on a sloppy track will know that he’s been going some.”

It happened just beyond the half-mile pole, in a sudden flurry of wind and rain. The spectators, huddling under the grand-stand roof, saw the horses dimly as through a heavy mist. The colors were indistinguishable at the distance, drenched and sodden.

“Hello!” said the presiding judge, who had been wiping his field glasses. “One of ’em went down! What happened?”

“Don’t know,” replied the associate judge. “I was watching that thing in front—Whitethorn…. Yes, and that horse is hurt, Major…. The boy is all right, though. He’s on his feet.”

“It’s Old Man Curry’s horse,” said the other. “Obadiah—and I sort of figured him the contender in this race, too…. The boy has got him…. Looks like a broken leg to me…. Too bad…. Better send an officer over there.”

Before the judges knew that anything had happened a shabby, bearded old man in a rusty black frock coat dodged across the track from the paddock gate and splashed hurriedly through the infield. Old Man Curry never used binoculars; he had the eyes of an eagle.

“Been looking for it to happen every day!” he muttered. “And a right likely colt, too. The skunks! The miserable little skunks!”

Whitethorn, the winner of the race, was back in the ring and unsaddled before the old man reached the half-mile pole. Jockey Moseby Jones, plastered with mud from his bullet head to his boots, shaken and bruised but otherwise unhurt, clung to Obadiah’s bridle.

“Now, honey, you jus’ stan’ still!” he was saying. “Jus’ stan’ still an’ we git yo’ laig fixed up in no time; no time a-a-a-tall.”

The colt stood with drooping head, drumming on the ground with the crippled foreleg; from time to time the unfortunate animal shivered as with a violent chill. Old Man Curry knelt in the mud, but rose almost immediately; one glance at the broken leg was enough. He looked at the little negro.

“How did it happen, Mose?”

“Jockey Murphy done it, boss. He was on ‘at thing of Weaver’s.”

“A-purpose?”

“Sutny he done it a-purpose. He cut in on us an’ knocked us agin the rail. Come from ‘way outside to do it.”

Old Man Curry began to take the saddle off the colt. A tall man in a rubber coat, gum boots, and a uniform cap arrived on the scene, panting after his run from the grand stand. He looked at Obadiah’s leg, sucked in his breath with a whistling sound more expressive than words, and faced Old Man Curry.

“Want the ‘vet’ to see him?” asked the newcomer.

“No use in him suffering that long,” said the old man dully. “He’s ruined. Might as well get it over with.”

Jockey Moseby Jones wailed aloud.

“Oh, don’ let ’em shoot Obadiah, boss!” he pleaded. “I’ll take keer o’ him; I’ll set up nights ‘ith him. Can’t you splint it? Ain’t there nothin’ we kin do fo’ him?”

“Only one thing, Mose,” said Old Man Curry. “It’s a kindness, I reckon.” He passed the bridle to the uniformed stranger. “Don’t be too long about it,” said he.

The colt, gentle and obedient to the last, hobbled off the track toward a sheltering grove of trees near the upper turn. Custom decrees that the closing scene of a turf tragedy shall not be enacted within sight of the grand stand. Two very young stableboys followed at a distance.

“Run away, kids,” said the tall man, fumbling at his hip pocket. “You don’t want to see this.”

Old Man Curry strode along the track, his shoulders squared, his face stern and his eyes blazing with the cold rage which sometimes overtakes a patient man. Little Mose trailed at his heels, whimpering and casting scared glances behind. After a time they heard the muffled report of a pistol.

“He’s out of his misery, sonny,” said the old man. “It’s the best way—the best way—and now I want you to tell them judges just how it happened.”

But Jockey Murphy had already told his story, ably seconded by his friends, Grogan and Merritt. These boys had been interviewed by racing judges before and, consequently, were not embarrassed.

“Judges—gentlemen,” said Murphy, cap in hand—a vest-pocket edition of a horseman, freckled, blue-eyed, and bow-legged—“this was how it happened: That little nigger nearly spilled the whole bunch of us, tryin’ to cut acrost to the rail goin’ into the turn. We yelled at him, and he kind of lost his head—tried to yank his hoss around and down he went. Awful slippery over there, judges. I had to pull up with Fieldmouse, and couldn’t get her to going again. She’s a mean, skulking mare, and won’t run a lick after she’s been interfered with…. Who else saw it? Why, Merritt was right there somewheres, and so was Grogan. They’re all that I’m sure of. You might ask ’em whether the nigger cut acrost or not. He’s an awful reckless little kid, and he’ll kill somebody yet if he ain’t more careful.”

Grogan and Merritt, called in support of this statement, perjured themselves like jockeys, and there was no conflicting note in the testimony. Mose, coming late, told his story, but the judges were swayed by the preponderance of evidence. It was three against one, and that one a very poor witness, for Mose was overawed by his surroundings and contradicted himself several times out of pure fright. In the end he was allowed to go with a solemn warning to be more careful in the future.

When this word was brought to Old Man Curry he lumbered heavily up the steps and into the judges’ stand, where he refused a chair and delivered himself standing, the water dripping in tiny puddles from the skirt of his long black coat.

“Gentlemen,” said he, “you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’ve been expecting something like this ever since the meeting opened. My little boy can’t ride a race ‘thout interference from these rascals that take their orders from Engle and his bunch. They’ve tried a dozen times to put him over the fence, and now they’ve killed a good hoss for me. I ain’t going to stand it. I——”

“But the other boys all say——”

“Great King!” interrupted the old man wrathfully. “Of course they do! Told you the same identical story, didn’t they? Ain’t that proof they’re lying? Did you ever see three honest people that could agree when they was trying to tell the truth ’bout an accident? Did you?”

Quite naturally the judges were inclined to regard this as a reflection upon their official conduct. Old Man Curry was reprimanded for his temerity, and descended from the stand, his beard fairly bristling with righteous indignation. Little Mose followed him down the track toward the paddock; he had to trot to keep up with the old man’s stride.

“Might have knowed they’d team up agin us,” said the negro. “Them Irish jockeys had a story all cooked to tell.”

Old Man Curry did not open his mouth until he reached his tack-room, and then it was only to stuff one cheek with fine-cut tobacco—his solace in times of stress. After reflection he spoke, dropping his words slowly, one by one.

“Weaver and Murphy and Engle…. It says in Ecclesiastes that a threefold cord is not easily broken, but I reckon it might be done, one cord at a time…. Well, Mose, they’ve made us take the medicine!”

“Sutny did!” chirped the little negro. “But they’ll never git us to lick the spoon!”

The Bald-faced Kid often boasted that everybody’s business was his business—a large contract on any race track of the Jungle Circuit. His stop watch told him what the horses were doing, and stableboys, bartenders, and waiters told him what their owners were doing, the latter vastly more important to the Kid. At all times he used his eyes, which were sharp as gimlets. Thus it happened that he was able to give Old Man Curry a bit of interesting information.

“Considering what these birds, Weaver and Murphy, did to you last week,” said the Kid, “I don’t suppose you’d fight a bulldog for ’em, or anything like that?”

“Eh? What bulldog?” Old Man Curry could never keep abreast of the vernacular.

“Getting down to cases,” said the Kid, “you’re laying for Weaver and Murphy, ain’t you?”

“I ain’t said so in that many words,” was the cautious response.

“You ain’t going to let ’em kill a good colt for you and get away with it, are you? Weaver was only in that race to take care of Obadiah. Eagle’s gang was down hook, line, and sinker on Whitethorn, and they cleaned up. Obadiah was the one they was leery of, so Weaver put Fieldmouse in the race and told Murphy to take care of you. It’s simple as A, B, C. Wouldn’t you get back at ’em if you had a chance?”

“I ain’t signed any peace documents as I know of,” said the old man, a smoldering light in his eye.

“Now you’re talking!” said the Kid. “If you want to catch Weaver and Murphy dead to rights, I can tell how to go about it.”

“So do, Frank,” said Old Man Curry. “So do. My ear is open to your cry.”

“In the first place,” said the Kid, lighting a cigarette, “I don’t suppose you know that Weaver has been stealing weight off his horses ever since this meeting opened.”

“With Parker, the clerk of the scales?” ejaculated the old man. “I’ve heard that couldn’t be done.”

The Bald-faced Kid chuckled.

“A smart owner can do anything,” said he, “and Weaver’s smart. At these other tracks, stealing weight off a horse is the king of indoor sports, and they mostly work it through a stand-in with the clerk of the scales; but you’re right about this fellow Parker. He’s on the level, and they can’t get at him. A jock has got to weigh in and weigh out on the dot when Parker is on the job. He won’t let ’em get by with the difference of an ounce.”

“Then how——” began Old Man Curry.

“There you go, busting through the barrier! Weaver is pulling the wool over Parker’s eyes. Now here’s what I saw yesterday: Weaver had Exmoor in the third race, supposed to be carrying one hundred and ten pounds. Jock Murphy ain’t much bigger’n a rabbit—tack and all, he won’t weigh ninety-five. That would make, say, fifteen pounds of lead in the weight pad. Murphy got on the scales and was checked out of the jock’s room at one hundred and ten, all square enough, but when Weaver saddled Exmoor he left the weight pad off him entirely—slipped it to that big nigger swipe of his—Chicken Liver Pete, they call him.”

“I know him,” said Old Man Curry.

“Everybody knows him,” said the Kid. “Well, Chicken Liver put the weight pad under the blanket that he was carrying to throw over the horse after the race. Exmoor won yesterday, but he didn’t carry an ounce of lead.”

“But how did Murphy make the weight after he finished?” demanded the old man.

“Easiest thing in the world!” said the Kid. “While Murphy was unsaddling the horse, Chicken Liver was right at his elbow, and both of ’em had their backs to the judges. It looked natural enough for the nigger to be there—waiting to blanket the horse the minute the saddle came off of him. All Murphy had to do was grab under the blanket with one hand while he jerked the saddle off the horse with the other—and there he was, ready to weigh one hundred and ten. I’ll bet those two fellows have rehearsed that switch a thousand times. They pulled it off so slick that if I hadn’t been watching for it I could have been looking right at ’em and never noticed it. And the judges didn’t have the chance that I did, because they couldn’t see anything but their backs. Murphy pranced in, hopped on the scales, got the O. K., and that was all there was to it. Pretty little scheme, ain’t it? And so darned simple!”

Old Man Curry combed his beard with both hands—with him a sign of deep thought.

“Frank,” said he at length, “where does this Chicken Liver nigger go while the race is being run?”

“Across the track to the infield. That was where he went yesterday. I was watching him.”

“The infield…. Hm-m-m…. Thank you, Frank.”

“You could tip it off to the judges,” suggested the Kid, “and they’d have Chicken Liver searched. Like as not they’d rule Weaver off for life and set Murphy down——”

“There’s a better way than searching that nigger,” said Old Man Curry.

“You’ll have to show me!”

“Son,” said the aged owner, “according to Solomon—and, oh, what a racing judge he would have made!—‘he that hath knowledge spareth his words.’ I’m sparing mine for the present, but that won’t keep me from doing a heap of thinking…. Engle, Weaver, and Murphy…. Maybe I can bust two of these cords at once—and fray the other one a little.”

Four men sat under the lantern in Martin O’Connor’s tack-room on a Wednesday night. They spoke in low tones, for they were engaged in running the fourth race on Thursday’s program.

“I’ve let it be known in a few places where it’ll do the most good that the mare can’t pack a hundred and fifteen pounds and win at a mile.” This was Weaver speaking, a small, wiry man with a drooping moustache. “You know how talk gets around on a race track—tell the right man and you might as well rent the front page of the morning paper. As a matter of fact, Fieldmouse can’t pack that weight and win.”

“That’s the way the form students will dope it out,” said Al Engle, otherwise the Sharpshooter, the smiling, youthful, gold-toothed blond who directed the campaigns and dictated the policy of the turf pirates. “That much weight will stop most of ’em, but let her in there under ninety pounds and Fieldmouse is a cinch. That little sleight-of-hand stunt between Murphy and your nigger is working fine. They not only put it over on the judges, but none of the other owners are wise. I’d try it myself some day if I wasn’t afraid somebody would fumble and give the snap away.”

“Huh!” growled the saturnine O’Connor. “Needn’t worry about tipping anything off to them judges. They’re both blind. Here’s what bothers me: Old Man Curry is in that same race with Isaiah.”

“Well, what of that?” said Engle. “That old fool is all same as a nightmare to you, ain’t he?”

“Call him a fool if you want to,” was the stubborn rejoinder, “but he made an awful sucker out of you with that trick horse of his. An awful sucker. If Old Man Curry is a fool, there’s a lot of wise people locked up in the bug houses. That’s all I’ve got to say!”

“He’s had your goat ever since the meeting opened,” grinned the Sharpshooter.

“That’s all right,” said O’Connor. “That’s a whole lot better than my buying a goat from him—for a thousand dollars.” This by way of reminding the Sharpshooter of something which he preferred to forget. Engle reddened.

“Aw, what’s the good of chewing the fat?” interrupted the fourth man briskly. This was Ab Mears, of whom it was said that he trained his horses to look into the betting ring on their way to the post and to run in accordance with the figures they saw upon the bookmakers’ slates. “Let’s not have any arguments, boys. All little pals together, eh?… Now, getting down to business, as the fellow said when he was digging the well, Isaiah is a pretty shifty old selling plater when he’s at himself; but you know and I know that the best day he ever saw he couldn’t beat Fieldmouse at a mile with a feather on her back. She’ll walk home alone. The most Isaiah can do is to come second——”

“He’ll be lucky if he does that well,” interrupted Engle. “The mare will be in front of him all the way…. Same old stuff; wait for the closing betting. Weaver, you keep on hollering your head off about the weight; it’ll scare the outsiders and they won’t play her. Then, at the last minute, cut loose and load up the books with all they’ll take.”

“Just the same,” muttered O’Connor, “I’d feel a lot more comfortable if Curry wasn’t in the race. That old boy is poison, that’s what he is. The last couple of times——”

“Oh, shut up!” rasped Engle. “Elisha was the horse he trimmed us with—Elisha! Get that through your head. This is Isaiah. There’s as much difference in horses as there is in prophets. What you need is one of those portable Japanese foot warmers.”

The paddock is the place to go for information, particularly after the saddling bell rings. The owners are usually on exhibition at that time. Nearly every owner will answer a civil question about his horse; once in a great while one of them may answer truthfully. In this particular race we are concerned with but two owners, one of whom told the truth.

Weaver, rat-eyed and furtive, answered all questions freely—almost too freely.

“Ye-es, she’s a right nice little mare, but they’ve weighted her out of it to-day. She can’t pack a hundred and fifteen and win…. That much lead will stop a stake horse. Better stay off her to-day. Some other time.”

Old Man Curry, grave and polite, also answered questions.

“Isaiah? Oh, yes. Well, now, sir, I’ll tell you ’bout this hoss of mine. I figure he’s got a stavin’ good chance to come second—a stavin’ good chance…. No, he won’t be first.”

Just before the bugle blew, Mose received his riding orders.

“If that mare of Weaver’s gets away in front, don’t you start chasing her. No use in running Isaiah’s head off trying to ketch her. I want you to finish second, understand? Isaiah can beat all these other hosses. Don’t pay no ‘tention to the mare. Let her go.”

Little Mose nodded.

“‘At Fieldmouse is sutny a goin’ fool when ‘ey bet stable money on huh,” said he. “Let ‘at ole mare go, eh?”

“Exackly,” said the old man, “but be sure you beat the rest of ’em.”

“Fieldmouse an’ Murphy,” said Mose. “Huh-uh! ‘At’s a bad combination fo’ us, boss, a ba-ad combination. ‘Membeh Obadiah?”

The Bald-faced Kid strolled into Isaiah’s stall.

“Chicken Liver’s got it,” he whispered. “I saw Weaver pass it to him.”

“That’s what I’ve been waiting for, Frank,” said Old Man Curry. “Here, Shanghai! You lead him out on the track. I’ve got business with the children of Israel.”

The Fieldmouse money was beginning to pour into the ring, and the block men were busy with their erasers. Each time the mare’s price went down, Isaiah’s price went up a little. Old Man Curry drew out a tattered roll of currency and went from booth to booth, betting on his horse at four to one.

“Think you’ve got a chance to-day, old man?” It was the Sharpshooter, smiling like a cherub.

“Well, now,” said Curry, “I’ll tell you ’bout me; I’m always trying, so I’ve always got a chance. Looks like the weight ought to stop the mare.”

“That’s so,” said Engle. “Betting much?”

“Quite considerable for me, yes. Isaiah ain’t a trick hoss, but he——”

“Oh, you go to the devil!” said Engle.

But Old Man Curry crossed the track instead. His first care was to locate the negro known as Chicken Liver; this done, he watched the start of the race. Nine horses were lined up at the barrier, and at least six of the jockeys were manœuvring for a flying start. The official starter, a thick-set man with a long twisted nose, bellowed loudly from time to time.

“No! No! You can’t break that way!… You, Murphy! I’ll fine you in a minute!… Get back there, Grogan! What did I tell you, Murphy?… Bring that horse up slow! Bring him up! No! No! You can’t break that way!”

Isaiah stood perfectly still in the middle of the track; on either side of him the nervous animals charged at the barrier or whirled away from it in sudden, wild dashes. The starter’s voice grew husky and his temper hot, but at last the horses were all headed in the right direction, if only for the fraction of a second. Jockey Murphy, scenting a start, had Fieldmouse in motion even as the elastic webbing shot into the air; she was in her racing stride as the starter’s voice blared out:

“You’re off! Go on! Go on!”

The mare, always a quick breaker, rushed into the lead, Murphy taking her on an easy slant to the inner rail. Isaiah, swinging a bit wide on the first turn, settled down to work, and at the half-mile pole was leading the pursuit, taking the dust which Fieldmouse kicked up five lengths in front.

Chicken Liver, watching Murphy skim the rail into the home stretch, shuffled his feet in an ecstasy of exultation.

“Come home, baby!” he shouted. “Come ‘long home! You de bes’ li’l ole hawss—uh!”

Something small and hard jammed violently into the pit of Chicken Liver’s stomach, and his song of victory ended in an amazed grunt. Old Man Curry was glaring at him and pressing the muzzle of a forty-five-calibre revolver against the exact spot where the third button of Chicken Liver’s vest would have been had he owned such a garment.

“Drop that weight pad, nigger, or I’ll blow you inside out! Drop it!”

Chicken Liver leaped backward with a howl of terror. The next instant he was well on his way to the Weaver barn, supplication floating over his shoulder.

“Don’t shoot, misteh! Fo’ de Lawd’s sake, don’t shoot!”

Old Man Curry picked up the weight pad and started for the gate. He arrived in time to see the smile on Murphy’s face as he swung under the wire, three lengths in front of Isaiah, the other horses trailing far in the rear. Murphy was still smiling broadly when he brought Fieldmouse back into the chalked circle, a privileged space reserved for winners.

“Judges!” piped the jockey shrilly, touching the visor of his cap with his whip. Receiving the customary nod, Murphy slid to the ground and attacked the cinch. It was then that Chicken Liver should have stepped forward with his blanket—then that the deft transfer should have taken place, but Chicken Liver, where was he? Murphy’s anxious eyes traveled around the wide circle of owners and hostlers, and his smile faded into a nervous grin.

Now, after each race a few thousand impatient people must wait for the official announcement—the one, two, three, without which no tickets can be cashed—and the official announcement must wait upon the weighing of the riders. For this reason no time is wasted in the ceremony.

“Hurry up, son,” said the presiding judge. “We’re waiting on you.”

Murphy fumbled with the strap, playing desperately for time. As he tugged, his eyes were searching for the missing negro. He caught one glimpse of Weaver’s face, yellow where it was not white; he, too, was raking the horizon for Chicken Liver.

“What’s the matter with you, Murphy?” demanded the judge. “Do you want help with that tack?”

“No, sir,” faltered the jockey. “Th-this thing sticks somehow. I’ll git it in a minute. I——”

Old Man Curry marched through the ring and up the steps to the platform of the judges’ stand, and when Weaver saw what he carried in his hand he became a very sick man indeed—and looked it. Al Engle backed away into the crowd and Martin O’Connor followed him, mumbling incoherently.

“Maybe this is what Murphy is waiting for, judges,” said Old Man Curry with marked cheerfulness. “Maybe he don’t want to git on the scales without it.”

“Eh?” said the presiding judge. “What is that?”

“Looks like a weight pad to me,” said Old Man Curry, “with quite a mess of lead in it. Yes, it is a weight pad.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Well,” said the old man, “I’ll tell you ’bout that: Weaver’s nigger had it smuggled under a blanket, but he dropped it and I picked it up. Maybe Weaver thought the nigger was a better weight packer than the mare. I don’t know. Maybe——”

“Young man,” commanded the presiding judge, “that’ll do you. Take your tackle and get on the scales. Lively now!”

Murphy cast one despairing glance about him and slouched to his undoing. The judge, weight pad in hand, followed him into the weighing room underneath the stand. He was back again almost instantly, and his voice had an angry ring.

“Change those numbers!” said he. “The mare is disqualified. Isaiah, first; Rainbow, second; put the fourth horse third. Mr. Weaver, come up here, sir! And where’s that nigger? I want him too. Murphy, I’ll see you later…. Don’t go away, Mr. Curry. I need you.”

“That’s what I call getting hunk with a vengeance, old-timer.” Thus the Bald-faced Kid, at the door of Old Man Curry’s tack-room. “You cleaned up right, didn’t you? Weaver’s ruled off for life, and his horses with him—he can’t even sell ’em to another stable. Murphy’s lost his license. Chicken Liver’s out of a job. Engle and his bunch are in the clear, but they lost a lot of money on the mare. Regular old blunderbuss, ain’t you? Didn’t miss anybody.”

“Son,” said Old Man Curry, removing his spectacles, “Solomon had it right. He says: ‘Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein.’ Weaver dug one big enough to hold his entire stable. And that reminds me: I bet fifty dollars for you to-day, and here’s the two hundred. Run it up if you can, but remember what Solomon says about that: ‘He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.’”

“I’ll take a chance,” said the Bald-faced Kid, reaching for the money.

By a hair

“Son,” said Old Man Curry, “what’s on your mind besides your hat? You ain’t said a word for as much as two minutes, and any time you keep still that long there must be something wrong.”

The Bald-faced Kid’s glance rested for an instant upon the kindly features of the patriarch of the Jungle Circuit, then flickered away down the line of stables where other horsemen and race-track followers were sunning themselves and waiting the summons to the noon meal.

Old Man Curry, his eyes half closed, a straw in the corner of his mouth, and the brim of his slouch hat resting upon the bridge of his nose, seemed not to be conscious of this brief but piercing scrutiny. As usual with him, there was about this venerable person a beguiling air of innocence and confidence in his fellow man, a simple attitude of trustfulness not entirely borne out by his method of handling a racing stable. Certain dishonest horsemen and bookmakers were beginning to suspect that Old Man Curry was smarter than he looked. The Bald-faced Kid had never entertained any doubts upon this subject. He remained silent, the thin edge of a grin playing about his lips.

“I hope you ain’t been trying to show any tin horn gamblers the error of their ways by ruining ’em financially,” said the old man, one drowsy eye upon the Kid’s face. “That’s one of the things what just naturally can’t be done. Steady growth is the thing to fat a bank roll, Frank. I’m about to tell you how you can multiply yours considerable. Last time you was here you had two hundred dollars, spoiled Egyptian money——”

“Oh, I guess it wasn’t so darn badly spoiled at that!” interrupted the Kid. “I didn’t have any trouble getting rid of it.” He grinned sheepishly. “Your friend Solomon called the turn on the get-rich-quick stuff. ‘He that maketh haste’—what’s the rest of it, old-timer?”

“‘He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent,’” quoted Old Man Curry, rolling out the syllables in sonorous procession. “But I reckon not being rich is worrying you more than not being innocent. Who took the roll away from you?”

“Squeaking Henry got a piece of it,” admitted the Kid. “Did you ever play twenty-one—Black Jack, old-timer?”

Old Man Curry shook his head.

“I never monkeyed much with cards,” said he, “but I’ve seen the game played some—when I was younger.”

“Well,” said the Kid mournfully, “Squeaking Henry and a couple of his friends rung in some marked cards—on my deal. Of course those burglars could take one flash at the top of the deck and know just when to draw and when not to. I sat up there like a flathead and let ’em clean me. What tipped it off was that when I was down to my last smack, with a face card in sight and a face card in the hole, Henry drew to twenty and caught an ace. The mangy little crook! Oh, well, easy come, easy go. I’d have lost it some other way, I guess. But, say, what was this proposition of yours about fattening the bank roll? I’ve got seven dollars between me and the wolf, and he’s so close that I can smell his breath.”

“Seeing that you ain’t got any more judgment than that,” was Old Man Curry’s comment, “I don’t know as I ought to tell you.”

“Oh, all right,” said the Kid, “if that’s the way you feel about it—but maybe I’ve got some information I could trade you for it.”

“I never swapped hosses blind,” said Old Man Curry.

“I won’t ask you to,” said the Bald-faced Kid. “It’s no news that Engle’s bunch is out for your scalp, is it?”

“No-o,” said the old man. “I kind of suspicioned as much.”

“They’re after you strong, old-timer. First you walloped ’em with Elisha, then you double-crossed ’em with Elijah, and then you got Weaver and Murphy ruled off. At first Engle thought you was only ignorant but shot full of blind luck. Lately he ain’t been so sure about the ignorance. Engle hates to give anybody else credit for being wise to the angles around this track.”

“Solomon said something about him,” remarked Old Man Curry gravely.

“Go ahead; pull it!” said the Kid.

“‘Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him.’ That’s what Solomon thought about the Engle family, son.”

“Well, if I was you I wouldn’t lay any fancy odds that Engle is a fool,” warned the Kid. “There’s one baby that you’ve got to figure on every minute. You’ve got a horse in your barn that Engle is watching like a hawk.”

“Elisha?”

“Elisha. When does he start the next time?”

“In the Handicap.”

“The Handicap, eh? You must think pretty well of him. Some good horses in that race. Well, there won’t be a price on him worth taking; you can bet on that.”

Old Man Curry opened his eyes wide for the first time.

“No price on him! Nonsense! He’s a selling plater going up agin so-called stake horses! No price! Huh!”

“Even so, nevertheless, notwithstanding, and but,” said the Kid with exasperating calmness, “you won’t get a price on him. I can quote some myself. The voice of wisdom is speaking to you.”

“But he ain’t never done anything that would justify starting him with stake hosses,” argued Old Man Curry, feeling in his pockets for his fine-cut.

“Is there any law to prevent ’em figuring that he might?”

“But why is Engle worrying about the price on my hosses?” demanded Curry.

“Maybe to get even for what you’ve done to him. Maybe because he’s got some sort of an agreement with Abe Goldmark. You know Abe?”

“By sight, son, by sight. And that’s the only way I want to know him.”

“You and me both,” said the Kid quickly. “I don’t like that fellow’s face or the way he wears it, but you can’t afford to overlook him any more than you can overlook a rattlesnake. Goldmark is another one of the wise boys. He runs one book, but he’s under cover with an interest in five or six more. He comes pretty near being a combination in restraint of trade, Goldmark does. The Handicap is going to be the big betting race of the meeting. Goldmark has been tipped to keep his eye out for Elisha. On Elisha’s record he ought to be 15 or 20 to 1.”

“Longer than that!” said Old Man Curry.

“I’m figuring these syndicate books,” said the Kid. “He’ll open around 3 to 1 and stay there whether there’s a dollar bet on him or not. False odds? Certainly, but they’re taking no chances on you. They figure you won’t be trying at that price. And another thing: This same Squeaking Henry, this marked-card gambler, has gone to work for Goldmark. Three dollars a day for what he can find out. Is this information worth anything to you?”

“It might be, son,” said Old Man Curry. “It might be. I’ll let you know later on.”

“On the level,” said the Kid, “you don’t figure that Elisha has got a chance to win that race—not with Regulator and Black Bill and Miss Amber in it? They’re no Salvators, I admit, still they’re the best we ever see in this part of the country. Black Bill is a demon over a distance, old-timer. He won that two-mile race last winter at Santa Anita. Elisha has never gone more than a mile and an eighth, and this is a mile and a half. Honest, now, you don’t think he can beat horses like Black Bill and Regulator, do you?”

“Son,” said Old Man Curry, “I never think anything about a race until the night before. That’s time enough.”

“But suppose they make him a short price? You wouldn’t cut him loose and let him make a showing that would spoil him as a betting proposition?”

“Well, maybe he won’t be a short price,” said the old man. “You can’t tell a thing about it. It’s this way with bookmakers: Once in a while they change their minds, and that’s where an honest hossman gets a crack at ’em. Yes, they get to fooling with their little pieces of chalk. I don’t reckon Elisha will be less’n 20 to 1. There goes the gong at the boarding house. Might as well eat with me and nurse that seven dollars all you can.”

The Bald-faced Kid rose with alacrity and bowed low, his hand upon his heart.

“You are the ideal host,” said he, “and I am the ideal hostee! I could eat a horse and chase the driver. Lead the way, old-timer!”

The money which Squeaking Henry won by reason of the marked cards did him very little good, remaining in his possession barely long enough to cause his vest pocket to sag a trifle. He lost it in a friendly game with the friends who were clever enough to plan the raid on the Bald-faced Kid’s bank roll, using Henry as a tool, much as the coastwise Chinaman uses a cormorant in his fishing operations. Stripped of his opulence, Squeaking Henry found himself flat on the market again.

Henry was a tout, hence an easy and extemporaneous liar, but, alas, a clumsy one. He lacked the Bald-faced Kid’s finesse; lacked also his tireless energy, his insatiable curiosity, and the thin vein of pure metal which lay underneath the base. There was nothing about Squeaking Henry which was not for sale cheap; body and soul, he was on life’s bargain counter among the remnants, and Abe Goldmark, examining the lot, found a price tag labelled three dollars a day.

“Uh-huh,” said Henry. “I get you, Mr. Goldmark. You want me to stick around Old Man Curry’s barn and pump him.”

“Never mind the pumping,” said Goldmark. “The less you talk and the fewer questions you ask the better. Curry is no fool, understand. He might be just as smart as you are. Judging by the number of good things he’s put over at this meeting, he’s smarter. I want to know who calls on him, who his stable connections are, who he——”

“Aw, he ain’t got no stable connections!” said Squeaking Henry in great disgust. “He plays the game alone, and when he wants to bet he walks into the ring and goes to it. Never had a betting commissioner in his life, and if you want to know when the stable money is down, all you’ve got to do is watch Curry. Cinch!”

“Oh, a cinch is it?” sneered Goldmark. “Then I’m making a big mistake to hire you to find out things. You know everything already, eh?”

“Well, I guess not everything,” mumbled the abashed Henry.

“That’s my guess, too!” snapped Goldmark. “I’m paying you to watch that Curry stable; get me? And I want you to watch it! I want to know everything that happens around there from now on, understand? Particularly, I want a line on this Elisha horse. Know him when you see him?”

“S-s-sure!” said Squeaking Henry. “Sure I do! Big, leggy bay with a white spot on his forehead about the size of a nickel. Do I know him? Well!”

“I want to know when Curry works him—how far and how fast. I want to know what the old man thinks of his chances in the Handicap. You can get me at the hotel every night after dinner. Better use the telephone. In case you slip up or miss me, send word by Al Engle.”

“All right,” said Henry.

“And say,” Goldmark actually grinned, “I hear this Curry is a soft-hearted old fellow. Why couldn’t you tell him a hard-luck story and get to sleep in his tack-room nights? Then you’d be right on the ground. Try a hard-luck story on him. The one you sprang on me wasn’t so bad.”

“H-m-m-m,” mused Henry. “I might, and that’s a fact. He ain’t a bad guy, Old Man Curry ain’t. He stakes the hustlers every once in a while.”

“Well,” said Goldmark insinuatingly, “if he should be such a sucker as to stake you, don’t forget you was on my pay roll first; that’s all I ask.”

“Aw, whadda you take me for?” growled Squeaking Henry, virtuously indignant at the barest hint of duplicity. “I ain’t that kind of a guy.”

Since the tout lives by his wits and his tongue, he is never without a hard-luck story—a dependable one, tried, but seldom, if ever, true. He circles human nature, searching for the weak point and, having found it, delivers the attack. Squeaking Henry knew the armor plate to be thinnest on man’s sympathetic side, and the hard-luck story which he told Old Man Curry would have melted the heart of a golf club handicapper. The story was overworked and threadbare in spots, but it brought an immediate result.

“And that’s how I’m fixed,” whined Squeaking Henry in conclusion. “I think I can rustle the eats all right enough—one meal a day anyway—and if I just had a place to sleep——” He paused and regarded Old Man Curry expectantly.

“Come in, son,” said the patriarch. A wiser man than Squeaking Henry might have found Curry’s manner almost too friendly. “Come in. There’s a spare cot here and you’re welcome to it. Mose, my little nigger, sleeps here too, but I reckon you won’t mind him. He’s clean.”

Strange to say, it was Jockey Moseby Jones who minded. He minded very much, in plain English, waylaying Old Man Curry as he made the rounds of the stalls that night, lantern in hand.

“This yer Squawkin’ Henry, boss, he’s a no-good hound. He’s no good a-a-atall. They ketched him at Butte last year ringin’ in hawss dice on ‘e crap game ‘mong friends an’ ‘ey jus’ nachelly sunk his floatin’ ribs an’ kicked him out on his haid. Thass all they done to him, Mist’ Curry. Betteh watch him clost, else he’ll steal ’em gol’ fillin’s outen yo’ teeth!”

“You know him, do you, Mose?” asked Old Man Curry.

“Do I knows him!” ejaculated the little negro. “I knows him well ‘nough to wish yo’ hadn’t ‘vited him to do his floppin’ in yo’ tack-room!”

“Ah-hah!” said Old Man Curry reflectively. “Mose, I reckon you never heard what Job said?”

Jockey Moseby Jones heaved a deep sigh.

“Heah it comes again!” he murmured. “No, boss; he said such a many things I kain’t seem to keep track of ’em all. Whut he say now?”

“Something about the wise being taken in their own craftiness; I’ve forgotten the exact words.”

“Umph! Sho’lly yo’ don’t call Squawkin’ Henry wise?”

“No-o, but he may have wise friends. Somehow I’ve sort of been expecting this visitor, Mose. You heard him tell about how bad off his mother is. It seems a shame not to accommodate him, when all he wants is a place to sleep—and some information on the side.”

“Info’mation, boss?”

“Well, I can’t exactly swear to it, Mose, but I think the children of Israel have sent this Henry person among us to spy out the land. That’s a trick they learned a long time ago, after they got out of Egypt. Joshua taught it to ’em. Ever since then they don’t take any more chances than they can help. They always want to know what the other fellow is doing—and it’s a pretty good system at that. Being as things are the way they are, a spy in camp, etcetry, mebbe what hoss talk is done had better be done by me. You sabe, Mose?”

“Humph!” sniffed the little jockey. “I got you long ago, boss, lo-ong ago!”

Al Engle, sometimes known as the Sharpshooter, horse owner and recognized head of a small but busy band of turf pirates, was leaving his stable at seven-thirty on a Wednesday evening, intending to proceed by automobile to the brightly lighted district. Sleek, blond, youthful in appearance, without betraying wrinkle or line, Engle’s innocent exterior had been his chief dependence in his touting days. He seemed, on the surface, to be everything which he was not.

As he stepped forth from the shadow of the stable awning a hand plucked at his sleeve.

“It’s me—Henry,” said a voice. “I’ve got a message for Goldmark—couldn’t catch him on the phone.”

“Shoot it!” said Engle.

“Tell him that Elisha has gone dead lame—can’t hardly rest his foot on the ground.”

“That’ll do for Sweeney!” said the Sharpshooter. “Elisha worked fine this morning. I clocked him myself.”

“But that was this morning,” argued Squeaking Henry. “He must have bowed a tendon or something. His left foreleg is in awful shape.”

“Are you sure it’s Elisha?” demanded Engle.

“Come and see for yourself. You know the horse. Owned him for a few weeks, didn’t you? Curry is working on his leg now. You can peek in at the door of the stall and see for yourself. He won’t even know you’re there.”

Together they crossed the dark space under the trees, heading for a thin ribbon of light which streamed from beneath the awning of Curry’s barn. Somewhere, close at hand, a piping voice was lifted in song:

“On ‘e dummy, on ‘e dummy line; Rise an’ shine an’ pay my fine; Rise an’ shi-i-ine an’ pay my fi-i-ine, Ridin’ on ‘e dummy, on ‘e dummy, dummy line.”

“What’s that?” ejaculated Engle, pausing.

“Aw, that’s only Curry’s little nigger, Mose. He’s always singing or whistling or something!”

“I hope he chokes!” said Engle, advancing cautiously.

The stall door was almost closed, but by applying his eye to the crack Engle could see the interior. Old Man Curry was kneeling in the straw, dipping bandages in a bucket of hot water. The horse was watching him, ears pricked nervously.

“If this ain’t tough luck, I don’t know what is!” Old Man Curry was talking to himself, his voice querulous and complaining. “Tough luck—yes, sir! Tough for you, ‘Lisha, and tough for me. Job knew something when he said that man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. Yes, indeed! Here I had you right on edge, and ready to—whoa, boy! Stand still, there! I ain’t goin’ to hurt ye, ‘Lisha. What’s the matter with ye, anyway? Stand still!”

The horse backed away on three legs, snorting with indignation. Engle had seen enough. He withdrew swiftly, nor did he pause to chuckle until he was fifty yards from Curry’s barn.

“Well,” said Squeaking Henry, “it was him, wasn’t it?”

“Sure it was him, and he’s got a pretty badly strained tendon, too. At first I thought the old fox might be trying to palm off one of his other cripples on you, but that was Elisha all right enough. Yes, he’s through for about a month or so.”

“That’s what I figure,” said Henry. “The old man, though, he’s got his heart set on starting Elisha in the Handicap next Saturday. He thinks maybe he can dope him up so’s he won’t feel the soreness.”

“In a mile and a half race?” said Engle. “I hope he tries it! He’ll just about ruin that skate for life if he does. Five-eighths, yes, but a mile and a half? No chance!”

“You’ll tell Goldmark?”

“Yes, I’ll tell him. So long.”

Engle swung away through the dark and Squeaking Henry watched him until he was swallowed up in the gloom.

“That being the case,” said he, “and Elisha on the bum, I guess I’ll take a night off. This Sherlock Holmes stuff is wearing on the nerves.”

Al Engle delivered the message, giving it a strong backing of personal opinion.

“No, Abe, it’s all right, I tell you. It’s straight. I’ve seen the horse myself, ain’t I? Know him? Man alive, I had the skate in my barn for nearly a month! I ought to know him. Why, there’s no question about it. He’s so lame he can hardly touch his foot to the ground. If he starts, he’s a million to one to win; a hundred to one he won’t even finish. Certainly I’m sure! You can go broke on it. Don’t talk to me! Haven’t I seen strained tendons before? Next to a broken leg, it’s the worst thing that can happen to a race horse.”

While Engle was closeted with Goldmark, Old Man Curry was entertaining another nocturnal visitor. It was the Bald-faced Kid, breathless, his brow beaded with perspiration.

“Just got the tip that Elisha has gone lame,” said the Kid. “I was in the crap game over at Devlin’s barn when Squeaking Henry came in with the news. I ran all the way over here.”

“Oho, so it was Henry, eh?” Old Man Curry rumbled behind his whiskers—his nearest approach to a laugh. “Henry, eh? Well, now, it’s this way ’bout Henry. He’s better than a newspaper because it don’t cost a cent to subscribe to him. He’s got the loosest jaw and the longest tongue in the world.”

“But on the level,” said the Kid earnestly, “is Elisha lame?”

“Come and see for yourself,” said Old Man Curry, taking his lantern from the peg. After an interval they returned to the tack-room, the Bald-faced Kid shaking his head commiseratingly.

“That would have been rotten luck if it had happened to a dog!” said he. “And the Handicap coming on and all.”

“There’ll be a better opening price than 3 to 1 now, I reckon,” said Old Man Curry grimly.

“Opening price!” ejaculated the Kid, startled. “Say, what are you talking about? You don’t mean to tell me you’re thinking of starting him with his leg in this shape, old-timer?”

“‘M—well, no, not in this shape, exackly.”

“But Lordy, man, the Handicap is on Saturday and here it is Wednesday night already. You can’t fix up a leg like that in two days. You’re going some if you get it straightened out in two weeks. Of course, you can shoot the leg full of cocaine and he’ll run on it a little ways, but asking him to go a mile and a half—confound it, old-timer! That’s murdering a game horse. You’re liable to have a hopeless cripple on your hands when it’s over. I tell you, if Elisha was mine——”

“You’d own a real race hoss, son,” said Old Man Curry. “Now run along, Frank, and don’t try to teach your grandad to suck aigs. I was doctoring hosses before you come to this country at all, and I’m going to doctor this one some more and then go to bed.”

Shortly thereafter the good horse Elisha entertained a visitor who brought no lantern with him, but operated in the dark, swiftly and silently. Later a door creaked, there were muffled footfalls under the stable awning and one resounding thump, as it might have been a shod hoof striking a doorsill. Still later Squeaking Henry, returning to his post of duty, saw a light in Elisha’s stall and looked in at Old Man Curry applying cold compresses to the left foreleg of a gaunt bay horse with a small splash of white in the center of the forehead.

“How they coming, uncle?” asked Henry.

“Oh, about the same, I reckon,” was the reply.

“You might as well hit the hay. You’ve been fooling with that leg since dark, but you’ll never get the bird ready to fly by Saturday.”

“‘Wisdom crieth without,’” quoted Old Man Curry sententiously. “‘She uttereth her voice in the street.’”

“Quit kidding yourself,” argued Henry, “and look how sore he is. You’re in big luck if he ain’t lame a whole month from now.”

“Well,” said Old Man Curry, “Solomon says that the righteous man regardeth the life of his beast.”

“He does, eh?” Squeaking Henry chuckled unpleasantly. “There’s a whole lot of things Solomon didn’t know about bowed tendons. That leg needs something besides regards, I’m telling you.”

“And I’m listening,” said Old Man Curry patiently. “Wisdom will die with you, I reckon, Henry, so take care of yourself.”

If the Jungle Circuit knew an event remotely approaching a turf classic, it was the Northwestern Handicap, by usage shortened to “the Handicap.” It was their Metropolitan, Suburban, and Brooklyn rolled into one. The winner was crowned with garlands, the jockey was photographed in the floral horseshoe, and the fortunate owner pocketed something more than two thousand dollars—a large sum of money on any race track in the land, but a princely reward to the average jungle owner.

The best horses in training were entered each year and while a scornful Eastern handicapper would doubtless have rated them all among the cheap selling platers, they were still the kings of the jungle tracks, small toads in a smaller puddle, and their annual struggle was anticipated for weeks. Each candidate appeared in the light of a possible winner because the purse was worth trying for and each owner was credited with an honest desire to win. The Handicap was emphatically the “big betting race” of the season.

This year Black Bill, famed for consistent performance and ability to cover a distance of ground, was a pronounced favorite. Black Bill had been running with better horses than the jungle campaigners and winning from them and it was popularly believed that he had been shipped from the South for the express purpose of capturing the Handicap purse. His single start at the meeting had been won in what the turf reporters called “impressive fashion,” which is to say that Jockey Grogan brought Black Bill home three lengths in front of his field and but for the strength in his arms the gap would have been a much wider one.

Regulator, a sturdy chestnut, and Miss Amber, a nervous brown mare, were also high in public esteem, rivals for the position of second choice.

“It’s a three-horse race,” said the wiseacres, “and the others are outclassed. Whatever money there is will be split by Black Bill, Miss Amber, and Regulator. If anything happens to Bill, one of the others will win, but the rest of ’em won’t get anything but a hard ride and a lot of dust.”

From his position on the block Abe Goldmark looked down on a surging crowd. He was waiting for the official announcement on the third race. The crowd was waiting for the posting of the odds on the Handicap, waiting, money in hand, ready to dash at bargains. Al Engle forced his way through the press and Goldmark bent to listen.

“The old nut is going to start him sure enough,” whispered the Sharpshooter. “No—he won’t warm him up. Would you throw a gallop into a horse with his leg full of coke? Curry is crazy, but he ain’t quite as crazy as that.”

“The old boy was putting bandages on him at midnight last night,” grinned Goldmark. “Dang it, Al, a man ought to be arrested for starting a horse in that condition.”

“The coke will die out before he’s gone half a mile,” said Engle. “Might not even last that long—depends on how long they’re at the post. I saw a horse once——”

The melodious bellow of the official announcer rose above the hum of the crowd and there was a sudden, tense shifting of the nervous human mass. A dozen bookmakers turned leisurely to their slates, a dozen pieces of chalk were poised aggravatingly—and a hoarse grunt of disappointment rose from the watchers. Black Bill the favorite, yes, but bet fives to win threes? Hardly. Wait a minute; don’t go after it now. Maybe it’ll go up. Regulator, 8 to 5—Holy Moses! What kind of booking is this, anyway? Miss Amber, 2 to 1.

“Make ’em all odds on and be done with it!” sneered the gamblers. “Talk about your syndicate books! Beat five races at this track and if your money holds out you may beat the sixth, too. Huh!”

One bookmaker, more adventurous than his fellows, offered 4 to 5 on Black Bill and was immediately mobbed. Then came the prices on the outsiders. Simple Simon, 8 to 1; Pepper and Salt, 12 to 1; Ted Mitchell and Everhardt, 15 to 1; and so on. Last of all, the chalk paused at Elisha—40 to 1.

“Aw, be game!” taunted Al Engle. “Only 40—with what you know about him? He ought to be 100, 40, and 20! Be game!”

“Who’s doing this?” demanded Goldmark. “Come on, gentlemen! Make your bets! We haven’t got all day. Black Bill, 6 to 10. Simple Simon, 40 to 5. Thank you, sir.”

Out in the paddock Old Man Curry rubbed the red flannel bandage on Elisha’s leg, stopping now and then to answer questions.

“Eh? Yes, been a little lame. Will he last? Well, it’s this way; you can’t never tell. If it comes back on him—no, I didn’t warm him up. Why not? That’s my business, young man.”

The Bald-faced Kid came also, alert as a fox, eager for any scrap of information which might be converted into coin. He shook his head reprovingly at Old Man Curry.

“I didn’t think you’d have the heart, old-timer,” said he. “Honest to Pete, I didn’t! Don’t you care what happens to this horse or what?”

“Son,” said the patriarch simply, “I care a lot. I care a-plenty. If you’ve got any of that seven dollars left, you might put it on his nose.”

“Him? To win? You’re daffy as a cuckoo bird! Why, last night he couldn’t put that foot on the ground!”

“Well, of course, Frank, if you know that much about it, don’t let me advise you. If I had seven dollars and was looking for a soft spot I’d put it square on ‘Lisha’s nose.”

“You’ve been losing too much sleep lately,” said the Kid, edging away. “You want to win this race so much that you’ve bulled yourself into thinking that you can.”

“Mebbe so, Frank, mebbe so,” was the mild response, “but don’t let me influence you none whatever. Go play Black Bill. What’s his price?”

“Three to five. One to two in some books.”

“False price!” said the old man. “He ain’t got no license to be odds on.”

“See you later!” said the Bald-faced Kid, and went away with a pitying grin upon his face. The pity was evenly divided between Elisha and his owner.

Old Man Curry heaved little Mose into the saddle.

“Mind now, son. Ride just like I told you. Stay with that black hoss. He’ll lay out of it the first mile. When he moves up, you move up too. We’ve got a big pull in the weights and that’ll count in the last quarter. Stay with him, just like his shadow, Mose.”

“Yes, suh,” said Jockey Jones. “If I’m goin’ to be his shadder, he’ll sho’ think the sun is settin’ behind him when he starts down at stretch!”

Abe Goldmark craned his neck to see the parade pass the grand stand. Elisha was fifth in line, walking sedately, as was his habit.

“Not so very frisky, but at that he looks better than I thought he would,” was Goldmark’s mental comment. “They must have shot all the coke in the world into that old skate. As soon as he begins to run the blood will pump into that sore leg and he’ll quit. Black Bill looks like the money to me. He outclasses these other horses.”

Goldmark passed the eraser over his slate. Black Bill, 2 to 5. Elisha, 60, 20, and 10.

A dozen restless, high-strung thoroughbreds and a dozen nervous, scheming jockeys can make life exceedingly interesting for an official starter, particularly if the race be an important one and a ragged start certain to draw a storm of adverse criticism. The boys on the front runners were all manœuvring to beat the barrier and thus add to a natural advantage while the boys on the top-weighted horses were striving to secure an early start before the lead pads began to tell on their mounts. As a result the barrier was broken four times in as many minutes and the commandment against profanity was broken much oftener. The starter grew hoarse and inarticulate; sweat streamed down his face as he hurled anathemas at horses and riders.

“Keep that Miss Amber back, Dugan! Go through that barrier again and it’ll cost you fifty! —— —— ——!!”

“I can’t do nothing with her!” whined Dugan. “She’s crazy; that’s what she is!”

Through all the turmoil and excitement two horses remained quietly in their positions waiting for the word. These were Black Bill and Elisha, stretch runners, to whom a few yards the worst of the start meant nothing. Out of the corner of his eye little Mose watched Jockey Grogan on the favorite. The black horse edged toward the webbing, the line broke, wheeled, advanced, broke again and a third time came swinging forward. As it advanced, Mose drove the blunt spurs into Elisha’s side. A roar from the starter, a spattering rain of clods, a swirl of dust—and the Handicap was on.

“Nice start!” said the presiding judge, drawing a long breath.

Across the track, the official starter mopped his brow.

“Not so worse,” said he. “Go on, you little devils! It’s up to you!”

Away went the front runners, their riders checking them and rating their speed with an eye to the long journey. Simple Simon, Pepper and Salt, and Ted Mitchell engaged in a brisk struggle for the pace-making position and the latter secured it. Miss Amber and Regulator were in fifth and sixth places respectively, and at the tail end of the procession was Black Bill, taking his time, barely keeping up with the others. A distance race was no new thing to Black Bill. He had seen front runners before and knew that they had a habit of fading in the final quarter. Beside him was Elisha, matching him, stride for stride.

Down the stretch they came, Ted Mitchell gradually increasing the pace. Jockey Jones heard the crowd cheering as he passed the grand stand and his lip curled.

“We eatin’ it now, ‘Lisha hawss,” said he, “but nex’ time we come down yere they’ll be eatin’ ow’ dust an’ don’t make no mistake! Take yo’ time, baby. It’s a long way yit, a lo-ong way!”

Entering the back stretch there was a sudden shifting of the colored jackets. The outsiders, nervous and overeager, were making their bids for the purse, and making them too soon. The flurry toward the front brought about a momentary spurt in the pace followed immediately by the steady, machine-like advance of Regulator, but as the chestnut horse moved up the brown mare went with him, on even terms.

“There goes Regulator! There he goes!”

“Yes, but he can’t shake Miss Amber! She’s right there with him! Oh, you Amber!”

“What ails Black Bill? He’s a swell favorite, he is! He ain’t done a thing yet.”

“He always runs that way,” said the wise ones. “Wait till he hits the upper turn.”

Abe Goldmark, standing on a stool on the lawn, wrinkled his brow in perplexity. “About time for that bird to quit,” said he to himself. “He ain’t got any license to run a mile with a leg like that!”

Jockey Moseby Jones was also beginning to wonder what ailed Black Bill. Grogan sat the favorite like a statue, apparently unmoved by the gap widening in front of him.

“We kin wait ‘long as he kin, baby,” said Mose, comfortingly, “but I sut’ny don’t crave to see ’em otheh hawsses so far ahead!”

At the end of the mile Black Bill and Elisha were still at the end of the procession. Miss Amber had managed to shove her brown nose in front, with Regulator at her saddle girth. Many an anxious eye was turned on Black Bill; many saw his transformation but none was better prepared for it than Jockey Moseby Jones. He saw the first wrap slide from Grogan’s wrists.

“Come on, baby!” yelled Mose, bumping Elisha with his spurs. “Come on! We got a race here afteh all! Yes, suh, ‘is black hawss wakin’ up! Show him something, baby! Show him ow’ class!”

Jockey Grogan laughed and flung an insult over his shoulder.

“Class? That skate?” said he. “Stay with us as long as you can. This is a-a-a horse, nigger, a-a-a horse!”

Black Bill was beginning to run at last, as the grand stand acknowledged with frenzied yells. Yes, he was running, but a gaunt bay horse was running with him, stride for stride. Old Man Curry, at the paddock gate, tugged at his beard with one hand and fumbled for his tobacco with the other.

Side by side the black and the bay swept upon the floundering outsiders, overwhelmed them, and passed on. Side by side they turned into the home stretch, and only two horses were in front of them—Regulator and Miss Amber. The mare was under the whip.

“You say you got a-a-a hawss there!” taunted Mose. “Show me how much hawss he is!”

Grogan shook off the last wrap and bent to his work. Not until then did he realize that the real race was beside him and not with the chestnut out in front.

“Show him up, ‘Lisha! Show him up!” shrilled Mose, and the bay responded with a lengthened stride which gave him an advantage to be measured in inches, but Black Bill gamely fought his way back on even terms again. Miss Amber dropped behind. The boy on Regulator was using his whip, but he might just as well have been beating a carpet with it. Third money was his at the paddock gate.

Seventy-five yards—fifty yards—twenty-five yards—and still the two heads bobbed side by side. Jockey Michael Grogan, hero of many a hard finish; cool, calculating, and unmoved by the deafening clamor beating down from the packed grand stand, measured the distance with his eye—and took a chance. His rawhide whip whistled through the air. Black Bill, unused to punishment, faltered for the briefest fraction of a second, and came on again, but too late.

The presiding judge, an unprejudiced man with a stubby grey moustache, squinted across an imaginary line and saw the bay head before he saw the black. “Jee-roozalum, my happy home!” said he. “That was an awful tight fit, but the Curry horse won—by a whisker. Hang up the numbers. Lord! But that Elisha is a better horse than I gave him credit for being!”

“Yeh,” said the associate judge, “and the nigger outrode Grogan, if anybody should ask you. He had a chance—if he hadn’t let that horse’s head flop to go the bat!”

“It wasn’t that,” said the other quickly. “The horse flinched when he hit him.”

“I been photographed and interviewed till I’m black in the face,” complained Old Man Curry, “and now you come along. You’re worse than them confounded reporters!”

“You bet I am,” was the calm response of the Bald-faced Kid, “because I know more. And yet I don’t know enough to satisfy me. Somebody played Elisha, and it wasn’t me. You never went near the betting ring. I watched you.”

“My money did. Quite a gob of it.”

“And you—you thought he’d win?”

“Didn’t I tell you to bet on him?”

“Hell!” wailed the Bald-faced Kid. “He was lame—he couldn’t walk the night before! Bet on him? How could I after I’d seen him in that fix?”

“Frank,” said the old man, “you believe everything you see, don’t you?”

The Bald-faced Kid sat down and took his head in his hands.

“Tell it to me, old-timer,” said he humbly. “I’m such a wise guy that it hurts me; but something has come off here that’s a mile over my head. Tell me; I’m no mind reader.”

Old Man Curry combed his beard reflectively and gazed through the tack-room door into the dusk of the summer evening.

“Son,” said he at length, “you never swapped hosses much, did you?”

“Never owned any to swap,” was the muffled response.

“Too bad. You would have learned things. For instance, there’s a trick that can be worked when you want to buy a hoss cheap and can get at him for a minute. It’s done with a needle and thread and a hair from the hoss’s tail. There’s a spot in the leg where the tendons come together, and the trick is to pass that hosshair in between the tendons and trim off the ends just long enough so’s you can find ’em again. Best part of the trick is it don’t hurt the hoss none, but he knows it’s there and he won’t hardly rest his foot on the ground till it’s pulled out. Then he’s as good as new again.”

“Lovely!” groaned the Kid. “What makes you so close-mouthed, old-timer?”

“Experience, son, experience. ‘He that hath knowledge spareth his words.’ I spared quite a-many. I knew there was a spy in camp, and I sewed up Elisha on Wednesday and let Henry see him. Al Engle came over and peeked to make sure. I had the little nigger watching for him. You saw Elisha that same night, and the whole kit and boiling of you got a couple of notions fixed in your heads—first, that it was Elisha; second, that he was a tol’able lame hoss. You expected, when you looked in that stall again, you’d see a big red hoss with a white spot on his forehead—lame. Well, you did, but it wasn’t the same one.”

“Elijah!” said the Kid. “And you lamed him too?”

“I had to do it. People expected to see a lame hoss; I had to have one to show ’em, didn’t I? But nobody got a look at him in bright daylight, son. After you went away Wednesday night I pulled out the hosshair, put Elisha in Elijah’s stall, and vice versey, as they say. Then I worked on Elijah, and when Henry came along he didn’t know the difference. Them hosses look a lot alike, anyway; put a little daub of white stuff on Elijah’s forehead, keep him blanketed up pretty snug, and—well, I reckon that’s about all they was to it.”

“Fifty and sixty to one—going begging!” mourning the Kid. “Why didn’t you tell me what was coming off?”

“Because Henry was watching both of us,” was the reply. “And, speaking of Henry, it was you told me the sons of Belial had gone into the spy business, so I p’tected your interests the best I could. Here’s a little ticket calling for quite a mess of money. It’s on the Abe Goldmark’s book, and I didn’t cash it because I wanted you to have a chance to laugh at him when he pays off. Last I seen of him he was sore but solvent.”

The last chance

It was the Bald-faced Kid who christened him Little Calamity because, as he explained, Jockey Gillis was a sniffling, whining, half portion of hard luck and a disgrace to the disreputable profession of touting. “Every season,” said the Bald-faced Kid, “is a tough season for a guy like that. He carries his hard luck with him. He’s cockeyed something awful; his face was put on upside down; you can’t tell whether he’s looking you in the eye or watching out for a policeman, and drunks shy clear across the betting ring to get away from him. That’s the tip-off; when a souse won’t listen to your gentle voice, it’s time to change your system of approach. This Little Calamity person has only got one thing in his favor, and that’s an honest face; he looks like a thief, and, by golly, he is one. He couldn’t sell a twenty-dollar gold piece for a dime or make a sucker put down a bet with the winning numbers already hanging on the board in front of him. They all give him the once over and holler for the police. And as for his riding, he’s about as much help to a horse as a fine case of the heaves. I’m darned if I know how he manages to live!”

Little Calamity sometimes wondered about this himself. Of course there were the rare occasions when he was able to persuade a weak-minded owner to give him a mount on a hopeless outsider or a horse entered only for the sake of the workout, but the five-dollar jockey fees were few and far between. They could not be stretched to cover the intervening periods, so Little Calamity did his best to be a petty larcenist with indifferent success.

He infested the betting ring with a persistence almost pitiful, but he had neither the appearance nor the manner which begets confidence in unlikely tales, and in his mouth the truth itself sounded like a fabrication. He was a willing but an unconvincing liar, and the few who lingered long enough to listen to his clumsy attempts went away smiling.

Little Calamity was nearer thirty than twenty, wrinkled and weazened and bow-legged. Worse than everything else, he was cross-eyed. The direct and compelling gaze is an absolute necessity in the touting business because the average man believes that the liar will be unable to look him in the eye. Little Calamity could not look any man in the eye without first undergoing a surgical operation. He had few acquaintances and no friends; he ate when he could slept where he could, and life to him was just a continued hard-luck story.

Imagine, then, the incredulous amazement of the Bald-faced Kid when Old Man Curry informed him that Jockey Gillis had secured steady employment.

“That shrimp?” said the Kid. “Why, if he had the ice-water privilege in hell he’d starve to death!”

“Frank,” said the old man, “I wish you wouldn’t be so blame keerless with your figures of speech. There won’t be any ice water for the wicked, it says in the Book, and, anyway, it ain’t a fit subject to joke about. It don’t sound pretty.”

The Bald-faced Kid took this reproof with a sober countenance, for he respected the old man’s principles even if he did not understand them.

“All right, old-timer. I’ll take your word for it. Got a steady job, has he? For Heaven’s sake, what doing?”

“Running a racing stable for a man named Hopwood.”

“Running a stable! What does Calamity know about training horses?”

“A heap more than Hopwood, I reckon, and, anyway, he’ll only have one hoss to experiment on. Hopwood was over here this morning, visiting around and getting acquainted, he said. Awful gabby old coot. He’s got a grocery store up in Butte, and used to go out to the race track once in a while. Some of those burglars got hold of him and sold him something with four legs and a tail. They told him it was a sure enough race hoss, and now he’s down here to make his fortune. Gillis saw him first, I reckon. Hopwood has hired him by the month—and a percentage of what he wins.”

At this the Bald-faced Kid laughed long and loud.

“There’s one of ’em born every minute,” said he, “but I didn’t think the supply was big enough to reach as far as Calamity. Didn’t you tell this poor nut what he was up against, trying to horn his way into the Jungle Circuit with one lonely lizard and a human jinx to handle him?”

“No-o,” said Old Man Curry, “I didn’t. What would be the use! You know what Solomon says about that sort of thing, don’t you?”

“I do not,” answered the Kid promptly, “but I’ll be the goat as usual. What does he say?”

“‘Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him,’” quoted Old Man Curry, “and that’s sound advice, my son. When a fool gets an idea crossways in his head, nothing but a cold chisel will get it out again, and, anyway, people don’t thank you for pointing out their mistakes. It’s human nature to get mad at a man that can prove he knows more than you do. This Hopwood has got it all whittled down to a fine point how he’s going to do right well at the racing game, and the best way is to let him try it a while. It’ll cost him money to find out that a grocery store is a safer place for him than a race track. ‘A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool’s back.’ That’s Solomon again. Hopwood has got the gad coming to him for sure.”

“Ain’t that the truth!” exclaimed the Kid. “By the way, did he mention the name of the beetle that’s going to do all this heavy work?”

“That’s the best joke of all,” said Old Man Curry. “Hopwood stables down at the end of the line, where Gilfeather used to be. Go take a look at what they sold him for five hundred dollars.”

“I’ll do that little thing,” said the Kid, rising. “If he’s got any dough left, I may want to sell him something myself!”

Little Calamity was in the box stall, industriously grooming a tall, wild-eyed chestnut animal with four white stockings and a blaze, and as he worked he hummed a tune under his breath. The tune stopped when he became aware of a head thrust in at the open door. The Bald-faced Kid glanced at the horse and his jaw dropped.

“Well, by the limping Lazarus!” he ejaculated. “If they haven’t gone and slipped him Last Chance! Yes, I’d know that darned old hay hound if he was stuffed and in a museum, and, by golly, that’s where he ought to be! Last Chance!”

“What’s it to you?” growled Little Calamity sullenly. “Can’t you mind your own business?”

“Your boss is in big luck,” continued the visitor, pleasantly ignoring Calamity’s manner. “The worst horse and the worst jock in the world—a prize package for fair! Last Chance! His name ought to be No Chance!”

“Now looka here,” whined Calamity, “I never tried to queer anything for you, did I? Live and let live; that’s what I say, and let a guy get by if he can. If you was right up against it and had a chance to grab off eating money, you wouldn’t want anybody around knocking, would you? On the level?”

He looked up as he finished, and the Bald-faced Kid’s heart smote him. Little Calamity’s face was thinner than ever, there were hollows under his wandering eyes, and in them the anxious, wistful look of a half-starved cur which has found a bone and fears that it will be taken away from him. It occurred to the Kid that even a rat like Gillis might have feelings—such feelings as may be touched by hunger and physical discomfort. And there was no mistaking the desperate earnestness of his plea.

“Things have been breaking awful tough for me around here,” he went on. “Awful tough. You don’t know. And then this Hopwood came along. It ain’t my fault if the sucker thinks he’s got another Roseben, is it? He wanted a trainer and a jockey, and somebody else would have picked him up if I hadn’t. It’s the first piece of luck I’ve had this year. All I want is a chance to string with this fellow as long as he lasts and get a piece of change for myself. That ain’t hurting you any, is it? He’s my only chance to eat regular; don’t go scaring him away.”

The Kid was about to reply when a short, fat gentleman waddled around the corner of the barn and paused, wheezing, at the door of the stall. A new owners’ badge dangled prominently from his buttonhole, and this he fingered from time to time with manifest pride. He peered in at Last Chance and beamed upon the Bald-faced Kid with the utmost friendliness, his thick eyeglasses giving him the appearance of a jovial owl.

“Well,” said he heartily, “I see you’re looking him over, young man. He’s mine; I just bought him, and I think I got him cheap. Pretty fine-looking horse, eh?”

The Kid nodded gravely.

“You bet your life!” said he with emphasis. “Take it from me, he is some horse!”

“Some horse is right!” chimed in Little Calamity fervently. “Just wait till I get him in shape, boss, and I’ll show you how much horse he is!”

“And that,” said the Bald-faced Kid, “is no idle statement.”

“Frank,” said Old Man Curry, “you’re making more of a fool of that Hopwood than the Lord intended him to be, and it’s a sin and a shame. Why can’t you let him alone?”

“Because he hands me many a laugh,” said the Bald-faced Kid, “and laughs are good for what ails me. He is a three-ring circus and concert all by himself, but he doesn’t know it, and that’s what makes him so good. And innocent? Say, the original Babes in the Wood haven’t got a thing on him. If he stays around here these sharpshooters will have his shirt.”

“And you’re helping them to get it with your lies. First thing you know you’ll have him betting on that hoss when he starts, and Last Chance never won a race in his life and never will. He can quit so fast that it looks like he’s going the wrong way of the track. Hopwood was around here to-day all swelled up with the stories you’ve been feeding him. It ain’t right, my son, and, what’s more, it ain’t honest. You might just as well pick his pockets and give the money to the bookmakers.”

“The bookmakers won’t get fat on what they take away from him,” was the careless rejoinder. “This fellow has got a groceryman’s heart. He can squeeze a dollar until the eagle screams for help, and he never heard of Riley Grannan. If he bets at all it won’t be more than a ten-dollar note. Last Chance goes in the second race to-morrow—nonwinners at the meeting—and I’m going down to the stable now to have a conference and give Calamity his riding orders.”

“I wash my hands of you,” said the old man. “Fun is all right in its place, but fun that hurts somebody else has a way of coming home to roost. Don’t forget that, my son.”

“Aw, who’s going to hurt him?” was the sulky rejoinder. “I’m only helping the chump to buy some of the experience that you spoke about the other day.”

“Solomon says——” began Old Man Curry, but the Kid beat a hasty retreat.

“Put him on ice till to-morrow!” he called back over his shoulder. “This is my busy day!”

For a horse that had never won a race, Last Chance made a gay appearance in the paddock. Little Calamity, conscious of his shortcomings as a trainer, had done his best to offset them by extra activities in his capacity as stable hand. The big chestnut had been groomed and polished until his smooth coat shone like satin and blue ribbons were braided in his mane. The other nonwinners were a sorry-looking lot of dogs when compared with Last Chance, and the owner’s bosom swelled with proud anticipation.

“Look at the fire in his eye!” said Hopwood to the Bald-faced Kid. “See how lively he is!”

“Uh-huh,” said the Kid, who was present in the rôle of adviser. “He seems to be full of pep to-day.”

As a matter of fact, Last Chance was nervous. He knew that a trip to the paddock was usually followed by a beating with a rawhide whip and a prodding with blunt spurs, hence the skittishness of his behavior and the fire in his eye. Given a decent opportunity he would have jumped the fence and gone home to his stall.

When the bell rang Little Calamity came out of the jockeys’ room, radiant as a butterfly in his new silks; he had the audacity to wink when he saw the Kid looking at him.

“What do we do now?” demanded Hopwood, all in a flutter. “This is new to me, you know.”

“Well,” said the Kid, “I’d say it would be a right pious idea to get this fiery steed saddled up, unless Calamity here is figuring on riding him bareback, which I don’t think the judges would stand for.”

Later it was the Kid who gave Calamity his riding orders. “All right, boy,” said he. “Nothing in here to beat but a lot of lizards. Never look back and make every post a winning one. He can tow-rope this field and drag ’em to death!”

“Pzzt!” whispered the jockey. “Not so strong with it, not so strong!”

While the horses were on their way to the post the Bald-faced Kid escorted Hopwood to a position in front of the grand stand.

“You want to be handy in case he wins,” said the Kid. “You’ll have to go down in the ring if he does. It’s a selling race and they might try to run him up on you.”

“In the ring, eh?” said Hopwood, straightening his collar and plucking at his tie. “Do I look all right?” But the Kid was coughing so hard that he could not answer the question.

“I can’t see very far with these glasses,” said Hopwood, “and you’ll have to tell me about it. Where is he now?”

“At the post,” said the Kid. “The starter won’t fool away much time with those … there they go now! Good start.”

Hopwood pawed at the Kid’s arm.

“I can’t see a thing! Where is he? How’s he doing?”

“He broke flying and he’s right up in front.”

“That’s good! That’s fine!… And now? Where is he now?”

“Still up in front and winging, just winging. It’s an exercise gallop for him. How much did you bet?”

Hopwood took off his glasses and fumbled at them with his handkerchief.

“Where is he now?”

“Second, turning for home. He ought to win all by himself. They’re choking to death behind him.”

“And I didn’t bet a cent!” wailed the owner. “But I said he was a good horse, remember?”

“Sure you did, and he … oh, tough luck! Well, if that ain’t a dirty shame!”

“What is it?” chattered Hopwood. “What happened?”

“They bumped him into the fence, I think…. Yes, he’s dropping back. And it looked like a cinch for him, too!… I’m afraid he won’t get anything this time…. Too bad! Well, that’s racing luck for you. It’s to be expected in this game. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Good thing you didn’t bet.”

“I—I suppose so,” gulped the unhappy owner. “Well, next time, eh?”

“That’s the proper spirit! Keep after ’em!”

Hopwood put on his glasses in time to see the finish of the race. First came four horses, well bunched; after them the stragglers. Last of all a chestnut with four white stockings and a blaze galloped heavily through the dust, snorting his indignation. Last Chance had been hopelessly last all the way in spite of a rawhide tattoo on his flanks.

The Bald-faced Kid, wishing to forestall a conflict of evidence, made it his business to have the first word with the principal witness. He walked beside Little Calamity as that dispirited midget shuffled down the track from the judges’ stand, saddle and tackle on his arm. Close behind them was Hopwood, leading the horse.

“Pretty tough luck,” said the Kid, “getting bumped in the stretch when you had the race won.” Little Calamity stared from under the peak of his cap in blank, uncomprehending amazement.

“Huh?” he grunted. “Bumped?… Aw, quitcha kiddin’!”

“Well,” said the Kid, “the boss couldn’t see and I was telling him about the race. It looked to me as if they bumped him.”

A gleam of intelligence lighted the straying eyes; instantly the jockey took his cue.

“Oh!” said he, loudly, “you mean in the stretch! Yeh, he had a swell chance till then—goin’ nice, and all, but the bumping took the run out of him. He’ll beat the same bunch like breakin’ sticks the next time.” Then, under his breath: “You’re a pretty good guy after all!”

“Well,” was the ungracious rejoinder, “don’t kid yourself that it’s on your account.”

Since it was his practice never to accept the obvious but to search diligently for the hidden motive behind every deed, good or bad, Little Calamity gave considerable thought to the matter and at last believed that he had arrived at the only possible explanation of the Kid’s conduct. “Boss,” said he that evening, “did you bet any money to-day?”

“Not a nickel,” was the answer.

“Or give anybody any money to bet for you?”

“No.”

“Did anybody ask to be your bettin’ commissioner?”

“No. Why?”

“Oh, nothing. I just wanted to know.”

Before Little Calamity went to sleep that night he reviewed the situation somewhat as follows:

“My dope was wrong, but it’s a cinch a hustler like the Kid ain’t hangin’ around the boss for his health…. And he didn’t kick in wit’ that alibi because he loves me any too well…. I can’t figure him at all.”

If he could have heard a conversation then going on in Old Man Curry’s tackle-room, the figuring would have been easier.

“Frank,” said the old man, “I had my eye on you to-day. You ain’t got designs on that fool’s bank roll, have you?”

The Bald-faced Kid blew a cloud of cigarette smoke into the air and watched it float to the rafters before he answered question with question.

“How long have you known me, old-timer?”

“Quite a while, my son.”

“You know that I get my living by doing the best I can?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever know me to steal anything from a blind man? Or even one that was near-sighted?”

“No-o.”

“Then don’t worry about this Hopwood.”

“But he ain’t blind—except in the Scriptural sense.”

“Think not, eh? Listen! That bird can’t see as far as the sixteenth pole. Somebody has got to watch the races and tell him how well his horse is going or else he’ll never know. Think what he’d miss! I’m his form chart and his eyes, old-timer, and all I charge him is a laugh now and then. Cheap enough, ain’t it?”

Old Man Curry found his packet of fine-cut and thrust a large helping into his left cheek. “‘For as the crackling of thorns under a pot,’” he quoted, “‘so is the laughter of a fool.’”

The end of the meeting was close at hand; the next town on the Jungle Circuit was preparing to receive the survivors. The owners were plotting to secure that elusive commodity known as get-away money; some of them would have been glad to mortgage their chances for a receipted feed bill. Last Chance had started five times and each time Hopwood had listened to a thrilling description of the race; the chestnut’s performances had been bad enough to strain the Kid’s powers of invention.

On the eve of the final struggle of the nonwinners, the Kid sat in grave consultation with Hopwood and Little Calamity and the rain drummed on the shingle roof of the tackle room. The fat man was downcast; he had been hinting about selling Last Chance at auction and returning to Butte.

“You don’t mean to say that you’re going to quit?” demanded the Kid, incredulously. “Just when he’s getting good?”

“What’s the use?” was the dreary reply. “Luck is against me, ain’t it?”

“But he’s always knocking at the door, ain’t he? He’s always right up there part of the way. You can’t get the worst of it every time, you know. Be game.”

“I’ve had the worst of it every time so far,” said Hopwood, with a dejected shake of his head. “Every time. I swear I don’t know what’s wrong with that horse. He looks all right and he acts all right, but every time he starts something happens. They bump him into the fence or pocket him or he gets a clod in his eye and quits. He’s been last every time but one and then he was next to last. I—I’m sort of discouraged, boys.”

“Aw, never mind, boss!” chirped Little Calamity, one eye on the Kid and the other wandering in the general direction of the owner. “To-morrow is another day and there ain’t a thing left in the nonwinner class for him to beat. All the good ones are gone. He worked fine this morning, and——”

“You’ve said that every time.”

“Yes, but you’re overlooking the muddy track!” Hopwood blinked in perplexity as the Kid came to the rescue with a new story.

“The muddy track? What difference will that make?”

“Listen to him! All the difference in the wide world!”

“Yeh,” chimed in Calamity. “You bet it makes a difference!”

“You’re forgetting that Last Chance is by a mudder out of a mudder,” suavely explained the Kid. “His daddy used to win stakes kneedeep in it. His mother liked mud so well they had to mix it with her oats to get her to eat regular. What difference will it make? Huh! Wait and see!”

The owner rose, grunting heavily.

“I hope you’re right this time,” said he. “Lord knows I’ve had disappointments enough. When I bought this horse they guaranteed him to win at least every other time he started——”

“With an even break in the luck, of course,” interrupted the Kid. “You’ve got to have luck too.”

“They didn’t mention anything about luck when they took my money.” Hopwood was positive on this point. “They told me it was a sure thing and I wouldn’t be in this mess if I hadn’t thought it was…. You boys talk it over between you. I’m going to ask Mr. Curry if he wants to buy a horse. He can have him for half what he cost me.”

Hopwood turned up his collar and departed; the two conspirators listened until his footsteps died away down the row of stables. “Will Curry split on us?” asked Little Calamity, anxiously.

“Not in a thousand years!” was the confident reply. “The old man is a sport in his way. It’s a queer way, but he’s all right at that. He plays his own string and lets you play yours. Hopwood will find out what Solomon says about buying strange horses, but the old man won’t tip your hand or mine. Queer genius, Curry is…. Well, your sucker has lasted longer than I thought he would.”

“And now he’s getting onto himself,” said Calamity mournfully.

“He’s not. He’s getting cold feet.”

“To-morrow is the last crack we’ll get at him…. Can this beagle run in the mud?”

“How do I know? I was only stringing him.”

Little Calamity sighed and the Kid rose to take his departure.

“Wait a minute!” said the other. “Don’t go yet. Maybe this horse will do better in the mud. You don’t know and I don’t know, but he might.”

“What he might do ain’t worrying me,” said the Kid.

“Listen a second. Maybe you won’t believe it, but I’ve been on the up and up with the boss. Honest, I have. I could have tipped one of the other hustlers to tout him and sink the money for a split, but—well, I didn’t do it, that’s all. He was white to me and I tried to be white too, see? I even told him not to bet on the horse until I gave him the office, and so far we’ve been running for nothing but the purse. You haven’t touted him either——”

“Draw your bat and make a quick finish!” said the Kid shortly. “What’s it all about?”

“Suppose I should talk him into putting a bet down to-morrow?”

“A bet on what?”

“On Last Chance. It ain’t no crime for a man to bet on his own horse, is it? He told me he’d give me a percentage of what he won. Maybe the old crowbait will go better in the mud, and I’ll ride him until his eyes stick out a foot. We might accidentally get down there to the judges’ stand in front, and——”

“And still you haven’t said anything,” interrupted the Kid. “You want something; what is it?”

“I want you not to queer the play. Hopwood won’t bet much; like as not he won’t bet anything without putting it up to you first. It’s my last chance to pick up a piece of change——”

“Last chance on Last Chance,” mused the Kid, “and that’s a hunch, but I wouldn’t play it with counterfeit Confederate money.”

“But if he comes to you, you won’t knock it, will you?”

“I’ll tell him that as an owner he ought to use his own judgment. If he wants to bet, I’ll see that he gets the top price.”

“You are a good guy!” said Little Calamity. “I think Last Chance will be a better horse to-morrow—somehow.”

The Bald-faced Kid shot a keen glance at the jockey.

“What do you mean, a better horse? A powder on his tongue, maybe?”

Calamity shook his head.

“I never hopped a horse; I wouldn’t know how to go about it. If I got to fooling with them speed powders I might give him too much and have him climbing a tree on the way to the post…. Cheese it! Here comes the boss!”

Hopwood entered, shaking the water from the brim of his hat, his lower lip sagging and an angry light in his eye.

“Well,” asked the Kid from the doorway, “what did Curry say?”

“Umph!” grunted the fat man, disgustedly. “He read me a chapter out of Proverbs. It was all about the difference between a wise man and a fool. Confound it! He needn’t have rubbed it in!”

It was the last race of the day and from their sheltered pagoda the judges looked out upon the river of mud which had been the home stretch. Forty-eight hours of rain had turned it into a grand canal. The presiding judge scowled as he examined the opening odds. “Nonwinners, eh? Same old bunch of hounds. Grayling, 2 to 1; Ivy Leaf, 4 to 1; Montezuma, 10 to 1; Bluestone, 10 to 1; Alibi, 15 to 1; Stuffy Eaton, 25 to 1—and here’s Last Chance again! I wonder where Hopwood got that horse? Remember him, two years ago at Butte? I thought he was pulling a junk wagon by now. Last Chance, 50 to 1. Jockey Gillis; hm-m-m. There’s a sweet combination for you! A horse that can’t untrack himself, a jockey that never rode a winner, and a half-witted grocer! Why couldn’t the chump stick to the little villainies that he knows about—sanding the sugar and watering the kerosene? I declare, sir, if I had half an excuse I’d refuse the entry of that horse and warn Hopwood away from here! It would be an act of Christian charity to do it.”

The Bald-faced Kid, faithful to the bitter end, assisted in the paddock as usual. Last Chance, his tail braided in a hard knot and minus the ribbons in his mane, submitted to the saddling process with unusual docility. His customary attitude of protest seemed to be swallowed up in a gloomy acquiescence to fate. It was as if he said: “You can do this to me again if you want to, but I assure you now that it is useless, quite useless.”

Calamity leaned down from the saddle and whispered in the Kid’s ear:

“You can get 50 and 60 to 1 on him! The boss said he’d make a bet. Don’t let him overlook it!”

When the bugle sounded, Hopwood grasped the bridle and led the horse through the chute to the track. The rain beat hard upon his hunched shoulders and his feet plowed heavily through the puddles. Repeated failure had robbed him of the pride of ownership and all confidence in horseflesh. He was, as the Bald-faced Kid said to himself, “a sad looking mess.” Hopwood spoke but once, wasting no words.

“Make good if you’re going to,” said he tersely, “because win or lose I’m through!”

“Yes, boss, and don’t forget what I told you. To-day’s the day to bet on him. Go to it!”

Last Chance splashed away down the track and Hopwood turned on his heel with a growl.

“Come along!” said he to the Kid. “I might as well be all the different kinds of fool while I’m about it!”

“Where to now?” asked the Kid innocently.

“To the betting ring,” was the grim response. “I said I’d bet on him this time and I will! Come along!”

From his perch on the inside rail the official starter eyed the nonwinners with undisguised malevolence. Some of them were cantering steadily toward the barrier, some were walking and one, a black brute, seemed almost unmanageable, advancing in a series of wild plunges and sudden sidesteps.

“Ah, hah,” said the starter, with suitable profanity. “Old Alibi has got his hop in him again! I’ll recommend the judges to refuse his entry.” Then, to his assistant: “Jake, take hold of that crazy black thing and lead him up here. Don’t let go of his head for a second or he’ll be all over the place! Lively now! I want to get out of this rain…. Walk ’em up, you crook-legged little devils! Walk ’em up, I say!”

Last Chance advanced sedately to his position, which was on the outer rail. Grayling, the favorite, had drawn the inner rail. Jake, obeying orders, swung his weight on Alibi’s bit and dragged the rearing, plunging creature into the middle of the line. At that instant the starter jerked the trigger and yelled:

“Come on! Come on!”

The whole thing happened in the flicker of an eyelid. As Jake released his hold, Alibi whirled at right angles and bolted for the inner rail, carrying Grayling, Ivy Leaf, Satsuma, and Jolson with him. They crashed into the fence, a squealing, kicking tangle, above which rose the shrill, frightened yells of the jockeys. This left but four horses in the race, and one of them, old Last Chance, passed under the barrier with a wild bound which all but unseated his rider. It was not his habit to display such unseemly haste in getting away from the post and, to do him justice, Last Chance was no less surprised—and shocked—than a certain young man of our acquaintance.

“Well, look at that lizard go!” gasped the Bald-faced Kid. “Look—at—him—go!”

“Honest Injun?” asked Hopwood. “Is he going—really?”

“Is he going! He’s going crazy! And listen to this! That black thing carried a big bunch of ’em into the fence and they’re out of it! Only four in the race and we’re away flying! Do you get that? Flying!”

“Honest?”

“Can’t you hear the crowd hissing the rotten start?”

“Well,” said Hopwood, “it—it’s about time I had a little luck.”

“That skate has got something besides luck with him to-day!” exclaimed the Kid. “I wonder now—did he try a powder after all? But no, he was quiet enough on the way to the post.”

Seeing nothing ahead of him but mud and water, Jockey Gillis steered Last Chance toward the inner rail.

“Don’t you quit on me, you crab!” he muttered. “Don’t you quit! Keep goin’ if you don’t want me to put the bee on you again! Hi-ya!”

Montezuma, Bluestone, and Stuffy Eaton were the other survivors—bad horses all. Their riders, realizing that something had happened to the real contenders, drove them hard and on the upper turn Jockey Gillis, peering over his shoulder, saw that he was about to have competition. He began to boot Last Chance in the ribs, but the aged chestnut refused to respond to such ordinary treatment.

“All right!” said Jockey Gillis, savagely. “If you won’t run for the spurs, you’ll run for this!” And he drove his clenched fist against the horse’s shoulder. Last Chance grunted and did his best to leap out from under his tormentor. Failing in this he spurted crazily and the gap widened.

“There it goes again!” muttered the Kid, under his breath. “He’s pretty raw with it. Now if the judges notice the way that horse is running they may frisk Calamity for an electric battery and if they find one on him—good night!”

“Where is he now?” demanded Hopwood.

“Still in front—if he can stay there.”

“Honest—is he?”

“Ask anybody!” howled the Kid, in sudden anger. “You don’t need to take my word for it!”

At the paddock gate Last Chance was rocking from side to side with weariness and the pursuit was closing in on him. Jockey Gillis measured the distance to the wire and waited until Montezuma and Bluestone drew alongside. Twenty-five feet from home his fist thumped Last Chance on the shoulder again. The big chestnut answered with a frenzied bound and came floundering under the wire, a winner by a neck.

“He won!” cried Hopwood. “That—that was him in front, wasn’t it?”

“That was what’s left of him,” was the response. “Maybe we’d better not cheer until the judges give us the ‘official’ on those numbers. I’ve got a hunch they may want to see Jock Gillis in the stand.” And to himself: “The fool! He handed it to him again right under their noses! Does he think the judges are cockeyed too?”

“Here’s our chance to get rid of the grocer,” said the presiding judge to his associate. “Did you notice the way that horse acted? The boy’s got a battery on him, sure as guns!”

One hundred yards from the wire Last Chance checked to a walk and as Jockey Gillis turned the horse he tossed a small, dark object over the inside fence. It fell in a puddle of water and disappeared from sight. When the winner staggered stiffly into the ring, Gillis flicked the visor of his cap with his whip.

“Judges?” he piped.

The presiding judge answered the salute with a nod, but later when the rider was leaving the weighing room, he halted him with a curt command.

“Bring that tack up here, boy!”

The investigation, while brief, was thorough. The judges examined the saddle carefully for copper stitching, looked at the butt end of the whip, ran their hands over Calamity’s thin loins and last of all felt in his bootlegs for wires connected with the spurs. All this time Jockey Gillis might have been posing as a statue of outraged innocence.

“Nothing on him,” said the presiding judge shortly. “Hang up the official.”

Jockey Gillis bowed and saluted.

“Judges, can I go now?” said he.

“Yes,” said the presiding judge, “and don’t come back. You’re warned off, understand?”

“Judges,” whined Jockey Gillis, “I ain’t done a thing wrong. That old horse, he——”

“Git!” said the presiding judge. “Now where is that man Hopwood? If he bet much money on this race——”

The Bald-faced Kid was waiting at the paddock gate. He greeted Little Calamity with blistering sarcasm.

“You’re a sweet little boy, ain’t you? A nice little boy! Here I stall for you for weeks and you didn’t even tell me that the old skate was going to have the Thomas A. Edison trimmings with him to-day!”

“Honest,” said the jockey, “I didn’t think there was enough ‘lectricity in the world to make it a cinch. I took a long chance myself, that’s all. I had to do it.”

“And got caught with the battery on you, too. Didn’t you know any better’n to slip him the juice right in front of the wire? Think those judges are blind?”

“Well,” said Little Calamity, “I don’t know how good their eyes are, at that. Jock Hennessey, he’s been riding with a hand buzzer every time the stable checks are down. This morning he loaned it to me.”

“Oh, it was a hand buzzer, eh?”

“Sure. I chucked it over the fence when I was turning him around after the race.”

“Fine work. What did the judges say to you?”

“They warned me away from the track. I should worry. There’s other tracks. Only thing is, they’ve got Hopwood in the stand now, and he’ll be fool enough to tell ’em this was the first time he bet on the horse. Somehow, I’d hate to see the old bird get into trouble…. Say, by the way, how much did he bet?”

The Bald-faced Kid began to laugh. He laughed until he had to lean on the rail for support.

“Don’t worry,” said he, at last. “The judges won’t be too hard on him. He hunted all over the ring until he found some 75 to 1 and then he bet the wad—two great big iron dobey dollars—all at once, mind you!”

“Two dollars!” gasped Little Calamity. “Two dollars?”

“It serves you right for not letting me know about the buzzer! I’d have made him bet more. As it stands, your cut will be seventy-five—if he splits with you, and I think he will. That’s a lot of money—when you haven’t got it.”

“Bah! Chicken feed!” This with an almost lordly scorn. “It’s a good thing those judges didn’t take off my boots. Then they would have found something!” He fumbled for a moment and produced eight pasteboards. “I had sixteen dollars saved up and one of the boys bet it for me—every nickel of it on the nose. Seventy-five dollars! I’m over eight hundred winner to the race!”

“Holy mackerel!” ejaculated the Kid. “What are you going to do with all that money?”

“I’m goin’ to buy a diamond pin and a gold watch and a ring with a red stone in it and a suit of clothes and an overcoat and a derby hat and a pair of silk socks and a porterhouse steak four inches thick and a——”

“E—nough!” said the Kid. “Sufficient! If there’s anything left over, you better erect a monument to the guy that discovered electricity!”

This happened long ago. Hopwood’s grocery store still does a flourishing business. Over the cash register hangs a crayon portrait of a large yellow horse with four white stockings and a blaze. The original of the portrait hauls the Hopwood delivery wagon. Irritated teamsters sometimes ask Mr. Hopwood’s delivery man why he does not drive where he is looking.

Sanguinary Jeremiah

It was not yet dawn, but Old Man Curry was abroad; more than that, he was fully dressed. It was a tradition of the Jungle Circuit that he had never been seen in any other condition. The owner of the “Bible horses,” in shirt sleeves and bareheaded, would have created a sensation among his competing brethren, some of whom pretended to believe that the patriarch slept in his clothes. Others, not so positive on this point, averred that Old Man Curry slept with one eye open and one ear cocked toward the O’Connor barn, where his enemies met to plot against him.

Summer and winter, heat and cold, there was never a change in the old man’s raiment. The rusty frock coat—black where it was not green, grey along the seams, and ravelled at the skirts—the broad-brimmed and battered slouch hat, and the frayed string tie had seen fat years and lean years on all the tracks of the Jungle Circuit, and no man could say when these things had been new or their wearer had been young. Old Man Curry was a fixture, as familiar a sight as the fence about the track, and his shabby attire was as much a part of his quaint personality as his habit of quoting the wise men of the Old Testament and borrowing the names of the prophets for his horses.

The first faint golden glow appeared in the east; the adjoining stables loomed dark in the half light; here and there lanterns moved, and close at hand rose the wail of a sleepy exercise boy, roused from slumber by a liberal application of rawhide. From the direction of the track came the muffled beat of hoofs, swelling to a crescendo, and diminishing to a thin tattoo as the thoroughbreds rounded the upper turn.

Old Man Curry squared his shoulders, turned his face toward the east, and saluted the dawn in characteristic fashion.

“‘A time to get and a time to lose; a time to keep and a time to cast away,’” he quoted. “Solomon was framin’ up a system for hossmen, I reckon. ‘A time to get and a time to lose.’ Only thing is, Solomon himself couldn’t figure which was which with some of these rascals! Oh, Mose!”

“Yessuh, boss! Comin’!”

Jockey Moseby Jones emerged from the tackle-room, rubbing his eyes with one hand and tugging at his sweater with the other. Later in the day he would be a butterfly of fashion and an offense to the eye in loud checks and conflicting colors; now he was only a very sleepy little darky in a dingy red sweater and disreputable trousers.

“Seem like to me I ain’t had no sleep a-a-a-tall,” complained Mose, swallowing a tremendous yawn. “This yer night work sutny got me goin’ south for fair.”

Shanghai, the hostler, appeared leading Elisha, the star of the Curry barn.

“Send him the full distance, Mose,” said the aged owner, “and set him down hard for the half-mile pole home.”

“Hard, boss?”

“As hard as he can go.”

“But, boss——” There was a note of strong protest in the jockey’s voice.

“You heard me,” said Old Man Curry, already striding in the direction of the track. “Extend him and let’s see what he’s got.”

“Extend him so’s eve’ybody kin see whut he’s got!” mumbled Mose rebelliously. “Huh!”

In the shadow of the paddock Old Man Curry came upon his friend, the Bald-faced Kid, a youth of many failings, frankly confessed. The Kid sat upon the fence, nursing an old-fashioned silver stop watch, for he was “clocking” the morning workouts.

“Morning, Frank,” said Old Man Curry. “You’re early.”

“But not early enough for some of these birds,” responded the Kid. “You galloping something, old-timer?”

“‘Lisha’ll work in a minute or two.”

“Uh-huh. I kind of figured you’d throw another work into him before to-morrow’s race. Confound it! If I didn’t know you pretty well, I’d say you ought to have your head examined! I’d say they ought to crawl your cupola for loose shingles!”

“And if you didn’t know me at all, Frank, you’d say I was just plain crazy, eh?” Old Man Curry regarded his young friend with thoughtful gravity. Here were two wise men of the turf approaching truth from widely varying standpoints, yet able to meet on common ground and exchange convictions to mutual profit. “Spit it out, son,” said Old Man Curry. “I’d sort of like to know how crazy I am.”

“Fair enough!” said the Bald-faced Kid. “Elisha’s a good horse—a cracking good horse—but to-morrow’s the end of the meeting and you’ve gone and saved him up to slip him into the toughest race on the card—on a day when all the burglars at the track will be leveling for the get-away money! You could have found a softer spot for him to pick up a purse, and, take it from me, the winner’s end is about all you’ll get around here. The bookmakers lost a lot of confidence in human nature when you pulled that horsehair stunt on ’em, and they wouldn’t give you a price now, not even if you started a nice motherly old cow against stake horses. As for Elisha—the bookies begin reaching for the erasers the minute they hear his name! You couldn’t bet ’em diamonds against doughnuts on that horse. They’ve been stung too often.”

“Maybe I wasn’t aiming to bet on him,” was the mild reply.

“Then why put him up against such a hard game?”

“Oh, it was a kind of a notion I had. I know it’ll be a tough race. Engle is in there, and O’Connor and a lot more that have been under cover. ‘Lisha is goin’ a mile this morning. Better catch him when he breaks. He’s off!”

Whatever Jockey Moseby Jones thought of his orders, he knew better than to disobey them. He sent Elisha the distance, driving him hard from the half-mile pole to the wire, and the Bald-faced Kid’s astounded comments furnished a profane obbligato.

“Take a look at that!” said he, thrusting the watch under Old Man Curry’s nose. “Pretty close to the track record for a mile, ain’t it? And every clocker on the track got him too! If I was you I’d peel the hide off that nigger for showing a horse up like that!”

“No-o,” said Old Man Curry, “I reckon I won’t lick Mose—this time. You forgot that Jeremiah is goin’ in the last race to-morrow, didn’t you?”

“Jeremiah!” The Bald-faced Kid spoke with scorn. “Why, he bleeds every time out! It’s a shame to start him!”

“Maybe he won’t bleed to-morrow, Frank.”

“He won’t, eh?” The Bald-faced Kid drew out the leather-backed volume which was his constant companion, and began to thumb the leaves rapidly. “You’re always heaving your friend Solomon at me. I’ll give you a quotation I got out of the Fourth Reader at school—something about judging the future by the past. Look here: ‘Jeremiah bled and was pulled up.’ ‘Jeremiah bled badly.’ Why, everybody around here knows that he’s a bleeder!”

“There you go again,” said Old Man Curry patiently. “You study them dad-burned dope sheets, and all you can see is what a hoss has done. You listen to me: it ain’t what a hoss did last week or last month—it’s what he’s goin’ to do to-day that counts.”

“A quitter will quit and a bleeder will bleed,” said the Kid sententiously.

“And Jeremiah says the leopard can’t change his spots,” said Old Man Curry. “Have it your own way, Frank.”

Exactly twenty-four hours later the Bald-faced Kid, peering across the track to the back stretch, saw Old Man Curry lead a black horse to the quarter pole, exchange a few words with Mose, adjust the bit, and stand aside.

“What’s that one, Kid?” The question was asked by Shine McManus, a professional clocker employed by a bookmaker to time the various workouts and make a report on them at noon.

“That’s Jeremiah,” said the Kid. “The old man hasn’t worked him much lately.”

“Good reason why,” said Shine. “I wouldn’t work a horse either if he bled every time he got out of a walk! There he goes!”

Jeremiah went to the half pole like the wind, slacked somewhat on the upper turn, and floundered heavily into the stretch.

“Bleeding, ain’t he?” asked Shine.

“He acts like it—yes, you can see it now.”

As Jeremiah neared the paddock he stopped to a choppy gallop, and the railbirds saw that blood was streaming from both nostrils and trickling from his mouth.

“Ain’t that sickening? You wouldn’t think that Old Man Curry would abuse a horse like that!”

The Bald-faced Kid went valiantly to the defense of his aged friend. He would criticise Old Man Curry if he saw fit, but no one else had that privilege.

“Aw, where do you get that abusing-a-horse stuff! It don’t really hurt a horse any more’n it would hurt you to have a good nosebleed. It just chokes him up so’t he can’t get his breath, and he quits, that’s all.”

“Yes, but it looks bad, and it’s a shame to start a horse in that condition.”

The argument waxed long and loud, and in the end the Kid was vanquished, borne down by superior numbers. The popular verdict was that Old Man Curry ought to be ashamed of himself for owning and starting a confirmed bleeder like Jeremiah.

On get-away day the speculative soul whose financial operations show a loss makes a determined effort to plunge a red-ink balance into a black one. On get-away day the honest owner has doubts and the dishonest owner has fears. On get-away day the bookmaker wears deep creases in his brow, for few horses are “laid up” with him, and he wonders which dead one will come to life. On get-away day the tout redoubles his activities, hoping to be far away before his victims awake to a sense of injury. On get-away day the program boy bawls his loudest and the hot-dog purveyor pushes his fragrant wares with the utmost energy. On get-away day the judges are more than usually alert, scenting outward indications of a “job.” On get-away day the betting ring boils and seethes and bubbles; the prices are short and arguments are long; strange stories are current and disquieting rumors hang in the very air.

“Now, if ever!” is the motto.

“Shoot ’em in the back and run!” is the spirit of the day, reduced to words.

In the midst of all this feverish excitement, Old Man Curry maintained his customary calm. He had seen many get-away days on many tracks. Elisha was entered in the fourth race, the feature event of the day, and promptly on the dot, Elisha appeared in the paddock, steaming after a brisk gallop down the stretch.

Soon there came a wild rush from the betting ring; the prices were up and Elisha ruled the opening favorite at 7 to 5. Did Mr. Curry think that Elisha could win? Wasn’t the price a little short? In case Mr. Curry had any doubts about Elisha, what other horse did he favor? The old man answered all questions patiently, courteously, and truthfully—and patience, courtesy, and truth seldom meet in the paddock.

We-ell, about ‘Lisha, now, he was an honest hoss and he would try as hard to win at 7 to 5 as any other price. ‘Lisha was trained not to look in the bettin’ ring on the way to the post. Ye-es, ‘Lisha had a chance; he always had a chance ‘count of bein’ honest and doin’ the best he knowed how. The other owners? Well, now, it was this way: he couldn’t really say what they was up to; he expected, though, they’d all be tryin’. Himself person’ly, he only bothered about his own hosses; they kept his hands full. Was Engle going to bet on Cornflower? Well, about Engle—hm-m-m. He’s right over there, sonny; better ask him.

After Little Mose had been given his riding orders—briefly, they were to do the best he could and come home in front if possible—Old Man Curry turned Elisha over to Shanghai and went into the betting ring. Elisha’s price was still 7 to 5. The old man paused in front of the first book, a thick wallet in his fingers. The bookmaker, a red-eyed, dyspeptic-looking person, glanced down, recognized the flowing white beard under the slouch hat, took note of the thick wallet, and with one swipe of his eraser sent Elisha to even money.

“That’s it! Squawk before you’re hurt!” grunted Elisha’s owner, shouldering his way through the crowd to the next stand.

This bookmaker was an immensely fat gentleman with purplish jowls and piggy eyes which narrowed to slits as they rested upon the corpulent roll of bills which Old Man Curry was holding up to him.

“Don’t want it,” he wheezed.

“What ails it?” Old Man Curry’s voice rose in a high, piping treble, shrill with wrath. “It’s good money. I got some of it from you. Your slate says 6 to 5, ‘Lisha.”

“Don’t want it,” repeated the bookmaker, his eyes roving over the crowd. “Get it next door.”

“That’s a fine howdy-do!” snapped the exasperated old man. “I can’t bet on my own horse—at a short price, too!”

Word ran around the betting ring that Old Man Curry was trying to bet so much money on Elisha that the bookmakers refused his wagers, and there was an immediate stampede for the betting booths and a demand for Elisha at any figure.

The third bookmaker forestalled all argument by wiping out the prophet’s price entirely, while the crowd jeered.

“Does a bet scare you that bad?” asked Old Man Curry with sarcasm.

“Any bet from you would scare me, professor. Any bet at all. Try the next store.”

Old Man Curry worked his way around the circle, Elisha’s price dropping before his advance. His very appearance in the ring had been enough to encourage play on the horse, and the large roll of bills which he carried so conspicuously added a powerful impetus to the rush on the favorite.

“Curry’s betting a million!”

“Elisha’s a cinch!”

“The old coot’s got ’em scared!”

Elisha dropped to even money, then went to odds on. At 4 to 5 and even at 3 to 5 the crowd played him, and sheet and ticket writers were kept busy recording bets on the Curry horse.

Somewhere in the maelstrom Old Man Curry encountered the Bald-faced Kid plying his vocation. He was earnestly endeavoring to persuade a whiskered rustic to bet more money than he owned on Cornflower at 3 to 1. Though very busy, the young man was abreast of the situation and fully informed of events, as indeed he usually was. Retaining his interest in the rustic by the simple expedient of thrusting a forefinger through his buttonhole, the Kid leaned toward the old man.

“See what your little nigger did, riding that horse out yesterday morning? You might have got 2 or 3 to 1 on him if Mose hadn’t tipped him off to every clocker at the track!”

Old Man Curry digested this remark in silence.

“I hear that Engle is sending the mare for a killing,” whispered the Kid. “Know anything about it?”

“Everything is bein’ sent for a killing to-day,” said Old Man Curry. “Well, she’ll have ‘Lisha to beat, I reckon. And all he’s runnin’ for is the purse, Frank, like you said. I did my best to bet ’em until the price got too plumb ridiculous, but the children of Israel wouldn’t take my money.”

The Bald-faced Kid glanced at the roll of bills which the old man still held in his hand.

“Well, no wonder!” he snorted. “Don’t you know that ain’t any way to do? You come in here and wave a chunk like that under their noses, and—by golly, you ought to have your head examined!”

“I reckon you’re right,” said the old man apologetically. “All I ask is please don’t have me yanked up before the Lunacy Board till after the last race, because——”

“Aw, rats! Beat it now till I land this sucker!”

“Frank,” whispered the old man, “tell him to save a couple of dollars to bet on Jeremiah!”

It was a great race. Cornflower, lightly weighted, able to set a pace or hold one, did not show in front until the homestretch was reached. Then the mare suddenly shot out of the ruck and flashed into the lead. But she soon had company. Honest old Elisha had been plugging along in the dust for the first half mile, but at that point he began to run, and the Curry colors moved up with great celerity. Merritt, glancing over his shoulders, shook out the last wrap on the mare just as Elisha thundered into second place. Gathering speed with every awkward bound, the big bay horse slowly closed the gap. At the paddock there was no longer daylight between them, and Old Man Curry stopped combing his beard. He knew what that meant. So did Jockey Merritt, plying whip and spur. So did Al Engle and those who had been given the quiet tip to play Cornflower for a killing. So did the Bald-faced Kid, edging away from the rustic who, with a Cornflower ticket clutched in his sweating palm, seemed to be trying to swallow the thyroid cartilage of his larynx. So did Jockey Moseby Jones, driving straight into the hurricane of cheers which beat down from the packed grand stand.

“Elisha! Elisha! Come on, you Elisha!”

Now the gaunt bay head was at the mare’s flank, now at the saddle girth, now it blotted out the shoulder, now they were neck and neck; one more terrific bound, an ear-splitting yell from the grand stand, and Elisha’s number went slowly to the top of the pole.

The judges were examining the opening betting on the last race of the meeting.

“Ah, we have Old Man Curry with us again!” said the presiding judge. “Jeremiah. If the meeting had another two weeks to run I’d ask him not to start that horse again. I’m told he bled at his workout this morning. By the way, the old man acted sort of grouchy after the Elisha race. Did you notice it?”

“Yes, and I know why,” said the associate judge. “He tried to bet a barrel of money and the bookmakers laughed at him. As a general thing he bets a few dollars in each book; this time he went at ’em too strong. The bookies are a little leary of that innocent old boy.”

“Call him innocent if you want to. He’s either the shrewdest horseman on this circuit—or the luckiest, and I be damned if I can tell which! Hm-m-m. Jeremiah, 20 to 1. If he bled this morning, he ought to be a thousand!”

So, also, thought the employer of Shine McManus, none other than the fat gentleman with the purple jowls, otherwise Izzy Marx, known to his friends as “Easy Marks.” McManus was a not unimportant cog in the secret-service department maintained by the bookmaker.

“Listen, Mac!” wheezed Marx. “I want you to tail Old Man Curry from now until the barrier goes up, understand? Yes, yes, you told me the horse bled this morning, but that old fox has got the miracle habit; I’d hate to give him too long a price on a dead horse, understand, Mac? If Curry is going to bet a plugged nickel on this here Jeremiah, I’ll hold him out and not take a cent on him. Stick around close and shoot me back word by Abie. The rest of these fellows have got 20 to 1 on him; he’s 15 to 1 in this book until I hear from you. Hurry, now!”

There were ten horses entered in the final race of the meeting, and nine of them were strongly touted as “good things.” The tenth was Jeremiah and the most reckless hustler at the track refused to consider the black horse as a contender for anything but sanguinary honors.

“Him? Nix! Didn’t you hear about him? Why, he bled this morning in his workout! No chance!”

Of course there were those who did not believe this, so they asked Jeremiah’s owner and Old Man Curry stamped up and down the paddock stall and complained querulously. They asked him if Jeremiah had a chance and he replied that Elisha was a good hoss, a crackin’ good hoss, but they wouldn’t let him bet his money. They asked him if Jeremiah was likely to bleed and he told them that a bookmaker who wouldn’t take a bet when it was shoved under his nose ought to be run off the track. They asked him what the other owners were doing and were informed that he had a tarnation good mind to make a holler to the judges. Word of this condition of affairs soon reached Mr. Marx.

“The old nut is ravin’ all over the place about how he couldn’t get a bet down on Elisha. Says if he wasn’t allowed to bet on the best horse in his barn he certainly ain’t goin’ to bet on the worst one. Oh, yes, and he’s talkin’ about makin’ a holler to the judges!”

“Fat chance!” chuckled Marx, and Jeremiah went to 25 to 1.

Clear and high above the hum of the betting ring rose the notes of a bugle. The last field of the season was being called to the track and instead of the usual staccato summons the bugler blew “Taps.”

“There she goes, boys!” bellowed the bookmakers. “That’s good-by for a whole year, you know! Bet ’em fast! They’re on the way to the post! Only a few minutes more!”

The final attack closed in around the stands. Men who had solemnly promised themselves not to make another bet caught the fever and hurled themselves into the jam, bent on exchanging coin of the realm for pasteboard tickets and hope of sudden prosperity. It was the last race of the season, wasn’t it, and good-bye to the bangtails for another year!

During this mad attack Abie squirmed through the mob and plucked at Marx’s sleeve. It was his third report.

“The old bird is settin’ out there in the corner of the stall all by himself, chewin’ a straw. Says he’s so disgusted he don’t care if he sees the race or not. I started to kid him about bein’ such a crab and, honest, I was afraid he’d bite me!”

Mr. Marx grinned and chalked up 40 to 1 on Jeremiah. “Now let him bleed!” said he.

The distance of the final event was three-quarters of a mile and the crowd in the betting ring continued to swarm about the stands until the clang of the gong warned them that the race was on. Then there was a wild rush for the lawn; even the fat Mr. Marx climbed down from his perch and waddled out into the sunshine, blinking as he turned his small eyes toward the back stretch.

Now little Mose had been watching the starter carefully and had thrown his mount at the barrier just as it rose in the air, but there were other jockeys in the race who had done the same thing, and Jeremiah’s was not the only early speed that sizzled down to the half-mile pole. At least four of the “good things” were away to a running start—Fireball, Sky Pilot, Harry Root, and Resolution. Jeremiah trailed the quartet, content to kick clods at the second division. On the upper turn Fireball and Harry Root found the pace too warm for them and dropped back. Jeremiah found himself in third place, coasting along easily under a strong pull. The presiding judge turned his binoculars upon the black horse and favored him with a searching scrutiny.

“Ah, hah!” said he, wagging his head. “I thought as much. Jeremiah may have bled this morning, but he ain’t bleeding now and that little nigger is almost breaking his jaw to keep him from running over the two in front!… Old Man Curry again! Oh, but he’s a cute rascal!”

“I’d rather see him get away with it than some of these other owners, at that,” said the associate judge.

“So would I … I kind of like the old coot…. Now what on earth do you suppose he’s done to that horse since this morning?”

A few thousand spectators were asking variations of the same question, but one spectator asked no questions at all. The Bald-faced Kid was reduced by stuttering degrees to dumb amazement. He had ignored Old Man Curry’s kindly suggestion and had persuaded all and sundry to plunge heavily on Fireball.

It really was not much of a contest. Sky Pilot, on the rail, swung wide turning into the stretch and carried Resolution with him. Like a flash Little Mose shot the black horse through the opening and straightened away for the wire, an open length away for the wire, an open length in the lead.

“Come git him, jocks!” shrilled Mose. “Come git ol’ Jeremiah to-day!”

The most that can be said for the other jockeys is that they tried, but Little Mose hugged the rail and Jeremiah came booming down the home stretch alone, fighting for his head and hoping for some real competition which never quite arrived. The black horse won by three open lengths, won with wraps still on his jockey’s wrists, and, as the form chart stated, “did not bleed and was never fully extended.”

“Well, anyhow,” said Mr. Marx, as he wheezed back to his place of business, “Curry won’t get anything but the purse again and that’ll help some. If he brought a dead horse around here in a wagon, the best he’d get from me would be 1 to 2!”

The judges, of course, were curious. They invited Old Man Curry into the stand to ask him if he had bet on Jeremiah.

“Gentlemen,” said he, removing his battered slouch hat, “I give you my word, I never went near that betting ring but once to-day, and that was to bet on a real hoss. ‘Elisha!’ I says, and I shoved it at ’em. Judges, they laughed at me. They wouldn’t take a cent. Not a cent! And I was so mad——”

“Yes, yes,” said the presiding judge, soothingly, “but how do you account for Jeremiah bleeding in his work this morning and running such a good race this afternoon?”

“Gentlemen,” said Old Man Curry, “I don’t account for it. Solomon was the smartest man that ever lived, I reckon, and there was a lot of things he never figured out. I reckon now, if he’d been in this business——”

“Good-bye, Mr. Curry,” said the presiding judge, “and good luck!”

The Bald-faced Kid might see miracles with his eyes, but there was that about him which demanded explanation. Chastened in spirit, utterly humble and cast down, he called upon Old Man Curry. He found him seated in his tackle-room, reading the Old Testament by the light of a lantern.

“Come in, Frank…. Got the Lunacy Board with you?”

“Don’t rub it in. And if you can spare the time, I wish you’d tell me what you’ve been up to with Jeremiah.”

“Oh, Jeremiah. Well, now, he’s a better hoss than some folks think. There wasn’t anything wrong with him but just them little bleedin’ spells. When I got him cured of those——”

“Cured! Was he cured this morning? Didn’t I see him bleed all over the place?”

“You saw some blood, yes … Frank, I wish’t you wouldn’t interrupt me when I’m talkin’…. Well, about three weeks ago I met up with a man that claimed he had a remedy to cure bleeders. I let him try his hand on Jeremiah and he done a good job. Since then we’ve been workin’ the black rascal at two in the mornin’ when all you wise folks was in bed…. Of course, I didn’t want anybody to know it was Jeremiah I was figurin’ on, so I gave ’em something else to think about. I started ‘Lisha the same day and I tried to get as many folks interested in him as I could. I had the little nigger send him a mile so fast that a wayfarin’ man and a fool couldn’t help but see he was ready. And then I kind of distracted ’em some more by goin’ into the bettin’ ring with a big mess of one dollar bills with a fifty on the outside. I held the money up where everybody could see it and I carried on scandalous when the bookmakers wouldn’t take it, I’d have carried on a lot worse if one of them children of Israel had called my bluff. And then I got so mad because they wouldn’t let me bet on ‘Lisha that they thought I’d lost interest in Jeremiah…. I’ve heard that Jeremiah wasn’t played. He was played all over the ring, two dollars at a time and it was my money that played him. But of course those bookmakers knew I was sulkin’ out in the paddock and took the sucker money…. Anything else you want to know?”

“Yes!” The Bald-faced Kid had reached the bursting point. “Was Jeremiah bleeding this morning or not?”

Old Man Curry stroked his beard thoughtfully.

“Well, it was real blood, if that’s what you want to know,” said he. “It took me some time to study that out. Last week Mose came around here, squawkin’ on one of them little toy balloons. I took it away from him for fear it would make the hosses nervous—and then I got to studying how it was made. Last night I done some shopping. I bought a nice, fat hen and a glass pumping arrangement from a drug store…. The hen, she passed away this mornin’ about daybreak. She bled quite a lot, but I got most of it in that rubber bag, and when Jeremiah was ready for his gallop——”

“You put it in his mouth?”

Old Man Curry nodded.

“Oh, why didn’t you tell me?” wailed the Bald-faced Kid. “I could have cleaned up!”

“I started in to tell you, son, and you said I ought to have my head examined. And then, I kind of like to surprise folks, Frank. I knew you wouldn’t have the nerve to bet on a bleeder like Jeremiah, so I had some bettin’ done for you.” Old Man Curry fumbled in his pocket and produced a roll of bills. “Solomon says there’s a time to get, and I don’t know of any better time than get-away day!”

Eliphaz, late Fairfax

When Old Man Curry’s racing string arrived at the second stop on the Jungle Circuit the Bald-faced Kid met the horse car in the railroad yards and watched the thoroughbreds come down the chute into the corral. One by one he checked them off: Elisha, the pride of the stable; Elijah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Esther, Nehemiah, Ruth, and Jeremiah. The aged owner, straw in mouth and hands clasped behind him, watched the unloading process narrowly giving an order now and then and sparing no more than a nod for his young friend. This sort of welcome did not discourage the Kid. He was accustomed to the old man’s spells of silence, as well as his garrulous interludes.

“They look all right, old-timer,” said the Kid, making conversation for its own sake. “Yes, sir, they look good. The trip didn’t bother ’em much. Elisha, now, I’d say he was ready to step out and bust a track record as soon as he gets the cinders out of his ears. Shouldn’t wonder if he——”

The aimless chatter died away into amazed silence. Shanghai, the hostler, appeared at the head of the chute leading a large, coal-black horse.

“Well, for Heaven’s sake!” muttered the Kid, moving nearer the fence, his eyes glued on the black stranger. “Where did you pick up that fellow?… One white forefoot. H-m-m!… Say, you don’t mean to tell me this is Fairfax?”

Old Man Curry nodded.

“Fairfax!” ejaculated the Bald-faced Kid disgustedly. “Well, how in the name of all that is good, great, and wise did you get that crowbait wished on you?”

Old Man Curry threw away his straw and reached for his packet of fine cut, a sure sign that he was about to unburden himself.

“He wa’n’t wished on me, Frank. Jimmy Miles was stuck with a feed bill, and at the last minute, just as I was loadin’ my hosses, he——”

“He stuck you with that,” finished the Kid, pointing at the black horse.

“Well, I dunno’s I’d say stuck,” remarked Old Man Curry, looking critically at Fairfax. “Jimmy sold him to me for next to nothing.”

“And you can bet he didn’t misrepresent the goods any!” said the Kid. “That’s exactly what Fairfax is—next to nothing. He’s so near nothing that a lot of folks can’t tell the difference. If you said to me: ‘This is a black horse named Fairfax and that over there is nothing,’ I couldn’t tell which was which. Old-timer, you’re in bad.”

“Mebbe I am.” Old Man Curry’s tone was apologetic and conciliating in the extreme. “Mebbe I am. You ought to know ’bout hosses, Frank. You most gener’ly do.”

“Cut out the sarcasm, because here’s one I do know…. You made a sucker of me on Jeremiah, but don’t rub it in. This Fairfax looks like a stake horse and on his breeding he ought to run like one, but he simply can’t untrack himself in any kind of going. If hay was two bits a ton and this black fellow had an appetite like a humming bird, he wouldn’t be worth feeding. I’m telling you!”

“I hear you, Frank.” Old Man Curry pretended to reflect deeply, but there was a shifting light in his eye. “Ah, hah! Your advice, then, would be to take him out and shoot him to save expense?”

“Oh, quit your kidding, old-timer. You’ve bought a race horse; now go ahead and see what you can do with him.”

“Well, ain’t that queer?” ejaculated the old man. “Ain’t it? Great minds run in the same channels, for a fact. You know, that’s exackly what I was figgerin’ to do! I ain’t had time to look this black hoss over yet—I bought him just before we pulled out of the railroad yards—but I’ve been expectin’ to see what I could do with him. Whenever I get hold of a hoss that ought to run—a hoss that looks as if he could run, but ain’t doin’ it—the next thing I want to find out is why. If I thought there was a cold strain in Fairfax, I wouldn’t waste a minute on him, but I know he’s bred right. His daddy was sure a go-getter from ‘way up the creek and his mother was a nice, honest little mare and game as a badger…. And, speakin’ about breeding, Frank, I don’t know’s you ever thought of it, but when it comes to ancestors, a real thoroughbred hoss has got something on a human being. Even Fairfax over there had his ancestors picked out for him by folks who knew their business and was after results—go back with him as far as you like and that’ll be true. A hoss or a mare without class can’t ring in on a family tree, whereas humans ain’t noways near that partickler. Son, good looks has made grandfathers out of lots of men that by rights should have been locked up instead of married. Did you ever think of that?”

The Bald-faced Kid laughed.

“I think that you’re putting up a whale of an argument to excuse yourself for shipping that black hay burner around the country. You’d save breath by admitting that Miles slipped one over on you.”

“Mebbe he did and mebbe he didn’t. Jimmy Miles don’t know all there is to be knowed about hosses—coming right down to it, I’d say he’s pretty near ignorant. Like as not he’s overlooked something about this Fairfax. I tell you, on his breeding, the hoss ought to run.”

“And Al Engle ought to be in jail, but he ain’t. He’s here, big as life.”

“And aspreading himself like a green bay tree, I reckon,” said the old man. “I’ve lopped a few branches off that rascal in my time, and if I have any luck I’ll lop off a few more at this meeting…. Ole Maje Pettigrew is still the presiding judge here, ain’t he?”

“Sure. They can’t get rid of him.”

“A lot of crooks would like to.” There was a trace of grimness in the old man’s tone. “Pettigrew won’t stand for no monkey business, pullin’ a boss’s head off on Monday and cuttin’ him loose on Tuesday. They’ve got to be middlin’ consistent p’formers to get by the major, and if Al Engle goes runnin’ ’em in and out he’ll get his jacket dusted good; you mark what I say!”

The Bald-faced Kid shook his head.

“That’s your hope talking now,” said he, “and not your common sense. These race-track judges have been after The Sharpshooter a long time, but I notice he’s still wearing an owner’s badge and coming in at the free gate. He’s a crook—no getting away from it—but he’s got high-up friends.”

“Let him have ’em!” snapped Old Man Curry. “You know what Solomon says? ‘Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished.’ Let Engle have his pull; it won’t buy him a nickel’s worth with ole Maje Pettigrew. When he starts dealin’ out justice, the cards come off the top of the deck and they lay as they fall. The major will get him, I tell you!”

“I won’t go into deep mourning if he does,” said the Kid. “Al Engle is no friend of mine, old-timer. If he was overboard in fifty feet of water and couldn’t swim a lick, I’d toss him a bar of lead—that’s how much I think of him. He did me a mean trick once and I haven’t got over it yet. He—say! Don’t you feed that black horse, or what?”

“Huh? Feed him? Of course we feed him! Why?”

“You don’t feed him enough or he wouldn’t be trying to eat up the top rail of the fence. Take a look, will you?”

Sure enough, Fairfax was gnawing at the pine board; the grating rasp of his teeth became audible in the silence. After a time the horse dropped his head and gulped heavily.

“Suffering mackerel!” ejaculated the Kid. “He ain’t really swallowing those splinters, is he?”

The time came when the Bald-faced Kid recalled that Old Man Curry’s next remark was not a direct reply to his question. After a careful survey of the black horse the patriarch of the Jungle Circuit spoke.

“What Jimmy Miles don’t know about hosses would fill a big book!”

Ten days later Fairfax, running in Old Man Curry’s colors and under the name of Eliphaz, won a cheap selling race from very bad horses—won it in a canter after leading all the way. The Bald-faced Kid, a student to whom past performance was a sacred thing, was shocked at this amazing reversal of form and sought Old Man Curry—and information.

“I don’t know how you do it!” said the youth. “All I can say is that you’re a marvel—a wizard. This Fairfax——”

“Eliphaz, son,” said the old man. “Eliphaz. I got his name changed.”

“And his heart too,” said the Kid. “And maybe you got him a new set of legs, or lungs, or something? Well, Eliphaz, then—do you know how fast that bird stepped the first half mile?”

Old Man Curry nodded.

“I reckon I do,” said he simply. “I bet quite a chunk on him.”

“But of course you wouldn’t open up and tell a friend!” The Bald-faced Kid was beginning to show signs of exasperation. “You’re the fellow that invented secrets, ain’t you, old-timer? You’re by a clam out of an oyster, you are! Never mind! Don’t say it! I can tell by the look in your eye that Solomon thought the clam was the king of beasts. What I want to know is this: how did that black brute come to change his heart at the same time with his name?”

“I dunno’s there was ever anything wrong with his heart,” said Old Man Curry. “Lots of folks make that mistake and think a man’s heart is bad when it’s only his habits that need reformin’. Now Eliphaz, on his breeding, he ought to——”

“Yes, yes! I know all about his breeding—by Stormcloud out of Frippery—but he never ran to his breeding before. The way he ran for Jimmy Miles you’d have thought he was by a steam roller out of a wheelbarrow. What in Sam Hill have you been doing to him—sprinkling powders on his tongue?”

The old man’s eyes flashed wrathfully.

“You know better’n that, Frank. All the help the black hoss had was what little bit Mose give him after the barrier went up. Ketch me handing the drug habit to a dumb critter! I guess not!”

“Keep your shirt on,” was the soothing reply. “I’m only telling you what they say. They think Jimmy Miles didn’t know the right prescription.”

“A lot of things he don’t know besides p’scriptions!” retorted Old Man Curry, still nettled. “Hosses, for one!”

“But you’re getting away from the subject, old-timer. Ain’t you going to tell me what you’ve done to this horse to make him win?”

“Some day, Frank—some day.” The aged horseman combed his white beard with his fingers and regarded his impatient young friend with benign tolerance. “You—got many clients, so far?” Thus tactfully did Old Man Curry recognize the fact that the Bald-faced Kid was what another man might have called a tout.

“A few, yes,” said the Kid. “Pikers.”

“Well, sort of whisper to ’em that Eliphaz’ll be a good bet the next time out.”

“If it’s a dog race, there won’t be any price on him,” was the sulky response.

“It won’t be a dog race,” said Old Man Curry. “It’ll be a hoss race.”

A few days afterward the Bald-faced Kid picked up the overnight entry slip and there found something which caused him to emit a long, low whistle.

“Well, the poor old nut!” murmured the Kid. “Just because he thinks well of the black horse, he’s got no license to slip him in against the real ones…. Too much class here for Eliphaz. He may be able to beat dogs and nonwinners, but Topaz and Miss Louise will run the eyeballs out of him. Let’s see—Topaz won his last start——” and the Bald-faced Kid fell to thumbing his form charts.

Topaz and Miss Louise did not run the eyeballs out of Eliphaz; the supposed contenders never got near enough to the black horse to give him a race. Eliphaz burst out in front when the barrier rose and stayed there, triumphantly kicking clods in the faces of his pursuers. To quote from the form chart notes: “Eliphaz much too good; surprised the talent by winning as he pleased.”

He certainly surprised the Bald-faced Kid, and grieved him too, for that youth had persuaded a most promising client to bet his last dollar on Topaz. Topaz was second, which was some consolation, but the horse without any license to start in such company passed under the wire with three lengths to spare, his mouth wide open because of a strong pull. That night Old Man Curry poured vinegar into the wound.

“Well, son,” said he, “I hope and trust you remembered what I said and cashed in on the black hoss to-day. They was offerin’ 10 to 1 on him in the openin’ betting. He’s an improved hoss, ain’t he?”

“He’s another horse!” grunted the Kid. “Mose had to choke him all the way down the stretch to keep him from breaking a track record! What on earth have you done to him?”

“That’s what they’d all like to know,” chuckled the old man. “‘A word spoken in due season, how good it is!’ I spoke one a few days ago. Did you heed it, Frank?”

“How in hell could I figure him to beat Topaz?” snarled the Kid. “On his past performance he ain’t even in the same class with horses like he beat to-day!”

Old Man Curry smiled and returned to Solomon.

“‘A scorner seeketh wisdom and findeth it not, but knowledge is easy unto him that understandeth.’”

“Yes—‘unto him that understandeth!’ That’s the point; I don’t understand. Nobody understands. Here’s a dead horse come to life and he’s got everybody guessing. Miracles are all right, but I’m never going to bet on one until I know how it’s done. Say, old-timer, ain’t you going to tell me what’s happened to Eliphaz?”

“No, but I’ll tell you what Solomon says ’bout a loose tongue, my son.” Old Man Curry paused, for he was addressing the vanishing coat tails of a much-disgusted young man. The Bald-faced Kid took himself off in a highly inflamed state of mind, and the patriarch, looking after him, shook his head sorrowfully.

“‘How much better is it to get wisdom than gold,’” he quoted, “but Frank, now—he wants ’em both at the same time!”

There were others who were earnest in their search for information, which became acute when Eliphaz, late Fairfax, won his fourth race, a brilliant victory over the best horses at the track. Among the seekers after knowledge, were Al Engle and Martin O’Connor, horsemen and turf pirates with whom Old Man Curry had been at war for some time. Engle, sometimes called The Sharpshooter, was the chief conspirator; O’Connor was his lieutenant. Engle, who was responsible for the skirmishes with Curry, had begun operations with the theory that Old Man Curry was a harmless, brainless individual, “shot full of luck,” he expressed it. Circumstances had caused him to alter his opinion somewhat; he no longer pitied the owner of Eliphaz and Elisha; he suspected him. O’Connor went even farther. He respected and feared everything bearing the Curry tag, the latter feeling amounting almost to superstition.

These two unworthies discussed the resurrection of Fairfax, the place of the confab being O’Connor’s tackle-room and the time being the night following the fourth straight victory of the Curry colors as borne by Eliphaz.

“If it ain’t hop he’s using on that horse,” said O’Connor, “I wish you’d tell me what it is. A month ago Fairfax was a bum; now he’s pretty near a stake horse and getting better every time he starts. Why couldn’t we have a smart ‘vet’ look him over on the sly before he goes to the post the next time? Then we could send word to the judge that Curry was stimulating the horse and——”

“And create a lovely precedent,” sneered Engle. “Use your head a little more; that’s what it’s for. A man that hops his horses as often as you do can’t afford to start any investigations along that line. If you must throw something at Curry, throw a brick, not a boomerang…. And somehow I don’t believe it’s hop. Fairfax was probably a good horse all the time, but Jimmy Miles didn’t know it; and, as for training, Jimmy couldn’t train a goat for a butting contest, let alone a thoroughbred for a race! Curry is a wise horseman—I’ll give the old scoundrel that much—and he’s got this bird edged up. Take it from me, he’s a cracking good selling plater. I’d like to have him in my barn.”

O’Connor laughed unpleasantly. He resented Engle’s easy and arrogant assumption of mental superiority, and was thankful for a chance to remind The Sharpshooter of one skirmish in which all the honors had gone to Old Man Curry.

“G’wan, run him up like you did Elisha,” said O’Connor. “Grab him out of a selling race. My memory ain’t what it used to be, Al, but seems to me you took one of Curry’s horses away from him and framed him up for a killing. Did I dream it, or did the skate run last? Go on and grab another horse away from the old boy!”

“Will you ever quit beefing about the money you lost on that race?” snapped Engle.

“Will I ever forget who got me into it?” countered O’Connor. “And if you’ll take a tip from me—which you won’t because you think you’re smarter than I am—you’ll let Old Man Curry’s horses alone. It ain’t in the cards that you or me can monkey with those Bible horses without getting hurt. Grab this Fairfax, or whatever they call him now, but count me out.”

“No-o,” said The Sharpshooter, his lips pursed and his brow wrinkled. “I don’t want to grab him. I’d rather get him some other way.”

“Buy him, then.”

Engle shook his head.

“Curry wouldn’t sell—not to me, anyway. He might to some one else. I saw Jimmy Miles this afternoon, and he was crying about what a wonderful horse he’d sold for nothing. I wonder where I could get hold of Jimmy?”

The following evening the Bald-faced Kid called upon his aged friend and interrupted a heart-to-heart session in Old Man Curry’s tackle-room.

“Hello, old-timer! Hello, Jimmy! Am I butting in here?”

Jimmy Miles, a thin, sandy-haired man with pale-blue eyes and a retreating chin, answered for both.

“No, nothing private. I’ve been tryin’ to tell Curry here that he kind of took a mean advantage of me when he bought Fairfax so cheap.”

“Eliphaz,” corrected the old man, “and it wa’n’t no advantage because you was crazy to sell.”

“I’d been drinkin’ or I wouldn’t have been such a fool,” whined Miles. “Booze in—brains out: the old story. If I hadn’t been right up against it, I wouldn’t have sold the horse at all—attached to him the way I was. I’d worked with him a long time, gettin’ him ready to win, and it was a mistake to let him go just when he was shapin’ up. I—I’d like to buy him back. Put a price on him, old man.”

Miles stooped to extinguish a burning match end which the Kid had thrown on the floor, and in that instant the Bald-faced Kid caught Old Man Curry’s eye and shook his head ever so slightly.

“He ain’t for sale,” said the owner of Eliphaz.

“Not for cash—and your own figure?” persisted Miles. Again a wordless message flashed across the tackle-room. This time the Kid, yawning, stretched one hand high over his head.

“Two thousand dollars!” said Old Man Curry promptly.

Miles gulped his astonishment.

“Why—why, you got him for a hundred and fifty!” he cried.

“He’s a better hoss than when I got him,” said the old man, “and he’s won four races. Maybe he’ll win four more. You asked for my figure. You got it. Two thousand. Not a cent less.”

Miles argued and pleaded, but the old man was firm.

“It ain’t as if I was wantin’ to sell,” he explained. “I never want to sell—when the other man wants to buy. That’s business, ain’t it? Two thousand—take it or leave it.”

“I’ll see you later,” said Miles. “You might come down some.”

Hardly was he out of the room before Old Man Curry turned to his remaining guest.

“Well, Frank,” said he, “you know something. What is it?”

“I know Miles is trying to buy the black horse for Al Engle.”

Old Man Curry’s fist thumped upon his knee.

“Engle! How did you find that out, son?”

The Bald-faced Kid grinned.

“Everybody ain’t as close-mouthed as you are, old-timer. Engle, O’Connor, and Jimmy Miles split a quart of wine in the restaurant under the grand stand after the last race to-day and the waiter hung around and got an earful. O’Connor was against the deal from the jump. He says nobody can win any money on a Bible horse without queering his luck. Engle knows you wouldn’t sell to him so he sent Miles after you and told him what to say. He’d like to run that horse in his colors next Saturday and win the Handicap with him.”

“You’re sure he ain’t intending to lay him up with the books and have him pulled, or something?”

“Not at this track, old-timer. You see, Engle is just the least little bit leery of Pettigrew. They talked it all over and decided that it wouldn’t be healthy for him to buy a four-time winner and make a bad showing with him the first time out. He wants the horse for a gambling tool, all right enough, but he won’t be foolish enough to do any cheating with Eliphaz at this track. Engle says himself that he don’t dare take a chance—not with old Pettigrew laying for him—on general principles. Engle thinks that if he buys the black horse and wins a good race with him first time out it may pull the wool over Pettigrew’s eyes. He says Eliphaz is a cinch in the Handicap next Saturday.”

Old Man Curry fingered his beard for some time in silence.

“Blast the luck!” said he suddenly. “Why didn’t I know Miles was arepresentin’ Al Engle?”

“You’d have said three thousand, eh?”

“No,” said Old Man Curry. “No, son. Fifteen hundred.”

“Fifteen hundred! You’re crazy!”

“Mebbe I am, but Solomon, he says that even a fool, if he keeps his mouth shut tight enough, can pass for a wise man…. Frank, I wish you’d go out and find Jimmy Miles. Sort of hint to him that if he comes back here he won’t be throwed out on his head. Do that for me, and mebbe you won’t lose nothing by it.”

The negotiations for the purchase of Eliphaz were long drawn out, but on Friday evening at dusk Old Man Curry went into the stall and said good-bye to his four-time winner.

“Don’t be so skittish!” said the old gentleman. “I ain’t come to put the strap on ye…. Habit is a great thing, black hoss, a great thing. In this case I’m kind of dependin’ on it. You know what the dog done, don’t ye? And the sow that was washed, she went wallerin’ in the mire, first chance she got. That’s in the New Testament, but Peter, he got the notion from Solomon and didn’t give him credit either…. Good-bye, black hoss, and whatever happens, good luck!”

This was at dusk, but it was close to eleven o’clock when the transaction was completed by transfer of a fat roll of bills, which Old Man Curry counted very carefully.

“Four hundred—five hundred—Jimmy, this hoss has got a engagement for the Handicap to-morrow—seven hundred—seven-fifty—Was you thinkin’ of startin’ him?”

“M—well, yes. I think he’s got a chance,” said Miles.

“A royal chance—‘Leven hundred—twelve hundred…. In that case, price bein’ satisfactory and all, I oughtn’t to hold out any info’mation. This black hoss shouldn’t be worked to-morrow mornin’. He got his last workout to-day; the full distance, and he’s ready. I wasn’t even goin’ to warm him up before takin’ him to the paddock. Some hosses run better hot; some run better cold…. Fourteen hundred—fifteen hundred, and O. K.—Better not forget that, Jimmy.”

“I won’t, old-timer. Guess I better take him now, eh?”

“As well now as any other time. He’s your hoss.”

Major Ewell Duval Pettigrew was an early riser, but he was barely into his trousers when a bell boy tapped at his door. The major was small and plump, with a face like a harvest moon, if you can imagine a harvest moon wearing a bristling moustache and goatee. Horsemen knew to their sorrow that the major owned a long memory, a short temper, and strong prejudices. Consistent racing was his cry and woe to the in-and-outer.

“Somebody to see me, eh?” sputtered the major. “Blankety blank it to blank! Man can’t even get his breakfast in peace! Oh, Mr. Curry. Show the gentleman up, boy.”

“Judge,” said Old Man Curry, after shaking hands, “there’s something you ought to know. I bought that Eliphaz hoss from Jimmy Miles—bought him cheap.”

“And a good bargain, suh,” remarked Major Pettigrew.

“Mebbe. Well, Miles has been pesterin’ me for a week wantin’ to buy the hoss back. Said he never would have sold him if he hadn’t been in licker. He kind of thought I took advantage of him, he said, but it wa’n’t true, judge, not a word of it. So last night I let him buy the hoss back—for cash. This mornin’ the hoss is in Al Engle’s barn.”

“Ah!” Major Pettigrew twisted his goatee until it stuck out straight from his chin. “Engle, eh?”

“He knew I never would have sold that hoss to him, so he sent Miles,” explained Old Man Curry. “I—I’ve had some trouble with Engle, judge. I beat him a few times when he wasn’t lookin’ for me to win. In case anything happens, I thought I better see you and explain how Engle got hold of the hoss—through another party.”

“Yes, suh,” said Major Pettigrew. “I understand yo’ position perfectly, suh. Suppose, now, you had not sold the animal. Would you say he had a chance to win the Handicap?”

“Judge,” said Old Man Curry earnestly, “I would have bet on him from hell to breakfast. Now I don’t know’s I would put a nickel on him.”

“Neither would I, suh. And, speaking of breakfast, Mr. Curry, will yo’ join me in a grilled kidney?”

“Thank you just the same, judge, but I reckon I better be gettin’ back to the track. I had my breakfast at sunup. I thought you ought to know the straight of how this black hoss come to change owners.”

“I am indebted to you, suh,” said the major, with a bow.

Jockey Merritt, wearing Engle’s colors, stood in the paddock stall eyeing Eliphaz and listening to the whispered instructions of the new owner.

“Get him away flying, jock, and never look back. He’s a fast breaker. Keep him in front all the way, but don’t win too far.”

“Bettin’ much on him?” asked Merritt.

“Not a nickel. He opened at even money and they played him to 4 to 5. I don’t fancy the odds, but you ride him just the same as if the last check was down—mind that. On his workout yesterday morning he’s ready for a better race than any he’s shown so far, so bring him home in front.”

The bugle blared, the jockeys were flung into the saddles and the parade began. The race was at seven-eighths, and as the horses passed the grand stand on the way to the post Jockey Merritt heard his name called. Major Pettigrew was standing on the platform in front of the pagoda, bawling through a megaphone.

“Boy, bring that black hoss over here!”

Merritt reined Eliphaz across the track, touched the visor of his cap with his whip, and looked up inquiringly.

“Son,” said Major Pettigrew, “you’re on the favorite, so don’t make any mistakes with him. I want to see you ride from start to finish—and I’m goin’ to be watchin’ you. That’s all.”

“I’ll do my best, judge,” was Merritt’s answer.

“You see that the hoss does his best,” warned the major. “Proceed with him, son.”

The Handicap was a great race, but we are concerned with but one horse—Eliphaz, late Fairfax. When the barrier rose Jockey Merritt booted the spurs home and tried to hurl the big black into the lead. He might as well have tried to get early speed out of a porpoise. Eliphaz grunted loudly and in exactly five lumbering jumps was in last place; the other horses went on and left the favorite snorting in the dust. Jockey Merritt raked the black sides with his spurs and slashed cruelly with his whip—the favorite would not, could not get out of a slow, awkward gallop.

“Blankety blank it!” exclaimed Major Pettigrew to the associate judge. “What did I tell you, eh? Sure as a gun, Engle laid him up, and the books made him favorite and took in a ton of money! Look at him, will you? Ain’t that pitiful?”

“He runs like a cow,” said the major’s assistant. “Merritt is certainly riding him, though. He’s whipping at every jump.”

It was a long way around the track, and probably only one man was really sorry for Eliphaz. Old Man Curry, at the paddock gate, shook his head as the black horse floundered down the stretch, last by fifty yards, the blunt spurs tearing at his sides and the rawhide raising welts on his shoulders.

The winning numbers had dropped into position before Eliphaz came under the wire. Major Pettigrew took one look at the horse and called to the official messenger.

“Find Engle and tell him I want to see him!”

“Well, old-timer, here we are again with our hat in our hand!” It was the Bald-faced Kid, at the door of Old Man Curry’s tackle-room. “This time you’ve put one over for fair! Major Pettigrew has just passed out his decision to the newspaper boys.”

“Ah, hah!” said the old man, looking up from the Book of Proverbs. “His decision, eh? Was he—kind of severelike?”

“Oh, no—o! Not what you’d call severe. I suppose he could have ordered Engle boiled in oil or hung by the neck or something like that, but the major let him down light. All he did was to rule him off the turf for life!”

“Gracious Peter! You don’t tell me!”

“Yes, and his horses too. The whole bunch! Engle is almost crazy. He swears on his mother’s grave that he’s in-no-cent and he’s going to appeal to the Jockey Club and have Eliphaz examined by a ‘vet’ and the Lord knows what all. Oh, he’s wild! It seems that Pettigrew wanted him to prove that he’d backed the horse and he couldn’t produce the losing tickets. If Merritt hadn’t half killed the horse, Pettigrew would have got him too.”

“Well, well!” said the old man, turning back to Proverbs. “I was just readin’ something here. ‘He that seeketh mischief, it shall come unto him.’ Engle has been seekin’ mischief a long time now and look what he’s got.”

“Too true, old-timer,” said the Bald-faced Kid, “but who was it ordered the mischief wrapped up and delivered to him? Come through!”

“Hold up your right hand!” said Old Man Curry.

“Cross my heart and hope to die if I ever tell!” said the Kid. “Now then, come clean.”

“Frank,” said the old man, “do you remember when we was unloadin’ the hosses and ketched Eliphaz bitin’ at the fence?… You do? Then you ought to be ashamed to ask any questions, because if you know hosses like you should know ‘em—in your business—you wouldn’t need to ask questions.

“Eliphaz is a cribber, and a cribber is a hoss that sucks itself full of wind like a balloon. I knew the minute I see him drop his head and swallow that way that cribbin’ was what ailed him. That explained his bein’ such a bad race hoss. Jimmy Miles probably never done a thing to correct that habit—didn’t know he had it, likely.

“Well, the first thing I did was to keep the hoss’s head tied high in the daytime, because no hoss will crib unless he can get his head down. Then at night I put on a cribbin’ strap and buckled it tight around his neck. He could get his head down all right, but he couldn’t suck any air. With that habit corrected, Eliphaz was a great hoss.

“When I found out that Engle wanted to buy him, I let Eliphaz crib all day Friday, after he’d been worked, and when I sold him I didn’t sell the strap. That’s all, Frank. When he went to the post he was so full of air that if Merritt hadn’t been settin’ on him he’d have gone up like a balloon. That’s why I warned you not to let anybody bet on him…. Did you do pretty well, Frank?”

“I got a toothful while some other folks was getting a meal,” answered the Kid. “Just one thing more: where did you get that name—Eliphaz?”

“That was a sort of a joke,” confessed the old man. “Once there was a party named Job, and he had all sorts of hard luck. Some of that hard luck was in not bein’ able to lose his friends. They used to come and see him and hold a lodge of sorrow and set on the ground and talk and talk—whole chapters of talk—and the windiest one of ’em all——”

“I get you!” chuckled the Bald-faced Kid. “That was Eliphaz!”

Old Man Curry nodded.

“‘Knowledge is easy unto him that understandeth,’” he quoted.

“Yes, but an inside tip now and then never hurt anybody,” said the Bald-faced Kid. “Declare me in on the next miracle, will you?”

The redemption handicap

“Well, old sport, are you going to slip another one over on ’em to-day?”

“What do you think of Jeremiah’s chances, Mr. Curry?”

“Can this black thing of yours beat the favorite?”

“There’s even money on Jeremiah for a place; shall I grab it?”

Old Man Curry, standing at the entrance to a paddock stall, lent an unwilling ear to these queries. He was a firm believer in the truth, but more firmly he believed in the fitness of time and place. The whole truth, spoken incautiously in the paddock, has been known to affect closing odds, and it was the old man’s habit to wager at post time, if at all. Those who pestered the owner of the “Bible stable” with questions about the fitness of Jeremiah and his chances to be first past the post went back to the betting ring with their enthusiasm for the black horse slightly abated. Old Man Curry admitted, under persistent prodding, that if Jeremiah got off well, and nothing happened to him, and it was one of his good days, and he didn’t get bumped on the turn, and the boy rode him just right, and he could stay in front of the favorite, he might win. Pressed further, a note of pessimism developed in the patriarch’s conversation; he became the bearded embodiment of reasonable doubt. Curry’s remarks, rapidly circulating in the betting ring, may have made it possible for Curry’s betting commissioner, also rapidly circulating at the last minute, to unload a considerable bundle of Curry’s money on Jeremiah at odds of 5 and 6 to 1.

One paddock habitué, usually a keen seeker after information, might have received a hint worth money had he come after it. Old Man Curry noted the absence of the Bald-faced Kid, and when the bugle sounded the call to the track he turned the bridle over to Shanghai, the negro hostler, and ambled into the betting ring in search of his young friend. The betting ring was the Kid’s place of business—if touting is classed as an occupation and not a misdemeanour—but Old Man Curry did not find him in the crowd. It was not until the horseman stepped out on the lawn that he spied the Kid, his elbows on the top rail of the fence, his chin in his hands, and his back squarely turned to the betting ring. He did not even look around when the old man addressed him.

“Well, Frank, I kind of expected you in the paddock.”

The Kid was staring out across the track with the fixed gaze of one who sees nothing in particular; he grunted slightly, but did not speak.

“Jeremiah—he’s worth a bet to-day.”

“Uh-huh!” This without interest or enthusiasm.

“I saw some 5 to 1 on him just now.”

The Kid swung about and glanced listlessly toward the betting ring. Then he looked at the horses on their way to the post. The old man read his thought.

“You’ve got a couple of minutes yet,” said he. “Mebbe more; there’s some bad actors in that bunch, and they’ll delay the start.”

The Kid looked again at the betting ring; then he shook his head. “Aw, what’s the use?” said he irritably. “What’s the use?”

Old Man Curry’s countenance took on a look of deep concern.

“What ails you, son? Ain’t you well?”

“Well enough, I guess. Why?”

“Because I never see you pass up a mortal cinch before.”

The Kid chuckled mirthlessly. “Old-timer,” said he, “I’m up against a cinch of my own—but it’s a cinch to lose.”

He returned to his survey of the open field, but Old Man Curry lingered. He stroked his beard meditatively.

“Son,” said he at length, “Solomon says that a brother is born for adversity. I don’t know what a father is born for, but I reckon it’s to give advice. Where you been the last week or ten days? It’s mighty lonesome round the stable without you.”

“I’m in a jam, and you can’t help me.”

“Mebbe not, but it might do some good to talk it all out of your system. You know the number, Frank.”

“You mean well, old-timer,” said the Kid; “and your heart’s in the right place, but you—you don’t understand.”

“No, and how can I ‘less you open up and tell me what’s the matter? If you’ve done anything wrong——”

“Forget it!” said the Kid shortly. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. I’m trying to figure out how to do right!“…

That night the door of Old Man Curry’s tack room swung gently open, and the aged horseman, looking up from his well-thumbed copy of the Old Testament, nodded to an expected visitor.

“Set down, Frank, and take a load off your feet,” said he hospitably. “I sort of thought you’d come.”

For a time they talked horse, usually an engrossing subject, but after a bit the conversation flagged. The Kid rolled many cigarettes which he tossed away unfinished, and the old man waited in silence for that which he knew could not long be delayed. It came at last in the form of a startling question. “Old-timer,” said the Kid abruptly, “you—you never got married, did you?”

Old Man Curry blinked a few times, passed his fingers through his beard, and stared at his questioner. “Why, no, son.” The old man spoke slowly, and it was plain that he was puzzled. “Why, no; I never did.”

“Did you ever think of it—seriously, I mean?”

Old Man Curry met this added impertinence without resentment, for the light was beginning to dawn on him. He drew out his packet of fine cut and studied its wrappings carefully.

“I’m not kidding, old-timer. Did you ever think of it?”

“Once,” was the reply. “Once, son, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. She was the right one for me, but she got the notion I wasn’t the right one for her. Sometimes it happens that way. She found the man she thought she wanted, and I took to runnin’ round the country with race horses. After that she was sure I was a lost soul and hell-bent for certain. This was a long time ago—before you was born, I reckon.”

After a silence, the Kid asked another question:

“Well, at that, the race-track game is no game for a married man, is it?”

“M-m-well,” answered the patriarch thoughtfully, “that’s as how a man’s wife looks at it. Some of ’em think it ain’t no harm to gamble s’long’s you can win, but the average woman, Frank, she don’t want the hosses runnin’ for her bread and butter. You can’t blame her for that, because a woman is dependent by nature. If the Lord had figured her to git out an’ hustle with the men, He’d have built her different, but He made her to be p’tected and shelteredlike. A single man can hustle and bat round an’ go hungry if he wants to, but he ain’t got no right to ask a woman to gamble her vittles on any proposition whatever.”

“Ain’t it the truth!” ejaculated the Bald-faced Kid, with a depth of feeling quite foreign to his nature. “You surely spoke a mouthful then!” Old Man Curry raised one eyebrow slightly and continued his discourse.

“For a man even to figger on gettin’ married, he ought to have something comin’ in steady—something that bad hosses an’ worse men can’t take away from him. He oughtn’t to bet at all, but if he does it ought to be on a mortal cinch. There ain’t many real cinches on a race track, Frank; not the kind that a married man’d be justified in bettin’ the rent money on. Yes, sir, a man thinkin’ ’bout gettin’ married ought to have a job—and stick to it!”

“And that job oughtn’t to be on a race track either,” supplemented the Kid, his eyes fixed on the cigarette which he was rolling. “But that ain’t all I wanted to ask you about, old-timer. Suppose, now, a fellow had a girl that was too good for him—a girl that wouldn’t wipe her feet on a gambler if she knew it, and was brought up to think that betting was wrong. And suppose now that this fellow wasn’t even a gambler. Suppose he was a hustler—a tout—but he’d asked the girl to marry him without telling her what he was, and she’d said she would. What ought that fellow to do?”

Old Man Curry took his time about answering; took also a large portion of fine cut and stowed it away in his cheek.

“Well, son,” said he gently, “it would depend a lot on which the fellow cared the most for—the race track or the girl.”

The Kid flung the cigarette from him and looked up, meeting the old man’s eyes for the first time. “I beat you to it, old-timer! Win or lose, I’m through at the end of this meeting. There’s a fellow over in Butte just about my age. He was a hustler too, and a pal of mine, but two years ago he quit, and now he’s got a little gents’ furnishing-goods place—nothing swell, of course, but the business is growing all the time. He’s been after me to come in with him on a percentage of the profits, and last night I wrote him to look for me when they get done running here. That part of it is settled. No more race track in mine. But that ain’t what I was getting at. Have I got to tell the girl what I’ve been doing the last five years?”

“Would you rather have her find out from some one else, Frank?”

“No-o.”

“If you want to start clean, son, the best place to begin is with the girl.”

“But what if she throws me down?”

“That’s the chance you’ll have to take. You’ve been taking ’em all your life.”

“Yes, but nothing ever meant as much to me as this does.”

“Well, son, the more a woman cares for a man the more she’ll forgive.”

“Did Solomon say that?” demanded the Kid suspiciously.

“No, I said it. You see, Frank, it was this way with Solomon: he had a thousand wives, more or less, and I reckon he never had time to strike a general average. He wrote a lot ’bout women, first and last, but it seems he only remembered two kinds—the ones that was too good to live and the ones that wasn’t worth killin’. It would have been more helpful to common folks if he’d said something ’bout the general run of women. You’d better tell her, Frank.”

The Bald-faced Kid sighed.

“I’d rather take a licking. You’re sure about that forgiving business, old-timer?”

“It’s the one best bet, my son.”

“Pull for it to go through, then. Good night—and thank you.”

Left alone, Old Man Curry turned the pages for a time, then read aloud:

“‘There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a maid—the way of a man with a maid.’ Well, after all, the straight way is the best way, and the boy’s on the right track.”

A few days later Old Man Curry, sunning himself in the paddock, caught sight of the Kid. That engaging youth had a victim pinned in a corner and, program in hand, was pointing the way to prosperity.

“Now, listen,” he was saying; “you ain’t taking a chance when you bet on this bird to-day. Didn’t I tell you that the boy that rides him is my cousin? And ain’t the owner my pal? What better do you want than that? This tip comes straight from the barn, and you can get 20 to 1 for all your money!”

The victim squirmed and wriggled and twisted and would have broken away but for the Kid’s compelling eye. At last he thought of something to say:

“If this here Bismallah is such a hell-clinkin’ good race horse, how come they ain’t all bettin’ on him?”

“Why ain’t they?” the Kid fairly squealed. “Because we’ve been lucky enough to keep him under cover from everybody! That’s why! Nobody knows what he can do; the stable money won’t even be bet here for fear of tipping him off; it’ll be bet in the pool rooms all over the Coast. He’ll walk in, I tell you—just walk in! Why, say! You don’t think I’d tell you this if I didn’t know it was so? Here comes the owner. I’ll go talk with him. You wait right here!”

It was really the owner of Bismallah, who, speaking out of the corner of his mouth, told the Bald-faced Kid to go to a warmer clime. The hustler returned to his victim instead.

“He says it’s all fixed up; everything framed; play him across the board. Come on!”

The victim allowed himself to be dragged in the direction of the betting ring, and Old Man Curry watched the proceedings with a whimsical light in his eye. Later he found a chance to discuss the matter with the Kid. The last race was over, and Frank was through for the day.

“You’re persuadin’ ’em pretty strong, ain’t you, son?” asked the old man. “You used to give advice; now you’re makin’ ’em take it whether they want to or not.”

“Where do you get that stuff?” demanded the Kid, bristling immediately.

“Why, I saw you working on that big fellow in the grey suit. I was afraid you’d have to hit him on the head and go into his pocket after it. Looked to me like he wasn’t exackly crazy to gamble.”

“Oh, him!” The tout spat contemptuously. “Do you know what that piker wanted to bet? Six dollars, across the board! I made him loosen up for fifteen, and he howled like a wolf.”

“The hoss—lost?” By the delicate inflection and the pause before the final word, Old Man Curry might have been inquiring about the last moments of a departed friend. The Kid was looking at the ground, so he missed the twinkle in the old man’s eyes.

“He ran like an apple woman,” was the sullen response. “Confound it, old-timer, I can’t pick ’em every time!”

“No, I reckon not,” said the patriarch. “I—reckon—not.” He lapsed into silence.

“Aw, spit it out!” said the Kid after a time. “I’d rather hear you say it than feel you thinking it!”

Old Man Curry smiled one of his rare smiles, and his big, wrinkled hand fell lightly on the boy’s shoulder.

“What I was thinking wasn’t much, son,” said he. “It was this: if you can make total strangers open up and spend their substance for something they only think is there, you ought to get rid of an awful lot of shirts and socks and flummery—the things that folks can see. If you can sell stuff that ain’t, you surely can sell stuff that is!”

“I’m sick of the whole business!” The words ripped out with a snarl. “I used to like this game for the excitement in it—for the kick. I used to like to see ’em run. Now I don’t give a damn, so long as I can get some coin together quick. And the more you need it the harder it is to get! To-day I had four suckers down on different horses in the same race, and a sleeper woke up on me. Four bets down and not a bean!”

The twinkle had gone from the old man’s eyes.

“Four hosses in one race, eh? Do you need the money that bad, son?”

For answer the Kid plunged his hand into his pocket and brought out a five-dollar gold piece and a small collection of silver coins which he spread upon his palm.

“There’s the bank roll,” said he, “and don’t tell me that Solomon pulled that line about a fool and his money!”

The old man calmly appraised the exhibit of precious metals before he spoke.

“How come you to be down so low, son?”

“I was trying to win myself out a little stake,” was the sulky answer; “but they cleaned me. That’s why I’m hustling so hard. It’s a rotten game, but it owes me something, and I want to collect it before I quit!”

“Ah, hah!” said Old Man Curry, stroking his beard meditatively. “Ah, hah! You haven’t told her yet.”

“No, but I’m going to. That’s honest.”

“I believe you, son, but did it ever strike you that mebbe she wouldn’t want you to make a fresh start on money that you got this way? Mebbe she wouldn’t want to start with you.”

“Dough is dough.” The Bald-faced Kid stated this point in the manner of one forestalling all argument. “At one time and another I’ve handled quite a lot of it that I got different ways, but I never yet had any trouble passing it off on folks, and they didn’t hold their noses when they took it either. Anything that’ll spend is good money, and don’t you forget it!”

“But this girl, now—mebbe she won’t think so.”

“What she don’t know won’t hurt her.”

“Son, what a woman don’t know she guesses and feels, and she may have the same sort of a feelin’ that I’ve got—that some kinds of money never bring anybody luck. A while ago you said this game was rotten, and yet you’re tryin’ to cash in your stack and pick up all the sleepers before you quit. Seems to me I’d want to start clean.”

“Dough is dough, I tell you!” repeated the Kid stubbornly. He turned and shook his fist at the distant betting ring where the cashiers were paying off the last of the winning tickets. “Look out for me, all of you sharks!” said the boy. “From now till the end of the meeting it’s packing-house rules, and everything goes!”

“‘A wise son heareth his father’s instruction,’” quoted Old Man Curry.

“I hear you, old-timer,” said the Kid, “but I don’t get you. Next thing I suppose you’ll pull Solomon on me and tell me what he says about tainted money!”

“I can do that too. Let’s see, how does it go? Oh, yes. ‘There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing; there is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches.’ That’s Solomon on the money question, my boy.”

“Huh!” scoffed the unregenerate one. “Solomon was a king, wasn’t he, with dough to burn? It’s mighty easy to talk—when you’ve got yours. I haven’t got mine yet, but you watch my smoke while I go after it!”

Old Man Curry trudged across the infield in the wake of the good horse Elisha. Another owner, on the day of an important race, might have been nervous or worried; the patriarch maintained his customary calm; his head was bent at a reflective angle, and he nibbled at a straw. Certain gentlemen, speculatively inclined, would have given much more than a penny for the old man’s thoughts; having bought them at any price, they would have felt themselves defrauded.

Elisha, the star performer of the Curry stable, had been combed and groomed and polished within an inch of his life, and there were blue ribbons in his mane, a sure sign of the confidence of Shanghai, the hostler. He was also putting this confidence into words and telling the horse what was expected of him.

“See all them folks, ‘Lisha? They come out yere to see you win anotheh stake an’ trim that white hoss from Seattle. Grey Ghost, thass whut they calls him. When you hooks up with him down in front of that gran’ stan’, he’ll think he’s a ghost whut’s mislaid his graveyard, yes, indeedy! They tells me he got lots of that ol’ early speed; they tells me he kin go down to the half-mile pole in nothin’, flat. Let him do it; ‘tain’t early speed whut wins a mile race; it’s late speed. Ain’t no money hung up on that ol’ half-mile pole! Let that white fool run his head off; he’ll come back to you. Lawdy, all them front runners comes back to the reg’lar hosses. Run the same like you allus do, an’ eat ’em up in the stretch, ‘Lisha! Grey Ghost—pooh! I neveh seen his name on no lamp-post! I bet befo’ you git th’ough with him he’ll wish he’d saved some that ol’ early speed to finish on. You ask me, ‘Lisha, I’d say we’s spendin’ this yere first money right now!”

It was the closing day of the meeting, always in itself an excuse for a crowd, but the management had generously provided an added attraction in the shape of a stake event. Now a Jungle Circuit stake race does not mean great wealth as a general thing, but this was one of the few rich plums provided for the horsemen. First money would mean not less than $2,000, which accounted for the presence of the Grey Ghost. The horse had been shipped from Seattle, where he had been running with and winning from a higher grade of thoroughbreds than the Jungle Circuit boasted, and there were many who professed to believe that the Ghost’s victory would be a hollow one. There were others who pinned their faith on the slow-beginning Elisha, for he was, as his owner often remarked, “an honest hoss that always did his level best.” Eight other horses were entered, but the general opinion seemed to be that there were only two contenders. The others, they said, would run for Sweeney—and third money.

Old Man Curry elbowed his way through the paddock crowd, calmly nibbling at his straw. He was besieged by men anxious for his opinion as to the outcome of the race; they plucked at the skirts of his rusty black coat; they caught him by the arms. Serene and untroubled, he had but one answer for all.

“Yes, he’s ready, and we’re tryin’.”

In the betting ring Grey Ghost opened at even money with Elisha at 7 to 5. The Jungle speculators went to the Curry horse with a rush that almost swept the block men off their stands, and inside of three minutes Elisha was at even money with every prospect of going to odds-on, and the grey visitor was ascending in price. The sturdy big stretch-runner from the Curry barn had not been defeated at the meeting; he was the known quantity and could be depended upon to run his usual honest race.

The Ghost’s owner also attracted considerable attention in the paddock. He was a large man, rather pompous in appearance, hairless save for a fringe above this ears, and answered to the name of “Con” Parker, the Con standing for concrete. He had been in the cement business before taking to the turf, and there were those who hinted that he still carried a massive sample of the old line above his shoulders. When cross-examined about the grey horse, he blunted every sharp inquiry with polite evasions, but he looked wiser than any human could possibly be, and the impression prevailed that he knew more than he would tell. Perhaps this was true.

The saddling bell rang, and the jockeys trooped into the paddock, followed by the roustabouts with the tackle. Old Man Curry, waiting quietly in the far corner of Elisha’s stall, saw the Bald-faced Kid wriggling his way through the crowd. He came straight to the old man.

“Elisha’s 4 to 5 now,” he announced breathlessly, “and they’re still playing him hard. The other one is 5 to 2. Looks like a false price on the Ghost, and I know that Parker is going to set in a chunk on him at post time. What do you think about it?”

“You goin’ to bet your own money, son?”

“I’ve got to do it—make or break right here.”

“How strong are you?”

“Just about two hundred bones.”

“Ah, hah!” Old Man Curry paused a moment for thought and sucked at his straw. “Two hundred at 5 to 2—that’d make seven hundred, wouldn’t it? Pretty nice little pile.”

The Kid’s eyes widened. “Then you don’t think Elisha can beat the Ghost to-day?”

“I ain’t bettin’ a cent on him,” said the old man. “Not a cent.” And the manner in which he said it meant more than the words.

“Then, shall I—?”

Old Man Curry glanced over at the grey horse, standing quietly in his stall.

“Play that one, son,” he whispered.

After the Kid had gone rocketing back to the betting ring, Curry turned to Jockey Moseby Jones.

“Mose,” said he, “don’t lay too far out of it to-day. This grey hoss lasts pretty well, so begin workin’ on ‘Lisha sooner than usual. He’s ready to stand a long, hard drive. Bring him home in front, boy!”

“Sutny will!” chuckled the little negro. “At’s bes’ thing I do!”

When the barrier rose, a grey streak shot to the front and went skimming along the rail, opening an amazingly wide gap on the field. It was the Ghost’s habit to make every post a winning one; he liked to run in front of the pack.

As he piloted the big bay horse around the first turn into the back stretch, Jockey Mose estimated the distance between his mount and the flying Ghost, taking no note of the other entries. Then he began to urge Elisha slightly.

“Can’t loaf much to-day, hawss!” he coaxed. “Shake yo’self! Li’l mo’ steam!”

The men who had played the Curry horse to odds on and thought they knew his running habits were surprised to see him steadily moving up on the back stretch. It was customary for Elisha to begin to run at the half-mile pole—usually from a tail-end position—but to-day he was mowing down the outsiders even before he reached that point, and on the upper turn he went thundering into second place—with the Ghost only five lengths away. The imported jockey on Parker’s horse cast one glance behind him, and at the head of the stretch he sat down hard in his saddle and began hand riding with all his might. Close in the rear rose a shrill whoop of triumph.

“No white hawss eveh was game, ‘Lisha! Sic him, you big red rascal, sic him! Make him dawg it!”

But the Ghost was game to the last ounce. More than that, he had something left for the final quarter, though his rider had not expected to draw upon that reserve so soon. The Ghost spurted, for a time maintaining his advantage. Then, annihilating incredible distances with his long, awkward strides and gathering increased momentum with every one, Elisha drew alongside. Again the Ghost was called on and responded, but the best he had left and all he had left, was barely sufficient to enable him to hold his own. Opposite the paddock inclosure, with the grand stand looming ahead, the horses were running nose and nose; ten yards more and the imported jockey drew his whip. Moseby Jones cackled aloud.

“You ain’t stuck on ‘is yere white sellin’ plater, is you, ‘Lisha? Whut you hangin’ round him faw, then? Bid him good night an’ good-bye!”

He drove the blunt spurs into Elisha’s sides, and the big bay horse leaped out and away in a whirlwind finish that left the staggering Ghost five lengths behind and incidentally lowered the track record for one mile.

It was a very popular victory, as was attested by the leaping, howling dervishes in the grand stand and on the lawn, but there were some who took no part in the demonstration. Some, like Con Parker, were hit hard.

There was one who was hit hardest of all, a youth of pleasing appearance who drew several pasteboards from his pocket and scowled at them for a moment before he ripped them to bits and hurled the fragments into the air.

“Cleaned out! Busted!” ejaculated the Bald-faced Kid bitterly. “The old scoundrel double-crossed me!”

The last race of the meeting was over when Old Man Curry emerged from the track office of the Rating Association. The grand stand was empty, and the exits were jammed with a hurrying crowd. The betting ring still held its quota, and the cashiers were paying off the lines with all possible speed. As they slapped the winning tickets upon the spindles, they exchanged pleasantries with the fortunate holders.

“Just keep this till we come back again next season,” said they. “We’re lending it to you—that’s all.”

Old Man Curry made one brisk circle of the ring, examining every line of ticket holders, then he walked out on the lawn. The Bald-faced Kid was sitting on the steps of the grand stand smoking a cigarette. Curry went over to him. “Well, Frank,” said he cheerfully, “how did you come out on the day?”

The boy stared up at him for a moment before he spoke.

“You ought to know,” said he slowly. “You told me to bet on that grey horse—and then you went out and beat him to death!”

“Ah, hah!” said the old man.

“I was crazy for a minute,” said the Kid. “I thought you’d double-crossed me. I’ve cooled out since then; now I’m only sorry that you didn’t know more about what your own horse could do. That tip made a tramp out of me, old-timer.”

“Exackly what I hoped it would do, son,” and Old Man Curry fairly beamed.

“What’s that?” The cigarette fell from the Kid’s fingers, and his lower jaw sagged. “You thought Elisha could win—and you went and touted me on to the other one?”

Old Man Curry nodded, smiling.

As the boy watched him, his expression changed to one of deep disgust. He dipped into his vest pocket and produced his silver stop watch. “Here’s something you overlooked,” he sneered. “Take it, and I’ll be cleaned right!”

Old Man Curry sat down beside him, but the Kid edged away. “I wouldn’t have thought it of you, old-timer,” said he.

“Frank,” said the old man gently, “you don’t understand. You don’t know what I was figgerin’ on.”

“I know this,” retorted the Kid: “if it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have to go to Butte alone!”

“You’ve told her, then?”

“Last night.”

“And I was right about the forgivin’ business, son?”

“Didn’t I say she was going to Butte with me? We had it all fixed to get married, but now——”

“Well, I don’t see no reason for callin’ it off.” Old Man Curry’s cheerfulness had returned, and as he spoke he drew out his old-fashioned leather wallet. “You know what I told you ’bout bad money, son—tainted money? You wouldn’t take my word for it that gamblers’ money brings bad luck; I just nachelly had to fix up some scheme on you so that you wouldn’t have no bad money to start out with.” He opened the wallet and extracted a check upon which the ink was scarcely dry—the check of the Racing Association for the winner’s portion of the stake just decided. “I wouldn’t want you to have bad luck, son,” the old man continued. “I wanted you to have good luck—and a clean start. Here’s some money that it wouldn’t hurt anybody to handle—an honest hoss went out and run for it and earned it, an’ he was runnin’ for you every step of the way! Here, take it.” He thrust the check into the boy’s hand—and let it stand to his credit that he answered before looking at it.

“I—I had you wrong, old-timer,” he stammered: “wrong from the start. I—I can’t take this. I ain’t a pauper, and I—I——”

“Why of course you can take it, son,” urged the old man. “You said this game owed you a stake, and maybe it does, but the only money you can afford to start out with is clean money, and the only clean money on a race track is the money that an honest hoss can go out and run for—and win. No, I can’t take it back; it’s indorsed over to you.”

Then, and not before, did the Kid look at the figures on the check.

“Why,” he gasped, “this—this is for twenty-four hundred and something! I don’t need that much! I—we—she says three hundred would be plenty! I——”

“That’s all right,” interrupted Old Man Curry. “Money—clean money—never comes amiss. You can call the three hundred the stake that was owin’ to you; the rest, well, I reckon that’s just my weddin’ present. Good-bye, son, and good luck!”

A morning workout

“Well, boss, they sutny done it to us again to-day. Look like it gittin’ to be a habit on thisyere track!”

Thus, querulously, Jockey Moseby Jones, otherwise Little Mose, as he trudged dejectedly across the infield beside his employer, Old Man Curry, owner of Elisha, Elijah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and other horses bearing the names of major and minor prophets. Mose was still in his silks—there were reasons, principally Irish, why the little negro found it more comfortable to dress in the Curry tack room—and the patriarch of the Jungle Circuit wore the inevitable rusty frock coat and battered slouch hat. Side by side they made a queer picture: the small, bullet-headed negro in gay stable colors, and the tall, bearded scarecrow, the frayed skirts of his coat flapping at his knees as he walked. Ahead of them was Shanghai, the hostler, leading a steaming thoroughbred which had managed to finish outside the money in a race that his owner had expected him to win: expected it to the extent of several hundred dollars. “Yes, suh, it gittin’ to be a habit!” complained Little Mose. “Been so long since I rode into ‘at ring I fo’get what it feels like to win a race!”

“It’s a habit we’re goin’ to break one of these days, Mose. What happened!”

“Huh! Ast me whut didn’t happen! Ol’ ‘Lijah, he got off good, an’ first dash—wham! he gits bumped by ‘at ches’nut hawss o’ Dyer’s. I taken him back some an’ talk to him, an’ jus’ when I’m sendin’ him again—pow! Jock Merritt busts ol’ ‘Lijah ‘cross ‘e nose ‘ith his whip. In ‘e stretch I tries to come th’oo on inside, an’ two of ’em Irish jocks pulls oveh to ‘e rail and puts us in a pocket. ‘Niggeh,’ they say to me, ‘take ‘at oat hound home ‘e long way; you sutny neveh git him th’oo!’ They was right, boss! ‘Lijah, he come fourth, sewed up like a eagle in a cage!”

“H’m-m. And the judges didn’t pay any attention when you claimed a foul?”

Little Mose gurgled wrathfully. “Huh! I done claim three fouls! Judges, they say they didn’t see no foul a-a-a-tall! Didn’t see us git bumped; didn’t see Jock Merritt hit ‘Lijah; didn’t see us pocketed. ‘Course they didn’t; they wasn’t lookin’ faw no foul! On ‘is track we not on’y got to beat hawsses; we got to beat jocks an’ judges too. How we goin’ lay up any bacon agin such odds as that?”

“It can’t last, Mose,” was the calm reply. “‘There shall be no reward to the evil man; the candle of the wicked shall be put out.’”

“It burnin’ mighty bright jus’ now, boss. Sol’mun, he say that?”

Old Man Curry nodded, and Little Mose sniffed sceptically. “Uh huh. Sol’mun he neveh got jipped out of seven races in a row!”

“Seven, eh!” The old man counted on his fingers. “Why, so it is, Mose! This is the seventh time they’ve licked us, for a fact!” Old Man Curry began to chuckle, and the jockey eyed him curiously.

“You sutny enjoy it mo’n I do, boss,” said he.

“That’s because you don’t read Solomon,” replied the owner. “Listen: ‘A just man falleth seven times and riseth up again.’ Mose, we’re due to rise up and smite these Philistines.”

“Huh! Why not smite some ’em Irish boys first? You reckon ’em crooked judges kin see us when we risin’ up?”

“We’ll have to fix it so’s they can’t overlook us, Mose.”

“Ought to git ’em some eyeglasses then,” was the sulky response.

“Seven and one—that’s eight, Mose. We’ve got Solomon’s word for it.”

Jockey Moseby Jones shook his head doubtfully. “Mebbe so, boss, mebbe so, but thisyere Sol’mun’s been dead a lo-o-ng time now. He neveh got up agin a syndicate bettin’ ring an’ crooked judgin’. He neveh rode no close finish ‘ith Irish jocks an’ had his shin barked on ‘e fence. You kin take Sol’mun’s word faw it, boss, but li’l Moseby, he’s f’um Mizzoury. He’ll steal a flyin’ start nex’ time out an’ try to stay so far in front that no Irish boy kin reach him ‘ith a lariat!”

A big, jovial-looking man, striding rapidly toward the stables, overtook them from the rear and announced his presence by slapping Old Man Curry resoundingly on the back. “Tough luck!” said he with a grin. “Awful tough luck, but you can’t win all the time, you know, old-timer!”

“Why, yes,” said Curry quietly; “that’s a fact, Johnson. Nobody but a hog would want to win all the time. And I wish you wouldn’t wallop me on the back thataway. I most nigh swallered my tobacco.”

Johnson laughed loudly. “How do you like our track?” he asked.

“Your track is all right,” answered the old man, with just a shade of emphasis placed where it would do the most good. “A visitor don’t seem to do very well here, though,” he added.

“The fortunes of war!” chuckled Johnson.

“Ah, hah,” said Curry. “My boy here can tell you ’bout that. He says the other jockeys fight him all the way round the track.”

“Well,” said Johnson, “you know why that is, don’t you? The boys ain’t stuck on his color, and you can’t blame ’em for that, Curry. If you had a boy like Walsh, now, it would be different.”

“I’ll bet it would!” was the emphatic response of Old Man Curry.

“I think I can get Walsh for you.”

“No-o.” Old Man Curry dropped his hand on the negro’s shoulder. “No. Mose has been ridin’ for me quite some time now. He suits me first rate.”

“You’re the doctor,” grinned Johnson. “Do as you think best, of course. I’m only telling you how it is.”

“Thankee. I reckon I’ll play the string out the way I started. Luck might change.”

“Yes, it’ll run bad for a while and then turn right round and get worse. So long!” Johnson hurried on toward the stables, laughing loudly at his ancient jest, and Old Man Curry looked after him with a meditative squint in his eyes.

“‘As the crackling of thorns under a pot,’” he quoted soberly. “A man that laughs all the time ain’t likely to mean it, Mose, but I don’t know’s I would say that Johnson is exackly a fool. No, he’s a pretty wise man, of his breed. He owns a controllin’ interest in this track (under cover, of course), he’s got a couple of books in the ring, and the judges are with him. I reckon from what he said ’bout Walsh that he’s in with the jockey syndicate. No wonder he wins races! Sure, he could get Walsh for me, or any other crook-legged little burglar that would send word to Johnson what I was doing! Mose, yonder goes the man we’ve got to beat!”

“Him too, boss?” Little Mose rolled his eyes. “Hawsses, judges, jocks, an’ Johnson! Sutny is a tough card to beat!”

“‘A just man falleth seven times and riseth up again,’” repeated the old man, “‘but the wicked shall fall into mischief.’ That’s the rest of the verse, Mose.”

“Boss,” said the little negro earnestly, “I don’ wish nobody no hard luck, but if somebody got to fall, I hope one of them Irish jocks will fall in front an’ git jumped on by ten hawsses!”

“Don’t make any mistake about it, Curry is wise. He may look like a Methodist preacher gone to seed, but the old scoundrel knows what’s going on. He ain’t a fool, take it from me!”

The speaker was Smiley Johnson, who was addressing a small but extremely select gathering of turf highwaymen who had met in his tackle-room to discuss matters of importance. They were all men who would willingly accept two tens for a five or betray a friend for gain: Smiley Johnson, Billy Porter, Curly McManus, and Slats Wilson. All owned horses and ran them in and out of the money, as they pleased, and not one of them would have trusted the others as far as a bull may be thrown by the tail.

“We can trim the old reprobate,” continued Johnson, “but we can’t keep him from finding out that the clippers are on him.”

“And who cares if he does know?” demanded Slats Wilson. “I’m in favor of making it so raw that he’ll take his horses and go somewhere else. Look at what he did last season. Got Al Engle and a lot of other people ruled off, didn’t he? Raised particular hell all over the circuit, the psalm-singing old hypocrite!”

“He’s got a fine, fat chance to get anybody ruled off around this track,” interrupted Curly McManus. “These judges ain’t reformers. They know who’s paying their salaries.”

“Sure they do,” assented Wilson, “but the longer this old rip hangs on the more chance there is to get into a jam of some kind. He’s a natural-born trouble maker. If he loses many more races the way he lost that one to-day, I wouldn’t put it past him to go to the newspapers with a holler. That would hurt. I’m in favor of giving him the gate!”

“When he hasn’t won a race?” argued Johnson. “Use your head, Slats. Let him run his horses, and bet on ’em. He may squawk, but he can’t prove anything, and when he’s lost enough dough he’ll quit.”

“Is there any way that we could frame up and get him ruled off?” asked Porter.

“The ruling wouldn’t stand,” said Johnson. “Curry has got too many friends higher up, and if we should try it and fall down it would give the track a black eye. The sucker horsemen would be leery of us.”

“If any framing is to be done,” announced McManus, “count me out now. You fellows know Grouchy O’Connor? Him and Engle framed on Curry till they were black in the face, and what did it get ’em? Not a nickel’s worth! You’ve got to admit that Al Engle was smart as they make ’em, but O’Connor tells me that Curry made Al look like a selling-plater: had him outguessed at every turn on the track. Let Curry run his horses, and our boys will take care of the little nigger.”

“That Elisha is quite a horse,” commented Johnson. “If they take care of him, they’ll go some.”

“What’s the use of worrying about Elisha?” asked McManus. “Curry hasn’t started him yet at the meeting. He’s trying to pick up some dough with Elijah and Isaiah and the others. They ain’t so very much.”

“Well, Elijah would have been right up there to-day if it hadn’t been for a little timely interference now and then.” Johnson grinned broadly as he spoke.

“A little timely interference!” ejaculated Wilson. “The boys did everything to that horse but knock him over the fence!”

“And the judges didn’t see a thing!” chuckled Johnson.

“Say, let’s get down to business!” said Porter. “What I want to know is this, Johnson: when are you going to cut loose with Zanzibar? You said we’d all be in with that; there’ll be a sweet price on him, and we ought to clean up.”

“Zanzibar is about ready,” answered Johnson. “You’ll know in plenty of time, and he’s a cinch.”

“And nobody knows a thing about him,” said McManus.

“Good reason why,” laughed Porter. “That’s a pretty smart trick: working him away from the track.”

“It’s the only thing to do,” said Johnson. “Zanzibar is a nervous colt, and if I worked him on the track with the other horses he’d go all to pieces. That’s why I have Dutchy take him out on a country road and canter him. It keeps him from fretting before a race.”

“How fast can he step the three-quarters?” asked Wilson.

“Fast enough to run shoes off of anything around here,” said Johnson. “You needn’t worry about that. We won’t have to put him up against the best, though. Zanzibar didn’t do anything last season, and he’s bound to get a price in almost any kind of a race.”

“You’re sure he’s under cover?”

“If he ain’t under cover, a horse never was. He gets his work before sunrise, and at that most of it is just cantering. I’ve set him down, though, and I know what he can do.”

“It sounds all right,” admitted McManus.

“Where do we bet this money?” demanded Porter.

Johnson laughed. “That’s a fool question! The less he’s played at the track the better. We’ll unload in the pool rooms on the Coast, same as we did before. Wilson here can enter Blitzen in the same race, and they can’t get away from making Blitzen the favorite: on form they’d have to pick him to win easy. I’ll let it leak out that I’m only sending Zanzibar for a workout and to see whether he’s improved any over last season. The pool rooms won’t know what hit ’em.”

“Hold on!” said McManus suddenly. “Suppose Curry gets into the race.”

“Bonehead!” growled Wilson. “You’ve got Curry on the brain. Outside of Elisha there’s no class to his string of beetles, and Elisha is a distance horse. Three-quarters is too short for him.”

“He can’t get going under half a mile!” supplemented Porter.

“Well,” apologized McManus, “I like to figure all the angles.“…

Old Man Curry also liked to figure all the angles. He had the utmost confidence in Solomon’s statement concerning the righteous man and the seven falls, but this did not keep him from taking the ordinary precautions when preparing for the eighth start and the promised rising up. He knew that the big rawboned bay horse Elijah was a vastly improved animal, but he also desired to know the company in which Elijah would find himself the next time out. His investigations, while inconspicuous were thorough, and soon brought him in contact with the name of an equine stranger.

“Zanzibar, eh?” thought the old man as he left the office of the racing secretary. “Zanzibar? And Johnson owns him. H’m-m. I’ll have to find out about that one, sure. The others don’t amount to much. But this Zanzibar? If I only had Frank now!”

Since the Bald-faced Kid’s retirement from the turf the Curry secret-service department had consisted of Shanghai and Mose, and there were times when the shambling hostler could be much wiser than he looked. It was Shanghai who drew the assignment.

“Boy,” said Old Man Curry, “Johnson has got a colt named Zanzibar that starts next Saturday. I thought I knew all the hosses in train-in’ round here, but I’ve overlooked this one. Find out all you can ’bout him.”

“Yes, suh!” answered Shanghai. “Bes’ way to do that would be to bus’ into a crap game. Misteh Johnson got a couple cullud swipes whut might know somethin’—crap-shootin’ fools, both of ‘em—an’ whiles I’m rollin’ them bones I could jus’ let a few questions slip out. Yes, suh, that’s good way, but when you ain’t shoot-in’ yo’ money in the game they jus’ nachelly don’ know you ‘mong them present. If you got couple nice, big, moon-face’ dollahs to inves’, they can’t he’p but notice you. They got to do it!”

Old Man Curry smiled and dipped two fingers and a thumb into his vest pocket.

“Thank you, suh!” chuckled Shanghai, trying hard to appear surprised. “Thank you! This sutny goin’ combine business with pleasuah!”

“Get away with you!” scolded Old Man Curry.

Now, nearly every one knows that the simon-pure feed-box information, the low-down and the dead-level tip, may be picked up behind any barn where hostlers, exercise boys, and apprentice jockeys congregate. Tongues are loosened at such a gathering, and the carefully guarded secrets of trainers and owners are in danger, for the one absorbing topic of conversation is horse, and then more horse.

Shanghai knew exactly where to go, and departed on his mission whistling jubilantly and chinking two silver dollars in his pocket.

At the end of three hours he returned, his hamlike hands thrust deep into empty pockets, and the look in his eye of one who has watched rosy dreams vanish.

“Where you been all this time?” snapped his employer wrathfully. “‘As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, so is a sluggard to them that send him.’ I declare, Solomon must have had some black stable boys! What you been at, you triflin’ hound?”

Shanghai smiled a sorrowful smile and shook his head.

“Well, you see, kunnel”—Shanghai always gave his employer a high military rank when in fear of rebuke—“you see, kunnel, it took ’em longer’n usual to break me this mawnin’. I start’ off right good, but I sutny bowed a tendon an’ pulled up lame. Once I toss six passes at them gamblehs——”

“Never mind that! What did you find out about Zanzibar?”

“Oh, him!” Shanghai blinked rapidly as if dispelling a vision. “Zanzibar? Why, kunnel, they aimin’ to slip him oveh Satu’day.”

“Ah, hah!” Old Man Curry tugged at his white beard. “Ah, hah. I thought so. Had him under cover, eh? Where have they been workin’ him?”

“Out on the county road ’bout two miles f’um yere. You know that nice stretch with all them trees? Every mawnin’, early, they takes him out——”

“Who takes him out?”

“Li’l white boy they calls Dutchy.”

“Nobody else goes with him?”

Shanghai shook his head.

“How old is this boy?” asked the canny horseman.

“How ole? Why, kunnel, I reckon he’s risin’ fifteen, mebbe.”

“Smart boy?”

Shanghai cackled derisively.

“I loaned him a two-bit piece, kunnel, an’ he tol’ me all he knowed!”

Old Man Curry fell to combing his beard, and Shanghai retreated to the tackle-room where he found Little Mose.

“The boss, he pullin’ his whiskehs an’ cookin’ up a job on somebody,” remarked the hostler.

“Huh!” grunted Mose. “It’s time he ‘uz doin’ somethin’! Betteh not leave it all to Sol’mun!”

The cooking process lasted until evening, by which time Old Man Curry had ceased to comb his beard and was rolling a straw reflectively from one corner of his mouth to the other.

“You, Shanghai!”

“Yes, suh! Comin’ up!”

“Find that little rascal Mose and tell him I want to see him.”

“Yes, suh.”

“And, Shanghai?”

“Yes, suh.”

“I believe I’ve found the way to rise up!”

“Good news!” ejaculated the startled negro, backing away. But to himself the hostler said: “Rise up? Sweet lan’ o’ libuhty! I wondeh whut bitin’ the ole man now?”

It was a small and very sleepy exercise boy whom Smiley Johnson tossed into the saddle at four o’clock on Saturday morning: a boy whose teeth were chattering, for he was cold.

“Canter him the usual distance, Dutchy,” said the owner. “Then set him down, but not for more than half a mile. Understand?”

“Y-yes, sir,” stammered the boy, rubbing his eyes with the back of one hand.

“Don’t let him get hot, now!”

“No, sir; I won’t.”

“All right. Take him away!”

Johnson slapped Zanzibar on the shoulder, and the colt moved off in the gloom. His rider, whose other name was Herman Getz, huddled himself in the saddle and reflected on several things, including the hard life of an exercise boy, the perils of the dark, and the hot cup of coffee which he would get on his return.

Wrapped in these meditations, he had traveled some distance before he became aware of a dark shape in the road ahead. Coming closer, Herman saw that it was a horse and rider, evidently waiting for him.

“Howdy, Jockey Walsh!” called a voice.

The shortest cut to an exercise boy’s heart is to address him as Jockey. Herman’s heart warmed toward this stranger, and he drew alongside, trying to make out his features in the darkness.

“‘Taint Walsh,” said Herman, not without regret. “It’s Getz.”

“Jockey Getz? I don’ seem to place you, jock. Where you been ridin’? East?”

“I ain’t a jock. I’m only gallopin’ ’em. Who are you?”

“Jockey Jones, whut rides faw Misteh Curry. If you ain’t a jock, you sutny ought to be. You don’t set a hawss like no exercise boy. Thass why I mistook you faw Walsh.”

“What horse is that?”

“This jus’ one ’em Curry beetles. Whut you got, jock?”

“Zanzibar.”

“Any good?”

“Well,” was the cautious reply, “he ain’t done anything yet.”

The boys jogged on for some time in silence. “You sutny set him nice an’ easy,” commented Mose. “Le’s breeze ’em a little an’ see how you handle a hawss.” Mose booted his mount in the ribs, chirruped twice, and the horse broke into a gallop. Herman immediately followed suit, and soon the riders were knee to knee, flying along the lonely road.

“Shake him up, jock!” urged Little Mose. “That all you kin get out of him? Shake him up, if you knows how!”

Of course Herman could not allow any one to hint that he did not know how. He went out on Zanzibar’s neck and shook him up vigorously, à la Tod Sloan in his palmy days. The colt began to draw ahead. From the rear came shrill encouragement.

“Thass whut I calls reg’luh race ridin’, jock! Let him out if he got some lef’! Let him out!”

Carried away by these kind words, Herman forgot his instructions: forgot everything but the thrill of the race. He drove his heels into Zanzibar’s sides and crouched low in the saddle. The cold dawn wind cut like a knife. After a time there came a wail from the rear.

“Nothin’ to it, jock! You too good! Too good! Wait faw me.”

Herman drew rein, and soon Mose was alongside again. “Canter ’em a while now,” said he. “Say, who taught you to ride like that?”

“Nobody,” answered Herman modestly. “I just picked it up.”

“A natchel-bawn race rideh. Sometimes you finds ’em. I wish’t I could set a hawss down like that. Show me again.”

“It’s easy,” bragged Herman, and proceeded to demonstrate that statement. Again the compliments floated from the rear, coupled with requests for speed, and yet more speed. Mose was not an apt pupil, however, for he required a third lesson, and at the end of it Zanzibar was blowing heavily. Mose suggested that they turn and go back. “If I could git that much out of a hawss, I wouldn’t take off my cap to no jock!” said he. “Whyn’t you make Johnson give you a mount once in a while?”

“He says I ain’t smart enough,” was the sulky reply.

Little Mose laughed. “He jus’ pig-headed, thass all ail him! You like to git a reg’luh job ridin’ faw a good man?”

“Would I!”

“Well, I knows a man whut wants a good boy. See that tree yondeh? That big one? Le’s see who kin get there first!”

“It—it’s pretty far, ain’t it?”

“Shucks! Quahteh of a mile, mebbe. Come on!”

But it was nearer half a mile, and the three brisk sprints had told on the colt. Boot him never so hard, it was all Herman could do to keep Zanzibar on even terms with Mose’s mount.

“You on’y foolin’ ‘ith me. He kin do betteh than that! We in the stretch now; shake him up!”

Zanzibar was shaken up for the fourth and last time—shaken up to the limit—and Mose was generous enough to say that the race was a dead heat.

As the boys brought the horses to a walk, another negro stepped out from behind a tree, a blanket on his arm. Mose slipped from the saddle and tossed the bridle to Shanghai.

“Ain’t you goin’ to ride back to the track?” demanded Herman.

“No. My boss, he always wants this skate blanketed an’ led round a while…. Sufferin’ mackerel, jock! What you goin’ do ‘ith that hawss? Shave him?”

Then for the first time Herman realized that Zanzibar was lathered with sweat; for the first time also he recalled his instructions.

“I can’t take him back like that!” he cried. “Johnson’ll kill me! He told me not to get this horse hot: and look at him!”

“He sutny some warm,” said Shanghai critically. “He steamin’ like a kettle!”

“Whut if he is?” asked Mose. “We kin fix that all hunky-dory, an’ Johnson, he won’t neveh know.”

“How can we fix it?”

“Got to let that sweat dry first,” warned Shanghai.

“And then wipe it off,” said Mose.

“It comes off easy when it’s dry,” supplemented Shanghai as he started down the road with the other horse.

“Let him stand a while,” said Mose. “We’ll tie him up to this tree. Pity you ain’t ridin’ some ’em races Johnson’s jock tosses off. Once round that limb’s enough. He’ll stand.”

And for rather more than half an hour the good colt Zanzibar shivered in a cold wind while Herman warmed himself in the genial glow of flattering speeches and honeyed compliments.

“He looks dry now,” said Mose at length. “We’ll rub him down with grass. See how easy it comes off an’ don’t leave no marks neither. Mebbe you betteh not say anythin’ to yo’ boss ’bout this.”

“Say, you don’t think I’m a fool, do you?”

“Sutny not! I see yo’ a pretty wise kid, all right!”

“If I could only get that reg’lar job you was talkin’ about!”

“It boun’ to come, jock, boun’ to come! You be steerin’ ’em down ‘at ol’ stretch one of these days, sure! If we jus’ had a li’l wateh, now, we could do a betteh job on ‘is hawss.”

“He’s shakin’ a lot, ain’t he?” asked Herman.

“Nuhvous, thass all ail him. My side ‘mos’ clean a’ready; how you gettin’ along?”

Smiley Johnson stood at the entrance to his paddock stall shaking hands with acquaintances, slapping his friends on the back, and passing out information. “I don’t know a great deal about this horse,” he would remark confidently. “He wasn’t much account last season—too nervous and high-strung. I’m only sending him to-day to see what he’ll do, but of course he never figured to beat horses like Blitzen. Not enough class.”

Curly McManus forced his way into Zanzibar’s stall and moved to the far corner where Johnson followed him.

“Curry is in the betting ring,” McManus whispered.

“Well, what of that?”

“He’s betting an awful chunk of dough on Elijah; they’re giving him 4 and 5 to 1.”

“The more he bets the more he’ll lose.”

“But it ain’t like him to unbelt for a chunk unless he knows something.”

Johnson chuckled.

“Most of his betting is done in books where I’ve got an interest. D’you think they’d be laying top prices on Elijah if they didn’t know something too?”

“I guess that’s right, Smiley. You didn’t warm this one up to-day. Why?”

“It would make him too nervous: the crowd, and all.”

“He’s fit, is he?”

“Fitter than a snake! We’re getting 8 and 10 to 1 in the pool rooms all over the Coast, and I wish we’d gone even stronger with him. Here comes Curry now. Listen to me kid him!”

The old man entered the paddock from the betting ring, bound for Elijah’s stall. Johnson halted him with a shout. “Well, old Stick-in-the-mud! You trying to-day?”

“I’m always tryin’,” answered Curry mildly. “My hosses are always tryin’ too.”

“Wish you a lot of luck!”

“Same to you, sir; same to you.”

“But everybody can’t win.”

“True as gospel. I found that out right here at this track.”

Old Man Curry continued on his way as calm and untroubled as if his pockets were not loaded down with pasteboards calling for a small fortune in the event of Elijah’s winning the race. His instructions to Little Mose were brief:

“Get away in front and stay there.”

A few moments later Johnson and McManus leaned over the top rail of the fence and watched the horses on their way to the post.

“That colt of yours looks a little stiff to me,” said McManus critically.

“Nonsense! He may be a bit nervous, but he ain’t stiff.”

“Well, I hope he ain’t. Curry’s horse looks good.”

Later they leveled their field glasses at the starting point. Johnson could see nothing but his own colors: a blazing cherry jacket and cap; McManus spent his time watching Little Mose and Elijah.

“Smiley, that nigger is playing for a running start.”

“Let him have it. Zanzibar’ll be in front in ten jumps. Hennessey knows just how to handle the colt, and he’s chain lightning on the break.”

“I suppose the boy on Blitzen’ll take care of the nigger if he has to. Slats gave him orders. They’re off!”

Johnson opened his mouth to say something, but the words died away into a choking gurgle. Instead of rushing to the front, the cherry jacket was rapidly dropping back. It was McManus who broke the stunned silence.

“In front in ten jumps, hey? He’s last in ten jumps, that’s what he is: stiffer’n a board! And look where Curry’s nigger is, will you?”

“To hell with Curry’s nigger!” barked Johnson. “Look at the colt! He—he can’t untrack himself: runs like he was all bound up somehow! Something has gone wrong, sure!”

“You bet it has!” snarled McManus. “Quite a pile of dough has gone wrong, and some of it was mine too!”

A comfortable ten lengths to the good at the upper turn, Little Mose addressed a few vigorous remarks to his mount.

“This a nice place faw us to stay, ‘Lijah! Them Irish boys all behin’ us! Nobody goin’ bump you to-day! Nobody goin’ slash you ‘ith no whip! Go on, big red hawss! Show ’em how we risin’ up!”

“The nigger’ll win in a romp!” announced McManus disgustedly.

“Oh, dry up! I want to know what’s happened to Zanzibar!”

“I can tell you what’s going to happen to him,” remarked the unfeeling McManus. “He’s going to finish last, and a damn bad last at that. Why, he can’t get up a gallop! Didn’t you know any more than to start a horse in that condition?”

“But how the devil did he get stiff all at once?” howled Johnson.

“That’s what you’d better find out. How do we know you didn’t cross us, Johnson? It would be just like you!”

Old Man Curry, watching at the paddock gate, thrust his hands under the tails of his rusty frock coat and smiled.

“‘A just man falleth seven times and riseth up again!’” he quoted softly. “And the wicked: well, they’ll have a mighty lame hoss on their hands, I reckon.”

Mose began checking Elijah, several lengths in front of the wire.

“Don’t go bustin’ a lung, hawss,” said he. “Might need it again. You winnin’ by a mile. A-a-a mile. Sol’mun was right, but maybe he wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t done some risin’ up myse’f this mawnin’! Whoa, hawss! This where they pay off! We th’oo faw the day!”

Old Man Curry was striding down the track from the judges’ stand when he met a large man whose face was purple and his language purple also.

“Man, don’t talk like that!” said Curry reprovingly. “And ca’m down or you’ll bust an artery. You can’t win all the time: that’s what you told me.”

Johnson sputtered like a damp Roman candle, but a portion of his remarks were intelligible.

“Oh, Zanzibar?” said Old Man Curry. “He’s a right nice colt. He ought to be. He pretty nigh run the legs off my ‘Lisha this mornin’.”

“Wha—what’s that?”

“Yes,” continued Old Man Curry, “they had it back an’ forth up that road, hot an’ heavy. I expect maybe Zanzibar got a chill from sweatin’ so hard.”

Out of the whirl of Mr. Johnson’s remarks and statements of intention Curry selected one.

“No,” said he, “I reckon you won’t beat that German kid to death. He didn’t know any better. You won’t lay a finger on him, because why? He’s on a railroad train by now, goin’ home to Cincinnati. I reckoned his mother might like to see him. And you ain’t goin’ to make no trouble for me, Johnson. Not a mite. You might whip a little kid, you big, bulldozin’ windbag, but I reckon you won’t stand up to a man, no matter how old he is!”

“I—I’ll have your entries refused!”

“Don’t go to no such trouble as that,” was the soothing reply. “There won’t be no more Curry entries at this track. A just man might fall down seven times again in such a nest of thieves an’ robbers! Tell that to your judges, an’ be damned!”

And, head erect, shoulders squared, and eyes flashing, Old Man Curry started for the betting ring to collect his due.

Egyptian corn

“Well, you great big hammer-headed lobster, what have you got to say for yourself, eh? Don’t stand there and look wise when I’m talking to you! Ain’t there a race in this country long enough for you to win? A mile and a half ought to give you a chance to open up and step, but what do you do? You come last, just beginning to warm up and go some! Sometimes I think I ought to sell you to a soap factory, you clumsy false alarm, you ugly old fraud, you cross between a mud turtle and a carpenter’s bench, you——”

At this point Slim Kern became extremely personal, speaking his mind concerning the horse Pharaoh, his morals, his habits, and his ancestors. Some of his statements would have raised blisters on a salamander, but Pharaoh listened calmly and with grave dignity.

Pharaoh was not handsome. He was, as Slim had said, a hammer-headed brute of imposing proportions. But for his eyes no turfman would have looked at him twice. They were large, clear, and unusually intelligent; they redeemed his homely face. Without them he would have been called a stupid horse.

An elderly gentleman sat on a bale of hay and listened to Slim’s peroration. As it grew in power and potency the listener ceased to chew his straw and began to shake his head. When Slim paused for breath, searching his mind for searing adjectives, a mild voice took advantage of the silence.

“There now, Slim, ain’t you said enough to him? Seems like, if it was me, I wouldn’t cuss a hoss so strong—not this hoss anyway. He ain’t no fool. Chances are he knows more’n you give him credit for. Some hosses don’t care what you say to ‘em—goes in one ear and out the other—but Pharaoh, he’s wise. He knows that ain’t love talk. He’s chewin’ it over in his mind right now. By the look in his eye, he’s askin’ himself will he bite your ear off or only kick you into the middle of next week. Cussin’ a hoss like that won’t make him win races where he never had a chance nohow.”

“I know it,” said Slim. “I know it, Curry, but think what a wonderful relief it is to me! Take a slant at him, standing there all dignified up like a United States senator! Don’t he look like he ought to know something? Wouldn’t you think he’d know where they pay off? He makes me sore, and I’ve just got to talk to him. I’ve owned him a whole year, and what has he done? Won once at a mile and a quarter, and he’d have been last that time if the leaders hadn’t got in a jam on the turn and fell down. He was so far behind ’em when they piled up that all he had to do was pull wide and come on home! He had sense enough for that. I’ve started him in all the distance races on this circuit; he always runs three feet to their one at the finish, but he’s never close enough up to make it count. He must have some notion that they pay off the second time around, and it’s all my boy can do to stop him after he goes under the wire. Why won’t he uncork some of that stuff where it will get us something? Why won’t he? I don’t know, and that’s what gets me.”

Old Man Curry rose, threw away his straw, and circled the horse three times, muttering to himself. This was purely an exhibition of strategy, for Curry knew all about Pharaoh: had known all about him for months.

“What’ll you take for him?” The question came so suddenly that it caught Slim off his balance.

“Take for him!” he ejaculated. “Who wants an old hammer-head like that?”

“I was thinkin’ I might buy him,” was the quiet reply, “if the price is right. I dunno’s a hoss named Pharaoh would fit in with a stable of Hebrew prophets, ‘count of the way Pharaoh used Moses and the Isrulites, but I might take a chance on him—if the price is right.”

Now, Slim would have traded Pharaoh for a nose bag or a sack of shorts and reckoned the intake pure gain, but he was a horseman, and it naturally follows that he was a trader.

“Well, now,” said he, “I hadn’t thought of selling him, Curry, and that’s a fact.”

“Did anybody but me ever think of buyin’ him?” asked the old man innocently.

“He’s got a wonderful breeding,” said Slim, ignoring the question. “Yes, sir; he’s out of the purple, sure enough, and as for age he’s just in his prime. There’s a lot of racing in him yet. Make me an offer.”

“You don’t want me to talk first, do you? I don’t reckon I could make a real offer on a hoss that never wins ‘less all the others fall down. Pharaoh ain’t what you might call a first-class buy. From his looks it costs a lot to keep him.”

“Not near as much as you’d think,” was the quick rejoinder. “Pharaoh’s a dainty feeder.”

“Ah, hah,” said Old Man Curry, stroking his beard. “About as dainty as one of them perpetual hay presses! That nigh foreleg of his has been stove up pretty bad too. How he runs on it at all beats me.”

“He’s sound as a nut!” declared Slim vehemently. “There ain’t a thing in the world the matter with him. Ask any vet to look him over!”

“Well, Slim, I dunno’s he’s worth the expense. Come on, now; tell me what’s the least you’ll take for him?”

“Five hundred dollars.”

“Give you a hundred and fifty cash.”

“Say, do you want me to make you a present of him?” demanded Slim, indignantly sarcastic. “Maybe you think I’d ought to throw in a halter so’s you can lead him away!”

“No,” said Old Man Curry. “I won’t insist on a halter. I got plenty of my own. You said yourself he wa’n’t no good and I thought you meant it. I was just askin’ if you’d sell him; that was all. Keep him till Judgment Day, if you want him. No harm done.” Old Man Curry began to walk away.

“Hold on a minute!” said Slim, trying hard to keep the anxious note out of his voice. “Be reasonable, old-timer. Make me an offer for the horse: one that a sensible man can accept.”

Old Man Curry paused and glanced over his shoulder.

“Why,” said he, faintly surprised, “I kind of thought I’d done that a’ready!”

“Look at him!” urged Slim. “Did you ever see a more powerful horse in your life? And smart too. A hundred and fifty dollars! One side of him is worth more than that!”

“Likely it is,” agreed the old man solemnly. “Seems to me I saw a piece in the paper ’bout a cannery where they was goin’ to put up hoss-flesh!”

“I admit he’s had a lot of bad luck,” persisted Slim, “but get Pharaoh warmed up once and he’ll surprise you. Didn’t you see how fast he was coming to-day?”

“The numbers was up before he got in,” was the dry response. “What’s the good of a hoss that won’t begin to run until the race is over? You said yourself he only won for you when all the others fell down. It’s kind of difficult to frame up races that way. Jockeys hate to take the chances. Will two hundred buy him? Two hundred, right in your hand?”

“Oh, come over here and set down!” said Slim. “You ain’t in any hurry, are you? Nothing you’ve said yet interests me. On the level, you ain’t got a suspicion of what a good horse this is!”

“No, but I kind of suspicion what a bad hoss he is.” Old Man Curry resumed his seat on the bale of hay and produced his packet of fine-cut tobacco. “You tell me how good he is,” said he, “and I’ll listen, but before you open up here’s what Solomon says: ‘The simple believeth every word, but the prudent man looketh well to his going.’ Hoss tradin’ is no job for a simple man, but I made a livin’ at it before you was born. Now fire away, and don’t tell me this Pharaoh is a gift. ‘Whoso boasteth himself of a false gift is like clouds and wind without rain.’ I reckon Solomon meant mostly wind. Now you can cut loose an’ tell me how much hoss this is.”

Two hours later Old Man Curry arrived at his barn leading Pharaoh. He had acquired the hammer-head for the sum of $265 and Slim had thrown in the halter. Shanghai, Curry’s hostler and handy man, stared at the new member of the racing string with open-mouthed and pop-eyed amazement.

“Lawd’s sake! What is that, a cam-u-el?”

“No, I don’t reckon he’s a camel, exactly,” replied the old man. “I don’t know just what he is, Shanghai, but I’m aimin’ to find out soon. The man I got him from allowed as he was a race hoss.”

“Huh-uh, kunnel! He sutny don’ ree’semble no runnin’ hawss to me. I neveh yet see a head shape’ like that on anything whut could run.” Shanghai came closer and examined the equine stranger carefully. “Yo’ an ugly brute, big hawss: ugly no name faw it. Oh-oh, kunnel; he got a knowin’ eye, ain’t he? If this hawss is wise as he look, he ought to be a judge in the Soopreme Cote! Yes, suh; somepin’ besides bone in that ole hammeh-head!”

“I bought him for his eyes,” said Old Man Curry. “His eyes and his name. This is Pharaoh, Shanghai.”

“Faro, eh?” The negro chuckled. “Thass a game where yo’ gits action two ways: bet it is or it ain’t. Now, mebbe this yere Faro is a race hawss, an’ mebbe he ain’t, but if yo’ eveh puts him in with early speed an’ a short distance to go, betteh play him with a copper, kunnel. He got same chance as a eagle flyin’ a mile ‘gainst pigeons.”

“The thing to do,” said Old Man Curry with his kindly smile, “is to find out the eagle’s distance.”

Little Mose was dreaming that he had piloted the winner of the Burns Handicap and was being carried to the jockey’s room in a floral horseshoe which rocked in a very violent manner. The motion became so pronounced that Mose opened his eyes, and found Old Man Curry shaking him.

“Get up, you lazy little rascal! Got a job for you this mornin’. Turn out!”

The jockey sat up, yawning and knuckling his eyes.

“Solomon must have had at least one little black boy,” said the old man. “‘Love not sleep lest thou come to poverty.’ Hurry up, Mose!”

“Yes, suh,” mumbled the drowsy youngster. “Reckon Sol’mun neveh had to gallop a string an’ ride ’em too. I sutny earns whut I gits when I git it.”

Dawn was breaking when Jockey Moseby Jones emerged from the tack room to find Old Man Curry and Pharaoh waiting for him. As they were walking to the track the owner gave his orders.

“One trouble with this hoss,” said he, “is that the boy who has been ridin’ him wasn’t strong enough in the arms to keep his head up.”

“That ol’ hawss has got a head whut weighs a thousan’ pounds!” murmured Mose sulkily. “‘Spect he’ll ’bout yank both arms outen me!”

“You’re pretty stout for a boy your size,” said the old man, “an’ you may be able to hold this big, hard-stridin’ hoss together an’ shake something out of him. Send him two miles, Mose, keep his head up if you can, an’ ride him every jump of the way.”

“But, boss, they ain’t no two-mile races in thisyer part o’ the country!”

“Keep on, an’ you’ll talk yourself into a raw-hidin’ yet, little black boy. I ain’t askin’ you to tell me ’bout the races on the jungle tracks. All you got to think about is can you handle as much hoss as this over a distance of ground. If you can, an’ he’s got the stayin’ qualities I think he has, you an’ me an’ Pharaoh may go on a long journey—down into Egypt after corn. Git up on him, Mose, an’ let’s see what you both can do.”

The hammer-head loafed away at a comfortable stride and his first mile showed nothing, but his second circuit of the track was a revelation which caused Old Man Curry to address remarks to his stop watch. It took every ounce of Mose’s strength to fight Pharaoh to a standstill: the big brute was just beginning to enjoy the exercise and wanted to keep on going.

“Well, think you can handle him?”

“Boss,” panted little Mose, “I kin do—everything to thisyer hoss—but stop him. He sutny—do love to run—once he git goin’. All the way—down the stretch—he was asayin’ to me: ‘Come on, jock! Lemme go round again!’ Yes, suh, he was beggin’ me faw ‘notheh mile!”

“Ah-hah,” said Old Man Curry. “That’s the way it looked to me. Well, to-morrow we’ll let him do that extra mile, but we’ll get up earlier. By an’ by when he’s ready, we’ll let him run four miles an’ see how he finishes an’ what the watch says.”

Little Mose rolled his eyes thoughtfully.

“Seem like I ain’t heard tell of but one fo’mile race,” he hinted. “‘Tain’t run in Egypt neitheh. They runs it down round ‘Frisco. The Thawntum Stakes is whut they calls it. Boss, you reckon Pharaoh kin pick up any corn in California?”

Old Man Curry’s eyes twinkled, but his voice was stern.

“If I was a little black boy,” said he, “an’ I was wantin’ my boss to take me on a trip down into Egypt, I wouldn’t call it California. If I knew anything ’bout a four-mile stake race, I’d try to mislay the name of it. If I had been ridin’ a big, hammer-headed hoss, I don’t think I’d mention him except in my prayers. If I was goin’ after corn, I don’t believe I’d say so.”

Mose listened, nodding from time to time.

“Boss,” said he earnestly, “I sutny always did want to see whut thisyer Egypt looks like. Outside of that, I neveh heard nothin’, I don’t know nothin’, an’ I can’t tell nothin’. Beginnin’ now, a clam has got me beat in a talkin’ match!”

Old Man Curry smiled and combed his long, white beard.

“That is the very best way,” said he, “to earn a trip down into Egypt. ‘A talebearer revealeth secrets, but he that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter.’”

“Thass me all oveh!” chuckled Mose. “I bet I got the faithfulest an’ the concealin’est spirit whut is!”

Port Costa is a small town on the Carquinez Straits, that narrow ribbon of wind-swept water between San Pablo and Suisun Bays. The early empire builders, striving to reach the Pacific by rail, found it necessary to cross the Carquinez Straits, and to that end built a huge ferryboat capable of swallowing up long overland trains. It was then that Port Costa came into being: a huddle of hastily constructed frame saloons along the water front and very little else. All day and all night the big ferryboat plied between Benicia and Port Costa, transferring rolling stock. While the trains were being made up on the Port Costa side passengers in need of liquid sustenance paid visits to the saloons. They got exactly what the transient may expect in any country.

Henry Ashbaugh sat at a table in Martin Dugan’s place and eyed the bartender truculently. He had purchased nothing, for the most excellent of reasons, but he had patronised the free lunch extensively.

“You don’t need to look at me like that,” said Henry when the silence became unbearable. “I’m waiting for a friend and when he comes he’ll buy.”

At this critical juncture the swinging doors opened to admit the friend, a tall, elderly man with a patriarchal white beard, clad in a battered black slouch hat and a venerable frock coat. Ashbaugh jumped up with a yell.

“Well, you old son of a gun! It’s good for sore eyes to see you! How long has it been, eh?”

“Quite some years,” answered Old Man Curry, allowing himself to be guided to the bar. “And how’s the world been usin’ you, Henry?”

“It’s been using me rough, awful rough,” replied Ashbaugh. “I ain’t even got the price of a drink.”

Curry laid a silver coin upon the bar.

“Have one with me,” said he.

“Don’t mind if I do,” said Ashbaugh, and poured out a stiff libation of water-front whisky. Old Man Curry took water, and the wise bartender, after one look at the stranger, drew it from a faucet.

“How!” said Henry, tilting the poison into his system.

“My regards!” said Old Man Curry, sipping his water slowly.

“Same old bird!” ejaculated Ashbaugh, clapping Curry on the back. “Solomon on the brain! Speaking of birds, though, did you ever see one that could fly with only one wing?”

“I never did,” was the grave response. “Have another?”

“If you force me,” said Ashbaugh, pouring out a second heavy dose. Old Man Curry took more water. Ashbaugh gulped once and passed the back of his hand over his lips.

“We have talked of birds,” said he, wheedlingly. “Leave us now talk of centipedes.”

“No,” said Curry quietly. “No, I reckon not, Henry. There’s something else to talk about. You got my telegram?”

“This afternoon,” said Ashbaugh with a lingering glance at the bottle. “That’s why I’m here.”

“You’ve still got your place out on the Martinez road?” asked Old Man Curry.

“I can’t get rid of it,” was the answer.

“I’d like to take a hoss down there and put him up for a few weeks, Henry.”

“The place is all yours!” said Ashbaugh with wide gestures. “All yours! A friend of mine can have anything I’ve got, and no questions asked. Where is this here horse?”

“They’ll be takin’ him out of a freight car about now,” said Curry. “Could I git him down to your place to-night?”

“You can if you walk it.”

“Is the road as good as it used to be?”

“Same road. Just like it was when you used to train horses on it.”

“Mebbe we ought to be going,” suggested Old Man Curry.

“Then you won’t talk about centipedes?”

“Oh, well,” smiled the old man, “I might discuss a three-legged critter with you—once.”

“Put that bottle back on the bar!” said Ashbaugh.

The overnight entry slips, given out on the day before the running of the Thornton Stakes, bore the name of the horse Pharaoh, together with that of his owner, C. T. Curry, whereat the wise men of the West chuckled. A few of them had heard of Old Man Curry, a queer, harmless individual who owned bad horses and raced them on worse tracks. A hasty survey of turf guides brought the horse Pharaoh to unfavorable light as a nonwinner in cheap company, and in no sense to be considered as a competitor in the second greatest of Western turf classics. In addition to this, those who made it their business to know the business of horsemen were able to state positively that no such horse as Pharaoh had arrived at the Emeryville track outside of Oakland. Consequently, when the figuring was done (and a great deal of figuring is always done on the eve of an important stake race), the Curry entry was regarded as among the scratches.

On paper, the rich purse was a gift to the imported mare Auckland. Australian horses, bred to go a distance, had often won this longest of American stakes, and Auckland was known to be one of the very best animals ever brought across the Pacific. It was only a question of how far she would win, and the others were considered as competing for second and third money. On the night before the race all the talk was of Auckland; all the speculation had to do with her price, and how many dollars a man might have to bet to win one. At noon on the day of the race a horse car was shunted in on one of the spur tracks at Emeryville, and a group of idlers gathered to watch the unloading process. No little amusement was afforded them by the appearance and costume of the owner, but Old Man Curry paid not the slightest attention to the half-audible comment, and soon the “Bible horses” found their feet on the ground once more.

Among the loafers were some “outside men” employed by the bookmakers, and these endeavored to acquire information from Old Man Curry, without success. The negro Shanghai proved more loquacious. He trudged at the end of the line leading a big hammer-headed brute which he often addressed as “Faro.”

“Who owns these hawsses?” repeated Shanghai. “Mist’ Curry—thass him in front—he owns ’em. We got here jus’ in time, I reckon. Thisyer hawss whut I’m leadin’, he goes in that Thawntum Stakes to-day.”

“Nix!” said the outside man. “Just off the cars, and he’s going to start? It can’t be done!”

“I ain’t heard the boss say he’d scratch him,” said Shanghai.

“But how long have you been on the way?”

“Oh, I reckon ’bout five days. Yes, suh; we been exackly five days an’ nights gettin’ here.”

“Then you’re kidding about that horse going to start in the Thornton Stakes.”

“No, suh; I ain’t kiddin’ nobody. Thass whut we brought him oveh faw: to staht him in them Thawntum Stakes. I reckon he’ll have to do the bes’ he know how.”

“Are you going to bet on him?”

“Says which?” Shanghai showed a double row of glistening ivories. “No, indeedy! Hawss got to show me befo’ I leggo my small change! This Faro, he can’t seem to win no mile races, so the boss he thinks he might do betteh in a long one. But me, I ain’t bettin’ on him, no suh!”

Only five horses faced the barrier in the Thornton Stakes. Second money was not enough of a temptation to the owners, who could see nothing but the Australian mare, Auckland. The opening prices bore out this belief. Auckland was quoted at 1 to 5, a prohibitive figure; Baron Brant, the hope of the California contingent, at 4 to 1; The Maori at 8 to 1; Ambrose Churchill at 12 to 1, and Pharaoh was held at 15 and 20. The bookmakers had heard that the Curry horse had been taken from the car at noon, and wondered at the obstinacy of his owner in starting him, stiff and cramped from a long railroad journey.

“Must be figuring to give him a workout and a race all at once,” said the chalk merchants.

All these things being known, a certain elderly gentleman did not have to beg the bookmakers to take his money. He passed from block to block in the big ring, stripping small bills from a fat roll, and receiving pasteboards in exchange. Round and round the ring he went, with his monotonous request:

“Ten on Pharaoh to win, please.”

Every bookmaker was glad to oblige him; most of them thanked him for the ten-dollar bills. There were thirty-two books in the circle, and Old Man Curry visited each one of them several times. He stopped betting only when he heard the saddling bell ringing in the paddock. After a few words with Little Mose, he returned to the betting ring and the distribution of his favors.

When the five horses stood at the barrier in front of the grand stand, Pharaoh was conspicuous only for his size and the color of his rider. The mare Auckland, beautifully proportioned, her smooth coat glistening in the sun, was the ideal racing animal.

The word was soon given, the barrier whizzed into the air, and the five horses were on their long journey. The boy on Auckland sent her to the front at once, and the mare settled into her long, easy stride, close to the rail, saving every possible inch. Pharaoh immediately dropped into last position, plodding through the dust kicked up by the field. The big hammer-head showed nothing in the first mile save dogged persistence. At the end of the second mile Auckland was twenty lengths in front of Pharaoh, and running without effort. The Maori and Ambrose Churchill were beginning to drop back, but Baron Brant still clung to second place, ten lengths behind the favorite.

It was in the third mile that Jockey Moseby Jones began to urge the big horse. At first there seemed to be no result, but gradually, almost imperceptibly, the heavy plugging stride grew longer. Auckland still held her commanding lead, but Pharaoh marked his gain on Ambrose Churchill and The Maori, leaving them a bitter and hopeless battle for fourth place. In the home stretch the pace began to tell on Baron Brant, and he faded. Pharaoh caught and passed him just at the wire, with the Australian mare fifteen lengths in front and eating up the distance in smooth, easy strides.

The stubborn persistence of the hammer-headed horse had not escaped the crowd, and those who support the underdog in an uphill fight gave him a tremendous cheer as he swung down to the turn. It was then that Little Mose leaned forward and began hand-riding, calling on Pharaoh in language sacred and profane.

“Hump yo’self, big hawss! Neveh let it be said that a mare kin make you eat dust! Lay down to it, Faro, lay down to it! Why, you ain’t begun to run yit! You jus’ been foolin’! You want to show me up befo’ a big town crowd! Faro, I ast you from my heart, lay down to it!”

And Pharaoh lay down to it. The ugly big brute let himself out to the last notch, hugging the rail with long, ungainly strides. The jockey on Auckland had counted the race as won—in fact, he had been spending the winner’s fee from the end of the second mile—but on the upper turn the thud of hoofs came to his ears, and with them wild whoops of encouragement. He looked back over his shoulder in surprise which soon turned to alarm; the big hammer-head was barely six lengths away and drawing nearer with every awkward bound. Jockey McFee sat down on his imported mount and began to ride for a five-thousand-dollar stake, a fat fee, his reputation, and several other considerations, but always he heard the voice of the little negro, coming closer and closer:

“Corn crop ’bout ripe, Faro! Jus’ waitin’ to be picked! That mare, she come a long ways to git it, but she goin’ git it good! Them ribbons don’t keep her f’um rockin’; she’s all through! Go git her, big hawss! Go git her!”

Jockey McFee slashed desperately with his whip as Pharaoh thundered alongside, and the game mare gave up her last ounce: gave it up in a losing fight. Once, twice, the ugly, heavy head and the head of the equine aristocrat rose and fell side by side; then Auckland dropped back beaten and broken-hearted while her conqueror pounded on to the wire, to win by five open lengths….

At least one dream came true. Moseby Jones was carried off the track in a gorgeous floral horseshoe, his woolly head bobbing among the roses and his teeth putting the white carnations to shame. Shanghai danced all the way from the judges’ stand to the stables, not an easy feat when one considers that he was leading the winner of the Thornton Stakes, also garlanded and bedecked within an inch of his life, but, in spite of all his floral decorations, extremely dignified.

Old Man Curry fought his way through a mob of reporters and fair-weather acquaintances to find himself face to face with the only real surprise of the day. A sharp-faced youth, immaculately dressed, leaped upon him, endeavoring to embrace him, shake his hand and congratulate him, all in a breath. “Frank!” cried the old man. “Bless your heart, boy, where did you come from?”

“From Butte,” answered the Bald-faced Kid. “Wanted to get some ideas on the spring trade; saw you had a horse in the Thornton Stakes; thought I might find you; got here just as the race finished. Old-timer, how are you? You don’t know how good it is to see you again!”

“I know how good it is to see you, my son!” The old man laid his arm across the youth’s shoulders. “How’s the wife, Frank?”

“Just bully! She would have been here with me, but she couldn’t leave the kid: couldn’t leave Curry——”

The patriarch of the Jungle Circuit reached hastily for his fine-cut.

“It—it was a boy, then?” he asked.

The Bald-faced Kid grinned.

“Better than that; it was a girl! We had the name picked out in advance. The wife wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Old Man Curry shook his head solemnly. “Frank,” said he, “you know that ain’t treat-in’ a little girl right! Curry! It sounds like the stuff you eat with rice! When she gits old enough to know she’ll hate it, and me, too.”

“Any kid of mine is going to love the name of Curry, and call you grandpa! What do you think of that? You don’t need to worry, and I won’t even argue the point with you. My wife says——”

“Anything your wife says is right,” interrupted the old man, blowing his nose lustily. “Why, it kind of seems as if I had some folks——”

“If you don’t think you’ve got a ready-made family,” said the Kid, “come over to Butte any time and I’ll win a bet from you. But I can tell you about that later. What I want to know is this: I met a couple of hustlers here to-day—boys I used to team with—and they told me Pharaoh didn’t have a chance because he went right from the box car to the paddock. He gets off the train, where he’s been for five days and nights, and comes so close to the American record that there ain’t any fun in it. Now, you know that can’t be done. Old-timer, you pulled many a miracle on me before I quit the turf; give me an inside on this one!”

Old Man Curry smiled benignantly.

“Well, son, mebbe I kind of took advantage of ’em there.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time, dad. Let’s have it.”

“All right. To start with, I bought this hoss for little or nothing. Mostly nothing. I knew he was a freak. He couldn’t begin to untrack himself till he had gone a mile, but after that it seemed like every mile he went he got better. I held a watch on him an’ he ran four miles close enough to the record to show me that he had a chance in the Thornton Stakes. Five weeks ago I shipped him out to Port Costa an’ took him off the train there——”

“Holy Moses!” breathed the Kid. “I begin to get it, but go on!”

“I knew a man there an’ he let me train Pharaoh at his place, Little Mose givin’ him a gallop every day. That Benicia road is as good as any race track. Then I did some close figgerin’ on freight schedules, an’ telegraphed Shanghai when to leave with the rest of the stable. They got into Port Costa this mornin’. It wa’n’t no trick at all to slip Pharaoh into that through car—not when you know the right people—an’ when we unloaded here this noon the word sort of got scattered round that the Curry hosses had been five days on the road. Now, no man with the sense that God gives a goose could figger a critter to walk out of a box car, where he’d been bumped an’ jolted an’ shook up for five days, an’ run four miles with any kind of hosses. It just ain’t in the book, son.

“They got the notion I was crazy, an’ I reckon they knew everything about us but the one thing that counted most, which was that Pharaoh hadn’t been in that car an hour all told. You know, when you go down into Egypt after corn, you got to do as the Egyptians do: have an ace in the hole all the time. Solomon says that a fool uttereth all his mind, but a wise man keepeth it till afterward. That’s why I’m gassin’ so much now, I reckon.”

“Old-timer,” chuckled the Kid, “you’re a wonder, and I’m proud to have a kid named for you! Just one question more, and I’m through. You won the stake, and that amounts to quite a mess of money, but did you bet enough to pay the freight on the string?”

“Well, now, son,” said the old man; “I been so glad to see you that I kind of forgot that part of it.” He fumbled in the tail pockets of his rusty black frock coat and brought forth great handfuls of tickets. “I didn’t take less’n 15 to 1,” said he, “an’ I bet ’em till my feet ached, just walkin’ from one book to another. I haven’t tried to figger it up, but I reckon I took more corn away from these Egyptians than the law allows a single man to have. If it’s all the same to you, Frank, an’ the baby ain’t got no objections, I’d like to use some of this to start a savings account for my namesake. Curry ain’t no name for a baby girl, an’ you ought to let me square it with her somehow. Mebbe when she gits of age, an’ wants to marry some harum-scarum boy, she won’t think so bad of her gran’daddy.”

The modern judgment of Solomon

It was an unpleasantly warm morning, and the thick, black shade of an umbrella tree made queer neighbors—as queer neighbors as the Jungle Circuit could produce. Old Man Curry found the shade first and felt that he was entitled to it by right of discovery, consequently he did not move when Henry M. Pitkin signified an intention of sharing the coolness with him. Old Man Curry had less than a bowing acquaintance with Pitkin, wished to know him no better, and had disliked him from the moment he had first seen him.

“Hot, ain’t it?” asked the newcomer by way of making a little talk. “What you reading, Curry?”

Old Man Curry looked up from the thirteenth chapter of Proverbs, ceased chewing his straw, and regarded Pitkin with a grave and appraising interest which held something of disapproval, something of insult. Pitkin’s eyes shifted.

“It says here,” remarked the aged horseman, “‘A righteous man hateth lying: but a wicked man is loathsome, and cometh to shame.’”

“Fair enough,” said Pitkin, “and serves him right. He ought to come to shame. Pretty hot for this time of year.”

“It’ll be hotter for some folks by and by.”

Pitkin laughed noisily.

“Where do you get that stuff?” he demanded.

“I hope I ain’t agoin’ to git it,” said Old Man Curry. “I aim to live so’s to miss it.” He lapsed into silence, and the straw began to twitch to the slow grinding motion of his lower jaw. A very stupid man might have seen at a glance that Curry did not wish to be disturbed, but for some reason or other Pitkin felt the need of conversation.

“I’ve been thinking,” said he, “that my racing colors are too plain—yellow jacket, white sleeves, white cap. There’s so many yellows and whites that people get ’em mixed up. How would it do if I put a design on the back of the jacket—something that would tell people at a glance that the horse was from the Pitkin stable?”

Old Man Curry closed his book.

“You want ’em to know which is your hosses?” he asked. “Is that the idee?”

“Sure,” answered Pitkin. “I was trying to think up a design of some kind. Lucky Baldwin, used to have a Maltese cross. How would it do if I had a rooster or a rising sun or a crescent sewed on to the back of the jacket?”

Old Man Curry pretended to give serious thought to the problem.

“Roosters an’ risin’ suns don’t mean anything,” said he judicially. “An emblem ought to mean something to the public—it ought to stand for something.”

“Yes,” said Pitkin, “but what can I get that will sort of identify me and my horses?”

“Well,” said the old man, “mebbe I can suggest a dee-sign that’ll fill the bill.” He picked up a bit of shingle and drew a pencil from his pocket. “How would this do? Two straight marks this way, Pitkin, an’ two straight marks that way—and nobody’d ever mistake your hosses—nobody that’s been watchin’ the way they run.”

Pitkin craned his neck and snorted with wrath. Old Man Curry had drawn two crosses side by side, and the inference was plain.

“That’s your notion, is it?” said he, rising. “Well, one thing is a mortal cinch, Curry; you’ll never catch me psalm singing round a race track, and any time I want to preach, I’ll hire a church! Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

“I ain’t smokin’, thankee, I’m chewin’ mostly,” remarked the old gentleman to Pitkin’s vanishing coat tails. “Well, now, looks like I made him sort of angry. What is it that Solomon wrote ’bout the anger of a fool?”

They used to say that the meanest man in the world was the Mean Man from Maine, but this is a slander on the good old Pine Tree State, for Henry M. Pitkin never was east of the Mississippi River in his life. He claimed Iowa as his native soil, and all that Iowa could do about it was to issue a warrant for his arrest on a charge connected with the misappropriation of funds. Young Mr. Pitkin escaped over the State line westward, beating the said warrant a nose in a whipping finish, and after a devious career covering many years and many States he turned up on the Jungle Circuit, bringing with him a string of horses, a gentle, soft-spoken old negro trainer, an Irish jockey named Mulligan, and two stable hands, each as black as the ace of spades.

The Jungle Circuit has always been peculiarly rich in catch-as-catch-can burglars and daylight highwaymen, but after they had studied Mr. Pitkin’s system closely these gentlemen refused to enter into a protective alliance with him, for, as Grouchy O’Connor remarked, “the sucker hadn’t never heard that there ought to be honor among thieves.” Pitkin would shear a black sheep as close to the shivering hide as he would shear a white one, and the horses of the Pitkin stable performed according to price, according to investment, according to orders—according to everything in the world but agreement, racing form, and honest endeavor. In ways that are dark and tricks that are vain the heathen Chinee at the top of his heathenish bent would have been no match for Mr. Henry M. Pitkin, who could have taken the shirt away from a Chinese river pirate.

The double-cross would have been an excellent racing trade-mark for the Pitkin stable, because Pitkin had double-crossed every one who ever trusted him, every one with whom he had come in contact. He had even double-crossed old Gabe Johnson, his negro trainer, and the history of that cross will furnish an accurate index on the smallness of Pitkin’s soul.

How such a decent old darky as Uncle Gabe ever came to be associated with white trash of the Pitkin variety is another and longer story. It is enough to say that Pitkin hired the old man when he was hungry and thereafter frequently reminded him of that fact. They had been together for three years when they came to the Jungle Circuit—Pitkin rat-eyed, furtive, mysterious as a crow, and scheming always for his own pocket; Uncle Gabe quiet, efficient, inclined to be religious, knowing his place and keeping it and attending strictly to business, namely, the conditioning of the Pitkin horses for the track.

Uncle Gabe treated all white men with scrupulous respect, even touching his hat brim every time Pitkin spoke to him. He was a real trainer of a school fast passing away, and at rare intervals he spoke of the “quality folks down yondeh” for whom he had handled thoroughbreds, glimpses of his history which made his present occupation seem all the stranger by contrast.

Some of the horsemen of the Jungle Circuit pretended to believe that Pitkin kept a negro trainer because he was too mean to get along with a white man, but this was only partly true. He kept Gabe because he had a keen appreciation of the old man’s knowledge of horseflesh, and in addition to this Gabe was cheap at the price—fifty dollars a month and his board, and only part of that fifty paid, for it hurt Pitkin to part with money under any circumstances.

It was by skipping pay days that he came to owe Uncle Gabe the not unimportant sum of five hundred dollars, and it was by trying to collect this amount that the aged trainer became also the owner of a race horse.

Pitkin, in the course of business dealings with a small breeding farm, had picked up two bay colts. They were as like as two peas with every honest right to the resemblance, for they were half-brothers by the same sire, and there was barely a week’s difference in their ages. Uncle Gabe looked the baby racers over very carefully before giving it as his opinion that no twins were ever more alike in appearance.

“They own mammies would have a li’l trouble tellin’ them colts apaht,” said the negro.

“Can you tell them apart?” asked Pitkin.

Gabe grinned. “Yes, suh,” he answered. “They is a difference.”

Pitkin looked at Gabe sharply. He knew that the old negro felt one colt to be better than the other.

“All right then,” he said after a moment. “Tell you what I’ll do. You’ve been deviling me for that five hundred dollars till I’m sick of listening to you. Take your pick of the two colts and call it square. How does that strike you?”

Uncle Gabe deliberated for some time. The five hundred dollars meant a great deal to him, but the cash value of a debt is regulated somewhat by the sort of man who owes it and Gabe realized that this point was worthy of consideration. On the other hand, should the colt turn out well, he would be worth several times five hundred dollars.

“Don’t wait till you get ’em in training,” said Pitkin. “A blind man could pick the best one then. Take the colt that looks good to you now and let it go at that.”

That evening Uncle Gabe made his selection and immediately announced that he intended to name his colt General Duval.

“Good enough,” said Pitkin, “and just to carry out the soldier idea, I’ll call the other one Sergeant Smith. Put the General in that end stall, away from the others.”

The next morning Gabe sent one of the stable hands to get his colt, and when the animal appeared the old trainer’s lower lip began to droop, but he said nothing until after he had made a thorough examination. “Boy, you done brought me the wrong colt,” said he. “This ain’t Gen’al Duval.”

“I got him outen yo’ stall,” said the stable hand.

“Don’t care where yo’ got him,” persisted Gabe. “This ain’t the colt I picked out. He ain’t wide enough between the eyes.”

“What’s the argument about?” asked Pitkin, coming from the tackle-room.

“Gabe say thisyer ain’t his colt,” answered the stable hand.

“Where did you get him?” demanded Pitkin.

“Outen that stall yondeh,” said the stable hand, pointing.

“That was where you put your colt, wasn’t it?” asked Pitkin, turning to Uncle Gabe.

“Yes, suh, I put him there all right, but this ain’t him.”

“Oh, come now,” laughed Pitkin, “you’ve been thinking it over and you’re afraid you’ve picked the wrong one. Be a sport, Gabe; stick with your bargain.”

“Been some monkey business done round yere,” muttered the aged negro. “Been a li’l night walkin’, mebbe. Boy, bring out that Sergeant Smith colt an’ lemme cas’ my eye oveh him once!”

“See here, nigger!” said Pitkin, “I let you have first pick, didn’t I? Gave you all the best of it, and you picked this colt here. If you’ve changed your mind overnight, I can’t help that, can I?”

“My mind ain’t changed none,” replied old Gabe, “but this colt, he’s changed, suh.”

“Who would change him on you, eh? Do you think I’d do it? Is that what you’re getting at?”

“Why—why, no suh, no, but——”

“Then shut up! You’re always beefing about something or other, always kicking! I don’t want to hear any more out of you, understand? Shut up!”

“Yes, suh,” answered old Gabe, touching his hat, “all the same I got a right to my opinion, boss.”

Whatever his opinion, Gabe proceeded to train the two colts in the usual manner, and before long it was plain to everyone connected with the Pitkin establishment that the striking likeness did not extend to track promise and performance. Sergeant Smith developed into a high-class piece of racing property; General Duval was not worth his oats. Sergeant Smith won some baby races in impressive fashion and was immediately tabbed as a comer and a useful betting tool, but every time General Duval carried the racing colors of Gabriel Johnson—cherry jacket, green sleeves, red, white and blue cap—he brought them home powdered with the dust of defeat.

Old Gabe made several ineffectual attempts to persuade Pitkin to take the colt back again on any terms, and was laughed at for his pains.

“You had your choice, didn’t you?” Pitkin would say. “Well, then, you can’t blame anybody but yourself. Whose fault is it that I got the good colt and you got the crab? No, Gabe, a bargain’s a bargain with me, always. The General’s a rotten bad race horse, but he’s yours and not mine. It’s what you get for being a poor picker.”

The bay colts were nearing the end of their three-year-old form when the Pitkin string arrived on the Jungle Circuit and took up quarters next door to Old Man Curry and his “Bible horses.” Sergeant Smith was the star of the stable and the principal money winner, when it suited Pitkin to let him run for the money, while General Duval, as like his half brother as a reflection in a flawless mirror, had a string of defeats to his discredit and his feed bill was breaking old Gabe’s heart. The trainer often looked at General Duval and shook his head.

“You an’ that otheh colt could tell me somethin’ if yo’ could talk,” he frequently remarked.

After his conversation with Old Man Curry, Pitkin returned to his tackle-room in a savage state of mind, and, needing a target for his abuse, selected Mulligan, the Irish jockey.

Now, Mulligan was small, but he had the heart of a giant and the courage of one conviction and two acquittals on charges of assault and battery. In spite of his size—he could ride at ninety-eight pounds—Mulligan was a man in years, a man who felt that his employer had treated him like a child in money matters, and when Pitkin called him a bow-legged little thief and an Irish ape, he was putting a match to a powder magazine.

One retort led to another, and when Mulligan ran out of retorts he responded with a piece of 2 by 4 scantling which he had been saving for just such an emergency, and Pitkin lost interest in the conversation.

Mulligan left him lying on the floor of the tackle-room, and though he was in somewhat of a hurry to be gone he found time to say a few words to old Gabe, who was sunning himself at the end of the barn.

“And I don’t know what you can do about it,” concluded the jockey, “but anyway I’ve put you wise. If they ask you, just say that you don’t know which way I went.”

That night Old Man Curry had a visitor who entered his tackle-room, hat in hand and bowing low.

“Set down, Gabe,” said the old horseman. “How’s Pitkin by this time?”

“He got a headache,” answered Gabe soberly.

“Humph!” snorted Curry. “Should think he would have. That boy fetched him a pretty solid lick. Glad he didn’t hurt him any worse—for the boy’s sake, I mean.”

“Yes, suh,” said Gabe. “Mist’ Curry, you been mighty good to me, one way’n anotheh, an’ I’d like to ast yo’ fo’ some advice.”

“Well,” said the old man, “advice is like medicine, Gabe—easy to give but hard to take. What’s troublin’ you now?”

“Mist’ Curry, yo’ ‘membeh me tellin’ yo’ ’bout that Gen’al Duval colt of mine—how he neveh did look the same to me since I got him?”

“Yes,” answered Curry, “an’ I’ve a’ready told you that you can’t prove anything on Pitkin. You may suspect that somebody switched them colts on you, but unless——”

“’Scuse me, suh,” interrupted Gabe, “but I got beyon’ suspectin’ it now. I knows it was done.”

“You don’t say!”

“Yes, suh, I got the proof. Mulligan, he say to me jus’ befo’ he lights out, ‘Gabe,’ he say, ‘that Smith colt, he belong to you by rights. Pitkin, he pulls a switch afteh yo’ went to bed that first night.’ He say he seen him do it.”

“Mebbe the boy was just tryin’ to stir up a little more trouble,” suggested Old Man Curry.

“Ain’t I tol’ you he neveh did look the same? Them colts so much alike they had me guessin’. I done picked the one whut was widest between the eyes—an’ that’s the one whut been awinnin’ all them races. That ain’t Sergeant Smith at all—that’s my Gen’al Duval. Pitkin, he gives me my pick an’ then he switches on me. Question is, how kin I git him back?”

Old Man Curry combed his whiskers for some time in silence.

“Solomon had a job like this once,” said he, “but it was a question of babies. I reckon his decision wouldn’t work out with hosses. Gabe, you’re gittin’ to be quite an old man, ain’t you?”

“Tollable ole,” replied the negro; “yes, suh.”

“An’ if you got this hoss away from Pitkin, what would you do with him?”

“Sell him,” was the prompt reply.

“Oho! Then it ain’t the hoss you want so much as the money, eh?”

“Mist’ Curry, that colt’d fetch enough to sen’ me home right. I got two sons in Baltimo’, an’ they been wantin’ me to quit the racin’ business, but I couldn’t quit it broke. No, suh, I couldn’t, so I jus’ been hangin’ on tooth an’ toenail like the sayin’ is, hopin’ I’d git a stake somehow.”

“And you don’t much care how you quit, so long’s you quit; is that it?”

“Well, suh, I don’t want no trouble if I kin he’p it, but if I has to fight my way loose from Pitkin I’ll do it.”

There was another long silence while Gabe waited.

“I reckon Solomon would have his hands full straightenin’ out this tangle,” said Old Man Curry at last. “You can’t break into the stall an’ take that hoss away from Pitkin, because he’d have you arrested. And then, of course, he’s got him registered in his name an’ runnin’ in his colors—that’s another thing we’ve got to take into consideration. I reckon we better set quiet a few days an’ study. You’ll know whenever this Sergeant hoss is entered in a race, won’t you?”

“Yes, suh; I’m boun’ to know ahead o’ time, suh.”

“All right. Go on back to work an’ don’t quarrel with Pitkin. Don’t let him know that you’ve found out anything, an’ keep me posted on Sergeant Smith. Might be a good thing if we knew when Pitkin is goin’ to bet on him. He’s been cheatin’ with that hoss lately.”

“He’s always cheatin’, suh. Yo’—yo’ think they’s a way to—to——”

“There’s always a way, Gabe,” answered Old Man Curry. “The main thing is to find it.”

“That’s my hoss by right,” said the negro, with a trace of stubbornness in his tone.

“An’ the world is your oyster,” responded Curry, “but you can’t go bustin’ into it with dynamite. You got to open an oyster, careful. Now go on back to your barn and do as I tell you. Understand?”

“Yes, suh, an’ thank yo’ kin’ly, suh.”

Pitkin’s bandaged head brought him little sympathy—in fact, the general opinion seemed to be that Mulligan had not hit him quite hard enough to do the community any good. Certainly the scantling did not improve his temper, and Pitkin made life a burden to old Gabe and the two black stable hands. Gabe swallowed the abuse with a patient smile, but the two roustabouts muttered to themselves and eyed their employer with malevolence. They had also been missing pay days.

One evening Pitkin stuck his head out of the door of the tackle-room and called for his trainer.

“Gabe! Oh, Gabe! Now where is that good-for-nothing old nigger?”

“Comin’, suh, comin’,” answered Gabe, shuffling along the line of stalls. “Yo’ want to see me, boss?”

“Shut the door behind you,” growled Pitkin. “I was thinking it was about time we cut this Sergeant Smith colt loose.”

“Yes, suh,” answered Gabe. “He’s ready to go, boss.”

“How good is he?” demanded Pitkin.

“Well, suh,” replied Gabe, “he’s a heap better’n whut he’s been showin’ lately, that’s a fact.”

“Can he beat horses like Calloway and Hartshorn?”

“He kin if he gits a chance.”

“How do you mean, a chance?”

“Well, suh, if he gits a good, hones’ ride, fo’ one thing. He been messed all oveh the race track las’ few times out.”

“But with a good ride you think he can win?”

“Humph!” sniffed Gabe. “He leave ’em like they standin’ still!”

“I want to slip him into the fourth race next Saturday,” said Pitkin, “and he’ll have Calloway and Hartshorn to beat. There ought to be a nice price on him—4 or 5 to 1, anyway, on account of what he’s been showing lately.”

“Yo’ goin’ bet on him, suh?”

“Straight and place,” said Pitkin, “but I won’t bet a nickel here at the track. They’ll be asking you about the colt and trying to get a line on him. You tell ’em that I’m starting him a little bit out of his class just to see if he’s game—any lie will do. And if they ask you about the stable money, we’re not playing him this time.”

“Yes, suh.”

“You’re absolutely sure he’s ready?”

“Ready? Why, boss, ain’t yo’ been watchin’ the way that colt is workin’? Yo’ kin bet ’em till they quits takin’ it an’ not be scared.”

“That’s all I want to know, Gabe, and mind what I told you about keeping that big mouth of yours shut. If I hear of any talk——”

“I ain’t neveh talked yit, has I?”

“Well, don’t pick this time to start; that’s all.”

That night the lights burned late in two tackle-rooms. In one of them Old Man Curry was bringing the judgment of Solomon down to date and fitting it to turf conditions; in the other Henry M. Pitkin was preparing code telegrams to certain business associates in Seattle, Portland, Butte, and San Francisco, for this was in the unregenerate days when pool rooms operated more or less openly in the West. Mr. Pitkin was getting ready for the annual clean-up.

The next morning he was on hand early enough to see General Duval return from an exercise gallop, and there was a small black boy on the colt’s back.

“Come here, Gabe,” said Pitkin. “Ain’t that Curry’s nigger jockey?”

“Yes, suh; that’s Jockey Moseby Jones, suh.”

“What’s he doing around this stable?”

“He kind o’ gittin’ acquainted with the Gen’al, suh.”

“Acquainted? What for?”

“Well, suh, they’s a maiden race nex’ Satu’day, an’ I was thinkin’ mebbe the Gen’al could win it if he gits a good ride. Jockey Jones didn’t have no otheh engagement, suh, so I done hired him fo’ the ‘casion.”

“Oh, you did, did you? Now listen to me, Gabe: I don’t want anybody from the Curry stable hanging around this place. Chances are this little nigger will be trying to pick up an earful to carry back to his boss, the psalm-singing old hypocrite! If Curry should find out we’re leveling with Sergeant Smith next Saturday, he might go into the ring and hurt the price. I can’t stop you putting the little nigger on your own horse, but if he tries to make my barn a hangout, I’ll warm his jacket for him, understand? You can tell him so.”

“Yes, suh,” answered Gabe meekly. “Mist’ Curry an’ yo’ bad friends, boss?”

“We ain’t any kind of friends,” snapped Pitkin, “and that goes for every blackbird that eats out of his hand!”

“I thought he was a kin’ o’ pious ole gentleman,” said Gabe.

“He’s got a lot of people fooled, Curry has,” replied Pitkin with unnecessary profanity, “but I’ve had his number right along. He’s a crook, but he gets away with it on account of that long-tailed coat—the sanctimonious old scoundrel! Don’t you have anything to do with him, Gabe.”

“Me?” said Gabe professing mild astonishment. “Humph! I reckon not!”

“Always stick with your friends,” said Pitkin, “and remember which side your bread is buttered on.”

“That’s whut I’m aimin’ to do, suh. Yo’ know, boss, I sort o’ figgeh the Gen’al’s got a mighty good chance nex’ Satu’day in that secon’ race. A mighty good chance.”

Pitkin sneered. “Going to bet on him, are you?”

“No, suh; not ‘less some people pay me whut they owes me.”

“You’d only blow it in if you had it,” replied Pitkin. “The General’s a darn bad race horse—always was and always will be.”

“They ain’t nothin’ in that race fo’ him to beat,” responded Gabe.

“He’s never had anything to beat yet,” said Pitkin, “and he’s still a maiden, ain’t he? Better let him run for the purse, Gabe. Playing a horse like that is just throwing good money after bad.”

“Mebbe yo’ right, boss,” answered the old negro. “Mebbe yo’ right, but I still thinks he’s got a chance.”

Now, in a maiden race every horse is supposed to have a chance, not a particularly robust one, of course, but still a chance. The maidens are the horses which have never won a race, and every jungle circuit is well supplied with these equine misfits. They graduate, one at a time, from their lowly state, and the owner is indeed fortunate who wins enough to cover the cost of probation. The betting on a maiden race is seldom heavy, but always sporadic enough to prove the truth of the old saw about the hope which springs eternal.

Saturday’s maiden race was no exception. There was a sizzling paddock tip on The Cricket, a nervous brown mare which had twice finished second at the meeting, the last time missing her graduation by a nose; others had heard that Athelstan was “trying”; there was a rumor that Laredo was about to annex his first brackets; suspicion pointed to Miller Boy as likely to “do something,” but nobody had heard any good news of General Duval. Those who looked him up in the form charts found his previous races sufficiently disgraceful.

The Cricket opened favorite at 8 to 5, and when her owner heard this he grunted deep and soulfully and swore by all his gods that the price was too short and the mare a false favorite. He had hoped for not less than 4 to 1, in which case he would have sent the mare out to win, carrying a few hundred dollars of ill-gotten gains as wagers, but at 8 to 5 tickets on The Cricket had no value save as souvenirs of a sad occasion.

Nobody bothered about General Duval; nobody questioned old Gabe as he led a blanketed horse round and round the paddock stalls. Old Man Curry sat on the fence, thoughtfully chewing fine-cut tobacco and seemingly taking no interest in his surroundings, but he saw Pitkin as soon as that fox-faced gentleman entered the paddock, and thereafter he watched the disciple of the double-cross closely. It was plain that Pitkin’s visit had no business significance; he was not the sort of man to play a maiden race, and after a few bantering remarks addressed to old Gabe he drifted back into the betting ring, where he made a casual note of the fact that on most of the slates General Duval was quoted at 40 to 1.

“Anybody betting on the nigger’s skate?” asked Pitkin of a black man whom he knew.

“Not a soul,” was the reply. “What does the old fool start him for?”

“Because that’s what he is—an old fool,” answered Pitkin briefly as he moved away.

When the first bookmaker chalked up 50 to 1 on the General, a bulky, flat-footed negro, dressed in a screaming plaid suit with an ancient straw hat tilted sportively over one eye, fished a wrinkled two-dollar bill out of his vest pocket, and bet it on Gabriel Johnson’s horse. “You like that one, do you?” grinned the bookmaker.

“No, suh, not ’specially,” chuckled the negro, “but I sutny likes that long price!”

Soon there was more 50 to 1 in sight, and the flat-footed negro began to shuffle about the betting-ring, bringing to light other wrinkled two-dollar bills. The bookmakers were glad to take in a few dollars on General Duval, if for no other reason than to round out their sheets. The flat-footed negro continued to bet until he arrived at the bottom of his vest pocket, and then he began to draw upon a fund concealed in the fob pocket of his trousers. When the first bugle call sounded he was betting from the right hip—and never more than two dollars at a time.

Jockey Moseby Jones, gorgeous as a tropical butterfly in the cherry jacket with green sleeves and the red, white and blue cap, pranced into General Duval’s paddock stall and listened intently as old Gabe bent over him.

“Yo’ ain’t fo’got whut we tole yo’ last night, son?” asked Gabe in anxious tones.

“Ain’t fo’got nuthin’,” was the sober answer.

“‘Cause eve’ything ‘pend on how it look.”

“Uh huh,” replied little Mose. “I make it look all right.”

“This hoss, he might take a notion to run off an’ leave ’em soon as the barrier go up,” cautioned Gabe. “Keep him folded up in yo’ lap to the las’ minute.”

“An’ then set him down,” supplemented Mose. “Yo’ jus’ be watchin’ me, thass all!”

“Lot of folks’ll be watchin’ yo’,” warned Gabe. “Them judges, they goin’ be watchin’ yo’. Remembeh, it got to look right!”

As Jockey Jones passed out of the paddock he clucked to his mount and glanced over toward the fence where Old Man Curry was still sitting.

“Hawss,” whispered little Mose, “did yo’ see that? The ole man winked at us!”

There must have been some truth in the rumor concerning Laredo, for he rushed to the front when the barrier rose, with Miller Boy and Athelstan in hot pursuit. As for The Cricket, she was all but left at the post, and her owner remarked to himself that he’d teach ’em when to make his mare a false favorite.

The three people most interested in the cherry jacket with the green sleeves watched it go bobbing along the rail several lengths behind the leaders, and were relieved to find it there instead of out in front. Had the judges been watching the bay colt they could not have helped noticing that his mouth was wide open, due to a powerful pull on the reins, and they might have drawn certain conclusions from this, but they were watching The Cricket instead and mentally putting a rod in pickle for the owner of the favorite.

Laredo led around the turn and into the stretch with Miller Boy and Athelstan crowding him hard, but the pace was beginning to tell on the front runners, and the rear guard was closing in on them, headed by the cherry jacket.

“It’s anybody’s race,” remarked the presiding judge as he squinted up the stretch. “Lord, what a lot of beetles!”

“Yes, they’re rotten,” said the associate judge. “Laredo’s quitting already. Now, then, you hounds, come on! Whose turn is it to-day?”

The maidens came floundering down to the wire spread out like a cavalry charge and covering half the track. At the sixteenth pole a bold man would have hesitated to pick the winner; indeed, it looked to be anybody’s race, with the sole exception of The Cricket, sulking far in the rear. It was Gabe Johnson who saw that the wraps were still about Mose’s wrists, but it was Old Man Curry who chuckled to himself as the horses passed the paddock gate, and it was Shanghai, Curry’s negro hostler, who began to count tickets on General Duval.

“The old nigger’s horse is going to be there or thereabouts to-day,” commented the presiding judge. “Just—about—there—or—thereabouts. Keep your eye on him, Ed—there he is on the inside. Darn these spread-eagle finishes! They always look bad from angle!”

Thirty yards away from home a single length separated the first five horses, and the fifth horse carried the racing colors of Gabriel Johnson. It was cutting it fine, very fine, but little Mose had an excellent eye for distance; he felt the strength of the mount under him and timed his closing rush to the fraction of a second. Those who were yelling wildly for Athelstan, Miller Boy, and the others saw a flash of cherry jacket on the rail, caught a glimpse of a bullet-headed little negro hurling himself forward in the stirrups—and the race was over. Jockey Moseby Jones had brought a despised outsider home a winner by half a length. There was a stunned silence as the numbers dropped into place, broken only by one terrific whoop from Shanghai, betting commissioner.

“Well,” said the associate judge, looking at his chief, “what do you make of that? The winner had a lot left, didn’t he? Think the old nigger has been cheating with him?”

The presiding judge rubbed his chin.

“No-o, Ed, I reckon not,” said he. “It was a poor race, run in slow time. And we’ve got to figure that the change of jockeys would make a difference; this Jones is a better boy than Duval is used to. I reckon it’s all right—and I’m glad the old nigger finally won a race.”

“The Cricket would have walked home if she’d got away good,” said the associate judge.

“Have to look into that business,” said the other. “Well, I’m glad the old darky finally put one over!”

Many people seemed glad of it, even Mr. Pitkin, who slapped Gabe on the back as he led the winner from the ring.

“Didn’t see the race—I was down getting another drink—but they tell me the General just lucked in on the last jump. Everything dead in front of him, eh?”

“Yes, suh,” answered Gabe, passing the halter to one of the black stable hands. “It did look like he win lucky, that’s a fac’!”

“Well, don’t go to celebrating and overlook that fourth race!” ordered Pitkin. “No gin now! You bring Sergeant Smith over to the paddock yourself.”

“Yes, suh, boss.”

“And if anybody asks you about him, he’s only in there for a tryout.”

“Jus’ fo’ a tryout, yes, suh.”

To such as were simple enough to expect a crooked man to return straight answers to foolish questions, Pitkin stated (1) that he was not betting a plugged nickel on his colt, (2) that he hardly figured to have a chance with such horses as Calloway and Hartshorn, (3) that he might possibly be third if he got the best of the breaks, and (4) that he had lost his regular jockey and was forced to give the mount to a bad little boy about whom he knew nothing.

The real truth he uncovered to Jockey Shea, a freckled young savage who had taken up the burden where Mulligan laid it down.

“Listen, kid, and don’t make any mistakes with this colt. I’m down on him hook, line, and sinker to win and place, so give him a nice ride and I’ll declare you in with a piece of the dough. Eh? Never you mind; it’ll be enough. Now, then, this is a mile race, and Calloway will go out in front—he always does. Lay in behind him and stay there till you get to the head of the stretch, then shake up the colt and come on with him. He can stand a long, hard drive under whip and spur, so give it to him good and plenty from the quarter pole home. Don’t try to draw a close finish—win just as far as you can with him, because Hartshorn will be coming from behind.”

This was the race as programmed; this was the Pitkin annual clean-up as planned. Imagine, then, Pitkin’s sheer, dumb amazement at the spectacle of Shea, going to the bat at the rise of the barrier in order to keep his mount within striking distance of the tail end of the procession! Imagine his wrath as the colt continued to lag in last place, losing ground in spite of the savage punishment administered by Shea. Imagine his sensations when he thought of the Pitkin bank roll, scattered in all the pool rooms between Seattle and San Francisco, tossed to the winds, burned up, gone forever, bet on a colt that would not or could not make a respectable fight for it!

Let us drop the curtain over the rest of the race—Hartshorn won it in a neck-and-neck drive with Calloway just as Shea was flogging the bay colt past the sixteenth pole—and we will lift the curtain again at the point where the judges summoned Pitkin into the stand to ask him for an explanation of Sergeant Smith’s pitiful showing.

“Now, sir,” said the presiding judge; “we’ve been pretty lenient with you, Mr. Pitkin. We’ve overlooked a lot of things that we didn’t like—a lot of things. I figured this colt to have a fair chance to win to-day, or be in the money at least. He ran like a cow. How do you account for that?”

“Why, judges,” stammered Pitkin, “I—I don’t account for it. I can’t account for it. The colt’s been working good, and—and——”

“And you thought he had a chance, did you?”

“Why sure, judges, and I——”

“Well, then, why did you tell your friends that the colt was only in for a tryout? How about that?”

“I—I didn’t want ’em spoiling the price, I mean, judges; I didn’t think it was anybody’s business.”

“Oh, so you bet on him, did you? Let’s see the tickets.”

And of course Mr. Pitkin had no tickets to show. He offered to produce copies of telegrams, but the judges had him exactly where they had been wanting to get him and they gave him a very unhappy ten minutes. At the end of this period the presiding judge cleared his throat and pronounced sentence. “Your entries are refused from now on, and you are warned off this track. Take your horses somewhere else, sir, and don’t ever bring ’em back here. That’s all.”

To Pitkin it seemed enough.

He walked down the steps in a daze and wandered away in the general direction of his stable. He was still in a daze when he reached his destination, and the first thing he saw was old Gabe, his coat on and a satchel in his hand.

“Oh, you’ve heard about it already, have you?” asked Pitkin dully.

“Heard whut?” And Gabe did not touch the brim of his hat.

“We’ve got the gate—been warned off: entries refused.”

“Glory!” ejaculated the aged trainer. “Time they was gittin’ onto you!”

“What’s that?” shouted Pitkin. “Why, you black hound, I’ll——”

“Yo’ won’t do nuthin’!” said Gabe stoutly. “Pitkin, yo’ an’ me is through; yo’ an’ me is done! Yo’ made me all the trouble yo’ eveh goin’ make. Nex’ time they ketches yo’ cheatin’ on a race track I hopes they shoot yo’ head off!”

Old Gabe walked away toward the Curry barn, and all Pitkin could do was stare after him. Then he sat down on a bale of hay and took stock of his misfortunes.

“I reckon everything’s all right, Gabe,” said Old Man Curry, who was counting money in his tackle-room. “It was sort o’ risky. When a man can’t tell his own hoss when he sees him, anything is liable to happen to him on a bush track. I’ve just cut this bank roll in two, Gabe, and here’s your bit. Shanghai’s a good bettin’ commissioner, eh?”

Old Gabe’s eyes bulged as he contemplated the size of his fortune.

“All this, suh—mine?”

“All yours—an’ you better not miss that six o’clock train. Never can tell what’ll happen, you know, Gabe. Pitkin will keep General Duval, I reckon?”

Gabe grinned from ear to ear.

“I fo’got to tell him so,” he chuckled, “but he got both them hosses now. Mist’ Curry, whut yo’ reckon Sol’mun would say ’bout us?”

“‘The Lord will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish,’” quoted the horseman, “‘but he casteth away the substance of the wicked.’”

“A-a-men!” said old Gabe. “An’ a fine job o’ castin’ away been done this evenin’! Mist’ Curry, I’m quit hoss racin’ now, but yo’ the whites’ man I met in all my time.”

“Go ‘way with you!” laughed Curry.

It was one of the black stable hands who recalled Pitkin to a sense of his responsibilities. The roustabout approached, leading a bay colt.

“Boss, is Gabe done quit us?”

“Huh?” grunted Pitkin, emerging from a deep-brown study. “Yes, he’s gone, confound him!”

“Well, he lef thisyer Gen’al Duval hoss behin’ him. The Gen’al’s cooled out now; whut you want me to do with him?”

“Put him in his stall,” mumbled Pitkin. “To-morrow I’ll see if I can get rid of him.”

It is a very stupid race horse which does not know its own stall. The stable hand released his hold on the halter and slapped the colt’s flank.

“G’long with yo’!” said he.

Then, and not until then, did Henry M. Pitkin begin to estimate his misfortune correctly, for the bay colt which had won the maiden race in the name of General Duval and carried the racing colors of Gabriel Johnson to their first and only victory marched straight into Sergeant Smith’s stall and thrust his muzzle into Sergeant Smith’s feed box!

Table of Contents

1. The flight of the Coyote Special (1910)

2. The message to Buckshot John (1912)

3. When thieves fall off (1912)

4. For Brodie's benefit (1916)

5. Tales of the Midnight Club

6. Buck Parvin and the movies (1917)

1. The extra man and the milk-fed lion

2. The international cup

3. Man afraid of his wardrobe

4. Water stuff

5. Buck’s lady friend

6. Desert stuff

7. Author! Author!

8. Snow stuff

9. “This is the life!”

7. Fore! (1918)

1. Gentlemen, you can’t go through!

2. Little poison ivy

3. The Major, D.O.S.

4. A mixed foursome

5. “Similia similibus curantur”

6. A cure for lumbago

7. The man who quit

8. The Ooley-cow

9. Adolphus and the rough diamond

8. Old Man Curry (1917)

1. Levelling with Elisha

2. Playing even for Obadiah

3. By a hair

4. The last chance

5. Sanguinary Jeremiah

6. Eliphaz, late Fairfax

7. The redemption handicap

8. A morning workout

9. Egyptian corn

10. The modern judgment of Solomon