Part 21 (1/2)

But he wouldn't come back; so I left him surrounded by the wreck of his former smartiness and went home. At the door where the treasures had been ma.s.sed not a solitary thing was left but a plush holder for a whisk broom, with hand-painted pansies on the front; and I decided I could live without that. Tim Mahoney was there, grouching round about having to light up the hall next night for the B'nai B'rith; and I told him to take it for himself. He already had six drawnwork doilies and a vanity box with white and red powder in it.

As I go by the Hong Kong Quick Lunch, Sandy and three or four others is up on stools; the Chinaman, cooking things behind the counter, is wearing a lavender-striped silk dressing sacque and a lace boudoir cap with pink ribbons in it. Yes; we'd all had a purple night of it!

Next day about noon I'm downtown and catch sight of Cousin Egbert setting in the United States Grill having breakfast; so I feel mean enough to go in and gloat over him some more. I think to find him all madded up and mortified; but he's strangely cheerful for one who has suffered. He was bearing up so wonderful that I asked why.

”Ain't you heard?” says he, blotting round in his steak platter with a slice of bread. ”Well, I got even with that Wales outfit just before daylight--that's all!”

”Talk on,” I beg, quite incredulous.

”I didn't get to bed till about two,” he says, ”and at three I was woke up by the telephone. It's this big stiff Len Wales, that had ought to have his head taken off because it only absorbs nourishment from his system and gives nothing in return. He's laughing in a childish frenzy and says is this me? I says it is, but that's neither here nor there, and what does he want at this hour? 'It's a good joke on you,' he says, 'for the little woman got it on the third trial.' 'Got what?' I wanted to know. 'Got that solitaire,' he yells. 'And it's a good joke on you, all right, because now you owe her the thousand dollars; and I hate to bother you, but you know how some women are that have a delicate, high-strung organization. She says she won't be able to sleep a wink if you don't bring it up to her so she can have all our little treasure under her pillow; and I think, myself, it's better to have it all settled and satisfactory while the iron's hot, and you'd probably prefer it that way, too; and she says she won't mind, this time, taking your check, though the actual money would be far more satisfactory, because you know what women are--”

”Say! He raves on like this for three minutes, stopping to laugh like a maniac about every three words, before I can get a word in to tell him that I'm a delicate, high-strung organization myself, if you come right down to it, and I can't stand there in my nightgown listening to a string of nonsense. He chokes and says: 'What nonsense?' And I ask him does he think I'd pay a thousand dollars out on a game I hadn't overlooked? And he says didn't I agree to in the presence of witnesses, and the cards is laid out right there now on the dining-room table if I got the least suspicion the game wasn't played fair, and will I come up and look for myself! And I says 'Not in a thousand years!' Because what does he think I am!

”So then Mis' Wales she breaks in and says: 'Listen, Mr. Floud! You are taking a most peculiar att.i.tude in this matter. You perhaps don't understand that it means a great deal to dear Leonard and me--try to think calmly and summon your finer instincts. You said I could not only play with my own cards at any hour of the night or day, but in my own home; and I chose to play here, because conditions are more harmonious to my psychic powers--' And so on and so on; and she can't understand my peculiar att.i.tude once more, till I thought I'd bust.

”It was lucky she had the telephone between us or I should certainly of been pinched for a crime of violence. But I got kind of collected in my senses and I told her I already had been pushed as far as I could be; and then I think of a good one: I ask her does she know what General Sherman said war was? So she says, 'No; but what has that got to do with it?' 'Well, listen carefully!' I says. 'You tell dear Leonard that I am now saying my last word in this matter by telling you both to go to war--and then ask him to tell you right out what Sherman said war was.'

”I listened a minute longer for her scream, and when it come, like sweet music or something, I went to bed again and slept happy. Yes, sir; I got even with them sharks all right, though she's telling all over town this morning that I have repudiated a debt of honour and she's going to have that thousand if there's any law in the land; and anyway, she'll get me took up for conducting a common gambling house. Gee! It makes me feel good!”

That's the way with this old Egbert boy; nothing ever seems to faze him long.

”How much do you lose on the night?” I ask him.

”Well, the bar was a great help,” he says, very chipper; ”so I only lose about fourteen hundred all told. It'll make a nice bunch for the Belgians, and the few dollars you ladies made at your cheap booths will help some.”

”How will your fourteen hundred lost be any help to the Belgians?” I wanted to know; and he looked at me very superior and as crafty as a fox.

”Simple enough!” he says in a lofty manner. ”I was going to give what I win, wasn't I? So why wouldn't I give what I lose? That's plain enough for any one but a woman to see, ain't it? I give Mis' Ballard, the treasurer, a check for fourteen hundred not an hour ago. I told you I knew how to run one of these grafts, didn't I? Didn't I, now?”

Wasn't that just like the old smarty? You never know when you got him nailed. And feeling so good over getting even with the Wales couple that had about a thousand dollars of his money that very minute!

Still from the dimly lighted bunk house came the wail of Sandy Sawtelle to make vibrant the night. He had returned to his earlier song after intermittent trifling with an extensive repertoire:

There's a broken heart for every light on Broadway, A million tears for every gleam, they say.

Those lights above you think nothing of you; It's those who love you that have to pay....

It was the wail of one thwarted and peris.h.i.+ng. ”Ain't it the sobbing tenor?” remarked his employer. ”But you can't blame him after the killing he made before. Of course he'll get to town sooner or later and play this fourteen number, being that the new reform administration, with Lon Price as Mayor, is now safely elected and the game has opened up again. Yes, sir; he's nutty about st.i.tches in a mule. I wouldn't put it past him that he had old Jerry kicked on purpose to-day!”

VII

KATE; OR, UP FROM THE DEPTHS

This day I fared abroad with Ma Pettengill over wide s.p.a.ces of the Arrowhead Ranch. Between fields along the river bottom were gates distressingly crude; clumsy, hingeless panels of board fence, which I must dismount and lift about by sheer brawn of shoulder. Such gates combine the greatest weight with the least possible exercise of man's inventive faculties, and are named, not too subtly, the Armstrong gate.

This, indeed, is the American beauty of ranch humour, a flower of imperishable fragrance handed to the visitor--who does the lifting with guarded drollery or triumphant snicker, as may be. Buck Devine or Sandy Sawtelle will achieve the mot with an aloof austerity that abates no jot unto the hundredth repet.i.tion; while Lew Wee, Chinese cook of the Arrowhead, fails not to brighten it with a nervous giggle, impairing its vocal correctness, moreover, by calling it the ”Armcatchum” gate.

Ma Pettengill was more versatile this day. The first gate I struggled with she called Armstrong in a manner dryly descriptive; for the second she managed a humorous leer to illumine the term; for the third, secured with a garland of barbed wire that must be painfully untwisted, she employed a still broader humour. Even a child would then have known that calling this criminal device the Armstrong gate was a joke of uncommon richness.

As I remounted, staunching the inevitable wound from barbed wire, I began to speak in the bitterly superior tones of an efficiency expert as we traversed a field where hundreds of white-faced Herefords were putting on flesh to their own ruin. I said to my hostess that I vastly enjoyed lifting a hundred-pound gate--and what was the loss of a little blood between old friends, even when aggravated by probable teta.n.u.s germs? But had she ever paused to compute the money value of time lost by her henchmen in dismounting to open these clumsy makes.h.i.+fts? I suggested that, even appraising the one reliable ranch joke in all the world at a high figure, she would still profit considerably by putting in gates that were gates, in place of contrivances that could be handled ideally only by a retired weight lifter in barbed-wire-proof armour.