Part 18 (2/2)
”I guess you are right,” interposed Carlin. ”There is the Mexican who lives across the street from us. If I were to take a revolver and go over there in the morning and attack him, the chances are I would scare him to death; were I to try the same experiment with a bowie knife the chances are more than even that he would give me more of a game than I would want, and simply because he is accustomed to a knife and not to a pistol.
”So the mountain trapper will attack a grizzly bear with perfect coolness, or cross the swiftest stream in a canoe without any fear, but bring the same man for the first time here to the mine and ask him to get on a cage with you and go down a shaft, and he will grow pale and tremble like a girl.”
”An Indian,” suggested the Professor, ”at the side of a white man will go into a desperate battle and never flinch; so long as the white man lives he will fight even unto death. But let a white man engage in a hand to hand fight with two or three Indians, and if he has the nerve to hold him up to the fight for two or three minutes he will conquer, because an hereditary fear overcomes the savage that the pale face will conquer in the end. That is really the cowardice which Falstaff a.s.sumed to feel, the cowardice of instinct in the presence of the true prince, and is the mark which the Indian mothers have impressed upon their babes for ten generations.
”The rule is that we follow our trades!”
”Then some men are brave at one time and cowardly at another,” said the Colonel. ”Men who will fight without shrinking, by day, are often completely demoralized by a night attack. With such men the trouble is, they cannot see to estimate their danger, and their imaginations multiply and magnify it a hundred fold. I know a man in this city who has been in a hundred fights, many of them most desperate encounters. He told me once that he believed it would frighten him to death to be awakened at night by a burglar in his room.
”This is the fear, too, which paralyzes men in the presence of an earthquake. The sky may be clear and the air still, but the thought that in a moment chaos may come is too much for the ordinary nerves of mortals.”
”The bravest act I ever witnessed was on C street in this city,”
responded Strong. ”It was a little Hebrew dunning a desperado for the balance due on a pair of pantaloons. The amount was six dollars and fifty cents. I would not have asked the fighter for the money for six times the sum, but the little chap not only asked for it, but when the fighter tried to evade him, he seized him by the arm with one hand and putting the forefinger of his other hand alongside his own nose, in the most insulting tone possible said: 'You does not get avay. Der man vot does not bay for his glose is, vots yer call him? one d----d loafer. I vants my monish.'
”The fighter could no more escape from that eye than a chicken hawk can from the spell of the eye of the black snake, and so he settled.
”That was the courage which it required the hards.h.i.+ps and persecutions of one hundred generations of suffering men to acquire, and I tell you there was something thrilling in the way it was manifested.”
”So, too, men's ideas of honor are often warped strangely by education,”
Miller said. ”Do you remember there was a Frenchman hanged in this city a few years ago? On the scaffold, with a grandiloquent air, just before the cap was drawn over his face, he said: 'Zey can hang me, but zey cannot hang Frawnce.' He had from childhood entertained the belief that there was but one entirely invincible nation on this earth, and that was France; and the thought that to the last France must be honored possessed him.
”That man had murdered a poor woman of the town for her money.”
”I should say there were some queer ideas of honor in this country,”
chipped in the Colonel. ”I believe the rule among some or all sporting men is, that it is entirely legitimate to practice any advantage on an opponent in a game, so long as the same idea controls the opponent.
Still those men have most tenacious ideas of honor. Indeed they have a code of their own. If one borrows money of another he pays it if he has to rob someone to do it. If one stakes another--that is gives him money to play--and a winning is made, the profits are scrupulously divided. If one loses more at night than he has money to pay, he must have it early next morning or go into disgrace.
”A friend of mine who lived on Treasure Hill during that first fearful winter, told me that during that season a faro game was running, and the owners of the bank had won some thirty-five hundred dollars. The dealer's habit was to lock up his place in the forenoon and not return until evening. The interval was his only time for sleep, as the game frequently ran all night.
”Three or four 'sports' who lived together in a house, had lost heavily at this game. One morning, one of them said that if he could only get that dealer's cards for half an hour he believed he could 'fix' them so that the luck of the boys would change.
”They had for a cook and servant a young man who had confessed that he left the East without any extensive or extended preparations, and that he did it to avoid paying a penalty for picking a lock and robbing a till.
”He was called up, it was explained to him what was wanted and for what reason, and asked if it was not possible for him to procure those cards.
”The youth took kindly to the proposition, went away, and in a few minutes returned--not with the cards--but with the dealer's sack of coin, saying as he laid down the sack: 'As I picked the lock of the drawer I found the sack and the cards lying side by side. I thought it would be easier to take the coin than to fool with the cards, and here it is.'
”Instantly there was a commotion, and a perfect storm of imprecations was poured out upon the thief. On every side were shouts of: 'Take back that money! you miserable New York thief! What do you take us for? Take back that sack or we will sell you for headcheese before night!'
”The youth carried back the coin and brought the cards. They were found to be 'fixed'; they were 'fixed' over and returned, and that night 'on the dead square,' the bank was broken. The boys had the sack for the second time, but this time the transaction, according to their code, was entirely legitimate.
”By the operation the professional thief obtained new ideas of the nice distinctions which are made in the gamblers' code of honor.”
”I once in Idaho knew a most conscientious judge,” said Miller. ”In his court a suit involving the t.i.tle of some mining ground was pending between two companies. In another part of the district the Judge had some claims which were looked upon as mere 'wild cat.'
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