Golden by day and silver by night, a new trail now leads to us across
the Indian Ocean. Dusky kings and princes have found our Bombay of the
West; and few be their trails that do not lead down to Broadway on
their journey for to admire and for to see.
If chance should ever lead you near a hotel that transiently shelters
some one of these splendid touring grandees, I counsel you to seek
Lucullus Polk among the republican tuft-hunters that besiege its
entrances. He will be there. You will know him by his red, alert,
Wellington-nosed face, by his manner of nervous caution mingled with
determination, by his assumed promoter's or broker's air of busy
impatience, and by his bright-red necktie, gallantly redressing the
wrongs of his maltreated blue serge suit, like a battle standard still
waving above a lost cause. I found him profitable; and so may you.
When you do look for him, look among the light-horse troop of Bedouins
that besiege the picket-line of the travelling potentate's guards and
secretaries--among the wild-eyed genii of Arabian Afternoons that
gather to make astounding and egregrious demands upon the prince's
coffers.
I first saw Mr. Polk coming down the steps of the hotel at which
sojourned His Highness the Gaekwar of Baroda, most enlightened of the
Mahratta princes, who, of late, ate bread and salt in our Metropolis
of the Occident.
Lucullus moved rapidly, as though propelled by some potent moral force
that imminently threatened to become physical. Behind him closely
followed the impetus--a hotel detective, if ever white Alpine hat,
hawk's nose, implacable watch chain, and loud refinement of manner
spoke the truth. A brace of uniformed porters at his heels preserved
the smooth decorum of the hotel, repudiating by their air of
disengagement any suspicion that they formed a reserve squad of
ejectment.
Safe on the sidewalk, Lucullus Polk turned and shook a freckled fist
at the caravansary. And, to my joy, he began to breathe deep invective
in strange words:
"Rides in howdahs [22], does he?" he cried loudly and sneeringly. "Rides
on elephants in howdahs and calls himself a prince! Kings--yah! Comes
over here and talks horse till you would think he was a president; and
then goes home and rides in a private dining-room strapped onto an
elephant. Well, well, well!"
[FOOTNOTE 22: howdah--a seat, often with a canopy, for riding an
elephant or camel]
The ejecting committee quietly retired. The scorner of princes turned
to me and snapped his fingers.
"What do you think of that?" he shouted derisively. "The Gaekwar
of Baroda rides on an elephant in a howdah! And there's old Bikram
Shamsher Jang scorching up and down the pig-paths of Khatmandu on a
motor-cycle. Wouldn't that maharajah you? And the Shah of Persia, that
ought to have been Muley-on-the-spot for at least three, he's got the
palanquin habit. And that funny-hat prince from Korea--wouldn't you
think he could afford to amble around on a milk-white palfrey once
in a dynasty or two? Nothing doing! His idea of a Balaklava charge
is to tuck his skirts under him and do his mile in six days over the
hog-wallows of Seoul in a bull-cart. That's the kind of visiting
potentates that come to this country now. It's a hard deal, friend."
I murmured a few words of sympathy. But it was uncomprehending, for I
did not know his grievance against the rulers who flash, meteor-like,
now and then upon our shores.
"The last one I sold," continued the displeased one, "was to that
three-horse-tailed Turkish pasha that came over a year ago. Five
hundred dollars he paid for it, easy. I says to his executioner or
secretary--he was a kind of a Jew or a Chinaman--'His Turkey Giblets
is fond of horses, then?'
"'Him?' says the secretary. 'Well, no. He's got a big, fat wife in
the harem named Bad Dora that he don't like. I believe he intends to
saddle her up and ride her up and down the board-walk in the Bulbul
Gardens a few times every day. You haven't got a pair of extra-long
spurs you could throw in on the deal, have you?' Yes, sir; there's
mighty few real rough-riders among the royal sports these days."
As soon as Lucullus Polk got cool enough I picked him up, and with no
greater effort than you would employ in persuading a drowning man to
clutch a straw, I inveigled him into accompanying me to a cool corner
in a dim café.
And it came to pass that man-servants set before us brewage; and
Lucullus Polk spake unto me, relating the wherefores of his
beleaguering the antechambers of the princes of the earth.
"Did you ever hear of the S.A. & A.P. Railroad [23] in Texas? Well,
that don't stand for Samaritan Actor's Aid Philanthropy. I was down
that way managing a summer bunch of the gum and syntax-chewers that
play the Idlewild Parks in the Western hamlets. Of course, we went
to pieces when the soubrette ran away with a prominent barber of
Beeville. I don't know what became of the rest of the company. I
believe there were some salaries due; and the last I saw of the troupe
was when I told them that forty-three cents was all the treasury
contained. I say I never saw any of them after that; but I heard them
for about twenty minutes. I didn't have time to look back. But after
dark I came out of the woods and struck the S.A. & A.P. agent for
means of transportation. He at once extended to me the courtesies of
the entire railroad, kindly warning me, however, not to get aboard any
of the rolling stock.
[FOOTNOTE 23: The San Antonio & Aransas Pass Railroad,
affectionately called the "SAAP" by two generations
of Texans, was eventually incorporated into the
International & Great Northern and later into the
Missouri Pacific. As late as 1920 summer vacationers
going to Central Texas resorts such as Comfort
could take the S.A. & A.P. from San Antonio as far
as Boerne (now on the northern edge of San Antonio)
and then ride a stagecoach the rest of the way.]
"About ten the next morning I steps off the ties into a village that
calls itself Atascosa City. I bought a thirty-cent breakfast and
a ten-cent cigar, and stood on the Main Street jingling the three
pennies in my pocket--dead broke. A man in Texas with only three cents
in his pocket is no better off than a man that has no money and owes
two cents.
"One of luck's favourite tricks is to soak a man for his last
dollar so quick that he don't have time to look it. There I was in
a swell St. Louis tailor-made, blue-and-green plaid suit, and an
eighteen-carat sulphate-of-copper scarf-pin, with no hope in sight
except the two great Texas industries, the cotton fields and grading
new railroads. I never picked cotton, and I never cottoned to a pick,
so the outlook had ultramarine edges.
"All of a sudden, while I was standing on the edge of the wooden
sidewalk, down out of the sky falls two fine gold watches in the
middle of the street. One hits a chunk of mud and sticks. The other
falls hard and flies open, making a fine drizzle of little springs and
screws and wheels. I looks up for a balloon or an airship; but not
seeing any, I steps off the sidewalk to investigate.
"But I hear a couple of yells and see two men running up the street
in leather overalls and high-heeled boots and cartwheel hats. One man
is six or eight feet high, with open-plumbed joints and a heartbroken
cast of countenance. He picks up the watch that has stuck in the mud.
The other man, who is little, with pink hair and white eyes, goes
for the empty case, and says, 'I win.' Then the elevated pessimist
goes down under his leather leg-holsters and hands a handful of
twenty-dollar gold pieces to his albino friend. I don't know how much
money it was; it looked as big as an earthquake-relief fund to me.
"'I'll have this here case filled up with works,' says Shorty, 'and
throw you again for five hundred.'
"'I'm your company,' says the high man. 'I'll meet you at the Smoked
Dog Saloon an hour from now.'
"The little man hustles away with a kind of Swiss movement toward a
jewelry store. The heartbroken person stoops over and takes a
telescopic view of my haberdashery.
"'Them's a mighty slick outfit of habiliments you have got on, Mr.
Man,' says he. 'I'll bet a hoss you never acquired the right, title,
and interest in and to them clothes in Atascosa City.'
"'Why, no,' says I, being ready enough to exchange personalities with
this moneyed monument of melancholy. 'I had this suit tailored from a
special line of coatericks, vestures, and pantings in St. Louis. Would
you mind putting me sane,' says I, 'on this watch-throwing contest?
I've been used to seeing time-pieces treated with more politeness and
esteem--except women's watches, of course, which by nature they abuse
by cracking walnuts with 'em and having 'em taken showing in tintype
pictures.'
"'Me and George,' he explains, 'are up from the ranch, having a spell
of fun. Up to last month we owned four sections of watered grazing
down on the San Miguel. But along comes one of these oil prospectors
and begins to bore. He strikes a gusher that flows out twenty thousand
--or maybe it was twenty million--barrels of oil a day. And me and
George gets one hundred and fifty thousand dollars--seventy-five
thousand dollars apiece--for the land. So now and then we saddles up
and hits the breeze for Atascosa City for a few days of excitement and
damage. Here's a little bunch of the _dinero_ that I drawed out of the
bank this morning,' says he, and shows a roll of twenties and fifties
as big around as a sleeping-car pillow. The yellowbacks glowed like a
sunset on the gable end of John D.'s barn. My knees got weak, and I
sat down on the edge of the board sidewalk.
"'You must have knocked around a right smart,' goes on this oil
Grease-us [24]. 'I shouldn't be surprised if you have saw towns more
livelier than what Atascosa City is. Sometimes it seems to me that
there ought to be some more ways of having a good time than there is
here, 'specially when you've got plenty of money and don't mind
spending it.'
[FOOTNOTE 24: Grease-us--a play on the name of Croesus]
"Then this Mother Cary's chick [25] of the desert sits down by me and we
hold a conversationfest. It seems that he was money-poor. He'd lived in
ranch camps all his life; and he confessed to me that his supreme idea
of luxury was to ride into camp, tired out from a round-up, eat a peck
of Mexican beans, hobble his brains with a pint of raw whisky, and go to
sleep with his boots for a pillow. When this barge-load of unexpected
money came to him and his pink but perky partner, George, and they hied
themselves to this clump of outhouses called Atascosa City, you know
what happened to them. They had money to buy anything they wanted; but
they didn't know what to want. Their ideas of spendthriftiness were
limited to three--whisky, saddles, and gold watches. If there was
anything else in the world to throw away fortunes on, they had never
heard about it. So, when they wanted to have a hot time, they'd ride
into town and get a city directory and stand in front of the principal
saloon and call up the population alphabetically for free drinks.
Then they would order three or four new California saddles from the
storekeeper, and play crack-loo [26] on the sidewalk with twenty-dollar
gold pieces. Betting who could throw his gold watch the farthest was an
inspiration of George's; but even that was getting to be monotonous.
[FOOTNOTE 25: Eighteenth Century mariners called the petrel (a
large sea bird) "Mother Cary's chicken."]
[FOOTNOTE 26: crack-loo--a form of gambling in which coins are
tossed high into the air with the object having
one's coin land nearest a crack in the floor]
"Was I on to the opportunity? Listen.
"In thirty minutes I had dashed off a word picture of metropolitan
joys that made life in Atascosa City look as dull as a trip to Coney
Island with your own wife. In ten minutes more we shook hands on an
agreement that I was to act as his guide, interpreter and friend in
and to the aforesaid wassail and amenity. And Solomon Mills, which
was his name, was to pay all expenses for a month. At the end of that
time, if I had made good as director-general of the rowdy life, he was
to pay me one thousand dollars. And then, to clinch the bargain, we
called the roll of Atascosa City and put all of its citizens except
the ladies and minors under the table, except one man named Horace
Westervelt St. Clair. Just for that we bought a couple of hatfuls
of cheap silver watches and egged him out of town with 'em. We wound
up by dragging the harness-maker out of bed and setting him to work
on three new saddles; and then we went to sleep across the railroad
track at the depot, just to annoy the S.A. & A.P. Think of having
seventy-five thousand dollars and trying to avoid the disgrace of dying
rich in a town like that!
"The next day George, who was married or something, started back to
the ranch. Me and Solly, as I now called him, prepared to shake off
our moth balls and wing our way against the arc-lights of the joyous
and tuneful East.
"'No way-stops,' says I to Solly, 'except long enough to get you
barbered and haberdashed. This is no Texas feet shampetter,' says I,
'where you eat chili-concarne-con-huevos and then holler "Whoopee!"
across the plaza. We're now going against the real high life. We're
going to mingle with the set that carries a Spitz, wears spats, and
hits the ground in high spots.'
"Solly puts six thousand dollars in century bills in one pocket of his
brown ducks, and bills of lading for ten thousand dollars on Eastern
banks in another. Then I resume diplomatic relations with the S.A. &
A.P., and we hike in a northwesterly direction on our circuitous route
to the spice gardens of the Yankee Orient.
"We stopped in San Antonio long enough for Solly to buy some clothes,
and eight rounds of drinks for the guests and employees of the Menger
Hotel [27], and order four Mexican saddles with silver trimmings and
white Angora _suaderos_ [28] to be shipped down to the ranch. From
there we made a big jump to St. Louis. We got there in time for dinner;
and I put our thumb-prints on the register of the most expensive hotel
in the city.
[FOOTNOTE 27: The Menger Hotel was (and still is) a San Antonio
landmark. Built in 1859 near the Alamo, its guests
haave included Robert E. Lee, U. S. Grant, Theodore
Roosevelt, and Sarah Bernhardt.]
[FOOTNOTE 28: suaderos--O. Henry uses this term in several
stories. He probably meant "sudaderos," which are
saddle blankets or pads. The term is also sometimes
used to refer to pads that prevent the stirrup
straps from rubbing the rider's leg. O. Henry
undoubtedly picked up the word during his stay on
South Texas ranches, but he probably never saw the
word written, and "suaderos" was what he came up
with many years later when writing. This annotator
is grateful to Michael K. DeWitt of Oklahoma State
University for explaining this reference.]
"'Now,' says I to Solly, with a wink at myself, 'here's the first
dinner-station we've struck where we can get a real good plate of
beans.' And while he was up in his room trying to draw water out of
the gas-pipe, I got one finger in the buttonhole of the head waiter's
Tuxedo, drew him apart, inserted a two-dollar bill, and closed him up
again.
"'Frankoyse,' says I, 'I have a pal here for dinner that's been
subsisting for years on cereals and short stogies. You see the chef
and order a dinner for us such as you serve to Dave Francis and the
general passenger agent of the Iron Mountain when they eat here.
We've got more than Bernhardt's tent full of money; and we want the
nose-bags crammed with all the Chief Deveries _de cuisine_. Object
is no expense. Now, show us.'
"At six o'clock me and Solly sat down to dinner. Spread! There's
nothing been seen like it since the Cambon snack [29]. It was all served
at once. The chef called it _dinnay à la poker_. It's a famous thing
among the gormands of the West. The dinner comes in threes of a kind.
There was guinea-fowls, guinea-pigs, and Guinness's stout; roast veal,
mock turtle soup, and chicken pâté; shad-roe, caviar, and tapioca;
canvas-back duck, canvas-back ham, and cotton-tail rabbit; Philadelphia
capon, fried snails, and sloe-gin--and so on, in threes. The idea was
that you eat nearly all you can of them, and then the waiter takes away
the discard and gives you pears to fill on.
[FOOTNOTE 29: Cambon snack--This term eludes definitive
explanation. It might refer to the brothers Paul
and Jules Cambon. Paul was the French ambassador
to Great Britain from 1898 to 1920; in 1904 he
negotiated the Entente Cordiale between France and
Britain that was the basis for their alliance in
World War I. Jules was the French ambassador to
the U.S. from 1897 to 1902 and was the French
ambassador to Germany at the outbreak of World
War I.]
"I was sure Solly would be tickled to death with these hands, after
the bobtail flushes he'd been eating on the ranch; and I was a little
anxious that he should, for I didn't remember his having honoured my
efforts with a smile since we left Atascosa City.
"We were in the main dining-room, and there was a fine-dressed crowd
there, all talking loud and enjoyable about the two St. Louis topics,
the water supply and the colour line. They mix the two subjects so
fast that strangers often think they are discussing water-colours; and
that has given the old town something of a rep as an art centre. And
over in the corner was a fine brass band playing; and now, thinks I,
Solly will become conscious of the spiritual oats of life nourishing
and exhilarating his system. But _nong, mong frang_.
"He gazed across the table at me. There was four square yards of
it, looking like the path of a cyclone that has wandered through a
stock-yard, a poultry-farm, a vegetable-garden, and an Irish linen
mill. Solly gets up and comes around to me.
"'Luke,' says he, 'I'm pretty hungry after our ride. I thought you
said they had some beans here. I'm going out and get something I can
eat. You can stay and monkey with this artificial layout of grub if
you want to.'
"'Wait a minute,' says I.
"I called the waiter, and slapped 'S. Mills' on the back of the check
for thirteen dollars and fifty cents.
"'What do you mean,' says I, 'by serving gentlemen with a lot of truck
only suitable for deck-hands on a Mississippi steamboat? We're going
out to get something decent to eat.'
"I walked up the street with the unhappy plainsman. He saw a
saddle-shop open, and some of the sadness faded from his eyes. We went
in, and he ordered and paid for two more saddles--one with a solid
silver horn and nails and ornaments and a six-inch border of rhinestones
and imitation rubies around the flaps. The other one had to have a
gold-mounted horn, quadruple-plated stirrups, and the leather inlaid
with silver beadwork wherever it would stand it. Eleven hundred dollars
the two cost him.
"Then he goes out and heads toward the river, following his nose. In a
little side street, where there was no street and no sidewalks and no
houses, he finds what he is looking for. We go into a shanty and sit
on high stools among stevedores and boatmen, and eat beans with tin
spoons. Yes, sir, beans--beans boiled with salt pork.
"'I kind of thought we'd strike some over this way,' says Solly.
"'Delightful,' says I, 'That stylish hotel grub may appeal to some;
but for me, give me the husky _table d'goat_.'
"When we had succumbed to the beans I leads him out of the
tarpaulin-steam under a lamp post and pulls out a daily paper with
the amusement column folded out.
"'But now, what ho for a merry round of pleasure,' says I. 'Here's
one of Hall Caine's shows [30], and a stock-yard company in "Hamlet,"
and skating at the Hollowhorn Rink, and Sarah Bernhardt, and the Shapely
Syrens Burlesque Company. I should think, now, that the Shapely--'
[FOOTNOTE 30: Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine (1853-1931) was a
very popular British novelist and playwright in
his day, but his works have now been largely
forgotten. As of July, 2004, two of his books,
_The Christian_ and _The Scapegoat_, can be found
in Project Gutenberg's library.]
"But what does this healthy, wealthy, and wise man do but reach his
arms up to the second-story windows and gape noisily.
"'Reckon I'll be going to bed,' says he; 'it's about my time. St.
Louis is a kind of quiet place, ain't it?'
"'Oh, yes,' says I; 'ever since the railroads ran in here the town's
been practically ruined. And the building-and-loan associations and
the fair have about killed it. Guess we might as well go to bed. Wait
till you see Chicago, though. Shall we get tickets for the Big Breeze
to-morrow?'
"'Mought as well,' says Solly. 'I reckon all these towns are about
alike.'
"Well, maybe the wise cicerone [31] and personal conductor didn't fall
hard in Chicago! Loolooville-on-the-Lake is supposed to have one or
two things in it calculated to keep the rural visitor awake after the
curfew rings. But not for the grass-fed man of the pampas! I tried
him with theatres, rides in automobiles, sails on the lake, champagne
suppers, and all those little inventions that hold the simple life in
check; but in vain. Solly grew sadder day by day. And I got fearful
about my salary, and knew I must play my trump card. So I mentioned New
York to him, and informed him that these Western towns were no more
than gateways to the great walled city of the whirling dervishes.
[FOOTNOTE 31: cicerone--a sight-seeing guide]
"After I bought the tickets I missed Solly. I knew his habits by then;
so in a couple of hours I found him in a saddle-shop. They had some
new ideas there in the way of trees and girths that had strayed down
from the Canadian mounted police; and Solly was so interested that he
almost looked reconciled to live. He invested about nine hundred
dollars in there.
"At the depot I telegraphed a cigar-store man I knew in New York to
meet me at the Twenty-third Street ferry with a list of all the
saddle-stores in the city. I wanted to know where to look for Solly
when he got lost.
"Now I'll tell you what happened in New York. I says to myself:
'Friend Heherezade, you want to get busy and make Bagdad look pretty
to the sad sultan of the sour countenance, or it'll be the bowstring
for yours.' But I never had any doubt I could do it.
"I began with him like you'd feed a starving man. I showed him the
horse-cars on Broadway and the Staten Island ferry-boats. And then I
piled up the sensations on him, but always keeping a lot of warmer
ones up my sleeve.
"At the end of the third day he looked like a composite picture of
five thousand orphans too late to catch a picnic steamboat, and I was
wilting down a collar every two hours wondering how I could please him
and whether I was going to get my thou. He went to sleep looking at
the Brooklyn Bridge; he disregarded the sky-scrapers above the third
story; it took three ushers to wake him up at the liveliest vaudeville
in town.
"Once I thought I had him. I nailed a pair of cuffs on him one morning
before he was awake; and I dragged him that evening to the palm-cage
of one of the biggest hotels in the city--to see the Johnnies and the
Alice-sit-by-the-hours. They were out in numerous quantities, with the
fat of the land showing in their clothes. While we were looking them
over, Solly divested himself of a fearful, rusty kind of laugh--like
moving a folding bed with one roller broken. It was his first in two
weeks, and it gave me hope.
"'Right you are,' says I. 'They're a funny lot of post-cards, aren't
they?'
"'Oh, I wasn't thinking of them dudes and culls on the hoof,' says he.
'I was thinking of the time me and George put sheep-dip in Horsehead
Johnson's whisky. I wish I was back in Atascosa City,' says he.
"I felt a cold chill run down my back. 'Me to play and mate in one
move,' says I to myself.
"I made Solly promise to stay in the café for half an hour and I hiked
out in a cab to Lolabelle Delatour's flat on Forty-third Street. I
knew her well. She was a chorus-girl in a Broadway musical comedy.
"'Jane,' says I when I found her, 'I've got a friend from Texas here.
He's all right, but--well, he carries weight. I'd like to give him a
little whirl after the show this evening--bubbles, you know, and a
buzz out to a casino for the whitebait and pickled walnuts. Is it a
go?'
"'Can he sing?' asks Lolabelle.
"'You know,' says I, 'that I wouldn't take him away from home unless
his notes were good. He's got pots of money--bean-pots full of it.'
"'Bring him around after the second act,' says Lolabelle, 'and I'll
examine his credentials and securities.'
"So about ten o'clock that evening I led Solly to Miss Delatour's
dressing-room, and her maid let us in. In ten minutes in comes
Lolabelle, fresh from the stage, looking stunning in the costume she
wears when she steps from the ranks of the lady grenadiers and says to
the king, 'Welcome to our May-day revels.' And you can bet it wasn't
the way she spoke the lines that got her the part.
"As soon as Solly saw her he got up and walked straight out through
the stage entrance into the street. I followed him. Lolabelle wasn't
paying my salary. I wondered whether anybody was.
"'Luke,' says Solly, outside, 'that was an awful mistake. We must have
got into the lady's private room. I hope I'm gentleman enough to do
anything possible in the way of apologies. Do you reckon she'd ever
forgive us?'
"'She may forget it,' says I. 'Of course it was a mistake. Let's go
find some beans.'
"That's the way it went. But pretty soon afterward Solly failed to
show up at dinner-time for several days. I cornered him. He confessed
that he had found a restaurant on Third Avenue where they cooked beans
in Texas style. I made him take me there. The minute I set foot inside
the door I threw up my hands.
"There was a young woman at the desk, and Solly introduced me to her.
And then we sat down and had beans.
"Yes, sir, sitting at the desk was the kind of a young woman that can
catch any man in the world as easy as lifting a finger. There's a way
of doing it. She knew. I saw her working it. She was healthy-looking
and plain dressed. She had her hair drawn back from her forehead and
face--no curls or frizzes; that's the way she looked. Now I'll tell
you the way they work the game; it's simple. When she wants a man, she
manages it so that every time he looks at her he finds her looking at
him. That's all.
"The next evening Solly was to go to Coney Island with me at seven. At
eight o'clock he hadn't showed up. I went out and found a cab. I felt
sure there was something wrong.
"'Drive to the Back Home Restaurant on Third Avenue,' says I. 'And if
I don't find what I want there, take in these saddle-shops.' I handed
him the list.
"'Boss,' says the cabby, 'I et a steak in that restaurant once. If
you're real hungry, I advise you to try the saddle-shops first.'
"'I'm a detective,' says I, 'and I don't eat. Hurry up!'
"As soon as I got to the restaurant I felt in the lines of my palms
that I should beware of a tall, red, damfool man, and I was going to
lose a sum of money.
"Solly wasn't there. Neither was the smooth-haired lady.
"I waited; and in an hour they came in a cab and got out, hand in
hand. I asked Solly to step around the corner for a few words. He was
grinning clear across his face; but I had not administered the grin.
"'She's the greatest that ever sniffed the breeze,' says he.
"'Congrats,' says I. 'I'd like to have my thousand now, if you
please.'
"'Well, Luke,' says he, 'I don't know that I've had such a skyhoodlin'
fine time under your tutelage and dispensation. But I'll do the best I
can for you--I'll do the best I can,' he repeats. 'Me and Miss Skinner
was married an hour ago. We're leaving for Texas in the morning.'
"'Great!' says I. 'Consider yourself covered with rice and Congress
gaiters. But don't let's tie so many satin bows on our business
relations that we lose sight of 'em. How about my honorarium?'
"'Missis Mills,' says he, 'has taken possession of my money and papers
except six bits. I told her what I'd agreed to give you; but she says
it's an irreligious and illegal contract, and she won't pay a cent of
it. But I ain't going to see you treated unfair,' says he. 'I've got
eighty-seven saddles on the ranch what I've bought on this trip; and
when I get back I'm going to pick out the best six in the lot and send
'em to you.'"
"And did he?" I asked, when Lucullus ceased talking.
"He did. And they are fit for kings to ride on. The six he sent me
must have cost him three thousand dollars. But where is the market for
'em? Who would buy one except one of these rajahs and princes of Asia
and Africa? I've got 'em all on the list. I know every tan royal dub
and smoked princerino from Mindanao to the Caspian Sea."
"It's a long time between customers," I ventured.
"They're coming faster," said Polk. "Nowadays, when one of the
murdering mutts gets civilised enough to abolish suttee [32] and quit
using his whiskers for a napkin, he calls himself the Roosevelt of the
East, and comes over to investigate our Chautauquas and cocktails.
I'll place 'em all yet. Now look here."
[FOOTNOTE 32: suttee--the practice in India (now illegal) of a
widow being burned to death (voluntarily or
involuntarily) on her husband's funeral pyre]
From an inside pocket he drew a tightly folded newspaper with
much-worn edges, and indicated a paragraph.
"Read that," said the saddler to royalty. The paragraph ran thus:
His Highness Seyyid Feysal bin Turkee, Imam of Muskat, is one of
the most progressive and enlightened rulers of the Old World. His
stables contain more than a thousand horses of the purest Persian
breeds. It is said that this powerful prince contemplates a visit
to the United States at an early date.
"There!" said Mr. Polk triumphantly. "My best saddle is as good as
sold--the one with turquoises set in the rim of the cantle. Have you
three dollars that you could loan me for a short time?"
It happened that I had; and I did.
If this should meet the eye of the Imam of Muskat, may it quicken his
whim to visit the land of the free! Otherwise I fear that I shall be
longer than a short time separated from my dollars three.