The grizzled ship's steward and the rough-coated Irish terrier quickly
became conspicuous figures in the night life of the Barbary Coast of San
Francisco. Daughtry elaborated on the counting trick by bringing Cocky
along. Thus, when a waiter did not fetch the right number of glasses,
Michael would remain quite still, until Cocky, at a privy signal from
Steward, standing on one leg, with the free claw would clutch Michael's
neck and apparently talk into Michael's ear. Whereupon Michael would
look about the glasses on the table and begin his usual expostulation
with the waiter.
But it was when Daughtry and Michael first sang "Roll me Down to Rio"
together, that the ten-strike was made. It occurred in a sailors' dance-
hall on Pacific Street, and all dancing stopped while the sailors
clamoured for more of the singing dog. Nor did the place lose money, for
no one left, and the crowd increased to standing room as Michael went
through his repertoire of "God Save the King," "Sweet Bye and Bye,"
"Lead, Kindly Light," "Home, Sweet Home," and "Shenandoah."
It meant more than free beer to Daughtry, for, when he started to leave,
the proprietor of the place thrust three silver dollars into his hand and
begged him to come around with the dog next night.
"For that?" Daughtry demanded, looking at the money as if it were
contemptible.
Hastily the proprietor added two more dollars, and Daughtry promised.
"Just the same, Killeny, my son," he told Michael as they went to bed, "I
think you an' me are worth more than five dollars a turn. Why, the like
of you has never been seen before. A real singing dog that can carry
'most any air with me, and that can carry half a dozen by himself. An'
they say Caruso gets a thousand a night. Well, you ain't Caruso, but
you're the dog-Caruso of the entire world. Son, I'm goin' to be your
business manager. If we can't make a twenty-dollar gold-piece a
night--say, son, we're goin' to move into better quarters. An' the old
gent up at the Hotel de Bronx is goin' to move into an outside room. An'
Kwaque's goin' to get a real outfit of clothes. Killeny, my boy, we're
goin' to get so rich that if he can't snare a sucker we'll put up the
cash ourselves 'n' buy a schooner for 'm, 'n' send him out a-treasure-
huntin' on his own. We'll be the suckers, eh, just you an' me, an' love
to."
* * * * *
The Barbary Coast of San Francisco, once the old-time sailor-town in the
days when San Francisco was reckoned the toughest port of the Seven Seas,
had evolved with the city until it depended for at least half of its
earnings on the slumming parties that visited it and spent liberally. It
was quite the custom, after dinner, for many of the better classes of
society, especially when entertaining curious Easterners, to spend an
hour or several in motoring from dance-hall to dance-hall and cheap
cabaret to cheap cabaret. In short, the "Coast" was as much a
sight-seeing place as was Chinatown and the Cliff House.
It was not long before Dag Daughtry was getting his twenty dollars a
night for two twenty-minute turns, and was declining more beer than a
dozen men with thirsts equal to his could have accommodated. Never had
he been so prosperous; nor can it be denied that Michael enjoyed it.
Enjoy it he did, but principally for Steward's sake. He was serving
Steward, and so to serve was his highest heart's desire.
In truth, Michael was the bread-winner for quite a family, each member of
which fared well. Kwaque blossomed out resplendent in russet-brown
shoes, a derby hat, and a gray suit with trousers immaculately creased.
Also, he became a devotee of the moving-picture shows, spending as much
as twenty and thirty cents a day and resolutely sitting out every
repetition of programme. Little time was required of him in caring for
Daughtry, for they had come to eating in restaurants. Not only had the
Ancient Mariner moved into a more expensive outside room at the Bronx;
but Daughtry insisted on thrusting upon him more spending money, so that,
on occasion, he could invite a likely acquaintance to the theatre or a
concert and bring him home in a taxi.
"We won't keep this up for ever, Killeny," Steward told Michael. "For
just as long as it takes the old gent to land another bunch of
gold-pouched, retriever-snouted treasure-hunters, and no longer. Then
it's hey for the ocean blue, my son, an' the roll of a good craft under
our feet, an' smash of wet on the deck, an' a spout now an' again of the
scuppers.
"We got to go rollin' down to Rio as well as sing about it to a lot of
cheap skates. They can take their rotten cities. The sea's the life for
us--you an' me, Killeny, son, an' the old gent an' Kwaque, an' Cocky,
too. We ain't made for city ways. It ain't healthy. Why, son, though
you maybe won't believe it, I'm losin' my spring. The rubber's goin'
outa me. I'm kind o' languid, with all night in an' nothin' to do but
sit around. It makes me fair sick at the thought of hearin' the old gent
say once again, 'I think, steward, one of those prime cocktails would be
just the thing before dinner.' We'll take a little ice-machine along
next voyage, an' give 'm the best.
"An' look at Kwaque, Killeny, my boy. This ain't his climate. He's
positively ailin'. If he sits around them picture-shows much more he'll
develop the T.B. For the good of his health, an' mine an' yours, an' all
of us, we got to get up anchor pretty soon an' hit out for the home of
the trade winds that kiss you through an' through with the salt an' the
life of the sea."
* * * * *
In truth, Kwaque, who never complained, was ailing fast. A swelling,
slow and sensationless at first, under his right arm-pit, had become a
mild and unceasing pain. No longer could he sleep a night through.
Although he lay on his left side, never less than twice, and often three
and four times, the hurt of the swelling woke him. Ah Moy, had he not
long since been delivered back to China by the immigration authorities,
could have told him the meaning of that swelling, just as he could have
told Dag Daughtry the meaning of the increasing area of numbness between
his eyes where the tiny, vertical, lion-lines were cutting more
conspicuously. Also, could he have told him what was wrong with the
little finger on his left hand. Daughtry had first diagnosed it as a
sprain of a tendon. Later, he had decided it was chronic rheumatism
brought on by the damp and foggy Sun Francisco climate. It was one of
his reasons for desiring to get away again to sea where the tropic sun
would warm the rheumatism out of him.
As a steward, Daughtry had been accustomed to contact with men and women
of the upper world. But for the first time in his life, here in the
underworld of San Francisco, in all equality he met such persons from
above. Nay, more, they were eager to meet him. They sought him. They
fawned upon him for an invitation to sit at his table and buy beer for
him in whatever garish cabaret Michael was performing. They would have
bought wine for him, at enormous expense, had he not stubbornly stuck to
his beer. They were, some of them, for inviting him to their homes--"An'
bring the wonderful dog along for a sing-song"; but Daughtry, proud of
Michael for being the cause of such invitations, explained that the
professional life was too arduous to permit of such diversions. To
Michael he explained that when they proffered a fee of fifty dollars, the
pair of them would "come a-runnin'."
Among the host of acquaintances made in their cabaret-life, two were
destined, very immediately, to play important parts in the lives of
Daughtry and Michael. The first, a politician and a doctor, by name
Emory--Walter Merritt Emory--was several times at Daughtry's table, where
Michael sat with them on a chair according to custom. Among other
things, in gratitude for such kindnesses from Daughtry, Doctor Emory gave
his office card and begged for the privilege of treating, free of charge,
either master or dog should they ever become sick. In Daughtry's
opinion, Dr. Walter Merritt Emory was a keen, clever man, undoubtedly
able in his profession, but passionately selfish as a hungry tiger. As
he told him, in the brutal candour he could afford under such changed
conditions: "Doc, you're a wonder. Anybody can see it with half an eye.
What you want you just go and get. Nothing'd stop you except . . . "
"Except?"
"Oh, except that it was nailed down, or locked up, or had a policeman
standing guard over it. I'd sure hate to have anything you wanted."
"Well, you have," Doctor assured him, with a significant nod at Michael
on the chair between them.
"Br-r-r!" Daughtry shivered. "You give me the creeps. If I thought you
really meant it, San Francisco couldn't hold me two minutes." He
meditated into his beer-glass a moment, then laughed with reassurance.
"No man could get that dog away from me. You see, I'd kill the man
first. I'd just up an' tell 'm, as I'm tellin' you now, I'd kill 'm
first. An' he'd believe me, as you're believin' me now. You know I mean
it. So'd he know I meant it. Why, that dog . . . "
In sheer inability to express the profundity of his emotion, Dag Daughtry
broke off the sentence and drowned it in his beer-glass.
Of quite different type was the other person of destiny. Harry Del Mar,
he called himself; and Harry Del Mar was the name that appeared on the
programmes when he was doing Orpheum "time." Although Daughtry did not
know it, because Del Mar was laying off for a vacation, the man did
trained-animal turns for a living. He, too, bought drinks at Daughtry's
table. Young, not over thirty, dark of complexion with large,
long-lashed brown eyes that he fondly believed were magnetic, cherubic of
lip and feature, he belied all his appearance by talking business in
direct business fashion.
"But you ain't got the money to buy 'm," Daughtry replied, when the other
had increased his first offer of five hundred dollars for Michael to a
thousand.
"I've got the thousand, if that's what you mean."
"No," Daughtry shook his head. "I mean he ain't for sale at any price.
Besides, what do you want 'm for?"
"I like him," Del Mar answered. "Why do I come to this joint? Why does
the crowd come here? Why do men buy wine, run horses, sport actresses,
become priests or bookworms? Because they like to. That's the answer.
We all do what we like when we can, go after the thing we want whether we
can get it or not. Now I like your dog, I want him. I want him a
thousand dollars' worth. See that big diamond on that woman's hand over
there. I guess she just liked it, and wanted it, and got it, never mind
the price. The price didn't mean as much to her as the diamond. Now
that dog of yours--"
"Don't like you," Dag Daughtry broke in. "Which is strange. He likes
most everybody without fussin' about it. But he bristled at you from the
first. No man'd want a dog that don't like him."
"Which isn't the question," Del Mar stated quietly. "I like him. As for
him liking or not liking me, that's my look-out, and I guess I can attend
to that all right."
It seemed to Daughtry that he glimpsed or sensed under the other's
unfaltering cherubicness of expression a steelness of cruelty that was
abysmal in that it was of controlled intelligence. Not in such terms did
Daughtry think his impression. At the most, it was a feeling, and
feelings do not require words in order to be experienced or comprehended.
"There's an all-night bank," the other went on. "We can stroll over,
I'll cash a cheque, and in half an hour the cash will be in your hand."
Daughtry shook his head.
"Even as a business proposition, nothing doing," he said. "Look you.
Here's the dog earnin' twenty dollars a night. Say he works twenty-five
days in the month. That's five hundred a month, or six thousand a year.
Now say that's five per cent., because it's easier to count, it
represents the interest on a capital value of one hundred an' twenty
thousand-dollars. Then we'll suppose expenses and salary for me is
twenty thousand. That leaves the dog worth a hundred thousand. Just to
be fair, cut it in half--a fifty-thousand dog. And you're offerin' a
thousand for him."
"I suppose you think he'll last for ever, like so much land'," Del Mar
smiled quietly.
Daughtry saw the point instantly.
"Give 'm five years of work--that's thirty thousand. Give 'm one year of
work--it's six thousand. An' you're offerin' me one thousand for six
thousand. That ain't no kind of business--for me . . . an' him. Besides,
when he can't work any more, an' ain't worth a cent, he'll be worth just
a plumb million to me, an' if anybody offered it, I'd raise the price."