the kind who appear in four-round exhibition bouts to keep the audience
amused while the "event of the evening" is preparing--but he had had
ring experience, and his name had been in the sporting paragraphs of the
San Francisco papers. The dub was a welter-weight and a professional,
but he accepted the challenge of Shorty Stack's backers and covered
their bet of fifty dollars that he could not "stop" Shorty in four
rounds.
And so it came about that extra posters were affixed to the door of the
Odd Fellows' Hall and the walls of the Post Office to the effect that
Shorty Stack, the champion of Placer County, and Buck McCleaverty, the
Pride of Colusa, would appear in a genteel boxing exhibition at the
entertainment given for the benefit, etc., etc.
Shorty had two weeks in which to train. The nature of his work in the
mine had kept his muscles hard enough, so his training was largely a
matter of dieting and boxing an imaginary foe with a rock in each fist.
He was so vigorous in his exercise and in the matter of what he ate and
drank that the day before the entertainment he had got himself down to a
razor-edge, and was in a fair way of going fine. When a man gets into
too good condition, the least little slip will spoil him. Shorty knew
this well enough, and told himself in consequence that he must be very
careful.
The night before the entertainment Shorty went to call on Miss Starbird.
Miss Starbird was one of the cooks at the mine. She was a very pretty
girl, just turned twenty, and lived with her folks in a cabin near the
superintendent's office, on the road from the mine to Iowa Hill. Her
father was a shift boss in the mine, and her mother did the washing for
the "office." Shorty was recognised by the mine as her "young man."
She was going to the entertainment with her people, and promised Shorty
the first "walk-around" in the "Grand Ball" that was to follow
immediately after the Genteel Glove Contest.
Shorty came into the Starbird cabin on that particular night, his hair
neatly plastered in a beautiful curve over his left temple, and his
pants outside of his boots as a mark of esteem. He wore no collar, but
he had encased himself in a boiled shirt, which could mean nothing else
but mute and passionate love, and moreover, as a crowning tribute, he
refrained from spitting.
"How do you feel, Shorty?" asked Miss Starbird.
Shorty had always sedulously read the interviews with pugilists that
appeared in the San Francisco papers immediately before their fights and
knew how to answer.
"I feel fit to fight the fight of my life," he alliterated proudly.
"I've trained faithfully and I mean to win."
"It ain't a regular prize fight, is it, Shorty?" she enquired. "Pa said
he wouldn't take ma an' me if it was. All the women folk in the camp
are going, an' I never heard of women at a fight, it ain't genteel."
"Well, I d'n know," answered Shorty, swallowing his saliva. "The
committee that got the programme up called it a genteel boxing
exhibition so's to get the women folks to stay. I call it a four round
go with a decision."
"My, itull be exciting!" exclaimed Miss Starbird. "I ain't never seen
anything like it. Oh, Shorty, d'ye think you'll win?"
"I don't _think_ nothun about it. I know I will," returned Shorty,
defiantly. "If I once get in my left upper cut on him, _huh_!" and he
snorted magnificently.
Shorty stayed and talked to Miss Starbird until ten o'clock, then he
rose to go.
"I gotta get to bed," he said, "I'm in training you see."
"Oh, wait a minute," said Miss Starbird, "I been making some potato
salad for the private dining of the office, you better have some; it's
the best I ever made."
"No, no," said Shorty, stoutly, "I don't want any."
"Hoh," sniffed Miss Starbird airily, "you don't need to have any."
"Well, don't you see," said Shorty, "I'm in training. I don't dare eat
any of that kinda stuff."
"Stuff!" exclaimed Miss Starbird, her chin in the air. "No one _else_
ever called my cooking stuff."
"Well, don't you see, don't you see."
"No, I don't see. I guess you must be 'fraid of getting whipped if
you're so 'fraid of a little salad."
"What!" exclaimed Shorty, indignantly. "Why I could come into the ring
from a jag and whip him; 'fraid! _who's_ afraid. I'll show you if I'm
afraid. Let's have your potato salad, an' some beer, too. Huh! _I'll_
show you if I'm afraid."
But Miss Starbird would not immediately consent to be appeased.
"No, you called it stuff," she said, "an' the superintendent said I was
the best cook in Placer County."
But at last, as a great favour to Shorty, she relented and brought the
potato salad from the kitchen and two bottles of beer.
When the town doctor had finished his paper on "Tuberculosis in Cattle,"
the chairman of the entertainment committee ducked under the ropes of
the ring and announced that: "The next would be the event of the evening
and would the gentlemen please stop smoking." He went on to explain
that the ladies present might remain without fear and without reproach
as the participants in the contest would appear in gymnasium tights, and
would box with gloves and not with bare knuckles.
"Well, don't they always fight with gloves?" called a voice from the
rear of the house. But the chairman ignored the interruption.
The "entertainment" was held in the Odd Fellows' Hall. Shorty's seconds
prepared him for the fight in a back room of the saloon, on the other
side of the street, and towards ten o'clock one of the committeemen came
running in to say:
"What's the matter? Hurry up, you fellows, McCleaverty's in the ring
already, and the crowd's beginning to stamp."
Shorty rose and slipped into an overcoat.
"All ready," he said.
"Now mind, Shorty," said Billy Hicks, as he gathered up the sponges,
fans and towels, "don't mix things with him, you don't have to knock him
out, all you want's the decision."
Next, Shorty was aware that he was sitting in a corner of the ring with
his back against the ropes, and that diagonally opposite was a huge red
man with a shaven head. There was a noisy, murmuring crowd somewhere
below him, and there was a glare of kerosene lights over his head.
"Buck McCleaverty, the Pride of Colusa," announced the master of
ceremonies, standing in the middle of the ring, one hand under the dub's
elbow. There was a ripple of applause. Then the master of ceremonies
came over to Shorty's corner, and, taking him by the arm, conducted him
into the middle of the ring.
"Shorty Stack, the Champion of Placer County." The house roared; Shorty
ducked and grinned and returned to his corner. He was nervous, excited.
He had not imagined it would be exactly like this. There was a
strangeness about it all; an unfamiliarity that made him uneasy.
"Take it slow," said Billy Hicks, kneading the gloves, so as to work the
padding away from the knuckles. The gloves were laced on Shorty's
hands.
"Up you go," said Billy Hicks, again. "No, not the fight yet, shake
hands first. Don't get rattled."
Then ensued a vague interval, that seemed to Shorty interminable. He
had a notion that he shook hands with McCleaverty, and that some one
asked him if he would agree to hit with one arm free in the breakaway.
He remembered a glare of lights, a dim vision of rows of waiting faces,
a great murmuring noise, and he had a momentary glimpse of someone he
believed to be the referee, a young man in shirtsleeves and turned-up
trousers. Then everybody seemed to be getting out of the ring and away
from him, even Billy Hicks left him after saying something he did not
understand. Only the referee, McCleaverty and himself were left inside
the ropes.
"Time!"
Somebody, that seemed to Shorty strangely like himself, stepped briskly
out into the middle of the ring, his left arm before him, his right fist
clinched over his breast. The crowd, the glaring lights, the murmuring
noise, all faded away. There only remained the creaking of rubber soles
over the resin of the boards of the ring and the sight of McCleaverty's
shifting, twinkling eyes and his round, close-cropped head.
"Break!"
The referee stepped between the two men and Shorty realised that the two
had clinched, and that his right forearm had been across McCleaverty's
throat, his left clasping him about the shoulders.
What! Were they fighting already? This was the first round, of course,
somebody was shouting.
"That's the stuff, Shorty."
All at once Shorty saw the flash of a red muscled arm, he threw forward
his shoulder ducking his head behind it, the arm slid over the raised
shoulder and a bare and unprotected flank turned towards him.
"Now," thought Shorty. His arm shortened and leaped forward. There was
a sudden impact. The shock of it jarred Shorty himself, and he heard
McCleaverty grunt. There came a roar from the house.
"Give it to him, Shorty."
Shorty pushed his man from him, the heel of his glove upon his face. He
was no longer nervous. The lights didn't bother him.
"I'll knock him out yet," he muttered to himself.
They fiddled and feinted about the ring, watching each other's eyes.
Shorty held his right ready. He told himself he would jab McCleaverty
again on the same spot when next he gave him an opening.
"_Break!_"
They must have clinched again, but Shorty was not conscious of it. A
sharp pain in his upper lip made him angry. His right shot forward
again, struck home, and while the crowd roared and the lights began to
swim again, he knew that he was rushing McCleaverty back, back, back,
his arms shooting out and in like piston rods, now for an upper cut with
his left on the--
"_Time!_"
Billy Hicks was talking excitedly. The crowd still roared. His lips
pained. Someone was spurting water over him, one of his seconds worked
the fans like a windmill. He wondered what Miss Starbird thought of him
now.
"_Time!_"
He barely had a chance to duck, almost double, while McCleaverty's right
swished over his head. The dub was swinging for a knockout already. The
round would be hot and fast.
"Stay with um, Shorty."
"That's the stuff, Shorty."
He must be setting the pace, the house plainly told him that. He
stepped in again and cut loose with both fists.
"_Break!_"
Shorty had not clinched. Was it possible that McCleaverty was clinching
"to avoid punishment." Shorty tried again, stepping in close, his right
arm crooked and ready.
"_Break!_"
The dub was clinching. There could be no doubt of that. Shorty
gathered himself together and rushed in, upper-cutting viciously; he
felt McCleaverty giving way before him.
"He's got um going."
There was exhilaration in the shout. Shorty swung right and left, his
fist struck something that hurt him. Sure, he thought, that must have
been a good one. He recovered, throwing out his left before him. Where
was the dub? not down there on one knee in a corner of the ring? The
house was a pandemonium, near at hand some one was counting,
"one--two--three--four--"
Billy Hicks shouted, "Come back to your corner. When he's up go right in
to finish him. He ain't knocked out yet. He's just taking his full
time. Swing for his chin again, you got him going. If you can put him
out, Shorty, we'll take you to San Francisco."
"Seven--eight--nine--"
McCleaverty was up again. Shorty rushed in. Something caught him a
fearful jar in the pit of the stomach. He was sick in an instant,
racked with nausea. The lights began to dance.
"_Time!_"
There was water on his face and body again, deliciously cool. The fan
windmills swung round and round. "What's the matter, what's the
matter," Billy Hicks was asking anxiously.
Something was wrong. There was a lead-like weight in Shorty's stomach,
a taste of potato salad came to his mouth, he was sick almost to
vomiting.
"He caught you a hard one in the wind just before the gong, did he?"
said Billy Hicks. "There's fight in him yet. He's got a straight arm
body blow you want to look out for. Don't let up on him. Keep--"
"_Time!_"
Shorty came up bravely. In his stomach there was a pain that made it
torture to stand erect. Nevertheless he rushed, lashing out right and
left. He was dizzy; before he knew it he was beating the air. Suddenly
his chin jolted backward, and the lights began to spin; he was tiring
rapidly, too, and with every second his arms grew heavier and heavier
and his knees began to tremble more and more. McCleaverty gave him no
rest. Shorty tried to clinch, but the dub sidestepped, and came in
twice with a hard right and left over the heart. Shorty's gloves seemed
made of iron; he found time to mutter, "If I only hadn't eaten that
stuff last night."
What with the nausea and the pain, he was hard put to it to keep from
groaning. It was the dub who was rushing now; Shorty felt he could not
support the weight of his own arms another instant. What was that on
his face that was warm and tickled? He knew that he had just strength
enough left for one more good blow; if he could only upper-cut squarely
on McCleaverty's chin it might suffice.
"_Break!_"
The referee thrust himself between them, but instantly McCleaverty
closed again. Would the round _never_ end? The dub swung again,
missed, and Shorty saw his chance; he stepped in, upper-cutting with all
the strength he could summon up. The lights swam again, and the roar of
the crowd dwindled to a couple of voices. He smelt whisky.
"Gimme that sponge." It was Billy Hicks voice. "He'll do all right
now."
Shorty suddenly realised that he was lying on his back. In another
second he would be counted out. He raised himself, but his hands
touched a bed quilt and not the resined floor of the ring. He looked
around him and saw that he was in the back room of the saloon where he
had dressed. The fight was over.
"Did I win?" he asked, getting on his feet.
"Win!" exclaimed Billy Hicks. "You were knocked out. He put you out
after you had him beaten. Oh, you're a peach of a fighter, you are!"
* * * * *
Half an hour later when he had dressed, Shorty went over to the Hall.
His lip was badly swollen and his chin had a funny shape, but otherwise
he was fairly presentable. The Iowa Hill orchestra had just struck into
the march for the walk around. He pushed through the crowd of men
around the door looking for Miss Starbird. Just after he had passed he
heard a remark and the laugh that followed it:
"Quitter, oh, what a quitter!"
Shorty turned fiercely about and would have answered, but just at that
moment he caught sight of Miss Starbird. She had just joined the
promenade or the walk around with some other man. He went up to her:
"Didn't you promise to have this walk around with me?" he said
aggrievedly.
"Well, did you think I was going to wait all night for you?" returned
Miss Starbird.
As she turned from him and joined the march Shorty's eye fell upon her
partner.
It was McCleaverty.
_*The Strangest Thing*_
The best days in the voyage from the Cape to Southampton are those that
come immediately before and immediately after that upon which you cross
the line, when the ship is as steady as a billiard table, and the ocean
is as smooth and shiny and coloured as the mosaic floor of a basilica
church, when the deck is covered with awning from stem to stern, and the
resin bubbles out of the masts, and the thermometer in the companion-way
at the entrance to the dining-saloon climbs higher and higher with every
turn of the screw. Of course all the men people aboard must sleep on
deck these nights. There is a pleasure in this that you will find
nowhere else. At six your steward wakes you up with your morning cup of
coffee, and you sit cross-legged in your pajamas on the skylight and
drink your coffee and smoke your cigarettes and watch the sun shooting
up over the rim of that polished basilica floor, and take pleasure in
the mere fact of your existence, and talk and talk and tell stories
until it's time for bath and breakfast.
We came back from the Cape in _The Moor_, with a very abbreviated cabin
list. Only three of the smaller tables in the saloon were occupied, and
those mostly by men--diamond-brokers from Kimberly, gold-brokers from
the Rand, the manager of a war correspondent on a lecture tour, cut
short by the Ashanti war, an English captain of twenty-two, who had been
with Jameson at Krugersdorp and somehow managed to escape, an Australian
reporter named Miller, and two or three others of a less distinct
personality.
Miller told the story that follows early one morning, sitting on the
Bull board, tailor-fashion, and smoking pipefuls of straight perique,
black as a nigger's wool. We were grouped around him on the deck in
pajamas and bath robes. It was half after six, the thermometer was at
70 degrees, _The Moor_ cut the still water with a soothing rumble of her
screw, and at intervals flushed whole schools of flying fish. Somehow
the talk had drifted to the inexplicable things that we had seen, and we
had been piecing out our experiences with some really beautiful lies.
Captain Thatcher, the Krugersdorp chap, held that the failure of the
Jameson Raid was the most inexplicable thing he had ever experienced,
but none of the rest of us could think of anything we had seen or heard
of that did not have some stealthy, shadowy sort of explanation sneaking
after it and hunting it down.
"Well, I saw something a bit thick once," observed Miller, pushing down
the tobacco in his pipe bowl with the tip of a callous finger, and in
the abrupt silence that followed we heard the noise of dishes from the
direction of the galley.
"It was in Johannesburg three years back, when I was down on me luck. I
had been rooked properly by a Welsh gaming chap who was no end of a
bounder, and three quid was all that stood between me and--well," he
broke in, suddenly, "I had three quid left. I wore down me feet walking
the streets of that bally town looking for anything that would keep me
going for a while, and give me a chance to look around and fetch breath,
and there was nothing, but I tell ye nothing, and I was fair desperate.
One dye, and a filthy wet dye it was, too, I had gone out to the race
track, beyond Hospital Hill, where the pony races are run, thinking as
might be I'd find a berth, handling ponies there, but the season was too
far gone, and they turned me awye. I came back to town by another
road--then by the waye that fetches around by the Mahomedan
burying-ground. Well, the pauper burying-ground used to be alongside in
those dyes, and as I came up, jolly well blown, I tell ye, for I'd but
tightened me belt by wye of breakfast, I saw a chap diggin' a gryve. I
was in a mind for gryves meself just then, so I pulled up and leaned
over the fence and piped him off at his work. Then, like the geeser I'd
come to be, I says:
"'What are ye doing there, friend?' He looked me over between
shovelfuls a bit, and then says:
"'Oh, just setting out early violets;' and that shut me up properly.
"Well, I piped him digging that gryve for perhaps five minutes, and
then, s' help me, I asked him for a job. I did--I asked that
gryve-digger for a job--I was that low. He leans his back against the
side of the gryve and looks me over, then by and bye, says he:
"'All right, pardner!'
"'I'm thinking your from the Stytes,' says I.
"'Guess yes,' he says, and goes on digging.
"Well, we came to terms after a while. He was to give me two bob a dye
for helping him at his work, and I was to have a bunk in his 'shack', as
he called it--a box of a house built of four boards, as I might sye,
that stood just on the edge of the gryveyard. He was a rum 'un, was
that Yankee chap. Over pipes that night he told me something of
himself, and do y' know, that gryve-digger in the pauper burying-ground
in Johannesburg, South Africa, was a Harvard graduate! Strike me
straight if I don't believe he really was. The man was a wreck from
strong drink, but that was the one thing he was proud of.
"'Yes, sir,' he'd say, over and over again, looking straight ahead of
him, 'Yes, sir, I was a Harvard man once, and pulled at number five in
the boat'--the 'varsity boat, mind ye; and then he'd go on talking half
to himself. 'And now what am I? I'm digging gryves for hire--burying
dead people for a living, when I ought to be dead meself. I am dead and
buried long ago. Its just the whiskey that keeps me alive, Miller,' he
would say; 'when I stop that I'm done for.'
"The first morning I came round for work I met him dressed as if to go
to town, and carrying a wickered demijohn. 'Miller',' he says, 'I'm
going into town to get this filled. You must stop here and be ready to
answer any telephone call from the police station.' S' help me if there
wasn't a telephone in that beastly shack. 'If a pauper cops off they'll
ring you up from town and notify you to have the gryve ready. If I'm
awye, you'll have to dig it. Remember, if it's a man, you must dig a
six foot six hole; if it's a woman, five feet will do, and if it's a
kid, three an' half'll be a plenty. S'long.' And off he goes.
"Strike me blind but that was a long dye, that first one. I'd the
pauper gryves for view and me own thoughts for company. But along about
noon, the Harvard graduate not showing up, I found a diversion. The
graduate had started to paint the shack at one time, but had given over
after finishing one side, but the paint pot and the brushes were there.
I got hold of 'em and mixed a bit o' paint and went the rounds of the
gryves. Ye know how it is in a pauper burying-ground--no nymes at all on
the headboards--naught but numbers, and half o' them washed awye by the
rynes; so I, for a diversion, as I sye, started in to paint all manner
o' fancy nymes and epitaphs on the headboards--any nyme that struck me
fancy, and then underneath, an appropriate epitaph, and the dytes, of
course--I didn't forget the dytes. Ye know, that was the rarest
enjoyment I ever had. Ye don't think so? Try it once! Why, Gawd blyme
me, there's a chance for imagination in it, and genius and art--highest
kind of art. For instance now, I'd squat down in front of a blank
headboard and think a bit, and the inspiration would come, and I'd write
like this, maybe: 'Jno. K. Boggart, of New Zealand. Born Dec. 21, 1870;
died June 5, 1890,' and then, underneath, 'He Rests in Peace'; or else,
'Elsie, Youngest Daughter of Mary B. and William H. Terhune; b. May 1st,
1880; d. Nov. 25, 1889--Not Lost, but Gone Before'; or agyne, 'Lucas,
Lieutenant T. V. Killed in Battle at Wady Halfa, Egypt, August 30, 1889;
born London, England, Jan. 3, 1850--He Lies Like a Warrior, Tyking His
Rest with His Martial Cloak Around Him'; or something humorous, as
'Bohunkus, J. J.; born Germany; Oct. 3d, 1880; died (by request) Cape
Town, Sept. 4, 1890'; or one that I remember as my very best effort,
that read, 'Willie, Beloved Son of Anna and Gustave Harris; b. April
1st, 1878; d. May 5th, 1888--He was a Man Before His Mother.' Then I
wrote me own nyme, with the epitaph, 'More Sinned Against Than Sinning;'
and the Harvard chap's too. His motto, I remember, was 'He Pulled 5 in
His 'Varsity's Boat.'
"Well, I had more sport that afternoon than I've ever had since. Y'know
I felt as if I really were acquainted with all those people--with John
Boggart, and Lieutenant Lucas, and Bohunkus, and Willie and all. Ah,
that was a proper experience. But right in the middle of me work here
comes a telephone message from town: 'Body of dead baby found at mouth
of city sewer--prepare gryve at once.' Well, I dug that gryve, the
first, last and only gryve I ever hope to dig. It came on to ryne like
a water-spout, and oh, but it was jolly tough work. Then about four
o'clock, just as I was finishing, the Harvard chap comes home, howling
drunk. I see him go into the shack, and pretty soon out he comes, with
a hoe in one hand and a table leg in the other. Soon as ever he sees me
he makes a staggering run at me, swinging the hoe and the table leg and
yelling like a Zulu indaba. Just to make everything agreeable and
appropriate, I was down in the gryve, and it occurred to me that the
situation was too uncommon convenient. I scrambled out and made a run
for it, for there was murder in his eye, and for upwards of ten minutes
we two played blindman's buff in that gryveyard, me dodging from one
headboard to another, and he at me heels, chivying me like a fox and
with intent to kill. All at once he trips over a headboard, and goes
down and can't get up, and at the same minute here comes the morgue
wagon over Hospital Hill.