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_TROLLEY FOLLY_
[Illustration: Jimmie escorted her, carrying her basket. Page 20]
_TROLLEY FOLLY_
BY
HENRY WALLACE PHILLIPS
Author of
RED SAUNDERS
THE MASCOT OF SWEET BRIAR GULCH
_Illustrated_
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1909
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
MARCH
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I TROLLEY FOLLY 1
II THE NUMISMATIST 32
III THE MASCOT OF THE GRAYS 61
IV THE LITTLE CANOE 90
V THE REVERSE OF A MEDAL 104
VI TEN MINUTES OF ETERNITY 126
VII THE PUNISHMENT AND THE CRIME 135
VIII CAMP CUNNINGHAM 165
IX HOHANKTON, PETTIE AND OTHERS 191
X THE FATAL GUM 214
XI BLESSED BE THE PEACEMAKERS 238
_TROLLEY FOLLY_
I
JIMMIE HORGAN’S FORETASTE OF FORTUNE
It was a splendid office--mahogany, plate-glass windows and all that
pertains to the uninteresting side of respectability. There was a
lawyer there, sitting before his desk--a crisp, gray sort of lawyer,
who looked as if when you patted him gently he would snap a finger off.
One Jimmie Horgan was also there.
Now, Jimmie was a careless youth, and a cheerful habit of sending
people scattering, acquired by managing the controller in the
employment of the Suburban Trolley Company, gave him what might be
called a cynicobenevolent view of life. He had learned that the human
body was an unreliable vessel to hold so great a thing as a soul.
One bunt from his trusty car, and the greatest alderman who ever
received boodle for that same franchise promptly departed for Heaven,
or its suburban districts.
He had made the proud to skip ahead; ladies, that one would not suspect
of either agility or pliability, had made creditable running-long-jumps
merely because Jimmie did not twist the brake. Bankers, plutocrats and
plumbers instantly dropped their accustomed airs of superiority and
hiked out-of-that when Jimmie’s foot trod the gong. This showed him
clearly that at heart all men were simple. The airs assumed were but a
mask, concealing a real desire to please.
Jimmie may have belonged to one of the first families of Ireland, but
his estate had fallen low--so low, in fact, that he held in his hand
the incredible, and now, away from his platform of authority, he needs
must tell the intrenched lawyer-man a strange tale.
Strong of heart was Jimmie. He rallied.
“Your name Simmonds?” he asked, with a grimy thumb indicating the
signature on the letter he extended for the lawyer’s inspection.
“Yes, sir,” barked the lawyer with severity.
“Who gave you that name?” inquired Jimmie in a spirit of levity.
“What is that?” returned the lawyer.
Jimmie recalled himself to his position. “Oh,” said he, “I want to know
whether this thing is a fake or not.”
The lawyer extended a hand like a rat-trap, and snapped the letter
toward him.
“Certainly not,” he said with decision. “Certainly not. You have been
left, through his dying intestate, by your maternal uncle, the sum of
five thousand dollars, as I have acquainted you in this letter.”
The lawyer coughed the cough of consequence. “This amount is in my
care; in fact, it is deposited in my bank, awaiting your orders.”
Jimmie leaned heavily on the office-boy to support himself.
“You don’t look it,” he said to the lawyer, “but are you addicted to
the use and abuse of strong things of any kind?”
“Sir!” said the lawyer.
“I slipped my trolley,” said Jimmie. “I didn’t know I had any maternal
uncle. I didn’t know he had five thousand dollars. I don’t know where
he got it, and I don’t know where I am, nor why you are here, nor
anything else.” He roused himself. “Say,” said he, “if you ain’t got me
down here to enjoy my looks, produce.”
“Hey?” said the lawyer.
“Yes,” said Jimmie, “just that. Hay; make it while the sun shines.
Clear weather to-day. I don’t savvy this thing, up nor down. You let
me have two hundred dollars, and it will look like business. All I want
to do is to feel it. I have been trying to feel two hundred dollars
for three years, and the nearest I have got to it is on the instalment
plan.”
The lawyer pushed him a book.
“Make out a check,” said he.
Jimmie swallowed all the air in the room, but yet made out the check.
The lawyer looked at the check in the most detached fashion, called a
man and handed him the slip of paper. The man seemed weary. He took the
piece of paper, walked toward an actual safe, opened a drawer with a
real key and pulled out from its secret hiding-place a bunch, or, as it
seemed to Jimmie, a whole head, of that tender, crisp, succulent plant,
the long green.
With a wet thumb the weary man shredded off a certain number of leaves,
and, showing disgust of life in every feature, placed them on the
lawyer’s desk. The lawyer eyed them glumly, wrapped them up with a
practised hand, and shoved them to Jimmie.
“There you are, sir,” he said. “Anything else?”
“No,” said Jimmie dreamily. “No, nothing else.”
He turned away, bumped into the partition, begged its pardon most
humbly; walked into a young woman who was approaching with a basketful
of letters; distributed wisdom all over the office; got spoken to
plainly; tried to help the young woman collect the flying sheets,
and got spoken to still more sharply; slid down the first four steps
outside, landed in the street in some fashion, and then galloped toward
a sign indicative of a life-saving station.
After safely embarking on a schooner he retired to a corner and
examined the ten promises of our government for twenty dollars per
promise, at leisure. They were so. Boldly he slapped one upon the bar.
Doubtfully the barkeeper opened his cash-drawer.
“No good,” thought Jimmie, thinking this an act of suspicion. But it
was not.
“Say, young feller,” said the barkeeper, “it’s pretty early in the day
to clean me out of change. Ain’t you got nothing smaller than that?”
From its lonesome abiding-place at the bottom of a pocket filled with
tobacco-dust, Jimmie fished out a quarter--that one piece of Mr.
Bryan’s philosophy which he had imagined to be all that stood between
him and a joyless wait for pay-day.
“All right,” said he.
This proof that it was inability and not contempt that had shown in the
barkeeper’s eyes burned in James’ heart like a little flame. He took
out one twenty-dollar bill and put it in a separate pocket. Twenty
dollars he could understand.
He then made for the barns, wondering what man it was whose legs
carried him so jauntily.
This was the beginning of the great mystery--the disappearance of Car
809.
How so large and eminently practical a thing as a trolley car--a thing
so blatantly modern and, withal, so hard and heavy--could vanish from
the face of the earth, and leave neither track nor rack behind, was a
problem that caused silver threads to appear amid the gold and bald
spots of the officers of the Suburban Trolley Company.
With it went the motorman and conductor; gone; vanished; vamoosed;
dissipated into thin air.
The thing was, and then it was not. That is all they ever knew about
it. The facts are these:
When James arrived in the yard he approached his running-mate and poked
him in the chest with a dramatic forefinger. The running-mate looked at
the forefinger and then at James.
“Changed your spots again?” he inquired.
“Nup,” said James, hitting himself mightily upon the chest. “Here is
Willie Wally Astor, and that’s me.”
“Grounded again?” sniffed the conductor. “Where do you feel it worst?”
“There ain’t any worst,” said Jimmie. “You come here!”--and he seized
him by the collar.
“Leggo!” said the conductor, but at the same time permitting himself
to be jammed into a corner while the golden tale of sudden wealth was
poured into his ears.
“Ah, g’wan!”--but the tones grew weaker and weaker, and when Jimmie
produced his little pamphlet on high finance, printed in green--proof
to any eye--the conductor fell upon his neck.
“I allus knew you was the kind of a little bird that could fly if you
drew them feet off the ground,” he said. “Call the turn.”
“We have got fifteen minutes,” said Jimmie. “Here we go fresh across
the street to celebrate.”
At this period the minds of both these worthy men were clear and free
from any further operation than that natural to taking a drink, but
after that first drink, and with the confidence, bred of another, to
believe in that money, James’ mind extended itself. He pounded the bar
with his fist.
“I am dead sick and tired of going over the same old streets,” said he.
“It occurs to me at times that I’ll have to turn off som’ers, or bust.”
“Yep,” assented the conductor; “that’s right, too. All the time the
same streets; all the time the same old dog that comes just so near
getting pinched; all the time the same fat man waving his umbrell’;
all the time the same Dagoes with gunnysacks filled with something,
and smelling with a strong Italian accent; all the time the same war
over that transfer, after that same young lady has traveled half a mile
beyond where she ought to have got off. If I had another drink I could
feel very bad about this.”
“Let’s,” said Jimmie. So the conductor felt very bad about it, and
Jimmie, like the good friend he was, felt worse.
“Yes, sir,” said he, “I just naturally will have to turn off som’ers,
or I surely _will_ bust.”
There gleamed a radiance from the crisp array before the mirror. Genius
had hit Jimmie--hypnotic.
“Say, Tommie,” said he, “we _will_ turn off som’ers. If you’ll go me
on it we’ll take the old ambulance clear to the end of everything in
sight this morning. There is more than forty thousand switches we’d
oughter took long ago, and they can’t stop us. If we get our jobs
excused away from us we c’n lean up against that five thousand until we
are rested. Come along,” said he, inspiration working. “Come on, old
man!”
“Say,” said the conductor, “I’ve got you faded. I don’t care if I never
work again, and as for jerking a piece of common clothes-line every
time a person with a mind to shoves one small nickel into my hand, why,
I am really tired of it. I have had idees of a nobler life than this,
Jimmie. They usually come after the sixth round, but when I think of
that five thousand--” He stopped abruptly.
They grabbed each other and made for the yard.
“Come on, you fellers!” yelled the starter. “Get a wiggle on. Youse are
due now.”
“Comin’, uncle!” said Jimmie, in a sharp falsetto.
“Slowly comin’!” boomed the conductor.
“Ain’t you got a gayness, though?” said the starter.
The motorman elaborately placed one silver dollar in the hands of the
starter and closed the latter’s fingers upon it.
“Keep this,” he said, from many years’ experience of viewing the hero
leaving the lady of his choice with a sob in the orchestra. “Keep
this,” he repeated waveringly, quaveringly and tenderly. “Do the same
by yourself. This is a sooveniret of something you never heard of
before.”
The starter looked startled. “Well!” said he. It was the only word in
the English language that could express his feelings. “Well!” he said.
He looked at the dollar, and in the tone of a man bewitched he cried,
“Give him the bell, Tommie! You’re off!”
Tommie pulled the strap. “Adoo! Fare thee well. Good-by. Ready!” he
called. “If we don’t see you again, hello!”
The starter waved his hand. The starter shook his head.
Car 809 droned merrily along the track until she came to the first
switch. “Give us the High Bush Line, Jerry,” said James.
The melancholy man jabbed his iron into the track. High Bush, North
Pole, Heaven or Hades, it was all one to him.
“Come along,” he growled, and they came.
“Hey, there! Hey!” cried an excitable old gentleman, as the car shot up
the side-street switch. “I thought this car went through Lethe Street.”
“It used to,” answered Tommie soothingly, “but it has got weary of
it--plumb tired out.”
“Tired?” cried the old gentleman blankly. “Here, let me out!” he
concluded with energy.
He stood on the crossing until a brewery-wagon was driven against him.
“Lunatics--not a doubt of it,” he said to himself, as he hopped to the
sidewalk. There he waited, but in vain, for no other car would be sent
forth until 809 passed a certain turnout, which she had not the least
intention of approaching this day.
And that ruptured the schedule.
A sour-faced young man with a fighting jaw approached the car a few
blocks farther on.
“Say! Do youse go through Scrabblegrass Avenoo?” he asked in a voice
like a curse.
“Now, that depends,” answered the blithe Thomas. “If we want to, we
will; if we don’t, we won’t. D’yer feel like making it an object to
us?”
The sour-faced young man backed up a step.
“Say, you are a pretty fresh duck, ain’t you?” he sneered. He quickly
put on his most ferocious look. “Now, you listen to the toot of my
little naughtyobilious horn,” said he; “and if you don’t I’ll mix you
up with the machinery. I want to go to Scrabblegrass Avenoo. D’yer get
that? The quicker I get there, the better. D’yer get that?” He pushed
his bulldog jaw into Thomas’ face.
“Shoo, fly!” said Thomas, making a light pass with his hand which
caused a noisy rustle in the aftermath that grew upon the other man’s
extensive face.
“Sure!” he continued. “Sure. I get all these things, of course.”
He stopped the car. He took the fighting-jawed man by the shoulder
and pointed his finger at an angle of thirty-five degrees to the
perpendicular and at right angles to the car track.
“There is Scrabblegrass Avenoo, right over yonder,” he said. “Jump!”
Sometimes a fighting jaw merely implies a fighting character: it
doesn’t insist upon it.
“D’yer mean I have got to walk?” asked the sour-faced man.
“Sure thing,” said Tommie, “or else you’d like to have me kick you
half-way there?”
“Say, what’s got into you this mornin’?” gasped the stranger.
It was Tommie’s turn to scoff. He reached for the strap, smiling
derisively.
“You ought to read the papers,” said he; “then you wouldn’t act like
such a lobster. Things ain’t run like they used to be, my friend;
me and my partner has bought this car, and we’re running it around,
getting custom where we can.”
“Ain’t there no more railroad company?” said the lost soul confronting
him.
“Nope,” answered Tommie with a yawn. “The hull trolley business is in
the hands of private parties like us--and we’re losing money on you by
the second. Skip!”
From this on, 809 developed more eccentricities of character. Sometimes
she stopped for passengers like a perfectly normal trolley car, but if
Jimmie did not like the looks of people as they drew near she bounded
ahead like an antelope, when the foot of habit was reaching for her
step. Then, at a place of pleasant greenery, refreshing to the city
eye, she often moved up and down the block several times while her
managers enjoyed the change of scene. This attracted some attention.
They always slowed the car fully to explain to the out-landers the
strange, new conditions existing in the trolley world.
The passengers made no complaint. It is so much the custom for the free
American to accept almost anything in uniform as a part of Nature,
and a Nature that grows violent on provocation, that the half-dozen
offspring of the eagle perched mildly upon their seats without
complaint.
Perhaps they liked it. One stout and jolly old gentleman enjoyed the
discourse immensely, even joining in the spread of misinformation.
A pallid little woman, with a very large baby, timidly accosted Jimmie.
She wanted to go to a certain place at least five miles distant, on a
branch line.
Jimmie appealed to the chivalry of the passengers.
“We have got your nickels,” said he, “but this here lady has been
misled. We feel as if we oughter take her where she belongs. No
objections?”
The passengers looked at each other and said nothing.
“Let her fly, Jimmie. We have got to make that five miles in six
minutes to keep up with our idee of things,” said Tommie.
They arrived at the street, but the little woman’s destination was
several blocks from the trolley track. Jimmie escorted her, carrying
her basket, while the stout old gentleman, saying that he would like to
stretch his legs, carried the baby.
In the meantime, the car that really belonged on that track came from
the opposite direction. I will not repeat what that motorman said.
There is a sign on all trolley cars, “Don’t speak to the motorman.” It
is a good piece of advice, because you might not like what the motorman
would say to you in reply.
He waved his hands and told 809 to get on about its business. He wanted
to know why she was there, in a tone that made the fourth-story
windows fly open.
“What d’yer mean by sitting there like a toad in a rain-storm, holding
us up when we’re twenty minutes late already?” he finished.
Tommie spread his hands with a gesture of deprecation.
“Orders,” he replied in explanation. “I can’t help it.”
“Orders?” said the motorman. “Orders? What are you tin-plated chumps
doing in this part of the country, anyhow?”
Tommie shrugged his shoulders.
“It is like this,” said he: “Old Man Rockerfeller has come to call on
an old woman that used to cook for him, and the company’s give him the
rights of this car--my Mote’s taking him around to the house now. We’ve
got to wait till he comes back, and you’ve got to wait, too; that’s
all.”
The other jumped in the air with astonishment and fury.
“Well, wouldn’t that knock the frizzles out of your hair?” said he.
“Those old devils can have anything they want, no matter what breaks,
can’t they?”
“That is just about the size of it, partner,” said Tommie; “but here
comes Jimmie. We’ll spin back and turn out for you below.”
“Thankee, old man,” said the motorman; “much obliged; but I can tell
you one thing: I am going to join the Ancient and Honorable Order of
Amalgamated Anarchists this night. You bet! Call on his cook, and block
the whole line! Well--”
This affair being arranged, 809 grasped the wire with her trolley,
threw off her brakes and went rushing forward to her fate.
As she sped down Poolton Avenue a party of young men, with long hair,
ran out of a café, yelling wildly. Tommie pulled the bell.
“Stop her, Jimmie,” he said. “They look like our kind of people.”
“Where are you going?” asked the panting youth who arrived first.
“Any old place,” said Tommie. The youth stopped.
“Hey?” said he.
“What’s that?” said Tommie.
“Oh,” said the young man, “I only wanted to know where you went to.”
“Answer same as before,” said Tommie. “Any old place. We have broke
loose from the tediousness of this darned commercial life, and we are
taking in the United States to suit ourselves.”
“Do you mean that?” earnestly inquired the young man.
“Try us,” said Tommie. “We’re only a few.”
At this juncture, all former passengers descended from the car.
“Yours is the route we have been planning,” said the long-haired young
man.
All the young men boarded the car, singing loudly a song about their
dear old something or other.
Thomas advanced to the front platform, and 809 gathered herself and
hit the irons per record. She passed would-be passengers as the City
Council passes a bill for more salaries for faithful services. She was
a gallant sight.
Once when Jimmie went aft to tell a funny story he had heard the night
before, 809 rammed a street-piano with such insistence and velocity
that it landed on top of a load of furniture, still playing one of
Sousa’s marches. The Italian burned his thumb in blazing away at the
departing monster with an eighty-nine-cent revolver. The young men
gathered on the back platform and encouraged him to shoot with a little
more art.
Three blocks away, speeding toward them, there came a red thing,
coughing, with inhuman rapidity. There were four things in it that
looked like Mr. H. G. Wells’ inhabitants of the moon.
“Here’s where your nice, red, hand-painted autymobile either takes to
its own side of the road or to the trees!” shouted Jimmie back to the
carload.
The young men swung themselves out to see the sight. The road was
narrow. The approaching bedevilment, streaming dust at every pore,
bestrode (or, better, bewheeled) one rail of the track.
“There is your nice little bubble,” chanted the young men. “‘Bubble,
bubble, toil and trouble!’ Get peevish there, Jimmie! Hit her on the
end!”
Tommie, the mild, called out, “Just one layer of varnish off will do
the trick, Jimmie.”
Naturally, the man at the wheel of that automobile expected the
trolley car to stop. Had it been an ordinary trolley car, at the
service of mere citizens, it must have stopped, but being an
Independent State of Modern Progress, it left restraint behind, and
could be seen to move toward that automobile.
“Shove, you shover!” shouted the tallest of the young men.
It was high time. The side of 809 hit the rear tire with a rubbery
shriek. The red automobile went over a small knoll of loose stone and
bunch-grass, to the left of the road, and disappeared from view.
“They can get her back again, all right enough,” said one of the young
men whose severe face suggested the mechanical engineer. “Just erect a
capstan on top of the hill, and winch her right back. I don’t know how
far she has gone down the other side. Wish I had asked you to stop, and
put in a bid for the job.”
“Too late,” said Tommie. “There is a long slant ahead of us, and we’re
really going to run.”
“I could die trolleying!” cooed the stout young man. “Hit her up in
front!” He clambered over the seats toward the front of the car.
In the general joy and enthusiasm then prevailing another young man
began to ring up fares.
“Hey! What yer doin’?” shouted Tommie in the grip of habit. Then he
remembered. “Let her sizzle,” said he. “No harm done.”
The register rang. The signal bell rang. Both gongs rang. It was
somewhat like a party of Swiss bell-ringers tobogganing down the
Matterhorn. Untrained horses walked upon their hind legs, and the _vox
populi_ was hushed.
The fat young man reached the front platform. He was not only fat. He
was also very strong.
“Here, let me run this old shebang?” he asked Jimmie. “I won’t kill
anybody.”
“Well, we’re in the open now,” said Jimmie. “I guess you can’t do much
damage.” So he gave him the controller and joined the vocalists.
Minutes passed by to the lilt and swing of such grand old classics as
_The Bulldog and the Bullfrog_, and the rest of it, with xylophone
accompaniment, accomplished by drawing a cane across the rods in the
backs of the seats.
Never had happiness so untrammeled an occupancy. Number 809 spread
her long wheels in the ecstasy of freedom. Her motors purred. She
passed the high points with loving pats, scarcely touching them. Her
inhabitants were carried away.
And then, like a handful of mud upon the merriment fell the roar of
the man at the controller. He was grinding frantically at the brake.
The huge muscles of his back had split his coat in the effort.
The party got up and saw ahead of them a sharp incline, ending in an
unprotected bridge.
“Gee-rusalem!” bawled Jimmie suddenly. “Wood’s Bridge--the worst in the
country. I forgot it.”
At that instant a crack, followed by the jingle of metal, told them
that the brake-chain was broken. The car, which had slacked a little of
its speed, leaped forward again.
“Turn off your power! Reverse, I mean!” yelled Jimmie.
Then came a thudding sound on the car’s roof.
“Oh,” he groaned, “the trolley’s off!”
Near that bridge, a few feet from the side of the track, there was a
long haystack.
“Farmers to the front!” said Tommie. “Every man to the step, and jump!”
In a twinkling twelve young men rolled along a haystack. They rolled
and rolled. They gathered much hay, but, still dominant above the
mischance, the souls of ten foot-ball players and two trolley men rose
triumphant. They wanted to see the last of 809.
She took the rest of the grade like a bucking bronco. She hit the
bridge like an avalanche. Something gave way, or held too strongly, for
809 sprang into the air, turned completely over and went down in thirty
feet of dirty water, trucks up, with a tremendous splash.
Silence stared with stony faces.
“She’s gone,” said Tommie solemnly.
“Beyond recall,” assented the mechanical engineer.
“And I am going, too,” said Tommie.
The college men said nothing, but, as the thin procession topped the
hill two miles away, the fat man led by twenty yards.
II
THE NUMISMATIST
POSSESSION IS NINE POINTS OF THE LAW, SELF-POSSESSION THE TENTH
Election day, ’96, was big medicine in Terrapin. Miners all down
from the upper camps, shoutin’ Free Silver, and morose about John
Sherman. All the cow-boys from the immediate vicinity were in. The
immediate vicinity of any point in the North-west is a good big scope
of country--say as far as two men can ride fast in as many days as it
takes to get there.
In Brown’s Bank there was a sound of deviltry by night. Them back from
the bar couldn’t get back. A damsel with a dulcimer was dispensin’
sweet strains, and a minority of the convention thought they was
singing to keep her from feeling conspicuous, each delegate voting for
a different tune. The toot ongsom was calculated to make an escaped
lunatic homesick.
In the middle of this dispensation I comes in, late. I endeavored to
attract the attention of the bar creature by shouting and sign talk,
for I wanted to do my duty. I know I yelled, for I could feel my jaw
waggle, and my breath give out--but I couldn’t hear nothin’. No one
would take my money. Some one or two drinks were handed to me, however,
a handful of cigars and six dollars change. Them Free Silver fellows
shore believed what they said.
So I looked around in search of distraction. Five deep they stood
around the faro and roulette layouts. Dealers looked like a Turkish
bath from raking in money and shovin’ over chips. One fellow at the
faro table had more’n six bushel of checks and was betting with a
shovel.
I made for the poker-rooms. Both locked. I hammers. “Shove your money
under the door,” yells some one inside, “and go away.”
Here was a fine how-de-do. Six months’ wages in my pocket and no action
in sight. I went out in front to hear myself think. On the porch sat a
man, unostentatious, hugging his knee, observing of the moon.
I shoved a cigar at him. He nods, sticks it in his face, and hands me
up matches over his shoulder. I likes his looks.
And his sayin’ nothing sounded good, too, for my ear-drums were jarred
clear to my ankles. I found out later that he wasn’t always silent. He
was a sort of human layer-cake that way--big slabs of talk and thin
streaks of keeping still.
He didn’t look quite like a cow-boy. Cow-boys’ eyes is all puckered
up by sun and wind. Nor quite like a miner. His hands was white but
they wasn’t tin-horn’s hands, not by no means. He wasn’t drunk, and I
couldn’t understand him at all, so I felt around.
“Stranger?” says I. He nods.
“Miner?”
“Once.”
“Cow-boy?”
“Once. Everything else--once. Just now I am a numismatist.”
I set down by him to show that didn’t make no difference to me.
“Is it--very bad?” I says, kinder solemn and hushed-like.
“A collector of rare coins,” he explains, laughing. His laugh was good,
too.
“Oh--I see. Got any of them with you?”
“Just one. Be careful of it,” he says, and hands it to me. I holds it
up to the light. ’Twas a common old iron dollar.
“Broke?”
He straightened up indignantly. “Not on your life--that’s no
counterfeit!” he says.
I liked him. I felt friendly. My experience is that the difference
between the friend that can help you but won’t and the enemy that would
hurt you but can’t isn’t worth notice. So I dug. When I gave his dollar
back I slid five yellow twenties with it.
He looks ’em over carefully, feeling of them, edges and both sides,
with his finger-tips. “Very interesting,” he says. “Very beautiful. How
clear the lettering is!” And he hands ’em back.
“They’re yours, Stranger,” says I. “For your collection.”
He swells up. “Not much. I’d beg before I’d accept charity.”
“You don’t understand me,” I says, sparring for time. “I meant as a
sporting venture. I’m superstitious. Men with a wad always lose it. So
why shouldn’t a broke man win? Take it and win us a home.”
“Oh, that’s different,” says Stranger. “I accept with pleasure--the
more so as I have an infallible system of winning at roulette, founded
on long observation.”
“Yes?” says I, beginning to feel sorry for my hundred.
“Yes. I have observed that, if you play enough, you always lose.
You just mathematically must. The percentage is a scientific
certain-t-y-ty. My system is to bet high, win, and quit before you
begin to lose.”
“How did you ever study it out?” says I, beginning to be glad about my
investment again. “I never tried that way, but it sounds promising.”
“Such being the case, I got a hunch,” says Stranger. “Here goes for a
gold chain or a wooden leg. Take my hand and watch me peer into the
future.”
We wiggled through to the table after a while. The dealer was a
voluptuous swell, accentuated with solid gold log chains and ruby
rings where convenient. I knew him. He wore a copyrighted smile losing,
and a nasty sneer when he won. An overbearing man and opportune,
Frenchy, addicted to killing his fellow-man in sheer self-defense,
during the absence of his assailant’s friends. Such was his unrefuted
statement, the dead gentlemen having never given their testimony. He
had been so fortunate in his protections that lots of folks rarely ever
went out of their way to annoy him.
Stranger began hostilities by depositing a twenty on the black. Red
ensued. Another twenty on black. Black comes. Frenchy shoved over a
ten, and Stranger looked pained.
“I bet twenty dollars,” he said, lifting of his brows.
“Ten dollars is the limit for any one bet,” snaps Frenchy, rolling the
ball again. “Don’t delay the game. Bet or give up your place.”
“But you took my twenty.” He stopped the wheel. “No bets this whirl,”
says Stranger.
The crowd stopped talking and side-stepped for an alibi in case the
gentleman should engage in self-defense.
Frenchy bares his teeth and snarls. “You lost. I got the mon. Why
didn’t you inquire? You orter understand a game before you buck it.
This is my game and my rules goes. See?”
“I see,” says Stranger quiet. “Give me tens for these twenties, please.”
Snickers from the crowd. Frenchy had them Buffaloed to a standstill.
All the same, they had no use for a fellow that let his rights be
trampled on this way. And yet Stranger didn’t look noways like a man of
patient proclivities, given to turning the other cheek. Some wise ones
cashed their chips when they remarked his easy smile.
When Frenchy began to roll again we had the table mostly to ourselves.
I moves over by the wheel to watch the lookout, him having a game eye
and a propensity to be sole witness for Frenchy when his life was
attempted.
“I will now declare myself as for W. J. Bryan,” says Stranger, dropping
ten each on the squares marked 16, 2, 1.
“Twenty-seven, red, odd and McKinley,” drones Frenchy, and scoops our
thirty.
Stranger strings thirty more on 16, 2, 1.
“Nine, black, odd! Great Republican gains!”
Frenchy’s singsong was plumb exasperating.
Stranger adorns his three numbers again with his last thirty, and, as
an afterthought, put his rare old iron dollar on single 0.
“Single green,” chants Frenchy. “Populist, by jingo!” I says, as
Frenchy rakes the three tens and pays ’em, with five more to the green.
Ten each on 16, 2, 1. Then he planks the six on double green. “I hate a
piker!” he states. And 00 came.
“Alfalfa,” I yells. “Grangers for ever!”
Things was looking up now, but Stranger was noways concerned. “Six
thirty-fives is two hundred and ten--six I had makes two sixteen.
Hold on till I make a purty.” He bets ten straight on 16, ten on each
corner, ten on each side. Same play for 2, and a lone ten on the unit.
I never seen a board look so plumb ridiculous.
“Hope springs infernal in the human breast. Let ’er go, Hanna!” he
says. “A short life and a merry one!”
The ball spun nearly two weeks. “Sixteen, black and even,” remarks
Frenchy.
I takes a swift glance at the wheel then, to corroborate my ears. “And
Bryan,” suggests Stranger.
“Bryan! Bryan!” yells the crowd. Miners and cow-boys is Democrats _ex
officio_, and Frenchy’s surreptitious habit of defending himself was
endearin’ Stranger to ’em. Besides, he was winning. That helps with
crowds.
Paying them bets was complex. We was over eleven hundred to the good on
the turn. Other business was suspended, and the crowd lined up, leaving
the gladiators the center of the stage, and a twenty-foot lane so they
could have plenty of air.
“I will now avenge the crime of ’73,” remarks Stranger. “I’m getting it
trained.” He made the same layout. Strike me dead, if the ball didn’t
jump in a pocket--out--and back--and out again and deliberated between
2 and 35 while the wheel went around fourteen times. You could have
heard the split-second hand on a stop watch in the next county while it
balanced--and at last rope-walked down in two.
“Two, red, even,” says Frenchy in a shocked voice, like he was seein’
things at night.
No one could yell--they was a-catching of their breath. And we lays by
twelve hundred and fifty more.
“Before proceeding further with my witchcraft,” says Stranger, “I
would ask you to set your valuation of layout, lookout, license and
good-will. Because,” he says, “any fool can see that the ball stops
on the one this time. Science, poetry, logic, romance, sentiment and
justice point to it, like spokes to a hub. And if you’re going to
bank with that chicken feed”--jerking his chin toward the shattered
fragments of the bank roll--“you’ll have to lower your limit ... before
I play. Oh, I’m learning fast.”
Frenchy looks unhappy, but there wasn’t nothing to say. His pile wasn’t
big enough to pay if Stranger’s predictions was accurate. “Bring me
my sack, Brown,” he calls out. Brown opens his safe and lugs over the
sack. Frenchy pours it out on the table--ten thousand dollars, bills
of all sizes from five to a thousand, and a coffee-pot full of gold.
“Shoot,” he says. “You’re faded.”
Stranger eclipses the one spot with ten dollar bills: ten each on
corners, the four sides and the middle. “It’s a sure thing--we’d just
as well have some side money,” he says, betting ten each on black,
odd, first column, first dozen and 1 to 18. “Mr. Brown,” he says, “the
gentleman who runs the game will hand you seventy dollars when the ball
stops. Drinks for the crowd while it lasts,” and drops ten each on 16
and 2, for luck.
Buz-z-z. The ball hums a cheerful ditty, like hot coffee on a cold
day. Buz-z-z--Click.
Frenchy goes into a trance, chewing his mouth. He moistens his lips
and makes an effort. “One, black, and odd!” His voice was cracked and
horrified.
“What a pleasant dream!” I thinks. “It’s a shame to wake up and
wrangle horses, but it must be near day.” I tries to open my eyes, but
couldn’t. ’Twas no dream of avarice. Stranger was just visible above a
pyramid of deferred dividends.
“Great Democratic gains,” he announces. “Gentlemen--in fact, all of
you--what’ll you have?”
“I guess that includes me, all right,” states a big miner. “Strictly
speaking, I don’t want no drink now, but, if you’d just as soon tell me
what color my old pack-mare’s next colt’ll be, I sh’d be obliged.”
No one wanted a drink--nobody moved. More miracles was what they
wanted. “What? No drinks?” says Stranger. “Prohibition landslide in
Terrapin? Can I believe my ears--or my nose? Well, then, I will pursue
my hellish purpose. I appeal to the calm judgment of this crowd, if
they ever heard of an election without repeaters?” But he doesn’t let
his gaze wander to the crowd none whatever. He never taken both eyes
off Frenchy to oncet, since the limit had been pulled on him.
He decorated the board just as it was the last time, and looks on with
pleased expectancy while the ball spins. I hope I may be saved it it
didn’t come a repeater!
Stranger yawns as he pulls in thirteen hundred and twenty dollars.
“Thanking you for your kind attention,” he states, “the entertainment
is now concluded. Will some one trust me for a sack?”
“Feet cold?” sneers Frenchy.
“Oh no, I’m quite comfortable. But I _might_ lose if I kept on,”
Stranger explains. “Those numbers may not come again for ever so long.
This is a piking game, anyhow. I like to bet my money in large chunks.”
“You seem to be a sort of a Democrat,” suggests Frenchy. “Why not back
up your views? Here’s seven thousand says McKinley’s elected.”
“Why, _that’s_ my game,” says Stranger, beaming. “That’s just what I
wanted. Bryan’s going to sweep the country from Dan to Milwaukee.”
I gives him the nudge, for I sees our pile a-glimmering. I don’t mind
betting on cards or horses and such, but politics is tricky. But he
prattles on, plumb carried away by the courage of his convictions.
Frenchy’s nose dented. Why, I learned later, but I’ll tell you now.
Terrapin was sixty miles from a telegraph office and all right-minded
citizens was here present. But this sure-thing sport, knowing we was
all for Bryan, had posted a relay on the North trail to bring him news.
It was now way past midnight. He had known McKinley was in since about
the time I was staking Stranger, and poor, innocent, confiding Stranger
walks right into his trap.
“Even money?” asks Frenchy.
“I would shorely scorn to take such an advantage of you,” says
Stranger. “I’ll give you a chance for your white alley. I will now
proceed to divide my capital into five parts. The first part contains
fifteen hundred dollars, which I bet you against five hundred dollars
that Bryan is our next President. I will then bet you fifteen hundred
even that Bryan carries thirty-six states, a list of which I will make
out and seal. Third pile, two thousand dollars, gives you a chance to
break even if you’re lucky. Give me odds of five to one and I bet
this two thousand that Bryan carries four other states, names of which
will also be deposited under seal with stake-holder. Pile number four,
five hundred dollars, goes even that I made a good bet. Number five,
one hundred and sixty-six dollars, goes in my pocket for tobacco and
postage stamps and other luxuries.”
“You’re delirious. Your money’s a gift,” says Frenchy. “Make out your
agreements. It’ll take more’n I got to cover that five to one bet,
but I can borrow the Northern Pacific on that proposition.” He takes
Brown off for a confidential and comes back with the money by the time
Stranger had the bet in writing and signed.
Frenchy reads it aloud. “You are all witnesses,” he says, and slaps his
fist to it. “Name your stake-holder.”
“Put it in Mr. Brown’s safe--money, agreement and my two lists of
states. Decide to-morrow at five P. M. when the stage comes in.”
They makes a bundle of it and locks it up. “And now,” says Stranger to
me, “my presentiments points for bed.”
“Why couldn’t you quit when I wanted you to, you ijit?” I says. “You
made the worst break I ever see.”
“You certainly surprise me. Haven’t I raised you to a position of
opulence by my acumen and foresight? Your ingratitude grieves me to my
heart’s core--and just when we stand to more than double our money,
too.”
“Acumen! Foresight!” I jeers. “’Twas blind, bulldog, damn-fool luck. I
furnished all the judgment used when I tried to stop you. I put up the
money, and you had a right to harken to me.”
“You’re my partner,” says he calmly. “Half this money is yours, and
all, if you need it. But I lost _your_ money. This here is the
proceeds of my iron dollar. By to-morrow night we’ll have eleven
thousand, anyway, and here you’re complaining. I do hate a quitter.”
“And I hate a fool. You have a chance to win one bet, and that’s all.”
“You’ll regret this hasty speech to-morrow night. Follow me, and you’ll
wear diamonds!”
“Yes--on the seat of my pants,” I rejoins bitterly. And all them
somewhat diverse prophecies came to pass.
When we woke, after noon, ’twas pretty well known how the election
went, and we was guyed unmerciful.
But Stranger wasn’t noways dejected. “Rumor--mere rumor. ‘Out of the
nettle danger we may pluck the flower safety,’” he spouts, waving his
hands like a windmill. “I’ve been in worse emergencies, and always
emerged.”
I was considerable sore and was for not showing up to turn over the
money, but he persuaded me.
“At the worst Frenchy owes me ten that I won fair on the second bet
last night,” he says. “If I have to collect that, I aim to charge him
something for collectin’. I had that in mind last night if the green
hadn’t come when my dollar was on it.”
I sees reason in this, and oils my guns.
Frenchy was waitin’ with his lookout, gay and cheerful. “Did you bring
your sack?” was his greeting.
“Why, no, I forgot. Hi! Bud!” Stranger gives a boy five dollars. “Bring
an ore sack to the barkeep for me, and keep the change.”
We gets Brown with the package of stake money and prognostications on
our way through the crowd to a back room. Brown busts the package and
begins the hollow mockery.
“Bet number one.” He reads the specifications. “Bryan loses. Any
objections?”
Stranger shakes his head sorrowful, and pushes over the
two-thousand-dollar packet.
“Bet number two.” Brown breaks the list of thirty-six states. “For
Bryan,” he reads: “Connecticut, New York, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan,
Minnesota--” His feelings overcome him and he laughs till the tears
roll down his face. Frenchy leers, and the lookout rocks himself back
and forward. And to cap it off comes a knock, and barkeep comes in with
the sack Stranger ordered.
They howled. “I’ll give you ten for your sack,” gasps Frenchy.
“You needn’t rub it in,” says Stranger, injured. “I certain was mistook
in them estimates. Pass on to the next.”
“Third bet,” wheezes Brown. He wipes his cheeks and tears open the list
of four states. “Bryan will carry--” he begins. He turns pale, his
tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and his eyes bugged out so you
could hang your hat on ’em.
“TEXAS!” he screeches. “_Arkansas, Georgia_, SOUTH CAROLINA!”
“_Then_ I made a good bet!” observes Stranger, popping the rest of the
money into the sack.
“What!” yells Frenchy. “You were to name four additional states--forty
in all!”
“Oh, no. Four _others_. These four were not in my list of thirty-six.
You lost and I’ve got the mon. Why didn’t you inquire? You orter
understand a game before you play it. This is my game, and my rules go.
See?”
Stranger’s gun was dangling on his right hip, but, as Frenchy drew,
Stranger’s right hand caught his’n, gun and all, and Stranger’s left
produced a .45 from nowhere at all and proceeds to bend it over
Frenchy’s head. The tin-horn couldn’t get his right hand loose, so he
reaches around with his left, jerks Stranger’s gun from his hip. But he
only wastes time snapping it, for that one wasn’t loaded.
I thought maybe Brown and the lookout would double up on my pardner,
but they didn’t. They just shoved the two pits of their two stomachs up
against the muzzles of my two guns, and looked foolish.
“Nuff!” screams Frenchy, letting go his gun. He looks like ration day
at Rosebud. Me and Stranger walks out, sticking closer’n brothers,
lockstepping, back to back.
“What’d I tell you?” says Stranger, turning in at a butcher shop. And
there he asks may we use the scales, and pours our ill-gotten gains
into both scoops till they balance. “Take your choice, pardner,” he
says. “You’re short on faith, but you’re hell on works!”
Next to a restaurant. Before our order comes, in steps Billy Edwards.
He was a deputy sheriff, but white. “Would you mind my asking your
name? ’Cause Frenchy doesn’t know. He’s swearing out a warrant for
you, alleging assault with intent to kill,” says Billy politely. “They
haven’t give me the warrant yet. Course if they had I wouldn’t tell you
this, for you might get away before I found you.”
I’d never thought to ask his name!
“Artemus G. Jones,” says he, and he stuck his thumb in his vest. “Set
down and take supper with us.”
“Ar--ahem. Er--what does the G. stand for?”
Artie looks embarrassed. “Galatians,” he sighs.
“What? Was you named after--”
“I was named,” says Artie, “after a family scrap. Can’t you suppress
it? Artemus G. ought to identify me.”
[Illustration: Frenchy told a terrible tale of wanton robbery. Page
57]
“I--I thought it might spell easier,” says Billy.
After supper we walks over and gets the warrant. Billy arrests Artie
and disarms him. “_You_ know _your_ business--I’ll make any kind of bet
on that,” says Billy; “but in your place I should have been far away on
a bounding bronco.”
We went to be tried before Judge Eliot. Frenchy kept a jack-leg lawyer
named Satterlee, and he was helping persecute.
“Have you legal advice, prisoner?” says his Honor.
“A little,” says Artie softly.
“Proceed. Call the plaintiff.”
Frenchy took the stand and told a terrible tale of wanton robbery and
brutal, unprovoked violence. He had won an election bet from prisoner,
and prisoner had taken the money by force. He showed his wounds. He
shore looked like he’d been playing goat with a buzz-saw.
Brown and the lookout was good witnesses, but they let out, when the
Judge questioned them, that Artie had the money in his sack before
the trouble began and that Frenchy had a gun. And not a word about my
presence of mind.
Artie allowed he wouldn’t cross-examine them. His Honor was riled.
“Will you take the stand, sir?” he says.
Artie stretches. “Oh, no--I guess it’s not worth while to take up your
time. Ugh--o--oaoh,” he says, yawning.
Judge was furious. “Prisoner, if you’ve got any witnesses in your
defense, call ’em. As the evidence stands--up you go!”
Artie placed himself on top of his feet. “Your Honor,” he says “call
Billy Edwards.”
Billy gives his name, sex, color, and other essentials. Then says
Artie:
“You arrested me to-night?”
“Yes.”
“Was my gun loaded?”
“One of them was empty. The other one had five cartridges in it,”
Edwards promptly asserts.
“Was the loaded one bloody?”
“Awful.”
“That’s all,” says Artie with a gracious wave of his hand, dismissing
the witness. “Your Honor, our friend the Gaul, alias Frenchy, is before
you. I am refined by nature. One gentle pull on the trigger would have
removed all doubt. He would have been dead dead. He isn’t. I move
that my client, Artemus G. Jones, me, I, myself, be discharged, and
plaintiff reprimanded for frivolity in taking up the time of the court.
Had I wished to kill this jigger I certainly would have shot him. The
gun that was bloody was the gun of Artemus,” and Artie paid the whole
blamed court a compliment by the way he retired.
Frenchy’s lawyer began to holler, but the judge cut him quick. “Sit
down, Mr. Satterlee,” says he. “Unless you can prove your client is
dead, the court will pursue the course indicated by the learned counsel
for defense.”
“Selah!” says Satterlee. “I’m down. Set ’em up in the other alley.”
III
THE MASCOT OF THE GRAYS
A BASE-BALL GAME AND THE SUBSEQUENT PROCEEDINGS
“Why, yes!” said Mr. Perkins, “I’ll tell you all about it, if you’ve
got the time to spare. I was managing the Grays--that was the club from
the west side of the river, you know--and we thought ourselves the
prettiest things that ever played base-ball in Dakota; for a while.
And then we had hard luck. Our fancy pitcher was an ex-soldier named
Fitzeben; a well-built, pale, handsome fellow, with lots of style,
and no heart. As long as things were coming his way, he could put up
a game of base-ball that would make a man forget his religion; but if
they began to find him on the other side, Fitz would go to slops on the
run. First-base was this man Falk you was speaking about. There was a
Hoodoo playing second. ‘Hindoo?’ Yes, that’s it. You’ve got it. He’d
come a long ways to our town. Nice, pleasant little man he was, too,
with a name that would have made him an overcoat and a pair of pants,
and then something left for the babies--‘Dammerjoodeljubberjubberchah,’
or words to that effect. The boys called him ‘Jub,’ so it didn’t matter
so much about that.”
Mr. Perkins stopped to crook his elbow, as they say in the vernacular,
and stood a while in silence, as the tears of ecstasy gathered in his
eyes.