GOOD OLD MICKY CUFF.
Shenandoah is a handsome little inland town, the center of a productive
coal country and the place of residence of many excellent people. This
volume, however, will not have much to do with that particular portion
of the inhabitants, the Mollies and their associates fully monopolizing
and employing the writer’s attention. Among those who were not members
of the organization, but still wicked enough to be classed with them,
was one Micky Cuff, the proprietor of a small whisky shop in the city.
The building, the basement of which Cuff and his family occupied, was a
two-story tenement, standing nearly flush with the street, and in its
cellar part rather low between floors. One night, about eleven o’clock,
after coming from a wake, McKenna found himself with Fergus and Ned
Monaghan, for the first time inside Micky Cuff’s groggery. Having such a
brace of worthies to introduce him, he made sure of a cordial welcome,
and Cuff shook his hand heartily as he said, in his gruff
voice—something between the noise produced by filing a mill-saw and that
made in the smaller theatres and called sheet-iron thunder:
“I’m plazed to mate ye, lad! Make yerself at home here, an’ when ye’re
thirsty come in an’ taste our liquor! If you misbehave—which I suppose
ye niver do—you’ll be well baten for yer pains!”
The detective had received his cue from Fergus never to dispute Cuff, or
find fault with anything in his house, unless he wanted a stroke over
the head with whatever instrument was most convenient, and therefore
accepted the allusion to a fight without sending back his habitual
rejoinder: “Two can play at that game!” And it was well for him that he
did. Without noticing Cuff’s captiousness, McKenna proposed: “Drinks for
four, or five, if Mrs. Cuff would take somewhat!”
“Af coorse she wull!” said Cuff; and that dumpy woman with the small
face, scanty gray hair, bent shoulders, and meek but deprecatory
smile—she felt compelled to express pleasure when her husband told her,
as plainly by a look as words could speak, that she must do so—came
forward and drank her thimbleful of poteen from the one lonesome, dirty
glass, sole remnant of the half dozen she had commenced housekeeping
with some thirty years before, and said:
“Thanks! This is Jim McKenna, is it? We have heard of you! I am glad to
meet any friend of my husband—and Mr. Ferguson!”
Ferguson acknowledged the compliment intended, and she retired to the
rear of the room, where there was work for her, “doing up” Cuff’s linen.
“Sure, an’ ye are that same bould Jim McKenna, what docthered Pat
Hennessy’s colt! I knew you be sight long ago, but this is the first
time you’ve honored our house with your prisence! Nivermind! Here’s to
your betther health, Mr. McKenna!”
And good old Cuff drained his half tumbler of raw spirits as
unconcernedly as if it had not been one of a dozen odd, similarly large
and strong, he had tasted since dinner. Then the four men sat down to a
greasy table, located in the middle of the apartment, and, by the light
of the single, smoking miners’ lamp, essayed the interesting game of
poker, the ante being the small sum of one dime.
That room and its contents would rejoice the graphic pencil of a
Hogarth, or the facile pen of a Dickens, were these great artists alive
to enter its stifling and tobacco-smoked precincts. Let me attempt
merely to outline the curious picture.
Descending a steep flight of well-worn stone steps, from the sidewalk, a
reasonably tall man would have to stoop considerably to save his head
from coming in violent collision with the arched lintel. Pushing open
the paintless, but by no means colorless, door, the interior premises
were at once disclosed to view. No, not at once, as it consumed some
moments for the best eyes to penetrate to the most distant walls, by
reason of the density and murkiness of the atmosphere, and the
prevalence of smoke from some cookery and several tobacco pipes. But
there could be no delay in the process of smelling the presence of
perspiring humanity in its most filthy forms. It required stomach and
lungs inured by extended habit to confinement in similarly reeking,
social stews, to enable a person to exist for any length of time in the
air of Micky Cuff’s castle. Two low windows at the front gave a dim
light during the day, while at night a flaring flame from a small lamp
was all the illumination the apartment afforded. The room was possibly
thirty feet in length, and eighteen wide. The ceiling, which was once
whitewashed, and then left for years to accumulate smoke, dust, and
moisture, was scant six feet above the dirty floor, and the encompassing
walls were of the same piece—adorned here and there with a rusty nail,
on which hung either a coat, a skirt, a skillet, or a frying-pan—and in
the economy of this particular family it mattered little as to their
rotation. It might be a pan, a dress, and a hat, or perchance a hat, a
pan, and a dress. Across one corner of the further end a string was
drawn, and to it a sheet hung suspended. Behind this temporary screen
slept all the Cuff family—man, wife, and five small children. When the
detective entered, a chicken and two pullets were serenely roosting on
the top of this convenient bed-room partition, and the curtain
evidenced, from its plentiful want of cleanliness, that they were
unaccustomed to make their nightly vigils elsewhere—for sleep they could
not while Cuff was awake, and that was generally the greater portion of
the night. In that triangular recess the Cuff family reposed. In that
dingy apartment the same persons cooked, washed, ate, drank, and sold
whisky to customers—beside keeping two boarders, who occupied a second
and calico curtained corner opposite that of the Cuffs. There were no
means of ventilation, save through the front door, the windows, and the
stove-pipe. The liquor rested in a five-gallon demijohn, which Cuff
denominated his “retail department.”
Good old Micky Cuff, as he heard himself ironically called by his
neighbors, was not generally looked upon as either good or handsome.
Heavy and tall of figure, he had plentiful, long, stiff, iron-gray hair,
and bristling eyebrows. His face was broad and retreating at the base,
and narrow and projecting at the top, preceded, when he walked, by a pug
nose, which seemed always heartily ashamed that it was not large in
proportion to the vast expanse of cheek flanking it on either side, and
hence appeared more insignificant than it really was. But the lack of
size in the nasal appendage was more than compensated by the yawning
chasm beneath, dividing the countenance into two moieties, and commonly
called a mouth. Cuff’s mouth was the crater of a miniature volcano,
continually bursting forth with loud oaths, running streams of tobacco
juice and bursts of fetid breath, causing the face to tremble with the
vehemence of the smouldering fires of the elements within. To make the
thing still more hideous, there were four tusks in the front of the
upper and lower jaw, jutting out slantingly, causing either lip to
protrude and assume a grin, which would have made the fortune of any
actor who affected the line of character professionally dubbed the
“heavy villain.” When Cuff laughed, which was constantly—and never more
diabolically than when incensed to the pitch of working violence upon
something—his little, round, black eyes retreated into their sockets,
the nose wriggled felicitously, like the stump of a dog’s tail when
begging for meat, and his four broad tusks clattered together, causing
his repeated guffaws to assume the tone of an illy played pair of
castanets combined with the before-mentioned stage thunder. In fact, the
big fellow’s face was open, like that of an alligator. Dressed in coarse
miners’ blouse and pantaloons, with boots of the usual weight—Cuff
seldom wore his hat, excepting when in the street or the mine, for he
was an expert miner, and labored when he could by day, selling whisky at
night—he was a perfect wonder to behold.
Cuff was not, and never had been, a Mollie, but was greatly in favor of
the organization, and on intimate terms of friendship with its principal
members. He bore the reputation of being a very rough customer, and
undoubtedly was, but he may be complimented by the addenda: even he “was
not as bad as he looked.” His temper was as peculiar as his _personnel_.
Once disputed in a favorite theory or belief, his anger was quick to
rise, knew no bounds, and the handiest weapon, no matter what it chanced
to be—a rock, an axe, or hammer, a bar of iron, a stick of wood—was
employed upon the person of his opponent, whether it chanced to be man,
woman, or child, and it was a cause of wonder in the neighborhood that
Micky had never yet been guilty of murder. In truth, he had not even
been arrested for an assault, though frequently guilty of those of an
aggravated character. His inner consciousness was as utterly
inexplicable as his outward general appearance. Nondescript is about the
only word in the English language clearly conveying to the mind of the
reader a photograph of the being bearing the name of Micky Cuff, of
Shenandoah. And the same syllables equally well apply to his mental and
moral attributes—for he possessed both of these in a marked and powerful
degree.
Cuff would never refuse a man a quart of whisky, even though he whacked
the applicant roundly before he could get off the premises with it.
During times of suspension, when few miners commanded ready funds, Cuff
is said to have disposed of, without money and without price, barrel
after barrel of liquor, showing that penuriousness was not one of his
many faults. Those who failed in coming up and settling, among the few
to whom he extended credit, when better times arrived and the cash was
attainable, the good old man took occasion to remind just once of their
indebtedness. A continued omission to walk up, soon afterward, and pay
the score, resulted in the closing of the account—wiping away the
chalk-marks from the wall with his huge paw—and the balancing of his
ledger by giving the negligent creditor a broken head the very first
time they came together.
“When I give, I gives,” said Cuff, “an’ when I trusts, I mane to have me
pay, if I have to take it out of somebody’s hide!”
So Cuff’s customers were ordinarily model paymasters. He sold by the
gallon, quart, and drink, mostly for money down. It was most agreeable
this way, all around.
Miners, or their companions, who took sick at or near Micky Cuff’s
house, were considered fortunate. If Cuff could have his way, he was the
softest-handed, gentlest-hearted nurse in the world. When he might not
do as he pleased, the invalid was quickly compelled to seek other
quarters. His usual parting salute in such an event would be:
“Go off now! Git out of me house! I’m not _nagerly_, but ye can’t stand
here an’ dispute the docther—an’ by the same token, that’s Micky Cuff!
_Dher manhim!_ Ye can’t be sick and docther beside! Go away—an’ the
devil go wid ye an’ sixpence! Here’s six eggs to ye an’ half a dozen of
’em rotten!”
With more of the same sort, which would make a stranger tremble; but
those who knew Cuff were aware that, to those in misfortune or suffering
from illness, his heart was that of a baby.
When the sick man wisely kept a silent tongue in his head, and swallowed
the remedies provided without word or grimace, no one could be more
compassionate than Cuff. His principal reliance, in all cases—his
_medicamentum_ and cure-all—was a preparation which he called
“skelkeen,” and it was generally to be gulped down very hot, so that his
patients denominated it—but not in his presence—“scald keen;” for they
said it scalded them sharply in the taking. Cuff made his skelkeen about
in this manner: Taking three fresh-laid eggs, plenty of sugar, or
molasses, he broke the eggs, beat them, with the other ingredients, in a
bowl, then added a generous quantity of whisky; putting all together in
a pot, or tin kettle, he stirred it while it boiled until reduced to the
consistency of cream, when some cayenne pepper was added, and the fiery
medicine was ready for use.
“Here! Take this!” he would say, holding a cupful of the steaming stuff
in his hand. “If ye wor gone, clane dead, the skelkeen would bring ye to
life again!”
Should the patient dare refuse the draught, Cuff would call him vulgar
names, not mentionable here, whip him, and end by kicking him out of
doors and up the stairs, in the goodness of his heart. It was not often
that his friends in this manner incurred his displeasure. Only strangers
dare refuse the skelkeen.
Then Cuff had his “mulled beer,” suitable for ladies, which he declared
cured all the evils flesh is heir to. And many went to his house to
partake of this remedy. The ladies’ cure consisted of malt beer, or ale,
boiled down thick and strong, in some vessel, on the family stove, with
molasses enough added to make it palatable, and drunk as hot as the sick
one could bear.
“Swallow this! It’ll cure you, or I’m a _gaberlunzie_, which by the same
token, I never wor!” was the rough language accompanying the
presentation of the vile concoction. Woe be unto the woman who dared to
turn her head away from the fumes of Cuff’s mulled beer! She would be
sure to hear such language from the impromptu doctor as would make her
repent the act during the remainder of her life. As with the men, very
few had the courage to put the cup from their lips. They generally
recovered their health, however, after taking one dose of the
stimulating compound.
There was an entire absence of spittoons in the place, and as all who
visited there chewed tobacco, or smoked, the sanitary condition of the
floor may be imagined but not portrayed. The scrubbing-brush or mop
never interfered with the supreme sway of abominations. An old broom
occasionally touched the surface of the boards, or the coating above
them, but soap and water were “too dampening for the children”—who, by
its use, might take sudden colds—to be placed upon anything in the
house, where their use could possibly be dispensed with. An old tin
kettle contained the smoking tobacco, and as it generally stood on the
floor, excepting when being passed from smoker to smoker, sundry
discharged and useless quids got mixed with the article to be used in
pipes, and McKenna was about to refuse to fill his doodeen when he
looked at Cuff, who was regarding him carefully over his cards, and
remembering a caution he had received, he choked down his rising gorge,
employed some of the tobacco, and handed the kettle to Fergus.
Mrs. Cuff was in most respects a fitting helpmate for Micky. She was
fully as fine-looking as her husband, but small in figure and
undemonstrative in demeanor, implicitly relying upon the ungainly
partner of her bosom as a wonderfully superior being—in truth, as one of
the greatest and best of men. She performed what he might order, in any
emergency, promptly and uncomplainingly, and so lived that she made not
an enemy in the town. True, her progeny wanted clothing sometimes, and
wallowed in the dust, as dirty as the _bonneens_ in the sty, growing up
as tough as maple knots and as uneducated as Hottentots, but it was not
her fault. She had never been taught any better, and as long as Micky
thought it right, the whole world would be wrong entirely, if found to
differ with his expressed opinion. She worked hard to keep her large
family fed and clothed, but the urchins would climb rocks, and fences,
and slide down cellar doors, and hence their garments would show holes
and rents. They exhibited little evidence in their persons that clean
water ran in streams, or stood in wells, and that soap was cheap at
corner groceries. Rather the contrary. But they and she had always been
accustomed to such a life, and cannot be blamed for believing it their
natural state of existence.
After several games at cards, in which Cuff and his partner came out
ahead, he proposed that McKenna should give them a song.
“I hear you are a wild boy wid the music an’ dance,” said the good old
man, trying to appear companionable; “an’ I have, these many days, been
wantin’ to see yez, an’ hear some of your best!”
“Yes,” chimed in Monaghan. “A song! A song!”
“Do, plaze favor us!” echoed Mrs. Cuff, who was now sitting by the
stove, mending a bifurcated garment intended to cover the body of one of
the younger Cuffs.
[Illustration: “_The others withdrawing somewhat from the table, he
seated himself upon it and began._”]
McKenna had a very sore throat at the time, but endeavored to comply.
The others withdrawing somewhat from the table, he seated himself upon
it and began with “The Miner and the Exciseman,” the tune being
indescribable, the words about as follows:
“I know that young folks like to hear a song;
Its something funny—its not very long;
Its of an exciseman, the story I’ll tell,
Who thought t’other night he was going to h—ll.
CHORUS.
“With my fal-al-addy, dol, tol-ol-oddy-dol,” etc.
“This exciseman went out upon the other day,
He met plenty of smugglers, as I hear them say,
All gauging their liquor, just ready to sell,
This exciseman got drunk, boys, the truth for to tell. —CHORUS.
“Well, ’twas nigh to a coal mine this exciseman did lie,
When four or five miners there chanced to pass by;
They took him on their shoulders and bore him away,
Like a peddler’s pack, without any delay. —CHORUS.
“It’s into the bucket they lowered him right down;
When this jolly exciseman he got underground,
An’ when he awoke in great horror and fear,
Up starts a big miner, saying, ‘What brought you here?’ —CHORUS.
“‘Indade, Mr. Devil, I don’t very well know,
But I see that I have come to the regions below;
An’ if ye spare me now, as you’ve oft done before,
I’ll never kape robbin’ the poor any more!’ —CHORUS.
“‘It’s what trade did you follow when you were above?’
‘I was an exciseman, an’ few did me love.’
‘If you’re an exciseman, why, here you’ll remain,
An’ you’ll never get out of this dark cell again.’ —CHORUS.
“‘Or you must give us money—now that we demand
Before you get to one sight of the land!’
‘Here is a hundred guineas,’ the exciseman did say,
‘For I long to get seeing the light of day!’” —CHORUS.
“Served the skunk right!” said Cuff, rising from his chair, and giving
the table a thump with his closed hand which made the room ring, and
caused McKenna to get down rather hastily from the perch and look around
to see if anybody were injured. Cuff gave him a reassuring wink and
continued: “I don’t belave there is any one thing, exceptin’ a
rattlesnake, that I hate more than a gauger—or a detective!”
“Them’s my sentiments, precisely!” shouted McKenna. “Come, let’s have
another smile, all around, and then we’ll go home!”
This ended the operative’s first call on good old Micky Cuff, but it was
by no means his last. He visited there, when he could not avoid it,
during that winter, but later an incident occurred that may be related
here, which terminated his companionship with that party. He does not go
to see Micky Cuff any more—and did not, after the event alluded to, for
many months preceding his departure from Shenandoah.
Cuff’s four horrid snags of teeth have been mentioned. They were a
source of continual annoyance to their owner, and the special aversion
of Mrs. Cuff—his one defect, if the word may be permitted. Both
thought—and their friends believed—that if the tusks were once removed
and their place filled with a new and regular artificial set, he would
be an elegant-appearing man. Cuff confessed to his boon companions that
he knew the fangs did slightly detract from his beauty of countenance;
and said if he had money to spare to fee the dentist he certainly might
have them taken out, and a “dacint set put in the mouth!” When Fergus,
on a certain occasion, thought of this, he cast a sly wink at McKenna,
and said: “Now, Cuff, McKenna and I are your friends. We have noticed
your anxiety about those teeth, and, with the assistance of Tom Hurley,
Jack Gibbons, an’ some more, have got up a raffle, to come off two weeks
hence, to raise twenty dollars for you, for the very purpose of getting
a new supply!”
“Yes,” said McKenna, taking the hint; “an’ it’ll not be long before the
money’s all collected. Tom Hurley and I can raise most of it, I do
believe!”
Cuff was very thankful, believed all they said, and promised to have the
four offending incisors extracted. In a short time Fergus informed the
operative that Cuff, taking them at their word, had accordingly had the
fangs taken out.
“What I’m thinking of now,” said Fergus, “is where you an’ I will be
afther hidin’ until Cuff gets over his anger! When he hears he has been
sold, he’ll be as mad as Sam’s master!”
“Then there was no raffle, afther all?” asked McKenna, innocently.
“Sure, an’ you knew that all the time! What’s the use of your playin’
off ye didn’t, at this late hour?”
“Oh, faith! I supposed you had got up a paper for Cuff, an’ I was ready
to pay me share,” answered McKenna; but seeing that Fergus did not care
to shoulder all the blame, he finally assented to an arrangement by
which they were, for a few weeks, at least, to travel always in company,
and never in the vicinities frequented by good old Micky Cuff.
The raffle never came off—but the roof of Cuff’s house was nigh coming
off with the solid imprecations that good but impulsive man indulged in
when a neighbor informed him that McKenna and Ferguson had been playing
a practical joke on him. No one in the place dared even look
suspiciously at the horrid hole left in his jaws, without incurring his
lasting displeasure. He went about his affairs with a more hideous
countenance than he had sported before the doctor took away his tusks.
Two men in Shenandoah never go to drink, play cards, sing and dance with
Micky Cuff. When invited, they invariably decline.
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