I
After the explosion, and before Uncle Billy Poindexter and Old Man
Sprott had been able to decide just what had hit them, Little Doc Ellis
had the nerve to tell me that he had seen the fuse burning for months
and months. Little Doc is my friend and I like him, but he resembles
many other members of his profession in that he is usually wisest after
the post mortem, when it is a wee bit late for the high contracting
party.
And at all times Little Doc is full of vintage bromides and figures of
speech.
"You have heard the old saw," said he. "A worm will turn if you keep
picking on him, and so will a straight road if you ride it long enough.
A camel is a wonderful burden bearer, but even a double-humped ship of
the desert will sink on your hands if you pile the load on him a bale of
hay at a time."
"A worm, a straight road, a camel and a sinking ship," said I. "Whither
are we drifting?"
Little Doc did not pay any attention to me. It is a way he has.
"Think," said he, "how much longer a camel will stand up under
punishment if he gets his load straw by straw, as it were. The Ooley-cow
was a good thing, but Uncle Billy and Old Man Sprott did not use any
judgment. They piled it on him too thick."
"Meaning," I asked, "to compare the Ooley-cow with a camel?"
"Merely a figure of speech," said Little Doc; "but yes, such was my
intention."
"Well," said I, "your figures of speech need careful auditing. A camel
can go eight days without a drink----"
Little Doc made impatient motions at me with both hands. He has no sense
of humour, and his mind is a one-way track, totally devoid of spurs and
derailing switches. Once started, he must go straight through to his
destination.
"What I am trying to make plain to your limited mentality," said he, "is
that Uncle Billy and Old Man Sprott needed a lesson in conservation, and
they got it. The Ooley-cow was the easiest, softest picking that ever
strayed from the home pasture. With care and decent treatment he would
have lasted a long time and yielded an enormous quantity of nourishment,
but Uncle Billy and Old Man Sprott were too greedy. They tried to corner
the milk market, and now they will have to sign tags for their drinks
and their golf balls the same as the rest of us. They have killed the
goose that laid the golden eggs."
"A minute ago," said I, "the Ooley-cow was a camel. Now he is a goose--a
dead goose, to be exact. Are you all done figuring with your speech!"
"Practically so, yes."
"Then," said I, "I will plaster up the cracks in your argument with the
cement of information. I can use figures of speech myself. You are
barking up the wrong tree. You are away off your base. It wasn't the
loss of a few dollars that made Mr. Perkins run wild in our midst. It
was the manner in which he lost them. Let us now dismiss the worm, the
camel, the goose and all the rest of the menagerie, retaining only the
Ooley-cow. What do you know about cows, if anything?"
"A little," answered my medical friend.
"A mighty little. You know that a cow has hoofs, horns and a tail. The
same description would apply to many creatures, including Satan himself.
Your knowledge of cows is largely academic. Now me, I was raised on a
farm, and there were cows in my curriculum. I took a seven-year course
in the gentle art of acquiring the lacteal fluid. Cow is my specialty,
my long suit, my best hold. Believe it or not, when we christened old
Perkins the Ooley-cow we builded better than we knew."
"I follow you at a great distance," said little Doc. "Proceed with the
rat killing. Why did we build better than we knew when we did not know
anything!"
"Because," I explained, "Perkins not only looks like a cow and walks
like a cow and plays golf like a cow, but he has the predominant
characteristic of a cow. He has the one distinguishing trait which all
country cows have in common. If you had studied that noble domestic
animal as closely as I have, you would not need to be told what moved
Mr. Perkins to strew the entire golf course with the mangled remains of
the two old pirates before mentioned. Uncle Billy and Old Man Sprott
were milking him, yes, and it is quite likely that the Ooley-cow knew
that he was being milked, but that knowledge was not the prime cause of
the late unpleasantness."
"I still follow you," said Little Doc plaintively, "but I am losing
ground every minute."
"Listen carefully," said I. "Pin back your ears and give me your
undivided attention. There are many ways of milking a cow without
exciting the animal to violence. I speak now of the old-fashioned
cow--the country cow--from Iowa, let us say."
"The Ooley-cow is from Iowa," murmured Little Doc.
"Exactly. A city cow may be milked by machinery, and in a dozen
different ways, but the country cow does not know anything about new
fangled methods. There is one thing--and one thing only--which will make
the gentlest old mooley in Iowa kick over the bucket, upset the milker,
jump a four-barred fence and join the wild bunch on the range. Do you
know what that one thing is?"
"I haven't even a suspicion," confessed Little Doc.
Then I told him. I told him in words of one syllable, and after a time
he was able to grasp the significance of my remarks. If I could make
Little Doc see the point I can make you see it too. We go from here.
* * * * *
Wesley J. Perkins hailed from Dubuque, but he did not hail from there
until he had gathered up all the loose change in Northeastern Iowa. When
he arrived in sunny Southern California he was fifty-five years of age,
and at least fifty of those years had been spent in putting aside
something for a rainy day. Judging by the diameter of his bankroll, he
must have feared the sort of a deluge which caused the early settlers to
lay the ground plans for the Tower of Babel.
Now it seldom rains in Southern California--that is to say, it seldom
rains hard enough to produce a flood--and as soon as Mr. Perkins became
acquainted with climatic conditions he began to jettison his ark. He
joined an exclusive downtown club, took up quarters there and spent his
afternoons playing dominoes with some other members of the I've-got-mine
Association. Aside from his habit of swelling up whenever he mentioned
his home town, and insisting on referring to it as "the Heidelberg of
America," there was nothing about Mr. Perkins to provoke comment,
unfavourable or otherwise. He was just one more Iowan in a country where
Iowans are no novelty.
In person he was the mildest-mannered man that ever foreclosed a
short-term mortgage and put a family out in the street. His eyes were
large and bovine, his mouth drooped perpetually and so did his jowls,
and he moved with the slow, uncertain gait of a venerable milch cow. He
had a habit of lowering his head and staring vacantly into space, and
all these things earned for him the unhandsome nickname by which he is
now known.
"But why the Ooley-cow?" some one asked one day. "It doesn't mean
anything at all!"
"Well," was the reply, "neither does Perkins."
But this was an error, as we shall see later.
It was an increasing waistline that caused the Ooley-cow to look about
him for some form of gentle exercise. His physician suggested golf, and
that very week the board of directors of the Country Club was asked to
consider his application for membership. There were no ringing cheers,
but he passed the censors.
I will say for Perkins that when he decided to commit golf he went about
it in a very thorough manner. He had himself surveyed for three
knickerbocker suits, he laid in a stock of soft shirts, imported
stockings and spiked shoes, and he gave our professional _carte
blanche_ in the matter of field equipment. It is not a safe thing to
give a Scotchman permission to dip his hand in your change pocket, and
MacPherson certainly availed himself of the opportunity to finger some
of the Dubuque money. He took one look at the novice and unloaded on him
something less than a hundredweight of dead stock. He also gave him a
lesson or two, and sent him forth armed to the teeth with wood, iron and
aluminum.
Almost immediately Perkins found himself in the hands of Poindexter and
Sprott, two extremely hard-boiled old gentlemen who have never been
known to take any interest in a financial proposition assaying less than
seven per cent, and that fully guaranteed. Both are retired capitalists,
but when they climbed out of the trenches and retreated into the realm
of sport they took all their business instincts with them.
Uncle Billy can play to a twelve handicap when it suits him to do so,
and his partner in crime is only a couple of strokes behind him; but
they seldom uncover their true form, preferring to pose as doddering and
infirm invalids, childish old men, who only think they can play the game
of golf, easy marks for the rising generation. New members are their
victims; beginners are just the same as manna from heaven to them. They
instruct the novice humbly and apologetically, but always with a small
side bet, and no matter how fast the novice improves he makes the
astounding discovery that his two feeble old tutors are able to keep
pace with him. Uncle Billy and Old Man Sprott are experts at nursing a
betting proposition along, and they seldom win any sort of a match by a
margin of more than two up and one to go. Taking into account the
natural limitations of age they play golf very well, but they play a
cinch even better--and harder. It is common scandal that Uncle Billy has
not bought a golf ball in ten years. Old Man Sprott bought one in 1915,
but it was under the mellowing influence of the third toddy and,
therefore, should not count against him.
The Ooley-cow was a cinch. When he turned up, innocent and guileless and
eager to learn the game, Uncle Billy and his running mate were quick to
realise that Fate had sent them a downy bird for plucking, and in no
time at all the air was full of feathers.
They played the Ooley-cow for golf balls, they played him for caddy
hire, they played him for drinks and cigars, they played him for
luncheons and they played him for a sucker--played him for everything,
in fact, but the locker rent and the club dues. How they came to
overlook these items is more than I know. The Ooley-cow would have stood
for it; he stood for everything. He signed all the tags with a loose and
vapid grin, and if he suffered from writer's cramp he never mentioned
the fact. His monthly bill must have been a thing to shudder at, but
possibly he regarded this extra outlay as part of his tuition.
Once in a while he was allowed to win, for Poindexter and Sprott
followed the system practised by other confidence men; but they never
forgot to take his winnings away from him the next day, charging him
interest at the rate of fifty per cent for twenty-four hours. The
Ooley-cow was so very easy that they took liberties with him, so
good-natured about his losses that they presumed upon that good nature
and ridiculed him openly; but the old saw sometimes loses a tooth, the
worm turns, the straight road bends at last, so does the camel's back,
and the prize cow kicks the milker into the middle of next week. And, as
I remarked before, the cow usually has a reason.