Transcriber's Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE PICAROONS

By the Same Author

The Reign of Queen Isyl

THE
PICAROONS

BY GELETT BURGESS

AND WILL IRWIN

NEW YORK

McCLURE, PHILLIPS & COMPANY

MCMIV

Copyright, 1904, by

McClure, Phillips & Co.

Published, April, 1904

Copyright, 1903, 1904, by Pearson Publishing Co.

To THE RED CYCLONE

G. B——      W. I.

THE PICAROONS

CONTENTS

NOTE

Picaroon—a petty rascal; one who lives by his wits; an adventurer. The Picaresque Tales, in Spanish literature of the beginning of the Seventeenth Century, dealt with the fortunes of beggars, impostors, thieves, etc., and chronicled the Romance of Roguery. Such stories were the precursors of the modern novel. The San Francisco Night’s Entertainment is an attempt to render similar subjects with an essentially modern setting.

CHAPTER I
A MIRACLE AT COFFEE JOHN’S

The lad in the sweater yawned with abandon and glanced up at the clock which hung on the whitewashed wall between a lithograph of Admiral Dewey and a sign bearing the legend: “Doughnuts and Coffee, 5 cents.”

“I move we proceed,” he said, impatiently. “There’ll be nobody else here to-night; all the stew-bums have lined up at the bakeries for free bread. I say, old man, you pull the trigger and we’re off! I’ve got a two-days’ handicap on my appetite and I won’t do a thing but make an Asiatic ostrich of myself!”

“I’ll back my stomach against yours,” said the man with spectacles who sat opposite him. “I’ll bet I could eat a ton of sinkers and a barrel of this brown paint. I’m for rounding up the grub myself. I’ll be eating the oil-cloth off this table, pretty soon!”

The proprietor of the dingy little restaurant turned to them from the counter in front, where he had been arranging a pile of wet plates and an exhibit of pastry in preparation for the next morning’s breakfasts. Wiping his hands on his apron, he said with a Cockney accent which proclaimed his birth, hinted at by his florid countenance and mutton-chop whiskers, “I sye, gents, if yer don’t want to wyte, yer know bloomin’ well wot yer kin do, an’ that’s git art! Strike me pink if yer ain’t gort a gall! Yer a bit comin’ on, gents, if yer don’t mind me syin’ it. I told yer I’d give yer an A1 feed if yer’d on’y wyte for another bloke to show up, an’ he ain’t ’ere yet, is ’e? Leastwise, if ’e is, I don’t see ’im.”

He took off his apron, nevertheless, as if he, too, were anxiously expectant, and he cast repeated glances at the door, where, painted on the window in white letters, were the words, “Coffee John’s.” Then he left the range behind the counter and came across the sanded floor to the single oil-lamp that lighted the two men who were his last patrons for the day.

The younger, he with the red sweater, had a round, jocund face and a merry, rolling eye that misfortune was powerless to tame, though the lad had evidently discovered Vagabondia.

“Who’s your interesting but mysterious friend?” he asked. “You’re not expecting a lady, I hope!” and he glanced at his coat which, though it had the cut of a fashionable tailor, was an atrocious harlequin of spots and holes.

“I don’t know who’s a comin’ no more’n you do,” Coffee John replied. “But see ’ere!” and he pointed with a blunt red finger at an insurance calendar upon the wall. “D’yer cop that there numero? It’s the Thirteenth of October to-dye, an’ they’ll be comp’ny all right. They allus is, the Thirteenth of October!”

“Well, you rope him and we’ll brand him,” remarked the other at the table, a man of some twenty-two years, with a typically Western cast of countenance, high cheek-bones and an aquiline nose. His eyes were gray-blue behind rusty steel spectacles. “I hope that stranger will come pretty durn pronto,” he added.

“There’ll be somethink a-doin’ before nine, I give yer my word. I’ll eat this ’ere bloomin’ pile o’ plytes if they ain’t!” Coffee John asserted.

Scarcely had he made the remark when the clock rang out, ending his sentence like a string of exclamation points, and immediately the door burst open and a man sprang into the room as though he were a runaway from Hell.

In his long, thin, white face two black eyes, set near together, burned with terror. His mouth was open and quivering, his hands were fiercely clinched. Under a battered Derby hat his stringy black hair and ragged beard played over his paper collar in a fringe. He wore a cutaway suit, green and shiny with age, which, divorced at the waist, showed a ring of red flannel undershirt. He crept up to the counter like a kicked spaniel.

“For God’s sake, gimme a drink o’ coffee, will you?” he whined.

“Wot’s bitin’ yer?” Coffee John inquired without sentiment. “Don’t yer ask me to chynge a ’undred-dollar bill, fur I reelly can’t do it!”

“I lost my nerves, that’s all,” he said, looking over his shoulder apprehensively. Then, turning to the two at the table, he gazed at them over the top of a thick mug of coffee. “Lord! That’s good! I’m better now,” he went on, and wiped off his mustache with a curling tongue, finishing with his sleeve. “If I should narrate to you the experience which has just transpired, gents, you wouldn’t believe it. You’d regard myself as a imposition. But facts is authentic, nevertheless, and cannot be dissented from, however sceptical.”

“See here!” cried the lad in the sweater, not too unkindly, “suppose you tell us about it some other time! We’ve been waiting for you many mad-some moons, and the time is ripe for the harvest. If you are as hungry as we are, and want to be among those present at this function, sit down and you’ll get whatever is coming to you. You can ascend the rostrum afterward. We were just looking for one more, and you’re it.”

The vagabond looked inquiringly at Coffee John, who, in response, pointed to a chair. “Why cert’nly,” the new-comer said, removing his hat, “I must confess I ain’t yet engaged at dinner this evening, and if you gents are so obliged as to——”

“Rope it!” roared the man in spectacles, out of all patience. The voluble stranger seated himself hurriedly.

Coffee John now drew two tables together. “Jest excuse me for half a mo’, gents, w’ile I unfurl this ’ere rag,” he said, spreading the cloth.

The three strangers looked on in surprise, for the Cockney’s tone had changed. He wore an expectant smile as he seated himself in the fourth place and rapped loudly on the table, distributing, as he did so, a damask napkin to each of his guests.

“Gloriana peacock!” cried the man in spectacles, “I’m sorry I forgot to wear my dress-suit. I had no idea you put on so much dog for coffee and sinkers.”

“Get wise, old chap,” the man in the sweater said, warningly, “I have a hunch that this is to be no mere charity poke-out. This is the true chloroform. We’re up against a genuine square this trip, or I’m a Patagonian. How about that, Coffee John?”

The host tucked his napkin into his neck and replied, benignly, “Oh, I dunno, we’ll do wot we kin, an’ them as ain’t satisfied can order their kerridges.”

As he spoke, two Chinamen emerged from the back room and filed up the dusky rows of tables, bearing loaded trays. Swiftly and deftly they spread the board with cut glass, china, and silverware, aligning a delectable array of bottles in front of the proprietor. In a trice the table began to twinkle with the appointments of a veritable banquet, complete even to a huge centre-piece of California violets. In that shabby hole an entertainment began to blossom like a flower blooming in a dunghill, and the spectators were awed and spellbound at the sudden miracle of the transformation. The man in the red sweater loosened his belt three holes under the table, the black-eyed man pulled a pair of frayed cuffs from his sleeves, and the other wiped his glasses and smiled for the first time. When all was ready, Coffee John arose, and, filling the glasses, cried jubilantly:

“Gents, I give yer the good ’elth of Solomon Bauer, Esquire, an’ the Thirteenth of October, an’ drink ’earty!”

The toast was drunk with wonder, for the men were visibly impressed, but, at the entry of oysters, each began to eat as if he were afraid it were all a dream and he might awake before it was over. The lad with the merry eye alone showed any restraint; his manners were those of a gentleman. The one with the spectacles drank like a thirsty horse, and the thin, black-haired individual watched the kitchen-door to see what was coming next. Following the oysters came soup, savoury with cheese.

“Potage au fromage, a la Cafe Martin, or I’ve never been in New York!” cried the youngster.

“Correck. I perceive yer by wye of bein’ an epicoor,” Coffee John remarked, highly pleased at the appreciation.

“I didn’t think they could do it in San Francisco,” the youth went on.

The Cockney turned his pop-eyes at the lad, and, with the bigotry of a proselyte, broached his favourite topic. “Young man, we kin do anythink they kin do in New York, not to speak of a trick or two blokes go to Paris to see done; an’ occysionally we kin go ’em one better. Yer don’t know this tarn yet. It’s a bloomin’ prize puzzle, that’s wot it is; they’s a bit o’ everythink ’ere!”

The fish followed, barracuda as none but Tortoni can broil; then terrapin, teal, venison, and so, with Western prodigality, to the dessert. The guests, having met and subdued the vanguard of hunger, did hilarious battle with the dinner, stabbing and slashing gallantly. No one dared to put his good fortune to the hazard of the inquiry, though each was curious, until at last the lad in the sweater could resist wonder no longer. The demands of nature satisfied, his mind sought for diversion. He laid his fork down, and pushed back his plate.

“It’s too good to be true,” he said. “I want to know what we’re in for, anyway! What’s your little game? It may be bad manners to be inquisitive, but I’ve slept in a wagon, washed in a horse-trough and combed my hair with tenpenny nails for so long that I’m not responsible. The time has come, the walrus said, to speak of many things! and I balk right here until I know what’s up your sleeve. No bum gets a Delmonico dinner at a coffee-joint on the Barbary Coast for nothing, I don’t think; and by John Harvard, I want to be put next to whether this is charity, insanity, a bet, or are you trying to fix us for something shady?”

“What d’you want to stampede the show for?” interrupted the man in spectacles. “We haven’t been asked to pay in advance, have we? We’ve signed no contract! You were keen to begin as a heifer is for salt, and when we draw a prize you want to look a gift-horse in the jaw! Get onto yourself!”

“Gents,” the unctuous voice of the third man broke in, “they’s champagne a-comin’!”

Coffee John had been looking from one to the other in some amusement. “Easy, gents,” he remarked. “I ain’t offended at this ’ere youngster’s expreshings, though I don’t sye as wot I mightn’t be, if ’e wa’n’t a gentleman, as I can see by the wye ’e ’andles ’is knife, an’ the suspicious fack of ’is neck bein’ clean, if he do wear a Jarsey. Nar, all I gort to sye is, thet this ’ere feast is on the squyre an’ no questions arsked. As soon as we gits to the corffee, I’ll explyne.”

“I accept your apology,” the lad cried, gayly, and he rose, bubbling with impudence. “Gentlemen-adventurers, knights of the empty pocket, comrades of the order of the flying brake-beam and what-not, I drink your very good health. Here’s to the jade whose game we played, not once afraid of losing, ah! It is passing many wintry days since I fed on funny-water and burned cologne in my petit noir, but there was a time—! My name, brothers of the pave, is James Wiswell Coffin 3d. Eight Mayflower ancestors, double-barrelled in-and-in stock, Puritans of Plymouth. Wrestling Coffin landed at Salem in the Blessing of the Bay, 1630, and——”

“Whoa, there!” the man in spectacles cried. “You ain’t so all-fired numerous! I left a happy mountain-home myself, but the biographical contest don’t come till the show is over in the big tent!”

“Cert’nly not, after you vetoed at my remarks,” said the third. “Let’s testify after the dishes is emptier and we begin to feel more like a repletion!”

In such wise the guests proceeded with badinage till the fruit appeared. Then, as a plate containing oranges and bananas was placed on the table, the young man of the party suddenly arose with a look of disgust, and turned from the sight.

“See here, Coffee John,” he said, pacifically, “would you mind, as a grand transcontinental favour, removing those bananas? I’m very much afraid I’ll have to part with my dinner if you don’t.”

“Wot’s up?” was the reply.

“Nothing, yet,” said the youth. “But I’ll explain later. We’ll have to work out all these puzzles and word-squares together.”

The bananas were taken away, while the others looked on curiously. Then the man with glasses grew serious, and said, “As long as objections have been raised, and the whole bunch is a bit loco, I don’t mind saying I’ve a request to make, myself.”

“Speak up, an’ if they’s anythink wrong, I’ll try to myke it correck,” said Coffee John. “’Evving knows it ain’t ’ardly usual for the likes o’ me to tyke orders from the likes o’ you, but this dinner is gave to please, if possible, an’ I don’t want no complyntes to be neglected. Wot’s the matter nar?”

“I’ve been sitting with my back to the wall, as you may have noticed, but there’s that over my head that makes me feel pretty sick when I catch myself thinking,” said the objector. “It’s that picture of Dewey. He’s all right, and a hero for sure; but if you don’t mind, would you turn him face to the wall, so I can look up?”

“Don’t menshing it,” said Coffee John, rising to gratify this eccentric request. “Nar wot’s your private an’ partickler farncy?” he asked, turning to the thin, dark man.

“Nothin’ at all, only proceed with the exercises, and if you’d be magnanimous enough to allow me to smoke, they being no females present——”

A box of Carolina perfectos was brought in, with a coffee-urn, cognac, and liqueurs, and the three men, now calm, genial, and satisfied, gave themselves up to the comforts of tobacco. Even the youngest allowed himself to draw up a chair for his feet, and sighed in content. Coffee John finished the last drop in his glass, drew out his brier pipe, and lighted it. Then, producing a folded paper from his pocket, he raised his finger for silence and said:

“If yer wants to know the w’y and the w’erfore of this ’ere reparst, gents, I am nar ready to give yer satisfaction o’ sorts. It ain’t me yer obligyted to, at all; it’s a newspyper Johnnie nymed Sol Bauer who’s put up for it, him as I arsked yer for to drink a ’elth to. It’s a proper queer story ’ow ’e come to myke and bryke in this ’ere very shop o’ mine, an’ if yer stogies is all drawin’ easy, I’ll read the tyle as ’e wrote it art for me, skippin’ the interduction, w’ich is personal, ’e bein’ of the belief that it wos me wot brought ’im luck.

“So ’ere goes, from w’ere ’e come darn to this plyce of a Hoctober night five years ago.” And so saying, he opened the paper. The narrative, deleted of Coffee John’s dialect, was as follows:

THE STORY OF THE GREAT BAUER SYNDICATE

Ten years I had been a newspaper man, and had filled almost every position from club reporter to managing editor, when just a year ago I found myself outside Coffee John’s restaurant, friendless, hungry, and without a cent to my name. Although I had a reputation for knowing journalism from A to Z, I had been discharged from every paper in the city. The reason was good enough; I was habitually intemperate, and therefore habitually unreliable. I did not drink, as many journalists do, to stimulate my forces, but for love of the game. It was physically impossible for me to remain sober for more than two weeks at a time.

I had, that day, been discharged from the Tribune for cause. The new president of the Southern Pacific Company was on his way to San Francisco, and it was necessary for our paper to get ahead of its contemporaries and obtain the first interview. I was told to meet the magnate at Los Angeles. I loitered at a saloon till I was too late for the train, and then decided I would meet my man down the line at Fresno. The next train south left while I was still drinking. I had time, however, to catch the victim on the other side of the bay, and interview him on the ferry, but he got in before I roused myself from my dalliance with the grape. Then, trusting to sheer bluff, I hurried into the office, called up two stenographers, dictated a fake interview containing important news, and rushed the thing on the press.

The next day the president of the railway repudiated the whole thing, and I was summarily given the sack. Nevertheless, it so happened that almost the whole of what I had predicted came true within the year.

I celebrated the bad luck in my characteristic manner, and finished with just sense enough to wish to clear my head with black coffee. So, trusting to my slight acquaintance with Coffee John, and more to his well-known generosity, I entered his place, and for the first time in my life requested what I could not pay for. I was not disappointed. A cup of coffee and a plate of doughnuts were handed me without comment or advice.

As I was making my meal in the back part of the little restaurant, three men, one after the other, came and sat down at my table. In the general conversation that ensued I found that one was a tramp printer, whose boast it was to have worked and jumped his board-bill in nearly every State in the Union; one was a book-agent, who had been attempting to dispose of “The Life of U. S. Grant,” and the third was an insurance solicitor, who had failed to make good the trade’s reputation for acumen.

A little talk developed the fact that all four of us were out of funds, and ready for anything that promised to keep the wolf from the door. Then, with a journalist’s instinct for putting three and one together, an idea came to me by which we could all find a way out of the dilemma.

For it so happened that one of the Herald’s periodical upheavals had occurred that very day, and a general clean-up was being effected in the office. The city editor, after a stormy interview with his chief, had resigned, and had carried with him four of the best men on the staff. Other reporters who had taken his part had also been let go, and the city room of the Herald was badly in need of assistance. It was very likely that any man who could put up any kind of a pretence to knowing the ropes would stand a fair chance of obtaining a situation without any trouble.

My plan was this: Each of the three men was to apply for a situation as reporter on the Herald, and, if accepted, was to report the next day for his assignment, and then come immediately to me for instructions. I was to give them all the necessary information as to obtaining the material, and, when they had brought me the facts, write out the story for them to hand in.

The three men agreed enthusiastically to the venture, and I spent the evening in coaching them in the shop-talk and professional terms they would need. You cannot teach a man what “news” is in one sitting—a man has to have a nose trained to smell it, and a special gift for determining its value, but I described the technical meaning of “a story” and “covering” a detail. I told them to keep their eyes open, and gave many examples of how it often happened that a reporter, when sent out on a little “single-head” story, would, if he were sharp, get a hint that could be worked up into a front page “seven-column scare-head.”

There is, of course, no royal road to journalism, but there are short-cuts that can be learned. I gave them points on the idiosyncrasies of the new man at the city desk, for I knew him well, and I provided each of them with a yarn about his supposed previous place. One, I believe, was to have worked on the St. Louis Globe-Herald, under George Comstock; one had done special writing on the Minneapolis Argus, and so on; for I knew a lot about all the papers in the East, and I fixed my men so they couldn’t easily be tripped up on their autobiographies.

They went down to the Herald office that night, and after I had waited an hour or so, I had the satisfaction of hearing that all three of my pupils had been accepted. It was agreed that each of them was to give me half his salary, and so I had a fair show of earning a man and a half’s wages as President of the Great Bauer Syndicate.

At one o’clock the next afternoon I sat down in Coffee John’s and waited for my subordinates to report. As each man came in I gave him minute instructions as to the best possible way of obtaining his information. There was not a trick in the trade I didn’t know, and I had never been beaten by any paper in town. I had succeeded in obtaining interviews at two in the morning from persons avowedly hostile to my sheet, I had got photographs nobody else could get, and I had made railroad officials talk after an accident. Without conceit, I may claim to be a practical psychologist, and where most men know only one way of getting what they want, I know four. My men had little excuse for failing to obtain their stories, and they walked out of Coffee John’s like automata that I had wound up for three hours.

They returned between four and five o’clock, gave me the information they had secured, and, while they reported to the city editor, received instructions as to writing the story, and got their evening’s assignment, I wrote the articles at railroad speed. I could tell as well as any city editor how much space the stories were worth, and wrote the head-lines accordingly—for in the Herald office every reporter was his own head-line writer.

If by any chance the editor’s judgment were not the same as mine, it took but a few minutes to cut the thing down or pad it to any length, and my men took the copy back before they went out on the next detail. Meanwhile, I had given them their new directions, and, when they turned up, toward ten and eleven at night, I had the whole batch of writing to do again. It was a terrific pace for any one man to keep up, and I doubt if anyone else in San Francisco could have kept three busy and turned out first-class work.

This went on for fifteen days, during which time I made Coffee John’s joint my headquarters. That was the only place where I could hope to keep sober, working at such high pressure, for I didn’t dare trust myself in a saloon, and I couldn’t afford to hire an office. The amount of black coffee I consumed made me yellow for a year. Whether Coffee John wondered what I was up to or not I never knew; at any rate he asked no questions and made no objections.

The Great Bauer Syndicate went merrily, and the members, with the exception of the president, earned their salaries easily enough. If the job was especially difficult or delicate, I went out and got the story myself. At the end of the first week we drew our pay and divided it according to the agreement, but there were indications that my men thought they were getting clever enough to handle the work alone. If it hadn’t been that while I was waiting for them to come in I managed to write several columns of “space,” faked and otherwise, that they could turn in and get paid for without any work at all, I would have had trouble in holding them down to their contracts. Except for this, the prospects were bright for the prettiest little news syndicate that ever fooled a city editor. We made a record for two weeks, and then came the crash.

I had been as sober as a parson for fifteen long, weary days, beating my record by twenty-four hours. I had drenched myself in black coffee, and turned out copy like a linotype machine, keyed up to a tension so tight that something had to give way. You can easily imagine what happened. One Monday night, after the last batch of copy had been delivered, and I had drawn down my second week’s pay, I relapsed into barbarism and cast care to the winds for the nonce.

I started down the line, headed for Pete Dunn’s saloon at 1 A.M., with thirty dollars in my pocket, and I found myself on Wednesday morning at the Cliff House, with an unresponsive female, whom I was imploring to call me “Sollie.” What had happened to me in the interim I never cared to investigate. But the Great Bauer Syndicate was out of business.

It seems that my three subordinates showed up as usual on Tuesday afternoon, and after waiting for me a while they attempted to cover their assignments without my help. The insurance solicitor got all twisted up, and never came back; the printer threw up his job when he failed to find me on his return. But the book-agent had grown a bit conceited by this time, and he thought he was as good as anybody in the business. So he sat down and wrote out his story, and by what they say about it, it must have been something rich enough to frame.

He had picked up a good many stock newspaper phrases, like “repaired to the scene of the disaster,” and “a catastrophe was imminent,” and “the last sad offices were rendered,” and “a life hung in the balance,” and such rot, and he had a literary ambition that would have put the valedictorian of a female seminary to the blush. He had an idea that my work was crude and jerky, so he melted down a lot of ineffable poetical bosh into paragraphs hot enough to set the columns afire. As for the story, you couldn’t find it for the adjectives. He may have been a wonder at selling “The Life of U. S. Grant,” but he couldn’t write English for publication in a daily paper.

When he turned the stuff in, the city editor gave a look at it, put about three swift questions to him, and the cat was out of the bag. It took no time at all to sweat the story out of him, and they sent that book-agent downstairs so quickly that he never came back.

The whole office went roaring over the way I’d done the paper, and the first thing I knew I was sent for, and the managing editor told me that if I’d take the Keeley cure for four months he’d give me the Sunday editor’s place and forget the episode.

The time I put in at Los Gatos taking chloride of gold was the darkness that preceded my financial dawn. When I graduated I hated the smell of whiskey so much that I couldn’t eat an ordinary baker’s mince-pie. Six months after that I was sent for by the New York Gazette, where I am now drawing a salary that makes my life in San Francisco seem insipid.

Coffee John folded the document carefully and restored it to his pocket with consideration. “Thet’s the wye ’e wrote it darn for me, an’ I’ve read it every year since. Yer see, gents, Sol. Bauer ’avin’ gort the idea I was, in a wye, the means of his restorashing to respeckability, an’ by wye of memorisink them three bums, ’as myde a practice o’ sendin’ me a cheque an a small gift every year, with instrucshings to celebryte the ’appy event by givin’ the best dinner money can buy to the fust three blokes as turns up here after 8.30 on the thirteenth dye of October, an’ I sye it’s ’andsome of ’im. Nar, I propose thet we all drink ’is very good ’ealth again, after w’ich, them as is agreeable will tell ’is own story for the mutual pleasure of the assembled company ’ere present.”

The three men agreed, and filled their glasses to the grateful memory of Solomon Bauer of the Great Bauer Syndicate.

CHAPTER II
JAMES WISWELL COFFIN 3D

“Nar, young man,” said Coffee John, pointing the stem of his pipe at the lad in the red sweater, “seein’ we’ve all agreed to testify, s’pose yer perceed to open the ball. You come in fust, an’ you talk fust. I ain’t no fly cop, but it strikes me you’re a bit different from the rest of us, though we’re all different enough, the Lord knows. Yer jacket fits yer, an’ thet alone is enough to myke yer conspicus in this ’ere shop. I see a good many men parss in an’ art from be’ind the carnter, but I don’t see none too many o’ the likes o’ you. If I ain’t mistook, you’ll be by wye o’ bein’ wot I might call a amatoor at this ’ere sort o’ livin’, an’ one as would find a joke w’erever ’e went. You’d larff at a bloomin’ corpse, you would, and flirt with Queen Victoria. You’ll never grow up, young fellar; I give yer thet stryte, before yer even open yer marth.”

“But wot I cawn’t figger art,” he continued, “is w’y yer jumped at the sight of a bunch o’ ord’n’ry yeller bananas. I’ve seen ’em eat with their bloomin’ knives, an’ comb their w’iskers with their bloomin’ forks, but this ’ere is a new one on me, an’ it gets my gyme. I’m nar ready to listen.”

“Even so!” said the youth. “Then I shall now proceed to let the procession of thought wriggle, the band play, and the bug hop. The suspense, I know, is something terrible, so I spare your anxiety.” And with this fanfare he began to relate

THE STORY OF THE HARVARD FRESHMAN

When I received a cordial invitation from the Dean to leave Harvard the second time—on that occasion it was for setting off ten alarm-clocks at two-minute intervals in chapel—the governor flew off the handle. My fool kid brother, that was to side-track the letter from the faculty, got mixed on his signals, and the telegram that the old man sent back nearly put the Cambridge office out of business. He said that I had foozled my last drive, and, although a good cane is sometimes made out of a crooked stick, he washed his hands of me, and would I please take notice that the remittances were herewith discontinued.

I noticed. After I’d settled up and given my farewell dinner to the Institute, where they were sorry to lose me because I was playing a cyclone game on the Freshman Eleven, I had ninety-eight dollars, and twelve hours to leave the college yard. Thinking it over, it struck me that the keenest way for me to get my money’s worth was to go out and take a sub-graduate course as a hobo—do the Wyckoff act, minus the worker and the prayer-meetings. I wasn’t going to beg my meals—there was where the pride of the Coffins stuck out—but I was willing to stand for the rest—dust, rust, and cinders. As a dead-head tourist, ninety-eight bones would feed me and sleep me for quite a space. I swung on at South Boston for my first lesson in brake-beams, and, tumbled off mighty sick at Worcester.

It’s a long tale, with hungry intervals, until I found myself in the pound, at Peru, Illinois, for smashing a fresh brakeman and running up against the constabulary. The police judge of that hustling little Western centre is paid out of the fines that he collects. It is a strange coincidence that when I was searched I had forty-seven, twenty, on my person, and my fine for vagrancy and assault came to forty dollars, with seven-twenty costs. The judge was a hard-shell deacon.

Next week, after I crawled out of the underground Pullman, at Louisville, I was watching Senator Burke’s racing stables come in, and I was hungry enough to digest a sand-car. It being work or beg, I says, “Here’s where I break the ethics of my chosen profession and strike for a job.” There was nothing doing until one of the hands mentioned, for a joke, that a waiter was wanted for the dining-room where the nigger jockeys ate. “It is only a matter of sentiment,” said I to myself, “and my Massachusetts ancestors fit and bled and died to make freedmen out of the sons of Ham. Here goes for a feed.” I took the place, collecting a breakfast in advance, and threw chow for three meals at coloured gentlemen who buried it with their knives. “If I am the prodigal son,” says I to myself, “these are the swine, all right.”

There was a black exercise-boy in the bunch who played the prize Berkshire hog. He was rather big for a man about the stables. Superstition held that he could lick everything of his weight on earth, and he acted as though he was a front-page feature in the Police Gazette. During the fourth meal he got gay over my frank, untrammelled way of passing soup. By way of repartee, I dropped the tray, tucked up my apron, and cleared for action.

First, I wiped off one end of the table with him, the way the hired girl handles crumbs. Then I hauled him out into the light of day, so as not to muss the dining-room, and stood him up against the pump, and gave him the Countercheck Quarrelsome. He was long on life and muscle, but short on science, and he swung miles wide. After I’d ducked and countered two attempts, he dropped his head all of a sudden. I saw what was coming. I got out of range and let him butt, and when he came into my zone of fire I gave him the knee good and proper. His face faded into a gaudy ruin.

The superintendent came down to restore order, and saw how merrily I jousted. He was a bit strict, but he was a true Peruvian in some ways, and he loved a scrapper. That night I got a hurry call to the office, and walked away James Wiswell Coffin 3d, anointed assistant rubber. After the season was over at Louisville, we pulled up stakes and hiked on to Chicago, following the circuit. When we moved I was raised to night-watchman—forty and found. Nothing happened until close to the end of the season at Chicago, except that I ate regularly. Money was easy in that part. Whenever I picked up any of it I looked around for good things in the betting. Without springing myself any, I cleaned up a little now and then, and when the big chance came I was $200 to the good.

This is the way that Fate laid herself open, so that I could get in one short-armed jab ere she countered hard. It was the night before a big race, really more important to us than the Derby. Everyone around the stables was bughouse with it. Before I went out on watch, the superintendent—his name was Tatum, please remember that—lined me up and told me that he’d have me garrotted, electrocuted, and crucified if there was a hair so much as crossed on either of our entries. We had two of them, Maduro and Maltese. The pair sold at six to five. Outside and in, it looked as though the old man hadn’t had a cup nailed so hard for years. The trainers were sleeping beside the ponies, but I was supposed to look in every half hour to see how things were coming on. At midnight Tatum came round and repeated his remarks, which riled me a bit, and Maduro’s trainer said he would turn in for a little sleep.

The next call, for Heaven knows what nutty reason, I got back to Maduro’s stall a quarter ahead of the hour. There was about a teaspoonful of light coming through the cracks. I got an eye to a knot-hole, and saw things happening. There was Maduro trussed like a rib-roast, and trying to jump, and there was the trainer—“Honest Bob” they used to call him—poking a lead-pencil up her nose. He said a swear word and began to feel around in the mare’s nostril, and pulled out a sponge. He squeezed it up tight and stuffed it back, and began to poke again. That was the cue for my grand entry.

“Good-morning,” I said through the hole; “you’re sleeping bully.” I was cutting and sarcastic, because I knew what was up. The sponge-game—stuff it up a horse’s nose, and he can walk and get around the same as ever, but when he tries to run, he’s a grampus.

He was too paralysed even to chuck the pencil. He stood there with his hands down and his mouth open.

“Oh, hello,” he said, when his wind blew back. “I was just doctoring the mare to make her sleep.” All this time I’d been opening the latch of the door, and I slid into the corner.

“Oh, sure,” said I, displaying my gun so that it would be conspicuous, but not obtrusive. “I suppose you’d like to have me send for Mr. Tatum. He’d like to hold her little hoof and bend above her dreams,” says I.

“Oh, there’s no necessity for bothering him,” said “Honest Bob,” in a kind of conciliatory way, and edging nearer to me all the time. I might have been caught if I hadn’t noticed that his right hand was lifted just a bit with the two first fingers spread. I learned that game with the alphabet. You slide in on your man, telling him all the time that he is your lootsy-toots, until you get your right in close, and then you shoot that fork into both his lamps. He can neither see nor shoot nor hit until his eyes clear out, which gives you time to do him properly. “Honest Bob” was taking a long chance.

I guarded my eyes and shoved the gun in his face. I felt like Old Nick Carter.

“How much do you want?” said he, all of a sudden.

“The honour of the Coffins never stoops to bribery,” said I; “but if you’ll tell me what’s going to win to-morrow, I’ll talk business. If the tip’s straight, I forget all about this job.”

“Early Rose,” he said.

“The devil you say!” said I. Early Rose was selling at twenty-five to one. I gave it to him oblique and perpendicular that if his tip was crooked I would peach and put him out of business for life. He swore that he was in the know. For the rest of that night I omitted Maduro’s stall and did some long-distance thinking.

I could see only one way out of it. Maduro loses sure, thinks I, and whether it’s to be Early Rose or not, there’s an investigation coming that involves little Jimmy 3d. What’s the matter with winning a pot of money and then disappearing in a self-sacrificing spirit, so that “Honest Bob” can lay it all to me? I was sick of the job, anyway.

What happened next day has passed into the history of the turf, but the thing that wasn’t put into the papers was the fact that I was in on Early Rose with one hundred and ninety plunks at twenty-five to one. He staggered home at the head of a groggy bunch that wilted at the three-quarters. I sloped for the ring and drew down $4,940. Just what happened, and whether the nags were all doped or not, I don’t know to this day, but there must be more in this horse-racing business than doth appear to the casual débutante.

Two minutes after I left the bookies I was headed for the overland train. Just as we pulled out, I looked back, proud like a lion, for a last gloat at Chicago. There, on the platform, was that man Tatum, with a gang from the stables, acting as though he were looking for someone. In the front of the mob, shaking his fist and doing the virtuous in a manner that shocked and wounded, was “Honest Bob.” I took the tip, dropped off two stations down the line, doubled back on a local to a child’s size Illinois town, and rusticated there three days.

I’d had time to think, and this was the way it looked: Where the broad Pacific blends with the land of freedom and railway prospecti, the Mistress of the Pacific dreams among her hills. Beneath her shades lie two universities with building plans and endowments. It occurred to me that I’d better make two packages of my money. One of nine hundred was to get me out to San Francisco and show me the town in a manner befitting my birth and station. The other was to transport me like a dream through one of the aforesaid universities on a thousand a year, showing the co-eds what football was like. With my diplomas and press notices tucked under my arm, I would then report at the residence of James Wiswell Coffin 2d, at South Framingham, and receive a father’s blessing.

By the time I’d landed at this Midway Plaisance and bought a few rags, the small package looked something like four hundred dollars. It was at this stage of the game that I met the woman starring as the villainess in this weird tale. We went out to the Emeryville track together. All of my four hundred that I didn’t pay for incidentals I lost the first day out.

But that makes no never mind, says I to myself; it’s easy to go through a California university on seven-fifty per, and besides, a college course ought to be three years instead of four. So I dipped into the big pile. Let us drop the quick curtain. When it rises I am centre stage in the Palace Hotel, ninety-dollar overcoats and pin-checked cutaways to right and left, katzenjammer R. U. E., a week’s board-bill hovering in the flies above me—and strapped. I gets up, puts my dress-suit into its case, tucks in a sweater and a bunch of ties, tells the clerk that I am going away for a day or so, and will leave my baggage until I can come back and settle, and walks into the cold, wet world.

The dress-suit brought eight dollars. That fed me and slept me in a little room on Third Street for a week. After dragging the ties through every pawn-shop from Tar Flat to the Iron Works, I got a dollar for them. They cost twenty. Next was the suit-case—two and a half. The third day after that I had dropped the last cent, and was leaving my lodgings two jumps ahead of the landlord, a great coarse Swede.

I hadn’t a thing but the clothes on my back. In a vacant basement of a house on Folsom Street I found a front step invisible to the naked eye of the cop on the beat. There I took lodgings. I got two meals by trading my trousers for a cheaper pair and twenty cents to boot from the Yiddish man in the shop above. When that was gone I roamed this grand old city for four days and three nights, and never did such a vulgar thing as eat. That’s no Child’s Dream of a Star.

The fourth day was a study in starvation. Dead serious, joshing aside, that was about as happy a time as I ever put in. I forgot that I was hungry, and up against the real thing. I saw myself like some other guy that I had a line on, chasing about ’Frisco in that fix. I myself was warm and comfortable, and having a dreamy sort of a time wandering about.

I was strolling down Kearney Street, listening to the birds singing through the haze, when something that wore scrambled whiskers and an ash-barrel hat advised me to go down to Broadway wharf and take a chance with the fruit bums. He steered me the proper course, and I smoked the pipe along Broadway. There was the wharf all right, and there was a whole cargo of bananas being lifted on a derrick and let down. Once in a while one would drop. The crowd underneath would make a jump and fight for it. I stood there wondering if I really wanted any bananas, or if it was worth while to eat, seeing that I’d have to do it again, and was now pretty well broken of the habit, when a big, scaly bunch got loose from the stem and began to shake and shiver. I got under it and made a fair catch, and went through the centre with it the way I used to go through the Yale Freshmen line. There were seventeen bananas, and I ate them all.

Next thing, I began to feel thirsty. So I marched up to that Coggswell joke on Ben Franklin, somewhere in the dance-hall district, and foundered myself with water. After that I crawled into a packing-box back of a wood-yard, and for two days I was as sick as Ham, Shem, and Japhet the second day out on the Ark.

When I got better I was hungry again. It was bananas or nothing. I found them carting off the cargo, and managed to pick up quite a load in one way or another. After dark I took up two piles and salted them down back of my packing-box. Next day, pretty weak yet, I stayed at home and ate bananas. When the new moon shone like a ripe banana-peel in the heavens of the next night, I never wanted to see a banana as long as I lived. Nathless, me lieges, they were all that I had. After breakfast next morning, I shook my clothes out, hid the sweater, and put on my collar to go downtown. On the way I couldn’t look at the bananas on the fruit-stands. At the end of the line I bumped into a big yellow building with arches on its front and a sign out:

“Football players please see Secretary.” I looked and saw that it was the Y. M. C. A. “Aha,” says I, “maybe I dine.”

I sang a good spiel to the Secretary. They were getting up a light-weight team and wanted talent. Thanking the gods that I was an end instead of a centre, I spun him some dream about the Harlem Y. M. C. A. He said report that afternoon. I went back, choked down ten bananas for strength, and got out on the field in a borrowed suit. They lined up for only five minutes, but that was time enough for me to show what I could do.

I waited after the game to hear someone say training-table, and no one peeped. I stood around, making myself agreeable, and they said come around to the Wednesday socials, but no one asked me to say grace at his humble board. By the time I had washed up and got back home to the packing-box, I was the owner of such a fifty-horse-power hunger that I simply had to eat more bananas. I swore then and there that it was my finish. Why, the taste of them was so strong that my tongue felt like a banana-peel!

After dinner I piked back to the Y. M. C. A., seeing that it was my only opening, and began to study the Christian Advocate in the reading-room. And the first thing that I saw was a tailor-made that looked as though it had been ironed on her, and a pair of coffee-coloured eyes as big as doughnuts.

As I rubbered at her over the paper I saw her try to open one of the cases where they kept the silver cups. That was my cue. It wasn’t two minutes before I was showing her around like a director. I taught her some new facts about the Y. M. C. A., all right, all right. She was a Tribune woman doing a write-up, and she caught my game proper. We’d got to the gym, and I was giving the place all the world’s indoor athletic records, when she turned those lamps on me and said:

“You don’t belong here.”

“I don’t?” says I. “Don’t I strike you for as good a little Y. M. C. A.’ser as there is in the business?”

She looked me over as though she were wondering if I was somebody’s darling, and said in a serious way:

“My mother and I have supper at home. My brother’s just come on from the East, and I’d like to have you meet him. Could you join us this evening?”

Realising the transparency of that excuse for a lady-like poke-out, I tried to get haughty and plead a previous engagement, but the taste of bananas rose up in my mouth and made me half-witted. When we parted she had me dated and doddering over the prospects. Then I raised my hand to my chin and felt the stubble. “A shave is next in order,” says I. So I stood at the door and scanned the horizon. Along comes the football captain. If he was in the habit of shaving himself, I gambled that I would dine with a clean face. I made myself as pleasant as possible. Pretty soon he began to shift feet.

“Going down the street?” said I. “Well, I’ll walk along.” We got to his lodgings. “Going in?” said I. “Well, I’d like to see your quarters,” and I walked in. “Pretty rooms. That’s a nice safety razor you have there. How do you strop it?” He showed me, kind of wondering, and I said, “How’s your shaving-soap?” He brought it. “Looks good,” said I, heading for the washstand. I jerked in a jet of cold water, mixed it up, lathered my face, and began to shave, handing out chin-music all the time about Social Settlement work. He said never a word. It was a case of complete paralysis. When I had finished I begged to be excused. He hadn’t even the strength to see me to the door.

Oh, the joy of walking to Jones Street, realising with every step that I was going to have something to take the taste of bananas out of my mouth! I got to playing wish with myself. I had just decided on a tenderloin rare-to-medium, and Bass ale, when I bumped on her house and the cordial welcome. It was one of those little box flats where the dining-room opens by a folding-door off the living-room.

“Can you wait here just a minute?” said the girl with the doughnut orbs, “I want you to meet my brother.”

She was gone longer than I expected. She was a thoroughbred to leave such a hobo as me alone with the silver. It got so that I just had to look at the scene of the festivities. It was here, all right, a genuine Flemish quarter-sawed oak dining-table, all set, and me going to have my first square meal for ten days. About that time I heard two voices in the back of the house. One was the girl’s; the other was a baritone that sounded mighty familiar. I explored farther, and the next clew was a photograph on the mantel that lifted my hair out of its socket.

It was signed “Your loving brother, John,” and it was the picture of John Tatum, the manager of Burke’s stables!

I saw my dinner dwindling in the distance. I saw myself breakfasting on bananas, and says I, “Not on your hard luck.” I wouldn’t swipe the silver, but, by all the gods of hunger, if there was a scrap to eat in that dining-room I was going to have it. I ran through the sideboard; nothing but salt, pepper, vinegar, and mustard. China closet; nothing but dishes. There was only one more place in the whole room where grub could be kept. That was a sort of ticket-window arrangement in the far corner. Footsteps coming; “Last chance,” says I, and breaks for it like a shot. I grabbed the handle and tore it open.

And there was a large, fine plate of rich, golden, mealy bananas!

CHAPTER III
PROFESSOR VANGO

“Yer was mixed up in a narsty piece o’ business,” said Coffee John, after the Freshman had concluded his tale, “an’ it strikes me as yer gort wot yer bloomin’ well desarved. I don’t rightly know w’ether yer expect us to larff or to cry, but I’m inclined to fyver a grin w’erever possible, as ’elpin’ the appetite an’ thereby bringin’ in tryde. So I move we accept the kid’s apology for bein’ farnd in me shop, an’ perceed with the festivities o’ the evenink. I see our friend ’ere with the long finger-nails is itchin’ to enliven the debyte, an’ I’m afryde if we don’t let ’im ’ave ’is sye art, ’e’ll bloomin’ well bust with it.”

He looked the thin, black-eyed stranger over calmly and judicially. “You’ll be one as lives by ’is wits, an’ yet more from the lack of ’em in other people, especially femyles,” the proprietor declared. “Yer one o’ ten tharsand in this tarn as picks up easy money, if so be they’s no questions arsked. But if I ain’t mistook, yer’ve come a cropper, an’ yer ain’t much used to sweatin’ for yer salary. But that don’t explyne w’y yer ’ad to tumble into this plyce like the devil was drivin’ yer, an’ put darn a swig o’ ’ot coffee to drarn yer conscience, like. Clay Street wa’n’t afire, nor yet in no dynger o’ bein’ flooded, so I’m switched if I twig yer gyme!”

“Well, I have got a conscience,” began the stranger, “though I’m no worse than many what make simulations to be better, and I never give nobody nothin’ they didn’t want, and wasn’t willin’ to pay for, and why shouldn’t I get it as well as any other party? Seein’ you don’t know any of the parties, and with the understandin’ that all I say is in confidence between friends, professional like, I’ll tell you the misfortunes that have overcame me.” So he began

THE STORY OF THE EX-MEDIUM

I am Professor Vango, trance, test, business, materialisin’, sympathetic, harmonic, inspirational, and developin’ medium, and independent slate-writer. Before I withdrew from the profession, them as I had comforted and reunited said that I was by far the best in existence. My tests was of the sort that gives satisfaction and convinces even the most sceptical. My front parlor was thronged every Sunday and Tuesday evenin’ with ladies, the most genteel and elegant, and gentlemen.

When I really learned my powers, I was a palm and card reader. Madame August, the psychic card-reader and Reno Seeress, give me the advice that put me in communication. She done it after a joint readin’ we give for the benefit of the Astral Seers’ Protective Union.

“Vango,” she says—I was usin’ the name “Vango” already; it struck me as real tasty—“Vango,” she says, “you’re wastin’ your talents. These is the days when men speak by inspiration. You got genius; but you ain’t no palmist.”

“Why ain’t I?” I says, knowin’ all the time that they was somethin’ wrong; “don’t I talk as good as any?”

“You’re a genius,” says she, “and you lead where others follow; your idea of tellin’ every woman that she can write stories if she tries is one of the best ever conceived, but if you don’t mind me sayin’ it, as one professional to another, it’s your face that’s wrong.”

“My face?” says I.

“Your face and your hands and your shape and the balance of your physicality,” says she. “They want big eyes—brown is best, but blue will do—and lots of looks and easy love-makin’ ways that you can hang a past to, and I’m frank to say that you ain’t got ’em. You have got platform talents, and you’ll be a phenomena where you can’t get near enough to ’em to hold hands. Test seances is the future of this business. Take a few developin’ sittin’s and you’ll see.”

For the time, disappointment and chagrin overcome me. Often and often since, I have said that sorrow is a means of development for a party. That’s where I learnt it. Next year I was holdin’ test seances in my own room and makin’ spirit photographs with my pardner for ample renumeration. Of course, I made my mistakes, but I can assert without fear of successful contradiction that I brought true communication as often as any of ’em.

Once I sized up a woman that wore black before I had asked the usual questions—which is a risky thing to do, and no medium that values a reputation will attempt it—and told her about her husband that had passed out and give a message, and she led me on and wrote me up for them very papers that I was advertisin’ in and almost ruined my prospecks. You get such scoffers all the time, only later on you learn to look out and give ’em rebukes from the spirits. It ain’t no use tryin’ to get ahead of us, as I used to tell the people at my seances that thought I was a collusion, because they’ve only got theirselves; but we’ve got ourselves and the spirits besides.

It wasn’t long in the course of eventualities before I was ordained by the Spirit Psychic Truth Society, and elected secretary of the union, and gettin’ my percentages from test and trance meetin’s at Pythian Hall. I was popular with the professionals, which pays, because mediums as a class is a little nervous, and—not to speak slanderous of a profession that contains some of the most gifted scientists—a set of knockers.

Only I wasn’t satisfied. I was ambitious in them days, and I wanted to make my debut in materialisin’, which takes a hall of your own and a apparatus and a special circle for the front row, but pays heavy on the investment. Try every way I could, with developin’ circles and private readin’s and palms extra, I could never amass the funds for one first-class spirit and a cabinet, which ought to be enough to start on. Then one night—it was a grand psychic reunion and reception to our visitin’ brothers from Portland—She come to the circle.

Our publication—I united with my other functionaries that of assistant editor of Unseen Hands—stigmatised it afterward as the grandest demonstration of hidden forces ever seen on this hemisphere. It was the climax to my career. I was communicatin’ beautiful, and fortune favoured my endeavours. When I pumped ’em, they let me see that which they had concealed, and when I guessed I guessed with amazin’ accuracy. I told a Swede all about his sweetheart on the other plane, and the colour of her hair, and how happy she was, and how it was comin’ out all right, and hazarded that her name was Tina, and guessed right the first trial. I recollect I was tellin’ him he was a physie, and didn’t he sometimes feel a influence he couldn’t account for, and hadn’t he ever tried to establish communication with them on the spirit plane, and all he needed was a few developin’ sittin’s—doin’ it neat an’ professional, you know, and all of the other mediums on the platform acquiescin’—when a woman spoke up from the back of the room. That was the first time that ever I seen her.

She was a middle-sized, fairish sort of a woman, in mournin’, which I hadn’t comprehended, or I’d ’a’ found the article that she sent up for me to test her influence, long before. As soon as she spoke, I knew she’d come to be comforted. She was a tidy sort of a woman, and her eyes was dark, sort of between a brown and a black. Her shape was nice and neat, and she had a straightish sort of a nose, with a curve into it. She was dead easy. I seen that she had rings on her fingers and was dressed real tasty, and right there it come to me, just like my control sent it, that a way was openin’ for me to get my cabinet and a stock of spirits.

“Will you please read my article?” she says. Bein’ against the æsthetics of the profession to let a party guide you like that, Mrs. Schreiber, the Egyptian astral medium, was for rebukin’ her. I superposed, because I seen my cabinet growin’.

“I was strongly drawed to the token in question,” I says, and then Mrs. Schreiber, who was there to watch who sent up what, motioned me to a locket on the table.

“When I come into the room, I seen this party with a sweet influence hoverin’ over her. Ain’t it a little child?” Because by that time I had her sized up.

I seen her eyes jump the way they always do when you’re guided right, and I knowed I’d touched the achin’ spot. While I was tellin’ her about my control and the beautiful light that was hoverin’ over her, I palmed and opened the locket. I got the picture out—they’re all alike, them lockets—and behind it was a curl of gold hair and the name “Lillian.” I got the locket back on the table, and the spirits guided me to it for her test. When I told her that the spirit callin’ for her was happy in that brighter sphere and sent her a kiss, and had golden hair, and was called “Lillian” in the flesh plane, she was more overcame than I ever seen a party at a seance. I told her she was a medium. I could tell it by the beautiful dreams she had sometimes.

Right here, Mrs. Schreiber shook her head, indicatin’ that I was travellin’ in a dangerous direction. Developin’ sittin’s is saved for parties when you can’t approach ’em on the departed dear ones. In cases like the one under consideration, the most logical course, you comprehend, is to give private test sittin’s. But I knowed what I was doin’. I told her I could feel a marvellous power radiate from her, and her beautiful dreams was convincin’ proof. She expressed a partiality to be developed.

When I got her alone in the sittin’, holdin’ her hand and gettin’ her to concentrate on my eyes, she made manifest her inmost thoughts. She was a widow runnin’ a lodgin’-house. Makin’ a inference from her remarks, I seen that she hadn’t no money laid by, but only what she earned from her boarders. The instalment plan was better than nothin’. She seized on the idea that I could bring Lillian back if I had proper conditions to work with. In four busy weeks, I was enabled by her magnanimity to open a materialisin’ circle of my own, with a cabinet and a self-playin’ guitar and four good spirit forms. I procured the cabinet second-hand, which was better, because the joints worked easier, and I sent for the spirits all the way to a Chicago dealer to get the best. They had luminous forms and non-duplicated faces, that convinced even the most sceptical. The firm very liberally throwed in a slate trick for dark cabinets and the Fox Sisters’ rappin’ table.

I took one of them luminous forms, the littlest one, and fixed it with golden curls painted phosphorescent. Mrs. Schreiber and the rest, all glad to be partakers in my good fortune, was hired to come on the front seats and join hands with each other across the aisle whenever one of the spirits materialised too far forward toward the audience. We advertised heavy, and the followin’ Sunday evenin’ had the gratification to greet a numerous and cultured assemblage. I was proud and happy, because steppin’ from plain test control to materialisin’ is a great rise for any medium.

Mrs. Higgins—that was her name, Mrs. Clarissa Higgins—come early all alone. I might ’a’ brought Lillian right away, only that would be inelegant. First we sang, “Show Your Faces,” to get the proper psychie current of mutuality. Etherealisin’ and a few tunes on a floatin’ guitar was next. When my control reassured itself, I knowed that the time had came, and let out the first spirit. A member of the Spirit Truth Society on the front seat recognised it for a dear one, and carried on real realistic and natural. I let it vanish. The next one was Little Hookah, the spirit of the Egyptian dancer, that used to regale the Pharaohs in the depths of the Ghizeh pyramid. I touched off a music-box to accompany her for a skirt-dance with her robes. I done that all myself; it was a little invention of my own, and was recognised with universal approbation.

That was the time for Lillian to manifest herself, and I done it artistic. First she rapped and conversed with me in the spirit whisper back of the curtains. You could hear Mrs. Higgins in the audience drawin’ in her breath sort of awesome.

I says for the spirit, in a little pipin’ voice, “Tell mamma not to mourn, because her lamentations hinders my materialisation. The birds is singin’, and it is, oh, so beautiful on this shore.”

Then commandin’ the believers on the front seats to join hands in a circle of mutuality, in order to assist the sister on the other shore to put on the astral symbols of the flesh, I materialised her nice and easy and gradual.

We was prepared for demonstrations on the part of Mrs. Higgins, so when she advanced I began to let it vanish, and the psychie circle of clasped hands stopped her while I done the job up good and complete. She lost conscientiousness on the shoulder of Mrs. Schreiber.

Not borin’ you, gentlemen, with the details of my career, my business and religious relations with Mrs. Higgins was the beginnin’ of my success. Myself and the little circle of believers—that guarded the front seats from the protrusions of sceptical parties that come to scoff, and not infrequent come up as earnest inquirers after my control had passed—we lived easy on the proceeds.

Mrs. Higgins would bring tears to your eyes, she was that grateful. She repaired the place for me so it was the envy of the unsuccessful in the profession. She had it fixed with stucco like a grotto, and wax calla lilies and mottoes and beautiful spirit paintin’s (Mrs. Schreiber done them out of the air while she was under control—a hundred dollars apiece she charged), and nice curtains over the cabinet, embroidered in snakes’ eyes inside of triangles and discobuluses. Mrs. Higgins capitalised the expense. Whenever we done poor business, we originated some new manifestations for Mrs. Higgins. She received ample renumeration. She seen Lillian every Tuesday and Sunday. Very semi-occasionally, when the planetary conditions favoured complete manifestation, I used to let her hug Lillian and talk to her. That was a tremendous strain, involvin’ the use of ice to produce the proper degree of grave cold, and my blood nearly conglomerated whenever circumstances rendered it advisable.

All human relationships draws to a close in time. After seven years of the most ideal communications between myself and Mrs. Higgins and the rest of the Psychic Truth Society, they came a time one evenin’ when I seen she was missin’. Next day, we received a message that she was undisposed. We sent Madam La Farge, the medical clairvoyant, to give her treatment, and word come back that them designin’ relatives, that always haunt the last hours of the passin’ spirit with mercenary entreaties, had complete domination over her person. I visited to console her myself, and was rebuked with insinuations that was a insult to my callin’. The next day we learned that she had passed out. We was not even admitted to participate in the funeral obsequies.

The first Sunday that she was in the spirit Mrs. Schreiber was all for materialisin’ her. I favoured omittin’ her, thinkin’ it would be more fittin’, you understand, and more genteel. But we had some very wealthy sceptics in the circle we was tryin’ to convince, and Mrs. Schreiber said they’d expect it. Against my better counsels, seein’ that Mrs. Higgins was a mighty fine woman and give me my start, and I got a partiality for her, I took down my best spirit form and broadened it some, because Mrs. Higgins had got fleshy before she passed out.

After Little Hookah done her regular dance that Sunday night, I got the hymn started, and announcin’ that the spirit that rapped was a dear one known to ’em all, I pulled out the new form that I had just fixed, and waited for the tap on the cabinet to show that all was ready. I didn’t like to do it. I felt funny, like something would go wrong. But I pulled the string, and then—O God!—there—in the other corner of the cabinet—was Mrs. Higgins—Mrs. Higgins holdin’ her arm across the curtains and just lookin’ at me like her eyes was tearin’ through me!

They seen somethin’ was wrong, and Mrs. Schreiber got the robe away before they found me—they said my control was too strong—and some said I was drunk. I did get drunk, too, crazy drunk, next day—and when I come round Mrs. Schreiber tried to do cabinet work with me on the front seat—and there I seen her—in her corner—just like she used to sit—and I never went back.

But a man has got to eat, and when my money was gone, and I wasn’t so scared as I was at first, I tried to do test seances, sayin’ to myself maybe she wouldn’t mind that—and the first article I took up, there she was in the second row, holdin’—oh, I couldn’t get away of it—holdin’ a locket just like she done the first night I seen her.

Then I knew I’d have to quit, and I hid from the circle—they wanted me because Mrs. Schreiber couldn’t make it go. I slept in the Salvation Army shelter, so as not to be alone, and she let me be for a while.

But to-day I seen a party in the street that I used to give tests to, and he said he’d give me two bits to tell him about his mine—and I was so broke and hungry, I give it a trial and—there She was—in the shadow by the bootblack awnin’—just lookin’ and lookin’!

The little medium broke off with a tremor that made the glasses shake.

CHAPTER IV
ADMEH DRAKE

“I expeck yer cut off yer own nose, all right,” said Coffee John. “If the sperits of the dead do return, an’ I was to come along with ’em, it seems to me I’d plye Mrs. ’Iggin’s gyme, an’ run abart a million o’ shyster ghost-raisers art o’ business in this city. I see their notices in the dyly pypers, an’ it feerly mykes a man sick. The more you show ’em up, the more the people come to be gulled. ’Uman nychur is certingly rum. Lord love yer, I’ve been to ’em, an’ I’ve been told my nyme was Peter, wa’nt it? an’ if not Peter, Hennery; an’ didn’t I ’ave a gryte-gran’father wot died? So I did, an’ I’m jolly glad ’e ain’t lived to be a hundred an’ forty neither! W’y is it thet the sperit of a decent Gawd-fearink woman wants to get familiar with a bloke wot wipes ’is nose on ’is arm-sleeve an’ chews terbacker? It’s agin reason an’ nature, an’ I don’t go a cent on it. It’s enough to myke a man commit murder coupled with improper lengwidge!”

He turned to the third man, who had made no comments on the stories. “You’re one as ’as loved an’ lost,” he said. “Yer look like one as is a lion with men an’ a bloomin’ mouse with women. You don’t cyre w’ether school keeps or not, you don’t, an’ I’m wonderin’ why. I don’t just like yer turnin’ yer back on Dewey, though plenty o’ Spanishers ’ave felt the syme wye. Yer gort a fist as could grip a gun-stock, an’ an eye wot ain’t afryde to look a man in the fyce, if yer do keep ’em behind specs. If yer can give a good reason for turnin’ Dewey to the wall, nar’s the charnce!”

The man with glasses had not winced at the plain language, nor apologised as the medium had done. He looked up and said:

“All right, pardner, if you’ll stand for it, I’ll tell you the truth, right out.” And with this he began

THE STORY OF THE HERO OF PAGO BRIDGE

My name is Admeh Drake. Mine ain’t a story-book yarn like yours, pardner, or a tale of spooks and phantoms, like yours. You can get away from ghosts when there’s other people around or it’s daylight, but there’s some things that you can’t get away from in a thousand years, daylight or dark.

A fellow that I knew from the PL outfit loaned me a story-book once by “The Duchess,” that said something like this, only in story-book language:

“A woman is the start and finish of all our troubles.”

I always remembered that. It was a right nice idea. Many and many’s the time that, thinking over my troubles and what brought me to this elegant feed—say, I could drink a washtub full of that new-fangled coffee—I’ve remembered those sentiments. Susie Latham, that is the finest lady in the White River country, she was the start and finish of my troubles.

Ever since we were both old enough to chew hay, Susie and I travelled as a team. The first time that ever I shone in society, I did it with Susie by my side. It was right good of her to go with me, seeing that I was only bound-boy to old man Mullins, who brought me up and educated me, and Susie’s father kept a store. But then we were too little to care about such things, me being eleven and Susie nine. It was the mum social of the First Baptist Church that I took her to. You know the sort? When the boss Sunday-school man gives the signal, you clap the stopper on your jaw-tackle and get fined a cent a word if you peep. Susie knew well enough that I had only five cents left after I got in, so what does she do but go out and sit on the porch while the talk is turned off, so that she wouldn’t put me in the hole. When they passed the grab-bag, I blew in the nickel. I got a kid brass ring with a red glass front and gave it to her. I said that it was for us to get married when we grew up.

“Why, Admeh Drake, I like your gall,” she said, but she took it just the same. After that, Susie was my best girl, and I was her beau. I licked every fellow that said she wasn’t pretty, and she stuck out her tongue to every girl that tried to joke me because I was old Mullins’s bound-boy. We graduated from Striped Rock Union High-school together. That was where I spent the happy hours running wild among the flowers in my boyhood’s happy home down on the farm. After that, she went to teaching school, and I struck first principles and punched cattle down on old Mullins’s XQX ranch. Says I to myself, I’ll have an interest here myself some time, and then married I’ll be to Susie if she’ll but name the day. I had only six months before I was to be out of bound to old Mullins.

Being a darn-fool kid, I let it go at that, and wrote to her once in a while and got busy learning to punch cattle. Lord love you, I didn’t have much to learn, because I was raised in the saddle. There were none of them better than me if I did have a High-School education. My eyes had gone bad along back while I was in the High-school, calling for spectacles. When I first rode in gig-lamps, they used to josh me, but when I got good with the rope and shot off-hand with the best and took first prize for busting broncos Fourth of July at Range City, they called me the “Four-eyed Cow-puncher,” and I was real proud of it. I wish it was all the nickname I ever had. “The Hero of Pago Bridge”—I wish to God——

The XQX is seventy miles down the river from Striped Rock. Seventy miles ain’t such a distance in Colorado, only I never went back for pretty near two years and a half. Then, one Christmas when we were riding fences—keeping the line up against the snow, and running the cattle back if they broke the wires and got across—I got to thinking of the holiday dances at Striped Rock, and says I: “Here’s for a Christmas as near home as I can get, and a sight of Susie.”

The boss let me off, and I made it in on Christmas Eve. The dance was going on down at Foresters’ Hall. I fixed up and took it in.

And there she was—I didn’t know her for the start she’d got. Her hair—that she used to wear in two molassesy-coloured braids hanging down her back, and shining in the sun the way candy shines when you pull it—was done up all over her head. She was all pinky and whitey in the face the way she used to be when she was a little girl. She had on a sort of pink dress, mighty pretty, with green wassets down the front and a green dingbat around the bottom, and long—not the way it was when I saw her before. She was rushed to the corner with every geezer in the place piled in front of her. I broke into the bunch. Everybody seemed to see me except Susie. She treated me like any other maverick in the herd. She hadn’t even a dance left for me. Once, in “Old Dan Tucker,” she called me out, but she’d called out every other tarantula in the White River country, so there was no hope in that. If ever a man didn’t know where he was at, I was the candidate.

All that winter, riding the fence, I thought and thought. I’d been so dead sure of her that I was letting her go. Here was the principal of the High-school, and young Mullins that worked in the Rancher’s Bank, and Biles that owned stock in the P L, all after her, like broncos after a marked steer, and I was only the “Four-eyed Cow-puncher,” thirty dollars and found. And I got bluer than the light on the snow. And then says I to myself, if she ain’t married when spring melts, by the Lord, I’ll have her.

I’m one of those that ain’t forgetting the sixteenth of February, 1898. Storm over, and me mighty glad of it. Snow all around, except where the line of fence-rails peeked through, and the sun just blinding. I on the bronco breaking through the crust, feeling mighty good both of us. Down in a little arroyo, where a creek ran in summer, was the end of my run. Away off in the snow, I saw Billy Taylor, my side-partner, waving his hand like he was excited. I pounded my mule on the back.

“The Maine’s blown up,” he yells. “The Maine’s blown up!”

“The what?” says I, not understanding.

“The Maine—Havana Harbour—war sure!” he says. I tumbled off in the snow while he chucked me down a bunch of Denver papers. There it was. I went as loco as Billy. Before I got back to camp, I had it all figured out—what I ought to do. I got to the foreman before noon and drew my pay, and left him cussing. Lickety-split, the cayuse—he was mine—got me to the station. I figured that the National Guard would be the first to go, and I figured right. So I telegraphed to old Captain Fletcher of Company N at Range City: “Have you got room for me?” And he answered me, knowing just how I stood on the ranches, “Yes. Can you raise me twenty men to fill my company?” He didn’t need to ask for men; there were plenty of them anxious enough to go, but he did need the sort of men I’d get him. Snow be darned, I rode for four days signing up twenty hellaroos that would leave the Rough Riders standing. Into Range City I hustled them. There we waited on the town, doing nothing but live on our back pay and drill while we waited, nineteen for glory and Spanish blood, and me for glory and the girl.

Congress got a move on at last, though we thought it never would, and the Colorado National Guard was accepted, enlisting as a body. When we were in camp together and the medical inspector went around thumping chests, the captain gave him a little song about my eyes. “He can’t see without his glasses,” says Captain Fletcher, “but he can shoot all right with them on. And he raised my extra men, and he’s a soldier.”

The doctor says, “Well, I’m getting forgetful in my age, and maybe I’ll forget the eye-test.” Which he did as he said.

After that was Dewey and Manila Bay, and the news that the Colorado Volunteers were going to be sent to the Philippines, which everybody had studied about in the geography but nobody remembered, except that they were full of Spaniards just dying to be lambasted.

We got going at last, muster at Denver, and they gave us a Sunday off to see our folks. You better believe I took an early train for Striped Rock—and Susie. A hundred and five miles it was, and the trains running so that I had just two hours and twenty-five minutes in the place.

Susie wasn’t at home, nor any of the Lathams. They were all in church at the Baptist meetinghouse where I gave her the grab-bag ring for kid fun. I went over there and peeked in the door. A new sky-pilot was in the pulpit, just turned loose on his remarks. Sizing him up, I saw that he was a stem-winding, quarter-hour striking, eight-day talker that would swell up and bust if he wasn’t allowed to run down. In the third row, I saw Susie’s hair. There I’d come a hundred miles and more to say good-by to her, and only two hours to spare; and there that preacher was taking my time, the time that I’d enlisted to fight three years for. It was against nature, so I signalled to the usher and told him that Miss Susie Latham was wanted at home on important business.

The usher was one of the people that are born clumsy. The darn fool, instead of going up and prodding her shoulder and getting her out sort of quiet, went up and told the regular exhorter who was sitting up on the platform; and the regular, instead of putting him on, told the visiting preacher. The old geezer was deaf.

“How thankful we should be, my brethren, that this hopeless eternity—” he was saying, when the regular parson broke out of his high-back chair and tapped him on the broadcloth and began to whisper.

“Hey?” says the stranger.

“Miss Susie Latham,” says the regular preacher, between a whisper and a holler.

“What about her?”

“Wanted at home,” so that you could hear him all through the church.

“Oh!” says the parson. “Brothers and sisters, I am requested to announce that Miss Susie Latham is wanted at home on important business—that this hopeless eternity is set as a guide to our feet—” and all the rest of the spiel. And me feeling as comfortable as a lost heifer in a blizzard—forty kinds of a fool.

She came down the aisle, looking red and white by turns, with all the people necking her way. Before I’d got time to explain why I did it, her mother got nervous, thinking there must be some trouble, and came trailing out after her. Then her kid sister couldn’t stand the strain, and followed suit.

That family reunion on the porch spoiled all the chance that I had to see Susie alone, because when they heard why I came, and how I was going to be Striped Rock’s hero, they were for giving me a Red Cross reception then and there. Only two hours more until train time, and the old lady had to rush me down to the house for lunch—and me with the rest of my life to eat in!

But I shook her and the kid sister at last, and got Susie alone. I tried to tell her—and I couldn’t. I could say that I was going to do my best and maybe die for my country, and there I stalled and balked, her looking the other way all pretty and pink, and giving me not a word either way to bless myself with. Says I finally:

“And if I come back, I suppose that you’ll be married, Susie?” and she says:

“No, I don’t think that I’ll be married when you come back; I don’t think that I’ll ever marry unless he’s a man that I can be proud of.”

Then she looked at me, her big eyes filling—her big eyes, coloured like the edge of the mountains after sunset. I’ve figured it out since that she was more than half proud of me already—me, in a clean, blue suit, and the buttons shiny; me, a ten-cent, camp volunteer. And then the old woman broke in with a bottle of Eilman’s Embrocation for use in camp.

Never another chance had I that side of the station. Of course, she kissed good-by, but that’s only politeness for soldiers. They all did that. So, although it was just like heaven, I knew that it didn’t mean anything particular from her, because her mother did it and her sister, and pretty darned near every other girl in Striped Rock, seeing that the news about having a real hero in town had spread.

Only, when we pulled away and I was leaning out of the window blowing kisses, being afraid to blow at Susie in special because I didn’t like to give myself away, she ran out of the crowd a ways and held up her little finger to show me something over the knuckle, and pulled her hand in quick as if nothing had happened. It was the play kid-ring that I gave her out of the grab-bag, to show that I was going to marry her when I grew up.

That was the last sight of Striped Rock that I got—Susie waving at the station as far as I could see her. It made you feel queer to ride past the fences and the bunch-grass and the foot-hills getting grayey-green with sage-brush, and the mountains away off, all snowy on top, and know that chances were you’d never see them again grayey. And I won’t, I won’t—never again.

Muster at Denver, and the train, and away we went, packed like a herd around salt, and the towns just black, like a steer in fly-time, with people coming out to see us pass, and Red Cross lunches every time the train had to stop for water; next ’Frisco and Camp Merritt. The first time that I saw this town, gray all over like a sage-hill, made out of crazy bay-window houses with fancy-work down the front, I knew that something was going skewgee.

The night before we went up for our final medical examination by the regular army surgeon, Captain Fletcher called me into his tent.

“Drake, how about your eyes?” says he.

I hadn’t thought of that, supposing that it could be fixed the same as it was at Range City. I told him so, and he said it couldn’t, not with the regular army surgeons. But says he:

“You’re a good soldier, and I got you to raise my reserves. They won’t let you in if you can’t pass the eye-test, glasses or no glasses. If it should happen that you learned a little formula that tallies with the eye-card, you wouldn’t let on that I gave it to you, I suppose?”

“I’m good at forgetting,” I says.

“Burn it when you’ve learned it,” he says, and he gave me a paper with long strings of letter on it. I learned it backward and forward, and so on that I could begin in the middle and go both ways. I lay awake half the night saying it over.

Naked as I was born, I floated in on the examiners for my physicals. Lungs, as they make them in the cow-country; weight, first-class; hearing, O. K. They whirled me and began to point. Taking a tight squint—you see better that way—I ripped through the formula: P V X C L M N H—I can see it yet. I could just see what line on the card he was pointing at, and never a darned bit more.

They make that sort of a doctor in hell. He saw me squint—and he began skipping from letter to letter all over the card. No use—I guessed and guessed dead wrong. “Rejected!” just businesslike, as if it was a little matter like a job on a hay-press. I went out and sat all naked on my soldier-clothes—my soldier-clothes that I was never going to wear any more—and covered up my head. It was the hardest jolt that I ever got—except one.

Captain Fletcher hadn’t any pull; he couldn’t do anything. Some of the twenty that I rounded into Range City talked about striking, they were so mad, but that wouldn’t do any good. I watched them sworn in next day, shuffling into the armory in new overall clothes. I stood around camp and saw them drill. I saw them go down the streets to the transport—flowers in their gun-barrels, wreaths on their hats, and the people just whooping. I sneaked after them onto the transport, and there I broke out and cussed the regular army and everything else. Old Fletcher saw it. He wasn’t sore; he understood. But I wish I had killed him before I let him do what he did next. He said:

“He can’t be with us, boys, and it ain’t his fault. But Striped Rock is going to have its hero. I am going to be correspondent for the Striped Rock Leader. If we have the luck to get into a fight, he’ll be the hero in my piece in the paper, and the man that gives away the snap ain’t square with Company N. Here’s three cheers for Admeh Drake, the hero of Company N!” he said. When they pulled out, people were cheering them and they cheering me. It heartened me up considerably, or else I couldn’t have stood to see them sliding past Telegraph Hill into the stream and me not there with them.

First, I was for writing to Susie and telling her all about it, but I just couldn’t. I put it off, saying that I’d go back and tell her all about it myself, and I went to mooning around camp like a ghost. And then along came a copy of the Leader that settled it. All about the big feed that they gave the regiment at Honolulu, and how Admeh Drake had responded for the men of Company N. Captain Fletcher was getting in his deadly work. It said that I was justly popular, and my engagement to one of Striped Rock’s fairest daughters was whispered. It treated me like I was running for Congress on the Leader ticket. I began to wonder if I saw a way to Susie.

After they got to the Islands, I dragged the cascos through the surf and rescued a squad of Company N from drowning. All that was in the Leader. The night they scrapped in front of the town, I stood and cheered on a detachment when they faltered before the foe. After they got to Manila and did nothing but lay around, Captain Fletcher had me rescue a man from a fire.

After that, I began to get next to myself, knowing that I’d have done best to stop it at the start and go straight back to Striped Rock. I’d been a darned fool to put it off so long. Now I could never go back and face the joshing. I wrote the captain a letter about it, and he never paid any attention. Instead of that, he sent me back a bunch of her letters. Knowing how things stood, what I was doing and what she thought that I was doing, I could hardly open them. They made me feel as small as buckshot in a barrel. They hinted about being proud of me—and prayed that I’d come home alive—and I knew, in spite of being ashamed, that I had her.

Next thing, the natives got off the reservation. There’s where Captain Fletcher went clean, plumb loco. One day the Leader came out with circus scare-heads about the “Hero of Pago Bridge.” They printed my biography and a picture of me. It didn’t look like me, but it was a nice picture. I’d broke through a withering fire and carried a Kansas lieutenant across to safety after he had been helplessly wounded—and never turned a hair.

What was I doing all that time? Laying pretty low. I was afraid to leave town because I wanted to keep an eye on the Leader, which was coming regularly to the Public Library, and afraid to get a regular daylight job for fear that somebody from Striped Rock would come along and see me. I was nearly busted when I ran onto old Doctor Morgan, the Indian Root Specialist. He gave me a job as his outside man. All I had to do was to hang around watching for sick-looking strays from the country. You know the lay. I told them how Doctor Morgan had cured me of the same lingering disease and how I was a well man, thanks to his secrets, babying them along kind of easy until they went to the doctor. He did the rest, and I collected twenty-five per cent.

Striped Rock acted as though I was the mayor. They named their new boulevard Drake Way. Come Fourth of July, they set me up alongside of Lincoln. They talked about running me for the Assembly. There came another bunch of her letters—I had answered the last lot that Cap sent, mailed them all the way to the Philippines, to be forwarded just to gain time—they were heaven mixed with hell.

The regiment was coming back in a week, and then I began to think it over and cuss myself harder than ever for a natural-born fool that didn’t have enough sand to throw up the game at first and go home and face the music. It was too late then, and I couldn’t go back to Striped Rock and take all the glory that was coming to me and face Susie knowing that I was a fake. Besides, I knew the boys from Range City were liable to go up to Striped Rock any time and tell the whole story, and it froze me, inside. I didn’t know what to do, but the first thing that I had on hand was to catch them at the dock and tell them all that it meant to me and get them to promise that they wouldn’t tell. Whether I’d dare to go back and try to get Susie, I couldn’t even think.

I threw up my job with the doctor and went down to the transport office to see just when they expected the boys. Little house on the dock; little hole rooms that you could scarcely turn around in. They said that the boss transport man was in the next room. I walked in.

There—face to face—was Susie—Susie, pinky and whitey, her eyes just growing and growing. I couldn’t turn, I couldn’t run, I could just hang tight onto the door-knob and study the floor. The transport man went out and left us alone.

And she said:

“Admeh Drake, what are you?”

My inwards, me saying nothing all the time, said that I was a fool and a thief and a liar. I could have lied, told her that I came home ahead of the regiment, if it had been anyone but Susie. But I told her the truth, bellowed it out,—because my soul was burned paper.

“I came out to see you come back,” she said, and then:

“I thought that I could be proud of you.” Never another word she said, and she never looked at me again, but she threw out her hand all of a sudden and something dropped. It was the play kid-ring I gave her the night that I wish I had died.

I tried to talk; I tried to hold the door; I might as well have tried to talk to the wall. The last I saw of her, the last that ever I will see, was her molassesy-gold hair going out of the big gate.

I spilled out over the transport man and—O God—how I cried! I ain’t ashamed of it. You’d have cried, too. After that—I don’t know what I did. I walked over a bigger patch of hell than any man ever did alone. But the regiment’s come and gone and never found me, and I don’t know why I ain’t dead along with my insides.

And they mustered out at Denver, and the boys split up and went home. Company N went back to Range City—cottonwoods shedding along the creeks, ranges all white on top, sagey smell off the foot-hills, people riding and driving in from the ranches by hundreds to see them and cheer them and feed them and hug them—but there wasn’t any hero for Striped Rock, because he had bad eyes and was a darn fool—a darn fool!

CHAPTER V
THE DIMES OF COFFEE JOHN

“Well,” said the Harvard Freshman, after the last tale was told, “I’m dead broke, and my brain seems to have gone out of business.”

“I’m broke, and my heart’s broke, too,” said the Hero of Pago Bridge.

“I’m broke, similar,” said the ex-medium, “and my nerves is a-sufferin’ from a severe disruption.”

Coffee John thumped his red fist upon the table.

“Bryce up, gents!” he exclaimed. “Remember there’s nothink in the ryce but the finish, as the dark ’orse says, w’en ’e led ’em up to the wire! They’s many a man ’as went broke in this ’ere tarn, an’ ’as lived to build a four-story ’ouse in the Western Addition; an’ they’s plenty more as will go broke afore the trams stop runnin’ on Market Street! This ’ere is a city o’ hextremes, you tyke me word for thet! It ain’t on’y that Chinatarn is a stone’s throw from the haristocracy o’ Nob Hill, an’ they’s a corner grocery with a side entrance alongside of every Methody chapel. It ain’t on’y that the gals here is prettier an’ homblier, an’ stryter an’ wickeder than anyw’eres else in Christendom, but things go up an’ darn every other wye a man can nyme. It’s corffee an’ sinkers to-dye an’ champyne an’ terrapin to-morrer for ’arf the people what hits the village. They’s washwomen’s darters wot’s wearin’ of their dimonds art on Pacific Avenoo, an’ they’s larst year’s millionaires wot’s livin’ in two rooms darn on Minnie Street. It’s the wye o’ life in a new country, gents, but they’s plums a-gettin’ ripe yet, just the syme, every bleedin’ dye, I give yer my word! Good Lawd! Look at me, myself! Lemme tell yer wot’s happened to me in my time!”

And with this philosophic introduction, Coffee John began

THE STORY OF BIG BECKY

When I fust struck this ’ere port, I was an yble seaman on the British bark Four Winds art o’ Iquique, with nitrytes, an’ I was abart as green a lad as ever was plucked. When I drored the nine dollars that was a-comin’ to me, I went ashore an’ took a look at the tarn, an’ I decided right then that this was the plyce for me. So I calmly deserts the bark, an’ I ain’t set me foot to a bloomin’ gang-plank from that dye to this, syvin’ to tyke the ferry to Oakland.

Me money larsted abart four dyes. The bleedin’ sharks at the sylor boardin’-’ouse charged five, a femile in a box at the “Golden West” darnce-hall got awye with three more, an’ the rest was throwed into drinks promiscus. The fourth dye in I ’adn’t a bloomin’ penny to me nyme, an’ I was as wretched as a cow in a cherry-tree. After abart twelve hours in “’Ell’s Arf-Acre” I drifted into a dive, darn on Pacific Street, below Kearney, on the Barbary Coast, as was the Barbary Coast in them dyes! It was a well-known plyce then, an’ not like anythink else wot ever done business that I ever seen, “Bottle Myer’s” it was; per’aps yer may have heard of it? No?

Yer went in through a swing door with a brarss sign on, darn a ’allwye as turned into a corner into a wider plyce w’ere the bar was, an’ beyond that to a ’all that might ’ave ’eld, I should sye, some sixty men or thereabart. The walls was pynted in a blue distemper, but for a matter of a foot or so above the floor there was wot yer might call a dydo o’ terbacker juice, like a bloomin’ coat o’ brarn pynte. The ’all smelled full strong o’ fresh spruce sawdust on the floor, an’ the rest was whiffs o’ kerosene ile, an’ sylor’s shag terbacker an’ style beer, an’ the combination was jolly narsty! Every man ’ad ’is mug o’ beer on a shelf in front of ’is bench, an’ the parndink of ’em after a song was somethink awful. On a bit of a styge was a row of performers in farncy dress like a nigger minstrel show, an’ a beery little bloke sat darn in front, bangin’ a tin-pan pianner, reachin’ for ’is drink with one ’and occysional, withart leavin’ off plyin’ with the other.

Well, after a guy ’ad sung “All through a lydy wot was false an’ fyre,” an’ one o’ the ’ens ’ad cracked art “Darn the lyne to Myry,” or somethink like that, Old Bottle Myer, ’e got up, with a ’ed like a cannon-ball an’ cock eyes an’ eyebrars like bits o’ thatch, an’ a farncy flannel shirt, an’ ’e says:

“If any gent present wants to sing a song, he can; an’ if ’e don’t want to, ’e don’t ’ave to!”

Nar, I wa’n’t no singer myself, though I ’ad piped occysional, to me mytes on shipboard, but I thought if I couldn’t do as well as them as ’ad myde us suffer, I ought to be jolly well ashymed o’ meself. Wot was more to the point, I didn’t ’ave the price of a pot o’ beer to bless myself with, an’ thinks I, this might be a charnst to pinch a bit of a ’aul. So I ups an’ walks darn to the styge, gives the bloke at the pianner a tip on the chune, an’ starts off on old “Ben Bobstye.” They was shellbacks in the audience quite numerous as I seen, an’ it done me good to ’ear ’em parnd their mugs after I’d gort through. W’en I picked up the abalone shell like the rest of ’em done, an’ parssed through the ’all, wot with dimes an’ two-bit pieces I ’ad considerable, an’ I was natchurly prard o’ me luck.

Old Bottle Myer come up an’ says, “’Ow much did you myke, me friend? Five fifteen, eh? Well, me charge will be on’y a dollar this time, but if yer want to come rarnd to-morrow night, yer can. If yer do all right, I’ll tyke yer on reg’lar.”

Well, I joined the comp’ny sure enough, an’ sung every night, pickin’ up a feerly decent livin’ at the gyme, for it was boom times then, an’ money was easier to come by. I had me grub with all the other hartists in a room they called the “Cabin,” darn below the styge, connected to a side dressin’-room by a narrer styre. Nar, one o’ the lydies in the comp’ny was the feature o’ the show, an’ she were a bit out o’ the ord’n’ry, I give you my word!

She was a reg’lar whyle of a great big trouncin’ Jew woman as ever I see. Twenty stone if she were an arnce, an’ all o’ six foot two, with legs like a bloomin’ grand pianner w’en she put on a short petticoat to do a comic song. She was billed as “Big Becky,” an’ by thet time she was pretty well known abart tarn.

She ’ad started in business in San Francisco at the hextreme top o’ the ’Ebrew haristocracy of the Western Addition, ’avin ’parssed ’erself off for a member o’ one o’ the swellest families o’ St. Louis, an’ she did cut a jolly wide swath here, an’ no dart abart thet! She was myde puffickly at ’ome everyw’eres, an’ flashed ’er sparklers an’ ’er silk garns with the best o’ ’em. Lord, it must ’ave took yards o’ cloth to cover ’er body! Well, she gort all the nobs into line, an’ ’ad everythink ’er own wye for abart two months, as a reg’lar full-blowed society favoryte. Day an’ night she ’ad a string o’ men after ’er, or ’er money, w’ich was quite two things, seein’ she ’ad to graft for every penny she bloomin’ well ’ad.

W’ile she were at the top notch of the social w’irl, as you might sye, along come another Jewess from the East, reckernized ’er, an’ spoils Big Becky’s gyme, like a kiddie pricks a ’ole in a pink balloon. She was showed up for a hadventuress, story-book style, wot ’ad ’oodwinked all St. Louis a year back, an’ then ’er swell pals dropped awye from ’er like she was a pest-’ouse. Them wot ’ad accepted ’er invites, an’ ’ad ’er to dinner an’ the theatre an’ wot-not, didn’t myke no bones abart it—they just natchully broke an’ run. Then all sorts o’ stories come art, ’ow she borrowed money ’ere, there an’ everyw’ere, put ’er nyme to bad checks, an’ fleeced abart every bloomin’ ’Ebrew in tarn. She’d a bin plyin’ it on the grand, an’ on the little bit too grand.

She was on trial for abart two dyes, an’ the city pypers was so full o’ the scandal that the swells she ’oodwinked ’ad to leave tarn till it blew over, an’ San Francisco quit larfin at ’em. I give yer me word the reporters did give art some precious rycy tyles, an’ every ’Ebrew wot ’ad ’ad Big Becky at a five o’clock tea didn’t dyre go art o’ doors dye-times.

Well, for the syke o’ ’ushin’ matters up, her cyse were compromised an’ the prosecution withdrawed, she bein’ arsked in return to git art o’ tarn. Instead o’ thet, not ’avin’ any money, she went an’ accepted an offer from a dime museum here, an’ begun fer to exhibit of ’erself in short skirts every afternoon an’ evenink reg’lar, to the gryte an’ grand delight of every chappie who ’adn’t been fooled ’imself. After that she done “Mazeppa” at the Bella Union Theatre in a costume wot was positively ’orrid. It was so rude that the police interfered, an’ thet was back ten year ago, w’en they wa’n’t so partickler on the Barbary Coast as they be naradyes. Then she dropped darn to Bottle Myer’s an’ did serios in tights. She was as funny as a bloomin’ helephant on stilts, if so yer didn’t see the plyntive side of it, an’ we turned men awye from the door every night.

I don’t expect Becky ever ’ad more’n a spoonful o’ conscience. But with all ’er roguery, she was as big a baby inside as she were a giant outside, w’en yer onct knew ’ow to tyke ’er, was Big Becky. ’Ard as brarss she was w’en yer guyed ’er, but soft as butter w’en yer took ’er part, w’ich were somethink as she weren’t much used to, for most treated ’er brutle. Some’ow I couldn’t help likin’ ’er a bit, in spite o’ meself. I put in a good deal o’ talk with ’er, one wye an’ another, till I ’ad ’er confidence, an’ could get most anythink art of ’er I wanted. She told me ’er whole story, bit by bit, an’ it were a reg’lar shillin’ shocker, I give yer my word!

Amongst other things, she told me that a Johnnie in tarn nymed Ikey Behn ’ad gort precious balmy over ’er, before she was showed up, an’ ’ad went so far as to tyke art a marriage license in ’opes, when she seen ’e meant biz, she’d marry ’im. ’E’d even been bloomin’ arss enough to give it to ’er, and she ’ad it yet, an’ was ’oldin’ it over ’is ’ed for blackmyle, if wust come to wust. She proposed for to ’ave a parson’s nyme forged into the marriage certificate that comes printed on the other side from the license.

Nar, things bein’ like this, one night I come up the styre from the “Cabin” w’ere I’d been lyte to dinner, an’ went into the room w’ere Becky was a-gettin’ ready to dress for ’er turn. There was a toff there, in a topper, an’ a long black coat, an’ ’e was havin’ it art, ’ot an’ ’eavy, with Becky. Just as I come up, ’e broke it off, cursink ’er something awful, an’ she was as red as a bleedin’ ’am, an’ shykin’ a herthquyke with ’er ’air darn, an’ ’er breath comin’ like a smith’s bellus. The gentleman slum the door, an’ she says to me, “’Ere, Jock, old man, will yer do me a fyvor? Just ’old this purse o’ mine an’ keep it good an’ syfe till I get through my song, for that’s Ikey Behn wot just went art, an’ ’e’ll get my license sure, if I leave it abart. I carn’t trust nobody in this ’ole but you. It’s in there,” an’ she showed me the pyper, shovin’ the purse into me ’and. I left an’ went darn front w’ile she put on ’er rig an’ done ’er turn.

Art in the bar, there was the toff, talkin’ to one o’ the wyters, an’ I knew ’e was tryin’ to tip somebody to frisk Big Becky’s pockets. W’en I come up, ’e says, “’Ow de do, me man? I sye, ’ave a glarss with me, won’t yer? Wot’ll yer ’ave?”

I marked ’is gyme then an’ there, an’ I sat darn to see ’ow ’e’d act. ’E done it ’andsome, ’e did; ’e was a thoroughbred, an’ no mistake abart thet! ’E wan’t the bloke to drive a bargain like most would ’ave done under the syme irritytin’ circumstances.

“See ’ere,” ’e says, affable, an’ ’e opens ’is wallet an’ tykes art a pack o’ bills. “’Ere’s a tharsand in ’undred-dollar greenbacks. You get me that pyper Big Becky’s got in ’er purse!”

There I was, sittin’ right in front of ’im, with the license in me pocket, an’ there was a fortune in front o’ me as would ’ave set me up in biz for the rest o’ me life. Wot’s more, if they’s anythink I do admire, it’s a thoroughbred toff, for I was brought up to reckernize clarss, an’ I seen at a wink that this ’ere Johnnie was a dead sport. I knew wot it meant to ’im to get possession o’ thet pyper, for Becky could myke it jolly ’ot for ’im with it. I confess, gents, thet for abart ’alf a mo I hesityted. But I couldn’t go back on the woman, seem’ she ’ad trusted me partickler, an’ so I shook me ’ed mournful, an’ refused the wad.

’E was a bit darn in the mouth at thet, not lookin’ to run up agin such, in a plyce like Bottle Myer’s, I expeck. “See ’ere, me man,” ’e says, “I just gort to ’ave thet pyper. I’ll tell yer wot, w’en I gort art thet license, I swyre I thought the woman was stryte an’ all she pretended to be. We was all of us took in. I wa’n’t after ’er money, I was plum balmy on ’er, sure, an’ nar I’m engyged to the nicest little gal as ever lived, an’ it’ll queer the whole thing if this ’ere foolishness gets art!”

With my respeck for the haristocracy, I was jolly sorry for the chap, but I wa’n’t a-goin’ to sell Becky art, not thet wye. I wa’n’t no holy Willie, but I stuck at that. So I arsked, “Wot’s the gal’s nyme?”

“That’s none of your biz,” says Behn, gettin’ ’ot in the scuppers, “an’ that little gyme won’t do yer no good, nohow, for the gal knows all abart this matter, ’an yer can’t trip me up there. Not much. I’ll pye yer all the docyment’s worth, if yer’ll get it for me.”

“Yer won’t get it art o’ Becky not at no price,” I says, “an’ yer won’t get it art o’ me, unless yer answer my questing. If yer want me to conduck this ’ere affyre, I got to know all abart it, an’ yer gal won’t be put to no bother, neither.”

’E looked me over a bit, an’ then ’e says, low, so that nobody couldn’t ’ear, “It’s Miss Bertha Wolfstein.” Then ’e give me ’is address, ’an left the matter for me to do wot I could.