Читать книгу Local Color - Cobb Irvin Shrewsbury - Страница 3

Cap’n Buck Fluter, holding his watch in the approved conductor’s grip, glanced back and forth the short length of the four-five accommodation and raised his free hand in warning:

“All aboard!”

From almost above his head it came:

“If you can’t get a board get a scantlin’!”

Clustered at the White or shady end of the station, the sovereign Caucasians of Swango rocked up against one another in the unbridled excess of their merriment. Farther away, at the Coloured or sunny end of the platform, the assembled representatives of the African population guffawed loudly, though respectfully. To almost any one having the gift of spontaneous repartee it might have occurred to suggest the advisability of getting a plank provided you could not get a board. It took Gash Tuttle to think up scantling.

The humourist folded his elbows on the ledge of the window and leaned his head and shoulders out of the car, considering his people whimsically, yet benignantly. He wore attire suitable for travelling – a dented-in grey felt hat, adhering perilously to the rearmost slope of his scalp; a mail-order suit of light tan, with slashed seams and rows of buttons extending up the sleeves almost to the elbows; a hard-surfaced tie of pale blue satin; a lavender shirt, agreeably relieved by pink longitudinal stripings.

Except his eyes, which rather protruded, and his front teeth, which undoubtedly projected, all his features were in a state of active retreat – only, his nose retreated one way and his chin the other. The assurance of a popular idol who knows no rival was in his pose and in his poise. Alexander the Great had that look – if we may credit the likenesses of him still extant – and Napoleon Bonaparte had it, and David Garrick, to quote a few conspicuous examples.

Alone, of all those within hearing, Cap’n Buck Fluter did not laugh. Indeed, he did not even grin.

“All right, black boy,” he said. “Let’s go from here!”

The porter snatched up the wooden box that rested on the earth, flung it on the car platform and projected his person nimbly after it. Cap’n Buck swung himself up the step with one hand on the rail. The engine spat out a mouthful of hot steam and the wheels began to turn.

“Good-by, my honeys, ’cause I’m gone!” called out Mr. Tuttle, and he waved a fawn-coloured arm in adieu to his courtiers, black and white. “I’m a-goin’ many and a-many a mile from you. Don’t take in no bad money while your popper’s away.”

The station agent, in black calico sleeve-protectors and celluloid eyeshade, stretched the upper half of his body out the cubby-hole that served him for an office.

“Oh, you Gash!” he called. “Give my love to all the ladies.”

The two groups on the platform waited, all expectant for the retort. Instantly it sped back to them, above the clacking voice of the train:

“That’s all you ever would give ’em, ain’t it?”

Mr. Gip Dismukes, who kept the livery stable, slapped Mr. Gene Brothers, who drove the bus, a resounding slap on the back.

“Ain’t he jest ez quick ez a flash?” he demanded of the company generally.

The station agent withdrew himself inside his sanctum, his sides heaving to his mirthful emotions. He had drawn a fire acknowledged to be deadly at any range, but he was satisfied. The laugh was worth the wound.

Through the favoured section traversed by the common carrier to whose care genius incarnate had just committed his precious person there are two kinds of towns – bus towns and non-bus towns. A bus town lies at an appreciable distance from the railroad, usually with a hill intervening, and a bus, which is painted yellow, plies between town and station. But a non-bus town is a town that has for its civic equator the tracks themselves. The station forms one angle of the public square; and, within plain sight and easy walking reach, the post office and at least two general stores stand; and handily near by is a one-story bank built of a stucco composition purporting to represent granite, thus signifying solidity and impregnability; and a two-story hotel, white, with green blinds, and porches running all the way across the front; also hitch rails; a livery stable; and a Masonic Hall.

Swango belonged to the former category. It was over the hill, a hot and dusty eighth of a mile away. So, having watched the departing four-five accommodation until it diminished to a smudgy dot where the V of the rails melted together and finally vanished, the assembled Swangoans settled back in postures of ease to wait for the up train due at three-eight, but reported two hours and thirty minutes late. There would still be ample time after it came and went to get home for supper.

The contemptuous travelling man who once said that only three things ever happened in Swango – morning, afternoon and night – perpetrated a libel, for he wilfully omitted mention of three other daily events: the cannon-ball, tearing through without stopping in the early forenoon; the three-eight up; and the four-five down.

So they sat and waited; but a spirit of depression, almost of sadness, affected one and all. It was as though a beaming light had gone out of their lives. Ginger Marable, porter and runner of the Mansard House, voiced the common sentiment of both races as he lolled on a baggage truck in the sunshine, with his cap of authority, crowned by a lettered tin diadem, shoved far back upon his woolly skull.

“Dat Mistah Gashney Tuttle he sho is a quick ketcher,” stated Ginger with a soft chuckle. “W’ite an’ black – we suttinly will miss Mistah Tuttle twell he gits back home ag’in.”

Borne away from his loyal subjects to the pulsing accompaniment of the iron horse’s snorted breath, the subject of this commentary extended himself on his red plush seat and considered his fellow travellers with a view to honing his agile fancy on the whetstones of their duller mentalities. On the whole, they promised but poor sport. Immediately in front of him sat a bride and groom, readily recognisable at a glance for what they were – the bride in cream-coloured cashmere, with many ribbons; the groom in stiff black diagonals, with braided seams, and a white lawn tie. A red-faced man who looked as though he might be a deputy sheriff from somewhere slept uneasily one seat in the rear. He had his shoes off, revealing gray yarn socks. His mouth was ajar, and down in his throat he snored screechily, like a planing mill. The youngest member of a family group occupying two seats just across the aisle whimpered a desire. Its mother rummaged in a shoebox containing, among other delicacies, hard-boiled eggs, salt and pepper mixed and enveloped in a paper squill, blueberry pie, leaking profusely, and watermelon-rind preserves, and found what she sought – the lower half of a fried chicken leg. Satisfied by this gift the infant ceased from fretful repining, sucking contentedly at the meat end; and between sucks hammered contentedly with the drumstick on the seat back and window ledge, leaving lardy smears there in the dust.

Cap’n Buck – captain by virtue of having a regular passenger run – came through the car, collecting tickets. At no time particularly long on temper, he was decidedly short of it to-day. He was fifteen minutes behind his schedule – no unusual thing – but the locomotive was misbehaving. Likewise a difference of opinion had arisen over the proper identity of a holder of mileage in the smoker. He halted alongside Gash Tuttle, swaying on his legs to the roll and pitch of the car floor.

“Tickets?” he demanded crisply.

“Wee gates, Cap,” answered the new passenger jovially. “How does your copperosity seem to sagashuate this evenin’?”

“Where goin’?” said Fluter, ignoring the pleasantry. “I’m in a hurry. What station?”

“Well,” countered the irrepressible one, “what stations have you got?”

Cap’n Buck Fluter’s cold eye turned meaningly toward the bell cord, which dipped like a tired clothesline overhead, and he snapped two fingers peevishly.

“Son,” he said almost softly, “don’t monkey with me. This here ain’t my day for foolin’!”

Favoured son of the high gods though he was, Gash Tuttle knew instantly now that this was indeed no day for fooling. Cap’n Buck was not a large man, but he had a way of growing to meet and match emergencies. He handled the Sunday excursions, which was the acid test of a trainman’s grit. Coltish youths, alcoholically keened up or just naturally high spirited, who got on his train looking for trouble nearly always got off looking for a doctor. As regards persons wishful of stealing a ride, they never tried to travel with Cap’n Buck Fluter oftener than once. Frequently, for a period of time measurable by days or weeks, they were in no fit state to be travelling with any one except a trained nurse.

Gash Tuttle quit his fooling. Without further ado – whatever an ado is – he surrendered his ticket, receiving in exchange a white slip with punchmarks in it, to wear in his hatband. Next came the train butcher bearing chewing gum, purple plums in paper cornucopias, examples of the light literature of the day, oranges which were overgreen, and bananas which were overripe, as is the way with a train butcher’s oranges and bananas the continent over. In contrast with the conductor’s dourness the train butcher’s mood was congenially inclined to persiflage.

After an exchange of spirited repartee, at which the train butcher by an admiring shake of the head tacitly confessed himself worsted, our hero purchased a paper-backed work entitled, “The Jolly Old Drummer’s Private Joke Book.” This volume, according to the whispered confidences of the seller, contained tales of so sprightly a character that even in sealed covers it might be sent by mail only at the sender’s peril; moreover, the wink which punctuated this disclosure was in itself a promise of the spicy entertainment to be derived from perusal thereof. The price at present was but fifty cents; later it would go up to a dollar a copy; this, then, was a special and extraordinary rate.

The train continued on its course – not hurriedly, but with reasonable steadfastness and singleness of purpose. After much the same fashion the sun went down. The bride repeatedly whisked cindery deposits off her cashmered lap; the large-faced man, being awakened by one of his own snores, put on his shoes and indulged in fine-cut tobacco, internally applied; but the youngest passenger now slept all curled up in a moist little bundle, showing an expanse of plump neck much mottled by heat-rash, and clutching in one greased and gritted fist the denuded shank-bone of a chicken with a frieze of gnawed tendons adhering to its larger joint.

At intervals the train stopped at small way stations, bus or non-bus in character as the case might be, to let somebody off or somebody on. Cap’n Buck now made his trips carrying his lantern – the ornate nickel-plated one that had been awarded to him in the voting contest for the most popular trainman at the annual fair and bazaar of True Blue Lodge of the Junior Order of American Mechanics. It had his proper initials – J. J. F. – chased on its glass chimney in old English script, very curlicue and ornamental. He carried it in the crook of his left elbow with the handle round his biceps; and when he reached the end of his run he would extinguish its flame, not by blowing it out but by a quick, short, expert jerk of his arm. This is a trick all conductors seek to acquire; some of them succeed.

Twilight, the stage manager of night, had stolen insidiously on the scene, shortening up the backgrounds and blurring the perspectives; and the principal character of this tale, straining his eyes over the fine print, had reached the next to the last page of “The Jolly Old Drummer’s Private Joke Book” and was beginning to wonder why the postal authorities should be so finicky in such matters and in a dim way to wish he had his fifty cents back, when with a glad shriek of relief the locomotive, having bumped over a succession of yard switches, drew up under a long open shed alongside a dumpy brick structure. To avoid any possible misunderstanding this building was labelled Union Depot in large letters and at both ends.

Being the terminus of the division, it was the train’s destination and the destination of Mr. Tuttle. He possessed himself of an imitation leather handbag and descended on solid earth with the assured manner of a seasoned and experienced traveller. Doubtless because of the flurry created by the train’s arrival and the bustling about of other arrivals his advent created no visible stir among the crowd at the terminal. At least he noticed none. Still, these people had no way of knowing who he was.

In order to get the Union Depot closer to the railroad it had been necessary to place it some distance away from the heart of things; even so, metropolitan evidences abounded. A Belt Line trolley car stood stationary, awaiting passengers; a vociferous row of negro hackmen were kept in their proper places by a uniformed policeman; and on the horizon to the westward a yellow radiance glowed above an intervening comb of spires and chimneys, showing where the inhabitants of the third largest second-class city in the state made merry at carnival and street fair, to celebrate the dedication and opening of their new Great White Way – a Great White Way seven blocks long and spangled at sixty-foot intervals with arc lights disposed in pairs on ornamental iron standards. Hence radiance.

Turning westward, therefore, Mr. Tuttle found himself looking along a circumscribed vista of one-story buildings with two-story fronts – that is to say, each wooden front wall extended up ten or fifteen feet above the peak of the sloping roof behind it, so that, viewed full-on, the building would have the appearance of being a floor taller than it really was. To add to the pleasing illusion certain of these superstructures had windows painted elaborately on their slab surfaces; but to one seeking a profile view the false work betrayed a razor-like thinness, as patently flat and artificial as stage scenery.

Travellers from the Eastern seaboard have been known to gibe at this transparent artifice. Even New York flat dwellers, coming direct from apartment houses which are all marble foyers and gold-leaf elevator grilles below and all dark cubby-holes and toy kitchens above, have been known to gibe; which fact is here set forth merely to prove that a sense of humour depends largely on the point of view.

To our Mr. Tuttle such deceits were but a part of the ordered architectural plan of things, and they moved him not. What did interest him was to note that the nearmost of these bogusly exalted buildings displayed, above swinging twin doors, a cluster of lights and a sign testifying that this was the First Chance Saloon. Without looking he sensed that the reverse of that Janus-faced sign would advertise this same establishment as being the Last Chance. He did not know about Janus, but he did know about saloons that are handily adjacent to union depots. Moreover, an inner consciousness advised him that after a dry sixty-mile trip he thirsted amain. He took up his luggage and crossed the road, and entered through the knee-high swinging doors.

There was a bar and a bar mirror behind it. The bar was decorated at intervals with rectangles of fly paper, on the sticky surfaces of which great numbers of flies were gummed fast in a perished or perishing state; but before they became martyrs to the fad of sanitation these victims had left their footprints thickly on the mirror and on the fringes of coloured tissue paper that dangled from the ceiling. In a front corner, against a window, was a lunch counter, flanked on one side by stools and serving as a barricade for an oil stove and shelves of cove oysters in cans, and hams and cheeses for slicing, and vinegar cruets and pepper casters and salt cellars crusted with the saline deposits of the years. A solitary patron was lounging against the bar in earnest conversation with the barkeeper; but the presiding official of the food-purveying department must have been absent on business or pleasure, for of him there was no sign.

Gash Tuttle ordered a beer. The barkeeper filled a tall flagon with brew drawn from the wood, wiped the clinging froth from its brim with a spatulate tool of whittled cedar, and placed the drink before the newcomer, who paid for it out of a silver dollar. Even as Mr. Tuttle scooped in his change and buried the lower part of his face in the circumference of the schooner he became aware that the other customer had drawn nearer and was idly rattling a worn leather cup, within which dice rapped against the sides like little bony ghosts uneasy to escape from their cabinet at a séance.

The manipulator of the dice held a palm cupped over the mouth of the cup to prevent their escape. He addressed the barkeeper:

“Flem,” he said, “you’re such a wisenheimer, I’ll make you a proposition: I’ll shake three of these here dice out, and no matter whut they roll I’ll betcha I kin tell without lookin’ whut the tops and bottoms will come to – whut the spots’ll add up to.”

The other desisted from rinsing glassware in a pail beneath the bar.

“Which is that?” he inquired sceptically. “You kin tell beforehand whut the top and bottom spots’ll add up?”

“Ary time and every time!”

“And let me roll ’em myself?”

“And let you roll ’em yourself – let anybody roll ’em. I don’t need to touch ’em, even.”

“How much’ll you risk that you kin do that, Fox?” Roused greed was in the speaker’s tone.

“Oh, make it fur the drinks,” said Fox – “jest fur the drinks. I ain’t aimin’ to take your money away frum you. I got all the money I need.” For the first time he seemed to become aware of a third party and he turned and let a friendly hand fall on the stranger’s shoulder. “Tell you whut, Flem, we’ll make it drinks fur this gent too. Come on, brother,” he added; “you’re in on this. It’s my party if I lose, which I won’t, and ole Flem’s party if he loses, which he shore will.”

It was the warmth of his manner as much as the generosity of his invitation that charmed Mr. Tuttle. The very smile of this man Fox invited friendship; for it was a broad smile, rich in proteids and butterfats. Likewise his personality was as attractively cordial as his attire was striking and opulent.

“‘Slide or slip, let ’er rip!’” said Mr. Tuttle, quoting the poetic words of a philosopher of an earlier day.

“That’s the talk!” said Fox genially. He pushed the dice box across the bar. “Go to it, bo! Roll them bones! The figure is twenty-one!”

From the five cubes in the cup the barkeeper eliminated two. He agitated the receptacle violently and then flirted out the three survivors on the wood. They jostled and crocked against one another, rolled over and stopped. Their uppermost faces showed an ace, a six and a five.

“Twelve!” said Flem.

“Twelve it is,” echoed Fox.

“A dozen raw,” confirmed Gash Tuttle, now thoroughly in the spirit of it.

“All right, then,” said Fox, flashing a beam of admiration toward the humourist. “Now turn ’em over, Flem – turn ’em over careful.”

Flem obeyed, displaying an ace, a deuce and a six.

“And nine more makes twenty-one in all!” chortled Fox triumphantly.

As though dazed, the barkeeper shook his head.

“Well, Foxey, ole pardner, you shore got me that time,” he confessed begrudgingly. “Whut’ll it be, gents? Here, I reckin the cigars is on me too, after that.” From a glass-topped case at the end of the bar alongside Gash Tuttle he produced a full box and extended it hospitably. “The smokes is on the house – dip in, gents. Dip in. Try an Old Hickory; them’s pure Tampas – ten cents straight.”

He drew the beers – large ones for the two, a small one for himself – and raised his own glass to them.

“Here’s to you and t’ward you!” he said.

“Ef I hadn’t a-met you I wouldn’t a-knowed you,” shot back Gash Tuttle with the lightning spontaneity of one whose wit moves in boltlike brilliancy; and at that they both laughed loudly and, as though dazzled by his flashes, bestowed on him the look that is ever the sweetest tribute to the jester’s talents.

The toast to a better acquaintance being quaffed and lights exchanged, the still nonplussed Flem addressed the winners:

“Well, boys, I thought I knowed all there was to know about dice – poker dice and crap dice too; but live and learn, as the feller says. Say, Fox, put me on to that trick – it’ll come in handy. I’ll ketch Joe on it when he gits back,” and he nodded toward the lunch counter.

“You don’t need to know no more’n you know about it already,” expounded Fox. “It’s bound to come out that way.”

“How is it bound to come out that way?”

“Why, Flem, it’s jest plain arithmetic; mathematics – that’s all. Always the tops and bottoms of ary three dice come to twenty-one. Here, gimme that cup and I’ll prove it.”

In rapid succession, three times, he shook the cubes out. It was indeed as the wizard had said. No matter what the sequence, the complete tally was ever the same – twenty-one.

“Now who’d ’a’ thought it!” exclaimed Flem delightedly. “Say, a feller could win a pile of dough workin’ that trick! I’d ’a’ fell fur some real money myself.”

“That’s why I made it fur the drinks,” said the magnanimous Fox. “I wouldn’t put it over on a friend – not for no amount; because it’s a sure-thing proposition. It jest naturally can’t lose! I wouldn’t ’a’ tried to skin this pardner here with it even if I’d ’a’ thought I could.” And once more his hand fell in flattering camaraderie on a fawn-coloured shoulder. “I know a regular guy that’s likewise a wise guy as soon as I see him. But with rank strangers it’d be plumb different. The way I look at it, a stranger’s money is anybody’s money – ”

He broke off abruptly as the doorhinges creaked. A tall, thin individual wearing a cap, a squint and a cigarette, all on the same side of his head, had entered. He stopped at the lunch counter as though desirous of purchasing food.

“Sh-h! Listen!” Fox’s subdued tones reached only the barkeeper and Mr. Tuttle. “That feller looks like a mark to me. D’ye know him, Flem?”

“Never seen him before,” whispered back Flem after a covert scrutiny of the latest arrival.

“Fine!” commented Fox, speaking with rapidity, but still with low-toned caution. “Jest to test it, let’s see if that sucker’ll fall. Here” – he shoved the dice cup into Gash Turtle’s grasp – “you be playin’ with the bones, sorter careless. You kin have the first bet, because I’ve already took a likin’ to you. Then, if he’s willin’ to go a second time, I’ll take him on fur a few simoleons.” The arch plotter fell into an attitude of elaborate indifference. “Go ahead, Flem; you toll him in.”

Given a guarantee of winning, and who among us is not a born gamester? Gash Tuttle’s cheeks flushed with sporting blood as he grabbed for the cup. All his corpuscles turned to red and white chips – red ones mostly. As for the barkeeper, he beyond doubt had the making of a born conspirator in him. He took the cue instantly.

“Sorry, friend,” he called out, “but the grub works is closed down temporary. Anything I kin do fur you?”

“Well,” said the stranger, edging over, “I did want a fried-aig sandwich, but I might change my mind. Got any cold lager on tap?”

“Join us,” invited Fox; “we’re jest fixin’ to have one. Make it beer all round,” he ordered the barkeeper without waiting for the newcomer’s answer.

Beer all round it was. Gash Tuttle, too eager for gore to more than sip his, toyed with the dice, rolling them out and scooping them up again.

“Want to shake for the next round, anybody?” innocently inquired the squint-eyed person, observing this byplay.

“The next round’s on the house,” announced Flem, obeying a wink of almost audible emphasis from Fox.

“This here gent thinks he’s some hand with the bones,” explained Fox, addressing the stranger and flirting a thumb toward Gash Tuttle. “He was sayin’ jest as you come in the door yonder that he could let anybody else roll three dice, and then he could tell, without lookin’ even, whut the tops and bottoms would add up to?”

“Huh?” grunted the squinty-eyed man. “Has he got any money in his clothes that says he kin do that? Where I come frum, money talks.” He eyed Gash Tuttle truculently, as though daring him to be game.

“My money talks too!” said Mr. Tuttle with nervous alacrity. He felt in an inner vest pocket, producing a modest packet of bills. All eyes were focused on it.

“That’s the stuff!” said Fox with mounting enthusiasm. “How much are you two gents goin’ to bet one another? Make it fur real money – that is, if you’re both game!”

“If he don’t touch the dice at all I’ll bet him fur his whole roll,” said the impetuous newcomer.

“That’s fair enough, I reckin,” said Fox. “Tell you whut – to make it absolutely fair I’ll turn the dice over myself and Flem’ll hold the stakes. Then there can’t be no kick comin’ from nobody whatsoever, kin there?” He faced their prospective prey. “How strong are you?” he demanded, almost sneeringly. “How much are you willin’ to put up against my pardner here?”

“Any amount! Any amount!” snapped back the other, squinting past Fox at Gash Tuttle’s roll until one eye was a button and the other a buttonhole. “Twenty-five – thirty – thirty-five – as much as forty dollars. That’s how game I am.”

Avarice gnawed at the taproots of Gash Tuttle’s being, but caution raised a warning hand. Fifteen was half of what he had and thirty was all. Besides, why risk all on the first wager, even though there was no real risk? A person so impulsively sportive as this victim would make a second bet doubtlessly. He ignored the stealthy little kick his principal accomplice dealt him on the shin. “I’ll make it fur fifteen,” he said, licking his lips.

“If that’s as fur as you kin go, all right,” said the slit-eyed man, promptly posting his money in the outstretched hand of the barkeeper, who in the same motion took over a like amount from the slightly trembling fingers of the challenger.

Squint-eye picked up the dice cup and rattled its occupants.

“Come on now!” he bantered Gash Tuttle. “Whut’ll they add up, tops and bottoms?”

“Twenty-one!” said Mr. Tuttle.

“Out they come, then!”

And out they did come, dancing together, tumbling and somersaulting, and finally halting – a deuce, a trey and a four.

“Three and two is five and four is nine,” Gash Tuttle read off the pips. “Now turn ’em over!” he bade Fox. “That’s your job – turn ’em over!” He was all tremulous and quivery inside.

In silence Fox drew the nearest die toward him and slowly capsized it. “Four,” he announced.

He flipped the deuce end for end, revealing its bottom: “Five!”

He reached for the remaining die – the four-spot. Dragging it toward him, his large fingers encompassed it for one fleeting instance, hiding it from view entirely; then he raised his hand: “Six!”

“Makin’ twenty-one in all,” stuttered Gash Tuttle. He reached for the stakes.

“Nix on that quick stuff!” yelled his opponent, and dashed his hand aside. “The tops come to nine and the bottoms to fifteen – that’s twenty-four, the way I figger. You lose!” He pouched the money gleefully.

Stunned, Gash Tuttle contemplated the upturned facets of the three dice. It was true – it was all too true! Consternation, or a fine imitation of that emotion, filled the countenances of Flem and of Fox.

“That’s the first time I ever seen that happen,” Fox whispered in the loser’s ear. “Bet him again – bet high – and git it all back. That’s the ticket!”

Mr. Tuttle shook his head miserably, but stubbornly. For this once, in the presence of crushing disaster, the divine powers of retort failed him. He didn’t speak – he couldn’t!

“Piker money! Piker money!” chanted the winner. “Still, ever’ little bit helps – eh, boys?”

And then and there, before Gash Tuttle’s bulging and horrified eyes, he split up the winnings in the proportion of five for Flem and five for Fox and five for himself. Of a sudden the loser was shouldered out of the group. He looked not into friendly faces, but at contemptuous backs and heaving shoulders. The need for play acting being over, the play actors took their ease and divided their pay. The mask was off. Treachery stood naked and unashamed.

Reaching blindly for his valise, Gash Tuttle stumbled for the door, a load lying on his daunted spirit as heavy as a stone. Flem hailed him.

“Say, hold on!” He spoke kindly. “Ain’t that your quarter yonder?”

He pointed to a coin visible against the flat glass cover of the cigar case.

“Sure it is – it’s yourn. I seen you leave it there when I give you the change out of that dollar and purposed to tell you ’bout it at the time, but it slipped my mind. Go on and pick it up – it’s yourn. You’re welcome to it if you take it now!”

Automatically Gash Tuttle reached for the quarter – small salvage from a great and overwhelming loss. His nails scraped the glass, touching only glass. The quarter was cunningly glued to its underside. Surely this place was full of pitfalls. A guffawed chorus of derision rudely smote his burning ears.

“On your way, sucker! On your way!” gibed the perfidious Fox, swinging about with his elbows braced against the bar and a five-dollar bill held with a touch of cruel jauntiness between two fingers.

“Whut you got in the gripsack – hay samples or punkins?” jeered the exultant Slit-Eye.

“Yes; whut is the valise fur?” came Flem’s parting taunt.

Under their goadings his spirit rallied.

“Cat’s fur, to make kittens’ britches!” he said. Then, as a final shot: “You fellers needn’t think you’re so derned smart – I know jest exactly how you done it!”

He left them to chew on that. The parting honours were his, he felt, but the spoils of war – alas! – remained in the camp of the enemy. Scarcely twenty minutes at the outside had elapsed since his advent into city life, and already one-half of the hoarded capital he had meant should sustain him for a whole gala week was irretrievably gone, leaving behind an emptiness, a void as it were, which ached like the socket of a newly drawn tooth.

Vague, formless thoughts of reprisal, of vengeance exacted an hundredfold when opportunity should fitly offer, flitted through his numbed brain. Meantime though adventure beckoned; half a mile away or less a Great White Way and a street fair awaited his coming. That saffron flare against the sky yonder was an invitation and a promise. Sighing, he shifted his valise from one hand to the other.

The Belt Line car, returning stationward, bore him with small loss of time straightway to the very centre of excitement; to where bunting waved on store fronts and flag standards swayed from trolley poles, converting the County Square into a Court of Honour, and a myriad lights glowed golden russet through the haze of dust kicked up by the hurrying feet of merrymaking thousands. Barkers barked and brass bands brayed; strange cries of man and beast arose, and crowds eddied to and fro like windblown leaves in a gusty November. And all was gaiety and abandon. From the confusion certain sounds detached themselves, becoming intelligible to the human understanding. As for example:

“Remembah, good people, the cool of the evenin’ is the time to view the edgycated ostritch and mark his many peculiarities!”

And this:

“The big red hots! The g-e-r-reat big, juicy, sizzlin’ red hots! The eriginal hot-dog sand-wige – fi’ cents, halluf a dime, the twentieth part of a dollah! Here y’are! Here y’are! The genuwine Mexican hairless Frankfurter fer fi’ cents!”

And this:

“Cornfetti! Cornfetti! All the colours of the rainbow! All the pleasures of the Maudie Graw! A large full sack for a nickel! Buy cornfetti and enjoy yourselves.”

And so on and so forth.

The forlorn youth, a half-fledged school-teacher from a back district, who had purchased the county rights of a patent razor sharpener from a polished gentleman who had had to look at the map before he even knew the name of the county, stood on a dry-goods box at the corner of Jefferson and Yazoo, dimly regretful of the good money paid out for license and unsalable stock, striving desperately to remember and enunciate the patter taught him by the gifted promoter. For the twentieth time he lifted his voice, essaying his word-formula in husky and stuttering accents for the benefit of swirling multitudes, who never stopped to listen:

“Friends, I have here the Infallible Patent Razor Sharpener. ’Twill sharpen razors, knives, scissors, scythe blades or any edged tool. If you don’t believe it will – ” He paused, forgetting the tag line; then cleared his throat and improvised a finish: “If you don’t believe it will – why, it will!” It was a lame conclusion and fruitful of no sales.

How different the case with a talented professional stationed half a block down the street, who nonchalantly coiled and whirled and threw a lasso at nothing; then gathered in the rope and coiled and threw it again, always at nothing at all, until an audience collected, being drawn by a desire to know the meaning of a performance seemingly so purposeless. Then, dropping the rope, he burst into a stirring panegyric touching on the miraculous qualifications of the Ajax Matchless Cleaning and Washing Powder, which made bathing a sheer pleasure and household drudgery a joy.

Never for one moment abating the flow of his eloquence, this person produced a tiny vial, held it aloft, uncorked it, shook twenty drops of its colourless fluid contents on the corrugated surface of a seemingly new and virgin sponge; then gently kneaded and massaged the sponge until – lo and behold! – lather formed and grew and mounted and foamed, so that the yellow lump became a mass of creamy white suds the size of a peck measure, and from it dripped huge bubbles that foamed about his feet and expired prismatically, as the dolphin was once believed to expire, leaving smears upon the boards whereon the operator stood.

Thereat dimes flowed in on him in clinking streams, and bottles of the Matchless flowed from him until, apparently grown weary of commerce, he abandoned his perch, avowedly for refreshment, but really – this being a trade secret – to rub shavings of soft yellow soap into the receptive pores of a fresh sponge and so make it ready against the next demonstration.

Through such scenes Gash Tuttle wandered, a soul apart. He was of the carnival, but not in it – not as yet. With a pained mental jolt he observed that about him men of his own age wore garments of a novel and fascinating cut. By contrast his own wardrobe seemed suddenly grown commonplace and prosaic; also, these city dwellers spoke a tongue that, though lacking, as he inwardly conceded, in the ready pungency of his own speech, nevertheless had a saucy and attractive savour of novelty in its phrasing. Indeed, he felt lonely. So must a troubadour of old have felt when set adrift in an alien and hostile land. So must the shining steel feel when separated from the flint on which it strikes forth its sparks of fire. I take it a steel never really craves for its flint until it parts from it.

As he wormed through a group of roistering youth of both sexes he tripped over his own valise; a wadded handful of confetti struck him full in the cheek and from behind him came a gurgle of laughter. It was borne in on him that he was the object of mirth and not its creator. His neck burned. Certainly the most distressing situation which may beset a humourist follows hard on the suspicion that folks are laughing – not with him, but at him!

He hurried on as rapidly as one might hurry in such crowded ways. He was aware now of a sensation of emptiness which could not be attributed altogether to the depression occasioned by his experience at the First and Last Chance Saloon; and he took steps to stay it. He purchased and partook of hamburger sandwiches rich in chopped onions.

Later it would be time to find suitable lodgings. The more alluring of the pay-as-you-enter attractions were yet to be tested. By way of a beginning he handed over a ten-cent piece to a swarthy person behind a blue pedestal, and mounting eight wooden steps to a platform he passed behind a flapping canvas curtain. There, in company with perhaps a dozen other patrons, he leaned over a wooden rail and gazed downward into a shallow tarpaulin-lined den where a rather drowsy-appearing, half-nude individual, evidently of Ethiopian antecedents, first toyed with some equally drowsy specimens of the reptile kingdom and then partook sparingly and with no particular avidity of the tail of a very small garter snake.

Chance, purely, had led Gash Tuttle to select the establishment of Osay rather than that of the Educated Ostrich, or the Amphibious Man, or Fatima the Pearl of the Harem, for his first plunge into carnival pleasures; but chance is the hinge on which many moving events swing. It was so in this instance.

Osay had finished a light but apparently satisfying meal and the audience was tailing away when Gash Tuttle, who happened to be the rearmost of the departing patrons, felt a detaining touch on his arm. He turned to confront a man in his shirtsleeves – a large man with a pock-marked face, a drooping moustache and a tiger-claw watch charm on his vest. It was the same man who, but a minute before, had delivered a short yet flattering discourse touching the early life and manners and habits of the consumer of serpents – in short, the manager of the show and presumably its owner.