And now I’ll tell you how I once threw stones at Hartford and thereby gained queer money to carry me to the bedside of my mother at her death.
My father, you should know, was a lawyer of eminence and wide practice at the New York bar. His income was magnificent; yet—thriftless and well living—he spent it with both hands. My mother, who took as little concern for the future as himself, aided pleasantly in scattering the dollars as fast as they were earned.
With no original estate on either side, and not a shilling saved, it was to be expected that my father’s death should leave us wanting a penny. I was twenty-two when the blow fell; he died stricken of an apoplexy, his full habit and want of physical exercise marking him to that malady as a certain prey.
I well recall how this death came upon us as a bolt from the blue. And while his partner stood over our affairs like a brother, when the debts were paid there remained no more than would manage an annuity for my mother of some six hundred dollars. With that she retreated to Westchester and lived the little balance of her years with a maiden sister who owned a starved farm, all chequered of stone fences, in that region of breath-taking hills.
It stood my misfortune that I was bred as the son of a wealthy man. Columbia was my school and the generosity of my father gilded those college days with an allowance of five thousand a year. I became proficient—like many another hare-brain—in everything save books, and was a notable guard on the University Eleven and pulled the bow oar in the University Eight. When I came from college the year before my father’s death I could write myself adept of a score of sciences, each physical, not one of which might serve to bring a splinter of return—not one, indeed, that did not demand the possession of largest wealth in its pursuit. I was poor in that I did not have a dollar when brought to face the world; I was doubly poor with a training that had taught me to spend thousands. Therefore, during the eighteen years to succeed my father’s going, was I tossed on the waves of existence like so much wreckage; and that I am not still so thrown about is the offspring of happy exigency rather than a condition due to wisdom of my own.
My ship of money did not come in until after I’d encountered my fortieth year. For those eighteen years next prior, if truth must out, I’d picked up intermittent small money following the races. Turf interest of that day settled about such speedy ones as Goldsmith Maid, Lucy, Judge Fullerton and American Girl, while Budd Doble, Dan Mace and Jack Splan were more often in the papers than was the President. I followed the races, I say; sometimes I was flush of money, more often I was poor; but one way or another I clung to the skirts of the circuits and managed to live.
Now, since age has come to my head and gold to my fingers, and I’ve had time and the cooled blood wherewith to think, I’ve laid my ill courses of those eighteen evil years to the doors of what vile ideals of life are taught in circles of our very rich. What is true now, was true then. Among our “best people”—if “best” be the word where “worst” might better fit the case—who is held up to youthful emulation? Is it the great lawyer, or writer, or preacher, or merchant, or man of medicine? Is it he of any trade or calling who stands usefully and profitably at the head of his fellows? Never; such gentry of decent effort and clean dollars to flow therefrom are not mentioned; or if they be, it is not for compliment and often with disdain.
And who has honor in the social conventions of our American aristocrats? It is young A, who drives an automobile some eighty miles an hour; or young B, who sails a single-sticker until her canvas is blown from the bolt ropes; or young C, who rides like an Arab at polo; or young D, who drives farthest at golf; or young E, who is the headlong first in a paper chase. These be the ideals; these the promontories to steer by. Is it marvel then when a youth raised of those “best circles” falls out of his nest of money that he lies sprawling, unable to honestly aid himself? Is it strange that he afterward lives drunken and precariously and seldom in walks asking industry and hard work? His training has been to spend money, while his contempt was reserved for those who labored its honorable accumulation. Such wrong-taught creatures, bereft of bank accounts, are left to adopt the races, the gambling tables, or the wine trade; and with all my black wealth of experience, I sit unable to determine which is basest and most loathly of the three.
During those eighteen roving, race-course years I saw my mother but seldom; and I never exposed to her my methods of life. I told her that I “traveled;” and she, good, innocent girl! gained from the phrase a cloudy notion that I went the trusted ambassador to various courts of trade of some great manufactory. I protected her from the truth to the end, and she died brightly confident that her son made a brilliant figure in the world.
While on my ignoble wanderings I kept myself in touch with one whom I might trust, and who, dwelling near my mother, saw her day by day. He was ever in possession of my whereabouts. Her health was a bit perilous from heart troubles, and I, as much as I might, maintained arrangements to warn me should she turn seriously ill.
At first I looked hourly for such notice; but as month after month went by and no bad tidings—nothing save word at intervals that she was passing her quiet, uneventful days in comfort, and as each occasional visit made to Westchester confirmed such news, my apprehension became dulled and dormant. It was a surprise then, and pierced me hideously, when I opened the message that told how her days were down to hours and she lay dying.
The telegram reached me in Hartford. When I took it from the messenger’s hand I was so poor I could not give him a dime for finding me; and as he had been to some detective pains in the business, he left with an ugly face as one cheated of appreciation. I could not help it; there dwelt not so much as one cheap copper in my pocket. Also, my clothes were none of the best; for I’d been in ill fortune, and months of bankruptcy had dealt unkindly with my wardrobe. But there should be no such word as fail; I must find the money to go to her—find it even though it arrive on the tides of robbery.
Luck came to me. Within the minute to follow the summons, and while the yellow message still fluttered between my fingers, I was hailed from across the street. The hail came from a certain coarse gentleman who seemed born to horse-races as to an heritage and was, withal, one of the few who reaped a harvest from them. This fortunate one was known to the guild as Sure-thing Pete.
It was fairly early of the morning, eight o’clock, and Surething Pete in the wake of his several morning drinks—he was a celebrated sot—was having his boots cleaned. It is a curious thing that half-drunken folk are prone to this improvement. That is why a boot-black’s chair is found so frequently just outside the portals of a rum shop. The prospect of a seat allures your drunkard fresh from his latest drink; he may sit at secure ease and please his rum-contented fancy with a review of the passing crowds; also, the Italian digging and brushing about his soles gives an impression that he is subject of concern to some one and this nurses a sense of importance and comes as vague tickle to his vanity.
Surething Pete, as related, was under the hands of a boot-black when I approached. He was much older than I and regarded me as a boy.
“Broke, eh?” said Surething Pete. His eye, though bleary, was keen. Then he tendered a quarter. “Take this and go and eat. I’ll wait for you here. Come back in fifteen minutes and I’ll put you in line to make some money. I’d give you more, but I’m afraid you wouldn’t return.”
Make money! I bolted two eggs and a cup of coffee and was back in ten minutes. Surething’s second shoe was receiving its last polish. He paid the artist, and then turning led me to a rear room of the nearby ginmill.
“This is it,” said Surething. His voice was rum-husky but he made himself clear. “There’s the special race between Prince Rupert and Creole Belle. You know about that?”
Of course I knew. These cracks had been especially matched against each other. It would be a great contest; the odds were five to three on Prince Rupert; thousands were being wagered; the fraternity had talked of nothing else for three weeks. Of course I knew!
“Well,” went on Surething, “I’ve been put wrong, understand! I’ve got my bundle on Creole Belle and stand to win a fortune if Prince Rupert is beaten. I supposed that I’d got his driver fixed. I paid this crook a thousand cold and gave him tickets on Creole Belle which stand him to win five thousand more to throw the race. But now, with the race to be called at two o’clock, I get it straight he’s out to double-cross me. He’ll drive Rupert to win; an’ if he does I’m a gone fawnskin. But I’ve thought of another trick.”
Then suddenly: “I’ll tell you what you do; get into this wagon outside and come with me.”
With the last word, Surething again headed for the street. We took a carriage that stood at the door. In thirty minutes we were on the Charter ‘Oak track. At this early hour, we had the course to ourselves. Surething walked up the homestretch until we arrived at a point midway between the half mile post and the entrance to the stretch.
“See that tree?” said Surething, and he pointed to a huge buttonwood—a native—that stood perhaps twenty feet inside the rail. “Come over and take a look at it.”
The great buttonwood was hollow; or rather a half had been torn away by some storm. What remained, however, was growing green and strong and stood in such fashion towards the course that it offered a perfect hiding place. By lying close within the hollow one was screened from any who might drive along.
“This is the proposition,” continued Surething, when I had taken in the convenient buttonwood and its advantages. “This Rupert can beat the Belle if he’s driven. But he’s as nervous as a girl. If a fly should light on him he’d go ten feet in the air—understand? Here now is what I want of you. I’ll tell you what you’re to do; then I’ll tell you what you’re to get. I want you to plant yourself behind this tree—better come here as early as the noon hour. The track ’ll be clear and no one’ll see you go under cover, understand! As I say, I want you to plant yourself in the sheltering hollow of this buttonwood. You ought to have three rocks—say as big as a guinea’s egg—three stones, d’ye see, ’cause the race is heats, best three in five. You must lay dead so no one’ll get on. As Rupert and the Belle sweep ’round the curve for the stretch, you want to let ’em get a trifle past you. Then you’re to step out and nail Rupert—he’ll have the pole without a doubt—and nail Rupert, I say, with a rock. That’ll settle him; he’ll be up in the air like a swallow-bird. It’ll give the Belle the heat.” Having gotten thus far, Surething fell into a mighty fit of coughing; his face congested and his eyes rolled. For a moment I feared that apoplexy—my father’s death—might take him in the midst of his hopeful enterprise and deprive me of this chance of riches. I was not a little relieved therefore when he somewhat recovered and went on: “That trick’s as safe as seven-up,” continued Surething. “You’ll be alone up here, as everybody else will be down about the finish. The drivers, driving like mad, won’t see you—won’t see anything but their horses’ ears. You must get Rupert—get him three times—every time he comes’round—understand?”
I understood.
“Right you are,” concluded Surething. “And to make it worth your while, here are tickets on the Belle that call for five hundred dollars if she wins. And here’s a dollar also for a drink and another feed to steady your wrists for the stonethrowing.”
It will seem strange and may even attract resentment that I, a college graduate and come of good folk, should accept such commission from a felon like Surething Pete. All I say is that I did accept it; was glad to get it; and for two hours before the great contest between Prince Rupert and Creole Belle was called, I lay ensconced in my buttonwood ambush, armed of three stones like David without the sling, ready to play my part towards the acquirement of those promised hundreds. And with that, my thoughts were on my mother. The money would count handsomely to procure me proper clothes and take me home. To me the proposed bombardment of the nervous Rupert appeared an opportunity heaven-sent when my need was most.
For fear of discovery and woe to follow, I put my tickets in the hands of one who, while as poor as I, could yet be trusted. He was, if the Belle won, to cash them; and should I be observed at my sleight of hand work and made to fly, he would meet me in a near-by village with the proceeds.
At prompt two o’clock the race was called. There were bustling crowds of spectators; but none came near my hiding place, as Surething Pete had foreseen. The horses got off with the second trial. They trotted as steadily as clockwork. As the pair rounded the second curve they were coming like the wind; drivers leaning far forward in their sulkies, eagle of glance, steady of rein, soothing with encouraging words, and “sending them,” as the phrase is, for every inch. It was a splendid race and splendidly driven, with Rupert on the pole and a half length to the good. They flashed by my post like twin meteors.
As they passed I stepped free of my buttonwood; and then, as unerringly as one might send a bullet—for I had not been long enough from school to forget how to throw—my first pebble, full two ounces, caught the hurrying Rupert in mid-rib.
Mighty were the results. Prince Rupert leaped into the air—stumbled—came almost to a halt—then into the air a second time—and following that, went galloping and pitching down the course, his driver sawing and whipping in distracted alternation. Meanwhile, Creole Belle slipped away like a spirit in harness and finished a wide winner. I took in results from my buttonwood. There was no untoward excitement about the grandstand or among the judges. Good; I was not suspected!
There ensued a long wait; planted close to my tree I wearied with the aching length of it. Then Rupert and the Belle were on the track again. The gong sounded; I heard the word “Go!” even in my faraway hiding; the second heat was on. It was patterned of the first; the two took the curve and flew for the head of the stretch as they did before; Rupert on the pole and leading with half a length. I repeated the former success. The stone struck poor Rupert squarely. He shot straight toward the skies and all but fell in the sulky when he came down. It was near to ending matters; for Rupert regained his feet in scantiest time to get inside the distance flag before the Belle streamed under the wire.
Creole Belle! two straight heats! What a row and a roar went up about the pools! What hedging was done! From five to three on Rupert the odds shifted to seven to two on Creole Belle. I could hear the riot and interpret it. I clung closely to the protecting buttonwood; there was still a last act before the play was done.
It was the third heat. The pace, comparatively, was neither hot nor hard; the previous exertions of both Rupert and the Belle had worn away the wire edge and abated their appetites for any utmost speed. Relatively, however, conditions were equal and each as tired as the other; and as Rupert was the quicker in the get-away and never failed of the pole in the first quarter, the two as they neared me offered the old picture of Rupert on the rail and leading by half his length.
Had I owned a better chance of observation, I might have noted as Prince Rupert drew near the buttonwood that his mind was not at ease. He remembered those two biting flints; they were lessons not lost on him. As I stepped from concealment to hurl my last stone, it is to be believed that Rupert—his alarmed eyes roving for lions in his path—glimpsed me. Certain it is that as the missile flew from my hand, Rupert swerved across the track, the hub of his sulky narrowly missing the shoulder of the mare.
The sudden shift confused my markmanship, and instead of Rupert, the stone smote the driver on the ear and all but swept him from his seat. It did the work, however; whether from the stone, the whip, or that state of general perturbation wherein his fell experiences had left his nerves, Rupert went fairly to pieces. Before he was on his feet again and squared away, the Belle had won.
Peeping from my hiding place I could tell that my adroit interference in the late contest was becoming the subject of public concern. Rupert’s driver, still sitting in his sulky, was holding high his whip in professional invocation of the judges’ eyes. And that ill-used horseman was talking; at intervals he pointed with the utmost feeling towards my butonwood. Nor was his oratory without power; he had not discoursed long when amid an abundance of shouts and oaths and brandished canes, one thousand gentlemen of the turf were under head in my direction.
It was interesting, but I did not stay in contemplation of the spectacle; I out and bolted. I crossed the track and ran straight for the end fence. This latter barrier looked somewhat high; I made no essay to climb, but, picking a broadest board, launched myself against it, shoulder on. The board fell and I was through the gap and in an open field.
But why waste time with that hustling hue and cry? It was futile for all its indignant energy; I promise you, I made good my distance. Young, strung like a harp, with a third of a mile start and able to speed like a deer, I ran the hunt out of sight in the first ten minutes. It was all earnestness, that flight of mine. I fled through three villages and a puny little river that fell across my path. I welcomed the river, for I knew it would cool the quest.
Of a verity! I got my money, and my stone throwing was not to be in vain. True, the driver and the owner of Rupert both protested, but the track statutes were inexorable. The judges could take no cognizance of that cannonading from the buttonwood and gave the race—three straight heats—to Creole Belle. Surething Pete won his thousands; and as for me, my friend and I encountered according to our tryst and he brought me my money safe. Within fifteen hours from that time when I dealt disaster to Rupert from the sheltering buttonwood, clothed and in respectable tears, I was kneeling by my mother’s side and taking what sorrowful joy I might for having arrived while she was yet equal to the bestowal of her blessing.
It was to be our last evening about the great stone fireplace; the last of our stories would be told. The roads were now broken, and though a now-and-then upset was more than likely to enliven one’s goings about, sleighs and sleds as schemes of conveyance were pronounced to be among things possible. As we drew our chairs about the blaze, the jangle of an occasional leash of bells showed how some brave spirit was even then abroad.
Under these inspiring conditions, the Sour Gentleman and the Red Nosed Gentleman declared their purpose of on the morrow pressing for the railway station eighteen miles away. To this end they had already chartered a sleigh, and the word was out that it be at the Inn door by ten of the morning clock.
For myself, nothing was driving me of business or concern, and I was in no haste to leave; and the Old Cattleman and his ward, Sioux Sam, were also of a mind to abide where they were for a farther day or two at least. But the going of the Sour Gentleman and the Red Nosed Gentleman would destroy our circle, wherefore we were driven to regard this as “our last evening,” and to crown it honorably the Jolly Doctor brewed a giant bowl of what he described as punch. The others, both by voice and the loyalty wherewith they applied themselves to its disappearance, avowed its excellencies, and on that point Sioux Sam and I were content to receive their words.
The Red Nosed Gentleman—who had put aside his burgundy in compliment to the Jolly Doctor and his punch, and seemed sensibly exhilarated by this change of beverage—was the first to give the company a story. It was of his younger, green-cloth days, and the title by which he distinguished it was “When I Ran the Shotgun.”
About this time the city of Providence fell midspasm in a fit of civic morality. Communities, like individuals, are prone to starts of strenuous virtue, and Providence, bewailing her past iniquities, was pushing towards a pure if not a festive life. And because in this new mood to be excellent it was the easiest, nearest thing, Providence smote upon the gambling brotherhood with the heavy hand of the police. The faro games and wheels of roulette were swept away and more than one who had shared their feverish profits were sent into captivity. Yea forsooth! the gay fraternity of fortune whose staff of life was cards found themselves borne upon with the burden of bad days.
For myself I conceived this to be the propitious moment to open a faro room of my own. I had been for long of the guild of gamblers yet had never soared to the brave heights of proprietorship. I had bucked the games, but never dealt them. It came to me as a thought that in the beating midst of this moral tempest dwelt my opportunity. Had I chosen a day of police apathy—an hour of gambling security—for such a move, I would have been set upon by every established proprietor. He would have resented my rivalry as a game warden would the intromissions of a poacher. And I’d have been wiped out—devoured horn and hide and hoof as by a band of wolves.
Under these new conditions of communal virtue, however, and with the clan of former proprietors broken and dispersed, the field was free of menace from within; I would face no risk more grievous than the constabulary. These latter I believed I might for a season avoid; particularly if I unveiled my venture in regions new and not theretofore the home of such lawless speculation.
Filled with these thoughts, I secured apartments sufficiently obscure and smuggled in the paraphernalia under cloud of night. The room was small—twenty feet square; there was space for no more than one faro table, and with such scant furnishing I went to work. For reasons which now escape me I called my place “The Shotgun.”
Heretofore I gave you assurance of the lapse of years since last I gambled at any game save the Wall Street game of stocks. I quit cards for that they were disreputable and the gains but small. Stocks, on the contrary, are endorsed as “respectable;” at stocks one may gamble without forfeiture of position; also, there exist no frontiers to the profits which a cunning stock plan well executed may bring.
In my old simpler days, I well recall those defences of the pure gambler wherein my regard indulged. Elia once separated humanity into two tribes—those who borrow and those who lend. In my younger philosophy I also saw two septs: those who lose and those who win. To me all men were gamblers. Life itself was one continuous game of chance; and the stakes, that shelter and raiment and food and drink to compose the body’s bulwark against an instant conquest by Death. Of the inherent morality of gambling I nurtured no doubts. Or, at the worst, I felt certain of its comparative morality when laid beside such commerces as banks and markets and fields of plain barter and sale. There is no trade (I said) save that of the hands which is held by the tether of any honesty. The carpenter sawing boards, the smith who beats out a horseshoe, the mason busy with trowel and mortar on sun-blistered scaffolds, hoarsely shouting “More bricks!” they in their way of life are honest. They are bound to integrity because they couldn’t cheat if they would. But is the merchant selling the false for the real—the shoddy for the true—is the merchant whose advertisements are as so many false pretences paid for by the line—is he more honest than the one who cheats with cards? Is the lawyer looking looks of wisdom to hide the emptiness of his ignorance? Is the doctor, profound of mien, who shakes portentous head, medicining a victim not because he has a malady but because he has a million dollars?
And if it become a question of fashion, why then, age in and age out, the gambler has been often noble and sometimes royal. In the days of the Stuarts, or later among the dull ones of Hanover, was it the peasant or the prince who wagered his gold at cards? Why man! every royal court was a gambling house; every king, save one—and he disloved and at the last insane—a gambler. Are not two-thirds of the homes of our American nobility—our folk of millions and Fifth Avenue—replete of faro and roulette and the very hotbed of a poisonous bridge whist? Fy, man, fy! you who denounce gambling but preach your own plebeianism—proclaim your own vulgarity! The gambler has been ever the patrician.
With but one table, whereat I would preside as dealer, I required no multitude to man The Shotgun. I called to my aid three gentlemen of fortune—seedy and in want they were and glad to earn a dollar. One was to be sentinel at the door, one would perch Argus-like on the lookout’s stool, while the third,—an old suspicious camp-follower of Chance,—kept the case. This latter, cautious man! declined my service unless I put steel bars on the only door, and as well on the only window. These he conceived to be some safeguard against invasions. They were not; but I spent money to put them in place to the end that his fluttered nerves be stilled and he won to my standard. And at that, he later pursued his business as case-keeper with an ear on the door and an eye on the small barred window, sitting the while half aloof from the table and pushing the case-buttons as the cards fell from the box with a timid forefinger and as though he proposed no further immersion in current crime than was absolutely demanded by the duties of his place. He sat throughout the games a picture of apprehension.
For myself, and to promote my profits, I gave both my people and my customers every verbal bond of safety. The story went abroad that I was “protected;” that no wolf of the police dared so much as glance at flock of mine. The Shotgun was immune of arrest, so ran the common tale, and as much as leer and look and smile and shrug of shoulder might furnish them I gave the story wings.
This public theory of safety was necessary to success. In the then hectic conditions, and briskly in the rear of a stern suppression of resorts that had flourished for decades unshaken of the law, wanting this feeling of security there would have come not one dollar to take its hopeful chances at The Shotgun. As it was, however, the belief that I lived amply “protected” took prompt deep root. And the fact that The Shotgun opened in the face of storms which smote without pity upon others, was itself regarded as proof beyond dispute. No one would court such dangers unless his footing were as unshakable as Gibraltar. Thereupon folk with a heart for faro came blithely and stood four deep about my one table; vast was the business I accomplished and vast were the sums changed in. And behold! I widely prospered.
When I founded The Shotgun, I was richer of hope than of money; but fortune smiled and within a fortnight my treasure was told by thousands. Indeed, my patrons played as play those who are starved to gamble; that recess of faro enforced of the police had made them hawk-hungry. And my gains rolled in.
While I fostered the common thought that no interference of the law would occur and The Shotgun was sacred ground, I felt within my own breast a sense of much unsafety. Damocles with his sword—hung of a hair and shaken of a breeze—could have been no more eaten of unease. I knew that I was wooing disaster, challenging a deepest peril. The moment The Shotgun became a part of police knowledge, I was lost.
Still, I dealt on; the richness of my rewards the inducement and the optimism of the born gambler giving me courage to proceed. It fed my vanity, too, and hugely pleased my pride to be thus looked upon as eminent in my relations with the powers that ruled. They were proud, even though parlous days, those days when I ran The Shotgun.
While I walked the field of my enterprise like a conqueror, I was not without the prudence that taketh account in advance and prepareth for a fall. Aside from the table whereon dwelt the layout, box and check rack, and those half-dozen chairs which encircled it, the one lone piece of furniture which The Shotgun boasted was a rotund lounge. Those who now and then reposed themselves thereon noted and denounced its nard unfitness. There was neither softness nor spring to that lounge; to sit upon it was as though one sat upon a Saratoga trunk. But it was in a farthest corner and distant as much as might be from the game; and therefore there arose but few to try its indurated merits and complain.
That lounge of unsympathetic seat was my secret—my refuge—my last resort. I alone was aware of its construction; and that I might be thus alone, I had been to hidden and especial pains to bring it from New York myself. That lounge was no more, no less than a huge, capacious box. You might lift the seat and it would open like a trunk. Within was ample room for one to lie at length. Once in one could let down the cover and lock it on the inside; that done, there again it stood to the casual eye, a lounge, nothing save a lounge and neither hint nor token of the fugitive within.
My plan to save myself when the crash should come was plain and sure. There were but two lights—gas jets, both—in The Shotgun; these were immediately above the table, low hung and capped with green shades to save the eyes of players. The light was reflected upon the layout; all else was in the shadow. This lack of light was no drawback to my popularity. Your folk who gamble cavil not at shadows for themselves so long as cards and deal-box are kept strongly in the glare. In event of a raid, it was my programme to extinguish the two lights—a feat easily per-formable from the dealer’s chair—and seizing the money in the drawer, grope my way under cover of darkness for that excellent lounge and conceal myself. It would be the work of a moment; the folk would be huddled about the table and not about the lounge; the time lost by the police while breaking through those defences of bars and bolts would be more than enough.
By the time the lights were again turned on and the Goths in possession, I would have disappeared. No one would know how and none know where. When the blue enemy, despairing of my apprehension, had at last withdrawn with what prisoners had been made, I would be left alone. I might then uncover myself and take such subsequent flight as best became my liberty and its continuance.
Often I went over this plan in my thoughts—a fashion of mental rehearsal, as it were—and the more I considered the more certain I became that when the pinch arrived it would not fail. As I’ve stated, none shared with me my secret of that hinged and hollow couch; it was my insurance—my cave of retreat in any tornado of the law; and the knowledge thereof steadied me and aided my courage to compose those airs of cheerful confidence which taught others safety and gave countenance to the story of my unqualified and sure “protection!” Alas! for the hour that unmasked me; from that moment The Shotgun fell away; my stream of golden profits ran dry; from a spectacle of reverence and respect I became the nine-day byword of my tribe!
It was a crowded, thriving midnight at The Shotgun. I had been running an uninterrupted quartette of months; and having had good luck to the point of miracles, my finances were flourishing with five figures in their plethoric count. From a few poor hundreds, my “roll” when I snapped the rubber band about it and planted it deep within the safety of my pocket, held over fifty thousand dollars. Quite a fortune; and so I thought myself.
It was, I repeat, a busy, winning midnight at The Shotgun. There were doubtless full forty visitors in the cramped room. These were crowded about the table, for the most part playing, reaching over each other’s shoulders or under each other’s elbows, any way and every way to get their wagers on the layout. I was dealing, while to right and left sat my henchmen of the lookout and the case.
As on every evening, I lived on the feather-edge of apprehension, fearing a raid. My eye might be on the thirteen cards and the little fortunes they carried, but my ear was ever alert for a first dull footfall that would tell of destruction on its lowering way.
There had been four hours of brisk, remunerative play—for the game began at eight—when, in the middle of a deal, there came the rush of heavy feet and a tumult of stumblings and blunderings on the stair. It was as if folk unaccustomed to the way—it being pitch dark on the stairway for caution’s sake—and in vast eagerness to reach the door, had tripped and fallen. Also, if one might judge from the uproar and smothered, deep profanity of many voices there were a score engaged.
To my quick intelligence, itself for long on the rack of expectancy and therefore doubly keen, there seemed but one answer to the question, of that riot on the stair. It was the police; the Philistines were upon me; my gold mine of The Shotgun had become the target of a raid!
It was the labor of an instant. With both hands I turned out the lights; then stuffing my entire fortune into my pockets I began to push through the ranks of bewildered gentlemen who stood swearing in frightened undertones expecting evil. Silently and with a cat’s stealth, I found my way in the pitch blackness to the lounge. As I had foreseen, no one was about it to discover or to interfere. Softly I raised the cover; in a moment I was within. Lying on my side for comfort’s sake, I again turned ear to passing events. I had locked the lounge and believed myself insured.
Meanwhile, within the room and in the hall beyond my grated door, the tumult gathered and grew. There came various exclamations.
“Who doused those glims?”
“Light up, somebody.”
Also, there befell a volley of blows and kicks and thumps on The Shotgun’s iron portals; and gruff commands:
“Open the door!”
Then some one produced a match and relighted the gas. I might tell that by a ray about the size and color of a wheat-straw which suddenly bored its yellow way through a hole in my shelter. The clamor still proceeded at the door; it seemed to augment.
Since there could be no escape—for every soul saw himself caught like a rat in a trap—the door was at last unbarred and opened, desperately. Of what avail would it be to force the arresting party to break its way? In despair the door was thrown wide and each of those within braced himself to meet his fate. After all, to visit a gambling place was not the great crime; the cornered ones might feel fairly secure. It was the “proprietor” for whom the law kept sharpest tooth!
When the door opened, it opened to the admission of a most delightful disappointment. There appeared no police; no grim array of those sky-hued watch-dogs of the city’s peace and order rushed through in search of quarry. Instead came innocently, deviously, and with uncertain, shuffling steps, five separate drunken gentlemen. There had been a dinner; they had fed deeply, drunk deeply; it was now their pleasure to relax themselves at play. That was all; they had sought The Shotgun with the best of motives; the confusion on the stair was the offspring of darkness and drink when brought to a conjunction. Now they were within, and reading in the faces about them—even through the mists of their condition—the terrors their advent inspired, the visiting sots were much abashed; they stood silent, and like the lamb before the shearer, they were dumb and opened not their mouths.
But discovering a danger past, the general mood soon changed. There was a space of tacit staring; then came a rout of laughter. Every throat, lately so parched, now shouted with derision. The common fear became the common jeer.
Then up started the surprised question:
“Where’s Jack?”
It had origin with one to be repeated by twenty.
“Where’s Jack?”
The barred window was still barred; I had not gone through the door; how had I managed my disappearance? It was witchery!—or like the flitting of a ghost! Even in my refuge I could feel the awe and the chill that began to creep about my visitors as they looked uneasily and repeated, as folk who touch some graveyard mystery:
“Where’s Jack?”
There was no help; fate held me in a corner and never a crack of escape! Shame-faced, dust-sprinkled and perspiring like a harvest hand—for my hiding place was not Nova Zembla—I threw back the top of the lounge and stood there—the image of confusion—the “man with a pull”—the ally of the powers—the “protected” proprietor of The Shotgun! There was a moment of silence; and next fell a whirlwind of mirth.
There is no argument for saying more. I was laughed out of Providence and into New York. The Shotgun was laughed out of existence. And with it all, I too, laughed; for was it not good, even though inadvertent comedy? Also, was it not valuable comedy to leave me better by half a hundred thousand dollars—that comedy of The Shotgun? And thereupon, while I closed my game, I opened my mouth widely and laughed with the others. In green-cloth circles the story is still told; and whenever I encounter a friend of former days, I’m inevitably recalled to my lounge-holdout and that midnight stampede of The Shotgun.
“That’s where the west,” observed the Old Cattleman, who had given delighted ear to the Red Nosed Gentleman’s story, “that’s where the west has the best of the east. In Arizona a passel of folks engaged in testin’ the demerits of farobank ain’t runnin’ no more resks of the constables than they be of chills an’ fever.”
“There are laws against gambling in the west?” This from the Jolly Doctor.
“Shore, thar’s laws.”
“Why, then, aren’t they enforced?”
“This yere’s the reason,” responded the Old Cattleman. “Thar’s so much more law than force, that what force exists is wholly deevoted to a round-up of rustlers an’ stage hold-ups an’ sech. Besides, it’s the western notion to let every gent skin his own eel, an’ the last thing thought of is to protect you from yourse’f. No kyard sharp can put a crimp in you onless you freely offers him a chance, an’ if you-all is willin’, why should the public paint for war? In the east every gent is tryin’ to play some other gent’s hand; not so in that tolerant region styled the west. Which it ain’t too much to say that folks get killed—an’ properly—in the west for possessin’ what the east calls virchoos.” And here the Old Cattleman shook his head sagely over a western superiority. “The east mixes itse’f too much in a gent’s private affairs. Now if Deef Smith an’ Colonel Morton” he concluded, “had ondertook to pull off their dooel in the east that Texas time, the east would have come down on ’em like a failin’ star an’ squelched it.”
“And what was this duel you speak of?” asked the Sour Gentleman. “I, for one, would be most ready to hear the story.1’
“Which it’s the story of ‘When the Capitol Was Moved.’”
When the joobilant Texans set down to kyarve out the destinies of that empire they wrests from the feeble paws of the Mexicans an’ Santa Anna, they decides on Austin for the Capitol an’ Old Houston to be President. An’ I’ll say right yere, Old Houston, by all roomer an’ tradition, is mighty likely the most presidential president that ever keeps a republic guessin’ as to whatever is he goin’ to do next. Which he’s as full of surprises as a night in Red Dog.
About the first dash outen the box, Old Houston gets himse’f into trouble with two Lone Star leadin’ citizens whose names, respective, is Colonel Morton an’ jedge Webb.
Old Houston himse’f on the hocks of them vict’ries he partic’pates in, an’ bein’ selected president like I say, grows as full of vanity as a prairie dog. Shore! he’s a hero; the drawback is that his notion of demeanin’ himse’f as sech is to spread his tail feathers an’ strut. Old Houston gets that puffed up, an’ his dignity is that egreegious, he feels crowded if a gent tries to walk on the same street with him.
Colonel Morton an’ Jedge Webb themse’fs wades through that carnage from soda to hock freein’ Texas, an’ they sort o’ figgers that these yere services entitles them to be heard some. Old Houston, who’s born with a notion that he’s doo’ to make what public uproar every o’casion demands, don’t encourage them two patriots. He only listens now an’ then to Morton; an’ as for Jedge Webb, he jest won’t let that jurist talk at all.
“An’ for these yere followin’ reasons to wit,” explains Old Houston, when some Austin sports puts it to him p’lite, but steadfast, that he’s onjust to Webb. “I permits Morton to talk some, because it don’t make a splinter of difference what Morton says. He can talk on any side of any subject an’ no one’s ediot enough to pay the least attention to them remarks. But this sityooation is changed when you-all gets to Webb. He’s a disaster. Webb never opens his mouth without subtractin’ from the sum total of hooman knowledge.”