Chapter VI: Cousin Egbert Intervenes (1)

"It takes all kinds of foreigners to make a world," said Ma Pettengill--irrelevantly I thought, because the remark seemed to be inspired merely by the announcement of Sandy Sawtelle that the mule Jerry's hip had been laid open by a kick from the mule Alice, and that the bearer of the news had found fourteen stitches needed to mend the rent.

Sandy brought his news to the owner of the Arrowhead as she relaxed in my company on the west veranda of the ranch house and scented the golden dusk with burning tobacco of an inferior but popular brand. I listened but idly to the minute details of the catastrophe, discovering more entertainment in the solemn wake of light a dulled sun was leaving as it slipped over the sagging rim of Arrowhead Pass. And yet, through my absorption with the shadows that now played far off among the folded hills, there did come sharply the impression that this Sawtelle person was dwelling too insistently upon the precise number of stitches required by the breach in Jerry's hide.

"Fourteen--yes, ma'am; fourteen stitches. That there Alice mule sure needs handling. Fourteen regular ones. I'd certainly show her where to head in at, like now she was my personal property. Me, I'd abuse her shamefully. Only eleven I took last time in poor old Jerry; and here now it's plumb fourteen--yes, ma'am; fourteen good ones. Say, you get fourteen of them stitches in your hide, and I bet--thought, at first, I could make twelve do, but it takes full fourteen, with old Jerry nearly tearing the chute down while I was taking these fourteen--"

I began to see numbers black against that glowing panorama in the west. A monstrous 14 repeated itself stubbornly along the gorgeous reach of it.

"Yes, ma'am--fourteen; you can go out right now and count 'em yourself. And like mebbe I'll have to go down to town to-morrow for some more of that King of Pain Liniment, on account of Lazarus and Bryan getting good and lamed in this same mix-up, and me letting fall the last bottle we had on the place and busting her wide open--"

"Don't you bother to bust any more!" broke in his employer in a tone that I found crisp with warning. "There's a whole new case of King of Pain in the storeroom."

"Huh!" exclaimed the surgeon, ably conveying disappointment thereby. "And like now if I did go down I could get the new parts for that there mower--"

"That's something for me to worry about exclusively. I'll begin when we got something to mow." There was finished coldness in this.

"Huh!" The primitive vocable now conveyed a lively resentment, but there was the pleading of a patient sufferer in what followed. "And like at the same time, having to make the trip anyway for these here supplies and things, I could stop just a minute at Doc Martingale's and have this old tooth of mine took out, that's been achin' like a knife stuck in me fur the last fourteen--well, fur about a week now--achin' night and day--no sleep at all now fur seven, eight nights; so painful I get regular delirious, let me tell you. And, of course, all wore out the way I am, I won't be any good on the place till my agony's relieved. Why, what with me suffering so horrible, I just wouldn't hardly know my own name sometimes if you was to come up and ask me!"

The woman's tone became more than ever repellent.

"Never you mind about not knowing your own name. I got it on the pay roll, and it'll still be there to-morrow if you're helping Buck get out the rest of them fence posts like I told you. If you happen to get stuck for your name when I ain't round, and the inquiring parties won't wait, just ask the Chinaman; he never forgets anything he's learned once. Or I'll write it out on a card, so you can show it to anybody who rides up and wants to know it in a hurry!"

"Huh!"

The powers of this brief utterance had not yet been exhausted. It now conveyed despair. With bowed head the speaker dully turned and withdrew from our presence. As he went I distinctly heard him mutter:

"Huh! Four-teen! Four-teen! And seven! And twenty-eight!"

"Say, there!" his callous employer called after him. "Why don't you get Boogles to embroider that name of yours on the front of your shirt? He'd adore to do it. And you can still read, can't you, in the midst of your agonies?"

There was no response to this taunt. The suffering one faded slowly down the path to the bunk house and was lost in its blackness. A light shone out and presently came sombre chords from a guitar, followed by the voice of Sandy in gloomy song: "There's a broken heart for every light on Broadway--"

I was not a little pained to discover this unsuspected vein of cruelty in a woman I had long admired. And the woman merely became irrelevant with her apothegm about foreigners. I ignored it.

"What about that sufferer down there in the bunk house?" I demanded. "Didn't you ever have toothache?"

"No; neither did Sandy Sawtelle. He ain't a sufferer; he's just a liar."

"Why?"

"So I'll let him go to town and play the number of them stitches on the wheel. Sure! He'd run a horse to death getting there, make for the back room of the Turf Club Saloon, where they run games whenever the town ain't lidded too tight, and play roulette till either him or the game had to close down. Yes, sir; he'd string his bets along on fourteen and seven and twenty-eight and thirty-five, and if he didn't make a killing he'd believe all his life that the wheel was crooked. Stitches in a mule's hide is his bug. He could stitch up any horse on the place and never have the least hunch; but let it be a mule--Say! Down there right now he's thinking about the thousand dollars or so I'm keeping him out of. I judge from his song that he'd figured on a trip East to New York City or Denver. At that, I don't know as I blame him. Yes, sir; that's what reminded me of foreigners and bazaars and vice, and so on--and poor Egbert Floud."

My hostess drew about her impressive shoulders a blanket of Indian weave that dulled the splendours of the western sky, and rolled a slender cigarette from the tobacco and papers at her side. By the ensuing flame of a match I saw that her eyes gleamed with the light of pure narration.

"Foreigners, bazaars, vice, and Egbert Floud?" I murmured, wishing these to be related more plausibly one to another.

"I'm coming to it," said the lady; and, after two sustaining inhalations from the new cigarette, forthwith she did:

* * * * *

It was late last winter, while I was still in Red Gap. The talk went round that we'd ought to have another something for the Belgians. We'd had a concert, the proceeds of which run up into two figures after all expenses was paid; but it was felt something more could be done--something in the nature of a bazaar, where all could get together. The Mes-dames Henrietta Templeton Price and Judge Ballard were appointed a committee to do some advance scouting.

That was where Egbert Floud come in, though after it was all over any one could see that he was more to be pitied than censured. These well-known leaders consulted him among others, and Cousin Egbert says right off that, sure, he'll help 'em get up something if they'll agree to spend a third of the loot for tobacco for the poor soldiers, because a Belgian or any one else don't worry so much about going hungry if they can have a smoke from time to time, and he's been reading about where tobacco is sorely needed in the trenches. He felt strong about it, because one time out on the trail he lost all his own and had to smoke poplar bark or something for two weeks, nearly burning his flues out.

The two Mes-dames agreed to this, knowing from their menfolk that tobacco is one of the great human needs, both in war and in peace, and knowing that Cousin Egbert will be sure to donate handsomely himself, he always having been the easiest mark in town; so they said they was much obliged for his timely suggestion and would he think up some novel feature for the bazaar; and he said he would if he could, and they went on to other men of influence.

Henrietta's husband, when he heard the money wouldn't all be spent for mere food, said he'd put up a choice lot in Price's Addition to be raffled off--a lot that would at some future date be worth five thousand dollars of anybody's money, and that was all right; and some of the merchants come through liberal with articles of use and adornment to be took chances on.

Even old Proctor Knapp, the richest man in town, actually give up something after they pestered him for an hour. He owns the People's Traction Company and he turned over a dollar's worth of street-car tickets to be raffled for, though saying he regarded gambling as a very objectionable and uncertain vice, and a person shouldn't go into anything without being sure they was dead certain to make something out of it, war or no war, he knowing all about it. Why wouldn't he, having started life as a poor, ragged boy and working his way up to where parties that know him is always very careful indeed when they do any business with him?

Some of the ladies they consulted was hostile about the tobacco end of it. Mrs. Tracy Bangs said that no victim of the weed could keep up his mentality, and that she, for one, would rather see her Tracy lying in his casket than smoking vile tobacco that would destroy his intellect and make him a loathsome object in the home. She said she knew perfectly well that if the countries at war had picked their soldiers from non-smokers it would have been all over in just a few days--and didn't that show you that the tobacco demon was as bad as the rum demon?

Mrs. Leonard Wales was not only bitter about tobacco but about any help at all. She said our hard storms of that winter had been caused by the general hatred in Europe which created evil waves of malignity; so let 'em shoot each other till they got sense enough to dwell together in love and amity--only we shouldn't prolong the war by sending 'em soup and cigarettes, and so on. Her idea seemed to be that if Red Gap would just stand firm in the matter the war would die a natural death. Still, if a bazaar was really going to be held, she would consent to pose in a tableau if they insisted on it, and mebbe she could thus inject into the evil atmosphere of Europe some of the peace and good will that sets the United States apart from other nations.

Trust Cora Wales not to overlook a bet like that. She's a tall, sandy-haired party, with very extravagant contours, and the thing she loves best on earth is to get under a pasteboard crown, with gilt stars on it, and drape herself in the flag of her country, with one fat arm bare, while Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and the rest is gathered about and looking up to her for protection. Mebbe she don't look so bad as the Goddess of Liberty on a float in the middle of one of our wide streets when the Chamber of Commerce is giving a Greater Red Gap pageant; but take her in a hall, where you set close up to the platform, and she looks more like our boasted liberty has degenerated into license, or something like that. Anyway, the committee had to promise her she could do something in her flag and crown and talcum powder, because they knew she'd knock the show if they didn't.

This reminded 'em they had to have a program of entertainment; so they got me on the committee with the other Mes-dames to think up things, me always being an easy mark. I find out right off that we're a lot of foreigners and you got to be darned careful not to hurt anybody's feelings. Little Bertha Lehman's pa would let her be a state--Colorado or Nebraska, or something--but he wouldn't let her sing unless it would be a German song in the original; and Hobbs, the English baker, said his Tillie would have to sing "Britannia Rules the Waves," or nothing; and two or three others said what they would and wouldn't do, and it looked like Red Gap itself was going to be dug up into trenches. I had to get little Magnesia Waterman, daughter of the coons that work in the U.S. Grill, to do the main singing. She seemed to be about the only American child soprano we had. She sings right well for a kid, mostly these sad songs about heaven; but we picked out a good live one for her that seemed to be neutral.

It was delicate work, let me tell you, turning down folks that wanted to sing patriotic songs or recite war poetry that would be sure to start something, with Professor Gluckstein wishing to get up and tell how the cowardly British had left the crew of a German submarine to perish after shooting it up when it was only trying to sink their cruiser by fair and lawful methods; and Henry Lehman wanting to read a piece from a German newspaper about how the United States was a nation of vile money-grubbers that would sell ammunition to the enemy just because they had the ships to take it away, and wouldn't sell a dollar's worth to the Fatherland, showing we had been bought up by British gold--and so on.

But I kept neutral. I even turned down an Englishman named Ruggles, that keeps the U.S. Grill and is well thought of, though he swore that all he would do was to get off a few comical riddles, and such. He'd just got a new one that goes: "Why is an elephant like a corkscrew? Because there's a 'b' in both." I didn't see it at first, till he explained with hearty laughter--because there's a "b" in both--the word "both." See? Of course there's no sense to it. He admitted there wasn't, but said it was a jolly wheeze just the same. I might have took a chance with him, but he went on to say that he'd sent this wheeze to the brave lads in the trenches, along with a lot of cigars and tobacco, and had got about fifty postcards from 'em saying it was the funniest thing they'd heard since the war begun. And in a minute more he was explaining, with much feeling, just what low-down nation it was that started the war--it not being England, by any means--and I saw he wasn't to be trusted on his feet.

So I smoothed him down till he promised to donate all the lemonade for Aggie Tuttle, who was to be Rebekkah at the Well; and I smoothed Henry Lehman till he said he'd let his folks come and buy chances on things, even if the country was getting overrun by foreigners, with an Italian barber shop just opened in the same block with his sanitary shaving parlour; though--thank goodness--the Italian hadn't had much to do yet but play on a mandolin. And I smoothed Professor Gluckstein down till he agreed to furnish the music for us and let the war take care of itself.

The Prof's a good old scout when he ain't got his war bonnet on. He was darned near crying into his meerschaum pipe with a carved fat lady on it when I got through telling him about the poor soldiers in the wet and cold without a thing to smoke. He says: "You're right, madam; with Jake Frost in the trenches and no tobacco, all men should be brothers under their hides." And I got that printed in the _Recorder_ for a slogan, and other foreigners come into line; and things looked pretty good.

Also, I got Doc Sulloway, who happened to be in town, to promise he'd come and tell some funny anecdotes. He ain't a regular doctor--he just took it up; a guy with long black curls and a big moustache and a big hat and diamond pin, that goes round selling Indian Snake Oil off a wagon. Doc said he'd have his musician, Ed Bemis, come, too. He said Ed was known far and wide as the world's challenge cornetist. I says all right, if he'll play something neutral; and Doc says he'll play "Listen to the Mocking Bird," with variations, and play it so swell you'll think you're perched right up in the treetops listening to Nature's own feathered songsters.

That about made up my show, including, of course, the Spanish dance by Beryl Mae Macomber. Red Gap always expects that and Beryl Mae never disappoints 'em--makes no difference what the occasion is. Mebbe it's an Evening with Shakespeare, or the Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, or that Oratorio by Elijah somebody, but Beryl Mae is right there with her girlish young beauty and her tambourine. You see, I didn't want it a long show--just enough to make the two-bits admission seem a little short of robbery. Our real graft, of course, was to be where the young society débutantes and heiresses in charge of the booths would wheedle money out of the dazed throng for chances on the junk that would be donated.

Well, about three days before the show I went up to Masonic Hall to see about the stage decorations, and I was waiting while some one went down to the Turf Exchange to get the key off Tim Mahoney, the janitor--Tim had lately had to do janitor work for a B'nai B'rith lodge that was holding meetings there, and it had made him gloomy and dissolute--and, while I was waiting, who should come tripping along but Egbert Floud, all sunned up like a man that knows the world is his oyster and every month's got an "r" in it. Usually he's a kind of sad, meek coot, looking neglected and put upon; but now he was actually giggling to himself as he come up the stairs two at a time.

"Well, Old-Timer, what has took the droop out of your face?" I ask him.

"Why," he says, twinkling all over the place, "I'm aiming to keep it a secret, but I don't mind hinting to an old friend that my part of the evening's entertainment is going to be so good it'll make the whole show top-heavy. Them ladies said they'd rely on me to think up something novel, and I said I would if I could, and I did--that's all. I'd seen enough of these shows where you ladies pike along with pincushions and fancy lemonade and infants' wear--and mebbe a red plush chair, with gold legs, that plays 'Alice, Where Art Thou?' when a person sets down on it--with little girls speaking a few pieces about the flowers and lambs, and so on, and cleaning up about eleven-twenty-nine on the evening's revel--or it would be that, only you find you forgot to pay the Golden Rule Cash Store for the red-and-blue bunting, and they're howling for their money like a wild-cat. Yes, sir; that's been the way of it with woman at the helium. I wouldn't wish to be a Belgian at all under present circumstances; but if I did have to be one I'd hate to think my regular meals was depending on any crooked work you ladies has done up to date."

"You'd cheer me strangely," I says, "only I been a diligent reader of history, and somehow I can't just recall your name being connected up with any cataclysms of finance. I don't remember you ever starting one of these here panics--or stopping one, for that matter. I did hear that you'd had your pocket picked down to the San Francisco Fair."

I was prodding him along, understand, so he'd flare up and tell me what his secret enterprise was that would make women's operations look silly and feminine. I seen his eyes kind of glisten when I said this about him being touched.

"That's right," he says. "Some lad nicked me for my roll and my return ticket, and my gold watch and chain, and my horseshoe scarfpin with the diamonds in it."

"You stood a lot of pawing over," I says, "for a man that's the keen financial genius you tell about being. This lad must of been a new hand at it. Likely he'd took lessons from a correspondence school. At least, with you standing tied and blinded that way, a good professional one would have tried for your gold tooth--or, anyway, your collar button. I see your secret though," I go on as sarcastically as possible: "You got the lad's address and you're going to have him here Saturday night to glide among the throng and ply his evil trade. Am I right or wrong?"

"You are not," he says. "I never thought of that. But I won't say you ain't warm in your guess. Yes, you certainly are warm, because what I'm going to do is just as dastardly, without being so darned illegal, except to an extent."

Well, it was very exasperating, but that was all I could get out of him. When I ask for details he just clams up.

"But, mark my words," says the old smarty, "I'll show you it takes brains in addition to woman's wiles and artwork to make a decent clean-up in this little one-cylinder town."

"If you just had a little more self-confidence," I says, "you might of gone to the top; lack of faith in yourself is all that's kept you back. Too bad!"

"All right for you to kid me," he says; "but I'd be almost willing to give you two dollars for every dollar that goes out of this hall Saturday night."

Well, it was kind of pathetic and disgusting the way this poor old dub was leaning on his certainty; so I let him alone and went on about my work, thinking mebbe he really had framed up something crooked that would bring at least a few dollars to the cause.

Every time I met him for the next three days after that he'd be so puffed up, like a toad, with importance and low remarks about woman that, at last, I just ignored him, pretending I hadn't the least curiosity about his evil secret. It hurt his feelings when I quit pestering him about it, but he'd been outraging mine right along; so we split even.

He'd had a good-sized room just down the hall turned over to him, and a lot of stuff of some kind carried in there in the night, and men working, with the door locked all the time; so I and the other ladies went calmly on about our own business, decorating the main hall with the flags of all nations, fixing up the platform and the booths very pretty, and giving Mr. Smarty Egbert Floud nothing but haughty glances about his hidden novelty. Even when his men was hammering away in there at their work he'd have something hung over the keyhole--as insulting to us as only a man can be.

Saturday night come and we had a good crowd. Cousin Egbert was after me the minute I got my things off to come and see his dastardly secret; but I had my revenge. I told him I had no curiosity about it and was going to be awful busy with my show, but I'd try as a personal favour to give him a look over before I went home. Yes, sir; I just turned him down with one superior look, and got my curtains slid back on Mrs. Leonard Wales, dressed up like a superdreadnought in a naval parade and surrounded by every little girl in town that had a white dress. They wasn't states this time, but Columbia's Choicest Heritage, with a second line on the program saying, "Future Buds and Débutantes From Society's Home Galleries." It was a line we found under some babies' photos on the society page of a great newspaper printed in New York City. Professor Gluckstein and his son Rudolph played the "Star-Spangled Banner" on the piano and fiddle during this feature.

Then little Magnesia Waterman, dressed to represent the Queen of Sheba, come forward and sung the song we'd picked out for her, with the people joining in the chorus:

We're for you, Woodrow Wilson,
One Hundred Million Strong!
We put you in the White House
And we know you can't do wrong.

It was very successful, barring hisses from all the Germans and English present; but they was soon hushed up. Then Doc Sulloway come out and told some funny anecdotes about two Irishmen named Pat and Mike, lately landed in this country and looking for work, and imitated two cats in a backyard, and drawing a glass of soda water, and sawing a plank in two; and winding up with the announcement that he had donated a dozen bottles of the great Indian Snake Oil Remedy for man and beast that had been imparted to him in secret by old Rumpatunk, the celebrated medicine man, who is supposed to have had it from the Great Spirit; and Ed Bemis, the World's Challenge Cornetist, entertained one and all; and Beryl Mae done her Spanish dance that I'd last seen her give at the Queen Esther Cantata in the M.E. Church. And that was the end of the show; just enough to start 'em buying things at the booths.

At least, we thought it would be. But what does a lot of the crowd do, after looking round a little, but drift out into the hall and down to this room where Cousin Egbert had his foul enterprise, whatever it was. I didn't know yet, having held aloof, as you might say, owing to the old hound's offensive manner. But I had heard three or four parties kind of gasping to each other, had they seen what that Egbert Floud was doing in the other room?--with looks of horror and delight on their faces. That made me feel more superior than ever to the old smarty; so I didn't go near the place yet, but herded people back to the raffles wherever I could.

The first thing was Lon Price's corner lot, for which a hundred chances had been sold. Lon had a blueprint showing the very lot; also a picture of a choice dwelling or bungalow, like the one he has painted on the drop curtain of Knapp's Opera House, under the line, "Price's Addition to Red Gap; Big Lots, Little Payments." It's a very fancy house with porches and bay windows and towers and front steps, and everything, painted blue and green and yellow; and a blond lady in a purple gown, with two golden-haired tots at her side, is waving good-bye to a tall, handsome man with brown whiskers as he hurries out to the waiting street car--though the car line ain't built out there yet by any means.

However, Lon got up and said it was a Paradise on earth, a Heaven of Homes; that in future he would sell lots there to any native Belgian at a 20 per cent. discount; and he hoped the lucky winner of this lot would at once erect a handsome and commodious mansion on it, such as the artist had here depicted; and it would be only nine blocks from the swell little Carnegie Library when that, also, had been built, the plans for it now being in his office safe.

Quite a few of the crowd had stayed for this, and they cheered Lon and voted that little Magnesia Waterman was honest enough to draw the numbers out of a hat. They was then drawn and read by Lon in an exciting silence--except for Mrs. Leonard Wales, who was breathing heavily and talking to herself after each number. She and Leonard had took a chance for a dollar and everybody there knew it by now. She was dead sure they would get the lot. She kept telling people so, right and left. She said they was bound to get it if the drawing was honest. As near as I could make out, she'd been taking a course of lessons from a professor in Chicago about how to control your destiny by the psychic force that dwells within you. It seems all you got to do is to will things to come your way and they have to come. No way out of it. You step on this here psychic gas and get what you ask for.

"I already see our little home," says Mrs. Wales in a hoarse whisper. "I see it objectively. It is mine. I claim it out of the boundless all-good. I have put myself in the correct mental attitude of reception; I am holding to the perfect All. My own will come to me."

And so on, till parties round her begun to get nervous. Yes, sir; she kept this stuff going in low, tense tones till she had every one in hearing buffaloed; they was ready to give her the lot right there and tear up their own tickets. She was like a crapshooter when he keeps calling to the dice: "Come, seven--come on, come on!" All right for the psychics, but that's what she reminded me of.

And in just another minute everybody there thought she'd cheated by taking these here lessons that she got from Chicago for twelve dollars; for you can believe it or not but her number won the lot. Yes, sir; thirty-three took the deed and Lon filled in her name on it right there. Many a cold look was shot at her as she rushed over to embrace her husband, a big lump of a man that's all right as far up as his Adam's apple, and has been clerking in the Owl Cigar Store ever since he can remember. He tells her she is certainly a wonder and she calls him a silly boy; says it's just a power she has developed through concentration, and now she must claim from the all-good a dear little home of seven rooms and bath, to be built on this lot; and she knows it will come if she goes into the silence and demands it. Say! People with any valuables on 'em begun to edge off, not knowing just how this strange power of hers might work.

Then I look round and see the other booths ain't creating near the excitement they had ought to be, only a few here and there taking two-bit chances on things if Mrs. Wales ain't going in on 'em, too; several of the most attractive booths was plumb deserted, with the girls in charge looking mad or chagrined, as you might say. So I remember this hidden evil of Egbert Floud's and that the crowd has gone there; and while I'm deciding to give in and gratify my morbid curiosity, here comes Cousin Egbert himself, romping along in his dinner-jacket suit and tan shoes, like a wild mustang.

"What was I telling you?" he demands. "Didn't I tell you the rest of this show was going to die standing up? Yes, sir; she's going to pass out on her feet." And he waved a sneering arm round at the deserted booths. "What does parties want of this truck when they can come down to my joint and get real entertainment for their money? Why, they're breaking their ankles now to get in there!"

It sure looked like he was right for once in his life; so I says:

"What is it you've done?"

"Simple enough," says he, "to a thinking man. It comes to me like a flash or inspiration, or something, from being down to that fair in San Francisco, California. Yes, sir; they had a deadfall there, with every kind of vice rampant that has ever been legalized any place, and several kinds that ain't ever been; they done everything, from strong-arm work to short changing, and they was getting by with it by reason of calling it Ye Olde Tyme Mining Camp of '49, or something poetical like that. That was where I got nicked for my roll, in addition to about fifty I lost at a crooked wheel. I think the workers was mostly ex-convicts, and not so darned ex- at that. Anyway, their stuff got too raw even for the managers of an exposition, so they had to close down in spite of their name. That's where I get my idee when these ladies said think up something novel and pleasing. Just come and see how I'm taking it off of 'em." And, with that, he grabs me by the arm and rushes me down to this joint of his.

At the side of the doorway he had two signs stuck up. One says, Ye Olde Tyme Saloone; and the other says, Ye Olde Tyme Gambling Denne. You could of pushed me over with one finger when I looked in. He'd drew the crowd, all right. I knew then that Aggie Tuttle might just as well close down her Rebekkah-at-the-Well dive, and that no one was going to take any more chances on pincushions and tidies and knitted bed slippers.

About a third of the crowd was edged up to the bar and keeping Louis Meyer and his father busy with drink orders, and the other two-thirds was huddled round a roulette layout across the room. They was wedged in so tight I couldn't see the table, but I could hear the little ball click when it slowed up, and the rattle of chips, and squeals from them that won, and hoarse mutters from the losers.

Cousin Egbert rubbed his hands and giggled, waiting for me to bedeck him with floral tributes.

"I suppose you got a crooked wheel," I says.

"Shucks, no!" says he. "I did think of it, but I'd of had to send out of town for one and they're a lot of trouble to put in, what with the electric wiring and all; and besides, the straightest roulette wheel ever made is crooked enough for any man of decent instincts. I don't begrudge 'em a little excitement for their money. I got these old bar fixings out of the Spilmer place that was being tore down, and we're charging two bits a drink for whatever, and that'll be a help; and it looks to me like you ladies would of thought you needed a man's brain in these shows long before this. Come on in and have a shot. I'll buy."

So we squeezed in and had one. It was an old-time saloon, all right--that is, fairly old; about 1889, with a brass foot rail, and back of the bar a stuffed eagle and a cash register. A gang of ladies was taking claret lemonades and saying how delightfully Bohemian it all was; and Miss Metta Bigler, that gives lessons in oil painting and burnt wood, said it brought back very forcibly to her the Latin Quarter of Chicago, where she finished her art course. Henrietta Templeton Price, with one foot on the railing, was shaking dice with three other prominent society matrons for the next round, and saying she had always been a Bohemian at heart, only you couldn't go very far in a small town like this without causing unfavourable comment among a certain element.

It was a merry scene, with the cash register playing like the Swiss Family Bellringers. Even the new Episcopalian minister come along, with old Proctor Knapp, and read the signs and said they was undeniably quaint, and took a slug of rye and said it was undeniably delightful; though old Proctor roared like a maddened bull when he found what the price was. I guess you can be an Episcopalian one without its interfering much with man's natural habits and innocent recreations. Then he went over and lost a two-bit piece on the double-o, and laughed heartily over the occurrence, saying it was undeniably piquant with old Proctor plunging ten cents on the red and losing it quick, and saying a fool and his money was soon parted--yes, and I wish I had as much money as that old crook ain't foolish; but no matter.

Beryl Mae Macomber was aiding the Belgians by running out in the big room to drum up the stragglers. She was now being Little Nugget, the Miners' Pet; and when she wasn't chasing in easy money she'd loll at one end of the bar with a leer on her flowerlike features to entice honest workingmen in to lose their all at the gaming tables. There was chuck-a-luck and a crap game going, and going every minute, too, with Cousin Egbert trying to start three-card monte at another table--only they all seemed wise to that. Even the little innocent children give him the laugh.

I went over to the roulette table and lost a few dollars, not being able to stick long, because other women would keep goring me with their elbows. Yes, sir; that layout was ringed with women four deep. All that the men could do was stand on the outside and pass over their loose silver to the fair ones. Sure! Women are the only real natural-born gamblers in the world. Take a man that seems to be one and it's only because he's got a big streak of woman in him, even if it don't show any other way. Men, of course, will gamble for the fun of it; but it ain't ever funny to a woman, not even when she wins. It brings out the natural wolf in her like nothing else does. It was being proved this night all you'd want to see anything proved. If the men got near enough and won a bet they'd think it was a good joke and stick round till they lost it. Not so my own sex. Every last one of 'em saw herself growing rich on Cousin Egbert's money--and let the Belgians look out for themselves.

Mrs. Tracy Bangs, for instance, fought her way out of the mob, looking as wild as any person in a crazy house, choking twenty-eight dollars to death in her two fists that she win off two bits. She crowds this onto Tracy and makes him swear by the sacred memory of his mother that he will positively not give her back a cent of it to gamble with if the fever comes on her again--not even if she begs him to on her bended knees. And fifteen minutes later the poor little shark nearly has hysterics because Tracy won't give her back just five of it to gamble again with. Sure! A very feminine woman she is.

Tracy is a pretty good little sport himself. He says, No, and that'll be all, please, not only on account of the sacred memory of his mother but because the poor Belgians has got to catch it going if they don't catch it coming; and he's beat it out to a booth and bought the twenty-five-dollar gold clock with chimes, with the other three dollars going for the dozen bottles of Snake Oil and the twenty street-car tickets.

And now let there be no further words about it, but there was when she hears this horrible disclosure--lots of words, and the brute won't even give her the street-car tickets, which she could play in for a dollar, and she has to go to the retiring room to bathe her temples, and treats Tracy all the rest of the evening like a crippled stepchild, thinking of all she could of won if he hadn't acted like a snake in the grass toward her!

Right after this Mrs. Leonard Wales, in her flag and powder, begun to stick up out of the scene, though not risking any money as yet. She'd just stand there like one petrified while cash was being paid in and out, keeping away about three women of regular size that would like to get their silver down. I caught the gleam in her eye, and the way she drawed in her breath when the lucky number was called out, kind of shrinking her upper lip every time in a bloodthirsty manner. Yes, sir; in the presence of actual money that dame reminded me of the great saber-toothed tiger that you see terrible pictures of in the animal books.

Pretty soon she mowed down a lot of her sister gamblers and got out to where Leonard was standing, to tell him all about how she'd have won a lot of money if she'd only put some chips down at the right time, the way she would of done if she'd had any; and Leonard said what a shame! And they drifted into a corner, talking low. I bet she was asking him if she couldn't make a claim to these here bets she'd won in her mind, and if this wasn't the magic time to get the little home or bungalow on the new lot she'd won by finding out from the Chicago professor how to mould her destiny.

Then I lose track of the two for a minute, because Judge Ballard comes in escorting his sister from South Carolina, that's visiting them, and invites every one to take something in her honour. She was a frail little old lady, very old-fashioned indeed, with white hair built up in a waterfall and curls over both ears, and a flowered silk dress that I bet was made in Civil War times, and black lace mitts. Say! She looked like one of the ladies that would of been setting in the front of a box at Ford's Theatre the night President Lincoln was shot up!

She seemed a mite rattled when she found herself in a common barroom, having failed to read Cousin Egbert's undeniably quaint signs; but the Judge introduced her to some that hadn't met her yet, and when he asked her what her refreshment would be she said in a very brazen way that she would take a drop of anisette cordial. Louis Meyer says they ain't keeping that, and she says, Oh, dear! she's too old-fashioned! So Cousin Egbert says, why, then she should take an old-fashioned cocktail, which she does and sips it with no sign of relish. Then she says she will help the cause by wagering a coin on yonder game of chance.

The Judge paws out a place for her and I go along to watch. She pries open a bead reticule that my mother had one like and gets out a knitted silk purse, and takes a five-dollar gold piece into her little bony white fingers and drops it on a number, and says: "Now that is well over!" But it wasn't over. There was excitement right off, because, outside of some silver dollars I'd lost myself, I hadn't seen anything bigger than a two-bit piece played there that night. Right over my shoulder I heard heavy breathing and I didn't have to turn round to know it was Cora Wales. When the ball slowed up she quit breathing entirely till it settled.

It must of been a horrible strain on her, for the man was raking in all the little bets and leaving the five-dollar one that win. Say! That woman gripped an arm of mine till I thought it was caught in machinery of some kind! And Mrs. Doc Martingale, that she gripped on the other side, let out a yell of agony. But that wasn't the worst of Cora Wales' torture. No, sir! She had to stand there and watch this little old-fashioned sport from South Carolina refuse the money!

"But I can't accept it from you good people," says she in her thin little voice. "I intended to help the cause of those poor sufferers, and to profit by the mere inadvertence of your toy there would be unspeakable--really no!"

And she pushed back the five and the hundred and seventy-five that the dealer had counted out for her, dusted her little fingers with a little lace handkerchief smelling of lavender, and asked the Judge to show her a game that wasn't so noisy.

I guess Cora Wales was lost from that moment. She had Len over in a corner again, telling him how easy it was to win, and how this poor demented creature had left all hers there because Judge Ballard probably didn't want to create a scene by making her take it; and mustn't they have a lot of trouble looking after the weak-minded thing all the time! And I could hear her say if one person could do it another could, especially if they had learned how to get in tune with the Infinite. Len says all right, how much does she want to risk? And that scares her plumb stiff again, in spite of her uncanny powers. She says it wouldn't be right to risk one cent unless she could be sure the number was going to win.

Of course if you made your claim on the Universal, your own was bound to come to you; still, you couldn't be so sure as you ought to be with a roulette wheel, because several times the ball had gone into numbers that she wasn't holding for with her psychic grip, and the uncertainty was killing her; and why didn't he say something to help her, instead of standing there silent and letting their little home slip from her grasp?

Cousin Egbert comes up just then, still happy and puffed up; so I put him wise to this Wales conspiracy against his game.

"Mebbe you can win back that lot from her," I says, "and raffle it over again for the fund. She's getting worked up to where she'll take a chance."

"Good work!" says he. "I'll approach her in the matter."

So over he goes and tries to interest her in the dice games; but no, she thinks dice is low and a mere coloured person's game. So then he says to set down to the card table and play this here Canfield solitaire; she's to be paid five dollars for every card she gets up and a whole thousand if she gets 'em all up. That listens good to her till she finds she has to give fifty-two dollars for the deck first. She says she knew there must be some catch about it. Still, she tries out a couple of deals just to see what would happen, and on the first she would have won thirteen dollars and on the second eight dollars. She figures then that by all moral rights Cousin Egbert owes her twenty-one dollars, and at least eight dollars to a certainty, because she was really playing for money the second time and merely forgot to mention it to him.

And while they sort of squabble about this, with Cousin Egbert very pig-headed or adamant, who should come in but this Sandy Sawtelle, that's now sobbing out his heart in song down there; and with him is Buck Devine. It seems they been looking for a game, and they give squeals of joy when they see this one. In just two minutes Sandy is collecting thirty-five dollars for one that he had carefully placed on No. 11. He gives a glad shout at this, and Leonard Wales and lady move over to see what it's all about. Sandy is neatly stacking his red chips and plays No. 11 once more, but No. 22 comes up.

"Gee!" says Sandy. "I forgot. Twenty-two, of course, and likewise thirty-three."

So he now puts dollar bets on all three numbers, and after a couple more turns he's collecting on 33, and the next time 22 comes again. He don't hardly have time to stack his chips, they come so fast; and then it's No. 11 once more, amid rising excitement from all present. Cora Wales is panting like the Dying Gamekeeper I once saw in the Eden Musée in New York City. Sandy quits now for a moment.

"Let every man, woman, and child, come one, come all, across the room and crook the convivial elbow on my ill-gotten gains!" he calls out.

So everybody orders something; Tim Mahoney going in behind the bar to help out. Even Cora Wales come over when she understood no expense was attached to so doing, though taking a plain lemonade, because she said alcohol would get one's vibrations all fussed up, or something like that.

Cousin Egbert was still chipper after this reverse, though it had swept away about all he was to the good up to that time.

"Three rousing cheers!" says he. "And remember the little ball still rolls for any sport that thinks he can Dutch up the game!"

While this drink is going on amid the general glad feeling that always prevails when some spendthrift has ordered for the house, Leonard Wales gets Buck Devine to one side and says how did Sandy do it? So Buck tells him and Cora that Sandy took eleven stitches in Jerry's hide yesterday afternoon and he was playing this hunch, which he had reason to feel was a first-class one.

"If I could only feel it was a cosmic certainty--" says Cora.

"Oh, she's cosmic, all right!" says Buck. "I never seen anything cosmicker. Look what she's done already, and Sandy only begun! Just watch him! He'll cosmic this here game to a standstill. He'll have Sour Dough there touching him for two-bits breakfast money--see if he don't."

"But eleven came only twice," says the conservative Cora.

"Sure! But did you notice Nos. 22 and 33?" says Buck. "You got to humour any good hunch to a certain extent, cosmic or no cosmic."

"I see," says Cora with gleaming eyes; "and No. 33 is not only what drew our beautiful building lot but it is also the precise number of my years on the earth plane."

Cousin Egbert overheard this and snorted like no gentleman had ought to, even in the lowest gambling den.

"Thirty-three!" says he to me. "Did you hear the big cheat? Say! No gambling house on earth would have the nerve to put her right age on a wheel! The chances is ruinous enough now without running 'em up to forty-eight or so. I bet that's about what you'd find if you was to tooth her."

Sandy has now gone back, followed by the crowd, and wins another bet on No. 11. This is too much for Cora's Standard Oil instincts. She never trusts Leonard with any money, but she goes over into a corner, hikes the flag of her country up over one red stocking for a minute, and comes back with a two-dollar bill, which she splits on 22 and 33; and when 33 wins she's mad clean through because 22 didn't also win, and she's wasted a whole dollar, like throwing it into the Atlantic Ocean.

"Too bad, Pettie!" says Leonard, who was crowded in by her. "But you mustn't expect to have all the luck"--which is about the height of Leonard's mental reach.

"It was not luck; it was simple lack of faith," says Cora. "I put myself in tune with the Infinite and make my claim upon the all-good--and then I waver. The loss of that dollar was a punishment to me."

Now she stakes a dollar on No. 33 alone, and when it comes double-o she cries out that the man had leaned his hand on the edge of the table while the ball was rolling and thereby mushed up her cosmic vibrations, even if he didn't do something a good deal more crooked. Then she switches to No. 22, and that wins.

She now gets suspicious of the chips and has 'em turned into real money, which she stuffs into her consort's pockets for the time being, all but two dollars that go on Nos. 11 and 33. And No. 22 comes up again. She nearly fainted and didn't recover in time to get anything down for the next roll--and I'm darned if 11 don't show! She turns savagely on her husband at this. The poor hulk only says:

"But, Pettie, you're playing the game--I ain't."

She replies bitterly:

"Oh, ain't that just like a man! I knew you were going to say that!"--and seemed to think she had him well licked.

Then the single-o come. She says:

"Oh, dear! It seems that, even with the higher consciousness, one can't be always certain of one's numbers at this dreadful game."

And while she was further reproaching her husband, taking time to do it good and keeping one very damp dollar safe in her hand, what comes up but old 33 again!