a serio-comedy of light fingers and heavy boots
zeke scraggs had been working out on the dry patch, where it was a long ways between drinks, and lukewarm water from a canteen no particular comfort. he complained, and i produced a discovery in the shape of a tin-foil-wrapped package of chewing-gum marked “lily sweet.”
“if you chew a piece of that when you’re dry, scraggy,” i said, “it will stave off thirst for some time.”
mr. scraggs received the offering in his large palm, and poked it with the forefinger of his other hand.
“yaas,” he said; “y-a-a-s. but it’s dangerous.”
215 “dangerous?”
“horrible. you don’t ketch me minglin’ myself with no ‘lily sweets.’ i consider the lily of the field how she grows. you wouldn’t believe that anything that sounds so innercent could be the tee-total ruin of a large, dark-complected tin-horn, with a pair of musstaches like injun-polished buffler horns, would you?”
like almost anybody else would have done, i said i wouldn’t.
“well, it was,” said zeke. “if you could see that gam, and compare him to this here package of choon’-gum, you wouldn’t ever guess that either one could do much of anything to t’other; yet i can a tale relate of that combination that would make each particler hair stand up-ended, like the squills of the frightful porkypine.”
“rats!” said i, being but a youth.
“you got any hairs that’s particler by nature?216 no? well, then, i’ll spread this terrific osculation of the connimgulated forces of nature befo’ you, as charley says. my kind of narrative is the plain, unvarnished tale. folks that tell a varnished tale is apt to sit on the varnish before it’s dry, and they’ll stick to it, come cold fact or red-hot argyment; whilst i’m always willin’ to prune, cross-harrer, revise or alter accordin’ to my victim’s feelin’s. that is, of course, if they go to corner me, which, between gentlemen, is a low-cut outrage. but this business about the gam is dead straight. i had relinquished all amusements and was livin’ quiet in order to save money, before i got acquainted with the facts.
“first place, comes a female missionary out to the ranch, and she was a corkin’ fine-lookin’ nice young woman, too, who tackled me on the subject of chewin’ terbackker. she had me all tangled up in my own rope and double217 left-sided front and back before the clock struck one.
“i tried to arger that nobody wouldn’t care whether i chewed terbackker or grass, so long’s i was happy and doin’ no harm. but that turned out not to be true. she said so.
“then i tried to reach her womanly compassion by tearfully expoundin’ how i’d miss my cut of plug a day; i never touched her. hers was a new religion. it had a different figger on the back from any i’d had dealt to me before. seems it weren’t a sin to chew, but it was the control i’d lost over myself that put me in the hole. i had just to git command of my mind and everything would come at me, like a north ca’lina town’s nigger’s dogs chasin’ a three-legged cat up an alley.
“‘but ma’am,’ say i, ‘i’ve knocked off before; an’, as for control over my mind, durin’ the hull spell me an’ star plug was separated,218 friends had to hold me to prevent me goin’ in an’ robbin’ my own grip. control of my mind,’ says i, fightin’ noble, ‘why, you could ’a’ sicked a burglar on me, an’ he couldn’t have found no such thing on my person. i didn’t have no mind. i walked up an’ down, day and night, in that man’s town, like a ravin’ maniac stupefied by his halloocinashuns. all that passed beneath my shinin’ dome was: “oh for a chew! oh for a chew! oh for a choo-choo-choo-choo! whoeep! brakes!” and when the cars went over the switch or a cayuse cantered up, they said: “terbackker, terbackker, terbackker,” to my famished ears. all i wished was that the houses was built of plug, and all i thought of was that i could get earnest with an ax. that’s all i could think—all!’
“‘but you must use the control!’ says she, eager.
“‘i will not use terbackker,’ says little zekey scraggs.” page 219
“‘you mean, ma’am,’ i says, ‘that i must219 seek out a quiet place, clench my fists, grind my teeth to a feather-edge and strain my suspenders to the bustin’ point in one calamitous effort to think i’m not thinking?’
“‘precisely!’ says she, victorious. ‘you western men have such a ready grip on essentials that it is a delight to be your guide.’
“‘well, uncle tom and the dogs a-bitin’ him!’ says i to myself. ‘lead on!’ i took off my hat aloud and bowed to within two of my noses to the ground. ‘to be able to foller so gentle and able a guide straight to perdition is a joy,’ says i. ‘i quit the class of roominants for two weeks. i will not use terbackker. no!’ says little zekey scraggs. ‘there’s my hand on it, ma’am.’
“and she just turned pink with joy. she was an awful nice little gal. only she was so jam-full of knowledge that it was hard for her to understand things.
“having put up this job on myself, i went220 to our storekeep’ and called for my time. i knew i’d need bright lights and excitement for a while. i begun to feel already that a chew wouldn’t go bad.
“there was the storekeep’ gazin’ fixedly at a book; his lips was movin’, but he seemed in a kind of rapture. when i hollered to him, he jumped all over and barked at me like a dog. at the same time he grabbed up a cigareet, stuck it in his mouth, took it out, looked at it and fired it down again.
“a light broke on me. ‘so she got you, too?’ says i.
“‘hooppitty hoppitty hippitty yer-hoop!’ says he. ‘that’s just what she’s done! i’m three days out. not a smell of smoke in three days! my soul has gone away and won’t have any more truck with me. i don’t know who i am, nor why. i’ve been trying for an hour to find out how much three and221 two make. take your money and leave me to my fate.’
“with this picture in my mind i broke for town. half-way there i was chawin’ a latigo-strap like a wolf. when i hit the street, i jumped through the drug-store door.
“‘what you got for a man that’s quit chewin’?’ i gasps to the boss.
“‘franky frenchman’s fool-killer,’ says he—and with that he turns his head and expectorates satisfactorily into the spittoon.
“seeing him, i near died of a broken heart.
“‘the next crack will be at your expense,’ i told him. ‘you hike out somethin’ for my case,’ i says. he shoved me out a package, just like that.”
mr. scraggs poked my gift.
“just like that. i put the whole bizzee in my trap and chomped on it like a lion. i walked around the town, chompin’ on it. i222 waved my jaws till my face ached. seemed to me like i’d never done anythin’ in all my life but bite injy-rubber. and then i pushed madly for the first stud-poker game.
“when i got there, nothin’ was movin’. this here tin-horn i mention was polishing his muss-tache with both hands, whilst he talked to a few hangers-on.
“i became ashamed of that choon’-gum and i stuck it under the table, very sly and surreptishus. i felt like a man again.
“‘fire the engine up!’ says i. ‘gimme five stacks to practise on.’
“the gam hopped gleeful toward the table and give the drawer a yank. she stuck. he cussed and pulled harder. she came open with a jerk and a kind of a long, sticky s-m-aaa-ack, followed the strings of gray.
“the gam arose from where he’d sot on his backbone and looked at the drawer.
223 “‘we’re not doin’ any business to-day,’ says he, showing me my little eagle-bird.
“‘what’s happened to the trade?’ says i.
“he simply p’inted to the hunk of gum (which i had most unforchinit jammed ag’in’ the drawer).
“‘my wildest fancies have got exceeded,’ says he. ‘do you want to hear a weird and wilful tale of woe?’
“‘of course not,’ i says.
“‘all right,’ says he. ‘i’ll tell you.’
“‘well,’ says he, ‘here’s the way she come up. i’m a lost one in the wilderness out at a telegraph station. i see where i get my talents buried in a napkin made of sole-leather, hence i get handy with a deck of cards in front of the lookin’-glass. my work is so good after a while that i lose my whole salary to myself, and yet watchin’ careful all the time in the lookin’-glass. i’m fit to handle the224 steamboat trade, but i aims higher: i buy me a ticket to noo york and hunt up a place where they hew to the line, let the chips fall where they will.
“‘“what’s your noo box o’ tricks?” says the murphy that run the joint.
“‘“well,” says i, “nothin’ new, but the good old reliable line. the world is my oyster, as hamlet says, and i’ve got openers.”
“‘“h’m,” says he, makin’ a fat man’s shift in his chair and pushin’ his seegar into the other corner of his face. “i want you to understand this is a dead-straight game run here, my bucko—yet you look good—s’pose i’ve come in an’ laid thirty cents or so on the king, coppered. lift the joker out of that deck an’ le’s see what happens.”
“‘he threw me a pack and i riffled and boxed ’em.
“‘“why, you lose,” says i, much surprised as the king came out open on the turn.
225 “‘“and not so worse,” says he. “play on!”
“‘i slid ’em out of the box to the last card. “you only lost your footin’ once,” says he. “the way you beat my corner play was a little obvious. exercise your little finger till it’s soopler. you can handle a roll to-night. but mind this,” says he as he grunted himself on his feet, “this is a dead-straight house. if anybuddy ketches you bein’ technical, we jump you, from me to the cop on watch. you get five per cent.”
“‘well, sir, that was the loveliest little bower of rosebuds you ever smelt! checks was joolry. we didn’t have change for nothin’ below a fifty-dollar bill. our line of customers was these tur’ble knowin’ young men of the world, who’d stood the terrific experience of a college careerin’. they was a darin’ outfit. they was so fast they couldn’t help talk about the pace they was hittin’, and what they didn’t know about the game of faro226 was my business. it was like bein’ knocked down in the street by a strong man and have money pushed into your clothes. i did things at that table that never happened before in a civilized community. i was so youthful, you know, and it was a constant problem to me whether they’d stand for biting off the corner of a card to make things come my way.
“‘i run in rhinecaboos that ’ud make a heathen scandahonian farmer fall off his hay-wagon, but them men of the world simply contributed yallerbacks—oh, good old yallerbacks!—beautiful to the eye; soft to the touch; so encouragin’ to the feelin’s! i reckoned i’d buy the durned old western union an’ get even with the cuss who used to pound it to me from up the line—ouch! vanished dream! sweet vision stuck to earth by that con-cussed, snappy, stringy, bouncy, mud-colored foolish food fer flighty females you see before you!’
“at this p’int,” said mr. scraggs, “he shot227 his finger at my gum, breathin’ hard an’ glitterin’ his eyes.
“‘yes, sir!’ says he. ‘there lies the cause of my roon! and such a fiddlin’, triflin’ stuff to wreck a man!’ he got some of his breath back. ‘you orter ask “how?”’ says he, ‘and i reply, “by contractin’ the habit”’—‘not of gnawin’ it’—he adds hasty, ‘but steppin’ on it. here was i sittin’ on sunset clouds and floatin’ over beautiful scenery, till there comes a cold blast of the winds of chance, and from that moment my path in life was strewed with the discard from rosy lips. for two solid weeks i did nothin’ but scuff my feet or flag a shine-stand to get rid of the day’s gatherin’ of gum. them eye-talians used to grin in a way that made me want an open season on furriners, as i cantered up to ’em, smicky-smacky, smicky-smacky, trailin’ soft gray hairs behind me like a retired minister’s whiskers.
“‘they’d look up at the sky and make dago228 remarks, whilst they curried my feet with a brick, till the cold sweat of mortification melted my b’iled collar. and once a flap-doodle actor goat, with a red, white and blue hatband, got gay and told me not to use such naughty words about these tributes from the mouth of beauty. i swatted the air where he’d been when i started to hit him an’ he took me by most of my trousers and turned me ten somersaults. how was i to know he was honest mike, the deck hand, who chucked the villain over brooklyn bridge every night and saturday matinée?
“‘well, i’ll cut it short. no matter where i fled, the fiend pursued me. i went to the opery one night, to get my frazzled nerves soothed by the champion yelpers of the pack. for two solid hours i lived untroubled, not even worried by the show, as i couldn’t understand a word of it and nobuddy on the stage had complaints too deep to sing about;229 but comin’ out, me enemy waited on the edge of a step for me and i landed astride of a stout lady’s neck, beggin’ her pardon and fightin’ a half-dozen men for five minutes. when i explained, even the stout lady laughed.
“‘the boss at my joint cussed himself into asthma, wondering what the sticky stuff, tracked all over his new seven-dollar-a-yard carpet, was.
“‘but i ain’t goin’ to weary you with trifles. one day the boss tipped me off that there was a bunch of alum-eyes due that evenin’; he said they was fellers that had took the college course, but recovered, and that the bowlegged elephant song and dance that extracted money from our regulars would be looked upon with reproach by the new-comers. i got nervous. playin’ ag’in’ them little first-crow roosters had been bad practice. i soaked my hands in warm water and prepared230 as best i could, but when i saw that gang before me i knew why they was called alum-eyes. they puckered my soul up, my hands got too wet with sweat for business—you know your fingers has got to be not too dry, to slip, and not too wet, to stick, if you’re turnin’ out high-grade work.
“‘well, i was excited, yet it was a reel pleasure to be up against reel men.
“‘i had a habit of running my fingers over the rung of my chair, to keep ’em in right shape. ’twas a thing nobuddy could complain of, and the game just held on to its hat and flew. how much money you had was the limit, and to put my little bank on the other side of the river, quick, was the idea of the alum-eyes.
“‘i forgot everythin’. i was fair hollerin’ inside for joy. my buckers had a good square chance to catch me at it, if they could, and i231 was haulin’ money when—well, fortune had patted me on the back with one hand, while she got ready with a black-jack in the other. in my state of feelin’ i put a heel, a chewin’-gum-covered-heel, on the rung of that chair and took it off again, without noticin’. as the play stood, the outfit had me whipsawed. i drug my fingers over the rung of that chair, that chewin’-gum-covered-rung, without noticing; then i wiggled my fingers in a chinee ketch-as-ketch-can over the box and raised ’em with a playin’-card firmly stuck to each finger. then i noticed, yes; and everybody noticed. silence fell six foot deep. one of them alum-eyes says:
“‘“that may be magnifercent, but it ain’t hoyle.”
“‘and i excused myself by ducking under the table and jumping over the banisters.
“‘once on the street, i hoopled her for the232 corner. my play was to wait till the crowd went out, and then see the old man, who had a rubber-band on my roll.
“‘i thought i’d peek around the corner until all was clear, then rush the boss with my hard-luck game of talk, extract a little of the juice of the root of evil from him, then fold up my legs like a jack-rabbit and silently lift myself through the breeze, back to the sagebush—back to where the prairie-dog and the owl and the rattlesnake live in harmony together—never excepting the rattlesnake, so long’s there’s plenty of young dogs and owls.
“‘the game must have busted when i took the fence, for here come the bunch of alum-eyes right up the street. i had the curiosity to wait and hear what they was talkin’ about, as i had a corner to duck behind when they come close. well, i waited, and didn’t hear nothin’ i’d care to write home to mother. they made me so cussed mad, i overstayed my233 time. just when they got within range, i started to hop swiftly backwards. but i didn’t. no. my feet had grew fast to that sidewalk. seems the city had been mending the block pavement, as usual, and some horney-souled son of toil had spilt a square yard of coal-tar on the sidewalk. me to the middle of the coal-tar district, of course—you can chew coal-tar, you know; i’ve done it.
“‘so, as i remarked, i didn’t gracefully side-step. exactly not. i gave one yank and landed with my knees up in the air. them feet was riveted fast, you bet, and my joints just had to yield accordin’.
“‘“what is this we have?” said one alum-eye.
“‘there was a gas lamp on the corner. they knew me by my face.
“‘“are you going to deal flagstones with your feet?” asks one of them.
“‘let’s pull down the blinds. it was their234 whirl at the bat. they brought all the folks, includin’ the old man and tommy the cop.
“‘they yee-hooed on my feet till i had to holler for mercy. then they sat on the curb and rocked and hollered like the pack of fools they were. they tried to lift my shoulders up, but found that my coat had took a violent affection for the sidewalk, too. some of ’em didn’t even try for the curbstone then. they rolled around on the sidewalk and kicked their legs, whilst i frayed my vocal chords readin’ their customs and habits to ’em.
“‘but i was in a runnin’ noose; the harder i cussed at ’em, the worse they laughed.
“‘“ain’t he the slick one, though!” says the old man, holdin’ on to his stummick with both hands. “don’t do nothin’ more to him for a minute, boys, or the coroner’ll be sittin’ on me.”
“‘every time i gee-nashed my teeth an’ tried to reach ’em they waltzed on one leg and235 shrieked. there must ’a’ been nigh three hundred fools watchin’ and havin’ the time of their lives. little messenger-boys was there, the night-watchmen took a peep, ladies with a past improved a shinin’ present, the dago shoeblacks heard the racket and come runnin’ up and hollered, “choon-gum extract! ten a cent!”
“‘and there i lay, flat on my back, with my knees in the air, scart to move, because i couldn’t wiggle a finger without the crowd throwin’ a fit. oh, murder! le’s cut it! they unlaced my shoes and snaked me out of my coat, and instead of bein’ sad at them pathetical shoes and coat lying in the coal-tar, the boss fell over sideways and the rest was too feeble to stop me as i broke away. i made that block in two stocking-footed leps.
“‘i had a hundred or two in my pants. i bought three dollars’ worth of coat and shoes from a second-hand store for fifteen dollars236 and a promise that if anything happened i wouldn’t mention the shop to the police. then i come here, far from the gadding crowds, far from the lady with the developed jaw-swing, and i get—that.’
“here,” said mr. scraggs, “he p’inted to my chewin’-gum and wiped his white brow off with his white handkercher, and he says: ‘have we come to this?’
“i swallered hard and looked at him.
“‘have you such a thing as a plug of terbackker in your possession?’
“‘yes,’ says he, surprised. ‘i have.’
“‘well,’ says i, ‘ruther than to further add to your troubles, i’ll break my word to a lady—gimme that plug! we haven’t come to this—this has come to us.’
“so i explained, and he opened his stock exchange. i reckon he was right about the bad effects of chewin’-gum, too, or maybe what’s a medal winner in n’ york ain’t art237 west of the missouri. anyhow, you don’t hear me kickin’ about that nice missionary young lady. if i cared for joolry, i’d be wearin’ that tin-horn’s diamon’ chest protector right now. gum has different effects on different people. ’twas fatal to his constitooshun.”
