Book: Somewhere in Red Gap

H >> Harry Leon Wilson >> Somewhere in Red Gap




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!

It looked like hysterics then, especially when she noticed Buck Devine
helping pile Sandy's chips up in front of him till they looked like a
great old English castle, with towers and minarets, and so on, Sandy
having played his hunch strong and steady. She waited for another turn
that come nothing important to any of 'em; then she drew Leonard out and
made him take her for a glass of lemonade out where Aggie Tuttle was
being Rebekkah at the Well, because they charged two bits for it at the
bar and Aggie's was only a dime. The sale made forty cents Aggie had
took in on the evening.

Racing back to Ye Olde Tyme Gambling Denne, she gets another hard blow;
for Sandy has not only win another of his magic numbers but has bought
up the bar for the evening, inviting all hands to brim a cup at his
expense, whenever they crave it--nobody's money good but his; so Cora is
not only out what she would of made by following his play but the ten
cents cash she has paid Aggie Tuttle. She was not a woman to be trifled
with then. She took another lemonade because it was free, and made Len
take one that he didn't want. Then she draws three dollars from him and
covers the three numbers with reckless and noble sweeps of her powerful
arms. The game was on again.

Cousin Egbert by now was looking slightly disturbed, or _outre_, as the
French put it, but tries to conceal same under an air of sparkling
gayety, laughing freely at every little thing in a girlish or painful
manner.

"Yes," says he coquettishly; "that Sandy scoundrel is taking it fast out
of one pocket, but he's putting it right back into the other. The
wheel's loss is the bar's gain."

I looked over to size Sandy's chips and I could see four or five markers
that go a hundred apiece.

"I admire your roguish manner that don't fool any one," I says; "but if
we was to drink the half of Sandy's winnings, even at your robber
prices, we'd all be submerged to the periscope. It looks to me," I goes
on, "like the bazaar-robbing genius is not exclusively a male attribute
or tendency."

"How many of them knitted crawdabs you sold out there at your booths?"
he demands. "Not enough to buy a single Belgian a T-bone steak and fried
potatoes."

"Is that so, indeed?" I says. "Excuse me a minute. Standing here in the
blinding light of your triumph, I forgot a little matter of detail such
as our sex is always wasting its energies on."

So I call Sandy and Buck away from their Belgian atrocities and speak
sharply to 'em.

"You boys ought to be ashamed of yourselves," I says--"winning all that
money and then acting like old Gaspard the Miser in the Chimes of
Normandy! Can't you forget your natural avarice and loosen up some?"

"I bought the bar, didn't I?" asks Sandy. "I can't do no more, can I?"

"You can," I says. "Out in that big room is about eighteen tired maids
and matrons of Red Gap's most exclusive inner circles yawning their
heads off over goods, wares, and merchandise that no one will look at
while this sinful game is running. If you got a spark of manhood in you
go on out and trade a little with 'em, just to take the curse off your
depredations in here."

"Why, sure!" says Sandy. He goes back to the layout and loads Buck's
hat full of red and blue chips at one and two dollars each. "Go buy the
place clean," he says to Buck. "Do it good; don't leave a single object
of use or luxury. My instructions is sweeping, understand. And if
there's a harness booth there you order a solid gold collar for old
Jerry, heavily incrusted with jewels and his initials and mine
surrounded by a wreath. Also, send out a pint of wine for every one of
these here maids and matrons. Meantime, I shall stick here and keep an
eye on my large financial interests."

So Buck romps off on his joyous mission, singing a little ballad that
goes: "To hell with the man that works!" And Sandy moves quickly back to
the wheel.

I followed and found Cora barely surviving because she's lost nine of
her three-dollar bets while Sandy was away, leaving her only about a
hundred winner. Len was telling her to "be brave, Pettie!" and she was
saying it was entirely his fault that they hadn't already got their neat
little home; but she would have it before she left the place or know the
reason why.

It just did seem as if them three numbers had been resting while Sandy
was away talking to me. They begin to show up again the minute he
resumed his bets, and Cora was crowding onto the same with a rising
temperature. Yes, sir, it seemed downright uncanny or miraculous the way
one or the other of 'em showed up, with Sandy saying it was a shame to
take the money, and Cora saying it was a shame she had to bet on all
three numbers and get paid only on one.

Of course others was also crowding these numbers, though not so many as
you'd think, because every one said the run must be at an end, and
they'd be a fool to play 'em any farther; and them that did play 'em was
mostly making ten-cent bets to be on the safe side. Only Sandy and Cora
kept right on showing up one Egbert Floud as a party that had much to
learn about pulling off a good bazaar.

It's a sad tale. Cousin Egbert had to send out twice for more cash, Cora
Wales refusing to take his check on the Farmers and Merchants National
for hers. She said she was afraid there would be some catch about it. I
met Egbert out in the hall after the second time she'd made him send and
he'd lost much of his sparkle.

"I never thought it was right to strike a lady without cause," he says
bitterly; "but I'd certainly hate to trust myself with that frail out in
some lonely spot, like Price's Addition, where her screams couldn't be
heard."

"That's right," I says; "take it out on the poor woman that's trying to
win a nice bungalow with big sawed corners sticking out all over it,
when that cut-throat Sandy Sawtelle has win about twice as much! That
ain't the light of pure reason I had the right to expect from the Bazaar
King of Red Gap."

"That's neither here nor there," says he with petulance. "Sandy would
of been just as happy if he'd lost the whole eighteen dollars him and
Buck come in here with."

"Well," I warns him, "it looks to me like you'd have to apply them other
drastic methods you met with in this deadfall at the San Francisco
Fair--strong-arm work or medicine in the drinks of the winners, or
something like that--if you want to keep a mortgage off the old home. Of
course I won't crowd you for that two dollars you promised me for every
one that goes out of the hall. You can have any reasonable time you want
to pay that," I says.

"That's neither here nor there," he says. "Luck's got to turn. The wheel
ain't ever been made that could stand that strain much longer."

And here Luella Stultz comes up and says Mrs. Wales wants to know how
much she could bet all at once if she happened to want to. I could just
see Cora having a sharp pain in the heart like a knife thrust when she
thought what she would of win by betting ten dollars instead of one.
Cousin Egbert answers Luella quite viciously.

"Tell that dame the ceiling sets the limit now," says he; "but if that
ain't lofty enough I'll have a skylight sawed into it for her."

Then he goes over to watch, himself, being all ruined up by these
plungers. Leonard was saying: "Now don't be rash, Pettie!" And Pettie
was telling him it was his negative mind that had kept her from betting
five dollars every clip, and look what that would mean to their pile!

Cousin Egbert give 'em one look and says, right out loud, Leonard Wales
is the biggest ham that was ever smoked, and he'd like to meet him, man
to man, outside; then he goes off muttering that he can be pushed so
far, but in the excitement of the play no one pays the least attention
to him. A little later I see him all alone out in the hall again. He was
scrunched painfully up in a chair till he looked just like this here
French metal statue called _Lee Penser_, which in our language means
"The Thinker." I let him think, not having the heart to prong him again
so quick.

And the game goes merrily on, with Sandy collecting steadily on his
hunch and Cora Wales telling her husband the truth about himself every
time one of these three numbers didn't win; she exposed some very
distressing facts about his nature the time she put five apiece on the
three numbers and the single-o come up. It was a mad life, that last
hour, with a lot of other enraged ladies round the layout, some being
mad because they hadn't had money to play the hunch with, and others
because they hadn't had the nerve.

Then somebody found it was near midnight and the crowd begun to fall
away. Cousin Egbert strolls by and says don't quit on his account--that
they can stick there and play their hunch till the bad place freezes
over, for all he cares; and he goes over to the bar and takes a drink
all by himself, which in him is a sign of great mental disturbance.

Then, for about twenty minutes, I was chatting with the Mes-dames
Ballard and Price about what a grand success our part had been, owing to
Sandy acting the fool with Cousin Egbert's money, which the latter ain't
wise to yet. When I next notice the game a halt has been called by Cora
Wales. It seems the hunch has quit working. Neither of 'em has won a bet
for twenty minutes and Cora is calling the game crooked.

"It looks very, very queer," says she, "that our numbers should so
suddenly stop winning; very queer and suspicious indeed!" And she glared
at Cousin Egbert with rage and distrust splitting fifty-fifty in her
fevered eyes.

Cousin Egbert replied quickly, but he kind of sputtered and so couldn't
have been arrested for it.

"Oh, I've no doubt you can explain it very glibly," says Cora; "but it
seems very queer indeed to Leonard and I, especially coming at this
peculiar time, when our little home is almost within my grasp."

Cousin Egbert just walked off, though opening and shutting his hands in
a nervous way, like, in fancy free, he had her out on her own lot in
Price's Addition and was there abusing her fatally.

"Very well!" says Cora with great majesty. "He may evade giving me a
satisfactory explanation of this extraordinary change, but I shall
certainly not remain in this place and permit myself to be fleeced.
Here, darling!"

And she stuffs some loose silver into darling's last pocket that will
hold any more. He was already wadded with bills and sagging with coin,
till it didn't look like the same suit of clothes. Then she stood there
with a cynical smile and watched Sandy still playing his hunch, ten
dollars to a number, and never winning a bet.

"You poor dupe!" says she when Sandy himself finally got tired and quit.
"It's especially awkward," she adds, "because while we have saved enough
to start our little nook, it will have to be far less pretentious than I
was planning to make it while the game seemed to be played honestly."

Cousin Egbert gets this and says, as polite as a stinging lizard, that
he stands ready to give her a chance at any game she can think of, from
mumblety-peg up. He says if she'll turn him and Leonard loose in a
cellar that he'll give her fifty dollars for every one she's winner if
he don't have Len screaming for help inside of one minute--or make it
fifteen seconds. Len, who's about the size of a freight car, smiles kind
of sickish at this, and says he hopes there's no hard feelings among old
friends and lodge brothers; and Egbert says, Oh, no! It would just be in
the nature of a friendly contest, which he feels very much like having
one, since he can be pushed just so far; but Cora says gambling has
brutalized him.

Then she sees the cards on the table and asks again about this game
where you play cards with yourself and mebbe win a thousand dollars
cold. She wants to know if you actually get the thousand in cash, and
Egbert says:

"Sure! A thousand that any bank in town would accept at par."

She picks up the deck and almost falls, but thinks better of it.

"Could I play with my own cards?" she wants to know, looking suspicious
at these. Egbert says she sure can. "And in my own home?" asks Cora.

"Your own house or any place else," says Egbert, "and any hour of the
day or night. Just call me up when you feel lucky."

"We could embellish our little nook with many needful things," says
Cora. "A thousand dollars spent sensibly would do marvels." But after
fiddling a bit more with the cards she laid 'em down with a pitiful
sigh.

Cousin Egbert just looked at her, then looked away quick, as if he
couldn't stand it any more, and says: "War is certainly what that man
Sherman said it was."

Then he watches Sandy Sawtelle cashing in his chips and is kind of
figuring up his total losses; so I can't resist handing him another.

"I don't know what us Mes-dames would of done without your master mind,"
I says; "and yet I'd hate to be a Belgian with the tobacco habit and
have to depend on you to gratify it."

"Well," he answers, very mad, "I don't see so many of 'em getting
tobacco heart with the proceeds of your fancy truck out in them booths
either!"

"Don't you indeed?" I says, and just at the right moment, too. "Then you
better take another look or get your eyes fixed or something."

For just then Sandy stands up on a chair and says:

"Ladies and gents, a big pile of valuable presents is piled just at the
right of the main entrance as you go out, and I hope you will one and
all accept same with the welcome compliments of me and old Jerry, that I
had to take eleven stitches in the hide of. As you will pass out in an
orderly manner, let every lady help herself to two objects that attract
her, and every gent help himself to one object; and no crowding or
pulling I trust, because some of the objects would break, like the
moustache cup and saucer, or the drainpipe, with painted posies on it,
to hold your umbrels. Remember my words--every lady two objects and
every gent one only. There is also a new washboiler full of lemonade
that you can partake of at will, though I guess you won't want any--and
thanking you one and all!"

So they cheer Sandy like mad and beat it out to get first grab at the
plunder; and just as Cousin Egbert thinks he now knows the worst, in
comes the girls that had the booths, bringing all the chips Buck Devine
had paid 'em--two hundred and seventy-eight dollars' worth that Egbert
has to dig down for after he thinks all is over.

"Ain't it jolly," I says to him while he was writing another check on
the end of the bar. "This is the first time us ladies ever did clean out
every last object at a bazaar. Not a thing left; and I wish we'd got in
twice as much, because Sandy don't do things by halves when his money
comes easy from some poor dub that has thought highly of himself as a
thinker about money matters." He pretends not to hear me because of
signing his name very carefully to the check. "And what a sweet little
home you'll build for the Wales family!" I says. "I can see it now, all
ornamented up, and with one of these fancy bungalow names up over the
front gate--probably they'll call it The Breakers!"

But he wouldn't come back; so I left him surrounded by the wreck of his
former smartiness and went home. At the door where the treasures had
been massed not a solitary thing was left but a plush holder for a whisk
broom, with hand-painted pansies on the front; and I decided I could
live without that. Tim Mahoney was there, grouching round about having
to light up the hall next night for the B'nai B'rith; and I told him to
take it for himself. He already had six drawnwork doilies and a vanity
box with white and red powder in it.

As I go by the Hong Kong Quick Lunch, Sandy and three or four others is
up on stools; the Chinaman, cooking things behind the counter, is
wearing a lavender-striped silk dressing sacque and a lace boudoir cap
with pink ribbons in it. Yes; we'd all had a purple night of it!

Next day about noon I'm downtown and catch sight of Cousin Egbert
setting in the United States Grill having breakfast; so I feel mean
enough to go in and gloat over him some more. I think to find him all
madded up and mortified; but he's strangely cheerful for one who has
suffered. He was bearing up so wonderful that I asked why.

"Ain't you heard?" says he, blotting round in his steak platter with a
slice of bread. "Well, I got even with that Wales outfit just before
daylight--that's all!"

"Talk on," I beg, quite incredulous.

"I didn't get to bed till about two," he says, "and at three I was woke
up by the telephone. It's this big stiff Len Wales, that had ought to
have his head taken off because it only absorbs nourishment from his
system and gives nothing in return. He's laughing in a childish frenzy
and says is this me? I says it is, but that's neither here nor there,
and what does he want at this hour? 'It's a good joke on you,' he says,
'for the little woman got it on the third trial.' 'Got what?' I wanted
to know. 'Got that solitaire,' he yells. 'And it's a good joke on you,
all right, because now you owe her the thousand dollars; and I hate to
bother you, but you know how some women are that have a delicate,
high-strung organization. She says she won't be able to sleep a wink if
you don't bring it up to her so she can have all our little treasure
under her pillow; and I think, myself, it's better to have it all
settled and satisfactory while the iron's hot, and you'd probably prefer
it that way, too; and she says she won't mind, this time, taking your
check, though the actual money would be far more satisfactory, because
you know what women are--"

"Say! He raves on like this for three minutes, stopping to laugh like a
maniac about every three words, before I can get a word in to tell him
that I'm a delicate, high-strung organization myself, if you come right
down to it, and I can't stand there in my nightgown listening to a
string of nonsense. He chokes and says: 'What nonsense?' And I ask him
does he think I'd pay a thousand dollars out on a game I hadn't
overlooked? And he says didn't I agree to in the presence of witnesses,
and the cards is laid out right there now on the dining-room table if I
got the least suspicion the game wasn't played fair, and will I come up
and look for myself! And I says 'Not in a thousand years!' Because what
does he think I am!

"So then Mis' Wales she breaks in and says: 'Listen, Mr. Floud! You are
taking a most peculiar attitude in this matter. You perhaps don't
understand that it means a great deal to dear Leonard and me--try to
think calmly and summon your finer instincts. You said I could not only
play with my own cards at any hour of the night or day, but in my own
home; and I chose to play here, because conditions are more harmonious
to my psychic powers--' And so on and so on; and she can't understand my
peculiar attitude once more, till I thought I'd bust.

"It was lucky she had the telephone between us or I should certainly of
been pinched for a crime of violence. But I got kind of collected in my
senses and I told her I already had been pushed as far as I could be;
and then I think of a good one: I ask her does she know what General
Sherman said war was? So she says, 'No; but what has that got to do with
it?' 'Well, listen carefully!' I says. 'You tell dear Leonard that I am
now saying my last word in this matter by telling you both to go to
war--and then ask him to tell you right out what Sherman said war was.'

"I listened a minute longer for her scream, and when it come, like sweet
music or something, I went to bed again and slept happy. Yes, sir; I got
even with them sharks all right, though she's telling all over town this
morning that I have repudiated a debt of honour and she's going to have
that thousand if there's any law in the land; and anyway, she'll get me
took up for conducting a common gambling house. Gee! It makes me feel
good!"

That's the way with this old Egbert boy; nothing ever seems to faze him
long.

"How much do you lose on the night?" I ask him.

"Well, the bar was a great help," he says, very chipper; "so I only lose
about fourteen hundred all told. It'll make a nice bunch for the
Belgians, and the few dollars you ladies made at your cheap booths will
help some."

"How will your fourteen hundred lost be any help to the Belgians?" I
wanted to know; and he looked at me very superior and as crafty as a
fox.

"Simple enough!" he says in a lofty manner. "I was going to give what I
win, wasn't I? So why wouldn't I give what I lose? That's plain enough
for any one but a woman to see, ain't it? I give Mis' Ballard, the
treasurer, a check for fourteen hundred not an hour ago. I told you I
knew how to run one of these grafts, didn't I? Didn't I, now?"

Wasn't that just like the old smarty? You never know when you got him
nailed. And feeling so good over getting even with the Wales couple that
had about a thousand dollars of his money that very minute!

* * * * *

Still from the dimly lighted bunk house came the wail of Sandy Sawtelle
to make vibrant the night. He had returned to his earlier song after
intermittent trifling with an extensive repertoire:

There's a broken heart for every light on Broadway,
A million tears for every gleam, they say.
Those lights above you think nothing of you;
It's those who love you that have to pay....

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