Checkers: A Hard-luck Story. Henry Blossom

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СКАЧАТЬ – stops me and says he wants to quit. Quit, with half our money gone! I was so sore I could have smashed him. And while we stood there arguing, without a nickel on the board, the wheel was rollin' dead our way – enough to have put us ahead of the game.

      "I gave him his hundred, and told him to 'take it and chase himself' – I was through with him. I stuck to the game until five in the morning. They got every cent I had in the world.

      "Well, I went to the hotel and went to bed, but I lay there wondering how I was going to dig up the money to pay my bill, and give me a start when my luck turned again. The longer I wondered the tougher it seemed. Finally I ordered an absinthe frappé – it kind of gave me a new idea. I 'd put up a song to my Uncle Giles, and try to make a little 'touch.'

      "I had n't seen or heard of him for half a dozen years, but I thought after all we had done for him, he could n't hardly lay down on his nephew.

      "Well, I wrote him a letter that would have brought tears to a pair of glass eyes. Say, it was the literary effort of my life. Of course, I did n't just stick to the facts. Then I goes down and gets me a little breakfast, and begins to feel like myself again.

      "This was Friday. Saturday my hotel bill was coming due. I had to make a killin' somehow to get my trunk and clothes away.

      "I chased myself from joint to joint, but I could n't get next to anything. There was n't a thing I could hock nor no one that I could 'give the borry.' Have you ever been flat broke, Mr. Preston, with not a nickel in your jeans; no one to stake you; no place to go, and nothing to keep you from starving to death? You haven't, eh? Well, then you do n't begin to know what trouble is. You feel as though every one had you 'sized,' or as though you were going to be arrested. You can't help thinking about the stuff you blew so reckless when you were flush – the night you got out and spent a hundred, and say, if you only had it now! You take a paralyzed oath on your mother that if you ever get right again you'll 'salt your stuff' and be a 'tight-wad' – and then you remember you 're broke again. I 've been up against some dead tough luck, and I 've had some fancy crimps put in me, but somehow I 've never felt so 'on my uppers' as I did at the Springs that night.

      "Say, if this hard-luck story of mine gets tiresome to you, ring me off. I did n't think I 'd be so long in getting to where my troubles began."

      I assured him that I felt the tale immensely interesting, as indeed I did, not only in its mere detail, but taken in connection with the youth who sat there, telling me his story in his naïve way, as unconcerned as though he had the Bank of England to draw upon. With not a penny in his pocket, or for aught I knew a place to sleep, it certainly seemed that, with the sparrows, he leaned most heavily on Providence.

      "Let 's have the rest of it, Checkers," I said; "I 'm anxious to hear how you raised the wind."

      He sipped his coffee and puffed his cigarette with a retrospective air, inhaling the smoke at every draught, or blowing it forth in little rings which he watched as they circled off into space.

      I waited in silence.

      "Well," he continued, "it was nothing but 'gallop on after the torch.' About 10 o'clock I blew into a joint that I had n't been to – a gambling house. There was a gang around the faro-bank, and I shoved in to see what was going on. I hope I may drop if Kendall was n't sitting there, howling, paralyzed full. He had a lot of chips in front of him, playin' 'em like a drunken sailor. He had down bets all over the board, and, honest, it gave me heart disease to see him play. He puts a stack on the ace to win. In a minute or two another player coppers it, and takes it down. I jumps in and grabs him by the arm. 'Hold on,' I hollered, 'Arthur, here's a piker that's touchin' you for your chips.'

      "Say, there was trouble right away. The piker made a smash at me. I dodged and caught him an upper cut, and the bouncer grabbed him and threw him out. This sort of sobered Arthur up, and for a while he played 'em 'cagey.' I goes over by him, and puts up a bluff to the gang that I 'm a friend of his. You see I wanted to get him out before they got his money away. It was a 'pipe' he'd lose it all the minute his luck turned. But as long as I was n't playing myself, I knew I 'd better not get too gay, but I watched his bets, and stacked his chips, and saw that no one pinched his sleepers.

      "Well, every few minutes he 'd call for a drink, and what do you think he was drinking? Sherry. Did you ever get a jag on sherry? Well, neither did I, but it gives you a 'beaut.' Arthur had a 'carry-over' that lasted him for about three days. He 'd slap his chips down any old place. It was the funniest thing you ever saw. But he was playing in drunken luck, and I let him do what he wanted to.

      "Well, to make a long story short, I finally 'cashed him in' for $200. I got him into a hack, and took him to my room. But say, when I got that boy undressed and abed and asleep, I 'll tell you like these: I was just three minutes ahead of a fit, and the fit was gaining on me fast. I had to take a couple of absinthes before I could get myself together. But you ought to have seen Kendall in the morning. He had a horrible 'sorry' on. The wheels were buzzing around in his head until I believe if he 'd have put his fingers in his ears, they 'd have been cut off – I do on the square. He could n't remember a thing he 'd done, except that he started out on a 'sandy' after he left me playing roulette – the night before, you recollect, and he got a 'package' aboard that he ought to have made at least two trips for.

      "I gave him his money, and told him where I found him, and how I saved it for him, and he began to cry like a baby. You see his nerves were all to pieces. He wanted me to take him home; nothing would do but he must go home. He felt too rocky to go alone, and besides he could n't trust himself. He begged me for God's sake not to leave him or he 'd get full again, or shoot himself.

      "I found out afterward that he had solemnly promised his girl that he 'd never get drunk again. That's what it was that gave him that awful 'sorry.' You know how it is when you love a girl. While you 're with her it seems dead easy to live decent, and do what 's right, and you promise anything. Then some day you get out with the gang and 'fall,' and the next morning R. E. Morse is sitting up on the edge of your bed giving you the horrible ha-ha.

      "Well, anyhow, I finally agreed to take him home. He lived in Clarksville, Ark. He gave me the roll to pay our bills with and buy the tickets and one thing and another, while he went down to the bath to boil out. But say, the hardest job of my life was not to 'pinch' that coin and 'duck.' It was mine by rights. He 'd never have kept it if I had n't jumped in and saved it for him. But, thank God, I can say one thing, I never stole a cent in my life. I may have separated three or four guys from their stuff, perhaps, at different times; but they always got a run for their money, and if they dropped it it was n't my fault. So I just could n't bring myself to do it. And I was thankful afterwards that I did n't.

      "The happiest year I ever had came to me on account of that trip – and the unhappiest. But I would n't give up the pleasant memories if I had to go through twice the troubles again.

      "'The banister of life is full of slivers,' as old man Bradley used to say, and when a fellow 'hits the slide,' he's apt to pick up a splinter or two. But I 'll tell you, if you 've only got some happy times that you 've had with your mother or sisters, your wife, or your girl, to look back to and think about, when you 're in hard luck, it's a kind of a bracer, and saves your life – "

      He suddenly stopped. I followed his gaze, and turning around saw Murray and three other friends coming toward me. I felt it an ill-timed interruption; but I ordered cigars and liquid refreshments, and introduced, all but Murray, to Mr. Edward Campbell, which I had learned was the proper name of my little friend.

      I was needed, Murray explained, "to make the fifth man in some game of theirs which could not be played to advantage with less;" and knowing that I was to work late, they had taken a chance of finding me here.

      In vain I begged to be excused, pleading indisposition, the lateness of the hour, anything and everything СКАЧАТЬ