Bucking the Tiger/Chapter 2

ACDONALD sank back comfortably in the creaking rocker. He studied the other occupants of the room from beneath lowered eyelids. An idea was forming in his brain, but so far it was shapeless. He only felt in a vague way that it had something to do with the other guests of Eslick's Grand Palace Hotel, and with Hayes, the insurance agent.

Broke—all of them, he said to himself. Yet, though in the beginning they had had less chance than he, they had had more ambition, they had felt more respect for the duty they owed to themselves. In a way they were martyrs to their principles. Therein they differed from him.

Andy Walsh had been a cowpuncher. Born and bred in Wyoming, he had ridden the range from Arizona to Montana; and, when cattle gave way to sheep and farms, he had crossed the border in the wake of the stamping steers and had worked for Peter Burns, the Canadian cattle king.

Then ambition had taken him by the forelock and he had followed the gold lure and had gone prospecting into the Hoodoo mountains of Idaho.

He had come away from there broke, and he couldn't go back to the Burns outfit in Alberta, whom he had left with riotous tales of the wealth he was going to annex. He refused to return broke, a thing to be jeered at and joshed.

Traube, the tall, thin German, was another illustration of ambition defeating its own ends. He had been a waiter. Steady, sober, conscientious, he had worked his way up from scullery-boy to "captain" at the Savoy Grill in Seattle.

Then, last year, a tall Alaskan had drifted into Seattle on the Irene, the first boat on the south-run after the ice had gone out of, the Bering Straits. He had looked ruffianly and unkempt, but his buckskin pouch had been filled with nuggets.

He had entered the Savoy, and had shouted for food, lots of it, done up in style, and damn the expense! Traube had looked at the Alaskan, and somehow he had imagined that the latter was of German origin, antecedents, and therefore culinary longings. He had sped to the kitchen himself and, fifteen minutes later, he had served the Alaskan with a meal worthy of a homesick Teutonic stomach.

There was sauerkraut, succulent and pale-yellow, pathetic little sausages smothered caressingly in a sour-cream gravy, the Baltic, but which was now done up in vinegar and the juice of selected onions; there was a pot of nut-brown beer, some sterling-minded Limburger with slices of hearty rye-bread, followed by a slushy cake which answered to the name of Sahnennusstorte.

The Alaskan had taken one long, comprehensive look at the meal. Then he had given his war cry. For his name was Patrick O'Dwyer Mulqueen.

There had been a fight in which the sauerkraut and the Sahnennusstorte had played homeric rôles. The Alaskan was a wealthy man with influential connections all through the Northwest, and he had sworn by all the Kings of Münster that he would have revenge on what he called an unprovoked insult to his national honour and racial dignity. So Traube had been blacklisted through all the restaurants of Washington, Idaho and British Columbia.

He would not go to Milwaukee or St. Louis, where cousins of his were offering him jobs, for he had an ambition, and it kept him in the Northwest where he was blacklisted. He wanted a café of his own, in Seattle or Spokane, and he had sworn by Thor and Wotan that he would get it.

The Frenchman's case was slightly different, although even he was in a way a martyr. A scion of the oldest nobility of France, a dreamer and an enthusiast, he had come to America in search of liberty and democracy. He had found it, had loved it, and had proceeded to write a book about it. He had been writing this book for the last twenty years. It was only half-finished, but meanwhile his money had given out. He earned a stray dollar now and then, but he refused to take a steady job. He said it interfered with his style and his clearness of perception.

Macdonald got up and walked over to the card-players. Traube was playing carefully, slowly, and was winning game after game from Walsh. He knew that the cowpuncher could not play, and Walsh knew that the German could not pay if he would lose. Yet they played intently. Gold-lust was stamped in every lineament of their faces. Macdonald smiled as he noticed it. Somehow he felt that this very characteristic would fit in well with his half-shaped scheme.

Even the Frenchman, who was only looking on, was intent on the changing chances of the cards. Macdonald saw. Again he smiled.

There was a rush of frosty, pine-scented air as the outer door opened and shut again. A short, stoutish, pasty-faced young man came into the lobby. He was dressed in vaguely sporting clothes of an audacious cut, and his pockets were pulled out of shape by masses of booklets and papers. There was about him that indefinable something which stamped him as an insurance agent—not a successful one—and the golden bear in his buttonhole proclaimed him beyond doubt as one of California's Native Sons.

Californian too was his breezy greeting:

"Hullo, hullo, hullo, brother down-and-outers!" he hailed with a piping voice which was curiously in contrast with his stout body.

"Good evening, Hayes," Macdonald replied. He looked at Hayes reflectively. Soliciting insurance all day doubtless, he thought; there were the little booklets and paper-blanks with which his pockets were filled. Life-insurance!

Suddenly he laughed out loud. He had it! His vague scheme had assumed definite shape. But he needed the others to put it on a working basis. He would have to nurse them along carefully. Otherwise they might fight shy. So he returned to his rocker and assumed once more his former attitude of dejected nonchalance. But he was alert, watching for his chance.

Hayes slipped off his overcoat and hit the Frenchman familiarly on the shoulder.

"Well, Count Whatdyemadoodle," he said, "studying another one of our great American games?"

The other looked up with a charming smile.

"Yes. I shall put it all in my book."

Hayes laughed good-humouredly.

"Say, old cock, don't forget to push in a little chapter or two about my line of graft. It's also strictly and uncompromisingly American."

"Life insurance?" the Frenchman inquired.

Macdonald looked up quickly, but relapsed at once. He said to himself that he couldn't afford to show his hand too soon.

"You're on, kid," the Californian replied. The Frenchman winced at this appellation, but Hayes continued in his usual, loud-piping tenor. "Yes—life insurance—the greatest little old bunco game west of the Divide." He laughed.

"Speaking about bunco-games," he went on; "where's Hillyer, Spokane's prize book-agent? Where's that haw-hawing little specimen of arrogant British humanity? And where's his noble running-mate, Captain the Honourable Ralph Vavassour-and-then-something Graham?"

The next moment a furious commotion which drifted into the lobby from the adjacent bar-room answered Hayes's question.

At first came the faint sounds of a low voice, evidently British and probably drunk. It went on for a while in an argumentative solo, steadily crescendo, and emphasising a point now and then with the clink of a glass against the bar. Then another voice, of the same insular origin and the same probable state of alcoholic inflation, chimed in.

The two voices rose to a very loud duet; and then a third joined in, very suddenly. This third voice was Mongolian, sing-song, bitter, excited, and vituperative in every word and inflection. Finally it won out over the other two. It became louder and louder, bounding up with fantastic kangaroo leaps and bursts of breathless speech, of which it was not always easy for the men in the lobby to pick up the thread.

But even the few words they heard distinctly were descriptive of the scene which was being enacted in the bar-room

"You getta hell out!" sing-songed the voice. "You bloke, bloke, you no damn good!" A short pause; again the rumbling British duet; then a shriek of the Mongolian which rose into an ear-splitting yell. "You getta hell out pletty quick! … I no care who you are, you no good, I savvy that! The last word with thudding emphasis; a confused answer from the duet; and again the Mongol solo.

"Wot you mean talkee like dat, hey? You no like Amelica, you get out! You bloke Amelica, you bloke evelywhere, savvy? All you do is kick, kick, kick—and dlinkee, dlinkee, dlinkee! You no dlinkee for dlinkee—you dlinkee for dlunkee!"

There was a splintering sound as of glasses being smashed. The next moment the bar-room door opened. A flash-like vision of two yellow fists, of a substantial Chinese foot covered with a padded slipper, a final shriek of victory and triumph-and two figures were precipitated out of the bar. After them came hurtling a couple of glasses and a tall brass which luckily missed their aim. Then the door shut with a slam.

The two men who had been kicked out in such ignominious fashion slowly picked themselves up.

The first took the form of a tall, slight, yellow-haired man with a hooked Norman nose, sharp-blue eyes, and a boldly receding chin. His clothes, of a violent and very hairy green tweed, still spoke of Savile Row through their tatters and stains, while his necktie, a chaste silken blending of cerise and rose, fairly shouted of the Burlington Arcade.

The other was younger, very short and exceedingly broad. He had close-curling, chestnut-brown hair, and the face of a cherub who for years has been dieting on underdone chops, Cumberland pie and Scotch whisky. His clothes were of the hand-me-down variety; his hat was a Stetson. But still it was not hard to classify him as one of Britain's younger sons, the sort who receives a quarterly remittance on the understanding that the tight little isle shall know him no more.

The two men looked at each other. They were suddenly quite sober.

"My word!" said the shorter one, William Hillyer by name, with a little pathetic catch in his voice.

And his friend, Captain the Honourable Ralph Vavassour Graham—drummed out of the Cape Mounted Rifles because he had played cards too well—replied in kind:

"My word! I am blessed!"

Then, on Macdonald's polite inquiry as to what had seemed to be the trouble, he added:

"Oh, Hillyer and I had a slight difference of opinion with that Chinese blighter in there, you know."

There was a roar of laughter. Graham looked stoney-eyed, imperturbable; Hillyer broke at first into a little chuckle; but, noticing his countryman's sphinxlike countenance, he speedily readjusted his facial muscles and said once more:

"My word!" but this time with a certain air of dignified finality.

But Macdonald had his reasons for insisting. He knew that the more bitterly dissatisfied these broken men were with life. the more easily he would be able to win them over to the scheme which he had thought out.

"Come on, Graham," he said. "Tell us what happened."

Graham yawned. He spoke with ponderous precision.

"We had a few drinks, Hillyer and I. We are both broke, you know, and so, quite naturally, I asked the beggar to charge them up. Then he got positively rough."

"Very, very," chimed in his cherub-faced friend.

"And then," Graham continued, "I explained to him. Wrong of me, I fancy—always rotten faux-pas to get familiar with the serving classes—but I explained to him the reasons for our temporary pecuniary embarrassment. I imagine I rather talked a bit above his head. I told him it's the fault of this accurst country—I beg your pardon, Mac—and he got very indignant. Told me something about America … and getting out …"

Macdonald laughed.

"I heard that part."

Graham flushed.

"I couldn't very well argue the point with him—"

Walsh looked up from his cards.

"You bet your sweet life you couldn't," he broke in, and pointed at the cuspidor which the infuriated Chung had hurtled after the two Englishmen.

Graham continued as if he had not heard the interruption.

"You know I am right, Mac. Take me and yourself and Hillyer. Take the count. All of us chaps of ability, education, and personality. And not one of us able to make a living here, in a new, rich country, by Jupiter! It's a shame!"

"Right-oh, a blooming shame!" Hillyer emphasised.

Macdonald smiled. The situation was developing the way he wished it to. He thought of a letter his father had written him after his last demand for money, and he quoted more or less unconsciously.

"There's a job and a future for every man with energy and brain in this country. The West is all right. Look at men, right in this town, men like Houghton and Kenny. They started with nothing—see what they are to-day."

Graham looked annoyed. The idea of others having money had always been distasteful to him, something in the nature of a personal affront. He was about to speak, but Macdonald continued:

"It's we who are at fault. Not the land." He was beginning to convince himself, and he waxed enthusiastic. "We are broke because we deserve it."

"I fancy you ought to know," Graham broke in with sardonic mildness.

"You bet I know," Macdonald replied with utter, ringing conviction. "I've had lots of chances. I've held a dozen jobs since I left Princeton and shed my blushing peg-top pants. I made money, too, lots of money." He laughed a little bitterly. "But I lost the dollars as fast as I roped them in—blooie—bang—whoop—gone to the devil and nothing to show for them except a ruined liver, a bulbous conscience and a taste for gin-fizzes in the morning. Its our fault, not the country's."

Walsh suddenly threw down the cards. He turned.

"Say, you fellows, what's all the row about?"

Macdonald explained, and the cowpuncher snorted contemptuously.

"Well, why the hell don't you work if you want money?"

Graham shrugged his shoulders. His lips were twisted in a thin, unpleasant smile.

"Very democratic and very American, I am sure!" Suddenly he was quite serious, and his ordinary mannerisms were dropping away from him. "I personally do not work because the game isn't worth the candle. I can make two dollars a day here, I fancy. We can all do that. Well, tell me, what is two dollars a day? Give me a few thousand dollars cash down. Give me a stake worth while—and I'll show you what I can do!"

There was a general murmur of assent. Macdonald was secretly delighted. Things were coming exactly the way he wanted them to.

He walked over to the window and looked out. The sun had sunk behind the cañon of Hangman's Creek. A fleet of little vagabond clouds was sailing across the sky, which was rapidly changing from gold to pink, and from pink to silvery-grey.

Suddenly he turned, and walked back to the centre of the room.

"Look here, you fellows," he said.

They looked up. Macdonald's voice was loud, ringing. It compelled their interest.

"Just imagine," Macdonald continued. "Here we are, seven men, all of us in the prime of life and as healthy as baby-steers. Some of us are highly educated, some just strong and powerful. But with all these qualities—the qualities which go to make a man—what are we, eh? What have we accomplished?" He laughed. "I'll tell you what you are."

He jumped onto the box on which Walsh and Traube had been playing cards and addressed them in the manner of a side-show spieler.

"Exhibit A!" he shouted, pointing an accusing finger at the German. "Herr Traube, curst with the prefix Gottlieb! Once you were a slinger of high-class hash for the gentry and nobility of Seattle! Once you used to coax the merry dollars from the buckskin pouches of furry Alaskans! Then you fell foul of an Irishman! And what are you to-day? You're broke! You're down-and-out!"

He paused for a moment, glancing round the circle of laughing men. Then he singled out Walsh.

"As Exhibit B we have Andy Walsh, formerly the terror of the Wyoming plains, the champion bull-thrower of the grand and cocky State of Arizona! And what is he now? Broke! Down-and-out!"

He bowed, mock-ceremoniously.

"Captain the Honourable Ralph Vavassour Fitzharries Mordaunt Graham! Have I got it all straight? Take yourself. Formerly the intrepid killer of many and hairy Boers! The pride of Mayfair, the despair of Petticoat Lane! What are you now? You're down-and-out!"

Graham was about to give a sharp answer, but Macdonald continued quickly, turning to Hillyer:

"Step forward, friend Hillyer, from Hillyer-super-Mer, Sussex, England! Step forward, descendant of a thousand generations of fox-hunting squires who died like gentlemen from the gout! Once you carried tea-baskets to ancient female villagers! Once you played rustic games with the daughters of the vicarage! Then you got thirsty—oh, so very thirsty—and what are you to-day? You sell the History of the United States in fifteen volumes, ten cents down and three cents every five minutes! In other words, you're down-and-out!"

He addressed the Frenchman with a little sigh.

"Cometh now the flower of the Faubourg St Germain, the monocled hero of the Inner Boulevards, the Count Jean de Salle La Terriere! Think back, monsieur. Remember the dear old days when you fought bloodless duels, when you flirted with the wife of your best friend, when you charmed feminine ears with those lyrics which a poet in a happy moment of inspiration compared to the scintillating magnetism of a steamed clam! Are you still arrayed in white spats and a comical high hat? No! You're bust. You're down-and-out!"

He continued after a short pause.

"Remains Donald Hayes, the Native Son, the Booster from Boosterville on the broad Pacific, where the climate and the oranges and the fleas come from; the son of wild who crossed the prairies and stalked gold and bears and Indians and other savage things! Tell me, Hayes, do you still stalk Indians and bears like your renowned though unwashed ancestors of the Forty-Niners? No, by heck! You stalk the petticoat to her savage lair! You stalk grocery clerks to their suburban homes and beguile them into buying insurance from the Western Crown Life Insurance Company! Step back! You're down-and-out!"

"Well, pard, what about yourself?" Walsh drawled.

Macdonald jumped down from the box. He laughed.

"You know yourself," he said, "that I've a little more nerve than the rest of you. But what of it? I used to lead the cotillion in the best Southern houses in Washington, D. C.! In my slightly swollen veins runs the blood of the Sons of the American Revolution, the Grand Army of the Republic, the Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Elks! When I played football for Princeton, I killed two men of Yale, and seriously crippled three others! And what of that? What has remained of the past glories?  Nothing, my friends! I'm broke! I too am down-and-out!"

"What are you going to do about it?" It was Walsh who spoke. "Are you going to work?"

"No," said Macdonald. "Not if I can avoid it. I got a plan that's got work skinned a dozen miles. Listen, you fellows!"

There was general commotion. A plan which didn't imply work? That sounded promising. They pulled up their chairs, and gathered closely around Macdonald.

"Shoot!" commanded Walsh.