Shorty McCabe Part 13

Business with the pen. "That's for the first week," says Pinckney, and I see he'd reckoned in Sunday and all.

"When can you come on?" says I.

"I'll begin now, if you don't mind," says he.

Then it was up to me; so I goes to work. Inside of ten minutes I had a fair notion of how Pinckney was put up. He wasn't as skimpy as he'd looked from the outside, but I saw that it wouldn't be safe to try the mitts: I might forget and put a little steam into the punch--then it would be a case of sweepin' up the pieces.

"Hold that out," says I, chuckin' him the shot-bag.

He put it out; but all there was in him was bracin' that arm.

"What you need," says I, "is a little easy track-work in the open, plenty of cold water before breakfast, and sleep in ten-hour doses."

"I couldn't sleep five hours at a stretch, much less ten," says he.

"We'll take something for that," says I.

We gets together a couple suits of running-togs, sweaters, towels and things, and goes downstairs where Pinckney has a big plum-colored homicide wagon waitin' for him.

"Tell Goggles to point for Jerome-ave.," says I. "There's a track out there we can use."

On the way up Pinckney lets loose a hint or two that gives me an outline map of his particular case. He hadn't been hittin' up any real paresis pace, so far as I could make out. He'd just been trying to keep even with the coupons and dividends that the old man had left him, burnin' it as it came in, and he'd run out of matches. Guess there was a bunch of millinery somewhere in the background too, for he was anxious about how he'd feel around Horse-Show time. Maybe Pinckney had made his plans to be more or less agreeable about then; but when he got a kinetoscope picture of himself in a sanitarium he had a scare thrown into him. Next some one gives him a tip on the Physical Culture Studio and he pikes for Shorty McCabe.

Well, I've trained a good many kinds, but I'd never tried to pump red corpuscles into an amateur Romeo before. There was the three-fifty, though, and I sails in.

"Head up now, elbows in, weight on your toes, an' we're off in a bunch!"

says I. "Steady there, take it easy! This ain't no hundred-yard sprint; this is a mile performance. There, that's better! Dog-trot it to the three-quarters, and if your cork ain't pulled by then you can spurt under the wire."

But Pinckney had lost all his ambition before we'd got half round. At the finish he was breathin' more air than his wind-tanks had known in months.

"Now for the second lap," says I.

"What? Around that fence again?" says Pinckney. "Why, I saw all there was to see last time. Can't we try a new one?"

"Do you think mile tracks come in cl.u.s.ters?" says I.

"Why not just run up the road?" asks Pinckney.

"The road it is," says I.

We fixed it up that Goggles was to follow along with the goose-cart and honk-honk the quarters to us as he read 'em on his speed-clock. We were three miles nearer Albany when we quit, and Pinckney was leakin' like a squeezed sponge.

"Throw her wide open and pull up at the nearest road-house," says I to Goggles.

He found one before I'd got all the wraps on Pinckney, and in no time at all we were under the shower. There was less of that marble-slab look about Pinckney when he began to harness up again. He thought he could eat a little something, too. I stood over the block while the man cut that three-inch hunk from the top of the round, and then I made a mortal enemy of the cook by jugglin' the broiler myself. But Pinckney did more than nibble. After that he wanted to turn in. Sleep? I had to lift him out at four G. M. The water-cure woke him, though. He tried to beg off on the last few gla.s.ses, but I made him down 'em. Then we starts towards Boston, Goggles behind, and Pinckney discovers the first sunrise he's seen for years.

Well, that's the way we went perambulatin' up into the pie-belt. First we'd jog a few miles, then hop aboard the whiz-wagon and spurt for running water. We didn't travel on any schedule or try to make any dates. Half the time we didn't know where we were, and didn't care.

When bath-tubs got scarce we'd hunt for a pond or a creek in the woods.

In one of the side-hampers on the car I found a quick-lunch outfit, so I gets me a broiler, lays in round steak and rye bread, and twice a day I does the hobo act over a roadside fire. That tickled Pinckney to death.

Nights we'd strike any place where they had beds to let. Pinckney didn't punch the mattress or turn up his nose at the quilt patterns. When it came dark he was glad enough to crawl anywhere.

Now this was all to the good. Never saw quite so much picnic weather rattled out of the box all at one throw. And the work didn't break your back. Why, it was like bein' laid off for a vacation on double pay--until Rajah b.u.t.ted in and began to mix things.

We'd pulled into some little town or other up in Connecticut soon after sun-up, lookin' for soft boiled eggs, when a couple of real gents in last-year ulsters pipes us off and saunters up to the car. They spots Pinckney for the cash-carrier and makes the play at him.

It was a hard-luck symposium, of course; but there was more to it than just a panhandle touch. They were all there was left of the Imperial Consolidated Circus and Roman Menagerie. They had lost their top and benches in a fire, deputy-sheriffs had nabbed the wagons and horses, the company was hoofing back to Broadway, and all they had left was Rajah.

Would the honorable gentleman come and take a squint at Rajah?

For why? Well, it was this way: They hated to do it, Rajah being an old friend, just like one of the family, you might say, but there wasn't anything else. They'd just got to hock Rajah to put the Imperial Consolidated in commission again. The worst of it was, these here villagers didn't appreciate what gilt-edged security Rajah was. But his honor would see that the two-fifty was nothing at all to lend out for a beggarly week or so on such a magnificent specimen. Why, Rajah was as good as real estate or Government bonds. As for selling him, ten thousand wouldn't be a temptation. Would the gentlemen just step around to the stable?

It was then I began to put up the odds on Pinckney. I got a wink from them black eyes of his, and there was the very divil an' all in 'em, with his face as straight as a crowbar.

"Certainly," says he, "we'll be happy to meet Rajah."

They had him moored to one of the floor-beams with an ox-chain around his nigh hind foot. He wasn't as big as all out doors, nor he wasn't any vest-pocket edition either. As elephants go, he wouldn't have made the welter-weight cla.s.s by about a ton. He was what I'd call just a handy size, about two bureaus high by one wide. His iv'ry stoop rails had been sawed off close to his jaw, so he didn't look any more wicked than a foldin'-bed. And his eyes didn't have that s.h.i.+fty wait-till-I-get-loose look they generally does. They were kind of soft, widowy, oh-me-poor-child eyes.

"He is sad, very sad, about all this," says one of the real gents.

"Know? Rajah knows almost as much as we do, sir."

Pinckney took his word for it. "I think I shall accommodate you with that loan," says he. "Come into the hotel."

Say, I didn't think you could gold-brick Pinckney as easy as that. One of the guys wrote out a receipt and Pinckney shoved it into his pocket handin' over a wad of yellow-backs. They didn't lose any time about headin' southeast, those two in the ulsterets. Then we goes back to have another look at Rajah.

"It's a wonderful thing, professor, this pride of possession," says Pinckney. "Only a few persons in the world own elephants. I am one of them. Even though it is only for a week, and he is miles away, I shall feel that I own Rajah, and it will make me glad."

Then he winks, so I knows he's just bein' gay. But Rajah didn't seem so gladsome. He was rockin' his head back and forth, and just as we gets there out rolls a big tear, about a tumblerful.

"Can't we do something to chirk him up a bit?" says I. "He seems to take it hard, being hung up on a ticket."

"There's something the matter with this elephant," says Pinckney, taking a front view of him. "He's in pain. See if you can't find a veterinary, professor."

Yes, they said there was a horse-doctor knockin' around the country somewhere. He worked in the s.h.i.+ngle-mill by spells, and then again in the chair-factory, or did odd jobs. A blond-haired native turned up who was sure the Doc had gone hog-killin' up to the corners. So I goes back to the stable.

"I've found out," says Pinckney. "It's toothache. He showed me. Open up, Rajah, and let the professor see. Up, up!"

Rajah was accommodatin'. He unhinged the top half of his face to give me a private view. We used a box of matches locating that punky grinder.

There was a hole in it big enough to drop a pool-ball into. Talk about your chamber of horrors! Think what it must be to be as big as that and feel bad all over.

"I never worked in an open-all-night painless shop," says I, "but I think I could do something for that if I could tap a drug store."

"Good," says Pinckney. "We pa.s.sed one down the road."

They kept grindstones and stove-polish and dress-patterns there too, but they had a row of bottles in one corner.

"Gimme a roll of cotton-battin' an' a quart of oil of cloves," says I to the man.

He grinned and ripped a little ten-cent bottle of toothache drops off a card. "It may feel that way, but you'll find this plenty," says he.

"You get busy with my order," says I. "This ain't my ache, it's Rajah's, and Rajah's an elephant."