Fore! Part 28

He played a short chop shot and the ball went hopping toward the pin, hit the back of the cup with a plunk, and dropped for a six. Of course it was a pure accident.

"Fluke!" said Colonel Jimmy, rather annoyed.

"Sure!" said Small. "But it wins the hole just the same!"

I knew then that the comedy was over for the day. Four holes remained to be played, and the Colonel was one down. It was never his policy to leave anything to chance. He would run the string out at top speed.

David Cameron came up from the rear.

"They'll play golf from here in," he whispered.

"They!" said I. "One of 'em will!"

"Do ye really think so?" said David.

Our Number Fifteen is 278 yards long, over perfectly level ground. There are bunkers to the right and left of the putting green and a deep sand trap behind it. It is a short hole, but the sort of one which needs straight shooting and an accurate pitch. Of all the holes on the course, I think it is the Colonel's favourite.

"My honour, eh?" said Small. "That being the case, I guess I'll just rap it out of the lot!"

He didn't bother to measure the distance or take a practice swing. He didn't even address the ball. He walked up to it and swung his driver exactly as a man would swing a baseball bat--tremendous power but no form whatever--and the wonder is that he hit it clean. A white speck went sailing up the course, rising higher and higher in the air. When the ball stopped rolling it was 260 yards from the tee and on a direct line with the pin.

"Beat that!" said Small.

Colonel Jimmy didn't say anything, but he grunted whole volumes. It takes more than a long drive to rattle that old reprobate. He whipped his ball 200 yards down the course and stepped off the tee so well satisfied with himself that he forgot to groan and put his hands on his back. Small laughed.

"Lumbago not so bad now, eh?" said he.

"I--I may be limbering up a bit," said the Colonel. "The long drive isn't everything, you know; it's the second shot that counts!"

"All right," said Small. "Let's see one!"

Colonel Jimmy studied his lie for some time and went through all the motions, but when the shot came it was a beauty--a mas.h.i.+e pitch which landed his ball five feet from the cup.

"Beat that one!" said he.

"I'll just do that thing!" said Small. And he did. Of course he had a short approach, as approaches go, but even so I was not prepared to see him play a push shot and rim the cup, leaving his ball stone dead for a three. Colonel Jimmy was not prepared to see it either, and I have reason to believe that the push shot jarred the old rascal from his rubber heels upward. He went about the sinking of that five-foot putt with as much deliberation as if his thousand dollars depended on it. He sucked in his breath and got down on all fours--a man with lumbago couldn't have done it on a bet--and he studied the roll of the turf for a full minute--studied it to some purpose, for when he tapped the ball it ran straight and true into the cup, halving the hole.

"You're getting better every minute!" said Small. "I'm some little lumbago specialist, believe me!"

Colonel Jimmy didn't answer, but he looked thoughtful and just the least mite worried. One down and three to go for a thousand dollars--it's a situation that will worry the best of 'em.

Number Sixteen was where the light dawned on me. It is a long, tricky hole--bogey 6, par 5--and if the Colonel hadn't made another phenomenal approach, laying his ball dead from fifty yards off the green, Small would have won that too. They halved in fives, but it was Small's second shot that opened my eyes. He used a cleek where most players would try a bra.s.sie, and he sent the ball screaming toward the flag--220 yards--and at no time was it more than ten feet from the ground. I was behind him when he played, and I can swear that there wasn't an inch of hook or slice on that ball. The cleek is no club for a novice. I remembered the niblick shot on the fourteenth. That was surely a fluke, but how about the push shot on fifteen? English professionals have written whole books about the push shot, but mighty few men have ever learned to play it.

Putting that and the cleek shot together, the light broke in on me--and my first impulse was to kick Archie MacBride.

I don't know who Colonel Jimmy wanted to kick, but he looked as if he would relish kicking somebody. He had been performing sums in mental addition, too, and he got the answer about the same time that I did.

"It's queer about that lumbago," said Small again.

"Yes," snapped the old man, "but it's a lot queerer the way you've picked up this game in the last two holes!"

"Well," and Small laughed, "you remember that I warned you I never could play for piker money, Colonel--that is, not very _well_."

Colonel Jimmy gave him a look that was all wolf--and cornered wolf at that. He answered Small with a nasty sneer.

"So you can't play well unless big money is bet, eh? That is exactly what I'm beginning to think, sir!"

"At any rate," said Small, "I've cured your lumbago for you, Colonel.

You can charge that thousand to doctor bills!"

Colonel Jimmy gulped a few times, his neck swelled and his face turned purple. There wasn't a single thing he could find to say in answer to that remark. He started for the seventeenth tee, snarling to himself. I couldn't stand it any longer. I drew Archie aside.

"I think you might have told me," I said.

"Told you what?"

"Why, about Small--if that's his name. What have you done? Rung in a professional on the old man?"

"Professional, your grandmother!" said Archie. "Small is an amateur in good standing. Darned good standing. If the Colonel knew as much about the Middle West as he pretends to know, he'd have heard of Small.

Wonder how the old boy likes the Chicago method of shearing a pig?"

The old boy didn't like it at all, but the seventeenth hole put the crown on his rage and mortification. Small drove another long straight ball, and after the Colonel had got through sneering about that he topped his own drive, slopped his second into a bunker, and reached the green in five when he should have been there in two. I thought the agony was over, but I didn't give Small credit for cat-and-mouse tendencies.

"In order to get all the good out of this lumbago treatment," said he, "it ought to go the full eighteen holes." Then, with a deliberation that was actually insulting, he played his second shot straight into a deep sand trap. I heard a queer clucking, choking noise behind me, but it was only David Cameron doing his best to keep from laughing out loud.

"Muster Small is puttin' the shoe on the other foot!" said David. "Ay, it's his turn to waste a few now."

"Cheer up, Colonel!" said Small. "You fooled away a lot of shots early in the match--on account of your lumbago, of course. I'm just as generous as you are when it comes to halving holes with an easy mark."

To prove it Small missed a niblick shot a foot, but pitched out on his fourth, and, by putting all over the green, finally halved the hole.

When Small stood up on the eighteenth tee for his last drive he looked over at the Colonel and nodded his head. "Colonel?" said he.

Colonel Jimmy grunted--rather a profane grunt, I thought.

"Dormie!" said Small.

"Confound it, sir! You talk too much!"

"So I've heard," said Small. "I'll make you a business proposition, Colonel. Double or quits on the last hole? I understand that's what you do when you're sure you can win. Two thousand or nothing?... No? Oh, all right! No harm done, I suppose?"

Colonel Jimmy had a burglar's chance to halve the match by winning the last hole, and he fought for it like a cornered wolf. They were both on the green in threes, Small ten feet from the cup and the Colonel at least fifteen. If he could sink his putt and Small should miss his, the match would be square again.

The old man examined every blade of gra.s.s between his ball and the hole.

Three times he set himself to make the putt, and then got down to take another look at the roll of the green--proof that his nerve was breaking at last. When he finally hit the ball it was a weak, fluttering stroke, and though the ball rolled true enough, it stopped four feet short of the cup.

"Never up, never in!" said Small. "Well, here goes for the thousand-dollar doctor bill! Lumbago is a very painful ailment, Colonel.

It's worth something to be cured of it." Colonel Jimmy didn't say a word. He looked at Small and then he turned and looked at MacBride. All his smooth and oily politeness had deserted him; his little tricks and hypocrisies had dropped away and left the wolf exposed--snarling and showing his teeth. I thought that he was going to throw his putter at Archie, but he turned and threw it into the lake instead--into the middle, where the water is deep. Then he marched into the clubhouse, stiff as a ramrod, and so he missed seeing Small sink his ten-foot putt.

"An' ye were really surprised?" said David Cameron to me.

"I was," said I. "When did you find it out, David?"