FullReads

“He pokes his head inside the door and yells to a Jap to put two more places at the table. So we reclines and indulges in edifying conversation upon the current topics of the day and, very shortly, nourishing smells begin for to percolate forth from within, causing me to water at the mouth until I has all the outward symptoms of being an ebb-tide. But this here pernicious Sweet Caps Kid, he can’t let well enough alone. Observing copious signs of affluence upon every side he gets ambitious and would abuse the sacred right of hospitality about half to three-quarters of an hour too soon. Out of the tail of my eye I sees him reaching in his pocket for the educated pasteboards and I gives him the high sign to soft pedal, but he don’t mind me. Out he comes with ’em.

“‘A little harmless game of cards,’ he says, addressing the elderly guy, ‘entitled,’ he says, ‘California euchre. I have here, you will observe, two jacks and an ace–the noble ace of spades. I riffle and shuffle and drop ’em in a row, the trick being to pick out the ace. Now, then,’ goes on this besetted Sweet Caps, with a winning smile, ‘just to while away the time before breakfast, s’pose you make a small bet with me regarding the present whereabouts of said ace.’

“The party with the whiskers gets up; and now, when he speaks I sees that in spite of him wearing a brush arbor, he aint no real rube.

“‘To think,’ he says, more in sorrow than in anger, ‘to think that I should live to see this day! To think that me, who helped Canady Bill sell the first gold brick that ever was molded in this country, should in my declining years have a couple of wooden-fingered amatoors come along and try to slip me the oldest graft in the known world! It is too much,’ he says, ‘it is too much too much. You lower a noble pursuit,’ he says, ‘and I must respectfully but firmly request you to be on your way. I’ll try to forgive you,’ he says, ‘but at this moment your mere presence offends me. On your way out,’ he says, ‘kindly latch the gate behind you–the chickens might stray off. Chickens,’ he says, ‘is not exciting for steady company,’ he says, ‘but in comparison with some humans I’ve met lately, chickens is absolutely gifted intellectually.

“‘Furthermore,’ he says, ‘I would offer you a word of advice, although you don’t really deserve it. Beware,’ he says, ‘of the constable in the village beyond. You’ll recognize him by his whiskers,’ he says. ‘Alongside of him, I look like an onion in the face. Ten years ago,’ he says, ‘that constable swore a solemn oath not never to shave until he’d locked up a thousand bums, and,’ he says, ‘he’s now on his last lap. Keep moving,’ he says, ’till you feel like stopping, and then don’t stop.’

“Them edifying smells has made me desperate. Besides, not counting the Chink, who don’t count we outnumbers him two to one.

“‘We don’t go,’ I says, ‘until we gets a bite.’

“‘Oh! I’ll see that you get a bite,’ he says. ‘Sato,’ he says, calling off-stage, ‘kindly unchain Ophelia and Ralph Waldo. Ophelia,’ he says, turning to us, ‘is a lady Great Dane, standing four feet high at the shoulder and very morose in disposition. But Ralph Waldo is a crossbreed–part Boston bull and part snapping turtle. Sometimes I think they don’t neither one of them care much for strangers. Here they come now! Sick ’em, pups!’

“Sweet Caps starts first but I beats him to the gate by half a length, Ophelia and Ralph Waldo finishing third and fourth, respectively. We fades away down the big road, and the last thing we sees as we turns a wistful farewell look over our shoulders is them two man-eaters raging back and forth inside the fence trying to gnaw down the palings, and the old guy standing on the steps laughing.