(fJarncU Intoerattg ffiihrarg 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY 
 
 COLLECTED BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 
 1854-1S19 
 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PS 1474.C35T2 
 
 Tales of the ex-tanks;a book of hard luc 
 
 3 1924 022 007 490 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022007490 
 
TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
TALES o/THE 
 EX-TANKS 
 
 A Book of Hard -Luck Stories 
 By CLARENCE LOUIS CULLEN 
 
 *'Tou can't keep a squirrel on the ground ' ' 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP 
 
 ELEVEN EAST SIXTEENTH . .S T R E E T 
 
 NEW YORK : : ,K;',«F ^1900 
 
These sketches originally appeared in the columns of 
 The New York Sun, and the author and publishers wish 
 to acknowledge the courtesy of the Editor in permitting 
 their publication in book form. 
 
 Copyright, 1899 and 19O0, by 
 The Sun Printing and Publishing Association. 
 
 Copyright, 1900, by Grosset & Dunlap. 
 
TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 A BOOK OF HARD-LUCK STORIES 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 TALE THE FIRST ,agk 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No. 3 Sheweth that the 
 Hock-Shop Violin may be Ye Real Thing . 1 7 
 
 TALE THE SECOND 
 
 Which Explaineth How Ex-Tank No. 14 
 Did Win Out By Means of Ye Hansom Cab 35 
 
 TALE THE THIRD 
 
 Which Telleth of How Ex-Tank No. 9 
 Escaped From Ye Burg of Galveston . -53 
 
 TALE THE FOURTH 
 
 In Which Ex-Tank No. 24 Peddl^h Feather 
 Flowers, and Resorteth to Ye Sport of Kiijgs 6g 
 
 TALE THE FIFTH 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No. 1 5 Visiteth Ye Home 
 
 of His Boyhood, and Thus Winneth Out . 87 
 
 TALE THE SIXTH 
 
 In Which Ex-Tank No. 4 Telleth of Ye 
 Soldiers Brave, and Some Strange Meetings loi 
 
CONTENTS— Continued. 
 
 TALE THE SEVENTH 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No. i6 Illustrateth the 
 Value Unto Man of Ye Good Front 1 1 5 
 
 TALE THE EIGHTH 
 
 In Which Ex-Tank No. 12 Narrateth His 
 Experience as a Strolling Player in the Drama 
 of Ye Bard of Avon . . . .129 
 
 TALE THE NINTH 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No. 17 Hath His Say 
 Anent the Incalculable Effect of Ye Good 
 Front . . . . . . -145 
 
 TALE THE TENTH 
 
 In Which Ex-Tank No. 19 Hath Strange 
 and Wonderful Luck Through Man's Friend, 
 Ye Dog 161 
 
 TALE THE ELEVENTH 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No. 25 Elucidateth Ye 
 Theory That a Man is Never Broke Until 
 He Is Broke . • , . • i77 
 
 TALE THE TWELFTH 
 
 Containing a Report of Ex-Tank No. 1 4 in 
 the Distressing Position of Ye Stowaway . 191 
 
CONTENTS— Continued. 
 
 TALE THE THIRTEENTH pagz 
 
 Which Speaketh of How Ex-Tank (Hoodoo) 
 No. 13 Wickedly Represented Himself as 
 Ye Theological Student .... 207 
 
 TALE THE FOURTEENTH 
 
 In Which Ex-Tank No. 6 Sheweth Up the 
 Vanity of Ye Sturdy Pioneers of the North- 
 west . • . . . . .221 
 
 TALE THE FIFTEENTH 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No. 5 Speaketh Divertingly 
 
 of the Reliever Stage of ye Jag . . -233 
 
 TALE THE SIXTEENTH 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank (Hoodoo) No. 13 Be- 
 c'ometh Discursive as to the Dreamy Isles of 
 ye Pacific . . . . . .251 
 
 TALE THE SEVENTEENTH 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No. 8 Hath a Good Word 
 
 for Ye Much- Maligned Burg, Council Bluffs 265 
 
 TALE THE EIGHTEENTH 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No. 21 Hurleth a Nosegay 
 
 in the Direction of Ye Chief Ex-Tank . 277 
 
 TALE THE NINETEENTH 
 
 In Which Ex-Tank No. 1 1 Dwells Upon the 
 Misdirected Zeal of Ye Chicago Sleuth . 29 1 
 
CONTENTS— Continued. 
 
 TALE THE TWENTIETH page 
 
 Wherein Ex -Tank No. 3 Endeavoreth to 
 Convey an Idea of the Misery of Awakening 
 in ye Bug- Ward ..... 305 
 
 TALE THE TWENTY-FIRST 
 
 In Which Ex-Tank No. 11 Relateth How 
 He Annihilated the Distance over ye Rocky 
 Mountams ; . . . . .321 
 
 TALE THE TWENTY-SECOND 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No. 1 8 Discourseth Warn- 
 ingly on the Insidiousness of ye Gambling 
 Bug 337 
 
 TALE THE TWENTY-THIRD 
 
 In Which Ex-Tank No. 22 Forgiveth Ye 
 Isle of Manhattan, After Having Departed 
 • Therefrom in Wrath , . . -349 
 
 TALE THE TWENTY-FOURTH 
 
 In Which Ex-Tank No. 27 Findeth Himself 
 Shanghaied on Board ye Brigantine Monmouth 
 Queen 363 
 
 TALE THE TWENTY-FIFTH 
 
 Wherein Ex- Tank No. 19 Dwelleth Rem- 
 iniscently and Feelingly Upon ye Joys of His 
 Former Peacefiil Home . . . .3^1 
 
Introductory Note 
 
 Frequent enquiries have been made by readers 
 of these tales as to the exact address — street and 
 number — of the Harlem Club of Former Alcoholic 
 Degenerates. Those of the enquirers unto whom 
 the information was vouchsafed subsequently com- 
 plained that, when they diligently hunted up the 
 addresses given, they found themselves regarding 
 (i) the bleak emptiness of vacant lots, (2) the unin- 
 viting exteriors of third-rate dressmaking establish- 
 ments, or (3) the bland, steamy outworks of 
 Chinese laundries. The first class of searchers for 
 the club's plant therefore rushed to the conclusion 
 — which they expressed in letters — that the tales 
 were as vacant of truth as the vacant lots were of 
 club edifices. Those whose investigations led 
 them to the dressmaking establishments voiced the 
 belief that the tales were made out of whole cloth. 
 
 Those whose search for the club took them to the 
 11 
 
12 INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 Chinese laundries, hesitated not to deliver them- 
 selves of the opinion that the tales were " pipe- 
 dreams," as their celestial source must plainly in- 
 dicate. 
 
 Far be it from the reporter of the deliberations 
 of the Harlem Club of Former Alcoholic De- 
 generates to endeavor to cast the mantle of mystery 
 over the club's location. Is it not within the 
 range of belief that the Ex-Tanks themselves do 
 not know the club's address — that they are con- 
 veyed thereto blindfolded and in closed carriages, 
 and removed in precisely the same manner upon 
 the terminations of the club's sessions — and that, 
 in consequence, the Ex-Tanks remain as ignorant 
 of the exact location of the club of which they are 
 members as — in their degenerate days — they doubt- 
 less often were as to the exact locations of their 
 own homes ? 
 
 In any event, what does the address signify ? 
 The membership quota of the club has been filled 
 to the limit for a long time past, so that scores of 
 clamorous Ex-Tanks, eager for admission, have 
 clamored in vain — for few initiated Ex-Tanks die, 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE 13 
 
 and none resign. They are too appreciative of a 
 good thing to do either the one or the other. 
 
 Certain mischievous friends of the writer of 
 these tales solemnly profess their belief that all of 
 the stories are autobiographical. It will be obvious 
 to the reader that, however large an area a some- 
 what restless newspaper man may have covered 
 before attaining his thirtieth year, and varied as 
 such an individual's experience may have been, he 
 could not possibly be all of the Ex-Tanks rolled 
 into one. The writer hopes the reader will view 
 the matter in this light, at any rate. 
 
 Clarence Louis Cullen. 
 New York, July zf, igoo. 
 
TALE THE FIRST 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No. 3 Sheweth that the 
 Hock-Shop Violin may be Ye Real Thing 
 
TALE THE FIRST 
 
 WHEREIN EX-TANK NO. 3 SHEWETH THAT THE 
 HOCK-SHOP VIOLIN MAY BE YE REAL THING 
 
 " Now, St. Louis was my hoodoo town," said 
 Ex-Tank No. 3, unconsciously disobeying one of 
 the club rules by making rings on the table with 
 the bottom of his glass of vichy and milk. " Dur- 
 ing the progress of six tumultuous years I never hit 
 St. Louis that it didn't get me down and out before 
 I so much as had a chance to take a look at Shaw's 
 Gardens. It didn't make any difference whether I 
 struck St. Louis wearing spurs, sombrero bells and 
 giglamps, coming from the West, or whether I got 
 into it with a silker, studs and patent leathers, trav- 
 elling from the East, that insidious town always 
 took a-hold of me during those six pipe-dreamed 
 years and counted me among the also-rans before I 
 had a show to find out where I was at. It fairly 
 makes me ache to think of the number of times I 
 walked under the steely, glittering stars that hang 
 over St. Louis, wondering how I could get just 
 one hooter to make me feel that life would be 
 17 
 
1 8 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 worth living five or ten minutes longer. And I 
 want to go on record as saying that, hard as the 
 proposition was on each and all of these occasions, 
 I always got the hooter. But, as I say, I had to 
 walk long distances under stars that just winked 
 me the laugh before I thought the thing out, and I 
 generally had to take my vest to a second-hand 
 store at the finish, at that. 
 
 " But, fellow Ex-Tanks, there never was a hoo- 
 doo yet that couldn't be broken. I smashed that 
 hoodoo the last time I covered St. Louis. The 
 last time I covered St. Louis I got out of it on the 
 varnished cars, and not on a side-door Pullman, 
 and I had a front and all colors of it in my clothes. 
 This thing of getting out of St. Louis as a deck- 
 hand on a freight boat bound for Memphis — but, 
 as I say, St. Louis doesn't owe me anything 
 now. A Stradivarius violin is a great thing, any- 
 how." 
 
 Then No. 3 gazed into his glass of vichy and 
 milk dreamily. Ex-Tanks Nos. 6 and 9 called 
 him to order at once. 
 
 "What the dickens," they both inquired to- 
 gether, " has getting out of St. Louis with two 
 dollars and a railroad ticket got to do with a Strad 
 fiddle ? " 
 
 The Chief Ex-Tank perceived the reasonable- 
 
TALE THE FIRST 19 
 
 ness of this question and requested No. 3 to re- 
 frain from drifting. 
 
 " Well," continued No. 3, " this Stradivarius 
 fiddle was the thing that enabled me to rip out the 
 works of that St. Louis hoodoo and look 'em in 
 the face. If it hadn't been for that fiddle — but it 
 wasn't a fiddle ; it was a violin. There's just as 
 much difference between a fiddle and a violin as 
 there is between Hickory Jim and George Dewey, 
 and " 
 
 At this point No. 3 was again called to order by 
 several Ex-Tanks for roping in extraneous matter 
 in connection with a recital of an alleged win-out, 
 as they put it. 
 
 " I wouldn't ha' gone to St. Louis at all that 
 last time," proceeded No. 3, after this round-up, 
 "if I hadn't been pushed over there by accident. 
 I made a finish of a Chicago spiel no further away 
 than in Dayton, O. I don't remember getting to 
 Dayton, but I remember getting away all right. I 
 got a shave and a shine and a haircut and a fifteen- 
 cent collar in Dayton when I came to, and hit up 
 some people there for a job. I thought they 
 might give me something to do in the sweep-out 
 line, just to enable me to buy a ticket for some 
 place or other after a couple of weeks' work ; but 
 they didn't. Derned if they didn't take hold of 
 
20 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 me at the right end, some way or another — prob- 
 ably because I shot a good line of talk into 'em — 
 and undertake to teach me the business and how 
 to sell their goods. Never got handled so white in my 
 life as I was handled in Dayton by those people. 
 After I'd hung around the works there for a month 
 or so they told me to stand by to go on the road 
 to sell goods. I stood by with a whole lot of a 
 broad grin, I want to say, for the fellows who were 
 then selling their goods on the road were making 
 money by hatfuls. When they finally told me, 
 however, that my first trip was to be to St. Louis 
 I was ready to do a lay-down. I did better than 
 that, though. I up and told the man who was 
 handling me all about it — what a hoodoo St. Louis 
 had always been to me, and that if he sent me to 
 St. Louis to sell goods I'd probably draw on him 
 for a thousand dollars before I'd been there twenty- 
 four hours, and then he wouldn't hear any more of 
 me or my samples. 
 
 " ' That's all right,' said he. ' St. Louis is the 
 only vacant territory I've got just now, and that's 
 where you're going — to-night. Pack up.' 
 
 "And so I went to St. Louis to sell goods. 
 How'd I make out ? Oh, only about ;^50 to ;^ioo 
 a day, clean, that's all. For the first week I was 
 there I sold so many goods that I was afraid the 
 
TALE THE FIRST 21 
 
 Dayton folks couldn't make 'em fast enough to de- 
 liver, and I wired the firm about it. They wired 
 me back to sell a million if I could, and I started 
 in to do it. The hoodoo seemed to be broken. 
 Never had such slathers of luck in my life. My 
 four dollar a day room at the Laclede wasn't big 
 enough for me after three days, and so I got a suite, 
 so I could pay more money for my accommodations. 
 Then I fell to selling goods only in the morning, 
 because I felt compunction about taking all the 
 money in St. Louis for myself and my firm, and in 
 the afternoons I went out to the Fair Grounds and 
 looked at 'em run. Couldn't lose at that game, 
 either. Picked five out of six on the card, every 
 day for six days running, and then says I to my- 
 self, ' This hoodoo business is all a hasheesh fan- 
 tasy. If I felt any better I couldn't stand it. If 
 I had any more luck it 'ud kill me. I'll just take 
 one or two, to spread a few dollars around a town 
 that I'm taking too much money out of.' Which 
 I did. I just got nibbling at the stufF — same old 
 way — and doing business at the same time. I 
 went right on selling goods and nibbling at the 
 red-eye, and making the coin to give away. I 
 couldn't see any finish to it. 
 
 " One afternoon, after I'd been in St. Louis for 
 nearly a month, I happened to pass by a pawnshop 
 
22 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 that looked familiar to me. The annual sale of 
 unredeemed pledges was going on at the time, and 
 that's how I happened to notice the joint. I got 
 to thinking about it and I remembered that two 
 years before, when I was rassling with the St. 
 Louis hoodoo and getting the worst of the falls, I 
 had put in two good sparkers there — a ring and a 
 pin. I wondered if I had any show to get them at 
 this sale, and so I went in to find out about it, hav- 
 ing all colors of stuff in my clothes to redeem them 
 if they were still there. They were still there. I 
 looked them over and I wanted them. The pawn- 
 shop people saw that I wanted them, and so they 
 told me I had no more claim on them, not having 
 paid the interest, than the general public — that they 
 were going to put the ring and the pin up to be 
 auctioned off that same afternoon. So I stayed to 
 watch the bidding on them. I had a few of the 
 St. Louis brand of drinks under my vest at the 
 time, and felt pretty good. I had to wait for the 
 auctioneer duck to come to my ring and pin, and I 
 watched the other stuff being put iip without much 
 interest until the fellow down below handed up an 
 old leather violin case. That made me sort o' 
 woozy. I recalled that when I was a kid my 
 father had tried for several years to drum some 
 violin music into me — using a fence picket for the 
 
TALE THE FIRST 23 
 
 purpose, generally, on account of my disinclination 
 to do any practicing — and I thought to myself that 
 I'd just pull down that old violin for fun. I asked 
 the chap on the block to let nie look at it, and 
 I inspected it critically, not knowing any more, 
 really, about a violin than I did about active tem- 
 perance work. 
 
 " This was 9 queer-looking old outfit, though. 
 It was a bruised-looking old fiddle, without any 
 bridge or strings on it. There was nothing fancy 
 about it — no gingerbready mother-of-pearl inlaid 
 work or anything of that kind — but there was a 
 head on the end of the neck that was carved into 
 what looked to me like a mask of tragedy or some- 
 thing like that. The case was of untanned leather, 
 with old-fashioned brass hinges, and there were 
 three funny-looking old bows, with little or no 
 hair on 'em, in the box. I decided to get the old 
 thing, anyhow, and string it up and see if I could 
 remember how to play ' Rory O'More,' the only 
 tune I ever could learn on the fiddle when I was a 
 kid. I passed it up to the auctioneer, nobody else 
 caring to look at it, and he started it going at a 
 dollar. I bid two and got the whole outfit at that 
 figure. Then I waited until they put up my ring 
 and pin and got them at the figure I had paid for 
 them originally. Then I picked up my old violin 
 
24 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 case and went to my suite — how's that, my suite ? 
 — at the Laclede. I put the fiddle case under the 
 bed, went out and got a few more high balls, and 
 forgot all about the thing for a week. By the time 
 that week had passed I wasn't selling so many 
 goods. I was too busy to pay much attention to 
 the goods. I was trying to see if I couldn't find 
 out what had become of that St. Louis hoodoo. I 
 wanted to give the hoodoo every chance in the 
 world to show up, and I did. I thought of the old 
 fiddle one afternoon, however, and went into a 
 music store and bought a set of strings for it and a 
 bridge and bow. I took the old fid out when I got 
 to the hotel and strung her up. I remembered 
 how to do that, anyhow. But, say, I found when 
 I tried to saw on it that I couldn't play a note. I 
 remembered how ' Rory O'More ' went, all right, 
 but I was the hammiest thing that ever happened 
 when it came to doing it with a bow. I noticed 
 when I picked the strings of that old violin, though, 
 that it sounded pretty good — kind o' deep and rich 
 and contraltoish, with a lot of volume and reso- 
 nance and that kind o' thing. 
 
 " ' Well,' says I, when I put it back into its 
 case and shoved it under the bed, ' the fid's 
 worth two dollars, anyhow, and the first Dutch- 
 man I meet that'll play "The Irish Washer- 
 
TALE THE FIRST 25 
 
 woman " for me on it will get the old thing for 
 nothing.' 
 
 " Then I forgot all about it all over again. By 
 this time I was nibbling pretty hard at the old stuff, 
 and not thinking much about business. I had seven 
 or eight hundred ready money and business wasn't 
 bothering me. Then came the night that I went 
 up against the green stuff that the boy behind the 
 bar frappes for you, and it was all off. The hoo- 
 doo got me. I didn't know anything for a week, 
 and when I got out of the trance I found a large 
 and turbulent stack of telegrams from my Dayton 
 people. Most of 'em were asking me for explana- 
 tions as to where I was at. The last one read like 
 this : 
 
 '"You are fired.' 
 
 " ' The thunder you say,' says I, and I went out 
 and tanked up again for another week or so. Then 
 I got a lucid interval long enough to pay up the 
 bill for that Laclede suite and to take a two dollar 
 a day room on the European plan, and by that 
 time I had only thirty five dollars left out of the 
 wad — and no job. The hoodoo was getting in its 
 work by this time all right, and I could see the 
 deck-hand finish on the freighter as far down as 
 Memphis again. 
 
 " Well, the same three-balls outfit got the ring 
 
26 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 and pin a week or so later, and after that the thing's 
 a good deal of a dizzy blank until I came to in a 
 little six by eight room in a theatrical boarding- 
 house with nothing much to speak of except forty 
 cents in change and two or three beer tickets, and 
 the whole wardrobe in. Didn't recall putting the 
 things in, but they weren't anywhere to be seen, 
 and I found the tickets in my pockets when I did 
 the usual digging around act customary under such 
 circumstances. I went out and blew in the forty 
 cents and beer tickets, and then I came back to the 
 room to see if I couldn't find something else where- 
 upon to raise the price. The end of the old fiddle 
 case stuck out from beneath the bunk, and I 
 pulled it out. I thought I might be able to get 
 fifty cents or a dollar on it, and I reflected what a 
 gorgeous inspiration it had been on my part that 
 afternoon to buy it in. I took it out of the case to 
 see if the strings were all right still, and picked on 
 it some. Then I drew the bow across the strings to 
 see if the old thing was in tune, so that if the 
 pawnbroker guy tried it he'd find it all right. I 
 was hauling the bow across the G and D strings 
 when I heard a rap on my door. ' Come in,' says 
 I, and the queerest little chap you ever saw — all 
 hair and eyes — walked in. 
 
 " ' I hairt ze veeolin,' he said, ' unt I ze lip- 
 
TALE THE FIRST 27 
 
 perty took — it zound most veil. May I him 
 see ? ' 
 
 " I handed it over to him, and he looked it over, 
 and then he looked me over. Then he felt all 
 over the fiddle, and rapped on the back of it, and 
 examined the inside of it, and fondled that mask 
 of tragedy headpiece, and finally picked the strings. 
 Then he looked me over some more. 
 
 " ' Vair you get zis ? ' he asked me, and derned 
 if the hairy-looking little old chap didn't examine 
 me with suspicion. 
 
 " ' At a hock shop, for a couple o' dollars,' said 
 I. ' Why ? ' 
 
 " He went on picking the strings again, and then 
 he gave me such a series of suspicious stares out of 
 his big fiery eyes that he sort o' made me hot. 
 
 " ' Is there anything ailing you, Jim ? ' I asked 
 him. 
 
 " He didn't make any reply, but he put that old 
 fiddle under his chin, made a sweep with the bow, 
 gave a crash on the strings from the G up to the E 
 and all on the bridge in a chord, and — say, it gets 
 me around the neck to talk about that duck's music, 
 honest it does. I never heard anything like it. 
 Why, it was simply devilish ! What he couldn't 
 do to that old thing — ^well, he gave a lot of those 
 crashing chords all over the violin, and then he be- 
 
28 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 gan 'way down on the bottom of the G string and 
 fooled around there with those stubby fingers of 
 his, and you could shut your eyes and think there 
 was a woman in the room with a contralto voice, 
 and a soul in it, at that. Then he gradually 
 worked his way up to the top of the E string and 
 burst into a lot of low whimpering up there, and, 
 after keeping that up a while, down he went to the 
 G again with a mutter like a little cascade, and — 
 well, I walked over to the dirty window of my 
 room, looked out into the alley, and felt sorry for 
 making such a hash of my life, and I'm not such 
 a soft slob, either. There's not a fpUow in this 
 room that that music wouldn't have made to feel 
 like thirty cents, and I know it. He must have 
 played away for fifteen or twenty minutes and when 
 he did stop I turned around. I knew that he 
 couldn't have made that music on an ordinary fid- 
 dle, and, •* badly as I was in need of the price, I 
 had already reconsidered the idea of taking it to a 
 three-ball shack and putting it in for a half-dollar 
 or so. 
 
 " ' You play that thing pretty well, Jim,' said I. 
 
 " He pulled out a big red bandanna handkerchief 
 and wiped his eyes. Then he shrugged his shoul- 
 ders. 
 
 " ' Unt who could nod ? ' he said. ' Besites, I 
 
TALE THE FIRST 29 
 
 pelong to ze Thomas Orchestra — am a fairst veeo- 
 lin. Ziz week we are here blaying.' 
 
 " Then he sort o' shook himself together. 
 
 " ' I gif you fifty tollar vor ze instrument,' he said. 
 
 " ' Not on your tintype,' said I. ' That fid's 
 been in my family since 1723, and it isn't for sale. 
 I'm temporarily on the hog, but I'm hanging on to 
 that violin all right.' 
 
 " He looked me over again. 
 
 " ' I gif you for eet an huntairt tollar,' he said. 
 
 " ' You must think I'm dead easy,' said I. ' I 
 don't play on the violin myself, but I know 'em 
 when I see them. You ought to be a good enough 
 violinist to see at a glance that that violin is a first- 
 rate Strad.' 
 
 " ' Nod exactly a firsd-rate one,' he said, ' but ze 
 tone ees loafly. Eet ees vat you call a second — a 
 goot eggsample, bud nod ze vair highest. I gif you 
 zwei huntairt.' 
 
 " ' Come again,' said I. ' You want to multiply 
 that about five times, and then maybe I'll do busi- 
 ness with you. I know what it's worth.' 
 
 " He played on it again, and then he made his 
 last raise — ;^300. I suppose, at that, I could have 
 made him hit it up to the ^500 mark, but I saw 
 the way the thing was, and I wanted to give that 
 St. Louis hoodoo a good hard twist. I finally told 
 
30 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 him that he didn't have the price to pay me for the 
 violin, but that if he would make me a first-rate 
 immediate sale of it — say, ;^i,ooo or ^1,500 — I'd 
 treat him right. He w^anted it himself too much 
 to take very enthusiastically to this idea, but at 
 last he said he knevi^ a collector of old violins in 
 St. Louis — he's quite a famous man in that line — 
 who would buy the violin at sight. He went along 
 with me to see this man. The collector, because 
 I was a bit shaky after my little month of it, 
 thought that he could throw it into me, and tried 
 on the brusque act, questioning me as to where I 
 had got the instrument, etc. I called his bluff, 
 and marched him down to the pawnshop where I 
 had bought it for two dollars. You ought to have 
 seen the pawnbroker's eyes stick out when he 
 learned of what a good thing he had let get away 
 from him. He made my title clear, however, and 
 told the collector that the violin had been brought 
 in two or three years before by a colored man, and 
 that it had been up on the block at the annual sales 
 ever since. The auctioneer hadn't been able to 
 get rid of it at any price until I happened along. 
 The coon had stolen it somewhere, of course, but 
 that wasn't up to me. The collector gave me my 
 figure, ;^ 1,500 spot cash, for it that afternoon, and 
 he's got it yet, I understand, and has never even 
 
TALE THE FIRST 31 
 
 had to fight a claimant of it, although it was, he 
 told me — ^and he's a man that knows about these 
 things-^as genuine, if not as absolutely perfect, a 
 Strad, as ever came out of Italy. I gave the 
 ' fairist veeolin ' of the Thomas Orchestra his bit 
 for putting me next. 
 
 " I eloped from St. Louis the next day with the 
 ring and pin and the rest of the ticketed things on 
 again, and I made faces at that St. Louis hoodoo 
 until the train was in the middle of the State of 
 Illinois. But I haven't taken any chances on that 
 town since." 
 
TALE THE SECOND 
 
 Which Explaineth How Ex-Tank No. 14 Did 
 Win Out By Means of Ye Hansom Cab 
 
TALE THE SECOND 
 
 WHICH EXPLAINETH HOW EX-TANK NO. I4 DID 
 WIN OUT BY MEANS OF YE HANSOM CAB 
 
 " It's funny how a town becomes too small for 
 you, under some circumstances, ain't it ? " is the 
 way Ex-Tank No. 14 got under way when he was 
 reminded by the Chief Ex-Tank at the club's last 
 fortnightly meeting that his number had been 
 drawn. 
 
 " Now, New York's a big town, ain't it ? I 
 leave it to all of you gentlemen if New York ain't 
 a big town, hey ? But it certainly looked to me 
 then — the time I'm going to tell you about — as if 
 New York was no bigger than Peru, Ind., or East 
 St. Louis, 111. You see, after you've been steadily 
 and properly soakful for three months or so the 
 town begins to look diminished, contracted in area. 
 You figure it that you've got all the routes worked 
 and that all hands are next to you ; that the news- 
 boys on your beat have got your case all down pat ; 
 that the barkeeps are beginning to freeze up on you 
 and that they are rapidly losing all recollection of 
 35 
 
36 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 the not remote times when you wore a frock coat 
 and a top hat. Understand ? 
 
 " When, in short, the jag gets to such a frazzled, 
 outworn stage it waxes reproachful and you imagine 
 that the whole town has knocked ofF both work 
 and play for the purpose of watching you slouch 
 along the street, unshaven, and with your clothes 
 unbrushed and your shoes only half tied and a few 
 dents in your hat from the scrap you had on the 
 night before. I lack, you will perceive, fellow ex- 
 tanks, the faculty of clear and continuous portrayal ; 
 I am only an impressionist and if I exhibit sketch- 
 iness bear with me. It's a hard thing, anyhow, to 
 make it clear just how small a town gets under 
 these circumstances : how it shrivels up when you 
 begin to feel that your most important job in life is 
 to dodge the cops, even though they may not have 
 so much as the first focus on you. 
 
 " At any rate, when, in the early winter of 1890, 
 I had accumulated the usual pocketful of dog's-eared 
 pawn tickets and the game began to get pretty hard, 
 I knew that New York didn't look any bigger to 
 me than Elizabeth, N. J. ; and so I had to entertain 
 soggy ideas of leaving the atrophied town to its 
 fate, I was ' in the midst,' as it were, of these re- 
 flections — ^wondering just where I'd pull out for 
 and how I'd get there — when I meets up with our 
 
TALE THE SECOND 37 
 
 honored fellow-member, No. 19. Nineteen had 
 just begun work on his regular early winter still 
 when I met him j nevertheless, he was already 
 broke. And so we got together. No. 19 didn't 
 think New York was so almighty small — he hadn't 
 yet arrived at that stage — and he said that he 
 thought New York was good enough for him. He 
 was willing, however, to cooperate with me in any 
 plan I might formulate that would enable me mer- 
 cilessly to abandon New York to a sorry destiny 
 without me. 
 
 " Now I began to wonder who I could touch up 
 for a pass to some place or other. It all simmered 
 down to one man — an old pal of mine who ran a 
 lumber yard up in Fordham. I knew that, alone 
 and unaided, I could't get the pass from him, for, 
 never having qualified for membership in an organ- 
 ization of this kind, he was dead sore on the 
 alcoholic degenerate question. I mentioned this to 
 No. 19. Nineteen, with his customary genius, saw 
 a way out of it. He had only his usual sedate still 
 on at the time, while I was soggy and disposed to 
 discourse on Carthaginian history. Nineteen hails 
 a passing cab — neither of us had a cent, you know 
 — and he orders the cabman to drive us out to the 
 lumber yard in Fordham. I didn't see through the 
 proposition, but when No. 19 told me that it was 
 
38 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 up to me to keep still and to look just as depraved, 
 wanton and helpless as possible, as my part of the 
 programme, I closed up. 
 
 " When we got to the lumber yard I just leaned 
 back in the cab and looked soggy, as per agreement 
 with Nineteen, and he went in to have a talk with 
 mf pal. He told him in that persuasive, I'm-just- 
 doing-this-for-an-unfortunate-man sort of way of 
 his that I was a wreck, and that it was impera- 
 tively necessary that I should be sent to my people, 
 who lived out in Denver ; that he wouldn't answer 
 for the consequence if I wasn't put aboard a train 
 and sent to my people in Denver; that, unfor- 
 tunately, he himself was not sufficiently strong in 
 funds to send me to my folks in Denver ; conse- 
 quently he had, out of purely philanthropic motives, 
 called at the lumber yard to see what could be 
 done. It was a good story, that of Nineteen's, 
 and it went. My old pal came out to the cab and 
 looked me over. I knew that he was looking me 
 over, but I didn't let on. ; I apparently slumbered. 
 He prodded, me, but that didn't work. I ap- 
 parently slumbered on. 
 
 '"Too bad,' I heard him say to Nineteen. 
 
 ' Why, I can remember when that old chap was . 
 
 Well, I guess you're right about the necessity for 
 sending him to his folks. If something's not done 
 
TALE THE SECOND 39 
 
 with him, something'll happen to him. I'll ship 
 him out to Denver if you see that he gets aboard 
 the train.' 
 
 " Sure, he would see that I got aboard a train, 
 said Nineteen, and so it was all right. My old 
 friend telegraphed down to a railroad office, to have 
 the railroad people give Nineteen a ticket for 
 Denver, with sleeper birth, upon application, 
 chargeable to his shipping account, and he handed 
 Nineteen twenty dollars to give to me for necessary 
 travelling expenses when I got aboard the train. 
 And I apparently slumbered on until the cab pulled 
 away from the lumber yard. 
 
 " ' Say, where do you want to go, anyhow ? ' 
 Nineteen asked me when we got under way. I 
 told him any old place would do. 
 
 " ' How about Chicago ? ' he asked me. 
 
 " I thought Chicago would be bully, I told him. 
 
 " ' You see, if you like Chicago,' he said, ' we 
 can get a rake-ofF on the ticket. I've got a ticket 
 for Denver for you, you know.' 
 
 "So we drove down to the railroad office and 
 got the ticket for Denver, Nineteen meanwhile 
 having handed me ten dollars out of the twenty 
 dollars. Having determined upon Chicago as my 
 next place of abode, we took the ticket down the 
 line to see what could be done with it. Nineteen 
 
40 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 was pretty well up on the dodgers of scalpers, and 
 he knew how to dicker with 'em. So he was able 
 to exchange the ticket for Denver for a straight 
 limited ticket to Chicago and get fourteen dollars 
 in change, which was doing mighty well. I got 
 ten dollars out of the fourteen dollars change, be- 
 sides the ticket to Chicago, and then Nineteen 
 and I started in to make our adieus to each other 
 I don't remember that part of it very well. 
 
 " The last I remembered of New York, after I 
 found myself aboard a train bound for Chicago 
 was Nineteen punching a cabman somewhere on 
 Sixth avenue, and then there was a blank. But 
 there I was on a train bound for Chicago all right, 
 already in the middle of the State of Pennsylvania, 
 broad daylight, no trunk, no baggage of any kind, 
 and seventy cents in silver only. At Altoona I got 
 a pint through the car window, the boy charging me 
 twenty cents for getting it for me, and by the time 
 the train drew into Pittsburg was pintless and flat 
 broke. Something had to be done, could see that. 
 It was early in December, and the weather was 
 mild, sunshiny and balmy, and so I got ofF at 
 Pittsburg. I got twelve dollars on my overcoat, and 
 took the next train out for Chicago, without an 
 overcoat, but with two quarts and money. Then 
 I got mixed up with the gang in the smoking car, 
 
TALE THE SECOND 41 
 
 and I was, as usual, a good thing. I got another 
 quart at every stop for 'em, and it was one de- 
 lirious whirl of bliss until the train reached Chicago, 
 which I don't remember. The brakie came along 
 and prodded me and yelled ' Chicago 1 ' at me, and 
 then I got off, 
 
 " It was about seven o'clock at night when the 
 train got into Chicago, and there was a blizzard in 
 Chicago. It had been snowing hard in Chicago 
 all day, and along toward night it had got too cold 
 to snow. The temperature was about 4° below 
 zero, and the stars looked frostier than I had ever 
 seen 'em. So did the huge cops, with their tough 
 caps pulled down over their ears. I had one drink 
 left in the last bottle, and I absorbed it outside of 
 the depot. Then I was good and up against it for 
 fair. I had never been in Chicago before. I 
 didn't know a man, boy or dog in the town. Here 
 I was, broke, without an overcoat in a temperature: 
 of 4° below zero, no front to speak of, no jag- 
 feeder, nothing. 
 
 " ' My boy,' says I to myself as I buttoned up 
 my sack coat outside the depot, ' here is where you 
 get vagged and break rock on the pile.' 
 
 " But I thought I'd take a walk around, any- 
 how. So I dug my hands into my pocket and 
 started to walk. The streets were jammed, and 
 
42 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 all of the men had on inch-thick ulsters and all of 
 the women electric seal sacques. It made me feel 
 sad and cold, that did. Then I could see the 
 ducks dropping into the booze factories in pairs 
 and threes- — all of 'em dressed up and with thirty 
 or forty cents each in their clothes — and it was 
 very hard — honest it was. I kept on walking until 
 I reached a corner where there were a couple of 
 newspaper offices catty-cornered from each other, 
 I afterward found out that it was the corner of 
 Dearborn and Madison streets. Now. In front of 
 one of these newspaper offices there were a couple 
 of cabs. The drivers weren't anywhere near that 
 I could see, and the flash came to me all of a 
 sudden. 
 
 " ' What's the matter with my making an honest 
 dollar or two with one of these cabs ? ' I thought. 
 
 " So I stepped up to the seat of one of the cabs, 
 wrapped the lap robe around my legs, pulled on the 
 reins, and we were off in a bunch. I confidently 
 expected to hear somebody yell after me, but I 
 thought that would be as good a way to get pinched 
 as any other. Nobody yelled after me. It was all 
 right. I had a good cab and a good horse, and it 
 was up to me to use 'em. 
 
 "As I say, I didn't know any more about 
 Chicago than I did about Timbuctoo, but I just 
 
TALE THE SECOND 43 
 
 pulled the horse around the corner where I saw the 
 biggest crowd. I was driving along a street that I 
 afterward found out was Wabash avenue, several 
 blocks away from where I had swiped the cab, and 
 keeping close to the curb for possible passengers, 
 when a couple of warm members, all togged out in 
 fur coats, came out of a rum repository and yelled 
 at me. I drew up alongside the curb. 
 
 " ' Hey, Bill,' said one of 'em, 'just shoot us out 
 to the fight, will you ? ' 
 
 " Of course I would, said I. I didn't know any 
 more about any fight than I did (then) about the 
 House of David on Clark street, but I had to make 
 a blufF. 
 
 " ' How many for the pair of us ? ' asked the hot 
 tamale that had hailed me. 
 
 " ' Ten apiece,' said I. 
 
 " ' All right,' they both said at once, and there 
 I was in a fair way to win out by finding twenty 
 dollars. After they both hopped into the calashj I 
 made a mumbling excuse to hustle into the saloon. 
 
 " ' Hey,' says I to the barkeep, ' where''s this 
 fight coming ofF to-night ? " 
 
 " The barkeep looked at me as if he thought I 
 had been stacking up too long against a barrel 
 house, but he told me. The fight was to take 
 place, he said, in the ' barn ' way over on the South 
 
44 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 Side. I didn't know anything about the 'barn,' 
 but I wasn't going to give myself away and excite 
 suspicion. So I hustled back to the cab, wrapped 
 up again, and started south. I knew that much — 
 which direction the south was — and just took a 
 chance on finding the joint where the fight was to 
 happen. I had driven about half a mile along 
 Wabash avenue when I fell in with a procession of 
 cabs and hansoms. They all seemed to be going 
 the same way, and a lot of the fellows inside of 
 'em were bawling and singing. So I correctly 
 figured it that all of the barouches were bound for 
 the fight, as I was, and all I had to do was to fol- 
 low them. My two ducks had a bottle apiece with 
 'em to keep out the cold, and they were hitting 
 them up pretty hard all the way out, occasionally 
 handing one of the bottles out for me to swig, 
 which I don't need to inform the honored mem- 
 bers of this organization was a godsend under the 
 prevailing conditions. When, after about an hour's 
 pull in the wake of the procession of cabs and han- 
 soms I pulled up outside the 'barn,' which in 
 reality was a huge, housed-over pavilion, I was a 
 bit nervous about the other cabbies. I feared they 
 might tumble to the rig and get next to me. So I 
 was pretty well pleased when my two passengers 
 stumbled out of the rig and began to gaze upon me 
 
TALE THE SECOND 45 
 
 with the sympathetic eye. The one I had made the 
 bargain with handed me a twenty dollar note that 
 he peeled ofF his wad, and then he said : 
 
 " ' Hey, Mike, d'ye want to see the scrap ? ' 
 " Well, I didn't so much want to see the scrap 
 as I did want to abandon that cab, but you can 
 gamble that I didn't waste any time replying that I 
 just ached to see the fight. 
 
 " ' Come 'long, then,' my jagged passenger said, 
 and I followed 'em. They had box seats already 
 bought for themselves, but the good-natured geezej- 
 that had asked me if I wanted to take in the fight 
 bought me a three dollar seat up in the front row 
 before the ring. That let me out of the cab scrape, 
 I knew, and so I settled down to wait for the ring 
 carnival. There were two or three preliminary 
 bouts between dubs, and then the two prize middle- 
 weights of the night came on. They hadn't been 
 fighting half a round before it was apparent that 
 the taller man of the two was outclassed by about 
 a million pounds by the squat man as a scientific 
 scrapper. All the tall chap was good for was to 
 take punishment, and he could beat any mixed-aler 
 at that that I ever saw. The squat man danced 
 around and made a punching bag of the lanky chap 
 from the start of the ten-round go, and the gang 
 was shouting all the time, ' Take him out ! ' re- 
 
46 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 ferring to the outclassed man with the advantage in 
 inches. By the time the eighth round came around 
 the thing was simply a farce. The tall man was 
 so dopey that he could barely raise his arms, 
 and he ran around the ring in a dazed kind of 
 way. 
 
 " Now, sitting a couple of rows behind me, there 
 was one of these here talky sports that knew all 
 about how the thing was going to wind up. The 
 eighth round was pretty nearly over, the tall fighter 
 about the worst licked man you ever saw, when 
 this chinny sport jumped up and yelled : 
 
 " ' Twenty to one he don't last the ninth round ! ' 
 
 " I like to call a chinner's bluff, and, anyhow, I 
 saw a remote, vague chance of making a decent 
 winning a — a tog-out winning and a start, overcoat 
 and all. So I turned around and addressed the 
 sport with a jaw. 
 
 " ' How much of that twenty to one have you 
 got ? ' I asked him. 
 
 " ' All you want of it,' he answered airily. 
 
 "'How about ;^400 to $%o that he don't 
 last the ninth round ? ' I asked him. 
 
 " ' You're on,' said the sport, a bit weaker than 
 he had talked before, but all of his pals were taking 
 it in, and so he couldn't back down. I pulled out 
 my solitary twenty dollars, and he dug into his 
 
TALE THE SECOND 47 
 
 wad, peeling off four ;^ioo bills. We deposited the 
 stakes with a man in the seat directly between us. 
 
 " ' This is like getting twenty dollars in a letter,' 
 said the chinny sport. I didn't think I had a show 
 on earth to win, but I thought I might as well take 
 a chance. It was like playing a i,ooo to i shot 
 in a race to win, but, then, I've seen things of the 
 sort go through at that. And with ^^420 I could 
 be an ace and get a start out in the Town of 
 Wind. With only twenty dollars — well, after I 
 got an eight dollar ulster there wouldn't be much 
 to it. These things I thought over as I sat and 
 watched 'em fanning the two pugs for the ninth 
 round. 
 
 " Now, my man looked a heap better to me 
 when he wabbled up to take his medicine in this 
 round. He didn't look like a winner, but he 
 seemed to have shaken himself together with the 
 determination of staying out the ten rounds. 
 Everybody noticed this, and the talky hot sport 
 with whom I had the bet looked a bit nervous over 
 it, as I perceived out of the tail of my eye. The 
 two fighters fiddled around a bit, the squat man 
 getting in a couple of hard stomach jabs on the 
 tall guy — and then it happened. It happened with 
 such suddenness that hardly anybody could say 
 just how it was done, and everybody agreed that it 
 
48 TALES OF THE EX-TANICS . 
 
 was a fluke of the flakiest kind. But the tall man, 
 in emerging from a hot mix-up, shot out his left, 
 more, apparently, with the intention of warding 
 ofF a swipe from the other man than for any other 
 reason. There was steam in his shooting out of 
 his left, and, probably accidentally, his fist caught 
 the squat man fairly on the point of the jaw, and 
 he went down like a clothing store dummy. The 
 referee was doing the arm-counting on him before 
 anybody realized what had happened. When the 
 ten seconds were up and the squat man was still 
 prone, with no sign of getting up, the stakeholder 
 of the ^420 turned to the sport with the penchant 
 for conversation, saying : 
 
 "'You' lose.' 
 
 " Then he handed me the wad of 1^420. 
 
 "The garrulous sport made the beginning of a 
 beef about the thing being a job, but his pals threw 
 it into him about being a chaw-bacon and a would- 
 be welcher and he subsided ; so I didn't have the 
 least bit of trouble in hanging on to the ;^420. I 
 got out of the ' barn ' with it and made for a drug 
 store. There I telephoned down to the newspaper 
 office in front of which I had swiped the cab, ask- 
 ing the people in the business office if there had 
 been a wild-eyed cabman inside hunting for his 
 rig. They said that such was the case. 
 
TALE THE SECOND 49 
 
 " ' Well, it's out here in front of the shack 
 where the fight was pulled ofF to-night,' I told 'em, 
 and then I rang off. 
 
 " Then I rode into town in a hack and took a 
 room for the night at the Hotel Richelieu at ten 
 dollars a throw. The clerk looked at me, a hard- 
 luck-looking, overcoatless proposition, when I reg- 
 istered, but I paid him for the room in advance 
 and that went. The next morning I went down 
 the line and togged out. Then I hunted up the 
 cabman, told him I had grabbed his cab the night 
 before when I was too far submerged in the juice 
 of the grape and paid him thirty dollars for his 
 anxiety and loss of a night's work. He was all 
 right, the cabman, and made no roar. So I had 
 about ;^300 with which to start plugging the game 
 in Chicago and it was a sober act for the rest of 
 my stay." 
 
 " Which I may state, before adjourning this 
 meeting," said the Chief Ex-Tank, rising, " that 
 for a quick win-out, Fourteen's the pacemaker and 
 the probable winner up to date." 
 
TALE THE THIRD 
 
 Which Telleth of How Ex-Tank No. 9 Es- 
 caped From Ye Burg of Galveston 
 
TALE THE THIRD 
 
 WHICH TELLETH OF HOW EX-TANK NO. 9 ESCAPED 
 FROM YE BURG OF GALVESTON 
 
 " When I read, a while back, that the Beach 
 Hotel, a few miles outside of Galveston, had 
 burned to the ground, I was swept by a wave of 
 memory," said Ex-Tank No. 9, reflectively. 
 "Not that I ever put up there. That isn't it. 
 But I once saw the outside of that hotel structure 
 under such peculiar and I might almost say 
 harrowing conditions that " 
 
 " Hold on there a minute," interrupted Ex-Tank 
 No. 7, who is a stickler for the carrying out of the 
 club's plans. " Is there any hard luck in this as a 
 result of alcoholic degeneracy ? " 
 
 No. 9 regarded No. 7 with an aggrieved gaze. 
 
 " Have I ever yet," he inquired, " since the or- 
 ganization of the Harlem Club of Former Alcoholic 
 Degenerates, sprung any Sunday-school ones about 
 the good little boy and the bad little boy, or have I 
 ever " 
 
 " Oh, well," replied No. 7, settling back in his 
 53 
 
54 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 seat, " if you're going to conform to the club rules, 
 of course, all right, go ahead. Only I couldn't 
 quite see the connection between the Beach Hotel 
 and " 
 
 " Shut up, Seven," said all of the members at 
 once. "Nine has now got the deck. Nine, shoot 
 it out." 
 
 " On this occasion that I started to speak about," 
 resumed No. 9, " I remember regarding the rather 
 handsome exterior of the Beach Hotel with such a 
 bitter feeling of unjust disapproval that " 
 
 " Rule No. 1,184, ' Don't begin a yarn in the 
 middle or at the end,' " quoted No. 7. 
 
 " I correct myself," said No. 9. " Therefore, 
 I begin at the beginning. Everything begins and 
 ends here in New York. This particular jag be- 
 gan here in New York in the inonth of August — 
 let's see, in 1889, it was. Yes, I remember now. 
 It was in 1889, ^^^ Y^^^ after the blizzard, on 
 which occasion I slept under a seventeen-foot 
 bank of snow over in Hackensack for two 
 days — " 
 
 "As you were saying, in August, 1889, you" — 
 again interrupted No. 7. 
 
 "In August, 1889," continued No. 9, "I had 
 been sober for fully five months. Consequently I 
 had too much money and too many good clothes. 
 
TALE THE THIRD 55 
 
 Moreover, five months of straightawray work con- 
 tains so many possibilities of monotony — but I 
 need not dilate upon this. You all know how 
 damaging to the inspiration an uninterrupted period 
 of five months' work is bound to be. Then the 
 ;^6oo that I had soaked away produced within me 
 a very tired feeling. Now, if I had only remained 
 here in New York with that ;g6oo — well, I could 
 ha' had a two months' whirl easy, with hospital 
 money left besides for the finish. But on the very 
 next morning after the jag began — why, I woke up 
 on a boat. Say, d'je ever wake up on a boat after 
 a night without knowing how you got there ? It's 
 a queer feeling, sure enough. Of course, I had 
 the head when I came to, and the first thing I did 
 when I woke up was to look around for a button 
 to push. It struck me then that the room I was 
 in was pretty small ; also, that it swayed a good 
 deal. I sat up and looked around, and then, 
 durned if I didn't hear the chug-chug of the pro- 
 peller. 
 
 " ' It's a boat, all right,' I thought, ' but what kind 
 of a boat ? I guess I must ha' waded aboard one 
 of the lower bay fishing steamers yesterday after- 
 noon and got screwed up, and they put me to 
 bunk.' 
 
 " Yet, when I looked around again, the blamed 
 
56 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 stateroom didn't look like a fishing steamer state- 
 room. Moreover, there was no sea in the lower 
 bay like the long swell this craft seemed to be 
 ploughing through. 
 
 " ' Well,' I thought, ' I'm just taking a little 
 voyage to Europe for my health. That must be 
 it,' 
 
 " The mystery of the thing was worse than the 
 head, which was bad enough. I jumped out of the 
 bunk and did the old act — went through my clothes 
 to see if I had as much as thirty-five cents or so 
 left. I went through all the regular pockets^ — not 
 a sou-marquee. 
 
 " ' This is nice,' I thought. ' I can't do the Con- 
 tinent, if that's where I'm bound, on my face. 
 Moreover, I need a drink pretty bad right now.' 
 
 " As a last resort, I reached into my inside vest 
 pocket, where I had never put money. My hand 
 struck the wad. I pulled it out — brown and green 
 ones still there. I counted it. Five hundred and 
 eighty-four dollars ! 
 
 " Talk about your chaps getting picked off life 
 rafts in midocean ! Of course, I couldn't figure it 
 out how I had hung on to it. I haven't figured it 
 out yet. Neither have I figured it out how my 
 trunk happened to be underneath my bunk, but 
 there it was. I kicked it accidently, and when I 
 
TALE THE THIRD 57 
 
 looked down, there was the trunk. I opened it up. 
 It was all nicely packed and I hadn't left anything 
 behind. I thought it was all a dream and I won- 
 dered why I didn't wake up. I saw a button on 
 the wall and I gave it a shove, just to see who'd 
 show up and to find out whither bound, and so on. 
 A darky with a clean white coat on answered the 
 button. I yelled at him to come in, and in he 
 came. I asked him to tell me, on the level, where 
 I happened to be. 
 
 " ' I know I'm on a boat,' said I, ' but what 
 boat ? ' 
 
 " ' Yo' all sut'nly was cheeahful las' night, suh — 
 sut'nly cheeahful,' said the darky to me, grinning. 
 
 '"That's all right about the cheerfulness,' said 
 I, ' but what I want to know is, what kind of a 
 packet is this, and where's she going ? ' 
 
 " ' Why,' said the darky, ' dis yeah steamuh's de 
 Comal o' de Mallory line, an' she's boun' fo' Gal- 
 veston. We dun got unduh way las' evenin', suh 
 — an' yo' all was out on de deck singin' ontil one 
 o'clock dis mawnin'.' 
 
 "'No; I'm damned if I was,' says I to the 
 darky, but I knew he was telling the truth all the 
 same. But I wasn't going to make any damaging 
 admissions. 
 
 " Well, I had the man bring me three high ones, 
 
58 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 to sort o' get me around to a deep-water way of 
 thinking. After I got the three high ones down I 
 had things straightened out in my head. Why not 
 the Comal ? What was the matter with the 
 Comal ? What was the matter with Galveston ? 
 Might as well be on my way to Galveston as any 
 other old place. So I touched the button again, 
 had the barber come and shave me in my bunk, 
 dressed, took three more high ones, and got out of 
 the stateroom. 
 
 "Say, there were about three dozen fellows 
 lounging around the decks, and dinged if every one 
 of 'em didn't say to me when I showed up on 
 deck : ' Hello, there pal ! ' or ' How are you. Bill ? ' 
 or ' How're you making it this morning, chum ? ' 
 or something like that. I didn't know a one of 
 'em from my aunt in Maine that I never saw, but 
 they were thicker'n thieves with me. And it ap- 
 peared that I had been the same with them the 
 night before in the card-room and around decks. 
 Funny game that, funny game. They were all 
 pretty nice chaps, too — most of 'em New York 
 drummers setting out for their fall campaigns in 
 the Southwestern territory. We had three high 
 ones, the whole bunch, right ofF, and the voyage 
 down to Galveston began to strike me as a heap 
 of a good job. Along toward afternoon I took it 
 
TALE THE THIRD 59 
 
 into my head to climb the foremast rope ladder lead- 
 ing up to the main yard. I climbed it, and started 
 to swing joyously from the yard by my hands. 
 There was a big swell on, and the Comal was list- 
 ing over about thirty -three degrees to starboard 
 and to port in the swell, and when I looked down 
 to the deck I saw all hands looking up with white 
 mugs. I decided to descend then, and when I 
 got down I found the skipper with a pair of irons 
 in his hand. 
 
 " ' If you try that on again,' said he to me, ' I'll 
 clap these on to your wrists.' 
 
 " ' Don't take it to heart so,' says I to him, and 
 then I went and had a few more with the com- 
 mercial travellers. 
 
 " Well, that trip is kind o' hazy in my mind 
 until we got down to Key West and tied up there 
 for twelve hours. I remember that the whole 
 bunch went ashore there, and the beer was warm 
 in Key West, because the ice steamer was a week 
 behind schedule time. We couldn't hit up warm 
 beer, so we did the other thing. We tore Key 
 West apart some, but I don't remember getting 
 aboard the Comal again. I found myself aboard 
 the next morning, though, and on that morning I 
 started in to play poker with a couple o' Maiden 
 Lane diamond drummers. They took it off me 
 
6o TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 so fast that I felt myself catching cold. Same 
 the next day. Same, also, the day after that. On 
 the night we got off the Galveston bar, to wait 
 there until morning for a high tide to let us into 
 the harbor, I counted over my bundle. I had six 
 dollars. 
 
 '"That ain't, much to begin life anew three 
 and a half thousand miles from New York,' I 
 thought, 'but it's got to go. I've got the front — 
 meaning my layout of togs — left anyhow.' 
 
 " I went ashore with the gang the next morning, 
 and the blank begins here for another twenty-four 
 hours. I guess I must ha' gone around some with 
 those commercial travellers. The next morning, 
 when I woke up, the low monotone of the sea 
 was in my ears ; also, there was wet sand in my 
 hair, and the sun was shining hard in my face. I 
 sat up. The Gulf of Mexico was right in front 
 of me. I looked behind. There was a big hotel 
 there. It looked something like the Oriental Ho- 
 tel down at Manhattan Beach. There was a sign 
 on it, 'Beach Hotel.' I dug into my pockets, 
 looking for the necessary dime. It wasn't there. 
 Nothing was there. I was lying on the sands of 
 the Gulf of Mexico, in front of the Beach Hotel, 
 broke, without even the price of a ride into Gal- 
 veston on one of the dinky mule-hauled street cars. 
 
TALE THE THIRD 61 
 
 That's why, as I said at the outset, I looked at the 
 Beach Hotel so disapprovingly on this occasion. 
 
 " I dusted the sand off my clothes and walked 
 over to a fountain spigot in front of the hotel and 
 took a drink of water. Yes, water ! It was hard, 
 but it had to go. Then I hunted around for the 
 street-car track. Galveston was two miles away, 
 but I had to make Galveston. There wasn't any 
 car in sight, so I took the track. I didn't have the 
 price of a fare, anyhow. The track was under 
 water, from floods, most of the way in. I 
 walked through brackish Gulf water full of tadpoles 
 and soft-shell crabs all the way in. I didn't have 
 anything particular in view when I struck Galves- 
 ton, but I wanted to get there, anyhow, for the 
 Beach Hotel, I figured, was full o' happy seashore 
 vacationizing people, and as I wasn't happy my- 
 self I didn't want to see them. On the way into 
 Galveston I mapped it out that I wasn't going to 
 do any telegraphing back here for funds, even if I 
 had to drive a truck. Talking about trucks, as I 
 was nearing Galveston I passed a whole lot o' cir- 
 cus tents. I prowled in among them and got talk- 
 ing to » tentman. He said it was Forepaugh's 
 show. I asked him where the show was going 
 from Galveston and he said it was going to close 
 up and go straight back to Philadelphia. I asked 
 
62 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 him how it would be for a job. He sent me to 
 one of the head guys, and I offered to feed the 
 zebras and do other useful chores in return for a 
 ride with the show to Philadelphia. He turned me 
 down and I kept on into town. 
 
 " When I got into town a sign that I saw over 
 a saloon looked vaguely familiar to me. 'The 
 Two Brothers' Saloon ' it read. I kind o' recalled 
 having been in that place with some of the drum- 
 mers on the day before, when we got off the Comal. 
 So I went in, not because I had the price of any- 
 thing, but I just went in anyhow. It was about 
 ten o'clock in the morning, but no customers were 
 in the place, which was a pretty swell rum joint, 
 with a piano in the back part of the room. One 
 of the ' Two Brothers ' was behind the bar — that 
 is, I found out afterward that he was one of the 
 Two Brothers. 
 
 " ' Hello, there, pal,' says he to me as I walked 
 in, ' how're you cuttin' it this morning ? ' 
 
 " I told him there was nothing doing, and sat 
 down at a table, for I was tired with the trudge in 
 from the Beach Hotel. The man behind the bar 
 sized me up, and he walked over to whew I sat. 
 
 " ' Up against it, eh, chum ? ' said he to me. 
 ' Better have a couple to sort o' jerk yourself to- 
 gether.' 
 
TALE THE THIRD 63 
 
 " They tasted pretty good, I'm a-telling you. 
 I went back to where the piano stood, and sat 
 down on the stool. They'd made me practice four 
 hours a day on the piano when I was a kid, and I 
 was a pretty good player. Well, I felt pretty 
 woozy and down in the mouth, and so, naturally, 
 I started in to play Schubert's ' Serenade,' and that 
 sort, with the soft pedal down. I was playing 
 away at this kind of music, thinking pretty hard of 
 the jay. I was, when the man behind the bar 
 touched me on the shoulder. 
 
 " ' Pard,' said he, ' I'm one of the proprietors of 
 this shack, and I'm going to make you a proposi- 
 tion. You say you're up against it, even if you 
 are one of these here wise boys from New York, 
 and I guess you are up against it. You seem to 
 know how to twiddle that py-ano to the queen's 
 taste. Tell you what I'll do. I need some one 
 to play on that machine. If you'll hammer tunes 
 out of it, say from nine o'clock at night until two 
 o'clock in the morning, I'll give you five dollars for 
 every night's work you do, and pay your way down 
 here besides. What do you think of it ? ' 
 
 " What did I think of it ! I wasn't missing any 
 win-out chance like that. 
 
 " ' It's a go,' I told him. 
 
 " He took me across the way to the Girardin 
 
64 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 House, one of the bang-up hotels of Galveston, 
 and put me up there. Then he went down to the 
 Mallory dock and had my trunk sent up to the 
 hotel. I togged out and turned up at the ' Two 
 Brothers' ahead of time. There were about two 
 hundred of the Galveston men down there. The 
 word had gone around that a ' Howling Thing ' 
 from New York had been engaged to play the 
 piano nightly at the ' Two Brothers,' and the boys 
 were on hand. I played. They sat around and 
 gave me the laugh, but I didn't mind that a little 
 bit. I earned my five all right that first night. 
 
 " The next morning the Galveston News was 
 sprinkled all over with small ads. like this : 
 
 " ' Come down to the Two Brothers' Saloon to- 
 night and hear the Hot Boy from New York hit 
 up the piano.' 
 
 " ' Drop in at the Two Brothers' Saloon to- 
 night and have a look at the Warm Baby from the 
 effete East hammer the keys.' 
 
 " ' The Howlingest Thing that ever struck this 
 community will sock it to the harpsichord at the 
 Two Brothers' Saloon to-night.' 
 
 " ' To get the latest effect in pants, as worn by 
 a Chile Con Carne from up York way, drop 
 in at the Two Brothers' Saloon to-night. The 
 Chile Con Carne plays the piano, too.' 
 
Yale the third 65 
 
 " The laugh ? Did I get the laugh ? I didn't 
 mind it, though. I didn't know anybody in Gal- 
 veston, and nobody in Galveston knew me. The 
 only inconvenient feature of it was when the boys 
 from the ranges used to drop in once in a while. 
 A good many of 'em 'ud come to Galveston, in- 
 stead of going to Dallas or San Antone, to blow in 
 their wages after round-ups. They didn't have it 
 in for me at all, but they just occasionaly shot a 
 smoke out of my teeth as I smoked and played. 
 . " I got my five-dollar bill every night when I 
 knocked off work, and I guess I must ha' brought 
 a lot of good trade to that joint, which was, in fact, 
 the best gin mill in the town of Galveston. I 
 tapered down to about ten a day, too, and after I 
 had been playing the piano at the Two Brothers' 
 for an even month, I got to thinking about Sixth 
 avenue one night. So I quit. On the level, the 
 Two Brothers were dead sore on me for quitting, 
 but when they found I was bent on it they made 
 the best of it. When I took the train for New 
 York they sent me a case of wine, and " 
 
 " I don't see any hard luck, due to alcoholic de- 
 generacy, in that story," interrupted No. 7. 
 
TALE THE FOURTH 
 
 In Which Ex-Tank No. 24 Peddleth Feather 
 Flowers, and Resorteth to Ye Sport of 
 Kings 
 
TALE THE FOURTH 
 
 IN WHICH EX-TANK NO. 24 PEBDLETH FEATHER 
 FLOWERS, AND RESORTETH TO YE SPORT OF 
 KINGS 
 
 " When I decided that time to jump Slopeville 
 and line out for the eastern seaboard — it was in the 
 summer of '95 — I had ;^450, enough glad rags to 
 stock a second-hand store, several Kimberley 
 rocks and a straight aqua record of four months be- 
 hind me," said Ex-Tank No. 24, the theatrical 
 member of the Harlem Club of Former Alcoholic 
 Degenerates. "San Francisco in summer is as 
 dead as West Broadway at i A. m., and there was 
 nothing doing in my line. I felt so rich, anyhow, 
 that I wanted 'em all to see how I shaped up back 
 here in the old parish, for when I'd struck out 
 from New York in the wake of the setting sun a 
 bit over a year before, I was holding them up with 
 horseshoe nails instead of buttons, and my shoes 
 were tied with copper wire. So I decided to 
 prance in here, all pinked up, and daze 'em up 
 around Thirty-fourth street with my blue-white 
 69 
 
^o TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 boulders, creased wardrobe and the browny-green 
 Government-stamped slips of paper kertish where- 
 with to buy in cases of emergency. Oh, bright 
 and gladsome dream ! oh, tender and touching 
 fancy. Oh, rosy and " 
 
 " Eliminate that ! " shouted Ex-Tank No. 6, the 
 parliamentarian and kicker, jumping to his feet. 
 " Just delete that 'cello obligato ! You're not 
 hurling a slow-music spiel at a bunch of ' Ingo- 
 mar ' and ' Ticket o' Leave Man ' tie counters. 
 Get out of the limelight and give us a plain, 
 unvar " 
 
 "The Sergeant-at-Arms will subject No. 6 to 
 fifteen minutes of our new corrective electrical 
 treatment for buckers and interrupters," said the 
 Chief Ex-Tank, rising and frowning severely. 
 When No. 6 was dragged from the room to the 
 Chamber of Correction, " The Ham, No. 24, will 
 now resume," said the Chief Ex-Tank. 
 
 " Well, I didn't put the scheme over the plate, 
 anyhow," continued No. 24. " I dug up for a 
 through ticket to New York, with parlor-car 
 coupons, and then I went out to the ClifF House 
 to pipe off the seals on the rocks just once more. 
 Now if I hadn't ha' done that — well, anyway, I 
 met up with a bridge-and-trestle drummer there 
 that I'd had a vortex with down in Los Angeles 
 
TALE THE FOURTH 71 
 
 about nine months before, and says he, when we 
 sat down to dinner in a cozy corner in the glass 
 front overlooking the amethyst sea : 
 
 " ' Regard me, mate. Study me closely. I've 
 been riding the ice wagon for four months to a 
 day. I have been up the pole for one hundred and 
 twenty and odd days. This is where I slide down 
 for a brief, fleeting spell.' 
 
 " ' Shocking ! ' said I. ' Away, man of weak 
 will ! Hence, creature of tadpole mentality ! ' 
 
 " Then we ordered Martinis, and after that a 
 couple more rounds, so's the dinner'd set right. 
 
 " During the dinner we had two quarts each of 
 the golden geyser product, and by the time we got 
 to the cognac and coiFee we were alternately sym- 
 pathizing mournfully with the seals on account of 
 their monotonous lives on the rocks, dwelling upon 
 the merriness of existence, and informing each 
 other of our top-notch qualities in our respective 
 lines. 
 
 " The little old voice, however, hummed in my 
 ear, ' Son, the main burg that you've got the ticket 
 for is six days due east, and this is a bum start 
 you're making. Get contiguous to yourself; other- 
 wise, if you ever get started at all, you'll only last 
 half-way of the trip, where you'll have to drop off 
 and be sad with yourself for many days and scurry 
 
72 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 for another bunch wherewith to land in the town 
 of your soul. Take a drop to the pulp-headedness 
 of this.' 
 
 " ' Go ay-way,' I replied to the little old voice, 
 ' you know not whereof you croak. This may be 
 the last time I shall gaze upon the wine-dark 
 Pacific, Begrudge me not the three Pacifies which 
 I now see. This night shall I make wassail, and 
 on the morrow I shall awaken in a Turkish bath, 
 grieved, mayhap, but ready to join the east-bound 
 caravan at Oakland, Meanwhile, lemme alone,' 
 
 "Whereupon the little old voice, after a few 
 weak growls, became silent. I don't remember 
 when or where I lost the bridge-and-trestle drum- 
 mer, but I lost him. And lo ! I did awaken on 
 the morrow in a Turkish bath in San Francisco. 
 The sun was high in the dome, 
 
 " ' Count,' said I to the Danish nobleman who 
 had rubbed me and who fanned me awake, *• at 
 what witching hour did I come alongside this 
 frigate and board it ? ' 
 
 " At four o'clock that morning, the nobleman in- 
 formed me, 
 
 " ' And was I littered with jewels and precious 
 stones ? ' I inquired of him, ' Did I deposit large 
 moneys with the ' 
 
 " The member of the Danish nobility disappeared 
 
TALE THE FOURTH 
 
 73 
 
 for a moment, and when he returned he told me 
 that not only were my shiny pebbles intact in an 
 envelope at the desk, but that there was a matter 
 of ^300 deposited to my account. 
 
 " This, gentlemen, happened in San Francisco, 
 you are to remember. I am thinking of sending 
 an account of it to the Society for the Collection 
 and Publication of Narratives of Extraordinary and 
 Unaccountable Occurrences. 
 
 " ' rU start East to-morrow morning,' I said to 
 myself, as I got my clothes on, ' spending the day 
 here in meditation and reflection upon the evils of 
 the Bowl.' 
 
 " Then I walked idly down to the water front to 
 get up an appetite for breakfast. There was a 
 gang near the Clay street wharf and I crossed over 
 to see wherefore. A couple of 'longshoremen in 
 a boat were pulling a drowned man out of the 
 water. The drowned man had been in the water 
 for some time. 
 
 " That got on my nerves. I reflected that I 
 might have been 
 
 " Well, one little green frappe isn't going to stand 
 me on my head,' I concluded, and I rode up to the 
 Palace and got it. Then I had twelve more. The 
 next morning the Danish nobleman fanned me 
 awake in a room at the Turkish bath, informing 
 
74 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 me, at the same time, that all of my glitterers and 
 some ;^250 in converted quarts were in an envelope 
 with my name on it at the desk. As to how this 
 happened, I pass. I always side-step deep ones. 
 
 " ' To-morrow morning,' said I to myself, ' I 
 will hie me at Oakland, board the train, and start 
 for the East, where dawn begins. This day shall 
 I spend in contemplation of the Horrors of Rum,' 
 
 " Whereupon I called for a morning paper where- 
 with to beguile the sad half-hour of awakening. 
 The paper contained grewsome pictures of the 
 bodies of two young women who had been mur- 
 dered in a San Francisco church, one of the bodies 
 having been discovered in the belfry. 
 
 "The pictures set me a-quiver, and I touched 
 the button for a basin of the green frappe. The 
 next morning the Danish nobleman fanned me 
 awake at the Turkish bath, conveying, at the same 
 time, the information that, while I was still in 
 possession of my crystals, my wealth in the office 
 envelope amounted to some three dollars only, not 
 including the value of my ticket to New York. 
 
 "After that it is all a shadowy, dusky dream. 
 When I happened to, a couple of weeks later, in 
 a room in a hotel-saloon in Stockton, I found a 
 bunch of familiar-looking tickets in my inside vest 
 pocket. They indicated various sums which a 
 
TALE THE FOURTH 75 
 
 three-bulb plant in San Francisco had dished out to 
 me for my sundry and divers De Beers shiners. 
 These sums, I ascertained after a close search of 
 my clothing, had all been expended with the excep- 
 tion of sixty cents. It appeared, likewise, that I 
 had cashed my ticket for New York, doubtless at 
 a heavy discount, for it was absent. My trunk and 
 two grips were in the room. I didn't remember 
 how it happened to be Stockton. I'd never been 
 in Stockton in my life. I'd never hankered to go 
 to Stockton. But it was Stockton, for a cinch. 
 The boy that answered my ring told me so him- 
 self. Before he came and told me, I was clutching 
 at the fond hope that the derned place might acci- 
 dentally happen to be South street in New York, 
 that I'd made the leap across the continent unbe- 
 knownst, so to speak, but not so, Bassanio; it was 
 Stockton, which is a morgueburg on the San 
 Joaquin River, one night's ride from San Francisco 
 on stern-wheel boats, although trains hesitate there, 
 too. 
 
 " Sixty cents ? It was up to me. I pasted one 
 of the suits in and got three dollars on it, resolving 
 that it would be the last. I got three dollars on 
 another suit the next day. The next day I got 
 three dollars on another suit. Three dollars I got 
 on another suit the following day. On another 
 
76 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 suit I got three dollars the day after that. I had 
 eight suits, besides the good one that I kept on my 
 frame. I managed to live on three dollars a day 
 for eight days. It is marvellous how cheaply a 
 man can live when he has to. On the ninth day I 
 woke up about noon, and I needed a basin bad. I 
 got it on my face, for the barkeeper downstairs had 
 become quite chummy with me. Three dollars a 
 day is big money in Stockton. Then I wandered 
 into the hotel office to get a chair and study over 
 the differences between being in New York with 
 about ;^300, royal raiment, and transparent car- 
 bons, and being in Stockton, California, broke. I 
 didn't intend to return to San Francisco, anyhow. 
 I had made elaborate adieus there, preparatory to 
 my departure for the East, and I felt that I couldn't 
 stand for the Indians that I'd said good-bye to danc- 
 ing around me with hoarse hoots and derisive gloats. 
 A crafty-looking grafter took a seat beside me. 
 
 '" Wherefore the gloom ? ' he asked me, cheerily. 
 
 " ' I just found my last cigarette broken in my 
 pocket,' said I, witheringly. I didn't feel talky at 
 all. 
 
 " ' So bad as all that ? ' said the grafter, good- 
 naturedly. ' Nothing doing ? Broke ? ' 
 
 " ' Go to the devil,' said I. 
 
 " ' I'd already went, until I struck this feather- 
 
TALE THE FOURTH 7^ 
 
 flowers* graft,' said he, unresentfuUy. ' Now I'm 
 getting the cush. Want to come in ? I need a 
 man for Sacramento.' 
 
 " I looked the guy over then, and while I was 
 doing so he told me about the feather-flowers. 
 They were roses made of tiny feathers, exact imi- 
 tations of the real thing. Chinks down in 'Frisco 
 made 'em for him for ten cents a bunch. He had 
 people selling 'em in stores, chiefly emporiums de 
 booze, all over the state, for a dollar a throw, in 
 neat little wire baskets. 
 
 " ' My man in Sacramento has proved himself a 
 dead one by running it up all the time and neglect- 
 ing business,' the grafter went on. ' Now, you 
 look like a clean, sober young fellow. Want that 
 Sacramento territory ? Give you forty cents for 
 every bunch of 'em you sell for a dollar.' 
 
 " ' You're on,' said I. 
 
 " So I went up to Sacramento with the cheerful 
 grafter that night, and the next day I was peddling 
 wire baskets filled with bunches of feather roses. 
 I passed up all the flagons that came my way — I'd 
 got the frigid pedals all of a sudden that morning 
 in the Stockton Hotel office, when I thought of the 
 girls rolling around in the surf at Manhattan Beach, 
 and me at the other end of the route — and I sold 
 thirteen of the bunches the first day. That made 
 
78 TALES OF THfi EX-TANKS 
 
 $S-20 as my rake-off. The grafter patted me otl 
 the back, told me that I was a wonder and in- 
 formed me that it was on the cards that he'd use 
 me in the business as far east as New York, if 
 I kept on making out so well. I told him to 
 sharpen up his yen-hok. 
 
 "'When I land in New York,' I told him, 'I'll 
 have the congealed dewdrops on me and the en- 
 graved paper in my duster, or I don't go at all.' 
 
 "The next day I talked seventeen barkeepers 
 and other weak-minded persons into buying bun- 
 dles of feather roses. I worked Sacramento for a 
 week, and averaged five dollars a day. At the end 
 of a week I had fifteen dollars, after paying board 
 and other expenses. I'd had the dogs sicked on 
 me a good many times, but I couldn't get used to 
 the slammed door and the occasional threatening 
 bungstarter. So I gave the cheerful grafter the 
 parting mitt — he emitted a sigh over losing me — 
 and the next morning, shined and shaved, and with 
 a scheme in my lid, I took a train for San Fran- 
 cisco. I wouldn't have returned to San Francisco 
 if it hadn't been for this scheme, which I thought 
 out all of a sudden, after overhearing a couple of 
 wise-looking geezers talking in one of the gin 
 mills where I'd been peddling feather roses the day 
 before. 
 
TALE THE FOtfRTM 79 
 
 " ' I'm going to wire a checit or two down to 
 Sausalito to be put on Long Bridge to-morrow,' I 
 heard one of these chaps say. ' He's been running 
 like a mud-turtle lately, but he's good enough to 
 beat any of the little bunch of four he's in with 
 to-morrow if he's right, and as he'll be the bum 
 outsider I'm going to spin a few chips on him.' 
 
 " Queer, isn't it, that way out in a bit of a burg 
 like Sacramento, something like 4,000 miles from 
 New York, you should hear a duck talking so fa- 
 miliarly about races being run off at Brighton 
 Beach ? This fellow's spiel got the horse bug to 
 buzzing beneath the hat again, and that's when I 
 thought out my scheme. I figured that any old 
 thing would beat peddling feather roses. 
 
 " I got into San Francisco about noon, and I 
 just caught the Tiburon, one of the ferryboats that 
 used to take the gang of plungers and pikers over 
 the bay to the pool-room at Sausalito. My front 
 measured up all right. I'd hung on to the top- 
 notch suit in the progress of those three-bulb visi- 
 tations with the other togs in Stockton, and I al- 
 ways was a powerful supporter of the spotless 
 linen and the shine and the shave under any and 
 all circumstances. They're indispensable. I knew 
 the people behind the desk at the pool-room well. 
 I worked for them for nearly a year ; they didn't 
 
8o TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 pay me wages, but I worked for them; they got 
 the wages that other people paid me. And I went 
 over there this time with the intention of getting 
 a hatful of money or of getting pounded to 
 death. 
 
 " This Long Bridge race that I'd heard the wise- 
 looking guy in Sacramento talking about was the 
 fourth on the card. There were only four in it — 
 Paladin, opening at 5 to 2 and being played down 
 at the track to 8 to 5 ; Declare, opening at evens 
 and going up to 7 to 5 ; Little Matt, opening at 3 
 and going up to 7 to 2, and the rank outsider. 
 Long Bridge, opening at 10 and drifting up to 
 20 to I. 
 
 " I sat in a rocking-chair and looked the board 
 over. I had ten dollars in one dollar bills in my 
 pocket. I wasn't going to invest any of that, but 
 was going to use them as props. I was going, 
 however, to bet ;^ioo on Long Bridge at 20 to i 
 and take a chance on being crunched to a pulp if 
 the mutt lost the race. 
 
 " I waited near the desk until the telegraph in- 
 strument began to click. 
 
 " ' Off at Brighton Beach ! ' the operator an- 
 nounced. ' Paladin in the lead. Declare second. 
 Little Matt third ! ' 
 J " I rushed up to the ticket-writer with my ten 
 
TALE THE FOURTH 8i 
 
 dollars in one dollar bills in my fist, starting to 
 strip them ofF, but carefully concealing their de- 
 nominations from view. 
 
 " ' I'll bet you a hundred on Long Bridge,' I 
 said to the ticket-writer, who knew me well. 
 
 " ' Paladin at the quarter, Declare second. Little 
 Matt third ! ' the operator was announcing. 
 
 " ' You're on,' said the ticket-writer, giving me 
 a slow smile, and beginning to write the ticket. 
 ' That's like taking candy from a child. The 
 mutt won't be one, two, three.' 
 
 " All the time I was slowly stripping bills from 
 that little bundle of one-spots, and attentively 
 watching the operator's lips at the same time. The 
 ticket-writer was a good deal interested in the out- 
 come of the race himself, having a bit of a bet 
 down, probably, and he'd only half-finished writ- 
 ing my ticket when he gave a whoop and yelled, 
 ' Go it. Paladin ! ' 
 
 " I held my money in my hand, carefully con- 
 cealing the numbers, so that the ticket-writer had 
 110 means of knowing whether I had a fistful of 
 centuries or not. He was considerably interested 
 in the race, anyhow. 
 
 " ' Paladin at the half. Declare second, Little 
 Matt third ! ' announced the telegrapher. 
 
 " ' Here's where I go to an early grave,' thought 
 
82 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 I, at the same time keeping one lamp on the door, 
 intending to make a bolt for it, anyhow. 
 
 " ' Paladin in the stretch by a length. Declare 
 second. Little Matt third ! ' croaked the operator. 
 
 " 'I am so young to die,' I reflected, wondering, 
 at the same time how good the pool-room people 
 were on the sprint. 
 
 " ' Long Bridge wins ! ' shouted the operator, a 
 note of strong surprise in his voice. 
 
 " I felt my knees giving way beneath me, and 
 I'll bet I was white around the gills all right. But 
 I kept myself together. 
 
 " ' Hully gee, where did you get that one ? — 
 the dog ran a rank last the last time out ! ' said the 
 ticket-writer, looking at me wonderingly. 
 
 " ' Oh,' said I, calmly, ' a friend of mine, one of 
 the trainers at the Beach, wired me that one this 
 morning. Wish I'd put another hundred on it.' 
 
 " The operator finished writing my ;^2,ooo to 
 ;^ioo ticket where he'd left ofF in the excitement 
 of hearing the race called off. 
 
 " ' Say,' said I to the ticket-writer, with all the 
 sangfroid I could muster, ' the lowest I've got here 
 is one of the five-hundred dollar boys. Just pass 
 the word along to the cashier that there's only two 
 thousand coming to me, will you, and it'll save you 
 changing a bill ? ' 
 
TALE THE FOURTH 83 
 
 " The ticket-writer, as I said, knew me well. 
 
 " ' O. K.,' said he. ' Jimmy,' addressing the 
 messenger boy behind the desk, 'tell the cashier that 
 there's only ^2,000 instead of ;^ 2, 100, coming to 
 the holder of ticket 942. Tell him we're shy of 
 change here.' 
 
 "Then the ticket-writer, flicking me my ticket, 
 began to throw the congratulations into me, and 
 in two minutes it was all over the room that I'd 
 yanked down ;^2,ooo on Long Bridge's win. I 
 took it all as if the raking down of that much 
 quartz was an everyday matter with me, but my 
 heart was up in my throat — and say, didn't I see 
 the ' Swept by Ocean Breezes ' sign then ! 
 
 "Twenty minutes later I was sitting on the 
 hurricane deck of the Tiburon, bound back for 
 San Francisco, with ;^2,oio in my homespuns. 
 As soon as I got ofF the boat I went directly to the 
 hotel where I'd been stopping most of the time I 
 spent in San Francisco. The clerk looked me over 
 as if I was a ghost. 
 
 " ' Say, where the dickens have you been ? ' he 
 asked me. ' Why haven't you been to me for that 
 
 m< 
 
 oney 
 
 ?■ 
 
 " ' What money ? ' I asked him. 
 " ' That two hundred you left with me for safe- 
 keeping one night a few weeks ago when you were 
 
84 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 soused ? Said you were going to a Turkish bath, 
 and that you were afraid you might get touched 
 somewhere or other. Then you disappeared, and 
 we've had the sleuths on the lookout for you for a 
 week. Thought you'd been sandbagged and 
 thrown into the bay, or something like that. Here's 
 your two hundred.' 
 
 " Two hundred dollars of my cush in the hands 
 of a hotel clerk, and I'd been peddling feather- 
 roses in Sacramento ! 
 
 " Ten days later I was lending 'em all two-dollar 
 bills to get their laundry out — the old bunch up 
 here — and " 
 
 " Oh, Listen to the Ham ! " chorused the Harlem 
 Club of Former Alcoholic Degenerates, and the 
 meeting was at an end. 
 
TALE THE FIFTH 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No. 15 Visiteth Ye Home 
 OF His Boyhood, and Thus Winneth Out 
 
TALE THE FIFTH 
 
 WHEREIN EX-TANK NO. 1 5 VISITETH YE HOME OF 
 HIS BOYHOOD, AND THUS WINNETH OUT 
 
 " Which I think I may say, without fear of a 
 call-down, that this thing of going back to your 
 old boyhood home is a pretty hard one to put over 
 the plate, and it's usually a frost at that when you 
 do finally get there," remarked Ex-Tank No. 15, 
 after the ceremonies attending the initiation of 
 three new members had been completed. " I sup- 
 pose there isn't a fellow here who hasn't had a 
 hunch to go back to the old place and have a look 
 around at " 
 
 "Wait a minute," interrupted No. 7, the par- 
 liamentarian and kicker. "I want to ask the 
 Chief Ex-Tank if he doesn't think there's been a 
 whole lot too much sentimental gush at these ex- 
 perience meetings lately. At me old boyhood 
 home, down on the farm, or in the dell, or out in 
 the woods, or on the water front, or in a blooming 
 cave, for that matter, who wants to listen to a lot 
 o' slush like that ? I submit that it sounds too 
 87 
 
88 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 much like beery ballads from the go-off. What's 
 Fifteen's boyhood home got to do with rum ? 
 Where does red-eye break into a man's hunch to 
 sneak back to his old boyhood home and " 
 
 "No. Seven is fined a round dozen vichy-and- 
 milks for interposing unreasonable objections," 
 said the Chief Ex-Tank, peremptorily. "Al- 
 coholism is inseparably mixed with any man's de- 
 sire to return to his old boyhood home. This is 
 obvious. No man not in an alcoholic state would 
 be jay enough to think of going back to the home 
 of his boyhood. I've wanted to go back to my old 
 boyhood home myself, and I know all about that 
 soggy desire. Fifteen will continue." 
 
 "You see," resumed Ex-Tank No. 15, "I 
 hadn't got within more than hitting distance of the 
 old town since I left it when I was a twelve-year 
 old kid, and I wanted to see it. It got so that 
 every time I corned up I just longed to get on a 
 train and ride to the middle of the country, where 
 the town's located, and look it over. Fact is, I 
 started for the place on three different occasions. 
 Once I shot over the mark, owing to the fact that 
 I went to sleep for three days on the train, and I 
 landed on the Pacific coast. I didn't land there 
 right, either, and it was up to me to get right back 
 here to my base on this seaboard. Sold Chinese 
 
TALE THE FIFTH 89 
 
 canary birds on commission on the San Francisco 
 streets and from house to house to get the price of 
 the ride back. I got acquainted with a lot of the 
 hands working on the China steamers. Every 
 time they made San Francisco on their return from 
 China they brought back big bunches of these 
 canaries in little wooden cages. They let me 
 have 'em for one dollar (eight bits, they call it out 
 there) apiece, and I conned people into buying 'em 
 for from two dollars to four dollars each. I had 
 enough to get back here with bells on inside of a 
 couple of months. 
 
 " Next time I started out for my old boyhood 
 home I woke up in a Turkish bath in Kansas 
 City, ordered five drinks right away, and found 
 when I started to dress that I was shy on the price 
 of them. Didn't have a nick. Came near being 
 handed over to the cops for ordering booze that I 
 couldn't pay for. Didn't see much chance to get 
 out of Kansas City until it occurred to me that the 
 Fourth of July was only three days ofF. So I 
 rented a little vacant store on my face, got a cargo 
 of fireworks on tick from a big wholesale house 
 and went into business. It was something easy. 
 I sold out three times before Fourth of July night 
 and cleaned up $2^^^ net. 
 
 • I wasn't sogged enough to feel like keeping on 
 
 cc 
 
go TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 for the rest of the way to my boyhood home then, 
 and so I called myself in. The very next time I 
 went skating here the boyhood home bug got to 
 fooling with me again. I wanted to hear the 
 trumpet calls echoing from the military post ad- 
 joining my old boyhood home. I wanted to see 
 the little old church. Wanted to size up the river 
 where I learned how to swim. Wanted to see the 
 waving fields of wheat and inhale the cool evening 
 fragrance of the woods. Wanted to " 
 
 " Beery thinks," growled No. 7 under his 
 breath. 
 
 "Wanted to land there with gig lamps on and 
 with dough in every pocket, and show the little 
 girls that declined to marry me when I was ten 
 years old what they missed. It's a queer old bug, 
 the boyhood home bug is, and every time you hear 
 flute music and you're sogged right it's bound to 
 give you a buzz. So I started out for my boy- 
 hood home for the third time and made it. Say, 
 you can talk about your disappointments, but — well, 
 I wasn't in shape to enjoy my old boyhood home 
 when I got there, as far as that goes. You see, I 
 stopped off in Chicago. Consequently, when I 
 was prodded awake in the dinky little station — it 
 looked bigger than any Westminster Abbey to me 
 when I was a kid — in my boyhood home, I was 
 
TALE THE FIFTH 91 
 
 all out, to the last red. That knocked all my pipe- 
 dreams of landing at the old place with a patroniz- 
 ing air and distributing backsheesh among the 
 natives. I'd intended to build a wing to the little 
 old schoolhouse where I learned what I know of 
 fractions, but that was, of course, all off. I'd 
 meant to stroll around and watch the kids among 
 whom I was raised slaving at their trades, and then, 
 when they remembered me, to have 'em knock off 
 work and go carriage riding with me. It had been 
 my original idea, or one of 'em, in coming to my 
 old boyhood home to dig up the old Dutchman 
 who gave me fiddle lessons when I was a kid and 
 make his life merry with Rhine wine for a few 
 days. Likewise, I'd intended to — oh, well, I'd had 
 it all plotted out and arranged to give my old boy- 
 hood home a blow-off for a week or so, and to 
 make 'em all feel sorry that they hadn't pulled 
 away from there into the great, wide, open world 
 when I did and hadn't become somebody. 
 
 " I got a job that afternoon as a waiter in the 
 restaurant of a man I had often chased up alleys 
 and punched when we were ten-year-olds. He 
 didn't know me, of course, and I didn't want any- 
 body to know me. I was in my old boyhood 
 home incognito. My front I had left back in 
 Chicago, gig lamps and all. I knew that I had 
 
92 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 made a hash of my arrival at my old boyhood 
 home, but I wasn't going to complete the job by put- 
 ting anybody next to who I was. I just took that 
 tray-juggling job for eight a week, and kept still. 
 I figured that in two or three weeks I'd have the 
 price of a ride back to Chicago or anywhere outside 
 of my old boyhood home, and that kept me up. 
 
 " When Sunday came around I thought I'd look 
 around, anyhow. Went to the church where I'd 
 been an acolyte when a kid. Took a rear seat and 
 watched the bunch coming in. Recognized a lot 
 of the people. The little girl named Kittie 
 O'Hoolihan, who had spurned my offer of mar- 
 riage when we were both ten years of age, was one 
 of the early arrivals. She weighed about 255, and 
 she had four little girls, all looking the same age, 
 along with her. I knew her, because the little 
 girls looked just like she looked at their time of 
 life. The little girls that I'd haughtily refused to 
 have anything to do with when I was a youngster 
 because they weren't pretty enough to suit my 
 juvenile ideas of beauty had changed to handsome 
 women, and the girls who had bewitched me with 
 their beauty when they were midgets in starched 
 frocks seemed to have all switched to homeliness. 
 The young fellows who I'd figured out would 
 probably be working as iron moulders or paper- 
 
TALE THE FIFTH 93 
 
 box-factory hands, pranced down the middle aisle, 
 done up to the limit, with the swell girls, and those 
 who I thought would be about stake class by the 
 time I visited my old boyhood home were side-aisle 
 plugs who looked like brickyard hands. The 
 church, that I'd been figuring on as little short of 
 St. Peter's at Rome in size, wasn't really much 
 bigger than a chapel. Whole town looked to the 
 last degree dinky and squalid. I went to the 
 house where I was born, stood outside and looked 
 at it ; that is, I wondered how my governor 
 could have ever fallen so low as to live in such a 
 hen coop. Oh, how I wanted to get away from 
 my old boyhood home ! How I longed to abandon 
 it forever ! 
 
 " One of the customers of the restaurant in my 
 old boyhood home was an ex-Judge, who looked 
 just about the same as he had about a quarter of a 
 century ago. He had been a crony of my father's. 
 I always waited on him and we picked up a sort of 
 chatty eater-and-waiter acquaintance. One after- 
 noon, after I'd been hashing it for a couple of 
 weeks, saving every dollar so I'd be able to pull 
 my freight at the earliest possible moment, the old 
 gentleman came in for a bottle of beer and a sand- 
 wich. He paid me for what he ate and drank with 
 a five dollar bill, and I dug into my change pocket 
 
94 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 to see if I had the breakings of the bill. I pulled 
 out a big bunch of silver coin and along with the 
 handful a big bronze medal that my father had 
 given me. He had carried it as a pocket-piece for 
 a good many years, and w^hen he died it passed on 
 to me, and I always had it on me. It was more 
 than an inch and a half in diameter, and on one 
 side it had a fine medallion profile portrait of John 
 Paul Jones. On the other side was a picture of 
 one of John Paul Jones' ships in action, with 
 wreckage all around, men clinging to spars and all 
 that sort of thing — a fine piece of work. I believe 
 my father's people were mixed up somehow or 
 another with the dashing John Paul. My father'd 
 often told me that this bronze medal was one of 
 two that were struck off by a lot of admiring citi- 
 zens of Philadelphia or New York or somewhere, 
 and presented to John Paul Jones — one of them 
 gold, and this one that he passed on to me of bronze. 
 
 " Well, I was fumbling around among the 
 handful of change when this old ex-Judge and 
 former pal of my father's got his eye on it. He 
 started and put on his glasses. 
 
 " ' Just let me see that, my man,' said he to me, 
 reaching out for the medal. I handed it to him. 
 He inspected it carefully, and then he looked at me 
 suspiciously. 
 
TALE THE FIFTH 95 
 
 " ' Where did you get this ? ' he asked me in 
 rather a craggy tone of voice. 
 
 " ' My governor gave it to me a long time ago,' 
 said I, not thinking that this old gentleman had 
 ever seen it before. 
 
 " ' What is your name ? ' he asked me, still 
 somewhat severely. ' Who do you mean by your 
 governor ? ' 
 
 " ' Well, seeing it's you, Judge, and knowing that 
 you're not liable to pass it around,' said I, looking 
 at him squarely, ' I'll tell you who I am,' and I 
 up and told him. 
 
 " ' God bless me, is that so ? ' said he, in an as- 
 tonished tone. 'Why, I might have known it, 
 though. You look just like your dad. I was 
 about to accuse you of having stolen this medal. 
 I knew that there was only one like it. I'd often 
 seen your father with this. Why, my boy, what- 
 ever in the world are you doing here, and how long 
 has your father been dead, and where did he die, 
 and didn't he ever read a newspaper closely enough 
 to see an advertisement I had put in all the papers 
 of the East a few years ago for his eye ? ' 
 
 " ' Anything in particular that you wanted him 
 for ? ' I asked the old gentleman. 
 
 " ' Rather particular, I guess,' he said to me, 
 ' and it's a mighty good thing for you that you've 
 
96 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 come along. Your father owned a strip of land 
 bordering on the military reservation here. It 
 wasn't of any value whatever until the govern- 
 ment wanted it a few years ago and condemned it, 
 and I, without knowing where your father was, 
 took his interest in hand and got an award of 
 ;^4,500 for it, whereas it wasn't really worth forty- 
 five dollars. I advertised far and near for your 
 father, but never got any reply, and the money's 
 on tap in the hands of the government at this 
 minute, waiting for a claimant.' 
 
 "'Well, I'm the only one of my bunch left,' 
 said I. 'You couldn't get hold of that ;^4,500 
 this afternoon, now, could you ? I want to get 
 away from my boyhood home at the rate of about 
 sixty miles an hour.' 
 
 " ' I can prove your case and get you the money 
 within a week,' the old gentleman replied. 
 ' Meantime, I can advance you whatever sum you 
 may require to enable you to cease this degrading 
 employment.' 
 
 " I had a straight-out talk with him then, and 
 told him the whole game — how I'd landed in the 
 home of my boyhood the wrong end first, in an 
 excess of sentiment, and how like thirty cents I 
 felt, and how I didn't want to be known under 
 any circumstances until I could show up something 
 
TALE THE FIFTH 97 
 
 like the real thing. The recital appeared to tickle 
 the old chap. We cooked up a scheme. I re- 
 signed my job as soon as he walked out. Then I 
 went across the street to the bank and cashed a 
 check which the ex-Judge gave me, and started in 
 to tog out. Went to a barber shop and got po- 
 liced thoroughly, had my mustache removed, and 
 came out of there looking like a different one al- 
 together. Then I slid up to the ex- Judge's house 
 in a hack, got up to a room that he had fixed for 
 me, and arrayed myself in the purple and fine 
 linen that I had bought. Then I came down- 
 stairs, where I found the ex-Judge and his family 
 waiting for me. The old gentleman hadn't told 
 'em a line of his manner of digging me up, and all 
 I had to do was to take supper and do the royal 
 part of a duck from New York just arrived in the 
 home of his boyhood for a little visit. Went 
 down town arm-in-arm with the old gentleman 
 that night, met all the hot cards, including the 
 member of Congress from the district, got the 
 merry hand from everybody, stacked up against all 
 the pretty girls that were babies in arms when Fd 
 left the town and the swagger married women of 
 my own age who'd been smitten with my early 
 beauty, and had all the real gloat out of my visit 
 to my boyhood town that Fd looked forward to in 
 
g8 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 moments of song. Next morning the newspaper 
 announced my arrival in flattering terms (' rapidly 
 rising young barrister, located in the great city of 
 New York,' the paper put it), and the nice, civi- 
 lized whirl I had during the ten days I was wait- 
 ing on the government for payment of the claim 
 made me feel like abjuring the bowl forever. Had 
 a good deal to do with it, in fact. I very willingly 
 handed the old ex-Judge ;^i,000 out of the bundle 
 when it came along, together with the John Paul 
 medal, and then I got out of the town of my boy- 
 hood at high noon, with a mandolin string orches- 
 tra serenading me at the station, and nobody but 
 the old ex-Judge any the wiser about my arrival 
 there a month before in a smoking car, at grey 
 dawn, without the price of a shine or a shave. 
 And I haven't had the boyhood home bug in my 
 head since." 
 
TALE THE SIXTH 
 
 In Which Ex-Tank No. 4 Telleth of Ye 
 Soldiers Brave, and Some Strange Meetings 
 
TALE THE SIXTH 
 
 IN WHICH EX-TANK NO. 4 TELLETH OF YE SOLDIERS 
 BRAVE, AND SOME STRANGE MEETINGS 
 
 "Which this isn't such a much of a huge 
 world, at that, after you've drawn a ring around it 
 and looked it over," remarked Ex-Tank No. 4, 
 after the club had disposed of the regular order. 
 " It looks big from New York, and it looks pretty 
 derned big, too, when you're crossing an Arizona 
 desert on the ties, with the water tanks about 140 
 miles apart ; but I guess there are bigger worlds 
 than this, anyhow." 
 
 " Can't lose your creditors in this one, hey ? " 
 amiably suggested No. 9, who has a sarcastic turn. 
 
 " Never had the luck to find any creditors until 
 I became one of the charter members of this club," 
 responded No. 4, " which in itself is a sad thing to 
 reflect upon, and ironical, considering that I don't 
 need 'em in my business now. But when I was 
 paid off from the regular army, in the fall of '90, 
 after three years unavailingly put in in an endeavor 
 
 to get a commission from the ranks, the three " 
 
 101 
 
102 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 " Hold on there a minute," interrupted Ex-Tank 
 No. 7, the club's stickler for accuracy. "D'ye 
 mean to inform the members of this club that so 
 lately as 1890 your habits were so correct as to en- 
 able you to serve three years in the army of the 
 United States ? Are you aware of the fact that, 
 if such is the case, your eligibility for charter mem- 
 bership in this organization is in question and in 
 need of reconsideration by the whole club ? Hey ? " 
 
 " Well, I'll tell you about that," said No. 4. 
 " If you ever by any chance happen to visit Fort 
 Canby, up in the State of Washington, on the 
 Pacific Ocean, or Alcatraz Island, in the harbor of 
 San Francisco, and take note of the fine, skillful 
 construction of the roads at those heavy artillery 
 posts, and you ask the stationary Provost Sergeants 
 of 'em who built those roads originally, you want 
 to stand by to hear my name mentioned ; and this 
 will probably lead the old Provost Sergeants to en- 
 thusiasm about me, and they'll tell you that I was 
 the finest whitewasher of woodsheds, chicken coops 
 and picket fences, and the most hustling gravel 
 digger, and the liveliest wood splitter, and the most 
 scientific sewer flusher, and the " 
 
 " I understood you to say that you were in the 
 regular army as a soldier," put in No. 7. 
 
 " You correctly understood me," replied No. 4. 
 
TALE THE SIXTH 103 
 
 " That's what I was — a buck private. But I put 
 in my three years in the cHnk — that is, most of the 
 three years. You see, they had canteens at both 
 Canby and Alcatraz." 
 
 " Oh ! " exclaimed No. 7, looking sheepish, 
 
 " I went in to get a commission, but the can- 
 teen queered me on that proposition," said No. 4. 
 " You see, when you've got to pass by the guard- 
 house in order to get back to your quarters from 
 the canteen, as you have to do at Canby and Al- 
 catraz, why, you're liable to " 
 
 " Of course," assented No. 7. " I withdraw my 
 questions. But what's all this got to do with the 
 smallness of the world, I'd like to know ? " 
 
 " Pipe down. Seven," said the Chief Ex-Tank, 
 rising. " You're becoming a man-o'-war chaw." 
 
 " Aye ! " assented all of the members in chorus, 
 and No. 7 took a back seat and sulked during the 
 remainder of the evening. 
 
 " There were three fellows paid ofF from Alca- 
 traz Island on the same day that I was," resumed 
 No. 4. " They had all happened to enlist on the 
 same day that I did in different parts of the country. 
 On the day the four of us were paid ofF and went 
 over to San Francisco together we were all ineli- 
 gible for initiation into membership into any club 
 of Former Alcoholic Degenerates whatsoever, for 
 
104 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 none of us was a Former, Jack Fahey of Chicago 
 had been busted from post Sergeant-Major at Canby 
 and helped me at my steady whitewashing job for 
 a month, with a sentry behind the pair of us, for 
 tearing an occupied frame house down across 
 the trail in II Waco, and he had been running mate 
 of mine in the mill off and on ever since his chev- 
 rons were cut ofF. Cork Mulvihill had got the 
 Corporal's stripes down the sides of his legs after 
 three months' service, and then he punched a team- 
 ster after a long pay day at the canteen, and he did 
 ten days alongside of me at carrying coal, with a 
 sentry for company, and he never got any stripes 
 on his legs after that. Monk Williams had been 
 battery clerk for fully four days before he landed in 
 the mill with me for — well, it was on a New Year's 
 eve, and at two o'clock in the morning Monk and I 
 ran the guard, climbed up in front of the command- 
 ing officer's quarters at Alcatraz Island, and. Monk 
 with a guitar and I with a fiddle, we started in to 
 serenade the old man. He didn't appreciate melody 
 at that unseemly hour, and Monk and I got a 
 month and a month each — which means the month 
 in the clink and the loss of a month's pay. 
 
 " In view of all of which, it is natural to sup- 
 pose that when the four of us were turned loose 
 from Alcatraz, each with a couple a hundred in his 
 
TALE THE SIXTH 105 
 
 clothes, we weren't going to hunt up any vichy 
 and milk to begin on. We all were going to buy 
 railroad tickets and go right home — we swore that ; 
 we might take a hooker or two, we admitted, but 
 we were going to get those railroad tickets the first 
 rattle out of the box so that we'd have a cinch on 
 getting back East. Jack Fahey belonged in 
 Chicago, Cork Mulvihill in St. Louis, Monk Wil- 
 liams in Washington, and I — well, I had written 
 home to my folks here that I'd be back in New 
 York just six days after I was paid oiF from 
 Alcatraz. 
 
 "Well, we took three or four when we got ofF 
 the government boat at the Clay street wharf in 
 San Francisco, and then we went in a body and 
 registered at the Palace Hotel. The clerk of the 
 hotel didn't know whether to let us sign the 
 register or not, because we all had on buck 
 privates' uniforms, but when we flashed the gilt on 
 him and paid for our two rooms in advance he had 
 to stand for the uniforms. Then we all went to a 
 clothing joint and rigged out in forty dollar ready- 
 made suits of clothes, patent leather kicks, five 
 dollar lids, to say nothing of haberdashery, and 
 when we got through with that we each had about 
 ;^I40 left. Then we started for the railroad ticket 
 office to buy tickets back East. We stepped into 
 
io6 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 the Bella Union on the way for just one, and — 
 well, we got lost at the Bella Union. I found my 
 room at the Palace along toward three o'clock the 
 next morning, and I found Fahey and Williams 
 there ahead of me. They were both slumbering 
 peacefully with their hats and shoes on, one of 'em 
 on the bed and the other in front of the washstand. 
 Mulvihill didn't turn up at all and he passed out of 
 the game altogether. He didn't show up during 
 the ten days more that the three of us put in in 
 San Francisco, and we figured that he'd been 
 ' rolled ' and thrown into the bay. On the tenth 
 day Williams and I lost Fahey. Can't remember 
 where or how, but he didn't turn up at the place 
 where we were stopping — it wasn't the Palace 
 Hotel where we were stopping, by the way, at that 
 time — and that left only Williams and myself. I 
 remember the day that Williams and I went broke. 
 It was in a Turkish bath that we both made the 
 simultaneous discovery that there was only ^2.45 
 between us. We weren't really faded, though, 
 over our impending financial embarrassment until 
 late that night, when we were both waltzing with 
 some Mexican ladies in a downstairs imitation of a 
 cafe chantant on Kearney street. The Mexican 
 ladies had, it seemed, ordered ;^ 11.90 worth of 
 liquids at our expense, unbeknownst to us, and in 
 
TALE THE SIXTH 107 
 
 which we had had no part in consuming, in fact ; 
 and when we showed 'em our sole remaining six 
 bits we were hopped. Now, Williams was six feet 
 two, and he just liked to be hopped this way, and 
 I wasn't such a slob at the game of taking care of 
 myself in a mix-up at that time, either. So we 
 gave 'em an imitation of Tom Gould's in its palmy 
 days, and got out with only a few cuts and our six 
 bits intact. At about two o'clock in the morning 
 the seventy-five cents was gone, and Monk and I 
 got out into the air and looked each other over. 
 
 " ' It's all ofF, eh ? ' said Monk. 
 
 " ' Looks that way,' said I. ' What you going 
 to do, " take on " again ? ' 
 
 " ' Not on your life,' he replied. ' I'm going 
 East.' 
 
 '"Those mountains and things between, you 
 know,' said I, ' how about 'em r ' 
 
 '"They've been walked,' said Williams. 
 ' Want to hump it along with me ? ' 
 
 '"Not by a damned sight,' said I. ' When I go 
 East I'm going to ride in a sleeper.' 
 
 "While we were chinning there and wondering 
 where the next one was coming from, a duck came 
 along and butted into us in the dark of Quincy 
 street. Williams slammed him, and hit a friend 
 without knowing it. The man was Jack Myers, 
 
io8 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 who had been a trumpeter in our battery, and who 
 had been paid ofF.with ;^500 the month before. 
 Myers was togged out and he had it on him. He 
 threw five or six into us before he aslced us what 
 our graft was. When we told him we were broke, 
 says Jaclc : 
 
 " ' I've got a house-boat up at Stockton, on the 
 San Joaquin river. Bought it for fifty dollars 
 when I got paid off, furnished it up with skillets 
 and pots and a couple o' chairs and gear, and I'm 
 living like the Jook of Cakkyack in it all by my- 
 self — just loafing. Do my own cooking, spend 
 half the day shooting snipe along the river for fun 
 and the meat, and am having a devil of a time all 
 by my lonesome. Come up there with me, the 
 pair of you. As for the damps, I've got kags of 
 it.' 
 
 " ' We're on,' said Williams and I in a breath, 
 and the next afternoon the three of us took one of 
 the Stockton stern-wheelers and got up to Stockton 
 the next morning without being stuck on mud and 
 sand bars more'n two dozen times. Myers hadn't 
 exaggerated the joys of his house-boat. I never put 
 in two moire corking weeks of solid comfort. 
 Maybe we'd have been there yet, but one fine 
 morning Williams went out for a walk around 
 Stockton and he didn't come back. This started 
 
TALE THE SIXTH 109 
 
 me to thinking that there was such a place on the 
 map as New York, but I am free to admit that I 
 didn't see any way of making good my bluff to 
 Williams, that when I went East I'd ride in the 
 varnished cars with bunks in 'em. I decided to see 
 if I couldn't get a job in Stockton and work long 
 enough to accumulate the price of a ticket. The 
 first man I hit up for a job — I was decked out in 
 fresh linen from Myers's wardrobe, and had all 
 kinds of a shave and a shine when I went out to 
 hunt for work — was a big fruit operator. He 
 gufFed with me for a while, asked me if I ever 
 drank, and if not, why didn't I, and pumped me 
 generally for ten minutes or so. Then he told me 
 that three or four days later he was going to send 
 a carload of choice California fruit straight across 
 the continent by fast freight to New York, to try 
 that market again for the hundred and twelfth time 
 on the California fruit question, and he asked me 
 if I thought I'd be able to do any rain-making by 
 word of mouth as to the merits of the fruit when 
 it got to New York, supposing he'd send me along 
 with it. 
 
 " Well, I didn't tell him no, you can figure on 
 that. Four days later, with fifty dollars expense 
 money in my clothes, I bade Jack Myers and his 
 house-boat a rather regretful good-bye and climbed 
 
no TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 into the swellest caboose, hitched to the totiiest 
 and fastest fruit freight train that ever left the Pa- 
 cific coast. I was It in that caboose. It was my 
 private caboose, and I just spent eight days smok- 
 ing and reading magazines and newspapers in it. 
 Then I got off in New York, which I hadn't seen 
 in nearly four years, with thirty dollars velvet still 
 remaining. I sold every last nickel's worth of 
 that fruit for my California man, and the way that 
 I have since won out — humph ! — forms a part of 
 the records of this organization. 
 
 " Two years ago I was trying to get across the 
 street at the corner of State and Monroe streets in 
 Chicago. I was in a hurry to see a man with 
 whom I had an appointment to sell a bill of goods, 
 and I took chances. State and Monroe streets is 
 about the most cluttered corner on this continent, 
 not barring any corner in New York. I had got 
 across one of the cable car tracks, and I was just 
 about to make one jump of it to clear the other — 
 not seeing the car bearing down not five feet away 
 from the other direction — when I got caught by 
 the scruff of my overcoat collar and jerked back 
 with a suddenness that made my teeth rattle. 
 When I turned around to have a look at the man 
 that had saved me from being run down, I looked 
 into the good-natured mug of Jack Fahey, in the 
 
TALE THE SIXTH in 
 
 uniform of a Chicago cop. When Jack had been 
 lost from our shuffle out in San Francisco that 
 time he had turned up in Vallejo, across from the 
 Mare Island Navy Yard, and he concluded that a 
 three-year cruise in the navy was about as good as 
 anything else. So he had gone around the world 
 as a bluejacket, and there he was, an old ex-battery 
 mate, looking at me and grinning, on the most 
 jammed street corner in America. When Jack 
 got ofF his blue duds we had a good time together, 
 with the rum cut out. 
 
 " Six months later I was standing in front of 
 the Laclede Hotel in St. Louis when a smooth- 
 faced duck with a Newmarket, giglamps, and a 
 pair of field-glasses slung over his shoulder, 
 walked up behind me and gave me a clap on the 
 back that I can feel yet, and when I turned around 
 I had to shake hands with Cork Mulvihill, who 
 had shaved off his red mustache and was playing the 
 St. Louis races and running a string of his own 
 with all kinds of luck. During the half-day cug- 
 germuggering that I had with Cork, he told me 
 that when he became separated from our push he 
 landed out near the old San Francisco race-course, 
 where a running meeting was then going on, and 
 that, being broke, he had got a job as a rubber. 
 He had had a run of luck in playing them with 
 
112 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 the few dollars he made, and within a couple of 
 years he had turned his shoestring into a tannery. 
 
 " On the night of the last big fight, when I was 
 sitting with a couple of friends right in front of 
 the platform and longing to have McCoy punch 
 Sharkey into kingdom come, who should I see 
 leering at me in a box only ten feet away but six- 
 foot-two Monk Williams of Washington. Monk 
 was togged out like a four-time winner, which he 
 is, but his name in Washington is not Monk Wil- 
 liams. He had made the whole trip from the 
 house-boat on the San Joaquin to Washington by 
 freight, and when he got home his prosperous 
 brothers took him in hand, so that Monk that was 
 is now the proprietor of about a dozen of the big- 
 gest market stands in Washington, and just rides 
 around in a buggy and collects the rake-ofF from 
 them. As for me — humph ! — well " 
 
 And Ex-Tank No. 4 drew himself up to his full 
 height with pardonable pride. 
 
TALE THE SEVENTH 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No. i6 Illustrateth the 
 Value Unto Man of Ye Good Front 
 
TALE THE SEVENTH 
 
 WHEREIN EX-TANK NO. l6 ILLUSTRATETH THE 
 VALUE UNTO MAN OF YE GOOD FRONT 
 
 "The inestimable value of a front," said Ex- 
 Tank No. 1 6, the best-dressed member of the 
 Harlem Club of Former Alcoholic Degenerates, 
 " never got a-hold of me until after they had tried 
 to vag me about six times. At that, it wasn't un- 
 til my day for getting vagged was all over that I 
 bloomed forth like — well, just look at me, that's 
 all," and No. i6 surveyed himself with an oleagi- 
 nous smile of pardonable pride, while all the other 
 Ex-Tanks present chimed in with, "Yes, just look 
 at him, that's all ! " 
 
 " Before the practically incalculable value of a 
 front soaked into what I am pleased to term my 
 mind," continued Ex-Tank No. i6, " they really 
 couldn't be blamed for sizing me up as a proper 
 recruit for the rock pile, for if ever there was a 
 slouch then I was It before I went in for sartorial 
 rejuvenation," and Ex-Tank No. i6 preened 
 himself some more, while the club chorused, 
 115 
 
ii6 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 " Before he ceased to be a slouch, why, he was 
 It!" 
 
 " One morning, when the clock in the steeple was 
 ready to chime two," went on Sixteen, " I was lean- 
 ing against a lamp-post on Arapahoe street, in Den- 
 ver. I was thinking; I wasn't thinking about 
 how much like a hobo I looked or about the dent 
 in my hat, but I was thinking about other matters. 
 I had only got into Denver from Omaha about 
 two hours before, and I may have had eight or ten 
 under my waist band ; but I was all right, even if 
 I did, in accordance with my lifelong negligence 
 of dress, look like a slob ; and I didn't know there 
 was any municipal ordinance against a man's lean- 
 ing on an Arapahoe street lamp-post and thinking. 
 
 " A cop about eight feet high came up quietly 
 behind me and gave me a prod with his club. 
 
 " ' Went away, Louie,' said he. ' Stop dossin' 
 agin the post. You're liable to fall down and 
 come apart. Haven't you got the price of a 
 bunk ? ' 
 
 " ' I am thinking,' said L 
 
 " ' So'm I,' said the cop, getting a grip on the 
 left sleeve of my coat. ' I'm a thinkin' about run- 
 nin' you in. Come on,' and he gave me three 
 jerks in the direction that he wanted to take. 
 
 " ' Go ay-way,' said I. ' Turn me loose. You 
 
TALE THE SEVENTH 117 
 
 know not what you do. What wouldst thou with 
 me?' 
 
 " ' Don't get glad with me,' said the cop, ' or I'll 
 rough-house you up some.' 
 
 " ' Say, what do I look like ? ' I asked him go- 
 ing along, though, so as to prevent him from 
 ripping hunks off my arm. ' Is it so bad as all 
 that ? ' 
 
 " ' You look like zinc money after it's been run 
 over and stepped on,' replied the cop with brutal 
 candor, ' and it ain't no cinch, but what you'd turn 
 a trick with the wedge and the phony keys at that,' 
 and he gave me two or three yanks to shake me up 
 some in my stride. 
 
 " ' Which am I, then, suspicious character or 
 vag ? ' I asked him. 
 
 " ' Both,' he answered, ' and a chinner from the 
 bottom lands besides. Shut up. I'm only paid 
 for walkin' you. The desk Sergeant'll do the 
 listenin'.' 
 
 "Whereupon I decided to abandon frivolous 
 conversation until I was stacked up against the 
 desk Sergeant. 
 
 "'What you got?' the desk Sergeant asked 
 the cop when he brought me into the station 
 house. 
 
 "'Talky vag,' said the cop. 'found hinj 
 
ii8 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 holdin' up a light-pole on Arapahoe street, without 
 visible means o' bunkin'. Don't know whether 
 he's got any of the tools on him, but he looks to 
 me like one of 'em.' 
 
 " ' Search him,' said the desk Sergeant. 
 
 " The cop reached for the inside breast pocket 
 of my bum coat first, and got out my wallet. He 
 dug ;^8oo in twenties, fifties and hundreds out of 
 the middle compartment, and then he wiped the 
 perspiration ofF his forehead with a bandanna and 
 looked at me with his jaw hanging dislocatedly on 
 the breast of his coat. You could ha' knocked 
 the Sergeant's eyes off with a stick. 
 
 " ' What's your business and where are you 
 from ? ' the Sergeant asked me when he got 
 through taking short breaths. 
 
 " ' Lawyer — Omaha,' said L 
 
 " ' Lawyer ? ' said he. ' You're a merry propo- 
 sition, ain't you ? You look like four days over 
 the mountains on an oil train, and you have the 
 gall to say you're a lawyer. How about that 
 money ? Where did you get it ? If you're a 
 lawyer, how about your make-up ? ' 
 
 " ' That's my business,' said I, ' but to satisfy 
 your curiosity I don't mind saying that my 
 make-up is a little eccentricity that betokens latent 
 genius. Genius runs in my family.' 
 
TALE THE SEVENTH irg 
 
 " ' Be careful, my bucko,' said the Sergeant, 
 looking warm beneath the collar. ' You're a vag, 
 and I don't know but what you're a thief, and we 
 don't take slack from that kind here," 
 
 " ' Well, I don't like to keep you waiting,' said 
 I, feeling that I'd be shoved back if I didn't open 
 pretty soon, ' and so I don't mind telling you that 
 at eleven o'clock this morning I'm going to appear 
 before the Supreme Court of the State of Colorado 
 to argue a railroad case. If you don't believe it, 
 just dig out of that wallet a letter with reference 
 to the case from a gentleman who ornaments the 
 Colorado bar, and whose non-active partner is now 
 a United States Senator for Colorado. If that 
 doesn't satisfy you, just ring up the gentleman and 
 ask him for a description of the junior member of 
 his corresponding legal firm in Omaha, or, better 
 still, send your eight-footer along with me up to 
 his house.' 
 
 "The whole beauty of this spiel consisted in 
 the fact that it was true. And if there's anything 
 more joyous in this life than having a clean bulge 
 on a desk Sergeant in a police station I've still got 
 some fun ahead of me. I was unhobbled and 
 turned loose instantly, and, as usual, the Sergeant 
 socked it to the cop for being a pinhead, a light- 
 weight, and an in-and-outer. The old man of my 
 
I20 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 firm in Omaha heard about it, though, and when I 
 got back (after winning out in the railroad case) he 
 went systematically at the job of convincing me 
 of the value of a front. My friends, you see the 
 result ! " 
 
 " The result ! " hummed the Ex-Tanks. 
 
 "And speaking of results," went on No. 16, 
 "reminds me of the time when, long before the 
 incident I have just narrated, I was vagged within 
 13-inch rifle shot of the New York City Hall 
 for not looking like the real thing, that is, when I 
 was nearly vagged. My fellow Ex-Tanks may 
 remember that in former years the racing of run- 
 ning horses was quite a popular pastime in this 
 neighborhood. Still is, do I hear ? Um ! Is that 
 so ? Strange I had not heard. Well, anyhow, at 
 the time I revert to, the racing of thoroughbred 
 horses around a circular track was esteemed as a 
 more than mildly exciting sport. I esteemed it that 
 way myself. I was too busy in fighting the demon 
 rum and in trying to hold jobs for two consecutive 
 weeks at that period to be able to visit the tracks 
 very frequently. But at the time there were in- 
 stitutions known as poolrooms, upon the black- 
 boards of which the names of the contending 
 horses were spread, together with the odds laid at 
 the track? on pr against the chances of each, 
 
TALE THE SEVENTH 121 
 
 One Friday, just after being fired from my job, 
 with eleven dollars in hand, I went into one of 
 these old-time institutions — they are but a memory 
 now, I understand — and bet the horse ten dollars 
 of my eleven dollars that the six horses I named 
 would win their respectives races. That was what 
 was called a combination. My combination paid 
 ;^3,ooo to ^10, and it won. 
 
 " ' Here,' said I to myself, ' is where I efface 
 the scandal of racing from this neighborhood. 
 This is my mission. I shall absorb all of the 
 money of the bookmakers. Without bookmakers 
 there can be no racing. Consequently, in shatter- 
 ing the bookmakers I shall put an end to this in- 
 sidious racing business, and the conservative 
 population shall arise and call me the real thing.' 
 
 " I was at my slouchiest in those days, and 
 when I appeared at the race-track the next after- 
 noon and put down ;^3,ooo with three bookmakers 
 on the horse Gotham to win, at 3 to 5 on — thus 
 standing to win ;^ 1,800, which I thought was good 
 enough for that one day — they viewed me with 
 suspicion. They no doubt thought that I had 
 stolen the money. Gotham lost by a nose. I 
 crunched my ;^3,ooo to ^1,800 ticket in my clothes 
 and went forth mournfully. I pulled up some- 
 where in the neighborhood of Bay Ridge toward 
 
122 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 midnight, and a constable with chin whiskers was 
 rapping the bottom of my feet — 1 omitted to say 
 that I was lying down. 
 
 " ' Come along wit' me, sport,' said the consta- 
 ble with chin whiskers. 
 
 " ' Which ? ' said I, getting up. 
 
 "'Yez'll make a good road-mendher,' said the 
 constable. ' But as a hobo yeez is not wan, two, 
 t'ree, or yeez wouldn't be a-sleepin' in th' road.' 
 
 " The ' one, two, three ' was a cue. It sounded 
 as if the chin-whiskered constable had been against 
 the game himself. 
 
 " ' I don't train with that lot ; you're mixed,' 
 said I. ' My name's Walton, Joe Walton — Plun- 
 ger Walton, the bunch call me. I fell down pretty 
 hard this afternoon on that Gotham thing, and it 
 dazed me.' 
 
 " The constable took me to the light of a street 
 oil-lamp and looked me over. 
 
 " ' Gotham, is it ? ' said he, with a show of in- 
 terest. ' Oi lose foive dollars on th' nag meself. 
 Yeez doan't look as if yeez had foive cints t' lose 
 on that wan or anny other.' 
 
 " I pulled out my ^3,000 to ;^ 1,800 ticket and 
 showed it to him in the light. ' Gotham — ;^3,ooo 
 to ;gi,8oo,' it read. 
 
 " ' Only dropped thirty hundred on it, that's all,' 
 
TALE THE SEVENTH 
 
 123 
 
 said I, not airily, but in an everyday sort of tone. 
 The ticket made a square bull's-eye on the con- 
 stable. 
 
 " ' Thin it's Walton yeez is, is it ? ' said he. 
 'Who th' divil would ha' believed it? Ye had 
 betther be off an' away, Walton, before th' sun 
 comes up.' And I took his advice and departed. 
 That's how near I came to being vagged, within 
 eight miles of the house where I was born, for not 
 appreciating the value of a front. 
 
 " About a year later they actually got me under 
 lock and key, as a preliminary to vagging me, 
 simply because I didn't have on good clothes. 
 This was down in Washington. The experience 
 was worth an even ^500 to me. I went down to 
 Washington to get the job of Attorney-General or 
 something like that, but, as usual with me then, I 
 neglected to consider togs as an essential in an 
 undertaking of that character. I knew a lot of 
 people in Washington, but the cop didn't give me 
 time to hunt them up. The cop, I should men- 
 tion, found me slumbering on a bench in the 
 Smithsonian grounds. The stuff that they purvey 
 on the trains always had a dopey effect on me, any- 
 how, and so I sought a sequestered corner of the 
 beautiful park surrounding the Smithsonian Insti- 
 tution and found sweet repose on a bench. I don't 
 
124 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 know how long it lasted, but I distinctly recall the 
 rataplan skill with which the cop gave me the hot 
 foot. He was a black cop. 
 
 " ' Yo' all kin traipse uhlong wid me,' he said, 
 and I was too sleepy by a whole lot to make any 
 kick. I went along. 
 
 '"Ah foun' dis heah man uh-sleepin' on uh 
 pahk bench,' the coon cop said to the Sergeant at 
 the desk. 
 
 " The Sergeant asked me what I had to say for 
 myself, and I said it. I mentioned a lot of people 
 in Washington who had the honor of knowing me, 
 and he decided to hold me in a witness room until 
 he had a chance to verify my statements. I was 
 pretty sore when they chucked me into a witness 
 room already occupied by a big, black ' spote.' He 
 was togged out in checks as big as paving blocks, 
 and large rose diamonds. He was sound asleep in 
 a chair, and my entrance didn't cause him to bat 
 an eye toward waking up. I hadn't been in there 
 more than ten minutes before the black ' spote ' 
 began to dream out loud. A nightmare was stomp- 
 ing all over him, and he choked and spluttered in 
 his sleep. I took him by the shoulder and shook 
 him awake. He looked at me wildly. 
 
 " ' Ah sut'nly was uh-dreamin',' he said. ' Ah 
 was uh-dreamin' dat Ah was uh-runnin' one p' 
 
TALE THE SEVENTH 125 
 
 dese heah cable cahs, an' dat uh leetle teeny white 
 baby done got in front 0' de cab. Ah couldn't 
 stop de cab, an' Ah was just uh-comin' down on 
 de baby w'en Ah woke up.' 
 
 " Then he rubbed his eyes, looked around, and a 
 slow grin crept over his black countenance. 
 
 " ' Ah won't do uh t'ing but play de Baby Row 
 w'en dey tunhs me loose from heah,' he said. 
 
 " That set me to thinking about the monumental 
 luck that follows the Afro-American brother when 
 he plays his superstitions. I asked the black 
 ' spote ' where there was a policy shop in Washing- 
 ton, and he told me. I was turned loose about 
 half an hour later, and I reached the policy shop in 
 time for the 8 p. M. drawing. I had seven dollars, 
 and I put five dollars of the bunch on the Baby 
 Row. The Baby Row happened the first rattle out 
 of the dish, and it paid lOO to i. 
 
 " But I might have landed the Attorney-General- 
 ship had I then understood — as I now understand 
 — the value of a front," 
 
TALE THE EIGHTH 
 
 In Which Ex-Tank No. 12 Narrateth His 
 Experience as a Strolling Player in the 
 Drama of Ye Bard of Avon 
 
TALE THE EIGHTH 
 
 IN WHICH EX-TANK NO. 12 NARRATETH HIS EX- 
 PERIENCE AS A STROLLING PLAYER IN THE 
 DRAMA OF YE BARD OF AVON 
 
 "Without entertaining any desire to detract 
 from the glamour with which posterity has invested 
 the genius of the Bard," remarked Ex-Tank No. 
 12, drumming with obvious unconsciousness on 
 the table with the fingers of his left hand, so as to 
 give the overhead lights a chance to bring out the 
 beauty of all the facets of the faultlessly-cut 3-k. 
 blue diamond on the third finger, "and with no 
 purpose or wish to induce the members of this 
 club to change their preconceived notions with 
 reference to the Swan of Avon, I yet take the 
 liberty of rising to state that Bill undeniably made 
 a few bad breaks. I'm not speaking of the way 
 he permitted Macbeth to wabble around and al- 
 low himself to be bulldozed by his wife, nor of 
 his failure to land the Melancholy Dane in a nut 
 factory at the wind-up of the play (there must 
 have been some kind of a Bloomingdale outfit in 
 129 
 
130 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 Denmark at that time for folks who had wheels), 
 nor of the yellow finish he dished out to Antony, 
 nor of the four-flushing talk he put into the mouth 
 of Coriolanus, nor of any of the rest of the little 
 idiosyncracies in the writing of the Bard which 
 the pygmies since his day and date have called 
 attention to. I'm just throwing it into him a few 
 to sort o' square up a personal grievance. I'm 
 sore on him because he heaved some superfluous 
 characters into his plays, and of these the super- 
 fluousest was and is Count Paris in Romeo and 
 Juliet. I know that that part's superfluous, be- 
 cause I've played it myself. It's a pretty unusual 
 thing for a man to be humiliated through no less a 
 famous gazebu than William Shakespeare, but that's 
 just what happened to me. Through Shakespeare 
 I was made to feel like ten Tien-Tsin taels. There 
 was a win-out end to it finally, but " 
 
 " Knock ofF talking like a man in a cave," 
 urged the club, gently, in chorus. 
 
 " You can't spreadeagle this outfit by going at a 
 talkfest both ends from the middle," protested 
 Ex-Tank No. 7, the parliamentarian and kicker. 
 " You're ten lengths behind your field. Hunch 
 up and do some riding or you'll be beat a quarter 
 of a mile." 
 
 " but," resumed Ex-Tank No. 12 where he 
 
TALE THE EIGHTH 131 
 
 had left ofF, " the thing left its scar. Here's what 
 one of the little jay papers said about me," diving 
 into his vest pocket and producing a yellowed 
 clipping about a stick long and reading : 
 
 " ' The underfed, reluctant, tentative proposition 
 in red cotton tights, a frayed green tunic of Visigoth 
 architecture, and a Mexican slouch hat minus the 
 rim-bells, who essayed the role of Count Paris- 
 well, we frankly own to being up against it in the 
 attempt which we had intended to undertake to 
 describe this young man's weird and wild interpre- 
 tation. Briefly, then, he made the Bard look as if 
 he had been hit on the wishbone by a steamboat 
 when he was writing that part. We dofF our bon- 
 nets reverently at the mere mention of the great 
 Singer's name, and yet we're bound to say that, in 
 our humble judgment, he should have fixed it so 
 that Count Paris could be kicked to death by 
 rabbits in the first act. It may be that in the 
 ranks of Thespians there are male bipeds capable 
 of assuming the r31e of the Count of Paris and of 
 making that pinhead look less like a zinc dime than 
 he really is in the play, but we doubt it. Assumed, 
 however, by a man with the physique of a hod- 
 carrier and the grace and carriage of a cook-stove 
 trying to climb a tree ' " 
 
 "I object," interrupted the parliamentarian and 
 
132 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 kicker. " I ask the members of this organization 
 one and all, if this is a literary outfit or a club of 
 ex-disciples of the Demon Rum, and I also inquire 
 when we may expect to have some mug get up 
 here and try to have ' Curfew Shall Not Ring 
 
 To-night ' into us ? What's the " 
 
 " It happened in Minonk, Illinois," went on Ex- 
 Tank No. 12, carefully returning the clipping to 
 his vest pocket, " late in the autumn of '8g. It 
 isn't germane to the main incident what I was 
 doing in Minonk, Illinois, but I may state that I 
 was — er — going from Chicago to St. Louis with- 
 out money, on a wager — with myself — when I fell 
 into Minonk. ' Fell ' is about right in this con- 
 nection. The brakeman demanded coin, and I 
 had no coin. So I fell off the flat-car, and the 
 place where I fell happened to be Minonk. It was 
 then about seven o'clock in the morning, and the 
 fast freight went right through Minonk. I didn't 
 even get scraped — landed in some bushes on the 
 outskirts of town, and it was a soft spot. I got up 
 and hoofed it to the station. An accommodation 
 train had just got in, and there were twelve sad 
 people on the platform. They looked their part. 
 They were ' hams.' I can tell a ham two miles 
 away in a valley without a pince-nez. They 
 were dickering with the driver of a craft that 
 
TALE THE EIGHTH 
 
 133 
 
 looked like a Hank Monk stage-coach about the 
 ride up to the hotel, likewise for the transporta- 
 tion of their gear to the op'ry house. There were 
 three trunks in the bunch, which included costumes, 
 street apparel, and the whole works for the pres- 
 entation of ' Shakespearean repertoire.' The 'bus 
 driver wanted seventy-five cents for the whole job, 
 and the main guy of the push was trying to get 
 him to do it C. O. D. The driver renigged, and 
 when the main guy got him down to fifty cents he 
 produced the half and the bunch started for the 
 inn. I was standing rubbering at 'em, with my 
 hands in my pockets, and filled with the earnest 
 desire for coffee and hot biscuits that you've read 
 about, when the main guy, who had on an olive- 
 green frock coat (not the original color) and a plug 
 hat of an extreme vintage, piped me ofF. I neg- 
 lected to state that, all in all, I had a pretty good 
 front for a flat car tourist. Before starting out 
 from Chicago I'd got hold of four dollars, and I 
 went ' down the bay ' with it. Got a papier-mache 
 suit, shoes, hat, and a pink flannel shirt for ^2.80, 
 and as I'd only been out four days from Chicago 
 the goods still held together and looked good 
 enough. 
 
 " ' Ha, me Cassio,' says the boss ham of the 
 bunch, stepping away from the 'bus and looking me 
 
134 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 over, ' methinks you resemble the castaway upon 
 the shores of Time that we lost back in Fairbury 
 yesterday.' 
 
 " ' That so ? ' said I. ' He must ha' been a 
 la-la. I'd like to meet up with a double that had 
 the price. I could use him.' 
 
 " The poor guy looked hungry himself, but he 
 had learned the lesson of cheerfulness under adver- 
 sity. He beamed upon me just as if he was on the 
 point of handing me money, and he said : 
 
 " ' Canst act ? ' 
 
 " It was up to me to laugh, and I did. 
 
 " ' I could put up the biggest blufF you ever saw 
 at a banquet scene, right now, without any re- 
 hearsal.' I told him, ' but in other parts I don't 
 think I'd ever be able to chase Booth and Barrett 
 over the Mexican line.* 
 
 " ' Say,' said the poor devil, dropping his voice 
 confidentially and belaying his Shakespearean pat- 
 ter, ' you'll do. We're a man shy. He didn't 
 show up when we left Fairbury, and he was seeing 
 'em anyhow during the performance last night. 
 Er — owing to a little misfortune we were com- 
 pelled to leave a few of our accessories back there, 
 so that here, where we are billed for two nights, 
 we'll have to give 'em Romeo and Juliet both 
 times — only costumes we've got left, y'see. Now, 
 
TALE THE EIGHTH 135 
 
 here's a problem in doubling up for all hands that 
 I'm afraid we're not equal to, and we just need one 
 more man. D'ye think you could get the lines of 
 Count Paris and walk through the part for us ? 
 Why, of course you could ! Just get into the 'bus 
 and we'll talk it over at breakfast. 
 
 " ' Breakfast ! ' — that's the word that landed me. 
 I got into the 'bus — that is, the boss ham linked 
 arms with me and shanghaied me into the 'bus. 
 
 " Our new attache,' said he, introducing me 
 
 around to the rest of the bunch. ' Mr. er 
 
 I didn't catch your name ? ' 
 
 " I handed him my stage name — Reginald 
 Montmorency, or some old thing like that. 
 
 " Ten minutes later I was sitting down at the 
 breakfast-table with the bunch, after a wash-up and 
 a brush-ofF in the room assigned me and another 
 chap, and there I was nailed for a mess of pottage ! 
 The man probably knew from the cut of my jib 
 that if I ate the breakfast I wouldn't renig on what 
 he wanted of me, and he was right. Real coffee, 
 yaller-legged chickens, hot biscuits and corn bread, 
 pancakes and honey — say, I'd have gone on and 
 sung Lohengrin without knowing a bar of it for 
 that breakfast. 
 
 "'Simple part — Count Paris,' the boss ham 
 started in to tell me when I went up to his room 
 
136 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 with him and he brought out a couple of corncob 
 pipes. ' The count has always been esteemed more 
 or less of a dub — er — no insinuation, you know — 
 with reference to my picking you out for the part, 
 you see — but we strive to live up to the traditions 
 of the Dray-ma, and I don't feel like cutting him 
 
 out altogether. Now, his first entrance ' 
 
 " Well, he got out a prompt book and for an hour 
 he drilled Count Paris into me. I regarded the 
 whole proposition out of the tail of my eye, but I 
 had that breakfast in me, and I wasn't going to 
 take to the cactus and leave the man who had pro- 
 vided it Count Parisless. After the boss ham got 
 through with me, the whole bunch went over to the 
 op'ry house, which was a kind of a Hibernian hall 
 layout over a drug store, and we rehearsed. Well, 
 say, I was pretty bad — I'm not trying to dodge 
 that — but it was a stand-ofF and play the high card. 
 It was a split between me and the rest of 'em. 
 The only difference was that they knew their lines 
 and I didn't. Of all the — well, that James Owen 
 O'Conner bunch that we had back here in New 
 York twelve or thirteen years ago wasn't one, two, 
 three. How they'd ever got as far away from 
 Kansas City, where they'd organized, as Minonk, 
 without being cabbaged and egged into the railroad 
 hospitals along the line, had me guessing, and my 
 
TALE THE EIGHTH 
 
 137 
 
 finish egan to loom up before me. But, as I say, 
 I'd broken bread with the main guy, and, at that, 
 there were two days' meals and a ten-spot in sight 
 for my two Count Paris stunts, and I couldn't pass 
 the game up. I got the count's lines by six o'clock 
 that evening so I could say them backward and 
 translate them into Plattdeutsch as I went along, 
 and when I put on the uniform and stood in the 
 wings waiting to go on, I felt fit to put up the 
 scrap of my life. I thought I was trained to a hair. 
 Well, I tripped in going on, which was a kind of 
 a bad break seeing that I landed on the scene — 
 which, by the way, looked as much like Verona as 
 Pell street does — head foremost. I lay there wait- 
 ing for 'em to count the ten seconds on me and 
 carry me to my corner, when I got poked with a 
 pole from behind, and then I got up and started in 
 with my little spiel. Say, even the jays in front — 
 there were about 300 of 'em — got up and hollered. 
 — It must ha' been funny for them, and that's a 
 fact, but for me it was just the merry garrote and 
 nothing else in life. Their howls choked me off 
 and made me forget all those carefully-memorized 
 lines. The main guy stood in the wings, tearing 
 out hunks of his pompadour Romeo wig and 
 bawling my lines at me, and, finally, amid the yowls 
 of all the farmers in front, I got a harpoon into the 
 
138 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 lines, and just ran away with 'em. I spat *em all 
 out like a phonograph that's working under a 
 pressure of 2,000 amperes and some odd volts, and 
 then I bolted. I was a frost, I felt that. 
 
 " ' Great, my boy ! ' said the boss ham, patting 
 me on the shoulder. ' You're great I You're a 
 wonder ! You're engaged for forty-two weeks ! 
 Just one or two more rehearsals, and you'll be a 
 tower of strength and a steel stanchion ! Just a 
 few little craggy edges to be rubbed ofF at rehearsal, 
 and you'll ' 
 
 " I looked him over carefully to see whether he 
 was insane or just guying me, but he averted my 
 suspicions by shaking my hand like a pump handle 
 and then rushing on to do his own little stunt. 
 
 " I pinched myself to find out whether I'd been 
 fooling with a yen-hok, but there I was Count 
 Paris, and a holy show, all right, all right. The 
 rest of that night's all a dream. All I can remem- 
 ber of it is the wild tumult of the hayseeds out in 
 front every time I showed up, and the main ham 
 shaking my mitt and telling me what a wonder I 
 was. 
 
 " When, in the patent insides Minonk paper I 
 saw the next morning that criticism that I had 
 started to read to you, I naturally reflected that, 
 after all, despite the boss ham's encouragement, I 
 
TALE THE EIGHTH 139 
 
 might not be altogether a spectacular success as an 
 Intrepreter of the Bard, and I told Romeo that I 
 was going to pass my job up — that no mortal coin 
 could ever bribe me to tog out in the Count Paris 
 rig again. 
 
 " ' The man who wrote that criticism,' said the 
 main guy, solemnly, ' has about as much of an idea 
 of the inner, occult meaning of the Dray-ma as the 
 mound-builders had of long-distance telephones. 
 My boy, the house is sold out for to-night — 350 
 pat — and if you desert us now we're ruined — abso- 
 lutely ruined ! Come ahead, now, and I'll just 
 put you on to how that second scene ought to be 
 done to get all the meat out of it. You enter 
 here ' 
 
 " Well, he was a pretty good con man, and he 
 nailed me for that positively last and final appear- 
 ance. He told me that this was his last show on 
 earth to haul down a few dollars, and that it would 
 be just plain manslaughter if I went back on him. 
 Then we had eleven drinks of corn-liquor together, 
 and when I got those beneath my belt I was ready 
 for any old thing. 
 
 "So I went on again. The house was packed. 
 The audience was deadly quiet until I went on, 
 and then — well, you'd never suppose that one state 
 could produce so many invalid eggs, passe turnips, 
 
140 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 and cabbages that had seen better days as sailed 
 right in my direction when I popped out. I didn't 
 get hit at all. I was foxy enough to be looking 
 for something like that, and I bobbed back into the 
 wings when I saw the first hayseed stand up in the 
 orchestra and give the signal. The Pell street 
 scene got the whole shower. The three handed 
 orchestra struck up a tune, but I didn't wait to hear 
 the finish of it. I hadn't lost any orchestra tunes. 
 I took a walk out in my Count Paris clothes to see 
 how the evening was holding up, and I heard the 
 rumbling of a freight in the distance. The freight 
 slowed up in passing through Minonk and I made 
 it stick all right. I wasn't thinking how I was go- 
 ing to look under the mellow sunlight of the next 
 morning in those red tights and the 'Visigoth 
 tunic' All I wanted to do was to vacate Minonk. 
 " I left the freight at Peoria at three o'clock the 
 next morning, and at dawn, while I was hovering 
 on the outskirts of the town, I got a lift from a 
 medecine fakir who was just driving into Peoria in 
 his perambulating pharmacy. He told me after- 
 ward that it was his first idea, when he saw me 
 ploughing along the road, to shoot me full of holes, 
 but upon getting a good look at my make-up he 
 had concluded that he could use me in his business. 
 He did use me. I stood up beside him in his 
 
TALE THE EIGHTH 141 
 
 wagon togged out in that Count Paris rig, and 
 served out medicine for him for a month. I at- 
 tracted trade for him. People came miles to see 
 me. The fakir gave me another suit to wear 
 while ofF duty, but he insisted on the red cotton 
 tights and the Visigoth tunic while he was peddling 
 corn salve and stuff from his wagon. He wanted 
 me to cover the whole state of Illinois with him 
 when we had finished Peoria, but I passed and he 
 paid me off. 
 
 "The trouble with me, when I was on the 
 stage, was that I didn't become wedded to my 
 art." 
 
TALE THE NINTH 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No. 17 Hath His Say 
 Anent the Incalculable Effect of Ye 
 Good Front 
 
TALE THE NINTH 
 
 WHEREIN EX-TANK NO. 1 7 HATH HIS SAY ANENT 
 THE INCALCULABLE EFFECT OF YE GOOD 
 FRONT 
 
 " We often revert, in these proceedings," said 
 Ex-Tank No. 17 of the Harlem Club of Former 
 Alcoholic Degenerates, twisting his three-stone 
 diamond ring with a preoccupied air, " to the incal- 
 culable value — particularly to persons who are 
 wont to become insolvent at the wind-up of tu- 
 multuous, personally conducted carnivals of joy — 
 of that seemliness in raiment and general appear- 
 ance which is technically known as a front. A 
 suddenly-arrested, punctured jag that discovers you 
 frontless at the awakening is one of life's tragedies. 
 Frontless men do win out, of course ; we all know 
 that ; but the progress of the frontless win-out is 
 craggy and disheartening. The frontless man is 
 the recipient of the dead face, otherwise the cold 
 storage countenance, until he is sorely tempted to 
 hold up the clothing store dummies that flap their 
 arms, beckoningly, on the sidewalks before the 
 145 
 
146 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 windows. It is simply trite to say that a front is 
 of value to the busted man. It's his whole stock 
 in trade. It's the complete works. It's the sec- 
 ond wheel to a sulky. 
 
 " I never in my life, at any time, or anywhere, 
 landed without a front. I have made a meal ofF 
 immature turnips, hand-dug, and I have been re- 
 duced to the necessity of absorbing none but the 
 three-cent article of cochineal fluid, compounded 
 chiefly of sweet chewing tobacco and wood alco- 
 hol, and dipped from a barrel by means of a tin 
 cup. But I always gave ear unto the foxy whisper 
 that buzzed beneath my chapeau the advice, ' Keep 
 up your front.' I have got up at dawn in the 
 morning when I needed about three so bad that I 
 could hear jaguars baying at the morning star ; but 
 I've erased the hair from my face with a razor that 
 I could hardly hold in my mitt, and changed the 
 linen, and rubbed off the shoes, and brushed off 
 the togs, and inked the hat when it needed it, be- 
 fore going forth after those sorely required life- 
 savers. Because why ? Because I always felt and 
 knew that, without a front, a man might just as 
 well resign himself to sobriety and to featureless, 
 plodding days ; that he's a deceased one ; and that 
 the cordial paw and the wreathed smile of men 
 are not for him. Your front may be naught but 
 
TALE THE NINTH 147 
 
 a white sepulchre — but hang on to it. Go down 
 to bay and procure suit, hat, shoes, collar, cuffs, 
 and necktie, the complete rig while you wait — for 
 ;^2.90, and blow in the other dime for a carnation 
 for your buttonhole — but make the stab for the 
 front. • And when you land again on top of the 
 tally-ho, with horns a-blowing, corks a-popping, 
 and the sun a-shining on both sides of the road, 
 make up your mind that the next time you get 
 ditched you'll stick to your front like a flea to a 
 French poodle — that you'll spout the watch and 
 the ring and the pin, if it comes to that, but cling 
 to the front-making togs ; thus you'll " 
 
 " Is Seventeen aware that he is addressing an ag- 
 gregation of Ex-Tanks, who have left all of these 
 things behind," interrupted Ex-Tank No. 7, the 
 parliamentarian and kicker, " or has he tranced 
 himself back to his own mixed-ale period, so that 
 he thinks he's spieling advice for a bunch of active, 
 non-extinct Tanks who've " 
 
 " The Sweep-Up will place Seven in the sweat- 
 box and keep him there with the full head of steam 
 turned on for thirty-five minutes," said the Chief 
 Ex-Tank, rising and frowning heavily. " Seven- 
 teen, you may proceed." 
 
 When the parliamentarian and kicker had been 
 dragged from the room — in accordance with fre- 
 
148 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 quent non-availing threats that the same would 
 happen to him if he did not belay his interruptions 
 — and securely locked in the folding steam bath, 
 Ex-Tank No. 1 7 proceeded : 
 
 " Well, I was going to toss you a few in illus- 
 tration of how inestimably valuable my dogged 
 adhesion to a front has been on a few occasions. 
 Take a hard game that I bucked into once out in 
 Spokane, for example. I might have been made 
 to break enough rock to macadamize two miles of 
 Spokane road if hadn't dropped anchor there with 
 a front. I had been indulging in two months of 
 wooze and sog and rummy sub-conscious poesy in 
 St. Paul, and that's where I left my gig-lamps and 
 everything else but the front. I clung to the grip- 
 ful of togs, as well as those I had on, when I 
 needed, and needed bad, the moist things I could 
 have traded them for. I got a ride out of St. Paul 
 on a mail train. It was against regulations, but 
 the railway postal clerk who offered me the ride — 
 I'd known him back this way — took a chance. It 
 was arranged that I should duck beneath a pile of 
 empty mail bags in a corner of the car should any 
 inspector hop aboard along the route ; but this 
 didn't happen and I had a pretty comfortable ride. 
 We were headed west, and my friend the clerk 
 was going as far as Spokane j and so was I, of 
 
TALE THE NINTH 149 
 
 course, not, as I say, having the cash wherewith to 
 proceed any farther. As far as clothes went, I 
 looked like ready money, and my grip was stuffed 
 full of clean linen. When we were pulling into 
 Spokane — it was about seven o'clock in the evening — 
 I gave myself the dusting and the primping of my 
 life, and my friend the clerk passed me a one. 
 
 " ' You can hurl 'em a bigger bluff with that than 
 I could with a thousand,' he said, flatteringly, and 
 I bowed my thanks, shook him cordially by the 
 hand and left the train. I stepped into the 'bus of 
 the best hotel in Spokane, and was driven thereto 
 in some state — the only passenger — with my bulg- 
 ing, well-labelled grip alongside of me. A porter 
 was at the door to drag the grip in, and I followed 
 after him, shoulders back, head way up in the air, 
 cane and umbrella strapped together, swinging like 
 a mace. From the door I saw the clerk beginning 
 to screw his face up for a welcome. It looked 
 good, so far. The bar was right to the left of the 
 hotel desk. I sheered off, before going up to the 
 desk, and strolled over there. The barkeep in- 
 clined his ear. 
 
 " ' Er — urn — let's see,' said I, clearing my throat 
 sonorously and patting my stomach, 'just make me 
 up a very dry Martigny — dash pf Curacoa — gherry 
 
150 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 " ' That's a new one on me. Cap,' said the bar- 
 keep. ' Can make you a plain cocktail.' 
 
 " I shuddered. 
 
 " ' No, just a plain drop of that gold seal, then,' 
 said I, with a lot of exterior disappointment, point- 
 ing to the bottle. 
 
 " The barkeep passed the bottle over and wiped 
 the glass very carefully before putting it down. I 
 poured out a very small one — I wanted a hooter, 
 but I was looking for effect, not joy, just then — 
 and tossed it off, with a lot of critical after-smack- 
 ing. Then I pulled a crumpled dollar out of my 
 vest-pocket — after reaching into my breast pocket 
 as if for my wallet — and tossed it on the bar. 
 Then I picked up my seventy-five cents in change 
 and walked over to the desk, where the clerk was 
 holding a pen, handle outward, for me. 
 
 "'Er — humph! — have you a room with a 
 bawth ? ' I asked him. 
 
 " ' Sorry, sir,' he replied, ' but we're just having 
 the baths put in. Got a nice two-room suite, 
 second floor front, for you, though.' 
 
 " I looked a whole lot grieved about the no-bath 
 proposition, and harped on it quite a few, and then 
 took the two-room suite — ten dollars per diem, 
 American plan. I couldn't help it if that clerk 
 figured me to be a post office inspector, which I 
 
TALE THE NINTH 151 
 
 afterward found he did. I'd got in on a mail train, 
 and his assumption was natural. I had the front 
 and the haughtiness that comes from a front; 
 otherwise I might have been ' vagged ' in Spokane 
 just twenty minutes after getting ofF the train — for 
 the place was full of hoboes and grafters, and they 
 were running them in in sets of fours. 
 
 " I went up to my suite, called for a lot of hotel 
 stationery wherewith to write letters, and stayed up 
 there half an hour or so in order to make it ap- 
 pear that I was writing letters. Then I went 
 downstairs, had a good dinner — I kicked mildly 
 because the house couldn't furnish the brand of 
 Sauterne I liked, and the steward sent me word 
 that he'd order it, and thought somewhat mourn- 
 fully about those seventy-five cents. I felt that 
 something had got to happen. 
 
 " I walked out to the front of the hotel and 
 caught the rattle of the chips, and the click of the 
 marble in the wheel, proceeding from a brilliantly 
 lighted and wide open plant across the street. I 
 strolled over there as it was as swagger a layout as 
 I ever saw — five bank outfits, with varying limits, 
 wheel, red-and-black, craps, stud, the whole works. 
 There were big crowds around all the faro layouts, 
 and I could hardly see the tables for the men stand- 
 ing behind the chairs and making bets. 
 
152 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 " ' Here,' said I to myself, ' is where I either be- 
 come the depository for sundry and divers leaden 
 capsules or acquire a stake.' 
 
 " So I walked up to the big-limit-table. All the 
 chairs were held down, and men were standing two 
 deep behind them, betting when they could. They 
 were calling out to the dealer to place markers for 
 them when they couldn't reach over. I got a peep 
 at the chart of the man sitting in front of me, and I 
 liked the king open. 
 
 " ' I'll bet you a hundred the king wins,' said I 
 to the dealer, smoothly, sticking my head between 
 the shoulders of a couple of chaps in front of 
 me. 
 
 " ' You're on,' said the dealer, and he put a 
 marker on the king for the hundred that I didn't 
 have. If the king lost I stood to get riddled while 
 making for the door at a lope — but I needed the 
 money. I watched the turns, when I could rub- 
 berneck over the shoulders of the fellows in front 
 of me, with a whole heap of excitement. 
 
 "The king came out on the right side. 
 
 " ' Whose marker is this ? ' asked the dealer. 
 
 " ' Mine,' said I, squeezing through so that he 
 could see me. ' Just let it stand.' 
 
 " It was a cold bluff and a hard chance to take 
 when "j had the j^^oo right in my mitt, and cohW 
 
TALE THE NINTH 153 
 
 have cashed and come away. But I guess the old 
 fever had got into me. 
 
 " The king won again. 
 
 " ' Just let me have checks for a couple of hun- 
 dred,' said I to the dealer, and just then the man 
 seated in front of me passed out and I took his 
 seat. The dealer passed me over twenty ten-dol- 
 lar chips and ^200 in eagles, which I stuffed into 
 my pocket wearily. I played on for two hours. 
 Then I yawned quite heavily, said something about 
 being sleepy, cashed in ;^900 worth of chips, walked 
 over to the hotel, split a quart of dry with the hotel 
 clerk, went up to my suite, and made monkey faces 
 at myself in the glass for three-quarters of an hour. 
 
 " That's how a front pulled me out in Spokane. 
 
 " Here's another little one about how a front 
 helped me : 
 
 " I got into Omaha, hopelessly sober, busted, 
 but still with the front, one beautiful June morning 
 at six o'clock. There was nothing doing. I was 
 guessing. My grip had been attached at Des 
 Moines, and so I couldn't put up at a hotel. It is 
 a weird thing to be broke in Omaha. 
 
 " I strolled up from the station and reached the 
 business section before seven o'clock. I passed by a 
 big department store. The doors were wide open, 
 »t)d the porters were cleaning the place out pre- 
 
154 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 paratory to the beginning of business at eight 
 o'clock. I stopped before the carpet window. 
 There was a sign in the window : ' Carpets, 
 second floor ; run up and look at the stock.' A 
 middle-aged, countrified-looking couple strolled up 
 to the window as I stood there, and began pointing 
 out to each other the kind of carpets they were 
 going to buy. 
 
 " ' I wisht these consarned, lazy store-folks 'ud 
 come daown and open up business,' I heard the 
 man say. 
 
 " I walked up to him and said : 
 
 " ' Are you thinking of purchasing carpets, sir ? ' 
 
 " ' Wall, thet's whut we come all th' way from 
 Hastings fur, young man,' said the farmer. ' But 
 these taown folks 'pear to lie abed so long.' 
 
 " 'Why,' said I, ' I'm the manager of this estab- 
 lishment's carpet department. I'm always down 
 ahead of the clerks. If you'll kindly step up to 
 the second floor with me, I'll be pleased to show 
 you our goods.' 
 
 " That was too dead easy for anything. They 
 followed me through the main entrance. I tripped 
 in in a jaunty, this-is-where-I-belong sort of way, 
 and my business-like, at-home manner conned the 
 porters. They didn't stop me. I conducted the 
 country couple up to the second floor. I didn't 
 
TALE THE NINTH 155 
 
 know the difFerence between a strip of ingrain 
 carpet and a piece of Gobelin tapestry — but, as I 
 say, it's something fierce and savage to be broke in 
 Omaha, and I needed the money again. I showed 
 the country people the carpets, and they picked out 
 what they liked. On every roll there was a tag 
 showing the price per yard, and that enabled me to 
 prance through my blufF. They tried to dicker me 
 down, but I wouldn't stand for it. 
 
 " ' Ours is a strictly one-price house,' I told 'em, 
 ' and it would be more than my position is worth 
 to make a single reduction.' 
 
 " While I was engaged in showing them the 
 carpets, the carpet-clerks swarmed in. They fig- 
 ured that I was probably a new clerk, and paid little 
 or no attention to me. When I had sold the rural 
 couple ;^250 worth of carpets, I asked one of the 
 clerks where I could find the manager. He told 
 me. I found the manager. 
 
 " ' On what basis am I working in your carpet 
 department ? ' I asked him. ' Salary or commission ? ' 
 
 " He sized me up with a surprised mug. 
 
 " ' How long have you been working in the car- 
 pet department ? ' he asked me. 
 
 " ' Since about a quarter past seven this morn- 
 ing,' I replied, and then I told him about it. 
 
 *' ' Well, of all the infernal, colossal gall and 
 
156 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 cheek ! ' he kept saying, and then he broke into a 
 grin. When I told how I had the old pair up- 
 stairs, and nailed for 1^250 worth of carpets, he 
 said, ' I'll be damned ! ' I knew that it was all right. 
 
 " ' Suppose you just make the commission ten 
 per cent, on the sale,' I suggested to him persua- 
 sively, and he broke into a roar. 
 
 " ' Go back and finish attending to your custo- 
 mers,' he directed, and I did. The farmer paid 
 me spot cash, and I saw them to the door with 
 arm-waves and repeated invitations to ' come in 
 and see us again.' The manager was watching it 
 all and holding his sides. After the couple had 
 gone, he called me into his oflice and handed 
 me $25. 
 
 " 'You may stay here on that basis, if you like,' 
 said he. 
 
 " ' I like,' said I. 
 
 " ' But you needn't mention it to any of the 
 other clerks that you're on commission,' he went 
 on. ' They're on salaries, and not very large ones. 
 Understand ? ' 
 
 " I understood. 
 
 " That's how front won me out in Omaha. If 
 I had tried to turn that trick, looking like a hobo, 
 I'd have been run intg 9. moral, and got about 
 two years, 
 
TALE THE NINTH 157 
 
 " I sold carpets, without knowing anything 
 whatever about carpets at that plant for a month, 
 and my commissions averaged nearly $80 a week. 
 I grabbed everybody that dropped ofF at the second 
 floor, going and coming, both ends from the mid- 
 dle, and made 'em buy carpets, and when I quit 
 with a stake at the end of the month the other 
 clerks in the carpet department were ready to as- 
 sassinate me for being the whole works, not to say 
 It with the manager." 
 
 Then all the Ex-Tanks joined in the chorus : 
 
 Oh, the frontless man 
 Is an also ran, 
 But the duck with the front is a live one. 
 
 Then the meeting adjourned. 
 
TALE THE TENTH 
 
 In Which Ex-Tank No. 19 Hath Strange and 
 Wonderful Luck Through Man's Friend, 
 Ye Dog 
 
TALE THE TENTrr 
 
 IN WHICH EX-TANK NO. I9 HATH STRANGE AtlB 
 WONDERFUL LUCK THROUGH MAN's FRIEND, YE 
 DOG 
 
 "If it hadn't been for those dogs," remarked 
 Ex-Tank No. 19, " maybe I'd be trying to sell 
 patent lamp chimney cleaners from door to door in 
 St. Louis yet." 
 
 " Well, it takes dogs to win races in St. Loo, all 
 correct," said the Chief Ex-Tank, with a reminis- 
 cent expression in his eyes. 
 
 " This bunch of dogs that won me out of St. 
 Louis, though," said No. 19, " didn't happen to be 
 that kind of dogs. They were real dogs, dog dogs, 
 with one-inch tails, enough of the rubberneck strain 
 mixed with their thoroughbred blood to supply the 
 population of an up-state village, and likewise the 
 destructiveness of street-car strikers. That is to 
 say, they were fox-terrier pups, three of 'em in a 
 row, the handsomest I ever saw, before or since, 
 and no one of 'em better'n the other when it came 
 to cute devilishness. I found them." 
 161 
 
i62 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 " Lucky chap, aren't you ? " broke in No. 7, the 
 parliamentarian and kicker, sarcastically. " You 
 were always finding something at just the right 
 minute when you were up ag-ainst it, weren't you ? 
 But, say, when you try to heave it into us that you 
 found three thoroughbred fox-terrier pups alto- 
 gether in a bunch, why, you'll just excuse me, for 
 one, if I " 
 
 " I found them, or as good as found them," 
 calmly resumed No. 19. " They just fell my 
 way. I happened on 'em. I drew them. They 
 dropped to me. I won 'em. Any old way, for 
 peace and a quiet life. And seeing that, up to the 
 win-out of which that incident was the beginning, 
 I never got anything out of St. Louis except a large 
 green stack of uncashable tickets, and, after that, a 
 must job peddling patent lamp chimney cleaners from 
 shack to shack, taking a chance on boiling water 
 and rolling pins right along, maybe Seven'll let me 
 get away with my statement about those pups." 
 
 " If Seven cuts in again he'll do three-quarters 
 of an hour in the new folding bath," said the Chief 
 Ex-Tank, sternly. 
 
 " I took i^yoo and a two-ended high-ball skate 
 with me into St. Louis that time," resumed No. 
 19, " after having been real good up in Chicago for 
 four months. When I got through with the East 
 
TALE THE TENTH 163 
 
 St. Louis game — it only took me ten days to get 
 through with it — I had the bundle of green tickets 
 all ready for framing, most of 'em at three to five on 
 or thereabouts, and several pink giraffes follovi^ing 
 me around and beating me out by necks at every 
 stage of the route. Not having the price of a rest 
 in a bug-vi^ard at tvi^enty-five per, with the soothing 
 music of the chapel organ playing down below, 
 and being opposed for reasons which will here be 
 apprehended to the no-pay bug-wards, I got enough 
 on my other suit to buy a fifty-cent-per room for a 
 week. Then I laid down and had it out with the 
 pink giraffes all by my lonesome. That's only a 
 bad memory now, but it was black tragedy while it 
 was going on. At the end of four days I got up, 
 bought a two-cent paper, and looked over the 
 ' Help Wanted ' column. I didn't know then that 
 nobody ever wants any help in St. Louis except 
 strangers who go up against the town, and the 
 most of these only want transportation out. The 
 only thing I saw that was a fit for me, or anything 
 like it, was the patent lamp chimney cleaner. I 
 took a bunch of 'em out, with the understanding 
 that I was to get a dime for every one of them I 
 sold. I sold twelve the first day, after trying 'em 
 on at about 1,200 different wickieups and then I 
 ate and meditated. I longed to separate myself 
 
i64 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 from St. Loo, but they watch the freight-yards 
 pretty closely there, and the man who gets out of 
 that town on a blind baggage is a four-ply baby 
 and a wonder. So I took up the trudge with my 
 armful of patent lamp chimney cleaners bright and 
 early the next morning, with the idea of selling 
 enough of them to buy a two dollar ticket to any 
 old place. I was walking along Fourth avenue, 
 wondering what the old gang in New York would 
 think of me if they could see me ringing basement 
 door-bells and getting the quick chase from kinky- 
 headed hash-slihgers, when I heard a sharp ' Ps-st ! ' 
 coming from a doorway. The street was pretty 
 well thronged — for St. Louis — but I looked around 
 to see whence the sound proceeded. I saw a sharp- 
 faced, grey-mustached, seedy-looking chap stand- 
 ing in the entrance to an office building and nod- 
 ding me toward him. He had three swell little fox- 
 terrier pups tied by three strings. I was apparently 
 the man he wanted, for he grinned nervously as I 
 walked over toward him. 
 
 " ' I t'ought by your looks you might ha' b'en a 
 lag,' was the polite way he addressed me, ' and w'en 
 you answered th' signal I knowed it.' 
 
 " Perhaps some of you fellows don't know that 
 the sharp ' Ps-st ! ' is the way convicts attract each 
 others' attention. 
 
TALE THE TENTH 165 
 
 "'You overwhelm me with your confidence, 
 Sammy,' I started to say, 'but, at that, I think 
 you've got your piping-off lamps a bit twisted 
 and ' 
 
 " ' Stow that, pal,' he broke in. ' I ain't a six- 
 year-old, and if you haven't done a few bits, by the 
 looks of ye, I'm a smoker, which I ain't. Got no 
 time t' chaw anyhow. Just take these pups for 
 me. I just seen a fly sleut' from Pittsburg pass 
 along, and I wouldn't be s'prised if he's nosin' for 
 me. I done a job up that way a few weeks ago, 
 and nearly all th' rest o' the gang's doin' their bits 
 now. I ain't takin' chances, and I got t' drill. 
 Just annex these pups — they're t'oroughbreds and 
 th' real t'ing — and see wot ye can make outen 'em. 
 You look like you need th' cush. So do I, but 
 there's not enough room for me and that wise 
 sleut' from Smokeburg in th' same town. So I'll 
 just take a chase. Sell th' pups, and if ever I run 
 acrost ye, you can make good if you've got it on 
 ye. S'long.' 
 
 "And he was ofF, with the quickest shuffle, 
 neither a run nor a walk, that I ever saw a man 
 put up. In ten seconds he was mixed with the 
 crowd, and I had three strings, each attached to a 
 tugging little devil of a fox-terrier, in my right 
 mitt. It was the suddenest game I had stacked up 
 
t66 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 against in a long while. For a minute after the 
 crook had disappeared I didn't quite know whether 
 to get hot or to laugh over his mistaking me for 
 one of the lag tribe. When I reflected upon the 
 rather bum front I was putting up, though, with a 
 week's growth of beard on my face, and perhaps 
 the hang-dog air which the highest stepping human 
 proposition on earth will exhibit when he's down 
 proper and up against it, I couldn't blame the crook, 
 and I had to grin gloomily over his error. Mean- 
 time, there were those pups. I knew something 
 about dogs, and I could see at a glance that they 
 were perfectly bred English fox-terriers, thorough- 
 bred all over, and valuable. Wherever the crook 
 got hold of 'em, I passi I at first concluded that 
 I didn't want any part of a game like that, and was 
 hunting up the janitor of the office-building and 
 handing the pups over to him. Then I had an- 
 other think. 
 
 " ' Passing 'em along to the janitor or anybody 
 else for nothing,' I thought, ' would be liable to 
 excite suspicion that I had swiped 'em, and get me 
 pinched. And I'm not going to turn 'em loose ; I 
 wouldn't turn even a yaller dog loose in St. Loo to 
 hustle for himself. And I need the money.' 
 
 " I knew a lot of horse owners and trainers over 
 at the East St. Louis track. I guesS there were 
 
TALE THE TENTH 167 
 
 plenty of 'em who wouldn't have stood for my 
 peddling patent lamp chimney cleaners if they'd 
 known I was up against it that hard, but they 
 didn't know it ; I was never on the touch at any 
 stage of the game, snow or hail. I took a calash, 
 dumped my three pups into it, and told the driver 
 to take me across to the paddock of the East St. 
 Louis track. , He wanted the price of the ride in 
 advance, noticing my make-up out of the tail of his 
 eye, but I hurled him a spiel about some collections 
 I was going to make at the other end. of the line, 
 and it went. He took me over. It was then 
 along toward noon, and I knew that I'd find a lot 
 of horsemen I knew at the stables. There was 
 one of 'em, a trainer for a big Memphis string — I'd 
 known him when I was picking 'em right — stand- 
 ing at the main stable gate when my calash pulled 
 up. I hopped out with my three pups. 
 
 " ' Just give the driver two dollars for me for 
 ten minutes, will you ? ' I said to the trainer, and 
 he dug up with a lot of friendly talk about my ap- 
 parently being on the porcine and all that. That 
 made me quits with the driver. The driver hadn't 
 pulled ofF before I saw that trainer eyeing my pups. 
 If there is anything a old-time horseman loves more 
 than a thoroughbred horse, it's a thoroughbred dog, 
 and the horsemen's addiction to bull and fox-ter- 
 
i68 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 rier pups was something. I was dead onto when I 
 decided to cross over to East St. Louis with my 
 bunch of little stump-tails. I didn't say anything, 
 but watched one of the pups claw all over the 
 trainer, who I knew was sizing the batch up with 
 the eye of a man who knew dog and dog-breed 
 from away back. 
 
 " ' Those are foxes right,' he said, after opening 
 the little chaps' mouths and picking them to pieces 
 with his shrewd eyes. ' Where'd you get 'em ? ' 
 
 " ' From a fellow I met,' said I, not caring to 
 talk much about that end of it. 
 
 " ' I'll give you fifty for this one,' he said, pick- 
 ing up the little gyp that had been clawing him. 
 
 " ' You're on,' said I, coolly as I could, but the 
 figure came near flattening me. The amount of 
 my rake-ofF on 500 patent lamp chimney cleaners ! 
 I knew that the pups were good, but I had no idea 
 they were as good as all that. 
 
 " My trainer friend pulled out a bundle about 
 the size of the under side of a horse collar and dug 
 beneath the hundreds to get at a fifty, which he 
 handed me. 
 
 " ' You're a good thing,' said he, when the trans- 
 action was completed, and he had the pup under 
 his arm. ' This gyp's worth a century if she's 
 worth two bits.' 
 
TALE THE TENTH i6g 
 
 " I told him that any money was money to me 
 just then, and we started for the stables, I leading 
 my other two pups. There was a bunch of own- 
 ers, nearly all of whom I knew, standing outside 
 one of the stables when we got up, and every man 
 stopped talking just to size up those pups. 
 
 " ' I've just chucked it into him,' said the Mem- 
 phis trainer, nodding with a grin to me, and ad- 
 dressing the owners, 'by claiming this one for 
 fifty. I'll make ten times that out of her with a 
 few litters.' 
 
 " ' I'll give you a fifty for this one,' said an 
 owner from the coast to me. 
 
 " ' Nothing doing,' said I. 
 
 " ' Seventy-five,' said he. 
 
 " ' Come again,' said I. 
 
 " ' Post-time — a hundred,' said he. 
 
 "'Take him,' I said, and he tripped me a 'C* 
 from his roll. 
 
 " ' Other one's mine,' said two owners at once, 
 — a Chicago and a Cincinnati man, — and they 
 drew straws to see which had spoken first and 
 which would have the privilege of paying a hun- 
 dred for my last pup. The Chicago man won, 
 and I had ^250 in my clothes, that had started out 
 in the morning with the idea of making enough 
 out of my patent lamp chimney cleaners to buy 
 
170 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 two dollars worth of railroad ride to any old point 
 out of St. Louis. 
 
 " Well, the old fire to run that bundle up into a 
 million by playing 'em right there that afternoon 
 got into me, and I went off into a corner and re- 
 flected. I had the price to sail into New York 
 with the bells on, — to break out of St. Loo once 
 and forever, — and yet 
 
 " ' Say, boy,' I heard a voice behind me saying. 
 I looked around and saw the Memphis trainer who 
 had bought the gyp. ' Seeing that ' I did you on 
 that dog deal, and that you appear to have been 
 some out of luck lately, — if you see me before the 
 last race on the card this afternoon, maybe I'll be 
 able to put you next to a little thing that's meant 
 at a good price.' 
 
 " He shot me an expressive look out of his 
 shrewd grey eyes, and walked away chewing a 
 straw. Then he turned and came back. 
 
 "Don't monkey with any of the other races ; 
 they're all open ; but see me about half an hour 
 before the last one.' 
 
 " Then he walked away for good. 
 
 " I went back to St. Louis, got some duds out 
 of hock, took a Turkish; bath, and by three o'clock 
 I was groomed up, with a Planters' meal beneath my 
 weskit, a quarter cigar in my face, and on my way 
 
TALE THE TENTH 171 
 
 over to East St. Louis in a cab. This was on 
 Friday (my lucky ,day): May 3, 1895. I got to 
 the track in time to watch the third and fourth 
 races, there were only five on the card, and I 
 watched 'em with cold feet and nary a dollar 
 down. Then I slipped out to the paddock and 
 looked around for my friend, the Memphis trainer. 
 I found him chewing a straw and looking uncon- 
 cerned. 
 
 " ' I think there's something doing on this Oh 
 No plug,' said hey giving me the right kind of a 
 look out of his eyes. ' Finished last the last time 
 out, and a bum looker,, but — well, there may be 
 something doing on Oh No. Don't take any of it 
 now. The price'll go up.' 
 
 " I went out into the betting ring and saw that 
 there were plenty of 15 to i against Oh No. 
 There were practically three favorites in the race 
 — Conductor McSweeney and Hercules at 5 to 2 
 against, and Oakview at 2 to i, the latter played 
 down from 3 to i by the time I got into the ring. 
 Two minutes after I got into the ring there was a 
 lot of heavy play on these three, and Oh No's 
 price went a-soaring. When it got to 30 to i I 
 took ^100 worth of it in four hooks. I was just 
 in time, for I hadn't any sooner got my ;^3,ooo to 
 ^100 before a lot of educated money began to show 
 
172 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 around the ring, and Oh No's price was cut first to 
 20, and then closed at 15 to i. 
 
 " ' They can't lose me anyhow, whether Oh No 
 wins or not,' I reflected as I went into the stand, 
 feeling pretty sassy with the hundred and a quarter 
 that I still had left and knowing that I'd get back 
 to New York on the varnished cars any old way. 
 
 " I thought my ;^ioo was up in the air for a cinch 
 when the bunch went to the post. Oh No looked 
 to me like a Percheron short of work. Oh No, 
 with a boy named Slaughter up, got ofF a rank last, 
 twenty yards behind the bunch, with Conductor 
 McSweeney 'way out in front, and Hercules and 
 Oak view, the other two played horses, lapped on 
 each other for the place. Around the back stretch 
 the Slaughter boy began to hunch Oh No up a 
 little, and, turning into the stretch, the plug was 
 fifth in the field of eight, only five lengths behind 
 the leader. Then the Slaughter boy let the mutt down, 
 there was a ding-dong drive all the length of the 
 stretch, and Oh No's nose poked in front right on 
 the wire, Conductor McSweeney a neck away, and 
 Hercules ahead of Oakview by a neck. 
 
 " When I had collected my ^3,100 — two of the 
 bookies who'd laid against me and another man 
 on the Oh No proposition weren't on the block 
 any more that year — I went a-hunting for the 
 
TALE THE TENTH 173 
 
 Memphis trainer. When I found him I offered 
 him a thousand of my roll. 
 
 " ' Salt that,' said he. ' I don't need it. I yank 
 down ;^6,ooo on that good one myself from four or 
 five different rooms around the country.' 
 
 " There's nothing too good for the pair of fox- 
 terriers I've got on my place now," concluded Ex- 
 Tank No. 19. 
 
TALE THE ELEVENTH 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No, 25 Elucidateth Ye 
 Theory That a Man is Never Broke Un- 
 til He is Broke 
 
TALE THE ELEVENTH 
 
 WHEREIN EX-TANK NO. 25 ELUCIDATETH YE 
 THEORY THAT A MAN IS NEVER BROKE UNTIL 
 HE IS BROKE 
 
 " A man's never broke until he's broke. Also, 
 all sheep herders are surely crazy," said Ex-Tank 
 No. 25, who used to run a newspaper at Buffalo, 
 Wyo., taking two long draws at his cigar and gaz- 
 ing around him blandly. 
 
 " No, siree," he continued, " no man's ever 
 broke until he's flat cleaned out and busted down 
 to the last piece of metal with the United States 
 stamp on it. And although there's not a particle 
 of doubt that Joe Irish was, and probably is yet, the 
 craziest sheep herder that ever threw a rock at a 
 Snake River magpie, that don't say that all sheep 
 herders aren't more or less loony. Now, after the 
 chance Joe Irish had to quit a big winner that time, 
 of course, like the crazy sheep herder he was, he 
 wasn't satisfied, but he wanted to put all the layouts 
 out of business, and of course he went broke 
 down to his last two bits. And if, after getting 
 177 
 
178 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 down to the last two bits, he hopped in again and 
 fooled me up by quitting a bigger winner than he 
 had been before, why, that didn't prove that he 
 wasn't plump blind, staggering crazy, not by a 
 dickens of a lot, did it ? 
 
 " Joe, you know," went on Ex-Tank No. 25, 
 " couldn't spend his pay on the range, and so, 
 when he came into Pocatello (which is in Idaho, 
 as I suppose I must say for the benefit of the Uit- 
 landers by whom I am surrounded), he had ^300 
 waiting for him. That ;^300 bundle was an awful 
 affliction to Joe. He knew that he couldn't hope 
 to blow it all in on sage-brush whiskey within the 
 space of ten days, which was to be the period of 
 his knock-ofF after nine solid months on the range 
 — but he made the attempt. After three days of it 
 he still had ^^250 left. Now, whiskey and inborn 
 insanity naturally make toward melancholia. I 
 was up against it at Pocatello, but I had a front. 
 That is, I had a collar and necktie. That's prob- 
 ably why Joe Irish picked me out for somebody when 
 he saw me standing near the entrance to the Grand 
 Palace bar and asked me. We had two or three, 
 and then Joe unfolded to me his tale of woe. 
 Only six and a half days remaining of his vaca- 
 tion from the sheep range and about ;^250 left. 
 
 " ' An' th' best I kin do,' said Joe, ' is t' drink 
 
TALE THE ELEVENTH 179 
 
 three gallons o' booze a day, an' there ain't no 
 one around here to stan' me up an' take th' bundle 
 ofF me, or work th' shells on me, or do me out o' 
 th' wad. Podner,' wound up Joe, plaintively, 
 ' I'm afeared I'm a-goin' t' hev fully twelve dollars 
 left out o' this bunch when th' time comes fur me 
 t' hit up th' range agin.' 
 
 " I really felt sorry for Joe, and so suggested 
 Shag Shaughnessy. You see, when I struck Po- 
 catello I had gone against Shag Shaughnessy's lay- 
 out myself. My ticket ran out at Pocatello, and 
 I only had eight dollars left. I wanted to go to 
 some old place, either backward or forward, and 
 eight dollars wasn't much. Shag got the eight dol- 
 larsj That's why I was anchored at Pocatello. 
 
 "I had practically to lift Joe into Shag's, for 
 the mesquite whiskey had told on him already on 
 this fourth morning of his vacation from the range, 
 although he hadn't taken more than eighty-seven 
 drinks of it since he had got out of bed at nine 
 o'clock in the morning. I lifted him into Shag's 
 from purely philanthropic motives. I didn't pur- 
 pose permitting any poor sheep herder to go back 
 to his range with money if I could help it. And 
 Shag looked pleased when I brought Joe in. Shag 
 was dealing himself, and the four men in front of 
 the table were pikers. 
 
i8o TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 " ' Here's a poor man,' said I to Shag, ' that's got 
 to go to work on his range next week, and he don't 
 see his way clear to getting rid of his pile between 
 now and then unless he has assistance. I can't 
 help him any, because myself, I'm only waiting 
 here to be vagged. Fix him out, Shag, and earn 
 his eternal gratitude.' 
 
 " ' Podner,' said Joe to me, gratefully, ' you're 
 all right. Much obliged.' 
 
 " Then Joe fell into one of the side seats just 
 when Shag was starting a new boxful, and by the 
 time the box was out Joe had won 1^1,850 of Shag's 
 coin just by letting his money stand eight times on 
 the double, because he had no more sense, between 
 his natural craziness and the whiskey. Joe 
 plunked his first hunk of gilt, twenty dollars, on a 
 queen. It came out. Then he slapped the win- 
 ning and the original twenty dollars over on an 
 eight. It came out. And so on. Eight times 
 he did this. The box was kind to him every time. 
 After the eighth come-out, when, besides his origi- 
 nal twenty dollars, ;^i,850 worth of Shag's chips 
 were piled up on the jack, the eighth card, Joe sud- 
 denly came to, like a man who had been hypno- 
 tized. It was a durned uncomfortable lucid 
 interval for Shag. 
 
 " ' Podner,' said Joe, addressing me, ' I'm jest a 
 
TALE THE ELEVENTH i8i 
 
 bit dizzy. We'll git out in the air an' while aroun' 
 some. Jest cash in this bunch fur me, will you ? ' 
 
 " Shag looked very much disappointed. In fact, 
 I've rarely seen such a disappointed-looking man 
 as Shag was when he turned that ^1,850 worth of 
 chips into gold and currency. 
 
 " ' Are you going to bring him back .? ' Shag 
 asked me. 
 
 " My boy,' said I to Shag, ' I'm waiting to get 
 vagged here, but I am not yet a runner for your in- 
 stitution. From motives of the purest philanthro- 
 phy I brought our sheep-herding son of fortune 
 here, to assuage his premature grief at the prospect 
 of being compelled to return to his range with ne- 
 gotiable paper and metal. The task seems to have 
 been too difficult, but it lets me out. For the 
 future movements of Mr. Irish' — Joe had already 
 gone out of the front door — ' I am not responsible.' 
 
 " Shaughnessy cashed the chips, and I walked 
 out with the ^1,870, which included Joe's original 
 venture of twenty dollars, and, nailing the wander- 
 ing Joe about a block up the street, I handed it 
 out to him. You may be surprised that he trusted 
 me, a stranger, so completely, but then you are 
 measurably familiar with my winning ways. 
 
 " Joe didn't seem to be particularly pleased with 
 the amount of his winnings. 
 
i82 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 " ' It's one thing or th' other, podner, with me,' 
 said he. ' Either I go back to th' range broke, or 
 I go a-travellin', an' I keep on a-travellin' until I'm 
 broke. It looks as if I don't get broke here. So, 
 how about a-travellin', an' right now ? ' 
 
 " I related unto the crazy man several tales of 
 quite sensible persons who hadn't ever been able to 
 let well enough alone, and I told him he'd better 
 hang on to his winnings and take a brace. 
 
 " ' Brace nothin',' he replied. ' I'm braced, 
 huddlin' a ornery bunch o' sheep ten months in 
 th' year, an' I'm just unbracin' now an' lettin' out. 
 When's th' nex' train west comin' along ? ' 
 
 " The next Union Pacific train for the west 
 was about due then, and I told him so. 
 
 " ' Well, we'll jest take it,' said Joe. 
 
 " It was humiliating, but I was compelled to tell 
 him my circumstances. I tried to point a moral in 
 telling him about my circumstances, but he wasn't 
 up to moralizing just then. He dug into the 
 pocket wherein he had deposited his winnings, drew 
 out a handful of gold and notes, and as I placed 
 both of my hands behind my back deprecatingly he 
 put it all on the rim of my hat. 
 
 " ' I'm stakin' you,' he said. ' Don't be a coyote.' 
 
 " I reached for the money then and counted it 
 Jt amounted to ,^235. 
 
TALE THE ELEVENTH 183 
 
 "' As a loan, then,' said I, ' all fight,' for I re- 
 flected that if we were to go travelling a stake 
 would be necessary, very likely, before long, 
 
 " We went over to the Grand Palace four-room 
 hotel anb I paid up and got my grip. Joe had 
 entered Pocatello unincumbered with luggage and 
 my solicitude over mine bored him a good deal. 
 When the Union Pacific train for the west came 
 along we took palace-car seats for the length of the 
 division. I thought that 'ud be far enough to 
 sober Joe up. The end of the division was 
 Glenn's Ferry, Idaho. When we got there — and 
 neither of us suffered for nourishment on the way 
 — it was about eleven o'clock at night. I put up 
 across from the station, at a hotel kept by a loco- 
 motive engineer's wife. I intended to get Joe to 
 bed there, lock him up, and, when he was meas- 
 urably sober the next morning, beat sense into his 
 head. The plan didn't go through. Joe was just 
 Sober enough before I got him to bed to be con- 
 trary. He had seen a wide-open game on his way 
 to the hotel. He wanted some of it. I had to go 
 along with him. 
 
 " Joe didn't have a nickel in the world when we 
 left that game at two o'clock in the morning. I had 
 about ^220, but Joe had forgotten all about that, 
 and I didn't intend to tell him anything about it 
 
1 84 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 until some of the corners of his jag had been 
 effaced. We turned in and slept like a pair of 
 tops. When we woke up the next morning Joe 
 didn't exhibit the customary gloom made and pro- 
 vided for the broke man with the bid head. He 
 was quite chipper and cheerful. 
 
 " ' I guess I kin stand in with one o' th' brakies 
 t' git a ride back t' my range,' said he. ' What's 
 more, I've had my money's worth. We'll stand 
 'em up fur breakfast here, hey ? ' 
 
 " I nodded. As we were entering the eating room 
 of the hotel shack, Joe kicked something metal- 
 lic with the toe of his boot, and the metallic thing 
 went clinking around the room until it hit the wall. 
 Joe followed it and picked it up. It was a quarter. 
 There was a far deeper expression of pleasure on 
 his face when he picked up that quarter than there 
 had been during any part of the time when he was 
 slugging Shag Shaughnessy's faro layout. 
 
 " ' I ain't broke yit,' said Joe, stuffing the quar- 
 ter into his pocket. 
 
 "After we had breakfast we went out for a walk 
 around. I pretended to have found a stray dollar 
 in my vest pocket, and I asked Joe into a weather- 
 boarded saloon for a drink. In the back room of 
 the saloon there was a roulette wheel and a rod and 
 black table, both of theni already in operatipn for 
 
TALE THE ELEVENTH 185 
 
 the benefit of the railroad men who were soon to 
 go out on their trains. The quarter in Joe's 
 pocket itched. He played the 00 on the wheel 
 layout. It won. Then he did another amateur- 
 ish thing. He played the 33. It won. Joe was 
 crazy, as I say, and therefore a bet doubler from 
 away back. He doubled on the wheel, and losing 
 only nine times in twenty-seven plays, and just 
 keeping under the twenty dollar limit — the game 
 ranged from a quarter to that figure — he had ;^268 
 when I plucked him by the sleeve. He was sensi- 
 ble enough to quit the wheel at my whispered 
 suggestion. But when we got outside : 
 
 '"We'll now head for the main tent,' said Joe. 
 I tried to convince him that ;^268 was a pretty fair 
 wad of money for a man who had been flat broke, 
 all except a quarter, half^ an hour before, and I put 
 it to him, too, that he could now go back to Poca- 
 tello and finish out his five days' leave yet re- 
 maining. 
 
 " ' We'll now head for the main tent,' repeated 
 Joe, and there was nothing for it but to accompany 
 him to Glenn's Ferry's chief faro layout. 
 
 "Joe took seven drinks of whiskey and started 
 play. He got down to his last ten dollar gold bit, 
 and I was just about to dig up my hold-out pile 
 and begin play myself, when he played the high 
 
1 86 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 card with his ten dollars and won. He couldn't 
 lose from that moment. At three o'clock in the 
 afternoon, when the east-bound express from Port- 
 land was due, Joe was ;^2,225 winner. I tugged 
 at him and invited him to the station to see me off. 
 
 " ' Where you goin' ? ' he asked me. 
 
 " ' East. To Omaha,' I told him. 
 
 " He cashed in and handed me five ;^ioo bills. 
 
 " ' You kin return that, if you're squeamish 
 about it, when you git back where you b'long.' 
 
 " I smiled in Joe's teeth and produced the ^219 
 that I had left. 
 
 "'I am already your beneficiary to this extent,' 
 I said to him, 'and if you insist on it I'll hang on 
 to this, although I meant to return it to you when 
 you took a brace, and be much obliged into the 
 bargain.' , 
 
 "He studied me for a moment. 
 
 " ' Well, podner,' he said, finally, ' if a tender- 
 foot like you kin come out t' this country an' hold 
 such a level head on his shoulders there ain't no 
 reason that I kin see why I shouldn't profit by th' 
 example, so t' speak. I'll just hold out on myself 
 and carry this whole bunch with me back t' th' 
 range.' 
 
 " He took the east-bound train with me, and got 
 off with about ;^2,xoo in his pocket when we 
 
TALE THE ELEVENTH 187 
 
 reached the station nearest his range. All of which 
 is why I wasn't vagged at Pocatello. All of which 
 also goes to show that a man's never brpke until 
 he's broke." 
 
 " But how about all sheep herders being crazy ? " 
 inquired Ex- Tank No. 7, the parliamentarian and 
 kicker. 
 
 " Didn't Joe Irish let me, a broke and about-to- 
 be-vagged tenderfoot from the East, handle his 
 winnings ? " said Ex-Tank No. 25. 
 
TALE THE TWELFTH 
 
 Containing a Report of Ex-Tank No. 14 in 
 THE Distressing Position of Ye Stowa- 
 way 
 
TALE THE TWELFTH 
 
 CONTAINING A REPORT OF EX-TANK NO. I4 IN 
 THE DISTRESSING POSITION OF YE STOWAWAY 
 
 " I FIND it odd to reflect," said Ex-Tank No. 
 14, " that I made a cruise on the Olympia, Ad- 
 miral George Dewey's flagship, before Dewey ever 
 trod her decks ; and I wasn't in the navy, either." 
 
 No. 14 immediately found himself the object of 
 the suspicious gaze of the whole club. No. 7, the 
 parliamentarian and kicker, punctured the moment 
 of silence that followed. 
 
 "Come at us light," said No. 7. "You were 
 shovelling coal on her trial trip. Is that it ? " 
 
 " Nope," answered Ex-Tank No. 14. " I had 
 a good long sail on board the Olympia after she 
 went into commission. Wasn't connected with 
 the service, though, as I said." 
 
 Ex-Tank No. 7 grew visibly angry, but the 
 Chief Ex-Tank had his eye on him and he only 
 spluttered : " You of course availed yourself, then, 
 of an opportunity to ride on the Olympia when she 
 was a collier or a tank ship or engaged in creek 
 191 
 
192 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 ferrying, eh ? Say, d'ye think you can throw it 
 into this outfit that the Olympia, one of the finest 
 cruisers in the world, was ever a passenger boat ? " 
 
 There was plenty of sarcasm in the inquiry, but 
 No. 14 preserved his calm amiability. 
 
 " There's no question about the Olympia's be- 
 ing a beauty and a crackajack," he went on reflec- 
 tively. " Roomy, too. Plenty of room aboard of 
 her for a fellow to keep out of sight. I was the 
 Olympia's first stowaway." 
 
 " Oh, you stowed away ? " inquired No. 7 with 
 a dreary smile of incredulity. " That sounds so 
 dead easy, you know — to stow away on an Ameri- 
 can man-o'-war. Say, did you ever stow away on 
 a transpacific airship ? " 
 
 "You see, it's a pretty long and monotonous 
 walk from San Diego to San Francisco, and my 
 lips were chapped, anyhow, so that I didn't want 
 to walk," went on Ex-Tank No. 14. " I was run 
 down some, too, and needed a lungful or two of 
 sea air, and a trip on a new cruiser was good 
 enough for me, especially when it 'ud take me 
 back to where I wanted to go. That's how I 
 happened to stow away on the Olympia in the 
 month of March, 1895, on her return trip from the 
 first baby cruise she went on after going into com- 
 mission." 
 
TALE THE TWELFTH 193 
 
 " Didn't have a bit of diiBcuIty doing it, either, 
 did you ? " inquired No. 7 sarcastically. " All you 
 had to do was to walk over the side, head for the 
 Captain's cabin and bunk up with the old man, 
 eh ? Say, what kind o' people d'ye think 
 you're " 
 
 " Back up. Seven," commanded the Chief Ex- 
 Tank, pounding with his cane gavel. " Make way 
 for the deep-water, heavy-weather man." 
 
 " I surely did winter hard in San Francisco that 
 year," resumed No. 14. " I had got together a 
 staff of steam-beer pugs — three of them — in' the 
 fall, expectin' 'em to win me out enough to get 
 back to New York with bells a-jingling, anyhow. 
 But they all three went wrong. One of 'em 
 stabbed a friend of his and got three years in San 
 Quentin. Another went oiF on a toot after I had 
 shaped him up for a ten-round go with a welter- 
 weight and landed in the bug ward of a free hos- 
 pital with the jims. The last of the bunch got 
 himself poked out in the first round by a half 
 Modoc lightweight, and I passed him up. Didn't 
 pull down a dollar from one of them. Then I got 
 behind the curtain out at the track and found out 
 about a good thing that was in preparation. I put 
 a Willie boy that I met next to what was going to 
 happen, and it went through, my rakedown being 
 
igi TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 ;^8oo. I was in two minds about jumping back to 
 New York right then, but I concluded to have one 
 more whack at the ring on an air-tight good thing 
 that I'd heard about. I put the whole bundle, 
 down to the last two-bit piece, on it. The nag got 
 away ten lengths behind the bunch and was beaten 
 a nose on the wire, with 30 to i about him. I'd 
 played him straight only. That put me out of 
 business for fair. 
 
 " I got through the next couple o' months on 
 my wardrobe and my face, but it was hard plug- 
 ging, San Francisco being the worst ever in la- 
 dling out the frappe to the busted alsorans. Only 
 had one suit, the trousers unpressed, and nary the 
 price to get my collars and cuiFs out, when I met 
 up with the merry-go-round chap. He was run- 
 ning the merry-go-round on a lot out near the 
 Presidio, and making good, too. San Francisco 
 people will take a hack at anything that gives 'em 
 a whirl and he was pulling down pretty fair money 
 on this merry-go-round. His name was Joe Cas- 
 dale and he was a queer duck, with all kinds of 
 tattoo marks on his arms and chest and enough in- 
 formation about the South Seas to make a book. 
 He never coughed up anything about himself, how- 
 ever. He took me in with him to help him stand 
 watch on the merry-go-round for two dollars a day 
 
TALE THE TWELFTH 195 
 
 and a roost at his boarding-house. I stayed along 
 at that until the business began to flatten out, and 
 then Casdale asked me if I wanted to go down to 
 San Diego with him and the merry-go-round to 
 take in the March flower fiesta. I went. 
 
 " Now, I'd been doing a dry stunt ever since I 
 first went broke in San Francisco, which was nine 
 months before, and this San Diego flower fiesta 
 just naturally made me thirsty. A California 
 flower fiesta is one of these here delightful Latin- 
 European institutions that permit, and in fact re- 
 quire, all hands to corn up from the beginning to 
 the end of them. There's no side stepping on 
 the proposition that those people out there know 
 how to enjoy themselves, and the way they cut 
 loose for the annual flower fiesta is a warning to 
 locusts. This San Diego blow-out lasted just one 
 week, and there was simply nothing doing except 
 joy from the start to the finish of it. It was, in 
 fact, about the most colossal drunk I'd ever blown 
 into. It didn't take me off^ my feet the first day or 
 two, but after that I began nibbling at the red 
 Chianti of California just to get into the game. I 
 found it pretty hard to keep at my stunt on the 
 merry-go-round, which was coining money, after I 
 got started on the California cochineal, and on the 
 fourth afternoon I had just walked ofF for an hour or 
 
196 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 so and let Casdale run the fit-out himself. When 
 I got back, pretty well hooted up, along toward 
 five o'clock in the afternoon, I found the merry-go- 
 round with a big sign on it, ' Closed down,' and a 
 cop standing near told me that my boss was in jail. 
 I hustled up to the jail to see him, and found him 
 smoking a pipe as cool as a cucumber. 
 
 "'It's all off;' he told me. 'They've nabbed 
 me for a job of ship-swiping five years ago, they've 
 got me dead to rights, and I'll do my little three or 
 five trick over the road for it for a certainty. I 
 don't know whether they'll attach the merry-go- 
 round or not, but if they don't you can have it and 
 run it yourself. You needn't bother about any 
 lawyer. They've got me too pat for that.' 
 
 " Well, there was a queer story in connection 
 with that. Five years before that Casdale, with a 
 couple of other chance-taking sailors — the masters' 
 certificates of all three of them had been taken 
 away from them years before for crooked work — 
 had deliberately sailed a schooner belonging to a 
 shipping company out of the harbor of Santa Bar- 
 bara and put out to sea, bound for that queer island, 
 Tiburon. They had heard pipe stories about buc- 
 caneers' treasure being buried there, and they went 
 after it. The natives didn't let them get within a 
 hundred yards of the beach, and they had set sail 
 
TALE THE TWELFTH 
 
 197 
 
 for Acapulco in their swiped schooner. The boat 
 got into a gale and was waterlogged and the three 
 chaps were picked up by the Pacific mail steamer 
 Colima, that went down a few years ago with all 
 hands. Casdale had been spotted in San Diego at 
 his merry-go-round by one of the agents of the 
 Santa Barbara shippjng company during my absence 
 that afternoon, and here they had him behind the 
 bars. He told me all this briefly over his pipe, 
 made me out a bill of sale for the merry-go-round, 
 shook hands and told me that he wanted to take a 
 snooze, and that's the last I ever saw of him. I 
 heard afterward that he got what he expected — five 
 years. 
 
 " I took a brace and went back and opened up 
 the merry-go-round again. Took in nearly forty 
 dollars that night and was booming along toward 
 the hundred mark the next day when a deputy sheriff 
 came along and attached the whole works. Now, at 
 the moment when this deputy sheriff duck served this 
 attachment on me I was riding about thirty of the 
 sailors of the Olympia, which had gone into com- 
 mission up at the Mare Island Navy Yard the 
 month before and had been sent on her first run 
 down to the San Diego flower fiesta to sort o' 
 loosen up the machinery and get her oiled up. I'd 
 been running in with the bluejackets every day 
 
igS TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 since the beginning of the blowout and they knew 
 me. Got mixed up with several bunches of 'em, 
 when I started in on the Chianti of the soil, in 
 fact. When this deputy sheriff flashed his paper 
 on me, therefore, and I told my bunch of tars that 
 it was all off, that the outfit had been grabbed 
 from me, they asked me whether I wanted to stand 
 for it or not. They were all loaded for snowbirds 
 and they didn't see any particular reason why their 
 merry-go-round rides should be choked ofF in 
 that sudden way. If I'd given them the tip there'd 
 have been minced deputy sheriff on the bill of fare 
 in less than two minutes, but I was just about 
 enough on top of the old stuff to know that if the 
 bluejackets took it into their heads to rough-house 
 it with the representative of the law they'd get 
 themselves into pretty serious trouble, and so I 
 called 'em off. 
 
 " ' I'm too strong to run the thing now, anyhow,' 
 I told 'em, ' and I want to do some riding on 
 merry-go-rounds myself.' 
 
 " The talk I put up seemed to make a hit with 
 them, and away we went to help make the fiesta 
 festive. I had enough on me then to take me 
 back to New York, but I passed up the opportunity 
 again. 
 
 " ' New York,' said I to myself, ' is a pretty raw 
 
TALE THE TWELFTH 199 
 
 burg in the month of March and the Chianti that 
 costs sixteen cents a gallon here is about ^^1.98, or 
 something like that, over there.' 
 
 " I don't remember much about the finish of that 
 night, or the next, or any of 'em for the rest of the 
 week. I had a bodyguard of bluejackets, I know, 
 all the time, and while my hundred held out their 
 shore money was counterfeit. I must have been 
 thicker than thieves with 'em, though, for when I 
 woke up on the Sunday morning following the 
 final Saturday night finish of the fiesta a couple of 
 them, with petty officers' badges on their arms, 
 were prodding me in the ribs. 
 
 " ' Say,' said one of them, a big oiler who had 
 been all over the world, in the navy, as I afterward 
 found out, ' we've got to go aboard now to stand 
 Sunday inspection. Liberty's up. You were giv- 
 ing us a hop-talk last night about walking back to 
 'Frisco. Is it up to you to do that ? ' 
 
 " I got up, looked through my clothes, found a 
 single two-bit piece, held it up, and, said I : 'It 
 looks like it, don't it ? ' 
 
 "'Well, I'll tell you,' said this kindly giant. 
 ' You've been on the level with us fellows, and we 
 want to handle you right. It's a long way by the 
 footpath up to San Francisco. D'ye want to take 
 a chance and ride up on the ship ? ' 
 
200 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 " ' What ship ? ' said I, 
 
 "'Our ship, the Olympia,' said he. 'There's 
 been about forty or fifty of the junipers that 
 shipped in Mare Island as landsmen and coal 
 heavers jumped her down here — couldn't stand the 
 gaff. None of them was aboard long enough to 
 have his mug known to the officers, I've got the 
 rig of one of the coal heavers that quit along with 
 me. Jump into it, if you want to go up — the ship 
 sails to-morrow morning — and the black gang down 
 below '11 see, after you get aboard, that you don't 
 have to stand a coal-heaving watch for your 
 passage, that you get your mess pan, and that the 
 Jimmy Legs and none of the officers '11 get next. 
 That's better than walking, isn't it ? ' 
 
 " Was it ? I was in that coal-heaver's blue- 
 jacket rig, big head and all, in less than three 
 minutes, and my name was switched to John 
 Crimmins, the name of the deserter the oiler told 
 me I looked most like. I rolled down to the steam 
 cutter with three of my bluejacket pals of the 
 week, and when we got to the landing we found 
 about twenty more of them, in various stages of 
 that next morning feeling, waiting to go off to 
 the ship. We all climbed into the cutter, and 
 on the way over the oiler whispered me some 
 directions. 
 
TALE THE TWELFTH 201 
 
 "'All you've got to do when you go aboard,' 
 said he, ' is to line up with the rest of the gang, 
 and when John Crimmins's name is sung out by 
 the officer of the deck, you just give him a bit of a 
 salute with your right, say, " Here, sir," and he'll 
 look you over to see whether you're to be marked 
 in the book " drunk and dirty " or " clean and 
 sober." The officer of the deck to-day is a kid 
 junior lieutenant that don't know one man's mug 
 from another's, and when you sing out your name 
 walk forward to the break o' the fo'c'sle an' I'll be 
 right behind you. Another thing : There's not 
 much chance of the thing not going through, but; 
 if you're nailed they can't do any more than put 
 you on the beach. If you're nailed and questioned, 
 just tell 'em that you came aboard on your owni 
 hook, and don't cough up who put you next to this 
 scheme.' 
 
 "It went through like clockwork. I shinned! 
 up the gangway ladder with as ready-money a. 
 swing as if I had been born in the foretop of a 
 wind jammer, for this free ride up to San Francisco 
 looked pretty neat to me, and I was play-acting on 
 my mettle. The young fellow in officer's clothes 
 who called out the names of the returning liberty 
 party just gave each of us a glance. A couple of 
 the tars who were jagged to the point of spifticatioa 
 
202 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 he handed over to the Master-at-Arms, who took 
 me in, by the way, when he first clapped his lamps 
 on me as if he thought there was a cog gone wrong 
 somewhere in his head, but let it go at that. When 
 I had answered to John Crimmins's name I didn't 
 waste any time joining the bunch up forward. The 
 oiler was right behind me. 
 
 " ' Duck,' said he, without looking at me, ' I 
 think the Jimmy Legs is next.' That is to say, he 
 thought the Master-at-Arms had piped me ofF. 
 Well, if the Master-at-Arms did have any suspicion 
 beneath his cap, he was all right, anyhow. He 
 gave me the queer look out of the tail of his eye a 
 number of times after that, but if he had the thing 
 right he never opened up. I went down to the 
 engine room with my friend the oiler, and he spent 
 half an hour or so in telling me what I was to do. 
 I stood quarters and inspection that Sunday morn- 
 ing on the main deck under the name of John 
 Crimmins, a lot of the tars of the black gang, who 
 had been put on quietly by the oiler, huddling me 
 in the rear lines so as to keep the engineers' eyes 
 off me — not, the oiler said, that the engineers were 
 liable to pipe me off, the crew was so new to them, 
 but for safety. 
 
 " Well, after that Sunday morning it was easy. 
 I got Crimmins's seat at the coal heavers' mess. I 
 
TALE THE TWELFTH 203 
 
 was told ofF for a watch when the ship got under 
 way for San Francisco the next morning, but my 
 friends in the black gang wouldn't stand for my 
 going into the bunkers. 
 
 "'It'll blister those soft mitts of yours,' they 
 said, and I didn't pass any coal. The watch list 
 was monkeyed with to get me out of it, and I 
 mixed up with the gang forward while I was sup- 
 posed to be stripped to the waist down below in a 
 temperature of about 135° shovelling steam coal. 
 I didn't want this end of it — it looked like flunking 
 and playing the baby act to me — but the oiler told 
 me that I'd croak in the bunkers and that 'ud give 
 the whole snap away. I can't pass up any finer 
 tribute to the decency of the fellows that are piking 
 around the world in the American bluejacket uni- 
 form than to say this : I found out afterward that 
 there wasn't a single man forward of the Olympia's 
 crew that didn't know within twenty-four hours 
 after I was aboard the Olympia that I was smug- 
 gled, and nary a one o' them so much as whispered 
 their knowledge of it to me, much less chawed 
 about it among themselves. The phrase ' there's 
 a knocker in every push,' don't fit our man-o' -war's 
 men. 
 
 " I had a nice sail, and when the ship pulled up 
 at Mare Island I got shore liberty, went over to 
 
204 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 Vallejo and forgot to come back. Therefore John 
 Crimmins wasn't declared a deserter in San Diego, 
 but in Vallejo, and that's one thing that John 
 Crimmins doesn't know. 
 
 " Four months later I came across the mountains 
 to New York in a four-and-a-half-day palace car, 
 but that's another end of it. 
 
 " I never figured that the Olympia would fall in 
 with such swell company as she did when George 
 Dewey took his post on her bridge : but I had a 
 ride on her before George did." 
 
TALE THE THIRTEENTH 
 
 Which Speaketh of How Ex-Tank (Hoo- 
 doo) No. 13 Wickedly Represented Him- 
 self AS Ye Theological Student 
 
TALE THE THIRTEENTH 
 
 WHICH SPEAKETH OF HOW EX-TANK (hOODOo) 
 NO. 13 WICKEDLY REPRESENTED HIMSELF AS YE 
 THEOLOGICAL STUDENT 
 
 Ex-Tank (Hoodoo) No. 13 of the Harlem Club 
 of Former Alcoholic Degenerates went down to 
 Washington to see Congress in the act of legislating. 
 
 " It made me lonesome," said he in talking 
 about it after the regular order at the club had been 
 concluded on his return. " Not that I hankered to 
 be down on the floor in the middle of the bunch. 
 It wasn't that. But it made me think of the term 
 I put in when I was twenty-three in the lower 
 house of Neb " 
 
 " No boy oratory goes in this outfit. I want 
 Hoodoo Thirteen to understand that," said Ex- 
 Tank No. 7, the parliamentarian and kicker, 
 rising suddenly. " No narration which shall 
 have for its purpose an attempt to stampede 
 this organization in favor of any or all of the in- 
 habitants of the State of Neb •" 
 
 "Number Seven will sit down and stay sat 
 307 
 
2o8 TALES Of TriE EX-f AlSfKS 
 
 down," commanded the Chief Ex-Tank, using the 
 crook of his cane for a gavel. "This outfit is in- 
 capable of being stampeded. Each and every 
 member of this organization has been so often 
 stampeded himself to a proper finish that — er — 
 Hoodoo Thirteen may resume." 
 
 " Well, I wasn't going to make any stab at 
 throwing political raw meat Into this cage of 
 ours," said No. 13. " Politics don't bother 
 me any more. Politics don't force me to take 
 bromides and other dope to get sleep any more. 
 What politics did to me that time when, at 
 twenty-three, I was a member of the lower house 
 of Neb — well, what politics did to me was a heap. 
 Say, just one month after my stretch as a legislator 
 was out I found myself standing up to the waist in 
 the water of a Colorado mine, fooling with a drill 
 for wages. That's what politics, aided and abetted 
 by the stufF that flows and finally throws and that 
 made the organization of this club possible — that's 
 what politics, etc., did for me. 
 
 " But it gave me some nerve. Before I did 
 that legislative stunt I could no more turn a win- 
 out trick than a duck who's got a governor to tele- 
 graph to for funds when he has slung down his bst 
 card. After that, though — well, I had a rope 
 around my neck once and it didn't chuck any par- 
 
TALE THE THIRTEENTH 209 
 
 ticular scare into me. Probably I considered that 
 a man might as well be hanged as live around the 
 Red River district of Arkansas any longer. 
 
 " That was a queer game. After the Colorado 
 mining job had held me waist dfeep in the water for 
 a couple o' months, I keeled over with the tizzy- 
 wizzy or something, went ofF my head for two or 
 three weeks, and the boys were fixing to send me 
 back home with a proper escort and me in the bag- 
 gage car in a box. I fooled 'em on that, but the 
 mining people wouldn't give me my job back when 
 I was able to get on my feet — said they didn't 
 think I could stand the gafF, and they didn't want 
 to be held liable for damages if I croaked from the 
 gas in the pit. So I jabbed a penknife into a map 
 after closing my eyes, and the point of the blade 
 stuck in the Red River country of Arkansas. I 
 set sail for there, took the wildest end of it I could 
 find and for a couple of weeks poked around on the 
 banks of the river with a shotgun over my arm, 
 making myself believe that I was hunting. Well, 
 just to bite this end of it off short, the moonshiners 
 down there got on to my trail and they figured me 
 out as a revenue sharp. They held me up one day 
 and run me to their still. 
 
 '"You've been hunting for something or other 
 around here for a couple o' weeks,' they said to me 
 
210 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS , 
 
 'and here it is,' and they showed me the still. I 
 told 'em they were mixed. Now it happened that 
 at the time they gathered me in I didn't have a 
 charge in either barrel of my shotgun ; was afraid 
 of the triggers catching in the underbrush. This 
 made them suspicious. 
 
 " ' Hunting squirrels,' they said incredulously, 
 ' and nary a charge in your iron ? What are you 
 giving us ? ' 
 
 "Well, I wasn't exactly feeling good. or trig 
 yet after that sickness, and so I told them to go to 
 the devil if they didn't believe me ; that I didn't 
 have any time or inclination to chew the rag about 
 it. So they put the rope around my neck, lifted 
 me up to the top of a barrel and I spent the time 
 in thinking out new ones to call them. That's 
 what made the hit with them. 
 
 " ' Revenue sharps don't talk that a-way,' the 
 boss of the gang said just as I was about to have 
 the barrel kicked from beneath me. 'I reckon 
 he un's all right.' And so I was turned loose and 
 told that Little Rock was healthier than any place 
 along the banks of the Red River. I took the 
 hint and that's how I happened to hit Little Rock. 
 
 " Now, when I got into Little Rock one Octo- 
 ber morning for the first time, the sun was shining, 
 the town looked about as dinky as usual and I had 
 
TALE THE THIRTEENTH 211 
 
 along with me eighty-five dollars and the whole 
 wardrobe with which I had dazzled 'em when I 
 was serving my term in the Legislature in the State 
 of Neb — when I was in politics. This all seemed 
 so unnatural that I took a few then and there be- 
 fore breakfast to sort o' bind the bargain. Then I 
 forgot to eat any breakfast. I forgot to eat any 
 breakfast for about three weeks after that. Now, 
 any man who can stand Little Rock red stuff with- 
 out eating anything for two days, much less two 
 weeks, has got to have had a whole big future be- 
 hind him at that kind of work, or it'll stop him for 
 good and all. I was almost stopped at the wind- 
 up of the three weeks. Also I was almost broke. 
 I woke up one morning in my room at the Mer- 
 chants' Exchange Hotel, and there was a pretty 
 good looker of a duck sitting in the chair by the 
 window reading the morning paper and smoking a 
 pipe. I only remembered him vaguely, and so I 
 asked him wherefore and how. Well, it seems 
 that he had been my bosom pal and chum during 
 those three weeks — that he had run into me almost 
 from the go-ofF and that we had just burnt up Little 
 Rock on that eighty-five dollars of mine and a 
 bunch of forty dollars that he had become possessed 
 of somehow or another himself. He, however, 
 had snapped himself right about a week before, and 
 
212 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 was, when I thus made his acquaintance rationally, 
 feeling like a four-timfe winner, while I saw charts 
 of the ichthyosaurian period all over the room. 
 He sat around my room for a couple o' days, get- 
 ting me right, and then we had a talk. 
 
 " ' You're broke, ain't you ? ' said he to me. 
 
 " ' Yep,' said I. 
 
 " ' So'm I,' said he. ' So we'll have to hitch up, 
 and do something. That right ? ' 
 
 " I told him that was about right, and I soon dis- 
 covered that he had a whole lot of a head on him. 
 He'd been every old thing — feather renovator, law- 
 yer, book agent, lobbyist. He had an idea. 
 
 " ' Say,' he said to me, ■• while I've been sitting 
 here listening to you talk bug in your sleep, it's 
 struck me that you're all right as a reader. You 
 didn't hurl any " Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night " 
 or stuff like that at me, but you worked off a lot 
 of Mark Twain and Jim Whit Riley and Eugene 
 Field spiels when you didn't know it, and I guess 
 you must have had some amateur practice some- 
 where at that game. How about it ? ' 
 
 " I told him he was about right, and then he 
 sprung his graft. 
 
 " ' I guess I'll just start out ahead of you and bill 
 a few towns announcing you as a reader. I'll work 
 up the church end of it. You can give your read- 
 
TALE THE THIRTEENTH 213 
 
 ings in the churches, see, and I'll spread it around 
 that you're a young, brilliant and promising theo- 
 logical student, endeavoring to raise funds by read- 
 ing sufficient to enable you to complete your studies. 
 We won't make any charge for admission, but when 
 we've got 'em planted in the churches we'll pass 
 around the plate and I guess we'll get enough out 
 of it that way for a meal ticket or so. How 
 about it ? ' 
 
 " I told him to go ahead and he did. He had a 
 pretty good front, and altogether he was about as 
 hustling a pal to tandem up with as ever I met. I 
 don't know how he ever got the price of a ticket 
 down to Arkadelphia, but he got there and hired a 
 church for my first reading. Then he spread him- 
 self around among the population and threw it into 
 'em what a great man was going to appear ' in their 
 midst ' to read things to them. I got a telegram 
 from him two days after he struck Arkadelphia. It 
 read : 
 
 " ' Put one of those overcoats in for five dollars 
 and come down here at once.' 
 
 " I followed copy and landed in Arkadelphia that 
 same night, wearing my legislative black broad- 
 cloth suit, a silk lid ruffled up to make it look like 
 the toppers of theological students ought to look 
 when they're struggling fpr n chance to pursue 
 
214 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 their studies, and a pair of plain glass eyeglasses 
 that I got for thirty-five cents to throw studious- 
 ness into my make-up. 
 
 " ' You're good all right, outside,' said my pal, 
 when he met me at the Arkadelphia station, sizing 
 me up, ' but you won't do. You're up against it. 
 I made a mistake this morning, and it's queered 
 the dice, I'm afraid. Called on the old Presby- 
 terian minister here — one of 'em, for I believe 
 there are two — and tried to enlist him in the game 
 and succeeded. That's the dickens of it. I suc- 
 ceeded. He wants to see you as soon as you get 
 in. Now, he's sharper than a steel trap, and he's 
 got an eye like an eagle. He's one of the shrewd- 
 est old gentlemen I ever met and he's bound to get 
 next. He'll want to talk theology with you, and 
 he'll run you into a corner before you've been along- 
 side of him two minutes. And the minute he sees 
 there's anything phony about you, the reading busi- 
 ness, lacking toeweights, goes right up in the air. 
 I'm afraid it's all up, chum. He'll expect you to 
 talk Greek and Latin, and when you flunk on that 
 he'll wonder ' 
 
 " ' You go on talking just to hear your head 
 roar, don't you, pal ? ' I said to him. ' How do 
 you know I'll flunk ? What'll you bet I'll flunk ? 
 You say he's 3H old pne ? Well, d'ye suppose he 
 
TALE THE THIRTEENTH 215 
 
 remembers a hundred lines of his Iliad ? I do, and 
 I'll saw 'em off on him if he gives me half a show. 
 D'ye think he recalls one canto of his Virgil ? 
 Well, it has only been three years or so since I 
 broke away from all that and I can heave Virgil at 
 him till he can't rest. And I'll fight shy of 
 theology. Just take me to him, and if I don't win 
 out I'll let you go through my trunk and take what 
 you want.' 
 
 " My pal took me to the old minister rather 
 reluctantly, and then left me, ostensibly to attend 
 to some business, but really because he didn't want 
 to be on hand to see me go all to pieces in the old 
 gentleman's hands. 
 
 " Did the old minister tear me apart ? Not 
 much did he ! Say, I'm not so chesty now as I 
 used to be, and whatever big head I ever had has 
 been swatted out of me, but I certainly did just 
 dazzle that old clergyman. I laid myself out. I 
 knew I was talking for my life, for if that reading 
 proposition didn't go through I didn't see anything 
 ahead except selling patent egg beaters. I made it 
 stick. We talked far into the night, and when I 
 left the old man he was giving me the gentle pats 
 on the shoulder. He was really one of the strongest 
 men I ever met — a bushy eyebrowed old man of 
 the cloth, with a pair of keen eyes and a faculty 
 
2i6 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 for seeing into things. Yet, as I say, when I bade 
 him good-bye that night he was on my staiF all 
 right, and he told me that he'd do all in his power 
 to make the reading a success. 
 
 " When I met my manager and told him about 
 it he did a Moqui snake dance, and the next morn- 
 ing there was an announcement in the Arkadelphia 
 morning paper near the top of the first column, 
 
 announcing that ' , the famous reader 
 
 and entertainer, whose successful efforts in this line 
 are well known throughout the State of Arkansas, 
 will amuse and instruct the people of Arkadelphia 
 
 at the Church this evening, under the auspices 
 
 of the Rev. and other Arkadelphian 
 
 men of the cloth.' 
 
 " The reading went through with a rush. The 
 whole town turned out to take it in. Both my pal 
 and I were flat broke on that morning and I had had 
 to wash out a white string tie myself in my room and 
 iron it with a heated shoe horn to wear at the read- 
 ing. After I had read my first two numbers that 
 night my pal saw that the plates went around, and 
 he counted the dust. The 800 and odd people 
 in the church chipped in a flat $i()i^ and no 
 buttons, and they gave me a hand that you could 
 have heard a block away, at that, for every number. 
 The clergymen and elders sat upon the platform 
 
TALE THE THIRTEENTH 217 
 
 and I couldn't help but think to myself as I stood 
 up there, thus hedged in by piety and black clothes, 
 ' Say, if my poor old pious mother could just see 
 me now ! ' 
 
 " We did eleven other towns in central and 
 southwest Arkansas, but the thirteenth place we 
 struck saw the finish of the tour. That place was 
 Malvern, a little town on the St. Louis, Iron 
 Mountain and Southern Railroad. We had about 
 ;^ 1,500 between us when we struck Malvern, and 
 maybe we both had the idea by that time that we 
 had too much money without getting a very swift 
 run for it. Anyhow, my pal didn't work up the 
 Malvern community very hard. I noticed his 
 rather unusual lack of energy, and asked him 
 about it. 
 
 " ' Well,' said he, ' I've been trying to make up my 
 mind ever since I got awake this morning whether 
 I want to begin on just a quart or a magnum of 
 wine. That's a nice calculation and I haven't 
 figured it out to my entire satisfaction yet. But 
 it's going to be one or the other before the sun goes 
 down. Then I noticed when I read the results 
 this morning that a horse won down at New 
 Orleans at sixty to one that I'd have played if I'd 
 have had to spout my shoes for a dollar. This 
 caused me to reflect that I may be wasting my time 
 
2i8 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 — that I ought to be on the ground where they're 
 running. Finally, I've observed in the course of 
 the last three readings that your voice is becoming 
 slightly impaired — probably on account of unnatural 
 drought. What you going to have ? ' 
 
 "It was all off from that moment of course. 
 We split the ;^ 1,500 right there, so there'd be no 
 growl later on, and I went and purchased some very 
 untheological garments. Then we had magnums 
 on the boat all the way down to New Orleans. 
 My pal batted the books so hard down there that 
 he went out to San Francisco to finish out his 
 string there. I preferred to remain in New 
 Orleans. I did remain there. Two months after 
 I got there I was peddling ' Picturesque Turkestan,' 
 in 112 numbers, fifty cents a number, to the popu- 
 lation of New Orleans, and not getting rich at it." 
 
TALE THE FOURTEENTH 
 
 In Which Ex-Tank No. 6 Sheweth Up the 
 Vanity of Ye Sturdy Pioneers of the 
 Northwest 
 
TALE THE FOURTEENTH 
 
 IN WHICH EX-TANK. NO. 6 SHEWETH UP THE 
 VANITY OF YE STURDY PIONEERS OF THE 
 NORTHWEST 
 
 " Now, Portland, Ore., isn't what you'd call by 
 rights a nice, soft town in which to go broke," said 
 Ex-Tank No. 6, thoughtfully polishing the stone 
 of his four-karat, blue-white diamond ring with his 
 pocket handkerchief. " Portland isn't frosty, but 
 it's wet. It rains thirteen months in the year out 
 there, and the gloom of the burg is pervasive and 
 pronounced. You get no sparkling sunshine and 
 blue skies in Portland to throw momentary spasms 
 of hope into you when you're up against it ; noth- 
 ing but soggy, dripping clouds, clayey streets, and 
 misery. The worst of it is, the rum-mills of 
 Portland are the most attractive joints of the kind 
 on the Slope, so that when you hit Portland with 
 nothing on you but your constitution wherewith to 
 try for a win-out, the Tantalus game played on 
 you by the bright-lighted booze factories, with 
 their pianists, harpists and fiddlers zipping away in 
 221 
 
222 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 all the back rooms, is a hard proposition to endure 
 in the midst of the exterior gloom. 
 
 " Worst of it is, if you walk into a Portland joy- 
 joint just to get out of the wet, and stand in front 
 of the bar for two minutes without buying, you're 
 dead liable to get vagged. The barkeep sizes you 
 up out of the tail of his eye and keeps the other 
 eye on the stop-watch he puts on strangers enter- 
 ing the plant. If you don't call for what you 
 want, but haven't got the price of, within two 
 minutes flat, he sneaks from behind the bar, steps 
 to the front door, whistles for a web-foot cop, and 
 the next day you're breaking rock. They didn't 
 get me this' way, for I had the finish of my '8g 
 whirl in San Francisco, and when I got to Portland 
 I didn't want anything but work or a ticket East. 
 But I saw the barkeeps and the web-foot cops put 
 it on a lot of other hard-luckers for not buying 
 within the specified time, and it struck me that it 
 was a cold and unfeeling way of handling strangers. 
 
 " I didn't have any particular reason for going to 
 Portland, anyhow. I had struck San Francisco 
 from New York a couple of months before with a 
 bundle of money and one of those cinch-betting 
 absinthe things that had such a good start on me 
 that I couldn't catch up with it so long as I had 
 the dust to keep it going. I played 'em as far back 
 
TALE THE FOURTEENTH 223 
 
 as I could at the San Francisco tracks, but it was 
 no use. I ate up all the i to 3 third shots they 
 pushed at me, and was even afraid to play one to 
 win at the cinch-looking price of 3 to 5 or i to 2 
 on, so wise did the green stuff talk to me. Well, 
 you know what the game was out in California at 
 that time. The betting on the one you liked, and 
 that figured to win, would open up, say, at even 
 money, and you could write your own ticket on 
 the rest. After you'd got your money down on 
 the right one to get the place, taking about 2 to 5 
 on to make a ' moral ' of it the flash 'ud come in 
 on one of the other skates, the price on which 
 would hop down from about 15 to i to 4 to 5 on. 
 Then there'd be flashes on one or two more of 
 'em, and by the time the bunch went to the post 
 your horse would be backed 'way up for a lobster. 
 " The nag that got the biggest flash down always 
 won by four blocks, helped out by the pailful of 
 cocaine they'd give him, and that's all there was to 
 it. Your first favorite, that you played for the 
 plots at 2 to 5 on, would generally be ' coming 
 strong at the finish ' and would be put down on 
 the charts as ' short of work, due the next time 
 out.' The judges would cackle a bit about 'rever- 
 sals in form ' and then it was up to you to guess 
 which one was ' meant ' to win the next race. 
 
224 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 " It was a game that you could only beat by 
 being in the know, and Eastern pikers had no 
 business out there. I was too busy experimenting 
 with the green stuff — straight, drips and frappes — 
 to snuggle up to the clique that knew how all the 
 races were going to be run, one, two, three, and 
 that's why they put the final crimp in me within 
 two weeks after I hit San Francisco. After I'd 
 got in hock for all of the gear and had done the 
 usual ten-day trick in the you-have-them ward I 
 crawled out to hunt for a job. California is the 
 El Dorado of the world, maybe not. I never saw 
 so many broke men in my life as I knocked against 
 in California. On the level, there were broke 
 grafters from the East working on the streets of 
 'Frisco for one dollar a day and wearing plug hats 
 and silk socks, when I was out there. 
 
 " I didn't see a chance to pull out in the middle 
 of that kind of a game and so I got a job for the 
 one trip as tenth assistant supercargo of the steamer 
 Columbia, bound from San Francisco for Portland, 
 Oregon. I got my board and passage for three days, 
 eighteen hours each, of freight-checking work and 
 with nothing in sight when I struck the wet coun- 
 try. When I got 'paid off' from the steamer 
 on the dismal morning she pulled into Portland 
 all I had besides a passable front was an alii- 
 
TALE THE EOURTEENTtt 225 
 
 gator hand satchel with a silver-backed hair brush 
 in it that I had somehow or other overlooked 
 when I was hocking things in San Francisco. 
 I got three dollars on the satchel and brush ten 
 minutes after getting ofF the boat, ate, got a 
 shine and a shave and then struck out in the wet 
 for a job. 
 
 " They were going to pinch me for a new crook 
 in town at most of the stores and offices where I 
 walked in and said : ' Gimme work.' Several of 'em 
 told me that they didn't see any sense in this thing 
 of being broke and asked me why I didn't scoot up 
 to Astoria and get a job in a salmon cannery, in- 
 asmuch as the salmon season was on. They think 
 every man up there that's broke is a Chinnook or 
 a Siwash, y' see. I was beginning to think that 
 the salmon-cleaning game would be about my graft, 
 at that, when, along in the afternoon after I had 
 hit about 200 different commercial shacks for some 
 kind of a job, I saw a sign, ' Pacific Historical 
 Association,' shining in the wet outside the second- 
 story window of an office building. So I went up- 
 stairs to see what kind of an outfit the Pacific His- 
 torical Association was. There was only one 
 occupant of the office, which was littered with 
 new books, but he was enough. He had on all 
 colors of gig lamps and he was from New York. 
 
226 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 He gave me the open face when I shambled in 
 with my duds dripping rain. 
 
 " ' Ha ! You're from the old town,' said he. 
 
 " ' How d'je guess it ? ' said I. 
 
 " ' Oh, because you've got the swagger and be- 
 cause you look as if you're four-flushing under 
 adverse circumstances,' said this hot card with the 
 penetrating eye. ' Now when did you say you'll 
 be wanting to go to work on our " History of the 
 Pioneers of Oregon and Washington " ? To- 
 morrow morning, did you say, you wanted to start 
 out ? ' 
 
 " Pretty previous talk,, wasn't it ? But I was so 
 darned glad to light on a duck from back here that 
 knew how to get to the point, even if it was a bluff, 
 that I warmed up to him from the jump. 
 
 " ' Ouick action you're giving me for my money, 
 ain't it ? ' said I to him. ' What do you want me 
 to do with this " History of the Pioneers of Ore- 
 gon and Washington " — write it or sell it ? ' 
 
 " ' Help to get the data, that's all. Book's not 
 out yet. We're getting it together now. Oh, 
 you'll do all right. Been hunting for you. Why 
 didn't you get in before? All right. You start 
 out in the morning — let's see, you can go to Baker 
 City first and clean up that place, and then I'll 
 find you territory once you get started,' 
 
TALE THE FOURTEENTH 227 
 
 in' 
 
 'That's great,' said I. 'What do I go to 
 Baker City on — my face ? ' 
 
 " ' I guess not,' said the Pacific Historical As- 
 sociation — he was the whole thing himself. ' Don't 
 get gay. I'll fix you out. Here's the scheme : 
 You dig out the old geezers, get next to them, 
 interview 'em about their early experiences, get a 
 line on what they've done for the great and glori- 
 ous West, with dates scattered in — stories of their 
 encounters with grizzly bears when all this region 
 was a howling wilderness, etc. — how they built the 
 first log hut this side of Cheyenne, and all that — 
 and then you write it up — about 1,000 words for 
 each of 'em, you understand — maybe a little more 
 for the genuine Heap-Bigs — an' show 'em what 
 you've written. That's when you do business. 
 Their biographies, or autobiographies, are to be 
 included in the " History of the Pioneers of Ore- 
 gon and Washington," with a picture of each of 
 'em, and it costs each of 'em ;^ioo a throw to 
 brealc into the history. See ? You get twenty- 
 five per cent, commission on all the pioneers you 
 write up. This is no con. game. Don't get that 
 into your head. It's on the level. I've made 
 ;^ 200,000 at it, working my way from Arizona up 
 here. It's like finding money. There's your 
 chance, if you want to win out.' 
 
228 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 "'You're good,' said I. 'Meantime, I'm not 
 togged out to make bluffs of this kind. And I 
 think I'd be a frost, anyhow, asking people ques- 
 tions about their ' 
 
 " ' No you wouldn't,' said the Pacific Historical 
 Association. 'And, say, you want a side line. 
 I'm introducing a new typewriter out here. 
 Seventy-five dollars apiece. You can make each 
 of the pioneers cough up for a typewriter and you 
 get twenty-five dollars a machine. Come on out. 
 I'm going to dress you up. Of course, you've got 
 no trunk. Neither did I when I first hit Arizona. 
 Got twelve of 'em now.' 
 
 " Say, that was a queer snap. I couldn't natu- 
 rally take much stock in it, for I wasn't "any more 
 of a come-on then than the average hard-lucker 
 from this town, but you ought to have seen how it 
 went through. The whirlwind Pacific Historical 
 Association — he was really a rattling nice fellow, 
 and perfectly on the level — took me out and togged 
 me out to the limit — suit, overcoat, full sets of 
 gear of all kinds — and then registered me at his 
 hotel, the best in the State of Oregon. I ate din- 
 ner that evening with him and his pretty San Fran- 
 cisco wife, and you'd have thought they had both 
 known me from infancy. 
 
 "The next morning, with fifty dollars expense 
 
TALE THE FOURTEENTH 229 
 
 money in my clothes, I started for Baker City to 
 write up the pioneers thereof and to sell 'em type- 
 writers. It was something easy. They all wanted 
 to get into the ' History of the Pioneers of Oregon 
 and Washington.' Young ducks not out of their 
 thirties wanted to break into the volume, and offered 
 me bonuses to work 'em in. One of the rules of 
 the Pacific Historical Association, however, was 
 that no pioneer of less than fifty years of age could 
 get into the work. But I had plenty of business with 
 the old-timers. I'd write them up ornately, filling 
 in all the bare spots with pipe-dreamy yarns, gen- 
 erally winding up each write-up with the statement 
 that the subject thereof had been ' frequently men- 
 tioned ' for Congress or for Governor, or for 
 ' something equally as good,' and within one month 
 from the day I met up with B. Franklin Granville, 
 the hustling Pacific Historical Association, I 
 counted up my change in Seattle and found that I 
 had about ^980. I scattered the typewriters 
 around my trail and made almost as much money 
 out of 'em as I did out of the write-ups, and to cap 
 the whole game I dug up my father's missing 
 brother — he's in for a swell send-ofF in the History 
 of the Pioneers of Oregon and Washington ' — and 
 he didn't have a thing but about 60,000 acres of 
 sheep land, and the sheep on the acres, in Malheur 
 
230 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 County, Oregon. He thought I was a pretty nice, 
 chesty young fellow, and he gave me ^i,ooo for a 
 Christmas present. I was ;^3,8oo good when I 
 cashed in at the office where I had taken a chance 
 on the wet sign of the Pacific Historical Associa- 
 tion, and B. Franklin Granville got out his book 
 and delivered the goods all right, at that. 
 
 " Then I thought I'd go down to the San Fran- 
 cisco tracks and see if I couldn't get some of that 
 money back that I had handed to the sure-thing 
 layers of odds when I went broke, and when I 
 struck the Barbary coast of 'Frisco I just acciden- 
 tally set up another partnership with the green stuff. 
 Oh, yes, I got back to New York all right a couple 
 of months later. Man that had been running an 
 Eastern string on the 'Frisco tracks gave up the 
 game in disgust, and when he shipped his string 
 back here, he let me hitch on, as a feeder and rub- 
 ber, for the freight ride across the continent. But 
 that end of it's got nothing to do with the good 
 win-out I made in Portland." 
 
TALE THE FIFTEENTH 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No. 5 Speaketh Divert- 
 
 INGLY OF THE ReLIEVER StaGE OF YE JaG 
 
TALE THE FIFTEENTH 
 
 WHEREIN EX-TANK NO. 5 SPEAKETH DIVERTINGLY 
 OF THE RELIEVER STAGE OF YE JAG 
 
 "When No. 9 told some time ago of his in- 
 voluntary steamer trip to Galveston and how he 
 won out of that town I observed that he wore a 
 certain perky, conceited air, as much as to^ay that 
 he was most likely the only member of this organi- 
 zation that ever found himself aboard an ocean- 
 going boat without knowing how he got there," 
 said Ex-Tank No. 5, the member with the two big 
 diamond rings. " I just want to tell him that he 
 wasn't, or isn't. What's more, when No. 9 dis- 
 covered himself on the high seas he had money and 
 a front, while I " 
 
 " Look a-here," said No. 7, the parliamentarian 
 and kicker, rising suddenly. "What the dickens 
 is this outfit getting to be — a Snug Harbor.? 
 What's the meaning of all this sailorizing talk ? I 
 put the matter to the club : Ain't we had just 
 about enough heavy-weather and deep-water chaw 
 in these experience meetings ? Now, here comes 
 
 Five along with a salty, green-seas " 
 
 233 
 
234 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 " Pipe down, Seven," said the club in chorus. 
 " Go ahead. Five, and spring it," 
 
 " Well. If I'd a known, when I helped to get 
 this gang together, that it was going to fizzle into 
 a kind o' Mariners' Union, you can bet your " 
 
 " Give us a rest, Seven," said the Chief Ex- 
 Tank peremptorily. " Five has got the deck." 
 
 " I was going to say," resumed No. 5, " that it's 
 all right and easy when you come to, wallowing in 
 an outside swell and in the teeth of a howling gale, 
 as it were, and find that you've got your front and 
 your dustbag practically unimpaired, like Nine did 
 when he woke up on the Galveston boat. But 
 this thing o' finding yourself swashing around in 
 blue water after carrying a jag down to the reliever 
 stage " 
 
 "Wait a minute. Five," interrupted the Chief 
 Ex-Tank. "'Reliever' — 'reliever' — jag carried 
 down to the ' reliever stage ' — that's kind of a new 
 one on me, and I can perceive that the other mem- 
 bers seem to be a bit puzzled over the expression. 
 What's the ' reliever stage ' of a jag, anyhow ? " 
 
 " Why, I am amazed," said No. 5, " that any 
 member of this organization should be ignorant of 
 so simple and direct a final-stage method to obtain 
 absolutely required booze — but, stay. Come to 
 think of it, the reliever scheme is a Chicago idea, 
 
TALE THE FIFTEENTH 235 
 
 and maybe I was the first to work it in this town. 
 But just you people let me get this story started, 
 and you'll find out how the reliever system works. 
 
 "That jag in the fall of '91 was set in motion 
 because I was picking 'em too easily down at 
 Gravesend. Why, I couldn't lose at that meeting, 
 I tell you honest. I didn't pack around any dope 
 book or handicapping outfit, and I cut out all con- 
 sideration of weights, jockeys, distances, previous 
 time made, whole thing; just played 'em on their 
 names, and I'm giving it to you right, I couldn't 
 lose. Didn't get oii more'n one dead one out of 
 the whole six on a day's card. Won so much of 
 it at that meeting that I thought I was dreaming — 
 used to feel, when my pockets bulged out at the 
 wind-up every day, like hiring stable boys to turn 
 the hose on me so's I could find out if I was 
 awake. I started in with a fifty dollar shoestring 
 on the first day, and I had $75° ^^ ^^^ finish of the 
 fourth day. That made me too husky to work at 
 an office desk. 
 
 " When I went back to the office to tell 'em 
 that I was too strong for pen-pushing any more 
 they told me that I was fired, anyhow, and I was 
 glad of it. I kept on at the track, and at the end 
 of the first week I had pushed two of the bookies 
 on the dead line out o' business. I got one of 'em 
 
236 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 to give me 300 to i on a combination of the whole 
 six to win on the last day of the week, put five dollars 
 on it, and it went through in a gallop. Bookie paid 
 me off and then went and bought himself a clay 
 pipe and ten cents' worth of tobacco and waited 
 for somebody to come along and hand him money 
 to start agoing again. 
 
 " I was doing a beer sozzle all this time, and 
 cutting the strong stuff out. Now, if I'd kept the 
 beer sozzle going, I'd probably have owned the 
 track by get-away day, but three days before the 
 meeting closed I switched to whiskey and tobasco 
 sauce, with occasional absinthes for toners, and that 
 got me going. I had soaked 'em for ;^5,200 up to 
 that third day before the meeting closed, but the 
 switch from beer to the hot stuff made me so 
 cautious that I began then to play 'em on form. 
 The bookies had a case of ' You lose ' on me for 
 the rest of the three days, and at the wind-up of 
 the meeting I only had ^2,800 left. Pretty good 
 bunch to pick up from a shoestring at that. It 
 was just good enough, anyhow, to make me decide 
 that I wasn't going to do any more work for the 
 remainder of my life. Me work any more ? Why, 
 I forgot what work meant. 
 
 " By the time the meeting closed the tobasco 
 sauce and things were producing night pictures for 
 
TALE THE FIFTEENTH 237 
 
 me of pink zebras crossing purple bridges and that 
 kind, but I couldn't see any knock-ofF in it when 
 I was weighted down with a ^2,800 bundle. So 
 I kept the jag moving at a 1:40 flat gait, and in 
 order to enjoy it in comfort I went uptown and 
 hired a seven-room furnished flat all for myself, 
 got a Dutchman for a cook, staked the refrigerator 
 to a stack of greens and reds in quart bottles, and 
 started in to relish life. Now, if I'd only ha' stayed 
 inside the flat, and not gone jamming around town, 
 I might have — but there's no use talking about 
 what I might have done. The flat wasn't big 
 enough for me after the sun went down, and when 
 I got downtown with the gang my ^2,800 began 
 to fall off me so quick that it made me sneeze. 
 At the end of three weeks I was down to ;^300, 
 and I figured that I would blow in ;^ioo, pinch 
 ^200 for hospital money and a starter when I got 
 through seeing the icthyosaurians and things in the 
 bug-ward, and then get a job somewhere and hold 
 on to it until the spring races started, when I in- 
 tended to drive every man in the game out o' busi- 
 ness. 
 
 "That calculation didn't go through. I got 
 touched for the whole ;^300 by a night-liner. He 
 only rolled me for the long green, and let me hang 
 on to my jewellery. I didn't make any holler, for 
 
238 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 I couldn't have fastened it on him, but I had a 
 think coming when I woke up broke the next 
 morning. My pin went first. Got fifty dollars 
 on that. Then the ring got in for ninety dollars. 
 The ring money lasted me a couple o' days. The 
 watch was the next to go, for twenty-five dollars 
 only. That supplied the jag for twenty-four 
 hours. My month at my flat was up by this time, 
 and the janitor was putting up a yell for another 
 month's rent in advance. Told him to chase him- 
 self, and fired my Dutch cook, and moved to a 
 room. My dress suit had to go next. I got ten 
 dollars on it. That ten lasted me for fully twenty 
 minutes. After it was finished I looked through 
 the closet. The weather was still warm, and so I 
 figured I could spare the topcoat and the overcoat. 
 Got ten dollars on them, and this kept the jag 
 jogging along at a moderate pace for a night. I 
 got down to the suits the next morning. Got five 
 dollars for the couple of good ones that I wrapped 
 up and took out, but by the time evening came 
 around the jag was hollering for another outlay. 
 Then I put on the best suit I had, a black cutaway 
 outfit, and had an Eighth avenue old-clothes man 
 come around and take a look at all the duds I had 
 left. He gave me ;g2.35 for the lot, and packed 
 them away with him. Next morning I woke up 
 
TALE THE FIFTEENTH 439 
 
 without the price, and I had been nibbled on by 
 pale blue giraffes all night, at that. So I had to 
 put the reliever act through. 
 
 " I went down to a Baxter street joint and had 
 the gazeeba look over the suit I had on. I asked 
 him what kind of a suit he'd give me, with five 
 dollars to boot, for the cutaway rig. He rigged 
 me out in a cottony, second-hand sack outfit, and 
 gave me the fiver in exchange for the good suit. 
 That's the reliever act, gentlemen. The gazeeba 
 relieves you of the togs you put up a front with 
 in exchange for a bum outfit and the price. I got 
 back to him the next morning, and asked him how 
 much he'd give me to boot, with any old kind of an 
 outfit, for the suit he'd peddled me the day before. 
 You ought to have seen the rig he put on me then 
 — the high-water boys that only reached to my 
 shoe tops, vest that he had to split up the back to 
 get on me, and a patched coat that was No. 13, 
 boys' size. I got seventy-five cents to boot. 
 That was the second and final stage of that reliever 
 turn. I got over to the Bowery then, and began 
 to use up what I could of the five-cent whiskey 
 purveyed on that thoroughfare. 
 
 " The seventy-five cents was a lot of money for 
 that purpose, and I don't just remember how I 
 managed to drift down to the pier under the 
 
24C5 Tales of the ex-Tanks 
 
 Brooklyn Bridge without being pinched as a rag 
 for I surely was a holy show in the last fitout 
 the Baxter street man gave me. I remember get- 
 ting into a good-natured chaw with some long- 
 shoremen down there, and I guessed I must ha' 
 asked them how to get aboard a deep-sea boat 
 without coughing up a ticket or the price of one. 
 It don't make any difference, anyhow, what I did 
 - — the fact remains that I woke up the next morn- 
 ing in the steerage — in the steerage, mind you — 
 and not in any hifalutin, stateroom, like No. 9 did 
 when he went to Galveston — of the steamship 
 Algonquin of the Clyde line bound for Charleston 
 and Jacksonville. A couple o' other ducks in the 
 steerage told me the name of the boat and where 
 she was going. They said that a couple of long- 
 shoremen had pushed me aboard, through an open 
 deadlight or something like that, 'way up forward. 
 They got me aboard in the shelter of a lot of bales 
 of goods, which is why the purser or the chap at 
 the gangway didn't get next to me. They said 
 the purser hadn't been around yet for the steerage 
 tickets, but that I'd better drill out o' sight for a 
 while, because the purser was liable to be around 
 at any minute. They spread a lot of old tarpaulin 
 over me, and, sure enough, the purser did come 
 around down below for the steerage tickets a little 
 
TALE THE FIFTEENTH 241 
 
 while later. I didn't know it till one of the steer- 
 age ducks gave me a dig and told me it was all 
 right, and that I could get out from beneath the 
 tarpaulin. 
 
 " I don't need to go into details as to how I felt 
 for the information of the honored members of the 
 Harlem Club of Former Alcoholic Degenerates. 
 I'd been nursing that jag, you understand, for more 
 than six weeks and giving it about everything it 
 asked for, and here I was, a blooming steerage 
 stowaway on a coaster, and seeing all colors of 
 pythons and things in broad daylight, and no more 
 chance of getting a drink than of walking ashore ! 
 It was a bad job. It was the worst job I ever 
 stacked up against. I bummed a cigarette from 
 one of the chaps in the steerage, a painter who 
 was going down to Jacksonville to get a winter 
 job, and that cigarette doped me up a little and 
 kept me from having 'em right there, and bad. I 
 extracted a few more cigarettes from him in the 
 course of the two-and-a-half-day trip, and smoked 
 them because I wanted to forget. I was the 
 toughest-looking mug in the steerage, and they 
 were a fierce-looking lot, too. I forgot to say that, 
 down to the time of my getting aboard the ship, I 
 had had a good derby hat. I must have gone to 
 sleep somewhere, for the hat I had when I came 
 
242 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 to on the boat was the rankest, batteredest look- 
 ing, variety-turn derby you ever saw. There was 
 a monogram pasted inside of it that read, 'A. 
 Wappl, Wien,' and I guess the Austrian who 
 traded his lid ofF for mine while I slept must have 
 been some broken-down sport from Vienna. The 
 soberer I got the more the horrible picture I made 
 worked on me. You never saw a picture of a 
 hobo that looked half so bad as I looked. But 
 there was no help for it. There was no way out, 
 and I didn't see any way out even after I landed, 
 for a man that's broke can't do a graft of any kind 
 anywhere if he hasn't got a front to put up. I 
 intended to go right on with the boat down to 
 Jacksonville, but that was not to be. The purser 
 came nosing around the steerage a few minutes 
 before the boat tied up at the Charleston wharf 
 and he spotted me. My face wasn't familiar to 
 him. 
 
 " ' Stowaway, hey ? ' said he to me. ' They vag 
 stowaways in this town, my bucko. I'll turn you 
 over to the dock cop when we tie up.' 
 
 " And he did. 
 
 " ' Here's a stone crusher for the chain gang,' 
 said the purser to the cop after he had taken me 
 over the gangway. 
 
 "The cop, a big, good-natured dub, led me 
 
TALE THE FIFTEENTH 243 
 
 along the pier shed to its entrance on East Bay 
 street, I think it was, and turned me loose. 
 
 " ' There's a freight or two out for the South 
 this afternoon, Willie,' said he to me. ' Better hop 
 one.' I walked away down the street. 
 
 " It was a cold, late October morning and rain- 
 ing hard. If there's any glbomier place on the 
 map than Charleston on a cold, rainy day in the 
 fall, I never saw it. But I had to walk. I saw a 
 lot o' black and white cops eyeing me pretty hard, 
 and I had to walk. I was wet through in three 
 minutes and shivering, and the trip had worn the 
 jag ofF so that I was hungry, but I had to keep 
 a-moving if I wanted to stay off the rock pile. 
 Say, d'ye know that I envied the coons that were 
 trucking cotton under the dry pier sheds ? I did, 
 for a fact. I reflected that when they knocked off 
 work at night they had some kind of a shack to go 
 to and get warm, and some kind of a shakedown to 
 have a dose on, and an eat coming to them right 
 along. I even figured on the pickaninnies and 
 comfortable cur dogs they probably had around 
 their wickieups; and I certainly felt a heap lonesome 
 trudging along there in the cold and wet outside 
 the pier sheds. 
 
 "I don't like to think of that day. I don't 
 know how I got through it. I remember that I 
 
244 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 crept up an alleyway to the back door of one of the 
 hotels, and struck a guy with a white paper cap on 
 for a hand-out. My rig-out was against me, and 
 he gave me the quick chase. When it began to 
 get dark, and still raining, I thought I might as 
 well go to some station house and vag myself, for 
 I began to think I'd croak from the cold and the 
 wet. Just as this idea got into my head, though, 
 I passed by the fireroom of some kind of a mill, 
 and I walked in. A big, black darky was firing 
 the furnaces. I asked him if he'd let me sleep in 
 the furnace room during his watch. The coon 
 looked at me closely for half a minute. They've 
 got intuition, those people. 
 
 '"He'p yo'sef, boss,' said he. 'Yo' kin shake 
 down in dat cohnuh. Yo' all's f'um de No'th, 
 ahn't yo' ? Ah's dun bin putty nigh col' t' def 
 up dat a-way mahse'f.' 
 
 " The big coon fireman gave me a handful of 
 newspapers to put under my head for a pillow, and 
 I fell down into the corner he pointed out, close to 
 the furnace, and had a sleep the like of which I 
 never enjoyed before or since. I slept until five 
 o'clock the next morning, and then the darky fire- 
 man shook me up and told me I'd better be moving 
 on before the engineer came down, or my being in 
 I the furnace room might get him into trouble. So 
 
TALE THE FIFTEENTH 245 
 
 I hunched together and went out into the cold and 
 wet again, for it was still pouring down rain. 
 
 "I was trudging down East Bay street along 
 about eight o'clock that morning, without a win- 
 out idea in my head, and hungry as the devil, when 
 I met a chap I had known in New York. He had 
 been a receiver of telegraph messages at one of the 
 windows of the main office of the Western Union 
 on Broadway when I knew him, and he was then 
 taking messages at the window of the Charleston 
 office. He didn't know me, when he looked at 
 me, from an elbow of zinc pipe, and you couldn't 
 blame him at that, but he remembered me all right 
 when I told him who I was, and he was all right, 
 too, that chap. He took me around to a feed shop 
 — and got looked at, too, pretty hard, for connubzin 
 with a hobo — and then he braved his landlady by 
 taking me to his dinky, but warm, little hall room. 
 There he planted me with a pipe, a box of to- 
 bacco, and the morning paper — oh, he certainly 
 was good to me ! He told me to wait till he got 
 back for lunch, and he'd rig me out in a fit-out of 
 his duds. After I got shaved and bathed up and 
 togged out in his No. 2 suit I began to feel like a 
 white man. I knew I had to take a chance if I 
 wanted to win out and ever get back to New York. 
 I'd been reading the entries for the Jerome Park 
 
246 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 races in the News and Courier. I had one of those 
 lightning, dead-sure hunches that I had three of the 
 races right. I asked my telegraphing friend if there 
 was a poolroom in Charleston. He told me where 
 one was run on the quiet. 
 
 " ' A two-spot'U be enough,' I told him, and I 
 found the poolroom. I put the two dollars on 
 Firenzi at 5 to i to win. It went through, I put 
 the ten dollars on Lamplighter to win at 10 to i. 
 That went through, too, in a canter. Then I 
 borrowed a dopebook and went at it. I wanted to 
 feel sure that Long Fellow was going to win the last 
 race, no matter how long a price they put on him. 
 The house betting on Long Fellow was already 12 
 to I. I couldn't see anything in it but Long Fellow, 
 and yet there were ten good ones in the race at 
 shorter prices. I didn't make any side steps about 
 it, but just waited for the track betting to come in. 
 Long Fellow started at 15 to i, and went up 
 to 20. Then I planted the ;^ioo William on him. 
 It was a mile and a furlong race. Long Fellow 
 didn't get so much as a call, not even a whistle, 
 until the stretch, and my shoulders got scroonched 
 down again. Then it was, all of a sudden, ' Long 
 Fellow in the stretch by a head. Top Gallant 
 second,' and, for the wind-up, ' Long Fellow wins 
 easy by three lengths,' 
 
TALE THE FIFTEENTH 247 
 
 " I walked out of that poolroom with ;^2,ooo. 
 They paid it to me pretty reluctantly, though, 
 thinking, I suppose, that I was a wire tapper. But 
 I had it in my kick all the same, when the boy that 
 had been good to me got home from his office. I 
 passed him over a thousand, and you ought to have 
 seen him look at me : 
 
 " ' Damn Charleston,' he said after a while. 
 ' I'm going back to New York.' 
 
 " I waited in Charleston for a few days, until the 
 Aglonquin stopped there on her return trip up to 
 New York, and when she got in my friend and I 
 hired a couple of bridal chambers for the cruise up 
 to New York. I sat, during the trip, at the right 
 side of the purser who had chucked me over the 
 side, expecting me to be pinched for the rock pile, 
 but he didn't know it. That's the difference 
 between a front and no front." 
 
TALE THE SIXTEENTH 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank (Hoodoo) No. 13 Becometh 
 Discursive as to the Dreamy Isles of ye 
 Pacific 
 
TALE THE SIXTEENTH 
 
 WHEREIN EX-TANK (hOODOo) NO. I3 BECOMETH 
 DISCURSIVE AS TO THE DREAMY ISLES OF YE 
 PACIFIC 
 
 "This isn't so much about my final win-out 
 and the fun I've had ever since in heing good as it 
 is about the smallness of the world," said Ex-Tank 
 (Hoodoo) No. 13. "Even when you look at it 
 all four ways this world isn't much bigger than a 
 gob o' gum. If it was, I wouldn't be here to-night 
 enjoying my own goodness and reprobating evil 
 of all kinds whatsoever, especially over-indulgence 
 in alcoholic stimulants. I'd probably be some- 
 where in the middle of Turkest ■ 
 
 " But that brings me to where this thing started, 
 to that time down in New Orleans when the win- 
 ter track put me up against it and when I tried to 
 make good for board and keep by selling ' Pictur- 
 esque Turkestan,' in 112 numbers, fifty cents a 
 number, to people who all looked upon me as a 
 second-story worker trying to get the lay of the 
 houses and sicked he dogs on me. I couldn't get 
 351 
 
252 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 used to that, and so when I ran in at my boarding- 
 house with a postal clerk who had a straight tour 
 all the way from New Orleans to Washington, and 
 who offered to smuggle me up on his car, under 
 the bags, as far as the capital, I took him in a min- 
 ute, and mighty grateful, at that, to get up near the 
 edge of the world. I got a temporary sub. job 
 conductoring on an electric car for a month or so 
 in Washington, and when that flattened out I shook 
 dice with myself to see whether it 'ud be New 
 York or Chicago. Chicago won. I had twenty 
 dollars saved up and I went across the aqueduct 
 bridge in Washington to a bank layout and on one 
 boxful ran the twenty dollar shoe string up into 
 what looked like a cordage trust to me then — 1^245. 
 I togged out, keeping the frosty eye turned to the 
 red stuff, and bought a parlor car ticket to Chicago. 
 It was right on this parlor car that the whole game 
 began. 
 
 When the train pulled out of Washington, there 
 was only one other occupant of the parlor car be- 
 sides myself — a very handsome, self-contained, 
 well-groomed woman of thirty or under. I had a 
 chair five or six numbers behind hers, and I occu- 
 pied myself for the first twenty miles or so out of 
 Washington in studying the fine contour of the 
 back of her head, and in mentally jolting myself 
 
TALE THE SIXTEENTH 253 
 
 for not winning one like that, settling down, and 
 being a good citizen of the republic. Reflections 
 such as these made me tired, as usual, and I fell to 
 nodding. I was awakened by some talking, and 
 when I rubbed my eyes I saw a drunken dude ad- 
 dressing himself to the lady up forward in the car. 
 He would have looked a chump had he been en- 
 tirely sober ; drunk, he was a show. I could see 
 that he didn't know the lady, and that he was ad- 
 dressing himself to her without her permission — 
 for she was glancing back in my direction. I 
 walked up to him. He turned upon me with dude 
 ferocity. 
 
 " ' Johnny,' said I, pulling the bell cord, ' you 
 don't want to ride on this train. Take the. next 
 one. I'm going to ditch you.' 
 
 " The train came rapidly to a standstill, and I 
 knew that it was important for me to dump the 
 little blackguard before the conductor heaved in 
 sight. So I seized him by the scruff of the neck, 
 persuaded him to the vestibule door with my knee 
 in the small of his back and let him down a gentle 
 declivity. He mumbled that he was only going as 
 far as Harper's Ferry to his shooting lodge, but I 
 told him that he could make a signal flag of his 
 shirt and halt the next train. Then I let him roll 
 down the little mossy decline and hustled back to 
 
254 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 my chair just as the conductor came running in 
 from the rear coach. He asked me if I had pulled 
 the bell cord, and I told him yes—that I'd done it 
 accidentally with the crook of my cane. He re- 
 garded me with suspicion, but he had no notion 
 that I had ditched one of his passengers on the edge 
 of the Blue Ridge Mountains. 
 
 " The lady thanked me after the conductor left 
 the car. I didn't want to make her think that she 
 had, out of courtesy, to be chummy with me just 
 because I had protected her from the drunken dude, 
 and so I didn't press any talk on her, but went back 
 to my seat and figured on what a nice twenty-mile 
 walk the duck that I dumped would have before 
 pulling up to the gate of his lodge at or near Har- 
 per's Ferry. It was consoling to think that maybe 
 he'd sue the road and get ;^50,ooo or ;^ 100,000 
 damages out of it — not. I met the lady face to face 
 in the dining car two or three times during the 
 journey to Chicago and she nodded to me pleas- 
 antly, but I never was much in the fresh guy line, 
 and I didn't try to scrape up an acquaintance with 
 her. I saw her in the station in Chicago, when 
 we were debarking, and she gave me a pleasant 
 smile and disappeared. In the swirl of the game 
 that I stacked up against in Chicago from the day 
 I hit the place I forgot all about the incident. 
 
TALE THE SIXTEENTH 255 
 
 " The town of Boreas and the bad aniline booze 
 thereof had me down and out within a couple of 
 months. It was coming on winter and I had some 
 thinks about striking out for the coast ; the Chicago 
 winter chaps my lips. I didn't know how to make 
 San Francisco without a front, and I had passed up 
 the front in trying to beat the Chicago game. 
 Lucky Baldwin had been racing a string of Cali- 
 fornia horses on the Chicago tracks that summer 
 and I met up with one of his assistant trainers, a 
 man I'd met when I was well in the push on 
 the Southern tracks. The trainer had a couple of 
 carloads of Lucky's horses ready for the trip to the 
 coast, and he took me along. I landed in San 
 Francisco with four dollars and a healthy appetite 
 for those quart bottles of red wine, with cock 
 roaches in 'em, that you get out there two for 
 two-bits. 
 
 " It was a Saturday morning when I got into 
 San Francisco that time, and I found out as soon 
 as I got there that racing was a dead game in Cali- 
 fornia for that winter. The owners of the tracks 
 were scrapping among themselves, and the Legisla- 
 ture shut down on the runners altogether that sea- 
 son. That dished me on two or three good things 
 that Baldwin's man told me he intended to put 
 through. I circulated around, and found that the 
 
256 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 whole gang from the East had gone back there in 
 disgust when it was announced that there was to be 
 no racing. So I didn't know a soul in town, and I 
 was sore because I hadn't stayed back East myself. 
 I had to pass up the cochineal in quarts, and got a 
 job in a hardware store for eight dollars a week. It 
 was a cerulean proposition, but there wasn't any- 
 thing else for it. After paying my board with the 
 bulk of my first week's pay, I took the remainder 
 of the bunch and went down to the Orpheum to 
 seek forgetfulness of wrought-iron nails and copper 
 tacks in a variety show. I coughed a dollar for a 
 seat in the orchestra. 
 
 " There was a fine-looking chap in the seat on 
 my right who seemed to have been dining pretty 
 well. He was, as I say, a fine-looking, big man, 
 thirty-five or around that, gig-lamped and togged 
 to the limit, but he had sure been toying with the 
 sparkling stuiF before he got to the show. He 
 began to talk to me and from that he began buying 
 the gold seal in quarts. 
 
 " ' I've been so long away from the coast,' he 
 said after a while, 'that I'm lonesome. I don't 
 break away from home and fireside only once every 
 two or three years, and every time I get back here 
 the fewer people I know.' 
 
 " ' Well,' said I, ' this town isn't growing any 
 
TALE THE SIXTEENTH 257 
 
 better in your absence, and that's the reason I ad- 
 vise you to sort o' keep that wad of yours under 
 cover, and to leave the gig-lamps at your hotel, 
 while you're out having fun. There are a lot of 
 natural-born pinchers of shiny stuff out this way, 
 as of course you know.' 
 
 " He looked me over and told me I was right. 
 Then he bought another quart, and, after inspect- 
 ing me pretty carefully, he asked me how I was 
 making out. Very badly, I told him. 
 
 " ' Well, I'll tell you,' he said. ' I don't know 
 anything about you except that you've got a square 
 jaw and a proper Mulligan look, but I guess you're 
 worth taking a chance on, at that. I've got one 
 of the biggest coffee plantations in the Hawaiian 
 Islands. It's a few miles out of Hilo, on the is- 
 land of Hawaii. A kid cousin of mine has been 
 with me as timekeeper — I run 300 to 500 coolies 
 during the busy season — during the past couple of 
 years, and he wants to break off for a year's vaca- 
 tion up here in the States. I pay him ^200 a 
 month and he lives with me. Want the job ? ' 
 
 " Now, I figured this to be pipe talk at first, but 
 after a couple of minutes' reflection I could see 
 that this man was too solid to be a smoker of 
 seconds. 
 
 " ' Just about,' said I. 
 
2S8 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 (( ( 
 
 'All right. You're engaged,' he said, and 
 then again I thought he might be talking through 
 his chapeau, for he didn't mention the thing again 
 until after the show. I was going to bid him 
 good-bye, and held out my hand. 
 
 '"Where you going?' he said, sort of sur- 
 prised. ' As my timekeeper, it's up to you to 
 keep tab on me until next Monday morning, when 
 we're going to take the steamer Australia for 
 Honolulu.' 
 
 " ' Say, is all this on the level ? ' I couldn't 
 help but ask him. 
 
 " That kind of nettled him. 
 
 " ' You've got to come to taw with a whole lot 
 more suddenness that this if you expect to work 
 for me, my boy,' he said, and then we went to the 
 Palace Hotel, where he was staying, and he showed 
 me a lot of pictures of his place down in the 
 Hawaiian Islands. Then he togged me out in 
 some of his clothes — we were the same size, and 
 he said they'd do until the stores opened Monday, 
 when he'd fix me out in a new rig — and informed 
 me that I was drawing pay from that day, inclusive. 
 He registered me at the Palace, and I'm bound to 
 say that there was action in every move he made 
 between that Saturday midnight and the hour we 
 took the Australia on the following Monday, If 
 
TALE THE SIXTEENTH 259 
 
 he didn't blow in ;^500 during that period he didn't 
 spend a cent, and he never got under the tide, 
 either, but was game and sensible enough to keep 
 just on edge and no more. The trip down on the 
 Australia was sort of a sobering up proposition — a 
 gradual taper, but not too gradual. I felt like a 
 two-year-old when we pulled into the harbor of 
 Honolulu seven days later. I found the boss to 
 be a dignified and quiet man and he didn't sidestep 
 a little bit, after his jamboree was over, over the 
 compact he had made with me at the Orpheum 
 variety show. He explained the whole cofFee-rais- 
 ing game to me and I in turn gave him a sort of a 
 sketch of the damphoolishness I had been mixing 
 up in for the past few years. When we got to 
 Honolulu we knew and liked each other. 
 
 "After a couple of days in Honolulu, during 
 which he introduced me around to the Presi- 
 dent and the Cabinet and the Judges of the Su- 
 preme Court and a few people like that — and 
 wasn't I thinking of the ' Picturesque Turkestan ' 
 days, though ! — we took the inter-island boat Like- 
 Like and drew into the harbor of Hilo the next 
 morning. 
 
 " ' My wife didn't expect me so soon,' said my 
 boss, 'so she's. not down here to meet me.' 
 
 " Then we got into a hack and drove eight or 
 
26o TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 ten miles out into the country (there'd be no use 
 in my trying to describe such country as that— it 
 was a plain dope-dream for me) to his ranch. 
 Well, there was about as far as the eye could see 
 of it, and the home in the middle of it was a 
 bungalow palace. My boss's wife heard the rattle 
 of the carriage wheels, and she hurried out to the 
 front veranda. She was still as pretty as a picture. 
 I knew her in a minute, but I wasn't going to say 
 anything. 
 
 " After the first few hugs were over the boss 
 turned to me and introduced me to his wife. 
 
 " ' New timekeeper, to take Joe's place,' said he. 
 ' Good fellow, and you'll like him.' 
 
 " Meantime she was sizing me up with a queer 
 little pucker about her forehead. Then her face 
 lit up, and she flushed. 
 
 " ' Why,' she suddenly exclaimed, ' aren't you 
 the gentleman who — six months ago — train from 
 Washington to Chicago — why, of course you are ! 
 I remember you perfectly, and you remember me, 
 for you are smiling over it. Why, John, this is 
 the gentleman who ' 
 
 "Well, she certainly did give me the cordial 
 handshake while she was telling her mystified hus- 
 band about that little incident on the train near the 
 edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She had told 
 
TALE THE SIXTEENTH 261 
 
 him about the afFair as soon as she arrived back in 
 Hawaii from her visit to her sister up in the States, 
 and here I w^as, the veritable duck. Oh, I fell into 
 a pleasant path there, all right. I liked the lotus- 
 eating game down there so much that when my 
 boss's wife's pretty sister came along for a visit on 
 the coffee ranch a couple of months later, and I 
 married her three months later on, I hated to give 
 up my job, but the boss wanted a New York agent 
 and I had to show a brother-in-lawy spirit by tak- 
 ing the place. 
 
 " Which is why — the smallness of the globe — 
 I'm here to-night, benign and good, reprobating 
 evil in all its forms " 
 
 Here the Chief Ex-Tank's gavel fell, and the 
 meeting adjourned, cutting off Hoodoo Thirteen's 
 reprobation of evil in its flower. 
 
TALE THE SEVENTEENTH 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No. 8 Hath a Good Word 
 FOR Ye Much-Maligned Burg, Council 
 Bluffs 
 
TALE THE SEVENTEENTH 
 
 WHEREIN EX-TANK NO. 8 HATH A GOOD WORD 
 FOR YE MUCH-MALIGNED BURG, COUNCIL BLUFFS 
 
 " Now, talking about towns, Council BlufFs gets 
 more knocks than any town I know of," said Ex- 
 Tank No. 8, when a discussion arose on the sub- 
 ject of the most hopeless cities in the country in 
 which to go broke. " But I've been up against 
 worse than Council BlufFs. Council BlufFs is a 
 clammy looker, and all that, but there's one good 
 thing about it : they don't run you in out there if 
 you strike the place in the dead of winter without 
 an overcoat. The constables just look you over, 
 and if you don't make the mistake of shivering, 
 and just slide along as if you never wore an over- 
 coat in your life, and wouldn't wear a sealskin 
 blanket if you had one, they don't chase you. 
 This thing of being compelled to dodge cops, as 
 you have to do in a good many towns I could men- 
 tion, simply because you've left the overcoat in the 
 last town back, done up with camphor balls, is not 
 what it's cracked up to be, and that's why I give 
 265 
 
266 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 Council Bluffs what's coming to it in this little 
 matter of detail. But that's not all, either. I 
 won out once in Council Bluffs, and " 
 
 " I would warn No. 8," interposed Ex-Tank 
 No. 7, the parliamentarian and kicker, rising, 
 " that none but truthful statements are spread upon 
 the records of this organization, and that this out- 
 fit has no sort of affiliation whatever with the 
 Harlem Liars' Club; consequently, in making such 
 a manifestly impossible statement that he at one 
 time won out in Council Bluffs, No. 8 is guilty 
 of " 
 
 " Point not sustained," interrupted the Chief 
 Ex-Tank. " Any man who can find himself and 
 win out in Chicago, as our records prove No. 8 to 
 have done, is capable of landing right even in 
 Council Bluffs, insurmountable as the difficulty of 
 such an undertaking would seem. No. 8 will 
 proceed." 
 
 " Oh, it wasn't so hard," resumed No. 8. " I 
 don't exactly understand how it was that my ticket 
 read to Council Bluffs and not across the bridge to 
 Omaha. I don't remember how I got that ticket 
 in Chicago anyhow. After I got twelve dollars and 
 a ticket on the overcoat way down on South Clark 
 street I remembered figuring it out that Omaha would 
 be a pretty good place to hit up next, but somehow 
 
TALE THE SEVENTEENTH 267 
 
 or another I didn't get my money down right in the 
 scalper's office where I got the ticket, so that the 
 conductor ditched me at Council Bluffs at four 
 o'clock in the morning. It was early in January, and 
 Council Bluffs was covered up with a couple of 
 feet of snow. I was asleep in the smoker when 
 the conductor came along and gave me the shoulder 
 hunch and yelled, ' Council Bluffs — this is where 
 you fall off,' at me, and that was the first I knew 
 that I wasn't booked any further than Council 
 Bluffs. In stepping off the train I slipped and fell 
 on the ice, and I came down on the pint bottle 
 that I had in my rear right-hand pocket. Gentle- 
 men, that was the bitterest moment of my life. I 
 do not refer to the broken particles of glass that 
 adhered to and penetrated me ; but to be deposited 
 at Council Bluffs at four of the clock on a mid- 
 winter morning with two feet of snow on the 
 ground and nary the price in your clothes, and then 
 to have a whole carefully nursed pint go smash on 
 you — well, I simply submit it to the club if that 
 wasn't harder'n wrought nails." 
 
 A murmur of sympathy ran around the room. 
 
 " It was darker than ink when I picked myself 
 up and tried to look around," resumed No. 8, 
 " and still snowing. I missed my overcoat a lot. 
 There wasn't a soul at the station, and the waiting- 
 
268 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 rooms were locked up tight. I looked through the 
 waiting-room windows and saw a big baseburner, 
 red-hot all around the bottom, standing in the mid- 
 dle of the room; but its heat wasn't for me. 
 When my train pulled out and left me standing 
 there all alone in the snow, overcoatless, with thin 
 summer russet shoes on, and a thirst that, up to 
 that hour, had been plenteously assuaged for fully 
 three weeks previously — well, I was almost sorry 
 that I had not been good. 1 might even venture 
 to say that, upon mentally turning over parts of my 
 past career, I almost found myself deficient in 
 some few respects. I had to keep a-moving or 
 freeze to death, and so I struck up town. I had 
 to make the first track in the snow myself, and it 
 wasn't easy walking. Now, it was pretty cold, 
 and I remembered that my underwear wasn't 
 particularly warm. I got a short, grisly chuckle, 
 anyhow, out of that suit of underwear I had on 
 when I thought about it. It was silk, and it had 
 cost me forty dollars. I had got four suits of it 
 while I was doing my eight months' sober act in 
 Chicago and on velvet, and I didn't know what had 
 become of the other three suits. The grim humor 
 of the blooming idea got a ghastly laugh out of me 
 even as I ploughed along through the snow that 
 black morning in Council Bluffs. 
 
TALE THE SEVENTEENTH 269 
 
 " The first gleam of light I caught sight of came 
 from a couple of oil lamps in a corner rum factory 
 that was just opening up at about five oclock. I 
 didn't have the dime, but I went in, anyhow. 
 There was a young fellow with a good-natured 
 mug starting the ball a-rolling behind the bar. He 
 looked me over when I walked in and over to the 
 stove. At that I guess I must have been a good 
 deal of an apparition to him. I had on a black 
 cutaway coat, worsted trousers, the summer rus- 
 sets and a black derby, and I had about three 
 inches of snow all over me. 
 
 " ' Been doin' a job ? ' the young fellow behind 
 the bar asked me. 
 
 " 'Job ? ' said I, for I didn't understand him ex- 
 actly, being a heap dazed with the cold and things. 
 
 " ' Where did you leave your tools ? ' he vasked, 
 and then I got next to his meaning. I told him I 
 hadn't got around to the cracking game yet. 
 
 " ' You look like you'd been left at the post, at 
 that,' he said consolingly, and then I told him I 
 had just got in. 
 
 " ' Nice place, when you say it fast — the BlufFs 
 — like hell, ain't it ? ' he said, and I soon found 
 out that he was from Chicago. 
 
 " ' Have a few,' he said then, showing up a tall 
 bottle, and when I told him I wasn't buying, he 
 
27° TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 said that he hadn't supposed I was, and passed the 
 bottle up anyhow. Decent duck, wasn't he ? 
 Then he went to the back room and cooked his 
 breakfast of steak, fried eggs and potatoes, and in- 
 vited me to jump at it with him. If any member 
 can name a town where he got better treatment 
 than this that I had chucked at me from the go- 
 ofF at poor old Council Bluffs, it's up to him to 
 spell it out. 
 
 " By the time I got through with that breakfast 
 I had reconsidered my vague idea of going down to 
 the Missouri and hopping in between ice floes. I 
 was about ready to go out and take a walk around 
 — it was then long after daylight — when a cus- 
 tomer came in. He and my friend the barkeep 
 got into a bit of talk in the back room, and then 
 the customer came out and asked me if I wanted a 
 couple of days' work. He was the leading printer 
 of the town, and he had a lot of new calendars that 
 he wanted to have distributed around. I took the 
 job on the spot. He took me up to his printing 
 shop, and picked a pretty good Irish frieze ulster 
 off a hook in his office. 
 
 " ' This is my No. 2 blanket,' he said to me, 
 ' but I don't wear it any. Put it on. If it fits you 
 it's yours, if you want it.' 
 
 " I started out with a bunch of the calendars 
 
TALE THE SEVENTEENTH 271 
 
 under my arm and put in a whacking day's work. 
 The printer gave me two dollars that night. I got 
 a room for a half and a meal for two bits, and had 
 one dollar and twenty-five cents velvet. The rum 
 was cut out, for it was up to me to turn a win-out 
 trick then. I finished the calendar-distributing job 
 the next day, and got another two dollars. The 
 printer asked me what I was going to do. 
 
 " ' Well, I'll tell you,' he said, ' there's one of 
 these here travelling mesmerist fakirs here that I've 
 printed a lot of bills for, and he wants them scat- 
 tered around right. He's going to give his show 
 at the hall here to night. Want to stack up 
 against him ? ' 
 
 " I met the long-bearded mesmerist and made a 
 three dollar arrangement with him to scatter a 
 couple of thousand handbills over the town. 
 When I went to him that night to get my three 
 dollars — it was just before the show was to begin 
 and the hall was rapidly filling up — the mesmerist 
 looked me over carefully as he handed me my pay. 
 Then he told me that his chief assistant had gone 
 ofF to Omaha on a toot and asked me if I thought 
 I could go on and do anything as a mesmerist's 
 helper. Of course I could. 
 
 " ' I'm going to fire that fellow, anyhow,' the 
 mesmerist told me. ' He's a good helper, and, 
 
272 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 confidentially, between you and me, almost as good 
 a con. man as I am myself, but he's getting too 
 chesty, and he's untrustworthy besides. If you 
 pan out any to-night maybe I'll engage you right 
 along. Can you play any stringed instrument ? " 
 
 " I told him that the banjo and guitar were my 
 particular graft, and this delighted him. So I went 
 to one of the dressing-rooms, stripped, and put on 
 the gutta percha undersuit that mesmerists' assist- 
 ants wear to protect their hides from the pins and 
 needles that are stuck into them, and resumed my 
 clothes while the mesmerist sat and gave me direc- 
 tions as to what I was to do. 
 
 " That was a hot night's work, but I don't think 
 I depart from the truth when I state that I made 
 an emphatic hit both with the audience and the 
 mesmerist, who was a pretty smooth old guy. All 
 I had to do was to act dense and obtuse before I 
 was plunged into the hypnotic trance, and then to 
 liven up and do whatever the mesmerist told me 
 to do. The worst end of it was the onions, turnips 
 and candles that I had to eat with apparent relish, 
 and the kerosene oil that I had to swallow with the 
 gusto of a hypnotized man. I also found that my 
 gutta percha suit was vulnerable in two or three 
 places, especially when big jabs from the audience 
 borrowed hatpins from their girls and prodded me 
 
TALE THE SEVENTEENTH 273 
 
 with them. I managed to get through this end of 
 it without giving the snap away, however, and the 
 mesmerist warmed up to me a heap as the show 
 went on. When, after I had finished a candle- 
 chewing performance and he snapped me behind 
 the ear and brought me to, he asked me if I could 
 play any musical instrument, all I had to do was 
 to look yokelish and say no. Then be Svengalied 
 me again and handed me a banjo. I began to rat- 
 tle off ' The Marriage Bells Are A-Ringing,' and 
 this like to have driven the Council Bluffers in the 
 audience wild with enthusiasm. After I had 
 played a repertoire of banjo music under the hyp- 
 notic influence the mesmerist handed me a guitar 
 and asked me if 1 could do anything with that ; 
 this, after he had snapped me out of my banjo- 
 playing trance. I did the sheepish act over again 
 all right, and then, when he had put me into a 
 trance some more and handed me the guitar I 
 went at it and played ' Silvery Waves,' with varia- 
 tions, and then sang ' Down On the Farm,' with 
 accompaniment. Then the mesmerist snapped me 
 awake and I shambled down among the audience 
 and resumed my part of looking opaque and im- 
 becile. 
 
 " After the show the mesmerist beamed upon 
 me, told me that I double discounted his chief as- 
 
274 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 sistant, handed me a five-dollar bill, and told me 
 that I was engaged for the middle Western and 
 Southern circuit. 
 
 " Win out in Council Bluffs ? I left Council 
 Bluffs wearing bells and smoking a two-for-a- 
 quarter cigar, and a month later, when our show 
 was down in Little Rock, the oily old mesmerist 
 fired his treasurer and installed me as house- 
 counter, in addition to my duties as assistant fakir. 
 I was with him for five months, and when I quit 
 him in New Orleans to take a job at sheet-writing 
 with a friend of mine who was making a book out 
 at the Crescent City track I had ;^i,6oo, all the 
 gig-lamps out of hock, and the sassiest gait of any 
 man within fourteen miles of the Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 " Council Bluffs is all right for the variety show 
 knockabout people to abuse, but it's an ace with 
 me." 
 
TALE THE EIGHTEENTH 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No. 21 Hurleth a Nose- 
 gay IN THE Direction of ye Chief Ex- 
 Tank 
 
TALE THE EIGHTEENTH 
 
 WHEREIN EX-TANK NO. 21 HURLETH A NOSEGAY 
 IN THE DIRECTION OF YE CHIEF EX-TANK 
 
 " The last time a hug-ward got me," remarked 
 Ex-Tank No. 18, " was in Milwaukee in the sum- 
 mer of '91. It was my first rap at Milwaukee. 
 Don't rememher how I got to Milwaukee from 
 Chicago, but it must have been by freight, on a 
 boat, for when I was turned loose from the bug- 
 ward I found, on assuming the wardrobe that I had 
 on when they got me, that the whole back of my 
 light cutaway coat was an archery target ; sp I fig- 
 ured it that I must ha' bunked on a coil of greased 
 rope on a boat, for the coat was all right, to the 
 best of my remembrance, the last time I put it on 
 in Chicago. 
 
 " When I came to in the ward I noticed the 
 fellow holding down the next bunk on my right 
 grinning at me out of the tail of his eye. 
 
 " ' Funny, ain't I ? ' said I sarcastically. 
 
 " He was a good-looking chap and he broke into 
 such a chuckle when I spoke that I couldn't help 
 but grin along with him. 
 
 377 
 
278 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 " ' It's this,' said he, stopping his chuclcle for a 
 minute. ' You were solemnly telling me for two 
 hours last night that there was a little devil of a 
 Caliban sitting on the footboard of your bunk and 
 playing the banjo. So when you came to this time 
 I was waiting for you to heave something at the 
 imp,' and he gave me the chuckle again. 
 
 " ' Don't remember ever having seen you before,' 
 I told him. ' How long you been in ? ' 
 
 " ' I pass,' said he. ' Got my head back yester- 
 day morning. The piano-mover in charge of the 
 ward tells me this is Milwaukee. Milwaukee's a 
 new one on me. Chicago's the last I know of it.' 
 
 " That struck me as a coincidence. The whole 
 game after Chicago was a vacuum to me. 
 
 " ' You're from the only town, ain't you ? ' he 
 asked me. It's a queer thing how one New Yorker 
 knowsanotherwherever hesees him. I knew that 
 that fellow was a New Yorker, too, as soon as I 
 heard him talk. 
 
 " ' Yep,' I told him. ' So are you,' and he ac- 
 knowledged it. 
 
 " ' They'll be turning us loose about this after- 
 noon,' he said. ' Where are you going to went ? ' 
 
 " ' Ask me easy ones,' I said to him. 
 
 " ' Don't you worry,' said he. ' We're on vel- 
 vet. I've got three dollars. Ward keeper told me 
 
TALE THE EIGHTEENTH 279 
 
 yesterday they found that on me when I came in.' 
 
 " Here I was up against a townsman with un- 
 told wealth ! 
 
 " ' No more of the red stuff? ' said I, inquiringly. 
 
 " ' Not any,' said he. ' I'm through. The 
 next time I want to see mastodons I'll smoke hop. 
 But no more of the red.' 
 
 " As my bunkie predicted, we were turned loose 
 from the bug-ward that afternoon. I got a rebate 
 of $i.gs •^hat had been found on me. Togged out, 
 my bunkie looked all right. My drawback was the 
 coat with the archery target on the back. I re- 
 placed that by a half-dollar seersucker coat. Then 
 we went and got shaved. When we got outside 
 the barber shop my pal struck an attitude. 
 
 " ' Now, here's the situation,' said he deliber- 
 ately. ' It's now July, and we both want to get 
 back to New York without any telegraphing to the 
 old man or anything like that, by October or No- 
 vember, don't we ? All right. It's a case of work- 
 ing our way back, and not on the first car back of 
 the engine, either. I've got to get back with the 
 bells on — I don't play tag and hi spy with myself 
 in New York, but use the rest of the country for 
 that purpose — and so do you. Can see by the cut 
 of your jib that when ypu go back you want to go 
 back right. Now, neither of us has got the front 
 
28o TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 to con. people here in Milwaukee to give us the 
 kind pf work we can do, and I don't want any 
 more Milwaukee, anyhow. Neither do you. 
 Well, there are two grafts in front of us. We can 
 either take the dough we've gof and run up to Oco- 
 nomowoe or Waukesha, a couple of summer re- 
 sorts I've heard about around this way, and get jobs 
 hashin' — table waiters are always wanted at summer 
 resorts. That 'ud keep us going until we had a 
 think about the next move. Or we can go out to 
 where the circus performance is being given here— 
 here comes the parade now — and strike 'em for 
 some kind of a job, just to get out of town. Name 
 your choice.' 
 
 " ' Circus,' said I. 
 
 " ' You win,' said he, and we got on a car and 
 went out to the circus grounds. Our luck was 
 with us. The circus had got mixed up in a ' Hey, 
 Rube ! ' battle a couple of towns up the line and a 
 lot of broken-headed tentmen had to be left behind. 
 The boss tentman took us on. He saw that we 
 were both big men and he knew that he'd get work 
 out of us. He did. You bet he did. I had done 
 my quota of win-outs before that, but for a hard 
 game that was the limit. But I thought afterward, 
 and so did my pal, that it was the best thing that 
 could have happened to us. We had to work like 
 
TALE THE EIGHTEENTH 281 
 
 dogs, but the work put us on our feet physically 
 after the damidiocy that had landed us in the Mil- 
 waukee bug- ward. Inside of a week after we joined 
 the show we were both as strong as grizzlies and 
 knocking the spots off every layout that came be- 
 fore us in the grub tent. In Madison I ran into a 
 piece pf luck. The show was all set and I was 
 snoozing under a flap while the afternoon crowd 
 came in, when a lot of yelling and excitement woke 
 me up. I saw a man running when I got on my 
 feet and a crowd after him. The man being pur- 
 sued was a pickpocket and he had just pinched a 
 farmer's wallet. I was pretty good at the cross- 
 country game when I was at school back this way 
 and I lit out after the pickpocket. He was good 
 himself, but I wore him down before he had gone 
 three-quarters of a mile. He was all out and so I 
 had no trouble nabbing him. He tried to throw 
 the wallet away without my seeing him, but I got 
 it. By that time the cops were up to us and the 
 farmer whose roll had been pinched. The old jay 
 was so glad to get his money back that he peeled 
 fifty dollars ofF the big roll inside the pocketbook 
 and handed it to me. 
 
 " ' We're pretty strong to work,' I said to my 
 pal when I showed him the fifty dollars. 
 
 " ' We can go into business at an easy graft,' he 
 
282 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 replied. ' He certainly had a head on him. The 
 pink lemonade duck had to go to a hospital this 
 morning with the rheumatism. Buy him out and 
 we'll run the peanut and pink lemonade business 
 for the show.' 
 
 " I took his tip, chased to the hospital, saw the 
 pink lemonade man and bought his layout for the 
 fifty dollars. The boss tentman was sore about our 
 passing up our jobs with him, but we had somehow 
 or another made a hit with him and he let us go 
 after a few kicks. I peddled the lemonade and the 
 peanuts from behind the stand in the menagerie 
 tent and my pal carried the lemonade around the 
 tent when the show was on. Even after coughing 
 up a big bunch of our daily rake-ofF to the circus 
 proprietor for the privilege we made good money. 
 I shared the take-in equally with my pal. Both 
 of us actually enjoyed the work. It was pretty hot 
 one night in Peoria, three weeks after we joined 
 the show. 
 
 "'Let's just have one proper drink and then 
 turn in,' said I to my pardner. The show was 
 going to exhibit another day in Peoria. 
 
 " ' Just what I was thinking,' said he, and we 
 did. I had about ;^I20 in my clothes and he had 
 seventy or eighty dollars. That was the finish of 
 our peanut and pink lemonade business- Three 
 
TALE THE EIGHTEENTH 283 
 
 days later, when we woke up in Chicago, we tele- 
 graphed to the circus proprietor in East St. Louis 
 about it, and he wired us this reply ; 
 
 " ' You're scratched. Another man has the 
 privilege.' 
 
 " By that time we had about thirty dollars left 
 between us. 
 
 " ' We'll cut out the rum and take a Turkish 
 bath,' said my pardner when the telegram told us 
 that we were out of business. "Then we'll go 
 into the advertising stereopticon business.' 
 
 "That was a new proposition on me, but by 
 that time I had a heap of respect for my pal's 
 acumen during his lucid intervals. When we 
 were spread out on the drying couches in the 
 Turkish bath layout he opened up. 
 
 " ' Among the games which haven't been worked 
 to a finish in this town,' said he, ' are the night 
 pictures on the big boards. I don't know why, 
 but they haven't. I was sober in this town for 
 fully three nights a few months ago, and was all 
 over the downtown region, and I didn't see a single 
 advertising stereopticon working. I'm going to 
 start a plant. We've got about twenty-five dollars, 
 and that'll keep us going until we get this thing 
 running. We've got to spend about a week in 
 conning big merchants to give us their advertising, 
 
284 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 and this time we've got front enough to be able to 
 show up before them and give 'em talks. When 
 we get enough advertising to make a showing, we 
 can take our contracts to the carpenter and the 
 painter, and they'll put up three big boards for us 
 on the tops of whatever buildings we get the 
 privilege of using. Likewise, the contracts'll 
 stand off the stereopticon people until the money 
 begins to come in, which will be, in part, when we 
 get the plant rigged and in order. See ? ' 
 
 '"Stop foohng with that hop-toi,' I told him. 
 'This thing looks too easy.' 
 
 " Nevertheless, I didn't really see any reason 
 why the thing shouldn't go through. We got 
 a boarding-house when we left the Turkish bath, 
 and then, we both suddenly remembered that we 
 each had in our clothes a bunch of pawn tickets on 
 stuff that we had soaked in Chicago before we had 
 got to Milwaukee. We thought the tickets could 
 be squeezed some and we were right. He got 
 thirty dollars more on his tickets and I squeezed 
 mine for forty dollars. 
 
 '"Let's cut now for New York,' I said to him. 
 ' We've got the price.' 
 
 " ' Not on your life,' said he. ' I'm going to 
 wear all the stuff these tickets call for when I get 
 into New York,' 
 
TALE THE EIGHTEENTH 285 
 
 " The next day we took separate routes to get 
 stereopticon advertising. We found it something 
 easy. It was a novelty in Chicago then, and we 
 didn't get one turn-down out of five advertisers 
 we struck. Inside of a week we had as much 
 stuff as we could handle on three boards. Then 
 we got the privilege to erect boards and working 
 gear on three of the most prominent buildings in 
 downtown Chicago for a small percentage of the 
 rake-off, and we only had to flash our contracts on 
 the stereopticon people to get three machines and 
 the men to manipulate them. 
 
 "We made money hand over fist, got all the 
 gig-lamps out of hock, and were settling down to 
 the affluence of bloated bondholders, all in Ifess 
 than three weeks, when a big wind came up and 
 blew all three of our boards down and wrecked 
 the stereopticons, which we had started to pay for. 
 We were fully ;^30o to the good, outside of the 
 jewellry we'd redeemed, when this happened. 
 
 " Come on, let's go to New York,' said my 
 pardner when we were surveying the wrecks. I 
 agreed, and with all kinds of a front, money and 
 all the other looks of fair-haired boys — just as we 
 intended to be before we started for New York — 
 we took the train. We went by way of Dfetfoit, 
 in a drawing-room car. I don't know how it was 
 
286 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 that we didn't happen to get by Detroit, but we 
 didn't. We only took a few on the train, but we 
 woke up in the Russell House in Detroit for all 
 that. We had gone to sleep in the same room 
 with our plug hats on. We woke up about the 
 same time. We both reached for the button 
 simultaneously. Well, it was a pretty swift week 
 after that in Detroit, but it didn't cost us more than 
 ;^200, so that when we decided to call it off we 
 still had ;^ioo left, nothing in hock and through 
 tickets to New York. 
 
 "'A hundred's not enough to land in New 
 York with,' said my pardner. ' We'll have to pick 
 up a few more here.' 
 
 " ' How we going to do it ? ' I asked him. 
 
 " ' Well,' he said, ' when I lost you the other 
 night I got to talking with a busted aeronaut down 
 at the bar. He's got a big balloon, but he isn't 
 good for the price to buy gas to fill it. I've got 
 his address. The Michigan State Fair's going to 
 happen here next week. I'm going to rent that 
 balloon, fill 'er up with gas, tie 'er to a stake out 
 on the fair grounds, have this busted high-flyer 
 run the thing for wages and ride the hayseeds in a 
 captive balloon for a quarter a head. It's a mint. 
 The fair'U last a week and we'll clear up fifty 
 dollars a day, easy. Then we can roll into New 
 
TALE THE EIGHTEENTH 287 
 
 York and tell 'em that we've just been away for a 
 few months buying railroads out West.' 
 
 "That went through, too, just as he said it 
 would. Instead, however, of cleaning up fifty 
 dollars a day on a game, we pulled down close to 
 ;^iOO a day, after paying the poor devil of an 
 aeronaut liberally for his end of it. We each had 
 ;^200 and over in our clothes when, at the wind-up 
 of the State fair, w.e started for the station to take 
 the New York express. On the way down my 
 pal, passing by a big gin mill, said to me : ' Come 
 on in.' 
 
 "I was going to demur, and demur hard, but 
 he gave me a queer look out of the corners of his 
 eyes. 
 
 " ' Let's have a couple of quart bottles of wine,' 
 said he to the waiter when we sat down at a 
 table. 
 
 " The waiter brought them. 
 
 " ' I just want to give this stuff the laugh for 
 once,' said he, grasping one of the bottles by the 
 base of it. ' It has been giving me the merry hoot 
 for a long time now. It has been man-handling 
 and punishing me for a good twelve years. It has 
 been luring me with a cheap siren song and then 
 pouncing on me with mirthful yelps of victory. 
 Well, here's where I pass it up, not for a while, 
 
288 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 but until hell freezes over,' and he deliberately 
 knocked the neck off the bottle and permitted the 
 upturned contents to race and splutter into the 
 spitoon at his side. 
 
 " He nodded to me to follow suit, and I did. I 
 was dead willing, for I had some memories, too. 
 
 "That's how I got from a bug-ward in Mil- 
 waukee to New York in the summer and fall of 
 '91, and all the verification I need for the narrative 
 is the blushing eountenance of our respected Chief 
 Ex-Tank, who was — and is — ffly pardner." 
 
 The Chief Ex-Tank rose and bowed amid 
 cheers and the meeting adjourned. 
 
tALE THE NINETEENTH 
 
 In Which Ex-Tank No. i i Dwells Upon the 
 Misdirected Zeal of Ye Chicago Sleuth 
 
TALE THE NINETEENTH 
 
 IN WHICH EX-TANK NO. 1 1 DWELLS UPON THE MIS- 
 DIRECTED ZEAL OF YE CHICAGO SLEUTH 
 
 "Anyhow, I needed one so bad that morning," 
 said Ex-Tank No. ii of the Harlem Club of For- 
 mer Alcoholic Degenerates, " that I got to talking 
 to myself about how bad I needed it. 
 
 " ' It boots not,' said I to myself, as I walked 
 along Michigan avenue about seven o'clock on a 
 hot sunshiny morning — the World's Fair was only 
 a couple of months old then ; ' it doesn't effect 
 the situation at all that I haven't the price of the 
 pint that I need. I'm going to have the pint any- 
 how. The price is the sordid, squalid end of it, 
 anyway. When a man's in a desert and comes to 
 a spring when he's about to cash in for the want 
 of a drink, does he dig into his clothes to see if 
 he's got the price.' Nay, forsooth. I'm in a 
 desert. I won't dig, because I know where I 
 stand without digging. Nevertheless, I'll have the 
 pint.' 
 
 " The night before I had blown in my last 
 291 
 
292 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 eighteen dollars on the Midway. The eighteen 
 dollars was the skeleton of the ^800 with which I 
 had struck Chicago two weeks before. It doesn't 
 make any difference where the other ^782 went. 
 Here I was on Michigan avenue, at broad day- 
 light, under the hot early morning sun, after having 
 been rudely awakened from a peaceful slumber in 
 the men's waiting-room of the Illinois Central 
 Railroad, minus the price of the pint which I so 
 imperatively required, minus the price even of one 
 of the Chicago washtubs filled with the malt prod- 
 uct. I wore a light grey frock suit, with a top 
 hat to match. The remainder of my wardrobe 
 was in a State street hotel, and subject to redemp- 
 tion only upon the payment of heavy salvage. 
 
 " ' I might,' I reflected, ■• go down the bay and 
 do the reliever act with this raiment, that is to say, 
 exchange it for less presumptuous and insistent ap- 
 parel, and achieve the necessary two dollars for the 
 pint into the bargain. But that would necessitate 
 a walk of some distance, and I decline to walk. I 
 want the pint right now.' 
 
 " Wherefore, I walked into the bar of one of the 
 water-front caravansaries. The spick-and-span 
 bartender was just opening up. I approached the 
 bar, patting my vest affectionately and luxuriously. 
 
 " ' Maurice — ' I began. 
 
TALE THE NINETEENTH 293 
 
 " ' How'd'je guess it ? ' the barkeep asked me. 
 
 " ' Maurice,' said I, ponderously, ' have you got 
 a pint of the Widdy, dry, in cold storage, not on 
 ice, but carefully tucked away in the frappe com- 
 partment ? ' 
 
 " ' It is, yes,' said the barkeep. ' You must've 
 spent the night over the dope sheets. That's two 
 winners you've picked already.' 
 
 " ' The pint is mine,' said I. ' Decant it.' 
 
 " Say, who was the thirsty guy who wrote about 
 blushful hippocrene ? He must have been jostled 
 awake in the men's waiting-room of the Illinois 
 Central Railroad in Chicago, at seven o'clock on a 
 hot, sunshiny morning, after two weeks of the 
 mazarine daze, minus the price; otherwise he 
 couldn't have been so wise to the meaning of a 
 thirst. That pint marked an epoch in my career. 
 Never, before or since — oh, well, I wake up in the 
 middle of the night, yet, and catch the bouquet of 
 that pint. 
 
 " ' You have the mate to this one, too, haven't 
 you, Maurice ? ' I asked the barkeep. 
 
 " ' The whole family,' said he, and he opened 
 me another pint. It was great, that pint, too, but 
 the first was the ever-memorable baby. 
 
 " ' Well,' said I to myself, after I'd got away 
 with the last of the number two pint, ' here's where 
 
294 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 I get the bung starter or the arm clutch. But it 
 was worth the money.' 
 
 " ' Just charge it up to Hogan,' said I, jauntily, 
 to the barkeep. ' Put the check on ice.' 
 
 " ' Sure,' said • the barkeep, and then I needed 
 digitalis. I'd been fixing to dodge beneath the 
 bar, and he said 'Sure.' I looked him in the 
 eye for a minute. I couldn't exactly under- 
 stand it. 
 
 " ' What for th' rubberin' ? ' he asked me. 
 
 " ' Your complaisancy overwhelms me,' said I, 
 ' How do you know you'll ever shake hands with 
 that four dollars ? ' 
 
 " ' Oh, you've bought enough basketfuls here, 
 pal, to make you good for the fixtures if you want 
 'em,' said the barkeep. ' What's the matter ; were 
 you sitting into an all-kitty game last night ? ' 
 
 "Then I started out, refreshed, but wondering 
 much. I hadn't got out the hotel door before 
 I felt a gentle tap on my left shoulder. I wheeled 
 around and gazed into the lamps of a cool-looking 
 chap. 
 
 " ' Hello, Burnham,' said he. ' Trying to bluff 
 it out, hey .? Where were you keeping yourself 
 yesterday ? I tried all the covers, but you were 
 nix. Of course you don't know anything about 
 the job, hey, chum .? But it had all your thumb- 
 
TALE THE NINETEENTH 295 
 
 prints, at that. I guess you were there or there- 
 abouts. Come on around, and I'll talk to you.' 
 
 " ' Say,' said I to the cool-looking duck, ' you 
 need rest and quiet. Burnham ? Is that the first 
 name you thought of? ' 
 
 " ' Ho ! you're springing American dialect, hey, 
 George ? Cut out your English drawl, I see. 
 Well, you won't do. Come on, now. Don't try 
 to mix me. I'm too educated.' 
 
 " I was a bit warm by this time. 
 
 " ' Look here, my friend,' said I, ' what the 
 devil are you talking about, and who the devil do 
 you take me for ? ' 
 
 " Darned if he didn't put his hands to his sides 
 and holler. I started to walk away in disgust. 
 Then I felt a grip on my right arm that would have 
 hauled an ice wagon. 
 
 " ' Oh, no, Georgy, don't go away,' said the 
 cool-looking proposition. ' It's too early in the 
 morning to play tag, anyhow. Come on around, 
 and you can begin to patch up your alibi when we 
 get there.' 
 
 " Well, ten minutes later I was sitting on a bench 
 in a cell at the Harrison Street Station, and spend- 
 ing mentally the ;^I00,000 or so that I was going 
 to sue the city of Chicago to get for false imprison- 
 ment. I was down on the books of the Harrison 
 
296 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 Street Station as George Burnham, English second- 
 story man, charged with pinching ;^4,ooo worth of 
 diamonds and other precious stones at a swell 
 Prairie avenue plant, a couple of evenings before, 
 while the family were at dinner. 
 
 " ' But you and this gum-shoe sleuth of yours 
 are up in the air,' I said to the desk sergeant when 
 I was hauled into the station. ' You're ballooning 
 without ballast. I'm no George Burnham, nor 
 George anything else. I'm a New York idiot who 
 came out here to see the World's Fair. The only 
 thing I know about second-story men is what Mr. 
 Byrnes of our little old town published on that sub- 
 ject in his book. I don't like to have people get 
 so giddy with me.' 
 
 " ' Pretty good switch he's made in his accent, 
 hey, sergeant ? ' the detective asked the sergeant. 
 ' Got it down pretty pat, hasn't he ? But you 
 won't do, George,' addressing me. ' I'll just hunt 
 through you some and show you up to yourself.' 
 
 "Then he searched me. I didn't have a scrap 
 of paper in my clothes, nor anything else. 
 
 " ' Did a strip act, and thought you'd bluff it out, 
 eh, George ? ' said the detective, amiably. ' Oh, 
 well, it was your job, all O. K., and you're too 
 good an old lag not to be next to the fact that I 
 can hitch it on to you.' 
 
TALE THE NINETEENTH 297 
 
 " When I protested to the sergeant that my ar- 
 rest was an outrage, and only got the hoot, I knew 
 there was no use trying to make a rough-house of 
 it, with a whole brigade of Swede cops sleeping up- 
 stairs. So I decided to take it as it came. I was 
 sleepy, anyhow, and I thought I might as well take 
 a little nap in a cell as anywhere else. So I sat on 
 the bench in the cell for a while, wondering what 
 New York lawyer I'd send for to enter suit against 
 Cook county for unjustifiable pinching, when I 
 rolled over and went to sleep. 
 
 " I don't know how long I slept, but it must 
 have been quite a while. I woke up suddenly to 
 the music of hoarse laughter, and there was my 
 doppelganger standing before me, grinning, with 
 the desk sergeant and the sleuth who had arrested 
 me right behind him, chuckling. 
 
 " ' Well, if they ain't ringers for each other you; 
 can give me the boots,' the detective was saying,, 
 and they looked at each other wonderingly. They 
 looked at each other only about a sixteenth of a 
 second, but it was long enough. The man who 
 looked like me — his resemblance to me honestly 
 was something scandalous, and he had my make-up 
 to a T — , frock grey suit, top hat to match, and 
 all, the man who looked like me slipped off his 
 right cufF with the quickness of thought and let it 
 
298 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 fall gently into my hat, that was lying, bottom up, 
 on the bench beside me. He kept right on grin- 
 ning at me all the time. Neither of the officers 
 saw the move he made with the cufF. 
 
 " ' Blimed 'f th' cove don't tike after me,' said 
 Mr. George Burnham, for he was George, all 
 right. ' Only he cawn't be called so bloomin' 
 good-lookin' as I am.' 
 
 " The desk-sergeant turned me loose with a 
 whole lot of apologies then and there. 
 
 " ' Case of mistaken identity, sir,' he said, ' that 
 would fool the best of us ; most remarkable case of 
 ringers I ever saw in my whole service. Trust 
 you're not going to make a ruction of it ? ' 
 
 " ' Well,' I told him, ' I could use a million dol- 
 lars or so just now, and this town's as good to get 
 it out of as any other.' 
 
 " Then I picked up my grey top hat, with Mr. 
 George Burnham's cufF still in it, put it on my 
 head, and walked out. There's nothing doing in 
 the way of damages for false imprisonment out in 
 Chicago, for all the citizens are pinched out there 
 at least once in their lives on suspicion of being 
 footpads, and I knew that I'd have to take my sore- 
 ness out in growling to myself for being yanked 
 into a cell for a second-story man. But if I hadn't 
 made some such a bluff to the sergeant and the de- 
 
TALE THE NINETEENTH 299 
 
 tectlve they might have thought I was a crook, 
 sure enough. 
 
 " It was night when I was turned loose, and I 
 walked around aimlessly, feeling pretty hollow and 
 parched. It was up to me to get out of Chicago 
 and back to New York some old way. I paddled 
 around, keeping awake with diiEculty, on the streets 
 of Chicago all that night, and the next morning I 
 got a job as a barker on South State street. A 
 smooth geezer from this little place was exhibiting 
 a very much altogether painting of ' Fatima, the 
 Odalisque,' and I met up with him in front of the 
 shack where he was showing the picture for a 
 quarter a throw. I had certain evidences of being 
 up against it printed on me, and he engaged me to 
 bark for the painting at the rate of ten dollars per 
 week, with two dollars in advance for immediate 
 needs. All I had to do was to walk up and down 
 in front of the place, say ' See the beauteous Fatima 
 inside,' in a deep bass voice, every three seconds, 
 and point inside with a bamboo cane. Nice graft, 
 eh ? But I needed the price of a scalped ticket 
 to New York, and I'd have carried the hod to 
 get it. 
 
 " I hadn't had my hat off since leaving the Har- 
 rison Street station, but it was pretty warm work 
 barking for Fatima, and after I'd been on duty for 
 
300 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 an hour or so I reached up and pulled ofF my lid 
 so's I could mop my forehead. As I pulled off the 
 hat, Mr. George Burnham's cufF, that I had for- 
 gotten all about, fell to the sidewalk. I picked it 
 up, and saw that it had a pencilled scrawl on it, 
 that read : 
 
 " ' Tell Tuck Rigley, No. , Custom House 
 
 Place, that the stufF is salted as usual. G. B.' 
 
 " ' Well,' said I to myself, ' I may get down to 
 barking for Fatima, but I guess I can get along 
 without knowing Tuck Rigley, whatever the dick- 
 ens kind of a crook he may be ; and if I gave him 
 this I'd be an accessory after the fact in the sec- 
 ond story game myself.' 
 
 " Then I rammed the cuff into my pocket and 
 went on telling 'em what a bird Fatima, inside, 
 was. Ten minutes later a pretty well-togged chap 
 came along, swinging a cane, and I noticed that 
 when he got his eyes on me he started visibly, and 
 then walked around me and took me in from vari- 
 ous points of view. 
 
 " ' You must like me. Bill,' said I, and he 
 grinned when he heard my voice, which he'd only 
 heard before in basso praise of the beauties of 
 Fatima. 
 
 " ' Your th' spit o' one o' me pals, that's all,' 
 said the chap with a cockney burr in his speech. 
 
TALE THE NINETEENTH 301 
 
 " ' Who ? George Burnhatn ? ' I asked him. 
 
 " He gave me the eye then for fair. 
 
 " ' George,' said I, ' if he's the one you mean, is 
 cooling off at the Harrison Street station.' 
 
 '"So I heard,' said the chap, still eyeing me 
 shrewdly. There's no doubt in life that he thought 
 me a crook. 
 
 " ' D'ye happen to know a friend of his named 
 Rigley — Tuck Rigley ? ' I asked him, just out of 
 curiosity. 
 
 '"That's me,' said the fellow. 'Say, what's 
 your lay ? ' he inquired, coming closer to me. 
 
 "A sudden impulse guided my hand into my 
 pocket, and I pulled out the cufF with the writing 
 on it and handed it to Rigley, telling him in a few 
 words how I happened to get it. The thing was 
 addressed to the man, I figured, and it wasn't par- 
 ticularly up to me to withhold it from him. 
 
 " ' Blow me if you ain't all right,' said Mr. Rig- 
 ley, ' and you'll get your bit for this.' 
 
 " ' Say, look-a-here,' I started to say to him, ' I 
 want you to understand that I'm not — ' but 
 Mr. Rigley had by that time stuffed the cufF into 
 his pocket and was tramping down the street as 
 fast as his legs would carry him, swinging his cane 
 jauntily. 
 
 " Then I resumed my barking for Fatima, feel- 
 
302 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 ing somehow or another, as if my picture ought to 
 be in the Rogues' Gallery if it wasn't. 
 
 "I was still hoarsely praising Fatima at five 
 o'clock on that sizzling hot afternoon when a 
 messenger boy on a bike rode up to the curb and 
 dismounted. Then he took an envelope out of his 
 cap and handed it to me. 
 
 « ' What's this ? ' I asked him. 
 
 " ' Gentleman down at the corner of Dearborn 
 and Madison streets told me to give it to you,' said 
 the messenger. 
 
 " ' But it's got no name on it,' said I. 
 
 " ' No,' said the boy, ' but he told me what you 
 looked like.' 
 
 " I opened the envelope. A nice, new ^500 bill 
 fell out first, and then a scrawl on a telegraph 
 blank. 
 
 " ' Here's your bit,' the scrawl read. ' I found 
 the plant, fenced it, and have left enough behind 
 for George's lawyer. They're after me, and I'm 
 drilling away from this. T. R.' 
 " " Well, there was no way of sending it back, 
 was there ? He was gone. So was I, three hours 
 later. But every time I read of a second-story- 
 man I shudder guiltily, and can feel a hefty paw on 
 my shoulder." 
 
TALE THE TWENTIETH 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No. 3 Endeavoreth to 
 Convey an Idea of the Misery of Awak- 
 ening IN YE Bug- Ward 
 
TALE THE TWENTIETH 
 
 WHEREIN EX-TANK NO. 3 ENDEAVORETH TO CON- 
 VEY AN IDEA OF THE MISERY OF AWAKENING 
 IN YE BUG-WARD 
 
 " One morning I turned over drowsily and woke 
 up in a bug-ward that I couldn't exactly place," 
 said Ex-Tank No. 3, the Secretary of the Harlem 
 Club of Former Alcoholic Degenerates. " Before 
 I had a chance to look around and try to study the 
 thing out, I found myself fixed by the gaze of the 
 man in the bunk on my right. He was resting on 
 his left side, with his head in his hand, and he was 
 regarding me with a curious grin. Maybe it was 
 his steady gaze that woke me up ; I've often seen 
 people awakened out of a sound sleep that way. 
 This man in the bunk on my right had a big, good- 
 natured, smooth-shaven face and twinkling Irish 
 eyes. His grin deepened when he saw that I was 
 awake. I wasn't feeling cheerful. 
 
 " ' Glad situation, ain't it ? ' said I, sarcastically. 
 
 " ' Kind o',' he replied, still grinning. 
 
 " I looked around the bug-ward wonderingly. 
 
 " ' Is it a new one on you ? ' asked the good-na- 
 305 
 
3o6 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 tured chap in the bunk on my right. ' If it isn't, 
 put me next to where it is, what town it's in, and 
 a little stuff like that.' 
 
 "'Search me,' said I. 'I am in-no-cent. Don't 
 you remember breaking in ? ' 
 
 " ' Nope,' said the man with the twinkling Irish 
 eyes. ' Don't remember anything. If this zebra- 
 shack's in Chicago, then it's one that I've missed. 
 Don't you recall when you butted in here ? ' 
 
 " ' Nay, belike^ sorry the day,' said I. 
 
 " ' Just touch that button there and we'll have a 
 couple of those things with cherries in 'em,' said 
 my bunkmate facetiously. 
 
 " ' Is Chicago the last you remember ef it ? ' I 
 asked him. 
 
 " ' Yep,' said he. ' Last thing I remember bie- 
 fore I got into this hop-trance was shaking dice for 
 pints at the Auditorium bar. This outfit may be 
 in Chicago, for all I know. Don't remember leav- 
 ing Chicago, anyhow.' 
 
 " ' Same here,' said I. ' Last thing that stands 
 out in my recollection is matching quarters far 
 high-balls in the House of David.' 
 
 "Just then a big bruiser of an Irish attendant 
 sauntered by. 
 
 " ' Hey, there, Hugo,' said the man in the bunk 
 on my right, calling after the Mulligan attendant, 
 
TALE THE TWENTIETH 307 
 
 ' tip us off on the name of the cave and the town 
 it's in, will you ? We're twisted.' 
 
 " ' Oh, yees two Injuns has come to, has yees ? ' 
 said the ward man, wheeling around and walking 
 up to our bunks. ' This is th' dizzy-ward o' th' 
 Moonisippal Hoshpit'l o' St. Paulj if yees wants t' 
 know, an' th' divil's own pair yees are, t' say th' 
 laste.' 
 
 " ' St. Paul, hey ? ' said the man in the bunk on 
 my right, wonderingly. 'Now, how the devil did I 
 get to St. Paul, I'd like to know ? ' 
 
 '"Hand me an easy one,' said I. 'The same 
 one's got me going about how I did it myself.' 
 
 " ' How long have I been in here, Mike ? * 
 asked my bunkmate of the wardman. 
 
 '"Two days, ye and yees pardner,' said the 
 Mulligan, indicating me with a nod of his head 
 when he said ' pardner.' 
 
 " ' Why, did the two of us land here in a bunch ? 
 Was it a dead heat ? ' asked my bunkmate. 
 
 " ' Yees finished roight on th' wire t'gither,' said 
 the wardman. ' Yees came here in a cab t'gither, 
 an' no cop along wid yees. Yees must ha' made 
 up yees moinds at wan an' th' same toime t' bale 
 yeezselves out.' 
 
 "Then the Mulligan wardman went along 
 about his business. 
 
3o8 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 "'So we landed here linked-arms,' said my 
 bunkmate. ' Queer deal, ain't it ? ' 
 
 " ' May have met on the train,' said I. ' May 
 have run into each other in Chicago, for that mat- 
 ter. The game now's to get out.' 
 
 " ' They won't stand for it,' said my bunkmate. 
 ' They'll hang on to us for a week, anyway.' 
 
 "Just then the young doctor in charge of the 
 ward came in. Seeing us awake and engaged in 
 conversation, he walked over to our bunks. 
 
 " ' Oh, you two have got around, have you ? ' 
 said the young doctor. ' How do you both feel ? ' 
 
 "'Well, speaking for myself, I've got a hunch 
 to go home,' replied my bunkmate. 
 ' ' The same dog's biting me,' said I. 
 ■ ' Impossible ! ' said the young doctor. ' You're 
 both in a condition of prostration. If I were to 
 turn you loose now, you'd both be back here be- 
 fore night.' 
 
 " ' Well, you don't want to stand to go broke on 
 that proposition,' said the man in the right-hand 
 bunk. ' Henceforth and forever I adjure the 
 Flagon.' 
 
 " ' I won't take a drink out of a Pompeiian tear- 
 jar as long as I live,' said I. 
 
 " ' Oh, I've heard that kind of stufF before,' said 
 the young doctor, jauntily. ' If I signed your re- 
 
 C( ( 
 
TALE THE TWENTIETH 309 
 
 lease, the both of you'd be spiflicated by noon, and 
 then when you came back the Super would hound 
 me for letting you go.' 
 
 " Well, we both started in to con that young 
 man, and we make it stick. 
 
 " ' You both belong in Chicago, you say ? ' asked 
 the young doctor, yieldingly. ' Well, that's a long 
 walk from St. Paul. I think there were seventeen 
 cents between you when you got in.' 
 
 " ' Touched, all right,' said my bunkmate and I, 
 together. 
 
 "Well, anyhow, we got out all right by noon. 
 When I saw my bunkmate togged out he proved 
 to be dressy and a good-looker. I had a front of 
 my own at that. The young doctor had under- 
 estimated our joint wealth. I had eighty-five cents 
 in change, and my bunkmate had twenty-eight 
 cents. I blew him ofF to an ammonia cocktail at 
 the first drug store we came to, and then said he : 
 
 " ' How about the ride to Chicago ? ' 
 
 " ' Lemme have a pencil and I'll try a scheme,' 
 said I, and we went to the writing-room of a hotel. 
 I dug for an hour, and at the end of that time I'd 
 written a rollicking, rolling song called ' Riding on 
 the C, M. & St. P.' It set forth attractively the 
 advantages of travelling on that line of railroad. I 
 showed it to my pal, and hummed it over for him. 
 
310 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 Then we hummed it together. Then we took it 
 to the St. Paul agent of the C, M. & St. P. 
 
 " ' Here,' said I to the agent, ' is the chance of 
 your life to be made general manager of your 
 line.' 
 
 " Then, my pal and I lined up together and sang 
 ' Riding on the C, M. & St. P.' for the agent. 
 
 " ' Now, all you've got to do, in order to make 
 such a hit with the board of directors that they 
 can't hold you down,' said I to the agent, ' is to 
 have, say, 25,000 copies of this song printed and 
 distributed free, as advertising matter. That'll 
 enable the road to declare an extra three per cent, 
 dividend inside of a month, and you'll be hailed 
 and applauded by the stockholders as a genius. 
 You can tell them you wrote the song yourself. 
 All this fame and glory and advancement to accrue 
 to you for two little passes over your line from here 
 to Chicago. See ? Great idea, hey ? ' 
 
 "The agent handed us the polaric eye, and we 
 faded out into the nippy, frosty street. 
 
 " I changed the song a bit so's to adapt it to an- 
 other road that ran to Chicago, and we took it to 
 the agent of that line and hummed it for him. He, 
 too, passed us the Antarctic stare, and we found 
 ourselves out in the eager air. 
 
 " We went to the barber shop to get shaved and 
 
TALE THE TWENTIETH 311 
 
 think it over. It was a hotel barber shop. The 
 man who had the chair next to mine was beefing 
 to his barber about the lack of shorthand and type- 
 writing facilities around the hotel. 
 
 "'It's a jay outfit, right,' he was saying, 'I've 
 got twenty letters to get ofF in the next mail, and 
 not a darned key-puncher around the place.' 
 
 " I cut in right there. 
 
 "'You can dictate 'em to me,' I said to the 
 man, ' and I'll dig up a machine somewhere and 
 transcribe the notes.' 
 
 " ' I'll go you,' said the man, and when I had my 
 shave I went up to the writing-room within, and 
 he dictated his letters to me. I went to a type- 
 writer agency, and, on pretext of trying the differ- 
 ent machines, ran off the letters in an hour, telling 
 them that I'd reserve decision as to which machine 
 I'd select. The man I did the work for handed 
 me a ten-dollar note, which I showed gloatingly to 
 my pal, who was waiting for me. 
 
 " ' Well,' said he, ' it's not up to you to do all 
 of the hustling. I guess I'd better run out and 
 tackle a turn at carrying the hod.' 
 
 " ' Wait'U I run this button up to a billion,' I 
 said. 'You stay here in the writing-room and 
 keep warm.' 
 
 " I noticed my ex-bunkmate of the bug-ward 
 
312 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 looking at me shrewdly out of the tall of his eye, 
 and I was rather tickled to have a chance to ex- 
 hibit my hustling abilities before him. 
 
 '"You've done some winning-out before, chum,' 
 said he, eyeing me craftily. 
 
 " Henry Irving was playing in St. Paul that 
 night. I hustled down to the box office. There 
 was a line in front of the window about a block 
 long. I skinned up the line, beginning at the rear, 
 and quietly suggested to a lot of the swell ducks 
 that were shivering and stamping their feet — some 
 of 'em had been in line for hours — that I could 
 get 'em their seats inside of five minutes for a 
 bonus. I picked up fourteen customers. I made 
 a list of the number each wanted, and where, and 
 they handed me their money freely. I hustled into 
 the box office and tackled the manager. 
 
 " ' I'm the Board of Aldermen's messenger,' 
 said I to him, ' and they've sent me down with a 
 list of the seats they want. Can you dig 'em up 
 before the good ones are all gone ? ' 
 
 " It went with a whoop. The manager was 
 only too tickled to oblige the Board of Aldermen. 
 I got the seats, turned 'em over to my people in 
 the line, and yanked out two dollars on each deal, 
 which made twenty-eight dollars. That made me 
 thirty-eight to the good altogether. 
 
TALE THE TWENTIETH 313 
 
 " I could see that there weren't going to be half 
 enough seats for the people who wanted to see the 
 Irving show, and so, with the thirty-eight dollars I 
 hustled back to the box office and shot one into the 
 manager about being delegated by the City Hall 
 employees to get them seats, too. He sort o' 
 passed me the searching look then, and I prepared 
 to edge out backward when I saw him making a 
 move toward the telephone. But he reconsidered 
 it, and gave me nineteen good balcony seats for 
 two dollars per. I took 'em to where my ex- 
 bunkmate was waiting for me and told him of the 
 wealth iti prospect. 
 
 " ' It's too good to go through,' said he. 
 ' You'll fall out of bed and bump your head in a 
 minute.' 
 
 "Well, at four o'clock that afternoon the box- 
 office people turned the box on the big line of 
 people still standing in front, waiting for a chance 
 to buy tickets, and the ' No More Seats ' sign was 
 hung out. I was right there at the time, and it 
 was like taking a candy cane from an infant to 
 pass up and down the line and offer to purvey my 
 two dollar balcony seats to the disappointed bunch 
 for five dollars a throw. They ate 'em up at that 
 figure, and I cleaned up fifty-seven dollars on the 
 job. That made me ninety-five dollars strong, and 
 
314 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 Chicago was right across the street for my ex- 
 bunkmate and me. 
 
 "I flashed the roll on him in the writing-room 
 of the hotel where he'd been waiting just when the 
 shades of early dusk were falling. 
 
 " ' We'll take a mild eat,' said I, ' get in a night's 
 sleep, and join the varnished-car-caravan Chicago- 
 ward to-morrow morning. When we get to Chi- 
 cago we can respectively find out why and how we 
 ever left there.' 
 
 " ' Say,' said my bunkmate of the bug-ward 
 when we were at the table in the hotel supper room, 
 ' what I want to know is. Where do I cut into that 
 wad you've picked up so scientifically ? You 
 don't know me. I've got no claim on you. How 
 do you happen to count me in on this ride back to 
 Chicago .? I've done none of the hustling. I 
 don't know how to -hustle that way. Conse- 
 quently, why should I let you pick me up on your 
 shoulders and pack me back to Chicago ? ' 
 
 " ' No reason, particularly,' said I, ' except that 
 you speak the language of my tribe, that you're 
 the same sort of an irresponsible idiot that I am, 
 and that you're up against it. Isn't that enough ? 
 I'd want you to do as much for me if the condi- 
 tions were reversed. I don't believe you've been 
 joggled and jolted around as much as I've been, 
 
TALE THE TWENTIETH 315 
 
 otherwise you'd see how and why it's up to me, 
 as your ex-bunkmate of a bug-ward, to see you 
 back to your base of operations, both of us having 
 been turned loose in company at one and the same 
 time. See ? ' 
 
 " ' Oh, you'll do,' said my pal, looking at me in 
 the peculiar way I'd noticed during the afternoon. 
 
 "The next morning we took the train for 
 Chicago. 
 
 " ' Well,' said I to my ex-bunkmate when we 
 pulled into the station in Chicago, ' here's where 
 we break apart. I suppose you're going home ? 
 lam.' 
 
 " As a matter of fact, I didn't have any home to 
 go to ; but I didn't care to own up to that. 
 
 " ' Hope I'll run in with you some other time,' 
 I wound up, at the same time trying to slip him a 
 ten-spot. 
 
 " He looked at me, and then at the ten, and 
 smiled. 
 
 " ' Let's get into a cab and take a little ride first,' 
 said he, hustling me into a roller. Then he or- 
 dered the cabman to drive to the swellest club in 
 Chicago. I was mystified, and looked him over 
 to see if he was all there. 
 
 " ' You'll be waking up presently,' I said. 
 
 " ' Oh, I guess I haven't been expelled,' said he. 
 
3i6 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 coolly, and then the cab pulled up before the club. 
 We went in. Twenty swell geezers were around 
 my bunkmate of the bug-ward in half a minute, 
 shaking hands with him, asking him where he'd 
 been, and making much of him. It got me going. 
 Then he introduced me to the whole mob as his 
 old friend and guest. Then he went to the club 
 treasurer and had a personal check for ^500 cashed. 
 This he handed to me. 
 
 " ' You'll do all right,' said he, with a smile. 
 ' Make a raid on the haberdashers in the morning, 
 get out what stuff you've got in, and come around 
 to my office about noon,' handing me his business 
 card, that of a building contractor, with offices in 
 the topnotch office building of Chicago. 
 
 '^ Well, I did see him at his office at noon the 
 next day. He certainly was a Prince Charlie to 
 me. He was worth about a million, that's all, 
 and he put me on his staff as his confidential 
 man. 
 
 " '. I've needed a resourceful, hustling man in my 
 business for some time, and you're It,' said he, 
 while I tried to hide my blushes behind my hat. 
 
 " ' Why didn't you make the wires sizzle when 
 you were broke in St. Paul day before yesterday ? ' 
 I asked him. 
 
 " ' There was too much fun in studying the win- 
 
TALE THE TWENTIETH 317 
 
 out methods adopted by a man just turned loose 
 from a bug-ward,' he said. 
 
 " That's when I became good and learned the 
 building contract business," concluded Ex-Tank 
 No. 3. 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FIRST 
 
 In Which Ex-Tank No. i i Relateth How he 
 Annihilated the Distance over ye Rocky 
 Mountains 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FIRST 
 
 IN WHICH EX-TANK NO. II RELATETH HOW HE 
 ANNIHILATED THE DISTANCE* OVER YE ROCKY 
 
 MOUNTAINS 
 
 " In order to get from San Francisco to Chicago, 
 said Ex-Tank No. 17, " you have first got to raise 
 the price of a ride on the ferry over to Oakland, 
 where all caravans bound for the land of the rising 
 sun are formed. Well, I got over to Oakland 
 without swimming. I waited until quite a crowd 
 had formed around the ferry gate on the San Fran- 
 cisco side, and when the gate was thrown open, 
 and the ticket-taker had begun business, I joggled 
 my way through the bunch, holding up a hand- 
 kerchief. 
 
 " ' Hey ! ' I yelled after an imaginary guy who 
 had suppositiously passed the ticket-taker, 'you've 
 dropped your mouchoir, old man ; just stay where 
 you are and I'll hand it to you.' 
 
 "The ticket-taker didn't have time to look 
 
 around for the purpose of spotting the man who 
 
 hadn't dropped any handkerchief, and he passed me 
 
 through the gate, naturally, without demanding any 
 
 321 
 
3i4 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 ticket, supposing that as soon as I'd returned the 
 dropped handkerchief to the owner thereof I'd 
 come right back outside the gate. But I didn't 
 come back. I went right aboard the ferryboat and 
 mingled with the madding throng. For, in setting 
 out from San Francisco for Chicago you've got to 
 get to Oakland first. 
 
 " This was along toward five o'clock on a benign 
 May afternoon, six years ago. I had been min- 
 gling in scenes of tumult in San Francisco for some 
 three months. No Eastern man may mingle in 
 scenes of San Francisco tumult for three months 
 and retain, at the finish, the wherewithal for a ride 
 across the mountains to this side. He must either 
 have on his staff San Francisco bankers who will 
 honor his draft, or sympathetic relatives on this 
 side of the Divide who will make good in response 
 to his telegrams, charges collect. Otherwise, he 
 
 must Well, any way, there I was, on the 
 
 Oakland side, filled with a deep ardor to get back to 
 Chicago. 
 
 " I walked into the station where the caravans 
 are formed for the East, and engaged in a line of 
 sombre thinks. The kit motif of my thinks was 
 this : ' To get back to Chicago without a ticket, 
 without walking, and without recourse to the side- 
 door Pullmans.' 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FIRST 323 
 
 " There was a large gang of Regular Army sol- 
 diers in the station waiting for a train to be made 
 up. The gang was cortipbsed of four heavy bat- 
 teries of an artillery regiment, about to make the 
 shift from the Presidio of San Francisco to an At- 
 lantic station. Three-fifths of them were already 
 pretty comfortable, thanks, with bottles hid away 
 in their knapsacks, and these were practically 
 under guard of the other two-fifths. 
 
 " ' I'd like to be a soldier,' I hummed, thinking 
 of the fatherly way Uncle Sam has of transporting 
 his troops. 
 
 " ' The hell you would ! ' said a voice in my ear. 
 I turned around and perceived that the voice be- 
 longed to a soldier who was more than moderately 
 soused. 
 
 " ' Well,' said I to him, ' just until this train that 
 you fellows are taking reached the East, I'd like to 
 be a soldier.' 
 
 " ' Say,' said the soldier, dropping his tone, and 
 beckoning me over to a corner of the men's smok- 
 ing-room of the station, 'maybe me and you can 
 do some business. D'je say that you wanted to 
 get back East ? " 
 
 " ' Well,' said I, ' I'd ship as a sailor on an air- 
 ship, if I knew of one that was going to start 
 East.' 
 
324 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 '"Well, t'ell with the snow shovellers back 
 East is my maxim,' said this queer soldier. ' I'm 
 a sloper, and I'm glad of it, and I don't want to go 
 East, and the beauty of it is that I ain't a-going 
 East if I can jump the outfit. Say, I'll trade you 
 clothes.' 
 
 " ' For why ? ' I asked him. 
 
 " ' You ain't so wise as you look,' said the 
 soldier with the skate, talking right close to my 
 ear. ' If you're so dead stuck on getting back 
 East, you can take my place, see ? I'm a rookie, 
 and when I joined this outfit at the Presidio I 
 didn't figure on 'em sending me East. T'ell with 
 the East. I buck when it comes to going East. 
 And I'm going to jump the outfit right here. 
 Trade me togs, and you can slip in with the bunch 
 and go along as a buck private in the regular 
 army. They'll not get next in the shufHe, not till 
 you've made a good piece of the trip, anyhow, and 
 when they do get wise that you ain't me, they 
 can't do no more than ditch you. Are you on ? ' 
 
 " Well, it was a chance, anyhow. I slipped out 
 of the station with the soldier, and we went across 
 the street to a dive and traded clothes. 
 
 " ' Your name's McGinley in C Battery, under- 
 stand ? ' said the soldier who was about to desert, 
 after we'd effected the exchange of raiment. ' But 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FIRST 325 
 
 nobody'll ask your name, at that. There ain't no 
 roll calls to be answered. S'long, pal. You can 
 have all the darned snow shovelling back East you 
 want. Old San Fran's good enough for me.' 
 
 " Then he faded from my view. A friend of 
 mine at Department Headquarters in Chicago 
 afterward told me that McGinley had been col- 
 lared for desertion on the day following the de- 
 parture of the batteries from Oakland, and that he 
 was nailed for a two-year term on Alcatraz Island. 
 McGinley struck me as being an amiable and yet 
 a determined cuss, but his prejudice against the 
 East was his undoing. 
 
 "I went back to the station and joined the 
 bunch of soldiers who had the letter ' C ' over their 
 cross-cannons. I am naturally clannish, and I 
 wanted to mingle with my own outfit. I noticed 
 'em looking at me peculiarly — the privates, that is. 
 The officers and non-commissioned officers were 
 all too busy to notice me. I kept my — McGin- 
 ley's — campaign hat pretty well pulled over my 
 eyes, anyhow. I fell in with the ' C ' battery 
 crowd when the order to march to the tourist 
 sleepers was given, taking up an obscure position 
 'way behind, and by that time the shades of night 
 had descended. There were five tourist sleepers 
 for the soldiers, and the berths were made up im- 
 
326 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 mediately all hands were embarked. Contrary to 
 McGinley's prediction, the roll was called as soon 
 as the men got aboard the train. A sergeant stood 
 at the door of the car ' C ' battery was on and 
 called out the names. I ' stood by ' for him to 
 reach the Ms, and when he called out ' McGinley,' 
 ' Here,' said I, in the perkiest way you ever heard, 
 
 " That put the members of ' C ' battery next to 
 me. When I crawled into my bunk, after the 
 train was under way, a fellow in a bunk across the 
 aisle stuck his head out between the curtains. 
 
 '"Say, has McGinley jumped?' he asked me 
 in a hoarse whisper. 
 
 " ' I am McGinley,' said I, frivolously, and I 
 heard a lot of subdued chuckles from the other 
 bunks. I was all right with them. They wouldn't 
 have spieled a line under any circumstances. But 
 the next morning, when reveille was sounded in the 
 car, and we got into uniform, the top sergeant of 
 ' C ' battery nailed me. He looked me over a 
 couple of times — this was just when the train was 
 about to pull into Mojave^and he came over 
 close to where I was sitting and said in a low 
 tone : 
 
 " ' McGinley, hey ? I'm sorry, son j hut it 
 won't do.' 
 
 " ' I don't tbitik so myself,' said I, 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FIRST 327 
 
 "'And it's liable to get me into trouble, at that,' 
 said the sergeant. ' I reported McGinley present 
 and accounted for a roll call last night, before the 
 train started. But I can explain that by claiming 
 that McGinley hopped oiF at some stop during the 
 night. You'd better jump ofF here at Mojave. 
 The officer in charge of the battery might collar 
 you for being in possession of a deserter's uniform, 
 or something like that.' 
 
 " And so, when the train pulled into Mojave, I 
 slid off, and stayed off, until the train was under 
 way again. The best I did by switching togs with 
 a buck soldier was to get ditched at Mojave, Cal., 
 and, all in all, it is solacing now to reflect that 
 McGinley had to do his two years at Alcatraz Is- 
 land. 
 
 " Mojave, Cal., is just a nightmareish mirage. 
 It is planted between a lot of dwarfed mountains 
 that are yellow all the year around, and the whole 
 aspect around Mojave is that of a portion of the 
 earth that the lightning of heaven has a habit of 
 striking and stripping bare several times a day. 
 The country around Mojave looks riven and 
 scarred, and the never-ceasing wind moans threno- 
 dies in your fears from first call in the morning 
 until taps at night, and then right on until first call 
 again. Mojave consists of a shack station, an eat- 
 
328 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 ing-place attached thereto, and about a dozen 
 hontatonks across the street. However, there I 
 was in Mojave — the soldiers, referring to the rail- 
 road maps, had called it Mojayve — in a buck ar- 
 tilleryman's uniform, with a hopeless number of 
 leagues of mountain and plain intervening between 
 me and Chicago. 
 
 " ' This,' said I to myself, as I stood behind the 
 eating-house, keeping out of sight until the train 
 had started, ' is the limit. This is where I cash 
 in for keeps. There's no way out of this. This 
 is the real thing, and I don't care a ' 
 
 " ' Well, I'll be damned ! ' said a voice behind 
 me. 
 
 " I wheeled around, and there was a fellow that 
 I had played marbles and shinny with back in this 
 part of the world. He had a sombrero on the back 
 of his head, his hands were jammed into his pockets, 
 and he was smoking a cigar. I hadn't seen him 
 for four years, and there he was. He handed me 
 the cordial mitt. 
 
 " ' D'je get left ? ' he inquired, nodding in the di- 
 rection of the disappearing train. 
 
 " ' Well, not exactly in the way you might im- 
 agine if you're judging from this Little Boy Blue 
 makeup,' I told him, and then I handed him the 
 story of my debut in Mojave. He himself had 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FIRST 329 
 
 gone broke in Los Angeles the month before, and 
 had met up with the owner of a string of railroad 
 eating-houses, including the one at Mojave. He'd 
 got the job- of managing the Mojave eating-house, 
 and he was It in Mojave. 
 
 " ' But it's not much more than a board-and- 
 keep graft for me,' he said, ' and I don't know how 
 I can send you along up the line to Chicago. 
 S'pose you stay along and hash for me until some- 
 thing turns up. I've got a Chink now to take care 
 of the lunch room. I'll fire him and you can have 
 the job — thirty a month and keep. And some- 
 thing may happen to give you a lift up to 
 Windville.' 
 
 " I took the job. It was like manna from above, 
 at that. My former pal, the manager of the eat- 
 ing-house, passed me a suit of his togs, and I sold 
 the soldier clothes to a teamster for two dollars, 
 which was more money than I thought there was 
 in the state of California since I'd gone broke in 
 San Francisco. I dished up the truck to the hun- 
 gry bunches that rushed in when the trains came 
 along — not many trains hesitated at Mojave, at 
 that — and it was a pretty good job. I figured on 
 saving all of my thirty per for a ticket back to 
 Chicago after a couple of months' work at hashing. 
 But I didn't need to. 
 
330 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 " About ten days after I'd hit Mojave, a jagged 
 cockney got ofF the morning train that came in 
 from Los Angeles. He had come to meet the San 
 Francisco train, east bound. He was a servant on 
 the staff of a Chicago packer whose name you all 
 know, and he was to take charge, at Mojave, of 
 five foxhounds that were due on the train from San 
 Francisco, and take care of 'em for the remainder 
 of the journey to Chicago. The cockney had ap- 
 parently begun to load up as soon as he got aboard 
 the train at Los Angeles, and when he got off at 
 Mojave he was talkative and blustery. He told 
 me all about those fpx'ounds, 'ow they were travel- 
 ling in the express car, 'ow he was going to travel 
 on the same train — in a first-rite Pullman, moind 
 ye — with the dogs, and only 'ad to see that they 
 were fed hand watered on the way, and so on. 
 Then he corned up a lot more while he waited for 
 the train to arrive from San Francisco with the 
 dogs relegated to his keeping during the trip across 
 the continent. He was goggle-eyed and spiflicated, 
 and sleeping in a room over the eating-house, all 
 out to the last ounce, when the station operator 
 got the signal that the train from San Francisco 
 was only a few miles away. My friend the boss 
 of the eating-house had heard the cockney's spiel 
 about the dogs, and he came to me in the lunch room. 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FIRST 331 
 
 " ' Well, s'long, old chap,' said he. * Hope 
 you'll have a nice ride. Give my regards to the 
 gang in Chicago.' 
 
 " ' Not so fierce, not so fierce,' said I. ' How 
 and when am I going to get to Chicago ? ' 
 
 " ' Well, you're going to take those dogs, ain't 
 you ? ' he said, tipping me the wink. ' That cock- 
 ney's paralyzed upstairs, and he won't jolt himself 
 awake for twelve hours. Meanwhile, you're the 
 man that's supposed to be waiting here to hitch on 
 to the train and take eha,rge of those dogs. See ? 
 Just load yourself a bushel-basket full of grub for 
 the trip, and here's a ten-spot for your work here. 
 When the train pulls in, and the man in charge of 
 the express car looks around for the man who's to 
 assume control of those dogs, you're the boy, 
 that's all.' 
 
 " The train pulled in, and the man in charge of 
 the express car was the first to jump off and gallop 
 into the station. 
 
 " ' Say,' he asked, ' is there a man here that's 
 going to take charge of those darned dogs ? ' 
 
 " ' Yep,' said I. ' I'm the geezer. Just gimme 
 a lift with this basket-full of grub for 'em, will 
 you ? ' 
 
 " Just then the conductor came up. 
 
 " ' You're the man that's to join those hounds, 
 
332 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 eh ? ' he said. ' Well, here's your ticket and your 
 berth check,' and he handed 'em to me. 
 
 " ' Be good, chum,' said my friend the manager 
 of the eating-house, shaking hands with me as the 
 train was about to pull out. ' You're good now 
 for a through trip. I'll take care of the cockney 
 if he makes any belch.' 
 
 " Five days later I pulled into Chicago, and I'd 
 made such a mash on those five fine foxhounds, 
 by spending a lot of time in the car with them and 
 fooling with them, that they declined to have any- 
 thing to do with anybody else. I was in a quan- 
 dary, however, before the train got into the Chicago 
 station, as to what I'd do with the dogs — how I'd 
 get them to the packer to whom they were con- 
 signed without having to exude a lot of embarrass- 
 ing explanations. I had decided to load them in a 
 wagon and just send them out, without any word, 
 to the packer's residence in the suburbs of Chicago. 
 I was in the express car with the dogs when the 
 train got in. As soon as the door of the car was 
 opened, a good-looking, well-groomed, elderly man 
 with grey side-whiskers stuck his head in. 
 
 " ' Ah, there they are,' said he. 
 
 " I recognized him instantly as the packer to 
 whom the dogs belonged. He'd often been mugged 
 for the picture papers. 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FIRST 333 
 
 " ' Yes,' said I, coming forward out of the dark- 
 ness of the car, ' here they are, sir.' 
 
 " ' Why, you're not James,' said he, looking at 
 me surprisedly. 
 
 " ' No, but I needed the ride,' said I, and then I 
 told him how it was that I, and not his Jeems, was 
 convoying his dogs. 
 
 " ' Well, I'll be dammed if that wasn't a cool 
 bit of work,' said the packer. ' Left him drunk in 
 Mojave, Cal., you say ? Well, I'm lucky to have 
 my dogs back here, in good shape, although the 
 transaction wasn't exactly — er — regular, now, 
 was it ? However, I'm much obliged,' and the 
 fifty dollar note that he passed me enabled me to 
 promenade the old fresh-water front that evening 
 with a real impudent look of prosperity sticking 
 out all over me. 
 
 " But I had a lot of luck on that cruise. Under 
 non-fortuitous circumstances, the hike between San 
 Francisco and Chicago is liable to be one of ennui 
 and depression for the man who hasn't got the 
 pasteboard." 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-SECOND 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No. i8 Discourseth Warn- 
 
 INGLY ON THE InSIDIOUSNESS OF YE GAM- 
 BLING Bug 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-SECOND 
 
 WHEREIN EX-TANK NO. 1 8 DISCOURSETH WARN- 
 INGLY ON THE INSIDIOUSNESS OF YE GAMBLING 
 BUG 
 
 "The gambling bug," remarked No. i8, "is a 
 buzzier proposition than either rum or dope. It 
 develops wheels within wheels under the hat. It's 
 a hard bug to shake ofF. It belongs to the clinch- 
 icus variety, and it's a staver from No Man's 
 Land. It generates the fever and then the cold 
 sweat. Pretty often it saps a man's nerve and 
 breaks his heart. Take the horse bug, for ex- 
 ample. A man who lets the horse bug get into his 
 lid isn't fit for work. He eats, drinks and dreams 
 horse. I had such a big horse bug once that I 
 dreamed every night of some skate or other that 
 was inevitably beaten a lap for third money. The 
 way I worked in my dreams to get those plugs I 
 was riding over the plate among the first three is a 
 bother to think of now. I was going to say, in 
 mentioning work, that a man with the rum bug 
 alone can make a bluff at holding down his job. It 
 337 
 
338 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 comes hard work, after a swift night; yet the 
 practiced rummerino goes at it and gets through 
 with it somehow. But the man with a mature, 
 healthy horse bug can't work at all. He wants to 
 know how they are running, if his picks are going 
 through. He hankers to see 'em chafing to get 
 away from the pump and the ' They're off ! ' shout 
 is the sweetest music he knows. There are plenty 
 of pinheads in this town to-day who, long ago 
 smashed and put out of business through the in- 
 strumentality of the horse bug, hang around the 
 poolrooms just to hear the races called off by the 
 operators. When their picks go through they snap 
 their fingers and root as if they stood to win it all 
 back, although they haven't even got a bet down 
 in a ten-cent handbook. The horse bug is a lulu 
 as a long-distance goer, all right. None of the 
 gambling bugs, in fact, is a mere sprinter. They 
 all last a route. 
 
 " Well, when you get the gambling bug in com- 
 bination with the rum bug, you're in trouble and 
 plenty of it. They play one against the other, and 
 they've got possession. You're never it. You 
 make a winning and the rum bug hauls down the 
 pot. You decide to eradicate the gambling bug 
 and let the rum bug play solitaire. When the rum 
 bug gets you going you immediately set out to cul- 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-SECOND 339 
 
 tivate another gambling bug. And you're never 
 one, two, three. 
 
 " Of the different species of the gambling bug 
 the faro clincher '11 take you about, as far as any 
 of 'em. It got me out to Spokane about twelve 
 years ago. I landed there with the last suit and a 
 straw hat, and it was pretty chilly at that. I'd 
 been trying to create a booze famine in Denver 
 and to put all of the Denver banks out of business, 
 and when I fell down on both jobs I turned my 
 face toward the land of the setting sun on a tourist 
 sleeper and pulled up in Spokane, because that was 
 as far as my ticket read. I put the temporary 
 squinch on the rum bug when I got there and 
 piked along at a ten-cent table with the last two 
 dollars I had. I ran it up to about seventy-five 
 dollars, policed myself up and fell into a good job 
 as boss dealer for one of the biggest limit banks in 
 the burg. I worked along there for about three 
 months, sloughing off, as usual, the ten dollars a 
 night that I earned dealing, by trying to whop 
 other banks during the afternoon, when the 
 shoe-stringer came along who nailed me for 
 more than half the bank's roll and got me 
 fired. 
 
 " He was a seedy, chubby-faced duck from 
 somewhere back this way, as I judged from his 
 
340 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 spiel. I had noticed him standing behind the 
 chairs of players for about a week of nights before 
 he got into the game. The way he got in was by 
 plunking a white chip — the whites were one dollar 
 — on the king to win. He stood up waiting for 
 the turn without much of a show of interest. The 
 king won and he let it stand. It won four straight 
 times and he let it stand each time. Then he 
 pulled down the bunch and called the turn right. 
 My lookout nodded him to take the seat of a 
 busted player who got up when the box ran out, 
 and the chubby-faced, shabby chap sat down, 
 pulled out an inch of pencil to keep cases and 
 started in to play faro with the pick-up he had 
 made off one white. He knew the game and his 
 luck was along with him. Inside of an hour he 
 had traded his five or six tall stacks of whites for 
 five dollar blues out of my rack and he still went 
 on and won. He cashed in when he was about 
 ;^400 to the good and went out for a while. When 
 he returned he had three other fellows along with 
 him, all of them just about as seedy and down-at- 
 heel-looking as himself. He bought a twenty 
 stack of blues for himself and stacked each of his 
 three friends to a bunch of the same height, which 
 took all of his ^400. They all got seats, and from 
 the moment they sat down they began to wallop 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-SECOND 341 
 
 me. They were scientific men at bank and all 
 four of them won from the jump. They never 
 coppered each other, so that the bank did not ben- 
 efit any from their differences of opinion on the 
 turns. When they had got about ;g3,ooo of the 
 bank's money inside of two hours' play I looked 
 around for the old man, intending to ask him to 
 put in another dealer to break the bank's hoodoo. 
 The old man wasn't around, however, and so I 
 went on dealing. When they had taken ^8,000 
 out of the safe — it was then along toward two 
 o'clock in the morning — I had a chin with the 
 lookout and we decided to turn the box on them 
 for the night, not knowing how the old man would 
 feel over the melting of half his roll. 
 
 "'It's all off for the night,' said I to the 
 chubby-faced chap^ addressing him as the staker of 
 the four. ' Come around to-morrow night and 
 pass it in again.' 
 
 "'Want to give each of us a ;^ 1,000 turn on 
 separate cards in a fresh box for a wind-up ? ' he 
 asked me. A dealer never turns down a recoup- 
 ing chance like that, and I nodded. I riffled the 
 boxful, and they put markers down to indicate 
 their respective ;^ 1,000 bets. All four of them won, 
 which put the bank a bit over ;^ 12,000 to the bad. 
 
 "Then they cashed in. The chubby-faced 
 
342 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 chap gave each of his three pals ;^2,ooo, and they 
 passed out, as shabby a looking lot of geezers to 
 have broken the spine of one of the good banks 
 of the boom town as ever I saw. 
 
 ^' The old man didn't turn up that night, but 
 when I and the lookout told him the next morn- 
 ing of the coal-mauling we had got the night be- 
 fore he looked black. 
 
 "'You're both all right,' said he, 'but you're 
 fired, I don't ask men working for me to deal 
 brace or phony, but I can't stand for the worst pair 
 of Jonahs this side of the Big Divide. I pass you 
 both up. Get what's coming to you from the 
 money devil, and consider yourselves dished.' 
 
 " The way the old man took it made me rather 
 hot. I told him so. 
 
 " ' You're a game sport,' said I to him, ' with 
 the copper on. I don't mind being fired par- 
 ticularly, but to get an unreasonable roast from a 
 man who talks like a sure-thinger inflates my 
 chest.' 
 
 "There was only fifty dollars or sixty dollars 
 coming to me, and when I got hold of it the rum 
 bug came to life and sung me an aria or two. I 
 pulled out of Spokane that same night with two 
 rear-pocket bottles and a ticket for Tacoma, and 
 when I got there I found there was nothing do- 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-SECOND 343 
 
 ing. I chubbed ofF what I had left of my Spokane 
 earnings at a ninety-three per cent, banic, and then 
 I went to worlc in a harness shop as bookkeeper 
 for twelve dollars a week. This wore me out in 
 less than three weeks, and I lent a listening ear 
 again to the sonatas of the rum insect. This 
 landed me in Seattle, and I made a couple of trips 
 from Seattle to Alaska as purser of a boat. I had 
 ;^ioo when I got back from the last trip and went 
 over to Portland. I took a few there to keep out 
 the Oregon wet, and when I emerged from the 
 two weeks of it I was still being rained upon, and 
 no place to get out of it. 
 
 " One night I was walking by one of the garnish 
 ginmills of Portland, wondering if I couldn't work 
 the reliever game and get a bum suit, with about 
 two dollars change, for the one I had on, when a 
 fellow walked out of the rum emporium and hap- 
 pened to get his lamps on me. He was more than 
 the limit in toggery and general grooming, and the 
 shiny ones in his necktie and on his finger hurt 
 my eyes. I knew him as soon as I saw him, and 
 he knew me. 
 
 " ' Hello, there, Spokane,' said he, walking up to 
 me and holding out his mitt. ' You look kind o' 
 beaten out. When did you quit dishing 'em out 
 in Spokane, and why ? ' 
 
344 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 " He was the chubby-faced chap, no longer 
 seedy, who had been the occasion of my losing my 
 job as a dealer in Spokane. 
 
 " ' The old man couldn't stand for your win that 
 time,' I told him, ' and he ditched me the next 
 morning.' 
 
 '" He did, hey ? ' said the chubby-cheeked duck. 
 ' Well, I'll tell you something. That was like 
 squealing, for he didn't know that he had any 
 cause for dumping you. But he did. Do you re- 
 member how I started in that night ? ' 
 
 " ' With a lonesome white chip,' said I. ' I've 
 got blooming good cause to remember it.' 
 
 '"How d'ye suppose I got that chip ? ' he asked 
 me. 
 
 " ' Bummed it off some piker, I suppose,' I said 
 to him. 
 
 " ' Not any,' said he. ' I didn't know a man in 
 Spokane, for I didn't have any front there until 
 after I pinned you to the stick. I was just watch- 
 ing the game that night, like I had been doing for 
 a week or so, when I noticed that you forgot to 
 pick off a white chip that had been . lost on the 
 four. The lookout said something to you when 
 the four came out, and you didn't take the chip 
 down. I asked one of the fellows at the table to 
 pass me that chip on the four, and he did. That's 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-SECOND 345 
 
 the way I got started on the king play, and the chip 
 that put me in business was the house's. I'm now 
 engaged in the business, exclusively, of cracking 
 banks with the top-price chips, and I'm making it 
 stick, at that.' 
 
 " I told him that he looked the part. 
 
 " ' And as long as you lost your job on my ac- 
 count,' he went on, ' it's up to me to make good. 
 Let us first repair within and become exceedingly 
 drunk, and to-morrow I'll stake you.' 
 
 " That lasted two weeks, but the chubby-faced 
 chap was unbreakable. He was too much to the 
 good. At the end of the two weeks — and two 
 weeks in Portland can be made as warm as a sim- 
 ilar period in any old place on the slope — he 
 emerged with an idea. 
 
 " ' It would be poetic retribution,' he said, ' if 
 we could run down to Spokane and bat the bank 
 of the man who fired you for losing to me. Want 
 to try it ? ' 
 
 " We went down to Spokane that same night 
 and the next night we both turned up in the bank 
 where I had done the dealing. The old man knew 
 me instantly, and smiled saturninely when I passed 
 over my ^100 for twenty blues. He didn't know 
 the chubby-faced chap, though, for he hadn't been 
 around when the latter had socked it to his bank 
 
346 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 through me. The best I could do in three nights' 
 play was to cash in for ;^i,6oo, but my friend with 
 the bundle roped the old man's new dealer for four 
 times that much before the box was turned on him 
 by order of the old man, who had got cold feet. 
 
 " Then I went down to San Francisco and came 
 around to New York by way of the Panama 
 steamers. I was so derned grateful to land back 
 here, not only with a whole skin, but with a front 
 trimmed with cow bells all over, that I extracted 
 the gambling and rum bugs from then on and 
 bottled them up in alcohol, and I wasn't the al- 
 cohol bottle, either." 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-THIRD 
 
 In Which Ex-Tank No. 22 Forgiveth Ye Isle 
 OF Manhattan, After Having Departed 
 Therefrom in Wrath 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-THIRD 
 
 IN WHICH EX-TANK NO. 22 FORGIVETH YE ISLE OF 
 MANHATTAN, AFTER HAVING DEPARTED THERE- 
 FROM IN WRATH 
 
 " One time I passed New York up because the 
 constituted authorities hereof, that I helped to elect 
 with my vote, treated me real rude and mean," re- 
 marked Ex-Tank No. 22, flicking the ash of an 
 expensive cigar off the lapel of his blue-and-red- 
 dotted fancy waistcoat. "Said I to New York 
 that time, ' You won't do ; you're scratched ; ' and 
 I went right away, just as mad as I could be, so I 
 was. But, say, it was fierce, the way I got jerked 
 around for a farmer that time. Right in the town 
 that I was born in, too. Right in the middle of 
 the Tender 
 
 " Well, anyhow, one Saturday night in the fall 
 of '90 I was walking up Sixth avenue, with forty- 
 eight dollars in my outdoor pajamas, and just the 
 pristine, beauteous beginning of one of those things 
 — I'd only had twenty-six, to the best of my re- 
 membrance, so that at every step I could just 
 349 
 
350 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 throw back my head and hear the music — and I 
 was going to my room, at that, with an armful of 
 new haberdashery that I'd got down town. After 
 four months on the Croton, I'd just taken those 
 twenty-six on knocking off work that evening for 
 the purpose of temporarily effacing the grey, som- 
 bre hues of the game as it was running; of blotting 
 out, for the time being, a too powerful apprecia- 
 tion of the ineffable sorrow of this life as she is 
 lived by " 
 
 " Wait a minute," exclaimed Ex-Tank No. 7, 
 the parliamentarian and kicker. " Am I to under- 
 stand that these meetings are going to be allowed 
 to degenerate into exploitations of Longfellowish 
 wooziness on the part of every hot-air pumper 
 that " 
 
 " The sergeant-at-arms will place No. 7 in the 
 chilled ante-chamber for twelve minutes for lodg- 
 ing a frivolous protest," said the Chief Ex-Tank, 
 rising and frowning severely. " Twenty-two will 
 proceed." 
 
 After the parliamentarian and kicker had been 
 dragged from the room into the cold-storage com- 
 partment, Ex-Tank No. 22 proceeded : 
 
 " Well, I decided to make it twenty-seven, and 
 no more, and up around Thirty-second street I 
 went in and got the twenty-seventh and pulled out 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-THIRD 351 
 
 my forty-eight dollars to liquidate for the same, 
 having no scrap metal in my change pocket. It 
 was about nine o'clock at night, and there weren't 
 so many bulb lights up around that way as there 
 are now, and I hadn't any more'n got out of the 
 door — I was keeping on my course, as if I was 
 stepping rail fences — when I was necked. What 
 d'ye think of that — me necked, that had been up 
 against everything in this town from the days when 
 Harry Hill was — well, I got mine, there and then, 
 just as if I'd only stepped ofF the ferry, the first time 
 in straight from Painted Post, or Peoria, or Peru, Ind. 
 And I got it right. There were two of 'em, and 
 while one of them held my lid back so that I could 
 have seen the nails in the heels of my shoes if it 
 had been light enough, the other one just clasped 
 his fingers around that roll as if he knew more 
 about where it was than I did — which he no doubt 
 did. 
 
 " ' This is too much of the batter for you to have 
 on you all at one and the same time. Tommy,' 
 the chap who copped my wad had the gall to say 
 to me while the other fellow was still necking me. 
 ' You got a list to starboard now from packing it 
 around. And look how we need the money, too ! ' 
 
 " Then my head was suddenly released — this all 
 happened in a dark doorway into which I was 
 
352 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 yanked — and I got a hard jolt on the left ear and 
 then another one on the right — and how long I 
 leaned up against that doorway, making a map of 
 the Milky Way from those two hard pushes, I 
 don't know. It was long enough for the pair of 
 cheerful opportunity-graspers to mingle with the 
 madding crowd, anyhow. I stooped down, picked 
 up the bundle of haberdashery that I had dropped, 
 and I was getting real mad every minute. I didn't 
 like insolvency brought about that way, which was 
 worse than being left at the post. So I went into 
 the booze bazaar where I had encircled that twenty- 
 seventh and last and threw a warm, personally- 
 conducted symposium of conversation at the low 
 forehead behind the bar. 
 
 " ' Say,' I asked him, ' are you in on these grafts, 
 and if you are, do I get a discount for cash ? ' 
 
 "Then I tossed him the story of how I had got 
 mine just outside his place by a couple of gum- 
 shoe artists that, I maintained, were kept there by 
 the man behind the bar for the purpose of annex- 
 ing good things that came that way. The rough 
 neck behind the bar gave me the polaric gaze. 
 
 " ' Pass out de side gate, Archie, an' see how de 
 evenin's holdin' up,' said he, placing his counte- 
 nance within two and a quarter inches of mine. 
 ' Went away w'ile it's easy f 'r youse, too. Youse 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-TMIRD 353 
 
 ain't bin rolled none aroun' dis honkatonk. Take 
 de exit, or I'll come aroun' an' dent up yer shins.' 
 
 " But the twenty-seven that I had stowed be- 
 neath my waistband rendered it difficult for me to 
 see it that way, and I told him some more things. 
 The next I knew I was making some more astro- 
 nomical observations from a coign of vantage in 
 the cobbled ditch outside, and I rose up and con- 
 cluded to go away from there. But I was still 
 real passionate under the neck band about the way 
 the game had been dished up to me, and I started 
 for the Thirtieth street station to have a conver- 
 sation with the man behind the desk about it. By 
 this time my two ears looked like they had ele- 
 phantiasis from the two clips I had got in the door- 
 way when I was separated from my little stack of 
 greens, and I was likewise considerably mudded up 
 from the attentions I had received at the hands of 
 the gent with the uninviting countenance behind 
 the bar where -I had started in to register my roar. 
 So that when I walked into the Tenderloin station 
 I'm willing to acknowledge that I didn't look as if 
 I'd just stepped out of a suit case. 
 
 " The man behind the desk — I don't know who 
 he was, but he looked real massive and unsympa- 
 thetic — was writing in a big book. 
 
 " ' Sir,' I started to say to him, ' I have unhap- 
 
354 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 pily been fallen upon by thieves, who have 
 abusgd me most shamefully, and — ' 
 
 "Just then the massive man behind the desk 
 looked up. He gazed at me right hard. 
 
 " ' Say,' sgid he, after a pause, ' it's good o' you 
 to've come in on your own hook, Zeke ; saves us 
 trouble ; we'd ha' had to pick you up.' 
 
 " Then he beckoned to the doorman. 
 
 " ' Go through it,' said the man behind the desk 
 to the dporman, indicating me. 
 
 " Then I did set up the long yell for fair. Told 
 'em that I had come down there to make a com- 
 plaint, that I had not always been thus, that they 
 wronged me, Claudie, that I'd have the life's 
 blood of every individual cop in the whole munici- 
 pality of New York if I didn't get what was com- 
 ing to me, and other things like that. Well, these 
 little remarks that I exuded under a profound 
 sense of wrong didn't help me any at all. They 
 wound me up, in fact. 
 
 " ' Take it back,' said the massive man behind 
 the desk, and I was yanked back to one of those 
 little compartments that have one real hard board 
 running along one side. 
 
 ^' §ay, how was that for a man that was born 
 and raised right in this town, that had never been 
 pinched before, to get it going and coming, both 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-THIRD 355 
 
 ends from the middle, and not even all bets ofF and 
 twenty minutes for a new book ? Didn't I have 
 a mad coming ? Can you blame me for not 
 thinking right then that New York was the only 
 burg on the chart ? 
 
 " But there was nothing doing. I had to stand 
 for it. I tried to get 'em to let me send out for 
 somebody to take me out of hock, but they told 
 me I was a four-flushing hobo, and that was the 
 end of that. Then I began to figure that I'd be 
 lucky if I didn't get four months on the Island. 
 
 " Sleep there was nix for me that night. Some- 
 where above me there was a young lady who 
 would alternate in singing 'There's a Little Green 
 Spot,' with the voice of an angel — I never heard a 
 purer, sweeter voice than that unfortunate woman's, 
 whoever she was — and cussing like a pirate, and 
 right next to me was a large, chesty 'longshoreman 
 with the cobras, who had removed a considerable 
 portion of his wife's anatomy with a cotton hook, 
 and seemed to be quite put out because he hadn't 
 finished her. Oh, yes, I had a real nice time in 
 the Tenderloin that night. 
 
 " A little after sunrise, when I was beginning to 
 sympathize with myself and to compare my un- 
 happy lot with that of the Prisoner of Chillon, the 
 clanking of keys came my way, and I was herded 
 
356 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 down to the JeiFerson Market court, where there 
 were quite a lot of young gentlemen with cold 
 grey eyes and little or no chins who were talking 
 about their chances of being ' bound over ' for 
 Special Sessions for second-story jobs of that sort, 
 and who calculated with great interest on the size 
 of the ' bits ' they were due to get. They gave me 
 a chance to wash up down there, and when I got 
 before the Magistrate he permitted me to spiel my 
 tale. I was dead sober and pretty darned eloquent, 
 and I handed the old gentleman such a straight bill 
 of lading that he just nodded me loose, although I 
 was charged with having been drunk and disorderly 
 and resisting an officer. 
 
 " I walked out into the sunlight of that Sunday 
 morning, sore as a stone-bruise, and with half an 
 idea of burrowing a hole under New York and 
 blowing it into the air. I had seventy cents left 
 in change out of my forty-eight dollar roll, and I 
 shot four in so quick that the speak-easy barkeep 
 stared at me. Then I went out and walked and 
 thought about what a nice old town New York 
 would look like in ashes. 
 
 " I leaned against the iron fence around a church 
 when I got tired walking, and I guess the drowsy 
 music of the organ inside, that had just started 
 playing, put me to sleep. Anyhow, I got shook 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-THIRD 357 
 
 awake by a fine-looking chap with a plug hat and a 
 serious face. His wife and little girl were standing 
 some distance away. They were about to enter 
 the church. I started down the street. After I 
 had gone about twenty feet I heard the patter of 
 little feet, and the little girl belonging to the man 
 who had shook me awake was standing alongside 
 me with the penny that she had to put in the 
 church-box held out in her little fist. 
 
 " ' Will '00 take zis, poor man ? ' she said to 
 me, and, not wanting to snub the child, I took the 
 penny and walked on. 
 
 " Say, how was that .? Enough to make a man 
 fall in love with the situation, wasn't it ? Little 
 girls on the street taking me for such a castaway 
 on the shores of time — me, that hadn't done a 
 thing but push in a few hooters the night before, 
 to efface temporarily the ineffable sorrow of life — 
 that they felt like staking me to pennies. 
 
 " ' I'm going ay-way from this,' said I, right ofF, 
 then, and it was also then that I scratched New 
 York. I had in my pocket a thousand-mile ticket 
 on a railroad going west, and I got on a train just 
 thirty minutes later and never got ofF until the 
 steam rattler pulled into Detroit. I wanted to get 
 right far away from New York, as I say. 
 
 " Oh, well, yes, I came back. The man with 
 
358 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 a grievance against this town doesn't hang on to It 
 long. The old hunch to be back in the real 
 puddle gets you up around the neck when you're 
 long enough in one of the imitation burgs to get to 
 thinking, and that's what happened to me. I 
 peddled tin and silk badges at the Fair Grounds in 
 Detroit, trying to make enough to stake myself to 
 a ride back to New York, but I couldn't get hold 
 of enough of the papers to do it that way ; the best 
 I could do was to seize out enough to get woozed 
 up in my longing to be back in this little old town, 
 and it looked like Detroit forever and a day for me 
 when one morning I walked down to the Windsor 
 ferryboat and bought a bunch of tickets for some 
 rides back and forth. I wanted to make myself 
 think I was riding on a ferry around this neck of 
 it. When I got over to the dinky little Canadian 
 town of Windsor the second time, I concluded to 
 get off and take a walk around. Then I came 
 back to take the ferry to Detroit again. I was 
 about a block from the Windsor ferry-bouse when 
 a dark-looking chap with a foreign accent tackled 
 me. 
 
 " ' Going across ? ' he asked me. 
 
 " ' Yep,' said I. 
 
 " ' Likewise am I,' said he. ' But I should like 
 to have you carry a bit of a package over for me, 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-THIRD 359 
 
 if you don't mind. I judge you are not prospering 
 particularly ? ' 
 
 '"Not enough to give me that world-weary 
 feeling,' said I. 
 
 " Oh, I was next, all right. This guy had a 
 little smuggling on hand, and he wanted to pass 
 the goods to me. I was ready for it, at that. I 
 don't say it was dead right, but I was ready for it. 
 We went to a little second-floor room, and he 
 handed me a small parcel, which I stuffed into my 
 back pocket. 
 
 '"I do this, only in case they suspect me — I 
 have had previous trouble at this point,' the chap 
 said. 
 
 " I nodded. 
 
 " ' Well,' said I, ' it's not highway robbery or 
 arson, and I guess the Government can stand to 
 let me have a ride back to where I belong.' 
 
 " I can't understand why the chap trusted me as 
 he did, but I suppose he never had his lamps off 
 me from the time we separated to go to the ferry 
 by different routes. When I got aboard the boat I 
 saw him, all right, on the upper deck. We held 
 no sort of communication, as a matter of course, 
 during the ride over to Detroit. He was, as he 
 had anticipated, searched with particular care when 
 he got into the hands of the customs people, while 
 
360 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 I just slouched over the gangplank with my hands 
 in my pockets. 
 
 " I waited for him up at the top of Woodward 
 avenue, and then we went to another small room, 
 where he passed me a century without any dicker- 
 ing. Then he opened up the little package I had 
 toted across the stream for him. I never saw such 
 stones. 
 
 "'They are worth about ;^ 15,000,' he told me 
 with a slow grin. ' Are you not sorry you did not 
 run for it ? ' 
 
 " ' Nix, Rochambeau,' I told him, ' I may have 
 been a contrabandist for once, but I am several 
 geographical leagues from being a thief.' 
 
 " Which virtuous sentiment he properly ap- 
 plauded, and one hour and fifteen minutes later I 
 was on the varnished car, bound hitherward, 
 with " 
 
 " And have you forgiven New York ? " inquired 
 the whole club in breathless suspense. 
 
 "Yes," replied Ex-Tank No. 22. 
 
 A great sigh of relief went around the room. 
 
 " Then I guess we're safe, and can go right on 
 in the same old way," said the Chief Ex-Tank, 
 rising, and the meeting was over. 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FOURTH 
 
 In Which Ex-Tank No. 27 Findeth Himself 
 Shanghaied on Board ye Brigantine Mon- 
 mouth Queen 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FOURTH 
 
 IN WHICH EX-TANK NO. t*] FINDETH HIMSELF 
 SHANGHAIED ON BOARD YE fiRIGANTINE &10N- 
 MOUTH QUEEN 
 
 " If you want to get hunk, all you've got to do 
 is just to wait, that's all," dryly remarked Ex-Tank 
 No. 27, as he ate the end off a fresh Reina Vic- 
 toria and produced his turquoise-encrusted match 
 box. 
 
 Whereupon he proceeded to indulge in so pro- 
 longed a silence that the expectant Ex-Tanks pres- 
 ent gazed upon him nervously and shifted uneasily 
 in their chairs. 
 
 " What's that, an installment or a sample ? " in- 
 quired Ex-Tank No. 7, the parliamentarian and 
 kicker. " Has it got so in this outfit that we've 
 got to swallow 'em serially ? Say, is that going to 
 be continued in your next, or " 
 
 " The Tonsorial Ex-Tank will shave one side 
 of Number Seven's countenance, and one side 
 only, if he exudes another kick during the ses- 
 sion," said the Chief Ex-Tank, rising, ponder- 
 363 
 
364 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 ously. " At the same time, it would seem to be 
 up to Number Twenty-seven to complete his 
 parable." 
 
 " Somehow or another," went on Ex-Tank No. 
 27, irrelevantly and dreamily, " I could n-o-t, not, 
 get 'em right that winter. They may have been 
 running for Hogan, but they weren't running for 
 me. When I'd dig a sleeper up, and get it right, 
 and lose rest waiting for the day to go down the 
 line on it, confidently expecting it 'ud be 30 to i 
 or better, the word got out every time, by the under- 
 ground, or some way or another, and the skate 'ud 
 prance to the post with i to 3 on chalked in front 
 of his name, and every piker and beanery worker 
 in San Francisco standing to go broke on him, 
 after they'd hammered the price down from some- 
 thing like even money. Nope, I couldn't get one 
 over. Every one that I looked over and saw 
 worked at grey dawn and salted down as the right 
 goods the next time he went to the pump for long 
 money had a Hanover or a Hindoo price tacked to 
 him when the slates went up. You can't keep a 
 thing quiet in 'Frisco, anyhow. It's everywhere 
 in twenty minutes, and no time for a new book, at 
 that. There are too many grafters out there for a 
 good thing to be kept quiet, and the 'Frisco graft- 
 ers, unlike the bunch back this way, pull together. 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FOURTH 365 
 
 So that if one of 'em gets wise to a long one that's 
 due to be uncorked, it's handed around to 'em all, 
 and the duck that fixes the whole job gets ' out in 
 the betting' for his. That's the way it was that 
 winter, anyhow. They began to double-reef my 
 stack the first day I blew in from this side, where 
 I'd had the season of my life, and I hadn't been 
 frittering with 'em for more than two months out 
 there before it began to look to me like a case of 
 tackling a Chink highbinder for a job on his Napa 
 county truck ranch. 
 
 " One raw morning — for the matter of that 
 every morning is raw in 'Frisco — when my pyra- 
 mid was down to three yellow disks, two of 'em 
 with twenty and the other with the ten stamp, I 
 went over to the track, resolved upon garroting the 
 first trainer I met and making him tell me the 
 name and address of a horse that was going to win. 
 The first trainer I met was a little sawed-ofF 
 weazen-face that used to ride 'em through the 
 snow on the outlaws back this way. He had a 
 string of four or five fair ones, with which he fre- 
 quently got the bum ends of the- purses and oc- 
 casionally the main money. I knew him pretty 
 well. I didn't exactly neck him, but I told him I 
 just couldn't see the long walk back to the Atlan- 
 tic seaboard, and that if something wasn't doing 
 
366 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 pretty soon there' d be an increase of one in the 
 prison census of San Quentin, for I meditated 
 sticking up the Mayor in the City Hall, or build- 
 ing a tunnel under the safe to the Cliff House, or 
 something like that. He kept on chewing his 
 straw, did this weazen-faced ex-jock, and then he 
 said : 
 
 " ' Say, d'je ever see that camel I got ? ' 
 
 " ' Yes,' said I, ' the whole string of 'em. I 
 wouldn't give you the sweat-band in my last year's 
 straw hat for the bunch.' 
 
 " ' I guess you ain't seen this one,' said he, still 
 eating hay. ' He's a humprback with four stom- 
 achs-rrrhut It's golng to happen, and I guess I'll let 
 you in for the sake of the old days at the Gut — I 
 know you won't split it.' 
 
 " Then he took me around to his bam and 
 showed me the thing. It looked like a cross be- 
 tween a dromedary and a Mexican burro. It was 
 a California-bred mutt that had never raced. It 
 had gone wrong as a two-year-old before being 
 sent to the pump, and it was still waiting for a 
 sight of the flgg as a three-year-old. 
 
 " ' This is it,' said the weazen-face, and I sat 
 down on a bale of hay and howled sardonically at 
 him. 
 
 "'To-morrow's the day,' said my friend the 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FOURTH 367 
 
 ex-jock and trainer. ' First race, which is for 
 maiden three-year-olds. There'll be about fifteen 
 in, and this one'll be write-your-own ticket. Put 
 what you got left down straight^ — no place or show. 
 It's plum preserves, and I'm giving you a real 
 push-up by letting you in. The camel's been 
 saved for this, and he's a racehorse. Get out, 
 now, I'm busy.' 
 
 " Something in the little chap's tone struck me. 
 He was dead in earnest, and I knew that he never 
 fooled himself. I'd known him for a good many 
 years, and he'd always told me right when the 
 skates he was riding or training were to the good 
 and meant, and when they wouldn't do, 
 
 " ' Gamel or no camel,' says I to myself, after I 
 had a chance to frame his talk up, ' I'll just let 'em 
 run for the books to-day, and take some o' that 
 with what I've got left to-morrow.' 
 
 " And I did. But the trouble was, I got woozed 
 up some before I left for the track on the afternoon 
 the camel was going to get his first peek at the 
 starter. Met an army officer at the Palace that I'd 
 known when we were kids back this way, and we 
 shot ten or fifteen in as if all the wet emporiums 
 were going out of business before noon. Then I 
 had a few more on the way to the track and after 
 I got there. But I was still to the good as far as 
 
368 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 having a clear lid was concerned when the slates 
 went up for the first race. I saw my friend the 
 trainer and ex-jock leaning over the paddock fence. 
 
 " ' It's right,' said he out of a corner of his 
 mouth. ' Go as far as you like.' 
 
 " So I spins over to the first book in the line, 
 and sees that the camel is at 40 to i. I'd done 
 business with that bookie often before. I passed 
 him one of the twenty dollar chips, and, naming 
 the camel, told him I wanted that one straight. 
 
 '"Another one of your hot things,' said the 
 bookie, handing me the grin along with the ticket 
 calling for ;^8oo to ;^20. 
 
 "Then I had another pint, and went into the 
 stand to watch the race. It looked to me like that 
 camel just winked at the judges as he walked — he 
 didn't run, he walked — under the wire, twenty 
 lengths to the good. 
 
 " ' Here's looking at Broadway six days from 
 date,' says I, digging for my ^800 to ;^20 
 ticket. The ticket wasn't there. I did the panic 
 hunt through all my clothes. The ticket was 
 gone. I hustled down to the betting ring, and 
 was first in my bookie's line. 
 
 " ' Say,' I said to him, ' I lost my good-thing 
 ticket, but you remember the bet, don't you ? ' 
 
 " As I spoke I got a pipe at the pay-ofF sheet, 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FOURTH 369 
 
 and my ;^8oo to $%o bet was the only one the sheet 
 contained on the camel. 
 
 " The bookie looked me over as if I belonged 
 to a bunch of Malay boomerang throwers on a 
 Midway. 
 
 "'What good-thing ticket?' said he. 'Who 
 are you ? ' 
 
 " I pointed to the pay-off sheet. 
 
 " ' That one,' said I, and my fingers ached at 
 the tips of them to clutch his throat. 
 
 " ' Go ay-way,' said he. ' Go right ay-way. 
 You may be good as a trance medium, but you 
 won't do. Go ay-way.' 
 
 " A real cute welch, wasn't it ? I only got one 
 good poke at him before I was hurtled out of the 
 grounds. 
 
 "I had a temperature of 112 centigrade, and 
 was bubbling inside like twin geysers, when I took 
 up the lope from the track to 'Frisco ; and when I 
 got there I went right up in the air, lacking toe 
 weights. I was going to lay for that bookie and pull 
 out his finger nails and cauterize his lamps and do 
 lots of things to him : but I still had some dollars on 
 me, and by the time it was up to me to be at the en- 
 trance to the bookie's hotel and start in to do him 
 rude, I was down at the foot of Clay street buying 
 Mulligans — which consist of red peppers mixed 
 
370 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 with steamed beer — for a large and admiring bunch 
 of 'longshoremen. They took turns telling me the 
 stories of their lives, and then I'd purchase more. 
 Mulligans for 'em. They'd edge up and give me 
 lung-to-lung talks about what a nice, chile con 
 carne proposition I was, whereupon I'd order ad- 
 ditional beakers composed of red peppers and 
 steamed beer for them, and the dripped green boys 
 for myself. I remembered afterward that they had 
 told me about a seamen's strike that was then on 
 which caused a general tie-up of all ships that 
 wanted to break out of the port of San Francisco. 
 I didn't forget about the bookie's welch on my 
 ;^8oo to $2Q ticket, but I was having so much 
 fun Studying primitive man in the shape of Mul- 
 ligan-absorbing 'longshoremen that I decided I'd 
 wait until the next day to gnaw the bookie's 
 bones. 
 
 " Well, the blank came, as the derned old thing 
 always does. I was getting the boots when I came 
 to in a greasy bunk in the fo'c'sle of the brigantine 
 Monmouth Queen, lumber-laden, for Hilo, 
 Hawaiian Islands. The bucko first mate was 
 wearing the boots. I'd been shanghaied. It was 
 then that I remembered about that seamen's 
 strike. 
 
 " Say, mine is a sad story, with tremolo music 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FOURTH 371 
 
 on the G string, and I was not always thus, with 
 the up-stage lights gradually lowered. I don't like 
 to allude frivolously to the ^eighteen days I put in 
 on the brigantine Monmouth Queen. When I 
 was yanked aboard the Monmouth Queen I didn't 
 know the difference between a capstan bar and a 
 ratline — ^but I learned, all right : oh, yes, I learned 
 — particularly with reference to the capstan bar. 
 Likewise the bucko first mate gave me personally 
 conducted lessons as to the meaning of marlin- 
 spikes and belaying pins. He was a devilishly 
 zealous instructor, that mate, and the way he laid 
 himself out, and me, too, in his efforts to teach me 
 seamanship, is something that I lay awake o'nights 
 and think about even now. I am free to say that 
 if I ever met up with that mate here in New York 
 I'd blow him oiF to the finest meal of concentrated 
 lye that could be bought. 
 
 " There was no use in my setting up the long 
 moan when I came to on board the Monmouth 
 Queen, and I didn't do it. I did what the mate 
 told me, and I did it sudden every time, at that. 
 My fo'c'sle shipmates were all old flat-feet, and 
 they put me wise to the fact from the jump that if 
 I didn't do things real quick for that mate I'd go 
 over the side without being sewed in any ham- 
 mock, and when I get a tip like that I always play 
 
372 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 it across the board. I was as good as I could be, 
 alow and aloft, as long as I was one of the crew 
 of the brigantine Monmouth Queen, so that when 
 she finally dropped her mudhook, eighteen days 
 out, in the harbor of Hilo, which is the main town 
 of the main island of Hawaii of the Hawaiian 
 group, I didn't have any more than 200 or so dents 
 on me that the bucko mate had put there in his 
 more playful moments. 
 
 " I didn't want to ride any more on the Mon- 
 mouth Queen, and when a Kanaka's bumboat 
 came alongside the ship the evening we got in, to 
 peddle bananas and alligator pears and cigarettes 
 and things to the crew, I dropped into the boat 
 under cover of the darkness while the Kanaka was 
 doing his peddling forward. I crawled under a 
 tarpaulin that the Kanaka had spread over his 
 goods up in the eyes of the bumboat, and after a 
 while he hopped in and pushed off, without dream- 
 ing that he had a passenger. When he had 
 beached his bumboat — there are no docks in Hilo 
 — and I rose up in the darkness, shrouded in the 
 tarpaulin, the way that Kanaka threw himself face 
 downward on the sand and prayed out loud to the 
 Kanaka Goddess Pele — who is supposed to pre- 
 side over the volcanic fireworks of Hawaii — was 
 real religious and impressive. 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FOURTH 373 
 
 " That night I walked the natural palm avenues, 
 wondering what they were doing in all the flats I 
 knew in New York, and thinking about the good 
 things, solid and liquid, in the ^7.98 refrigerators 
 in all the flats I knew in New York, while the big 
 stars of that latitude rubbernecked at me and 
 threatened — they seemed so close — to come right 
 down and hit me a few. 
 
 " About seven o'clock the next morning I was 
 slouching by a big livery stable on the main street 
 of Hilo, when a man who was sitting in a chair in 
 front of the livery stable office looked up and 
 passed me the nod. 
 
 " ' Hello,' said he, ' when did you drop in ? ' 
 
 " I told him how I'd slipped in under the harbor 
 guns, so to speak, the night before, informing him 
 that I'd been shanghaied, and incidentally remark- 
 ing that the next time I went to sea I'd be sitting 
 at either the right or left hand side of the skipper, 
 so's I could josh him during meals. 
 
 " ' The motion of a ship in the part I've been 
 riding in during the last eighteen days depletes my 
 system,' I added. 
 
 "'Say, do you think you could drive four 
 bosses ? ' the man in the chair in front of the 
 livery stable, who was the boss, as I afterward 
 found out, asked me. 
 
374 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 " ' I couldn't think of driving less'n eight,' I 
 told him. 
 
 " ' Know something about hosses, then ? ' said 
 he. 
 
 "Did I know anything about horses! Did I 
 know anything else but things about horses at i to 
 20 on to 200 to I against ? 
 
 " ' Because I guess I can give you a job, Bub,' 
 says this livery stable man, ' if you think you can 
 handle a four-hoss team.' 
 
 " Then he told me that he sent a four-horse 
 coach filled with tourists up to the Burning Lake 
 of Kilauea — about thirty miles up on the side of 
 the volcano of Mauna Loa — every morning, but 
 that his driver had embarked upon a massive saki 
 drunk the night before, after fetching the coach 
 down on the return trip, and wasn't liable to show 
 up for some days. 
 
 " Two hours later I had the four lines in my 
 mitt, and was sitting on the seat of the coach like 
 as if it was all mine — a Kanaka boy beside me to 
 point out the right road for me — and about twenty 
 swell tourists inside the coach, all bound for Peter 
 Lee's Volcano House, which stands on the brink 
 of that lively crater that's called the burning Lake 
 of Kilauea. I came near hopping ofF the seat and 
 cutting for it when I first came in sight of that 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FOURTH 375 
 
 devilish hole in the earth, with the flame and 
 smoke and vapor rising and falling in it like a 
 pulse, and I concluded right there and then that 
 the brimstone spiels that were handed to me when 
 I was a kid at Sunday-school were all right, all 
 right, and on the level. But I pulled the coach up 
 in front of the Volcano House, after a six-hour 
 tug, with whip a-cracking and colors flying, and 
 the folks inside the coach calling me Hank Monk 
 and other old-time stage drivers' names like that— 
 for the road from Hilo to the Burning Lake isn't 
 any Speedway, by a lot. 
 
 " I drove 'em down and back to Hilo the next 
 day, and those tourists all plugged so hard for me 
 that the livery stable boss told me I could have the 
 coach-driving job permanently at eighty dollars a 
 month and found, if I wanted it. Well, it costs 
 eighty dollars to come up from Honolulu to 
 'Frisco, first-class, per steamship, and I wouldn't 
 have come back to 'Frisco any other way if I'd 
 had to stay in Hilo — or on the leper island of Me- 
 lokai, for that matter — for the rest of my life ; and 
 another ^100, at least, from 'Frisco to New York, 
 Oh, yes, I wanted the job. 
 
 " Voy-la ! as that Ollendorf fellows says. I 
 drove that coach from Hilo to the Burning Lake 
 and back for two months, and I'd probably have 
 
376 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 driven it for another two months, so's to be able to 
 get back here looking like some ready money, any- 
 how — but my day for getting hunk came around. 
 
 " I was hitching up the four one morning when 
 the bunch of tourists bound up to the Burning 
 Lake on my wagon came laughing and chatting 
 to the barn from the Interisland steamer. I knew 
 one of them as soon as I popped my lamps on him. 
 He was the bookie who had welched on my ;^8oo 
 to ;^20 ticket on the camel. Say, he didn't 
 have a one on that was less'n four carats. I didn't 
 make myself known to him, and he was too busy 
 being gallant to the five women to notice me. 
 
 " ' This,' said I to myself, as I climbed onto 
 the box and picked up the reins, 'is my last 
 trip up.' 
 
 " I got the coach up all right as usual. My 
 bookie man was sitting well up forward, and 
 through the open windows beneath me I could 
 hear him telling the man next to him how he'd had 
 the biggest season of his experience on the block — 
 how only about eighteen per cent, of the favorites 
 had reached the wire first, and the remaining 
 eighty-two per cent, had handed the dough over to 
 the books by the hatful. 
 
 " The tourists all climbed out when I hauled the 
 coach up in front of the Volcano House, and sep- 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FOURTH 377 
 
 arated into little groups. I never took my eye off 
 my bookie man. After about an hour, when din- 
 ner was over, and the party was waiting to de- 
 scend to the sides of the crater on pony back, the 
 bookie walked a couple of hundred yards away 
 from the hotel to examine a spot where vapor was 
 rising from a hole in the ground. It was a yellow 
 sulphur pit, as hot as molten lead. He stood there, 
 looking into it. I was right after him, and I did 
 such a good gum-shoe stunt that he didn't know 
 there was anybody around until I had him right by 
 the collar. We were screened from the view of 
 the people on the hotel porch by a bunch of scrub, 
 half baked trees. 
 
 " He wheeled about, as pale as a spook, when I 
 got that quick clutch on his collar. Did he know 
 me ? In a second, or less ! 
 
 " ' Ombrey,' I said to him, ' it 'ud give me a 
 sight more satisfaction to just dump you into that 
 pit — and no one 'ud ever be the wiser — than 
 to collect the ^820. But I need the money. Dig!' 
 
 " He dug. He passed it over in eight centuries 
 and a twenty. I slackened my grasp on his collar 
 and slapped him on each side of his countenance 
 with my open palm. 
 
 " I drove the coach down to Hilo the next day, 
 resigned my job with a mutual exchange of regrets, 
 
378 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 and two days later I was in a cabin next to the 
 skipper's on the steamer Australia, Honolulu to 
 San Francisco. In sixteen days from the morning 
 I left Honolulu I was making the rounds of all the 
 flats I knew in New York, and doing my share of 
 re-stocking the refrigerators. 
 
 " If you want to get hunk, all you've got to do 
 is to just wait, that's all," dryly concluded Ex- 
 Tank No. 27 of the Harlem Club of Former Al- 
 coholic Degenerates. 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FIFTH 
 
 Wherein Ex-Tank No. 19 Dwelleth Rem- 
 iniscently and feelingly upon ye joys of 
 His Former Peaceful Home 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FIFTH 
 
 WHEREIN EX-TANK NO. I9 DWELLETH REMINIS- 
 CENTLY AND FEELINGLY UPON YE JOYS OF HIS 
 FORMER PEACEFUL HOME 
 
 " Ours was a happy, peaceful home," said Ex- 
 Tank No. 19, in a subdued, yearning, the-days- 
 that-are-no-more tone. " Ours was an idyllic 
 shack. It was a wickieup over which the white- 
 winged dove of " 
 
 " Say, bite it off for a minute," interrupted Ex- 
 Tank No. 7, the parliamentarian and kicker, " until 
 I get the orchestra to mute the strings and play a 
 few bars of ' In a Lighthouse by the Crick,' or 
 ' My Little Log Cabin, on East Tenth Street,' or 
 ' My Dinky Four-Room Flat Way Down in 
 iMaine,' or something like that, with trills and 
 tremulos and sobs on the G and D strings. It's 
 dead easy to see that this is going to be a slow-music 
 spiel, full of moans about busted happy homes and 
 rum-extinguished firesides, and we ought to have 
 fitting music to give the thing the right soaky, 
 sobby, soggy, tear-drenched effect, with a gradual 
 
 lowering of the up-stage lights, and " 
 
 381 
 
382 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 " No. 7 will be rudely removed from the room 
 and rigged out in the punitive, skin-tight bathing 
 suit, thus to remain in full sight of the club until 
 the meeting is at an end," said the Chief Ex-Tank, 
 rising and glowering at the parliamentarian and 
 kicker. "No. ig will resume with the wickieup 
 over which the white-wing-ed dove, etc." 
 
 When No. 7 had been dragged to the club's 
 chamber of torture for kickers. No. 19 proceeded: 
 
 " Ours, as I stated,, was a beatific bungalow. 
 It was a stag flat, and there were four of us. First, 
 me ; second, Jim Callemout, the telegraph operator 
 in a pool-room ; third. Bill Writemdown, the sheet- 
 writer for one of the main tome-makers in this 
 county ; and fourth, Percival Rockandrye, the art- 
 ist, who made funny pictures for the weeklies 
 when he wasn't real tired and the wind was favor- 
 able. The Dog was cook, overseer, and time- 
 keeper. The Dog was a Chink we picked up to 
 run the plant for us. He'd been steward for the 
 skippers of two men-o'-war, had done stunts as a 
 chambermaid in ground-and-lofty palaces on Nob 
 Hill in San Francisco, where all the will-con.testors 
 live, had built flapjacks for a mining outfit in a 
 Nevada camp, and held down other little Jobs like 
 that. We nailed him on Dover street, after he'd 
 been up against a sanded fan-tan deck and dropped 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FIFTH 383 
 
 the savings of a three-years' cruise in the Navy, and 
 was therefore willing to work for four young men 
 of exemplary habits who longed for the calm joy- 
 aunce of a home. His name was Hi Ky-Yi, 
 which freely translated, means the Dog. He was 
 a triple-X, distilled-water jewel, was the Dog, and 
 he wouldn't think anything of it when we'd all fall 
 in in a bunch at 4:27 in the morning, pour bottles 
 of malt on him to wake him up, and order him to 
 cook us up everything in the refrigerator. In just 
 twenty-six minutes from the time we chased him 
 out of bed on these occasions he'd have the finest 
 parade of things to eat served on the table that I 
 ever pulled a bench up to before or since, and he'd 
 grin while we all sat down and made faces at him 
 and told him that he wouldn't do, and that he 
 ought to be cooking scouse on a lumber schooner, 
 and things like that. Oh, the Dog was the good 
 end of that sylvan retreat of ours, all right, but we 
 didn't know it until it was too late. 
 
 " The Dog did all the buying and the rent-pay- 
 ing, and handed in his shorthand notes of the cost 
 of running the whole heap-much plant every two 
 weeks. We'd cut that into four and dig up the 
 sum total, wherever it happened to be. We'd 
 each chimed in ^200 to furnish the tepee, and 
 when the Dog got it all fixed up we had a home 
 
384 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 right and no mistake. It was so peaceful, too, as I 
 believed I stated before. The telegrapher gen- 
 erally got in about three in the morning, and then 
 he'd take turns in playing on his mouth-organ and 
 mandolin for a couple of hours. The sheet-writer 
 would usually happen in a couple of hours before, 
 with some cab-driver for whom he had conceived 
 such a fondness that he made him tell his sad story 
 until sunup. The funny paper artist was on hand 
 all the time. He never got out of bed except to 
 get another bottle out of the cold-storage box and 
 to light a fresh cigarette. I neglected to state that 
 I was at that time running a flashlight-picture 
 plant, and of course I couldn't get in until a couple 
 or three after midnight, and when I did get in 
 everything was all agreeable to me. I didn't care. 
 I loved my happy home. 
 
 " Well, it was all too good to last. When I got 
 in one morning — the graveyards had done their 
 yawnings a couple of hours before — I found the 
 funny paper artist sitting on the edge of his trunk, 
 with a light in his lanterns such as was never seen 
 on land or sea. He was not only to the bad as to 
 his eyes, but in every other way. He was telling 
 the Dog that carrots were growing out of the walls 
 and ceiling so fast that he couldn't count 'em, and 
 demanding that the Dog fill a few bushel baskets 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FIFTH 385 
 
 with 'em and take 'em to market. It didn't take 
 me long to see that he had the Brooklyn boys 
 right, and I had to jolly him into going along with 
 me by telling him I was geing to drive down to 
 Washington market to find out the market price on 
 carrots, delivered wholesale. I got him into a cab 
 and took him to an entomological ward, and that's 
 where he drops out. 
 
 " After that we split the Dog's vouchers into 
 three. About a month later the sheet-writer 
 walked in one night all prinked up, and with noth- 
 ing but lemon phosphates under his waistband, and 
 announced that that night was his ante-nuptial 
 vigil; that it was going to happen up in Troy or 
 somewhere the next day, and that thenceforward 
 to the end of time he intended to be a sedate and 
 loving husband and father. That let him out. 
 
 " The pool-room telegrapher and I split the 
 Dog's expense statements in two and did the dig- 
 ging for another month, without hunting for any 
 new recruits. Then the pool-rooms were closed 
 up for awhile, and my remaining flat-pal had to 
 lam West for Chicago to get a job. That left me 
 and the Dog alone in my eight-room happy home. 
 The ;^8oo worth of furniture reverted to me, the 
 agreement having been when the four of us went 
 into furnish the idyllic honkatonk that the man 
 
386 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 that stayed the distance should yank down the 
 whole layout, and that there should be no draw- 
 down for any of the quitters. It was an awful 
 responsibility to own ;^8oo worth of flat furniture 
 all at one and the same time. It preyed upon me 
 so heavily that one night I forgot to go back to the 
 flat. I forgot to go back the next night, too, and 
 the night after that, and about a week after I'd 
 done my first foregetful stunt I was too far away to 
 get back conveniently. I was in Jacksonville, 111., 
 where I had arrived on a train. I didn't jot the 
 number of the train down in my notebook at the 
 time not having been very strong on mathematics 
 at the particular time I was riding on the train. 
 
 " Why Jacksonville, 111. ? Well, say, it's a 
 warm night, and I like to answer easy ones, any- 
 how. There I was in Jacksonville, at any rate, 
 and ;^8oo of furniture upon which I could have 
 realized more than 800 miles away. The con- 
 ductor jostled me awake in Jacksonville at nine 
 o'clock in the morning, and informed me that my 
 ticket only read to that point. 
 
 " ' Jacksonville,' I said to him. ' Which Jack- 
 sonville, Florida or ' 
 
 "'Jacksonville, Chicago,' said he. 'You want 
 to do a wiggle, at that, for the train pulls out in 
 two minutes.' 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FIFTH 387 
 
 " Jacksonville, hey ? I couldn't make it out. I 
 knew that I had been in Chicago for a day or two, 
 but I'd never heard of Jacksonville, 111., in my life, 
 and how or why I'd steered my caravel to that 
 port was one that I didn't have the time to figure 
 out on the chart. I didn't have time because 
 when I did the dough-mobilization customary on 
 such occasions I found after clawing every pocket 
 that the bundle I'd started out with in New York 
 had proved an alibi. I was just ^^2.85 worth, 
 which was big money under the circumstances, at 
 that. I went after the shave and the shine and the 
 clean collar and cufFs, which stood me four bits, 
 and the milk toast and coiFee breakfast gouged me 
 out of the other thirty-five cents in change, leaving 
 me a pat deuce to the good. 
 
 " I found the Jacksonville town photographer in 
 his plant over a livery stable. I told him about it 
 for about twenty minutes — about the way to make 
 'em buy pictures, that is — before he saw it. Then 
 I got him hypnotized, and he told me I could go 
 ahead with the scheme and use his apparatus and 
 draw down half of all I made. 
 
 " I shouldered his outdoor camera and a bunch 
 of plates and went out into the highways of Jack- 
 sonville, 111., to do business. Every time saw a 
 nice looking kid, boy or girl, playing around the 
 
388 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 streets, I stood the kid up against a fence or a tree 
 and conned it into looking pretty and smiling, and 
 took a couple of views of it. When I found four 
 or five kids playing together, I massed, 'em into a 
 group, and tore ofF a couple of 5x8 views of the 
 group. I took about forty plates back to the 
 photographer that evening, swooped upon his dark- 
 room, developed the plates, and found them all to 
 be just as cute as they could be, so they were. 
 The next day I went after more portraits of young 
 ones, and brought back another large stack of 
 plates. I kept at that stunt for four days, and at 
 the finish I had about 150 nice plates of all or 
 nearly all of the rising generation of Jacksonville, 
 111. On the fifth day I made proofs of the plates 
 and took 'em around to the mothers of the young 
 ones. They ate 'em up, and ordered pictures by 
 the two dozen. My yank-down was eighty dollars, 
 which I collected from the photographer, who 
 almost wept when I told him that Jacksonville 
 wasn't big enough for me, and that, having done 
 my little win-out stunt, I was off and away. He 
 offered me the use of his horse and buggy and a 
 key to the cider cellar and any other old thing 
 reasonable if I'd only stay along awhile and boom 
 his business, but I couldn't see Jacksonville, 111., 
 any longer. I went to Springfield, 111., took an 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FIFTH 389 
 
 8x10 view of the house in which Abraham Lincoln 
 lived while a resident of Springfield, drilled off 
 about 3,000 prints from the view, advertised for 
 agents in St. Louis and other towns where the 
 black man and brother abides in large quantities 
 and my agents sold the black population the photo- 
 graphs of the Springfield residence of Lincoln as 
 ' the house in which the Great Emancipator wrote 
 the Emancipation Proclamation.' The agents got 
 one dollar a throw for the pictures, and six weeks 
 from the day that I struck Springfield I was ^1,000 
 to the good, and hungry for a sight of the old 
 town. 
 
 " I got into New York at midnight, with noth- 
 ing but money all over me, and I went uptown in 
 the ' L ' right away to see how my flat was making 
 out. On my way up I figured that I'd assemble 
 another bunch of Indians and start the happy home 
 all over again. I touched the button and got the 
 click, and then I felt that the Dog was a faithful 
 old canine to be still in possession. I couldn't 
 figure how he'd paid the rent and kept the plant 
 going, but when the click opened the downstairs 
 door I felt that it was all right. 
 
 "The Dog stood outside the door of my flat 
 when I got up the stairs. When he saw me I 
 thought his jaw was going to fall on the landing 
 
390 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 and break. The Dog was a startled Chink, all 
 right. 
 
 " ' Hello, Ki-Yi,' I said to him. ' I'm home early, 
 ain't I ? Got anything to eat ? ' 
 
 " The Dog could only gasp. His manner put 
 me next to the fact that there was something do- 
 ing — besides which, I couldn't help but smell the 
 hop. I pushed the door open — and it was all ofF. 
 There v/ere only twenty-six people lying around on 
 bunks in my flat and hitting the pipe, that's all — 
 only twenty-six. The Dog had started in my flat 
 one of the most prosperous yen-hok layouts this 
 side of San Francisco. Besides the Dog himself 
 there were four other Chinks to cook the pills. 
 This is the way I found my happy home. 
 
 " I took the Dog out to the kitchen and gave 
 him the gaze. He told me that he hadn't ex- 
 pected me back, and that he had been tempted to 
 do a little business on his own hook. He had paid 
 the rent, telling the landlord that I was away on 
 an extended vacation, had assembled his layout 
 and gathered his clientele, and he sure was in a big 
 way of business when I butted in. He told me all 
 this calmly and grinningly, and I couldn't help but 
 feel then and there that if I'd been born with that 
 Celestial's nerve I'd never have to live anywhere else 
 except on a white yacht, a-cruising the ^gean sea. 
 
TALE THE TWENTY-FIFTH 391 
 
 " I told the Dog to get 'em out, and he did. He 
 went from bunk to bunk and handed out the word 
 that he'd been tipped oif that there was to be a 
 raid, and the bunch of hop-smokers got up, one by 
 one, and crawled away. Then the Dog chased his 
 four pill-cooks, opened the windows, fixed me up a 
 nice little feed of fried chicken and rice, showed 
 me the ^800 he'd hauled down so far with the 
 joint, and told me that for the time being he was 
 too strong to work. The next morning the Dog 
 gathered up his layout, made me his smiling de- 
 voirs, and that's where he drops out. 
 
 "I put the ^800 worth of furniture in storage, 
 and after a couple of months I forgot to pay the 
 storage. 
 
 " All this happened six years ago. 
 
 " Last week I was walking throueh Madison 
 Square, wondering why the hoboes sitting on the 
 benches wouldn't abjure the Demon Rum once and 
 forever — like all of us here present did when the 
 gafFgot too strong and we had too — when I got a 
 clip on the back that sent me forward about twelve 
 feet. I wheeled around. There was the ex-in- 
 mate of my happy home, the funny paper artist, 
 upon whom I hadn't clapped a lamp since that 
 time I'd taken him to the bug-ward when he saw 
 the carrots growing out of the walls and ceilings 
 
392 TALES OF THE EX-TANKS 
 
 of our eight-room Arcadia. He loolced all to the 
 good, fat, sassy and dressed-up — he's a candidate 
 for election to membership in this club at the next 
 quarterly meeting — and after we'd talked it over 
 for an hour or so he dragged me over to Bayonne, 
 N. J., to have dinner at his plant. I walked into 
 his derned nice little home, was introduced to his 
 pretty, tidy little wife, saw a couple o' fat young 
 ones playing around — and then that queer feeling 
 that I'd seen it all before crept over me. I rubbed 
 my lamps and looked again. The funny paper 
 artist stood a little away from me, grinning. 
 
 " ' Looks kind o' familiar to you, eh ? ' said he. 
 
 " I couldn't get my eyes away from that furni- 
 ture. It seemed as if I knew every stick of it. 
 
 " ' It's the same old gear,' said he. ' I bought it 
 at auction when I was married three years ago, 
 when the storage establishment sold it to pay over- 
 due storage charges.' 
 
 " I stayed all night, and slept in the same brass- 
 and-white bed in which I'd reposed in my own 
 happy home six years before." 
 
 Then the Harlem Club of Former Alcoholic 
 Degenerates sang two verses of " He Don't Want 
 No Happy Home, Nohow," and the meeting was 
 at an end. 
 
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