The Open Boat and Other Stories
The salad having vanished, the kids arose. "All right, now," they
warned him. "If you play us for duffers, we'll get square. Don't you
forget it."
"Boys, I'll give you a race for your money. Book on that. I may
lose--understand, I may lose--no man can help meeting a better man. But
I think I can skin him, and I'll give you a run for your money, you
bet."
"All right, then. But, look here," they told him, "you keep your face
closed. Nobody gets in on this but us. Understand?"
"Not a soul," Pop declared. They left him, gesturing a last warning
from the wicker doors.
In the street they saw Benson, his cane gripped in the middle,
strolling through the white-clothed jabbering natives on the shady
side. They semaphored to him eagerly. He came across cautiously, like a
man who ventures into dangerous company.
"We're going to get up a race. Pop and Fred. Pop swears he can skin
'im. This is a tip. Keep it dark. Say, won't Freddie be hot?"
Benson looked as if he had been compelled to endure these exhibitions
of insanity for a century. "Oh, you fellows are off. Pop can't beat
Freddie. He's an old bat. Why, it's impossible. Pop can't beat Freddie."
"Can't he? Want to bet he can't?" said the kids. "There now, let's
see--you're talking so large."
"Well, you----"
"Oh, bet. Bet or else close your trap. That's the way."
"How do you know you can pull off the race? Seen Freddie?"
"No, but----"
"Well, see him then. Can't bet with no race arranged. I'll bet with you
all right--all right. I'll give you fellows a tip though--you're a pair
of asses. Pop can't run any faster than a brick school-house."
The kids scowled at him and defiantly said--"Can't he?" They left him
and went to the Casa Verde. Freddie, beautiful in his white jacket, was
holding one of his innumerable conversations across the bar. He smiled
when he saw them. "Where you boys been?" he demanded, in a paternal
tone. Almost all the proprietors of American cafés in the city used to
adopt a paternal tone when they spoke to the kids.
"Oh, been 'round,'" they replied.
"Have a drink?" said the proprietor of the Casa Verde, forgetting his
other social obligations. During the course of this ceremony one of the
kids remarked--
"Freddie, Pop says he can beat you running."
"Does he?" observed Freddie without excitement. He was used to various
snares of the kids.
"That's what. He says he can leave you at the wire and not see you
again."
"Well, he lies," replied Freddie placidly.
"And I'll bet you a bottle of wine that he can do it, too."
"Rats!" said Freddie.
"Oh, that's all right," pursued a kid. "You can throw bluffs all you
like, but he can lose you in a hundred yards' dash, you bet."
Freddie drank his whisky, and then settled his elbows on the bar.
"Say, now, what do you boys keep coming in here with some pipe-story
all the time for? You can't josh me. Do you think you can scare me
about Pop? Why, I know I can beat him. He can't run with me. Certainly
not. Why, you fellows are just jollying me."
"Are we though!" said the kids. "You daren't bet the bottle of wine."
"Oh, of course I can bet you a bottle of wine," said Freddie
disdainfully. "Nobody cares about a bottle of wine, but----"
"Well, make it five then," advised one of the kids.
Freddie hunched his shoulders. "Why, certainly I will. Make it ten if
you like, but----"
"We do," they said.
"Ten, is it? All right; that goes." A look of weariness came over
Freddie's face. "But you boys are foolish. I tell you Pop is an old
man. How can you expect him to run? Of course, I'm no great runner, but
then I'm young and healthy and--and a pretty smooth runner too. Pop is
old and fat, and then he doesn't do a thing but tank all day. It's a
cinch."
The kids looked at him and laughed rapturously. They waved their
fingers at him. "Ah, there!" they cried. They meant that they had made
a victim of him.
But Freddie continued to expostulate. "I tell you he couldn't win--an
old man like him. You're crazy. Of course, I know you don't care about
ten bottles of wine, but, then--to make such bets as that. You're
twisted."
"Are we, though?" cried the kids in mockery. They had precipitated
Freddie into a long and thoughtful treatise on every possible chance
of the thing as he saw it. They disputed with him from time to time,
and jeered at him. He laboured on through his argument. Their childish
faces were bright with glee.
In the midst of it Wilburson entered. Wilburson worked; not too much,
though. He had hold of the Mexican end of a great importing house of
New York, and as he was a junior partner, he worked. But not too much,
though. "What's the howl?" he said.
The kids giggled. "We've got Freddie rattled."
"Why," said Freddie, turning to him, "these two Indians are trying to
tell me that Pop can beat me running."
"Like the devil," said Wilburson, incredulously.
"Well, can't he?" demanded a kid.
"Why, certainly not," said Wilburson, dismissing every possibility of
it with a gesture. "That old bat? Certainly not. I'll bet fifty dollars
that Freddie----"
"Take you," said a kid.
"What?" said Wilburson, "that Freddie won't beat Pop?"
The kid that had spoken now nodded his head.
"That Freddie won't beat Pop?" repeated Wilburson.
"Yes. It's a go?"
"Why, certainly," retorted Wilburson. "Fifty? All right."
"Bet you five bottles on the side," ventured the other kid.
"Why, certainly," exploded Wilburson wrathfully. "You fellows must
take me for something easy. I'll take all those kinds of bets I can
get. Cer--tain--ly."
They settled the details. The course was to be paced off on the asphalt
of one of the adjacent side-streets, and then, at about eleven o'clock
in the evening, the match would be run. Usually in Mexico the streets
of a city grow lonely and dark but a little after nine o'clock. There
are occasional lurking figures, perhaps, but no crowds, lights and
noise. The course would doubtless be undisturbed. As for the policeman
in the vicinity, they--well, they were conditionally amiable.
The kids went to see Pop; they told him of the arrangement, and then in
deep tones they said, "Oh, Pop, if you throw us!"
Pop appeared to be a trifle shaken by the weight of responsibility
thrust upon him, but he spoke out bravely. "Boys, I'll pinch that race.
Now you watch me. I'll pinch it."
The kids went then on some business of their own, for they were not
seen again till evening. When they returned to the neighbourhood of
the Café Colorado the usual stream of carriages was whirling along the
calle. The wheels hummed on the asphalt, and the coachmen towered in
their great sombreros. On the sidewalk a gazing crowd sauntered, the
better class self-satisfied and proud, in their Derby hats and cut-away
coats, the lower classes muffling their dark faces in their blankets,
slipping along in leather sandals. An electric light sputtered and
fumed over the throng. The afternoon shower had left the pave wet and
glittering. The air was still laden with the odour of rain on flowers,
grass, leaves.
In the Café Colorado a cosmopolitan crowd ate, drank, played billiards,
gossiped, or read in the glaring yellow light. When the kids entered a
large circle of men that had been gesticulating near the bar greeted
them with a roar.
"Here they are now!"
"Oh, you pair of peaches!"
"Say, got any more money to bet with?" Colonel Hammigan, grinning,
pushed his way to them. "Say, boys, we'll all have a drink on you now
because you won't have any money after eleven o'clock. You'll be going
down the back stairs in your stocking feet."
Although the kids remained unnaturally serene and quiet, argument in
the Café Colorado became tumultuous. Here and there a man who did not
intend to bet ventured meekly that perchance Pop might win, and the
others swarmed upon him in a whirlwind of angry denial and ridicule.
Pop, enthroned behind the bar, looked over at this storm with a shadow
of anxiety upon his face. This widespread flouting affected him, but
the kids looked blissfully satisfied with the tumult they had stirred.
Blanco, honest man, ever worrying for his friends, came to them. "Say,
you fellows, you aren't betting too much? This thing looks kind of
shaky, don't it?"
The faces of the kids grew sober, and after consideration one
said--"No, I guess we've got a good thing, Blanco. Pop is going to
surprise them, I think."
"Well, don't----"
"All right, old boy. We'll watch out."
From time to time the kids had much business with certain orange, red,
blue, purple, and green bills. They were making little memoranda on the
back of visiting cards. Pop watched them closely, the shadow still upon
his face. Once he called to them, and when they came he leaned over the
bar and said intensely--"Say, boys, remember, now--I might lose this
race. Nobody can ever say for sure, and if I do, why----"
"Oh, that's all right, Pop," said the kids, reassuringly. "Don't mind
it. Do your derndest, and let it go at that."
When they had left him, however, they went to a corner to consult.
"Say, this is getting interesting. Are you in deep?" asked one
anxiously of his friend.
"Yes, pretty deep," said the other stolidly. "Are you?"
"Deep as the devil," replied the other in the same tone.
They looked at each other stonily and went back to the crowd. Benson
had just entered the café. He approached them with a gloating smile of
victory. "Well, where's all that money you were going to bet?"
"Right here," said the kids, thrusting into their waistcoat pockets.
At eleven o'clock a curious thing was learned. When Pop and Freddie,
the kids and all, came to the little side street, it was thick with
people. It seemed that the news of this race had spread like the wind
among the Americans, and they had come to witness the event. In the
darkness the crowd moved, mumbling in argument.
The principals--the kids and those with them--surveyed this scene with
some dismay. "Say--here's a go." Even then a policeman might be seen
approaching, the light from his little lantern flickering on his white
cap, gloves, brass buttons, and on the butt of the old-fashioned Colt's
revolver which hung at his belt. He addressed Freddie in swift Mexican.
Freddie listened, nodding from time to time. Finally Freddie turned to
the others to translate. "He says he'll get into trouble if he allows
this race when all this crowd is here."
There was a murmur of discontent. The policeman looked at them with an
expression of anxiety on his broad, brown face.
"Oh, come on. We'll go hold it on some other fellow's beat," said one
of the kids. The group moved slowly away debating. Suddenly the other
kid cried, "I know! The Paseo!"
"By jiminy," said Freddie, "just the thing. We'll get a cab and go out
to the Paseo. S-s-h! Keep it quiet; we don't want all this mob."
Later they tumbled into a cab--Pop, Freddie, the kids, old Colonel
Hammigan and Benson. They whispered to the men who had wagered, "The
Paseo." The cab whirled away up the black street. There were occasional
grunts and groans, cries of "Oh, get off me feet," and of "Quit! you're
killing me." Six people do not have fun in one cab. The principals
spoke to each other with the respect and friendliness which comes to
good men at such times. Once a kid put his head out of the window and
looked backward. He pulled it in again and cried, "Great Scott! Look at
that, would you!"
The others struggled to do as they were bid, and afterwards shouted,
"Holy smoke! Well, I'll be blowed! Thunder and turf!"
Galloping after them came innumerable cabs, their lights twinkling,
streaming in a great procession through the night.
"The street is full of them," ejaculated the old colonel.