Shorty McCabe

Sewell Ford

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• Publié par: sufan
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 32
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Shorty McCabe, by
Sewell Ford
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Title: Shorty McCabe
Author: Sewell Ford
Illustrator: Francis Vaux Wilson
Release Date: August 5, 2007 [EBook #22249]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
SHORTY MCCABE ***
Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.netShe was a dream, all right.
She was a dream, all right.
Shorty McCabe
By
Sewell Ford
Illustrated by
Francis Vaux Wilson
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1906, by Mitchell Kennerley.
SHORTY McCABE
CHAPTER I
Excuse me, mister man, but ain't you—Hello, yourself!Blamed if I didn't think there was somethin' kind of
natural about the looks, as you come pikin' by. How're
they runnin', eh?
Well say, I ain't seen you since we used to hit up the
grammar school together. You've seen me, eh? Oh,
sure! I'd forgot. That was when you showed up at the
old Athletic club the night I got the belt away from the
Kid. Doin' sportin' news then, wa'n't you? Chucked all
that now, I s'pose?
Oh, I've kept track of you, all right. Every time I sees
one of your pieces in the magazines I reads it. And
say, some of 'em's kind of punk. But then, you've got
to sling out somethin' or other, I expect, or get off the
job. Where do you dig up all of them yarns, anyway?
That's what always sticks me. You must knock around
a whole bunch, and have lots happen to you. Me? Ah,
nothin' ever happens to me. Course, I'm generally on
the move, but it's just along the grub track, and that
ain't excitin'.
Yes, it's been a couple of years since I quit the ring.
Why? Say, don't ever put that up to a has-been. It's
almost as bad as compoundin' a felony. I could give
you a whole raft of reasons that would sound well, but
there's only one that covers the case. There's a
knockout comin' to the best of 'em, if they hang to the
game long enough. Some ain't satisfied, even after
two or three. I was. I got mine, clean and square, and
I ain't ashamed of it. I didn't raise any holler about a
chance shot, and I didn't go exhibitin' myself on the
stage. I slid into a quiet corner for a month or so, and
then I dropped into the only thing I knew how to do,trainin' comers to go against the champs. It ain't like
pullin' down your sixty per cent of the gate receipts,
but there's worse payin' jobs.
Course, there's times when I finds myself up against
it. It was durin' one of them squeezes, not so long
ago, that I gets mixed up with Leonidas Dodge, and all
that foolishness. Ah, it wa'n't anything worth wastin'
breath over. You would? Honest? Well, it won't take
long, I guess.
You see, just as my wad looks like it had shrunk so
that it would rattle around in a napkin ring, someone
passes me the word that Butterfly was down to win the
third race, at 15 to 1. Now as a general thing I don't
monkey with the ponies, but when I figured up what a
few saw-bucks would do for me at those odds, I
makes for the track and takes the high dive. After it
was all over and I was comin' back in the train, with
only a ticket where my roll had been, me feelin' about
as gay as a Zulu on a cake of ice, along comes this
Mr. Dodge, that I didn't know from next Tuesday
week.
"Is it as bad as that?" says he, sizin' up the woe on my
face. "Because if it is they ought to give you a
pension. What was the horse?"
"Butterfly," says I. "Now laugh!"
"I've got a right to," says he. "I had the same dope."
Well, you see, that made us almost second cousins by
marriage and we started to get acquainted. I looked
him over careful but I couldn't place him within a mile.He had points enough, too. The silk hat was a veteran,
the Prince Albert dated back about four seasons, but
the gray gaiters were down to the minute. Being an
easy talker, he might have been a book agent or a
green goods distributor. But somehow his eyes didn't
seem shifty enough for a crook, and no con. man
would have lasted long wearing the kind of hair that he
did. It was a sort of lemon yellow, and he had a lip
decoration about two shades lighter, taggin' him as
plain as an "inspected" label on a tin trunk.
"I'm a mitt juggler," says I, "and they call me Shorty
McCabe. What's your line?"
"I've heard of you," he says. "Permit me," and he
hands out a pasteboard that read:
LEONIDAS MACKLIN DODGE
Commissioner-at-Large
"For what?" says I.
"It all depends," says Mr. Dodge. "Sometimes I call it a
brass polisher, then again it's a tooth-paste. It works
well either way. Also it cleans silver, removes grease
spots, and can be used for a shaving soap. It is a
product of my own lab'ratory, none genuine without
the signature."
"How does it go as a substitute for beef and?" says I.
"I've never quite come to that," says he, "but I'm as
close now as it's comfortable to be. My gold reserve
counts up about a dollar thirty-nine.""You've got me beat by a whole dollar," says I.
"Then," says he, "you'd better let me underwrite your
next issue."
"There's a friend of mine up to Forty-second Street
that ought to be good for fifty," says I.
"I've had lots of friendships, off and on," says he, "but
never one that I could cash in at a pinch. I'll stay by
until you try your touch."
Well, the Forty-second Street man had been gone a
month. There was others I might have tried, but I
didn't like to risk gettin' my fingers frost-bitten. So I
hooks up with Leonidas and we goes out with a grip
full of Electro-Polisho, hittin' the places where they had
nickel-plated signs and brass hand rails. And say! I
could starve to death doing that. Give me a week and
two pairs of shoes and I might sell a box or so; but
Dodge, he takes an hour to work his side of the block
and shakes out a fist full of quarters.
"It's an art," says he, "which one must be born to.
After this you carry the grip."
That's the part I was playin' when we strikes the
Tuscarora. Sounds like a parlor car, don't it? But it
was just one of those swell bachelor joints—fourteen
stories, electric elevators, suites of two and three
rooms, for gents only. Course, we hadn't no more call
to go there than to the Stock Exchange, but Leonidas
Macklin, he's one of the kind that don't wait for cards.
Seein' the front door open and a crowd of men in the
hall, he blazes right in, silk hat on the back of hishead, hands in his pockets, and me close behind with
the bag.
"What's up; auction, row or accident?" says he to one
of the mob.
Now if it had been me that butted in like that I'd had a
row on my hands in about two minutes, but in less
time than that Leonidas knows the whole story and is
right to home. Taking me behind a hand-made palm,
he puts me next. Seems that some one had
advertised in a mornin' paper for a refined, high-
browed person to help one of the same kind kill time at
a big salary.
"And look what he gets," says Leonidas, wavin' his
hand at the push. "There's more'n a hundred of 'em,
and not more'n a dozen that you couldn't trace back to
a Mills hotel. They've been jawing away for an hour,
trying to settle who gets the cinch. The chap who did
the advertising is inside there, in the middle of that
bunch, and I reckon he wishes he hadn't. As an act of
charity, Shorty, I'm going to straighten things out for
him. Come on."
"Better call up the reserves," says I.
But that wa'n't Mr. Dodge's style. Side-steppin' around
to the off edge of the crowd, just as if he'd come down
from the elevator, he calls out good and loud: "Now
then, gentlemen; one side, please, one side! Ah, thank
you! In a moment, now, gentlemen, we'll get down to
business."
And say, they opened up for us like it was pay day andhe had the cash box. We brought up before the
saddest-lookin' cuss I ever saw out of bed. I couldn't
make out whether he was sick, or scared, or both. He
had flopped in a big leather chair and was tryin' to
wave 'em away with both hands, while about two
dozen, lookin' like ex-bath rubbers or men nurses,
were telling him how good they were and shovin'
references at him. The rest of the gang was trying to
push in for their whack. It was a bad mess, but
Leonidas wasn't feazed a bit.
"Attention, gentlemen!" says he. "If you will all retire to
the room on the left we will get to work. The room on
the left, gentlemen, on the left!"
He had a good voice, Leonidas did, one of the kind
that could go against a merry-go-round or a German
band. The crowd stopped pushin' to listen, then some
one made a break for the next room, and in less than
a minute they were all in there, with the door shut
between. Mr