Part 11

"Sure you can!" said the Bish with enthusiasm. "One thing about you, Peacock, you're willing to learn, and when a man is willing to learn there is always hope for him. Never let one bad hole get your nanny."

"Eleven!" murmured Henry. "No chance for me to win that big cup now."

"Aw, what's one cup, more or less?" demanded the Bish. "You'll get something to-day worth more than any cup. You'll get keen competition--and advice."

Indeed that was the truth. The competition was keen enough, and the advice poured forth in a steady stream. The Bish never left Henry alone with his ball for an instant. He was not allowed to think for himself, nor was he allowed to choose the clubs with which to execute his shots. If he wished to use a mashie the Bish would insist on the mid-iron. If he pulled the mid-iron from his bag the jigger would be placed in nomination. The climax came when the Bish gravely explained that all putter shots should be played with a slight hook, "for the sake of the extra run." That was when I nearly swallowed my chewing gum.

"He's steering him all wrong," whispered Dale. "What's the idea?"

I suggested that he ask the Bish that question; but we got nothing out of that remarkable man but a cool, impersonal stare; and for the first time since I have known him the Bish kept a careful record of the scores. As a general thing he carries the figures in his head--and when you find a man who does that you have found a golfer. Henry's score would have been a great memory test. It ran to eights, nines and double figures, and on the long hole, when he topped his drive into the bottom of the ravine and played seven strokes in a tangle of sycamore roots he amassed the astonishing total of fifteen. From time to time he bleated plaintively, but the Bish, sticking closer than a brother, advised him to put all thought of his score out of his head and concentrate on his shots. Henry might have been able to do this if he had been left alone, but with a human phonograph at his elbow he had no chance to concentrate on anything. He finished in a blaze of glory, taking nine on the last hole, and the Bish slapped him violently between the shoulder blades.

"You'll be all right, Peacock, if you just remember what I've told you. The fundamentals of your game are sound enough, but you've a tendency to underclub yourself. You must curb that. Never be afraid of getting too much distance."

"I--I'm awfully obliged to you," said Henry. "I'm obliged to all you gentlemen. I hope to have the pleasure of playing with you again soon--er--quite soon. I'm here nearly every afternoon. And anything you can tell me----"

Henry continued to babble and the Bish drew me aside.

"Hold him in the lounging room for a while. Don't let him get away. Talk to him about his game--anything. Buy him soft drinks, but keep him there!"

Immediately thereafter the Bish excused himself, and I heard him demanding to know where he might come by a shingle nail.

* * * * *

The Totten Day cups were presented in the lounging room with the usual ceremonies. Sam made the speeches and Jumbo acted as sergeant-at-arms, escorting the winners to the table at the end of the room. By selecting an obscure corner I had been able to detain Henry for a time, but when the jollification began he showed signs of nervousness. He spoke of needing a shower and was twice on the point of departure when my good fairy prompted me to mention the winning of the Hemmingway Cup. Immediately he launched into an elaborate description of that famous victory, stroke by stroke, with distances, direction and choice of clubs set forth in proper order. He was somewhere on the seventh hole when Totten made his last speech.

"So I thought it all over, and I decided it was too far for the mashie and not quite far enough for the----"

There was a loud, booming noise at the other end of the room. Over the sea of heads I caught sight of the Bish mounting a table. He had a large green felt bag under his arm.

"Gentlemen!" he shouted. "Gentlemen--if you are gentlemen!--I crave your indulgence for a moment! A moment, I beg of you! I have here an added trophy--a trophy which I may say is unique in golfing history!"

He paused, and there was a faint patter of applause, followed by cries of "Go to it, Bish!" I glanced at Sam Totten, and the surprised expression on his face told me that this part of the programme was not of his making.

"All the cups presented to-day," continued the Bish, "have been awarded for a best score of some sort. I believe you will agree with me that this is manifestly one-sided and unfair."

"Hear! Hear!" cried a voice.

"Throw that twenty-four-handicap man out!" said the Bish. "Now the cup which I hold in my hands is a cup for the highest gross score ever made by a twelve-handicap man in the United States of America."

Henry Peacock jumped as if his name had been called. If I had not laid my hand on his arm he would have bolted for the door.

"I take great pleasure, gentlemen," said the Bish after the uproar had subsided, "in presenting this unique trophy to one who now has a double distinction. He is the holder of two records--one for the lowest net score on record, the other for the highest gross. Mr. Henry Peacock shot the course to-day in exactly one hundred and sixty-seven strokes.... Bring the gentleman forward, please!"

There was a great burst of laughter and applause, and under cover of the confusion Henry tried to escape. A dozen laughing members surrounded him, and he surrendered, sputtering incoherently. He was escorted to the table, and the double wall of cheering humanity closed in behind him and surged forward. I caught a glimpse of his face as the Bish bent over and placed the green bag in his hands. It was very red, and his lower lip was trembling with rage.

"Open it up! Come on, let's see it!"

Mr. Peacock cast one despairing glance to left and right and plunged his hand into the bag. I do not know what he expected to find there, but it was a cup, sure enough--a fine, large pewter cup, cast in feeble imitation of the genuine article and worth perhaps seventy-five cents. And on the side of this cup rudely engraved with a shingle nail, was the record of Mr. Peacock's activities for the afternoon, in gross and detail, as follows:

HOLES PAR PEACOCK

1 4 11 2 4 9 3 4 8 4 5 8 5 3 7 6 6 15 7 5 9 8 4 8 9 4 12 10 5 12 11 3 7 12 4 8 13 4 9 14 3 7 15 4 8 16 4 9 17 5 11 18 5 9 -- --- Total 76 167

As Henry gazed at this work of art a shout came from the back of the room. Waddles had come to life.

"Winner buys, Henry! Winner always buys! It's a rule of the club!"

"The club be damned!" cried Henry Peacock as he fought his way to the door.

"Bish," said Frank Woodson, "that was a rotten trick to play on anybody. You shouldn't have done it."

"A rotten case," replied the Bish, "requires a rotten remedy. It's kill or cure; even money and take your pick."

* * * * *

As it turned out it was a cure.

Henry Peacock is once more a member of the Old Guard, in good standing and entitled to all privileges. Totten, Woodson and Miller received him with open arms, and they actually treat the old reprobate as if nothing had happened. I believe it will be a long time before he reminds them that he once shot an eighty-two, and a longer time before he breaks a ninety.

A CURE FOR LUMBAGO

I

Colonel Jimmy threatens to resign from the club. He says it was sharp practice. Archie MacBride says it wasn't half as sharp as the lumbago trick which the Colonel worked on him as well as several of the other young members. Colonel Jimmy Norman is one of the charter members of our golf club. He is about as old as Methuselah and he looks it. That is what fools people. It doesn't fool the handicap committee, though. They've got the Colonel down to 8 now and he hasn't entered a club competition since for fear they'll cut him to 6. Respect for age is a fine thing, I admit, but anybody who can step out and tear off 79's and 80's on the Meadowmead course--72 par and a tough 72 at that--isn't entitled to much the best of it because he can remember the Civil War and cast his first vote for Tilden.

Mind you, I don't say that Colonel Jimmy shoots 79's every day, but he shoots 'em when he needs 79's to win, and that's the mark of a real golfer. And bet? The old pirate will bet anything from a repainted golf ball to a government bond. He has never been known to take his clubs out of the locker without a gamble of some sort. The new members pay all the expenses of Colonel Jimmy's golfing, as well as the upkeep of his limousine--the old members are shy of him--and the way he can nurse a victim along for months without letting him win a single bet is nothing short of miraculous. I ought to know, for I am one of Colonel Jimmy's graduates, and, while I never beat him in my life, he always left me with the impression that I would surely rook him the next time--if I had any luck. Somehow I never had the luck.

Colonel Jimmy has the gentle art of coin separation down to an exact science. Perhaps this is because he made his money in Wall Street and applies Wall Street methods to his golf. After every match he waits around until he collects. He always apologises for taking the money and says that he hopes you'll be on your game the next time.

The Colonel is a shrewd judge of how far he can go in shearing a lamb, and when he sees signs that the victim is getting bare in spots and is about ready to stop betting with him, he cleans up all the spare fleece with the lumbago trick. I'll never forget how he worked it on me. I had been betting him five and ten dollars a match and winning nothing but sympathy and advice and I was about ready to quit the Colonel as a poor investment.

The next time I went out to the club I found Colonel Jimmy sitting on the porch in the sun and I heard him groan even before I saw him. Naturally I asked what was the matter.

"Oh, it's this cursed lumbago again! I must have caught cold after my shower the other night and--ouch!--just when I'd been looking forward to a nice little game this afternoon, too! It's a real pleasure to play with a young man like you who--ouch! O-o-o!"

After a while he began to wonder whether light exercise would do him any good. I thought it might and he let me persuade him. If I would give him my arm as far as his locker--ouch!

All the time he was dressing he grunted and groaned and rubbed his back and cursed the lumbago bitterly. He said it was the one thing the devil didn't try on Job because it would have fetched him if he had. He worried some because he would have to drive with an iron, not being able to take a full swing with a wooden club. Then when he had me all ribbed up properly, he dropped a hint where I couldn't help but stumble over it.

"You have always named the bet," said Colonel Jimmy. "Don't take advantage of my condition to raise it beyond reason."

Up to that time the idea of making a bet with a cripple hadn't occurred to me. It wouldn't have seemed fair. I got to thinking about the fives and the tens that the old rascal had taken away from me when the advantage was all on his side and--

"I suppose I shouldn't expect mercy," said Colonel Jimmy, fitting his remarks to my thought like a mind reader. "I have been quite fortunate in winning from you, William, when you were not playing your best. This seems an excellent opportunity for you to take revenge. This cursed lumbago----"

The match was finally made at five dollars a hole, and if I hadn't been ashamed of taking advantage of a cripple I would have said ten.

Colonel Jimmy whined a little and said that in his condition it was almost a shame for me to raise the bet to five dollars a hole and that he couldn't possibly allow me any more than five strokes where before he had been giving me eight and ten. He said he probably wouldn't get any distance off the tees on account of not being able to take a full swing, and I agreed on the basis of five strokes, one each on the five longest holes.

I went out to the professional's shop to buy some new balls. David Cameron is a good club maker, but a disappointing conversationalist. He says just so much, and then he stops and rubs his left ear. I told David that I had caught Colonel Jimmy out of line at last and would bring him home at least six or seven down.

"Ay," said David. "He'll be havin' one of his attacks of the lumba-ago again, I'm thinkin'. Ye've raised the bet?"

I admitted that the bet had been pressed a little. "Ye're not gettin' as many str-rokes as usual?"

I explained about the Colonel's not being able to take a full swing with his wooden clubs.

"Ay," said David, beginning to polish his left ear.

"I wish you'd tell me what you think," said I.

"I'm thinkin'," said David, "that ye'll not have noticed that the climate hereabouts is varra benefeecial to certain for-rms o' disease. I've known it to cure the worst case o' lumba-ago between the clubhouse an' the fir-rst tee. The day o' meeracles is not past by ony means," concluded David, rubbing his ear hard.

I suspected then that I had a bad bet. I was sure of it when I saw Colonel Jimmy pulling his driver out of the bag on the first tee.

"I thought you said you'd have to drive with an iron." I reminded him of it anyway.

"I might as well try the wood," said Colonel Jimmy. "I'll have to shorten up my swing some and I suppose I'll top the ball."

He groaned and he grunted when he took his practice swing, and said that he was really afraid he'd have to call the bet off, but when he hit the ball he followed through like a sixteen-year-old, and it went sailing down the middle of the course, a good 200 yards--which is as far as Colonel Jimmy ever drives.

"Well, I'll declare!" he crowed. "Look at that ball go! I had no idea I could do it! And with this lumbago too!"

There's no use in prolonging the agony with a detailed account of the match. The old shark was out for the fag end of the fleece crop so far as I was concerned, and he surely gave me a close clip. He made a 79 that day and I had to hand him my check for forty dollars. It might not have been so much, only on every tee the Colonel whined about his lumbago and got me in such a state of mind that I couldn't keep my eye on the ball to save my life.

When we got back to the clubhouse, David Cameron was sitting in the door of his shop, rubbing his left ear thoughtfully. He knew it wouldn't have been safe for him to ask about the match. Colonel Jimmy, confound him, blatted right along, apologising to me for playing "better than he knew how" and all that sort of rot. He said he hoped we could have another match soon, and perhaps I was a little crusty with him. At any rate he was satisfied that my forty-dollar check was the last contribution he would ever get from me, and he took up with Archie MacBride, who had just joined the club and was learning the game.

Archie hails from out West somewhere and he has the Eastern agency for a lot of stuff manufactured in Chicago. In the beginning he didn't know any of the younger members at Meadowmead and that made it easy for the Colonel to take him under his wing. The old rascal has rather a pleasant manner--in the clubhouse at least--and he talked Chicago to Archie--what a wonderful city it is and all that stuff. He talked the same way to me about Cincinnati.

I watched the shearing proceed to the lumbago stage, but I didn't interfere. In the first place, it wasn't any of my business. In the second, I hadn't been introduced to MacBride. And, besides, I had a sort of curiosity to know how he would act when he was stung. He looked more like a goat than a lamb to me.

One day I was sitting on the porch and MacBride came out of the locker room and sat down beside me. Colonel Jimmy was over on the extra green, practicing sidehill putts. Somehow we drifted into conversation.

"Did you ever play with that old fellow over there?" said he.

"A few times."

"Ever beat him?"

"No-o. Nor anybody else. His methods are--well, peculiar."

"Darned peculiar! I don't know but that the grand jury ought to investigate 'em. If you shoot 110 at him, he's just good enough to win. If you make a 90, he's still good enough to win. He's always good enough to win. The other day I came out here and found him all doubled up with----"

"Lumbago, wasn't it?"

MacBride held out his hand immediately.

"Both members of the same lodge!" said he. "I feel better now. He nicked me for an even hundred. What did he get you for?"

Nothing cements a friendship like a common grievance. We had both been rooked by the lumbago trick and we fell to discussing the Colonel and his petty larceny system of picking on the new members.

"Far be it that I should squeal," said Archie. "I hope I'm a good loser as far as the money goes, but I hate to be bunkoed. I handed over one hundred big iron dollars to that hoary old pirate--and I smiled when I did it. It hurt me worse to smile than it did to part with the frog-skins, but I wanted the Colonel to think that I didn't suspect him. I want him to regard me as a soft proposition and an easy mark because some day I am going to leave a chunk of bait lying around where that old coyote can see it. If he gobbles it--good night. Yes, sir, I'm going to slip one over on him that he'll remember even when they begin giving him the oxygen."

"He'll never be trimmed on a golf course," said I.

"He'll never be trimmed anywhere else. It's the only game he plays. If he sticks around this club, I'll introduce him to the Chicago method of taking the bristles off a hog. I'm not sure, but I think it's done with a hoe."

"It can't be done with a set of golf clubs," said I.

"Don't be too sure of that. By the way, my name's MacBride. What's yours?... If you don't mind, I'll call you Bill for short. We will now visit the nineteenth tee and pour a libation on the altar of friendship. We will drink success to the Chicago method of shearing a hog. Simple, effective, and oh, so painful!"

II

Colonel Jimmy picked up a new pupil after Archie quit him and Archie paired off with me. We played two or three times a week and often ran into the Colonel on the porch or in the locker room. The old reprobate was always cordial in his cat-and-canary way--infernally cordial. I couldn't resist the temptation to inquire after his lumbago occasionally, but it was next to impossible to hurt his feelings. The old fellow's hide was bullet proof and even the broadest sort of hint was lost on him. Archie was more tactful. He used to joke the Colonel about a return match, but he was never able to fix a date. The Colonel was busy anyway. His latest victim was a chinless youth from Poughkeepsie with money to burn and no fear of matches.

One afternoon Archie brought a friend out to the club with him--an immense big chap with hands and feet like hams. Everything about him was beyond the limit. He was too beefy to begin with, though I suppose that wasn't his fault. He wore a red tie and a yellow vest. He talked too much and too loud. Archie introduced him to me as Mr. Small of Chicago.

"Small but not little!" said Small. "Haw!"

"Mr. Small is an old friend of mine," said Archie. "He is taking a short vacation and I am putting him up at the club for a week or ten days. He doesn't look it, but his doctor says he needs exercise."

"Yeh," said Small, "and while I'm resting I think I'll learn this fool game of golf. Think of a big fellow like me, whaling a poor little pill all over the country! I suppose all there is to it is to hit the blamed thing."

Colonel Jimmy was sitting over by the reading table and I saw him prick up his ears at this remark. He always manages to scrape an acquaintance with all the beginners.

Small went booming along.

"I can remember," said he, "when people who played golf were supposed to be a little queer upstairs. Cow-pasture pool, we used to call it. It's a good deal like shinny-on-your-own-side, ain't it?"

Archie took him out to David to get him outfitted with clubs and things, left Small in the shop, and came back to explain matters to me.

"You mustn't mind Small's manner," said he. "He's really one of the best fellows in the world, but he's--well, a trifle crude in spots. He's never had time to acquire a polish; he's been too busy making money."

"Excuse me"--Colonel Jimmy had been listening--"but is he in any way related to the Caspar Smalls of Chicago and Denver?"

"Not that I know of, Colonel," said Archie.

"You spoke of money," said I. "Has he so much of it, then?"

"Barrels, my dear boy, barrels. Crude oil is his line at present. And only thirty-five years of age too. He's a self-made man, Small is."

I couldn't think of anything to say except that he must have had a deuce of a lot of raw material to start with--and if I put the accent on the raw it was unintentional.

"Well," said Archie, "his heart is in the right place anyway."

When you can't think of anything else to say for a man, you can always say that his heart is in the right place. It sounds well, but it doesn't mean anything. Archie proposed that we should let Small go around with us that afternoon. I didn't like the idea, but, of course, I kept mum; the man was Archie's guest.

Small got in bad on the first tee. I knew he would when I saw who was ahead of us--Colonel Jimmy and the chinless boy. Like most elderly mechanical golfers, the Colonel is a stickler for the etiquette of the game--absolute silence and all that sort of thing.

Archie introduced Small to the Colonel and the Colonel introduced us to the chinless boy, who said he was charmed, stepped up on the tee and whacked his ball into the rough.

While the Colonel was teeing up, Small kept moving around and talking in that megaphone voice of his. Colonel Jimmy looked at him rather eloquently a couple of times and finally Small hushed up. The Colonel took his stance, tramped around awhile to get a firm footing, addressed the ball three times, and drew his club back for the swing. Just as it started downward, Small sneezed--one of those sneezes with an Indian war whoop on the end of it--"Aa-chew!" Naturally Colonel Jimmy jumped, took his eye off the ball and topped it into the long grass in front of the tee.

"Take it over," said the chinless boy, who was a sport if nothing else.

"I certainly intend to!" snapped the Colonel, glaring at Small. "You--you spoiled my swing, sir!"

"Quit your kidding, Colonel!" said Small. "How could I spoil your swing?"

"You sneezed behind me!"

Small laughed at the top of his voice. "Haw! Haw! That's rich! Why, I've seen Heinie Zimmerman hit a baseball a mile with thirty thousand people yelling their heads off at him!"

"Yes," said Archie, "but that was baseball. This is golf. There's a difference."

"Gentlemen," said the Colonel, "when you are through with your discussion, I would really like to drive."

III

I played with Small all the afternoon without yielding to an impulse to slay him with a niblick, which speaks volumes for my good disposition. It was a harrowing experience. Small proceeded on the usual theory of the beginner, which is to hit the ball as hard as possible and trust to luck. The most I can say for his day's play is that I never expect to see golf balls hit any harder. His wooden club shots hooked and sliced into the woods on either side of the course--he bought a dozen balls to begin with and was borrowing from us at the finish--he dug up great patches of turf on the fair greens, he nearly destroyed three bunkers and after every shot he yelled like a Comanche.