Part 5

Ambrose drove; and a smothered gasp went up from the gallery. The ball had the speed of a bullet, as well as a perfect line; and, at first, I thought it would rise enough to skim the crest of the hill. Instead of that, it seemed to duck in flight, caught the hard face of the incline, and kicked abruptly to the left. It was that crooked bound which broke all our hearts; for we knew that, barring a miracle, our man was in the sand trap.

"Hard luck!" said MacNeath; and I think he really meant to be sympathetic.

Ambrose looked at him as a bulldog might look at a mastiff.

"Oh, I wouldn't say that!" he answered, rather stiffly. "I like to play my second shot from over there."

"You're welcome!" said MacNeath; and completed our discomfiture by poling out a tremendous shot, which carried well over the direction post and went sailing on up the plateau toward the clubhouse.

No man ever hit a longer ball at a more opportune time. As we toiled up the hill I tried to say something hopeful.

"He may have stopped short of the trap."

"Not a hope!" said MacQuarrie, chewing at his cigar. "He'll be in--up to his neck."

Sure enough, when we reached the summit there was the caddie, a mournful statue on the edge of the sand trap. The crowd halted at a proper distance and Ambrose and MacNeath went forward alone. MacQuarrie and I swung off to the left, for we wanted to see how deep the ball was in and what sort of a lie it had found.

"Six feet in from the edge," muttered Dunn'l, "an' twenty feet away from the wall. Lyin' up on top of the sand too. An iron wi' a little loft to it, a clean shot, a good thir-rd, an' he might get a four yet. It's just possible."

"But not probable," said I. "What on earth is he waiting for?"

Ambrose had taken a seat on the edge of the trap; and as he looked from the ball to the bunker looming in front of it, he rolled a cigarette.

"You don't mind if I study this situation a bit?" said he to MacNeath.

"Take your time," said the veteran.

"Because I wouldn't want to use the wrong club here," continued Ambrose.

The caddie said something to him at this point; but Phipps shook his red head impatiently and continued to puff at his cigarette. He caught a glimpse of me and beckoned.

"How do the home boys stand on this cup thing?" he asked.

"All even--two matches to two."

"That," said Ambrose after a thoughtful pause, "seems to put it up to me."

At last he rose, tossed away the cigarette end and, reaching for his bag, drew out a wooden club. Again the caddie said something; but Ambrose waved him away. There was not a sound from his audience, but a hundred heads wagged dolefully in unison. A wooden club--out of a trap? Suicide! Sheer suicide! An iron might give him a fighting chance to halve the hole; but my last lingering hope died when I saw that club in the boy's hand. The infernal young lunatic! I believe I said something of the sort to MacQuarrie.

"Sh-h!" he whispered. "Yon's a baffy. I made it for him."

"What's a baffy?"

"Well, it's just a kind of an exaggerated bulldog spoon--ye might almost call it a wooden mashie, wi' a curvin' sole on it. It's great for distance. The lie is good, the wind's behind him, an' if he can only hit it clean--clean!----Oh, ye little red devil, keep your head down--keep your head down an' hit it clean!"

I shall never forget the picture spread out along the edge of that green plateau--the red-headed stocky youngster in the sand trap taking his stance and whipping the clubhead back and forth; MacNeath coolly leaning on his driver and smiling over a match already won; the two caddies in the background, one sneeringly triumphant, the other furiously angry; the rim of spectators, motionless, hopeless.

Everybody was watching Ambrose, and I think Old MacQuarrie was the only onlooker who was not absolutely certain that the choice of a wrong club was throwing away our last slender chance.

When the tension was almost unbearable the redhead turned and grinned at MacNeath.

"I suppose you'd shoot this with an iron," said he; "but the baffy is a great club--if you've got the nerve to use it."

Ambrose settled his feet firmly in the sand, craned his neck for a final look at the flag, two hundred yards away, dropped his chin on his chest, waggled the clubhead over the ball, and then swung with every ounce of strength in his sturdy body. I heard a sharp click, saw a tiny feather of sand spurt into the air, and against the blue sky I caught a glimpse of a soaring white speck, which went higher and higher until I lost it altogether. The next thing I knew, the spectators were cheering, yelling, screaming; and some one was hammering me violently between the shoulder blades. It was the unemotional Dunn'l MacQuarrie, gone completely daft with excitement.

"Oh, man!" he cried. "He picked it up as clean as a whistle, an' he's on the green--on the green!"

"Told you that was a sweet little club!" said Ambrose as he climbed out of the trap. "Takes nerve to use one though. On the green, eh? Well, I guess that'll hold you for a while."

His prediction soon had a solid backing of fact. MacNeath, the iron man, the dependable Number One, the match player without nerves, was not proof against a miracle. Ambrose's phenomenal recovery had shaken the veteran to the soles of his shoes.

MacNeath's second shot was an easy pitch to the green, but he lingered too long over it; the blade of his mashie caught the turf at least three inches behind the ball and shot it off at an angle into the thick, long grass that guards the eighteenth green. He was forced to use a heavy niblick on his third; but the ball rolled thirty feet beyond the pin. He tried hard for the long putt, but missed, and picked up when Ambrose laid his third shot on the lip of the cup.

By the most fortunate fluke ever seen on a golf course our little red Ishmael had won for us the permanent possession of the Edward B. Wimpus Trophy.

MacNeath was game. He picked up his ball with the left hand and offered his right to Ambrose. "Well done!" said he.

"Thanks!" responded Ambrose. "Guess I kind of jarred you with that baffy shot. It's certainly a dandy club in a pinch. Better let MacQuarrie make you one."

MacNeath swallowed hard and nearly managed a smile.

"It wasn't the club," said he. "It was just burglar's luck. You couldn't do it again in a thousand years!"

"Maybe not," replied the victor; "but when you get back to Bellevue you tell all the dear chappies there that I got away with it once--got away with it the one time when it counted!"

At this point the gallery closed in and overwhelmed young Mr. Phipps. Inside of a minute he heard more pleasant things about himself than had come to his ears in a lifetime. He did not dispute a single statement that was made; nor did he discount one by so much as the deprecating lift of an eyebrow. For once in his life he agreed with everybody. In the stag celebration that followed--with the Edward B. Wimpus Cup in the middle of the big round table--he was easily induced to favour us with a few brief remarks. He informed us that tin cups were nothing in his young life, club spirit was nothing, but that gameness was everything--and the cheering was led by the Dingbats!

* * * * *

Now you know why we feel that we owe Ambrose something; and, if I am any judge, that debt will be paid with heavy interest. Dunn'l MacQuarrie is also a winner. He has booked so many orders for baffles that he is now endeavouring to secure the services of a first-class club maker.

As Ambrose often tells us, the baffy is a sweet little club to have in the bag--provided, of course, you have the nerve to use it.

THE MAJOR, D.O.S.

I

I despise the sort of man who gloats and pokes his finger at you and reminds you that he told you so. I hope I am not in that class, and I would be the last to rub salt into an open wound; still I see no harm in calling attention to the fact that I once expressed an opinion which had to do with Englishmen in general and Major Cuthbert Eustace Lawes--D.S.O., and a lot of other initials--in particular. What is more, that opinion was expressed in the presence of Waddles Wilmot and one other director of the Yavapai Golf and Country Club.

"You can't tell much about an Englishman by looking at him."

Those were my very words, and I stand by them. I point to them with pride. If Waddles had listened to me--but Waddles never listens to anybody. Sometimes he looks as if he might be listening, when as a matter of fact he is only resting his voice and thinking up something cutting and clever to say next.

Speaking of Waddles, the fault is not all his. We have indulged him with too much authority. We have allowed him to become a sort of autocrat, a golfing Pooh-Bah, a self-appointed committee of one with arbitrary powers. He began looking after the club when it was in its infancy, and now that the organisation has grown to quite respectable proportions he does not seem to know how to let go gracefully. He still looks after us, whether we want him to or not, and if it is only the getting out of a new score card Waddles must attend to it, having the first word, the last word and all the words between.

If any one presumes to disagree with him Waddles merely snorts in that disdainful way of his and goes on talking louder and louder until finally the opposition succumbs, blown down by sheer lung power, as it were, gassed before reaching the trenches. Wind is all right in its place, and in moderation, but a steady gale gets on the nerves in time. Waddles is a human simoom, carrying dust, sand and cactus.

I say this in all kindness, for I am really fond of the old boy. He has many admirable qualities, and frequently tells us what they are, but consideration for others is not one of them; and when he plays golf the things he does to an opponent are sinful. He is just as ruthless and overbearing on the links as he is in committee meeting--but of this, more anon--much more. I made my remark about Englishmen a month or so after the Major became a member of the club. We understood that Lawes was a retired infantry officer in poor health, and when he arrived in our part of the world he brought with him a Hindu servant with his head wrapped up in about forty yards of cheesecloth, an unquenchable thirst, some gilt-edged letters of introduction from big people, and a hobnail liver. He was proposed by two of our financial moguls and passed the membership committee without a whisper of dissent.

"This old bird," said Waddles, "is probably a cracking good golfer. Nearly all Englishmen are. We can use him to plug up that weak spot on the team." And of course he looked straight at me when he said it. Goodness knows, I never asked to be put on the club team, and I play my worst golf in competition.

Some of the other men thought that the Major would lend a bit of tone to the organisation. I presume they got the idea from the string of initials after his name.

As to his golfing, the Major proved a disappointment. He did not seem in any haste to avail himself of the privileges of active membership, and when at the club he spent all his time sitting on the porch and staring at the mountains in the distance. I don't remember ever seeing him without a tall brandy highball at his elbow.

Personally, the Major wasn't much to look at. You could just as easily have guessed the age of a mummy. He was long-legged and cadaverous, with thin, sandy hair and a yellowish moustache that never seemed to be trimmed. His mouth was always slightly ajar, his front teeth were unduly prominent, and his chin was short and receded at an acute angle. A side view of the Major suggested a tired, half-starved old rabbit that had lost all interest in life. His eyes were a faded light blue in colour and blinked constantly without a vestige of human expression. He was freckled like a turkey egg--freckled all over, but mostly on the neck and the forearms. When he spoke, which was seldom, it was in a thin, hesitating treble, reminiscent of a strayed sheep, and he had an exasperating habit of leaving a sentence half finished and beginning on another one. He could sit for hours, staring straight in front of him and apparently seeing nothing at all. When addressed he usually jumped half out of his chair and said something like this:

"Eh? Oh! God-bless-me! God-bless-me! What say?"

Socially he was a very mangy-looking lion, but we understood that he was very well connected in the old country and not so stupid as he seemed. He couldn't have been, and lived. He was a bachelor of independent means; he bought a bungalow on Medway Hill and a six-cylinder runabout, which the servant learned to drive, after a fearsome fashion. This put the Major out of the winter-visitor class--which was reassuring--but as the weeks passed and he was never seen with a golf club in his hands Waddles began to worry about that weak spot on the team.

Three of us were watching Lawes one afternoon through a window of the lounging room, which commands a view of the porch. The Major was spread out in a big wicker chair, and, save for certain mechanical movements of the right hand and arm, was as motionless as a turtle on a log. As usual, Waddles was doing most of the talking.

"Ain't he the study in still life, eh?... With the accent on the still--get me? Still! Ho, ho! Not bad a bit.... Gaze upon him, gentlemen; the world's most consistent rum hound! He hasn't moved a muscle in the last hour except to lift that glass. Wonderful type of the athletic Englishman, what-oh? Devoted to sports and pastimes, my word, yes! He wouldn't qualify for putting the shot, but for putting the highball I'll back him against all comers."

"Oh, I don't know," said Jay Gilman, who is a conservative sort of chap and knows Waddles well enough not to believe everything he says. "I don't know. The old boy makes a drink last a long time. He doesn't order many in the course of an afternoon. I've never seen him the least bit edged."

"Fellow like that never gets edged," argued Waddles. "The skin stays just so full all the time. Can't get any fuller. Did you ever try to talk with his royal jaglets? Sociable as an oyster! I tried to get him opened up the other day. He's been in India and Africa and everywhere else, they tell me, and I thought he might want to gas about his experiences. War stuff. Nothing stirring. A frost. Kidded him about the Boers, and the way the embattled farmers hung it on perfidious Albion. Couldn't even get a rise out of him. All he did was stare at me with those fishy eyes of his and make motions with his Adam's apple! Ever notice the way he watches you when you're talking to him? It's enough to make a man nervous! A major, eh? If he was a major, I wonder what the shave-tail lieutenants were like! D.S.O.! They got the initials balled up when they hitched that title to him. It should have been D.O.S.!"

"All right," said Gilman; "I'll bite. I'll be the Patsy. Why D.O.S.?"

"Dismal Old Souse, of course!" cackled Waddles. "Fits him like a glove, eh?"

It was then that I expressed my opinion, as previously quoted: "You can't tell much about an Englishman by looking at him."

But Waddles only laughed. He usually laughs at his own witticisms.

"D.O.S.," said he. "Impromptu, but good. I'll have to tell it to the boys!"

II

But for Cyril, I suppose the Major would have remained a chair warmer indefinitely.

Cyril was the Major's nephew, doing a bit of globe trotting after getting out of college, and he dropped in out of a clear sky, taking the Major entirely by surprise. We heard later that all the Major said was, "Bless me, it's Cyril, isn't it?"

Looking at the boy, you knew at once what the Major had been like at twenty-five or thereabouts; so it goes without saying that Cyril was no motion-picture type for beauty. He was tall and thin and gangling, his feet were always in his way, his clothes did not fit him and would not have fitted anything human, his cloth hats were really not hats at all but speckled poultices, and he was as British as the unicorn itself. He was almost painfully shy when among strangers, and blushed if any one spoke to him; but his coming seemed to cheer the Major tremendously. It hadn't occurred to me before, but I presume the D.O.S. had been lonely for his kind. Cyril was his kind--no question about that--and the pair of them held a love feast which lasted all of one afternoon. Waddles witnessed this touching family reunion and told us about it afterward, but it is likely he handled the truth in his usual nonchalant manner. Waddles would never spoil a good story for the sake of mere accuracy.

"It was great stuff!" said he. "They sat out there on the porch and gabbled terribly. A dumb man couldn't have got a word in edge-wise. The Major was never at a loss for a topic of conversation. As fast as one was exhausted he would look in his glass and say, 'Shan't we have another, dear boy?' Friend Nephew never missed his cue once. 'Rawther!' he'd say, or 'Right-oh!' Then the Major would hoist signals of distress and make signs at the waiter. Oh, it was lovely to see them taking so much comfort in each other's society--and so much nourishment."

"What I want to know is this," put in Jay Gilman: "Did it liven 'em up any?"

"Not so you could notice it with the naked eye. For all the effect that anybody could see, the stuff might just as well have been poured into a pair of gopher holes. They went away at six o'clock, solemn and dignified, loaded to capacity but not even listing the least bit from the cargo they'd taken on. A lot of raw material wasted. That sort of thing is inhuman--uncanny. It must be a gift that runs in families--what?"

Before long we had a real sensation--the Major blossomed out into a playing member. A mummy doing a song and dance wouldn't have created any more excitement round the clubhouse. Even the caddies were talking about it.

Sam broke the news to me while I was practising mid-iron shots on the other side of the eighteenth green. Sam has carried my bag for years. He is too old to be a caddie, too young to be a member of the Supreme Court, and too wise for either job. He shoots the course in the seventies every time he can dodge the greens keeper--play by employes being strictly prohibited. He has forgotten more golf than I shall ever know, and tries hard to conceal the superiority he feels, but never quite makes the grade. You know the sort of caddie I mean--every club has a few like Sam.

"There you go again! What did I tell you about playin' the ball too far off your right foot? Stiffen up those wrists a bit--don't let 'em flop so. Put some forearm into the shot, and never mind lookin' up to see where the ball goes.... Say, that long, thin gentleman, him with the nose and teeth--the one they call the Major, that sits on the porch so much liftin' tall ones--I caddied for him this morning."

"You don't tell me so!"

"Yeh, I do. Sure! Him and his relative--the young fellah. Serial, ain't it? Well, they was both out early this morning, the Major beefin' a little about losin' his sleep, and sayin' he wouldn't make a fool of himself for anybody else on earth; but after he connected with a few shots he began to enjoy it and talk about what a lovely day it was goin' to be. You know how it is: any weather looks good to you when your shots are comin' off."

"Can he play at all?"

"Who, the Major? A shark, I tell you! That old boy has been a great golfer in his day, and it wasn't so long ago neither. To look at him you wouldn't think he had a full cleek shot in his system, but that's where he'd fool you. What's more, he knows where it's goin' when he ties into it. The young fellah plays a mighty sweet game--mighty sweet. He hits everything clean and hard and right on the line, but give the Major a few days' practise and he'll carry my small change every time. Knows more golf than Serial--got more shots, and he's a whale with his irons. He's a little wild with his wood off the tee--hooks too much and gets into trouble--but when he straightens out that drive he'll have Serial playin' the odd behind him. Say, it'd be great to get 'em both into the Invitation Tournament, eh?"

Now our Invitation Tournament is the big show of the year in golfing circles. Waddles sees to that. All members of the association are eligible, but visitors have to have a card and an invitation as well.

Waddles always scans these visitors very closely, and if a man is known as a cup hunter no amount of pressure can get him in. The Major, being a member of the club, was automatically invited to participate, but Cyril must be classed as a visitor.

I went to Waddles and told him what Sam had told me, suggesting that here was the chance to coax the Major off the porch for good, and perhaps get him onto the team later. I said that I thought it would be a graceful thing to issue an invitation to Cyril without waiting for a request from the Major.

"You poor fish!" said Waddles. "I was going to do that anyway. Do you think I'm asleep all the time?"

That is the way with Waddles. He can catch an idea on the fly, and before it settles he has adopted it as his own. He doesn't care a brass-mounted continental who scared it up in the first place. Before it lights it is his--all his. He said he didn't believe the Major was half so good as his advance notices, and, as for the full cleek shot, he pooh-poohed that part of the story entirely. Waddles has never mastered the cleek, but he is a demon with a bulldog spoon or with a brassy.

"I'll do this thing--as a common courtesy to a member," said Waddles; "but I'm not counting on the Major's golf. A man can't lay off for months and come back playing any sort of a game."

So the invitation was issued in Cyril's name, and we went in search of the Major. He was on the porch and Cyril was practising putts on the clock green.

Waddles can be very formal and dignified and diplomatic when he wants to be, and as a salve spreader he has few equals and no superiors. He pays a compliment in such a bluff, hearty fashion that it carries with it an air of absolute sincerity.

"Major," he began, "I can't tell you how delighted I am to hear that you have taken up the game again. Aside from the pleasure, it is bound to benefit your health."

"Eh?" said the Major, staring at Waddles intently. "Oh, yes! I'm feeling quite well at present, thanks."

"And you'll feel better for taking exercise," continued Waddles. "We are hoping that you will enter our Invitation Tournament next week. You'll get a number of good matches, meet some charming people and make some friends. Play begins on Wednesday."

"Ah!" said the Major.

"You can pick your own partner in the qualifying round." And here Waddles brought out the envelope containing the invitation. "I thought likely you might want to play with your nephew."

The Major took the envelope and opened it. After he had read the inclosure he looked up at Waddles and smiled.

"Very kind of you, I'm sure," said he. "Most kind. Cyril will appreciate this.... Shan't we have a drink?"

"Can you beat him?" said Waddles to me when we were back in the lounging room. "Just about as chummy as an oyster!"

"Either that or very inattentive," said I; "but just the same I think he'll play. Cyril will persuade him."

"I don't care a whoop whether he plays or not," growled Waddles. "I hate a man who can't loosen up and _talk_!"

"There is only one thing worse," said I, "and that is a man who talks too much."

Waddles took my remark as personal and wolfed at me for half an hour. Why is it that the man who has no consideration for your feelings is always so confoundedly sensitive about his own?

III