The Gentle Grafter Read online

  HOSTAGES TO MOMUS

  I

  I never got inside of the legitimate line of graft but once. But, onetime, as I say, I reversed the decision of the revised statutes andundertook a thing that I'd have to apologize for even under the NewJersey trust laws.

  Me and Caligula Polk, of Muskogee in the Creek Nation, was down in theMexican State of Tamaulipas running a peripatetic lottery and montegame. Now, selling lottery tickets is a government graft in Mexico,just like selling forty-eight cents' worth of postage-stamps forforty-nine cents is over here. So Uncle Porfirio he instructs the_rurales_ to attend to our case.

  _Rurales_? They're a sort of country police; but don't draw any mentalcrayon portraits of the worthy constables with a tin star and a graygoatee. The _rurales_--well, if we'd mount our Supreme Court onbroncos, arm 'em with Winchesters, and start 'em out after John Doe_et al_. we'd have about the same thing.

  When the _rurales_ started for us we started for the States. Theychased us as far as Matamoras. We hid in a brickyard; and that night weswum the Rio Grande, Caligula with a brick in each hand, absent-minded,which he drops upon the soil of Texas, forgetting he had 'em.

  From there we emigrated to San Antone, and then over to New Orleans,where we took a rest. And in that town of cotton bales and otheradjuncts to female beauty we made the acquaintance of drinks inventedby the Creoles during the period of Louey Cans, in which they arestill served at the side doors. The most I can remember of this townis that me and Caligula and a Frenchman named McCarty--wait a minute;Adolph McCarty--was trying to make the French Quarter pay up the backtrading-stamps due on the Louisiana Purchase, when somebody hollersthat the johndarms are coming. I have an insufficient recollection ofbuying two yellow tickets through a window; and I seemed to see a manswing a lantern and say "All aboard!" I remembered no more, exceptthat the train butcher was covering me and Caligula up with Augusta J.Evans's works and figs.

  When we become revised, we find that we have collided up against theState of Georgia at a spot hitherto unaccounted for in time tablesexcept by an asterisk, which means that trains stop every otherThursday on signal by tearing up a rail. We was waked up in a yellowpine hotel by the noise of flowers and the smell of birds. Yes, sir,for the wind was banging sunflowers as big as buggy wheels against theweatherboarding and the chicken coop was right under the window. Meand Caligula dressed and went down-stairs. The landlord was shellingpeas on the front porch. He was six feet of chills and fever, andHongkong in complexion though in other respects he seemed amenable inthe exercise of his sentiments and features.

  Caligula, who is a spokesman by birth, and a small man, thoughred-haired and impatient of painfulness of any kind, speaks up.

  "Pardner," says he, "good-morning, and be darned to you. Would youmind telling us why we are at? We know the reason we are where, butcan't exactly figure out on account of at what place."

  "Well, gentlemen," says the landlord, "I reckoned you-all would beinquiring this morning. You-all dropped off of the nine-thirty trainhere last night; and you was right tight. Yes, you was right smartin liquor. I can inform you that you are now in the town of MountainValley, in the State of Georgia."

  "On top of that," says Caligula, "don't say that we can't haveanything to eat."

  "Sit down, gentlemen," says the landlord, "and in twenty minutes I'llcall you to the best breakfast you can get anywhere in town."

  That breakfast turned out to be composed of fried bacon and ayellowish edifice that proved up something between pound cake andflexible sandstone. The landlord calls it corn pone; and then he setsout a dish of the exaggerated breakfast food known as hominy; and some and Caligula makes the acquaintance of the celebrated food thatenabled every Johnny Reb to lick one and two-thirds Yankees for nearlyfour years at a stretch.

  "The wonder to me is," says Caligula, "that Uncle Robert Lee's boysdidn't chase the Grant and Sherman outfit clear up into Hudson's Bay.It would have made me that mad to eat this truck they call mahogany!"

  "Hog and hominy," I explains, "is the staple food of this section."

  "Then," says Caligula, "they ought to keep it where it belongs. Ithought this was a hotel and not a stable. Now, if we was in Muskogeeat the St. Lucifer House, I'd show you some breakfast grub. Antelopesteaks and fried liver to begin on, and venison cutlets with _chilicon carne_ and pineapple fritters, and then some sardines and mixedpickles; and top it off with a can of yellow clings and a bottle ofbeer. You won't find a layout like that on the bill of affairs of anyof your Eastern restauraws."

  "Too lavish," says I. "I've traveled, and I'm unprejudiced. There'llnever be a perfect breakfast eaten until some man grows arms longenough to stretch down to New Orleans for his coffee and over toNorfolk for his rolls, and reaches up to Vermont and digs a slice ofbutter out of a spring-house, and then turns over a beehive close to awhite clover patch out in Indiana for the rest. Then he'd come prettyclose to making a meal on the amber that the gods eat on MountOlympia."

  "Too ephemeral," says Caligula. "I'd want ham and eggs, or rabbitstew, anyhow, for a chaser. What do you consider the most edifying andcasual in the way of a dinner?"

  "I've been infatuated from time to time," I answers, "with fancyramifications of grub such as terrapins, lobsters, reed birds,jambolaya, and canvas-covered ducks; but after all there's nothingless displeasing to me than a beefsteak smothered in mushrooms ona balcony in sound of the Broadway streetcars, with a hand-organplaying down below, and the boys hollering extras about the latestsuicide. For the wine, give me a reasonable Ponty Cany. And that'sall, except a _demi-tasse_."

  "Well," says Caligula, "I reckon in New York you get to be aconniseer; and when you go around with the _demi-tasse_ you arenaturally bound to buy 'em stylish grub."

  "It's a great town for epicures," says I. "You'd soon fall into theirways if you was there."

  "I've heard it was," says Caligula. "But I reckon I wouldn't. I canpolish my fingernails all they need myself."