Fore! Part 41

"Maybe not," said Windy, quite earnestly, "but I can lick you within an inch of your life--and I will. Is there anything in the book about that? If you read me out of this cup, you better make arrangements to have it sent direct to the hospital. It'll make a nice flower holder--if you've got any friends that think enough of you to send flowers!"

"You gentlemen are witnesses to these threats," said Kitts, appealing to the gallery.

"We didn't hear a word," said Cupid. "Not a word. Go on and play your match and stop squabbling. You act like a couple of fishwives!"

The contestants walked off in the direction of the tee, with Windy still rubbing it in.

"A word to the wise. Keep that d.a.m.n' book in your pocket, if you don't want to eat it--cover and all!"

"Suppose they do mix it?" said Cupid, mopping his brow. "Sweet little golfing scandal, eh? Can't you see the headlines in the newspapers?

'Country Club finalists in fist fight on links!' And some of these roughneck humourists will congratulate us on golf becoming one of the vital, red-blooded sports! Oh, lovely!"

"Bah!" said I. "There will be no fight. No man will fight who smiles like a coyote when he is getting a call down."

"But a coyote will fight if you put it up to him, don't make any mistake about that. And Kitts will spring the book on Windy again, I feel it in my bones, and if he does--choose your partners for the one-step! Oh, why did we ever let these rotters into the club?"

IV

I see no reason for inflicting upon you a detailed description of the next fifteen holes of golfing frightfulness. Golf is a game which requires mental calm, and the contestants were entirely out of calmness after the second hole and could not concentrate on their shots.

Windy began driving all over the shop, hooking and slicing tremendously, and Kitts manhandled his irons in a manner fit to make a hardened professional weep. Neither of them could have holed a five-foot putt in a washtub, and they staggered along side by side, silent and nervous and savage, and if Windy managed to win a hole Kitts would be sure to take the next one and square the match. But he didn't take any holes with the book. When Windy broke a rule--which he did every little while--Kitts would sneer and pretend to look the other way. He tried to convey the impression that it was pity and contempt that made him blind to Windy's lapses, but he didn't fool me for a minute. It was fear of consequences.

And so they came to the last hole, all square, and also all in.

Our eighteenth has a vicious reputation among those golfing unfortunates who slice their tee shots. The drive must carry a steep hill, the right slope of which pitches away to a deep, narrow ravine--a ravine scarred and marred by thousands of niblick shots, but otherwise as disgusted Nature left it. We call it h.e.l.l's Half Acre, though the first part of the name would be quite sufficient.

The only improvements that have ever been made in this sinister locality have been made by golf clubs, despairingly wielded. h.e.l.l's Half Acre is full of stunted trees with roots half out of the ground, and thick brush and matted weeds, and squarely in the middle of this desolation is a deep sink, or pit, known as the Devil's Kitchen. h.e.l.l's Half Acre is bad enough, believe one who knows, but the Devil's Kitchen is the last hard word in hazards, and it is a crime to allow such a plague spot within a mile of a golf course.

At a respectful distance we watched the renegades drive from the eighteenth tee. Kitts had the honour--if there is any honour in winning a four hole in eight strokes--and messed about over his ball even longer than usual. His drive developed a lovely curve to the right, and went skipping and bounding down the hill toward the ravine.

"And that'll be in the Kitchen unless something stops it!" said Cupid with a sigh of relief. "I was afraid the blighters might halve this one and need extra holes!"

Now with Adolphus in the Devil's Kitchen all Windy needed was a straight ball over the brow of the hill--in fact, a ball anywhere on the course would be almost certain to win the hole and the match--but when he walked out on the tee it was plain to be seen that he had lost confidence in his wooden club. Any golfer knows what it means to lose confidence in his wood, and Windy had reason to doubt his driver. His tee shots had been fearfully off direction, and here was one that _had_ to go straight.

He teed his ball, swung his club a couple of times, and shook his head.

Then he yelled at his caddie.

"Oh, boy! Bring me my cleek!"

Now, a cleek is a wonderful club if a man knows how to use one, but it produces a low tee shot, as a general thing. It produced one for Windy--a screamer, flying with the speed of a rifle bullet. I thought at first that it was barely going to clear the top of the hill, but I misjudged it. Three feet higher and the ball would have been over, but it struck the ground and kicked abruptly to the right, disappearing in the direction of the Devil's Kitchen. We heard a crashing noise. It was Windy splintering his cleek shaft over the tee box.

"Both down!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Cupid. "Suffering St. Andrew, what a finish!"

We arrived on the rim of the Kitchen and peered into that wild amphitheatre. Kitts had already found his ball, and was staring at it with an expression of dumb anguish on his face. It was lying underneath a tangle of st.u.r.dy oak roots, as safely protected as if an octopus was trying to hatch something out of it.

Windy was combing the weeds which grew on the abrupt sides of the pit, too full of his own trouble to pay any attention to his opponent.

"If it's a lost ball----" said Cupid.

But it wasn't. Windy found it, half-way up the left slope, hidden in the weeds, and not a particularly bad lie except for the fact that nothing human could have taken a stance on that declivity. Having found his ball, Windy took a look at Kitts's lie and then, for the first and only time in his golfing career, Wilkins recognised the rules of the game.

"You're away, sir," said he to Kitts. "Play!"

Adolphus took his niblick and attacked the octopus. His first three strokes did not even jar the ball, but they damaged the oak roots beyond repair. On his eighth attempt the ball popped out of its nest, and the next shot was a very pretty one, sailing up and out to the fair green, but there was no applause from the gallery.

"Countin' the drive," said Windy, "that makes ten, eh?"

A man may play nine strokes in a hazard, but he hates to admit it.

Adolphus grunted and withdrew to the other side of the pit, from which point he watched Windy morosely. With victory in sight the latter became cheerful again; conversation bubbled out of him.

"Boy, slip me the niblick and get up yonder on the edge of the ravine where you can watch this ball. I'm goin' to knock it a mile out of here.

Ten shots he's had. If it was me, I'd give up. How am I to get a footin' on this infernal side hill? Spikes won't hold in that stuff.

Wish I was a goat. Aha! The very thing!"

Suddenly he delivered a powerful blow at the slope some distance below his ball and three or four feet to the left of it. Cupid gasped and opened his mouth to say something, but I nudged him and he subsided, clucking like a nervous hen.

"What's the idea?" demanded Kitts.

"To make little boys ask questions," was the calm reply. "I climbed the Alps once. Had to dig holes for my feet. Guess I haven't forgotten how, but diggin' with a blasted niblick is hard work."

"Oh!" said Kitts.

Windy continued to hack at the wall, the gallery looking on in tense silence. n.o.body would have offered a suggestion; we all felt that it was their own affair, and on the knees of the G.o.ds, as the saying is. When Windy had hacked out a place for his right foot he cut another one for his left. The weeds were tough and the soil was hard, and he grunted as he worked.

"Yep--that Alps trip--taught me something. Comes in--handy now. Pretty nifty--job, hey?"

I suppose a mountain climber would have called it a nifty job. Cupid began to mutter.

"Be quiet!" said I. "Let's see if Kitts has nerve enough to call it on him!"

With the shaft of his niblick in his teeth, Windy swarmed up the side of the wall, found the footholds and planted himself solidly. Grasping a bush above his head with his left hand, he measured the distance with his eye, steadied himself and swung the niblick with his powerful right arm. It was a wonderful shot, even if Windy Wilkins did make it; the ball went soaring skyward, far beyond all trouble.

"_Some--out!_" he panted, looking over his shoulder at Kitts. "I guess that'll clinch the match!"

For just a second Adolphus hesitated; then he must have thought of the cup. "I rather think it will," said he. "You're nicely out, Wilkins--in forty-seven strokes."

"Forty-seven devils!" shouted Windy. "I'm out _in two_!"

"In a hazard," quoted Kitts, "the club shall not touch the ground, nor shall anything be touched or moved before the player strikes at the ball." At this point Adolphus made a serious mistake; he reached for the book. "Under the rule," he continued, "I could claim the hole on you, but I won't do that. I'll only count the strokes you took in chopping a stance for yourself----"

That was where Windy dropped the niblick and jumped at him, and Cupid was correct about the coyote. Put him in a hole where he can't get out, attack him hard enough, and he _will_ fight.

Adolphus dropped the book and nailed Windy on the chin with a right upper cut that jarred the whole Wilkins family.

"Keep out of it, everybody!" yelled Cupid with a sudden flash of inspiration. "It's an elimination contest! More power to both of 'em--and may they both lose!"

Inside of two seconds the whole floor of the Devil's Kitchen was littered up with fists and elbows and boots and knees. They fought into clinches and battered their way out of them; they tripped over roots and scrambled to their feet again; they tossed all rules to the winds except the rule of self-preservation. The air was full of heartfelt grunts and sounds as of some one beating a rag carpet, and the language which floated to us was--well, elemental, to say the least. And through it all the gallery looked down in decent silence; there was no favourite for whom any one cared to cheer.