John Henry Smith Part 12

"I don't care who are partners," said Harding, stepping up to the tee.

"I'll shoot first, and you keep your eye on your Uncle Dudley!"

He piled up a hill of sand, gripped his club like grim death, drew back, swung with all his might--and missed the ball by three inches.

"One stroke!" laughed Miss Harding.

"That don't count!" he declared. "I didn't hit the blamed thing at all!

Look at it! It's just where I fixed it a minute ago. Don't cheat, Kid!"

"A missed ball counts a stroke," laughed Carter.

"Are you sure that's the rule?"

We all a.s.sured him there was not the slightest doubt of it.

"All that I can say is that it's a fool rule," he protested, "but at that, one missed swipe cuts little figure with me. Here goes for number two!"

"Don't press!" cautioned Carter.

"I'll press all I darned please. Keep your eyes on this one!"

He grazed the ball enough to make it roll not more than twenty feet into a clump of tall gra.s.s. He looked blankly at it, but did not say a word.

Then he took a jack-knife from his pocket and cut two notches in the shaft of his club.

Carter drove out a good one, and I teed a ball for Miss Harding. The lane is about a hundred yards away, and I thought of advising her to play short, but on reflection determined not to embarra.s.s her by suggestions so early in the game.

The moment she took her stance and grasped her club I noted a difference in her style of play as compared with that of the preceding day. Her club head came back with a free, even curve, and on the return she caught the ball with a good though not perfect follow through. The ball carried straight and true over the lane, and did not stop rolling until it had pa.s.sed the 130-yard mark. It was a nice clean drive, and I smiled my approval.

"Good work, Kid," grinned Harding, but he did not seem the least dismayed. I should not care to play poker with him. I lined out a beauty, and then Harding returned to the attack.

It took two strokes to get his ball out of the gra.s.s. On his fifth shot the ball had a good lie about ten yards from the lane fence. He smashed at it with a bra.s.sie, but drove too low. The ball hit a fence post and bounded back fully seventy-five yards. In five strokes he had not gained a foot. After a combination of weird and wonderful shots he reached the green in twelve.

Harding's putting was a revelation in how not to drop a ball in a cup.

He went back and forth over the hole like a shuttle. This performance added six to his score, and he holed out in nineteen. He was fighting mad, but did not say a word. While the rest of us were holing out he sullenly added seventeen notches to his club.

I was astonished and pleased at the reversal in form shown by Miss Harding. Two iron shots laid her ball on the green, her approach was a little weak, and she missed an easy two-foot putt, but she made the hole in seven, which is not at all bad for a woman. Carter and I both got fours.

When Harding finally got his ball out of the old graveyard in playing the second hole there was a dispute as to how many strokes he had taken.

I counted twelve, but he claimed only nine, and we let him have his own way about it. I did not dare to dispute with him, fearing that he might have a stroke of apoplexy. He marked eleven new notches on his club shaft for this hole.

He made a fair drive over the marsh on his third hole, flubbed his second and third shots, but his fourth was a screaming bra.s.sie which landed him on the green within two inches of the cup. It was one of those freak shots which a man makes once a season, but Harding took vast credit for it and was the happiest person on the links over his bogy five for this long hole.

Miss Harding was playing like a veteran. This hole is 355 yards from the tee, but she was well on the green on her third, and holed out in six.

Carter did the same, but I got a five and saved the hole for our side.

I do not know how to account for Miss Harding's improved playing. It was not in the least like that of the day when we were alone. For the entire eighteen holes she played steady, consistent golf. It was not brilliant, but it was a creditable exhibition for a woman. She kept on the course, missed only two drives, and rarely failed to get distance and direction.

Not until we had played half-way around and Harding was hopelessly behind did he give voice to his amazement.

"This is the time you have got the old man down and out, Kid," he said, after she had made the ninth hole in four to his fourteen. "I'll admit that there is a trick about this game that I'm not on to, but you just wait; you just wait. I seem to hit 'em all right, but confound 'em, they don't go right. I don't understand it. I'd have bet a million dollars against a perfecto cigar that I could drive a ball farther than a 125-pound girl, even if she is my daughter."

"We will call our bet off, Mr. Harding," I suggested, satisfied that we had tumbled him from the pedestal reared by his conceit.

"We'll call nothing off," he promptly declared. "Soak it to me as hard as you can; I'll get even with all of you before the season's over."

No language can describe the game played by the railway magnate. His miserable playing was supplemented by worse luck. A predatory cow swallowed his ball. He drove another one into the crotch of a tree, hit Carter in the shin, broke a window in the club house, tore his trousers, sprained his thumb, and poisoned his hands with ivy while searching for a lost ball. He conversed much with himself when Miss Harding was not near.

The nicks in his club by which he kept score became so numerous, and they so weakened the shaft, that he finally broke it; also one of the commandments.

The story of his calamities and of his undoing is feebly indicated by his score, which was as follows:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Out-- 19 11 5 7 12 9 8 16 14--101 In--- 8 6 10 5 7 7 11 5 12-- 71 --- Total --172

Miss Harding made it in 116, and with a reasonable amount of luck I am sure she would have done much better. I played a rattling good game, completing the round in 80, which is the best score I have made this season.

I put it all over Carter, who had made me a side bet of the dinners for the four of us that his individual score would be better than mine.

Miss Harding won an automobile which will cost not less than $15,000; I won fifty-six dozen golf b.a.l.l.s, enough to last me two years; Carter lost a dinner which I thoroughly enjoyed, and Mr. Harding lost his temper, but I will give him credit for finding it the moment the game was over.

He laughed as if it were the greatest joke in the world.

"You threw me down, Kid," he said to Miss Harding, "but I'll forgive you. You get the buzz wagon and Smith gets a cartload of b.a.l.l.s, but I'll tell you one thing, and that is this: I'm going to learn how to hit one of those blamed b.a.l.l.s in the nose every time I swipe at it, even if I have to resign the presidency of the R.G. & K. railroad."

I can see that the golf microbe has marked him for a shining victim.

ENTRY NO. IX

MR. SMITH GETS BUSY

I have had to neglect my golf and attend to business. For nearly a week I have not seen Miss Harding. And all on account of that miserable N.O.

& G. stock.

Early in the week it dropped to more than ten points below the figure at which I purchased it. This meant a loss of $20,000.

Tuesday morning I called on my broker and he informed me that if N.O. & G. dropped two more points he would have to call on me for margins.

There were rumours, he said, that it would pa.s.s its next dividend, or at least reduce it. Then I got busy.

I called on Jones, the kind friend who steered me against this investment. Jones informed me that certain powerful banking interests were raiding the stock. He could not identify them, and I saw that he knew nothing about it.

"We are the lambs, Smith," he sadly said. "I'm in for a thousand shares myself."

"They have not an ounce of my fleece yet," I declared, and turned and left him.

I served two years on Wall Street under my father, and there was no streak of mutton in him. It made me furious to think that I should be made to "hold the bag" for a lot of unscrupulous tricksters.