Lady Luck Part 29

"Not me, Wilecat. Dat ball landed inside dis heah graveyard tomb. You don't git me in dere fo' a million dollahs. What's 'at! You foun' yo'

goat!"

"Boy, out o' mah way!" The Wildcat walked toward the Chinese tomb as fast as Lily could cover the ground. "Git out o' mah way. Me an' Lily looks in dat tomb place. Us ain't scared o' no ol' ghosts no mo'."

One of the Blue Fezant gentleman called to the Wildcat. "Son, where in h.e.l.l have you been?"

Something in the Potent n.o.ble's tone made the Wildcat think of Captain Jack and the gone-away days in France. "Cap'n, suh, no place. I was jes' 'c.u.mulatin' mah mascot goat."

He entered the roofless Chinese tomb, and there on the stone floor lay the golf ball. "Cap'n, suh," he yelled, "heah's yo' freckled pill." He called less loudly to the Mud Turtle. "Otheh ball read three. Dis one heah's got de fo' spot up. 'At's seven! Mud Turtle, you loses. Come in heah an' look at it."

The Mud Turtle's dread of the Chinese tomb was still with him. "I 'cepts yo' word fo' it, Wilecat. Doggone you. Boy, you wins fo' times runnin'."

"Boy, f'm now on I wins steady. Lady Luck done sent back mah mascot goat. I cain't lose!"

He turned to his four-legged companion. "Kin us, Lily, whilst you's wid me?"

"Blaaa!" answered Lily. "I should say not."

CHAPTER XVII

1.

"Lead me to de woods whah de luck trees grow, Han' me de axe when it's time to chop.

Lead me kinda gentle,--git me started slow; When I gits to goin', watch de luck trees drop."

While the Wildcat was doing his best to forget the cares that nominally infested his official day as porter on the Blue Fezant special car, sidetracked in San Francisco, Honey Tone Boone, the brunet uplifteh, languished in the Memphis jail.

There were two sides to every jail. To the Wildcat, the loser in the law's game generally occupied the inside. Honey Tone was different. The inside of a jail for Honey Tone was often a place of sanctuary from which the occupant might sneer serenely at the disappointed female perils who gnashed their teeth outside the bars.

In San Francisco the days were warm, and Lily the mascot goat had returned to her master's side.

The Wildcat was playing even in the matter of daily rations. Trailing along in the wake of a pair of the golf-playing n.o.bles of the Mysterious Mecca at the Lincoln Park Golf course provided a cash surplus which enabled the Wildcat to discard his winter-weight Prince Albert and to adorn his person with a retiring suit of clothes three shades lighter than a sunburned pumpkin and embellished with six-inch checks. Life wasn't so bad. Ol' railroad sleepin' car was probably doin' all right. Reasonably sure that tomorrow would lug in new brands of trouble to pester a boy with, the Wildcat steered his somnolent mentality clear of the shoals of surmise and let tomorrow take care of itself.

A boy never could tell about Lady Luck. Every time the Wildcat did something that clearly ent.i.tled him to free board in some permanent jail, like as not next day he would wake up all festooned with gold watches. Take a preacher's advice and head down the straight and narrow path, and the chances were that some deppity sherriff with a shotgun, or else a bear, would be waiting in the path right where the heaviest canebrakes discouraged detours.

2.

"One man's pizen is anotheh man's meat,-- Mah troubles neveh botheh you.

Hog needs wings like a snake needs feet: De question ain't why, but who."

Honey Tone Boone's downfall had been accomplished in Memphis immediately subsequent to a Konk'rin' Heroes' parade. There had been some talk about the ownership of the mule which Honey Tone rode. The line of march headed straight for Honey Tone's wife and his potential soul mate and culminated in a ruckus from which Honey Tone emerged, safe in the talons of a policeman. The two women, comparing notes, had gummed up the leader's grand entry to a degree which left Honey Tone thankful for the mule-stealing charge that had landed him safe in the jail and out of the clutches of his wife and Cuspidora Lee. He enjoyed sanctuary in jail for two months and then, threatened with an embarra.s.sing and abrupt release, he concentrated on a hurried mental incubation. Hard pressed, he sought to hatch from the bad egg of circ.u.mstance some new enterprise which would take him away, sudden and safe, from where his memorizing wife awaited him.

His mind roamed wild through the fields of questionable enterprises opened to him by a combination of easy conscience and the flashy part of a "college" education. On the day of his release he half regretted his education. Ignorance cursed the individual with work, but it left him free of the higher responsibilities and the more acute penalties of transgressions, and just then Honey Tone wished devoutly that he was a field hand. He craved a black complexion instead of the halfway colour that barred him from the unquestioning comradeship of white and black alike.

On the night of his release from jail he beat the barrier, and by morning he was well on his way to St. Louis, resolved to explore the Pacific coast for fields wherein his peculiar abilities might enable him to reap the harvest of cash without which life to him was naught.

En route West, Honey Tone managed to keep one state ahead of his reputation. Thus he avoided the iron impedimenta which the laws of the land drape around the ankles and feet that stray from the straight and narrow trail--around wrists and hands whose idleness affords the devil welcome opportunity to function as a labour agent.

Honey Tone's first week in Oakland found him preaching to a small congregation. On the following Sunday he announced to his flock that subscriptions for a church building fund would be accepted, beginning forthwith.

"Temp'rary an' perm'nent." The announcement followed a long prayer during which the uplifter's face wore the same holy expression as that which adorns the first stages of a sneeze. "Rev'und" Honey Tone Boone opened his eyes and tamed his vocabulary to the vernacular current among his hearers. "Temp'rary an' perm'nent. Weekly refun's on all temp'rary subscriptions, togetheh with int'res' at a hund'ed per cent.

You doubles yo' 'vestment, like de boy wid de ten talents."

The dangling bait was presently engulfed.

The subscription books were kept open throughout the week. Facilities for subscribing were offered through agencies established in the pastor's quarters, in two barber shops and three pool rooms.

On the following Sunday, after a service devoted largely to discussion of temporal problems which afflict the flesh here in this vale of tears, Honey Tone paid his subscribers their original contributions and added an equal sum for interest at a hund'ed per cent.

The books were flooded with new subscriptions within the next fifteen minutes. The six agencies did a rushing business all during the week.

On Friday Honey Tone counted his cash and decided that another week could be managed. Then--exit.

After the next Sunday services, owing to an eight that looked like a three, he was short five hundred dollars in the item of interest.

Explanations led to retreat, and Honey Tone retreated to a hotel in San Francisco. His flight therefrom was interrupted by a delegation from a mob which visited him on the following night. He beat the delegation out of the lobby of the hotel because, in the emergency, his feet acted more quickly than his head. He went away from there leading his flock.

Mentally he shipped his remains to his next of kin four times in the next fifty yards. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the gleam of a piece of light-coloured steel swung by a dark-coloured investor who craved to collect his investment, plus interest, one way or another.

Honey Tone's racing legs, impelled by an acute ambition, functioned successfully in their owner's single endeavour to lead the flying wedge of razor-bearing blood hunters by at least two jumps more than a slashin' reach. The fugitive turned into Mission Street; and here in the long stretch the saddle-coloured financier saw a chance to do some thinking. Galloping was his main business just then, but he carried a side line of quick thoughts.

With members of his own race Honey Tone asked no greater odds in the money game than those which served from the theory that mind was superior to matter. But in this, too, time was the essence. Just then he needed time. Ten minutes were worth a million dollars and lots of other important things like health and strength and blood. Time was that without which the best laid plans died in the egg.

For the next five blocks, running something less than a mile a minute, the uplifter's brain functioned with the cunning which enables the fragrant fox to overcome the handicap with which nature has equipped him, when the hounds begin the cross country obesity cure. During this time a plan had flowered in Honey Tone's brain whereby victory might be s.n.a.t.c.hed from what had looked like a total loss of all the blood that would run out of where a razor had nestled.

In a shadowed area midway between two street lights Honey Tone stopped.

He stopped abruptly, like a golf ball hitting the north side of Gibraltar. He bounced back, absorbing his momentum in a twisting motion which left him squarely facing the oncoming pack. Now it was, or never!

When they were upon him he raised his arms.

He orated. "Hush! Git calm! Now us kin talk! Money! Cash! Rest easy!"

His voice lifted one notch higher than the undertone which welled about him. The peak load of peril was confronted and pa.s.sed, but still his speech ranged over the bait words most potent as verbal sedatives.

"Easy money--lissen--gin--seven dice--fancy clothes--chicken an' gin fo' one an' all soopreem members."

He discarded his college-bred dialect and adopted the vernacular of the majority about him. "Lissen heavy! Git calm. Len' me yo' ears. Men an'

brethren, you knows me. Fo'gettin' de peril o' de tar bar'l an' de p'cessions at night wid blazin' pitch knots an' de chokin' rope whut folks uses when dey uprises, an' chosin' fo' ouah guide de lives ob de ol'-time martyrs, safe an' serene in de circle ob fate cast 'roun' mah fragile form by dis yere rabbit's foot--Ah tells you--lissen!"

The speaker waved his rabbit's foot. He beckoned at the loose fringe of sceptics which milled on the margin of the group. "Gether together, dat ye can hear de words ob wisdom. De prophet knowed whut he said when he perdicted dat somebody was comin' to lead his chillun f'm darkness into light. 'At's me! Somebody. I leads you out ob darkness into de promised lan' whah flows de milk an' honey. In pa.s.sin' lemme add dat milk is f'm de ol' language used by de Sanskrits, meanin' gin. Honey f'm de ancient Check-Slowfat word 'Honito.' Dat's de word fo' chicken--fried chicken, to be mo' preciser.... Men, you is sons ob Kings f'm Africa. How come you all redoosted to de state ob slaves? How come bird shot cain't pester a cinnamon bear? Because yo' brains and yo' brawns is all spread out, desiccated on triflin' things like cotton crops an' cawn, sweatin'

undeh heavy loads 'stid of rulin' at de seat of guv'ment an' dictatin'

whut's whut."

The orator dragged in another lungful of midnight fog and broke into the stretch. "Heah's de answeh, graved on de gol' tablets an' dug up in de midnight moon wid a luck spade. Gran' oaks f'm li'l acorns grow.

Heah in San F'mcisco wid de aid of you all we starts de new movement towards de Canaan land. Fust off, us o'ganizes de Temple o' Luck. Den de fust annex is de Swamick Chu'ch, based on de mystic teachin' of Swami de Indian Budda. Nex' do' in de Temple de Soopreem Faith Healer thrives an' collects money f'm folks whut only thinks dey's sick.