Fore! Part 20

"SIMILIA SIMILIBUS CURANTUR"

I

The front porch of our clubhouse is a sort of reserved-seat section from which we witness the finish of all important matches. The big wicker rocking-chairs command the eighteenth putting green, as well as the approach to it, and when nothing better offers we watch the dub foursomes come straggling home, herding the little white pills in front of them.

We were doing this only yesterday--Waddles, the Bish and yours truly--and Waddles was picking the winners and losers at a distance of three hundred yards. The old rascal is positively uncanny at that sort of thing; in fact, he rather prides himself on his powers of observation. The Bish was arguing with him, as usual. Of course he isn't really a bishop, but he has a long, solemn ecclesiastical upper lip and a heavy manner of trundling out the most commonplace remarks, so we call him the Bish, and there is nothing he can do about it. In justice to all parties concerned I feel it my duty to state that in every other way he is quite unlike any bishop I have ever met.

"h.e.l.lo!" said Waddles, sitting up straight. "Here's the Old Guard--what's left of it, at least."

Away down to the right of the sycamore trees a single figure topped the brow of the hill and stalked along the sky line. There was no mistaking the long, thin legs or the stiff swing with which they moved.

"Walks like a pair of spavined sugar tongs," was Waddles' comment. "You can tell Pete Miller as far as you can see him."

A second figure shot suddenly into view--the figure of a small, nervous man who brandished a golf club and danced from sheer excess of emotion, but even at three hundred yards it was evident that there was no joy in that dance. Waddles chuckled.

"Bet you anything you like," said he, "that Sam Totten sliced his tee shot into the apricot orchard. He's played about four by now--and they're cutthroating it on the drink hole, same as they always do....

About time for Jumbo to be putting in an appearance."

While he was speaking a tremendous form loomed large on the sky line, dwarfing Miller and Totten. Once on level ground this giant struck a rolling gait and rapidly overhauled his companions--overhauled them in spite of two hundred and sixty pounds and an immense paunch which swayed from side to side as he walked.

"Little Jumbo," said Waddles, sinking back in his chair. "Little Jumbo, with his bag of clubs tucked under his left arm--one driver and all of three irons. He carries that awful load because his doctor tells him he ought to reduce. And he eats four pieces of apple pie a la mode with his lunch. But a fine old fellow at that.... Well, I notice it's still a threesome."

"Notice again," said the Bish, pointing to the left of the sycamores.

Waddles looked, and rose from his chair with a grunt of amazement. A fourth figure came dragging itself up the slope of the hill--the particular portion of the slope of the hill where the deepest trouble is visited upon a sliced second shot. Judging by his appearance and manner this fourth golfer had been neck-deep in grief, to say nothing of cactus and manzanita. His head was hanging low on his breast, his shoulders were sagging, his feet were shuffling along the ground, and he trailed a golf club behind him. When a man trails a club to the eighteenth putting green it is a sure sign that all is over but the shouting; and the wise observer will do his shouting in a whisper. Waddles sat down suddenly.

"Well, as I live and breathe and run the Yavapai Golf and Country Club!"

he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "there's my old friend, Mr. Peac.o.c.k, with all his tail feathers pulled out! The deserter has joined the colours again, and the Old Guard is recruited to full war strength once more! They've actually taken him back, after the way he's acted, too! Now what do you think of that, eh?"

"If you ask me," said the Bish in his booming chest notes, "I'd say it was just a case of _similia similibus curantur_."

"Nothing of the sort!" said Waddles, bristling instantly; "and besides, I don't know what you mean. Bish, when you cut loose that belly barytone of yours you always remind me of an empty barrel rolling down the cellar stairs--a lot of noise, but you never spill anything worth mopping up.

Come again with that foreign stuff."

"_Similia similibus curantur_," repeated the Bish. "That's Latin."

Waddles shook his head.

"In this case," said he, "your word will have to be sufficient. While you were hog-wrastling Caesar's Commentaries I was down in the Indian Territory mastering the art of driving eight mules with a jerk line. I learned to swear some in Choctaw and Cherokee, but that was as far as I got. Break that Latin up into little ones. Slip it to me in plain unvarnished United States."

"Well, then," said the Bish, rolling a solemn eye in my direction, "that's the same as saying that the hair of the dog cures the bite."

"The hair of the dog," repeated Waddles, wrinkling his brow. "The hair--of--the--dog.... H'm-m."

"Oh, it's deep stuff," said the Bish. "Take a good long breath and dive for it."

"The only time I ever heard that hair-of-the-dog thing mentioned," said Waddles, "was the morning after the night before. Peac.o.c.k doesn't drink."

The Bish made use of a very unorthodox expletive.

"Something ailed your friend Peac.o.c.k," said he, "and something cured him. Think it over."

Slowly the light of intelligence dawned in Waddles' eyes. He began to laugh inwardly, quivering like a mould of jelly, but the joke was too big to remain inside him. It burst forth, first in chuckles, then in subdued guffaws, and finally in whoops and yells, and as he whooped he slapped his fat knees and wallowed in his chair.

"Why," he panted, "I saw it all the time--of course I did! It was just your fool way of putting it! The hair of the dog--oh, say, that's rich!

Make a note of that Latin thing, Bish. I want to spring it on the Reverend Father Murphy!"

"Certainly--but where are you off to in such a hurry?"

"Me?" said Waddles. "I'm going to do something I've never done before.

I'm going to raise a man's handicap from twelve to eighteen!"

He went away, still laughing, and I looked over toward the eighteenth green. Pete Miller was preparing to putt, Sam Totten and Jumbo were standing side by side, and in the background was Henry Peac.o.c.k, his hands in his pockets, his cap tilted down over his eyes and his lower lip entirely out of control. His caddie was already on the way to the shed with the bag of clubs.

"From twelve handicap to eighteen," said I. "That's more or less of an insult. Think he'll stand for it?"

"He'll stand for anything right now," said the Bish. "Look at him! He's picked up his ball--on the drink hole too. Give him the once over--'mighty somnambulist of a vanished dream!'"

II

As far back as my earliest acquaintance with the royal and ancient game, the Old Guard was an inst.i.tution of the Yavapai Golf and Country Club--a foursome cemented by years and usage, an a.s.sociation recognised as permanent, a club within the club--four eighteen-handicap men, bound by the ties of habit and hopeless mediocrity. The young golfer improves his game and changes his company, graduating from Cla.s.s B into Cla.s.s A; the middle-aged golfer is past improvement, so he learns his limitations, hunts his level and stays there. Peter Miller, Frank Woodson, Henry Peac.o.c.k and Sam Totten were fixtures in the Grand Amalgamated Order of Dubs, and year in and year out their cards would have averaged something like ninety-seven. They were oftener over the century mark than below it.

Every golf club has a few permanent foursomes, but most of them are held together by common interests outside the course. For instance, we have a bankers' foursome, an insurance foursome and a wholesale-grocery foursome, and the players talk shop between holes. We even have a foursome founded on the owners.h.i.+p of an automobile, a jitney alliance, as Sam Totten calls it; but the Old Guard cannot be explained on any such basis, nor was it a case of like seeking like.

Peter Miller, senior member, is grey and silent and as stiff as his own putter shaft. He is the sort of man who always lets the other fellow do all the talking and all the laughing, while he sits back with the air of one making mental notes and reservations. Peter is a corporation lawyer who seldom appears in court, but he loads the gun for the young and eloquent pleader and tells him what to aim at and when to pull the trigger. A solid citizen, Peter, and a useful one.

Frank Woodson, alias Jumbo, big and genial and hearty, has played as Miller's partner for years and years, and possesses every human quality that Peter lacks. They say of Frank--and I believe it--that in all his life he never hurt a friend or lost one. Frank is in the stock-raising business at present, and carries a side line of blue-blooded dogs. He once made me a present of one, but I am still his friend.

A year ago I would have set against Henry Peac.o.c.k's name the words "colourless" and "neutral." A year ago I thought I knew all about him; now I am quite certain that there is something in Henry Peac.o.c.k's nature that will always baffle me. Waddles swears that Peac.o.c.k was born with his fingers crossed and one hand on his pocketbook, but that is just his extravagant way of putting things. Henry has shown me that it is possible to maintain a soft, yielding exterior, and yet be hard as adamant inside. He has also demonstrated that a meek man's pride is a thing not lightly dismissed. I have revised all my estimates of H.

Peac.o.c.k, retired capitalist.

Last of all we have Samuel Totten, youngest of the Old Guard by at least a dozen years. How he ever laughed his way into that close corporation is a mystery, but somewhere in his twenties he managed it. Sam is a human firebrand, a dash of tabasco, a rough comedian and catch-as-catch-can joker. Years have not tamed him, but they have brought him into prominence as a consulting specialist in real estate and investments. Those who should know tell that Sam Totten can park his itching feet under an office desk and keep them there long enough to swing a big deal, but I prefer to think of him as the rather florid young man who insists on joining the hired orchestra and playing snare-drum solos during the country-club dances, much to the discomfiture of the gentleman who owns the drum. You will never realise how poor Poor b.u.t.terfly is until you hear Sam Totten execute that melody upon his favourite instrument.

These four men met twice a week, rain or s.h.i.+ne, without the formality of telephoning in advance. Each one knew that, barring flood, fire or act of G.o.d, the others would be on hand, fed, clothed and ready to leave the first tee at one-fifteen P. M. If one of the quartette happened to be sick or out of town the others would pick up a fourth man and take him round the course with them, but that fourth man recognised the fact that he was not of the Old Guard, but merely with it temporarily. He was never encouraged to believe that he had found a home.

Imagine then, this permanent foursome, this coalition of fifteen years'

standing, this sacred inst.i.tution, smitten and smashed by a bolt from the blue. And like most bolts from the blue it picked out the most unlikely target. Henry Peac.o.c.k won the Brutus B. Hemmingway Cup!

Now as golf cups go the Hemmingway Cup is quite an affair--eighteen inches from pedestal to brim, solid silver of course, engraved and scrolled and chased within an inch of its life. Mr. Hemmingway puts up a new cup each year, the conditions of play being that the trophy shall go to the man making the best net score. A Cla.s.s-B man usually wins it with a handicap of eighteen or twenty-four and the Cla.s.s-A men slightingly refer to Mr. Hemmingway's trophy as "the dub cup." Sour grapes, of course.

I remember Mr. Peac.o.c.k's victory very well; in fact, I shall never forget it. On that particular afternoon my net score was seventy-one, five strokes under our par, and for half an hour or so I thought the Hemmingway Cup was going home with me. I recall trying to decide whether it would show to best advantage on the mantel in the living room or on the sideboard in the dining room. Numbers of disappointed contestants offered me their congratulations--they said it was about time I won something, even with the a.s.sistance of a fat handicap--and for half an hour I endeavoured to bear my honours with becoming modesty. Waddles brought the Hemmingway Cup over and put it in the middle of the table.

"'S all yours, I guess," said he. "n.o.body out now but the Old Guard. Not one of them could make an 88 with a lead pencil, and that's what they've got to do to beat you. Might as well begin to buy."