Rolling Stones | Page 8

found a five-dollar bill
crumpled neatly into my hand.
"I wouldn't have thought, Kansas Bill," I said, "that you'd hold an old
friend that cheap."
Then he turned his head, and the hickory-nut cracked into a wide smile.
"Give back the money," said he, "or I'll have the cop after you for false
pretenses. I thought you was the cop."

"I want to talk to you, Bill," I said. "When did you leave Oklahoma?
Where is Reddy McGill now? Why are you selling those impossible
contraptions on the street? How did your Big Horn gold-mine pan out?
How did you get so badly sunburned? What will you drink?"
"A year ago," answered Kansas Bill systematically. "Putting up
windmills in Arizona. For pin money to buy etceteras with. Salted.
Been down in the tropics. Beer."
We foregathered in a propitious place and became Elijahs while a
waiter of dark plumage played the raven to perfection. Reminiscence
needs must be had before I could steer Bill into his epic mood.
"Yes," said he, "I mind the time Timoteo's rope broke on that cow's
horns while the calf was chasing you. You and that cow! I'd never
forget it."
"The tropics," said I, "are a broad territory. What part of Cancer of
Capricorn have you been honoring with a visit?"
"Down along China or Peru--or maybe the Argentine Confederacy,"
said Kansas Bill. "Anyway 'twas among a great race of people,
off-colored but progressive. I was there three months."
"No doubt you are glad to be back among the truly great race," I
surmised. "Especially among New Yorkers, the most progressive and
independent citizens of any country in the world," I continued, with the
fatuity of the provincial who has eaten the Broadway lotus.
"Do you want to start an argument?" asked Bill.
"Can there be one?" I answered.
"Has an Irishman humor, do you think?" asked he.
"I have an hour or two to spare," said I, looking at the cafe clock.
"Not that the Americans aren't a great commercial nation," conceded
Bill. "But the fault laid with the people who wrote lies for fiction."

"What was this Irishman's name?" I asked.
"Was that last beer cold enough?" said he.
"I see there is talk of further outbreaks among the Russian peasants," I
remarked.
"His name was Barney O'Connor," said Bill.
Thus, because of our ancient prescience of each other's trail of thought,
we travelled ambiguously to the point where Kansas Bill's story began:
"I met O'Connor in a boarding-house on the West Side. He invited me
to his hall-room to have a drink, and we became like a dog and a cat
that had been raised together. There he sat, a tall, fine, handsome man,
with his feet against one wall and his back against the other, looking
over a map. On the bed and sticking three feet out of it was a beautiful
gold sword with tassels on it and rhinestones in the handle.
"'What's this?' says I (for by that time we were well acquainted). 'The
annual parade in vilification of the ex-snakes of Ireland? And what's
the line of march? Up Broadway to Forty-second; thence east to
McCarty's cafe; thence--'
"'Sit down on the wash-stand,' says O'Connor, 'and listen. And cast no
perversions on the sword. 'Twas me father's in old Munster. And this
map, Bowers, is no diagram of a holiday procession. If ye look again.
ye'll see that it's the continent known as South America, comprising
fourteen green, blue, red, and yellow countries, all crying out from time
to time to be liberated from the yoke of the oppressor.'
"'I know,' says I to O'Connor. 'The idea is a literary one. The ten-cent
magazine stole it from "Ridpath's History of the World from the
Sand-stone Period to the Equator." You'll find it in every one of 'em.
It's a continued story of a soldier of fortune, generally named O'Keefe,
who gets to be dictator while the Spanish-American populace cries
"Cospetto!" and other Italian maledictions. I misdoubt if it's ever been
done. You're not thinking of trying that, are you, Barney?' I asks.

"'Bowers,' says he, 'you're a man of education and courage.'
"How can I deny it?' says I. 'Education runs in my family; and I have
acquired courage by a hard struggle with life.'
"'The O'Connors,' says he, 'are a warlike race. There is me father's
sword; and here is the map. A life of inaction is not for me. The
O'Connors were born to rule. 'Tis a ruler of men I must be.'
"'Barney,' I says to him, 'why don't you get on the force and settle down
to a quiet life of carnage and corruption instead of roaming off to
foreign parts? In what better way can you indulge your desire to subdue
and maltreat the oppressed?'