Rolling Stones | Page 9

"'Look again at the map,' says he, 'at the country I have the point of me
knife on. 'Tis that one I have selected to aid and overthrow with me
father's sword.'
"'I see,' says I. 'It's the green one; and that does credit to your patriotism,
and it's the smallest one; and that does credit to your judgment.'
"'Do ye accuse me of cowardice?' says Barney, turning pink.
"'No man,' says I, 'who attacks and confiscates a country single-handed
could be called a coward. The worst you can be charged with is
plagiarism or imitation. If Anthony Hope and Roosevelt let you get
away with it, nobody else will have any right to kick.'
"'I'm not joking,' says O'Connor. 'And I've got $1,500 cash to work the
scheme with. I've taken a liking to you. Do you want it, or not?'
"'I'm not working,' I told him; 'but how is it to be? Do I eat during the
fomentation of the insurrection, or am I only to be Secretary of War
after the country is conquered? Is it to be a pay envelope or only a
portfolio?'
"I'll pay all expenses,' says O'Connor. "I want a man I can trust. If we
succeed you may pick out any appointment you want in the gift of the

government.'
"'All right, then,' says I. 'You can get me a bunch of draying contracts
and then a quick-action consignment to a seat on the Supreme Court
bench so I won't be in line for the presidency. The kind of cannon they
chasten their presidents with in that country hurt too much. You can
consider me on the pay-roll.'
"Two weeks afterward O'Connor and me took a steamer for the small,
green, doomed country. We were three weeks on the trip. O'Connor
said he had his plans all figured out in advance; but being the
commanding general, it consorted with his dignity to keep the details
concealed from his army and cabinet, commonly known as William T.
Bowers. Three dollars a day was the price for which I joined the cause
of liberating an undiscovered country from the ills that threatened or
sustained it. Every Saturday night on the steamer I stood in line at
parade rest, and O'Connor handed ever the twenty-one dollars.
"The town we landed at was named Guayaquerita, so they told me.
`Not for me,' says I. 'It'll be little old Hilldale or Tompkinsville or
Cherry Tree Corners when I speak of it. It's a clear case where Spelling
Reform ought to butt in and disenvowel it.'
"But the town looked fine from the bay when we sailed in. It was white,
with green ruching, and lace ruffles on the skirt when the surf slashed
up on the sand. It looked as tropical and dolce far ultra as the pictures
of Lake Ronkonkoma in the brochure of the passenger department of
the Long Island Railroad.
"We went through the quarantine and custom-house indignities; and
then O'Connor leads me to a 'dobe house on a street called 'The Avenue
of the Dolorous Butterflies of the Individual and Collective Saints.' Ten
feet wide it was, and knee-deep in alfalfa and cigar stumps.
"'Hooligan Alley,' says I, rechristening it.
"''Twill be our headquarters,' says O'Connor. 'My agent here, Don
Fernando Pacheco, secured it for us.'

"So in that house O'Connor and me established the revolutionary centre.
In the front room we had ostensible things such as fruit, a guitar, and a
table with a conch shell on it. In the back room O'Connor had his desk
and a large looking-glass and his sword hid in a roll of straw matting.
We slept on hammocks that we hung to hooks in the wall; and took our
meals at the Hotel Ingles, a beanery run on the American plan by a
German proprietor with Chinese cooking served a la Kansas City lunch
counter.
"It seems that O'Connor really did have some sort of system planned
out beforehand. He wrote plenty of letters; and every day or two some
native gent would stroll round to headquarters and be shut up in the
back room for half an hour with O'Connor and the interpreter. I noticed
that when they went in they were always smoking eight-inch cigars and
at peace with the world; but when they came out they would be folding
up a ten- or twenty-dollar bill and cursing the government horribly.
"One evening after we had been in Guaya--in this town of
Smellville-by-the-Sea--about a month, and me and O'Connor were
sitting outside the door helping along old tempus fugit with rum and ice
and limes, I says to him:
"'If you'll excuse a patriot that don't exactly know what he's patronizing,
for the question--what is your scheme for subjugating this country? Do
you intend to plunge