"They have nerve enough for anything," said I, and dropped the subject. I didn't want him to get the idea that I was trying to argue with him and upset his game. One foursome was lying down just over the hill; the other was piled up short of the bunker. Watlington had finally found his ball and played onto the green. The others, of course, had been standing round the pin and holding things up for him. I took an iron on my second and played short, intending to pitch over the bunker on my third. Wally used a spoon and got tremendous height and distance. His ball carried the bunker, kicked to the right and stopped behind a sandtrap. It was a phenomenal shot, and with luck on the kick would have gone straight to the pin. I thought the Big Four would surely be off the green by the time I got up to my ball, but no, Peck was preparing to hole a three-foot putt. Any ordinary dub would have walked up to that pill and tapped it in, but that wasn't Peck's style. He got down on all fours and sighted along the line to the hole. Then he rose, took out his handkerchief, wiped his hands carefully, called for his putter and took an experimental stance, tramping about like a cat "making bread" on a woollen rug. "Look at him!" grunted Wally. "You don't mind if I go ahead to my ball? It won't bother you?" "Not in the least," said I. "I want to play as soon as they get out of the way," he explained. The Colonel's first stance did not suit him, so he had to go all through the tramping process again. When he was finally satisfied, he began swinging his putter back and forth over the ball, like the pendulum of a grandfather's clock--ten swings, neither more nor less. Could any one blame Wally for boiling inside? After the three-footer dropped--he didn't miss it, for a wonder--they all gathered round the hole and pulled out their cards. Knowing each other as well as they did, nobody was trusted to keep the score. "Fore!" called Wally. They paid not the slightest attention to him, and it was fully half a minute before they ambled leisurely away in the direction of the seventh tee. I played my pitch shot, with plenty of back-spin on it, and stopped ten or twelve feet short of the hole. Wally played an instant later, a mashie shot intended to clear the trap, but he had been waiting too long and was burning up with impatience. He topped the ball, hit the far edge of the sandtrap and bounced back into a bad lie. Of course I knew why he had been in such a hurry--he wanted to catch the Big Four on the seventh tee. His niblick shot was too strong, but he laid his fifth dead to the hole, giving me two for a win. Just as a matter of record, let me state that I canned a nice rainbow putt for a four. A four on Number Six is rare. "Nice work!" said Wally. "You're only one down now. Come on, let's get through these miserable old men!"