To-night he did all three, in the reverse order. To him Dawson was a
dream city; its lights were dazzling, its music heavenly, its games of
chance enticing, and its liquor was the finest, the smoothest, the most
inspiriting his tongue had ever tested. Old friends were everywhere,
and new ones, too, for that matter. Among them were alluring women who
smiled and sparkled. Each place 'Poleon entered was the home of
carnival.
By midnight he was gloriously drunk. Ere daylight came he had sung
himself hoarse, he had danced two holes in his moccasins, and had
conducted three fist-fights to a satisfactory if not a successful
conclusion. It had been a celebration that was to live in his memory.
He strode blindly off to bed, shouting his complete satisfaction with
himself and with the world, retired without undressing, and then sang
himself to sleep, regardless of the protests of the other lodgers.
"Say! That Frenchman is a riot," Kid Bridges declared while he and
Lucky Broad were at breakfast. "He's old General Rough-houser, and he
set an altogether new mark in disorderly conduct last night. Letty
'most cried about it."
"Yeah? Those yokels are all alike--one drink and they declare a
dividend." Lucky was only mildly concerned. "I s'pose the vultures
picked him clean."
"Nothin' like it," Bridges shook his head. "He gnawed 'em naked, then
done a war-dance with their feathers in his hat. He left 'em bruised
an' bleedin'."
For a time the two friends ate in silence, then Broad mused, aloud:
"Letty 'most cried, eh? Say, I wonder what she really thinks of him?"
"I don't know. Miller told me she was all broke up, and I was goin' to
take her home and see if I could fathom her true feelin's,
but--Phillips beat me to it."
"Phillips! He'll have to throw out the life-line if Laure gets onto
that. She'll take to Letty just like a lone timber-wolf."
"Looks like she'd been kiddin' us, don't it? She calls him her
'brother' and he says she's his masseur--you heard him, didn't you?"
There was another pause. "What's a masseur, anyhow?"
"A masseur," said Mr. Broad, "is one of those women in a barber-shop
that fixes your fingernails. Yes, I heard him, and I'm here to say that
I didn't like the sound of it. I don't yet. He may mean all right,
but--them foreigners have got queer ideas about their women. Letty's a
swell kid and she's got a swell job. What's more, she's got a wise gang
riding herd on her. It's just like she was in a church--no danger, no
annoyance, nothing. If Doret figures to start a barber-shop with her
for his masseur, why, we'll have to lay him low with one of his own
razors."
Mr. Bridges nodded his complete approval of this suggestion. "Right-o!
I'll bust a mirror with him myself. Them barber-shops is no place for
good girls."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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