For a few moments there was more or less painful gabbling in all the
rows, pathetic whisperings and "go ons" or eager urgings of one and
another to sacrifice himself upon the altar of necessity, insistences by
the ex-trumpeter that he had blown trumpets in his day as good as any
one--what the deuce had got into him anyhow? It must be the horn!
"Well," shouted Culhane finally, as a stop-gap to all this, "isn't any
one going to blow that thing? Do you mean to tell me that I'm hauling
all of you around, with not a man among you able to blow a dinky little
horn? What's the use of my keeping a lot of fancy vehicles in my barn
when all I have to deal with is a lot of shoe salesmen and floorwalkers?
Hell! Any child can blow it. It's as easy as a fish-horn. If I hadn't
these horses to attend to I'd blow it myself. Come on--come on!
Kerrigan, what's the matter with you blowing it?"
"The truth is, Mr. Culhane," explained Mr. Kerrigan, the very dapper and
polite heir of a Philadelphia starch millionaire, "I haven't had any
chance to practice with one of those for several years. I'll try it if
you want me to, but I can't guarantee--"
"Try!" insisted Culhane violently. "You can't do any worse than that
other mutt, if you blow for a million years. Blow it! Blow it!"
Mr. Kerrigan turned back and being very cheerfully tendered the horn by
the last failure, wetted and adjusted his lips, lifted it upward and
backward--and--
It was pathetic. It was positively dreadful, the wheezing, grinding
sounds that were emitted.
"God!" shouted Culhane, pulling up the coach to a dead stop. "Stop that!
Whoa! Whoa!!! Do you mean to say that that's the best you can do? Well,
this finishes me! Whoa! What kind of a bunch of cattle have I got up
here, anyhow? Whoa! And out in this country too where I'm known and
where they know all about such things! God! Whoa! Here I spend thousands
of dollars to get together an equipment that will make a pleasant
afternoon for a crowd of gentlemen, and this is what I draw--hams! A lot
of barflies who never saw a tally-ho! Well, I'm done! I'm through! I'll
split the damned thing up for firewood before I ever take it out again!
Get down! Get out, all of you! I'll not haul one of you back a step!
Walk back or anywhere you please--to hell, for all I care! I'm through!
Get out! I'm going to turn around and get back to the barn as quick as I
can--up some alley if I can find one. To think of having such a bunch of
hacks to deal with!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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