Sandburrs. Alfred Henry Lewis
V
VII
JAMES ROBERT KEENE
PREFACE
A SANDBURR is a foolish, small vegetable, irritating and grievously useless. Therefore this volume of sketches is named Sandburrs. Some folk there be who apologize for the birth of a book. There's scant propriety of it. A book is but a legless, dormant creature. The public has but to let it alone to be safe. And a book, withal! is its own punishment. Is it a bad book? the author loses. Is it very bad? the publisher loses. In any case the public is preserved. For all of which there will be no apology for SAND-BURRS. Nor will I tell what I think of it. No; this volume may make its own running, without the handicap of my apology, or the hamstringing of my criticism. There should be more than one to do the latter with the least of luck. The Bowery dialect—if it be a dialect—employed in sundry of these sketches is not an exalted literature. The stories told are true, however; so much may they have defence.
A. H. L.
New York, Nov. 15, 1899.
SANDBURRS
SPOT AND PINCHER.
Martin is the barkeeper of an East Side hotel—not a good hotel at all—and flourishes as a sporting person of much emphasis. Martin, in passing, is at the head of the dog-fighting brotherhood. I often talk with Martin and love him very much.
Last week I visited Martin's bar. There was “nothin' doin',” to quote from Martin. We talked of fighting men, a subject near to Martin, he having fought three prize-fights himself. Martin boasted himself as still being “an even break wit' any rough-and-tumble scrapper in d' bunch.”
“Come here,” said Martin, in course of converse; “come here; I'll show you a bute.”
Martin opened a door to the room back of the bar. As we entered a pink-white bull terrier, with black spots about the eyes, raced across to fawn on Martin. The terrier's black toe-nails, bright and hard as agate, made a vast clatter on the ash floor.
“This is Spot,” said Martin. “Weighs thirty-three pounds, and he's a hully terror! I'm goin' to fight him to-night for five hundred dollars.”
I stooped to express with a pat on his smooth white head my approbation of Spot.
“Pick him up, and heft him,” said Martin. “He won't nip you,” 'he continued, as I hesitated; “bulls is; d' most manful dogs there bees. Bulls won't bite nobody.”
Thereupon I picked up Spot “to heft him.” Spot smiled widely, wagged his stumpy tail, tried to lick my face, and felt like a bundle of live steel.
“Spot's goin' to fight McDermott's Pincher,” said Martin. “And,” addressing this to Spot, “you want to watch out, old boy! Pincher is as hard as a hod of brick. And you want to look out for your Trilbys; Pincher'll fight for your feet and legs. He's d' limit, Spot, Pincher is! and you must tend to business when you're in d' pit wit' Pincher, or he'll do you. Then McDermott would win me money, an' you an' me, Spot, would look like a couple of suckers.”
Spot listened with a pleased air, as if drinking in every word, and wagged his stump reassuringly. He would remember Pincher's genius for crunching feet and legs, and see to it fully in a general way that Pincher did not “do” him.
“Spot knows he's goin' to fight to-night as well as you and me,” said Martin, as we returned to the bar. “Be d' way! don't you want to go?”
It was nine o'clock that evening. The pit, sixteen feet square, with board walls three feet high, was built in the centre of an empty loft on Bleecker street. Directly over the pit was a bunch of electric lights. All about, raised six inches one above the other, were a dozen rows of board seats like a circus. These were crowded with perhaps two hundred sports. They sat close, and in the vague, smoky atmosphere, their faces, row on row, tier above tier, put me in mind of potatoes in a bin.
Fincher was a bull terrier, the counterpart of Spot, save for the markings about the face which gave Spot his name. Pincher seemed very sanguine and full of eager hope; and as he and Spot, held in the arms of their handlers, lolled at each other across the pit, it was plain they languished to begin. Neither, however, made yelp or cry or bark. Bull terriers of true worth on the battle-field were, I learned, a tacit, wordless brood, making no sound.
Martin “handled” Spot and McDermott did kindly office for Pincher in the same behalf. Martin and McDermott “tasted” Spot and Pincher respectively; smelled and mouthed them for snuffs and poisons. Spot and Pincher submitted to these examinations in a gentlemanly way, but were glad when they ended.
At the word of the referee, Spot and Pincher were loosed, each in his corner. They went straight at each other's throats. They met in the exact centre of the pit like two milk-white thunderbolts, and the battle began.
Spot and Pincher moiled and toiled bloodily for forty-five minutes without halt or pause or space to breathe. Their handlers, who were confined to their corners by quarter circles drawn in chalk so as to hem them in, leaned forward toward the fray and breathed encouragement.
What struck me as wonderful, withal, was a lack of angry ferocity on the parts of Spot and Pincher. There was naught of growl, naught of rage-born cry or comment. They simply blazed with a zeal for blood; burned with a blind death-ardour.
When