Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 72: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

862 shoot me tor my shoes or something the first day he piped up with his ‘ Art thee the football mentor?’ I thought he was insultin’ me.” “By callin’ you mentor?” laughs Eddie. ““He was payin’ you a compliment. Men- tor means a star—a shootin’ star.” “That’s all right then,” I says, ‘“‘ but how does this baby come to be using church talk and shooting big league dice? They ain’t what you'd call twin accomplish- ments.” “Both habits; one taught and one learned,” says Eddie, squatting to the club- house stairs and stuffing his pipe. I bit on a dry cigar. “ This guy,” says Eddie, light- ing his pipe and puffing it aglow, “is a freak. After he took my safety razor from me the other day on the fastest seven I ever saw, and says, ‘ Thee see how simple it is,’ I says, ‘ Listen, Hezekiah, what’s the idea of Bible conversation and wicked dice?’ He grins, and after a while gets in a confidential mood and tells me. “Seems he was raised by a Quaker srandfather on an island up in Maine. Only about one hundred families on the place, the men and their sons all fishermen. The fathers were fairly religious, but the sons, with nothing else to do in their spare time, gambled. ‘They used to shoot craps for their lobster hauls or a catch of cod. Haines, it seems, was raised to use only Quaker lingo, while by knocking around with the younger fishermen he learned to handle the dice.” “ And now he bats a thousand at both,” I says. “Exactly,” nods Eddie. “So proficient, in fact, he’s known all over New England as Halibut Haines.” “ Halibut Haines,” I says. — © Halibut ’?” “He caught the biggest halibut ever brought into Portland, and had a pair of dice made out of a piece of the backbone. Seems a Boston newspaperman heard about it and ran a big story with a lotta pictures in the Sunday paper. He had a vivid im- agination, according to Haines, naming him Halibut, and picturing him as the crap- shooting terror of the Maine coast. Even said he had once shot craps with a rival “Why the ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. for the hand of a beautiful island girl, had won her, but then gallantly given her to his rival. Well, it seems that Halibut’s grandad heard about the crap shooting after the article appeared in the newspaper, and threatened hell’s fury on the boy if he didn’t quit pastiming with Satan’s weap- ons despite the old man having won all his dough, according to Halibut, gambling in Wall Street, giving orders to his broker something like, ‘When Consolidated Thumb Tack hits ninety, thee sell.’ ” “Has the kid any money?” “A barrel of it,” continues Eddie, re- lighting his pipe which had gone Demo- cratic. ‘The old man kicked off a year ago and leit him most of the island they lived on, a lotta jack, and instructions to keep on with the Quaker oats chatter as long as he lives. The day after the funeral, Halibut, it seems, blew into Boston to de- cide on a college to go to, and picked Cen- terville, after seeing Mullings beat Har- vard. Now he’d like to be—” “* Another Mullings,” I cut in. ““T suppose so,” says Eddie. ** And can’t play a lick,” says I. “He was so rotten I told him to stop coming out. So now he hangs around oc- casionally and practices with the bones.” “Ts this his first college?” “First school, in fact,” says Eddie. “His grandad had him tutored on the is- land by some queer old bird who had buzzed around the world and knew Epic- tetus and half of those babies by their first names,” 1 puffed a while on my smoke and looked off into the fast-gathering dusk. “ That goes to show you,” I finaly says, ‘ what football means to a college nowadays. Here’s a customer Centerville gets just through us beating Harvard. Ill bet there’s two dozen more in the school this year, and a thousand waitin’ till they’re old enough to come.” “* Absolutely,” says Eddie. “It’s too bad this guy can’t play,” I says. ‘“ With all his jack if he made good he might slip Centerville a hundred thou- sand toward athletics, and then we might have a better chance to compete with some of the real football teams.” COME OOOKS. GO