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a bar with a brass rail and tall spittoons. Behind the bar was a mirror. Easy-chairs were all around the room. There was a pool-table. Magazines on sticks hung in a line on the wall. There was a framed autographed portrait of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on the wall draped in the American flag. Several Indians were sitting in the easy-chairs reading. A little group stood at the bar.
“Nice little club, eh?” An Indian came up and shook hands with Yogi. “I see you almost every day at the pump-factory.”
He was a man who worked at one of the machines near Yogi in the factory. Another Indian came up and shook hands with Yogi. He also worked in the pump-factory.
“Rotten luck about the chinook,” he said.
“Yes,” Yogi said. “Just a false alarm.”
“Come and have a drink,” the first Indian said.
“I’m with a party,” Yogi answered. Who were these Indians, anyway?
“Bring them along too,” the first Indian said. “Always room for one more.”
Yogi looked around him. The two Indians who had brought him were gone. Where were they? Then he saw them. They were over at the pool-table. The tall refined Indian to whom Yogi was talking followed his glance. He nodded his head in understanding.
“They’re woods Indians,” he explained apologetically. “We’re most of us town Indians here.”
“Yes, of course,” Yogi agreed.
“The little chap has a very good war record,” the tall refined Indian remarked. “The other chap was a major too, I believe.”
Yogi was guided over to the bar by the tall refined Indian. Behind the bar was the bartender. He was a Negro.
“How would some Dog’s Head ale go?” asked the Indian.
“Fine,” Yogi said.
“Two Dog’s Heads, Bruce,” the Indian remarked to the bartender. The bartender broke into a chuckle.
“What are you laughing at, Bruce?” the Indian asked.
The Negro broke into a shrill haunting laugh.
“I knowed it, Massa Red Dog,” he said. “I knowed you’d ordah dat Dog’s Head all the time.”
“He’s a merry fellow,” the Indian remarked to Yogi. “I must introduce myself. Red Dog’s the name.”
“Johnson’s the name,” Yogi said. “Yogi Johnson.”
“Oh, we are all quite familiar with your name, Mr. Johnson,” Red Dog smiled. “I would like you to meet my friends Mr. Sitting Bull, Mr. Poisoned Buffalo, and Chief Running Skunk-Backwards.”
“Sitting Bull’s a name I know,” Yogi remarked, shaking hands.
“Oh, I’m not one of those Sitting Bulls,” Mr. Sitting Bull said.
“Chief Running Skunk-Backwards’s great-grandfather once sold the entire Island of Manhattan for a few strings of wampum.” Red Dog explained.
“How very interesting,” Yogi said.
“That was a costly bit of wampum for our family.” Chief Running Skunk-Backwards smiled ruefully.
“Chief Running Skunk-Backwards has some of that wampum. Would you like to see it?” Red Dog asked.
“Indeed, I would.”
“It’s really no different from any other wampum,” Skunk-Backwards explained deprecatingly. He pulled a chain of wampum out of his pocket, and handed it to Yogi Johnson. Yogi looked at it curiously. What a part that string of wampum had played in this America of ours.
“Would you like to have one or two wampums for a keepsake?” Skunk-Backwards asked.
“I wouldn’t like to take your wampum,” Yogi demurred.
“They have no intrinsic value really,” Skunk-Backwards explained, detaching one or two wampums from the string.
“Their value is really a sentimental one to Skunk-Backwards’s family,” Red Dog said.
“It’s damned decent of you, Mr. Skunk-Backwards,” Yogi said.
“It’s nothing,” Skunk-Backwards said. “You’d do the same for me in a moment.”
“It’s decent of you.”
Behind the bar, Bruce, the Negro bartender, had been leaning forward and watching the wampums pass from hand to hand. His dark face shone. Sharply, without explanation, he broke into high-pitched uncontrolled laughter. The dark laughter of the Negro.
Red Dog looked at him sharply. “I say, Bruce,” he spoke sharply; “your mirth is a little ill-timed.”
Bruce stopped laughing and wiped his face on a towel. He rolled his eyes apologetically.
“Ah can’t help it, Massa Red Dog. When I seen Mistah Skunk-Backhouse passin’ dem wampums around I jess couldn’t stand it no longa. Whad he wan sell a big town like New Yawk foh dem wampums for? Wampums! Take away yoah wampums!”
“Bruce is an eccentric,” Red Dog explained, “but he’s a corking bartender and a good-hearted chap.”
“Youah right theah, Massa Red Dog,” the bartender leaned forward. “I’se got a heart of puah gold.”
“He is an eccentric, though,” Red Dog apologized. “The house committee are always after me to get another bartender, but I like the chap, oddly enough.”
“I’m all right, boss,” Bruce said. “It’s just that when I see something funny I just have to laff. You know I don’ mean no harm, boss.”
“Right enough, Bruce,” Red Dog agreed. “You are an honest chap.”
Yogi Johnson looked about the room. The other Indians had gone away from the bar, and Skunk-Backwards was showing the wampum to a little group of Indians in dinner dress who had just come in. At the pool-table the two woods Indians were still playing. They had removed their coats, and the light above the pool-table glinted on the metal joints in the little woods Indian’s artificial arms. He had just run the table for the eleventh consecutive time.
“That little chap would have made a pool-player if he hadn’t had a bit of hard luck in the war,” Red Dog remarked. “Would you like to have a look about the club?” He took the check from Bruce, signed it, and Yogi followed him into the next room.
“Our committee room,” Red Dog said. On the walls were framed autographed photographs of Chief Bender, Francis Parkman, D. H. Lawrence, Chief Meyers, Stewart Edward White, Mary Austin, Jim Thorpe, General Custer, Glenn Warner, Mabel Dodge, and a full-length oil painting of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Beyond the committee room was a locker room with a small plunge bath or swimming-pool. “It’s really ridiculously small for a club,” Red Dog said. “But it makes a comfortable little hole to pop into when the evenings are dull.” He smiled. “We call it the wigwam, you know. That’s a little conceit of my own.”
“It’s a damned nice club,” Yogi said enthusiastically.
“Put you up if you like,” Red Dog offered. “What’s your tribe?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your tribe. What are you—Sac and Fox? Jibway? Cree, I imagine.”
“Oh,” said Yogi. “My parents came from Sweden.”
Red Dog looked at him closely. His eyes narrowed.
“You’re not having me on?”
“No. They either came from Sweden or Norway,” Yogi said.
“I’d have sworn you looked a bit on the white side,” Red Dog said. “Damned good thing this came out in time. There’d