“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 have been no end of scandal.” He put his hand to his head and pursed his lips. “Here, you,” he turned suddenly and gripped Yogi by the vest. Yogi felt the barrel of an automatic pushed hard against his stomach. “You’ll go quietly through the club-room, get your coat and hat and leave as though nothing had happened. Say polite good-by to anyone who happens to speak to you. And never come back. Get that, you Swede.”
“Yes,” said Yogi. “Put up your gun. I’m not afraid of your gun.”
“Do as I say,” Red Dog ordered. “As for those two pool-players that brought you here, I’ll soon have them out of this.”
Yogi went into the bright room, looked at the bar, where Bruce, the bartender, was regarding him, got his hat and coat, said good-night to Skunk-Backwards, who asked him why he was leaving so early, and the outside trap-door was swung up by Bruce. As Yogi started down the ladder the Negro burst out laughing. “I knowed it,” he laughed. “I knowed it all de time. No Swede gwine to fool ole Bruce.”
Yogi looked back and saw the laughing black face of the Negro framed in the oblong square of light that came through the raised trap-door. Once on the stable floor, Yogi looked around him. He was alone. The straw of the old stable was stiff and frozen under his feet. Where had he been? Had he been in an Indian club? What was it all about? Was this the end?
Above him a slit of light came in the roof. Then it was blocked by two black figures, there was the sound of a kick, a blow, a series of thuds, some dull, some sharp, and two human forms came crashing down the ladder. From above floated the dark, haunting sound of black Negro laughter.
The two woods Indians picked themselves up from the straw and limped toward the door. One of them, the little one, was crying. Yogi followed them out into the cold night. It was cold. The night was clear. The stars were out.
“Club no damn good,” the big Indian said. “Club heap no damn good.”
The little Indian was crying. Yogi, in the starlight, saw that he had lost one of his artificial arms.
“Me no play pool no more,” the little Indian sobbed. He shook his one arm at the window of the club, from which a thin slit of light came. “Club heap goddam hell no good.”
“Never mind,” Yogi said. “I’ll get you a job in the pump-factory.”
“Pump-factory, hell,” the big Indian said. “We all go join Salvation Army.”
“Don’t cry,” Yogi said to the little Indian. “I’ll buy you a new arm.”
The little Indian went on crying. He sat down in the snowy road. “No can play pool me no care about nothing,” he said.
From above them, out of the window of the club came the haunting sound of a Negro laughing.
Author’s Note to the Reader
In case it may have any historical value, I am glad to state that I wrote the foregoing chapter in two hours directly on the typewriter, and then went out to lunch with John Dos Passos, whom I consider a very forceful writer, and an exceedingly pleasant fellow besides. This is what is known in the provinces as log-rolling. We lunched on rollmops, Sole Meunière, Civet de Lièvre à la Chez Cocotte, marmelade de pommes, and washed it all down, as we used to say (eh, reader?) with a bottle of Montrachet 1919, with the sole, and a bottle of Hospice de Beaune 1919 apiece with the jugged hare. Mr. Dos Passos, I believe, shared a bottle of Chambertin with me over the marmelade de pommes (Eng., apple sauce).
We drank two vieux marcs, and after deciding not to go to the Café du Dôme and talk about Art we both went to our respective homes and I wrote the following chapter. I would like the reader to particularly remark the way the complicated threads of the lives of the various characters in the book are gathered together, and then held there in that memorable scene in the beanery. It was when I read this chapter aloud to him that Mr. Dos Passos exclaimed, “Hemingway, you have wrought a masterpiece.”
P. S.—From the Author to the Reader
It is at this point, reader, that I am going to try and get that sweep and movement into the book that shows that the book is really a great book. I know you hope just as much as I do, reader, that I will get this sweep and movement because think what it will mean to both of us. Mr. H. G. Wells, who has been visiting at our home (we’re getting along in the literary game, eh, reader?) asked us the other day if perhaps our reader, that’s you, reader—just think of it, H. G. Wells talking about you right in our home. Anyway, H. G. Wells asked us if perhaps our reader would not think too much of this story was autobiographical. Please, reader, just get that idea out of your head. We have lived in Petoskey, Mich., it is true, and naturally many of the characters are drawn from life as we lived it then.
But they are other people, not the author. The author only comes into the story in these little notes. It is true that before starting this story we spent twelve years studying the various Indian dialects of the North, and there is still preserved in the museum at Cross Village our translation of the New Testament into Ojibway. But you would have done the same thing in our place,
