Shorty McCabe

Shorty McCabe, by Sewell Ford

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Shorty McCabe, by Sewell Ford This
eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Shorty McCabe
Author: Sewell Ford
Illustrator: Francis Vaux Wilson
Release Date: August 5, 2007 [EBook #22249]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHORTY
MCCABE ***

Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at http://www.pgdp.net

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: She was a dream, all right.]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
SHORTY McCABE
By Sewell Ford
Illustrated by Francis Vaux Wilson
New York GROSSET & DUNLAP Publishers
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright, 1906, by Mitchell Kennerley.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

SHORTY McCABE
CHAPTER I
Excuse me, mister man, but ain't you--Hello, yourself! Blamed if I
didn't think there was somethin' kind of natural about the looks, as you
come pikin' by. How're they runnin', eh?
Well say, I ain't seen you since we used to hit up the grammar school
together. You've seen me, eh? Oh, sure! I'd forgot. That was when you
showed up at the old Athletic club the night I got the belt away from
the Kid. Doin' sportin' news then, wa'n't you? Chucked all that now, I
s'pose?
Oh, I've kept track of you, all right. Every time I sees one of your
pieces in the magazines I reads it. And say, some of 'em's kind of punk.
But then, you've got to sling out somethin' or other, I expect, or get off
the job. Where do you dig up all of them yarns, anyway? That's what
always sticks me. You must knock around a whole bunch, and have lots
happen to you. Me? Ah, nothin' ever happens to me. Course, I'm
generally on the move, but it's just along the grub track, and that ain't

excitin'.
Yes, it's been a couple of years since I quit the ring. Why? Say, don't
ever put that up to a has-been. It's almost as bad as compoundin' a
felony. I could give you a whole raft of reasons that would sound well,
but there's only one that covers the case. There's a knockout comin' to
the best of 'em, if they hang to the game long enough. Some ain't
satisfied, even after two or three. I was. I got mine, clean and square,
and I ain't ashamed of it. I didn't raise any holler about a chance shot,
and I didn't go exhibitin' myself on the stage. I slid into a quiet corner
for a month or so, and then I dropped into the only thing I knew how to
do, trainin' comers to go against the champs. It ain't like pullin' down
your sixty per cent of the gate receipts, but there's worse payin' jobs.
Course, there's times when I finds myself up against it. It was durin'
one of them squeezes, not so long ago, that I gets mixed up with
Leonidas Dodge, and all that foolishness. Ah, it wa'n't anything worth
wastin' breath over. You would? Honest? Well, it won't take long, I
guess.
You see, just as my wad looks like it had shrunk so that it would rattle
around in a napkin ring, someone passes me the word that Butterfly
was down to win the third race, at 15 to 1. Now as a general thing I
don't monkey with the ponies, but when I figured up what a few
saw-bucks would do for me at those odds, I makes for the track and
takes the high dive. After it was all over and I was comin' back in the
train, with only a ticket where my roll had been, me feelin' about as gay
as a Zulu on a cake of ice, along comes this Mr. Dodge, that I didn't
know from next Tuesday week.
"Is it as bad as that?" says he, sizin' up the woe on my face. "Because if
it is they ought to give you a pension. What was the horse?"
"Butterfly," says I. "Now laugh!"
"I've got a right to," says he. "I had the same dope."
Well, you see, that made us almost second cousins by marriage and we

started to get acquainted. I looked him over careful but I couldn't place
him within a mile. He had points enough, too. The silk hat was a
veteran, the Prince Albert dated back about four seasons, but the gray
gaiters were down to the minute. Being an easy talker, he might have
been a book agent or a green goods distributor. But somehow his eyes
didn't seem shifty enough for a crook, and no con. man would have
lasted long