Smoke Bellew | Page 3

horse?"
"I have essayed that adventure."
John Bellew snorted his disgust. "I'm glad your father didn't live to see
you in all the glory of your gracelessness," he said. "Your father was a
man, every inch of him. Do you get it? A man. I think he'd have whaled
all this musical and artistic tom foolery out of you."
"Alas! these degenerate days," Kit sighed.
"I could understand it, and tolerate it," the other went on savagely, "if
you succeeded at it. You've never earned a cent in your life, nor done a
tap of man's work."
"Etchings, and pictures, and fans," Kit contributed unsoothingly.
"You're a dabbler and a failure. What pictures have you painted? Dinky
water-colours and nightmare posters. You've never had one exhibited,
even here in San Francisco--"
"Ah, you forget. There is one in the jinks room of this very club."
"A gross cartoon. Music? Your dear fool of a mother spent hundreds on
lessons. You've dabbled and failed. You've never even earned a
five-dollar piece by accompanying some one at a concert. Your

songs?--rag-time rot that's never printed and that's sung only by a pack
of fake Bohemians."
"I had a book published once--those sonnets, you remember," Kit
interposed meekly.
"What did it cost you?"
"Only a couple of hundred."
"Any other achievements?"
"I had a forest play acted at the summer jinks."
"What did you get for it?"
"Glory."
"And you used to swim, and you have essayed to sit a horse!" John
Bellew set his glass down with unnecessary violence. "What earthly
good are you anyway? You were well put up, yet even at university you
didn't play football. You didn't row. You didn't--"
"I boxed and fenced--some."
"When did you box last?"
"Not since, but I was considered an excellent judge of time and
distance, only I was--er--"
"Go on."
"Considered desultory."
"Lazy, you mean."
"I always imagined it was an euphemism."
"My father, sir, your grandfather, old Isaac Bellew, killed a man with a

blow of his fist when he was sixty-nine years old."
"The man?"
"No, your--you graceless scamp! But you'll never kill a mosquito at
sixty-nine."
"The times have changed, oh, my avuncular! They send men to prison
for homicide now."
"Your father rode one hundred and eighty-five miles, without sleeping,
and killed three horses."
"Had he lived to-day, he'd have snored over the course in a Pullman."
The older man was on the verge of choking with wrath, but swallowed
it down and managed to articulate:
"How old are you?"
"I have reason to believe--"
"I know. Twenty-seven. You finished college at twenty-two. You've
dabbled and played and frilled for five years. Before God and man, of
what use are you? When I was your age I had one suit of underclothes.
I was riding with the cattle in Coluso. I was hard as rocks, and I could
sleep on a rock. I lived on jerked beef and bear-meat. I am a better man
physically right now than you are. You weigh about one hundred and
sixty-five. I can throw you right now, or thrash you with my fists."
"It doesn't take a physical prodigy to mop up cocktails or pink tea," Kit
murmured deprecatingly. "Don't you see, my avuncular, the times have
changed. Besides, I wasn't brought up right. My dear fool of a
mother--"
John Bellew started angrily.
"--As you described her, was too good to me; kept me in cotton wool
and all the rest. Now, if when I was a youngster I had taken some of

those intensely masculine vacations you go in for--I wonder why you
didn't invite me sometimes? You took Hal and Robbie all over the
Sierras and on that Mexico trip."
"I guess you were too Lord-Fauntleroyish."
"Your fault, avuncular, and my dear--er--mother's. How was I to know
the hard? I was only a chee-ild. What was there left but etchings and
pictures and fans? Was it my fault that I never had to sweat?"
The older man looked at his nephew with unconcealed disgust. He had
no patience with levity from the lips of softness.
"Well, I'm going to take another one of those what-you-call masculine
vacations. Suppose I asked you to come along?"
"Rather belated, I must say. Where is it?"
"Hal and Robert are going in to Klondike, and I'm going to see them
across the Pass and down to the Lakes, then return--"
He got no further, for the young man had sprung forward and gripped
his hand.
"My preserver!"
John Bellew was immediately suspicious. He had not dreamed the
invitation would be accepted.
"You don't mean it?" he said.
"When do we start?"
"It will be a hard trip. You'll be in the way."
"No, I won't. I'll work. I've learned to work since I went on The