Jack London - Michael, Brother of Jerry

“I got you,” Captain Jorgensen announced, as he saw the waiter approaching with but a single schooner of beer. “The bow-wow has forgot, if he ever remembered. He thinks you an’ me is fighting. The place in his mind for one beer, and two , is wiped out, like a wave on the beach wipes out the writing in the sand.”

“I guess he ain’t goin’ to forget arithmetic no matter how much noise you shouts,” Daughtry argued aloud against his sinking spirits. “An’ I ain’t goin’ to butt in,” he added hopefully. “You just watch ’m for himself.”

The tall, schooner-glass of beer was placed before the captain, who laid a swift, containing hand around it. And Michael, strung as a taut string, knowing that something was expected of him, on his toes to serve, remembered his ancient lessons on the Makambo , vainly looked into the impassive face of Steward for a sign, then looked about and saw, not two glasses, but one glass. So well had he learned the difference between one and two that it came to him—how the profoundest psychologist can no more state than can he state what thought is in itself—that there was one glass only when two glasses had been commanded. With an abrupt upspring, his throat half harsh with anger, he placed both forepaws on the table and barked at the waiter.

Captain Jorgensen crashed his fist down.

“You win!” he roared. “I pay for the beer! Waiter, bring one more.”

Michael looked to Steward for verification, and Steward’s hand on his head gave adequate reply.

“We try again,” said the captain, very much awake and interested, with the back of his hand wiping the beer-foam from his moustache. “Maybe he knows one an’ two. How about three? And four?”

“Just the same, Skipper. He counts up to five, and knows more than five when it is more than five, though he don’t know the figures by name after five.”

“Oh, Hanson!” Captain Jorgensen bellowed across the bar-room to the cook of the Howard . “Hey, you square-head! Come and have a drink!”

Hanson came over and pulled up a chair.

“I pay for the drinks,” said the captain; “but you order, Daughtry. See, now, Hanson, this is a trick bow-wow. He can count better than you. We are three. Daughtry is ordering three beers. The bow-wow hears three. I hold up two fingers like this to the waiter. He brings two. The bow-wow raises hell with the waiter. You see.”

All of which came to pass, Michael blissfully unappeasable until the order was filled properly.

“He can’t count,” was Hanson’s conclusion. “He sees one man without beer. That’s all. He knows every man should ought to have a glass. That’s why he barks.”

“Better than that,” Daughtry boasted. “There are three of us. We will order four. Then each man will have his glass, but Killeny will talk to the waiter just the same.”

True enough, now thoroughly aware of the game, Michael made outcry to the waiter till the fourth glass was brought. By this time many men were about the table, all wanting to buy beer and test Michael.

“Glory be,” Dag Daughtry solloquized. “A funny world. Thirsty one moment. The next moment they’d fair drown you in beer.”

Several even wanted to buy Michael, offering ridiculous sums like fifteen and twenty dollars.

“I tell you what,” Captain Jorgensen muttered to Daughtry, whom he had drawn away into a corner. “You give me that bow-wow, and I’ll smash Hanson right now, and you got the job right away—come to work in the morning.”

Into another corner the proprietor of the Pile-drivers’ Home drew Daughtry to whisper to him:

“You stick around here every night with that dog of yourn. It makes trade. I’ll give you free beer any time and fifty cents cash money a night.”

It was this proposition that started the big idea in Daughtry’s mind. As he told Michael, back in the room, while Kwaque was unlacing his shoes:

“It’s this way Killeny. If you’re worth fifty cents a night and free beer to that saloon keeper, then you’re worth that to me . . . and more, my son, more. ’Cause he’s lookin’ for a profit. That’s why he sells beer instead of buyin’ it. An’, Killeny, you won’t mind workin’ for me, I know. We need the money. There’s Kwaque, an’ Mr. Greenleaf, an’ Cocky, not even mentioning you an’ me, an’ we eat an awful lot. An’ room-rent’s hard to get, an’ jobs is harder. What d’ye say, son, to-morrow night you an’ me hustle around an’ see how much coin we can gather?”

And Michael, seated on Steward’s knees, eyes to eyes and nose to nose, his jowls held in Steward’s hand’s wriggled and squirmed with delight, flipping out his tongue and bobbing his tail in the air. Whatever it was, it was good, for it was Steward who spoke.

The grizzled ship’s steward and the rough-coated Irish terrier quickly became conspicuous figures in the night life of the Barbary Coast of San Francisco. Daughtry elaborated on the counting trick by bringing Cocky along. Thus, when a waiter did not fetch the right number of glasses, Michael would remain quite still, until Cocky, at a privy signal from Steward, standing on one leg, with the free claw would clutch Michael’s neck and apparently talk into Michael’s ear. Whereupon Michael would look about the glasses on the table and begin his usual expostulation with the waiter.

But it was when Daughtry and Michael first sang “Roll me Down to Rio ” together, that the ten-strike was made. It occurred in a sailors’ dance-hall on Pacific Street , and all dancing stopped while the sailors clamoured for more of the singing dog. Nor did the place lose money, for no one left, and the crowd increased to standing room as Michael went through his repertoire of “God Save the King,” “Sweet Bye and Bye,” “Lead, Kindly Light,” “Home, Sweet Home,” and “Shenandoah.”

It meant more than free beer to Daughtry, for, when he started to leave, the proprietor of the place thrust three silver dollars into his hand and begged him to come around with the dog next night.

“For that?” Daughtry demanded, looking at the money as if it were contemptible.

Hastily the proprietor added two more dollars, and Daughtry promised.

“Just the same, Killeny, my son,” he told Michael as they went to bed, “I think you an’ me are worth more than five dollars a turn. Why, the like of you has never been seen before. A real singing dog that can carry ’most any air with me, and that can carry half a dozen by himself. An’ they say Caruso gets a thousand a night. Well, you ain’t Caruso, but you’re the dog-Caruso of the entire world. Son, I’m goin’ to be your business manager. If we can’t make a twenty-dollar gold-piece a night—say, son, we’re goin’ to move into better quarters. An’ the old gent up at the Hotel de Bronx is goin’ to move into an outside room. An’ Kwaque’s goin’ to get a real outfit of clothes. Killeny, my boy, we’re goin’ to get so rich that if he can’t snare a sucker we’ll put up the cash ourselves ’n’ buy a schooner for ’m, ’n’ send him out a-treasure-huntin’ on his own. We’ll be the suckers, eh, just you an’ me, an’ love to.”

* * * * *

The Barbary Coast of San Francisco, once the old-time sailor-town in the days when San Francisco was reckoned the toughest port of the Seven Seas, had evolved with the city until it depended for at least half of its earnings on the slumming parties that visited it and spent liberally. It was quite the custom, after dinner, for many of the better classes of society, especially when entertaining curious Easterners, to spend an hour or several in motoring from dance-hall to dance-hall and cheap cabaret to cheap cabaret. In short, the “Coast” was as much a sight-seeing place as was Chinatown and the Cliff House.