Well, just wait until he and his best pal got fairly started in the good work, and possibly some of those defiant pilots would be numbered among the “has beens,” having mysteriously vanished from the ken of their fellow law-breakers.
“I shore doant want to brag,” Perk told himself, as modestly as he could find the heart to be; “but jest the same I been along with Jack more’n a few times, when we run up agin sech gay birds; an’ it was allers the same ole story over an’ over agin. Right naow a good many cells in Atlanta, Leavenworth, an’ a few more penitentiaries air filled by lads what reckoned nawthin’ could beat ’em at their pet game; yet there they be, behind stone walls, an’ nary one chanct in a thousand to break away. Huh! hope hist’ry repeats in this new adventure we’re right naow embarkin’ on, that’s all.”
Such confidence in a comrade bordered on the sublime, yet according to his light Perk felt he was justified in believing Jack to be at the head of his class—without a peer, yet modest withal, shrinking from praise, and content to let the heroes of unsurpassed air flights, as well as all manner of broken records for speed, endurance, and like exploits, bask in the spotlight, while he was satisfied to do his full duty, and afterwards remain unknown to fame.
Jack apparently still had a little fear lest something his best pal managed to do, when off his guard, might throw all their labors into the discard. On this account, and because they were now bearing down close to an important point in their schedule, he took occasion to once more delicately hint along such lines.
“For perhaps the last time, partner,” he went on to say, soberly; “we’ve both got to get a firm grip on ourselves, and try to actually live the parts we’re about to play. Let’s consider we’re actors, with a critical audience in front, watching closely to see if we leave any break back of which our real character may be seen.”
“Huh! I like thataway o’ puttin’ it, Big Boss,” snorted Perk, without the slightest hesitation; although he must have suspected that Jack was trying to impress this point particularly on his, Perk’s mind—“I’ll try my darnedest to keep athinkin’ a thousand eyes and ears they be on to me, searchin’ fo’ some knothole in the fence to peep through, an’ gimme the laugh straight. Go on an’ say some more ’long them lines, buddy—I kin stand it okay.”
“An actor to be a success must have the power, the ability to throw off his own ways and character, to assume whatever queer quirks marking the role of the person he is pretending to be. Try and forget you were Yankee born, and swap places with a son of Dixie, filled with veneration for those heroes in gray, soldiers of Lee, Jackson, Forrest, and all the other leaders of the sacred Lost Cause. You can do it, I’m dead certain, if you keep your mind steadfastly on that business alone, and forget a lot of other less essential matters.”
“Shore I kin, an’ I mean to, partner—yeou wait up an’ see haow I’ll pull the wool over their eyes—I’m Wally Corkendall, an’ I was borned an’ brought up in Birmin’ham, where them bully stories o’ the colored folks that make yeou laugh like fun keep acomin’ from right along. Yessuh! I done tole yeou I may be a man o’ the world; but Dixie is my dwellin’-place, Birmin’ham my ole hometown.”
So Jack let it go at that, and indulged in the hope his pal would not fall down in a pinch—it meant a matter of life and death with them, in view of the desperate type of men with whom they would soon be at close grips.