“Sure I did,” Jule answered.
“Well, you take warning by me and don’t ever buy any!” Mike declared.
“Well, what about these twenty bands?” Jule insisted.
“Sho’, of course, I nearly forgot all about the bands. Well nineteen bands passed our corner without a note of music. Walked by just like they were going up the street in a political parade. You know, son,” Mike continued, “that musicians think they are paid to walk in parades on account of their uniforms, and not on account of their music.”
“What did you say these twenty bands did?” laughed Jule.
“Nineteen marched plumb by without ever blowing a horn. The twentieth one started in half a block below us. I just had a notion then that that band was going to play, and that I would have to buy the cigars, and then I thought that one of the tickets might draw a prize so I wasn’t kicking any. Well, sir, do you know that that big band headed up to us in full tune.”
“So you had to buy the cigars?” asked Jule.
“Did I have to buy the cigars?” repeated Mike. “Say, kid, twenty feet below us a horse hitched to a carriage filled with ladies reared up on his hind feet and they had to stop the music until they got by us so as not to frighten the horse any more. You bet I don’t have to buy the cigars on any bet like that!”
Encouraged by the friendly voice and manner of the Irishman, Jule asked what they intended doing with the Rambler.
“It’s just this way, boy,” Mike replied, “we’ve been skinned and cleaned up, and knocked out, in every enterprise we ever undertook. We’re both printers, and used to work on the old Chicago Herald when Jim Scott owned it. Well, we beat the faro bank until we didn’t have a cent. We played poker and roulette until the other fellows held a mortgage on our pay envelopes. So we’re just plumb disgusted with civilization. We haven’t got the brains to become city pirates and run gambling houses and elect aldermen and all that, but we have got muscle enough to become river pirates, so here we are, and here your boat is.”