“I’ll try,” I said. “Bet you two drinks I’ll get it in.”
“Done!” he says. “The top inside coat-pocket, and no tearing.”
It was a big bottle, and all my pockets were small; but I got it into the pocket he’d betted against. It was a tight squeeze, but I got it in.
Then we both laughed, but his laugh was nastier than usual, because it was meant to be pleasant, and he’d lost two drinks; and my laugh wasn’t easy—I was anxious as to which of us would laugh next.
Just then I noticed something, and an idea struck me—about the most up-to-date idea that ever struck me in my life. I noticed that Stiffner was limping on his right foot this morning, so I said to him:
“What’s up with your foot?” putting my hand in my pocket. “Oh, it’s a crimson nail in my boot,” he said. “I thought I got the blanky thing out this morning; but I didn’t.”
There just happened to be an old bag of shoemaker’s tools in the bar, belonging to an old cobbler who was lying dead drunk on the veranda. So I said, taking my hand out of my pocket again:
“Lend us the boot, and I’ll fix it in a minute. That’s my old trade.”
“Oh, so you’re a shoemaker,” he said. “I’d never have thought it.”
He laughs one of his useless laughs that wasn’t wanted, and slips off the boot—he hadn’t laced it up—and hands it across the bar to me. It was an ugly brute—a great thick, iron-bound, boiler-plated navvy’s boot. It made me feel sore when I looked at it.