"Hello, Heinie!" I said pleasantly. "How are you, Joe?"
"Commong ça va?" inquired Heinie, evidently mortified at his situation and condition, but putting on the careless front of a gunman in a strange ward.
Pick-em-up Joe added jauntily: "Well, Doc, what's the good word?"
"France," I replied, smiling; "Do you know a better word?"
"Yes," he said, "Noo York. Say, what's your little graft over here, Doc?"
"You and I reverse rôles, Pick-em-up; you stop bullets; I pick 'em up—after you're through with 'em."
"The hell you say!" he retorted, grinning.[pg 149] "Well, grab it from me, if it wasn't for the Jack Johnsons and the gas, a gun fight in the old 50th would make this war look like Luna Park! It listens like it, too, only this here show is all fi-nally, with Bingle's Band playin' circus tunes an' the supes hollerin' like they seen real money."
He was a merry ruffian, and he controlled the "coke" graft in the 50th while Heinie was perpetual bondsman for local Magdalenes.
"Well, ain't we in Dutch—us three guys!" he remarked with forced carelessness. "We sure done it that time."
"Did you do business with Duck?" inquired Pick-em-up, curiously.