What did we do with Homer, eh? Ah, forget it! Say, soon's he got back to town and found he could navigate 'round by himself, he begins to count up expenses. Then he asks us to put in a bill.
"Bill!" says I. "What for? I'm no hired man. I've been doin' this for fun." Leonidas says the same.
But Homer wouldn't have it that way. He says we've done him a lot of good, and lost our valuable time, and he'll feel hurt if we don't let him make us a little present. With that he pries open a fat leather green goods case, paws over a layer of yellow backs two or three inches thick—and fishes out a couple of ten spots.
"Stung!" says Leonidas, under his breath.
"Homer," says I, shovin' 'em back at him, "if you're as grateful as all that, I'll tell you what you'd better do—keep these, and found a Home for Incurable Tight-wads."
Then we loses him in the crowd, and each of us strikes out for himself. Blessed if I know where Leonidas strayed to, but I'm dead sure of the place I fetched up at. It was It'ly, North It'ly. Ever been there? Well, don't. Nothin' but dagoes and garlic and roads that run up hill. Say, some day when my roll needs the anti-fat treatment, I'm goin' to send over there and have 'em put a monument that'll read: "Here's where Shorty McCabe was buried alive for five weeks."
Doing? Wasn't a blamed thing doing there. We were just assassinatin' time, that's all. But the Boss thought he liked it, for a while, so I had to hang on. The Boss? Oh, he's just the Boss. Guess you wouldn't know him—he hasn't been cured by three bottles of anything, and isn't much for buyin' billboard space. But he's a star all right. He's got a mint somewhere, a little private mint of his own, that runs days and nights and overtime. Scotty mine? No, better'n that—defunct grandmothers and such. It's been comin' his way ever since he was big enough to clip a coupon. Don't believe he knows how much he has got, but that don't worry him. He don't even try to spend the gate receipts; just uses what he wants and lets the rest pyramid.
Course, he's out of my class in a way; but then again, he ain't. The way we come to hook up was like this: You see, when I quits Homer, I takes the first thing that comes along, which happens to be the Jericho Lamb. He wants me to train him for his go with Grasshopper Jake, and I did.
Well, we pulls it off in Denver. The Lamb he bores in like a stone crusher for five rounds. Then he stops a cross hook with his jaw and is jarred some. That brings out the yellow. Spite of all I could say, he stops rushin' and plays for wind and safety. Think of that, with the Grasshopper as groggy as a five days old calf! Well, I saw what was coming to him, right there. When the bell rings I chucks my towel to a rubber and quits. I hadn't hired out for no wet nurse, and I told the crowd so.
Just as I was makin' my sneak this quiet-speakin' chap falls in alongside and begins to talk to me. First off I sized him up for one of them English Johnnies that had lost his eyeglass. But that's where I was dead wrong. He wasn't no Johnnie, and he wasn't no tinhorn sport. But he was a new one on me. They don't grow many like him, I guess, so no wonder I didn't get wise right away.