"No, there isn't another person around the place who would know how to go about it. Torchy, I'm going to try you out!"
It wasn't anything like I'd ever been up against before. He hands me an express receipt and says he wants me to go over to Jersey City and get what that calls for without landin' in jail.
"You'll see a bundle done up in burlap somewhere around the express office," says he, "a big bundle. It looks like a side of veal; but it isn't. It's a deer, one that I shot four days ago up north. Torchy, did you know that it was illegal to shoot deer during certain months of the year?"
"You can be pinched for shootin' craps any time," says I.
"Really?" says he.
Then he goes on with his tale, givin' me all the partic'lars, so I wouldn't make any batty moves. And say, they can think up some queer stunts, hangin' around the club of an afternoon and lookin' out at Fifth-ave. through the small end of a glass. This was one of them real clubby dreams. It started by Mr. Robert countin' himself in on a debate that he didn't know the beginning of.
"When they asked me if I could do it, I said, 'Of course I can,'" says he, "and then I asked what it was."
The bunch had been gassin' about an old gun hangin' over the fireplace. It was one of these old-timers, like they tell about Daniel Boone's havin', in the Nickel Libr'ies, the kind you load with a stove poker. Flintlocks—that's it! They was wonderin' if there was anyone left that could take a relic like that out in the woods and hit anything besides the atmosphere. And the first thing Mr. Robert knows he has been joshed into bettin' a hatful of yellowbacks that he can take old Injun killer out and bring back enough deer meat to feed the crowd—and him knowin' no more about that sort of act than a one-legged man does about skatin'! They gives him two weeks to do it in.
That wa'n't the worst of it, though, accordin' to him. They passes the word around until everyone that knows him is on the broad grin. The joke is handed across billiard tables between shots, and is circulated around the boxes at the opera. It's the best ever; for Mr. Robert has never hunted anything livelier than a Welsh rabbit, after the show.
He's a boy that likes to make good, though. He never makes a brag; but he boxes up that old shootin' iron and drops out of sight. 'Way up in the woods somewhere he digs up an old b'gosh artist that was brought up with one of them guns in his hand, and he takes a private course. After he's used up a keg of powder shootin' at tin cans they start out to find where the deers roost. They find 'em, too. Mr. Robert is so rattled that he misses the one he aims at; but he bores a tunnel through another in the next lot.