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Caesar never declined a crown with greater dignity. "You, my brother, have accomplished in a few days what I have failed to do in years! That is because you are sportman! Just as Larry Atkins was sportman! He sent me all he had, and could not do more. I understood him. Why did he do it? Simply sportman that is all! Why do you do this? Why do you throw your life into the hot cauldron of Zeitoon?
"You dog of an Armenian, you lie!" Kagig ignored him. "This is the German sportman who tried once to go to Zeitoon to shoot bears, as he said. But I knew he was a spy. I am not the Eye of Zeitoon merely because that title rolls nicely on the tongue.
"There are four in our party," said Will, apropos apparently of nothing. The effect was unexpected. "Four?" His eyes opened wide, and be made the knuckle-bones of both hands crack like caps going off. "Four Eenglis sportman?" "I said four. If you're willing to tell the naked truth about what's back of your offer, I'll undertake to talk it over with my other friends.
Previous to entering our service, he had been in the horse business, a votary of the turf; as such he had often seen the brilliant 'sportman, Victor de Mauleon; sometimes talked to him. But why there in that disguise? What was his real business and object? My confrere had no time allowed to him to prosecute such inquiries.
Though he was a 'sportman, a gambler, a Don Juan, a duel list, nothing was ever said against his honour. "I remember one instance of his generosity in this respect; for it was much talked of at the time. One of your countrymen, who had never handled a fencing-foil nor fired a pistol, took offence at something M. de Mauleon had said in disparagement of the Duke of Wellington, and called him out.
Tell these Eenglis sportman, then, that I am good man good guide! Tell them they come with me to Zeitoon!" The consul's face darkened swiftly, clouded by some notion that he seemed to try to dismiss, but that refused to leave him. "How much would you ask for your services?" he demanded. "Whatever the effendim please." "Have you a horse?" He nodded.
And that was the last I saw of him. Not that he was not sportman all through. He told me in a letter afterward that the police arrested him, supposing him to be me, but that he easily proved he was not me, and so got away with the money. Enclosed in the package in which the letter came were his diamond ring and a watch and chain, and he also sent me an order to deliver to me his horse and saddle.
But there was the money in the savings bank that I did not dare to draw for fear the police might learn my address, yet I had not the heart to leave behind. "So I took a sportman into my confidence, and told him about my money, and why I wanted it.
He was not the foreman, but the man who took the place of foreman when the real foreman was too drunk the hungriest man of all, and so oftenest near the cook-fire. When I had told him, he took me to a township where a lawyer was, and the lawyer drew up a document, which I signed. "Then the sportman his name was Larry Atkins, I remember took that document and went to draw the money on my behalf.
He laughed outright, throwing out both hands toward us. "Eenglis sportmen!" he said simply. "What's that got to do with it?" Will retorted. He has the unaccountable American dislike of being mistaken for an Englishman, but long ago gave up arguing the point, since foreigners refuse, as a rule, to see the sacred difference. "I am, too, sportman. At Zeitoon there is very good sport. Bear. Antelope.
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