After four or five had thus spoken, Horne, without
altering his lounging attitude, spoke twenty or thirty words,
rapped again on the table with his rawhide whip, and immediately
came over to us.
"Now," said he cheerfully, "we'll have a game of golf."
That was amusing, but not astonishing. Most of us have at one
time or another laid out a scratch hole or so somewhere in the
vacant lot. We returned to the house, Horne produced a
sufficiency of clubs, and we sallied forth. Then came the surprise
of our life! We played eighteen holes-eighteen, mind you-over
an excellently laid-out and kept-up course! The fair greens were
cropped short and smooth by a well-managed small herd of sheep;
the putting greens were rolled, and in perfect order; bunkers had
been located at the correct distances; there were water hazards
in the proper spots. In short, it was a genuine, scientific,
well-kept golf course. Over it played Horne, solitary except on
the rare occasions when he and his assistant happened to be at
the post at the same time. The nearest white man was six days'
journey; the nearest small civilization 196 miles.* The whole
affair was most astounding.
*Which was, in turn, over three hundred miles from the next.
Our caddies were grinning youngsters a good deal like the Gold
Dust Twins. They wore nothing but our golf bags.
