The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-09-25
SIGNS OF YELLOW JACK
ANGLo-AMERIcAN CLUB VICTIM
OF THE FEVER.
English Cable Manager Is Taken
While at the Poker Table and He
Cashes In For the Last Time
Had Made Big Winnings and
They Pay For His Burial.
Chicago Inter oceanl.

ii AUNT, SAID the eX-captaln OF I'M
munes, ''but it wasn't a circumstance
to the game we were up against there
last year. My regiment was the frs
which landed in the province after the
surrender. We got there on Aug
and they put us to policing the towr
right away. although we were as raw
and undiscdplined as a party of Kick
apoo bucks. That was a job which
soldiers who had been under the arnS
discipline for twenty years would have
found difficult. The regulars were
mostly in the hospital, however, and
we had to do it You can imagine what
kind of a time we had with our com
munes'-they never called US anything
else. One of the correspondents having
learned the capacity of some of ou1
men for that villainous native rum and
the several different varieties of biazeS
they used to raise after falling under
its influence, dubbed US Hoods COM
munes,' and the name stuck. Moreover
1t was applied to all the other so-called
immune regiments as fast as they
landed.
When we struck Santiago the death
rate averaged something like $50 day
not counting the United States soldiers
who had taken part in the campaign.
There were so many deaths every day
that the cemetery force. which had been
vastly increased, wasn't large enough
TO bury them, and General Wood had
to burn the bodies. He didn't burn any
Americans; only pauper Cubans and
Spanish soldiers. The term .pauper Gu
bans admitted OF a pretty general ap-
plication, for at that time they were
all in pretty bad state. They were
dying of yellow fever, typhoid fever,
and all kinds of stomach trouble The
americans We're petering out pretty
fast, too.
'Fn tell you the story of the way
James, the manager of the English
Cable company, passed out and was put
away, to give you some idea of the way
we had come to look at things. 1t
makes me shiver to think about it, now
that it's all over, and can think calm
~ Luckily, 1 didn't think normally in
those days. None of US did We were
adj in a sort of intoxication, and
couldn't see things in their true light.
James was a big fellow who had been
all over the world. He was full of good
stories, and everybody around town
liked ham. One. night late in August
ne was sitting in a game of 50-cent
limit in the Anglo American club. The
boys who messed ait the club had a
table at the end of the sitting room,
and there was a game of six or seven
ndnQS gong on every night.
His Last Poker Game.
James sat at one end of the table
blowing big clouds of blue smoke cell
lngward from a long, riry, black, rank
which, after the fashion of
most Cuban cheroots, good, bad or in
different, was called a Henry CLAW,
Mason, the English consul, who had
peen with Ramsden for twenty years,
and who had taken -Ramsden's place
Mnen the poor fellow went over to
kingston to die from the effects of a
FEVER he caught while helping the I'M
fortunate people in the town during the
to Caney, caused by Shat
ter threat to shell Toral into surren-
derlng. was hanging over James chair
watching things closely. Mason was
trying to get the hang of the game.
which was entirely new to him. James
had picked the game up in his travels.
and played it well. He had been with
the invading army before it left Tampa.
and after it landed on Cuban soil and
had had plenty of practice A big
blonde staff captain from the palace,
who quit a handsome income in New
Y ork to see the scrapping and had Sc
cured comfortable staff billet, sat OPP
posfte James at the other end of the
table. The other players were another
couple of captains of iimmunes and my
self, the representatives of a bunch of
New York philanthropists who had
raised fund to establish in Santiago
a plant of crowded hospitals, and the
Spanish agent of an American line of
ships. '-.---,--s
I'VE were all smoking Henry Claws
and between deals imbibing viilainous
Bacordi rum in open and fragrant VIC
ation OF the orders from the palace
There was nothing else to drink. The
clubs stock Of brandy had long since
given out under the abnormal consump-
ton since the surrender.
There was q concert going on in the
other end of the room in which Cox,
who was in town looking after the in
Lerests Of an American mining syndi-
cate which had big investments and
property at Daiquiri was the
central figure. Cox was at the piano
Of an ancient French make. singing
Kipling's songs, negro melodies impre-
vised odes to Anglo-Saxon unity, and
playing his own Accomplishments. His
audience, which was made up of about
he same variety of elements as ours,
was joining in the chofuseS. Cox was
/ spell binder when he sat down to that
piano. He had q fine voice and an in
mitable way of putting character into
his songs. Chevalier himself was not
superior to him when it came to singing
,oster songs. He did it as well as he
lad looked after the interests of his
company during the three years in
which the Cubans and Spaniards had
,een engaged in the cheerful occupa-
ion Of cutting each others Threats,
which is saying q good deal, for he was
master of the diplomatic game.
Business In His Music.
COX was in Santiago province all
through the insurrection. Sometimes he
vas in town hobnobbing with the Span
ards, but quite as often in the Cuban
lamps in the hills. His skin was imper-
-ious tcs the fevers which struck other
people down. The Americans had
hardly got settled before he was as
popular with them as he had been with
he Spanish and Cuban officers Whom
le used by turns to entertain at the
mining company's beautiful place on
me of the picturesque hills overlook
ne the bay about three. miles south of
Santiago on the old MORO trail. Cox
managed his situations well, and there
ire no embarrassing deneouments. The
,paniards never dropped in on him
While the Cubans were drinking his
good Burgundy and smok-
ng his company's Henry Clays, and the
subans, not to be outdone in politeness,
lad business elsewhere when he was
the Spaniards. This all
ost money, but the game was worth |
he candle. Cuban mining property is |
you don't have to sink deep !
hats and dig tunnels to get the metal. |
The ore crops right out of the noun |
ain side in veins which a man who |
,nows a little about geology can follow |
nd all you have TO do is to build a |
ARROW gauge railroad in from the sea
o the place where you want to begin |
york, pile the ore in the cars and run |
t down to the ships. Cox's company |