“I wish I were playing this for the first time,” said Booverman, blackly.  “I wish I could forget—­rid myself of memories.  I have seen class A amateurs take twelve, and professionals eight.  This is the end of all things, Picky, the saddest spot on earth.  I won’t waste time.  Here goes.”

To Pickings’s horror, the drive began slowly to slice out of bounds, toward the railroad tracks.

“I knew it,” said Booverman, calmly, “and the next will go there, too; then I’ll put one in the river, two the swamp, slice into—­”

All at once he stopped, thunderstruck.  The ball, hitting tire or rail, bounded high in the air, forward, back upon the course, lying in perfect position; Pickings said something in a purely reverent spirit.

“Twice in sixty thousand times,” said Booverman, unrelenting.  “That only evens up the sixth hole.  Twice in sixty thousand times!”

From where the ball lay an easy brassy brought it near enough to the green to negotiate another four.  Pickings, trembling like a toy dog in zero weather, reached the green in ten strokes, and took three more puts.

The fifteenth, a short pitch over the river, eighty yards to a slanting green entirely surrounded by more long grass, which gave it the appearance of a chin spot on a full face of whiskers, was Booverman’s favorite hole.  While Pickings held his eyes to the ground and tried to breathe in regular breaths, Booverman placed his ball, drove with the requisite back spin, and landed dead to the hole.  Another two resulted.

“Even threes—­fifteen holes in even threes,” said Pickings to himself, his head beginning to throb.  He wanted to sit down and take his temples in his hands, but for the sake of history he struggled on.

“Damn it!” said Booverman all at once.

“What’s the matter?” said Pickings, observing his face black with fury.

“Do you realize, Pickings, what it means to me to have lost those two strokes on the fourth and sixth greens, and through no fault of mine, neither?  Even threes for the whole course—­that’s what I could do if I had those two strokes—­the greatest thing that’s ever been seen on a golf-course.  It may be a hundred years before any human being on the face of this earth will get such a chance.  And to think I might have done it with a little luck!”

Pickings felt his heart begin to pump, but he was able to say with some degree of calm: 

“You may get a three here.”

“Never.  Four, three and four is what I’ll end.”

“Well, good heavens! what do you want?”

“There’s no joy in it, though,” said Booverman, gloomily.  “If I had those two strokes back, I’d go down in history, I’d be immortal.  And you, too, Picky, you’d be immortal, because you went around with me.  The fourth hole was bad enough, but the sixth was heartbreaking.”

His drive cleared another swamp and rolled well down the farther plateau.  A long cleek laid his ball off the green, a good approach stopped a little short of the hole, and the put went down.