Book: Somewhere in Red Gap

H >> Harry Leon Wilson >> Somewhere in Red Gap




"Late in the fall Henrietta Templeton Price done it. You may not know
what that meant to Alonzo Price, Choice Villa Sites and Price's Addition
to Red Gap. Alonzo is this kind: I met him the day Gussie Himebaugh had
her accident when the mules she was driving to the mowing machine run
away out on Himebaugh's east forty. Alonzo had took Doc Maybury out and
passes me coming back. 'How bad was she hurt?' I asks. The poor thing
looks down greatly embarrassed and mumbles: 'She has broken a limb.'
'Leg or arm?' I blurts out, forgetting all delicacy. You'd think I had
him pinned down, wouldn't you? Not Lon, though. 'A lower limb,' says he,
coughing and looking away.

"You see how men are till we put a spike collar and chain on 'em. When
Henrietta declared herself Alonzo read the riot act and declared marital
law. But there was Henrietta with the collar and chain and pretty soon
Lon was saying: 'You're quite right, Pettikins, and you ought to have
the thanks of the community for showing our ladies how to dress
rationally on horseback. It's not only sensible and safe but it's
modest--a plain pair of riding breeches, no coquetry, no frills, nothing
but stern utility--of course I agree.'

"'I hoped you would, darling,' says Henrietta. She went to Miss
Gunslaugh and had her make the costume, being one who rarely does things
by halves. It was of blue velvet corduroy, with a fetching little bolero
jacket, and the things themselves were fitted, if you know what I mean.
And stern utility! That suit with its rosettes and bows and frogs and
braid had about the same stern utility as those pretty little tin tongs
that come on top of a box of candy--ever see anybody use one of those?
When Henrietta got dressed for her first ride and had put on the Cuban
Pink Face Balm she looked like one of the gypsy chorus in the Bohemian
Girl opera.

"Alonzo gulped several times in rapid succession when he saw her, but
the little man never starts anything he don't aim to finish, and it was
too late to start it then. Henrietta brazened her way through Main
Street and out to the country club and back, and next day she put them
on again so Otto Hirsch, of the E-light Studio, could come up and take
her standing by the horse out in front of the Price mansion. Then they
was laid away until the Grand Annual Masquerade Ball of the Order of the
Eastern Star, which is a kind of hen Masons, when she again gave us a
flash of what New York society ladies was riding their horse in. As a
matter of fact, Henrietta hates a horse like a rattlesnake, but she had
done her pioneer work for once and all.

"Every one was now laughing and sneering at the old-fashioned divided
skirt with which woman had endangered her life on a horse, and wondering
how they had endured the clumsy things so long; and come spring all the
prominent young society buds and younger matrons of the most exclusive
set who could stay on a horse at all was getting theirs ready for the
approaching season, Red Gap being like London in having its gayest
season in the summer, when people can get out more. Even Mis' Judge
Ballard fell for it, though hers was made of severe black with a long
coat. She looked exactly like that Methodist minister, the old one, that
we had three years ago.

"Most of the younger set used the mail-order catalogue, their figures
still permitting it. And maybe there wasn't a lot of trying on behind
drawn blinds pretty soon, and delighted giggles and innocent girlish
wonderings about whether the lowest type of man really ogles as much
under certain circumstances as he's said to. And the minute the roads
got good the telephone of Pierce's Livery, Feed, and Sale Stable was
kept on the ring. Then the social upheaval was on. Of course any of 'em
looked quiet after Henrietta's costume, for none of the girls but Beryl
Mae Macomber, a prominent young society bud, aged seventeen, had done
anything like that. But it was the idea of the thing.

"A certain element on the South Side made a lot of talk and stirred
things up and wrote letters to the president of the Civic Purity League,
who was Mis' Judge Ballard herself, asking where this unspeakable
disrobing business was going to end and calling her attention to the
fate that befell Sodom and Gomorrah. But Mis' Ballard she's mixed on
names and gets the idea these parties mean Samson and Delilah instead of
a couple of twin cities, like St. Paul and Minneapolis, and she writes
back saying what have these Bible characters got to do with a lady
riding on horseback--in trousers, it is true, but with a coat falling
modestly to the knee on each side, and certain people had better be a
little more fussy about things that really matter in life before they
begin to talk. She knew who she was hitting at all right, too. Trust
Mis' Ballard!

"It was found that there was almost the expected amount of ogling from
sidewalk loafers, at first. As Daisy Estelle Maybury said, it seemed as
if a girl couldn't show herself on the public thoroughfare without being
subjected to insult. Poor Daisy Estelle! She had been a very popular
young society belle, and was considered one of the most attractive girls
in Red Gap until this happened. No one had ever suspected it of her in
the least degree up to that time. Of course it was too late after she
was once seen off her horse. Them that didn't see was told in full
detail by them that did. Most of the others was luckier. Beryl Mae
Macomber in her sport shirt and trouserettes complained constantly about
the odious wretches along Main Street and Fourth, where the post office
was. She couldn't stop even twenty minutes in front of the post office,
minding her own business and waiting for some one she knew to come along
and get her mail for her, without having dozens of men stop and ogle
her. That, of course, was during the first two weeks after she took to
going for the mail, though the eternal feminine in Beryl Mae probably
thought the insulting glances was going to keep up forever.

"I watched the poor child one day along in the third week, waiting there
in front of the post office after the four o'clock mail, and no one
hardly ogled her at all except some rude children out from school. What
made it more pitiful, leaning right there against the post office front
was Jack Shiels, Sammie Hamilton, and little old Elmer Cox, Red Gap's
three town rowdies that ain't done a stroke of work since the canning
factory closed down the fall before, creatures that by rights should
have been leering at the poor child In all her striking beauty. But, no;
the brutes stand there looking at nothing much until Jack Shiels stares
a minute at this horse Beryl Mae is on and pipes up: 'Why, say, I
thought Pierce let that little bay runt go to the guy that was in here
after polo ponies last Thursday. I sure did.' And Sam Hamilton wakes up
and says: 'No, sir; not this one. He got rid of a little mare that had
shoulders like this, but she was a roan with kind of mule ears and one
froze off.' And little old Elmer Cox, ignoring this defenceless young
girl with his impudent eyes, he says: 'Yes, Sam's right for once. Pierce
tried to let this one go, too, but ain't you took a look at his hocks!'
Then along comes Dean Duke, the ratty old foreman in Pierce's stable,
and he don't ogle a bit, either, like you'd expect one of his debased
calibre to, but just stops and talks this horse over with 'em and says
yes, it was his bad hocks that lost the sale, and he tells 'em how he
had told Pierce just what to do to get him shaped up for a quick sale,
but Pierce wouldn't listen to him, thinking he knew it all himself; and
there the four stood and gassed about this horse without even seeing
Beryl Mae, let alone leering at her. I bet she was close to shedding
tears of girlish mortification as she rode off without ever waiting for
the mail. Things was getting to a pretty pass. If low creatures lost to
all decent instincts, like these four, wouldn't ogle a girl when she was
out for it, what could be expected of the better element of the town?
Still, of course, now and then one or the other of the girls would have
a bit of luck to tell of.

"Well, now we come to the crookedest bit of work I ever been guilty of,
though first telling you about Mr. Burchell Daggett, an Eastern society
man from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that had come to Red Gap that spring to be
assistant cashier in the First National, through his uncle having stock
in the thing. He was a very pleasant kind of youngish gentleman, about
thirty-four, I reckon, with dark, parted whiskers and gold eyeglasses
and very good habits. He took his place among our very best people right
off, teaching the Bible class in the M.E. Sabbath-school and belonging
to the Chamber of Commerce and the City Beautiful Association, of which
he was made vice-president, and being prominent at all functions held in
our best homes. He wasn't at all one of them that lead a double life by
stopping in at the Family Liquor Store for a gin fizz or two after work
hours, or going downtown after supper to play Kelly pool at the
Temperance Billiard Parlours and drink steam beer, or getting in with
the bunch that gathers in the back room of the Owl Cigar Store of an
evening and tells these here suggestive stories. Not that he was
hide-bound. If he felt the need for a shot of something he'd go into the
United States Grill and have a glass of sherry and bitters brought to
him at a table and eat a cracker with it, and he'd take in every show,
even the Dizzy Belles of Gotham Big Blonde Beauty Show. He was refined
and even moral in the best sense of the word, but still human.

"Our prominent young society buds took the keenest notice of him at
once, as would naturally happen, he being a society bachelor of means
and by long odds the best catch in Red Gap since old Potter Knapp, of
the Loan and Trust Company, had broke his period of mourning for his
third wife by marrying Myrtle Wade that waited on table at the
Occidental Hotel, with the black band still on his left coat sleeve.
It's no exaggeration to say that Mr. Burchell Daggett became the most
sought-after social favourite among Reg Gap's hoot mondy in less than a
week after he unpacked his trunk. But it was very soon discovered by the
bright-eyed little gangsters of the best circles that he wasn't going to
be an easy one to disable. Naturally when a man has fought 'em off to
his age he has learned much of woodcraft and the hunter's cunning wiles,
and this one had sure developed timber sense. He beat 'em at their own
game for three months by the simple old device of not playing any
favourite for one single minute, and very, very seldom getting alone
with one where the foul stroke can be dealt by the frailest hand with
muscular precision. If he took Daisy Estelle Maybury to the chicken pie
supper to get a new carpet for the Presbyterian parsonage, he'd up and
take Beryl Mae and her aunt, or Gussie Himebaugh, or Luella Stultz, to
the lawn feet at Judge Ballard's for new uniforms for the band boys. At
the Bazaar of All Nations he bought as many chances of one girl as he
did of another, and if he hadn't any more luck than a rabbit and won
something--a hanging lamp or a celluloid manicure set in a plush-lined
box--he'd simply put it up to be raffled off again for the good of the
cause. And none of that moonlight loitering along shaded streets for
him, where the dirk is so often drove stealthily between a man's ribs,
and him thinking all the time he's only indulging in a little playful
nonsense. Often as not he'd take two girls at once, where all could be
merry without danger of anything happening.

"It was no time at all till this was found out on him. It was seen that
under a pleasing exterior, looking all too easy to overcome by any girl
in her right mind, he had powers of resistance and evasion that was like
steel. Of course this only stirred the proud beauties on to renewed and
crookeder efforts. Every darned one of 'em felt that her innocent young
girlhood was challenged, and would she let it go at that? Not so. My
lands! What snares and deadfalls was set for this wise old timber wolf
that didn't look it, with his smiling ways and seemingly careless
response to merry banter, and so forth!

"And of course every one of these shrinking little scoundrels thought at
once of her new riding costume, so no time at all was lost in organizing
the North Side Riding and Sports Club, which Mr. Burchell Daggett gladly
joined, having, as he said, an eye for a horse and liking to get out
after banking hours to where all Nature seems to smile and you can let
your mount out a bit over the firm, smooth road. Them that had held off
until now, on account of the gossip and leering, hurried up and got into
line with No. 9872 in the mail-order catalogue, or went to Miss
Gunslaugh, who by this time had a female wax dummy in her window in a
neat brown suit and puttees, with a coat just opening and one foot
advanced carelessly, with gauntlets and a riding crop, and a fetching
little cap over the wind-blown hair and the clear, wonderful blue eyes.
Oh, you can bet every last girl of the bunch was seeing herself send
back picture postals to her rivals telling what a royal time they was
having at Palm or Rockaway Beach or some place, and seeing the engraved
cards--'Mr. and Mrs. Burchell Daggett, at Home After the Tenth, Ophir
Avenue, Red Gap, Wash.'

"Ain't we good when you really get us, if you ever do--because some
don't. Many, indeed! I reckon there never was a woman yet outside of a
feeb' home that didn't believe she could be an A. No. 1 siren if she only
had the nerve to dress the part; never one that didn't just ache to sway
men to her lightest whim, and believe she could--not for any evil
purpose, mind you, but just to show her power. Think of the tender
hearts that must have shuddered over the damage they could and actually
might do in one of them French bathing suits like you are said to
witness in Paris and Atlantic City and other sinks of iniquity. And here
was these well-known society favourites wrought up by this legible
party, as the French say, till each one was ready to go just as far as
the Civic Purity League would let her in order to sweep him off his feet
in one mad moment. Quite right, too. It all depends on what the object
is, don't it; and wasn't theirs honourable matrimony with an
establishment and a lawn in front of it with a couple of cast-iron
moose, mebbe?

"And amid all this quaint girlish enterprise and secret infamy was the
problem of Hetty Tipton. Hetty had been a friend and a problem of mine
for seven years, or ever since she come back from normal to teach in the
third-grade grammar school; a fine, clean, honest, true-blue girl, mebbe
not as pretty you'd say at first as some others, but you like her better
after you look a few times more, and with not the slightest nonsense
about her. That last was Hetty's one curse. I ask you, what chance has a
girl got with no nonsense about her? Hetty won my sympathy right at the
start by this infirmity of hers, which was easily detected, and for
seven years I'd been trying to cure her of it, but no use. Oh, she was
always took out regular enough and well liked, but the gilded youth of
Red Gap never fought for her smiles. They'd take her to parties and
dances, turn and turn about, but they always respected her, which is the
greatest blight a man can put on one of us, if you know what I mean.
Every man at a party was always careful to dance a decent number of
times with Hetty and see that she got back to her seat; and wasn't it
warm in here this evening, yes, it was; and wouldn't she have a glass of
the punch--No, thank you--then he'd gallop off to have some fun with a
mere shallow-pated fool that had known how from the cradle. It was
always a puzzle to me, because Hetty dressed a lot better than most of
them, knowing what to wear and how, and could take a joke if it come
slow, and laid herself out to be amiable to one and all. I kind of think
it must be something about her mentality. Maybe it is too mental. I
can't put her to you any plainer than to say that every single girl in
town, young and old, just loved her, and not one of them up to this time
had ever said an unkind or feminine thing about her. I guess you know
what that would mean of any woman.

"Hetty was now coming twenty-nine--we never spoke of this, but I could
count back--and it's my firm belief that no man had ever proposed
marriage or anything else on earth to her. Wilbur Todd had once
endeavoured to hold her hand out on the porch at a country-club dance
and she had repulsed him in all kindness but firmly. She told him she
couldn't bring herself to permit a familiarity of that sort except to
the man who would one day lead her to the altar, which is something I
believe she got from writing to a magazine about a young girl's
perplexities. And here, in spite of her record, this poor thing had
dared to raise her eyes to none other than this Mr. Burchell Daggett.
There was something kind of grand and despairing about the impudence of
it when you remember these here trained efficiency experts she was
competing with. Yet so it was. She would drop in on me after school for
a cup of tea and tell me frankly how distinguished his manner was and
what shapely features he had and what fine eyes, and how there was a
certain note in his voice at times, and had I ever noticed that one
stubborn lock of hair that stuck out back of his left ear? Of course
that last item settled it. When they notice that lock of hair you know
the ship has struck the reef and all hands are perishing.

"And it seemed that the cuss had not only shown her more than a little
attention at evening functions but had escorted her to the midspring
production of 'Hamlet' by the Red Gap Amateur Theatrical and Dramatic
Society. True, he had conducted himself like a perfect gentleman every
minute they was alone together, even when they had to go home in Eddie
Pierce's hack because it was raining when the show let out--but would I,
or would I not, suspect from all this that he was in the least degree
thinking of her in a way that--you know!

"Poor child of twenty-eight, with her hungry eyes and flushed face while
she was showing down her hand to me! I seen the scoundrel's play at
once. Hetty was the one safe bet for him in Red Gap's social whirl. He
was wise, all right--this Mr. D. He'd known in a second he could trust
himself alone with that girl and be as safe as a babe in its mother's
arms. Of course I couldn't say this to Hetty. I just said he was a man
that seemed to know his own mind very clearly, whatever it was, and
Hetty blushed some more and said that something within her responded to
a certain note in his voice. We let it go at that.

"So I think and ponder about poor Hetty, trying to invent some
conspiracy that would fix it right, because she was the ideal mate for
an assistant cashier that had a certain position to keep up. For that
matter she was good enough for any man. Then I hear she has joined the
riding club, and an all day's ride has been planned for the next
Saturday up to Stender's Spring, with a basket lunch and a romantic ride
back by moonlight. Of course, I don't believe in any of this
spiritualist stuff, but you can't tell me there ain't something in it,
mind-reading or something, with the hunches you get when parties is in
some grave danger.

"Stella Ballard it was tells me about the picnic, calling me in as I
passed their house to show me her natty new riding togs that had just
come from the mail-order house. She called from back of a curtain, and
when I got into the parlour she had them on, pleased as all get-out.
Pretty they was, too--riding breeches and puttees and a man's flannel
shirt and a neat-fitting Norfolk jacket, and Stella being a fine,
upstanding figure.

"'They may cause considerable talk,' says she, smoothing down one leg
where it wrinkled a bit, 'but really I think they look perfectly
stunning on me, and wasn't it lucky they fit me so beautifully? They're
called the Non Plush Ultra.'

"'The what?' I says.

"'The Non Plush Ultra,' she answers. 'That's the name of them sewed in
the band.'

"'What's that mean?' I wanted to know.

"'Why,' says Stella, 'that's Latin or Greek, I forget which, and it
means they're the best, I believe. Oh, let me see! Why, it means nothing
beyond, or something like that; the farthest you can go, I think. One
forgets all that sort of thing after leaving high school.'

"'Well,' I says, 'they fit fine, and it's the only modest rig for a
woman to ride a horse in, but they certainly are non plush, all right.
That thin goods will never wear long against saddle leather, take my
word for it.'

"But of course this made no impression on Stella--she was standing on
the centre table by now, so she could lamp herself in the glass over the
mantel--and then she tells me about the excursion for Saturday and how
Mr. Burchell Daggett is enthused about it, him being a superb horseman
himself, and, if I know what she means, don't I think she carries
herself in the saddle almost better than any girl in her set, and won't
her style show better than ever in this duck of a costume, and she must
get her tan shoes polished, and do I think Mr. Daggett really meant
anything when he said he'd expect her some day to return the masonic pin
she had lifted off his vest the other night at the dance, and so on.

"It was while she was babbling this stuff that I get the strange hunch
that Hetty Tipton is in grave danger and I ought to run to her; it
seemed almost I could hear her calling on me to save her from some
horrible fate. So I tell Stella yes, she's by far the finest rider in
the whole Kulanche Valley, and she ought to get anything she wants with
that suit on, and then I beat it quick over to the Ezra Button house
where Hetty boards.

"You can laugh all you want to, but that hunch of mine was the God's
truth. Hetty was in the gravest danger she'd faced since one time in
early infancy when she got give morphine for quinine. What made it more
horrible, she hadn't the least notion of her danger. Quite the contrary.

"'Thank the stars I've come in time!' I gasps as I rushes in on her, for
there's the poor girl before her mirror in a pair of these same Non
Plush Ultras and looking as pleased with herself as if she had some
reason to be.

"'Back into your skirts quick!' I says. 'I'm a strong woman and all
that, but still I can be affected more than you'd think.'

"Poor Hetty stutters and turns red and her chin begins to quiver, so I
gentled her down and tried to explain, though seeing quick that I must
tell her everything but the truth. I reckon nothing in this world can
look funnier than a woman wearing them things that had never ought to
for one reason or another. There was more reasons than that in Hetty's
case. Dignity was the first safe bet I could think of with her, so I
tried that.

"'I know all you would say,' says the poor thing in answer, 'but isn't
it true that men rather like one to be--oh, well, you know--just the
least bit daring?'

"'Truest thing in the world,' I says, 'but bless your heart, did you
suspicion riding breeches was daring on a woman? Not so. A girl wearing
'em can't be any more daring after the first quick shock is over
than--well, you read the magazines, don't you? You've seen those
pictures of family life in darkest Africa that the explorers and monkey
hunters bring home, where the wives, mothers, and sweethearts, God bless
'em! wear only what the scorching climate demands. Didn't it strike you
that one of them women without anything on would have a hard time if she
tried to be daring--or did it? No woman can be daring without the proper
clothes for it,' I says firmly, 'and as for you, I tell you plain, get
into the most daring and immodest thing that was ever invented for
woman--which is the well-known skirt.'

"'Oh, Ma Pettengill,' cries the poor thing, 'I never meant anything
horrid and primitive when I said daring. As a matter of fact, I think
these are quite modest to the intelligent eye.'

"'Just what I'm trying to tell you,' I says. 'Exactly that; they're
modest to any eye whatever. But here you are embarked on a difficult
enterprise, with a band of flinty-hearted cutthroats trying to beat you
to it, and, my dear child, you have a staunch nature and a heart of
gold, but you simply can't afford to be modest.'

"'I don't understand,' says she, looking at herself in the glass again.

"'Trust me, anyway,' I implores. 'Let others wear their Non Plush
Ultras which are No. 9872'--she tries to correct my pronunciation, but I
wouldn't stop for that. 'Never mind how it's pronounced,' I says,
'because I know well the meaning of it in a foreign language. It means
the limit, and it's a very desirable limit for many, but for you,' I
says plainly, 'it's different. Your Non Plush Ultra will have to be a
neat, ankle-length riding skirt. You got one, haven't you?'

"'I have,' says she, 'a very pretty one of tan corduroy, almost new, but
I had looked forward to these, and I don't see yet--'

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