Book: Somewhere in Red Gap

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




"Then I thought of another way I might get to her without blurting out
the truth. 'Listen, Hetty,' I says, 'and remember not only that I'm your
friend but that I know a heap more about this fool world than you do.
I've had bitter experiences, and one of them got me at the time I first
begun to wear riding pants myself, which must have been about the time
you was beginning to bite dents into your silver mug that Aunt Caroline
sent. I was a handsome young hellion, I don't mind telling you, and they
looked well on me, and when Lysander John urged me to be brave and wear
'em outside I was afraid all the men within a day's ride was going to
sneak round to stare at me. My! I was so embarrassed, also with that
same feeling you got in your heart this minute that it was taking an
unfair advantage of any man--you know! I felt like I was using all the
power of my young beauty for unworthy ends.

"'Well, do you know what I got when I first rode out on the ranch? I
got just about the once-over from every brute there, and that was all.
If one of them ranch hands had ever ogled me a second time I'd have
known it all right, but I never caught one of the scoundrels at it.
First I said: "Now, ain't that fine and chivalrous?" Then I got wise. It
wasn't none of this here boasted Western chivalry, but just plain lack
of interest. I admit it made me mad at first. Any man on the place was
only too glad to look me over when I had regular clothes on, but dress
me like Lysander John and they didn't look at me any oftener than they
did him. Not as often, of course, because as a plain human being and
man's equal I wasn't near as interesting as he was.'

"'But then, too,' says Hetty, who had only been about half listening to
my lecture, 'I thought it might be striking a blow at the same time for
the freedom of woman.'

"Well, you know how that freedom-of-the-sex talk always gets me going. I
was mad enough for a minute to spank her just as she stood there in them
Non Plush Ultras she was so proud of. And I did let out some high talk.
Mrs. Dutton told her afterward she thought sure we was having words.

"'Freedom from skirts,' I says, 'is the last thing your sex wants.
Skirts is the final refuge of immodesty, to which women will cling like
grim death. They will do any possible thing to a skirt--slit it, thin
it, shorten it, hike it up one side--people are setting up nights right
now thinking up some new thing to do to it--but women won't give it up
and dress modestly as men do because it's the only unfair drag they got
left with the men. I see one of our offended sex is daily asking right
out in a newspaper: "Are women people?" I'd just like to whisper to her
that no one yet knows.

"'If they'll quit their skirts, dress as decently as a man does so they
won't have any but a legitimate pull with him, we'd have a chance to
find out if they're good for anything else. As a matter of fact, they
don't want to be people and dress modestly and wear hats you couldn't
pay over eight dollars for. I believe there was one once, but the poor
thing never got any notice from either sex after she became--a people,
as you might say.'

"Well, I was going on to get off a few more things I'd got madded up to,
but I caught the look in poor Hetty's face, and it would have melted a
stone. Poor child! There she was, wanting a certain man and willing to
wear or not wear anything on earth that would nail him, and not knowing
what would do it, and complicating her ignorance with meaningless
worries about modesty and daringness and the freedom of her poor sex,
that ain't ever even deuce-low with one woman in a million.

"And right then, watching her distress, all at once I get my big
inspiration--it just flooded me like the sun coming up. I don't know if
I'm like other folks, but things do come to me that way. And not only
was it a great truth, but it got me out of the hole of having to tell
Hetty certain truths about herself that these Non Plush Ultras made all
too glaring.

"'Listen,' I says: 'You believe I'm your friend, don't you? And you
believe anything I tell you is from the heart out and will probably have
a grain of sense in it. Well, here is an inspired thought: Women won't
ever dress modestly like men do because men don't want 'em to. I never
saw a man yet that did if he'd tell the truth, and so this here dark
city stranger won't be any exception. Now, then, what do we see on
Saturday next? Why, we see this here gay throng sally forth for
Stender's Spring, the youth and beauty of Red Gap, including Mr. D.,
with his nice refined odour of Russia leather and bank bills of large
size--from fifties up--that haven't been handled much. The crowd is of
all sexes, technically, like you might say; a lot of nice, sweet girls
along but dressed to be mere jolly young roughnecks, and just as
interesting to the said stranger as the regular boys that will be
present--hardly more so. And now, as for poor little meek you--you will
look wild and Western, understand me, but feminine; exactly like the
coloured cigarette picture that says under it "Rocky Mountain Cow Girl."
You will be in your pretty tan skirt--be sure to have it pressed--and a
blue-striped sport bloose that I just saw in the La Mode window, and
you'll get some other rough Western stuff there, too: a blue silk
neckerchief and a natty little cow-girl sombrero--the La Mode is showing
a good one called the La Parisienne for four fifty-eight--and the
daintiest pair of tan kid gauntlets you can find, and don't forget a
pair of tan silk stockings--'

"'They won't show in my riding boots,' says Hetty, looking as if she was
coming to life a little.

"'Tush for the great, coarse, commonsense riding boots,' I says firmly;
'you will wear precisely that neat little pair of almost new tan pumps
with the yellow bows that you're standing in now. Do you get me?'

"'But that would be too dainty and absurd,' says Hetty.

"'Exactly!' I says, shutting my mouth hard.

"'Why, I almost believe I do get you,' says she, looking religiously up
into the future like that lady saint playing the organ in the picture.

"'Another thing,' I says: 'You are deathly afraid of a horse and was
hardly ever on one but once when you were a teeny girl, but you do love
the open life, so you just nerved yourself up to come.'

"'I believe I see more clearly than ever,' says Hetty. She grew up on a
ranch, knows more about a horse than the horse himself does, and would
be a top rider most places, with the cheap help we get nowadays that can
hardly set a saddle.

"'Also from time to time,' I goes on, 'you want to ask this Mr. D.
little, timid, silly questions that will just tickle him to death and
make him feel superior. Ask him to tell you which legs of a horse the
chaps go on, and other things like that; ask him if the sash that holds
the horrid old saddle on isn't so tight it's hurting your horse. After
the lunch is et, go over to the horse all alone and stroke his nose and
call him a dear and be found by the gent when he follows you over trying
to feed the noble animal a hard-boiled egg and a couple of pickles or
something. Take my word for it, he'll be over all right and have a
hearty laugh at your confusion, and begin to wonder what it is about
you.

"'How about falling off and spraining my ankle on the way back?' demands
the awakening vestal with a gleam in her eye.

"'No good,' I says; 'pretty enough for a minute, but it would make
trouble if you kept up the bluff, and if there's one thing a man hates
more than another it's to have a woman round that makes any trouble.'

"'You have me started on a strange new train of thought,' says Hetty.

"'I think it's a good one,' I tells her, 'but remember there are risks.
For one thing, you know how popular you have always been with all the
girls. Well, after this day none of 'em will hardly speak to you because
of your low-lifed, deceitful game, and the things they'll say of
you--such things as only woman can say of woman!'

"'I shall not count the cost,' says she firmly. 'And now I must hurry
down for that sport bloose--blue-striped, you said?'

"'Something on that order,' I says, 'that fits only too well. You can
do almost anything you want to with your neck and arms, but remember
strictly--a skirt is your one and only Non Plush Ultra.'

"So I went home all flushed and eager, thinking joyously how little
men--the poor dubs--ever suspect how it's put over on 'em, and the next
day, which was Friday, I thought of a few more underhand things she
could do. So when she run in to see me that afternoon, the excitement of
the chase in her eye, she wanted I should go along on this picnic. I
says yes, I will, being that excited myself and wanting to see really if
I was a double-faced genius or wasn't I? Henrietta Price couldn't go on
account of being still lame from her ride of a week ago, so I could go
as chaperone, and anyway I knew the dear girls would all be glad to have
me because I would look so different from them--like a genial old ranch
foreman going out on rodeo--and the boys was always glad to see me along
anyway. 'I'll be there,' I says to Hetty. 'And here--don't forget at all
times to-morrow to carry this little real lace handkerchief I'm giving
you.'

"I was at the meeting-place next morning at nine. None of the other
girls was on time, of course, but that was just as well, because Aggie
Tuttle had got her father to come down to the sale yard to pack a mule
with the hampers of lunch. Jeff Tuttle is a good packer all right, but
too inflamed in the case of a mule, which he hates. They always know up
and down that street when he's packing one; ladies drag their children
by as fast as they can. But Jeff had the hitch all throwed before any of
the girls showed up, and all began in a lovely manner, the crowd of
about fifteen getting off not more than an hour late; Mr. Burchell in
the lead and a bevy of these jolly young rascals in their Non Plush
Ultras riding herd on him.

"Every girl cast cordial glances of pity at poor Hetty when she showed
up in her neat skirt and silly tan pumps with the ridiculous silk
stockings and the close-fitting blue-striped thing, free at the neck,
and her pretty hair all neated under the La Parisienne cow-girl hat. Oh,
they felt kinder than ever before to poor old Hetty when they saw her as
little daring as that, cheering her with a hearty uproar, slapping their
Non Plush Ultras with their caps or gloves, and then giggling
confidentially to one another. Hetty accepted their applause with what
they call a pretty show of confusion and gored her horse with her heel
on the off side so it looked as if the vicious brute was running away
and she might fall off any minute, but somehow she didn't, and got him
soothed with frightened words and by taking the hidden heel out of his
slats--though not until Mr. D. had noticed her good and then looked
again once or twice.

"And so the party moved on for an hour or two, with the roguish young
roughnecks cutting up merrily at all times, pretending to be cowboys
coming to town on pay day, swinging their hats, giving the long yell,
and doing roughriding to cut each other away from the side of Mr. D.
every now and then, with a noisy laugh of good nature to hide the
poisoned dagger. Daisy Estelle Maybury is an awful good rider, too, and
got next to the hero about every time she wanted to. Poor thing, if she
only knew that once she gets off a horse in 'em it makes all the
difference in the world.

"The dark city stranger seemed to enjoy it fine, all this noise and
cutting up and cowboy antics like they was just a lot of high-spirited
young men together, but I never weakened in my faith for one minute.
'Laugh on, my proud beauties,' I says, 'but a time will come, just as
sure as you look and act like a passel of healthy boys.' And you bet it
did.

"We hadn't got halfway to Stender's Spring till Mr. D. got off to
tighten his cinch, and then he sort of drifted back to where Hetty and I
was. I dropped back still farther to where a good chaperone ought to be
and he rode in beside Hetty. The trail was too narrow then for the rest
to come back after their prey, so they had to carry on the rough work
among themselves.

"Hetty acted perfect. She had a pensive, withdrawn look--'aloof,' I
guess the word is--like she was too tender a flower, too fine for this
rough stuff, and had ought to be in the home that minute telling a fairy
story to the little ones gathered at her decently clad knee. I don't
know how she done it, but she put that impression over. And she tells
Mr. D. that in spite of her quiet, studious tastes she had resolved to
come on this picnic because she loves Nature oh! so dearly, the birds
and the wild flowers and the great rugged trees that have their message
for man if he will but listen with an understanding heart--didn't Mr. D.
think so, or did he? But not too much of this dear old Nature stuff,
which can be easy overdone with a healthy man; just enough to show there
was hidden depths in her nature that every one couldn't find.

"Then on to silly questions about does a horse lie down when it goes to
sleep each night after its hard day's labour, and isn't her horse's sash
too tight, and what a pretty fetlock he has, so long and thick and
brown--Oh, do you call that the mane? How absurd of poor little me! Mr.
Daggett knows just everything, doesn't he? He's perfectly terrifying.
And where in the world did he ever learn to ride so stunningly, like one
of those dare-devils in a Wild West entertainment? If her own naughty,
naughty horse tries to throw her on the ground again where he can bite
her she'll just have Mr. D. ride the nassy ole sing and teach him better
manners, so she will. There now! He must have heard that--just see him
move his funny ears--don't tell her that horses can't understand things
that are said. And, seriously now, where did Mr. D. ever get his superb
athletic training, because, oh! how all too rare it is to see a
brain-worker of strong mentality and a splendid athlete in one and the
same man. Oh, how pathetically she had wished and wished to be a man and
take her place out in the world fighting its battles, instead of poor
little me who could never be anything but a homebody to worship the
great, strong, red-blooded men who did the fighting and carried on great
industries--not even an athletic girl like those dear things up
ahead--and this horse is bobbing up and down like that on purpose, just
to make poor little me giddy, and so forth. Holding her bridle rein
daintily she was with the lace handkerchief I'd give her that cost me
twelve fifty.

"Mr. D. took it all like a real man. He said her ignorance of a horse
was adorable and laughed heartily at it. And he smiled in a deeply
modest and masterful way and said 'But, really, that's nothing--nothing
at all, I assure you,' when she said about how he was a corking
athlete--and then kept still to see if she was going on to say more
about it. But she didn't, having the God-given wisdom to leave him
wanting. And then he would be laughing again at her poor-little-me horse
talk.

"I never had a minute's doubt after that, for it was the eyes of one
fascinated to a finish that he turned back on me half an hour later as
he says: 'Really, Mrs. Pettengill, our Miss Hester is feminine to her
finger tips, is she not?' 'She is, she is,' I answers. 'If you only knew
the trouble I had with the chit about that horrible old riding skirt of
hers when all her girl friends are wearing a sensible costume!' Hetty
blushed good and proper at this, not knowing how indecent I might
become, and Mr. D. caught her at it. Aggie Tuttle and Stella Ballard at
this minute is pretending to be shooting up a town with the couple of
revolvers they'd brought along in their cunning little holsters. Mr. D.
turns his glazed eyes to me once more. 'The real womanly woman,' says he
in a hushed voice, 'is God's best gift to man.' Just like that.

"'Landed!' I says to myself. 'Throw him up on the bank and light a
fire.'

"And mebbe you think this tet-a-tet had not been noticed by the merry
throng up front. Not so. The shouting and songs had died a natural
death, and the last three miles of that trail was covered in a gloomy
silence, except for the low voices of Hetty and the male she had so
neatly pronged. I could see puzzled glances cast back at them and catch
mutterings of bewilderment where the trail would turn on itself. But the
poor young things didn't yet realize that their prey was hanging back
there for reasons over which he hadn't any control. They thought, of
course, he was just being polite or something.

"When we got to the picnic place, though, they soon saw that all was not
well. There was some resumption of the merrymaking as they dismounted
and the girls put one stirrup over the saddle-horn and eased the cinch
like the boys did, and proud of their knowledge, but the glances they
now shot at Hetty wasn't bewildered any more. They was glances of pure
fright. Hetty, in the first place, had to be lifted off her horse, and
Mr. D. done it in a masterly way to show her what a mere feather she
was in his giant's grasp. Then with her feet on the ground she reeled a
mite, so he had to support her. She grasped his great strong arm firmly
and says: 'It's nothing--I shall be right presently--leave me please, go
and help those other girls.' They had some low, heated language about
his leaving her at such a crisis, with her gripping his arm till I bet
it showed for an hour. But finally they broke and he loosened her
horse's sash, as she kept quaintly calling it, and she recovered
completely and said it had been but a moment's giddiness anyway, and
what strength he had in those arms, and yet could use it so gently, and
he said she was a brave, game little woman, and the picnic was served to
one and all, with looks of hearty suspicion and rage now being shot at
Hetty from every other girl there.

"And now I see that my hunch has been even better than I thought. Not
only does the star male hover about Hetty, cutely perched on a fallen
log with her dainty, gleaming ankles crossed, and looking so fresh and
nifty and feminine, but I'm darned if three or four of the other males
don't catch the contagion of her woman's presence and hang round her,
too, fetching her food of every kind there, feeding her spoonfuls of
Aggie Tuttle's plum preserves, and all like that, one comical thing
after another. Yes, sir; here was Mac Gordon and Riley Hardin and
Charlie Dickman and Roth Hyde, men about town of the younger dancing
set, that had knowed Hetty for years and hardly ever looked at
her--here they was paying attentions to her now like she was some prize
beauty, come down from Spokane for over Sunday, to say nothing of
Mr. D., who hardly ever left her side except to get her another sardine
sandwich or a paper cup of coffee. It was then I see the scientific
explanation of it, like these high-school professors always say that
science is at the bottom of everything. The science of this here was
that they was all devoting themselves to Hetty for the simple reason
that she was the one and only woman there present.

"Of course these girls in their modest Non Plush Ultras didn't get the
scientific secret of this fact. They was still too obsessed with the
idea that they ought to be ogled on account of them by any male beast in
his right senses. But they knew they'd got in wrong somehow. By this
time they was kind of bunching together and telling each other things in
low tones, while not seeming to look at Hetty and her dupes, at which
all would giggle in the most venemous manner. Daisy Estelle left the
bunch once and made a coy bid for the notice of Mr. D. by snatching his
cap and running merrily off with it about six feet. If there was any one
in the world--except Hetty--could make a man hate the idea of riding
pants for women, she was it. I could see the cold, flinty look come into
his eyes as he turned away from her to Hetty with the pitcher of
lemonade. And then Beryl Mae Macomber, she gets over close enough for
Mr. D. to hear it, and says conditions is made very inharmonious at home
for a girl of her temperament, and she's just liable any minute to chuck
everything and either take up literary work or go into the movies, she
don't know which and don't care--all kind of desperate so Mr. D. will
feel alarmed about a beautiful young thing like that out in the world
alone and unprotected and at the mercy of every designing scoundrel. But
I don't think Mr. D. hears a word of it, he's so intently listening to
Hetty who says here in this beautiful mountain glade where all is peace
how one can't scarcely believe that there is any evil in the world
anywhere, and what a difference it does make when one comes to see life
truly. Then she crossed and recrossed her silken ankles, slightly
adjusted her daring tan skirt, and raised her eyes wistfully to the
treetops, and I bet there wasn't a man there didn't feel that she
belonged in the home circle with the little ones gathered about, telling
'em an awfully exciting story about the naughty, naughty, bad little
white kitten and the ball of mamma's yarn.

"Yes, sir; Hetty was as much of a revelation to me in one way as she
would of been to that party in another if I hadn't saved her from it.
She must have had the correct female instinct all these years, only no
one had ever started her before on a track where there was no other
entries. With those other girls dressed like she was Hetty would of been
leaning over some one's shoulder to fork up her own sandwiches, and no
one taking hardly any notice whether she'd had some of the hot coffee or
whether she hadn't. And the looks she got throughout the afternoon! Say,
I wouldn't of trusted that girl at the edge of a cliff with a single
pair of those No. 9872's anywhere near.

"After the lunch things was packed up there was faint attempts at fun
and frolic with songs and chorus--Riley Hardin has a magnificent bass
voice at times and Mac Gordon and Charlie Dickman and Roth Hyde wouldn't
be so bad if they'd let these Turkish cigarettes alone--and the boys got
together and sung some of their good old business-college songs, with
the girls coming in while they murdered Hetty with their beautiful eyes.
But Hetty and Mr. D. sort of withdrew from the noisy enjoyment and
talked about the serious aspects of life and how one could get along
almost any place if only they had their favourite authors. And Mr. D.
says doesn't she sing at all, and she says, Oh! in a way; that her voice
has a certain parlour charm, she has been told, and she sings at--you
can't really call it singing--two or three of the old Scotch songs of
homely sentiment like the Scotch seem to get into their songs as no
other nation can, or doesn't he think so, and he does, indeed. And he's
reading a wonderful new novel in which there is much of Nature with its
lessons for each of us, but in which love conquers all at the end, and
the girl in it reminds him strongly of her, and perhaps she'll be good
enough to sing for him--just for him alone in the dusk--if he brings
this book up to-morrow night so he can show her some good places in it.

"At first she is sure she has a horrid old engagement for to-morrow
night and is so sorry, but another time, perhaps--Ain't it a marvel the
crooked tricks that girl had learned in one day! And then she remembers
that her engagement is for Tuesday night--what could she have been
thinking of!--and come by all means--only too charmed--and how rarely
nowadays does one meet one on one's own level of culture, or perhaps
that is too awful a word to use--so hackneyed--but anyway he knows what
she means, or doesn't he? He does.

"Pretty soon she gets up and goes over to her horse, picking her way
daintily in the silly little tan pumps, and seems to be offering the
beast something. The stricken man follows her the second he can without
being too raw about it, and there is the adorably feminine thing with a
big dill pickle, two deviled eggs, and a half of one of these Camelbert
cheeses for her horse. Mr. D. has a good masterly laugh at her idea of
horse fodder and calls her 'But, my dear child!' and she looks prettily
offended and offers this chuck to the horse and he gulps it all down and
noses round for more of the same. It was an old horse named Croppy that
she'd known from childhood and would eat anything on earth. She rode him
up here once and he nabbed a bar of laundry soap off the back porch and
chewed the whole thing down with tears of ecstasy in his eyes and
frothing at the mouth like a mad dog. Well, so Hetty gives mister man a
look of dainty superiority as she flicks crumbs from her white fingers
with my real lace handkerchief, and he stops his hearty laughter and
just stares, and she says what nonsense to think the poor horses don't
like food as well as any one. Them little moments have their effect on a
man in a certain condition. He knew there probably wasn't another horse
in the world would touch that truck, but he couldn't help feeling a
strange new respect for her in addition to that glorious masculine
protection she'd had him wallowing in all day.

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