Book: Somewhere in Red Gap

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"The ride home, at least on the part of the Non Plush Ultra cut-ups, was
like they had laid a loved one to final rest out there on the lone
mountainside. The handsome stranger and Hetty brought up the rear,
conversing eagerly about themselves and other serious topics. I believe
he give her to understand that he'd been pretty wild at one time in his
life and wasn't any too darned well over it yet, but that some good
womanly woman who would study his ways could still take him and make a
man of him; and her answering that she knew he must have suffered beyond
human endurance in that horrible conflict with his lower nature. He said
he had.

"Of course the rabid young hoydens up ahead made a feeble effort now and
then to carry it off lightly, and from time to time sang 'My Bonnie Lies
Over the Ocean,' or 'Merrily We Roll Along,' with the high, squeaky
tenor of Roth Hyde sounding above the others very pretty in the
moonlight, but it was poor work as far as these enraged vestals was
concerned. If I'd been Hetty and had got a strange box of candy through
the mail the next week, directed in a disguised woman's hand, I'd of
rushed right off to the police with it, not waiting for any analysis.
And she, poor thing, would get so frightened at bad spots, with the
fierce old horse bobbing about so dangerous, that she just has to be
held on. And once she wrenched her ankle against a horrid old tree on
the trail--she hadn't been able to resist a little one--and bit her
under lip as the spasm of pain passed over her refined features. But she
was all right in a minute and begged Mr. D. not to think of bathing it
in cold water because it was nothing--nothing at all, really now--and he
would embarrass her frightfully if he said one more word about it. And
Mr. D. again remarked that she was feminine to her finger tips, a brave,
game little woman, one of the gamest he ever knew. And pretty soon--what
was she thinking about now? Why, she was merely wondering if horses
think in the true sense of the word or only have animal instinct, as it
is called. And wasn't she a strange, puzzling creature to be thinking on
deep subjects like that at such a time! Yes, she had been called
puzzling as a child, but she didn't like it one bit. She wanted to be
like other girls, if he knew what she meant. He seemed to.

"They took Hetty home first on account of her poor little ankle and
sung 'Good Night, Ladies,' at the gate. And so ended a day that was
wreck and ruin for most of our sex there present.

"And to show you what a good, deep, scientific cause I had discovered,
the next night at Hetty's who shows up one by one but these four men
about town, each with a pound of mixed from the Bon Ton Handy Kitchen,
and there they're all setting at the feet of Hetty, as it were, in her
new light summer gown with the blue bows, when Mr. D. blows in with a
two-pound box and the novel in which love conquered all. So excited she
was when she tells me about it next day. The luck of that girl! But
after all it wasn't luck, because she'd laid her foundations the day
before, hadn't she? Always look a little bit back of anything that seems
to be luck, say I.

"And Hetty with shining eyes entertained one and all with the wit and
sparkle a woman can show only when there's four or five men at her at
once--it's the only time we ever rise to our best. But she got a chance
for a few words alone with Mr. D., who took his hat finally when he sees
the other four was going to set him out; enough words to confide to him
how she loathed this continual social racket to which she was constantly
subjected, with never a let-up so one could get to one's books and to
one's real thoughts. But perhaps he would venture up again some time
next week or the week after--not getting coarse in her work, understand,
even with him flopping around there out on the bank--and he give her one
long, meaning look and said why not to-morrow night, and she carelessly
said that would be charming, she was sure--she didn't think of any
engagement at this minute--and it was ever so nice of him to think of
poor little me.

"Then she went back and gave the social evening of their life to them
four boys that had stayed. She said she couldn't thank them enough for
coming this evening--which is probably the only time she had told the
truth in thirty-six hours--and they all made merry. Roth Hyde sang
'Sally in Our Alley' so good on the high notes that the Duttons was all
out in the hall listening; and Riley Hardin singing 'Down, Diver, Down,
'Neath the Deep Blue Waves!' and Mac Gordon singing his everlasting
German songs in their native language, and Charlie Dickman singing a new
sentimental one called 'Ain't There at Least One Gentleman Here?' about
a fair young lady dancer being insulted in a gilded cafe in some large
city; and one and all voted it was a jolly evening and said how about
coming back to-morrow night, but Hetty said no, it was her one evening
for study and she couldn't be bothered with them, which was a plain,
downright so-and-so and well she knew it, because that girl's study was
over for good and all.

"Well, why string it out? I've give you the facts. And my lands! Will
you look at that clock now? Here's the morning gone and this room still
looking like the inside of a sheep-herder's wagon! Oh, yes, and when
Hetty was up here this time that she wouldn't wear my riding pants
down, she says. 'Not only that, but I'm scrupulously careful in all
ways. Why, I never even allow dear Burchell to observe me in one of
those lace boudoir caps that so many women cover up their hair with when
it's their best feature but they won't take time to do it.'

"Now was that spoken like a wise woman or like the two-horned Galumpsis
Caladensis of East India, whose habits are little known to man? My Lord!
Won't I ever learn to stop? Where did I put that dusting cloth?"




VI

COUSIN EGBERT INTERVENES


"It takes all kinds of foreigners to make a world," said Ma
Pettengill--irrelevantly I thought, because the remark seemed to be
inspired merely by the announcement of Sandy Sawtelle that the mule
Jerry's hip had been laid open by a kick from the mule Alice, and that
the bearer of the news had found fourteen stitches needed to mend the
rent.

Sandy brought his news to the owner of the Arrowhead as she relaxed in
my company on the west veranda of the ranch house and scented the golden
dusk with burning tobacco of an inferior but popular brand. I listened
but idly to the minute details of the catastrophe, discovering more
entertainment in the solemn wake of light a dulled sun was leaving as it
slipped over the sagging rim of Arrowhead Pass. And yet, through my
absorption with the shadows that now played far off among the folded
hills, there did come sharply the impression that this Sawtelle person
was dwelling too insistently upon the precise number of stitches
required by the breach in Jerry's hide.

"Fourteen--yes, ma'am; fourteen stitches. That there Alice mule sure
needs handling. Fourteen regular ones. I'd certainly show her where to
head in at, like now she was my personal property. Me, I'd abuse her
shamefully. Only eleven I took last time in poor old Jerry; and here now
it's plumb fourteen--yes, ma'am; fourteen good ones. Say, you get
fourteen of them stitches in your hide, and I bet--thought, at first, I
could make twelve do, but it takes full fourteen, with old Jerry nearly
tearing the chute down while I was taking these fourteen--"

I began to see numbers black against that glowing panorama in the west.
A monstrous 14 repeated itself stubbornly along the gorgeous reach of
it.

"Yes, ma'am--fourteen; you can go out right now and count 'em yourself.
And like mebbe I'll have to go down to town to-morrow for some more of
that King of Pain Liniment, on account of Lazarus and Bryan getting good
and lamed in this same mix-up, and me letting fall the last bottle we
had on the place and busting her wide open--"

"Don't you bother to bust any more!" broke in his employer in a tone
that I found crisp with warning. "There's a whole new case of King of
Pain in the storeroom."

"Huh!" exclaimed the surgeon, ably conveying disappointment thereby.
"And like now if I did go down I could get the new parts for that there
mower--"

"That's something for me to worry about exclusively. I'll begin when we
got something to mow." There was finished coldness in this.

"Huh!" The primitive vocable now conveyed a lively resentment, but
there was the pleading of a patient sufferer in what followed. "And like
at the same time, having to make the trip anyway for these here supplies
and things, I could stop just a minute at Doc Martingale's and have this
old tooth of mine took out, that's been achin' like a knife stuck in me
fur the last fourteen--well, fur about a week now--achin' night and
day--no sleep at all now fur seven, eight nights; so painful I get
regular delirious, let me tell you. And, of course, all wore out the way
I am, I won't be any good on the place till my agony's relieved. Why,
what with me suffering so horrible, I just wouldn't hardly know my own
name sometimes if you was to come up and ask me!"

The woman's tone became more than ever repellent.

"Never you mind about not knowing your own name. I got it on the pay
roll, and it'll still be there to-morrow if you're helping Buck get out
the rest of them fence posts like I told you. If you happen to get stuck
for your name when I ain't round, and the inquiring parties won't wait,
just ask the Chinaman; he never forgets anything he's learned once. Or
I'll write it out on a card, so you can show it to anybody who rides up
and wants to know it in a hurry!"

"Huh!"

The powers of this brief utterance had not yet been exhausted. It now
conveyed despair. With bowed head the speaker dully turned and withdrew
from our presence. As he went I distinctly heard him mutter:

"Huh! Four-teen! Four-teen! And seven! And twenty-eight!"

"Say, there!" his callous employer called after him. "Why don't you get
Boogles to embroider that name of yours on the front of your shirt? He'd
adore to do it. And you can still read, can't you, in the midst of your
agonies?"

There was no response to this taunt. The suffering one faded slowly down
the path to the bunk house and was lost in its blackness. A light shone
out and presently came sombre chords from a guitar, followed by the
voice of Sandy in gloomy song: "There's a broken heart for every light
on Broadway--"

I was not a little pained to discover this unsuspected vein of cruelty
in a woman I had long admired. And the woman merely became irrelevant
with her apothegm about foreigners. I ignored it.

"What about that sufferer down there in the bunk house?" I demanded.
"Didn't you ever have toothache?"

"No; neither did Sandy Sawtelle. He ain't a sufferer; he's just a liar."

"Why?"

"So I'll let him go to town and play the number of them stitches on the
wheel. Sure! He'd run a horse to death getting there, make for the back
room of the Turf Club Saloon, where they run games whenever the town
ain't lidded too tight, and play roulette till either him or the game
had to close down. Yes, sir; he'd string his bets along on fourteen and
seven and twenty-eight and thirty-five, and if he didn't make a killing
he'd believe all his life that the wheel was crooked. Stitches in a
mule's hide is his bug. He could stitch up any horse on the place and
never have the least hunch; but let it be a mule--Say! Down there right
now he's thinking about the thousand dollars or so I'm keeping him out
of. I judge from his song that he'd figured on a trip East to New York
City or Denver. At that, I don't know as I blame him. Yes, sir; that's
what reminded me of foreigners and bazaars and vice, and so on--and poor
Egbert Floud."

My hostess drew about her impressive shoulders a blanket of Indian weave
that dulled the splendours of the western sky, and rolled a slender
cigarette from the tobacco and papers at her side. By the ensuing flame
of a match I saw that her eyes gleamed with the light of pure narration.

"Foreigners, bazaars, vice, and Egbert Floud?" I murmured, wishing these
to be related more plausibly one to another.

"I'm coming to it," said the lady; and, after two sustaining inhalations
from the new cigarette, forthwith she did:

* * * * *

It was late last winter, while I was still in Red Gap. The talk went
round that we'd ought to have another something for the Belgians. We'd
had a concert, the proceeds of which run up into two figures after all
expenses was paid; but it was felt something more could be
done--something in the nature of a bazaar, where all could get together.
The Mes-dames Henrietta Templeton Price and Judge Ballard were appointed
a committee to do some advance scouting.

That was where Egbert Floud come in, though after it was all over any
one could see that he was more to be pitied than censured. These
well-known leaders consulted him among others, and Cousin Egbert says
right off that, sure, he'll help 'em get up something if they'll agree
to spend a third of the loot for tobacco for the poor soldiers, because
a Belgian or any one else don't worry so much about going hungry if they
can have a smoke from time to time, and he's been reading about where
tobacco is sorely needed in the trenches. He felt strong about it,
because one time out on the trail he lost all his own and had to smoke
poplar bark or something for two weeks, nearly burning his flues out.

The two Mes-dames agreed to this, knowing from their menfolk that
tobacco is one of the great human needs, both in war and in peace, and
knowing that Cousin Egbert will be sure to donate handsomely himself, he
always having been the easiest mark in town; so they said they was much
obliged for his timely suggestion and would he think up some novel
feature for the bazaar; and he said he would if he could, and they went
on to other men of influence.

Henrietta's husband, when he heard the money wouldn't all be spent for
mere food, said he'd put up a choice lot in Price's Addition to be
raffled off--a lot that would at some future date be worth five thousand
dollars of anybody's money, and that was all right; and some of the
merchants come through liberal with articles of use and adornment to be
took chances on.

Even old Proctor Knapp, the richest man in town, actually give up
something after they pestered him for an hour. He owns the People's
Traction Company and he turned over a dollar's worth of street-car
tickets to be raffled for, though saying he regarded gambling as a very
objectionable and uncertain vice, and a person shouldn't go into
anything without being sure they was dead certain to make something out
of it, war or no war, he knowing all about it. Why wouldn't he, having
started life as a poor, ragged boy and working his way up to where
parties that know him is always very careful indeed when they do any
business with him?

Some of the ladies they consulted was hostile about the tobacco end of
it. Mrs. Tracy Bangs said that no victim of the weed could keep up his
mentality, and that she, for one, would rather see her Tracy lying in
his casket than smoking vile tobacco that would destroy his intellect
and make him a loathsome object in the home. She said she knew perfectly
well that if the countries at war had picked their soldiers from
non-smokers it would have been all over in just a few days--and didn't
that show you that the tobacco demon was as bad as the rum demon?

Mrs. Leonard Wales was not only bitter about tobacco but about any help
at all. She said our hard storms of that winter had been caused by the
general hatred in Europe which created evil waves of malignity; so let
'em shoot each other till they got sense enough to dwell together in
love and amity--only we shouldn't prolong the war by sending 'em soup
and cigarettes, and so on. Her idea seemed to be that if Red Gap would
just stand firm in the matter the war would die a natural death. Still,
if a bazaar was really going to be held, she would consent to pose in a
tableau if they insisted on it, and mebbe she could thus inject into the
evil atmosphere of Europe some of the peace and good will that sets the
United States apart from other nations.

Trust Cora Wales not to overlook a bet like that. She's a tall,
sandy-haired party, with very extravagant contours, and the thing she
loves best on earth is to get under a pasteboard crown, with gilt stars
on it, and drape herself in the flag of her country, with one fat arm
bare, while Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and the rest
is gathered about and looking up to her for protection. Mebbe she don't
look so bad as the Goddess of Liberty on a float in the middle of one of
our wide streets when the Chamber of Commerce is giving a Greater Red
Gap pageant; but take her in a hall, where you set close up to the
platform, and she looks more like our boasted liberty has degenerated
into license, or something like that. Anyway, the committee had to
promise her she could do something in her flag and crown and talcum
powder, because they knew she'd knock the show if they didn't.

This reminded 'em they had to have a program of entertainment; so they
got me on the committee with the other Mes-dames to think up things, me
always being an easy mark. I find out right off that we're a lot of
foreigners and you got to be darned careful not to hurt anybody's
feelings. Little Bertha Lehman's pa would let her be a state--Colorado
or Nebraska, or something--but he wouldn't let her sing unless it would
be a German song in the original; and Hobbs, the English baker, said his
Tillie would have to sing "Britannia Rules the Waves," or nothing; and
two or three others said what they would and wouldn't do, and it looked
like Red Gap itself was going to be dug up into trenches. I had to get
little Magnesia Waterman, daughter of the coons that work in the U.S.
Grill, to do the main singing. She seemed to be about the only American
child soprano we had. She sings right well for a kid, mostly these sad
songs about heaven; but we picked out a good live one for her that
seemed to be neutral.

It was delicate work, let me tell you, turning down folks that wanted to
sing patriotic songs or recite war poetry that would be sure to start
something, with Professor Gluckstein wishing to get up and tell how the
cowardly British had left the crew of a German submarine to perish after
shooting it up when it was only trying to sink their cruiser by fair
and lawful methods; and Henry Lehman wanting to read a piece from a
German newspaper about how the United States was a nation of vile
money-grubbers that would sell ammunition to the enemy just because they
had the ships to take it away, and wouldn't sell a dollar's worth to the
Fatherland, showing we had been bought up by British gold--and so on.

But I kept neutral. I even turned down an Englishman named Ruggles, that
keeps the U.S. Grill and is well thought of, though he swore that all he
would do was to get off a few comical riddles, and such. He'd just got a
new one that goes: "Why is an elephant like a corkscrew? Because there's
a 'b' in both." I didn't see it at first, till he explained with hearty
laughter--because there's a "b" in both--the word "both." See? Of course
there's no sense to it. He admitted there wasn't, but said it was a
jolly wheeze just the same. I might have took a chance with him, but he
went on to say that he'd sent this wheeze to the brave lads in the
trenches, along with a lot of cigars and tobacco, and had got about
fifty postcards from 'em saying it was the funniest thing they'd heard
since the war begun. And in a minute more he was explaining, with much
feeling, just what low-down nation it was that started the war--it not
being England, by any means--and I saw he wasn't to be trusted on his
feet.

So I smoothed him down till he promised to donate all the lemonade for
Aggie Tuttle, who was to be Rebekkah at the Well; and I smoothed Henry
Lehman till he said he'd let his folks come and buy chances on things,
even if the country was getting overrun by foreigners, with an Italian
barber shop just opened in the same block with his sanitary shaving
parlour; though--thank goodness--the Italian hadn't had much to do yet
but play on a mandolin. And I smoothed Professor Gluckstein down till he
agreed to furnish the music for us and let the war take care of itself.

The Prof's a good old scout when he ain't got his war bonnet on. He was
darned near crying into his meerschaum pipe with a carved fat lady on it
when I got through telling him about the poor soldiers in the wet and
cold without a thing to smoke. He says: "You're right, madam; with Jake
Frost in the trenches and no tobacco, all men should be brothers under
their hides." And I got that printed in the _Recorder_ for a slogan, and
other foreigners come into line; and things looked pretty good.

Also, I got Doc Sulloway, who happened to be in town, to promise he'd
come and tell some funny anecdotes. He ain't a regular doctor--he just
took it up; a guy with long black curls and a big moustache and a big
hat and diamond pin, that goes round selling Indian Snake Oil off a
wagon. Doc said he'd have his musician, Ed Bemis, come, too. He said Ed
was known far and wide as the world's challenge cornetist. I says all
right, if he'll play something neutral; and Doc says he'll play "Listen
to the Mocking Bird," with variations, and play it so swell you'll
think you're perched right up in the treetops listening to Nature's own
feathered songsters.

That about made up my show, including, of course, the Spanish dance by
Beryl Mae Macomber. Red Gap always expects that and Beryl Mae never
disappoints 'em--makes no difference what the occasion is. Mebbe it's an
Evening with Shakespeare, or the Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, or that
Oratorio by Elijah somebody, but Beryl Mae is right there with her
girlish young beauty and her tambourine. You see, I didn't want it a
long show--just enough to make the two-bits admission seem a little
short of robbery. Our real graft, of course, was to be where the young
society debutantes and heiresses in charge of the booths would wheedle
money out of the dazed throng for chances on the junk that would be
donated.

[Illustration: "ALL SUNNED UP LIKE A MAN THAT KNOWS THE WORLD IS HIS
OYSTER AND EVERY MONTH'S GOT AN 'R' IN IT"]

Well, about three days before the show I went up to Masonic Hall to see
about the stage decorations, and I was waiting while some one went down
to the Turf Exchange to get the key off Tim Mahoney, the janitor--Tim
had lately had to do janitor work for a B'nai B'rith lodge that was
holding meetings there, and it had made him gloomy and dissolute--and,
while I was waiting, who should come tripping along but Egbert Floud,
all sunned up like a man that knows the world is his oyster and every
month's got an "r" in it. Usually he's a kind of sad, meek coot, looking
neglected and put upon; but now he was actually giggling to himself
as he come up the stairs two at a time.

"Well, Old-Timer, what has took the droop out of your face?" I ask him.

"Why," he says, twinkling all over the place, "I'm aiming to keep it a
secret, but I don't mind hinting to an old friend that my part of the
evening's entertainment is going to be so good it'll make the whole show
top-heavy. Them ladies said they'd rely on me to think up something
novel, and I said I would if I could, and I did--that's all. I'd seen
enough of these shows where you ladies pike along with pincushions and
fancy lemonade and infants' wear--and mebbe a red plush chair, with gold
legs, that plays 'Alice, Where Art Thou?' when a person sets down on
it--with little girls speaking a few pieces about the flowers and lambs,
and so on, and cleaning up about eleven-twenty-nine on the evening's
revel--or it would be that, only you find you forgot to pay the Golden
Rule Cash Store for the red-and-blue bunting, and they're howling for
their money like a wild-cat. Yes, sir; that's been the way of it with
woman at the helium. I wouldn't wish to be a Belgian at all under
present circumstances; but if I did have to be one I'd hate to think my
regular meals was depending on any crooked work you ladies has done up
to date."

"You'd cheer me strangely," I says, "only I been a diligent reader of
history, and somehow I can't just recall your name being connected up
with any cataclysms of finance. I don't remember you ever starting one
of these here panics--or stopping one, for that matter. I did hear that
you'd had your pocket picked down to the San Francisco Fair."

I was prodding him along, understand, so he'd flare up and tell me what
his secret enterprise was that would make women's operations look silly
and feminine. I seen his eyes kind of glisten when I said this about him
being touched.

"That's right," he says. "Some lad nicked me for my roll and my return
ticket, and my gold watch and chain, and my horseshoe scarfpin with the
diamonds in it."

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