Book: Somewhere in Red Gap

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




"Then he told about learning to run a motor car all by himself, just to
please the mater. The first time he made the sharp turns round their
country house he took nine shingles off the corner and crumpled a fender
like it was tissue paper; but he stuck to it till he got the score down
to two or three shingles only. He seemed right proud of that, like it
was bogey for the course, as you might say. He wasn't the greatest
humourist in the world, being too high-minded, but he appealed to all my
better instincts; he was trying so hard to make the grade out of respect
for his bedizened and homicidal mother.

"And his poor sister, that come along later, was very much like him,
being severe of outline and wearing the same kind of spectacles, and not
fussing much about the fripperies of dress that engross so many of our
empty-headed sex and get 'em the notice of the male. Her complexion was
brutally honest, which was about all her very best-wishers could say for
it, but she was kind-hearted and earnest, and thought a good deal about
the real or inner meaning of life. What she really yearned for was to
stay in Boston and go to concerts, holding the music on her lap and
checking off the notes with a gold pencil when the fiddlers played them.
I watched her do it one night. I don't know what her notion was, keeping
cases on the orchestra that way; but it seemed to give her a secret
satisfaction. She was also interested in bird life and other studies of
a high character, and she didn't want to be made a companion of by her
rabid parent any more than brother did. They was just a couple of
lambkins born to a tiger.

"Pretty soon the ranch buildings was all complete and varnished and
polished, like you seen to-day, and the family moved in with all kinds
of uniformed servants that looked unhappy and desperate. They had a
pained butler in a dress suit that never once set foot outside the house
the whole five months they was here. He'd of been thought too gloomy for
good taste, even at a funeral. He had me nervous every time I went
there, thinking any minute he was going to break down and sob.

"And this lady loses no time making companions of her children that
didn't want to be. First she tried to make 'em chase steers on
horseback. A fact! That was one of her ideas of ranch life. When I asked
her what she was going to stock her ranch with she said didn't I have
some good heads of stock I could sell her? And I said yes, I had some
good heads, and showed her a bunch of my thoroughbreds, thinking none
but the best would satisfy her. She looked 'em over with a glittering
eye and said they was too fat to run well. I didn't get her. I said it
was true; I hadn't raised 'em for speed. I said I didn't have an animal
on the place that could hit better than three miles an hour, and not
that for long. I cheerfully admitted I didn't have a thoroughbred on
the place that wouldn't be a joke on any track in the country; but I
wanted to know what of it.

"'How do you get any sport out of them,' demands the lady, 'if they
can't give you a jolly good chase?'

"That's what she asked me in so many words. I says, does she aim to
breed racing cattle? And she says, where will the sport be with
creatures all out of condition with fat, like mine are? It took me about
ten minutes to get her idea, it was that heinous or criminal. When I did
get it I sent her to old Safety First; and what does she do but buy a
herd of twenty yearling steers from the old crook! Scrubby little runts
that had been raised out in the hills and was all bone and muscle, and
any one of 'em able to do a mile in four minutes flat, I guess.

"Old Safety was tickled to death at first when he put off this refuse on
her at a price not much more than double what they would have brought in
a tanyard, which was all they'd ever be good for except bone fertilizer,
mebbe; but he was sick unto death when he found they was just what she
wanted, the skinnier the better and he could have got anything he asked
for 'em. He says to me afterward why don't I train some of mine and trim
her good? But I told him I'm cinched for hell, anyway, and don't have to
make it tighter by torturing poor dumb brutes.

"That's what it amounted to. Having got Angora chaps and cowboy hats for
herself and offsprings, what do they do but get on ponies and chase
this herd all over creation, whirling their ropes, yelling, shooting in
the air--just like you see on any well-conducted ranch. Once in a while
the old lady herself, being a demon rider, would rope an animal and
fetch it down; but brother and sister was very careful not to tangle
their own ropes on anything. They didn't shoot their guns with any
proper spirit, either; and when they tried to yip like cowboys they
sounded like rabbits. And brother having to smoke brown-paper
cigarettes, which he hated like poison and had trouble in rolling!

"Mother could roll 'em, all right--do it with one hand. And she urged
sister to; but sister rebelled for once. The old lady admitted this was
due to a fault in her early training. It seems her grandmother had been
one of the old-fashioned sort; and, having studied the modern young
woman of society in Boston and New York, she'd promised sister a string
of pearls if she didn't either smoke or drink till her twenty-first
birthday. Sister had not only won the pearls but had come on to
twenty-eight without being like other young girls of the day, and wasn't
going to begin now. So ma and brother had to do all the smoking.

"After a fine morning's run following the steers they'd like as not have
a little branding in the afternoon, the old-fashioned kind that ain't
done in the higher ranch circles any more, where a couple of silly
punchers rope an animal fore and aft and throw it, thereby setting it
back at least four months in its growth. The old lady was puzzled again
by me having my branding done in a chute, where the poor things ain't
worried more than is necessary. I bet she thought I was a short sport,
not doing a thing on my place that would look well in a moving picture.
She got a lot of ripping sport out of this branding. Made no difference
if they was already branded, they got it again; she'd brand 'em over and
over. Two or three of that herd got it so often that they looked like
these leather suitcases parties bring back from Europe stuck all over
with hotel labels.

"Well, this branch of sport lasted quite a while, with them steers
developing speed every day till they got too fast for any one but the
old lady. Brother and sister would be left far behind, or mebbe get
stacked up and discouraged or sprained for the day. The old dame said it
was disheartening, indeed, trying to make companions of one's children
when they showed such a low order of intelligence for it. Still, she was
fair-minded; so she had a golf links made, and put 'em at that. She
wouldn't play herself, saying it was an effeminate game, good for fat
old men or schoolboys, but mebbe her chits would benefit by it and get a
taste for proper sports, where you can break a bone now and then by not
using care.

"But golf wasn't much better. Sister would carry a book of poetry with
her and read it as she loafed from one hit to another. The old lady near
shed tears at the sight. And brother was about as bad, getting
hypnotized by passing insect life and forgetting his score while
prodding some new kind of bug.

"The old lady said I'd never believe what a care and responsibility
children was. She had wanted 'em to go in for ranching and be awfully
keen about it, and look how they acted! Still, she wouldn't give up. She
suggested polo next; but sister said it wasn't a lady's game, making no
demand upon the higher attributes of womanhood, and brother said he
might go in for it if she'd let him play his on a bicycle, as being more
reliable or stauncher than a pony.

"So she throws up her hands in despair, but thinks hard again; and at
last she says she has the right sport for 'em and why didn't she think
of it before! This new idea is to bring up her pack of prize-winning
beagles, the sport being full of excitement, and yet safe enough for all
concerned if they'll look where they walk and not stop to read slushy
poems or collect insect life. Sister and brother said beagles, by all
means, like drowning sailors clutching at a straw or something; and the
old lady sent off a telegram.

"I admit I didn't know what kind of a game beagles was, but I didn't
betray the fact when she told me about it. I was over to Egbert Floud's
place next day and I asked him. But he didn't know and he couldn't even
get the name right. He says: 'You mean beetles.' I says, 'Not at all';
that it's beagles. Then he says I must of got the name twisted, and
probably it's one of these curly horns. That's as close as he ever did
come to the name; and until he actually saw the things he insisted they
was either something to blow on or something that crawled. 'Mark my
words,' he says,'they're either a horn or a bug; and I wonder what this
here blond guy will be doing next.' So I saw nothing sensible was to be
had out of him, and I left him there, doddering.

"Then in about ten days, which was days of peace for brother and sister,
because they didn't have to go in keenly for any new way of killing
themselves off, what comes up but several crates of beagles, in charge
of their valet or tutor! I'd looked forward to something of a thrilling
or unknown character, and they turned out to be mere dogs; just little
brown-and-white dogs that you wouldn't notice if you hadn't been excited
by their names; kind of yapping mutts that some parties would poison off
if they lived in the same neighbourhood with 'em. They all had names
like Rex II and Lady Blessington, and so on; and each one had cost more
than any three steers I had on the place. What do you think of that?
They was yapping in their kennels when I first seen 'em, with the old
lady as excited as they was, and brother and sister trying to look
excited in order to please mother, and at least looking relieved because
no fatalities was in immediate prospect.

"I listened to the noise a while and acted nice by saying they was
undoubtedly the very finest beagles I'd ever laid eyes on--which was the
simple God's truth; and then I says won't she take one out of the cage
and let him beagle some, me not having any idea what it would be like?
But the old lady says not yet, because the costumes ain't come. I
thought at first it was the pups that had to be dressed up, but it seems
it was costumes for her and brother and sister to wear; so I asked a few
more silly questions and found out the mystery. It seemed the secret of
a beagle's existence was rabbits. Yes, sir; they was mad about rabbits
and went in keenly for 'em. Only they wouldn't notice one, I gathered,
if the parties that followed 'em wasn't dressed proper for it.

"Then we went in where we could hear each other without screaming, and
the lady tells me more about it, and how beagles is her last hope of her
chits ever amounting to anything in the great world of sport. If they
don't go in keenly for beagles she'll just have to give up and let
Nature take its course with the poor things. And she said these was
A-Number-One beagles, being sure to get a rabbit if one was in the
country. She'd just had 'em at a big fashionable country resort down
South, some place where the sport attracted much notice from the
simple-minded peasantry, and it hadn't been a good country for rabbits;
so the beagles had trooped into a backyard and destroyed a Belgian hare
that had belonged to a little boy, whose father come out and swore at
the costumed hunters in a very common manner, and offered to lick any
three of 'em at once.

"And in hurrying acrost a field to get away from this rowdy, that
seemed liable to forget himself and do something they'd all regret
later, they was put up a tree by a bull that was sensitive about
costumes, and had to stay there two hours, with the bull trying to grub
up the tree, and would of done so if his owner hadn't come along and
rescued 'em.

"She made it sound like an exciting sport, all right, yet nothing I
thought I'd ever go in keenly for. It didn't seem like anything I'd get
up in the night to indulge myself in. And I agreed with her that if her
chits found beagling too adventurous, then all hope was gone and she
might as well let 'em die peacefully in their beds.

"Two days later the costumes come along and I was kindly sent word to
show up the next morning if I wanted to see some ripping sport that I'd
be quite mad about and go in for keenly, and all that sort of thing, by
Jove! Of course I go over, on account of this dame's atrocities never
yet having failed to interest me, and I didn't think she'd fall down
now. I felt strangely out of it, though, when I seen the costumes. Ma
and sister had, from the top down, black velvet jockey caps; green
velvet coats with gold buttons; white pique skirts, coming to the knee;
black silk stockings; and neat black shoes with white spats. Brother had
been abused the same, barring the white skirt, which left him looking
like something out of a collection called The Dolls of All Nations.

"I saw right off that all these clothes must be necessary--they looked
so careful and expensive. Yes, Sir; that lady would no more of went out
beagling without being draped for it than she'd of gone steer hunting
without a vanity-box lashed to her saddle horn.

"I sort of hung back with the awe-stricken help when the start was made.
They was all out in front except the butler, who lurked in the entry
looking like he'd passed a night of grief at the new-made grave of his
mother.

"The beagles surged all over the place the minute they was let loose,
and then made for down in the willows below the house. And, sure enough,
they started a cottontail down there and went in for him keenly,
followed by ma and brother and sister. Brother started to yell 'Yoicks!
Yoicks!' But ma shut him off with a good deal of severity that caused
him to blush at his words. It seems Yoicks is a cry you give at some
other critical juncture in life. When beagles start you must yell 'Gone
away!' in a clear, ringing voice. Brother meant well, but didn't know.

"Anyhow, they followed those pups, and I trailed along at a decent
distance on my horse; and pretty soon they got the rabbit which had been
fool enough to come round in a wide circle back to where it started
from. Say! It was mere child's play for that plucky little band of nine
dogs to clean up that rabbit. They never had a minute's fear of it and
the rabbit didn't have the least chance of winning the fight, not at
any stage. Yes, sir! any time you see nine beagles setting on a tuckered
rabbit--I don't care how wild he is--you'll know how to put your money
down.

"I never did see a rabbit put up a worse fight than that one did. I rode
up to its fragments, and the old lady was saying how ripping it was and
calling sister a mollycoddle, because here was sister crying like a baby
over the rabbit's fate--a rabbit she'd never set eyes on before in her
life. Brother didn't look like he had gone in keenly for the sport,
either. He was kind of green and yellow, like one of these parties on
shipboard about the time he's saying he don't feel the boat's motion the
least bit; and, anyway, he's got a sure-fire remedy for it if anything
does happen. I just kind of stood around, neutral and revolted.

"Pretty soon the pack beagles off again with glad cries; and this time,
up on the hillside, what do they start but a little spike buck that has
been down to a salt lick on the creek flat! They wasn't any more afraid
of him than they had been of the rabbit and started to chase him out of
the country. Of course they didn't do well after they got him
interested. The last I saw of the race he was making 'em look like they
was in reverse gear and backing up full speed. Anyway, that seemed to
end the sport for the day, because the dogs and the buck must of been
over near the county line in ten minutes. The old lady was mad and
blamed it on the valet, who come up and had to take as sweet a roasting
as you ever heard a man get from a lady word painter. It seems he'd
ought to have taught 'em to ignore deer.

"Then I lied like a lady and said it was a ripping sport that I would
sure go in keenly for if I had time; and we all went back to the house
and sat down to what they called a hunt breakfast. Ma said at last her
chits could hold up their heads in the world of sport and not be a
reproach to her training. The chits looked very thoughtful, indeed.
Sister still had red eyes and couldn't eat a mouthful of hunt breakfast,
and brother just toyed with little dabs of it.

"Next day I learned the pack didn't get back till late that evening,
straggling in one by one, and the valet having to go out and look for
the last two with a lantern. Also, these last two had been treated
brutally by some denizen of the wildwood. Rex II had darn near lost his
eyesight and Lady Blessington was clawed something scandalous. Brother
said mebbe a rabbit mad with hydrophobia had turned on 'em. He said it
in hopeful tones, and sister cheered right up and said if these two had
it they would give it to the rest of the pack, and shouldn't they all be
shot at once?

"Mother said what jolly nonsense; that they'd merely been scratched by
thorns. I thought, myself, that mebbe they'd gone out of their class and
tackled a jack rabbit; but I didn't say it, seeing that the owner was
sensitive. Afterward she showed me a lot of silver things her pets had
won--eye-cups and custard dishes, and coffee urns and things, about a
dozen, with their names engraved on 'em. She said it was very annoying
to have 'em take after deer that way. What she wanted 'em to do was to
butcher rabbits where parties in the right garments could stand and look
on.

"Next day they tried again; and one fool rabbit was soon gone in for
keenly to the renewed sound of sister's bitter sobs, and brother looking
like he'd been in jail two years--no colour left at all in his face. But
pretty soon the pack took up the scent of a deer again, and that was the
end of another day's sport. Brother and sister looked glad and resumed
their peaceful sports. He hunted butterflies with a net, and she set
down and looked at birds through an opera glass and wrote down things
about their personal appearance in a notebook. The old lady changed to
her cowboy suit and went out and roped three steers--just to work her
mad off, I guess.

"Well, this time the beagles not only limped in at a shocking hour of
the night but three of the others had had their beauty marred by a demon
rabbit or something. They had been licked very thoroughly, indeed; and
the old lady now said it must be a grizzly bear, and brother and sister
beamed on her and said: 'What a shame!' And would they hunt again next
day? For the first time they seemed quite mad about the sport. Mother
said they better wait till she went out and shot the grizzly, but I told
her we hadn't had any grizzlies round here for years; so she said, all
right, they could lick anything less than a grizzly. And they beagled
again next day, with terrible and inspiring results, not only to Rex II
and Lady Blessington again, but to two of the others that hadn't been
touched before.

"This left only two of the pack that hadn't been horribly abused by some
unknown varmint; so a halt had to be called for three days while Red
Cross work was done. Brother and sister tried to look regretful and
complained about this break in the ripping sport; but their manner was
artificial. They spent the time riding peacefully round up in the canon,
pretending to look for the wild creature that had chewed their little
pets. They come back one day and cheered their mother a whole lot by
telling her the pack had been over the pass as far as the house of a
worthy rancher, Mr. Floud by name. They said Mr. Floud didn't believe
there was any bears round, and further said he greatly admired the
beagles, even though at first they seriously annoyed his pet kitten.

"The old lady said this was ripping of Mr. Floud, to take it in such a
sporting way, because many people in the past had tried to make all
sorts of nasty rows when her pets had happened to kill their kittens.
Brother said, yes; Mr. Floud took the whole thing in a true sporting
way, and he hoped the pack would soon be well enough to hunt again.
Right then I detected falsity in his manner; I couldn't make out what
it was, but I knew he was putting something over on mother.

"Two days later the dogs was fit again, and another gay hunt was had,
with a rabbit to the good in the first twenty minutes, and then the
usual break, when they struck a deer scent. Brother said he'd follow on
his horse this time and try to get whatever was bothering 'em. He
didn't. He said he lost 'em. They crawled back at night, well chewed;
and mother was now frantic.

"There had to be another three days in bed for the cunning little
murderers, after which brother and sister both went out with 'em on
horseback, with the same mysterious results--except that Rex II didn't
get in till next day and looked like he'd come through a feed chopper.
For the next hunt, four days after that, the old lady went, too, all of
'em on horseback; but the same slinking marauder got at the pack before
they could come up with it, and two of 'em had to be brought back in
arms. They all stopped here on the way home to tell about the mystery.
Brother and sister was very cheerful and mad about the sport, but their
manner was falser than ever. Mother says the pack is being ruined, and
she wouldn't continue the sport, except it has roused the first gleam of
interest her chits has ever showed in anything worth while. I caught the
chits looking at each other in a guilty manner when she says this, and
my curiosity wakes up. I says next time they go out I will be pleased to
go with 'em; and the old lady thanks me and says mebbe I can solve this
reprehensible mystery.

"In another three days they come by for me. The beagles was looking an
awful lot different from what I had first seen 'em. They was not only
beautifully scarred but they acted kind of timid and reproachful, and
their yapping had a note of caution in it that I hadn't noticed before.
So I got on my pony and went along to help probe the crime. We worked up
the canon trail and over the pass, with the pack staying meekly behind
most of the time. Just the other side of the pass they actually got a
rabbit, though not working with their old-time recklessness, I thought.
Of course we had to stop and watch this. Brother looked the other way
and sister just set there biting her lips, with an evil gleam in her
pale-blue eyes. Not a beagle in the pack would have trusted himself
alone with her at that minute if he'd known his business.

"Then we rode on down toward Cousin Egbert's shack, with nothing further
happening and the pups staying back in a highly conservative manner.
Brother says that yonder is the Mr. Floud's place he had spoken of, and
ma wants to know if he, too, goes in for ranching, and I says yes, he's
awfully keen about it; so she says we'll ride over and chat with him and
perhaps he can suggest some solution of the mystery in hand. I said all
right, and we ride up.

"Cousin Egbert is tipped back in a chair outside the door, reading a
Sunday paper. Whenever he gets one up here he always reads it clean
through, from murders to want ads. And he'd got into this about as far
as the beauty hints and secrets of the toilet. Well, he was very polite
and awkward, and asked us into his dinky little shack; and the old lady
says she hears he is quite mad about ranching, and he says, Oh,
yes--only it don't help matters any to get mad; and he finds a chair for
her, and the rest of us set on stools and the bed; and just then she
notices that the beagle pack has halted about thirty feet from the door,
and some of 'em is milling and acting like they think of starting for
home at once.

"So out she goes and orders the little pets up. They didn't want to come
one bit; it seemed like they was afraid of something, but they was well
disciplined and they finally crawled forward, looking like they didn't
know what minute something cruel might happen.

"The old lady petted 'em and made 'em lie down, and asked Cousin Egbert
if he'd ever seen better ones, or even as good; and he said No, ma'am;
they was sure fine beetles. Then she begun to tell him about some wild
animal that had been attacking 'em, a grizzly, or mebbe a mountain lion,
with cubs; and he is saying in a very false manner that he can't think
what would want to harm such playful little pets, and so on. All this
time the pets is in fine attitudes of watchful waiting, and I'm just
beginning to suspect a certain possibility when it actually happens.

"There was an open window high up in the log wall acrost from the door,
and old Kate jumps up onto the sill from the outside. He was one fierce
object, let me tell you; weighing about thirty pounds, all muscle, with
one ear gone, and an eye missing that a porcupine quill got into, and a
lot of fresh new battle scars. We all got a good look at him while he
crouched there for a second, purring like a twelve-cylinder car and
twitching his whiskers at us in a lazy way, like he wanted to have folks
make a fuss over him. And then, all at once, catching sight of the dogs,
he changed to a demon; his back up, his whiskers in a stiff tremble, and
his half of a tail grown double in girth.

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