We Spend a Couple of Days at a Michigan Man’s Ranch in Darkest
Africa—Pa and the Cowboys Take a Bath—After Smoking about 50
Cigars—Pa Told What Cowards Lions and Tigers Were—Pa Walked up
to a Lion and Gave Him a Cut with a Whip.
We have spent a comple of days at the Michigan man’s ranch in Darkest
Africa, where he has brought civilization right into the Jungle, and
after spending six months with negro savages and wild animals, and
menagerie people, it has been the most enjoyable two days I ever knew.
It is good sometimes to see ourselves as others see us, and not having
looked into a mirror for half a year, we found that we were about the
most disreputable looking tourists that ever came in sight of beds with
linen sheets on, and pillows.
I noticed that the family of the Michigan man and the servants looked at
us with suspicion, and turned up their noses at us, but I never realized
what it was all about until they showed us to our rooms that night, when
I saw myself in a mirror, and found that my face and hands were black
with dirt and smoke, my clothes were greasy and patched with buckskin
patches, sewed on with strips of rawhide, and my torn coat was pinned
together with thorns. I could see Pa and the cowboy all the time, and
knew that they looked like tramps, but I thought I was all right.
The Michigan man showed us to our rooms, after Pa and the cowboy had
drank a few quarts of highballs, and they were going to go to bed with
their clothes on, but I knew they would ruin the beds if they did, so I
insisted that we all get in the bath tubs and take our semi-annual bath,
and as the man left us he said we could find clothes to put on in the
morning, in a closet, and to leave our clothes out in the hall and he
would have a servant take them away with the tongs and burn them in the
furnace.
That sobered Pa and the cowboy a little, and they decided to try the
baths.
Well, we didn’t do a thing to the running water, and before we retired
we had washed ourselves so clean, with real soap, the first we had seen
since we left Germany, that Pa and the cowboy had to be introduced to
each other, and I was so clean that I didn’t know myself, and we put on
pajamas that we found in the room, and crawled into the clean beds and
slept till morning, after putting all of our clothes out of the room, to
purify the air.
In the morning we dressed up in the clothes the Michigan man told us we
would find in the closet, and such a transformation was never seen
before.
Pa found a pair of gray pants and a frock coat, and a silk hat, and when
he was dressed and had on a white shirt he looked like a senator from
South Carolina.
The cowboy found a golf suit, with short pants, long socks, and putty
leggins, and a Tam o’ Shanter cap, and he looked like an escaped
Scotchman, while I found a Buster Brown suit that fit me, and all I
wanted was a dog to be complete, and we went down to breakfast, and made
a hit, the family acting as though they were proud to have us in their
midst.
During breakfast they all drew Pa out, and he told them of his
experiences capturing wild animals in Africa, and exploring the country,
and being made king of a tribe, and they called Pa “Your Highness,” and
Pa lied enough about his adventures to send him over the road for
disorderly conduct.
The women drew out the cowboy, and he lied some on his own account, and
the children got me to going, and you know how it is with me when I get
to going.
When the breakfast was over we were all heroes, and Pa pulled out a
handful of uncut diamonds and spread them on the table by his plate, and
gave each one a diamond as big as a hickory nut, and left a lot of
smaller ones on the table with the bread crumbs for the servants, and
when we left the table the whole family bowed low to us, and stood back
until the king and the cowboy and I had passed out on to the veranda.
Gee, but they seemed to think King Edward wouldn’t be ace high to Pa,
and Pa swelled up so I thought he might bust.
[Illustration: Pa Swelled Up So I Thought He Might Bust.]
After smoking some fifty cigars, Pa told of what cowards lions and
tigers were, and how he could take a riding whip and chase a lion up a
tree, and the Michigan man proposed to have an exhibit of his wild
animals, which he kept in his private forest outside of the clearing. He
had a race track in the clearing next to the forest, and told Pa that
every morning his herders turned a lot of lions, giraffes, rhinoceroses
and zebras into the track, and the family chased them around the track
in automobiles, and Pa said he would like to enter into such a race, and
the man ordered the herders to turn in the animals.
The cowboy wanted a saddle horse and a lariat rope, and they fixed him
out, and when the herders announced that the animals were on the track
all right, we got into the waiting autos, the man and Pa lit cigars and
sat on the front seat with the chauffeur, and some of us got in the back
seats and started out.
When the animals saw us coming they started down the home stretch, and
the auto gave chase, and we yelled and fired guns in the air, and the
chauffeur put a charge of bird shot into the hind hams of a lion that
didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry, and the lion turned on us, and Pa
told the chauffeur to stop and he would settle with the lion.
Pa got out with a horse whip and started for the lion, which gave a roar
like distant thunder, and as I looked at Pa with the frock coat and silk
hat, walking towards the lion I thought that was the last of Pa, and
begged him to come back, but he said, “Never you mind me, I have seen
lions before,” and Pa walked up to the lion and gave him a cut with the
whip, and yelled, “Get back into the jungle, you Tom Cat.”
Well, really, that lion ought to have turned and put his tail between
his legs and galloped for the woods, but Pa had made a mistake in his
lion, for the animal went up to Pa and took a mouthful of his pants, and
shook him like a dog would shake a rat, and Pa yelled for them to take
away their lion if they didn’t want the animal injured.
The animal rolled Pa over on the ground in the dust, chewed his silk
hat, and Pa got loose and made a rush for the auto and crawled under it
to fix something, and just then the cowboy came along on a pony and
threw his lariat over the lion’s head and pulled him away across the
track, and Pa came out from under the machine and took a big
monkey-wrench and started again for the lion, bareheaded, and so mad he
fairly frothed at the mouth, after he saw the lion was choked nearly to
death, and then Pa mauled the apparently dead lion until the cowboy
dismounted from the pony and gave his lariat rope back.
Pa gave the lion a couple of kicks, and got back into the auto, and the
Michigan man patted him on the back and said, “Old man, you are a king
of beasts, sure enough;” and Pa said, “O, I don’t know; I never did like
a cowardly lion, no how.”
We chased some more animals around the track, and the Michigan man said
he hoped the toothless old lion would not die, as he was saving him for
Roosevelt to practice on when he came to the ranch after the 4th of
March.
The cowboy went across the field where a tame giraffe was grazing in a
tree top, and took the saddle off his pony and put it on the giraffe,
and we run up to where he was, and the Michigan man asked him what he
was going to do, and he said he was going to ride the giraffe, as he had
ridden almost everything that walked on four legs except a giraffe.
The Michigan man told him he had better leave the giraffe out of his
repertoire, because a giraffe was mighty uncertain, but the cowboy got
the saddle on, and climbed into it, and then the trouble began.
The giraffe didn’t have any bridle on, and no mane to hold on to, and he
was built so that the saddle slipped down by his rump, and when the
animal turned around and saw he had the cowboy where he wanted him, he
started off towards the forest on a hop, skip and a jump, kicking up his
heels like a bucking broncho, and the last we saw of the expedition the
giraffe had jumped over a wire fence and took to the woods, with the
cowboy dangling by one stirrup, swearing in the Wyoming dialect.
[Illustration: The Giraffe Didn’t Have Any Bridle On—and No Mane to Hold
On To.]
Then we went back to the house to play golf, and the Michigan man sent
some servants into the woods with a strecher to bring in the remains of
the cowboy.
As we dismounted at the veranda, Pa lit a cigarette and said to the man,
“You certainly have all the comforts of a home here, and all the
facilities for enjoyment that anybody has outside of a traveling
menagerie, except draw poker.”
“We can fix you all right on the draw poker,” said the Michigan man.
“Boy, bring the chips and the cards, and let me know when they find the
remains of Mr. Cowboy,” and they began to play poker, and I went out to
see them milk a Jersey cow.
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