NOMADS
"Johnny!" said Diane in crisp, distinct tones, "Mr. Poynter has slept
long enough. You'd better call him."
Now it is a regrettable fact that ordinarily this attack would have
provoked a reply of mild impudence from Mr. Poynter's tent, but this
morning a surprising silence lay behind the flapping canvas. Diane
began to hum. When presently investigation proved that Mr. Poynter's
tent was in exemplary order--that Mr. Poynter and his mended shirt were
missing--she went on humming--but to Johnny's amazement, burned her
fingers on the coffeepot; sharply reproved Johnny for staring, and then
curtly suggested that he prepare to break camp that morning, as it was
high time they were on the road.
"As for Mr. Philip Poynter," reflected Diane with delicate disdain, as
she bent over the fire and rolled some baked potatoes away with a
stick, "what can one expect? Men are exceedingly peculiar and
inconsistent and impudent. I haven't the ghost of a doubt that he
found that ridiculous shirt and went off in a huff. And I'm very glad
he did--very glad indeed. I meant he should, though I didn't suppose
with his unconscionable nerve it would bother him in the least. If a
man's sufficiently erratic to blow a tin whistle all the way to
Florida--as Philip certainly is--and maroon himself on somebody else's
lake for fear he'd miss an acquaintance, he'd very likely fly into a
rage when one least expected it and go tramping off in the night. I do
dislike people who fall into huffs about nothing."
Diane burned her fingers again, felt that the fire was unnecessarily
hot upon her face, and indignantly resigning the preparation of
breakfast to Johnny, went fishing.
"He should have gone long ago," mused Diane, flinging her line with
considerable force into the river. "It's a great mercy as it is that
Aunt Agatha didn't appear and weep all over the camp about him. I'm
sorry I mended the shirt. Not but that I was fortunate to find
something that would make him go, but a shirt's such a childish thing
to fuss about. And, anyway, I preferred him to leave in a friendly,
conventional sort of way!"
There are times, alas, when even fish are perverse! Thoroughly out of
patience, Diane presently unjointed her rod, emptied the can of worms
upon the bank, and returned to camp, where she found Johnny
industriously piling up a heap of litter.
"What are you going to do with these?" demanded Diane, indicating an
eccentric woodland broom and a rake of forked twigs and twine. "Throw
them out?"
Johnny nodded.
"Well, I guess you're not!" sniffed Diane indignantly. "They're mighty
convenient. That rake is really clever."
Johnny's round eyes showed his astonishment. He had heard his perverse
young mistress malign these inventions of Philip's most cruelly.
Then what a woodland commotion arose after breakfast! What a cautious
stamping out of fire and razing of tents! What a startled flutter of
birds above and bugs below! What an excited barking on the part of
Rex, who after loafing industriously for a week or so, felt called upon
to sprint about and assist his mistress with a dirt-brown nose! What a
trampling of horses and a creaking of wheels as the great green wagon
wound slowly through the shadowy forest road and took to the open
highway with Rex at His mistress's feet haughtily inspecting the
wayside.
And what a wayside, to be sure! Past fields of young rye from which a
lazy silver smoke seemed to rise and follow the wind-billowing grain;
past fields of dark red clover rife with the whir and clatter of mowing
machines as the farmers felled the velvety stalks for clover hay; past
snug white farmhouses where perfumed peonies drooped sleepily over
brick walks; on over a rustic bridge, skirting now a tiny village whose
church spire loomed above the trees; now following a road which lay
rough and deeply rutted, among golden fields of buttercups fringed with
bunch grass.
Farmers waved and called; housewives looked and disapproved; children
stared and jealous canines pettishly barked at the haughty Rex; but
Johnny only chuckled and cracked his whip. Day by day the green and
white caravan rumbled serenely on, camping by night in field and forest.
A country world of peace and sunshine--of droning bees and the nameless
fragrance of summer fields it was! And the struggling nomads of the
dusty road! Diane felt a kindred thrill of interest in each one of
them. Now a Syrian peddler woman, squat and swarthy, bending heavily
beneath her pack amid a flurry of dust from the sun-baked roads her
feet had wearily padded for days; now a sleepy negro on a load of hay,
an organ grinder with a chattering monkey or a clumsy bear, another
sleepy negro with another load of hay, and a picturesque minstrel with
an elaborate musical contrivance drawn by a horse. Now a capering
Italian with a bagpipe, who danced grotesquely to his own piping, and
piped the pennies out of rural pockets as if they had been so many
copper rats from Hamelin!
Peddlers and tramps and agents, country drummers and country circuses,
medicine men who shouted the versatile merits of corn salve by the
light of flaring torches, eccentric orators of eccentric theology,
tent-shows of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," with real bloodhounds and unreal
painted ice, gypsies who were always expected to steal some one's
children and never did, peddlers with creaking, clinking wagons,
hucksters and motorcyclists, motorists and dusty hikers--one by one in
the days to come Diane was to meet them all and learn that the nomads
of the summer road were a happy-go-lucky guild of peculiar and
coöperative good humor.
But the girl herself was a truer nomad than many to whom with warm
friendliness she nodded and spoke.
Late one afternoon Diane espied a woodland brook. Shot with gold and
shadow, it laughed along, under a waving canopy of green, freckled with
cool, clean pebbles and hiding roguishly now and then beneath a
trailing branch. A brook was a luxury. It was mirror and spring and
lullaby in one.
By six the tents of the nomad were pitched by the forest brook and the
nomad herself was smoothing back her ruffled hair over a crystalline
mirror.
A drowsy negro on a load of hay drove by on the road beyond.
Diane studied him with critical interest.
"Johnny," she said, "just why are there so many drowsy negroes about
driving loads of hay? Or is that the same one? And if it is, where
under Heaven has he been driving that hay for the last three days?"
Johnny didn't know. Wherefore he pursed his lips and shook his head.
The hay wagon turned on into the forest on the farther side of the road
and halted. The drowsy negro leisurely alighted and shuffled through
the trees until he stood before Diane with a square of birch bark in
his hand. Greatly astonished--for this negro was apparently too lazy
to talk when he deemed it unnecessary--Diane took the birch bark and
inspected it in mystification. A most amazing message was duly
inscribed thereon.
"Erastus has acquired a sinewy chicken from somebody's barn yard," it
read. "Why not bring your own plate, knife, fork, spoon and a good saw
over to my hay-camp and dine with me?
"Philip."
Diane stared with rising color at the load of hay. From its ragged,
fragrant bed, a tall, lean young man with a burned skin, was rising and
lazily urging a nondescript yellow dog to do the same. The dog
conceivably demurred, for Philip removed him, yelping, by the simple
process of seizing him by the loose skin at the back of his neck and
dropping him overboard. Having brushed his clothes, the young man
came, with smiling composure, through the forest, the yellow dog
waggling at his heels.
"I've read so much about breaking the news gently," apologized Philip,
smiling, "that I thought I'd better try a bit of it myself. Hence the
sylvan note. Ras, if you go to sleep by that tree, I'll like as not
let you sleep there until you die. Go back to camp and build a fire
and hollow out the feathered biped."
Ras slouched obediently off toward the hay-camp.
"You've hay in your ears!" exclaimed Diane, biting her lips.
"I'm a nomad!" announced Philip calmly. "So's Erastus--so's Dick
Whittington here. I'm likely to have hay in my ears for months to
come. Dick Whittington," explained Philip, patting the dog, "is a
mustard-colored orphan I picked up a couple of days ago. He'd made a
vow to gyrate steadily in a whirlwind of dust after a hermit flea who
lived on the end of his tail, until somebody adopted him and--er--cut
off the grasping hermit. I fell for him, but, like Ras, a sleep bug
seems to have bitten him."
"Most likely he unwinds in his sleep," suggested Diane politely. And
added, acidly, "Where are you going?'
"Florida!" said Philip amiably.
The girl stared at him with dark, accusing eyes.
"The trip is really no safer now," reminded Philip steadily, "than it
was when I left camp."
"In a huff!" flashed Diane disparagingly.
"In a huff," admitted Philip and dismissed the dangerous topic with a
philosophic shrug.
"I won't have you trailing after me on a hay-wagon!" exclaimed Diane in
honest indignation.
"Hum! Just how," begged Philip, "does one go about effecting a
national ordinance to keep hay-carts off the highway?"
As Philip betokened an immediate desire to name over certain rights
with which he was vested as a citizen of the United States, Diane was
more than willing to change the subject. Persistence was the keynote
of Mr. Poynter's existence.
"Johnny," begged Philip, "get Miss Diane some chicken implements, will
you, old man? And lend me some salt. You see," he added easily to
Diane, "Ras and I are personally responsible for an individual and very
concentrated grub equipment. It saves a deal of fussing. I carry mine
in my pocket and Ras carries his in his hat, but he wears a roomier
tile than I do and never climbs out of it even when he sleeps. Thank
you, Johnny. I'll send Ras over with your supper. But if it seems to
be getting late, look him up. He may fall asleep."
After repeated indignant refusals which Mr. Poynter characteristically
splintered, Diane, intensely curious, went with Mr. Poynter to the
hay-camp for supper.
Now although the somnolent Ras had been shuffling drowsily about a
fresh fire with no apparent aim, he presently contrived to produce a
roasted chicken, fresh cucumbers, some caviare and rolls, coffee and
cheese and a small freezer of ice cream, all of which he appeared to
take at intervals from under the seat of the hay-cart.
"Ice cream and caviare!" exclaimed the girl aghast. "That's treason."
"I've my own notions of camping," admitted Philip, "and really our way
is exceedingly simple and comfortable. Ras loads up the seat pantry at
the nearest village and then we cast off all unnecessary ballast every
morning. Of course we couldn't very well camp twice in the same
place--we decorate so heavily--but that's a negligible factor. Oh,
yes," added Philip smiling, "we've blazed our trail with buns and
cheese for miles back. Ras thinks whole processions of birds and dogs
and tramps and chickens are already following us. If it's true, we'll
most likely eat some of 'em."
"Where," demanded Diane hopelessly, "did you get this ridiculous
outfit?"
"Well," explained Philip comfortably, "Ras was drowsing by Sherrill's
on a load of hay and I bought the cart and the hay and the horses and
Ras at a bargain and set out. Ras is a free lance without an
encumbrance on earth and I can't imagine a more comfortable manner of
getting about than stretched out full length on a load of hay. You can
always sleep when you feel like it. And every morning we peel the
bed--that is, we dispense with a layer of mattress and _presto_! I
have a fresh bed until the hay's gone. We bought a new load this
morning."
Swept by an irresistible spasm of laughter, Diane stared wildly about
the hay-camp.
"And Ras?" she begged faintly.
"Well," said Philip slowly, "Ras is peculiarly gifted. He can sleep
anywhere. Sometimes he sleeps stretched out on the padded seat of the
wagon, and sometimes he sleeps under it--the wagon I mean; not in the
pantry. And then of course he sleeps all day while he's driving and
once or twice I've found him in a tree. I don't like him to do that,"
he added with gravity, "for he's so full of hay I'm afraid the birds
will begin to make nests in his ears and pockets."
"Mistah Poynteh," reflected Ras, scratching his head through his hat,
"is a lunatict. He gits notions. I cain't nohow understan' him but
s'long as he don' get ructious I'se gwine drive dat hay-cart to de Norf
Pole if he say de word. I hain't never had a real chanst to make my
fortune afore."
"And what," begged Diane presently, "do you do when it rains?"
Mr. Poynter agreed that that had been a problem.
"But with our accustomed ingenuity," he added modestly, "we have solved
it. Back there in a village we induced a blacksmith with brains and
brawn to fit a tall iron frame around the wagon and if the sun's too
hot, or it showers, we shed some more hay and drape a tarpaulin or so
over the frame. It's an excellent arrangement. We can have side
curtains or not just as we choose. In certain wet circumstances, of
course, we'll most likely take to barns and inns and wood-houses and
corncribs and pick up the trail in the morning. You can't imagine," he
added, "how ready pedestrians are to tell us which way the green moving
van went."
Whereupon the nomad of the hay-camp and his ruffled guest crossed
swords again over a pot of coffee, with inglorious defeat for Diane,
who departed for her own camp in a blaze of indignation.
"I'll ignore him!" she decided in the morning as the green van took to
the road again. "It's the only way. And after a while he'll most
likely get tired and disgruntled and go home. He's subject to huffs
anyway. It's utterly useless to talk to him. He thrives on
opposition."
Looking furtively back, she watched Mr. Poynter break camp. It was
very simple. Ras, yawning prodigiously, heaved a variety of
unnecessary provisions overboard from the seat pantry, abandoned the
ice-cream freezer to a desolate fate by the ashes of the camp fire and
peeled the hay-bed. Philip slipped a small tin plate, a collapsible
tin cup, a wooden knife, fork and spoon into his pocket. Ras put his
in his hat, which immediately took on a somewhat bloated appearance.
Having climbed languidly to the reins, the ridiculous negro appeared to
fall asleep immediately. Mr. Poynter, looking decidedly trim and
smiling, summoned Dick Whittington, climbed aboard and, whistling,
disappeared from view with uncommon grace and good humor. The
hay-wagon rumbled off.
Diane bit her lips convulsively and looked at Johnny. Simultaneously
they broke into an immoderate fit of laughter.
"Very well," decided the girl indignantly a little later, "if I can't
do anything else, I can lose him!"
But even this was easier of utterance than accomplishment. Diane was
soon to learn that if the distance between them grew too great, Mr.
Poynter promptly unloaded all but a scant layer of hay, took the reins
himself, and thundered with expedition up the trail in quest of her,
with Dick Whittington barking furiously. It was much too spectacular a
performance for a daily diet.
Diane presently ordered her going and coming as if the persistent
hay-gypsy on the road behind her did not exist, but every night she
caught the cheerful glimmer of his camp fire through the trees, and
frowned.