SOMETHING ABOUT “G. KNAPP”
But how can three people with all the revivifying flow of youth in
their veins remain in the dumps, to use one of Tavia’s own illuminating
expressions. Impossible! That tea at the Holyoke House, which began so
miserably, scaled upward like the notes of a coloratura soprano until
they were all three chatting and laughing like old friends. Even Tavia
had to forget her miserable financial state.
Dorothy believed her first impression of G. Knapp had not been wrong.
Indeed, he improved with every moment of increasing familiarity.
In the first place, although his repartee was bright enough, and he was
very jolly and frank, he had eyes and attention for somebody besides
the chatterbox, Tavia. Perhaps right at first Tavia was a little under
the mark, her mind naturally being upon her troubles; but with a
strange young man before her the gay and sparkling Tavia would soon be
inspired.
However, for once she did not absorb all the more or less helpless
male’s attention. G. Knapp insisted upon dividing equally his glances,
his speeches, and his smiles between the two young ladies.
They discovered that his full and proper name was Garford Knapp—the
first, of course, shortened to “Garry.” He was of the West, Western,
without a doubt. He had secured a degree at a Western university,
although both before and after his scholastic course he had, as Tavia
in the beginning suggested, been a “cowboy person.”
“And it looks as if I’d be punching cows and doing other chores for Bob
Douglas, who owns the Four-Square ranch, for the rest of my natural,”
was one thing Garry Knapp told the girls, and told them cheerfully.
“I did count on falling heir to a piece of money when Uncle Terrence
cashed in. But not—no more!”
“Why is that?” Dorothy asked, seeing that the young man was serious
despite his somewhat careless way of speaking.
“The old codger is just like tinder,” laughed Garry. “Lights up if a
spark gets to him. And I unfortunately and unintentionally applied
the spark. He’s gone off to Alaska mad as a hatter and left me in the
lurch. And we were chums when I was a kid and until I came back from
college.”
“You mean you have quarreled with your uncle?” Dorothy queried, with
some seriousness.
“Not at all, Miss Dale,” he declared, promptly. “The old fellow
quarreled with me. They say it takes two to make a quarrel. That’s not
always so. One can do it just as _e-easy_. At least, one like Uncle
Terrence can. He had red hair when he was young, and he has a strong
fighting Irish strain in him. The row began over nothing and ended with
his lighting out between evening and sunrise and leaving me flat.
“Of course, I broke into a job with Bob Douglas right away——”
“Do you mean, Mr. Knapp, that your uncle went away and left you without
money?” Dorothy asked.
“Only what I chanced to have in my pocket,” Garry Knapp said
cheerfully. “He’d always been mighty good to me. Put me through
school and all that. All I have is a piece of land—and a good big
piece—outside of Desert City; but it isn’t worth much. Cattle raising
is petering out in that region. Last year the mouth and hoof disease
just about ruined the man that grazed my land. His cattle died like
flies.
“Then, the land was badly grazed by sheepmen for years. Sheep about
poison land for anything else to live on,” he added, with a cattleman’s
usual disgust at the thought of “mutton on the hoof.”
“One thing I’ve come East for, Miss Dale, is to sell that land. Got
a sort of tentative offer by mail. Bob wanted a lot of stuff for the
ranch and for his family and couldn’t come himself. So I combined his
business and mine and hope to make a sale of the land my father left me
before I go back.
“Then, with that nest-egg, I’ll try to break into some game that will
offer a man-sized profit,” and Garry Knapp laughed again in his mellow,
whole-souled way.
“Isn’t he just a _dear_?” whispered Tavia as Garry turned to speak to
the waiter. “Don’t you love to hear him talk?”
“And have you never heard from your old uncle who went away and left
you?” Dorothy asked.
“Not a word. He’s too mad to speak, let alone write,” and a cloud for
a moment crossed the open, handsome face of the Westerner. “But I know
where he is, and every once in a while somebody writes me telling me
Uncle Terry is all right.”
“But, an old man, away up there in Alaska——?”
“Bless you, Miss Dale,” chuckled Garry Knapp. “That dear old codger has
been knocking about in rough country all his days. He’s always been a
miner. Prospected pretty well all over our West. He’s made, and then
bunted away, big fortunes sometimes.
“He always has a stake laid down somewhere. Never gets real poor, and
never went hungry in his life—unless he chanced to run out of grub on
some prospecting tour, or his gun was broken and he couldn’t shoot a
jackrabbit for a stew.
“Oh, Uncle Terrence isn’t at all the sort of hampered prospector you
read about in the books. He doesn’t go mooning around, expecting to
‘strike it rich’ and running the risk of leaving his bones in the
desert.
“No, Uncle Terry is likely to make another fortune before he dies——”
“Oh! Then maybe you will be rich!” cried Tavia, breaking in.
“No.” Garry shook his head with a quizzical smile on his lips and
in his eyes. “No. He vowed I should never see the color of his
money. First, he said, he’d leave it to found a home for indignant
rattlesnakes. And he’d surely have plenty of inmates, for rattlers seem
always to be indignant,” he added with a chuckle.
Dorothy wanted awfully to ask him why he had quarreled with his
uncle—or _vice versa_; but that would have been too personal upon first
meeting. She liked the young man more and more; and in spite of Tavia’s
loss they parted at the end of the hour in great good spirits.
“I’m going to be just as busy as I can be this afternoon,” Garry Knapp
announced, as they went out. “But I shall get back to the hotel to
supper. I wasn’t in last night when you ladies were down. May I eat at
your table?” and his eyes squinted up again in that droll way Dorothy
had come to look for.
“How do you know we ate in the hotel last evening?” demanded Tavia,
promptly.
“Asked the head waiter,” replied Garry Knapp, unabashed.
“If you are so much interested in whether we take proper nourishment or
not, you had better join us at dinner,” Dorothy said, laughing.
“It’s a bet!” declared the young Westerner, and lifting his
broad-brimmed hat he left the girls upon the sidewalk outside the
restaurant.
“Isn’t he the very nicest—but, oh, Doro! what shall I do?” exclaimed
the miserable Tavia. “All my money——”
“Let’s go back and see if it’s been found.”
“Oh, not a chance!” gasped Tavia. “That horrid woman——”
“I scarcely believe that we can lay it to Mrs. Halbridge’s door in any
particular,” said Dorothy, gravely. “You should not have left your bag
on the counter.”
“She laid hers there! And, oh, Doro! it was full of money,” sighed her
friend.
“Probably your bag had been taken before you even touched hers.”
“Oh, dear! why did it have to happen to _me_—and at just this time.
When I need things so much. Not a thing to wear! And it’s going to be a
cold, cold winter, too!”
Tavia would joke “if the heavens fell”—that was her nature. But that
she was seriously embarrassed for funds Dorothy Dale knew right well.
“If it had only been your bag that was lost,” wailed Tavia, “you would
telegraph to Aunt Winnie and get more money!”
“And I shall do that in this case,” said her friend, placidly.
“Oh! no you won’t!” cried Tavia, suddenly. “I will not take another
cent from your Aunt Winnie White—who’s the most blessed, generous,
free, open-handed person who ever——”
“Goodness! no further attributes?” laughed Dorothy.
“No, Doro,” Tavia said, suddenly serious. “I have done this thing
myself. It is _awful_. Poor old daddy earns his money too hardly for
_me_ to throw it away. I should know better. I should have learned
caution and economy by this time with you, my dear, as an example ever
before me.
“Poor mother wastes money because she doesn’t _know_. I have had every
advantage of a bright and shining example,” and she pinched Dorothy’s
arm as they entered the big store again. “If I have lost my money, I’ve
lost it, and that’s the end of it. No new clothes for little Tavia—and
serves her right!” she finished, bitterly.
Dorothy well knew that this was a tragic happening for her friend.
Generously she would have sent for more money, or divided her own store
with Tavia. But she knew her chum to be in earnest, and she approved.
It was not as though Tavia had nothing to wear. She had a full and
complete wardrobe, only it would be no longer up to date. And she would
have to curtail much of the fun the girls had looked forward to on
this, their first trip, unchaperoned, to the great city.