Hubert Hand
It was three years after Mrs. Ricker came to the ranch, bringing John
and Martha, that Hubert Hand put in his appearance. He had got Mr.
Indian Chat Chin, as everybody called him, to bring him up from
Rattail in his old surrey. Hubert Hand was something of a dude in
those days, though he has well outgrown it since, and I remember yet
how comical he looked, sitting up there so stiff and fine in his light
gray overcoat and gray Fedora hat, with that big Roman nose of his
protruding out and up, disdainfully, above his little moustache, and
apparently above all consciousness of dirty old Mr. Indian Chat Chin
and the rattle-trap rig.
Mr. Indian Chat Chin stopped his old nag at the entrance to the
driveway, and Hubert Hand climbed carefully down and came up the road,
swinging a walking cane like he was leading a parade.
Sam and I, as was our custom, went walking down to meet him.
He took off his hat to me, and said to Sam, “I wish to see the owner
of this ranch.”
“Nobody ever mistook me for a fairy before,” Sam said. “But go ahead.
Your first wish is granted. What are the other two?”
Hubert Hand got out his card then. Besides his name it had
“Clover-blossom Creamery,” and the San Francisco address printed on
it.
“Now, Mr. Stanley,” Hubert Hand went on, after the embarrassing minute
of general introductions, “I am going to be honest with you——”
“Hold on, stranger,” Sam interrupted, “you’re not. You are going to be
as dishonest as heck. Otherwise, you wouldn’t bother to tell me you
were going to be honest. Go ahead.”
Hubert Hand laughed, but he didn’t like it. He went ahead, though, and
explained that he had an up-and-coming creamery business in San
Francisco, but that his physician had told him that he had to live in
a high, dry climate with plenty of sunshine and no fog. He had, after
inquiries and investigations, decided that the Desert Moon Ranch,
altitude seven thousand feet, sunshine three hundred and sixty-five
days in the year, to say nothing of the marvelous view of the Garnet
Mountains, the hunting, the fishing, and the pure snow water, would
fill all his requirements.
“Thanks,” Sam said. “When I get ready to start a Gold Cure Sanatorium,
I’ll drop you a line.”
“You won’t do business, then?” Hubert Hand questioned.
“I hadn’t heard anything about doing business,” Sam said.
Hubert Hand’s proposition was that he start a creamery, on the Desert
Moon Ranch, and supply the valley with ice-cream, butter, and other
dairy products. Sam had the ranch, the cows, and the big ice plant.
Mr. Hubert Hand had the knowledge and the equipment. They could divide
the profits.
Next to sheep men, I guess there is nothing that cow men hold in lower
contempt than they hold dairy farms. Sam was too much disgusted to
swear very long.
“But, do you realize, Mr. Stanley,” Hubert Hand insisted, “that this
entire valley has to depend on Salt Lake City, or on Reno, for its
dairy products?”
“Listen, stranger,” Sam said. “I wouldn’t turn the Desert Moon into a
place to slop milk around in if the entire valley had to depend on
Hong Kong, China, for its ice-cream cones. Forget it, and come in now
and have some supper.”
To my knowledge, Hubert Hand, from that day to this, has never again
mentioned, on the Desert Moon, anything that had to do with
creameries. Neither, from that day to this, has he been off the ranch
for more than a couple of weeks at a time.
“By the way,” he began, trying to make it sound unimportant, when we
had finished supper, “I heard, in Telko, that you were something of a
chess player.”
“I am, when I can get a game,” Sam said. “But chess players, in these
parts, are as scarce as hen’s teeth. My neighbor, thirty miles east of
here, and I used to play regular, two nights a week. But the son of a
gun struck it rich, and like most loyal Native Sons of this state, he
moved to California to spend his money. I’m teaching my boy, John—but
he is just a kid. Here, lately, about all I’ve done is work out the
puzzles by myself.”
“I play a little,” Hubert Hand produced, right modestly.
Sam jumped up and got out his chess table, inlaid ebony and ivory,
made special, and his ebony and ivory chess-men.
Hubert Hand beat him the first game in about half an hour. They set up
their men again. It took Hubert Hand over an hour that time to beat
Sam, but he did it.
“Heck!” Sam said, at the end of that game. “You’re hired.”
“Hired for what?”
“For whatever you want to call it, except the slopping of milk around.
Send for your trunk and name your pay. Why didn’t you say, in the
first place, that you were a blankety-blank crack chess player?”
I realize, right here, that I am not going to be able to get through
with this entire story, with Sam in it, and continue to modify his
vocabulary into hecks and blankety blanks. Wrong, I think it is; but
it is true, that men out here do not talk like that. Sam cusses,
swears and damns, just as naturally and as innocently as he breathes.
The only real trouble about Sam’s profanity is that he uses up all his
strong words day by day in ordinary conversation; so, when occasions
arise that call for something really emphatic, Sam hasn’t any words to
do them justice. If the demands are not too serious, he reverts and
finds a little “Pshaw!” or, “Shoot!” unusual enough to meet the need.
If it goes beyond that, he opens his mouth in silence and keeps it
open, hoping for a word, until his pipe drops out and scatters ashes
and burned and burning tobacco all over everything. I pay no attention
to his profanity and small attention to his “Pshaws,” and “Shoots.”
But when his pipe drops, I get right down interested.
To return to Hubert Hand: he accepted Sam’s offer, then and there. The
next day he titled himself assistant ranch manager, and named his
salary at two hundred and fifty dollars a month. Sam paid it without
blinking; and kept right on managing the ranch, and everything on it,
except, perhaps, myself, without any assistance, the same as he had
always done.