Ted landed in our midst with all the attendant violence of a meteor.
He didn’t arrive, he landed, bag and baggage, and until his departure
weeks later our tranquil existence was sufficiently hectic to suit
even Bill.
After numerous letters from his doting aunt, we reluctantly consented
to look after Ted while she was in Europe recuperating from a nervous
break-down. At the end of the first week, we understood why Aunt
Elizabeth found recuperation necessary, and I suggested to Owen, it
might be well to engage our passage on a later steamer, for I had a
premonition that my own nerves might require a rest after two months
of Ted’s strenuous companionship.
He wasn’t bad; there was not a bad thing about him. He was just
overflowing with youth and energy, which had been pent up for years,
between boarding school in the winter and Newport in the summer.
Motherless, fatherless, rich, neglected or over-indulged by a none too
wise aunt, Ted was an appealing young person, a character easily to be
made or marred by circumstances.
He looked like a member of the celestial choir—blue-eyed, fair-haired
and mild—but he produced the effect of a Kansas cyclone.
There was nothing he did not see, there was nothing he did not hear
and there was nothing he did not do. Even on eighty thousand acres of
land his activities were somewhat limited.
He was wildly enthusiastic about the West, fascinated by the men, and
was Bill’s shadow, so we promptly turned him over to those “rough
persons” Aunt Elizabeth had especially hoped that he might avoid, to
get it all out of his system.
“Let him stay at the bunk-house,” Owen advised after Ted had besought
me to allow him to stay with the men. “It will do him more good than
anything else in the world, if he has the right stuff in him.”
Ted stood on the porch, uneasily shifting from one foot to the other,
when I came out of the office.
“All right, Ted, Mr. Brook and I are perfectly willing for you to stay
with the men, if you really want to.”
He hopped up and down and almost embraced me in his joy.
“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Brook. You see,” he explained, carefully, “I’ve
seen people like you and Mr. Brook all my life, but I never had the
chance to be with real cow-punchers before.” Evidently, from Ted’s
point of view, Owen and I were very commonplace individuals compared
to these heroes of the prairie, and I laughed to myself as he bounded
down the steps to break the joyful news to Bill that he was to share
his bed and board.
The next day we had to go to town to meet some prospective wool
buyers, and, after having his breakfast interrupted five different
times by Ted’s dashing in to see if we were ready, Owen was moved to
inquire finally, “What on earth is on the boy’s mind now?”
“His outfit,” I answered. “He’s been planning it for days; wishes to
select it himself and we are not to see it until we get home.”
That was a wise stipulation of Ted’s, for if we had seen it, we should
never have been able to get home.
He put it on as soon as we reached the ranch, and when he finally
emerged, the flaming sunset paled with chagrin at its futile effort of
years.
The “outfit” consisted of tan corduroy trousers, chaps of long silky
angora wool, which had been dyed a brilliant orange, a shirt of vivid
green, a bright red silk handkerchief for his neck, an enormous
Stetson hat, high-heeled tan boots, silver studded belt and huge
spurs.
We gasped when we saw him, but he was so intent on showing himself to
Bill, as to be utterly unconscious of the effect he produced.
We followed him into the yard where the boys were waiting the call to
supper. Bill looked up from the quirt he was braiding and blinked.
“Gosh! I thought the sun had set an hour ago,” he remarked.
“No,” Ted laughingly responded, giving him a push, “but he’s going to
‘set’ now,” and he threw himself down by Bill’s side. “I knew you
fellows would guy me, but all the same I think this outfit’s great,”
and he surveyed himself with infinite pride and satisfaction.
“It’s all right,” said Bill, taking in all the details of the
resplendent costume, and looking up at Owen and me with twinkling
eyes, “I like somethin’ a little gay myself; but round here where
everything’s green, we won’t be able to tell you from a bunch of
soap-weed,” and Ted good naturedly joined in the laugh at his own
expense.
“Wouldn’t his Aunt Elizabeth die of heart-failure if she could see him
now?” I asked Owen as we went into the house.
“She certainly would,” he answered, “but we’ll trust to luck and let
Nature take its course.”
Everything, including Nature, took its course rapidly with Ted, and
for the next few weeks wise prairie dogs, rabbits and rattle-snakes
stayed in their holes. By the end of his stay that energetic young
person had enough rattle-snake skins to provide belts and hat-bands
for all of New York, and scores of live prairie-dogs he had trapped to
be shipped to his aunt’s place in Newport.
I tried to picture the joy of Aunt Elizabeth and her neighbors when
they found informal prairie-dog towns in the midst of their formal
gardens. If life is measured by experiences, a few additional years
were in store for Newport.
Bill taught Ted to shoot and he spent hours and a fortune shooting at
old tin cans on a post before Bill finally consented to say:
“I’ve saw fellers do worse,” the sweetest praise that ever fell on
mortal ears, judging by Ted’s expression.
And, then, Owen went to New Mexico to buy some sheep and Bohm came to
sleep on a claim.
This claim was one over which Owen and Bohm had been having a
controversy for months. It had been included in the sale of the ranch,
and after one of our most important sheep camps had been built upon
it, Owen discovered that Bohm could not give a deed to it, as he had
not made final proof on the land.
Bohm never ceased to regret having sold the ranch, and had never
forgiven Owen for buying it and making him live up to his contract, so
was only too glad of the opportunity to cause him all the trouble
possible. Time after time he promised to come out and “prove up”, but
he never came, so although I was most anxious to have him come, I was
far from pleased to have him about when Owen was away.
Ted, however, was overjoyed; he seemed to feel that Providence had
arranged Bohm’s visit to the ranch for his especial entertainment, and
from the moment the old chap arrived Ted dogged his footsteps.
At first, old Bohm seemed quite flattered and laughed and joked with
him, praised his shooting, told him stories of the Indian days,
promised to show him the underground passage to an abandoned stage
station, but later he became annoyed, for no clinging burr ever clung
more closely than Ted. He scarcely allowed Bohm to get out of his
sight for one moment.
How much the boy had heard of old Bohm’s history I did not know, but I
concluded a few rumors had reached those ever-attentive ears, for one
day he came in fairly beaming.
“Gosh! Pudge and Soapy haven’t got anything on me, they’ve only seen
Buffalo Bill in a show, and I’m right in the same house with a man
that’s a holy terror!”
“What do you mean, Ted?” I asked, anxious to find out how much he had
heard.
“Oh, you know well enough, Mrs. Brook,” he laughed, going to the door
as he saw old Bohm on his way to the barn. “You can’t fool me. Gee! I
wouldn’t have missed him for the world. The fellows’ll just be sick
when I tell them.”
“The fellows” were evidently “Pudge” and “Soapy”, his two chums at St.
Paul’s, “Pudge” because of “his shape,” as Ted explained, and “Soapy”,
whose parental millions came from the manufacturing of soap.
The game between the boy and Bohm was amusing. Clever as the old chap
was, he couldn’t evade Ted’s watchful eye. If Bohm thought him miles
away, he suddenly appeared with such an unconscious air of innocence
he disarmed all suspicion, but he made Bohm uneasy.
“Quit campin’ on the old man’s trail, Kid,” said Bill one evening at
the corral after Ted had driven Bohm to the bunk-house to escape his
questions. “You’re gettin’ on his nerves; let him go and sleep on his
claim and get through with it. You and me’s got to hunt horses
tomorrow, anyways.”
Ted cheerfully acquiesced, and old Bohm loaded his wagon alone and
drove toward his claim in peace.
The next morning very early, I heard Bill calling Ted. No Ted
appeared, and I went out to see where he was.
“Where do you reckon that crazy kid’s went now?” demanded Bill,
impatient to start.
“I’m sure I don’t know, Bill, hunting prairie-dogs, probably. Don’t
wait for him, if you’re ready to go.”
“Huntin’ prairie-dogs,” echoed Bill. “I’ll bet a hat he’s huntin’ old
Bohm somewheres.” He frowned as he cinched up his saddle. “I reckon
I’d better ride over that way and see what he’s up to.”
“I wish you would,” I said, vaguely uneasy. “I don’t want him to
bother Bohm too much.”
“Me neither,” said Bill, getting on his horse, “there’s his pony’s
tracks now,” he looked at the ground. “I’ll find him and take him
along with me. Don’t you worry, he’s all right, but he sure is a
corker—that kid,” and Bill galloped off.
I felt confident that he would overtake the lad, so I dismissed them
all from my mind and settled down to an uninterrupted morning, and a
delayed postal report.
I was busy all day and was just starting out for a little walk before
supper when Bill and Ted rode up.
Bill and Ted, hatless, clothes torn and covered with dirt and blood,
their faces scratched and bruised, and Ted regarding me triumphantly
from one half-closed eye, the other being swollen shut.
“What on earth hap—” I tried to ask, my breath fairly taken away.
Bill got off his horse and came up to the gate.
“We’re all right, Mrs. Brook. I’m sorry you seen us ’fore we got fixed
up a little; we just got mixed up some with Bohm—that’s all—’taint
nothin’ serious. We look a whole lot worse than we feel, don’t we
Ted?”
“You bet we do,” mumbled Ted from a cut and bleeding mouth, “but you
ought to see Bohm, he’s a sight!”
Ted got off his horse with difficulty. “Gosh, it was great,” he said,
leaning up against the fence for support.
“Come in and sit down, both of you, Charley will take your horses,”
and I led the way into the house followed a little unsteadily by Bill
and Ted, who collapsed on the first chairs they could reach.
I gave them some wine, washed off their blood-stained faces, and made
protesting Ted go into my room and lie down. He was very pale, and I
saw that he was faint.