THE GREAT AMERICAN FRYING PAN
It was Claire's first bad day since the hole in the mud. She had started
gallantly, scooting along the level road that flies straight west of
Fargo. But at noon she encountered a restaurant which made eating seem
an evil.
That they might have fair fame among motorists the commercial club of
Reaper had set at the edge of town a sign "Welcome to Reaper, a Live
Town--Speed Limit 8 Miles perhr." Being interpreted, that sign meant
that if you went much over twenty miles an hour on the main street,
people might glance at you; and that the real welcome, the only
impression of Reaper that tourists were likely to carry away, was the
welcome in the one restaurant. It was called the Eats Garden. As Claire
and her father entered, they were stifled by a belch of smoke from the
frying pan in the kitchen. The room was blocked by a huge lunch counter;
there was only one table, covered with oil cloth decorated with
venerable spots of dried egg yolk.
The waiter-cook, whose apron was gravy-patterned, with a border and
stomacher of plain gray dirt, grumbled, "Whadyuhwant?"
Claire sufficiently recovered to pick out the type from the fly specks
on the menu, and she ordered a small steak and coffee for her father;
for herself tea, boiled eggs, toast.
"Toast? We ain't got any toast!"
"Well, can't you make it?"
"Oh, I suppose I could----"
When they came, the slices of toast were an inch thick, burnt on one
side and raw on the other. The tea was bitter and the eggs watery. Her
father reported that his steak was high-test rawhide, and his
coffee--well, he wasn't sure just what substitute had been used for
chicory, but he thought it was lukewarm quinine.
Claire raged: "You know, this town really has aspirations. They're
beginning to build such nice little bungalows, and there's a fine clean
bank---- Then they permit this scoundrel to advertise the town among
strangers, influential strangers, in motors, by serving food like this!
I suppose they think that they arrest criminals here, yet this
restaurant man is a thief, to charge real money for food like this----
Yes, and he's a murderer!"
"Oh, come now, dolly!"
"Yes he is, literally. He must in his glorious career have given chronic
indigestion to thousands of people--shortened their lives by years.
That's wholesale murder. If I were the authorities here, I'd be
indulgent to the people who only murder one or two people, but imprison
this cook for life. Really! I mean it!"
"Well, he probably does the best he----"
"He does not! These eggs and this bread were perfectly good, before he
did black magic over them. And did you see the contemptuous look he gave
me when I was so eccentric as to order toast? Oh, Reaper, Reaper, you
desire a modern town, yet I wonder if you know how many thousands of
tourists go from coast to coast, cursing you? If I could only hang that
restaurant man--and the others like him--in a rope of his own hempen
griddle cakes! The Great American Frying Pan! I don't expect men
building a new town to have time to read Hugh Walpole and James Branch
Cabell, but I do expect them to afford a cook who can fry eggs!"
As she paid the check, Claire tried to think of some protest which would
have any effect on the obese wits of the restaurant man. In face of his
pink puffiness she gave it up. Her failure as a Citizeness Fixit sent
her out of the place in a fury, carried her on in a dusty whirl till the
engine spat, sounded tired and reflective, and said it guessed it
wouldn't go any farther that day.
Now that she had something to do, Claire became patient. "Run out of
gas. Isn't it lucky I got that can for an extra gallon?"
But there was plenty of gas. There was no discernible reason why the
car should not go. She started the engine. It ran for half a minute and
quit. All the plugs showed sparks. No wires were detached in the
distributor. There was plenty of water, and the oil was not clogged. And
that ended Claire's knowledge of the inside of a motor.
She stopped two motorists. The first was sure that there was dirt on the
point of the needle valve, in the carburetor. While Claire shuddered
lest he never get it back, he took out the needle valve, wiped it, put
it back--and the engine was again started, and again, with great
promptness, it stopped.
The second Good Samaritan knew that one of the wires in the distributor
must be detached and, though she assured him that she had inspected
them, he looked pityingly at her smart sports-suit, said, "Well, I'll
just take a look," and removed the distributor cover. He also scratched
his head, felt of the fuses under the cowl, scratched his cheek, poked a
finger at the carburetor, rubbed his ear, said, "Well, uh----" looked to
see if there was water and gas, sighed, "Can't just seem to find out
what's the trouble," shot at his own car, and escaped.
Claire had been highly grateful and laudatory to both of them--but she
remained here, ten miles from nowhere. It was a beautiful place. Down a
hill the wheat swam toward a village whose elevator was a glistening
tower. Mud-hens gabbled in a slew, alfalfa shone with unearthly green,
and bees went junketing toward a field of red clover. But she had the
motorist's fever to go on. The road behind and in front was very long,
very white--and very empty.
Her father, out of much thought and a solid ignorance about all of
motoring beyond the hiring of chauffeurs and the payment of bills,
suggested, "Uh, dolly, have you looked to see if these, uh---- Is the
carburetor all right?"
"Yes, dear; I've looked at it three times, so far," she said, just a
little too smoothly.
On the hill five miles to eastward, a line of dust, then a small car. As
it approached, the driver must have sighted her and increased speed. He
came up at thirty-five miles an hour.
"Now we'll get something done! Look! It's a bug--a flivver or a Teal or
something. I believe it's the young man that got us out of the mud."
Milt Daggett stopped, casually greeted them: "Why, hello, Miss Boltwood.
Thought you'd be way ahead of me some place!"
"Mrwr," said Vere de Vere. What this meant the historian does not know.
"No; I've been taking it easy. Mr., Uh--I can't quite remember your
name----"
"Milt Daggett."
"There's something mysterious the matter with my car. The engine will
start, after it's left alone a while, but then it stalls. Do you
suppose you could tell what it is?"
"I don't know. I'll see if I can find out."
"Then you probably will. The other two men knew everything. One of them
was the inventor of wheels, and the other discovered skidding. So of
course they couldn't help me."
Milt added nothing to her frivolity, but his smile was friendly. He
lifted the round rubber cap of the distributor. Then Claire's faith
tumbled in the dust. Twice had the wires been tested. Milt tested them
again. She was too tired of botching to tell him he was wasting time.
"Got an oil can?" he hesitated.
Through a tiny hole in the plate of the distributor he dripped two drops
of oil--only two drops. "I guess maybe that's what it needed. You might
try her now, and see how she runs," he said mildly.
Dubiously Claire started the engine. It sang jubilantly, and it did not
stop. Again was the road open to her. Again was the settlement over
there, to which it would have taken her an hour to walk, only six
minutes away.
She stopped the engine, beamed at him--there in the dust, on the quiet
hilltop. He said as apologetically as though he had been at fault,
"Distributor got dry. Might give it a little oil about once in six
months."
"We are so grateful to you! Twice now you've saved our lives."
"Oh, I guess you'd have gone on living! And if drivers can't help each
other, who can?"
"That's a good start toward world-fellowship, I suppose. I wish we could
do---- Return your lunch or---- Mr. Daggett! Do you read books? I
mean----"
"Yes I do, when I run across them."
"Mayn't I gi--lend you these two that I happen to have along? I've
finished them, and so has father, I think."
From the folds of the strapped-down top she pulled out Compton
Mackenzie's _Youth's Encounter_, and Vachel Lindsay's _Congo_. With a
curious faint excitement she watched him turn the leaves. His blunt
fingers flapped through them as though he was used to books. As he
looked at _Congo_, he exclaimed, "Poetry! That's fine! Like it, but I
don't hardly ever run across it. I---- Say---- I'm terribly obliged!"
His clear face lifted, sun-brown and young and adoring. She had not
often seen men look at her thus. Certainly Jeff Saxton's painless
worship did not turn him into the likeness of a knight among banners.
Yet the good Geoffrey loved her, while to Milt Daggett she could be
nothing more than a strange young woman in a car with a New York
license. If her tiny gift could so please him, how poor he must be. "He
probably lives on some barren farm," she thought, "or he's a penniless
mechanic hoping for a good job in Seattle. How white his forehead is!"
But aloud she was saying, "I hope you're enjoying your trip."
"Oh yes. I like it fine. You having a good time? Well---- Well, thanks
for the books."
She was off before him. Presently she exclaimed to Mr. Boltwood: "You
know--just occurs to me--it's rather curious that our young friend
should be so coincidental as to come along just when we needed him."
"Oh, he just happened to, I suppose," hemmed her father.
"I'm not so sure," she meditated, while she absently watched another
member of the Poultry Suicide Club rush out of a safe ditch, prepare to
take leave for immortality, change her fowlish mind, flutter up over the
hood of the car, and come down squawking her indignities to the
barnyard. "I'm not so sure about his happening---- No. I wonder if he
could possibly---- Oh no. I hope not. Flattering, but---- You don't
suppose he could be deliberately following us?"
"Nonsense! He's a perfectly decent young chap."
"I know. Of course. He probably works hard in a garage, and is terribly
nice to his mother and sisters at home. I mean---- I wouldn't want the
dear lamb to be a devoted knight, though. Too thankless a job."
She slowed the car down to fifteen an hour. For the first time she began
to watch the road behind her. In a few minutes a moving spot showed in
the dust three miles back. Oh, naturally; he would still be behind her.
Only---- If she stopped, just to look at the scenery, he would go on
ahead of her. She stopped for a moment--for a time too brief to indicate
that anything had gone wrong with her car. Staring back she saw that the
bug stopped also, and she fancied that Milt was out standing beside it,
peering with his palm over his eyes--a spy, unnatural and disturbing in
the wide peace.
She drove on a mile and halted again; again halted her attendant. He was
keeping a consistent two to four miles behind, she estimated.
"This won't do at all," she worried. "Flattering, but somehow----
Whatever sort of a cocoon-wrapped hussy I am, I don't collect scalps. I
won't have young men serving me--graft on them--get amusement out of
their struggles. Besides--suppose he became just a little more friendly,
each time he came up, all the way from here to Seattle?... Fresh.... No,
it won't do."
She ran the car to the side of the road.
"More trouble?" groaned her father.
"No. Just want to see scenery."
"But---- There's a good deal of scenery on all sides, without stopping,
seems to me!"
"Yes, but----" She looked back. Milt had come into sight; had paused to
take observations. Her father caught it:
"Oh, I see. Pardon me. Our squire still following? Let him go on ahead?
Wise lass."
"Yes. I think perhaps it's better to avoid complications."
"Of course." Mr. Boltwood's manner did not merely avoid Milt; it
abolished him.
She saw Milt, after five minutes of stationary watching, start forward.
He came dustily rattling up with a hail of "Distributor on strike
again?" so cheerful that it hurt her to dismiss him. But she had managed
a household. She was able to say suavely:
"No, everything is fine. I'm sure it will be, now. I'm afraid we are
holding you back. You mustn't worry about us."
"Oh, that's all right," breezily. "Something might go wrong. Say, is
this poetry book----"
"No, I'm sure nothing will go wrong now. You mustn't feel responsible
for us. But, uh, you understand we're very grateful for what you have
done and, uh, perhaps we shall see each other in Seattle?" She made it
brightly interrogatory.
"Oh, I see." His hands gripped the wheel. His cheeks had been too
ruddily tinted by the Dakota sun to show a blush, but his teeth caught
his lower lip. He had no starter on his bug; he had in his embarrassment
to get out and crank. He did it quietly, not looking at her. She could
see that his hand trembled on the crank. When he did glance at her, as
he drove off, it was apologetically, miserably. His foot was shaking on
the clutch pedal.
The dust behind his car concealed him. For twenty miles she was silent,
save when she burst out to her father, "I do hope you're enjoying the
trip. It's so easy to make people unhappy. I wonder---- No. Had to be
done."