you pusillanimous little devil, howl! Maybe you’ll now stay out of that
cherry tree.”
Just at that moment Jim Cardwell came staggering up from the creek bank,
flourishing his bottle. “Anybody want a drink?” he queried. My father
took the bottle and threw it into the creek. He never drank. He was
awfully peeved. He swore. And let me say now whatever my father did, he
did it well. “Jim,” he accused, “you’ve been giving Davey whiskey from
your rotten old bottle!”Davey Cullom stopped his howling long enough to
say, “No, daddy, it was the cherries; honest it was.” He supplemented
his little lie with the further information that it was not the choke
cherries, but the black cherries, that he had eaten. Then my father
said, “I’ll cut that damned black cherry tree down tomorrow.”
Jim Cardwell laughed, drunkenly, and inquired, “Got a match, Bill?”
My father didn’t smoke, and he didn’t have a match. Then Jim mumbled,
“Furnish my own whiskey, find my own match.” He fumbled in his pockets
and produced a match.
Jim walked over to the curly-headed boy who had lied so cleverly, and
said, “Now, Davey, we can show Bill that you didn’t drink any of Jim’s
old rot-gut.” Placing the match and a dollar in Davey’s hands, he said,
“Bet you that dollar you can’t blow out the match.” Jim looked at us
boys and grinned in a maudlin way. “Light the match and then blow it
out, Davey, and the dollar is yours. John and all the boys here know
you won’t take a dare; and I dare you!” he taunted. It was then I
wished that I could make little crosses like Michael Norton to ward off
impending disaster.
Jim staggered backwards a little as he continued. “But don’t light the
match, Davey, until I get away. I know my old whiskey breath will burn
like a house afire.” Davey Cullom stared, looked foolish and finally
said, “I don’t want your dollar, Mr. Cardwell.”
I shall now explain. Speaking for the gang as well as myself, we thought
Davey would put the stuff to his little lips, then, with a wry face,
push it away—perhaps spill it on the ground, which, of course, would
have tickled us immensely. But the little fellow, feeling that he must
make sure of winning the dare, took not one but two small swigs of the
raw stuff. Booze was booze then, and it took only a very little of it to
make a small boy wobble. If it will help any to put over my alibi I will
say now that the “pusillanimous little devil” made that face.
Now a bright idea struck one of the gang. I believe it might have been
Will Gill—now Dr. W. W. Gill, of Enid, Oklahoma. He would know, of
course. Anyway, someone had said, “Come Jim, let’s get your bottle.”
They managed somehow to get into the tank-boat and they rowed out to
deep water. And there, from some unexplained cause, the boat capsized.
Michael Norton crossed himself three times.
Then the whole bunch—lifesaver, officers, and all—plunged into the water
without stopping to remove clothing, which wouldn’t have been a very big
job, at that. Jim was saved, of course. And appreciably sobered.
As intimated in the foregoing paragraph, the clothing worn by the
tanyard gang during the summer months was almost nil—negligible, at any
rate. Always there were rents and patches, and more rents. But the gang
did not care.
The next day after Davey’s debauch my father came blustering into the
house, and bellowed, “Now, who in hell has taken my axe?” My mother said
to him in her sweet, calm way, “Oh, don’t be so fussy, William—Davey
loaned your axe to Jim Cardwell last night.”
Attaching no significance to this fact, nor sensing forebodings, my
father laughingly said, “I wonder what Jim thought he could do with an
axe, in his pickled condition?” I should like to tell you now that he
found that out, to his dismay, all too soon.
He was a good feeler, was my father, happy as a lark when things went
right—and not at all ugly even when he swore, not counting of course the
tempo of the sulphurous words of easement which he sometimes released.
Just habitual, understand. The indiscriminate use of swearwords was
as natural as long-whiskers to the old pioneer. He whistled a lot, and
sometimes tried to sing, but he was hot very good at that.
Having first boots to mend for a patron of his shoe-shop, my father was
late in reaching the tannery this day. The ruffled condition which had
broken forth with the axe inquiry now relegated from his thoughts, he
whistled while he worked, and this too in bad taste in the presence of
his patron.
It had fallen to my lot to remain at the house for a while, the home
and the shoeshop being one and the same place. A packing case containing
alum, tallow, neatsfoot oil, and lampblack, had been received by express
the day previous. I was to take from this packing box some alum, powder
it fine, then dissolve it in warm water. It was to be used at the
tannery in the day’s workout of the hides from one of the vats. It was
to firm them. A hide in the jelly stage is as slippery as an eel, and it
was always a chore to get them safely landed on the work bench.
My father would work the ooze out of the hides with a slicker—a piece
of plate glass ground smooth on the edge. Then he would rub the alum in
with the same devise, before returning them to the vat which would be
refilled with fresh ooze. Later, after the six vats were worked out, the
hides would again be put upon the bench, when tallow and neats-foot oil
would be worked into them with that same slicker. It would come into
play again when he polished the blackened leather. All handlings at the
bench called for vigorous rubbings. So vigorously did he attack them
that he would sweat. Oh, God, how that man did sweat! Being in fine
fettle, and late on the job this day, he would rush the work, and
whistle—and sweat all the more.
Consider now for a moment that cherished black cherry tree—the tree
which, in a spasm of idle talk, my father had threatened to cut down. It
was a large tree, as black cherry trees grow, more than a foot through,
and tall with good spread. Under this wild cherry tree reposed my
father’s work-bench. Also under this tree was the ash-hopper in which
lye was made from wood-ashes to remove the hair from the hides. As a
protector from the hot summer sun the tree was well nigh indispensable.
The sun rose that July morning sixty years ago on a rain-soaked world—a
perfumed, growing world; sparkling; invigorating. The brook at the
tannery, slightly augmented by the early morning shower, gave forth a
soft, dreamy murmur as it poured over the dam. Birds sang sweetly in the
tree tops. Jim sang also, though rather poorly, as he put the finishing
touches on the job to which he had set himself. Save for the depressing
knowledge that later in the day things would sizzle in steaming
humidity, with old expansion of noisome tannery fumes, all was fine and
vely.
Came now my father, gayly whistling, to his beloved tannery. Davey
followed. The other boys were already there. With a puzzled look on
his face the daddy of that happy-go-lucky bunch stopped suddenly in his
tracks. He surveyed the surroundings in considerable disgust.
At first I thought my father was so overcome by the shock that he was
not going to say anything. Well, he didn’t—exactly. Maybe he couldn’t.
But it was none the less certain that a violent change of mood had taken
place. The thing he saw had stilled his gay whistle—and whereas only a
few moments before could his voice but have taken up the glad song of
his heart he would have sung beautifully, now he cursed prodigiously!
And Davey howled some more.
That “damned” black cherry tree was gone—cut down, trimmed, and neatly
piled. Jim had mistaken Davey’s purpose in bringing him the axe. He
had done his work well. The morning sun flooded the tanvats and the
work-bench. By noon it would beat down upon them with torrid intensity.
PLUGGING FOR HER DADDY Little Janet, four-year-old daughter of Dr. and
Mrs. Leland Latham, was at the home of J. E. (Dutch) Roderick. Thinking
to get a reaction from Janet, “Dutch” said in a sort of off-hand way to
no one in particular, “Wish I knew where to find a good veterinarian?”
The little Latham girl said, “My daddy is a vet’narian. If you want to
get spayed, he can do it.”
THE STRANGE CASE OF MR. HENRY, et al. Not Hitherto Published—1947.
By John T. Bristow
The last three preceding articles were done at the request of one of the
old tanyard-swimming hole gang whom I dubbed “Buddy.” It really was a
triple order. At the same time I was committed to still another request.
Went out to one of Buddy’s buddies to verify data pertaining to Buddy’s
written request and ran head-on into another one—the one I’m going to
tackle now, together with other incidents.
It is a dangerous operation, this thing of running in unrelated
episodes, and if in attempting it I should find myself up in the air
going around in circles with no place to land, I shall have to call on
Buddy’s buddy to “talk” me down. Though no longer in our midst, Buddy’s
octogenarian buddy still lives. And it will be a pleasure to grant his
request.
In reminiscing one incident calls up another, and that one still
another, and so on ad infinitum—and anything of the time and place
is considered fair game, if you can capture it without maiming it, or
without encumbering something else. In presenting the Strange Case of
Mr. Henry, I shall try to ease it in without a jarring note. But, to
do this, I must go back to the “circus” lot, grab onto one of my
co-performers, and work up to it through a chain of co-incidental
events.
George Foreman was here at that time going to school, and learning
telegraphy with his brother-in-law, L. C. (Cass) McVay. George was my
closest boy friend. After graduating in telegraphy, he worked for the
railroad company out on the west end of the Central Branch—and later
blossomed out as a fullblown lawyer in a finely appointed Denver office,
all his own. When I called on him there he laughingly remarked, “Here
I am, a big lawyer in a big city—with no clients.” In later years I saw
him up at Blackhawk doing assay work for a Colorado mining company. This
time he aid, “I’ve found out that I am a better assayer than I ever *was
a lawyer.” He went from there to Butte, Montana, still following the
assay business. He never married.
His sister, Alice Foreman-McVay, with whom George made his home, came
here from a highly cultured community over by the river in Doniphan
county, as the bride of Cass McVay. And, being a refined lady with a
fine show of modesty, notably out-classing the common herd, got the
unearned name of being a “stuck-up.” But she lived that down nicely,
simply by carrying on in her own sweet way oblivious to it all.
Alice McVay had the happy faculty of attending strictly to her own
knitting—and letting the world go by. She was, in truth, the town’s most
gracious and beloved woman. And had she aspired to it, she could have
been nominated as the outstanding model of social perfection, displacing
one who had held that distinction from the town’s beginning.
Up to this time, our people had not been what one might call
connoisseurs in the art of classifying the townfolk. In the old days,
social standing was largely measured by wealth — even make-believe
wealth. For example, Eliza Morris, (Mrs. Bill), as the leading
merchant’s wife—and a big hearted woman—was looked upon as the leader
in society, one who set the pattern. The fact that she said “bekase”
for because, with many another outmoded expression, did not disqualify
her—but she lost caste when she sallied forth to church wearing her new
Easter bonnet wrong-side-to. But, let it be remembered, she had a way
with the youngsters about town that was taking.
After her husband’s death, which occurred in the eighth year after
coming here, Alice McVay could have married, in later years, Henry
DeForest, the town’s top eligible bachelor, and while she greatly
admired him, as did everyone else, she simply would not “desert” her
three children — Harvey, Myrtle, and Louis. I was favored with this
bit of information for having “tended” store for Mr. Henry while he
accompanied the lady with her purchases to her home. Besides teaching
me double-entry book-keeping of evenings, Mr. Henry would sometimes get
confidential on other matters. He told me himself that Alice McVay’s
love for her children was the one thing which caused her to forego a
marriage with him. And then too, Mr. Henry was markedly devoted to his
aristocratic mother, which fact might have had some bearing on what to
my mind should have developed into a most charming romance. His mother
spoke of him always as Mr. Henry.
Alice McVay had ample means to rear her children — and rear them she did
right here in Wetmore. Then the family moved to Whittier, California.
Besides his savings, Cass McVay and his brother Bill, had each inherited
$7,000 from the family estate shortly before Cass died. Alice was a
step-sister, and also shared in the cut.
Cass McVay was a thrifty man, a real gentleman. Aside from his position
as station agent at the C. B. U. P. depot—it was a Union Pacific
line then, and before that organized as the Atchison and Pike’s Peak
railroad—Cass owned a lumber yard, and operated a small grain elevator,
powered by a donkey. I know it was a donkey for when I would sometimes
whip him up in order to lift the grain faster so that I might get off
early to play, “one old cat” with the town boys, he would bray just
like a donkey. Cass McVay built the dwelling later owned by Dr. Guy S.
Graham. Close in now, it was considered “away out in the cow country”
then. In marked contrast, Bill McVay squandered his inheritance, in
drink. He had Spanish blood in his veins, along with his other short
comings. Bill McVay married Johnny Thomas’ oldest sister, Jemima.
The DeForest-McVay romance was not Mr. Henry’s first. That came earlier
in life. The girl was the sister of Seth Handley, who was Mr. Henry’s
partner in the implement business on first coming to Wetmore. Adherence
to a family brand of religion — something like that which threatened
the love of the King of England and Wally — was said to have prevented
marriage. She was reputedly a divorcee.
In reviewing this romance, I am uncovering no skeletons, giving away no
secrets. The story has been told and retold, in whispers and snatches,
with varying degrees of accuracy. Clean and beautiful beyond compare, it
was not a thing to be hidden under a bushel.
I did not get the divorce angle in the case of the Handley girl from Mr.
Henry, or any other member of his family. Had understood all along
that it was nothing more than family objections occasioned by a doting
mother’s idea of her son’s superior breeding that was holding the
romance in check. But John Thomas, one of the few oldtimers left,
tells me now that he got the impression of the divorce from his
brother-in-law, Moulton DeForest. So then, I think, much as I dislike
to, we shall have to accept it as authentic.
This causes me to speculate.
Henry Clay DeForest was 26 years old when he came here. Seth Handley
was about the same age. His sister was younger. This would have afforded
scant time for the girl to have married and become divorced before the
beginning of her romance with Mr. Henry. And moreover, I cannot imagine
Mr. Henry deliberately paying court to a divorced woman, knowing the
while the family feelings, the Church restrictions, and above all his
aristocratic mother’s set views on such matters. The romance dated back
to Madison, Wisconsin, beyond the time he came to Wetmore — likely back
to school days. And in that event, accepting the divorce angle, it very
well could have been a case where the man had “Loved and Lost,” with the
old flame carrying on after Reno.
The town people said the same thing about Augusta Ann DeForest as was
wrongfully said about Alice McVay — and she lived up to it, nobly. I
wouldn’t know what, if anything, she had in her own right to justify
this, but she had the DeForest name to build on—and that was a million.
The DeForests were of French Huguenot stock. Joseph DeForest,
grandfather of Mr. Henry, was reputedly, at one time, a very wealthy
man. He made an endowment to Yale college—hence the schooling there of
Moulton and Mr. Henry.
Augusta Ann did not play the aristocracy game offensively. With
courteous dignity, she played it faultlessly. It was well known that
she had definite ideas about gentlemen in general marrying beneath their
station and, it was said, she saw to it that her hired girls—in one
long-lasting instance an extraordinarily pretty maiden — would have no
chance, under her roof, to make google eyes at her boys.
In the process of making, Mr. Henry was not touched with this better
than thou idea—and it seems that father Isaac Newton had none of it. In
fact, Isaac was not at all times in complete agreement with his spouse.
Mr. Henry was not Augusta Ann’s oldest, nor yet her youngest. He was
seventh in a family of eight boys. Even so, he displayed no necromantic
talent, despite the ancient superstition. But he sure had a lot of the
worthwhile kind of talent. Then, too, that run of seven might have been
broken by the birth of a girl. I never learned just where she came
in, did not even know of Mrs. John C. Kridler until she came here from
Denver with her three fine little girls — Lettie, Grace, and Blanche.
Jane DeForest-Kridler was now a divorcee—something more for the
aristocratic Augusta Ann to frown upon.
Augusta Ann was a mite heavy on her feet, and on her infrequent
appearances in public leaned heavily upon her Mr. Henry. And though not
of a mind to recognize caste, our people paid her marked respect, and
were free in saying that it was mighty nice of Mr. Henry, tall and
stately, to give his mother, short and dumpy, his arm on all occasions.
It was truly a most beautiful mother-son attachment.
It would, perhaps, be too much to say that in this unusual show of
attention Mr. Henry had hopes of bringing about a change in his mother’s
estimation of his girl. But never doubt he had hopes, enduring hopes,
that in riding the thing out something favorable would turn up. The way
I had it in mind, Mr. Henry did not want to break with the family—nor
did he have any intention of ever giving up his girl. This awkward
situation made it inadvisable for him to bring her here.
One time, after I had gotten myself rather too deeply in the mining game
for comfort, Mr. Henry told me that he also had, some years earlier,
taken a flyer in mining with his old partner, Seth Handley, at Grass
Valley, California. But when the conversation was terminated, I was of
the opinion that he had, in fact, only put his sweetheart on ice, so
to speak, for safe keeping against the time when the family winds might
blow less raw. And had the Aristocratic Augusta Ann have passed on
before the girl I think Mr. Henry, divorcee or no, would have cast his
religion to the winds—as did The King.
Somehow, I don’t like the divorce angle.
Seth Handley’s sister died at the little mining town of Grass Valley, in
California, where her brother was a prospector. Mr. Henry went to Omaha
to meet the Union Pacific train bearing his old partner, Seth, and the
remains on the way back east for burial. On his return home, Mr. Henry
was visibly shaken. It was a sad day for him. Few people here ever
knew just who it was that held such a strangle hold on Mr. Henry’s
affections.
From my early association with Mr. Henry and Seth I got the impression
that there was more between them than just being partners. Later, I had
it from one or the other of them, maybe both, that the girl in the case
was Seth’s sister. Their implement house and yard was just across the
street from our home, down by the tracks, on “Smoky Row.” And though
less than half their age, my mother said I was always under foot when
they wanted to go about their work. The year was 1872. But if I were not
under foot at the moment when Seth wanted to go hunting, he would come
to the house and ask me to go along. He would shoot anything that could
fly. And Seth remembered, years later. He sent his respects to me from
Omaha by Mr. Henry. At that time I was “helping out” in the DeForest
general store.
I suspect there were some things the aristocratic Augusta Ann did not
know about her favorite son. While vacationing in Colorado Mr. Henry,
with the Handley girl—who was supposed to be in California—rode horses
on the trail to the top of Pike’s Peak. Miss Handley rode a sidesaddle,
the ancient kind where the lady puts her left foot in the stirrup and
throws her right leg over the left fork of the split pommel—and holds
on for dear life. That was at a time when it was considered vulgar for
a lady to straddle a horse. Also it was before the cog-railroad mounted
the Peak, even before the time of the carriage road up the north side of
the mountain.
Mr. Henry’s eyes sparkled when he told me it was a wonderful trip—one
I should not miss—and though a little difficult coming down, especially
for the ladies, he said he enjoyed it immensely. That was quite
understandable. Love had come to Mr. Henry wrapped in trouble. Here now
for a day at least he was bound by no thongs. Here, with the girl
who was the most precious one in the world to him, his spirits could
soar—unhampered, up to the clouds.
Under Mr. Henry’s oral guidance, I also made that trip all by my
lonesome—that is, without my girl. Later, I went to the top again with
THE Girl, and I can tell you there was a difference. We were in love, a
maid and a man—intoxicated with the joy that only the first love of the
young knows. And the clouds came down to where one could almost reach up
and touch them—just as Mr. Henry had said they would.
I have learned, as doubtless Mr. Henry had learned, that the show spots
in this old world of ours take on beauty and meaning when you have
someone along—preferably THE ONE—to help you enjoy them. It’s truly a
situation where two hearts can beat as one. And it’s worth a million to
see the shine come into her eyes.
Might say here that it was while on an editorial junket to Colorado
Springs—with THE Girl—that I made this great discovery. It was her first
trip to the mountains, and the shine was in her eyes—big. I’m glad
that memory holds the picture of the girl, who, in all her radiant
loveliness, walked by my side all through that week with but one tiny
shadow to flit across her faultless blue sky.
And while she had, with justification, came near showing temper one
morning, when, in following the crowd, I had innocently led her away
from the historic grave of Helen Hunt-Jackson, on the mountain above the
Seven Falls, down the gravel slide, thereby ruining a pair of new shoes
for her, she was still THE Girl that made all the difference. Compared
with some of the other women who took the plunge, her squawk was mild
indeed—and most ladylike. The well-dressed women in that day wore high
kid shoes and silk stockings.
The gravel slide is—or was—about three hundred feet downslope from the
grave, along the mountain at a left turn, where all join hands, stick
feet in the gravel, stand erect, pulling first one foot up and then the
other to avoid being swamped, while the whole mass slips away to the
canyon several hundred feet below. And there you were—right at the
trail, with the laborious climb down the seven flights of steps avoided.
The mutilation of those new shoes at a time like that was truly a
disconcerting thing to befall the “perfect 34” girl—we had ‘em then—who
had only the day before been declared the neatest dressed and
most attractive woman in the editorial party. She had form, poise,
personality—and a wonderfully good dressmaker. However, before the day
was done, she evened the score—and gloried in it.