STUBBORN FOOLS
"Oh, Bess, you should see yourself now," Nan laughed the next morning.
It was early and the girls were all mounted on mules as they passed
through the archway of the patio and out into the gardens with their
huge palms and brilliant flowers and birds.
"Feel like a fool myself," Adair grumbled as he tried to adjust his
position on the beast he was riding. And truly, he was a ridiculous
figure.
"Well, dad," Alice pretended that she was trying to mollify him, "you
just weren't made to ride a mule. Nor were you," she looked at Walker
Jamieson's long dangling legs as she spoke.
"Nor you either," Walker retorted laughing. "You're too little. Hey,
you," he broke off his conversation with Alice quickly and called to
Nan, "don't do that."
"What?" Nan asked innocently.
"You know. Don't look so innocent."
"Nan Sherwood!" Bess guessed at what Walker was driving at. "You're not
taking pictures of us in _these_ outfits are you?"
"She not only is, but she has," Walker answered before Nan could say
anything. "I saw her sliding that little camera back into its case."
"Nan, please," Alice joined in the protest, "have mercy on us and think
how our children and grandchildren will laugh if they ever see pictures
of us riding mule-back. We're all perfect sights."
But Nan had already taken the pictures, so the protests came too late.
Now it was Adair MacKenzie who diverted their attention. "Get along
there. Get a move on, you slow poke." Adair was kicking the sides of his
mule with real force. But the mule was accustomed to such treatment and
he only raised his ears lazily, turned his head slowly and looked at his
rider sleepily. Then he stopped, dead in his tracks.
"Get along there, get along, I say," Adair kicked the mule again. "Can't
you understand plain English?"
"Understands only Spanish, I guess, Mr. MacKenzie," Walker said. "Try
that on him."
"If he can't understand English, the best language in the world, he
can't understand anything," Adair was as stubborn as the mule he was on,
but for once all his railing, all his sputtering, all the ordering that
he could do, didn't accomplish a thing. The mule just wouldn't move.
"Here you," Adair called ahead to their guide who had philosophically
shrugged his shoulders at the outburst of the new master, and sat now,
on his mule on the trail above waiting for the party to move on. At the
call, he ambled back to see what was wrong.
"Hey, you," Adair was impatient with everyone and everything now. "Get a
hustle on. It's today we want to see this blasted estate, today. Not
manana."
The guide understood one word, 'manana.' His face broke into a broad
grin. "Si, si, senor. Si, Senoritas." He was more than glad that these
strangers could speak his language. Now, he broke out into a voluble
explanation, all in Spanish of course, as to how to treat a mule.
Walker stood off laughing heartily at the whole situation. Adair
MacKenzie did not understand one single word of what was being said to
him, but it was coming forth so fast that he could neither interrupt nor
stop the flow. For once in his life he looked utterly helpless.
Alice was as amused as Walker. "Poor dear," she said, "to think that he
should come all of this way to be baffled by a mule and a man whose
philosophy says 'tomorrow', we will do it 'tomorrow'."
Adair saw their smiles. It was more than he could stand, more than any
man could stand. Awkwardly, he dismounted from his beast, walked around
in front and shook his ever present cane at him. The beast did nothing
but blink.
"Why, wh-wh-why, you good-for-nothing, senseless, no-count, beast you,"
he burst forth in a torrent, "if you think you can stop me, you're
mistaken. You'll go up there if I have to carry you and you'll not take
a picture of that either," Adair turned to Nan with this last. It was
somehow much more satisfying to explode to Nan than to either the beast
or the Mexican.
"No, cousin," Nan answered as seriously as she could.
"And don't be meek either." He brandished his cane again. "Never get
anyplace like that." There was no satisfying the man now. Neither
agreement nor disagreement could placate him. Nan kept still.
It was Alice finally, who smoothed his ruffled feelings and got him back
on the mule. "Now, daddy," she said quietly, "if you'll just sit quietly
and wait, the mule will go, but you can't beat him into action the way
you do me." Saying this she laughed up at him. He stooped over and
kissed her.
It was nice to see this father and daughter together. They seemed to
understand one another perfectly. Adair, explode as he might, could
never frighten Alice. She knew how soft-hearted and kind he was
underneath all his crust. She had known from babyhood that he wouldn't
intentionally, for all his angry outbursts, hurt anyone.
Now, having smoothed his ruffled feelings some, she let Walker assist
her back on her mule. The party moved slowly along the narrow stony
trail while huge limbs of great palm trees waved slightly above them.
Reaching the top of a high hill on the estate they looked out over the
countryside.
"What's that?" Laura, ever curious, indicated a point in the distance,
something that showed black against the sky and that clearly had been
built by man.
Walker drew forth his field glasses and directed his glance toward the
object. "Can't be sure," he rendered his verdict after some thought,
"but think it might be a pyramid. There are several in the district you
know. Perhaps the most famous of them all is the one that a hunter down
from New York discovered three or four years ago. It's rather
inaccessible, but such an old one that some old codger in the East with
a lot of money on his hands donated a considerable sum to have it
opened."
"What did they find?" Nan asked.
"Oh, lots of dried up bones."
"That all?" Nan sounded disappointed.
"Well, not exactly," Walker admitted and then stopped. He enjoyed
teasing these youngsters.
"Well, what did they find then," Nan persisted.
"Some jewels. Some gold. Some exceptionally fine pottery."
"And--" Nan saw that he was still holding out.
"Some poison spiders that killed three members of the excavation party.
Now you satisfied?" Walker grinned down at her.
"Well, yes," Nan agreed. "But I still want to visit a pyramid sometime."
"Visit those in Egypt," Walker advised. "There's nothing more
impressive."
"You been there?" Nan questioned. The path was wide enough so that they
could ride now with their mules side by side.
"Yes, years ago, with my father," Walker answered. "He had a bad case of
the wanderlust, so whenever he could scrape a few dollars together, off
he would go to some outlandish place."
"Taking your mother with him?"
"Oh, sometimes. She went up into Alaska when he went to pan gold from
the streams. She went down into South America when he went as an
engineer on a big industrial project. And she went when he set out for
Russia after the revolution, but after that she gave up."
"You must be like your father," Nan commented.
"Oh, a little," Walker admitted. "But I haven't quite got the wanderlust
as much as he has. He could go into raptures over anything that was far
away from him. I've been thinking of him a lot today, riding over this
estate. He spent some time down here in Mexico, and never grew tired of
extolling the country. This was after my mother died.
"Though we are not entering the country at all that he was fondest of,
I've been thinking of his descriptions of it, especially after seeing
that pyramid in the distance.
"It was down in Oaxaca and was called, I believe, Tehuantepec. It took
days to get there by horseback, according to his account, and the route
was through tropical jungles more dense than any others in the world.
You see my father never saw mediocre things," he explained by the way.
"The City itself lay on a river by the same name in a gorgeous tropical
setting surrounded by orchards and many gardens, all shaded by flowering
trees and palms.
"The population was largely Indian, a tribe that had its own language
and preserved its own traditions, but it seems that above all this
particular tribe was known for its beautiful women, more independent,
more lovely, and more beautifully dressed than any of the women in other
tribes.
"He described them as being tall, well-built, and industrious. Their
dresses consisted of long full skirts made of bright colors with a deep
white flounce at the bottom, that swept the ground and covered their
bare feet. The blouse was short and square-necked and for adornment they
wore much jewelry, earrings and long heavy chains hung with ten and
twenty American gold pieces.
"They had a graceful carriage, walking straight and firmly with an ease
that only those women who have been trained to carry things on their
head have. These people, he said, carry their flowers, fruit, and foods
to the market in painted gourd bowls perched firmly on the crowns of
their heads.
"Ah, yes, those people were perfect, more perfect my father said than
any he had ever come across. But then, my father," Walker admitted
boyishly, "always did tell a grand tale."
"So that's why you became a newspaper man," Nan concluded.
"Yes, I suppose so," Walker admitted. "You know this taste for queer
places and queer things is often bred right in your bones."
"Say, what are you two talking about back there?" Adair MacKenzie
suddenly became conscious of the fact that two in his party were paying
no attention whatsoever to him and his troubles with his mule. Had he
had a horse, he would liked to have galloped back beside them, but with
a mule there was no galloping. As it was he turned the mule's head
sharply.
It was just too much. The mule was tired of his burden anyway, so
before anyone realized at all what was happening, Adair was deposited
firmly on the ground and the mule, with more intelligence perhaps than
he had been given credit for, was gazing at him soberly.