HOMEWARD HOBOES
At Santa Fé we had a worn tire retreaded. “It may last you a thousand
miles,” said the honest dealer. At the end of the thousand miles,
the tire was in ribbons. We put it on the forward wheel and favored
it all we could. In another thousand miles the canvas showed through
the tread. Time went on, and a complete new set of tires went to the
junk-heap, but the old retread still flaunted its tattered streamers.
More than once, when both spare tires had collapsed, it carried us
safely over long, desolate stretches. At last, when it had gone five
or six thousand miles we ceased to worry. The conviction came to my
prophetic soul that it would take us home. And it did. It took us to
Toby’s door, and went flat as I turned into my own driveway. Thus did
our guardian angels stay with us, like the guide’s mule, to the end.
Like tired horses whose heads are turned homeward, our pace accelerated
steadily as we moved east. Each day we put two hundred miles or
more behind us. Montana, brown and parched like all the West, yet
magnificent in the tremendous proportions of its mountains and valleys,
we left with regret. We followed the Great Northern to the bleak town
of Havre, then dropped south to the perfidious Yellowstone Trail. Bits
of the road were unexpectedly good; for the first time since Houston
the old lady’s skirts hummed in the breeze. We unwillingly put hundreds
of gophers to death. The roads here were honeycombed with their nests,
and as we bore down on them they poked their silly heads up to be
sacrificed or ran under our wheels by the gross. We learned to dread
them, for each gopher-hole meant a sharp little jolt to the car, by
which more than one spring-leaf was snapped.
For several days we trailed forest fires. The whole state was so
tindery that a lighted match might sweep it clear. Puffs of blue-white
smoke blurred the sharp outlines of the mountains and the air was warm
with an acrid, smoky haze. Sometimes we passed newly charred forests
with little tongues of flame still leaping at their edges, and once
we barely crossed before a smouldering fire swept down a hillside and
crossed the road where we had been a moment earlier. The people we met
were in a state of passive depression after the ruin of the wheat at
this last blow to their bank accounts. Some blamed the I. W. W. for the
fires, but most of them spoke of this possibility with the caution one
pins a scandal to an ugly neighbor in a small town.
Montana’s cities were also at the mercy of the I. W. W. The usual
strikes were agitating at Butte, and at the two leading hotels of Great
Falls, both perfectly appointed, every waiter had gone on strike, and
the cafeterias were doing a rushing business. The chambermaids followed
suit next day. Yet we liked Great Falls, and the kindred cities of
Montana, sharp-edged, clearly focussed little towns, brisk and new,
frankly ashamed of their un-Rexalled past, and making plans to build a
skyscraper a week--in the future.
Miles City and Roundup,--what visions of frontier life they conjured
up! And how little they fulfilled these visions! The former used to
be and still is the scene of great horse fairs and the center of
horse-trading Montana, a fact brought home to us by the manifold
horseshoe nails that punctured our tires in this district. But as we
saw no chaparraled rough-riders swaggering in the streets of Round-up,
so we saw no horses in Miles City. It may be that once or twice yearly
these towns revert to old customs, and their streets glow with the
color of former years, but otherwise they are more concerned with their
future than their past, and are trying as fast as possible to wipe out
all traits that distinguish them from every other thriving city.
Of this very section we drove through, back in the eighties Theodore
Roosevelt wrote, “In its present form stock-raising on the plains is
doomed and can hardly outlast the century. The great free ranches with
their barbarous, picturesque and curiously fascinating surroundings,
mark a primitive stage of existence as surely as do the great tracts of
primeval forests, and like the latter must pass away before the onward
march of our people; and we who have felt the charm of the life, and
have exulted in its abounding vigor and its bold, restless freedom,
will not only regret its passing for our own sakes, but must also feel
real sorrow that those who come after us are not to see, as we have
seen, what is perhaps the pleasantest, healthiest, and most exciting
phase of American existence.”
We came into the town of Medora on the Little Missouri, after the hills
had flattened out into the endless plains of North Dakota. On a cutbank
dominating the river at its bend a great gloomy house frowns. Here
the French Marquis de Mores once lived like a seigneur of the glorious
Louis, in crude, patriarchal magnificence. Even in his lifetime he was
a legend in this simple Dakotan village. But a greater legend centres
in a large signboard opposite which tells that Roosevelt once ranched
near by,--a matter of pride to all Medorans. Of this town in the
eighties he wrote, “Medora has more than its full share of shooting and
stabbing affrays, horse stealing and cattle-lifting. But the time for
such things is passing away.”
As we read the sign, a lanky Dakotan hovered near, and volunteered much
information in a sing-song voice which seemed characteristic of the
locality. “Right here at this bend,” he said, “they’re talking about
putting up one of these here equesterian statutes of Teddy, mounted on
horseback.”
Being averse to stopping, we suggested that he ride to the village and
tell us what he had to tell.
“Yes’m,” he continued swinging to the running board without ceasing
to talk. “In this here town interesting things has happened. But as
interesting as ever happened is coming off tomorrow, and if you was
a writer of books,”--a hit in the dark on his part--“I could tell
you something to write down. For there’s some of the richest men in
this town, prominent men with good businesses,”--his voice took on
an edge of strong feeling and I sensed something personal in his
excitement,--“who has been found out to be part of a gang that has been
stealing cattle wholesale, and shipping them to K. C. There’s a fat,
fleshy, portly man that’s said to have stole 1200 head himself. And
they’ve been getting rich on it for years, and would ’a kept on years
more only one of the gang, an outsider, got caught, and is turning
state’s evidence. There’ll be some excitement when they begin to make
arrests. You’d better stay over, and see some doings aint been seen in
a long time.”
But we could not stay,--the Drang nach Osten was too strong for us.
And a half-finished story sometimes is more alluring than one with the
edges nicely bound. Yet I should like to have heard the reason for the
note of personal grievance that shook the lanky stranger’s voice when
he spoke of the righteous vengeance about to fall on the cattle thieves.
We were not tempted to linger in North Dakota. No shade, no variety, no
charm, nothing but wheat, wheat, wheat;--ruined crops left to bake in
the glaring sun. Great grain elevators, community-owned, made the only
vertical lines in the landscape. The rest was flat, and to us stale
and unprofitable; colorless save for the faintly rainbow-tinted Bad
Lands. What little individuality the state had was crude and dreary,
reeking of Townleyism. With its wheat, its per capita wealth, and its
beyond-the-minute legislation I have been told it is one of the most
prosperous states of the Union. It may be. I know some people like
South Dakota,--virtuous, prosperous, solid, yet with no shade trees,
no bosky nooks, no charm. I leave their presence as quickly as we
left Dakota to the companionship of its galvanized iron elevators.
We sympathized with an old man who chatted with us when one of our
frequent punctures halted us in a forsaken little hamlet. In fact, it
was hardly a hamlet; it was more like a hamlet with the hamlet left
out. We commented on the drought.
“I suppose you’re used to it?”
“Me? I guess not! I don’t belong here. Where I come from they’ve got a
perfect climate all year round.”
“California?” we asked wearily.
“Tacoma.”
“But I’ve heard it’s always raining in Tacoma.”
“So it does. Rains every day of the year. There’s a climate for you.
Hope I get back to it some day, but,” he shook his head sadly, “I don’t
know.”
“Can’t you sell out?”
“Don’t own anything. Just here on a visit. Came here expecting to stay
a couple a weeks, and been here three years and nine months.”
“That almost sounds as if you like the place.”
“Naw. Came on to bury my mother-in-law, and what do you know!” His
sense of grievance mounted to indignation. “She ain’t died yet!”
As we talked to the aged man whose faith in human nature had been so
bitterly shattered by this perfidy in a near relative, he pointed to
the lad who was mending our tire.
“That fellow went through the war from start to finish,” he said. “Got
decorated three times.”
We looked at the desolate fields and the one forlorn main street,
and wondered how a hero who had known the tenseness of war and the
civilized beauty of France could endure to return to the bleak
stupidity of the town.
“Where were you stationed in France?” we asked him.
“Well, I was everywhere,--in the Argonne, at Belleau Woods and Chattoo
Thierry, and all them places.”
“It must have been exciting.”
“Well, it was pretty hot.”
“Do tell us more about it.”
“Well it was pretty hot,--pretty hot.”
“Did you like France?”
“France?” His eyes kindled as they swept the bare prairie,--“Believe
me, I was glad to get back where there’s something doing. Mud,--that’s
what France was,--nothin’ but mud!”
The tire he repaired gave out before evening, but we forgave him. Not
every puncture can be patched by a hero of Belleau Wood. Besides, it
was our twelfth that week, and one more or less had become a matter of
indifference.
At Bismarck mine host met us at the sidewalk with, “Where’s the Mister?”
“There _is_ no Mister,” answered Toby, to whom that question was a red
rag. “We are alone.”
What he said next is memorable only because we were soon to hear it
for the last time, and its refrain already had a pensive note of
reminiscence. But that we dared go so far from home Misterless raised
his opinion of us to dizzy heights, and after personally escorting us
to the garage, where he made a eulogistic speech in which we figured
as intimate friends for whom any service rendered would be a personal
favor to him, he gave us the best room his house afforded. Though
cozy it was not the best house in town. We had long avoided exclusive
hotels. Hardened by ten thousand miles of vagabondage, we had become
completely indifferent to appearances, and wore our grimy khaki and
dusty boots with the greatest disregard of the opinion of others
either had ever attained. While Toby packed each morning, it was my
duty to attend to the car, and to this fact I could boast the trimmer
appearance of the two. When the tank was filled, I usually sprayed what
gasolene remained in the hose over my clothes where they looked worst,
but Toby was so far sunk in lassitude that she scorned such primping.
Her suit was a collection of souvenirs of delightful hours. A smudge on
the left knee recalled where she rested her tin plate in the Canyon de
Chelley. Down the front a stain showed where Hostein Chee had upset a
cup of coffee. Her elbows were coated with a paste of grease and dirt
from innumerable tires, and minor spots checkerboarded her from chin
to knee. As a precaution, when we had to stay at a first class hotel,
I usually left Toby outside while I registered. Though the clerk never
looked favorably upon me, he would give me a room, usually on the
fourteenth floor if they went that high. Then, before he could see Toby
I would smuggle her hurriedly across to the elevator. Sometimes she
refused to be hurried, but examined postcards and magazines on the way,
indifferent to the amazed, immaculate eyes turned toward us.
“I always maintain,” she contended when I remonstrated with her, “that
a person is well dressed if all her clothes are of the same sort, no
matter what sort they are.”
“In that case,” I said, “you are undoubtedly well-dressed.”
Secure in this consciousness, Toby sat down in the lobby of our
Bismarck hotel with two dozen postcards which she proceeded to address
to her sisters and her cousins and her aunts. As she warmed to her
work, she gradually spread out until the cards covered the desk. A
fellow lodger watched her, and finally rose and stood beside her,
curiosity gleaming from his eyes and reflecting in his gold teeth which
glittered as he spoke.
“Say! If you’re going east”--he thrust a handful of business cards in
her hands as he spoke--“maybe you’d just as lief distribute some of my
cards with your own, as you go along.”
Something I recognized as Cantabrigian, but he did not, in Toby’s
expression made him add propitiatingly, “Of course I’d expect to do the
same for you. What’s _your_ line,--postcards?”
When what remained of him had thawed out sufficiently to fade away I
ventured to look at his cards. They read, “Portable Plumbing and Bath
Fixings.”
“According to your theory,” I consoled Toby, “in presenting a
convincing and consistent appearance as a lady drummer for postcards
and plumbing, you are well dressed. Therefore the poor man was only
paying you a compliment----”
“He was fresh,” said Toby. “Just fresh.”
Only as we were leaving Dakota did we see a touch of homeliness,--in
Fargo, a green, cozy place, full of neat, comfortable homes. As
we crossed the state line here into Minnesota, instantly a change
appeared. The air became moist and unirritating. Meadows and leafy
forests, such as we have in New England, dozens of black, quiet lakes
and little, sparkling streams, long wheat fields shaded by boundary
rows of oaks, with six-horse teams harvesting grain flashed by us.
Flock upon flock of red-winged and jet black blackbirds and wild ducks
flashed from the reedy pools, whirring into the woods. We would have
liked leisure to camp on the shores of some secluded pond until the
spirit moved us on.
We saw something more in Minnesota than her blackbirds and lakes and
pretty woods and fields, her macadam roads and beautiful twin cities,
frowning at each other from the high banks of the Mississippi. We saw
the West fade, and give place to the East. The easy-going, slap-dash,
restless, generous, tolerant, gossipy, plastic, helpful, jealous West
was departing, not to reappear even sporadically. In its place we
began to encounter caution, neatness, method, the feeling for property
and the fear of strangers, that we were brought up with. We were
clicking back into the groove of precedent and established order, no
stronger, if as strong, on the Eastern seaboard than here. We could
almost put our finger on the very town along the Red Trail where we
noticed the transition. It was not Miles City nor Glendive,--Montana
is still entirely western; it was not Bismarck nor the bleak little
town of Casselton, west of Fargo. Probably it was Fargo that we should
have marked for the pivotal town. At least the slight struggle a few
villages beyond made to suggest the old, beloved West was soon quenched
by the encroaching East. Some call the West Seattle, others Syracuse,
N. Y., but I believe that Fargo very nearly marks the division.
Grazing, sheep and cattle-raising increasingly lost place to the
industries, city-building and manufactures, from this point eastward
until they disappeared altogether.
Our last experience with what for lack of a neater phrase I have called
western chivalry, occurred at a charming little town named St. Cloud,
near Minneapolis. Our fourteenth and last puncture was changed and
mended for us at an up-to-the-second garage. When we inquired what we
owed we received a smile and the answer, “No charge for ladies.”
“But you worked half an hour.”
“Glad to do it. Come again when you have a puncture, and we’ll charge
you the same.”
From this point till we reached home, we met with respectful treatment,
but no suggestion that we belonged to a sex to whom special privileges
must be accorded. That is what old-fashioned people used to say would
happen when women had the vote. Yet we were leaving the pioneer
suffrage states, and entering the anti’s last stand.
Wisconsin surely is not the West, though we found it a fruitful,
welcoming state anyone would be glad to live in. We got an impression
of rolling fields, in brilliant patchwork of varying grains, like a
glorified bedquilt spread under the sun; elms and summer haze, and a
tangle of shade by the road; lazy, prosperous farmsteads, fat Dutch
cattle, silver-green tobacco crops. The predominant impression was of
gold and blue,--stacked wheat against the sky. Madison, into which we
rolled one Sunday morning, presents an unhurried and stately best to
the tourist, who sees it unprejudiced by miles of slatternly outskirts.
He comes quickly to the Capitol, which is as it should be, the logical
center of the town. Flanked by dignified University buildings set in
green gardens, the State House stands in grounds planned to set off
its perfect proportions. Without making it an object, we had seen
many state Capitols,--Arizona’s, New Mexico’s, Utah’s, Montana’s,
North Dakota’s, Minnesota’s--and some were imposing and some merely
distressing. All, whatever their shortcomings, had a dome, as if it
were a requirement of the Federal Constitution that whether it has
honesty, dignity, grace or proportion, a state building must have a
dome. In poor Boston, the dome has nearly disappeared under an attack
of elephantiasis affecting the main body, as if someone had given the
State House an overdose of yeast and set it in a warm place after
forgetting to put any “risings” in the dome. Santa Fé’s is modest and
pretty enough. Salt Lake’s is impressive and cold and very fine, but
leaves one with no more of a taste for Capitols than before seeing it.
Helena’s is atrocious,--a bombastic dome overtopping a puny body, and
Arizona’s is so like all the others I cannot recall it in any respect.
But Wisconsin’s has charm and beauty, dignity and proportion,--all that
an architect strives and usually fails to get in one building. Most
capitols leave one unimpressed, but this is so satisfying and inspiring
one wonders how its corridors can send forth such unpromising statesmen.
Our homeward journey seemed nearly ended before we reached Chicago.
Driving over these perfectly kept roads of the middle west furnished
no new experience. We decided to shorten the remaining interval still
further by taking the Detroit boat to Buffalo. When we suddenly made
this decision we had less than two days to make the 340 miles,--time
enough, except for the state of our tires, which resembled that
mid-Victorian neurasthenic Sweet Alice Ben Bolt. They collapsed if you
gave them a smile, and blew out at fear of a frown. No longer in the
belt of chivalry, we toiled over obstreperous rims, warped and bent
from drought and flood, while able bodied men sailed by, and the only
speech we had from them was an occasional jeering, “Hello, girls!”
Thus we knew we were fast returning to civilization. As we made out our
bill of lading at Detroit we heard for the last time, “Well, you are a
long ways from home.” After that we felt we had already completed our
period of vagabondage.
But the fates were not to let us finish tamely. The last act of our
drama began when our rear tire gave way, and lost us two hours while
we waited for repairs, just out of Chicago. The eastern entrance to
Chicago, with its unsightly, factory-pocked marshes is cheerless enough
even under blue skies. But a soggy downpour only made us shiver and
hurry on. Chicago was well enough, as cities go, but the middle west
did not hold us, having neither the courtesy of the South, the wide
beauty of the West nor the self-respecting antiquity of the East. Yet
here and there in the open country of Illinois, with its broad golden
wheat fields, tall elms, and its homelike blue haze softening distant
woods, a bit of English Warwickshire peeped out at us.
The drizzle soon settled into a steady downpour. All day we slushed
over glistening macadam and through the heavy mud of section roads.
Night fell early under the gloom of the rain while we were still many
miles from the end of our day’s stint. We decided to go as long as we
could, or we never should reach Detroit in time. Camping was out of the
question,--Illinois was too civilized for it to be safe procedure. So
in deference to the solemn midwestern habit of laying out their country
like a checkerboard, we paced so many miles east, so many miles south.
We left tracks in three states that day, the Yellowstone Trail dipping
unexpectedly into Indiana, seen too late and briefly to leave any
impression but of an excellent cafeteria at South Bend. Some time after
dark, our sense of direction took a nose dive, and was permanently
injured. At half-past eight we reckoned the miles, and knew there was
to be no rest for the weary if we were to reach Detroit next day.
Hopelessly lost by now, confused by many arguments, backings and
turnings, we knocked, somewhere in Indiana, at a Hoosier door, and an
old man in his stocking feet came out, calling lovingly, “That you,
dear?” We almost wished we were his dear, and might rest in the yellow
glow of his parlor instead of pushing on in the dark. We were several
miles off our bearings in both directions it seemed. He told us off
nine turns to the east and four to the north to straighten us out,
and we went on into the night and the storm. We had gone out into the
night and storm so often that no heroine of melodrama could tell us
anything about either. But being by this time completely disorientated,
instead of traveling nine east and four north, as they say in the easy
vernacular of the midwest, we went instead nine west and four south,
and came out at a lonely crossroads, the kind at which a murderer might
appropriately be buried. Our arithmetic was quite unequal to adding
and subtracting our mistakes. Seeing a house with one light burning,
I reached its door to ask directions. There, unashamed, through the
lighted window, a lady sat in her nightdress, braiding her hair. I
backed away, not wishing to embarrass her. It was not as if I were
one of the neighbors, whom she seemed not to mind. A dismal quarter
of a mile away, another light gleamed. I walked to it. An old woman
cautiously put her head out of the door. She too was in an honest
flannel nightie, and I concluded that the mid-west wears its nightgear
unabashed. My sudden appearance, and especially the fact of my
inquiring for a great city like Detroit, was not reassuring to her. She
asked suspiciously if I were alone and at my answer, exclaimed, “Aint
you afraid?”
Her question gave me genuine amazement. I had forgotten that in the
eastern section of our country people are afraid of each other, and
I had grown so far away from it that I laughed and said, “Not in the
least.” She seemed to think this marvelous. A motherly old soul, her
sympathy struggled hard with her fear that I was bent on forcing a
violent entrance into her house, but finally the baser suspicions won
and she shut the door firmly on me until she could confer with “Pa.”
He, being bolder, came openly to the porch in his,--was it pajamas or
nightshirt?--I can hardly say, because not to embarrass him I only
looked past his snowy beard and into his nice blue eyes. He directed
us. We were to go seven north and thirteen west.
For half an hour the sleepy Toby and I wrestled with the problem
of where we now were, how far from our starting point, from our
destination, from our last checking up,--till we feared for our
reason. Like a ballad refrain, we went seven miles south and thirteen
west,--but instead of a town met a pine forest. So, a few miles more
or less meaning nothing to us, we threw in several to the north and
a couple east, with the same unpromising result. At the rate we were
going, I expected to reach either the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific
Ocean by morning.
Once we heard the whirr of a mighty engine over our heads,--some
belated airman, lost like ourselves doubtless in the rain above us. If
anything could have made us feel lonelier than we had, it would have
been this evidence of an unseen neighbor who shared the night and the
storm with us.
We came to another house. I stopped the car. Neither of us moved. “I
went last time,” I said pointedly.
“Huh-yah-yah,” protested Toby, but I did not yield, because I had
fallen asleep. She wearily tottered out to the house, and brought back
a Hoosier farmer with her, who fastened his suspenders as he came.
“You’re some out of your way,” he said, unnecessarily, “but five east
and eight south you’ll find a small hotel where you can spend the
night.”
“Is it all right?” I asked dubiously.
“Well,” he considered, “being a neighbor, I don’t like to say. You
might like it better at Orland, seven miles further.”
We decided on Orland and slushed along in mud so thick we could hardly
hold the wheel stiff. Suddenly we heard an ominous sound,--a steady
thump, thump, thump. I got out in the downpour and looked at the tires.
They were hard. I peered at the engine. It purred with a mighty purr.
So I climbed in again, and we started hopefully; again came the heavy
thumping, a sound fit to rack a car into bits. However, as the engine
still functioned we decided to go as long as we could, though the noise
struck terror to our hearts. We were too weary and wet to wallow in the
mud and dark, investigating engine troubles. I drove cautiously, and
after what seemed hours we reached Orland. The thumping now had become
violent, but we didn’t care. A roof and a bed were practically within
our grasp.
It was a neat little town with white buildings and shady trees. Had we
been motoring through on a sunny afternoon we might have said, “What a
sweet place!” But we were too tired for æsthetic appreciation. Across
the street was a large, comfortable white hotel, with broad hospitable
porch. We hastened to rap on the door.
After a quarter of an hour, we ceased to hasten, but we continued to
knock intermittently. Then Toby blew the horn as viciously as she knew
how. The silent town seemed to recoil from our rude noise and gather
the bed quilts closer about it. But no response came from the hotel.
From the second floor came sounds of slumbering. Becoming expert we
counted three people asleep. The three snores dwindled to two snores
and a cough, after our experiment with the horn, and later diminished
to a cough and two voices, speaking in whispers. We wanted to call out
that we knew they were awake, and why didn’t they come down and let us
in, but we knew they had no intention of stirring. We were in a state
of enraged helplessness. We rapped until it was quite apparent the
hotel was resolved not to establish a dangerous precedent by admitting
strangers after midnight. Then we gave up. But Orland owed us a bed and
if we could we were going to exact it. We felt as if it were a duel
between the town and ourselves.
Our last knock brought a head from a little room over the store next
door, and a woman’s voice called, “Who is it?”
“Two ladies from Boston,” we answered, guilefully using the magic words
which in happier climes had brought cheerful repartee and prompt
sustenance. We did not get the expected reaction, but her tone was
apprehensive, if kind, when she asked, “What do you want?”
We told her, though she might have guessed.
“Knock again,” she said. “There’s someone there. They ought to hear
you.”
“They hear us all right,” we said, loud enough for the cough and two
voices not to miss, “but they won’t let us in. Do you know of any place
where we can go?”
“I’d take you in here,” said the voice,--the only sign of hospitality
we had from Orland that night,--“but my husband and I have one room,
and the children the other.”
Even standing on an alien sidewalk at two-thirty A. M. in the rain we
felt less forlorn now that we had someone to talk to. A male rumble
made a quartette of our trio, which after a discussion, she reported.
“_He_ says you might try Uncle Ollie’s.” Her voice implied she thought
the suggestion barren.
I dared not let her see we didn’t know Uncle Ollie for fear it might
prejudice this suspicious hamlet against us. So I queried cautiously,
“Now, just where does he live?” as if it had only slipped my mind for
the moment.
“Go down the road a piece and turn west,--it’s the second house. But I
dunno whether you’ll be able to wake him. He’s kinder deaf.”
We thanked her, and said goodnight and she wished us good luck. We
bumped the damaged old lady down the main street, her thumpings making
such a racket that we expected the constable to arrest us any moment
for disturbing the peace. We had, however, no intention of trying Uncle
Ollie’s.
A half mile further, within a pretty white cottage set shyly from the
road, we saw a light burning. This was so unusual for Orland that we
invaded the premises with new hope. Toby being again comatose, I waded
wearily to the door and knocked. A frightened girl’s voice answered,
and its owner appeared at the door. I shall always think of Indiana
and Michigan as a succession of old and young standing on doorsteps in
their nightgowns.
“Who is it?” called a voice from an inner room.
“Two women want a place to spend the night, gran’maw,” answered the
girl.
“Well, don’t you let ’em in here,” answered gran’maw.
“No, I don’t know of any place,” the girl translated gran’maw to us,
shutting the door.
“Of all churlish towns!” we said, left on the doorstep. But it was
not a just criticism. We had simply crossed the line where west is
east, where a stranger is perforce a suspicious character. Back in New
England would _we_ have let in two strange women after midnight? Their
asking to come in would have been proof presumptive they were either
criminal or crazy.
Our duel lost we drew up the old lady in a gutter under some dripping
elms, and lay down to a belated sleep among the baggage,--Toby in one
seat, I in another. In a twinkling we sat up, refreshed, to broad
daylight and a shining morning sky. Our first thought was to search
for the car’s internal injuries, fearing greatly they might prevent us
going further. There were none. Two tumors the size of a large potato
on our front tire revealed the cause of the noise. The marvel was that
the tire had not collapsed as a finishing touch to last night’s dismal
story. Luck, in its peculiar way, was again with us.
While we changed to our last spare tire, Toby straightened up for a
moment, and suddenly broke into a bitter, sardonic laugh. “Will you
look at that!” she said, pointing overhead.
Directly above our patient car a large, brightly painted sign flapped
energetically in the clearing breeze. It read, in letters a yard high,
“Welcome to Orland!”
Transcriber's Notes:
Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
Perceived typographical errors have been changed.