MA PETTENGILL
by
HARRY LEON WILSON
Author of _Bunker Bean_, _Ruggles of Red Gap_, _Somewhere in Red Gap_,
etc.
1919
TO WILLIAM EUGENE LEWIS
CONTENTS
I. MA PETTENGILL AND THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
II. A LOVE STORY
III. RED GAP AND THE BIG-LEAGUE STUFF
IV. VENDETTA
V. ONE ARROWHEAD DAY
VI. THE PORCH WREN
VII. CHANGE OF VENUS
VIII. CAN HAPPEN!
IX. THE TAKER-UP
X. AS TO HERMAN WAGNER
XI. CURLS
I
MA PETTENGILL AND THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
From the Arrowhead corrals I strolled up the poplar-bordered lane that
leads past the bunk house to the castle of the ranch's chatelaine. It
was a still Sunday afternoon--the placid interlude, on a day of rest,
between the chores of the morning and those of evening. But the calm was
for the ear alone. To the eye certain activities, silent but swift, were
under way. On the shaded side piazza of the ranch house I could discern
my hostess, Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill; she sat erect, even in a
rocking-chair, and knitted. On the kitchen steps, full in the westering
sun, sat the Chinese chef of the Arrowhead, and knitted--a yellow,
smoothly running automaton. On a shaded bench by the spring house, a
plaid golfing cap pushed back from one-half the amazing area of his bare
pate, sat the aged chore-boy, Boogles, and knitted. The ranch was on a
war basis.
And more: As I came abreast of the bunk house the Sabbath calm was
punctured by the tart and careless speech of Sandy Sawtelle, a top rider
of the Arrowhead, for he, too, was knitting, or had been. On a stool
outside the doorway he held up an unfinished thing before his grieved
eyes and devoutly wished it in the place of punishment of the wicked
dead. The sincere passion of his tones not only arrested my steps but
lured through the open doorway the languorous and yawning Buck Devine,
who hung over the worker with disrespectful attention. I joined the pair.
To Buck's query, voiced in a key of feigned mirth, Sandy said with simple
dignity that it was going to be a darned good sweater for the boys in the
trenches. Mr. Devine offered to bet his head that it wasn't going to be
anything at all--at least nothing any one would want round a trench. Mr.
Sawtelle ignored the wager and asked me if I knew how to do this here,
now, casting off. I did not.
"I better sneak round and ask the Chink," said Sandy. "He's the star
knitter on the place."
We walked on together, seemingly deaf to certain laboured pleasantries of
Mr. Devine concerning a red-headed cow-puncher that had got rejected for
fighting because his feet was flat and would now most likely get rejected
for knitting because his head was flat. By way of covering the hearty
laughter of Mr. Devine at his own wit I asked why Sandy should not
consult his employer rather than her cook.
With his ball of brown wool, his needles and his work carried tenderly
before him Sandy explained, with some embarrassment as it seemed, that
the madam was a good knitter, all right, all right, but she was an awful
bitter-spoken lady when any little thing about the place didn't go just
right, making a mountain out of a mole hill, and crying over spilt milk,
and always coming back to the same old subject, and so forth, till you'd
think she couldn't talk about anything else, and had one foot in the
poorhouse, and couldn't take a joke, and all like that. I could believe
it or not, but that was the simple facts of the matter when all was said
and done. And the Chink was only too glad to show off how smart he was
with a pair of needles.
This not only explained nothing but suggested that there might indeed be
something to explain. And it was Sandy's employer after all who resolved
his woolen difficulty. She called to him as he would have left me for the
path to the kitchen door:
"You bring that right here!"
It was the tone of one born to command, and once was enough. Sandy
brought it right there, though going rather too much like a martyr to
the stake, I thought; for surely it was not shameful that he should prove
inept in the new craft.
Nor was there aught but genial kindness in the lady's reception of him.
Ma Pettengill, arrayed in Sabbath bravery of apparel, as of a debutante
at a summer hotel where the rates are exorbitant, instantly laid by her
own knitting and questioned him soothingly. It seemed to be a simple
difficulty. Sandy had reached the point where a sweater must have a neck,
and had forgotten his instructions. Cordially the woman aided him to
subtract fourteen from two hundred and sixty-two and then to ascertain
that one hundred and twenty-four would be precisely half of the
remainder. It was all being done, as I have remarked, with the gentlest
considering kindness, with no hint of that bitterness which the neophyte
had shown himself to be fearing in the lady. Was she not kindness itself?
Was she not, in truth, just a shade too kind? Surely there was a purr
to her voice, odd, unwonted; and surely her pupil already cringed under
a lash that impended.
Yet this visible strain, it seemed, had not to do with knitted garments.
Ma Pettengill praised the knitting of Sandy; praised it to me and praised
it to him. Of course her remark that he seemed to be a born knitter and
ought to devote his whole time to it might have seemed invidious to a
sensitive cowman, yet it was uttered with flawless geniality. But when
Sandy, being set right, would have taken his work and retired, as was
plainly his eager wish, his mentor said she would knit two of the new
short rows herself, just to make sure. And while she knitted these two
rows she talked. She knitted them quickly, though the time must have
seemed to Sandy much longer than it was.
"Here stands the greatest original humorist in Kulanche County," said
the lady, with no longer a purring note in her voice. She boomed the
announcement. Sandy, drooping above her, painfully wore the affectation
of counting each stitch of the flashing needles. "And practical jokes--my
sakes alive! He can think of the funniest jokes to put up on poor,
unsuspecting people! Yes, sir; got a genius for it. And witty! Of
course it ain't just what he says that's so funny--it's the noisy way
he says it.
"And you wouldn't think it to look at him, but he's one of these here
financial magnets, too. Oh, yes, indeed! Send him out with a hatful of
ten-dollar bills any day and he won't let one of 'em go for a cent under
six dollars, not if buyers is plenty--he's just that keen and avaricious.
That's his way. Never trained for it, either; just took it up natural."
With drawn and ashen face Mr. Sawtelle received back his knitting. His
pose was to appear vastly preoccupied and deaf to insult. He was still
counting stitches as he turned away and clattered down the steps.
"Say!" called his employer. Sandy turned.
"Yes, ma'am!"
"You seen the party that stopped here this morning in that big, pompous
touring car?"
"No, ma'am!"
"They was after mules."
"Yes, ma'am!"
"They offered me five hundred dollars a span for mine."
"No, ma'am--I mean, yes, ma'am!"
"That's all. I thought you'd rejoice to know it." The lady turned to me
as if Mr. Sawtelle had left us. "Yes, sir; he'd make you die laughing
with some of his pranks, that madcap would. I tell you, when he begins
cutting up--"
But Mr. Sawtelle was leaving us rapidly. His figure seemed to be drawn
in, as if he would appear smaller to us. Ma Pettengill seized her own
knitting once more, stared grimly at it, then stared grimly down at the
bunk house, within which her victim had vanished. A moment later she was
pouring tobacco from a cloth sack into a brown cigarette paper. She drew
the string of the sack--one end between her teeth--rolled the cigarette
with one swift motion and, as she waited the blaze of her match, remarked
that they had found a substitute for everything but the mule. The
cigarette lighted, she burned at least a third of its length in one vast
inhalation, which presently caused twin jets of smoke to issue from the
rather widely separated corners of a generous mouth. Upon which she
remarked that old Safety First Timmins was a game winner, about the
gamest winner she'd ever lost to.
Three other mighty inhalations and the cigarette was done. Again she took
up the knitting, pausing for but one brief speech before the needles
began their shrewd play. This concerned the whale. She said the whale
was the noblest beast left to us in all the animal kingdom and would
vanish like the buffalo if treated as food. She said it was shameful to
reduce this majestic creature of the deep to the dimensions of a chafing
dish and a three-cornered slice of toast. Then she knitted.
She had left numerous openings; some humorous emprise of Sandy Sawtelle,
presumably distressing; the gameness of one Timmins as a winner; the
whale as a food animal; the spectacular price of mules broken to harness.
Rather than choose blindly among them I spoke of my day's fishing.
Departing at sunrise I had come in with a bounteous burden of rainbow
trout, which I now said would prove no mean substitute for meat at the
evening meal.
Then, as she grimly knitted, Ma Pettengill discoursed of other boasted
substitutes for meat, none of which pleased her. Hogs and sheep were
other substitutes, there being but one genuine meat, to wit, Beef. Take
hogs; mean, unsociable animals, each hog going off by himself, cursing
and swearing every step of the way. Had I ever seen a hog that thought
any other hog was good enough to associate with him? No, I hadn't; nor
nobody else. A good thing hogs couldn't know their present price. Stuck
up enough already! And sheep? Silly. No minds of their own. Let one die
and all the rest think they got to die also. Do it too. No brain. Of
course the price tempted a lot of moral defectives to raise 'em, but when
you reflected that you had to go afoot, with a dog that was smarter than
any man at it, and a flea-bitten burro for your mess wagon---not for her.
Give her a business where you could set on a horse. Yes, sir; people
would get back to Nature and raise beef after the world had been made
safe once more for a healthy appetite. This here craze for substitutes
would die out. You couldn't tell her there was any great future for the
canned jack-rabbit business, for instance--just a fad; and whales the
same. She knew and I knew that a whale was too big to eat. People
couldn't get any real feeling for it, and not a chance on earth to breed
'em up and improve the flesh. Wasn't that the truth? And these here diet
experts, with their everlasting talk about carbos and hydrates, were they
doing a thing but simply taking all the romance out of food? No, they
were not. Of course honest fish, like trout, were all right if a body
was sick or not hungry or something.
Trout reminded her of something, and here again the baleful tooth of
calumny fleshed itself in the fair repute of one Timmins. She described
him as "a strange growth named Timmins, that has the Lazy 8 Ranch over
on the next creek and wears kind of aimless whiskers all over his face
till you'd think he had a gas mask on." She talked freely of him.
"You know what he does when he wants a mess of trout? Takes one of
these old-fashioned beer bottles with patent stoppers, fills it up with
unslaked lime, pours in a little water, stops it up, drops it in a likely
looking trout pool, and in one minute it explodes as good as something
made by a Russian patriot; all the trout in the pool are knocked out
and float on the surface, where this old highbinder gathers 'em in. He's
a regular efficiency expert in sport. Take fall and spring, when the wild
geese come through, he'll soak grain in alcohol and put it out for 'em
over on the big marsh. First thing you know he'll have a drunken old
goose by the legs, all maudlin and helpless. Puts him in a coop till
he sobers up, then butchers him.
"Such is Safety First: never been known to take a chance yet. Why, say,
a year ago when he sold off his wool there was a piece in the county
paper about him getting eighteen thousand dollars for it; so naturally
there was a man that said he was a well-known capitalist come up from
San Francisco to sell him some stock in a rubber company. Safety admits
he has the money and he goes down to the big city for a week at the
capitalist's expense, seeing the town's night life and the blue-print
maps and the engraved stock and samples of the rubber and the
capitalist's picture under a magnificent rubber tree in South America,
and he's lodged in a silk boudoir at the best hotel and wined and
dined very deleteriously and everything is agreed to. And the night
before he's going to put his eighteen thousand into this lovely rubber
stock that will net him two hundred per cent, at the very lowest, on the
capitalist's word of honour, what does he do but sneak out and take the
train for home on his return ticket that he'd made the capitalist buy
him.
"Ever talk to one of these rich capitalists that has rubber stock for
sale in South America or a self-starting banana orchard? You know how
good they are.
"You're certainly entitled to anything of your own that you've kept
after they get through with you. And would you think that this poor,
simple-minded old rancher would be any match for their wiles? But if
you knew he had been a match and had nicked 'em for at least three
hundred dollars, would you still think something malignant might be
put over on him by a mere scrub buckeroo named Sandy Sawtelle, that
never made a cent in his life except by the most degrading manual
labour? No, you wouldn't. No fair-minded judge of criminals would.
"But I admit I had a weak moment. Yes, sir; for a brief spell I was all
too human. Or I guess what it was. I was all blinded up with immoral
designs, this here snake-blooded Timmins having put things over on me
in stock deals from time to time till I'd got to lying awake nights
thinking how I could make a believer of him. I wanted him to know there
is a God, even if it hadn't ever seemed so to him.
"Of course I knew it would have to be some high-grade felony, he being
proof against common depredations. Well, then, along come this Sunday
paper, with two whole pages telling about how the meat of the common
whale will win the war, with a picture of a whale having dotted lines
showing how to butcher it, and recipes for whale patties, and so forth.
And next comes the circus to Red Gap, with old Pete, the Indian, going
down to it and getting crazy about elephants. And so that was how it
happened."
The lady now knitted in silence, appearing to believe that all had been
told.
I waited a decent interval, then said I was glad indeed to know how it
had all happened; that it was a great help to know how it had happened,
even if I must remain forever ignorant of what it was that had happened.
Of course I couldn't expect to be told that.
It merely brought more about mules. Five hundred dollars a span for mules
looked good until you remembered that you needed 'em worse than the other
party did. She had to keep her twenty span of old reliables because, what
with the sailors and section hands you got nowadays to do your haying,
you had to have tame mules. Give 'em any other kind and they'd desert the
ship the minute a team started to run. It cost too much for wagon
repairs.
Silence again.
I now said I had, it was true, heard much low neighbourhood scandal about
the Timmins man, but that I had learned not to believe all I heard about
people; there was too much prejudice in the world, and at least two sides
to every question.
This merely evoked the item that Timmins had bought him a thrift stamp
on the sole ground that it had such a pretty name; then came the wish
that she might have seen him dining in public at that rich hotel where
the capitalist paid the bills.
She thought people must have been startled by some of his actions.
"Yes, sir; that old outlaw will eat soup or any soft food with almost no
strategy at all."
As we seemed to be getting nowhere I meanly rolled the lady a cigarette.
She hates to stop knitting to roll one, but she will stop to light it.
She stopped now, and as I held the match for her I said quite frankly
that it had become necessary for me to be told the whole thing from start
to finish. She said she had told me everything--and believed it--but
would go over it again if I didn't understand. Though not always starting
at command, the lady has really a full habit of speech.
I told you about whales, didn't I? Whales started it--whales for table
use. It come in the Sunday paper--with the picture of a handsome whale
and the picture of a French cook kissing his fingers over the way he has
cooked some of it; and the picture of a pleased young couple eating whale
in a swell restaurant; and the picture of a fair young bride in her
kitchenette cutting up three cents' worth of whale meat into a chafing
dish and saying how glad she was to have something tasty and cheap for
dearie's lunch; and the picture of a poor labouring man being told by
someone down in Washington, D.C., that's making a dollar a year, that
a nickel's worth of prime whale meat has more actual nourishment than a
dollar's worth of porterhouse steak; and so on, till you'd think the
world's food troubles was going to be settled in jig time; all people
had to do was to go out and get a good eating whale and salt down the
side meat and smoke the shoulders and grind up some sausage and be fixed
for the winter, with plenty to send a mess round to the neighbours now
and then.
And knocking beef, you understand, till you'd think no one but criminals
and idiots would ever touch a real steak again, on account of its being
so poor in food values, like this Washington scientist says that gets a
dollar a year salary and earns every cent of it. It made me mad, the
slanderous things they said about beef; but I read the piece over pretty
carefully and I really couldn't see where the whale was going to put me
out of business, at least for a couple years yet. It looked like I'd have
time, anyway, to make a clean-up before you'd be able to go into any
butcher shop and get a rib roast of young whale for six cents, with a
bushel or two of scraps thrown in for the dog.
Then this Sunday paper goes out to the bunk house and the boys find the
whale piece and get excited about it. Looks like if it's true that most
of 'em will be driving ice wagons or something for a living. They want
me to send down for a mess of whale meat so they can see if it tastes
like regular food. They don't hardly believe these pictures where people
dressed up like they had money are going into spasms of delight about it.
Still, they don't know--poor credulous dubs! They think things you see in
a Sunday paper might be true now and then, even if it is most always a
pack of lies thought up by dissipated newspaper men.
I tell 'em they can send for a whole whale if they want to pay for it,
but none of my money goes that way so long as stall-fed beef retains its
present flavour; and furthermore I expect to be doing business right here
for years after the whale fad has died out--doing the best I can with
about ten silly cowhands taking the rest cure at my expense the minute I
step off the place. I said there was no doubt they should all be added to
the ranks of the unemployed that very minute--but due to other well-known
causes than the wiping out of the cattle industry by cold whale hash in
jelly, which happened to be the dish this French chef was going crazy
over.
They chewed over that pointed information for a while, then they got to
making each other bets of a thousand dollars about what whale meat would
taste like; whether whale liver and bacon could be told from natural
liver and bacon, and whether whale steak would probably taste like
catfish or mebbe more like mud turtle. Sandy Sawtelle, who always knows
everything by divine right, like you might say, he says in superior tones
that it won't taste like either one but has a flavour all its own, which
even he can't describe, though it will be something like the meat of the
wild sea cow, which roams the ocean in vast herds off the coast of
Florida.
Then they consider the question of a whale round-up in an expert manner.
It don't look none too good, going out on rodeo in water about three
miles too deep for wading, though the idea of lass'ing a whale calf and
branding it does hold a certain fascination. Sandy says it would be the
only livestock business on earth where you don't always have to be
fearing a dry season; and Buck Devine says that's so, and likewise
the range is practically unlimited, as any one can see from a good map,
and wouldn't it be fine riding herd in a steam yacht with a high-class
bartender handy, instead of on a so-and-so cayuse that was liable any
minute to trade ends and pour you out of the saddle on to your lame
shoulder.
They'd got to kidding about it by this time, when who should ride up but
old Safety First Timmins. They spring the food whale on Safety with much
flourish. They show him the pictures and quote prices on the hoof--which
are low, but look what even a runt of a yearling whale that was calved
late in the fall would weigh on the scales!--and no worry about fences or
free range or winter feeding or water holes; nothing to do but ride round
on your private steamboat with a good orchestra, and a chance to be
dissolute and count your money. And look what a snap the pioneers will
have with all the mavericks; probably not a single whale in the ocean yet
branded! And does Timmins want to throw in with us? If he does mebbe they
can fix up a deal with me because I want a good business man at the head
of the new outfit.
But Safety says right off quick that it's all a pack of nonsense. He says
it's the mad dream of a visionary or feeble-minded person. He don't deny
there would be money in whales if they could be handled, but you couldn't
handle anything that had the whole ocean to swim in that covers three
quarters of the earth's surface, as he has often read. And how would you
get a branding iron on a whale, and what good would it do you? He'd beat
it out for Europe. He said they was foolish to think whales would stay in
a herd, and he guessed I'd been talking just to hear myself talk, or more
likely I'd been kidding 'em to get a good laugh.
Sandy says: "Well, I wasn't going to tell you at first, but I guess it'll
be safe with you, you being a good friend of the Arrowhead, only don't
let it go no farther; but the fact is the boss is negotiating for the
whale privilege in Great Salt Lake. Yes, sir, she's bribing the Utah
legislature this very minute to let the bill go through! And I guess that
don't look much like kidding. As soon as the governor has signed the bill
she'll put in a couple of good three-year-old bull whales and a nice
little herd of heifers and have the world's meat supply at her finger
ends in less than five years--just killing off the yearling steers."
Safety looks a bit startled at this, and Sandy goes on to say that though
whale meat is now but a fad of the idle rich it's bound to be the meat of
rich and poor alike in future. He'd bet a thousand dollars to a dime that
by the time the next war come along the first thing they'd do would be to
establish a whaleless day. He said whale meat was just that good.
Safety chewed his gum quite a time on this--he says if a man chews gum he
won't ruin himself in pocket for tobacco--and he read the whale article
over carefully and looked at the pictures again, but he still said it
didn't sound to him like a legitimate business enterprise. He said for
one thing there'd be trouble shipping the original herd up to Salt Lake.
Sandy said it was true; there would be the initial expense of loading on
to flat cars, and a couple of tunnels would have to be widened so the
bulls wouldn't be rasped going through, but that I have already taken
this up with the railroad company.
Safety says that may all be true, but, mark his words, the minute my herd
gets into inland waters it will develop some kind of disease like anthrax
or blackleg, and the whole bunch will die on me. Sandy says it will be a
simple matter to vaccinate, because the animals will be as affectionate
as kittens by that time through having been kindly handled, which is all
a whale needs. He says they really got a very social nature and are loyal
unto death. Once a whale is your friend, he says, it's for life, rain or
shine, just so long as you treat him square. Even do a whale a favour
just once and he'll remember your face, make no difference if it's fifty
years; though being the same, it is true, in his hatreds, because a whale
never forgives an injury. A sailor he happens to know once give a whale
he had made friends with a chew of tobacco just for a joke and the animal
got into an awful rage and tried to tear the ship down to get at him, and
then he followed the ship all over the world waiting for this sailor to
fall off or get wrecked or something, till finally the hunted man got so
nervous he quit the sea and is now running a news stand in Seattle, if
Safety don't believe it. It just goes to show that a whale as long as
you're square with him is superior in mind and morals to a steer, which
ain't got sense enough to know friend from foe.
Safety still shakes his head. He says "safe and sane" has been his motto
throughout a long and busy life and this here proposition don't sound
like neither one to him. The boys tell him he's missing a good thing by
not throwing in with us. They say I'm giving 'em each a big block of
stock, paid up and non-assessable, and they don't want him to come round
later when they're rolling in wealth and ask why they didn't give him a
chance too.
"I can just hear you talk," said Sandy. "You'll be saying: 'I knew that
whole fool bunch when not one ever had a dollar he could call his own the
day after he was paid off, and now look at 'em--throwing their hundreds
of thousands right and left; houses with pianos in every room; new boots
every week; silver-mounted saddles at a thousand each; choice wines,
liquors, and cigars; private taxicabs; and Alexander J. Sawtelle, the
wealthy banker, being elected to Congress by an overwhelming majority!'
That's the way you'll be talking," said Sandy, "with regret eating into
your vitals like some horrible acid that is fatal to man and beast."
Safety says he thinks they're all plumb crazy, and a fool and his money
is soon parted--this being a saying he must have learned at the age of
three and has never forgotten a word of--and he comes up to the house to
see me. Mebbe he wanted to find out if I had really lost my mind, but he
said nothing about whales. Just set round and talked the usual hard luck.
Been in the stock business thirty years and never had a good year yet.
Nothing left of his cattle but the running gear; and his land so poor you
couldn't even raise a row on it unless you went there mad; and why he
keeps on struggling in the bitter clutch of misfortune he don't know. But
I always know why he keeps on struggling. Money! Nothing but money. So
when he got through mourning over his ruined fortunes, and feebly said
something about taking some mules off my hands at a fair price, I shut
him off firmly. Whenever that old crook talks about taking anything off
your hands he's plotting as near highway robbery as they'll let him stay
out of jail for. He was sad when I refused two hundred and fifty dollars
a span for my best mules.
He went off shaking his head like he hadn't expected such inhumanity from
an old friend and neighbour to one who through hard luck was now down and
out.
Well, I hear no more about whales; but a circus is coming to Red Gap and
old Pete, the Indian, says he must go down to it, his mind being inflamed
by some incredible posters pasted over the blacksmith shop at Kulanche.
He says he's a very old man and can't be with us long, and when he does
take the one-way trail he wants to be able to tell his friends on the
other side all about the strange animals that they never had a chance to
see. The old pagan was so excited about it I let him go. And he was still
more excited when he got back two days later. Yes, sir; he'd found a way
to fortune.
He said I'd sure think he was a liar with a crooked tongue and a false
heart, but they had an animal at that circus as big as our biggest
covered mess wagon and it would weigh as much as the six biggest steers I
ever shipped. It has a nose about five feet long--he was sure I wouldn't
believe this part--that it fed itself with, and it carried so much meat
that just one ham would keep a family like Pete's going all winter. He
said of course I would think he was a liar, but I could write down to Red
Gap to a lawyer, and the lawyer would get plenty of people to swear to it
right in the courthouse. And so now I must hurry up and stock the place
with these animals and have more meat than anybody in the world and get
rich pretty quick. Forty times he stretched his arms to show me how big
one of these hams would be, and he said the best part was that this
animal hardly ate anything at all but a little popcorn and a few peanuts.
Hadn't he watched it for hours? And if I didn't hurry others would get
the idea and run prices up.
I guess Pete's commercial mind must of been engaged by hearing the boys
talk about whales. He hadn't held with the whale proposition, not for a
minute, after he learned they live in the ocean. He once had a good look
at the ocean and he promptly said "Too much water!" But here was a land
animal packing nearly as much meat as a whale, eating almost nothing, and
as tame as a puppy. "I think, 'Injun how you smart!'" he says when he got
through telling me all this in a very secret and important way.
I told him he was very smart indeed and ought to have a job with the
Government at a dollar a year telling people to quit beef meat for the
elephant. I said I was much obliged for the tip and if I ever got to
going good in elephants I'd see he had a critter of his own to butcher
every fall. So Pete went out with all his excitement and told the boys
how I was going to stock the ranch with these new animals which was
better than whales because you wouldn't have to get your feet wet. The
boys made much of it right off.
In no time at all they had all the white-faces sold off and vast herds of
pure-bred elephants roaming over the ranch with the Arrowhead brand on
'em. Down on the flat lands they had waving fields of popcorn and up
above here they had a thousand acres of ripening peanuts; and Sandy
Sawtelle, the king of the humourists, he hit on another idea that would
bring in fifty thousand dollars a year just on the side. He said if a
crowd come along to a ranch and bought the rancher's own hay for the sake
of feeding it to his own steers they would be thought weak-minded. Not so
with elephants. He said people would come from far and near and bring
their little ones to buy our own peanuts and popcorn to feed our own
elephants. All we needed to do was put the stuff up in sacks at a nickel
a throw. He said of course the novelty might die out in time, but if he
could only get the peanut-and-popcorn concession for the first three
years that would be all he'd want for his simple needs of living in a
swell marble house in Spokane, with a private saloon and hired help to
bring him his breakfast in bed and put on another record and minister
to his lightest whim. Buck Devine said he'd be able to throw his own good
money right and left if he could get the ivory privilege, which is made
from the horns of the elephant and is used for many useful purposes; and
one of the other boys says they'll develop a good milk strain and get a
dairy herd, because the milk of this noble animal ought to be fine for
prize fighters and piano movers.
In about ten minutes they was doing quite a business for old Pete's
benefit, and Pete very earnest about it. He says I've promised him a
young animal to butcher every fall, and they tell him there ain't no meat
so good as a prime young popcorn-fed elephant, and he'll certainly live
high. And just then up rides old Safety First again. So they get silent
and mysterious all at once and warn Pete, so Safety will hear it, not to
say a word to any one. Pete looks secretive and hostile at the visitor
and goes back to his woodpile. Safety naturally says what fool thing have
they got into their heads now, and he supposes it's some more of that
whale nonsense.
The boys clam up. They say this is nothing like whales, but a dry-land
proposition too important to talk about; that I've sworn everyone to
secrecy, but he'll see soon enough what it is when the big money begins
to roll in. They don't mind telling him it's an African proposition of
new and nourishing food, a regular godsend to the human race, but they
got to keep quiet until I get my options bought up so I'll have the
cream of the business.
Safety sniffs in a baffled manner and tries to worm out a hint, but they
say it's a thing would go like wildfire once it got known, being so much
tastier than whale meat and easier to handle, and eating almost nothing.
"Whales was pretty good," says Sandy; "but since the boss got a line on
this other animal she's disposed of her whale interests for seventy-three
thousand dollars."
Buck Devine says I showed him the check, that come in yesterday's mail,
and let him hold it a minute so he could say he once held seventy-three
thousand dollars in his hand just like that. And the money was to be put
into this new business, with the boys being let in on the ground floor,
like they had been with the whales. Sandy says that in probably a year
from now, or eighteen months at the most, he won't be a thing but a
dissipated millionaire. Nothing but that!
Safety is peculiar in his mind. If you told him you found a million gold
dollars up in the top of that jack pine he wouldn't believe it, yet still
and all he'd get a real thrill out of it. He certainly does cherish
money. The very notion of it is romantic to him. And he must of been
thrilled now. He hung round, listening keenly while the boys squandered
their vast wealth in various reprehensible ways, trying to get some idea
about the new animal. Finally he sniffed some more, and they was all
crazy as loons, and went off. But where does he go but over to old Pete
at the woodpile and keeps him from his work for ten minutes trying to get
the new animal's name out of Pete. But he can't trap the redman into any
admissions. All he can find out is that Pete is serious and excited.
Then he come up to ask me once more if he couldn't take some mules off
my hands. He found out quick and short that he couldn't. Still he hung
round, talking nonsense as far as I could make out, because I hadn't
yet been let in on the new elephant proposition. He says he hears I'm
taking up a new line of stock, the same not being whales nor anything
that swims, and if it's more than I can swing by myself, why, he's a good
neighbour of long standing, and able in a pinch, mebbe, to scrape up a
few thousand dollars, or even more if it's a sure cinch, and how about
it, and from one old friend to another just what is this new line?
Being busy I acted short. I said I was sticking to cattle in spite of the
infamous gossip against 'em, and all reports to the contrary was mere
society chatter. Still he acted like I was trying to fool him. He went
out saying if I changed my mind any time I was to let him know, and he'd
be over again soon to talk mules at least, if nothing else, and anything
he could do for me any time, just say the word, and try some of this gum,
and so forth. I was right puzzled by these here refined civilities of his
until Pete comes in and tells me how the boys have stocked the old ranch
with elephants and how Safety has tried to get him to tell the secret. I
tell Pete he's done right to keep still, and then I go down to the bunk
house and hear the whole thing.
By this time they're shipping thousands of steer elephants at top prices;
they catch 'em up off soft feed and fatten 'em on popcorn and peanuts,
and every Thanksgiving they send a nice fat calf down to the White House,
for no one looks at turkey any more. Sandy is now telling what a snap it
will be to ride herd on elephants.
"You pick out a big one," he says, "and you build a little cupalo up on
top of him and climb up into it by means of a ladder, and set there in
this little furnished room with a good book, and smoke and pass the time
away while your good old saddle elephant does the work. All you got to do
is lean out of the front window now and then and jab him in the forehead
with an ice pick, whichever way you want him to turn."
I said trust a cow-puncher to think up some way where he'd have to do as
little work with his hands as he does with his head. But I admitted they
seemed to have landed on old Timmins for once, because he had tried to
get Pete to betray the secret and then come wheedling round to me about
it. I said I could talk more intelligently next time, and he would sure
come again because he had lavished two sticks of gum on me, which was an
incredible performance and could not have been done except for an evil
purpose.
"Now say," says Sandy, "that does look like we got him believing. I was
going to kid him along about once more, then spring elephants on him, and
we'd all have a good laugh at the old wolf. But it looks to me like a
chance for better than a laugh; it looks to me like we might commit a
real crime against him."
"He never carries anything on him," I says, "if you're meaning something
plain, like highway robbery."
Sandy says he don't mean that; he means real Wall Street stuff, such as
one gentleman can pull on another and still keep loose; crooked, he says,
but not rough. I ask what is the idea, and Sandy says get him more and
more feverish about the vast returns from this secret enterprise. Then
we'll cut out a bunch of culls--thin stuff and runts and cripples--and
make him give about four times what they're worth on a promise to let him
into the new deal; tell him we must be rid of this stuff to make room for
the new animals, and naturally we'll favour our friends.
"There, now!" says Sandy. "I should be in Wall Street this minute, being
able to think up a coop as pernicious as that: and I would of been there,
too, only I hate city life."
"For once in the world's history," I says, "there may be a grain of
sense in your words. Only no cows in the deal. Even to defraud the old
crook I wouldn't let him have hide nor hair of a beef, not since he
worked on my feelings in the matter of them bull calves two years ago.
Mules, yes. But the cow is too worthy a beast to be mixed up in anything
sinful I put over on that profiteer. Now I'll tell you what," I says,
very businesslike: "you boys tole him along till he gets hectic enough to
take that bunch of mule runts down in the south field, and anything you
get over fifty dollars a head I'll split with you."
Sandy hollers at this. He says this bunch ain't mules but rabbits, and
that I wouldn't refuse forty a head for 'em this minute. He says even a
man expecting to be let in on a sure-thing elephant ranch would know
something wicked was meant if asked to give even as much as fifty dollars
for these insects. I tell him all very true; but this is just the margin
for his lasting financial genius which he displays so little reticence
about that it'll get into the papers and make him a marked man from coast
to coast if he ain't careful. He says oh, all right, if I want to take it
that way, and he'll see what he can do. Mebbe he can get fifty-five a
head, which would not only give the boys a good laugh but provide a
little torch money.
I left 'em plotting against a man that had never been touched by any plot
whatever. I resolved to remain kind of aloof from their nefarious doings.
It didn't seem quite dignified for one of my standing to be mixed up in a
deal so crooked--at least no more than necessary to get my share of the
pickings.
Sure enough, the very next day here come the depraved old outcast
marauding round again at lunch time and et with the boys in the kitchen.
He found 'em full of suppressed excitement and secret speech and
careless talk about large sums of money. It must of been like sweetest
music to his ears. One says how much would it be safe to count on cutting
up the first year--how much in round numbers; and another would say that
in round numbers, what with the expense of getting started and figuring
everything down to the last cent, it wouldn't be safe to count on more
than a hundred thousand dollars; but, of course, for the second year,
now, why it would be nearer two hundred thousand in round numbers, even
figuring everything fine and making big allowance for shrinkage. After
that they handed money back and forth in round numbers till they got
sick of the sound of it.
They said Safety set and listened in a trance, only waking up now and
then to see if he couldn't goad someone into revealing the name of this
new animal. But they always foiled him. Sandy Sawtelle drew an affecting
picture of himself being cut off by high living at the age of ninety,
leaving six or eight million dollars in round numbers and having his kin
folks squabble over his will till the lawyers got most of it. They said
Safety hardly et a morsel and had an evil glitter in his eyes.
And after lunch he went out to the woodpile where old Pete was working
and offered him two bits in money to tell him the secret, and when old
Pete scorned him he raised it to four bits. I guess the idea of any one
refusing money merely for a little talk had never seemed possible to him.
He must of thought there was sure something in it. I was away that day,
but when I got back and heard about his hellish attempt to bribe old
Pete I told the boys they sure had the chance of a lifetime. I said if
there was a mite of financial prowess in the bunch they would start the
price on them runt mules at one hundred dollars flat, because it was
certain that Safety had struck the skids.
Next day it looked better than ever. Safety not only appeared in the
afternoon but he brought me a quart jar of honey from his own bees. Any
one not having looked up his criminal record would little understand
what this meant. I pretended to be too busy to be startled at the gift,
which broke thirty years of complete inactivity in that line. I looked
worried and important with a litter of papers on my desk and seemed to
have no time to waste on callers. He mentioned mules once or twice with
no effect whatever, then says he hears I'm going into a new line that
seems like it might have a few dollars in it, and he hopes I won't lose
my all, because so many things nowadays look good till they're tried.
I was crafty. I said I might be going into a new line, then again it
might be nothing but idle talk and he better not believe everything he
hears.
He took up the jar of honey and fondled it, with his face looking like
he was laying a loved one to rest, and said he wouldn't mind going into
something new himself if he could be sure it was sound, because the stock
business at present was a dog's life. He said the war was to be won by
food, and every patriot should either go across or come across, and he
was trying to stand by the flag and save all the food he could, but by
the way his help acted at mealtime you'd think they was a gang of German
spies. Watch 'em eat beans, he said, and you'd think they'd never heard
that beans had gone from three cents a pound to sixteen; but they had
heard it, because he'd told 'em so in plain English more than once. But
it had no effect. The way they dished into 'em you'd think we'd been
endowed with beans the same as with God's own sunlight.
He said it was discouraging to a staunch patriot. Here was the President
trying to make democracy safe for the world, and he was now going to
stand by the Administration even if he had voted the Republican ticket
up to now; but three of his men had quit only yesterday and the war was
certainly lost if the labouring classes kept on making gods of their
stomachs that way. And as a matter of fact now, as between old friends
and neighbours, if I had something that looked good, why not keep it all
together just with us here in the valley, he, though a poor man, being
able to scrape up a few thousand dollars in round numbers for any
enterprise that was a cinch.
And the old hound being worth a good half million dollars at that
instant! But I kept control of my face and looked still more worried
and important and said I might have to take in a good man, and then
again I might not. I couldn't tell till I got some odd lots of stock
cleaned up. Then I looked at some more documents and, like I was talking
unconsciously to myself, I muttered, though distinctly: "Now that there
bunch of runt mules--they'll have to go; but, of course, not for any mere
song."
Then I studied some more documents in a masterful manner and forgot my
caller entirely till at last he pussyfooted out, having caught sight of
Sandy down by the corral.
Pretty soon Sandy reports to me. He says Safety is hurt at my cold manner
to an old friend and neighbour that's always running in with a jar of
honey or some knickknack; and he had mentioned the runt mules, saying
he might be induced to consider 'em though I probably won't let 'em go
for any mere song, contemptible as they are. Sandy says he's right; that
it's got to be a whole opera with words and music for them mules. He says
I got a reason for acting firm about the price, the reason being that
this new line I'm going to embark in is such a sure thing that I want
only friends to come in, and I got to be convinced first that their heart
is in the right place.
Safety says his heart is always getting the best of his head in stock
deals, but just how foolish will I expect an old and tried friend to seem
about these scrub mules that nobody in his right mind would touch at any
price.
Sandy yawns like he was weary of it all and says a hundred dollars flat.
He said Safety just stood still and looked at him forever without batting
an eye, till he got rattled and said that mebbe ninety-five might be
considered. That's a trick with this old robber when a party's got
something to sell him. They tell their price and he just keeps still and
looks at 'em--not indignant nor astonished, not even interested, but
merely fishlike. Most people can't stand it long, it's that uncanny.
They get fussed and nervous, and weaken before he's said a single word.
But it was certain now that the mystery was getting to Safety, because
otherwise he'd have laughed his head off at the mention of a hundred
dollars for these mules. Three months before he'd heard me himself offer
'em for forty a head. You see, when I bought bands of mules from time to
time I'd made the sellers throw in the little ones to go free with the
trade. I now had twenty-five or so, but it had begun to get to me that
mebbe those sellers hadn't been so easy as I thought at the time. They
was knotty-headed little runts that I'd never bothered to handle.
Last spring I had the boys chink up the cracks in the corral and put each
one of the cunning little mites into the chute and roach it so as to put
a bow in its neck; then I put the bunch on good green feed where they
would fatten and shed off; but it was wasted effort. They looked so much
like field mice I was afraid that cats would make a mistake. After they
got fat the biggest one looked as if he'd weigh close up to seven hundred
and fifty. It was when they had begun to buy mules too; that is to say,
mules! But no such luck as a new West Pointer coming to inspect these;
nothing but wise old cavalry captains that when they put an eye on the
bunch would grin friendly at me and hesitate only long enough to put some
water in the radiator. I bet there never was a bunch of three-year-old
mules that stood so much condemning.
After offering 'em for forty a head one time to a party and having him
answer very simply by asking how the road was on beyond and which turn
did he take, I quit bothering. After that when buyers come along I told
the truth and said I didn't have any mules. I had to keep my real ones,
and it wasn't worth while showing those submules. And this was the bunch
Sandy had told S.F. Timmins he could take away for a hundred a head--or
even ninety-five. And Safety hadn't laughed!
And would you have wondered when he sifts in a couple days later and
makes me a cold offer of sixty dollars a head for this choice livestock?
Yes, sir! He says "Live and let live" is his motto, and he wants to prove
that I have wronged him in the past if I ever had the faintest suspicion
that he wasn't the ideal party to have in on a deal that was going to net
everyone concerned a handsome fortune. He says the fact is money goes
through his fingers like water if you come right down to it; and sixty or
even sixty-five if I want to push him to extremes, because he's the last
man on God's green earth to let five dollars split up old neighbours
that ought to be hand and glove in any new deal that come up.
It like to of keeled me over, but I recovered and become busier than ever
and got out my bank book and begun to figure over that. I said Sandy
Sawtelle had the handling of this particular bunch of my assets and
I couldn't be bothered by it.