I looked at my watch and said the sun was over ten minutes slow, which
was probably due to the heavy continuous gunfire on the Western Front.
This neat bit went for just nothing. As we rode on I fondly recalled that
last cold hot cake which Sandy Sawtelle had sacrificed to his gift for
debased whimsy. I also recalled other items of that gloomy repast,
wondering how I could so weakly have quit when I did.
We rode now under a sun that retained its old fervour if not its
velocity. We traversed an endless lane between fields, in one of which
grazed a herd of the Arrowhead cattle. These I was made to contemplate
for many valuable moments. I had to be told that I was regarding the
swallow-fork herd, pure-breds that for one reason or another--the chief
being careless help--had not been registered. The omission was denoted
by the swallow fork in the left ear.
The owner looked upon them with fond calculation. She was fondly
calculating that they would have been worth about fifty per cent. more
to her with ears unmutilated. She grew resentful that their true worth
should not be acclaimed by the world. In the sight of heaven they were
pure-breds; so why should they suffer through the oversight of a herd
boss that hadn't anywhere near such distinguished ancestry? And so on,
as the lady says.
We left the lane at last and were on the county road, but headed away
from the Arrowhead and food. No doubt there remained other homes for us
to wreck. We mounted a rise and the road fell from us in a long, gentle
slope. And then a mile beyond, where the slope ended, I beheld a most
inviting tiny pleasance in this overwhelming welter of ranch land, with
its more or less grim business of cattle.
It was a little homestead fit to adorn an art calendar to be entitled
Peace and Plenty--a veritable small farm from some softer little country
far to the east. It looked strangely lost amid these bleaker holdings.
There was a white little house and it sported nothing less than green
blinds. There was a red barn, with toy outbuildings. There was a
vegetable garden, an orchard of blossoming fruit trees, and, in front of
the glistening little house, a gay garden of flowers. Even now I could
detect the yellow of daffodils and the martial--at least it used to be
martial--scarlet of tulips. The little place seemed to drowse here in
the noontide, dreaming of its lost home and other little farms that once
companioned it.
To my pleased surprise this unbelievable little farm proved to be our
next stopping place. At its gate Ma Pettengill dismounted, eased the
cinch of her saddle and tied her horse to the hitching rack. I did
likewise by the one-time cinch binder.
"Now," I wondered, "what devastating bomb shall we hurl into this
flower-spiced Arcady? What woe will she put upon its unsuspecting
dwellers, even as she has ruined four other homes this day? This should
be something really choice." But I said no word and followed where the
avenger stalked.
We unlatched the white gate and went up a gravelled walk between the
rows of daffodils and tulips and hyacinths. We did not ascend the
spotless front porch to assault its innocent white door, but turned aside
on a narrow-gauge branch of the gravelled pathway and came to a side
porch, shaded by maples. And here, in strict conformity to the soundest
behests of tradition, sat two entirely genuine Arcadians in wooden
rocking-chairs. The male was a smiling old thing with winter-apple
cheeks and white hair, and the female was a smiling old thing with
winter-apple cheeks and white hair; both had bright eyes of doll blue,
and both wore, among other neat things, loose and lovely carpet slippers
and white stockings.
And, of course, the male was named Uncle Henry and the other one was
named Aunt Mollie, for I was now presented to them. They shyly greeted
me as one returned to them after many years in which they had given me
up. And again I wondered what particular iniquity we had come here to do.
Then Ma Pettengill eased my worry. She said in a few simple but affecting
words, that we had stopped in for a bite to eat. No self-torturing
stylist could have put the thing better. And results were sudden. Uncle
Henry, the male one, went to take our horses round to the barn, and the
other one said they had et an hour ago; but give her ten minutes and
she'd have a couple of them young pullets skinned and on the fire.
Ma Pettengill said, with very questionable taste, I thought: "Oh, no;
nothing like that!"--because we didn't want to make the least bit of
trouble. The woman is dense at times. What else had we come there
for? But Aunt Mollie said, then, how about some prime young pork
tenderline? And Ma Pettengill said she guessed that would do, and I
said I guessed that would do. And there we were! The ladies went to
the kitchen, where they made quick and grateful noises.
Pretty soon Uncle Henry came round a lovely corner and said try a tumbler
of this here grape wine, which he poured from a pressed-glass pitcher; so
I tried it and gave him a town cigarette, which he tucked between his
beautiful white moustache and his beautiful white whiskers. And I hoped
he didn't use gasoline to get them so clean, because if he did something
might happen when he lighted the cigarette; but nothing did, so probably
he didn't. I tried the grape wine again; and dear old Uncle Henry said he
was turning out quite a bit of it since the Gov'ment had shet down on
regular dram-shops, quite considerable of parties happening along from
time to time to barter with him, getting it for dances or colds, or
something.
A yellow cat, with blue eyes like Uncle Henry's, came and slept on
his lap. A large fussy hen with a litter of chickens--or however a hen
designates her assemblage of little ones--clucked her way to our feet.
I could see three hives of bees, a grape arbour, and a row of milk pans
drying in the sun, each leaning on its neighbour along a white bench.
Uncle Henry said drink it up while it was cold. All Nature seemed to
smile. The hen found a large and charming bug, and chuckled humorously
while her cunning little ones tore it limb from limb. It was idyllic.
Then Aunt Mollie pushed open the screen door and said come in and set up;
so I came in and set up quickly, having fried pork tenderloin and fried
potatoes, and hot biscuit and pork gravy, and cucumber pickles, and
cocoanut cake and pear preserves, peach preserves, apricot preserves,
loganberry jelly, crab-apple jelly, and another kind of preserves I was
unable to identify, though trying again and again.
Ma Pettengill ate somewhat, but talked also, keeping Uncle Henry and Aunt
Mollie shiny with smiles. They both have polished white teeth of the most
amazing regularity. I ate almost exclusively, affecting to be preoccupied
about something. The time was urgent. I formed an entangling alliance
with the pork tenderloin, which endured to a point where but one small
fragment was left on the platter. I coolly left it there, so that Aunt
Mollie might believe she had cooked more than enough.
I have never ceased to regret that hollow bit of chivalry. Was it
honest, genuine, open? No! Why will men at critical junctures stoop
to such trickery? Aunt Mollie said I might think that tenderline was
fresh-killed; but not so--she has fried it last December and put it down
in its own juice in a four-gallon crock, and now look how fresh it come
out! She seemed as proud as if she had invented something. She had a
right to be. It was a charming notion and I could have eaten the rest of
the crock--but, no matter. Half a dozen biscuits copiously gummed up with
preserves of one kind or another would do as well--almost.
So Aunt Mollie showed me objects of interest in the room, including
her new carpet sweeper, a stuffed road runner, a ship built in a bottle,
and the coloured crayon portraits of herself and Uncle Henry, wearing
blue clothes and gold jewellery and white collars and ecru neckties.
Also, the marriage certificate. This was no mere official certificate.
It was the kind that costs three dollars flat, over and above what you
give to the party that does it for you, being genuine steel-engraved,
with a beautiful bridal couple under a floral bell, the groom in severe
evening dress, and liberally spotted with cupids and pigeons. It is worth
the money and an ornament to any wall, especially in the gilt frame.
Aunt Mollie seemed as proud of this document as she had been with the
tenderloin. I scanned it word by word for her pleasure. I noticed
especially the date. Aunt Mollie said that her and Henry were now in
the fortieth year on this place, and it had changed in looks a whole
lot since they came here. I again looked at the date of the certificate.
Ma Pettengill said, well, we must be getting on, and they must both come
over to the Arrowhead for a day right soon. And Uncle Henry said here
was a quart bottle of his peach brandy, going on eight year old, and
would I take it along back with me and try it? Parties had told him it
was good; but he didn't know--mebbe so, mebbe not. He'd like to know what
I thought. It seemed little enough to do to bring a bit of gladness into
this old gentleman's life, and I was not the man to wound him by refusal.
It was as if Michelangelo had said "Come on round to the Sistine Chapel
this afternoon and look over a little thing I've dashed off." If he had
brought two bottles instead of one my answer would have been the same.
So we were out on our refreshed horses and heading home; and I said,
without loss of time, that Aunt Mollie might have a good heart and a
cunning way with pork interiors, and it was none of my business, anyway;
but, nevertheless, she had mentioned forty long years with this amateur
saloon keeper, whereas her marriage certificate was dated but one year
previous, in figures all too shamefully legible. So what about it? I
said I mind observing the underworld from time to time; but I like
to be warned in advance, even when its denizens were such a charming,
bright-eyed winter-apple-cheeked old couple as the two we were now
leaving.
The sun was on our backs, a light breeze fanned us, the horses knew which
way they were going, and work for the day was over; so Ma Pettengill
spoke, in part, as follows:
"Oh, well, of course everyone knows about that. Simple enough! Aunt
Mollie and her first husband trekked in here forty years ago. He was a
consumptive and the first winter put him out. They had a hard time; no
neighbours to speak of, harsh weather, hard work, poor shelter, and a
dying man. Henry Mortimer happened by and stayed to help--nursed the
invalid, kept the few head of stock together, nailed up holes in the
shack, rustled grub and acted like a friend in need. At the last he
nailed a coffin together; did the rest of that job; then stayed on to
nurse Aunt Mollie, who was all in herself. After he got her to stepping
again he put in a crop for her. Then he stayed to build a barn and do
some fencing. Then he harvested the crop. And getting no wages! They was
both living off the land. Pretty soon they got fond of each other and
decided to marry. It's one of Aunt Mollie's jokes that she owed him two
years' wages and had to marry him.
"Marriage was easier said than done. No preacher, or even a justice of
the peace, was within ninety miles, which meant a four days' trip over
the roads of that day, and four days back, providing high water or some
other calamity didn't make it a month; and no one to leave on the place,
which meant there wouldn't be a head of stock left when they got back,
what with Indians and rustlers. Uncle Henry will tell you how it seemed
too bad that just one of 'em wouldn't make the trip down and have the
ceremony done, leaving the other to protect the place.
"Then along comes a horse trader, who stops over to rest his stock,
and learns their trouble. He tells 'em to quit their worry; that he's a
notary public and can perform a marriage as good as any Baptist preacher
they ever saw. I never been able to make out whether he was crazy or just
a witty, practical joker. Anyway, he married the pair with something like
suitable words, wouldn't take a cent for it, and gave 'em a paper saying
he had performed the deed. It had a seal on it showing he was a genuine
notary public, though from back in Iowa somewhere. That made no
difference to the new bride and groom. A notary public was a notary
public to them, highly important and official.
"They had enough other things to worry about, anyway. They had to buckle
down to the hard life that waits for any young couple without capital in
a new country. They had years of hard sledding; but they must of had a
good time somehow, because they never have any but pleasant things to
tell of it. Whatever that notary public was, he seemed to of pulled off
a marriage that took as well or better than a great many that may be
more legal. So that's all there is to it--only, here about a year ago
they was persuaded to have it done proper at last by a real preacher who
makes Kulanche two Sundays a month. That's why the late date's on that
certificate. The old lady is right kittenish about that; shows it to
everyone, in spite of the fact that it makes her out of been leading
an obliquitous life, or something, for about thirty-eight years.
"But then, she's a sentimental old mush-head, anyhow. Guess what she told
me out in the kitchen! She's been reading what the Germans did to women
and children in Belgium, and she says: 'Of course I hate Germans; and yet
it don't seem as if I could ever hate 'em enough to want to kill a lot of
German babies!' Wasn't that the confession of a weakling? I guess that's
all you'd want to know about that woman. My sakes! Will you look at that
mess of clouds? I bet it's falling weather over in Surprise Valley. A
good moisting wouldn't hurt us any either."
That seemed to be about all. Yet I was loath to leave the topic. I still
had a warm glow in my heart for the aged couple, and I could hear Uncle
Henry's bottle of adolescent peach brandy laughing to itself from where
it was lashed to the back of my saddle. I struck in the only weak spot
in the wall.
"You say they were persuaded into this marriage. Well, who persuaded
them? Isn't there something interesting about that?"
It had, indeed, been a shrewd stroke. Ma Pettengill's eyes lighted.
"Say, didn't I ever tell you about Mrs. Julia Wood Atkins, the well-known
lady reformer?"
"You did not. We have eight miles yet."
"Oh, very well!"
So for eight miles of a road that led between green fields on our right
and a rolling expanse of sagebrush on our left, I heard something like
this:
"Well, this prominent club lady had been out on the Coast for some time
heading movements and telling people how to do things, and she had got
run down. She's a friend of Mrs. W.B. Hemingway, the well-known social
leader and club president of Yonkers, who is an old friend of mine; and
Mrs. W.B. writes that dear Julia is giving her life to the cause--I
forget what cause it was right then--and how would it be for me to have
her up here on the ranch for a vacation, where she could recover her
spirits and be once more fitted to enter the arena. I say I'm only too
glad to oblige, and the lady comes along.
"She seemed right human at first--kind of haggard and overtrained, but
with plenty of fights left in her; a lady from forty-eight to fifty-four,
with a fine hearty manner that must go well on a platform, and a kind
of accusing face. That's the only word I can think of for it. She'd be
pretty busy a good part of the day with pamphlets and papers that she or
someone else had wrote, but I finally managed to get her out on a gentle
old horse--that one you're riding--so she could liven up some; and we got
along quite well together.
"The only thing that kind of went against me was, she's one of them that
thinks a kind word and a pleasant smile will get 'em anywhere, and she
worked both on me a little too much like it was something professional.
"Still, I put it by and listened to her tell about the awful state the
world is in, and how a few earnest women could set it right in a week if
it wasn't for the police.
"Prison reform, for instance. That was the first topic on which she
delivered addresses to me. I couldn't make much out of it, except that we
don't rely enough on our convicts' rugged honour. It was only a side line
with her; still, she didn't slight it. She could talk at length about the
innate sterling goodness of the misunderstood burglar. I got tired of it.
I told her one day that, if you come right down to it, I'd bet the men
inside penitentiaries didn't average up one bit higher morally than the
men outside. She said, with her pleasantest smile, that I didn't
understand; so I never tried to after that.
"The lady had a prowling mind. Mebbe that ain't the right word, but
it come to me soon after she got here. I think it was the day she begun
about our drinking water. She wanted to know what the analysis showed
it to contain. She was scared out of her pleasant smile for a minute when
she found I'd never had the water analyzed. I thought, first, the poor
thing had been reading these beer advertisements; you know--the kind they
print asking if you are certain about the purity of your drinking water,
telling of the fatal germs that will probably be swimming there, and
intimating that probably the only dead-safe bet when you are thirsty
is a pint of their pure, wholesome beer, which never yet gave typhoid
fever to any one. But, no; Julia just thought all water ought to be
analyzed on general principles, and wouldn't I have a sample of ours
sent off at once? She'd filled a bottle with some and suggested it with
her pleasantest platform smile.
"'Yes,' I says; 'and suppose the report comes back that this water is
fatal to man and beast? And it's the only water round here. What then?
I'd be in a hell of a fix--wouldn't I?'
"I don't deny I used to fall back on words now and then when her smile
got to me. And we went right on using water that might or might not make
spicy reading in a chemist's report; I only been here thirty years and
it's too soon to tell. Anyway, it was then I see she was gifted with a
prowling mind, which is all I can think of to call it. It went with her
accusing face. She didn't think anything in this world was as near right
as it could be made by some good woman.
"Of course she had other things besides the water to worry about. She
was a writer, too. She would write about how friction in the home life
may be avoided by one of the parties giving in to the other and letting
the wife say how the money shall be spent, and pieces about what the
young girl should do next, and what the young wife should do if
necessary, and so on. For some reason she was paid money for these
pieces.
"However, she was taking longer rides and getting her pep back, which
was what she had come here for. And having failed to reform anything
on the Arrowhead, she looked abroad for more plastic corruption as you
might say. She rode in one night and said she was amazed that this here
community didn't do something about Dave Pickens. That's the place we
stopped this morning. She said his children were neglected and starving,
his wife worked to the bone, and Dave doing nothing but play on a cheap
fiddle! How did they get their bread from day to day?
"I told her no one in the wide world had ever been able to answer this
puzzle. There was Dave and his wife and five children, all healthy, and
eating somehow, and Dave never doing a stroke of work he could side-step.
I told her it was such a familiar puzzle we'd quit being puzzled by it.
"She said someone ought to smash his fiddle and make him work. She said
she would do something about it. I applauded. I said we needed new blood
up here and she seemed to of fetched it.
"She come back the next day with a flush of triumph on her severely
simple face. And guess the first thing she asked me to do! She asked me
to take chances in a raffle for Dave's fiddle. Yes, sir; with her kind
words and pleasant smile she had got Dave to consent to raffle off his
fiddle, and she was going to sell twenty-four chances at fifty cents a
chance, which would bring twelve dollars cash to the squalid home. I had
to respect the woman at that moment.
"'There they are, penniless,' says she, 'and in want for the barest
necessities; and this man fiddling his time away! I had a struggle
persuading him to give up his wretched toy; but I've handled harder
cases. You should of seen the light in the mother's wan face when
he consented! The twelve dollars won't be much, though it will do
something for her and those starving children; and then he will no
longer have the instrument to tempt him.'
"I handed over a dollar for two chances right quick, and Julia went out
to the bunk-house and wormed two dollars out of the boys there. And next
day she was out selling off the other chances. She didn't dislike the
work. It give her a chance to enter our homes and see if they needed
reforming, and if the children was subjected to refining influences, and
so on. The first day she scared parties into taking fifteen tickets, and
the second day she got rid of the rest; and the next Sunday she held the
drawing over at Dave's house. The fiddle was won by a nester from over in
Surprise Valley, who had always believed he could play one if he only
had a fair chance.
"So this good deed was now completed, there being no music, and twelve
dollars in the Pickens home that night. And Mrs. Julia now felt that she
was ready for the next big feat of uplift, which was a lot more important
because it involved the very sanctity of the marriage tie. Yes, sir;
she'd come back from her prowling one night and told me in a hushed
voice, behind a closed door, about a couple that had been for years
living in a state of open immorality.
"I didn't get her, at first, not thinking of Uncle Henry and Aunt Mollie.
But she meant just them two. I give her a good hearty laugh, at first;
but it pained her so much I let her talk. It seems she'd gone there to
sell raffle tickets, and they'd taken four, and cooked food for her, and
give her some cherry cordial, which she took on account of being far from
a strong woman; and then Aunt Mollie had told all her past life, with
this horrid scandal about the notary public sticking innocently out of
it.
"Mrs. Julia hadn't been able to see anything but the scandal, she being
an expert in that line. So she had started in to persuade Aunt Mollie
that it was her sacred duty to be married decently to her companion in
crime for forty years. And Aunt Mollie had been right taken with the
idea; in fact, she had entered into it with a social enthusiasm that
didn't seem to Mrs. Julia to have quite enough womanly shame for her dark
past in it. Still, anything to get the guilty couple lawful wedded;
and before she left it was all fixed. Uncle Henry was to make an honest
woman of Aunt Mollie as soon as she could get her trousseau ready.
"Me? I didn't know whether to laugh or get mad. I said the original
marriage had satisfied the peace and dignity of the state of Washington;
and it had done more--it had even satisfied the neighbours. So why not
let it rest? But, no, indeedy! It had never been a marriage in the sight
of God and couldn't be one now. Facts was facts! And she talked some more
about Aunt Mollie not taking her false position in the proper way.
"It had been Mrs. Julia's idea to have the preacher come up and commit
this ceremony quite furtively, with mebbe a couple of legal witnesses,
keeping everything quiet, so as not to have a public scandal. But nothing
like that for the guilty woman! She was going to have a trousseau and a
wedding, with guests and gayety. She wasn't taking it the right way at
all. It seemed like she wanted all the scandal there was going.
"'Really, I can't understand the creature,' says Mrs. Julia. 'She even
speaks of a wedding breakfast! Can you imagine her wishing to flaunt such
a thing?'
"It was then I decided to laugh instead of telling this lady a few things
she couldn't of put in an article. I said Aunt Mollie's taking it this
way showed how depraved people could get after forty years of it; and we
must try to humour the old trollop, the main thing being to get her and
her debased old Don Juan into a legal married state, even if they did
insist on going in with a brass band. Julia said she was glad I took it
this way.