write herself to Judge Ballard and find out all the details; but if
Homer wanted her to go to Kulanche with him and try to start the thing
there--why, all right. She was ready when Homer come with her horse and
off they rode on the twelve-mile trip.
I gather that not much was said on the way by Homer who only muttered
like a fever patient from time to time, with Minna saying once in a while
how glad she was she had thought up this one sure way out of his trouble.
At Kulanche they rode up in front of Old Man Geiger's office, who is
justice of the peace.
"Wait here a minute," says Homer, and went inside. Pretty soon he come
out and got her. "Come on, now," he says, "I got it all fixed."
And Minna goes in, thinking mebbe she's got to swear to an affidavit or
something that Homer couldn't get a fair trial among people knowing he
regarded little ones as so many cockroaches or something to step on.
She got some shock when Homer took her inside and held her tight by the
wrist while Old Man Geiger married 'em. That's about the way it was. She
says she was so weak she could hardly stand up, and she hadn't hardly any
voice at all left. But she kept on saying "Why, Homer!" and "Oh, Homer!"
and "No, no, Homer!" as soon as she discovered that she had been dragged
off to a fate she had always regarded as worse than death; but a lot of
good it done her to say them things in a voice not much better than a
whisper.
And the dreadful thing was over before she could get strength to say
anything more powerful. There she was, married to a man she thought
highly of, it's true, and had a great sympathy for in the foul wrong one
of her sex had tried to slip over on him; but a man she had never thought
of marrying. I'm telling you what she told me. And after sentence had
been pronounced she kept on saying "Why, Homer!" and "Oh, Homer!" and
"No, no, Homer!" till there was nothing to do but get some clothes out of
her trunk that she'd left down there in time to take the narrow gauge for
their wedding tour to Spokane.
The news spread over the valley next day like a brush fire in August. It
was startling! Like the newspapers say of a suicide, "No cause could be
assigned for the rash act." They was away ten days and come back to find
the whole country was again giving Homer the laugh because Mrs. Tolliver
had up and married a prosperous widower from over in Surprise Valley, and
had never brought any suit against him. It was said that even the late
Mrs. Tolliver was laughing heartily at him.
Homer didn't seem to care, and Minna certainly didn't. She was the
old-fashioned kind of wife, a kind you don't hear much of nowadays; the
kind that regards her husband as perfect, and looks up to him. She told
me about the tumultuous wedding. Neither of 'em had had time for any talk
till they got on the train. Then it come out. She says why ever did Homer
do such a monstrous thing? And Homer says:
"Well, you told me a change of Venus was the only way out for me--"
"I said a change of venue," says Minna.
"It sounded like change of Venus," says Homer, "and I knew Venus was the
god of love. And you said you was willing and I knew we was congenial,
and I was a desperate man; and so here we are!"
So she cried on his shoulder for twenty miles while he ate a box of figs.
Homer is now a solid citizen, with his money put into a place down at the
lower end of the valley, instead of lying in the bank at the mercy of
some unscrupulous woman with little ones. And here this summer, with his
own work light, he's been helping me out as riding boss; or, at least I
been lavishing money on him for that.
A fine, dependable hand, too! Here was this bunch of stock to be got in
from Madeline--them Bolshevik ain't gathered more'n two thirds of 'em;
and there's more to come in from over Horse Fly Mountain way, and still
another bunch from out of the Sheep Creek country--the busiest month in a
bad year, when I needed every man, woman, and child to be had, and here
comes Homer, the mush-head, taking two days off!
"Yes'm, Mis' Pettengill; I just got to take time off to go down to Red
Gap. It's a matter of life and death. Yes'm; it is. No'm; I wouldn't dast
send any one, and Minna agrees I'm the only one to go--" Shucks!
The lady built a cigarette and, after lighting it, turned back to scan
the mesa we had descended. The cattle now crowded down the narrow way
into the valley, their dust mounting in a high, slow cloud.
"Call yourself a cowman, do you?" she demanded of the absent Homer.
"Huh!" Then we rode on.
"What was the matter of life and death?" I asked.
Ma Pettengill expelled cigarette smoke venomously from inflated nostrils
like a tired dragon.
"The matter of life and death was that he had to get two teething rings
for the twins."
"Twins!"
"Oh, the valley got it's final laugh at Homer! Twins, sure! Most of us
laughed heartily, though there was mothers that said it was God's
judgment on the couple. Of course Homer and Minna ain't took it that way.
They took it more like they had been selected out of the whole world as a
couple worthy to have a blessed miracle happen to 'em. There might of
been single babies born now and then to common folks, but never a case
of twins--and twins like these! Marvels of strength and beauty, having to
be guarded day and night against colic and kidnappers.
"They had 'em down to the post office at Kulanche the other day showing
'em off, each one in a red shawl; and sneering at people with only one.
And this imbecile Homer says to me:
"'Of course it can't be hoped,' he says, 'that this great world war will
last that long; but if it could last till these boys was in shape to
fight I bet it wouldn't last much after that. Yes, sir; little Roosevelt
and Pershing would soon put an end to that scrap!'
"And now they're teething and got to have rubber rings. And no, he
couldn't send any one down for 'em; and he couldn't order 'em by mail
either, because they got to be just the right kind.
"'Poor little Pershing is right feverish with his gums,' says Homer, 'but
little Roosevelt has got a front one through already. He bit my thumb
yesterday with it--darned near to the bone. He did so!'
"Calls himself a cowman, does he? He might of been--once. Now he ain't no
more than a woman's home companion!"
VIII
CAN HAPPEN!
Lew Wee, prized Chinese chef of the Arrowhead Ranch, had butchered,
cooked, and served two young roosters for the evening meal with a
finesse that cried for tribute. As he replaced the evening lamp on the
cleared table in the big living room he listened to my fulsome praise of
his artistry as Marshal Foch might hear me say that I considered him a
rather good strategist. Lew Wee heard but gave no sign, as one set above
the petty adulation of compelled worshipers. Yet I knew his secret soul
made festival of my words and would have been hurt by their withholding.
This is his way. Not the least furtive lightening of his subtle eyes
hinted that I had pleased him.
He presently withdrew to his tiny room off the kitchen, where, as was
his evening custom for half an hour, he coaxed an amazing number of
squealing or whining notes from his two-stringed fiddle. I pictured him
as he played. He would be seated in his wicker armchair beside a little
table on which a lamp glowed, the room tightly closed, window down,
door shut, a fast-burning brown-paper cigarette to make the atmosphere
more noxious. After many more of the cigarettes had made it all but
impossible, Lew Wee, with the lamp brightly burning, as it would burn the
night through--for devils of an injurious sort and in great numbers will
fearlessly enter a dark room--he would lie down to refreshing sleep. That
fantasy of ventilation! Lew Wee always sleeps in an air-tight room packed
with cigarette smoke, and a lamp turned high at his couchside; and Lew
Wee is hardy.
He played over and over now a plaintive little air of minors that put
a gentle appeal through two closed doors. It is one he plays a great
deal. He has told me its meaning. He says--speaking with a not unpleasant
condescension--that this little tune will mean: "Life comes like a
bird-song through the open windows of the heart." It sounds quite like
that and is a very satisfying little song, with no beginning or end.
He played it now, over and over, wanderingly and at leisure, and I
pictured his rapt face above the whining fiddle; the face, say, of the
Philosopher Mang, sage of the second degree and disciple of Confucius,
who was lifted from earth by the gods in a time we call B.C. but which
was then thought to be a fresh, new, late time; the face of subtle eyes
and guarded dignity. And I wondered, as I had often wondered, whether Lew
Wee, lone alien in the abiding place of mad folks, did not suffer a vast
homesickness for his sane kith, who do not misspend their days building
up certain grotesque animals to slaughter them for a dubious food. True,
he had the compensation of believing invincibly that the Arrowhead Ranch
and all its concerns lay upon his own slightly bowed shoulders; that the
thing would fast crumble upon his severance from it. But I questioned
whether this were adequate. I felt him to be a man of sorrow if not of
tragedy. Vaguely he reached me as one who had survived some colossal
buffeting.
As I mused upon this Ma Pettengill sorted the evening mail and to Lew Wee
she now took his San Francisco newspaper, _Young China,_ and a letter.
Half an hour later Lew Wee brought wood to replenish the fire. He
disposed of this and absently brushed the hearth with a turkey wing.
Then he straightened the rug, crossed the room, and straightened on the
farther wall a framed portrait in colour of Majestic Folly, a prize bull
of the Hereford strain. Then he drew a curtain, flicked dust from a
corner of the table, and made a slow way to the kitchen door, pausing
to alter slightly the angle of a chair against the wall.
Ma Pettengill, at the table, was far in the Red Gap _Recorder_ for the
previous day. I was unoccupied and I watched Lew Wee. He was doing
something human; he was lingering for a purpose. He straightened another
chair and wiped dust from the gilt frame of another picture, Architect's
Drawing of the Pettengill Block, Corner Fourth and Main streets, Red Gap,
Washington. From this feat he went softly to the kitchen door, where he
looked back; hung waiting in the silence. He had made no sound, yet he
had conveyed to his employer a wish for speech. She looked up at him from
the lamp's glow, chin down, brows raised, and eyes inquiring of him over
shining nose glasses.
"My Uncle's store, Hankow, burn' down," said Lew Wee.
"Why, wasn't that too bad!" said Ma Pettengill.
"Can happen!" said Lew Wee positively.
"Too bad!" said Ma Pettengill again.
"I send him nine hundred dollars your money. Money burn, too," said Lew
Wee.
"Now, now! Well, that certainly is too bad! What a shame!"
"Can happen!" affirmed Lew Wee.
It was colourless. He was not treating his loss lightly nor yet was he
bewailing it.
"You put your money in the bank next time," warned his employer sharply,
"instead of letting it lie round in some flimsy Chinee junk shop. They're
always burning."
Lew Wee regarded her with a stilled face.
"Can happen!" he again murmured.
He was the least bit insistent, as if she could not yet have heard
this utterly sufficing truth. Then he was out; and a moment later the
two-stringed fiddle whined a little song through two closed doors.
I said something acute and original about the ingrained fatalism of the
Oriental races.
Ma Pettengill laid down her paper, put aside her glasses, and said, yes,
Chinee one fatal race; feeling fatal thataway was what made 'em such good
help. Because why? Because, going to work at such-and-such a place, this
here fatal feeling made 'em think one place was no worse than another; so
why not stick here? If other races felt as fatal as the Chinee race it
would make a grand difference in the help problem. She'd bet a million
dollars right now that a lot of people wished the Swedes and Irish had
fatal feelings like that.
I said Lew Wee had the look of one ever expecting the worst; even more
than the average of his race.
"It ain't that," said my hostess. "He don't expect anything at all; or
mebbe everything. He takes what comes. If it's good or bad, he says, 'Can
happen!' in the same tone of voice; and that ends it. There he is now,
knowing that all this good money he saved by hard labour has gone up in
smoke, and paying the loss no more attention that if he'd merely broke a
string on that squeaky long-necked contraption he saws."
"He seems careless enough with his money, certainly."
"Sure, because he don't believe it does the least good to be careful."
From a cloth sack the speaker poured tobacco into a longitudinally
creased brown paper and adeptly fashioned something in the nature of a
cigarette.
"Ain't I been telling him for a year to buy Liberty Bonds with his money?
He did buy two, being very pro-American on account of once having a
violent difference with a German; and he's impressed with the button
the Government lets him wear for it. He feels like the President has made
him a mandarin or something; but if the whole Government went flooey
to-morrow he'd just say, 'Can happen!' and pick up his funny fiddle. Of
course it ain't human, but it helps to keep help. I had him six years
now, and the only thing that can't happen is his leaving. I don't say
there wasn't reasons why he first took the place."
Reasons? So there had been reasons in the life of Lew Wee. I had
suspected as much. I found something guarded and timid and long-suffering
in his demeanour. He bore, I thought, the searing memory of an ordeal.
"Reasons!" I said, waiting.
"Reasons for coming this far in the first place. Wanted to save his life.
I don't know why, with that fatal idea he sticks to. Habit, probably.
Anyway, he had trouble saving it--kind of a feverish week."
She lighted the cigarette and chuckled hoarsely between the first
relishing whiffs of it.
"Yes, sir; that poor boy believes the country between here and the
coast is inhabited by savages; wild hill tribes that try to exterminate
peaceful travellers; a low kind of outlaws that can't understand a word
you tell 'em and act violent if you try to say it over. And having got
here, past the demons, I figure he's afraid to go back. I don't blame
him."
Ordinarily, this would have been enough. Now the lady merely smoked and
chuckled. When I again uttered "Well?" with a tinge of rebuke, she came
down from her musing, but into another and distant field. It was the
field of natural history, of zoology, of vertebrates, mammals, furred
quadrupeds--or, in short, skunks. One may as well be blunt in this
matter.
Ma Pettengill said the skunk got too little credit for its lovely
character, it being the friendliest wild animal known to man and never
offensive except when put upon. Wasn't we all offensive at those times?
And just because the skunk happened to be superbly gifted in this
respect, was that any reason to ostracize him?
"I ain't sayin' I'd like to mix with one when he's vexed," continued the
lady judicially; "but why vex 'em? They never look for trouble; then why
force it on their notice? Take one summer, years ago, when Lysander John
and I had a camp up above Dry Forks. My lands! Every night after supper
the prettiest gang of skunks would frolic down off the hillside and romp
round us. Here would come Pa and Ma in the lead, and mebbe a couple of
aunts and uncles and four or five of the cunningest little ones, and
they'd all snoop fearlessly round the cook fire and the grub boxes,
picking up scraps of food--right round under my feet, mind you--and
looking up now and then and saying, 'Thank you!' plain as anything, and
what lovely weather we're having, and why don't you come up and see us
some time?--and so on. They kept it up for a month while we was there;
and I couldn't want neater, nicer neighbours.
"Lysander John, he used to get some nervous, especially after one chased
him back into the tent late one night; but it was only wanting to play
like a mere puppy, I tells him. He'd heard a noise and rushed out, and
there the little thing was kind of waltzing in the moonlight, whirling
round and round and having a splendid time. When it came bounding toward
him--I guess that was the only time in his life Lysander John was scared
helpless. He busted back into the tent a mere palsied wreck of his former
self; but the cute little minx just come up and sniffed at the flap in a
friendly way, like it wanted to reassure him. I wanted him to go out and
play with it in the moonlight. He wouldn't. I liked 'em round the place,
they was so neighbourly and calm. Of course if I'd ever stepped on one,
or acted sudden--
"They also tame easy and make affectionate pets. Ralph Waldo Gusted, over
on Elkhorn, that traps 'em in winter to make First-Quality Labrador
Sealskin cloaks--his children got two in the house they play with like
kittens; and he says himself the skunk has been talked about in a loose
and unthinking way. He says a pet skunk is not only a fine mouser but
leads a far more righteous life than a cat, which is given to debauchery
and cursing in the night. Yes, sir; they're the most trusting and
friendly critters in all the woods if not imposed upon--after that,
to be sure!"
I said yes, yes, and undoubtedly, and all very interesting, and well and
good in its place; but, really, was this its place? I wanted Lew Wee's
reasons for believing in the existence of savage hill tribes between
there and San Francisco.
"Yes; and San Francisco is worse," said the lady. "He believes that city
to be ready for mob violence at any moment. Wild crowds get together and
yell and surge round on the least provocation. He says it's different in
China, the people there not being crazy."
"Well, then, we can get on with this mystery."
So Ma Pettengill said we could; and we did indeed.
This here chink seems to of been a carefree child up to the time the
civilized world went crazy with a version for him. He was a good cook
and had a good job at a swell country club down the peninsula from San
Francisco. The hours was easy and he was close enough to the city to
get in once or twice a week and mingle with his kind. He could pass an
evening with the older set, playing fan-tan and electing a new president
of the Chinee race, or go to the Chinee theatre and set in a box and chew
sugar cane; or he could have a nice time at the clubrooms of the Young
China Progressive Association, playing poker for money. Once in a while
he'd mix in a tong war, he being well thought of as a hatchet man--only
they don't use hatchets, but automatics; in fact, all Nature seemed to
smile on him.
Well, right near this country club one of his six hundred thousand
cousins worked as gardener for a man, and this man kept many beautiful
chickens--so Lew Wee says. And he says a strange and wicked night animal
crept into the home of these beautiful birds and slew about a dozen of
'em by biting 'em under their wings. The man told his cousin that the
wicked night animal must be a skunk and that his cousin should catch him
in a trap. So the cousin told Lew Wee that the wicked night animal was a
skunk and that he was going to catch him in a trap. Lew Wee thought it
was interesting.
He went up to the city and in the course of a pleasant evening at fan-tan
he told about the slain chickens that were so beautiful, and how the
night animal that done it would be caught in a trap. A great friend of
Lew Wee's was present, a wonderful doctor. Lew Wee still says he is the
most wonderful doctor in the world, knowing things about medicines that
the white doctors can't ever find out, these being things that the Chinee
doctors found out over fifteen thousand years ago, and therefore true.
The doctor's name was Doctor Hong Foy, and he was a rich doctor. And he
says to Lew Wee that he needs a skunk for medicine, and if any one will
bring him a live skunk in good condition he will pay twenty-five dollars
in American money for same.
Lew Wee says he won't be needing that skunk much longer--or words to
that effect--because he will get this one from the trap. Doctor Hong
Foy is much pleased and says the twenty-five American dollars is eager
to become Lew Wee's for this animal, alive and in good condition.
Lew Wee goes back, and the next day his cousin says he set a trap and the
night skunk entered it, but he was strong like a lion and had busted out
and bit some more chickens under the wing, and then went away from there.
He showed Lew Wee the trap and Lew Wee seen it wasn't the right kind, but
he knows how to make the right kind and will do so if the skunk can
become entirely his property when caught.
The cousin, without the least argument, agreed heartily to this. He was
honest enough. He explained carefully that the skunk was wished to be
caught to keep it from biting chickens under the wing, causing them to
die, and not for any value whatever it might have to the person catching
it. He says it will be beneficial to catch the skunk, but not to keep it;
that a skunk is not nice after being caught, and Lew Wee is more than
welcome to it if he will make a right trap. The cousin himself was
probably one of these fatal "Can happen!" boys. When Lew Wee says he must
have the skunk alive and in good condition he just looked at him in a
distant manner that Lew Wee afterward remembered; but he only said: "Oh,
very well!" in his native language.
Lew Wee then found a small peaked-roofed chicken coop, with stout
slats on it, and made a figure-four trap, and put something for bait
on the pointed stick and set the trap, and begun right off to squander
twenty-five dollars that was to come as easy as picking it up in the
road.
There wasn't any breakfast trade at the country club and Lew Wee was able
to get over across the golf links to the chicken place early the next
morning. The cousin was some distance from the chicken place, hoeing a
bed of artichokes, but he told Lew Wee his trap had been a very wonderful
trap and the night animal was safe caught. Lew Wee was surprised at his
cousin's indifference and thought he should of been over there looking at
the prize. But not so. The cousin was keeping some distance off. He just
told Lew Wee that there was his animal and that he should take it away
with as little disturbance as possible, which would be better far and
near for all concerned. He was strangely cool about it.
But Lew Wee was full of pleasant excitement and run swiftly to his trap.
Sure enough! There was a nice big beautiful skunk in his trap. Lew Wee
had never seen one. He said it was more beautiful than a golden pheasant,
with rich, shiny black fur and a lovely white stripe starting from its
face and running straight down on each side of its back; and it had a
wonderful waving tail, like a plume. He looked at it joyfully through the
slats. It was setting down comfortably when he come up; so he spoke to
it in a friendly way. Then it got up and yawned and stretched itself,
looking entirely self-possessed, but kind of bored, I suppose, like this
was a poor sort of practical joke to play on a gentleman; so now would
someone kindly lift this box off him?
The proud owner danced about it in great glee and told it how the nice
doctor wouldn't hurt it any, but would give it a good home, with chicken
for supper, mebbe, and so on. Then he went back to his cousin and give
him a pack of cigarettes, out of his overflowing heart, and asked where
was something he could put his wild animal in and take it to town to his
great friend Doctor Hong Foy, who had a desire for it.
The cousin took the cigarettes, but he looked at Lew Wee a long time,
like he didn't understand Chinee at all. Lew Wee said it all over again.
He wanted something to take the wild animal to town in, because the
chicken coop it was now in hadn't any bottom; and was too big, anyway.
The cousin again looked at him a long time, like one in a trance. Then,
without any silly talk, he went over to the barn and handed Lew Wee a
bran sack.
Lew Wee said that was just the thing; and would the cousin come over
and help him in case the animal would be timid and not want to go in
the sack? The cousin said he would not. And he didn't go back to the
artichokes. He went to a bed of cauliflower clear at the other end of
the garden, after giving Lew Wee another of them long "Can happen!"
looks, which signify that we live in a strange and terrible world.