Shady Rill; so I chanced it again, remarking on the sign I had observed
that day. So she left her desk for a seat before the fire and said yes,
and they was other signs of Herman's hid off in the mountains where no
one but cows, that can't read a line, would see 'em. She also divulged
that Herman, himself, wasn't anything you'd want a bronze statue of to
put up in Courthouse Square.
Well then, come on, now! What about him? No, sir; not by a darned sight!
With that there desk full of work, she simply could not stop to talk now.
She did.
Is that the only sign of Herman's you saw? He's got others along them
trails. You'll see an arrow in white paint, pointing to his sylvan glen,
and warnings not to go to other glens till you've tried his. One says:
You've tried the rest; now try the best! Another says: Try Wagner's
Sylvan Glen for Boating, Bathing, and Fishing. Meals at all hours! And
he's got one that shows he studied American advertising as soon as he
landed in this country. It says: Wagner's Sylvan Glen--Not How Good,
But How Cheap!
I don't know. I ain't made up my mind about Herman, even yet. If it
wasn't for why he had to leave Nevada and if I knew there could be more
than one kind of German, then I'd almost say Herman was the other kind.
But, of course, there can't be but one kind, and he showed the Prussian
strain fast enough in why he come up from Reno. Still and all, he's got
his engaging points as a pure imbecile or something.
He don't tell me why he left Reno for a long time after he gets here;
not till I'd won his confidence by showing I was a German sympathizer. It
was when Sandy Sawtelle had a plan for a kind of grand war measure. His
grand war measure was to get some secret agents into Germany and kill off
all the women under fifty. He said if you done this the stock would die
out, because look at the game laws against killing does! He told this
to everybody. He told it to Herman; but Herman knew enough to remain
noncommittal 'bout it. He told it to me, and I saw right off it probably
couldn't be managed right; and, even if it could be, I said to Sandy,
it seemed to me somehow like it would be sort of inhuman.
Herman heard me say this and got the idea I was a pacifist and a secret
friend of his country; so he confided to me the secret of why he left
Reno to keep from having his heart cut out by Manuel Romares. But no
matter!
Anyway, last year in the spring this Herman dropped by, looking for
work. He hadn't been in America long, having stopped with his uncle in
Cincinnati a while, and then coming West on a life of adventure and to
take up a career. He said now he'd come up from Nevada, where he'd been
working on a sheep ranch, and he acted like he wanted to get into
something respectable and lead a decent life again.
Well, it had got so I hired everything that come along; so why not
Herman? I grabbed at him. The boys heard he was a German alien and acted,
at first, like a bunch of hogs with a bear about; but I'd of hired old
Hinderburg himself if he'd offered and put him to doing something worth
while.
This Herman was the first man ever worked here in side whiskers. He told
me, after I showed myself a German sympathizer, that in the beginning of
the war he'd wore one of them moustaches like the Kaiser puts up in tin
fasteners every night after he's said his prayers; but this had made him
an object of unpleasant remark, including missiles. So he had growed this
flowering border round it to take off the curse.
They was beautiful shiny side whiskers and entirely innocent-looking.
In the right clothes Herman could of gone into any Sabbath school in the
land and said he was glad to see so many bright little faces there this
morning, and now what was to-day's golden text, and so on. That's what
he looked like. These things fell like portières each side of his face,
leaving his chin as naked as the day he was born. He didn't have any too
much under his mouth either; so I guess the whiskers was really a mercy
to his face.
He admitted he didn't know too much about the cow business, but said
he was willing to learn; so I put him on the payroll. We found he was
willing to try anything that looked easy; for instance, like setting on
colts for the first time. The first morning he went to work it was rainy,
with the ground pretty wet, and he was out to the corral watching Sandy
Sawtelle break a colt. That's the best time to handle colts that has
never been set on. They start to act up and pour someone out of the
saddle; then they slip and slide, helpless, and get the idea a regler
demon of a rider is up there, and give in. So the boys give Herman a
fussy two-year-old, and Herman got away with it not so bad.
Of course he was set off a few times, but not hard; and the colt,
slicking over this wet ground, must of thought another star rider had
come to town. Two days later, though, when the ground was dry, Herman
got on the same wild animal again, and it wasn't there when he come down
from his first trip aloft. It traded ends with him neatly and was off in
a corner saying. "Well, looks like that German ain't such a dandy rider
after all! I couldn't pull that old one with him yesterday, but I
certainly done it good to-day."
I wasn't near enough to hear what Herman said when he picked himself up;
but I'm a good lip reader since I been going to these moving pictures,
and I'm way mistaken if he hadn't learned two or three good things in
English to call a horse at certain times.
He walked for several days with trench feet, and his morale was low
indeed. He was just that simple. He'd try things that sane punchers
wouldn't go looking for, if sober; in fact, he was so simple you might
call him simple-minded and not get took up for malicious slander.
So it come to where we seen he wasn't good for anything on this ranch but
chore boy. And naturally we needed a chore boy, like we needed everything
else. He could get up wood, and feed the pigs we was fattening, and milk
the three dairy cows, and make butter, and help in the kitchen. But as
for being a cow hand, he wasn't even the first joint on your little
finger. He was willing, but his Maker had stopped right at that point
with him. And he had a right happy time being chore boy.
Of course the boys kidded him a lot after they found out he could
positively not be enraged by the foulest aspersions on the character of
the Kaiser and his oldest son. They seen he was just an innocent dreamer,
mooning round the place at his humble tasks. They spent a lot of good
time thinking up things for him.
He'd brought a German shotgun with silver trimmings with him, which he
called a fowling piece, and he wanted to hunt in his few leisure moments;
so the boys told him all the kinds of game that run wild on the place.
There was the cross-feathered snee, I remember, which was said by the
bird books to be really the same as the sidehill mooney. It has one leg
shorter than the other and can be captured by hand if driven to level
ground, where it falls over on its side in a foolish manner when it tries
to run. Herman looked forward to having one of these that he could stuff
and send to his uncle in Cincinnati, who wrote that he had never seen
such a bird.
Also, he spent a lot of time down on the crick flat looking for a mu,
which is the same as a sneeze-duck, except for the parallel stripes. It
has but one foot webbed; so it swims in a circle and can be easy shot by
the sportsman, who first baits it with snuff that it will go miles to
get. Another wild beast they had him hunting was the filo, which is like
the ruffle snake, except that it has a thing like a table leg in its ear.
It gets up on a hill and peeks over at you, but will never come in to
lunch. The boys said they nearly had one over on Grizzly Peak one time,
but it swallowed its tail and become invisible to the human eye, though
they could still hear its low note of pleading. Also, they had Herman
looking for a mated couple of the spinach bug for which the Smithsonian
Institution had offered a reward of five hundred dollars, cash.
Herman fell for it all--all this old stuff that I had kicked the slats
out of my trundle-bed laughing at. And in between exciting adventures
with his fowling piece he'd write himself some pieces of poetry in a
notebook, all about the cows and the clouds and other natural objects. He
would also recite poetry written by other Germans, if let. And at night
he'd play on a native instrument shaped like a potato, by blowing into
one cavity and stopping up other cavities to make the notes. It would be
slow music and make you think of the quiet old churchyard where your
troubles would be o'er; and why not get there as soon as possible? Sad
music!
So Herman was looked on as a harmless imbecile by one and all till Eloise
Plummer come over to help in the kitchen while the haying crew was here
last summer. And Eloise looked on him as something else. She looked on
Herman as one of them that make it unsafe for girls to leave home. She
had good reason to.
Eloise is in the prime of young womanhood; but this is just exactly as
fur as any fair-minded judge would go to say of her as a spectacle. Her
warmest adherents couldn't hardly get any warmer than that if put under
oath. She has a heart of gold undoubtedly, but a large and powerful face
that would belong rightly to the head director of a steel corporation
that's worked his way up from the bottom.
It is not a face that has ever got Eloise pestered with odious attentions
from the men. Instead of making 'em smirk and act rough, but playful, it
made 'em think that life, after all, is more serious than most of us
suspect in our idle moments. It certainly is a face to make men think.
And inspiring this black mood in men had kind of reacted on Eloise till
they couldn't quite see what they was ever intended for. It was natural.
I don't say the girl could of cooked all winter in a lumber camp and not
been insulted a time or two; but it wasn't fur from that with her.
So you can imagine how bitter she was when this Herman nut tried to make
up to her. Herman was a whirlwind wooer; I'll say that for him. He told
her right off that she was beautiful as the morning star and tried to
kiss her hand. None of these foolish preliminaries for Herman, like
"Lovely weather we're having!" or "What's your favourite flower?"
Eloise was quick-natured, too. She put him out of the kitchen with a coal
shovel, after which Herman told her through a crack of the door that she
was a Lorelei.
Eloise, at first, misunderstood this term entirely, and wasn't much less
insulted when she found it meant one of these German hussies that hang
round creeks for no good purpose. Not that her attitude discouraged
Herman any; he played under her window that night, and also sang a rich
custard sort of tenor in his native tongue, till I had to threaten him
with the bastile to get any sleep myself.
Next day he fetched her regal gifts, consisting of two polished
abalone shells, a picture of the Crown Prince in a brass frame,
and a polished-wood paper knife with Greetings from Reno! on it.
Eloise was now like an enraged goddess or something; and if Herman hadn't
been a quick bender and light on his feet she wouldn't of missed him with
his gifts. As it was, he ducked in time and went out to the spring house
to write a poem on her beauty, which he later read to her in German
through a kitchen window that was raised. The window was screened; so he
read it all. Later he gets Sandy Sawtelle to tell her this poem is all
about how coy she is. Every once in a while you could get an idea partway
over on Herman. He was almost certain Eloise was coy.
By the end of that second day, after Herman threw kisses to her for ten
minutes from on top of the woodshed, where he was safe, she telephoned
her brother to come over here quick, if he had the soul of a man in his
frame, and kill Herman like he would a mad dog.
But Eloise left the next morning, without waiting for anything suitable
to be pulled off by her family. It was because, when she went to bed
that night, she found a letter from Herman pinned to her pillow. It had
a red heart on it, pierced by a dagger that was dropping red drops very
sentimentally; and it said would she not hasten to take her vast beauty
out in the moonlight, to walk with Herman under the quiet trees while
the nightingale warbled and the snee, or sidehill mooney, called to its
lovemate? And here, as they walked, they could plan their beautiful
future together.
This was beyond Eloise even with a full battery of kitchen utensils at
hand. She left before breakfast; and Herman had to come in and wash
dishes.
The next excitement was Herman committing suicide, out in the woodshed,
with a rope he'd took off a new packsaddle. Something interrupted him
after he got the noose adjusted and was ready to step off the chopping
block he stood on. I believe it was one more farewell note to the woman
that sent him to his grave. Only he got interested in it and put in a lot
more of his own poetry and run out of paper, and had to get more from the
house; and he must of forgot what he went to the woodshed for because an
hour after that he committed an entirely new suicide with his fowling
piece.
Near as I could gather, he was all ready to pull the trigger, looking
down into this here frowning muzzle before a mirror; and then something
about his whiskers in the mirror must of caught his eye. Anyway, another
work of self-destruction was off. So he come in and helped with lunch.
Then he told me he'd like to take some time off, because he was going
up to the deep pool to drown himself.
I said was he really bent on it? He said it was requisite, because away
from this beautiful lady, who had torn his heart out and danced on it, he
could not continue to live, even for one day. So I come down on Herman. I
told him that, hard up as I was for help, I positively would not have a
man on the place who was always knocking off work to kill himself. It et
into his time, and also it took the attention of others who longed to see
him do it.
I said I might stand for a suicide or two--say, once a month, on a quiet
Sunday--but I couldn't stand this here German thoroughness that kept it
up continual. At least, if he hoped to keep on drawing pay from me, he'd
have to make way with himself in his own leisure moments and not on my
time.
Herman says I don't know the depths of the human heart. I says I know
what I pay him a month, and that's all I'm needing to know in this
emergency. I thought, of course, he'd calm down and forget his nonsense;
but not so. He moped and mooned, and muttered German poetry to himself
for another day, without ever laying a violent hand on himself; but then
he come and said it was no good. He says, however, he will no longer
commit suicide at this place, where none have sympathy with him and many
jeer. Instead, he will take his fowling piece to some far place in the
great still mountains and there, at last, do the right thing by himself.
I felt quite snubbed, but my patience was wore out; so I give Herman
the money that was coming to him, wished him every success in his
undertaking, and let him go.
The boys scouted round quite a bit the next few days, listening for
the shot and hoping to come on what was left; but they soon forgot it.
Me? I knew one side of Herman by that time. I knew he would be the most
careful boy in every suicide he committed. If I'd been a life-insurance
company it wouldn't have counted against him so much as the coffee habit
or going without rubbers.
And--sure enough--about two months later the dead one come to life.
Herman rollicked in one night with news that he had wandered far into
the hills till he found the fairest spot on earth; that quickly made
him forget his great sorrow. His fairest spot was a half section of
bad land a hopeful nester had took up back in the hills. It had a little
two-by-four lake on it and a grove of spruce round the lake; and Herman
had fell in love with it like with Eloise.
He'd stay with the nester, who was half dead with lonesomeness, so that
even a German looked good to him, and wrote to his uncle in Cincinnati
for money to buy the place. And now I'd better hurry over and see it,
because it was Wagner's Sylvan Glen, with rowing, bathing, fishing, and
basket parties welcome. Yes, sir! It goes to show you can't judge a
German like you would a human.
I laughed at first; but no one ever got to Herman that way. He was firm
and delighted. That Sylvan Glen was just the finest resort anywhere
round! Why, if it was within five miles of Cincinnati or Munich it would
be worth a million dollars! And so on. It done no good to tell him it was
not within five miles of these towns and never would be. And it done less
good to ask him where his customers was coming from, there not being a
soul nearer him than twenty miles, and then only scattered ranchers that
has got their own idea of a good time after the day's work is over, which
positively is not riding off to anybody's glen, no matter how sylvan.
"The good people will come soon enough. You'll see!" says Herman.
"They soon find out the only place for miles round where they can get
a good pig's knuckle, or blood sausage and a glass Rhine wine--or maybe
beer--after a hard day's work. I got a fine boat on the lake--they can
row and push all round over the water; and I'm getting a house put up
with vines on it, like a fairy palace, and little tables outside! You
see! The people will come when they hear!"
That was Herman. He never stopped to ask where they was coming from. He'd
make the place look like a Dutch beer garden and they'd just have to come
from somewhere, because what German ever saw a beer garden that didn't
have people coming to it? I reckoned up that Herman would have enough
custom to make the place pay, the quick rate our country is growing, in
about two hundred and forty-five or fifty years.
So that's Wagner's Sylvan Glen you seen advertised. It's there all right;
and Herman is there, waiting for trade, with a card back of his little
bar that says, in big letters: Keep Smiling! I bet if you dropped in this
minute you'd find him in a black jacket and white apron, with a bill of
fare wrote in purple ink. He thinks people will soon drop in from twenty
miles off to get a cheese sandwich or a dill pickle, or something.
Two of the boys was over this last June when he had his grand opening.
They was the only person there except a man from Surprise Valley that
was looking for stock and got lost. Buck Devine says the place looked
as swell as something you'd see round Chicago.
Herman has a scow on the pond, and a dozen little green tables outside
under the spruce trees, with all the trees white-washed neatly round the
bottoms, and white-washed stones along the driveway, and a rustic gate
with Welcome to Wagner's Sylvan Glen! over it. And he's got some green
tubs with young spruces planted in 'em, standing under the big spruces,
and everything as neat as a pin.
Everyone thinks he's plumb crazy now, even if they didn't when he said
Eloise Plummer was as beautiful as the morning star. But you can't tell.
He's getting money every month from his uncle in Cincinnati to improve
the place. He's sent the uncle a photo of it and it must look good back
in Cincinnati, where you can't see the surrounding country.
Maybe Herman merely wants to lead a quiet life with the German poets, and
has thought up something to make the uncle come through. On the other
hand, mebbe he's a spy. Of course he's got a brain. He's either kidding
the uncle, or else Wagner's Sylvan Glen now covers a concrete gun
foundation.
In either case he's due for harsh words some day--either from the uncle
when he finds there ain't any roadhouse patrons for twenty miles round,
or from the German War Office when they find out there ain't even
anything to shoot at.
The lady paused; then remarked that, even at a church sociable, Uncle
Henry's idee of wine would probably make trouble to a police extent. Here
it had made her talkative long after bedtime, and she hadn't yet found
out just how few dollars stood between her and the poorhouse.
I allowed her to sort papers for a moment. As she scanned them under
drawn brows beside a lamp that was dimming, she again rumbled into song.
She now sang: "What fierce diseases wait around to hurry mortals home!"
It is, musically, the crudest sort of thing. And it clashed with my mood;
for I now wished to know how Herman had revealed Prussian guile by his
manner of leaving Reno. Only after another verse of the hymn could I be
told. It seems worth setting down here:
Well, Herman is working on a sheep ranch out of Reno, as I'm telling you,
and has trouble with a fellow outcast named Manuel Romares. Herman was
vague about what started the trouble, except that they didn't understand
each other's talk very well and one of 'em thought the other was making
fun of him. Anyway, it resulted in a brutal fist affray, greatly to
Herman's surprise. He had supposed that no man, Mexican or otherwise,
would dare to attack a German single-handed, because he would of heard
all about Germans being invincible, that nation having licked two
nations--Serbia and Belgium--at once.
So, not suspecting any such cowardly attack, Herman was took unprepared
by Manuel Romares, who did a lot of things to him in the way of ruthless
devastation. Furthermore, Herman was clear-minded enough to see that
Manuel could do these things to him any time he wanted to. In that coarse
kind of fighting with the fists he was Herman's superior. So Herman
drawed off and planned a strategic coop.
First thing he done was to make a peace offer, at which the trouble
should be discussed on a fair basis to both sides. Manuel not being one
to nurse a grudge after he'd licked a man in jig time, and being of a
sunny nature anyway, I judge, met him halfway. Then, at this peace
conference, Herman acted much unlike a German, if he was honest. He
said he had been all to blame in this disturbance and his conscience
hurt him; so he couldn't rest till he had paid Manuel an indemnity.
Manuel is tickled and says what does Herman think of paying him? Herman
shows up his month's pay and says how would it suit Manuel if they go in
to Reno that night and spend every cent of this money in all the lovely
ways which could be thought up by a Mexican sheep herder that had just
come in from a six weeks' cross-country tour with two thousand of the
horrible animals.
Manuel wanted to kiss Herman. Herman says he did cry large tears of
gladness. And they started for town.
So they got to Reno, and did not proceed to the Public Library, or the
Metallurgical Institute, or the Historical Museum. They proceeded to the
Railroad Exchange Saloon, where they loitered and loitered and loitered
before the bar, at Herman's expense, telling how much they thought of
each other and eating of salt fish from time to time, which is intended
by the proprietor to make even sheep herders more thirsty than normal.
Herman sipped only a little beer; but Manuel thought of many new
beverages that had heretofore been beyond his humble purse, and every
new one he took made him think of another new one. It was a grand moment
for Manuel--having anything he could think of set before him in this
beautiful café or saloon, crowded with other men who were also having
grand moments.
After a while Herman says to Manuel to come outside, because he wants to
tell him something good he has thought of. So he leads him outside by an
arm and can hardly tell what he has to say because it's so funny he has
to laugh when he thinks of it. They go up an alley where they won't be
overheard, and Herman at last manages to keep his laughter down long
enough to tell it. It's a comical antic he wants Manuel to commit.
Manuel don't get the idea, at first, but Herman laughs so hard that
at last Manuel thinks it's just got to be funny and pretty soon he's
laughing at it as hard as Herman is.
So they go back to the saloon to do this funny thing, which is to be a
joke on the big crowd of men in there. Herman says he won't be able to
do it good himself, because he's got a bad cold and can't yell loud; but
Manuel's voice is getting better with every new drink. Manuel is just
busting with mirth, thinking of this good joke he's going to play on the
Americans.
They have one more drink, Manuel taking peach brandy with honey, which
Herman says costs thirty cents; then he looks over the men standing there
and he yells good and loud:
"To hell with the President! Hurrah for the Kaiser!"