ON THE WAY
The buckboard seat was not wide enough to accommodate the three, so Tom
sat in back with his legs dangling over, and occasionally, by way of
stretching himself, stood up behind the seat, holding on to the back and
chatting with the other two.
It was a slow, hard pull up the mountain, over a woods road which was
hardly more than a trail. Again and again they stopped to rest the
struggling horses, and Tom placed stones under the rear wheels.
“How many have you got working up there?” he asked.
“Oh ’bout a dozen just now,” said Ferris. “But only four of them are
steadies. They come and go. We’ve got a chauffeur who lost his license
and can’t drive; he’s not so bad. We’ve got an inventor who invented a
substitute for gasoline; he’s waiting for a law suit to be decided in
his favor—fifty thousand bucks I think he expects. He’s good for the
summer. We’ve got an ex-soldier; he’s a good worker, but a queer duck.”
“Don’t forget the legitt,” said his sister.
“And we’ve got a legitimate actor,” said Ferris; “he’s a good worker
too. Dances, sings and expects to play Hamlet next season.”
“He chops down a tree more artistically than any one I ever knew,” said
Miss Audry Ferris. “He bows when he’s finished.”
“All he wants is a little applause,” said Ferris. “You’ll like them, the
steadies. The rest are sort of transients. A couple of them aren’t half
bad.”
“They won’t like you though,” said Audry.
“Thanks. Why not?” Tom asked.
“They’ll think you’re uppish.”
“That’s news to me,” said Tom. “I was never called uppish before. I
don’t see how you can think that.”
“I didn’t say I thought so,” she said. “But your staying in the cottage
with us will make them think so. That’s what they’ll say, _that you’re
uppish_. That’s just what Ned Whalen will think; I can just _hear_ him
asking, ‘Well, how’s things in the Executive Mansion?’”
“Oh now—” her brother laughed deprecatingly.
“Oh yes, he will,” she said. “That’s exactly what he asked Will Daggett;
Will told me so himself. He has that _abominable_ sarcastic way about
him. I know _just exactly_ the kind of things he’ll say. Things that
make you _mad_, but that don’t give you a chance to _denounce_ him. I
can just _hear_ him now.”
“Nobody wants to denounce him,” soothed her brother.
“I want to denounce him,” the girl said.
“He’s a very good worker,” Nielson urged; “Will said so himself. Good
outdoor man too. Get along,” he concluded, addressing the struggling
horses. “I can hear you flying off the handle some fine day or other and
telling him how you hate him and then I’ll lose the best worker I’ve
got.”
“I’m not an _idiot_,” said the girl. “You seem to know just exactly what
I’ll do and say. Have I ever done or said anything?”
“You seem to know just exactly what _he’ll_ do and say,” her brother
laughed.
“Who was Will Daggett?” Tom asked by way of generalizing the
conversation.
“He was a young gentleman,” said Audry. “And he kept the accounts and
stayed in the cottage with us. He went home to prepare for college.”
“He failed to pass last year—g’long, Flossie,” said her brother
disinterestedly.
“You’ll see,” said the girl mysteriously, and evidently addressing Tom
who was standing behind them holding the back of the seat. “You’ll see
for yourself. You’ll be a _martyr_ for living in the cottage.”
“Well I don’t think I’d like that,” Tom said. “Maybe it would be better
if I bunked in with the gang; maybe we’d all work better together that
way. Especially as I guess most of them are older than I am. Gee, I
don’t want them to think I’m a boss.”
“You may be right about that,” said Ferris.
“Then why don’t we all eat with them?” Audry asked.
“Because we’re not in such close touch with them as Mr. Slade will be.
He expects to work too.”
“You bet,” said Tom. “Of course I never really bossed a job; at camp I’m
a sort of a boss over the kids, I suppose you might say, and I mix up
with them, eat with them and all that.”
“That’s entirely different,” the girl said.
“Y—yes, I suppose it is,” Tom conceded. “But I don’t know, up in lumber
camps and places like that they all eat and bunk together, foremen and
all—so I’ve heard.”
“You see,” said Ferris, “we have to watch our step up here. Our outfit
is a sort of a potpourri. They’re not regular laborers. We can’t get
laborers to come up here. Some of them are pretty well educated and
started out in good homes. We have to be careful.
“You’re just up here to help out and tip them off about tree felling and
one thing or another that scouts learn. I don’t want to use the word
boss. It isn’t a case of boss and laborers. It’s more a case of scout
and tenderfoots. Get me? I don’t want them walking off and leaving us
flat, that’s the main thing. You’ll see,” he added cheerily. “It’s kind
of _different_.”
“I understand,” Tom said.
“Lonely mountains are no places for hoity-toity distinctions,” said
Ferris. “This is a camp up here. See?”
“I get you,” Tom said.
“You’ll use your own judgment,” said Ferris.
“Well,” Tom said, “I guess I wouldn’t know how to be a boss anyway. I’m
just going to pile in and help. I have a hunch I’ll bunk right in with
them—friends all ’round.”
There was a minute of silence, except for the steady trudging of the
patient horses and occasionally the sound of a stone dislodged by their
digging hoofs and rolling down the mountainside. It was not until Tom
gave evidence of withdrawing to his seat on the rear edge of the
buckboard that the girl observed:
“If you have to stay with them all the time in order to be one of them,
if that’s the only way you can get results, it shows your own weakness;
it shows that it’s your presence and not your personality that counts.
If you were really _big_ it wouldn’t make any difference where you
stayed. They’d _worship_ you.”
“I don’t believe Mr. Slade wants to be worshipped,” laughed Ferris.
“No, but he seems to think he has to choose between one thing or the
other,” the girl said. “It didn’t make any difference where Napoleon
was, his troops _adored_ him.
“If you’re afraid of what they think, that’s just the very thing that
will make them think the worst of you. You start by thinking what _they_
would like best. It isn’t _you_ they will like; it’s your decision. Tact
isn’t as big as personality. If you have personality people will love
you even if you sit on a throne. I’d rather be liked for what I _am_
than for what I _do_.”
“Well then,” said her brother, brutally reducing her talk to its common
denominator, “we’ll have Mr. Slade in the cottage if that’s what you
want.”
“That isn’t it at all,” the girl flared up, blushing. “He as much as
said that he couldn’t win the men unless he played a part.”
“Played a part?” her brother queried.
“Yes, played a part.”
“You’re thinking of our actor,” Ferris laughed.
And Tom laughed too, feeling very much beyond his depth.
“It’s just like a politician who goes around shaking hands with
everybody to get votes,” the girl said.
“You said they’d dislike me,” Tom ventured to remind her.
“Yes, because you’re not big enough to be one of them and yet not
actually live among them. There are very few big enough to surmount
artificial arrangements.”
Poor Tom was quite staggered with such highbrow talk.
“How do you know how big Mr. Slade is?” Ferris burst out laughing. “You
haven’t even taken a good look at him.”
This was not exactly true, for indeed she had taken a very good look at
him. That was why she was arguing.
“Oh you don’t understand,” she sneered. “You admit he has to watch his
step—you said so. If a person is born to be loved and trusted and looked
up to, do you suppose he has to watch his step? I think myself that
maybe it would be much better if Mr. Slade stays in the hotel where he
can _watch_ them.”
No doubt Brent Gaylong could have put this learned young lady out of the
ring with one of his whimsical knock-out blows, but poor Tom was visibly
impressed. There is a type of young fellow predestined to fall victim to
the highbrow type of girl.
Tom, with all his prowess and wholesome intelligence, was simple and
credulous. He felt that here was one who could see where he was blind.
He realized how crude was his thinking in the light of Audry Ferris’
fine, discriminating vision. She was right, of course she was right. He
was not big enough—whatever that meant....
“Well,” said he, “I’m going to live in the cottage if you’ll let me,
that’s one thing sure.”
“Maybe you’d be more contented over in the hotel,” Audry said.
“It isn’t a question of where I’d be more contented,” he said. “You bet
I’ll be more contented in the cottage with you—and Mr. Ferris. I think
it would be best, too, just like you say.”
“Oh, I didn’t say so,” the girl expostulated.
“You’re right, anyway, that’s sure,” poor Tom vociferated.
“And you’ll meet Miranda,” said Ferris.
Tom was not curious. He felt that he did not care anything about meeting
Miranda, whoever she was. He was quite satisfied with the girl who had
made him see things as they really are....
And sure, thanks to her, his vision was now so clear, he scrutinized her
rather more particularly as she stepped down from the buckboard when it
stopped before a funny little cottage, under the shadow of the old
hotel. She looked very winsome in her khaki knickers and high laced
hiking boots.
“She’s one clever girl,” poor Tom said to himself.