They told him he had for to wait a few days and they went over to
Livingston and got twelve thousand dollars in five-dollar bills, and
brung it to Dwelley, and told him to count it. He counted a little of
it, and then said it was all right; he'd take their word for it that
there was twelve thousand dollars there. So then he put it in a sack
where he had some beaver hides. They told me he sent it all by express
to a fur buyer in Salt Lake after a while, and told him to put it in a
bank. He had one thousand five hundred dollars saved out, so they told
me, and he put that in the bank over to Bozeman. It riled them people at
Bozeman a good deal to think that anybody not from Bozeman should have
one thousand five hundred dollars inaccessible in their town. So one day
when old man Dwelley was there they fined him one thousand five hundred
dollars for killing a elk out of season, or something. That made him
mad. Still and all, he had his twelve thousand dollars left, not
mentioning what he got for his beaver hides.
"One thing with another," continued Maw after a period of rumination,
"you can't say but what this park is a fine place. Of course there's
always a wonder in my mind where they get all the hot water for the
geysers. It looks to me like a industrial waste. If the geysers could be
used for laundries, that would be something like. Then, again, they're
all the same color. If they'd throw in some bluing now and then, or some
red or green, they'd look prettier--that'd give more variety, like. Yet
they say these geysers has been running for years and no let-up. Ain't
it funny the things you see, away from home?
[Illustration: "If the geysers could be used for laundries, that would
be something like."--Maw--p. 48]
"I like to ride along these roads up in the mountains, and look down at
the rivers. You get way up above a river and it looks like a long
washboard, down below, here in the mountains. And I'll have to say
the roads is crooked. I say to Paw: 'We're all church members except
Cynthy, which went to college, and if we go we go.' And even if we
do--why, we've all had a vacation, and I'll tell it to the world that a
vacation trip once in a lifetime is something no family ought to be
without, no matter what the preacher says about idleness. I'm strong for
vacations from this time on. Fact is, I believe Paw and me has got to
have them, though this is our first. And to think we was afraid to buy
ice cream once, except on the Fourth of July! Now, Paw goes right up to
one of them stands and buys five dollars of gasoline like it was
nothing. Times has changed, like I said. Lookit at our car now. I can
remember back--not so far, neither--when if I got a ride in a side-bar
buggy I thought I was a mighty lucky girl. And here we are, traveling
with every sort of comfort anybody could ask."
There were many appliances which Maw gradually had installed for
facilitating housekeeping in her day-to-day camps--folding beds, a
cracker-box pantry, a planed board for table, racks for groceries and
the like, all strung alongside the car, so numerous and extensive that
by the time the Hickory Bend Outing Club's great wall tent had been
added you barely could see the wheels underneath the moving mass. From
the midst of all projected the steering wheel, which Paw grasped as he
sat, with only the top of his hat visible to the naked eye. Maw rode
beside him somewhere. I never was able satisfactorily to determine where
Cynthy, Hattie and Rowena rode. Danny, the family dog, had his seat
outside on the fender, against the hood. I presume Danny's feet got hot
sometimes on the up grades, but Maw said he ought to be used to it by
now.