Sunday and a driving rain had combined to keep Ma Pettengill within the
Arrowhead ranch house. Neither could have done this alone. The rain
would merely have added a slicker to her business costume of khaki
riding breeches, laced boots, and flannel shirt as she rode abroad;
while a clement Sabbath would have seen her "resting," as she would put
it, in and round the various outbuildings, feeding-pens, blacksmith
shop, harness-room, branding-chute, or what not, issuing orders to
attentive henchmen from time to time; diagnosing the gray mule's
barbed-wire cut; compounding a tonic for Adolph, the big milk-strain
Durham bull, who has been ailing; wishing to be told why in something
the water hadn't been turned into that south ditch; and, like a
competent general, disposing her forces and munitions for the campaign
of the coming week. But Sunday--and a wildly rainy Sunday--had housed
her utterly.
Being one who can idle with no grace whatever she was engaged in what
she called putting the place to rights. This meant taking out the
contents of bureau drawers and wardrobes and putting them back again,
massing the litter on the big table in the living-room into an involved
geometry of neat piles that would endure for all of an hour,
straightening pictures on the walls, eliminating the home-circles of
spiders long unmolested, loudly calling upon Lew Wee, the Chinaman, who
affrightedly fled farther and farther after each call, and ever and
again booming pained surmises through the house as to what fearful state
it would get to be in if she didn't fight it to a clean finish once in a
dog's age.
The woman dumped a wastebasket of varied rubbish into the open fire,
leaned a broom against the mantel, readjusted the towel that protected
her gray hair from the dust--hair on week days exposed with never a
qualm to all manner of dust--cursed all Chinamen on land or sea with an
especial and piquant blight invoked upon the one now in hiding, then
took from the back of a chair where she had hung it the moment before a
riding skirt come to feebleness and decrepitude. She held it up before
critical eyes as one scanning the morning paper for headlines of
significance.
"Ruined!" she murmured. Even her murmur must have reached Lew Wee, how
remote soever his isle of safety. "Worn one time and all ruined up!
That's what happens for trying to get something for nothing. You'd think
women would learn. You would if you didn't know a few. Hetty Daggett,
her that was Hetty Tipton, orders this by catalogue, No. 3456 or
something, from the mail-order house in Chicago. I was down in Red Gap
when it come. 'Isn't it simply wonderful what you can get for three
thirty-eight!' says she with gleaming eyes, laying this thing out before
me. 'I don't see how they can ever do it for the money.' She found out
the next day when she rode up here in it with me and Mr. Burchell
Daggett, her husband. Nothing but ruin! Seams all busted, sleazy cloth
wore through. But Hetty just looks it over cheerfully and says: 'Oh,
well, what can you expect for three thirty-eight?' Is that like a woman
or is it like something science has not yet discovered?
"That Hetty child is sure one woman. This skirt would never have held
together to ride back in, so she goes down as far as the narrow gauge in
the wagon with Buck Devine, wearing a charming afternoon frock of pale
blue charmeuse rather than get into a pair of my khakis and ride back
with her own lawful-wedded husband; yes, sir; married to him safe as
anything, but wouldn't forget her womanhood. Only once did she ever come
near it. I saved her then because she hadn't snared Mr. Burchell Daggett
yet, and of course a girl has to be a little careful. And she took my
counsels so much to heart she's been careful ever since. 'Why, I should
simply die of mortification if my dear mate were to witness me in
those,' says she when I'm telling her to take a chance for once and get
into these here riding pants of mine because it would be uncomfortable
going down in that wagon. 'But what is my comfort compared to dear
Burchell's peace of mind?' says she.
"Ain't we the goods, though, when we do once learn a thing? Of course
most of us don't have to learn stuff like this. Born in us. I shouldn't
wonder if they was something in the talk of this man Shaw or Shavian--I
see the name spelled both ways in the papers. I can't read his pieces
myself because he rasps me, being not only a smarty but a vegetarian. I
don't know. I might stand one or the other purebred, but the cross seems
to bring out the worst strain in both. I once got a line on his beliefs
and customs though--like it appears he don't believe anything ought to
be done for its own sake but only for some good purpose. It was one day
I got caught at a meeting of the Onward and Upward Club in Red Gap and
Mrs. Alonzo Price read a paper about his meaning. I hope she didn't
wrong him. I hope she was justified in all she said he really means in
his secret heart. No one ought to talk that way about any one if they
ain't got the goods on 'em. One thing I might have listened to with some
patience if the man et steaks and talked more like some one you'd care
to have in your own home. In fact, I listened to it anyway. Maybe he
took it from some book he read--about woman and her true nature.
According to Henrietta Templeton Price, as near as I could get her, this
Shaw or Shavian believes that women is merely a flock of men-hawks
circling above the herd till they see a nice fat little lamb of a man,
then one fell swoop and all is over but the screams of the victim dying
out horribly. They bear him off to their nest in a blasted pine and pick
the meat from his bones at leisure. Of course that ain't the way ladies
was spoken of in the Aunt Patty Little Helper Series I got out of the
Presbyterian Sabbath-school library back in Fredonia, New York, when I
was thirteen--and yet--and yet--as they say on the stage in these plays
of high or English life."
It sounded promising enough, and the dust had now settled so that I
could dimly make out the noble lines of my hostess. I begged for more.
"Well, go on--Mrs. Burchell Daggett once nearly forgot her womanhood.
Certainly, go on, if it's anything that would be told outside of a
smoking-car."
The lady grinned.
"Many of us has forgot our womanhood in the dear, dead past," she
confessed. "Me? Sure! Where's that photo album. Where did I put that
album anyway? That's the way in this house. Get things straightened up
once, you can't find a single one you want. Look where I put it now!"
She demolished an obelisk of books on the table, one she had lately
constructed with some pains, and brought the album that had been its
pedestal. "Get me there, do you?"
It was the photograph of a handsome young woman in the voluminous riding
skirt of years gone by, before the side-saddle became extinct. She held
a crop and wore an astoundingly plumed bonnet. Despite the offensive
disguise, one saw provocation for the course adopted by the late
Lysander John Pettengill at about that period.
"Very well--now get me here, after I'd been on the ranch only a month."
It was the same young woman in the not too foppish garb of a cowboy. In
wide-brimmed hat, flannel shirt, woolly chaps, quirt in hand, she
bestrode a horse that looked capable and daring.
"Yes, sir, I hadn't been here only a month when I forgot my womanhood
like that. Gee! How good it felt to get into 'em and banish that
sideshow tent of a skirt. I'd never known a free moment before and I
blessed Lysander John for putting me up to it. Then, proud as Punch,
what do I do but send one of these photos back to dear old Aunt
Waitstill, in Fredonia, thinking she would rejoice at the wild, free
life I was now leading in the Far West. And what do I get for it but a
tear-spotted letter of eighteen pages, with a side-kick from her pastor,
the Reverend Abner Hemingway, saying he wishes to indorse every word of
Sister Baxter's appeal to me--asking why do I parade myself shamelessly
in this garb of a fallen woman, and can nothing be said to recall me to
the true nobility that must still be in my nature but which I am
forgetting in these licentious habiliments, and so on! The picture had
been burned after giving the Reverend his own horrified flash of it, and
they would both pray daily that I might get up out of this degradation
and be once more a good, true woman that some pure little child would
not be ashamed to call the sacred name of mother.
"Such was Aunt Waitstill--what names them poor old girls had to stand
for! I had another aunt named Obedience, only she proved to be a regular
cinch-binder. Her name was never mentioned in the family after she slid
down a rainspout one night and eloped to marry a depraved scoundrel who
drove through there on a red wagon with tinware inside that he would
trade for old rags. I'm just telling you how times have changed in spite
of the best efforts of a sanctified ministry. I cried over that letter
at first. Then I showed it to Lysander John, who said 'Oh, hell!' being
a man of few words, so I felt better and went right on forgetting my
womanhood in that shameless garb of a so-and-so--though where aunty had
got her ideas of such I never could make out--and it got to be so much a
matter of course and I had so many things to think of besides my
womanhood that I plumb forgot the whole thing until this social upheaval
in Red Gap a few years ago.
"I got to tell you that the wild and lawless West, in all matters
relating to proper dress for ladies, is the most conservative and
hidebound section of our great land of the free and home of the
brave--if you can get by with it. Out here the women see by the Sunday
papers that it's being wore that way publicly in New York and no one
arrested for it, but they don't hardly believe it at that, and they
wouldn't show themselves in one, not if you begged them to on your
bended knees, and what is society coming to anyway? You might as well
dress like one of them barefooted dancers, only calling 'em barefooted
must be meant like sarcasm--and they'd die before they'd let a daughter
of theirs make a show of herself like that for odious beasts of men to
leer at, and so on--until a couple years later Mrs. Henrietta Templeton
Price gets a regular one and wears it down Main Street, and nothing
objectionable happens; so then they all hustle to get one--not quite so
extreme, of course, but after all, why not, since only the evil-minded
could criticise? Pretty soon they're all wearing it exactly like New
York did two years ago, with mebbe the limit raised a bit here and there
by some one who makes her own. But again they're saying that the latest
one New York is wearing is so bad that it must be confined to a certain
class of women, even if they do get taken from left to right at Asbury
Park and Newport and other colonies of wealth and fashion, because the
vilest dregs can go there if they have the price, which they often do.
"Red Gap is like that. With me out here on the ranch it didn't matter
what I wore because it was mostly only men that saw me; but I can well
remember the social upheaval when our smartest young matrons and
well-known society belles flung modesty to the chinook wind and took to
divided skirts for horseback riding. My, the brazen hussies! It ain't so
many years ago. Up to that time any female over the age of nine caught
riding a horse cross-saddle would have lost her character good and
quick. And these pioneers lost any of theirs that wasn't cemented good
and hard with proved respectability. I remember hearing Jeff Tuttle tell
what he'd do to any of his womenfolks that so far forgot the sacred
names of home and mother. It was startling enough, but Jeff somehow
never done it. And if he was to hear Addie or one of the girls talking
about a side-saddle to-day he'd think she was nutty or mebbe wanting one
for the state museum. So it goes with us. My hunch is that so it will
ever go.
"The years passed, and that thrill of viciousness at wearing divided
skirts in public got all rubbed off--that thrill that every last one of
us adores to feel if only it don't get her talked about--too much--by
evil-minded gossips. Then comes this here next upheaval over riding
pants for ladies--or them that set themselves up to be such. Of course
we'd long known that the things were worn in New York and even in such
modern Babylons as Spokane and Seattle; but no woman in Red Gap had ever
forgot she had a position to keep up, until summer before last, when we
saw just how low one of our sex could fall, right out on the public
street.
"She was the wife of a botanist from some Eastern college and him and
her rode a good bit and dressed just alike in khaki things. My, the
infamies that was intimated about that poor creature! She was bony and
had plainly seen forty, very severe-featured, with scraggly hair and a
sharp nose and spectacles, and looked as if she had never had a moment
of the most innocent pleasure in all her life; but them riding pants
fixed her good in the minds of our lady porch-knockers. And the men just
as bad, though they could hardly bear to look twice at her, she was that
discouraging to the eye; they agreed with their wives that she must be
one of that sort.
"But things seem to pile up all at once in our town. That very summer
the fashion magazines was handed round with pages turned down at the
more daring spots where ladies were shown in such things. It wasn't felt
that they were anything for the little ones to see. But still, after
all, wasn't it sensible, now really, when you come right down to it? and
as a matter of fact isn't a modest woman modest in anything?--it isn't
what she wears but how she conducts herself in public, or don't you
think so, Mrs. Ballard?--and you might as well be dead as out of style,
and would Lehman, the Square Tailor, be able to make up anything like
that one there?--but no, because how would he get your measure?--and
surely no modest woman could give him hers even if she did take it
herself--anyway, you'd be insulted by all the street rowdies as you rode
by, to say nothing of being ogled by men without a particle of fineness
in their natures--but there's always something to be said on both sides,
and it's time woman came into her own, anyway, if she is ever to be
anything but man's toy for his idle moments--still it would never do to
go to extremes in a narrow little town like this with every one just
looking for an excuse to talk--but it would be different if all the best
people got together and agreed to do it, only most of them would
probably back out at the last moment and that smarty on the _Recorder_
would try to be funny about it--now that one with the long coat doesn't
look so terrible, does it? or do you think so?--of course it's almost
the same as a skirt except when you climb on or something--a woman has
to think of those things--wouldn't Daisy Estelle look rather stunning in
that?--she has just the figure for it. Here's this No. 9872 with the
Norfolk jacket in this mail-order catalogue--do you think that looks too
theatrical, or don't you? Of course for some figures, but I've always
been able to wear--And so forth, for a month or so.
"Late in the fall Henrietta Templeton Price done it. You may not know
what that meant to Alonzo Price, Choice Villa Sites and Price's Addition
to Red Gap. Alonzo is this kind: I met him the day Gussie Himebaugh had
her accident when the mules she was driving to the mowing machine run
away out on Himebaugh's east forty. Alonzo had took Doc Maybury out and
passes me coming back. 'How bad was she hurt?' I asks. The poor thing
looks down greatly embarrassed and mumbles: 'She has broken a limb.'
'Leg or arm?' I blurts out, forgetting all delicacy. You'd think I had
him pinned down, wouldn't you? Not Lon, though. 'A lower limb,' says he,
coughing and looking away.
"You see how men are till we put a spike collar and chain on 'em. When
Henrietta declared herself Alonzo read the riot act and declared marital
law. But there was Henrietta with the collar and chain and pretty soon
Lon was saying: 'You're quite right, Pettikins, and you ought to have
the thanks of the community for showing our ladies how to dress
rationally on horseback. It's not only sensible and safe but it's
modest--a plain pair of riding breeches, no coquetry, no frills, nothing
but stern utility--of course I agree.'
"'I hoped you would, darling,' says Henrietta. She went to Miss
Gunslaugh and had her make the costume, being one who rarely does things
by halves. It was of blue velvet corduroy, with a fetching little bolero
jacket, and the things themselves were fitted, if you know what I mean.
And stern utility! That suit with its rosettes and bows and frogs and
braid had about the same stern utility as those pretty little tin tongs
that come on top of a box of candy--ever see anybody use one of those?
When Henrietta got dressed for her first ride and had put on the Cuban
Pink Face Balm she looked like one of the gypsy chorus in the Bohemian
Girl opera.
"Alonzo gulped several times in rapid succession when he saw her, but
the little man never starts anything he don't aim to finish, and it was
too late to start it then. Henrietta brazened her way through Main
Street and out to the country club and back, and next day she put them
on again so Otto Hirsch, of the E-light Studio, could come up and take
her standing by the horse out in front of the Price mansion. Then they
was laid away until the Grand Annual Masquerade Ball of the Order of the
Eastern Star, which is a kind of hen Masons, when she again gave us a
flash of what New York society ladies was riding their horse in. As a
matter of fact, Henrietta hates a horse like a rattlesnake, but she had
done her pioneer work for once and all.
"Every one was now laughing and sneering at the old-fashioned divided
skirt with which woman had endangered her life on a horse, and wondering
how they had endured the clumsy things so long; and come spring all the
prominent young society buds and younger matrons of the most exclusive
set who could stay on a horse at all was getting theirs ready for the
approaching season, Red Gap being like London in having its gayest
season in the summer, when people can get out more. Even Mis' Judge
Ballard fell for it, though hers was made of severe black with a long
coat. She looked exactly like that Methodist minister, the old one, that
we had three years ago.
"Most of the younger set used the mail-order catalogue, their figures
still permitting it. And maybe there wasn't a lot of trying on behind
drawn blinds pretty soon, and delighted giggles and innocent girlish
wonderings about whether the lowest type of man really ogles as much
under certain circumstances as he's said to. And the minute the roads
got good the telephone of Pierce's Livery, Feed, and Sale Stable was
kept on the ring. Then the social upheaval was on. Of course any of 'em
looked quiet after Henrietta's costume, for none of the girls but Beryl
Mae Macomber, a prominent young society bud, aged seventeen, had done
anything like that. But it was the idea of the thing.
"A certain element on the South Side made a lot of talk and stirred
things up and wrote letters to the president of the Civic Purity League,
who was Mis' Judge Ballard herself, asking where this unspeakable
disrobing business was going to end and calling her attention to the
fate that befell Sodom and Gomorrah. But Mis' Ballard she's mixed on
names and gets the idea these parties mean Samson and Delilah instead of
a couple of twin cities, like St. Paul and Minneapolis, and she writes
back saying what have these Bible characters got to do with a lady
riding on horseback--in trousers, it is true, but with a coat falling
modestly to the knee on each side, and certain people had better be a
little more fussy about things that really matter in life before they
begin to talk. She knew who she was hitting at all right, too. Trust
Mis' Ballard!
"It was found that there was almost the expected amount of ogling from
sidewalk loafers, at first. As Daisy Estelle Maybury said, it seemed as
if a girl couldn't show herself on the public thoroughfare without being
subjected to insult. Poor Daisy Estelle! She had been a very popular
young society belle, and was considered one of the most attractive girls
in Red Gap until this happened. No one had ever suspected it of her in
the least degree up to that time. Of course it was too late after she
was once seen off her horse. Them that didn't see was told in full
detail by them that did. Most of the others was luckier. Beryl Mae
Macomber in her sport shirt and trouserettes complained constantly about
the odious wretches along Main Street and Fourth, where the post office
was. She couldn't stop even twenty minutes in front of the post office,
minding her own business and waiting for some one she knew to come along
and get her mail for her, without having dozens of men stop and ogle
her. That, of course, was during the first two weeks after she took to
going for the mail, though the eternal feminine in Beryl Mae probably
thought the insulting glances was going to keep up forever.
"I watched the poor child one day along in the third week, waiting there
in front of the post office after the four o'clock mail, and no one
hardly ogled her at all except some rude children out from school. What
made it more pitiful, leaning right there against the post office front
was Jack Shiels, Sammie Hamilton, and little old Elmer Cox, Red Gap's
three town rowdies that ain't done a stroke of work since the canning
factory closed down the fall before, creatures that by rights should
have been leering at the poor child In all her striking beauty. But, no;
the brutes stand there looking at nothing much until Jack Shiels stares
a minute at this horse Beryl Mae is on and pipes up: 'Why, say, I
thought Pierce let that little bay runt go to the guy that was in here
after polo ponies last Thursday. I sure did.' And Sam Hamilton wakes up
and says: 'No, sir; not this one. He got rid of a little mare that had
shoulders like this, but she was a roan with kind of mule ears and one
froze off.' And little old Elmer Cox, ignoring this defenceless young
girl with his impudent eyes, he says: 'Yes, Sam's right for once. Pierce
tried to let this one go, too, but ain't you took a look at his hocks!'
Then along comes Dean Duke, the ratty old foreman in Pierce's stable,
and he don't ogle a bit, either, like you'd expect one of his debased
calibre to, but just stops and talks this horse over with 'em and says
yes, it was his bad hocks that lost the sale, and he tells 'em how he
had told Pierce just what to do to get him shaped up for a quick sale,
but Pierce wouldn't listen to him, thinking he knew it all himself; and
there the four stood and gassed about this horse without even seeing
Beryl Mae, let alone leering at her. I bet she was close to shedding
tears of girlish mortification as she rode off without ever waiting for
the mail. Things was getting to a pretty pass. If low creatures lost to
all decent instincts, like these four, wouldn't ogle a girl when she was
out for it, what could be expected of the better element of the town?
Still, of course, now and then one or the other of the girls would have
a bit of luck to tell of.
"Well, now we come to the crookedest bit of work I ever been guilty of,
though first telling you about Mr. Burchell Daggett, an Eastern society
man from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that had come to Red Gap that spring to be
assistant cashier in the First National, through his uncle having stock
in the thing. He was a very pleasant kind of youngish gentleman, about
thirty-four, I reckon, with dark, parted whiskers and gold eyeglasses
and very good habits. He took his place among our very best people right
off, teaching the Bible class in the M.E. Sabbath-school and belonging
to the Chamber of Commerce and the City Beautiful Association, of which
he was made vice-president, and being prominent at all functions held in
our best homes. He wasn't at all one of them that lead a double life by
stopping in at the Family Liquor Store for a gin fizz or two after work
hours, or going downtown after supper to play Kelly pool at the
Temperance Billiard Parlours and drink steam beer, or getting in with
the bunch that gathers in the back room of the Owl Cigar Store of an
evening and tells these here suggestive stories. Not that he was
hide-bound. If he felt the need for a shot of something he'd go into the
United States Grill and have a glass of sherry and bitters brought to
him at a table and eat a cracker with it, and he'd take in every show,
even the Dizzy Belles of Gotham Big Blonde Beauty Show. He was refined
and even moral in the best sense of the word, but still human.
"Our prominent young society buds took the keenest notice of him at
once, as would naturally happen, he being a society bachelor of means
and by long odds the best catch in Red Gap since old Potter Knapp, of
the Loan and Trust Company, had broke his period of mourning for his
third wife by marrying Myrtle Wade that waited on table at the
Occidental Hotel, with the black band still on his left coat sleeve.
It's no exaggeration to say that Mr. Burchell Daggett became the most
sought-after social favourite among Reg Gap's hoot mondy in less than a
week after he unpacked his trunk. But it was very soon discovered by the
bright-eyed little gangsters of the best circles that he wasn't going to
be an easy one to disable. Naturally when a man has fought 'em off to
his age he has learned much of woodcraft and the hunter's cunning wiles,
and this one had sure developed timber sense. He beat 'em at their own
game for three months by the simple old device of not playing any
favourite for one single minute, and very, very seldom getting alone
with one where the foul stroke can be dealt by the frailest hand with
muscular precision. If he took Daisy Estelle Maybury to the chicken pie
supper to get a new carpet for the Presbyterian parsonage, he'd up and
take Beryl Mae and her aunt, or Gussie Himebaugh, or Luella Stultz, to
the lawn feet at Judge Ballard's for new uniforms for the band boys. At
the Bazaar of All Nations he bought as many chances of one girl as he
did of another, and if he hadn't any more luck than a rabbit and won
something--a hanging lamp or a celluloid manicure set in a plush-lined
box--he'd simply put it up to be raffled off again for the good of the
cause. And none of that moonlight loitering along shaded streets for
him, where the dirk is so often drove stealthily between a man's ribs,
and him thinking all the time he's only indulging in a little playful
nonsense. Often as not he'd take two girls at once, where all could be
merry without danger of anything happening.
"It was no time at all till this was found out on him. It was seen that
under a pleasing exterior, looking all too easy to overcome by any girl
in her right mind, he had powers of resistance and evasion that was like
steel. Of course this only stirred the proud beauties on to renewed and
crookeder efforts. Every darned one of 'em felt that her innocent young
girlhood was challenged, and would she let it go at that? Not so. My
lands! What snares and deadfalls was set for this wise old timber wolf
that didn't look it, with his smiling ways and seemingly careless
response to merry banter, and so forth!
"And of course every one of these shrinking little scoundrels thought at
once of her new riding costume, so no time at all was lost in organizing
the North Side Riding and Sports Club, which Mr. Burchell Daggett gladly
joined, having, as he said, an eye for a horse and liking to get out
after banking hours to where all Nature seems to smile and you can let
your mount out a bit over the firm, smooth road. Them that had held off
until now, on account of the gossip and leering, hurried up and got into
line with No. 9872 in the mail-order catalogue, or went to Miss
Gunslaugh, who by this time had a female wax dummy in her window in a
neat brown suit and puttees, with a coat just opening and one foot
advanced carelessly, with gauntlets and a riding crop, and a fetching
little cap over the wind-blown hair and the clear, wonderful blue eyes.
Oh, you can bet every last girl of the bunch was seeing herself send
back picture postals to her rivals telling what a royal time they was
having at Palm or Rockaway Beach or some place, and seeing the engraved
cards--'Mr. and Mrs. Burchell Daggett, at Home After the Tenth, Ophir
Avenue, Red Gap, Wash.'
"Ain't we good when you really get us, if you ever do--because some
don't. Many, indeed! I reckon there never was a woman yet outside of a
feeb' home that didn't believe she could be an A. No. 1 siren if she only
had the nerve to dress the part; never one that didn't just ache to sway
men to her lightest whim, and believe she could--not for any evil
purpose, mind you, but just to show her power. Think of the tender
hearts that must have shuddered over the damage they could and actually
might do in one of them French bathing suits like you are said to
witness in Paris and Atlantic City and other sinks of iniquity. And here
was these well-known society favourites wrought up by this legible
party, as the French say, till each one was ready to go just as far as
the Civic Purity League would let her in order to sweep him off his feet
in one mad moment. Quite right, too. It all depends on what the object
is, don't it; and wasn't theirs honourable matrimony with an
establishment and a lawn in front of it with a couple of cast-iron
moose, mebbe?
"And amid all this quaint girlish enterprise and secret infamy was the
problem of Hetty Tipton. Hetty had been a friend and a problem of mine
for seven years, or ever since she come back from normal to teach in the
third-grade grammar school; a fine, clean, honest, true-blue girl, mebbe
not as pretty you'd say at first as some others, but you like her better
after you look a few times more, and with not the slightest nonsense
about her. That last was Hetty's one curse. I ask you, what chance has a
girl got with no nonsense about her? Hetty won my sympathy right at the
start by this infirmity of hers, which was easily detected, and for
seven years I'd been trying to cure her of it, but no use. Oh, she was
always took out regular enough and well liked, but the gilded youth of
Red Gap never fought for her smiles. They'd take her to parties and
dances, turn and turn about, but they always respected her, which is the
greatest blight a man can put on one of us, if you know what I mean.
Every man at a party was always careful to dance a decent number of
times with Hetty and see that she got back to her seat; and wasn't it
warm in here this evening, yes, it was; and wouldn't she have a glass of
the punch--No, thank you--then he'd gallop off to have some fun with a
mere shallow-pated fool that had known how from the cradle. It was
always a puzzle to me, because Hetty dressed a lot better than most of
them, knowing what to wear and how, and could take a joke if it come
slow, and laid herself out to be amiable to one and all. I kind of think
it must be something about her mentality. Maybe it is too mental. I
can't put her to you any plainer than to say that every single girl in
town, young and old, just loved her, and not one of them up to this time
had ever said an unkind or feminine thing about her. I guess you know
what that would mean of any woman.
"Hetty was now coming twenty-nine--we never spoke of this, but I could
count back--and it's my firm belief that no man had ever proposed
marriage or anything else on earth to her. Wilbur Todd had once
endeavoured to hold her hand out on the porch at a country-club dance
and she had repulsed him in all kindness but firmly. She told him she
couldn't bring herself to permit a familiarity of that sort except to
the man who would one day lead her to the altar, which is something I
believe she got from writing to a magazine about a young girl's
perplexities. And here, in spite of her record, this poor thing had
dared to raise her eyes to none other than this Mr. Burchell Daggett.
There was something kind of grand and despairing about the impudence of
it when you remember these here trained efficiency experts she was
competing with. Yet so it was. She would drop in on me after school for
a cup of tea and tell me frankly how distinguished his manner was and
what shapely features he had and what fine eyes, and how there was a
certain note in his voice at times, and had I ever noticed that one
stubborn lock of hair that stuck out back of his left ear? Of course
that last item settled it. When they notice that lock of hair you know
the ship has struck the reef and all hands are perishing.
"And it seemed that the cuss had not only shown her more than a little
attention at evening functions but had escorted her to the midspring
production of 'Hamlet' by the Red Gap Amateur Theatrical and Dramatic
Society. True, he had conducted himself like a perfect gentleman every
minute they was alone together, even when they had to go home in Eddie
Pierce's hack because it was raining when the show let out--but would I,
or would I not, suspect from all this that he was in the least degree
thinking of her in a way that--you know!
"Poor child of twenty-eight, with her hungry eyes and flushed face while
she was showing down her hand to me! I seen the scoundrel's play at
once. Hetty was the one safe bet for him in Red Gap's social whirl. He
was wise, all right--this Mr. D. He'd known in a second he could trust
himself alone with that girl and be as safe as a babe in its mother's
arms. Of course I couldn't say this to Hetty. I just said he was a man
that seemed to know his own mind very clearly, whatever it was, and
Hetty blushed some more and said that something within her responded to
a certain note in his voice. We let it go at that.
"So I think and ponder about poor Hetty, trying to invent some
conspiracy that would fix it right, because she was the ideal mate for
an assistant cashier that had a certain position to keep up. For that
matter she was good enough for any man. Then I hear she has joined the
riding club, and an all day's ride has been planned for the next
Saturday up to Stender's Spring, with a basket lunch and a romantic ride
back by moonlight. Of course, I don't believe in any of this
spiritualist stuff, but you can't tell me there ain't something in it,
mind-reading or something, with the hunches you get when parties is in
some grave danger.
"Stella Ballard it was tells me about the picnic, calling me in as I
passed their house to show me her natty new riding togs that had just
come from the mail-order house. She called from back of a curtain, and
when I got into the parlour she had them on, pleased as all get-out.
Pretty they was, too--riding breeches and puttees and a man's flannel
shirt and a neat-fitting Norfolk jacket, and Stella being a fine,
upstanding figure.
"'They may cause considerable talk,' says she, smoothing down one leg
where it wrinkled a bit, 'but really I think they look perfectly
stunning on me, and wasn't it lucky they fit me so beautifully? They're
called the Non Plush Ultra.'
"'The what?' I says.
"'The Non Plush Ultra,' she answers. 'That's the name of them sewed in
the band.'
"'What's that mean?' I wanted to know.
"'Why,' says Stella, 'that's Latin or Greek, I forget which, and it
means they're the best, I believe. Oh, let me see! Why, it means nothing
beyond, or something like that; the farthest you can go, I think. One
forgets all that sort of thing after leaving high school.'
"'Well,' I says, 'they fit fine, and it's the only modest rig for a
woman to ride a horse in, but they certainly are non plush, all right.
That thin goods will never wear long against saddle leather, take my
word for it.'
"But of course this made no impression on Stella--she was standing on
the centre table by now, so she could lamp herself in the glass over the
mantel--and then she tells me about the excursion for Saturday and how
Mr. Burchell Daggett is enthused about it, him being a superb horseman
himself, and, if I know what she means, don't I think she carries
herself in the saddle almost better than any girl in her set, and won't
her style show better than ever in this duck of a costume, and she must
get her tan shoes polished, and do I think Mr. Daggett really meant
anything when he said he'd expect her some day to return the masonic pin
she had lifted off his vest the other night at the dance, and so on.
"It was while she was babbling this stuff that I get the strange hunch
that Hetty Tipton is in grave danger and I ought to run to her; it
seemed almost I could hear her calling on me to save her from some
horrible fate. So I tell Stella yes, she's by far the finest rider in
the whole Kulanche Valley, and she ought to get anything she wants with
that suit on, and then I beat it quick over to the Ezra Button house
where Hetty boards.
"You can laugh all you want to, but that hunch of mine was the God's
truth. Hetty was in the gravest danger she'd faced since one time in
early infancy when she got give morphine for quinine. What made it more
horrible, she hadn't the least notion of her danger. Quite the contrary.
"'Thank the stars I've come in time!' I gasps as I rushes in on her, for
there's the poor girl before her mirror in a pair of these same Non
Plush Ultras and looking as pleased with herself as if she had some
reason to be.
"'Back into your skirts quick!' I says. 'I'm a strong woman and all
that, but still I can be affected more than you'd think.'
"Poor Hetty stutters and turns red and her chin begins to quiver, so I
gentled her down and tried to explain, though seeing quick that I must
tell her everything but the truth. I reckon nothing in this world can
look funnier than a woman wearing them things that had never ought to
for one reason or another. There was more reasons than that in Hetty's
case. Dignity was the first safe bet I could think of with her, so I
tried that.
"'I know all you would say,' says the poor thing in answer, 'but isn't
it true that men rather like one to be--oh, well, you know--just the
least bit daring?'
"'Truest thing in the world,' I says, 'but bless your heart, did you
suspicion riding breeches was daring on a woman? Not so. A girl wearing
'em can't be any more daring after the first quick shock is over
than--well, you read the magazines, don't you? You've seen those
pictures of family life in darkest Africa that the explorers and monkey
hunters bring home, where the wives, mothers, and sweethearts, God bless
'em! wear only what the scorching climate demands. Didn't it strike you
that one of them women without anything on would have a hard time if she
tried to be daring--or did it? No woman can be daring without the proper
clothes for it,' I says firmly, 'and as for you, I tell you plain, get
into the most daring and immodest thing that was ever invented for
woman--which is the well-known skirt.'
"'Oh, Ma Pettengill,' cries the poor thing, 'I never meant anything
horrid and primitive when I said daring. As a matter of fact, I think
these are quite modest to the intelligent eye.'
"'Just what I'm trying to tell you,' I says. 'Exactly that; they're
modest to any eye whatever. But here you are embarked on a difficult
enterprise, with a band of flinty-hearted cutthroats trying to beat you
to it, and, my dear child, you have a staunch nature and a heart of
gold, but you simply can't afford to be modest.'
"'I don't understand,' says she, looking at herself in the glass again.
"'Trust me, anyway,' I implores. 'Let others wear their Non Plush
Ultras which are No. 9872'--she tries to correct my pronunciation, but I
wouldn't stop for that. 'Never mind how it's pronounced,' I says,
'because I know well the meaning of it in a foreign language. It means
the limit, and it's a very desirable limit for many, but for you,' I
says plainly, 'it's different. Your Non Plush Ultra will have to be a
neat, ankle-length riding skirt. You got one, haven't you?'
"'I have,' says she, 'a very pretty one of tan corduroy, almost new, but
I had looked forward to these, and I don't see yet--'
"Then I thought of another way I might get to her without blurting out
the truth. 'Listen, Hetty,' I says, 'and remember not only that I'm your
friend but that I know a heap more about this fool world than you do.
I've had bitter experiences, and one of them got me at the time I first
begun to wear riding pants myself, which must have been about the time
you was beginning to bite dents into your silver mug that Aunt Caroline
sent. I was a handsome young hellion, I don't mind telling you, and they
looked well on me, and when Lysander John urged me to be brave and wear
'em outside I was afraid all the men within a day's ride was going to
sneak round to stare at me. My! I was so embarrassed, also with that
same feeling you got in your heart this minute that it was taking an
unfair advantage of any man--you know! I felt like I was using all the
power of my young beauty for unworthy ends.
"'Well, do you know what I got when I first rode out on the ranch? I
got just about the once-over from every brute there, and that was all.
If one of them ranch hands had ever ogled me a second time I'd have
known it all right, but I never caught one of the scoundrels at it.
First I said: "Now, ain't that fine and chivalrous?" Then I got wise. It
wasn't none of this here boasted Western chivalry, but just plain lack
of interest. I admit it made me mad at first. Any man on the place was
only too glad to look me over when I had regular clothes on, but dress
me like Lysander John and they didn't look at me any oftener than they
did him. Not as often, of course, because as a plain human being and
man's equal I wasn't near as interesting as he was.'
"'But then, too,' says Hetty, who had only been about half listening to
my lecture, 'I thought it might be striking a blow at the same time for
the freedom of woman.'
"Well, you know how that freedom-of-the-sex talk always gets me going. I
was mad enough for a minute to spank her just as she stood there in them
Non Plush Ultras she was so proud of. And I did let out some high talk.
Mrs. Dutton told her afterward she thought sure we was having words.
"'Freedom from skirts,' I says, 'is the last thing your sex wants.
Skirts is the final refuge of immodesty, to which women will cling like
grim death. They will do any possible thing to a skirt--slit it, thin
it, shorten it, hike it up one side--people are setting up nights right
now thinking up some new thing to do to it--but women won't give it up
and dress modestly as men do because it's the only unfair drag they got
left with the men. I see one of our offended sex is daily asking right
out in a newspaper: "Are women people?" I'd just like to whisper to her
that no one yet knows.
"'If they'll quit their skirts, dress as decently as a man does so they
won't have any but a legitimate pull with him, we'd have a chance to
find out if they're good for anything else. As a matter of fact, they
don't want to be people and dress modestly and wear hats you couldn't
pay over eight dollars for. I believe there was one once, but the poor
thing never got any notice from either sex after she became--a people,
as you might say.'
"Well, I was going on to get off a few more things I'd got madded up to,
but I caught the look in poor Hetty's face, and it would have melted a
stone. Poor child! There she was, wanting a certain man and willing to
wear or not wear anything on earth that would nail him, and not knowing
what would do it, and complicating her ignorance with meaningless
worries about modesty and daringness and the freedom of her poor sex,
that ain't ever even deuce-low with one woman in a million.
"And right then, watching her distress, all at once I get my big
inspiration--it just flooded me like the sun coming up. I don't know if
I'm like other folks, but things do come to me that way. And not only
was it a great truth, but it got me out of the hole of having to tell
Hetty certain truths about herself that these Non Plush Ultras made all
too glaring.
"'Listen,' I says: 'You believe I'm your friend, don't you? And you
believe anything I tell you is from the heart out and will probably have
a grain of sense in it. Well, here is an inspired thought: Women won't
ever dress modestly like men do because men don't want 'em to. I never
saw a man yet that did if he'd tell the truth, and so this here dark
city stranger won't be any exception. Now, then, what do we see on
Saturday next? Why, we see this here gay throng sally forth for
Stender's Spring, the youth and beauty of Red Gap, including Mr. D.,
with his nice refined odour of Russia leather and bank bills of large
size--from fifties up--that haven't been handled much. The crowd is of
all sexes, technically, like you might say; a lot of nice, sweet girls
along but dressed to be mere jolly young roughnecks, and just as
interesting to the said stranger as the regular boys that will be
present--hardly more so. And now, as for poor little meek you--you will
look wild and Western, understand me, but feminine; exactly like the
coloured cigarette picture that says under it "Rocky Mountain Cow Girl."
You will be in your pretty tan skirt--be sure to have it pressed--and a
blue-striped sport bloose that I just saw in the La Mode window, and
you'll get some other rough Western stuff there, too: a blue silk
neckerchief and a natty little cow-girl sombrero--the La Mode is showing
a good one called the La Parisienne for four fifty-eight--and the
daintiest pair of tan kid gauntlets you can find, and don't forget a
pair of tan silk stockings--'
"'They won't show in my riding boots,' says Hetty, looking as if she was
coming to life a little.
"'Tush for the great, coarse, commonsense riding boots,' I says firmly;
'you will wear precisely that neat little pair of almost new tan pumps
with the yellow bows that you're standing in now. Do you get me?'
"'But that would be too dainty and absurd,' says Hetty.
"'Exactly!' I says, shutting my mouth hard.
"'Why, I almost believe I do get you,' says she, looking religiously up
into the future like that lady saint playing the organ in the picture.
"'Another thing,' I says: 'You are deathly afraid of a horse and was
hardly ever on one but once when you were a teeny girl, but you do love
the open life, so you just nerved yourself up to come.'
"'I believe I see more clearly than ever,' says Hetty. She grew up on a
ranch, knows more about a horse than the horse himself does, and would
be a top rider most places, with the cheap help we get nowadays that can
hardly set a saddle.
"'Also from time to time,' I goes on, 'you want to ask this Mr. D.
little, timid, silly questions that will just tickle him to death and
make him feel superior. Ask him to tell you which legs of a horse the
chaps go on, and other things like that; ask him if the sash that holds
the horrid old saddle on isn't so tight it's hurting your horse. After
the lunch is et, go over to the horse all alone and stroke his nose and
call him a dear and be found by the gent when he follows you over trying
to feed the noble animal a hard-boiled egg and a couple of pickles or
something. Take my word for it, he'll be over all right and have a
hearty laugh at your confusion, and begin to wonder what it is about
you.
"'How about falling off and spraining my ankle on the way back?' demands
the awakening vestal with a gleam in her eye.
"'No good,' I says; 'pretty enough for a minute, but it would make
trouble if you kept up the bluff, and if there's one thing a man hates
more than another it's to have a woman round that makes any trouble.'
"'You have me started on a strange new train of thought,' says Hetty.
"'I think it's a good one,' I tells her, 'but remember there are risks.
For one thing, you know how popular you have always been with all the
girls. Well, after this day none of 'em will hardly speak to you because
of your low-lifed, deceitful game, and the things they'll say of
you--such things as only woman can say of woman!'
"'I shall not count the cost,' says she firmly. 'And now I must hurry
down for that sport bloose--blue-striped, you said?'
"'Something on that order,' I says, 'that fits only too well. You can
do almost anything you want to with your neck and arms, but remember
strictly--a skirt is your one and only Non Plush Ultra.'
"So I went home all flushed and eager, thinking joyously how little
men--the poor dubs--ever suspect how it's put over on 'em, and the next
day, which was Friday, I thought of a few more underhand things she
could do. So when she run in to see me that afternoon, the excitement of
the chase in her eye, she wanted I should go along on this picnic. I
says yes, I will, being that excited myself and wanting to see really if
I was a double-faced genius or wasn't I? Henrietta Price couldn't go on
account of being still lame from her ride of a week ago, so I could go
as chaperone, and anyway I knew the dear girls would all be glad to have
me because I would look so different from them--like a genial old ranch
foreman going out on rodeo--and the boys was always glad to see me along
anyway. 'I'll be there,' I says to Hetty. 'And here--don't forget at all
times to-morrow to carry this little real lace handkerchief I'm giving
you.'
"I was at the meeting-place next morning at nine. None of the other
girls was on time, of course, but that was just as well, because Aggie
Tuttle had got her father to come down to the sale yard to pack a mule
with the hampers of lunch. Jeff Tuttle is a good packer all right, but
too inflamed in the case of a mule, which he hates. They always know up
and down that street when he's packing one; ladies drag their children
by as fast as they can. But Jeff had the hitch all throwed before any of
the girls showed up, and all began in a lovely manner, the crowd of
about fifteen getting off not more than an hour late; Mr. Burchell in
the lead and a bevy of these jolly young rascals in their Non Plush
Ultras riding herd on him.
"Every girl cast cordial glances of pity at poor Hetty when she showed
up in her neat skirt and silly tan pumps with the ridiculous silk
stockings and the close-fitting blue-striped thing, free at the neck,
and her pretty hair all neated under the La Parisienne cow-girl hat. Oh,
they felt kinder than ever before to poor old Hetty when they saw her as
little daring as that, cheering her with a hearty uproar, slapping their
Non Plush Ultras with their caps or gloves, and then giggling
confidentially to one another. Hetty accepted their applause with what
they call a pretty show of confusion and gored her horse with her heel
on the off side so it looked as if the vicious brute was running away
and she might fall off any minute, but somehow she didn't, and got him
soothed with frightened words and by taking the hidden heel out of his
slats--though not until Mr. D. had noticed her good and then looked
again once or twice.
"And so the party moved on for an hour or two, with the roguish young
roughnecks cutting up merrily at all times, pretending to be cowboys
coming to town on pay day, swinging their hats, giving the long yell,
and doing roughriding to cut each other away from the side of Mr. D.
every now and then, with a noisy laugh of good nature to hide the
poisoned dagger. Daisy Estelle Maybury is an awful good rider, too, and
got next to the hero about every time she wanted to. Poor thing, if she
only knew that once she gets off a horse in 'em it makes all the
difference in the world.
"The dark city stranger seemed to enjoy it fine, all this noise and
cutting up and cowboy antics like they was just a lot of high-spirited
young men together, but I never weakened in my faith for one minute.
'Laugh on, my proud beauties,' I says, 'but a time will come, just as
sure as you look and act like a passel of healthy boys.' And you bet it
did.
"We hadn't got halfway to Stender's Spring till Mr. D. got off to
tighten his cinch, and then he sort of drifted back to where Hetty and I
was. I dropped back still farther to where a good chaperone ought to be
and he rode in beside Hetty. The trail was too narrow then for the rest
to come back after their prey, so they had to carry on the rough work
among themselves.
"Hetty acted perfect. She had a pensive, withdrawn look--'aloof,' I
guess the word is--like she was too tender a flower, too fine for this
rough stuff, and had ought to be in the home that minute telling a fairy
story to the little ones gathered at her decently clad knee. I don't
know how she done it, but she put that impression over. And she tells
Mr. D. that in spite of her quiet, studious tastes she had resolved to
come on this picnic because she loves Nature oh! so dearly, the birds
and the wild flowers and the great rugged trees that have their message
for man if he will but listen with an understanding heart--didn't Mr. D.
think so, or did he? But not too much of this dear old Nature stuff,
which can be easy overdone with a healthy man; just enough to show there
was hidden depths in her nature that every one couldn't find.
"Then on to silly questions about does a horse lie down when it goes to
sleep each night after its hard day's labour, and isn't her horse's sash
too tight, and what a pretty fetlock he has, so long and thick and
brown--Oh, do you call that the mane? How absurd of poor little me! Mr.
Daggett knows just everything, doesn't he? He's perfectly terrifying.
And where in the world did he ever learn to ride so stunningly, like one
of those dare-devils in a Wild West entertainment? If her own naughty,
naughty horse tries to throw her on the ground again where he can bite
her she'll just have Mr. D. ride the nassy ole sing and teach him better
manners, so she will. There now! He must have heard that--just see him
move his funny ears--don't tell her that horses can't understand things
that are said. And, seriously now, where did Mr. D. ever get his superb
athletic training, because, oh! how all too rare it is to see a
brain-worker of strong mentality and a splendid athlete in one and the
same man. Oh, how pathetically she had wished and wished to be a man and
take her place out in the world fighting its battles, instead of poor
little me who could never be anything but a homebody to worship the
great, strong, red-blooded men who did the fighting and carried on great
industries--not even an athletic girl like those dear things up
ahead--and this horse is bobbing up and down like that on purpose, just
to make poor little me giddy, and so forth. Holding her bridle rein
daintily she was with the lace handkerchief I'd give her that cost me
twelve fifty.
"Mr. D. took it all like a real man. He said her ignorance of a horse
was adorable and laughed heartily at it. And he smiled in a deeply
modest and masterful way and said 'But, really, that's nothing--nothing
at all, I assure you,' when she said about how he was a corking
athlete--and then kept still to see if she was going on to say more
about it. But she didn't, having the God-given wisdom to leave him
wanting. And then he would be laughing again at her poor-little-me horse
talk.
"I never had a minute's doubt after that, for it was the eyes of one
fascinated to a finish that he turned back on me half an hour later as
he says: 'Really, Mrs. Pettengill, our Miss Hester is feminine to her
finger tips, is she not?' 'She is, she is,' I answers. 'If you only knew
the trouble I had with the chit about that horrible old riding skirt of
hers when all her girl friends are wearing a sensible costume!' Hetty
blushed good and proper at this, not knowing how indecent I might
become, and Mr. D. caught her at it. Aggie Tuttle and Stella Ballard at
this minute is pretending to be shooting up a town with the couple of
revolvers they'd brought along in their cunning little holsters. Mr. D.
turns his glazed eyes to me once more. 'The real womanly woman,' says he
in a hushed voice, 'is God's best gift to man.' Just like that.
"'Landed!' I says to myself. 'Throw him up on the bank and light a
fire.'
"And mebbe you think this tet-à-tet had not been noticed by the merry
throng up front. Not so. The shouting and songs had died a natural
death, and the last three miles of that trail was covered in a gloomy
silence, except for the low voices of Hetty and the male she had so
neatly pronged. I could see puzzled glances cast back at them and catch
mutterings of bewilderment where the trail would turn on itself. But the
poor young things didn't yet realize that their prey was hanging back
there for reasons over which he hadn't any control. They thought, of
course, he was just being polite or something.
"When we got to the picnic place, though, they soon saw that all was not
well. There was some resumption of the merrymaking as they dismounted
and the girls put one stirrup over the saddle-horn and eased the cinch
like the boys did, and proud of their knowledge, but the glances they
now shot at Hetty wasn't bewildered any more. They was glances of pure
fright. Hetty, in the first place, had to be lifted off her horse, and
Mr. D. done it in a masterly way to show her what a mere feather she
was in his giant's grasp. Then with her feet on the ground she reeled a
mite, so he had to support her. She grasped his great strong arm firmly
and says: 'It's nothing--I shall be right presently--leave me please, go
and help those other girls.' They had some low, heated language about
his leaving her at such a crisis, with her gripping his arm till I bet
it showed for an hour. But finally they broke and he loosened her
horse's sash, as she kept quaintly calling it, and she recovered
completely and said it had been but a moment's giddiness anyway, and
what strength he had in those arms, and yet could use it so gently, and
he said she was a brave, game little woman, and the picnic was served to
one and all, with looks of hearty suspicion and rage now being shot at
Hetty from every other girl there.
"And now I see that my hunch has been even better than I thought. Not
only does the star male hover about Hetty, cutely perched on a fallen
log with her dainty, gleaming ankles crossed, and looking so fresh and
nifty and feminine, but I'm darned if three or four of the other males
don't catch the contagion of her woman's presence and hang round her,
too, fetching her food of every kind there, feeding her spoonfuls of
Aggie Tuttle's plum preserves, and all like that, one comical thing
after another. Yes, sir; here was Mac Gordon and Riley Hardin and
Charlie Dickman and Roth Hyde, men about town of the younger dancing
set, that had knowed Hetty for years and hardly ever looked at
her--here they was paying attentions to her now like she was some prize
beauty, come down from Spokane for over Sunday, to say nothing of
Mr. D., who hardly ever left her side except to get her another sardine
sandwich or a paper cup of coffee. It was then I see the scientific
explanation of it, like these high-school professors always say that
science is at the bottom of everything. The science of this here was
that they was all devoting themselves to Hetty for the simple reason
that she was the one and only woman there present.
"Of course these girls in their modest Non Plush Ultras didn't get the
scientific secret of this fact. They was still too obsessed with the
idea that they ought to be ogled on account of them by any male beast in
his right senses. But they knew they'd got in wrong somehow. By this
time they was kind of bunching together and telling each other things in
low tones, while not seeming to look at Hetty and her dupes, at which
all would giggle in the most venemous manner. Daisy Estelle left the
bunch once and made a coy bid for the notice of Mr. D. by snatching his
cap and running merrily off with it about six feet. If there was any one
in the world--except Hetty--could make a man hate the idea of riding
pants for women, she was it. I could see the cold, flinty look come into
his eyes as he turned away from her to Hetty with the pitcher of
lemonade. And then Beryl Mae Macomber, she gets over close enough for
Mr. D. to hear it, and says conditions is made very inharmonious at home
for a girl of her temperament, and she's just liable any minute to chuck
everything and either take up literary work or go into the movies, she
don't know which and don't care--all kind of desperate so Mr. D. will
feel alarmed about a beautiful young thing like that out in the world
alone and unprotected and at the mercy of every designing scoundrel. But
I don't think Mr. D. hears a word of it, he's so intently listening to
Hetty who says here in this beautiful mountain glade where all is peace
how one can't scarcely believe that there is any evil in the world
anywhere, and what a difference it does make when one comes to see life
truly. Then she crossed and recrossed her silken ankles, slightly
adjusted her daring tan skirt, and raised her eyes wistfully to the
treetops, and I bet there wasn't a man there didn't feel that she
belonged in the home circle with the little ones gathered about, telling
'em an awfully exciting story about the naughty, naughty, bad little
white kitten and the ball of mamma's yarn.
"Yes, sir; Hetty was as much of a revelation to me in one way as she
would of been to that party in another if I hadn't saved her from it.
She must have had the correct female instinct all these years, only no
one had ever started her before on a track where there was no other
entries. With those other girls dressed like she was Hetty would of been
leaning over some one's shoulder to fork up her own sandwiches, and no
one taking hardly any notice whether she'd had some of the hot coffee or
whether she hadn't. And the looks she got throughout the afternoon! Say,
I wouldn't of trusted that girl at the edge of a cliff with a single
pair of those No. 9872's anywhere near.
"After the lunch things was packed up there was faint attempts at fun
and frolic with songs and chorus--Riley Hardin has a magnificent bass
voice at times and Mac Gordon and Charlie Dickman and Roth Hyde wouldn't
be so bad if they'd let these Turkish cigarettes alone--and the boys got
together and sung some of their good old business-college songs, with
the girls coming in while they murdered Hetty with their beautiful eyes.
But Hetty and Mr. D. sort of withdrew from the noisy enjoyment and
talked about the serious aspects of life and how one could get along
almost any place if only they had their favourite authors. And Mr. D.
says doesn't she sing at all, and she says, Oh! in a way; that her voice
has a certain parlour charm, she has been told, and she sings at--you
can't really call it singing--two or three of the old Scotch songs of
homely sentiment like the Scotch seem to get into their songs as no
other nation can, or doesn't he think so, and he does, indeed. And he's
reading a wonderful new novel in which there is much of Nature with its
lessons for each of us, but in which love conquers all at the end, and
the girl in it reminds him strongly of her, and perhaps she'll be good
enough to sing for him--just for him alone in the dusk--if he brings
this book up to-morrow night so he can show her some good places in it.
"At first she is sure she has a horrid old engagement for to-morrow
night and is so sorry, but another time, perhaps--Ain't it a marvel the
crooked tricks that girl had learned in one day! And then she remembers
that her engagement is for Tuesday night--what could she have been
thinking of!--and come by all means--only too charmed--and how rarely
nowadays does one meet one on one's own level of culture, or perhaps
that is too awful a word to use--so hackneyed--but anyway he knows what
she means, or doesn't he? He does.
"Pretty soon she gets up and goes over to her horse, picking her way
daintily in the silly little tan pumps, and seems to be offering the
beast something. The stricken man follows her the second he can without
being too raw about it, and there is the adorably feminine thing with a
big dill pickle, two deviled eggs, and a half of one of these Camelbert
cheeses for her horse. Mr. D. has a good masterly laugh at her idea of
horse fodder and calls her 'But, my dear child!' and she looks prettily
offended and offers this chuck to the horse and he gulps it all down and
noses round for more of the same. It was an old horse named Croppy that
she'd known from childhood and would eat anything on earth. She rode him
up here once and he nabbed a bar of laundry soap off the back porch and
chewed the whole thing down with tears of ecstasy in his eyes and
frothing at the mouth like a mad dog. Well, so Hetty gives mister man a
look of dainty superiority as she flicks crumbs from her white fingers
with my real lace handkerchief, and he stops his hearty laughter and
just stares, and she says what nonsense to think the poor horses don't
like food as well as any one. Them little moments have their effect on a
man in a certain condition. He knew there probably wasn't another horse
in the world would touch that truck, but he couldn't help feeling a
strange new respect for her in addition to that glorious masculine
protection she'd had him wallowing in all day.
"The ride home, at least on the part of the Non Plush Ultra cut-ups, was
like they had laid a loved one to final rest out there on the lone
mountainside. The handsome stranger and Hetty brought up the rear,
conversing eagerly about themselves and other serious topics. I believe
he give her to understand that he'd been pretty wild at one time in his
life and wasn't any too darned well over it yet, but that some good
womanly woman who would study his ways could still take him and make a
man of him; and her answering that she knew he must have suffered beyond
human endurance in that horrible conflict with his lower nature. He said
he had.
"Of course the rabid young hoydens up ahead made a feeble effort now and
then to carry it off lightly, and from time to time sang 'My Bonnie Lies
Over the Ocean,' or 'Merrily We Roll Along,' with the high, squeaky
tenor of Roth Hyde sounding above the others very pretty in the
moonlight, but it was poor work as far as these enraged vestals was
concerned. If I'd been Hetty and had got a strange box of candy through
the mail the next week, directed in a disguised woman's hand, I'd of
rushed right off to the police with it, not waiting for any analysis.
And she, poor thing, would get so frightened at bad spots, with the
fierce old horse bobbing about so dangerous, that she just has to be
held on. And once she wrenched her ankle against a horrid old tree on
the trail--she hadn't been able to resist a little one--and bit her
under lip as the spasm of pain passed over her refined features. But she
was all right in a minute and begged Mr. D. not to think of bathing it
in cold water because it was nothing--nothing at all, really now--and he
would embarrass her frightfully if he said one more word about it. And
Mr. D. again remarked that she was feminine to her finger tips, a brave,
game little woman, one of the gamest he ever knew. And pretty soon--what
was she thinking about now? Why, she was merely wondering if horses
think in the true sense of the word or only have animal instinct, as it
is called. And wasn't she a strange, puzzling creature to be thinking on
deep subjects like that at such a time! Yes, she had been called
puzzling as a child, but she didn't like it one bit. She wanted to be
like other girls, if he knew what she meant. He seemed to.
"They took Hetty home first on account of her poor little ankle and
sung 'Good Night, Ladies,' at the gate. And so ended a day that was
wreck and ruin for most of our sex there present.
"And to show you what a good, deep, scientific cause I had discovered,
the next night at Hetty's who shows up one by one but these four men
about town, each with a pound of mixed from the Bon Ton Handy Kitchen,
and there they're all setting at the feet of Hetty, as it were, in her
new light summer gown with the blue bows, when Mr. D. blows in with a
two-pound box and the novel in which love conquered all. So excited she
was when she tells me about it next day. The luck of that girl! But
after all it wasn't luck, because she'd laid her foundations the day
before, hadn't she? Always look a little bit back of anything that seems
to be luck, say I.
"And Hetty with shining eyes entertained one and all with the wit and
sparkle a woman can show only when there's four or five men at her at
once--it's the only time we ever rise to our best. But she got a chance
for a few words alone with Mr. D., who took his hat finally when he sees
the other four was going to set him out; enough words to confide to him
how she loathed this continual social racket to which she was constantly
subjected, with never a let-up so one could get to one's books and to
one's real thoughts. But perhaps he would venture up again some time
next week or the week after--not getting coarse in her work, understand,
even with him flopping around there out on the bank--and he give her one
long, meaning look and said why not to-morrow night, and she carelessly
said that would be charming, she was sure--she didn't think of any
engagement at this minute--and it was ever so nice of him to think of
poor little me.
"Then she went back and gave the social evening of their life to them
four boys that had stayed. She said she couldn't thank them enough for
coming this evening--which is probably the only time she had told the
truth in thirty-six hours--and they all made merry. Roth Hyde sang
'Sally in Our Alley' so good on the high notes that the Duttons was all
out in the hall listening; and Riley Hardin singing 'Down, Diver, Down,
'Neath the Deep Blue Waves!' and Mac Gordon singing his everlasting
German songs in their native language, and Charlie Dickman singing a new
sentimental one called 'Ain't There at Least One Gentleman Here?' about
a fair young lady dancer being insulted in a gilded café in some large
city; and one and all voted it was a jolly evening and said how about
coming back to-morrow night, but Hetty said no, it was her one evening
for study and she couldn't be bothered with them, which was a plain,
downright so-and-so and well she knew it, because that girl's study was
over for good and all.
"Well, why string it out? I've give you the facts. And my lands! Will
you look at that clock now? Here's the morning gone and this room still
looking like the inside of a sheep-herder's wagon! Oh, yes, and when
Hetty was up here this time that she wouldn't wear my riding pants
down, she says. 'Not only that, but I'm scrupulously careful in all
ways. Why, I never even allow dear Burchell to observe me in one of
those lace boudoir caps that so many women cover up their hair with when
it's their best feature but they won't take time to do it.'
"Now was that spoken like a wise woman or like the two-horned Galumpsis
Caladensis of East India, whose habits are little known to man? My Lord!
Won't I ever learn to stop? Where did I put that dusting cloth?"