This day I fared abroad with Ma Pettengill over wide spaces of the
Arrowhead Ranch. Between fields along the river bottom were gates
distressingly crude; clumsy, hingeless panels of board fence, which I
must dismount and lift about by sheer brawn of shoulder. Such gates
combine the greatest weight with the least possible exercise of man's
inventive faculties, and are named, not too subtly, the Armstrong gate.
This, indeed, is the American beauty of ranch humour, a flower of
imperishable fragrance handed to the visitor--who does the lifting with
guarded drollery or triumphant snicker, as may be. Buck Devine or Sandy
Sawtelle will achieve the mot with an aloof austerity that abates no jot
unto the hundredth repetition; while Lew Wee, Chinese cook of the
Arrowhead, fails not to brighten it with a nervous giggle, impairing its
vocal correctness, moreover, by calling it the "Armcatchum" gate.
Ma Pettengill was more versatile this day. The first gate I struggled
with she called Armstrong in a manner dryly descriptive; for the second
she managed a humorous leer to illumine the term; for the third,
secured with a garland of barbed wire that must be painfully untwisted,
she employed a still broader humour. Even a child would then have known
that calling this criminal device the Armstrong gate was a joke of
uncommon richness.
As I remounted, staunching the inevitable wound from barbed wire, I
began to speak in the bitterly superior tones of an efficiency expert as
we traversed a field where hundreds of white-faced Herefords were
putting on flesh to their own ruin. I said to my hostess that I vastly
enjoyed lifting a hundred-pound gate--and what was the loss of a little
blood between old friends, even when aggravated by probable tetanus
germs? But had she ever paused to compute the money value of time lost
by her henchmen in dismounting to open these clumsy makeshifts? I
suggested that, even appraising the one reliable ranch joke in all the
world at a high figure, she would still profit considerably by putting
in gates that were gates, in place of contrivances that could be handled
ideally only by a retired weight lifter in barbed-wire-proof armour.
I rapidly calculated, with the seeming high regard for accuracy that
marks all efficiency experts, that these wretched devices cost her
twenty-eight cents and a half each _per diem_. Estimating the total of
them on the ranch at one hundred, this meant to her a loss of
twenty-eight dollars and a half _per diem_. I used _per diem_ twice to
impress the woman. I added that it was pretty slipshod business for a
going concern, supposing--sarcastically now--that the Arrowhead was a
going concern. Of course, if it were merely a toy for the idle rich--
She had let me talk, as she will now and then, affecting to be engrossed
with her stock.
"Look at them white-faced darlings!" she murmured. "Two years old and
weighing eleven hundred this minute if they weigh a pound!"
Then I saw we approached a gate that amazingly was a gate. Hinges, yes;
and mechanical complications, and a pendant cord on each side. I tugged
at one and the gate magically opened. As we passed through I tugged at
the other and it magically closed. This was luxury ineffable to one who
had laboured with things that seemed to be kept merely for the sake of a
jest that was never of the best and was staling with use. It would also
be, I hoped, an object lesson to my hostess. I performed the simple rite
in silence, yet with a manner that I meant to be eloquent, even
provocative. It was.
"Oh, sure!" spoke Ma Pettengill. "That there's one of your _per-diem_
gates; and there's another leading out of this field, and about six
beyond--all of 'em just as _per diem_ as this one; and, also, this here
ranch you're on now is one of your going concerns." She chuckled at this
and repeated it in a subterranean rumble: "A going concern--my sakes,
yes! It moved so fast you could see it go, and now it's went." Noisily
she relished this bit of verbal finesse; then permitted her fancy again
to trifle with it. "Yes, sir; this here going concern is plumb gone!"
With active malice I asked no question, maintaining a dignified silence
as I lightly manipulated a second paragon of gates. The lady now rumbled
confidentially to herself, and I caught piquant phrases; yet still I
forbore to question, since the woman so plainly sought to intrigue me.
Even when we skirted a clump of cottonwoods and came--through another
perfect gate--upon a most amazing small collection of ranch buildings,
dying of desertion, I retained perfect control of a rising curiosity.
By unspoken agreement we drew rein to survey a desolation that was still
immaculate. Stables and outbuildings were trim and new, and pure with
paint. All had been swept and garnished; no unsightly litter marred the
scene. The house was a suburban villa of marked pretension and would
have excited no comment on Long Island. In this valley of the mountains
it was nothing short of spectacular. Only one item of decoration hinted
an attempt to adapt itself to environment: in the noble stone chimney
that reared itself between two spacious wings a branding iron had been
embedded. Thus did it proclaim itself to the incredulous hills as a
ranch house.
Flowers had been planted along a gravelled walk. While I reminded myself
that the gravel must have been imported from a spot at least ten miles
distant, I was further shocked by discovering a most improbable golf
green, in gloomy survival. Then I detected a series of kennels facing a
wired dog run. This was overwhelming in a country of simple, steadfast
devotion to the rearing of cattle for market.
Ma Pettengill now spoke in a tone that, for her, could be called hushed,
though it reached me twenty feet away.
"An art bungalow!" she said, and gazed upon it with seeming awe. Then
she waved a quirt to indicate this and the painfully neat outbuildings.
"A toy for the idle rich--was that it? Well, you said something. This
was one little _per-diem_ going concern, all right. They even had the
name somewhere round here worked out in yellow flowers--Broadmoor it
was. You could read it for five miles when the posies got up. There it
is over on that lawn. You can't read it now because the letters are all
overgrown. My Chinaman got delirious about that when he first seen it
and wanted me to plant Arrowhead out in front of our house, and was
quite hurt when I told him I was just a business woman--and a tired
business woman at that. He done what he could, though, to show we was
some class. The first time these folks come over to our place to lunch
he picked all my pink carnations to make a mat on the table, and spelled
out Arrowhead round it in ripe olives, with a neat frame of celery
inclosing same. Yes, sir!"
This was too much. It now seemed time to ask questions, and I did so in
a winning manner; but so deaf in her backward musing was the woman that
I saw it must all come in its own way.
"We got to make up over that bench yet," she said at last; and we rode
out past the ideal stable--its natty weather vane forever pointing the
wind to the profit of no man--through another gate of superb cunning,
and so once more to an understandable landscape, where sane cattle
grazed. Here I threw off the depression that comes upon one in places
where our humankind so plainly have been and are not. Again I questioned
of Broadmoor and its vanished people.
The immediate results were fragmentary, serving to pique rather than
satisfy; a series of _hors d'oeuvres_ that I began to suspect must form
the whole repast. On the verge of coherence the woman would break off to
gloat over a herd of thoroughbred Durhams or a bunch of sportive
Hereford calves or a field teeming with the prized fruits of
intermarriage between these breeds. Or she found diversion in stupendous
stacks of last summer's hay, well fenced from pillage; or grounds for
criticising the sloth of certain of her henchmen, who had been told as
plain as anything that "that there line fance" had to be finished by
Saturday; no two ways about it! She repeated the language in which she
had conveyed this decision. There could have been no grounds for
misunderstanding it.
And thus the annals of Broadmoor began to dribble to me, overlaid too
frequently for my taste with philosophic reflections at large upon what
a lone, defenceless woman could expect in this world--irrelevant,
pointed wonderings as to whether a party letting on he was a good ranch
hand really expected to perform any labour for his fifty a month, or
just set round smoking his head off and see which could tell the biggest
lie; or mebbe make an excuse for some light job like oiling the
twenty-two sets of mule harness over again, when they had already been
oiled right after haying. Furthermore, any woman not a born fool would
get out of the business the first chance she got, this one often being
willing to sell for a mutilated dollar, except for not wishing financial
ruin or insanity to other parties.
Yet a few details definitely emerged. "Her" name was called Posnett,
though a party would never guess this if he saw it in print, because it
was spelled Postlethwaite. Yes, sir! All on account of having gone to
England from Boston and found out that was how you said it, though
Cousin Egbert Floud had tried to be funny about it when shown the name
in the Red Gap _Recorder_. The item said the family had taken apartments
at Red Gap's premier hotel _de luxe_, the American House; and Cousin
Egbert, being told a million dollars was bet that he never could guess
how the name was pronounced in English, he up and said you couldn't fool
him; that it was pronounced Chumley, which was just like the old
smarty--only he give in that he was surprised when told how it really
was pronounced; and he said if a party's name was Postlethwaite why
couldn't they come out and say so like a man, instead of beating round
the bush like that? All of which was promising enough; but then came the
Hereford yearlings to effect a breach of continuity.
These being enough admired, I had next to be told that I wouldn't
believe how many folks was certain she had retired to the country
because she was lazy, just keeping a few head of cattle for
diversion--she that had six thousand acres of land under fence, and had
made a going concern _per diem_ of it for thirty years, even if parties
did make cracks about her gates; but hardly ever getting a good night's
sleep through having a "passel" of men to run it that you couldn't
depend on--though God only knew where you could find any other sort--the
minute your back was turned.
A fat, sleek, prosperous male, clad in expensive garments, and wearing a
derby hat and too much jewellery, became somehow personified in this
tirade. I was led to picture him a residuary legatee who had never done
a stroke of work in his life, and believed that no one else ever did
except from a sportive perversity. I was made to hear him tell her that
she, Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill, was leading the ideal life on her
country place; and, by Jove! he often thought of doing the same thing
himself--get a nice little spot in this beautiful country, with some
green meadows, and have bands of large handsome cattle strolling about
in the sunlight, so he could forget the world and its strife in the same
idyllic peace she must be finding. Or if he didn't tell her this, then
he was sure to have a worthless son or nephew that her ranch would be
just the place for; and, of course, she would be glad to take him on and
make something of him--that is, so the lady now regrettably put it, as
he had shown he wasn't worth a damn for anything else, why couldn't she
make a cattleman of him?
"Yes, sir; that's what I get from these here visitors that are enchanted
by the view. Either they think my ranch is a reform school for poor
chinless Chester, that got led away by bad companions and can't say no,
or they think, like you said, that it's just a toy for the idle rich.
Show 'em a shoe factory or a steel works and they can understand it's a
business proposition; but a ranch--Shucks! They think I've done my day's
work when I ride out on a gentle horse and look pleased at the
landscape."
Again were we diverted. A dozen alien beeves fed upon the Arrowhead
preserves. Did I see that wattle brand--the jug-handle split? That was
the Timmins brand--old Safety First Timmins. There must be a break in
his fence at the upper end of the field. Made it himself likely.
Wouldn't she give the old penny-pincher hell if she had him here? She
would, indeed! Continuous muttering of a rugged character for half a
mile of jog trot.
Then again:
"Cousin Egbert got all fussed up in his mind about the name and always
called her Postle-nut. He don't seem to have a brain for such things.
But she didn't mind. I give her credit for that. She was fifty if she
was a day, but very, very blond; laboratory stuff, of course. You'd of
called her a superblonde, I guess. And haggard and wrinkled in the face;
but she took good care of that, too--artist's materials.
"You know old Pete--that Indian you see cutting up wood back on the
place. Pete took a long look at her and named her the Painted Desert.
You always hear say an Indian hasn't got any sense of humour. I don't
know; Pete was sure being either a humourist or a poet. However, this
here lady handed me a new one about my business. She thought it was
merely an outdoor sport. I never could get that out of her head. Even
when she left she says she knows it's ripping good sport, but it's such
a terrific drain on one's income, and I must be quite mad about ranching
to keep it up. I said, yes; I got quite mad about it sometimes, and let
it go at that. What was the use?"
A voiceless interval while we climbed a trail to the timbered bench
where fence posts were being cut by half a dozen of the Arrowhead
forces. Two of these were swiftly detached and bade to repair the break
in the fence by which one Timmins was now profiting, the entire six
being first regaled with a brief but pithy character analysis of the
offender, portraying him as a loathsome biological freak; headless, I
gathered, and with the acquisitive instincts of a trade rat.
Then we rounded back on our way to the Arrow head ranch house. Five
miles up the narrowing valley we could see its outposts and its smoke.
Far below us the spick-and-span buildings of deserted Broadmoor
glittered newly, demanding that I be told more of them. Yet for the
five-mile ride I added, as I thought, no item to my slender stock.
Instead, when we had descended from the bench and were again in fields
where the gates might be opened only by galling effort, I learned
apparently irrelevant facts concerning Egbert Floud's pet kitten.
"Yes, sir; he's just like any old maid with that cat. 'Kitty!' here and
'Kitty!' there; and 'Poor Kitty, did I forget to warm its milk?' And so
on. It was give to him two years ago by Jeff Tuttle's littlest girl,
Irene; and he didn't want it at first, but him and Irene is great
friends, so he pretended he was crazy about it and took it off in his
overcoat pocket, thinking it would die anyway, because it was only skin
and bones. Whenever it tried to purr you'd think it was going to shake
all its timbers loose. His house is just over on the other side of
Arrowhead Pass there, and I saw the kitten the first day he brought it
up, kind of light brown and yellow in colour, with some gray on the left
shoulder.
"Well, the minute I see these markings I recognized 'em and remembered
something, and I says right off that he's got some cat there; and he
says how do I know? And I tell him that there kitten has got at least a
quarter wildcat in it. Its grandmother, or mebbe its great-grandmother,
was took up to the Tuttle Ranch when there wasn't another cat within
forty miles, and it got to running round nights; and quite a long time
after that they found it with a mess of kittens in a box out in the
harness room. One look at their feet and ears was all you'd want to see
that their pa was a bobcat. They all become famous fighting characters,
and was marked just like this descendant of theirs that Cousin Egbert
has. And, say, I was going on like this, not suspecting anything except
that I was giving him some interesting news about the family history of
this pet of his, when he grabs the beast up and cuddles it, and says I
had ought to be ashamed of myself, talking that way about a poor little
innocent kitten that never done me a stroke of harm. Yes, sir; he was
right fiery.
"I don't know how he come to take it that cross way, for he hadn't
thought highly of the thing up to that moment. But some way it seemed to
him I was talking scandal about his pet--kind of clouding up its
ancestry, if you know what I mean. He didn't seem to get any broad view
of it at all. You'd almost think I'd been reporting an indiscretion in
some member of his family. Can you beat it? Heating up that way over a
puny kitten, six inches from tip to tip, that he'd been thinking of as a
pest and only taken to please Irene Tuttle! So he starts in from that
minute to doctor it up and nurture it with canned soup and delicacies;
and every time I see him after that he'd look indignant and say what
great hands for spreading gossip us women are, and his kitten ain't got
no more bobcat in its veins than what I have.
"He's a stubborn old toad. Irene had told him the kitten's name was
Kate; so he kept right on calling it that even after it become
incongruous, as you might say. Judge Ballard was up here on a fishing
trip one time and heard him calling it Kate, and he says to Egbert: Why
call it Kate when it ain't? Egbert says that was the name little Irene
give it and it's too much trouble to think up another. The Judge says,
Oh, no; not so much trouble, being that he could just change the name
swiftly from Kate to Cato, thus meeting all conventional requirements
with but slight added labour. But Egbert says there's the sentiment to
think of--whatever he meant by that; and if you was to go over there
to-day and he was home you'd likely hear him say: 'Yes; Kate is
certainly some cat! Why, he's at least half bobcat--mebbe
three-quarters; and the fightingest devil!' What's that? Yes; he's
changed completely round about the wildcat strain. He's proud of it. If
I was to say now it was only a quarter bob he'd be as mad as he was at
first; he says anybody can see it's at least half bob. What changed him?
Oh, well, we're too near home. Some other time."
So it befell that not until we sat out for a splendid sunset that
evening did I learn in an orderly manner of Postlethwaite vicissitudes.
Ma Pettengill built her first cigarette with tender solicitude; and
this, in consideration of her day's hard ride, I permitted her to burn
in relaxed silence. But when her trained fingers began to combine paper
and tobacco for the second I mentioned Broadmoor, Postlethwaite,
Posnett, and parties in general that come round the tired business
woman, harassed with the countless vexations of a large cattle ranch,
telling her how wise she has been to retire to this sylvan quietude,
where she can dream away her life in peace. She started easily:
"That's it; they always intimate that running a ranch is mere cream
puffs compared to a regular business, and they'd like to do the same
thing to-morrow if only they was ready to retire from active life. Mebbe
they get the idea from these here back-to-nature stories about a
brokendown bookkeeper, sixty-seven years old, with neuritis and gastric
complications and bum eyesight, and a wife that ain't ever seen a well
day; so they take every cent of their life savings of eighty-three
dollars and settle on an abandoned farm in Connecticut and clear nine
thousand dollars the first year raising the Little Giant caper for
boiled mutton. There certainly ought to be a law against such romantic
trifling. In the first place, think of a Connecticut farmer abandoning
anything worth money! Old Timmins comes from Connecticut. Any time that
old leech abandons a thing, bookkeepers and all other parties will do
well to ride right along with him. I tell you now--"
The second cigarette was under way, and suddenly, without modulation,
the performer was again on the theme, Posnett _née_ Postlethwaite.
"Met her two years ago in Boston, where I was suffering a brief visit
with my son-in-law's aunts. She was the sole widow of a large woolen
mill. That's about all I could ever make out--couldn't get any line on
him to speak of. The first time I called on her--she was in pink silk
pyjamas, smoking a perfecto cigar, and unpacking a bale of lion and
tiger skins she'd shot in Africa, or some place--she said she believed
there would be fewer unhappy marriages in this world if women would only
try more earnestly to make a companion of their husbands; she said she'd
tried hard to make one of hers, but never could get him interested in
her pursuits and pastimes, he preferring to set sullenly at his desk
making money. She said to the day of his death he'd never even had a
polo mallet in his hand. And wasn't that pitiful!
"And right now she wanted to visit a snappy little volcano she'd heard
about in South America--only she had a grown son and daughter she was
trying to make companions of, so they would love and trust her; and
they'd begged her to do something nearer home that was less fatiguing;
and mebbe she would. And how did I find ranching now? Was I awfully keen
about it and was it ripping good sport? I said yes, to an extent. She
said she thought it must be ripping, what with chasing the wild cattle
over hill and dale to lasso them, and firing off revolvers in company
with lawless cowboys inflamed by drink. She went on to give me some more
details of ranch life, and got so worked up about it that we settled
things right there, she being a lady of swift decisions. She said it
wouldn't be very exciting for her, but it might be fine for son and
daughter, and bring them all together in a more sacred companionship.
"So I come back and got that place down the creek for her, and she sent
out a professional architect and a landscape gardener, and some other
experts that would know how to build a ranch _de luxe_, and the thing
was soon done. And she sent son on ahead to get slightly acquainted with
the wild life. He was a tall bent thing, about thirty, with a long
squinted face and going hair, and soft, innocent, ginger-coloured
whiskers, and hips so narrow they'd hardly hold his belt up. That rowdy
mother of his, in trying to make a companion of him, had near scared him
to death. He was permanently frightened. What he really wanted to do, I
found out, was to study insect life and botany and geography and
arithmetic, and so on, and raise orchids, instead of being killed off in
a sudden manner by his rough-neck parent. He loved to ride a horse the
same way a cat loves to ride a going stove.
"I started out with him one morning to show him over the valley. He got
into the saddle all right and he meant well, but that don't go any too
far with a horse. Pretty soon, down on the level here, I started to
canter a bit. He grabbed for the saddle horn and caught a handful of
bunch grass fifteen feet to the left of the trail. He was game enough.
He found his glasses and wiped 'em off, and said it was too bad the
mater couldn't have seen him, because it would have been a bright spot
in her life.
"Then he got on again and we took that steep trail up the side of the
cañon that goes over Arrowhead, me meaning to please him with some
beautiful and rugged scenery, where one false step might cause utter
ruin. It didn't work, though. After we got pretty well up to the rim of
the cañon he looks down and says he supposes they could recover one if
one fell over there. I says: 'Oh, yes; they could recover one. They'd
get you, all right. Of course you wouldn't look like anything!'
"He shudders at that and gets off to lead his horse, begging me to do
the same. I said I never tried to do anything a horse could do better,
and stayed on. Then he got confidential and told me a lot of interesting
crimes this mater of his had committed in her mad efforts to make a
companion of him. Once she'd tramped on the gas of a ninety-horsepower
racer and socked him against a stone wall at a turn some fool had made
in the road; and another time she near drowned him in the Arctic Ocean
when she was off there for the polar-bear hunting; and she'd got him
well clawed by a spotted leopard in India, that was now almost the best
skin in her collection; and once in Switzerland he fell off the side of
an Alp she was making him climb, causing her to be very short with him
all day because it delayed the trip. Tied to a rope he was and hanging
out there over nothing for about fifteen minutes--he must have looked
like a sash weight.
"Then he told about learning to run a motor car all by himself, just to
please the mater. The first time he made the sharp turns round their
country house he took nine shingles off the corner and crumpled a fender
like it was tissue paper; but he stuck to it till he got the score down
to two or three shingles only. He seemed right proud of that, like it
was bogey for the course, as you might say. He wasn't the greatest
humourist in the world, being too high-minded, but he appealed to all my
better instincts; he was trying so hard to make the grade out of respect
for his bedizened and homicidal mother.
"And his poor sister, that come along later, was very much like him,
being severe of outline and wearing the same kind of spectacles, and not
fussing much about the fripperies of dress that engross so many of our
empty-headed sex and get 'em the notice of the male. Her complexion was
brutally honest, which was about all her very best-wishers could say for
it, but she was kind-hearted and earnest, and thought a good deal about
the real or inner meaning of life. What she really yearned for was to
stay in Boston and go to concerts, holding the music on her lap and
checking off the notes with a gold pencil when the fiddlers played them.
I watched her do it one night. I don't know what her notion was, keeping
cases on the orchestra that way; but it seemed to give her a secret
satisfaction. She was also interested in bird life and other studies of
a high character, and she didn't want to be made a companion of by her
rabid parent any more than brother did. They was just a couple of
lambkins born to a tiger.
"Pretty soon the ranch buildings was all complete and varnished and
polished, like you seen to-day, and the family moved in with all kinds
of uniformed servants that looked unhappy and desperate. They had a
pained butler in a dress suit that never once set foot outside the house
the whole five months they was here. He'd of been thought too gloomy for
good taste, even at a funeral. He had me nervous every time I went
there, thinking any minute he was going to break down and sob.
"And this lady loses no time making companions of her children that
didn't want to be. First she tried to make 'em chase steers on
horseback. A fact! That was one of her ideas of ranch life. When I asked
her what she was going to stock her ranch with she said didn't I have
some good heads of stock I could sell her? And I said yes, I had some
good heads, and showed her a bunch of my thoroughbreds, thinking none
but the best would satisfy her. She looked 'em over with a glittering
eye and said they was too fat to run well. I didn't get her. I said it
was true; I hadn't raised 'em for speed. I said I didn't have an animal
on the place that could hit better than three miles an hour, and not
that for long. I cheerfully admitted I didn't have a thoroughbred on
the place that wouldn't be a joke on any track in the country; but I
wanted to know what of it.
"'How do you get any sport out of them,' demands the lady, 'if they
can't give you a jolly good chase?'
"That's what she asked me in so many words. I says, does she aim to
breed racing cattle? And she says, where will the sport be with
creatures all out of condition with fat, like mine are? It took me about
ten minutes to get her idea, it was that heinous or criminal. When I did
get it I sent her to old Safety First; and what does she do but buy a
herd of twenty yearling steers from the old crook! Scrubby little runts
that had been raised out in the hills and was all bone and muscle, and
any one of 'em able to do a mile in four minutes flat, I guess.
"Old Safety was tickled to death at first when he put off this refuse on
her at a price not much more than double what they would have brought in
a tanyard, which was all they'd ever be good for except bone fertilizer,
mebbe; but he was sick unto death when he found they was just what she
wanted, the skinnier the better and he could have got anything he asked
for 'em. He says to me afterward why don't I train some of mine and trim
her good? But I told him I'm cinched for hell, anyway, and don't have to
make it tighter by torturing poor dumb brutes.
"That's what it amounted to. Having got Angora chaps and cowboy hats for
herself and offsprings, what do they do but get on ponies and chase
this herd all over creation, whirling their ropes, yelling, shooting in
the air--just like you see on any well-conducted ranch. Once in a while
the old lady herself, being a demon rider, would rope an animal and
fetch it down; but brother and sister was very careful not to tangle
their own ropes on anything. They didn't shoot their guns with any
proper spirit, either; and when they tried to yip like cowboys they
sounded like rabbits. And brother having to smoke brown-paper
cigarettes, which he hated like poison and had trouble in rolling!
"Mother could roll 'em, all right--do it with one hand. And she urged
sister to; but sister rebelled for once. The old lady admitted this was
due to a fault in her early training. It seems her grandmother had been
one of the old-fashioned sort; and, having studied the modern young
woman of society in Boston and New York, she'd promised sister a string
of pearls if she didn't either smoke or drink till her twenty-first
birthday. Sister had not only won the pearls but had come on to
twenty-eight without being like other young girls of the day, and wasn't
going to begin now. So ma and brother had to do all the smoking.
"After a fine morning's run following the steers they'd like as not have
a little branding in the afternoon, the old-fashioned kind that ain't
done in the higher ranch circles any more, where a couple of silly
punchers rope an animal fore and aft and throw it, thereby setting it
back at least four months in its growth. The old lady was puzzled again
by me having my branding done in a chute, where the poor things ain't
worried more than is necessary. I bet she thought I was a short sport,
not doing a thing on my place that would look well in a moving picture.
She got a lot of ripping sport out of this branding. Made no difference
if they was already branded, they got it again; she'd brand 'em over and
over. Two or three of that herd got it so often that they looked like
these leather suitcases parties bring back from Europe stuck all over
with hotel labels.
"Well, this branch of sport lasted quite a while, with them steers
developing speed every day till they got too fast for any one but the
old lady. Brother and sister would be left far behind, or mebbe get
stacked up and discouraged or sprained for the day. The old dame said it
was disheartening, indeed, trying to make companions of one's children
when they showed such a low order of intelligence for it. Still, she was
fair-minded; so she had a golf links made, and put 'em at that. She
wouldn't play herself, saying it was an effeminate game, good for fat
old men or schoolboys, but mebbe her chits would benefit by it and get a
taste for proper sports, where you can break a bone now and then by not
using care.
"But golf wasn't much better. Sister would carry a book of poetry with
her and read it as she loafed from one hit to another. The old lady near
shed tears at the sight. And brother was about as bad, getting
hypnotized by passing insect life and forgetting his score while
prodding some new kind of bug.
"The old lady said I'd never believe what a care and responsibility
children was. She had wanted 'em to go in for ranching and be awfully
keen about it, and look how they acted! Still, she wouldn't give up. She
suggested polo next; but sister said it wasn't a lady's game, making no
demand upon the higher attributes of womanhood, and brother said he
might go in for it if she'd let him play his on a bicycle, as being more
reliable or stauncher than a pony.
"So she throws up her hands in despair, but thinks hard again; and at
last she says she has the right sport for 'em and why didn't she think
of it before! This new idea is to bring up her pack of prize-winning
beagles, the sport being full of excitement, and yet safe enough for all
concerned if they'll look where they walk and not stop to read slushy
poems or collect insect life. Sister and brother said beagles, by all
means, like drowning sailors clutching at a straw or something; and the
old lady sent off a telegram.
"I admit I didn't know what kind of a game beagles was, but I didn't
betray the fact when she told me about it. I was over to Egbert Floud's
place next day and I asked him. But he didn't know and he couldn't even
get the name right. He says: 'You mean beetles.' I says, 'Not at all';
that it's beagles. Then he says I must of got the name twisted, and
probably it's one of these curly horns. That's as close as he ever did
come to the name; and until he actually saw the things he insisted they
was either something to blow on or something that crawled. 'Mark my
words,' he says,'they're either a horn or a bug; and I wonder what this
here blond guy will be doing next.' So I saw nothing sensible was to be
had out of him, and I left him there, doddering.
"Then in about ten days, which was days of peace for brother and sister,
because they didn't have to go in keenly for any new way of killing
themselves off, what comes up but several crates of beagles, in charge
of their valet or tutor! I'd looked forward to something of a thrilling
or unknown character, and they turned out to be mere dogs; just little
brown-and-white dogs that you wouldn't notice if you hadn't been excited
by their names; kind of yapping mutts that some parties would poison off
if they lived in the same neighbourhood with 'em. They all had names
like Rex II and Lady Blessington, and so on; and each one had cost more
than any three steers I had on the place. What do you think of that?
They was yapping in their kennels when I first seen 'em, with the old
lady as excited as they was, and brother and sister trying to look
excited in order to please mother, and at least looking relieved because
no fatalities was in immediate prospect.
"I listened to the noise a while and acted nice by saying they was
undoubtedly the very finest beagles I'd ever laid eyes on--which was the
simple God's truth; and then I says won't she take one out of the cage
and let him beagle some, me not having any idea what it would be like?
But the old lady says not yet, because the costumes ain't come. I
thought at first it was the pups that had to be dressed up, but it seems
it was costumes for her and brother and sister to wear; so I asked a few
more silly questions and found out the mystery. It seemed the secret of
a beagle's existence was rabbits. Yes, sir; they was mad about rabbits
and went in keenly for 'em. Only they wouldn't notice one, I gathered,
if the parties that followed 'em wasn't dressed proper for it.
"Then we went in where we could hear each other without screaming, and
the lady tells me more about it, and how beagles is her last hope of her
chits ever amounting to anything in the great world of sport. If they
don't go in keenly for beagles she'll just have to give up and let
Nature take its course with the poor things. And she said these was
A-Number-One beagles, being sure to get a rabbit if one was in the
country. She'd just had 'em at a big fashionable country resort down
South, some place where the sport attracted much notice from the
simple-minded peasantry, and it hadn't been a good country for rabbits;
so the beagles had trooped into a backyard and destroyed a Belgian hare
that had belonged to a little boy, whose father come out and swore at
the costumed hunters in a very common manner, and offered to lick any
three of 'em at once.
"And in hurrying acrost a field to get away from this rowdy, that
seemed liable to forget himself and do something they'd all regret
later, they was put up a tree by a bull that was sensitive about
costumes, and had to stay there two hours, with the bull trying to grub
up the tree, and would of done so if his owner hadn't come along and
rescued 'em.
"She made it sound like an exciting sport, all right, yet nothing I
thought I'd ever go in keenly for. It didn't seem like anything I'd get
up in the night to indulge myself in. And I agreed with her that if her
chits found beagling too adventurous, then all hope was gone and she
might as well let 'em die peacefully in their beds.
"Two days later the costumes come along and I was kindly sent word to
show up the next morning if I wanted to see some ripping sport that I'd
be quite mad about and go in for keenly, and all that sort of thing, by
Jove! Of course I go over, on account of this dame's atrocities never
yet having failed to interest me, and I didn't think she'd fall down
now. I felt strangely out of it, though, when I seen the costumes. Ma
and sister had, from the top down, black velvet jockey caps; green
velvet coats with gold buttons; white pique skirts, coming to the knee;
black silk stockings; and neat black shoes with white spats. Brother had
been abused the same, barring the white skirt, which left him looking
like something out of a collection called The Dolls of All Nations.
"I saw right off that all these clothes must be necessary--they looked
so careful and expensive. Yes, Sir; that lady would no more of went out
beagling without being draped for it than she'd of gone steer hunting
without a vanity-box lashed to her saddle horn.
"I sort of hung back with the awe-stricken help when the start was made.
They was all out in front except the butler, who lurked in the entry
looking like he'd passed a night of grief at the new-made grave of his
mother.
"The beagles surged all over the place the minute they was let loose,
and then made for down in the willows below the house. And, sure enough,
they started a cottontail down there and went in for him keenly,
followed by ma and brother and sister. Brother started to yell 'Yoicks!
Yoicks!' But ma shut him off with a good deal of severity that caused
him to blush at his words. It seems Yoicks is a cry you give at some
other critical juncture in life. When beagles start you must yell 'Gone
away!' in a clear, ringing voice. Brother meant well, but didn't know.
"Anyhow, they followed those pups, and I trailed along at a decent
distance on my horse; and pretty soon they got the rabbit which had been
fool enough to come round in a wide circle back to where it started
from. Say! It was mere child's play for that plucky little band of nine
dogs to clean up that rabbit. They never had a minute's fear of it and
the rabbit didn't have the least chance of winning the fight, not at
any stage. Yes, sir! any time you see nine beagles setting on a tuckered
rabbit--I don't care how wild he is--you'll know how to put your money
down.
"I never did see a rabbit put up a worse fight than that one did. I rode
up to its fragments, and the old lady was saying how ripping it was and
calling sister a mollycoddle, because here was sister crying like a baby
over the rabbit's fate--a rabbit she'd never set eyes on before in her
life. Brother didn't look like he had gone in keenly for the sport,
either. He was kind of green and yellow, like one of these parties on
shipboard about the time he's saying he don't feel the boat's motion the
least bit; and, anyway, he's got a sure-fire remedy for it if anything
does happen. I just kind of stood around, neutral and revolted.
"Pretty soon the pack beagles off again with glad cries; and this time,
up on the hillside, what do they start but a little spike buck that has
been down to a salt lick on the creek flat! They wasn't any more afraid
of him than they had been of the rabbit and started to chase him out of
the country. Of course they didn't do well after they got him
interested. The last I saw of the race he was making 'em look like they
was in reverse gear and backing up full speed. Anyway, that seemed to
end the sport for the day, because the dogs and the buck must of been
over near the county line in ten minutes. The old lady was mad and
blamed it on the valet, who come up and had to take as sweet a roasting
as you ever heard a man get from a lady word painter. It seems he'd
ought to have taught 'em to ignore deer.
"Then I lied like a lady and said it was a ripping sport that I would
sure go in keenly for if I had time; and we all went back to the house
and sat down to what they called a hunt breakfast. Ma said at last her
chits could hold up their heads in the world of sport and not be a
reproach to her training. The chits looked very thoughtful, indeed.
Sister still had red eyes and couldn't eat a mouthful of hunt breakfast,
and brother just toyed with little dabs of it.
"Next day I learned the pack didn't get back till late that evening,
straggling in one by one, and the valet having to go out and look for
the last two with a lantern. Also, these last two had been treated
brutally by some denizen of the wildwood. Rex II had darn near lost his
eyesight and Lady Blessington was clawed something scandalous. Brother
said mebbe a rabbit mad with hydrophobia had turned on 'em. He said it
in hopeful tones, and sister cheered right up and said if these two had
it they would give it to the rest of the pack, and shouldn't they all be
shot at once?
"Mother said what jolly nonsense; that they'd merely been scratched by
thorns. I thought, myself, that mebbe they'd gone out of their class and
tackled a jack rabbit; but I didn't say it, seeing that the owner was
sensitive. Afterward she showed me a lot of silver things her pets had
won--eye-cups and custard dishes, and coffee urns and things, about a
dozen, with their names engraved on 'em. She said it was very annoying
to have 'em take after deer that way. What she wanted 'em to do was to
butcher rabbits where parties in the right garments could stand and look
on.
"Next day they tried again; and one fool rabbit was soon gone in for
keenly to the renewed sound of sister's bitter sobs, and brother looking
like he'd been in jail two years--no colour left at all in his face. But
pretty soon the pack took up the scent of a deer again, and that was the
end of another day's sport. Brother and sister looked glad and resumed
their peaceful sports. He hunted butterflies with a net, and she set
down and looked at birds through an opera glass and wrote down things
about their personal appearance in a notebook. The old lady changed to
her cowboy suit and went out and roped three steers--just to work her
mad off, I guess.
"Well, this time the beagles not only limped in at a shocking hour of
the night but three of the others had had their beauty marred by a demon
rabbit or something. They had been licked very thoroughly, indeed; and
the old lady now said it must be a grizzly bear, and brother and sister
beamed on her and said: 'What a shame!' And would they hunt again next
day? For the first time they seemed quite mad about the sport. Mother
said they better wait till she went out and shot the grizzly, but I told
her we hadn't had any grizzlies round here for years; so she said, all
right, they could lick anything less than a grizzly. And they beagled
again next day, with terrible and inspiring results, not only to Rex II
and Lady Blessington again, but to two of the others that hadn't been
touched before.
"This left only two of the pack that hadn't been horribly abused by some
unknown varmint; so a halt had to be called for three days while Red
Cross work was done. Brother and sister tried to look regretful and
complained about this break in the ripping sport; but their manner was
artificial. They spent the time riding peacefully round up in the cañon,
pretending to look for the wild creature that had chewed their little
pets. They come back one day and cheered their mother a whole lot by
telling her the pack had been over the pass as far as the house of a
worthy rancher, Mr. Floud by name. They said Mr. Floud didn't believe
there was any bears round, and further said he greatly admired the
beagles, even though at first they seriously annoyed his pet kitten.
"The old lady said this was ripping of Mr. Floud, to take it in such a
sporting way, because many people in the past had tried to make all
sorts of nasty rows when her pets had happened to kill their kittens.
Brother said, yes; Mr. Floud took the whole thing in a true sporting
way, and he hoped the pack would soon be well enough to hunt again.
Right then I detected falsity in his manner; I couldn't make out what
it was, but I knew he was putting something over on mother.
"Two days later the dogs was fit again, and another gay hunt was had,
with a rabbit to the good in the first twenty minutes, and then the
usual break, when they struck a deer scent. Brother said he'd follow on
his horse this time and try to get whatever was bothering 'em. He
didn't. He said he lost 'em. They crawled back at night, well chewed;
and mother was now frantic.
"There had to be another three days in bed for the cunning little
murderers, after which brother and sister both went out with 'em on
horseback, with the same mysterious results--except that Rex II didn't
get in till next day and looked like he'd come through a feed chopper.
For the next hunt, four days after that, the old lady went, too, all of
'em on horseback; but the same slinking marauder got at the pack before
they could come up with it, and two of 'em had to be brought back in
arms. They all stopped here on the way home to tell about the mystery.
Brother and sister was very cheerful and mad about the sport, but their
manner was falser than ever. Mother says the pack is being ruined, and
she wouldn't continue the sport, except it has roused the first gleam of
interest her chits has ever showed in anything worth while. I caught the
chits looking at each other in a guilty manner when she says this, and
my curiosity wakes up. I says next time they go out I will be pleased to
go with 'em; and the old lady thanks me and says mebbe I can solve this
reprehensible mystery.
"In another three days they come by for me. The beagles was looking an
awful lot different from what I had first seen 'em. They was not only
beautifully scarred but they acted kind of timid and reproachful, and
their yapping had a note of caution in it that I hadn't noticed before.
So I got on my pony and went along to help probe the crime. We worked up
the cañon trail and over the pass, with the pack staying meekly behind
most of the time. Just the other side of the pass they actually got a
rabbit, though not working with their old-time recklessness, I thought.
Of course we had to stop and watch this. Brother looked the other way
and sister just set there biting her lips, with an evil gleam in her
pale-blue eyes. Not a beagle in the pack would have trusted himself
alone with her at that minute if he'd known his business.
"Then we rode on down toward Cousin Egbert's shack, with nothing further
happening and the pups staying back in a highly conservative manner.
Brother says that yonder is the Mr. Floud's place he had spoken of, and
ma wants to know if he, too, goes in for ranching, and I says yes, he's
awfully keen about it; so she says we'll ride over and chat with him and
perhaps he can suggest some solution of the mystery in hand. I said all
right, and we ride up.
"Cousin Egbert is tipped back in a chair outside the door, reading a
Sunday paper. Whenever he gets one up here he always reads it clean
through, from murders to want ads. And he'd got into this about as far
as the beauty hints and secrets of the toilet. Well, he was very polite
and awkward, and asked us into his dinky little shack; and the old lady
says she hears he is quite mad about ranching, and he says, Oh,
yes--only it don't help matters any to get mad; and he finds a chair for
her, and the rest of us set on stools and the bed; and just then she
notices that the beagle pack has halted about thirty feet from the door,
and some of 'em is milling and acting like they think of starting for
home at once.
"So out she goes and orders the little pets up. They didn't want to come
one bit; it seemed like they was afraid of something, but they was well
disciplined and they finally crawled forward, looking like they didn't
know what minute something cruel might happen.
"The old lady petted 'em and made 'em lie down, and asked Cousin Egbert
if he'd ever seen better ones, or even as good; and he said No, ma'am;
they was sure fine beetles. Then she begun to tell him about some wild
animal that had been attacking 'em, a grizzly, or mebbe a mountain lion,
with cubs; and he is saying in a very false manner that he can't think
what would want to harm such playful little pets, and so on. All this
time the pets is in fine attitudes of watchful waiting, and I'm just
beginning to suspect a certain possibility when it actually happens.
"There was an open window high up in the log wall acrost from the door,
and old Kate jumps up onto the sill from the outside. He was one fierce
object, let me tell you; weighing about thirty pounds, all muscle, with
one ear gone, and an eye missing that a porcupine quill got into, and a
lot of fresh new battle scars. We all got a good look at him while he
crouched there for a second, purring like a twelve-cylinder car and
twitching his whiskers at us in a lazy way, like he wanted to have folks
make a fuss over him. And then, all at once, catching sight of the dogs,
he changed to a demon; his back up, his whiskers in a stiff tremble, and
his half of a tail grown double in girth.
"I looked quick to the dogs, and they was froze stiff with horror for at
least another second. Then they made one scramble for the open door, and
Kate made a beautiful spring for the bunch, landing on the back of the
last one with a yell of triumph. Mother shrieked, too, and we all rushed
to the door to see one of the prettiest chases you'd want to look at,
with old Kate handing out the side wipes every time he could get near
one of the dogs. They fled down over the creek bank and a minute later
we could see the pack legging it up the other side to beat the cars,
losing Kate--I guess because he didn't like to get his hide wet.
"When the first shock of this wore off, here was silly old Egbert, in a
weak voice, calling: 'Kitty, Kitty, Kitty! Here, Kitty! Here, Kitty!'
Then we notice brother and sister. Brother is waving his hat in the air
and yelling 'Yoicks!' and 'Gone away!' and 'Fair sport, by Jove!'--just
like some crazy man; and sister, with her chest going up and down, is
clapping her hands and yelling 'Goody! Goody! Goody!' and squealing with
helpless laughter. Mother just stood gazing at 'em in horrible silence.
Pretty soon they felt it and stopped, looking like a couple of kids that
know it's spanking time.
"'So!' says mother. That's all she said--just, 'So!'
"But she stuffed the simple word with eloquence; she left it pregnant
with meaning, as they say. Then she stalked loftily out and got on her
horse, brother and sister slinking after her. I guess I slunk, too,
though it was none of my doings. Cousin Egbert kind of sidled along,
mumbling about Kitty:
"'Kitty was quite frightened of the pets first time he seen 'em; but
someway to-day it seemed like he had lost much of his fear--seemed more
like he had wanted to play with 'em, or something.'
"Nobody listened to the doddering old wretch, but I caught brother
winking at him behind mother's back. Then we all rode off in lofty
silence, headed by mother, who never once looked back to her late host,
even if he was mad about ranching. We got up over the pass and the pack
of ruined beagles begun to straggle out of the underbrush. A good big
buck rabbit with any nerve could have put 'em all on the run again. You
could tell that. They slunk along at the tail of the parade. I dropped
out informally when it passed the place here. It seemed like something
might happen where they'd want only near members of the family present.
"I don't hear anything from Broadmoor next day; so the morning after
that I ride over to Cousin Egbert's to see if I couldn't get a better
line on the recent tragedy. He was still on his Sunday paper, having
finished an article telling that man had once been scaly, like a fish;
and was just beginning the fashion notes, with pictures showing that the
smart frock was now patterned like an awning. Old Kate was lying on a
bench in the sun, trying to lick a new puncture he'd got in his chest.
"I started right in on the old reprobate. I said it was a pretty
how-de-do if a distinguished lady amateur, trying to raise ranching to
the dignity of a sport, couldn't turn loose a few prize beagles without
having 'em taken for a hunt breakfast by a nefarious beast that ought to
be in a stout cage in a circus this minute! I thought, of course, this
would insult him; but he sunned right up and admitted that Kate was
about half to three-quarters bobcat; and wasn't he a fine specimen? And
if he could only get about eight more as good he'd have a pack of
beagle-cats that would be the envy of the whole sporting world.
"'It ain't done!' I remarked, aiming to crush him.
"'It is, too!' Egbert says. 'I did it myself. Look what I already done,
just with Kitty alone!'
"'How'd it start?' I asked him.
"'Easy! says he. 'They took Kate for a rabbit and Kate took them for
rabbits. It was a mutual error. They found out theirs right soon; but I
bet Kate ain't found out his, even to this day. I bet he thinks they're
just a new kind of rabbit that's been started. The first day they broke
in here he was loafin' round out in front, and naturally he started for
'em, though probably surprised to see rabbits travelling in a bunch.
Also, they see Kate and start for him, which must of startled him good
and plenty. He'd never had rabbits make for him before. He pulled up so
quick he skidded. I could see his mind working. Don't tell me that cat
ain't got brains like a human! He was saying to himself: "Is this here a
new kind of rabbits, or is it a joke--or what? Mebbe I better not try
anything rash till I find out."
"'They was still coming for him acrost the flat, with their tongues out;
so he soopled himself up a bit with a few jumps and made for that there
big down spruce. He lands on the trunk and runs along it to where the
top begins. He has it all worked out. He's saying: "If this here is a
joke, all right; but if it ain't a joke I better have some place back of
me for a kind of refuge."
"'So up come these strange rabbits and started to jump for him on the
trunk of the spruce; but it's pretty high and they can't quite make it.
And in a minute they sort of suspicion something on their part, because
Kate has rared his back and is giving 'em a line of abuse they never
heard from any rabbit yet. Awful wicked it was, and they sure got
puzzled. I could hear one of 'em saying: "Aw, come on! That ain't no
regular rabbit; he don't look like a rabbit, and he don't talk like a
rabbit, and he don't act like a rabbit!" Then another would say: "What
of it? What do we care if he's a regular rabbit or not? Let's get him,
anyway, and take him apart!"
"'So they all begin to jump again and can't quite make it till their
leader says he'll show 'em a real jump. He backs off a little to get a
run and lands right on the log. Then he wished he hadn't. Old Kate
worked so quick I couldn't hardly follow it. In about three seconds this
leader lands on his back down in the bunch, squealing like one of these
Italian sopranos when the flute follows her up. He crawls off on his
stomach, still howling, and I see he's had a couple of wipes over the
eye, and one of his ears is shredded.
"'A couple of the others come over to ask him how it happened, and what
he quit for, and did his foot slip; and he says: "Mark my words,
gentlemen; we got our work cut out for us here. That animal is acting
less and less like a rabbit every minute. He's more turbulent and he's
got spurs on." He goes on talking this way while the others bark at
Kate, and Kate dares any one of 'em to come on up there and have it out,
man to man. Finally another lands on the tree trunk and gets what the
first one got. I could see it this time. Kate done some dandy shortarm
work in the clinches and hurled him off on his back like the other one;
then he stands there sharpening his claws on the bark and grinning in a
masterful way. He was saying: "You will, will you?"
"'Then one of these beetles must of said, "Come on, boys--all together
now!" for four of 'em landed up on the trunk all to once. And Kate
wasn't there. He'd had the top of this fallen tree at his back, and he
kites up a limb about ten feet above their heads and stretches out for a
rest, cool as anything, licking his paws and purring like he enjoyed the
beautiful summer day, and wasn't everything calm and lovely? It was
awful insulting the way he looked down on 'em, with his eyes half shut.
And you never seen beetles so astonished in your life. They just
couldn't believe their eyes, seeing a rabbit act that way! The leader
limps over and says: "There! What did I tell you, smarties? I guess next
time you'll take my word for it. I guess you can see plain enough now he
ain't no rabbit, the way he skinned up that tree."
"'They calm down a mite at this, and one or two says they thought he was
right from the first; and some others says: "Well, it wouldn't make no
difference what he was, rabbit or no rabbit, if he'd just come down and
meet the bunch of us fair and square; but the dirty coward is afraid to
fight us, except one at a time." The leader is very firm, though. He
tells 'em that if this here object ain't a rabbit they got no right to
molest him, and if he is a rabbit he's gone crazy, and wouldn't be good
to eat, anyway; so they better go find one that acts sensible. And he
gets 'em away, all talking about it excitedly.
"'Well, sir, you wouldn't believe how tickled Kate was all that day. It
was like he'd found a new interest in life. And next time these beetles
come up they pull off another grand scrap. Kate laid for 'em just this
side of the creek and let 'ern chase him back to his tree. He skun up
three others that day, still pursuin' his cowardly tactics of fighting
'em one at a time, and retirin' to his perch when three or four would
come at once. Also, when they give him up again and started off he come
down and chased 'em to the creek bank, like you seen the other day,
telling 'em to be sure and not forget the number, because he ain't had
so much fun since he met up with a woodchuck. The next time they showed
up he'd got so contemptuous of 'em that he'd leap down and engage one
that had got separated from the pack. He had two of 'em darn' near out
before they was rescued by their friends.
"'Then, a few days later, along comes the pack again--only this time
they're being herded by the lad with the ginger-coloured whiskers. He
gets off his horse and says how do I do, and what lovely weather, and
how bracing the air is; and I says what pretty beetles he has; and he
says it's ripping sport; and I says, yes; Kate has ripped up a number of
'em, but I hope he don't blame me none, because my Kitty has to defend
himself. Say, this guy brightened up and like to took me off my feet! He
grabs both my hands and shakes 'em warmly for a long time and says do I
think my cat can put the whole bunch on the blink?--or words to that
effect. And I says it's the surest thing in the world; but why? And he
says, then the sooner the better, because it's a barbarous sport and
every last beetle ought to be thoroughly killed; and when they are, in
case his mother don't find out the crooked work, mebbe he'll be let to
raise orchids or do something useful in the world, instead of frittering
his life away in the vain pursuit of pleasure.
"'Oh, he was the chatty lad, all right! And I felt kind of sorry for
him; so I says Kate would dearly love to wipe these beetles out one by
one; and he says: 'Capital, by Jove!' And I call Kitty and we pull off
another nice little scrap on the fallen tree, though it's hard to make
the beetles take much interest in it now, except in the way of
self-defense. Even at that, they're kept plenty occupied.
"'Say, this guy is the happiest you ever see one when Kate has about
four more of 'em licked to a standstill in jigtime. He says he has one
more favour to ask of me: Will I allow his sister to come up some day
and see the lovely carnage? And I says, Sure! Kate will be glad to
oblige any time. He says he'll fetch her up the first time the pack is
able to get out again, and he keeps on chattering like a child that's
found a new play-pretty.
"'I can't hardly get him off the place, he's so greatful to me. He tells
me his biography and about how this here blond guy has been roughing
him all over Europe and Asia, and how it had got to stop right here,
because a man has a right to live his own life, after all; and then he
branches off in a nutty way to tell me that he always takes a cold
shower every morning, winter and summer, and he never could read a line
of Sir Walter Scott, and why don't some genius invent a fountain pen
that will work at all times? and so on, till it sounded delirious. But
he left at last.
"'And we had some good ripping sport when him and sister come up. I
never seen such a blood-thirsty female. She'd nearly laugh her head off
when Kitty was gouging the eye out of one of these cunning little
scamps. She said if I'd ever seen the nasty curs pile on to one poor
defenseless little bunny I'd understand why she was so keen about my
beetle-cat. That's what she called Kate.
"'Kate, he got kind of bored with the whole business after that. He
hadn't actually eat one yet, and mebbe that was all that kept him
going--wanting to see if they'd taste any better than regular rabbits.
But you bet they knew now that Kate wasn't any kind of a rabbit. They
didn't have any more arguments on that point--they knew darn' well he
didn't have a drop of rabbit blood in his veins. Oh, he's some
beetle-cat, all right!'
"That's Cousin Egbert for you! Can you beat him--changing round and
being proud of this mixed marriage that he had formerly held to be a
scandal!
"Well, I go back home, and here is mother waiting for me. And she's a
changed woman. She's actually give up trying to make anything out of her
chits, because after considerable browbeating and third-degree stuff,
they've come through with the whole evil conspiracy--how they'd got her
prize-winning beagles licked by a common cat that wouldn't be let into
any bench show on earth! Her spirit was broke.
"'My poor son,' she says, 'I shall allow to go his silly way after this
outrageous bit of double-dealing. I think it useless to strive further
with him. He has not only confessed all the foul details, but he came
brazenly out with the assertion that a man has a right to lead his own
life--and he barely thirty!'
"She goes on to say that it's this terrible twentieth-century modernism
that has infected him. She says that, first woman sets up a claim to
live her own life, and now men are claiming the same right, even one as
carefully raised and guarded as her boy has been; and what are we coming
to? But, anyway, she did her best for him.
"Pretty soon Broadmoor was closed like you seen it to-day. Sister is now
back in Boston, keeping tabs on orchestras and attending lectures on the
higher birds; and brother at last has his orchid ranch somewhere down in
California. He's got one pet orchid that I heard cost twelve thousand
dollars--I don't know why. But he's very happy living his own life. The
last I heard of mother she was exploring the headwaters of the Amazon
River, hunting crocodiles and jaguars and natives, and so on.
"She was a good old sport, though. She showed that by the way she
simmered down about Cousin Egbert's cat before she left. At first, she
wanted to lay for it and put a bullet through its cowardly heart. Then
she must of seen the laugh was on her, all right; for what did she do?
Why, the last thing she done was to box up all these silver cups her
beagles had won and send 'em over to Kate, in care of his owner--all the
eye-cups and custard bowls, and so on. Cousin Egbert shows 'em off to
every one.
"'Just a few cups that Kate won,' he'll say. 'I want to tell you he's
some beetle-cat! Look what he's come up to--and out of nothing, you
might say!'"