"Elevators!" Tish went on scornfully. "Street cars and taxicabs! No
wonder your bodies are mere masses of protoplasm, or cellulose, or
whatever it is."
"Since when," said Aggie, "have you been walking to develop yourself,
Tish? I must say--"
Here anger brought on one of her sneezing attacks, and she was unable to
finish.
Tish stood before us oracularly. "After next September," she said, "you
will both scorn the sloth of civilization. You will move about for the
joy of moving about. You will have cast off the shackles of the flesh
and be born anew. That is, if a plan of mine goes through. Lizzie, you
will lose fifty pounds!"
Well, I didn't want to lose fifty pounds. After our summer in the Maine
woods I had gone back to find that my new tailor-made coat, which had
fitted me exactly, and being stiffened with haircloth kept its shape off
and looked as if I myself were hanging to the hook, had caved in on me
in several places. Just as I had gone to the expense of having it taken
in I began to put on flesh again, and had to have it let out. Besides,
no woman over forty should ever reduce, at least not violently. She
wrinkles. My face that summer had fallen into accordion plaits, and I
had the curious feeling of having enough skin for two.
Aggie had suggested at that time that I have my cheeks filled out with
paraffin, which I believe cakes and gives the appearance of youth. But
Mrs. Ostermaier knew a woman who had done so, and being hit on one side
by a snowball, the padding broke in half, one part moving up under her
eye and the second lodging at the angle of her jaw. She tried lying on a
hot-water bottle to melt the pieces and bring them together again, but
they did not remain fixed, having developed a wandering habit and
slipping unexpectedly now and then. Mrs. Ostermaier says it is painful
to watch her holding them in place when she yawns.
Strangely enough, however, a few weeks later Tish's enthusiasm for the
West had apparently vanished. When several weeks went by and the atlas
had disappeared from her table, and she had given up vegetarianism for
Swedish movements, we felt that we were to have a quiet summer after
all, and Aggie wrote to a hotel in Asbury Park about rooms for July and
August.
There was a real change in Tish. She stopped knitting abdominal bands
for the soldiers in Europe, for one thing, although she had sent over
almost a dozen very tasty ones. In the evenings, when we dropped in to
chat with her, she said very little and invariably dozed in her chair.
On one such occasion, Aggie having inadvertently stepped on the rocker
of her chair while endeavoring by laying a hand on Tish's brow to
discover if she was feverish, the chair tilted back and Tish wakened
with a jerk.
She immediately fell to groaning and clasped her hands to the small of
her back, quite ignoring poor Aggie, whom the chair had caught in the
epigastric region, and who was compelled for some time to struggle for
breath.
"Jumping Jehoshaphat!" said Tish in an angry tone. It is rare for Tish
to use the name of a Biblical character in this way, but she was clearly
suffering. "What in the world are you doing, Aggie?"
"T-t-trying to breathe," poor Aggie replied.
"Then I wish," Tish said coldly, "that you would make the effort some
place else than on the rocker of my chair. You jarred me, and I am in no
state to be jarred."
But she refused to explain further, beyond saying, in reply to a
question of mine, that she was not feverish and that she had not been
asleep, having merely closed her eyes to rest them. Also she affirmed
that she was not taking riding-lessons. We both noticed however, that
she did not leave her chair during the time we were there, and that she
was sitting on the sofa cushion I had made her for the previous
Christmas, and on which I had embroidered the poet Moore's beautiful
words: "Come, rest in this bosom."
As Aggie was still feeling faint, I advised her to take a mouthful of
blackberry cordial, which Tish keeps for emergencies in her bathroom
closet. Immediately following her departure the calm of the evening was
broken by a loud shriek.
It appeared, on my rushing to the bathroom, while Tish sat heartlessly
still, that Aggie, not seeing a glass, had placed the bottle to her lips
and taken quite a large mouthful of liniment, which in color resembled
the cordial. I found her sitting on the edge of the bathtub in a state
of collapse.
"I'm poisoned!" she groaned. "Oh, Lizzie, I am not fit to die!"
I flew with the bottle to Tish, who was very calm and stealthily rubbing
one of her ankles.
"Do her good," Tish said. "Take some of the stiffness out of her liver,
for one thing. But you might keep an eye on her. It's full of alcohol."
"What's the antidote?" I asked, hearing Aggie's low groans.
"The gold cure is the only thing I can think of at the moment," said
Tish coldly, and started on the other ankle.
I merely record this incident to show the change in Tish. Aggie was not
seriously upset, although dizzy for an hour or so and very talkative,
especially about Mr. Wiggins.
Tish was changed. Her life, which mostly had been an open book to us,
became filled with mystery. There were whole days when she was not to be
located anywhere, and evenings, as I have stated, when she dozed in her
chair.
As usual when we are worried about Tish, we consulted her nephew,
Charlie Sands. But like all members of the masculine sex he refused to
be worried.
"She'll be all right," he observed. "She takes these spells. But trust
the old lady to come up smiling."
"It's either Christian Science or osteopathy," Aggie said dolefully.
"She's not herself. The fruit cake she sent me the other day tasted very
queer, and Hannah thinks she put ointment in instead of butter."
"Ointments!" observed Charlie thoughtfully. "And salves! By George, I
wonder--I'll tell you," he said: "I'll keep an eye open for a few days.
The symptoms sound like--But never mind. I'll let you know."
We were compelled to be satisfied with this, but for several days we
lingered in anxiety. During that painful interval nothing occurred to
enlighten us, except one conversation with Tish.
We had taken dinner with her, and she seemed to be all right again and
more than usually active. She had given up the Bran-Nut after breaking
a tooth on it, and was eating rare beef, which she had heard was
digested in the spleen or some such place, thus resting the stomach for
a time. She left us, however, immediately after the meal, and Hannah,
her maid, tiptoed into the room.
"I'm that nervous I could scream," she said. "Do you know what she's
doing now?
"No, Hannah," I said with bitter sarcasm. "Long ago I learned never to
surmise what Miss Tish is doing."
"She's in the bathroom, standing on one foot and waving the other in the
air. She's been doing it," Hannah said, "for weeks. First one foot, then
the other. And that ain't all."
"You've been spying on Miss Tish," Aggie said. "Shame on you, Hannah!"
"I have, Miss Aggie. Spy I have and spy I will, while there's breath in
my body. Twenty years have I--Do you know what she does when she come
home from these sneakin' trips of hers? She sits in a hot bath until the
wonder is that her blood ain't turned to water. And after that she uses
liniment. Her underclothes is that stained up with it that I'm ashamed
to hang 'em out."
Here Tish returned and, after a suspicious glance at Hannah, sat down.
Aggie and I glanced at each other. She did not, as she had for some time
past, line the chair with pillows, and there was an air about her almost
of triumph.
She did not, however, volunteer any explanation. Aggie and I were driven
to speculation, in which we indulged on our way home, Aggie being my
guest at the time, on account of her janitor's children having measles,
and Aggie never having had them, although recalling a severe rash as a
child, with other measly symptoms.
"She has something in mind for next summer," said Aggie apprehensively,
"and she is preparing her strength for it. Tish is forehanded if nothing
else."
"Well," I remarked with some bitterness, "if we are going along it might
be well to prepare us too."
"Something," Aggie continued, "that requires landing on one foot with
the other in the air."
"Don't drivel," said I. "She's not likely going into the Russian ballet.
She's training her muscles, that's all."
But the mystery was solved the following morning when Charlie Sands
called me up.
"I've got it, beloved aunt," he said.
"Got what?" said I.
"What the old lady is up to. She's a wonder, and no mistake. Only I
think it was stingy of her not to let you and Aunt Aggie in."
He asked me to get Aggie and meet him at the office as soon as possible,
but he refused to explain further. And he continued to refuse until we
had arrived at our destination, a large brick building in the center of
the city.
"Now," he said, "take a long breath and go in. And mind--no excitement."
We went in. There was a band playing and people circling at a mile a
minute. In the center there was a cleared place, and Tish was there on
ice skates. An instructor had her by the arm, and as we looked she waved
him off, gave herself a shove forward with one foot, and then, with her
arms waving, she made a double curve, first on one foot and then on the
other.
"The outside edge, by George!" said Charlie Sands. "The old sport!"
Unluckily at that moment Tish saw us, and sat down violently on the ice.
And a quite nice-looking young man fell over her and lay stunned for
several seconds. We rushed round the arena, expecting to see them both
carried out, but Tish was uninjured, and came skating toward us with her
hands in her pockets. It was the young man who had to be assisted out.
"Well," she said, fetching up against the railing with a bang, "of
course you had to come before I was ready for you! In a week I'll really
be skating."
We said nothing, but looked at her, and I am afraid our glances showed
disapproval, for she straightened her hat with a jerk.
"Well?" she said. "You're not tongue-tied all of a sudden, are you?
Can't a woman take a little exercise without her family and friends
coming snooping round and acting as if she'd broken the Ten
Commandments?"
"Breaking the Ten Commandments!" I said witheringly. "Breaking a leg
more likely. If you could have seen yourself, Tish Carberry, sprawled on
that ice at your age, and both your arteries and your bones brittle, as
the specialist told you,--and I heard him myself,--you'd take those
things off your feet and go home and hide your head."
"I wish I had your breath, Lizzie," Tish said. "I'd be a submarine
diver."
Saying which she skated off, and did not come near us again. A young
gentleman went up to her and asked her to skate, though I doubt if she
had ever seen him before. And as we left the building in disapproval
they were doing fancy turns in the middle of the place, and a crowd was
gathering round them.
Owing to considerable feeling being roused by the foregoing incident,
we did not see much of Tish for a week. If a middle-aged woman wants to
make a spectacle of herself, both Aggie and I felt that she needed to be
taught a lesson. Besides, we knew Tish. With her, to conquer a thing is
to lose interest.
On the anniversary of the day Aggie became engaged to Mr. Wiggins, Tish
asked us both to dinner, and we buried the hatchet, or rather the
skates. It was when dessert came that we realized how everything that
had occurred had been preparation for the summer, and that we were not
going to Asbury Park, after all.
"It's like this," said Tish. "Hannah, go out and close the door, and
don't stand listening. I have figured it all out," she said, when Hannah
had slammed out. "The muscles used in skating are the ones used in
mountain-climbing. Besides, there may be times when a pair of skates
would be handy going over the glaciers. It's not called Glacier Park for
nothing, I dare say. When we went into the Maine woods we went
unprepared. This time I intend to be ready for any emergency."
But we gave her little encouragement. We would go along, and told her
so. But further than that I refused to prepare. I would not skate, and
said so.
"Very well, Lizzie," she said. "Don't blame me if you find yourself
unable to cope with mountain hardships. I merely felt this way: if each
of us could do one thing well it might be helpful. There's always snow,
and if Aggie would learn to use snowshoes it might be valuable."
"Where could I practice?" Aggie demanded.
But Tish went on, ignoring Aggie's sarcastic tone. "And if you, Lizzie,
would learn to throw a lasso, or lariat,--I believe both terms are
correct,--it would be a great advantage, especially in case of meeting
ferocious animals. The park laws will not allow us to kill them, and it
would be mighty convenient, Lizzie. Not to mention that it would be an
accomplishment few women possess."
I refused to make the attempt, although Tish sent for the clothesline,
and with the aid of the encyclopædia made a loop in the end of it.
Finally she became interested herself, and when we left rather
downhearted at ten o'clock she had caught the rocking-chair three times
and broken the clock.
Aggie and I prepared with little enthusiasm, I must confess. We had as
much love for the rocks and rills of our great country as Tish, but, as
Aggie observed, there were rocks and rocks, and one could love them
without climbing up them or falling off them.
The only comfort we had was that Charlie Sands said that we should ride
ponies, and not horses. My niece's children have a pony which is very
gentle and not much larger than a dog, which comes up on the porch for
lumps of sugar. We were lured to a false sense of security, I must say.
As far as we could see, Tish was making few preparations for the trip.
She said we could get everything we needed at the park entrance, and
that the riding was merely sitting in a saddle and letting the pony do
the rest. But on the 21st of June, the anniversary of the day Aggie was
to have been married, we went out to decorate Mr. Wiggins's last
resting-place, and coming out of the cemetery we met Tish.
She was on a horse, astride!
She was not alone. A gentleman was riding beside her, and he had her
horse by a long leather strap.
She pretended not to see us, and Aggie unfortunately waved her red
parasol at her. The result was most amazing. The beast she was on jerked
itself free in an instant, and with the same movement, apparently,
leaped the hedge beside the road. One moment there was Tish, in a derby
hat and breeches, and the next moment there was only the gentleman, with
his mouth open.
Aggie collapsed, moaning, in the road, and beyond the hedge we could
hear the horse leaping tombstones in the cemetery.
"Oh, Tish!" Aggie wailed.
I broke my way through the hedge to find what was left of her, while the
riding-master bolted for the gate. But to my intense surprise Tish was
not on the ground. Then I saw her. She was still on the creature, and
she was coming back along the road, with her riding-hat on the back of
her head and a gleam in her eye that I knew well enough was a gleam of
triumph.
She halted the thing beside me and looked down with a patronizing air.
"He's a trifle nervous this morning," she said calmly. "Hasn't been
worked enough. Good horse, though,--very neat jump."
Then she rode on and out through the gates, ignoring Aggie's pitiful
wail and scorning the leading-string the instructor offered.
We reached Glacier Park without difficulty, although Tish insisted on
talking to the most ordinary people on the train, and once, losing her,
we found her in the drawing-room learning to play bridge, although not a
card-player, except for casino. Though nothing has ever been said, I
believe she learned when too late that they were playing for money, as
she borrowed ten dollars from me late in the afternoon and was looking
rather pale.
"What do you think?" she said, while I was getting the money from the
safety pocket under my skirt. "The young man who knocked me down on the
ice that day is on the train. I've just exchanged a few words with him.
He was not much hurt, although unconscious for a short time. His name is
Bell--James C. Bell."
Soon after that Tish brought him to us, and we had a nice talk. He said
he had not been badly hurt on the ice, although he got a cut on the
forehead from Tish's skate, requiring two stitches.
After a time he and Aggie went out on the platform, only returning when
Aggie got a cinder in her eye.
"Just think," she said as he went for water to use in my eye-cup, "he
is going to meet the girl he is in love with out at the park. She has
been there for four weeks. They are engaged. He is very much in love. He
didn't talk of anything else."
She told him she had confided his tender secret to us, and instead of
looking conscious he seemed glad to have three people instead of one to
talk to about her.
"You see, it's like this," he said: "She is very good looking, and in
her town a moving-picture company has its studio. That part's all right.
I suppose we have to have movies. But the fool of a director met her at
a party, and said she would photograph well and ought to be with them.
He offered her a salary, and it went to her head. She's young," he
added, "and he said she could be as great a hit as Mary Pickford."
"How sad!" said Aggie. "But of course she refused?"
"Well, no, she liked the idea. It got me worried. Worried her people
too. Her father's able to give her a good home, and I'm expecting to
take that job off his hands in about a year. But girls are queer. She
wanted to try it awfully."
It developed that he had gone to her folks about it, and they'd offered
her a vacation with some of her school friends in Glacier Park.
"It's pretty wild out there," he went on, "and we felt that the air, and
horseback riding and everything, would make her forget the movies. I
hope so. She's there now. But she's had the bug pretty hard. Got so she
was always posing, without knowing it."
But he was hopeful that she would be cured, and said she was to meet him
at the station.
"She's an awfully nice girl, you understand," he finished. "It's only
that this thing got hold of her and needed driving out."
Well, we were watching when the train drew in at Glacier Park Station,
and she was there. She was a very pretty girl, and it was quite touching
to see him look at her. But Aggie observed something and remarked on it.
"She's not as glad to see him as he is to see her," she said. "He was
going to kiss her, and she moved back."
In the crowd we lost sight of them, but that evening, sitting in the
lobby of the hotel, we saw Mr. Bell wandering round alone. He looked
depressed, and Aggie beckoned to him.
"How is everything?" she asked. "Is the cure working?"
He dropped into a chair and looked straight ahead.
"Not so you could notice it!" he said bitterly. "Would you believe that
there's a moving-picture outfit here, taking scenes in the park?"
"No!"
"There is. They've taken two thousand feet of her already, dressed like
an Indian," he said in a tone of suppressed fury. "It makes me sick. I
dare say if we tied her in a well some fool would lower a camera on a
rope."
Just at that moment she sauntered past us with a reddish-haired young
man. Mr. Bell ignored her, although I saw her try to catch his eye.
"That's the moving-picture man with her," he said in a low, violent tone
when they had passed. "Name's Oliver." He groaned. "He's told her she
ought to go in for the business. She'd be a second Mary Pickford! I'd
like to kill him!" He rose savagely and left us.
We spent the night in the hotel at the park entrance, and I could not
get to sleep. Tish was busy engaging a guide and going over our
supplies, and at eleven o'clock Aggie came into my room and sat down on
the bed.
"I can't sleep, Lizzie," she said. "That poor Mr. Bell is on my mind.
Besides, did you see those ferocious Indians hanging round?"
Well, I had seen them, but said nothing.
"They would scalp one as quick as not," Aggie went on. "And who's to
know but that our guide will be in league with them? I've lost my
teeth," she said with a flash of spirit, "but so far I've kept my hair,
and mean to if possible. That old Indian has a scalp tied to the end of
a stick. Lizzie, I'm nervous."
"If it is only hair they want, I don't mind their taking my switch," I
observed, trying to be facetious, although uneasy. As to the switch, it
no longer matched my hair, and I would have parted from it without a
pang.
"And another thing," said Aggie: "Tish can talk about ponies until she
is black in the face. The creatures are horses. I've seen them."
Well, I knew that, too, by that time. As we walked to the hotel from the
train I had seen one of them carrying on. It was arching its back like a
cat that's just seen a strange dog, and with every arch it swelled its
stomach. At the third heave it split the strap that held the saddle on,
and then it kicked up in the rear and sent saddle and rider over its
head. So far as I had seen, no casualty had resulted, but it had set me
thinking. Given a beast with an India-rubber spine and no sense of
honor, I felt I would be helpless.
Tish came in just then and we confronted her.
[Illustration: "It's well enough for you, Tish Carberry, to talk about
gripping a horse with your knees"]
"Ponies!" I said bitterly. "They are horses, if I know a horse. And,
moreover, it's well enough for you, Tish Carberry, to talk about
gripping a horse with your knees. I'm not built that way, and you know
it. Besides, no knee grip will answer when a creature begins to act like
a cat in a fit."
Aggie here had a bright idea. She said that she had seen pictures of
pneumatic jackets to keep people from drowning, and that Mr. McKee, a
buyer at one of the stores at home, had taken one, fully inflated, when
he crossed to Paris for autumn suits.
"I would like to have one, Tish," she finished. "It would break the
force of a fall anyhow, even if it did puncture."
Tish, who was still dressed, went out to the curio shop in the lobby,
and returned with the sad news that there was nothing of the sort on
sale.
We were late in getting started the next morning owing partly to Aggie's
having put her riding-breeches on wrong, and being unable to sit down
when once in the saddle. But the main reason was the guide we had
engaged. Tish heard him using profane language to one of the horses and
dismissed him on the spot.
The man who was providing our horses and outfit, however, understood,
and in a short time returned with another man.
"I've got a good one for you now, Miss Carberry," he said. "Safe and
perfectly gentle, and as mild as milk. Only has one fault, and maybe you
won't mind that. He smokes considerably."
"I don't object, as long as it's in the open air," Tish said.
So that was arranged. But I must say that the new man did not look mild.
He had red hair, although a nice smile with a gold tooth, and his
trousers were of white fur, which looked hot for summer.
"You are sure that you don't use strong language?" Tish asked.
"No, ma'am," he said. "I was raised strict, and very particular as to
swearing. Dear, dear now, would you look at that cinch! Blow up their
little tummies, they do, when they're cinched, and when they breathe it
out, the saddle's as loose as the tongues of some of these here
tourists."
Tish swung herself up without any trouble, but owing to a large canvas
bag on the back of my saddle I was unable to get my leg across, and
was compelled to have it worked over, a little at a time. At last,
however, we were ready. A white pack-horse, carrying our tents and
cooking-utensils, was led by Bill, which proved to be the name of our
cowboy guide.
Mr. Bell came to say good-bye and to wish us luck. But he looked
unhappy, and there was no sign whatever of the young lady, whose name we
had learned was Helen.
"I may see you on the trail," he said sadly. "I'm about sick of this
place, and I'm thinking of clearing out."
Aggie reminded him that faint heart never won fair lady, but he only
shook his head.
"I'm not so sure that I want to win," he said. "Marriage is a serious
business, and I don't know that I'd care to have a wife that followed a
camera like a street kid follows a brass band. It wouldn't make for a
quiet home."
We left him staring wistfully into the distance.
Tish sat in her saddle and surveyed the mountain peaks that rose behind
the hotel.
"Twenty centuries are looking down upon us!" she said. "The crest of our
native land lies before us. We will conquer those beetling crags, or die
trying. All right, Bill. Forward!"
Bill led off, followed by the pack-horse, then Tish, Aggie and myself.
We kept on in this order for some time, which gave me a chance to
observe Aggie carefully. I am not much of a horsewoman myself, having
never been on a horse before. But my father was fond of riding, and I
soon adapted myself to the horse's gait, especially when walking. On
level stretches, however, where Bill spurred his horse to a trot, I was
not so comfortable, and Aggie appeared to strike the saddle in a
different spot every time she descended.
Once, on her turning her profile to me in a glance of despair, I was
struck by the strange and collapsed appearance of her face. This was
explained, however, when my horse caught up to hers on a wider stretch
of road, and I saw that she had taken out her teeth and was holding them
in her hand.
"Al-almost swallowed them," she gasped. "Oh, Lizzie, to think of a
summer of this!"
At last we left the road and turned onto a footpath, which instantly
commenced to rise. Tish called back something about the beauties of
nature and riding over a carpet of flowers, but my horse was fording a
small stream at the time and I was too occupied to reply. The path--or
trail, which is what Bill called it--grew more steep, and I let go of
the lines and held to the horn of my saddle. The horses were climbing
like goats.
"Tish," Aggie called desperately, "I can't stand this. I'm going back!
I'm--Lordamighty!"
Fortunately Tish did not hear this. We had suddenly emerged on the brink
of a precipice. A two-foot path clung to the cliff, and along the very
edge of this the horses walked, looking down in an interested manner now
and then. My blood turned to water and I closed my eyes.
"Tish!" Aggie shrieked.
But the only effect of this was to start her horse into a trot. I had
closed my eyes, but I opened them in time to see Aggie give a wild
clutch and a low moan.
In a few moments the trail left the edge, and Aggie turned in her saddle
and looked back at me.
"I lost my lower set back there," she said. "They went over the edge. I
suppose they're falling yet."
"It's a good thing it wasn't the upper set," I said, to comfort her. "As
far as appearance goes--"
"Appearance!" she said bitterly. "Do you suppose we'll meet anybody but
desperadoes and Indians in a place like this? And not an egg with us, of
course."
The eggs referred to her diet, as at different times, when having her
teeth repaired, she can eat little else.
"Ham," she called back in a surly tone, "and hard tack, I suppose! I'll
starve, Lizzie, that's all. If only we had brought some junket tablets!"
With the exception of this incident the morning was quiet. Tish and Bill
talked prohibition, which he believed in, and the tin pans on the
pack-horse clattered, and we got higher all the time, and rode through
waterfalls and along the edge of death. By noon I did not much care if
the horses fell over or not. The skin was off me in a number of places,
and my horse did not like me, and showed it by nipping back at my leg
here and there.
At eleven o'clock, riding through a valley on a trail six inches wide,
Bill's horse stepped on a hornets' nest. The insects were probably dazed
at first, but by the time Tish's horse arrived they were prepared, and
the next thing we knew Tish's horse was flying up the mountain-side as
if it had gone crazy, and Bill was shouting to us to stop.
The last we saw of Tish for some time was her horse leaping a mountain
stream, and jumping like a kangaroo, and Bill was following.
"She'll be killed!" Aggie cried. "Oh, Tish, Tish!"
"Don't yell," I said. "You'll start the horses. And for Heaven's sake,
Aggie," I added grimly, "remember that this is a pleasure trip."
It was a half-hour before Tish and Bill returned. Tish was a chastened
woman. She said little or nothing, but borrowed some ointment from me
for her face, where the branches of trees had scraped it, while Bill led
the horses round the fatal spot. I recall, however, that she said she
wished now that we had brought the other guide.
"Because I feel," she observed, "that a little strong language would be
a relief."
We had luncheon at noon in a sylvan glade, and Aggie was pathetic. She
dipped a cracker in a cup of tea, and sat off by herself under a tree.
Tish, however, had recovered her spirits.
"Throw out your chests, and breathe deep of this pure air unsullied by
civilization," she cried. "Aggie, fill yourself with ozone."
"Humph!" said Aggie. "It's about all I will fill myself with."
"Think," Tish observed, "of the fools and dolts who are living under
roofs, struggling, contending, plotting, while all Nature awaits them."
"With stings," Aggie said nastily, "and teeth, and horns, and claws, and
every old thing! Tish, I want to go back. I'm not happy, and I don't
enjoy scenery when I'm not happy. Besides, I can't eat the landscape."
As I look back, I believe it would have been better if we had returned.
I think of that day, some time later, when we made the long descent from
the Piegan Pass under such extraordinary circumstances, and I realize
that, although worse for our bodies, which had grown strong and agile,
so that I have, later on, seen Aggie mount her horse on a run, it would
have been better for our nerves had we returned.
We were all perfectly stiff after luncheon, and Aggie was sulking also.
Bill was compelled to lift us into our saddles, and again we started up
and up. The trail was now what he called a "switchback." Halfway up
Aggie refused to go farther, but on looking back decided not to return
either.
"I shall not go another step," she called. "Here I am, and here I stay
till I die."
"Very well," Tish said from overhead. "I suppose you don't expect us all
to stay and die with you. I'll tell your niece when I see her."
Aggie thought better of it, however, and followed on, with her eyes
closed and her lips moving in prayer. She happened to open them at a bad
place, although safe enough, according to Bill, and nothing to what we
were coming to a few days later. Opening them as she did on a ledge of
rock which sloped steeply for what appeared to be several miles down
on each side, she uttered a piercing shriek, followed by a sneeze. As
before, her horse started to run, and Aggie is, I believe Bill said,
the only person in the world who ever took that place at a canter.
We were to take things easy the first day, Bill advised. "Till you get
your muscles sort of eased up, ladies," he said. "If you haven't been
riding astride, a horse's back seems as wide as the roof of a church.
But we'll get a rest now. The rest of the way is walking."
"I can't walk," Aggie said. "I can't get my knees together."
"Sorry, ma'am," said Bill. "We're going down now, and the animals has to
be led. That's one of the diversions of a trip like this. First you ride
and than you walk. And then you ride again. This here's one of the show
places, although easy of access from the entrance. Be a good place for a
holdup, I've always said."
"A holdup?" Tish asked. Her enthusiasm seemed to have flagged somewhat,
but at this she brightened up.
"Yes'm. You see, we're near the Canadian border, and it would be easy
for a gang to slip over and back again. Don't know why we've never had
one. Yellowstone can boast of a number."
I observed tartly that I considered it nothing to boast of, but Bill did
not agree with me.
"It doesn't hurt a neighborhood none," he observed. "Adds romance, as
you might say."
He went on and, happening to slide on a piece of shale at that moment, I
sat down unexpectedly and the horse put its foot on me.