Chapter VI: Part 6

Peter wheeled from the men and headed for the bunch he was cutting out. He fancied that the man had looked at him strangely as he offered a choice of meanings for the “H L”—and yet he could not have known that Peter had gone to Rodney’s cabin last night. He flung himself heart and soul into his work, dashing full tilt at the snorting, stamping bedlam, enveloped in clouds of dust that dimmed the very daylight. Calves bleated piteously as they were jammed in the thickening pack. Peter shouted, swung the rope right and left, thinning the bunch about him, and a second later emerged, driving before him a cow, followed by a calf. These were turned over to cow-boys waiting for them. Time after time Hamilton returned to that mass of unconscious power, that with a single rush could have annihilated the little band of horsemen that handled them with the skill of a dealer shuffling, cutting, dealing a pack of cards.

To the left were the steers, pawing and tearing up the earth in a very ecstasy of impotent fury. Picture the giant propeller of an ocean liner thrashing about in the sands of the desert and you will have an approximate knowledge of the dust raised by a thousand steers. Their long-drawn, shrieking bellow had a sinister note. Horns, hoofs, tails beat the air, their bloodshot eyes looked menacingly in every direction; but a handful of cow-boys kept them in check, circling round and round them on ponies who did their work without waiting for quirt or rowel.

The noonday sun looked down upon a scene that to the eye unskilled in these things was as confusion worse confounded. Cow-boys dashed from nowhere in particular and did amazing things with a bit of rope, sending it through the air with snaky undulations after flying cattle. The rope, taking on lifelike coils, would pursue the flying beast like an aerial reptile, then the noose would fall true, and the thing was done. A second later a couple of cow-boys would be examining the disputed brand on the prone animal.

The smell of burning flesh and hair rose from the branding-pen and mingled with the stench of the herds in one noisome compound. The yells of the cow-punchers, each having its different bearing on the work in hand, were all but lost in the dull, steady roar of the cattle, bellowing in a chorus of fear, rage, and pain. And still the work of sorting, branding, cutting-out, went steadily on. Though an outsider would not have perceived it, the work was as crisp-cut and exact in its methods as the work in a counting-house. One of the cow-boys, in hot pursuit of a fractious heifer, encountered a gopher-hole, and horse and rider were down in a heap. In a second a dozen helping hands were dragging him from under the horse. He limped painfully, but stooped to examine his horse. The beast had broken a leg, and turned on the man eyes almost human in their pain.

“Bob, Bob!” The cow-puncher went down on his knees and put his arms about the neck of his pet. “My God!” he said, “me and Bob was just like brothers. Everybody knowed that.” He uncinched the saddle with clumsy tenderness; not a man thought a whit less of him because he could not see well at the moment. He turned his head away, that he might not see the well-aimed shot that would release his pet from pain. Then he limped away after another horse—it was all in the day’s work.

The beef contract called for a thousand steers, four and five years old, and these having been well and duly counted, and some dozen extra head added in case of accident, they were immediately started on the trail, as they could accomplish some seven or eight miles before being bedded down for the night. Hamilton, who had crossed to the beef side of the round-up to have a necessary word with the “Circle-Star” foreman, was amazed to find Simpson making ready to start with the trail herd. Peter inquired, with a few expletives, “how long he had been a cow-man, in good and regular standing?”

“As far as the regularity is concerned, that would be a pretty hard thing to answer, but he’s had an interest in the ‘XXX’ since—since—”

“He drove Rodney’s sheep over the cliff?”

“Ain’t you a little hard on the beginning of his cattle career? It usually goes by a more business-like name, but—” he shrugged his shoulders—“it’s up to the ‘XXX.’ We wouldn’t have him help to pull bogged cattle out of a creek.”

The beeves, hidden in a simoom of their own stamping, were gradually being pressed forward on the trail, a huge pawn, ignorant of its own strength, manipulated by a handful of men and horses. Its bellowing, like the tuning of a thousand bass-fiddles, shook the stillness like the long, sullen roar of the sea, as out of the plain they thundered, to feed the multitude.

“Well, there goes as pretty a bunch of porterhouses as I’d want to put tooth to. If I get away from here within the next two months, as I’m expecting, doubtless I’ll meet some of you again with your personality somewhat obscured by reason of fried onions.”

The foreman of the “Circle-Star” waved his hand after the slowly moving herd that gradually pressed forward like an army in loose marching order. Outriders galloped ahead, like darting insects, and pointing the lumbering mass that trailed its half-mile length at a snail’s-pace. The great column steadily advanced, checked, turned, led as easily as a child trails his little steam-cars after him on the nursery floor, and always by the little force of a handful of men and a few horses.

After supper came general relaxation around the camp-fire. The men, who had all day been strung to a keen pitch of nervous energy, lounged in loose, picturesque uncouthness, while each began to unravel his own lively miscellany of information or invention. There was jest, laughter, spinning of yarns, singing of songs. As Peter lay in the fire-light, smoking his brier-wood, he noticed that the man next him spent a great deal of time poring over a letter, holding it close to the blaze, now at arm’s-length, which was hardly surprising, considering the penmanship of the more common variety of _billet-doux_. The man was plainly disappointed that Peter would not notice or comment. Finally he folded it up, and with sentimental significance returned it to the left side pocket of his flannel shirt, and remarked to Peter, “It’s from her.”

“Indeed,” said Peter, who had not the faintest notion who “her” could be. “Let me congratulate you.”

“Yes, sir,” and there was conviction in the cow-puncher’s tone; “it’s from old man Kinson’s girl, up to the Basin, and the parson’s goin’ to give us the life sentence soon. A man gets sick o’ helling it all over creation.” He rolled a cigarette, lit it, took a puff or two, then turned to Peter, as one whose acquaintance with the broader side of life entitled him to speak with a certain authority. “Is it that, or is it that we’re getting on, a little long in the tooth, logy in our movements?”

“I think we’re just sick of helling it.” Peter looked towards the star that last night had been the beacon towards which he and Judith had scaled the heights. “Yes, we get sick of helling it after we’ve turned thirty.”

“Then I can’t be making a mistake. If I thought it was because I was getting on, I’d stampede this here range. It don’t seem fair to a girl to allow that you’re broke, tamed, and know the way to the corral, when it’s just that you’re needin’ to go to an old man’s home.”

“Now this is really love,” said Peter to himself, with interest. “This is humility.” A sympathetic liking for the self-distrustful lover surged hot and generous into Peter’s heart, and he continued to himself: “Now that’s what Judith would appreciate in a man, some directness, some humility!” Poor Judith! Poor burden-bearer! Who was to love her as she deserved to be loved, even as old man Kinson’s girl, of the Basin, was loved? Yet suppose some one did love her in such fashion and she returned it? It was a picture Peter had never conjured up before. Nonsense! he was accustomed to think of Judith a great deal, and that was not the way to think of her. “Dear Judith!” said Peter, half unconsciously to himself, and looked again at the fellow, who had gone back to his dingy letter and continued to reread it in the fire-light as if he hoped to extract some further meaning from the now familiar words. Nature had fitted him out with a rag-bag assortment of features—the nose of a clown, the eyes of a ferret, the mouth that hangs agape like a badly hinged door, the mouth of the incessant talker. And withal, as he lounged in the fire-light, dreamily turning his love-letter, he had a sort of superphysical beauty, reflected of the glow that many waters cannot quench.

Costigan, who had led the merriment against Simpson at Mrs. Clark’s eating-house, was playing “mumbly-peg” with Texas Tyler. They had been working like Trojans all day at the round-up, but they pitched their pocket-knives with as keen a zest as school-boys, bickering over points in the game, accusing each other of cheating, calling on the rest of the company to umpire some disputed point.

But presently, from the opposite side of the fire, some one began to sing, in a rich barytone, a dirgelike thing that caught the attention of first one then another of the men, making them stop their yarning and knife-throwing to listen. The tune, in its homely power to evoke the image of the ceremonial of death, was more or less familiar to most of them. There was a conscious funeral pageantry in the ring of its measured phrases that recalled to many burials of the dead that had taken place in their widely scattered homes. Mrs. Barbauld’s hymn, “Flee as a Bird to the Mountain,” are the words usually sung to the air.

Costigan presently cut across the dirgelike refrain with: “Phwat th’ divil is ut about that chune that Oi’m thinkin’ of?”

“This,” said the man with the barytone voice, “is the tune that Nick Steele saved his neck to.”

“Begorra, that’s ut. I wasn’t there mesilf, but Oi’ve heard th’ story told more times than Oi’ve years to me credit.”

“My father was in that necktie party,” spoke up a young cow-puncher, “and I’ve heard him tell the story scores of times, and he always wondered why the devil they let Steele off. Never could understand it after the thing was done. He was talking of it once to a man who was a sharp on things like mesmerism, and the man called it hypnotic suggestion. Said that Steele got control of the whole outfit and mesmerized ’em so they couldn’t do a thing to him.”

Several of the men asked for the story, echoes of which had come down through all the forty years since its happening. And the cow-puncher, lighting a cigarette, began:

“It was in the good old forty-nine days in California, when gold was sometimes more plentiful than bread, and women were so scarce that one day when they found a girl’s shoe on the trail they fitted a gold heel to it and put it up in camp to worship. But sentiment wasn’t exactly their long suit, and any little difficulties that cropped up were straightened out by the vigilance committee—and a rope. One day a saddle, or maybe it was a gun, that didn’t belong to him, was found among this man Steele’s traps, and though he swore that some one had put it there for a grudge, the committee thought that a hemp necktie was the easiest way out of the argument. And this here Steele party finds himself, at the age of twenty-four, with something like thirty minutes of life to his credit. He don’t take on none, nor make a play for mercy, nor try any fancy speech-making. He just waits round, kinder pale, but seemin’ indifferent, considerin’ it was his funeral that was impendin’. I’ve heard my father say that he was a tall, slim boy, with a kind of girlish prettiness, and the committee looked some for hysterics and they didn’t get none. The noose was made ready and they told Steele he could have five minutes to pray, if he wanted to, or he could take it out in cursing, just as he chose. The boy said he felt that he hadn’t quite all that was coming to him in the way of enjoyment, and that while he was far from criticising the vigilance committee, he was not altogether partial to the nature of his demise, and if it was just the same to them, instead of praying or cursing, he’d take that five minutes for a song.

“They was agreeable, and he up and steps on the scaffold, what they was mighty proud of, it bein’ about the only substantial structure the town could boast. He began to sing that thing you’ve all been listening to, and he had a voice like water falling light and fine in a pool below. They crowded up close about the scaffold and listened. The words he put to it were his own story, just like those old minstrels that you read about, and at the end of each verse came the chorus, slow and solemn as the moment after something great has happened. There wasn’t a hangin’-face in the crowd after he was started. At some time or other every man had heard somebody he thought a heap of, buried to that tune, and his voice got to workin’ on their imaginations and turned their hearts to water. I don’t remember anything but the chorus—that went like this:

“‘Who’ll weep for me, on the gallows tree, As I sway in the wind and swing? Is there never a tear to be shed for me, As I swing by a hempen string? Who’ll weep, who’ll keep Watch, as I’m rocked to sleep, Rocked by a hempen string?’”

There was a long silence, broken only by the crackle of the logs in the camp-fire and the night sounds of the lonely plain. The leaping flames showed a group of thoughtful faces. Finally, Costigan broke the silence with:

“Begorra, ’tis some av thim ’ud be doin’ well to be lukin’ to their music-lessons about here, Oi’m thinkin’, afther th’ day’s wurruk.”

The Irishman, with his instinctive loquacity, had expressed what none of the rest would have considered politic to hint. It was like the giving way of the pebble that starts the avalanche. Soon they were deep in tales of lynchings. Peter knew only too well the trend of their talk, the “XXX” men were feeling the public pulse, as it were. Now, according to the unwritten code of the plains, lynching was “meet, right, just, and available” for the cattle-thief. And Peter felt himself false to his creed, false to his employer, false to himself, in seeking to evade the question. And yet that pitiful cabin, the white-faced woman running to the door so often that she knew not what she did, and the little rosy boy, who had put out his arms so trustfully! Peter broke into their grewsome yarning. “Lord, but you’re like a lot of old women just come from a funeral!”

“Whin the carpse died hard, and th’ wake was a success.” Costigan turned over. “Werra, werra, but we’ll be seein’ fairies the night!”

A “XXX” man turned his head with a deliberate slowness and regarded Peter with narrowing eyes: “If the subject of cattle-thieves and their punishment is unpleasant to the gentleman from New York, perhaps he will favor us with something more cheerful.” It was the same man who had given the two definitions of the “H L” brand that morning at the round-up.

“Delighted,” said Peter, affecting not to notice the significance of the man’s remark. “Did you ever hear of the time that Tony Neville was burned with snow?”

The “XXX” man yawned long and audibly. No one seemed especially interested in Tony Neville’s having been burned with snow, but Peter struck out manfully, just in time to head off a man who said that he had seen Jim Rodney or some one who looked like him, following the trail-herd.

“Once on a time, when it paid to be a cattle-man,” began Peter, “there was an outfit near Laramie that hailed from the United Kingdom, every mother’s son of them. A fine, manly lot of fellows, but wedded to calamity along of their cooks—not the revered range article,” and Peter waved his hand towards the “W-square” cook, who was one of the party, “but the pampered ranch article that boasts a real stove, planted in a real kitchen, the spoiled darling that never has to light a fire out of wet wood in the rain.

“These unhappy Britons had every species of ill luck that could befall an outfit, in the way of cooks; they were of every nationality, age, and sex, and they stole, drank, quarrelled, till the outfit determined to sweep the house clear of them and do its own cooking. Every man was to have a turn at it for a week. There was a Scotchman, who gave them something called ‘pease bannocks,’ three times a day; followed by an Irishman, who breakfasted them on potatoes and whiskey. There was an Englishman, who had a beef slaughtered every time he fancied a tenderloin. There was a Welshman, who sang as he cooked. There were as many different kinds of indigestion as there were men in the outfit. They would beg to do night-herding, anything to get them away from that ranch. Finally, when their little tummies got so bad that their overcoats thickened, or wore through, or whatever happens to stomachs’ overcoats that are treated unkindly, some one’s maiden aunt sent him a tract saying that rice was the salvation of the human race, as witness the Chinese. Whosever turn it was to cook that week determined to try the old lady’s prescription. Rice was procured, about a peck, I think; and the man who was cooking, pro tem, put the entire quantity on to boil in a huge ham-boiler, over a slow fire, as per the directions of the maiden aunt. The rice seemed to be doing nicely, when some one came in and said that a bunch of antelope was over on the hills and there was a good chance to get a couple. Every man got his gun, all but the cook, and he looked at the rice, that hadn’t done a thing over the slow fire, in a way that would melt your heart. ‘Just my luck that it should be my week to pot-wrestle when there’s good hunting right at one’s front door.’

“‘Oh, come on,’ some one said. ‘Didn’t Kellett’s aunt say the rice ought to be cooked over a slow fire? Kellett, get your aunt’s letter and read the directions for cooking that rice again.’

“The cook didn’t need a second invitation, and they got into their saddles, cook and all, and went for the antelope.

“Now antelope are not like stationary wash-tubs; they move about. And when that particular outfit arrived at the spot where those antelope were last seen, they had moved, but the boys found traces of them, and continued on their trail. They went in the foot-hills and they searched for those antelope all day. They caught up with old man Hall’s outfit at dinner-time and were invited to take a bite. Coming home by way of the ‘Circle-Star’ ranch, Colonel Semmes asked them in to have a mint-julep; the colonel was a South Carolinian, and he had just succeeded in raising some mint. They had several—I fear more than several—drinks before leaving for home, with never a trace of antelope nor a thought of the rice cooking over the slow fire. The colonel remembered some hard cider that he had, and topping off on that, they set out. The weather was pretty warm, and on their way home they experienced some remorse over the hard cider. Now hard cider is an accumulative drink; it piles up interest like debt or unpaid taxes. And by the time those Englishmen had turned the little lane leading into their home corral, they saw a sight that made their sombreros rise. As I have said before, it was hot, being somewhere in the month of August. Gentlemen, I hardly expect you to believe me when I say it was snowing on their house, and not on another God blessed thing in the landscape.

“The blame thing about it was, that every man took the phenomenon to be his own private view of snakes, or their bibulous equivalent, manifested in another and more terrifying form. Here was the August sun pouring down on the plain where their ranch-house was situated; everything in sight hot and dry as a lime-kiln, grasshoppers chirping in a hot-wave prophecy, and snow covering the house and the ground, about to what seemed a depth of four inches. Every one of them felt sensitive about mentioning what he saw to the others. You see, gentlemen, being unfamiliar with American drinks, and especially old Massachusetts cider, they merely looked to keep their saddles and no questions asked.

“But when they got a bit closer the horror increased. Flying right out of their windows were perfect drifts of snow, banks of it, gentlemen, and the thermometer up past a hundred. One of the men looked about him and noticed the pallor on the faces of the rest:

“‘Do you notice anything strange, old chap? These cursed American drinks!’

“‘Strange!’—the boy he had spoken to was about eighteen, a nice, red-cheeked English lad out with his uncle learning the cattle business. ‘Good God!’ the boy said. ‘I’ve always tried to lead a good life, and here I am a paretic before I’ve come of age.’

“They halted their horses and held a consultation. The boss came to the conclusion that since they had all seen it, there was nothing to do but continue the investigation and send the details to the ‘Society for Psychical Research,’ when he got down from his horse and walked towards the door of the house. At his approach, as if to rebuke his wanton curiosity, a great blast of snow blew out of the window and got him full in the face. He howled—the snow was scalding hot.

“Then they remembered the rice.”

“Is that all?” demanded the man who had wanted to talk about rustling.

“Isn’t it enough?” said Peter, who could afford to be magnanimous, now that he had accomplished his point.

“When I first heard that story, ’bout ten years ago, it ended with the Britishers riding like hell over to the Wolcott ranch to borrow umbrellas to keep off the hot rice while they got into the house,” said the man, still sulky.

“That’s the way they tell it to tenderfeet,” and Peter turned on his heel. The story-telling for the evening was over, the boys got their blankets and set about making their beds for the night.

XIII. Mary’s First Day In Camp

The first day spent as governess to the family of Yellett reminded Mary Carmichael of those days mentioned in the opening chapter of Genesis, days wherein whole geological ages developed and decayed. Any era, geological or otherwise, she felt might have had its rise, decline, and fall during that first day spent in a sheep camp.

She awoke to the sound of faint tinklings, and accepted the towering peaks of the Wind River mountains, with their snowy mantles all shadowy in the whitening dawn, and the warmer grays of huddling foot-hills, as one receives, without question, the fantastic visions of sleep. The faint tinkling grew nearer, mingled with a light pitter patter and a far off baa-ing and bleating; then, as shadowy as the sheep in dreams, a great flock came winding round the hill; in and out through the sage-brush they went and came, elusive as the early morning shadows they moved among. The air was crystalline and sparkling; creation’s first morning could not have promised more. It would have been inconsistent in such a place to waken in a house; the desert, that seemed a lifeless sea, the sheep moving like gray shadows, were all parts of a big, new world that had no need of houses built by hands.

Ben, oldest of the Brobdingnag tribe, who had greeted Mary’s request to be directed to “the house” as a bit of dry Eastern humor, led the herd to pasture. Ben’s right-hand man was “Stump,” the collie, so named because he had no tail worth mentioning, but otherwise in full possession of his faculties. Stump was newly broken to his official duties and authority sat heavily on him. Keenly alert, he flew hither and thither, first after one straying member of the herd, then another, barking an early morning roll-call as he went. Two other male Brobdingnags came from some sequestered spot in the landscape and joined Ben—Mary recognized two more pupils.

Mrs. Yellett then unrolled the pillow constructed the night previous of such garments as she had been willing to dispense with, and put them on. The vastness of her surroundings did not prevent her from locating the minutest article, and Mary gave her the respectful admiration of a woman who has spent a great deal of time searching for things in an infinitely smaller space. The matriarch then called the remaining members of her household officially—the Misses Yellett accomplished their early morning toilets with the simplicity of young robins. Only the new governess hung back, but finally mustered up enough courage to say that if such a thing was possible she would like to have a bath.

Mrs. Yellett greeted her request with the amused tolerance of one who has never given such a trifle a thought.

“The habit of bathing,” she commented, “is shore like religion: them that observes it wonders how them that neglects it gets along.” She beckoned Mary to follow, and led the way to a bunch of willows that grew about a stone’s-throw from the camp. “Here be a whole creek full of water, if you don’t lack the fortitood. It’s cold enough to sell for ten cents a glass down to Texas.”

Somewhat dismayed, Mary stepped gingerly into the creek. Its intense cold numbed her at first, but a second later awoke all her young lustiness, and she returned to camp in a fine glow of courage to encounter whatever else there might be of novelty. Mrs. Yellett was preparing breakfast at a sheet-iron stove, assisted by Cacta and Clematis.

“Your hankering after a bath like this”—she added another handful of flour to the biscuit dough—“do shore remind me of an Englishman who come to visit near Laramie in the days of plenty, when steers had jumped to forty-five. This yere Britisher was exhibit stock, shore enough, being what’s called a peer of the realm, which means, in his own country, that he is just nacherally entitled from the start to h’ist his nose high.

“The outfit he was goin’ to visit wasn’t in the habit of havin’ peers drop in on them casual, but they aimed to make him feel that he wasn’t the first of the herd that headed that way by a quart”—she cut four biscuits with a tin cup, and resumed—“to which end they rounded up every specimen of canned food that’s ever come across the Rockies.

“‘Let him ask for “salmon esplinade,” let him ask for “chicken marine-go,” let him ask for plum-pudding, let him ask for hair-oil or throat lozengers, this yere outfit calls his bluff,’ says Billy Ames, who owns the ‘twin star’ outfit and is anticipatin’ this peer as a guest.

“Well, just as everything is ready, the can-opener, sharp as a razor, waitin’ to open up such effete luxuries as the peer may demand, Bill Ames gets called to California by the sickness of his wife. He feels mean about abandonin’ the peer, but he don’t seem to have no choice, his wife bein’ one of them women who shares her bad health pretty impartially round the family. So Billy he departs. But before he goes he expounds to Joplin Joe, his foreman, the nature of a peer and how his wants is apt to be a heap fashionable, and that when he asks for anything to grasp the can-opener and run to the store-house—Cacta, you put on the coffee!

“That peer arrives in the afternoon, and he never makes a request any more than a corpse. Beyond a marked disposition to herd by himself and to maintain the greatest possible distance between his own person and a six-shooter, he don’t vary none from the bulk of tenderfeet. At night, when all parties retires, and Joplin Joe ponders on them untouched, effete luxuries in the store-room, and how the can-opener ’ain’t once been dimmed in the cause of hospitality, it frets him considerable, and he feels he ain’t doin’ his duty to the absent Billy Ames.

“At sunrise he can stand it no longer. He thunders on the Britisher’s door with the butt of his six-shooter, calling out:

“‘Peer, peer, be you awake?’

“The peer allowed he was, though his teeth was rattling like broken crockery.

“‘Peer, would you relish some “salmon esplinade”?’

“The peer allowed he wouldn’t.

“‘Peer, would you relish some “chicken marine-go”?’

“The peer allowed he shore wouldn’t, and the crockery rattled harder than ever. Joplin Joe then tried him on the hair-oil and the throat lozengers, the peer declining each with thanks.

“‘Peer,’ said Joplin Joe, fair busting with hospitality, ‘is there anything in this Gawd’s world that you do want?’

“The crockery rattled an interlood, then Joplin Joe made out:

“‘Thanks, very much. I should like a ba-ath’—Clematis, you see if them biscuits is brownin’.

“Joe he ran to the store-room, and his eye encountered a barrel of corned-beef. He calls to a couple of cow-punchers, and the first thing you know that late corned steer is piled onto the prairie and them cow-punchers is hustling the empty barrel in to the peer. Next they detaches the steps from the kitchen door, ropes ’em to the barrel and introduces the peer to his bath. He’s good people all right, and when he sees they calls his bluff he steps in all right and lets ’em soak him a couple of buckets. This here move restores all parties to a mutual understanding, and the peer he bathes in the corned-beef barrel regular durin’ his stay—you see the habit had cinched him.”

Ned had shot an antelope a day or two previous, and antelope steak, broiled over a glowing bed of wood coals, with black coffee, stewed dried apples, and soda biscuit made up what Mary found to be an unexpectedly palatable breakfast. As camp did not include a cow, no milk or butter was served with meals. Nevertheless, the hungry tenderfoot was quite content, and missed none of the appurtenances she had been brought up to believe essential to a civilized meal, not even the little silver jug that Aunt Martha always insisted came over with William the Conqueror—Aunt Martha scorned the _May-flower_ contingent as parvenus.

The family sat on the grass, tailor fashion, and every one helped himself to what appetite prompted, in a fashion that suggested brilliant gymnastic powers. To pass a dish to any one, the governess discovered, was construed as an evidence of mental weakness and eccentricity. The family satisfied its appetite without assistance or amenities, but with the skill of a troupe of jugglers.

Breakfast was half over when Mrs. Yellett laid down her knife, which she had handled throughout the meal with masterly efficiency. Mary watched her in hopeless embarrassment, and wondered if her own timid use of a tin fork could be construed as an unfriendly comment upon the Yelletts’ more simple and direct code of table etiquette.

“Land’s sakes! I just felt, all the time we’ve been eating, we was forgettin’ something. You children ought to remember, I got so much on my mind.”

All eyes turned anxiously to the cooking-stove, while an expression of frank regret began to settle over the different faces. The backbone of their appetites had been broken, and there was something else, perhaps something even more appetizing, to come.

Interpreting the trend of their glance and expression, up flared Mrs. Yellett, with as great a show of indignation as if some one had set a match to her petticoats.

“I declare, I never see such children; no more nacheral feelin’s than a herd of coyotes; never thinks of a plumb thing but grub. No, make no mistake about the character of the objec’ we’ve forgot. ’Tain’t sweet pertaters, ’tain’t molasses, ’tain’t corn-bread—it’s paw! It’s your pore old paw—him settin’ in the tent, forsook and neglected by his own children.”

All started up to remedy their filial neglect without loss of time, but Mrs. Yellett waved them back to their places.

“Don’t the whole posse of you go after him, like he’d done something and was to be apprehended. Ben, you go after your father.”

Ben strode over to the little white tent that Mary had noticed glimmering in the moonlight the preceding evening, and presently emerged, supporting on his arm a partially paralyzed old man, who might have been Rip Van Winkle in the worst of tempers. His white hair and beard encircled a shrivelled, hawklike face, the mouth was sucked back in a toothless eddy that brought tip of nose and tip of chin into whispering distance, the eyes glittered from behind the overhanging, ragged brows like those of a hungry animal searching through the brush for its prey.

“If you’ve done eatin’,” whispered Mrs. Yellett to Miss Carmichael, “you’d better run on. Paw’s langwidge is simply awful when we forget to bring him to meals.” Mary ran on.

When, after the lapse of some thirty minutes or so, the stentorian voice of Mrs. Yellett recalled Mary to camp, she found that the tin breakfast service had been washed and returned to the mess-box, the beds had been neatly folded and piled in one of the wagons—in fact, the extremely simple tent-hold, to coin a word, was in absolute order. It was just 6 A.M., and Mrs. Yellett thought it high time to begin school. Mary tried to convey to her that the hour was somewhat unusual, but she seemed to think that for pupils who were beginning their tasks comparatively late in life it would be impossible to start sufficiently early in the morning. So at this young and tender hour, with many misgivings, Mary set about preparing her _al fresco_ class-room.

She chose a nice, flat little piece of the United States, situated in the shade of the clump of willows that bordered a trickling creek not far from her sylvan bath-room of the early morning. How she was to sit on the ground all day and yet preserve a properly pedagogical demeanor was the first question to be settled. That there was nothing even remotely resembling a chair in camp she felt reasonably assured, as “paw” was sitting on an inverted soap-box under a pine-tree, and “paw,” by reason of age and infirmity, appropriated all luxuries. Mrs. Yellett, with her usual acumen, grasped the situation.

“I’m figgerin’,” she commented, “that there must be easier ways of governin’ than sittin’ up like a prairie-dog while you’re at it.”

Mrs. Yellett took a hurried survey of the camp, lessening the distance between herself and one of the light wagons with a gait in which grace was entirely subservient to speed; then, with one capacious wrench of the arms, she loosened the spring seat from the wagon and bore it to the governess with an artless air of triumph. It was difficult, under these circumstances, to explain to Mrs. Yellett that without that symbol of scholastic authority, a desk, the wagon seat was useless. Nevertheless, Mary set forth, with all her eloquence, the mission of a desk. Mrs. Yellett was genuinely depressed. Had she imported the magician without his wand—Aladdin without his lamp? She proposed a bewildering choice—an inverted wash-tub, two buckets sustaining the relation of caryatides to a board, the sheet-iron cooking-stove. In an excess of solicitude she even suggested robbing “paw” of his soap-box.

Mary chose the wash-tub on condition that Mrs. Yellett consented to sacrifice the handles in the cause of lower education. She felt that an inverted tub that was likely to see-saw during class hours would tend rather to develop a sense of humor in her pupils than to contribute to her pedagogical dignity.

The camp, as may already have been inferred, enjoyed a matriarchal form of government. Its feminine dictator was no exception to the race of autocrats in that she was not an absolute stranger to the rosy byways of self-indulgence. There was a strenuous quality in her pleasuring perhaps not inconsistent in one whose daily tasks included sheep-herding, ditch-digging, varied by irrigating and shearing in their proper seasons. Under the circumstances, it was not surprising that her wash-tub bore about the same relationship to her real duties as does the crochet needle or embroidery hoop to the lives of less arduously engaged women. It was at once her fad and her relaxation, the dainty feminine accomplishment with which she whiled away the hours after a busy day spent with pick and shovel. Of all this Mary was ignorant when she proposed that Mrs. Yellett saw off the tub-handles in the cause of culture. However, Mrs. Yellett procured a saw, yet the hand that held it lingered in its descent on the handles. She contemplated the tub as affectionately as Hamlet regarding the skull of “Alas, poor Yorick!”

“This,” she observed, “is the only thing about camp that reminds me I’m a woman. I’d plumb forget it many a time if it warn’t for this little tub. The identity of a woman is mighty apt to get mislaid when dooty compels her to assoome the pants cast aside by the nacheral head of the house in sickness or death. It’s ben six years now since paw’s done a thing but set ’round and wait for meals.” Mrs. Yellett sighed laboriously. “Not that I’m holdin’ it agin him none. When a man sees eighty, it’s time he bedded himself down comfortable and waited for the nacheral course of events to weed him out. But when the boys get old enough to tend to herdin’, irrigatin’, and the work that God A’mighty provided that man might get the chance to sweat hisself for bread, accordin’ to the Scriptures, I aim to indulge myself by doin’ a wash of clothes every day, even if I have to take clean clothes and do ’em over again.”

The poor “gov’ment’s” tender heart could not resist this presentation of the case.

“We won’t touch the handles, Mrs. Yellett,” she laughed. “I’m glad you told me you had a personal sentiment for the tub. There are some things I should feel the same way about—my hoe and rake, for instance, that I care for my garden with, at home. And that suggests to me, why not dig two little trenches for the handles and plant the tub? Then I shall have an even firmer foundation on which to arrange the—the—the educational miscellany.”

The suggestion of this harmless expedient was gratefully received, and the “desk” duly implanted, whereupon Mary pathetically sought to embellish her “class-room” from such scanty materials as happened to be at hand. A hemstitched bureau scarf that she had tucked in her trunk, in unquestioning faith in the bureau that was to be part of the ranch equipment, took the “raw edge,” as it were, off the desk. A bunch of prairie flowers, flaming cactus blossoms in scarlet and yellow, ox-eyed daisies, white clematis from the creek, seemed none the less decorative for the tin cup that held them. Mary grimly told herself that her school was to have refining influences, even if it had no furniture.

The books, pencils, and paper arranged in decorous little piles, Miss Carmichael announced to her patroness that school was ready to open. Mrs. Yellett, who had never heard that “a soft voice is an excellent thing in woman,” and whose chest-notes were not unlike those of a Durham in sustained volume of sound, made the valley of the Wind River echo with the summons of the pupils to school, upon which the teacher herself was overcome by the absurdity of the situation and had barely time to escape back of the willows, where she laughed till she cried.

As the pupils trooped obediently to school, Mary noted that they carried no flowers to their dear teacher, but that Ben, the oldest pupil, twenty-one years old, six feet four inches in height and deeply saturnine in manner, carried a six-shooter in his cartridge-belt. The teacher felt that she was the last to deny a pupil any reasonable palliative of the tedium of class-hours—the nearness of her own school-days inclined her to leniency in this particular—but she was hardly prepared to condone a six-shooter, and confided her fears to Mrs. Yellett, who received them with the indulgent tolerance a strong-minded woman might extend to the feminine flutter aroused by a mouse. She explained that Ben did not shoot for “glory,” but to defend the herd from the casual calls of mountain-lions, bears, and coyotes. Jack and Ned, who were very nearly as tall as their older brother, carried similar weapons. Mary prayed that a fraternal spirit might dwell among her pupils.

The Misses Yellett were hardly less terrifying than their brothers. They had their father’s fierce, hawklike profile, softened by youth, and the appalling height and robustness due to the freedom and fresh air of a nomadic existence. Their costumes might, Mary thought, have been fashioned out of gunny-sacks by the simple expedient of cutting holes for the head and arms. The description of the dress worn by the charcoal-burner’s daughter in any mediaeval novel of modern construction would approximate fairly well the school toilets of these young lady pupils. The boys wore overalls and flannel shirts, which, in contrast to the sketchy effects of their sisters’ costumes, seemed almost modish. Mrs. Yellett then left the “class-room,” saying she must take Ben’s place with the sheep.

The Brobdingnags, huge of stature, sinister of aspect, deeply distrustful of the rites in which they were about to participate, closed in about their teacher. From the pigeon-holes of memory Mary drew forth the academic smile with which a certain teacher of hers had invariably opened school. The pupils greeted the academic smile with obvious suspicion. No one smiled in camp. When anything according with their conception of the humorous happened, they laughed uproariously. Thus, early in the morning, on his way to breakfast, Ned had stumbled over an ax and severely cut his head. Every one but Ned saw the point of this joke immediately, and hearty guffaws testified to their appreciation.

Miss Carmichael took her place behind the upturned tub.

“Will you please be seated?” she said.

The class complied with the instantaneous precision of automata newly greased and in excellent working order. Their abrupt obedience was disconcerting. Some one must have been drilling them, thought their anxious teacher, in the art of simultaneous squatting. The temper of the class respecting scholastic deportment leaned towards rigidity bordering on self-torture.

Mary made out a roll-call, and by unanimous consent it was agreed to arrange the class as it then stood, or rather squatted, with the Herculean Ben at the top, and gradually diminishing in size till it reached the vanishing point with Cacta, who was ten and the least terrifying of all.

“And now,” ventured the teacher, with the courage of a white rabbit, “what have you been in the habit of studying?”

Absolute silence on the part of the class, which confronted its questioner straight as a row of bottles, presenting faces imperturbable as so many sphinxes.

Other questions met with an equally disheartening response. Miss Carmichael sat up straight, pushed back the persistent curls from her face, and bent every energy towards the achievement of a “firm” demeanor.

“Clematis,” said she, wisely selecting perhaps the least formidable of the class, “I want you to give me some idea of the kind of work you have been doing, so that we may all be able to understand each other. Now, in your mathematics, for instance, which of you have finished with your arithmetic, and which—”

“What do you mean?” begged Clematis, somewhat tearful.

“Where are you in your arithmetic?

“Nowhere, ma’am.”

“Do you mean you have never learned any?” Mary Carmichael shuddered as she icily put the question.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is that the case with all of you?”

Emphatic nods left no room for doubt.

“Then we’ll leave that for the present. If you will tell me, Clematis, what kind of work you have been doing in your history and English, we will get to work on those to-day. What books have you been using?”

Not unnaturally, Clematis, who was emotional and easily impressed, began to feel as though she were a criminal. She sobbed in a helpless, feminine way. Ben spoke up, fearsomely, from the top of the class.

“We ’ain’t got no books,” said he, in grim rebuke, as though to put an end to a profitless discussion.

“Do you wish me to understand,” quavered Mary, “that you have had no studies—that you—can’t read?—that you—don’t know—anything?”

“That’s it,” said Ben, with the nearest approach to cheerfulness he had yet manifested.

Meanwhile there lay on the teacher’s “desk” copies of Clodd’s _Childhood of the World_, two of that excellent series of _History Primers_, and _The Young Geologist_, all carefully selected, in the fulness of Mary’s ignorance, for the little pupils of her imagination. She had brought no primer, as Mrs. Yellett’s letter had distinctly said that the youngest child was ten and that all were comparatively advanced in their studies. More than ever Mary longed to penetrate the mystery of that Irish linen decoy, for without doubt it was to be her melancholy fate to conduct this giant band through the alphabet!

Accordingly she wrote out the letters of the alphabet with large simplicity and a sublime renunciation of flourish. The class received it tepidly. Mary grew eloquent over its unswerving verities. The class remained lukewarm. The difference between a and b was a matter of indifference to the house of Yellett. They regarded their teacher’s strenuous efforts to furnish a key to the acquirement of the alphabet with the amused superiority of “grown-ups” watching infant antics with pencil and paper. Meanwhile her fear of the class increased in proportion as her ability to hold its attention diminished. The backbone of the school was plainly wilting. The little scholars, armed to the teeth, no longer sat up straight as tenpins. After twenty-five minutes of educational experience, satiety bowled them over.

A single glance had convinced Ben that the alphabet was beneath contempt. He yawned automatically at regular intervals—long, dismal yawns that threatened to terminate in a howl, the unchecked, primitive type of yawn that one hears in the cages of the zoological gardens on a dull day. Miss Carmichael raised interrogatory eyebrows, but she might as well have looked reproof at a Bengal tiger.

The class was rapidly promoted to c-a-t, cat; but these dizzy intellectual heights left them cold and dull. Ben began to clean his revolver, and on being asked why he did not pay attention to his lessons, answered, briefly:

“It’s all d——d foolishness.”

Cacta and Clem were pulling each other’s hair. Mary affected not to see this sisterly exchange of torture. Ned whittled a stick; and, in chorus, when their teacher told them that d-o-g spelled dog, they shouted derision, and affirmed that they had no difficulty in compelling the obedience of Stump even without this particular bit of erudition. Though Mary had always abhorred corporal punishment, she began to see arguments in its favor.

With the handleless tub as an elbow-rest the teacher took counsel with herself. Strategy must be employed with the intellectual conquest of the Brobdingnags. Summoning all the pedagogical dignity of which she was capable, she asked:

“Boys, don’t you want to know how to read?”

“Noap,” responded the head of the class.

“Don’t you want to know how to write?”

“Noap.”

“But, my dear boy, what would you do if you left here and went out into the world, where every one knows these things and your ignorance would be evident at every turn. What would you do?”

“Slug the whole blamed outfit!”

Mary looked at her watch. School had lasted just forty-five minutes. Had time become petrified?

XIV. Judith Adjusts The Situation

Mary had been a member of the Yellett household for something over a week, and the intellectual conquest of her Brobdingnag pupils seemed as hopeless as on that first day. School seemed to be regarded by them as a sort of neutral territory, admirably adapted for the settlement of long-standing grudges, the pleasant exchange of practical jokes, peace and war conferences; also as a mart of trade, where fire-arms, knives, bear and elk teeth might be swapped with a greater expenditure of time and conversation than under the maternal eye. “Teacher,” as she was understood and accepted by the house of Yellett, undoubtedly filled a long-felt want. Presiding over a school of six-imp power for a week, however, had humbled Mary to the point of seriously considering a letter to the home government, meekly asking for return transportation. But this was before feminine wile had struggled with feminine vanity, and feminine wile won the day. School still continued to open at six, from which early and unusual hour it continued, without recess or interruption, till noon, when dinner pleasantly invaded the scholastic monotony, to the infinite relief of all parties concerned.

Mary had dismissed her pupils a few minutes before the usual hour, on a particularly bad day, that she might rally her scattered faculties and present something of a countenance to the watchful eye of Mrs. Yellett. Every element of humor had vanished from the situation. The inverted tub was no longer a theme for merriment in her diary; home-life without a house was no longer a diverting epigram; she had closed her eyes that she might not see the mountains in all their grandeur. In her present mood of abject homesickness the white-capped peaks were part and parcel of the affront. With head sunk in the palms of her hands, and elbows resting on the inverted tub, Mary presented a picture of woe, in which the wicked element of comedy was not wholly lacking. Looking up suddenly, she saw Judith Rodney advancing. The first glimpse of her put Mary in a more rational mood.

“I’m so glad to see you! Behold my class-room appointments! They may seem a trifle novel, but, for that matter, so are my pupils,” began Mary, determining to present the same front to Judith that she had to Mrs. Yellett. But Judith was not to be put off. She looked into Mary’s eyes and did not relax her gaze until she was rewarded with an answering twinkle. Then Mary laughed long and merrily, the first good, hearty laugh since the beginning of her teaching.

“Tell me,” Mary broke out, suddenly, “or the suspense will kill me, who wrote that lovely letter—on such good quality Irish linen, too? Snob that I was, it was the letter that did it.”

“So you have your suspicions that it was not a home product?”

“You didn’t do it, did you?”

“Oh no; though I was asked, and so was Miss Wetmore, I believe. Of course poor Mrs. Yellett had no other recourse, as I suppose you know. I chose to be disobliging that time, and was sorry for it afterwards—sorry when I heard about the letter that really went! Do you find the sheep-wagon so very dreadful?”

“I thought,” laughed Mary, “that it was going to be like a picture I saw in a magazine, Mexican hammocks, grass cushions, and a lady pouring tea from a samovar; instead it was the sheep-wagon and ‘Do you sleep light or dark?’ There is Mrs. Yellett calling us to dinner. Shall I have a chance to talk to you alone afterwards?”

“I’ve come all the way from Dax’s to see you,” explained Judith, with characteristic directness. “We have all the afternoon.”

“Really!” Mary displayed a flash of school-girl enthusiasm. “I feel as if I could almost bear the scenery.”