Chapter IV: The Energy Is Once Again Transmitted (4)

The Siwash was late comin’ back with the mail over the Chillowisp. Snow must have been three foot deep in the mountains, and it lay for quite a while in the valley, so we thought Kultus Jake and Frisco Baldy had waited too late and would lose their chance to get to their trappin’. They did lose it, too, but not exactly that way--but I’ll come to that point when I get there. Snow druv school indoors. Miss Carey she had to quit the tent--and sure enough it turned out like I told y’u. Edmund’s sittin’-room was filled up with Texan kids--Edmund’s private room, which he had so nicely fixed up with all his college things: mugs, flags, an oar, pictures of his friends, a whole heap of stuff. It had to be used for the school, bein’ the only possible place, or school had to stop till spring come round and the tent could serve again. Well, Edmund wasn’t willin’ to cut off the hope of the empire of the Northwest for five whole months. Of course they wasn’t there Saturdays and Sundays, or at night, or at hours when he really needed his room--he was in the store durin’ school-time--but every day, after the kids had gone home, poor Edmund he had to open all the windows of his pet room. He caught Miss Carey sweepin’ it of their leavin’s and scolded her savage for that. Insisted on sweepin’ it himself. Would have his way. My sakes, but he was a cross man every day while he was sweepin’! Then the kids they bruck one or two of his souvenirs, touchin’ and meddlin’ with them, and Miss Carey was wild. Edmund didn’t mind half as much. She spoke to me as we was takin’ a ride together one Sunday, when the snow had melted most off again. Guess it was early in December. She wanted her folks back in Orange, New Jersey, to buy new things and send ’em out. She was earnest about it. She was a nice-lookin’ girl. I remember that ride. Tamaracks was all yello’ and sheddin’, makin’ yello’ patches on the snow with their needles, but the pines was that green they was black a little ways off, and the wind smelt of ’em strong.

“I wanted particularly to replace the glass decanter,” she says, “but it only made him rude to me. I had to tell him it was a very strange thing that the only gentleman in the valley should be the one person who had been rude.”

“Goodness to gracious!” I shouts out, “what did he say?”

“That I was the only lady in the valley, and that explained it.”

“Well,” I says, “he’s never apologized as handsome as that to me.” So we both laughs.

“But,” she says just before we got home, “he ought not to tease those poor old men.”

“Well, he’s not done it lately--not in my hearin’,” I says.

It happened Edmund had done it. Couldn’t keep his mouth shut about the school-house question. It was the old men’s duty, he claimed, to give their land for the school-house. Edmund was awful about people’s duty. He brung it up, though, in a new way. He thought he was makin’ a joke. Hands out the pieces of the decanter to Jake and Baldy, and tells ’em they done that damage and it was their business to make it good; so when they, who had never seen the decanter before, didn’t make out what he was drivin’ at, Edmund tells ’em they’re the final cause. He explains how if they’d given their land, the school-house would have been built and no accidents would have occurred. Edmund meant that to be funny, but Jake and Baldy went off cursin’ him and the school and the whole valley, and wasn’t a bit grateful for learnin’ what a final cause is.

But back they comes in a day or two as usual, as if no words had passed, and they buy their truck to go trappin’. Takes ’em all day, but Edmund is wonderful patient. So they can’t start that day. So they comes back next day to pack up and start. And it was then that Washington, D.C., comes up again. The Siwash was a day overdue with the mail, and some of the Texans was assembled at the store to see the mail arrive. They expected no letters, but it was somethin’ to do and they always done it--assembled and stood around inside the store and out. Then to-day they had more to do, for there was Kultus Jake and Frisco Baldy and their horses, packin’ up their stuff. That gave everybody a chance to make remarks and be wise. They hardly noticed the mail when it did come about ten o’clock, they was so busy tellin’ the old men the best way to do everythin’--best trap, best bait, best way to make a set--when Edmund he begins to lecture. He comes out with a letter in his hand and holds it up. That’s the subject of the lecture. Letter has come to the wrong Beekman. It was mailed at Portland, Awregon, and addressed to “Beekman, Massachusetts,” and it has come out of its way to “Beekman, Washington,” thereby losin’ a lot of time, of course. For it had went over the Northern Pacific on its right way as far as Spokane, and then had come back through Coulee City away up here, and it would get to Beekman, Massachusetts, about two weeks late.

“It all comes,” says Edmund, “of havin’ places of the same name. That ought to be against the law.” He told us there was nine Beekmans. He took it to heart heavy, as usual. “As the country grows and settles up,” he says, “they’ll keep on namin’ places Beekman. There’ll be a hundred Beekmans before we’re through. It ought to be a state’s prison offence.”

“In that case,” says a Texas parent, “you couldn’t call this territory Washington.”

“I guess this is a free country,” says another.

“I guess,” says another, “the folks that live in a place has the right to call that place what they see fit.”

Poor Edmund! It wasn’t no use him explainin’ the confusion it made.

“There’s forty-eight places named Washington now,” says he. “I’ve looked it up. There ought to be just one. The capital of the United States. And the map is pitted with ’em like smallpox.”

“Washington, D.C., Maryland,” says Frisco Baldy, haulin’ in slack on the diamond hitch.

“Virginia,” says Kultus Jake, on the other side of the pack.

Edmund he just give ’em both a witherin’ look, and he whirls back into the store and gets to work at his desk. Wouldn’t come out to tell the old men good-by when they started off up the river, although he was grubstakin’ ’em for nothin’. They didn’t know that, of course. Expected to pay him in furs when they come back in the spring.

“You’ll not get very far to-day,” says an onlooker to the departin’ junipers. “You’re makin’ a late start.”

“Camp at Early Winter,” one of ’em says. Early Winter was a creek that come into the main stream about halfway to the Robinson Cabin.

“_Wake la-le hyas cole snass_,” says the Siwash mail-carrier.

“Oh, no, it ain’t,” says a Texan, lookin’ the weather up and down.

“Well, I think maybe it will,” says another, sweepin’ his eyes around the sky. “And maybe it won’t.”

So that sets ’em discussin’ the probabilities of a big snow and if Siwashes knowed about such things more’n white men did. They concluded Siwashes was inferior to white men in every respect, and it wasn’t goin’ to snow.

“Good luck!” one of ’em calls out. But Kultus Jake and Frisco Baldy was by that time on the bridge over the North Fork, and couldn’t hear him.

No more events took place that day. The kids finished their school and went home. Miss Carey she went home. Edmund opened the windows and swept the floor. A few folks bought things durin’ the day, or came to buy and didn’t, and some had letters to go out next day. There was always a little more hustle round mailtimes. But a lonesome winter softness filled the valley and seemed to make y’u hear the stove plainer. The trunks of the trees kind of appeared more silent. Everythin’ was quieter. I remember Edmund looked out of the door about sundown and said the Siwash had been right, there was goin’ to be a big snow. Even his voice sounded quieter in the clouded-over light, and Edmund’s voice was always deep--the voice of a man who was all man. Lyin’ in bed that night I never knowed the dark could be so still. Funny thing was, I heard the rapids under the bridge all of a sudden. Of course they’d been goin’ right on all the time. What makes y’u notice things and not notice ’em? It got very solemn, that room did, in the dark. Those old men was too old to go off into the mountains. Then I heard the little sound of the snowflakes around on the cabin. They must have started fallin’ pretty late, for next mornin’ it wasn’t deep, not four inches yet, but it was keepin’ on. Old man Parrigin come in about nine, and he says he had told everybody yesterday a storm was comin’. As a matter of fact, he’d been one of the surest no storm was comin’. It makes Edmund look sour at him. And bye and bye another prophet drops in, and he says he had offered to bet it would snow. And by eleven o’clock the fifth Texan had come along to sit around the stove; and he says--like every one of ’em had done before him--that anybody could have told it was goin’ to snow. Oh, not one of ’em had ever doubted it for a minute! It gets too much for Edmund to bear, and he pushes up his spectacles high on his forehead and looks at me, mournful as anythin’.

“Last Fourth of July,” says he to me, “I said it was going to snow to-day.”

Old man Parrigin he starts laughin’ at that. He come from New York state and he could see a joke, even when Edmund made it. But when y’u make that kind of a joke to a Texan--the kind of Texan that moves away from Texas--he says you’re insultin’ him. Around the stove they all looks dignified and spits without words. We could hear the rapids, and indoors the kids was singin’ some kind of Christmas chorus Miss Carey was teachin’ to ’em. Their voices come to us through a couple of shut doors. One of the Texans as had been insulted by Edmund’s joke now asserts his self-respect by changin’ the subject.

“Washington, D.C.,” says he, “is in Pennsylvania.”

Edmund he sighs heavy and goes on postin’ up his ledger.

Old man Parrigin gives me a nudge. “I wonder if Miss Carey would hold a night-school?” says he, and winks.

The fellars around the stove they spits some more. They was afraid. That’s what was the matter. Plain it was there had been talk among ’em, ridin’ away yesterday after Edmund’s remarks. Maybe some of ’em knowed their geography correct on that point, but they didn’t feel they knowed it correct enough to insist upon it in the presence of witnesses. Anyway they drops it now, and after some further spittin’ they changes the subject again.

“There’ll be plenty snow at the Robinson Cabin,” says one.

“Plenty at Early Winter by now,” another says.

“Oh, they’ll get through,” says a third.

“I wonder if they’ll get my silver-gray fox,” says old man Parrigin. So the talk turns for a while on trappin’, and dies down till the rapids was the only noise; and then a Texan got up and stretched himself, and said he’d be late for dinner, he guessed, if he didn’t begin to think some about startin’ home. So he began to think, I suppose, though it didn’t show none on his face. Edmund kep’ a-writin’ up his ledger. Y’u could hear the rapids just as if they had come clost up outside. And the snow was fallin’ and fallin’.

Old man Parrigin holds up his hand. “What’s that?” he says. So we all pricks up our ears.

The snow had the valley pretty well muffled, but there did seem to be somethin’. So a fellar looks out and he says it’s somebody comin’ acrost the bridge. Hard to tell who it was for the snow. But next minute he got nearer, and it was Frisco Baldy, walkin’ his horse turrable slow.

“My God!” says somebody, “somethin’s happened.” And we all crowds out.

“More horses on the bridge,” says Parrigin.

We could all see ’em. It was packhorses creepin’ along. Behind ’em trailed a man ridin’, and that was Kultus Jake.

“Then what has happened?” somebody says.

Baldy he arrives first, snow on his hat two inches deep. He gets down and jumps some to shake off the snow, and then walks in through us and goes to the stove and takes a chair. Not a word said. Packhorses they arrives and stands around all over snow--stand sad and hangdog, like they was guilty and had gave up denyin’ it. Jake comes along a mile an hour, same as Baldy; and he gets down and jumps the snow off, and same as Baldy, he passes through us and goes to the stove. But he puts it between him and Baldy. Sits down and don’t look at Baldy. So we all comes back in and sits down, too--except Edmund. He goes behind his desk and stands up there with his spectacles pushed high.

“Well?” he says.

Baldy’s lips move, but nothin’ sounds.

“Well?” Edmund repeats. “Was the trail snowed up? Anybody dead?”

Jake clears his throat, but that’s all.

Then Baldy manages to talk. “No,” he says kind of croakin’; “trail wasn’t snowed up.”

“Not then, it wasn’t,” says Jake. “Nobody’s dead.”

Up flares Edmund’s temper. He swings a big hammer down on the counter with a bang, and he lets out one swear as thorough and bad as any Western man. Y’u’d been scared yourself if he’d aimed it at you. After all, Edmund had grubstaked ’em, though they didn’t know it.

The hammer and the oath dislodges Jake’s voice. “That man,” says he, noddin’ contemptuous acrost the stove at Baldy--“that man claims it’s in Maryland.”

I have explained to y’u that Edmund was an unexpected person in his ways. I looked for more hammer and more blasphemy. They had let Washington, D.C., break up their winter’s trappin’. But Edmund he slowly relaxes on the hammer, and he just stands and stands and keeps a-lookin’ at ’em, merely inter-ested--more and more inter-ested. And they sits blinkin’ at him. Won’t look at each other.

Then a Texan speaks. “I have said right along that it was in Pennsylvania.”

There’s times when things get altogether beyond any daily feelin’s a man commonly has. I didn’t want to lay down on the flour sacks this time. Didn’t want to laugh at all. And Edmund wasn’t a bit mad. Even old man Parrigin makes no symptoms except of further inquiry. And the Texans, of course, was merely anxious to have a point settled that some of ’em had been disputin’ over.

“I wish you would tell me all about it,” says Edmund. Violets ain’t milder than he was.

Well, that was exactly what they couldn’t do, y’u see. When they first come in and saw how we was all anxious over watchin’ ’em arrive I expect it came home to ’em, I expect it shamed ’em. They took in then the way they and their actions would look to the valley, and talkin’ came hard to ’em. But once they got started, they was soon screechin’ at each other as usual, and forgot appearances. They had got to Early Winter, they had camped at Early Winter, but on the way there the argument had come up. Must have growed pretty warm by bedtime, for it had lasted through their sleep so they wasn’t speakin’ to each other at breakfast. Y’u see, alone up there with the snow there wasn’t nothin’ new to change the subject for ’em. It stayed right with ’em, and after breakfast it bruck out worse than ever, Jake for Virginia and Baldy for Maryland, and they had it all the time they was packin’, givin’ each other proofs where it was; and when they was ready to go they wouldn’t live with each other any more, wouldn’t camp, wouldn’t trap, wouldn’t speak--and so they had come home!

So there they was, and there we was, and there it was. They’d simmered down again now, after tearin’ loose and tellin’ all about it. They was quiet. They sat with the stove between ’em and just blinked on and on. Snow fallin’; rapids soundin’; nothin’ else durin’ it must have been all of a minute--and it felt like ten.

The strain got too severe for that Texan, and he spoke with the gentlest, anxiousest voice, like a child pleadin’ for somethin’:--

“Say, ain’t it in Pennsylvania?”

And outside in the snow one o’ them horses gives a long, weary, hungry neigh.

That horse breakin’ in bust somethin’ inside of me and Parrigin and Edmund. Edmund he gives a kind of youp! Parrigin curls over on the counter, and I’d have laid right down on the sacks, only I wasn’t near ’em, and so I leaned up against the shelves. Nobody else did nothin’ because Jake and Baldy hadn’t any heart left after seem’ themselves in their true light, and the other Texans they was bein’ very careful now about their geography--they were savin’ it up, they wasn’t givin’ any of it away, not even to charity.

But after his youp Edmund pulls himself up and he takes charge of the meetin’, and when me and Parrigin hears him beginnin’ a speech we comes to and listens.

“This is a great valley,” says Edmund, behind his desk. “It has song and story whipped to a finish.” Then he fixes his big glum eyes on Kultus Jake and Frisco Baldy. “Don’t think,” says he, “you’ll draw me into your argument. But you hold the record. Wherever Washington is, it would have stayed there till spring. Your words haven’t moved it anywhere else. But you have lost your winter over this. Couldn’t you have waited and come home with your load of furs, and been a success instead of a failure? For you can’t turn around and go back into the mountains now; you’d never get halfway, and unless unusual weather follows this soon, the passes will be choked for the next three months.”

Edmund stops with that. It was fairly hard on the poor old blinkin’ junipers--but y’u’ll notice Edmund hadn’t told ’em a word about the grubstakin’. “If everybody will come in here,” he says, “perhaps we can find some child to settle the question.”

He opens the door and we all shambles in through after him to the school-room. Miss Carey she rises from her chair, and of course she don’t know what to make of it.

“Miss Carey,” says Edmund, “will some of your scholars kindly tell us what the capital of the United States is, and where it is?”

Miss Carey she looks at the kids sittin’ around the table fixed for ’em. Gosh, y’u’d ought to have seen the hands fly up all over the room!

“Everybody may answer,” says Miss Carey.

And out they yells it. It was like the chorus they was practisin’ for Christmas. Oh, she had ’em trained!

There was long breaths of relief drawn among the men standin’ sheepish by the door--two or three regular sighs come out from that crowd.

“Thank you, Miss Carey,” says Edmund, “and please excuse us for troubling you.” So he leads the way back into the store and goes behind his desk. If anybody expected him to make another speech they was disappointed. Edmund looked cold and ca’m, and just as unconcerned as though he’d been addin’ sums or readin’ a two-weeks-old newspaper. He starts writin’ at his ledger.

“Well, I’ll be late for dinner,” says the Texan.

“I told y’u where it was,” says another.

One by one they shuffles out, Jake and Baldy mixed in with them, and they swings up on to their horses and slowly goes away--up the river and down the river and acrost the bridge--till y’u could see none of em no more through the fallin’ snow; and in the store was just Edmund writin’, and me lookin’ at him, and the sound of the rapids.

Did Edmund talk then? That wouldn’t have been Edmund. Nothin’ was said in that store by him or me for--well, it must have been quite a while before the door opened and Miss Carey she pokes her head in and wants to know if she may be so bold as to inquire what all that meant in the school-room. The kids had gone home early for fear of the snow. So Edmund he smiles perfectly peaceful and tells her about it. So, of course, she thinks it very comic and she laughs hearty--but all of a sudden she remembers and expresses sympathy for Edmund’s misplaced generosity.

“Don’t let that trouble you,” says he, gay enough. “I meant to grubstake ’em, and I will. It shall not cost ’em a cent. Don’t tell the poor old idiots.”

So that was that. But the poor old idiots had somethin’ more to say. They had a thought. It snowed away all that night--a great big snow--but next mornin’ it had quit and there was promise of its turnin’ into a fine large day. The kids had come to school pretty late, but they come. And then into the store walks Kultus Jake and Frisco Baldy. For a while they walks around and just inspects all the goods they knowed by heart anyway.

“Well?” says Edmund. And they looks at each other.

“Could we step into the school-room just a minute?” says Jake then.

Edmund he looks surprised, but asks no questions, and in we all goes. Miss Carey she gets up again.

“Any more information?” says she, pleasant.

“No,” says Jake.

“Not to-day,” says Baldy.

“We,” says Jake, “well--we--we’d--”

Baldy gets restless and he steps up. “Put your school-house on our land,” says he.

“We want to give it to y’u,” says Baldy.

“Coal and all,” says Jake.

There was a pink color went over Miss Carey’s face--all over it--and she didn’t say a word for a while; she looks quick at Edmund and then she looks back at the two old men, and her eyes has tears in ’em.

“Folks ought to know geography,” says Jake.

“We want the kids in this valley to know it,” says Baldy.

“Knowledge will save ’em from mistakes,” says Jake.

And then Miss Carey she speaks at last. “Thank you,” she says.

“Is this _potlatch_?” inquires Edmund, jokin’.

“_Kultus potlatch!_” says both of ’em together.

Would y’u think it?--after that day I never heard ’em scrappin’ together again. Maybe they did sometimes, but not in my hearin’. Their experience seemed to have changed ’em somehow. In the store I’d catch ’em lookin’ at each other. Their eyes was gentle. I think--yes, I think they knowed that it was coming, that good-by was on its way to them. The school-house was built in the spring; and after the school got into it, now and again Jake and Baldy would sneak up to the door, look in and take a back seat. And one of ’em would say he’d like to ask the kids a question: Where was Washington, D.C.? And when the answer came, Jake and Baldy they’d laugh like they’d split and sneak out again. One day in the store we heard the knockin’ sound of a boat bein’ rowed over the river, and Baldy came into the store alone. He walks to Edmund, but he looks down on the floor.

“Jake’s sick,” says he. “Jake’s sick.” Oh, he knowed what it meant.

There was no doctor in the valley, but what could a doctor do? In about three days we had Baldy sick, too. The tie between ’em was the tie of life, and Jake died of a Saturday and Baldy died Monday.

“They must be buried by the school-house,” says Miss Carey. And everybody went. And then up comes the question what to put on the headboard? It brought up something none of us had thought of.

“Why, we don’t even know their names!” says Miss Carey, very soft.

We didn’t know anything. They had come into the valley, they had made the valley laugh, they were gone. That was all. Not a fact or a birthplace or anythin’ to put over them that would tell who they had been. But Miss Carey wasn’t goin’ to let it be like that. She took it in charge and she got it right. She found a bit of poetry and she had the board painted, and it was this way: “Jake and Baldy. Our Friends. Their heart was free from malice, and all their anger was excess of love.”

And then along in July Edmund got married to Miss Carey. They was sure a happy two!

“Are y’u still the oldest man in the valley?” I asks Edmund one day in the store.

“About three and a half,” says Edmund, solemn and deep. But then he laughs.

Oh, yes, their happiness filled that store, filled the whole cabin, crowded it. Maybe that’s why I left the valley.

VIII

THE DRAKE WHO HAD MEANS OF HIS OWN

Scipio sat beside the table--Mrs. Culloden’s still very new, wedding-present table--arguing on and on, and I forgot all about him. When he slapped the Wyoming game laws for that year down on the table hard, and complained that I was not listening to him, I continued to look out of the ranch window at the pond and merely said:--

“Just hear those ducks.”

He stared at me with disgust and scorn. “Ducks!” he then muttered.

“Well, but hear them,” I urged.

“Well, they’re quackin’,” he said. “A duck does.” He picked up the game laws and resumed: “As I was telling you, it says--page 12, section 25--”

But I gave him no attention and still looked out at the pond.

So then he remarked bitterly: “I suppose ducks crow back East--or bark.”

He was perfectly welcome to all the satire he could invent; I was not to be turned from my curiosity about the clamor in the water outside, and as I watched I said aloud: “There’s something behind it.”

This brought him to the window, where, as he stood silent beside me, I could feel his impatience as definitely as if it had been a radiator. The matter was that he had his mind running on something and I had my mind running on something--and they weren’t the same things; and each of us wished the other to be interested in his own thing.

“Something behind it,” echoed Scipio slightingly. “Behind every quack you’ll find a duck.”

To this I returned no answer.

“Maybe they have forgot themselves and laid eggs in the water,” suggested Scipio.

“Do your Western ducks lay much in September?” I inquired, with chill.

The noise in the pond, which had died down for an instant, was now set up again--loud, remonstrant, voluble; the two birds sat in the middle of the water and lifted up their heads and screamed to the sky.

“That’s what they’ve done,” said Scipio; “and they can’t locate the eggs. Well, it’d make me holler too. Say,” he pleaded, “what’s the point in your point, anyhow? I want to show you about those game laws.”

“Must I hear it all over again and must I say it all over again?” I responded, not taking my eye from the pond.

“You’ve never heard it wunst yet, for you’ve never listened.”

“I did. I didn’t begin to wander till you began repeating the whole thing for the third time. And now I’ll say, for the fourth time, it’s a close season till 1912. There they go out of the pond, single file--Duchess in the lead. The Duchess has purple in her wings; the Countess has none.”

“Oh, soap fat!” said Scipio.

“And they’ve gone to feed on the grain in the haystack. There’s Sir Francis waiting for them by the woodpile. He’s the drake.”

“Oh, soap fat!” repeated Scipio.

I followed the ducks until they had waddled out of sight.

“Every now and then, during the day,” I said, “they go through that same performance: sit in the water and scream louder each minute, then come out and head for the haystack in the most orderly, quiet manner, just after having given every symptom of falling into convulsions. Now I’m going to find out what that means. And what I am wondering at,” I continued, “is why you do not suggest that they are screaming at the game laws.”

Well, we sat down then and had it out about those game laws; and it is but right to confess that they were more important to poor Scipio than the ducks were to me. First we took section 25 to pieces, dug its sentences to the bottom, and carefully lifted out every scrap which gave promise of containing sense. It was no child’s task. You didn’t reach the first full stop for a hundred and twelve words--nothing but commas; it was like being lost in the sage-brush--and, by the time the full stop did come, your head--but let me quote the sentence:--

“It shall be unlawful for any person or persons to kill any antelope until the open season for other game animals in 1915, when only one antelope may be killed by any person hunting legally, or to kill any moose, elk or mountain sheep until the open season for other game animals, in 1912, when only one male moose may be killed by any person hunting legally, or to kill any elk or mountain sheep in any part of this state, except in Fremont County, Uinta County, Carbon County and that part of Bighorn County and Park County west of the Bighorn River, until the open season for game animals in 1915.”

To tell you all that we said before we had finished with this would be worse than useless--it would be profane; enough that I stuck to the conclusion I had reached when I read the section in the East--no hunting anything anywhere for anybody until 1912. On the strength of it I had left my rifle at home and brought only my fishing rod.

“If it is your way,” said Scipio, “what do you make of section 26? ‘It shall be unlawful for any person or persons to hunt, pursue or kill any elk, deer or mountain sheep except from September twenty-fifth to November thirtieth of _each year_.’” He yelled the last two words at me.

But I merely clapped my hands to my brow.

“And if it is your way,” Scipio pursued, playing his ace, “what do you make of Honey Wiggin taking a party out next Monday for six weeks?”

“Why, they’ll simply all be arrested.”

“No; they’ll not. I’ve saw Honey’s license with this year stamped in red figures right acrost it, just as plain as headlines.”

What could one reply to that? I picked up the pamphlet and stared at the page.

Scipio ruminated. “Will you tell me,” he said, “why, in a country where everybody’s born equal, the legislature should be a bigger fool than anybody else?”

“It’s a free country,” I reminded him. “Every man has the right to be an ass here.”

But Scipio still brooded. “Well,” he said, “if I was a legislator--” he stopped.

“You’re not qualified,” said I.

“Not?”

“You haven’t sufficient command of the English language.”

“_What!_” cried Scipio; for vocabulary is his chief pride and I had actually touched him.

“No. You couldn’t cook up two paragraphs of your mother tongue that would defy any sane human intelligence.”

“They have done worse than that to me,” he said ruefully. “They have lost me my season’s job. The party I was to take out read them laws same as you did, and they stayed back East and made other plans. That’s what I got in last night’s mail”

“Well, I haven’t stayed back East,” I said. “The fishing’s about done, but I want an excuse for another month or two of outing. My things can get here in twelve days--we’ll hunt, and I’ll be your season’s job. And,” I added, “now I shall have time to study the ducks.”

We launched then into discussion of horses and camp outfit, copiously arguing what the legislature would let a man hunt, pursue, or kill in a season it declared to be open for no big game at all, until from eleven the clock went round to noon; and in the kitchen the voice of Mrs. Culloden was heard, calling clearly to her young bridegroom in the corral--calling too clearly.

“Well, Jimsy,” the voice said, “are you going to get me any wood for this stove--or ain’t you?”

Our discussion dropped; we sat still; it was time for Scipio to be getting back across the river to his own cabin and dinner. He rose, put on his hat, and stood looking at me for a moment. Then he took his hat off and scratched his head, glancing toward the kitchen.

“Jimsy, did you hear me telling you about that wood?” came the voice of the young bride, a trifle clearer. “I seem to have to remind you of everything.”

Scipio’s bleached blue eye and his long, eccentric nose turned slowly once more on me. “My, but it’s turrable easy to get married,” was his word. He shoved his hat on again and was out of the door and on his horse; and I watched him ride down to the river and ford it. As he grew distant, my three ducks waddled back from the haystack to the pond. The Duchess led, the Countess followed; Sir Francis brought up the rear. But how could I attend to them while the following reached me through the door from the kitchen?

“If dinner’s late you can thank yourself, Jimsy.”

“Why, May, I split the wood for you right after breakfast. That corral gate--”

“Split the wood and leave me to carry it!”

“Well, I’ve been about as busy as I could be on the ditch; and that gate needs--”

“Never mind. Wash your hands and get ready now. Kiss me first.”

At this point it seemed best to go out of the sitting-room door and come presently into the kitchen by the other way, at the moment when my hostess was placing the hot food upon the table. It was good food, well cooked; and all the spoons and things were bright and clean. Bright and clean too, and very pretty, was the little bride. She was not twenty yet; Jimsy was not twenty-four; and as he sat down to his meal I saw her look at him with a look which I understood plainly: had no stranger been there to see, some more kissing would have occurred. Yet, what did she now find to say to him--she that so visibly adored him?

“Jimsy Culloden! Well, I guess you’ll never learn to brush your hair!”

Jimsy suddenly grinned. “Others have enjoyed it pretty well this way,” said he. “Tangled their hands all through it.” And his gray eyes twinkled at me. But the little woman’s blue eyes flashed and she sat up very stiff. “Before I asked you, that was,” Jimsy added.

Have I ever told you how Jimsy became married? I believe not--but it would take too long now; it will have to wait. His bachelor liveliness had not contributed to his mother’s peace of mind, but all was now well; the poker chips had gone I don’t know where; our beloved old card-table of past years stood now in the bridal bedroom, stifled in feminine drapery beyond

recognition; the bottles that in these days lay empty beyond the corral had contained merely tomato ketchup and such things; and here was Jimsy Culloden a stable citizen, an anchored man, county commissioner, selling vegetables, alfalfa, and horses, with me for a paying boarder in that new-established Wyoming industry which is locally termed dude-wrangling. The eastern “dude” is destined to replace Hereford cattle in Wyoming--and sheep also.

Jimsy was an anchored man, to be sure: might he possibly some day drag his anchor? I glanced at his blue-eyed May, so fair and competent, and I hoped her voice would not grow much clearer. I glanced at Jimsy, quietly eating, and wondered if a new look lately lurking in his eye--a look of slight bewilderment--would increase or pass.

“Didn’t I see Scipio Le Moyne ride away?” he asked me.

“Yes. It was dinner-time.”

“Couldn’t he stay here and eat?”

“There you go, Jimsy Culloden; wanting to feed this whole valley every day, just like you was rich!”

Jimsy’s gray eyes blinked and he attended to his plate. The failure of that little joke about tangled hair was the probable cause of his present silence, and the bride appealed to me.

“Ain’t that so?” she said. “You’ve been here before. You know how folks loaf around up and down this valley and stop to dinner, and stay for supper, and just eat people up!”

She was so perfectly right in principle that my only refuge from the perilous error of taking sides was the somewhat lame remark: “Well, Scipio isn’t a dead-beat, you know.”

“There!” cried Jimsy, triumphantly.

“Mr. Culloden would have fed a dead-beat just the same,” returned the lady promptly.

Again she was entirely right. From good heart and long habit Jimsy made welcome every passing traveler and his horse. When Wyoming was young and its ranches lay wide, desert miles apart, such hospitality was the natural, unwritten law; but now, in this day of increasing settlements and of rainbowed folders of railroads painting a promised land for all comers, a young ranchman could easily be kept poor by the perpetual drain on his groceries and his oats. Jimsy’s wife was stepping between him and his bachelor shiftlessness in all directions, and the propitious signs oi her influence were everywhere. Indoors and out, a crisp, new appearance of things harbingered good fortune. Why, she had actually started him on reforming his gates! Did you ever see the thing they were frequently satisfied to call a gate in Wyoming? A sordid wreck of barbed wire and rotten wood, hung across the fence-gap by a rusty loop, raggedly dangling like the ribs of a broken umbrella.

The telephone bell called Mrs. Culloden to the sitting-room near the end of dinner.

Mrs. Sedlaw, her dear friend and schoolmate living five miles up the valley, was inviting them to dinner next day to eat roast grouse.

“Let’s go,” said Jimsy.

“And you quit your ditch and me quit my ironing?” answered the clear voice. “Thank you ever so much, Susie; we’d just love to, but Jimsy can’t go off the ranch this week and I’d not like to leave him all alone, even if I wasn’t as busy as I can be with our wash.” There followed exchange of gossip and laughter over it, and much love sent to and fro--and the receiver was hung up.

“As for grouse,” I said to Jimsy, for his silence was on my nerves, “I will now go and catch you some trout superior to any bird that flies.”

Sir Francis, the snow-white drake, stood by the woodpile as I crossed the enclosure on my way to the river. In the pond the lady ducks were loudly quacking, but I passed them by. I desired the solitude of Buffalo Horn, its pools, its cottonwoods, its quiet presiding mountains; and I walked up its stream for a mile, safe from that clear voice and from the bewildered eye of Jimsy, my once blithe, careless friend.

Unless it be from respect for Izaak Walton and tradition, I know not why I ever carry in my fly-book, or ever use, a brown-hackle; it has wasted hours of fishing time for me. The hours this afternoon it did not waste, because, under the spell of the large day that shone upon the valley, my thoughts dwelt not on fish, but with delicious vagueness upon matrimony, the game laws and those ducks. With the waters of Buffalo Horn talking near by and singing far off, I watched all things rather than my line and often wholly stopped to smell the wild, clean odor of the sage-brush and draw the beauty of everything into my very depths. So from pool to pool I waded down the south fork of Buffalo Horn and had caught nothing when I reached Sheep Creek, by Scipio’s ranch. Here I changed to a grizzly king and soon had killed four trout.

Scipio was out in his meadow gathering horses, and he came to the bank with a question:--

“Find the eggs them ducks laid in the water?”

“Jimsy wanted to know why you didn’t stay to dinner,” was my answer.

“Huh!” Scipio watched me land a half-pound fish. Then: “They ain’t been married a year yet.”

I cast below a sunken log and took a small trout, which I threw back, while Scipio resumed:

“Why I didn’t stop to dinner! Huh! Say, when did they quit havin’ several wives at wunst?”

“Who quit?”

“Why, them sheep-men back in the Bible--Laban and Solomon and them old-timers. What made ’em quit?”

“They didn’t all quit. There, you’ve made me lose that fish. Are you thinking two wives would be twice as bad as one?”

“You’ll get another fish. I’m thinking they wouldn’t be half as bad as one.”

Certain passages in Scipio’s earlier days came into my mind, but I did not mention them to him. Possibly he was thinking of them himself.

“Two at once is not considered moral in this country,” I said.

Scipio mused. “I’m not sure I’ve ever clearly understood about morals,” he muttered. “Are you going to keep that whitefish?”

“I always keep a few for the hens. Makes ’em lay.”

This caused Scipio to look frowningly across Buffalo Horn to where the Culloden Ranch buildings lay clear in the blue crystal of the afternoon light. “Marriage ain’t learned in a day,” he remarked, “any more than ropin’ stock is. He ain’t learned how to _be_ married yet.”

Again I thought of Scipio’s past adventures and remembered that the best critics are they who have failed in art.

“Did you mean what you said about hunting with me?” Scipio now inquired.

“Sure thing!” I returned, “if you’re right about Honey Wiggin.”

“Oh, I’m right enough. You’ll see him come by here Monday.”

“Then I’ll send East for my things,” I said.

“Well, I’ll be looking for a man to cook and horse-wrangle,” said Scipio.

As I approached the ranch across the level pasture with my fish, I could hear from afar the quack of the ducks, invisible in the pond, and could see from afar the snow-white figure of the drake, stationary by the woodpile. Now for the first time the idea glimmered upon me that he had something to do with it. But what? I came to the breast of the little pond and stood upon it to watch the Countess and the Duchess. They were making a great noise; but over what? Sometimes they sat still and screamed together; a punctuation of silence would then follow. Next one or the other would take it up alone. Was it a sort of service they were holding to celebrate the sunset? I looked up at the lustrous crimson on the mountain wall--a mile of giant battlements sending forth a rose glow as if from within, like something in a legend; birds and beasts might well celebrate such a marvel--but the Countess and Duchess were doing this at other hours, when nothing particular seemed to be happening. I looked at the drake by the woodpile. He had not moved a quarter of an inch. He stood in profile, most becomingly. His neat, spotless white, his lemon-colored bill, his orange-colored legs, his benign yet confident attitude, as if of personal achievement taken for granted but not thrust forward--all this put me in mind of something, but so faintly that I could not just then make out what it was. Shouts from the Duchess at the top of her voice hastily recalled my attention to the pond.

I expected to find something sudden was wrong. Not at all. The water was without a wrinkle, the ducks floated motionless: yet there had been a note, a quality, urgent, piercingly remonstrant, in those quacks of the Duchess. She might have been calling for the constabulary, the fire brigade, and the health department. And then, without change for better or for worse in anything around us that I could see, the two birds swam placidly to land. They got out on the bank, wiggled their tails, stood on their toes to flap their wings, and, this brief drying process being over, they took their way to the drake. He stood by the woodpile, stock-still in profile; he had not yet moved a quarter of an inch; it seemed to me--but I was not certain--that his ladies raced as they drew near him. When they reached him he turned with gravity and headed for the haystack. They fell in behind him and the three waddled and wobbled solemnly toward their goal, squeezed under the fence and were lost to view.

I took in my trout to Mrs. Culloden, who praised their size and my skill. On the subject of giving her hens a diet of whitefish, she told me it was her great ambition so to manage that before the moulting fowls should wholly stop laying the spring pullets should have begun to lay.

“Jimsy is real fond of eggs,” she explained, “and I want him to have them.”

I further learned that whitefish cooked were better than whitefish raw, which often tainted the eggs with a fishy taste. I stood high in the little bride’s favor because I was helping her to please Jimsy. Lying abed that night in my one-room cabin, I said aloud, abruptly: “That was a protest.”

I know nothing about what they call our subconscious workings, save that I am choke-full of them; I meant the Duchess. Apparently my subconscious works had been dealing with her ever since the scene at the pond. Thus a conclusion had popped out of my mouth full-fledged before I knew it was there. “Yes,” I repeated; “she was protesting. They both were.”

The works, however, must have stopped after that for the night--or turned to other activity--for next morning I went down to the pond with nothing beyond the two theories of yesterday: that it was protest and that the drake was somehow at the bottom of it. But I scored no advance in my knowledge. All three birds were in the water and did not come out while I remained there; nothing more of their plan of life was revealed to me. Still, I saw one new thing. Sir Francis swam about, with the Duchess and Countess in a suite, following close, but never crowding him. What they did do was crowd each other. A struggle for place occurred between them from time to time; and, although all the rest of the time they were like sisters, when the struggle was on it was bitter.

I must have stayed watching them for half an hour to make sure of this and I know that there were moments when they would have gladly killed each other. Sir Francis never took the slightest notice of it, though he must have been well aware of it, since it always went on some six inches behind his back. The Countess would attempt to swim up closer to him, at which the Duchess would instantly crook her neck sidewise at her and, savagely undulating her head, would utter quick, poisonous sounds that trembled with fury. To these the Countess would retort, crooking and undulating too; thus they would swim with their necks at right angles, raging at each other and crowding for place. Sometimes the Duchess darted her bill out and bit the Countess, who was of a milder nature, I gradually discerned. The admirable ignorance which Sir Francis preserved of all this testified plainly to his moral balance, and filled me with curiosity and respect. Whatever was going on behind him, whether peace or war, he swam quietly on or stopped as it pleased him, with never a change in the urbanity of his eye and carriage.

It came to me that afternoon what his attitude at the woodpile essentially was. He stood there again alone--the ducks were quacking in the pond--and as I looked at his neat white body and the lemon-colored bill and orange-colored legs, all presented in the same dignified profile, I saw that his was by instinct the historical portrait attitude: Perry after Lake Erie, Webster before replying to Hayne, Washington on being notified of his appointment as Commander-in-Chief--you will understand what I mean. And if you smile at my absorption in these little straws from the farmyard you have never known the blessing of true leisure. To drop clean out of my mind for a while the law and investment of trust funds and the self-induced hysterics of Wall Street, and study a perfectly irrelevant, unuseful trifle, such as the family life of Sir Francis and his ladies, brings a pastoral health to the spirit and to the biliary duct.

There was an error in my conclusions about the Countess and Duchess which I did not have a chance to perceive for a day or two, because our domestic harmony was mysteriously disturbed. That clear note in May’s voice waked up again, this time a tone or so higher; and it was kept awake by one thing after another. It began after a wagonful of people had passed the ranch on its way down the valley to town. I was off by the river when they stopped a few minutes on the road outside the fence. One could not see who they were at that distance. Jimsy left his ditch work and talked to them and when they had gone returned to it. At our next meal Jimsy’s eye was bewildered--and something more--and May’s voice was bad for digestion. As soon as my last mouthful was swallowed I sought the solitude of my cabin and read a book until bedtime. How should one connect that wagonload of people with the new and higher tide of unrest? Nothing was more the custom than this stopping

of neighbors to chat over the fence. May’s voice and Jimsy’s eye kept me as often and as far from their neighborhood as I could get.

It was Scipio, the next time I saw him, who began at once: “Did you see Mrs. Faxon?”

“Who’s she?”

“Gracious! I thought everybody in this country knowed her. She’s an alfalfa widow.”

“Well, I seem to have somehow missed her.”

“She went down to town the other day. Pity you’ve missed her. Awful good-looker.”

“Well, I’ll try to meet her.”

“Her and Jimsy used to meet a whole heap,” said Scipio.

“Oh!” said I. “H’m! All the same May’s a fool.”

“Did she get mad? Did she get mad?” demanded Scipio, vivaciously.

“Lord!” said I, thinking of it. I told Scipio how Jimsy had talked over the fence to the scarlet fragment of his past for perhaps three minutes in the safe presence of a wagonload of witnesses, and how in consequence May had gone up into the air. “To love acceptably needs tact,” I moralized; but while I expatiated on this, Scipio’s attention wandered.

“You saw Honey Wiggin go up the river with his dudes?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And two other parties go up?”

“Yes.”

“Any further notions about the game laws?”

“Nothing--except it’s the merest charity to assume they made them when they were drunk.”

“Sure thing! I guess I’ll have a cook when your camping stuff comes.”

My stuff was due in not many days; and as I walked home from Scipio’s cabin I felt gratitude to the game laws for the part they had played in delaying me in this valley where each day seemed the essence distilled from the beauty of seven usual days. Even as I waded Buffalo Horn I stopped to look up and down the course that it made between its bordering cottonwoods. A week ago these had been green; but autumn had come one night and now here was Buffalo Horn unwinding its golden miles between the castle walls of the mountains. Amid all this august serenity I walked the slower through fear of having it marred by the voice of May. I lingered outside the house and it was the voice of the Duchess that I heard. Yes, I was grateful to the game laws. They, too, caused me to learn the whole truth about Sir Francis.