"Well. You're right. I'm a fliv. Shake hands, m' boy, and no hard feelings."
"Good. Then I can drive on nice and alone, without having to pound your ears off?"
"Certainly. That is—we'll compromise. You take me on just a few miles, into more settled country, and I'll leave you."
So it chanced that Milt was still inescapably accompanied by Mr. Pinky Parrott, that evening, when he saw Claire's Gomez standing in the yard at Barmberry's and pulled up.
Pinky had voluntarily promised not to use his eloquence on Claire, nor to try to borrow money from Mr. Boltwood. Without ever having quite won permission to stay, he had stayed. He had also carried out his promise to buy his half of the provisions by adding a five-cent bag of lemon drops to Milt's bacon and bread.
When they had stopped, Milt warned, "There's their machine now. Seems to be kind of a hotel here. I'm going in and say howdy. Good-by, Pink. Glad to have met you, but I expect you to be gone when I come out here again. If you aren't—— Want granite or marble for the headstone? I mean it, now!"
"I quite understand, my lad. I admire your chivalric delicacy. Farewell, oldcompagnon de voyage!"
Milt inquired of Mr. Barmberry whether the Boltwoods were within, and burst into the parlor-living-room-library. As he cried to Claire, by the fire, "Thought I'd never catch up with you," he was conscious that standing up, talking to Mr. Boltwood, was an old-young man, very suave, very unfriendly of eye. He had an Oxford-gray suit, unwrinkled cordovan shoes; a pert, insultingly well-tied blue bow tie, and a superior narrow pink bald spot. As he heard Jeff Saxton murmur, "Ah. Mr. Daggett!" Milt felt the luxury in the room—the fleecy robe over Claire's shoulders, the silver box of candy by her elbow, the smell of expensive cigars, and the portly complacence of Mr. Boltwood.
"Have you had any dinner?" Claire was asking, when a voice boomed, "Let me introduce myself as Westlake Parrott."
Jeff abruptly took charge. He faced Pinky and demanded, "I beg pardon!"
Claire's eyebrows asked questions of Milt.
"This is a fellow I gave a lift to. Miner—I mean actor—well, kind of spiritualistic medium——"
Mr. Boltwood, with the geniality of dinner and cigar, soothed, "Jeff, uh, Daggett here has saved our lives two distinct times, and given us a great deal of help. He is a motor expert. He has always refused to let us do anything in return but—— I noticed there was almost a whole fried chicken left. I wonderif he wouldn't share it with, uh, with his acquaintance here before—before they make camp for the night?"
In civil and vicious tones Jeff began, "Very glad to reward any one who has been of service to——"
He was drowned out by Pinky's effusive, "True hospitality is a virtue as delicate as it is rare. We accept your invitation. In fact I should be glad to have one of those cigarros elegantos that mine olfactory——"
Milt cut in abruptly, "Pink! Shut up! Thanks, folks, but we'll go on. Just wanted to see if you had got in safe. See you tomorrow, some place."
Claire was close to Milt, her fingers on his sleeve. "Please, Milt! Father! You didn't make your introduction very complete. You failed to tell Mr. Daggett that this is Mr. Saxton, a friend of ours in Brooklyn. Please, Milt, do stay and have dinner. I won't let you go on hungry. And I want you to know Jeff—Mr. Saxton.... Jeff, Mr. Daggett is an engineer, that is, in a way. He's going to take an engineering course in the University of Washington. Some day I shall make you bloated copper magnates become interested in him.... Mrs. Barmberry. Mrssssssss. Barrrrrrrmberrrrrry! Oh. Oh, Mrs. Barmberry, won't you please warm up that other chicken for——"
"Oh, now, that's too bad. Me and Jim have et it all up!" wept the landlady, at the door.
"I'll go on," stammered Milt.
Jeff looked at him expressionlessly.
"You will not go on!" Claire was insisting. "Mrs. Barmberry, won't you cook some eggs or steak or something for these boys?"
"Perhaps," Jeff suggested, "they'd rather make their own dinner by a campfire. Must be very jolly, and that sort of thing."
"Jeff, if you don't mind, this is my party, just for the moment!"
"Quite right. Sorry!"
"Milt, you sit here by the fire and get warm. I'm not going to be robbed of the egotistic pleasure of being hospitable. Everybody look happy now!"
She got them all seated—all but Pinky. He had long since seated himself, by the fire, in Claire's chair, and he was smoking a cigar from the box which Jeff had brought for Mr. Boltwood.
Milt sat farthest from the fire, by the dining-table. He was agonizing, "This Jeff person is the real thing. He's no Percy in riding-breeches. He's used to society and nastiness. If he looks at me once more—young garage man found froze stiff, near Flathead Lake, scared look in eyes, believed to have met a grizzly, no signs of vi'lence. And I thought I could learn to mingle with Claire's own crowd! I wish I was out in the bug. I wonder if I can't escape?"
Duringdinner Milt watched Jeff Saxton's manner and manners. The hot day had turned into a cold night. Jeff tucked the knitted robe about Claire's shoulders, when she returned to the fire. He moved quietly and easily. He kept poking up the fire, smiling at Claire as he did so. He seemed without difficulty to maintain two conversations: one with Mr. Boltwood about finances, one with Claire about mysterious persons called Fannie and Alden and Chub and Bobbie and Dot, the mention of whom made Milt realize how much a stranger he was. Once, as he passed by Claire, Jeff said gently, "Youarelovely!" Only that, and he did not look at her. But Milt saw that Claire flushed, and her eyes dimmed.
Pinky was silent till he had eaten about two-thirds of the total amount of fried eggs, cold lamb and ice-box curios. When Claire came over to see how they fared, Pinky removed himself, with smirking humility, and firmly joined himself to Jeff and Mr. Boltwood. He caught the subject of finance and, while Claire dropped down in the chair by Milt, Pinky was lecturing the two men from New York:
"Ah, finance! Queen of the sociological pantheon!I don't know how come I am so graced by Fortune as to have encountered in these wilds two gentlemen so obviously versed in the stratagems of the great golden game, but I will take the opportunity to give you gentlemen some statistics about the gold-deposits still existent in the Cascades and other ranges that may be of benefit and certainly will be a surprise to you. It happens that I have at the present time a mine——"
Claire was whispering to Milt, "If we can get rid of your dreadful passenger, I do want you to meet Mr. Saxton. He may be of use to you some day. He's terribly capable, and really quite nice. Think! He happened to be out here, and he traced me by telephone—oh, he treats long-distance 'phoning as I do a hair-pin. He brought down the duckiest presents—divertissements for dinner, and that knitted robe, and some real René Bleuzet perfume—I was all out of it—— And after the grime of the road——"
"Do you really care for things like that, all those awfully expensive luxuries?" begged Milt.
"Of course I do. Especially after small hotels."
"Then you don't really like adventuring?"
"Oh yes—in its place! For one thing, it makes a clever dinner seem so good by contrast!"
"Well—— Afraid I don't know much about clever dinners," Milt was sighing, when he was aware of Jeff Saxton looming down on him, demanding:
"Daggett, would you mind trying to inform yourfriend that neither Mr. Boltwood nor I care to invest in his gold-mine? We can't seem to get that into his head. I don't mind being annoyed myself, but I really feel I must protect Mr. Boltwood."
"What can I do?"
"My dear sir, since you brought him here——"
It was the potassium cyanide and cracked ice and carpet tacks and TNT and castor oil in Jeff's "My dear sir" that did it. Milt discovered himself on his feet, bawling, "I am not your dear sir! Pinky is my guest, and—— Gee, sorry I lost my temper, Claire, terrible sorry. See you along the road. Good night. Pink! You take your hat! Git!"
Milt followed Pinky out of the door, snarling, "Git in the car, and do it quick. I'll take you clear to Blewett Pass. We drive all night."
Pinky was of great silence and tact. Milt lumped into the bug beside him. But he did not start the all-night drive. He wanted to crawl back, on his knees, to apologize to Claire—and to be slapped by Jeff Saxton. He compromised by slowly driving a quarter of a mile up the road, and camping there for the night.
Pinky tried to speak words of philosophy and cheer—just once he tried it.
For hours, by a small fire, Milt grieved that all his pride was gone in a weak longing to see Claire again. In the morning he did see her—putting off on the lake, in a motor-boat with Jeff and Mr. Barmberry.He saw the boat return, saw Jeff get into the car which had brought him from Kalispell, saw the farewell, the long handclasp, the stoop of Jeff's head, and Claire's quick step backward before Jeff could kiss her. But Claire waved to Jeff long after his car had started.
When Claire and her father came along in the Gomez, Milt was standing by the road. She stopped. She smiled. "Night of sadness and regrets? You were fairly rude, Milt. So was Mr. Saxton, but I've lectured him, and he sends his apologies."
"I send him mine—'deed I do," said Milt gravely.
"Then everything's all right. I'm sure we were all tired. We'll just forget it."
"Morning, Daggett," Mr. Boltwood put in. "Hope you lose that dreadful red-headed person."
"No, I can't, Mr. Boltwood. When Mr. Saxton turned on me, I swore I'd take Pinky clear through to Blewett Pass ... though not to Seattle, by golly!"
"Foolish oaths should be broken," Claire platitudinized.
"Claire—look—— You don't really care so terribly much about these little luxuries, food and fixin's and six-dollar-a-day-hotel junk, do you?"
"Yes," stoutly, "I do."
"But not compared with mountains and——"
"Oh, it's all very well to talk, and be so superior about these dear old grandeurs of Nature, and the heroism of pioneers, and I do like a glimpse of them. But the niceties of life do mean something and even if it is weak and dependent, I shall always simply adore them!"
"All these things are kind of softening." And he meant that she was still soft.
"At least they're not rude!" And she meant that he was rude.
"They're absolutely trivial. They shut off——"
"They shut off rain and snow and dirt, and I still fail to see the picturesqueness of dirt! Good-by!"
She had driven off, without looking back. She was heading for Seattle and the Pacific Ocean at forty miles an hour—and they had no engagement to meet either in Seattle or in the Pacific.
Before Milt went on he completed a task on which he had decided the night before while he had meditated on the tailored impertinence of Jeff Saxton's gray suit. The task was to give away the Best Suit, that stolid, very black covering which at Schoenstrom had seemed suitable either to a dance or to the Y. P. S. C. E. The recipient was Mr. Pinky Parrott, who gave in return a history of charity and high souls.
Milt did not listen. He was wondering, now that they had started, where they had started for. Certainlynot for Seattle! Why not stop and see Pinky's gold-mine? Maybe he did have one. Even Pinky had to tell the truth sometimes. With a good popular gold-mine in his possession, Milt could buy quantities of clothes like Jeff Saxton's, and——
"And," he reflected, "I can learn as good manners as his in one hour, with a dancing lesson thrown in. If I didn't, I'd sue the professor!"
Onthe edge of Kootenai Canyon, feeling more like an aviator than like an automobilist, Claire had driven, and now, nearing Idaho, she had entered a national forest. She was delayed for hours, while she tried to change a casing, after a blow-out when the spare tire was deflated. She wished for Milt. She would never see him again. She was sorry. He hadn't meant——
But hang it, she panted, if he admired her at all, he'd be here now and get on this per-fect-ly beast-ly casing, over which she had been laboring for a dozen years; and she was simply too ridiculously tired; and was there any respectful way of keeping Henry B. from beaming in that benevolent manner while she was killing herself; and look at those fingernails; and—oh, drrrrrrat that casing!
To make the next town, after this delay, she had to drive for hours by night through the hulking pines of the national forest. It was her first long night drive.
A few claims, with log cabins of recent settlers, once or twice the shack of a forest-ranger, a telephone in a box by the road or a rough R. F. D. box nailed to a pine trunk, these indicated that civilization stillexisted, but they were only melancholy blurs. She was in a cold enchantment. All of her was dead save the ability to keep on driving, forever, with no hope of the tedium ending. She was bewildered. She passed six times what seemed to be precisely the same forest clearing, always with the road on a tiny ridge to the left of the clearing, always with a darkness-stilled house at one end and always, in the pasture at the other end, a horse which neighed. She was in a panorama stage-scene; things moved steadily by her, there was a sound of the engine, and a sensation of steering, but she was forever in the same place, among the same pines, with the same scowling blackness between their bare clean trunks. Only the road ahead was clear: a one-way track, the foot-high earthy bank and the pine-roots beside it, two distinct ruts, and a roughening of strewn brown bark and pine-needles, which, in the beating light of the car's lamps, made the sandy road scabrous with little incessant shadows.
She had never known anything save this strained driving on. Jeff and Milt were old tales, and untrue. Was it ten hours before that she had cooked dinner beside the road? No matter. She wasn't hungry any longer. She would never reach the next town—and she didn't care. It wasn't she, but a grim spirit which had entered her dead body, that kept steering, feeding gas, watching the road.
In the darkness outside the funnel of light from herlamps were shadows that leaped, and gray hands hastily jerked back out of sight behind tree trunks as she came up; things that followed her, and hidden men waiting for her to stop.
As drivers will, she tried to exorcise the creeping fear by singing. She made up what she called her driving-song. It was intended to echo the hoofs of a fat old horse on a hard road:
The old horse trots with a jog, jog, jog,And a jog, jog, jog; and a jog, jog, jog.And the old road makes a little jog, jog, jog,To the west, jog, jog; and the north, jog, jog.While the farmer drinks some cider from his jug, jug, jug,From his coy jug, jug; from his joy jug, jug.Till he accumulates a little jag, jag, jag,And he jigs, jigs, jigs, with his jug, jug, jug——
The old horse trots with a jog, jog, jog,And a jog, jog, jog; and a jog, jog, jog.And the old road makes a little jog, jog, jog,To the west, jog, jog; and the north, jog, jog.While the farmer drinks some cider from his jug, jug, jug,From his coy jug, jug; from his joy jug, jug.Till he accumulates a little jag, jag, jag,And he jigs, jigs, jigs, with his jug, jug, jug——
The song was a comfort, at first—then a torment. She drove to it, and she steered to it, and when she tried to forget, it sang itself in her tired brain: "Jog, jog, jog—oh,damn!"
Her father had had a chill. Miserable, weak as a small boy, he had curled up on the bottom of the car, his head on the seat, and gone to sleep. She was alone. The mile-posts went by slowly. The posts said there was a town ahead called Pellago, but it never came——
And when it did come she was too tired to care. In a thick dream she drove through midnight streets of the town. In stupid paralysis she kicked at the door of the galvanized-iron-covered garage. No answer. She gave it up. She drove down the street and into the yard of a hotel marked by a swing sign out over the plank sidewalk. She got out the traveling bags, awakened her father, led him up on the porch.
The Pellago Tavern was a transformed dwelling house. The pillars of the porch were aslant, and the rain-warped boards snapped beneath her feet. She hesitatingly opened the door. The hallway was dark and musty. A sound like a moan filtered down the unlighted stairs.
There seemed to be light in the room on the right. Trying to assure herself that her father was a protection, she pushed open the door. She looked into an airless room, scattered with rubber boots, unsavory old corduroy caps, tattered magazines. By the stove nodded a wry-mouthed, squat old woman, and a tall, cheaply handsome man of forty. Tobacco juice stained the front of his stiff-bosomed, collarless shirt. His hands were white but huge.
The old woman started. "Well?"
"I want to get two rooms for the night, please."
The man smirked at her. The woman creaked, "Well, I don't know. Where d' you come from, heh?"
"We're motoring through."
"Heh? Who's that man?"
"He's my father, madam."
"Needn't to be so hoity-toity about it, 'he's my father, madam!' F' that matter, that thing there is my husband!"
The man had been dusting his shabby coat, stroking his mustache, smiling with sickly gallantry. He burbled, "Shut up, Teenie. This lady is all right. Give her a room. Number 2 is empty, and I guess Number 7 has been made up since Bill left—if 'tain't, the sheets ain't been slept on but one night."
"Where d' you come——"
"Now don't go shooting off a lot of questions at the lady, Teenie. I'll show her the rooms."
The woman turned on her husband. He was perhaps twenty-five years younger; a quarter-century less soaked in hideousness. Her yellow, concave-sided teeth were bared at him, her mouth drew up on one side above the gums. "Pete, if I hear one word more out of you, out you go. Lady! Huh! Where d' you come from, young woman?"
Claire was too weak to stagger away. She leaned against the door. Her father struggled to speak, but the woman hurled:
"Wherdjuhcomfromised!"
"From New York. Is there another hotel——"
"Nah, there ain't another hotel! Oh! So you comefrom New York, do you? Snobs, that's what N' Yorkers are. I'll show you some rooms. They'll be two dollars apiece, and breakfast fifty cents extra."
The woman led them upstairs. Claire wanted to flee, but—— Oh, she couldn't drive any farther! She couldn't!
The floor of her room was the more bare in contrast to a two-foot-square splash of gritty ingrain carpet in front of the sway-backed bed. On the bed was a red comforter that was filthy beyond disguise. The yellow earthenware pitcher was cracked. The wall mirror was milky. Claire had been spoiled. She had found two excellent hotels since Yellowstone Park. She had forgotten how badly human beings can live. She protested:
"Seems to me two dollars is a good deal to charge for this!"
"I didn't say two dollars. I said three! Three each for you and your pa. If you don't like it you can drive on to the next town. It's only sixteen miles!"
"Why the extra dollar—or extra two dollars?"
"Don't you see that carpet? These is our best rooms. And three dollars—— I know you New Yorkers. I heard of a gent once, and they charged him five dollars—five dol-lars!—for a room in New York, and a boy grabbed his valise from him and wanted a short-bit and——"
"Oh—all—right! Can we get something to eat?"
"Now!?"
"We haven't eaten since noon."
"That ain't my fault! Some folks can go gadding around in automobuls, and some folks has to stay at home. If you think I'm going to sit up all night cooking for people that come chassayin' in here God knows what all hours of the day and night——! There's an all-night lunch down the street."
When she was alone Claire cried a good deal.
Her father declined to go out to the lunch room. The chill of the late ride was still on him, he croaked through his door; he was shivering; he was going right to bed.
"Yes, do, dear. I'll bring you back a sandwich."
"Safe to go out alone?"
"Anything's safe after facing that horrible—— I do believe in witches, now. Listen, dear; I'll bring you a hot-water bag."
She took the bag down to the office. The landlady was winding the clock, while her husband yawned. She glared.
"I wonder if I may have some hot water for my father? He has a chill."
"Stove's out. No hot water in the house."
"Couldn't you heat some?"
"Now look here, miss. You come in here, asking for meals and rooms at midnight, and you want a cutrate on everything, and I do what I can, but enough's enough!"
The woman stalked out. Her husband popped up. "Mustn't mind the old girl, lady. Got a grouch. Well, you can't blame her, in a way; when Bill lit out, he done her out of four-bits! But I'll tell you!" he leered. "You leave me the hot-water biznai, and I'll heat you some water myself!"
"Thank you, but I won't trouble you. Good night."
Claire was surprised to find a warm, rather comfortable all-night lunch room, called the Alaska Café, with a bright-eyed man of twenty-five in charge. He nodded in a friendly way, and made haste with her order of two ham-and-egg sandwiches. She felt adventurous. She polished her knife and fork on a napkin, as she had seen people do in lunches along the way. A crowd of three rubbed their noses against the front window to stare at the strange girl in town, but she ignored them, and they drifted away.
The lunchman was cordial: "At a hotel, ma'am? Which one? Gee, not the Tavern?"
"Why yes. Is there another?"
"Sure. First-rate one, two blocks over, one up."
"The woman said the Tavern was the only hotel."
"Oh, she's an old sour-face. Don't mind her. Just bawl her out. What's she charging you for a room?"
"Three dollars."
"Per each? Gee! Well, she sticks tourists anywheresfrom one buck to three. Natives get by for fifty cents. She's pretty fierce, but she ain't a patch on her husband. He comes from Spokane—nobody knows why—guess he was run out. He takes some kind of dope, and he cheats at rummy."
"But why does the town stand either of them? Why do you let them torture innocent people? Why don't you put them in the insane hospital, where they belong?"
"That's a good one!" her friend chuckled. But he saw it only as a joke.
She thought of moving her father to the good hotel, but she hadn't the strength.
Claire Boltwood, of Brooklyn Heights, went through the shanty streets of Pellago, Montana, at oneA.M.carrying a sandwich in a paper bag which had recently been used for salted peanuts, and a red rubber hot-water bag filled with water at the Alaska Café. At the Tavern she hastened past the office door. She made her father eat his sandwich; she teased him and laughed at him till the hot-water bag had relieved his chill-pinched back; she kissed him boisterously, and started for her own room, at the far end of the hall.
The lights were off. She had to feel her way, and she hesitated at the door of her room before she entered. She imagined voices, creeping footsteps, people watching her from a distance. She flung intothe room, and when the kindled lamp showed her familiar traveling bag, she felt safer. But once she was in bed, with the sheet down as far as possible over the loathly red comforter, the quiet rustled and snapped about her, and she could not relax. Sinking into sleep seemed slipping into danger, and a dozen times she started awake.
But only slowly did she admit to herself that she actually did hear a fumbling, hear the knob of her door turning.
"W-who's there?"
"It's me, lady. The landlord. Brought you the hot water."
"Thanks so much, but I don't need it now."
"Got something else for you. Come to the door. Don't want to holler and wake ev'body up."
At the door she said timorously, "Nothing else I want, thank you. D-don't bother me."
"Why, I've brought you up a sandwich, girlie, all nice and hot, and a nip of something to take the chill off."
"I don't want it, I tell you!"
"Be a sport now! You use Pete right, and he'll use you right. Shame to see a lady like you not gettin' no service here. Open the door. Dandy sandwich!" The knob rattled again. She said nothing. The heel of her palm pressed against the door till the molding ate into it. The man was snorting:
"I ain't going to all this trouble and then throw away a good sandwich. You asked me——"
"M-must I s-shout?"
"S-shout your fool head off!" He kicked the door. "Good friends of mine, 'long this end of the hall. Aw, listen. Just teasing. I'm not going to rob you, little honey bird. Laws, you could have a million dollars, and old Pete wouldn't take two-bits. I just get so darn lonely in this hick town. Like to chat to live ones from the big burg. I'm a city fella myself—Spokane and Cheyenne and everything."
In her bare feet, Claire had run across the room, looked desperately out of the window. Could she climb out, reach her friend of the Alaska Café? If she had to——
Then she grinned. The world was rose-colored and hung with tinkling bells. "I love even that Pinky person!" she said. In the yard of the hotel, beside her Gomez, was a Teal bug, and two men were sleeping in blankets on the ground.
She marched over to the door. She flung it open. The man started back. He was holding an electric, torch. She could not see him, but to the hovering ball of light she remarked, "Two men, friends of mine, are below, by their car. You will go at once, or I'll call them. If you think I am bluffing, go down and look. Good night!"
Beforebreakfast, Claire darted down to the hotel yard. She beamed at Milt, who was lacing a rawhide patch on a tire, before she remembered that they were not on speaking terms. They both looked extremely sheepish and young. It was Pinky Parrott who was the social lubricant. Pinky was always on speaking terms with everybody. "Ah, here she is! The little lady of the mutinous eyes! Our colonel of the flivver hussars!"
But he got no credit. Milt straightened up and lumbered, "Hel-lo!"
She peeped at him and whispered, "Hel-lo!"
"Say, oh please, Claire—— I didn't mean——"
"Oh, I know! Let's—let's go have breakfast."
"Was awfully afraid you'd think we were fresh, but when we came in last night, and saw your car—didn't like the looks of the hotel much, and thought we'd stick around."
"I'm so glad. Oh, Milt—yes, and you, Mr. Parrott—will you whip—lick—beat up—however you want to say it—somebody for me?"
With one glad communal smile Milt and Pinkycurved up their wrists and made motions as of pulling up their sleeves.
"But not unless I say so. I want to be a Citizeness Fixit. I've been good for so long. But now——"
"Show him to me!" and "Up, lads, and atum!" responded her squad.
"Not till after breakfast."
It was a sufficiently vile breakfast, at the Tavern. The feature was curious cakes whose interior was raw creepy dough. A dozen skilled workmen were at the same long table with Claire, Milt, Pinky, and Mr. Boltwood—the last two of whom were polite and scenically descriptive to each other, but portentously silent about gold-mines. The landlady and a slavey waited on table; the landlord could be seen loafing in the kitchen.
Toward the end of the meal Claire insultingly crooked her finger at the landlady and said, "Come here, woman."
The landlady stared, then ignored her.
"Very well. Then I'll say it publicly!" Claire swept the workmen with an affectionate smile. "Gentlemen of Pellago, I want you to know from one of the poor tourists who have been cheated at this nasty place that we depend on you to do something. This woman and her husband are criminals, in the way they overcharge for hideous food and——"
The landlady had been petrified. Now she chargeddown. Behind her came her husband. Milt arose. The husband stopped. But it was Pinky who faced the landlady, tapped her shoulder, and launched into, "And what's more, you hag, if our new friends here have any sense, they'll run you out of town."
That was only the beginning of Pinky's paper on corrections and charities. He enjoyed himself. Before he finished, the landlady was crying ... she voluntarily promised to give her boarders waffles, some morning, jus' soon as she could find the waffle-iron.
With her guard about her, at the office desk, Claire paid one dollar apiece for the rooms, and discussion was not.
Before they started, Milt had the chance to say to her, "I'm getting so I can handle Pinky now. Have to. Thinking of getting hold of his gold-mine. I just give him the eye, as your friend Mr. Saxton would, and he gets so meek——"
"But don't! Please understand me, Milt; I do admire Mr. Saxton; he is fine and capable, and really generous; only—— He may be just a bit snippish at times, while you—you're a playmate—father's and mine—and—— I did face that landlady, didn't I! I'm not soft and trivial, am I! Praise!"
She had driven through the panhandle of Idaho into Washington, through Spokane, through the writhing lava deposits of Moses Coulee where fruit treesgrow on volcanic ash. Beyond Wenatchee, with its rows of apple trees striping the climbing fields like corduroy in folds, she had come to the famous climb of Blewett Pass. Once over that pass, and Snoqualmie, she would romp into Seattle.
She was sorry that she hadn't come to know Milt better, but perhaps she would see him in Seattle.
Not adventure alone was she finding, but high intellectual benefit in studying the names of towns in the state of Washington. Not Kankakee nor Kalamazoo nor Oshkosh can rival the picturesque fancy of Washington, and Claire combined the town-names in a lyric so emotion-stirring that it ought, perhaps, to be the national anthem. It ran:
Humptulips, Tum Tum, Moclips, Yelm,Satsop, Bucoda, Omak, Enumclaw,Tillicum, Bossburg, Chettlo, Chattaroy,Zillah, Selah, Cowiche, Keechelus,Bluestem, Bluelight, Onion Creek, Sockeye,Antwine, Chopaka, Startup, Kapowsin,Skamokawa, Sixprong, Pysht!Klickitat, Kittitas, Spangle, Cedonia,Pe Ell, Cle Elum, Sallal, Chimacum,Index, Taholah, Synarep, Puyallup,Wallula, Wawawai, Wauconda, Washougal,Walla Walla, Washtucna, Wahluke,Solkulk, Newaukum, Wahkiakus,Penawawa, Ohop, Ladd!Harrah, Olalla, Umtanum, Chuckanut,Soap Lake, Loon Lake, Addy, Ace, Usk,Chillowist, Moxee City, Yellepit, Cashup,Moonax, Mabton, Tolt, Mukilteo,Poulsbo, Toppenish, Whetstone, Inchelium,Fishtrap, Carnation, Shine, Monte Cristo,Conconully, Roza, Maud!China Bend, Zumwalt, Sapolil, Riffle,Touchet, Chesaw, Chew, Klum, Bly,Humorist, Hammer, Nooksack, Oso,Samamish, Dusty, Tiger, Turk, Dot,Scenic, Tekoa, Nellita, Attalia,Steilacoom, Tweedle, Ruff, Lisabeula,Latah, Peola, Towal, Eltopia,Steptoe, Pluvius, Sol Duc, Twisp!
Humptulips, Tum Tum, Moclips, Yelm,Satsop, Bucoda, Omak, Enumclaw,Tillicum, Bossburg, Chettlo, Chattaroy,Zillah, Selah, Cowiche, Keechelus,Bluestem, Bluelight, Onion Creek, Sockeye,Antwine, Chopaka, Startup, Kapowsin,Skamokawa, Sixprong, Pysht!
Klickitat, Kittitas, Spangle, Cedonia,Pe Ell, Cle Elum, Sallal, Chimacum,Index, Taholah, Synarep, Puyallup,Wallula, Wawawai, Wauconda, Washougal,Walla Walla, Washtucna, Wahluke,Solkulk, Newaukum, Wahkiakus,Penawawa, Ohop, Ladd!
Harrah, Olalla, Umtanum, Chuckanut,Soap Lake, Loon Lake, Addy, Ace, Usk,Chillowist, Moxee City, Yellepit, Cashup,Moonax, Mabton, Tolt, Mukilteo,Poulsbo, Toppenish, Whetstone, Inchelium,Fishtrap, Carnation, Shine, Monte Cristo,Conconully, Roza, Maud!
China Bend, Zumwalt, Sapolil, Riffle,Touchet, Chesaw, Chew, Klum, Bly,Humorist, Hammer, Nooksack, Oso,Samamish, Dusty, Tiger, Turk, Dot,Scenic, Tekoa, Nellita, Attalia,Steilacoom, Tweedle, Ruff, Lisabeula,Latah, Peola, Towal, Eltopia,Steptoe, Pluvius, Sol Duc, Twisp!
"And then," complained Claire, "they talk about Amy Lowell! I leave it to you, Henry B., if any union poet has ever written as gay a refrain as 'Ohop Ladd'!"
She was not merely playing mental whist. She was trying to keep from worry. All the way she had heard of Blewett Pass; its fourteen miles of climbing, and the last half mile of stern pitch. On this eastern side of the pass, the new road was not open; there was a tortuous, flint-scattered trail, too narrow, in most places, for the passing of other cars. Claire was glad that Milt and Pinky were near her.
If so many of the race of kind advisers of touristshad not warned her about it, doubtless she would have gone over the pass without difficulty. But their voluntary croaking sapped her nerve, and her father's. He kept worrying, "Do you think we better try it?" When they stopped at a ranch house at the foot of the climb, for the night, he seemed unusually tired. He complained of chill. He did not eat breakfast. They started out silent, depressed.
He crouched in the corner of the seat. She looked at him and was anxious. She stopped on the first level space on the pass, crying, "You are perfectly miserable. I'm afraid of—— I think we ought to see a doctor."
"Oh, I'll be all right."
But she waited till Milt came pit-pattering up the slope. "Father feels rather sick. What shall I do? Turn round and drive to the nearest doctor—at Cashmere, I suppose?"
"There's a magnolious medico ahead here on the pass," Pinky Parrott interrupted. "A young thing, but they say he's a graduate of Harvard. He's out here because he has some timber-claims. Look, Milt o' the Daggett, why don't you drive Miss Boltwood's 'bus—make better time, and hustle the old gent up to the doc, and I'll come on behind with your machine."
"Why," Claire fretted, "I hate——"
A new Milt, the boss, abrupt, almost bullying, snapped out of his bug. "Good idee. Jump in, Claire.I'll take your father up. Heh, whasat, Pink? Yes, I get it; second turn beyond grocery. Right. On we go. Huh? Oh, we'll think about the gold-mine later, Pink."
With the three of them wedged into the seat of the Gomez, and Pinky recklessly skittering after them in the bug, they climbed again—and lo! there was no climb! Unconsciously Claire had hesitated before dashing at each sharp upsloping bend; had lost headway while she was wondering, "Suppose the car went off this curve?" Milt never sped up, but he never slackened. His driving was as rhythmical as music.
They were so packed in that he could scarcely reach gear lever and hand-brake. He halted on a level, and curtly asked, "That trap-door in the back of the car—convertible extra seat?"
"Yes, but we almost never use it, and it's stuck. Can't get it open."
"I'll open it all right! Got a big screwdriver? Want you sit back there. Need elbow room."
"Perhaps I'd better drive with Mr. Pinky."
"Nope. Don't think better."
With one yank he opened the trap-door, revealing a folding seat, which she meekly took. Back there, she reflected, "How strong his back looks. Funny how the little silvery hairs grow at the back of his neck."
They came to a settlement and the red cedar bungalow of Dr. Hooker Beach. The moment Claire sawthe doctor's thin demanding face, she trusted him. He spoke to Mr. Boltwood with assurance: "All you need is some rest, and your digestion is a little shaky. Been eating some pork? Might stay here a day or two. We're glad to have a glimpse of Easterners."
Mr. Boltwood went to bed in the Beaches' guest-room. Mrs. Beach gave Claire and Milt lunch, with thin toast and thin china, on a porch from which an arroyo dropped down for a hundred feet. Fir trees scented the air, and a talking machine played the same Russian music that was popular that same moment in New York. And the Beaches knew people who knew Claire.
Claire was thinking. These people were genuine aristocrats, while Jeff Saxton, for all his family and his assumptions about life, was the eternal climber. Milt, who had been uncomfortable with Jeff, was serene and un-self-conscious with the Beaches, and the doctor gratefully took his advice about his stationary gas engine. "He's rather like the Beaches in his simplicity—yes, and his ability to do anything if he considers it worth while," she decided.
After lunch, when the doctor and his wife had to trot off to a patient, Claire proposed, "Let's walk up to that ledge of rock and see the view, shall we, Milt?"
"Yes! And keep an eye on the road for Pinky. The poor nut, he hasn't showed up. So reckless; hope he hasn't driven the Teal off the road."
She crouched at the edge of a rock, where she would have been frightened, a month before, and looked across the main road to a creek in a pine-laced gully. He sat beside her, elbows on knees.
"Those Beaches—their kin are judges and senators and college Presidents, all over New England," she said. "This doctor must be the grandson of the ambassador, I fancy."
"Honest? I thought they were just regular folks. Was I nice?"
"Of course you were."
"Did I—did I wash my paws and sit up and beg?"
"No, you aren't a little dog. I'm that. You're the big mastiff that guards the house, while I run and yip." She was turned toward him, smiling. Her hand was beside him. He touched the back of it with his forefinger, as though he was afraid he might soil it.
There seemed to be no reason, but he was trembling as he stammered, "I—I—I'm d-darn glad I didn't know they were anybody, or 'd have been as bad as a flivver driver the first time he tries a t-twelve-cylinder machine. G-gee your hand is little!"
She took it back and inspected it. "I suppose it is. And pretty useless."
"N-no, it isn't, but your shoes are. Why don't you wear boots when you're out like this?" A flicker of his earlier peremptoriness came into his voice. She resented it:
"My shoes are perfectly sensible! I will not wear those horrible vegetarian uplift sacks on my feet!"
"Your shoes may be all right for New York, but you're not going to New York for a while. You've simply got to see some of this country while you're out here—British Columbia and Alaska."
"Would be nice, but I've had enough roughing——"
"Chance to see the grandest mountains in the world, almost, and then you want to go back to tea and all that junk!"
"Stop trying to bully me! You have been dictatorial ever since we started up——"
"Have I? Didn't mean to be. Though I suppose I usually am bullying. At least I run things. There's two kinds of people; those that give orders, and those that naturally take them; and I belong to the first one, and——"
"But my dear Milt, so do I, and really——"
"And mostly I'd take them from you. But hang it, Seattle is just a day away, and you'll forget me. Wish I could kidnap you. Have half a mind to. Take you way up into the mountains, and when you got used to roughing it in sure-enough wilderness—say you'd helped me haul timber for a flume—then we'd be real pals. You have the stuff in you, but you still need toughening before——"
"Listen to me, Milton. You have been reading fiction,about this man—sometimes he's a lumberjack, and sometimes a trapper or a miner, but always he's frightfully hairy—and he sees a charming woman in the city, and kidnaps her, and shuts her up in some unspeakable shanty, and makes her eat nice cold boiled potatoes, and so naturally, she simply adores him! A hundred men have written that story, and it's an example of their insane masculine conceit, which I, as a woman, resent. Shakespeare may have started it, with his sillyTaming of the Shrew. Shakespeare's men may have been real, but his women were dolls, designed to please some majesty. You may not know it, but there are women today who don't live just to please majesties' fancies. If a woman like me were kidnapped, she would go on hating the brute, or if she did give in, then the man would lose anyway, because she would have degenerated; she'd have turned into a slave, and lost exactly the things he'd liked in her. Oh, you cavemen! With your belief that you can force women to like you! I have more courage than any of you!"
"I admit you have courage, but you'd have still more, if you bucked the wilds."
"Nonsense! In New York I face every day a hundred complicated problems you don't know I ever heard of!"
"Let me remind you that Brer Julius Cæsar said he'd rather be mayor in a little Spanish town thanpolice commissioner in Rome. I'm king in Schoenstrom, while you're just one of a couple hundred thousand bright people in New York——"
"Really? Oh, at least a million. Thanks!"
"Oh—gee—Claire, I didn't mean to be personal, and get in a row and all, but—can't you see—kind of desperate—Seattle so soon——"
Her face was turned from him; its thin profile was firm as silver wire. He blundered off into silence and—they were at it again!
"I didn't mean to make you angry," he gulped.
"Well, you did! Bullying—— You and your men of granite, in mackinaws and a much-needed shave, trying to make a well-bred woman satisfied with a view consisting of rocks and stumps and socks on the line! Let me tell you that compared with a street canyon, a mountain canyon is simply dead, and yet these unlettered wild men——"
"See here! I don't know if you're firing these adjectives at me, but I don't know that I'm so much more unlettered—— You talked about taking French in your finishing-school. Well, they taught American in mine!"
"They would!"
Then he was angry. "Yes, and chemistry and physics and Greek and Latin and history and mathematics and economics, and I took more or less of a whirl at all of them, while you were fiddling withribbons, and then I had to buck mechanics and business methods."
"I also 'fiddled' with manners—an unfortunate omission in your curriculum, I take it! You have been reasonably rude——"
"So have you!"
"I had to be! But I trust you begin to see that even your strong hand couldn't control a woman's taste. Kidnapping! As intelligent a boy as you wanting to imitate these boorish movie——"
"Not a darn bit more boorish than your smart set, with its champagne and these orgies at country clubs——"
"You know so much about country clubs, don't you! The worst orgy I ever saw at one was the golf champion reading the beauty department inBoudoir. Would you mind backing up your statements about the vices of myself and my friends——"
"Oh, you. Oh, I didn't mean——"
"Then why did you——"
"Now you're bullying me, and you know that if the smart set isn't vicious, at least it's so snobbish that it can't see any——"
"Then it's wise to be snobbish, because if it did condescend——"
"I won't stand people talking about condescending——"
"Would you mind not shouting so?"
"Very well! I'll keep still!"
Silence again, while both of them looked unhappy, and tried to remember just what they had been fighting about. They did not at first notice a small red car larruping gaily over the road beneath the ledge, though the driver was a pink-haired man in a green coat. He was almost gone before Milt choked, "It's Pinky!"
"Pink! Pinky!" he bellowed.
Pinky looked back but, instead of stopping, he sped up, and kept going.
"Thatcouldn't have been Pinky! Why! Why, the car he had was red," cried Claire.
"Sure. The idiot's got hold of some barn paint somewhere, and tried to daub it over. He's trying to make a getaway with it!"
"We'll chase him. In my car."
"Don't you mind?"
"Of course not. I do not give up my objections to the roughing philosophy, but—— You were right about these shoes—— Oh, don't leave me behind! Want to go along!"
These sentences she broke, scattered, and totally lost as she scrambled after him, down the rocks. He halted. His lips trembled. He picked her up, carried her down, hesitated a second while his face—curiously foreshortened as she looked up at it from his big arms—twisted with emotion. He set her down gently, and she climbed into the Gomez.
It seemed to her that he drove rather too carefully, too slowly. He took curves and corners evenly. His face was as empty of expression, as unmelodramatic, as that of a jitney driver. Then she looked at thespeedometer. He was making forty-eight miles an hour down hill and forty to thirty on upgrades.
They were in sight of the fleeing Pinky in two miles. Pinky looked back; instantly was to be seen pulling his hat low, stooping over—the demon driver. Milt merely sat more erect, looked more bland and white-browed and steady.
The bug fled before them on a winding shelf road. It popped up a curve, then slowed down. "He took it too fast. Poor Pink!" said Milt.
They gained on that upslope, but as the road dropped, the bug started forward desperately. Another car was headed toward them; was drawn to the side of the road, in one of the occasional widenings. Pinky passed it so carelessly that, with crawling spine, Claire saw the outer wheels of the bug on the very edge of the road—the edge of a fifty-foot drop. Milt went easily past the halted car—even waved his hand to the waiting driver.
This did not seem to Claire at all like the chase of a thief. She looked casually ahead at Pinky, as he whirled round an S-shaped curve on the downslope, then—— It was too quick to see what happened. The bug headed directly toward the edge of the road, shot out, went down the embankment, over and over. It lay absurdly upside-down, its muffler and brake-rods showing in place of the seat and hood.
Milt quite carefully stopped the Gomez. The daywas still—just a breathing of running water in the deep gully. The topsy-turvy car below them was equally still; no sight of Pinky, no sound.
The gauche boy gone from him, Milt took her hand, pressed it to his cheek. "Claire! You're here! You might have gone with him, to make room—— Oh, I was bullying you because I was bullying myself! Trying to make myself tell you—but oh, you know, you know! Can you stand going down there? I hate to have you, but you may be needed."
"Yes. I'll come," she whispered.
Their crawl down the rock-rolling embankment seemed desperately slow.
"Wait here," bade Milt, at the bottom.
She looked away from the grotesque car. She had seen that one side of it was crumpled like paper in an impatient hand.
Milt was stooping, looking under; seemed to be saying something. When he came back, he did not speak. He wiped his forehead. "Come. We'll climb back up. Nothing to do, now. Guess you better not try to help, anyway. You might not sleep well."
He gave her his hand up the embankment, drove to the nearest house, telephoned to Dr. Beach. Later she waited while Milt and the doctor, with two other men, were raising the car. As she waited she thought of the Teal bug as a human thing—as her old friend, to which she had often turned in need.
Milt returned to her. "There is one thing for you to do. Before he died, Pinky asked me to go get his wife—Dolores, I think it is. She's up in a side canyon, few miles away. She may want a woman around. Beach will take care of—of him. Can you come?"
"Of course. Oh, Milt, I didn't——"
"I didn't——"
"—mean you were a caveman! You're my big brother!"
"—mean you were a snob!"
They drove five miles along the highway, then up a trail where the Gomez brushed the undergrowth on each side as it desperately dug into moss, rain-gutted ruts, loose rocks, all on a vicious slant which seemed to push the car down again. Beside them, the mountain woods were sacredly quiet, with fern and lily and green-lit spaces. They came out in a clearing, before dusk. Beside the clearing was a brook, with a crude cradle—sign of a not very successful gold miner. Before a log cabin, in a sway-sided rocker, creaked a tall, white, flabby woman, once nearly beautiful, now rubbed at the edges. She rose, huddling her wrapper about her bosom, as they drove into the clearing and picked their way through stumps and briars.
"Where you folks think you're going?" she whimpered.
"Why, why just——"
"I cer'nly am glad to see somebody! I been 'most scared to death. Been here alone two weeks now. Got a shotgun, but if anybody come, I guess they'd take it away from me. I was brought up nice, no rough-house or—— Say, did you folks come to see the gold-mine?"
"M-mine?" babbled Milt.
"Course not. Pinky said I was to show it, but I'm so sore on that low-life hound now, I swear I won't even take the trouble and lie about it. No more gold in that crick than there is in my eye. Or than there's flour or pork in the house!"
The woman's voice was rising. Her gestures were furious. Claire and Milt stood close, their hands slipping together.
"What d' you think of a man that'd go off and leave a lady without half enough to eat, while he gallivanted around, trying to raise money by gambling, when he was offered a good job up here? He's a gambler—told me he was a rich mine-owner, but never touched a mine in his life. Lying hound—worst talker in ten counties! Got a gambler's hand on him, too—I ought to seen it! Oh, wait till I get hold of him; just wait!"
Claire thought of the still hand—so still—that she had seen under the edge of the upturned car. She tried to speak, while the woman raved on, wrath feeding wrath:
"Thank God, I ain't really his wife! My husbandis a fine man—Mr. Kloh—Dlorus Kloh, my name is. Mr. Kloh's got a fine job with the mill, at North Yakima. Oh, I was a fool! This gambler Pinky Parrott, he comes along with his elegant ways, and he hands me out a swell line of gab, and I ups and leaves poor Kloh, and the kid, and the nicest kid—— Say, please, could you folks take me wherever you're going? Maybe I could get a job again—used to was a good waitress, and I ain't going to wait here any longer for that lying, cheating, mean-talking——"
"Oh, Mrs. Kloh, please don't! He's dead!" wailed Claire.
"Dead? Pinky? Oh—my—God! And I won't ever see him, and he was so funny and——"
She threw herself on the ground; she kicked her heels; she tore at her loosely caught, tarnished blonde hair.
Claire knelt by her. "You mustn't—you mustn't—we'll——"
"Damn you, with your smug-faced husband there, and your fine auto and all, butting into poor folks' troubles!" shrieked Dlorus.
Claire stumbled to her feet, stood with her clenched right hand to her trembling lips, cupping it with her nervous left hand. Her shoulders were dejected. Milt pleaded, "Let's hike out. I don't mind decent honest grease, but this place—look in at table! Dirty dishes—— And gin bottles on the floor!"
"Desert her? When she needs me so?" Claire started forward, but Milt caught her sleeve, and admired, "You were right! You've got more nerve than I have!"
"No. I wouldn't dare if—— I'm glad you're here with me!"
Claire calmed the woman; bound up her hair; washed her face—which needed it; and sat on the log doorstep, holding Dlorus's head in her lap, while Dlorus sobbed, "Pinky—dead! Him that was so lively! And he was so sweet a lover, oh, so sweet. He was a swell fellow; my, he could just make you laugh and cry, the way he talked; and he was so educated, and he played the vi'lin—he could do anything—and athaletic—he would have made me rich. Oh, let me alone. I just want to be alone and think of him. I was so bored with Kloh, and no nice dresses or nothin', and—I did love the kid, but he squalled so, just all the time, and Pinky come, and he was so funny—— Oh, let me alone!"
Claire shivered, then, and the strength seemed to go from the steady arms that had supported Dlorus's head. Dusk had sneaked up on them; the clearing was full of swimming grayness, and between the woman's screams, the woods crackled. Each time Dlorus spoke, her screech was like that of an animal in the woods, and round about them crept such sinister echoes that Milt kept wanting to look back over his shoulder.
"Yes," sighed Claire at last, "perhaps we'd better go."
"If you go, I'll kill myself! Take me to Mr. Kloh! Oh, he was—— My husband, Mr. Kloh. Oh, so good. Only he didn't understand a lady has to have her good times, and Pink danced so well——"
Dlorus sprang up, flung into the cabin, stood in the dimness of the doorway, holding a butcher knife and clamoring, "I will! I'll kill myself if you leave me! Take me down to Mr. Kloh, at North Yakima, tonight!"
Milt sauntered toward her.
"Don't you get flip, young man! I mean it! And I'll kill you——"
Most unchivalrously, quite out of the picture of gray grief, Milt snapped, "That'll be about enough of you! Here! Gimme that knife!"
She dropped the knife, sniveling, "Oh Gawd, somebody's always bullying me! And all I wanted was a good time!"
Claire herded her into the cabin. "We'll take you to your husband—tonight. Come, let's wash up, and I'll help you put on your prettiest dress."
"Honest, will you?" cried the woman, in high spirits, all grief put aside. "I got a dandy China silk dress, and some new white kid shoes! My, Mr. Kloh, he won't hardly know me. He'll take me back. I know how to handle him. That'll be swell, goingback in an automobile. And I got a new hair-comb, with genuine Peruvian diamonds. Say, you aren't kidding me along?"
In the light of the lantern Milt had kindled, Claire looked questioningly at him. Both of them shrugged. Claire promised, "Yes. Tonight. If we can make it."
"And will you jolly Mr. Kloh for me? Gee, I'll be awfully scared of him. I swear, I'll wash his dishes and everything. He's a good man. He—— Say, he ain't seen my new parasol, neither!"