"I find myself," said the Driver, at the next session of the Scheherazade Society, as Colonel Baggs called their camp-fires, "in a whale of a dilemmer. I have never had nothin' happen to me worth tellin'. I have punched cows till this dry farmin' made it necessary to take to some more humble callin', and there's nothin' to cow-punchin' that is interestin'.
"I have showed you here in the Upper Geyser Basin fifteen geysers of the first magnitude, an' a hundred smaller ones; I have showed you Old Faithful, the Giant, the Giantess, the Fan and the Riverside. I have showed you the Grotto Geyser, which is a cross between a geyser and a cave. I have showed you the quiescent spring at its best—the Morning Glory pool with more colors than any rainbow ever had. I've showed you jewels and giants and ogres and sprites, and—"
"Here!" shouted the Groom. "Saw off on that professional patter! You're not the driver now, but Aconite Driscoll, the Cow-boy, and telling us the story of your life. We have seen more things here than Münchhausen, Gulliver, Mandeville, Old Jim Bridger and the whole brood of romancers ever could imagine. Give us some North American facts, now."
"Well, if I must, I must," said poor Aconite. "But there's nothin' to it. I reckon I'd better narrate to you some of the humble doin's of the J-Up-And-Down Ranch over on Wolf Nose Crick, in the foot-hills of the Black Hills—in the dear, dead past beyond recall—thanks to the Campbell method of dry farmin'."
The way I gets into this story is a shame an' disgrace, an' is incompetent, irreverent, an' immaterial, an' not of record in this case.
Eh? Adds color to the—which? Narrative! Well, I d'n' know about that. I reely couldn't say as it does.
But mentionin' color, the thought of that little affair do make my face as red as a cow-town on pay-day. When I turn that tale loose we'll make a one-night stand of it by the grub-wagon. It comprises a shipper's pass to Sioux City, a sure-thing game in that moral town, which I win out by backin' my judgment with my Colt, an' a police court wherein the bank roll and my pile was rake-off for the court. Charge, gamblin'. All hands plead guilty. All correct says you, an' quite accordin' to the statues made an' pervided; an' so says I, ontil I casually picks up a paper in Belle Fourche, an' sees that it was a phoney police court, not only owned and controlled by the shell men, which wouldn't be surprisin', but privately installed as a sort of accident insurance on their other game.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," Mr. Elkins remarks to me one day, but all that is goin' to be changed when I ketch up with that police judge.
Ridin' the range makes a man talkative with the scenery, an' when I sees that Sioux City paper, I turns loose some remarks in the presence of a gentleman who subsequently turns out to be Mr. Elkins.
"Thanks," says he.
"When did you acquire any chips in this little solitaire blasphemy game?" says I, mad, as a man allus is if he's ketched solloloquisin' to himself.
"A man," says he, "with all the sidetracks filled with cars o' cattle an' more comin', an' no gang, is in,ex proprio vigore," says he, whatever that means, "anywhere where cuss-words is trumps."
He never smiled except back in his eyes, an' I, likin' his style, hires out to him, an' was third man on the J-Up-And-Down Ranch from the day the dogies begun to be unloaded, till James R. Elkins went to New York, with a roll that would choke a blood-sweatin' hippopotamus.
Third man, says I, an' if you think the first was the Old Man, J. R. E., you know, you've got another conjecture comin'. Number One was Mrs. Elkins, an' I reckon some of her New York friends'll enter into conniptions to know that, in lessn' a year, half the boys called her Josie—in their dreams, at least—an' some on 'em to her face; but none to her back, by a damsite! The Old Man—a lot of us called him Jim habitual—was a one-lunger when this dogie enterprise started, all mashed in body in the collapse of the boom at Lattimore; an' them as thinks I refer to any loggin' accident is informed that I mean the town-lot boom in the city of Lattimore, as is more fully set forth elsewhere, the same bein' made by reference a part hereof, marked "Exhibit A," which explains the broken bones aforesaid—
"If there's no objection," said Colonel Baggs, in a high court-room singsong, "'Exhibit A' will be received in evidence. G'long, Aconite!"
Financially, he was millions worse than nothing, if you can understand that. Personally, I caint. Zero is the bottom of the spondulix scale fer me, although the thummometer seems to prove it ain't necessarily thus. Anyhow, the Old Man had Josie, an' any man from Sturgis to Dog Den Buttes would have shouldered all Mr. Elkins' shrinkages, especially the below-zero part, to've had her jest once smooth the hair off his beaded brow, let alone take charge of him like a Her'ford heifer does her fust calf. Which is sure the manner Josie took a-holt and managed the Old Man. But this hain't no love story. Quite the reverse. It's the "Tale of Ten Thousand Dogies."
I found out that when Mr. E. went into the bulb in a business way, this Wolf Nose Crick Ranch went around bankruptcy, instid of through it, becuz, mostly, nobody thought it wuth a—a thought. An' to them as think strange of ten thousand steers, even dogies, bein' bought by a busted boomer, I'll state that any man with the same range, an' not absolutely a convicted hoss-thief, could've got 'em by givin' the same cutthroat chattel mawgitch. Old Aleck Macdonald did sure sell 'em to Mr. Elkins reasonable, though, because James R. had made him a good deal of money in this boom, an' they was only dogies anyhow.
Now, this bein' my evenin' fer tellin' the truth, I'll state that ten thousand dogies is sure a complicated problem on the range. The distinction between them an' reg'lar native range cows lays in the lap o' luxury in which the dogies is dangled in the farmin' regions where they originate. The first little blizzard, they'll hump up an' blat fer home an' mother. They'll gaze fondly at a butte ten mile off, expectin' doors in it to slide open, an' racks full of clover an' timothy to pull out an' be forked out to 'em. They look grieved an' wring their jaws becuz water with the chill took off ain't piped to their stalls, an' they moan 'cause they ain't no stalls. I'd as soon run a Women's an' Babies' Home. You cain't get it into their heads where the water-holes is, an' it's allus an even break whuther they'll stan' an' freeze in their tracks, or chase after some bunch of 2:10 natives ontil their hooves drop off. That's why Macdonald talked as he did about 'em, as I'm informed.
"Take 'em," says he, "an' don't flatter yourself I'm donatin' anything. They's no feed fer 'em in their native Iowa at any livin' price, an' on the other hand, fifty per cent. of 'em'll die gettin' over their homesickness on the range. You'll have it in fer me fer stickin' you, when you know more about the cattle business. Fer the Lord's sake take 'em before they eat me out of every dollar I've got left!"
Some of this was straight goods, an' some stall; but that first winter was a special providence if they ever was one. So mild and barmy from September to March that the prairie-dogs forgot to hole up, an' Mrs. Elkins served Thanksgivin' dinner in the open air on the pizziazzy at the Ranch. An' she rode the range with Jim consecutively, an' said she'd found her 'finity in this cattle biz. As for him, the main thing the matter was that failure o' his a-millin' through his mental facilities. But this was their honeymoon, we found, an' that, an' no losses on the range, helped his case, an' by spring he begun to shoot the persiflage into the gang, an' set up an' reach for things to beat fours. As for the dogies, none of 'em had the faintest show fer a beller. The grass was like new-mown hay; every little snow was follered by a chinook; the water-holes was brimmin'; an' all went merry as a marriage bell.
"The fact is, Aconite," says Mr. Elkins, addressin' me, "I knew when I heard that burst of phonetic lava from your lips at Belle Fourche, that there'd be no fear of low temperatures if you could be induced to stay by the cows, and blow off once in a while."
He had the hot air under wonderful control, hisself, an' felt good at the way the stock was comin' on—March, April, May, an' fresh feed, ponds full o' ducks, cute little young wolves about the dens, an' every one o' the ten thousand dogies stretchin' to see hisself grow. But the fall—the fall was sure a bad one fer both feed an' water. The dogies, however, couldn't fairly be called such any longer, havin' recovered from what Jim called their acute nostalgia, an' bein' pret' near's good rustlers as natives. An' well it was fer 'em, fer grass was sca'ce, an' a son-of-a-gun of a while between drinks. After you got away from the crick—an' you jisthadto git away f'r grass—it was a good day's ride to water, east, west, north, south, up'r down. On the hay-slews we had to prime the rake with old hay 'fore we could make a windrow. Laff if you want to, but they was whole outfits with less hay than some folks has gover'ment bonds. We had about enough to wad a shotgun, an' was merchant princes in the fodder line. The steers, lookin' like semi-animated hat-racks, as the Old Man said, come through the cold weather in a shrinkin' an' sylph-like way, so thin that you could throw a bull by the tail a dum sight furder'n I'd trust some folks, an' that's no dream!
By this time Mr. Elkins was a sure-enough cow-man, president of the Association and the biggest man from Spearfish to Jackson's Hole. He knew some confounded joke on every man in the cow-country, an' not only called 'em all by their fust name, but had one of his own f'r most of 'em. Mrs. Elkins, havin' pulled him through his own dogy stage, dropped out of the cow business, an' devoted herself to kids. I knew that this dogy proposition was a sort of a straw that Jim Elkins grabbed at as he went under, an' it done me an' all the fellers good to see the percentage of loss so small, even if the brutes wasn't puttin' on weight as they orto, an' the price was away down, an' we knew we shouldn't be ready to sell when the mawgitch got ripe. Old Macdonald was Jim's friend, though, an' would sure extend the note when it come of age; an' fur's we could see, these dry seasons was only delayin' the clean-up.
So I thought, an' so thought the Elkins family, as peaceful as a Injun summer morn, an' as happy as skunks. But along in June of the third year, just in the last of the round-up, out comes what Elkins called our Nemmysis in the form of a jackleg lawyer with news of Macdonald's death, and papers to prove it, an' him appointed executioner of the estate of A. Macdonald, diseased. He wanted to see the cattle the estate had a mawgitch on. I was app'inted as his chaperon to show him the stock, an' it bein' a hurryin' time o' year, I exhibited to him ten 'r 'leven thousand head of mixed pickles, and called it square. He didn't know a cow-brand from one plucked from the burnin', an' credited us with a township or two of O-Bar-X cow stuff I run him into the first day out. I didn't feel that he was wuth payin' much notice to, if he hadn't had the say about the Old Man's mawgitch.
I gathered from him that he was goin' to rearlize on the outfit in the fall. I went so fur as to p'int out what a grave-robbin' scheme this was, an' how this dogy stuff had been kep' in the livin' skelliton department f'r two years by drouth an' a hell-slew of other troubles, an' couldn't possibly do more than pay off the mawgitch, an' leave us holdin' the bag in the wust country f'r snipe outside of the Mojave desert.
"They'll pay out," says he, "an' that's all I'm required to look out fer."
I swear, I was prospectin' f'r a good hole to plant him in all the rest o' the trip. I goes right to the ranch when we pulled in. The Old Man an' Josie was a-sittin' in the firelight, an' she had the baby, a yearlin' on her lap, and the boy, a long two-year-old, in the crib. Outside of a nest o' young wild ducks, I never seen anything softer and cuter. I reports an' asks instructions as to the best way of disposin' of Mr. Jackleg's remains.
"Quicklime," says he ruminatin'ly, "is a good and well-recognized scheme; but we haven't any, Aconite, have we? Or we might incorporate him into that burnin' lignite bed over in the butte. Boxin' him up an' shippin' him to fictitious consignees involves a trip to the railroad, an' creatin', as it does, a bad odor, an' stickin' a strugglin' railroad company for the freight, it never seemed to me quite the Christian thing. Don't you agree with me, Aconite?"
"Now, the God's truth is, I was speakin' parabolically about this projected homicide, but no man can bluffme, an' when the Old Man seemed to fall in with it in that heart-to-heart way, I made a lightnin' cat-hop, an' told him as sober as a Keeley alumnus that the lignite bed seemed most judicious to me, an' when should we load up the catafalque? Then Mrs. E. breaks in with a sort o' gugglin' laugh.
"Jim," says she, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself! Mr. Driscoll," addressin' me by my name, which never was Aconite, reely, "Mr. Driscoll, Mr. Elkins is not serious in his remarks."
"Neither'm I," says I.
"Of course not," says she. "We fully understand that."
"Sure," says the Old Man. "Let the lawyer take its course. Which will be assumin' possession of the ten thousand dogies; and I feel sure he'll want to leave you in charge of 'em. He's stuck on you, Aconite."
"See him in Helena fust," says I.
"But wait a minute," says Mr. Elkins. "Somebody's got to take charge of this stuff for the mortgagee, if he keeps on thinkin' as he does now. You're our friend. It'll be more agreeable in every way to have you than, say, Bill Skeels, of the O-Bar-X."
Of course I gets roped, throwed an' branded at last, an' Mr. Jackleg goes away takin' my receipt f'r ten thousand head, more or less, of steers branded "J" known in the cattle business as "J-Up-And-Down," the same bein' on the ranges at the head-waters of the Cheyenne, Moreau, Little Missouri, an' other streams, an' God knows where else, more definitely described in a certain indenture of mawgitch, and so forth and so on, till death comes to your relief. An' James R. Elkins was reduced to a few hundred white faces he'd put in as a side-line, an' I feelin' like a sheepman unmasked!
Mr. Jackleg—his real name turned out to be Witherspoon—give me his instructions from the buckboard as he prepares to pull out, in the presence of the Old Man an' Mrs. E.
"I was fetched up on a farm," says he, an' he looked the part, "an' I know a good deal about cattle. Every animal should hev water at least twice a day."
"I'll personally see to it," says I, winkin' at the Old Man, "that every steer has a crack at the growler at least semi-daily."
"Another thing," says he; "I knew a herd-boy that run a bunch of fifty cows practically dry by holdin' 'em in too close a bunch on the prairie. Let 'em spread out so's to give 'em room to graze."
"Well, fer Gawd's sake!" says I, thinkin' of the feller's sanity; an' before I could finish my yawp, off he pelts, leavin' me gaspin'.
"Wake up," says Elkins, shakin' me by the shoulder. "If you git 'em all watered by bed-time, you'll have to git busy."
He sure is a good loser, thinks I, ontil I figgered that with Josie an' the kids counted in, he hadn't been pried loose from any great percentage of his holdin's after all.
Now, the idee was to round up an' ship about the first of December, so the estate could be wound up at the January term o' court. Pretty soon things seemed about as they was before. I went to the Old Man for orders, an' Mr. Jackleg's visit seemed, as Mrs. E. once said, like a badly-drawn dream. Every time I went to J. R. E. he says to me that I'm boss, an' to remember my instructions.
"Obey orders," says he, "if it busts owners."
Grass an' water was plenty ag'in, and the dogies was fattin' up. Round-up was drawin' on just as prospects f'r profit begins to brighten. It seemed a sort of a hash of midnight assassination, poisonin' water-holes, givin' away a podner, an' keepin' sheep, to ship them ten thousand then. An' all the time the Old Man was a-bearin' down about obeyin' orders, and beggin' me to remember Mr. Jackleg's partin' words, an' repeatin' that sayin' about obeyin' orders if it busted owners. The thing kep' millin' an' millin' in my brain till I got into the habit of settin' around an' sweatin' heinyous, ontil I'd come to with a start, in the middle of a pool of self-evolved moisture filled with wavin' rushes, an' embosomin' acres of floatin' water-lilies! That's the sort of sweater I am when a little worried. Fin'ly I turned on the Old Man like a worm—a reg'lar spiral still-worm.
"How in everlastin' fire," says I, not just like that, "am I to see that every dogy gits two swigs a day on these prairies, an' wherein am I to take any notice of that shyster's fool talk about rangin' wide?"
"Well," says he, "you know there's pools an' water-holes scattered from here to the Canada line, an' from the Missouri to the Continental Divide. A few head, dropped here an' there, handy to water, would be apt to live more accordin' to the hydropathic ideas of the executor of the will of A. Macdonald, diseased. At the same time you would be conformin' to his remarkable correct hyjeenic notions as to segregation."
"Hyjeenic y'r grandmother!" says I, f'r the sitiwation called f'r strong language. "They couldn't be rounded up in a year; an' it's damn nonsense, anyhow, to foller the so-called idees of a—"
"Oh, I see," says he, in a sort of significant way. "I see: it would be a slow round-up. Maybe my intrusts blinds me to those of the people you represent. A slow round-up wouldn't hurt me any! But, of course, you stan' f'r the mawgitchee's intrusts, an' are nat'rally hostyle—"
I set sort o' numbed f'r a minute. A new thing was a-happenin' to me, to wit, an idee was workin' itself into my self-sealin', air-tight, shot-proof, Harveyized skull. Talk about your floods o' light! I got what Doc calls a Noachian deluge of it right then.
"Sir," says I, "'an' Madam, truly'"—quotin' from a pome Mrs. E. had been readin'—"IthinkI see my duty clear at last! If I fin'lyhevgrasped it, my labors requires my absence," says I, "an' I'll see you later."
Mr. Elkins laughed a sort of a Van Triloquist's chuckle. Josie Elkins comes up, an' stannin' close to me in that maddenin' way o' hern, sort o's if she's climbin' into your vest pocket, she squose my hand, an' says she, "Mr. Driscoll, we know that you'll be true to any trust reposed in you! An' to your friends!" An' at the word "friends" she sort of made sunbeams from her eyes to mine, an' pressed my hand before breakin' away, as much as to say that, speakin' o' friends, the ones that had reely drunk from the same canteen an' robbed watermelon patches together from earliest infancy was her an' me. Holy Mackinaw! I went out into the wilderness givin' thanks an' singin' an' cussin' myself, at peace with all the world.
I flatter myself that the work done upon, or emanatin' from the J-Up-And-Down Ranch from that time, f'r a spell, stands in a class by itself in cow-country annuals. It begins with a sort o' quarterly conference of the punchers. I gives 'em a sermon something as follers:
"Fellers," says I, "it's been borne in upon me that these dogies need drivin' where they's fewer cows to the cubic inch o' water. Moreover, they're in too much of a huddle. Here's the hull ten thousand cooped up within twenty to thirty mile of the spot whereon we stand. You cain't swing a bob-cat by the tail," says I, "without scratchin' their eyes out. It vi'lates the crowded tenement laws. It corrupts the poor little innercent calves. It's a Mulberry Street shame. You are therefore ordered an' directed to disseminate these beeves over a wider expanse of the moral heritage. You, Doc, take Ole an' the Greaser, an' goin' south an' west with as many as you can round up, drop off a carload 'r so at every waterin' place an' summer resort up the Belle Fourche an' the North Fork, over onto the Powder, an' as fur as Sheridan. When yeh git short o' cows, come back f'r more. There ain't no real limits to yer efforts short o' the Yellowstone. We must obey Mr. Jackleg's orders about huddlin'. I'll give Absalom an' Pike the Little Missouri, the Cannon Ball and the Grand valleys. Git what help you need; I grant power to each of yeh to send f'r persons an' papers an' administer oaths, if necessary. I'll take my crew an' try to gladden the waste places along the Moreau an' Cheyenne an' White Rivers with dogies. Get your gangs, an' scatter seeds o' kindness an' long four-year-olds from hell to breakfast. For as yeh sow even shall yeh reap. If a critter smothers from crowdin' sev'ral to a township these hot nights, somebody's goin' to be held personally responsible to me. You hear, I s'pose?"
"Is this straight goods, Aconite?" says Doc.
"Am I a perfessional humorist," says I, "or am I the combined Fresh Air Fund, S. P. C. A., and Jacob A. Riis of these yere hills? Am I the main squeeze of this outfit, an' the head of a responsible gover'ment, or am I not? Hit the grit," says I, "an' begin irradiatin' steers."
Obedience is a lovely thing, fellers, an' a man poised in an air-ship a few thousan' feet above a given pi'nt som'eres in the neighborhood o' the Hay Stack Buttes, armed with a good long-range peekeriscope, might have observed a beautiful outbust of it, all that golding autumn, on the part of a class of men presumably onsubordinate—the ungrammatical but warm-hearted cow-boys. They preached a mixed assortment o' fair-to-middlin' steers unto all men. The Ten Thousand was absorbed into the landscape of four great states, like a ship-load o' Swedes into the Republican party. The brethren of the ranches heared gladly the gospel of obeyin' orders, an' wherever a wisp of cows amountin' to more than a double handful congregated together in one place, there was some obejient son of a gun in the midst of 'em, movin' 'em along towards the bubblin' springs, green fields an' pastors new of Mr. Jackleg's orders. It was touchin'. I never felt so good, so sort o' glory-hallelujahish in my life, as I did a-ridin' back to Wolf Nose Crick in the brown October weather, with the dogies off my mind an' the map, thinkin' of how Mrs. E. had squoze my hand, sort o' weepful on moonlight nights, but stronger'n onions in a sense o' juty well performed.
You can sort o' dimly ketch onto the shock it was to me, a-drillin' into camp at Wolf Nose Crick in this yere peaceful frame of mind, to find Mr. Jackleg there, madder'n a massasauga, an' perfec'ly shameful in his feelin's towardsme.
"Where's these ten thousand head o'cattle, Driscoll?" he hollers on seein' me. "Here's your receipt for 'em; where's the stock?"
"Calm yourself," says I, droppin' my hand to my gun; "the dogies is all right. The dogies is out yan in the most unhuddled state of any outfit on the range, fur from the slums of Wolf Nose Crick an' their corruptin' influences, drinkin' at the pure springs o' four great American commonwealths, layin' on fat like aldermen, an' in a advanced state of segregation. Your orders," says I, tickled to think how I'd remembered langwidge so fur above my station in life, "your orders was to put 'em next to the damp spots, an' keep 'em fur apart, an' has been obeyed regardless."
Up to that time I had looked upon him with contempt; but the way he turned in an' damned me showed how sorely I'd misjudged him. As my respect fer him riz, it grew important not to let him go on so, f'r I couldn't let any reel man talk to me that-a-way, an' in less time than it takes to mention it, I had the boys a-holdin' me, and Mr. Jackleg stannin' without hitchin'.
"I may hev been hasty in my remarks," says he; "but I've been out with all the men I could git f'r two weeks, an' how many of our herd do you s'pose I have been enabled to collect?"
"Not knowin', cain't say," says I.
"Just a hundred an' fifty-seven!" says he.
"Good!" says I. "You've got no kick comin'. I couldn't have done better myself. But you won't git as many in the next two weeks! Cheer up; the wust is yet to come!"
An' at that he flies off the handle ag'in, an' lights out f'r the East, with the estate all unwound, I s'pose.
Now, everybody knows the rest of this story. Everybody knows how grass an' water an' winters favored the range-stuff f'r the next two years. Them dogies was as well off 's if they'd been in upholstered sheds eatin' gilded hay. When ol' Dakoty starts out to kill stock, she reg'lar Mountain-Medders-Massacres 'em; but when she turns in to make a feed-yard of herself, she's a cow paradise without snakes. The hist'ry of these dogies illustrates this p'int, an' shows our beautiful system of enforcin' honesty in marketin' range cattle whereby the active robbery is confined to the stockyards folks and the packers, where it won't do no moral harm. As was perfec'ly square an' right, the brand inspectors at Omaha, Sioux City, Chicago an' Kansas City was on the lookout f'r J-Up-And-Down steers in the intrusts of Mr. Jackleg's mawgitch; an' after every round-up, some on 'em would dribble in with the shipments, an' be sold an' proceeds gobbled accordin' to Hoyle. An' when things got good—dogies about the size of Norman hosses, an' as fat as Suffolk pigs—the word goes out from Wolf Nose Crick to every ranch on the range, that the anti-slum crusade was off, an' J-Up-And-Down stuff was to be shipped as rounded up. F'r weeks an' months, I'm told, pret' near every car had some of 'em. Top grassers, they was at last, in weight an' price, an' when the half of 'em was in, the estate of A. Macdonald, diseased, was wound up, tight as a drum, intrust an' principal, an' Jim Elkins had left a little trifle o' five thousand beeves, wuth around a hundred apiece, free an' clear, an' the record of Aconite Driscoll, as a philanthropist, a humannytarian, an' a practical-cow-puncher, was once more as clear as a Christian's eye.
An' this is how Jim Elkins got his ante in this New York game he's a-buckin' so successful. An' so it was that my little meet-up with a Sioux City shell-man, which I'm lookin' fer yit, results in a reg'lar Pullman sleeper trip to Chicago, where I'm the guest of honor at a feedin' contest instituted by Mr. James R. Elkins, whereat Mr. Jackleg—Witherspoon, I mean, and dead game after all, if any one should inquire—makes a talk about the pleasure it affords all of us to see our old friend Elkins restored to those financial circulars where he was so well known, an' so much at home; an' alludin' to me as restorer-in-chief by virtoo of my great feet, an' losin' ten thousand dogies so that Pinkerton himself couldn't find 'em ontil the wilderness saw fit to disgorge 'em in its own wild an' woolly way. An' fin'ly I'm called on an' made to git up, locoed at the strange grazin' ground, but game to do my best, an' after millin' awhile, "I'm here," says I, "owin' to my eckstrordinary talent f'r obeyin' orders. I'm told to come hither, an' I at once set out to prove my effectiveness as a come-hitherer. As f'r losin' ten thousand dogies, I cain't see what that has to do with my great feet. An' right here," I says, "I wish to state that I onst lost something else, to wit, my val'able temper at something done 'r said by a gentleman now present, for all of which I begs pardon of Mr. Jackleg—Mr. Witherspoon, I means," says I, an' everybody hollers an' pounds, him most of all, but redder'n a turkey, "an' I wish to state that it does me good to feel that harmony and peace between him an' me is restored. Here in Chicago," says I, "him an' me can git together on the platform of feedin' in bunches, without dehornin'; with the paramount issue to go before the people on, however, that old plank o' his'n declarin' f'r frekent drinks!"
After that, I don't remember what eventuated—not quite so clear.
"I told you," said the Bride, as the party broke up for the night, "that we'd get some local color."
"Alas!" replied the Artist. "This is like the local color of Babylon and the Shepherd Kings—a tradition and a whisper borne on the night breeze, of things that were. O, Remington! Remington!"
Professor Boggs was in a brown study from the time his name emerged from the hat on starting from the Upper Geyser Basin, until the equipage of the Seven Wonderers, as the Poet called the party, reached the Thumb Lunch Station on Yellowstone Lake, nineteen miles to the east—which drive they made between breakfast and luncheon. The Colonel had telephoned ahead for a special banquet for the eight that night, at which Professor Boggs was to tell his story, and civilized life was to be resumed for the nonce—"To prevent," as the Colonel explained, "our running wild so that we'll have to be blindfolded and backed onto the cars when we get back to Gardiner." All up the pleasant Firehole Valley, the Professor worked at a packet of papers which he took from his bag.
"I'll bet he gives us an essay on some phase of rural education," challenged the Artist, with no takers.
Past the exquisite Kepler Cascade they went, after a stop which filled all except the Hired Man and the Professor with delight. When the party alighted for the walk of half a mile to the Lone Star Geyser, these two remained with the surrey—the Professor busy, the Hired Man lazily smoking. His mental film-pack was exhausted. Spring Creek Cañon proved another of those comforting features which relieve the strain of constant astonishment in the Park—the narrow and winding cañon, with its homelike rocks and cliffs, topped by inky evergreens, shut them in like some comforting shelter against the tempest of the marvelous. Down this wild glen tumbled a clear stream of cold water, bordered with ferns, willows and alders. The Bride scooped up a little of the water in her hand and drank it.
"Isn't it funny?" she asked.
"Isn't what funny?" asked the Groom.
"To find water actually cool and clear, and flowing down a glen of just rocks, with no steam, or rainbow colors, or anything but good earth and stones? I feel like one just out of some sort of inferno."
"The first feller to roam these here hollers," said Aconite, "was a guy named John Colter. He came out with the Lewis and Clark expedition, and stopped on the way back to trap. That was about 1807. He got into the Park some way, and when he emerged he told of it. And there was where the fust reppytation for truth an' veracity was blighted by the p'isenous exhalations of this region of wonders."
"Was he Jimbridgered?" asked the Artist.
"Was he whiched?"
"Jimbridgered; Marcopoloed; Münchhausened; Mandevilled; Driscolled; placed in the Ananias Club?"
"He shore was," replied Aconite. "W'y this place was called Colter's Hell from Saint Joe to Salt Lake by them as didn't believe in it. 'Whar'd this eventuate?' a puncher'd say to a feller that had seen something. 'In Colter's Hell' another would say, meanin' that it never did occur—an' if he didn't smile when he said it, there'd be gun play. An' hyar was all them marvels that Colter'd seen, and more, all the time!"
At Craig Pass, the cayuses were stopped so that all might feast their eyes on the little Isa Lake, frowned on by stern precipices, but smiling up into the blue, its surface flecked with water-lilies.
"An' hyar," said Aconite, "we hev a body of water that at one end empties into the Atlantic Ocean's tributaries, an' at the other waters the Pacific slope."
"Which is which?" asked the Colonel.
"The east end runs into the Pacific, and the west into the Atlantic," replied Aconite, quite truthfully.
"What's that!" exclaimed the Hired Man. "Do yeh mean to say we've got over on the coast by drivin' east—toward Ioway?"
"You've said 'er," said Aconite.
"I tell you," said the Hired Man, as the others began studying their maps to clear up this geographic anomaly, "I tell you that there ain't no way of understandin' the 'tother-end-toness of this place, except by sayin' that the hull thing is a gigantic streak of nature."
"The most rational explanation," said the Groom, "that I've heard. Mr. Hired Man sets us all right. Drive on, Aconite!"
Down Corkscrew Hill they volplaned, thrilled and somewhat scared by the speed of the cayuses, which flew downward in joyful relief at the cessation of the uphill pull to the pass. At the bottom there was a halt to afford a glimpse of Shoshone Lake, and far off to the south the exquisite Tetons, their summits capped with pearl. The visit to Shoshone Lake with its gorgeous geysers was to be postponed until after they should arrive at the thumb of Yellowstone Lake, and make camp.
An hour of steady driving succeeded. They drowsed in their seats, torpid from the early start and the days of strenuous sight-seeing. The road ran through a quiet forest, and there was something not unpleasant in the fact that the curtain of trees shut off the view—until suddenly at a turn in the highway, there burst upon their sight that most marvelous of inland seas, Yellowstone Lake. Straight away extended its waters, for twenty miles, to the dim shores of Elk Point, where the pines carried the wonderful landscape upward, their gloom cutting straight across the view, between the mirror-like sheen of the lake, to timber-line on the azure Absarokas, standing serenely across the eastern sky, their serrated summits picked out with snow against the blue.
A huge chalice lay the lake, reared to a height of a mile and a half above the dusty and furrowed earth where folk plow and dig and make their livings, the crown jewel of the continent's diadem, unutterably, indescribably lovely, filled with crystalline dew. The tourists caught their breaths. Aconite said nothing. For a long time they stood, until the horses began to move backward and forward, uneasy at the unwonted stay. The Bride was holding the Groom's hand, her eyes glistening with tears.
They passed the lovely little Duck Lake, unmindful of its prettiness, and drew up at the lunch station, where they remained unconscious of their hunger until the memory of the splendors of the lake were first dulled, and then obliterated by the scent of the bacon which Aconite was frying. The Hired Man ate valiantly, lighted his pipe, and sighed.
"That was all right," said he.
"Thanks," said Aconite. "It cost forty cents a pound, an' orto be good."
"I meant," said the Hired Man, "that view o' the lake from back yonder."
Night brought dinner, and that appetite for it which outdoors gives to healthy folk, at eight thousand feet above the sea. After the eating was well and thoroughly done, the Professor responded to the call for his story. He rose solemnly, bowed to the assemblage, arranged his papers, cleared his throat, and began.
Unlike the rest of you, I am no mere seeker after pleasure. I am an outcast from my native Iowa. I have held high and honorable office, and I have been treated as was Coriolanus of old. I am the victim of the ingratitude of republics, as expressed in a direct primary in Stevens County, Iowa. I am on my way to the great new West, where I shall seek to serve newer communities where perfidy may not be so ingrained in the nature of the body politic. And I shall shun relations other than professional ones, with persons of youth, beauty, charm, and feminine gender. For by these I am a sufferer. I have with me my notes, and to you is given the first hearing of my side of a case which may become historic.
"The contest is unequal," says Epictetus, "between a charming young girl and a beginner in philosophy." Let this be remembered when I am blamed for the havoc wrought upon my political educational career in Stevens County, Iowa, by Miss Roberta Lee Frayn of Tennessee. Not that I am a beginner in philosophy. The man who, at my age, has been elected county superintendent of schools is no mere tyro in the field wherein Epictetus so distinguished himself. But neither does the word "charming" adequately describe Miss Frayn, unless one trace back the word "charm" to its more diabolically significant root. I expect to write this, myapologia, and leave the verdict to posterity.
No citizen of Stevens County is likely to be ignorant of the manner in which Miss Frayn was deposited in my mother's farmyard by the wrecking of a railway train, or how her grandfather, Colonel Kenton Yell Frayn, died there in her arms and left the young girl penniless. Judge Worthington, hereafter to be mentioned, was on the train and doubtless assisted in extricating Miss Frayn and her grandfather from the wreckage, but I feel that my own efforts were more effective than was reported. We left the young woman in the care of my mother, and I took the judge with me in my buggy.
He was much distraught as we rode along. I tried to say something in the way of furthering my candidacy for the office I now hold; but he repulsed me.
"For God's sake, Oscar," I remember him to have said, "don't try to electioneer me until I can get out of my mind the image of that poor young girl and her dying grandfather!"
I do not care to criticize the judiciary, but will say that Judge Worthington's early promotion to the bench and his undeniable comeliness of person have in a measure induced in him a certain arrogance.
I was triumphantly elected. I went to Boston and won recognition so far as to be placed on the sub-committee for the investigation of Tone-Deafness in the rural schools, in the superintendents' section of the National Teachers' Association.
"Gee!" ejaculated the Hired Man.
Feeling the growing breadth and fullness of life I returned and assumed my office. Then it was that the Frayn episode may be said to have begun, in a letter from my brother Chester, which I have here, and which runs, using an undignified diminutive:
"Dear Oc:"We would like to see you. Mother and all are well, and glad you pulled through, even if you did run behind the ticket so. Am feeding three loads of steers, and they are making a fine gain. Middlekauff's look rough, and all the feeders think he'll lose money on them. He paid four cents for them. This is about all the news. Can't you appoint me your deputy down here to examine Miss Frayn, whose grandfather got killed in that wreck? She wants to teach. She is a Southerner, but an awful nice lady, and just as smart as one of us. She dreads to go to Pacific City to be examined, as she won't let ma get her hardly any clothes. She is very sensitive about money matters, and I had to lie to her about the funds to bury her grandfather with, and tried to slip in $250 more, but she caught me at it and cried. I will be strict and make her write out the examination properly; so send along the questions, and the appointment."Yours truly,Chet."P. S.—Judge Worthington's office is so near yours, you might leave the appointment and the questions in there. The judge will bring them down. He comes down quite often now, because he says that the Boggses and the Worthingtons moved into Iowa in the same wagon train in an early day, and he thinks it strange that that accident that killed Colonel Frayn should have brought the families together again. He thinks that Miss Frayn will make a first-rate teacher, so you need not be backward about the appointment and the questions."
"Dear Oc:
"We would like to see you. Mother and all are well, and glad you pulled through, even if you did run behind the ticket so. Am feeding three loads of steers, and they are making a fine gain. Middlekauff's look rough, and all the feeders think he'll lose money on them. He paid four cents for them. This is about all the news. Can't you appoint me your deputy down here to examine Miss Frayn, whose grandfather got killed in that wreck? She wants to teach. She is a Southerner, but an awful nice lady, and just as smart as one of us. She dreads to go to Pacific City to be examined, as she won't let ma get her hardly any clothes. She is very sensitive about money matters, and I had to lie to her about the funds to bury her grandfather with, and tried to slip in $250 more, but she caught me at it and cried. I will be strict and make her write out the examination properly; so send along the questions, and the appointment.
"Yours truly,Chet.
"P. S.—Judge Worthington's office is so near yours, you might leave the appointment and the questions in there. The judge will bring them down. He comes down quite often now, because he says that the Boggses and the Worthingtons moved into Iowa in the same wagon train in an early day, and he thinks it strange that that accident that killed Colonel Frayn should have brought the families together again. He thinks that Miss Frayn will make a first-rate teacher, so you need not be backward about the appointment and the questions."
Not abating one jot or tittle of my official strictness, I informed Chester that Miss Frayn must appear and be examined as did others in the same situation. Chester is an Ames man, and a fine judger and feeder of cattle, but not fitted for responsibility inbelles-lettres.
Professor Dustin, an elderly and myopic educator and the author of a monograph on the Grübe method, had charge of the examination when Miss Frayn appeared. I found Chester smoking a vile pipe in my lodgings when I came home.
"Say, Oc," said he, "this four-eyed old trilobite won't do. You've got to get in here and do business yourself."
Conjecturing that he meant Professor Dustin, I inferred that Miss Frayn's papers had been rejected. A glance justified the professor. She had given Richmond as the capital of the United States. A question in physiology called for a description of the iris, and Miss Frayn had answered that, further than that, "she" was a naiad, a dryad, or a nymph, and was pursued by Boreas, or Eolus, or Zephyrus until, turned into a flower, she could say nothing about Iris. The handwriting and drawing were beautiful; but the pages of mathematics were mostly blank, save for certain splashy discolorations presumably of lachrymatory origin, denoting lack of self-control and scholastic weakness.
"It is absurd," said I, "to think of certifying her. While she has a certain measure of intelligence—"
"A certain measure!" shouted Chester. "If you weren't a natural-born saphead, I'd—! Come up to Aunt Judith's!"
I went with him, firm in that solid self-control which gives fixity of character to my nature. I saw in its true light the amiable weakness of my relatives which made them slaves to this girl. I felt as stern and austere as a public officer should, and looked it, I believe, for mother was quite in a flutter as she asked me to read a clipping from an eastern Tennessee paper describing the departure from that region of the Frayns.
From this I learned that Miss Frayn and the colonel had been the last of the Frayns, the family having been exterminated in the Frayn-Harrod feud. The colonel had been an engineer in Lee's army. He had given public notice on leaving that at noon he would nail to the front door of the court-house, with the revolver of Boone Harrod, the last enemy shot by the colonel, his version of the origin of the feud. He had carried out this parting piece of bravado with no disturbance except an exchange of shots as the train moved away from the station. I was horrified. Was a person in this barbarous state of culture asking me, Oscar Boggs, member of the National Sub-Committee on Tone-Deafness—!
"Okky," said my mother, from behind, "this is Miss Frayn!"
I looked at her, and was suddenly impressed with the non-existence of the material universe, except as centered in and consisting of eyes of a ruddy brown like those of fine horses, rufous hair surrounding the small head like a nimbus, and a fused mass of impressions made up of the abstract concepts of trimness, fire, elegance, and unconquerability. I have reported the matter to the society for psychical research, but have received no answer as yet. It was clearly abnormal.
She placed her arm about my mother's waist and looked most respectfully at me.
"You ah the great man," said she, "of the family Ah have so much cause to love." Here she stopped as if to regain self-control. "Ah wish mah po' papahs," she went on, "had—"
"There, there!" said my mother, patting her arm. "It'll be all right anyway, dear!"
I was considering what to say. Her skin was clear, white, daintily transparent, and of a delicacy our western girls seldom display (owing, I surmise, to climatic influences); she stood there on Aunt Judith's Persian rug, her petite figure with its rounded curves, half-levitated, like Atalanta upon the oat-heads—and there returned upon me the mental vertigo, the lack of cerebral coördination, and the obliteration of the material universe.
"Am Ah so igno'ant, really?" said she. "Ah'm fond of children; and Ahmustfind wohk!"
Why did I hate Dustin? Why could I not command my speech? I always rally at the crises, however, and did so in this instance.
"As for ignorance," said I, "Sir John Lubbock says: 'Studies are a means, not an end.' And Lord Bacon hath it: 'To spend too much time in studies is sloth.' I see that you have acted on these maxims. Professor Dustin's astigmatism and myopia rendered it impossible for him to see you."
I stopped in some returning confusion.
"Those dreadful cube roots and quadratics—" said she.
"The personality of the teacher," said I, "controls the matter."
I heard her laugh, a little delighted laugh, and found myself agreeing to the heresy that, after all, the chief thing is to train the girls to be gentle, and the boys brave! Then I gave her my arm in to dinner. Chester, who had never offered a girl his arm except at a dance or after dark, glared at me. Mother was uneasy at the stirring of the old brotherly antagonisms. I expanded, and told Miss Frayn that if all southern women were like the only one I had met, I didn't wonder at the feuds. Then seeing whither I was drifting, I asked her plans as to the school she would take, when I sent her her certificate. She said that "Mistah Chestah" was going to let her have the home school.
"A boy like Chester," said I, "will have little influence with Mr. Middlekauff, the director."
"Oh, cut it out, Oc!" burst in Chester. "I've got it all framed up to be elected director!"
"My political plans," said I, "will not allow of a breach between my family and Mr. Middlekauff."
"Well, mine do," retorted Chester. "You'll take your chances with the Middlekauffs, just as I do!"
It was not the occult influence, but a desire to benefit educational conditions, that led me to visit Miss Frayn's school the week Chester's insurgency placed her in it. My memory is hazy as to the matter, but my notes show that her weakness was in the matter of organization.
"Oh," said she, when I mentioned this, "do you all prefeh things so regulah and poky? It's so much mo' pleasant foh the little things to be free!" She called most of the little ones "Honey," and allowed much latitude in whispering and moving about. They crowded around her like ants to a lump of sugar. Some of them were beginning to evince a laxity of pronunciation, sounding the personal pronoun "I" like the interjection "Ah."
In a few days I went back—Chester sneered at me as I went by—to tell Miss Frayn of the necessity of teaching the effects of stimulants and narcotics according to the Iowa law. She was greatly surprised when I told her of this requirement.
"What,daily, Mr. Supe'intendent!" she exclaimed.
"Daily teaching," said I. "Our law requires it."
"It seemssounnecessa'y," she said in perplexity. "The young gentlemen will find out all about it in due time: and is it raght to expe'iment with the littlest ones? And wheiah shall I obtain the liquoh foh the demonstrations?"
I felt strangely overcome at this astounding speech, by an indescribable mixture of tender solicitude for her welfare, and horror at her fearful mistake; but I reproved her for jesting at the vice of drinking.
"Vice!" said she, with a bubbling laugh. "Why, down home we-all regyahd it as an accomplishment! But Ah reckon you ah jokin' about teachin' it. Youah jokes and use of the lettah 'ah' ah things Ah shall nevah get used to, Ah'm afraid; but Ah'm glad you don't mean that about the drinkin'."
Despairing of making her understand, I left her, again conscious of being under occult and abnormal control. I was astonished to see in the school several large boys who must have been greatly needed in the fields. They looked at each other sheepishly as I came in, but most of the time they gazed at the teacher, rather than at their books. Not having the gift of prophecy, I could not see in their presence the cloud that would soon overshadow my official life. I took their attendance as proof of the popularity of the school. I studied the philosophers, and sought calm of spirit. Learning from Epictetus that the earthen pitcher and the rock do not agree, and from Lubbock that love at first sight is thought by great minds actually to occur, I reëxamined my abnormal psychic symptoms in Miss Frayn's presence, and prudently refrained from seeking her society. Poise alone makes possible a consistent career, and this I had in large measure reconquered, when, like a bolt from the blue—or at least with much abruptness—into my quiet office burst a committee from the Teal Lake Township School Board, accompanied by a number of patrons of the Boggs school—all old neighbors of ours—headed by the defeated Mr. Elizur Middlekauff. This could mean but one thing—Miss Frayn! The rebel invasion was at the door.
"Mr. Middlekauff," said one, "is the spokesman."
"We've got a grievyance," said Mr. Middlekauff, "a whale of a grievyance in our deestrict; and we've come right to the power-house to fix it."
"It shall command my most careful consideration," said I. "Please state the case."
"That 'ere railroad wreck," said Mr. Middlekauff, who was a very forcible speaker at caucuses, "let loose on our people a scourge in caliker more pestilential than the Huns and Vandals. We come to you as clothed with a little brief authority, an' accessory after the fact to this scourge business."
"I fail," said I, "to catch your meaning."
"I mean," said he, growing loud, "that peaches-an'-cream invader from the states lately in rebellion that you've give a stiffkit, an' your brother Chet by stratagems an' spiles has got himself elected an' put into our school. That's what I mean!"
"I infer," said I, "some implied strictures upon the character or school management or educational qualifications of Miss Roberta Lee Frayn."
"W'l you infer surprisin'ly clus to the truth!" replied Mr. Middlekauff offensively. "We're a-complainin' of this schoolma'am with the rebil name; and of her onrivaled facilities f'r spreadin' treason an' emotional insanity! Try to git that through your hair!"
Like lightning a course of policy occurred to me.
"Are the defendant," said I, looking them over, "and Mr. Boggs, the director, among your numbers?"
"No," said Mr. Middlekauff. "This is kinder informal. An' besides, we'd crawl out right where we went in if she was here. I tell you she's a—a—irresistible force."
"It is elementary," said I, "that noex parteinvestigation can have any validity."
"Now, see here, Oc Boggs!" hissed he, "I don't take any high-an'-mighty stand-off from a lunkhead that's stole my melons when he was a kid! You'll hear this complaint, see?"
I did not weaken, but I allowed his standing in the community and party to outweigh offensive orthoepy, rhetoric, and manners. Unofficially, I took down the complaint, reserving my ruling. As the horrid tale was told I grew sick at the problem before me. I glean the details of the situation from my notes:
Miss Frayn (all these things are set down asasserted) had assigned William Middlekauff, whose father was a member of the G. A. R., the Confederate side of a debate on the comparative greatness of Washington and Robert E. Lee, and had said: "She reckoned Mr. William ought to have won, as he had the strong side." Complained of as against public policy, adhering to armed insurrection, and giving aid and comfort to the enemy.Quœre(per O. B.): Is complaint good after forty years of peace, and Reconstruction?
All members of the committee said that every boy in the district of more than sixteen years of age was irresistibly attracted to her (exact language, "be-daddled over her," O. B.). Hence, her character must be "wrong" somehow. Two boys, each claiming an exclusive franchise to sweep out for her, had met in Allen's feed-lot to fight a duel, and been discovered in the act of firing and tied to the feed-rack by Allen's hired man, and spanked with the end-gate of his wagon. Clarence Skeen was poorly, and had been found kneeling before a bench calling it his darling Roberta and begging it to be his. Columbus Smith had turned somnambulist, and his father had lost ten tons of timothy which "Clumb" had failed to put up in cock. When sleep-walking Clumb had been heard by Vespucci, his brother (known as "Spootch"), to protest with sighs and groans that his heart was broken and to ask "Roberta" to shed one tear over his grave. Twitted of this by his young sister, Semiramis, Clumb had slapped her and, cursing profanely, had assaulted Spootch, who reproved him, and had fled to the Wiggly Creek woods with no subsistence but a loaf of salt-rising bread, a box of paper collars, and a book of poems. Letter from Mrs. Smith asking that this Jezebel's certificate be revoked before all should be lost.
Whipple Cavanaugh had been idle and "lawless" since attending school. Refused nourishment. Pillow wet with tears. Kissed Cavanaugh's mare, "Old Flora," on nose after Miss Frayn had patted her on said spot. Had written a poem to Roberta, and rather than have it read publicly by the hired girl, who had found it under his pillow, had eaten it, paper, ink, and all. Doctor Dilworthy called in; pronounced him in danger of gastritis and love-sickness with grave prognosis.
Names of fifteen boys given, known as "Frayn Mooners," who haunted the shrubbery about the home of Mrs. Jane D. Boggs, where the teacher boarded. Six fights were known to have occurred among them. Tension in the neighborhood was unbearable because of the loosing by Chester Boggs, "in violation of his official oath," of a bulldog which had bitten Albert Boyer, and thrown his mother into nervous prostration.
This epidemic of "worthlessness and sentimentality" was spreading outside the district, as evidenced by an excerpt found in the dog's possession, from the upper rear elevation of the Sunday trousers of Boliver Fromme, living in District No. 4. Progress in the studies of the boys confined to amatory poetry and pugilism, both unrelated to their life work.Iowa, My Iowa, Major Byers' stirring lyric, had been supplanted byMaryland, My Maryland, in school singing. Chester Boggs, the director, refused to receive complaints, and was condemned as equally affected with the disease, and probably a "Mooner" himself. There was a certificate of Doctor Dilworthy of Teal Lake as to the existence of many cases of "extreme mental exaltation accompanied by explosive and fulminant cerebral disturbances traceable to mediate or immediate association with one Roberta Lee Frayn, an individual seemingly possessed of an abnormal power in the way of causing obsessions, fixed ideas, aberrant cranio-spinal functionings, and cranial tempests, in those of her associates resembling her in the matter of age, and differing from her in social habits, hereditary constitution, and sex."
I sank back in my chair horrified, with a sinking in the region of the epigastric plexus.
"We kind o' thought, Oc," said Mr. Middlekauff, "that thet would hold yeh f'r a while."
I saw the muddled political relations with which this imbroglio teemed, and clung to delay as my sole hope.
"I am inexpressibly shocked," said I, "and as soon as we can meet with the defendant and the director—"
"What!" shrieked Mr. Middlekauff. "Herpresent! Arter what them papers says? And everybody follerin' her, if she jest smiles, like a caff arter salt! Why, dad ding me, if I'd trustmyselff'r more'n a smile or two. She'll bamboozle the hull thing if she's there. I b'lieveyou'vegot it, you conceited young sprout! No, sir; decide this thing now!"
"I regret the necessity," said I, "of asking time to get the opinion of the county attorney, and to—to—"
"Not by a dum sight!" roared Mr. Middlekauff. "We'll see what the court has to say on this. An' when you're up f'r election ag'in, come round, an' we'll consider it f'r a while—an' then you won't know you're runnin'!"
I was torn by conflicting emotions when they went away. I knew that Middlekauff was a man of influence. I was not averse to seeing Chester rebuked for his fatuous behavior, and for tempting me to a deviation from strict duty. I felt that in taking my stand with the "Mooners" I might be siding with the heaviest body of voters after all. By these whiffling winds of the mind was I baffled, finding no rest in my works on didactics and pedagogics, wondering what Middlekauff would do—until all doubts were settled by the filing of the case of The School Board of Teal Lake versus Frayn; and in a few days it came on for trial before Judge Worthington.
Chester telephoned, asking to see me. He came in looking thinner than I had ever seen him.
"Do you know," said he, "that this case old Middlekauff's got plugged up comes off this morning?"
"Having been summonsed by writ of subpœna," said I severely, "I am aware that your wilfulness in placing an untried importation in charge of our school, regardless of her unfitness, or of my political well-being, is this morning bearing its legitimate fruit in the hearing which comeson—notoff! And I hope your lack of consideration for the welfare of the school system, so largely wrapped up in my career, will—"
That Chester was temporarily insane is clear. He flew at me, seized my trachea in his iron hands, compressed it so as greatly to impede respiration, and knocked my head against the wall, using incoherently certain technical terms he had learned at Ames.
"Shut up!" he cried. "You duplex—polyphase—automatic—back-action—compound-wound—multipolarAss! Shut up!"
An anatomical chart on the wall preserved my head, and I retained my self-possession. When he let me down I took my station on the other side of a table and looked him in the eye, strongly willing that he quiet down.
"Forgive me, Oc," said he humbly, "I promised myself eight years ago not to lick you any more! Pardon me."
I forgave him, and we have ever since remained reconciled. He explained that he wanted to consult as to methods of concealing from Miss Frayn the nature of the suit.
"Am I to understand," said I, "that she does not know that the relief sought is her expulsion from the school?"
"Of course she don't!" replied Chester. "Do you think I'd let her know? She thinks everybody loves her. Nobody ever dared tell her anything else, either here or down where she was raised. The boys down there always were in love with her. She don't see anything strange in it—and there isn't."
"A change," said I, "would be wholesome for her."
"She wouldn't know what to do," replied Chester. "And if she were to hear these charges—against herself! Why, I don't know what she might not do! She'd be absolutely desperate. She'd think she had no one to defend her—and you know the Frayn way."
"I shall not endeavor," said I, after consideration, "to reconcile medieval notions of honor and personal dignity with proceedings under the Iowa Code. Neither do I feel it prudent for me to see this person."
For a few minutes Chester sat grinding his teeth and gripping the desk, and then rushed from the office calling me a white-livered dub, and telling me to go plumb to some place the name of which was cut off by the door's slamming. I sat in the office feeling a sense of unrest, until the time for going to court, where I found Judge Worthington on the bench, Chester sitting at the defendant's table, and no Miss Frayn.
"Are both sides ready in the next case?" asked the judge, without looking at the calendar.
"We wish to put the defendant on the stand for a few questions," said Beasley, Middlekauff's lawyer. "I don't see her in court, your Honor."
"Call the witness!" said the judge; and the bailiff shouted three times: "Robert Lefrayne!"
"Has this man Lefrayne been subpœnaed?" asked the judge; "as he is defendant, I don't suppose you thought it necessary, Mr. Beasley."
We could all see that the mispronunciation of the name had misled the judge as to the identity of the defendant.
"To make sure," said Beasley, "we subpœnaed the party. Here is the writ, your Honor, with proof of service."
"Mr. Clerk," said the judge, frowning sternly, "issue a bench warrant! Mr. Sheriff, attach this witness, and produce him at two. Some of these tardy witnesses will go to jail for contempt if this is repeated! Call your next!"
Chester was pale as a ghost, and accosted the bailiff as he went out with the warrant. Then he came back and listened with flushes of anger and clenched teeth to the reading of the pleadings, to which the judge seemed to pay no attention. At two, after the intermission, the bailiff, Captain Winfield, an old G. A. R. man, appeared with Miss Frayn on his arm. He was blushing and fumbling his bronze button, while she smiled up at him in a charming, daughterly way that brought back dangerous symptoms of relapse in my psychic nature.
"Call the witness Lefrayne!" cried the judge.
Light, airy, daintily flushed, she floated up to the bench. The fine for contempt died in Forceythe Worthington's breast, as he stared in a sort of delighted embarrassment.
"It was raght kahnd of you, Judge Wo'thin'ton," she said, looking up into his face, "to send Captain Winfield to remahnd me of mah engagement hyah. Why, he was at Franklin, and Chickamauga, and knows Tennessee! And now, gentlemen, what can Ah do foh you-all?"
The judge stepped down from the bench and handed Miss Frayn to the witness chair like a lord chancellor placing a queen on her throne. Beasley looked at the witness as if fascinated. Middlekauff seized him by the lapel of his coat.
"Don't look at her, Beasley, more'n yeh c'n help!" he whispered. "I tell yeh, it's dangerous!"
And yetIam selected to bear blame for a momentary weakness of the prevailing sort!
"Proceed, gentlemen!" said Judge Worthington.
Beasley gathered up his papers. "Are you the defendant?" asked he.
"Ah don't quite gathah youah meanin' suh," said she, "but Ah think not, suh."
"You're the teacher of the Boggs School, in Teal Lake Township?"
"Oh, yes, suh!" said she. "Pahdon me! I thought you inquiahed about something else."
Judge Worthington started as if struck by a dart.
"Let me see the papers in the case," said he excitedly.
Beasley handed them up, and the judge examined them carefully. Then he handed them down, turned his back on Miss Frayn, and spoke in a low tone, like one greatly shocked.
"Proceed!" said he.
Something in his tone or in the turning of his back seemed to strike upon the senses of Miss Frayn as unpleasant or hostile. The few questions put to her by the lawyer to lay the foundation for some other bit of evidence did not appear to affect her at all; and when she took her seat between Chester and my mother, and was reassured by their whispered communications, she looked serene, save when she noted the judge's averted face. Chester's lawyer spoke insinuatingly of spite, prejudice, and unreasonable provincialism as being at the bottom of the case.
"And," he added, "I may add jealousy—jealousy, your Honor, of the defendant's charms of person, which, as a part of theres gestæ, are evidence in this case, if your honor only would observe them."
The judge started and blushed, but still looked steadily away. Mr. Middlekauff looked relieved. Miss Frayn fretted the linoleum with little taps of her toe, and her delicate nostrils fluttered. There was a mystic tension in the air.
"Mr. Chestah," said the girl, in a low voice, "he seems to be alludin' to—what does he mean?"
Judge Worthington rapped for silence. Miss Frayn's eyes grew bright, and her cheek showed a spot of crimson which deepened as the reading of the affidavit went on. As the legal verbiage droned through the story of the boys' infatuation, I looked at her, and knew that her indignation was swelling fiercely at she scarcely knew what. I began repeating to myself a passage from Seneca.
"Objected to," roared Chester's lawyer, "as incompetent, irrelevant, immaterial, impertinent, and grossly scandalous!"
Miss Frayn clenched her hands and held her breath as if at the realization of her worst fears. Then the judge spoke. "The affidavit," said he, "attributes to Miss Frayn a malign and corrupting influence over the whole neighborhood, and—"
"Suh!" she gasped.
Again did the judge rap for order.
"Ruling reserved," said he. "Proceed."
Triumphantly Beasley went on with the resolutions. At last Miss Frayn seemed to understand. She rose, stilled Beasley with a gesture, and in frozen dignity addressed the court.
"Judge Wo'thin'ton," said she, "Ah'm not quite ce'tain Ah get the full meanin' of this, but Ah feel that Ah cain't pe'mit it to go fu'thah. Ah desiah to say to you as a gentleman and an acquaintance, if not a friend, that these ah things that can not be said of a lady, suh!"
"The defendant," said the judge, after two or three ineffectual attempts to speak, "will be heard through her counsel—proceed!"
She was hurt and desperate as she sat down, and in a cold and livid fury. With her eyes level and shining like knife-points, she put off, with a look like a blow, Chester's efforts to comfort her. She sat, an alien in an inhospitable land, hedged about by a wall of displeasure at some formless insult, and at friends without chivalry. The judge began stating his decision, giving the argument for the one side and then for the other, as judges do.
"The evidence tends to prove," said he, "that Roberta Lee Frayn has a malign fascination over her pupils—the larger boys especially; that she has lured them into personal attendance upon her rather than to study; that she has incited young men to duels, brawls, breaches of the peace, and—"
I could see that she thought the phrase "it tends to prove" an expression of his belief in the charges; and as he went on her face flamed red once more, and then went white as snow. She stepped back from the table as if to clear for action, one little hand lifted, the other in the folds of her dress.
"Suh!" she cried, in a passion of indignation which was splendid and terrible. "This must stop! If mah false friends lack the chivalry to protect me and mah good name, Ah'll defend mahself, suh!"
Chester half rose, as if to throw himself into the hopeless contest.
"The defendant does not understand," said the judge. "The defendant will resume her seat! The evidence tends to prove that—"
But the decision was never finished; for the girl drew a short, small pistol and aimed at him. We were frozen in horror. Judge Worthington looked unwaveringly into the muzzle.
"Roberta!" said he.
I then saw a rush by Captain Winfield to strike her arm; the pistol roared out in the court-room like a cannon; and as Miss Frayn sank back into my mother's arms, Judge Worthington stepped down with a rent across his shoulder, from which he withdrew his fingers stained red. From under the table, where irresistible force had thrown me, I saw him take her unresisting hand, and heard him whisper to her.
"Darling!" said he. "You don't understand! Let me explain, sweetheart, and then if you want the pistol back I'll give it to you, loaded!"
Then he stood up and took command.
"The bailiff," said he, "will remove the defendant and Mrs. Boggs to my chambers. I shall investigate thisin camera. I am not hurt, gentlemen, more than a pin's prick, and am able to go on and take such measures as are necessary to protect the court. Remain here until I resume the trial!"
"I tell you," said Middlekauff, "we'll crawl out where we went in. Nobody can stand ag'in her at clus range like that!"
Captain Winfield's face bore a puzzled and mysterious smile as he emerged from the chambers.
"You can't subdue these Southerners, Oc," said he.
"The verdict of history," said I, "is otherwise."
"We just reconstructed and absorbed 'em," said he. "I was there, an' I know. The judge thinks we've got to handle this Frayn invasion the same way."
"I fail to get your meaning," said I.
"The way to absorb this rebel host," said the captain, "is to marry it. It's the only way to ground her wire and demagnetize her. I can't undertake the job, for reasons known to all. You're sort of responsible for her devastatin' course, an' I think it'll cipher itself down to Oscar Boggs as a bridegroom for the good of Teal Lake Township, and the welfare of the Boggs School."
My emotions were tumultuous. No such marriage could be forced on me, of course; but duty, duty! Marriage had been to me an asset to be used in my career, some time after my doctor's degree, like casting in chess. I thought of Miss Frayn's untamable nature; and then of her sweetly tender way with the little ones, how they clambered over her while she called them "honey."
"On the main point," said the captain, "the court had its mind made up when I came out. This marryin' has got to be did. Who's to do it is what they're figgerin' on!"
"Captain Winfield," said I, "if the public interests require it, if my constituents demand it, I will make the sacrifice! Doctor Johnson said that marriages might well be arranged by the Lord Chancellor, and Judge Worthington is now sitting in chancery. I will marry the defendant,pro bono publico!"
"Oc," said the captain, in a properly serious manner, though some tittered, "you're a livin' marvel! I'll go back and report."
Almost immediately, as my heart-beats stifled me, they emerged from the chambers. My mother was in tears. Worthington bore Miss Frayn on his arm, and both looked exaltedly happy. Roberta, as I called her in my thoughts, shrank back bashfully, more beautiful than I had ever seen her. It was a great, a momentous hour for me. I felt that I had settled the case.
"I shall ask the plaintiff," said the judge, "to dismiss this case!"
"On what grounds?" interrogated Beasley sharply.
"Don't tell, Forceythe!" said Roberta, hiding her face on the judge's arm as I approached.
"Because the defendant," the judge replied to Beasley, "has resigned. She is about to be married!"
"Didn't I tell you, Oc," said Winfield, slapping me on the back—which in the delightful embarrassment of the occasion I did not resent—"that it was up to you?"
A boy in the audience—I think it was William Middlekauff—caught the judge's statement, and ungrammatically shouted: "Who to?"
"The lucky man?" shouted the crowd. "Name him!"
As it seemed proper for me to do under the circumstances, I went forward to take Roberta's hand in anticipation of the announcement. Then all went dark before my eyes.