It was in camp at Sulphur Mountain that the Artist's fate overtook him. The gods pulled his name from the hat by the hard hand of the Hired Man. This mystic event overshadowed the visit to Sulphur Spring—though that was in every respect a success. It was timed so as to give them the last of the dawn—the splendid flood of rare light which precedes the first cast of his noose by the Hunter of the East—and both eye and camera caught beautifully the myriads of steam spirals ascending from the hill, each from its own vent. The spring itself, the Poet compared to the daily press, in that it made a mighty and unceasing pother and dribbled out a mighty small amount of run-off—and that the output stained everything with which it came in contact a bright yellow.
"No matter what it splashes," said he, "stick or stone, church, family or court, it yellows it."
"Speaking of courts," said the Artist, "and the law—I think our friends the Colonel and Bill have dealt altogether too flippantly with them. I shall give you another view to-night."
"Do you notice," said the Bride, "how peaceful and sort of comforting the river is? It is as placid as a lake—or some deep river—like the Thames—made for pleasure boats and freighters."
"See the trout leap!" shouted the Colonel.
"Well," said Aconite, "you jest watch that river, an' it'll surprise yeh. It ain't reformed yit, if it hez sobered up. An' right here—Whoa!"
They were at the crossing of Alum Creek, and Aconite halted to point out matters of interest.
"Right hyar," said he, "or in this vicinity, took place one of the most curious things that ever happened to Old Jim Bridger. This crick is all alum, 'specially up at the head. Over yon"—pointing to the eastern bank of the Yellowstone with his whip—"is a stream named Sour Crick comin' in from the east. It's one or the other of these cricks, 'r one of the same kind, that Old Jim Bridger was obliged to go up f'r three days on his bronk, one time. It was a long trip. But on the way back he noticed that the crick had flooded the country, an' gone down ag'in, an' it seemed to him that he was makin' better time than goin' up. The hills that was low an' rounded when he went up, looked to him steeper, and higher, an' more clustered than they was. He didn't believe this could be, an' wondered how folks' minds acted when they was goin' crazy. Finely, he found his first camp, after he had been on the back track only half a day. He couldn't understand how he could've made the distance in four hours that it took two days to cover comin' up, and begun to get the Willies. He come to a bottom that had scattered trees on comin' up, and it was timbered so thick now that he couldn't go through it—but it wa'n't furder through than a hedge fence. Then he noticed that his bronk was hobblin', and observed that his hooves was drawed down to mere points, but good-shaped hoss's hooves all the same—they was just little, like the hooves of a toy hoss. At last he come to a place whar there had been two great boulders that had been forty rods apart when he went up—he knowed 'em by marks he had made on 'em in his explorin' around—an' danged if they wasn't jammed up agin' each other so's they touched both stirrups when he rode through between 'em. An' there he was back whar he started from in a little more'n half a day. He got to studyin' it over, an' found that this crick of alum water had over-flowed and jest puckered the scenery up, so that the distances to anywhere along its valley was shrunk up to most nothin'!"
The Hired Man looked away off to the east, and mentioned that the fish-hawks were thick this morning. The Bride giggled a very slight giggle—but the others were impassive. They seemed to be absorbing some of the taciturnity of the Indian. In the meantime the river did begin to surprise them. After miles of deep quiet, its valley walls began to crowd together.
"Somebody has been sprinkling alum on this scenery," suggested the Colonel—"eh, Aconite?"
Aconite clucked solemnly to the team.
The road was forced to the very edge of the bank. The river became mildly excited, as if in protest at the constriction. The road grew wilder and the landscape more rugged; and suddenly, the river, tortured by the pressure of the narrow trench provided for it, began raging and foaming, and sending up a hoarse roar, which grew upon them like an approaching tempest. The road trod first a narrow shelf above the terrific rapids, and then a bridge hung like a stretched rope over an awesome abyss. For half a mile the tumult below grew, until it seemed as if water could bear no more—when suddenly the river, just now ravening through a mere fifty-foot crack in the rocks, was gone. It turned abruptly away from the road, and fell away into space. They had passed the Upper Falls, where the Yellowstone, in a great spouting curve drops a sheer hundred and twelve feet in a curtain of white water, and sends up from the bottom of the cañon its hymn to liberty, in a cloud of mist.
They were no longer the tired sight-seers, with jaded senses; for this was new. They felt the thrill of power. And as they passed on, promising themselves a return when camp should be made, they cried out in delight as the Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone displayed the stupendous sluiceway into which the river had fallen. At their feet the lovely Crystal Falls of Cascade Creek played exquisitely, almost unnoted. The roar of the falls followed them to the Cañon Hotel near which they camped, and leaving the pitching of the tents to the men, they walked to the brink of the cañon, and gazed upon the most perfect scene, perhaps, that water, in its flow to the sea, has anywhere sculptured and painted to delight the eye of man. The Yosemite has greater heights; the Colorado offers huger dimensions, the Niagara or the Victoria possess mightier cataracts; but nowhere else is there such a riot of color, such dizzy heights, such glooming verdure, and such mad waters, united in one surpassingly splendid scenic whole.
They saw it all—that day, and subsequent days. They lingered as though unable to leave at all. They revisited the Upper Falls before seeing the lower, so as to view them in fairness and with no injustice to what seemed unsurpassable beauty.
"And now," said the Bride, "take me to the greater falls."
It was as if she had seen all but the Holy of Holies, and felt the exaltation suitable for higher things.
They were amazed at the tremendous plunge of more than three hundred feet which their river (as they now called it) made at the Lower Falls—even to the foot of which they descended. They looked from Inspiration Point, from Artist's Point, from Lookout Point. They watched the stream dwarfed by distance to a trickle, and strangely silent, as it wandered at the bottom of the gorge.
And at last the time came to leave. Early in the morning they were to start; and the last camp-fire was smoldering to ashes on that last night when the Artist found his audience collected, the demand for payment of his obligation presented; and without preface, save the statement that his was the story of a young fool, told his tale.
His name was John Smith, but he was not otherwise unworthy of notice. Out of her vast, tempestuous experience Blanche Slattery admitted this as she swept into the offices and looked down at the boy, noting the curl in his hair which speaks of the hidden vein of vanity, the wide blue eyes which told of a stratum of mysticism, the unsubdued brawn of hand and wrist which reminded her more of harvests than of field-meets, the mouth closely shut in purposeful attention to one Mr. Thompson'sCommentaries on the Law of Corporations.
He thought her the stenographer and kept his eyes on the page. She laid a card on his desk—a card at which he looked with some attention before rising to meet her eyes with his own, which dilated in a sort of horror, as she thought. Her cheek actually burned, though it grew no redder, as she turned aside with the crisp statement of her business.
"I want to see Judge Thornton," she said.
Without a word John Smith pushed a button and listened at a telephone. The judge took his time as usual, and John gazed at the Slattery person with the receiver pressed against his ear. She was powdered and painted; the full corsage of her dress glittered with passementerie; in her form the latest fad was exaggerated into a reminiscence of medieval torturing-devices. Through the enamel of her skin dark crescents showed under her great black eyes, the whites of which were mottled here and there with specks of red. The once sweet lips had lost their softness of curve with their vermeil tincture and had fallen into hard repose.
John knew her profession and how she dominated her world of saddest hilarity—a world which through all mutations of time and institutions persists as on that day when Samson went to Gaza. He felt that there emanated from her a sort of authority, like a sinister manifestation of the atmosphere surrounding men of power and sway—as though by dark and devious ways this soul, too, had carved out a realm in which it darkly reigned. She wondered, when he spoke, whether the softness in his voice were for her or whether it were merely a thing of habit.
"Judge Thornton is sorry that he can not see you this morning," he said. "Between ten and eleven to-morrow if it is convenient for you—"
"All right," she said. "I'll be here at half-past ten. Good morning!"
The perfume of her presence, the rustling of her departure, the husky depth of her voice haunting his memory, the vast vistas through which the mind of the country boy fared forth venturesomely, impelled by the new contacts of this town in which he had undertaken to scale the citadel of professional success—all these militated against the sober enticements of the law of corporations; and when Judge Thornton entered unheard, John Smith started as though detected in some offense.
"The law," said the judge, launching the hoary quotation, "is a jealous mistress."
John Smith blushed, but saw no lodgment for a denial where there was no accusation. He had been allowing his thoughts to go wool-gathering; but now he began questioning the judge on the doctrine of the rights of minority stock-holders. The judge condescended to a five-minute lecture which would have been costly had it been given for a client before the court. In the midst of the talk there bustled in a young man—a boy, in fact, who accosted the lawyer familiarly.
"Just a minute, Judge. About that mass-meeting Tuesday—I'm Johnson of theNews, you know. Will you speak?"
"I don't think the readers of theNewsare lying awake about it," answered the judge, looking at the boy amusedly. "But my present intentions go no further than to attend the meeting."
"What about the movement for cheaper gas?" asked the reporter. "Will the meeting start anything?"
"The meeting," said the judge, "will be a law unto itself."
"Sure," replied Johnson of theNews. "But a word from you as to the extortions of the gas company—"
"Will be addressed to the meeting—if I have any," said the judge. "I—"
"Oh, all right!" interrupted the boy. "That's what I wanted! Good-by!"
John Smith's amazement at the boy's self-possession and ready, impudent effrontery, passed away in a visualization of Judge Thornton's big, strong figure at the meeting, fulminating against oppression—the oppression of to-day—as did Patrick Henry and James Otis against the wrongs of their times. Now, as of old, thought John Smith, the lawyer is a public officer, charged with public duties, alert to do battle with any tyrant or robber. He flushed with pleasure at this conception of the greatness of the profession.
"As a science," said the judge, as though in answer to John's thought, "it's the greatest field of the intellect. It's the practice that's laborious and full of compromises."
"Yes," said John Smith, lamenting the interrupted lecture on the rights of minority stock-holders. Judge Thornton had donned his coat and his hat.
"I'm off for the day. Good day to you—oh, I almost forgot. Do you want to hear a paper onKing Learto-night? Nellie thought you might. Poor paper—but you'll meet people, and that's a part of the game."
"Oh, yes!" cried John. "I'd be glad to!"
"Come to the house about eight," said the judge, "and go with Nellie and me."
Ah, this was living! Why, at home he knew scarcely a person who had read more of Shakespeare than the quarrel scene in the Fifth Reader. Surely it was good fortune that had made his father and Judge Thornton playmates in boyhood. And to go with Nellie Thornton, too!
"Paint out that sign!" he heard some one say. "And what goes in the place of it, sir?" asked the painter. "'Thornton & Smith,'" replied the judge's voice. "My son-in-law, Mr. Smith, has been taken into the firm."
The stenographer saw exaltation in his face as he closed the safe, bade her good night and went home.
As he sat beside Nellie that evening, he remembered the fancied colloquy between her father and the imaginary painter, and shuddered as he contemplated the possibility of thought-transference and of its ruinous potentialities. As a protection against telepathy he gave his whole attention to Judge Thornton's paper onLear. The indescribable agony of the old king's frenzy, the whirling tempest of the tragedy in which he wandered to his doom clutched at the boy's heart. The wolfish Goneril and Regan, the sweet Cordelia, the bared gray head, the storm, the night—By some occult warning John Smith knew that Nellie was not pleased with his absorption, and that the discussion had begun.
"This treatment issooriginal," said the lady president. "Everybody must be full of questions. Now let us have a perfectly free discussion—don't wait to be called upon, please!"
To John Smith the lady president seemed enthusiasm personified; yet only a few people rose, and these merely said how much they had enjoyed the paper. John Smith could see himself on his feet pouring forth comment and exposition, but he sat close, hoping that no adverse fate might direct the lady president's attention to him. The discussion was dragging; one could tell that from the increasing bubbliness of the lady president's enthusiasm as she strove conscientiously to fulfil her task of imposing culture upon society.
"I'm sure there must be something more," she said. "Perhaps the most precious pearl of thought of the evening awaits just one more dive. Mrs. Brunson, can you not—"
"I always feel presumptuous," said Mrs. Brunson, hoarsening her voice to the pitch she always adopted in public speaking, "when I differ from other commentators. But I also feel that the true critic must put himself in the place of the character under examination. Isn't there a good deal of justification for Goneril and Regan? I do not see, personally, how Lear could be supposed to need all those hundred knights, with their drinking and roistering and dogs and—and all that. I believe Lear's fate was of his own making, and—"
John Smith, the unsophisticated, was startled. The unutterable fate of "the old, kind king"—could this Olympian circle hold such treason?
"No, you unnatural hags,I will have such revenges on you both,That all the world shall—I will do such things—What they are, yet I know not; but they shall beThe terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep;No, I'll not weep:I have full cause of weeping; but this heartShall break into a hundred thousand flaws,Or ere I'll weep. O, fool, I shall go mad!"
"No, you unnatural hags,I will have such revenges on you both,That all the world shall—I will do such things—What they are, yet I know not; but they shall beThe terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep;No, I'll not weep:I have full cause of weeping; but this heartShall break into a hundred thousand flaws,Or ere I'll weep. O, fool, I shall go mad!"
The fiery denunciation rang in the boy's ears in answer to the words of this modern woman with her silks and plumes, standing here in a church and, in spite of the softening things of her heritage, sympathizing with these fierce sisters! Others rose and agreed with her. One read the words of Regan:
"O, sir, you are old;Nature in you stands on the very vergeOf her confine: you should be ruled and ledBy some discretion that discerns your stateBetter than you yourself."
"O, sir, you are old;Nature in you stands on the very vergeOf her confine: you should be ruled and ledBy some discretion that discerns your stateBetter than you yourself."
These, was the comment, were the really sane words regarding Lear.
"Oh, well!" said Judge Thornton as John broke his fast and the abstinence of a lifetime in the parlor, upon the cakes and wine served by Nellie. "It didn't surprise me a bit. Mrs. Brunson thinks she'd do as Goneril and Regan did with their father—and she would. She'd avoid the little peccadilloes with Edmund and so remain technically virtuous—the best people are the worst, in some things, John, never forget that. It will be useful to remember it. And the worst are nearly as good as the best—come into the office when that Slattery person comes in the morning, and you'll see what I mean. I'll give you some papers to draw for her."
The Slattery person swept into the private office with a rustle of stiffest silks, reminding the youth of the corn-husks at home in shucking-time, leaving behind her a whiff of all the Orient. John Smith walked into her presence, palpitating as at the approach to something terrible and daunting and mystically fateful to such as himself—as a sailor might draw warily near the black magnetic rocks, which, approached too closely, would draw the very nails from his ship and dissolve his craft in the billows. When Judge Thornton remarked by way of left-handed introduction that Mr. Smith would draw the papers, the woman paid John no attention other than to bow and look straight before her. The youth felt conscious of the same shuddering admiration for her that he might have felt for some gaudy, bright-eyed serpent.
"It's a simple matter, I guess," she said. "I want to make over some property so Abner Gibbs of Bloomington will get fifty dollars sure every month as long as he lives."
"Not so very simple," said the judge, "but quite possible. But why don't you remit it to him yourself?"
"I want to cinch it while I've the money. You see, it's this way. In—in my—business"—she looked into John Smith's girlish eyes and hesitated—"everything is uncertain. It's a feast or a famine. A wave of reform may strike the town to-morrow, and the lid goes on. The protection you pay for may be taken from you next week. You've no rights. You ain't human. So I fix the fifty a month for the old man while I can, see?"
"Gibbs—Gibbs!" said the judge. "Relation of yours?"
"In a way. Does it make any difference?"
"It goes to the consideration," said the lawyer. "Love and affection, you know."
"Well," said the Slattery person, "his son was my solid man—my side-partner—my husband. The last thing he said when he got his was, 'Blanche, old girl, take care of dad. You know his weakness. Don't let him starve!' And I ain't going to!"
"His weakness?" queried the judge. "What did he mean?"
"Drink," said the Slattery person. "It's in the blood. But he can't last long—and he's Jim's father!"
She looked out of the window and dabbed with a lace handkerchief at her bright eyes, which she dared not wipe for fear of ruin to the appliqué complexion. Suddenly she had, to the mind of the susceptible John Smith, become a woman, with a woman's weakness and yearning over the departed Jim—of the blackness of whose life John had no means of taking the measure. He felt all at once that this person had shown feelings so like those he would have expected from his mother that it startled him.
"Oh, we're all alike!" said the judge when she had gone. "These things are worth the lawyer's study. Human nature—human nature! We must get above it and study it! Just ponder on the contradictions in the bases of life involved in this Slattery person and Mrs. Brunson's feeling toward Lear. Here's a woman, that no one at the circle last night would touch with anything shorter than a ten-foot pole or lighter than a club, who is actually carrying out toward a drunkard in Bloomington a policy of love and humanity that would be beyond Mrs. Brunson. She'd say: 'Let him behave the way I say, and I'll take him in!' Any of us moral folks would do the same, too. No knights and roistering for us! Quite a study—eh, John?"
John sat silent, far afloat from his moorings. The judge was too deep, too ethically acute for him. Perhaps by long association he, John Smith, might grow in moral height and mental grasp, so as to—
"I don't know," said Judge Thornton, "which is the worse—sale of the body, or barter of the soul. I don't mean that the body can be sold without the soul going with it, though Epictetus seems a case in point in favor of the separable-transaction theory; but if it can, sale of the soul would seem the more ruinous. I—"
Judge Thornton was interrupted by the opening of the office door and the entrance of a brisk, capable-looking, Vandyke-bearded man who carried a cane and bore himself with an ease that seemed somehow at war with something of restraint—the ease on the surface, the embarrassment underneath, like a dead swell coming in against the breeze. There was a triumphant gleam in Judge Thornton's eyes, filmed at once with self-possession and inscrutable calm. "Come in, Mr. Avery," he said.
"Just a word with you," said Mr. Avery, "in—"
"Certainly!" said the judge. "Right in here, Mr. Avery."
Mr. Avery passed into the private office. Judge Thornton remained for a word with John Smith.
"This is the vice-president of the gas company," he said. "Don't mention his call and don't allow me to be disturbed."
John Smith was triumphant. The very might of Thornton's ability and power had brought the gas company to its knees! This crucial stage of the gas fight thrust entirely out of his mind the deep moral and ethical consideration of the relations of the Slattery person to the discussion of Lear. The law, as of old, was a great profession. Would any of the Boone County folk be able to believe that he, John Smith, was so near the heart of big things as to sit here while Judge Thornton won this great bloodless victory for the people?
Mr. Avery came out, cordially smiling upon Judge Thornton, who looked triumphant, pleased, uplifted. For a man who had just been throttled, Mr. Avery looked in rather good form.
"I'll send all the papers over to you, Judge," he said. "And I'm mighty glad we've got together. It ought to have been done before; but you know how it is when you leave things to subordinates."
"Oh, well," said the judge. "Of course I'm very glad; but the subordinates may have done the right thing. Maxwell and Wilson are good men, but local conditions may—"
They went out into the anteroom, and John Smith heard them go away together. He felt disquieted. The appearances were so different from what he had expected. Not that it was in the least degree his affair, but—
The newsboy threw in the evening paper. John Smith looked at once for the account of the gas fight.
"The anti-ordinance forces make no secret of their regret that Judge Thornton has seen fit to withdraw his promise to address the mass-meeting on Tuesday. Late this afternoon he told aNewsrepresentative that he would not attend, and that in his opinion a study of the gas question will convince any business man that the illuminant can not be delivered at the meter at anything short of the rate now paid here. This is regarded by some as a reversal of Judge Thornton's position; but, as a matter of fact, in all his public utterances the judge has suspended judgment on the merits of the question. The outlook for a successful movement can not be regarded as bright to-day."
"The anti-ordinance forces make no secret of their regret that Judge Thornton has seen fit to withdraw his promise to address the mass-meeting on Tuesday. Late this afternoon he told aNewsrepresentative that he would not attend, and that in his opinion a study of the gas question will convince any business man that the illuminant can not be delivered at the meter at anything short of the rate now paid here. This is regarded by some as a reversal of Judge Thornton's position; but, as a matter of fact, in all his public utterances the judge has suspended judgment on the merits of the question. The outlook for a successful movement can not be regarded as bright to-day."
John Smith was looking at the paper as though it were some published blasphemy, some unspeakable profanation of all things good and holy, when Judge Thornton returned, whistling like a man at peace with the world and himself. The judge went into his private office and came out with a thin slip of paper folded in the palm of one smooth, strong hand.
"Too bad you're not a full-fledged lawyer, John, instead of a beginner. I could use you a good deal. My practice is getting more extensive. I've just been retained as the general counsel of the gas company. Oh, all you have to do is to wait and make yourself indispensable!You'llbe getting plums like that one of these days. It's a great game! Good night."
Good night, indeed! There was no thunder and lightning like that on the heath when Lear went mad; but, to a boy whose world had suddenly tumbled into pieces, the snow which drove softly against his cheek and slithered hissingly along the asphalt was a natural feature to dwell in his memory for ever. He wandered out through the area of high buildings, past the residences, to where the snow rattled on the corn-husks that reminded him of the Slattery person's silks. He had confused visions of Mrs. Brunson, dressed in Judge Thornton's decent high hat, flaunting gaudy garments and painting her face for indescribable drinking-bouts. He came back past the Thornton home, where he paused in the gray dawn and looked at one lace-curtained window to murmur "Good-by." At the door of the office-building where his days had been spent since his coming to town, he went in from force of habit and pushed the button for the elevator. No sound rewarded the effort, and he pushed again impatiently. Then he laughed as he noted the elevator-cages about him, all shut down, all empty, like cells from which the lunatic occupants had escaped. A woman who had begun scrubbing the marble steps looked at him curiously as his mirthless laugh sounded through the empty building.
John Smith climbed flight after flight, opened the door which would never have "Thornton & Smith" on it, sat down at his desk and wrote:
"Dear Father: I am quite well. Everything looks favorable for my studies. Judge Thornton says he wants to do all he can for me, and I think he does; but I guess I am not cut out for a lawyer. It isn't quite what I thought it was. If you are still willing to send me to the state college and give me that agricultural course, I believe I'll go. There's something about the farm that's always there; and you know it's there. I'll be home as soon as I can pack up."Your loving son,"John Smith."
"Dear Father: I am quite well. Everything looks favorable for my studies. Judge Thornton says he wants to do all he can for me, and I think he does; but I guess I am not cut out for a lawyer. It isn't quite what I thought it was. If you are still willing to send me to the state college and give me that agricultural course, I believe I'll go. There's something about the farm that's always there; and you know it's there. I'll be home as soon as I can pack up.
"Your loving son,"John Smith."
The party sat for a few moments motionless, as the Artist's voice became silent. Then the Colonel arose, bade them good night, and took the Artist's hand.
"As a legal Slattery person," said he, "I thank you for the tale of the young fool. Good night!"
The traveler who is wise, going from Grand Cañon Hotel to Tower Falls, will pass over Mount Washburn—and he starts early. He starts early that he may take with him the memory of the Upper and Lower Falls wrapped in the mist which they and night have wrought together, and which the nocturnal calm has perhaps left hanging wraith-like over the tremendous slot so filled with the roar of many waters. And he starts early, too, that he may make the ten-mile climb to Washburn's summit before the day-wind rises and sweeps the mountain's head with that gale which so tears the trees and twists them into a permanent declination, like vegetable dipping needles.
The Seven Wonderers pursued the way of wisdom, and so they startled deer and elk from their night beds along the road to Cascade Creek; and began the climb of Washburn before sunrise. The tops of Dunraven and Hedges Peaks were rosy with morning when the rested cayuses pulled over the first rugged spurs of these peaks, and it was morning with the perfect trees, that stood like spires about them, morning with the columbine and the larkspur, the forget-me-nots and the asters, the flea-bane and the paint-brush—and all the wild flowers that enameled the wayside. For many days they had been in the heart of the Rockies, and yet the scenery had not seemed like real mountain scenery. Here for the first time, it became alpine. They threaded Dunraven Pass in the early forenoon, and took the high road straight over the summit. The team leaned hard into the squeaking collars, and frequent stops that the horses might breathe made the tourists glad. Every stop and every turn brought the eye new delights. The great lake came into view again, like a distant splash of silver; and as if for another good-by, away off to the south stood Mount Sheridan, with the three Tetons to the right of it, solemnly overlooking the Park of which they are a part to the eye only.
"Oh! Oh!" said the Bride, gasping. "There's the Grand Cañon, like a crack in the floor!"
"And," said the Poet, "there's the ghost of wasted power, mistily brooding over the falls, just as when we left."
"Ghost of wasted power!" repeated the Groom. "That's not half bad, Poet."
Another turn, and the Absarakas notched the eastern horizon; and the whole huge valley, with titanic slopes as its farther wall, and the zigzag trench of the cañon as its central drain, lay at their feet. The air was cooler, now, and the breath came short, as lungs labored for more of the rare atmosphere. At their feet lay green meadows and open parks, on which they might have expected to see grazing herds of shaggy black Highland cattle.
Again a few starts and stops, and as if turned into view by machinery, came the northwest quarter of the Park, with all the country they had traversed—Electric Peak, in whose shadow they had entered upon their journey, Sepulcher Mountain, with its grave and the monuments at head and foot no longer to be made out, the valley of Carnelian Creek at their feet, and beyond it the jagged range, of which Prospect, Folsom and Storm Peaks are the culminations.
"That's something you don't always see," said Aconite, pointing to something away off to the northwest. "That thing is the Devil's Slide."
"And we saw his Inkstand yesterday," said the Hired Man. "He seems to've preëmpted a lot of this here region."
"Well," remarked the Colonel sardonically, "isn't the Park dedicated to the enjoyment, as well as the benefit of the people?"
"It started as 'Colter's Hell,'" suggested the Groom.
"In Old Jim Bridger's time," said Aconite, "it rained fire up here in these hills one year."
"I don't doubt it," assented the Artist. "And we've either seen or are promised a view of Hell Roaring Creek, Hell Broth Springs, Hell's Half Acre, Satan's Arbor, and a lot of other infernal real estate."
"It's heavenly uphere!" said the Bride.
Once at the summit the Park lay under their eyes like a map—all these and a thousand other features to be taken in by merely turning about. The land was sown with every variety of all that is wild and beautiful and strange; the sky was filled with peaks. Here they had mountains to spare. They looked, and looked, and grew tired of looking—and then gazed again. The wind blew up and whipped their faces; and the sun was far past the meridian, passing south through the silvery splotch of Yellowstone Lake, when Aconite literally loaded them into the surrey, and drove down the mighty flanks of Washburn, northwardly, until he found a place where a fire could be builded and luncheon prepared.
"You folks mustn't fergit," said he, "that scenery ain't so fillin' f'r them as looks it every little while, as it is f'r the tenderfoot."
The Professor was evidently pleased when his name came from the Stetson for the second time. He seemed to have something on his mind. Fully a mile short of Tower Falls, which they planned to visit in the early morning, they camped in dense forest, with a party of sight-seers just so far away as to seem neighborly without intrenching on privacy.
"This is the best camp we've had," said the Bride, hooking her hands over her knee, and gazing into the fire.
"Sure," said Billy. "Every camp is the best in life, for me, honey! Listen to the Professor, now—nobody heard!"
I can not bring myself to think lightly of devils and imps. Neither can I believe that the consensus of the opinions of so many millions of mankind associating eternal punishment with fire can be neglected by the student of ethnology or theology. These are filled with haunts of devils—if the opinions of those who named them are worth anything. In addition to those localities which have been mentioned, I have in my notes the following:
The Devil's Frying Pan,The Devil's Slide,The Devil's Kitchen,The Devil's Punch Bowl,The Devil's Broiler,The Devil's Bath Tub,The Devil's Den,The Devil's Workshop,The Devil's Stairway,The Devil's Caldron,The Devil's Well,The Devil's Elbow,The Devil's Thumb,
The Devil's Frying Pan,The Devil's Slide,The Devil's Kitchen,The Devil's Punch Bowl,The Devil's Broiler,The Devil's Bath Tub,The Devil's Den,The Devil's Workshop,The Devil's Stairway,The Devil's Caldron,The Devil's Well,The Devil's Elbow,The Devil's Thumb,
and I know not how many of the members of His Satanic Majesty—all in this Park! And yet we say there is no devil, no brood of imps set upon the capture of human souls?
I shall tell you a story that seems worth considering as evidence on the other side. It is the story of something that occurred when I was journeying by a branch railway to take the main line to Washington, after a visit to the Boggses' ancestral farm in Pennsylvania. I had been at Boston as an attendant upon the sessions of the National Teachers' Association; with what recognition of my own small ability as an educator I have already mentioned. I boarded an old-fashioned, branch-line sleeping-car, and there met the being whose utterances and actions have so impressed me that I shall never forget them, never. I feel that this creature, so casually met, may be one of the actors in a series of events of the most appalling character, and cosmic scope.
When the porter came snooping about as if desiring to make up my berth, I went into the smoking compartment. I do not smoke; but it was the only place to go. I found there a person of striking appearance who told me the most remarkable story I ever heard in my life, and one which I feel it my duty to make public.
He had before him a bottle of ready-mixed cocktails, a glass, and a newspaper. With his bags and the little card table on which he rested his elbows, he was occupying most of the compartment. I sidled in hesitatingly, in that unobtrusive way which I believe to be the unfailing mark of the retiring and scholastic mind, and for want of a place to sit down, I leaned upon the lavatory. He was gazing fixedly at the half-empty bottle, his sweeping black mustaches curling back past his ears, his huge grizzled eyebrows shot through with the gleam of his eyes. He looked so formidable that I confess I was daunted, and should have escaped to the vestibule; but he saw me, rose, and with extreme politeness began tossing aside baggage to make room.
"I trust, Sir," said he with a capital S, "that you will pardon my occupancy of so much of a room in which your right is equal to mine! Be seated, I beg of you, Sir!"
I sat down; partly because, when not aroused, I am of a submissive temperament; and partly because he had thrown the table and grips across the door.
"Don't mention it," said I. "Thank you."
"Permit me, Sir," said he, "to offer you a drink."
"I hope you will excuse me," I replied, now slightly roused, for I abhor alcohol and its use. "I never drink!"
"It is creditable to any man, Sir," said he, "to carry around with him a correct estimate of his weaknesses."
This really aroused in me that indignation which sometimes renders me almost terrible; but his fixed and glittering gaze seemed to hold me back from making the protest which rose to my lips.
"Permit me, Sir," said he, "to offer you a cigar."
It was a strong-looking weed; but although I am not a smoker, I took and lighted it. He resumed his attention to his bottle and paper.
"Will you be so kind," said he, breaking silence, "as to read that item as it appears to you?"
"'Federal Improvement Company,'" I read. "'Organized under the laws of New Jersey, on January 4th, with a capital of $1,000,000. Charter powers very broad, taking in almost every field of business. The incorporators are understood to be New York men.'"
"'Imp,'" said he, "isn't it? not 'Improvement.'"
"I take it, sir," said I, "that the omission of the period is a printer's error, and that i-m-p means Improvement.'"
He leaned forward, grasped my wrist and peered like a hypnotist into my face.
"Just as badly mistaken," said he, "as if you had lost—as could be! It means 'Imp' just as it says 'Imp.' Have another drink!"
This time I really did not feel free to refuse him. He seemed greatly pleased at my tasting.
"Sit still," said he, "and I'll tell you the condemdest story you ever heard. That corporation means that we are now entering a governmental and sociological area of low pressure that will make the French Revolution look like a cipher with the rim rubbed out. In the end you'll be apt to have clearer views as to whether or not 'i-m-p' spells improvement'!"
This he seemed to consider a very clever play upon words, and he sat for some time, laughing in the manner adopted by the stage villain in his moments of solitude. His Mephistophelean behavior, or something, made me giddy. His manner was quite calm, however, and after a while we lapsed back into the commonplace.
"Ever read a story," said he, "namedThe Bottle Imp?"
"Stevenson'sBottle Imp?" I exclaimed, glad to find a topic of common interest, and feeling that it could not be a dangerous thing to be shut into the same smoking compartment with any man who loved such things, no matter how Captain-Kiddish he might appear. "Why, yes, I have often read it. I am a teacher of literature and an admirer of Stevenson. He possesses—"
"Who? Adlai?" he said. "Did he ever have it?"
"I mean Robert Louis," said I. "He wrote it, you know."
"Oh!" said my companion meditatively, "he did, did he? Wrote it, eh? It's as likely as not he did—I knowAdlai. Met him once, when I was putting a bill through down at Springfield: nice man! Well about this Bottle Imp. You know the story tells how he was shut up in a bottle—the Imp was—and whoever owned it could have anything he ordered, just like the fellow with the lamp—"
"Except long life!" said I, venturing to interrupt.
"Of course, not that!" replied my strange traveling companion. "If the thing had been used to prolong life, where would the Imp come in? His side of the deal was to get a soul to torture. He couldn't be asked to give 'em length of days, you understand. It couldn't be expected."
I had to admit that, from the Imp's standpoint, there was much force in this remark.
"And that other clause in the contract that the owner could sell it," he went on. "That had to be in, or the Imp never could have found a man sucker enough to take the Bottle in the first place."
The cases of Faust, and the man who had the Wild Ass's Skin seemed to me authorities against this statement; but I allowed the error to pass uncorrected.
"On the other hand," he went on, "it was nothing more than fair to have that other clause in, providing that every seller must take less for it than he gave. Otherwise they'd have kept transferring it just before the owner croaked, and the Imp would never have got his victim. But with that rule in force the price just had to get down so low sometime that it couldn't get any lower, and the Imp would get hisquid pro quo."
"You speak," said I indignantly, for it horrified me to hear the loss of a soul spoken of in this light manner; "you speak like a veritable devil's advocate!"
"When I've finished telling you of this Federal Imp Company that's just been chartered," said he, "you'll have to admit that there's at least one devil that's in need of the best advocate that money'll hire!"
Here he gave one of his sardonic chuckles, long-continued and rumbling, and peered into the bottle of cocktails, as if the prospective client of the advocate referred to had been confined there.
"When it doesn't cost anything," he added, "there's no harm in being fair, even with an Imp."
I failed to come to the defense of my position, and he went on.
"Well," said he, "do you remember the Bottle Imp's history that this man Stevenson gives us? Cæsar had it once, and wished himself clear up to the head of the Roman Empire. Charlemagne, Napoleon, and a good many of the fellows who had everything coming their way, owed their successes to the Bottle Imp, and their failures to selling out too soon: got scared when they got a headache, or on the eve of battle, or something like that. It was owned in South Africa, and Barney Barnato and Cecil Rhodes both had it. That accounts for the waytheygot up in the world. Then the Bottle and Imp went to the Nob Hill millionaire who bought it for eighty dollars and sold it to Keawe the Kanaka for fifty. The price was getting dangerously low, now, and Keawe was mighty glad when he had wished himself into a fortune and got rid of the thing. Then, just as he was about to get married, he discovered that he had leprosy, hunted up the Bottle, which he found in the possession of a fellow who had all colors of money and insomnia, both of which he had acquired by purchasing the Bottle Imp for two cents, you remember, and was out looking for a transferee, and about on the verge of nervous prostration because he couldn't find one,—not at that price! Keawe became so desperate from the danger of going to the leper colony and the loss of his sweetheart, that he bought the Bottle for a cent, in the face of the fact that, so far as he knew, a cent was the smallest coin in the world, and the bargain, accordingly, cinched him as the Imp's peculiar property, for all eternity. I'll be—hanged—if I know whether to despise him for his foolishness or to admire him for his sand!"
"You recall," said I, "that his wife directed his attention to thecentime—"
"Yes," said he, "she put him on. And they threw away one transfer by placing it on the market at fourcentimes. They might just as well have started it at five."
"I don't see that," said I.
"Because you haven't figured on it," said he. "You haven't been circulating in Imp circles lately, as I have, where these things are discussed. Listen! Acentimeis the hundredth part of a franc, and a franc is about nineteen cents. A cent, therefore, is a fraction more than fivecentimes. But they started it at four, the chocolate-colored idiots, after getting rid of their leprosy! When I think how that Bottle Imp has been mismanaged, I am driven—"
He illustrated that to which he was driven, by a gesture with the bottle on the table. He coughed, and took up hisrésuméof the story.
"Let that pass. They put it up at fourcentimes, and without Keawe's knowledge that she had anything to do with it, Keawe's wife got an old man to buy it, and she took it off his hands at three. The Kanaka soon found out that he was now carrying his eternal damnation in his wife's name, and he procured an old skipper or mate, or some such fellow in a state of intoxication, to buy it of her for two, on the agreement that he would take it again for one. Here they were, frittering away untold fortunes, each trying to go to perdition to save the other—it makes me tired! But the old bos'n or whatever he was, said he was going, you know where, anyhow, and figured that the Bottle was a good thing to take with him, and kept it. And there's where the Kanakas got out of a mighty tight place—"
"And the Bottle disappeared and passed into history!" I broke in. I was really absorbed in the conversation, in spite of a slight vertigo, now that we had got into the field of literature where I felt at home.
"Passed into—nothing!" he snorted. "Passed into the state of being the Whole Thing! Became It! Went on the road to the possession of the Federal Imp Company as the sole asset of the corporation. Folks'll see now pretty quick, whether it passed into history or not! Yes, I should say so!"
"Who's got it now?" I whispered. I was so excited that I found myself sitting across the table, and us mingling our breaths like true conspirators. He had a good working majority in the breaths, however.
"Who's the Charlemagne, the J. Cæsar, the Napoleon of the present day?" he whispered in reply, after looking furtively over his shoulder. "It don't need a Sherlock Holmes to tell that, does it?"
"Not," said I, "not J. P.—"
"No," said he, "It's John D.—"
But before he finished the name he crept to the door and peered down the aisle, and then whispered it in my ear so sibilantly that I felt for a minute as I used to do when I got water in my ear when swimming. But I noticed it very little in my astonishment at the fact he had imparted to me. I felt that I was pale. He rose again and prowled about as if for eavesdroppers. I felt myself a Guy Fawkes, an Aaron Burr, an—well, anything covert and dangerous.
"He bought this Bottle Imp," my companion went on, resuming his seat, "of the old sailing-master, or whatever he was—the man with the downward tendency and the jag. What J. D. wanted was power, just as Cæsar and Napoleon wanted it in their times. But the same kind of power wouldn't do. Armies were the tools of nations then; now they are the playthings. Now nations are the tools of money, and wealth runs the machine. This emperor of ours chose between having the colors dip as he went by, and owning the fellows that made 'em dip. He gave the grand-stand the go-by, and took the job of being the one to pull the string that turned on the current that moved the ruling force that controlled the power back of the power behind the throne. D'ye understand?"
"It's a little complex," said I, "the way you state it, but—"
"It'll all be clear in the morning," he said. "Anyway, that's what he chose. And what is he? The Emperor of Coin. He was a modest business man a few years ago. Suddenly the wealth of a continent began flowing into his control. It rolled in and rolled in, every coin making him stronger and stronger, until now the business of the world takes out insurance policies on his life and scans the reports of his health as if the very basis of society were John D. You-Know-Who. Emperors court his favor, and the financial world shakes when he walks. You don't think for a minute that this could be done by any natural means, do you?"
"But the price of the bottle was onecentime!" said I, my altruism coming uppermost once more. "Onecentime: and he is no longer young!"
"Exactly," he answered, "and he's got to sell it, or go to—Well, he's just about got to sell it!"
"But how?" I queried. "What coin is there smaller than acentime—what he paid?"
"All been figured out," said he airily. "Who solved the puzzle I don't know; but I guess it was Senator Depew. Know what a mill is?"
"A mill? Yes," said I. "A factory? A pugilistic encounter? A money of account?"
"Yes," said he, "a 'money of account.' Never coined. One-tenth of a cent.One-half a centime!Have you heard of Senator Aldrich's currency bill, S. F. 41144? It's got a clause in it providing for the coinage of the mill. And there's where I come in. I'm an unelected legislator—third house, you know. Let the constructive statesman bring in their little bills. I'm satisfied to put 'em through! S. F. 41144 is going to be put through, and old J. D.'ll sell his Bottle, Imp and all. Price, one mill. When this grip epidemic started in, he got a touch of it, and I'll state that a sick man feels a little nervous with that Imp in stock. So they wired for me. It's going to be a fight all right!"
"Why, who will oppose the bill?" said I. "No one will know its object."
"Lots of folks will oppose it," said he. "Every association of clergymen in the country is liable to turn up fighting it tooth and nail. There are too many small coins now for the interests of the people who depend on contribution boxes. The Sunday-schools will all be against it. And the street-car companies won't want the cent subdivided. Then it'll be hard to convince Joe Cannon; he's always looking for a nigger in the fence, and thereisone here, you understand. But the mill's going to be coined, all the same!"
"But," said I, "who will buy the diabolical thing for a mill? If Keawe and his wife had such trouble selling it for acentime, it will be impossible to dispose of it for a mill, absolutely impossible! It's the irreducible minimum!"
"I take it, Sir," said he, with a recurrence of the capital S, "that you are not engaged in what Senator Lodge in our conference last night called 'hot finance'?"
"No," I admitted, for in spite of the orthoëpic error, I understood him. "No, I am not—exactly."
"I inferred as much from your remark," said he. "When there's anything to be done, too large for individual power, or dangerous in its nature, or, let us say, repugnant to some back-number criminal law, or, as in this case, dangerous to the individual's soul's salvation, what do you do? Why you organize a corporation, if you know your business, and turn the whole thing over to it—and there you are. The Federal Imp Company will take over the Bottle Imp at the price of one mill. Mr. R. won't own it any more. His stock will be non-assessable, and all paid up by the transfer of the Imp, and there can't be any liability on it. He can retain control of it if he wants to—and you notice he generally wants to, and can laugh in the Imp's face. We've got all kinds of legal opinions onthat. And whoever controls that company will rule the world. That Imp is the greatest corporate asset that ever existed. All that's needed is for the president of the corporation to wish for anything, or the board of directors to pass a resolution, and the thing asked for comes a-running. The railways, steamships, banks, factories, lands—everything worth having—are just as good as taken over.
"Why it's the Universal Merger, the Trust of Trusts! The stock-holders of the Federal Imp Company will be the ruling class of the world, a perpetual aristocracy; and the man with fifty-one per cent. of the stock, or proxies for it, will be Emperor, Czar, Kaiser, Everything!"
"But this is stupendous!" I exclaimed: for, being a student of political economy—"economics," they call it now—I at once perceived the significance of his statements. "This is terrible! It is revolution! It is the end of democracy! Can't it be stopped?"
"M'h'm," said he quietly, evidently assenting to my rather excited statement; and then in reply to my question, he added with another chuckle, "Stop nothing! Federal injunction won't do it: presidential veto won't do it: nor calling out the militia: nor anything else. For the Imp controls the courts, the president,andthe army; and J. D. R. runs the Imp—fifty-one per cent. of the Imp stock! The socialists will go out campaigning in favor of the government's taking over the Federal Imp Company, but the Imp controls the government—and the socialists, too, when you come down to brass nails. Oh, it's a cinch, a timelock, leadpipe cinch! The stuff's off with everybody else, if we can get this bill through!"
I was shocked into something like a cataleptic state, and sat dazed for a while. Either this or the strong cigar, or something, so affected me that, as he passed the flask to me for the fourth time, the smoking compartment seemed to swim about me as the train rolled thunderously onward through the night. To steady myself I gazed fixedly at my extraordinary fellow traveler as he sat, his now well-nigh empty bottle before him, peering into it from time to time as if for some potent servant of his own. Suddenly he leaned back and laughed more diabolically than ever.
"Ha, ha, ha!" he roared. "You ought to have been with us last night in his library! Aldrich and Depew and some of the others were there, and we were checking over our list of sure votes in the House. The old man had the grip, as I said a while ago, and privately, I'll state I think he's scared stiff; for every fifteen minutes we got a bulletin from his doctors and messages from him to rush S. F. 41144 to its passage, regardless, or he'd accept a bid he'd got for the Bottle Imp from Sir Thomas Lipton, who wants it for some crazy scheme regarding lifting the Cup. All the while, there stood the Bottle with the Imp in it. When the grip news was coming in there was nothing doing with his Impship. But whenever we began discussing his transfer to the Company, the way business picked up in that bottle was a caution! Why, you could hear him stabbing the stopper with his tail, and grinding his horns against the sides of the bottle, and fighting like a weasel in a trap, in such a rage that the Bottle glowed like a red-hot iron. It was shameful! One of the lawyers took the horrors, and had to be taken home in a carriage—threw a conniption fit every block! Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha! Oh! it was great stuff!"
"I don't see—" I began.
"No? Don't you?" he queried, between the satanic chuckles. "Well, by George, the Imp saw, all right! He saw that modern financial ingenuity has found a way to flimflam the devil himself. He saw, Sir (here his voice assumed an oratorical orotund, and the capital S came in again), that our corporation lawyers have found a spoon long enough so that we can safely sup with Satan! Why, let me ask you once, what did the Imp go into the Bottle deal for in the first place? To get the aforesaid soul. You can see how he'd feel, now that the price is down to the last notch but one, to have it sold to a corporation, with no more soul than a rabbit! If—that—don't beat the—the devil, what does?"
It all dawned upon me now. The reasonableness of the entire story appealed to me. I reached for the paper. There it was: "Federal Imp Company: Charter powers very broad, taking in almost the entire field of business." I looked at the lobbyist. He had dropped asleep with his head on the table beside the empty cocktail bottle. Again things seemed to swim, and I lapsed into a state of something like coma, from which I was aroused by some one shaking me by the shoulder.
"Berth's ready, suh," said the porter, and passed to my companion.
"Hyah's Devil's Gulch Sidin', suh," said he, rousing the slumbering lobbyist. "You get off, hyah, suh!"
He passed out of the door with a Chesterfieldian bow and good night. I passed a sleepless and anxious night. The shock, or something, made me quite ill. I have not yet recovered my peace of mind. An effort which I made to place the matter before Doctor Byproduct, the president of the university of which I am an alumnus, led to such a stern reproof that I was forced to subside. The doctor said that the story was a libel upon a great and good man who had partially promised the university an endowment of ten millions of dollars. I am ready, however, to appear before any congressional committee which may be appointed to investigate the matter, or before the Interstate Commerce Commission, and to testify to the facts as above written, if it costs me my career.
"By gad, sir!" shouted the Colonel, breaking a long silence. "That infernal scheme would work!"
The party went one by one to their tents. Soon no one but the Colonel and the Hired Man were left.
"It sounds to me," remarked the Hired Man oracularly.
"If these lovely little waterfalls," asserted the Bride, as she gazed upon the graceful Tower Falls, "could only have a fair chance, they would win fame—but they are overshadowed here—and they don't seem to care."
Undine Falls, the Virginia Cascade, Mystic Falls, Kepler Cascade and Crystal Falls were in the mind of the Bride; but she might have mentioned many more, which in their incursion into the Park they had not seen.
"This," said the Artist, "is no place to look at, and leave—it is a region for the artist to live in, to study, to make a part of his life, and finally, to understand."
"I reckon," said the Hired Man, "that he'd git homesick f'r the corn country after a winter or so."
Some competent judges think Tower Falls the most beautiful cascade on earth. Perhaps it is. Certainly no fault has ever been found with it as a picture. The Seven Wonderers spent a day near their pretty camp, resting, exploring, and renewing their acquaintance with the gorge of the Yellowstone, and forming that of the Needle, slender as a campanile, and three hundred feet high, marking the end of the Grand Cañon. Junction Butte, which they crossed the New Bridge to see, standing where many roads and rivers meet, seemed to the Bride another monument placed there by the gods with manifest intention. Why otherwise, she queried, could not the Needle be anywhere else, just as well as at the lower end of the Grand Cañon, or Junction Butte, in any other place as easily as in this cross-roads of highways and waters?
"Why, indeed?" assented the Groom. "When you find a stone stuck on end at the corner of a parcel of land, you know that the stone was placed there to mark the corner, don't you?"
"Reminds me of the providential way that rivers always run past cities, just where they are needed," carped the Colonel.
"It isn't the same thing," said the Bride hotly. "You're getting mean, Colonel!"
"Honing for the wrangle of the courts, Bride," said he. "I apologize."
"Well," said Aconite, "there's a lot of bigger mysteries than them in these regions. Here's the Petrified Trees, over here in a ravine just off the road. If we don't see the petrified forest up Amethyst Crick way, maybe you'd like to look at these an' tell me how trees ever turned to stone that-a-way."
There they stood, splintered by the elements, indubitably the stubs of trees, and unquestionably stone. The Professor began an explanation of the phenomenon of petrifaction, but nobody paid him any attention.
"Old Jim Bridger," said Aconite, "discovered the Petrified Forest, up in the Lamar Valley; an' back in the mountains som'eres he found a place where the grass, birds an' everything else was petrified. Even a waterfall was petrified, an' stan's thar luk glass."
"And the roar of it is petrified, and the songs of the birds, and the sunlight, and the birds singing their petrified songs in the petrified air, in which they are suspended for ever, by reason of the petrifaction of the force of gravity, which otherwise would bring them down!"
Thus the Poet. Aconite looked at him in surprise.
"Either you've been here before," said he, "or you've knowed some one that has been!"
Time refused to serve for an exploration of the regions northeast of the New Bridge, though the road invited, and the Artist strongly argued for the trip. He wanted to see the Fossil Forest, and Amethyst Falls, Amethyst Creek, Amethyst Mountain and Specimen Ridge. But they turned their backs on these, on Soda Butte and its wonderful cañon, and that of the Lamar, on the piscatorial delights of Trout Lake, the mystery of Death Gulch, and the weirdnesses of the Hoodoo Region. The Bride and Groom were due to take train from Gardiner, and on to San Francisco. At Yancey's the Bride invited them to a parting dinner when they should reach Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, and when Aconite and the Hired Man failed to recognize themselves as included, the Bride assured them that the occasion would be ruined if they did not attend—and they promised.
They reached Yancey's early in the afternoon, but the Bride was so enraptured by its beauties as a camping place that they made camp for the night, and drawing from the hat the name of Aconite as the entertainer for the evening, and the Poet for the dinner at the Hotel, each found himself feeling like one who has sent his luggage to the station, and awaits the carriage to bear him from home; or like sailors who have their dunnage ready for the dock at the end of the voyage.
Their relationship had grown to something very like intimacy in something more than half a month. And they were about to go their several ways, like ships that pass in the night. It was their great good fortune to have so met and acted that every member of the party felt the companionship a tolerable thing to contemplate as a permanency—that should they be in any mysterious—though scarcely improbable—interposition of glass barrier, or fiery lake, or gulf filled with deadly vapor, shut into this marvelous region, they could be good friends and good fellows. And they listened respectfully as Aconite, under the trees at Yancey's, spun the yarn of his love affair with an Oberlin College girl, his connection with a Rosebud beef issue fraud, and the tragedy that resulted from the mixture thereof.
This here doctrine of Mr. Witherspoon's about lettin' cattle range wide, has some arguments of a humane nature back of it. But his openin' of it up in the instructions f'r runnin' the ten thousand dogies, was the same kind of a miscue the Pawnees made when they laid fer an' roped the U.P. flyer—which Mr. Elkins described as a misapplication of sound theory to new an' unwonted conditions; as the rattler said when he swallered the lawn hose. Principles has their local habitats the same as live things; an' nothin' is worse f'r 'em than to turn 'em loose where they don't know the water-holes an' wind-breaks. Principles that'll lay on fat an' top the market in Boston, 'll queer the hull game in a country where playin' it is tangled up with Injuns, gold mines, 'r range-stuff. In the short-grass country, dogy principles are sure a source of loss, until they get hardened up so's to git out and rustle with the push. Now, this Humane-Society-Injun-Relief-Corps form of doin' good—harmless, you'd say, as we set here by the grub-wagon; but I swear to Godfrey's Gulch, the worst throw-down I ever got in a social way growed out of a combination of them two highly proper idees with a Oberlin College gal I met up to Chamberlain.
This was the way of it: The "O. M." Mr. Elkins, I mean, of the J-Up-An'-Down Ranch, was called to Sioux Falls as a witness in a case of selling conversation-water to the Injuns, an' casually landed a juicy contract with Uncle Sam f'r supplyin' beef-issue cattle over on the Rosebud. The Pierre firm of politicians he outbid, havin' things framed up pretty good, as they thought, on the delivery, at once hops to him with a proposition to pay him I d'know how much money an' take it off his hands. Havin' a pongshong f'r doin' business on velvet, the O. M. snaps 'em up instantaneous, an' comes home to Wolf Nose Crick smilin' like he'd swallered the canary, an' sends me to Chamberlain to see that the contract is carried out as fer as proper.
"Go up, Aconite," he says, "an' remember that while the J-Up-An'-Down outfit don't feel bound to demand any reforms, its interests must be protected. Any sort of cattle the Pierre crowd can make look like prime steers to the inspector, goes with us. But," he goes on, "our names and not theirs are on the contract. These inspectors," says he, "bein' picked out on their merits at Washington, to look after the interests of the gover'ment an' the noble red, it would be unpatriotic if notLee's Majestyto cavil at their judgment on steers, especially if it coincides with that of Senator Whaley's men at Pierre. Therefore, far be it from us to knock. But be leery that we don't get stuck for non-performance: which we can't afford. See?"
It was purty plain to a man who'd matrickelated as night-wrangler, an' graduated asiton the J-Up-An'-Down, an' I went heart-free an' conscience clear, seein' my duty perfectly plain.
Now at Chamberlain was this Oberlin College lady, who had some kind of an inflamed conscience on the Injun question, an' was dead stuck on dumb animals an' their rights. She was one of the kind you don't see out here—blue eyes, you know, yellow hair, the kind of complexion that don't outlive many hot winds; an' she had lots of pitchers around her, of young folks in her classes, an' people with mortar-board hats an' black nighties, 'r striped sweaters. She was irrupting into the Injun questionviaChamberlain. Her thought was that the Injuns was really livin' correct's fur as they had a chance, an' that we orto copy their ways, instid of makin' them tag along after our'n.
"Maybe that's so," says I, "but I've took the Keeley cure twice now, an' please excuse me!"
She looked kinder dazed f'r a minute, an' then laffed, an' said somethin' about the sardonic humor of the frontier.
I had been asked to give a exhibition of broncho bustin' at the ranch where she was stayin' an' she was agitatin' herself about the bronks' feelin's. I told her that it was just friendly rivalry between the puncher an' the bronk, an' how, out on the ranch, the gentle critters 'd come up an' hang around by the hour, a-nickerin' f'r some o' the gang to go out an' bust 'em.
"It reminds me," she says, "of my brother's pointers begging to go hunting."
"Same principle," says I.
It seemed to ease her mind, an' feelin' as I did toward her, I wouldn't have her worry f'r anything. Then she found out that I was a graduate of the high school of Higgsville, Kansas, an' used to know what quadratics was, an' that my way of emitting the English language was just an acquired mannerism, like the hock-action of a string-halted hoss, an' she warmed up to me right smart, both then an' after, never askin' to see my diploma, an' begun interrogatin' me about the beef-issue, an' discussin' the Injun question like a lifelong friend. Whereat, I jumped the game.
But, for all that, about this time I become subject to attacts of blue eyes an' yellow hair, accompanied by vertigo, blind-staggers, bots, ringin' in the ears—like low, confabulatin' talk, kinder interspersed with little bubbles of lafture—an' a sense o' guilt whenever I done anything under the canopy of heaven that I was used to doin'. Can yeh explain that, now? Why this Oberlin proposition should make me feel like a criminal jest because the pony grunted at the cinchin' o' the saddle, 'r because I lammed him f'r bitin' a piece out o' my thigh at the same time, goes too deep into mind science f'r Aconite Driscoll. O' course, a man under them succumstances is supposed to let up on cussin' an' not to listen to all kinds o' stories; but you understand, here I was, conscience-struck in a general an' hazy sort of way, mournin' over a dark an' bloody past, an' thinkin' joyfully of death. It was the condemnedest case I ever contracted, an' nothin' saved me to be a comfort to my friends but the distraction of the queer actions of that inspector.
I never had given him a thought. Senator Whaley an' his grafters was supposed to arrange matters with him—an' I'm no corruptionist, anyway. Of course, the cattle wasn't quite up to export shippin' quality. The senator's gang had got together a collection of skips an' culls an' canners that was sure a fraud on the Injuns, who mostly uses the cattle issued to 'em the way some high-up civilized folks does hand-raised foxes—as a means of revortin' to predatory savagery, as Miss Ainsley says. Ainsley was her name—Gladys Ainsley—an' she lived som'eres around Toledo. The p'int is, that they chase 'em, with wild whoops an' yips over the undulatin' reservation until they can shoot 'em, an' I s'pose, sort of imagine, if Injuns have imaginations, that time has turned back'ard in her flight, an' the buffalo season is on ag'in. Whereas, these scandalous runts of steers an' old cow stuff was mostly too weak or too old to put up any sort of a bluff at speed.
But, under my instructions, if they looked good to the inspector, they looked good to me; an' bein' sort of absent-minded with gal-stroke, I rested easy, as the feller said when the cyclone left him on top o' the church tower.
The inspector was a new man, an' his queer actions consisted mostly of his showin' up ten days too soon, an' then drivin' 'r ridin' around the country lookin' at the stock before delivery. This looked suspicious; fer we s'posed it was all off but runnin' 'em through the gap once, twice 'r three times to be counted. Whaley's man comes to me one day, an' ast me what I thought of it.
"I'm paid a princely salary," says I, "fer keepin' my thoughts to myself. This here's no case," I continued, "callin' f'r cerebration on my part. If thinkin's the game, it's your move. What's Senator Whaley in politics fer," says I, "if a obscure forty-a-month-an'-found puncher is to be called on to think on the doin's of a U.S. inspector? What's he in this fer at all, if we've got to think at this end of the lariat?"
"He was talkin' about cavvs," said the feller, whose name was Reddy—a most ungrammatical cuss. "He was a-pokin' round with the contrack, a-speakin' about cavvs. Wun't you go an' talk to him?"
"Not me!" says I, f'r the hull business disgusted me, an' my guilt come back over me shameful, with the eyes an' hair an' things plenteous. Whaley's man rode off, shakin' his head.
Next day the inspector hunted me up.
"Mr. Driscoll?" says he, f'r I'd been keepin' out of his way.
"Correct," says I.
"You represent the Elkins' interests in the matter of supplying for the issue, do you not?" says he.
"In a kind of a sort of a way," says I, f'r I didn't care to admit too much till I see what he was up to. "In a kind of a sort of a way, mebbe I do. Why?"
"Did you have anything to do," says he, unfoldin' a stiff piece of paper, "with procuring the cattle now in readiness for delivery?"
"Hell, no!" I yells, an' then seein' my mistake, I jumped an' added: "You see, the top stuff f'r the Injun market is perduced up around Pierre. So we sub-contracted with this Pierre outfit to supply it. It's their funeral, not ours. It's good stock, ain't it?"
"I am assured by Senator Whaley's private secretary," says he, "who is a classmate of mine, that there would be great dissatisfaction among the Indians, owing to certain tribal traditions and racial peculiarities—"