The Dude Wrangler (11 page)

As it happened, the only person who gave Miss Mercy any thought as she waited forlornly by the roadside was Aunt Lizzie Philbrick. Although she and Miss Mercy had not been speaking since the episode of the butterfly, her tender conscience was troubled that she had not said good-bye to her. The more she thought about it the more strongly it urged her to be forgiving and magnanimous to the extent of wishing Miss Mercy a pleasant journey. With this purpose in view Aunt Lizzie left the others and started for the roadside. If she had not been otherwise engaged at the moment, Miss Mercy might have seen Aunt Lizzie's white sailor hat bobbing above the intervening bushes, but she was intent on learning the cause of a rustling she had heard in the leaves behind her. It was a snake, undoubtedly, and it flashed through Miss Mercy's mind that here was her opportunity not only to return to camp but to go back a heroine.

She set her fishnet bag on the stump she vacated and provided herself with a cudgel before starting to investigate. Advancing cautiously, she saw a bunch of tall grass wave in a suspicious manner. She smote the clump with her cudgel, and a large, warty toad jumped out into the open. It was stunned, and stood blinking as if trying to locate the danger.

"Nasty thing!" exclaimed Miss Mercy, viciously, and raised her club to finish it.

The blow landed, and Miss Mercy and the toad saw stars simultaneously, for Aunt Lizzie brought down a four-foot stick and crushed in the crown of Miss Mercy's alpine hat.

"You dread-ful woman!" Aunt Lizzie shrieked at her, and it was her purpose to strike again but the stick was rotten, and since only some six inches remained in her hand, she had to content herself with crying:

"You horrible creature! You unnatural woman! 'Shady' Lane-you belong in an asylum!"

Since Miss Mercy had been told this before, she resented it doubly, and no one can say what else might have happened if Wallie, hearing the disturbance, had not hurried forward to discover what was occurring.

"She was killing a hop-toad!" Aunt Lizzie screamed, hysterically. Then her legs collapsed, while Miss Mercy boomed that if she did, it was none of Aunt Lizzie's business-it was not her hop-toad.

The astounding news passed from mouth to mouth that Aunt Lizzie and Miss Mercy had been fighting in the brush with clubs, like Amazons, and everyone rushed forward to view the combatants and to learn the details, but the chugging of a motor sent Miss Mercy into the middle of the road to flag it before they could hear her side of the story.

It proved to be no less a person than Rufus Reed, who was transporting provisions on a truck between Prouty and a road-camp in the Park. Rufus welcomed company and intimated that his only wonder was that they were not all leaving.

So Miss Mercy clambered up beside Rufus and without looking back started on her return journey to Zanesville, Ohio, to soothe the brow of the suffering and minister to the wants of the dying in her professional capacity.

Pinkey sombrely looked after the cloud of dust in which Rufus and the Angel of Mercy vanished.

"That's one chicken we counted before it was hatched," he observed, regretfully, to Wallie.

The scenery was sublime that morning and the party were in ecstasies, but mere mountains, waterfalls, and gorges could not divert Wallie's mind from the disquieting fact that he must somehow convey the information to Mr. Hicks that his presence at table with the guests was undesirable.

As he rode, he framed tactful sentences in which to break the news to that formidable person, and he had finally a complete and carefully prepared speech which he meant to deliver in a friendly but firm manner. The result he could only guess at. Hicks might quit, or he might resent the affront to his dignity with any convenient weapon, or after a savage outburst of sarcasm he might make the best of the situation. The only thing that Wallie could not imagine was a calm acquiescence. It would be easier to replace Mr. Hicks, however, than to acquire a new party of dudes at this late season, so Wallie nerved himself to the ordeal.

The passengers who preferred to ride in the surrey had now increased to a number which made it necessary for them to sit in each other's laps, and it devolved upon Wallie to drive their horses. Herding loose horses is sometimes a task to strain the temper, and these were that kind of horses, so that by the time the party reached the noon-day camp Wallie was in a more fitting mood to confront Mr. Hicks than when they had started.

The cook was busy over the camp-fire when Wallie determined to speak and have it over.

"Don't let him tree you or run you into the river." Pinkey, who knew Wallie's purpose, warned him jocosely. "I'm glad it ain't me has the job of tellin' that hyena that he ain't as welcome as the President."

Wallie could not share Pinkey's amusement. On the contrary, it annoyed him. That was the worst of his partner nowadays, he was so happy that nothing troubled him. Perhaps envy was at the bottom of this irritation; at any rate, Wallie frowned and told himself that he never would have believed that love could make such a simpleton of anybody.

As Wallie drew nearer, through the smoke and steam rising from various cooking utensils he noted that Mr. Hicks' expression was particularly melancholy and his colour indicated that a large amount of bile had accumulated in his system. There was something tragic in the very way he stirred the frying potatoes, and as Wallie hesitated Hicks set his fists on his hips and recited in a voice vibrating with feeling:

"Into this Universe, and why not knowing,

Nor whence, like water will-nilly flowing,

And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,

I know not whither willy-nilly blowing."

It did not seem a propitious moment to "put Mr. Hicks in his place," as Mrs. Stott had phrased it, but Wallie had no desire to nerve himself twice for the same ordeal; therefore, with something of the desperate courage which comes to high-strung persons about to have a tooth extracted, Wallie advanced and inquired cordially:

"Well, Mr. Hicks, how are things coming?"

"I am not complaining," replied Mr. Hicks, in a tone which intimated that once he started enumerating his grievances he would not know where to finish.

"Pleasant people, aren't they?" Wallie suggested.

"So is a menagerie-after it's eaten."

"They do have appetites," Wallie admitted. "I suppose it's living in the open."

"I've cooked for section hands on the Burlington, and they were canary-birds beside these Poland Chinas. We had ought to brought troughs instead of tinware."

"You mustn't speak so of our guests," Wallie reprimanded.

Hicks went on wrathfully:

"That fat sister in the cameo breastpin-she swiped a can of potted chicken on me yesterday-she's a regular 'camp-robber'."

Wallie interposed hastily:

"We mustn't have any trouble. I want to get through this trip peaceably. In fact, Mr. Hicks, it's along this line that I wished to have a word with you."

Mr. Hicks looked at him quickly and suspiciously.

"Has any of 'em been kickin' on me?"

Wallie hesitated, casting a furtive eye about as he did so for the most convenient exit.

"Not kicking, I wouldn't saykicking , Mr. Hicks, but it has been suggested-I have been thinking that it might bepleasanter for you and Red to have your own table."

Mr. Hicks stopped turning over the potatoes and looked at him for what seemed to Wallie a full minute.

"In other words," he said, finally, in a voice that was oily and coaxing, as if he wanted the truth from him, "the dudes don't want the cook and the horse-wrangler to eat with them?"

Wallie noticed uneasily that while Hicks spoke he was tentatively feeling the edge of the knife he had been using. Instinctively Wallie's eyes sought the route he had selected, as he replied conciliatingly:

"No reflection upon you and Red is intended, Mr. Hicks; it is just that Eastern people have different customs, and we have to humour them, although we may not agree with them."

There was another silence, in which Hicks continued to thumb the knife in a manner that kept Wallie at a tension, then he said with a suavity which somehow was more menacing than an outburst:

"Perhaps itwould be better for us rough-necks to eat at the second table. It hadn't occurred to me that our society might not be agreeable to ladies and gentlemen. I'm glad you mentioned it."

Hicks seemed to purr, actually. His tone was caressing-like the velvet touch of a tiger-and his humble acceptance of the situation was so unnatural that Wallie felt himself shiver with apprehension. Was he capable of putting ground-glass in the sugar, he wondered, or dropping a spider in something?

"Red" was plainly disgruntled when he found himself, as it were, segregated, and he sulked openly; but Hicks, on the contrary, was so urbane and respectful that everyone remarked his changed manner, and Mrs. Stott triumphantly demanded to know if it were not proof of her contention that servants were the better for being occasionally reminded of their position.

"I am not a snob," she reiterated, "but common people really spoil my appetite when I am obliged to eat with them."

Wallie, however, could not share her elation, for there was that in Mr. Hicks' eye whenever he met it which renewed his uneasy forebodings as to ground glass and spiders.

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