Tish Marches On (22 page)

“She’s off again, Miss Lizzie,” she said.

“What do you mean, Hannah?”

“She’s getting ready for something. She bought a fishing pole—one that comes to pieces—and she’s been practicing with it out the apartment window for days. She’s dropped two worms that I know of into Mrs. Perkins’s charlotte russe that she’d set on the windowsill below and she’s flung an onion into the Robinson’s baby buggy down in the courtyard, when the baby was in it.”

“An onion?” I said faintly.

“Yes’m. That’s in Mr. Charlie’s book on fishing. I read it last night after she was in bed. It says you can catch fish on all sorts of things. It’s the way you throw them in the water that matters. The man that wrote it’s caught ’em on onions and radishes and ears of corn.”

“He’s lying,” Aggie said sternly. “Even if I saw a fish eating an ear of corn I wouldn’t believe him.”

“Liver too,” said Hannah in a hollow voice. “She put some liver on the hook yesterday morning and the janitor’s cat got it. They had to get a veterinary.”

We comforted the poor soul as best we might, but when she had gone Aggie had a nervous chill. She was certain that something was going to happen and that we would find ourselves in trouble again.

“She has been doing so well, Lizzie,” she said. “Only the other day Mr. Ostermaier spoke about her Sunday-school class and the things she knits for the Old Ladies’ Home.”

And with that poor Aggie began to cry. She said she was not frightened; that she was thinking of Mr. Wiggins, and how before he fell off that dreadful roof he had liked to dig a can of worms and cut a pole and go fishing; and no nonsense about radishes and ears of corn and killing people’s cats and so on, and her hay fever just coming on.

That was on Thursday. On Friday Tish herself came around. Save that her bonnet was slightly over one ear, she was her usual calm and well-poised self and lost no time in coming to the point.

“For some years,” she said, “I have felt that we have not done justice to our great national parks. They are
our
parks. They belong to us, to the people. Year by year thousands of us visit them, gazing on their natural beauties, studying their flora and fauna, and learning something of their great mountains.”

Here Aggie, who remembered a trip to Glacier Park some years ago, interrupted her.

“Mountains!” she said bitterly. “Don’t you talk mountains to me, Tish Carberry. The next time I propose to drop a set of teeth three thousand feet I’ll go up in a balloon and throw them out.”

“In proposing the Yellowstone,” Tish went on, ignoring her. “I have two reasons. First, there is beauty without danger, and also there is fishing. We are no longer young, and it is as well to prepare for the days to come when the active life may be beyond us. A great mind specialist has said that he never fears for those who like to fish. Aggie, of course, will always belong to those of whom it was said: ‘A primrose by a river’s brim a yellow primrose was to him, and it was nothing more.’”

“Yellow primrose!” said Aggie furiously. “Yellow goldenrod, you mean. And ragweed, Tish Carberry. And you know perfectly well what they do to me.”

“There are also animals,” Tish said. “Indeed, I gather that the animals are a great attraction. Kindness has tamed them, and in many cases they will eat out of the human hand.”

“Eat a piece out of the human hand!” said Aggie. “What kind of animals?”

“Mostly bears, I believe,” Tish told her kindly. “Of course, there are others.” But the thought was almost too much for Aggie. She has a great fear of animals, and especially of bears, and into the bargain she has always suffered from hay fever following any visit to the Zoo, maintaining that their fur has a peculiar, irritant quality. Nor was she consoled by the fact that we were to motor across the continent, camping by various streams where Tish might fish and carrying our outfit in a small cart or wagon which trailed behind.

“She’ll fish and we’ll work,” she said most unfairly. “And I’m through with sleeping on the ground. The next time I get into bed with a snake—”

“It was a toad,” I reminded her.

“Well, it
felt
like a snake.”

Of course, she went in the end, although she was depressed throughout the preparations, buying her knickerbockers, cap, and flannel shirts without enthusiasm and insisting on taking an air mattress. As, however, during revolver practice on the road a, few days out, Tish unfortunately put a bullet through it, its usefulness was early over.

But in spite of her apprehension, the trip itself was almost without incident. Some one or two small things occurred, naturally. Thus, Tish always drives her car with sureness but at a high rate of speed, and once we were almost apprehended. Had she not, by a skillful turn of the wheel, forced the motorcycle policeman into a ditch full of water, we would undoubtedly have found ourselves in difficulty. And again, entering a cornfield in search of bait one early morning, she practically collided with the farmer who owned the field.

I must say he was most unpleasant and threatened to have her arrested. But when she explained that she only wanted one ear of corn to fish with he gave her a strange look and backed away.

“Well, all the queer fish aren’t in the water,” he said. “All right, ma’am, it’s yours. But take my advice: I’m a fisherman myself. Put some butter and salt on it, and you want to look for a fish with a good set of teeth.”

He waited until Tish had adjusted her hook and dropped it into the hole, and when a moment or two later she drew in a large bass he sat down on the bank and held his head in his hands.

“And me feedin’ corn to hogs!” he groaned. “Man and boy, for fifty years feedin’ corn to hogs.”

When we broke camp and moved on he was still there.

We reached the park without incident, and at once left the main roads for back lanes, where, as Tish so rightly said, we could be alone with Nature. Looking back, it is as though we had been led to this course, for had we not done so we would never have met Mr. Armstrong, and this account would never have been written.

Never shall I forget that first meeting. It happened in this fashion:

The roads had grown rougher, and we had been having trouble with the trailer, which was inclined to slip and bounce. Indeed, on turning a corner one day it skidded around and struck a man in a light buggy. Fortunately he was not injured by his fall, but after that, on such roads, Tish requested Aggie to sit on the trailer and thus steady it. It was at such a time that the meeting occurred.

We were moving along quietly when we saw a cowboy sitting by the road on his horse. From a distance he was indeed a gorgeous picture, wearing orange-colored chaps of some long fur, a purple shirt, a green neckerchief, and an enormous Stetson hat. It was only later that we perceived a certain incongruity in his costume. At the time all we noticed was that he held in his hand the loop of a lasso, and that as we passed he suddenly flung it at the car. A moment later we heard a terrible cry from Aggie, and Tish at once put on the brakes. There was our poor friend, sitting upright in the road with a noose around her neck, and the most shocked expression I have ever seen on a human face.

The cowboy had not moved. He appeared stunned, but after a moment or two he got slowly off his horse and took off his hat.

“Sorry,” he said. “Awfully sorry. I didn’t know the lady was there.”

“You threw that rope at me,” Tish said angrily. “Don’t stand there and say you didn’t. I saw you.”

“I was practicing.”

“Practicing! Why don’t you get a cow to practice on? That’s your business, isn’t it?”

“Not by a damn sight,” he said, with sudden violence. “I’m a—but it’s a long story, ladies. A long, sad story. Why should I bother you with my troubles? You can get a ranger about half a mile from here and have me locked up. As a matter of fact, I wish you would. A nice quiet cell somewhere sounds all right to me.”

Well, when we had a good look at him, he was certainly a queer figure, for all his fancy clothes. He was a pale young man with nose glasses; not bad-looking but, as Tish said later, all wrong. He had the best of his chaps somewhere up around his armpits, and along with the regulation bag of Bull Durham in the breast pocket of his shirt he had a fountain pen clamped to it. His hat was creased wrong and sat up on top of his head, and when he tried to get on his horse again he started from the off side.

“That’s wrong,” Tish called to him.

“Is it?” he said humbly. “Thanks. Thanks very much. Maybe that’s the reason I’ve had so much trouble with him.”

Well, as he got on he scraped the creature’s back with his spur—he had the longest spurs I have ever seen—and the last we saw of him he had picked himself up and the horse was a quarter of a mile away and still going.

O
F THE YELLOWSTONE I
need not speak. Who has not seen, in magazines and railroad folders, the pictures of its scenic beauties?

We camped near a basin where there were a number of boiling springs, and here we did our washing. It was a fine sight to see the garments boiled and emerging in a state of snowy whiteness. We erected our clothesline in a grove near by, and as the garments were sucked down out of sight, we waited until they emerged and then hooked them out.

I regret to say, however, that a pair of my own undergarments did not reappear. They had been made by hand, and I was deeply regretful. Later, however, they came back. A very nice young ranger was showing the pool to some girls from a boarding school, and threw in a rather soiled handkerchief so that they could see it sucked down and returned to him clean.

We were sitting near by when this happened.

“Now am I telling you a fairy tale?” he demanded. “There it is! Let’s see what’s happened to it?”

Well, what had happened was plenty, for when he hooked it out it was my lost undergarment. I never saw a man so upset.

Thus a week passed. We moved from lake to stream and vice versa, but we had not seen the cowboy again, although we often spoke of him. Aggie was particularly interested, scenting a romance, but Tish was busy with her fishing. She caught several trout on radishes and even, one day when we ran short, an excellent one on a dill pickle. Pine cones, however, perhaps because of their lack of color, were not successful.

When she came home in the evening we made it a point to have an excellent meal ready, and to have the camp in perfect order. And on just such an evening, as we were sitting down to dinner, we found the cowboy again.

I was taking some hot biscuits out of the oven when we heard a sound, and he emerged into the firelight. He looked even queerer than before, and he was dragging behind him about six feet of vine that had caught in one of his spurs.

Just as he came close he put one foot on the vine and nearly fell.

“Damn!” he said. “Two or three damns and a hell! Why in the name of the great god Pan anybody
chooses
to wear these things—”

“Then why wear them?” Tish said coldly. “As for your language, you owe us an apology, young man.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “The truth is, I’m not quite myself. I’ve been living on canned beans for a week, and if I keep on I’ll need to be roped to the ground or I’ll blow away with the first gale.”

Well, as supper was ready, we asked him to eat with us, and I never saw a man eat like that. He ate sixteen biscuits, and at the end he seemed much stronger. Not that he cheered perceptibly. What Aggie called a blue-and-yellow melancholy was perceptible throughout, and he had a queer habit, too, of looking over his shoulder. Every time he took a biscuit he would glance about and then pop it into his mouth, all at once.

As Tish said later, he looked haunted.

He was quieter when the meal was over. He took out a package of papers and a bag of tobacco and started to roll a cigarette. Then he muttered something, looked around again, and having put the stuff away, reached down into his boot and took out a box of ready-made cigarettes. When he had lighted one he drew a long breath and looked at us.

“You look like sensible women,” he said, “and truthful ones. Tell me, do I look like anything you ever saw before? Like a cowboy, for example, or a strong brutal he-man?”

“From a distance—” Tish began tactfully, but he only groaned.

“Precisely,” he said. “From a distance. But I don’t fool anybody, do I?” He looked down bitterly at himself. “It’s no use. I’ve been going around like this for two weeks, but it doesn’t get any better. Take these chaps. I don’t need protection in front. I need it from the rear; but suppose I do the sensible thing and turn them around! Take these spurs. I’m not used to them, ladies. When I try to hold onto my horse with my legs, and God knows it’s the only way I can, I dig him in the ribs and he runs off with me.” He sighed. “I’ve been run off with six times today. Great Scott, what’s that?”

We had all heard a rustling in the bushes, but it ceased and he looked relieved. Tish was regarding him intently.

“Are we to understand that you are wearing this costume as a disguise?”

He grunted and shifted his position.

“I can’t seem to learn to sit on the ground,” he said, “and as to sitting on my heel, which I’m supposed to do, how can any human being sit on a six-inch spur? No, not a disguise, exactly. The truth is—”

But he did not finish. A black bear at that moment came out of the bushes and went toward him. He fairly turned white.

“I’m sorry, ladies,” he said. “I’ve been trying to lose this creature for four days. If you have any candy or sugar, it will keep her quiet. I’ve given her all I have.”

Aggie had screamed and now started to sneeze, but Tish with her usual efficiency at once found some lump sugar. While the bear ate it the young man regarded her with hostile eyes.

“It’s a queer world,” he said. “I’ve bought that bear, heart and soul, for four pounds of marshmallows and two jars of honey. But people are different, women especially. Four pounds of marshmallows and two jars of honey! A man can offer a girl all he’s got, and she’ll want something different.”

“Then you are not a cowboy by profession?” Tish asked.

“Cowboy! Ladies, I’ll be honest. Since I was ten years old the only acquaintance I’ve had with a beef steer has been on the plate, not the hoof.