“We might make a reasonable arrangement,” Tish told him, “while the dessert is being brought on.”
He groaned, and I could fairly feel his eyes boring into me as I carried a caramel custard from the fire.
“Is that a custard?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“A caramel custard?”
“It is,” Tish told him.
He sighed deeply.
“I used to be fond of caramel custard,” he said. “Very fond. It was my favorite dessert. But that was years ago, before I was cast away on an island with three—”
“Three what?” Tish demanded.
“Never mind about that,” he said hastily. “You mentioned an arrangement. What is it? I’m only a weak man, and I dare say I’ll sell my immortal soul, let alone my daughter, for a square meal. For a square meal and my trousers,” he added.
But here Aggie wailed, and Tish firmly stated that the trousers were not to be bargained about. She demanded, and he finally agreed, that he consent to his daughter’s engagement, and that he abide by this agreement.
“Go back, send for the man, and give your daughter to him,” she said. “That agreement finally drawn and placed in Miss Aggie’s pocket—”
“My pocket,” he interrupted.
“—we shall be able to discuss rates for board. Lodging unfortunately we cannot offer.”
“Rates! You’re going to charge me?”
“Why not?” said Tish placidly. “I have certain charities, and the funds shall go to them. Breakfast and lunch will be twenty-five dollars, and dinner fifty. If that is all right with you, you can stand behind that tree and we will pass your dinner to you now. There is plenty here.”
Well, he carried on dreadfully, far worse than about his daughter; but in the end he agreed, and while Tish was writing the agreement I prepared his meal. I made a tray out of the engine hatch cover, and was about to carry it to him when Tish interfered.
“Payment in advance,” she said. “Aggie, take fifty dollars off the roll of bills in your pocket—”
“My pocket,” he said again.
“—and give them to me. All right, Lizzie.”
I never knew a man to eat so much, and strangely enough, when he had finished we heard him laughing. He sat back there in the darkness and laughed and laughed, and I must say it made me creepy.
“Ladies,” he said, “I bow to you. Were conditions other than they are, I would emerge and kneel to you. For sheer highhanded banditry you have the world beaten by a mile, and as for cooking—! You’ve robbed me of my daughter, of my money, and of my pants—and by gad I’m for you. If any of you ever want a newspaper job, come to me.”
And even then we did not realize the awful truth! Not even when we were rescued the next day, nor when within twenty-four hours we received a telegram from Charlie Sands calling Tish home at once.
FOR GOSH SAKE COME HOME AND EXPLAIN WIRE FROM BOSS STOP SITUATION TERRIBLE STOP DON’T WANT THE GIRL AND NEVER DID STOP WHAT HAS HAPPENED?
We had spent the intervening time in bed and had seen no one, and now we packed hastily and prepared to go immediately. None of us was surprised to see Lily and her young man at the dock, and as he had his arm around her we knew that everything was as we had planned. But we were a little surprised at a few words which passed between Tish and Lily just before the boat started.
“Did you hear the news?” she said. “Everything’s all right.”
Tish smiled at her benignly.
“I am very glad,” she said. “We had to use a little moral suasion, but it has worked out perfectly.”
Lily looked a trifle bewildered.
“Really?” she said. “I thought it was because he had caught a diamond-button tarpon.”
Then the boat moved out, and we were left to consider Charlie Sands’ telegram. We could make nothing of it, however, nor of Charlie Sands’ wild expression when we got out of the train.
“Quick!” he said. “Out with it! What in the name of gosh-amighty have you done to me?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” said Tish. “What could we have done to you?”
Well, he looked fairly stupefied.
“You’re sure of that, are you? You don’t know anything and you didn’t do anything?”
“We have done a number of things, but none that concern you or your affairs.”
“And you didn’t see the boss?”
“Certainly not.”
Well, he seemed stunned. He drew a telegram out of his pocket and handed it to us. It said:
CERTAINLY YOU MAY HAVE HER MY BOY STOP HAD NO IDEA THAT IT WAS SO SERIOUS STOP GOOD LUCK TO YOU.
“I’ve wired back for a confirmation,” he said dejectedly, “but it’s ‘her,’ not ‘it.’ He doesn’t mean the job; he means Clara.”
“Tish!” said Aggie suddenly. “You don’t suppose—”
But Tish silenced her with a look, and we went into the station.
I have related this series of incidents as they occurred, and in the hope that Charlie Sands will read them without bias. He has never been really fair to us, although after all Clara eloped with somebody else a few days later. But he did not get the job, and he has always for some reason held it against us. Especially Aggie.
“A woman who will steal a man’s only pair of trousers will do anything.”
Also it appears that just as soon as Clara had eloped he sent the boss a keg of very fine oysters, and that when they were opened in his presence he turned pale and ordered them out of the office.
“I don’t know why,” he says. “He used to like oysters. But that very day he gave another chap the job.”
But he also says that he is much changed, and that he has ordered that every man on the staff buy two pairs of trousers with every suit. It has become a sort of mania with him.
“A man without trousers is worse than a woman without virtue,” he told them. “For one is wicked, but the other is ridiculous.”
But he has never told the story, nor have we until now, and that without using his name. As a matter of fact, he asked us not to do so, and that in the following manner:
Although we have not related this to Charlie Sands, the “boss” sent Tish that very keg of oysters, and with it a card.
“The oyster has a mouth, but does not talk.”
THE DIPPER
I
ONLY LAST NIGHT I was looking at the sky, and the sight of the Dipper brought back to me forcibly the events of last summer. I went to my desk, and there I got out the one or two small objects which I had retained as reminders of the affair: a small piece of black cloth cut, as we later discovered, from one of the extra curtains of Tish’s car and having two small round holes in it, the notes made on the third, fourth, and fifth of August, a box of marshmallows now dried and hard, and a pair of long spurs which we found discarded by the cabin when all was over.
So tonight, while Tish is at prayer meeting and Aggie has retired to her couch, I propose to make a permanent record of the experience in the hope that, given chronologically, Charlie Sands will see that no Christian woman, such as his dear aunt Tish undoubtedly is, could have done otherwise than as she did.
As a matter of fact, a portion of the responsibility is actually his. It was he who on her birthday in the spring presented Tish with the book on the art of fishing which was the beginning of it all.
“Stream fishing, my beloved aunt,” he said, with emphasis. “Nice quiet creeks and rivers. It may seem a trifle flat after a certain affair which I recall, but the idea is that you catch the fish and not vice versa.”
By this he referred to the summer before, when we had rented a cottage on the Maine coast and were wont to take a boat and do a little quiet fishing for codfish, tying our lines to the seats and knitting or reading until a certain agitation showed that something was on the hook.
Unfortunately, on the day in question, our anchor had caught in the blow hole of a whale and for some time it looked as though we were bound for the m
id-Atlantic, if not for the British Isles. I remember our passing through a fishing fleet at a terrific pace and that one man called to us to let go.
“If you do get him what’ll you do with him?” he said.
I forget our dear Tish’s reply, but I do know that we finally collided with a large revenue boat and that, while it freed us, a sailor leaned over the edge and accused us of trying to sink them.
Save that Aggie suffered severely from mal de mer during the experience, there were no untoward results, and I have simply recounted the affair to explain Charlie Sands’ speech.
The fact is that for some time Tish had been growing restless again, and all of us had noticed it. To turn her mind to fishing, then, seemed to offer a safe outlet for those energies which with Tish are prone to translate themselves into action.
For three or four days, therefore, we were very hopeful. Then, one Thursday afternoon, on her day out, Hannah came in to see us. She has lived with Tish so long that she knows her every mood, and there was a certain wildness in her eye that set Aggie to sneezing at once.
“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 i
t 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.
II
OF THE YELLOWSTONE I need not speak. Who has not seen, in magazines and railroad folders, the pictures of its scenic beauties?
Tish Marches On Page 17
