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.
“I’m an Easterner,” he went on. “In the bond business. High grade-bonds offering good returns. We specialize in chain stores. There is no question but that the chain store is the future development of the retail business. A bond is income plus security. Also—I’m sorry, ladies! It’s the habit of years. Well, about a year ago I became engaged, but a month or so ago the engagement was broken. She came west in June, and she wrote me a letter. She said she had been thinking things over, and I was not the type. The type!” He groaned again, and taking off his enormous hat, held his head in his hands. “What she wants, it appears, is a man who is a man; somebody from the open spaces. A man who loves the wild, can conquer a horse, and roll his own cigarettes! Somebody who wears fur pants and likes beans, by heck! I’d like to feed her on a bean diet for a week! As a matter of fact, she hates beans. Beans and bears. I’d like to give her Susie for four days. She’d be as fed up as I am.”
“Susie?”
“Susie’s the bear,” he said somberly. “I named her Susie. It was all I could think of. You see, her name is Suzanne.”
He got up then and gave a hitch to his chaps.
“I don’t get the hang of the things,” he said mournfully. “If I put my spurs on first in the morning, I can’t get ’em on at all. I’ve tried sleeping in them, but when a man’s been accustomed all his life to taking off his pants at night—”
Here Aggie sneezed, and he got up.
“Well, I guess I’ll be going,” he said.
He thanked us for our hospitality and started off. He had a camp near by, he said. At the edge of the clearing, however, he stopped and looked back.
“You wouldn’t like to keep Susie for a while, I suppose?” he said. “She’s an interesting bear. You wouldn’t believe it, but she stole a bottle of whisky from a tourist’s car last Tuesday and brought it back for me to open.”
Tish stiffened somewhat.
“And you opened it?”
“Of course, I did,” he said. “Don’t all these he-men drink whisky?”
Tish was thoughtful after he had gone.
“It is a pitiful case,” she said. “Here is a young man whose character is being entirely undermined by some idiot of a girl. He drinks, he swears, he is accessory to a theft. Yet in the past, I feel sure, his life has been blameless.”
“If only the girl could see him now,” Aggie said gently.
But Tish glared at her.
“The only thing we can hope,” she stated, “is that she does not see him.”
We retired thoughtfully. I could see that Tish was pondering his problem, and at such times we allow her splendid intellect
to work uninterrupted. Things were quiet enough until 2 A. M., when I heard Aggie screaming. As I ran toward her tent something large and lumbering crashed into me and knocked me down. Aggie maintained that Susie had come back and sat down on her chest while she devoured a jar of cold cream and that she had carried off a package of Seidlitz powders. Aggie was considerably unnerved, but no damage had been done, and we went to sleep again.
While we were breakfasting the young man came back.
“See here,” he said. “I came to warn you. Are you sure your sugar is all right? I think Susie’s poisoned. She went down to the creek this morning to take a drink of water, and I’ve never seen a bear act like that. She’s rolling around now, yelling and foaming at the mouth.”
We explained about the Seidlitz powders. He was greatly relieved and ate a hearty breakfast of fish balls and hot waffles. But he seemed abstracted, at that.
He said that he had seen a car go by an hour or so ago and was certain Suzanne was in it, alone.
“As certain as a man can be,” he said. “In my condition all girls look like her, of course; but she wore a red tam-o’-shanter, and the way she held her head, and her pretty little nose, and all that—and I know the very way she drives a car, as if she was thinking of something else.”
“I consider that very hopeful,” Tish said. “She has evidently followed you.”
But he shook his head.
“She doesn’t know I’m here,” he said. “What I had planned was to get this stuff by heart and then spring it on her. She’s been at a ranch near Cody, and I was going there later. I meant to ride in, rolling a cigarette with one hand and firing a six-shooter with the other—whatever a six-shooter is. You can’t buy anything but automatics now. But what’s the use? I can’t roll a cigarette with both hands, and when I do I can’t make them stick. I’ve got a tube of library paste, but it tastes something awful.”
“Have you any idea where she is going?”
“None whatever. She was going to camp, from the look of her car.”
“Camp alone?”
“Oh, she’ll start alone, all right,” he said listlessly, “but it won’t be for long. There will be rangers six feet deep around her in time. She’s that kind.”
Well, he went away, and Tish, who was looking thoughtful, went fishing. The day was quiet, except for one incident. I was stirring up a cup custard for our evening meal when we heard a horse galloping wildly through the woods. Mr. Armstrong was on him—we had learned that this was his name—and just as the horse passed us he fell off. He lay quite still, and we rushed up to him, but he was unhurt. He was simply lying there swearing quietly but terribly. I was glad that our dear Tish was not present. When he sat up he announced that he was through.
“I’ve stood a lot,” he said. “I’ve been stung by wasps and thrown from horses and lived on beans and got a bear I don’t know what to do with. Enough’s enough.”
As he was in no condition even to heat a can of beans, we prevailed upon him to take supper with us; Tish brought in a nice string of fish, and Aggie made a sauce tartare. I thought he would never stop eating, and as Susie had not appeared, we had a quiet evening. When he took off his chaps and so on he was a very good-looking young man. He said Suzanne was all right, but that she had been carried away by reading stories about cowboys on dude ranches, and so on.
“It’s in her blood now,” he said gloomily. “I wrote her that the bond business was fair, and she wrote back that nobody could think of bonds who had sat on a horse and looked at the stars! But you can bet your sweet life she doesn’t look at the stars alone.”
“She’s doing it tonight,” Tish reminded him.
“How do you know that?” he demanded. “I’d like to bet she’s got three rangers pointing out the Dipper to her this minute. And she’ll let on she never saw it before. That’s the sort she is.”
The next day he was gone. How he escaped from Susie I do not know, but I do know that she remained with us. Aggie never liked her, however, and one day Tish and I, having been to a near-by settlement for food, returned to find our poor Aggie hanging from the branch of a tree, while Susie stood on it and playfully swayed it up and down. However, she was really a good-natured bear, and she was very useful to us later on.
III
IT MUST HAVE BEEN ten days later that we happened on Suzanne. We had been moving about with Susie on the trailer, camping here and there, and we found her quite by accident.
We had drawn into a grove beside a lake to make camp when we heard a ukelele at a short distance, and a girl singing. Tish motioned us to be quiet, and when we had made our way through the trees we came in sight of her. She was not alone, and just as we got within earshot a male voice said:
“It’s a great place to see the stars. Look, there’s the Dipper.”
We knew then that it was Suzanne, and she certainly was not alone. There was one ranger setting up her tent and another one washing her dishes. She herself looked very pretty and fresh, sitting on a robe from her car.
“There’s one thing I’ll say for you western men,” she said. “You can do everything, from washing dishes to firing a gun. When I think of the men I know back home, sitting around clubs or playing golf, it makes me sick.”
“It’s sure the life, little girl.”
She sighed and looked pensive.
“When I think that I have to go back to that,” she said. “I who adore the open and the stars! Picture me at balls this next winter! I who so love the wild, and the creatures of the wild. The big shaggy buffaloes, the gentle deer, the cunning friendly bears.”
Just at that instant Susie walked into the clearing toward her, and she let out the most awful yell.
“It’s a bear!” she screamed. “It’s coming at me! Shoot it, somebody.”
As we retired from the spot Tish’s indignation was extreme.
“The little fool,” she said furiously. “What a man like Mr. Armstrong can see in a girl like that is beyond me. She needs a lesson, that’s what she needs. Camping! I’ll bet somebody else has cooked every slice of bacon for her since she got here. What she needs—”
She did not complete the sentence, but remained in deep thought during the remainder of the evening.
The next day was a repetition of that evening. The rangers being presumably occupied, two young men in plus fours did Suzanne’s camp work and listened to her ukulele, and in the evening three rangers came. As she was a very pretty girl, probably this was to be expected, but Tish resented it with what in anyone less broad of mind would have been sulkiness. She did not fish that day, but remained in camp, and late that night I wakened to see Susie tied to a tree, an unusual procedure, and Tish poring by the firelight over what appeared to be a map.
As I was weary I slept heavily and was only roused by Aggie bending over me and shaking me.
“She’s gode!” she said, excitement always causing her an acute coryza. “Tish’s gode and she’s left a dote. Oh, Lizzie, there’s sobethig wrog. Sobethig terribly wrog.”
The note told us very little. Tish had found it expedient to go to the cabin—an isolated spot in a remote corner of the park where we had once spent two days—and would meet us there later in the day at the crossroads. “Bring Susie,” she wrote. “Also some canned beans and half a dozen packages of marshmallows. But do not come to the cabin. Stop at the crossroads.”
“Stop at the crossroads!” Aggie said indignantly. “I’be stoppig right here. If she thigks I’be goig to walk fifty biles draggig that bear by the had she can thigk agaid.”
It was not necessary to walk, however, as we found that Tish had not taken the car. Our bewilderment was extreme, but there was nothing to do but obey. I can drive a little, and so we proceeded to break camp and prepare to depart. Here a most untoward incident occurred, probably due to my preoccupation. In attempting to start I unluckily put the car into reverse, and to my horror we backed rapidly down a bank and into the lake.
In this connection I should li
ke to say that, Aggie notwithstanding, we were never in any danger whatever. By standing upright in the car our heads were well above the surface, and Susie indeed appeared to enjoy it. I recall that in some manner or other she caught a fish and ate it with apparent gusto.
Nevertheless, time was lost. It was fully two hours before a passing car discovered us and pulled us out. And while waiting we had abundance of time in which to discuss the mystery. Aggie was convinced that Tish had been abducted and had written the note under duress.
“We bay dever see her agaid,” she said dismally.
But I was filled with dire forebodings which I kept to myself. From where we stood in the water we could see Suzanne’s camp site, and it appeared to be deserted. Also there was no sign of her car, and once more in agony of mind I saw our dear Tish as I had seen her the night before, poring over a map.
It was late in the evening and raining when we reached the crossroads, but there to our joy was our comrade, safe and sound. True, she looked worn and somewhat battered, as though she had been through a struggle of some sort, and there was a long scratch across her cheek. But she was cheerful, and almost exalted.
“Did you bring the beans and marshmallows?” was her first question.
She listened absently to our explanation of our delay, glanced at Susie asleep in the rear of the car, and at once took the wheel.
“We shall have to take a roundabout route,” she said. “I came by a short cut on foot, but with the car—You haven’t seen Mr. Armstrong, I suppose?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, that can wait.”
It was then raining hard, and the road was growing worse. We rattled over rocks and sank into mudholes, and once Aggie wailed that Susie was holding onto her and squeezing her to death. But it was not until dusk had fallen that we finally mired in a deep hole, and nothing Tish could do was of any avail. We were in a remote portion of the park, far from any tourist travel, and to add to our discomfort a cold wind was blowing.
Tish Marches On Page 18
