by B. M. Bower
“—And I have felt how lonely they must be, with their rude fare and few pleasures, and what a field there must be among them for a great and noble work; to uplift them and bring into their lonely lives a broader, deeper meaning; to help them to help themselves to be better, nobler men and women—”
“We don’t have any lady cowpunchers out here,” interposed Andy mildly.
The strange lady had merely gone astray a bit, being accustomed to addressing Mothers’ Meetings and the like. She recovered herself easily. “Nobler men, the bulwarks of our nation.” She stopped and eyed Andy archly. Andy, having observed that her neck was scrawny, with certain cords down the sides that moved unpleasantly when she talked, tried not to look.
“I wonder if you can guess what brings me out here, away from home and friends! Can you guess?”
Andy thought of several things, but he could not feel that it would be polite to mention them. Agent for complexion stuff, for instance, and next to that, wanting a husband. He shook his head again and looked at his potato.
“You can’t guess?” The tone was the one commonly employed for the encouragement, and consequent demoralization of, a primary class. Andy realized that he was being talked down to, and his combativeness awoke. “Well, away back in my home town, a woman’s club has been thinking of all you lonely fellows, and have felt their hearts swell with a desire to help you—so far from home and mother’s influence, with only the coarse pleasures of the West, and amid all the temptations that lie in wait—” She caught herself back from speech-making—“and they have sent me—away out here—to be your friend; to help you to help yourselves become better, truer men and—” She did not say women, though, poor soul, she came near it. “So, I am going to be your friend. I want to get in touch with you all, first; to win your confidence and teach you to look upon me in the light of a mother. Then, when I have won your confidence, I want to organize a Cowboys’ Mutual Improvement and Social Society, to help you in the way of self-improvement and to resist the snares laid for homeless boys like you. Don’t you think I’m very—brave?” She was smiling at him again, leaning back in her chair and regarding him playfully over her glasses.
“You sure are,” Andy assented, deliberately refraining from saying “yes, ma’am,” as had been his impulse.
“To come away out here—all alone—among all you wild cowboys with your guns buckled on and your wicked little mustangs—Are you sure you won’t shoot me?”
Andy eyed her pityingly. If she meant it, he thought, she certainly was wabbly in her mind. If she thought that was the only kind of talk he could savvy, then she was a blamed idiot; either way, he felt antagonistic. “The law shall be respected in your case,” he told her, very gravely.
She smiled almost as if she could see the joke; after which she became twitteringly, eagerly in earnest. “Since you live near here, you must know the Whitmores. Miss Whitmore came out here, two or three years ago, and married her brother’s coachman, I believe—though I’ve heard conflicting stories about it; some have said he was an artist, and others that he was a jockey, or horse-trainer. I heard too that he was a cowboy; but Miss Whitmore certainly wrote about this young man driving her brother’s carriage. However, she is married and I have a letter of introduction to her. The president of our club used to be a schoolmate of her mother. I shall stop with them—I have heard so much about the Western hospitality—and shall get into touch with my cowboys from the vantage point of proximity. Did you say you know them?”
“I work for them,” Andy told her truthfully in his deep amazement, and immediately repented and wished that he had not been so virtuous. With Andy, to wish was to do—given the opportunity.
“Then I can go with you out to their farm—ranchero! How nice! And on the way you can tell me all about yourself and your life and hopes—because I do want to get in touch with you all, you know—and I’ll tell you all my plans for you; I have some beautiful plans! And we’ll be very good friends by the time we reach our destination, I’m sure. I want you to feel from the start that I am a true friend, and that I have your welfare very much at heart. Without the confidence of my cowboys, I can do nothing. Are there any more at home like you?”
Andy looked at her suspiciously, but it was so evident she never meant to quote comic opera, that he merely wondered anew. He struggled feebly against temptation, and fell from grace quite willingly. It isn’t polite to “throw a load” at a lady, but then Andy felt that neither was it polite for a lady to come out with the avowed intention of improving him and his fellows; it looked to him like butting in where she was not wanted, or needed.
“Yes, ma’am, there’s quite a bunch, and they’re pretty bad. I don’t believe you can do much for ’em.” He spoke regretfully.
“Do they—drink?” she asked, leaning forward and speaking in the hushed voice with which some women approach a tabooed subject.
“Yes ma’am, they do. They’re hard drinkers. And they”—he eyed her speculatively, trying to guess the worst sins in her category—“they play cards—gamble—and swear, and smoke cigarettes and—”
“All the more need of someone to help them overcome,” she decided solemnly. “What you need is a coffee-house and reading room here, so that the young men will have some place to go other than the saloons. I shall see to that right away. And with the Mutual Improvement and Social Society organized and working smoothly, and a library of standard works for recreation, together with earnest personal efforts to promote temperance and clean-living, I feel that a wonderful work can be done. I saw you drive into town, so I know you can take me out with you; I hope you are going to start soon. I feel very impatient to reach the field and put my sickle to the harvest.”
Andy mentally threw up his hands before this unshakable person. He had meant to tell her that he had come on horseback, but she had forestalled him. He had meant to discourage her—head her off, he called it to himself. But there seemed no way of doing it. He pushed back his chair and rose, though he had not tasted his pie, and it was lemon pie at that. He had some faint notion of hurrying out of town and home before she could have time to get ready; but she followed him to the door and chirped over his shoulder that it wouldn’t take her two minutes to put on her wraps. Andy groaned.
He tried—or started to try—holding out at Rusty Brown’s till she gave up in despair; but it occurred to him that Chip had asked him to hurry back. Andy groaned again, and got the team.
She did not wait for him to drive around to the hotel for her; possibly she suspected his intentions. At any rate, she came nipping down the street toward the stable just as he was hooking the last trace, and she was all ready and had a load of bags and bundles.
“I’m not going to begin by making trouble for you,” she twittered. “I thought I could just as well come down here to the wagon as have you drive back to the hotel. And my trunk did not come on the train with me, so I’m all ready.”
Andy, having nothing in mind that he dared say to a lady, helped her into the wagon.
At sundown or thereabouts—for the days were short and he had a load of various things besides care—Andy let himself wearily into the bunk-house where was assembled the Happy Family. He merely grunted when they spoke to him, and threw himself heavily down upon his bunk.
“For Heaven’s sake, somebody roll me a cigarette! I’m too wore out to do a thing, and I haven’t had a smoke since dinner,” he groaned, after a minute.
“Sick?” asked Pink solicitously.
“Sick as a dog! water, water!” moaned Andy. All at once he rolled over upon his face and shook with laughter more than a little hysterical, and to the questioning of the Happy Family gave no answer but howls. The Happy Family began to look at one another uneasily.
“Aw, let up!” Happy Jack bellowed. “You give a man the creeps just to listen at yuh.”
“I’m going to empty the water-bucket over yuh in a minute,” Pink threatened, “Go get it, Cal; it’s half full.”
Andy k
new well the metal of which the Happy Family was made, and the night was cool for a ducking. He rolled back so that they could see his face, and struggled for calm. In a minute he sat up and merely gurgled.
“Well, say, I had to do something or die,” he explained, gasping. “I’ve gone through a heap, the last few hours, and I was right where I couldn’t do a thing. By gracious, I struck the ranch about as near bug-house as a man can get and recover. Where’s a cigarette?”
“What you’ve gone through—and I don’t give a cuss what it is—ain’t a marker for what’s going to happen if yuh don’t loosen up on the history,” said Jack Bates firmly.
Andy smoked hungrily while he surveyed the lot. “How calm and innocent yuh all look,” he observed musingly, “with your hats on and saying words that’s rude, and smoking the vile weed regardless, never dreaming what’s going to drop, pretty soon quick. Yuh make me think of a hymn-song my step-mother used to sing a lot, about ‘They dreamed not of danger, those sinners of old, whom—”
“Hand me the water bucket,” directed Pink musically.
“Oh, well—take it from the shoulder, then; I was only trying to lead up to it gradual, but yuh will have it raw. You poor, dear cowboys, that live your lonely lives watching over your cattle with your faithful dogs and the stars for company, you’re going to be improved. (You’ll sure stand a lot of it, too!) A woman’s relief club back East has felt the burden of your no-accountness and general orneriness, and has sent one of its leading members out here to reform yuh. You’re going to be hazed into a Cowboys’ Mutual Improvement and Social Society, and quit smoking cigarettes and cussing your hosses and laying over Rusty’s bar when yuh ride into town; and for pleasure and recreation you’re going to read Tennyson’s poems, and when yuh get caught out in a blizzard yuh’ll be heeled with Whittier’s Snowbound, pocket edition. Emerson and Browning and Shakespeare and Gatty” (Andy misquoted; he meant Goethe) “and all them stiffs is going to be set before yuh regular and in your mind constant, purging it of unclean thoughts, and grammar is going to be learnt yuh as a side-line. Yuh—”
“Mama mine,” broke in Weary. “I have thought sometimes, when Andy broke loose with that imagination uh his, that he’d gone the limit; but next time he always raises the limit out uh sight. He’s like the Good Book says: he’s prone to lie as the sparks fly-upward.”
Andy gazed belligerently at the skeptical group. “I brought her out from town,” he said doggedly, “and whilst I own up to having an imagination, she’s stranger than fiction. She’d make the fellow that wrote “She” lay down with a headache. She’s come out here to help us cowboys live nobler, better lives. She’s going to learn yuh Browning, darn yuh! and Emerson and Gatty. She said so. She’s going to fill your hearts with love for dumb creatures, so when yuh get set afoot out on the range, or anything like that, yuh won’t put in your time cussing the miles between you and camp; you’ll have a pocket edition of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ to read, or the speech Mark Anthony made when he was running for office. Or supposing yuh left ’em all in camp, yuh’ll study nature.
There’s sermons in stones, she says. She’s going to send for a pocket library that can easy be took on roundup—”
“Say, I guess that’s about enough,” interrupted Pink restlessly. “We all admit you’re the biggest liar that ever come West of the Mississippi, without you laying it on any deeper.”
Whereupon Andy rose in wrath and made a suggestive movement with his fist. “If I was romancing,” he declared indignantly, “I’d do a smoother job; when I do lie, I notice yuh all believe it—till yuh find out different. And by gracious yuh might do as much when I’m telling the truth! Go up to the White House and see, darn yuh! If yuh don’t find Miss Verbena Martin up there telling the Little Doctor how her heart goes out to her dear cowboys and how she’s going to get in touch with ’em and help ’em lead nobler, better lives, you can kick me all round the yard. And I hope, by gracious, she does improve yuh! Yuh sure do need it a lot.”
The Happy Family discussed the tale freely and without regard for the feelings of Andy; they even became heated and impolite, and they made threats. They said that a liar like him ought to be lynched or gagged, and that he was a disgrace to the outfit. In the end, however, they decided to go and see, just to prove to Andy that they knew he lied. And though it was settled that Weary and Pink should be the investigating committee, by the time they were halfway to the White House they had the whole Happy Family trailing at their heels. A light snow had begun to fall since dark, and they hunched their shoulders against it as they went. Grouped uncomfortably just outside the circle of light cast through the unshaded window, they gazed silently in upon Chip and the Little Doctor and J.G. Whitmore, and upon one other; a strange lady in a black silk shirtwaist and a gold watch suspended from her neck by a chaste, black silken cord; a strange lady with symmetrical waves in her hair and gray on her temples, and with glasses and an eager way of speaking.
She was talking very rapidly and animatedly, and the others were listening and stealing glances now and then at one another. Once, while they watched, the Little Doctor looked at Chip and then turned her face toward the window. She was biting her lips in the way the Happy Family had learned to recognize as a great desire to laugh. It all looked suspicious and corroborative of Andy’s story, and the Happy Family shifted their feet uneasily in the loose snow.
They watched, and saw the strange lady clasp her hands together and lean forward, and where her voice had before come to them with no words which they could catch distinctly, they heard her say something quite clearly in her enthusiasm: “Eight real cowboys here, almost within reach! I must see them before I sleep! I must get in touch with them at once, and show them that I am a true friend. Come, Mrs. Bennett! Won’t you take me where they are and let me meet my boys? for they are mine in spirit; my heart goes out to them—”
The Happy Family waited to hear no more, but went straightway back whence they had come, and their going savored of flight.
“Mama mine! she’s coming down to the bunkhouse!” said Weary under his breath, and glanced back over his shoulder at the White House bulking large in the night. “Let’s go on down to the stable and roost in the hay a while.”
“She’ll out-wind us, and be right there waiting when we come back,” objected Andy, with the wisdom gained from his brief acquaintance with the lady. “If she’s made up her mind to call on us, there’s no way under Heaven to head her off.”
They halted by the bunk-house door, undecided whether to go in or to stay out in the open.
“By golly, she don’t improve me!” Slim asserted pettishly. “I hate books like strychnine, and, by golly, she can’t make me read ’em, neither.”
“If there’s anything I do despise it’s po’try,” groaned Cal Emmett.
“Emerson and Browning and Shakespeare and Gatty,” named Andy gloomily.
Whereat Pink suddenly pushed open the door and went in as goes one who knows exactly what he is about to do. They followed him distressfully and silently. Pink went immediately to his bunk and began pulling off his boots.
“I’m going to bed,” he told them. “You fellows can stay up and entertain her if yuh want to—I won’t!”
They caught the idea and disrobed hastily, though the evening was young. Irish blew out the lamp and dove under the blankets just as voices came faintly from up the hill, so that when Chip rapped a warning with his knuckles on the door, there was no sound within save an artificial snore from the corner where lay Pink. Chip was not in the habit of knocking before he entered, but he repeated the summons with emphasis.
“Who’s there-e?” drawled sleepily a voice—the voice of Weary.
“Oh, I do believe they’ve retired!” came, in a perturbed feminine tone, to the listening ears of the Happy Family.
“Gone to bed?” cried Chip gravely.
“Hours ago,” lied Andy fluently. “We’re plumb wore out. What’s happened?”
“Oh, don’t d
isturb the poor fellows! They’re tired and need their rest,” came the perturbed tone again. After that the voices and the footsteps went up the hill again, and the Happy Family breathed freer. Incidentally, Pink stopped snoring and made a cigarette.
Going to bed at seven-thirty or thereabouts was not the custom of the Happy Family, but they stayed under the covers and smoked and discussed the situation. They dared not have a light, and the night was longer than they had ever known a night to be, for it was late before they slept. It was well that Miss Verbena Martin could not overhear their talk, which was unchivalrous and unfriendly in the extreme. The general opinion seemed to be that old maid improvers would better stay at home where they might possibly be welcome, and that when the Happy Family wanted improving they would let her know. Cal Emmett said that he wouldn’t mind, if they had only sent a young, pretty one. Happy Jack prophesied plenty of trouble, and boasted that she couldn’t haul him into no s’ciety. Slim declared again that by golly, she wouldn’t do no improving on him, and the others—Weary and Irish and Pink and Jack Bates and Andy—discussed ways and means and failed always to agree. When each one hoots derision at all plans but his own, it is easy guessing what will be the result. In this particular instance the result was voices raised in argument—voices that reached Chip, grinning and listening on the porch of the White House—and tardy slumber overtaking a disgruntled Happy Family on the brink of violence.
It was not a particularly happy Family that woke to memory and a snowy Sunday; woke late, because of the disturbing evening. When they spoke to one another their voices were but growls, and when they trailed through the snow to their breakfast they went in moody silence.
They had just brightened a bit before Patsy’s Sunday breakfast, which included hot-cakes and maple syrup, when the door was pushed quietly open and the Little Doctor came in, followed closely by Miss Martin; an apologetic Little Doctor, who seemed, by her very manner of entering, to implore them not to blame her for the intrusion. Miss Martin was not apologetic. She was disconcertingly eager and glad to meet them, and pathetically anxious to win their favor.
