The B. M. Bower Megapack

by B. M. Bower

  Now dad is very old-fashioned in some of his notions; one of them is that a parent may hand out a roast that will frizzle the foliage for blocks around, and, guilty or innocent, the son must take it, as he’d take cod-liver oil—it’s-nasty-but-good-for-what-ails-you. He snapped his mouth shut, and, being his son and having that habit myself, I recognized the symptoms and judged that things would presently grow interesting.

  I was betting on a full-house. The atmosphere grew tense. I heard a lot of things in the next five minutes that no one but my dad could say without me trying mighty hard to make him swallow them. And I just sat there and looked at him and took it.

  I couldn’t agree with him that I’d committed a grievous crime. It wasn’t much of a lark, as larks go: just an incident at the close of a rather full afternoon. Coming around up the beach front Ingleside House a few days before, in the Yellow Peril—my machine—we got to badgering each other about doing things not orthodox. At last Barney MacTague dared me to drive the Yellow Peril past the dead-line—down by the Pavilion—and on up the hill to Sutro Baths. Naturally, I couldn’t take a dare like that, and went him one better; I told him I’d not only drive to the very top of the hill, but I’d stop at the Gift House and crack a bottle of champagne on each wheel of the Yellow Peril, in honor of the occasion; that would make a bottle apiece, for there were four of us along.

  It was done, to the delight of the usual Sunday crowd of brides, grooms, tourists, and kids. A mounted policeman interviewed us, to the further delight of the crowd, and invited us to call upon a certain judge whom none of us knew. We did so, and dad was good enough to pay the fine, which, as I said before, was not much. I’ve had less fun for more money, often.

  Dad didn’t say anything at the time, so I was not looking for the roast I was getting. It appeared, from his view-point, that I was about as useless, imbecile, and utterly no-account a son as a man ever had, and if there was anything good in me it was not visible except under a strong magnifying-glass.

  He said, among other things too painful to mention, that he was getting old—dad is about fifty-six—and that if I didn’t buck up and amount to something soon, he didn’t know what was to become of the business.

  Then he delivered the knockout blow that he’d been working up to. He was going to see what there was in me, he said. He would pay my bills, and, as a birthday gift, he would present me with a through ticket to Osage, in Montana—where he owned a ranch called the Bay State—and a stock-saddle, spurs, chaps, and a hundred dollars. After that I must work out my own salvation—or the other thing. If I wanted more money inside a year or two, I would have to work for it just as if I were an orphan without a dad who writes checks on demand. He said that there was always something to do on the Bay State Ranch—which is one of dad’s places. I could do as I pleased, he said, but he’d advise me to buckle down and learn something about cattle. It was plain I never would amount to anything in an office. He laid a yard or two of ticket on the table at my elbow, and on top of that a check for one hundred dollars, payable to one Ellis Carleton.

  I took up the check and read every word on it twice—not because I needed to; I was playing for time to think. Then I twisted it up in a taper, held it to the blaze in the fireplace, and lighted a cigarette with it. Dad kept his finger-tips together and watched me without any expression whatsoever in his face. I took three deliberate puffs, picked up the ticket, and glanced along down its dirty green length. Dad never moved a muscle, and I remember the clock got to ticking louder than I’d ever heard it in my life before. I may as well be perfectly honest! That ticket did not appeal to me a little bit. I think he expected to see that go up in smoke, also. But, though I’m pretty much of a fool at times, I believe there are lucid intervals when I recognize certain objects—such as justice. I knew that, in the main, dad was right. I had been leading a rather reckless existence, and I was getting pretty old for such kid foolishness. He had measured out the dose, and I meant to swallow it without whining—but it was exceeding bitter to the palate!

  “I see the ticket is dated twenty-four hours ahead,” I said as calmly as I knew how, “which gives me time to have Rankin pack a few duds. I hope the outfit you furnish includes a red silk handkerchief and a Colt’s .44 revolver, and a key to the proper method of slaying acquaintances in the West. I hate to start in with all white chips.”

  “You probably mean a Colt’s .45,” said dad, with a more convincing calmness than I could show. “It shall be provided. As to the key, you will no doubt find that on the ground when you arrive.”

  “Very well,” I replied, getting up and stretching my arms up as high as I could reach—which was beastly manners, of course, but a safe vent for my feelings, which cried out for something or somebody to punch. “You’ve called the turn, and I’ll go. It may be many moons ere we two meet again—and when we do, the crime of cracking my own champagne—for I paid for it, you know—on my own automobile wheels may not seem the heinous thing it looks now. See you later, dad.”

  I walked out with my head high in the air and my spirits rather low, if the truth must be told. Dad was generally kind and wise and generous, but he certainly did break out in unexpected places sometimes. Going to the Bay State Ranch, just at that time, was not a cheerful prospect. San Francisco and Seattle were just starting a series of ballgames that promised to be rather swift, and I’d got a lot up on the result. I hated to go just then. And Montana has the reputation of being rather beastly in early March—I knew that much.

  I caught a car down to the Olympic, hunted up Barney MacTague, and played poker with him till two o’clock that night, and never once mentioned the trip I was contemplating. Then I went home, routed up my man, and told him what to pack, and went to bed for a few hours; if there was anything pleasant in my surroundings that I failed to think of as I lay there, it must be very trivial indeed. I even went so far as to regret leaving Ethel Mapleton, whom I cared nothing for.

  And above all and beneath all, hanging in the background of my mind and dodging forward insistently in spite of myself, was a deep resentment—a soreness against dad for the way he had served me. Granted I was wild and a useless cumberer of civilization; I was only what my environments had made me. Dad had let me run, and he had never kicked on the price of my folly, or tried to pull me up at the start. He had given his time to his mines and his cattle-ranches and railroads, and had left his only son to go to the devil if he chose and at his own pace. Then, because the son had come near making a thorough job of it, he had done—this. I felt hardly used and at odds with life, during those last few hours in the little old burgh.

  All the next day I went the pace as usual with the gang, and at seven, after an early dinner, caught a down-town car and set off alone to the ferry. I had not seen dad since I left him in the library, and I did not particularly wish to see him, either. Possibly I had some unfilial notion of making him ashamed and sorry. It is even possible that I half-expected him to come and apologize, and offer to let things go on in the old way. In that event I was prepared to be chesty. I would look at him coldly and say: “You have seen fit to buy me a ticket to Osage, Montana. So be it; to Osage, Montana, am I bound.” Oh, I had it all fixed!

  Dad came into the ferry waiting-room just as the passengers were pouring off the boat, and sat down beside me as if nothing had happened. He did not look sad, or contrite, or ashamed—not, at least, enough to notice. He glanced at his watch, and then handed me a letter.

  “There,” he began briskly, “that is to Perry Potter, the Bay State foreman. I have wired him that you are on the way.”

  The gate went up at that moment, and he stood up and held out his hand. “Sorry I can’t go over with you,” he said. “I’ve an important meeting to attend. Take care of yourself, Ellie boy.”

  I gripped his hand warmly, though I had intended to give him a dead-fish sort of shake. After all, he was my dad, and there were just us two. I picked up my suit-case and started for the gate. I looked back once, and saw da
d standing there gazing after me—and he did not look particularly brisk. Perhaps, after all, dad cared more than he let on. It’s a way the Carletons have, I have heard.

  CHAPTER II

  The White Divide

  If a phrenologist should undertake to “read” my head, he would undoubtedly find my love of home—if that is what it is called—a sharply defined welt. I know that I watched the lights of old Frisco slip behind me with as virulent a case of the deeps as often comes to a man when his digestion is good. It wasn’t that I could not bear the thought of hardship; I’ve taken hunting trips up into the mountains more times than I can remember, and ate ungodly messes of my own invention, and waded waist-deep in snow and slept under the stars, and enjoyed nearly every minute. So it wasn’t the hardships that I had every reason to expect that got me down. I think it was the feeling that dad had turned me down; that I was in exile, and—in his eyes, at least—disgraced, it was knowing that he thought me pretty poor truck, without giving me a chance to be anything better. I humped over the rail at the stern, and watched the waves slap at us viciously, like an ill-tempered poodle, and felt for all the world like a dog that’s been kicked out into the rain. Maybe the medicine was good for me, but it wasn’t pleasant. It never occurred to me, that night, to wonder how dad felt about it; but I’ve often thought of it since.

  I had a section to myself, so I could sulk undisturbed; dad was not small, at any rate, and, though he hadn’t let me have his car, he meant me to be decently comfortable. That first night I slept without a break; the second I sat in the smoker till a most unrighteous hour, cultivating the acquaintance of a drummer for a rubber-goods outfit. I thought that, seeing I was about to mingle with the working classes, I couldn’t begin too soon to study them. He was a pretty good sort, too.

  The rubber-goods man left me at Seattle, and from there on I was at the tender mercies of my own thoughts and an elderly lady with a startlingly blond daughter, who sat directly opposite me and was frankly disposed to friendliness. I had never given much time to the study of women, and so had no alternative but to answer questions and smile fatuously upon the blond daughter, and wonder if I ought to warn the mother that “clothes do not make the man,” and that I was a black sheep and not a desirable acquaintance. Before I had quite settled that point, they left the train. I am afraid I am not distinctly a chivalrous person; I hummed the Doxology after their retreating forms and retired into myself, with a feeling that my own society is at times desirable and greatly to be chosen.

  After that I was shy, and nothing happened except that on the last evening of the trip, I gave up my sole remaining five dollars in the diner, and walked out whistling softly. I was utterly and unequivocally strapped. I went into the smoker to think it over; I knew I had started out with a hundred or so, and that I had considered that sufficient to see me through. Plainly, it was not sufficient; but it is a fact that I looked upon it as a joke, and went to sleep grinning idiotically at the thought of me, Ellis Carleton, heir to almost as many millions as I was years old, without the price of a breakfast in his pocket. It seemed novel and interesting, and I rather enjoyed the situation. I wasn’t hungry, then!

  Osage, Montana, failed to rouse any enthusiasm in me when I saw the place next day, except that it offered possibilities in the way of eating—at least, I fancied it did, until I stepped down upon the narrow platform and looked about me. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and I had fasted since dinner the evening before. I was not happy.

  I began to see where I might have economized a bit, and so have gone on eating regularly to the end of the journey. I reflected that stewed terrapin, for instance, might possibly be considered an extravagance under the circumstances; and a fellow sentenced to honest toil and exiled to the wilderness should not, it seemed to me then, cause his table to be sprinkled, quite so liberally as I had done, with tall glasses—nor need he tip the porter quite so often or so generously. A dollar looked bigger to me, just then, than a wheel of the Yellow Peril. I began to feel unkindly toward that porter! he had looked so abominably well-fed and sleek, and he had tips that I would be glad to feel in my own pocket again. I stood alone upon the platform and gazed wistfully after the retreating train; many people have done that before me, if one may believe those who write novels, and for once in my life I felt a bond of sympathy between us. It’s safe betting that I did more solid thinking on frenzied finance in the five minutes I stood there watching that train slid off beyond the sky-line than I’d done in all my life before. I’d heard, of course, about fellows getting right down to cases, but I’d never personally experienced the sensation. I’d always had money—or, if I hadn’t, I knew where to go. And dad had caught me when I’d all but overdrawn my account at the bank. I was always doing that, for dad paid the bills. That last night with Barney MacTague hadn’t been my night to win, and I’d dropped quite a lot there. And—oh, what’s the use? I was broke, all right enough, and I was hungry enough to eat the proverbial crust.

  It seemed to me it might be a good idea to hunt up the gentleman named Perry Potter, whom dad called his foreman. I turned around and caught a tall, brown-faced native studying my back with grave interest. He didn’t blush when I looked him in the eye, but smiled a tired smile and said he reckoned I was the chap he’d been sent to meet. There was no welcome in his voice, I noticed. I looked him over critically.

  “Are you the gentleman with the alliterative cognomen?” I asked him airily, hoping he would be puzzled.

  He was not, evidently. “Perry Potter? He’s at the ranch.” He was damnably tolerant, and I said nothing. I hate to make the same sort of fool of myself twice. So when he proposed that we “hit the trail,” I followed meekly in his wake. He did not offer to take my suit-case, and I was about to remind him of the oversight when it occurred to me that possibly he was not a servant—he certainly didn’t act like one. I carried my own suitcase—which was, I have thought since, the only wise move I had made since I left home.

  A strong but unsightly spring-wagon, with mud six inches deep on the wheels, seemed the goal, and we trailed out to it, picking up layers of soil as we went. The ground did not look muddy, but it was; I have since learned that that particular phase of nature’s hypocrisy is called “doby.” I don’t admire it, myself. I stopped by the wagon and scraped my shoes on the cleanest spoke I could find, and swore. My guide untied the horses, gathered up the reins, and sought a spoke on his side of the wagon; he looked across at me with a gleam of humanity in his eyes—the first I had seen there.

  “It sure beats hell the way it hangs on,” he remarked, and from that minute I liked him. It was the first crumb of sympathy that had fallen to me for days, and you can bet I appreciated it.

  We got in, and he pulled a blanket over our knees and picked up the whip. It wasn’t a stylish turnout—I had seen farmers driving along the railroad-track in rigs like it, and I was surprised at dad for keeping such a layout. Fact is, I didn’t think much of dad, anyway, about that time.

  “How far is it to the Bay State Ranch?” I asked.

  “One hundred and forty miles, air-line,” said he casually. “The train was late, so I reckon we better stop over till morning. There’s a town over the hill, and a hotel that beats nothing a long way.”

  A hundred and forty miles from the station, “air-line,” sounded to me like a pretty stiff proposition to go up against; also, how was a fellow going to put up at a hotel when he hadn’t the coin? Would my mysterious guide be shocked to learn that John A. Carleton’s son and heir had landed in a strange land without two-bits to his name? Jerusalem! I couldn’t have paid street-car fare down-town; I couldn’t even have bought a paper on the street. While I was remembering all the things a millionaire’s son can’t do if he happens to be without a nickel in his pocket, we pulled up before a place that, for the sake of propriety, I am willing to call a hotel; at the time, I remember, I had another name for it.

  “In case I might get lost in this strange city,” I said to my c
ompanion as I jumped out, “I’d like to know what people call you when they’re in a good humor.”

  He grinned down at me. “Frosty Miller would hit me, all right,” he informed me, and drove off somewhere down the street. So I went in and asked for a room, and got it.

  This sounds sordid, I know, but the truth must be told, though the artistic sense be shocked. Barred from the track as I was, sent out to grass in disgrace while the little old world kept moving without me to help push, my mind passed up all the things I might naturally be supposed to dwell upon and stuck to three little no-account grievances that I hate to tell about now. They look small, for a fact, now that they’re away out of sight, almost, in the past; but they were quite big enough at the time to give me a bad hour or two. The biggest one was the state of my appetite; next, and not more than a nose behind, was the state of my pockets; and the last was, had Rankin packed the gray tweed trousers that I had a liking for, or had he not? I tried to remember whether I had spoken to him about them, and I sat down on the edge of the bed in that little box of a room, took my head between my fists, and called Rankin several names he sometimes deserved and had frequently heard from my lips. I’d have given a good deal to have Rankin at my elbow just then.

  They were not in the suit-case—or, if they were, I had not run across them. Rankin had a way of stowing things away so that even he had to do some tall searching, and he had another way of filling up my suit-cases with truck I’d no immediate use for. I yanked the case toward me, unlocked it, and turned it out on the bed, just to prove Rankin’s general incapacity as valet to a fastidious fellow like me.

  There was the suit I had worn on that memorable excursion to the Cliff House—I had told Rankin to pitch it into the street, for I had discovered Teddy Van Greve in one almost exactly like it, and—Hello! Rankin had certainly overlooked a bet. I never caught him at it before, that’s certain. He had a way of coming to my left elbow, and, in a particularly virtuous tone, calling my attention to the fact that I had left several loose bills in my pockets. Rankin was that honest I often told him he would land behind the bars as an embezzler some day. But Rankin had done it this time, for fair; tucked away in a pocket of the waistcoat was money—real, legal, lawful tender—m-o-n-e-y! I don’t suppose the time will ever come when it will look as good to me as it did right then. I held those bank-notes—there were two of them, double XX’s—to my face and sniffed them like I’d never seen the like before and never expected to again. And the funny part was that I forgot all about wanting the gray trousers, and all about the faults of Rankin. My feet were on bottom again, and my head on top. I marched down-stairs, whistling, with my hands in my pockets and my chin in the air, and told the landlord to serve dinner an hour earlier than usual, and to make it a good one.