Somewhere in Red Gap Part 16

I've had bitter experiences, and one of them got me at the time I first begun to wear riding pants myself, which must have been about the time you was beginning to bite dents into your silver mug that Aunt Caroline sent. I was a handsome young h.e.l.lion, I don't mind telling you, and they looked well on me, and when Lysander John urged me to be brave and wear 'em outside I was afraid all the men within a day's ride was going to sneak round to stare at me. My! I was so embarra.s.sed, also with that same feeling you got in your heart this minute that it was taking an unfair advantage of any man--you know! I felt like I was using all the power of my young beauty for unworthy ends.

"'Well, do you know what I got when I first rode out on the ranch? I got just about the once-over from every brute there, and that was all.

If one of them ranch hands had ever ogled me a second time I'd have known it all right, but I never caught one of the scoundrels at it.

First I said: "Now, ain't that fine and chivalrous?" Then I got wise. It wasn't none of this here boasted Western chivalry, but just plain lack of interest. I admit it made me mad at first. Any man on the place was only too glad to look me over when I had regular clothes on, but dress me like Lysander John and they didn't look at me any oftener than they did him. Not as often, of course, because as a plain human being and man's equal I wasn't near as interesting as he was.'

"'But then, too,' says Hetty, who had only been about half listening to my lecture, 'I thought it might be striking a blow at the same time for the freedom of woman.'

"Well, you know how that freedom-of-the-s.e.x talk always gets me going. I was mad enough for a minute to spank her just as she stood there in them Non Plush Ultras she was so proud of. And I did let out some high talk.

Mrs. Dutton told her afterward she thought sure we was having words.

"'Freedom from skirts,' I says, 'is the last thing your s.e.x wants.

Skirts is the final refuge of immodesty, to which women will cling like grim death. They will do any possible thing to a skirt--slit it, thin it, shorten it, hike it up one side--people are setting up nights right now thinking up some new thing to do to it--but women won't give it up and dress modestly as men do because it's the only unfair drag they got left with the men. I see one of our offended s.e.x is daily asking right out in a newspaper: "Are women people?" I'd just like to whisper to her that no one yet knows.

"'If they'll quit their skirts, dress as decently as a man does so they won't have any but a legitimate pull with him, we'd have a chance to find out if they're good for anything else. As a matter of fact, they don't want to be people and dress modestly and wear hats you couldn't pay over eight dollars for. I believe there was one once, but the poor thing never got any notice from either s.e.x after she became--a people, as you might say.'

"Well, I was going on to get off a few more things I'd got madded up to, but I caught the look in poor Hetty's face, and it would have melted a stone. Poor child! There she was, wanting a certain man and willing to wear or not wear anything on earth that would nail him, and not knowing what would do it, and complicating her ignorance with meaningless worries about modesty and daringness and the freedom of her poor s.e.x, that ain't ever even deuce-low with one woman in a million.

"And right then, watching her distress, all at once I get my big inspiration--it just flooded me like the sun coming up. I don't know if I'm like other folks, but things do come to me that way. And not only was it a great truth, but it got me out of the hole of having to tell Hetty certain truths about herself that these Non Plush Ultras made all too glaring.

"'Listen,' I says: 'You believe I'm your friend, don't you? And you believe anything I tell you is from the heart out and will probably have a grain of sense in it. Well, here is an inspired thought: Women won't ever dress modestly like men do because men don't want 'em to. I never saw a man yet that did if he'd tell the truth, and so this here dark city stranger won't be any exception. Now, then, what do we see on Sat.u.r.day next? Why, we see this here gay throng sally forth for Stender's Spring, the youth and beauty of Red Gap, including Mr. D., with his nice refined odour of Russia leather and bank bills of large size--from fifties up--that haven't been handled much. The crowd is of all s.e.xes, technically, like you might say; a lot of nice, sweet girls along but dressed to be mere jolly young roughnecks, and just as interesting to the said stranger as the regular boys that will be present--hardly more so. And now, as for poor little meek you--you will look wild and Western, understand me, but feminine; exactly like the coloured cigarette picture that says under it "Rocky Mountain Cow Girl."

You will be in your pretty tan skirt--be sure to have it pressed--and a blue-striped sport bloose that I just saw in the La Mode window, and you'll get some other rough Western stuff there, too: a blue silk neckerchief and a natty little cow-girl sombrero--the La Mode is showing a good one called the La Parisienne for four fifty-eight--and the daintiest pair of tan kid gauntlets you can find, and don't forget a pair of tan silk stockings--'

"'They won't show in my riding boots,' says Hetty, looking as if she was coming to life a little.

"'Tush for the great, coa.r.s.e, commonsense riding boots,' I says firmly; 'you will wear precisely that neat little pair of almost new tan pumps with the yellow bows that you're standing in now. Do you get me?'

"'But that would be too dainty and absurd,' says Hetty.

"'Exactly!' I says, shutting my mouth hard.

"'Why, I almost believe I do get you,' says she, looking religiously up into the future like that lady saint playing the organ in the picture.

"'Another thing,' I says: 'You are deathly afraid of a horse and was hardly ever on one but once when you were a teeny girl, but you do love the open life, so you just nerved yourself up to come.'

"'I believe I see more clearly than ever,' says Hetty. She grew up on a ranch, knows more about a horse than the horse himself does, and would be a top rider most places, with the cheap help we get nowadays that can hardly set a saddle.

"'Also from time to time,' I goes on, 'you want to ask this Mr. D.

little, timid, silly questions that will just tickle him to death and make him feel superior. Ask him to tell you which legs of a horse the chaps go on, and other things like that; ask him if the sash that holds the horrid old saddle on isn't so tight it's hurting your horse. After the lunch is et, go over to the horse all alone and stroke his nose and call him a dear and be found by the gent when he follows you over trying to feed the n.o.ble animal a hard-boiled egg and a couple of pickles or something. Take my word for it, he'll be over all right and have a hearty laugh at your confusion, and begin to wonder what it is about you.

"'How about falling off and spraining my ankle on the way back?' demands the awakening vestal with a gleam in her eye.

"'No good,' I says; 'pretty enough for a minute, but it would make trouble if you kept up the bluff, and if there's one thing a man hates more than another it's to have a woman round that makes any trouble.'

"'You have me started on a strange new train of thought,' says Hetty.

"'I think it's a good one,' I tells her, 'but remember there are risks.

For one thing, you know how popular you have always been with all the girls. Well, after this day none of 'em will hardly speak to you because of your low-lifed, deceitful game, and the things they'll say of you--such things as only woman can say of woman!'

"'I shall not count the cost,' says she firmly. 'And now I must hurry down for that sport bloose--blue-striped, you said?'

"'Something on that order,' I says, 'that fits only too well. You can do almost anything you want to with your neck and arms, but remember strictly--a skirt is your one and only Non Plush Ultra.'

"So I went home all flushed and eager, thinking joyously how little men--the poor dubs--ever suspect how it's put over on 'em, and the next day, which was Friday, I thought of a few more underhand things she could do. So when she run in to see me that afternoon, the excitement of the chase in her eye, she wanted I should go along on this picnic. I says yes, I will, being that excited myself and wanting to see really if I was a double-faced genius or wasn't I? Henrietta Price couldn't go on account of being still lame from her ride of a week ago, so I could go as chaperone, and anyway I knew the dear girls would all be glad to have me because I would look so different from them--like a genial old ranch foreman going out on rodeo--and the boys was always glad to see me along anyway. 'I'll be there,' I says to Hetty. 'And here--don't forget at all times to-morrow to carry this little real lace handkerchief I'm giving you.'

"I was at the meeting-place next morning at nine. None of the other girls was on time, of course, but that was just as well, because Aggie Tuttle had got her father to come down to the sale yard to pack a mule with the hampers of lunch. Jeff Tuttle is a good packer all right, but too inflamed in the case of a mule, which he hates. They always know up and down that street when he's packing one; ladies drag their children by as fast as they can. But Jeff had the hitch all throwed before any of the girls showed up, and all began in a lovely manner, the crowd of about fifteen getting off not more than an hour late; Mr. Burch.e.l.l in the lead and a bevy of these jolly young rascals in their Non Plush Ultras riding herd on him.

"Every girl cast cordial glances of pity at poor Hetty when she showed up in her neat skirt and silly tan pumps with the ridiculous silk stockings and the close-fitting blue-striped thing, free at the neck, and her pretty hair all neated under the La Parisienne cow-girl hat. Oh, they felt kinder than ever before to poor old Hetty when they saw her as little daring as that, cheering her with a hearty uproar, slapping their Non Plush Ultras with their caps or gloves, and then giggling confidentially to one another. Hetty accepted their applause with what they call a pretty show of confusion and gored her horse with her heel on the off side so it looked as if the vicious brute was running away and she might fall off any minute, but somehow she didn't, and got him soothed with frightened words and by taking the hidden heel out of his slats--though not until Mr. D. had noticed her good and then looked again once or twice.

"And so the party moved on for an hour or two, with the roguish young roughnecks cutting up merrily at all times, pretending to be cowboys coming to town on pay day, swinging their hats, giving the long yell, and doing roughriding to cut each other away from the side of Mr. D.

every now and then, with a noisy laugh of good nature to hide the poisoned dagger. Daisy Estelle Maybury is an awful good rider, too, and got next to the hero about every time she wanted to. Poor thing, if she only knew that once she gets off a horse in 'em it makes all the difference in the world.

"The dark city stranger seemed to enjoy it fine, all this noise and cutting up and cowboy antics like they was just a lot of high-spirited young men together, but I never weakened in my faith for one minute.

'Laugh on, my proud beauties,' I says, 'but a time will come, just as sure as you look and act like a pa.s.sel of healthy boys.' And you bet it did.

"We hadn't got halfway to Stender's Spring till Mr. D. got off to tighten his cinch, and then he sort of drifted back to where Hetty and I was. I dropped back still farther to where a good chaperone ought to be and he rode in beside Hetty. The trail was too narrow then for the rest to come back after their prey, so they had to carry on the rough work among themselves.

"Hetty acted perfect. She had a pensive, withdrawn look--'aloof,' I guess the word is--like she was too tender a flower, too fine for this rough stuff, and had ought to be in the home that minute telling a fairy story to the little ones gathered at her decently clad knee. I don't know how she done it, but she put that impression over. And she tells Mr. D. that in spite of her quiet, studious tastes she had resolved to come on this picnic because she loves Nature oh! so dearly, the birds and the wild flowers and the great rugged trees that have their message for man if he will but listen with an understanding heart--didn't Mr. D.

think so, or did he? But not too much of this dear old Nature stuff, which can be easy overdone with a healthy man; just enough to show there was hidden depths in her nature that every one couldn't find.

"Then on to silly questions about does a horse lie down when it goes to sleep each night after its hard day's labour, and isn't her horse's sash too tight, and what a pretty fetlock he has, so long and thick and brown--Oh, do you call that the mane? How absurd of poor little me! Mr.

Daggett knows just everything, doesn't he? He's perfectly terrifying.

And where in the world did he ever learn to ride so stunningly, like one of those dare-devils in a Wild West entertainment? If her own naughty, naughty horse tries to throw her on the ground again where he can bite her she'll just have Mr. D. ride the na.s.sy ole sing and teach him better manners, so she will. There now! He must have heard that--just see him move his funny ears--don't tell her that horses can't understand things that are said. And, seriously now, where did Mr. D. ever get his superb athletic training, because, oh! how all too rare it is to see a brain-worker of strong mentality and a splendid athlete in one and the same man. Oh, how pathetically she had wished and wished to be a man and take her place out in the world fighting its battles, instead of poor little me who could never be anything but a homebody to wors.h.i.+p the great, strong, red-blooded men who did the fighting and carried on great industries--not even an athletic girl like those dear things up ahead--and this horse is bobbing up and down like that on purpose, just to make poor little me giddy, and so forth. Holding her bridle rein daintily she was with the lace handkerchief I'd give her that cost me twelve fifty.

"Mr. D. took it all like a real man. He said her ignorance of a horse was adorable and laughed heartily at it. And he smiled in a deeply modest and masterful way and said 'But, really, that's nothing--nothing at all, I a.s.sure you,' when she said about how he was a corking athlete--and then kept still to see if she was going on to say more about it. But she didn't, having the G.o.d-given wisdom to leave him wanting. And then he would be laughing again at her poor-little-me horse talk.

"I never had a minute's doubt after that, for it was the eyes of one fascinated to a finish that he turned back on me half an hour later as he says: 'Really, Mrs. Pettengill, our Miss Hester is feminine to her finger tips, is she not?' 'She is, she is,' I answers. 'If you only knew the trouble I had with the chit about that horrible old riding skirt of hers when all her girl friends are wearing a sensible costume!' Hetty blushed good and proper at this, not knowing how indecent I might become, and Mr. D. caught her at it. Aggie Tuttle and Stella Ballard at this minute is pretending to be shooting up a town with the couple of revolvers they'd brought along in their cunning little holsters. Mr. D.

turns his glazed eyes to me once more. 'The real womanly woman,' says he in a hushed voice, 'is G.o.d's best gift to man.' Just like that.

"'Landed!' I says to myself. 'Throw him up on the bank and light a fire.'

"And mebbe you think this tet-a-tet had not been noticed by the merry throng up front. Not so. The shouting and songs had died a natural death, and the last three miles of that trail was covered in a gloomy silence, except for the low voices of Hetty and the male she had so neatly p.r.o.nged. I could see puzzled glances cast back at them and catch mutterings of bewilderment where the trail would turn on itself. But the poor young things didn't yet realize that their prey was hanging back there for reasons over which he hadn't any control. They thought, of course, he was just being polite or something.

"When we got to the picnic place, though, they soon saw that all was not well. There was some resumption of the merrymaking as they dismounted and the girls put one stirrup over the saddle-horn and eased the cinch like the boys did, and proud of their knowledge, but the glances they now shot at Hetty wasn't bewildered any more. They was glances of pure fright. Hetty, in the first place, had to be lifted off her horse, and Mr. D. done it in a masterly way to show her what a mere feather she was in his giant's grasp. Then with her feet on the ground she reeled a mite, so he had to support her. She grasped his great strong arm firmly and says: 'It's nothing--I shall be right presently--leave me please, go and help those other girls.' They had some low, heated language about his leaving her at such a crisis, with her gripping his arm till I bet it showed for an hour. But finally they broke and he loosened her horse's sash, as she kept quaintly calling it, and she recovered completely and said it had been but a moment's giddiness anyway, and what strength he had in those arms, and yet could use it so gently, and he said she was a brave, game little woman, and the picnic was served to one and all, with looks of hearty suspicion and rage now being shot at Hetty from every other girl there.

"And now I see that my hunch has been even better than I thought. Not only does the star male hover about Hetty, cutely perched on a fallen log with her dainty, gleaming ankles crossed, and looking so fresh and nifty and feminine, but I'm darned if three or four of the other males don't catch the contagion of her woman's presence and hang round her, too, fetching her food of every kind there, feeding her spoonfuls of Aggie Tuttle's plum preserves, and all like that, one comical thing after another. Yes, sir; here was Mac Gordon and Riley Hardin and Charlie d.i.c.kman and Roth Hyde, men about town of the younger dancing set, that had knowed Hetty for years and hardly ever looked at her--here they was paying attentions to her now like she was some prize beauty, come down from Spokane for over Sunday, to say nothing of Mr. D., who hardly ever left her side except to get her another sardine sandwich or a paper cup of coffee. It was then I see the scientific explanation of it, like these high-school professors always say that science is at the bottom of everything. The science of this here was that they was all devoting themselves to Hetty for the simple reason that she was the one and only woman there present.

"Of course these girls in their modest Non Plush Ultras didn't get the scientific secret of this fact. They was still too obsessed with the idea that they ought to be ogled on account of them by any male beast in his right senses. But they knew they'd got in wrong somehow. By this time they was kind of bunching together and telling each other things in low tones, while not seeming to look at Hetty and her dupes, at which all would giggle in the most venemous manner. Daisy Estelle left the bunch once and made a coy bid for the notice of Mr. D. by s.n.a.t.c.hing his cap and running merrily off with it about six feet. If there was any one in the world--except Hetty--could make a man hate the idea of riding pants for women, she was it. I could see the cold, flinty look come into his eyes as he turned away from her to Hetty with the pitcher of lemonade. And then Beryl Mae Macomber, she gets over close enough for Mr. D. to hear it, and says conditions is made very inharmonious at home for a girl of her temperament, and she's just liable any minute to chuck everything and either take up literary work or go into the movies, she don't know which and don't care--all kind of desperate so Mr. D. will feel alarmed about a beautiful young thing like that out in the world alone and unprotected and at the mercy of every designing scoundrel. But I don't think Mr. D. hears a word of it, he's so intently listening to Hetty who says here in this beautiful mountain glade where all is peace how one can't scarcely believe that there is any evil in the world anywhere, and what a difference it does make when one comes to see life truly. Then she crossed and recrossed her silken ankles, slightly adjusted her daring tan skirt, and raised her eyes wistfully to the treetops, and I bet there wasn't a man there didn't feel that she belonged in the home circle with the little ones gathered about, telling 'em an awfully exciting story about the naughty, naughty, bad little white kitten and the ball of mamma's yarn.

"Yes, sir; Hetty was as much of a revelation to me in one way as she would of been to that party in another if I hadn't saved her from it.

She must have had the correct female instinct all these years, only no one had ever started her before on a track where there was no other entries. With those other girls dressed like she was Hetty would of been leaning over some one's shoulder to fork up her own sandwiches, and no one taking hardly any notice whether she'd had some of the hot coffee or whether she hadn't. And the looks she got throughout the afternoon! Say, I wouldn't of trusted that girl at the edge of a cliff with a single pair of those No. 9872's anywhere near.

"After the lunch things was packed up there was faint attempts at fun and frolic with songs and chorus--Riley Hardin has a magnificent ba.s.s voice at times and Mac Gordon and Charlie d.i.c.kman and Roth Hyde wouldn't be so bad if they'd let these Turkish cigarettes alone--and the boys got together and sung some of their good old business-college songs, with the girls coming in while they murdered Hetty with their beautiful eyes.

But Hetty and Mr. D. sort of withdrew from the noisy enjoyment and talked about the serious aspects of life and how one could get along almost any place if only they had their favourite authors. And Mr. D.

says doesn't she sing at all, and she says, Oh! in a way; that her voice has a certain parlour charm, she has been told, and she sings at--you can't really call it singing--two or three of the old Scotch songs of homely sentiment like the Scotch seem to get into their songs as no other nation can, or doesn't he think so, and he does, indeed. And he's reading a wonderful new novel in which there is much of Nature with its lessons for each of us, but in which love conquers all at the end, and the girl in it reminds him strongly of her, and perhaps she'll be good enough to sing for him--just for him alone in the dusk--if he brings this book up to-morrow night so he can show her some good places in it.

"At first she is sure she has a horrid old engagement for to-morrow night and is so sorry, but another time, perhaps--Ain't it a marvel the crooked tricks that girl had learned in one day! And then she remembers that her engagement is for Tuesday night--what could she have been thinking of!--and come by all means--only too charmed--and how rarely nowadays does one meet one on one's own level of culture, or perhaps that is too awful a word to use--so hackneyed--but anyway he knows what she means, or doesn't he? He does.

"Pretty soon she gets up and goes over to her horse, picking her way daintily in the silly little tan pumps, and seems to be offering the beast something. The stricken man follows her the second he can without being too raw about it, and there is the adorably feminine thing with a big dill pickle, two deviled eggs, and a half of one of these Camelbert cheeses for her horse. Mr. D. has a good masterly laugh at her idea of horse fodder and calls her 'But, my dear child!' and she looks prettily offended and offers this chuck to the horse and he gulps it all down and noses round for more of the same. It was an old horse named Croppy that she'd known from childhood and would eat anything on earth. She rode him up here once and he nabbed a bar of laundry soap off the back porch and chewed the whole thing down with tears of ecstasy in his eyes and frothing at the mouth like a mad dog. Well, so Hetty gives mister man a look of dainty superiority as she flicks crumbs from her white fingers with my real lace handkerchief, and he stops his hearty laughter and just stares, and she says what nonsense to think the poor horses don't like food as well as any one. Them little moments have their effect on a man in a certain condition. He knew there probably wasn't another horse in the world would touch that truck, but he couldn't help feeling a strange new respect for her in addition to that glorious masculine protection she'd had him wallowing in all day.