Ma Pettengill Part 19

On the completion of this a hoa.r.s.e hoot of scorn boomed through the haze and Homer was told that men like himself often caused perfectly decent people to be tried for murder. And again Homer's rightful job was echoed as "Matron of a foundling asylum!"

I felt the embarra.s.sment of one unwittingly come upon the adjustment of a private grievance. I dropped delicately a few paces behind, unnoticed, I thought; but Ma Pettengill waited for me to overtake her again.

Then, as we pushed through the dust together, she told me that her days were swifter than a weaver's shuttle and spent without hope. If it wasn't one thing it was another. What she'd like--she'd like to wake up in a strange place and find she'd clean forgot her name and address, like these here parties you read about in the papers. And why wouldn't she? A dry year; feed short on the range; water holes dusty that never did go dry before; half a hay crop and winter threatening right spang in the summertime! Think of having to gather cattle off the range in the middle of August when other times you could let 'em run till the middle of October! In fact, this was the kind of a year that cattle raisers had a technical term for. It was known technically as one h.e.l.l of a year, if I wanted to be told.

And having to do the work with mental defectives and cripples and Bolsheviki, because every able-bodied puncher in the country had gone over to create a disturbance in Europe! Hadn't she combed out the county hospital and poor farm to get a haying crew? Didn't the best cowboy now on the pay roll wear a derby hat and ride a motorcycle by preference? And paying seventy-five dollars to these imitation punchers to fight her gentle saddle horses, no colt, it seemed, having been ridden on the place in the memory of man.

She didn't know; taking one thing with another, sometimes she almost wished that the world was going to stay unsafe for democracy.

Of course this technically described bad year wasn't so bad one way, because the sheepmen would sure get a tasty wallop, sheep being mighty informal about dying with the weather below zero and scant feed. When cattle wasn't hardly feeling annoyed sheep would lie down and quit intruding on honest cattle raisers for all time. Just a little attention from a party with a skinning knife was all they needed after that. And so on, back to Homer Gale, who had gone to Red Gap for two days on a matter of life and death--and of this the less repeated here the better.

Now our narrow way spread to a valley where the sun's rays were more widely diffused and the dust less pervasive. We could see a mile ahead to a vaster cloud of dust. This floated over a band of Arrowhead cattle being driven in from a range no longer sustaining. They were being driven by Bolsheviki, so my informant disclosed.

We halted above the road and waited for the dusty creatures to plod by us down to the pleasant lea where feed was still to be had and water was sweet. Then came the Bolshevik rear guard. It consisted of Silas Atterbury and four immature grandchildren.

Grandpa Atterbury was ninety-three and doing his first labour since he retired, at eighty-five. The grandchildren, two male and two female, should have been playing childish games. And they were Bolsheviki, all because they had refused to bring in this bunch of stock except for the wage customarily paid to trained adults. Even the youngest, known as Sissy Atterbury, aged eight and looking younger, despite her gray coating of powdered alkali, had tenaciously held out for a grown man's pay, which made her something even worse than a Bolshevik; it made her an I.W.W.

But, as Ma Pettengill said, what could a lady do when Fate had a stranglehold on her. There was, indeed, nothing to do but tell Sissy to tell one of her incendiary brothers to get up close to grandpa, and yell good and loud at him, and make him understand he was to get a count on that bunch at the first gate, because it didn't look to us that there was over three hundred head where there ought to be at least five hundred.

And then there was nothing to do but ride ahead of the toiling beasts and again down the narrow way that would bring us to the lowlands of the Arrowhead, where the dust no longer choked and one could see green and smell water. From the last mesa we looked out over the Arrowhead's flat fields, six thousand acres under fence, with the ranch house and outbuildings hazy in the distance.

It was a pleasant prospect and warmed Ma Pettengill from her mood of chill negation. She remarked upon the goodliness of the scene, quite as if the present were not a technical year for cattle raisers. Then, as we jogged the six miles home by peaceful thoroughfares, the lady, being questioned persistently and suitably, spoke with utter freedom of Homer Gale, who had shamefully deserted his job for two days at the busiest end of the season, when a white man wouldn't of thought of leaving, even on a matter of life and death.

Had Homer the shadow of an excuse? We shall see.

Well, then, this here celluloid imitation of a cowman that I been using violent words about come into the valley three years ago and rapidly got a lot of fame by reason of being a confirmed bachelor and hating the young of the human species with bitterness and constancy. I was the one that brought him in; I admit that. First time I seen him he was being a roistering blade in the Fas.h.i.+on Waffle Kitchen down at Red Gap. He was with Sandy Sawtelle and a couple other boys from the ranch here, and Sandy tells me later that he is looking for work, being a good cowhand.

I said he looked like something else, being dressed in an uproarious check suit of clothes that would instantly of collected a crowd in most city streets. But Sandy says that's all right; he's a regler cowman and had to wear these startling garments for a disguise to get him safe out of Idaho.

It seems he'd been crowded out of that thriving state by a yearning and determined milliner that had witnesses a-plenty and intended to do something about it. Defendant claimed he hadn't even meant anything of the sort and was just being a good pal; but it looked like the cruel teeth of the law was going to bite right into his savings if this breach-of-promise suit ever come to trial, the lady having letters from him in black and white. So Homer had made a strategic retreat, avoiding contact with the enemy, and here he was. And how about taking him on at the Arrowhead, where he could begin a new life?

Needing another hand just then, I fussed none at all about Homer's scandalous past. I said he could throw in with us; and he did. When he got dressed in a legal manner he looked like he couldn't be anything else but a cowhand. About forty and reliable, he looked. So I sent him to a summer camp over on the Madeline plains, where I had a bunch of cattle on government range. Bert Glasgow lived in a shack with his wife and family there and had general charge, and Homer was to begin his new life by helping Bert.

His new life threatened to be short. He showed up here late the third night after he went over, looking sad and desperate and hunted. He did look that way more or less at all times, having one of these long, sad moustaches and a kind of a bit-into face. This night he looked worse than usual. I thought the h.e.l.lhounds of the law from Idaho might of took up his winding trail; but no. It was the rosy-cheeked tots of Mr. and Mrs.

Bert Glasgow that had sent him out into the night.

"Say," he says, "I wouldn't have you think I was a quitter, but if you want to suicide me just send me back to that horrible place. Children!"

he says. "That's all; just children! Dozens of 'em! Running all over the place, into everything, under everything, climbing up on you, sticking their fingers into your eyes--making life unbearable for man and beast.

You never once let on to me," he says reproachfully, "that this Bert had children."

"No," I says; "and I never let on to you that he's got a mole on his chin either. What of that?"

Then the poor lollop tries to tell me what of it. I saw he really had been under a nervous strain, all right. Suffering had put its hot iron on him. First, he just naturally loathed children anyway. Hadn't he run away from a good home in Iowa when he was sixteen, account of being the oldest of seven? He said some things in general about children that would of got him no applause at a mothers' meeting. He was simply afraid to look a child in the eye; and, from what he'd like to do to 'em all, it seemed like his real middle name was Molech. Wasn't that the party with hostile views about children? Anyway, you could see that Homer's idea of a real swell festivity would be to hide out by an orphan asylum some night until the little ones had said their prayers and was tucked all peaceful into their trundle beds and then set fire to the edifice in eight places after disconnecting the fire alarm. That was Homer, and he was honest; he just couldn't help it.

And Bert's tikes had drove him mad with their playful antics. He said he'd be set down for a bite of dinner and one of 'em would climb up his back and feel his hair--not saying a word, just taking hold of it; then it would jump down and another would climb up and do the same thing, and him not daring to defend himself. He'd got so worked up he was afraid to stay on the place.

"And you know," he says--"what I can't understand--danged if Bert don't seem to kind of like 'em. You may think I'm a liar, but he waited for one the other morning when it squealed at him and kept a hold of its hand clean down to the hay barn. What do you think of that? And besides these that go round infesting the place outside he's got a short yearling and a long two-year-old that have to be night-herded. I listened to 'em every night. One yelled and strangled all last night, till I s'posed, of course, it was going to perish everlastingly; but here this morning it was acting like nothing at all had happened.

"All I can say is, Bert don't have much luck. And that littlest yeller always unswallowing its meals with no effort whatever! It's horrible!

And the mother, with no strength of character--feeble-minded, I reckon--coddles 'em! She never did cuss 'em out proper or act human toward 'em. Kids like them, what they need--upside down and three quick hard ones. I know!"

I was fool enough to argue with him a bit, trying to see if he didn't have a lick of sense. I told him to look how happy Bert was; and how his family had made a man of him, him getting more money and saving more than ever in his past life. Homer said what good would all that money do him? He'd only fool it away on his wife and children.

"He regrets it, all right," says Homer. "I says to myself the other day: 'I bet a cookie he'd like to be carefree and happy like me!'"

Homer was a piker, even when he made bets with himself. And the short of it was I sent a man that didn't hate children over to Bert's and kept Homer on the place here.

He stayed three months and said it was heaven, account of not having them unnecessary evils on the place that would squirm round a man's legs and feel of his hair and hide round corners and peek at him and whisper about him. Then I changed foremen and Scott Humphrey, the new one, brought three towheads with him of an age to cause Homer the anguish of the d.a.m.ned, which they done on the first day they got here by playing that he was a horse and other wild animals, and trying to pull the rest of his hair out.

He come in and cut himself out of my life the day after, shaking his head and saying he couldn't think what the world was coming to. As near as I could make him, his idea was that the world was going to be swamped with young ones if something wasn't done about it, like using squirrel poison or gopher traps.

I felt like I wanted to cuff him up to a peak and knock the peak off; but I merely joked and said it was too bad his own folks hadn't come to think that way while he could still be handled easy. I also warned him it was going to be hard to find a job without more or less children on the outskirts, because ours was a growing state. He said there must be a few sane people left in the world. And, sure enough, he gets a job over to the Mortimers'--Uncle Henry and Aunt Mollie being past seventy and having nothing to distress Homer.

Of course the secret of this scoundrel's get-away from Idaho had got round the valley, making him a marked man. It was seen that he was a born flirt, but one who retained his native caution even at the most trying moments. Here and there in the valley was a hard-working widow that the right man could of consoled, and a few singles that would of listened to reason if properly approached; and by them it was said that Homer was a fiend for caution. He would act like one of them that simply won't take no for an answer--up to a certain point. He would seem to be going fur in merry banter, but never to words that the law could put any expensive construction on. He would ride round to different ranches and mingle at dances and picnics, and giggle and conduct himself like one doomed from the cradle to be woman's prey--but that was all.

Funny how he'd escaped through the years, him having apparently the weak and pliant nature that makes the ideal husband, and having reached the time of life when he was putting sheep dip on his hair where the lining shone through on top. But so it was. And his views on children had also become widely known. Mothers used to grab up their youngest ones when he'd go into the post office down at Kulanch or meet one on the road.

He made no hit at all with such views among them that had learned better.

Still there was hopeful ones that thought he might be made to take a joke sooner or later, and the fact that he was known to save his wages and had a nice little stake laid by didn't work against him any with such parties as might have a chance to be swept off their feet by him in a mad moment.

Then over at the Mortimers' place he meets Mrs. Judson Tolliver, a plausible widow lady who come into the valley every once in a while to do sewing round at different ranches. She was a good-built, impressive person, with a persuading manner; one of these competent ones that can take charge of affairs and conduct them una.s.sisted, and will do so if not stopped. Uncle Henry Mortimer brought her to the house in his light wagon one morning, with her sewing machine in the back. And Homer was there to help her out and help out with the machine and see it was placed right in the sitting room; and then help out with her satchel and ask in a gentlemanly manner if everything was all right--and everything was: Thank you so much, Mr. Gale!

This party was no simpering schoolgirl. She was thirty-five or so and square-jawed, and did her hair plain, and had a managing voice that would go good at club meetings. She read library books and was a good conversationalist. And what did she do the first evening, when Homer was mending one of his s.h.i.+rts by the kitchen lamp, but wrench it away from him roguishly and do the job herself, while she entertained him with conversation. It was bound to be entertaining, for she started in about what trials children was to their tormented parents and how the world would be brighter and better if it consisted entirely of adults.

Any one might of thought she'd been hearing gossip about Homer's likes and dislikes. I know that's what I thought afterward, when he opened his soul to me. She said what a mercy it was that half a dozen yelling demons wasn't in this house at that moment to make life an evil thing for all.

And Homer sunned right up and took the talk away from her. While she done his mending he spoke heatedly of little children in his well-known happy vein, relating many incidents in his blasted career that had brought him to these views. The lady listened with deep attention, saying "Ah, yes, Mr. Gale!" from time to time, and letting on there must be a strong bond of sympathy between them because he expressed in choice words what she had so often felt.

Homer must of been kind of swept off his feet at that very moment, and the rapids just below him. I guess he'd already been made mushy sentimental by seeing the ideal romantic marriage between Uncle Henry and his wife--forty years or so together and still able to set down in peace and quiet without having something squirm over you to see what you had in your pockets or ask what made your hair come out that funny way, till you wished a couple she-bears would rush out and devour forty-two of 'em.

It was the first of quite many evenings when Homer and the lady would set with a dish of apples and fried cakes between 'em and denounce the world's posterity. The lady was even suffering grave doubts about marriage. She said having to make her own way after she lost her husband had made her relish her independence too much to think of ever giving it up again lightly. Of course she wouldn't say that possibly at some time in the dim future a congenial mate that thought as she did on vital topics--and so forth--just enough to give Homer a feeling of security that was wholly unwarranted. Wasn't he the heedless Hugo?

He was quite wordy about the lady to me when he come over on an errand one day. He told me all about these delightful talks of theirs, and what an attractive person she was, sound as a nut, and companionable and good-looking without being one of these painted dolls. He said, to see her above her sewing, she was a lovely view that he never tired of gazing at, and to hear her loathe children was music to the ear. He said she was a rare woman. I said she must be and asked him if he had committed himself.

"Well, I don't say I have and I don't say I haven't," he says; "but here I be, standing with reluctant feet at the parting of the ways. And who knows what might happen? I know I've had some darned close shaves from doing a whole lot worse in my time."

So I wished him the best of luck with this lady child hater; not that I thought he'd really get what was coming to him. He was so crafty. He was one of them that love not well but too wisely, as the saying is. Still, there was a chance. He was scared to death of fire and yet he would keep on playing with it. Some day the merry old flames might lick him up. I hoped for the best.

A few days after that I went down to the foreman's house late in the afternoon to see him about a s.h.i.+pment we had to make. Scott was off somewhere, but his sister was in; so I set talking with her, and waiting. This here Minna Humphrey was a hectic, blighted girl of thirty, sandy-haired, green-eyed, and little--no bigger than a bar of soap after a day's was.h.i.+ng. What had blighted the poor thing was having to teach public school for a dozen years. She'd been teaching down to Kulanche that year and had just closed up. We set out in front of the house and Minna told me she was all in; and how she'd ever got through the season she didn't know.

She went on to speak of little children. Fire in her voice? Murder!

According to Minna, children had ought to be put in cages soon as they can walk and kept there till they are grown; fed through the bars and shot down if they break out. That's what twelve years' enforced contact with 'em had done to Minna's finer instincts. She said absolutely nothing in the world could be so repugnant to her as a roomful of the little animals writing on slates with squeaky pencils. She said other things about 'em that done her no credit.

And while I listened painfully who should be riding up but Homer Gale!

"Here," I says to Minna; "here's a man you'll be a joyous treat to; just let him come in and listen to your song a while. Begin at the beginning and say it all slow, and let Homer have some happy moments."

So I introduced the two, and after a few formalities was got over I had Minna telling in a heartfelt manner what teaching a public school was like, and what a tortured life she led among creatures that should never be treated as human. Homer listened with glistening eyes that got quite moist at the last. Minna went on to say that children's mothers was almost as bad, raging in to pick a fuss with her every time a child had been disciplined for some piece of deviltry. She said mothers give her pretty near as much trouble as the kids themselves.

It was a joyous and painful narrative to Homer. He said why didn't Minna take up something else? And Minna said she was going to. She'd been working two summers in Judge Ballard's office, down to Red Gap, and was going to again this summer, soon as she regained a little vitality; and she hoped now she'd have a steady job there and never have to go back to the old life of degradation. Homer sympathized warmly; his heart had really been touched. He hoped she'd rise out of the depths to something tolerable; and then he told her about Bert's five horrible children that drove him out into the brush--and so forth.

I listened in a while; and then I says to Homer ain't it nice for him to meet someone else that thinks as he does on this great vital topic, Minna seeming to find young ones as repulsive as Mrs. Judson Tolliver? And how about that lady anyway? And how is his affair coming on? I never dreamed of starting anything. I was being friendly.