Ma Pettengill Part 27

Be reasonable! Why not pick out a good glen that parties can slip off to for a quiet evening without breaking up a whole week? Frankly, I don't understand you and your glen. But you can bet I'll find out about it!"

So, right away, I said to Ma Pettengill, who by this time had a lot of bills and papers and ledgers and stuff out on her desk, and was talking hotly to all of them--I said to her that there was nearly half a bottle of Uncle Henry's wine left, his rare old grape wine laid down well over a month ago; so she had better toss off a foamy beaker of it--yes, it still foamed--and answer me a few questions.

It was then she said the things about that there wine being able to inflate the casualty lists, even of Polish weddings, which are already the highest known to the society page of our police-court records. She said, further, that she had took just enough of the stuff at dinner to make her think she wasn't entirely bankrupt, and she wanted to give these here accounts a thorough going-over while the sensation lasted.

Not wis.h.i.+ng to hurt Uncle Henry's feelings, even if he didn't catch me at it, I partook again of the fervent stuff, and fell into new wonder at the seeming imbecility of Herman Wagner. I found myself not a little moved by the pathos of him. It was little enough I could get from Ma Pettengill at first. She spoke almost shortly to me when I asked her things she had to stop adding silly figures to answer.

What I found out was mostly my own work, putting two and two in their fit relations.h.i.+p. Even the mention of Herman Wagner's full name brought nothing about himself. I found it most annoying. I would say: "Come on, now; what about this Herman Wagner that paints wheedling messages across the face of Nature?" And to this fair, plain query I would merely have more of the woman's endless help troubles. All that come looking for work these days was stormy petrels, not caring if they worked or not--just asking for it out of habit.

Didn't she have a singing teacher, a painless dentist, a crayon-portrait artist and a condemned murderer on her payroll this very minute, all because the able-bodied punchers had gone over to see that nasty little Belgium didn't ever again attack Germany in that ruthless way? She had read that it cost between thirty and thirty-five thousand dollars to wound a soldier in battle. Was that so? Well, she'd tell me that she stood ready to wound any of these that was left behind for between thirty and thirty-five cents, on easy payments. Wound 'em severely, too! Not mere scratches.

Presently again I would utter Herman Wagner, only to be told that these dry cows she was letting go for sixty dollars--you come to cut 'em up for beef and you'd have to grease the saw first. Or I heard what a scandal it was that lambs actually brought five-fifty, and the Government at Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., setting back idly under the outrage!

Then I heard, with perfect irrelevance to Herman Wagner, that she wouldn't have a puncher on the place that owned his own horse. Because why? Because he'd use him gentle all day and steal grain for him at night. Also, that she had some kind of rheumatiz in her left shoulder; but she'd rather be a Christian Scientist and fool herself than pay a doctor to do the same. It may all have been true, but it was not important; not germane to the issue, as we so often say in writing editorials.

It looked so much like a blank for Herman Wagner that I quit asking for a time and let the woman toil at her foolish ruinous tasks.

After half an hour of it she began to rumble a stanza of By Cool Siloam's Shady Rill; so I chanced it again, remarking on the sign I had observed that day. So she left her desk for a seat before the fire and said yes, and they was other signs of Herman's hid off in the mountains where no one but cows, that can't read a line, would see 'em. She also divulged that Herman, himself, wasn't anything you'd want a bronze statue of to put up in Courthouse Square.

Well then, come on, now! What about him? No, sir; not by a darned sight!

With that there desk full of work, she simply could not stop to talk now.

She did.

Is that the only sign of Herman's you saw? He's got others along them trails. You'll see an arrow in white paint, pointing to his sylvan glen, and warnings not to go to other glens till you've tried his. One says: You've tried the rest; now try the best! Another says: Try Wagner's Sylvan Glen for Boating, Bathing, and Fis.h.i.+ng. Meals at all hours! And he's got one that shows he studied American advertising as soon as he landed in this country. It says: Wagner's Sylvan Glen--Not How Good, But How Cheap!

I don't know. I ain't made up my mind about Herman, even yet. If it wasn't for why he had to leave Nevada and if I knew there could be more than one kind of German, then I'd almost say Herman was the other kind.

But, of course, there can't be but one kind, and he showed the Prussian strain fast enough in why he come up from Reno. Still and all, he's got his engaging points as a pure imbecile or something.

He don't tell me why he left Reno for a long time after he gets here; not till I'd won his confidence by showing I was a German sympathizer. It was when Sandy Sawtelle had a plan for a kind of grand war measure. His grand war measure was to get some secret agents into Germany and kill off all the women under fifty. He said if you done this the stock would die out, because look at the game laws against killing does! He told this to everybody. He told it to Herman; but Herman knew enough to remain noncommittal 'bout it. He told it to me, and I saw right off it probably couldn't be managed right; and, even if it could be, I said to Sandy, it seemed to me somehow like it would be sort of inhuman.

Herman heard me say this and got the idea I was a pacifist and a secret friend of his country; so he confided to me the secret of why he left Reno to keep from having his heart cut out by Manuel Romares. But no matter!

Anyway, last year in the spring this Herman dropped by, looking for work. He hadn't been in America long, having stopped with his uncle in Cincinnati a while, and then coming West on a life of adventure and to take up a career. He said now he'd come up from Nevada, where he'd been working on a sheep ranch, and he acted like he wanted to get into something respectable and lead a decent life again.

Well, it had got so I hired everything that come along; so why not Herman? I grabbed at him. The boys heard he was a German alien and acted, at first, like a bunch of hogs with a bear about; but I'd of hired old Hinderburg himself if he'd offered and put him to doing something worth while.

This Herman was the first man ever worked here in side whiskers. He told me, after I showed myself a German sympathizer, that in the beginning of the war he'd wore one of them moustaches like the Kaiser puts up in tin fasteners every night after he's said his prayers; but this had made him an object of unpleasant remark, including missiles. So he had growed this flowering border round it to take off the curse.

They was beautiful s.h.i.+ny side whiskers and entirely innocent-looking.

In the right clothes Herman could of gone into any Sabbath school in the land and said he was glad to see so many bright little faces there this morning, and now what was to-day's golden text, and so on. That's what he looked like. These things fell like portieres each side of his face, leaving his chin as naked as the day he was born. He didn't have any too much under his mouth either; so I guess the whiskers was really a mercy to his face.

He admitted he didn't know too much about the cow business, but said he was willing to learn; so I put him on the payroll. We found he was willing to try anything that looked easy; for instance, like setting on colts for the first time. The first morning he went to work it was rainy, with the ground pretty wet, and he was out to the corral watching Sandy Sawtelle break a colt. That's the best time to handle colts that has never been set on. They start to act up and pour someone out of the saddle; then they slip and slide, helpless, and get the idea a regler demon of a rider is up there, and give in. So the boys give Herman a fussy two-year-old, and Herman got away with it not so bad.

Of course he was set off a few times, but not hard; and the colt, slicking over this wet ground, must of thought another star rider had come to town. Two days later, though, when the ground was dry, Herman got on the same wild animal again, and it wasn't there when he come down from his first trip aloft. It traded ends with him neatly and was off in a corner saying. "Well, looks like that German ain't such a dandy rider after all! I couldn't pull that old one with him yesterday, but I certainly done it good to-day."

I wasn't near enough to hear what Herman said when he picked himself up; but I'm a good lip reader since I been going to these moving pictures, and I'm way mistaken if he hadn't learned two or three good things in English to call a horse at certain times.

He walked for several days with trench feet, and his morale was low indeed. He was just that simple. He'd try things that sane punchers wouldn't go looking for, if sober; in fact, he was so simple you might call him simple-minded and not get took up for malicious slander.

So it come to where we seen he wasn't good for anything on this ranch but ch.o.r.e boy. And naturally we needed a ch.o.r.e boy, like we needed everything else. He could get up wood, and feed the pigs we was fattening, and milk the three dairy cows, and make b.u.t.ter, and help in the kitchen. But as for being a cow hand, he wasn't even the first joint on your little finger. He was willing, but his Maker had stopped right at that point with him. And he had a right happy time being ch.o.r.e boy.

Of course the boys kidded him a lot after they found out he could positively not be enraged by the foulest aspersions on the character of the Kaiser and his oldest son. They seen he was just an innocent dreamer, mooning round the place at his humble tasks. They spent a lot of good time thinking up things for him.

He'd brought a German shotgun with silver tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs with him, which he called a fowling piece, and he wanted to hunt in his few leisure moments; so the boys told him all the kinds of game that run wild on the place.

There was the cross-feathered snee, I remember, which was said by the bird books to be really the same as the sidehill mooney. It has one leg shorter than the other and can be captured by hand if driven to level ground, where it falls over on its side in a foolish manner when it tries to run. Herman looked forward to having one of these that he could stuff and send to his uncle in Cincinnati, who wrote that he had never seen such a bird.

Also, he spent a lot of time down on the crick flat looking for a mu, which is the same as a sneeze-duck, except for the parallel stripes. It has but one foot webbed; so it swims in a circle and can be easy shot by the sportsman, who first baits it with snuff that it will go miles to get. Another wild beast they had him hunting was the filo, which is like the ruffle snake, except that it has a thing like a table leg in its ear.

It gets up on a hill and peeks over at you, but will never come in to lunch. The boys said they nearly had one over on Grizzly Peak one time, but it swallowed its tail and become invisible to the human eye, though they could still hear its low note of pleading. Also, they had Herman looking for a mated couple of the spinach bug for which the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution had offered a reward of five hundred dollars, cash.

Herman fell for it all--all this old stuff that I had kicked the slats out of my trundle-bed laughing at. And in between exciting adventures with his fowling piece he'd write himself some pieces of poetry in a notebook, all about the cows and the clouds and other natural objects. He would also recite poetry written by other Germans, if let. And at night he'd play on a native instrument shaped like a potato, by blowing into one cavity and stopping up other cavities to make the notes. It would be slow music and make you think of the quiet old churchyard where your troubles would be o'er; and why not get there as soon as possible? Sad music!

So Herman was looked on as a harmless imbecile by one and all till Eloise Plummer come over to help in the kitchen while the haying crew was here last summer. And Eloise looked on him as something else. She looked on Herman as one of them that make it unsafe for girls to leave home. She had good reason to.

Eloise is in the prime of young womanhood; but this is just exactly as fur as any fair-minded judge would go to say of her as a spectacle. Her warmest adherents couldn't hardly get any warmer than that if put under oath. She has a heart of gold undoubtedly, but a large and powerful face that would belong rightly to the head director of a steel corporation that's worked his way up from the bottom.

It is not a face that has ever got Eloise pestered with odious attentions from the men. Instead of making 'em smirk and act rough, but playful, it made 'em think that life, after all, is more serious than most of us suspect in our idle moments. It certainly is a face to make men think.

And inspiring this black mood in men had kind of reacted on Eloise till they couldn't quite see what they was ever intended for. It was natural.

I don't say the girl could of cooked all winter in a lumber camp and not been insulted a time or two; but it wasn't fur from that with her.

So you can imagine how bitter she was when this Herman nut tried to make up to her. Herman was a whirlwind wooer; I'll say that for him. He told her right off that she was beautiful as the morning star and tried to kiss her hand. None of these foolish preliminaries for Herman, like "Lovely weather we're having!" or "What's your favourite flower?"

Eloise was quick-natured, too. She put him out of the kitchen with a coal shovel, after which Herman told her through a crack of the door that she was a Lorelei.

Eloise, at first, misunderstood this term entirely, and wasn't much less insulted when she found it meant one of these German hussies that hang round creeks for no good purpose. Not that her att.i.tude discouraged Herman any; he played under her window that night, and also sang a rich custard sort of tenor in his native tongue, till I had to threaten him with the bastile to get any sleep myself.

Next day he fetched her regal gifts, consisting of two polished abalone sh.e.l.ls, a picture of the Crown Prince in a bra.s.s frame, and a polished-wood paper knife with Greetings from Reno! on it.

Eloise was now like an enraged G.o.ddess or something; and if Herman hadn't been a quick bender and light on his feet she wouldn't of missed him with his gifts. As it was, he ducked in time and went out to the spring house to write a poem on her beauty, which he later read to her in German through a kitchen window that was raised. The window was screened; so he read it all. Later he gets Sandy Sawtelle to tell her this poem is all about how coy she is. Every once in a while you could get an idea partway over on Herman. He was almost certain Eloise was coy.

By the end of that second day, after Herman threw kisses to her for ten minutes from on top of the woodshed, where he was safe, she telephoned her brother to come over here quick, if he had the soul of a man in his frame, and kill Herman like he would a mad dog.

But Eloise left the next morning, without waiting for anything suitable to be pulled off by her family. It was because, when she went to bed that night, she found a letter from Herman pinned to her pillow. It had a red heart on it, pierced by a dagger that was dropping red drops very sentimentally; and it said would she not hasten to take her vast beauty out in the moonlight, to walk with Herman under the quiet trees while the nightingale warbled and the snee, or sidehill mooney, called to its lovemate? And here, as they walked, they could plan their beautiful future together.

This was beyond Eloise even with a full battery of kitchen utensils at hand. She left before breakfast; and Herman had to come in and wash dishes.

The next excitement was Herman committing suicide, out in the woodshed, with a rope he'd took off a new packsaddle. Something interrupted him after he got the noose adjusted and was ready to step off the chopping block he stood on. I believe it was one more farewell note to the woman that sent him to his grave. Only he got interested in it and put in a lot more of his own poetry and run out of paper, and had to get more from the house; and he must of forgot what he went to the woodshed for because an hour after that he committed an entirely new suicide with his fowling piece.

Near as I could gather, he was all ready to pull the trigger, looking down into this here frowning muzzle before a mirror; and then something about his whiskers in the mirror must of caught his eye. Anyway, another work of self-destruction was off. So he come in and helped with lunch.

Then he told me he'd like to take some time off, because he was going up to the deep pool to drown himself.

I said was he really bent on it? He said it was requisite, because away from this beautiful lady, who had torn his heart out and danced on it, he could not continue to live, even for one day. So I come down on Herman. I told him that, hard up as I was for help, I positively would not have a man on the place who was always knocking off work to kill himself. It et into his time, and also it took the attention of others who longed to see him do it.

I said I might stand for a suicide or two--say, once a month, on a quiet Sunday--but I couldn't stand this here German thoroughness that kept it up continual. At least, if he hoped to keep on drawing pay from me, he'd have to make way with himself in his own leisure moments and not on my time.

Herman says I don't know the depths of the human heart. I says I know what I pay him a month, and that's all I'm needing to know in this emergency. I thought, of course, he'd calm down and forget his nonsense; but not so. He moped and mooned, and muttered German poetry to himself for another day, without ever laying a violent hand on himself; but then he come and said it was no good. He says, however, he will no longer commit suicide at this place, where none have sympathy with him and many jeer. Instead, he will take his fowling piece to some far place in the great still mountains and there, at last, do the right thing by himself.

I felt quite snubbed, but my patience was wore out; so I give Herman the money that was coming to him, wished him every success in his undertaking, and let him go.