Then the Frenchman begun to talk in a very nice way. He said a few words about his country—how they had been fighting all these years, not knowing whether they could win or not, but meaning to fight till there wasn't any fighters left; and how grateful France was for the timely aid of this great country and for the efforts of beautiful ladies like Madam Popper, and so on.

You bet no one laughed, even if he didn't talk such very good English. They didn't even laugh when he said beautiful ladies like Madam Popper, though Cousin Egbert, somewhere off in the crowd, made an undignified sound which he pretended was coughing.

The Frenchman then said he would now ask for bids for these beautiful table delicacies, which were not only of rich food value but were more priceless than gold and jewels because of having been imprisoned in the crystal glass by the fair hands of the beautiful Madam Popper; and what was he offered for six bottles of this unspeakable jelly?

Of course G.H. Stultz would of had 'em in no time if the panic hadn't saved him. Yes, sir; right then something terrible and unforeseen happened to cause a frightful panic. About five of them jars of preserves blew up with loud reports. Of course everyone's first thought was that a German plot was on to lay Horticultural Hall in ruins with dynamite. It sounded such. No one thought it was merely these strange preserves that had been working overtime in that furnace.

Women screamed and strong men made a dash for the door over prostrate bodies. And then a lot more explosions took place. The firing became general, as the reports say. Bottle after bottle shot its dread contents into the fray, and many feeble persons was tromped on by the mob.

It wasn't any joke for a minute. The big jars, mostly loaded with preserves, went off with heavy reports; then there was these smaller bottles, filled with artificial ketchup and corked. They went off like a battery of light field guns, putting down a fierce barrage of ketchup on one and all. It was a good demonstration of the real thing, all right. I ain't never needed any one since that to tell me what war is.

The crowd was two thirds out before any one realized just what kind of frightfulness was going on. Then, amid shot and shell that would still fly from time to time, the bravest, that hadn't been able to fight their way out, stood by and picked up the wounded under fire and helped brush their clothes off. The groans of the sufferers mingled with the hiss of escaping ketchup.

Genevieve May was in hysterics from the minute the first high-powered gun was fired. She kept screaming for everyone to keep cool. And at last, when they got some kind of order, she went into a perfectly new fit because her Frenchman was missing. She kept it up till they found the poor man. He was found, without his crutch, at the far end of the hall, though no one has ever yet figgered how he could get there through the frenzied mob. He was on a chair, weak and trembling, behind a fancy quilt made by Grandma Watkins, containing over ten thousand pieces of silk. He was greenish yellow in colour and his heart had gone wrong.

That'll show you this bombardment wasn't any joke. The poor man had been exhausted by Cousin Egbert's well-meant efforts to show him something exciting, and he was now suffering from sure-enough shell shock, which he'd had before in more official circumstances.

He was a brave man; he'd fought like a tiger in the trenches, and had later been shot down out of the air four times, and was covered with wounds and medals and crosses; but this here enfilade at the fair hands of the beautiful Madam Popper, coming in his weak state, had darn near devastated what few nerves the war had left him.

It was a sad moment. Genevieve May was again exploding, like her own handiwork, which wasn't through itself yet by any means, because a solitary shot would come now and then, like the main enemy had retreated but was leaving rear guards and snipers. Also, people that had had exhibits in the art section and the fancy-work section was now setting up yells of rage over their treasures that had been desecrated by the far-flung ketchup.

But tender hands was leading the stricken Frenchman back of the lines to a dressing station, and all was pretty near calm again, except for G.H. Stultz, who was swearing—or words to that effect.

It really took a good hour to restore perfect calm and figure up the losses. They was severe. Of course I don't mean to say the whole three hundred bottles of this ammunition dump had exploded. Some had been put up only a short while and hadn't had time to go morbid; and even some of the old stuff had remained staunch.

The mincemeat shrapnel had proved fairly destructive, but the turnip marmalade didn't seem to of developed much internal energy. All of them jars of marmalade proved to be what they call "duds." But you bet enough had gone up to make a good battle sketch. The ketchup, especial, was venomous.

I met G.H. Stultz as I left the trenches. He'd been caught in a machine-gun nest of ketchup and had only wiped about half of it off his face. He looked like a contagious disease.

"Say, look here," he says; "you can't tell me there isn't a Providence ever watching over this world to give some of us just what's coming to us!" That was very silly, because I'd never told him anything of the sort.

Then I go out into No Man's Land and meet Cousin Egbert by a lemonade stand. He was one radiant being. He asked me to have a glass of the beverage, and I done so; and while I was sipping it he says brightly:

"Wasn't that some gorgeous display of fireworks? And wasn't it fine to stand there and watch them bottles laugh their heads off at this food profiteer?"

I said he ought to be right sorry for her—after all the work she'd done.

"Not me!" he says firmly. "She never done any work in her life except to boost her own social celebrity."

Then he took another gulp of his lemonade and says, very bitter:

"Madam Peach Blossom! I wonder what that funny little mite of hers will say when she sees her to-night? Something laughable, I bet—like it would be 'Madam Onion Blossom!'—or something comical, just to give her a good laugh after her hard day."

Such is Cousin Egbert, and ever will be. And Genevieve May, having took up things all round the circle, is now back to the dance.



X

AS TO HERMAN WAGNER

It had been a toilsome day for Ma Pettengill and me. Since sunup we had ridden more than a score of mountain miles on horses that could seldom exceed a crawl in pace. At dawn we had left the flatlands along the little timbered river, climbed to the lava beds of the first mesa, traversed a sad stretch of these where even the sage grew scant, and come, by way of a winding defile that was soon a mounting canon, into big hills unending.

Here for many hours we had laboured over furtive, tortuous trails, aimless and lost, it might have seemed, but that ever and again we came upon small bands of cattle moving one way. These showed that we had a mission and knew, after all, what we were about. These cattle were knowingly bent toward the valley and home. They went with much of a businesslike air, stopping only at intervals to snatch at the sparse short grass that grows about the roots of the sagebrush. They had come a long journey from their grazing places, starting when the range went bad and water holes dried, and now seemed glad indeed to give up the wild free life of a short summer and become tended creatures again, where strangely thoughtful humans would lavish cut grass upon them for certain obscure but doubtless benevolent purposes of their own.

It was our mission this day to have a look-see, mebbe as far as Horsefly Mountain, and get a general idee of how many head was already coming down to eat up the so-and-so shortest hay crop that had ever been stacked on the Arrowhead since the dry winter of '98, when beef fell to two cents a pound, with darned few takers at that.

It was really a day of scenic delight, if one hadn't to reflect sorely upon the exigencies of the beef-cattle profession, and at least one of us was free of this thrall.

What we reached at last were small mountains rather than big hills; vast exclamatory remnants of shattered granite and limestone, thickly timbered, reckless of line, sharp of peak. One minute canon we viewed from above was quite preposterous in its ambitions, having colour and depth and riot of line in due proportions and quite worthy of the grand scale. It wasn't a Grand Canon, but at least it was a baby grand, and I loitered on its brink until reminded sharply that I'd better pour leather into that there skate if I wanted to make home that night.

I devoutly did wish to make home that night, for the spot we were on was barren of those little conveniences I am accustomed to. Moreover, the air was keen and a hunger, all day in the building, called for strong meats. So I not too reluctantly passed on from this scenic miniature of parlour dimensions—and from the study of a curious boulder thereby which had intrigued me not a little.

Now we were home and relaxed by the Arrowhead fireside, after a moving repast of baked young sage hens. The already superior dynamics of the meal, moreover, had been appreciably heightened by a bottle of Uncle Henry's homemade grape wine, which he warmly recommends for colds or parties, or anything like that. It had proved to be a wine of almost a too-recent cru. Ma Pettengill said that if Uncle Henry was aiming to put it on the market in quantity production he had ought to name it the Stingaree brand, because it was sure some stuff, making for malevolence even to the lengths of matricide, if that's what killing your mother is called. She said, even at a Polish wedding down across the tracks of a big city, it would have the ambulances and patrol wagons clanging up a good half hour quicker than usual.

Be that as it may, or is, when I had expected sleep to steal swiftly to the mending of the day's ravages I merely found myself wakeful and wondering. This stuff of Uncle Henry's is an able ferment. I wondered about a lot of things. And at the same time I wondered interminably about that remarkable boulder at the side of the Tom Thumb Grand Canon. I was even wakeful enough and discursive enough—my hostess had taken but one glass from the bottle—to wonder delightedly about all rocks and stones, and geology, and that sort of thing. It was almost scientific, the way I wondered, as I sat there idly toying with my half-filled glass.

Take this particular boulder, for example. It had once been mere star dust, hadn't it? Some time ago, I mean, or thereabouts. But it had been star dust; and then, next thing it knew, it got to be a kind of cosmic stew, such as leisurely foreigners patch out highways with, and looking no more like a granite boulder than anything.

Then something happened, like someone letting the furnace fire go out the night of the big freeze; and this stuff I'm talking about grew cold and discouraged, and quit flat, apparently not caring a hoot what shape it would be found in years and years later, the result being that it was found merely in the general shape of rocks or boulders—to use the more scientific term—which is practically no shape at all, as you might say, being quite any shape that happens, or the shape of rocks and boulders as they may be seen on almost every hand by those of us who have learned to see in the true sense of the word.

I have had to be brief in this shorter science course on the earth's history before the time of man, because more important matters claim my attention and other speakers are waiting. The point is that this boulder up there by the dwarf canon had survived from unremembered chaos; had been melted, stewed, baked, and chilled until it had no mind of its own left; then bumped round by careless glaciers until it didn't care where it came to rest; and at last, after a few hundred million years of stony unconcern for its ultimate fate, here it had been drawn by the cunning hand of man sprang into the complex mechanism of our industrial human scramble.

That is to say, this boulder I speak of, the size of a city hall, lying there in noble neglect since long before wise old water animals were warning their children that this here fool talk about how you could go up out of the water and walk round on dry land would get folks into trouble, because how could a body breathe up there when there wasn't any water to breathe in? And the fools that tried it would soon find out; and serve 'em right! Well, I mean to say, this boulder that had lain inert and indifferent while the ages wrought man from a thing of one cell—and not much of a cell at that—bore across that face of it nearest the winding trail, a lettered appeal, as from one man to another. The letters were large and neatly done in white paint and the brushwork was recent. And the letters said, with a good deal of pathos, it seemed to me:

WAGNER'S SYLVAN GLEN, ONLY THIRTY-TWO MILES. HERMAN WAGNER, SOLE PROP.

Let this teach us, one and all, this morning, that everything in Nature has its use if we but search diligently. I mean, even big rocks like this, which are too big to build homes or even courthouses of. May we not, at least, paint things on them in plain letters with periods and commas, and so on, and so give added impetus to whatever is happening to us?

But the evening wears on and the whipping mental urge of grape juice meddled with by Uncle Henry wears off. And so, before it all ends, what about Herman Wagner, Sole Prop. of Wagner's Sylvan Glen?

I know it has been a hard day, but let us try to get the thing in order. Why not begin cautiously with a series of whys? Why any particular sylvan glen in a country where everything is continuously and overwhelmingly sylvan and you can't heave a rock without hitting a glen? Really, you can't walk fifty yards out there without stepping on a glen—or in a glen; it doesn't matter. What I am earnestly trying to get at is, if this Herman Wagner wanted to be sole prop. of a sylvan glen, why should he have gone thirty-two miles farther for one? Why didn't he have it right there? Why insanely push thirty-two miles on in a country where miles mean something serious? Up-and-down miles, tilted horribly or standing on edge!

It didn't seem astute. And Herman achieved simply no persuasion whatever with me by stocking in that "only." He could have put only all over the rock and it would still have been thirty-two miles, wouldn't it? Only indeed! You might think the man was saying "Only ten minutes' walk from the post office"—or something with a real meaning like that. I claimed then and I claim now that he should have omitted the only and come out blunt with the truth. There are times in this world when the straight and bitter truth is better without any word-lace. This Wagner person was a sophist. So I said to him, now, as a man will at times:

"All right, Herman, old top! But you'll have to think up something better than only to put before those thirty-two miles. If you had said 'Only two miles' it might have had its message for me. But thirty more than that! 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 wishing 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 relationship. 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 Washington, 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 Fishing. 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 shiny 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 chore boy. And naturally we needed a chore 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 butter, 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 chore 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 trimmings 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 Institution 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 attitude 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 shells, a picture of the Crown Prince in a brass frame, and a polished-wood paper knife with Greetings from Reno! on it.

Eloise was now like an enraged goddess 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.

The boys scouted round quite a bit the next few days, listening for the shot and hoping to come on what was left; but they soon forgot it. Me? I knew one side of Herman by that time. I knew he would be the most careful boy in every suicide he committed. If I'd been a life-insurance company it wouldn't have counted against him so much as the coffee habit or going without rubbers.

And—sure enough—about two months later the dead one come to life. Herman rollicked in one night with news that he had wandered far into the hills till he found the fairest spot on earth; that quickly made him forget his great sorrow. His fairest spot was a half section of bad land a hopeful nester had took up back in the hills. It had a little two-by-four lake on it and a grove of spruce round the lake; and Herman had fell in love with it like with Eloise.

He'd stay with the nester, who was half dead with lonesomeness, so that even a German looked good to him, and wrote to his uncle in Cincinnati for money to buy the place. And now I'd better hurry over and see it, because it was Wagner's Sylvan Glen, with rowing, bathing, fishing, and basket parties welcome. Yes, sir! It goes to show you can't judge a German like you would a human.

I laughed at first; but no one ever got to Herman that way. He was firm and delighted. That Sylvan Glen was just the finest resort anywhere round! Why, if it was within five miles of Cincinnati or Munich it would be worth a million dollars! And so on. It done no good to tell him it was not within five miles of these towns and never would be. And it done less good to ask him where his customers was coming from, there not being a soul nearer him than twenty miles, and then only scattered ranchers that has got their own idea of a good time after the day's work is over, which positively is not riding off to anybody's glen, no matter how sylvan.

"The good people will come soon enough. You'll see!" says Herman. "They soon find out the only place for miles round where they can get a good pig's knuckle, or blood sausage and a glass Rhine wine—or maybe beer—after a hard day's work. I got a fine boat on the lake—they can row and push all round over the water; and I'm getting a house put up with vines on it, like a fairy palace, and little tables outside! You see! The people will come when they hear!"

That was Herman. He never stopped to ask where they was coming from. He'd make the place look like a Dutch beer garden and they'd just have to come from somewhere, because what German ever saw a beer garden that didn't have people coming to it? I reckoned up that Herman would have enough custom to make the place pay, the quick rate our country is growing, in about two hundred and forty-five or fifty years.

So that's Wagner's Sylvan Glen you seen advertised. It's there all right; and Herman is there, waiting for trade, with a card back of his little bar that says, in big letters: Keep Smiling! I bet if you dropped in this minute you'd find him in a black jacket and white apron, with a bill of fare wrote in purple ink. He thinks people will soon drop in from twenty miles off to get a cheese sandwich or a dill pickle, or something.

Two of the boys was over this last June when he had his grand opening. They was the only person there except a man from Surprise Valley that was looking for stock and got lost. Buck Devine says the place looked as swell as something you'd see round Chicago.

Herman has a scow on the pond, and a dozen little green tables outside under the spruce trees, with all the trees white-washed neatly round the bottoms, and white-washed stones along the driveway, and a rustic gate with Welcome to Wagner's Sylvan Glen! over it. And he's got some green tubs with young spruces planted in 'em, standing under the big spruces, and everything as neat as a pin.

Everyone thinks he's plumb crazy now, even if they didn't when he said Eloise Plummer was as beautiful as the morning star. But you can't tell. He's getting money every month from his uncle in Cincinnati to improve the place. He's sent the uncle a photo of it and it must look good back in Cincinnati, where you can't see the surrounding country.

Maybe Herman merely wants to lead a quiet life with the German poets, and has thought up something to make the uncle come through. On the other hand, mebbe he's a spy. Of course he's got a brain. He's either kidding the uncle, or else Wagner's Sylvan Glen now covers a concrete gun foundation.

In either case he's due for harsh words some day—either from the uncle when he finds there ain't any roadhouse patrons for twenty miles round, or from the German War Office when they find out there ain't even anything to shoot at.

The lady paused; then remarked that, even at a church sociable, Uncle Henry's idee of wine would probably make trouble to a police extent. Here it had made her talkative long after bedtime, and she hadn't yet found out just how few dollars stood between her and the poorhouse.

I allowed her to sort papers for a moment. As she scanned them under drawn brows beside a lamp that was dimming, she again rumbled into song. She now sang: "What fierce diseases wait around to hurry mortals home!" It is, musically, the crudest sort of thing. And it clashed with my mood; for I now wished to know how Herman had revealed Prussian guile by his manner of leaving Reno. Only after another verse of the hymn could I be told. It seems worth setting down here:

Well, Herman is working on a sheep ranch out of Reno, as I'm telling you, and has trouble with a fellow outcast named Manuel Romares. Herman was vague about what started the trouble, except that they didn't understand each other's talk very well and one of 'em thought the other was making fun of him. Anyway, it resulted in a brutal fist affray, greatly to Herman's surprise. He had supposed that no man, Mexican or otherwise, would dare to attack a German single-handed, because he would of heard all about Germans being invincible, that nation having licked two nations—Serbia and Belgium—at once.

So, not suspecting any such cowardly attack, Herman was took unprepared by Manuel Romares, who did a lot of things to him in the way of ruthless devastation. Furthermore, Herman was clear-minded enough to see that Manuel could do these things to him any time he wanted to. In that coarse kind of fighting with the fists he was Herman's superior. So Herman drawed off and planned a strategic coop.

First thing he done was to make a peace offer, at which the trouble should be discussed on a fair basis to both sides. Manuel not being one to nurse a grudge after he'd licked a man in jig time, and being of a sunny nature anyway, I judge, met him halfway. Then, at this peace conference, Herman acted much unlike a German, if he was honest. He said he had been all to blame in this disturbance and his conscience hurt him; so he couldn't rest till he had paid Manuel an indemnity.

Manuel is tickled and says what does Herman think of paying him? Herman shows up his month's pay and says how would it suit Manuel if they go in to Reno that night and spend every cent of this money in all the lovely ways which could be thought up by a Mexican sheep herder that had just come in from a six weeks' cross-country tour with two thousand of the horrible animals.

Manuel wanted to kiss Herman. Herman says he did cry large tears of gladness. And they started for town.

So they got to Reno, and did not proceed to the Public Library, or the Metallurgical Institute, or the Historical Museum. They proceeded to the Railroad Exchange Saloon, where they loitered and loitered and loitered before the bar, at Herman's expense, telling how much they thought of each other and eating of salt fish from time to time, which is intended by the proprietor to make even sheep herders more thirsty than normal.

Herman sipped only a little beer; but Manuel thought of many new beverages that had heretofore been beyond his humble purse, and every new one he took made him think of another new one. It was a grand moment for Manuel—having anything he could think of set before him in this beautiful cafe or saloon, crowded with other men who were also having grand moments.

After a while Herman says to Manuel to come outside, because he wants to tell him something good he has thought of. So he leads him outside by an arm and can hardly tell what he has to say because it's so funny he has to laugh when he thinks of it. They go up an alley where they won't be overheard, and Herman at last manages to keep his laughter down long enough to tell it. It's a comical antic he wants Manuel to commit.

Manuel don't get the idea, at first, but Herman laughs so hard that at last Manuel thinks it's just got to be funny and pretty soon he's laughing at it as hard as Herman is.

So they go back to the saloon to do this funny thing, which is to be a joke on the big crowd of men in there. Herman says he won't be able to do it good himself, because he's got a bad cold and can't yell loud; but Manuel's voice is getting better with every new drink. Manuel is just busting with mirth, thinking of this good joke he's going to play on the Americans.

They have one more drink, Manuel taking peach brandy with honey, which Herman says costs thirty cents; then he looks over the men standing there and he yells good and loud:

"To hell with the President! Hurrah for the Kaiser!"

You know, when Herman told me that, I wondered right off if he hadn't been educated in some school for German secret agents. Didn't it show guile of their kind? I'll never be amazed if he does turn out to be a spy that's simply went wrong on detail.

Of course he was safe out of town long before Manuel limped from the hospital looking for him with a knife. And yet Herman seemed so silly! First thing when he got on the place he wanted to know where the engine was that pumped the windmill.

Furthermore, if you ask me, that there wine won't be made safe for democracy until Uncle Henry has been years and years laid away to rest.



XI

CURLS

Ma Pettengill, long morose, for months made hostile of mood by the shortage of help, now bubbled with a strange vivacity. At her desk in the Arrowhead living room she cheerfully sorted a jumble of befigured sheets and proclaimed to one and all that the Arrowhead ranch was once more a going concern. She'd thought it was gone, and here it was merely going. She would no longer be compelled to stare ruin in the face till it actually got embarrassed and had to look the other way. And it was the swift doings of this here new foreman. He'd not only got us going again but had put us on a military basis. And at that he was nothing but a poor old wreck of a veteran from the trenches, aged all of twenty-one, shot to pieces, gassed, shell-shocked, trench feeted and fevered, and darned bad with nervous dyspepsia into the bargain.

Thus described, the bargain seemed to me to be a poor one, for I had not yet viewed this decrepit newcomer or been refreshed with tales of his prowess. But Ma Pettengill knows men, and positively will not bubble except under circumstances that justify it, so I considered the matter worth a question or two.

Very well then! What about this mere shattered bit of flotsam from the world welter? How could so misused a remnant cope with the manifold cares of the long-harried Arrowhead ranch?

Why, he just plain coped, that was all. He might be mere shattered flotsam, but you bet he was still some little coper, take her word for that! Matter of fact, though, he didn't aim to hold the job for long. Only until this here smarty of a medical officer, that turned him down from going back to the trenches, was retired to private life again. This here new foreman had to be on the ground when this puppet got out of his uniform and so could be handled proper by the right party without incurring twenty years in Leavenworth. At this brief meeting the unfortunate man would be told politely that he had guessed wrong on the foreman's physical condition, after which the same would be proved to him then and there, leaving him to wish that he hadn't been so arrogant telling parties they was unfit for further service and had better go home and forget all about the war. Yes, sir; he'd be left himself with something to forget that most likely he'd still be remembering vividly when folks had got to wondering what them funny little buttons with "Liberty Loan" on 'em could ever of been used for.

Still, this palsied wreck was with us for a time and had started in that very morning to carry on. He used but few words, but treated 'em rough if they come looking for it. First, they was two I.W.W.'s down to the lower field had struck for three-fifty a day, and had threatened to burn someone's haystacks when it was coldly refused. So one had been took to jail and one to the hospital the minute the flotsam slowed up with 'em. It was a fair enough hospital case for both, but the one for jail could still walk.

Then two other new hands, two of these here demi-cowboys you have to put up with, had kept the bunk house noisy every night with a bitter personal quarrel including loud threats of mutual murder that never seemed to get any further. So the flotsam, after drinking in some of their most venomous eloquence, had lined 'em up and commanded 'em to git busy and fight it out quick. And he had then licked 'em both in a quick and exaggerated manner when they tried to keep on talking it out with him.

It was a sharply etched impression over the ranch, now shared by its owner, that this here invalid flotsam would take darned little nonsense from any one. It was also the owner's own private impression that he had been expelled from the war for rough behaviour on the field of battle and not because of wounds or sickness. Most likely they'd told him the latter because they was afraid to tell him the truth. But that was the real truth; he was too scrappy and wouldn't let the war go on in peace and quiet.

Anyway, she and the Army was both satisfied, so let it go at that. Mebbe after a few more arguments over there, when they'd made a convinced pro-Ally out of Germany, she might get some more shell-wracked jetsams like this one, that would step in without regard for the rules of civilized warfare and make the life of a certain beef-cattle raiser just one long dream of loveliness with pink rose leaves dreening down on her. Mebbe so!

I was charmed indeed to hear the gladsome note from one so long dismal. So I told the woman that the longest war must have its end and that by this time next year she would be refusing to hire good help at forty-five dollars a month and found, in place of the seventy-five she was now lavishing on indolent stragglers.

She said in that happy case she might consent to adorn the cattle business a few decades longer, but for her part she didn't believe wars would end. If it wasn't this war it would be another one, because human beings are undeniably human. As how? Well, I could take it this way. Say one of these here inventors sets up nights for twenty years inventing a gun that will shoot through a steel plate sixteen inches thick. All right so far. But the next day another inventor invents a piece of steel seventeen inches thick. And it had to begin all over—just a seesaw. From where she set she couldn't see no end to it. Was she right; or wasn't she? Of course!

But now, further, about compelling little boys to wear long curls till maturity, with the idee of blunting their finer instincts and making hellions of 'em, so's to have some dandy shock troops for the next war—well, she didn't know. Room for argument there.

This seemed reasonable. I didn't know either. It was an entirely new idee, come from nowhere. This was the very first moment I had supposed there could be such an idee. But such is Ma Pettengill. I thought to inquire as to the origin of this novelty; perhaps to have it more fully set forth. But I had not to. Already I saw unrelenting continuance in the woman's quickened eye. There would be, in fact, no stopping her now. So I might as well leave a one-line space right here to avoid using the double and single quotation marks, which are a nuisance to all concerned. I will merely say that Ma Pettengill spoke in part as follows, and at no time during the interview said modestly that she would prefer not to have her name mentioned.

Mind you, I don't say war's a good thing, even for them that come out of it. Of course you can read stories about how good it is in improving the character. I've read pretty ones in these here sentimental magazines that get close to the great heart of the people once a month; stories about how the town tough boy, that robs his gray-haired mother of her wash money to play pool with, goes into war's purifying flames and comes out a man, having rescued Marshal Fotch from a shell hole under fire and got the thanks of the French nation and his home-town paper. Now he don't hang round the pool parlour any more, running down fifteen balls from the break, but shuns his low companions, never touches a cue again, marries the mayor's daughter and becomes the regular Democratic candidate for county recorder.

These stories may be true. I don't know. Only these same magazines print stories that have a brave fireman in the picture carrying a fainted girl down his ladder through the flames, and if you believed them you'd also believe they had to set a tenement house on fire every time a fireman wants to get married. And that don't stand to reason. Mebbe the other stories don't either.

But what about the other side of these same stories? What about the village good boy that goes through war's purifying flame and comes back home to be the town tough? Ain't it time someone showed up the moral ravages war commits on our best young men?

Me? I just had a talk lately with a widowed mother down to Red Gap and what this beastly war has done to her oldest boy—well, if she could of looked ahead she would of let the world go right on being unsafe even for Republicans. She poured her heart out to me. She is Mrs. Arline Plunkett, one of the sweetest, gentlest mothers that ever guarded a son from every evil influence. And then to see it all go whoosh! The son's name was Shelley Plunkett, or it was until he went out into the world to make a name for himself. He is now largely known as Bugs Plunkett. I leave it to you if a nice mother would relish having her boy make that name for himself. And after all the pains she'd took with his moral development from the cradle up—till he run away from home on account of his curls!

Arline had been left well-off by her husband, who was president of the Drovers' Trust Company, and her home was about the most refined home in Red Gap, having full bookcases and pictures of foreign Catholic churches—though Arline is a Presbyterian—and metal statues of antique persons, male and female, and many articles of adornment that can't be had for the ordinary trading stamps. She lived, of course, only for her two boys, Shelley and Keats. Keats being an infant didn't require much living for, but Shelley was old enough to need a lot of it.

He was eight years old when I first seen him, with long golden curls to his shoulders and lace on his velvet pants. He came in when I was calling on his ma and acted the perfect little gentleman. He was so quiet and grown-up he made me feel right awkward. He had the face of a half-growed angel framed in these yellow curls, and his manners was them of Sir Galahad that he read stories about. He was very entertaining this day. His mother had him show me a portrait of himself and curls that had been printed in a magazine devoted to mothers and watermelon-rind pickles, and so forth, and he also brought me the new book his pastor had presented him with on his eighth birthday.

It was a lovely bound book, having a story about a sheepman that had a hundred head out on the range and lost one and left the other ninety-nine unprotected from the coyotes and went out into the brush looking for the lost one, which is about the brains of the average sheepman; but it was a pretty book, and little Shelley told me prettily all about the story, and showed me how his dear pastor had wrote in it for him. He had wrote: "To Shelley Vane Plunkett, who to the distinction of his name unites a noble and elevated nature." I wonder if Bugs Plunkett ever looks at that writing now and blushes for his lost angel face? Anyway, I thought this day that he was the loveliest, purest child in the world, with his delicate beauty and sweet little voice and perfect manners, all set off by the golden curls.

A couple days later I was going through that same street and when I turned a corner next to the Plunkett house, here was little Shelley addressing a large red-faced man on the back of an ice wagon that had stopped there. It was some shock to my first notions of the angel child. I gathered with no trouble whatever that the party on the ice wagon had so far forgot his own manners as to call little Shelley a sissy. It was a good three-to-one bet he was now sorry he spoke. Little Shelley was using language beyond his years and words that had never been taught him by his lady mother. He handled them words like they was his slaves. Three or four other parties stopped to listen without seeming to. I have heard much in my time. I have even been forced to hear Jeff Tuttle pack a mule that preferred not to be packed. And little Shelley was informing, even to me. He never hesitated for a word and was quick and finished with the syllables.

The ice-wagon man was peeved, as he had a right to be, and may of been going to talk back, but when he saw the rest of us getting Shelley he yelled to the man in the front to drive on. It was too late, quick as he went, to save the fair repute of himself and family, if Shelley's words was to be took seriously. Shelley had invaded the most sacred relationship and pretended to bare a hideous scandal. Also the iceman himself couldn't possibly of done half the things Shelley hotly urged him to do.

Us people that had seemed to linger walked right on, not meeting each other's eye, and Shelley again become the angel child, turning in at his gate and walking up the path in a decorous manner with his schoolbooks under his arm. I first wondered if I shouldn't go warn Arline that her child had picked up some words that would get him nowhere at all with his doting pastor. Little could the fond woman dream, when she tucked him in after his prayers at night, that talk such as this could come from his sweet young lips. How much mothers think they know of their sons and how darned little they do know! But I decided to keep out of it, remembering that no mother in the world's history had ever thanked a person for anything but praise of her children.

Still, I couldn't help but worry about Shelley's future, both here and hereafter. But I talked to other people about it and learned that he was already known as a public character to everyone but his own dear mother. It was these here curls that got him attacked on every hand by young and old, and his natural vigour of mind had built him up a line of repartee that was downright blistering when he had time to stop and recite it all. Even mule skinners would drive blocks out of their way just to hear little Shelley's words when someone called him sissy or girl-boy.

It seems Shelley never took any of these troubles to his mother, because he was right manly and he regarded curls as a natural infirmity that couldn't be helped and that his poor ma shouldn't be blamed for. He'd always had curls, just as other unfortunates had been disfigured or maimed from birth, so he'd took it as a cross the Lord had give him to bear. And he was willing to bear it in silence if folks would just let him alone. Otherwise, not. Oh, most surely not!

I kind of kept watch on Shelley's mad career after that. It was mad most of the time. He had already begun to fight as well as to use language, and by the time he was ten he was a very nasty scrapper. And ready—it soon got so that only boys new-come to town would taunt him about his golden locks. And unless they was too much out of Shelley's class he made believers of 'em swiftly. From ten to twelve he must of had at least one good fight a day, what with the new ones and the old ones that still couldn't believe a boy in velvet pants with curls on his shoulders could really put it over on 'em. His mother believed his clothes was tore and his face bunged up now and then in mere boyish sports, and begged him not to engage in such rough games with his childish playmates. And Shelley, the little man, let her talk on, still believing he was like little Paul McNamara, that had a crooked foot. He wasn't going to shame his mother as well as himself.

I don't know just how Shelley ever got his big illumination that curls was not a curse put on him by his Maker. But he certainly did get it when he was round twelve. After two years of finish fights he suddenly found out that curls is optional, or a boy's own fault, if not his mother's, and that they may be cured by a simple and painless operation. He'd come to the observing age. They say he'd stand in front of Henry Lehman's barber shop every chance he'd get, watching the happy men getting their hair cut. And he put two and two together.

Then he went straight to his mother and told her all about his wonderful and beautiful discovery. He was awful joyous about it. He said you only had to go to Mr. Lehman's barber shop with thirty-five cents, and the kind Mr. Lehman would cut the horrible things off and make him look like other boys, so please let him have the thirty-five.

Then Shelley got a great shock. It was that his mother wanted him to wear them things to please her. She burst into tears and said the mere thought of her darling being robbed of his crowning glory by that nasty old Henry Lehman or any one else was breaking her heart, and how could he be so cruel as to suggest it?

The poor boy must of been quite a bit puzzled. Here was a way out of something he had thought was incurable, and now his mother that loved him burst into tears at the thought of it. So he put it out of his mind. He couldn't hurt his mother, and if cutting off his disgrace was going to hurt her he'd have to go on wearing it.

Shelley was getting lanky now, with big joints and calf knees showing below his velvet pants; and he was making great headway, I want to tell you, in what seemed to be his chosen profession of pugilism. He took to going out of his class, taking on boys two or three years older. I never had the rare pleasure of seeing him in action, but it was mere lack of enterprise on my part. Before he found out that curls could be relieved by a barber he had merely took such fights as come to him. But now he went out of his way looking for 'em, and would start the action himself.

It got so that boys used to travel in bands—them that had criticized his appearance so he'd hear it—but he'd lie in wait for stragglers that was left behind by the convoy, and it would be the same old sad story. You can know what it meant when I tell you that the last year Shelley went to school they say he could come onto the playground with his long yellow curls floating in the breeze, and not a word would be heard from the fifty boys that might be there.

And so it went till he was thirteen. One succession of fights and a growing collection of words that would of give his fond pastor something to think about. Of course word of the fights would get to Shelley's ma from mothers whose little ones he had ravaged, but she just simply didn't believe it. You know a woman can really not believe anything she don't wish to. You couldn't tell that lady that her little boy with the angel face and soft voice would attack another boy unless the other boy begun it. And if the other boy did begin it it was because he envied Shelley his glorious curls. Arline was certainly an expert in the male psychology, as they call it.

But at thirteen Shelley was losing a lot of the angel out of his face. His life of battle had told on him, I guess. But he was still obedient and carried the cross for his mother's sake. Poor thing! He'd formed the habit of obedience and never once suspicioned that a woman had no right to impose on him just because she was his mother. Shelley just took to fighting a little quicker. He wouldn't wait for words always. Sometimes mere looks of disgust would start him.

Then, when he got to near fourteen, still with the beautiful curls, he begun to get a lovely golden down on his face; and the face hadn't hardly a trace of angel left in it. The horrible truth was that Shelley not only needed a haircut but a shave. And one day, goaded by certain taunts, he told his mother this in a suddenly bass voice. It must of startled Arline, having this roar come out of her child when his little voice had always been sweet and high. So she burst into some more tears and Shelley asked her forgiveness, and pretty soon she was curling his hair again. I guess he knew right then it was for the last time on earth, but nothing warned the mother.

These new taunts that had finally made a man of Shelley was no taunts from boys, which he could handle easy, but the taunts of heedless girls, who naturally loathed a boy with curls even more than male humans of any age loathe him; and girls can be a lot tauntier when they start out to. Well, Shelley couldn't lick girls, and he had reached an age when their taunts cut into his hide like whiplashes, so he knew right well he had to do something desperate.

Then he went out and run away from the refining influences of his beautiful home. He took to the hills and landed way up on the north fork of the Kulanche where Liver-eating Johnson has a sheep ranch. Liver-eating, who is an unsavory character himself, had once heard Shelley address a small group of critics in front of the post office, and had wanted to adopt him right there. He still cherished the fondest memories of Shelley's flow of language, so he was tickled to death to have him drop along and stop, seeing that though but a lad in years he was a man and brother in speech, even if he did look like a brother that had started out to be a sister and got mixed.

Liver-eating took him in and fed him and cut his hair with a pair of sheep shears. It was a more or less rough job, because shearing sheep does not make a man a good human barber by any means. But Shelley looked at his head in the glass and said it was the most beautiful haircut in the world. Fussy people might criticize it here and there, but they could never say it hadn't really been cut.

He was so grateful to Liver-eating that he promised to stay with him always and become a sheep herder. And he did hide out there several months till his anguished mother found out where he was. After having every pond dragged and every bit of woods searched for her boy's body she had believed he'd been carried off by kidnappers on account of his heavenly beauty, and she'd probably have to give ten thousand dollars for his release. She was still looking for a letter from these fiends when she learned about his being with Liver-eating Johnson and that this wretch had committed sacrilege on him.

It was a harsh blow to know that her pet had consorted with such a person, who was not only a sheepman but had earned his nickname in a way that our best people thought not nice. He'd gone home one day years ago and found his favourite horse had been took by an Injun. Being a simple-mannered man of few words, he just said that by sundown to-morrow he would of et the liver of the Injun that done the stealing. I don't know, personally, what happened, except that he did come back the next night with his horse. Anyway no one ever begrudged him his title after that. And here was Shelley Vane Plunkett, who had been carefully raised on fruits and cereals, taking up with such a nauseous character as a social equal.

Arline had the sheriff out at once for her darling, but Shelley got word and beat it farther. He finally got to Seattle, where he found various jobs, and kept his mother guessing for three years. He was afraid she'd make him start the curls again if he come home. But finally, when he was eighteen, he did come, on her solemn promise to behave. But he was no longer the angel-faced darling that had left, and he still expected at least one fight a day, though no longer wearing what would cause fights. He'd formed the habit and just couldn't leave off. A body could hardly look at him without starting something unpleasant. He was round like a barrel now, and tough and quick, and when anything did happen to be started he was the one that finished it. Also, he'd have his hair cut close every five or six days. He always looked like a prisoner that had started to let it grow about a week before he left the institution. Shelley was taking no chances, and he used to get a strange, glittering look in his eye when he regarded little Keats, his baby brother, who was now coming on with golden curls just as beautiful as Shelley's had ever been. But he done nothing sinister.

In time he might of settled down and become a useful citizen, but right then the war broke out, so no more citizen stuff for Shelley. It was almost too good to be true that he could go to a country where fighting was legal; not only that, but they'd give him board and lodging and a little spending money for doing the only thing he'd ever learned to do well. It sure looked like heaven. So off he went to Canada and enlisted and got sent across and had three years of perfect bliss, getting changed over to our Army when we finally got unneutral so you could tell it.

Of course his mother was almost more anguished about his going to war than about having his curls fixed with the sheep shears. She said even if he wasn't shot he would be sure to contract light habits in France, consisting of native wine and dancing, and so forth, and she hoped at least he could be a drummer boy or something safe.

But Shelley never had a safe moment, I guess. No such thing as a quiet sector where he was. He fought at the Front, and then he'd fight at hospitals every time he got took back there for being shot up. He was almost too scrappy even for that war. He was usually too busy to write, but we got plenteous reports of his adventures from other men, these adventures always going hard with whatever Germans got in his way. And I bet his mother never dreamed that his being such a demon fighter was all due to her keeping him in curls so long, where he got the habit and come to love it for its own sake.

Anyway, he fought and fought and had everything happen to him that German science had discovered was useful to exterminate the lesser races, and it finally begun to tell on him, hardened as he was by fighting from the cradle up, as you might say.

It was a glad day for Arline when she got word that he was a broken-down invalid and had landed at an Atlantic Ocean port on his way home. She got arrowroot gruel and jelly and medicinal delicacies and cushions, and looked forward to a life of nursing. She hoped that in the years to come she could coax the glow of health back to his wan cheeks. And I wouldn't put it past her—mebbe she hoped she could get him to let the golden hair grow again, just long enough to make him interesting as he lay coughing on his couch.

And Shelley come home, but his idee of being an invalid wasn't anything like his mother's. He looked stout as a horse, and merely wished to rest up for a couple weeks before getting some other kind of action suited to his peculiar talents. And worse, he wasn't Shelley Vane Plunkett—he was Bugs Plunkett; and his mother's heart broke again. He was shaved like a convict and thicker through than ever, and full of rich outdoor words about what he would do to this so-and-so medical officer for not letting him back into the scrap. Yes, sir; that man is going to suffer casualties right up to the limit the minute he gets out of his uniform—and him thinking the world is at peace once more! Sure, Shelley had been shot through the lungs a couple of times, and one leg had been considerably altered from the original plan, but he had claimed he was a better scrapper than ever before and had offered to prove it to this medical officer right then and there if it could be done quiet. But this fair offer had been rejected.

So here he'd come back, not any kind of a first-class invalid that would be nice to nurse, but as Bugs Plunkett! No sooner did he get to town than letters and postal cards begun to come addressed to Mr. Bugs Plunkett or mebbe B. Plunkett, Esquire; and the cards would be from his old pals in the trenches, many of whom had worse names, even, than Shelley had made for himself.

Also the sick warrior turned down flat the arrowroot gruel and Irish-moss custard and wine jelly and pale broth. He had to have the same coarse food that is et by common working people who have had no home advantages, including meat, which is an animal poison and corrupts the finer instincts of man by reducing him to the level of the brutes. So Arline Plunkett says. Shelley had it, though, ordering it in a bass voice that made the statuary teeter. Steak was cooked in the Plunkett home for the first time since it had been erected, notwithstanding the horrible example it set to little Keats, who still had golden curls as lovely as Shelley's once had been and was fed on fruits and nuts.

Arline couldn't of had any pleasant time with her wandering boy them three weeks he was there. She suffered intensely over the ignominy of this mail that came to him by the awful name of Bugs, with the gossips in the post office telling it everywhere, so that the boys round the cigar store got to calling him Bugs right out plain. And her son seeming proud of this degradation!

And she couldn't get him to protect himself from drafts by night. He'd insist on having a window wide open, and when she'd sneak back to close it so he wouldn't catch his death of cold he'd get up and court destruction by hoisting it again. And once when she'd crept in and shut it a second time he threw two shoes through the upper and lower parts so it would always be open. He claimed he done this in his sleep, having got into the habit in the trenches when he'd come in from a long march and someone would close all the windows. But Arline said that this only showed that war had made him a rowdy, even in his sleep—and out of the gentlest-mannered boy that ever wore velvet garments and had a cinch on every prize in the Sunday school; though she did not use coarse words like that. She told me herself it was time we got this other side of what war did to gently nurtured youths that had never soiled their lips with an oath in their lives until they went into war's hell. She said just that!

Also Shelley had contracted the vicious habit of smoking, which was all a body would want to know about war. She said he'd have his breakfast in bed, including whole slices of ham, which comes from the most loathsome of all animals, and would then lie and smoke the Lord Byron five-cent cigar, often burning holes in the covers, which he said was another old trench habit—and that showed what war done to the untainted human soil. Also while smoking in bed he would tell little Keats things no innocent child should hear, about how fine it feels to deflate Germans with a good bayonet. She had never esteemed Lord Byron as a poet, and these cigars, she assures me, was perfectly dreadful in a refined home, where they could be detected even in the basement.

Little Keats was now thirteen, with big joints and calf knees showing under the velvet pants, and I guess his curls was all that persuaded his mother to live, what with Shelley having gone to the bad and made a name for himself like Bugs. But little Keats had fell for his brother, and spent all the time he could with him listening to unpretty stories of Germans that had been fixed up proper the way the good Lord meant 'em to be.

After he'd been home a couple weeks or more Shelley begun to notice little Keats more closely. He looked so much like Shelley had at that age and had the same set-on manner in the house that Shelley got suspicious he was leading the same double life he had once led himself.

He asked his mother when she was going to take Keats to a barber, and his mother burst into tears in the old familiar way, so he said no more to her. But that afternoon he took little Keats out for a stroll and closely watched his manner toward some boys they passed. They went on downtown and Shelley stepped into the Owl cigar store to get a Lord Byron. When he come out little Keats was just finishing up a remark to another boy. It had the familiar ring to Shelley and was piquant and engaging even after three years in the trenches, where talk is some free. Keats still had the angel face, but had learned surprisingly of old English words.

Then Shelley says to him: "Say, kid, do you like your curls?" And little Keats says very warmly and almost shedding tears: "They're simply hell!"

"I knew it," says Shelley. "Have many fights?"

"Not so many as I used to," says Keats.

"I knew that, too," says Shelley. "Now, then, you come right along with me."

So he marches Keats and curls down to Henry Lehman's and says: "Give this poor kid a close haircut."

And Henry Lehman won't do it. He says that Mrs. Plunkett, the time of the scandal about Shelley, had warned every barber in town that she would have the law on 'em if they ever harmed a hair on the head of a child of hers; and he was a law-abiding citizen. He didn't deny that the boy needed a haircut the worst way in the world, but at his time of life he wasn't going to become an outlaw.

Keats had nearly broke down at this. But Shelley says: "All right; come on over to the other place."

So they go over to Katterson Lee, the coloured barber, and Katterson tells 'em the same story. He admits the boy needs a haircut till it amounts to an outrage, but he's had his plain warning from Shelley's ma, and he ain't going to get mixed up with no lawsuit in a town where he's known to one and all as being respectable.

Shelley then threatened him with bodily harm if he didn't cut that hair off quick, and Katterson was right afraid of the returned soldier, that had fixed so many Germans right, but he was more afraid of the law, so he got down on his knees to Shelley and begged for his life.

Little Keats was now blubbering, thinking he wasn't going to be shut of his disgrace after all, but Shelley says: "All right, kid; I'll stand by you. I'll do it myself. Get into that chair!"

Of course Katterson couldn't prevent that, so Keats got sunny again and climbed into the chair, and Shelley grabbed a pair of shears and made a sure-nuff boy of him. He got the curls off all right, but when it come to trimming up he found he couldn't do a smooth job, and Katterson wasn't there to give him any hints, having run from his shop at the beginning of the crime so he would have a good alibi when hauled into court. So Shelley finally took up a pair of clippers, and having learned to clip mules he soon had little Keats' whole scalp laid bare. It must of been a glorious sight. They both gloated over it a long time.

Then Keats says: "Now you come with me and we'll show it to mamma!" But Shelley says: "Not me! I have to draw the line somewhere. I shall be far away from here to-night. I am not afraid of enemy soldiers, for I've been up against them too often. But there are worse things than death, so you'll have to face mamma alone. You can tell her I did it, but I will not be there to hear you. So good-bye and God help you!" And Shelley retired to a position less exposed.

That was an awful day for the Plunkett home, because little Keats, being left to his own resources, tried to use his brain. First he gathered up the long shining curls and wrapped 'em in a newspaper. Then he went out and found Artie Bartell, who is a kind of a harmless halfwit that just walks the streets and will do anything whatever if told, being anxious to please. Keats gives Artie a dime to take the curls up to his dear mother and tell her that her little boy has been run over by a freight engine down to the station and these here curls was all that could be saved of him.

Then he hurries home the back way and watches, and pretty soon he sees some neighbours come rushing to the house when they hear his mother scream, so then he knows everything is all right. He waits a minute or two, then marches in with his hat off. His mother actually don't know him at first, on account of his naked skull, but she soon sees it must be he, little Keats, and then has hysterics because she thinks the freight engine has clipped him this way. And of course there was more hysterics when she learned the terrible truth of his brother's infamy. I guess Shelley had been wise all right to keep off the place at that time, soldier or no soldier. But that's neither here nor there.

The point is that little Keats may now be saved to a life of usefulness and not be hanged for murder, thanks to his brother's brave action. Of course Bugs himself is set in his ways, and will adorn only positions of a certain kind. He's fine here, for instance, just at this time when I got to hire all kinds that need a firm hand—and Bugs has two.

Sure, it was him took the job of foreman here yesterday. We had quite a little talk about things when he come. He told me how he released his little brother from shame. He said he wouldn't of done such a radical thing except that peace is now coming on and the world will no longer need such fighting devils as curls will make of a boy if let to stay long enough.

"Keats might have turned out even worse than I did," he says, "but if there wasn't going to be any way where he could do it legally, what was the use? He'd probably sometime have killed a boy that called him Goldilocks, and then the law might have made it unpleasant for him. I thought it was only fair to give him a chance to live peaceful. Of course in my own case mamma acted for the best without knowing it. We needed fighters, and I wouldn't have been anything at all like a fighter if she hadn't made me wear those curls till my whiskers began to show above the surface. In fact, I'm pretty sure I was a born coward, but those golden strands took all that out of me. I had to fight.

"And see what it did for me in the Army. I don't want to talk about myself, but I made a good average fighter and I would have been there to the last if I'd had my rights. And I simply owe it all to my dear mother. You might say she made me the man I am. I wouldn't ever have been tough if she'd cut my hair humanely from six years on. I certainly hope Keats hasn't gone too long. One of us in a family is enough."

That's the way Bugs talks, and it sounds right sensible. What I say now is, the idee had ought to be took up by the War Department at Washington, D. C. Let 'em pass a law that one boy out of, say, twenty-five has got to wear curls till his voice changes. By that time, going round in this here scenic investiture, as you might say, he will be a demon. In peace times it may add to our crimes of violence, but look what it will be when another war comes. We'll have the finest line of shock troops the world has ever produced, fit and anxious to fight, having led an embittered existence long enough to make it permanent. No line would ever stand against a charge of them devils. They would be a great national asset and might save the country while we was getting ready to begin to prepare a couple months after war was declared on us.

Still I don't suppose it will be took up, and I ain't got time to go down and preach it to Congress personally.

And now let me tell you one thing: I'm going to sleep to-night without a care on my mind for the first time in a year. This here Bugs unites to the distinction of his name a quick and handy nature, and my busiest troubles are over.

THE END