"Sure! A thousand that any bank in town would accept at par."

She picks up the deck and almost falls, but thinks better of it.

"Could I play with my own cards?" she wants to know, looking suspicious at these. Egbert says she sure can. "And in my own home?" asks Cora.

"Your own house or any place else," says Egbert, "and any hour of the day or night. Just call me up when you feel lucky."

"We could embellish our little nook with many needful things," says Cora. "A thousand dollars spent sensibly would do marvels." But after fiddling a bit more with the cards she laid 'em down with a pitiful sigh.

Cousin Egbert just looked at her, then looked away quick, as if he couldn't stand it any more, and says: "War is certainly what that man Sherman said it was."

Then he watches Sandy Sawtelle cashing in his chips and is kind of figuring up his total losses; so I can't resist handing him another.

"I don't know what us Mes-dames would of done without your master mind," I says; "and yet I'd hate to be a Belgian with the tobacco habit and have to depend on you to gratify it."

"Well," he answers, very mad, "I don't see so many of 'em getting tobacco heart with the proceeds of your fancy truck out in them booths either!"

"Don't you indeed?" I says, and just at the right moment, too. "Then you better take another look or get your eyes fixed or something."

For just then Sandy stands up on a chair and says:

"Ladies and gents, a big pile of valuable presents is piled just at the right of the main entrance as you go out, and I hope you will one and all accept same with the welcome compliments of me and old Jerry, that I had to take eleven stitches in the hide of. As you will pass out in an orderly manner, let every lady help herself to two objects that attract her, and every gent help himself to one object; and no crowding or pulling I trust, because some of the objects would break, like the moustache cup and saucer, or the drainpipe, with painted posies on it, to hold your umbrels. Remember my words—every lady two objects and every gent one only. There is also a new washboiler full of lemonade that you can partake of at will, though I guess you won't want any—and thanking you one and all!"

So they cheer Sandy like mad and beat it out to get first grab at the plunder; and just as Cousin Egbert thinks he now knows the worst, in comes the girls that had the booths, bringing all the chips Buck Devine had paid 'em—two hundred and seventy-eight dollars' worth that Egbert has to dig down for after he thinks all is over.

"Ain't it jolly," I says to him while he was writing another check on the end of the bar. "This is the first time us ladies ever did clean out every last object at a bazaar. Not a thing left; and I wish we'd got in twice as much, because Sandy don't do things by halves when his money comes easy from some poor dub that has thought highly of himself as a thinker about money matters." He pretends not to hear me because of signing his name very carefully to the check. "And what a sweet little home you'll build for the Wales family!" I says. "I can see it now, all ornamented up, and with one of these fancy bungalow names up over the front gate—probably they'll call it The Breakers!"

But he wouldn't come back; so I left him surrounded by the wreck of his former smartiness and went home. At the door where the treasures had been massed not a solitary thing was left but a plush holder for a whisk broom, with hand-painted pansies on the front; and I decided I could live without that. Tim Mahoney was there, grouching round about having to light up the hall next night for the B'nai B'rith; and I told him to take it for himself. He already had six drawnwork doilies and a vanity box with white and red powder in it.

As I go by the Hong Kong Quick Lunch, Sandy and three or four others is up on stools; the Chinaman, cooking things behind the counter, is wearing a lavender-striped silk dressing sacque and a lace boudoir cap with pink ribbons in it. Yes; we'd all had a purple night of it!

Next day about noon I'm downtown and catch sight of Cousin Egbert setting in the United States Grill having breakfast; so I feel mean enough to go in and gloat over him some more. I think to find him all madded up and mortified; but he's strangely cheerful for one who has suffered. He was bearing up so wonderful that I asked why.

"Ain't you heard?" says he, blotting round in his steak platter with a slice of bread. "Well, I got even with that Wales outfit just before daylight—that's all!"

"Talk on," I beg, quite incredulous.

"I didn't get to bed till about two," he says, "and at three I was woke up by the telephone. It's this big stiff Len Wales, that had ought to have his head taken off because it only absorbs nourishment from his system and gives nothing in return. He's laughing in a childish frenzy and says is this me? I says it is, but that's neither here nor there, and what does he want at this hour? 'It's a good joke on you,' he says, 'for the little woman got it on the third trial.' 'Got what?' I wanted to know. 'Got that solitaire,' he yells. 'And it's a good joke on you, all right, because now you owe her the thousand dollars; and I hate to bother you, but you know how some women are that have a delicate, high-strung organization. She says she won't be able to sleep a wink if you don't bring it up to her so she can have all our little treasure under her pillow; and I think, myself, it's better to have it all settled and satisfactory while the iron's hot, and you'd probably prefer it that way, too; and she says she won't mind, this time, taking your check, though the actual money would be far more satisfactory, because you know what women are—"

"Say! He raves on like this for three minutes, stopping to laugh like a maniac about every three words, before I can get a word in to tell him that I'm a delicate, high-strung organization myself, if you come right down to it, and I can't stand there in my nightgown listening to a string of nonsense. He chokes and says: 'What nonsense?' And I ask him does he think I'd pay a thousand dollars out on a game I hadn't overlooked? And he says didn't I agree to in the presence of witnesses, and the cards is laid out right there now on the dining-room table if I got the least suspicion the game wasn't played fair, and will I come up and look for myself! And I says 'Not in a thousand years!' Because what does he think I am!

"So then Mis' Wales she breaks in and says: 'Listen, Mr. Floud! You are taking a most peculiar attitude in this matter. You perhaps don't understand that it means a great deal to dear Leonard and me—try to think calmly and summon your finer instincts. You said I could not only play with my own cards at any hour of the night or day, but in my own home; and I chose to play here, because conditions are more harmonious to my psychic powers—' And so on and so on; and she can't understand my peculiar attitude once more, till I thought I'd bust.

"It was lucky she had the telephone between us or I should certainly of been pinched for a crime of violence. But I got kind of collected in my senses and I told her I already had been pushed as far as I could be; and then I think of a good one: I ask her does she know what General Sherman said war was? So she says, 'No; but what has that got to do with it?' 'Well, listen carefully!' I says. 'You tell dear Leonard that I am now saying my last word in this matter by telling you both to go to war—and then ask him to tell you right out what Sherman said war was.'

"I listened a minute longer for her scream, and when it come, like sweet music or something, I went to bed again and slept happy. Yes, sir; I got even with them sharks all right, though she's telling all over town this morning that I have repudiated a debt of honour and she's going to have that thousand if there's any law in the land; and anyway, she'll get me took up for conducting a common gambling house. Gee! It makes me feel good!"

That's the way with this old Egbert boy; nothing ever seems to faze him long.

"How much do you lose on the night?" I ask him.

"Well, the bar was a great help," he says, very chipper; "so I only lose about fourteen hundred all told. It'll make a nice bunch for the Belgians, and the few dollars you ladies made at your cheap booths will help some."

"How will your fourteen hundred lost be any help to the Belgians?" I wanted to know; and he looked at me very superior and as crafty as a fox.

"Simple enough!" he says in a lofty manner. "I was going to give what I win, wasn't I? So why wouldn't I give what I lose? That's plain enough for any one but a woman to see, ain't it? I give Mis' Ballard, the treasurer, a check for fourteen hundred not an hour ago. I told you I knew how to run one of these grafts, didn't I? Didn't I, now?"

Wasn't that just like the old smarty? You never know when you got him nailed. And feeling so good over getting even with the Wales couple that had about a thousand dollars of his money that very minute!

* * * * *

Still from the dimly lighted bunk house came the wail of Sandy Sawtelle to make vibrant the night. He had returned to his earlier song after intermittent trifling with an extensive repertoire:

There's a broken heart for every light on Broadway, A million tears for every gleam, they say. Those lights above you think nothing of you; It's those who love you that have to pay....

It was the wail of one thwarted and perishing. "Ain't it the sobbing tenor?" remarked his employer. "But you can't blame him after the killing he made before. Of course he'll get to town sooner or later and play this fourteen number, being that the new reform administration, with Lon Price as Mayor, is now safely elected and the game has opened up again. Yes, sir; he's nutty about stitches in a mule. I wouldn't put it past him that he had old Jerry kicked on purpose to-day!"



VII

KATE; OR, UP FROM THE DEPTHS

This day I fared abroad with Ma Pettengill over wide spaces of the Arrowhead Ranch. Between fields along the river bottom were gates distressingly crude; clumsy, hingeless panels of board fence, which I must dismount and lift about by sheer brawn of shoulder. Such gates combine the greatest weight with the least possible exercise of man's inventive faculties, and are named, not too subtly, the Armstrong gate. This, indeed, is the American beauty of ranch humour, a flower of imperishable fragrance handed to the visitor—who does the lifting with guarded drollery or triumphant snicker, as may be. Buck Devine or Sandy Sawtelle will achieve the mot with an aloof austerity that abates no jot unto the hundredth repetition; while Lew Wee, Chinese cook of the Arrowhead, fails not to brighten it with a nervous giggle, impairing its vocal correctness, moreover, by calling it the "Armcatchum" gate.

Ma Pettengill was more versatile this day. The first gate I struggled with she called Armstrong in a manner dryly descriptive; for the second she managed a humorous leer to illumine the term; for the third, secured with a garland of barbed wire that must be painfully untwisted, she employed a still broader humour. Even a child would then have known that calling this criminal device the Armstrong gate was a joke of uncommon richness.

As I remounted, staunching the inevitable wound from barbed wire, I began to speak in the bitterly superior tones of an efficiency expert as we traversed a field where hundreds of white-faced Herefords were putting on flesh to their own ruin. I said to my hostess that I vastly enjoyed lifting a hundred-pound gate—and what was the loss of a little blood between old friends, even when aggravated by probable tetanus germs? But had she ever paused to compute the money value of time lost by her henchmen in dismounting to open these clumsy makeshifts? I suggested that, even appraising the one reliable ranch joke in all the world at a high figure, she would still profit considerably by putting in gates that were gates, in place of contrivances that could be handled ideally only by a retired weight lifter in barbed-wire-proof armour.

I rapidly calculated, with the seeming high regard for accuracy that marks all efficiency experts, that these wretched devices cost her twenty-eight cents and a half each per diem. Estimating the total of them on the ranch at one hundred, this meant to her a loss of twenty-eight dollars and a half per diem. I used per diem twice to impress the woman. I added that it was pretty slipshod business for a going concern, supposing—sarcastically now—that the Arrowhead was a going concern. Of course, if it were merely a toy for the idle rich—

She had let me talk, as she will now and then, affecting to be engrossed with her stock.

"Look at them white-faced darlings!" she murmured. "Two years old and weighing eleven hundred this minute if they weigh a pound!"

Then I saw we approached a gate that amazingly was a gate. Hinges, yes; and mechanical complications, and a pendant cord on each side. I tugged at one and the gate magically opened. As we passed through I tugged at the other and it magically closed. This was luxury ineffable to one who had laboured with things that seemed to be kept merely for the sake of a jest that was never of the best and was staling with use. It would also be, I hoped, an object lesson to my hostess. I performed the simple rite in silence, yet with a manner that I meant to be eloquent, even provocative. It was.

"Oh, sure!" spoke Ma Pettengill. "That there's one of your per-diem gates; and there's another leading out of this field, and about six beyond—all of 'em just as per diem as this one; and, also, this here ranch you're on now is one of your going concerns." She chuckled at this and repeated it in a subterranean rumble: "A going concern—my sakes, yes! It moved so fast you could see it go, and now it's went." Noisily she relished this bit of verbal finesse; then permitted her fancy again to trifle with it. "Yes, sir; this here going concern is plumb gone!"

With active malice I asked no question, maintaining a dignified silence as I lightly manipulated a second paragon of gates. The lady now rumbled confidentially to herself, and I caught piquant phrases; yet still I forbore to question, since the woman so plainly sought to intrigue me. Even when we skirted a clump of cottonwoods and came—through another perfect gate—upon a most amazing small collection of ranch buildings, dying of desertion, I retained perfect control of a rising curiosity.

By unspoken agreement we drew rein to survey a desolation that was still immaculate. Stables and outbuildings were trim and new, and pure with paint. All had been swept and garnished; no unsightly litter marred the scene. The house was a suburban villa of marked pretension and would have excited no comment on Long Island. In this valley of the mountains it was nothing short of spectacular. Only one item of decoration hinted an attempt to adapt itself to environment: in the noble stone chimney that reared itself between two spacious wings a branding iron had been embedded. Thus did it proclaim itself to the incredulous hills as a ranch house.

Flowers had been planted along a gravelled walk. While I reminded myself that the gravel must have been imported from a spot at least ten miles distant, I was further shocked by discovering a most improbable golf green, in gloomy survival. Then I detected a series of kennels facing a wired dog run. This was overwhelming in a country of simple, steadfast devotion to the rearing of cattle for market.

Ma Pettengill now spoke in a tone that, for her, could be called hushed, though it reached me twenty feet away.

"An art bungalow!" she said, and gazed upon it with seeming awe. Then she waved a quirt to indicate this and the painfully neat outbuildings. "A toy for the idle rich—was that it? Well, you said something. This was one little per-diem going concern, all right. They even had the name somewhere round here worked out in yellow flowers—Broadmoor it was. You could read it for five miles when the posies got up. There it is over on that lawn. You can't read it now because the letters are all overgrown. My Chinaman got delirious about that when he first seen it and wanted me to plant Arrowhead out in front of our house, and was quite hurt when I told him I was just a business woman—and a tired business woman at that. He done what he could, though, to show we was some class. The first time these folks come over to our place to lunch he picked all my pink carnations to make a mat on the table, and spelled out Arrowhead round it in ripe olives, with a neat frame of celery inclosing same. Yes, sir!"

This was too much. It now seemed time to ask questions, and I did so in a winning manner; but so deaf in her backward musing was the woman that I saw it must all come in its own way.

"We got to make up over that bench yet," she said at last; and we rode out past the ideal stable—its natty weather vane forever pointing the wind to the profit of no man—through another gate of superb cunning, and so once more to an understandable landscape, where sane cattle grazed. Here I threw off the depression that comes upon one in places where our humankind so plainly have been and are not. Again I questioned of Broadmoor and its vanished people.

The immediate results were fragmentary, serving to pique rather than satisfy; a series of hors d'oeuvres that I began to suspect must form the whole repast. On the verge of coherence the woman would break off to gloat over a herd of thoroughbred Durhams or a bunch of sportive Hereford calves or a field teeming with the prized fruits of intermarriage between these breeds. Or she found diversion in stupendous stacks of last summer's hay, well fenced from pillage; or grounds for criticising the sloth of certain of her henchmen, who had been told as plain as anything that "that there line fance" had to be finished by Saturday; no two ways about it! She repeated the language in which she had conveyed this decision. There could have been no grounds for misunderstanding it.

And thus the annals of Broadmoor began to dribble to me, overlaid too frequently for my taste with philosophic reflections at large upon what a lone, defenceless woman could expect in this world—irrelevant, pointed wonderings as to whether a party letting on he was a good ranch hand really expected to perform any labour for his fifty a month, or just set round smoking his head off and see which could tell the biggest lie; or mebbe make an excuse for some light job like oiling the twenty-two sets of mule harness over again, when they had already been oiled right after haying. Furthermore, any woman not a born fool would get out of the business the first chance she got, this one often being willing to sell for a mutilated dollar, except for not wishing financial ruin or insanity to other parties.

Yet a few details definitely emerged. "Her" name was called Posnett, though a party would never guess this if he saw it in print, because it was spelled Postlethwaite. Yes, sir! All on account of having gone to England from Boston and found out that was how you said it, though Cousin Egbert Floud had tried to be funny about it when shown the name in the Red Gap Recorder. The item said the family had taken apartments at Red Gap's premier hotel de luxe, the American House; and Cousin Egbert, being told a million dollars was bet that he never could guess how the name was pronounced in English, he up and said you couldn't fool him; that it was pronounced Chumley, which was just like the old smarty—only he give in that he was surprised when told how it really was pronounced; and he said if a party's name was Postlethwaite why couldn't they come out and say so like a man, instead of beating round the bush like that? All of which was promising enough; but then came the Hereford yearlings to effect a breach of continuity.

These being enough admired, I had next to be told that I wouldn't believe how many folks was certain she had retired to the country because she was lazy, just keeping a few head of cattle for diversion—she that had six thousand acres of land under fence, and had made a going concern per diem of it for thirty years, even if parties did make cracks about her gates; but hardly ever getting a good night's sleep through having a "passel" of men to run it that you couldn't depend on—though God only knew where you could find any other sort—the minute your back was turned.

A fat, sleek, prosperous male, clad in expensive garments, and wearing a derby hat and too much jewellery, became somehow personified in this tirade. I was led to picture him a residuary legatee who had never done a stroke of work in his life, and believed that no one else ever did except from a sportive perversity. I was made to hear him tell her that she, Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill, was leading the ideal life on her country place; and, by Jove! he often thought of doing the same thing himself—get a nice little spot in this beautiful country, with some green meadows, and have bands of large handsome cattle strolling about in the sunlight, so he could forget the world and its strife in the same idyllic peace she must be finding. Or if he didn't tell her this, then he was sure to have a worthless son or nephew that her ranch would be just the place for; and, of course, she would be glad to take him on and make something of him—that is, so the lady now regrettably put it, as he had shown he wasn't worth a damn for anything else, why couldn't she make a cattleman of him?

"Yes, sir; that's what I get from these here visitors that are enchanted by the view. Either they think my ranch is a reform school for poor chinless Chester, that got led away by bad companions and can't say no, or they think, like you said, that it's just a toy for the idle rich. Show 'em a shoe factory or a steel works and they can understand it's a business proposition; but a ranch—Shucks! They think I've done my day's work when I ride out on a gentle horse and look pleased at the landscape."

Again were we diverted. A dozen alien beeves fed upon the Arrowhead preserves. Did I see that wattle brand—the jug-handle split? That was the Timmins brand—old Safety First Timmins. There must be a break in his fence at the upper end of the field. Made it himself likely. Wouldn't she give the old penny-pincher hell if she had him here? She would, indeed! Continuous muttering of a rugged character for half a mile of jog trot.

Then again:

"Cousin Egbert got all fussed up in his mind about the name and always called her Postle-nut. He don't seem to have a brain for such things. But she didn't mind. I give her credit for that. She was fifty if she was a day, but very, very blond; laboratory stuff, of course. You'd of called her a superblonde, I guess. And haggard and wrinkled in the face; but she took good care of that, too—artist's materials.

"You know old Pete—that Indian you see cutting up wood back on the place. Pete took a long look at her and named her the Painted Desert. You always hear say an Indian hasn't got any sense of humour. I don't know; Pete was sure being either a humourist or a poet. However, this here lady handed me a new one about my business. She thought it was merely an outdoor sport. I never could get that out of her head. Even when she left she says she knows it's ripping good sport, but it's such a terrific drain on one's income, and I must be quite mad about ranching to keep it up. I said, yes; I got quite mad about it sometimes, and let it go at that. What was the use?"

A voiceless interval while we climbed a trail to the timbered bench where fence posts were being cut by half a dozen of the Arrowhead forces. Two of these were swiftly detached and bade to repair the break in the fence by which one Timmins was now profiting, the entire six being first regaled with a brief but pithy character analysis of the offender, portraying him as a loathsome biological freak; headless, I gathered, and with the acquisitive instincts of a trade rat.

Then we rounded back on our way to the Arrow head ranch house. Five miles up the narrowing valley we could see its outposts and its smoke. Far below us the spick-and-span buildings of deserted Broadmoor glittered newly, demanding that I be told more of them. Yet for the five-mile ride I added, as I thought, no item to my slender stock. Instead, when we had descended from the bench and were again in fields where the gates might be opened only by galling effort, I learned apparently irrelevant facts concerning Egbert Floud's pet kitten.

"Yes, sir; he's just like any old maid with that cat. 'Kitty!' here and 'Kitty!' there; and 'Poor Kitty, did I forget to warm its milk?' And so on. It was give to him two years ago by Jeff Tuttle's littlest girl, Irene; and he didn't want it at first, but him and Irene is great friends, so he pretended he was crazy about it and took it off in his overcoat pocket, thinking it would die anyway, because it was only skin and bones. Whenever it tried to purr you'd think it was going to shake all its timbers loose. His house is just over on the other side of Arrowhead Pass there, and I saw the kitten the first day he brought it up, kind of light brown and yellow in colour, with some gray on the left shoulder.

"Well, the minute I see these markings I recognized 'em and remembered something, and I says right off that he's got some cat there; and he says how do I know? And I tell him that there kitten has got at least a quarter wildcat in it. Its grandmother, or mebbe its great-grandmother, was took up to the Tuttle Ranch when there wasn't another cat within forty miles, and it got to running round nights; and quite a long time after that they found it with a mess of kittens in a box out in the harness room. One look at their feet and ears was all you'd want to see that their pa was a bobcat. They all become famous fighting characters, and was marked just like this descendant of theirs that Cousin Egbert has. And, say, I was going on like this, not suspecting anything except that I was giving him some interesting news about the family history of this pet of his, when he grabs the beast up and cuddles it, and says I had ought to be ashamed of myself, talking that way about a poor little innocent kitten that never done me a stroke of harm. Yes, sir; he was right fiery.

"I don't know how he come to take it that cross way, for he hadn't thought highly of the thing up to that moment. But some way it seemed to him I was talking scandal about his pet—kind of clouding up its ancestry, if you know what I mean. He didn't seem to get any broad view of it at all. You'd almost think I'd been reporting an indiscretion in some member of his family. Can you beat it? Heating up that way over a puny kitten, six inches from tip to tip, that he'd been thinking of as a pest and only taken to please Irene Tuttle! So he starts in from that minute to doctor it up and nurture it with canned soup and delicacies; and every time I see him after that he'd look indignant and say what great hands for spreading gossip us women are, and his kitten ain't got no more bobcat in its veins than what I have.

"He's a stubborn old toad. Irene had told him the kitten's name was Kate; so he kept right on calling it that even after it become incongruous, as you might say. Judge Ballard was up here on a fishing trip one time and heard him calling it Kate, and he says to Egbert: Why call it Kate when it ain't? Egbert says that was the name little Irene give it and it's too much trouble to think up another. The Judge says, Oh, no; not so much trouble, being that he could just change the name swiftly from Kate to Cato, thus meeting all conventional requirements with but slight added labour. But Egbert says there's the sentiment to think of—whatever he meant by that; and if you was to go over there to-day and he was home you'd likely hear him say: 'Yes; Kate is certainly some cat! Why, he's at least half bobcat—mebbe three-quarters; and the fightingest devil!' What's that? Yes; he's changed completely round about the wildcat strain. He's proud of it. If I was to say now it was only a quarter bob he'd be as mad as he was at first; he says anybody can see it's at least half bob. What changed him? Oh, well, we're too near home. Some other time."

So it befell that not until we sat out for a splendid sunset that evening did I learn in an orderly manner of Postlethwaite vicissitudes. Ma Pettengill built her first cigarette with tender solicitude; and this, in consideration of her day's hard ride, I permitted her to burn in relaxed silence. But when her trained fingers began to combine paper and tobacco for the second I mentioned Broadmoor, Postlethwaite, Posnett, and parties in general that come round the tired business woman, harassed with the countless vexations of a large cattle ranch, telling her how wise she has been to retire to this sylvan quietude, where she can dream away her life in peace. She started easily:

"That's it; they always intimate that running a ranch is mere cream puffs compared to a regular business, and they'd like to do the same thing to-morrow if only they was ready to retire from active life. Mebbe they get the idea from these here back-to-nature stories about a brokendown bookkeeper, sixty-seven years old, with neuritis and gastric complications and bum eyesight, and a wife that ain't ever seen a well day; so they take every cent of their life savings of eighty-three dollars and settle on an abandoned farm in Connecticut and clear nine thousand dollars the first year raising the Little Giant caper for boiled mutton. There certainly ought to be a law against such romantic trifling. In the first place, think of a Connecticut farmer abandoning anything worth money! Old Timmins comes from Connecticut. Any time that old leech abandons a thing, bookkeepers and all other parties will do well to ride right along with him. I tell you now—"

The second cigarette was under way, and suddenly, without modulation, the performer was again on the theme, Posnett nee Postlethwaite.

"Met her two years ago in Boston, where I was suffering a brief visit with my son-in-law's aunts. She was the sole widow of a large woolen mill. That's about all I could ever make out—couldn't get any line on him to speak of. The first time I called on her—she was in pink silk pyjamas, smoking a perfecto cigar, and unpacking a bale of lion and tiger skins she'd shot in Africa, or some place—she said she believed there would be fewer unhappy marriages in this world if women would only try more earnestly to make a companion of their husbands; she said she'd tried hard to make one of hers, but never could get him interested in her pursuits and pastimes, he preferring to set sullenly at his desk making money. She said to the day of his death he'd never even had a polo mallet in his hand. And wasn't that pitiful!

"And right now she wanted to visit a snappy little volcano she'd heard about in South America—only she had a grown son and daughter she was trying to make companions of, so they would love and trust her; and they'd begged her to do something nearer home that was less fatiguing; and mebbe she would. And how did I find ranching now? Was I awfully keen about it and was it ripping good sport? I said yes, to an extent. She said she thought it must be ripping, what with chasing the wild cattle over hill and dale to lasso them, and firing off revolvers in company with lawless cowboys inflamed by drink. She went on to give me some more details of ranch life, and got so worked up about it that we settled things right there, she being a lady of swift decisions. She said it wouldn't be very exciting for her, but it might be fine for son and daughter, and bring them all together in a more sacred companionship.

"So I come back and got that place down the creek for her, and she sent out a professional architect and a landscape gardener, and some other experts that would know how to build a ranch de luxe, and the thing was soon done. And she sent son on ahead to get slightly acquainted with the wild life. He was a tall bent thing, about thirty, with a long squinted face and going hair, and soft, innocent, ginger-coloured whiskers, and hips so narrow they'd hardly hold his belt up. That rowdy mother of his, in trying to make a companion of him, had near scared him to death. He was permanently frightened. What he really wanted to do, I found out, was to study insect life and botany and geography and arithmetic, and so on, and raise orchids, instead of being killed off in a sudden manner by his rough-neck parent. He loved to ride a horse the same way a cat loves to ride a going stove.

"I started out with him one morning to show him over the valley. He got into the saddle all right and he meant well, but that don't go any too far with a horse. Pretty soon, down on the level here, I started to canter a bit. He grabbed for the saddle horn and caught a handful of bunch grass fifteen feet to the left of the trail. He was game enough. He found his glasses and wiped 'em off, and said it was too bad the mater couldn't have seen him, because it would have been a bright spot in her life.

"Then he got on again and we took that steep trail up the side of the canon that goes over Arrowhead, me meaning to please him with some beautiful and rugged scenery, where one false step might cause utter ruin. It didn't work, though. After we got pretty well up to the rim of the canon he looks down and says he supposes they could recover one if one fell over there. I says: 'Oh, yes; they could recover one. They'd get you, all right. Of course you wouldn't look like anything!'

"He shudders at that and gets off to lead his horse, begging me to do the same. I said I never tried to do anything a horse could do better, and stayed on. Then he got confidential and told me a lot of interesting crimes this mater of his had committed in her mad efforts to make a companion of him. Once she'd tramped on the gas of a ninety-horsepower racer and socked him against a stone wall at a turn some fool had made in the road; and another time she near drowned him in the Arctic Ocean when she was off there for the polar-bear hunting; and she'd got him well clawed by a spotted leopard in India, that was now almost the best skin in her collection; and once in Switzerland he fell off the side of an Alp she was making him climb, causing her to be very short with him all day because it delayed the trip. Tied to a rope he was and hanging out there over nothing for about fifteen minutes—he must have looked like a sash weight.

"Then he told about learning to run a motor car all by himself, just to please the mater. The first time he made the sharp turns round their country house he took nine shingles off the corner and crumpled a fender like it was tissue paper; but he stuck to it till he got the score down to two or three shingles only. He seemed right proud of that, like it was bogey for the course, as you might say. He wasn't the greatest humourist in the world, being too high-minded, but he appealed to all my better instincts; he was trying so hard to make the grade out of respect for his bedizened and homicidal mother.

"And his poor sister, that come along later, was very much like him, being severe of outline and wearing the same kind of spectacles, and not fussing much about the fripperies of dress that engross so many of our empty-headed sex and get 'em the notice of the male. Her complexion was brutally honest, which was about all her very best-wishers could say for it, but she was kind-hearted and earnest, and thought a good deal about the real or inner meaning of life. What she really yearned for was to stay in Boston and go to concerts, holding the music on her lap and checking off the notes with a gold pencil when the fiddlers played them. I watched her do it one night. I don't know what her notion was, keeping cases on the orchestra that way; but it seemed to give her a secret satisfaction. She was also interested in bird life and other studies of a high character, and she didn't want to be made a companion of by her rabid parent any more than brother did. They was just a couple of lambkins born to a tiger.

"Pretty soon the ranch buildings was all complete and varnished and polished, like you seen to-day, and the family moved in with all kinds of uniformed servants that looked unhappy and desperate. They had a pained butler in a dress suit that never once set foot outside the house the whole five months they was here. He'd of been thought too gloomy for good taste, even at a funeral. He had me nervous every time I went there, thinking any minute he was going to break down and sob.

"And this lady loses no time making companions of her children that didn't want to be. First she tried to make 'em chase steers on horseback. A fact! That was one of her ideas of ranch life. When I asked her what she was going to stock her ranch with she said didn't I have some good heads of stock I could sell her? And I said yes, I had some good heads, and showed her a bunch of my thoroughbreds, thinking none but the best would satisfy her. She looked 'em over with a glittering eye and said they was too fat to run well. I didn't get her. I said it was true; I hadn't raised 'em for speed. I said I didn't have an animal on the place that could hit better than three miles an hour, and not that for long. I cheerfully admitted I didn't have a thoroughbred on the place that wouldn't be a joke on any track in the country; but I wanted to know what of it.

"'How do you get any sport out of them,' demands the lady, 'if they can't give you a jolly good chase?'

"That's what she asked me in so many words. I says, does she aim to breed racing cattle? And she says, where will the sport be with creatures all out of condition with fat, like mine are? It took me about ten minutes to get her idea, it was that heinous or criminal. When I did get it I sent her to old Safety First; and what does she do but buy a herd of twenty yearling steers from the old crook! Scrubby little runts that had been raised out in the hills and was all bone and muscle, and any one of 'em able to do a mile in four minutes flat, I guess.

"Old Safety was tickled to death at first when he put off this refuse on her at a price not much more than double what they would have brought in a tanyard, which was all they'd ever be good for except bone fertilizer, mebbe; but he was sick unto death when he found they was just what she wanted, the skinnier the better and he could have got anything he asked for 'em. He says to me afterward why don't I train some of mine and trim her good? But I told him I'm cinched for hell, anyway, and don't have to make it tighter by torturing poor dumb brutes.

"That's what it amounted to. Having got Angora chaps and cowboy hats for herself and offsprings, what do they do but get on ponies and chase this herd all over creation, whirling their ropes, yelling, shooting in the air—just like you see on any well-conducted ranch. Once in a while the old lady herself, being a demon rider, would rope an animal and fetch it down; but brother and sister was very careful not to tangle their own ropes on anything. They didn't shoot their guns with any proper spirit, either; and when they tried to yip like cowboys they sounded like rabbits. And brother having to smoke brown-paper cigarettes, which he hated like poison and had trouble in rolling!

"Mother could roll 'em, all right—do it with one hand. And she urged sister to; but sister rebelled for once. The old lady admitted this was due to a fault in her early training. It seems her grandmother had been one of the old-fashioned sort; and, having studied the modern young woman of society in Boston and New York, she'd promised sister a string of pearls if she didn't either smoke or drink till her twenty-first birthday. Sister had not only won the pearls but had come on to twenty-eight without being like other young girls of the day, and wasn't going to begin now. So ma and brother had to do all the smoking.

"After a fine morning's run following the steers they'd like as not have a little branding in the afternoon, the old-fashioned kind that ain't done in the higher ranch circles any more, where a couple of silly punchers rope an animal fore and aft and throw it, thereby setting it back at least four months in its growth. The old lady was puzzled again by me having my branding done in a chute, where the poor things ain't worried more than is necessary. I bet she thought I was a short sport, not doing a thing on my place that would look well in a moving picture. She got a lot of ripping sport out of this branding. Made no difference if they was already branded, they got it again; she'd brand 'em over and over. Two or three of that herd got it so often that they looked like these leather suitcases parties bring back from Europe stuck all over with hotel labels.

"Well, this branch of sport lasted quite a while, with them steers developing speed every day till they got too fast for any one but the old lady. Brother and sister would be left far behind, or mebbe get stacked up and discouraged or sprained for the day. The old dame said it was disheartening, indeed, trying to make companions of one's children when they showed such a low order of intelligence for it. Still, she was fair-minded; so she had a golf links made, and put 'em at that. She wouldn't play herself, saying it was an effeminate game, good for fat old men or schoolboys, but mebbe her chits would benefit by it and get a taste for proper sports, where you can break a bone now and then by not using care.

"But golf wasn't much better. Sister would carry a book of poetry with her and read it as she loafed from one hit to another. The old lady near shed tears at the sight. And brother was about as bad, getting hypnotized by passing insect life and forgetting his score while prodding some new kind of bug.

"The old lady said I'd never believe what a care and responsibility children was. She had wanted 'em to go in for ranching and be awfully keen about it, and look how they acted! Still, she wouldn't give up. She suggested polo next; but sister said it wasn't a lady's game, making no demand upon the higher attributes of womanhood, and brother said he might go in for it if she'd let him play his on a bicycle, as being more reliable or stauncher than a pony.

"So she throws up her hands in despair, but thinks hard again; and at last she says she has the right sport for 'em and why didn't she think of it before! This new idea is to bring up her pack of prize-winning beagles, the sport being full of excitement, and yet safe enough for all concerned if they'll look where they walk and not stop to read slushy poems or collect insect life. Sister and brother said beagles, by all means, like drowning sailors clutching at a straw or something; and the old lady sent off a telegram.

"I admit I didn't know what kind of a game beagles was, but I didn't betray the fact when she told me about it. I was over to Egbert Floud's place next day and I asked him. But he didn't know and he couldn't even get the name right. He says: 'You mean beetles.' I says, 'Not at all'; that it's beagles. Then he says I must of got the name twisted, and probably it's one of these curly horns. That's as close as he ever did come to the name; and until he actually saw the things he insisted they was either something to blow on or something that crawled. 'Mark my words,' he says,'they're either a horn or a bug; and I wonder what this here blond guy will be doing next.' So I saw nothing sensible was to be had out of him, and I left him there, doddering.

"Then in about ten days, which was days of peace for brother and sister, because they didn't have to go in keenly for any new way of killing themselves off, what comes up but several crates of beagles, in charge of their valet or tutor! I'd looked forward to something of a thrilling or unknown character, and they turned out to be mere dogs; just little brown-and-white dogs that you wouldn't notice if you hadn't been excited by their names; kind of yapping mutts that some parties would poison off if they lived in the same neighbourhood with 'em. They all had names like Rex II and Lady Blessington, and so on; and each one had cost more than any three steers I had on the place. What do you think of that? They was yapping in their kennels when I first seen 'em, with the old lady as excited as they was, and brother and sister trying to look excited in order to please mother, and at least looking relieved because no fatalities was in immediate prospect.

"I listened to the noise a while and acted nice by saying they was undoubtedly the very finest beagles I'd ever laid eyes on—which was the simple God's truth; and then I says won't she take one out of the cage and let him beagle some, me not having any idea what it would be like? But the old lady says not yet, because the costumes ain't come. I thought at first it was the pups that had to be dressed up, but it seems it was costumes for her and brother and sister to wear; so I asked a few more silly questions and found out the mystery. It seemed the secret of a beagle's existence was rabbits. Yes, sir; they was mad about rabbits and went in keenly for 'em. Only they wouldn't notice one, I gathered, if the parties that followed 'em wasn't dressed proper for it.

"Then we went in where we could hear each other without screaming, and the lady tells me more about it, and how beagles is her last hope of her chits ever amounting to anything in the great world of sport. If they don't go in keenly for beagles she'll just have to give up and let Nature take its course with the poor things. And she said these was A-Number-One beagles, being sure to get a rabbit if one was in the country. She'd just had 'em at a big fashionable country resort down South, some place where the sport attracted much notice from the simple-minded peasantry, and it hadn't been a good country for rabbits; so the beagles had trooped into a backyard and destroyed a Belgian hare that had belonged to a little boy, whose father come out and swore at the costumed hunters in a very common manner, and offered to lick any three of 'em at once.

"And in hurrying acrost a field to get away from this rowdy, that seemed liable to forget himself and do something they'd all regret later, they was put up a tree by a bull that was sensitive about costumes, and had to stay there two hours, with the bull trying to grub up the tree, and would of done so if his owner hadn't come along and rescued 'em.

"She made it sound like an exciting sport, all right, yet nothing I thought I'd ever go in keenly for. It didn't seem like anything I'd get up in the night to indulge myself in. And I agreed with her that if her chits found beagling too adventurous, then all hope was gone and she might as well let 'em die peacefully in their beds.

"Two days later the costumes come along and I was kindly sent word to show up the next morning if I wanted to see some ripping sport that I'd be quite mad about and go in for keenly, and all that sort of thing, by Jove! Of course I go over, on account of this dame's atrocities never yet having failed to interest me, and I didn't think she'd fall down now. I felt strangely out of it, though, when I seen the costumes. Ma and sister had, from the top down, black velvet jockey caps; green velvet coats with gold buttons; white pique skirts, coming to the knee; black silk stockings; and neat black shoes with white spats. Brother had been abused the same, barring the white skirt, which left him looking like something out of a collection called The Dolls of All Nations.

"I saw right off that all these clothes must be necessary—they looked so careful and expensive. Yes, Sir; that lady would no more of went out beagling without being draped for it than she'd of gone steer hunting without a vanity-box lashed to her saddle horn.

"I sort of hung back with the awe-stricken help when the start was made. They was all out in front except the butler, who lurked in the entry looking like he'd passed a night of grief at the new-made grave of his mother.

"The beagles surged all over the place the minute they was let loose, and then made for down in the willows below the house. And, sure enough, they started a cottontail down there and went in for him keenly, followed by ma and brother and sister. Brother started to yell 'Yoicks! Yoicks!' But ma shut him off with a good deal of severity that caused him to blush at his words. It seems Yoicks is a cry you give at some other critical juncture in life. When beagles start you must yell 'Gone away!' in a clear, ringing voice. Brother meant well, but didn't know.

"Anyhow, they followed those pups, and I trailed along at a decent distance on my horse; and pretty soon they got the rabbit which had been fool enough to come round in a wide circle back to where it started from. Say! It was mere child's play for that plucky little band of nine dogs to clean up that rabbit. They never had a minute's fear of it and the rabbit didn't have the least chance of winning the fight, not at any stage. Yes, sir! any time you see nine beagles setting on a tuckered rabbit—I don't care how wild he is—you'll know how to put your money down.

"I never did see a rabbit put up a worse fight than that one did. I rode up to its fragments, and the old lady was saying how ripping it was and calling sister a mollycoddle, because here was sister crying like a baby over the rabbit's fate—a rabbit she'd never set eyes on before in her life. Brother didn't look like he had gone in keenly for the sport, either. He was kind of green and yellow, like one of these parties on shipboard about the time he's saying he don't feel the boat's motion the least bit; and, anyway, he's got a sure-fire remedy for it if anything does happen. I just kind of stood around, neutral and revolted.

"Pretty soon the pack beagles off again with glad cries; and this time, up on the hillside, what do they start but a little spike buck that has been down to a salt lick on the creek flat! They wasn't any more afraid of him than they had been of the rabbit and started to chase him out of the country. Of course they didn't do well after they got him interested. The last I saw of the race he was making 'em look like they was in reverse gear and backing up full speed. Anyway, that seemed to end the sport for the day, because the dogs and the buck must of been over near the county line in ten minutes. The old lady was mad and blamed it on the valet, who come up and had to take as sweet a roasting as you ever heard a man get from a lady word painter. It seems he'd ought to have taught 'em to ignore deer.

"Then I lied like a lady and said it was a ripping sport that I would sure go in keenly for if I had time; and we all went back to the house and sat down to what they called a hunt breakfast. Ma said at last her chits could hold up their heads in the world of sport and not be a reproach to her training. The chits looked very thoughtful, indeed. Sister still had red eyes and couldn't eat a mouthful of hunt breakfast, and brother just toyed with little dabs of it.

"Next day I learned the pack didn't get back till late that evening, straggling in one by one, and the valet having to go out and look for the last two with a lantern. Also, these last two had been treated brutally by some denizen of the wildwood. Rex II had darn near lost his eyesight and Lady Blessington was clawed something scandalous. Brother said mebbe a rabbit mad with hydrophobia had turned on 'em. He said it in hopeful tones, and sister cheered right up and said if these two had it they would give it to the rest of the pack, and shouldn't they all be shot at once?

"Mother said what jolly nonsense; that they'd merely been scratched by thorns. I thought, myself, that mebbe they'd gone out of their class and tackled a jack rabbit; but I didn't say it, seeing that the owner was sensitive. Afterward she showed me a lot of silver things her pets had won—eye-cups and custard dishes, and coffee urns and things, about a dozen, with their names engraved on 'em. She said it was very annoying to have 'em take after deer that way. What she wanted 'em to do was to butcher rabbits where parties in the right garments could stand and look on.

"Next day they tried again; and one fool rabbit was soon gone in for keenly to the renewed sound of sister's bitter sobs, and brother looking like he'd been in jail two years—no colour left at all in his face. But pretty soon the pack took up the scent of a deer again, and that was the end of another day's sport. Brother and sister looked glad and resumed their peaceful sports. He hunted butterflies with a net, and she set down and looked at birds through an opera glass and wrote down things about their personal appearance in a notebook. The old lady changed to her cowboy suit and went out and roped three steers—just to work her mad off, I guess.

"Well, this time the beagles not only limped in at a shocking hour of the night but three of the others had had their beauty marred by a demon rabbit or something. They had been licked very thoroughly, indeed; and the old lady now said it must be a grizzly bear, and brother and sister beamed on her and said: 'What a shame!' And would they hunt again next day? For the first time they seemed quite mad about the sport. Mother said they better wait till she went out and shot the grizzly, but I told her we hadn't had any grizzlies round here for years; so she said, all right, they could lick anything less than a grizzly. And they beagled again next day, with terrible and inspiring results, not only to Rex II and Lady Blessington again, but to two of the others that hadn't been touched before.

"This left only two of the pack that hadn't been horribly abused by some unknown varmint; so a halt had to be called for three days while Red Cross work was done. Brother and sister tried to look regretful and complained about this break in the ripping sport; but their manner was artificial. They spent the time riding peacefully round up in the canon, pretending to look for the wild creature that had chewed their little pets. They come back one day and cheered their mother a whole lot by telling her the pack had been over the pass as far as the house of a worthy rancher, Mr. Floud by name. They said Mr. Floud didn't believe there was any bears round, and further said he greatly admired the beagles, even though at first they seriously annoyed his pet kitten.

"The old lady said this was ripping of Mr. Floud, to take it in such a sporting way, because many people in the past had tried to make all sorts of nasty rows when her pets had happened to kill their kittens. Brother said, yes; Mr. Floud took the whole thing in a true sporting way, and he hoped the pack would soon be well enough to hunt again. Right then I detected falsity in his manner; I couldn't make out what it was, but I knew he was putting something over on mother.

"Two days later the dogs was fit again, and another gay hunt was had, with a rabbit to the good in the first twenty minutes, and then the usual break, when they struck a deer scent. Brother said he'd follow on his horse this time and try to get whatever was bothering 'em. He didn't. He said he lost 'em. They crawled back at night, well chewed; and mother was now frantic.

"There had to be another three days in bed for the cunning little murderers, after which brother and sister both went out with 'em on horseback, with the same mysterious results—except that Rex II didn't get in till next day and looked like he'd come through a feed chopper. For the next hunt, four days after that, the old lady went, too, all of 'em on horseback; but the same slinking marauder got at the pack before they could come up with it, and two of 'em had to be brought back in arms. They all stopped here on the way home to tell about the mystery. Brother and sister was very cheerful and mad about the sport, but their manner was falser than ever. Mother says the pack is being ruined, and she wouldn't continue the sport, except it has roused the first gleam of interest her chits has ever showed in anything worth while. I caught the chits looking at each other in a guilty manner when she says this, and my curiosity wakes up. I says next time they go out I will be pleased to go with 'em; and the old lady thanks me and says mebbe I can solve this reprehensible mystery.

"In another three days they come by for me. The beagles was looking an awful lot different from what I had first seen 'em. They was not only beautifully scarred but they acted kind of timid and reproachful, and their yapping had a note of caution in it that I hadn't noticed before. So I got on my pony and went along to help probe the crime. We worked up the canon trail and over the pass, with the pack staying meekly behind most of the time. Just the other side of the pass they actually got a rabbit, though not working with their old-time recklessness, I thought. Of course we had to stop and watch this. Brother looked the other way and sister just set there biting her lips, with an evil gleam in her pale-blue eyes. Not a beagle in the pack would have trusted himself alone with her at that minute if he'd known his business.

"Then we rode on down toward Cousin Egbert's shack, with nothing further happening and the pups staying back in a highly conservative manner. Brother says that yonder is the Mr. Floud's place he had spoken of, and ma wants to know if he, too, goes in for ranching, and I says yes, he's awfully keen about it; so she says we'll ride over and chat with him and perhaps he can suggest some solution of the mystery in hand. I said all right, and we ride up.

"Cousin Egbert is tipped back in a chair outside the door, reading a Sunday paper. Whenever he gets one up here he always reads it clean through, from murders to want ads. And he'd got into this about as far as the beauty hints and secrets of the toilet. Well, he was very polite and awkward, and asked us into his dinky little shack; and the old lady says she hears he is quite mad about ranching, and he says, Oh, yes—only it don't help matters any to get mad; and he finds a chair for her, and the rest of us set on stools and the bed; and just then she notices that the beagle pack has halted about thirty feet from the door, and some of 'em is milling and acting like they think of starting for home at once.

"So out she goes and orders the little pets up. They didn't want to come one bit; it seemed like they was afraid of something, but they was well disciplined and they finally crawled forward, looking like they didn't know what minute something cruel might happen.

"The old lady petted 'em and made 'em lie down, and asked Cousin Egbert if he'd ever seen better ones, or even as good; and he said No, ma'am; they was sure fine beetles. Then she begun to tell him about some wild animal that had been attacking 'em, a grizzly, or mebbe a mountain lion, with cubs; and he is saying in a very false manner that he can't think what would want to harm such playful little pets, and so on. All this time the pets is in fine attitudes of watchful waiting, and I'm just beginning to suspect a certain possibility when it actually happens.

"There was an open window high up in the log wall acrost from the door, and old Kate jumps up onto the sill from the outside. He was one fierce object, let me tell you; weighing about thirty pounds, all muscle, with one ear gone, and an eye missing that a porcupine quill got into, and a lot of fresh new battle scars. We all got a good look at him while he crouched there for a second, purring like a twelve-cylinder car and twitching his whiskers at us in a lazy way, like he wanted to have folks make a fuss over him. And then, all at once, catching sight of the dogs, he changed to a demon; his back up, his whiskers in a stiff tremble, and his half of a tail grown double in girth.

"I looked quick to the dogs, and they was froze stiff with horror for at least another second. Then they made one scramble for the open door, and Kate made a beautiful spring for the bunch, landing on the back of the last one with a yell of triumph. Mother shrieked, too, and we all rushed to the door to see one of the prettiest chases you'd want to look at, with old Kate handing out the side wipes every time he could get near one of the dogs. They fled down over the creek bank and a minute later we could see the pack legging it up the other side to beat the cars, losing Kate—I guess because he didn't like to get his hide wet.

"When the first shock of this wore off, here was silly old Egbert, in a weak voice, calling: 'Kitty, Kitty, Kitty! Here, Kitty! Here, Kitty!' Then we notice brother and sister. Brother is waving his hat in the air and yelling 'Yoicks!' and 'Gone away!' and 'Fair sport, by Jove!'—just like some crazy man; and sister, with her chest going up and down, is clapping her hands and yelling 'Goody! Goody! Goody!' and squealing with helpless laughter. Mother just stood gazing at 'em in horrible silence. Pretty soon they felt it and stopped, looking like a couple of kids that know it's spanking time.

"'So!' says mother. That's all she said—just, 'So!'

"But she stuffed the simple word with eloquence; she left it pregnant with meaning, as they say. Then she stalked loftily out and got on her horse, brother and sister slinking after her. I guess I slunk, too, though it was none of my doings. Cousin Egbert kind of sidled along, mumbling about Kitty:

"'Kitty was quite frightened of the pets first time he seen 'em; but someway to-day it seemed like he had lost much of his fear—seemed more like he had wanted to play with 'em, or something.'

"Nobody listened to the doddering old wretch, but I caught brother winking at him behind mother's back. Then we all rode off in lofty silence, headed by mother, who never once looked back to her late host, even if he was mad about ranching. We got up over the pass and the pack of ruined beagles begun to straggle out of the underbrush. A good big buck rabbit with any nerve could have put 'em all on the run again. You could tell that. They slunk along at the tail of the parade. I dropped out informally when it passed the place here. It seemed like something might happen where they'd want only near members of the family present.

"I don't hear anything from Broadmoor next day; so the morning after that I ride over to Cousin Egbert's to see if I couldn't get a better line on the recent tragedy. He was still on his Sunday paper, having finished an article telling that man had once been scaly, like a fish; and was just beginning the fashion notes, with pictures showing that the smart frock was now patterned like an awning. Old Kate was lying on a bench in the sun, trying to lick a new puncture he'd got in his chest.

"I started right in on the old reprobate. I said it was a pretty how-de-do if a distinguished lady amateur, trying to raise ranching to the dignity of a sport, couldn't turn loose a few prize beagles without having 'em taken for a hunt breakfast by a nefarious beast that ought to be in a stout cage in a circus this minute! I thought, of course, this would insult him; but he sunned right up and admitted that Kate was about half to three-quarters bobcat; and wasn't he a fine specimen? And if he could only get about eight more as good he'd have a pack of beagle-cats that would be the envy of the whole sporting world.

"'It ain't done!' I remarked, aiming to crush him.

"'It is, too!' Egbert says. 'I did it myself. Look what I already done, just with Kitty alone!'

"'How'd it start?' I asked him.

"'Easy! says he. 'They took Kate for a rabbit and Kate took them for rabbits. It was a mutual error. They found out theirs right soon; but I bet Kate ain't found out his, even to this day. I bet he thinks they're just a new kind of rabbit that's been started. The first day they broke in here he was loafin' round out in front, and naturally he started for 'em, though probably surprised to see rabbits travelling in a bunch. Also, they see Kate and start for him, which must of startled him good and plenty. He'd never had rabbits make for him before. He pulled up so quick he skidded. I could see his mind working. Don't tell me that cat ain't got brains like a human! He was saying to himself: "Is this here a new kind of rabbits, or is it a joke—or what? Mebbe I better not try anything rash till I find out."

"'They was still coming for him acrost the flat, with their tongues out; so he soopled himself up a bit with a few jumps and made for that there big down spruce. He lands on the trunk and runs along it to where the top begins. He has it all worked out. He's saying: "If this here is a joke, all right; but if it ain't a joke I better have some place back of me for a kind of refuge."

"'So up come these strange rabbits and started to jump for him on the trunk of the spruce; but it's pretty high and they can't quite make it. And in a minute they sort of suspicion something on their part, because Kate has rared his back and is giving 'em a line of abuse they never heard from any rabbit yet. Awful wicked it was, and they sure got puzzled. I could hear one of 'em saying: "Aw, come on! That ain't no regular rabbit; he don't look like a rabbit, and he don't talk like a rabbit, and he don't act like a rabbit!" Then another would say: "What of it? What do we care if he's a regular rabbit or not? Let's get him, anyway, and take him apart!"

"'So they all begin to jump again and can't quite make it till their leader says he'll show 'em a real jump. He backs off a little to get a run and lands right on the log. Then he wished he hadn't. Old Kate worked so quick I couldn't hardly follow it. In about three seconds this leader lands on his back down in the bunch, squealing like one of these Italian sopranos when the flute follows her up. He crawls off on his stomach, still howling, and I see he's had a couple of wipes over the eye, and one of his ears is shredded.

"'A couple of the others come over to ask him how it happened, and what he quit for, and did his foot slip; and he says: "Mark my words, gentlemen; we got our work cut out for us here. That animal is acting less and less like a rabbit every minute. He's more turbulent and he's got spurs on." He goes on talking this way while the others bark at Kate, and Kate dares any one of 'em to come on up there and have it out, man to man. Finally another lands on the tree trunk and gets what the first one got. I could see it this time. Kate done some dandy shortarm work in the clinches and hurled him off on his back like the other one; then he stands there sharpening his claws on the bark and grinning in a masterful way. He was saying: "You will, will you?"

"'Then one of these beetles must of said, "Come on, boys—all together now!" for four of 'em landed up on the trunk all to once. And Kate wasn't there. He'd had the top of this fallen tree at his back, and he kites up a limb about ten feet above their heads and stretches out for a rest, cool as anything, licking his paws and purring like he enjoyed the beautiful summer day, and wasn't everything calm and lovely? It was awful insulting the way he looked down on 'em, with his eyes half shut. And you never seen beetles so astonished in your life. They just couldn't believe their eyes, seeing a rabbit act that way! The leader limps over and says: "There! What did I tell you, smarties? I guess next time you'll take my word for it. I guess you can see plain enough now he ain't no rabbit, the way he skinned up that tree."

"'They calm down a mite at this, and one or two says they thought he was right from the first; and some others says: "Well, it wouldn't make no difference what he was, rabbit or no rabbit, if he'd just come down and meet the bunch of us fair and square; but the dirty coward is afraid to fight us, except one at a time." The leader is very firm, though. He tells 'em that if this here object ain't a rabbit they got no right to molest him, and if he is a rabbit he's gone crazy, and wouldn't be good to eat, anyway; so they better go find one that acts sensible. And he gets 'em away, all talking about it excitedly.

"'Well, sir, you wouldn't believe how tickled Kate was all that day. It was like he'd found a new interest in life. And next time these beetles come up they pull off another grand scrap. Kate laid for 'em just this side of the creek and let 'ern chase him back to his tree. He skun up three others that day, still pursuin' his cowardly tactics of fighting 'em one at a time, and retirin' to his perch when three or four would come at once. Also, when they give him up again and started off he come down and chased 'em to the creek bank, like you seen the other day, telling 'em to be sure and not forget the number, because he ain't had so much fun since he met up with a woodchuck. The next time they showed up he'd got so contemptuous of 'em that he'd leap down and engage one that had got separated from the pack. He had two of 'em darn' near out before they was rescued by their friends.

"'Then, a few days later, along comes the pack again—only this time they're being herded by the lad with the ginger-coloured whiskers. He gets off his horse and says how do I do, and what lovely weather, and how bracing the air is; and I says what pretty beetles he has; and he says it's ripping sport; and I says, yes; Kate has ripped up a number of 'em, but I hope he don't blame me none, because my Kitty has to defend himself. Say, this guy brightened up and like to took me off my feet! He grabs both my hands and shakes 'em warmly for a long time and says do I think my cat can put the whole bunch on the blink?—or words to that effect. And I says it's the surest thing in the world; but why? And he says, then the sooner the better, because it's a barbarous sport and every last beetle ought to be thoroughly killed; and when they are, in case his mother don't find out the crooked work, mebbe he'll be let to raise orchids or do something useful in the world, instead of frittering his life away in the vain pursuit of pleasure.

"'Oh, he was the chatty lad, all right! And I felt kind of sorry for him; so I says Kate would dearly love to wipe these beetles out one by one; and he says: 'Capital, by Jove!' And I call Kitty and we pull off another nice little scrap on the fallen tree, though it's hard to make the beetles take much interest in it now, except in the way of self-defense. Even at that, they're kept plenty occupied.

"'Say, this guy is the happiest you ever see one when Kate has about four more of 'em licked to a standstill in jigtime. He says he has one more favour to ask of me: Will I allow his sister to come up some day and see the lovely carnage? And I says, Sure! Kate will be glad to oblige any time. He says he'll fetch her up the first time the pack is able to get out again, and he keeps on chattering like a child that's found a new play-pretty.

"'I can't hardly get him off the place, he's so greatful to me. He tells me his biography and about how this here blond guy has been roughing him all over Europe and Asia, and how it had got to stop right here, because a man has a right to live his own life, after all; and then he branches off in a nutty way to tell me that he always takes a cold shower every morning, winter and summer, and he never could read a line of Sir Walter Scott, and why don't some genius invent a fountain pen that will work at all times? and so on, till it sounded delirious. But he left at last.

"'And we had some good ripping sport when him and sister come up. I never seen such a blood-thirsty female. She'd nearly laugh her head off when Kitty was gouging the eye out of one of these cunning little scamps. She said if I'd ever seen the nasty curs pile on to one poor defenseless little bunny I'd understand why she was so keen about my beetle-cat. That's what she called Kate.

"'Kate, he got kind of bored with the whole business after that. He hadn't actually eat one yet, and mebbe that was all that kept him going—wanting to see if they'd taste any better than regular rabbits. But you bet they knew now that Kate wasn't any kind of a rabbit. They didn't have any more arguments on that point—they knew darn' well he didn't have a drop of rabbit blood in his veins. Oh, he's some beetle-cat, all right!'

"That's Cousin Egbert for you! Can you beat him—changing round and being proud of this mixed marriage that he had formerly held to be a scandal!

"Well, I go back home, and here is mother waiting for me. And she's a changed woman. She's actually give up trying to make anything out of her chits, because after considerable browbeating and third-degree stuff, they've come through with the whole evil conspiracy—how they'd got her prize-winning beagles licked by a common cat that wouldn't be let into any bench show on earth! Her spirit was broke.

"'My poor son,' she says, 'I shall allow to go his silly way after this outrageous bit of double-dealing. I think it useless to strive further with him. He has not only confessed all the foul details, but he came brazenly out with the assertion that a man has a right to lead his own life—and he barely thirty!'

"She goes on to say that it's this terrible twentieth-century modernism that has infected him. She says that, first woman sets up a claim to live her own life, and now men are claiming the same right, even one as carefully raised and guarded as her boy has been; and what are we coming to? But, anyway, she did her best for him.

"Pretty soon Broadmoor was closed like you seen it to-day. Sister is now back in Boston, keeping tabs on orchestras and attending lectures on the higher birds; and brother at last has his orchid ranch somewhere down in California. He's got one pet orchid that I heard cost twelve thousand dollars—I don't know why. But he's very happy living his own life. The last I heard of mother she was exploring the headwaters of the Amazon River, hunting crocodiles and jaguars and natives, and so on.

"She was a good old sport, though. She showed that by the way she simmered down about Cousin Egbert's cat before she left. At first, she wanted to lay for it and put a bullet through its cowardly heart. Then she must of seen the laugh was on her, all right; for what did she do? Why, the last thing she done was to box up all these silver cups her beagles had won and send 'em over to Kate, in care of his owner—all the eye-cups and custard bowls, and so on. Cousin Egbert shows 'em off to every one.

"'Just a few cups that Kate won,' he'll say. 'I want to tell you he's some beetle-cat! Look what he's come up to—and out of nothing, you might say!'"



VIII

PETE'S B'OTHER-IN-LAW

On the Arrowhead Ranch it was noon by the bell that Lew Wee loves to clang. It may have been half an hour earlier or later on other ranches, for Lew Wee is no petty precisian. Ma Pettengill had ridden off at dawn; and, rather than eat luncheon in solitary state, I joined her retainers for the meal in the big kitchen, which is one of my prized privileges. A dozen of us sat at the long oilcloth-covered table and assuaged the more urgent pangs of hunger in a haste that was speechless and far from hygienic. No man of us chewed the new beef a proper number of times; he swallowed intently and reached for more. It was rather like twenty minutes for dinner at what our railway laureates call an eating house. Lew Wee shuffled in bored nonchalance between range and table. It was an old story to him.

The meal might have gone to a silent end, though moderating in pace; but we had with us to-day—as a toastmaster will put it—the young veterinary from Spokane. This made for talk after actual starvation had been averted—fragmentary gossip of the great city; of neighbouring ranches in the valley, where professional duty had called him; of Adolph, our milk-strain Durham bull, whose indisposition had brought him several times to Arrowhead; and then of Squat, our youngest cowboy, from whose fair brow the intrepid veterinary, on his last previous visit, had removed a sizable and embarrassing wen with what looked to me like a pair of pruning shears.

The feat had excited much uncheerful comment among Squat's confreres, bets being freely offered that he would be disfigured for life, even if he survived; and what was the sense of monkeying with a thing like that when you could pull your hat down over it? Of course you couldn't wear a derby with it; but no one but a darned town dude would ever want to wear a derby hat, anyway, and the trouble with Squat was, he wished to be pretty. It was dollars to doughnuts the thing would come right back again, twice as big as ever, and better well enough alone. But Squat, who is also known as Timberline, and is, therefore, a lanky six feet three, is young and sensitive and hopeful, and the veterinary is a matchless optimist; and the thing had been brought to a happy conclusion.

Squat, being now warmly urged, blushingly turned his head from side to side that all might remark how neatly his scar had healed. The veterinary said it had healed by first intention; that it was as pretty a job as he'd ever done on man or beast; and that Squat would be more of a hit then ever with the ladies because of this interesting chapter in his young life. Then something like envy shone in the eyes of those who had lately disparaged Squat for presuming to thwart the will of God; I detected in more than one man there the secret wish that he had something for this ardent expert to eliminate. Squat continued to blush pleasurably and to bolt his food until another topic diverted this entirely respectful attention from him. The veterinary asked if we had heard about the Indian ruction down at Kulanche last night—Kulanche Springs being the only pretense to a town between our ranch and Red Gap—a post-office, three general stores, a score of dwellings, and a low drinking place known as The Swede's. The news had not come to us; so the veterinary obliged. A dozen Indians, drifting into the valley for the haying about to begin, had tarried near Kulanche and bought whiskey of the Swede. The selling of this was a lawless proceeding and the consumption of it by the purchasers had been hazardous in the extreme. Briefly, the result had been what is called in newspaper headlines a stabbing affray. I quote from our guest's recital:

"Then, after they got calmed down and hid their knives, and it looked peaceful again, they decided to start all over; but the liquor was out, so that old scar-faced Pyann jumps on a pony and rides over from the camp for a fresh supply. He pulled up out in front of the Swede's and yelled for three bottles to be brought out to him, pronto! If he'd sneaked round to the back door and whispered he'd have got it all right, but this was a little too brash, because there were about a dozen men in the bar and the Swede was afraid to sell an Injin whiskey so openly. All he could do was go to the door and tell this pickled aborigine that he never sold whiskey to Injins and to get the hell out of there! Pyann called the Swede a liar and some other things, mentioning dates, and started to climb off his pony, very ugly.

"The Swede wasn't going to argue about it, because we'd all come out in front to listen; so he pulled his gun and let it off over Pyann's head; and a couple of the boys did the same thing, and that started the rest—about six others had guns—till it sounded like a bunch of giant crackers going off. Old Pyann left in haste, all right. He was flattened out on his pony till he looked like a plaster.

"We didn't hear any more of him last night, but coming up here this morning I found out he'd done a regular Paul Revere ride to save his people; he rode clear up as far as that last camp, just below here, on your place, yelling to every Injin he passed that they'd better take to the brush, because the whites had broken out at Kulanche. At that, the Swede ought to be sent up, knowing they'll fight every time he sells them whiskey. Two of these last night were bad cut in this rumpus."

"Yes; and he'd ought to be sent up for life for selling it to white men, too—the kind he sells." This was Sandy Sawtelle, speaking as one who knew and with every sign of conviction. "It sure is enterprising whiskey. Three drinks of it make a decent man want to kill his little golden-haired baby sister with an axe. Say, here's a good one—lemme tell you! I remember the first time, about three, four years ago—"

The speaker was interrupted—it seemed to me with intentional rudeness. One man hurriedly wished to know who did the cutting last night; another, if the wounded would recover; and a third, if Pete, an aged red vassal of our own ranch, had been involved. Each of the three flashed a bored glance at Sandy as he again tried for speech:

"Well, as I was saying, I remember the first time, about three, four years ago—"

"If old Pete was down there I bet his brother-in-law did most of the knifework," put in Buck Devine firmly.

It was to be seen that they all knew what Sandy remembered the first time and wished not to hear it again. Others of them now sought to stifle the memoir, while Sandy waited doggedly for the tide to ebb. I gathered that our Pete had not been one of the restive convives, he being known to have spent a quiet home evening with his mahala and their numerous descendants, in their camp back of the wood lot; I also gathered that Pete's brother-in-law had committed no crime since Pete quit drinking two years before. There was veiled mystery in these allusions to the brother-in-law of Pete. It was almost plain that the brother-in-law was a lawless person for whose offenses Pete had more than once been unjustly blamed. I awaited details; but meantime—

"Well, as I was saying, I remember the first time, about three, four years ago—"

Sandy had again dodged through a breach in the talk, quite as if nothing had happened. Buck Devine groaned as if in unbearable anguish. The others also groaned as if in unbearable anguish. Only the veterinary and I were polite.

"Oh, let him get it offen his chest," urged Buck wearily. "He'll perish if he don't—having two men here that never heard him tell it." He turned upon the raconteur, with a large sweetness of manner: "Excuse me, Mr. Sawtelle! Pray do go on with your thrilling reminiscence. I could just die listening to you. I believe you was wishing to entertain the company with one of them anecdotes or lies of which you have so rich a store in that there peaked dome of yours. Gents, a moment's silence while this rare personality unfolds hisself to us!"

"Say, lemme tell you—here's a good one!" resumed the still placid Sandy. "I remember the first time, about three, four years ago, I ever went into The Swede's. A stranger goes in just ahead of me and gets to the bar before I do, kind of a solemn-looking, sandy-complected little runt in black clothes.

"'A little of your best cooking whiskey,' says he to the Swede, while I'm waiting beside him for my own drink.

"The Swede sets out the bottle and glass and a whisk broom on the bar. That was sure a new combination on me. 'Why the whisk broom?' I says to myself. 'I been in lots of swell dives and never see no whisk broom served with a drink before.' So I watch. Well, this sad-looking sot pours out his liquor, shoots it into him with one tip of the glass; and, like he'd been shot, he falls flat on the floor, all bent up in a convulsion—yes, sir; just like that! And the Swede not even looking over the bar at him!

"In a minute he comes out of this here fit, gets on his feet and up to the bar, grabs the whisk broom, brushes the dust off his clothes where he's rolled on the floor, puts back the whisk broom, says, 'So long, Ed!' to the Swede—and goes out in a very businesslike manner.

"Then the Swede shoves the bottle and a glass and the whisk broom over in front of me, but I says: 'No, thanks! I just come in to pass the time of day. Lovely weather we're having, ain't it?' Yes, sir; down he goes like he's shot, wriggles a minute, jumps up, dusts hisself off, flies out the door; and the Swede passing me the same bottle and the same broom, and me saying: 'Oh, I just come in to pass the time of—'"

The veterinary and I had been gravely attentive. The faces of the others wore not even the tribute of pretended ennui. They had betrayed an elaborate deafness. They now affected to believe that Sandy Sawtelle had not related an anecdote. They spoke casually and with an effect of polished ease while yet here capitulated, as tale-tellers so often will.

"I remember a kid, name of Henry Lippincott, used to set in front of me at school," began Buck Devine, with the air of delicately breaking a long silence; "he'd wiggle his ears and get me to laughing out loud, and then I'd be called up for it by teacher and like as not kept in at recess."

"You ought to seen that bunch of tame alligators down to the San Francisco Fair," observed Squat genially. "The old boy that had 'em says 'Oh, yes, they would make fine pets, and don't I want a couple for ten dollars to take home to the little ones?' But I don't. You come right down to household pets—I ruther have me a white rabbit or a canary bird than an alligator you could step on in the dark some night and get all bit up, and mebbe blood poison set in."

"I recollect same as if it was yesterday," began Uncle Abner quickly. "We was coming up through northern Arizona one fall, with a bunch of longhorns and we make this here water hole about four P.M.—or mebbe a mite after that or a little before; but, anyway, I says to Jeff Bradley, 'Jeff,' I says to him, 'it looks to me almighty like—'"

Sandy Sawtelle savagely demanded a cup of coffee, gulped it heroically, rose in a virtuous hurry, and at the door wondered loudly if he was leaving a bunch of rich millionaires that had nothing to do but loaf in their club all the afternoon and lie their heads off, or just a passell of lazy no-good cowhands that laid down on the job the minute the boss stepped off the place. Whereupon, it being felt that the rabid anecdotist had been sufficiently rebuked, we all went out to help the veterinary look at Adolph for twenty minutes more.

Adolph is four years old and weighs one ton. He has a frowning and fearsome front and the spirit of a friendly puppy. The Arrowhead force loafed about in the corral and imparted of its own lore to the veterinary while he took Adolph's temperature. Then Adolph, after nosing three of the men to have his head rubbed, went to stand in the rush-grown pool at the far end of the corral, which the gallery took to mean that he still had a bit of fever, no matter what the glass thing said.

The veterinary opposed a masterly silence to this majority diagnosis, and in the absence of argument about it there seemed nothing left for the Arrowhead retainers but the toil for which they were paid. They went to it lingeringly, one by one, seeming to feel that perhaps they wronged the ailing Adolph by not staying there to talk him over.

Uncle Abner, who is the Arrowhead blacksmith, was the last to leave—or think of leaving—though he had mule shoes to shape and many mules to shoe. He glanced wistfully again at Adolph, in cool water to his knees, tugged at his yellowish-white beard, said it was a dog's life, if any one should ask me, and was about to slump mournfully off to his shop—when his eye suddenly brightened.

"Will you look once at that poor degraded red heathen, acting like a whirlwind over in the woodlot?"

I looked once. Pete, our Indian, was apparently the sole being on the ranch at that moment who was honestly earning his wage. No one knows how many more than eighty years Pete has lived; but from where we stood he was the figure of puissant youth, rhythmically flashing his axe into bits of wood that flew apart at its touch. Uncle Abner, beside me, had again shrugged off the dread incubus of duty. He let himself go restfully against the corral bars and chuckled a note of harsh derision.

"Ain't it disgusting! I bet he never saw the boss when she rode off this A.M. Yes, sir; that poor benighted pagan must think she's still in the house—prob'ly watching him out of the east winder this very minute."

"What's this about his brother-in-law?" I asked.

"Oh, I dunno; some silly game he tries to come the roots over folks with. Say, he's a regular old murderer, and not an honest hair in his head! Look at the old cheat letting on to be a good steady worker because he thinks the boss is in the house there, keeping an eye on him. Ain't it downright disgusting!"

Uncle Abner said this as one supremely conscious of his own virtue. He himself was descending to no foul pretense.

"A murderer, is he?"

I opened my cigarette case to the man of probity. He took two, crumpled the tobacco from the papers and stuffed it into his calabash pipe.

"Sure is he a murderer! A tough one, too."

The speaker moved round a corner of the barn and relaxed to a sitting posture on the platform of the pump. It brought him into the sun; but it also brought him where he could see far down the road upon which his returning employer would eventually appear. His eyes ever haunted the far vistas of that road; otherwise he remained blissfully static.

It should perhaps be frankly admitted that Uncle Abner is not the blacksmith of song and story and lithographed art treasure, suitable for framing. That I have never beheld this traditional smith—the rugged, upstanding tower of brawn with muscles like iron bands—is beside the point. I have not looked upon all the blacksmiths in the world, and he may exist. But Uncle Abner can't pose for him. He weighs a hundred and twenty pounds without his hammer, is lean to scrawniness, and his arms are those of the boys you see at the track meet of Lincoln Grammar School Number Seven. The mutilated derby hat he now wore, a hat that had been weathered from plum colour to a poisonous green—a shred of peacock feather stuck in the band—lent his face no dignity whatever.

In truth, his was not an easy face to lend dignity to. It would still look foolish, no matter what was lent it. He has a smug fringe of white curls about the back and sides of his head, the beard of a prophet, and the ready speech of a town bore. The blacksmith we read of can look the whole world in the face, fears not any man, and would far rather do honest smithing any day in the week—except Sunday—than live the life of sinful ease that Uncle Abner was leading for the moment.

Uncle Abner may have feared no man; but he feared a woman. It was easy to see this as he chatted the golden hours away to me. His pale eyes seldom left the road where it came over a distant hill. When the woman did arrive—Oh, surely the merry clang of the hammer on the anvil would be heard in Abner's shop, where he led a dog's life. But, for a time at least—

"So he's one of these tough murderers, is he?"

"You said it! Always a-creating of disturbances up on the reservation, where he rightly belongs. Mebbe that's why they let him go off. Anyway, he never stays there. Even in his young days they tell me he wouldn't stay put. He'd disappear for a month and always come back with a new wife. Talk about your Mormons! One time they sent out a new agent to the reservation, and he hears talk back and forth of Pete philandering thisaway; and he had his orders from the Gov'ment at Washington, D.C., to stamp out this here poly-gamy—or whatever you call it; so he orders Pete up on the carpet and says to him: 'Look here now, Pete! You got a regular wife, ain't you?' Pete says sure he has; and how could he say anything else—the old liar! 'Well,' says Mr. Agent, 'I want you to get this one regular wife of yours and lead a decent, orderly home life with her; and don't let me hear no more scandalous reports about your goings on.'

"Pete says all right; but he allows he'll have to have help in getting her back home, because she's got kind of antagonistic and left him. The agent says he'll put a stop to that if Pete'll just point her out. So they ride down about a mile from the agency to a shack where they's a young squaw out in front graining a deerhide and minding her own business. She looked up when they come and started to jaw Pete something fierce; but the agent tells her the Gov'ment frowns on wives running off, and Pete grabbed her; and the agent he helps, with her screeching and biting and clawing like a female demon. The agent is going to see that Pete has his rights, even if it don't seem like a joyous household; and finally they get her scrambled onto Pete's horse in front of him and off they go up the trail. The agent yells after 'em that Pete is to remember that this is his regular wife and he'd better behave himself from now on.