Judith of the Plains Part 16

"The habit of bathing," she commented, "is sh.o.r.e like religion: them that observes it wonders how them that neglects it gets along." She beckoned Mary to follow, and led the way to a bunch of willows that grew about a stone's-throw from the camp. "Here be a whole creek full of water, if you don't lack the fort.i.tood. It's cold enough to sell for ten cents a gla.s.s down to Texas."

Somewhat dismayed, Mary stepped gingerly into the creek. Its intense cold numbed her at first, but a second later awoke all her young l.u.s.tiness, and she returned to camp in a fine glow of courage to encounter whatever else there might be of novelty. Mrs. Yellett was preparing breakfast at a sheet-iron stove, a.s.sisted by Cacta and Clematis.

"Your hankering after a bath like this"-she added another handful of flour to the biscuit dough-"do sh.o.r.e remind me of an Englishman who come to visit near Laramie in the days of plenty, when steers had jumped to forty-five. This yere Britisher was exhibit stock, sh.o.r.e enough, being what's called a peer of the realm, which means, in his own country, that he is just nacherally ent.i.tled from the start to h'ist his nose high.

"The outfit he was goin' to visit wasn't in the habit of havin' peers drop in on them casual, but they aimed to make him feel that he wasn't the first of the herd that headed that way by a quart"-she cut four biscuits with a tin cup, and resumed-"to which end they rounded up every specimen of canned food that's ever come across the Rockies.

"'Let him ask for "salmon esplinade," let him ask for "chicken marine-go,"

let him ask for plum-pudding, let him ask for hair-oil or throat lozengers, this yere outfit calls his bluff,' says Billy Ames, who owns the 'twin star' outfit and is antic.i.p.atin' this peer as a guest.

"Well, just as everything is ready, the can-opener, sharp as a razor, waitin' to open up such effete luxuries as the peer may demand, Bill Ames gets called to California by the sickness of his wife. He feels mean about abandonin' the peer, but he don't seem to have no choice, his wife bein'

one of them women who shares her bad health pretty impartially round the family. So Billy he departs. But before he goes he expounds to Joplin Joe, his foreman, the nature of a peer and how his wants is apt to be a heap fashionable, and that when he asks for anything to grasp the can-opener and run to the store-house-Cacta, you put on the coffee!

"That peer arrives in the afternoon, and he never makes a request any more than a corpse. Beyond a marked disposition to herd by himself and to maintain the greatest possible distance between his own person and a six-shooter, he don't vary none from the bulk of tenderfeet. At night, when all parties retires, and Joplin Joe ponders on them untouched, effete luxuries in the store-room, and how the can-opener 'ain't once been dimmed in the cause of hospitality, it frets him considerable, and he feels he ain't doin' his duty to the absent Billy Ames.

"At sunrise he can stand it no longer. He thunders on the Britisher's door with the b.u.t.t of his six-shooter, calling out:

"'Peer, peer, be you awake?'

"The peer allowed he was, though his teeth was rattling like broken crockery.

"'Peer, would you relish some "salmon esplinade"?'

"The peer allowed he wouldn't.

"'Peer, would you relish some "chicken marine-go"?'

"The peer allowed he sh.o.r.e wouldn't, and the crockery rattled harder than ever. Joplin Joe then tried him on the hair-oil and the throat lozengers, the peer declining each with thanks.

"'Peer,' said Joplin Joe, fair busting with hospitality, 'is there anything in this Gawd's world that you do want?'

"The crockery rattled an interlood, then Joplin Joe made out:

"'Thanks, very much. I should like a ba-ath'-Clematis, you see if them biscuits is brownin'.

"Joe he ran to the store-room, and his eye encountered a barrel of corned-beef. He calls to a couple of cow-punchers, and the first thing you know that late corned steer is piled onto the prairie and them cow-punchers is hustling the empty barrel in to the peer. Next they detaches the steps from the kitchen door, ropes 'em to the barrel and introduces the peer to his bath. He's good people all right, and when he sees they calls his bluff he steps in all right and lets 'em soak him a couple of buckets. This here move restores all parties to a mutual understanding, and the peer he bathes in the corned-beef barrel regular durin' his stay-you see the habit had cinched him."

Ned had shot an antelope a day or two previous, and antelope steak, broiled over a glowing bed of wood coals, with black coffee, stewed dried apples, and soda biscuit made up what Mary found to be an unexpectedly palatable breakfast. As camp did not include a cow, no milk or b.u.t.ter was served with meals. Nevertheless, the hungry tenderfoot was quite content, and missed none of the appurtenances she had been brought up to believe essential to a civilized meal, not even the little silver jug that Aunt Martha always insisted came over with William the Conqueror-Aunt Martha scorned the _May-flower_ contingent as parvenus.

The family sat on the gra.s.s, tailor fashion, and every one helped himself to what appet.i.te prompted, in a fashion that suggested brilliant gymnastic powers. To pa.s.s a dish to any one, the governess discovered, was construed as an evidence of mental weakness and eccentricity. The family satisfied its appet.i.te without a.s.sistance or amenities, but with the skill of a troupe of jugglers.

Breakfast was half over when Mrs. Yellett laid down her knife, which she had handled throughout the meal with masterly efficiency. Mary watched her in hopeless embarra.s.sment, and wondered if her own timid use of a tin fork could be construed as an unfriendly comment upon the Yelletts' more simple and direct code of table etiquette.

"Land's sakes! I just felt, all the time we've been eating, we was forgettin' something. You children ought to remember, I got so much on my mind."

All eyes turned anxiously to the cooking-stove, while an expression of frank regret began to settle over the different faces. The backbone of their appet.i.tes had been broken, and there was something else, perhaps something even more appetizing, to come.

Interpreting the trend of their glance and expression, up flared Mrs.

Yellett, with as great a show of indignation as if some one had set a match to her petticoats.

"I declare, I never see such children; no more nacheral feelin's than a herd of coyotes; never thinks of a plumb thing but grub. No, make no mistake about the character of the objec' we've forgot. 'Tain't sweet pertaters, 'tain't mola.s.ses, 'tain't corn-bread-it's paw! It's your pore old paw-him settin' in the tent, forsook and neglected by his own children."

All started up to remedy their filial neglect without loss of time, but Mrs. Yellett waved them back to their places.

"Don't the whole posse of you go after him, like he'd done something and was to be apprehended. Ben, you go after your father."

Ben strode over to the little white tent that Mary had noticed glimmering in the moonlight the preceding evening, and presently emerged, supporting on his arm a partially paralyzed old man, who might have been Rip Van Winkle in the worst of tempers. His white hair and beard encircled a shrivelled, hawklike face, the mouth was sucked back in a toothless eddy that brought tip of nose and tip of chin into whispering distance, the eyes glittered from behind the overhanging, ragged brows like those of a hungry animal searching through the brush for its prey.

"If you've done eatin'," whispered Mrs. Yellett to Miss Carmichael, "you'd better run on. Paw's langwidge is simply awful when we forget to bring him to meals." Mary ran on.

When, after the lapse of some thirty minutes or so, the stentorian voice of Mrs. Yellett recalled Mary to camp, she found that the tin breakfast service had been washed and returned to the mess-box, the beds had been neatly folded and piled in one of the wagons-in fact, the extremely simple tent-hold, to coin a word, was in absolute order. It was just 6 A.M., and Mrs. Yellett thought it high time to begin school. Mary tried to convey to her that the hour was somewhat unusual, but she seemed to think that for pupils who were beginning their tasks comparatively late in life it would be impossible to start sufficiently early in the morning. So at this young and tender hour, with many misgivings, Mary set about preparing her _al fresco_ cla.s.s-room.

She chose a nice, flat little piece of the United States, situated in the shade of the clump of willows that bordered a trickling creek not far from her sylvan bath-room of the early morning. How she was to sit on the ground all day and yet preserve a properly pedagogical demeanor was the first question to be settled. That there was nothing even remotely resembling a chair in camp she felt reasonably a.s.sured, as "paw" was sitting on an inverted soap-box under a pine-tree, and "paw," by reason of age and infirmity, appropriated all luxuries. Mrs. Yellett, with her usual ac.u.men, grasped the situation.

"I'm figgerin'," she commented, "that there must be easier ways of governin' than sittin' up like a prairie-dog while you're at it."

Mrs. Yellett took a hurried survey of the camp, lessening the distance between herself and one of the light wagons with a gait in which grace was entirely subservient to speed; then, with one capacious wrench of the arms, she loosened the spring seat from the wagon and bore it to the governess with an artless air of triumph. It was difficult, under these circ.u.mstances, to explain to Mrs. Yellett that without that symbol of scholastic authority, a desk, the wagon seat was useless. Nevertheless, Mary set forth, with all her eloquence, the mission of a desk. Mrs.

Yellett was genuinely depressed. Had she imported the magician without his wand-Aladdin without his lamp? She proposed a bewildering choice-an inverted wash-tub, two buckets sustaining the relation of caryatides to a board, the sheet-iron cooking-stove. In an excess of solicitude she even suggested robbing "paw" of his soap-box.

Mary chose the wash-tub on condition that Mrs. Yellett consented to sacrifice the handles in the cause of lower education. She felt that an inverted tub that was likely to see-saw during cla.s.s hours would tend rather to develop a sense of humor in her pupils than to contribute to her pedagogical dignity.

The camp, as may already have been inferred, enjoyed a matriarchal form of government. Its feminine dictator was no exception to the race of autocrats in that she was not an absolute stranger to the rosy byways of self-indulgence. There was a strenuous quality in her pleasuring perhaps not inconsistent in one whose daily tasks included sheep-herding, ditch-digging, varied by irrigating and shearing in their proper seasons.

Under the circ.u.mstances, it was not surprising that her wash-tub bore about the same relationship to her real duties as does the crochet needle or embroidery hoop to the lives of less arduously engaged women. It was at once her fad and her relaxation, the dainty feminine accomplishment with which she whiled away the hours after a busy day spent with pick and shovel. Of all this Mary was ignorant when she proposed that Mrs. Yellett saw off the tub-handles in the cause of culture. However, Mrs. Yellett procured a saw, yet the hand that held it lingered in its descent on the handles. She contemplated the tub as affectionately as Hamlet regarding the skull of "Alas, poor Yorick!"

"This," she observed, "is the only thing about camp that reminds me I'm a woman. I'd plumb forget it many a time if it warn't for this little tub.

The ident.i.ty of a woman is mighty apt to get mislaid when dooty compels her to a.s.soome the pants cast aside by the nacheral head of the house in sickness or death. It's ben six years now since paw's done a thing but set 'round and wait for meals." Mrs. Yellett sighed laboriously. "Not that I'm holdin' it agin him none. When a man sees eighty, it's time he bedded himself down comfortable and waited for the nacheral course of events to weed him out. But when the boys get old enough to tend to herdin', irrigatin', and the work that G.o.d A'mighty provided that man might get the chance to sweat hisself for bread, accordin' to the Scriptures, I aim to indulge myself by doin' a wash of clothes every day, even if I have to take clean clothes and do 'em over again."

The poor "gov'ment's" tender heart could not resist this presentation of the case.

"We won't touch the handles, Mrs. Yellett," she laughed. "I'm glad you told me you had a personal sentiment for the tub. There are some things I should feel the same way about-my hoe and rake, for instance, that I care for my garden with, at home. And that suggests to me, why not dig two little trenches for the handles and plant the tub? Then I shall have an even firmer foundation on which to arrange the-the-the educational miscellany."

The suggestion of this harmless expedient was gratefully received, and the "desk" duly implanted, whereupon Mary pathetically sought to embellish her "cla.s.s-room" from such scanty materials as happened to be at hand. A hemst.i.tched bureau scarf that she had tucked in her trunk, in unquestioning faith in the bureau that was to be part of the ranch equipment, took the "raw edge," as it were, off the desk. A bunch of prairie flowers, flaming cactus blossoms in scarlet and yellow, ox-eyed daisies, white clematis from the creek, seemed none the less decorative for the tin cup that held them. Mary grimly told herself that her school was to have refining influences, even if it had no furniture.

The books, pencils, and paper arranged in decorous little piles, Miss Carmichael announced to her patroness that school was ready to open. Mrs.

Yellett, who had never heard that "a soft voice is an excellent thing in woman," and whose chest-notes were not unlike those of a Durham in sustained volume of sound, made the valley of the Wind River echo with the summons of the pupils to school, upon which the teacher herself was overcome by the absurdity of the situation and had barely time to escape back of the willows, where she laughed till she cried.

As the pupils trooped obediently to school, Mary noted that they carried no flowers to their dear teacher, but that Ben, the oldest pupil, twenty-one years old, six feet four inches in height and deeply saturnine in manner, carried a six-shooter in his cartridge-belt. The teacher felt that she was the last to deny a pupil any reasonable palliative of the tedium of cla.s.s-hours-the nearness of her own school-days inclined her to leniency in this particular-but she was hardly prepared to condone a six-shooter, and confided her fears to Mrs. Yellett, who received them with the indulgent tolerance a strong-minded woman might extend to the feminine flutter aroused by a mouse. She explained that Ben did not shoot for "glory," but to defend the herd from the casual calls of mountain-lions, bears, and coyotes. Jack and Ned, who were very nearly as tall as their older brother, carried similar weapons. Mary prayed that a fraternal spirit might dwell among her pupils.

The Misses Yellett were hardly less terrifying than their brothers. They had their father's fierce, hawklike profile, softened by youth, and the appalling height and robustness due to the freedom and fresh air of a nomadic existence. Their costumes might, Mary thought, have been fashioned out of gunny-sacks by the simple expedient of cutting holes for the head and arms. The description of the dress worn by the charcoal-burner's daughter in any mediaeval novel of modern construction would approximate fairly well the school toilets of these young lady pupils. The boys wore overalls and flannel shirts, which, in contrast to the sketchy effects of their sisters' costumes, seemed almost modish. Mrs. Yellett then left the "cla.s.s-room," saying she must take Ben's place with the sheep.

The Brobdingnags, huge of stature, sinister of aspect, deeply distrustful of the rites in which they were about to partic.i.p.ate, closed in about their teacher. From the pigeon-holes of memory Mary drew forth the academic smile with which a certain teacher of hers had invariably opened school. The pupils greeted the academic smile with obvious suspicion. No one smiled in camp. When anything according with their conception of the humorous happened, they laughed uproariously. Thus, early in the morning, on his way to breakfast, Ned had stumbled over an ax and severely cut his head. Every one but Ned saw the point of this joke immediately, and hearty guffaws testified to their appreciation.

Miss Carmichael took her place behind the upturned tub.

"Will you please be seated?" she said.

The cla.s.s complied with the instantaneous precision of automata newly greased and in excellent working order. Their abrupt obedience was disconcerting. Some one must have been drilling them, thought their anxious teacher, in the art of simultaneous squatting. The temper of the cla.s.s respecting scholastic deportment leaned towards rigidity bordering on self-torture.