Ma Pettengill Part 28

The boys scouted round quite a bit the next few days, listening for the shot and hoping to come on what was left; but they soon forgot it.

Me? I knew one side of Herman by that time. I knew he would be the most careful boy in every suicide he committed. If I'd been a life-insurance company it wouldn't have counted against him so much as the coffee habit or going without rubbers.

And--sure enough--about two months later the dead one come to life.

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

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

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

"The good people will come soon enough. You'll see!" says Herman.

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

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

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

Two of the boys was over this last June when he had his grand opening.

They was the only person there except a man from Surprise Valley that was looking for stock and got lost. Buck Devine says the place looked as swell as something you'd see round Chicago.

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

Everyone thinks he's plumb crazy now, even if they didn't when he said Eloise Plummer was as beautiful as the morning star. But you can't tell.

He's getting money every month from his uncle in Cincinnati to improve the place. He's sent the uncle a photo of it and it must look good back in Cincinnati, where you can't see the surrounding country.

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

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

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

I allowed her to sort papers for a moment. As she scanned them under drawn brows beside a lamp that was dimming, she again rumbled into song.

She now sang: "What fierce diseases wait around to hurry mortals home!"

It is, musically, the crudest sort of thing. And it clashed with my mood; for I now wished to know how Herman had revealed Prussian guile by his manner of leaving Reno. Only after another verse of the hymn could I be told. It seems worth setting down here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"To h.e.l.l with the President! Hurrah for the Kaiser!"

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

Of course he was safe out of town long before Manuel limped from the hospital looking for him with a knife. And yet Herman seemed so silly!

First thing when he got on the place he wanted to know where the engine was that pumped the windmill.

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

XI

CURLS

Ma Pettengill, long morose, for months made hostile of mood by the shortage of help, now bubbled with a strange vivacity. At her desk in the Arrowhead living room she cheerfully sorted a jumble of befigured sheets and proclaimed to one and all that the Arrowhead ranch was once more a going concern. She'd thought it was gone, and here it was merely going.

She would no longer be compelled to stare ruin in the face till it actually got embarra.s.sed and had to look the other way. And it was the swift doings of this here new foreman. He'd not only got us going again but had put us on a military basis. And at that he was nothing but a poor old wreck of a veteran from the trenches, aged all of twenty-one, shot to pieces, ga.s.sed, sh.e.l.l-shocked, trench feeted and fevered, and darned bad with nervous dyspepsia into the bargain.

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

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

Why, he just plain coped, that was all. He might be mere shattered flotsam, but you bet he was still some little coper, take her word for that! Matter of fact, though, he didn't aim to hold the job for long.

Only until this here smarty of a medical officer, that turned him down from going back to the trenches, was retired to private life again.

This here new foreman had to be on the ground when this puppet got out of his uniform and so could be handled proper by the right party without incurring twenty years in Leavenworth. At this brief meeting the unfortunate man would be told politely that he had guessed wrong on the foreman's physical condition, after which the same would be proved to him then and there, leaving him to wish that he hadn't been so arrogant telling parties they was unfit for further service and had better go home and forget all about the war. Yes, sir; he'd be left himself with something to forget that most likely he'd still be remembering vividly when folks had got to wondering what them funny little b.u.t.tons with "Liberty Loan" on 'em could ever of been used for.

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

It was a fair enough hospital case for both, but the one for jail could still walk.

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

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

Anyway, she and the Army was both satisfied, so let it go at that.

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

Mebbe so!

I was charmed indeed to hear the gladsome note from one so long dismal.

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