Ma Pettengill Part 6

She's a queer one. Darned if she don't make a person think sometimes--listening to her chatter--that there must be something kind of decent about human nature after all!

III

RED GAP AND THE BIG-LEAGUE STUFF

I waited beside Ma Pettengill at the open door of the Arrowhead ranch house. It was a moment of tranquil expectancy; presently we would be summoned to the evening meal. Down by the barn a tired janizary pumped water into a trough for two tired mules still in harness. Halfway down the lane, before a mirror tacked to the wall beside the bunk-house door, two men hurriedly combed their damp hair. Blackbirds were still noisy in the poplars. In the field at our left a lazy lot of white-faced cattle, large and placid, lolled or grazed on the new spring gra.s.s.

Surveying these cattle with a fond eye--had she not that day refused all of three hundred and twenty-five dollars a head for a score of these pure-bred cows?--my hostess read me a brief lecture on the superior fleshing disposition of the Hereford. No better rustler under range conditions, said she, acc.u.mulating flesh at all ages, storing it in seasons of plenty to draw on in seasons of want. Hadn't I noticed how common cows got paunchy and how well the fat was distributed on the pure-breds?

I had not noticed, cows being more or less cows to me, but I was prepared to look with deep respect upon any cow for which three hundred and twenty-five dollars could be sanely refused, and I now did so. I was told that I forgot their calves, which would be worth a hundred and sixty dollars the day they were weaned. This made it all more impressive. I looked respectfully again at the bulky creatures, though listening, too, for the stealthy-stepping Lew Wee; a day in the thin spring air along a rocky trout stream had made even cattle on the hoof suggestive.

Ma Pettengill, with a last proud look at her jewels, swept the panoramic camera of her eye round to the blacksmith shop on our right. Before it were strewn the mutilated remains of four wood wagons. I had lately heard the lady have words with Abner, the blacksmith, concerning repairs to these. Abner himself had few of the words. They were almost entirely his employer's. They were acutely to the effect that these here wagons would be running again before the week was out or she would know the reason why. The aggrieved Abner had tried to suggest that this reason she would know would not be the right reason at all, because wasn't he already working like a beaver? Possibly, said the lady. And beavers might be all right in their place. What she needed at this precise time was someone working like a blacksmith--someone!

Over her shoulder she had flung the word at him, blackened with emphasis.

"Any one hurt in the runaway?" I asked, observing her glance to linger upon this snarl of wagon parts.

"Four wagons was mortally hurt," said the lady, "but of course not a mule skinner touched. Talk about charmed lives! Besides, they wasn't accidents; they was just incidents. It was part of our winter sports."

"I didn't know you had winter sports up here."

"I didn't either till I got down to Red Gap last winter and found out that was what we had been having. Here I been gritting along winter after winter, calling it work, and come to find out it's what parties go a long distance to indulge in and have to wear careful clothes for it. Yes, sir; society is mad about it. Red Gap itself was mad about it last winter, when it got a taste of the big-league stuff. Next winter I'll try to get the real sporting spirit into this gang of sedentaries up here; buy 'em uniforms and start a winter-sports club. Their ideal winter sport so far is to calk up every c.h.i.n.k in the bunk house, fill the air-tight stove full of pitch pine and set down with a good book by Elinor Glyn. They never been at all mad about romping out in the keen frosty air that sets the blood tingling and brings back the roses to their wan cheeks.

"Take last winter. Not knowing it was sport it seemed at times like toil. First it snowed early and caught a lot of my cows and calves in the mountains. While we sported round with these, working 'em down into the valley, the weather changed. It snowed harder. Just oodles of the most perfectly darling snow. Then distemper broke out among the saddle horses. Then being already shorthanded, what does the fool vaquero boss do but pick a splinter out of his thumb with a pin and get blood poison enough to lay him off? Too much trouble for cussing. I tried that out scientifically. So I had to get out and make a hand. If I heard someone say I did as much as any three of these mollycoddles up here I'd just simper in silence and look down. Only I wish I'd known it was a fashionable winter sport. I'd of been more carefree.

"Then come the best of our winter sports--wood hauling through the drifts over a rocky road down the mountains. My lands, but it was jolly! On a quiet day there'd be only one runaway, one wagon fetched to the shop in sections, like a puzzle. Then another day all hands would seem to be quite mad about the sport, and nothing but the skinners and the mules would get back to camp that night--with the new outfit of harness and the hoodlum wagon going back next morning to see what could be salvaged.

"Finally we got the cows and calves home, got our wood in and started a general rodeo for the dry stock--Nature's fleecy mantle getting thicker every minute. And none of us ever suspecting that it was a sport only the wealthy have a right to. If I'd suggested building an ice palace as a sporty wind-up I'll bet the help wouldn't of took it right. Anyway, I didn't. With everything under shelter or fence at last I fled down to Red Gap, where I could lead a quiet life suitable to one of my years--where I thought I could."

From the doorway Lew Wee softly called, "You come now!" We both heard him. Inside my hostess stealthily closed the door upon the gentle spring night; closed and locked it. Furtively she next drew curtains over the two windows. Then, candle in hand, she went lightly across the big living room to a stern and businesslike safe that stands against the farther wall. Kneeling before this she rapidly twirled the lock to a series of mystic numbers and opened the formidable doors.

"Leave us keep the home fires burning," said she impressively, and withdrew from an exposed cavern a bottle of Scotch whisky. Standing before the safe we drank chattily. We agreed that prohibition was a good thing for the state of Washington. We said we were glad to deny ourselves for the sake of those weaker natures lacking self-control, including Mr.

Bryan, whom the lady characterized as "just a water-spout."

The bottle restored to security my hostess shut the thick doors upon it and twirled the lock. Then she raised the curtains and reopened the door to the innocent spring night, after which we sat to our meatless and wheatless repast. In place of meat we sternly contented ourselves with stewed chicken, certain of the Arrowhead fowls having refused to do their bit in eggs and now paying the penalty in a crisis when something is expected from everyone. In place of wheat we merely had corn m.u.f.fins of a very coaxing perfection. Even under these hardships I would patriotically practice the gospel of the clean plate.

As her exploring spoon wandered over the platter of half-submerged chicken Ma Pettengill casually remarked that carefree Bohemians was always the first to suffer under prohibition, and that you couldn't have a really good Latin Quarter in a dry town. I let it go. I must always permit her certain speeches of seeming irrelevance before she will consent to tell me all. Thus a moment later as she lavished valuable b.u.t.ter fat upon one of the spirituelle m.u.f.fins she communicated the further item that Cousin Egbert Floud still believed Bohemians was gla.s.s blowers, he having seen a troupe of such at the World's Fair. He had, it is true, known some section hands down on the narrow gauge that was also Bohemians, but Bohemians of any cla.s.s at all was gla.s.s blowers, and that was an end of it. No use telling him different, once he gets an idea into his poor old head.

This, too, I let pa.s.s, overcome for the moment by the infatuating qualities of the chicken stew. But when appet.i.tes, needlessly inflamed by the lawless tippling, had at last been appeased and the lady had built her first cigarette I betrayed a willingness to hear more of the hinted connection between winter sports and Latin Quarters peopled by Bohemians, gla.s.s-blowing or otherwise. The woman chuckled privately through the first cigarette, adeptly fashioned another, removed to a rocking-chair before the open fire and in a businesslike fervour seized a half-knitted woollen sock, upon which she fell to work.

She now remarked that there must be along the Front millions of sweaters and wristlets and m.u.f.flers and dewdads that it looked well to knit in public, so it seemed to be up to her to supply a few pairs of socks. She said you naturally couldn't expect these here society dames that knitted in theatres and hotel corridors to be knitting anything so ugly as socks, even if they would know how to handle four needles, which they mostly wouldn't; but someone had to do it. Without the slightest change of key she added that it was a long story and painful in spots, but had a happy ending, and she didn't know as she minded telling me.

So I come down to Red Gap about December first hoping to hole up for the winter and get thoroughly warmed through before spring. Little did I know our growing metropolis was to be torn by dissension until you didn't know who was speaking to who. And all because of a lady Bohemian from Washington Square, New York City, who had crept into our midst and started a Latin Quarter overnight. The first day I was downtown I overheard two ladies saying something about the new Latin Quarter. That mystified me, because I knew the town had been lidded tight since Lon Price went out of office as mayor. Then I meet Mrs. Judge Ballard in the Boston Cash Store and she says have I met a Miss Smith from New York who is visiting here. I said I had not. It didn't sound exciting. Some way "a Miss Smith" don't excite you overly, no matter where she hails from. So I dismissed that and went on with my shopping. Next I meet Egbert Floud, who is also down for the winter to rest beside a good coal stove, and we ask each other what's the good word and is anything new. Cousin Egbert says nothing is new in Red Gap except a Bohemian gla.s.s blower from Grinitch Village, New York. He says he ain't seen her blow gla.s.s yet, but he's going some night, because them Bohemian gla.s.s blowers down to the fair was right fascinating, and don't I think Grinitch is a b.u.m name for a town? He says when I see this gla.s.s blower I'll feel like asking animal, vegetable, or mineral, because he has seen her in the post office with Metta Bigler and she looks like a nut.

I tell the poor old zany he sounds simple-minded himself and I can't make a lick of sense out of what he's said, except I know this village ain't spelled that way. He's telling me that's the way it's spoken anyway, and about how he brought home a gla.s.s watch chain that these Bohemians blowed at the fair, when along come Metta Bigler herself and stops to shake hands, so Cousin Egbert slinks off.

I got to tell you about Metta. She's our artist; gives lessons in oil painting and burnt wood and other refinements. People can take six lessons off Metta and go home and burn all the Indian heads on leather sofa pillows that you'd ever want to see. Also she can paint a pink fish and a copper skillet and a watermelon with one slice cut out as good as any one between here and Spokane. She's a perfectly good girl, falling on thirty, refers to herself without a pang as a bachelor girl, and dresses as quiet as even a school-teacher has to in a small town.

Well, Metta rushes up to me now, all glowing and girlish, and says I must come to her studio that very afternoon and meet her dear old chum, Vernabelle Smith, that is visiting her from Washington Square, New York. She and Vernabelle met when they were completing their art education in the Latin Quarter of Chicago, and Vernabelle had gone down to New York and got into all the new movements and among people who was doing things, and was now very, very advanced being what you might call an intellectual; but I would be sure to like her because she was so delightfully Bohemian, not standing on ceremony but darting straight to the heart of life, which is so complex to most of us who live within convention's sh.e.l.l and never get in touch with the great throbbing centre of things. She didn't say what things. It was a new line of chatter from Metta. Usually she'd have been telling me her troubles with Chinese help, or what a robber the Square Deal meat market was, or, at the most, how her fruit-and-fish piece had carried off the first prize of twenty dollars at the Kulanche County Fair.

So I say I'll be sure to look in on her and her new friend. I reckoned she must be the Miss Smith and the gla.s.s blower I'd already heard about that morning. Of course "Miss Smith" didn't sound like much, but Vernabelle Smith was different. That name Vernabelle made all the difference in the world. You sort of forgot the ensuing Smith.

That same afternoon about four P.M. I dropped round to the Bigler house.

Metta's mother let me in. She's a neat and precise old lady with careful hair, but she looked scared as she let me in and led me to the door of Metta's studio, which is a big room at the back of the house. She didn't go in herself. She pulled it open and shut it on me quick, like it was a lion's den or something.

All the curtains was down, candles lighted, and the room not only hot but full of cigarette smoke and smoke from about forty of these here punk sticks that smoldered away on different perches. It had the smell of a nice hot Chinese laundry on a busy winter's night. About eight or ten people was huddled round the couch, parties I could hardly make out through this gas attack, and everyone was gabbling. Metta come forward to see who it was, then she pulled something up out of the group and said "Meet dear Vernabelle."

Well, she was about Metta's age, a short thirty, a kind of a slaty blonde with bobbed hair--she'd been reached fore and aft--and dressed mostly in a pale-blue smock and no stockings. Nothing but sandals. I could hardly get my eyes off her feet at first. Very few of our justly famous s.e.x can afford to brave the public gaze without their stockings on. Vernabelle could ill afford it. She was skinny, if you know what I mean, lots of tendons and so forth, though I learned later that Vernabelle called it being willowy. She had slaty-gray eyes and a pale, dramatic face with long teeth and a dignified and powerful-looking nose. She was kind of hungry-looking or soulful or something. And she wore about two yards of crockery necklace that rattled when she moved. Sounded like that Chinaman with his dishes out there in the kitchen. I learned later that this was art jewellery.

Vernabelle greeted me with many contortions like she was taking an exercise and said she had heard so much about me and how interesting it was to meet one who did things. I said I was merely in the cattle business. She said "How perfect!" and clasped her hands in ecstasy over the very idea. She said I was by way of being the ideal type for it. And did I employ real cowboys; and they, too, must be fascinating, because they did things. I said they did if watched; otherwise not. And did I acquire an ascendancy over their rough natures. I said we quickly parted forever if I didn't do that. Then she clanked across to the couch, where she set down on her feet. I give her credit for that much judgment. That girl never did just plain set down. It was either on one foot or on both feet, or she draped herself along the furniture to show how willowy she could be without its hurting.

She now lighted a new cigarette from her old one and went on telling the fish-faces about her how little colour she had found here. She said we was by way of being a mere flat expanse in dull tints. But what could be expected of a crude commercialism where the arts was by way of being starved. Ah, it was so different from dear old Washington Square, where one was by way of being at the heart of life. It took me some time to get this by-way-of-being stuff, but the others was eating it up. Metta Bigler hovered round proud as Lucifer and trying to smoke for the first time in her life, though making poor work of it, like she was eating the cigarette and every now and then finding bits she couldn't swallow, and holding it off at arm's length in between bites. Mrs. Henrietta Templeton Price was making better work of the cigarettes, and Beryl Mae Macomber, a wealthy young society heiress and debutante, aged seventeen, was saying that she had always felt this lack in Red Gap and would of been in the movies long since if her aunt had listened to reason. The only man present was Edgar Tomlinson, who is Red Gap's most prominent first-nighter and does the Lounger-in-the-Lobby column for the Recorder, reviewing all the new films in an able and fearless manner. Edgar was looking like he had come into his own at last. He was wearing a flowing tie and a collar that hardly come higher than his chest and big wind shields on a black cord, and had his hair mussed up like a regular Bohemian in a Sunday paper. Vernabelle was soon telling him how refreshing it was to meet away out here one who was by way of doing things, and she had read that very morning his review of the film ent.i.tled A Sister of Sin, and had found it masterly in its clear-cut a.n.a.lysis, but why did he waste himself here when the great world lay open. Edgar thrust back his falling hair with a weary hand and tried to look modest, but it was useless. Vernabelle devoted most of her chat to Edgar. She was an incessant person but it seemed to take a man to bring out all that was best in her.

Pretty soon Metta went over to a table and brought back some gla.s.ses of wine on a tray, of which all partook with more or less relish. I recognized it from the bottle. It was elderberry wine that Metta's mother had put up. You have to be resourceful in a dry state.

"I'm afraid you'll all think me frightfully Bohemian," said Metta proudly.

Beryl Mae held her gla.s.s up to the light and said, "After all, does anything in life really matter?" She appeared very blase in all her desperate young beauty. She and Edgar Tomlinson looked as near right as anything you'd see in Washington Square. Vernabelle said the true spirit of Bohemia knew neither time nor place; it was wherever those gathered who were doing things, and wasn't it splendid that even here in this crude Western town a few of the real sort could meet and make their own little quarter and talk about the big things, the lasting things!

Everyone said yes, quite so; and they all tried to handle their wine like it was a rare old vintage. But you can't hold much wa.s.sail on the juice of the elderberry; it ain't the most jocund stuff the world as fermented by Metta's mother.

However, it livened things up a bit and Vernabelle set down her gla.s.s and chattered some more. She said after all life was anything but selective, but didn't we think that all the arts rounded out one's appreciation of the beautiful. Several said "How true--how true indeed!" and sighed importantly. Then Metta said Vernabelle must show us some of her work and Vernabelle said she could hardly bring herself to do that; but yet she could and did, getting up promptly. She had designs for magazine covers and designs for war posters and designs for mural decorations and designs for oil paintings and so forth--"studies; crude, unfinished bits" she called 'em, but in a tone that didn't urge any one else to call 'em that.

It was mostly clouds and figures of females, some with ladies' wearing apparel and many not, engaged in dancing or plucking fruit or doing up their hair. Quite different stuff from Metta's innocent pictures of kittens and grapes and daffodils. After everyone was put on the easel Henrietta Templeton Price would stick her thumb up in the air and sight across it with one eye shut and say "A stunning bit, that!" and the others would gasp with delight and mutter to each other about its being simply wonderful.

Vernabelle listened in an all-too-negligent manner, putting in a tired word or two now and then. She admitted that one or two was by way of being precious bits. "Rather precious in an elemental way," she would say. "Of course I am trying to develop the psychology of the line."

Everyone said "Oh, of course!"

While she had one up showing part of a mottled nude lady who was smiling and reaching one hand up over to about where her shoulder blades would meet in the back, who should be let in on the scene but Lon Price and Cousin Egbert Floud. Lon had called for Henrietta, and Cousin Egbert had trailed along, I suppose, with gla.s.s blowing in mind. Vernabelle forgot her picture and fluttered about the two new men. I guess Lon Price is a natural-born Bohemian. He took to her at once.

"Sit here and tell me all about yourself," says Vernabelle, and Lon did so while the girl hung breathless on his words. In no time at all he was telling her about Price's Addition to Red Gap, how you walk ten blocks and save ten dollars a block and your rent money buys a home in this, the choicest villa site on G.o.d's green earth. Vernabelle had sort of kept hold of Cousin Egbert's sleeve with an absent hand--that girl was a man hound if ever there was one--and pretty soon she turned from Lon to Egbert and told him also to tell her all about himself.

Cousin Egbert wasn't so glib as Lon. He looked nervous. He'd come expecting a little gla.s.s blowing and here was something strange. He didn't seem to be able to tell her all about himself. He couldn't start good.

"Tell me what you are reading, then," says Vernabelle; and Cousin Egbert kind of strangled at this, too. He finally manages to say that he tried to read Shakespere once but it was too fine print. The old liar! He wouldn't read a line of Shakespere in letters a foot high. It just showed that he, too, was trying to bluff along with the rest of 'em on this Bohemian chatter.

Vernabelle continued full of blandishment for the two men and poured 'em out stiff hookers of this demon elderberry wine and lighted cigarettes for 'em from hers. I don't know whether this beverage got to Lon Price or not, but in a minute he was telling her that beauty in her s.e.x was a common-enough heritage, but how all-too rare it was to find beauty and brains in the same woman! Vernabelle called him comrade after that, and then she was telling Cousin Egbert that he was of the great outdoors--a man's man! Egbert looked kind of silly and puzzled at this. He didn't seem to be so darned sure about it.

Then Vernabelle worked over by the easel--it took her about six att.i.tudes leaning against things, to get there--and showed her oil paintings to the newcomers. Lon Price was full of talk and admiration and said she must do a poster for him showing a creature of rare beauty up in the clouds beckoning home-buyers out to Price's Addition, where it was Big Lots, Little Payments, and all Nature seemed to smile. He said this figure, however, had better have something in the shape of a garment on it because the poster would go into homes where art in its broader extent was still regarded in a suspicious or even hostile manner, if she caught what he meant. The artist says she can readily understand, and that life after all is anything but selective.

Cousin Egbert just looked at the pictures in an uncomfortable manner.

He spoke only once and that was about the mottled lady reaching over her shoulder and smiling. "Grinitch," says he with a knowing leer. But Vernabelle only says, yes, it was painted in the dear old village.

Then the crowd sort of got together on the couch and in chairs and Vernabelle talked for one and all. She said how stimulating it was for a few of the real people who did things to come together in this way after the day's turmoil--to get away from it all! Beryl Mae said she had often wanted to get away from it all, but her aunt was narrow-minded. Henrietta Price lighted her ninth cigarette and said how it reminded her of the Latin Quarter of Paris, which she had never been to, but her cousin had spent a whole afternoon there once and had been simply wild about it.

Vernabelle said it was times like this, with a few real people, that she got her biggest ideas; that life in the rough was too terribly a labyrinth, didn't we think, stunning one with its immensity, while in these dear little half-lighted moments the real came out unafraid, if we understood what she meant. Many of us said we did.