The Dude Wrangler Part 33

"Aunt Lizzie" looked as if she had been cast for a period play--early General Grant, perhaps--as she descended wearing a beaded silk mantle and a bonnet with strings.

"Be careful, Aunt Lizzie! Look where you step!"

The chorus of warnings was due to the fact that Aunt Lizzie already had fallen fourteen times in transit, a tack-head seeming sufficient to trip her up, and now, quite as though they had shouted the reverse, Aunt Lizzie stumbled and dropped the onyx apple upon old Mr. Penrose's felt-shod foot.

This was too much. Mr. Penrose shouted furiously:

"I wish you'd lose that d.a.m.ned thing!"

When it came to altered looks, Wallie had no monopoly on surprise. The Happy Family found it difficult to reconcile this rather tough-looking young man with the nice, neat boy who had blown them kisses from the motor bus.

"Now, what sort of a conveyance have you provided?" inquired Mr. Stott, who had taken the initiative in such matters during the trip.

Wallie pointed proudly to the stage-coach with Pinkey on the box and Mr.

Tucker standing faithfully at the leaders' heads.

Everybody exclaimed in delight and lost no time in greeting Pinkey, whose response was cordial but brief. To Wallie he said, out of the corner of his mouth:

"Load 'em on. The roan is gittin' a hump in his back."

"We have twenty-five miles to make," Wallie hinted.

"Our luggage? How about that?" inquired Mr. Stott.

"It will follow." Wallie opened the stage-coach door as a further hint.

"I want to get some snap-shots of the town," said Mr. Penrose, who had his camera and a pair of field-gla.s.ses slung over his shoulder.

"What an experience this will be to write home!" gushed Miss Gaskett.

"Let's stop at the office and mail post-cards."

Pinkey leaned over the side and winked at Wallie, who urged uneasily:

"We must start. Twenty-five miles is a good distance to make before dark."

"Switzerland has nothing to surpa.s.s this view!" declared Mr. Stott, who had never been in Switzerland.

Everyone took a leisurely survey of the mountains.

"And the air is very like that of the Scotch moors." No one ever would have suspected from his positive tone that Mr. Stott never had been in Scotland, either.

"I am sorry to insist," said Wallie in response to another significant look from Pinkey, "but we really will have to hurry."

Thus urged, they proceeded to clamber in, except Miss Gertie Eyester, who was patting the roan on the nose.

"Dear 'ittie horsey!"

"'Ittie horse eats human flesh, you'd better not git too close," said Pinkey.

Miss Eyester looked admiringly at Pinkey in his red shirt and declared with an arch glance:

"You're so droll, Mr. Fripp!"

Since Mr. Fripp thought something of the sort himself he did not contradict her, but told himself that she was "not so bad--for a dude."

"I hope the horses are perfectly safe, because my heart isn't good, and when I'm frightened it goes bad and my lips get just as _b-l-u-e_!"

"They look all right now," said Pinkey, after giving them his careful attention.

Miss Eyester observed wistfully:

"I hope I will get well and strong out here."

"If you'd go out in a cow-camp fer a couple of months it would do you a world of good," Pinkey advised her. "You'd fatten up."

Mr. Budlong, who had gotten in the coach, got out again to inquire of Pinkey if he was sure the horses were perfectly gentle.

"I'd trust my own step-mother behind 'em anywhere."

Mr. Budlong, who had had a step-mother, intimated that that was not convincing proof, and returned to the coach declaring that he had no fears for himself, but his wife was nervous.

To show his contempt of danger, Mr. Stott said: "Poof!"

Wallie, having closed the door, climbed up beside Pinkey, who unlocked the brake.

"I always feel helpless shut inside a vehicle," declared Mr. Budlong.

Mr. Stott again said recklessly: "Poof!"

Just as he said "poof!", the leaders rose on their hind legs. Mr.

Tucker, who rose with them, clung valiantly to their bits and dangled there. One of the wheel horses laid down and the other tried to climb over the back of the leader in front of him, while the bystanders scattered.

"There seems to be some kind of a ruckus," Mr. Appel remarked as he stood up and leaned out the window.

Before he had time to report, however, two side wheels went over the edge of the station platform, tipping the coach to an angle which sent all the pa.s.sengers on the upper side into the laps of those on the lower.

Aunt Lizzie pitched headlong and with such force that when she struck Mr. Stott on the mouth with her onyx apple she cut his lip.

"You'll kill somebody with that yet!" Mr. Stott glared at the keepsake.

Aunt Lizzie scrambled back into her seat and looked composedly at the drop of blood he offered in evidence, on the corner of his handkerchief.

Mr. Appel, who undoubtedly would have gone on through the window when the coach lurched had it not been for his wife's presence of mind in clutching him by the coat, demanded in an angry voice--instead of showing the grat.i.tude she had reason to expect:

"Whatch you doin'? Tearin' the clothes off'n m'back? Wisht you'd leave me be!"

It had been years since Mr. Appel had spoken to his wife like that. Mrs.

Appel opened her reticule, took out a handkerchief and held it to her eyes.