Tish: The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions Part 46

"He's a surly creature," Tish observed as he crackled through the brush again. "More than likely that girl's better off without him."

"He looks rather downhearted," Aggie remarked. "Much that we think is temper is due to unhappiness."

"Much of your charitable view is due to a good dinner too," Tish said.

"Here we are, in the center of the wilderness, with great peaks on every hand, and we meet a fellow creature who speaks nine words, and begrudges those. If he's as stingy with money as with language she's hard a narrow escape."

"He's had kind of a raw deal," Bill put in. "The girl was stuck on him all right, until this moving-picture chap came along. He offered to take some pictures with her in them, and it was all off. They're making up a play now, and she's to be in it."

"What sort of a play?" Tish demanded.

"Sorry not to oblige," Bill replied. "Can't say the nature of it."

But all of us felt that Bill knew and would not say.

Tish, to whom a mystery is a personal affront, determined to find out for herself; and when later in the evening we saw the light of Bell's camp-fire, it was Tish herself who suggested that we go over and visit with him.

"We can converse about various things," she said, "and take his mind from his troubles. But it would be better not to mention affairs of the heart. He's probably sensitive."

So we left Bill to look after things, and went to call on Mr. Bell. It was farther to his camp than it had appeared, and Tish unfortunately ran into a tree and bruised her nose badly. When it had stopped bleeding, however, we went on, and at last arrived.

He was sitting on a log by the fire, smoking a pipe and looking very sad. Behind him was a bit of a tent not much larger than an umbrella.

Aggie touched my arm. "My heart aches for him," she said. "There is despair in his very eyes."

I do not believe that at first he was very glad to see us, but he softened somewhat when Tish held out the cake she had brought.

"That's very nice of you," he said, rising. "I'm afraid I can't ask you to sit down. The ground's wet and there is only this log."

"I've sat on logs before," Tish replied. "We thought we'd call, seeing we are neighbors. As the first comers it was our place to call first, of course."

"I see," he said, and poked up the fire with a piece of stick.

"We felt that you might be lonely," said Aggie.

"I came here to be lonely," he replied gloomily. "I want to be lonely."

Tish, however, was determined to be cheerful, and asked him, as a safe subject, how he felt about the war.

"War?" he said. "That's so, there is a war. To tell the truth, I had forgotten about it. I've been thinking of other things."

We saw that it was going to be difficult to cheer him. Tish tried the weather, which brought us nowhere, as he merely grunted. But Aggie broached the subject of desperadoes, and he roused somewhat.

"There are plenty of shady characters in the park," he said shortly.

"Wolves in sheep's clothing, that's what they are."

"Bill, our guide, says there may be a holdup at any time."

"Sure there is," he said calmly. "There's one going to be pulled off in the next day or two."

We sat petrified, and Aggie's eyes were starting out of her head.

"All the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs," he went on, staring at the fire. "Innocent and unsuspecting tourists, lunch, laughter, boiled coffee, and cold ham.

Ambush. The whole business--followed by highwaymen in flannel shirts and revolvers. Dead tourist or two, desperate resistance--everything."

Aggie rose, pale as an aspen. "You--you are joking!" she cried.

"Do I look like it?" he demanded fiercely. "I tell you there is going to be the whole thing. At the end the lovely girl will escape on horseback and ride madly for aid. She will meet the sheriff and a posse, who are out for a picnic or some such damfool nonsense, and--"

"Young man," Tish said coldly, "if you know all this, why are you sitting here and not alarming the authorities?"

"Pooh!" he said disagreeably. "It's a put-up scheme, to advertise the park. Yellowstone's got ahead of them this year, and has had its excitement, with all the papers ringing with it. That was a gag, too, probably."

"Do you mean--"

"I mean considerable," he said. "That red-headed movie idiot will be on a rise, taking the tourists as they ride through. Of course he doesn't expect the holdup--not in the papers anyhow. He happens to have the camera trained on the party, and gets it all. Result--a whacking good picture, revolvers firing blank cartridges, everything which people will crowd to see. Oh, it's good business all right. I don't mind admitting that."

Tish's face expressed the greatest rage. She rose, drawing herself to her full height.

"And the tourists?" she demanded. "They lend themselves to this imposition? To this infamy? To this turpitude?"

"Certainly not. They think it's the real thing. The whole business hangs on that. And as the sheriff, or whoever it is in the fool plot, captures the bandits, the party gets its money back, and has material for conversation for the next twenty years."

"To think," said Tish, "of our great National Government lending itself to such a scheme!"

"Wrong," said the young man. "It's a combination of Western railroads and a movie concern acting together."

"I trust," Tish observed, setting her lips firmly, "that the tourists will protest."

"The more noise, the better." The young man, though not more cheerful as to appearance, was certainly more talkative. "Trust a clergyman for yelling when his pocket's picked."

With one voice the three of us exclaimed: "Mr. Ostermaier!"

He was not sure of the name, but "Helen" had pointed the clergyman out to him, and it was Mr. Ostermaier without a doubt.

We talked it over with Bill when we got back, and he was not as surprised as we'd expected.

"Knew they were cooking up something. They've got some Indians in it too. Saw them rehearsing old Thunder Mountain the other day in nothing but a breech-clout."

Tish reproved him for a lack of delicacy of speech, and shortly afterward we went to bed. Owing to the root under the tent, and puddles here and there, we could not go to sleep for a time, and we discussed the "nefarious deed," as Tish aptly termed it, that was about to take place.

"Although," Tish observed, "Mr. Ostermaier has been receiving for so many years that it might be a good thing, for his soul's sake, to have him give up something, even if to bandits." I dozed off after a time, but awakened to find Tish sitting up, wide awake.

"I've been thinking that thing over, Lizzie," she said in a low tone. "I believe it's our duty to interfere."

"Of course," I replied sarcastically; "and be shown all over the country in the movies making fools of ourselves."

"Did you notice that that young man said they would be firing blank cartridges?"