VII
Chugg Takes The Ribbons
Chugg, comforted with liquids and stayed with a head-plaster, presentedhimself at the Dax ranch just twenty-four hours after he was due. His miencombined vagueness with hostility, and he harnessed up the stage thatPeter Hamilton had driven over the day before, when his prospectivepassengers were looking, with a graphic pantomimic representation of "takeit or leave it." Under the circumstances, Miss Carmichael and the fat ladyconsented to be passengers with much the same feeling of finality that onemight have on embarking for the planet Mars in an air-ship.
There was, furthermore, a suggestion of last rites in the farewells of theDaxes, each according to their respective personalities, that was far fromreassuring.
"Here's some bread and meat and a bottle of cold coffee, if you live toneed it," was Mrs. Dax's grim prognostication of accident. Leander, beingof an emotional nature, could scarce restrain his tears--the advent of thetravellers had created a welcome variation in the monotony of his dutifulroutine--he felt all the agitation of parting with life-long friends. MaryCarmichael and Judith promised to write--they had found a great deal to sayto each other the preceding evening.
Chugg cracked his whip ominously, the travellers got inside, not daring totrust themselves to the box.
The journey with the misanthrope was but a repetition of that first day'sstaging--the sage-brush was scarcer, the mountains seemed as far off asever, and the outlook was, if possible, more desolate. The entry in MissCarmichael's diary, inscribed in malformed characters as the stage joltedover ruts and gullies, reads: "I do not mind telling you, in strictestconfidence, 'Dere Diary'--as the little boy called you--that when I solightly severed my connection with civilization, I had no idea to what anextent I was going in for the prairie primeval. How on earth does a womanwho can write a letter like Mrs. Yellett stand it? And where on the map ofNorth America is Lost Trail?"
"Land sakes!" regretted the fat lady, "but I do wish I had a piece of that'boy's favorite' cake that I had for my lunch the day we left town. I justate and ate it 'cause I hadn't another thing to do. If I hadn't been sogreedy I could offer him a piece, just to show him that some women folkhave kind hearts, and that the whole sect ain't like that Pink."
"Boy's favorite," as adequate compensation for shattered ideals, a brokenheart, and the savings of a lifetime, seemed to Mary Carmichael inadequatecompensation, but she forbore to express her sentiments.
The fat lady had never relaxed her gaze from Chugg's back since the stagehad started. She peered at that broad expanse of flannel shirt through thetiny round window, like a careful sailing-master sweeping the horizon forpossible storm-clouds. At every portion of the road presenting a steepdecline she would prod Chugg in the back with the handle of her ampleumbrella, and demand that he let her out, as she preferred walking. Thestage-driver at first complied with these requests, but when he saw theythreatened to become chronic, he would send his team galloping down gradeat a rate to justify her liveliest fears.
"Do you think you are a-picnicking, that you crave roominating round theseyere solitoodes?" And the misanthrope cracked his whip and adjured histeam with cabalistic imprecations.
"Did you notice if Mrs. Dax giv' him any cold coffee, same as she did us?"anxiously inquired the fat lady from her lookout.
Mary hadn't noticed.
"He's drinking something out of a brown bottle--seems to relish it a heepmore'n he would cold coffee," reported the watch. "Hi there! Hi! Mr.Chugg!" The stage-driver, thinking it was merely a request to be allowedto walk, continued to drive with one hand and hold the brown bottle withthe other. But even his too solid flesh was not proof against thecontinued bombardment of the umbrella handle.
"Um-m-m," he grunted savagely, applying a watery eye to the round window.
"Nothing," answered the fat lady, quite satisfied at having her worstfears confirmed.
Chugg returned to his driving, as one not above the weakness of seeing andhearing things.
"'Tain't coffee."
"Could you smell it?" questioned Mary, anxiously.
"You never can tell that way, when they are plumb pickled in it, likehim."
"Then how did you know it wasn't coffee?"
"His eyes had fresh watered."
Mary collapsed under this expert testimony. "What are we going to do aboutit?"
"Appeal to him as a gentleman," said the fat lady, not without dramaticintonation.
"You appeal," counselled Mary; "I saw him look at you admiringly when youwere walking down that steep grade."
"Is that so?" said the fat lady, with a conspicuous lack of incredulity;and she put her hand involuntarily to her frizzes.
This time she did not trust to the umbrella-handle as a medium ofcommunication between the stage-driver and herself. Putting her handthrough the port-hole she grasped Chugg's arm--the bottle arm--with nouncertain grip.
"Why, Mr. Chugg, this yere place is getting to be a regular summer resort;think of two ladies trusting themselves to your protection and travellingout over this great lonesome desert."
Chugg's mind, still submerged in local Lethe waters, grappled in silencewith the problem of the feminine invasion, and then he muttered to himselfrather than to the fat lady, "Nowhere's safe from 'em; women andhouse-flies is universally prevailing."
The fat lady dropped his arm as if it had been a brand. "He's nogentleman. As for Mountain Pink, she was drove to it."
All that day they toiled over sand and sage-brush; the sun hung like amolten disk, paling the blue of the sky; the grasshoppers kept up theirshrill chirping--and the loneliness of that sun-scorched waste became atangible thing.
Chugg sipped and sipped, and sometimes swore and sometimes muttered, andas the day wore on his driving not only became a challenge to theendurance of the horses, but to the laws of gravitation. He lashed them upand down grade, he drove perilously close to shelving declivities, andsometimes he sang, with maudlin mournfulness:
"'Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie.' The words came low and mournfully From the cold, pale lips of a youth who lay On his dying couch at the close of day."
The fat lady reminded him that he was a gentleman and that he was drivingladies; she threatened him with her son on Sweetwater, who began, in thematernal chronicles, by being six feet in his stockings, and who steadilygrew, as the scale of threats increased, till he reached the altitude ofsix feet four, growing hourly in height and fierceness.
But Chugg gave no heed, and once he sang the "Ballad of the Mule-Skinner,"with what seemed to both terrified passengers an awful warning of theiroverthrow:
"As I was going down the road, With a tired team and a heavy load, I cracked my whip and the leaders sprung-- The fifth chain broke, and the wheelers hung, The off-horse stepped on the wagon tongue--"
This harrowing ballad was repeated with accompanying Delsarte at intervalsduring the afternoon, but as Mary and the fat lady managed to escapewithout accident, they began to feel that they bore charmed lives.
At sundown they came to the road-ranch of Johnnie Dax, bearing Leander'scompliments as a secret despatch. The outward aspect of the place wascertainly an awful warning to trustful bachelors who make acquaintancesthrough the columns of _The Heart and Hand_. The house stood solitary inthat scourge of desolation. The windows and doors gaped wide like theunclosed eyes of a dead man on a battle-field. Chugg halloed, and an oldwhite horse put his head out of the door, shook it upward as if in assent,then trotted off.
"That's Jerry, and he's the intelligentest animal I ever see," remarkedthe stage-driver, sobering up to Jerry's good qualities, and presentlyJohnnie Dax and the white horse appeared together from around the cornerof the house.
This Mr. Dax was almost an exact replica of the other, even to theapologetic crook in the knees and a certain furtive way of glancing overthe shoulder as if anticipating missiles.
"Pshaw now, ladies! why didn't you let me know that you was coming? andI'd have tidied up the p
lace and organized a few dried-apple pies."
"Good house-keepers don't wait for company to come before they get totheir work," rebukefully commented the fat lady.
Mr. Dax, recognizing the voice of authority, seized a towel and began tobeat out flies, chickens, and dogs, who left the premises with the illgrace of old residents. Two hogs, dormant, guarded either side of thedoor-step and refused so absolutely to be disturbed by the flicking of thetowel that one was tempted to look twice to assure himself that they werenot the fruits of the sculptor's chisel.
"Where's your wife?" sternly demanded the fat lady.
"Oh, my Lord! I presume she's dancin' a whole lot over to Ervay. Shepacked her ball-gown in a gripsack and lit out of here two days ago,p'inting that way. A locomotive couldn't stop her none if she got a chanceto go cycloning round a dance."
In the mean time, the two hogs having failed to grasp the fact that theywere _de trop_, continued to doze.
"Come, girls, get up," coaxed Johnnie, persuasively. "Maude, I don't knowwhen I see you so lazy. Run on, honey--run on with Ethel." For Ethel, thepiebald hog, finally did as she was bid.
Mary Carmichael could not resist the temptation of asking how the hogshappened to have such unusual names.
"To tell the truth, I done it to aggravate my wife. When I finds myself adiscard in the matrimonial shuffle, I figgers on a new deal that's goingto inclood one or two anxieties for my lady partner--to which end--viz.,namely, I calls one hawg Ethel and the other hawg Maude, allowing to mywife that they're named after lady friends in the East. Them lady friendsmight be the daughters of Ananias and Sapphira, for all they everhappened, but they answers the purpose of riling her same as if they wereeating their three squares daily. I have hopes, everything else failing,that she may yet quit dancing and settle down to the sanctity of the homeout of pure jealousy of them two proxy hawgs."
"I can just tell you this," interrupted the fat lady: "I don't enjoyoccupying premises after hawgs, no matter how fashionable you name 'em. Ahawg's a hawg, with manners according, if it's named after the Presidentof the United States or the King of England."
"That's just what I used to think, marm, of all critters before I enjoyedthat degree of friendliness that I'm now proud to own. Take Jerry now,that old white horse--why, me and him is just like brothers. When I have toleave the kid to his lonesome infant reflections and go off to chop wood,I just call Jerry in, and he assoomes the responsibility of nurse like hewas going to draw wages for it."
"I reckon there's faults on both sides," said the fat lady, impartially."No natural woman would leave her baby to a horse to mind while she wentoff dancing. And no natural man would fill his house full of critters, andthem with highfalutin names. Take my advice, turn 'em out."
Mary did not wait to hear the continuation of the fat lady's advice. Shewent out on the desert to have one last look at the west. The sun hadtaken his plunge for the night, leaving his royal raiment of crimson andgold strewn above the mountain-tops.
Her sunset reflections were presently interrupted by the fat lady, whoproposed that they should walk till Mr. Dax had tidied up his house,observing, with logic, that it did not devolve on them to clean the place,since they were paying for supper and lodging. They had gone but a littleway when sudden apprehension caused the fat lady to grasp Mary's arm. MissCarmichael turned, expecting mountain-lions, rattlesnakes, orstage-robbers, but none of these casualties had come to pass.
"Land sakes! Here we be parading round the prairie, and I never found outhow that man cooked his coffee."
"What difference does it make, if we can drink it?"
"The ways of men cooks is a sealed book to you, I reckon, or you wouldn'tbe so unconcerned--'specially in the matter of coffee. All men has got thenotion that coffee must be b'iled in a bag, and if they 'ain't got aregular bag real handy, they take what they can get. Oh, I've caught 'em,"went on the fat lady, darkly, "b'iling coffee in improvisations that'dturn your stomach."
"Yes, yes," Mary hastily agreed, hoping against hope that she wasn't goingto be more explicit.
"And they are so cute about it, too; it's next to impossible to catch 'em.You ask a man if he b'iles his coffee loose or tight, and he'll declare heb'iles it loose, knowing well how suspicious and prone to investigate isthe female mind. But you watch your chance and take a look in thecoffee-pot, and maybe you'll find--"
"Yes, yes, I've heard--"
"I've seen--"
"Let's hurry," implored Mary.
"Have you made your coffee yet?" inquired the fat lady.
"Yes, marm," promptly responded Johnnie.
"I hope you b'iled it in a bag--it clears it beautiful, a bag does."
Johnnie shifted uneasily. "No, marm, I b'iles it loose. You see, bagsain't always handy."
The fat lady plied her eye as a weapon. No Dax could stand up before anaccusing feminine eye. He quailed, made a grab for the coffee-pot, andrushed with it out into the night.
"What did I tell you?" she asked, with an air of triumph.
Johnnie returned with the empty coffee-pot. "To tell the truth, marm, Imade a mistake. I 'ain't made the coffee. I plumb forgot it. P'raps youcould be prevailed on to assist this yere outfit to coffee while Iorganizes a few sody-biscuits."
After supper, when the fat lady was so busy talking "goo-goo" language tothe baby as to be oblivious of everything else, Mary Carmichael took theopportunity to ask Johnnie if he knew anything about Lost Trail. The nameof her destination had come to sound unpleasantly ominous in the ears ofthe tired young traveller, and she feared that her inquiry did not soundas casual as she tried to have it. Nor was Johnnie's candid replyreassuring.
"It's a pizen-mean country, from all I ever heard tell. The citizenstharof consists mainly of coyotes and mountain-lions, with a few rattlersthrown in just to make things neighborly. This yere place"--waving his handtowards the arid wastes which night was making more desolate--"is a summerresort, with modern improvements, compared to it."
Mary screwed her courage to a still more desperate point, and inquired ifMr. Dax knew a family named Yellett living in Lost Trail.
"Never heard of no family living there, excepting the bluff at family lifemaintained by the wild beasts before referred to. See here, miss, I ain'tmakin' no play to inquire into your affairs, but you ain't thinkin' o'visitin' Lost Trail, be you?"
"Perhaps," said Mary, faintly; and then she, too, talked "goo-goo" to thebaby.