Part 21 (2/2)

”Paw's as hard to manage as a bent pin,” she remarked, in an aside to Mary, while he protested and fought her off with his stick. But she, with the agility of an acrobat, got directly back of him, took his head under her arm, pried open his mouth, and poured down the unwelcome, if beneficial, dose.

”There, there, paw,” she said, wiping his mouth as if he had been a baby, ”don't take on so! It's all gone, and I can't have you sick on my hands.”

But Mr. Yellett continued to splutter and flare and use violent language, whereupon the matriarch went into the tent and returned with a drink of condensed-milk and water, ”to wash down the nasty taste,” she told him, soothingly.

A moment afterwards she and Leander were engaged in rolling the barrels of sheep-dip to the wagon, Mary Carmichael helplessly looking on while Mrs.

Yellett looked doubtfully at a ”gov'ment” who could not handle barrels.

Finally, under the skilful manipulation of Mrs. Yellett and Leander, the long pole took on the aspect of a colossal vertebral column, from which huge barrel-ribs projected horizontally, leaving at the rear a foot or so of bare pole as a smart caudal appendage, bearing about the same proportion to the wagon as the neatly bitten tail of a fox-terrier does to the dog.

Mrs. Yellett kissed ”paw” good-bye, explaining to Mary, in extenuation of her weakness, that she would never forgive herself if she neglected it and anything happened to him during her absence. She then climbed to the front barrel and secured the ribbons. Leander had brought out three rolls of bedding of the inevitable bed-quilt variety, but Mrs. Yellett scorned such luxury while driving, and accordingly gave hers to the ”gov'ment” for a back-rest. Mary sat on the lower row of barrels, with her feet dangling, using one roll of bedding for a seat and the other comfortably arranged at her back as a cus.h.i.+on.

Madam called sharply to the horses, ”Hi-hi-hi-kerat! hi-kerat-kerat!” and they started off at a rattling pace, the barrels of dip creaking and squeaking as they swayed under their rope las.h.i.+ngs. Mary bounced about like a bean in a bag, working loose from between the bed-quilt rolls at each gulley, clinging frantically to barrel ends, shaken back and forth like a shuttle. Indeed, the drive seemed to combine every known form of physical exercise. Mrs. Yellett herself was in fine fettle; she drove sitting for a while, then rose, standing on a narrow ledge while she held the four ribbons lightly in one hand and tickled the leaders with a long whip carried in the other. She drove her four horses over the rough road with the skill of a circus equestrienne, balancing easily on the crazy ledge, s.h.i.+fting her weight from side to side as the wagon rattled down gullies and up ridges, the horses responding gallantly to the shrill ”Hi-hi-kerat! hi-kerat! hi-kerat!” Her costume on this occasion represented joint concessions to her s.e.x and the work that was before her, as the head of a family at the dipping-vat. She still wore the drum-shaped rabbit-skin cap pulled well down over her forehead for driving. The great, cable-like braids of hair stood out well below the cap, giving her head an appearance of denseness and solidity, but the rambling curls were still blowing about her face, perhaps adding to the sum total of grotesqueness.

She wore a man's s.h.i.+rt of gray flannel, well open at the neck, from which the bronzed column of the throat rose in austere dignity. A pair of Mr.

Yellett's trousers, stuffed into high, cow-puncher's boots, that met the hem of a skirt coming barely to the knees, contributed to the originality of her dress.

The wagon had been pitching like a s.h.i.+p at sea through the desert dreariness for about an hour, when Mary Carmichael suddenly became conscious that the prods she had been receiving from time to time in her back were not due either to their manner of locomotion or to the freight carried. Clinging to two barrels, she waited for the next lurch of the wagon to shake her free from the rolls of bedding, and, at the peril of life and limb, looked round. Leander hung over the top row of barrels, gesticulating wildly. The change in the man, since leaving camp some two hours previous, was appalling. He seemed to have shrivelled away to a wraith of his former self. His cheeks, his chin, had waned to the vanis.h.i.+ng point. He opened his lips and mouthed horribly, yet his frightful grimacings conveyed no meaning. Mary called to Mrs. Yellett, but her voice was drowned in the rattle of the wagon, the clatter of four horses' hoofs, and the continual ”Hi-hi-hi-kerat! hi-kerat!” of the driver. In the mean time Leander pointed to his mouth and back to the road in indescribably pathetic pantomime. ”Perhaps the poor creature wants to turn back and die in his bed, like a Christian, even if he isn't one,”

thought Mary, as she called and called, Leander still emitting the most inhuman of cries, like the sounds made by deaf mutes in distress.

Presently Mrs. Yellett drew up, and asked in the name of many profane things what was the matter with her companions.

Leander resumed his mouthings and his dumb show, but Mrs. Yellett proved a better interpreter than Mary Carmichael.

”G.o.d A'mighty!” she said, ”he's lost his false teeth!” And without another word she turned the four horses and the wagon with a skill that fell little short of sleight-of-hand.

The dialogue that followed between Mrs. Yellett and Leander as to how far back he had dropped his teeth, cannot be given, owing to the inadequacy of the English language to reproduce his toothless enunciation. Catching, as Mary did, the meaning of Mrs. Yellett's remarks only, she received something of the one-sided impression given by overhearing a telephone conversation:

”What did you have 'em out for?... You didn't have 'em out?... I just shook 'em out? Then what made you have your mouth open? Ef your mouth had been shut, you couldn't have lost 'em.... You was a-yawnin', eh? Well, you are a plumb fool to yawn on this kind of a waggin, with your mouth full o'

china teeth. Your yawnin' 'll put us back a good hour an' we won't reach camp before sundown.”

At this point of the diatribe the Infidel left the wagon and began to search along the road. He said he had noticed a buffalo skull near the place where he had dropped the teeth, and thought he could trace them by this landmark. Mrs. Yellett held the ribbons and suggested that Mary get down ”and help to prospect for them teeth.” As Mary clambered down she heard a fragment of the matriarch's monologue, which, being duly expurgated for polite ears, was to the effect that she would rather take ten babies anywhere than one grown man, and that as for getting in the way, hindering, obstructing, and being a nuisance, generally speaking, man had not his counterpart in the scheme of creation.

”Talk about a woman bein' at the bottom of everything!” sniffed Mrs.

Yellett; ”I be so sick of always hearin' about 'the woman in the case!'

Half the time the case would be a blame sight worse if it was left exclusive to the men. The Book of Hiram says: 'A skunk may have his good p'ints, but few folks is takin' the risk of waitin' round to get acquainted with 'em.'”

While Mary was still ”prospecting,” a glad cry roused her attention, and Leander came up smiling, with his dental treasures nicely adjusted.

”Quit smilin' like a rattlesnake, you plumb fool!” called out Mrs.

Yellett. ”Do you want to lose 'em again?”

So, curtailing the muscular contraction indicative of his pleasure, the Infidel again took his place among the bed-quilts and the journey was resumed.

It was now about five in the afternoon. The heat, which had been oppressive all day, suddenly relaxed its blistering grip, and a keenly penetrating dampness, not unlike that of a sea-fog, came from some unknown quarter of the arid wastes and chilled the three travellers to the marrow.

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