Part 12 (2/2)

Soon Mr. Waterman panted up the path brandis.h.i.+ng a barge pole and demanding to know the whereabouts of the marauders. As he had apparently for the moment reverted to his primal African savagery, I deliberately misled him by indicating a false direction, upon which he went off, muttering the most frightful threats.

The two culprits returned, put their fowl in the pot to boil, and swore me eternal fidelity for having saved them. They declared I should thereafter be known as Keen Knife, and that, needing a service, I might call upon them freely.

”Dead Shot never forgets a friend,” affirmed the taller lad, whereupon I formally shook hands with the pair and left them to their childish devices. They were plotting as I left to capture ”that n.i.g.g.e.r,” as they called him, and put him to death by slow torture.

But I was now shrewd enough to suspect that I might still be far from the western frontier of America. The evidence had been c.u.mulative but was no longer questionable. I mean to say, one might do here somewhat after the way of our own people at a country house in the s.h.i.+res. I resolved at the first opportunity to have a look at a good map of our late colonies.

Late in the afternoon our party gathered upon the small dock and I understood that our host now returned from his trouting. Along the sh.o.r.e of the lake he came, propelled in a native canoe by a hairy backwoods person quite wretchedly gotten up, even for a wilderness.

Our host himself, I was quick to observe, was vogue to the last detail, with a sense of dress and equipment that can never be acquired, having to be born in one. As he stepped from his frail craft I saw that he was rather slight of stature, dark, with slender moustaches, a finely sensitive nose, and eyes of an almost austere repose. That he had much of the real manner was at once apparent. He greeted the Flouds and his own family with just that faint touch of easy superiority which would stamp him to the trained eye as one that really mattered. Mrs. Effie beckoned me to the group.

”Let Ruggles take your things--Cousin Egbert's man,” she was saying.

After a startled glance at Cousin Egbert, our host turned to regard me with flattering interest for a moment, then transferred to me his oddments of fis.h.i.+ng machinery: his rod, his creel, his luncheon hamper, landing net, small scales, ointment for warding off midges, a jar of cold cream, a case containing smoked gla.s.ses, a rolled map, a camera, a book of flies. As I was stowing these he explained that his sport had been wretched; no fish had been hooked because his guide had not known where to find them. I here glanced at the backwoods person referred to and at once did not like the look in his eyes. He winked swiftly at Cousin Egbert, who coughed rather formally.

”Let Ruggles help you to change,” continued Mrs. Effie. ”He's awfully handy. Poor Cousin Egbert is perfectly helpless now without him.”

So I followed our host to his own detached hut, though feeling a bit queer at being pa.s.sed about in this manner, I mean to say, as if I were a basket of fruit. Yet I found it a grateful change to be serving one who knew our respective places and what I should do for him. His manner of speech, also, was less barbarous than that of the others, suggesting that he might have lived among our own people a fortnight or so and have tried earnestly to correct his deficiencies. In fact he remarked to me after a bit: ”I fancy I talk rather like one of yourselves, what?” and was pleased as Punch when I a.s.sured him that I had observed this. He questioned me at length regarding my a.s.sociation with the Honourable George, and the houses at which we would have stayed, being immensely particular about names and t.i.tles.

”You'll find us vastly different here,” he said with a sigh, as I held his coat for him. ”Crude, I may say. In truth, Red Gap, where my interests largely confine me, is a town of impossible persons. You'll see in no time what I mean.”

”I can already imagine it, sir,” I said sympathetically.

”It's not for want of example,” he added. ”Scores of times I show them better ways, but they're eaten up with commercialism--money-grubbing.”

I perceived him to be a person of profound and interesting views, and it was with regret I left him to bully Cousin Egbert into evening dress. It is undoubtedly true that he will never wear this except it have the look of having been forced upon him by several persons of superior physical strength.

The evening pa.s.sed in a refined manner with cards and music, the latter being emitted from a phonograph which I was asked to attend to and upon which I reproduced many of their quaint North American folksongs, such as ”Everybody Is Doing It,” which has a rare native rhythm. At ten o'clock, it being noticed by the three playing dummy bridge that Cousin Egbert and the Mixer were absent, I accompanied our host in search of them. In Cousin Egbert's hut we found them, seated at a bare table, playing at cards--a game called seven-upwards, I learned. Cousin Egbert had removed his coat, collar, and cravat, and his sleeves were rolled to his elbows like a navvy's. Both smoked the brown paper cigarettes.

”You see?” murmured Mr. Belknap-Jackson as we looked in upon them.

”Quite so, sir,” I said discreetly.

The Mixer regarded her son-in-law with some annoyance, I thought.

”Run off to bed, Jackson!” she directed. ”We're busy. I'm putting a nick in Sour-dough's bank roll.”

Our host turned away with a contemptuous shrug that I dare say might have offended her had she observed it, but she was now speaking to Cousin Egbert, who had stared at us brazenly.

”Ring that bell for the c.o.o.n, Sour-dough. I'll split a bottle of Scotch with you.”

It queerly occurred to me that she made this monstrous suggestion in a spirit of bravado to annoy Mr. Belknap-Jackson.

CHAPTER SIX

There are times when all Nature seems to smile, yet when to the sensitive mind it will be faintly brought that the possibilities are quite tremendously otherwise if one will consider them pro and con. I mean to say, one often suspects things may happen when it doesn't look so.

The succeeding three days pa.s.sed with so ordered a calm that little would any but a profound thinker have fancied tragedy to lurk so near their placid surface. Mrs. Effie and Mrs. Belknap-Jackson continued to plan the approaching social campaign at Red Gap. Cousin Egbert and the Mixer continued their card game for the trifling stake of a s.h.i.+lling a game, or ”two bits,” as it is known in the American monetary system.

And our host continued his recreation.

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