Part 22 (2/2)

these here little plates of cut-up things and waiting for the real stuff, and first thing I know I get a spoonful of coffee in something like you put eye medicine into, and I know it's all over. Last time I was out I hid up a dish of these here salted almuns under a fern and et the whole lot from time to time, kind of absent like. It helped some, but it wasn't dinner.”

”Same here,” put in the Mixer, saturating half a slice of bread in the sauce of the stew. ”I can't afford to act otherwise than like I am a lady at one of them dinners, but the minute I'm home I beat it for the icebox. I suppose it's all right to be socially elegant, but we hadn't ought to let it contaminate our food none. And even at that New York hotel this summer you had to make trouble to get fed proper. I wanted strawberry shortcake, and what do you reckon they dealt me? A thing looking like a marble palace--sponge cake and whipped cream with a few red spots in between. Well, long as we're friends here together, I may say that I raised h.e.l.l until I had the chef himself up and told him exactly what to do; biscuit dough baked and prized apart and b.u.t.tered, strawberries with sugar on 'em in between and on top, and plenty of regular cream. Well, after three days' trying he finally managed to get simple--he just couldn't believe I meant it at first, and kept building on the whipped cream--and the thing cost eight dollars, but you can bet he had me, even then; the bonehead smarty had sweetened the cream and grated nutmeg into it. I give up.

”And if you can't get right food in New York, how can you expect to here? And Jackson, the idiot, has just fired the only real cook in Red Gap. Yes, sir; he's let the c.o.o.ns go. It come out that Waterman had sneaked out that suit of his golf clothes that Kate Kenner wore in the minstrel show, so he fired them both, and now I got to support 'em, because, as long as we're friends here, I don't mind telling you I egged the c.o.o.n on to do it.”

I saw that she was referring to the black and his wife whom I had met at the New York camp, though it seemed quaint to me that they should be called ”c.o.o.ns,” which is, I take it, a diminutive for ”racc.o.o.n,” a species of ground game to be found in America.

Truth to tell, I enjoyed myself immensely at this simple but satisfying meal, feeling myself one with these homely people, and I was sorry when we had finished.

”That was some little dinner itself,” said the Mixer as she rolled a cigarette; ”and now you boys set still while I do up the dishes.” Nor would she allow either of us to a.s.sist her in this work. When she had done, Cousin Egbert proceeded to mix hot toddies from the whiskey, and we gathered about the table before the open fire.

”Now we'll have a nice home evening,” said the Mixer, and to my great embarra.s.sment she began at once to speak to myself.

”A strong man like him has got no business becoming a social b.u.t.terfly,” she remarked to Cousin Egbert.

”Oh, Bill's all right,” insisted the latter, as he had done so many times before.

”He's all right so far, but let him go on for a year or so and he won't be a darned bit better than what Jackson is, mark my words. Just a social b.u.t.terfly, wearing funny clothes and attending afternoon affairs.”

”Well, I don't say you ain't right,” said Cousin Egbert thoughtfully; ”that's one reason I got him out here where everything is nice. What with speaking pieces like an actor, I was afraid they'd have him making more kinds of a fool of himself than what Jackson does, him being a foreigner, and his mind kind o' running on what clothes a man had ought to wear.”

Hereupon, so flushed was I with the good feeling of the occasion, I told them straight that I had resolved to quit being Colonel Ruggles of the British army and a.s.sociate of the n.o.bility; that I had determined to forget all cla.s.s distinctions and to become one of themselves, plain, simple, and unpretentious. It is true that I had consumed two of the hot grogs, but my mind was clear enough, and both my companions applauded this resolution.

”If he can just get his mind off clothes for a bit he might amount to something,” said Cousin Egbert, and it will scarcely be credited, but at the moment I felt actually grateful to him for this admission.

”We'll think about his case,” said the Mixer, taking her own second toddy, whereupon the two fell to talking of other things, chiefly of their cattle plantations and the price of beef-stock, which then seemed to be six and one half, though what this meant I had no notion.

Also I gathered that the Mixer at her own cattle-farm had been watching her calves marked with her monogram, though I would never have credited her with so much sentiment.

When the retiring hour came, Cousin Egbert and I prepared to take our blankets outside to sleep, but the Mixer would have none of this.

”The last time I slept in here,” she remarked, ”mice was crawling over me all night, so you keep your shack and I'll bed down outside. I ain't afraid of mice, understand, but I don't like to feel their feet on my face.”

And to my great dismay, though Cousin Egbert took it calmly enough, she took a roll of blankets and made a crude pallet on the ground outside, under a spreading pine tree. I take it she was that sort. The least I could do was to secure two tins of milk from our larder and place them near her cot, in case of some lurking high-behind, though I said nothing of this, not wis.h.i.+ng to alarm her needlessly.

Inside the hut Cousin Egbert and I partook of a final toddy before retiring. He was unusually thoughtful and I had difficulty in persuading him to any conversation. Thus having noted a bearskin before my bed, I asked him if he had killed the animal.

”No,” said he shortly, ”I wouldn't lie for a bear as small as that.”

As he was again silent, I made no further approaches to him.

From my first sleep I was awakened by a long, booming yell from our guest outside. Cousin Egbert and I reached the door at the same time.

”I've got it!” bellowed the Mixer, and we went out to her in the chill night. She sat up with the blankets m.u.f.fled about her.

”We start Bill in that restaurant,” she began. ”It come to me in a flash. I judge he's got the right ideas, and Waterman and his wife can cook for him.”

”Bully!” exclaimed Cousin Egbert. ”I was thinking he ought to have a gents' furnis.h.i.+ng store, on account of his mind running to dress, but you got the best idea.”

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