Wallie felt chagrined when he reflected that although he was a graduate of Haverford College and was bringing all his intelligence to bear upon it he was still unable to do what any hired man with an inch of forehead could accomplish with no apparent effort.
Perhaps there was some trick about it--perhaps it _did_ make a difference which side a cow was milked on. Wallie walked around and turned the spot-light on the other side of his Jersey.
The outlook, he fancied, seemed more promising.
He sat down on his heel and started in energetically.
It did make a difference which side one milked on--there was no doubt about it. The instant he touched her she lifted her foot and with an aim which was not only deadly and unerring but remarkable, considering that she could not see her target, planted it in the pit of Wallie"s stomach with such force that the m.u.f.fled thud of it sounded like someone beating a carpet. The kick knocked the breath out of him, and as he lay on his back on a clump of cactus he was sure that he was bleeding internally and probably dying.
Wallie finally got to his feet painfully and with both hands on his stomach looked at the cow, who was again chewing tranquilly. There was murder in Wallie"s eyes as he yelled at her:
"Curse you! I could cut your heart out!"
Then he crept up the path to his tent and dropped down on his pneumatic mattress, doubting if he ever would rise from it. As he lay there, supperless, with his clothes on, every muscle in his body aching, to say nothing of the sensation in his stomach, it seemed incredible that he could be the same person who had started off so blithely in the morning.
The series of misfortunes which had befallen him overwhelmed him. He had purchased a cow which not only gave no milk but had a vicious disposition. He had paid two prices for a pair of locoed horses that did their pulling backward. He had made himself a laughing stock to the entire country and seemed destined to play the clown somehow whenever Helene Spenceley was in the vicinity. His ears grew red to the rims as he thought of it.
But she _had_ resented Canby"s dishonesty for him--_that_ was something; and Wallie was in a mood to be grateful for anything.
The cow grunted as she lay down to her slumbers--Wallie ground his teeth as he heard her. A coyote yapped on a ridge forlornly and the horse on picket coughed and snorted while Wallie, staring at the stars through the entrance, ma.s.saged his injury and ruminated.
Suddenly he sat up on his patent air mattress and shook his fist at the universe:
"Canby nor n.o.body else shall down me! I"m going to make good somehow, or fertilize Wyoming as old Appel told me. I"ll show "em!"
After that he felt better; so much better that he fell asleep immediately, and even the activities of two field-mice, who pulled and snipped at his hair with their sharp teeth in the interests of a nest they were building, only disturbed without awakening him.
CHAPTER XI
MERRY CHRISTMAS
Wallie shivered in his sleep and pulled the soogans higher. The act exposed his feet instead of his shoulders, so it did not add to his comfort. He felt sleepily for the flour sack which he wore on his head as protection against the dust that blew in through the crack in the logs and his fingers sank into a small snow bank that had acc.u.mulated on his pillow.
The chill of it completely awakened him. He found that there was frost on the end of his nose and he was in a miniature blizzard as far as his shoulders. The wind was howling around the corners and driving the first snow of the season through the many large cracks in his log residence.
The day was Christmas, and there was no reason to believe that it would be a merry one.
Wallie lay for a time considering the prospect and comparing it with other Christmases. He had a kettle of boiled beans, cold soda biscuit, coffee, and two prairie-dogs which he intended cooking as an experiment, for his Christmas dinner.
Growing more and more frugal as his bank account shrank with alarming rapidity, Wallie reasoned that if he could eat prairie-dog it would serve a double purpose: While ridding his land of the pests it would save him much in such high-priced commodities as ham and bacon.
Prairie-dog might not be a delicacy sought after by epicures, yet he never had heard anything directly against them, beyond their propensity for burrowing, which made them undesirable tenants. He reasoned that since they subsisted upon roots mainly, they were of cleanly habits and quite as apt to be nourishing and appetizing, if properly cooked, as rabbit.
Having the courage of his convictions, Wallie skinned and dressed the prairie-dogs he had caught out of their holes one sunshiny morning, and meant to eat them for his Christmas dinner if it was humanly possible.
The subject of food occupied a large part of Wallie"s time and attention since he was not yet sufficiently practised to make cooking easy. He had purchased an expensive cook book, but as his larder seldom contained any of the ingredients it called for, he considered the price of it wasted.
He had found that the recipes imparted by Tex McGonnigle, who had built his ten-by-twelve log cabin for him, were far more practical. Under his tuition Wallie had learned to make "sweat-pads," "dough-G.o.ds,"
"mulligan," and other dishes with names deemed unsuitable for publication.
After considering his dinner menu for a time, Wallie drew his knees to his chin, which enabled him to his get entire body under the soogan, and contrasted his present surroundings with those of the previous Christmas.
In the s.p.a.cious Florida hotel last year he had only to touch a b.u.t.ton to bring a uniformed menial who served him coffee and lighted a grate fire for him, while the furnishings of his room and bath were quite as luxurious as those of The Colonial.
Now, as the light strengthened, Wallie could see his third-handed stove purchased from the secondhand man, Tucker, standing in the corner with its list to starboard. The wind blowing through the baling wire which anch.o.r.ed the stove-pipe to the wall sounded like an aeolian harp played by a maniac. His patent camp chair had long since given way beneath him, and when he had found at the Prouty Emporium two starch boxes of the right height, he had been as elated when they were given to him as if he had been the recipient of a valuable present. They now served as chairs on either side of his plank table.
His pneumatic mattress had collapsed from punctures, and Wallie"s bones were uncomfortably close to the boards in the bottom of the bunk McGonnigle had built against one end of the cabin. His pillow was a flour sack filled with straw and of a doubtful colour, as was also the hand towel hanging on a nail beside a shocking wash basin.
There was a dirt roof on the cabin from which clods of earth fell rather frequently and bounced on Wallie"s head or dropped in the food, or on his bed to startle him when sleeping. The floor contained knotholes through which the field mice and chipmunks came up to share his provisions, and the door, being a trifle larger than the frame, could not be closed entirely.
When Wallie had called McGonnigle"s attention to the fact that he could stand in the middle of his cabin and view the scenery through the cracks in any direction, McGonnigle had a.s.sured him that "fresh air never hurt n.o.body," and while he cheerfully admitted that he was not a carpenter, declared that he had made allowances for this fact in his charges.
Though Wallie could not notice it when he paid them, he said nothing, for by now he was accustomed to having everything cost more than he had antic.i.p.ated, however liberal he might be in his estimate.
Boise Bill rode by occasionally and inquired humorously if he thought he would "winter." To which Wallie always replied that he intended to, though there were moments of depression when he doubted it.
It was upon Wallie"s inability to "winter" that Canby was counting. He had hung on longer than Canby had thought he would, but the cattleman felt fairly sure that the first big snowstorm would see the last of Wallie. The hardships and loneliness would "get" him as it did most tenderfeet, Canby reasoned, and some morning he would saddle up in disgust, leaving another homestead open to entry.
If, perchance, this did not happen, Canby had a system of his own for eliminating settlers. It was quite as efficacious as open warfare, though it took longer and was open to the objection that sometimes it enabled them to stay long enough to plow up eighty acres or so which went to weeds when they abandoned it.
Canby had no personal feeling against Wallie and, after meeting him, decided he would use the more lawful and humane method of ridding himself of him. Instead of running him off by threats and violence he would merely starve him out, and Wallie"s bank balance indicated that Canby was in a fair way to accomplish his purpose.
Several happenings had made Wallie suspect something of Canby"s purpose, and the same latent quality which had made Wallie trudge doggedly after his cow and horse until he had worn out their perversity always made him tell himself grimly that he was going to stick until he had his crop in and harvested if he laid down, a skeleton, and died beside one of his own haystacks.
Mostly, however, he was so busy with his cooking, feeding his livestock, getting wood and water, to say nothing of piling rocks and grubbing sagebrush that he had no time to brood over Canby and the wrongs he had done him. He had learned from McGonnigle that his locoed horses would grow worse instead of better and eventually would have to be shot, and that person had imparted the discouraging information also that not only could he expect no milk from his cow until her calf arrived in January but Jerseys were a breed not commonly selected for beef cattle.
Wallie had thought that his aunt would surely relent to the extent of writing him a Christmas letter but, yesterday, after riding eight miles to look in the bluing box nailed to a post by the roadside, he had found that it had contained only a circular urging him to raise mushrooms in his cellar.
Helene Spenceley, too, might have sent him a Christmas card or something. He had seen her only twice since the sale, and each time she had whizzed past him in Canby"s machine on the way to Prouty. The sight had given him a curious feeling which he had tried to a.n.a.lyze but had been unable to find a satisfactory name for it.
Altogether, Wallie felt very lonely and forlorn and forgotten this Christmas morning as he lay in a knot under the soogan, listening to the wind tw.a.n.ging the stove-pipe wire and contemplating his present and future.
He had discovered that by craning his neck slightly when in a certain position he could look through a crack and see the notch in the mountain, below which was the Spenceley ranch, according to Pinkey. He was prompted to do so now, but an eyeful of snow discouraged his observation, so he decided that he would get up, feed his animals and, after breakfast, wash his shirt and a few towels by way of recreation.
The cabin was not only as cold as it looked but colder, and as Wallie hopped over the floor bare-footed and shivering he reflected that very likely his potatoes and onions were frozen and wished he had taken them to bed with him.
They were, unmistakably, for they rattled like gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s when he picked up several onions and examined them with a pained expression.
Wallie was still wearing much of the wardrobe he had brought with him, and when dressed to go outside he was warm but unique in a green velour hat, his riding breeches, brilliant golf stockings that were all but feetless thrust in arctics, a blue flannel shirt from the Emporium in Prouty, and a long, tight-fitting tan coat which had once been very smart indeed.
The snow had stopped falling by the time he had done his ch.o.r.es and breakfasted. The only benefit the storm had brought him was that it did away with the necessity of carrying water for his washing. He had acquired the agility of a cliff-dweller from scaling the embankment by means of the "toe-holts"; yet, at that, it was no easy matter to transport a bucket of water without spilling it.
He wished for a well every time that he panted in from a trip to the creek, and meant to have one as soon as he could afford it.
While the snow-water was melting Wallie considered the manner in which he should prepare the prairie-dogs. He presumed that it was too much to expect that the cook book would have anything to say on the subject, but it surely would recognize rabbit, and a recipe suitable for one would do for the other.