"Bring me the salt and don"t talk so much. You"ll have the stew spoiled in about one minute," Mother said, severely, to Crook McKusick, and that mighty leader meekly said, "Yes, ma"am," and trotted to a box on the far side of the fire.
The rest of the band--eight practical romanticists, each of whom was in some ways tougher than the others--looked rather sullenly at Mother"s restraining presence, but when the mulligan was served they volunteered awkward compliments. Veal and chicken and sweet potatoes and Irish potatoes and carrots and corn were in the stew, and it was very hot, and there was powerful coffee with condensed milk to accompany it.
Father shook his head and tried to make himself believe that he really was where he was--in a rim of bare woods reddened with firelight, surrounding a little stumpy clearing, on one side of which was a shack covered with tar-paper fastened with laths. The fire hid the storm behind its warm curtain. The ruffians about the fire seemed to be customers in a new "T Room" as Mother fussed over them and kept their plates filled.
Gradually the hoboes thawed out and told the Applebys that they had permission from the owner of the land to occupy this winter refuge, but that they liberally "swiped" their supplies from the whole countryside.
Mother exclaimed: "You poor boys, I don"t suppose you know any better.
Father, I think we"ll stay here for a few days, and I"ll mend up the boys" clothes and teach them not to steal.... You boys--why, here you are great big grown-up men, and you can jus" as well go out every day and work enough to get your supplies. No need to be leading an immoral life jus" because you"re tramps. I don"t see but what being tramps is real interesting and healthy, if you jus" go about it in a nice moral way. Now you with the red hair, come here and wipe the dishes while I wash them. I swear to goodness I don"t believe these horrid tin plates have been washed since you got them."
As Mother"s bland determined oration ended, Crook McKusick, the hook-nosed leader, glanced at her with a resigned shrug and growled: "All right, ma"am. Anything for a change, as the fellow said to the ragged shirt. We"ll start a Y. M. C. A. I suppose you"ll be having us take baths next."
The youngster introduced as the K. C. Kid piped up, truculently: "Say, where do you get this moral stuff? This ain"t a Sunday-school picnic; it"s a hoboes" camp."
Crook McKusick vaulted up with startling quickness, seized the K. C.
Kid by the neck, wrenched his face around, and demanded: "Can that stuff, Kid. If you don"t like the new stunt you can beat it. This here lady has got more nerve than ten transcontinental b.u.ms put together--woman, lady like her, out battering for eats and pounding the roads! She"s the new boss, see? But old Uncle Crook is here with his mits, too, see?"
The Kid winced as Crook"s nails gouged his neck, and whimpered: "All right, Crook. Gee! you don"t need to get so sore about it."
Unconscious that there had been a crisis, Mother struck in, "Step lively now, boys, and we"ll clean the dishes while the water"s hot."
With the incredulous gentry of leisure obeying her commands, Mother scoured the dishes, picked up refuse, then penetrated the sleeping-shack and was appalled by the filth on the floor and by the gunny-sacking mattresses thrown in the crude wooden bunks.
"Now we"ll tidy this up," she said, "and maybe I can fix up a corner for Mr. Appleby and me--sort of part.i.tion it off like."
The usual evening meditations and geographical discussions of the monastery of hoboes had been interrupted by collecting garbage and by a quite useless cleaning of dishes that would only get dirty again. They were recuperating, returning to their spiritual plane of perfect peace, in picturesque att.i.tudes by the fire. They scowled now. Again the K. C.
Kid raised his voice: "Aw, let the bunk-house alone! What d"yuh think this is? A female cemetery?"
Crook McKusick glared, but Reddy joined the rebellion with: "I"m through. I ain"t no c.h.i.n.k laundryman."
The bunch turned their heads away from Mother, and pretended to ignore her--and to ignore Crook"s swaying shoulders and clenching fists. In low but most impolite-sounding voices they began to curse the surprised and unhappy Mother. Father ranged up beside her, protectingly. He was sure there was going to be a fight, and he determined to do for some one, anyway. He was trapped, desperate. Crook McKusick stood with them, too, but his glance wavered from them to the group at the fire and back again, and he was clearing his throat to speak when--
"Hands up!" came a voice from the shadows beyond the fire.
CHAPTER XV
While he was raising his arms so high that his cuffs were pulled half-way down to his elbows, Father was conscious that the hoboes by the fire, even the formidable Crook McKusick, were doing the same. Facing them, in the woods border, was a farmer in a c.o.o.n-skin overcoat, aiming a double-barreled shot-gun, beside him two other farmers with rifles under their arms. It seemed to Father that he was in a wild Western melodrama, and he helplessly muttered, "Gosh! Can you beat it?"
The man with the leveled shot-gun drawled, "I"m the deputy sheriff for this locality and I"ll give you dirty b.u.ms just five minutes to pick up your duffle and git out, and keep a-going. I guess we don"t need you around here. You been robbing every hen-roost for ten miles. Now step lively, and no funny business."
"Stung!" muttered Crook McKusick, hopelessly. "Got us."
Suddenly a downy figure--who might herself have come from a large, peaceful human hen-roost--fluttered straight at the muzzle of the sheriff"s shot-gun. It was Mother.
"Hands up, I told juh!" stormed the sheriff, amazedly.
"Oh, look _out_, Mother!" wailed Father, rushing after her, his own hands going down to his sides in his agitation.
"Look out, aunty!" echoed Crook McKusick. "That"s a bad actor, that guy."
But Mother continued straight at the gun, snapping: "Don"t point that dratted thing at me. You bother me."
The sheriff wavered. The gun dropped. "Who are you?" he demanded.
"Never you mind who I am, young man. I"m responsible for these boys, though. And they promised me they wouldn"t do no more stealing. They"re going to work for what they get. And they got a right here on this land.
They got permission. That"s more than you got, I venture, with your nasty guns and all, coming around here-- Have you got a warrant?"
"No, I ain"t, but you--"
"Then you just step yourself away, young man! Coming here, fairly shaking a body"s nerves. I vow, you almost scare me, carrying on-- Put down that dratted gun, I told you. You"ll either go, Mr. Deputy Monkey, or I"ll see your boss, and we"ll see what we"ll see."
With which Mother--who was rapidly becoming almost impolite in her indignation over this uninvited visit from a person whom she couldn"t find it in her heart to like--seized the muzzle of the gun, pushed it down, and stood glowering at the sheriff, her arms akimbo.
"Well, ma"am, I don"t know who you are, but if you got any idee that this bunch of cut-throats is likely to turn into any W. C. T. U.
pink-tea party--"
"Now none of your nonsense and impudence and sneering, young man, and be off with you, or I"ll see somebody that"ll have something to say to you.
Illegal goings-on, that"s what they are; no warrant or nothing."
One of the sheriff"s companions muttered: "Come on, Bill. I think she"s the wife of that nosey new preacher over to Cordova."
"All right," said the sheriff. Before he turned away he threatened, "Now if I hear of anything more from you boys, I"ll get that warrant, all righty, and you"ll land in the calaboose, where you belong."
But the hoboes about the fire cheered derisively, and as the sheriff disappeared in the woods they surrounded Mother in a circle of grins and shining eyes, and the K. C. Kid was the first to declare: "Good for you, aunty. You"re elected camp boss, and you can make me perm"nent cookee, if you want to."
"Well, then," said Mother, calmly, "let"s get that nasty shack cleaned up right away. I do declare I"m beginning to get sleepy."
Nothing in his life was more to Father"s credit than the fact that he did not envy Mother the credit of having become monarch of the camp and protector of the poor. "I"m with you, Mother," he said. "What you want me to do? Let"s hustle. Blizzard coming--with a warrant."
Round a camp-fire in the woods a group of men were playing cards, wire-bearded men in rough coats and greasy flannel shirts; but the most violent thing they said was "Doggone it," and sometimes they stopped to listen to the strains of "Dandy d.i.c.k and the Candlestick," which a white-haired cheerful old gentleman rendered on the mouth-organ.
Father was perched on a powder-can. His feet were turned inward with comfort and soul-satisfaction, and now and then he jerked his head sideways, with an air of virile satisfaction. The collar of his blue-flannel shirt poked up beside his chin as c.o.c.kily as the ear of a setter pup.... Father didn"t know it, but he was making believe be King of the Bandits.
Across the fire, in an aged and uncertain rocking-chair, placid as though she were sitting beside a gas-log instead of a camp-fire over-gloomed with winter woods, was Mother, darning a sock and lecturing the homicidal-looking Crook McKusick on cursing and swearing and carryings-on. Crook stared down at her adoringly, and just when she seemed to have penetrated his tough hide with her moral injunctions he chuckled: "By golly! I believe I"ll marry and settle down--just as soon as I can find a moll that"ll turn into a cute old lady like you, aunty."
"Now, Mr. McKusick," she said, severely, "you want to reform for the sake of reforming, not just to please some girl--not but what a nice sweet woman would be good--"
"Nothing will ever be good for me, aunty. I"m gone. This sweet civilization of ours has got me. The first reform school I went to reformed me, all right--formed me into a crook. I used to show signs of growing up to be fair to middling intelligent, once. But now--nothing to it. You people, though you"re twice as old as I am, you"re twice as young. You got a chance. Look here, Uncle Appleby, why don"t you go out for being one of these famous old pedestrians that get their mugs in the papers? Will you do what I tell you to, if I train you? I"ve trained quite some pugs before--before I quit."
Mother acerbically declined to learn the art of physical culture. "Me at my time of life learning to do monkey-shines and bending and flapping my arms like a chicken with its head cut off." But Father enthusiastically and immediately started in to become the rival of the gentlemen in jerseys who wear rubber heels in the advertis.e.m.e.nts and spend their old ages in vigorously walking from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, merely in order to walk back again.
While his fellow-hoboes about the fire jeered, Father bent over forty times, and raised himself on his toes sixty, and solemnly took breathing-exercises.