That was Charlie Sands"s way of talking. He does not mean to be rude, and he is really a young man of splendid character. But, as Tish says, contact with the world, although it has not spoiled him, has roughened his speech.
"You see," he explained, "there are places out there where the horses have to climb like goats. It"s only fair to them to distribute your weight equally. A side saddle is likely to turn and drop you a mile or two down a crack."
Aggie went rather white and sneezed violently.
But Tish looked thoughtful. "It sounds reasonable," she said. "I"ve felt for along time that I"d be glad to discard skirts. Skirts," she said, "are badge of servitude, survivals of the harem, reminders of a time when nothing was expected of women but parasitic leisure."
I tried to tell her that she was wrong about the skirts. Miss MacGillicuddy, our missionary in India, had certainly said that the women in harems wore bloomers. But Tish left the room abruptly, returning shortly after with a volume of the encyclopaedia, and looked up the Rocky Mountains.
I remember it said that the highest ranges were, as compared with the size and shape of the earth, only as the corrugations on the skin of an orange. Either the man who wrote that had never seen an orange or he had never seen the Rocky Mountains. Orange, indeed! If he had said the upper end of a pineapple it would have been more like it. I wish the man who wrote it would go to Glacier Park. I am not a vindictive woman, but I know one or two places where I would like to place him and make him swallow that orange. I"d like to see him on a horse, on the brink of a canon a mile deep, and have his horse reach over the edge for a stray plant or two, or standing in a cloud up to his waist, so that, as Aggie so plaintively observed, "The lower half of one is in a snowstorm while the upper part is getting sunburned."
For we went. Oh, yes, we went. It is not the encyclopaedia"s fault that we came back. But now that we are home, and nothing wrong except a touch of lumbago that Tish got from sleeping on the ground, and, of course, Aggie"s unfortunate experience with her teeth, I look back on our various adventures with pleasure. I even contemplate a return next year, although Aggie says she will die first. But even that is not to be taken as final. The last time I went to see her, she had bought a revolver from the janitor and was taking lessons in loading it.
The Ostermaiers went also. Not with us, however. The congregation made up a purse for the purpose, and Tish and Aggie and I went further, and purchased a cigar-case for Mr. Ostermaier and a quant.i.ty of cigars.
Smoking is the good man"s only weakness.
I must say, however, that it is absurd to hear Mrs. Ostermaier boasting of the trip. To hear her talk, one would think they had done the whole thing, instead of sitting in an automobile and looking up at the mountains. I shall never forget the day they were in a car pa.s.sing along a road, and we crossed unexpectedly ahead of them and went on straight up the side of a mountain.
Tish had a sombrero on the side of her head, and was resting herself in the saddle by having her right leg thrown negligently over the horse"s neck. With the left foot she was kicking our pack-horse, a creature so scarred with brands that Tish had named her Jane, after a cousin of hers who had had so many operations that Tish says she is now entirely unfurnished.
Mr. Ostermaier"s face was terrible, and only two days ago Mrs.
Ostermaier came over to ask about putting an extra width in the skirt to her last winter"s suit. But it is my belief that she came to save Tish"s soul, and nothing else.
"I"m so glad wide skirts have come in," she said. "They"re so modest, aren"t they, Miss Tish?"
"Not in a wind," Tish said, eying her coldly.
"I do think, dear Miss Tish," she went on with her eyes down, "that to--to go about in riding-breeches before a young man is--well, it is hardly discreet, is it?"
I saw Tish glancing about the room. She was pretty angry, and I knew perfectly well what she wanted. I put my knitting-bag over Charlie Sands"s tobacco-pouch.
Tish had learned to roll cigarettes out in Glacier Park. Not that she smoked them, of course, but she said she might as well know how. There was no knowing when it would come in handy. And when she wishes to calm herself she reaches instinctively for what Bill used to call, strangely, "the makings."
"If," she said, her eye still roving,--"if it was any treat to a twenty-four-year-old cowpuncher to see three elderly women in riding-breeches, Mrs. Ostermaier,--and it"s kind of you to think so,--why, I"m not selfish."
Mrs. Ostermaier"s face was terrible. She gathered up her skirt and rose.
"I shall not tell Mr. Ostermaier what you have just said," she observed with her mouth set hard. "We owe you a great deal, especially the return of my earrings. But I must request, Miss Tish, that you do not voice such sentiments in the Sunday school."
Tish watched her out. Then she sat down and rolled eleven cigarettes for Charlie Sands, one after the other. At last she spoke.
"I"m not sure," she said tartly, "that if I had it to do over again I"d do it. That woman"s not a Christian. I was thinking," she went on, "of giving them a part of the reward to go to Asbury Park with. But she"d have to wear blinders on the bathing-beach, so I"ll not do it."
However, I am ahead of my recital.
For a few days Tish said nothing more, but one Sunday morning, walking home from church, she turned to me suddenly and said:--
"Lizzie, you"re fat."
"I"m as the Lord made me," I replied with some spirit.
"Fiddlesticks!" said Tish. "You"re as your own sloth and overindulgence has made you. Don"t blame the Good Man for it."
Now, I am a peaceful woman, and Tish is as my own sister, and indeed even more so. But I was roused to anger by her speech.
"I"ve been fleshy all my life," I said. "I"m no lazier than most, and I"m a dratted sight more agreeable than some I know, on account of having the ends of my nerves padded."
But she switched to another subject in her characteristic manner.
"Have you ever reflected, either of you," she observed, "that we know nothing of this great land of ours? That we sing of loving "thy rocks and rills, thy woods and templed hills"--although the word "templed"
savors of paganism and does not belong in a national hymn? And that it is all balderdash?"
Aggie took exception to this and said that she loved her native land, and had been south to Pinehurst and west to see her niece in Minneapolis, on account of the baby having been named for her.
But Tish merely listened with a grim smile. "Travel from a car window,"
she observed, "is no better than travel in a nickelodeon. I have done all of that I am going to. I intend to become acquainted with my native land, closely acquainted. State by State I shall wander over it, refreshing soul and body and using muscles too long unused."
"Tish!" Aggie quavered. "You are not going on another walking-tour?"
Only a year or two before Tish had read Stevenson"s "Travels with a Donkey," and had been possessed to follow his example. I have elsewhere recorded the details of that terrible trip. Even I turned pale, I fear, and cast a nervous eye toward the table where Tish keeps her reading-matter.
Tish is imaginative, and is always influenced by the latest book she has read. For instance, a volume on "Nursing at the Front" almost sent her across to France, although she cannot make a bed and never could, and turns pale at the sight of blood; and another time a book on flying machines sent her up into the air, mentally if not literally. I shall never forget the time she secured some literature on the Mormon Church, and the difficulty I had in smuggling it out under my coat.
Tish did not refute the walking-tour at once, but fell into a deep reverie.
It is not her custom to confide her plans to us until they are fully shaped and too far on to be interfered with, which accounts for our nervousness.
On arriving at her apartment, however, we found a map laid out on the table and the Rocky Mountains marked with pins. We noticed that whenever she straightened from the table she grunted.
"What we want," Tish said, "is isolation. No people. No crowds. No servants. If I don"t get away from Hannah soon I"ll murder her."
"It wouldn"t hurt to see somebody now and then, Tish," Aggie objected.
"n.o.body," Tish said firmly. "A good horse is companion enough." She forgot herself and straightened completely, and she groaned.
"We might meet some desirable people, Tish," I put in firmly. "If we do, I don"t intend to run like a rabbit."
"Desirable people!" Tish scoffed. "In the Rocky Mountains! My dear Lizzie, every desperado in the country takes refuge in the Rockies. Of course, if you want to take up with that cla.s.s--"
Aggie sneezed and looked wretched. As for me, I made up my mind then and there that if Let.i.tia Carberry was going to such a neighborhood, she was not going alone. I am not much with a revolver, but mighty handy with a pair of lungs.
Well, Tish had it all worked out. "I"ve found the very place," she said.
"In the first place, it"s Government property. When our country puts aside a part of itself as a public domain we should show our appreciation. In the second place, it"s wild. I"d as soon spend a vacation in Central Park near the Zoo as in the Yellowstone. In the third place, with an Indian reservation on one side and a national forest on the other, it"s bound to be lonely. Any tourist," she said scornfully, "can go to the Yosemite and be photographed under a redwood tree."
"Do the Indians stay on the reservation?" Aggie asked feebly.
"Probably not," Tish observed coldly. "Once for all, Aggie--if you are going to run like a scared deer every time you see an Indian or a bear, I wish you would go to Asbury Park."
She forgot herself then and sat down quickly, an action which was followed by an agonized expression.