Somewhere in Red Gap

"Alonzo gulped several times in rapid succession when he saw her, but the little man never starts anything he don't aim to finish, and it was too late to start it then. Henrietta brazened her way through Main Street and out to the country club and back, and next day she put them on again so Otto Hirsch, of the E-light Studio, could come up and take her standing by the horse out in front of the Price mansion. Then they was laid away until the Grand Annual Masquerade Ball of the Order of the Eastern Star, which is a kind of hen Masons, when she again gave us a flash of what New York society ladies was riding their horse in. As a matter of fact, Henrietta hates a horse like a rattlesnake, but she had done her pioneer work for once and all.

"Every one was now laughing and sneering at the old-fashioned divided skirt with which woman had endangered her life on a horse, and wondering how they had endured the clumsy things so long; and come spring all the prominent young society buds and younger matrons of the most exclusive set who could stay on a horse at all was getting theirs ready for the approaching season, Red Gap being like London in having its gayest season in the summer, when people can get out more. Even Mis' Judge Ballard fell for it, though hers was made of severe black with a long coat. She looked exactly like that Methodist minister, the old one, that we had three years ago.

"Most of the younger set used the mail-order catalogue, their figures still permitting it. And maybe there wasn't a lot of trying on behind drawn blinds pretty soon, and delighted giggles and innocent girlish wonderings about whether the lowest type of man really ogles as much under certain circumstances as he's said to. And the minute the roads got good the telephone of Pierce's Livery, Feed, and Sale Stable was kept on the ring. Then the social upheaval was on. Of course any of 'em looked quiet after Henrietta's costume, for none of the girls but Beryl Mae Macomber, a prominent young society bud, aged seventeen, had done anything like that. But it was the idea of the thing.

"A certain element on the South Side made a lot of talk and stirred things up and wrote letters to the president of the Civic Purity League, who was Mis' Judge Ballard herself, asking where this unspeakable disrobing business was going to end and calling her attention to the fate that befell Sodom and Gomorrah. But Mis' Ballard she's mixed on names and gets the idea these parties mean Samson and Delilah instead of a couple of twin cities, like St. Paul and Minneapolis, and she writes back saying what have these Bible characters got to do with a lady riding on horseback—in trousers, it is true, but with a coat falling modestly to the knee on each side, and certain people had better be a little more fussy about things that really matter in life before they begin to talk. She knew who she was hitting at all right, too. Trust Mis' Ballard!

"It was found that there was almost the expected amount of ogling from sidewalk loafers, at first. As Daisy Estelle Maybury said, it seemed as if a girl couldn't show herself on the public thoroughfare without being subjected to insult. Poor Daisy Estelle! She had been a very popular young society belle, and was considered one of the most attractive girls in Red Gap until this happened. No one had ever suspected it of her in the least degree up to that time. Of course it was too late after she was once seen off her horse. Them that didn't see was told in full detail by them that did. Most of the others was luckier. Beryl Mae Macomber in her sport shirt and trouserettes complained constantly about the odious wretches along Main Street and Fourth, where the post office was. She couldn't stop even twenty minutes in front of the post office, minding her own business and waiting for some one she knew to come along and get her mail for her, without having dozens of men stop and ogle her. That, of course, was during the first two weeks after she took to going for the mail, though the eternal feminine in Beryl Mae probably thought the insulting glances was going to keep up forever.

"I watched the poor child one day along in the third week, waiting there in front of the post office after the four o'clock mail, and no one hardly ogled her at all except some rude children out from school. What made it more pitiful, leaning right there against the post office front was Jack Shiels, Sammie Hamilton, and little old Elmer Cox, Red Gap's three town rowdies that ain't done a stroke of work since the canning factory closed down the fall before, creatures that by rights should have been leering at the poor child In all her striking beauty. But, no; the brutes stand there looking at nothing much until Jack Shiels stares a minute at this horse Beryl Mae is on and pipes up: 'Why, say, I thought Pierce let that little bay runt go to the guy that was in here after polo ponies last Thursday. I sure did.' And Sam Hamilton wakes up and says: 'No, sir; not this one. He got rid of a little mare that had shoulders like this, but she was a roan with kind of mule ears and one froze off.' And little old Elmer Cox, ignoring this defenceless young girl with his impudent eyes, he says: 'Yes, Sam's right for once. Pierce tried to let this one go, too, but ain't you took a look at his hocks!' Then along comes Dean Duke, the ratty old foreman in Pierce's stable, and he don't ogle a bit, either, like you'd expect one of his debased calibre to, but just stops and talks this horse over with 'em and says yes, it was his bad hocks that lost the sale, and he tells 'em how he had told Pierce just what to do to get him shaped up for a quick sale, but Pierce wouldn't listen to him, thinking he knew it all himself; and there the four stood and gassed about this horse without even seeing Beryl Mae, let alone leering at her. I bet she was close to shedding tears of girlish mortification as she rode off without ever waiting for the mail. Things was getting to a pretty pass. If low creatures lost to all decent instincts, like these four, wouldn't ogle a girl when she was out for it, what could be expected of the better element of the town? Still, of course, now and then one or the other of the girls would have a bit of luck to tell of.

"Well, now we come to the crookedest bit of work I ever been guilty of, though first telling you about Mr. Burchell Daggett, an Eastern society man from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that had come to Red Gap that spring to be assistant cashier in the First National, through his uncle having stock in the thing. He was a very pleasant kind of youngish gentleman, about thirty-four, I reckon, with dark, parted whiskers and gold eyeglasses and very good habits. He took his place among our very best people right off, teaching the Bible class in the M.E. Sabbath-school and belonging to the Chamber of Commerce and the City Beautiful Association, of which he was made vice-president, and being prominent at all functions held in our best homes. He wasn't at all one of them that lead a double life by stopping in at the Family Liquor Store for a gin fizz or two after work hours, or going downtown after supper to play Kelly pool at the Temperance Billiard Parlours and drink steam beer, or getting in with the bunch that gathers in the back room of the Owl Cigar Store of an evening and tells these here suggestive stories. Not that he was hide-bound. If he felt the need for a shot of something he'd go into the United States Grill and have a glass of sherry and bitters brought to him at a table and eat a cracker with it, and he'd take in every show, even the Dizzy Belles of Gotham Big Blonde Beauty Show. He was refined and even moral in the best sense of the word, but still human.

"Our prominent young society buds took the keenest notice of him at once, as would naturally happen, he being a society bachelor of means and by long odds the best catch in Red Gap since old Potter Knapp, of the Loan and Trust Company, had broke his period of mourning for his third wife by marrying Myrtle Wade that waited on table at the Occidental Hotel, with the black band still on his left coat sleeve. It's no exaggeration to say that Mr. Burchell Daggett became the most sought-after social favourite among Reg Gap's hoot mondy in less than a week after he unpacked his trunk. But it was very soon discovered by the bright-eyed little gangsters of the best circles that he wasn't going to be an easy one to disable. Naturally when a man has fought 'em off to his age he has learned much of woodcraft and the hunter's cunning wiles, and this one had sure developed timber sense. He beat 'em at their own game for three months by the simple old device of not playing any favourite for one single minute, and very, very seldom getting alone with one where the foul stroke can be dealt by the frailest hand with muscular precision. If he took Daisy Estelle Maybury to the chicken pie supper to get a new carpet for the Presbyterian parsonage, he'd up and take Beryl Mae and her aunt, or Gussie Himebaugh, or Luella Stultz, to the lawn feet at Judge Ballard's for new uniforms for the band boys. At the Bazaar of All Nations he bought as many chances of one girl as he did of another, and if he hadn't any more luck than a rabbit and won something—a hanging lamp or a celluloid manicure set in a plush-lined box—he'd simply put it up to be raffled off again for the good of the cause. And none of that moonlight loitering along shaded streets for him, where the dirk is so often drove stealthily between a man's ribs, and him thinking all the time he's only indulging in a little playful nonsense. Often as not he'd take two girls at once, where all could be merry without danger of anything happening.

"It was no time at all till this was found out on him. It was seen that under a pleasing exterior, looking all too easy to overcome by any girl in her right mind, he had powers of resistance and evasion that was like steel. Of course this only stirred the proud beauties on to renewed and crookeder efforts. Every darned one of 'em felt that her innocent young girlhood was challenged, and would she let it go at that? Not so. My lands! What snares and deadfalls was set for this wise old timber wolf that didn't look it, with his smiling ways and seemingly careless response to merry banter, and so forth!

"And of course every one of these shrinking little scoundrels thought at once of her new riding costume, so no time at all was lost in organizing the North Side Riding and Sports Club, which Mr. Burchell Daggett gladly joined, having, as he said, an eye for a horse and liking to get out after banking hours to where all Nature seems to smile and you can let your mount out a bit over the firm, smooth road. Them that had held off until now, on account of the gossip and leering, hurried up and got into line with No. 9872 in the mail-order catalogue, or went to Miss Gunslaugh, who by this time had a female wax dummy in her window in a neat brown suit and puttees, with a coat just opening and one foot advanced carelessly, with gauntlets and a riding crop, and a fetching little cap over the wind-blown hair and the clear, wonderful blue eyes. Oh, you can bet every last girl of the bunch was seeing herself send back picture postals to her rivals telling what a royal time they was having at Palm or Rockaway Beach or some place, and seeing the engraved cards—'Mr. and Mrs. Burchell Daggett, at Home After the Tenth, Ophir Avenue, Red Gap, Wash.'

"Ain't we good when you really get us, if you ever do—because some don't. Many, indeed! I reckon there never was a woman yet outside of a feeb' home that didn't believe she could be an A. No. 1 siren if she only had the nerve to dress the part; never one that didn't just ache to sway men to her lightest whim, and believe she could—not for any evil purpose, mind you, but just to show her power. Think of the tender hearts that must have shuddered over the damage they could and actually might do in one of them French bathing suits like you are said to witness in Paris and Atlantic City and other sinks of iniquity. And here was these well-known society favourites wrought up by this legible party, as the French say, till each one was ready to go just as far as the Civic Purity League would let her in order to sweep him off his feet in one mad moment. Quite right, too. It all depends on what the object is, don't it; and wasn't theirs honourable matrimony with an establishment and a lawn in front of it with a couple of cast-iron moose, mebbe?

"And amid all this quaint girlish enterprise and secret infamy was the problem of Hetty Tipton. Hetty had been a friend and a problem of mine for seven years, or ever since she come back from normal to teach in the third-grade grammar school; a fine, clean, honest, true-blue girl, mebbe not as pretty you'd say at first as some others, but you like her better after you look a few times more, and with not the slightest nonsense about her. That last was Hetty's one curse. I ask you, what chance has a girl got with no nonsense about her? Hetty won my sympathy right at the start by this infirmity of hers, which was easily detected, and for seven years I'd been trying to cure her of it, but no use. Oh, she was always took out regular enough and well liked, but the gilded youth of Red Gap never fought for her smiles. They'd take her to parties and dances, turn and turn about, but they always respected her, which is the greatest blight a man can put on one of us, if you know what I mean. Every man at a party was always careful to dance a decent number of times with Hetty and see that she got back to her seat; and wasn't it warm in here this evening, yes, it was; and wouldn't she have a glass of the punch—No, thank you—then he'd gallop off to have some fun with a mere shallow-pated fool that had known how from the cradle. It was always a puzzle to me, because Hetty dressed a lot better than most of them, knowing what to wear and how, and could take a joke if it come slow, and laid herself out to be amiable to one and all. I kind of think it must be something about her mentality. Maybe it is too mental. I can't put her to you any plainer than to say that every single girl in town, young and old, just loved her, and not one of them up to this time had ever said an unkind or feminine thing about her. I guess you know what that would mean of any woman.

"Hetty was now coming twenty-nine—we never spoke of this, but I could count back—and it's my firm belief that no man had ever proposed marriage or anything else on earth to her. Wilbur Todd had once endeavoured to hold her hand out on the porch at a country-club dance and she had repulsed him in all kindness but firmly. She told him she couldn't bring herself to permit a familiarity of that sort except to the man who would one day lead her to the altar, which is something I believe she got from writing to a magazine about a young girl's perplexities. And here, in spite of her record, this poor thing had dared to raise her eyes to none other than this Mr. Burchell Daggett. There was something kind of grand and despairing about the impudence of it when you remember these here trained efficiency experts she was competing with. Yet so it was. She would drop in on me after school for a cup of tea and tell me frankly how distinguished his manner was and what shapely features he had and what fine eyes, and how there was a certain note in his voice at times, and had I ever noticed that one stubborn lock of hair that stuck out back of his left ear? Of course that last item settled it. When they notice that lock of hair you know the ship has struck the reef and all hands are perishing.

"And it seemed that the cuss had not only shown her more than a little attention at evening functions but had escorted her to the midspring production of 'Hamlet' by the Red Gap Amateur Theatrical and Dramatic Society. True, he had conducted himself like a perfect gentleman every minute they was alone together, even when they had to go home in Eddie Pierce's hack because it was raining when the show let out—but would I, or would I not, suspect from all this that he was in the least degree thinking of her in a way that—you know!

"Poor child of twenty-eight, with her hungry eyes and flushed face while she was showing down her hand to me! I seen the scoundrel's play at once. Hetty was the one safe bet for him in Red Gap's social whirl. He was wise, all right—this Mr. D. He'd known in a second he could trust himself alone with that girl and be as safe as a babe in its mother's arms. Of course I couldn't say this to Hetty. I just said he was a man that seemed to know his own mind very clearly, whatever it was, and Hetty blushed some more and said that something within her responded to a certain note in his voice. We let it go at that.

"So I think and ponder about poor Hetty, trying to invent some conspiracy that would fix it right, because she was the ideal mate for an assistant cashier that had a certain position to keep up. For that matter she was good enough for any man. Then I hear she has joined the riding club, and an all day's ride has been planned for the next Saturday up to Stender's Spring, with a basket lunch and a romantic ride back by moonlight. Of course, I don't believe in any of this spiritualist stuff, but you can't tell me there ain't something in it, mind-reading or something, with the hunches you get when parties is in some grave danger.

"Stella Ballard it was tells me about the picnic, calling me in as I passed their house to show me her natty new riding togs that had just come from the mail-order house. She called from back of a curtain, and when I got into the parlour she had them on, pleased as all get-out. Pretty they was, too—riding breeches and puttees and a man's flannel shirt and a neat-fitting Norfolk jacket, and Stella being a fine, upstanding figure.

"'They may cause considerable talk,' says she, smoothing down one leg where it wrinkled a bit, 'but really I think they look perfectly stunning on me, and wasn't it lucky they fit me so beautifully? They're called the Non Plush Ultra.'

"'The what?' I says.

"'The Non Plush Ultra,' she answers. 'That's the name of them sewed in the band.'

"'What's that mean?' I wanted to know.

"'Why,' says Stella, 'that's Latin or Greek, I forget which, and it means they're the best, I believe. Oh, let me see! Why, it means nothing beyond, or something like that; the farthest you can go, I think. One forgets all that sort of thing after leaving high school.'

"'Well,' I says, 'they fit fine, and it's the only modest rig for a woman to ride a horse in, but they certainly are non plush, all right. That thin goods will never wear long against saddle leather, take my word for it.'

"But of course this made no impression on Stella—she was standing on the centre table by now, so she could lamp herself in the glass over the mantel—and then she tells me about the excursion for Saturday and how Mr. Burchell Daggett is enthused about it, him being a superb horseman himself, and, if I know what she means, don't I think she carries herself in the saddle almost better than any girl in her set, and won't her style show better than ever in this duck of a costume, and she must get her tan shoes polished, and do I think Mr. Daggett really meant anything when he said he'd expect her some day to return the masonic pin she had lifted off his vest the other night at the dance, and so on.

"It was while she was babbling this stuff that I get the strange hunch that Hetty Tipton is in grave danger and I ought to run to her; it seemed almost I could hear her calling on me to save her from some horrible fate. So I tell Stella yes, she's by far the finest rider in the whole Kulanche Valley, and she ought to get anything she wants with that suit on, and then I beat it quick over to the Ezra Button house where Hetty boards.

"You can laugh all you want to, but that hunch of mine was the God's truth. Hetty was in the gravest danger she'd faced since one time in early infancy when she got give morphine for quinine. What made it more horrible, she hadn't the least notion of her danger. Quite the contrary.

"'Thank the stars I've come in time!' I gasps as I rushes in on her, for there's the poor girl before her mirror in a pair of these same Non Plush Ultras and looking as pleased with herself as if she had some reason to be.

"'Back into your skirts quick!' I says. 'I'm a strong woman and all that, but still I can be affected more than you'd think.'

"Poor Hetty stutters and turns red and her chin begins to quiver, so I gentled her down and tried to explain, though seeing quick that I must tell her everything but the truth. I reckon nothing in this world can look funnier than a woman wearing them things that had never ought to for one reason or another. There was more reasons than that in Hetty's case. Dignity was the first safe bet I could think of with her, so I tried that.

"'I know all you would say,' says the poor thing in answer, 'but isn't it true that men rather like one to be—oh, well, you know—just the least bit daring?'

"'Truest thing in the world,' I says, 'but bless your heart, did you suspicion riding breeches was daring on a woman? Not so. A girl wearing 'em can't be any more daring after the first quick shock is over than—well, you read the magazines, don't you? You've seen those pictures of family life in darkest Africa that the explorers and monkey hunters bring home, where the wives, mothers, and sweethearts, God bless 'em! wear only what the scorching climate demands. Didn't it strike you that one of them women without anything on would have a hard time if she tried to be daring—or did it? No woman can be daring without the proper clothes for it,' I says firmly, 'and as for you, I tell you plain, get into the most daring and immodest thing that was ever invented for woman—which is the well-known skirt.'

"'Oh, Ma Pettengill,' cries the poor thing, 'I never meant anything horrid and primitive when I said daring. As a matter of fact, I think these are quite modest to the intelligent eye.'

"'Just what I'm trying to tell you,' I says. 'Exactly that; they're modest to any eye whatever. But here you are embarked on a difficult enterprise, with a band of flinty-hearted cutthroats trying to beat you to it, and, my dear child, you have a staunch nature and a heart of gold, but you simply can't afford to be modest.'

"'I don't understand,' says she, looking at herself in the glass again.

"'Trust me, anyway,' I implores. 'Let others wear their Non Plush Ultras which are No. 9872'—she tries to correct my pronunciation, but I wouldn't stop for that. 'Never mind how it's pronounced,' I says, 'because I know well the meaning of it in a foreign language. It means the limit, and it's a very desirable limit for many, but for you,' I says plainly, 'it's different. Your Non Plush Ultra will have to be a neat, ankle-length riding skirt. You got one, haven't you?'

"'I have,' says she, 'a very pretty one of tan corduroy, almost new, but I had looked forward to these, and I don't see yet—'

"Then I thought of another way I might get to her without blurting out the truth. 'Listen, Hetty,' I says, 'and remember not only that I'm your friend but that I know a heap more about this fool world than you do. I've had bitter experiences, and one of them got me at the time I first begun to wear riding pants myself, which must have been about the time you was beginning to bite dents into your silver mug that Aunt Caroline sent. I was a handsome young hellion, I don't mind telling you, and they looked well on me, and when Lysander John urged me to be brave and wear 'em outside I was afraid all the men within a day's ride was going to sneak round to stare at me. My! I was so embarrassed, also with that same feeling you got in your heart this minute that it was taking an unfair advantage of any man—you know! I felt like I was using all the power of my young beauty for unworthy ends.

"'Well, do you know what I got when I first rode out on the ranch? I got just about the once-over from every brute there, and that was all. If one of them ranch hands had ever ogled me a second time I'd have known it all right, but I never caught one of the scoundrels at it. First I said: "Now, ain't that fine and chivalrous?" Then I got wise. It wasn't none of this here boasted Western chivalry, but just plain lack of interest. I admit it made me mad at first. Any man on the place was only too glad to look me over when I had regular clothes on, but dress me like Lysander John and they didn't look at me any oftener than they did him. Not as often, of course, because as a plain human being and man's equal I wasn't near as interesting as he was.'

"'But then, too,' says Hetty, who had only been about half listening to my lecture, 'I thought it might be striking a blow at the same time for the freedom of woman.'

"Well, you know how that freedom-of-the-sex talk always gets me going. I was mad enough for a minute to spank her just as she stood there in them Non Plush Ultras she was so proud of. And I did let out some high talk. Mrs. Dutton told her afterward she thought sure we was having words.

"'Freedom from skirts,' I says, 'is the last thing your sex wants. Skirts is the final refuge of immodesty, to which women will cling like grim death. They will do any possible thing to a skirt—slit it, thin it, shorten it, hike it up one side—people are setting up nights right now thinking up some new thing to do to it—but women won't give it up and dress modestly as men do because it's the only unfair drag they got left with the men. I see one of our offended sex is daily asking right out in a newspaper: "Are women people?" I'd just like to whisper to her that no one yet knows.

"'If they'll quit their skirts, dress as decently as a man does so they won't have any but a legitimate pull with him, we'd have a chance to find out if they're good for anything else. As a matter of fact, they don't want to be people and dress modestly and wear hats you couldn't pay over eight dollars for. I believe there was one once, but the poor thing never got any notice from either sex after she became—a people, as you might say.'

"Well, I was going on to get off a few more things I'd got madded up to, but I caught the look in poor Hetty's face, and it would have melted a stone. Poor child! There she was, wanting a certain man and willing to wear or not wear anything on earth that would nail him, and not knowing what would do it, and complicating her ignorance with meaningless worries about modesty and daringness and the freedom of her poor sex, that ain't ever even deuce-low with one woman in a million.

"And right then, watching her distress, all at once I get my big inspiration—it just flooded me like the sun coming up. I don't know if I'm like other folks, but things do come to me that way. And not only was it a great truth, but it got me out of the hole of having to tell Hetty certain truths about herself that these Non Plush Ultras made all too glaring.

"'Listen,' I says: 'You believe I'm your friend, don't you? And you believe anything I tell you is from the heart out and will probably have a grain of sense in it. Well, here is an inspired thought: Women won't ever dress modestly like men do because men don't want 'em to. I never saw a man yet that did if he'd tell the truth, and so this here dark city stranger won't be any exception. Now, then, what do we see on Saturday next? Why, we see this here gay throng sally forth for Stender's Spring, the youth and beauty of Red Gap, including Mr. D., with his nice refined odour of Russia leather and bank bills of large size—from fifties up—that haven't been handled much. The crowd is of all sexes, technically, like you might say; a lot of nice, sweet girls along but dressed to be mere jolly young roughnecks, and just as interesting to the said stranger as the regular boys that will be present—hardly more so. And now, as for poor little meek you—you will look wild and Western, understand me, but feminine; exactly like the coloured cigarette picture that says under it "Rocky Mountain Cow Girl." You will be in your pretty tan skirt—be sure to have it pressed—and a blue-striped sport bloose that I just saw in the La Mode window, and you'll get some other rough Western stuff there, too: a blue silk neckerchief and a natty little cow-girl sombrero—the La Mode is showing a good one called the La Parisienne for four fifty-eight—and the daintiest pair of tan kid gauntlets you can find, and don't forget a pair of tan silk stockings—'

"'They won't show in my riding boots,' says Hetty, looking as if she was coming to life a little.

"'Tush for the great, coarse, commonsense riding boots,' I says firmly; 'you will wear precisely that neat little pair of almost new tan pumps with the yellow bows that you're standing in now. Do you get me?'

"'But that would be too dainty and absurd,' says Hetty.

"'Exactly!' I says, shutting my mouth hard.

"'Why, I almost believe I do get you,' says she, looking religiously up into the future like that lady saint playing the organ in the picture.

"'Another thing,' I says: 'You are deathly afraid of a horse and was hardly ever on one but once when you were a teeny girl, but you do love the open life, so you just nerved yourself up to come.'

"'I believe I see more clearly than ever,' says Hetty. She grew up on a ranch, knows more about a horse than the horse himself does, and would be a top rider most places, with the cheap help we get nowadays that can hardly set a saddle.

"'Also from time to time,' I goes on, 'you want to ask this Mr. D. little, timid, silly questions that will just tickle him to death and make him feel superior. Ask him to tell you which legs of a horse the chaps go on, and other things like that; ask him if the sash that holds the horrid old saddle on isn't so tight it's hurting your horse. After the lunch is et, go over to the horse all alone and stroke his nose and call him a dear and be found by the gent when he follows you over trying to feed the noble animal a hard-boiled egg and a couple of pickles or something. Take my word for it, he'll be over all right and have a hearty laugh at your confusion, and begin to wonder what it is about you.

"'How about falling off and spraining my ankle on the way back?' demands the awakening vestal with a gleam in her eye.

"'No good,' I says; 'pretty enough for a minute, but it would make trouble if you kept up the bluff, and if there's one thing a man hates more than another it's to have a woman round that makes any trouble.'

"'You have me started on a strange new train of thought,' says Hetty.

"'I think it's a good one,' I tells her, 'but remember there are risks. For one thing, you know how popular you have always been with all the girls. Well, after this day none of 'em will hardly speak to you because of your low-lifed, deceitful game, and the things they'll say of you—such things as only woman can say of woman!'

"'I shall not count the cost,' says she firmly. 'And now I must hurry down for that sport bloose—blue-striped, you said?'

"'Something on that order,' I says, 'that fits only too well. You can do almost anything you want to with your neck and arms, but remember strictly—a skirt is your one and only Non Plush Ultra.'

"So I went home all flushed and eager, thinking joyously how little men—the poor dubs—ever suspect how it's put over on 'em, and the next day, which was Friday, I thought of a few more underhand things she could do. So when she run in to see me that afternoon, the excitement of the chase in her eye, she wanted I should go along on this picnic. I says yes, I will, being that excited myself and wanting to see really if I was a double-faced genius or wasn't I? Henrietta Price couldn't go on account of being still lame from her ride of a week ago, so I could go as chaperone, and anyway I knew the dear girls would all be glad to have me because I would look so different from them—like a genial old ranch foreman going out on rodeo—and the boys was always glad to see me along anyway. 'I'll be there,' I says to Hetty. 'And here—don't forget at all times to-morrow to carry this little real lace handkerchief I'm giving you.'

"I was at the meeting-place next morning at nine. None of the other girls was on time, of course, but that was just as well, because Aggie Tuttle had got her father to come down to the sale yard to pack a mule with the hampers of lunch. Jeff Tuttle is a good packer all right, but too inflamed in the case of a mule, which he hates. They always know up and down that street when he's packing one; ladies drag their children by as fast as they can. But Jeff had the hitch all throwed before any of the girls showed up, and all began in a lovely manner, the crowd of about fifteen getting off not more than an hour late; Mr. Burchell in the lead and a bevy of these jolly young rascals in their Non Plush Ultras riding herd on him.

"Every girl cast cordial glances of pity at poor Hetty when she showed up in her neat skirt and silly tan pumps with the ridiculous silk stockings and the close-fitting blue-striped thing, free at the neck, and her pretty hair all neated under the La Parisienne cow-girl hat. Oh, they felt kinder than ever before to poor old Hetty when they saw her as little daring as that, cheering her with a hearty uproar, slapping their Non Plush Ultras with their caps or gloves, and then giggling confidentially to one another. Hetty accepted their applause with what they call a pretty show of confusion and gored her horse with her heel on the off side so it looked as if the vicious brute was running away and she might fall off any minute, but somehow she didn't, and got him soothed with frightened words and by taking the hidden heel out of his slats—though not until Mr. D. had noticed her good and then looked again once or twice.

"And so the party moved on for an hour or two, with the roguish young roughnecks cutting up merrily at all times, pretending to be cowboys coming to town on pay day, swinging their hats, giving the long yell, and doing roughriding to cut each other away from the side of Mr. D. every now and then, with a noisy laugh of good nature to hide the poisoned dagger. Daisy Estelle Maybury is an awful good rider, too, and got next to the hero about every time she wanted to. Poor thing, if she only knew that once she gets off a horse in 'em it makes all the difference in the world.

"The dark city stranger seemed to enjoy it fine, all this noise and cutting up and cowboy antics like they was just a lot of high-spirited young men together, but I never weakened in my faith for one minute. 'Laugh on, my proud beauties,' I says, 'but a time will come, just as sure as you look and act like a passel of healthy boys.' And you bet it did.

"We hadn't got halfway to Stender's Spring till Mr. D. got off to tighten his cinch, and then he sort of drifted back to where Hetty and I was. I dropped back still farther to where a good chaperone ought to be and he rode in beside Hetty. The trail was too narrow then for the rest to come back after their prey, so they had to carry on the rough work among themselves.

"Hetty acted perfect. She had a pensive, withdrawn look—'aloof,' I guess the word is—like she was too tender a flower, too fine for this rough stuff, and had ought to be in the home that minute telling a fairy story to the little ones gathered at her decently clad knee. I don't know how she done it, but she put that impression over. And she tells Mr. D. that in spite of her quiet, studious tastes she had resolved to come on this picnic because she loves Nature oh! so dearly, the birds and the wild flowers and the great rugged trees that have their message for man if he will but listen with an understanding heart—didn't Mr. D. think so, or did he? But not too much of this dear old Nature stuff, which can be easy overdone with a healthy man; just enough to show there was hidden depths in her nature that every one couldn't find.

"Then on to silly questions about does a horse lie down when it goes to sleep each night after its hard day's labour, and isn't her horse's sash too tight, and what a pretty fetlock he has, so long and thick and brown—Oh, do you call that the mane? How absurd of poor little me! Mr. Daggett knows just everything, doesn't he? He's perfectly terrifying. And where in the world did he ever learn to ride so stunningly, like one of those dare-devils in a Wild West entertainment? If her own naughty, naughty horse tries to throw her on the ground again where he can bite her she'll just have Mr. D. ride the nassy ole sing and teach him better manners, so she will. There now! He must have heard that—just see him move his funny ears—don't tell her that horses can't understand things that are said. And, seriously now, where did Mr. D. ever get his superb athletic training, because, oh! how all too rare it is to see a brain-worker of strong mentality and a splendid athlete in one and the same man. Oh, how pathetically she had wished and wished to be a man and take her place out in the world fighting its battles, instead of poor little me who could never be anything but a homebody to worship the great, strong, red-blooded men who did the fighting and carried on great industries—not even an athletic girl like those dear things up ahead—and this horse is bobbing up and down like that on purpose, just to make poor little me giddy, and so forth. Holding her bridle rein daintily she was with the lace handkerchief I'd give her that cost me twelve fifty.

"Mr. D. took it all like a real man. He said her ignorance of a horse was adorable and laughed heartily at it. And he smiled in a deeply modest and masterful way and said 'But, really, that's nothing—nothing at all, I assure you,' when she said about how he was a corking athlete—and then kept still to see if she was going on to say more about it. But she didn't, having the God-given wisdom to leave him wanting. And then he would be laughing again at her poor-little-me horse talk.

"I never had a minute's doubt after that, for it was the eyes of one fascinated to a finish that he turned back on me half an hour later as he says: 'Really, Mrs. Pettengill, our Miss Hester is feminine to her finger tips, is she not?' 'She is, she is,' I answers. 'If you only knew the trouble I had with the chit about that horrible old riding skirt of hers when all her girl friends are wearing a sensible costume!' Hetty blushed good and proper at this, not knowing how indecent I might become, and Mr. D. caught her at it. Aggie Tuttle and Stella Ballard at this minute is pretending to be shooting up a town with the couple of revolvers they'd brought along in their cunning little holsters. Mr. D. turns his glazed eyes to me once more. 'The real womanly woman,' says he in a hushed voice, 'is God's best gift to man.' Just like that.

"'Landed!' I says to myself. 'Throw him up on the bank and light a fire.'

"And mebbe you think this tet-à-tet had not been noticed by the merry throng up front. Not so. The shouting and songs had died a natural death, and the last three miles of that trail was covered in a gloomy silence, except for the low voices of Hetty and the male she had so neatly pronged. I could see puzzled glances cast back at them and catch mutterings of bewilderment where the trail would turn on itself. But the poor young things didn't yet realize that their prey was hanging back there for reasons over which he hadn't any control. They thought, of course, he was just being polite or something.

"When we got to the picnic place, though, they soon saw that all was not well. There was some resumption of the merrymaking as they dismounted and the girls put one stirrup over the saddle-horn and eased the cinch like the boys did, and proud of their knowledge, but the glances they now shot at Hetty wasn't bewildered any more. They was glances of pure fright. Hetty, in the first place, had to be lifted off her horse, and Mr. D. done it in a masterly way to show her what a mere feather she was in his giant's grasp. Then with her feet on the ground she reeled a mite, so he had to support her. She grasped his great strong arm firmly and says: 'It's nothing—I shall be right presently—leave me please, go and help those other girls.' They had some low, heated language about his leaving her at such a crisis, with her gripping his arm till I bet it showed for an hour. But finally they broke and he loosened her horse's sash, as she kept quaintly calling it, and she recovered completely and said it had been but a moment's giddiness anyway, and what strength he had in those arms, and yet could use it so gently, and he said she was a brave, game little woman, and the picnic was served to one and all, with looks of hearty suspicion and rage now being shot at Hetty from every other girl there.

"And now I see that my hunch has been even better than I thought. Not only does the star male hover about Hetty, cutely perched on a fallen log with her dainty, gleaming ankles crossed, and looking so fresh and nifty and feminine, but I'm darned if three or four of the other males don't catch the contagion of her woman's presence and hang round her, too, fetching her food of every kind there, feeding her spoonfuls of Aggie Tuttle's plum preserves, and all like that, one comical thing after another. Yes, sir; here was Mac Gordon and Riley Hardin and Charlie Dickman and Roth Hyde, men about town of the younger dancing set, that had knowed Hetty for years and hardly ever looked at her—here they was paying attentions to her now like she was some prize beauty, come down from Spokane for over Sunday, to say nothing of Mr. D., who hardly ever left her side except to get her another sardine sandwich or a paper cup of coffee. It was then I see the scientific explanation of it, like these high-school professors always say that science is at the bottom of everything. The science of this here was that they was all devoting themselves to Hetty for the simple reason that she was the one and only woman there present.

"Of course these girls in their modest Non Plush Ultras didn't get the scientific secret of this fact. They was still too obsessed with the idea that they ought to be ogled on account of them by any male beast in his right senses. But they knew they'd got in wrong somehow. By this time they was kind of bunching together and telling each other things in low tones, while not seeming to look at Hetty and her dupes, at which all would giggle in the most venemous manner. Daisy Estelle left the bunch once and made a coy bid for the notice of Mr. D. by snatching his cap and running merrily off with it about six feet. If there was any one in the world—except Hetty—could make a man hate the idea of riding pants for women, she was it. I could see the cold, flinty look come into his eyes as he turned away from her to Hetty with the pitcher of lemonade. And then Beryl Mae Macomber, she gets over close enough for Mr. D. to hear it, and says conditions is made very inharmonious at home for a girl of her temperament, and she's just liable any minute to chuck everything and either take up literary work or go into the movies, she don't know which and don't care—all kind of desperate so Mr. D. will feel alarmed about a beautiful young thing like that out in the world alone and unprotected and at the mercy of every designing scoundrel. But I don't think Mr. D. hears a word of it, he's so intently listening to Hetty who says here in this beautiful mountain glade where all is peace how one can't scarcely believe that there is any evil in the world anywhere, and what a difference it does make when one comes to see life truly. Then she crossed and recrossed her silken ankles, slightly adjusted her daring tan skirt, and raised her eyes wistfully to the treetops, and I bet there wasn't a man there didn't feel that she belonged in the home circle with the little ones gathered about, telling 'em an awfully exciting story about the naughty, naughty, bad little white kitten and the ball of mamma's yarn.

"Yes, sir; Hetty was as much of a revelation to me in one way as she would of been to that party in another if I hadn't saved her from it. She must have had the correct female instinct all these years, only no one had ever started her before on a track where there was no other entries. With those other girls dressed like she was Hetty would of been leaning over some one's shoulder to fork up her own sandwiches, and no one taking hardly any notice whether she'd had some of the hot coffee or whether she hadn't. And the looks she got throughout the afternoon! Say, I wouldn't of trusted that girl at the edge of a cliff with a single pair of those No. 9872's anywhere near.

"After the lunch things was packed up there was faint attempts at fun and frolic with songs and chorus—Riley Hardin has a magnificent bass voice at times and Mac Gordon and Charlie Dickman and Roth Hyde wouldn't be so bad if they'd let these Turkish cigarettes alone—and the boys got together and sung some of their good old business-college songs, with the girls coming in while they murdered Hetty with their beautiful eyes. But Hetty and Mr. D. sort of withdrew from the noisy enjoyment and talked about the serious aspects of life and how one could get along almost any place if only they had their favourite authors. And Mr. D. says doesn't she sing at all, and she says, Oh! in a way; that her voice has a certain parlour charm, she has been told, and she sings at—you can't really call it singing—two or three of the old Scotch songs of homely sentiment like the Scotch seem to get into their songs as no other nation can, or doesn't he think so, and he does, indeed. And he's reading a wonderful new novel in which there is much of Nature with its lessons for each of us, but in which love conquers all at the end, and the girl in it reminds him strongly of her, and perhaps she'll be good enough to sing for him—just for him alone in the dusk—if he brings this book up to-morrow night so he can show her some good places in it.

"At first she is sure she has a horrid old engagement for to-morrow night and is so sorry, but another time, perhaps—Ain't it a marvel the crooked tricks that girl had learned in one day! And then she remembers that her engagement is for Tuesday night—what could she have been thinking of!—and come by all means—only too charmed—and how rarely nowadays does one meet one on one's own level of culture, or perhaps that is too awful a word to use—so hackneyed—but anyway he knows what she means, or doesn't he? He does.

"Pretty soon she gets up and goes over to her horse, picking her way daintily in the silly little tan pumps, and seems to be offering the beast something. The stricken man follows her the second he can without being too raw about it, and there is the adorably feminine thing with a big dill pickle, two deviled eggs, and a half of one of these Camelbert cheeses for her horse. Mr. D. has a good masterly laugh at her idea of horse fodder and calls her 'But, my dear child!' and she looks prettily offended and offers this chuck to the horse and he gulps it all down and noses round for more of the same. It was an old horse named Croppy that she'd known from childhood and would eat anything on earth. She rode him up here once and he nabbed a bar of laundry soap off the back porch and chewed the whole thing down with tears of ecstasy in his eyes and frothing at the mouth like a mad dog. Well, so Hetty gives mister man a look of dainty superiority as she flicks crumbs from her white fingers with my real lace handkerchief, and he stops his hearty laughter and just stares, and she says what nonsense to think the poor horses don't like food as well as any one. Them little moments have their effect on a man in a certain condition. He knew there probably wasn't another horse in the world would touch that truck, but he couldn't help feeling a strange new respect for her in addition to that glorious masculine protection she'd had him wallowing in all day.

"The ride home, at least on the part of the Non Plush Ultra cut-ups, was like they had laid a loved one to final rest out there on the lone mountainside. The handsome stranger and Hetty brought up the rear, conversing eagerly about themselves and other serious topics. I believe he give her to understand that he'd been pretty wild at one time in his life and wasn't any too darned well over it yet, but that some good womanly woman who would study his ways could still take him and make a man of him; and her answering that she knew he must have suffered beyond human endurance in that horrible conflict with his lower nature. He said he had.

"Of course the rabid young hoydens up ahead made a feeble effort now and then to carry it off lightly, and from time to time sang 'My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,' or 'Merrily We Roll Along,' with the high, squeaky tenor of Roth Hyde sounding above the others very pretty in the moonlight, but it was poor work as far as these enraged vestals was concerned. If I'd been Hetty and had got a strange box of candy through the mail the next week, directed in a disguised woman's hand, I'd of rushed right off to the police with it, not waiting for any analysis. And she, poor thing, would get so frightened at bad spots, with the fierce old horse bobbing about so dangerous, that she just has to be held on. And once she wrenched her ankle against a horrid old tree on the trail—she hadn't been able to resist a little one—and bit her under lip as the spasm of pain passed over her refined features. But she was all right in a minute and begged Mr. D. not to think of bathing it in cold water because it was nothing—nothing at all, really now—and he would embarrass her frightfully if he said one more word about it. And Mr. D. again remarked that she was feminine to her finger tips, a brave, game little woman, one of the gamest he ever knew. And pretty soon—what was she thinking about now? Why, she was merely wondering if horses think in the true sense of the word or only have animal instinct, as it is called. And wasn't she a strange, puzzling creature to be thinking on deep subjects like that at such a time! Yes, she had been called puzzling as a child, but she didn't like it one bit. She wanted to be like other girls, if he knew what she meant. He seemed to.

"They took Hetty home first on account of her poor little ankle and sung 'Good Night, Ladies,' at the gate. And so ended a day that was wreck and ruin for most of our sex there present.

"And to show you what a good, deep, scientific cause I had discovered, the next night at Hetty's who shows up one by one but these four men about town, each with a pound of mixed from the Bon Ton Handy Kitchen, and there they're all setting at the feet of Hetty, as it were, in her new light summer gown with the blue bows, when Mr. D. blows in with a two-pound box and the novel in which love conquered all. So excited she was when she tells me about it next day. The luck of that girl! But after all it wasn't luck, because she'd laid her foundations the day before, hadn't she? Always look a little bit back of anything that seems to be luck, say I.

"And Hetty with shining eyes entertained one and all with the wit and sparkle a woman can show only when there's four or five men at her at once—it's the only time we ever rise to our best. But she got a chance for a few words alone with Mr. D., who took his hat finally when he sees the other four was going to set him out; enough words to confide to him how she loathed this continual social racket to which she was constantly subjected, with never a let-up so one could get to one's books and to one's real thoughts. But perhaps he would venture up again some time next week or the week after—not getting coarse in her work, understand, even with him flopping around there out on the bank—and he give her one long, meaning look and said why not to-morrow night, and she carelessly said that would be charming, she was sure—she didn't think of any engagement at this minute—and it was ever so nice of him to think of poor little me.

"Then she went back and gave the social evening of their life to them four boys that had stayed. She said she couldn't thank them enough for coming this evening—which is probably the only time she had told the truth in thirty-six hours—and they all made merry. Roth Hyde sang 'Sally in Our Alley' so good on the high notes that the Duttons was all out in the hall listening; and Riley Hardin singing 'Down, Diver, Down, 'Neath the Deep Blue Waves!' and Mac Gordon singing his everlasting German songs in their native language, and Charlie Dickman singing a new sentimental one called 'Ain't There at Least One Gentleman Here?' about a fair young lady dancer being insulted in a gilded café in some large city; and one and all voted it was a jolly evening and said how about coming back to-morrow night, but Hetty said no, it was her one evening for study and she couldn't be bothered with them, which was a plain, downright so-and-so and well she knew it, because that girl's study was over for good and all.

"Well, why string it out? I've give you the facts. And my lands! Will you look at that clock now? Here's the morning gone and this room still looking like the inside of a sheep-herder's wagon! Oh, yes, and when Hetty was up here this time that she wouldn't wear my riding pants down, she says. 'Not only that, but I'm scrupulously careful in all ways. Why, I never even allow dear Burchell to observe me in one of those lace boudoir caps that so many women cover up their hair with when it's their best feature but they won't take time to do it.'

"Now was that spoken like a wise woman or like the two-horned Galumpsis Caladensis of East India, whose habits are little known to man? My Lord! Won't I ever learn to stop? Where did I put that dusting cloth?"

VI