Chapter 7 No.7

Chugg Takes The Ribbons

Chugg, comforted with liquids and stayed with a head-plaster, presented himself at the Dax ranch just twenty-four hours after he was due. His mien combined vagueness with hostility, and he harnessed up the stage that Peter Hamilton had driven over the day before, when his prospective passengers were looking, with a graphic pantomimic representation of "take it or leave it." Under the circumstances, Miss Carmichael and the fat lady consented to be passengers with much the same feeling of finality that one might have on embarking for the planet Mars in an air-ship.

There was, furthermore, a suggestion of last rites in the farewells of the Daxes, each according to their respective personalities, that was far from reassuring.

"Here's some bread and meat and a bottle of cold coffee, if you live to need it," was Mrs. Dax's grim prognostication of accident. Leander, being of an emotional nature, could scarce restrain his tears-the advent of the travellers had created a welcome variation in the monotony of his dutiful routine-he felt all the agitation of parting with life-long [pg 094] friends. Mary Carmichael and Judith promised to write-they had found a great deal to say to each other the preceding evening.

Chugg cracked his whip ominously, the travellers got inside, not daring to trust themselves to the box.

The journey with the misanthrope was but a repetition of that first day's staging-the sage-brush was scarcer, the mountains seemed as far off as ever, and the outlook was, if possible, more desolate. The entry in Miss Carmichael's diary, inscribed in malformed characters as the stage jolted over ruts and gullies, reads: "I do not mind telling you, in strictest confidence, 'Dere Diary'-as the little boy called you-that when I so lightly severed my connection with civilization, I had no idea to what an extent I was going in for the prairie primeval. How on earth does a woman who can write a letter like Mrs. Yellett stand it? And where on the map of North America is Lost Trail?"

"Land sakes!" regretted the fat lady, "but I do wish I had a piece of that 'boy's favorite' cake that I had for my lunch the day we left town. I just ate and ate it 'cause I hadn't another thing to do. If I hadn't been so greedy I could offer him a piece, just to show him that some women folk have kind hearts, and that the whole sect ain't like that Pink."

"Boy's favorite," as adequate compensation for shattered ideals, a broken heart, and the savings of a lifetime, seemed to Mary Carmichael inadequate compensation, but she forbore to express her sentiments.

[pg 095] The fat lady had never relaxed her gaze from Chugg's back since the stage had started. She peered at that broad expanse of flannel shirt through the tiny round window, like a careful sailing-master sweeping the horizon for possible storm-clouds. At every portion of the road presenting a steep decline she would prod Chugg in the back with the handle of her ample umbrella, and demand that he let her out, as she preferred walking. The stage-driver at first complied with these requests, but when he saw they threatened to become chronic, he would send his team galloping down grade at a rate to justify her liveliest fears.

"Do you think you are a-picnicking, that you crave roominating round these yere solitoodes?" And the misanthrope cracked his whip and adjured his team with cabalistic imprecations.

"Did you notice if Mrs. Dax giv' him any cold coffee, same as she did us?" anxiously inquired the fat lady from her lookout.

Mary hadn't noticed.

"He's drinking something out of a brown bottle-seems to relish it a heep more'n he would cold coffee," reported the watch. "Hi there! Hi! Mr. Chugg!" The stage-driver, thinking it was merely a request to be allowed to walk, continued to drive with one hand and hold the brown bottle with the other. But even his too solid flesh was not proof against the continued bombardment of the umbrella handle.

"Um-m-m," he grunted savagely, applying a watery eye to the round window.

[pg 096] "Nothing," answered the fat lady, quite satisfied at having her worst fears confirmed.

Chugg returned to his driving, as one not above the weakness of seeing and hearing things.

"'Tain't coffee."

"Could you smell it?" questioned Mary, anxiously.

"You never can tell that way, when they are plumb pickled in it, like him."

"Then how did you know it wasn't coffee?"

"His eyes had fresh watered."

Mary collapsed under this expert testimony. "What are we going to do about it?"

"Appeal to him as a gentleman," said the fat lady, not without dramatic intonation.

"You appeal," counselled Mary; "I saw him look at you admiringly when you were walking down that steep grade."

"Is that so?" said the fat lady, with a conspicuous lack of incredulity; and she put her hand involuntarily to her frizzes.

This time she did not trust to the umbrella-handle as a medium of communication between the stage-driver and herself. Putting her hand through the port-hole she grasped Chugg's arm-the bottle arm-with no uncertain grip.

"Why, Mr. Chugg, this yere place is getting to be a regular summer resort; think of two ladies trusting themselves to your protection and travelling out over this great lonesome desert."

Chugg's mind, still submerged in local Lethe waters, grappled in silence with the problem of the feminine invasion, and then he muttered to himself [pg 097] rather than to the fat lady, "Nowhere's safe from 'em; women and house-flies is universally prevailing."

The fat lady dropped his arm as if it had been a brand. "He's no gentleman. As for Mountain Pink, she was drove to it."

All that day they toiled over sand and sage-brush; the sun hung like a molten disk, paling the blue of the sky; the grasshoppers kept up their shrill chirping-and the loneliness of that sun-scorched waste became a tangible thing.

Chugg sipped and sipped, and sometimes swore and sometimes muttered, and as the day wore on his driving not only became a challenge to the endurance of the horses, but to the laws of gravitation. He lashed them up and down grade, he drove perilously close to shelving declivities, and sometimes he sang, with maudlin mournfulness:

"'Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie.'

The words came low and mournfully

From the cold, pale lips of a youth who lay

On his dying couch at the close of day."

The fat lady reminded him that he was a gentleman and that he was driving ladies; she threatened him with her son on Sweetwater, who began, in the maternal chronicles, by being six feet in his stockings, and who steadily grew, as the scale of threats increased, till he reached the altitude of six feet four, growing hourly in height and fierceness.

But Chugg gave no heed, and once he sang the [pg 098] "Ballad of the Mule-Skinner," with what seemed to both terrified passengers an awful warning of their overthrow:

"As I was going down the road,

With a tired team and a heavy load,

I cracked my whip and the leaders sprung-

The fifth chain broke, and the wheelers hung,

The off-horse stepped on the wagon tongue-"

This harrowing ballad was repeated with accompanying Delsarte at intervals during the afternoon, but as Mary and the fat lady managed to escape without accident, they began to feel that they bore charmed lives.

At sundown they came to the road-ranch of Johnnie Dax, bearing Leander's compliments as a secret despatch. The outward aspect of the place was certainly an awful warning to trustful bachelors who make acquaintances through the columns of The Heart and Hand. The house stood solitary in that scourge of desolation. The windows and doors gaped wide like the unclosed eyes of a dead man on a battle-field. Chugg halloed, and an old white horse put his head out of the door, shook it upward as if in assent, then trotted off.

"That's Jerry, and he's the intelligentest animal I ever see," remarked the stage-driver, sobering up to Jerry's good qualities, and presently Johnnie Dax and the white horse appeared together from around the corner of the house.

This Mr. Dax was almost an exact replica of the other, even to the apologetic crook in the knees [pg 099] and a certain furtive way of glancing over the shoulder as if anticipating missiles.

"Pshaw now, ladies! why didn't you let me know that you was coming? and I'd have tidied up the place and organized a few dried-apple pies."

"Good house-keepers don't wait for company to come before they get to their work," rebukefully commented the fat lady.

Mr. Dax, recognizing the voice of authority, seized a towel and began to beat out flies, chickens, and dogs, who left the premises with the ill grace of old residents. Two hogs, dormant, guarded either side of the door-step and refused so absolutely to be disturbed by the flicking of the towel that one was tempted to look twice to assure himself that they were not the fruits of the sculptor's chisel.

"Where's your wife?" sternly demanded the fat lady.

"Oh, my Lord! I presume she's dancin' a whole lot over to Ervay. She packed her ball-gown in a gripsack and lit out of here two days ago, p'inting that way. A locomotive couldn't stop her none if she got a chance to go cycloning round a dance."

In the mean time, the two hogs having failed to grasp the fact that they were de trop, continued to doze.

"Come, girls, get up," coaxed Johnnie, persuasively. "Maude, I don't know when I see you so lazy. Run on, honey-run on with Ethel." For Ethel, the piebald hog, finally did as she was bid.

Mary Carmichael could not resist the temptation [pg 100] of asking how the hogs happened to have such unusual names.

"To tell the truth, I done it to aggravate my wife. When I finds myself a discard in the matrimonial shuffle, I figgers on a new deal that's going to inclood one or two anxieties for my lady partner-to which end-viz., namely, I calls one hawg Ethel and the other hawg Maude, allowing to my wife that they're named after lady friends in the East. Them lady friends might be the daughters of Ananias and Sapphira, for all they ever happened, but they answers the purpose of riling her same as if they were eating their three squares daily. I have hopes, everything else failing, that she may yet quit dancing and settle down to the sanctity of the home out of pure jealousy of them two proxy hawgs."

"I can just tell you this," interrupted the fat lady: "I don't enjoy occupying premises after hawgs, no matter how fashionable you name 'em. A hawg's a hawg, with manners according, if it's named after the President of the United States or the King of England."

"That's just what I used to think, marm, of all critters before I enjoyed that degree of friendliness that I'm now proud to own. Take Jerry now, that old white horse-why, me and him is just like brothers. When I have to leave the kid to his lonesome infant reflections and go off to chop wood, I just call Jerry in, and he assoomes the responsibility of nurse like he was going to draw wages for it."

"I reckon there's faults on both sides," said the fat lady, impartially. "No natural woman [pg 101] would leave her baby to a horse to mind while she went off dancing. And no natural man would fill his house full of critters, and them with highfalutin names. Take my advice, turn 'em out."

Mary did not wait to hear the continuation of the fat lady's advice. She went out on the desert to have one last look at the west. The sun had taken his plunge for the night, leaving his royal raiment of crimson and gold strewn above the mountain-tops.

Her sunset reflections were presently interrupted by the fat lady, who proposed that they should walk till Mr. Dax had tidied up his house, observing, with logic, that it did not devolve on them to clean the place, since they were paying for supper and lodging. They had gone but a little way when sudden apprehension caused the fat lady to grasp Mary's arm. Miss Carmichael turned, expecting mountain-lions, rattlesnakes, or stage-robbers, but none of these casualties had come to pass.

"Land sakes! Here we be parading round the prairie, and I never found out how that man cooked his coffee."

"What difference does it make, if we can drink it?"

"The ways of men cooks is a sealed book to you, I reckon, or you wouldn't be so unconcerned-'specially in the matter of coffee. All men has got the notion that coffee must be b'iled in a bag, and if they 'ain't got a regular bag real handy, they take what they can get. Oh, I've caught 'em," went on the fat lady, darkly, "b'iling coffee in improvisations that'd turn your stomach."

[pg 102] "Yes, yes," Mary hastily agreed, hoping against hope that she wasn't going to be more explicit.

"And they are so cute about it, too; it's next to impossible to catch 'em. You ask a man if he b'iles his coffee loose or tight, and he'll declare he b'iles it loose, knowing well how suspicious and prone to investigate is the female mind. But you watch your chance and take a look in the coffee-pot, and maybe you'll find-"

"Yes, yes, I've heard-"

"I've seen-"

"Let's hurry," implored Mary.

"Have you made your coffee yet?" inquired the fat lady.

"Yes, marm," promptly responded Johnnie.

"I hope you b'iled it in a bag-it clears it beautiful, a bag does."

Johnnie shifted uneasily. "No, marm, I b'iles it loose. You see, bags ain't always handy."

The fat lady plied her eye as a weapon. No Dax could stand up before an accusing feminine eye. He quailed, made a grab for the coffee-pot, and rushed with it out into the night.

"What did I tell you?" she asked, with an air of triumph.

Johnnie returned with the empty coffee-pot. "To tell the truth, marm, I made a mistake. I 'ain't made the coffee. I plumb forgot it. P'raps you could be prevailed on to assist this yere outfit to coffee while I organizes a few sody-biscuits."

After supper, when the fat lady was so busy talking "goo-goo" language to the baby as to be oblivious [pg 103] of everything else, Mary Carmichael took the opportunity to ask Johnnie if he knew anything about Lost Trail. The name of her destination had come to sound unpleasantly ominous in the ears of the tired young traveller, and she feared that her inquiry did not sound as casual as she tried to have it. Nor was Johnnie's candid reply reassuring.

"It's a pizen-mean country, from all I ever heard tell. The citizens tharof consists mainly of coyotes and mountain-lions, with a few rattlers thrown in just to make things neighborly. This yere place"-waving his hand towards the arid wastes which night was making more desolate-"is a summer resort, with modern improvements, compared to it."

Mary screwed her courage to a still more desperate point, and inquired if Mr. Dax knew a family named Yellett living in Lost Trail.

"Never heard of no family living there, excepting the bluff at family life maintained by the wild beasts before referred to. See here, miss, I ain't makin' no play to inquire into your affairs, but you ain't thinkin' o' visitin' Lost Trail, be you?"

"Perhaps," said Mary, faintly; and then she, too, talked "goo-goo" to the baby.

[pg 104]

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