Читать книгу The Dry Ridge Gang - Bertha Muzzy Sinclair - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Naturally there was a good deal of embracing and incoherent talk. I stood on the side lines and nothing much came my way until the first excitement was over. For when an only son comes home with his sheepskin from college and meets his adoring mother and his ditto sister, a mere friend of that son cannot expect to seem important just at first, or receive any notice whatever.

They were mighty nice to me, though, once they let go of Ray and remembered that a guest was along. I liked Ray’s mother a lot. She reminded me of a pert little Jenny Wren chirping and fussing over her brood. I knew instinctively that she was going to take me right into the nest and make me feel that I really and truly belonged there. She had soft brown hair brushed down in wings to help the likeness, and a back comb standing up from the coil behind her fine little head—I wondered if she were deliberately helping out her likeness to a wren—and her movements were quick, though every one seemed to count for something. I am not given to emotional splurges, yet I wanted to pick that little lady up in my arms and carry her to the easiest rocking chair in sight and set her down in it. She wouldn’t have liked it, I know. She’d have seen something else to do and hopped right onto the job before my back was turned, but I wanted to do it just the same.

The girl, Ray’s sister, was as different as it’s possible for a daughter to be, I guess. Tall and cool—serene might be a better word, though her quiet manner somehow suggested banked fires, and that certainly doesn’t sound cool, does it? With the first look at her I got the impression of a lot of power lying latent. That is what I mean, really; unused strength and efficiency. And beauty too, of the kind that doesn’t depend on red lips and peachbloom complexion—

Oh, well, I’m raving when I should be getting on with the foundation of my story. The family called her Ellie, and it took me a day or so to discover that it wasn’t a pet name for Ella, but Ellison trimmed down to convenient length. I’ve got to add that she was not a person to be overlooked. Without being obtrusive, there was something about her that made one always aware of her presence, always sort of waiting for her opinion and listening when she spoke. I don’t think it was just my own personal susceptibility that made me so Ellie-conscious from the very first; I think even her family felt that way about her.

Once or twice, that first day, I thought I saw a rebellious look in her eyes, though I can’t remember what had called it there. I thought then how much her eyes were like her father’s, but in a moment the resemblance was gone. In the main she was serene—I come back to that word, you see—and pleasant, although she didn’t say much. I never would have suspected her of being a product of the wild and woolly West such as Ray continually harped on. Perhaps she used a few colloquialisms not often heard east of the Mississippi, though they always sounded right and proper when she spoke them.

After the first handshake and friendly greeting, she didn’t give me much attention, which at least left me free to study her. She was frankly intrigued by Ray and his new clothes, and the way he knotted his tie and dented his hat crown. Even the new cut of his shoes came in for her keen observation and criticism. She didn’t like them, I remember. Ray always was rather extreme. He liked to look the college man as he is portrayed on the stage and in magazine ads.

He even carried a stick, though there was no earthly excuse for it—sticks not being the latest fad. He affected light gray, of the pattern called an invisible plaid but which is always perfectly obvious. His silk socks were chosen to emphasize the bright line of the plaid, whatever it was, and his ties carried the tone an octave higher, as it were. The meerschaum he smoked was dragging down the corner of his mouth, it was so heavy, and wearing the enamel off his teeth. And because he had a true magazine-cover profile, he had a trick of turning his head against the light. With his hat tilted to show a lock of brown wavy hair falling carelessly down over one eyebrow, I always thought Harrison Fisher or Gibson ought to have a look at him. He’d go well with their girls.

This doesn’t mean that I felt anything less than a real affection for Ray Whitcome. He was the biggest-hearted fellow in the world and one of the most likable. His little vanities were a sort of game with him. He did it partly to devil me, I always suspected, and now I saw that he was getting a real kick out of his sister’s attitude, too. I know he repeated to her what he always fired at me if I got to ragging him too hard. “The girls like this sort of thing and I like the girls. See?” She saw, and gave a ladylike snort and let the argument end there. Which was what I usually did.

Well, that gives you my first impressions of the family. The sheriff was mighty proud of those two kids, as I could tell by his face; and his manner toward his little wren of a wife was almost pathetically tender and considerate. And all the while he seemed to think he was hiding his feelings under a bluff tolerance of their pretended shortcomings. He couldn’t have fooled a blind man.

As soon as I decently could, I brought out the stock excuse of wanting to get several letters ready for the next mail and left them to their own intimate gossip. I spent the evening in the big room upstairs that was to be mine for the three months I had promised Ray. There were two windows looking down toward Porcupine, the town we had arrived at on the train. I could see the trail we had come over, looking like a brown ribbon flung carelessly over the low ridges. It was five miles to Porcupine, Ray had told me, but the clear air was deceptive and it looked less than half that distance. At dusk, when the lights flashed out over the sprawling town, I felt as if I were in the suburbs and could walk to the business section in fifteen or twenty minutes. Which of course put the cap sheaf on my disillusionment and killed all my hopes of spending three months away from civilization. I meant, you see, to try my hand at writing, and I wanted solitude for that.

Porcupine, I had noticed, was quite up to date and citified. There were trolley lines running here and there, and brick business blocks of a quite imposing height, and three ten-twenty-thirty theaters, Ray had confessed, when I asked him about entertainment. After enthusing about the frontier flavor of the county seat of Porcupine County, I certainly went after him at bedtime when he came into my room for a chat.

“But it is wild,” he insisted, roosting upon a corner of my dresser and holding up that infernal big pipe of his so it wouldn’t pull the teeth out of his head. “Don’t go and make the mistake of thinking that two trolley lines spell civilization. The town’s a town, I admit. The swells on the North Side dress for dinner and have butlers and coachmen and all the trappings of wealth—and I can take you where the lights are pretty darned bright and you can get anything you want from opium to absinthe. And you can get on a horse outside the door and in an hour gallop into the wild and woolly I’ve been telling you about, Walter.”

“Oh.” My tone was, I hope, ironic. “Your wild and woolly is too damned tame and smooth to interest me, my boy.”

“That’s all you know. I admit we’ve got a telephone here and a very efficient acetylene gas system—yes. Sure, we have. And I can throw a rock into the corral and hit a bronk that has to be forefooted before a man can get into the saddle, and when he’s there he’ll have to be a dandy if he stays more than two jumps—”

“Oh, yes,” I yawned. “I’ve seen horses like that in Trenton, New Jersey.”

“Well,” he flared up at me, “darn your picture, I can take you back there into Big Bend a couple of miles from this house, and give you a crack at a deer, or wolves, or a wildcat, if you’re quick enough. I can show you men right here on the ranch who wear hairy chaps for use and not for show purposes, and handle a branding iron as easily as you do a fountain pen. Why, confound you, Walter, the West is here—right on this ranch! The same West we always had—unless you want dime-novel trimmings, and even then I guess you could be accommodated, all right, if you want to stick around awhile.”

I like Ray when he grows heated and eloquent. He looked very handsome and earnest, perched there swinging his lavender-socked foot and holding up a pound or so of warmly shaded meerschaum. While I shook out a pair of pajamas, he scowled at me from under the lock of hair that had fallen over one eye and waited for me to go on and argue some more. Instead, I gave him my well-known smile of amused tolerance, and that started him off again—as I knew it would.

“Why, blame your hide, Walter. I’ll just take Dad up on hunting that Dry Ridge gang, then! If Big Bend isn’t wild enough, I’ll show you some that is, by heck! Take you out after some real dyed-in-the-wool outlaws—”

“Yes, we have some pretty hard citizens in New York, too,” I observed maliciously. “Banks are robbed in the East, you know, and the robbers are just as hard to catch, from all the accounts I have heard.”

“Well, by thunder, I’ll show you before the summer’s over,” Ray snorted angrily, and took himself and his pipe and lavender socks indignantly out of my sight.

I laughed to myself while I got into bed. I didn’t actually demand that the wheels of progress should turn backwards and give me a thrill of the old gun-smoke days. If Ray had been satisfied to wait and let Montana speak for itself, there would have been no argument. As it was, he felt he had to produce the goods. Well, I was willing to let him, so long as he threw in a good trout stream.