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diff --git a/old/24126-h.zip b/old/24126-h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index ce87b4b..0000000 --- a/old/24126-h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/24126-h/24126-h.htm b/old/24126-h/24126-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index 486da2e..0000000 --- a/old/24126-h/24126-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1689 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> - -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> - <title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of Maw's Vacation, by Emerson Hough - </title> - <style type="text/css"> -/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ -<!-- - p {margin-top: .75em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .75em; - text-indent: 1em; - } - - h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ - clear: both; - } - - hr {width: 20%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: auto; - margin-right: auto; - clear: both; - height: 1px; - border: 0; - background-color: black; - color: black; - } - - .dropcap { - float: left; - padding-left: 3px; - font-size: 250%; - line-height: 93%; - overflow: visible; - } - - .firstword { - text-transform: uppercase; - letter-spacing: 0.20ex; - } - - p.newchapter { - text-indent: 0em; - } - - body{margin-left: 15%; - margin-right: 15%; - } - - p.publisher {margin-top: 6em; - text-align: center; - font-size: smaller; - margin-bottom: 3em; - text-indent: 0em; - } - - p.copyright {margin-top: 6em; - text-align: center; - font-size: 70%; - text-indent: 0em; - padding-bottom: 2em;} - - p.ads {margin-top: .75em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .75em; - margin-left: 15%; - margin-right: 15%; - } - - div.advertisements {margin-top: 3em; - margin-left: 15%; - margin-right: 15%; - font-size: smaller; - padding: 0.5em 0.5em 0.5em 0.5em; - background-color: #FBF5E6; - color: black; - } - - div.note {margin: 4em 10% 0 10%; - padding: 1em; - border: 1px dashed black; - color: inherit; - background-color: #F0F8FF; - font-size: smaller; - } - - img {border-style: none; - } - - ul {list-style: none; - line-height: 150%; - } - - .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ - /* visibility: hidden; */ - position: absolute; - right: 1%; - font-size: x-small; - text-align: right; - font-weight: normal; - font-style: normal; - } - - a:link {text-decoration: none; - color: #104E8B; - background-color: inherit; - } - - a:visited {text-decoration: none; - color: #8B0000; - background-color: inherit; - } - - a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} - - a:active {text-decoration: underline;} - - .bbox {border: solid 1px;} - - .center {text-align: center; - text-indent: 0em;} - - .caption {text-align: center; - text-indent: 0em; - font-size: 80%; - padding-bottom: 1em; - } - - .figcenter {text-align: center; - padding-top: 1em;} - - // --> - /* XML end ]]>*/ - </style> - </head> -<body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Maw's Vacation, by Emerson Hough - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone - -Author: Emerson Hough - -Release Date: January 2, 2008 [EBook #24126] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAW'S VACATION *** - - - - -Produced by D Alexander, Barbara Kosker, Irma Špehar and -the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive) - - - - - - -</pre> - - - - -<div class="note"> - -<h4>Transcriber's Note:</h4> - -<p>Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has -been preserved.</p> - -<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For -a complete list, please see the end of this document.</p> -</div> - - - - -<h1>MAW'S VACATION</h1> - - -<h2>THE STORY OF A HUMAN BEING<br /> - -<i><small>in the</small></i><br /> - -YELLOWSTONE</h2> - -<p class="center"><i><small>by</small></i></p> - -<p style="font-size: 150%; text-indent: 0em; text-align: center">EMERSON HOUGH</p> - -<p class="center"><small>AUTHOR OF: The Sagebrusher, Hearts Desire, The Covered Wagon,<br /> -Curly of the Range, etc.</small></p> - - - -<p class="center" style="padding-top: 2em; font-size: 130%">ILLUSTRATED</p> - - - - -<p class="publisher"><small>SAINT PAUL</small><br /> -J. E. HAYNES, <small>Publisher</small><br /> -<small>1921</small></p> - - - - -<p class="copyright">COPYRIGHT 1920<br /> -THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY<br /><br /> -COPYRIGHT 1921<br /> -EMERSON HOUGH</p> - - - -<p class="figcenter"><a href="images/i003.jpg"><img src="images/i003_th.jpg" -alt="" title="" /></a></p> -<p class="caption">“Maw”</p> - -<hr /> - - -<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">T</span>imes</span> has changed, says Maw to herself, says she. Things ain't like what -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span>they used to be. Time was when I worked from sunup to sundown, and we -didn't have no daylight-saving contraptions on the old clock, neither. -The girls was too little then, and I done all the work myself—cooking, -sweeping, washing and ironing, suchlike. I never got to church Sundays -because I had to stay home and get the Sunday dinner. Like enough they'd -bring the preacher home to dinner. You got to watch chicken—it won't -cook itself. Weekdays was one like another, and except for shoveling -snow and carrying more coal I never knew when summer quit and winter -come. There was no movies them days—a theater might come twice a -winter, or sometimes a temperance lecturer that showed a picture of the -inside of a drunkard's stomach, all redlike and awful. We didn't have -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>much other entertainment. Of course we had church sociables now and -then, or a surprise party on someone. Either way, the fun no more than -paid for the extra cooking. I never seen nothing or went nowhere, and if -when I was down town after the groceries I'd 'a' stepped into the drug -store and bought me a lemonade—and they didn't have no nut sundaes -then—they'd of had me up before the church for frivolous conduct.</p> - -<p>Of course Paw kicks about the crops and prices, but I've been living -with Paw forty years, and I dunno as I can remember a time when he -didn't kick. He kicks now on the wages he pays these city boys that come -out to farm; says they're no good at all. But somehow or other, things -gets raised. I notice the last few years we somehow have had more -clothes and things, and more money in the bank. When Paw bought the -automobile he didn't ask the minister if it was right, and he didn't -have to ask the bank for a consent, neither. Cynthy's back from -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>college, and it's all paid for somehow. Jimmy's in a mail-order store -in Chicago. I've got a girl to help me that calls herself a maid, which -is all right enough, though we used to call Judge Harmsworth's help a -girl and let it go at that, law me! My other girls, Hattie and Roweny, -are big enough to help a lot, and Paw reasons with them considerable -about it. I've always been so used to work that I think I can do it -better myself. I always like to do for my children.</p> - -<p>But Paw, ever since I married him, has been one of those energetics. -They call him an aggressive business man. Some of them call him a -dominant man, because of his whiskers, though he knows well enough about -how scared of him I am. Only time I ever was scared of Paw was when he -got the car. I thought he would break his fool neck and kill Roweny, -that had clim in with him. He did break down the fence in front of the -house and run over the flower beds and all.</p> - - - -<hr /> - -<h3><a name="The_Park-Bound_Throng_of_Maws" id="The_Park-Bound_Throng_of_Maws"></a>The Park-Bound Throng of Maws<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></h3> - - -<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">B</span>ut</span> this summer we allowed we all would get in the car and take a big -trip out West—go right into some of the parks, if nothing happened.</p> - -<p>We borrowed our tent from the Hickory Bend Outing Club that Paw belongs -to back home. The poles go along the fenders and stick out a good way -behind. I could always cook without a stove, from experience at picnics -when I was younger. The dishes goes in a box. Paw nailed a rack on top -of the fenders, and we carry a lot of stuff that way. Cynthy always has -her suitcase on the outside because it's the newest one. The other girls -set on the bedding on the rear seat, and I ride in front with Paw. We -mostly wear overalls.</p> - -<p>Yes, times has changed, says Maw.</p> - -<p>As a dispassionate observer in one of our national parks, expressing the -belief<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> in modern speech, I'll say they have. I have met Maw this -summer, ninety thousand of her, concentrated on a piece of mountain -scenery about fifty miles square—Maw on her first vacation in a life of -sixty years. Dear old Maw!</p> - -<p>Ninety thousand replicas of Maw cause the rest of us to eat copiously of -alkaline dust and to shiver each time we approach a turn on the roads of -Yellowstone Park, which were laid out on a curling iron. You cannot -escape seeing Paw and Maw, and Cynthy in her pants, and Hattie and -Roweny in overalls and putties. I have seen their camp fire rising on -every remaining spot of grass on all that busy fifty miles. I have -photographed Maw and Cynthy and the other girls, and Cynthy has -photographed me because I looked funny. Bless them all, the whole ninety -thousand of them—I would not have missed them on their vacation this -summer for all the world. They are, I suppose, what we call the new -people of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> America, who never have been out like this before. They've -been at home. Maw has been getting the Sunday dinner. Paw has been -plowing, paying the taxes which this Government has spent for him. But -now Paw pays income tax also; and both he and Maw construe this fact to -mean that they can at last read their title clear to a rest, and a car, -and a vacation. So they have swung out from the lane at last, after -forty years of work, and on to the roads that lead to the -transcontinental highway. They have crossed the prairies and come up -into the foothills—the price of gas increasing day by day, and Paw -kicking but paying cash—and so they have at last arrived among the -great mountains of which Maw has dreamed all her long life of cooking -and washing and ironing.</p> - - - -<hr /> - -<h3><a name="Studies_in_Mountain_Pants" id="Studies_in_Mountain_Pants"></a>Studies in Mountain Pants<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></h3> - - -<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">I</span> shall</span> not inquire by what miracle of grace Paw has learned to find his -way about on these curling-iron mountain roads. I am content to eat a -barrel of dust a day rather than miss the sight of Maw, placid and -bespectacled, on the front seat of the flivver. Without her the mountain -roads would never be the same for me, and my own vacation would be -spoiled. Frankly, I am in love with Maw; and as for Cynthy in her -pants——</p> - -<p>Times has changed. Maw also wears pants today. She says that they are -convenienter when she sits down round on the grass. Sometimes her pants -are fastened round the ankles with large and shiny safety pins, -apparently saved from the time when Jimmy was a baby. Sometimes they -hang straight down <i>au naturel</i>, and sometimes they stop at the knee—in -which case, as Maw's <i>au naturel</i> is disposed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> to adipose—they make a -startling adjunct to the mountain scenery. But, bless her heart, Maw -doesn't care! She is on her way and on her vacation, the first in all -her life. There rest on her soul the content and poise which her own -square and self-respecting mind tells her are due her after forty years -of labor, including the Lord's Days thereof. I call Maw's vacation her -Lord's Day. It ought to be held a sacred thing by all who tour our -national parks, where Maw is gregariously accumulated in these days. I -used to own this park, you and I did. It's Maw's park now. Forty years -of hard work!</p> - -<p>Has she earned a vacation? I'll say she has. Is she taking it? I'll say -she is.</p> - -<p>Maw has company in the park—not always just the company she or I would -select, were it left to us. Some of these do not go out by motor car. Of -course Abe Klinghammer, of the Plasterers' Union, Local Number Four, -being rich, goes out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> by rail on a round trip. He can go to the tents -and log cottages of the Camps Company. He does not kick any more than -Maw kicks. To tell the truth, in spite of the front he throws, Abe is a -little bit scared at all this sudden splendor in his life. He is a -little uneasy about how to act, how to seem careless about it, as though -he had been used to it all his life. Abe takes it out in neckties. -Having bought a swell one of four colors and inserted a large cameo in -it, he loses his nerve and begins to doubt whether he is getting by. You -will always see Abe looking at your necktie.</p> - -<p>And there is Benjamin D. O'Cleave of New York—with a flourish under it -on the register. He and his wife take it out in diamonds. You would -never see one of the O'Cleave family at a roadside camp fire such as -that where Maw fries the trout and Rowena toasts the bread on a fork. -The original O'Cleave came over in the Mayflower, as I am informed—but, -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>without question in my mind, came steerage. You will find Mr. O'Cleave -in the swellest hotel, in the highest-priced room. He is first in war, -first in peace, and first in the dining room.</p> - -<p>Mr. O'Cleave pays a plenty a head for all his family, for rooms with -bath and meals. The hotel company would gladly charge him more, and Mr. -O'Cleave gladly would pay more. He confides to the hotel clerk—who is a -Y. M. C. A. secretary back East—that he should not care if it was even -fifty dollars a day, he could pay it. But, if so, he would already want -for his money more service, which he waits five hours and not enough -cars to get him over to see the Giantess Geyser play, which the Giantess -maybe didn't play again for eight days, and should a business man and -taxpayer wait eight days because of not cars enough by a hotel, which is -the only place a man has to go with his family? Is it reasonable?</p> - - - -<hr /> - -<h3><a name="Maw_in_War_Paint" id="Maw_in_War_Paint"></a>Maw in War Paint<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></h3> - - -<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">T</span>he</span> highly specialized hotel clerk admits that it is not reasonable, -that nothing is reasonable, that he has spoken to the Giantess a dozen -times about her irregular habits; but what can he do? “I would gladly -charge you one hundred dollars a day, Mr. O'Cleave, if I had the consent -of the Interior Department. It isn't my fault.”</p> - -<p>I wish I had a movie of the Y. M. C. A. hotel clerk when he is off duty -at the desk. I wonder if his faith upholds him when he recalls the -threat of Benjamin D. O'Cleave to go to Europe next year. Ah, well, even -if he does, Maw will remain.</p> - -<p>I know that next year I shall again see Maw leaning against a big pine, -as she sits upon the ground drinking real handmade coffee of her own -from a tin cup with the handle cut so it will nest down in the box. -Maw's meals do not cost her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> four bits a throw, because they brought -things along. Paw catches a trout sometimes on the cane pole that hangs -alongside the car; not always, but sometimes, he catches one. And Maw, -once she had conquered the notion that you ought to skin a trout the way -you do a bullhead back in Ioway, took to cooking trout naturally; and -her trout, with pancakes and sirup, to my notion beat anything the hotel -chef in the best hotel can do. Maw does not worry about a room with -bath, though sometimes when the rain comes through the old wall tent she -gets both. The pink and green war paint which you sometimes see beneath -Maw's specs when you meet her on the road represents only the mark of -the bedquilts, where the colors were not too proud to run.</p> - -<p>Maw finds it wonderful in these mountains. I know she does, because she -has never yet told me so. Maw throws no fits. But many a time I have -seen her sitting, in the late afternoon, her hands, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> the first -idleness they have known in all her life, lying in her ample lap, her -faded eyes quietly gazing through her steel-bowed far-lookers at the -vast pictures across some valley she has found. It is her first valley -of dreams, her first valley of rest and peace and quiet. The lights on -these hills are such as she did not see in Ioway, or even in Nebraska, -when she went there once, time Mary's baby was born. The clouds are so -strange to Maw, their upturned edges so very white against the black -body of their over-color. And the rains that come, with hail—but here -you don't need worry, for there are no crops for the hail to spoil. And -sometimes in the afternoon, never during the splendor of the mellow -morning such as Maw never before has seen, comes the lightning and rips -the counterpane of clouds to let the sun shine through.</p> - -<p>I know Maw loves it all, because she never has told me so. She is very -shy about her new world in this new day. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> wouldn't like to talk -about it. We never do like to talk about it, once we really have looked -out across our valley of dreams.</p> - -<p>You can't fail to like Hattie and Rowena and Cynthy. Often I walk with -Cynthy and her Vassarrority on the Angel Terrace, when the moon is up, -when it is all white, and Cynthy is almost the only angel left there. -Such a moon as the Interior Department does provide for the summer here! -I defy any Secretary of any other Department—War, Navy, Commerce, Labor -or anything—to produce any such moon as this at six dollars and fifty -cents a day with bath; or four dollars and fifty cents a day with two -towels; or four bits a day at Maw's camp on the Madison. So though I -know Cynthy would prefer the young park ranger—who really is the son of -a leading banker in Indianapolis—to explain the algae and the Algys, I -do the best I can at my age of life with Cynthy.</p> - -<p>Rowena, the younger, seventeen now,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> who wears hers with spirals, tells -me that Cynthy keeps a diary, because she herself found it in the tool -box. “And once,” says Rowena to me, “Cynthy, after coming into camp from -a walk through the moonlit pines, wrote in her diary: 'August 12, 11 p. m. -Trout for supper. Walked with —— toward the Hymen Terrace, just -beyond Jupiter Hill, I think it is called. The moon wonderful what woman -is there who has not at some time in her life longed to be swept off her -feet by some Strong Man!'”</p> - -<p>I copy this as Rowena did, punctuation and all. Rowena has not yet gone -to Vassar.</p> - -<p>Cynthy is the one who thinks the family ought to have a six-cylinder car -next year, with seats that lie back, and air mattresses. Maw does not -agree with her, and says that four cylinders are plenty hard enough for -Paw to keep clean. By what marvel Cynthy is always so stunning; and -Hattie so nurselike in denim<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> and white; and Rowena always so neat in -hers with spirals, which she bought ready made at the store for seven -dollars and fifty-two cents—I cannot say; but when I see these marvels -I renew my faith in my country and its people, even though I do wish -that Paw would pause at some geyser and have a Sunday shave. He says he -forgot his razor and left it home.</p> - - - -<hr /> - -<h3><a name="In_the_Grip_of_the_Law" id="In_the_Grip_of_the_Law"></a>In the Grip of the Law<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></h3> - - -<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">S</span>peaking</span> of room with bath, Maw solved the ablutionary problem for -herself the other day at Old Faithful Ranger Station. The young men who -make up the ranger force there have built a simple shanty over the -river's brim, which they use as their own bathhouse. As there is no -sentinel stationed there Maw thought it was public like everything else. -She told me about it later.</p> - -<p>“I went in,” said she, “and seen what it was. There was a long tub and a -tin pail. There was a trapdoor in the floor that was right over the -river. I reached down and drew up a pail of water, and it was right -cold. Then I seen a turn faucet, end of a pipe that stuck out over the -tub. It brought in some right hot water that come up within six feet of -the door. It didn't take me long to figure that this was the hot-water -faucet. So there was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> hot and cold water both right on the spot, and I -reckon there ain't no such natural washtub as that in all Ioway. I got -me a wash that will last me a long while. There wasn't no towels, and so -I took my skirt. Now, Cynthy——”</p> - -<p>But Cynthy was writing notes in her diary. All college girls write notes -in diaries, and sometimes they take to free verse. Of course writing in -a diary is only a form of egotism, precisely like writing on a geyser -formation. They both ought to be illegal, and one is. Maw knows all -about that. Sometimes, even now, she will tell me how she came to be -fined by the United States commissioner at Mammoth Hot Springs.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"><a href="images/i022.jpg"><img src="images/i022_th.jpg" -alt="" title="" /></a></p> - -<p class="caption">“So Maw, dear, old, happy, innocent Maw, knelt down with -her hatpin and wrote:”—p. 19</p> - -<p>You see, the geysers rattled Maw, there being so many and she loving -them all so much. One day when they were camped near the Upper Basin, -Maw was looking down in the cone of Old Faithful, just after that -Paderewski of the park had ceased playing. She told me she wanted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> to -see where all the suds came from. But all at once she saw beneath her -feet a white, shiny expanse of something that looked like chalk. At a -sudden impulse she drew a hatpin from her hair and knelt down on the -geyser cone—not reflecting how long and slow had been its growth.</p> - -<p>For the first time a feeling of identity came to Maw. She never had been -anybody all her life, even to herself, before this moment on her -vacation. But now she had seen the mountains and the sky, and had -oriented herself as one of the owners of this park. So Maw, dear, old, -happy, innocent Maw, knelt down with her hatpin and wrote: Margaret D. -Hanaford, Glasgow, Iowa.</p> - -<p>She was looking at her handiwork and allowing she could have done it -better, when she felt a touch on her shoulder, and looked up into the -stern young face, the narrow blond mustache, of the ranger from -Indianapolis. The ranger was in the Engineers of the A. E. F. When Maw<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> -saw him she was frightened, she didn't know why.</p> - -<p>“Madam,” said the ranger, “are you Margaret D. Hanaford?”</p> - -<p>“That's me,” answered Maw; “I don't deny it.”</p> - -<p>“Did you write that on the formation?”</p> - -<p>Maw could not tell a lie any more than George Washington when caught, so -she confessed on the spot.</p> - -<p>“Then you are under arrest! Don't you know it's against the regulations -to deface any natural object in the park? I'll have to telephone in the -number of your car. You must see the commissioner before you leave the -park.”</p> - -<p>“Me arrested?” exclaimed Maw in sudden consternation. “What'll that man -do to me?”</p> - -<p>“He'll fine you ten dollars and costs. If you had written it a little -bit larger it would have been twenty-five dollars and costs. Now get -down and rub it out before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> it sets, and do it quick, before the geyser -plays again.”</p> - -<p>And so Maw got down on her knees and rubbed out her first feeling of -identity. And the commissioner fined her ten dollars and costs in due -time—for Maw was honest as the day and didn't try to evade the -punishment that she thought was hers.</p> - -<p>“I ought to have knew better,” she said “me, a woman of my years. I -don't begretch the money, and I think the young man was right, and so -was the judge, and I'll never do it again. The commissioner said that I -looked like a woman of sense. I always did have sense before. I think it -must be these mountains, or the moon, or something. I never felt that -way before.”</p> - -<p>It was this young man who walked down to Maw's camp to take her number. -It was there that he met Cynthy, and I am inclined to think that she -took his number at the time. Later on I often saw them walking together, -past the great log hotel with its jazz architecture, and beyond the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> -fringe of pine that separates the camp trippers from the O'Cleaves, who -live in the hotels. The young ranger was contrite about arresting Maw, -but that latter was the first to exonerate him.</p> - -<p>“You only done right,” said she. “I done what I knew was wrong. Now, -Hattie, and you, Roweny, don't you let this spoil your trip none at all. -It's once your Maw has allowed herself the privilege of being an old -fool, the first time in her life. I dunno but it was worth ten dollars, -at that.”</p> - -<p>And so I suppose we should let Cynthy and the young ranger go out into -the moonshine to learn how the algae grow, of how many different colors. -Consider the algae of the geysers, how they grow. Solomon in all his -glory had nothing on the algae; and the Queen of Sheba nothing on -Cynthy.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"><a href="images/i028.jpg"><img src="images/i028_th.jpg" -alt="" title="" /></a></p> - -<p class="caption">“—and The Queen of Sheba had nothing on Cynthy.”—p. -22.</p> - -<p>Sometimes, even yet, Maw and I talk about the time she was fined ten -dollars for writing her name. “It might have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> been worse,” said she to -me. “When we was coming through some place a ways back we heard about a -man there that was sentenced to be hung after he had been tried several -times. His friends done what they could with the governor, but it didn't -come to nothing. So after a while his lawyer come in the jail, and he -says: 'Bill, I can't do nothing more for you. On next Monday morning at -six o'clock you've got to be hung by the neck until you're dead, and may -God have mercy on your soul.' 'Well, all I can say,' says Bill, 'that's -a fine way to begin the week, ain't it now?'”</p> - -<p>The time she wrote her name upon the geyser will always remain the great -event in Maw's life. When she makes down her bedquilt bed in the pine -woods, from which she can hear the music of the hotel orchestra when the -nocturnal dance has begun, and can see the searchlight playing on the -towering pillar of Old Faithful, once more in its twenty-four daily -essays from the bowels of the mysterious earth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> shooting up into the -mysterious blackness of the night sky, Maw on her hands and knees says -to herself: “I'm glad my name ain't on that thing. It was too little to -go with that, even if for a minute I felt like somebody.”</p> - -<p>Speaking of the midnight and the music, sometimes I go over to the hotel -to tread a measure with Stella O'Cleave, able for a moment to forget -Stella's father in the opulent beauty of Stella herself. Her mother is -what is called a fine figure of a woman, and so will Stella be some day. -Sometimes, when we have left the dance floor to sit along the rail where -the yellow cars will line up next morning to sweep Stella away within a -day after she and her putties have come into my young life, I may say -that I find Stella O'Cleave not difficult to look upon. I always feel a -sense of Oriental luxury, as though I had bought a new rug, when Stella -turns on me the slumberous midnight of her eyes. I am enamored of the -piled black shadows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> of Stella's hair, even as displayed in the somewhat -extreme cootie garages which, in the vernacular of the A. E. F., -indicate the presence of her ears. I admire the long sure lines which -her evidently expensive New York tailor has given to hers; they are -among the best I have seen in the park. I could wish that the heels on -Stella's French shoes were less than five inches high. I could wish that -she did not wrap her putties, one from the inside out, and the other -from the outside in. But these are details. The splendor of her eyes, -the ripe redness of her lips, the softness of her voice, combined, have -disposed me to forgive her all.</p> - -<p>“There are times,” sighed Stella that evening, beneath the moon, as we -sat against the log rail and listened to the jazz, “out here in these -mountains, when I feel as though I were a wild creature, like these -others.”</p> - -<p>“My dear,” said I, “I can believe you. Your putties do look wild.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>”</p> - -<p>“Listen,” said she to me. “You do not get me.”</p> - -<p>The sob of the saxophone came through the window near by, the froufrou -of the dancers made a soft susurration faintly audible. I looked into -Stella's dark eyes, at her clouded brow.</p> - -<p>“Come again, loved one,” said I to her.</p> - -<p>“What I mean to say,” she resumed, “is that there are times when I feel -as though I did not care what I did or what became of me out here.”</p> - -<p>My hand fell upon her slender fingers as they lay twitching in the -twilight.</p> - -<p>“Stella,” I exclaimed, “lit-tel one, if that is the way you really -feel—or the way really you feel—or really the way you feel—why don't -you go down to Jackson's Hole and try a congressional lunch?”</p> - - - -<hr /> - -<h3><a name="Enough_for_Five_More" id="Enough_for_Five_More"></a>Enough for Five More<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span></h3> - - -<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">T</span>he</span> spruce trees rustled amid their umbrageous boughs. The sob of the -saxophone still came through the window. I saw Stella tremble through -all her tall young body. A tear fell upon the floor and rebounded -against one of the rustic posts.</p> - -<p>“No, No!” said she in sudden contrition, burying her face in both her -shapely hands. “Say anything but that! I did not mean me hasty words. My -uncle is a congressman, and he has told me all.”</p> - -<p>A silence fell between us. The sob of the saxophone, still doing jazz, -came through the window. Once more I recalled the classic story—no -doubt you know it well. A musician one evening passed a hat among the -dancers, after a number had been concluded.</p> - -<p>“Please, sir,” said he to each, “would you give fifty cents to bury a -saxophone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> player?” Then out spoke one jovial guest, to the clink of his -accompanying coin: “Here's three dollars, friend. Bury six saxophone -players!”</p> - -<p>Absent-mindedly recalling this story I reached out my hand with a -five-dollar bill in it, as I saw a quiet-looking gentleman passing by -with a hat in his hand.</p> - -<p>“Bury ten saxophone players,” I hissed through my set lips. He turned to -me mildly.</p> - -<p>“Excuse me sir,” said he, “I am not an undertaker. I am only the -Secretary of the Interior.”</p> - -<p>Of course one will make mistakes. Still, under our form of government -methinks the Secretary of the Interior really is responsible for the -existence of saxophone players within the limits of the park.</p> - -<p>In common with Maw and others, I realized that in many ways the park -might be better. It might be far more practicably administered. This -morning I met a procession<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> of fifty women, all in overalls, who all -looked precisely alike. Maw was at their head.</p> - -<p>“We're going over to the store to get a loaf of bread,” said she, “and a -picture of Old Faithful Geyser and a burnt-leather pillow. And lookit -here, mister, here is a book I bought for Roweny to read. I can stand -for most of it. But here it says that the geysers is run by hot water, -and when they freeze up in the winter the men that live in the park cut -the ice and use it for foot warmers, it's so hot. That might be true, -and then again it might not. If it ain't, why should they try to fool -the people?”</p> - -<p>I referred Maw to the superintendent of the park, with the explanation -that he has full control over all the natural objects, and that if any -geyser proves guilty of obnoxious conduct he is empowered to eject it.</p> - -<p>“I dunno but what that would be the best way to do,” said she. “If these -places<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> ain't fit to walk on, summer or winter neither one, something -ought to be done about it.</p> - -<p>“But lookit here,” she went on, “if you want to see people busy, come -down to our camp, some sundown. There ain't that many mosquitoes in all -Ioway, and they call this place a national playground. It ain't no such -place. And yet, when I go to the post office, store, or the -superintendent's office, or the head clerk's house, or the curio store -to get some mosquito dope to rub on myself, they ain't got no mosquito -dope; but for four dollars you can buy a lovely leather pillow with -'Mother' on it. What do I want with a leather pillow with 'Mother' on it -when mosquitoes are biting; or a picture of an Indian on one side of a -sheepskin; or bead bags; or moccasins that they say are made by the -Indians? What I want is mosquito dope and bread; something practical. -When you got a bite on your elbow you don't care a durn about a card -showing a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> picture of Artist Point, and I am as good a Presbyterian as -anybody. I say them stores ain't practical.”</p> - -<p>Quite often when I stroll down to interview Maw and her family at their -camp I am able to obtain free expression of opinion on current matters. -The other evening Paw was hammering at something which at first looked -like a piece of stone.</p> - -<p>“It breaks right easy,” said he. “I got this piece off the Angel Cake -Terrace. Having so many in the car I have to cut down the weight. But -what I and Maw want,” he said, “is a pair of them elk horns. If I can -get a good pair I allow to paint them red and black, with gold round the -lower ends. Maw and me think they'd look right good in the parlor.”</p> - - - -<hr /> - -<h3><a name="Old_Stanleys_Story" id="Old_Stanleys_Story"></a>Old Stanley's Story<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span></h3> - - -<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">T</span>hey</span> have visitors now and then, Paw and Maw, at their camp. The local -old-timers seem to gravitate toward them. One evening I found old man -Stanley sitting on a log and talking to them in reminiscent mood about -himself, his deeds and his dentition.</p> - -<p>“It looks to me like a fellow could work hard enough in three months to -last him the hull year,” said old man Stanley. “Just last week the camp -folks wanted me to go to work for them. I told them I wouldn't work for -nobody but the Gover'ment, and only three months in the year at that. -But they persuaded me to go to work for night watchman. I said all -right, only I had to go down to Gardiner and get my teeth fixed. They -asked me why I didn't go to Livingston. I told them some of my friends -down to Gardiner had been pulling my teeth for me for six or eight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> -years, them having a good pair of forceps. Of course they break some, -but take it one way with the other, them uppers of mine get along right -well. So I goes down to them friends last week, and had some more teeth -pulled. They mostly get nearly all the pieces out. I've got four teeth -left now, and that's enough for anybody. I sort of wish they'd track a -little better; but still, four teeth is enough for any reasonable man.”</p> - -<p>Maw spoke to me in an aside: “I wisht I could believe everything I see -and hear,” said she, <i>sotto voce</i>. “Now, here, this man and old Tom -Newcomb, they both tell me that them and old John Yancey, which is dead -now, was here so long ago they saw the water turned into Yellowstone -River. Of course it may be true; but then again, sometimes I doubt the -things I hear.”</p> - -<p>“The safest thing you could do is to doubt them geysers,” interrupted -her husband, who overheard her. “I was walking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> round on them just the -other day, right where signs said 'Dangerous.' It didn't seem to me -there was no danger at all, for nothing was happening. But one of them -rangers come up to me and asked if I didn't see the sign. 'That's all -right, brother,' says I. 'I've tried this place and it's all right.' And -right then she went off.”</p> - -<p>“And you should have seen Paw come down off from there,” commented his -spouse. “I didn't know he could run that fast, his time of life.”</p> - -<p>“If they let me have my gun,” said Paw, uncrossing one leg from the -other, “I could mighty soon get me a pair of elk horns for myself. But -what can a fellow do when they tie his gun up, time he comes in the -park?”</p> - -<p>“You ain't maybe noticed that hole in the back end of our car,” -explained Maw to me, pointing to an aperture in the curtain which looked -as though a cat had been thrown through it with claws extended. “Tell -him about it Paw.”</p> - - - -<hr /> - -<h3><a name="Spontaneous_Eruption" id="Spontaneous_Eruption"></a>Spontaneous Eruption<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></h3> - - -<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">“W</span>ell</span>, I dunno as it's much to tell,” said that gentleman, somewhat -crestfallen. “This here old musket of mine is the hardest shooting gun -in our country. I've kilt me a goose with it many a time, at a hundred -yards. She's a Harper's Ferry musket that done good service in the Civil -War. She's been hanging in my room, loaded, for three or four years, I -reckon, and when I told the ranger man, coming in, that she was loaded -he says: 'You can't take no loaded gun through the park. We'll have to -shoot her off before you can go in the park.' So we took old Suse round -behind the house, and snaps six or eight caps on her, but she didn't go -off. Finally the ranger allowed that that gun was perfectly safe, and -they let me bring her on in, of course, having wired up the working end.</p> - -<p>“I think old Suse must have got some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> sort of examples from these -geysers. I just throwed her in back of the car, on top of the bed -clothes, pointing back behind where the girls was setting. All at once, -several hours later, without no warning, she just erupted. There's -something eruptious in the air up here I guess.”</p> - -<p>“And they do the funniest things,” nodded Maw. “I was saying I thought -this park wasn't practical, but some ways I believe it is. For instance, -they told me about how when they was making the new road from the Lake -Hotel over to the Canyon the engineer run the line in the winter time, -and it run right over on top a grave, where a man was buried. There was -a headstone there, but the snow was so deep the engineer didn't see it. -Come spring, the road crew graded the road right through, grave and all. -When the superintendent heard of that he come down and complained about -it.</p> - -<p>“'Now,' says he, 'you've gone built that expensive road right over that -feller,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> and we've got to take him up and move him.' There was an Irish -foreman that had run the road crew, and he reasons thoughtful for a -while, and then he says to the superintendent, says he: 'Why can't we -just move the headstone and leave him where he's at?' So they done that, -and everybody is perfectly contented, his widow and all. What I don't -see is why don't the yellow cars stop there and point out that for a -point of interest? But they don't. I believe I'll speak to the -superintendent about that.”</p> - -<p>As to the latter personage mentioned by my friends, one must search far -to find a more long-suffering man. As a boy the superintendent was wild, -and during a moment of unrestraint he slew his Sabbath-school teacher -while yet a youth. The judge, in sentencing him, said that hanging would -not be severe enough, so he condemned him to a life as superintendent of -a national park—a sentence barely constitutional.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p><p>The park superintendent is a study in natural history. During the open -season on superintendents, some three months in duration, he does not -sleep at all. For one month after the first snowfall he digs a hole -beneath a rock, somewhere above timberline, and falls into a torpor, -using no food for thirty days. Then he goes to Washington to meet the -Director of Parks, after which he gets no more sleep until next fall. It -is this perpetual insomnia which gives a park superintendent his haunted -look. He knows he ought not to have killed his teacher, so he suffers in -silence.</p> - -<p>When the superintendent comes down to his office in the morning Maw is -sitting on the front steps, sixty thousand of her. She has not got that -letter with the money in it yet; and it's such things as that which -keeps people away from the parks. And what has become of her dog? He was -right in the car last night and he never harmed nobody in his life and -wouldn't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> bite nobody's bears if left alone. And what can folks do when -it rains this way and the roads so slippy? And about that man on the -truck that sassed us the other day? And about the price of gas—how can -folks afford it even if they only need two gallons to get to the -railroad? And if I couldn't make better soup than they serve at the -camps I'd resign from the church. And how far is it to Norris Geyser -Basin and why do they call it a basin and who was Mr. Norris and do they -name all the things after people and why not name something after -Congressman Smith or the editor of some Montana paper and what's the -reason people have to pay to ride in the parks anyways and why can't we -bottle Apollinaris Spring and would some salts help the Iron Spring and -what makes the pelican's mouth so funny that way and do they eat fish -and is there any swans on Swan Lake Flats and which way is the garage -and is there church on Sundays and who preaches and why don't they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> have -a Presbyterian and is that map up to date and are you a married man and -how many people does it take to run the park and how much do the hotels -make and why is the owner of the camps always in such a hurry to get -away when you want to talk with him and who is the man who drives the -sprinkler wagon with specs and can you get pictures cheaper if you take -say a dozen and why can't everybody sell pictures and run hotels—we -could take them right with our Kapoks anyways—and is there a place -where you can get some writing paper and an envelope and do you write -all your own letters yourself but of course how could a stenographer -stand the altitude? Why, I get out of breath sometimes.</p> - - - -<hr /> - -<h3><a name="His_Busy_Day" id="His_Busy_Day"></a>His Busy Day<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></h3> - - -<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">I</span> think</span> Maw, sixty thousand of her, does sometimes get out of breath, -but not often and not for long. The superintendent, contrite because of -his past, is patient when he replies.</p> - -<p>“Dear madam,” he begins, the tips of his fingers together as he sits -back in his chair, “your inquiry regarding this national park is noted, -and in reply I beg to state that I will answer all your questions after -I have told the rangers where to let the hotels cut wood and where to -run their milk herd and how to feed the hay crews and where to send the -road crews and where to have the gravel crews sleep and where to get -four more good trucks and two more garage men and a steno and a new man -on the files and look after the Appropriations Committee and write my -annual report to the Secretary of the Interior and my weekly report to -the Director<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> of the Parks and my daily report for the records and my -personal correspondence and see where the automobile blanks all have -gone and get the daily total of visitors classified and find a new site -for a camp and lay out twelve miles of new road and have the garbage -moved and get the elk counted again and the antelope estimated and stop -the sale of elk teeth and investigate the reasons why the bears don't -come in and look at a sick lady at the Fountain and wire the Shriners -that I will meet them at the train and write Congressman Jones that his -trip is all arranged for and pick out a camp site for the director's -Chicago friends and make my daily drive of five hundred miles round the -park to see if they haven't carried off the mountains and tell the -United States commissioner to soak that party who wrote six names on the -Castle Geyser and get in oats for the road teams and take up the -topographic maps with the U. S. engineers and send some photos to twelve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> -magazines and arrange for the last movie man to photograph the bears -and see about some colored prints of Old Faithful and have the bridal -chambers of the hotel renovated for the party of New York editors and -get a new collar for my wife's dog, and explain why there are so many -mosquitoes this year even under a Republican Administration—and a lot -more things that are on the daily tickler pad. Then I have to keep my -personal books and write my longhand letters until after midnight and -read up some more of the geology of the park and the times of -intermission for the geysers and the altitudes of all the peaks and -learn the personal names of all the geysers and woodchucks and——”</p> - -<p>“That man wasn't right polite to me,” said Maw in commenting upon some -of this. “He told me he was busy. I'd like to know what he's got to do, -just setting round.”</p> - -<p>Myself, I sometimes think the punishment of the superintendent is almost -too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> severe. He is obliged, for instance, to know everything in the -world that everyone else in the world does not know. He has pictures and -exact measurements of all the game animals in the park, all the flowers, -knows all the colors of the Grand Canyon and the location of every -sprinkling hose in fifty square miles. I have never been able to ask him -any questions that he cannot answer—except perhaps my favorite -question: “Why do they have this curio junk in all the park -stores—moccasins, leather Indian heads, and all that sort of thing?” He -sobbed when I asked him that, but I thought I could hear some muttered -word about there being a popular demand. As for me, I hold with Maw -that, if a person is being bitten on the elbow, better a bottle of -marmalade, a loaf of bread or a bottle of mosquito dope than a pair of -beef-hide moccasins with puckered toes. In my belief a few paintings by -Mr. Thomas Moran at a cost of fifteen thousand or twenty thousand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> -dollars, or sets of the works of some of our more popular authors, with -flexible backs, would be far more appropriate in the curio stores.</p> - -<p>Maw is of the opinion that most of the merchants, storekeepers and -venders of commodities west of the Mississippi River are robbers. “Not -that I mean real robbers like used to hold up the stagecoaches here in -the park,” she explained. “They don't do that no more since the cars has -come—I suppose because they go so fast that it ain't convenient for -robbers no more. But in the old times, they tell me, when they run -stagecoaches in here, and didn't have no railroad in on the west side, -there used to be a regular business of holding up the stagecoaches right -over where old man Dwelley used to have his eating house for lunch. -There's a clubhouse there now, instead of his old eating house, they -say. I heard that when they wanted to buy old man Dwelley out for a club -and asked him how much he wanted, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> thought a while, and then did some -counting, and then allowed that about twelve thousand dollars would be -about right. The man that was buying the place, he set down and writ a -check right then for twelve thousand dollars. But old man Dwelley didn't -take it. 'I dunno what that thing is,' says he. 'When I say twelve -thousand dollars I mean twelve thousand dollars in real money.'”</p> - - - -<hr /> - -<h3><a name="When_Bozeman_Was_Riled" id="When_Bozeman_Was_Riled"></a>When Bozeman Was Riled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></h3> - - -<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">T</span>hey</span> told him he had for to wait a few days and they went over to -Livingston and got twelve thousand dollars in five-dollar bills, and -brung it to Dwelley, and told him to count it. He counted a little of -it, and then said it was all right; he'd take their word for it that -there was twelve thousand dollars there. So then he put it in a sack -where he had some beaver hides. They told me he sent it all by express -to a fur buyer in Salt Lake after a while, and told him to put it in a -bank. He had one thousand five hundred dollars saved out, so they told -me, and he put that in the bank over to Bozeman. It riled them people at -Bozeman a good deal to think that anybody not from Bozeman should have -one thousand five hundred dollars inaccessible in their town. So one day -when old man Dwelley was there they fined him one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> thousand five hundred -dollars for killing a elk out of season, or something. That made him -mad. Still and all, he had his twelve thousand dollars left, not -mentioning what he got for his beaver hides.</p> - -<p>“One thing with another,” continued Maw after a period of rumination, -“you can't say but what this park is a fine place. Of course there's -always a wonder in my mind where they get all the hot water for the -geysers. It looks to me like a industrial waste. If the geysers could be -used for laundries, that would be something like. Then, again, they're -all the same color. If they'd throw in some bluing now and then, or some -red or green, they'd look prettier—that'd give more variety, like. Yet -they say these geysers has been running for years and no let-up. Ain't -it funny the things you see, away from home?</p> - -<p class="figcenter"><a href="images/i056.jpg"><img src="images/i056_th.jpg" -alt="" title="" /></a></p> - -<p class="caption">“If the geysers could be used for laundries, that would -be something like.”—Maw—p. 48</p> - -<p>“I like to ride along these roads up in the mountains, and look down at -the rivers. You get way up above a river and it looks like a long -washboard, down below,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> here in the mountains. And I'll have to say -the roads is crooked. I say to Paw: 'We're all church members except -Cynthy, which went to college, and if we go we go.' And even if we -do—why, we've all had a vacation, and I'll tell it to the world that a -vacation trip once in a lifetime is something no family ought to be -without, no matter what the preacher says about idleness. I'm strong for -vacations from this time on. Fact is, I believe Paw and me has got to -have them, though this is our first. And to think we was afraid to buy -ice cream once, except on the Fourth of July! Now, Paw goes right up to -one of them stands and buys five dollars of gasoline like it was -nothing. Times has changed, like I said. Lookit at our car now. I can -remember back—not so far, neither—when if I got a ride in a side-bar -buggy I thought I was a mighty lucky girl. And here we are, traveling -with every sort of comfort anybody could ask.”</p> - -<p>There were many appliances which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> Maw gradually had installed for -facilitating housekeeping in her day-to-day camps—folding beds, a -cracker-box pantry, a planed board for table, racks for groceries and -the like, all strung alongside the car, so numerous and extensive that -by the time the Hickory Bend Outing Club's great wall tent had been -added you barely could see the wheels underneath the moving mass. From -the midst of all projected the steering wheel, which Paw grasped as he -sat, with only the top of his hat visible to the naked eye. Maw rode -beside him somewhere. I never was able satisfactorily to determine where -Cynthy, Hattie and Rowena rode. Danny, the family dog, had his seat -outside on the fender, against the hood. I presume Danny's feet got hot -sometimes on the up grades, but Maw said he ought to be used to it by -now.</p> - - - -<hr /> - -<h3><a name="All_Ready_for_Bud" id="All_Ready_for_Bud"></a>All Ready for Bud<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></h3> - - -<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">O</span>n top</span> of the load, with the stock projecting well forward, I quite -often was able to recognize old Suse, the ancient firearm of geyserlike -proclivities. Maw said she always felt more comfortable when there was a -gun round, because she never could get used to bears, no matter how -afraid they was of folks.</p> - -<p>“When we come out here we didn't know but what we could get a shot on -the quiet at a buffalo, Paw never having killed one in his life. Plenty -people believes the same till they get here. When we was at the ranger -station we seen one Arkansas car come in with six shooting irons, and -they all made a kick about having their guns locked up. Then there was a -deputy sheriff from Arizony, with woolly pants on, and he made a holler -about them locking up his six-shooter. 'This here may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> cost me my life,' -said he to the ranger. 'I dunno for sure that Bud Cottrell is in this -here park, but he might be; and if I should run across him I serve -notice on you right now I'm going to bust this seal.'</p> - -<p>“'My!' says the ranger to this Arizony man, 'you look to me like a sort -of ferocious person. Have you killed many people?'</p> - -<p>“That sort of quieted him down. 'Well, no,' says he, 'I ain't never -killed nobody, but I've saw it did, and if I ever meet Bud Cottrell I -shore am going to bust this seal.' I ain't ever heard whether he busted -it or not.”</p> - -<p>“Funniest thing to me about this here park,” commented Paw, “is that -they call me a sagebrusher and the people at the hotels dudes. And the -girls in the hotel dining rooms they call savages, though some of them -wears specs, and most of them is school-teachers, with a few -stenographers throwed in. Why they should call them people savages is -what I can't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> understand. And what do they mean by dude wrangling, -mister?”</p> - -<p>I explained to Paw that this was a new industry recently sprung up in -the West, among those residents of adjacent states who take out camping -and hunting parties, or even such persons as desire to see mountain -scenery and the footprints of large game, formerly embedded in the soil -and now protected by log parapets.</p> - -<p>“So that's what it is,” nodded Maw as I gave this information. “I -suppose it's just part of the funny things that happens back here. Such -things as a person does see on a vacation! Don't it beat all? Now I -caught Hattie walking off towards the electric light last night with a -young man that had specs and leather leggins like the officers has, and -I declare if she didn't tell me he was a perfessor of geology down at -Salt Lake or Omaha. Once I give a quarter for a tip to a man that -brought me some gasoline, and I declare if I didn't find out he teaches -law in a university somewheres!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> Then, they tell me that the young man -who peels potatoes in the kitchen back of our camp has only one more -year to get through Princeton—whoever Princeton is. I wish he was -through now, because he sings things.</p> - -<p>“We're making quite a stay here in the park—longer than what we allowed -we would do, Paw and me. The girls seem to be having a sort of good time -here, one thing with another. You can't leave a girl alone anywheres -here, unless she's taken in by some perfessor or ranger or guide or cook -or chauffeur or something, who comes along and carries her off to show -her the bears or Old Faithful or Inspiration Point or something. Seems -to me like we've heard them words before, too—and then there's Lovers' -Leap and the Devil's Slide. We've even got them in Ioway, where the -hills is rough.</p> - -<p>“Set down on the log here,” said Maw, “and rest yourself, and I'll build -up the fire. Ain't it fine outdoors? I declare,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> I let out my corsets -four inches above and below, I breathe that much deeper here in the -mountains; and the air makes you feel so fine. What was I saying?—oh, -about my knitting. You see at home, when I get my work done, I knit or -crochet or embroider. Mary's baby is a right cute little thing, and I -like to sew or knit things anyways. But Joseph said to me: 'Now, Maw! -Now you forget it; we're going to have a vacation now, with no work at -all for no one at all, and all strings off. We're just going to have one -mighty good time,' says Joseph to me. At first, having nothing to do, I -felt right strange, but I'm getting used to it now, though I do think I -could knit comfortable while setting watching the geysers spout.</p> - -<p>“I dunno how we happened to come out so far as this—we didn't allow to -spend over two hundred dollars, but I allow we've spent over five -hundred or six hundred dollars now. The funny thing is, Paw don't seem -to care. He always was aggressive.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> He just driv right on West till we -got here. He said his Paw traveled across all that country in a ox team, -and he allowed he could in a automobile. So we done it, and here we are. -I don't care if we don't get home till after harvest.”</p> - -<p>Many and many a talk I had with Maw, dear old Maw, some sixty thousand -of her, this past summer. The best of all vacations is to see someone -else having a vacation who never has had a vacation before in his or her -life. The delight of Maw in this new phase of her existence has been my -main delight for many a week in the months spent, not so much in -watching geysers as in watching Maw. Sometimes I steal away from the -pleadings of the saxophone, leaving even Stella O'Cleave with the -slumberous eyes sitting alone at the log rail of Old Faithful Inn. I -want to see Maw once more, and talk with her once again about the -virtues of a vacation now and again; at least once in a lifetime spent -in work for others.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p> - -<p>I do not always find the girls at home in the camp. For some reason they -seem of late to be out later and later of evenings. Paw has found a -crony here and there about the camps, and swaps reminiscences of this -sort or that. Sometimes I find Maw alone, sitting on the log, gazing -into her little camp fire. Once, I recall, one of the girls was at home.</p> - -<p>“Roweny!” called out Maw suddenly. “Roweny, where are you? Come and talk -to the gentleman.”</p> - -<p>A voice replied from the other side of the car, where Rowena was sitting -on the running board. I discovered her, chin in hand, looking out into -the dark.</p> - -<p>“I was afraid some perfessor had got her,” explained Maw to me. “Come on -out, Roweny, and set by the fire. This gentleman seems sort of nice, and -he's old.”</p> - -<p>Rowena, seventeen years of age, uncrossed her long young limbs and came -out of the darkness, seating herself on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> the running board on our side, -where the firelight shone on her clean young features, her splendid -young figure of an American girl. She was comely enough in her spiral -putties and her tanned boots as she sat, her small round chin on the -hand whose arm was supported by a knee. Rowena appeared downcast. While -Maw was busy a moment later, I asked her why.</p> - -<p>I think it must have been the mountain moon again; for Rowena, seventeen -years of age, once more looked gloomily out into the night.</p> - -<p>“If I thought I could ever find a man that would understand me I believe -I would marry him!” said she, as has every young girl in her time.</p> - -<p>“Tut, tut! Rowena!” I replied. “I believe that I understand you, simple -as I am myself, and you need not marry me at all. I understand you -perfectly. You are just a fine young girl, out on almost your first -vacation, with your Maw. It is the moon, Rowena. It is youth, Rowena,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> -and the air of the hills. Believe me, it will all come right when the -cook has finished his Princeton; of that I am sure.</p> - -<p>“And Rowena,” I added, “you will grow up after a while—you will grow up -to be a wholesome, useful American woman, precisely like your Maw.”</p> - -<p>“Precisely?” said Rowena, smiling.</p> - -<p>But I saw how soft her eye was, after all, when I mentioned Maw—her -Maw, who came out of another day; who has worked so hard she is -uncomfortable now without her knitting when Old Faithful plays.</p> - -<p>“Come, Rowena,” said I, and held out my hand to her. “Let us go.”</p> - -<p>“Land sakes!” exclaimed Maw, just then emerging into the firelight of -the sagebrush camp. “I almost got a turn. One of them two bears, Teddy -and Eymogene, is always hanging round us begging for doughnuts, and here -it was standing on its hind legs and mooching its nose, and I stepped -right into it. I declare,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> I can't hardly get used to bears. There ain't -none in Ioway. But if Eymogene gets into my bed again tonight I declare -I'll bust her on the snoot, no matter what the park regulations is. -People has got to sleep. Not that you girls seem to be troubled about -sleeping. Where were you going?”</p> - -<p>She spoke as Rowena and I stood hand in hand, after so brief an -acquaintance as might not elsewhere have served us, except in these -vacation hills.</p> - -<p>“I was going,” said I, “to take Rowena up past the camp and beyond the -hotel and the electric light to the curio store. I was going to get -something for Rowena to bring to you—a sort of present from a nice old -man, you know.”</p> - -<p>“As which?” said Maw.</p> - -<p>“I was going with Rowena, Maw,” said I, “to get you a present.”</p> - -<p>“As which?”</p> - -<p>“And it shall be a leather pillow; and on it shall be the word -'Mother.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>”</p> - -<p>You see, the moon on the sage makes a strange light.</p> - -<p>It may even enable you to see into the hearts of other people.</p> - - - -<div class="advertisements bbox"> - -<p style="text-align: center; letter-spacing: 0.20ex; text-indent: 0em; font-weight: bold; line-height: 200%; padding-bottom: 2em; padding-top: 1em"><span style="font-size: 160%;">Standard Books</span><br /> -<span style="letter-spacing: 0ex">on the</span><br /> -<span style="font-size: 160%">Yellowstone</span></p> - -<p class="ads"><big>HAYNES GUIDE.</big> The Complete Handbook of Yellowstone -Park; 1921 ed. 8 vo., 160 pp. Officially approved by -The National Park Service, Washington, D. C., and -The Yellowstone Trail Association. Illustrated, maps, -diagrams, charts. Descriptive, Historical, Geological, -and contains the Motorists' Complete Road Log; By -J. E. Haynes, B. A. 83c postpaid</p> - - -<p class="ads"><big>THE DISCOVERY OF YELLOWSTONE PARK.</big> Diary of the -Expedition to the Yellowstone and Firehole Rivers -in 1870. 8 vo., board, 122 pp. Illustrated; Maps; -Drawings; By Nathaniel P. Langford, first -superintendent of the Park, who served for five years -without pay to save the Park for the American people. -<span style="padding-left: 7em">$1.62 postpaid</span></p> - -<p class="ads"><big>YELLOWSTONE IN JINGLETONE</big>, a De Luxe booklet of catchy -jingles containing “Geysergrams,” “Recollections of a -Barn Dog,” “The Buffalo Stampede,” “Paintin' the -Canyon,” etc., in envelope suitable for mailing; By -C. A. Brewer.<span style="padding-left: 13em">55c postpaid</span></p> - -<p class="center"><i><small>Published by</small></i><br /> -<big>J. E. HAYNES</big><br /> -<small>ST. PAUL</small></p> -</div> - - - -<div class="note"> -<h4>Transcriber's Note:</h4> - -<p>Typographical errors corrected in text:</p> - -<ul><li>Page <a href="#Page_30">30</a>—postoffice changed to post office</li> - -<li>Page <a href="#Page_33">33</a>—overhead changed to overheard</li> - -<li>Page <a href="#Page_49">49</a>—applainces changed to appliances</li></ul> -</div> - - - - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Maw's Vacation, by Emerson Hough - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAW'S VACATION *** - -***** This file should be named 24126-h.htm or 24126-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/1/2/24126/ - -Produced by D Alexander, Barbara Kosker, Irma Špehar and -the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone - -Author: Emerson Hough - -Release Date: January 2, 2008 [EBook #24126] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAW'S VACATION *** - - - - -Produced by D Alexander, Barbara Kosker, Irma Špehar and -the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - +-----------------------------------------------------------+ - | Transcriber's Note: | - | | - | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | - | been preserved. | - | | - | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For | - | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | - | | - +-----------------------------------------------------------+ - - - - - - MAW'S VACATION - - - THE STORY OF A HUMAN BEING - - _in the_ - - YELLOWSTONE - - _by_ - - EMERSON HOUGH - - AUTHOR OF: The Sagebrusher, Hearts Desire, The Covered Wagon, - Curly of the Range, etc. - - - - ILLUSTRATED - - - - - SAINT PAUL - J. E. HAYNES, Publisher - 1921 - - - - - - - - - COPYRIGHT 1920 - THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY - - - COPYRIGHT 1921 - EMERSON HOUGH - -[Illustration: "Maw"] - - - - -Times has changed, says Maw to herself, says she. Things ain't like what -they used to be. Time was when I worked from sunup to sundown, and we -didn't have no daylight-saving contraptions on the old clock, neither. -The girls was too little then, and I done all the work myself--cooking, -sweeping, washing and ironing, suchlike. I never got to church Sundays -because I had to stay home and get the Sunday dinner. Like enough they'd -bring the preacher home to dinner. You got to watch chicken--it won't -cook itself. Weekdays was one like another, and except for shoveling -snow and carrying more coal I never knew when summer quit and winter -come. There was no movies them days--a theater might come twice a -winter, or sometimes a temperance lecturer that showed a picture of the -inside of a drunkard's stomach, all redlike and awful. We didn't have -much other entertainment. Of course we had church sociables now and -then, or a surprise party on someone. Either way, the fun no more than -paid for the extra cooking. I never seen nothing or went nowhere, and if -when I was down town after the groceries I'd 'a' stepped into the drug -store and bought me a lemonade--and they didn't have no nut sundaes -then--they'd of had me up before the church for frivolous conduct. - -Of course Paw kicks about the crops and prices, but I've been living -with Paw forty years, and I dunno as I can remember a time when he -didn't kick. He kicks now on the wages he pays these city boys that come -out to farm; says they're no good at all. But somehow or other, things -gets raised. I notice the last few years we somehow have had more -clothes and things, and more money in the bank. When Paw bought the -automobile he didn't ask the minister if it was right, and he didn't -have to ask the bank for a consent, neither. Cynthy's back from -college, and it's all paid for somehow. Jimmy's in a mail-order store -in Chicago. I've got a girl to help me that calls herself a maid, which -is all right enough, though we used to call Judge Harmsworth's help a -girl and let it go at that, law me! My other girls, Hattie and Roweny, -are big enough to help a lot, and Paw reasons with them considerable -about it. I've always been so used to work that I think I can do it -better myself. I always like to do for my children. - -But Paw, ever since I married him, has been one of those energetics. -They call him an aggressive business man. Some of them call him a -dominant man, because of his whiskers, though he knows well enough about -how scared of him I am. Only time I ever was scared of Paw was when he -got the car. I thought he would break his fool neck and kill Roweny, -that had clim in with him. He did break down the fence in front of the -house and run over the flower beds and all. - - - - -The Park-Bound Throng of Maws - - -But this summer we allowed we all would get in the car and take a big -trip out West--go right into some of the parks, if nothing happened. - -We borrowed our tent from the Hickory Bend Outing Club that Paw belongs -to back home. The poles go along the fenders and stick out a good way -behind. I could always cook without a stove, from experience at picnics -when I was younger. The dishes goes in a box. Paw nailed a rack on top -of the fenders, and we carry a lot of stuff that way. Cynthy always has -her suitcase on the outside because it's the newest one. The other girls -set on the bedding on the rear seat, and I ride in front with Paw. We -mostly wear overalls. - -Yes, times has changed, says Maw. - -As a dispassionate observer in one of our national parks, expressing the -belief in modern speech, I'll say they have. I have met Maw this -summer, ninety thousand of her, concentrated on a piece of mountain -scenery about fifty miles square--Maw on her first vacation in a life of -sixty years. Dear old Maw! - -Ninety thousand replicas of Maw cause the rest of us to eat copiously of -alkaline dust and to shiver each time we approach a turn on the roads of -Yellowstone Park, which were laid out on a curling iron. You cannot -escape seeing Paw and Maw, and Cynthy in her pants, and Hattie and -Roweny in overalls and putties. I have seen their camp fire rising on -every remaining spot of grass on all that busy fifty miles. I have -photographed Maw and Cynthy and the other girls, and Cynthy has -photographed me because I looked funny. Bless them all, the whole ninety -thousand of them--I would not have missed them on their vacation this -summer for all the world. They are, I suppose, what we call the new -people of America, who never have been out like this before. They've -been at home. Maw has been getting the Sunday dinner. Paw has been -plowing, paying the taxes which this Government has spent for him. But -now Paw pays income tax also; and both he and Maw construe this fact to -mean that they can at last read their title clear to a rest, and a car, -and a vacation. So they have swung out from the lane at last, after -forty years of work, and on to the roads that lead to the -transcontinental highway. They have crossed the prairies and come up -into the foothills--the price of gas increasing day by day, and Paw -kicking but paying cash--and so they have at last arrived among the -great mountains of which Maw has dreamed all her long life of cooking -and washing and ironing. - - - - -Studies in Mountain Pants - - -I shall not inquire by what miracle of grace Paw has learned to find his -way about on these curling-iron mountain roads. I am content to eat a -barrel of dust a day rather than miss the sight of Maw, placid and -bespectacled, on the front seat of the flivver. Without her the mountain -roads would never be the same for me, and my own vacation would be -spoiled. Frankly, I am in love with Maw; and as for Cynthy in her -pants---- - -Times has changed. Maw also wears pants today. She says that they are -convenienter when she sits down round on the grass. Sometimes her pants -are fastened round the ankles with large and shiny safety pins, -apparently saved from the time when Jimmy was a baby. Sometimes they -hang straight down _au naturel_, and sometimes they stop at the knee--in -which case, as Maw's _au naturel_ is disposed to adipose--they make a -startling adjunct to the mountain scenery. But, bless her heart, Maw -doesn't care! She is on her way and on her vacation, the first in all -her life. There rest on her soul the content and poise which her own -square and self-respecting mind tells her are due her after forty years -of labor, including the Lord's Days thereof. I call Maw's vacation her -Lord's Day. It ought to be held a sacred thing by all who tour our -national parks, where Maw is gregariously accumulated in these days. I -used to own this park, you and I did. It's Maw's park now. Forty years -of hard work! - -Has she earned a vacation? I'll say she has. Is she taking it? I'll say -she is. - -Maw has company in the park--not always just the company she or I would -select, were it left to us. Some of these do not go out by motor car. Of -course Abe Klinghammer, of the Plasterers' Union, Local Number Four, -being rich, goes out by rail on a round trip. He can go to the tents -and log cottages of the Camps Company. He does not kick any more than -Maw kicks. To tell the truth, in spite of the front he throws, Abe is a -little bit scared at all this sudden splendor in his life. He is a -little uneasy about how to act, how to seem careless about it, as though -he had been used to it all his life. Abe takes it out in neckties. -Having bought a swell one of four colors and inserted a large cameo in -it, he loses his nerve and begins to doubt whether he is getting by. You -will always see Abe looking at your necktie. - -And there is Benjamin D. O'Cleave of New York--with a flourish under it -on the register. He and his wife take it out in diamonds. You would -never see one of the O'Cleave family at a roadside camp fire such as -that where Maw fries the trout and Rowena toasts the bread on a fork. -The original O'Cleave came over in the Mayflower, as I am informed--but, -without question in my mind, came steerage. You will find Mr. O'Cleave -in the swellest hotel, in the highest-priced room. He is first in war, -first in peace, and first in the dining room. - -Mr. O'Cleave pays a plenty a head for all his family, for rooms with -bath and meals. The hotel company would gladly charge him more, and Mr. -O'Cleave gladly would pay more. He confides to the hotel clerk--who is a -Y. M. C. A. secretary back East--that he should not care if it was even -fifty dollars a day, he could pay it. But, if so, he would already want -for his money more service, which he waits five hours and not enough -cars to get him over to see the Giantess Geyser play, which the Giantess -maybe didn't play again for eight days, and should a business man and -taxpayer wait eight days because of not cars enough by a hotel, which is -the only place a man has to go with his family? Is it reasonable? - - - - -Maw in War Paint - - -The highly specialized hotel clerk admits that it is not reasonable, -that nothing is reasonable, that he has spoken to the Giantess a dozen -times about her irregular habits; but what can he do? "I would gladly -charge you one hundred dollars a day, Mr. O'Cleave, if I had the consent -of the Interior Department. It isn't my fault." - -I wish I had a movie of the Y. M. C. A. hotel clerk when he is off duty -at the desk. I wonder if his faith upholds him when he recalls the -threat of Benjamin D. O'Cleave to go to Europe next year. Ah, well, even -if he does, Maw will remain. - -I know that next year I shall again see Maw leaning against a big pine, -as she sits upon the ground drinking real handmade coffee of her own -from a tin cup with the handle cut so it will nest down in the box. -Maw's meals do not cost her four bits a throw, because they brought -things along. Paw catches a trout sometimes on the cane pole that hangs -alongside the car; not always, but sometimes, he catches one. And Maw, -once she had conquered the notion that you ought to skin a trout the way -you do a bullhead back in Ioway, took to cooking trout naturally; and -her trout, with pancakes and sirup, to my notion beat anything the hotel -chef in the best hotel can do. Maw does not worry about a room with -bath, though sometimes when the rain comes through the old wall tent she -gets both. The pink and green war paint which you sometimes see beneath -Maw's specs when you meet her on the road represents only the mark of -the bedquilts, where the colors were not too proud to run. - -Maw finds it wonderful in these mountains. I know she does, because she -has never yet told me so. Maw throws no fits. But many a time I have -seen her sitting, in the late afternoon, her hands, in the first -idleness they have known in all her life, lying in her ample lap, her -faded eyes quietly gazing through her steel-bowed far-lookers at the -vast pictures across some valley she has found. It is her first valley -of dreams, her first valley of rest and peace and quiet. The lights on -these hills are such as she did not see in Ioway, or even in Nebraska, -when she went there once, time Mary's baby was born. The clouds are so -strange to Maw, their upturned edges so very white against the black -body of their over-color. And the rains that come, with hail--but here -you don't need worry, for there are no crops for the hail to spoil. And -sometimes in the afternoon, never during the splendor of the mellow -morning such as Maw never before has seen, comes the lightning and rips -the counterpane of clouds to let the sun shine through. - -I know Maw loves it all, because she never has told me so. She is very -shy about her new world in this new day. She wouldn't like to talk -about it. We never do like to talk about it, once we really have looked -out across our valley of dreams. - -You can't fail to like Hattie and Rowena and Cynthy. Often I walk with -Cynthy and her Vassarrority on the Angel Terrace, when the moon is up, -when it is all white, and Cynthy is almost the only angel left there. -Such a moon as the Interior Department does provide for the summer here! -I defy any Secretary of any other Department--War, Navy, Commerce, Labor -or anything--to produce any such moon as this at six dollars and fifty -cents a day with bath; or four dollars and fifty cents a day with two -towels; or four bits a day at Maw's camp on the Madison. So though I -know Cynthy would prefer the young park ranger--who really is the son of -a leading banker in Indianapolis--to explain the algae and the Algys, I -do the best I can at my age of life with Cynthy. - -Rowena, the younger, seventeen now, who wears hers with spirals, tells -me that Cynthy keeps a diary, because she herself found it in the tool -box. "And once," says Rowena to me, "Cynthy, after coming into camp from -a walk through the moonlit pines, wrote in her diary: 'August 12, -11 p. m. Trout for supper. Walked with ---- toward the Hymen Terrace, just -beyond Jupiter Hill, I think it is called. The moon wonderful what woman -is there who has not at some time in her life longed to be swept off her -feet by some Strong Man!'" - -I copy this as Rowena did, punctuation and all. Rowena has not yet gone -to Vassar. - -Cynthy is the one who thinks the family ought to have a six-cylinder car -next year, with seats that lie back, and air mattresses. Maw does not -agree with her, and says that four cylinders are plenty hard enough for -Paw to keep clean. By what marvel Cynthy is always so stunning; and -Hattie so nurselike in denim and white; and Rowena always so neat in -hers with spirals, which she bought ready made at the store for seven -dollars and fifty-two cents--I cannot say; but when I see these marvels -I renew my faith in my country and its people, even though I do wish -that Paw would pause at some geyser and have a Sunday shave. He says he -forgot his razor and left it home. - - - - -In the Grip of the Law - - -Speaking of room with bath, Maw solved the ablutionary problem for -herself the other day at Old Faithful Ranger Station. The young men who -make up the ranger force there have built a simple shanty over the -river's brim, which they use as their own bathhouse. As there is no -sentinel stationed there Maw thought it was public like everything else. -She told me about it later. - -"I went in," said she, "and seen what it was. There was a long tub and a -tin pail. There was a trapdoor in the floor that was right over the -river. I reached down and drew up a pail of water, and it was right -cold. Then I seen a turn faucet, end of a pipe that stuck out over the -tub. It brought in some right hot water that come up within six feet of -the door. It didn't take me long to figure that this was the hot-water -faucet. So there was hot and cold water both right on the spot, and I -reckon there ain't no such natural washtub as that in all Ioway. I got -me a wash that will last me a long while. There wasn't no towels, and so -I took my skirt. Now, Cynthy----" - -But Cynthy was writing notes in her diary. All college girls write notes -in diaries, and sometimes they take to free verse. Of course writing in -a diary is only a form of egotism, precisely like writing on a geyser -formation. They both ought to be illegal, and one is. Maw knows all -about that. Sometimes, even now, she will tell me how she came to be -fined by the United States commissioner at Mammoth Hot Springs. - -[Illustration: "So Maw, dear, old, happy, innocent Maw, knelt down with -her hatpin and wrote:"--p. 19] - -You see, the geysers rattled Maw, there being so many and she loving -them all so much. One day when they were camped near the Upper Basin, -Maw was looking down in the cone of Old Faithful, just after that -Paderewski of the park had ceased playing. She told me she wanted to -see where all the suds came from. But all at once she saw beneath her -feet a white, shiny expanse of something that looked like chalk. At a -sudden impulse she drew a hatpin from her hair and knelt down on the -geyser cone--not reflecting how long and slow had been its growth. - -For the first time a feeling of identity came to Maw. She never had been -anybody all her life, even to herself, before this moment on her -vacation. But now she had seen the mountains and the sky, and had -oriented herself as one of the owners of this park. So Maw, dear, old, -happy, innocent Maw, knelt down with her hatpin and wrote: Margaret D. -Hanaford, Glasgow, Iowa. - -She was looking at her handiwork and allowing she could have done it -better, when she felt a touch on her shoulder, and looked up into the -stern young face, the narrow blond mustache, of the ranger from -Indianapolis. The ranger was in the Engineers of the A. E. F. When Maw -saw him she was frightened, she didn't know why. - -"Madam," said the ranger, "are you Margaret D. Hanaford?" - -"That's me," answered Maw; "I don't deny it." - -"Did you write that on the formation?" - -Maw could not tell a lie any more than George Washington when caught, so -she confessed on the spot. - -"Then you are under arrest! Don't you know it's against the regulations -to deface any natural object in the park? I'll have to telephone in the -number of your car. You must see the commissioner before you leave the -park." - -"Me arrested?" exclaimed Maw in sudden consternation. "What'll that man -do to me?" - -"He'll fine you ten dollars and costs. If you had written it a little -bit larger it would have been twenty-five dollars and costs. Now get -down and rub it out before it sets, and do it quick, before the geyser -plays again." - -And so Maw got down on her knees and rubbed out her first feeling of -identity. And the commissioner fined her ten dollars and costs in due -time--for Maw was honest as the day and didn't try to evade the -punishment that she thought was hers. - -"I ought to have knew better," she said "me, a woman of my years. I -don't begretch the money, and I think the young man was right, and so -was the judge, and I'll never do it again. The commissioner said that I -looked like a woman of sense. I always did have sense before. I think it -must be these mountains, or the moon, or something. I never felt that -way before." - -It was this young man who walked down to Maw's camp to take her number. -It was there that he met Cynthy, and I am inclined to think that she -took his number at the time. Later on I often saw them walking together, -past the great log hotel with its jazz architecture, and beyond the -fringe of pine that separates the camp trippers from the O'Cleaves, who -live in the hotels. The young ranger was contrite about arresting Maw, -but that latter was the first to exonerate him. - -"You only done right," said she. "I done what I knew was wrong. Now, -Hattie, and you, Roweny, don't you let this spoil your trip none at all. -It's once your Maw has allowed herself the privilege of being an old -fool, the first time in her life. I dunno but it was worth ten dollars, -at that." - -And so I suppose we should let Cynthy and the young ranger go out into -the moonshine to learn how the algae grow, of how many different colors. -Consider the algae of the geysers, how they grow. Solomon in all his -glory had nothing on the algae; and the Queen of Sheba nothing on -Cynthy. - -[Illustration: "--and The Queen of Sheba had nothing on Cynthy."--p. -22.] - -Sometimes, even yet, Maw and I talk about the time she was fined ten -dollars for writing her name. "It might have been worse," said she to -me. "When we was coming through some place a ways back we heard about a -man there that was sentenced to be hung after he had been tried several -times. His friends done what they could with the governor, but it didn't -come to nothing. So after a while his lawyer come in the jail, and he -says: 'Bill, I can't do nothing more for you. On next Monday morning at -six o'clock you've got to be hung by the neck until you're dead, and may -God have mercy on your soul.' 'Well, all I can say,' says Bill, 'that's -a fine way to begin the week, ain't it now?'" - -The time she wrote her name upon the geyser will always remain the great -event in Maw's life. When she makes down her bedquilt bed in the pine -woods, from which she can hear the music of the hotel orchestra when the -nocturnal dance has begun, and can see the searchlight playing on the -towering pillar of Old Faithful, once more in its twenty-four daily -essays from the bowels of the mysterious earth shooting up into the -mysterious blackness of the night sky, Maw on her hands and knees says -to herself: "I'm glad my name ain't on that thing. It was too little to -go with that, even if for a minute I felt like somebody." - -Speaking of the midnight and the music, sometimes I go over to the hotel -to tread a measure with Stella O'Cleave, able for a moment to forget -Stella's father in the opulent beauty of Stella herself. Her mother is -what is called a fine figure of a woman, and so will Stella be some day. -Sometimes, when we have left the dance floor to sit along the rail where -the yellow cars will line up next morning to sweep Stella away within a -day after she and her putties have come into my young life, I may say -that I find Stella O'Cleave not difficult to look upon. I always feel a -sense of Oriental luxury, as though I had bought a new rug, when Stella -turns on me the slumberous midnight of her eyes. I am enamored of the -piled black shadows of Stella's hair, even as displayed in the somewhat -extreme cootie garages which, in the vernacular of the A. E. F., -indicate the presence of her ears. I admire the long sure lines which -her evidently expensive New York tailor has given to hers; they are -among the best I have seen in the park. I could wish that the heels on -Stella's French shoes were less than five inches high. I could wish that -she did not wrap her putties, one from the inside out, and the other -from the outside in. But these are details. The splendor of her eyes, -the ripe redness of her lips, the softness of her voice, combined, have -disposed me to forgive her all. - -"There are times," sighed Stella that evening, beneath the moon, as we -sat against the log rail and listened to the jazz, "out here in these -mountains, when I feel as though I were a wild creature, like these -others." - -"My dear," said I, "I can believe you. Your putties do look wild." - -"Listen," said she to me. "You do not get me." - -The sob of the saxophone came through the window near by, the froufrou -of the dancers made a soft susurration faintly audible. I looked into -Stella's dark eyes, at her clouded brow. - -"Come again, loved one," said I to her. - -"What I mean to say," she resumed, "is that there are times when I feel -as though I did not care what I did or what became of me out here." - -My hand fell upon her slender fingers as they lay twitching in the -twilight. - -"Stella," I exclaimed, "lit-tel one, if that is the way you really -feel--or the way really you feel--or really the way you feel--why don't -you go down to Jackson's Hole and try a congressional lunch?" - - - - -Enough for Five More - - -The spruce trees rustled amid their umbrageous boughs. The sob of the -saxophone still came through the window. I saw Stella tremble through -all her tall young body. A tear fell upon the floor and rebounded -against one of the rustic posts. - -"No, No!" said she in sudden contrition, burying her face in both her -shapely hands. "Say anything but that! I did not mean me hasty words. My -uncle is a congressman, and he has told me all." - -A silence fell between us. The sob of the saxophone, still doing jazz, -came through the window. Once more I recalled the classic story--no -doubt you know it well. A musician one evening passed a hat among the -dancers, after a number had been concluded. - -"Please, sir," said he to each, "would you give fifty cents to bury a -saxophone player?" Then out spoke one jovial guest, to the clink of his -accompanying coin: "Here's three dollars, friend. Bury six saxophone -players!" - -Absent-mindedly recalling this story I reached out my hand with a -five-dollar bill in it, as I saw a quiet-looking gentleman passing by -with a hat in his hand. - -"Bury ten saxophone players," I hissed through my set lips. He turned to -me mildly. - -"Excuse me sir," said he, "I am not an undertaker. I am only the -Secretary of the Interior." - -Of course one will make mistakes. Still, under our form of government -methinks the Secretary of the Interior really is responsible for the -existence of saxophone players within the limits of the park. - -In common with Maw and others, I realized that in many ways the park -might be better. It might be far more practicably administered. This -morning I met a procession of fifty women, all in overalls, who all -looked precisely alike. Maw was at their head. - -"We're going over to the store to get a loaf of bread," said she, "and a -picture of Old Faithful Geyser and a burnt-leather pillow. And lookit -here, mister, here is a book I bought for Roweny to read. I can stand -for most of it. But here it says that the geysers is run by hot water, -and when they freeze up in the winter the men that live in the park cut -the ice and use it for foot warmers, it's so hot. That might be true, -and then again it might not. If it ain't, why should they try to fool -the people?" - -I referred Maw to the superintendent of the park, with the explanation -that he has full control over all the natural objects, and that if any -geyser proves guilty of obnoxious conduct he is empowered to eject it. - -"I dunno but what that would be the best way to do," said she. "If these -places ain't fit to walk on, summer or winter neither one, something -ought to be done about it. - -"But lookit here," she went on, "if you want to see people busy, come -down to our camp, some sundown. There ain't that many mosquitoes in all -Ioway, and they call this place a national playground. It ain't no such -place. And yet, when I go to the post office, store, or the -superintendent's office, or the head clerk's house, or the curio store -to get some mosquito dope to rub on myself, they ain't got no mosquito -dope; but for four dollars you can buy a lovely leather pillow with -'Mother' on it. What do I want with a leather pillow with 'Mother' on it -when mosquitoes are biting; or a picture of an Indian on one side of a -sheepskin; or bead bags; or moccasins that they say are made by the -Indians? What I want is mosquito dope and bread; something practical. -When you got a bite on your elbow you don't care a durn about a card -showing a picture of Artist Point, and I am as good a Presbyterian as -anybody. I say them stores ain't practical." - -Quite often when I stroll down to interview Maw and her family at their -camp I am able to obtain free expression of opinion on current matters. -The other evening Paw was hammering at something which at first looked -like a piece of stone. - -"It breaks right easy," said he. "I got this piece off the Angel Cake -Terrace. Having so many in the car I have to cut down the weight. But -what I and Maw want," he said, "is a pair of them elk horns. If I can -get a good pair I allow to paint them red and black, with gold round the -lower ends. Maw and me think they'd look right good in the parlor." - - - - -Old Stanley's Story - - -They have visitors now and then, Paw and Maw, at their camp. The local -old-timers seem to gravitate toward them. One evening I found old man -Stanley sitting on a log and talking to them in reminiscent mood about -himself, his deeds and his dentition. - -"It looks to me like a fellow could work hard enough in three months to -last him the hull year," said old man Stanley. "Just last week the camp -folks wanted me to go to work for them. I told them I wouldn't work for -nobody but the Gover'ment, and only three months in the year at that. -But they persuaded me to go to work for night watchman. I said all -right, only I had to go down to Gardiner and get my teeth fixed. They -asked me why I didn't go to Livingston. I told them some of my friends -down to Gardiner had been pulling my teeth for me for six or eight -years, them having a good pair of forceps. Of course they break some, -but take it one way with the other, them uppers of mine get along right -well. So I goes down to them friends last week, and had some more teeth -pulled. They mostly get nearly all the pieces out. I've got four teeth -left now, and that's enough for anybody. I sort of wish they'd track a -little better; but still, four teeth is enough for any reasonable man." - -Maw spoke to me in an aside: "I wisht I could believe everything I see -and hear," said she, _sotto voce_. "Now, here, this man and old Tom -Newcomb, they both tell me that them and old John Yancey, which is dead -now, was here so long ago they saw the water turned into Yellowstone -River. Of course it may be true; but then again, sometimes I doubt the -things I hear." - -"The safest thing you could do is to doubt them geysers," interrupted -her husband, who overheard her. "I was walking round on them just the -other day, right where signs said 'Dangerous.' It didn't seem to me -there was no danger at all, for nothing was happening. But one of them -rangers come up to me and asked if I didn't see the sign. 'That's all -right, brother,' says I. 'I've tried this place and it's all right.' And -right then she went off." - -"And you should have seen Paw come down off from there," commented his -spouse. "I didn't know he could run that fast, his time of life." - -"If they let me have my gun," said Paw, uncrossing one leg from the -other, "I could mighty soon get me a pair of elk horns for myself. But -what can a fellow do when they tie his gun up, time he comes in the -park?" - -"You ain't maybe noticed that hole in the back end of our car," -explained Maw to me, pointing to an aperture in the curtain which looked -as though a cat had been thrown through it with claws extended. "Tell -him about it Paw." - - - - -Spontaneous Eruption - - -"Well, I dunno as it's much to tell," said that gentleman, somewhat -crestfallen. "This here old musket of mine is the hardest shooting gun -in our country. I've kilt me a goose with it many a time, at a hundred -yards. She's a Harper's Ferry musket that done good service in the Civil -War. She's been hanging in my room, loaded, for three or four years, I -reckon, and when I told the ranger man, coming in, that she was loaded -he says: 'You can't take no loaded gun through the park. We'll have to -shoot her off before you can go in the park.' So we took old Suse round -behind the house, and snaps six or eight caps on her, but she didn't go -off. Finally the ranger allowed that that gun was perfectly safe, and -they let me bring her on in, of course, having wired up the working end. - -"I think old Suse must have got some sort of examples from these -geysers. I just throwed her in back of the car, on top of the bed -clothes, pointing back behind where the girls was setting. All at once, -several hours later, without no warning, she just erupted. There's -something eruptious in the air up here I guess." - -"And they do the funniest things," nodded Maw. "I was saying I thought -this park wasn't practical, but some ways I believe it is. For instance, -they told me about how when they was making the new road from the Lake -Hotel over to the Canyon the engineer run the line in the winter time, -and it run right over on top a grave, where a man was buried. There was -a headstone there, but the snow was so deep the engineer didn't see it. -Come spring, the road crew graded the road right through, grave and all. -When the superintendent heard of that he come down and complained about -it. - -"'Now,' says he, 'you've gone built that expensive road right over that -feller, and we've got to take him up and move him.' There was an Irish -foreman that had run the road crew, and he reasons thoughtful for a -while, and then he says to the superintendent, says he: 'Why can't we -just move the headstone and leave him where he's at?' So they done that, -and everybody is perfectly contented, his widow and all. What I don't -see is why don't the yellow cars stop there and point out that for a -point of interest? But they don't. I believe I'll speak to the -superintendent about that." - -As to the latter personage mentioned by my friends, one must search far -to find a more long-suffering man. As a boy the superintendent was wild, -and during a moment of unrestraint he slew his Sabbath-school teacher -while yet a youth. The judge, in sentencing him, said that hanging would -not be severe enough, so he condemned him to a life as superintendent of -a national park--a sentence barely constitutional. - -The park superintendent is a study in natural history. During the open -season on superintendents, some three months in duration, he does not -sleep at all. For one month after the first snowfall he digs a hole -beneath a rock, somewhere above timberline, and falls into a torpor, -using no food for thirty days. Then he goes to Washington to meet the -Director of Parks, after which he gets no more sleep until next fall. It -is this perpetual insomnia which gives a park superintendent his haunted -look. He knows he ought not to have killed his teacher, so he suffers in -silence. - -When the superintendent comes down to his office in the morning Maw is -sitting on the front steps, sixty thousand of her. She has not got that -letter with the money in it yet; and it's such things as that which -keeps people away from the parks. And what has become of her dog? He was -right in the car last night and he never harmed nobody in his life and -wouldn't bite nobody's bears if left alone. And what can folks do when -it rains this way and the roads so slippy? And about that man on the -truck that sassed us the other day? And about the price of gas--how can -folks afford it even if they only need two gallons to get to the -railroad? And if I couldn't make better soup than they serve at the -camps I'd resign from the church. And how far is it to Norris Geyser -Basin and why do they call it a basin and who was Mr. Norris and do they -name all the things after people and why not name something after -Congressman Smith or the editor of some Montana paper and what's the -reason people have to pay to ride in the parks anyways and why can't we -bottle Apollinaris Spring and would some salts help the Iron Spring and -what makes the pelican's mouth so funny that way and do they eat fish -and is there any swans on Swan Lake Flats and which way is the garage -and is there church on Sundays and who preaches and why don't they have -a Presbyterian and is that map up to date and are you a married man and -how many people does it take to run the park and how much do the hotels -make and why is the owner of the camps always in such a hurry to get -away when you want to talk with him and who is the man who drives the -sprinkler wagon with specs and can you get pictures cheaper if you take -say a dozen and why can't everybody sell pictures and run hotels--we -could take them right with our Kapoks anyways--and is there a place -where you can get some writing paper and an envelope and do you write -all your own letters yourself but of course how could a stenographer -stand the altitude? Why, I get out of breath sometimes. - - - - -His Busy Day - - -I think Maw, sixty thousand of her, does sometimes get out of breath, -but not often and not for long. The superintendent, contrite because of -his past, is patient when he replies. - -"Dear madam," he begins, the tips of his fingers together as he sits -back in his chair, "your inquiry regarding this national park is noted, -and in reply I beg to state that I will answer all your questions after -I have told the rangers where to let the hotels cut wood and where to -run their milk herd and how to feed the hay crews and where to send the -road crews and where to have the gravel crews sleep and where to get -four more good trucks and two more garage men and a steno and a new man -on the files and look after the Appropriations Committee and write my -annual report to the Secretary of the Interior and my weekly report to -the Director of the Parks and my daily report for the records and my -personal correspondence and see where the automobile blanks all have -gone and get the daily total of visitors classified and find a new site -for a camp and lay out twelve miles of new road and have the garbage -moved and get the elk counted again and the antelope estimated and stop -the sale of elk teeth and investigate the reasons why the bears don't -come in and look at a sick lady at the Fountain and wire the Shriners -that I will meet them at the train and write Congressman Jones that his -trip is all arranged for and pick out a camp site for the director's -Chicago friends and make my daily drive of five hundred miles round the -park to see if they haven't carried off the mountains and tell the -United States commissioner to soak that party who wrote six names on the -Castle Geyser and get in oats for the road teams and take up the -topographic maps with the U. S. engineers and send some photos to twelve -magazines and arrange for the last movie man to photograph the bears -and see about some colored prints of Old Faithful and have the bridal -chambers of the hotel renovated for the party of New York editors and -get a new collar for my wife's dog, and explain why there are so many -mosquitoes this year even under a Republican Administration--and a lot -more things that are on the daily tickler pad. Then I have to keep my -personal books and write my longhand letters until after midnight and -read up some more of the geology of the park and the times of -intermission for the geysers and the altitudes of all the peaks and -learn the personal names of all the geysers and woodchucks and----" - -"That man wasn't right polite to me," said Maw in commenting upon some -of this. "He told me he was busy. I'd like to know what he's got to do, -just setting round." - -Myself, I sometimes think the punishment of the superintendent is almost -too severe. He is obliged, for instance, to know everything in the -world that everyone else in the world does not know. He has pictures and -exact measurements of all the game animals in the park, all the flowers, -knows all the colors of the Grand Canyon and the location of every -sprinkling hose in fifty square miles. I have never been able to ask him -any questions that he cannot answer--except perhaps my favorite -question: "Why do they have this curio junk in all the park -stores--moccasins, leather Indian heads, and all that sort of thing?" He -sobbed when I asked him that, but I thought I could hear some muttered -word about there being a popular demand. As for me, I hold with Maw -that, if a person is being bitten on the elbow, better a bottle of -marmalade, a loaf of bread or a bottle of mosquito dope than a pair of -beef-hide moccasins with puckered toes. In my belief a few paintings by -Mr. Thomas Moran at a cost of fifteen thousand or twenty thousand -dollars, or sets of the works of some of our more popular authors, with -flexible backs, would be far more appropriate in the curio stores. - -Maw is of the opinion that most of the merchants, storekeepers and -venders of commodities west of the Mississippi River are robbers. "Not -that I mean real robbers like used to hold up the stagecoaches here in -the park," she explained. "They don't do that no more since the cars has -come--I suppose because they go so fast that it ain't convenient for -robbers no more. But in the old times, they tell me, when they run -stagecoaches in here, and didn't have no railroad in on the west side, -there used to be a regular business of holding up the stagecoaches right -over where old man Dwelley used to have his eating house for lunch. -There's a clubhouse there now, instead of his old eating house, they -say. I heard that when they wanted to buy old man Dwelley out for a club -and asked him how much he wanted, he thought a while, and then did some -counting, and then allowed that about twelve thousand dollars would be -about right. The man that was buying the place, he set down and writ a -check right then for twelve thousand dollars. But old man Dwelley didn't -take it. 'I dunno what that thing is,' says he. 'When I say twelve -thousand dollars I mean twelve thousand dollars in real money.'" - - - - -When Bozeman Was Riled - - -They told him he had for to wait a few days and they went over to -Livingston and got twelve thousand dollars in five-dollar bills, and -brung it to Dwelley, and told him to count it. He counted a little of -it, and then said it was all right; he'd take their word for it that -there was twelve thousand dollars there. So then he put it in a sack -where he had some beaver hides. They told me he sent it all by express -to a fur buyer in Salt Lake after a while, and told him to put it in a -bank. He had one thousand five hundred dollars saved out, so they told -me, and he put that in the bank over to Bozeman. It riled them people at -Bozeman a good deal to think that anybody not from Bozeman should have -one thousand five hundred dollars inaccessible in their town. So one day -when old man Dwelley was there they fined him one thousand five hundred -dollars for killing a elk out of season, or something. That made him -mad. Still and all, he had his twelve thousand dollars left, not -mentioning what he got for his beaver hides. - -"One thing with another," continued Maw after a period of rumination, -"you can't say but what this park is a fine place. Of course there's -always a wonder in my mind where they get all the hot water for the -geysers. It looks to me like a industrial waste. If the geysers could be -used for laundries, that would be something like. Then, again, they're -all the same color. If they'd throw in some bluing now and then, or some -red or green, they'd look prettier--that'd give more variety, like. Yet -they say these geysers has been running for years and no let-up. Ain't -it funny the things you see, away from home? - -[Illustration: "If the geysers could be used for laundries, that would -be something like."--Maw--p. 48] - -"I like to ride along these roads up in the mountains, and look down at -the rivers. You get way up above a river and it looks like a long -washboard, down below, here in the mountains. And I'll have to say -the roads is crooked. I say to Paw: 'We're all church members except -Cynthy, which went to college, and if we go we go.' And even if we -do--why, we've all had a vacation, and I'll tell it to the world that a -vacation trip once in a lifetime is something no family ought to be -without, no matter what the preacher says about idleness. I'm strong for -vacations from this time on. Fact is, I believe Paw and me has got to -have them, though this is our first. And to think we was afraid to buy -ice cream once, except on the Fourth of July! Now, Paw goes right up to -one of them stands and buys five dollars of gasoline like it was -nothing. Times has changed, like I said. Lookit at our car now. I can -remember back--not so far, neither--when if I got a ride in a side-bar -buggy I thought I was a mighty lucky girl. And here we are, traveling -with every sort of comfort anybody could ask." - -There were many appliances which Maw gradually had installed for -facilitating housekeeping in her day-to-day camps--folding beds, a -cracker-box pantry, a planed board for table, racks for groceries and -the like, all strung alongside the car, so numerous and extensive that -by the time the Hickory Bend Outing Club's great wall tent had been -added you barely could see the wheels underneath the moving mass. From -the midst of all projected the steering wheel, which Paw grasped as he -sat, with only the top of his hat visible to the naked eye. Maw rode -beside him somewhere. I never was able satisfactorily to determine where -Cynthy, Hattie and Rowena rode. Danny, the family dog, had his seat -outside on the fender, against the hood. I presume Danny's feet got hot -sometimes on the up grades, but Maw said he ought to be used to it by -now. - - - - -All Ready for Bud - - -On top of the load, with the stock projecting well forward, I quite -often was able to recognize old Suse, the ancient firearm of geyserlike -proclivities. Maw said she always felt more comfortable when there was a -gun round, because she never could get used to bears, no matter how -afraid they was of folks. - -"When we come out here we didn't know but what we could get a shot on -the quiet at a buffalo, Paw never having killed one in his life. Plenty -people believes the same till they get here. When we was at the ranger -station we seen one Arkansas car come in with six shooting irons, and -they all made a kick about having their guns locked up. Then there was a -deputy sheriff from Arizony, with woolly pants on, and he made a holler -about them locking up his six-shooter. 'This here may cost me my life,' -said he to the ranger. 'I dunno for sure that Bud Cottrell is in this -here park, but he might be; and if I should run across him I serve -notice on you right now I'm going to bust this seal.' - -"'My!' says the ranger to this Arizony man, 'you look to me like a sort -of ferocious person. Have you killed many people?' - -"That sort of quieted him down. 'Well, no,' says he, 'I ain't never -killed nobody, but I've saw it did, and if I ever meet Bud Cottrell I -shore am going to bust this seal.' I ain't ever heard whether he busted -it or not." - -"Funniest thing to me about this here park," commented Paw, "is that -they call me a sagebrusher and the people at the hotels dudes. And the -girls in the hotel dining rooms they call savages, though some of them -wears specs, and most of them is school-teachers, with a few -stenographers throwed in. Why they should call them people savages is -what I can't understand. And what do they mean by dude wrangling, -mister?" - -I explained to Paw that this was a new industry recently sprung up in -the West, among those residents of adjacent states who take out camping -and hunting parties, or even such persons as desire to see mountain -scenery and the footprints of large game, formerly embedded in the soil -and now protected by log parapets. - -"So that's what it is," nodded Maw as I gave this information. "I -suppose it's just part of the funny things that happens back here. Such -things as a person does see on a vacation! Don't it beat all? Now I -caught Hattie walking off towards the electric light last night with a -young man that had specs and leather leggins like the officers has, and -I declare if she didn't tell me he was a perfessor of geology down at -Salt Lake or Omaha. Once I give a quarter for a tip to a man that -brought me some gasoline, and I declare if I didn't find out he teaches -law in a university somewheres! Then, they tell me that the young man -who peels potatoes in the kitchen back of our camp has only one more -year to get through Princeton--whoever Princeton is. I wish he was -through now, because he sings things. - -"We're making quite a stay here in the park--longer than what we allowed -we would do, Paw and me. The girls seem to be having a sort of good time -here, one thing with another. You can't leave a girl alone anywheres -here, unless she's taken in by some perfessor or ranger or guide or cook -or chauffeur or something, who comes along and carries her off to show -her the bears or Old Faithful or Inspiration Point or something. Seems -to me like we've heard them words before, too--and then there's Lovers' -Leap and the Devil's Slide. We've even got them in Ioway, where the -hills is rough. - -"Set down on the log here," said Maw, "and rest yourself, and I'll build -up the fire. Ain't it fine outdoors? I declare, I let out my corsets -four inches above and below, I breathe that much deeper here in the -mountains; and the air makes you feel so fine. What was I saying?--oh, -about my knitting. You see at home, when I get my work done, I knit or -crochet or embroider. Mary's baby is a right cute little thing, and I -like to sew or knit things anyways. But Joseph said to me: 'Now, Maw! -Now you forget it; we're going to have a vacation now, with no work at -all for no one at all, and all strings off. We're just going to have one -mighty good time,' says Joseph to me. At first, having nothing to do, I -felt right strange, but I'm getting used to it now, though I do think I -could knit comfortable while setting watching the geysers spout. - -"I dunno how we happened to come out so far as this--we didn't allow to -spend over two hundred dollars, but I allow we've spent over five -hundred or six hundred dollars now. The funny thing is, Paw don't seem -to care. He always was aggressive. He just driv right on West till we -got here. He said his Paw traveled across all that country in a ox team, -and he allowed he could in a automobile. So we done it, and here we are. -I don't care if we don't get home till after harvest." - -Many and many a talk I had with Maw, dear old Maw, some sixty thousand -of her, this past summer. The best of all vacations is to see someone -else having a vacation who never has had a vacation before in his or her -life. The delight of Maw in this new phase of her existence has been my -main delight for many a week in the months spent, not so much in -watching geysers as in watching Maw. Sometimes I steal away from the -pleadings of the saxophone, leaving even Stella O'Cleave with the -slumberous eyes sitting alone at the log rail of Old Faithful Inn. I -want to see Maw once more, and talk with her once again about the -virtues of a vacation now and again; at least once in a lifetime spent -in work for others. - -I do not always find the girls at home in the camp. For some reason they -seem of late to be out later and later of evenings. Paw has found a -crony here and there about the camps, and swaps reminiscences of this -sort or that. Sometimes I find Maw alone, sitting on the log, gazing -into her little camp fire. Once, I recall, one of the girls was at home. - -"Roweny!" called out Maw suddenly. "Roweny, where are you? Come and talk -to the gentleman." - -A voice replied from the other side of the car, where Rowena was sitting -on the running board. I discovered her, chin in hand, looking out into -the dark. - -"I was afraid some perfessor had got her," explained Maw to me. "Come on -out, Roweny, and set by the fire. This gentleman seems sort of nice, and -he's old." - -Rowena, seventeen years of age, uncrossed her long young limbs and came -out of the darkness, seating herself on the running board on our side, -where the firelight shone on her clean young features, her splendid -young figure of an American girl. She was comely enough in her spiral -putties and her tanned boots as she sat, her small round chin on the -hand whose arm was supported by a knee. Rowena appeared downcast. While -Maw was busy a moment later, I asked her why. - -I think it must have been the mountain moon again; for Rowena, seventeen -years of age, once more looked gloomily out into the night. - -"If I thought I could ever find a man that would understand me I believe -I would marry him!" said she, as has every young girl in her time. - -"Tut, tut! Rowena!" I replied. "I believe that I understand you, simple -as I am myself, and you need not marry me at all. I understand you -perfectly. You are just a fine young girl, out on almost your first -vacation, with your Maw. It is the moon, Rowena. It is youth, Rowena, -and the air of the hills. Believe me, it will all come right when the -cook has finished his Princeton; of that I am sure. - -"And Rowena," I added, "you will grow up after a while--you will grow up -to be a wholesome, useful American woman, precisely like your Maw." - -"Precisely?" said Rowena, smiling. - -But I saw how soft her eye was, after all, when I mentioned Maw--her -Maw, who came out of another day; who has worked so hard she is -uncomfortable now without her knitting when Old Faithful plays. - -"Come, Rowena," said I, and held out my hand to her. "Let us go." - -"Land sakes!" exclaimed Maw, just then emerging into the firelight of -the sagebrush camp. "I almost got a turn. One of them two bears, Teddy -and Eymogene, is always hanging round us begging for doughnuts, and here -it was standing on its hind legs and mooching its nose, and I stepped -right into it. I declare, I can't hardly get used to bears. There ain't -none in Ioway. But if Eymogene gets into my bed again tonight I declare -I'll bust her on the snoot, no matter what the park regulations is. -People has got to sleep. Not that you girls seem to be troubled about -sleeping. Where were you going?" - -She spoke as Rowena and I stood hand in hand, after so brief an -acquaintance as might not elsewhere have served us, except in these -vacation hills. - -"I was going," said I, "to take Rowena up past the camp and beyond the -hotel and the electric light to the curio store. I was going to get -something for Rowena to bring to you--a sort of present from a nice old -man, you know." - -"As which?" said Maw. - -"I was going with Rowena, Maw," said I, "to get you a present." - -"As which?" - -"And it shall be a leather pillow; and on it shall be the word -'Mother.'" - -You see, the moon on the sage makes a strange light. - -It may even enable you to see into the hearts of other people. - - Standard Books - on the - Yellowstone - -HAYNES GUIDE. The Complete Handbook of Yellowstone -Park; 1921 ed. 8 vo., 160 pp. Officially approved by -The National Park Service, Washington, D. C., and -The Yellowstone Trail Association. Illustrated, maps, -diagrams, charts. Descriptive, Historical, Geological, -and contains the Motorists' Complete Road Log; By -J. E. Haynes, B. A. 83c postpaid - -THE DISCOVERY OF YELLOWSTONE PARK. Diary of the -Expedition to the Yellowstone and Firehole Rivers -in 1870. 8 vo., board, 122 pp. Illustrated; Maps; -Drawings; By Nathaniel P. Langford, first -superintendent of the Park, who served for five years -without pay to save the Park for the American people. - $1.62 postpaid - -YELLOWSTONE IN JINGLETONE, a De Luxe booklet of catchy -jingles containing "Geysergrams," "Recollections of a -Barn Dog," "The Buffalo Stampede," "Paintin' the -Canyon," etc., in envelope suitable for mailing; By -C. A. Brewer. 55c postpaid - - - - - _Published by_ - J. E. HAYNES - ST. PAUL - - - - +-----------------------------------------------+ - | Transcriber's Note: | - | | - | Typographical errors corrected in text: | - | | - | Page 30 postoffice changed to post office | - | | - | Page 33 overhead changed to overheard | - | | - | Page 49 applainces changed to appliances | - | | - +-----------------------------------------------+ - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Maw's Vacation, by Emerson Hough - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAW'S VACATION *** - -***** This file should be named 24126.txt or 24126.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/1/2/24126/ - -Produced by D Alexander, Barbara Kosker, Irma Špehar and -the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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