Maw's Vacation by Emerson Hough (ebook reader android .TXT) 📖

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