brake.
Then I hears Aloysius’ voice raised in
He looks at me, winks one eye and
a high key:
sighs—
“My dear, I was so interested in our
“Well, folks, here we are.”
new guide that I never noticed you getting out
“Haw!” says Lord Washburn. “Haw!
of the car. He’s a jewel. Wonderful memory.”
Joke. Heard it before. Where had we ought to
“Well,” says his wife, “I’m glad you
be?”
had sense enough to hire a good one. Bettina,
“—— only knows,” says Magpie, sad-
my love, are you standing the trip?”
like. “Any old place except in the hills, I
“I think so, mamma,” squeaks Bettina,
reckon.”
and then she says to Tip, “I beg your pardon,
“Aloysius Van Fleet,” says the old but can you tell me how long we will be lady, glaring at the lion-hunter, “what do you here?”
mean by leaving us down there? If this
“Ma’am,” says Tip, “I am a guide, not
gentleman hadn’t come along—well, I a prophet. I was hired to find animals, not to shudder to think what might have happened.
make time-tables.”
Can’t you never remember anything?”
“Oh,” says Bettina. “Why are we
“Shucks,” says Tip. “You’d ’a’ been
stopping here?”
all ’right.”
“Ask your pa,” advised Tip. “He put
“Who asked your opinion?” asks the
on the brakes.”
old lady. “Who are you anyway?”
“Papa, did you put on the brakes?” she
“I’m the—the-what am I?” Tip looks
asks.
at Aloysius, who shakes his head.
Aloysius scratches his head and looks
“Well,” says Washburn, “I’d say we
around.
might as well dismount. After this I shall keep
“I really can’t remember, my dear.
Adventure
6
Where did we have them last?”
“Well, why don’t you pitch camp,
“——‘s delight!” grunts Magpie. Tip?”
“Reckon I’ll unhitch that team so as to keep
“I ain’t running the show. Ask the lord.
my mind off the painful things of life. Better He, he, he! Sounds like a prayer.”
take them two boxes of dynamite and put ’em
“A prayer might be in order,” nods
where that bunch can’t fall over ’em, Ike.”
Magpie. “After looking the bunch over, I
I unloads two fifty-pound boxes of reckon we better ask for divine protection.”
powder and the bunch of grub Magpie had
Then cometh mamma. Mamma sizes
been to Piperock after, while Aloysius, Lord me up, like she was looking at a dogy, and Washburn and Tip seems to hold a says:
conference. Then they comes over to me.
“Will you prepare a dinner menu so I
“Can we go any farther with the car?”
may consider it?”
asks Aloysius.
“Will I prepare a dinner me and you?”
“Well,” says I, “after seeing you hop
I asks. “That’s a —— of a way to use United the rocks and stumps out there, I’d hate to States language, ma’am. Why don’t you say, say.”
‘Will you prepare a dinner for me and you; so
“Mister Seeley tells me that your two
we may eat?’ Up here we don’t consider
spotted horses are suitable to carry luggage,”
nothing but our stummicks, ma’am.”
says Washburn. “We would like to rent them, Mamma rears up and almost falls over
if we may—in the event that we can go no
backwards. She adjusts her glasses and glares farther with the car.”
at me.
“I’ve got four saddle-hosses at my
“Of all things!” she snaps, which
ranch,” says Tip. “Women can ride ’em.”
covers everything a mule-skinner could say in
“Women can ride ’em, Tip?” I asks.
five minutes’ straight cussing.
“Women can ride as well as men, can’t
“Such insolence!” Then she whirls and
they?”
yelps, “Aloysius!”
Just then Magpie comes back, and I
Aloysius’ backbone settles about seven
puts it up to him about the pintos.
inches when he hears that yelp, but he toddles
“To pack?” says he. “Sure you can
over beside her. She grabs him by the arm and have the horses. Won’t guarantee ’em points at me.
though.”
“You selected him,” she snaps. “Him!”
“Oh, that’s perfectly all right,” says
“Did I?” squeaks Aloysius. “All right,
Aloysius. “I assure you we will take a chance dearie.”
on them wearing out.”
“Now discharge him!” she whoops.
Magpie looks at me and I look at
“But—but, my dear,” pleads Aloysius,
Magpie, but we don’t say a word. Neither of
“I—I must have a guide.”
them broncs has ever had anything on their
“Guide? Didn’t you hire him as a
backs, except a harness.
chef?”
“Chef? Perhaps I did, dearie.”
WELL, that whole danged bunch sets right
“I demand his discharge—at once!”
down and makes themselves to home. Lord
“Well,” says Aloysius, sad-like, and
Washburn is an English setter and the rest is mamma shakes him, “well—get out—out of
blooded stock in which the setter instinct the kitchen. Now, my dear, I have discharged predominates. Magpie goes over to Tip, and him—who will get dinner?”
says—
Mamma sets her jaw and looks all
Tippecanoe and Cougars Two 7
around. Her eyes light on Magpie and she
besides, your mother is too—er—cocky. Isn’t decides quick.
that the right word to use, Lord Washburn?”
“I employ that man in the late chef’s
“I—er—“ Lord Washburn screws the
place. Prepare a menu—at once!”
one-eyed spectacle into his eye and squints Magpie’s mouth forms a real smart
hard—“I would—er —rawther say— er—
reply, beginning with profanity, but he speaking in the feminine gender regarding manages to choke it back. Then he stares at fowl, I would say she was—er—a bit henny.
me and then at her.
Haw! Haw! Haw!”
“Yes’m. I got all my education at night
Bung!
the same of which spoils me for writing in the Anyway I think it “bunged.” I didn’t
day-time, but I’ll orate a bill of fare.”
hear it, ’cause I was the one it bunged upon. I
“Very well!” she snaps. “I am know I woke up and found them all grouped listening.”.
around me, and old Tip says—
Magpie smooths his mustache and
“Aw, you-can’t kill him that easy, but
chants:
I’ll bet that pot-cover will never fit again.”
I got up and declared myself like
“Bean soup, hot enough to burn a burro’s belly, this—
Fried broncs ears and Gila-monster jelly.
“I can lick the —- fool who hit me!”
Horse-hoof salad and some jerke
d rawhide,
“There he goes again, pup-paw,” wails
Baked turkey buzzard with some loco fried, Bettina. “He’s meaning mum-maw.”
Sidewinder gravy and a sunburned spud,
“Is she the —— fool?” I asks.
Saddle-blanket pie and a cup of mud.”
“She is my wife,” says Aloysius.
“That’s a sensible answer,” says I.
“And,” says Magpie, looking up at the
“Why did she hit me?”
awed face of mamma, “that is a —— of a
“Women,” says Tip, “never need no
good feed for a he-man, if anybody should ask reason. Them female contraptions is a heap yuh.”
like dynamite, because they bust without
Manama swallers hard and flops her
provocation at times. I reckon she was aiming arms like she was going to fly, but her voice to land a court-card and drew a deuce. Lord won’t seem to work. She sort of puffs up full What-yuh-call’m haw-hawed at the wrong
of words and all at once she explodes:
time.”
“Of all things!”
“Then Lord What-yuh-call’m better
“Yes’m,” agrees Magpie. “Such as lay off on that haw-haw stuff,” says I. “I ain’t they are.”
going to have no —— females banging me on
Mamma takes two deep breaths and
the head just because some snake-hunter of a walks away stiff-legged like a peeved bear.
lord opines to haw-haw at the wrong time.
Aloysius cocks one eye at mamma, and then
What you haw-hawing about anyway?”
squints at Magpie.
“Joke,” says he. “Good joke. Aloysius
“Pup-paw,” says Bettina? “I’m says, ‘She’s getting too cocky, don’t you ashamed that you would let a man say such
know?’ and I replied, I’d say she was—er—
things to mummaw.”
rather henny.’ Haw, Haw, Haw!”
Aloysius looks at Magpie and then
It was five minutes before the lord
back at Bettina.
woke up. I whanged him on the head with a
“My dear, one must use diplomacy. I
lid off the Dutch oven, and he just sets right find that cooks are very scarce, and—and down and stares into space.
Adventure
8
“That was a dastardly deed,” says us for the discomforts of the environment in Bettina, trying to take the lord’s head in her which we are placed.”
lap; but he acts like one of them toy things
“My gosh!” snorts Tip. “You don’t
what you can’t make lay down. Every time
need a guide—you need a e-metic. I wish I
she tips him over he flops right up again.
had a almanac so I could see if he was chidin’
“You plumb knocked his gyroscope
us, or just runnin’ over with wisdom.”
out of kilter,” says Magpie. “Want me to set on his neck, ma’am?”
The lord begins whistling through his
SOME folks will naturally say that we’re all teeth and pretty soon he gets red in the face wrong in talking and acting like we’ve been and looks around.
doing. They’ll orate that Western chivalry is
“What happened to me, I’d awsk?”
extinct like the dodo or Free Silver, but such is says he.
not a fact. Western chivalry is all there like it
“You got in the road of that pot-
is in the East.
cover,” says Magpie.
This bunch of misfits comes on a
“Pot-cover?” he asks. “I beg your forlorn mission. They picks us out to be pardon.”
servants unto their wishes, whangs us with
“You’re welcome,” says Magpie. “The
pot-covers et cettery, and nobody, unless
old lady hit Ike with it ’cause you haw-hawed they’re of the same kind, color, and
at the wrong time, and then Ike tried to hit the complexion, can expect us to kiss, humor, and old lady ’cause you haw-hawed at the wrong coddle said conglomeration of misguided
time again.”
humanity.
“Did you try to hit mum-maw?” asks
Magpie is just through being sheriff of
Bettina. “Did you actually contemplate that?
Yaller Rock County, and I’m willing to help Why?”
Aloysius all I can, being as he’s a cripple—
“You can draw your own mentally; but the rest of the scientific herd—
conclusions,” says I.
nothin’ doing in sympathy or helpfulness. I’m
“She can’t draw anything,” declares
plumb neutral and noncommittal.
Aloysius. “She spent a year in Paris and ten The old lady gets to fussing around
thousand dollars tryin’ to learn how to draw, and pretty soon she says:
and—and——”
“Aloysius, I really must have food. It
will soon be dinner-time and no preparations to air our family affairs before strangers.”
are under way. Attend to this please.”
“Don’t mind me,” squeaks Tip. “Fight
“Yes’m,” says Aloysius, foolish-like.
if yuh feel like” it—I’m hard-boiled.”
“Yes’m. Where do we dine?”
“I’d venture to say that I am
“Where?” asks mum-maw, looking
misunderstood,” states the lord, rubbing his down at poor little Aloysius. “Where?”
head. “What had art to do with the present
“Oh,”
says
Aloysius, and then goes to
situation, I’d awsk? There has been altogether writing in his little book.
too much coarse badinage and exchanging
Mum-maw gets sore as a boil and sort
of—er——”
of appeals to Lord Washburn. He shakes his
“Pot-covers?”
asks
Magpie.
head and says:
“Exactly. I hope we will succeed in
“My dear Mrs. Van Fleet, I know
our mission, but I am of the opinion it will nothing whatever of the culinary art. I was require unprecedented good fortune to repay under the impression that Mr. Van Fleet had
Tippecanoe and Cougars Two 9
engaged a chef.”
“It can be done,” says Tip. “There ain’t
“He did,” says Tip, “and the old lady
nothin’ impossible, is there? Just because a had him throwed out of the kitchen. Women
grizzly never did let anybody photygraft it as raiseth —— with everything—seems to me. I
it is——”
comes danged near getting married oncet, I—
“Exactly,” says Aloysius. “I am glad to
—”
find a man who does not insist on precedent.
“Forgot to go to the church,” says I.
We will secure the pictures we desire without Tip nods and grins.
any effort, I assure you all.”
“Did I? Maybe I did—I forget.
“Why does the grizzly object to being
Anyway, I ain’t got no wife, for which I raises photographed?” asks Bettina.
my voice in a prayer each day.”
“Superstition,” says Magpie. “A
“Your domestic difficulties have no grizzly is superstitious about photography.
bearing on my dinner,” says mum-maw, They figure that it’s unlucky to let a mean-like. “I want to eat!”
photographer cross their trail.”
“Shucks, if that’s all you want, I can
“We will—er—commence on the—
cook,” says Tip. “There’s two things I sure er— inoffensive—er— What is it, Mr.
can do, and one of them is cook.”
Seeley?” asks Aloysius.
“What’s the other?” asks Magpie.
“Inoffensive?” asks Tip. “What you
Tip scratches his head and thinks hard.
talkin’ about, senator?”
“Danged if I know right now, Magpie,
“The—er— Now, I adjure you, I am
but she’s a accomplishment, as I remember
not a senator. We spoke of some animal,
it.”
which we might try the machine on. Was it
Let me pass over that meal. I tried it
the—er—tom-cat?”
and found it guilty of everything, I ain’t no
“Bob-cat,”
says
Tip.
“We’ll find one at
hand to fuss over the way my stuff is cooked; once. We ought to have some dogs.”
but I’ll be danged if my stummick can stand
“Domestic animals I do not wish for,”
for parboiled tea and a mulligan thickened states Aloysius.