Waifs And Strays

by Charles de Lint

  　　had the message wrong. So I queried the other: “Bright eyes, you don’t really mean Dagoes, do you?” and over the wireless came three deathly, psychic taps: “Yes.” Then I reflected that to George all foreigners were probably “Dagoes.” I had once known another camp cook who had thought Mons., Sig., and Millie (Trans-Mississippi for Mlle.) were Italian given names; this cook used to marvel therefore at the paucity of Neo-Roman precognomens, and therefore why not—

  　　I have said that snow is a test of men. For one day, two days, Etienne stood at the window, Fletcherizing his finger nails and shrieking and moaning at the monotony. To me, Etienne was just about as unbearable as the snow; and so, seeking relief, I went out on the second day to look at my horse, slipped on a stone, broke my collarbone, and thereafter underwent not the snow test, but the test of flat-on-the-back. A test that comes once too often for any man to stand.

  　　However, I bore up cheerfully. I was now merely a spectator, and from my couch in the big room I could lie and watch the human interplay with that detached, impassive, impersonal feeling which French writers tell us is so valuable to the litterateur, and American writers to the faro-dealer.

  　　“I shall go crazy in this abominable, mee-ser-rhable place!” was Etienne’s constant prediction.

  　　“Never knew Mark Twain to bore me before,” said Ross, over and over.

  　　He sat by the other window, hour after hour, a box of Pittsburg stogies of the length, strength, and odor of a Pittsburg graft scandal deposited on one side of him, and “Roughing It,” “The Jumping Frog,”

  　　and “Life on the Mississippi” on the other. For every chapter he lit a new stogy, puffing furiously. This in time, gave him a recurrent premonition of cramps, gastritis, smoker’s colic or whatever it is they have in Pittsburg after a too deep indulgence in graft scandals.

  　　To fend off the colic, Ross resorted time and again to Old Doctor Still’s Amber-Colored U. S. A. Colic Cure. Result, after forty-eight hours—nerves.

  　　“Positive fact I never knew Mark Twain to make me tired before.

  　　Positive fact.” Ross slammed “Roughing It” on the floor. “When you’re snowbound this-away you want tragedy, I guess. Humor just seems to bring out all your cussedness. You read a man’s poor, pitiful attempts to be funny and it makes you so nervous you want to tear the book up, get out your bandana, and have a good, long cry.”

  　　At the other end of the room, the Frenchman took his finger nails out of his mouth long enough to exclaim: “Humor! Humor at such a time as thees! My God, I shall go crazy in thees abominable—”

  　　“Supper,” announced George.

  　　These meals were not the meals of Rabelais who said, “the great God makes the planets and we make the platters neat.” By that time, the ranch-house meals were not affairs of gusto; they were mental distraction, not bodily provender. What they were to be later shall never be forgotten by Ross or me or Etienne.

  　　After supper, the stogies and finger nails began again. My shoulder ached wretchedly, and with half-closed eyes I tried to forget it by watching the deft movements of the stolid cook.

  　　Suddenly I saw him cock his ear, like a dog. Then, with a swift step, he moved to the door, threw it open, and stood there.

  　　The rest of us had heard nothing.

  　　“What is it, George?” asked Ross.

  　　The cook reached out his hand into the darkness alongside the jamb.

  　　With careful precision he prodded something. Then he made one careful step into the snow. His back muscles bulged a little under the arms as he stooped and lightly lifted a burden. Another step inside the door, which he shut methodically behind him, and he dumped the burden at a safe distance from the fire.

  　　He stood up and fixed us with a solemn eye. None of us moved under that Orphic suspense until, “A woman,” remarked George.

  　　Miss Willie Adams was her name. Vocation, school-teacher. Present avocation, getting lost in the snow. Age, yum-yum (the Persian for twenty). Take to the woods if you would describe Miss Adams.

  　　A willow for grace; a hickory for fibre; a birch for the clear whiteness of her skin; for eyes, the blue sky seen through treetops;

  　　the silk in cocoons for her hair; her voice, the murmur of the evening June wind in the leaves; her mouth, the berries of the wintergreen;

  　　fingers as light as ferns; her toe as small as a deer track. General impression upon the dazed beholder—you could not see the forest for the trees.

  　　Psychology, with a capital P and the foot of a lynx, at this juncture stalks into the ranch house. Three men, a cook, a pretty young woman —all snowbound. Count me out of it, as I did not count, anyway. I

  　　never did, with women. Count the cook out, if you like. But note the effect upon Ross and Etienne Girod.

  　　Ross dumped Mark Twain in a trunk and locked the trunk. Also, he discarded the Pittsburg scandals. Also, he shaved off a three days’

  　　beard.

  　　Etienne, being French, began on the beard first. He pomaded it, from a little tube of grease Hongroise in his vest pocket. He combed it with a little aluminum comb from the same vest pocket. He trimmed it with manicure scissors from the same vest pocket. His light and Gallic spirits underwent a sudden, miraculous change. He hummed a blithe San Salvador Opera Company tune; he grinned, smirked, bowed, pirouetted, twiddled, twaddled, twisted, and tooralooed. Gayly, the notorious troubadour, could not have equalled Etienne.

  　　Ross’s method of advance was brusque, domineering. “Little woman,”

  　　he said, “you’re welcome here!”—and with what he thought subtle double meaning—“welcome to stay here as long as you like, snow or no snow.”

  　　Miss Adams thanked him a little wildly, some of the wintergreen berries creeping into the birch bark. She looked around hurriedly as if seeking escape. But there was none, save the kitchen and the room allotted her. She made an excuse and disappeared into her own room.

  　　Later I, feigning sleep, heard the following:

  　　“Mees Adams, I was almost to perislh-die-of monotony w’en your fair and beautiful face appear in thees mee-ser-rhable house.” I opened my starboard eye. The beard was being curled furiously around a finger, the Svengali eye was rolling, the chair was being hunched closer to the school-teacher’s. “I am French—you see—temperamental—nervous!

  　　I cannot endure thees dull hours in thees ranch house; but—a woman comes! Ah!” The shoulders gave nine ‘rahs and a tiger. “What a difference! All is light and gay; ever’ting smile w’en you smile.

  　　You have ‘eart, beauty, grace. My ‘eart comes back to me w’en I feel your ‘eart. So!” He laid his hand upon his vest pocket. From this vantage point he suddenly snatched at the school-teacher’s own hand, “Ah! Mees Adams, if I could only tell you how I ad—”

  　　“Dinner,” remarked George. He was standing just behind the Frenchman’s ear. His eyes looked straight into the school-teacher’s eyes. After thirty seconds of survey, his lips moved, deep in the flinty, frozen maelstrom of his face: “Dinner,” he concluded, “will be ready in two minutes.”

  　　Miss Adams jumped to her feet, relieved. “I must get ready for dinner,” she said brightly, and went into her room.

  　　Ross came in fifteen minutes late. After the dishes had been cleaned away, I waited until a propitious time when the room was temporarily ours alone, and told him what had happened.

  　　He became so excited that he lit a stogy without thinking. “Yeller-

  　　hided, unwashed, palm-readin’ skunk,” he said under his breath. “I’ll shoot him full o’ holes if he don’t watch out—talkin’ that way to my wife!”

  　　I gave a jump that set my collarbone back another week. “Your wife!”

  　　I gasped.

  　　“Well, I mean to make her that,” he announced.

  　　The air in the ranch ho
use the rest of that day was tense with pent-up emotions, oh, best buyers of best sellers.

  　　Ross watched Miss Adams as a hawk does a hen; he watched Etienne as a hawk does a scarecrow, Etienne watched Miss Adams as a weasel does a henhouse. He paid no attention to Ross.

  　　The condition of Miss Adams, in the role of sought-after, was feverish. Lately escaped from the agony and long torture of the white cold, where for hours Nature had kept the little school-teacher’s vision locked in and turned upon herself, nobody knows through what profound feminine introspections she had gone. Now, suddenly cast among men, instead of finding relief and security, she beheld herself plunged anew into other discomforts. Even in her own room she could hear the loud voices of her imposed suitors. “I’ll blow you full o’

  　　holes!” shouted Ross. “Witnesses,” shrieked Etienne, waving his hand at the cook and me. She could not have known the previous harassed condition of the men, fretting under indoor conditions. All she knew was, that where she had expected the frank freemasonry of the West, she found the subtle tangle of two men’s minds, bent upon exacting whatever romance there might be in her situation.

  　　She tried to dodge Ross and the Frenchman by spells of nursing me.

  　　They also came over to help nurse. This combination aroused such a natural state of invalid cussedness on my part that they were all forced to retire. Once she did manage to whisper: “I am so worried here. I don’t know what to do.”

  　　To which I replied, gently, hitching up my shoulder, that I was a hunch-savant and that the Eighth House under this sign, the Moon being in Virgo, showed that everything would turn out all right.

  　　But twenty minutes later I saw Etienne reading her palm and felt that perhaps I might have to recast her horoscope, and try for a dark man coming with a bundle.

  　　Toward sunset, Etienne left the house for a few moments and Ross, who had been sitting taciturn and morose, having unlocked Mark Twain, made another dash. It was typical Ross talk.

  　　He stood in front of her and looked down majestically at that cool and perfect spot where Miss Adams’ forehead met the neat part in her fragrant hair. First, however, he cast a desperate glance at me. I

  　　was in a profound slumber.

  　　“Little woman,” he began, “it’s certainly tough for a man like me to see you bothered this way. You”—gulp—“you have been alone in this world too long. You need a protector. I might say that at a time like this you need a protector the worst kind—a protector who would take a three-ring delight in smashing the saffron-colored kisser off of any yeller-skinned skunk that made himself obnoxious to you. Hem.

  　　Hem. I am a lonely man, Miss Adams. I have so far had to carry on my life without the”—gulp—“sweet radiance”—gulp—“of a woman around the house. I feel especially doggoned lonely at a time like this, when I am pretty near locoed from havin’ to stall indoors, and hence it was with delight I welcomed your first appearance in this here shack. Since then I have been packed jam full of more different kinds of feelings, ornery, mean, dizzy, and superb, than has fallen my way in years.”

  　　Miss Adams made a useless movement toward escape. The Ross chin stuck firm. “I don’t want to annoy you, Miss Adams, but, by heck, if it comes to that you’ll have to be annoyed. And I’ll have to have my say. This palm-ticklin’ slob of a Frenchman ought to be kicked off the place and if you’ll say the word, off he goes. But I don’t want to do the wrong thing. You’ve got to show a preference. I’m gettin’

  　　around to the point, Miss—Miss Willie, in my own brick fashion. I’ve stood about all I can stand these last two days and somethin’s got to happen. The suspense hereabouts is enough to hang a sheepherder.

  　　Miss Willie”—he lassooed her hand by main force—“just say the word.

  　　You need somebody to take your part all your life long. Will you mar—”

  　　“Supper,” remarked George, tersely, from the kitchen door.

  　　Miss Adams hurried away.

  　　Ross turned angrily. “You—”

  　　“I have been revolving it in my head,” said George.

  　　He brought the coffee pot forward heavily. Then bravely the big platter of pork and beans. Then somberly the potatoes. Then profoundly the biscuits. “I have been revolving it in my mind.

  　　There ain’t no use waitin’ any longer for Swengalley. Might as well eat now.”

  　　>From my excellent vantage-point on the couch I watched the progress of that meal. Ross, muddled, glowering, disappointed; Etienne, eternally blandishing, attentive, ogling; Miss Adams, nervous, picking at her food, hesitant about answering questions, almost hysterical;

  　　now and then the solid, flitting shadow of the cook, passing behind their backs like a Dreadnaught in a fog.

  　　I used to own a clock which gurgled in its throat three minutes before it struck the hour. I know, therefore, the slow freight of Anticipation. For I have awakened at three in the morning, heard the clock gurgle, and waited those three minutes for the three strokes I

  　　knew were to come. Alors. In Ross’s ranch house that night the slow freight of Climax whistled in the distance.

  　　Etienne began it after supper. Miss Aclams had suddenly displayed a lively interest in the kitchen layout and I could see her in there, chatting brightly at George—not with him—the while he ducked his head and rattled his pans.

  　　“My fren’,” said Etienne, exhaling a large cloud from his cigarette and patting Ross lightly on the shoulder with a bediamonded hand which, hung limp from a yard or more of bony arm, “I see I mus’ be frank with you. Firs’, because we are rivals; second, because you take these matters so serious. I—I am Frenchman. I love the women”

  　　—he threw back his curls, bared his yellow teeth, and blew an unsavory kiss toward the kitchen. “It is, I suppose, a trait of my nation. All Frenchmen love the women—pretty women. Now, look:

  　　Here I am!” He spread out his arms. “Cold outside! I detes’ the col-l-l! Snow! I abominate the mees-ser-rhable snow! Two men!

  　　This—” pointing to me—“an’ this!” Pointing to’ Ross. “I am distracted! For two whole days I stan’ at the window an’ tear my ‘air! I am nervous, upset, pr-r-ro-foun’ly distress inside my ‘ead!

  　　An’ suddenly—be’old! A woman, a nice, pretty, charming, innocen’

  　　young woman! I, naturally, rejoice. I become myself again—gay, light-‘earted, “appy. I address myself to mademoiselle; it passes the time. That, m’sieu’, is wot the women are for—pass the time!

  　　Entertainment—like the music, like the wine!

  　　“They appeal to the mood, the caprice, the temperamen’. To play with thees woman, follow her through her humor, pursue her—ah! that is the mos’ delightful way to sen’ the hours about their business.”

  　　Ross banged the table. “Shut up, you miserable yeller pup!” he roared. “I object to your pursuin’ anything or anybody in my house.

  　　Now, you listen to me, you—” He picked up the box of stogies and used it on the table as an emphasizer. The noise of it awoke the attention of the girl in the kitchen. Unheeded, she crept into the room. “I don’t know anything about your French ways of lovemakin’ an’

  　　I don’t care. In my section of the country, it’s the best man wins.

  　　And I’m the best man here, and don’t you forget it! This girl’s goin’

  　　to be mine. There ain’t g’oing to be any playing, or philandering, or palm reading about it. I’ve made up my mind I’ll have this girl, and that settles it. My word is the law in this neck o’ the woods.

  　　She’s mine, and as soon as she says she’s mine, you pull out.” The box made one final, tremendous punctuation point.

  　　Etienne’s bravado was unruffled. “Ah! that is no way to win a woman,”

  　　he smiled, easily. “I make prophecy you will never win ‘er t
hat way.

  　　No. Not thees woman. She mus’ be played along an’ then keessed, this charming, delicious little creature. One kees! An’ then you ‘ave her.” Again he displayed his unpleasant teeth. “I make you a bet I

  　　will kees her—”

  　　As a cheerful chronicler of deeds done well, it joys me to relate that the hand which fell upon Etienne’s amorous lips was not his own.

  　　There was one sudden sound, as of a mule kicking a lath fence, and then—through the swinging doors of oblivion for Etienne.

  　　I had seen this blow delivered. It was an aloof, unstudied, almost absent-minded affair. I had thought the cook was rehearsing the proper method of turning a flapjack.

  　　Silently, lost in thought, he stood there scratching his head. Then he began rolling down his sleeves.

  　　“You’d better get your things on, Miss, and we’ll get out of here,”

  　　he decided. “Wrap up warm.”

  　　I heard her heave a little sigh of relief as she went to get her cloak, sweater, and hat.

  　　Ross jumped to his feet, and said: “George, what are you goin’

  　　to do?”

  　　George, who had been headed in my direction, slowly swivelled around and faced his employer. “Bein’ a camp cook, I ain’t over-burdened with hosses,” George enlightened us. “Therefore, I am going to try to borrow this feller’s here.”

  　　For the first time in four days my soul gave a genuine cheer. “If it’s for Lochinvar purposes, go as far as you like,” I said, grandly.

  　　The cook studied me a moment, as if trying to find an insult in my words. “No,” he replied. “It’s for mine and the young lady’s purposes, and we’ll go only three miles—to Hicksville. Now let me tell you somethin’, Ross.” Suddenly I was confronted with the cook’s chunky back and I heard a low, curt, carrying voice shoot through the room at my host. George had wheeled just as Ross started to speak.

  　　“You’re nutty. That’s what’s the matter with you. You can’t stand the snow. You’re getting nervouser, and nuttier every day. That and this Dago”—he jerked a thumb at the half-dead Frenchman in the corner—“has got you to the point where I thought I better horn in.