The Grub-and-Stakers Pinch a Poke

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “The whole affair sounds too utterly precious for words, if you ask me,” Margery scoffed. “You’d never catch me at that kind of circus.”

  “No, I’m sure I wouldn’t,” Dittany replied sweetly. She’d been told in confidence by Hazel Munson that Margery Streph couldn’t even write a thank-you note without boring its reader to tears. “Good-bye, Margery. I’ll tell Arethusa you were asking for her.”

  Chapter 5

  PLEASANTLY CONSCIOUS OF HAVING pinned Margery Streph’s ears back, Dittany took her birthday card home to be addressed and signed. She’d already arranged by telephone for the senior Mrs. Monk to receive an elegant basket of assorted fruits, Mother Monk being on a diet even grimmer than Hazel Munson’s and fruit being the one gastronomic pleasure the doctor was allowing her to enjoy. All the right things had been done. Yet as she walked up Applewood Avenue and entered to dump her bag on the kitchen table, Dittany’s inner voice kept nagging at her, “Something’s wrong.”

  It must be all this flak she was getting about Arethusa, she thought. But Arethusa wasn’t doing anything wrong. Was it Arethusa’s fault she couldn’t turn around without tripping over three besotted males? She wasn’t favoring one over another as far as Dittany could see. She was addressing herself to keeping peace among them as best she might; and she was doing her utmost to make a triumph of her nephew’s play even if Arethusa did keep insisting she wasn’t doing it for Osbert but for the Architrave.

  Yet Dittany’s mind was still in a state of perturbation as she hung up her coat, dumped her purchases on the kitchen table, and took out the magenta-colored pen she kept for special occasions. She fretted inwardly as she signed her name to the birthday card and added an affectionate message. She’d grown fond of her mother-in-law, and her father-in-law, too, for that matter, even though both were still groping audibly for an explanation to the riddle of Osbert’s choosing to live in a poky backwater like Lobelia Falls and write silly cowboy yarns when he could have carried his bride to a cozy high-rise apartment in Toronto and become a high-powered executive like his dear old dad.

  They weren’t blaming Dittany for their son’s aberrant ways. They blamed his Aunt Arethusa, which was really unfair of them because Arethusa disapproved of Osbert’s writing career even more vociferously than his parents did. That wasn’t jealousy, it was just Arethusa’s way. She’d have disapproved of any nephew who’d never fought a duel, pledged his vast estates at the gaming table, or swashbuckled around town in a velvet suit and a satin waistcoat.

  Osbert couldn’t have worn a velvet suit even if he’d wanted to, which he most emphatically dad-blanged didn’t, because Ethel shed quite a lot. He had quit wearing tight Levis because he and Dittany hoped to raise a family some day, but he stuck to his flannel shirts and his buckskin vest, and had even been known to flaunt a red bandana when the call of the range was strong upon him.

  A little chat with Osbert might be just the nerve tonic she needed. Dittany peeked into the alcove off the dining room that they called the office. Osbert was hunched over his faithful typewriter, lashing it on to full gallop. The machine was a big old Remington manual that he preferred to a newer model because it presented more of a challenge. Besides, the letters didn’t fly off the bars during his bursts of inspiration as had those of an electric portable his mother had bought him once in a well-meant effort to accept what she could not understand.

  He must be heading the outlaws off at the pass, Dittany thought. This was clearly not the moment to shatter his concentration over a vague feeling of unease. Osbert had been feeling uneasy about his Aunt Arethusa all his life anyway, and would feel quite reasonably, from his point of view, that his wife might have chosen a more opportune time to unload her qualms. Dittany left the birthday card on the dining room table where he’d see it when he emerged from his rustler-rife ruminations, and went back to the kitchen.

  There were more immediate crises to be dealt with, the main one at the moment being that they were almost out of molasses cookies. Dittany got Gram Henbit’s old yellow crockery mixing bowl out of the pantry and began assembling ingredients. It was soothing work measuring out flour and sugar and shortening, spooning in fragrant spices, cracking an egg on the side of the bowl, pouring molasses by the glug as her forebears had done. She stirred the batter to optimum consistency with confidence born of much practice, and parked it in the fridge to rest its gluten while she found the rolling pin and the time-darkened tin cookie cutter with crinkles around the edges, and floured the ancestral breadboard.

  Dittany had lit the black iron wood stove for company even though she preferred to bake in the less picturesque but more predictable electric oven. The kettle on the stove was simmering, reminding her gently that a restorative cup of tea mightn’t be a bad idea before she tackled the agreeable but exacting task of rolling and cutting. Dittany hauled up the rocking chair and was sitting there with her cup in her hand and her feet in the oven when it hit her.

  All at once, she knew why Carolus Bledsoe’s voice sounded so familiar, and wherefore she’d been having these worrisome forebodings. There was that of which she might well be foreboded.

  The struggle which the Grub-and-Stake Gardening and Roving Club had been forced to wage against Andrew McNaster and his myrmidons back when Dittany was still Miss Henbit* was fresh in her memory, as why wouldn’t it have been? Dark, dire, and dirty had been the dealing and derring had been the do. Dittany’s personal epiphany had come when, disguised in molting false eyelashes and Gramp Henbit’s holey sweatshirt, she’d eavesdropped on a conversation between McNaster and a lawyer from Scottsbeck.

  Dittany had not been able to get a look at the lawyer, but she’d heard his voice frighteningly loud and all too clear. She’d heard Andy call him Charlie and assumed his name was Charles. The name Charles was derived, although that detail had slipped her mind until just now, from the Latin Carolus. Naturally a man named Carolus would rather be called Charlie than Carrie. She took a deep breath and reached to steady the teacup that was jittering dangerously in its saucer.

  So it wasn’t only their rivalry for Arethusa Monk’s grace and favor which had provoked that instant show of enmity at the airport. Those outbursts of mutual antipathy that had been electrifying the cast at rehearsals weren’t prompted by histrionic urges but by simple hatred of each other’s guts.

  Andy and Charlie had been at odds during that overheard meeting. They must have had later differences of an even more serious nature. If Andrew McNaster’s reformation was sincere, he must have struggled to tear himself loose from his former disreputable association. Carolus Bledsoe might be losing his erstwhile eagerness to affiliate himself with Wilhedra Thorbisher-Freep’s social position and Jenson Thorbisher-Freep’s money, but he still wanted to win that lawsuit against his ex-wife.

  Evidently his case rested on how successfully he was able to present himself as a man incapable of chicanery, malfeasance, buttering up old ladies for personal gain, or associating with rogues like the then still unreformed Andrew McNaster. Yet here the pair of them were, inexorably bound by their joint record of past skulduggeries and their present infatuation with the reigning queen of regency romance. She must tell Osbert!

  Dittany took her feet out of the oven and was looking for a safe place to park her teacup when she froze. She must not tell Osbert! If she so much as breathed a word about Charlie, even in her sleep, the story would get around. Osbert wouldn’t utter a yip to a living soul, of course, but that wouldn’t make any difference. Dittany hadn’t lived in Lobelia Falls all her life without coming to realize that walls do in fact have ears and every little bird is a stool pigeon at heart.

  Only this morning, Osbert had had a long distance telephone call from his agent. Archie was planning to fly up for the premiere with a well-known theatrical producer in tow. Yet it wasn’t the possibility of blowing another big sale that rooted Dittany to the linoleum. She and Osbert were not lavish in their tastes. They already had a well-stocked pantry to feed them and a fresh
ly reshingled roof to shelter them, plus a nice, fat cushion of cash in the bank to fall back on. Osbert wouldn’t mind so much if he didn’t make any money on Dangerous Dan, but what if the play never got performed?

  He’d been working like a sheepdog, developing his scraped-together bunch of amateurs into a pretty slick cast. Fired by his enthusiasm and by their complex emotional tensions, the cast had not only memorized everything they were supposed to learn but vied with each other in performing their roles to perfection. Everyone came on when he should, did his part without a flaw, and left on cue without tripping over his own or anybody else’s feet en route.

  Even Jenson Thorbisher-Freep, who was still dropping in on rehearsals to see whether any technicality might have popped up that required his expertise, had done some audible marveling at how well the Traveling Thespians were shaping. He hadn’t come right out and said they were a shoo-in to carry off the prize at the competition, but he certainly hadn’t dashed any hopes.

  And now they were galloping down the home stretch. Tomorrow night was the dress rehearsal. Minerva had made Dittany a really delightful little girl’s frock of sprigged blue calico with a ruffled white pinafore. The flat-heeled Mary Janes, the white socks and pantalettes, the corkscrew curls, the blue hair ribbon Dittany would wear in the first act and the red one she’d coerced Desdemona into letting her flaunt in the Malamute saloon were all packed and ready to travel. She was rather proud of that red ribbon. It would send the signal that Dittany Henbit Monk had at last outgrown tiny tot roles.

  She also had the woolly cap and mittens she was to put on before she, her sorrowing mother, and their faithful canine friend forsook their once-happy home and headed for the Yukon with false-hearted Dan McGrew. Dan, in the person of Andrew McNaster, would be wearing the traditional villain suit: a black frock coat, a fancy waistcoat, and a high silk hat. Andy had even grown a black mustache, so great was his dedication to his role, and learned how to wax the ends into despicable little spit curls.

  That was the marvelous thing about the casting. Zilla Trott had remarked on it only yesterday. Andrew McNaster was totally convincing as the bad guy because everybody knew he had a heart as black as his mustache even though the rogue was putting on a show of repentance to impress Arethusa Monk. Carolus Bledsoe, on the other hand, made the perfect hero because he was such an honorable, upstanding gentleman in real life.

  Suppose word leaked out that the honorable Charlie was not only every bit as roguish as Andy ever was but also a former accomplice to Andy’s roguery? Suppose Jenson Thorbisher-Freep found out the man on whom he’d been prepared to bestow his daughter’s hand was a double-dyed dastard? Suppose Wilhedra found out? More to the point, suppose they all found out and then Charlie found out it was Dittany Monk who’d scraped the scales from their eyes?

  Being a closet rotter didn’t appear to bother Carolus Bledsoe much. The possibility that people like the Thorbisher-Freeps and Arethusa Monk, not to mention the audience who’d be watching him act the hero and the judge who’d be trying that lawsuit might find out must cause him the odd moment’s perturbation now and then, though. It wouldn’t perturb Dittany a bit, provided he could keep the lid on until after Saturday night’s performance was safely past. She could see all too clearly what would happen if the story popped.

  To begin with, the play would flop. Even if Carolus Bledsoe had the face to go on (and who could replace him at this late date?) the dramatic tension that had been working so magnificently up to now would be shattered. Arethusa was no trained actress. Once she realized who her stage husband really was, she’d be able to work up about as much semblance of wifely affection for him as she had for that reviewer who referred to her books as low-grade tripe.

  Nor would Arethusa be the only one affected. Exposed, Carolus could act the hero in front of a Lobelia Falls audience till his eyes bugged out and his toes fell off, and nobody would swallow one word he said. As for Andy McNaster, he’d be so anxious to show how reformed he’d become in contrast to his unrepentant former henchman that he’d turn Dan McGrew into a cross between Santa Claus and Mother Teresa.

  If the play flopped, what of the Architrave? Dittany reminded herself that it was she who’d goaded the Grub-and-Stakers into helping the Traveling Thespians so that they could acquire the Thorbisher-Freep Collection for their museum. She’d got Mr. Glunck all charged up about filling that back bedroom, though she still wasn’t sure whether it was the memorabilia or the display cases he coveted.

  What it boiled down to was that she had nobody but herself to blame for this dilemma. She’d talked Osbert into writing the play. She’d lined up the Girl Guides to sell cookies and lemonade during the intermission. She’d strong-armed Minerva Oakes into being wardrobe mistress.

  Minerva had in turn organized a posse to sew all those red skirts and foaming petticoats for the dance hall girls. The foamy effect was achieved by yards and yards and yards of ruffles, every inch of them stitched by Therese Boulanger, the club president. Therese was the only member who not only possessed a ruffling attachment for her sewing machine but was also able to make it ruffle. All that flouncing had set Therese back at least a week on the crib quilt she was piecing for her new granddaughter. Her sacrifice must not be in vain.

  There was also the matter of how actively vengeful Carolus might become toward the woman who blew the whistle on him if he found out who she was. Dittany thrust speculation from her mind and began rolling out cookies.

  It was as well she did. The pressure was building. Osbert and the many cast members and backstage helpers who kept dropping in to pour out their anxieties about one thing and another turned to compulsive cookie gobbling as a temporary palliative. Dittany had been through so many dress rehearsals as a tiny tot that she herself wasn’t nervous, or wouldn’t have been if panic weren’t so catching. At least she had her piano to bang on when the atmosphere got too tense.

  Since Carolus Bledsoe didn’t know one note from another, that heart-wrenching music the miner was required to play just before the shootout could have posed a problem. Osbert had coped easily enough by having Dittany play a medley of appropriate selections and recording them on tape. Carolus had only to sit down on the rickety-looking but actually quite sturdy piano stool Dittany would by then have vacated, and twiddle his fingers over the keyboard while the prop crew played the tape.

  Dittany’s personal worry was that her music might not be quite what Robert W. Service had had in mind when he wrote the poem. “I don’t know, dear,” she fretted. “Do you really think ‘There Is a Tavern in the Town’ fills the bills as the crowning cry of a heart’s despair?”

  “It’s appropriate to the setting, darling,” Osbert consoled her. “And that snatch of ‘Just Before the Battle, Mother’ at the end ought to rock their socks all right, eh. How about a cup of tea and a cookie?”

  One way and another, they got through the time. About half past five Friday afternoon, because they couldn’t stand it any longer, Dittany and Osbert bundled their properties into the ranch wagon, stowed Ethel—or Fido, a Faithful Dog, as she would appear on the programs—in the back seat, and headed for Scottsbeck. They didn’t stop for Arethusa because Andy McNaster, Carolus Bledsoe, and Jenson Thorbisher-Freep had all offered her rides.

  How the leading lady had settled the matter they didn’t know, nor did they care. Osbert was running through his many checklists while Dittany tried to concentrate on driving. She wasn’t too concerned about forgetting her lines, but she did wonder a bit about the elastic in her pantalettes. Well, she’d know by the end of the evening and there’d still be time to fix it tomorrow if necessary. This was only the dress rehearsal, after all. And everybody knew a bad rehearsal meant a fine performance. Softly, so as not to distract Osbert from his lists, she began to sing ‘Just before the battle, Mother.’

  *The Grub-and-Stakers Move a Mountain.

  Chapter 6

  WHEN THEY REACHED THE opera house, they were surprised to find Arethusa there ahead of them.
“I decided to come with Jenson,” she explained, “because he has a key to the stage door.”

  For one who most often had her feet planted firmly on a rose-pink cloud, Arethusa was showing an unexpected grasp of practicalities these days. At least Dittany was thinking so until her aunt-in-law demanded, “What have you done with my costumes?”

  “I haven’t done anything with your costumes,” Dittany retorted. “Why should I? I’m not the wardrobe mistress.”

  “Nonsense, of course you are.”

  “I am not. I’m the kid that handles the music box. Arethusa, try to think. Did Minerva Oakes bring anything to your house during the past week?”

  Dutifully, Arethusa thought. At last she nodded. “Yes, she did.”

  “What did you do with it?”

  “I ate it.”

  “Arethusa, you can’t have!”

  “Why not, forsooth? What else does one do with a plate of fudge?”

  Dittany persevered with such patience as she could muster. “Arethusa, did Minerva bring anything else besides the plate of fudge? Anything of a textile nature, for instance?”

  “Gadzooks, yes, she’d covered the fudge with a linen tea towel. It had birds on it. Whooping cranes, I believe, or robins. Some endangered species.”

  “Robins aren’t an endangered species.”

  “They are when Minerva gets after them with a slingshot for pecking her cherries.”

  This unrewarding discussion might have gone on for some time if Minerva herself hadn’t arrived with a huge armload of costumes, followed by Zilla and a couple more, all afoam with petticoats. “Oh, Arethusa,” panted Minerva, “I was hoping you’d be here. We’ve sewn the red skirt to that black lace corset so you won’t bunch up around the waist, but I’m not sure about the hem. You’d better try this on, just in case. And the housedress for the first act, too.”

  Both costumes were fine. Everything was fine. Everybody could smell success from the moment when the curtain went up and Carolus, lugging a feedbag as the badge of his calling, burst into the cozy flat where Arethusa, in a long rose-print cotton gown and a frilly pink apron, was pretending to stir something in a bowl. Ethel lay under the table, the picture of canine contentment. Dittany, in her tiny tot garb and blue hair ribbon, tinkled, “Call me pet names, dearest, call me a bird” on the piano, which was placed on a slant at the rear of the stage.