Chapter 2

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?

"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.