CHAPTER NINE
GARY WRITES A LETTER
“Johnnywater Cañon.
“Dear Pat:
“I take it all back. There’s a new model of cow called Walking X, that don’t need grass. It has a special food-saving device somewhere in its anatomy, which enables it to subsist on mountain scenery, sagebrush and hopes. I haven’t discovered yet whether the late model of Walking X chews a cud or merely rolls a rock under its tongue to prevent thirst. I’m guessing it’s the rock. There’s darned little material for cuds in the country. If I were going to stay here and make you a cattle queen, I should ask you to get prices on gum in carload lots.
“Yesterday I was hiking out on the desert—for exercise, my dear girl. Can’t afford to grow flabby muscled as well as flabby souled. Souls don’t register on the screen anyway—but it takes muscle to throw the big heavy around in the blood-curdling scrap which occurs usually in the fourth reel. Besides, I’m going to throw a fellow down the bluff—when I get him located. Don’t know how big he is, as I haven’t met the gentleman yet. It’s a cinch he hasn’t got lung trouble though; he’s the longest-winded cuss I ever heard holler.
“He’s been trying to get fresh with me ever since I came. Picks wild, stormy nights when a man wants to stay indoors and then gets up on the bluff and hollers for help. First couple of nights I heard him, I bit. But I don’t fall for that hokum any more. A man that can holler the way he does and come back strong the next night don’t need any assistance from me.
“I hoed your spuds to-day, Pat. Did a perfect imitation of Charlie Ray—except that I wasn’t costumed for the part. Didn’t have no gallus to hitch up and thereby register disgust with my job. But I featured the sweat—a close-up of me would have looked like Gary out in a rain. It was accidental. I was chasing Pat Connolly’s pigs, trying to round them up and get acquainted. They headed for Pat Connolly’s alfalfa and they went through the potato patch. There ought to be a fence around those spuds, Pat; or else the pigs ought to be shut up. You’re a darn shiftless ranch lady to let pigs run loose to root up your spuds. They’re in full blossom—and don’t ask me which I mean, pigs or potatoes. They needed a little strong-arm work, bad. The pigs ducked out of the scene into the alfalfa—and that sure needs cutting, too. There’s a scythe in the shed, and a fork or two and a hay rake. If Waddell’s got horses he couldn’t have used them much. Maybe he couldn’t afford a mowing machine, and cut his hay with a scythe. There’s a wagon here, and a comedy hayrack. But I can’t feature handsome Gary scything hay.
“Anyway, every darned spud blossom in the patch peeked up at me through a jungle of weeds. That wouldn’t look good to a buyer (you won’t get a chance to read this letter, old girl, so I don’t mind telling you you’ve played right into my hands with that Power of Attorney, and I’m going to sell out, if Monty Girard ever comes and hauls me back to town). They’re not finished yet, but I can do the rest in the morning if Monty don’t come.
“Monty Girard has plumb forgotten me, I guess. He was a friendly cuss, too. He’s seven days overdue, and I’d get out and hunt him up, only he forgot to leave me his address and I can’t get his ’phone number from Information. Can’t get Information. There ain’t no telephone. He said his camp was about twenty miles off. But I’m wise to these desert miles. More likely it’s thirty. I tried to trail him yesterday, but he took our back track for five miles or so, and for all I know he may have beat it back to town. That’s not walking distance, I’ll tell a heartless world.
“I’m stuck here until somebody comes and hauls me away. The last house I saw was back down the road a nice little jaunt of about sixty-five miles. Monty Girard drives his Ford like he was working in one of those comedy chases. And it’s four hours by the watch from that last shack to this shack—Monty Girard driving. Figure it yourself, Pat, and guess how many afternoon calls I’ve made on my neighbors. I’m afraid the pinto cat couldn’t walk that far, and it would hurt her feelings if I didn’t ask her to join the party.
“Said pinto cat is a psychic. Waddell was a nut of some kind, and the cat caught it. Seems Waddell got the habit of seeing things—though I haven’t located any still yet—and now the cat looks up and meows at the air, and rubs her fur against her imagination. Got my goat the first time she did it—I admit it. I can’t say I feature it yet, her talking and playing up to some gink I can’t see. But I named her Faith and I’ve no kick coming, I reckon, if the eyes of Faith looks up to things of which I kennest not.
“I’m wondering if Waddell wasn’t a tall, round-shouldered gink with a bald spot on top of his head the size of a dollar and a half, and a puckered scar on his cheek; a Bret Harte type, before he puts on the mustache. I keep thinking about a guy like that, as if he belonged here. When Faith takes one of her psychic fits, I get a funny idea she’s trying to rub up against that kind of a man. Sounds nutty, but heck knows I never did feature the spook stuff, and I don’t mean I’m goofy now about it. I just keep thinking about that fellow, and there’s times when I get a funny notion he’s standing behind me and I’ll see him if I look around. But get this—it’s good. I don’t look around! It’s over the hills to the bug-house when a fellow starts that boob play.
“There’s something wrong about this trick cañon, anyway. I can’t seem to feature it. You can’t make me believe that boob up on the bluff thinks he’s a cuckoo clock and just pops out and hollers because he’s made that way. He’s trying to get my goat and make me iris out of the scene. There’s going to be a real punch in the next reel, and that guy with the big voice will be in front of it. His head is swelled now since he’s scared Waddell out. But he’s going to get a close-up of yours truly—and the big punch of the story.
“The other night just after dark I sneaked up the bluff as high as I could get without making a noise so he’d hear me, and laid for him. I was all set to cut loose with that blood-curdling Apache yell dad’s riders used to practice when I was a kid. But he never opened his mouth all night. Made a fool out of me, all right, losing my sleep like that for nothing. Then the next night he started in at sundown and hollered half the night.
“I’m overdue at the studio now, by several days. If Mills could get that contract for me, it’s gone blooey by this time. And he can’t get word to me or hear from me—I’m not even famous enough yet to make good publicity out of my disappearance. Soon as Monty comes, I intend to beat it in to Las Vegas and wire Mills. Then if there’s nothing doing for me in pictures right now, I’ll get out and see how good I am as a salesman.
“But I hate to let that four-flusher up here in the rocks think he’s got the laugh on me. And that alfalfa ought to be put up, and no mistake. The spuds need water, too. After the trusty hoe has got in its deadly work on the weeds, a good soaking would make them look like a million dollars. And I suppose the pigs ought to be shut up before they root up all the spuds on the place—but then some one would have to be here to look after them. That’s the heck of it, Pat. When you get a place on your hands, you simply let yourself in for a dog’s life, looking after it.
“You had a picture of me riding out at dawn after the cattle! That shows how much you don’t know. All told there’s about fifteen head of stock that water here at the mouth of the creek. I mean, at the end of the creek where it flows into a big hole and forgets to flow out again. It acts kind of tired, anyway, getting that far; no pep to go farther. As for horses, Monty and I looked for your horses as we came across the desert out here. There wasn’t a hoof in sight, and Monty says they’re probably watering over at another spring about fifteen miles from here. It’s too far to walk and drag a loop, Pat. So your dashing Western hee-ro can’t dash. Nothing to dash on. That’s a heck of a note, ain’t it?
“Did you ever try to make three meals fill up a day? Well, don’t. Can’t be did. I’ve read all the magazines—the whole two. I also have read Mr. Waddell’s complete library. One is ‘Cattle and Their Diseases,’ and the other is ‘Tom Brown’s School Days,’ with ten pages gone just when I was getting a kick out of it. That was one day when it rained. I knew a man once who could go to bed at sundown and sleep till noon the next day. I don’t believe he kept a psychic cat, though, or chased voices all over the hills. Anyway, I forgot to find out how he did it.
“This looks a good cañon for mineral. Something tells me some rich stuff has been taken out of here. If I were going to stay any length of time, I might look around some. I keep thinking about gold—but I guess it’s just a notion. Monty Girard ought to be here to-morrow, sure. I’ve packed my pyjamas every morning and unpacked them every night. I’ve got as much faith as the pinto cat—but it don’t get me a darn bit more than it gets her. Packing my pyjamas and waiting for Monty Girard is just about as satisfactory as the cat’s rubbing up against nothing. You’d think she’d get fed up on that sort of thing, but she don’t. Just before I started to write, she trotted toward the door looking up and purring like she does when I come in. Only nobody came in. You wouldn’t notice it if there was anybody else around. Being alone makes it creepy.
“I started this because I wanted to talk to somebody. Being alone gets a fellow’s goat in time. And seeing I don’t intend to send this to you, Pat, I’ll say I’m crazy about you. There’s not another girl in the world I’d want. I love the way you stand by your own ideas, Pat, and use your own brains. If you only knew how high you stack up alongside most of the girls, you wouldn’t worry about who played opposite me. I was sore when I left you that night—but that was just because I hate to see you lose your money, and that ‘flabby-soul’ wallop put me down for the count.
“I’ll admit now that you didn’t get cheated as much as I thought; but I’m here to remark also that Johnnywater Cañon is no place for my Princess Pat to live. And it’s a cinch that Handsome Gary is not going to waste his splendid youth in this hide-out. There goes that darned nut on the bluff again, yelling hello at me.
“If Monty Girard doesn’t show up to-morrow I’m sure as heck going to figure out some way of getting at that bird. Yesterday he was hollering in the daytime. He’s crazy, or he’s trying to make a nut out of me. I believe he wants this cañon to himself for some reason, and tries to scare everybody out. But I don’t happen to scare quite as easy as Waddell. Though the joke of it is, I couldn’t get out of here till Monty Girard comes, no matter how scared I got. I’m sure glad I never get sick.
“Golly grandma, how I hate that howling! I’d rather have coyotes ringed around the cañon four deep than listen to that merry roundelay of the gink on the bluff. I’d take a shot at him if I had a gun.
“Good night, Pat. You’re five hundred miles away, but if every inch was a mile I wouldn’t feel any farther or any lonesomer. Your flabby-souled movie man is going to bed.
“Gary.”