Irvin S. Cobb

“ They saw a solitary bighorn ram with a twisted double cornucopia springing out of his skull and likewise they saw a pair of indifferent mule-deer and enough landscapes to fill all the souvenir post-card racks of the world; for complete particulars consult the official guide-book of Our National Playgrounds.
Evening brought them across a bony hip of the Divide to within sight of the distant rear boundary of the governmental domain. So they pitched the tents and coupled up the collapsible stove there in a sheltered small cove in the Park’s back yard and watched the sun go down in his glory. ”

“ If you don’t think well of yourself, who else is going to?”
“Why, Hector Gatling, I believe you’re really—but no, you couldn’t be! Look at the difference in their stations! Look at their different environments! Look at their different viewpoints!” ”

“ A bedroom door opened and out came Shirley—a crumpled, wobegone Shirley with a streaky swollen face.
“It’s all right, mater,” she said with a flickering trace of her usual jauntiness. “The alliance between the house of Gatling and the house of Tripier is off. So you can liven up. I’ll be your substitute for such crying as is done in this family during the next day or two. I’ve—I’ve been practising all afternoon.” ”

“ You’ve succeeded darned well.” He stared almost regretfully down the line at the rear of an observation-car swiftly diminishing into a small square dot where the rails came together. “Since you mention it, she did look powerfully chipper and cheerful a minute ago, hustling to climb aboard that Pullman—cheerfuller than she’s looked since we quit the trail last Wednesday. Lord, how I wish I could guarantee that kid was never going to have a minute’s unhappiness the rest of her life!” Something remotely akin to remorse was beginning to gnaw at Mr. Gatling’s heart cockles. ”

“ Now hold on there, Romola. Let’s try to be just even if we are prejudiced. All the clods that kid ever hopped you could put ’em in your eye without interfering with your eyesight. He’s no farm-hand; he’s a cow-hand or was before he got this job of steering tourists around through these mountains—and that’s a very different thing, I take it. And what he knows he knows blame’ well. I wish I could mingle in with a horse the way he does. ”

“ I don’t suppose there ever was a man who really loved his daughter but what he figured that, taking one thing with another, she was too good for any man on earth. I’m not saying now what sort of a husband I’d try to pick out for you if the choice had been left to me. ”

“ Still, at that, it’s a rotten shame—the poor kid!”
He hurried across, overtaking the slumped figure, and as his hand fell in a friendly slap upon one drooped shoulder the transformed cowboy looked about him with two sad eyes.
“Howdy-do, sir,” he said wanly. Then he braced himself and squared his back, and Mr. Gatling perceived—and was glad to note—that the youngster strove to take his heartache in a manly fashion.
“Son,” said Mr. Gatling, “from what I’m able to gather I’m not going to have you for a son-in-law after all. But that’s no reason why we shouldn’t hook up along another line. ”

“ People our age who’ve got children growing up go around bleating that young people are different from the way young people were when we were young. They’re not. They’re just the same as we were—same impulses, same emotions, same damphoolishness, same everything—but they’ve got a new way of expressing ’em. ”

“ After being separated for a whole week you two’ll enjoy a day together without any old folks snooping around. Meet us at the hotel tonight.”
So Shirley went on ahead. It perhaps was true that Shirley’s nerves had suffered after six days spent in the companionship of a devoted mother who trailed along with yearning, grief-stricken eyes fixed on her only child—a mother who at frequent intervals sniffed mournfully. Quite willingly Shirley went.
“I—I feel as though I were giving her up forever,” faltered Mrs. Gatling, following with brimming eyes her daughter’s departing form. ”

“ The business that I’ve got in Spokane will keep me maybe two or three days. That’ll give you time to get those new clothes of yours and then we’ll all meet over at Many Glacier—I’ll wire you in advance—and in a day or two we’ll all go on East together so’s you can get acquainted with Shirley’s friends and so forth. But of course, as I said before, that’s our secret—all that part of it is. You’ve never been East, I believe? ”

“ And that’s what Miss Shirley is doing right now this very minute, or else I’m the worst misled man in the entire state of Montana.”
“Maybe—maybe——” The matron sputtered as her distress mounted. “Of course I’m not admitting that you’re right, Hector—the mere suggestion of such a thing is simply incredible—but on the bare chance that the child might be getting silly notions into her head maybe I’d better speak to her. I’m so much older than she is that——”
“You said it then!” With a grim firmness Mr. Gatling interrupted. “You’re so much older than she is; that’s your trouble. ”

“ I don’t want her to have a husband that she’s liable later on to be ashamed to show him off before the majority of her friends, or anyhow one that she’d maybe have to go around making excuses for the way he handled his knife and fork in company ”

“ I’d suggest that when picking out a suit you get something good and brisk as to pattern. Shirley likes live colors.” Mr. Gatling next stressed a point which already had been dwelt upon: “You understand of course that she’s not to know a single thing about all this—it’s strictly between us two?” ”

“ Watch me for about another minute and you’ll hear me doing it.” He settled himself on his air mattress and drew the blankets over him.
Undeniably Mr. Hector Gatling could be one of the most aggravating persons on earth when he set out to be. Any husband can.
Speaking with regard to the ripening effect of summer nights upon the spirits of receptive and impressionable youth, Mr. Gatling had listed the cumulative possibilities of three moonlit ones hand-running. ”

“ Now they’re Charleston dancers and the only place most of ’em carry any weight is on the hip.
“But that’s not the point. The point is that if Shirley fell for this party she’d probably be a mighty regretful young female when the bloom began to rub off the peach. They haven’t been raised to talk the same language—that’s the trouble. I don’t want her to make a mistake that’ll gum up her life before it’s fairly started. ”

“ One thing more occurs to me: Your hair is a little bit long and shaggy, don’t you think? That’s fine for out here but back East a young fellow that wants to be in style keeps himself trimmed up sort of close. Now I saw a barber working on somebody about as old as you are just the other day. ”

“ If you think you’d like a chance to start in as foreman or boss or superintendent or whatever you call it and maybe work up into a partnership if you showed me you had the goods, why, we’ll talk it over together at dinner. The womenfolks won’t be down and we can sit and powwow. ”

“ I figured you might be able to get the correct slant a little quicker then she would. This is only the curtain-raiser. I’m saving the big scene with the melodramatic touches for her. I have a feeling that she may be just a trifle difficult. ”

“ The lobby below was seething—seething is the word commonly used in this connection so we might as well do so, too—was seething with Easterners who mainly had dressed as they imagined Westerners would dress, and with Westerners who mainly had dressed as they imagined Easterners would dress, the resultant effect being that nobody was fooled but everybody was pleased. ”