The Happy Family written by Bertha Muzzy Bower

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Take-Notice stretched his legs out before him, pushed his hands deep
down in his trousers' pockets, and laughed and laughed. "That was sure
one on you," he chuckled. "Andy's a hard case, all right."

But the girl stood before him, a little pale and with her chin high.
"Father, how can you think it's funny?" she cried impatiently. "It
seems to me--er--I think it's perfectly horrid for a man to act like
that. And you say, Mr. Bates, that he's out there _now_"--she swept a
very pretty hand and arm toward the window--"acting the same silly
sort of falsehood?"

"I don't know where he is _now_," Jack answered judicially. "That's
what he was doing when we came past."

She went to the door and stood looking vaguely out at nothing in
particular, and Irish took the opportunity to kick Jack on the
ankle-bone and viciously whisper, "Yuh damned chump!" But Jack smiled
serenely. Irish, he reflected, had not been with them that day in the
Bad-lands, and so had not the same cause for vengeance. He remembered
that Irish had laughed, just as Take-Notice was laughing, when they
told him about it; but Jack had never been able to see the joke, and
his conscience did not trouble him now.

More they said about Andy Green--he and Take-Notice, with Irish mostly
silent and with the girl extremely indignant at times and at others
slightly incredulous, but always eager to hear more. More they said,
not with malice, perhaps, for they liked Andy Green, but with the
spirit of reminiscence strong upon them. Many things that he had said
and done they recalled and laughed over--but the girl did not laugh.
At sundown, when they rode away, she scribbled a hasty note, put it in
an envelope and entrusted it to Irish for immediate delivery to the
absent and erring one. Then they rode home, promising each other that
they would sure devil Andy to death when they saw him, and wishing
that they had ridden long ago to the cabin of Take-Notice. It was not
pleasant to know that Andy Green had again fooled them completely.

None at the ranch had seen Andy, and they speculated much upon the
nature of the game he was playing. Happy Jack wanted to bet that Andy
really had broken his leg--but that was because he had a present
grievance against Irish and hated to agree with anything he said. But
when they went to bed, the Happy Family had settled unanimously upon
the theory that Andy had ridden to Dry Lake, and would come loping
serenely down the trail next day.

Irish did not know what time it was when he found himself sitting up
in bed listening, but he discovered Pink getting quietly into his
clothes. Irish hesitated a moment, and then felt under his pillow for
his own garments--long habit had made him put them there--and began to
dress. "I guess I'll go along with yuh," he whispered.

"Yuh can if yuh want to," Pink answered ungraciously. "But yuh needn't
raise the long howl if--"

"Hold on, boys; my ante's on the table," came guardedly from Weary's
bunk, and there was a soft, shuffling sound as of moving blankets; the
subdued scrape of boots pulled from under bunks, and the quiet
searching for hats and gloves. There was a clank of spur-chains, the
faint squeal of a hinge gone rusty, a creak of a loose board, and then
the three stood together outside under the star-sprinkle and avoided
looking at one another. Without a word they went down the deep-worn
path to the big gate, swung it open and headed for the corral where
slept their horses.

"If them bone-heads don't wake up, nobody'll be any the wiser--and
it's a lovely night for a ramble," murmured Weary, consoling himself.

"Well, I couldn't sleep," Irish confessed, half defiantly. "I expect
it's just a big josh, but--it won't do any hurt to make sure."

"Yuh all think Andy Green lives to tell lies," snapped Pink, throwing
the saddle on his horse with a grunt at the weight of it. The horse
flinched away from its impact, and Pink swore at it viciously. "Yuh
might uh gone down and made sure, anyhow," he criticised.

"Well, I was going to; but Jack said--" Irish stooped to pick up the
latigo and did not finish. "But I can't get over the way his head
dropped down on his arms, when we were riding out uh sight. As if--oh,
hell! If it was a josh, I'll just about beat the head off him for
spoiling my sleep this way. Get your foot off that rein, yuh damned,
clumsy bench!" This last to his horse.

They rode slowly away from the ranch and made the greater haste when
the sound of their galloping could not reach the dulled ears of those
who slept. They did not talk much, and when they did it was to tell
one another what great fools they were--but even in the telling they
urged their horses to greater speed.

"Well," Pink summed up at last, "if he's hurt, out here, we're doing
the right thing; and if he ain't, he won't be there to have the laugh
on us; so it's all right either way."

There was black shadow in the grassy swale where they found him. His
horse had wandered off and it was only the sure instinct of Irish that
led them to the spot where he lay, a blacker shadow in the darkness
that a passing cloud had made. Just at first they thought him dead,
but when they lifted him he groaned and then spoke.

"It's one on me, this time," he said, and the throat of Irish pinched
achingly together at the sound of his voice, which had in it the note
of pain he had been trying to forget.

After that he said nothing at all, because he was a senseless weight
in their arms.

At daylight Irish was pounding vehemently the door of the White House
and calling for the Little Doctor. Andy lay stretched unconscious upon
the porch beside him, and down in the bunk-house the Happy Family was
rubbing eyes and exclaiming profanely at the story Pink was telling.

"And here," finished Irish a couple of hours later, when he was
talking the thing over with the Little Doctor, "here's a note
Take-Notice's girl gave me for him. I don't reckon there's any good
news in it, so maybe yuh better hold it out on him till he's got over
the fever. I guess we queered Andy a lot--but I'll ride over, soon as
I can, and fix it up with her and tell her he broke his leg, all
right. Maybe," he finished optimistically, "she'll come over to see
him."

Irish kept his word, though he delayed until the next day; and the
next day it was too late. For the cabin of Take-Notice was closed and
empty, and the black lamb and the white were nosing unhappily their
over-turned pan of mush, and bleating lonesomely. Irish waited a while
and started home again; rode into the trail and met Bert Rogers, who
explained:

"Take-Notice was hauling his girl, trunk and all, to the depot," he
told Irish. "I met 'em just this side the lane. They aimed to catch
the afternoon train, I reckon. She was going home, Take-Notice told
me."

So Irish rode thoughtfully back to the ranch and went straight to the
White House where Andy lay, meaning to break the news as carefully as
he knew how.

Andy was lying in bed looking big-eyed at the ceiling, and in his hand
was the note. He turned his head and glanced indifferently at Irish.

"Yuh sure made a good job of it, didn't yuh?" he began calmly, though
it was not the calm which meant peace. "I was just about engaged to
that girl. If it'll do yuh any good to know how nice and thorough yuh
busted everything up for me, read that." He held out the paper, and
Irish turned a guilty red when he took it.

"Mr. Green: I have just been greatly entertained with the history
of your very peculiar deeds and adventures, and I wish to say that
I have discovered myself wholly lacking the sense of humor which
is necessary to appreciate you.

"As I am going home to-morrow, this is my only opportunity of
letting you know how thoroughly I detest falsehood in _any_ form.
Yours truly,

"MARY EDITH JOHNSON."

"Ain't yuh proud?" Andy inquired in a peculiar, tired voice. "Maybe
I'm a horrible liar, all right--but I never done anybody a dirty trick
like that."

Irish might have said it was Jack Bates who did the mischief, but he
did not. "We never knew it was anything serious," he explained
contritely. "On the dead, I'm sorry--"

"And that does a damned lot uh good--if she's gone!" Andy cut in,
miserably.

"Oh, she's gone, all right. She went to-day," murmured Irish, and went
out and shut the door softly behind him.

* * * * *

FOOL'S GOLD.

Andy Green, unshaven as to face and haggard as to eyes, leaned upon
his stout, willow stick and looked gloomily away to the west. He was a
good deal given to looking to the west, these days when a leg
new-healed kept him at the ranch, though habit and inclination would
have sent him riding fast and far over prairies untamed. Inaction
comes hard when a man has lived his life mostly in the open, doing
those things which keep brain and muscle keyed alike to alertness and
leave no time for brooding.

If Andy had not broken his leg but had gone with the others on
roundup, he would never have spent the days glooming unavailingly
because a girl with a blond pompadour and teasing eyes had gone away
and taken with her a false impression of his morals, and left behind
her the sting of a harsh judgment against which there seemed no
appeal. As it was, he spent the time going carefully over his past in
self-justification, and in remembering every moment that he had spent
with Mary Johnson in those four weeks when she stayed with her father
and petted the black lamb and the white.

In his prejudiced view, he had never done anything to make a girl hate
him. He had not always told the truth--he would admit that with
candid, gray eyes looking straight into your own--but he had never
lied to harm a man, which, it seemed to him, makes all the difference
in the world.

If he could once have told her how he felt about it, and showed her
how the wide West breeds wider morals--he did not quite know how you
would put these things, but he felt them very keenly. He wanted to
make her feel the difference; to see that little things do not count
in a man's life, after all, except when they affect him as a man when
big things are wanted of him. A little cowardice would count, for
instance, because it would show that the man would fail at the test;
but a little lie? just a harmless sort of lie that was only a "josh"
and was taken as such by one's fellows? Andy was not analytic by
nature, and he would have stumbled vaguely among words to explain his
views, but he felt very strongly the injustice of the girl's
condemnation, and he would scarcely speak to Jack Bates and Irish when
they came around making overtures for peace and goodwill.

"If she hadn't gone home so sudden, I could uh squared it all right,"
he told the Little Doctor, whenever her sympathetic attitude won him
to speech upon the subject.

"Yes, I believe you could," she would agree cheeringly. "If she's the
right sort, and cared, you could."

"She's the right sort--I know that," Andy would assert with much
decision, though modesty forbade his telling the Little Doctor that he
was also sure she cared. She did care, if a girl's actions count for
anything, or her looks and smiles. Of course she cared! Else why did
she rush off home like that, a good month before she had intended to
go? They had planned that Andy would get a "lay-off" and go with her
as far as Butte, because she would have to wait there several hours,
and Andy wanted to take her out to the Columbia Gardens and see if she
didn't think they were almost as nice as anything California could
show. Then she had gone off without any warning because Jack Bates and
Irish had told her a lot of stuff about him, Andy; if that didn't
prove she cared, argued Andy to himself, what the dickens would you
want for proof?

It was from thinking these things over and over while he lay in bed,
that Andy formed the habit of looking often towards the west when his
hurt permitted him to hobble around the house. And when a man looks
often enough in any direction, his feet will, unless hindered by fate
itself, surely follow his gaze if you give them time enough.

It was the excursion rates advertised in a Great Falls paper that
first put the idea consciously into the brain of Andy. They seemed
very cheap, and the time-limit was generous, and--San Jose was not
very far from San Francisco, the place named in the advertisement; and
if he could only see the girl and explain--It would be another month
before he would be able to work, anyway, and--A man might as well get
rid of a hundred or so travelling, as to sit in a poker game and watch
it fade away, and he would really get more out of it. Anyhow, nobody
need know where he had gone. They could think he was just going to
Butte. And he didn't give a darn if they did find it out!

He limped back into the house and began inspecting, with much
dissatisfaction, his wardrobe. He would have to stake himself to new
clothes--but he needed clothes, anyway, that fall. He could get what
he wanted in Butte, while he waited for the train to Ogden. Now that
Andy had made up his mind to go, he was in a great hurry and grudged
the days, even the hours, that must pass before he could see Mary
Edith Johnson.

Not even the Little Doctor knew the truth, when Andy appeared next
morning dressed for his journey, ate a hasty and unsatisfactory
breakfast and took the Old Man to one side with elaborate carelessness
and asked for a sum that made the Old Man blink. But no man might have
charge of the Happy Family for long without attaining that state of
mental insulation which renders a shock scientifically impossible. The
Old Man wrote a check, twisted his mouth into a whimsical knot and
inquired mildly: "What's the brand of devilment this time, and how
long's it going to take yuh?" With a perceptible emphasis on the word
_this_.

For probably the first time in his life Andy blushed and stammered
over a lie, and before he had got out more than two words, the Old Man
seemed to understand the situation quite thoroughly. He said "Oh, I
see. Well, git a round-trip ticket and be dead sure yuh don't out-stay
the limit." He took out his pipe and filled it meditatively.

Andy blushed again--six weeks indoors had lightened the tan on his
face so that his blushes showed very plainly--and made desperate
denial. "I'm only going up to Butte. But a fellow can't have any kind
of a time there without a fair-sized roll, and--I'll be back in two or
three weeks--soon as my leg's mended thorough. I--"

"Get along with yuh!" growled the Old Man, though his eyes twinkled.
"Doggone it, don't yuh lie to _me_. Think I was shipped in on the last
train? A man don't git red in the face when he's just merely headed
for Butte. Why, doggone yuh--"

The last words had to serve for a farewell, because Andy was limping
away as fast as he could, and did not come back to the house again. He
did not even tell the Little Doctor good-by, though it was fifteen
minutes before John Wedum, the ranchhand, had the team ready to drive
Andy to town, and he was one of the Little Doctor's most loyal
subjects.

* * * * *

Andy walked haltingly down a palm-shaded street in San Jose and
wondered just what would be the best and quickest way in which to find
Mary Edith Johnson. Three ways were open to him: He could hunt up all
the Johnsons in town--there were three full pages of them in the
directory, as he remembered with a sigh--and find out which one was
the right one; but San Jose, as he had already discovered, was not a
village, and he doubted if he could stand the walking. He could visit
all the real estate offices in town--and he was just beginning to
realize that there were almost as many real estate offices as there
were Johnsons. And he could promenade the streets in the hope of
meeting her. But always there was the important fact to face--the fact
that San Jose is not a village.

He came upon a particularly shady spot and a bench placed invitingly.
Andy sat down, eased the new-healed leg out before him and rolled a
cigarette. "This is going to be some different from hunting a stray on
the range," he told himself, with an air of deliberate cheerfulness.
"If I could get out and scurrup around on a hoss, and round her up
that way--but this footing it all over town is what grinds me." He
drew a match along the under side of the bench and held the blaze
absently to the cigarette. "There was one thing--she told about an
orange tree right beside her mother's front gate, Maybe--" He looked
around him hopefully. Just across the street was a front gate, and
beside it an orange tree; he knew because there were ripe oranges
hanging upon it. He started to rise, his blood jumping queerly, sat
down again and swore. "Every darned gate in town, just about, has got
an orange tree stuck somewhere handy by. I remember 'em now, damn
'em!"

Three cigarettes he smoked while he sat there. When he started on
again his face was grimly set toward the nearest business street. At
the first real-estate sign he stopped, pulled together his courage,
and went in. A girl sat in a corner of the room before a typewriter.
Andy saw at a glance that her hair was too dark; murmured something
and backed out. At the next place, a man was crumpled into a big
chair, reading a paper. Behind a high desk a typewriter clicked, but
Andy could not see the operator without going behind the railing, and
he hesitated.

"Looking for a snap?" asked the man briskly, coming up from his
crumpled state like a spring.

"Well, I was looking--"

"Now, here. It may not be what you want, but I'm just going to show
you this proposition and see what you think of it. It ain't going to
last--somebody's goin' to snap it up before you know it. Now, here--"

It was half an hour before Andy got away from that office, and he had
not seen who was running the machine behind the desk, even then. He
had, however, spoken rather loudly and had informed the man that he
was from Montana, with no effect whatever upon the clicking. He had
listened patiently to the glowing description of several "good buys,"
and had escaped with difficulty within ten minutes after hearing the
unseen typist addressed as "Fern."

At the third place he merely looked in at the door and retreated
hastily when the agent, like a spider on the watch, started forward.

When he limped into the office of his hotel at six o'clock, Andy was
ready to swear that every foot of land in California was for sale, and
that every man in San Jose was trying his best to sell it and looked
upon him, Andy Green, as a weak-minded millionaire who might be
induced to purchase. He had not visited all the places where they kept
bulletin-boards covered with yellowed placards abounding in large type
and many fat exclamation points and the word ONLY with a dollar mark
immediately after. All? He had not visited half of them, or a third!

That night he dreamed feverishly of "five-room, modern cottages with
bath," and of "ONLY $500.00 down and balance payable monthly," and of
ten-acre "ranches" and five-acre "ranches"--he who had been used to
numbering acres by the thousand and to whom the word "ranch" meant
miles of wire fencing and beyond that miles of open!

It took all the longing he felt for Mary Johnson to drive him out the
next morning and to turn his face toward those placarded places which
infested every street, but he went. He went with eyes that glared
hostility at every man who said "buy," and with chin set to stubborn
purpose. He meant to find Mary Edith Johnson, and he meant to find her
without all California knowing that he was looking for her. Not once
had he mentioned her name, or showed that he cared whether there was a
typewriter in the office or whether it was a girl, man or Chinaman who
clicked the keys; and yet he knew exactly how every girl typist had
her hair dressed, and what was the color of her eyes.

At two o'clock, Andy stopped suddenly and stared down at a crack in
the pavement, and his lips moved in muttered speech. "She's worked
three years in one of them places--and she 'thoroughly detests
falsehood in _any_ form'! Hell!" Is exactly what he was saying out
loud, on one of the busiest streets in San Jose.

A policeman glanced at him, looked again and came slowly toward him.
Andy took the hint and moved on decorously to the next bulletin-board,
but the revelation that had come to him there in the street dulled
somewhat his alertness, so that he came near committing himself to the
purchase of one of those ubiquitous "five-room, modern cottages with
bath" before he realized what he was doing and fled to the street
again, on the pretense that he had to catch the car which was just
slowing down for that crossing.

He boarded the car, though he had no idea of where it was going, and
fished in his pocket for a nickel. And just when he was reaching up
from the step where he stood clinging--reaching over the flower-piled
hat of a girl, to place the nickel in the outstretched palm of the
conductor, he heard for the first time in many weeks the name of Mary
Johnson. A girl at his elbow was asking the other: "What'n the world's
become of Mary Johnson? She wasn't to the dance last night, and it's
the first one--"

Andy held his breath.

"Oh, Mame quit her place with Kelly and Gray, two weeks ago. She's
gone to Santa Cruz and got a place for the summer. Her and Lola
Parsons went together, and--"

Andy took advantage of another crossing, and dropped off. He wanted to
find out when the next train left for Santa Cruz. It never occurred to
him that there might be two Mary Johnsons in the world, which was
fortunate, perhaps; he wasted no time in hesitation, and so, within
twenty minutes, he was hearing the wheels of a fast train go
_clickety-click, clickety-click_ over the switches in the suburbs of
San Jose, and he was asking the conductor what time the train would
reach Santa Cruz, and was getting snubbed for his anxiety.

Santa Cruz, when he did reach it, seemed, on a superficial
examination, to be almost as large as San Jose, and the real-estate
offices closer together and even more plentifully supplied with modern
cottages and bath--and the heart of him sank prophetically. For the
first time since he dropped off the street-car in San Jose, it seemed
to him that Mary Johnson was quite as far off, quite as unattainable
as she had ever been.

He walked slowly up Pacific Avenue and watched the hurrying crowds,
and wondered if chance would be kind to him; if he should meet her on
the street, perhaps. He did not want to canvass all the real-estate
offices in town. "It would take me till snow flies," he murmured
dispiritedly, forgetting that here was a place where snow never flew,
and sought a hotel where they were not "full to the eaves" as two
complacent clerks had already told him.

At supper, he made friends with a genial-voiced insurance agent--the
kind who does not insist upon insuring your life whether you want it
insured or not. The agent told Andy to call him Jack and use him good
and plenty--perhaps because something wistful and lonely in the gray
eyes of Andy appealed to him--and Andy took him at his word and was
grateful. He discovered what day of the week it was: Saturday, and
that on the next day Santa Cruz would be "wide-open" because of an
excursion from Sacramento. Jack offered to help him lose himself in
the crowd, and again Andy was grateful. For the first time since
leaving the Flying U he went to bed feeling not utterly alone and
friendless, and awoke pleasantly expectant. Friend Jack was to pilot
him down to the Casino at eleven, and he had incidentally made one
prediction which stuck closely to Andy, even in his sleep. Jack had
assured him that the whole town would be at the beach; and if the
whole town were at the beach, why then, Mary would surely be somewhere
in the crowd. And if she were in the crowd--"If she's there, I'll sure
get a line on her before night," Andy told himself, with much
assurance. "A fellow that's been in the habit of cutting any certain
brand of critter out of a big herd ought to be able to spot his girl
in a crowd"--and he hummed softly while he dressed.

The excursion train was already in town, and the esplanade was,
looking down from Beach Hill, a slow-moving river of hats, with
splotches of bright colors and with an outer fringe of men and women.
"That's a good-sized trail-herd uh humans," Andy remarked, and the
insurance agent laughed appreciatively.

"You wait till you see them milling around on the board walk," he
advised impressively. "If you happen to be looking for anybody, you'll
realize that there's some people scattered around in your vicinity. I
had a date with a girl, down here one Sunday during the season, and we
hunted each other from ten in the morning till ten at night and never
got sight of each other."

Andy gave him a sidelong, suspicious glance, but friend Jack was
evidently as innocent as he looked, and so Andy limped silently down
the hill to the Casino and wondered if fate were going to cheat him at
the last moment.

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