Free Air Part 16

"Never been there. This tailor is a busy boy. He fitted about eleventeen thousand people, last year."

"I see. Ready mades. Cheer up. That's where Henry B. Boltwood gets most of his clothes. Mr. Daggett, if ever I catch you in the Aren't-I-beautiful frame of mind of our friend back on the porch, I'll give up my trip to struggle for your soul."

"He seemed to have soul in large chunks. He seemed to talk pretty painlessly. I had a hunch you and he were discussing sculpture, anyway.

Maybe Rodin."

"What do you know about Rodin?"

"Articles in the magazines. Same place you learned about him!" But Milt did not sound rude. He said it chucklingly.

"You're perfectly right. And we've probably read the very same articles.

Well, our friend back there said to me at dinner, 'It must be dreadful for you to have to encounter so many common people along the road.' I said, 'It is,' in the most insulting tone I could, and he just rolled his eyes, and hadn't an idea I meant him. Then he slickered his hair at me, and mooed, 'Is it not wonderful to see all these strange manifestations of the secrets of Nature!' and I said, 'Is it?' and he went on, 'One feels that if one could but meet a sympathetic lady here, one's cup of rejoicing in untrammeled nature----' Honest, Milt, Mr.

Daggett, I mean, he did talk like that. Been reading books by optimistic lady authors. And one looked at me, one did, as if one would be willing to hold my hand, if I let one.

"He invited me to come out on the porch and give the double O. to handsome mountains as illuminated by terrestrial bodies, and I felt so weak in the presence of his conceit that I couldn't refuse. Then he insisted on introducing me to a woman from my own Brooklyn, who condoled with me for having to talk to Western persons while motoring.

Oh, dear G.o.d, that such people should live ... that the sniffy little Claire should once have been permitted to live!... And then I saw you!"

Through all her tirade they had stood close together, her face visibly eager in the glow from the hotel; and Milt had grown taller. But he responded, "I'm afraid I might have been just as bad. I haven't even reached the riding-breeches stage in evolution. Maybe never will."

"No. You won't. You'll go right through it. By and by, when you're so rich that father and I won't be allowed to a.s.sociate with you, you'll wear riding-breeches--but for riding, not as a donation to the beauties of nature."

"Oh, I'm already rich. It shows. Waitress down at the camp asked me whose car I was driving through."

"I know what I wanted to say. Since you won't be our guest, will you be our host--I mean, as far as welcoming us? I think it would be fun for father and me to stop at your camp, tomorrow night, at the canyon, instead of at the hotel. Will you guide me to the canyon, if I do?"

"Oh--terribly--glad!"

CHAPTER XIII

ADVENTURERS BY FIRELIGHT

Neither of the Boltwoods had seen the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. The Canyon of the Yellowstone was their first revelation of intimidating depth and color gone mad. When their car and Milt's had been parked in the palisaded corral back of the camp at which they were to stay, they three set out for the canyon's edge chattering, and stopped dumb.

Mr. Boltwood declined to descend. He returned to the camp for a cigar.

The boy and girl crept down seeming miles of damp steps to an outhanging pinnacle that still was miles of empty airy drop above the river bed.

Claire had a quaking feeling that this rock pulpit was going to slide.

She thrust out her hand, seized Milt's paw, and in its firm warmth found comfort. Clinging to its security she followed him by the crawling path to the river below. She looked up at columns of crimson and saffron and burning brown, up at the matronly falls, up at lone pines clinging to jutting rocks that must be already cras.h.i.+ng toward her, and in the splendor she knew the Panic fear that is the deepest reaction to beauty.

Milt merely shook his head as he stared up. He had neither gossiped nor coyly squeezed her hand as he had guided her. She fell to thinking that she preferred this American boy in this American scene to a nimble gentleman saluting the Alps in a d.i.n.ky green hat with a little feather.

It was Milt who, when they had labored back up again, when they had sat smiling at each other with comfortable weariness, made her see the canyon not as a freak, but as the miraculous work of a stream rolling grains of sand for millions of years, till it had cut this Jovian intaglio. He seemed to have read--whether in books, or in paragraphs in mechanical magazines--a good deal about geology. He made it real. Not that she paid much attention to what he actually said! She was too busy thinking of the fact that he should say it at all.

Not condescendingly but very companionably she accompanied Milt in the exploration of their camp for the night--the big dining tent, the city of individual bedroom tents, canvas-sided and wooden-floored, each with a tiny stove for the cold mornings of these high alt.i.tudes. She was awed that evening by hearing her waitress discussing the novels of Ibanez.

Jeff Saxton knew the names of at least six Russian novelists, but Jeff was not highly authoritative regarding Spanish literature.

"I suppose she's a school-teacher, working here in vacation," Claire whispered to Milt, beside her at the long, busy, scenically conversational table.

"Our waitress? Well, sort of. I understand she's professor of literature in some college," said Milt, in a matter of fact way. And he didn't at all see the sequence when she went on:

"There is an America! I'm glad I've found it!"

The camp's evening bonfire was made of logs on end about a stake of iron. As the logs blazed up, the guests on the circle of benches crooned "Suwanee River," and "Old Black Joe," and Claire crooned with them. She had been afraid that her father would be bored, but she saw that, above his carefully tended cigar, he was dreaming. She wondered if there had been a time when he had hummed old songs.

The fire sank to coals. The crowd wandered off to their tents. Mr.

Boltwood followed them after an apologetic, "Good night. Don't stay up too late." With a scattering of only half a dozen people on the benches, this huge circle seemed deserted; and Claire and Milt, leaning forward, chins on hands, were alone--by their own campfire, among the mountains.

The stars stooped down to the hills; the pines were a wall of blackness; a coyote yammered to point the stillness; and the mighty pile of coals gave a warmth luxurious in the creeping mountain chill.

The silence of large places awes the brisk intruder, and Claire's voice was unconsciously lowered as she begged, "Tell me something about yourself, Mr. Daggett. I don't really know anything at all."

"Oh, you wouldn't be interested. Just Schoenstrom!"

"But just Schoenstrom might be extremely interesting."

"But honest, you'd think I was--edging in on you!"

"I know what you are thinking. The time I suggested, way back there in Dakota, that you were sticking too close. You've never got over it. I've tried to make up for it, but---- I really don't blame you. I was horrid.

I deserve being beaten. But you do keep on punis.h.i.+ng ra----"

"Punis.h.i.+ng? Lord, I didn't mean to! No! Honest! It was nothing. You were right. Looked as though I was inviting myself---- But, oh, plea.s.sssse, Miss Boltwood, don't ever think for a sec. that I meant to be a grouch----"

"Then do tell me---- Who is this Milton Daggett that you know so much better than I ever can?"

"Well," Milt crossed his knees, caught his chin in his hand, "I don't know as I really do know him so well. I thought I did. I was onto his evil ways. He was the son of the pioneer doctor, Maine folks."

"Really? My mother came from Maine."

Milt did not try to find out that they were cousins. He went on, "This kid, Milt, went to high school in St. Cloud--town twenty times as big as Schoenstrom--but he drifted back because his dad was old and needed him, after his mother's death----"

"You have no brothers or sisters?"

"No. n.o.body. 'Cept Lady Vere de Vere--which animal she is going to get cuffed if she chews up any more of my overcoat out in my tent tonight!... Well, this kid worked 'round, machinery mostly, and got interested in cars, and started a garage---- Wee, that was an awful shop, first one I had! In Rauskukle's barn. Six wrenches and a screwdriver and a one-lung pump! And I didn't know a roller-bearing from three-point suspension! But---- Well, anyway, he worked along, and built a regular garage, and paid off practically all the mortgage on it----"

"I remember stopping at a garage in Schoenstrom, I'm almost sure it was, for something. I seem to remember it was a good place. Do you own it?

Really?"

"Ye-es, what there is of it."

"But there's a great deal of it. It's efficient. You've done your job.

That's more than most high-born aides-de-camp could say."

"Honestly? Well--I don't know----"

"Who did you play with in Schoenstrom? Oh, I _wish_ I'd noticed that town. But I couldn't tell then that---- What, uh, which girl did you fall in love with?"