An American Idyll | Page 8

ten-cent cap-pistol and five cents' worth of caps--they were in their Paradise. I mended three shirts of Carl's that had been in my basket so long they were really like new to him,--he'd forgotten he owned them!--laundered them, and hung the trio, tied in tissue paper and red ribbon, on the tree. That was a Christmas!
He used to claim, too, that, as I got so excited over five cents' worth of gum-drops, there was no use investing in a dollar's worth of French mixed candy--especially if one hadn't the dollar. We always loved tramping more than anything else, and just prowling around the streets arm-in-arm, ending perhaps with an ice-cream soda. Not over-costly, any of it. I have kept some little reminder of almost every spree we took in our four engaged years--it is a book of sheer joy from cover to cover. Except always, always the need of saying good-bye: it got so that it seemed almost impossible to say it.
And then came the day when it did not have to be said each time--that day of days, September 7, 1907, when we were married. Idaho for our honeymoon had to be abandoned, as three weeks was the longest vacation period we could wring from a soulless bond-house. But not even Idaho could have brought us more joy than our seventy-five-mile trip up the Rogue River in Southern Oregon. We hired an old buckboard and two ancient, almost immobile, so-called horses,--they needed scant attention,--and with provisions, gun, rods, and sleeping-bags, we started forth. The woods were in their autumn glory, the fish were biting, corn was ripe along the roadside, and apples--Rogue River apples--made red blotches under every tree. "Help yourselves!" the farmers would sing out, or would not sing out. It was all one to us.
I found that, along with his every other accomplishment, I had married an expert camp cook. He found that he had married a person who could not even boil rice. The first night out on our trip, Carl said, "You start the rice while I tend to the horses." He knew I could not cook--I had planned to take a course in Domestic Science on graduation; however, he preferred to marry me earlier, inexperienced, than later, experienced. But evidently he thought even a low-grade moron could boil rice. The bride of his heart did not know that rice swelled when it boiled. We were hungry, we would want lots of rice, so I put lots in. By the time Carl came back I had partly cooked rice in every utensil we owned, including the coffee-pot and the wash-basin. And still he loved me!
That honeymoon! Lazy horses poking unprodded along an almost deserted mountain road; glimpses of the river lined with autumn reds and yellows; camp made toward evening in any spot that looked appealing--and all spots looked appealing; two fish-rods out; consultation as to flies; leave-taking for half an hour's parting, while one went up the river to try his luck, one down. Joyous reunion, with much luck or little luck, but always enough for supper: trout rolled in cornmeal and fried, corn on the cob just garnered from a willing or unwilling farmer that afternoon, corn-bread,--the most luscious corn-bread in the world, baked camper-style by the man of the party,--and red, red apples, eaten by two people who had waited four years for just that. Evenings in a sandy nook by the river's edge, watching the stars come out above the water. Adventures, such as losing Chocolada, the brown seventy-eight-year-old horse, and finding her up to her neck in a deep stream running through a grassy meadow with perpendicular banks on either side. We walked miles till we found a farmer. With the aid of himself and his tools, plus a stout rope and a tree, in an afternoon's time we dug and pulled and hauled and yanked Chocolada up and out onto dry land, more nearly dead than ever by that time. The ancient senile had just fallen in while drinking.
We made a permanent camp for one week seventy-five miles up the river, in a spot so deserted that we had to cut the road through to reach it. There we laundered our change of overalls and odds and ends, using the largest cooking utensil for boiling what was boiled, and all the food tasted of Ivory soap for two days; but we did not mind even that. And then, after three weeks, back to skirts and collars and civilization, and a continued honeymoon from Medford, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington, doing all the country banks en route. In Portland we had to be separated for one whole day--it seemed nothing short of harrowing.
Then came Seattle and house-hunting. We had a hundred dollars a month to live on, and every apartment we