Ma Pettengill | Page 5

she was to have something tasty and cheap
for dearie's lunch; and the picture of a poor labouring man being told
by someone down in Washington, D.C., that's making a dollar a year,
that a nickel's worth of prime whale meat has more actual nourishment
than a dollar's worth of porterhouse steak; and so on, till you'd think the

world's food troubles was going to be settled in jig time; all people had
to do was to go out and get a good eating whale and salt down the side
meat and smoke the shoulders and grind up some sausage and be fixed
for the winter, with plenty to send a mess round to the neighbours now
and then.
And knocking beef, you understand, till you'd think no one but
criminals and idiots would ever touch a real steak again, on account of
its being so poor in food values, like this Washington scientist says that
gets a dollar a year salary and earns every cent of it. It made me mad,
the slanderous things they said about beef; but I read the piece over
pretty carefully and I really couldn't see where the whale was going to
put me out of business, at least for a couple years yet. It looked like I'd
have time, anyway, to make a clean-up before you'd be able to go into
any butcher shop and get a rib roast of young whale for six cents, with
a bushel or two of scraps thrown in for the dog.
Then this Sunday paper goes out to the bunk house and the boys find
the whale piece and get excited about it. Looks like if it's true that most
of 'em will be driving ice wagons or something for a living. They want
me to send down for a mess of whale meat so they can see if it tastes
like regular food. They don't hardly believe these pictures where people
dressed up like they had money are going into spasms of delight about
it. Still, they don't know--poor credulous dubs! They think things you
see in a Sunday paper might be true now and then, even if it is most
always a pack of lies thought up by dissipated newspaper men.
I tell 'em they can send for a whole whale if they want to pay for it, but
none of my money goes that way so long as stall-fed beef retains its
present flavour; and furthermore I expect to be doing business right
here for years after the whale fad has died out--doing the best I can
with about ten silly cowhands taking the rest cure at my expense the
minute I step off the place. I said there was no doubt they should all be
added to the ranks of the unemployed that very minute--but due to
other well-known causes than the wiping out of the cattle industry by
cold whale hash in jelly, which happened to be the dish this French
chef was going crazy over.

They chewed over that pointed information for a while, then they got to
making each other bets of a thousand dollars about what whale meat
would taste like; whether whale liver and bacon could be told from
natural liver and bacon, and whether whale steak would probably taste
like catfish or mebbe more like mud turtle. Sandy Sawtelle, who
always knows everything by divine right, like you might say, he says in
superior tones that it won't taste like either one but has a flavour all its
own, which even he can't describe, though it will be something like the
meat of the wild sea cow, which roams the ocean in vast herds off the
coast of Florida.
Then they consider the question of a whale round-up in an expert
manner. It don't look none too good, going out on rodeo in water about
three miles too deep for wading, though the idea of lass'ing a whale calf
and branding it does hold a certain fascination. Sandy says it would be
the only livestock business on earth where you don't always have to be
fearing a dry season; and Buck Devine says that's so, and likewise the
range is practically unlimited, as any one can see from a good map, and
wouldn't it be fine riding herd in a steam yacht with a high-class
bartender handy, instead of on a so-and-so cayuse that was liable any
minute to trade ends and pour you out of the saddle on to your lame
shoulder.
They'd got to kidding about it by this time, when who should ride up
but old Safety First Timmins. They spring the food whale on Safety
with much flourish. They show him the pictures and quote prices on the
hoof--which are low, but look what even