Somewhere in Red Gap | Page 3

that make a man
fascinating--about the nearest he ever comes to adventure is when he
opens the bills the first of the month. And she often seeing him without
any collar on, and needing a shave mebbe, and cherishing her own
secret romantic dreams, while like as not he's prosily figuring out how
he's going to make the next payment on the endowment policy.
"It's a hard, tiresome life women lead, chained to these here plodders.
That's why rich widows generally pick out the dashing young devils
they do for their second, having buried the man that made it for 'em. Oh,
they like him well enough, call him 'Father' real tenderly, and see that
he changes to the heavy flannels on time, but he don't ever thrill them,
and when they order three hundred and fifty dollars' worth of duds from
the Boston Cash Emporium and dress up like a foreign countess, they
don't do it for Father, they do it for the romantic guy in the magazine
serial they're reading, the handsome, cynical adventurer that has such

an awful power over women. They know darned well they won't ever
meet him; still it's just as well to be ready in case he ever should make
Red Gap--or wherever they live--and it's easy with the charge account
there, and Father never fussing more than a little about the bills.
"Not that I blame 'em. We're all alike--innocent enough, with freaks
here and there that ain't. Why, I remember about a thousand years ago I
was reading a book called 'Lillian's Honour,' in which the rightful earl
didn't act like an earl had ought to, but went travelling off over the
moors with a passel of gypsies, with all the she-gypsies falling in love
with him, and no wonder--he was that dashing. Well, I used to think
what might happen if he should come along while Lysander John was
out with the beef round-up or something. I was well-meaning,
understand, but at that I'd ought to have been laid out with a
pick-handle. Oh, the nicest of us got specks inside us--if ever we did
cut loose the best one of us would make the worst man of you look like
nothing worse than a naughty little boy cutting up in Sunday-school.
What holds us, of course--we always dream of being took off our feet;
of being carried off by main force against our wills while we snuggle
up to the romantic brute and plead with him to spare us--and the most
reckless of 'em don't often get their nerve up to that. Well, as I was
saying--"
But she was not saying. The thing moved too slowly. And still the
woman paltered with her poisoned tea and made cigarettes and
muttered inconsequently, as when she now broke out after a glance at
the photograph:
"That Ben Sutton certainly runs amuck when he buys his vests. He
must have about fifty, and the quietest one in the lot would make a
leopard skin look like a piker." Again her glance dreamed off to
visions.
I seated myself before her with some emphasis and said firmly: "Now,
then!" It worked.
"Wilfred Lennox," she began, "calling himself the hobo poet, gets into
Red Gap one day and makes the rounds with that there piece of poetry

you see; pushes into stores and offices and hands the piece out, and like
as not they crowd a dime or two bits onto him and send him along.
That's what I done. I was waiting in Dr. Percy Hailey Martingale's
office for a little painless dentistry, and I took Wilfred's poem and
passed him a two-bit piece, and Doc Martingale does the same, and
Wilfred blew on to the next office. A dashing and romantic figure he
was, though kind of fat and pasty for a man that was walking from
coast to coast, but a smooth talker with beautiful features and about
nine hundred dollars' worth of hair and a soft hat and one of these
flowing neckties. Red it was.
"So I looked over his piece of poetry--about the open road for his
untamed spirit and him being stifled in the cramped haunts of men--and
of course I get his number. All right about the urge of the wild to her
wayward child, but here he was spending a lot of time in the cramped
haunts of men taking their small change away from 'em and not
seeming to stifle one bit.
"Ain't this new style of tramp funny? Now instead of coming round to
the back door and asking for a hand-out like any self-respecting tramp
had ought to, they march up to the front door, and they're somebody
with two or three names that's walking round the world on a wager they
made