Somewhere in Red Gap | Page 5

and that she'd better hunt out something with clothes on like
Whistler's portrait of his mother, or, if she wanted the nude in art, to get
the Horse Fair or something with animals.
"I tell you that to show you how they don't hit it off sometimes. Then
Henrietta sulks. Kind of pinched and hungry looking she is, drapes her
black hair down over one side of her high forehead, wears daring
gowns--that's what she calls 'em anyway--and reads the most
outrageous kinds of poetry out loud to them that will listen. Likes this
Omar Something stuff about your path being beset with pitfalls and gin
fizzes and getting soused out under a tree with your girl.
"I'm just telling you so you'll get Henrietta when Wilfred Lennox drips
gracefully in with his piece of poetry in one hand. Of course she must
have looked long and nervously at Wilfred, then read his poetry, then
looked again. There before her was Romance against a background of
Alonzo Price, who never had an adventurous or evil thought in his life,
and wore rubbers! Oh, sure! He must have palsied her at once, this wild,
free creature of the woods who couldn't stand the cramped haunts of
men. And I have said that Wilfred was there with the wild, free words
about himself, and the hat and tie and the waving brown hair that give

him so much trouble. Shucks! I don't blame the woman. It's only a few
years since we been let out from under lock and key. Give us a little
time to get our bearings, say I. Wilfred was just one big red splash
before her yearning eyes; he blinded her. And he stood there telling
how this here life in the marts of trade would sure twist and blacken
some of the very finest chords in his being. Something like that it must
have been.
"Anyway, about a quarter to six a procession went up Fourth Street,
consisting of Wilfred Lennox, Henrietta, and Alonzo. The latter was
tripping along about three steps back of the other two and every once in
a while he would stop for a minute and simply look puzzled. I saw him.
It's really a great pity Lon insists on wearing a derby hat with his side
whiskers. To my mind the two never seem meant for each other.
"The procession went to the Price mansion up on Ophir Avenue. And
that evening Henrietta had in a few friends to listen to the poet recite
his verses and tell anecdotes about himself. About five or six ladies in
the parlour and their menfolks smoking out on the front porch. The
men didn't seem to fall for Wilfred's open-road stuff the way the ladies
did. Wilfred was a good reciter and held the ladies with his voice and
his melting blue eyes with the long lashes, and Henrietta was envied for
having nailed him. That is, the women envied her. The men sort of
slouched off down to the front gate and then went down to the
Temperance Billiard Parlour, where several of 'em got stewed. Most of
'em, like old Judge Ballard, who come to the country in '62, and Jeff
Tuttle, who's always had more than he wanted of the open road, were
very cold indeed to Wilfred's main proposition. It is probable that low
mutterings might have been heard among 'em, especially after a
travelling man that was playing pool said the hobo poet had come in on
the Pullman of No. 6.
"But I must say that Alonzo didn't seem to mutter any, from all I could
hear. Pathetic, the way that little man will believe right up to the bitter
end. He said that for a hobo Wilfred wrote very good poetry, better than
most hobos could write, he thought, and that Henrietta always knew
what she was doing. So the evening come to a peaceful end, most of the

men getting back for their wives and Alonzo showing up in fair shape
and plumb eager for the comfort of his guest. It was Alonzo's notion
that the guest would of course want to sleep out in the front yard on the
breast of old earth where he could look up at the pretty stars and feel at
home, and he was getting out a roll of blankets when the guest said he
didn't want to make the least bit of trouble and for one night he'd
manage to sleep inside four stifling walls in a regular bed, like common
people do. So Lon bedded him down in the guest chamber, but opened
up the four windows in it and propped the door wide open so the poor
fellow could have a breeze and not smother. He told this downtown the