# McClure's Magazine/Volume 27/Number 1/The Return of the Gipsy

Extracted from McClure's magazine, 1905 June, pp. 86–97.
THE RETURN OF THE GIPSY
BY
MRS. WILSON WOODROW
AUTHOR OF “THE NEW MISSIONER,” “THE SPORTIN' BLOOD OF ZENITH,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY F. WALTER TAYLOR
ONE morning when the August sun had just risen above the peaks and was pouring a flood of glory full upon Zenith, a small mining village far up in the Rockies, two shaggy burros, answering to the respective names of “Jemmy” and “Jerry,” stood amid the broken crockery and tin cans of Mrs. Nitschkan's front yard, and with the patient and indifferent stoicism of their kind allowed them- selves to be laden with burdens heavy and grievous to be borne.
With a skill betokening long experience, Mrs. Nitschkan herself was busily occupied in adjusting various and cumbersome objects upon the backs fitted to bear them.
She was an unusual and striking figure, this burly mountain woman, as she stood beside the donkeys, testing straps and lightly lifting huge bundles. A pair of bright, blue eyes twinkled in a face reddened by exposure to all kinds of weather, and her frequent laughter displayed two even rows of squirrel-white teeth. In the ten years Zenith had known her, she had never altered for any occasion her peculiar, semi-masculine attire a man's coat over a flannel shirt, a soft hat thrust far back on her curly, brown hair, and, her only concession to femininity, a short skirt which fell scantily over her heavy boots.
Hard upon her heels were her five children who, as she arranged her camping outfit, were fetching and carrying with a zeal and alacrity which suggested that they expected immediately to enjoy the rewards of service.
“Here, Captola,” ordered Mrs. Nitschkan cheerily, “you an' Josh had best strap that cook-stove on the off-side of Jerry to balance the tent; an' you, Celia, kin fetch Mommie her fishin' rods an' gun. I guess I'll load them onto Jemmy.”
Gathered about the front gate, maintained upon its rusted hinges by some frayed bits of rope, were a group of Mrs. Nitschkan's most intimate companions and allies; but, if attitude and expression be taken as indications of inner emotion, these ladies were strongly evidencing a disapproval of their friend's activities.
Care sat upon each brow. Mrs. Landvetter, enormously stout, Dutch, and spotless, leaned heavily against a gate-post, and knitted busily at an interminable piece of lace. Mrs. Thomas, a pink and white giantess with an appealing manner and a baby lisp, had tilted her sun-bonnet over her eyes in token of grief. And Mrs. Evans, a tiny, bird-like creature, active, steel-hard, and indomitable, had allowed her smooth forehead to wrinkle in an harassed frown.
She it was who summoned up courage to demand the purpose of the elaborate preparations. “What does all this mean, Mis' Nitschkan?” she asked in a sharp, rasped voice.
“Jus' about what you kin see,” replied her friend airily, arranging some blankets and provisions more securely upon Jerry's back.
The three women at the gate exchanged meaning glances.
“Sadie Nitschkan”—Mrs. Evans's tone was magisterial—“we want to know something, an' we want to know the truth: Are you goin' gipsyin' again?”
“I sure am.” The answer was decisive, if indifferent.
“An' leave your husband an' kids to shift for theirselves, an' in the care of the entire camp—which really means us—while you go traipsin' over the hills like a wild woman?” Mrs. Evans's shrill tones ran a crescendo scale of incredulous, indignant remonstrance.
Mrs. Nitschkan paused moment in her packing to stand with arms akimbo, measuring in humorous, faintly sardonic contemplation the group at the gate.
“Gosh A'mighty! What you gettin' so hot fer, Evans? Jack's up at his prospect, doin' assessment work fer a while; an', if a lot of half-grown kids can't look after theirselves, an' keep the roof over their heads, I don't now when they're goin' to learn. You girls kind o' keep an eye on 'em, an' they'll be all right. Come on, Bob; we might as well be movin'.”
“She's a takin' Bob, the only one that's got any idea of behavin'!” groaned Mrs. Thomas. “But, if they get sick, Mis' Nitschkan,” she pleaded desperately, “an' you know that all flesh is grass enough to do that now and then, why, where air we, an' where air you?”
“How kin I tell?” answered the Amazon happily, leading Jerry carefully through the gate, while her lad followed with Jemmy. “But,” emphatically, “they ain't goin' to get sick. Those kids is tough as whipcord.”
“Here, you,” turning to the children with a last admonition, “now you take care of things, an' do right, an' we'll bring you somethin' nice; but, if you don't, it's a lickin' apiece. So long, girls.”
The women turned to each other with lack-lustre eyes and elongated faces.
“Well, we certainly got our work cut out fer us,” sighed Mrs. Thomas with the finality of despair, as they watched their sturdy friend starting out afoot and light-hearted in her quest of the open road, leading one reluctant burro herself, while her equally sturdy boy tugged at the rope of its companion, their faces set toward the black, mysterious pines at the foot of the shining peaks.
“What would happen to us poor women, if we'd shirk our responsibilities like what she does?” cried Mrs. Thomas, settling her sun-bonnet with impatient hands. “An' yet she gets along as good as the rest of us. I never go to Denver fer a day, but what I come home to find one of my kids in bed with a ketchin' disease, or with some of their legs an' arms broke.”
“I'll bet there ain't a bakin' of bread in the house,” snapped Mrs. Evans.
“Nor a stick of vood in de shed,” ruminated Mrs. Landvetter gloomily. “Now, you know how long our piles is goin' to last.”
But their annoyance was far from communicating itself to the deserted children. Captola and Celia, girls of thirteen and twelve years, and Peter and “Josh,” boys of eleven and eight, danced about gaily, singing with clear, shrill voices, “Mommie's gone a gipsyin'! Mommie's gone a gipsyin'!” in a very ecstasy of freedom. Loosed of moral bond or tether, they realized to the full that the world was theirs for purposes of experimentation.
For some reason, at intervals of every two or three years, Mrs. Nitschkan became beset with longings for a life in the open. She was one of those restless, variable beings to whom “the long, brown path” with its thousand possibilities and surprises makes an irresistible appeal.
When this desire of the hills came upon her, she stayed not upon the order of her going, but joyously rose up to follow her vagrant impulses. She would depart, taking a camping outfit with her, and be gone—a month, six weeks, two months; at last returning, hale, tanned, and hearty, full of new life and laughter, her larder enriched with bear and venison, fish and fowl, her tongue quick with a score of fishermen's and hunters' yarns to enliven the long evenings for her husband and the lean, brown prospectors, when they gathered at her cabin to play poker and pinochle through the winter nights.
“It ain't no good sayin' a word,” mourned Mrs. Thomas, as she and her companions started homeward. “Las' time we got wind of her traipsin' off, we asked the Bishop to talk to her, an' he did; but, as near as I kin make out, she twisted him 'round her finger. He says in that mild way he has,” he says:
“'Mis' Nitschkan, frankly now, do you think you ought to evade your sacred responsibilities as a wife an' mother by takin' to the woods this way?'
“'Gosh A'mighty,' answers Nitschkan quick as you please, 'when I been in the woods, I see the mother birds shove the young ones out'n the nest an' make 'em learn to fly whether they wanted to or not. They was give their wings to fly with, wasn't they? Now, Bishop, kids was give their hands an' feet an' eyes to use; an' the way to teach "em anything is to make 'em use 'em, an' give their mommie a chanst to rest sometimes. Them kids'll get along all right, if you don't bother.'
“'I do' know,' said the Bishop afterward, 'if Mis' Nitschkan ain't showin' a beautiful trust, leavin' her children in the hands of the Lord like that?'
“But as I told him, right to his face, too, I wisht she'd take to showin' her trust in some way that wouldn't wear her friends to the bone.”
It was a fortnight before Mr. Nitschkan completed his assessment work, and returned to Zenith and his daily toil in one of the adjacent mines. He heard then for the first time, and without apparent perturbation of spirit of his wife's journey.
“Sadie gone a trampin', eh?” he remarked. “Well, she's got good weather,” squinting his eyes at the cloudless sky; “it'll hold for quite a spell yet.”
And, in the meantime, the children made the most of their freedom, and daily proved themselves more predatory, impish, and lawless, than even their harshest critics had predicted.
“Something's got to be done to bring Sadie Nitschkan home,” affirmed Mrs. Evans with more than her customary emphasis, at a Wednesday afternoon meeting of the Ladies' Aid Society. “Yesterday, my Rupert Hentzau come toddlin' home with his little face all painted blue on one side an' red on the other, an' with house paint, too. He said he'd been playin' Injun with them brats.”
“It might have et into the brain,” suggested Mrs. Thomas, with the relish of one who loved to sup upon horrors. “Gee! You ain't had it all, Mis' Evans. I've sewed buttons up an' down them Nitschkans' backs till I'm dizzy. Captola come to my house yesterday without a button on her, jus' stuck as full of pins as a porcupine.”
“My vood pile is mos' all gone,” grieved Mrs. Landvetter, “und dey haf broke two of my vindow panes. Ven I catch dose devils, I gif each of dem a dollar's vort of vippings.”
“It's five weeks since she left,” said Mrs. Evans dispiritedly; “an' old man Johnson seen her a week or two ago, an' he says she 's shot a bear an' was talkin' of pushin' on still further—never said a word about comin' home. She's somewhere up in North Park now, an' there's no hope of gettin' her back before the snow flies.”
The women instinctively paused in their sewing to gaze out resentfully upon the September splendor of the narrow plateau and its enclosing mountains. The hills swam in purple hazes; the aspens fluttered their shining gold through the scarlet of the maple: and the dark green of the pines. Begrudgingly the group thought of Mrs. Nitschkan enjoying to the full her wild freedom, rising from her bed on the earth to inhale great “draughts of space,” alive to the tips of her fingers, fooling with dangers and embracing rough discomforts for the robust love of them, instinct with the gay, fresh sentiment of the road, tossing the light coin of her jovial greetings to the passers-by.
It was a fleeting vision, but sufficient to arouse in each feminine breast the scorn of the housed and tended beast for the forager of the woods, a scorn eternally mingled with an unsubdued and primitive envy.
Mrs. Landvetter broke the silence with a sharp click of her needles. “Vell, dere mus' be some vay of vorking it to get her back,” hopefully.
“Yes,” agreed Mrs. Evans who had been unwontedly silent. “There's always a way out of everything, an' I've thought of a way out of this; but it's got to be worked cautious.”
“How vould it do to send vord to her dat Jack's kind o' took mit some odder girl?” advanced Mrs. Landvetter. “Hein?”
“What'd she care?” Mrs. Thomas's tone was infinitely scornful. “She ain't like the rest of us self-sacrificing, submissive women that wins a man's heart through our weakness and dependence an' then gets ignored an' neglected or worse; that is, if we don't look sharp an' ain't ready to hand 'em out as good as they give. Now Mis' Nitschkan, she'll traipse off gipsyin' without sayin' by your leave to anybody. She'll do a day's work in the mines or shoot deer to beat any of 'em! She'll stick a pipe 'twixt her teeth an' win the boys' money from 'em night after night; an' what do they say? 'Oh, Mis' Nitschkan, she's a good feller!' Whereas, if 'twas us, they'd say, 'Disgustin'! Disgraceful!' Why, even Dan Mayhew! He was holdin' forth las' night like a fool man loves to, an' like any other fool woman, I was hangin' on his words like they was law an' gospel.
“'A woman's place,' he says, loud an' argumentative, 'is stayin' at home an' mindin' the house an' kids.'
“'What about Mis' Nitschkan?' I asked real mild an' innocent.
“'Oh, she's different,' he answers, 'An' she's all right, too, you bet.' My Lord! Sometimes, I think there ain't no justice in the world.”
“Oh, I've heard that same talk from Sile,” affirmed Mrs. Evans. “The other night I says: 'Course, Mis' Nitschkan's one of my best friends; but she certainly is a figure of fun in them man's clothes.'
“'Oh, they suit her,' Sile answers. 'An' I guess they suit Jack, too,' he says, real spiteful. 'After he's married, a man ain't hankerin' to see so much ribbon an' lace fixin's when he knows he's got to pay fer 'em no matter how the ore's runnin'.'”
“Ain't they the low dogs now!” murmured Mrs. Thomas. “How'd ever us poor women get even with 'em if we didn't have a skillet or a pan handy now an' then?”
“Well, every one of our kids is gettin' demoralized by those Nitschkan Injuns, an' what we got to do is to get her here an' to get her here to stay; an' us girls got to manage it.” Mrs. Evans's tone was final.
Apparently the manner in which this delicate and difficult matter was to be managed was speedily decided upon and a definite plan of campaign mapped out, for a few evenings later as the dusk was falling, the little band of women knocked at the kitchen door of the Nitschkan cabin.
“Come in,” said a gruff voice, and they entered to find Mr. Nitschkan, heavy and bearded, sitting alone. His chair was tilted back against the rough, log walls; a pipe was in his mouth, and he was, to outward seeming, absorbed in meditations from which he had no desire to be aroused. A hastily cleared table, whereon a smoky lamp was dimly burning indicated that Celia and Captola had swiftly disposed of the supper things after that cursory method known as a lick and a promise, and, as their shouts with. out betokened, had joined the boys.
The ladies greeted Mr. Nitschkan pleasantly; but without changing his position, he viewed them with a glance of apprehensive suspicion from under his lowered eyelids, merely growling a responsive “how-do” without removing his pipe from his mouth.
It suited his visitors, however, to ignore his lack of cordiality and the unrelenting hostility of his glance.
“Well, Jack,” said Mrs. Thomas, with an ingratiating smile, “us girls got to thinkin' you'd be feelin' kind o' lonesome with Mis' Nitschkan gone so long, so we thought it would be real neighborly to look in on you, without waitin' for an invitation”; she laughed softly at her joke as she threw aside her cape.
“Yes,” added Mrs. Evans genially. “Yes, indeed, an' knowin' Celia an' Captola was young an' inexperienced, we brought a little somep'n along to help you out in your lunch pail. Mis' Landvetter, jus' kindly lay the things out on the table.”
Mrs. Landvetter began to unpack a large basket and spread the various articles it contained in a delectable array, tabulating them as she proceeded “Two of Mis' Thomas's best cakes, gold und silver, und chocolate. You see Marthy remembered your taste, Jack, und half a dozen of Mis' Effens's saucer pies, all kinds; und six of mein meat turn-ofers, und plummy duff, und a loaf of salt risin', und a loaf of plain bread.”
A look of surprise and of pleased anticipation dispelled the gloom of Mr. Nitschkan's face. The suspicion vanished from his eyes. He brought his chair to its legs with a thud, removed his pipe and cheerfully knocked out its ashes on the edge of the stove.
“That certain is neighborly,” he said, his glance fixed appreciatively upon the varied and appetizing exhibit upon the table. “I wouldn't hardly have expected it of you;” again distrust wavered in his eyes. “Here, Mis' Evans, that chair might give down, take this one. Celia an' Captola ain't no shakes, I can tell you that,” grumblingly.
“What do you hear from Mis' Nitschkan, Jack?” asked Mrs. Evans with casual interest, feeling that the moment had arrived when she might open the lead to which her trained lieutenants would tactfully play up.
“I don't hear nothin',” responded Mr. Nitschkan in a matter-of-fact tone, feeling in his coat pocket for some loose tobacco, and prodding it into the bow] of his pipe with his thumb.
“My, Jack! The backs of your hands is all split!” cried Mrs. Thomas with sudden solicitude.
“I know it;” he looked at them ruefully “but I couldn't find a thing in this house to rub 'em with.”
“My patience, an' me with a box of Rocky Mountain salve in my pocket!” exclaimed the tiny Mrs. Evans, lifting her trim, calico skirt, and drawing a tin box from a huge pocket in her stuff petticoat. “Here, let me rub some on. A man certain does need a woman to look after him. Has Sadie sent any word when she'll be back?”
“Sadie! Oh, she'll come when she gets ready,” he replied with philosophical indifference.
Mrs. Evans elevated her eyebrows and shook her head two or three times. “Well, course we think the world an' all of Sadie, Jack; but jus' between ourselves, this ain't no way to act. This camp ain't what it was ten years ago. Folks is got to act more formal every day, an' when a wife leaves her man for months at a time an' goes traipsin' over the mountains, they will talk.”
Nitschkan was conscious of a dull perplexity, a growing distrust of his own customary and hitherto unquestioned standards. “Oh, that's all right,” he answered with a bluff assumption of ease. “Sadie, she's kind o' different. She can't be penned up all year in four walls; she's got to get out an' get a breath of air or she'd give right out;” he was repeating a formula long impressed upon his mind.
“I do' know if it is all right,” Mrs. Thomas was gravely questioning. “Maybe a home-keepin' body like me's all wrong; but how Sadie Nitschkan kin go off a gipsyin' leavin' you here all alone with those dev—wild kids to look after is more'n I kin understand. The house is goin' to wrack an' ruin; nothin' to eat 'cept'n what two half-grown girls cooks fer you, an' your poor hands all bust open to the bone on the backs of 'em. How kin she do it?” There was the moisture of tears in Mrs. Thomas's blue eyes.
There was a moment's silence while Mr. Nitschkan, holding his pipe with loose fingers, abstractedly rubbed the bowl of it in the palm of his other hand. His head was bent upon his chest, and his ruminative gaze was fixed upon a knothole in the floor with the resentful expression of one who has suddenly discovered a grievance.
“Vell, vell, vell! Ve didn't come here to make you feel bad,” cried Mrs. Landvetter cheerily, laying aside her knitting. “Now it aindt sociable to sit here all de efening mit out a drop of anyting. Here, girls, you get busy. Get dat jar of cream out of de basket, Mis' Thomas, und you, Effens, you vas a master hand at makin' de coffee. Now, Jack,” bustling about, “vich vill you haf—a slice of pie or a piece of cake?”
“Oh, give him both,” exclaimed Mrs. Thomas with unctuous generosity. “Here,” cutting a huge piece first of the cake and then of the pie, “here, I'll put your plate down, an' Mis' Evans'll pour your coffee. Now you sit right up to table,” patting his shoulder with a maternal and protecting hand.
Mr. Nitschkan, with something of the sensations of the Porter of Bagdad when he awoke to find himself in the palace of the Princess of China, now completely threw off the surly suspicion of the early evening, and allowed himself to expand in this grateful and comforting atmosphere of feminine consideration and sympathy.
“My Lord! It does a man good to get his teeth into vittles like these,” he said, when he had finished the last bite of pie and sat gazing with glistening eyes at the remaining half on the pie plate.
“Aw, take the rest, Jack,” urged Mrs. Thomas. “It'll do you good. Like enough you ain't had much to stay you lately.”
He took a deep draught of coffee and wiped his mouth meditatively on the back of his sleeve. Then an impulse of gallantry stirred within him, a desire to express his gratitude for the neighborly offices of his wife's friends. “I hope Landvetter and Evans 'preciate their blessings,” he said.
Mrs. Landvetter rattled her knitting needles together and drew a deep, rasping breath which was almost a groan; Mrs. Evans tossed her head and lifted her eyebrows with the slight, scornful smile of the femme incomprise.
“They ain't like you, Jack,” gently explained Mrs. Thomas, “with a heart as big as a bushel basket and pleased to death with any little thing that's done fer you.”
“That's so,” affirmed Mr. Nitschkan emphatically, unable to withstand the heady wine of Mrs. Thomas's glance. “I always was that way—ready to 'preciate, and—and—well, jus' all heart; but,” with a heavy sigh, “when a man's wife leaves him two an' three months at a time with a lot of kids wild as Injuns hellin' around—what's he goin' to do?”
He sat, his head on his hand, stabbing the table with his knife. Not having hitherto regarded himself as an injured being, he was enjoying to the full the passion of self-pity into which his visitors' commiseration had swept him.
The ladies sighed in unison.
“Now, I'll tell you, Jack,” Mrs. Evans felt that the moment had come for forcing him to take action. “This ain't right fer Sadie, an' it ain't right fer the kids an' it ain't right fer you.”
“Praise Gawd, it ain't!” interrupted Mrs. Thomas fervently.
Mrs. Evans silenced her with a glance. “Now, Jack, you got to see, what all the rest of us sees so plain, that Sadie's got to be made to come back, an' they's only one way to do it. Scare her good by pertendin' that you're terrible mad at her, an' that you ain't goin' to take her back at all unless she comes home at once. Now Dan Mayhew's goin' up to the Park to-morrow, an' he'll take a letter for you if you ask him.”
Mr. Nitschkan scratched his head. “What shall I say?” he murmured helplessly.
“Jus' say,” continued his mentor, pursuing her advantage, “that you'll have no more to do with her; that she sha'n't come in the house nor see the kids nor anything, if she don't come the minute she gets that letter. Otherwise, she can spend the rest of her life gipsyin' if she's a mind to.”
“If this dratted weather wouldn't jus' hold out!” fretted Mrs. Thomas. “Any other year, the snow would be flyin' before this time; but there ain't no justice in the world, even the weather's got to turn in an' accommodate Mis' Nitschkan. An' when she does come,” with growing petulance, “she'll santer in sayin' she's had the time of her life, an' it's a pity us girls ain't her taste fer country life, then we wouldn't be gruntin' an' groanin' all the time—an' us wore to frazzles with her Injun kids! She's snapped her fingers good an' strong in your face, Jack Nitschkan, an' you bet, she'll probable go off fer six months next year.”
“Well, what kin I do?” growled Nitschkan, in shamefaced irritation.
“You can be a man, that's what,” said Mrs. Evans, with ringing significance, “an' you can let Sadie Nitschkan know that you're master in your own house. You can make it so hot fer her that she'll give up any thought of gipsyin' for some years to come.”
Nitschkan fidgetted uneasily. “Might as well talk sense,” he muttered gruffly. “It ain't so easy to make it hot fer her.”
Mrs. Evans arose and throwing her cape about her fastened it with impatient fingers. “Sadie Nitschkan has got to be disciplined,” she said firmly. “Brace up, Jack, an' show some spirit, an' we'll think up some way to help you manage it. Come, girls! So long, Jack.”
“So long, girls, an' thank ye. Here, I'll see you to the gate.”
After gallantly assisting his visitors to pick their way through broken crockery and entangling wires, Mr. Nitschkan closed the gate thoughtfully behind them, called the children in, peremptorily sent them to bed; and then sought diligently and with final success, among pots and pans, for pen, ink, and paper. Spreading these before him on the kitchen table, he sat far into the night, with tongue in cheek and pen gripped tightly in his unaccustomed fingers, composing the letter which was to bring his wife to a sense of her neglected duties.
“I calkilate this'll fetch her in about a week, givin' Dan time to see her an' her time to get here,” he said when he had finished, viewing the work of his hand and brain with immense satisfaction.
But a week passed, two, three, and Mrs. Nitschkan had not returned, nor sent word back by any camper when she intended to do so. It was a bitter moment to Mr. Nitschkan when he had to confess to his wife's companions that his imperative commands, his threats, had been light-heartedly and carelessly ignored.
Another week, rounding the month, and then one day it was announced by a party of returning campers that Mrs. Nitschkan was on her way home.
The next morning, carolling blithely, she arrived at her own gate. Bob, with nimble fingers untied the rope which held in place that frail portal, and his mother, leading the burros, passed through. No welcoming shouts of children greeted her; but the smoke curling whitely from the chimney and the unshuttered windows proclaimed the house inhabited. Otherwise, there was no sign of life.
Within the kitchen, however, was a hastily assembled council composed of Mrs. Evans, Mrs. Thomas, and Mrs. Landvetter. They sat about the stove whereon hissed a coffee-pot, while Mr. Nitschkan strode restlessly about the room. Mrs. Evans, who in common with the other women, appeared slightly paler than usual with a somewhat strained expression about the eyes, was just about to pour herself a cup of coffee, when there came a thunderous knock upon the door, causing her hand to shake so violently that she spilled half the contents of the pot on the floor.
“Now, Jack,” she cautioned, as Mr. Nitschkan stood irresolute, “remember you got to be firm. Give her a good fright, an' make her promise there sha'n't be no more gipsyin' in hers 'fore you let her in.”
“At least till the kids is old enough to go with her,” added Mrs. Thomas sotto voce.
Nitschkan approached the window and pulling down the small, upper sash, leaned his elbows upon it and thrust out his bearded face
“Hello, Jack,” called his wife cheerily, “the door's stuck. Pull it open fer me, will you?”
“The door ain't stuck, Sadie,” remarked Mr. Nitschkan with solemn severity, “it's locked, an' it's locked a-purpose.”
“Locked a-purpose!” echoed Sadie, pausing in her efforts to enter, and peering at him as if she doubted the evidence of her senses. “Well it had better get unlocked mighty quick then, 'fore I sail in. That's all I got lo say.
“Be firm, Jack, you're a-doin' splendid,” encouraged Mrs. Evans.
“It'll stay locked,” repeated Mr. Nitschkan slowly and impressively, “until you promise me that onct an' fer all you're done with this gipsyin' that's made you the talk of the camp.”
Mrs. Nitschkan turned suddenly and gazed at her lord and master with shrewd and twinkling eyes.
“Who's in there with you, Jack?” she asked quickly. “Effie Evans an' Marthy Thomas, I'll bet my head.”
Nitschkan ignored the question, and scowled darkly at the blue ridges of the mountains beyond him.
His wife laughed uproariously. “Oh, Effie, Effie Evans!” she called breezily through the keyhole. “Wait till you want help in some little game, an' then see where you're at! Is old, fat pillow of a Landvetter in there, too? Course; I kin smell the coffee. An' dear little Marthy!” she lisped affectedly. ”Here, Bob, boy!” turning to her son, “get the ax offen Jemmy an' Mommie'll break the door.”
Mr. Nitschkan turned apprehensively to the council about the stove.
“Tell her,” commanded Mrs. Evans, with a pale smile of triumph, “that if she does, it'll be the winter's talk in the camp, how you turned her out. Stand pat now, Jack, an' you got her.”
“Folks won't be a talkin' of nothin' else all winter, Sadie, if you break that door in,” admonished her husband, returning to the window. “They'll say I turned you off.”
“That's true enough,” acquiesced Sadie pausing in her operations. This sweet reasonableness on her part caused the ladies about the stove to exchange alarmed glances. “Well, Bob,” with what was apparently a sigh of capitulation, “I guess there ain't nothin' fer you an me to do but camp in the yard. Get to work an' we'll unload the burros.”
“Come away from that window, Jack, an' don't take no notice of her,” adjured Mrs. Evans, who had watched with growing uneasiness Nitschkan's increasing interest in the unpacking going on without.
But he was deaf to her admonitions. “Lord! she 's got a good bear skin, an' some mighty nice lookin' venison.”
“Ain't that jus' like a man, an' after all we've done fer him, too!” Mrs. Thomas sunk her voice to a disgusted whisper. “We jus' got to get him away from there.”
“Jack, remember what you been through,” she pleaded, her hand upon his arm.
“I sure got to show her I'm master here,” he said firmly, but as though repeating a lesson which had lost its first, fresh significance. “That's what I got to do.”
“You bet you have, Jack,” urged the ladies.
“Oh, Jack, Jack,” called Sadie's voice outside, “I seen the Weeks boys in North Park an' they told me how they'd got even at last with that Thompson tribe. It would make a kiote laugh to hear tell of it.”
A slow grin overspread Mr. Nitschkan's face. “Did you hear that?” he asked the council. “The Weeks's have got even at last with them Thompsons. Gosh! I'd like to know how!”
“Say, Jack, come to the window an' see this mess of trout. Bob, boy, build Mommie a fire, an' she'll get some of 'em ready now. Here!” The rollicking, contagious laughter echoed without as she held up a fish for her husband's inspection. The sunlight fell upon its speckled sides and as Sadie drew out the sedgy grass with which it was stuffed, Nitschkan sighed audibly.
“Nice; fresh trout, an' Sadie kin fry 'em to a turn,” he muttered wistfully.
“Now, Jack, you want to be firm,” reminded Mrs. Thomas. “You don't want to be led away from your duty by no such vanities as trout an' venison.”
Deaf to her words, he edged nearer the window. “She's got somethin' in a hankercher,” in a tense whisper.
Seductively near drew Mrs. Nitschkan. “Jack, Jack,” holding up some objects tied in a red bandana handkerchief. “Oh, Jack!” she teased. “You'd give them pop eyes of yourn to know what I got in here. Look”—untieing the knots of the handkerchief and holding up three or four gleaming nuggets in her hand—“what do you think of this? Free gold, Jack, free gold! An' this nice little piece of peacock!”
Mr. Nitschkan breathed hard. ”Who passed 'em along to you, Sadie?” he asked, with an attempt at carelessness.
“Ol' Mr. Rock give 'em to me,” she laughed. “I staked out a nice little claim or so, Jack, an' posted my notice all right, you bet.”
“Hand 'em up, Sadie, to let me see,” Nitschkan stretched out itching fingers, “or wait—wait till I unbar the door.”
He tore at the lock. “Come on in, Sadie,” as the door swung back. “The girls”—becoming aware of his advisers in the background—“the girls is here to welcome you.” Then he fled.
Cornered, routed, but defiant, the council stood. The Guard might die; but there was “no surrender” written on every line of the firm, little face of Mrs. Evans as she stood with folded arms facing her friend.
Mrs. Landvetter, glancing up from the depths of her rocking chair, went on with her knitting; Mrs. Thomas, on the contrary, bustled about with a busy show of occupation.
“I'll pour you a steamin' cup of coffee this minute, Sadie. Mis' Landvetter, will you pass me the cream jug,” she babbled, and then encountering Mrs. Nitschkan's glance, sank down upon a stool and began to weep.
The mountain woman stood in the doorway, her head lowered, her right arm with its tightened fist swinging back and forth by her side. All the easy good nature had vanished from her face.
“Where's my kids, Effie Evans?” voice was hoarse.
“They're to my house, Sadie Nitschkan,” laconically, coolly.
“What fer?” like the shot of a pistol.
“To keep 'em out of the way while we got Jack to scare you a spell.”
The pathos of a betrayed trust was in Mrs. Nitschkan's eyes. “I'm a goin' to drive you all outen here in about a minute,” slowly rolling up her sleeve, “with some marks on you that you didn't have when you come; but first, I'm goin' to know what you done it fer. You an' me, Effie Evans, has hung together fer ten years. Your wits an' my fists has made us leaders of society in Zenith, an' up to a minute ago I'd a done up anybody that'd say you wasn't a white woman.”
The tiny beads of sweat were standing out on Mrs. Evans's brow; but her eyes never wavered from the other woman's face.
“1 couldn't stand your kids, Sadie Nitschkan, two months an' more of 'em has drove me wild.”
“My kids!” with infinite surprise. “Why, they's no better behaved young ones anywheres.”
Mrs. Thomas suddenly ceased her convulsive sobbing. “Supposin', Sadie Nitschkan,” she cried. “Supposin' you had to look after Mis' Evans's, or Mis' Landvetter's kids fer two or three months?”
A faint smile twinkled in Mrs. Nitschkan's eyes. “Oh, Marthy,” she mocked, “ask me somep'n easy. Why, I'd 'a' broke their heads, that's what I'd 'a' done. But say, my children wasn't that bad? Speak up, Landvetter; they wasn't as bad as the Thomas or Evans kids now, was they?”
“Dey vas vorse,” affirmed Mrs. Landvetter. “Ten t'ousand times vorse as de Thomases or Effenses. Mein vas goot.”
Mrs. Nitschkan fell against the door, the tears trickling down her cheeks, her laughter ringing through the cabin. “It's all right, girls,” buoyantly, boisterously, and accepting the olive branch of a cup of tea which Mrs. Thomas made haste to offer. “We'll let bygones be bygones.”
Then with the elaborate courtesy usual from the victorious general to his defeated opponents: “You girls must 'a' done slick work to get Jack to act like he done; but where you slipped up, women dear, was in miscalculatin' the heart of man.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1935, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 88 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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