The Spread Eagle and Other Stories

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"I have always mistrusted thin men," said the lady, and she hastily
added: "Not that you're _fat_"

"My bones are covered," said Saterlee; "I admit it."

"Yes," she said, "but with big muscles and sinews."

"I am not weak," said Saterlee; "I admit it."

"What air this is," exclaimed the lady; "what delicious air. No wonder
it cures people with lung trouble. Still, I'm glad mine are sound."

"I'm glad to hear you say that, Ma'am," said Saterlee. "When you said
you were bound for Carcasonne House, I thought to myself, 'Mebbe she's
got it,' and I felt mighty sorry."

"Do I look like a consumptive?" she asked.

"Bless me--no," said he. "But you're not stout, and, considering where
you said you was going, you mustn't blame me for putting two and two
together and getting the wrong answer."

"I don't blame you at all," she said, but a little stiffly. "It was
perfectly natural. No," she said, "my daughter is at Carcasonne House.
She had a very heavy cold--and other troubles--and _two_ doctors agreed
that her lungs were threatened. Well, perhaps they were. I sent her to
Carcasonne House on the doctors' recommendation. And it seems that she's
just as sound as I am."

"What a relief to you, Ma'am," said Saterlee hastily.

"Yes," she said, but without enthusiasm, "a great relief."

He screwed his massive head around on his massive neck, not without
difficulty, and looked at her. His voice sounded hurt.

"You don't seem very glad, Ma'am," he said.

Her answer, on a totally different topic, surprised him.

"Do you believe in blood?" she said. "Do you believe that blood
will--_must_ tell?"

"Ma'am," he said, "if I can draw my check for twenty-five thousand
dollars it's because I was born believing that blood will tell. It's
because I've acted on it all my life. And it's the truth, and I've made
a fortune out of it.... Cattle," he added in explanation.

"I don't know what you think of women," she said, "who talk of their
affairs to strangers. But my heart is so full of mine. I did so hope to
reach Carcasonne early this evening. It don't seem to me as if I could
stand hours and hours behind that horse without talking to some one. Do
you mind if I talk to you?" she appealed. "Somehow you're so big and
steady-minded--you don't seem like a stranger."

"Ma'am," said Saterlee, the most chivalrous courtesy in his voice, for
hers had sounded truly distressed, "fire away!"

"It's about my daughter," she said. "She has made up her mind to marry a
young man whom I scarcely know. But about him and his antecedents I know
this: that his father has buried three wives."

The blood rushed into Saterlee's face and nearly strangled him. But the
lady, who was leaning forward, elbows on knees and face between hands,
did not perceive this convulsion of nature.

"If blood counts for anything," said she, "the son has perhaps the same
brutish instincts. A nice prospect for my girl--to suffer--to die--and
to be superseded. The man's second wife was in her grave but three weeks
when he had taken a third. I am told he is a great, rough, bullying man.
No wonder the poor souls died. The son is a tremendous great fellow,
too. Oh! blood will tell every time," she exclaimed. "M. A. Saterlee,
the cattle man--do you know him?"

"Yep!" Saterlee managed, with an effort that would have moved a ton.

"I am going to appeal to her," said the lady. "I have been a good mother
to her. I have suffered for her. And she must--she shall--listen to me."

"If I can help in any way," said Saterlee, somewhat grimly, "you can
count on me.... Not," he said a little later, "that I'm in entire
sympathy with your views, Ma'am.... Now, if you'd said this man Saterlee
had _divorced_ three wives...."

The lady started. And in her turn suffered from a torrential rush of
blood to the face. Saterlee perceived it through her spread fingers, and
was pleased.

"If you had said that this man," he went on, "had tired of his first
wife and had divorced her, or been divorced by her, because his desire
was to another woman, then I would go your antipathy for him, Ma'am.
But I understand he buried a wife, and took another, and so on. There is
a difference. Because God Almighty Himself says in one of His books that
man was not meant to live alone. Mebbe, Ma'am, the agony of losing a
faithful and tender companion is what sets a man--some men--to looking
for a successor. Mebbe the more a man loved his dead wife the quicker is
he driven to find a living woman that he can love. But for people who
can't cling together until death--and death alone part 'em--for such
people, Ma'am, I don't give a ding."

"And you are wrong," said the lady, who, although nettled by the
applicability of his remarks to her own case, had recovered her
composure. "Let us say that a good woman marries a man, and that he
dies--not the _death_--but dies to her. Tires of her, carries his love
to another, and all that. Isn't he as dead, even if she loved him, as if
he had really died? He is dead to her--buried--men don't come back.
Well, maybe the more she loved that man the quicker she is to get the
service read over him--that's divorce--and find another whom she can
trust and love. Suppose that happens to her twice. The cases would seem
identical, sir, I think. Except that I could understand divorcing a man
who had become intolerable to me; but I could never, never fancy myself
marrying again--if my husband, in the course of nature, had died still
loving me, still faithful to me. So you see the cases are not identical.
And that only remarriage after divorce is defensible."

"I take your point," said Saterlee. She had spoken warmly and
vehemently, with an honest ring in her voice. "I have never thought of
it along those lines. See that furrow across the road--that's where a
snake has crossed. But I may as well tell you, Ma'am, that I myself have
buried more than one wife. And yet when I size myself up to myself I
don't seem a regular hell-hound."

"If we are to be on an honest footing," said the lady, "I must tell you
that I have divorced more than one husband, and yet when I size myself
up, as you call it, I do not seem to myself a lost woman. It's true that
I act for my living--"

"I know," he interrupted, "you are Mrs. Kimbal. But I thought I knew
more about you than I seem to. I'm Saterlee. And my business at
Carcasonne House is the same as yours."

She was silent for a moment. And then:

"Well," she said, "here we are. And that's lucky in a way. We both seem
to want the same thing--that is, to keep our children from marrying
each other. We can talk the matter over and decide how to do it."

"We can talk it over anyway, as you say," said Saterlee. "But--" and he
fished in his pocket and brought out his son's letter and gave it to
her. She read it in the waning light.

"But," he repeated gently, "that don't read like a letter that a brute
of a son would write to a brute of a father; now, does it?"

She did not answer. But she opened her purse and took out a carefully
and minutely folded sheet of note-paper.

"That's my Dolly's letter to me," she said, "and it doesn't sound
like--" her voice broke. He took the letter from her and read it.

"No, it doesn't," he said. And he said it roughly, because nothing
brought rough speech out of the man so surely as tears--when they were
in his own eyes.

"Well," said Mrs. Kimbal with a sigh, "let's talk."

"No," said Saterlee, "let's think."

IV

They could hear from far ahead a sound as of roaring waters.

"That," said Saterlee dryly, "will be Gila River. Mebbe we'll have to
think about getting across that first. It's a river now, by the sound of
it, if it never was before."

"Fortunately it's not dark yet," said Mrs. Kimbal.

"The last time I had trouble with a river," said Saterlee, "was when my
first wife died. That was the American River in flood. I had to cross it
to get a doctor. We'd gone prospectin'--just the old woman and me--more
for a lark than profit."

"Yes?" said Mrs. Kimbal sympathetically.

"She took sick in an hour," he went on. "From what I've heard since, I
guess it was appendicitis. Anyway, I rode off for help, hell for
leather, and when I come to the river the whole thing was roaring and
foaming like a waterfall. My horse, and he was a good one, couldn't make
it. But I did. And when I come to it on the return trip with the doctor,
he gave one look and folded his arms. 'Mark,' he said, 'I'm no boaster,
but my life is not without value. I think it's my duty not to attempt
this crossing.' 'Jim,' I said, 'if you don't your soul will be
scotched. Don't you know it? Folks'll point at you as the doctor that
didn't dare.' 'It's not the daring, Mark,' he says, 'it's wanting to be
sure that I make the right choice.' I says: 'She was in terrible pain,
Jim. Many a time she's done you a good turn; some you know of, some you
don't.' That fetched him. He caught up his bridle and drove his spurs
into his horse, and was swept down-stream like a leaf. I rode along the
bank to help if I could. But he got across on a long diagonal--horse and
all. I waved to him to go on and not mind about me. And he rode off at
the gallop. But I was too heavy, I guess. I lost my second horse in that
flood, and had to foot it into camp. I was too late. Pain had made her
unconscious, and she was dead. But before givin' in she'd wrote me a
letter." He broke off short. "And there's Gila River," he said.

"I hoped you were going to tell me what your poor wife said in her
letter," said Mrs. Kimbal.

"Oh, Ma'am," he said, hesitated, cleared his throat, and became routed
and confused.

"If you'd rather not--" said Mrs. Kimbal.

"It isn't that," he said. "It would seem like bragging."

"Surely not," she said.

Saterlee, with his eyes on the broad, brown flood which they were
approaching, repeated like a lesson:

"'Mark--I'm dying. I want it to do good, not harm. Jenny always thought
the world of you. You'll be lonely when I'm gone. I don't want you to be
lonely. You gave me peace on earth. And you can't be happy unless you've
got a woman to pet and pamper. That's your nature--'"

He paused.

"That was all," he said, and wiped his forehead with the palm of his
hand. "It just stopped there."

"I'm glad you told me," said Mrs. Kimbal gently. "It will be a lesson
to me not to spring to conclusions, and not to make up my mind about
things I'm not familiar with."

When they came to where the road disappeared under the swift unbroken
brown of Gila River, the old horse paused of her own accord, and,
turning her bony and scarred head a half revolution, stared almost
rudely at the occupants of the buggy.

"It all depends," said Saterlee, "how deep the water runs over the road,
and whether we can keep to the road. You see, it comes out higher up
than it goes in. Can you swim, Ma'am?"

Mrs. Kimbal admitted that, in clothes made to the purpose, and in very
shallow water, she was not without proficiency.

"Would you rather we turned back?" he asked.

"I feel sure you'll get me over," said she.

"Then," said Saterlee, "let's put the hood down. In case we do capsize,
we don't want to get caught under it."

Saterlee on his side, and Mrs. Kimbal, not without exclamations of
annoyance, on hers, broke the toggle-joints that held the dilapidated
hood in place, and thrust it backward and down. At once the air seemed
to circulate with greater freshness.

For some moments Saterlee considered the river, up-stream, down-stream,
and across, knitting his brows to see better, for the light was failing
by leaps and bounds. Then, in an embarrassed voice:

"I've _got_ to do it," he said. "It's only right."

"What?" said Mrs. Kimbal.

"I feel sure," he said, "that under the circumstances you'll make every
allowance, Ma'am."

Without further hesitation--in fact, with almost desperate haste, as if
wishing to dispose of a disagreeable duty--he ripped open the buttons of
his waistcoat and removed it at the same time with his coat, as if the
two had been but one garment. He tossed them into the bottom of the
buggy in a disorderly heap. But Mrs. Kimbal rescued them, separated
them, folded them neatly, and stowed them under the seat.

Saterlee made no comment. He was thinking of the state of a shirt that
he had had on since early morning, and was wondering how, with his
elbows pressed very tightly to his sides, he could possibly manage to
unlace his boots. He made one or two tentative efforts. But Mrs. Kimbal
seemed to divine the cause of his embarrassment.

"_Please_," she said, "don't mind anything--on my account."

He reached desperately, and regardlessly, for his boots, unlaced them,
and took them off.

"Why," exclaimed Mrs. Kimbal, "_both_ your heels need darning!"

Saterlee had tied his boots together, and was fastening them around his
neck by the remainder of the laces.

"I haven't anybody to do my darning now," he said. "My girls are all at
school, except two that's married. So--" He finished his knot, took the
reins in his left hand and the whip in his right.

At first the old mare would not budge. Switching was of no avail.
Saterlee brought down the whip upon her with a sound like that of small
cannon. She sighed and walked gingerly into the river.

The water rose slowly (or the river bottom shelved very gradually), and
they were half-way across before it had reached the hubs of the wheels.
But the mare appeared to be in deeper. She refused to advance, and once
more turned and stared with a kind of wistful rudeness. Then she saw the
whip, before it fell, made a desperate plunge, and floundered forward
into deep water--but without the buggy.

One rotten shaft had broken clean off, both rotten traces, and the
reins, upon which hitherto there had been no warning pull, were jerked
from Saterlee's loose fingers. The old mare reached the further shore
presently, swimming and scrambling upon a descending diagonal, stalked
sedately up the bank, and then stood still, only turning her head to
look at the buggy stranded in mid-stream. The sight appeared to arouse
whatever of youthful mischief remained in the feeble old heart. She
seemed to gather herself for a tremendous effort, then snorted once, and
kicked thrice--three feeble kicks of perhaps six inches in the
perpendicular.

Mrs. Kimbal exploded into laughter.

"Wouldn't you know she was a woman?" she said.

But Saterlee was climbing out of the buggy.

"Now," said he, "if you'll just tie my coat round your neck by the
sleeves--let the vest go hang--and then you'll have to let me
carry you."

Mrs. Kimbal did as she was told. But the buggy, relieved at last of all
weight, slid off sidewise with the current, turned turtle, and was
carried swiftly down-stream. Saterlee staggering, for the footing was
uncertain, and holding Mrs. Kimbal high in his arms, started for shore.
The water rose above his waist, and kept rising. He halted, bracing
himself against the current.

"Ma'am," he said in a discouraged voice, "it's no use. I've just got to
let you get wet. We've got to swim to make it."

"All right," she said cheerfully.

"Some folks," he said, "likes to go overboard sudden; some likes to go
in by degrees."

"Between the two for me," said Mrs. Kimbal. "Not suddenly, but firmly
and without hesitation."

She gave a little shivery gasp.

"It's not really cold," she said. "How strong the current pulls. Will
you have to swim and tow me?"

"Yes," he said.

"Then wait," she said. "Don't let me be carried away."

He steadied her while she drew the hat-pins from her hat and dropped it
as carelessly on the water as if that had been her dressing-table. Then
she took down her hair. It was in two great brown, shining braids. The
ends disappeared in the water, listing down-stream.

Shorn of her hat and her elaborate hair-dressing, the lady was no longer
showy, and Saterlee, out of the tail of an admiring eye, began to see
real beauties about her that had hitherto eluded him. Whatever other
good qualities and virtues she may have tossed overboard during a stormy
and unhappy life, she had still her nerve with her. So Saterlee
told himself.

"It will be easier, won't it," she said, "if you have my hair to hold
by? I think I can manage to keep on my back."

"May I, Ma'am?" said Saterlee.

She laughed at his embarrassment. And half-thrust the two great braids
into the keeping of his strong left hand.

A moment later Saterlee could no longer keep his footing.

"Now, Ma'am," he said, "just let yourself go."

And he swam to shallow water, not without great labor, towing Mrs.
Kimbal by the hair. But here he picked her up in his arms, this time
with no word spoken, and carried her ashore. Some moments passed.

"Well," she said, laughing, "aren't you going to put me down?"

"Oh!" said he, terribly confused, "I forgot. I was just casting an eye
around for that horse. She's gone."

"Never mind--we'll walk."

"It'll be heavy going, wet as you are," said he.

"I'll soon be dry in this air," she said.

Saterlee managed to pull his boots on over his wet socks, and Mrs.
Kimbal, having given him his wet coat from her neck, stooped and wrung
as much water as she could from her clothes.

It was now nearly dark, but they found the road and went on.

"What time is it?" she asked.

"My watch was in my vest," said Saterlee.

"How far to Carcasonne House?"

"'Bout thirty miles."

She did not speak again for some time.

"Well," she said, a little hardness in her voice, "you'll hardly be in
time to steer your boy away from my girl."

"No," said he, "I won't. An' you'll hardly be in time to steer your
girl away from my boy."

"Oh," she said, "you misconceive me entirely, Mr. Saterlee. As far as
I'm concerned, my only regret _now_ is that I shan't be in time to dance
at the wedding."

"Ma'am?" he said, and there was something husky in his voice.

V

About midnight they saw a light, and, forsaking what they believed in
hopeful moments to be the road, they made for it across country. Across
open spaces of sand, into gullies and out of gullies, through stinging
patches of yucca and prickly pear, through breast-high chaparral,
meshed, knotted, and matted, like a clumsy weaving together of very
tough ropes, some with thorns, and all with sharp points and elbows.

They had long since dispensed with all conversation except what bore on
their situation. Earlier in the night the darkness and the stars had
wormed a story of divorce out of Mrs. Kimbal, and Saterlee had found
himself longing to have the man at hand and by the throat.

And she had prattled of her many failures on the stage and, latterly, of
her more successful ventures, and of a baby boy that she had had, and
how that while she was off playing "on the road" her husband had come
in drunk and had given the baby the wrong medicine. And it was about
then that she had left off conversing.

For in joy it is hard enough to find the way in the dark, while for
those in sorrow it is not often that it can be found at all.

The light proved to be a lantern upon the little porch of a ramshackle
shanty. An old man with immense horn-rimmed spectacles was reading by it
out of a tattered magazine. When the couple came close, the old man
looked up from his reading, and blessed his soul several times.

"It do beat the Dutch!" he exclaimed in whining nasal tones, "if here
ain't two more."

"Two more what?" said Saterlee.

"It's the floods, I reckon," whined the old man. "There's three on the
kitchen floor and there's two ladies in my bed. That's why I'm sittin'
up. There wa'n't no bed for a man in his own house. But I found this
here old copy of the _Medical Revoo_, 'n' I'm puttin' in the time with
erysipelis."

"But," said Saterlee, "you must find some place for this lady to rest.
She is worn out with walking and hunger."

"Stop!" whined the old man, smiting his thigh, "if there ain't that
there mattress in the loft! And I clean forgot, and told the boys that I
hadn't nothin' better than a rug or two 'n the kitchen floor."

"A mattress!" exclaimed Saterlee. "Splendid! I guess you can sleep some
on anything near as good as a mattress. Can't you, ma'am?"

"Indeed I could!" she said. "But you have been through as much as I
have--more. I won't take it."

The old man's whine interrupted.

"Ain't you two married?" he said.

"Nop," said Saterlee shortly.

"Now ain't that ridiculous?" meditated the old man; "I thought you was
all along." His eyes brightened behind the spectacles. "It ain't for me
to interfere _in_ course," he said, "but hereabouts I'm a Justice of the
Peace." Neither spoke.

"I could rouse up the boys in the kitchen for witnesses," he insinuated.

Saterlee turned suddenly to Mrs. Kimbal, but his voice was very humble.

"Ma'am?" he suggested.

MR. HOLIDAY

Mr. Holiday stepped upon the rear platform of his car, the Mishawaka,
exactly two seconds before the express, with a series of faint,
well-oiled jolts, began to crawl forward and issue from beneath the
glass roof of the Grand Central into the damp, pelting snow. Mr. Holiday
called the porter and told him for the good of his soul that fifty years
ago travelling had not been the easy matter that it was to-day. This off
his mind, he pulled an _Evening Post_ from his pocket and dismissed the
porter by beginning to read. He still wore his overcoat and high silk
hat. These he would not remove until time had proved that the
temperature of his car was properly regulated.

He became restless after a while and hurried to the forward compartment
of the Mishawaka to see if all his trunks had been put on. He counted
them over several times, and each time he came to the black trunk he
sniffed and wrinkled up his nose indignantly. The black trunk was filled
with the most ridiculous and expensive rubbish that he had ever been
called upon to purchase. When his married daughters and his wife had
learned, by "prying," that he was going to New York on business, they
had gathered about him with lists as long as his arm, and they had
badgered him and pestered him until he had flown into a passion and
snatched the lists and thrown them on the floor. But at that the ladies
had looked such indignant, heart-broken daggers at him that, very
ungraciously, it is true, and with language that made their
sensibilities hop like peas in a pan, he had felt obliged to relent. He
had gathered up the lists and stuffed them into his pocket, and had
turned away with one bitter and awful phrase.

"Waste not, want not!" he had said.

He now glared and sniffed at the black trunk, and called for the porter.

"Do you know what's in that trunk?" he said in a pettish, indignant
voice. "It's full of Christmas presents for my grandchildren. It's got
crocodiles in it and lions and Billy Possums and music-boxes and dolls
and yachts and steam-engines and spiders and monkeys and doll's
furniture and china. It cost me seven hundred and forty-two dollars and
nine cents to fill that trunk. Do you know where I wish it was?"

The porter did not know.

"I wish it was in Jericho!" said Mr. Holiday.

He fingered the brass knob of the door that led forward to the regular
coaches, turned it presently, and closed it behind him.

His progress through the train resembled that of a mongoose turned
loose in new quarters. Nothing escaped his prying scrutiny or love of
petty information. If he came to a smoking compartment, he would thrust
aside the curtain and peer in. If it contained not more than three
persons, he would then enter, seat himself, and proceed to ask them
personal questions. It was curious that people so seldom resented being
questioned by Mr. Holiday; perhaps his evident sincerity in seeking for
information accounted for this; perhaps the fact that he was famous, and
that nearly everybody in the country knew him by sight. Perhaps it is
impossible for a little gentleman of eighty, very smartly dressed, with
a carnation in his buttonhole, to be impertinent. And then he took such
immense and childish pleasure in the answers that he got, and sometimes
wrote them down in his note-book, with comments, as:

"Got into conversation with a lady with a flat face. She gave me her age
as forty-two. I should have said nearer sixty.

"Man of fifty tells me has had wart on nose for twenty-five years; has
had it removed by electrolysis twice, but it persists. Tell him that I
have never had a wart."

Etc., etc.

He asked people their ages, whence they came, where they were going;
what they did for a living; if they drank; if they smoked; if their
parents were alive; what their beefsteak cost them a pound; what kind of
underwear they wore; what church they attended; if they shaved
themselves; if married; if single; the number of their children; why
they did not have more children; how many trunks they had in the
baggage-car; whether they had seen to it that their trunks were put on
board, etc. Very young men sometimes gave him joking and sportive
answers; but it did not take him long to catch such drifts, and he
usually managed to crush their sponsors thoroughly. For he had the great
white dignity of years upon his head; and the dignity of two or three
hundred million dollars at his back.

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