“Well, I be jiggered!” said Brother Wright as he mounted his horse. “What a sight of blamed fools there must be in the world!” and with this comforting reflection he rode home, and ever after held his peace about the episode on the ford of Little Cotton Wood Creek. And so likewise did Aunt Ruby, that talkative old lady. But sometimes, when she and Brother Wright looked into each other’s eyes, they grinned a little sheepishly, showing that the recollection of it had not quite faded from their minds.
CHAPTER VII.
WILLETTE.
Willette, the only child of the Wright and Winkle pair, was a young person of considerable character, which had undergone little of the attempted modification which we call education. At the time of Olive’s arrival at Perfection City this child was about eleven years old, and was as wild a specimen of a girl as could be easily found even on the prairie. Her mother had endeavoured to clothe her in garments known as the “reform-dress,” and had made her a suit of lilac calico, consisting of short tunic, and full-gathered trousers of the prescribed pattern. Willette had put on these things and had promptly complained of “scratchiness” around the neck and arm-holes, owing probably to deficiency of skill on the part of her mother in the making of the said garments. Shortly afterwards, being called upon to do some cattle-hunting, Willette had set out in all the pride of her new clothes to ride down some young steers who were proving refractory. The steers took shelter in the bottom-land along Little Cotton Wood Creek, and skilfully hid themselves in the brushwood there, among the trailing wild vines and the spiky wilder plums which formed a very good barrier against pursuing man. Willette plunged bravely into the brush, and after a fierce struggle returned with one steer and half her dress. The other half remained in the brush along with the rest of the steers. Repeated onslaughts reduced her almost to nakedness, but she brought home the full complement of steers and an abundant assortment of scratches on her legs. After that Willette had enough of her mother’s system of dress, and accordingly she evolved one of her own.
“I ain’t agoin’ to cattle-hunt in no more o’ your cobwebs, Ma,” explained this young person. “I reckon I’ll go a-ridin’ like a boy next time.”
Willette appropriated one of her father’s pants made of the material known as hickory, which is supposed to resist any tear or strain. The current legend attached to real out-and-out hickory is as follows. A farmer arrayed in hickory was one day rooting out old stumps from a newly-cleared field with a new patent plough. He came to a regular stunner which jerked the plough clean out of the land. He backed up, took a good hold of the plough-handles, gave a mighty yell to the horses, and drove the plough clean through the stump, which split open in the middle. The plough and the man passed through, but the stump closed up again and caught his hickory trousers. The horses strained at the collar, but the man would not let go of the plough, nor would the stump relinquish its grasp of the hickory trousers. So he rested his horses a spell, took a big breath, and said “Hallelujah!” whereupon the horses went forward with a bound and brought plough, man, trousers, and stump along with them!
It was a garment of this incomparable material that Willette appropriated to her use. She cut off the legs until the length suited her stature, regardless of the fit of the waist, clothed the upper part of her body in a pink check shirt, put a boy’s cap upon her head, and announced her intention of henceforth dressing like that. She was a chip off the old block with a vengeance, and Mary Winkle, after one affrighted gasp, was obliged to admit that her own principles, as put into practice by her daughter, were too much for her. Wright laughed immensely, and said she was a boy now and would do first-rate.
Willette was totally uneducated, could not write her name and could scarcely read, but she did not lack for intelligence. She knew the hour of the day, by looking at the sun, as well as a negro, and she could distinguish a horse from a cow at four miles distance. She knew every beast for miles around, and to whom it belonged, and could remember for a month every cow she had come across on the prairie and which way it was heading. She understood the moods and intentions of all kinds of animals almost as if she was one of the species herself, and she never was at fault on a cattle-trail.
Olive found immense amusement in talking to Willette, who expressed herself with the utmost freedom upon all subjects in language which would have done credit to a nigger. The child, on the other hand, had a supreme contempt for Olive’s abilities and attainments, which seemed ludicrously deficient, but felt a kindly patronising sort of regard for her, and liked to look at her pretty face and touch her smooth round cheeks. The pair were therefore often together, and Willette undertook to teach her friend to ride, provided she would get some sensible clothes and ride in the only way that Willette imagined it possible for a two-legged human being to bestride a quadruped. Olive therefore made herself a bewitching riding-habit with Turkish trousers, and rode a high-peaked Mexican saddle, out of which even a sack of meal could not tumble if it tried. As soon as Olive began to feel confidence in herself and her horse, she enjoyed the riding immensely. She claimed the refusal of a horse on every possible opportunity when one could be spared from the farm work. Ezra, delighted to see her so pleased with a healthy exercise, encouraged her to go cattle-hunting with Willette, and enjoyed the spirited reports which she used to bring home from these exhilarating expeditions.
“I do wish I had a pony of my very own which I could take out whenever I wanted a ride, and which would be always there for me,” said Olive one day to Ezra after she had been riding by herself on Rebel. Ezra was hoeing up the newly sprouted sweet-corn, and the horses were not at work on the land. In his inmost heart he re-echoed the wish, and would at that moment have given anything to be an individualist and be able to say: “Darling, I’ll buy you a pony with the first load of corn I sell.” He looked at his pretty wife’s glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes, and thought with a groan that he was tied by his principles and prevented by them and the public opinion of the Community from giving his wife this enjoyment. It was the first time that his heart had come into conflict with the perfect theories of Perfection City, and he was amazed and disturbed to find how very much he was vexed by them. Fortunately Olive dismissed the idea of a pony of her own as an unattainable bliss, and contented herself with chance rides on Rebel and Queen Katherine, the two horses which inhabited Ezra’s stable and were generally used by him on his side of the community-land.
Olive’s courage and spirit of independence, fostered by a very mild-tempered horse, grew apace. She soon felt able to dispense with the escort and instruction of Willette and go cattle-hunting alone. She learned quickly enough to know the sixty head of cattle belonging to the Community, and where to look for them. The cattle, which consisted of the usual mixture of milch cows, steers, yearlings, and calves, had been bought at different times and were apportioned to the different families in rough division, chiefly because each woman liked to have the cows she was to milk, driven up to her own fence near to her own house to save trouble. The cattle, consequently, seemed to have become intensely individualistic in their tendencies, and absolutely refused to graze in common. Each bell-cow led off her own herd of steers and yearlings where she thought best on the prairie, and it was seldom that any two of those “leading ladies” chose to go to the same spot. If they did they generally quarrelled and fought a bit. Cattle-hunting, therefore, became a sufficiently diversified occupation in which the unexpected frequently occurred.