Chapter XXI
On the Trail of the Wild-Cat Woman
Meanwhile, the pursuing party had made the trip to Brewster and were on their way home. At the various small towns where they stopped to ask questions, they found that the patent-medicine vendors had invariably followed one course. They had taken supper at the hotel, but after each evening’s performance had driven into the country a little way to camp for the night, in the open. At Orleans an acquaintance of Mr. Milford’s in a feed store had much to say about them.
“I don’t know whether they camp out of consideration for the wild-cat, or whether it’s because they’re attached to that rovin’, gypsy life. They’re good spenders, and from the way they sold their liniment here last night, you’d think they could afford to put up at a hotel all the time and take a room for the cat in the bargain. You needn’t tell me that beast ever saw the banks of the Brazos. I’ll bet they caught it up in the Maine woods some’rs. But they seem such honest, straightforward sort of folks, somehow you have to believe ’em. They’re a friendly pair, too, specially the old lady. Seems funny to hear you speak of her as the wild-cat woman. That name is sure a misfit for her.”
Mr. Milford thought so himself, when a little later he came across her, a mile out of Brewster. She was sitting in the wooden rocking chair in one end of the ivagon, placidly darning a pair of socks, while she waited for her husband to bring the horses from some place up in the woods where he had taken them for water. They had been staked by the roadside all night to graze. The wild-cat was blinking drowsily in its cage, having just been fed.
Some charred sticks and a little pile of ashes by the roadside, showed where she had cooked dinner over a camp-fire, but the embers were carefully extinguished and the frying pan and dishes were stowed out of sight in some mysterious compartment under the wagon bed, as compactly as if they had been parts of a Chinese puzzle. Long experience on the road had taught her how to pack with ease and dexterity.
She looked up with interest as the automobile drew out of the road, and stopped alongside the wagon. She was used to purchasers following them out of town for the liniment after a successful show like last night’s performance.
Despite the feedman’s description of her, Mr. Milford had expected to see some sort of an adventuress such as one naturally associates with such a business, and when he saw the placid old lady with the smooth, gray hair, and met the gaze of the motherly eyes peering over her spectacles at him, he scarcely knew how to begin. Uncle Darcy, growing impatient at the time consumed in politely leading up to the object of their coming, fidgetted in his seat. At last he could wait no longer for remarks about weather and wild-cats. Such conversational paths led nowhere. He interrupted abruptly.
“I’m the Towncrier from Provincetown, ma’am. Did you lose anything while you were there?”
“Well, now,” she began slowly. “I can’t say where I lost it. I didn’t think it was in Provincetown though. I made sure it was some place between Harwichport and Orleans, and I had my man post notices in both those places.”