All Ready for Bud
On top of the load, with the stock projecting well forward, I quite often was able to recognize old Suse, the ancient firearm of geyserlike proclivities. Maw said she always felt more comfortable when there was a gun round, because she never could get used to bears, no matter how afraid they was of folks.
“When we come out here we didn't know but what we could get a shot on the quiet at a buffalo, Paw never having killed one in his life. Plenty people believes the same till they get here. When we was at the ranger station we seen one Arkansas car come in with six shooting irons, and they all made a kick about having their guns locked up. Then there was a deputy sheriff from Arizony, with woolly pants on, and he made a holler about them locking up his six-shooter. 'This here may cost me my life,' said he to the ranger. 'I dunno for sure that Bud Cottrell is in this here park, but he might be; and if I should run across him I serve notice on you right now I'm going to bust this seal.'
“'My!' says the ranger to this Arizony man, 'you look to me like a sort of ferocious person. Have you killed many people?'
“That sort of quieted him down. 'Well, no,' says he, 'I ain't never killed nobody, but I've saw it did, and if I ever meet Bud Cottrell I shore am going to bust this seal.' I ain't ever heard whether he busted it or not.”
“Funniest thing to me about this here park,” commented Paw, “is that they call me a sagebrusher and the people at the hotels dudes. And the girls in the hotel dining rooms they call savages, though some of them wears specs, and most of them is school-teachers, with a few stenographers throwed in. Why they should call them people savages is what I can't understand. And what do they mean by dude wrangling, mister?”
I explained to Paw that this was a new industry recently sprung up in the West, among those residents of adjacent states who take out camping and hunting parties, or even such persons as desire to see mountain scenery and the footprints of large game, formerly embedded in the soil and now protected by log parapets.
“So that's what it is,” nodded Maw as I gave this information. “I suppose it's just part of the funny things that happens back here. Such things as a person does see on a vacation! Don't it beat all? Now I caught Hattie walking off towards the electric light last night with a young man that had specs and leather leggins like the officers has, and I declare if she didn't tell me he was a perfessor of geology down at Salt Lake or Omaha. Once I give a quarter for a tip to a man that brought me some gasoline, and I declare if I didn't find out he teaches law in a university somewheres! Then, they tell me that the young man who peels potatoes in the kitchen back of our camp has only one more year to get through Princeton—whoever Princeton is. I wish he was through now, because he sings things.
“We're making quite a stay here in the park—longer than what we allowed we would do, Paw and me. The girls seem to be having a sort of good time here, one thing with another. You can't leave a girl alone anywheres here, unless she's taken in by some perfessor or ranger or guide or cook or chauffeur or something, who comes along and carries her off to show her the bears or Old Faithful or Inspiration Point or something. Seems to me like we've heard them words before, too—and then there's Lovers' Leap and the Devil's Slide. We've even got them in Ioway, where the hills is rough.
“Set down on the log here,” said Maw, “and rest yourself, and I'll build up the fire. Ain't it fine outdoors? I declare, I let out my corsets four inches above and below, I breathe that much deeper here in the mountains; and the air makes you feel so fine. What was I saying?—oh, about my knitting. You see at home, when I get my work done, I knit or crochet or embroider. Mary's baby is a right cute little thing, and I like to sew or knit things anyways. But Joseph said to me: 'Now, Maw! Now you forget it; we're going to have a vacation now, with no work at all for no one at all, and all strings off. We're just going to have one mighty good time,' says Joseph to me. At first, having nothing to do, I felt right strange, but I'm getting used to it now, though I do think I could knit comfortable while setting watching the geysers spout.