Merton of the Movies

by Harry Leon Wilson

Metta kept it up. Her woman’s ingenuity contrived new little tricks with the instrument of torture. She would doubtless have had a responsible post with the Spanish Inquisition. Face set, absorbed in her evil work, she tickled the ribs crosswise and tickled between them, up and down, always with the artist’s light touch.

Dexter’s frame grew tense, his head came up. Once more he looked like a horse. He had been brave to face destruction, but he found himself unable to face being tickled to death. If only they had chosen some other method for his execution he would have perished gamely, but this was exquisitely poignant—beyond endurance. He tossed his head and stepped into a trot toward the open gate.

Metta yelled in triumph. The rider tossed his own head in rhythm to Dexter’s trot. His whole body tossed in the saddle; it was a fearsome pace; the sensations were like nothing he had ever dreamed of. And he was so high above the good firm ground! Dexter continued his jolting progress to the applause of Metta. The rider tried to command Metta to keep still, and merely bit his tongue.

Stirred to life by the tickling, Dexter now became more acutely aware of that strange, restless burden on his back, and was inspired to free himself from it. He increased his pace as he came to the gate, and managed a backward kick with both heels. This lost the rider his stirrups and left him less securely seated than he wished to be. He dropped the reins and grasped the saddle’s pommel with both hands.

He strangely seemed to consider the pommel the steering wheel of a motor car. He seemed to be twisting it with the notion of guiding Dexter. All might have been well, but on losing his stirrups the rider had firmly clasped his legs about the waist of the animal. Again and again he tightened them, and now Dexter not only looked every inch a horse but very painfully to his rider felt like one, for the spurs were goring him to a most seditious behavior. The mere pace was slackened only that he might alarmingly kick and shake himself in a manner as terrifying to the rider as it was unseemly in one of Dexter’s years.

But the thing was inevitable, because once in his remote, hot youth Dexter, cavorting innocently in an orchard, had kicked over a hive of busy bees which had been attending strictly to their own affairs until that moment. After that they had attended to Dexter with a thoroughness that had seared itself to this day across his memory. He now sincerely believed that he had overturned another hive of bees, and that not but by the most strenuous exertion could he escape from their harrying. They were stinging him venomously along his sides, biting deeper with every jump. At last he would bear his rider safely over the border.

The rider clasped his mount ever more tightly. The deep dust of the alley road mounted high over the spirited scene, and through it came not only the hearty delight of Metta Judson in peals of womanly laughter, but the shrill cries of the three Ransom children whom Merton had not before noticed. These were Calvin Ransom, aged eight; Elsie Ransom, aged six; and little Woodrow Ransom, aged four. Their mother had lain down with a headache, having first ordered them to take their picture books and sit quietly in the parlour as good children should on a Sabbath afternoon. So they had noisily pretended to obtain the picture books and then quietly tiptoed out into the backyard, which was not so stuffy as the parlour.

Detecting the meritorious doings in the Gashwiler barnyard, they perched in a row on the alley fence and had been excited spectators from the moment that Merton had mounted his horse.

In shrill but friendly voices they had piped, “Oh, Merton Gill’s a cowboy, Merton Gill’s a cowboy! Oh, looka the cowboy on the big horse!”

For of course they were motion-picture experts and would know a cowboy when they saw one. Wide-eyed, they followed the perilous antics of Dexter as he issued from the alley gate, and they screamed with childish delight when the spurs had recalled to his memory that far-off dreadful day with the busy bees. They now balanced precariously on the alley fence, the better to trace Merton’s flight through the dust cloud. “Merton’s in a runaway, Merton’s in a runaway, Merton’s in a runaway!” they shrieked, but with none of the sympathy that would have become them. They appeared to rejoice in Merton’s plight. “Merton’s in a runaway,” they joyously chanted.