Red Saunders: His Adventures West & East

by Henry Wallace Phillips

"Oh, what a bully old fellow you are!" thought Lettis as he looked at him. Lettis was thinking of other qualities than flesh, but the physical Red Saunders on horseback was deserving of a glance from anybody; the massive figure so well poised; the clear cut, proud profile; the shapely head with its crown of red-gold hair; the easy grace of him by virtue of his strength—it would be a remarkable crowd in which Chanta Seechee Red couldn't pass for a man. He was every inch of that from the ground up.

Lettis had come to bow down to him in adoration, with all an affectionate boy's worship. To those eyes Red was just right, in every particular. Likewise to Miss Mattie, who even now was filling her eyes with him, from behind the vantage of a broad-brimmed straw hat.

At last the whole party disembarked at the flat before the mill, and made ready for the official starting of the machinery. The big doors were thrown open, so that the company could see within while resting outside in the shade, and under the cooling influence of what breeze there was. The mill was officially started. Red climbed the bank to the flume, and raised the gate. The crowd cheered as the imprisoned waters leapt to freedom with a hollow roar, raising in pitch as the penstock filled and the wheels began to go round. Speech was called for, and the vigorously protesting Red forced to the front by his former friends, Demilt and Lettis. Thus betrayed by those he trusted, Red made the best of it.

"Ladies and gentlemen, fellow citizens!" said he. "The mill is now open to all comers. We hope to make this thing a success; we hope to see every horny-handed, hump-backed farmer in the country rosin the soles of his moccasins, and shove his plough through twice as much ground as he ever did before, and if he comes here with his plunder, we'll give him a square shake. We'll pay him as much as we dast, and not let him in on the ground floor, so he can crawl out through the coal-hole, as is sometimes done. Now, everybody run away and have a good time, for I don't like to talk this yappi any more than you like to hear it. Kola geus! By-bye!"

It was a very successful picnic. They spent the afternoon in wandering around in the usual picnic fashion, developing appetites, until it occurred to Red to liven the performance by showing them the art of roping, as practiced upon an old cow found in the woods. As a spectacle it was a failure. The combined efforts of all the hooting small boys could not make that cow run; she even stretched her neck toward Red, as though saying, "Hurry up with your foolishness. I have a cud to chew and can't stand here idle all day." So Red galloped by and threw the noose over her head as an exhibition of how the thing was done, rather than how it ought to be done. Nevertheless, picnic parties are not hypercritical in the matter of amusement, and the feat received three encores. The last time he missed his cast through overconfidence. Whereat the old cow tossed her head and tail in the air, and tore off at an elephantine gallop, with a bawl that sounded to Red mightily like derision.

"Durned if she ain't laughing at me!" he cried. But as a matter of fact, it was a hornet and its unmistakable sting that injected this activity into her system.

It was all very pleasant to Miss Mattie, as one's first picnic in many years should be. She enjoyed the crisp green sod, the great trees standing around, park-like, with the sunlight falling between their shade like brilliant tatters of cloth-of-gold; while from the near distance came the tiny shouting of cool waters. They had a camp-fire at night, making the moonlight still more mysterious and remote by contrast. The quartette of strings played for the ears of those who cared to listen and for the legs of those who chose to take chances on tripping their light fantastic toes over tree roots in the grass.

Red loved music, and he loved the night. The poetic side of his memories of watching the Dipper swing around Polaris, while he sung the cows to sleep, came back to him. In his mind he saw the vast prairie roll on to infinity; saw the mountains stand out, a world of white peaks, rising from a sea of darkness. Again he heard the plaintive shrilling of an Indian whistle, or the song of the lad down creek made tuneful and airy by the charm of distance.

"Having a good time, Mattie?" he asked, with a smile.

"The best I ever had, Will," she answered, smiling back unsteadily. Poor lady! The size of an occasion is so many standards, whether the standard be inches or feet, or miles. Miss Mattie's events had been measured in hundredths of an inch, and it took a good many of them to cover so small an action as a successful picnic on a beautiful night. Her eyes were humid; her mouth smiled and drooped at the corners alternately. Red felt her happiness with a keen sympathy, and as he looked at her, suddenly she changed in his eyes. Just what the difference was he could not have told; nor whether it was in her or in him. A sudden access of feeling, undefinable, unplaceable, but strong, possessed him. There is a critical temperature in the life of a man, when no amount of pressure can ever make the more expansive emotions assume the calmer form of friendship. There was something in Miss Mattie's eye which had warmed Red to that degree, but he didn't know it. He only knew that he wanted to sit rather unnecessarily close beside her, and that he would be sorry when it came time to go home. And he was very silent.