“What the devil does that mean?” Walter growled, and I lit into the camp and brought out my telescope, and in half a minute it was on the canoe.
“Two guides—don’t know ’em,” I reported. And then I shrieked in agony, “For cat’s sake—for cat’s sake!”
Walter got excited. “Who is it—what is it?” he threw at me.
“That’s what I say,” answered I. “Who is it? what is it? It’s, a, straw, hat!”
“A straw hat?” Walter repeated, dazed-like.
For, you see, nature may abhor a vacuum, but I’m willing to bet she doesn’t abhor it a patch on the way she does a stiff hat. And there it sat in the middle of nature, the lake gurgling around; dingy, regulation guides dipping paddles bow and stern; outraged mountains rising up green and sanctified at the horizon; and, in the centre of the stage, a shiny straw hat. It was too much. I dropped the glass and doubled with too-muchness. And Walter glued an eye to the lookout.
“It’s a straw hat,” he admitted, and reserved judgment, and went down to the dock, me following in all maidenly modesty.
In five minutes more the canoe’s nose ran up the bank to our feet. We “bon jour-ed” the guides, and then the hat was lifted respectfully and a lanky figure of a man arose to his feet and stood wobbling. The guides tried to keep the boat steady, but he lurched at the dock and slopped over. His forefoot went into some quite wet lake which we kept there—Canadian canoes aren’t meant for doing the tango. Walter and I snitched as one man at him, and yanked him landward, but in the enthusiasm of salvage his eye-glasses jumped him, and according to the law of gravity made for a crack in the dock. And somebody—said to be me—knocked off his lid. It took to the deep and bobbed away riding a wave, and Auguste, the guide, had to depêche like sin to fish it in with a paddle. It was an eventful landing for that sandy-haired youth, as we discovered him to be on the escape of the hat. He squished water sorrowfully out of the yellowest low shoes I ever saw, and you couldn’t cheer him even when I set his crown back on him and picked up his glasses. He just pulled off his hat promptly and gazed at it like an anxious mother and squished more lake out of his yellow foot, and clucked softly—I don’t know how to spell the noise, but it was a kind of a regretful cluck. Finally he got his glasses rubbed and his hat wiped, and Walter and I volubly offered him dozens of shoes, though I knew we’d have to short-come on the color. With the most exquisite courtesy we walked him up-stairs over the muddy little precipice of a trail to the camp, and sat him in the red rocker, and offered him whiskey. But he wouldn’t. Heavings, Maud! No. Not for him. So we fed him Jamaica ginger and hot water, which I prefer myself, if there’s sugar in it. And behold! he smiled like a split in a potato and arrived at the next station.
“I beg you will pardon me, Judge Morgan. I have been disturbed a little by these unfortunate accidents. I have forgotten to explain my presence in your hospitable camp. My name is Spafford. I am head clerk in the office of Bush, Engelhardt & Clarkson. I come from Mr. Engelhardt, Judge Morgan.”
“Huh!” grunted Walter in a sweet way he has, like a cross codfish.