"But she was in the French Revolution. It says so in the guide-book."
"Yes, the waxwork business went to her son, you remember, and this was the grandson's second wife, I think—a perfect angel, anyway. Mother got a job as charwoman at the waxworks. How I remember sitting in a corner all alone behind those weird dead figures! They frightened me horribly at first—in the dark, you know, after closing time—and mother scrubbing the floor down in the Chamber of Horrors."
"Awful place that. Scared me."
"In short frocks," I added by way of local color. "I was only five. And then came the trouble—fingers missing from the statues, and ears and things from the sit-down figures. The management found out that mother was a Kanaka, from the New Hebrides. They shoved her in jail."
"But, why?"
"And mother a Methodist!" I wiped my eyes with my shirt-sleeve, deeply moved, then gulped, and went on bravely. "She'd given up eating such things, but there it was, the suspicion, the doubt—fingers missing, and ears—and the nose of Marie Antionette—the highest I ever reached. You see, it wasn't mother. It was me. It was hereditary." I choked back a sob. "That's why my name's Lemuncher."
Rams became very uneasy. He was broke dead gentle to ride or drive, but shied at cannibals.
From the Columbia crossing up Toby Creek to Paradise Flat we climbed about fourteen miles and, scared as I was of night catching us on that dim trail in the mountains, our horses needed rest. We found a Mexican packer camped with his bunch of burros, keen for a gossip in Spanish, insisting that we share his venison stew. I slacked cinches and introduced Mr. Rams to "a Kanaka friend from the New Hebrides."
"But fancy Kanakas here! What next!"
"Yes," I confessed, "a lot of my mother's people settled here to get away from the missionaries. You see, they eat salt, and it spoils their flavor. We'll stop for dinner and try Kanaka cooking."