There was the lady who took a walk up a tangled mountain-side to pick flowers, and got lost and kept the whole outfit hunting for her an entire night.
But there were many as well who were good-natured and good sports, whether they had little or much experience in riding and roughing it,—many who acquired here a life-long habit for outdoors.
Having seen all these sorts and conditions of “doods,” we tried not to be vain when Bill introduced us to his friend Curly in these words. The fact that Bill had visited Lewis’, the only place in the Park where there was a saloon, had no effect on our pride, for Bill had tightly kept his opinion to himself, heretofore, and in vino veritas.
“Girls,” he said from his horse, his dignity not a whit impaired because of the purple neck-handkerchief pinned to his Stetson, because “the boys said I didn’t look quite wild enough,”——“Girls, this is Curly. Curly, this is the girls. You’ll like them, Curly, they aint helpless!”
Praise is as sweet to me as to most, but those words of Bill’s, even with the evidence of the bandana, meant more than the wildest flattery.
Of all the “dood-wranglers” in the Park, Bill was possessed of the most whimsical personality. He had been our guide several summers ago, the year the draft bill was passed. Bill always spoke in a slow drawl, his words, unhurried and ceaseless, forming into an unconscious blank verse frequently at odd variance with their import. Could Edgar Lee Masters do better than this?
“I had a legacy from my uncle,
The only one in the fam’ly had money.
They quarreled over the will.
When I got my share