"For twelve years I have been pretending not to know that you used the hotel soap to do your washing in the bath-tub, and it is a relief to mention it to you.

"And, Miss Gaskett," the deadly coldness of his voice made her shiver, "I doubt if the fuzz under your bed has troubled you as much as the fact that for three summers your cat has had kittens in the linen closet has annoyed me."

The Baltimore widow had his attention:

"It is possible that the drip from your faucet and the squeak in your rocking-chair gets on your nerves, my dear lady, but not more than your daily caterwauling on the hotel piano gets on mine.

"I shall miss your check, certainly, Mr. Appel, but not nearly so much as I shall enjoy the relief from listening to the story of the way you got your start as a 'breaker-boy' in the coal region."

He bowed with the irony of Mephistopheles to Mrs. Budlong:

"Instead of discharging the man with the vacuum cleaner, I shall give him for his large family the cake and fruit you would have carried away from the table in your capacious pocket if you had been here."

His eyes swept them all.

He would have given Mr. Budlong his attention, but that person's vanishing back was all he could see of him, so he turned to the others and shouted:

"Go! The sooner the better. Get out of my sight--the lot of you! I'M GOING TO A REST CURE!"

His hand travelled toward the potato he used as a pen-wiper and there was something so significant in the action when taken in connection with his menacing expression that, without a word, they obeyed him.

CHAPTER XVII

COUNTING THEIR CHICKENS

The "Happy Family" of The Colonial had decided to make up a congenial party and spend the remainder of the summer at the Lolabama Ranch in Wyoming. They were expected on the morrow, everything was in readiness for their coming, and, after supper, down by the corrals Wallie and Pinkey sat on their heels estimating their probable profits.

Pinkey's forehead was furrowed like a corrugated roof with the mental effort as he figured in the dust with a pointed stick while Wallie's face wore a look of absorption as he watched the progress, although he was already as familiar with it as with his multiplication tables.

"Ten head of dudes at $100 a month is a $1,000," said Pinkey. "And twelve months in the year times a $1,000 is $12,000. And, say----"

Wallie interrupted:

"But I've told you a dozen times they all go South in the winter. The most we can count on is two months now and perhaps more next summer."

Pinkey replied confidently:

"You can't figger out ahead what a dude is goin' to do any more than a calf or a sheep. If we treat 'em right and they get stuck on the country they're liable to winter here instead of Floridy. Now, if we could winter--say--ten head of dudes at $150 a month for seven months, that would be $10,500. The trip through the Yellowstone Park and Jackson Hole Country is goin' to be a big item. Ten head of dudes--say--at $5.00 a day for--say--fifteen days is----"

"But you never deduct expenses, Pinkey. It isn't all profit. There's the interest on the investment, interest on the money we borrowed, groceries, the cook's wages, and we'll need helpers through the Yellowstone."

"You're gettin' an awful habit of lookin' on the black side of things,"

said Pinkey, crossly.

"If we can pay expenses and have a $1,000 clear the first year, I'll be satisfied."

"A thousand dollars!" Pinkey exclaimed, indignantly. "You're easy pleased--I thought you had more ambition. Look at the different ways we got to git their money. Two bits apiece for salt water baths and eight baths a day--some of 'em might not go in reg'lar--every day, but, say eight of 'em do, anyway, eight times two bits is $2.00. Then $10.00 apiece every time they go to town in the stage-coach is, say, $100 a trip--and they go twict a week, say, that's $200."

"But they might not go twice a week," Wallie protested, "nor all of them at a time."

"You sh.o.r.e give me the blues a croakin'. Why don't you look on the bright side of things like you useta? Do you know, I've been thinkin' we ought to make out a scale of prices for lettin' 'em work around the place. They'd enjoy it if they had to pay for it--dudes is like that, I've noticed. They're all pretty well fixed, ain't they?"

"Oh, yes, they all have a good deal of money, unless, perhaps Miss Eyester, and I don't know much about her in that way. But Mr. Penrose, Mr. Appel, and Mr. Budlong are easily millionaires."

Pinkey's eyes sparkled.

"I s'pose a dollar ain't any more to them than a nickel to us?"

Wallie endeavoured to think of an instance which would indicate that Pinkey's supposition was correct, but, recalling none, declared enthusiastically:

"They are the most agreeable, altogether delightful people you ever knew, and, if I do say it, they think the world of me."

"That's good; maybe they won't deal us so much grief."

"How--grief?"

"Misery," Pinkey explained.

"I can't imagine them doing anything ill-natured or ill-bred," Wallie replied, resentfully. "You must have been unfortunate in the kind of dudes you've met."

Pinkey changed the subject as he did when he was unconvinced but he was in no mood for argument. He climbed to the top pole of the corral fence and looked proudly at the row of ten-by-twelve tents which the guests were to occupy, at the long tar-paper room built on to the original cabin for a dining room, at the new bunk-house for himself and Wallie and the help, at the shed with a dozen new saddles hanging on their nails, while the ponies to wear them milled behind him in the corral.

His eyes sparkled as he declared:

"We sh.o.r.e got a good dudin' outfit! But it's nothin' to what we _will_ have--watch our smoke! The day'll come when we'll see this country, as you might say, lousy with dudes! So fur as the eye kin reach--dudes!

Nothin' but dudes!" He ill.u.s.trated with a gesture so wide and vigorous that if it had not been for his high heels hooked over a pole he would have lost his balance.

"Yes," Wallie agreed, complacently, "at least we've got a start. And it seems like a good sign, the luck we've had in picking things up cheap."

Instinctively they both looked at the old-fashioned, four-horse stage-coach that they had found sc.r.a.pped behind the blacksmith shop in Prouty and bought for so little that they had quaked in their boots lest the blacksmith change his mind before they could get it home. But their fears were groundless, since the blacksmith was uneasy from the same cause.

They had had it repaired and painted red, with yellow wheels that flashed in the sun. And now, there it stood--the last word in the picturesque discomfort for which dudes were presumed to yearn! They regarded it as their most valuable possession since, at $10.00 a trip, it would quickly pay for itself and thereafter yield a large return upon a small investment.

Neither of them could look at it without pride, and Pinkey chortled for the hundredth time:

"It sh.o.r.e was a great streak of luck when we got that coach!"

Wallie agreed that it was, and added:

"Everything's been going so well that I'm half scared. Look at that hotel-range we got second hand--as good as new; and the way we stumbled on to a first-cla.s.s cook; and my friends coming out--it seems almost too good to be true."

He drew a sigh which came from such contentment as he had not known since he came to the State, for it seemed as if he were over the hard part of the road and on the way to see a few of his hopes realized.

With the money he had collected from Canby he had formed a partnership with Pinkey whereby the latter was to furnish the experience and his services as against his, Wallie's, capital.

Once more the future looked roseate; but perhaps the real source of his happiness lay in the fact that he had seen Helene Spenceley in Prouty a good bit of late and she had treated him with a consideration which had been conspicuously lacking heretofore.