The Red Ink Maid

by B. M. Bower

 

The
RED INK MAID

By B. M. Sinclair

(Copied from an old ledger, badly scorched and found lying in the fireplace of a deserted line-camp in the edge of the Badlands, presumable belonging to the 7-Bar outfit.)

Who says a cow-puncher can't keep a diary of his soul-yearnings and his heart's deep pages? That man's a liar, for I'm going to cut loose right now and keep a real sissy-book. I admit I'm some handicapped, right in the start; I regret that I can't let down my back hair and wrap the folds of a pale-blue what-you-may-call-'em around my willowy form. A red and yellow Navajo blanket's the closest I can come; and, being it's my saddle-blanket, it wouldn't cover a quarter of me—seeing I'm six feet and then some. But, barring them drawbacks, I guess I ain't so far outclassed. I've got a book here about the size and color of a side of bacon, and a whole bottle of ink, and a nickel's worth of steel pens; if that don't see me through till spring, there's a lead-pencil—the flat, carpenter kind—in the knife-box, that I'm holding for reserve.

Lord! this is sure a miserable way to put in a winter—feeding poor cows and calves that's on the lift about half the time, and need tailing up regular for their breakfast; and watching water-holes and washing dishes; and studying up new and striking ways of giving vent to my feelings. This here diary's my latest invention; and I've named it on the outside with a piece of hot baling-wire. “My Silent Pardner” is what I call it; and I consider that a swell name for a diary. So, pard, listen to my tale uh woe.

There was an ad in a magazine, the other day, that got me where I live. It started out: “Are you satisfied with your job?” I ain't—not what you can notice; I'm overflowing with pessimessem (let 'er go, pard—but I'd gamble that word could stand some fixing!), and so I answered the ad. I got the answer to-day; and the way they called my bluff was sure amazing. I had to give the names of three solid citizens that know my pedigree—which I done; put down Sheep Charlie, and the old man at the home ranch, and old One Eye—but not by them names, of course. And I had to dig up forty plunks, which I was mighty lucky to have. They're going to give me absent treatment for lame spelling (which I sure need!); and crooked grammar, and how old is Ann, and the like. They guarantee a cure or money refunded, which looks to me like a square deal. I'm going to put up a mail-box over on the stage trail; and old One Eye has promised faithful he'd stick my doses of learning into it.

Say! when I come up out of this coulée in the spring, oozing language out of every pore, I guess, maybe, the boys won't go in the air none—eh? I had my choice on a lot of brands, but I bid for grammar, spelling, orthography, and oratory. If I can wise up this winter like they say I can, I'll just turn on the oratory in round-up, pard; and then watch the boys turn handsprings backward. Pard, you watch my smoke. Before long I'll be able to indite these pages with a flow of words that'll sure put a crimp in your spine.... Eh-awh!... You're dull company, pard—maybe because you're so harmless. I'm going to turn in, if you ask me. But I'll keep 'er a-going—if the ink-bottle don't freeze and bu'st, some of these balmy nights. Guess I'll take it to bed with me—how's that? So-long, pard.

 

I never dated that last outpouring—but I think it was somewhere's about the middle of November. That's the worst fault you've got, pard. You don't know a cussed thing but what I tell you; so they's no use asking you what day it was. Anyway, this is some time after—and if you ask me how many days, I'll likely lie about it—because I don't know.

Got my first dose of wisdom, pard, and say! they didn't do a thing but send a string of questions from here to Bent Willow for me to answer. I guess they aimed to find out just how wide and deep is my sea of ignorance; and how long it's going to take to wipe it off the map. It made me think of the district-school examinations I used to lay under dad's barn to get away from. It was all typewrote; and you are supposed to be put on your honor as a gentleman not to ask no help from anybody. I'm sure safe from cheating at this game, pard—with fifteen miles of unharrowed country between here and the home ranch. Clem Ralston's dead honest; and no cards up his sleeve. His own think-works grappled, unaided, with these—— Now, look at this one! “What is an article? How many are there? Name them.”

I'll tell you what I done, pard. I named over pretty near every article in the shack, including two frying-pans, and told 'em to come again and I'd complete the list. I guess that'll hold 'em for awhile.

I got to quit you, pard, and buckle down to the rest of them fool questions. I never did have much use for grammar, but I've got forty plunks in this game, and I'll have 'em jumping sidewise, back there, but what I'll get the worth of my money out of 'em. I'd like to be cached in a corner when that bunch of answers rolls in! So-long, pard. You're sure all right, in some ways. You're blame quiet—but then you don't never interrupt, nor contradict what I say; nor bum me for cigarette papers or tobacco. I've held down camps with worse fellows than you; and that's no dream. I wish I'd invented you before; you beat solitaire hands down.

 

Say, pard, what do you think? I like to 'a' fell dead when I got my bunch of answers back to-day. They was corrected right up to par, all right—all hashed up with red ink. And the Lord have mercy, pard—it was a woman! I can tell by her fine, scrimpy writing. And you know what I done when I come to the interjection question? I let my mind kinda run on that red cow that had got down on the ice and wouldn't get up—to be sure, the poor brute couldn't—and kept fighting me when I went to help. And on the strength of those memories, I handed out a bunch of interjections that fair made the paper smoke. The fact is, I made a damfool business of it all around. And what do you think she wrote along the edge of them cuss words? She wrote—so fine I like to turned cross-eyed reading it—“My strenuous young friend, we do not carry a line of asbestos for the use of our pupils. Have you no sulfurous interjections in your vocabulary? Try again, please.” That's it, word for word; and she drawed a line under the please, pard.

So I combed my hair and put on a clean tie—I hadn't fixed up none the other time; but, seeing I was dealing with a lady, it looked more polite—and I wrote interjections that she ought to like: “Oh! ah! indeed! good land! the idea!” and “Oh, fudge!” What do you suppose she'll say to that bunch, pard? I wonder if she'll laugh? Or maybe she's one of them stern, four-eyed damsels that takes life seven times more serious than a Hard-shell Baptist. No, I guess she don't, either. That little red ink spiel sounds like she could take a joke; don't it, pard? “My strenuous young friend, we don't carry a line of asbestos——” no, sir, no four-eyed old maid would write like that! and I'll gamble on it. So-long, pard. We'll wait and see what she says.

 

Mister! it's a long ways from here to New York. I'll bet old One Eye has lost my long envelope—and if he has, he'd better send in his last words to his mother, for I'll sure wipe him off the face of Montana. Pard, you're no good. Why don't you say something? I guess it's solitaire for yours truly to-night. I'd sure like to know what the Red Ink Maid thought when she cast her optics over my last bunch of answers to her leading questions. She writes a mighty pretty hand; little and even and plain as print. I guess I'll do a few stunts on your back, pard, if you don't object. I want to practise some before I send her anything more. I used to think I wrote good enough. I've got too blame careless and out of practise these last three or four years. It's a wonder she could read what I wrote, that first time. I thought it was a man I was addressing, so I didn't take much pains—just scratched it off any old way. There's about forty thousand more pages of you, pard, than I'll ever need for the deep pages of my heart (I read that somewheres, and it sure sounds good in a diary), so I'll just get down to biz, and see if I can't make marks that don't bear such a close resemblance to snow-bird tracks. So-long.

 

It's snowing to beat four of a kind. If old One Eye don't get his stage through to-morrow, I'll sure report the old cuss. I wonder if he did hold out my mail last time; it'd be just like him—the old horse-thief. A man that'll hold out mail on a fellow ought to be sent up for life. Hanging's too good for a man like that. I'll just give him till to-morrow night; and if he don't make good there'll be something doing out on the Bent Willow trail, now I'm telling you! So-long, pard. I got the blues bad to-night.

 

Well, I got my mail all right; but I froze my nose plumb solid waiting for old One Eye to come along. He's sure the slowest son-of-a-gun in seven States. She didn't distribute quite so much red ink around over my pages this time. I got down to business, and done the best I could remember. Lord, what a lot of time a kid wastes in school, learning things he chucks out of his mind soon as he gets out mixing with the real things of life! I made mistakes that I wouldn't 'a' been guilty of when I was a kid—but, on the whole, I guess I stacked up better than she expected I would, judging from my first play. She wrote on the edge again—alongside the interjections. Here's what she said: “These interjections would not hurt any one's feelings, I'm sure. You must have attended a Young Ladies' Seminary.” Now, what do you think of that? She wanted 'em mild; and now she's got 'em, she don't seem real satisfied. Say, she does write a pretty hand! I'll bet she's about twenty-one, and has got brown eyes—the kind that shines—and a dimple in her right cheek. For two cents I'd write and ask her. What do you think, pard? Think she'd tell me to mind my lessons and never mind the teacher? Darn this long-distance school-teaching! I wisht they'd send her out here to hear my lessons; it's plumb sinful to waste postage-stamps like this. I've got to send in by One Eye and get some more—about a dollar's worth. But there's one thing I am going to do, pard, if it bu'sts the thing up right here. I'm going to write that Red Ink Damsel a nice little letter, and explain them interjections. (I'd gamble she's got brown eyes, all right—and a dimple.) I'm going to tell her that the first bunch—that smelled so rank of brimstone—was inspired by a big red cow that got down on the ice and decided she'd stay right there and wait for a chinook. And I'll tell her the mild bunch was caused by her criticism of the first ones. I wonder how that'll strike her. If she knew the way I live—wouldn't she open them big brown eyes? For two cents I'd give her a deal about it—or, say! what's the matter of drawing a picture of me tailing up that red cow—just to illustrate them first interjections? That's the stuff! I can draw a pretty good sketch when I try—only, I forgot; I haven't got a pencil—unless I use that flat one in the knife-box. And—lemme see. I'll draw one of me reading her red remarks on the edge of my paper—and I won't say a cussed word! That'll keep her guessing some. That's what—I'll make the pictures do the talking. Sure, she can't get offended at a couple of little sketches, can she, pard?

 

Pard, I'm learning fast. Can't you see how my writing's improved? I sure let you stay under my bed a long time—'most a month, I guess. Lemme see; oh, I was just going to draw those (my Red Ink Maid got after me fierce for saying them. She's sure strict with a fellow) those pictures. Well, she savvied, all right—the little scamp! She drawed one herself, and sent it along inside my corrected lesson. It was a peaked-nosed, four-eyed female, built like a match—and the hair was drawed—no, drawn, that's it—in red ink. And she was laying back in a faint—or else it was hysterics—with a lesson in her hands—and I guess it was my first bunch of interjections, because the smoke was rising up from the pages in a cloud! You bet it's all right, pard—as a joke. But she needn't think I'm going to accept that as a speaking likeness of her—my money's still up on the brown eyes and the dimple; and little white hands and a smily red mouth. If she don't look out, I'll tell her so, some of these days. Her peaked-nose, and lanky and four-eyed? Not on your life! Pard, she can't load me that way. I've sent her quite a bunch of sketches, that tells the awful story of my life in pretty good shape—if it don't sound too swell-headed for me to say so. And I keep my lessons right up to par, you bet! I don't want her to think I'm as boneheaded as I let on that first time I went up against the game. She sure come back at me about them—those articles. So I sent her a picture of my shack—one where I was frying bacon with a cigarette in my face and my hat on the back of my head (but, really, pard, you know yourself I'm a swell housekeeper, and never smoke when I'm cooking; I just drew the cigarette in for a josh), and one where I was poring over my lessons, with my overcoat on and a cap pulled over my ears, and the breath coming out of my nostrils like the exhaust of a steam-engine. And a lot more on the same plan—me where I was holding up old One Eye with a gun, and making him fork over my mail. I had it labeled “Grammar,” so she couldn't think I was taking his roll. I ain't no highwayman, and I don't want her to get that impression of me, either, because—well, never you mind, pard, I hate to see even a diary get too blamed curious about a man's feelings.

My mail-box is drifted plumb full of snow, pard. I'm sure interested in—grammar. Most always I meet old One Eye two or three miles down the trail, so's to see how many mistakes I made last time. You bet your sweet life little brown eyes don't overlook any mistakes! She's got her little red ink tab on every flaw—if it ain't any more than a t that I never thought to cross. She's sure strict—that little maid. If she knew she was pointing out the mistakes of a great, overgrown son-of-a-gun like me—— But I always draw Little Willy with his hat-crown grazing the ceiling, just to give her a hint of my size. Maybe, though, she takes it the other way, and thinks the shack's about as deep as a hotel pie. Mister! I never thought of that; maybe I'd better send my actual dimensions in figures—only she might get to thinking I'm stuck on my shape; and I ain't—not unless she was; and then I don't say but what I might get some nifty over my six-feet-two, and straight as a ramrod. I wonder if she likes black hair that waves quite a bit; and blue eyes. Gee! that sure sounds silly, don't it? So-long, pard—I'm threatened with softening of the brain, I guess. I'll go stick my head in a snow-bank, and then go to bed. It's kinda funny, though—I'm always dreaming things about that Red Ink Maid. I wonder if she——

 

Jerusalem and little fishes! It's blizzarding—the worst I ever saw; and I spent two winters in North Dakota. Old One Eye never'll make it to-day—and I couldn't find the trail to waylay him if he did. The little maid'll wonder what's the matter if I don't get a lesson off day after to-morrow, when One Eye comes back. But if he don't get down to Bent Willow, he can't come back, see?

Curse a country like this! I wonder if a fellow couldn't do pretty well in New York with what stake I've got laid up. If I sold out my bunch of horses—I know where I could place them, easy—I could scare up five thousand, I guess. That wouldn't be a drop in the bucket back there, though. I wonder—if she—but this ain't any country for a woman like her—educated like she is—and smart——

 

I take back all the mean things I said about old One Eye. That old boy is sure all right! He pulled in here last night just before dark with both hands frosted bad; and his nose as white as a lump of dough. He had my mail, all right. I sure got up a good supper for him—opened up my last can of apricots, that I've been saving for some event worth celebrating; a chinook, for instance. He stayed all night, which was some awkward, seeing I had to talk to him, and couldn't do more than sneak a look at my lesson—and what she wrote. You'd think, pard, a man that's held down a line camp all by his little lonesome for three months would be tickled to death to have a garrulous party like One Eye to share his supper and bed. But I wasn't none overjoyed, only plain grateful for my mail, which I'd give up looking for. Now the Red Ink Maid won't have to wait for a whack at my weak points on grammar and spelling. I asked her once how many gazabos she was leading into the straight and narrow path of correct English, like she was me. She said—well, never mind what she said—but she gave me to understand, anyway, that she wasn't drawing pictures promiscuous; nor scribbling little joshes on the margins of the bunch. It's straight business with all comers—except yours truly. I ain't real handsome, nor rich—but I'm sure a lucky devil! So-long, pard. I've got a five-hundred-word essay to write. Teacher said so. I guess I'll make it a parable, and tell her a lot of things I wouldn't dare to say straight out. She ain't so slow—she can savvy if she wants to; and answer accordingly. And if she don't want to, she can pass it up—— If she does, though——

 

Pard, I may as well own up, first as last. My essay—oh, well, I done what sure took plenty of gall; I asked the Red Ink Maid to marry me—and I don't even know her name! But she suits me, all right, just the way she is—no name but Red Ink Maid; and no picture but what I've got in my mind. I don't count those comic valentine ones she's always sending. If she was ugly—on the dead—she'd draw 'em so's they'd flatter her. Oh, I never had much experience with love, but I know human nature. I know she's good to look at, or she wouldn't make such all-fired ugly pictures of herself.

Anyway, I done the square thing this time. I didn't depict my own countenance for her to judge me by. I sent her a photograph—and I will say it's a peach. Natural as life; and I told her so. She may think I'm stuck on myself, but I ain't to blame if the Lord saw fit to give me features and hair. I never thought much about it before—but now I'm grateful to Him—and that's no dream. Maybe she'll like me better this way; and that's what counts from now on. The photograph was too wide for the envelopes they furnish; but I trimmed it down with my jack-knife so it would fit. I told her straight up that I loved her. I do all right—and I don't give a darn if folks do call me locoed loving a girl I've never even saw. I know her, all right. She's true blue, and sensible, and jolly; she suits me, all right. She's just the sort I could make a chum of and never get tired of; and work for and settle down with. I don't care if she ain't really pretty, or if her eyes are blue, maybe, instead of brown. But I can't say I'm much stuck on blue eyes, as a general thing; mine are blue. Still, I won't kick over a little thing like that.

And she's right there with the goods when it comes to brains or education. She told me she has to correct the papers of most a hundred seekers after wisdom; and all winter I've never caught her overlooking any mistakes I made. She holds me right up to the mark, let me tell you; and she marks me just what I've earned. Friendly as we've got to be, she's never showed no mercy when it comes to keeping tally. I get what's coming to me—and not a grain more. Do you know, I like that. It shows she'd be sensible and just, right through the game. She ain't one of the sentimental sort; nor the shifty sort that gets spiteful and does things just to be onery. I know, for I tried her on that. I drew a picture of her marking up my lesson once—and I made her out ten times worse than she ever did herself. She never got mad, though. She got back at me in a picture—the darndest-looking jay you ever saw she made me out. And she went right on keeping tab on me just the same—just as strict, and no stricter. I know how mean a teacher could be—for I found I was up against a narrow-minded cuss in the oratory game. He's a man, and a regular old maid kind of man, too. He'll get on the peck at something I say in my speeches—takes 'em personal, whether they're meant that way or not—and cuts and slashes 'em to beat the deuce. Oratory's no fun, anyway. I've kind of dropped that, and put my mind to the English lessons—and to the English teacher, I may as well admit.

Pard, what do you suppose she'll say? She must like me a little, or she wouldn't have got so chummy this winter. Don't it look that way to you? And if she had a fellow back there, it don't look to me like she'd have acted just the way she has done with me; it wouldn't be giving neither one of us a square deal. She ain't a flirt—leastways, that ain't the way I've got her sized up. If she was, she'd 'a' gone further, don't you see? She had a chance to say heaps of things that she didn't say. She would have gone further, though, if she was a bit flirty in her ways. I don't call it flirting the way we've been going on. She's never said a thing that a perfect lady wouldn't say. And if she looks at it the way I do, she won't think I'm a fresh kind of gazabo, either. She'll see I'm honest, anyway. Well, if she'll take chances on me, I'm sure willing to do the same with her. I guess we stand even there. She knows me just as well as I do her, only she does know my name, and I don't hers. Well, pard—it's up to her. So-long.

 

Pard! Pard!

I've done to-day what I never done before since I went to punching cows; and that was when I was a kid. I most died trying to keep from laughing. It's something a man can't talk about, but this diary business of setting down your thoughts as they come to you certainly is a habit. I've got so I have to write whatever's on my mind. It's kind of like telling a friend all your troubles that you know won't go shooting off his mouth about it: afterward.

I heard from Her. It didn't come with the grammar lesson this time, but in a separate envelope. Pard, she likes me—she didn't say so, just like that, but if she hadn't liked me a heap, 'most as much as I do her, she'd never 'a' wrote the way she did. It was the sorriest letter I ever read, pard. Oh, it sounds foolish for a cow-puncher like me to go on like that. But she's all alone in the world, and she was educated in an orphan's home. Think of that! Never had any folks, nor any real home—just like a chicken that's raised in one of these big wooden brooders, and kept warm with lamps stuck underneath, instead of snuggling under its mother's wing, and her cr-r-rr-ing to it.

It was sure sorrowful, pard, that little letter, all wrote out on lesson-paper, so 'twould look familiar, in that cheerful red ink we'd been playing with, like as if we'd been a couple of children making mud pies. No, I won't show it to you, even, you dog-eared, broken-backed old silent pardner—except just as much as I darn please; and that part won't be the beginning nor the end of the letter—not by a long shot. Those sections are for the exclusive use of my Red Ink Maid and me; and if you're wise for your years, pard, you won't press me further. But on along from this page here I'll let you in, considering the way you stood by me in the blizzard; and your interest, without crowding me none, in my education.

——So you see, Clem, dear, it is all quite impossible. Because a man who can look with his heart in his eyes, the way you look out of that photograph (even that stiff pose and crude finish and glazed card couldn't spoil you entirely, you see,) would never want to look at me. I'm sending my photograph in the sealed package enclosed. Oh, how I wish I wasn't such a plain, meager, little thing, just like my handwriting, that's always so economical of paper. Maybe being brought up in a charity school makes me afraid that both myself and my letters will be unwelcome if we take up too much space in the world.

But the photograph won't tell you the worst. It's been the temptation of a lifetime to let it go without an explanation, but I won't. Only promise that you'll look at it—a good long look, dear—before you turn it over and read what's written on the back.

Maybe you surmise just how long it took me to slit open that flat little package, regardless of old One Eye sitting there, more intent on my business than on anything that ever occurred on his claim. Well, pard, it's Saturday night, and you've tried all the week to be good, and so I'll let you have a peek. How does that photograph affect you? Slim, ain't she, as but all curves, that she neglected to mention, from the line of her topknot to the tips of her shoes. Delicate arms. Not much strength in them, hey? But perhaps you'll be kind enough to observe the dimple in the wrist. And the gown—I suppose it's just some kind of white cotton; and like enough she made it herself, being naturally talented; but don't she wear it like a duchess—she that calls herself a charity child?

Don't it make your old leather cheeks kind of moist, pard, to hear a girl with a face like that talk about always having been lonely? Why, her face—haven't I mentioned her face? She's got the sweetest face God ever gave a woman—big, wistful eyes that make your own eyes water to look into, even on paper. How she could josh and devil a man, with them eyes in her head, is a plumb mystery to me. And they're brown. I'll swear to it. And the sweetest little mouth; droopy at the corners—and no wonder, with the deal she's had to go up against. And her hair waves as much as mine does; but hers curls soft and pretty round her forehead—say, her forehead is pretty! A man would want to plant a kiss on it pretty frequent—and on that droopy little mouth.

While my eyes were on hers, I plumb forgot her telling me to read what she'd written on the back of the photograph. But old One Eye brought me out of my trance, tilting forward to catch a squint for his share. So I twisted the card over in the palm of my hand, and I see:

Oh, Clem, Clem, do you think my hair is pretty, because, you see, it's curly and soft and fair, and there's loads of it? With the light shining on it that way, I suppose you think it's golden. Clem, it isn't. It's snow-white. I don't know why, but it began to turn when I was seventeen, and now there isn't a brown hair left. Maybe it is the result of the privations of my childhood, and my griefs and loneliness. Anyway, my hair isn't like a young wife's; it's like, yes, I will say it, it's like an old maid's. Oh, Clem Ralston, the only man I've ever loved, I know you wouldn't care for me, now you know. So good by, good-by.

I whirled that card over again; and, sure enough, the hair, tossed up in that high-stepping way, with a black velvet lariat round it, was for all the world like some pictures a guy showed me once of foreign ladies who never went into society unless their hair was covered as thick with powder as the prairie with a snow-squall. Then it all came before me like a magic-lantern view; and I could just see her, with her brown eyes, and those pen-and-ink eyebrows; her cheeks flushing like an early rose; the soft mouth with a dimple at each corner, instead of a sorrowful droop. There she was, the loveliest creature on this footstool, crying her eyes out, and scaring me so that a cattle stampede was child's play—and all because her hair is like moonlight instead of sunlight——

As I've said before, I thought I'd pass away, trying to keep from bu'sting out laughing, with old One Eye staring me out of countenance. And, naturally, one can't laugh at a lady in the presence of others—not in Montana, that is. Bless her pretty head! I'm plumb glad, pard, that it ain't a schoolmarm, or an angel, either, that I'm marrying, but a Real Woman.

I tell you right now, pard, your hours are numbered. I'm going to pitch you, head first, into the fireplace in a minute. And I'm going to roll my bed and hit the sod for the home ranch, and draw my time, and catch the first train for New York. I'm going to get that little maid, and show her that she's got a whole lifetime of happiness to her credit; and I'm her banker. I'll take that droop out of her mouth and make it smily, like it ought to be, or——

I'm going to marry her before another week rolls round—and the bunch of wisdom-seekers can hunt another teacher. I'm going to get my learning right at home. Home! do you hear that, pard? I know where I can get a peach of a ranch for sixteen hundred—right on the edge of a pretty creek, and with a grove back of the house. Pard, I hate to quit you, but my time's limited. You've done your part.... Now I'm going to do mine. So-long.