Ladies and GentlemenCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
General
Ladies and Gentlemen
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
Fiction; Short stories, American
The camp dunnage being miraculously bestowed upon the patient backs
of various pack-animals, their expedition moved. They overtook and
passed Dad Wheelis and his crew, caravaning with provender for the
highway contractors on up under the cloud-combing parapet of the Garden
Wail Wall, and behind them heard for a while his frank and aboveboard
reflections upon the immediate ancestries, the present deplorable
traits, the darkened future prospects of his work stock. They swung
away from the rutted wagon track and took the steeper horseback trail
and for hours threaded it like so many plodding ants against the slant
of a tilted bowl. They stopped at midday on a little plateau fixed
so high toward heaven that it was a picture-molding on Creation's
wall above a vast mural of painted buttes and playful cataracts and a
straggling timber-line and two jeweled glaciers.
They stretched their legs and uncramped their backs; they ate and
remounted and on through the afternoon single-filed along the farther
slope where a family herd of mountain-goats browsed among the stones
and paid practically no heed to them. They saw a solitary bighorn
ram with a twisted double cornucopia springing out of his skull and
likewise they saw a pair of indifferent mule-deer and enough landscapes
to fill all the souvenir post-card racks of the world; for complete
particulars consult the official guide-book of Our National Playgrounds.
Evening brought them across a bony hip of the Divide to within sight of
the distant rear boundary of the governmental domain. So they pitched
the tents and coupled up the collapsible stove there in a sheltered
small cove in the Park's back yard and watched the sun go down in his
glory. When the moon rose it was too good to believe. You almost could
reach up and jingle the tambourines of little circling stars; anyhow,
you almost thought you could. It was a magic hour, an ideal place for
love-making among the young of the species. Realizing the which, Mrs.
Gatling had a severe sinking and apprehensive sensation directly behind
the harness buckle on the ample belt which girthed her weary form
amidships. She'd been apprehensive all day but now the sinking was more
pronounced.
She strained at the tethers of her patience though until supper
was over and it was near hushaby-time for the tired forms of the
middle-aged. Within the shelter of their small tent she spoke then to
her husband, touching on the topic so stedfastly uppermost in her brain.
"Oh, Hector," she quavered, "I'm actually beginning to be afraid you're
right. They've been together this livelong day. Neither one of them had
eyes for anything or anybody else. The way he helped her on and off her
horse! The way he fetched and carried for her! And the way she let him
do it! And they're--they're together outside now. Oh, Hector!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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