The Grub-And-Stakers Pinch a Poke (3 page)

“How dastardly!”

“Oh, it’s all that and then some,” Osbert agreed. “The boss, who’s none other than Dan McGrew, fires the feedbag man and blackens his reputation so that nobody else will hire him. This is before unemployment insurance, remember, so the family’s financial situation soon becomes desperate. One dark and stormy night, the exfeedbag man scrapes together what money he has and leaves it in a pathetic little heap on the washstand, along with a note explaining that he’s going to the Yukon to seek his fortune in the gold fields and will return to his loved ones as soon as he’s panned out his pile.”

“How brave, and how sad,” sighed Dittany.

“Cheer up, darling, it gets worse. McGrew, who has long lusted in his black heart after the beauteous Louisa, starts putting the moves on. Needless to say, Louisa spurns his caddish advances, so he has to resort to sinister wiles.”

“He would.” Dittany fluttered a few more pages. “He sounds to me like just the type.”

“Oh, McGrew’s a Grade A rotter, no question about that. Do you know what he does next?”

Dittany might have taken a shrewd guess, but she wasn’t about to stem the flow of Osbert’s creative juices. “No dear, what?”

“He sells his horsecar business to the hated rival, who has by now repented of his wickedness and vows henceforth to make sure the horses get their daily carrots, which he had quit giving them under McGrew’s evil influence. Then McGrew promises Louisa he’ll take her to the Yukon to find her beloved husband.”

“And she falls for this fiendish ruse?”

“Consider her position, darling. She’s spent her pittance to buy bread and milk for her sweet little daughter. They’ve had to sell Evangeline’s piano and the landlady’s threatening to turn them out in the snow. I thought Zilla Trott might be good as the landlady. It’s a cameo role but one Zilla could really sink her teeth into. So anyway, Louisa unravels her best flannel petticoat to knit Evangeline a warm cap and mittens, and off they go to the Yukon.”

“Osbert,” cried Dittany, “I never fully realized the depth of your creative genius. This positively tears at the hearstrings.”

“Do you really think so, darling?” Osbert’s self-satisfied smirk indicated that he thought so, too. “So that’s the first scene. Or maybe the first and second. Don’t you think it might be a fine dramatic touch to drop the curtain after the feedbag man writes his pathetic note, kisses his fair wife and winsome wee one as they sleep, and staggers off, grief-stricken but resolute, into the night?”

“Terrific, darling. And you could begin the second scene with the as yet unrepentant rival taunting the poor, tired horses by eating a carrot in front of them and not giving them any.”

“I’m not quite sure we ought to bring in the horses, precious. I’ve got to shove in all that attempted seduction business, remember, and the landlady giving Louisa and Evangeline the heave-ho and McGrew twirling his big black mustache in a villainous and lustful manner while he promises to take them to the Yukon. Then there’s the gripping moment while they’re packing up their few remaining bits and pieces and saying good-bye to the landlady’s cat.”

“Why the landlady’s cat? Couldn’t they have a faithful dog who’s their one stay and comfort throughout their tragic ordeal?”

“You mean Ethel?” Osbert pondered. “I was sort of planning to powder her fur and use her for a polar bear when we get to the Yukon. But your idea’s better, darling. The feedbag man can shake Ethel’s paw in the parting scene and have a wrenching little chat with her about guarding his loved ones while he slogs through the frozen wastes in quest of the precious metal that will restore thenruined fortunes. Only mightn’t Ethel bite Dan McGrew while he’s striving to force his unwelcome attentions on Louisa?”

“She won’t realize what Dan’s up to because she has such a guileless, trusting nature. Ethel’s not terribly b-r-i-g-h-t about some things, you have to admit.”

Dittany spelled out the word because Ethel happened to be taking a postprandial snooze under their feet at this very moment, and she wouldn’t for anything have hurt the stay and comfort’s feelings.

“That’s true enough,” Osbert conceded. “Any dog that could manage to fall in love with a-“

“Shh. Don’t reopen old wounds.”

They’d gone through a painful month or so last summer when Ethel had formed an ill-conceived and unreciprocated tendresse for a woodchuck. That was all behind her now and best forgotten.

“So what happens next to Louisa and Evangeline?” Dittany went on briskly. “Do you show them riding in the train or the oxcart or whatever?”

“No, we flash directly to the Malamute saloon, of which Dan McGrew is now the proprietor. He’s seated stage left, rear, cheating himself at solitaire. Watching him is the feedbag man’s wife, still chaste and loyal but gaudily painted and bedizened and contemptuously referred to as Lou by the roistering miners clustered about the bar. And dear little Evangeline, the erstwhile darling of her vanished father’s heart, whom he may even now be envisioning in their once happy home playing Til Be With You When the Roses Bloom Again’ is perched at the tinpanny old piano, hitting a jagtime tune.”

“She’s the kid that handles the music box!” cried Dittany. “Osbert dearest, is there no limit to your powers of invention?”

“There hadn’t better be, pardner,” Osbert replied soberly, “or you may wind up rattling the music box over at Andy McNaster’s inn.”

Dittany started, and looked up at the big old schoolhouse clock that hung since long before she could remember over the black iron stove. “Speaking of that moderately unpleasant subject, dearest, what time are we supposed to pick up your Aunt Arethusa?”

Dittany’s question was less irrelevant than might appear. Ever since the previous August, and it was now the succeeding December, the once most hated man in Lobelia Falls had been laying siege to Arethusa Monk’s affections. So far McNaster had made little headway and that little only because Arethusa, after her long steeping in the field of roguish regency romance, was a sucker for a reformed rake.

Andrew McNaster did seem to be sincere in his efforts to clean up his act, as Desdemona Portley might have expressed it. He was still showering endless benefactions in the way of free carpentry and plumbing repairs on the Aralia Polyphema Architrave Museum.

According to informed sources like Roger Munson, who always knew eveything, Andy had quit cutting corners in both his contracting business and his innkeeping and was running both enterprises in strict conformity with every code and regulation he could find to conform to.

Whether anybody in Lobelia Falls believed McNaster had actually turned over a new leaf or was merely laying down a smoke screen to cover some piece of chicanery even more devious and dire than his previous coups depended on how seriously the townsfolk took their personal commitments to peace on earth and goodwill toward men. Osbert at this juncture was not disposed to pass judgment on his aunt’s unlikely swain one way or the other. He was merely looking stricken.

“Dittany, did you have to bring up Aunt Arethusa just when I’m in the midst of writing my first play?”

“But you have the plot all worked out, dearest. All you have to do now is get the feedbag man into the saloon and hold the shootout.”

“You talk as if it were a mere bagatelle. Don’t you realize creative writing is the hardest work there is?”

“Yes, love,” said Dittany, “you’ve told me lots of times. That’s why I think you ought to take a break. Would you mind looking in your little notebook and seeing what flight Arethusa’s coming in on? You wrote it down when we took her to the airport, remember?”

“But if I tell you when she’s coming, you’ll start agitating to meet the plane,” Osbert protested.

“You did promise we’d pick her up,” his wife reminded him.

“That was when I was temporarily dazzled by the prospect of being rid of her for a week. Promises made in a state of euphoric delirium don’t count.”

“All right, dear,” she said. “If you really don’t want to, I’ll go myself.”

“Drive alone for hours and hours along a lonely road on a dark and gloomy night with a blizzard coming on?” he howled. “Not by a jugful you won’t.”

“Darling, it’s ten o’clock in the morning and clear as a bell. The highway’s dry, the airport’s precisely two hours and three minutes away, and we haven’t seen a snowflake for a week.”

“Then the weather’s due for a change and you’re not going without me. That’s final.”

“But we can’t leave Arethusa stranded.”

“In my opinion, it’s the only sensible thing to do.”

Of course Osbert didn’t mean that. After a certain amount of searching for his notebook, which turned up at last in the pocket of his beaded buckskin vest, he found the page where he’d written down that his aunt’s plane was due in at thirteen minutes past one o’clock, and even squandered a long distance call to make sure the flight was on time. It probably wouldn’t be, but there wasn’t much he could do about that.

There wasn’t all that much time to get ready, either. Dittany put on her new blue-green suit that matched her blue-green eyes, her camel-hair coat and beret that went so well with her blond-brown hair, and the high-heeled boots she never got to wear much around Lobelia Falls because Lobelia Falls wasn’t that kind of place. Osbert would have liked to wear the Stetson hat and cowboy boots Arethusa hated; but they weren’t comfortable to drive in so he settled for his clomping-around boots, his buckskin jacket with the six-inch thrums, and a multicolored Laplander hat that came up to little horns fore and aft.

“I wish I had time to grow a beard,” he said fretfully.

“You can grow a beard tomorrow.” Dittany straightened his horns for him. “There, you look just lovely. We really ought to get started. Have you any money in case Arethusa wants lunch? She’ll be starved after that long flight, don’t you think? Or will they have fed her on the plane?”

“She’ll be hungry anyway,” snarled Osbert. “She’s always hungry.

Come on, Ethel, let’s find something smelly for you to roll in. Then you can sit next to dear old Auntie.”

“Ethel, you know better even if Daddy doesn’t,” Dittany chided.

“Wipe your paws before you get into the car, that’s a good girl. Do you want to drive, Osbert, or would you rather curl up in the back seat and have a good cry?”

“Oh, I’ll do it. I don’t know why people go around saying it’s always the woman who suffers.” He flung himself into the driver’s seat, untangled his car keys from his thrums, and started the motor.

The Monks had a brand-new ranch wagon, purchased less than two weeks ago to celebrate Osbert’s having sold a book to the movies. Maverick Malamute (to be released as Pulsing Passion) was a gripping tale of the frozen north in which Ethel, thinly disguised as a dauntless sled dog, rounded up a gang of yak rustlers virtually single-pawed after her temporarily snowblind master fell into a seal hole and froze his mukluks.

She’d rescued him and nursed him through the crisis, of course, but he was still convalescing on ptarmigan soup when the rustlers happened along and took advantage of his weakened condition, little re Jking what sort of dog they were up against. The movie producer was planning to replace the malamute with a trick poodle, turn the hero into a heroine, switch the setting to Palm Springs, and substitute alpacas for the yaks, but Osbert had been solemnly assured that the basic thrust of his story would be meticulously retained.

Anyway, they hadn’t chosen the ranch wagon out of any illusion that the Henbit-Monk homestead on Applewood Avenue resembled the old Bar-None, but simply because the wagon had plenty of room in back for Ethel to stretch out and be comfortable. She probably enjoyed her ride to the airport more than either of her companions did. Osbert chafed to be back at his typewriter shooting it out with Dan McGrew, and Dittany was filled with a dire foreboding as to what Arethusa was going to think of having been committed in absentia to the Scottsbeck drama festival. Since neither of them felt like talking, they turned on the car radio to a station that played mostly bagpipe music and skirled into the airport to the poignant strains of “Macrimmon’s Lament,” which seemed appropriate enough.

After a fair amount of sorting out, they located the gate where Arethusa’s plane was alleged to be coming in, and stood around.

Other people were standing around, too. Lost in their own thoughts, Dittany and Osbert didn’t pay much attention to their costandees, but Ethel did. She checked them over one by one, then she growled. This was unlike Ethel, who usually had a wag and a whoofle for just about anybody. Startled, Dittany took a firmer grip on her leash and glanced around to ascertain what ill-bred child had taken a notion to swing on the nice doggie’s tail.

There was no child. There was, however, a large, red-cheeked man running a little to flesh. His black hair was slicked down, no doubt with some expensive he-man slickum. His blue overcoat was brushed to a fare-thee-well, his boots positively glittered. His arms were fully occupied with a huge bouquet of white chrysanthemums and what could only be a two-kilogram box of expensive chocolates.

The box was covered in gold paper and had a multi-looped red bow on it that he was trying hard not to squash. When he caught Dittany’s eye, he gave her a nervous smile.

She smiled nervously back and gave Osbert a surreptitious nudge. “Don’t look now, darling, but guess who’s here.”

“Why shouldn’t I look if I choose to?” Osbert was still cherishing his snit.

“Because your jaw would drop.”

“I could pick it up.” Suddenly Osbert’s lips twitched upward in a knowing little grin. “Darling, you don’t mean it’s the lovesick swain?”

“Don’t I, though? Andy’s got a bunch of flowers with him that would choke a horse.”

“He must have stopped on his way and robbed a cemetery.”

“And a big box of fancy chocolates.”

“Snatched from an infant in its pram, no doubt. I wish Andy McNaster would quit chasing Aunt Arethusa. Or else catch her and take her far, far away,” Osbert amended.

“He wouldn’t,” Dittany pointed out. “He’d move into her house and inveigle her into deeding it over to him.”