The Girl From Montana Rides Again!
When last we left, our hero had been awakened by a sense that something was going after the lady sleeping on the other side of the bushes. He tried to speak through the bushes. He failed. We closed the chapter with him deciding to walk around the bushes.
He stepped boldly around the green barrier,
Hooray! Done! The conclusion to I don't know how many paragraphs of dithering.
and his first glance told him she was lying there still asleep; but the consciousness of another presence held him from going away. There, coiled on the ground with venomous fangs extended and eyes glittering like slimy jewels, was a rattlesnake, close beside her.
Snakes aren't slimy!
For a second he gazed with a kind of fascinated horror, and his brain refused to act.
/tooeasy
Then he knew he must do something, and at once. He had read of serpents and travellers' encounters with them, but no memory of what was to be done under such circumstances came. Shoot? He dared not. He would be more likely to kill the girl than the serpent, and in any event would precipitate the calamity. Neither was there any way to awaken the girl and drag her from peril, for the slightest movement upon her part would bring the poisoned fangs upon her.
Well, yes, this is a bit of a poser. I'm not sure what I'd do either. Curled-up snake between two people, one unaware... hm.
He cast his eyes about for some weapon, but there was not a stick or a stone in sight. He was a good golf-player; if he had a loaded stick, he could easily take the serpent's head off, he thought; but there was no stick. There was only one hope, he felt, and that would be to attract the creature to himself; and he hardly dared move lest the fascinated gaze should close upon the victim as she lay there sweetly sleeping, unaware of her new peril.
Well, no, I wouldn't GET US BOTH BITTEN. Also, he has a skill! Golf! It is useless!
Suddenly he knew what to do. Silently he stepped back out of sight, tore off his coat, and then cautiously approached the snake again, holding the coat up before him. There was an instant's pause when he calculated whether the coat could drop between the snake and the smooth brown arm in front before the terrible fangs would get there; and then the coat dropped, the man bravely holding one end of it as a wall between the serpent and the girl, crying to her in an agony of frenzy to awaken and run.
Did he just trap the snake between a coat and his own feet and then stand there yelling?
I admit this is a bad situation, because a sizeable rattler can kill someone painfully with a single bite. He has boots, she has her skin right there, and rattlesnakes can accurately strike through carry bags because they are pit vipers and will aim for the hot spots. So his coat, unless it is very thick, is actually not such a good idea. Maybe he could have dropped the folded coat on the snake and run around to drag the girl away before it came out in any direction, which would have been extremely risky but would not have left his own two feet right by a confused rattler. Maybe he could have just started talking in a low tone telling her about the snake until she woke up, and then gotten her ready to jump up and dropped the coat. Maybe he could have sneaked out for a branch and back again. Probably the one best move would have been to get a different close angle and shoot the snake with the pistol.
As it is, the one thing in his favor is that snakes are deaf.
There was a terrible moment in which he realized that the girl was saved and he himself was in peril of death, while he held to the coat till the girl was on her feet in safety. Then he saw the writhing coil at his feet turn and fasten its eyes of fury upon him. He was conscious of being uncertain whether his fingers could let go the coat, and whether his trembling knees could carry him away before the serpent struck;
"Suddenly he knew what to do" my butt.
then it was all over, and he and the girl were standing outside the sage-brush, with the sound of the pistol dying away among the echoes, and the fine ache of his arm where her fingers had grasped him to drag him from danger.
I'd worry about the gunshot drawing attention to them, but earlier there was all that shouting and shooting that was apparently some kind of Sunday regular, so I doubt anyone would notice.
The serpent was dead. She had shot it. She took that as coolly as she had taken the bird in its flight. But she stood looking at him with great eyes of gratitude, and he looked at her amazed that they were both alive, and scarcely understanding all that had happened.
I'm going to need a tally for times when he does understand everything that just happened, or I would if I thought I would ever see that.
The girl broke the stillness.
"You are what they call a 'tenderfoot,'" she said significantly.
"Yes," he assented humbly, "I guess I am. I couldn't have shot it to save anybody's life."
It's a big rattler! Curled up! On soft dirt! It's not a fly buzzing in a room!
"You are a tenderfoot, and you couldn't shoot," she continued eulogistically, as if it were necessary to have it all stated plainly, "but you-you are what my brother used to call 'a white man.' You couldn't shoot; but you could risk your life, and hold that coat, and look death in the face. You are no tenderfoot."
He's going to need a bunch of eulogies if he doesn't shape up. Also, this "white man" thing is really grating after all that Finley. I'd use it as a jumping-off point to talk about race and class if there were more examples than I've already pounced on, but so far everyone in the novel has been white... which, since the author is white and assuming a white readership and this is a romance novel written in 1922, is a bit expected.
There was eloquence in her eyes, and in her voice there were tears. She turned away to hide if any were in her eyes. But the man put out his hand on her sure little brown one,
Also, at least she tans and there's a direct mention to it in the very next paragraph, so skin color and morality are not as entwined as they are when Finley has her hands on the reins.
and took it firmly in his own, looking down upon her with his own eyes filled with tears of which he was not ashamed.
Guys, I don't mean to be rough here, but you are still two people in the wilderness facing all kinds of perils.
"And what am I to say to you for saving my life?" he said.
"I? O, that was easy," said the girl, rousing to the commonplace. "I can always shoot. Only you were hard to drag away. You seemed to want to stay there and die with your coat."
"They laughed at me for wearing that coat when we started away. They said a hunter never bothered himself with extra clothing," he mused as they walked away from the terrible spot.
That reminds me. Is she still wearing everything that was in her closet? What does this look like?
"Do you think it was the prayer?" asked the girl suddenly.
"It may be!" said the man with wondering accent.
Prayers attract rattlesnakes. So this chapter is called: A CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR MEETING IN THE WILDERNESS, not HOW TO DIE OF SNAKEBITE, and we'd better get to that. They hear singing, he suspects it's a Sunday-school, she hears "school" and wants to go.
He led her down behind the schoolhouse to a spot where the horses could not be seen from the trail. The girl peered curiously around the corner into the window. There sat two young girls about her own age, and one of them smiled at her. It seemed an invitation. She smiled back, and went on to the doorway reassured. When she entered the room, she found them pointing to a seat near a window, behind a small desk.
THERE SAT A RATTLESNAKE! No.
Up behind the man who sat at the big desk was a large board painted black with some white marks on it. The sunlight glinted across it, and she could not tell what they were; but, when she moved a little, she saw quite clearly it was a large cross with words underneath it-"He will hide me."
Oh, and she can read, just she never had a chance to read very much. So despite no schooling she's not illiterate and will not be impaired entering the barriers of his society or anything. Just getting that out there.
Up the trail on horseback, with shouts and ribald songs, rode four rough men, too drunk to know where they were going. The little schoolhouse seemed to attract their attention as they passed, and just for deviltry they shouted out a volley of oaths and vile talk to the worshippers within. One in particular, the leader, looked straight into the face of the young man as he returned from fastening the horses and was about to enter the schoolhouse, and pretended to point his pistol at him, discharging it immediately into the air. This was the signal for some wild firing as the men rode on past the schoolhouse, leaving a train of curses behind them to haunt the air
How in Sam hill did they get here stone drunk and about three days' and night's ride over trackless and baffling territory?!
The girl looked out from her seat beside the window, and saw the evil face of the man from whom she had fled.
Again: HOW. But welcome to the past:
Suppose he said she was his-his wife, perhaps, or sister, who had run away. What could they do? Would they believe her? Would the man who had saved her life a few minutes ago believe her? Would anybody help her?
See that? That right there? That nearly hangs on into modern times. Domestic violence is more acceptable as not-my-business! than a random man attacking a random woman; an abusive husband going after a wife who has left him might still keep people from helping her by telling them she married him, whether she wanted to stay with him or not. But damn, we are well out of it, and having GLH casually mention it as one of the dangers she faces is hair-raising.
The party passed, and the man came in and sat down beside her quietly enough; but without a word or a look he knew at once who the man was he had just seen. His soul trembled for the girl, and his anger rose hot. He felt that a man like that ought to be wiped off the face of the earth in some way, or placed in solitary confinement the rest of his life.
All very well and good, but it doesn't get us anywhere... besides that he should have watched where they were going so that he could go in some other direction. Also, they started drinking and riding the evening before. It is now late morning the following day. How are they still riding around drunk?
So GLH involves herself entirely with recent proceedings. GLH is a big church fan, so we hear more about the service, the people, the sermon, the songs, the verses. Then afterward they talk:
"O," said the inquisitor; and then, seeing the missionary's daughter was talking to some one else, she whispered, nodding toward the man, "Is he your husband?"
The girl looked startled, while a slow color mounted into her cheeks.
"No," said she gravely, thoughtfully. "But-he saved my life a little while ago."
"Oh!" said the other, awestruck. "My! And ain't he handsome? How did he do it?"
But the girl could not talk about it. She shuddered.
"It was a dreadful snake," she said, "and I was-I didn't see it. It was awful! I can't tell you about it."
"My!" said the girl. "How terrible!"
Interesting, because she is a single woman travelling with a strange man, and she gives him all the credit for the death of the rattlesnake and her salvation when she immediately saved him right back. Also, she can't talk about it? Why not? She killed it as soon as she laid an eye on it. Anyway, they have some milk, get some food, draw a course away from the way the men went, and head on.
"Yes, but I want to know about your life... I want to know, for instance, how you came to talk so well. You don't talk like a girl that never went to school. You speak as if you had read and studied. You make so few mistakes in your English. You speak quite correctly. That is not usual, I believe, when people have lived all their lives away from school, you know. You don't talk like the girls I have met since I came out here."
Well, because she's a stand-in for the reader!
"Father always made me speak right. He kept at every one of us children when we said a word wrong, and made us say it over again. It made him angry to hear words said wrong. He made mother cry once when she said 'done' when she ought to have said 'did.' Father went to school once, but mother only went a little while. Father knew a great deal, and when he was sober he used to teach us things once in a while. He taught me to read. I can read anything I ever saw."
This is an interesting reversal to most GLH relationships, which involve a delicate, sensitive, refined wife teaching the little ones all her skills and niceties while the man goes masculinely around the place playing with the kids now and then.
"O, well," said he as if it mattered very little about his life, "I had a nice home-have yet, for the matter of that. Father died when I was little, and mother let me do just about as I pleased. I went to school because the other fellows did, and because that was the thing to do. After I grew up I liked it. That is, I liked some studies; so I went to a university."
"What is that?"
"O, just a higher school where you learn grown-up things.
Like. Like what, dude.
Then I travelled. When I came home, I went into society a good deal. But"-and his face darkened again-"I got tired of it all, and thought I would come out here for a while and hunt, and I got lost, and I found you!" He smiled into her face. "Now you know the rest."
You might want to explain "university" and "society" a bit more, since you are like five class levels and half a civilization different from her, dude. No? Okay.
They had come to the end of the valley, and were crossing the bench.
Okay, I had to stop and google. As best I can tell a bench is like a mesa, probably pretty small since they get nothin' but crossed. I guess a bench is up high, so maybe it's a plain at the top of a steep incline? I don't know where the mountains are if there's just plains and prairies at the top of hillsides, but at least I can get the image of a cute little garden bench out of my head.
The distant ranch could quite distinctly be seen. The silver moon had come up, for they had not been hurrying, and a great beauty pervaded everything. They almost shrank from approaching the buildings and people. They had enjoyed the ride and the companionship. Every step brought them nearer to what they had known all the time was an indistinct future from which they had been joyously shut away for a little time till they might know each other.
See? They've been dating. With prayer. GLH is indeed a romantic soul.
He stepped boldly around the green barrier,
Hooray! Done! The conclusion to I don't know how many paragraphs of dithering.
and his first glance told him she was lying there still asleep; but the consciousness of another presence held him from going away. There, coiled on the ground with venomous fangs extended and eyes glittering like slimy jewels, was a rattlesnake, close beside her.
Snakes aren't slimy!
For a second he gazed with a kind of fascinated horror, and his brain refused to act.
/tooeasy
Then he knew he must do something, and at once. He had read of serpents and travellers' encounters with them, but no memory of what was to be done under such circumstances came. Shoot? He dared not. He would be more likely to kill the girl than the serpent, and in any event would precipitate the calamity. Neither was there any way to awaken the girl and drag her from peril, for the slightest movement upon her part would bring the poisoned fangs upon her.
Well, yes, this is a bit of a poser. I'm not sure what I'd do either. Curled-up snake between two people, one unaware... hm.
He cast his eyes about for some weapon, but there was not a stick or a stone in sight. He was a good golf-player; if he had a loaded stick, he could easily take the serpent's head off, he thought; but there was no stick. There was only one hope, he felt, and that would be to attract the creature to himself; and he hardly dared move lest the fascinated gaze should close upon the victim as she lay there sweetly sleeping, unaware of her new peril.
Well, no, I wouldn't GET US BOTH BITTEN. Also, he has a skill! Golf! It is useless!
Suddenly he knew what to do. Silently he stepped back out of sight, tore off his coat, and then cautiously approached the snake again, holding the coat up before him. There was an instant's pause when he calculated whether the coat could drop between the snake and the smooth brown arm in front before the terrible fangs would get there; and then the coat dropped, the man bravely holding one end of it as a wall between the serpent and the girl, crying to her in an agony of frenzy to awaken and run.
Did he just trap the snake between a coat and his own feet and then stand there yelling?
I admit this is a bad situation, because a sizeable rattler can kill someone painfully with a single bite. He has boots, she has her skin right there, and rattlesnakes can accurately strike through carry bags because they are pit vipers and will aim for the hot spots. So his coat, unless it is very thick, is actually not such a good idea. Maybe he could have dropped the folded coat on the snake and run around to drag the girl away before it came out in any direction, which would have been extremely risky but would not have left his own two feet right by a confused rattler. Maybe he could have just started talking in a low tone telling her about the snake until she woke up, and then gotten her ready to jump up and dropped the coat. Maybe he could have sneaked out for a branch and back again. Probably the one best move would have been to get a different close angle and shoot the snake with the pistol.
As it is, the one thing in his favor is that snakes are deaf.
There was a terrible moment in which he realized that the girl was saved and he himself was in peril of death, while he held to the coat till the girl was on her feet in safety. Then he saw the writhing coil at his feet turn and fasten its eyes of fury upon him. He was conscious of being uncertain whether his fingers could let go the coat, and whether his trembling knees could carry him away before the serpent struck;
"Suddenly he knew what to do" my butt.
then it was all over, and he and the girl were standing outside the sage-brush, with the sound of the pistol dying away among the echoes, and the fine ache of his arm where her fingers had grasped him to drag him from danger.
I'd worry about the gunshot drawing attention to them, but earlier there was all that shouting and shooting that was apparently some kind of Sunday regular, so I doubt anyone would notice.
The serpent was dead. She had shot it. She took that as coolly as she had taken the bird in its flight. But she stood looking at him with great eyes of gratitude, and he looked at her amazed that they were both alive, and scarcely understanding all that had happened.
I'm going to need a tally for times when he does understand everything that just happened, or I would if I thought I would ever see that.
The girl broke the stillness.
"You are what they call a 'tenderfoot,'" she said significantly.
"Yes," he assented humbly, "I guess I am. I couldn't have shot it to save anybody's life."
It's a big rattler! Curled up! On soft dirt! It's not a fly buzzing in a room!
"You are a tenderfoot, and you couldn't shoot," she continued eulogistically, as if it were necessary to have it all stated plainly, "but you-you are what my brother used to call 'a white man.' You couldn't shoot; but you could risk your life, and hold that coat, and look death in the face. You are no tenderfoot."
He's going to need a bunch of eulogies if he doesn't shape up. Also, this "white man" thing is really grating after all that Finley. I'd use it as a jumping-off point to talk about race and class if there were more examples than I've already pounced on, but so far everyone in the novel has been white... which, since the author is white and assuming a white readership and this is a romance novel written in 1922, is a bit expected.
There was eloquence in her eyes, and in her voice there were tears. She turned away to hide if any were in her eyes. But the man put out his hand on her sure little brown one,
Also, at least she tans and there's a direct mention to it in the very next paragraph, so skin color and morality are not as entwined as they are when Finley has her hands on the reins.
and took it firmly in his own, looking down upon her with his own eyes filled with tears of which he was not ashamed.
Guys, I don't mean to be rough here, but you are still two people in the wilderness facing all kinds of perils.
"And what am I to say to you for saving my life?" he said.
"I? O, that was easy," said the girl, rousing to the commonplace. "I can always shoot. Only you were hard to drag away. You seemed to want to stay there and die with your coat."
"They laughed at me for wearing that coat when we started away. They said a hunter never bothered himself with extra clothing," he mused as they walked away from the terrible spot.
That reminds me. Is she still wearing everything that was in her closet? What does this look like?
"Do you think it was the prayer?" asked the girl suddenly.
"It may be!" said the man with wondering accent.
Prayers attract rattlesnakes. So this chapter is called: A CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR MEETING IN THE WILDERNESS, not HOW TO DIE OF SNAKEBITE, and we'd better get to that. They hear singing, he suspects it's a Sunday-school, she hears "school" and wants to go.
He led her down behind the schoolhouse to a spot where the horses could not be seen from the trail. The girl peered curiously around the corner into the window. There sat two young girls about her own age, and one of them smiled at her. It seemed an invitation. She smiled back, and went on to the doorway reassured. When she entered the room, she found them pointing to a seat near a window, behind a small desk.
THERE SAT A RATTLESNAKE! No.
Up behind the man who sat at the big desk was a large board painted black with some white marks on it. The sunlight glinted across it, and she could not tell what they were; but, when she moved a little, she saw quite clearly it was a large cross with words underneath it-"He will hide me."
Oh, and she can read, just she never had a chance to read very much. So despite no schooling she's not illiterate and will not be impaired entering the barriers of his society or anything. Just getting that out there.
Up the trail on horseback, with shouts and ribald songs, rode four rough men, too drunk to know where they were going. The little schoolhouse seemed to attract their attention as they passed, and just for deviltry they shouted out a volley of oaths and vile talk to the worshippers within. One in particular, the leader, looked straight into the face of the young man as he returned from fastening the horses and was about to enter the schoolhouse, and pretended to point his pistol at him, discharging it immediately into the air. This was the signal for some wild firing as the men rode on past the schoolhouse, leaving a train of curses behind them to haunt the air
How in Sam hill did they get here stone drunk and about three days' and night's ride over trackless and baffling territory?!
The girl looked out from her seat beside the window, and saw the evil face of the man from whom she had fled.
Again: HOW. But welcome to the past:
Suppose he said she was his-his wife, perhaps, or sister, who had run away. What could they do? Would they believe her? Would the man who had saved her life a few minutes ago believe her? Would anybody help her?
See that? That right there? That nearly hangs on into modern times. Domestic violence is more acceptable as not-my-business! than a random man attacking a random woman; an abusive husband going after a wife who has left him might still keep people from helping her by telling them she married him, whether she wanted to stay with him or not. But damn, we are well out of it, and having GLH casually mention it as one of the dangers she faces is hair-raising.
The party passed, and the man came in and sat down beside her quietly enough; but without a word or a look he knew at once who the man was he had just seen. His soul trembled for the girl, and his anger rose hot. He felt that a man like that ought to be wiped off the face of the earth in some way, or placed in solitary confinement the rest of his life.
All very well and good, but it doesn't get us anywhere... besides that he should have watched where they were going so that he could go in some other direction. Also, they started drinking and riding the evening before. It is now late morning the following day. How are they still riding around drunk?
So GLH involves herself entirely with recent proceedings. GLH is a big church fan, so we hear more about the service, the people, the sermon, the songs, the verses. Then afterward they talk:
"O," said the inquisitor; and then, seeing the missionary's daughter was talking to some one else, she whispered, nodding toward the man, "Is he your husband?"
The girl looked startled, while a slow color mounted into her cheeks.
"No," said she gravely, thoughtfully. "But-he saved my life a little while ago."
"Oh!" said the other, awestruck. "My! And ain't he handsome? How did he do it?"
But the girl could not talk about it. She shuddered.
"It was a dreadful snake," she said, "and I was-I didn't see it. It was awful! I can't tell you about it."
"My!" said the girl. "How terrible!"
Interesting, because she is a single woman travelling with a strange man, and she gives him all the credit for the death of the rattlesnake and her salvation when she immediately saved him right back. Also, she can't talk about it? Why not? She killed it as soon as she laid an eye on it. Anyway, they have some milk, get some food, draw a course away from the way the men went, and head on.
"Yes, but I want to know about your life... I want to know, for instance, how you came to talk so well. You don't talk like a girl that never went to school. You speak as if you had read and studied. You make so few mistakes in your English. You speak quite correctly. That is not usual, I believe, when people have lived all their lives away from school, you know. You don't talk like the girls I have met since I came out here."
Well, because she's a stand-in for the reader!
"Father always made me speak right. He kept at every one of us children when we said a word wrong, and made us say it over again. It made him angry to hear words said wrong. He made mother cry once when she said 'done' when she ought to have said 'did.' Father went to school once, but mother only went a little while. Father knew a great deal, and when he was sober he used to teach us things once in a while. He taught me to read. I can read anything I ever saw."
This is an interesting reversal to most GLH relationships, which involve a delicate, sensitive, refined wife teaching the little ones all her skills and niceties while the man goes masculinely around the place playing with the kids now and then.
"O, well," said he as if it mattered very little about his life, "I had a nice home-have yet, for the matter of that. Father died when I was little, and mother let me do just about as I pleased. I went to school because the other fellows did, and because that was the thing to do. After I grew up I liked it. That is, I liked some studies; so I went to a university."
"What is that?"
"O, just a higher school where you learn grown-up things.
Like. Like what, dude.
Then I travelled. When I came home, I went into society a good deal. But"-and his face darkened again-"I got tired of it all, and thought I would come out here for a while and hunt, and I got lost, and I found you!" He smiled into her face. "Now you know the rest."
You might want to explain "university" and "society" a bit more, since you are like five class levels and half a civilization different from her, dude. No? Okay.
They had come to the end of the valley, and were crossing the bench.
Okay, I had to stop and google. As best I can tell a bench is like a mesa, probably pretty small since they get nothin' but crossed. I guess a bench is up high, so maybe it's a plain at the top of a steep incline? I don't know where the mountains are if there's just plains and prairies at the top of hillsides, but at least I can get the image of a cute little garden bench out of my head.
The distant ranch could quite distinctly be seen. The silver moon had come up, for they had not been hurrying, and a great beauty pervaded everything. They almost shrank from approaching the buildings and people. They had enjoyed the ride and the companionship. Every step brought them nearer to what they had known all the time was an indistinct future from which they had been joyously shut away for a little time till they might know each other.
See? They've been dating. With prayer. GLH is indeed a romantic soul.