SOMEWHERE IN RED GAP
By Harry Leon Wilson
Contents
I. The Red Splash of Romance
II. Ma Pettengill and the Song of Songs
III. The Real Peruvian Doughnuts
IV. Once a Scotchman, Always
V. Non Plush Ultra
VI. Cousin Egbert Intervenes
VII. Kate; or, Up From the Depths
VIII. Pete's B'other-in-law
IX. Little Old New York
Chapter 1 Excerpt
THE walls of the big living-room in the Arrowhead ranch house are tastefully enlivened here and there with artistic spoils of the owner, Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill. There are family portraits in crayon, photo-engravings of noble beasts clipped from the Breeder's Gazette, an etched cathedral or two, a stuffed and varnished trout of such size that no one would otherwise have believed in it, a print in three colours of a St. Bernard dog with a marked facial resemblance to the late William E. Gladstone, and a triumph of architectural perspective revealing two sides of the Pettengill block, corner of Fourth and Main streets, Red Gap, made vivacious by a bearded fop on horseback who doffs his silk hat to a couple of overdressed ladies with parasols in a passing victoria.
And there is the photograph of the fat man. He is very large - both high and wide. He has filled the lens and now compels the eye. His broad face beams a friendly interest. His moustache is a flourishing, uncurbed, riotous growth above his billowy chin.
The checked coat, held recklessly aside by a hand on each hip, reveals an incredible expanse of waistcoat, the pattern of which raves horribly. From pocket to pocket of this gaudy shield curves a watch chain of massive links - nearly a yard of it, one guesses.
Often I have glanced at this noisy thing tacked to the wall, entranced by the simple width of the man. Now on a late afternoon I loitered before it while my hostess changed from riding breeches to the gown of lavender and lace in which she elects to drink tea after a day's hard work along the valleys of the Arrowhead. And for the first time I observed a line of writing beneath the portrait, the writing of my hostess, a rough, downright, plain fashion of script: "Reading from left to right - Mr. Ben Sutton, Popular Society Favourite of Nome, Alaska."
"Reading from left to right " Here was the intent facetious. And Ma Pettengill is never idly facetious. Always, as the advertisements say, "There's a reason " And now, also for the first time, I noticed some printed verses on a sheet of thickish yellow paper tacked to the wall close beside the photograph - so close that I somehow divined an intimate relationship between the two. . .
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