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Page 41
But in our talks together, and in our visits and conversation with May
Martha, neither Goodloe Banks nor I could find out which one of us she
preferred. May Martha was a natural-born non-committal, and knew in
her cradle how to keep people guessing.
As I said, old man Mangum was absentminded. After a long time he
found out one day--a little butterfly must have told him-that two
young men were trying to throw a net over the head of the young
person, a daughter, or some such technical appendage, who looked after
his comforts.
I never knew scientists could rise to such occasions. Old Mangum
orally labelled and classified Goodloe and myself easily among the
lowest orders of the vertebrates; and in English, too, without going
any further into Latin than the simple references to Orgetorix, Rex
Helvetii--which is as far as I ever went, myself. And he told us that
if he ever caught us around his house again he would add us to his
collection.
Goodloe Banks and I remained away five days, expecting the storm to
subside. When we dared to call at the house again May Martha Mangum
and her father were gone. Gone! The house they had rented was
closed. Their little store of goods and chattels was gone also.
And not a word of farewell to either of us from May Martha--not a
white, fluttering note pinned to the hawthorn-bush; not a chalk-mark
on the gate-post nor a post-card in the post-office to give us a clew.
For two months Goodloe Banks and I--separately--tried every scheme we
could think of to track the runaways. We used our friendship and
influence with the ticket-agent, with livery-stable men, railroad
conductors, and our one lone, lorn constable, but without results.
Then we became better friends and worse enemies than ever. We
forgathered in the back room of Snyder's saloon every afternoon after
work, and played dominoes, and laid conversational traps to find out
from each other if anything had been discovered. That is the way of
rivals.
Now, Goodloe Banks had a sarcastic way of displaying his own learning
and putting me in the class that was reading "Poor Jane Ray, her bird
is dead, she cannot play." Well, I rather liked Goodloe, and I had a
contempt for his college learning, and I was always regarded as good-
natured, so I kept my temper. And I was trying to find out if he knew
anything about May Martha, so I endured his society.
In talking things over one afternoon he said to me:
"Suppose you do find her, Ed, whereby would you profit? Miss Mangum
has a mind. Perhaps it is yet uncultured, but she is destined for
higher things than you could give her. I have talked with no one who
seemed to appreciate more the enchantment of the ancient poets and
writers and the modern cults that have assimilated and expended their
philosophy of life. Don't you think you are wasting your time looking
for her?"
"My idea," said I, "of a happy home is an eight-room house in a grove
of live-oaks by the side of a charco on a Texas prairie. A piano," I
went on, "with an automatic player in the sitting-room, three thousand
head of cattle under fence for a starter, a buckboard and ponies
always hitched at a post for 'the missus '--and May Martha Mangum to
spend the profits of the ranch as she pleases, and to abide with me,
and put my slippers and pipe away every day in places where they
cannot be found of evenings. That," said I, "is what is to be; and a
fig--a dried, Smyrna, dago-stand fig--for your curriculums, cults, and
philosophy."
"She is meant for higher things," repeated Goodloe Banks.
"Whatever she is meant for," I answered, just now she is out of
pocket. And I shall find her as soon as I can without aid of the
colleges."
"The game is blocked," said Goodloe, putting down a domino and we had
the beer.
Shortly after that a young farmer whom I knew came into town and
brought me a folded blue paper. He said his grandfather had just
died. I concealed a tear, and he went on to say that the old man had
jealously guarded this paper for twenty years. He left it to his
family as part of his estate, the rest of which consisted of two mules
and a hypotenuse of non-arable land.
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