Contents
PAGE
The First Traveler. Jimmy
On the Trail of the Wise Men 1
The Second Traveler. Gid Wiggan
In the Wake of a Honeymoon 55
The Third Traveler. The Clown
Towards His Accolade 91
The Fourth Traveler. Wexley Snathers
By Way of an Inherited Circus 131
The Fifth Traveler. Bap. Sloan
To His Mount of Pisgah 159
The First Traveler
Jimmy
On The Trail of the Wise Men
ORDINARILY a fleck of cigar ashes in the pot of mashed potatoes would
not have caused a row in the ranch kitchen, but to-day old Jimmy had had
a sup too much. At such times the mere sight of Matsu, the Japanese
cook, could provoke him to oaths, and it was Matsu who had unwittingly
dropped the ashes into the pot, as he laid his cigar stump on the shelf
above the stove, preparatory to dishing up dinner.
Time was when Jimmy had been the cook at Welsh's ranch, and had had it
all his own way in the greasy adobe kitchen. But that was before Ben
Welsh's last round-up. Since then his widow had been obliged to turn
part of the cattle-ranch into a boarding camp for invalids; the part
that lay in a narrow strip along the desert. Health-seekers paid better
than cattle or alfalfa she found.
Many things came in with the new administration. Matsu was one of them,
in his white chef's cap and jacket. The spotless linen was a delight to
the boarders, but to Jimmy, deposed to the rank of hewer of wood and
drawer of water, it was the badge of the usurper. Naturally enough his
jealousy took the form of making Matsu live up to his linen, and he
watched him like a cat for the slightest lapse from cleanliness.
This constant warfare with Matsu was one of the few diversions the camp
afforded, and every man made much of it. Had he been let alone, old
Jimmy would have accepted the situation as merely one more ill-turn of
Fate, which had left him as usual at the bottom of the wheel. But his
futile resentment was too funny a thing for his tormentors to allow to
die out.
It was a remark made early that morning which set him to brooding over
his wrongs, and finally led to the sup too much which precipitated the
fight over the potato-pot. Batty Carson made it, in a hoarse whisper,
all the voice left to him since the grippe sent him West in his senior
year. (He had been the best tenor in his college glee-club.) Jimmy was
moving a table into the shadow of the tents, in order that the daily
game of poker might begin. Poker was all there was in that God-forsaken
desert to save a man's reason, Batty declared, so they played it from
breakfast till bed-time. As the usual group joined him around the table,
he opened a new deck of cards and began shuffling it. Automatically he
found the joker and flipped it out of the pack. It fell face up on the
dry Bermuda grass and old Jimmy stooped to pick it up.
