Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions

M >> Mary Roberts Rinehart >> Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions


"Is that all the loot you secured during the infamous scene on Piegan
Pass?" Tish demanded, "You need not hide anything from us. We know the
facts, and the whole story will soon be public."

"That's all, lady," whined one of the men. "Except a few boxes of lunch,
and that's gone. Lady, lemme take my hands down. I've got a stiff
shoulder, and I--"

"Keep them up," Tish snapped. "Aggie, see that they keep them up."

Until that time we had been too occupied to observe the girl, who merely
stood and watched in a disdainful sort of way. But now Tish turned and
eyed her sternly.

"Search her, Lizzie," she commanded.

"Search me!" the girl exclaimed indignantly. "Certainly not!"

"Lizzie," said Tish in her sternest manner, "go over that girl. Look in
her riding-boots. I haven't come across Mrs. Ostermaier's earrings yet."

At that the girl changed color and backed off.

"It's an outrage," she said. "Surely I have suffered enough."

"Not as much," Tish observed, "as you are going to suffer. Go over her,
Lizzie."

While I searched her, Tish was lecturing her.

"You come from a good home, I understand," she said, "and you ought
to know better. Not content with breaking an honest heart, you join a
moving-picture outfit and frighten a prominent divine--for Mr. Ostermaier
is well known--into what may be an illness. You cannot deny," she
accused her, "that it was you who coaxed them to the pass. At least you
needn't. We heard you."

"How was I to know--" the girl began sullenly.

But at that moment I found Mrs. Ostermaier' chamois bag thrust into her
riding-boot, and she suddenly went pale.

Tish held it up before her accusingly. "I dare say you will not deny
this," she exclaimed, and took Mrs. Ostermaier's earrings out of it.

The men muttered, but Aggie was equal to the occasion. "Silence!" she
said, and pointed the revolver at each in turn.

The girl started to speak. Then she shrugged her shoulders. "I could
explain," she said, "but I won't. If you think I stole those hideous
earrings you're welcome to."

"Of course not," said Tish sarcastically. "No doubt she gave them to
you--although I never knew her to give anything away before."

The girl stood still, thinking. Suddenly she said "There's another one,
you know. Another man."

"We have him. He will give no further trouble," Tish observed grimly. "I
think we have you all, except your Mr. Oliver."

"He is not my Mr. Oliver," said the girl. "I never want to see him
again. I--I hate him."

"You haven't got much mind or you couldn't change it so quickly."

She looked sulky again, and said she'd thank us for the ring, which was
hers and she could prove it.

But Tish sternly refused. "It's my private opinion," she observed, "that
it is Mrs. Ostermaier's, and she has not worn it openly because of the
congregation talking quite considerably about her earrings, and not
caring for jewelry on the minister's wife. That's what I think."

Shortly after that we heard a horse loping along the road. It came
nearer, and then left the trail and came toward the fire. Tish picked up
one of the extra revolvers and pointed it. It was Mr. Oliver!

"Throw up your hands!" Tish called. And he did it. He turned a sort of
blue color, too, when he saw us, and all the men with their hands up.
But he looked relieved when he saw the girl.

"Thank Heaven!" he said. "The way I've been riding this country--"

"You rode hard enough away from the pass," she replied coldly.

We took a revolver away from him and lined him up with the others. All
the time he was paying little attention to us and none at all to the
other men. But he was pleading with the girl.

"Honestly," he said, "I thought I could do better for everybody by doing
what I did. How did I know," he pleaded, "that you were going to do such
a crazy thing as this?"

But she only stared at him as if she hated the very ground he stood on.

"It's a pity," Tish observed, "that you haven't got your camera along.
This would make a very nice picture. But I dare say you could hardly
turn the crank with your hands in the air."

We searched him carefully, but he had only a gold watch and some money.
On the chance, however, that the watch was Mr. Ostermaier's, although
unlikely, we took it.

I must say he was very disagreeable, referring to us as highwaymen and
using uncomplimentary language. But, as Tish observed, we might as well
be thorough while we were about it.

For the nonce we had forgotten the other man. But now I noticed that the
pseudo-bandits wore a watchful and not unhopeful air. And suddenly one
of them whistled--a thin, shrill note that had, as Tish later remarked,
great penetrative power without being noisy.

"That's enough of that," she said. "Aggie, take another of these guns
and point them both at these gentlemen. If they whistle again, shoot.
As to the other man, he will not reply, nor will he come to your
assistance. He is gagged and tied, and into the bargain may become at
any time the victim of wild beasts."

The moment she had said it, Tish realized that it was but too true, and
she grew thoughtful. Aggie, too, was far from comfortable. She said
later that she was uncertain what to do. Tish had said to fire if they
whistled again. The question in her mind was, had it been said purely
for effect or did Tish mean it? After all, the men were not real
bandits, she reflected, although guilty of theft, even if only for
advertising purposes. She was greatly disturbed, and as agitation always
causes a return of her hay fever, she began to sneeze violently.

Until then the men had been quiet, if furious. But now they fell into
abject terror, imploring Tish, whom they easily recognized as the
leader, to take the revolvers from her.

But Tish only said: "No fatalities, Aggie, please. Point at an arm or a
leg until the spasm subsides."

Her tone was quite gentle.

Heretofore this has been a plain narrative, dull, I fear, in many
places. But I come now to a not unexciting incident--which for a time
placed Tish and myself in an unpleasant position.

I refer to the escape of the man we had tied.

We held a brief discussion as to what to do with our prisoners until
morning, a discussion which Tish solved with her usual celerity by
cutting from the saddles which lay round the fire a number of those
leather thongs with which such saddles are adorned and which are used in
case of necessity to strap various articles to the aforesaid saddles.

With these thongs we tied them, not uncomfortably, but firmly, their
hands behind them and their feet fastened together. Then, as the night
grew cold, Tish suggested that we shove them near the fire, which we
did.

The young lady, however, offered a more difficult problem. We
compromised by giving her her freedom, but arranging for one of our
number to keep her covered with a revolver.

"You needn't be so thoughtful," she said angrily, and with a total lack
of appreciation of Tish's considerate attitude. "I'd rather be tied,
especially if the Moslem with the hay fever is going to hold the gun."

It was at that moment that we heard a whistle from across the stream,
and each of the prostrate men raised his head eagerly. Before Tish could
interfere one of them had whistled three times sharply, probably a
danger signal.

Without a word Tish turned and ran toward the stream, calling to me to
follow her.

"Tish!" I heard Aggie's agonized tone. "Lizzie! Come back. Don't leave
me here alone. I--"

Here she evidently clutched the revolver involuntarily, for there was a
sharp report, and a bullet struck a tree near us.

Tish paused and turned. "Point that thing up into the air, Aggie," she
called back. "And stay there. I hold you responsible."

I heard Aggie give a low moan, but she said nothing, and we kept on.

The moon had now come up, flooding the valley with silver radiance. We
found our horses at once, and Tish leaped into the saddle. Being heavier
and also out of breath from having stumbled over a log, I was somewhat
slower.

Tish was therefore in advance of me when we started, and it was she who
caught sight of him first.

"He's got a horse, Lizzie," she called back to me. "We can get him, I
think. Remember, he is unarmed."

Fortunately he had made for the trail, which was here wider than
ordinary and gleamed white in the moonlight. We had, however, lost some
time in fording the stream, and we had but the one glimpse of him as the
trail curved.

Tish lashed her horse to a lope, and mine followed without urging.
I had, unfortunately, lost a stirrup early in the chase, and was
compelled, being unable to recover it, to drop the lines and clutch
the saddle.

Twice Tish fired into the air. She explained afterward that she did this
for the moral effect on the fugitive, but as each time it caused my
horse to jump and almost unseat me, at last I begged her to desist.

We struck at last into a straight piece of trail, ending in a wall of
granite, and up this the trail climbed in a switchback. Tish turned to
me.

"We have him now," she said. "When he starts up there he is as much gone
as a fly on the wall. As a matter of fact," she said as calmly as though
we had been taking an afternoon stroll, "his taking this trail shows
that he is a novice and no real highwayman. Otherwise he would have
turned off into the woods."

At that moment the fugitive's horse emerged into the moonlight and Tish
smiled grimly.

"I see why now," she exclaimed. "The idiot has happened on Mona Lisa,
who must have returned and followed us. And no pack-horse can be made to
leave the trail unless by means of a hornet. Look, he's trying to pull
her off and she won't go."

It was true, as we now perceived. He saw his danger, but too late. Mona
Lisa, probably still disagreeable after her experience with the hornets,
held straight for the cliff.

The moon shone full on it, and when he was only thirty feet up its face
Tish fired again, and the fugitive stopped.

"Come down," said Tish quietly.

He said a great many things which, like his earlier language, I do not
care to repeat. But after a second shot he began to descend slowly.

Tish, however, approached him warily, having given her revolver to me.

"He might try to get it from me, Lizzie," she observed. "Keep it pointed
in our direction, but not at us. I'm going to tie him again."

This she proceeded to do, tying his hands behind him and fastening his
belt also to the horn of the saddle, but leaving his feet free. All this
was done to the accompaniment of bitter vituperation. She pretended to
ignore this, but it made an impression evidently, for at last she
replied.

"You have no one to blame but yourself," she said. "You deserve your
present humiliating position, and you know it. I've made up my mind to
take you all in and expose your cruel scheme, and I intend to do it. I'm
nothing if I am not thorough," she finished.

He made no reply to this, and, in fact, he made only one speech on the
way back, and that, I am happy to say, was without profanity.

"It isn't being taken in that I mind so much," he said pathetically.
"It's all in the game, and I can stand up as well under trouble as any
one. It's being led in by a crowd of women that makes it painful."

I have neglected to say that Tish was leading Mona Lisa, while I
followed with the revolver.

It was not far from dawn when we reached the camp again. Aggie was as we
had left her, but in the light of the dying fire she looked older and
much worn. As a matter of fact, it was some weeks before she looked like
her old self.

The girl was sitting where we had left her, and sulkier than ever. She
had turned her back to Mr. Oliver, and Aggie said afterward that the way
they had quarreled had been something terrible.

Aggie said she had tried to make conversation with the girl, and had,
indeed, told her of Mr. Wiggins and her own blasted life. But she had
remained singularly unresponsive.

The return of our new prisoner was greeted by the other men with brutal
rage, except Mr. Oliver, who merely glanced at him and then went back to
his staring at the fire. It appeared that they had been counting on him
to get assistance, and his capture destroyed their last hope. Indeed,
their language grew so unpleasant that at last Tish hammered sharply on
a rock with the handle of her revolver.

"Please remember," she said, "that you are in the presence of ladies!"

They jeered at her, but she handled the situation with her usual
generalship.

"Lizzie," she said calmly, "get the tin basin that is hanging to my
saddle, and fill it with the water from that snowbank. On the occasion
of any more unseemly language, pour it over the offender without mercy."

It became necessary to do it, I regret to state. They had not yet
learned that Tish always carries out her threats. It was the one who we
felt was the leader who offended, and I did as I had been requested to.
But Aggie, ever tender-hearted, feared that it would give the man a
severe cold, and got Tish's permission to pour a little blackberry
cordial down his throat.

Far from this kindness having a salubrious effect, it had the contrary.
They all fell to bad language again, and, realizing that they wished the
cordial, and our supply being limited, we were compelled to abandon the
treatment.

It had been an uncomfortable night, and I confess to a feeling of relief
when "the rift of dawn" broke the early skies.

We were, Tish calculated, some forty miles from breakfast, and Aggie's
diet for some days had been light at the best, even the mountain-lion
broth having been more stimulating than staying. We therefore
investigated the camp, and found behind a large stone some flour,
baking-powder, and bacon. With this equipment and a frying-pan or two we
were able to make some very fair pancakes--or flapjacks, as they are
called in the West.

Tish civilly invited the girl to eat with us, but she refused curtly,
although, on turning once, I saw her eyeing us with famished eyes. I
think, however, that on seeing us going about the homely task of getting
breakfast, she realized that we were not the desperate creatures she had
fancied during the night, but three gentlewomen on a holiday--simple
tourists, indeed.

"I wish," she said at last almost wistfully--"I wish that I could
understand it all. I seem to be all mixed up. You don't suppose I want
to be here, do you?"

But Tish was not in a mood to make concessions. "As for what you want,"
she said, "how are we to know that? You are here, aren't you?--here as
a result of your own cold-heartedness. Had you remained true to the very
estimable young man you jilted you would not now be in this position."

"Of course he would talk about it!" said the girl darkly.

"I am convinced," Tish went on, dexterously turning a pancake by a swift
movement of the pan, "that sensational movies are responsible for much
that is wrong with the country to-day. They set false standards.
Perfectly pure-minded people see them and are filled with thoughts of
crime."

Although she had ignored him steadily, the girl turned now to Mr.
Oliver.

"They don't believe anything I tell them. Why don't you explain?" she
demanded.

"Explain!" he said in a furious voice. "Explain to three lunatics?
What's the use?"

"You got me into this, you know."

"I did! I like that! What in the name of Heaven induced you to ride off
the way you did?"

Tish paused, with the frying-pan in the air. "Silence!" she commanded.
"You are both only reaping what you have sowed. As far as quarreling
goes, you can keep that until you are married, if you intend to be. I
don't know but I'd advise it. It's a pity to spoil two houses."

But the girl said that she wouldn't marry him if he was the last man on
earth, and he fell back to sulking again.

As Aggie observed later, he acted as if he had never cared for her,
while Mr. Bell, on the contrary, could not help his face changing when
he so much as mentioned her name.

We made some tea and ate a hearty breakfast, while the men watched us.
And as we ate, Tish held the moving-picture business up to contumely and
scorn.

"Lady," said one of the prostrate men, "aren't you going to give us
anything to eat?"

"People," Tish said, ignoring him, "who would ordinarily cringe at the
sight of a wounded beetle sit through bloody murders and go home with
the obsession of crime."

"I hope you won't take it amiss," said the man again, "if I say that,
seeing it's our flour and bacon, you either ought to feed us or take it
away and eat it where we can't see you."

"I take it," said Tish to the girl, pouring in more batter, "that you
yourself would never have thought of highway robbery had you not been
led to it by an overstimulated imagination."

"I wish," said the girl rudely, "that you wouldn't talk so much. I've
got a headache."

When we had finished Tish indicated the frying-pan and the batter.
"Perhaps," she said, "you would like to bake some cakes for these
friends of yours. We have a long trip ahead of us."

But the girl replied heartlessly that she hoped they would starve to
death, ignoring their pitiful glances. In the end it was our own
tender-hearted Aggie who baked pancakes for them and, loosening their
hands while I stood guard, saw that they had not only food but the
gentle refreshment of fresh tea. Tish it was, however, who, not to be
outdone in magnanimity, permitted them to go, one by one, to the stream
to wash. Escape, without horses or weapons, was impossible, and they
realized it.

By nine o'clock we were ready to return. And here a difficulty presented
itself. There were six prisoners and only three of us. The men, fed now,
were looking less subdued, although they pretended to obey Tish's
commands with alacrity.

Aggie overheard a scrap of conversation, too, which seemed to indicate
that they had not given up hope. Had Tish not set her heart on leading
them into the great hotel at Many Glaciers, and there exposing them to
the taunts of angry tourists, it would have been simpler for one of us
to ride for assistance, leaving the others there.

In this emergency Tish, putting her hand into her pocket for her
scissors to trim a hangnail, happened to come across the policeman's
whistle.

"My gracious!" she said. "I forgot my promise to that young man!"

She immediately put it to her lips and blew three shrill blasts. To our
surprise they were answered by a halloo, and a moment later the young
gentleman himself appeared on the trail. He was no longer afoot, but was
mounted on a pinto pony, which we knew at once for Bill's.

He sat on his horse, staring as if he could not believe his eyes. Then
he made his way across the stream toward us.

"Good Heavens!" he said. "What in the name of--" Here his eyes fell on
the girl, and he stiffened.

"Jim!" cried the girl, and looked at him with what Aggie afterward
characterized as a most touching expression.

But he ignored her. "Looks as though you folks have been pretty busy,"
he observed, glancing at our scowling captives. "I'm a trifle surprised.
You don't mind my being rather breathless, do you?"

"My only regret," Tish said loftily, "is that we have not secured the
Indians. They too should be taught a lesson. I am sure that the red man
is noble until led away by civilized people who might know better."

It was at this point that Mr. Bell's eyes fell on Mr. Oliver, who with
his hands tied behind him was crouching over the fire.

"Well!" he said. "So you're here too! But of course you would be." This
he said bitterly.

"For the love of Heaven, Bell," Mr. Oliver said, "tell those mad women
that I'm not a bandit."

"We know that already," Tish observed.

"And untie my hands. My shoulders are about broken."

But Mr. Bell only looked at him coldly. "I can't interfere with these
ladies," he said. "They're friends of mine. If they think you are better
tied, it's their business. They did it."

"At least," Mr. Oliver said savagely, "you can tell them who I am, can't
you?"

"As to that," Mr. Bell returned, "I can only tell them what you say you
are. You must remember that I know nothing about you. Helen knows much
more than I do."

"Jim," cried the girl, "surely you are going to tell these women that we
are not highway robbers. Tell them the truth. Tell them I am not a
highway robber. Tell them that these men are not my accomplices, that I
never saw them before."

"You must remember," he replied in an icy tone, "that I no longer know
your friends. It is some days since you and I parted company. And you
must admit that one of them is a friend of yours--as well as I can
judge, a very close friend."

She was almost in tears, but she persisted. "At least," she said, "you
can tell them that I did not rob that woman on the pass. They are going
to lead us in to Many Glaciers, and--Jim, you won't let them, will you?
I'll die of shame."

But he was totally unmoved. As Aggie said afterward, no one would have
thought that, but a day or two before, he had been heartbroken because
she was in love with someone else.

"As to that," he said, "it is questionable, according to Mrs.
Ostermaier, that nothing was taken from you, and that as soon as the
attack was over you basely deserted her and followed the bandits. A full
description of you, which I was able to correct in one or two trifling
details, is now in the hands of the park police."

She stared at him with fury in her eyes. "I hope you will never speak to
me again," she cried.

"You said that the last time I saw you, Helen. If you will think, you
will remember that you addressed me first just now."

She stamped her foot.

"Of course," he said politely, "you can see my position. You maintain
and possibly believe that these--er--acquaintances of yours"--he
indicated the men--"are not members of the moving-picture outfit. Also
that your being with them is of an accidental nature. But, on the other
hand--"

She put her fingers in her ears and turned her back on him.

"On the other hand," he went on calmly, "I have the word of these three
respectable ladies that they are the outfit, or part of it, that they
have just concluded a cruel hoax on unsuspecting tourists, and that they
justly deserve to be led in as captives and exposed to the full ignominy
of their position."

Here she faced him again, and this time she was quite pale. "Ask
those--those women where they found my engagement ring," she said. "One
of those wretches took it from me. That ought to be proof enough that
they are not from the moving-picture outfit."

Tish at once produced the ring and held it out to him. But he merely
glanced at it and shook his head.

"All engagement rings look alike," he observed. "I cannot possibly say,
Helen, but I think it is unlikely that it is the one I gave you, as you
told me, you may recall, that you had thrown it into a crack in a
glacier. It may, of course, be one you have recently acquired."

He glanced at Mr. Oliver, but the latter only shrugged his shoulders.

Well, she shed a few tears, but he was adamant, and helped us saddle the
horses, ignoring her utterly. It was our opinion that he no longer cared
for her, and that, having lost him, she now regretted it. I know that
she watched him steadily when he was not looking her way. But he went
round quite happily, whistling a bit of tune, and not at all like the
surly individual we had at first thought him.

The ride back was without much incident. Our prisoners rode with their
hands tied behind them, except the young lady.

"We might as well leave her unfastened," the young man said casually.
"While I dare say she would make her escape if possible, and
particularly if there was any chance of getting filmed while doing it,
I will make myself personally responsible."

As a matter of fact she was exceedingly rude to all of us, and during
our stop for luncheon, which was again bacon and pancakes, she made a
dash for her horse. The young man saw her, however, in time, and brought
her back. From that time on she was more civil, but I saw her looking at
him now and then, and her eyes were positively terrified.

It was Aggie, at last, who put in a plea for her with him, drawing him
aside to do so. "I am sure," she said, "that she is really a nice girl,
and has merely been led astray by the search for adventure. Naturally my
friends, especially Miss Tish, have small sympathy with such a state of
mind. But you are younger--and remember, you loved her once."

"Loved her once!" he replied. "Dear lady, I'm so crazy about her at this
minute that I can hardly hold myself in."

"You are not acting much like it."

"The fact is," he replied, "I'm afraid to let myself go. And if she's
learned a lesson, I have too. I've been her doormat long enough. I tried
it and it didn't work. She's caring more for me now, at this minute,
than she has in eleven months. She needs a strong hand, and, by George!
I've got it--two of them, in fact."

We reached Many Glaciers late that afternoon, and Tish rode right up to
the hotel. Our arrival created the most intense excitement, and Tish,
although pleased, was rather surprised. It was not, however, until a
large man elbowed his way through the crowd and took possession of the
prisoners that we understood.