The Associate Hermits. Frank Richard Stockton
to do with you. Sadler’s! Oh, when do we start?”
“To-morrow is Saturday,” replied Mr. Archibald; “we must get together some things we will need for camp-life, and we can start on Monday.”
When the visitors were left to themselves for a few moments, Mr. Archibald said to his wife, “Harriet, I am astounded. This girl, who used to ride bareback and jump over fences, is a young lady now, and a handsome one, too. She is quite a different person from the girl I agreed to take with us.”
“Mr. Archibald,” said his wife, “you never can remember that in this world people of all ages grow older. She was fourteen when she was visiting us, and that was four years ago, so of course she is a young lady.”
“No,” he answered, “I don’t feel that I am growing any older, and I don’t see that you are, and so I totally forget that proclivity in other people. But what do you think now? Can we take this young woman with us to camp? Will she not be a dreadful drag?”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Archibald, “I much prefer the young lady to the girl. I don’t want to be the only woman in camp, and the nearer the other woman is to my age the better.”
“All right,” said Mr. Archibald; “if you are satisfied, I am; and, if she will agree to it, we will add our ages for the time being, and divide by three, and then we will all stand on a level.”
CHAPTER III
SADLER’S
It was in the afternoon of Monday, the 11th of June, when Mr. and Mrs. Archibald, accompanied by Miss Margery Dearborn, arrived at Sadler’s, and with feelings of relief alighted from the cramped stage-coach which had brought them eight miles from the railroad station.
“Can this be Sadler’s?” said Mr. Archibald, in a tone of surprise.
“Of course it must be,” said his wife, “since they brought us here.”
“It certainly is the place,” said Margery, “for there is the name over that door.”
“How do you feel about it?” said Mr. Archibald to his wife.
“I feel very well about it,” said she. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“How do you feel about it?” he asked of the younger lady.
“Well,” she answered, “I don’t exactly understand it. I had visions of forests and wilds and tumbling mountain streams and a general air of primevalism, and I am surprised to see this fine hotel with piazzas, and croquet-grounds, and tennis-courts, and gravelled walks, and babies in their carriages, and elderly ladies carrying sun-shades.”
“But it seems to me that there is a forest behind it,” said Mr. Archibald.
“Yes,” replied Margery, a little dolefully, “it has that to back it up.”
“Don’t let us stand here at the bottom of the steps talking,” said Mrs. Archibald. “I must say I am very agreeably surprised.”
In the wide hall which ran through the middle of the hotel, and not far from the clerk’s desk, there sat a large, handsome man, a little past middle age, who, in a hearty voice, greeted the visitors as they entered, but without rising from his chair. This was Peter Sadler, the owner of the hotel, the legal owner of a great deal of the neighboring country, and the actual ruler of more of said country than could be easily marked out upon a map or stated in surveyors’ terms.
In fact, Peter Sadler, was king of that portion of the vast district of mountain and forest which could be reached in a day’s journey in any direction. If he had wished to extend his domain to points at a greater distance than this he would have done so, but so far he was satisfied with the rights he had asserted. He ruled supreme in that region because he had lived longer in the vicinity than any other white man, because he had a powerful will which did not brook opposition, and because there was no one to oppose him.
“‘CAN THIS BE SADLER’S?’”
On the arable land which lay outside of the forest, and which really belonged to him, there were the houses of the men who farmed his fields, and on the outskirts of the woods were scattered here and there the cabins of the hunters and guides he employed, and these men knew no law but his will. Of course the laws of the State covered the district, but such promulgation and enforcement of these as he might consider necessary were generally left to Peter Sadler, and as to his own laws, he was always there to see that these were observed.
His guests submitted themselves to his will, or they left his hotel very soon. To people of discernment and judgment it was not difficult to submit to the will of this full-bearded, broad-chested man, who knew so much better than they did what they ought to do if they wanted to get all the good out of Sadler’s which they were capable of assimilating.
This man, who sat all day in a big rolling-chair, and who knew everything that was going on in the hotel, the farm, and the forest about him, had been a hunter and a guide in his youth, an Indian-fighter in later years, and when he had been wounded in both legs, so that it was impossible for him ever to walk again, he came back to the scenes of his youth and established an inn for sportsmen—a poor little house at first, which grew and grew and grew, until it was the large, well-kept hotel so widely known by his name.
After dinner, at which meal they were waited upon by women, and not by men in evening-dress as Margery had begun to fear, Mr. Archibald sought Peter Sadler and made known to him the surprise of his party at finding themselves in this fine hotel.
“What did you expect?” asked Peter, eying him from head to foot.
“From what we had heard,” replied the other, “we supposed we should find some sort of a preparatory camping-ground in the woods, from which we could go out and have a camp of our own.”
“That’s just what you have found,” said Sadler. “In this house you prepare to camp, if you need preparation. If any man, woman, or child comes here and wants to go out to camp, and I see that they are sickly or weak or in any way not fit to live in the woods, I don’t let them go one step until they are fit for it. The air and the food and the water they get here will make them fit, if anything will do it, and if these three things don’t set them up they simply have to go back where they came from. They can’t go into camp from this house. But if they fancy this hotel—and there isn’t any reason why anybody shouldn’t fancy it—they can stay here as long as they like, and I’ll take care of them. Now, sir, if you want to go into camp, the first thing for you to do is to bring your family here and let me take a look at them. I’ve seen them, of course, but I haven’t made up my mind yet whether they are the right sort for camp life. As for you, I think you will do. There isn’t much of you, but you look tough.”
Mr. Archibald laughed. “That’s good rough talk,” he said, “and smacks more of camp life than anything I have noticed here. I will go and bring my wife and Miss Dearborn.”
“There is another reason why I want to see them,” said the bluff Peter. “As you are bent on camping, you’ll like to choose a camp, and when anything of that kind is on hand I want to talk to the whole party. I don’t care to settle the business with one of them, and then have him come back and say that what has been agreed upon don’t suit the others. I want a full meeting or no session.”
When Mr. Archibald returned with his wife and Margery, he found Peter Sadler had rolled his chair up to a large circular table at the back of the hall, on which was spread a map of the forest.