Maw could not tell a lie any more than George Washington when caught, so she confessed on the spot.

   “Then you are under arrest! Don't you know it's against the regulations to deface any natural object in the park? I'll have to telephone in the number of your car. You must see the commissioner before you leave the park.”

   “Me arrested?” exclaimed Maw in sudden consternation. “What'll that man do to me?”

   “He'll fine you ten dollars and costs. If you had written it a little bit larger it would have been twenty-five dollars and costs. Now get down and rub it out before

   it sets, and do it quick, before the geyser plays again.”

   And so Maw got down on her knees and rubbed out her first feeling of identity. And the commissioner fined her ten dollars and costs in due time—for Maw was honest as the day and didn't try to evade the punishment that she thought was hers.

   “I ought to have knew better,” she said “me, a woman of my years. I don't begretch the money, and I think the young man was right, and so was the judge, and I'll never do it again. The commissioner said that I looked like a woman of sense. I always did have sense before. I think it must be these mountains, or the moon, or something. I never felt that way before.”

   It was this young man who walked down to Maw's camp to take her number. It was there that he met Cynthy, and I am inclined to think that she took his number at the time. Later on I often saw them walking together, past the great log hotel with its jazz architecture, and beyond the

   fringe of pine that separates the camp trippers from the O'Cleaves, who live in the hotels. The young ranger was contrite about arresting Maw, but that latter was the first to exonerate him.

   “You only done right,” said she. “I done what I knew was wrong. Now, Hattie, and you, Roweny, don't you let this spoil your trip none at all. It's once your Maw has allowed herself the privilege of being an old fool, the first time in her life. I dunno but it was worth ten dollars, at that.”

   And so I suppose we should let Cynthy and the young ranger go out into the moonshine to learn how the algae grow, of how many different colors. Consider the algae of the geysers, how they grow. Solomon in all his glory had nothing on the algae; and the Queen of Sheba nothing on Cynthy.

 Prev. P 9/25 next