Chapter IV: The Energy Is Once Again Transmitted (3)

Such his life had been; dust, thirst, hunger, repulse--and onward to more. Existence shook her head at him with a changeless “No.” Latterly, in Tucson, a pretty woman had shown him kindness which she should not, since he was not her husband and she had one. She fell in love with the April bloom of his years and with his hard luck--and this was the single instance of human interest in him which had touched his life in fifteen months. It lay light upon his roving conscience, was nothing but joy and pride to him; but his code forbade continued acceptance of her money that there seemed no chance to repay. Quitting Tucson, he took from her, as a final loan, enough to buy a wretched horse, with a trifle over. If none in Push Root would employ him, the mines were left; if these should fail, then he would have knocked at the door of every trade in Arizona, except robbery, which was undoubtedly the territory’s chief industry.

Bellyful slid down a hand to his pocket’s bottom. One by one he fingered seven coins therein, his whole fortune, in fractional currency--it summed up to a dollar and four bits. He drew out the coins and attentively read their dates. These he already knew. He was not thinking of the coins, but of the Universe, and how successfully it resisted explanation. A voice stopped him; Aaron Tace was nearly opposite his clump of mesquite. The shell-game man was talking to himself.

“Remember, gentlemen, the hand is quicker than the eye.” This he said over and over, while his hands were ceaselessly moving. Bellyful rose with astonishment, and stared. Aaron Tace could easily have seen him, but was too busy. He was making quick turns and passes, and talking the while.

“Remember, gentlemen, the hand is quicker than the eye.” Nothing but that, while his hands paused, shuffled, and paused again.

“Remember, gentlemen--” It was like a player polishing his lines. Aaron rehearsed all the tones that express complete candor and friendly warning, with a touch of “dare you to try it!” thrown in. The reins hung on the horse’s neck. Fitted to the saddle-horn (a very neat piece of work) was a smooth, wooden tray, and upon this three walnut shells in a line. These Aaron Tace would shift from right to left and back, or half back, exchanging their positions, sliding them among each other, lifting them up and setting them down--a pretty thing to see. Only one slip he made, due to a stumble of his horse. The little pebble, or pea, which the shifted shells concealed by turns to allure the bets of onlookers, rolled to the ground. Aaron sprang off limberly, found it, and was on again, busily rehearsing while his horse walked onward. He had now passed by, and a rock hid him from view; but for a long time still Bellyful could hear the rising and falling cadence of his “Remember, gentlemen, the hand is quicker than the eye,” even after the syllables ceased to be distinguishable. Thus Aaron proceeded toward the Push Root _fiesta_, happy and busy, until his distant cadences died away.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Bellyful.

For perhaps an hour he lay, looking upward through the filmy mesquite, himself a piece of the vast silence. But this new light on the shell game helped little to render the Universe more susceptible of explanation. By and by he took his slow way along the road, and nothing living was left at the Forks. Far in the huge, blue, hot sky the eagle sailed, hunting his prey.

* * * * *

Bellyful found the town of Push Root full of good nature. Indeed, there was more good nature than town; it spilled over the edges in strains of music, strains of language, and gentlemen overcome in the brush. But it was beyond the livery stable’s good nature to trust any such looking owner of any such looking horse; Bellyful paid in advance. He inquired for employment at the stage office, the hardware store, the other store, the Palace Hotel, the other hotel, the Can-Can Restaurant, the Fashion Saloon, the four other saloons, and the three private houses. These were locked because their owners were out, practising good nature. That finished it; there was no employment here. The horse could never make the mines without two meals and a night’s rest--paid for already. No duty now hindered Bellyful from being good-natured himself. He still had three coins of slight importance to do it with, and his absent-minded fingers rubbed them over in his pocket.

Push Root teemed with strangers from ranch and mine, wandering joyously between drinks in search of new games. Through the many sounds Aaron’s voice held its own, and, reaching Bellyful, waked his brooding mind, which had long forgotten Aaron. Some games he knew about, but this one had hitherto not been closely studied by him. Was the eye always slower than the hand? Practice makes perfect, but--? With this dawn of scientific doubt Bellyful stood looking at the cluster of patrons which screened Aaron where he shuffled his three walnut shells and chanted his “Remember, gentlemen.” A disordered-looking patron now emerged from the group, perceived Bellyful, lurched toward him, leaned against him confidingly, and remarked with tears:--

“Say, are you married? I am. Some people are fools all the time. I am. All people are fools some of the time. I am. And when I get home I’ll get hell.” He untied an old horse and rode desolately out of town.

Through the air, like a call, came Aaron’s jaunty voice. Bellyful joined the patrons at once. Aaron shot over him a travelled, measuring eye, of which the not untravelled Bellyful took prompt note. He stood in the front row, staring with as simple an expression as he could command, slowly fumbling the poor little coins in his pocket. Soon the man next him won three dollars on a dime. Bellyful came near whistling, but repressed it in order to maintain his simple expression. Thirty to one! This game paid thirty to one! And the dawn of scientific doubt grew lighter.

“Try yourn.” This suggestion somebody made to a youth of prosperous appearance, with an English neatness, and a cap and waistcoat of the horse-stable variety.

“Thanks, no, ye know. Seen it with thimbles at home, ye know.”

None present was aware that this accent had been heard in no part of the British Isles at any time. Yet, after a look at him, Bellyful’s scientific doubt dawned a trifle clearer.

“Win three dollars?” cried an astonished freighter.

“Remember, gentlemen, the hand is quicker than the eye,” said Aaron, instantly.

He shuffled his shells. The freighter’s hairy fist made a “jeans dive.” This well-known reach for money in the “pants” is composed of two gestures: the hand shoots down into the pocket, while the head tilts skyward. It is common where hay grows, and often foretells that the owner and his money will soon be parted. Bellyful now forgot all about his empty stomach. The freighter touched a shell, put down five cents, and won a dollar and a half.

“Megod!” exclaimed British Isles. He risked a quarter, and lost.

“Aw, now!” he lamented. “Good-by, all.”

They rallied him, chaffed him, told him to come back and be a man; so, not to shame old England in a foreign country (as he explained), he doubled his quarter, and lost again.

“Remember, gentlemen,” chanted Aaron, “the hand is quicker than the eye.”

He shuffled the shells straight at the freighter, as if he were making love to him. The freighter’s eyes bulged; he dredged from his pocket a sort of bun of bills, greasy old rags pressed to a lump, gazed at them, touched them, smoothed them, and at last, amid general laughter, shoved them lingeringly back into his jeans. But his eyes seemed unrestful, and he mopped his brow.

“She’s there!” bet British Isles, touching a shell.

“Take you,” said Aaron.

British Isles put a dollar down. The pea was under the shell. Everybody saw the thirty dollars paid to British Isles. Aaron shuffled his shells anew.

“She’s there!” thundered the freighter. His hand shot down, his head tilted up, and out came the bun again. A neighbor moved a gentle elbow against the freighter’s ribs, and silently indicated another shell. In his excitement Bellyful now nearly forgot to keep looking innocent. The dawn of scientific doubt showed signs of sunrise; if this freighter should _lose_, all would be known to Bellyful but one last detail. If the freighter should _win_--why, then, a splendid theory went up in smoke.

The neighbor pushed a little harder with his

elbow. This time the freighter felt it. He backed away from the neighbor with glaring indignation.

“Ho, no, young man!” he exclaimed loudly. “Keep your tips for greenhorns that ain’t on to this game.” He flayed twenty dollars off his bun. “She’s under there,” he declared, tapping his own shell again.

“Take you,” said Aaron. He lifted the shell. No pea was there!

“Aw!” commented British Isles sympathetically. “Come again, sir. You’ll be apt to swat him next time.”

But the unhappy freighter stood still in an ox-like bewilderment, turning large, rueful eyes now upon the shuffling shells and now upon the neighbor, whose lip curled with a cold, wise smile.

Scientific doubt was rosy everywhere; full knowledge might break at any minute. Bellyful knew now that the freighter was too innocent to be true, that he was in it with Aaron, in it with British Isles, that the three of them had a united eye upon some fat quarry, and were playing a game to bag him. Who was it? Bellyful looked at every man.

“Are you on yet?” whispered the neighbor, edging up. While the bets and shuffling went on, he whispered wisdom behind his hand to Bellyful. Aaron won steadily in a small way till a lull in business came; this he cured by losing sixty well-timed dollars to British Isles. Small business picked up at once. Some people are fools all the time, all people are fools some of the time--but when was the fat quarry coming? Every little while the neighbor dropped more expert wisdom into Bellyful’s ear. “A bad thing,” he whispered, “ever to take your eye off the shells. While that hayseed freighter was looking at the sky, just now, the shells had been changed round. Hard to prove it, too, even if you thought you saw it. Best way of all was, keep your hand on the shell you bet on. Don’t let him move it and talk, for even if the pea was under it he could get it away. He’d never let you win if he didn’t want you to. Keep your hand on your shell.”

“H’m,” answered Bellyful.

“Here’s the real trick,” continued the expert neighbor. “He shuffles till he sees by your eye you’ve spotted a shell. Maybe he leads you on to spot a shell by playing awkward. And he claps down the shell.”

“H’m,” responded Bellyful again.

“No. I hadn’t finished,” explained the expert. “Of course the pea is not under that shell. Where is it? Nestling in his little right finger. Some of ’em is both-handed and can work two peas. So, when you bet, no pea is under any shell. You’re bound to lose, see? And see how he holds his shells with them two end fingers crooked in and how he stoops over ’em close to the edge of the table now and then.”

“H’m,” unchangeably remarked Bellyful.

“Yes, but you ain’t watching,” complained the expert. “When he scrapes a shell close to the edge, that’s when the pea’s liable to tumble into his little finger. I’m going after him in a minute.”

A flash came into Bellyful’s eye. He turned his head for one look at the expert. It satisfied him.

“I guess you’re catching on now,” said the expert. “There! The pea’s in his finger. Watch me.”

Bellyful watched.

The expert had gold pieces, plenty of them, all sizes. He put down five dollars. “I’ll pick up,” he said, “the two shells the pea’s not under.”

“Take you,” said Aaron.

The expert quickly picked up two shells. But the pea was under one of them.

“You win,” said Aaron instantly, and instantly caught up all three shells and shuffled them. One hundred and fifty dollars to the expert, though he had really lost! “See what that means?” he whispered to Bellyful. “He paid me not to expose him.”

“H’m,” replied Bellyful.

“Watch me again,” urged the expert.

Indeed, Bellyful did. Scientific doubt was over; the full sun had risen.

Once more the shuffled shells came to rest, enticing bets, when violent voices arose off to the left. Aaron quite--oh, quite!--forgot, and looked away to see what the noise was. The freighter quickly lifted a shell. The pea was there. He clapped the shell down.

“Put your hand on that, young man,” he commanded. “She’s there,” he shouted to Aaron, whose eye had now come back. The disturbance had been some brief trouble between British Isles and a man near him; it was quieted. The freighter bet the rest of his money--that large bun. The expert, with his hand on the shell, bet all his gold--it made several stacks.

“Take you,” said Aaron.

The pea wasn’t beneath the shell!

“Too bad, gentlemen,” said Aaron, gathering promptly all the money and the shells, and shoving everything into his pockets. “Well, I told you the hand was quicker than the eye. Good-by! Better luck next time!” He nodded kindly, and was gone.

The game was done, the patrons dispersed. British Isles and the freighter no longer to be seen, everybody melted away among the wagons, the horses, the people, the sounds, the shows, the music of the general _fiesta_. On the deserted spot stood the expert and Bellyful, looking at each other.

“What are you trembling about?” demanded the expert, sharply.

“I don’t know,” said Bellyful. He didn’t know.

“Five hundred and thirty-five dollars,” muttered the expert, hoarsely. “That freighter got the pea out when he scraped that shell down.”

“They were, all three, laying for you from the start,” said Bellyful. He couldn’t stop trembling. Perhaps it was want of food.

“Five hundred and thirty-five dollars,” wailed the expert.

After that, he, too, melted away.

* * * * *

Five miles out of Push Root, where the road forks to the mines, nothing had changed, except the name of the day. Repose Valley had not aged in twenty-four hours; it may be doubted if Repose Valley could have looked older in twenty-four million hours. Its sand was hot and gray, its mountains were hot and gray, its sunlight glared like a curse. No breeze, no water, no shade; gauze mesquite, stiff cactus, white cattle bones--four hundred square miles of this, quite as usual. It might just as well have been yesterday, but for its name. All the days of the week here might have sat for each other’s photographs. Only the Creator could have told them apart. Up in the blue air sailed the eagle. Evidently he must find meals in Repose Valley, else he wouldn’t be here, sailing and watching. He saw the same horse and the same Bellyful resting beneath the same mesquite. He saw also, away off, the same Aaron riding slowly along the road toward the Forks--only, this morning, Aaron was coming from Push Root instead of going to it. This proved it wasn’t yesterday. Aaron had out his practice-table, and his hands were industrious.

Again Bellyful lay thinking. His horse was better for the hay and corn and eighteen hours of rest; but the mines were further than Push Root, and he must get there, there was nowhere else left to get--except _out_! As he lay under the mesquite, Bellyful made one gesture--he shook his fist at the sky. They might put him out, but he wouldn’t get out.

It might be said that the only difference between the Bellyful of yesterday and him of to-day was the difference of one dollar and four bits. He had nothing now in his pocket; those last coins had paid for what food they could buy him. But there was another difference. It had been wrought during the night hours, wrought while he lay in the stable, unable to sleep, possibly wrought also, even in the sleep he at length fell into just before daylight; for, while he slept, his heart went on beating, of course, and what was his soul doing?

After his single gesture he lay under the mesquite motionless, gazing up through the filmy branches, quiet as a stone, deep sunk in the heart of Repose Valley silence. Stretched so, still beneath the same mesquite, he looked as if he had been there since yesterday, as if in all the to-morrows he might be there, keeping the cattle bones company. But the whole boy--every inch of flesh and spirit--was alive, very much alive, not at all in a moderate, everyday fashion; in fact, Bellyful was a powder magazine, needing nothing but a match. Existence had shaken her head at him once too often.

He didn’t suspect his own state until the match was applied. Aaron’s approaching voice reached him. Even the eagle, a mile up in the air, stopped hunting to witness the sudden proceedings. Bellyful leaped to his feet, looked at the rock which blocked him and his horse from Aaron’s view, moved the passive beast a few paces back, looked at the rock again, was satisfied, ran like wild game behind the rock, and waited. His pistol was always in excellent order, a clean-polished, incongruous gleam to flash forth from such a rusty scarecrow.

The talking Aaron came along, happy and busy. His head bent over his shuffled shells; the rise and fall of his cadences grew clearer, the sounds began to take to themselves syllables; first “hand” and “eye” came out distinct, then the links between filled in, and the whole sentence rang perfect through the unstirred air.

“Remember, gentlemen, the hand is quicker than the eye.”

Such rehearsals as this must have helped many a monotonous journey to pass pleasantly for Aaron--not to speak of placing him in the foremost ranks of Art.

“Remember, gentlemen, the hand is quicker than the eye.”

“Not this morning.”

The shells smashed in Aaron’s horrified grasp. The little pea rolled to the ground.

“Going to the mines?” pursued Bellyful. All his words were sweet and dreadful.

Then Aaron saw behind the pistol who it was.

“That kid a road-agent!” he thought. “Why didn’t I spot him yesterday?” And he blamed his own blindness, miserably and quite unjustly, because how could he know that Bellyful had only become a road-agent in the last ten minutes?

“Strip,” said Bellyful.

Aaron was slow about it.

A flash, a smoke, and a hole through Aaron’s Mexican hat cleared every doubt.

“You’re mature, I see,” remarked Aaron, and offered his unbuckled pistol.

“The other one now,” commanded Bellyful. This was a guess, but a correct one. “Leave ’em both drop down.”

Both dropped down.

“Go on strippin’.”

The money followed, a good deal of it, and Aaron made a gesture of emptiness.

“That all?”

“Yes, indeed, young man.”

“Then I want the rest of it.”

“You’ve got the rest. You’ve got the whole. The game ain’t what it used to be, and I have partners; they--”

“I’ll partner you. Get down. Get down quick.”

Evidently a compromise was the very most a poor shell-game man in this hapless crisis could hope for. Aaron got down and addressed the road-agent.

“See here, beau,” he began, “you and me oughtn’t to be hostile. In our trade we can’t afford it. You and me’s brothers.”

“Don’t you call me brother. I don’t lie. I say ‘hand it over’ and folks ain’t deceived. I’m an outlaw and, maybe, my life is forfeit. But you pretend you’re an honest man and that your dirty game is square. Throw it all down, or I’ll tear it out of you.”

Aaron threw it all down. Then he was allowed to go his ways, seeking more fools to cheat.

Up in the air the eagle sailed. He was still looking down upon clots of cactus, thickets of mesquite, and skeletons of cattle. He also saw a horseman going slowly one way, and a horseman going slowly the other. In time many miles lay between them, and the forks of the road were as silent and empty of motion as the rest of Repose Valley.

* * * * *

To me, listening, Scipio Le Moyne narrated the foregoing anecdote while he lay in hospital, badly crumpled up by a bad horse. Upon the day following I brought him my written version.

“Yes,” he said musingly, when I had finished reading it to him, “that--happened--eight--years--ago. You’ve told it about correct--as to facts.”

“What’s wrong, then?”

“Oh--I ain’t competent to pass on your language. The facts are correct. What are you lookin’ at me about?”

“Well--the ending.”

“Ending?”

“Well--I don’t like the way Bellyful just went off and prospered and--”

“But he did.”

“And never felt sorry or--”

“But he didn’t.”

“Well--”

“D’you claim he’d oughtn’t? Think of him! Will y’u please to think of him after that shell game? He begging honest work and denied all over, everywhere, till his hat and his clothes and his boots were in holes, and his body was pretty near in holes--think of him, just a kind of hollo’ vessel of hunger lying in that stable while the shell-game cheat goes off with his pockets full of gold.” Scipio spoke with heat.

“Yes, I know. But, if Bellyful afterward could only feel sorry and try--”

“Are you figuring to fix that up?”--he was still hotter--“because I forbid you to monkey with the truth. Because I _never_ was sorry.”

“_What?_”

“I was Bellyful,” said Scipio, becoming quiet. “Yes, that was eight years ago.” He mused still more, his eyes grew wistful. “I was nineteen then. God, what good times I have had!”

VII

WHERE IT WAS

When Scipio had brought to an end the edifying anecdote, he lay in his hospital bed, silent and a little tired after so sustained a recital.

“Why not write,” I inquired, “a book, and call it Tales From My Past?”

He looked at me suspiciously, but suspicion melted into what immediately sparkled in the tones of his reply. “In spite of my ancestors, I don’t know French.”

For an instant I was stupid--I have many such instants.

“You’ve often told me,” he had to explain, “that in France y’u can print anything.”

“Oh, well!” I laughed, “quite a number of yours are harmless enough--even for our magazines. This one for instance.”

But his thoughts had gone on; he was gazing through the open window with a craving eye. All out-of-doors was his true home, his hearth and bed, his natural workshop and playground; indoors had been merely his occasional resort--a place where a man went for a brief visit when he felt like spending his money. “I’m goin’ to get well,” he said, still watching the far-off, golden hills. “I _am_ getting well. And wunst I’m on my legs I’ll start makin’ a lot more Past.”

“Do!” I exclaimed. “Do. It isn’t everybody who can, even when they try.”

He grunted. “Huh! I ain’t never tried much. Didn’t have to. Things just kind o’ seem to happen when I’m around.”

“Did you lie just now?” I asked.

“Lie? When?”

“Didn’t you fix up the ending?”

“Fix up nothin’! That’s what them two old junipers actually did.”

“You’ll remember,” I persisted, “you forbade me the other day to ‘monkey with the facts,’ when I told you I didn’t like the ending of Bellyful’s adventure in Repose Valley.”

“Sure! Us Western men don’t care about fixed-up things when we know how things are--when we’ve been the things ourselves. And will you tell me”--Scipio grew earnest--“what’s the point of a book lyin’ about life the way more’n half of ’em do? The way I wouldn’t let y’u do about Bellyful?”

“Oh, our sincere and pious public is determined that virtue shall triumph in print, anyhow--and that nothing naked is true until draped.”

“Not me. I don’t want any of them bib-and-tucker-and-safety-pin stories they hand you out. What made y’u think I’d lied?”

“Well, it seemed too good, too virtuous, too right.”

He grinned, and I perceived this to be at my expense--he had caught _me_ taking divergent postures toward life and toward print.

“I surrender!” I laughed. “I’m a liar too!”

His grin now faded. “Now and then, y’u know, people do act decent. I’ve met several besides them two old men. Even along the Rio Grande. Why, I’ve acted decent myself at times.” He seemed to review his recent anecdote. “The point was,” he said next, “_they_ always thought they were madder than they _were_. Now _I’m_ just the other way. I’m that good-natured that I’m frequently madder than I feel--and it’s the other man finds that out!”

“Get out of here!” said the post doctor, entering. “Look at your victim’s eyes!”

So I went out, ashamed of myself at having led poor Scipio to talk so much. I needn’t change a syllable of as many as I recollect in his anecdote. His impression of the Thowmet Valley as it had been in those earlier days--before apples, before the Great Northern, before anything--shall not be “fixed up” by me.

* * * * *

I’d been seein’ a lot of country, clear up from Mazatlan to the Big Bend--driftin’ through Old Mexico and California and Awregon, and over for a little while to Boisé, and up through the Palouse where the dust puffed up from the ploughs and trailed like a freight-train’s smoke does on the Southern Pacific for a half-hour after she’s went by; and I’d crossed the God-awful Big Bend--but I’ll skip that--and I’d crossed the stinkin’, vicious Columbia on a chain ferry--but I’ll skip that--and I was kind o’ tired. Didn’t want no mines either. There was mines up there and folks crowdin’ to ’em, thick from everywheres. But I was tired. Figured I’d put in the balance of the fall--and the winter, too, maybe--in some pleasant place, if they could direct me to such a thing. So they told me there was women--wives, I mean--and children and homes and neighbors over on the Thowmet. So I headed for there. Went in with a Siwash over the Chillowisp trail. Him and me couldn’t talk much, but we could nod and point and grunt when his English and my Chinook gave out. He carried the mail in wunst a week, except when the snow wouldn’t let him. That proved to be often. Oh, but I liked the Thowmet Valley’s looks that first sight! And it stayed pleasant to me. Why did I leave it? Don’t know. Just got curious to see some more country.

There wasn’t any homes to see as the Injun and me rode down the hill. But trees that could shade you, and grass a horse could eat, and water not runnin’ like it wanted to kill you, but friendly water. And the mountains all around was pleasant too--timber on ’em. Snow not on ’em yet, except a dozen or so high-up, far-back patches, lyin’ around white like wash-day. So we rode along up the valley and camped, and next day struck a cabin, and corral and haystacks. Sure enough! Married man with wife and kids. Kids had regular Texas-colored hair. But the most homes was farther up the river, they said, near the Forks and store; and so I went along with the Siwash, who was bound for the store with his mail-sack. The store was the post-office, of course--Beekman was its name. We passed by a tent ‘side of the road, and voices was screechin’ inside the tent, and the Siwash he started to laugh. So I asked him what he knowed about it. Let me see. What did he say? I don’t have use any more for the Chinook I learned up there. Oh, yes! He said:--

“_Klaska tenas man, klaska hyas pilton._”

So I didn’t know what that meant, and there wasn’t much good mentioning this to him; but I didn’t have to, for they came a-rushin’ out of the tent, no hats on.

“How does a coyote walk?” screeched out the littlest one, aimin’ his finger at me.

Well, I felt huffy--never’d saw him before or his partner neither--didn’t catch the joke--but he wasn’t jokin’. The big one arrives and he yells:--

“Don’t he walk separate?”

“He walks together, don’t he?” yells the little one.

Little one had scrambled hair, white, and it hadn’t been cut lately. Big partner had left his hair behind him somewheres along life’s journey. They was glarin’ up at me for an answer.

So I said: “Tell me what you mean.”

So they did. They was trappers. One claimed you could always tell a coyote’s tracks by the way he put his right foot and his left foot down in different places, so you could tell he was a four-footed animal; and the other he said that was the way the bobcat and the link and the mountain-lion walked. And then the first one he yelled out that they struck one foot right in the other foot’s track, so it looked like a two-footed animal had been walkin’ there.

“That’s all easy,” I said; for I’ve trapped some myself.

So I set ’em straight as to the facts. Thing was, they quieted down right off and took my say-so. But that was their way, I found--get up a regular state-of-things that would mean trouble, you’d suppose, and drop it as if nobody’d said a word.

“Come and finish dinner,” says the little one to the big one.

“Dinner!” says the big one. “Quit your dining. You’ve eet enough to wake the dead.”

So they starts back to their tent like twins. I expect they were sixty, or seventy, or eighty--I don’t know how long they’d lasted in this world--and one had boots, and the other had his feet tied in gunnysack, and both looked like two-bits’ worth of God-help-us.

But they didn’t get to their tent that time. Down the road comes a nice-lookin’ girl on a calico horse with one blue eye--the horse had--and the little one he sees her and he whirls around and aims his finger at her, same as he done to me.

“No, you don’t!” says he, loud up in the air. “I’ve told you I won’t.”

“I had no intention of speaking about it again,” says she, rather quiet, but smilin’. “But when you find that there’s no coal really there--”

Well, what d’y’u think? It set ’em wild. Both of ’em went plumb wild. I couldn’t hear for a while what the trouble was, because they scrambled their words just like the little one’s hair, talkin’ to the girl and me and the Siwash and each other. But the Siwash he gave another laugh and rode away--he had his mail. I stayed. I hadn’t got used to ’em yet. Thought maybe she’d better have a man around. But they was absolutely harmless. And then I began to understand.

The girl she sat there indulgin’ ’em. Told ’em she wasn’t goin’ to worry ’em about it any more. They told her there was coal there and they was goin’ to supply the whole valley, and it was better than a gold-mine. She might just as well have worried ’em instead of sittin’ so peaceful on the calico horse, because they would never have noticed any worryin’ she could do--they was that busy with the worry they were keepin’ up all by themselves. She was a school-teacher and up to now she’d kept school in a tent. But the valley was going to build a school-house and the best location for it happened to be on some land they’d filed on. Any other place would be too far for somebody’s kids, or for everybody’s, or else hadn’t water convenient. But it seemed they wouldn’t hear of it. I suppose whoever put it to ’em first had put it wrong, and now all y’u had to do was say “school-house” in their hearing, and have a circus prompt.

“Mr. Edmund,” says she to me, “says that if their idea of other minerals is like their idea of coal, it’s no wonder they have found trapping more profitable. But no one can persuade them, and it’s truly a pity about the school-house.” Mr. Edmund kept the store at Beekman.

“If it’s not coal,” says I, “what is it?”

“Oh, slate, or graphite, or something--and just a tiny ledge, and too far from transportation.”

“Well, then, it don’t burn.”

“You can’t reason with them,” says she. And she smiles down at them two quarrelin’, fussin’ old men. It would have brought me to reason, her smile would, but she never gave it to me.

Yes, she indulged ’em. The valley indulged ’em right along. They was so old and so harmless. Kultus Jake and Frisco Baldy was their names--all the names I ever heard for ’em--and they’d been most everywheres before other people had. Been acrost the Isthmus and round the Horn, they claimed--not together, y’u know, but they had met when they was young. Their trails had crossed somewheres in Sonora. Then they’d met again on the Santa Fé trail, when they was still young. And so now and then they’d kep’ a-meetin’ and a-growin’ less young. Been through the gold excitement of ’49. Drifted up to Portland. Got separated at Klamath about the time of the Modoc War. Didn’t see each other again till both come face to face over in the Okanogan country--and then they was old. They remembered former days, and it tied ’em together. They was goin’ to Africa next time they felt like they needed a change of air. Kultus Jake’s hair was all the moss he’d ever gathered, and Frisco Baldy he seemed to have gathered nothin’ whatever. But they packed around a big harvest of years--no one ever knowed the sum of it. Wunst in a while they would speak of something they had done together long ago. Then y’u knew the silent tie between ’em. I don’t wish to live that long and have to look backward when I want to see anything of promise. It’s awful when everybody has to indulge y’u--time to quit then. But y’u needn’t to pity Kultus Jake and Frisco Baldy, for they was just as set and cheerful about goin’ to Africa as young rich folks talkin’ over what waterin’ place they’ll visit next summer. Liveliest old junipers that ever I see!

_Kultus_, y’u know, is Chinook, and it’s used for most anything that don’t amount to nothin’. And while we’re on Chinook, here’s something funny. _Potlatch_ means a gift. Now you’d suppose _kultus potlatch_ would be a poor gift--counterfeit dollar or a dozen rotten eggs, for instance. Well, you’re wrong. You give a man a bridle, or a hindquarter of venison, or anything y’u choose, and say nothin’ when y’u give it--that’s just a plain common _potlatch_, and it means he’s expected by all the rules to give you something pretty soon, something as good as your bridle or your deer. But you say “_Kultus potlatch_” to him, and then he’ll be genuinely grateful, for that means you’re just makin’ him a real present out of the warmness of your heart, and don’t expect him to come back at y’u with a huckleberry for your persimmon. Why, when a Siwash--the custom came from them--gave me somethin’ in silence, it used to worry me ’most to death.

What the mail-carrier said to me the first day, when the two old men was screechin’ inside their tent, was that they were children and fools. But he was an Injun and did not have indulgent feelings. I saw more of ’em and didn’t mind ’em. I fell into a job at the Forks. Mr. Edmund wanted somebody else in the store, and I could write a plain hand and add figures fairly correct. He was kind of mad about the school-house, havin’ the interests of the valley at heart, and he used to watch the days gettin’ shorter. Mr. Edmund had everything at heart--too much at heart--other folks’ troubles as well as his own. He would lecture me about them in his deep-down voice. School wouldn’t do in a tent after snow came, and he saw that this would come down to havin’ school in his own cabin if the children was to get any teachin’ at all. He was the only one that didn’t leave ’em alone about their coal-mine. Offered to buy it off ’em wunst, and they screeched for ten minutes. Threatened to write to Washington and have him removed for takin’ advantage of his office.

“Why, you don’t know where Washington is,” says he, with his voice down in the cellar.

“Washington, D.C.?” screeches Kultus Jake. “I don’t know? I been there!”

“Washington, D.C.,” repeats Edmund slow, like Fate a-comin’. “You don’t know where it is.” That was Edmund all over. His way o’ jokin’.

“It’s in Maryland,” says Frisco Baldy.

“Virginia, y’u singed porcupine!” yells Kultus Jake. “Don’t I tell y’u I been there?”

And I seen they both meant it. And I seen this really grieved Edmund instead of pleasin’ him. He took it to heart. Well, sir, I just went acrost the store and lay down on the flour-sacks. Kicked up my heels. Guess I made more noise than the old men did. After a minute I lifted up to see what Edmund was doin’, and he’d pushed his spectacles up high on his forehead and was lookin’ at the two scrappin’ about Washington, D.C., out of his awful solemn eyes; so I laid down again flat. If Edmund had talked I couldn’t have heard him, but as a matter of fact he just let ’em go it alone; and they, like they pretty much always done, got switched off on to somethin’ else--this time it was the traps. There was some number fours hanging there, and they both happened to agree it was number fours they would take when they started into the mountains to trap for the winter. So traps made ’em forget about Washington, D.C., and _it_ had made ’em forget about exposin’ Edmund, which had made ’em forget the coal-mine and the school-house, and so they departed entirely peaceful out of the store and over the Thowmet to their tent, which they had moved up to the Forks. Then I looks up from the sacks again. There stands Edmund behind his desk, same as ever, spectacles away up on his forehead, only now his solemn eyes was fixed on me. And I looks at him, not knowin’ what on earth he’s goin’ to say or whether he’s mad or ain’t mad--for y’u couldn’t often tell from his face. For a young man--and he was young--he was a lot growed up. I expect he knew sorrow early. Both of us was quite silent.

“I didn’t know they didn’t know,” says Edmund, like he was breaking the news of a death to y’u.

And I lays right down again on the sacks.

“Good Lord!” says Edmund, “what ignorance. The capital of their country!”

But I could only fight for my breath, and cry and cry.

Next time I could see anything, there was Edmund sittin’ on the counter clost alongside of me, legs danglin’ against the sacks. But that time when I looked at him he laughed--laughed all through fit to kill himself, same as I’d been doin’. And it was at himself, y’u know, as well as at the whole thing; he included himself in the show.

“You’re quite right,” says he.

That was what made y’u love Edmund. When a thing like Washington, D.C., came up, he’d most always get it wrong first--see the bad side of it too big and the good side too small--he had a heap of misplaced seriousness in his system to conquer. But he’d sure conquer it every time if y’u gave him time. It took me the whole first week I worked for him in the store to find this out. Edmund was the squarest man I have ever known. Too square. And about the finest. He was from an Eastern college and entirely wasted on the Thowmet Valley, where nobody but him had any education or understood honesty as he understood it.

“But they’re obstacles to the public good here, all the same,” said he next; and I had to think back before I saw he meant the old men was obstructin’ the school-house and thereby withholdin’ light from the young hope of the great empire of the Northwest.

He came back to it too, several days after that, while the school-teacher was orderin’ slate-pencils.

“Oh, leave them alone,” says she. “Mr. Edmund, you’ll just make ’em worse.”

But he was in for an argument. He settled those eyes of his on her with his regular May-God-have-mercy-on-your-soul expression, and he told her she’d ought to know better. But she didn’t mind him any more’n I did. She liked him.

“You know as well as I do,” says he, “that children should be an improvement on their parents, especially when those parents come from Texas. Texas is a large place,” he goes on, “and I am willin’ to believe that it contains thousands of enlightened and refined persons--but they don’t come here. If your scholars don’t learn to read and write, where’s any progress to come from?”

“Well, Mr. Edmund,” says she, “all I know is that you will never help me, or the school-house, or progress, by calling Kultus Jake and Frisco Baldy a pair of inspected and condemned mules to their faces.”

I didn’t know he’d called ’em that. Must have been outside the store somewheres. Edmund could turn his tongue wrong-side-out when he felt like it. “That’s what they are,” says he, laughin’ at his own words, which he had forgotten. “But as for this valley, it was inhabited by better citizens when the wild animals lived here. I prefer a black-tailed deer to a Texan. Don’t waste your money on those chocolates, Miss Carey.”

“Why, what’s wrong with them?” says she, with the box in her hand.

“There’s no chocolate in ’em,” says Edmund. “The wholesale house cheated me. I’d send ’em back, but I’d sold too much before I found out. This candy here,” says he, showin’ her some more, “seems to be what it claims to be.”

And then, while she seemed to hesitate over the chocolates, what do y’u suppose he does? Takes the box sudden out of her hand, walks out to the river bank and throws the whole outfit plop into the water!

“Isn’t that just like him!” says she to me, very quiet, while he was out on the bank. And it was. Yes, Edmund is the only fool I ever loved.

She kept starin’ out at him, and in a minute we heard the noise of a boat bein’ rowed acrost the Thowmet. Edmund he stands watchin’ whoever it was below. Next minute up the bank comes Kultus Jake.

“No use your divin’ for that candy,” says Edmund; “it’s all melted by now.”

But Jake didn’t know about the candy and he had somethin’ on his mind. His old innocent blue eyes was troubled.

“Decided where Washington, D.C., is?” says Edmund, walkin’ ahead of him into the store.

But that didn’t faze Jake; he’d come to say somethin’. I thought Washington, D.C., was a thing of the past. As a matter of fact it hadn’t scarcely begun; it was bidin’ its time for all of us, though none of us could ever suspect that.

“Well, where’s your partner this afternoon?” says Edmund.

Kultus Jake he walks around the store blinkin’ at the various goods, and he touches a trap here and a blanket there and after a while he answers:--

“Oh, he’s over to Pipestone Cañon.” And he walks around and touches some more goods.

“Figure you’ll get into the mountains this season?” says Edmund.

“Yes,” says Jake. “Next week.” Then he walks up close to Edmund. “Baldy’s over to Pipestone Cañon,” says he. “We’re goin’ to start next week. Don’t want the snow to get ahead of us. Mink and marten reported plentiful up Robinson Creek. One man seen a silver-gray fox. Guess we’ll do pretty well this winter. Live in Robinson Cabin--it ain’t fallen down like they claimed.” And he took another turn around by the door. Well, all this wasn’t much to tell people. We knowed all that ourselves--but Jake just then made up his mind quick to say what he’d come to say.

“Don’t you josh Baldy,” says he, comin’ back close up to Edmund. “Don’t you do it any more. I don’t mind joshin’, but Baldy--he’s old.”

And out he goes. He went down the bank, and next y’u could hear the knockin’ of his oars, as he rowed himself back over the Thowmet to their tent. Miss Carey she looked at the door where he’d gone out, smilin’ very pretty. It takes a woman to understand them feelin’s men has, but conceals.

“Well, I must be getting home for supper,” says she. She boarded a little ways up the North Fork with some folks that had quite a family. But when she’s outside, just startin’ to untie her horse, “Why, here comes Frisco Baldy!” says she, and waits for him.

Frisco Baldy was comin’, sure enough, ridin’ up the river quite slow, and lookin’ acrost at where their tent was in the flat land this side o’ the blacksmith’s cabin. Then we knowed Jake had spied him and that was what made him speak out so quick.

Baldy he arrives and gets down. “Been over to Pipestone Cañon,” says he. “We’ll be startin’ for the Robinson Cabin next week, I guess. Snow’s not meltin’ on the mountain tops any more. She’s liable to come down here for keeps any day. Well--we’ll be needin’ a lot o’ truck off you. Beans and pork and coffee, and stuff in general--me and Jake’ll be over to see you about it. Guess you’ll have to let us pay you in furs when we come out in the spring. Old man Parrigin seen a silver-gray fox. Say!” And Baldy walks clost up to Edmund. “Don’t you josh Jake. He’s old.”

And out he goes!

I looks at Miss Carey--just in time to catch her whippin’ her handkerchief away from her eye.

“Well,” begins Edmund--but she bursts right out on him.

“Don’t you say anything! Don’t say a thing!” she cries. “They’re just two poor, quaint, dear, helpless old waifs.” Oh, she looked at Edmund perfectly ragin’.

I didn’t know what Edmund would do about that. He had an awful quick temper. But he gives a smile pretty near as lovely as hern had been, and his solemn brown eyes merely looked kind o’ surprised.

“Why,” says he, “I was goin’ to say I would grubstake ’em for nothin’. They needn’t give me any furs.”

It pulled her right up short and I don’t know what she would have said, for there was Frisco Baldy on the bank, hollerin’ and throwin’ his arms up and down. I run out. I thought somebody was in trouble. Just in the bend there below where the North Fork comes in, there’s a big deep hole. Well, nobody was in no trouble. Jake was rowin’ himself over to our side again, and Baldy appeared not to want him over on our side. So he kept a-bellerin’ and throwin’ his arms, and Jake he came along over, not mindin’ about Baldy on the bank. He landed and clumb up the bank right past Baldy, and Baldy he yells out:--

“Didn’t y’u see me tellin’ y’u to stay over there?”

“Yes, I seen y’u and I come,” says Jake, not yellin’, but in his nat’ral voice. And he starts past him.

“Didn’t y’u see I’ve got the horse and can cross at the ford without y’u?”

That starts Jake and he yells back: “I didn’t come for you; I came for a box of matches, y’u bawlin’ bobcat.”

So there they was at it again, scrappin’ about nothin’ at all. And Jake he bought his matches, mad, and cleared out to his boat; and old Baldy he got on his horse, mad, and cleared out to the ford; and I don’t know, when they got to their tent, whether they went on with that partic’lar dissension or whether they’d forgot all about it and had to start up a new one to keep ’em from feelin’ lost. Oh, they’d contracted the habit o’ disagreement, I suppose, same as a man gets to depend on havin’ a quid of tobacco in his cheek. But while speakin’ to Edmund about his joshin’, the eyes of both of ’em had given away the store they set by each other.

Miss Carey she went home with her slate-pencils ordered and some candy Edmund’s conscience was willin’ for him to recommend, and me and Edmund was left alone in the store. I wanted to say somethin’ about Kultus Jake and Frisco Baldy’s latest unpleasantness, and somethin’ about the way each one had sneaked in to ask Edmund not to josh the other one any more; and I had things to say about the bad chocolates, and about Edmund’s plan of grubstakin’ the old junipers when they should start into the mountains for a winter’s trappin’--I was full of conversation, but Edmund wasn’t. He was loaded plumb to the gills with silence. I could tell that from his looks. I had come to know by hard experience that there was spells when Edmund not only didn’t want to say a word himself, but didn’t want you to, either. And if y’u happened to say anythin’--don’t care what--he’d fly at y’u. I said wunst it was goin’ to rain, and just merely this started Edmund roundin’ me up for the inattentive way I had of lettin’ my mind wander from my business. It did rain, too. So now I wondered for a while what he’d say when he felt like speakin’ once more. It was generally some very peculiar remark y’u couldn’t foresee. Of course Edmund was college-raised, but it wasn’t no college-raisin’ made him Edmund. I’ve saw heaps of graduates and undergraduates and they’re just like other people when y’u come to know ’em. But I’d forgot wonderin’ by the time Edmund did speak. He made me jump.

“I am the oldest man in this valley.”

That is what he said in the store long after dark with two lamps. He was makin’ out an order to send to Seattle by the mail next day--a big order, because it was likely to be the last lot of goods we could send for that year. Freight teams couldn’t get into the valley after the heavy snow came.

Well, I didn’t say anythin’, for I wasn’t full of conversation any more. Edmund he stands back of his desk and shoves his spectacles up on his forehead, and his eyes was lookin’ at me so y’u’d have thought I’d committed--well, most anythin’.

“Very much the oldest man in this valley,” says Edmund, lookin’ more serious--if possible.

“All right,” says I.

“I will be twenty-five,” says Edmund, “next fourteenth of July. I’m going to bed.”

So he marched out with his lamp and left me in the store with all the shadows and things, and the sound of the North Fork rapids under the bridge. One lamp made awful little light in that store. D’y’u think I laughed at Edmund then, like I so often did? Not a bit. I sat down on the counter and thought him over. And for the first time I expect I saw him clear. Saw him alone in that valley, unlike anybody or anythin’ that was there, or likely to come there. And him with his college mates and all men and women who set store by him miles and miles and miles away in the East. It made me feel old and lonesome myself! And then--throwin’ those chocolates into the river! Maybe he was the oldest man in the valley, for Jake and Baldy had crossed the line into childhood.

But I laughed at him next mornin’. The Siwash had started down the valley with the mail and no one had come to the store yet that early--it was dark. So Edmund had nothin’ to do, and he was weighin’ himself on the scales.

“I don’t gain,” says he, disgusted. “Not a pound in a year.”

“Y’u don’t think the thoughts that make a man fat,” says I.

“A hundred and forty,” says he, and jumps down.

Well, I did weigh a hundred and sixty, stripped, right along--and we was pretty near of a height. Maybe I had half an inch the better of him. “But,” I tells him for consolation, “it’s your great age. You’ll be twenty-five next July and I was only twenty-four last June.” It was November we was in, y’u know. So I laughs.

“Yes!” he says. “You twenty-four! You stopped maturing at six.” And he laughs, too.