“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.
The Siwash was late comin’ back with the mail over the Chillowisp. Snow
must have been three foot deep in the mountains, and it lay for quite a
while in the valley, so we thought Kultus Jake and Frisco Baldy had
waited too late and would lose their chance to get to their trappin’.
They did lose it, too, but not exactly that way--but I’ll come to that
point when I get there. Snow druv school indoors. Miss Carey she had to
quit the tent--and sure enough it turned out like I told y’u. Edmund’s
sittin’-room was filled up with Texan kids--Edmund’s private room, which
he had so nicely fixed up with all his college things: mugs, flags, an
oar, pictures of his friends, a whole heap of stuff. It had to be used
for the school, bein’ the only possible place, or school had to stop
till spring come round and the tent could serve again. Well, Edmund
wasn’t willin’ to cut off the hope of the empire of the Northwest for
five whole months. Of course they wasn’t there Saturdays and Sundays, or
at night, or at hours when he really needed his room--he was in the
store durin’ school-time--but every day, after the kids had gone home,
poor Edmund he had to open all the windows of his pet room. He caught
Miss Carey sweepin’ it of their leavin’s and scolded her savage for
that. Insisted on sweepin’ it himself. Would have his way. My sakes, but
he was a cross man every day while he was sweepin’! Then the kids they
bruck one or two of his souvenirs, touchin’ and meddlin’ with them, and
Miss Carey was wild. Edmund didn’t mind half as much. She spoke to me
as we was takin’ a ride together one Sunday, when the snow had melted
most off again. Guess it was early in December. She wanted her folks
back in Orange, New Jersey, to buy new things and send ’em out. She was
earnest about it. She was a nice-lookin’ girl. I remember that ride.
Tamaracks was all yello’ and sheddin’, makin’ yello’ patches on the snow
with their needles, but the pines was that green they was black a little
ways off, and the wind smelt of ’em strong.
“I wanted particularly to replace the glass decanter,” she says, “but it
only made him rude to me. I had to tell him it was a very strange thing
that the only gentleman in the valley should be the one person who had
been rude.”
“Goodness to gracious!” I shouts out, “what did he say?”
“That I was the only lady in the valley, and that explained it.”
“Well,” I says, “he’s never apologized as handsome as that to me.” So we
both laughs.
“But,” she says just before we got home, “he ought not to tease those
poor old men.”
“Well, he’s not done it lately--not in my hearin’,” I says.
It happened Edmund had done it. Couldn’t keep his mouth shut about the
school-house question. It was the old men’s duty, he claimed, to give
their land for the school-house. Edmund was awful about people’s duty.
He brung it up, though, in a new way. He thought he was makin’ a joke.
Hands out the pieces of the decanter to Jake and Baldy, and tells ’em
they done that damage and it was their business to make it good; so when
they, who had never seen the decanter before, didn’t make out what he
was drivin’ at, Edmund tells ’em they’re the final cause. He explains
how if they’d given their land, the school-house would have been built
and no accidents would have occurred. Edmund meant that to be funny, but
Jake and Baldy went off cursin’ him and the school and the whole valley,
and wasn’t a bit grateful for learnin’ what a final cause is.
But back they comes in a day or two as usual, as if no words had passed,
and they buy their truck to go trappin’. Takes ’em all day, but Edmund
is wonderful patient. So they can’t start that day. So they comes back
next day to pack up and start. And it was then that Washington, D.C.,
comes up again. The Siwash was a day overdue with the mail, and some of
the Texans was assembled at the store to see the mail arrive. They
expected no letters, but it was somethin’ to do and they always done
it--assembled and stood around inside the store and out. Then to-day
they had more to do, for there was Kultus Jake and Frisco Baldy and
their horses, packin’ up their stuff. That gave everybody a chance to
make remarks and be wise. They hardly noticed the mail when it did come
about ten o’clock, they was so busy tellin’ the old men the best way to
do everythin’--best trap, best bait, best way to make a set--when Edmund
he begins to lecture. He comes out with a letter in his hand and holds
it up. That’s the subject of the lecture. Letter has come to the wrong
Beekman. It was mailed at Portland, Awregon, and addressed to “Beekman,
Massachusetts,” and it has come out of its way to “Beekman, Washington,”
thereby losin’ a lot of time, of course. For it had went over the
Northern Pacific on its right way as far as Spokane, and then had come
back through Coulee City away up here, and it would get to Beekman,
Massachusetts, about two weeks late.
“It all comes,” says Edmund, “of havin’ places of the same name. That
ought to be against the law.” He told us there was nine Beekmans. He
took it to heart heavy, as usual. “As the country grows and settles up,”
he says, “they’ll keep on namin’ places Beekman. There’ll be a hundred
Beekmans before we’re through. It ought to be a state’s prison offence.”
“In that case,” says a Texas parent, “you couldn’t call this territory
Washington.”
“I guess this is a free country,” says another.
“I guess,” says another, “the folks that live in a place has the right
to call that place what they see fit.”
Poor Edmund! It wasn’t no use him explainin’ the confusion it made.
“There’s forty-eight places named Washington now,” says he. “I’ve looked
it up. There ought to be just one. The capital of the United States. And
the map is pitted with ’em like smallpox.”
“Washington, D.C., Maryland,” says Frisco Baldy, haulin’ in slack on the
diamond hitch.
“Virginia,” says Kultus Jake, on the other side of the pack.
Edmund he just give ’em both a witherin’ look, and he whirls back into
the store and gets to work at his desk. Wouldn’t come out to tell the
old men good-by when they started off up the river, although he was
grubstakin’ ’em for nothin’. They didn’t know that, of course. Expected
to pay him in furs when they come back in the spring.
“You’ll not get very far to-day,” says an onlooker to the departin’
junipers. “You’re makin’ a late start.”
“Camp at Early Winter,” one of ’em says. Early Winter was a creek that
come into the main stream about halfway to the Robinson Cabin.
“_Wake la-le hyas cole snass_,” says the Siwash mail-carrier.
“Oh, no, it ain’t,” says a Texan, lookin’ the weather up and down.
“Well, I think maybe it will,” says another, sweepin’ his eyes around
the sky. “And maybe it won’t.”
So that sets ’em discussin’ the probabilities of a big snow and if
Siwashes knowed about such things more’n white men did. They concluded
Siwashes was inferior to white men in every respect, and it wasn’t goin’
to snow.
“Good luck!” one of ’em calls out. But Kultus Jake and Frisco Baldy was
by that time on the bridge over the North Fork, and couldn’t hear him.
No more events took place that day. The kids finished their school and
went home. Miss Carey she went home. Edmund opened the windows and swept
the floor. A few folks bought things durin’ the day, or came to buy and
didn’t, and some had letters to go out next day. There was always a
little more hustle round mailtimes. But a lonesome winter softness
filled the valley and seemed to make y’u hear the stove plainer. The
trunks of the trees kind of appeared more silent. Everythin’ was
quieter. I remember Edmund looked out of the door about sundown and said
the Siwash had been right, there was goin’ to be a big snow. Even his
voice sounded quieter in the clouded-over light, and Edmund’s voice was
always deep--the voice of a man who was all man. Lyin’ in bed that night
I never knowed the dark could be so still. Funny thing was, I heard the
rapids under the bridge all of a sudden. Of course they’d been goin’
right on all the time. What makes y’u notice things and not notice ’em?
It got very solemn, that room did, in the dark. Those old men was too
old to go off into the mountains. Then I heard the little sound of the
snowflakes around on the cabin. They must have started fallin’ pretty
late, for next mornin’ it wasn’t deep, not four inches yet, but it was
keepin’ on. Old man Parrigin come in about nine, and he says he had told
everybody yesterday a storm was comin’. As a matter of fact, he’d been
one of the surest no storm was comin’. It makes Edmund look sour at him.
And bye and bye another prophet drops in, and he says he had offered to
bet it would snow. And by eleven o’clock the fifth Texan had come along
to sit around the stove; and he says--like every one of ’em had done
before him--that anybody could have told it was goin’ to snow. Oh, not
one of ’em had ever doubted it for a minute! It gets too much for Edmund
to bear, and he pushes up his spectacles high on his forehead and looks
at me, mournful as anythin’.
“Last Fourth of July,” says he to me, “I said it was going to snow
to-day.”
Old man Parrigin he starts laughin’ at that. He come from New York state
and he could see a joke, even when Edmund made it. But when y’u make
that kind of a joke to a Texan--the kind of Texan that moves away from
Texas--he says you’re insultin’ him. Around the stove they all looks
dignified and spits without words. We could hear the rapids, and indoors
the kids was singin’ some kind of Christmas chorus Miss Carey was
teachin’ to ’em. Their voices come to us through a couple of shut doors.
One of the Texans as had been insulted by Edmund’s joke now asserts his
self-respect by changin’ the subject.
“Washington, D.C.,” says he, “is in Pennsylvania.”
Edmund he sighs heavy and goes on postin’ up his ledger.
Old man Parrigin gives me a nudge. “I wonder if Miss Carey would hold a
night-school?” says he, and winks.
The fellars around the stove they spits some more. They was afraid.
That’s what was the matter. Plain it was there had been talk among ’em,
ridin’ away yesterday after Edmund’s remarks. Maybe some of ’em knowed
their geography correct on that point, but they didn’t feel they knowed
it correct enough to insist upon it in the presence of witnesses. Anyway
they drops it now, and after some further spittin’ they changes the
subject again.
“There’ll be plenty snow at the Robinson Cabin,” says one.
“Plenty at Early Winter by now,” another says.
“Oh, they’ll get through,” says a third.
“I wonder if they’ll get my silver-gray fox,” says old man Parrigin. So
the talk turns for a while on trappin’, and dies down till the rapids
was the only noise; and then a Texan got up and stretched himself, and
said he’d be late for dinner, he guessed, if he didn’t begin to think
some about startin’ home. So he began to think, I suppose, though it
didn’t show none on his face. Edmund kep’ a-writin’ up his ledger. Y’u
could hear the rapids just as if they had come clost up outside. And the
snow was fallin’ and fallin’.
Old man Parrigin holds up his hand. “What’s that?” he says. So we all
pricks up our ears.
The snow had the valley pretty well muffled, but there did seem to be
somethin’. So a fellar looks out and he says it’s somebody comin’ acrost
the bridge. Hard to tell who it was for the snow. But next minute he got
nearer, and it was Frisco Baldy, walkin’ his horse turrable slow.
“My God!” says somebody, “somethin’s happened.” And we all crowds out.
“More horses on the bridge,” says Parrigin.
We could all see ’em. It was packhorses creepin’ along. Behind ’em
trailed a man ridin’, and that was Kultus Jake.
“Then what has happened?” somebody says.
Baldy he arrives first, snow on his hat two inches deep. He gets down
and jumps some to shake off the snow, and then walks in through us and
goes to the stove and takes a chair. Not a word said. Packhorses they
arrives and stands around all over snow--stand sad and hangdog, like
they was guilty and had gave up denyin’ it. Jake comes along a mile an
hour, same as Baldy; and he gets down and jumps the snow off, and same
as Baldy, he passes through us and goes to the stove. But he puts it
between him and Baldy. Sits down and don’t look at Baldy. So we all
comes back in and sits down, too--except Edmund. He goes behind his desk
and stands up there with his spectacles pushed high.
“Well?” he says.
Baldy’s lips move, but nothin’ sounds.
“Well?” Edmund repeats. “Was the trail snowed up? Anybody dead?”
Jake clears his throat, but that’s all.
Then Baldy manages to talk. “No,” he says kind of croakin’; “trail
wasn’t snowed up.”
“Not then, it wasn’t,” says Jake. “Nobody’s dead.”
Up flares Edmund’s temper. He swings a big hammer down on the counter
with a bang, and he lets out one swear as thorough and bad as any
Western man. Y’u’d been scared yourself if he’d aimed it at you. After
all, Edmund had grubstaked ’em, though they didn’t know it.
The hammer and the oath dislodges Jake’s voice. “That man,” says he,
noddin’ contemptuous acrost the stove at Baldy--“that man claims it’s in
Maryland.”
I have explained to y’u that Edmund was an unexpected person in his
ways. I looked for more hammer and more blasphemy. They had let
Washington, D.C., break up their winter’s trappin’. But Edmund he slowly
relaxes on the hammer, and he just stands and stands and keeps a-lookin’
at ’em, merely inter-ested--more and more inter-ested. And they sits
blinkin’ at him. Won’t look at each other.
Then a Texan speaks. “I have said right along that it was in
Pennsylvania.”
There’s times when things get altogether beyond any daily feelin’s a man
commonly has. I didn’t want to lay down on the flour sacks this time.
Didn’t want to laugh at all. And Edmund wasn’t a bit mad. Even old man
Parrigin makes no symptoms except of further inquiry. And the Texans, of
course, was merely anxious to have a point settled that some of ’em had
been disputin’ over.
“I wish you would tell me all about it,” says Edmund. Violets ain’t
milder than he was.
Well, that was exactly what they couldn’t do, y’u see. When they first
come in and saw how we was all anxious over watchin’ ’em arrive I expect
it came home to ’em, I expect it shamed ’em. They took in then the way
they and their actions would look to the valley, and talkin’ came hard
to ’em. But once they got started, they was soon screechin’ at each
other as usual, and forgot appearances. They had got to Early Winter,
they had camped at Early Winter, but on the way there the argument had
come up. Must have growed pretty warm by bedtime, for it had lasted
through their sleep so they wasn’t speakin’ to each other at breakfast.
Y’u see, alone up there with the snow there wasn’t nothin’ new to change
the subject for ’em. It stayed right with ’em, and after breakfast it
bruck out worse than ever, Jake for Virginia and Baldy for Maryland,
and they had it all the time they was packin’, givin’ each other proofs
where it was; and when they was ready to go they wouldn’t live with each
other any more, wouldn’t camp, wouldn’t trap, wouldn’t speak--and so
they had come home!
So there they was, and there we was, and there it was. They’d simmered
down again now, after tearin’ loose and tellin’ all about it. They was
quiet. They sat with the stove between ’em and just blinked on and on.
Snow fallin’; rapids soundin’; nothin’ else durin’ it must have been all
of a minute--and it felt like ten.
The strain got too severe for that Texan, and he spoke with the
gentlest, anxiousest voice, like a child pleadin’ for somethin’:--
“Say, ain’t it in Pennsylvania?”
And outside in the snow one o’ them horses gives a long, weary, hungry
neigh.
That horse breakin’ in bust somethin’ inside of me and Parrigin and
Edmund. Edmund he gives a kind of youp! Parrigin curls over on the
counter, and I’d have laid right down on the sacks, only I wasn’t near
’em, and so I leaned up against the shelves. Nobody else did nothin’
because Jake and Baldy hadn’t any heart left after seem’ themselves in
their true light, and the other Texans they was bein’ very careful now
about their geography--they were savin’ it up, they wasn’t givin’ any of
it away, not even to charity.
But after his youp Edmund pulls himself up and he takes charge of the
meetin’, and when me and Parrigin hears him beginnin’ a speech we comes
to and listens.
“This is a great valley,” says Edmund, behind his desk. “It has song and
story whipped to a finish.” Then he fixes his big glum eyes on Kultus
Jake and Frisco Baldy. “Don’t think,” says he, “you’ll draw me into your
argument. But you hold the record. Wherever Washington is, it would have
stayed there till spring. Your words haven’t moved it anywhere else. But
you have lost your winter over this. Couldn’t you have waited and come
home with your load of furs, and been a success instead of a failure?
For you can’t turn around and go back into the mountains now; you’d
never get halfway, and unless unusual weather follows this soon, the
passes will be choked for the next three months.”
Edmund stops with that. It was fairly hard on the poor old blinkin’
junipers--but y’u’ll notice Edmund hadn’t told ’em a word about the
grubstakin’. “If everybody will come in here,” he says, “perhaps we can
find some child to settle the question.”
He opens the door and we all shambles in through after him to the
school-room. Miss Carey she rises from her chair, and of course she
don’t know what to make of it.
“Miss Carey,” says Edmund, “will some of your scholars kindly tell us
what the capital of the United States is, and where it is?”
Miss Carey she looks at the kids sittin’ around the table fixed for ’em.
Gosh, y’u’d ought to have seen the hands fly up all over the room!
“Everybody may answer,” says Miss Carey.
And out they yells it. It was like the chorus they was practisin’ for
Christmas. Oh, she had ’em trained!
There was long breaths of relief drawn among the men standin’ sheepish
by the door--two or three regular sighs come out from that crowd.
“Thank you, Miss Carey,” says Edmund, “and please excuse us for
troubling you.” So he leads the way back into the store and goes behind
his desk. If anybody expected him to make another speech they was
disappointed. Edmund looked cold and ca’m, and just as unconcerned as
though he’d been addin’ sums or readin’ a two-weeks-old newspaper. He
starts writin’ at his ledger.
“Well, I’ll be late for dinner,” says the Texan.
“I told y’u where it was,” says another.