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.

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.

One by one they shuffles out, Jake and Baldy mixed in with them, and they swings up on to their horses and slowly goes away—up the river and down the river and acrost the bridge—till y’u could see none of em no more through the fallin’ snow; and in the store was just Edmund writin’, and me lookin’ at him, and the sound of the rapids.

Did Edmund talk then? That wouldn’t have been Edmund. Nothin’ was said in that store by him or me for—well, it must have been quite a while before the door opened and Miss Carey she pokes her head in and wants to know if she may be so bold as to inquire what all that meant in the school-room. The kids had gone home early for fear of the snow. So Edmund he smiles perfectly peaceful and tells her about it. So, of course, she thinks it very comic and she laughs hearty—but all of a sudden she remembers and expresses sympathy for Edmund’s misplaced generosity.

“Don’t let that trouble you,” says he, gay enough. “I meant to grubstake ’em, and I will. It shall not cost ’em a cent. Don’t tell the poor old idiots.”

So that was that. But the poor old idiots had somethin’ more to say. They had a thought. It snowed away all that night—a great big snow—but next mornin’ it had quit and there was promise of its turnin’ into a fine large day. The kids had come to school pretty late, but they come. And then into the store walks Kultus Jake and Frisco Baldy. For a while they walks around and just inspects all the goods they knowed by heart anyway.

“Well?” says Edmund. And they looks at each other.

“Could we step into the school-room just a minute?” says Jake then.

Edmund he looks surprised, but asks no questions, and in we all goes. Miss Carey she gets up again.

“Any more information?” says she, pleasant.

“No,” says Jake.

“Not to-day,” says Baldy.

“We,” says Jake, “well—we—we’d—”

Baldy gets restless and he steps up. “Put your school-house on our land,” says he.

“We want to give it to y’u,” says Baldy.

“Coal and all,” says Jake.

There was a pink color went over Miss Carey’s face—all over it—and she didn’t say a word for a while; she looks quick at Edmund and then she looks back at the two old men, and her eyes has tears in ’em.

“Folks ought to know geography,” says Jake.

“We want the kids in this valley to know it,” says Baldy.

“Knowledge will save ’em from mistakes,” says Jake.

And then Miss Carey she speaks at last. “Thank you,” she says.

“Is this potlatch?” inquires Edmund, jokin’.

“Kultus potlatch!” says both of ’em together.

Would y’u think it?—after that day I never heard ’em scrappin’ together again. Maybe they did sometimes, but not in my hearin’. Their experience seemed to have changed ’em somehow. In the store I’d catch ’em lookin’ at each other. Their eyes was gentle. I think—yes, I think they knowed that it was coming, that good-by was on its way to them. The school-house was built in the spring; and after the school got into it, now and again Jake and Baldy would sneak up to the door, look in and take a back seat. And one of ’em would say he’d like to ask the kids a question: Where was Washington, D.C.? And when the answer came, Jake and Baldy they’d laugh like they’d split and sneak out again. One day in the store we heard the knockin’ sound of a boat bein’ rowed over the river, and Baldy came into the store alone. He walks to Edmund, but he looks down on the floor.

“Jake’s sick,” says he. “Jake’s sick.” Oh, he knowed what it meant.

There was no doctor in the valley, but what could a doctor do? In about three days we had Baldy sick, too. The tie between ’em was the tie of life, and Jake died of a Saturday and Baldy died Monday.

“They must be buried by the school-house,” says Miss Carey. And everybody went. And then up comes the question what to put on the headboard? It brought up something none of us had thought of.

“Why, we don’t even know their names!” says Miss Carey, very soft.

We didn’t know anything. They had come into the valley, they had made the valley laugh, they were gone. That was all. Not a fact or a birthplace or anythin’ to put over them that would tell who they had been. But Miss Carey wasn’t goin’ to let it be like that. She took it in charge and she got it right. She found a bit of poetry and she had the board painted, and it was this way: “Jake and Baldy. Our Friends. Their heart was free from malice, and all their anger was excess of love.”

And then along in July Edmund got married to Miss Carey. They was sure a happy two!

“Are y’u still the oldest man in the valley?” I asks Edmund one day in the store.

“About three and a half,” says Edmund, solemn and deep. But then he laughs.

Oh, yes, their happiness filled that store, filled the whole cabin, crowded it. Maybe that’s why I left the valley.