At last he got the Judge to one side. He took him by the collar with both hands, he backed him up in a corner, and, as he did so, his teeth chattered and ground together as if he stood half-naked on the everlasting snows that surrounded them. He pushed his face down into the red apple-like face of the magistrate, and began as if he was about to reveal the most terrible crime in the annals of the world. All the time he was holding on to the Judge with both hands, as if he feared he might not listen to his proposal, but tear away and attempt to escape.
At last Sandy drew a sharp, short breath, and blurted out what he had to say, as if it was tearing out his lungs.
"Good, good!"
The Judge drew a long breath. He swelled out to nearly twice his usual importance. You could have seen him grow.
It was now the Judge's turn to lay hold of Sandy. For now, as the great strong man had accomplished his fearful task, told his secret, and done all that was necessary to do, he wanted to get away, to go home, go anywhere and collect his thoughts, and to rest.
The Judge held him there, told him the great advantages that would come of it, the high responsibility that he was about to put his shoulder to, and talked to him, in fact, till he grew white and stiff as a sign-post. Yet all that Sandy could remember, for almost all that he said, was something about "the glorious climate of Californy."
Never rode a king into his capital with such majesty as did the Judge the next day enter the Forks. He was swelling, bursting with the importance of his secret. But now he had Sandy's permission to tell the boys, and he went straight to the Howling Wilderness for that purpose.
His face glowed like the fire as he stood there rubbing his hands above the great mounting blaze, and bowing right and left in a patronizing sort of a way to the miners who had sauntered into the saloon.
At last the little red-faced man turned his back to the fire, stuck his two hands back behind his coat-tails, which he kept lifting up and down and fanning carelessly, as if in deep thought—stood almost tip-toe, stuck out his round little belly, and seemed about to burst with his secret.
"O this wonderful Californy climate!" He puffed a little as he said this, and fanned his coat-tails a little bit higher, perked out his belly a little bit further, and stood there as if he expected some one to speak. But as the miners seemed to think they had heard something like this before, or, at least, that the remark was not wholly new, none of them felt called upon to respond.