"Well"—the little man tilted up on his toes as he said this, and took in a long breath—"hit comes off about the next snow fall."
He had said these words one at a time, and by inches as it were, slowly, deliberately, as if he knew perfectly well that he had something to say, and that the men were bound to listen.
This time they all looked up, and half of them spoke. And oh, didn't he torture them! Not that he pretended to keep his secret of half a day—not at all! On the contrary, he kept talking on, and tip-toeing, and fanning his coat-tails, and pushing out his belly, and puffing out his cheeks, just as careless and indifferent as if all the world knew just what he was going to say, and was perfectly familiar with the subject. "Yes, gentlemen," puffed the little man, "on or about the next snow-fall the Widow, as a widow, ceases to exist. That lovely flower, my friends, is to be transplanted from its present bed to—to—into—the—O this wonderful climate of Californy!"
The Howling Wilderness was as silent as the
Catacombs of Rome for nearly a minute.
Then Sandy had not been deterred either by the Widow's strange intimacy with the eccentric little Poet, or by the suspicion of the camp that this woman was the last of the doomed family.
The first thing that was heard was something like a red-hot cannon-shot. The cinnamon-headed man behind the bar dodged down behind his barricade of sand-bags till only his bristling red hair and a six-shooter were visible. The decanters tilted together as if there had been an earthquake.
It was a Missourian swearing.
Somebody back in the corner said "Jer-u-sa-lem!"—said it in joints and pieces, and then came forward and kicked the fire, and stood up by the side of the red little man, and looked down at him as if he would like to eat him for a piece of raw beef.
A fair boy, the dreamer, the poet, went back to a bunk against the further wall, where the bar-keeper's bull-dog lay sleeping in his blankets, and put his arms about his neck, and put his face down and remained there a long time. Perhaps he wept. Was he weeping for joy or for sorrow?