"And don't he step high! Jerusalem, don't he step high!"
"And where's Captain Tommy, and where's the Widow?" anxiously inquired the Forks, still looking up the hill towards its little shrine.
At last they entered the town, and the town met them on the edge—at its outer gate, as it were, with all its force.
The woman indeed bore a flag of truce. A long white banner streamed from her arms and fell down to her feet, and almost touched the ground. A close observer would have seen that this flag was made of the very same coarse material from which the Widow had made the curtains of her little bed.
They entered the edge of the town, these three, and the town stood there as silent as if it had risen up on its way to church on a Sunday morning. These three, do you mind, stood there still, right in the track of the town, and the town looking at them as if they had come from another world. And so at least they had, a part of them.
These three: Sandy, Bunker Hill, and the first baby born in the mines of the Sierras.
Bunker Hill held the baby out in one hand, and with the other tenderly lifted back the covering, while Sandy stood by like a tower on a hill, smiling, pushing back his hat, pulling down his whiskers, looking over the little army of men with a splendid sort of sympathy and self-accusation combined. He seemed to be saying, as he turned their eyes to the little red half opened rose-bud, "Just look there! see what I've done." His great face was radiant with delight.
And then there was a shout—such a shout! The spotted clouds that blew about the tall pine tops, indolent and away up on the mountain's brow, seemed to be set in motion again; the coyote rose up from his sleep on the mountain side and called out to his companions across the gorge as if he had been frightened; while Captain Tommy, who had been left with the Widow, came to the door and stood there, listening and looking down into the camp to see what in the world had happened. She saw men's hats go up in the air, and then again the shouts shook the town.
"Three cheers for Sandy!" They were given with a tiger. "Three cheers for the Widow! three cheers for Missus Bunker Hill." And then the poor girl leaning out of the door, took up her apron and wiped tears of joy from her eyes, for "three times three" were given for Captain Tommy. Then she went back into the house, back to the bed-room with the curious little curtains and gunny-bag carpets, and told the Widow, and the two women wept in each other's arms together.
Men slapped each other on the back, bantered each other, and talked loud of old Missouri and the institution of marriage.