The remaining observers dispersed respectfully; but the reckless manner in which they wandered through mud-puddles and climbed over barrels and potato-sacks, indicated plainly that their disappointment had been severe.
After another liquid bet had been paid, and while sleeves but lately tenderly protected were carelessly drying damp mustaches, an old miner remarked:
“Reckon that’s why he left the States;” and the emphatic “You bet!” which followed his words showed that the Tough Caseites were unanimous on the subject of Mrs. Blizzer.
For she was short and fat, and had a pug nose, and a cast in one eye; her forehead was low and square, and her hair was of a color which seemed “fugitive,” as the paper-makers say. Her hands were large and pudgy, her feet afforded broad foundations for the structure above them, and her gait was not suggestive of any popular style. Besides, she seemed ten years older than her husband, who was not yet thirty.
For several days boots were allowed to grow rusty and chins unshaven, as the boys gradually drank and worked themselves into a dumb forgetfulness of their lately cherished ideals.
But one evening, during a temporary lull in the conversation at Sim Ripson’s, old Uncle Ben, ex-deacon of a New Hampshire church, lifted up his voice, and remarked:
“‘Pears to me Blizzer’s beginnin’ to look scrumptious. He used to be the shabbiest man in camp.”
Through the open door the boys saw Blizzer carrying a pail of water; and though water-carrying in the American manner is not an especially graceful performance, Blizzer certainly looked unusually neat.
Palette, who had spoiled many canvases and paintbrushes in the East, attentively studied Blizzer in detail, and found his hair was combed, his shirt buttoned at the collar, and his trowsers lacking the California soil which always adorns the seat and knees of orthodox mining pantaloons.
“It’s her as did it,” said Pat Fadden; “an’ ’tain’t all she’s done. Fhat d’ye tink she did dhis mornin’? I was a-fixin’ me pork, jist as ivery other bye in camp allers does it, an’ jist then who should come along but hersilf. I tuk off me pork, and comminced me breakfast, when sez she to me, sez she, ‘Ye don’t ate it widout gravy, do ye?’ ‘Gravy, is it?’ sez I. Nobody iver heard of gravy here,’ sez I. ‘Thin it’s toime,’ sez she, an’ she poured off the fat, an’ crumbled a bit of cracker in the pan, an’ put in some wather, an’ whin I thought the ould thing ’ud blow up for the shteam it made, she poured the gravy on me plate—yes, she did.”