Lyster was there, too, with a most exhausting list of articles which Mr. Haydon was to send up from Helena.
“Dan, some of these things I put down for ’Tana, as I happened to think of them,” he said, and unfolded a little roll made from the leaves of a notebook stuck together at the ends with molasses. “You look it over and see if it’s all right. I left one sheet empty for anything you might want to add.”
Dan took it, eying dubiously the length of it and the great array of articles mentioned.
“I don’t think I had better add anything to it until heavier boats are carrying freight on the Kootenai,” he remarked, and then commenced reading aloud some of the items:
| Eiderdown pillows. Rugs and hammocks. A guitar. Hot water bottle. Some good whisky. Toilet soap. Bret Harte’s Poems. |
A traveling dress for a girl. (Here followed measurements and directions to the dressmaker.) Then the whole was scratched out, and the following was substituted: Brown flannel or serge—nine yards.
“I had to get Mrs. Huzzard to tell me some of the things,” said Lyster, who looked rather annoyed at the quizzical smiles of Dan and the doctor.
“I should imagine you would,” observed Overton. “I would have needed the help of the whole camp to get 220 together that amount of plunder. A good shaving set and a pair of cork insoles, No. 8, are they for ’Tana, too?”
But Lyster disdained reply, and Overton, after reading, “All the late magazines,” and “A double kettle for cooking oatmeal,” folded up the paper and gave it back.
“As I have read only a very small section of the list, I do not imagine you have omitted anything that could possibly be towed up the river,” he said. “But it is all right, my boy. I would never have thought of half that stuff, but I’ve no doubt they will all be of use, and ’Tana will thank you.”