The tops of the somber mountains took on a mellow tinge of golden brown, and birds began to sing in every direction. Here and there along the rugged mountains a thin line of smoke ascended, showing that there were inhabitants along the range. The distant sound of the lowing of cattle came faintly to the ears in the peaceful stillness of the early morning.
Then some one began to chop wood out back of the hotel, and this strange sound aroused the sleeping shoemaker, and it awoke him to all the miseries of what is vulgarly called “the morning after.”
One bird, with a louder, more insistent song than the others, perched on a twig near the tent, and it seemed to poor Morris Goldberg, who had never felt anything like the agony he was now enduring, that its voice was louder and shriller than a steam calliope.
The suffering man crawled feebly from the tent, leaving the child sleeping peacefully there. Slowly, and painfully holding his hand to his splitting head, Morris crept along to the watering-trough and to the little stream that trickled cool and clear from far up in the mountains.
Letting the cold water run over his aching head, and drinking a quantity of the blessed water from the hollow of his hands, Morris sat down on an upturned bucket and gave vent to his feelings in these words:
“I vish dot pirt vould shut up. I nefer t’ougt a pirt in der vorld haf such a voice—so lout. I nefer haf such a headache like dis. I vonder if dere is any ice in Vyoming. Oh, my! oh, my! I vonder”—here he laid his burning head against the moist rock down which the water was trickling, and found it cool. He continued his lament: “Dank Gott! de rocks are colt. Ah, go avay, birtie; you annoy me! Go to de Sout’—to de pottom of it. I feel so sick, und de ice on de mountains is a million miles avay.”
Loney had been awakened by the birds, and now came from the tent with an empty, black whiskey-bottle in his hands, and this he extended toward Morris, saying:
“Look, Mr. Goldberg, what I found in the tent.”
“Vat is it? Money?”
“No; it is this bottle. I know we never had one like this before.”