“Wake la-le hyas cole snass,” says the Siwash mail-carrier.
“Oh, no, it ain’t,” says a Texan, lookin’ the weather up and down.
“Well, I think maybe it will,” says another, sweepin’ his eyes around the sky. “And maybe it won’t.”
So that sets ’em discussin’ the probabilities of a big snow and if Siwashes knowed about such things more’n white men did. They concluded Siwashes was inferior to white men in every respect, and it wasn’t goin’ to snow.
“Good luck!” one of ’em calls out. But Kultus Jake and Frisco Baldy was by that time on the bridge over the North Fork, and couldn’t hear him.
No more events took place that day. The kids finished their school and went home. Miss Carey she went home. Edmund opened the windows and swept the floor. A few folks bought things durin’ the day, or came to buy and didn’t, and some had letters to go out next day. There was always a little more hustle round mailtimes. But a lonesome winter softness filled the valley and seemed to make y’u hear the stove plainer. The trunks of the trees kind of appeared more silent. Everythin’ was quieter. I remember Edmund looked out of the door about sundown and said the Siwash had been right, there was goin’ to be a big snow. Even his voice sounded quieter in the clouded-over light, and Edmund’s voice was always deep—the voice of a man who was all man. Lyin’ in bed that night I never knowed the dark could be so still. Funny thing was, I heard the rapids under the bridge all of a sudden. Of course they’d been goin’ right on all the time. What makes y’u notice things and not notice ’em? It got very solemn, that room did, in the dark. Those old men was too old to go off into the mountains. Then I heard the little sound of the snowflakes around on the cabin. They must have started fallin’ pretty late, for next mornin’ it wasn’t deep, not four inches yet, but it was keepin’ on. Old man Parrigin come in about nine, and he says he had told everybody yesterday a storm was comin’. As a matter of fact, he’d been one of the surest no storm was comin’. It makes Edmund look sour at him. And bye and bye another prophet drops in, and he says he had offered to bet it would snow. And by eleven o’clock the fifth Texan had come along to sit around the stove; and he says—like every one of ’em had done before him—that anybody could have told it was goin’ to snow. Oh, not one of ’em had ever doubted it for a minute! It gets too much for Edmund to bear, and he pushes up his spectacles high on his forehead and looks at me, mournful as anythin’.
“Last Fourth of July,” says he to me, “I said it was going to snow to-day.”
Old man Parrigin he starts laughin’ at that. He come from New York state and he could see a joke, even when Edmund made it. But when y’u make that kind of a joke to a Texan—the kind of Texan that moves away from Texas—he says you’re insultin’ him. Around the stove they all looks dignified and spits without words. We could hear the rapids, and indoors the kids was singin’ some kind of Christmas chorus Miss Carey was teachin’ to ’em. Their voices come to us through a couple of shut doors. One of the Texans as had been insulted by Edmund’s joke now asserts his self-respect by changin’ the subject.
“Washington, D.C.,” says he, “is in Pennsylvania.”
Edmund he sighs heavy and goes on postin’ up his ledger.