The hammer and the oath dislodges Jake’s voice. “That man,” says he, noddin’ contemptuous acrost the stove at Baldy—“that man claims it’s in Maryland.”
I have explained to y’u that Edmund was an unexpected person in his ways. I looked for more hammer and more blasphemy. They had let Washington, D.C., break up their winter’s trappin’. But Edmund he slowly relaxes on the hammer, and he just stands and stands and keeps a-lookin’ at ’em, merely inter-ested—more and more inter-ested. And they sits blinkin’ at him. Won’t look at each other.
Then a Texan speaks. “I have said right along that it was in Pennsylvania.”
There’s times when things get altogether beyond any daily feelin’s a man commonly has. I didn’t want to lay down on the flour sacks this time. Didn’t want to laugh at all. And Edmund wasn’t a bit mad. Even old man Parrigin makes no symptoms except of further inquiry. And the Texans, of course, was merely anxious to have a point settled that some of ’em had been disputin’ over.
“I wish you would tell me all about it,” says Edmund. Violets ain’t milder than he was.
Well, that was exactly what they couldn’t do, y’u see. When they first come in and saw how we was all anxious over watchin’ ’em arrive I expect it came home to ’em, I expect it shamed ’em. They took in then the way they and their actions would look to the valley, and talkin’ came hard to ’em. But once they got started, they was soon screechin’ at each other as usual, and forgot appearances. They had got to Early Winter, they had camped at Early Winter, but on the way there the argument had come up. Must have growed pretty warm by bedtime, for it had lasted through their sleep so they wasn’t speakin’ to each other at breakfast. Y’u see, alone up there with the snow there wasn’t nothin’ new to change the subject for ’em. It stayed right with ’em, and after breakfast it bruck out worse than ever, Jake for Virginia and Baldy for Maryland, and they had it all the time they was packin’, givin’ each other proofs where it was; and when they was ready to go they wouldn’t live with each other any more, wouldn’t camp, wouldn’t trap, wouldn’t speak—and so they had come home!
So there they was, and there we was, and there it was. They’d simmered down again now, after tearin’ loose and tellin’ all about it. They was quiet. They sat with the stove between ’em and just blinked on and on. Snow fallin’; rapids soundin’; nothin’ else durin’ it must have been all of a minute—and it felt like ten.
The strain got too severe for that Texan, and he spoke with the gentlest, anxiousest voice, like a child pleadin’ for somethin’:—
“Say, ain’t it in Pennsylvania?”
And outside in the snow one o’ them horses gives a long, weary, hungry neigh.