CHRISTMAS ON THE SINGING RIVER[2]
Jefferson Lee Harbour
There was always a crowd in waiting when the stage-coach arrived in the shabby little mining-camp of Singing River. As a rule, the crowd assembled on the long, wide platform in front of the post-office, which was also the stage-office, the hotel, the general store, and the center from which radiated the social life of the camp. Above the post-office was a small and dingy hall lighted with dripping tallow candles; and such public amusements or entertainments as there were in Singing River were given in this hall. The platform in front of the building was the favorite “loafing-place” of the miners. The arrival of the stage-coach was the connecting-link between Singing River and the great outside world from which the little mining-camp was so far removed. The nearest railroad station was one hundred miles distant, and there was no town within fifteen miles any larger than Singing River, which was but a little hamlet of log-cabins, tents, and slab shanties far up the mountainside above the little Singing River in the rocky gulch below. The Singing River was a narrow and shallow stream; but its crystal-clear waters surged in foamy wavelets around moss-covered boulders and went singing on so merrily that there was perpetual music in even the darkest and gloomiest parts of the gulch. But there was ice over the river for seven months of the year, and then nothing was to be heard but the dreary sound of the wind as it went moaning or shrieking up and down the long, dark cañon.
The winters were long and bitter in Singing River. Snow began to fly as early as the last of September, and it still lay deep in the gulches and in the narrow, rocky streets of the camp while the wild flowers were blooming in the far-distant valleys.
But on the December day when this story opens, the stage arrived a full hour in advance of the usual time, and only a few of the men of the camp were at the post-office when Dave Hixon, the stage-driver, drew rein before it, amid the gently falling snow. There were no passengers on the outside seats, and no inside occupants were to be seen. Apparently the big stage was empty.
“Light load this trip, Dave,” said big Jim Hart, the postmaster, as he came out to get the limp and unpromising-looking mail-bag.
“I should say so,” replied Dave, as he took off his wide-brimmed felt hat and slapped it against the side of the coach to rid it of the snow that had fallen upon it.
“I reckon travel is about done for this season over the Shoshone trail, an’ they’ll soon stop sendin’ the coach up here even once a week, an’ then we’ll be clean shut off from everywhere. No passengers this trip—eh?”
“Only two, an’ there’s so little of them that I reckon they’ve rattled round like peas in a pod inside there.”
Then Dave leaned far downward and, twisting himself around, called out to some one within the stage: