“What’s to be done?” asked a long, lank, red-whiskered man called “Cap.”
“Shore enough,” drawled out an elderly man who had been chewing the end of his long gray mustache reflectively.
“I move that we go over to my shack an’ talk the matter over,” said Big Dan; and, without waiting for his motion to be voted upon, he started toward his cabin, a small log affair a short distance around the rocky road. The men around the post-office followed Big Dan, and, when they were in his cabin, seated on benches and nail-kegs or sprawling on buffalo robes in front of the fire in the big open fire-place, one of the men said:
“What does all this mean, anyhow? You know that I’ve just come down from Mount Baldy, an’ all this is Greek to me.”
“Well, it’s just this-a-way,” replied Dan. “Three days ago a man come into camp on foot from over towards Roarin’ Fork. He was so sick when he got here he could hardly speak, an’ ’bout all we got outo’ him was that his name was Miller. Pneumonia had set in mighty hard, an’ in less than two hours after he got here he couldn’t speak at all, an’ he didn’t live twelve hours. We laid him under that little clump o’ pines down near the bend in the Singin’ River not ten hours ago; an’ now here in comes the stage with that boy an’ gal, ev’dently the prop’ty o’ this same Miller, who ain’t here to meet ’em, an’ who won’t ever meet ’em in this world. It goes without sayin’ that they ain’t got no ma. If they had, she’d never let ’em come trailin’ off out here all by theirselves. It’s mighty tough on ’em.”
“That’s right,” agreed the man called Cap. “I’m old an’ tough as ever they make ’em, but I ain’t fergot my own childhood so fur as not to ’preciate just how them pore little young uns will feel when they reelize the sitooation. I feel fer ’em.”
“So do I,” said a stalwart fellow of about thirty-five years. “I’ve got a couple o’ little folks o’ my own back East, an’ that boy reminds me a sight o’ my own little chap.”
The men were still discussing the strange and sad occurrence, and the question of the future of the children was still unsettled, when the door of the cabin opened and Ma’am Hickey appeared. Her eyes were red and her voice was unsteady as she said:
“I just run over to say one thing, boys, an’ that’s this: Don’t one of you dast to breathe a word to them pore little darlin’s about where their pa is until after Christmas. They’re not to know that they are orphans until after that time. Their ma died last spring, an’ their pa sent for ’em to come out here to him. It’s a mighty rough place to fetch ’em to, but the little girl says that an aunt of hers was to come on from California an’ be with ’em this winter, an’ their pa wrote that he would likely go on to California in the spring—pore man! He’s gone on now to a country that’s furder away than that!”
She wiped her eyes on the back of her hand before adding: