On cold winter nights Myra could always be found in the Snake House where a chair beside the stove was reserved for her. One night I said jestingly: “You never play poker. What are you doing here?”
She whispered: “Wood’s hard to get. I’m saving mine.”
Then came one of those mornings when one’s soul tingles with the feel of a perfect desert day and Myra was up early. She came to the store.
“What got you up at this hour?” Bernice asked.
“I felt too dam’ good to stay indoors....”
There were a few old timers in the store and these surrounded her—because she was the kind who could tell you that it was hotter than hell, in a thrilling way. She bought a few groceries and started back to her cabin. Friendly eyes followed her passage along a path across the playground of the little school. Children sliding down the chute or riding teeter boards, waved affectionately. Myra was seen to falter in her step, then sag to the sand. The children ran to her aid and in a moment Shoshone was gathering about her. Myra Benson was dead.
Sam Flake, nearing 80, on the fringe of the crowd paid his simple tribute in a voice a bit shaky, but in language hard as the rock in the hills: “Dam’ her old hide—us boys are going to miss Myra....” He turned aside, his hand pulling at the bandana in his hip pocket and Shoshone understood.
Though she was buried 500 miles away, every man, woman, and child in Shoshone wanted a token of love to attend her and about the grave that received her casket was a wilderness of flowers.
Chapter XX
Odd But Interesting Characters
In these pages the reader has seen familiar names—the favored of Lady Luck—but what of those who failed—the patient, plodding kind of whom you hear only on the scene? They too followed jackasses into hidden hills; made trails that led others to fortunes which built cities, industries, railroad; endowed colleges and made science function for a better world. To these humbler actors we owe more than we can repay.