"God has made some women a little plain, in order that he might have some women that are wholly good."
These things began to be noised about. All things have their culmination. Even the epizootic has one worst day. Things only go so far. Rockets only rise so high, then they explode, and all is dark and still.
The Judge stood straddled out before the roaring fire of the Howling Wilderness one night, tilting up the tails of his coat with his two hands which he had turned in behind him, as he stood there warming the upper ends of his short legs, and listening to these questions and the comments of the men. At last, he seemed to have an inspiration, and tilting forward on his toes, and bringing his head very low down, and his coat-tails very high up, he said, solemnly:
Then bringing out his right hand, and reaching it high in the air, as he poised on his right leg:
"In this glorious climate of Californy--"
"Be gad, it is!" cried an Irishman, jumping up, "a Bryan! A poet, a rale, live, Lord O'Bryan."
And so the status of the strange boy was fixed at the Forks. He was declared to be a poet, and was no more a wonder. Curiosity was satisfied.
"It is something to know that it is no worse," growled a very practical old man, as he held a pipe in his teeth and rubbed his tobacco between his palms.
He spoke of it as if it had been a case of the small-pox, and as if he was thinking how to best prevent the spread of the infection.
One day Limber Tim came up from the Howling Wilderness, all excitement: all gyrations, and gimlets, and corkscrews. He twisted himself around a sapling--this great, overgrown, six-foot boy without a beard--and shouting down to his "pardner" in the mine, Old Sandy, who stood at the bottom of the open claim, leaning on his pick, resting a moment, looking into the bright bubbling water that burst laughing from the bank before him, dreaming a bit in the freshness about him; and said, "Hallo! I say! a widder's come to town. D'ye hear? A widder; one what's up and up, and on the square."
Sandy only looked up, for he was getting old, and gray, and wrinkled. Then he looked at the silver stream that ran from the bank and through the rocks at his feet, and called to him in the pleasant, balmy sunset, sweet with the smell of fir, and he did not disturb the water again with his pick. It looked too pretty, laughed, and sparkled, and leapt, and made him glad and yet sad.