“My God!” says somebody, “somethin’s happened.” And we all crowds out.
“More horses on the bridge,” says Parrigin.
We could all see ’em. It was packhorses creepin’ along. Behind ’em trailed a man ridin’, and that was Kultus Jake.
Baldy he arrives first, snow on his hat two inches deep. He gets down and jumps some to shake off the snow, and then walks in through us and goes to the stove and takes a chair. Not a word said. Packhorses they arrives and stands around all over snow--stand sad and hangdog, like they was guilty and had gave up denyin’ it. Jake comes along a mile an hour, same as Baldy; and he gets down and jumps the snow off, and same as Baldy, he passes through us and goes to the stove. But he puts it between him and Baldy. Sits down and don’t look at Baldy. So we all comes back in and sits down, too--except Edmund. He goes behind his desk and stands up there with his spectacles pushed high.
“Well?” Edmund repeats. “Was the trail snowed up? Anybody dead?”
Then Baldy manages to talk. “No,” he says kind of croakin’; “trail wasn’t snowed up.”
“Not then, it wasn’t,” says Jake. “Nobody’s dead.”
Up flares Edmund’s temper. He swings a big hammer down on the counter with a bang, and he lets out one swear as thorough and bad as any Western man. Y’u’d been scared yourself if he’d aimed it at you. After all, Edmund had grubstaked ’em, though they didn’t know it.
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.