The Sagebrusher | Page 2

it some day. Fact is,
I was just a-going to do it anyways."
"Just a-going to--like hell you was! You been a-going to move that bed
for four years, to my certain knowledge, and I know that in that time
you ain't shuk it out or aired it onct, or made it up."
"How do you know I ain't made her up?" demanded Sim Gage, his
knife arrested in its labors.
"Well, I know you ain't. It's just the way you've throwed it ever'
morning since I've knowed you here. Move it up on the
bedstead?--First thing you know you can't."
"Well," said Sim, sighing, "some folks is always making other folks
feel bad. I ain't never found fault with the way you keep house when I
come over to your place, have I?"
"You ain't got the same reason for to," replied Wid Gardner. "I ain't no
angel, but I sure try to make some sort of bluff like I was human. This
place ain't human."
"Now you said something!" remarked Sim suddenly, after a time spent
in solemn thought. "She ain't human! That's right."
He made no explanation for some time, and both men sat looking
vaguely out of the open door across the wide and pleasant valley above
which a blue and white-flecked sky bent amiably. A wide ridge of good
grass lands lay held in the river's bent arm. The wind blew steadily,
throwing up into a sheet of silver the leaves of the willows which
followed the water courses. A few quaking asps standing near the cabin

door likewise gave motion and brightness to the scene. The air was
brilliantly cool and keen. It was a pleasant spot, and at that season of
the year not an uncomfortable one. Sim Gage had lived here for some
years now, and his homestead, originally selected with the unconscious
sense for beauty so often exercised by rude men in rude lands, was
considered one of the best in the Two-Forks Valley.
"Feller, he loses hope after a while," began the owner of the place after
a considerable silence. "Look at me, for instance. I come out here from
Ioway more'n twenty-five years ago, when I was only a boy. When my
pa died my ma, she moved back to Ioway. I stuck around here, like you
and lots of other fellers, and done like you all, just the best I could.
Some way the country sort of took a holt on me. It does, ain't it the
truth?"
His friend nodded silently.
"Well, so I stuck around and done about what I could, same as you,
ain't that so, Wid? I prospected some, but you know how hard it is to
get any money into a mine, no matter what you've found fer a prospect.
I got along somehow--seems like folks didn't use to pester so much, the
way they do to-day. And you know onct I was just on the point of
starting out fer Arizony with that old miner, Pop Haynes--do you
suppose I'd struck anything if I'd of went down there?"
"Nobody can say if you would or you wouldn't," replied Wid. "Fact is,
you never got more'n half started."
"Well, you see, this old feller, Pop Haynes, he'd been down in Arizony
twenty years before, and he said there was lots of gold out there in the
desert. Well, we got a team hooked up, and a little flour and bacon, and
we did start--now, I'll leave it to you, Wid, if we didn't. We got as far as
Big Springs, on the railroad. What did we hear then? Why, news comes
up from down in Arizony that a railroad has went out into the desert,
and that them mines has been discovered. What's the use then fer us to
start fer Arizony with a wagon and team? Like enough all the good
stakes would be took up before we could get there. Old Pop and me, we
just turned back, allowing it was the sensiblest thing to do."

"And you been in around here ever since."
"Yes, sir; yes, sir, that's what I been. Been around here ever since. I told
you the country kind of takes a holt on a feller. Ain't it the truth? Well,
I trapped a little since then in the winters, and killed elk for the market
some, like you know, and fished through the ice over on the lakes, like
you know. Some days I'd make three or four dollars a day fishing. So at
last when that Swede, Big Aleck, got run out of the county, I fell into
his ranch. There ain't a better in the whole valley. Look at that hay land,
Wid. You got to admit that this here is one of the best places