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Page 42
Mr. Hemmingway felt that there WAS an answer to this, but, being
wise, also felt that it would be unavailing. He smiled politely
and said nothing, at which the first speaker turned to him:--
"Thar ain't anything to see to-day, but to-morrow, ez things go,
the water oughter be droppin'. Mebbe you'd like to wash up now and
clean yourself," he added, with a glance at Hemmingway's small
portmanteau. "Ez we thought you'd likely be crowded here, we've
rigged up a corner for you at Stanton's shanty with the women."
The young man's cheek flushed slightly at some possible irony in
this, and he protested with considerable stress that he was quite
ready "to rough it" where he was.
"I reckon it's already fixed," returned the man decisively, "so
you'd better come and I'll show you the way."
"One moment," said Hemmingway, with a smile; "my credentials are
addressed to the manager of the Boone Ditch Company at 'Jules'.'
Perhaps I ought to see him first."
"All right; he's Stanton."
"And"--hesitated the secretary, "YOU, who appear to understand the
locality so well,--I trust I may have the pleasure"--
"Oh, I'm Jules."
The secretary was a little startled and amused. So "Jules" was a
person, and not a place!
"Then you're a pioneer?" asked Hemmingway, a little less
dictatorially, as they passed out under the dripping trees.
"I struck this creek in the fall of '49, comin' over Livermore's
Pass with Stanton," returned Jules, with great brevity of speech
and deliberate tardiness of delivery. "Sent for my wife and two
children the next year; wife died same winter, change bein' too
sudden for her, and contractin' chills and fever at Sweetwater.
When I kem here first thar wasn't six inches o' water in the creek;
out there was a heap of it over there where you see them yallowish-
green patches and strips o' brush and grass; all that war water
then, and all that growth hez sprung up since."
Hemmingway looked around him. The "higher ground" where they stood
was in reality only a mound-like elevation above the dead level of
the flat, and the few trees were merely recent young willows and
alders. The area of actual depression was much greater than he had
imagined, and its resemblance to the bed of some prehistoric inland
sea struck him forcibly. A previous larger inundation than Jules'
brief experience had ever known had been by no means improbable.
His cheek reddened at his previous hasty indictment of the
settlers' ignorance and shiftlessness, and the thought that he had
probably committed his employers to his own rash confidence and
superiority of judgment. However, there was no evidence that this
diluvial record was not of the remote past. He smiled again with
greater security as he thought of the geological changes that had
since tempered these cataclysms, and the amelioration brought by
settlement and cultivation. Nevertheless, he would make a thorough
examination to-morrow.
Stanton's cabin was the furthest of these temporary habitations,
and was partly on the declivity which began to slope to the river's
bank. It was, like the others, a rough shanty of unplaned boards,
but, unlike the others, it had a base of logs laid lengthwise on
the ground and parallel with each other, on which the flooring and
structure were securely fastened. This gave it the appearance of a
box slid on runners, or a Noah's Ark whose bulk had been reduced.
Jules explained that the logs, laid in that manner, kept the shanty
warmer and free from damp. In reply to Hemmingway's suggestion
that it was a great waste of material, Jules simply replied that
the logs were the "flotsam and jetsam" of the creek from the
overflowed mills below.
Hemmingway again smiled. It was again the old story of Western
waste and prodigality. Accompanied by Jules, however, he climbed
up the huge, slippery logs which made a platform before the door,
and entered.
The single room was unequally divided; the larger part containing
three beds, by day rolled in a single pile in one corner to make
room for a table and chairs. A few dresses hanging from nails on
the wall showed that it was the women's room. The smaller
compartment was again subdivided by a hanging blanket, behind which
was a rude bunk or berth against the wall, a table made of a
packing-box, containing a tin basin and a can of water. This was
his apartment.
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