A blizzard was raging at present, according to the paper from which Mr. Appel was reading the headlines aloud to the group on the veranda. All trains were stalled west of the Mississippi and there was three feet of snow on the level in Denver.
"That reminds me----"
Only too well Mr. Cone knew what Mr. Budlong's remark portended. The hotel proprietor was having an interesting conversation with Mrs. Appel upon the relative merits of moth-preventatives, but he arose abruptly.
Mr. Budlong squared away again.
"That reminds me that I was wondering this morning how deep the snow would be at that point where Mr. Stott slid down the glacier in the gold-pan. By the way, Mr. Cone, have you heard that story? It's a good one."
Edging toward the doorway, Mr. Cone fairly chattered in his vehemence: "Oh, yes--yes--yes!"
Mr. Penrose interrupted eagerly: "The drifts must be about forty feet high on that stretch south of The Lolabama. There's a gap in the mountain where the wind comes through a-whoopin'. I mean the place where the steer chased Aunt Lizzie--did any one ever tell you that yarn, Cone?"
Mr. Cone, with one foot over the door-sill and clinging to the jamb, as if he half expected they would wrench him loose and make him go back and listen, answered with unmistakable irony: "I think I recall having heard someone mention it."
It required more than irony to discourage Mr. Penrose, however, and he insisted petulantly: "Come on back here, Cone! I'll explain just how Wallie jumped that steer and went to the ground with him. It's worth listening to twice."
Twice! Mr. Cone had heard it more times than he had fingers and toes.
"The telephone's ringing," he pleaded.
"Go answer it, then; looks like you'd want to learn something!"
Miss Macpherson had heard the story an even greater number of times than Mr. Cone, but now she urged Mr. Penrose to repeat it, and he did so with such spirit and so vividly that she shuddered almost continuously through the telling. He concluded by asserting emphatically that if it had not been for his foresight in providing himself with field-glasses, the steer would have been running over the flat with Aunt Lizzie empaled on its horns like a naturalist's butterfly, before any one could have prevented it.
Mr. Appel opined, when Mr. Penrose had finished, that "Canby made a poor showing."
"I could have done as well myself if I had been able to get there." He added speculatively: "I suppose Canby and Miss Spenceley are engaged by now--or married. Wallie hasn't mentioned it in his letters, has he?"