"And it's to his credit," Ma Snow snapped back. "When he's doin' that he ain't runnin' up board bills he cain't pay."
"It's as good a place as any," admitted the Judge, "providin' he don't go nutty." He raised his voice and added with a significant look at Uncle Bill: "Bachin' alone makes some fellers act like a bull-elk that's been whipped out of the herd."
"It takes about four months before you begin to think that somebudy's layin' out in the brush watchin' you--waitin' to rob you even if you haven't got anything to steal but a slab of swine-buzzum and a sack of flour. The next stage," went on the citizen behind the stove speaking with the voice of authority, "is when you pack your rifle along every time you go for a bucket of water, and light you palouser in the middle of the night to go around the cabin lookin' for tracks. Yes, sir," emphatically, "and the more brains you got the quicker you go off."
"You seemed about the same when you got back as when you left that time you wintered alone on the left fork of Swiftwater," Ma Snow commented.
"Like as not you remember that spell I spent t'other side of Sheep-eater Ridge when I druv that fifty foot tunnel single-handed into the Silver King?"
"You've never give us no chance to forgit it," responded an auditor. "We've heard it reg'lar every day since."
"I hadn't seen nobody fer clost to three months," Lemonade Dan continued "when a feller come along, and says: 'I'd like to stop with ye but I'm short of cash.' I counted out a dollar-thirty and I says 'Stranger,' I says, 'that's all I got but it's yourn if you'll stay!'"
"And you'll jump for a new seed catalogue or an Agricultural Bulletin like it was a novel just out," contributed Yankee Sam from his experience. "I've allus been a great reader. I mind how I come clost to burnin' myself out on account of it the fall of '97 when I was ground-sluicin' down there on Snake river. I had a tidy cabin papered with newspapers and one week when 'twere stormin' I got interested in a serial story what was runnin'. It started back of the stove and they was an installment pasted in the cupboard, they was a piece upside down clost to the floor so I had to stand on my head, as you might say, to read it, and the end was on the ceilin'. One evenin' I was standin' on a box with my mouth open and my neck half broke tryin' to see how it come out when I tipped the lamp over. I'm a reg'lar book-worm, when I gits where they's readin'."