't kill Phil, but he got tol'able well used up. His clothes
was nearly all tore off, an' his hands got some bruised where he caught
on to the aidges before he got a holt an' lifted himself out in a still
place. He'd be'n all right only he got mixed up with a string o' lumber
that was a-comin' down, an' so he had to go to the hospital.

"One thing about Jess--she was a singer all right. I ain't never heer'd
ary one o' them there the-_ay_-ter gals that could beat her singin'. She
warbled like a lark with his belly full o' grubworms. It was wuth ridin'
a clamp from here to Mill Flat to hear her sing. She had a couple o'
hymn-books an' a stack o' them coon songs the newspapers gives away, an'
I tell yeh, she'd sing them there songs like she'd knowed 'em all her
life. Picked out the tunes some ways on a little string-thing like a
sawed-off guitar. Sounds like muskeeters hummin' aroun'. Yes, a
mandy-linn--that's it. But that there mandy-linn didn't soot her a
little bit. She was crazy ter have a pianner. I heer'd her tell her paw,
who was aroun' ag'in workin' after his busted laig got well, she'd give
ten years o' her life for any ol' cheap pianner he could skeer up fer
her.

"'Wal,' says he, 'how in tunket am I a-goin' ter git anything like
that--thirty miles off'n the road, an' nary way o' freightin' it up or
down the canon to this camp?'

"'Couldn't yeh have it brung up to Skyland by the stage road,' asts she,
'an' then have it rafted down the flume? Jest a little one?' she asts
very earnest-like.

"'Gee whittaker!' says he, laughin' all over. 'You'll be a-wantin' 'em
to send yeh down a parlor-keer nex'.'

"Then she gits hot in the collar an' cries an' takes on, an' Jud, who
was a-hangin' aroun', has to walk her up to the Riffles; an' he must 'a'
comforted her a heap, fer she comes back alone, singin,' 'Nearer, my
God, to Thee,' like a angel.

"The' was a big spill up to the Devil's Gate,--one o' them places back
there where the flume hangs onto the side o' the cliff, about half a
mile above the bottom o' the gulch,--an' Jud Brusie an' all hands has to
work there three days an' nights ter git things straightened out. Jud
worked so derned hard, up all night an' hangin' on ter the ropes he was
let up an' down by till yeh'd think he was ready to drop, that the
soop'rintendent said he'd make Jud flume boss when he got back from Noo
York, where he was a-goin' fer a few months. The soop'rintendent--that's
Mr. Sneath--went