ingers; but a true Californian of
Sierras jerks his head at the boys, heads straight up to the bar, knocks
his knuckles on the board, winks at the bar-keeper, pecks his nose at
his favorite bottle, fills to the brim, nods his head down the line to
the left, then to the right, hoists his Poison, throws back his head,
and then falls back wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, quite
recovered from his confusion.

Sandy backed his partner into a corner rapidly, and then, laying his
hands again on his shoulders, said: "Limber Tim! she's sick!"

He had to throw his head forward to say it. It came out as if jerked
from his throat by a thousand fish-hooks.

He raised his two great hands, and reaching out his face again clutched
the two shoulders, and said, "She's d--d sick!"

Up went the hands, back went the hat, the door was jerked open, a man
whirled out of the door as if he had been a whirlwind, up the trail, up
over the stones and snow and logs. Sandy climbed to his cabin on the
hill, while the boys followed him with their eyes; and then stood
looking at each other in wonder as he disappeared in the door.

Through the cabin burst the man, and back to the little bed-room, as if
he had been wild as the north wind that whistled and whirled about
without.

The little lady lay there, quiet now, but her face was white as ashes.
The blood had gone out from her face like a falling tide; the pain was
over, but only, like a tide, to return.

How white she was, and how beautiful she was! How helpless she was down
there in the deep, hidden in a crack of the world, away from all old
friends, away from all her kindred, all her sex and kind. She was very
ill, so alone was she; not a doctor this side of that great impassable
belt of snow that curved away like a deep white wave around and above
the heads of the three little rivers. Sandy saw all this, felt all this.
It cut him to the core, and he shook like a leaf.

What a pretty nest of a bed-room! How fragrant it was from the
fir-boughs that were gathered under foot. There were little curtains
about this bed, there deep in the Sierras. Coarse they were, it is true,
very coarse, but white as the snow that whirled about without the cabin.
Still, you might have seen here and there that there were cloudy spots
that had refused all the time to be quite washed out, rub and soak and
soap and boil them as the Widow and Washee-Washee would.

If you had lain in that bed through a spe