move that bed
for four years, to my certain knowledge, and I know that in that time
you ain't shuk it out or aired it onct, or made it up."

"How do you know I ain't made her up?" demanded Sim Gage, his knife
arrested in its labors.

"Well, I know you ain't. It's just the way you've throwed it ever'
morning since I've knowed you here. Move it up on the bedstead?--First
thing you know you can't."

"Well," said Sim, sighing, "some folks is always making other folks
feel bad. I ain't never found fault with the way you keep house when I
come over to your place, have I?"

"You ain't got the same reason for to," replied Wid Gardner. "I ain't
no angel, but I sure try to make some sort of bluff like I was human.
This place ain't human."

"Now you said something!" remarked Sim suddenly, after a time spent in
solemn thought. "She ain't human! That's right."

He made no explanation for some time, and both men sat looking vaguely
out of the open door across the wide and pleasant valley above which a
blue and white-flecked sky bent amiably. A wide ridge of good grass
lands lay held in the river's bent arm. The wind blew steadily,
throwing up into a sheet of silver the leaves of the willows which
followed the water courses. A few quaking asps standing near the cabin
door likewise gave motion and brightness to the scene. The air was
brilliantly cool and keen. It was a pleasant spot, and at that season
of the year not an uncomfortable one. Sim Gage had lived here for some
years now, and his homestead, originally selected with the unconscious
sense for beauty so often exercised by rude men in rude lands, was
considered one of the best in the Two-Forks Valley.

"Feller, he loses hope after a while," began the owner of the place
after a considerable silence. "Look at me, for instance. I come out
here from Ioway more'n twenty-five years ago, when I was only a boy.
When my pa died my ma, she moved back to Ioway. I stuck around here,
like you and lots of other fellers, and done like you all, just the
best I could. Some way the country sort of took a holt on me. It
does, ain't it the truth?"

His friend nodded silently.

"Well, so I stuck around and done about what I could, same as you,
ain't that so, Wid? I prospected some, but you know how hard it is to
get any money into a mine, no matter what you've found fer a prospect.
I got along somehow--seems like folks didn't use to pester so much, the
way they do to-da