Page:Hugh Pendexter--Tiberius Smith.djvu/34

 conversed earnestly with him for some time. Tib then jolted his hat over his right ear, and I knew by that old familiar sign that he had agreed to do something unusual. "‘Let me hold discourse with my friend,' I heard him say. Then to me he whispered, 'If we can be mean enough to deal a few pictures from the bottom of the deck, we can make up what the manager appropriated, I believe. List! This town is bedridden. Hasn't seen any one but French and half-breeds since the tristful days of '61. They'll use us well if we agree to stay through the summer.'

"‘But why stay?' I mumbled, utterly at loss to comprehend any advantage in so doing.

"‘To earn a livelihood,' explained Tib. 'Yon antique migrated here when the Civil War broke out. Did it to escape the draft. He and a bunch of companions with their women folks settled down in this well, believing they were in Canada. He's the only original forebear alive. They've never written a letter or received a letter or a newspaper since coming here. Hence the newer generation is in plumb darkness as to the events of the last forty-two years. You see, the first batch of settlers was so opposed to being discovered and drafted that they never left the valley.

"‘They call the surrounding heights the Dozen Hills, as that's their number. The prenatal influ-