Page:Melville Davisson Post--The Man of Last Resort.djvu/210

186 The mountaineer dropped the butt of his rifle on the stones, and looked up in astonishment. “Smoky hell!” ejaculated the mountaineer, “it air the sheriff. Smoky hell!” The refrain was a nervous idiom with Spitler Hamrick.

White Carter put his hand into the pocket of his coat, took out a pipe, knocked the ashes from the bowl and began to fill it with great deliberation. This act, remaining after the red man had passed, proclaimed a status of dignified truce.

The play of action faded from Hamrick's face, leaving it stolid, heavy, prodigiously indifferent. It was the mountain's stamp on its minion, the silence, and the abominable indifference of the rugged earth ground into the faces of the men who struggle for life on her stony breast.

“Hot,” observed the sheriff, crowding the bowl of his pipe and thrusting the tobacco down with his broad thumb.

The mountaineer folded his arms over the muzzle of his rifle and leaned upon it heavily.

“Yas,” he responded, “warmish.”