Page:The Black Cat v01no03 (1895-12).pdf/21



RAWFORD and I had gone up into the foot-hills of the Sierras to shoot. It was autumn; yet the sun unscrewed us so immediately when we walked abroad that we were forced to seek the shelter of pines and dusty scrub oaks, as often as they fell across our path.

We were lying, one afternoon, under a row of young firs on the crest of a ridge, when the gaunt figure of an old man labored up the slope toward us.

"If all the world 'd lay about in the shade like you 'uns and me—not interferin' with Nature—she'd get her hand in again on her own hook," he said, throwing himself down beside us.

What he may have looked like when his features were normal we never knew. At this advanced period he wore so inflated a nose of such eccentric modeling that his eyes couldn't count for much, and his mouth was only suggested under a flippant gray beard.

"I'm the Archangel," he said sweetly, and smiled at us.

Crawford shrugged himself a trifle nearer his gun and smiled back again.

"There's no crack," he assured us immediately. "That's been my title for three years. I got it because I held my hand from gorin' a man under false provocation."

"Tell us about it," we said.

He found a stone to rest his back against, and threw open his shirt at the throat.

"These hot summer days sizzle just as they did then—crisp your throat like coals curl bacon. I'd mined all this country in the gold days, and held my own with the dizziest dog of 'em all in findin' the color and epicuring the liquids. I run a drinking fountain in opposition to the Dead Falls, up Mokelumne way, and 19