Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/305

 oil by and by. Ten years of hard savings, at least, were contributed to the making of Burnett's joke by the oily hand of Little Jack Ryan. If an appreciation of humor could save a man's spirits and prop up his courage in a crisis like that, then appreciation of humor ought to be made a course in every college in the land.

There was something more than humor behind Little Jack Ryan's twinkling eyes and sly grin. It was the result of a life out on the edge of things that the man had lived so long; a life where all things come hard, its tragedies sudden and appalling, its rewards so scant as to be in the main despised. Life itself was its own reward to a man who had spent so many of his years on the bare edges of the world. If he came through the day with that, rounded out the year with nothing more, he counted himself a winner, and was glad.

Ryan's interpretation of Burnett's big joke had gone out through some chink, and spread over town like a cupful of the lamp-tender's oil by evening. It was such a rare joke, in the opinion of Damascus, that the town appeared to take it as full compensation for the loss and humiliation it had felt so harshly before.

Jim Justice stopped at Hall's office to tell it, as something springing out of his own deep well of humor; the lumberman stopped him on his way to the livery barn, to give his version of it, and pass it along as a bit of sardonic comedy that had sprouted between the crevices of his close-planked business mind.

Kraus was looking brighter than Hall ever had seen him. He came weaving up in his bearish gait while Hall was saddling his horse to give it a little exercising jaunt, pulling his long yellow face apart in a grin. He repeated