[Philip Verrill Mighels, Billy Does His Assessment, Harper's Monthly Magazine, January 1905]

 

Billy Does His Assessment

BY PHILIP VERRILL MIGHELS

            THERE were six big, husky citizens of Silveredge paying court all at once in the modest presence of Margy Crewe, and each and every one prepared to take undue advantage of the other, when, to the utter astonishment of all, the cabin door was opened and in there came no less an individual than " Scared little Billy " Huntoon.

            For a moment the men could hardly be convinced they really saw aright. Their Billy !—the Billy afraid to pass where a female shadow had fallen? Billy, who blushed by intuition whenever a new-come woman stepped ashore at San Francisco, that was seven hundred miles or more away? They looked again. The wiry little figure was certainly there, and there were the fun-lit, startled eyes, the stubby brown beard, and the unmistakable broom of his hair all fearfully standing on end. It was Billy by all the significant truths that ever set humans to guessing.

            The tension, lent already to the atmosphere by six distinct varieties of matrimonial hopes or intentions, was not perceptibly modified by this wholly unanticipated descent upon the scene of a man so shy as little Billy. Instantly the six rough Lotharios of the mines conceived a new and more exalted estimate of Margy and her charms. It meant things, decidedly, when Billy Huntoon could summon courage to look at a girl with wife-desiring eyes; and if this were not his mission, then what in the world did he mean?

            With one accord the six were staring at the new intruder, silently demanding, as it were, to know his business here, and know it soon.

            " Good—evenin', boys—and—and Miss Margy." stammered Billy, flushing yet a deeper red than his florid countenance usually carried. " N-nice—nice evenin' —kinder nice—even in', I mean."

            " Nice enough, if it don't git spiled by too many unwanted people," growled big Jack White. " But I guess it will."

            Billy answered to this with a sickly grin. Then he looked about the room as if from a corner where he stood at bay and meant to fight. A glance, however, was all he dared bestow on Margy Crewe; for how could a man behold a girl so wholesome and plump and entrancing as she and remain undizzied by the sight?

            She sat somewhat constrained herself, between a pair of miners who were nearly as timid as Billy. A nice, plain girl, good and strong, was Margy, sufficiently freckled to look decidedly genuine and healthy, and now half abashed, half amused, but wholly brave, keeping open house, quite alone, in the temporary absence of stout Mrs. Todd. She was simply dressed, and, when she thought upon the subject, she knew what to do with nearly everything about her, save her two strong hands and her two sturdy feet. That is to say, her blushes took care of themselves, and her eyes could not entirely restrain their merriment, nor yet could they wholly avoid the troubled faces of her six—nay, seven—admirers. For the greater part of the time, however, she, like Billy, fidgeted just a trifle and was looking anxiously about to find her tiny brother, little Ted.

            This small boy, orphan, five years old, and always quaintly busy, now appeared from out beyond. As he came into the room, certain of the miners and certain of the overworked Fates might almost have been heard to heave a groan. He had been here a week, he and Margy, and despite abundant ingenuity on the part of Fate and the fellows come here to court, he had deftly foiled no less than twenty machinations arranged to entangle his sister in a quick matrimonial alliance. Not one of the six stout Romeos had even so much as proposed.

            "Oh. Billy !—Hullo, Billy!" cried the youngster now, and running forward in

SIX DISTINCT VARIETIES OF MATRIMONIAL HOPES OR INTENTIONS

BILLY DOES HIS ASSESSMENT.     241

honest delight he kicked one wooer's hat across the room from its place on the floor, and Margy, shifting her shoes as she answered another big suitor's observations concerning the day and the weather, planted a fairly substantial foot upon its crown. She thereby afforded much entertainment to several miners, not, however, including the man who owned the tile.

            Meantime Billy and the bright-eyed little Ted were enjoying certain phases of comradery as only simple natures can, and out of the room, to the one beyond, they presently departed.

            " Wal, as I was sayin'," spoke up big Jack White, resuming a monologue interrupted last by the vision of Billy coming in to join the company—" as I was sayin', Miss Margy, when I went to trappin' grizzly bear—"

            "Is that the story 'bout the one they called ole Clubfoot, Jack?" inquired an eager admirer, whose scheme of wooing Margy was to show how thoroughly well he was acquainted with all the other fellows and their stories. "Give 'em that one, Jack. Awful comical story. How the bear et up his grub-stake, beans and all, and some of his biscuit to boot, and never got pizened."

            " Naw ! That ain't the story," Jack replied, in some unaccountable disgust. " I was goin' to tell about a Californy lion."

            " The one which turned out for to be the neighbor's calf ?" interrupted the desperate friend. " Why don't you give us the other, 'bout the rabbit which scared you half to death and got away? Fearful bully story! And the wildcat, Jack, the one that stole your pants."

            "It wasn't pants, Miss Margy; it was boots," corrected a third admirer. " Wildcat thought they was fodder."

            "It was winter-time and game pretty scarce," imparted another. " But boots ain't game as much as moccasins."

            "But the wildcat got 'em, all the same, and pore ole Jack had to walk three miles, barefooted and cussin'," concluded the original interrupter of the narrative. " Awful sad story, Miss Margy. Couldn't you give us that one, Jack, without no trouble?"

            " I ain't goin' to tell no story 't all," said Jack, whose face betrayed but little pride in what had been thus far revealed of his adventures. He noted little Ted and the timid Billy now returning to the room, the small boy alert at the mention of a yarn. " All I was sayin', Miss Margy," he resumed, " is that, take it one place and another, what with trappin' and huntin' and minin' and loggin', I've been through pretty near everything there is."

            Little Ted advanced very slowly, till he stood admiringly before the miner, gazing fairly in his face. Then he said, in his childishly piping falsetto,

            "Have you ever been through a threshing-machine ?"

            For a second an ominous silence ensued. Then the boys attempted to kick through the floor—all save Jack. He waited, in a savage sort of patience, finally replying:

            " I didn't hear what the young man said. But, as I was remarkin', Miss Margy, when I come—"

            " Hey, Billy! — Hey there! Hey — Billy's gone!" broke in a teamster who had heretofore been silent.

            And this, indeed, was true. Taking advantage of the moment when attention had been centred rather closely on the man with stories in abundance, Billy had slipped to the rear of the chair where Miss Margy was sitting, and from there had edged swiftly to the door, out of which he had bolted abruptly.

            " Leave him go," growled Jack, in satisfaction thus to see his rivals lessened by a jot. "You needn't break your neck to call him back."

            " But he went so queer," replied a man called Punkin Pete. " And say, Miss Margy, look at that ! You kin kick my shins if I don't believe he's bin and pinned a great big letter on your dress."  He was pointing impolitely with his finger at a bulky folded paper, secured, as he said, to Margy's dress where folds of new calico were trailed along the floor.  In much confusion Margy took it off and gave it a glance. Suddenly crimsoning, she dropped it down on her chair in haste, and catching little Teddy by the hand, darted quickly from the room.

            " Well, kick my—what's the matter? What's the darn thing got inside?" inquired Pete, starting actively forward.

            But big Jack White was ahead, and catching up the missive, was instantly

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aware it was nothing less than a document weighty and new. He turned it over and read aloud the caption at the top:

            " ' Notice of Location. My claim!'"

            " Location ? Here? Locatin' what ?" demanded one of the suitors. " Git it open! Look inside !"

            Big Jack lost little time in bending back the folds that doubled the paper. The document proved to be a printed form, exactly such as all employed in locating ground for a mining claim, but here and there the wording was changed, and much was scratched, and much that was utterly foreign to the mining code was boldly written in, by way of meeting new and unheard-of conditions.

            As spokesman, White began to read, emphasizing Billy's interlineations with an accent of wonder and awe:

            " ' Notice of Location of a Wife Claim. Notice is hereby given, to all whom it may concern : That I, Billy (William) Huntoon, bein' of soun' mind and a citizen of the United States over the age of twenty-one years, having discovered a new girl which has just came to camp, within the limits of the claim hereby located, have this day, under and in accordance with the Revised Statutes of the United States, Chapter Six, Title Thirty-two, located about 5 feet 4 inches of the same, with surface ground about one foot six inches in width, situated in Silveredge Mining District, County of Esperanza, State of Nevada, and known as the Margy Crewe Claim, and extending clean around from this notice at the discovery or prospect cabin, the exterior boundaries of this claim being distinctly marked by reference to some natural objects or permanent monuments, and more particularly described as follows, to wit: the mountains on every side of where she's livin', which is my wife claim as I seen her and spoke to her first the day she rid into camp, on the stage, with little Teddy and her a-settin' on the box, with ole Barry Webb a-drivin', and he don't count, as he's a married man, and so I locate this here claim first, accordin' to law. for I was the first unmarried man which seen her and spoke to her first, and that's why I locate this here claim before anybody else. which is my legal rights. And I intend to hold and work said claim as provided by the local customs and rules of miners and the Mining Statutes of the United States. Billy (William) Huntoon. Dated on the ground this 13th day of August, A.D. 18—.'"

            For a brief space of time after Jack had finished reading, there was absolute silence in the room. By some unwritten law of ethics, due to a mining education, the six rough citizens gave a semi-tacit consent to Billy's " rights "— the whole thing granted in a spirit half comic, half serious, engendered by surprise and admiration.

            " Location notice, pat as mud," said Punkin Pete. " Location—claimin' Margy, all there is, complete! Kick my shins if that ain't the slickest racket yet! Little ole gal-nipper Billy! And all plumb 'cordin' to law, as sure as whales !"

            " Law?" ejaculated a scrawny individual by the name of Mink Kerfoot. " Law? What kind of Jim Crow minin' law is that ?"

            Big Jack White was paralyzed.

            " I didn't think he had the sand," he said, impressively. " I don't see how he ever done it up."

            " But, drat him !—what's the good of all his fool location papers, with a gal?" objected a very much worried aspirant for Margy's hand. " I wonder where she is by now? She's sure got a right to speak up here for herself."

            She certainly had; and having duly listened at the door to Jack's labored reading of the notice, there were things she could have uttered in abundance. However, she fled away to the farthest confines of the cabin, while the men remained in the " parlor," blindly groping for a hope.

            " Locations is always locations, all the same," conceded one of the bashful boys who had felt that his chances were slim. " He's went and got ahead of all the gang, and done it neat."

            " But he'll never dare to show up here regular and do his legal assessment, you can bet your last little onion onto that," decided Punkin Pete. " He ain't got the grit to spark the gal, and when a feller don't come up with that kind of assessment, 'cordin' to law, why, the next-best man kin jump the claim, just as if nuthin' important had happened."

            " You bet !" agreed a friend.

BILLY DOES HIS ASSESSMENT.     243

            " But to think of him doin' the racket up so slick!" persisted big Jack White, reflectively. " Where do you s'pose he's went to now ?"

            " Gone home, I reckon," answered one. " Gone home, perhaps, to pour some oil on his troubled hair."

            "'Twould make him look almost sort of human; but he'll never dress up and do assessment, mark my word," reiterated Punkin Pete, prophetically. " I wonder now what we'd better think of doin'?"

            Jack White was emerging from his shock. " Pete's dead correct," he agreed at last. " Billy won't make no love—he won't do that kind of assessment. Jest bein' smart ain't all it needs, with a gal in the game." He looked at the notice of location gravely, and folding it, laid it on a chair. " He's got a kind of right, of course," he concluded. " We've got to think of that. I reckon, however, as Margy won't be comin' back very sudden, perhaps we'd better poke along and go and git a drink."

            United by common calamity, the disconcerted six gazed hopelessly toward the door by which Mistress Margy had flown, and then wandered slowly away, to wet and to swallow a deep-dyed sense of defeat, chagrin, and bereavement.

            It's a very poor prophecy that fails to please the prophet. Punkin Pete felt amply repaid for the mental endeavor he had made in predicting that Billy would fail to " do assessment work " in courting Margy Crewe, for when a week had nearly gone the timid locator of a claim on the girl had not so much as been seen about the camp, save at regular hours of labor at the Uncle Sammy mine.

            Billy was certainly " scared " of what he had done; that is, he was fearful of meeting Miss Margy face to face. In a way he felt he had fixed his rights; but having expended the whole of his nerve in " posting his notice " that evening, he was now absenting himself from the centre of action while he slowly accumulated a brand-new charge of courage.

            Meantime Margy had dared to read the document until a certain sense of feminine admiration had resulted in her nature. She was smiling and blushing together as she waited for further developments. Moreover, she went so far as to encourage little Ted when his spirit of adventure led him far across the hill to the mine where Billy was employed. And to this young Teddy took the more kindly as a small gray donkey there was endlessly driven in and out of the tunnel, trundling a heavy iron car that was used to clear out rock and precious ore.

            The girl was rather more glad than otherwise that Billy's preposterous claim was proving sufficiently potent to keep many suitors away. In a spirit of fairness the doughty six had jokingly consented to remain aloof for at least ten days and give Billy ample opportunity to make good his " hold on the property." Despite the agreement thus completed with his pals, however, the lanky Mink Kerfoot made bold to appear at Margy's home one beautiful evening and propose to make her his wife.

            He was calmly and firmly refused, after which he returned to his five fellow exiles, stoutly to hold all the others to the common agreement.

            On Sunday morning news was spread that Billy intended to attend the " church" where earnest Hugh Willis would preach. That Margy would be there, of course, was widely known. The exiles decided to lend their presence in a body. They likewise invited their friends.

            It thus came to pass that the preacher beheld a large, alert, and attentive congregation when the service was fairly under way. In the midst of his sermon, impassioned and strong, inspired by the growing favor of the institution, Willis was unaware that Teddy Crewe had wandered away from his sister's side and was squirming his way about the place, investigating everything in sight.

            The miners, however, watched the child with senses keenly focused on his form. So did Margy and Billy. Margy, indeed, was weak with nervous dread. She knew her bright-eyed little brother, who now worked quickly around to the rear of the pulpit, where the preacher stood on an elevated platform, easily seen. Approaching Willis from behind, little Ted grasped him affectionately by the legs, and thrusting his head between the preacher's knees, looked forth at the congregation and grinned good-naturedly.

            Margy gazed in horror on the picture. The miners were pale with apprehension.

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            By some exercise of masterly unconcern, Hugh Willis kept on preaching. Teddy, for his part, kept on grinning and propelling himself yet farther forward between the two living pillars that he liked. He also began to swing himself backward and forward, all the while inventing new facial expressions, each more ingenious than the last.

            Meantime perspiration was suddenly oozing from the helpless preacher's brow. Poor Margy, ashamed to speak or call young Teddy to her side, shrank down in her seat in helpless despair. Then up in his seat rose Billy Huntoon, the timid, blushing Billy; and down the aisle he shakingly marched, led by a natural sympathy with children where courage could never have urged him. He came to the pulpit, and taking Ted in his trembling arms, bore him forth from the meeting to the rocky slope without.

            They told the tale at the mine, next day, that when the folks all left the church young Teddy was sent down-hill alone, while Billy " slid off in the hills." Then, when Ted came in person to the tunnel, the miners all hotly vied with one another to win the favor of his friendship.

            It thus transpired that he took a ride in the ore-car, hauled back and forth by the burro. After that a trust in Teddy's own resourcefulness could hardly have been misapplied. He was here and there and everywhere, below the ground, above the ground, and underfoot and overhead, wheresoever busy shoes could tread or eager hands could clutch. Yet never was he long astray from the watchful gaze of Billy. The hold the small boy had on Billy's heart was a thing that no one knew; and what a babbling fountain of joy he brought to the lorn miner's life could hardly have been understood.

            On the last of the days forenamed by the six bold suitors for the hand of Mangy Crewe as bringing an end to the hours of grace allotted to Billy in which to do some " sparkin'," by way of " assessment,"—on this final day, little Billy was working extra hard. He was well aware that his time was up, for big Jack White had so informed him, to his face. Therefore in feverish excitement he was pounding away at a drill, in a frantic, worried effort to drum up his recreant courage.

            As if the rock were his weaker self, he went at it stoutly and long. He drilled a hole of extra depth, and into its bore he tamped a charge of giant powder big enough to shake the mighty hills. Then the fuse was laid and the word went forth and miners sped to safety from the place, some with lighted candles in their hands.

            When Billy ran out he looked in the car that stood there idly on the rails. It was empty.

            " Alec," he said to the foreman, "where's the boy?"

            " Don't know," answered Alec. "Must 'a' went home to his lunch."

            " You sure he's out of the tunnel ?" demanded Billy, eagerly. " Any one see him come out ?"

            " I tole him to git away out of where I was workin'," answered one of the men. " Goin' to git sure hurt, some day, a-foolin"round in there."

            " I don't believe he's out !" said Billy, thoroughly alarmed. " If he wandered into the south drift all alone, where no one was workin', why— I know he's there!—I know he's there! I'm goin' to scoot back there and git him!"

            " Here!" bawled Alec, suddenly halting the frightened little Billy, as he started on a run for the tunnel. "Darn your darn-fool hide! Do you want to git killed? Keep out of that!—keep out —and quit your kickin', or I'll biff you on the jaw !"

            " I won't !—the kid! You let me go! I know the boy's inside!" yelled Billy, in the swift, hot anger of impatience. " You let me go! You let me—"

            Boom! went the muffled, deep-toned roar of the blast inside the hill.

            A tremor shivered through the earth; and then a dull down-pounding sound came sullenly forth from the mine. The men stood rigidly where they were and looked each other in the face peculiarly.

            " Say !" exclaimed the foreman, as he dropped the struggling Billy from his arms. "Say! did you hear that noise? The tunnel must have caved !"

            He ran inside, but Billy shot ahead. A dozen men were at their heels. They met a gush of dust of rock outflowing to the air. Then Billy came to a huge irregular pyramid of porphyry and earth, dropped from the ceiling to the floor and filling the passage to the top.

 

"HE'S GONE!" CRIED ALEC

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            " I knew it !" he cried. "I knew it! And I know he's there inside!"

            "Now shut up, Billy! Shut your gab!" commanded the foreman, somewhat harshly. " I don't believe the kid's inside, and we've got to think of what we're goin' to do to open the mine. Should have been timbered; I said so all along. If you're worried, why, go outside, or even down to his sister's place and look the youngster up."

            " He wouldn't 'a' went off—I know he wouldn't 'a' went off home—because—we was goin' down together!" Billy confessed as he stared at the caved-in heap in its ponderous masses. " I know it, Alec, Teddy's there inside! I'm goin' to git inside and fetch him out!"

            He started to climb towards the apex of the new-created pile of debris. Again the foreman caught him in his arms.

            " You darned little idjit, don't you know the tunnel's plumb filled with pizen gas?" he demanded. " No man could breathe inside that place and not be a goner mighty sudden! And even if Teddy was inside, why, hang it, man— Say! git your senses back on shift and go outside and rustle up the kid."

            A look of cunning crept to Billy's eyes. " Let's all go out and look," he said.

            More worried himself than he cared to confess, the foreman started to lead the way. Lagging behind him, Billy pretended to follow. Then, with a quickness that no one expected, he turned about, and darting to the grim, disordered barrier, scrambled up its short declivity, to paw in madness at the sand and stone that lay close up to the ceiling.

            " Hey there! Hey, Billy! Hey, Alec—Billy's goin' back!" yelled one of the miners. Towards him raced the foreman, cursing in his worry.

            But having thrown out sand enough to leave a narrow hole, the frenzied Billy dived head foremost into the gap. Kicking and wriggling in desperate haste, he scrambled through to the farther side, crying to Teddy as he went.

            " You Billy! You !" bawled Alec, on the heap, but a ton of loosened earth came down on top of the mound already there, and the aperture, so darkly gaping but a moment before, was blotted out in the wink of an eye.

            " He's gone !" cried Alec. " He's buried now as sure as hell! You, Spooner, run to Mrs. Todd's and see if little Crewe ain't landed home. And then you git all the men you can! We're goin' to need a heap of help!"

            In the mean time, shut in the tunnel, and having barely escaped the supplementary drop of caving sand, Billy was now on his feet and blundering forward, striking the wall of rock as he groped his way in the darkness.

            He presently came to a secondary cave, Could he only have cast a glare of light on the tunnel's roof, the sight of broken fissures, bulging stones, and twisted strata would have warned him fearfully against the place. As it was he thought only of Teddy, certain he knew where the unsuspecting child had been at play when the blast was fired.

            On hands and knees he scaled the sloping wall of dry, down-sliding gravel on which the solid rock had moved, and which now comprised this second bulkhead, sealing up the corridor. The top of this conelike heap was thick, but he dug at it furiously with his fingers, flinging the sand behind him like a dog. And all the while he was talking.

            " I'm coming, Teddy—coming right away. I'm coming sure," he said. " Don't be frightened—don't be scared. You bet I'm coming in to git you out!"

            Then, when at last he had wormed as before through the meagre opening formed at the top of the pile, a stifling breath of smoke and gas, held here imprisoned before, suddenly engulfed him. He inhaled a lungful, and smitten with lethargy, rolled half-way down to the floor inside, in a heap inert and helpless.  Outside, the foreman, nearly crazed, was storming the first of the cave-made barriers. His men were assaulting the heap in frenzied energy. Then Spooner, sent to Mrs. Todd's and to call for men, came panting to the bill with the news that little Ted was not at home.

            Alec was pale. " He's in here—God help 'em both !" he admitted at last. " I sort of felt old Billy was right from the first."

            The men that came now, swarming up the slope, found other fellow beings so hotly at work that ten minutes' time was sufficient to use up their breath. They staggered back from the face of the drift and fresh hands clutched at the picks.

BILLY DOES HIS ASSESSMENT.     247

            The news was spreading through the camp. The women came, and Margy Crewe, and extra help from the store and saloons, till a throng was surging on the rock-strewn dump of the mine and excitement rose higher and higher, as barrow after barrow of stuff came out of the tunnel, bearing tales of newer cavings from the roof and constantly added dangers to the sweating men who drove the tools directed on the heap.

            Inside the man-made tomb, little Billy was stirring where he lay. The fumes of gas had settled down. They lay knee-deep upon the floor, while air and smoke together hung above.

            Slowly emerging from his drowsiness, lying as he was above the fumes, Billy dragged his hand across his brow.

            " Teddy !—that's what it was !" he said, and staggering weakly to his feet, he plunged down quickly, over broken fragments of rock, and began once more to feel his way along the wall.

            Benumbed in his senses, weak and " turned around," his ears dully ringing and all his head in a dizzying whirl, he groped in the darkness, lost as completely as if he had never in his life been made acquainted with the ramifying drifts.

            "Ted, you bet I'm coming!" he murmured. " Don't be afraid—I'll find you pretty soon."

            But the hour went by, and noon was passed, and the afternoon grew old. A frenzied Margy paced the dump outside the mine. She wanted to help—to work with the men—to follow where Billy had gone—but the crumbling earth, that threatened the lives of the toilers already employed, was not a foe for the softer hands of women to engage.

            It was two o'clock, and then it was three, and the silent crypt behind the cave had yielded not a sign. Nevertheless little Billy, ill at his stomach and aching in his bones and trembling as he moved, had come at last to the big south chamber—and the boy. He had stumbled almost over the tiny form, stretched helplessly out on the floor. And finding the gas had barely entered in quantities sufficient to bring unconsciousness, he had taken up the limber little body in his arms, and was once again staggering, groping, feeling his way, to come to the main entrance tunnel.

            The workers outside broke through the first of the bulkheads just at four. Mindless of the perils of the business, they hastened in, their way strangely lit by the flare of candles and torches held aloft. Thus they came, almost at once, to the second great obstruction; and some of them groaned and some of them cursed as they looked on the sinister heap.

            Then, in the wavering light of a torch, they suddenly beheld a tiny pair of feet protruding through the orifice enlarged by Billy when he made his way inside. A feeble push from the dark that reigned in the tunnel back of the cave, and Teddy's little form was nearly thrust into sight.

            Jack White darted forward, a cry on his lips from the gladness of his heart. He caught the limber little feet and dragged Teddy closely to his breast.

            "Billy!   Billy!    Billy!" yelled the foreman, raucously.

            But weakened to the last degree and utterly exhausted by the hours he had toiled in the silent tomb, with its thick, half-poisonous fumes, the " Scared little Billy " had only had strength to last for the final effort, now complete.

            " Teddy—you bet—I'll git—you—out !" he said for the hundredth time, and then he toppled backward, unconscious.

            They dragged him forth, the eager men who wriggled through the dug-out hole where tons of rock were balancing in readiness to drop at a jar. And men and women trooped behind as they carried his almost boyishly frail little figure, with Teddy's, down to Mrs. Todd's.

            The courier sent from the house to the store, where the anxious big fellows were waiting, found a crowded room full of miners, teamsters, and quartz - mill hands, all breathless for his news.

            " You bet !" he bawled, " he's comin' 'round all right! I seen him and pore little Ted settin' up! And likewise, which is somethin' more—I saw Margy kiss durned old Billy, and cry."

            The men were silent for a moment. And just before their glad hurrah went crashing up to the ceiling, big Jack White took a pipe from between his teeth, the better to make a remark.

            " I reckon," he said, " that Billy has done his assessment."