feeling it, and there I was, edged out by the likes of Arvie Wilt.
Popley, he stopped by. There I was, a-setting hungry and discouraged, and he
came down creek riding that big brown mule and he said, “Tell, I’d take it
kindly if you stayed away from the house.” He cleared his throat because I had a
bleak look to my eye. “Griselda is coming up to marrying time and I don’t want
her confused. You’ve got nothing, and Arvie Wilt is a prosperous mining man.
Meaning no offense, but you see how it is.”
He rode on down to the settlement and there was nothing for me to do but go to
picking wild onions. The trouble was, if a man picked all day with both hands he
couldn’t pick enough wild onions to keep him alive.
It was rough country, above the canyons, but there were scattered trees and high
grass plains, with most of the ridges topped with crests of pine. Long about
sundown I found some deer feeding in a parklike clearing.
They were feeding, and I was downwind of them, so I straightened up and started
walking toward them, taking my time. When I saw their tails start to switch, I
stopped.
A deer usually feeds into the wind so he can smell danger, and when his tail
starts to wiggle he’s going to look up and around, so I stood right still. Deer
don’t see all too good, so unless a body is moving they see nothing to be afraid
of. They looked around and went back to feeding and I moved closer until their
tails started again, and then I stopped.
Upshot of it was, I got a good big buck, butchered him, and broiled a steak
right on the spot, I was that hungry. Then I loaded the best cuts of meat into
the hide and started back, still munching on wild onions. Down on the creek
again the first person I saw was Griselda, and right off she began switching her
skirts as she walked to meet me.
“I passed your claim,” she said, “but you were not there.”
She had little flecks of brown in her blue eyes and she stood uncomfortably
close to a man. “No, ma’am, I’ve give … given … it up. Your pa is right.
That claim isn’t up to much.”
“Are you coming by tonight?”
“Seems to me I wore out my welcome. No, ma’am, I’m not coming by. However, if
you’re walking that way, I’ll drop off one of these here venison steaks.”
Fresh meat was scarce along that creek, and the thought occurred that I might
sell what I didn’t need, so after leaving a steak with the Popleys, I peddled
the rest of it, selling out for twelve dollars cash money, two quarts of beans,
a pint of rice, and six pounds of flour.
Setting in my shack that night I wrassled with my problem and an idea that had
come to me. Astride that spavined mule I rode down to the settlement and spent
my twelve dollars on flour, a mite of sugar, and some other fixings, and back at
the cabin I washed out some flour sacks for aprons, and made me one of those
chef hats like I’d seen in a newspaper picture. Then I set to making bear-sign.
Least, that’s what we called them in the mountains. Most folks on the flatland
called them doughnuts, and some mountain folk did, but not around our house. I
made up a batch of bear-sign and that good baking smell drifted down along the
creek, and it wasn’t more than a few minutes later until a wild-eyed miner came
running and falling up from the creek, and a dozen more after him.
“Hey! Is that bear-sign we smell? Is them doughnuts?”
“Cost you,” I said. “I’m set up for business. Three doughnuts for two bits.”
That man set right down and ate two dollars’ worth and by the time he was
finished there was a crowd around reaching for them fast as they came out of the
Dutch oven.
Folks along that creek lived on skimpy bacon and beans, sometimes some soda
biscuits, and real baking was unheard of. Back to home no woman could make
doughnuts fast enough for we Sackett boys who were all good eaters, so we took
to making them ourselves. Ma often said nobody could make bear-sign like her
son, William Tell Sackett.
By noon I was off to the settlement for more makings, and by nightfall everybody
on the creek knew I was in business. Next day I sold a barrel of doughnuts, and
by nightfall I had the barrel full again and a washtub also. That washtub was
the only one along the creek, and it looked like nobody would get a bath until
I’d run out of bear-sign.
You have to understand how tired a man can get of grease and beans to understand
how glad they were to taste some honest-to-gosh, down-to-earth doughnuts.
Sun-up and here came Arvie Wilt. Arvie was a big man with a big appetite and he
set right down and ran up a bill of four dollars. I was making money.
Arvie sat there eating doughnuts and forgetting all about his claim.
Come noon, Griselda showed up. She came a-prancing and a-preening it up the road
and she stayed around, eating a few doughnuts and talking with me. The more she
talked the meaner Arvie got.
“Griselda,” he said, “you’d best get along home. You know how your pa feels
about you trailing around with just any drifter.”
Well, sir, I put down my bowl and wiped the flour off my hands. “Are you aiming
that at me?” I asked. “If you are, you just pay me my four dollars and get off
down the pike.”
He was mean, like I’ve said, and he did what I hoped he’d do. He balled up a
fist and threw it at me. Trouble was, he took so much time getting his fist
ready and his feet in position that I knew what he was going to do, so when he
flung that punch, I just stepped inside and hit him where he’d been putting
those doughnuts.
He gulped and turned green around the jowls and white around the eyes, so I
knocked down a hand he stuck at me and belted him again in the same place. Then
I caught him by the shirt front before he could fall and backhanded him twice
across the mouth for good measure.
Griselda was a-hauling at my arms. “Stop it, you awful man! You hurt him!”
“That ain’t surprising, Griselda,” I said. “It was what I had in mind.”
So I went back to making bear-sign, and after a bit Arvie got up, with Griselda
helping, and he wiped the blood off his lips and he said, “I’ll get even! I’ll
get even with you if it’s the last thing I do!”
“And it just might be,” I said, and watched them walk off together.
There went Griselda. Right out of my life, and with Arvie Wilt, too.
Two days later I was out of business and broke. Two days later I had a barrel of
doughnuts I couldn’t give away and my private gold rush was over. Worst of all,
I’d put all I’d made back into the business and there I was, stuck with it. And
it was Arvie Wilt who did it to me.
As soon as he washed the blood off his face he went down to the settlement. He
had heard of a woman down there who was a baker, and he fetched her back up the
creek. She was a big, round, jolly woman with pink cheeks, and she was a
first-rate cook. She settled down to making apple pies three inches thick and
fourteen inches across and she sold a cut of a pie for two bits and each pie
made just four pieces.
She also baked cakes with high-grade all over them. In mining country rich ore
is called high-grade, so miners got to calling the icing on cake high-grade, and
there I sat with a barrel full of bear-sign and everybody over to the baker
woman’s buying cake and pie and such-like.
Then Popley came by with Griselda riding behind him on that brown mule, headed
for the baker woman’s. “See what a head for business Arvie’s got? He’ll make a
fine husband for Griselda.”
Griselda? She didn’t even look at me. She passed me up like a pay-car passing a
tramp, and I felt so low I could have walked under a snake with a high hat on.
Three days later I was back to wild onions. My grub gave out, I couldn’t peddle
my flour, and the red ants got into my sugar. All one day I tried sifting red
ants out of sugar; as fast as I got them out they got back in until there was