“How ever do you manage it?” she asked shifting the reins.

“With my one arm, y’ mean?” The stage driver laughed and aimed more chewing tobacco at that innocent front wheel; and the question drew out such a story of heroism in spite of the damn’t’s and the tobacco squids as made her proud of human clay, just as she had been ashamed of human something or other inside the stage with the lavender silk and the gold teeth and Bat’s frozen tallow smile.

“Why, it was the year o’ the Kootenay rush, ye mind?  No, ye don’t mind, ye weren’t born then, were y’?  Damn’t,” and a punctuation in tobacco.  “Wall, ’twas in the early days ‘fore we had steam hoists an’ things.” (Another punctuation mark—­a good big one.) “We was usin’ an old hand hoist.  Guess the shaft was about hundred feet down—­straight down, an’ we was gettin’ in the pay streak, bringin’ up barrels o’ rock showin’ more color every load.  Wall, them loads was hauled up to the dumps by a hand hoist y’ onderstand, kind of winch, like y’ turn a handle in old fashioned down East wells.  Wall—­” (Another punctuation mark and another dip for ink, so to speak, from the plug in the hand of the one-armed driver.) “boys were all down under.  Say—­’twas in the days when ol’ Calamity was runnin’ the hills.  Know Calamity?  She was a wild ‘un in her day; an’ they say MacDonald, the rich sheep man, has kind o’ sorter given her a home these late years.  Wall—­I ain’t the one t’ say he shouldn’t.  Her morals weren’t much better in them days than the crazy patch quilts ladies used to make down East when I was a boy; but she’s settled down I hear; an’ I ain’t the one to say MacDonald don’t deserve credit for what he’s done.  She saved many a poor miner’s life from the Indians in them ol’ days, saved ’em by a shave, carried ’em in on her shoulder to the Deadwood Hospital, or nussed ’em well on the spot, an’ all the while, she wazn’t no better than she ought t’ be; wazn’t there a woman in Scripture like that?  Kind o’ seems to me the church folks forgets that Rahub gurl!  Wall—­’twas about those days.” (More showers of damn’t’s and tobacco on that front wheel.) “Boys was all under.  Big load of rock was comin’ up.  I waz man at the hoist, man on the easy job that day.  Wall—­wad y’ believe it, the damn thing bruk—­bruk plum whoop an’ started spinnin’ round back side first with the load o’ rock an’ the boys under comin’ up the ladder.  I yelled for a kid we had workin’ round to get me a jack wrench, a hand spike, Hell, any ol’ thing to stop her kitin’ that load o’ rock down on the boys!  Kid stood gopin’ there an’ sayin’ ‘What d’y’ say?’ Say,—­damn’t—­an’ that load o’ rock goin’ plumb down on the boys, heavy enough to smash ’em to pulp.  There weren’t nothin’ handy near ’cept me, so I jumped this here arm that you find missin’ right into the wheel!  It stopped her all right, the load didn’t fall on the boys; and they got up all right by the ladder; but—­say, mebbe the cogs o’ that damn wheel didn’t do a thing to my arm.  Say—­the doctor didn’t need to amputate it.  That winch did him out o’ his job.”