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."

"You mean," said Eleanor, slowing the grays to a reluctant walk down
grade, while the driver clamped the front wheel brake with his foot,
"you mean because there was no crowbar, or anything to stop the hoist
flying backwards and killing the men under the load of rock, you mean
because there was no crowbar, you jumped into the wheel, yourself?"

"Sure," said the man astonished at her question; and because Eleanor
was a true Westerner and didn't mind the tobacco squids and the
damn't's in the least (where they belonged) she gave that one-armed
driver a look that would have made any man proud: only the one-armed
driver didn't see it.

"They took up a purse an' wanted to give