The deed had
been done for the horse. The visitor insisted, and finally the price was
fixed:
"Bout a nickel!"
A mountaineer seldom asks questions. Instead he makes a statement of
that which appears to him to be the fact, and if unchallenged or
uncorrected, it is accepted as the proper deduction. Early in my visit
to Pall Mall I learned my lesson.
"Have you lived all your life in the valley?" I asked an old mountaineer
whom I met on the road as he was carrying on his shoulder a sack of corn
to the mill.
Into his eye there came a light of playfulness, then pity, quickly to be
followed by a twinkle of fun. He simply could not let the opening pass.
"Not yit," he said.
Later I saw a little fellow of six years of age chasing a chicken barren
of feathers over a yard that was barren of grass. When I accused him of
maliciously picking that chicken, his face was a spot of smiles as he
vigorously denied it.
"Are you going to school?" I asked him.
The smile changed to a look of surprize at an inquiry so out of line
with his immediate activities.
"When it starts," he called back as he and the chicken disappeared under
the cabin.
I dropped questions and adopted the direct statement as a method of
procedure in which there was less personal liability.
Alvin Terry, dressed in a patched corduroy with a hunting-pouch made of
the skin of a gray fox and with his long rifle in his hand, stopped at
the store and told how he "got a bear.
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