Welcome To Hard Times Part 5

Well the minute he did that I had Zar step up and meet him, and Miss Adah, who shook his hand and made him blush, and Jenks, who nodded and blinked his wolfy eyes, and the Chinese girl and Jimmy. Bear had gone back to his shack and84 Molly stood straight by the door of the cabin and would not come over. But it was a proper welcome Isaac Maple got even so.

A few minutes later the tall girl, Jessie, came out of Zar's place smoothing down her hair. Then Mae followed supporting Alf who was laughing and blinking in the light. Alf had consumed a good amount of whiskey, he looked us all over standing around the stage and said: "Yessir, the spirit o' life, spirit o' life, yessir."

The old man on the box moved over to the driver's side and took up the reins and we helped Alf to sit up next to him. I gave Alf the forty dollars and the ordering list I had worked up for Zar and Isaac which he stuck in his vest.

"See you again Alf?"

"Tha's right Blue, tha's right!" He lifted his hat and his head went back as the old man flung his whip out and the wheels spun up dirt.

I felt pretty fair watching that wagon line out its dust over the flats-like I had done a good day's work. But in the evening, over our supper of salted beef newly bought from Isaac Maple's barrel, Molly couldn't see I had done anything to be satisfied of.

"We'll have to pay for this meat ten tunes what we could have by buying it ourselves," she said.

"Well Molly I don't favor keeping a store. Set- tling Ezra's brother here puts money in the town."

She looked at me. "The townl Oh Mayor you don't fool me one bit-"

"What?"

"You'll rope in every d.a.m.n fool you can just to make up a herd. There's surety in numbers, ain't that what you think?"85 "I don't think that.'

"I know you Blue," she giggled, and Jimmy watching her laughed too. But then Molly's face went cold and she gazed at me: "Mayor, all the soft yellow spines in the world stack up to nothing when the Bad Man comes. I'll tell you that, I know it."

After that it was a race against the weather. Jenks began to build something with what lumber he could reclaim from the old street and it was clear to me whatever it was he was having a bad time. He finally admitted he wanted to raise a barn for his wagon and three animals. When Zar and I heard that we told him we would fetch wood from Fountain Creek and help him build a good enough stable if he would put up our horses without charge. He agreed, and we made two trips with both wagons-Zar's and the black stage-and we weren't choosy about the wood. I thought we could use every hand we had to advantage, it was a lot of work what with stalls and all; but Isaac Maple, who had rented Zar's big tent for his own shelter, had no horse of his own and he saw no reason to join in; and Bear the Indian would have nothing t0 do with any of us while Zar was in our company- he spent most of his time away in the rocks, pre- paring traps I suppose and bringing down all the brush he could find.

All during these days Jimmy worked close by me in everything. He took care of the ipony, he cut roots and gathered manure for fire, he cleaned the stove and helped with the c.h.i.n.king of the barn walls. He was always at my side and heeding what- ever I told him to do. But I remember the way86 he watched her when Molly one morning went over to the old street and poked around in the rubble till she found the stiletto she had dropped the day of the fire and came back to nail it, teary-eyed, above our door.

And each morning the sun came up weaker and whiter, like an old man rising from his bed, and each morning's chill was slower giving up the ground. Till finally I stood one day with the sun at its height and there was no warmth at all, but a shuddering breeze running down the neck and up the legs and lifting the clothes from the body. The winds were light but they brazed 'the flats with their cool blow and we hadn't much time till winter.

6.The stable was not roofed before the true cold came, we drove the horses into the enclosure of the four high walls and while they snorted so you could see their breath and turned from one corner to another we took the corral apart and got some of the shaven logs up for joists. There was no good way of keeping warm except by moving. When the roof was up tolerably we made a railing of the remaining corral poles to go along in front of all the buildings-from the doors of the stable past Isaac Maple's tent and past Zar's place and the windmill to the door of the cabin I had built for Molly and Jimmy and me. A Dakota blizzard will freeze your eyes shut and drive you from your direction faster than your senses realize. I have known men to die in a drift a few feet from their doors because they had no rail to go by.

All during this hurried-up preparation against the winter I kept thinking how much we could use a good carpenter like Fee. A skilled man like that and it would not matter so much that the nails we had were soft and the lumber rotten. I88 .

worried what a blizzard might do to the stable roof. I took down the blades of the windmill to keep the water in the ground. Winter is a worrying time, you have to tuck your chin in and burrow down some- where and hope there will still be something when the spring comes.

I had no clothes but the ones I wore, Molly had only her white dress and Jimmy had not even a hat. His pants didn't cover his ankles and I had to tie a bit of rawhide around one of his shoes to keep the sole from flapping. We were not fit to meet the winter out of doors, and I knew when it set in in earnest we would have just our roof and each other to keep us from freezing. And that would be no comfort in a real blow.

For one week running the sun didn't show through at all, the skies filled up grey and then snow began to sweep in on the wind. If you stood the bite long enough to take a look there was no more line between earth and sky. The flats were grey, the rock hills were grey and the wind, thick with snow, flew around your face in gusts so that you could even doubt your own balance, you could not be sure you were standing on ground or rising, without breath, in the sky.

The cabin I had built onto the dugout was not good against such weather. The door shook against its latch and snow came through the wall and settled in the corners. I moved the stove back to the dugout and we retreated there to sit with blankets around our shoulders and watch the glow of the fire in each other's faces.

These were strange quiet moments. We didn't have much to be proud of but I had to allow we were better off than we might have been. I could89 take satisfaction from the thought that bitter as she was, Molly had never made to leave the place I offered her; and that Jimmy might have done otherwise than jump to work at my side and heed every word I told him. A person cannot live with- out looking for good signs, you just cannot do it, and I thought these signs were good.

But I looked at Molly sitting near the stove, her head was turned to the side and her hands were folded in her lap and she was gazing at nothing and her eyes were lost listening to the wind and snow outside-and in that quiet moment it was plain to me if she didn't up and leave the first chance she had it was because no other place could she so savor the discouragement of her life. And Jimmy, who worked so willingly, the first day I came to the old town I saw Fee planing a board and his son holding one end for him. I had never once seen the boy linger at something useless the way most children will. He had watched his Pa stumble out of the Silver Sun and he had taken him by the belt- and that was work too. Jimmy was a child fitted to the land, using all his senses to live with what it gave him, and if he did his share and did as I told him why it was because he knew no other way.

Therefore where were my good signs? This green-eyed woman and brown-eyed boy sitting here had never done but the only thing they could do. And if I felt like believing we were growing into a true family that was alright: if a good sign is so important you can just as soon make one up and fool yourself that way.

I remembered that half-burnt old almanac we had and I thought it might be the right weather for90 teaching the boy to read. I could put a point on a stick and show the letters by scratching them in the floor. So we began to do that, working at it a little each day, I would have him study a letter as it was printed and then say its name and then'watch me write it with the stick. Sometimes Molly watched, no expression on her face, maybe she was learning something too.

But the weather was ornery. A storm would blow up for a few days until the snow was banked high enough to keep the inside of the cabin warm. Then the sun would break through for a morning, warm winds would come down from the rocks, and soon everything was melting like a sound of crickets and water was running off everywhere. At night the ground iced up, every roof was hung with ice and the cabin walls were exposed again to the cold winds. It went on like that, every snow bring- ing its chinook to devil the skin, one day you stepped in snow, the next in mud, water soaked in your boots and froze them at night, it was the next worst thing to pure blizzardry, it was weather that wouldn't let you settle.

Molly said one evening: "Here you're going on and on with those d.a.m.n letters and you don't even see the boy is sick,"

Jimmy had coughed once or twice that I'd heard, but I hadn't thought about it. I said: "You're al- right aren't you Jimmy?"

"I'm alright."

But the next day he was coughing a lot. Even in the dugout the ground was damp, at night I folded my blanket and put it under him and then sat up listening to him cough and s.h.i.+ver in his sleep. Molly lay on her side on the other side of91 the stove, I could tell by her back she was wide awake and listening each time the boy coughed.

The next morning Jimmy couldn't get up. He was shuddering under the blanket, his teeth chattered and there was a wheeze to his breath. His face was flushed and his eyes glittery. Molly looked at me like it was my fault he had come up sick.

Straightaway I went to the Russian's. It was a grey cold morning and there was ice all along the railing and a muddy crust of snow on the ground. Inside his place Zar was pacing up and down and Adah and the three girls were sitting on the meet- ing chairs and making a breakfast of flour-cakes and sardines. It was cold in there but they all had coats.

"Zar," I said, "I'll trouble you for some whiskey, the boy has caught something on his chest."

"So?" He waved his hand as he paced. "Take, take, there will be no miners again this week, what for do I need whiskey?"

Adah wanted to know what Jimmy's symptoms were like. I told her he had a powerful cough and the chills and fever.

"Well it's the weather for it," the tall girl, Jessie, said, "I'm feeling poorly myself."

"Ain't the weather's your trouble, honey," Mae said to her, "jes the moon."

Adah told me to wait a bit and she went into another room. Zar had built this place not much wider than a railroad car, and there were two rooms at the end of the public room, one in back of the other.

"No customers, only that deadhead Jenks," Zar was saying. He was vexed the way the weather closed off the trail to the mining camp.92 "Hey Blue," Mae got up from the table, "that's a mighty fine beard y'workin' up there, you come over of an evenin' and we'll comb it for yuh."

The Chinese had her mouth full and she had to put her hand up while she giggled.

"G.o.d's truth," Mae said, "all we ever see now is that Jenks and he ain't good for much more'n polis.h.i.+n' his d.a.m.n guns. Beard like that'd keep a girl warm these nights."

"And that New Englander Maple," Zar said, "he does not drink, he does not use the woman, he stays there in my tent. I buy from him I must pay money, a fine way to trade."

Adah came out carrying two bottles. She told me there was turpentine in the little one for rub- bing on the boy's legs. In the big bottle was rum, which was better than whiskey, I was to mix it with some hot water and make him swallow as much as he could take. "Nothing like rum for the chest," she told me.

Well I thanked her and went back and did as she said. And for a while it seemed to help. But in the afternoon Jimmy began to s.h.i.+ver again and he wouldn't take any more rum. Each time he coughed his whole body shuddered. Molly fixed up some flour soup with bits of salt beef for supper but he wouldn't eat it.

It began to frighten me hearing that boy cough away like a man, the sound came up from his bowels and pushed his tongue and eyes out and turned his face crimson. We had him wrapped in. all the blankets and the fire built up high but he couldn't stop his s.h.i.+vering. I began to feel the awful helpless rage. We fussed with him hour after hour-sitting him up to ease his breathing, laying93 him down again-but nothing comforted him and he couldn't get to sleep.

It must have been close on midnight and Jimmy began to whimper and look up from one of us to the other. But we didn't know what else to do. There was an unnatural burning in his eyes and his cheeks drew in with each wheezing breath. Molly couldn't look at him any more, she walked back and forth fingering the cross at her throat. When the boy was taken with a heavy fit of cough- ing she stepped up into the cabin and walked away in the dark.

Then I felt a breeze at my feet and I went into the cabin after her. She had the door partly open and she was looking across the windy moonlit reach to the Indian's shack. "Mayor," she said, "what will you do if the boy dies, will you bury him beside his Pa?"

She didn't wait for any answer I might have had but went out just in that dress and headed across for John Bear's place, walking that stiff walk, of hers, hugging herself against the bite. A great anger rose in me as I closed the door, I could have struck her right then, I was distressed for the boy's ill- ness, I d.a.m.ned her for the grip she had on my life, this unrelenting wh.o.r.e.

A few minutes later the Indian was standing in the dugout looking down at Jimmy. The boy stared back in fear, Bear wore his buffalo robe over his s.h.i.+rt and his black hair hung from under his hat down to his shoulders. They regarded each other and no word was spoken-and then the Indian bent down and tore the top blanket off Jimmy with such suddenness that he cried out and began to cough.94 Bear went into his doctoring with a speed that was like solace. He hung the blanket across the doorway leading to the cabin. He put a pot of water on the stove and poked up the fire. When the water was boiling he threw in some herbs he had and in a few minutes the air in the dugout was sweet and steamy. We all watched his moves transfixed: he drew a tin out of his pocket and poured a handful of seed in his palm. Then he kneeled down and looked around the dugout.

"He wants a stone," Molly said to me.

I ran outside and found a flat piece of rock and brought it to him. He began to pound the seed into a powder, when it was well ground it made the sharp odor of mustard. He took some water from our pail and spilled it over the powder till he had a thick paste of earth and mustard. Then, cupping it in one hand he went over to Jimmy and went down on his knees, straddling the boy.

Jimmy began to struggle then, kicking and throw- ing his arms up, but the Indian just drew back and looked at him until he quietened and turned his face away. Holding the mustard paste in one hand, Bear exposed the boy's chest. Seeing that small white ribbed body made my heart hurt. Bear spread the medicine across from under one arm to the other, up to the throat, down as far as the stomach. Then he pulled down Jimmy's s.h.i.+rt and bound the blanket tight around him.

I will say this, whatever else was to happen John Bear was the best doctor I ever saw, white or red; he had a true talent for healing and it must be owned him.

Before he left he stepped up to Molly and while95 she stood startled, unwound the thin chain from her throat and dropped the cross at Jimmy's head. He was no Christian but a modest man; Molly had clutched the cross during her healing and he was no one to deny the power of a charm.

Then came that long day and night with the wind whipping snow down from the rocks, and inside the dugout, droplets of water p.r.i.c.kling the sod walls as the steam rose from the pot on the stove. I kept feeding the fire and filling the pot. Molly sat with the boy propped against her, he was coughing up matter and spitting it into a rag she held to his face. His eyes were smarting from the mustard, his chest ached with the coughing and burned from the poultice, he was in thorough misery. Whenever he made as if to tear the blanket away she held his hands and whispered: "Let it burn, Jet it burn deep!"

Sometime during that siege Miss Adah came pounding on the door wanting to know how the boy was doing. She wouldn't come in so I had to step outside and we shouted to each other a few moments before she scurried back to the saloon.

Jimmy didn't take anything for supper but dur- ing the night, after the snow let up, I thought he was breathing easier. Still he couldn't close his eyes and Molly, laying his head against her breast, put her arms around him. It was an effort for her, she was blus.h.i.+ng, she kept looking at me as if she expected me to laugh at her.

There was a panic in her eyes for a moment, she wanted to talk to the boy, to soothe him, but she had trouble with the words. She had to go back a long way to find them:96 "I bet you never seen a big city. Molly used to live in New York, did you know that? Oh it's a grand place with stone houses all in rows, and cobbled streets and lamps oh each corner that the man comes to light each evening with a long taper. And the carriage buses you see, so s.h.i.+ny and clean, with horses pulling them that are braided in the mane, high stepping. Did you know that...?"

I was sitting with my back to the wall and chewing on a prairie cake and as Molly went on talking I watched her close. The more she talked the easier the words came. The boy's eyes were open and listening and he was breathing heavily, and Molly sat with her own eyes closed as she summoned up her pictures.

". . . and each morning I would have a fresh black frock to put on and a white linen ap.r.o.n and a little starched cap to pin to my hair, as clean and starched as a nun I was. And that house! Well you've never seen the likes, a good fifteen rooms, each room fitted out with its own set of furniture and its polished floor of wood and its fancy rug. Why you could disappear into one of those big soft beds. And in the dining room, that was a room just used for eating, can you see that? The table would be covered with a fine cloth ta.s.seled at the edges, and maybe ten settings of pure silver forks and knives and spoons, with three or four gla.s.ses at each place for the different waters or wines. And with the people all talking and laughing and the room lit up with candles, in we would come from the kitchen, three or four of us, carrying trays of hot vegetables and buns and a hen, maybe, and97 a roasted ham to serve to all the ladies and gentle- men. All the ladies and gentlemen ..."

I will never forget her words. Even after the boy's eyes were closed she sat holding him around, whispering these remembrances. It was the most she ever said about herself, it was the most I ever learned about her. She was speaking the brogue. I had never heard her use it before, and I wouldn't again.

"All the lovely ladies, all the fine gentlemen ..."

Then her eyes opened and she saw me looking and "Turn away!" she said, her eyes filling with tears. "Don't you dare look at me, turn away!" Even without her telling me I would have had to, such terrible pride was blinding.

Later Molly slipped away from the boy and laid him down in his sleep which was so long in com- ing. And we each stretched out to get some sleep too. .But all the blankets were on Jimmy and after the fire went down it was cold lying there, there was a chill in my bones that made them ache. I couldn't sleep and neither could Molly. I heard her s.h.i.+vering. I moved near her and touched her shoulder and with a cry she rolled over and bundled up to me. "d.a.m.n you Mayor," she whis- pered in my ear, "I swear I can't bear the sight of you!" And I held her as tight as I could, feeling her breast on mine, feeling her breathing, and then the warmth came and I didn't move until she was asleep. I think I had wanted to hold her ever since the fire. My hands were on her back and I could feel the scars under her dress. She was small, so much smaller than she looked. I held her around, pressing her to me and I thought well we're both98 suffering our lives, only how we do it is different. If it replenishes her to hate me then let her hate me. At the worst her hate is something between her- self and herself. And knowing it I was ashamed I had ever felt poorly of her.

7.Jimmy was slow to get better, his cough lingered for weeks. Molly tended to him each minute of the time and didn't ask any help from me. She cooked him soups, she kept him well wrapped; and on his walking day she held him under the elbows while he slowly stepped around the cabin. On occasion she went to consult with John Bear, bringing the Indian her portion of food. And if she returned with some more treatment Jimmy might have wanted to squawk but he submitted to it without a word. There was something about Molly that com- manded him: she went about her ministering shortly, with never a smile, as if in one moment of a too tried patience she would just give him up and leave him to himself.

She had already left me to myself. Our bundling had warmed her only to the point where she hardly acknowledged that I was there in the cabin. She kept busy with the boy and with the steady cold now I was fairly locked in; so that there was not much I could do but take away the slops, or worry would we have fire to last the winter. When Jimmy 99.

100 E. L. Doctoiow was on his feet I thought he might want to take up our reading lessons once more. But he didn't seem keen on it, his eyes always wandered to the woman, and what use there^as to the almanac; even that I had to myself.

I spent a lot of time studying the almanac. It kept me from brooding or wondering where the Bad Man might be enjoying his winter. It had cen- sus figures for the different states and their counties, and the dates they were brought into the Union. I have always been one for that kind of reading. Before I got the fever to go West I was bound out to a lawyer for some months, and it pleasured me to feel the legal cap or read the briefs all salted down with Latin. In all my traveling, whenever I came across a Warrant or a Notice of any kind I never failed to read it through. Some people have a weakness for cards, or whittling, my weakness has always been for doc.u.ments and deeds and such like.

When I first came to Hard Times it was nothing posted that stopped me, I had a small stake in my money belt and I was riding up to the lodes to earn some more. But there was Fee putting the finis.h.i.+ng boards on Avery's two-story saloon, and the sight of him building this place right up off the flat ground struck me somehow. I could think of bet- ter places for a carpenter to make his living; not the poorest townsite I'd seen it still didn't look worth his labor, yet Fee was working with an a.s.surance that made me feel ashamed even to question him. In my forty-eighth year, tired out with looking, looking, moving always and wanting I don't know what, I was ready to grant it wasn't101 the site but the settling of it that mattered. I bought a room off the porch from Hausenfield and I stayed. Later, without much thinking about it, I got a ledger from a traveling notions man; and after I acquired that lawyer's desk and belongings who was going up to work in the lodes, I put the ledger on the desk and in my spare time I began to put down everyone's name and the land they claimed and what properties they owned. I never enjoyed anything more. The town hadn't a pro- moter, you see, and there were no records for anything. If it ever got big enough to be listed or. if the Territory ever needed names for a statehood pet.i.tion, why I had these doc.u.ments. A few people- like Avery laughed when it went about what I was doing; later, Avery was one of the first to call me Mayor- But just thinking about it just made the daya longer.

One cold afternoon there was a banging on our door and it was Isaac Maple. He came in begging our pardon, he said he'd tried to see Jenks and Zar both, but Jenks was asleep in the stable and Zar was in a mood and wouldn't speak to him.

"See them about what, Isaac?" I said.

He took something from his pocket which I saw to be a small printed calendar. Standing there, with water hanging from his nose, he said: "I mark off the days with this, and s'far as I know it's December the twenty-fifth, Christmas."

Molly and I looked at him. He was waiting for something by way of reply, but all I could think to say was: "Well if that's so Isaac take off your102 coat and drink some coffee with us," At the same time Molly looked from him to me and walked away without a word.

It was clear in his eyes we were as bad as Jenks or the Russian. His sad hound's face fell: "Thank ye, no," he said and turned and went out.

That put him in my mind for the rest of the day. Isaac Maple stayed alone in his tent most of the time, thinking I suppose of his brother Ezra. He was a shy man and he was new to the West and it must have been a powerful need for com- fort which brough him to our door. I don't often honor holidays but I wanted to understand Isaac's feelings. In the evening I went over to Zar's place and demanded a drink on the house.

Zar was leaning with his elbows on his sawhorse bar: "For what," he scowled at me.

"It's Christmas, Zar," I said. "Didn't you know?"

"Wal wal, I tell you-only the spring shall I celebrate."

But Miss Adah was properly moved. She ran to wake up the girls sleeping in the back rooms. I thought she had just the spirit Isaac wanted and when she came back I said, "Isaac Maple's the one who told me."

"I'll go get him," she said putting a shawl over her. "Poor man's all alone."

"Save yourself, Adah," Zar said, but she was gone.

Zar had no use for the man and couldn't see going to any trouble over him; when Adah re- turned, leading Isaac Maple, she had to set up the drinks herself-the Russian had sat down, grum- bling, on one of his camp chairs.103 Then Jenks wandered in, he was wearing a hat he'd made out of prairie dog fur, it came down to his eyes and went around his head to a point in back. You could just about make out his wolfy smile under that cap.

"The customer," Zar said folding his arms.

Well I saw it was going to be a true enough gathering so I took myself back to the cabin to get Molly and the boy. Molly wanted no part of it. She said it wouldn't do for Jimmy to go out at night with the wind so cold and snow blowing along the ground. I said we could wrap a blanket around him and I'd carry him over. That didn't please either of them too much, but then we heard, coming across the wind, the sounds of Miss Adah's voice singing a hymn with her melodeon, and I did as I wanted-wrapping the boy up-and we all went over.

When we came in Adah stopped her singing and got up to greet Molly. Everyone was very polite- Jenks pulled at his cap when he said h.e.l.lo and the ladies gave Jimmy a greeting although, since he stood by Molly's side, they stayed their distance. There was only one lantern on the table and the room was in shadows, but Zar got up to light another and at Adah's signal he started to pour out a drink for Molly. She held up her hand, very lady- like, and smiled and sMook her head. She had drunk her share in the old days and it wouldn't have hurt her now, but it gave her more pleasure to refuse, it set her apart from the ladies although she knew them better than they thought she did.

All at once, as we were standing around, n.o.body had anything to say, we were all embarra.s.sed we'd104 made an occasion. I lifted my cup: "Well here's to Christmas and better times for the world."

"Amen," said Miss Adah. Then she sat down at the melodeon and began her hymn again. Everyone was quiet and drinking listening to her sing it through. She had a deep voice but she meant what she sang. When she finished she started another and it was one Isaac recognized, he stepped up in back of her and looking straight at the wall he joined right in, tenor.

Well the whiskey was warm going down and it spread over me like sun. There was the churchly music going; Molly, with Jimmy at her side, was sitting on a chair listening; Zar was stepping around offering the bottle; and I thought why this is what Isaac Maple had in mind, just to celebrate the fact that all of us are here. And I asked myself whether these weren't already better times: here was some people and we had a root on the land where there was nothing but graves a few months before.

After a while the liquor began to have its effect on everyone. Jessie and Mae, who had been cowed by Molly's presence, made a show of forgetting she was there and began to enjoy themselves. Jessie went over to Jenks, sitting in a chair, and stuck her thumb under his fur cap.

"Is that you under there, Dead-Eye?" she said.

Jenks slapped her hand away, stealing a glance at Molly at the same time: "Get on!"

"Why Jenksy!" said Mae plunking herself down on his lap. "Ah've never seen you so outdone. Didn't you get yore sleep t'day?"

"If'n hew please, ladies," Jenks said pus.h.i.+ng Mae off. Holding his drink high he walked away to the105 bar. Jessie and Mae giggled. Jenks was being un- common dignified but pieces of drying dung were stuck to the seat of his pants.

When the hymn was ended Adah turned in her seat and put her hand on Isaac's arm: "You sing right nice, Mr. Maple," she said.

"Thank ye, I like a good hymn," said Isaac.

Zar was clapping his hands: "Holy, holy, holy! That's vary good."

"Ye have a true gift Miss Adah," Isaac said.

"A gift?" said Zar. "Together you and she-two coyotes howling at moon."

Isaac turned to him: "Say what?"

"Sure!" Zar began to laugh. "Such music I have heard on the steppe at night. Just the same as that: Howly, howly howly!" He doubled up with his own joke. "Ja.s.sie, Mae, you hear?" And he re- peated what he'd said.