I can see
the sag of their tired shoulders against the whitewashed wall. What good
fellows they were, how much they knew, and how many things they had kept
faith with!
Fuchs had been a cowboy, a stage-driver, a bar-tender, a miner; had
wandered all over that great Western country and done hard work
everywhere, though, as grandmother said, he had nothing to show for it.
Jake was duller than Otto. He could scarcely read, wrote even his name
with difficulty, and he had a violent temper which sometimes made him
behave like a crazy man--tore him all to pieces and actually made him ill.
But he was so soft-hearted that any one could impose upon him. If he, as
he said, "forgot himself" and swore before grandmother, he went about
depressed and shamefaced all day. They were both of them jovial about the
cold in winter and the heat in summer, always ready to work overtime and
to meet emergencies. It was a matter of pride with them not to spare
themselves. Yet they were the sort of men who never get on, somehow, or do
anything but work hard for a dollar or two a day.
On those bitter, starlit nights, as we sat around the old stove that fed
us and warmed us and kept us cheerful, we could hear the coyotes howling
down by the corrals, and their hungry, wintry cry used to remind the boys
of wonderful animal stories; about gray wolves and bears in the Rockies,
wildcats and panthers in the Virginia mountains.
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