' Perhaps
I ought to see him first."
"All right; he's Stanton."
"And"--hesitated the secretary, "YOU, who appear to understand the
locality so well,--I trust I may have the pleasure"--
"Oh, I'm Jules."
The secretary was a little startled and amused. So "Jules" was a person,
and not a place!
"Then you're a pioneer?" asked Hemmingway, a little less dictatorially,
as they passed out under the dripping trees.
"I struck this creek in the fall of '49, comin' over Livermore's
Pass with Stanton," returned Jules, with great brevity of speech and
deliberate tardiness of delivery. "Sent for my wife and two children the
next year; wife died same winter, change bein' too sudden for her, and
contractin' chills and fever at Sweetwater. When I kem here first thar
wasn't six inches o' water in the creek; out there was a heap of it over
there where you see them yallowish-green patches and strips o' brush
and grass; all that war water then, and all that growth hez sprung up
since.
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