BY CHARLES DWIGHT WILLARD
There were five of us in the party—six, counting Long Tom, the guide. After two days’ hard climbing, which the burros endured with exemplary fortitude, we arrived at the little valley high up in the mountains, through which threaded the trout-stream.
“Jest you all go over into the cabin there and make yourself comf’ble, while I ’tend to gettin’ this stuff unpacked,” said Long Tom; “there ain’t no one there. My pardner, he’s down below.”
“The cabin appears to be two cabins,” said the colonel, as we approached it.
“That is for economy in ridge-poles,” said the doctor; “sleeping apartments on one side and kitchen on the other. In the space between, you keep your fishing-tackle and worms.”
We entered the right-hand section of the twin cabin, which proved to be the kitchen side. There was not much furniture—a table of hewn logs, a chair of bent saplings, and a rough bench.
However, we did not notice such furniture as there was, for each member of the party, as he stepped over the high threshold, had his attention instantly attracted by the stove, and a brief roundelay of ejaculations went along the group.
“Well, that staggers me,” said the stock-broker.
“H’m,” said the professor, in a mysterious tone, and rubbed his chin.
The stove was a plain, small cooking-range, rather old and rusty. The strange thing about it was its position. Its abbreviated legs stood upon large cedar posts, which were planted in the floor and were over four feet in height. This brought the stove away up in mid-air, so that the top was about on a level with the face of the colonel, and he was a six-footer.
We formed in a circle about the stove and stared at it as solemnly as a group of priests around a sacrificial tripod. We felt of the posts—they were firm and solid, showing that the mysterious arrangement was a permanent, not a temporary, one. Then we all bent our necks and opened our mouths to look up at the hole in the roof, through which the stove-pipe vanished.
Suddenly the stock-broker burst out into a laugh.
“Oh, I understand it now,” said he.
“Understand what?” asked the colonel, sharply.
“Why Long Tom has his stove hoisted up so high from the floor.”
“So do I,” said the doctor; “but I suspect that my explanation is not the same that any one else would offer.”
“Well, I will bet that I am right,” said the stock-broker, “and put up the money.”
“I am in this,” said the judge; “I have a clear idea about that stove and will back it.”
“Make it a jack-pot,” said the colonel; “I want to take a hand.”
The stock-broker drew a small yellow coin out of his pocket and dropped it on the table.
“He has the stove up there,” he said, “to get a better draught. In this rarefied mountain air there is only a small amount of oxygen to the cubic inch, and combustion is more difficult to secure than in the lower latitudes. I have heard that if you get high enough up, you can’t cook an egg—that is, I mean, water won’t boil—or something like that,” he continued, thrown into sudden confusion by the discovery that the professor’s eye was fixed upon him with a sarcastic gaze.
“Is that supposed to be science?” demanded the professor.
“Well,” said the stock-broker, doggedly, “never mind the reasons. Experience is probably good enough for Long Tom. He finds that he gets a better draught for his stove by having it up in mid-air, so he has it there.”
“The right explanation,” began the professor, “is the simplest. My idea is that——”
“Excuse me,” interrupted the stock-broker, tapping the table; “are you in this pot?”
The professor made a deposit, and proceeded:
“Have you noticed that our host is a very tall man? Like most men of his height, he hates to bend over. If the stove were near the floor, he would have to stoop down low when he whirled a flap-jack or speared a rasher of bacon. Now he can stand up and do it with ease. Your draught theory is no good; the longer the pipe, if it is straight, the better the fire will burn.”
“Professor,” remarked the colonel, “I regret to have to tell you that your money is gone. Long Tom told me, on the way up, that his partner did all the cooking, and he is a man of rather short stature.” The colonel then paid his compliments to the jack-pot, and continued: “Now, my idea is that the stove heats the room better there than on the floor. It is only a cooking-stove, to be sure, but when the winter is cold it makes this room comfortable. Being up in the middle of the space, it heats it all equally well, which it could not do if it were down below.”
The doctor greeted this theory with a loud laugh. “Colonel,” he said, “you are wild—way off the mark. Hot air rises, of course, and the only way to disseminate it is to have your stove as low as possible. According to your idea, it would be a good plan to put the furnace in the attic of a house instead of in the basement.”
“I think,” said the colonel, “that I could appreciate your argument better if you would ante.”
“The pot is mine,” said the doctor, as he deposited his coin; “you will all adopt my idea the moment you hear it, and Long Tom, who will be here in a minute, will bear me out. This room is very small; it has but little floor-space, and none of it goes to waste. Now, if he had put the stove down where we expected to find it, Long Tom could not have made use of the area underneath, as you see he has done. On all sides of the supporting posts, you will notice there are hooks, on which he hangs his pans and skillets. Underneath, there is a kitchen-closet for pots and cooking-utensils of various sorts. What could be more convenient? Under your ordinary stove there is room only for a poker and a few cockroaches.”
The judge, who had been listening to the opinions offered by the others with the same grim smile that occasionally ornamented his face when he announced that an objection was overruled, now stepped forward and dropped a coin on the table. He then rendered his decision as follows:
“It appears that none of you have noticed the forest of hooks in the roof just over the stove. They are not in use at present, but they are there for some purpose. I imagine that during the winter huge pieces of venison and bear’s-meat dangle over the stove, and are dried for use later. Now, if the stove were on the floor, it would be too far from the roof to be of service in this way.”
“Here comes old Tom,” shouted the colonel, who had stepped to the open door while the judge was speaking.
The old trapper put down the various articles of baggage with which his arms were loaded and came into the kitchen-cabin where we all stood. He glanced at the group and then at the stilted stove in our midst.
“I see you air all admirin’ my stove,” said he, “and I’ll bet you’ve been a-wonderin’ why it is up so high.”
“Yes, we have,” said the professor; “how did you know it?”
“People most allus generally jest as soon as they come into the place begin to ask me about it—that’s how I knowed.”
“Well, why is it up so high?” demanded the stock-broker impatiently, with a side glance at the well-developed jack-pot on the table.
“The reason’s simple enough,” said Long Tom, with a grin that showed his bicuspids; “you see we had to pack all this stuff up here from down below on burros. Originally there was four j’ints of that stove-pipe, but the cinch wasn’t drawed tight enough on the burro that was carryin’’em, and two of’em slipped out and rolled down the mountain. When we got here and found that there wasn’t but two pieces left, I reckoned that I would have to kinder h’ist the stove to make it fit the pipe—so I jest in an’ h’isted her. And thar she is yet. Say, what’s all this here money on the table for?”
There was a deep silence which lasted so long that Tom ventured to repeat his question about the money.
“It is a jack-pot,” said the doctor, sadly, “and as near as I can make out, it belongs to you.”