"The boys down this way didn't have much show. It looked like Jess had hit it off with Jud Brusie, a big, husky, clean-lookin' chap up to the h'ist. Jud used ter send her down notes stuck in sticks wedged inter the clamps, an' he used ter sneak down this way on Sundays when he'd git a chanst. She'd meet him up to the Riffles there by that big bunch o' yaller pines we passed. He didn't dast come down here nary time till ol' man Hemenway he got laid up with a busted laig from slippin' off the trestle in the snow. That there was Jud's show ter git in his fine work. Used ter bring down deer-meat for the ol' man, an' sody-water from that there spoutin' spring up ter Crazy Canon; an' it begun to look like Hemenway'd give in an' let him have her. But he seemed to hold off. "The boys used ter nearly josh the life out o' Jud. One fellow--his name was Phil Pettis--was skunkin' mean enough to read a note Jud sent down oncet an' tell about it roun' Skyland; but that was the only time any of 'em ever done anything like that, fer Jud jest laid fer Phil an' went through him like a buzz-saw an' chucked him inter the flume. "No, it didn't kill Phil, but he got tol'able well used up. His clothes was nearly all tore off, an' his hands got some bruised where he caught on to the aidges before he got a holt an' lifted himself out in a still place. He'd be'n all right only he got mixed up with a string o' lumber that was a-comin' down, an' so he had to go to the hospital. "One thing about Jess--she was a singer all right. I ain't never heer'd ary one o' them there the-_ay_-ter gals that could beat her singin'. She warbled like a lark with his belly full o' grubworms. It was wuth ridin' a clamp from here to Mill Flat to hear her sing. She had a couple o' hymn-books an' a stack o' them coon songs the newspapers gives away, an' I tell yeh, she'd sing them there songs like she'd knowed 'em all her life. Picked out the tunes some ways on a little string-thing like a sawed-off guitar. Sounds like muskeeters hummin' aroun'. Yes, a mandy-linn--that's it. But that there mandy-linn didn't soot her a little bit. She was crazy ter have a pianner. I heer'd her tell her paw, who was aroun' ag'in workin' after his busted laig got well, she'd give ten years o' her life for any ol' cheap pianner he could skeer up fer her. "'Wal,' says he, 'how in tunket am I a-goin' ter git anything like that--thirty miles off'n the road, an' nary way o' freightin' it up or down the canon to this camp?' "'Couldn't yeh have it brung up to Skyland by the stage road,' asts she, 'an' then have it rafted down the flume? Jest a little one?' she asts very earnest-like. "'Gee whittaker!' says he, laughin' all over. 'You'll be a-wantin' 'em to send yeh down a parlor-keer nex'.'