The wind grew stronger and keener, roaring down the canyon with the breath of the upper snows, and the man's blood cried out for a fire (June stands close to winter in the high ranges of the Crestones), and at last he rose stiffly and returned to the little sitting-room, where he found the widow in the midst of an argument with her boarders to prove that they were all fools together for hangin' to the side of a mountain that had no more gould in it than a flatiron or a loomp o' coal--sure thing! "What you goin' to do about our assays?" asked young Johnson. "Assays, is it? Annybody can have assays--that will pay the price. Ye're all lazy dogs in the manger, that's phwat ye air. Ye assay and want somebody else to pay ye fer the privilege of workin'. Why don't ye work yer-silves--ye loots? Sit around here expectin' some wan ilse to shovel gould into yer hat. Ye'll pay me yer board--moind that," she ended, making a personal application of her theories; "ivery wan o' ye." If any lingering resolution remained in Bidwell's heart it melted away as he listened to Mrs. Delaney's throaty voice and plain, blunt words. Opening the door timidly, he walked in and without looking at the angry woman seized upon his bundles, which lay behind the door. The widow's voice rang out: "Where ye gawun wid thim bags?" Bidwell straightened. "They're my bundles, I reckon. Can't a man do as he likes with his own?" "Not whin he's owin' fer board. Put thim boondles down!" The culprit sighed and sat down on the bundles. Even young Johnson lost his desire to laugh, for Bidwell looked pathetically old and discouraged at the moment, as he mildly asked: "You wouldn't send a man out in the night without his blankets, would you?" "I'd send a sneak to purgatory--if I c'u'd. Ye thought ye'd ooze out, did ye? Nice speciment you are!" Bidwell was roused. "If I had planned to sneak I wouldn't 'a' come into the room with you a-standin' in the middle of the floor," he replied, with some firmness. "You ordered me out, didn't you? Well, I'm goin'. I can't pay you--you knew that when you told me to go--and I owe you a good deal--I admit that--but I'm going to pay it. But I must have a little time." The other men, with a grateful sense of delicacy, got up and went out, leaving Bidwell free space to justify himself in the eyes of the angry woman. As the door slammed behind the last man the widow walked over and gave Bidwell a cuff. "Get _off_ thim boondles. Gaw set on a chair like a man, an' not squat there like a baboon." She pitched his bundles through an open door into a small bedroom. "Ye know where yer bed is, I hope! I do' know phwat Dan Delaney w'u'd say to me, housin' and feedin' the likes o' you, but I'll do it wan more summer--and then ye gaw flyin'. Ye hear that now!" And she threw the door back on its hinges so sharply that a knob was broken.