When the Mail Came in

"When the Mail Came In" by Rex Ellingwood Beach is a captivating novel that explores themes of adventure, ambition, and the impact of communication on human connections. Set against a backdrop of a small, mail-dependent community, the story dives into the lives of characters whose fates intertwine with the arrival of the post. As letters, packages, and news transform their relationships and futures, the narrative reveals the profound significance of the written word in shaping destinies. With Beach's signature storytelling, the book offers a poignant reflection on the power of connection in an era when communication was both a lifeline and a mystery.

• Short story

								
We didn't like Montague Prosser at first--he was too clean. He wore his
virtue like a bath-robe, flapping it in our faces. It was Whitewater
Kelly who undertook to mitigate him one day, but, being as the nuisance
stood an even fathom high and had a double-action football motion about
him, Whitewater's endeavors kind of broke through the ice and he
languished around in his bunk the next week while we sat up nights and
changed his bandages.

Yes, Monty was equally active at repartee or rough-house, and he knocked
Whitewater out from under his cap, slick and clean, just the way you
snap a playing-card out from under a coin, which phenomenon terminated
our tendencies to scoff and carp.

Personally, I didn't care. If a man wants to wallow about in a
disgusting daily debauch of cleanliness, it is his privilege. If he
squanders the fleeting moments brushing teeth, cleaning fingernails, and
such technicalities, it stands to reason he won't have much time left to
attend to his work and at the same time cultivate the essentials of life
like smoking, drinking, and the proper valuation of a three-card draw.
But, as I say, it's up to him, and outsiders who don't see merit in such
a system shouldn't try to bust up his game unless they've got good
foot-work and a knockout punch.

It wasn't so much these physical refinements that riled us as the
rarefied atmosphere of his general mental and moral altitudes. To me
there's eloquence and sentiment and romance and spiritual uplift in a
real, full-grown, black-whiskered cuss-word. It's a great help in a
mountainous country. Profanity is like steam in a locomotive--takes more
to run you up-hill than on the level, and inasmuch as there's only a few
men on the level, a violent vocabulary is a necessity and appeals to me
like a certificate of good character and general capability.

There wasn't a thing doing with Prosser in the idiom line, however. His
moral make-up was like his body, big and sound and white and manicured,
and although his talk, alongside of ours, listened like it was skimmed
and seminaried, still when we got to know him we found that his verbal
structures had vital organs and hair on their chests just like anybody
else's, and at the same time had the advantage of being fit to send
through the mails.

He had left a widowed mother and come north on the main chance, like the
rest of us, only he originated farther east. What made the particular
ten-strike with us was the pride he took in that same mother. He gloried
in her and talked about her in that hushed and nervous way a man speaks
about a real mother or a regular sweetheart. We men-folks liked him all
the better for it. I say we men, for he was a "shine" with the
women--all nine of them. The camp was fifteen hundred strong that
winter, over and above which was the aforesaid galaxy of nine, stranded
on their way up-river to a Dawson dance-hall. The Yukon froze up and
they had to winter with us. Of course there were the three married
ladies, too, living with their husbands back on the Birch Ridge, but we
never saw them and they didn't count. The others went to work at
Eckert's theater.

Monty would have been right popular at Eckert's--he was a handsome
lad--but he couldn't see those people with a field-glass. They simply
scandalized him to death.

"I love to dance," said he, one night, as we looked on, "and the music
sends thrills through me, but I won't do it."

"Why not?" I asked. "This is Alaska. Be democratic. You're not so
awfully nice that a dance-hall girl will contaminate you."

"It's not democracy that I lack, nor contamination that I'm afraid of,"
he replied. "It's the principle back of it all. If we encourage these
girls in the lives they lead, we're just as bad as they are."

"Look here, son, when I quit salt water I left all that garbage and
bilge-water talk about 'guilt' and 'responsibility' behind. The days are
too short, the nights are too cold, and grub is too dear for me to spare
time to theorize. I take people the way I take work and play--just as
they come--and I'd advise you to do the same."

"No, sir; I won't associate with gamblers and crooks, so why should I
hobnob with these women? They're worse than the men, for all the
gamblers have lost is their honesty. Every time I see these girls I
think of the little mother back home. It's awful. Suppose she saw me
dancing with them?"

Well, that's a bad line of talk and I couldn't say much.

Of course, when the actresses found out how he felt they came back at
him strong, but he wrapped himself up in his dignity and held himself
aloof when he came to town, so he didn't seem to mind it.

It was one afternoon in January, cold and sharp, that Ollie Marceau's
team went through the ice just below our camp. She was a great
dog-puncher and had the best team in camp--seven fine malamoots--which
she drove every day. When the animals smelled our place they ran away
and dragged her into the open water below the hot springs. She was wet
for ten minutes, and by the time she had got out and stumbled to our
bunk-house she was all in. Another ten minutes with the "quick" at
thirty below would have finished her, but we rushed her in by the fire
and made her drink a glass of "hootch." Martin got her parka off somehow
while I slashed the strings to her mukluks and had her little feet
rubbed red as berries before she'd quit apologizing for the trouble
she'd made. A fellow learns to watch toes pretty close in the winter.

"Lord! stop your talk," we said. "This is the first chance we have had
to do anything for a lady in two years. It's a downright pleasure for us
to take you in this way."

"Indeed!" she chattered. "Well, it isn't mutual--" And we all laughed.

We roused up a good fire and made her take off all the wet clothes she
felt she could afford to, then wrung them out and hung them up to dry.
We made her gulp down another whisky, too, after which I gave her some
footgear and she slipped into one of Martin's Mackinaw shirts. We knew
just how faint and shaky she felt, but she was dead game and joked with
us about it.

I never realized what a cute trick she was till I saw her in that great,
coarse, blue shirt with her feet in beaded moccasins, her yellow hair
tousled, and the sparkle of adventure in her bright eyes. She stood out
like a nugget by candle-light, backed as she was, by the dingy bark
walls of our cabin.

I suppose it was a bad instant for Prosser to appear. He certainly cued
in wrong and found the sight shocking to his Plymouth Rock proprieties.

The raw liquor we had forced on her had gone to her head a bit, as it
will when you're fresh from the cold and your stomach is empty, so her
face was flushed and had a pretty, reckless, daring look to it. She had
her feet high up on a chair, too--not so very high, either--where they
were thawing out under the warmth of the oven, and we were all laughing

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