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"A kiss from any girl the winner may choose from among the shuckers, I believe," Dudley answered demurely. "Oh!" murmured Abby, blushing warmly. "I now understand." "The girl of my choice," Abner added with a meaning glance at his companion, and with a decided emphasis upon "my," "is far too refined and womanly to permit my taking such a reward.
Everyone laughed, for the big rough shells were traveling into the oyster-house by thousands, on moving belts. Some shells looked as if they were carrying sponges in their mouths, but Ez said it was a kind of moss that grew there. Already the pile of unopened oysters in the shed was higher than a man. The shuckers needed a million to work on next day, Ez said.
Such of them as still possess horses, and occasionally figure as hunters, are called Shoshonies; but there is another class, the most abject and forlorn, who are called Shuckers, or more commonly Diggers and Root Eaters.
You know good and well one side is full of near-poors, and half-ways, and real-poors the downandouters, the guys that never had a show, ditchers and sewercleaners and sweatshoppers and mill hands and shuckers, and overdriven mutts and starved women and kids.
"You don't seem to be trying for the championship," laughingly remarked Abby Patterson to Abner Dudley that evening as they sat side by side in the long line of busy shuckers. "See how William Hinkson, Jed White and John Smith are working; and look how swiftly Thomas Miles is reducing his heap. I do believe he will win the contest."
A few beavers were taken every night, and salmon trout of a small size, so that the camp had principally to subsist upon dried buffalo meat. On the 14th, a poor, half-naked Snake Indian, one of that forlorn caste called the Shuckers, or Diggers, made his appearance at the camp.
He tried Boerhave's Holland Bitters and the Retired Physician's Sands of Life, and got well. He then married the lovely Countess D'Smith, and lived to a green old age, being the triumph of virtue and downfall of vice. "Life's but a walking shadow a poor player." Shakespeare. "Let me die to sweet music." J.W. Shuckers. "Go forth, Clarence Stanley! Hence to the bleak world, dog!
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