CHAPTER XVIIAMBITIONS
HALF of the outfit of Demarest, Spruce and Tillou went into permanent camp on a timbered plateau three miles from the lake, thus establishing Camp Number One. The other half journeyed on six miles down the mountain valley that extended in the direction of the coast, where it became Camp Two.
Joshua Cole remained at Camp One, which grew to a white-tent city during the several closely following days. This mountain country thrilled him. The air was light and cool, and the objects of Nature’s handiwork stood out in bold relief. The pine forests looked as if they had been newly painted, so bright were the greens, so contrasting the delicate browns. Lofty peaks covered with untarnished snow looked down upon the camp, and the placid lake lay like a blue teardrop in the hollow of a gigantic, caressing hand. Lush meadows surrounded the lake, and here grazed innumerable cattle, the property of Box-R Ranch, down on the desert. All winter long they had cropped bunchgrass that grew under sage bushes on the sandy waste, and had just been driven into the mountains for the summer pasture of saltgrass and bluejoint. Occasionally Joshua saw cowpunchers working with them and heard their shouting from afar.
He had gone to work as soon as the big camp was established, swinging a striking hammer on a drill head, with three others to complete the crew. The work was represented by a gigantic cut through solid rock, and, but forthat in the hands of Shanty Madge, was the most difficult on the entire job.
Joshua had become an artistic hammerman, and, though the youngest man in his crew, he was a welcome addition. Always quiet and reserved, he had none of the qualities that often make youth obnoxious to such old-timers as it fell to his lot to labor with. And as he swung his striking hammer or turned the drill he thought of Madge Mundy of the frizzly bronze-gold hair, and wondered if ever he would find courage to go to her.
He began to realize now, with the girl so close to him, that he had come upon a wild-goose chase to seek her in the West. Since he had seen her last she had traveled over the United States and had had many experiences. While he on the other hand had been shut up behind gray walls with Clegg and his books and the telescope. His meeting with her had been a momentous episode in his life, for directly afterward he had been committed to the House of Refuge, where one lived over and over the bright spots in his past. But it was doubtful now if Madge even would remember him. More and more, as the days passed, he shrank from going to her camp.
California Bill had returned to Spur for more supplies directly after the first long pull into the mountains. Now, one evening, his six slick mules rolled into camp ahead of a load of grain and groceries, and Joshua met him as he came, weary and dusty but wearing his never-failing smile, from the stable tent.
“I’m goin’ to the Mundys’ camp to-morrow mornin’,” he said. “They’re gettin’ low on dynamite, an’ the boss says f’r me to hook up my wheelers an’ take ’em enough to tide ’em over till their freighters ramble in. To-morrow’s Sunday—better come along, Tony.”
“No, I’m not ready yet,” Joshua replied.
The slate-blue eyes studied him carefully. “Scared, eh?”
“I look so tough,” Joshua evaded. “I’ll wait till I’ve earned enough to get some halfway-decent clothes.”
“Uh-huh”—and California Bill waddled away to his bunk tent to prepare for supper.
Joshua did not see him again until Monday morning, and then he was perched on his high seat behind his long-eared hybrids, on his way to Spur for more supplies. And that same afternoon, as Joshua was turning a drill under the ringing blows of his three fellow-workmen, he heard the thud of horses’ hoofs close by, and the voice of the walking boss calling to the hammermen:
“Hold ’em a minute, fellas!”
The blows ceased. Joshua gave his drill a twist and looked up at two mounted figures. One was the walker on his big roan mare, and the other was a girl on a black gelding. She wore a flannel shirt open at the neck and riding breeches. From under a man’s broad-brimmed hat her large eyes, brown as Oriental topaz, looked straight at Joshua. Her hair was frizzly and bronze-gold where the sunbeams caught it.
“Lady wants to see you, Cole,” said the walker. “Let Bluenose turn the drill awhile.”
As a little girl Madge Mundy had been outstanding. Her adorably recalcitrant hair, with its strange gleam of reddish gold, combined with the blended brown-pink coloring of her flawless skin had made her so. Now, a young woman rounding to maturity, she would have attracted instant attention among a hundred girls, all beautiful. Her beauty was unique, her own, and altogether distracting to mankind because of its unexpectedness. That amazing, crinkly hair was now gathered simply at the nape of her neck and held in place by a ribbon, and below the ribbon it spread fanwise over her back and shoulders, a gleaming,puffy mass of antique gold. But her eyes, as of old, held the steadfast gaze of the discomfited hammerman. Their reddish-brown was like the brown of no other eyes that he had ever seen. The whimsical thought flashed through his mind that Madge, like the untarnished forests and mountains all about her, had been newly pumiced and varnished in honor of his coming.
“Well, Joshua, aren’t you coming to say hello to me?”
Slowly he rose from his seat on a powder can and walked toward the horses. The walking boss and Joshua’s fellow-hammermen were watching him narrowly, and his throat felt dry and parched. He put out his hand as he reached the side of the black horse, and looked up at her with his grave gray-blue eyes.
“Hello,” he said obediently.
The walker snorted, and the girl’s laughter rang out with a clearness that somehow seemed to match her eyes and her skin and her even little teeth. If she had laughed any other way, thought Joshua, the entire effect of her individuality would have been set at naught.
“How did—California Bill told you I was here, of course.”
“Yes, Bill tells me everything. I have him hypnotized.”
He had taken her strong brown hand and held it until it occurred to him to pump her arm up and down and release his hold, which he did with boyish vigor.
“And so you’re West at last. We’ve thought about you a thousand times. And when are you coming to tell Ma and me all about it? Next Sunday?”
“I—I can come then.”
“I wish you would. We’ve so much to talk about. We know about your—where you went when you left us in Hathaway that night. Pa meant to take me to see you, but— Well, he didn’t get around to it. We left for theWest only a week afterward. But I mustn’t keep you from your work. You’ll remember that Ma wouldn’t let me have a holiday from my lessons when you called on me. We’ll expect you down Sunday, then. Isn’t it funny that you’re here after all these years? Good-by!”
She waved a hand at him and smiled and swung the black about. The walking boss fell in behind her, and she rode back the way she had come. Joshua slowly returned to his seat on a powder can and mechanically took the drill from Bluenose.
“Good-night, kid!” muttered that expert powderman. “Say, you’re it! Dat dame’s got ’em all crazy. How’d youse make de riffle?”
“I knew her back East when we were kids,” said Joshua simply. “Let’s go!”
And the music of the hammers began again.
Saturday evening Joshua Cole had charged to his account by the commissary clerk the following resplendent raiment:
And Bluenose cut his coal-black hair for nothing, for which cruelty Bluenose should have had the straight-jacket.
Then, next morning, he walked six miles and called on Madge and Mrs. Mundy.
The camp of the Mundys was on a lowland flat, coveredsparsely with bull pines. Because of the big shots that were being fired day by day the tents were nearly a quarter of a mile from the work. The task of Shanty Madge and her mother was, as California Bill Fox had proclaimed, enormous. It consisted for the most part of a long tunnel through the bowels of a rounded hill, which jutted out obstinately into the deep cañon that the right-of-way was trying to follow. The hill had been without a name until the coming of the construction men, but now it was known as the Hill of Springs.
Its top was composed of grainy soil and shattered rottenstone, and in this porous formation frequent springs bubbled up. Some of them were mud springs, and spurted up blue batter to a height of several feet. Others spouted soda-and-magnesia water. But all were inconsiderately moist.
This moisture leaked into the tunnel all the time, and made the operations there damp and difficult and a constant aid to rheumatism. But the worst of it was that Madge feared the entire top of the hill might slide into the tunnel at any unexpected moment, and the work went ahead cautiously and with the slowness that caution calls for. And Shanty Madge was worried.
She met Joshua at the door of the tent in which she and her mother lived. A cluster of lofty pines stood about it, and it was screened and had a floor of tongue-and-groove. It was white and clean, and the few furnishings within were tastefully arranged. In the mountain camp, it was a little oasis in canvas, touched by the magic hand of woman, which leaves its delicate imprint wherever it is reached forth to make a habitation.
Mrs. Mundy was graying a little, but she was as wholesome and serene as ever. As when he was a boy, she talked with Joshua in a sincere manner and listened to him with that courteous, undivided attention which puts one athis ease and is the topmost pinnacle of good breeding. Joshua did not mean to intimate such a thing, but he said something that morning that proved his puzzlement over Mrs. Mundy’s devotion to a man of the stamp of Bloodmop. And, showing no offense, she explained it simply:
“Why, when I was eighteen the man just swept me off my feet with his irresistible love-making, and after I’d surrendered he kept me off my feet with his everlasting goodness.”
Madge, trim and neat in her olive-drab shirt and bellows breeches, sat by and listened to her mother and Joshua talk. She seemed to hear everything that was being said and to be drawing as many conclusions as if she were engaging in the conversation, but her clear brown eyes were faraway and dreamy. She looked almost boyish as she sat there, hands thrust into trousers pockets, her slim, rounded legs crossed and stretched out before her.
“And now,” said Elizabeth Mundy, “tell me how you and your friends the stars are getting on.”
At once Madge’s eyes lost their dreaminess, and she looked at Joshua alertly, patently interested in what his reply would be.
Then out came the story of life in the House of Refuge and of Beaver Clegg and his wondrous telescope.
“Why, you’ve accomplished marvels!” Madge finally interrupted. “Here we’ve been feeling sorry for you, and now you tell us that you’ve been helped on toward the goal of your ambition in a way that never would have happened if you’d not been sent to that reformatory.”
“Yes, I learned a lot from Mr. Clegg,” said Joshua. “But now I’ve got to begin at the beginning again. Science is progressing by leaps and bounds these days, and unless a fellow is in constant touch with new developments he’s out of luck. My first payday goes back to Hathaway formy books and Clegg’s notes and the photographs. If there’s any left I’ll subscribe to several scientific magazines and try to catch up. Last Sunday I found a cave about a mile from our camp. Just stumbled onto it. I’m going to appropriate it as a study and laboratory, and I’ll spend all of my spare time there. I can give at least three or four hours every night, and all day of every Sunday, to study. I’m a hound for work, if I do say it myself, and I’ll be caught up before this job is finished in the mountains. Then I hope to put another new idea to work.
“I discovered something else last Sunday. Before I’d stumbled onto the cave I walked around the lake to the other side, and climbed that rocky ridge over there to see if I could get a view of the desert. It’s a steep climb, but I made it—and, say, the view is marvelous. For miles and miles, far as the eye can reach—and I was told by the doctor at the House of Refuge that I have particularly good eyes—the desert sweeps below you, the most magnificent sight on earth. It seemed that from that particular mountain-top—for it is a miniature mountain—objects on the desert stood out with a clearness almost unbelievable. I turned and looked into the range at the forests and peaks, and they too seemed clearer than I had ever seen them before. And I got to thinking.
“It strikes me that there is something mighty peculiar over there on that ridge. To the west of us lies the coast—to the east the desert. All of the western slopes of the range, they tell me, are covered with trees—great forests of pine. And on the eastern slopes nothing much grows but scrubby piñons, cactus, yuccas, and sage. You can almost see the dividing line at the lake shore. Haven’t you noticed that there are no pine forests on the other side of the lake, and that they begin abruptly on this side? So over there we have the influence of the dry desert in the atmosphere,while at the same time we have an altitude of over six thousand feet.
“Well, all this seems to make for the clearest atmosphere on top of that ridge that I have ever seen. And I’m going up there to-night to see what it’s like after dark. If I’m right, that mountain that I stood on last Sunday is the most marvelous spot on earth, atmospherically, for astronomical observations. And if repeated visits prove that I am right as to the atmosphere’s rare transparency—”
“Yes, go on,” urged Madge.
“Well, then that’smymountain,” replied Joshua, “and I’ll install a telescope there and astonish the world of science. That is—perhaps.”
“But where will you get your telescope?” asked Madge’s mother.
Joshua threw out his hands in a gesture of submission. “I’ll have to earn it,” he told her. “And the one that was given to me cost Mr. Clegg five hundred dollars. Whew! And I’m only a hammerman for Demarest, Spruce and Tillou. But that doesn’t discourage me. I’ll earn the money in time. And while I’m doing that I’ll make a telescope for myself—one that will do for the time being, anyway.”
“Make one!” exclaimed Madge.
“Yes, I think I can. Among my notes, back in Hathaway, are directions for making a small home-made glass that will show the mountains, craters, and plains of the moon, the rings of Saturn, at least four of the nine satellites of Jupiter, and at certain times the polar caps of Mars. Also any large spots that may appear on the disk of the sun. We have a good blacksmith shop in camp, of course, and I know Blacky will let me use his tools. Then I’ll use that telescope until I can buy a five-inch one—which is my great ambition in life—and then I’ll— Oh, well, I’m boring you,I know. I get too enthusiastic over these things, I guess.”
“I wouldn’t be ashamed of the enthusiasm, Joshua,” Madge said, her brown eyes dreamy once more. “But tell me this: Is there any money in it?”
“Money! Who cares for money?”
“But you’ll have to live.”
“Yes, of course. I suppose that’s true. But I can work on the railroad grade as long as the road is building. That will be six months to a year, I think. I ought to save some money in that time. And maybe I can get a job somewhere about here after the outfits have moved on. There’s work at G-string, in the mines, isn’t there?”
“You couldn’t work in a mine all day and study the stars at night, could you?” observed Mrs. Mundy. “It seems to me that would soon ruin your health.”
“I could ruin a lot of that and still have plenty to spare,” he laughed with boyish assurance.
“I should think,” Madge offered, “that, rather than do that, you would want to save up for a university education.”
“No, I think not,” he said musingly. “Clegg was against it. He said in his whimsical way that he entered an Eastern university once, but that he quit because it took too much time from his studies. No, I want to observe the stellar bodies, not read about them and look at pictures.”
“But, Joshua, don’t they have enormous telescopes at the universities?”
“Yes, they do,” he conceded. “But right here I’ll tell you something that you perhaps don’t know. There are difficulties that arise when an astronomer attempts lunar or Martian observations with high-powered telescopes that the layman knows nothing about. This is too involved for me to attempt an explanation, but believe me when I saythat moderate magnifying power, under certain conditions, has its advantages in the study of Mars and the moon. Why, some of our greatest discoveries have been made with small instruments. It’s the transparency of the atmosphere, the ability of the observer to concentrate and his constant application, coupled with good vision, that get results. Oh, on that mountain over there—if I’m right—and I know I am—”
The older woman was smiling at his enthusiasm and sincerity, and she saw in him now just what she had expected of the queer little boy who had come courting her daughter at breakfast time, and revealed to her the wonders of the stars that night. Joshua’s handsome, ascetic face was aglow with the warmth of his feelings, and his tolerant, gray-blue eyes mirrored the intensity of his thoughts. “What a lover he’d make,” she mused, but aloud she said:
“You’re only about twenty-one, aren’t you? But you talk and act like a man of thirty. Are you all for astronomy? Haven’t you any of the yearnings that most young men have?”
“Well,” he replied thoughtfully, “there was no use to yearn in the House of Refuge, and I guess I got out of the habit of it early. But I’ve always wanted to be a cowboy—honest”—and his eyes twinkled. “I suppose I am a bit cramped mentally. I don’t know what I would be like if I hadn’t been a tramp for a year or more. That took a lot of the Ethelbert stuff out of me, I guess, and put what he-man there is into me. Now don’t think I’m a freak. Because a man’s a scientist he doesn’t have to have stooped shoulders and be absent-minded and wear glasses as big as check-strap rings. I’m human and sinful, head over heels in love with life, and like to play draw poker. And if The Whimperer did steal my refractor and almost break my heart, he taught me to smoke tobacco and drink a glass ofhundred-proof without batting an eye—for the appreciation of which good things of earth I thank him. Just the same, I’m a born astronomer. I’m not meaning to be boastful—I merely was fortunate enough, by a rare fluke, to find out early in life what I was put here for. And I’m just telling you. I know I’m boring you, Mrs. Mundy.”
Madge did not give her mother time to say yes or no. “But you haven’t answered my question,” she said. “Is there any money in it, Joshua?”
“I’ve hardly considered that,” he told her. “I don’t want to consider it. But I may gain fame. For about a year before I left the House of Refuge I was working on a pet theory of my own. It’s in connection with Mars, which planet had occupied my interest almost exclusively for some time before Mr. Clegg died. If I can prove my theory to be fact— Well, then I’ll make ’em sit up and take notice. And as for money, why, I can earn all I’ll need right here in the mountains, I guess. All I want is a living and a horse to carry me over the mountains and the desert, a little cabin back from the lake in a clump of sprawling junipers that I know about—and a five-inch telescope on my hill.”
Madge laughed shortly. “That sounds romantic enough,” she admitted, “but— Oh, well, come take a ride with me and I’ll show you what an eighteen-year-old shanty queen can do. And I warn you right now that I’m mighty proud of myself, and you must conduct yourself accordingly. I may never achieve fame, but if we’re reasonably fortunate we’ll get the money. That’s what counts these days.”
“You don’t mean that at all,” he said hopefully, for the first time a little disappointed with his Penelope in bronze.
“Humph! Don’t I? ’By, Ma”—and she led the way out into the cool sunshine and fresh forest smells.