CHAPTER XVIIINEW PROSPECTS
THE Mundys’ stable boss saddled for Madge the black gelding that she had ridden when she called on Joshua, and for him a blaze-faced bay which had been Bloodmop’s saddler. Side by side they took up the trail through the woods, and soon were ascending sharply to the work above.
They watched the strings of dump-cars traveling swiftly under momentum from a fifty-foot cut which extended to the mouth of the drippy tunnel. Muck from the tunnel was being carried to its dump over another route by men “pullin’ ’im by the whiskers,” which, in construction parlance, means leading with a rope a horse or mule hitched to a cart. They looked on in silence for a time, then Madge said:
“This means a lot to me, Joshua. You know, I was a harum-scarum kid when you met me, pretty good with a team and a wheeler even at that age, and wild about railroading. Well, I never got over it. It’s my delight to-day. I love the work and the free-and-easy, democratic life in the open country. I fell into bossing the job naturally when poor Pa died, and I’ve been making good. Ma, of course, thinks it’s no job for a girl, and if we could let go I guess she’d be willing enough to get me away from it all. But she’s an old dear—she never tries to make me quit. Well, why should I? Isn’t this the day when it’s up to women to show the stuff they’re made of? And I’ll show ’em, if we can swing this job. Tell me one thing,” she broke off abruptly: “Why are you here?”
“Why,” Joshua replied, trying to put innocence into his tones, “didn’t you invite me?”
“I mean why are you out West—on this particular job?”
He looked her over carefully, the ghost of a smile on his lips. He was far from disconcerted.
“I may as well confess to the truth,” he told her. “I came hunting you.”
She drew in her breath slightly.
“Your question was a frank one, Madge—I made my reply as frank. During all those years in the House of Refuge I never forgot you. It was my boyish ambition, you know, to travel West with your father. And when they nabbed me and put me away I clung to the idea. Then when I was pardoned I had no place to go. My brother—the boy for whom I went to the House of Refuge, if you want to get down to fine points—would have nothing to do with me. My father, of course, was still impossible. So I went on the bum and hunted you up. I knew I’d find you out here somewhere.”
“How did you know that?”
“Well, a hunch, we’ll call it. I wanted desperately to, and perhaps psychology did the rest.”
For a long time she looked at him searchingly, and then her reddish lashes hid her eyes. “Let’s get off and have a look at the tunnel,” she suggested.
She led the way inside the damp cylinder in the hill, and they watched the human gophers forging ahead through the solid rock, from the open crevices of which came a continuous ooze. The men timbered carefully ahead of them as they progressed, and the huge beams used seemed capable of withstanding almost any strain.
“Madge,” said he, as they blew out their candles at the tunnel’s mouth, “I don’t like the looks of things in there.Of course I don’t know anything about the nature of the hilltop, but California Bill says it’s a mass of springs. By George, if she caves on you you’re ruined.”
“I know it,” she readily agreed. “But we’re praying that it won’t cave until the concrete gang gets on the job. We’re timbering heavily, as you saw, and if old Jawbone only will listen to the walker and me we’ll get by, I think.”
“Who’s Jawbone?”
“The most obstinate old Irish boss-powderman in the entire game,” she explained. “He’s a wonder, but too reckless. He’s fired some marvelous shots for us—shots that have made us big money. But on this kind of work he’s simply dangerous. I’d as soon think of firing myself, though, as to fire Jawbone. He’s been with us ever since we hit the West, and Pa swore by him.”
“How is he dangerous?” asked Joshua.
“Well, he uses too much powder for tunnel work like this. I tell him—and Steve, the walking boss, does too—that the big shots he’s firing in there to loosen the muck are likely to bring the entire hill down on his silly old head. He growls at us and keeps right on. He’s one of these faithful-old-retainer types—been with the outfit so long that he thinks he owns it. And he takes advantage of me since Pa died, thinking, of course, that I’m in his hands and helpless without him. But he got a little slide the other day and eased up a lot on the giant, and I’m hoping he learned a lesson before it is too late. If he’ll only stay sober! But the minute he gets a few drinks under his belt he’ll get reckless again.”
“I’d watch him like a hawk, then,” was Joshua’s advice. “If that wet hill slides down in your tunnel— Well, then you’ll be mighty busy, to say the least.”
“I know it,” she returned. “And I confess I’m worried. But I can’t fire Jawbone—you don’t understand, perhaps.I have one of his own men watching him on the sly, and I’ll know it if he begins shooting heavily again.”
Joshua left the camp of the Mundys at three o’clock in the afternoon and walked slowly homeward. His reception and subsequent treatment by the two women had warmed his heart, and made him feel anything but the tramp laborer that he actually was. He smiled now at his frankness in telling Madge that he had come West seeking her, and wondered where he had found the courage. It was plain that she had suspected why he had come; she must have realized that coincidence had not set him down in a camp next door to hers. And she had asked the meaning of it. Had she expected the brave reply that he had made? Joshua whistled as he followed the well-beaten footpath that ran parallel with the new railroad grade. He was well satisfied with the result of his renewed friendship with the Mundys. Physically Madge was even more glorious than he had expected her to be, but he grew a trifle morose when he remembered her reference to money-making. Joshua was too much of a dreamer, too thoroughly wrapped up in the romance of astronomy, to give great heed to money matters. And he wanted the woman he was going to love—Madge, in short—to be as indifferent to the moron idea of slaving day and night for riches as he was. But Madge would be all right—he was too young, too full of youth’s enthusiasm over life in general to beckon difficulties. And if they came uncalled he would surmount them. Yes, Madge was all right—more than all right.
He returned to his block-hole drilling the following morning, and nothing out of the ordinary occurred until the ghost walked. Then, with his pay in his pocket, he trudged around the lake to Ragtown, a new tent village which had sprung into being since the establishment of Demarest, Spruce and Tillou’s Camp Number One, and senta money-order to his brother. His letter asked that all of his belongings be expressed to him immediately. Then he sent money to three magazines devoted to the science of astronomy, and returned to his muscle-building hammerwork once more.
He wanted to call on the Mundys the following Sunday, but refrained. It would not do to presume too far on their friendship. Yet he longed desperately to see Madge again. He wondered about young Montgomery. What was he like? Madge had not mentioned him; Joshua knew only that California Bill had referred to him as one of the ardent suitors of the shanty queen.
California Bill arrived in camp in the course of a day or two, and that night Joshua saw him for the first time since his trip down the line. They sat on the ground at the edge of camp and watched the lake turn red, then violet, then purple as the sun sank to rest behind Saddle Mountain; and Bill, as he listened to Joshua’s accusation, sang softly:
“My head likes liquor, but my stomach don’t.My feet cut up, but my stomach won’t.My hands play poker and my tongue sings a song,But my stomach keeps a-sayin’, ‘There’s somethin’ wrong.’
“My head likes liquor, but my stomach don’t.My feet cut up, but my stomach won’t.My hands play poker and my tongue sings a song,But my stomach keeps a-sayin’, ‘There’s somethin’ wrong.’
“My head likes liquor, but my stomach don’t.
My feet cut up, but my stomach won’t.
My hands play poker and my tongue sings a song,
But my stomach keeps a-sayin’, ‘There’s somethin’ wrong.’
“But what’re ye kickin’ about?” he broke off. “Wanted to see her, didn’t ye? Well, I told her all about ye, an’ she said she’d ride up next day an’ see ye. I knew ye wouldn’t look her up short of a month, an’ by that time maybe Jack Montgomery’d have her dead to rights. Now she’s seen ye, though, she’ll think a while before lettin’ Montgomery run away with her. What she have to say about yer astronomy, Tony?”
“Why, are you so greatly interested in my astronomy?” asked Joshua.
“Certainly am. Thing like that always takes on me. Now, if ye had a project in mind to make a million or two I wouldn’t give ye a smile. But somethin’ reg’lar, like astronomy, an’ I’m out to help. Did ye send f’r yer traps back East come payday?”
“Yes, I’ve sent for them,” said Joshua. “And I’ve subscribed for three scientific magazines, too. I’ll get to work evenings as soon as my things come. It’ll take a lot of study to bring me up to where I was when I left the House of Refuge.”
Then he told Bill about the little cave that he had discovered, where he could hide himself away and find quiet for his work. And this disclosure led to the one concerning the miniature mountain beyond the lake, where the atmosphere seemed so rare.
“By golly!” Bill applauded. “That’ll be just the place, Tony. We’ll fix ye up there all snug an’ tight, when ye get that telescope made, an’ ye’ll become an institution in the mountains—a character, ye know, like me. Tony of Telescope Mountain, they’ll be callin’ ye. No, that there don’t sound just right—seems. Le’me think! Spyglass sounds more romantic than Telescope, don’t it? Tony of Spyglass— No, by golly, I got it! Cole of Spyglass Mountain! That’s the dope. An’ say—why didn’t I think of it before, Tony? Just the caper. C’mon to my bunk tent with me—I got somethin’ to show ye.”
When they reached the big tent in which California Bill slept during his short periods in the mountain camp, where men lay in bunks three tiers high and talked or read, Bill reached under his straw pillow and pulled out a newspaper. He carried it to where the light of a candle, fused with its own drippings to the lid of a can, threw a feeble radiance over one end of the tent. He found what he wished to show his friend and handed him the paper. He rolled a cigaretteand watched Joshua from under bushy black brows as he read.
When Joshua looked up from the article California Bill winked knowingly and laid a finger on his lips. Then, pocketing the paper, he led the way out again.
“Well, how’s it strike ye, Tony?” he asked as they walked through the trees once more.
“I don’t believe I understood all of it,” was Joshua’s reply.
“It’s jest like this here,” said Bill. “All o’ this land about the lake here, an’ f’r God knows how many miles beyond, is in the forest reserve. It ain’t been used f’r anythin’ but the delight o’ hunters an’ the fattenin’ of Ole Lee Sweet’s cows f’r a few months in the summer. Lee he owns Box-R Ranch, down on the desert, where we camped first night outa Spur. Them’s his cattle ye see roamin’ ’round the lake. Well, now along comes the gover’ment—seems—an’ says this here land’s good f’r somethin’ else. It c’n raise things besides sagebrush and blue-weed and saltgrass, an’ it ain’t the gover’ment’s purpose to let good land go to waste. So they’re goin’ to throw her open to homestead entry pretty soon.
“I remember myself when the gover’ment surveyors was up in here last year, runnin’ lines, but I never paid any attention. Had a lot o’ State University boys with ’em, an’ I thought they was jest practicin’, maybe, or reëstablishin’ the lines of an old survey that was made here forty years ago. Anyway, they was separatin’ the agricultural land from the worthless parts—seems—an’ now it’s out that a fella c’n take up a homestead here.
“Well, sir, I read that there account in Spur, an’ f’r some reason er other I tucked the paper under my wagon seat. Thought f’r a little, I guess, that maybe I’d take up a piece f’r myself an’ settle down an’ quit my foolin’,but I’d forgot all about it until ye tells me about Spyglass Mountain. Tony, what ye wanta do is this: Ye wanta go to work an’ get down to Los Angeles an’ file a homestead claim as close as ye c’n get to Spyglass Mountain. Maybe the lines run beyond the mountain, because pretty good land runs right clost to the foot o’ the slope. Then ye c’n have yer own mountain right on yer prop’ty. Now that the railroad’s comin’ through this country, it won’t be no time before every acre o’ that land’s took up. There can’t be much of it. Ye gotta act quick. Tell ye what we’ll do. Le’me think a minute.
“Yes, tell ye what we’ll do: You lay off to-morrow, an’ when I go out I’ll drive clean ’round the lake with ye an’ take ye to G-string. There’s anhombrethere I know—name o’ Golden. He’s a mining engineer, but I reckon he knows about surveys, too. Course he will! Well, we’ll get this Golden an’ have ’im go with ye an’ make location on the land ye’ll want. Take a hundred an’ sixty—all ye c’n get. Then I’ll have to be drivin’ on to Spur right away. But you c’n come on down on the stage next day, an’ beat it to Los Angeles to make yer filin’. Got any jack?”
“Not much,” answered Joshua, catching Bill’s enthusiasm. “Scientific magazines are expensive, and—”
“Well, I got about forty bones I c’n loan ye. Guess it’ll cost ye somethin’ over twenty-five for yer filin’ fee, an’ ye won’t have much to blow on peanuts. But ye’ll make it all right. Yes, sir, that’s jest what you’n’me’ll do, Tony. An’ maybe later on I c’n pick me out a piece f’r myself.”
“Look here, California,” said Joshua, laying a firm hand on his friend’s shoulder, “do you want a piece of that land?”
“Naw,” scoffed Bill. “Jest kiddin’ myself. What’d I do with a farm?”
“I believe,” said Joshua, “that you do want a piece, and that if you had more money you’d go with me and make a filing too.”
“Ferget it! No such thing. I was jest kiddin’.”
“Bill!”
“Honest to God, Tony! Why, I’ll be drivin’ hosses all my life—seems. Couldn’t do anythin’ else if I wanted to. Shut up now. G’wan an’ tell yer boss ye’re layin’ off a day or two, an’ then go to bed. I’ll see ye in the mornin’. Cole of Spyglass Mountain—that’s the stuff!”
There came a severe tickling in Joshua’s throat when he tried to raise further protest against the old man’s generosity, but Bill grabbed him by the arm and turned him about. Then, administering a light kick, he bade him to “shut up an’ hit the hay,” and Joshua, too hopefully elated to refuse good fortune when it came his way, hurried into camp and to the walking boss.
Next morning he rode around the lake with California Bill toward G-string, his body on the high seat over the rolling backs of Bill’s slick mules, his soul sailing in the heavens.