Theroad to Miners’ Camp from Meeteetse, forty-five miles long, follows the Grey Bull to its junction with Wood River. Thence it wanders along through miles of fertile ranch lands; then, rising among the black foot-hills, up, up, it winds across the precipitous face of Jo-Jo Hill, and plunges among the snow-crowned Shoshones, crowded nearer and yet nearer to Wood River until finally there is but room for the narrow track and the narrow stream at the bottom of the deep cañon.
This was the road which Ross traveled the day following Weston’s departure for Cody, and traveled in increasing discomfort. The further they advanced among the mountains, the colder it became, until, finally, Ross was obliged to desert the high seat beside Bill Travers, the driver, and seek shelter inside the stage, but not until he had learned from Bill that there was no hotel in Miners’ Camp.
In talking with Hank he had taken it for granted that there was a lodging house of somedescription and so had asked no questions on the subject.
"I pack my grub along," Bill assured him carelessly, "’n’ roll up in a bunk in a shack that some one ’r other has left. If you’ve packed yer bed along, stay with me to-night. There’s the floor," hospitably, "and I guess I can rustle grub enough fer both. Anyhow, there’s two eatin’-houses where you could fill up."
At five in the afternoon the stage crawled through the dusk over a yielding bridge built of hemlock saplings creaking under their coating of ice and snow, and stopped in front of a shack out of whose open door glinted a welcome light. Another light appeared high up on the side of the mountain.
"Hold up there, Bill," was the shout which had brought the stage to a standstill. "Got a cold, hungry young chap inside there, name of Grant? Wishin’ Wilson went through yesterday and said he’d be along with you to-day."
Ross recognized the voice as belonging to Steele, and, opening the stage door, answered for himself in the affirmative.
Steele shook hands cordially. "Better get out here, Grant," he invited in an offhand way; "I have some beefsteak ready to fry, and the spuds are bakin’ in the oven."
Ross climbed out with as much alacrity as his cold, benumbed limbs would permit. But no sooner was he on the ground than something queer occurred. His legs gave every indication of doubling up under him, while his head felt as large and airy as a balloon. He clutched the wheel, but not until Steele had clutched him.
"Altitude!" exclaimed Steele. "Being a mile and a half above sea-level don’t agree with most people just at first."
Ross leaned against the wheel, looking up giddily at the strip of sky corralled between the towering summits of Dundee and Gale’s Ridge. It seemed to him that it was the mountains and not the altitude which oppressed him, and bore down upon him, and shut off his breath.
"My baggage," he began hesitatingly to the stage-driver, "where–if there’s no hotel––"
But Steele interposed. "Lend a hand here, Bill, with these trunks. I want Grant to put up at my hotel to-night, bag and baggage."
Bill grinned, and laid hands on the emergency chest. "He’ll git a better layout than at my old shack, I tell ye! Say! Is Uncle Jake in Camp?"
Steele shook his head. "Nope. I’m going to see about packin’ Grant over to the Creek myself in a few days," and a great wave of thankfulness surged over Ross.
A few moments later Steele waved his hand around the one room of his little log shack. "This is the only kind of home you’ll find up here, Grant, about the same as Weimer has over on the Creek. Things are rough and ready here, without any frills."
As he spoke he glanced at the larger of Ross’s trunks.
If Amos Steele understood one subject better than mining operations, that one subject was men. He saw in Ross an overgrown, homesick boy, with a stout but untested "backbone."
"And I wonder," thought Steele, "how far that backbone is going to take him when it gets a healthy development, and–how far is he goin’ to develop it?"
Furthermore, Steele concluded, Ross was more accustomed to bending over a book than over a shovel; and he shrugged his shoulders at the thought of the Weimer-Grant claims.
"His backbone can’t do everything," he decided, "no matter how stout it grows, especially when Weimer has lost his."
Steele’s shack was at the foot of Gale’s Ridge. Half-way up the mountainside was another and larger shack, where his miners, thirty in number, ate. Above that was the "bunk-house" where they slept. And yet higher up was the mouth ofthe tunnel out of which the Gale’s Ridge Mining Company expected to pull vast wealth when the Burlington Road had done its part.
"I’d rather bach it," Steele explained to Ross as they sat down to beefsteak and baked potatoes, "than to be with the men. It’s pleasanter for me–and," with a jolly laugh, "for them also, I expect."
Ross liked this frank young superintendent who had so kindly taken him in. He felt that he must get his bearings in some way, and Steele was the man to set him right.
Therefore quite early in the evening the boy burst out with:
"Mr. Steele, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m the greenest tenderfoot that ever came to Wyoming. Now, you know the ropes here, and I don’t. Will you advise me?"
"That is exactly what I’ve been wanting to do," assented Steele swiftly and heartily. "But I won’t do it at all to-night. It’ll take you a few days to get over your light-headedness, and until you do the trail around Crosby won’t be healthy ridin’ for you. Anyway, there’s a lot to be done, for Uncle Jake Weimer hasn’t laid in any winter supplies yet."
Ross tipped his chair back against the unhewn logs, and thrust his hands into his pockets. Eversince the talkative prospector had passed through the stage camp he had wondered what manner of man Weimer was. But not until he was jolting along in the stage that day did one sentence especially recur to him in all its possible significance.
The prospector had said, "’Curious how that snow-blindness should have touched Dutch Weimer.’"
Therefore, Ross’s first question was of the man he had crossed the continent to help.
The answer reached far into the night; and when at last Ross, wrapped in his blankets, lay down in a bunk built against the wall, it was a long time before sleep came, tired as he was.
The following evening, after a full day’s work, he sat down beside the little home-made table to write to Dr. Grant and Aunt Anne while Steele washed up the supper dishes.
"I should be worse than helpless, were it not for Steele," he wrote; "and even with him to help me I may as well own up I am in blue funk. Not a man is there to hire; so the programme for the next few months seems to be this: Yours truly has got to put on some muscle, and buckle down to pick and shovel. Where do you think Piersol’s ’Histology’ is coming in, uncle, or that man Remsen?
"But that’s not the worst. It seems thatWeimer isn’t as stout in his head as he was before he was stricken with snow-blindness, and, although he is as stout as ever in his muscles, he doesn’t take kindly to work any more. Hasn’t even taken the winter’s supplies of food and dynamite over to Meadow Creek. He’s just smoking his pipe in peace because of the man father is sending to help him out! But I can tell you that the peace is all on his side.
"The mountains here are the original packages, all right. They’re miles high, and look as if they’d topple over on a fellow with but half an excuse. And then the air–or the lack of it, rather! I’ve not been able to walk any distance without a cane, so uncertain does this rare air make me in my motions. But Steele says I’ll get over that in a day or two. So, day after to-morrow he is going with me to Meadow Creek with the Gale’s Ridge Company’s horses–we ’pack’ over the supplies for the winter, and the emergency chest just as it is; but, Aunt Anne, only a small portion of the contents of my big trunk can go. Over on the Creek Steele can explain to me about the amount of work to be done, for fear Weimer doesn’t tell it straight––"
Suddenly Ross stopped. He leaned back and bit his pencil, his eyes narrowing frowningly as he glanced over the letter. Then with a gestureof disdain he caught up the sheets, and tore them into fragments.
Steele paused in the act of placing the dishes in the rough cupboard which was nailed to the logs behind the stove.
"Well, I’d think twice before I tore up a letter–too hard work to write ’em."
"I have thought twice," returned Ross emphatically. "That’s why I tore it up. No use piling up all my difficulties on them first thing. Aunt Anne worries enough over my being here, as it is."
"So there’s an ’Aunt Anne,’ is there?" mused Steele to himself over the dishes. He glanced at the bits of paper in a heap on the table. "Good work she and that doctor uncle have done." He surveyed Ross’s clean-cut, clear-eyed face as it bent above a second and brighter letter, one that ignored or made light of the difficulties oppressing the boy.
In order to divert further the attention of the recipients, Ross also wrote divers pieces of information that he had learned from Steele.
"I am trying to ferret out this gold mining business from the beginning," he wrote. "I never got the hang of it before, and, if Mr. Steele wasn’t everlasting patient with me, I wouldn’t be getting much now, because everything is so new and strange here. I don’t half understand the men’slingo, because they have a strange name for everything.... Well, it seems that a gold mine up here is started in some such a way as this: along comes a prospector–quartz crazy, he is called if he’s in dead earnest–with a pick and shovel, a hammer and microscope, and a camp outfit. If some one else has provided him with food and the outfit he is ’grub-staked’ and his ’pard’ is entitled to half of the results of his work. Father, for instance, has grub-staked Weimer for years. This prospector pegs away at the rocks, getting specimens of ore and examining them under his microscope. He goes right past rocks that look to me full of gold they glitter so. No gold in such! But when he finds some common, dull old stone that doesn’t show up much to me but has all the earmarks of ’a high value’ in gold, then he thinks he has found the outcropping of a good ’lead,’ because all the rock that is behind that rock in the same strata is supposed to have that much gold in it or more. So there he ’stakes his claim.’ You see I’ve got the hang of a few of the terms already. First, he drives a stake near the rock and leaves on it a paper with his name and the date and a notice that the land is his for so many feet each way. He can’t take possession of more than six hundred feet one way and fifteen hundred the other in one claim, but he can stake off as manyother claims right beside this first as he wants to. The staking is easy enough, but the tug of war comes in doing enough work to patent the claims! This means to get a deed of possession from the state. There is where Weimer and I are up against it–on the work side! But guess I’d better not make your heads ache any more with such an accumulation of learned facts. I’ll just say good-bye now and continue the headache in my next."
To his father he wrote a different kind of letter, a defense of his delay at Dry Creek.
"I couldn’t desert a man in that shape," he wrote, "although I have lost three weeks at exactly the season of the year, I find, when three weeks count for the most. I’m sorry it happened that way, but I shall try to put in good time now and make up. Anyway, I guess the delay is as broad as it is long, because, if that accident hadn’t occurred, I shouldn’t have known Steele; and it’s his help that’s smoothing things out here for me to begin work."
Ross did not know that the way he had conducted himself at Dry Creek was the cause of the very practical interest which Steele was taking in him.
But not all of Steele’s influence in Camp had secured a single laborer for Meadow Creek. Rossfound that Andy’s explanation on the Cody stage held good. No one cared to go any further out of the world than Miners’ Camp.
"It’s bad enough," one of the Mountain Company’s men told Ross, "up here eighty miles from the railroad, with a stage only three times a week in summer and any time it can get through in the winter. But, when it comes to workin’ on the Creek,excuse me! Seven mile over Crosby, and the trail shut up half the year. No, I’m goin’ to Cody when the Mountain works shuts down."
The Gale’s Ridge Company worked all winter; but the Mountain Company dismissed its employees, twenty in number, when the deep snows came.
To the twenty Ross applied in vain. Labor was dear and men scarce "Cody way," and the miners refused to be mewed up over on the Creek for five months at any price.
"You see," Steele explained, "I’d be glad to employ all the twenty during the winter myself; but not many of ’em will ever stay up here in Camp–too much cut off. I shall run short of hands all winter. Of course, when the railroad gets up here, it will be different. They’ll be willing to stay then."
Ross checked a groan. "The railroad isn’t here, but I am," he observed grimly.
Steele looked at him curiously. "Why don’t you strike the trail back East," he asked abruptly, "since you started out without understanding the situation?"
Ross glanced up in surprise. "Why, I never thought of doing that!" he exclaimed, and dropped the subject.
But Steele continued to look him over with a new interest; for the stage the previous evening had brought to Steele a letter from the elder Grant asking for private information concerning the situation Ross, Junior, was encountering. Ross’s brief letters from Dry Creek had shown Ross, Senior, that he had no real knowledge of the nature of the difficulties into which he had sent his son.
The morning of the third day, Ross, staggering around uncertainly without a cane, aided Steele in binding the supplies on the wooden saddles of the packhorses. From the Gale’s Ridge Company’s supply-shack they brought sacks of flour and cornmeal, boxes of canned vegetables and condensed milk, sides of bacon and hams, bags of coffee and tea, all of which Steele with many a twist of the rope and "half-hitch" secured to the clumsy saddles. The trustiest horse carried the emergency chest. On Ross’s own horse, lashed behind his saddle, were his bed blankets and a bundle from the trunk Aunt Anne had packed with such care.
"All ready?" called Steele, one foot in his stirrup.
He looked back at Ross already mounted, bringing up the rear of the string of packhorses, standing in front of the company’s store.
"All ready," shouted Ross.
Steele, about to swing himself up, hesitated. He glanced again at Ross. Then, dropping his bridle reins to the ground, he disappeared inside the store, emerging presently with a short rifle and a cartridge belt.
"Ever use a gun?" he asked.
Ross hesitated. "I’ve practiced target shooting a little, and gone hunting a few times; but," candidly, "I don’t amount to shucks with a gun."
Steele grinned, and handed it up. "Take it along," he advised, "and practice some more. It may bring you fresh meat. Sometimes elk and mountain sheep come down to the Creek to drink over there–won’t come amiss, anyhow."
Ross accepted the gun; and Steele, going back to the head of the procession, mounted, and led the way up the cañon, which presently broadened until it formed a snow-flecked valley a few rods wide. Here were a dozen shacks, another eating house, and the store of the Mountain Company. The mouth of its tunnel could be seen high on the side of the mountain above the store.
Immediately beyond this valley the cañon was nearly closed by two great peaks. The one on the left was still Dundee; but on the right Gale’s Ridge gave place to Crosby, behind which lay Meadow Creek Valley.
Zigzagging across the face of this mountain wound a narrow trail gradually ascending. Up and yet up climbed the horses until Ross clung to his saddle involuntarily while looking down. Soon Wood River became a thread, and the shacks became black doll-houses set in patches of snow.
On the trail the snow lay deep in the hollows, but was swept away wherever the east wind could touch it. But, snow-filled or black, the trail ever ascended. The peak of Dundee opposite, which had seemed from the cañon narrow and remote, stretched out now immense and so near that Ross felt he could hurl a stone across and hit it.
He looked ahead. They were approaching the dizzy shoulder of Crosby. Steele rounded it, and disappeared. One by one the slow packhorses, their loads hitting against the rocks on the inside of the trail, crawled cautiously after, and also disappeared. Then before Ross opened a view of startling grandeur. He was looking out over the top of Gale’s Ridge and down across Big Horn Basin, beyond Cody, eighty miles away and intothe blue heart of the Big Horn Mountains. The sight brought with it a pang of homesickness. Eighty miles from a railroad! Eighty difficult, laborious miles! Ross felt helpless and small and decidedly shaky in this strange new world about which he had so much to learn.
Clinching his teeth hard together, he looked up. Above were bowlders seemingly glued to the almost upright mountainside. Below–but Ross’s head swam, and he turned his eyes to the inside of the trail, and clung to the saddle. Below was a sheer drop of a thousand feet down to the falls of Meadow Creek, which separated Crosby from Gale’s Ridge. The mist came up in clouds rolling thick and frosty in the zero air. This was the quarter-mile of trail which cut Meadow Creek Valley off from Wood River Cañon for months during the year.
"Well," laughed Steele as they stopped where the trail widened beyond the dangerous shoulder, "you didn’t take a header, did you?"
Ross passed his hand across his forehead. His face was pale. "No, but–I felt every minute that I’d go over."
"You’ll get used to that," returned Steele easily. "You see why that trail becomes impassable later, don’t you? If it was just the snow on the trail, why, that wouldn’t count. You could shovel itoff around the shoulder, and go on snow-shoes the rest of the way. But, when the snow lodges up over the shoulder something like ten feet deep, and a chinook or warm wind comes along and loosens it, a footfall or a man calling might start it, and then––" Steele shrugged his shoulders.
"And there is no other way you can get into the Creek valley?" asked Ross.
"No other way with a horse. You can follow the Creek toward its source, they say, a few miles and then across. Hunters go that way sometimes, but on foot; and they have to scramble for it."
On and on they went over a wide trail now beside the clear little Meadow Creek. Ross began to feel giddy again.
"Of course you do," Steele explained the next time they made a stop, "because the Creek is half a mile higher than the cañon. But you get over that in a few days."
"I wonder," exclaimed Ross suddenly, "how Leslie Jones stood that trail?"
"About the same as the average and ordinary mortal," rejoined Steele sarcastically. "But you’ll probably have a good many chances of finding out for yourself. You’ll be glad to see anybody, even young Jones!"
At last, after threading their way between spursand over bowlders and through valleys, they emerged on the other side of Crosby, and found themselves in a bowl the sides of which were formed by mountains so high and grim that Ross gasped for the breath that he felt the peaks would eventually shut off.
It was a queer and uncomfortable feeling, this which the mountains gave him, a sense of being shut in and overpowered and helpless.
The peaks on all sides were snow-heaped; but the valley, protected as it was, showed patches of black earth. Sage-brush with scrub spruce and hemlock were the only vegetation of the valley visible, but the sides of the mountains showed a good growth of hemlock and pine trees reaching to timber line only a few hundred feet up.
On the left at the foot of Crosby–whose back looked as high to Ross as its face, despite the fact that he was half a mile higher here than in the cañon–two columns of smoke were ascending from two clusters of hemlocks a quarter of a mile apart. Toward these, Steele, drawing in his horse, pointed.
"The first is your layout," he called back over his shoulder, "the other is the McKenzies’!"
"And where is Wilson’s?" asked Ross, eagerly.
Steele faced in the opposite direction and indicated a narrow trail that led to the right,disappearing in a forest of scrub pine which filled the ravine between two of the mountains that formed the rim of the bowl. "Follow that trail and you’ll reach ’em. But ten to one, before you can do it they’ll follow the trail this way and reach you!"
"I hope so!" exclaimed Ross in a heartfelt tone.
A few moments later he was face to face with Weimer.
The latter stood in the doorway of a low log shack, his great hands cupped over large blue goggles through which his eyes showed dimly, the lids screwed together, leaving only slits for the admission of the dreaded glare of light from the snow. His hands were crusted with dirt. His face, bearded to the rim of the goggles, was grimy, and the beard matted. His hair hung uneven and uncombed to his thick rounded shoulders. He wore a colored flannel shirt, a sheepskin coat, and corduroy trousers thrust into the knee-high tops of old shoes.
In response to Steele’s greeting and introduction Weimer extended his hand, peered at Ross a moment, and then asked eagerly in a throaty, husky voice of Steele:
"D’ye pack any tobac’ over?"
"Lots of it," cried Steele jovially. "Enoughfor your use and some for you to give to your neighbors."
Immediately Weimer’s sagging, middle-aged figure became straight and stiff, and his high forehead wrinkled in a heavy frown.
"Give dem McKenzies anyting! Ven I do, it’ll be ven my name ain’t Shake Veimer."
Steele stepped quickly in front of the older man, and spoke forcefully. "There’s one thing, Uncle Jake, that you’re givin’ ’em as fast as you can, and that’s these claims."
"Nein! Nein!" Weimer shouted. "Das ist nicht so!"
His uneven black hair bobbed wildly about his shoulders. He pumped his powerful arms up and down as if the McKenzies were beneath them.
Steele thrust his face near that of the agitated man, and demanded roughly, "How many shots have you put since you were over to Camp to get me to write to young Grant’s father? Say, now!"
Weimer’s manner became cringing. He backed into the cabin. "If your eyes––" he began, but Steele cut him short.
"You know you’ve not taken one pound of ore out of your tunnel since. You know you have sat around here waitin’ for Grant to send some one to help you out––"
Weimer put up a great hand, and shrank backas a child would have retreated before his mother’s upraised slipper. Steele followed him into the cabin, and Ross slowly followed Steele.
"The snow ist come," whimpered Weimer; "und I can’t see ven the snow comes, und the tunnel so far ist to valk––"
But Steele cut short his complaints sternly. "Now," he declared, "all your excuses must come to an end. Here is some one to help. Young Grant here is going to put this work through, and you’ve got to brace up and help him. I should be ashamed to sit down and let a couple of McKenzies take away my claims."
At once Weimer became alert and combative. The McKenzies should not take the claims.
"You see how it is," Steele began as he and Ross were carrying the cases of dynamite "sticks" up the trail to the tunnel in which Weimer was doing the assessment work for the four tracts to which he had laid claim. "Mentally Weimer has become suddenly an old and childish man while retaining all his physical powers. He can do the work of two ordinary men if he can be made to work–and it’s up to you to compel him. Otherwise, by the first of next July, at the time when these claims ought to be patented, you will have to forfeit ’em."
Ross’s heart sank. "The first of next July,"and it was then but the middle of October! He laid the case of sticks down on the ore-dump, and, glancing up at the peaks which held him a prisoner, caught his breath in a gust of rebellion.
At the mouth of the tunnel, some seven feet high and eight wide, was the "dump," to the edge of which ran a rusty track with a "bumper" at the end. The track extended into the tunnel. On it stood a lumbering vehicle, consisting of the trucks of a hand car, on which was fastened a home-made box to carry ore.
"This," explained Steele, "is a remnant of Weimer’s better days. There was no way to pack a regular car over here, and he devised this. He was a smart man until last year."
After dinner, which Weimer prepared,–Ross found him always ready to prepare food and eat it,–Steele suggested that they "drop in" on the McKenzies.
"Especially," he added, his eyes scanning Ross’s face, "after your meeting Sandy on the way to Cody."
Ross hesitated. "I don’t know about that," he objected, surprised that Steele should suggest such a thing. "Wouldn’t it be a bit queer for me to call on my ’friends the enemy’?"
Steele laughed, but held strongly to his point. "Not queer at all. There’s no object in not beingon a speakin’-footing with ’em," he said. "There’s nothing to be gained and a lot to be lost by openly recognizing what they’re waiting for. You’re goin’ to get almighty lonesome up here,"–involuntarily Ross swallowed, and turned his face away,–"and that Sandy McKenzie is good company–on the surface. I can’t say as much for the other, Waymart, but he’ll pass."
The sun was shining warmly when they left Weimer’s cabin. The snow above the narrow loam-paved trail was melting and running in rivulets down to the creek. Overhead the spruce boughs met, and laced their green fingers together, sending down a damp, spicy odor.
Near the McKenzie cabin Steele paused and looked up the mountainside. A few rods away the earth was thrown up around some tree stumps whose tops had been recently cut off.
"You see," he explained in a low tone to Ross, "the McKenzies are supposed to be over here working some claims that they staked out last spring. But look there! They haven’t got the discovery hole finished yet!"
The "discovery hole," as Ross had learned, must be dug within thirty days after the staking of the claim, and is a name given to the ten feet of development work required by the law of Wyoming. This ten feet of digging may mark eitherthe commencement of a tunnel if the claim is located on the side of a mountain, or, if the claim is on level ground, the hole takes the form of a shaft driven perpendicularly into the earth. With a claim thus staked and developed, the owner may rest secure for one year without further work. Then, in order to hold the claim against any covetous claim "jumper" he must do one hundred dollars’ worth of development work a year for five years in order to obtain a patent. If he has staked several adjacent claims, work for all may be done in one shaft or tunnel.
Ross, merely glancing at the incomplete discovery hole, looked at the cabin from which the sound of voices issued. His gaze was doubtful, and his footsteps lagged.
Seeing this, Steele walked on briskly, rapped on the sagging door, threw it open, and brought Ross reluctantly face to face with his "friends the enemy."
Sandy McKenziesat before a rough board table on which his elbows lazily rested, supporting half his weight. Sandy needed no gymnasium exercises to teach him relaxation. Before him were the remains of a hearty dinner, the chief dish of which smelled to Ross like beefsteak. From this dish from time to time Sandy forked bits of meat on which he leisurely chewed.
He wore the same garb in which Ross had first seen him; but the corduroy trousers were much the worse for wear and dirt, and it had been weeks since his face had felt a razor. His sandy hair also had increased in length, one thick lock perpetually dangling over his forehead.
Waymart, an older and darker man than Sandy, lay in his bunk smoking, his knees drawn up and his hands clasped around them. Waymart was clean shaven, and his black hair was closely clipped.
Both Sandy and Waymart were surprised to see Ross at their cabin door, but Sandy favored himwith a delighted grin. Rising without disturbing the box on which he had been sitting, he straddled across it, and held out a cordial hand.
"Hello, Tenderfoot," he shouted. "I hear they’ve added Doc to that there name since I see you last."
Waymart crawled slowly out of his bunk. His black eyes met Ross’s an instant, and then slid away, the lids drooping. He held out a hand which, although larger than Sandy’s, lacked its cordial grip.
"Have some chairs," Sandy invited gayly, kicking forward a couple of boxes. "These here are our second-best plush, upholstered,mahogany affairs. The best are coming from Chicago when the Burlington Road gets into Camp."
There was about Sandy such an air of gay irresponsibility and cordiality that Ross brightened perceptibly. After all, his "friends the enemy" might not be bad neighbors, and he was glad he had allowed Steele to persuade him to come.
Pushing his box away from the red-hot stove, he tipped it up on end, and sat down beside the only window the cabin afforded. Directly outside, hanging to a tree, were the hind quarters of a beef, as Ross supposed at first glance. But, chancing to glance down, he found himself looking at the head of an elk with great branching antlers, ahead such as he had seen at "The Irma" in Cody, credited to the marksmanship of Buffalo Bill.
"Last week," he heard Waymart saying to Steele, "we got him over near the Divide."
Ross opened his eyes in astonishment. "A week!" he exclaimed, glancing from the table to the meat hanging uncovered and unprotected outside.
Sandy caught the expression, and slapped his leg gleefully. "Think that there meat ought to be off color by this time, don’t ye, Doc? Well, let me tell ye we’ll be eatin’ on it hangin’ just where it is until it’s gone; and the last bite will be as good as the first."
Steele explained. "The air up here cures meat, Grant, quite as well as brine. It takes meat a mighty long time to spoil–in fact, if it’s properly jerked, it never spoils."
"’Jerked’?" interrogated Ross: but Sandy had launched into an account of their hunt over on the Divide, and no one explained the "jerking" process then.
As Sandy talked, his manner lost its laziness. He became animated, laughing and gesticulating constantly, and occasionally running his fingers through his hair and throwing the stray front lock back among its fellows.
Waymart had lain back in his bunk again, andunceremoniously elevated his knees, between which he glanced at Ross from time to time. He said but little, and smiled less.
The two occupied a cabin similar to Weimer’s except that it was cleaner. In one corner was a heap of supplies, boxes of canned goods, and sacks of flour. Seeing Steele’s eyes on these, Sandy explained easily:
"Hain’t packed over our winter’s supplies yet except the sticks. Got a plenty of them, but grub’s gettin’ pretty low."
"Better hurry up, then," remarked Steele in a careless fashion. "All the horses in Camp will be sent below in a couple of weeks."
By "below" he meant the ranches of Wood River Valley.
Sandy pushed back his front lock. "Time enough," he returned lightly. "Everything can wait except game-huntin’. There’s a flock of mountain sheep over on the north side of Crosby, and we’re goin’ to trail ’em to-morrow." Then he turned hospitably to Ross. "Want to go along?"
Ross shook his head. "I’ve–I’ve got to work," he stammered, embarrassed at being obliged to introduce the subject of work on the Weimer-Grant claims.
He might have saved himself all embarrassment,as the subject seemed to have no personal connection with the gay Sandy.
"What," he cried, "in huntin’ season? Wall, I’ve met other tenderfeet constituted like ye; but they soon git over the fit, and so will you, I reckon. Brought a gun?"
"Yes."
"You’ll be out with us yet," declared Sandy.
"Sure," came from the bunk in tones of certainty.
Ross said nothing.
"When you bring down your first buck," pursued Sandy, unruffled by the boy’s silence, "you’ll begin to git the Western fever that ye said ye didn’t want." Here Sandy chortled. "Guess ye think ye’re enough of a doctor t’ cure that fever, but wait and see!"
As he said this, there was in the speaker’s manner, or in his blue eyes or sandy-bearded face, a return of that subtle something which had caused Ross to decide that he "partly liked him and partly didn’t."
"I expect," said Steele laughingly, "that Doc here will get as quartz crazy as Wishing Wilson is. Of course, you fellows have seen Wishing."
"Wishin’ Wilson!" exclaimed Sandy and Waymart in one breath, Sandy adding, "What do ye mean? Whereabouts is Wishin’?"
"Well! Well! How comes it you didn’t know?" exclaimed Steele wonderingly. "Wishing is right up here in your midst. He’s holding down his claims this minute up yonder," jerking his thumb over his shoulder.
Sandy sat up and threw the lock out of his eyes. "Back to stay?" he asked with his forehead puckering into a scowl.
Steele nodded. "Stay till the trail is shut up."
The scowl on Sandy’s forehead deepened. "Thought Wishin’ was on the hog’s back. Last I knew he was tryin’ to sell out to a party in Omaha. When did he come?"
Waymart crawled out of his bunk again and lighted his pipe. "We’ve been hunting’," he explained, "ye know. Didn’t git back ’til yesterday. Place may be full of folks and we none the wiser!"
"I don’t think you’re crowded up here yet," Steele rejoined. "And Wishing didn’t come until–when was it?–only a few days ago, he and his new partner."
"Pardner?" cried Sandy.
"Pardner!" echoed Waymart, holding his pipe in his hand. "What pardner?"
"Young chap," replied Steele, "about Doc’s height and–what age should you say, Doc?"
"Probably seventeen," returned Ross. "Notmuch over," adding, "his name is Jones, Leslie Jones. He’s from Omaha."
"Grub stake?" asked Waymart succinctly.
"More than that," answered Steele. "Jones is going to stay and help."
The scowl on Sandy’s forehead smoothed itself out. He grinned genially at Ross. "I wonder now," he mused, "if there’s enough of us old goats up here in Meadow Greek to round up the kids and take care of ’em!"
"What about the kids taking care of the goats?" laughed Steele. "Sometimes they’re bigger hustlers."
Sandy nodded lightly. "This air’ll take the hustle out quick enough. Such high mountains as these hain’t made fer hustlers."
As Ross was returning with Steele to Weimer’s shack, the superintendent glanced at him sidewise.
"I don’t believe," he said slowly, "that the McKenzies intend to winter here. Of course, there’s no object in their stayin’. We all know they’re not here to work their claims, and it isn’t necessary to stay in order to watch yours; and they’ve no winter supplies, nor," thoughtfully, "have they mud-chinked their cabin. You can see daylight anywhere between the logs. No, I don’t think they have any intention of staying."
Ross looked around the tiny valley, with its fringe of windy, inaccessible peaks, and thought of the long months ahead of him, shut in among those cruelly cold mountains.
"I hope they stay!" he declared fervently.
An hour later, having talked over the situation with Ross thoroughly, explained the amount of work necessary to be done in the tunnel, and given Weimer large chunks of advice, Steele rode away, driving his packhorses in front of him.
Ross watched him out of sight and then entered the shack whistling to keep his courage up. Inside he surveyed his temporary home with a shiver which stopped the whistle. "Uncle Jake," he suggested, "let’s clean house the rest of the day. Willing?"
Weimer, sitting on a box in front of the stove, assented without removing the pipe from his lips. "Ja, clean up all you vant to. I tink your fader was alvays vantin’ to clean mit der house."
"Think of my father’s ever cleaning out a cabin like this!" muttered Ross.
He stood helplessly in front of the door looking from the complacently smoking Weimer to the bags and boxes heaped on the floor and then around the dirt-encrusted room. He thought of Aunt Anne and her perfectly kept house with a great throb of homesickness. Then he thought ofhis father, who had got his "start" under such conditions as these and suddenly threw off his coat.
"It’s got to be done," he said aloud, "and I’ve got to do it!"
"Vat?" asked Weimer stupidly turning his goggles in Ross’s direction. Weimer was hugging his knees in a state of blissful content, the smoke from his pipe curling about his head and almost shutting from view the big young man on whose shoulders he had already shifted all burdens connected with the Grant-Weimer claims.
During the remainder of the day Ross worked cleaning up the cabin and packing away their winter supplies. When night came his bunk looked better to him than the supper which Weimer was preparing, and he dropped asleep sitting beside the table waiting for the flapjacks. But, instead of turning in directly after washing the supper dishes, as he had intended, he was forced to keep awake until nine o’clock entertaining the denizens of Meadow Creek Valley.
The McKenzies came over first. Weimer, who, when night approached, had removed his goggles, saw them coming first and raised his voice in protest.
"Ach! dem McKenzies! See here, poy, dey mustn’t come mit my cabin. Dey ist after dese claims. Vorstehen sie nicht?"
"Yes, yes, Uncle Jake, I understand," Ross returned soothingly. "But they can’t carry the claims away in their pockets to-night, and to-morrow morning we are going to bone down to work at such a rate that they’ll come up missing on their calculations altogether."
At the mention of work, Weimer groaned and retiring precipitately to his bunk lay there regarding the doorway hostilely through the smoke from his pipe. The next minute the doorway framed Sandy with Waymart close behind.
"Hello, Doc!" Sandy pushed his cap to the back of his head. "Mart and I, we’ve started out fer to pay our respects to Wishin’ Wilson. Want t’ hike along with us?"
Ross shrugged his shoulders and sat down on one end of the table, dish-cloth in hand. "Guess I’ve had hiking enough for one day, McKenzie. Let’s see. It’s two miles up there, isn’t it?"
"Yep;" Sandy lounged in and sat down on a box. "And by th’ same sign it’s two miles back. But, gosh, young man, a matter of four mile ain’t nothin’ in this country!" He surveyed Ross curiously. "How d’ye travel East? In a push cart?"
Ross grinned but flushed. "The trip over from Camp was on rather higher ground than I’ve ever seen before and it–well–it winded me," frankly."And this afternoon I’ve been hoeing out here. So I’m not exactly as fresh as a morning glory to-night."
Waymart came inside and looked around. Ross pushed a box in his direction and, after a moment’s hesitation and a civil nod in the direction of the bunk, the older McKenzie sat down and pulled his pipe out of his pocket.
"Ha, ha!" laughed Sandy. "When you’re a few months further away from Pennsylvany you’ll forgit that a shack needs a hoe, t’ say nothin’ of a broom." Then he addressed the bunk without looking toward it. "Uncle Jake, have you seen Wishin’?"
"Ja," growled Weimer uncivilly, "dat I have."
"How did he look?" smiled Sandy who seemed to enjoy the other’s "grouch."
"Look?" violently. "Vy, how should he look but shust like himself!"
Waymart chuckled, and Sandy was about to reply when footsteps were heard drawing near. Heavy shoes were crunching the stones and pine needles under foot, and voices sounded louder and louder.
"Must be Wilson and Jones," said Ross going to the door.
The room was lighted by two miner’s candlesticks driven into the side logs. One candle wasnear the door, and the light fell on the genial face of Wishing Wilson, who paused in the doorway to wring Ross’s hand and shout his greetings at the other occupants of the room, before stepping in and allowing his young partner to enter. When Ross finally held out his hand to Leslie Jones he knew that he was facing a boy as homesick as himself, rather than "Queen Victory’s youngest."
Leslie gripped the other’s hand as though its owner were a lifelong friend. "How do you make it up here?" he asked in a low tone.
"Don’t make it yet," responded Ross. "I just got here to-day. Steele came up with me."
Then he turned to introduce Leslie to the McKenzies and saw a tableau which puzzled him.
Waymart was staring at Leslie with amazed eyes and a lower jaw that slightly sagged. He held his pipe in front of his mouth surprised in the act of adjusting it between his lips. Sandy, rising, came blithely forward, and, in passing Waymart, stumbled and jostled against him. Waymart instantly recovered his lost poise. Lowering his pipe he slouched along behind Sandy and shook hands with Wilson’s partner. Wilson himself was over beside Weimer’s bunk telling at the top of his voice that he had come to a rock wall in his tunnel, and on the other side there must, without fail, be either a pocket of free gold or a lead that would make theclaims among the most valuable in the Shoshones. To this optimistic talk Leslie did not listen with the same absorbing interest he had shown at Sagehen Roost, Ross noticed.
In fact, a week of loneliness, coarse food and hard work had wilted Leslie Jones both physically and mentally. Abject weariness seemed to have robbed him of a part of his absorbing self-esteem. Furthermore, he appeared to Ross to be troubled as well as homesick. He looked at Sandy and Waymart unrecognizingly and sat down on a bench beneath the candle by the stove.
"We shall stay," Ross heard Wishing tell the McKenzies, "till the pass over Crosby threatens. Then we’ll hike it below to the coal claims."
"Didn’t know you had any," interrupted Sandy. "Where are they?"
"Up Wood River, only about a mile or such a matter from Camp. Fine outcroppin’ of coal. Best in the country. When the Burlington gits here they’ve got t’ have coal and I says to myself, ’There’s where you come up on top, Wishin’, you’ll have th’ coal t’ sell ’em,’ me and my pard now," he added with a glance at Jones.
The boy looked at him vaguely, as though he had not heard, and nodded. He sat with one knee thrown over the other, his back pressed against the side logs, his eyes so heavy that thelids kept drooping despite his efforts to keep awake. His hands were blistered, and his new corduroy suit dirty and torn. The air of newness which had characterized him when Ross first met him was gone. His hair had lengthened, and his cheeks revealed hollows. He said but little, being engaged in the absorbing effort to keep awake. Besides, Sandy and Wilson gave no one else a chance to talk. Waymart smoked stolidly staring at the candle above Leslie.
Ross, sitting with his elbows on the table, ceased to struggle against weariness, and, with his head on his arms, fell asleep. He awakened just in time to see his callers depart, whereupon he threw himself, dressed, in his bunk and slept until late the next morning.
During the next few weeks, all days seemed alike to Ross except Sunday. Early each Sunday morning he struck the trail for Miners’ Camp, the post-office, and Steele’s shack. At first he crept shudderingly over that quarter mile around the shoulder of Crosby. But soon his head lost every sense of giddiness, and his legs regained their accustomed strength, and his heart ceased to beat agitatedly at sight of the thousand-feet fall.
On the third Sunday he came into Steele’s shack with a brighter face than he had worn before.