III
They crested the last sharp rise, and looked down upon the little cabin huddling in the spruces—an island of humanity in the beautiful sea of the wilderness.
It seemed to Jim as if the small house brightened in appearance at the return of its soul; his heart in turn rose with a home feeling; his belief in the treasure which lay where the new channel cut across the old wash—that treasurewhich would make the world so different—came back to him like a renewed love. His hands ached for a grip on pick and shovel. His strong muscles twitched with eagerness to be at work again.
Suddenly a ponderous and gross sound, out of all proportion to the size of its source, smashed the mountain silence into slivers. It was the burro’s greeting to his companions, and the echoes fluttered it from cliff to cliff until it faded into the merest tint.
“Kerissmus! How many of dem is dere?” asked Ches, astonished at the demonstration. At that instant the herd welcomed the returned one.
The cañon was full of brays; colliding, rising, falling and swelling in a tumult of noise against which the dreadful shouting of the gods at the fall of Troy would have seemed as the wail of a kitten.
“Say, I don’t like dat!” said Ches. “What’s loose?”
Jim had watched the growing astonishment of the boy’s face with suppressed emotion, but now he hugged himself and uproariously laughed his laugh out.
“That, Ches,” he replied, “is a matter of fifteen or twenty donkeys and an echo—did you think it was the end of the world?”
“I t’ought it was gittin’ on well past der middle, all right,” retorted Ches. “What ’ud yer expeck of a man dat never heerd der like before?”
“I knew what to expect. I never heard them either till I came out here. I was digging a hole up the side of that hill yonder, and had begun to feel that there was something behind me, and that it was almost time to go home, when old Jack, who has the voice of his family, poured out his soul about twenty rods away. I was half way home, Ches, before I got sand enough to go back and investigate. But now listen, and you’ll hear something prettier than that.”
He put his fingers to his lips and whistled a bugle call.
“I can’t get ’em up,
I can’t get ’em up,
I can’t get ’em up in the morning,”
sounded Jim. And back came the pretty reveille in a fabric of music, indescribably interwoven; sharp and staccato from the neighboring walls; the lightest of whispers from the distance, turning and twisting upon itself and starting afresh when all seemed still.
“Say, datisprutty!” said Ches enthusiastically. “Hit her again!”
“Young man, you can come up here whenever you feel like it in the future, but as for now, I’m for home and grub.”
“Dat ain’t so bad, neither. Der animile’s jumped me up an’ down till I cud hold more’n a man. Dis spook’s hang-out business won’t quit, will it?”
“No, sir; that’s a fixture. Hang on tight now, and I’ll race you to the cabin—one, two, three!” and away sprinted Jim down the hill trail, the burro lumbering after.
“No fair! No fair!” yelled Ches. “Yer’ve got me skate doped! T’row us a tow!”
Jim wheeled at the doorway andtook in the excited, happy little figure bumping on the burro’s back. For once in his life he had the satisfaction of an indisputable proof that he had done well. With a sudden access of affection he caught the boy in his arms and stood him on the ground. “Well, here’s our home, Ches,” he said.
Home! The street Arab filled his puny chest, took a long, devouring look about him, and sought a definition of the word to make sound the lift of pride and hope that rose within him.
“Yer mean nobuddy kin chase us out of dis?”
“Nobody.”
“It’s our’n!” the boy went on withcurious vehemence. “Like dis here,” snatching an old knife from his pocket and shaking it in his tight fist, “ter t’row away, ter sell, er ter keep, and nobuddy got nuttin’ ter say about it?”
“Just that, laddybuck. That and nothing else.”
“No more slinkin’ an’ snoopin’ aroun’ dodgin’ der coppers; no more stallin’ fer der push; no more dirt of no kind—say, I can’t git dat jus’ in a minute.”
He stood grappling with the new idea. In the search an old one came to the top. His face changed rapidly. The furtive, hunted look returned. In a tone, the odd quiet of which contrastedwith the former heat, he spoke again. “Yer forme, now, ain’t yer, Jim? If—if der Gun should happen ter come here, yer wouldn’t t’row me down at dis stage of der game?”
The big man answered him with an equal soberness. He thrust a hand before the boy’s eyes—a splendid hand, massive and corded at the base, running out to long, shapely, intelligent fingers, and every line in it spoke of power.
“Do you see that hand, Ches?”
“Yessir.”
“If the ‘Gun’ shows his face where that hand can get a grip on him, it will do the business for him in one squeeze, and if the hand can’t reach, there’s arifle inside that can. Now get that out of your mind once for all.”
“Well—” said the boy, “well—aw, I’ll be damned, dat’s all I kin say, Jim,” and rushed into the house.
The miner leaned back and laughed, and blew his nose; and laughed again and blew his nose again; then he wiped the dust out of his eyes, swore a few words himself, and followed the boy within.
The next day Jim started on his work in earnest. Before, he had sunk a hole here or there in the broad smooth surface of the bar of gravel that he felt certain hid his bonanza.
Now, he determined to begin atthe creek bank and drift straight across the bar. That meant six hundred feet of tunnel at the best, unless fortune was much kinder than she had hinted at before—quite an undertaking for one man, considering the timbering and all.
It must have been a miner who wrote, that hope springs eternal in the human breast. Surely in no place other than the mines is the fact so manifest. There was once a man seventy-three years old who was sinking through a cap of cement two hundred feet thick. The stuff was just this side of powderwork, barely to be loosened with a pick. The old man had to climb down sixty feet of ladder, fill his bucket,climb up again and dump it, and so on and so on and so on. Besides, he had to walk thirty miles and back again with his load, whenever he ran out of provisions. It had taken him a year to put his shaft down the sixty feet. There was one hundred and forty more to go, each foot getting harder, the Lord only knew what would be at the bottom when he got there; yet to sit in that old man’s cabin for an hour was to obtain a complete exposition of the theory and practice of optimism. It is an unbelievable story and would be senseless, were it not entirely true.
Beside that effort, Jim’s task took on the tint of an avocation, but the manwho runs six hundred feet of tunnel single-handed earns whatever may be at the end of it.
The tunnel was the one thing that Ches abhorred in his new surroundings. Whether it was that it reminded him of the dingy holes of his city life, or whether it was a natural antipathy, Ches was one of those who can never enter a confined space without the sensation of smothering—at any rate, neither argument nor coaxing could get him to put a foot within its dark mouth.
An old miner would have shared his feelings in this instance, for Jim, so thorough in some things, was a carelessworkman. Your old miner would have shaken his head at the weak caps and recklessly driven lagging; frames out of plumb and made of any stick that came to hand—more especially as they were to support loose dirt of the most treacherous sort.
Ches worked outside, dumping the car that Jim had made of four tree sections for wheels, and sluice-box boards for sides. Jim, the ingenious, had rigged up a pulley system, whereby Ches could run the car out and in without interrupting the work on the face.
It was hard labor for Ches at first, but he gritted his teeth and stuck it out manfully.
“Bime-by,” he would say to himself, “I’ll have er muscle on me like Jim, an’ den I’ll yank dis cussed ol’ car right out in der middle of der crik,” and he examined the small bunch on his arm critically a dozen times every day.
Meanwhile, his hero and idol was outdoing the human in his exertions. The effort he put forth would have killed an ordinary man. He fought the stubborn earth as though it were an enemy. Stripped to the waist, bent over in the low tunnel, hour after hour Jim plied the pick and shovel with the regularity and power of a machine. There was at once something fascinating andheroic in the rippling glide of the muscles over his broad back, and in the supple swing that sent the pick to join the packed dirt.
It all looked so easy. It was as if the dirt were very soft, and not the striker very strong. Nevertheless, fourteen hours a day of this, varied occasionally by cutting timbers and carrying them by hand to the tunnel—some of them a weight enough for a horse, others not adequate, “just as they came” being careless Jim’s motto—told even on his engines.
They had a certain mark on the cañon side—a wild-cat’s hole it was—and when the sun threw the shadow ofthe western wall upon the mark, the day’s work was finished.
Ches used to watch this with attention. “Yer move along all right till yer gits half way up, den yer jus’ crawls, yer ol’ beggar!” was his standing remark on the progress of the shadow. Still, he always gave good measurement.
Toward the last of the month Jim grew an interest in their clock.
“Where’s the blame thing now, Ches?” would come hollowly out of the tunnel.
“Three more cars away, Jim,—jus’ tippin’ the white rock.”
Then the cheery shout of “All over!”and the worker stepping out into the fresh air, soft and cool in the twilight, hooking the sweat from his forehead, and wishing that supper would cook itself. Sometimes the wild-cat looked down upon them from his eyrie.
“Ches,” said weary Jim, “if that lad thinks at all, he must think we’re awful fools.”
“He wouldn’t be so tur’ble off his guess, neider,” replied the equally weary Ches.
After supper, however, the world seemed different. There was Jones’s Hill—(a man of large ideas, was Jones, to call that mass of rock a hill)—shining red-hot in the last light against atopaz or turquoise sky, and the gulch that ran up to it in a mystery of dark green gloom offering up an evening prayer of indescribable odors—those appeals to a life in former spheres which no other sense remembers; the ceaseless roar of the wind in the pines, so steady that it formed a background for other sounds almost as good as silence itself; the evening pipe, and the talk of what had been done and what was to be done—all these made amends.
And then the sleeping—such sleeping! And waking up in the morning in the exact attitude one went to sleep the night before! Sleep that washed out all the former day’s fatigue, and startedthem as eager as hounds for that of the new day. That is, within limits, for, when a man overworks as continually as Jim had done, no paradise sleep nor balsam air can turn him right perpetually.
And for that reason the claim declared a holiday, consisting of a hunting trip. It was a curious hunting trip. Not one “bang!” went the clean and polished rifle. They stalked four deer, crawling on their bellies, quivering with the chase, rounding behind rocks. Then when the game was within range, up went the rifle, Jim squinted along the sights—then dropped it.
“What’s der matter?” whisperedChes. He had been waiting for a long time to hear the gun go off.
“They seem to be having a pretty good time by themselves there, Ches.”
“Yes—dat’s so—but I’ve heard deer-meat was good.” Ches was disappointed at this manner of hunting.
“So it is,” replied Jim, “probably nobody has that notion stronger than the deer.” He followed the four pretty animals below them with tense eyes. He loved to hunt but he hated to kill.
“See here, boy,” he said, sitting down and pulling off his boots, “I think I can show you some fun—do you notice they’re feeding up to that nose of rock? Well I used to be rather quick on myfeet once, and I think if I can slip down behind there without their winding me, if one gets close enough I can catch him with my hands—which is a trick I’d like muchly to accomplish. Now you sit here and watch, and for your life, don’t make a move or sound! By Jiminy! if I could do that!” He trotted light-footed down the slope out of sight.
The boy soon saw him reappear behind the sharp rock-wall that jutted out into the valley, rubbing crushed pine-needles upon himself with the idea of overpowering the human odor, although, whether effective in its purpose or not, it was not necessary—astrong up-wind from deer to man making it impossible that they could scent him.
They waited and they waited, a big man crouched like a tiger below, and a highly excited small boy above, while the deer did every exasperating thing that animals could do.
They started straight for the rock, grazing along, and then for no reason in the world beat back on their tracks, or turned to right or left. They even went so far as to lie down, chewing most contentedly.
One hour went by—two—when suddenly the buck rose and walked straight up the cañon in a course that wouldtake him within twenty feet of the rock. Jim heard him snort and prepared for action, laying hold of a corner of stone to get a spring from all-fours.
The deer’s shadow floated black on the grass before him, and Jim leaped—to the biggest surprise of his life, for instead of making the least effort to escape, the buck charged, and that with such sudden fury it was all the man could do to lay hold of him anywhere as they came to dirt together.
The next ten seconds was delirium, each combatant doing something as quick as he could without any definite aim. Jim received a painful rake across the chest from the antlers, anda jab in the leg from the sharp hoofs, while the deer was the worse for several bangs over the head and an ear nearly pulled off, as they rolled over together.
It came over Jim with the force of a revelation that he had got into a very different business from that which he had intended. Instead of the “timid deer” whose capture was the difficulty, he found himself engaged with a horned and hoofed demon, and the problem was how to get away.
Meanwhile, Ches had legged it down the hill-side at his best speed, enthusiastically cheering what he supposed was a prearranged performance. Jimhad promised him fun, and that whirling heap below supplied plenty of it.
“Hooray!” yelled Ches. “Hooray! Hold him dere, Jim, till I get down!”
Jim heard the shrill voice, as he succeeded, after a desperate effort, in getting an arm around the deer’s neck, so that he could do something in the choking line, and he smiled grimly in the heat of battle. “All right, Ches!” he gasped. “Don’t—hurry!”
“Keep out of this!” he yelled a moment later as Ches burst out from the bushes. “You’ll get killed!”
But Ches was not to be denied. He danced around the pushing, tugging, straining storm-center, and the momentopportunity offered, slipped in and seized the buck by a hind leg.
If he had touched an electric battery, the effect could not have been more instant. The deer fanned that muscular hind leg, with its boy attachment, at the rate of seven hundred strokes to the minute. Poor Ches’ head was nearly snapped off his shoulders, and the breath was literally jerked out of his body, but he hung on, with all the strength that pulling the car had given him.
It was not much help, but it was a diversion. Jim gulped a lungful of air, gathered his powers and came down with all his might. Slowly thestubborn neck, bent—so slowly that Jim feared he would give out before gaining the mastery. As it yielded, his leverage increased, and at last, exerting every ounce of strength that was in him, he downed the foe and held him there, his leg over the front legs whose armament he had felt before, and was not desirous of feeling again.
But the deer gave up the struggle, and lay quiet, looking up with great pleading eyes.
“Yes, you devil!” cried Jim, “you look meek enough now, but if you weren’t a handful of hard luck ten seconds ago I never ran across one. You hurt, Ches?”
“I got a lovely t’ump on me smeller, but I’m in it yet—do I let go or don’t I?”
“Not on your life—wait a moment!” He worked his weight over on the deer’s body. “Now!” he said. “Quick! Jump loose!” Again the deer glanced up reproachfully, as though to say, “How suspicious you are!”
The instant Ches jumped clear, so did Jim. They watched their late antagonist, who sprang to his feet and went off with frisky leaps, apparently as fresh as ever.
Then they looked at each other. Ches was rubbing his stomach with his left hand, while he wiped the blood fromhis nose with the right. Jim’s coat and trousers were torn; he had a deep scratch across his chest, a gouge in his leg, and he trembled from the exertion.
“Well—Ches!” he panted, “we’ve—had—a—nice—rest—haven’t we?”
“Wouldn’t it ‘a’ been tur’ble if yer hadn’t caught him?” replied Ches. And then they simply whooped.
A good incident is an opal among gems in a lonely life. You can turn it over and over and always get new colors.
On the home trip, as Nimrod Jim stalked along with his follower trotting beside, they rehearsed every detail of the unexpected encounter. Jimcrouched and leaped again, giving his sensations when the buck did likewise. Then he waited while Ches ran down a side hill and threw himself upon a sapling, which for the time was a deer’s hind leg.
They were just of an age—any one would have said so, on seeing them approach the cabin, arms flying, tongues wagging, bruised, tired and happy.
“Jim,” said a very sleepy little boy after supper, gorged like an anaconda, “yer don’t see t’ings like dat in N’york—not much yer don’t. If dat racket had come off in der Bowery, dere’d be head-lines—’dlines—on der extries—more’n a mile—”
Jim picked him up and tucked him into his bunk. “More’n a mile long—g’ nigh’,” sighed Ches.
Jim lit his pipe and went out for an evening smoke. It was some little time the next morning before he could realize what he was doing out there under the tree.
He had been in some ways a graver man of late. What he had undertaken as an experiment, a generous impulse, had been turned into a lasting responsibility.
IV
On the second day after Ches’ arrival, Bud had come through with the mail, and before leaving, drew Jim aside, out of the boy’s hearing.
“The little feller’s yours agin all comers now, Jim,” he said.
“What’s that?” asked Jim, surprised by the meaning in the tone.
“He’syours,” repeated Bud. “That sweet-scented blossom that called himself the boy’s dad, filled his skin withred-eye farther up the line and settled the fuss he had with his dame.”
“Hurt her?”
“Man!” said Bud slowly, “he used a knife a foot long—gave it to her a dozen times as hard as he could drive—what’s your opinion?”
“Lord Almighty! Did he get away? But no, of course he couldn’t, being on the train—”
“He didn’t get away. The Con. wired the news to Kimballs. What was he to do when a small army of punchers boarded the train and took the prisoner? He couldn’t do nothing, and he never loved that black-muzzled whelp from the time he sassed him in thedepot. The punchers took our friend out and tried him.”
“Tried him?”
“With a rope. In three minutes by; the watch he was found wanting—your boy now, Jim, as I was telling you. Going to say anything to him about it?”
“Why,” said Jim, bewildered, “why, I don’t know, Bud—guess not, just yet, on general principles. What do you think?”
“Think you’re right,” said Bud. “The poor little rooster couldn’t help but feel glad to hear the news, but it would sound kind of awful to hear a kid like that say he was glad two people were killed. Better wait till he’sbeen with you a while, Jim, and learned something different.”
Jim flushed at the implied compliment. “You’re right, Bud, I will.”
“Great little papoose, ain’t he?” said Bud, turning in his saddle before his starting rush. “Makings of a man there, all right. The boys in town are dead stuck on him. I’ll have to give a complete history when I get back. I must get a gait on, or I’ll have Uncle Sammy on my neck again—inspector started out with me this morning.”
“The devil he did!” cried Jim indignantly, well knowing the hardships and dangers of the big rider’s route.
“Oh, it’s all right!” replied Bud witha wave of his hand. “Come out fine. When the lad first told me he’d been sent out to see why the mails was so late on this line, I told him I’d show him right on the spot, but he said there was no use getting hot about it, as he was only doing his duty, so I quieted down.
“He was a decent sort of feller. I thought to myself before we got under way, ‘Now, there won’t nothing happen this day—everything’ll go as smooth and slick as grease, and this feller will report that I’m sojering,’ that’s the way it usually works, you know. But this time I played in luck.
“Two miles out of town we ran into a wild-eyed gang from somewhere,who was going to make us dance. We didn’t dance, and I’ll say for that inspector that he stood by me like a man, but he was awful sick at his stomach later on from the excitement.
“Next thing, the bridge was down at Squaw Creek, and we swum her. He’d have gone down the flume, if I hadn’t got hold of his bridle. ‘Nice mail route, this,’ says he, as he got ashore. ‘Oh, you’d like it,’ says I, ‘if you got used to it.’ I’d begun to wonder what was next myself. Ain’t many people swimming Squaw Creek, as you perhaps know.
“Well, next was about ten mile along, just before you come to the old Tin-cup Camp. We was passing the bluff there,and all of a sudden, rip, thump, biff! Down comes what looked like the whole side a-top of us. It weren’t though. It was only a cinnamon had lost his balance, leaning over too far to see what we was. That bear landed right agin brother inspector’s horse, and brother inspector’s horse tried to climb a tree. Inspector himself fell a-top of the bear. I dassent shoot, for the devil himself couldn’t have told which was inspector and which bear. Finally bear shakes himself loose and telescopes himself up the cañon, the worst scared animile in the country. ‘If you’ll ketch my horse, I’ll amble back again,’ says the inspector. ‘I’ve investigatedthis route pretty thorough, and find it’s just as you say. Lamp-posts’ll do me all right for a while.’ Come out fine, didn’t it?
“Whish there! Untie yourself, you yaller bone-heap!” And the mail was a quarter of a mile up the trail.
Jim pondered the information concerning Ches carefully, only to adhere to his original determination. He could not see any way in which the boy would be benefited by hearing the news. Still, the miner hated anything that savored of concealment or deception.
“I wish Anne was here to help me,” he thought; “she’d know what to do.”
He sat long, looking down, his handsclasped about his knees, drinking with old Tantalus. But the reverie ended as it always did—in action. There was nothing for it but the claim. Success there meant success everywhere.
It was the knowledge that Anne, the boy, and all he wished to do for both depended on the pay-streak which had urged him to such a fury of effort.
His carelessness of his own life, that led him to slap his timbering up any way, was born of that same fury. And the consequences came like most consequences, without a moment’s warning.
It was a still and beautiful noon. Ches had pulled out the last car before dinner, and started for the cabin.
A curious groaning and snapping from the tunnel halted him. It was the giving of the tortured timbers. On the heels of that came a dull, crushing roar. A blast of dust shot from the tunnel-mouth, like smoke from a cannon, preceded by a shock that nearly threw the boy off his feet.
Then all was still again. The sun shone as brilliantly as before, blazing down upon the ghastly face of a little boy, who, after one heart-broken cry of “Jim! Oh, Jim’s killed!” sank down upon the ground, chewing the fingers thrust in his mouth, that the pain might make the black wave keep its distance.
For Ches knew that he was alone;that there was no human being within miles to help the man caught in the hand of that mischance but himself, so frantically willing, but so impotent.
“I must git me wits tergedder—I must!” and down came the teeth with all the strength of the boy’s jaw. “Oh, what will I do? What will I do?” The little head waved from side to side in its agony, and a sudden sob struck him in the throat.
After that one small weakness rose Ches Felton, hero. To the mouth of the tunnel he went. Above the tumbled pile of dirt and timber ran a sort of passage, between it and the roof.
A way along which a boy mightcrawl and find out if all the frames were down—to which the silence of the tunnel gave a bitter assent—or if by some most lucky chance one or two had held, and Jim be safe within.
Ches climbed to the top and thrust his head into the gloom. “Jim!” he called, “Jim!” No answer.
Before him lay the ruin of his pardner’s work. It was over this that his path lay, as deadly dangerous a path as could be found. The slightest disturbing of the roof above might bring down a thousand tons of dirt upon the one who ventured, slowly and hideously to crush his life out, there in the dark, beyond sight and sound of the cheerfulworld without. With this knowledge before him, and his inborn fear of the dark hole, as daunting as the hand of death itself, he took his soul in his gripe, and wormed his way within.
Sometimes his back grazed a stone in the roof, and the touch of white-hot iron could not have been so terrible; sometimes a falling stone near him would make his heart leap and stop as he waited for the hill above to follow. Foot by foot he made it, twisting around the end of a post, scooping out the dirt most cautiously where the hole was too small for even his slight body.
Once the sharp end of a broken piece of lagging caught in his clothes, and hecould go neither forward nor back. There, for a second, he broke down. Bracing up again, he managed somehow to get the old knife out of his pocket and cut himself free.
He could see little.
A gray spectral light filtered in here and there that defined nothing, even when his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness.
It was an endless journey. In places where the dirt closed in he would be a full minute progressing a foot, and a minute of such mortal terror as seldom falls to the lot of man of peace or soldier.
But it ended.
Suddenly the boy’s outstretched hand encountered only emptiness below. That frame had held. He dove into the space head first, and landed on something soft and warm—the body of his pardner.
He had found him. In a paroxysm of joy, he flung himself upon the motionless figure and cried his heart out. This, too, he soon conquered. Jim had just so much show—any delay might wipe it out. He searched the man’s pockets until he found a match. By its light he saw the candle stuck into the post, and lit it. Then he knelt beside his pardner again.
It was a curious picture within thatgloomy chamber underground. The miner lying stark, stretched to his full great length, appearing enormous in the flickering candle-light, and the child, white-faced, big-eyed, but steady as a veteran, wiping the blood from the ragged cut in the man’s head.
Ches realized what had happened the instant before the calamity. Jim, startled by the noise of the yielding timbers, had made a rush, only to be struck down by the rock, that now lay within an inch of him; yet struck into safety for all that. Had he gone a yard farther, the life would have been smashed out of him instantly.
But now, what? The flowing blood sent a sickening chill through the boy. Had he done this much only to be able to see his pardner die? He drove his teeth into his hand again at the thought. What was that? Was it a trick of the tunnel, his heart sounding in his own ears, or a rhythmic beat from outside? Hollow and dull fell that “clatter-clum-clatter-clum.”
“Bud!” screamed Ches, “T’ank God, dat’s Bud!”
After half a dozen efforts he climbed the dirt pile and went back through the treacherous holes. The rider came so fast! “Oh!” groaned the boy, “I’ll never make it! Bud’ll t’ink we’re off somewheres an’ pull on!—Bud! BUD!”he called at the top of his lungs; but the tunnel swallowed the little voice.
Desperation made him entirely reckless. It was any way to get out before the mail-man was beyond call. Glairy with sweat, he pulled, tugged, squirmed and wriggled along, until a dirty, small bundle rolled down almost under the mail-rider’s feet.
“Whoa!” shouted Bud with an astonished oath. “What’s the—why boy, what’s the matter? Damn it! how you scart me!”
One look at him froze the man; he said no more, but waited, watching the working face of the child, who wasmastering himself once more, in order to tell a quick, straight story, that no time might be lost.
“Der tunnel’s fell in, Bud; Jim’s in dere where der frame’s held. He’s livin’ yet, but he’s got a tur’ble cut in his head.”
The mail-rider drew out paper and tobacco, and rolled a cigarette. It was his method of biting his hand. He loved the man inside that dark blotch on the hill-side with an affection only known where men are few and strong. And because he loved him, Bud was going to keep his head cool and clear, to find the right thing to do and do it the right way.
For all his calm outer man the mind within was whirling. He turned to the tense little face before him for help, and with an admiration that knew no bounds.
“How far back?” he asked.
“T’ree frames was held—dere was seven, ten foot apart—how much is dat?”
“Forty feet—ten foot apart! No wonder! Oh, Jim! How could you have been so careless?”
The boy’s shoulders shook once. “He worked like er horse—now it’s all gone an’ he’s in dere—” The face was contorted out of all humanity, but he held the tears back.
Bud leaped from his horse. “Never you mind, Chessy lad!” he cried, hugging up the little figure, “we’ll get him out of that, by God!—Could we haul him out the way you went?”
“No, dere ain’t room—an’ if you touch dat roof hard—” he shuddered.
Bud sucked in his breath. “If you weren’t the sandy little man to try it!” he said. He stood a moment in silence going over it all.
“Ches,” he said, “there ain’t any time to lose. If Jim’s cut like that he may bleed to death in there when we could save him all right if we had him outside.
“There’s a party of miners down theroad eight mile. They was having their grub as I went by. Chances are they’ll be there yet. They’ve got four men and a team. Icouldride back, but I ought to be here working. Do you think you could stick on old Buck and ride there?”
“I kin.”
“By God! I hate to do it—but there ain’t any other way!” The big man ground his teeth together. “I hate to do it—damned if I’ll do it!”
Ches caught his hand. “I kin make it, Bud,” he pleaded; “I cuddent do nothin’ if I stayed here, an’ you could do a heap. Put me up and let me try.”
“All right,” said Bud. “The goodLord kept you from getting hurt in the tunnel, perhaps He’ll see you through again. Shut your eyes and hold on tight when you strike the high places, and don’t touch a rein—leave it all to old Buck.”
He stepped forward and caught the horse by the bit.
“Buck!” he said, as though talking to a human being, “you and me have been through a heap together—don’t fall down on me, now!—Take the kid safe, old boy!” He caught Ches up and threw him across the saddle. “You’ll only have to tell ’em what’s happened—the Lord send nothing happens to you! Good-by, you bravelittle devil—we’ll win out yet. Go it, Buck!”
And while one of Jim’s friends plied pick and shovel like a mad man, the other was swaying on top of a galloping horse, gripping the pommel of the saddle with all the strength he had, and shutting his eyes when he came to the high places.
Captain Hanrahan’s party were miners of substance. They were working their way out to a new country to suit their inclinations. It had just been suggested that it was perhaps time to hit the trail again when the captain saw a figure on a horse flying athwart the mountain side—the regular road was bad enough, but Bud had short cuts of his own, and Buck followed his usual way.
“Huh!” said the captain, “that man’s drunk or crazy?”
“Holy sufferin’!” gasped the man next him, as the yellow horse slipped on a turn and sent a shower of gravel a thousand feet below. “That was a near touch,” as the horse caught himself and swept on.
“Looks to me like a case of trouble, Cap,” said a third speaker. “That ain’t no man, anyhow—it’s only a boy.”
“Horse running away with him, probably—his folks ought to be clubbed for letting him out on such ananimal. Well, spread out, boys, and we’ll catch him.”
But Buck stopped in two jumps, at Ches’ command of “Whoa!”
“Fren’s!” cried the boy, “me pardner’s caught in a tunnel dat caved in on him. Kin yer help us out? Three mile above Jones’s Hill.”
He had not finished the sentence before two men sprang for the horses. The rest grabbed picks and shovels and hurled them into the wagon.
“We’ll be there, hell-a-whooping,” said Captain Hanrahan.
“T’anks!” replied Ches weakly, and then the world went out. The captain caught him as he fell.
“Poor little cuss! He rid hard to help his pardner!” said the captain. “Hump yourselves, boys—all ready! Got the whisky, Pete? Picks enough? Stick the axes where they won’t jump loose and cut a leg off some of us. Tie the horse behind—good animal, that. All right, let ’em go!”
They went. Over stones and gulleys, the tools clanging and banging fit to leap from the wagon, the men clinging to the side-boards for dear life.
Down hill-sides like the slant of a roof, the horses keeping out of the way of the wagon; up the other side with the reeking animals straining every fiber; over bridges that bent fearfullybeneath the shock of their onset; swaying around curves with the wheels sluing and sparks flying, and over the level as though the devil himself were behind them.
It was the record trip for eight miles in a wagon in that country. The driver stood up, a foot braced on either side, the reins thrown loose, the whip plied hard, and every urging that voice could give shrieked out by his powerful lungs.
It was like the rush of a fire-engine, plus twice the speed, and twenty times the danger. Above the pounding of hoofs, the din of rattling metal, the crash, smash and roar of the wheelsand the yells of the driver could be heard the man Pete, ex-cowpuncher, cheerfully singing,
“Roll your tails, and roll ’em high,
We’ll all be angels by-and-by.”
Braced in the back corner sat Captain Hanrahan, his leg keeping some of the tools from going overboard, holding Ches in his arms.
“Curse it all, Billy!” he screamed to the driver, “misssomeof them bumps, will you? I’ve got on a new pair of pants.”
“I’ll take ’em clean off you the next time, Cap!” retorted the driver.
They joked, which may seem heartless; but they risked their necks a hundred times, and that isn’t very heartless.
“That’s the place, I reckon, Cap!” said the driver, pointing. “Somebody working there now!”
“Give ’em a hoot!” replied the captain.
Bud stepped out and held up his hand in answer to the yell. The wave of thanksgiving at the sight of this most efficient help took all the stiffness out of the knees of the mail-rider. The tears rolled down his face unnoticed.
“You’re welcome, boys,” he cried, as the driver sawed the frenzied teamto a standstill and the men sprang out.
“Reckon we are,” said the captain. “Now what’s up?”
“Is the boy hurt? Good God! He ain’t hurt himself, has he?”
“Naw; pore little cuss is used up, that’s all. He’ll be around all right in a minute. Now tell me, what’s loose.”
Bud answered briefly, but completely.
“Pete and Billy, get to cutting wood—the rest of you come here,” commanded the captain.
“You ain’t going to stop to timber, are you?” asked Bud in an agony of haste.
“I sure am,” replied the captain.“All this trouble’s come of carelessness. Now you just keep your clothes on, and let me run this thing.
“We’ll have your friend out in no time, and there won’t be no more men stuck in there with a hill a-top of ’em in the doing of it. What you’ve done there is a help all right, but it might easy have meant that we’d had two men instead of one to hunt for.”
“You’re dead right,” said Bud. “Tell me what I’m to do.”
The captain took hold as only a man can who has the genius for it. He knew by long practice what size of a relief tunnel meant real speed of progress—the least dirt to be removed to make itpossible that men could work to advantage. And his tunnel, safely rough-ceiled, went in at the rate of a foot a minute.
When at last they pulled the insensible man out into the light of day, and found that while his wound, though severe, and if neglected mortal, was not likely to be dangerous with good attention, the captain said that he must be getting about his business.
“Oh, stay a little longer, fellers, till he comes to,” remonstrated Bud. “He’d like to have a chance to say ‘Thank you.’”
“Bugs!” replied the captain. “You tell him he owes us a drink, and as aparticular favor to me, please not to put his frames over four foot apart in that ground.
“We’re likely to be back here shortly, anyhow, because I think your friend has got hold of the right idea from what you tell me of his plans; but it’ll take more’n one man to really prospect it. If we don’t hit it where we’re going, we’ll sure come back.”
“Well, boys,Ican thank you and I’m going to,” said Bud. “That man is my friend, and if you hadn’t come as you did—”
“Say, let go,” interrupted the captain. “You’d have done the same thing if you’d been us, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” admitted Bud reluctantly.
“And you wouldn’t want to be thanked for it a white chip more’n we do,” concluded the captain. “If there’s any thanks coming it is to that little two-foot chunk of man yonder. Snaking over that fall was a thing to put a crimp in anybody. You was bound to help your pardner, wasn’t you, son?”
The boy looked up into the captain’s eagle face. “I’d ’er got to Jim,” he answered simply, “’f I’d had ter chew me way in like a rat.”
The captain stepped back and looked at him.
“By the Lord!” he said slowly, “I believe you would!” A change came overthe thin, arrogant face. He stooped suddenly, raised the boy and kissed him. “Now, get out o’ this!” he roared at the driver, as he leaped into the wagon.
They waved their hands as long as the miners were in sight, and stood staring until Pete’s statement that they’d all be angels by-and-by was lost in the distance.
“Pretty good folks when you’re in trouble, ain’t they, Ches?” said Bud.
“What ’ud we have done, if dey hadn’t come?—Ain’t it ’mos’ time Jim was moving, Bud?”
“I’ll give him another spoonful of whisky, but you can’t expect him tostart right up and hop around. He got an awful crack, boy.”
For all that, as the dose of strong liquor went down Jim’s throat, he opened his eyes.
“Hello, Bud! Hello, Ches!” he said wonderingly. “Have I been asleep?—Why, what the devil’s the matter with my head?” he raised his hand to the spruce-gum bandage. “Phew! But I feel weak!” he sighed as his hand dropped. “Something’s happened—what is it?”
There, with a friend on each side holding a hand, they told him the story. It was a sacred reunion.
The gratitude of the man saved, andthe protestations of the others that they would have done all they did a thousand times again would only seem childish in repetition. They cried, too, which is excusable in a child, but not in two big men. Men don’t cry. It is the monopoly of women. Nevertheless, Bud and Jim and Ches cried and swore, and shook hands and cried again until it was a pitiful thing to see.
“Well,” said Bud at last, “this makes you feel better, but it won’t get the work done. I’ve got to go out and fix old Buck and get in some firewood.”
“Oh, I’ll do that!” cried Jim, raising himself on his elbow.
“You?” jeered Bud. “You look like it! Now, you lie right down there and get well—that’s your play. It would make us feel as if we’d wasted our time if we had to turn to and bury you after all the trouble we’ve had. You’re good for two weeks in that bunk, old horse.”
“Two weeks! I can’t, Bud; I can’t! I must get up before that!”
“You lie down there—hear me?”
“But I’ll have to see to things around—you can’t stay.”
“I stay right here till you’re well.”
“But the mail?”
“The devil take the mail—or anybody else that wants the job. Uncle Sammy won’t hop on to my collar button,because of the fine send-off my friend the inspector’ll give. And somebody will get orry-eyed up in town, and come down to find what’s loose. He’ll take the bags then. It’s all settled.”
“But there are other things—”
“Let ’em rest. Now I’m off to do the chores—oh, say, speaking of mail, here’s a letter for you I forgot all about in the excitement—here you go. Come along, Ches, and help me carry wood.”
The miner looked at the letter in his hand, and a tinge of blood crept into his white cheeks, then ebbed, leaving them whiter than before.
Suppose there were other men who wanted her; men with money, learning,wit and influence. Was this bitterest of blows to fall upon him when he was already down? He looked at his hands, green from loss of blood. “I tried,” he muttered, “I tried.”
Still the very touch of the paper seemed to have something warm and heartening in it. It was fromher, anyhow. With sudden strength he tore it open and read: