Copper Creek had begun as a half-way house, and had ended as a camp. Thus the hotel was its oldest structure.
Situated about half way between Rockerville and Custer, on the old Spring Creek trail, it often happened that the stage running from Rapid to the last-named town would stop for the evening meal, or even for the night, at the little log structure which Bill Martin had been sagacious enough to erect there. The soil was good for potatoes, which was lucky, for Bill Martin could never have prospered as a hotel keeper pure and simple; because purity, simplicity, and temperance principles have nothing to do with a Western inn. Bill cooked, made beds, and raised potatoes. Then a fortuitous "grub staker" discovered the Great Snake lode. A town sprang up in the night, so Bill Martin hired Black Jack and built additions. And finally, since his food was good and cheap, it came to be the proper thing to eat late dinners at two dollars a week in the long dining-room of Bill Martin's new building. After the Little Nugget, a later but more enterprising venture, Bill Martin's Prairie Dog, with its small office, its big eating room, its little square bedrooms above the office, and its ancient and musty copies of distant journals, was acknowledged to be the most important institution of the place.
From the narrow, roofless stoop its proprietor looked out tranquilly on the growth of the camp. He was a tall, cadaverous, facetious individual, slightly stooped, with thin impassive face, deep eyes, and a beard that seemed always just two days old. He spoke with a drawl that was at first natural, but later, as the quaint old fellow grew to appreciate its humorous qualities, it took on a faint color of affectation. He adopted always the paternal attitude, as was clearly his right.
Bill Martin was probably the only man who could have told you the history of Copper Creek, for he had been, through all of its changes of population, the one stable character. First came the original "grub staker" and a score more like him—impecunious, giving, many of them, their labor and experience, in exchange for tools and provisions furnished them by a speculator in the towns. The speculator took half of what was found. These men were hardy, bold, enduring, skilful. They grubbed about in the hills with the keen restless instinct of ants over a mould of earth, moving rapidly, pausing often, lighting finally, with an accuracy that to the outsider would have seemed something preternatural, on the one quartz vein of the many, or the one significant lead in the multitude of systems that seamed the country in all directions. Thereupon they staked out claims with white pine posts, and blasted little troughs to show milk-white quartz or red ore filling. And finally they disappeared, like bats before daylight, leaving not an echo of themselves to recall their presence to the hills in which they had toiled.
Their places were taken by the speculator, the miner with a little money, the small capitalist willing to invest and not unwilling to work with his own hands. These men paid a certain modest amount to the first discoverers for the chance to take chances on the embryo mines. The prospector never had the patience to wait, or scheme, or develop, to the justification of a better price. The excitement of the chase was his. He was a master who sketched, in bold comprehensive strokes, the design of a work which men patient in the little details must fill in with color and value. Having thus outlined the lifetimes of men, the prosperity of the whole great industry that was to be, he was content to move on to where a new and virgin country offered a fresh canvas to his creative genius. He was always poor, but he never pitied himself.
The new owner, then, represented the investor. He expected no immediate returns. He was willing to wait. Meanwhile he spent as much time in going over the fifty thousand square yards of his one claim as his predecessor had in examining the whole twenty-five hundred square miles of the district. He carefully analyzed the lead, its tendencies, its virtues, its defects. When he had fully satisfied his mind, he sank neat, square-timbered shafts, from fifty to two hundred feet in depth, from which ramified tunnels, both across and along the drift. The débris he piled outside, without attempting to save its value. In this manner, gradually, he came to possess points of view from which the next purchaser of the claim could plainly see its worth and possibilities.
For this second proprietor never expected to make his profit from the ore. That accrued later, and to another man. When the country became a little known, the other man would happen along; he, in his turn, would be willing to invest; and the present holder of the property, the middleman in this queerly constructed industry, could measure the success of his undertaking by the difference between the price he had paid to the original "grub staker" and the price he now received from the future developer. Meanwhile, he worked hard with his hands.
Thus the camp presented the phenomenon of a community prospering on nothing more tangible than hope. When the cabins began to crowd thicker and thicker between the walls of the little gulch, Bill Martin had been forced to give up agriculture because of lack of room; so that Copper Creek produced absolutely nothing, not even potatoes. Every cent of its present and actual value came from outside, either with the men themselves, or with some investor who brought in the price of wages for a contemplated improvement. Only as long as there existed in men's minds the comparative certainty of a future stamp mill, by which the quartz could be made to give up its treasure, would the machinery of life run well. Hope depended on confidence.
The miners built themselves cabins in which to live, and so there came into being a town. It was a dusty, new little town; but venerable in its age—old air from the first. The cabins themselves were low and dark, flanking the street closely, a sort of monotone of brown, by which the stable, the saloon, and the hotel were thrown into stronger relief; the one by virtue of its wide-open door, the other two because of their porch and painted front respectively. These structures held the eye. One noticed the cane chairs on the stoop; the bench outside the saloon; the dumped down saddles, the hay dust, the lazy loafers about the stable. And always one drew aside instinctively to the edge of the broad, white, dusty street, as if to let pass a horse race, or a train of cars, or something equally swift and irresistible.
The camp lived on each side of that river of blinding white; never in it. Later, perhaps, when Copper Creek reached the industrial or producing stage, and became domestic, it would be a Rubicon over which contending armies of small boys would dispute the supremacy of the north and south side of the town. Now it wore a constant air of being quite empty. Perhaps nothing was more characteristic, struck the eye more forcibly, lingered longer in the memory as the dominant note in the impressionistic picture of the place, than this single silent road; not even the sombre cabins, or the great pine-clad hills, or the clear mountain air imparting a quality of its own to the very appearance of things, or the little singing brook that ran behind one row of cabins and the stable, or the eagles wheeling and screaming so far up in the blue Western sky. The town seemed to draw back on either side of the road to avoid spoiling its effect, over-awed by it, humbled by its dignified solemnity. Copper Creek would have been willing to have its history recounted by that road, which was primarily, indeed, the cause of its being.
And Bill Martin, in the cane chair of his stoop, the only man capable of recounting that history, owed most of his unique knowledge of events to the ancient thoroughfare. Men came from the lower gulch, abode their brief hour, and disappeared into the thin air of the upper curve. From one wing, across the white stage, out by the other wing, the actors changed; the setting remained always the same.
Now each morning early the old innkeeper saw defile before his windows the Optimist, intent on developing his dream. A motley crew, these Optimists, having little in common with one another but the inner spirit of hope. There was Old Mizzou, short, squat, grizzled, good-natured, with back-sloping, bald forehead, and a seven dollar suit of clothes, from which he suffered severely, because it was "store made." He owned a little claim over beyond Ragged Top, on which he made infinitesimal progress. No one seemed to believe it amounted to much, Old Mizzou least of all, but he was old, and he had lived the life, and so he liked to amuse himself still in playing at the game; contented to chip away a few slivers of rock in order to persuade himself that he was a miner, to sip a little whiskey so that men might honor him as a drinker, to talk so loudly from his warm corner in the Little Nugget that the sound of his voice might persuade him he was a bold bad man; although everyone knew that Old Mizzou had never harmed a fly.
And then again, there was Jack Graham, the Easterner, but never the tenderfoot. His selections of claims had been judicious. He was not afraid of work. He had the good sense of the timely word, so the men trusted and liked him, even though he was college-bred and quiet-mannered and a little aloof.
And again, there was Dave Kelly, who was red-cheeked, and blushed, but was a good man for all that; and Cheyenne Harry, who owned two claims and never did any work on them; and Houston, the strongest man in the camp; and, of course, the great Moroney. These, and a hundred like them, were actual miners, wielding sledge, drill and pick. Besides them were others—Frosty, and the faro man, and Bill Martin, and the stable boys, and the proprietor of the New York Emporium, all of whom lived in ministering to the wants of a prosperity that was still in the air.
Each morning the camp emptied itself into the hills. The claims were usually held in partnership; when they were not, two of the men "traded work," so that they could labor in pairs. At rude forges near the shafts they sharpened their heavy steel drills, resembling crowbars, beating the red-hot point out with the sledges. Then one held, while the other struck—crash! Turn, crash! Turn, crash! And so on, in unwearying succession, until the hole became so clogged with the powdered rock and the water poured in to cool the drill, that it had to be spooned out with a special T-shaped instrument.
After a time the hole would be deep enough. The operators would load it, touch the fuse, scamper for shelter. The earth would become cumbered with broken vein matter, and this had to be removed laboriously with pick and shovel. When the shaft grew deeper, the fuse was cut a little longer, and the miners would climb out as fast as they could on a notched pole. Cases have been known when that was not fast enough; as the time old Brady, the paralytic, was blown out along with the vein filling, and died almost before the horse was saddled to go for the doctor at Custer, fifteen miles away.
The rock was hard and the immediate results invisible. Well earned was the title of Optimist, for that these coarse, untrained men should so devote themselves to a futurity certainly indicated optimism, and of a fine sort. If the capitalist should not come! The net result would be a few acres of hilly stony land, a well hole where there was no water, and an exhausted pocket-book.
At noon some of the miners ate a lunch which they had brought with them, heating coffee over the little fire used to warm the powder; while others picked up something in their own cabins. Bill Martin's table entertained only the gambler, Graham, Cheyenne Harry, and two other men, whom the camp laughingly designated as "proud." About four or five o'clock, the workers returned from the claims. At six sharp Black Jack served dinner to the entire camp. Then came the Little Nugget, a quiet smoke, a glass or so of whiskey, and a sound night's sleep.
Sometimes there was a celebration. One or two members of the little community were inclined to become a trifle over joyous too often for their health. The standard of humor and manners was not one of the most quiet and delicate. But, on the whole, Copper Creek was no worse nor better than a hundred other similar prospecting camps in the West.
Naturally, to such a community, in the hobbledehoy stage of its development, as it were, the advent of so strange a phenomenon as a woman was in the nature of an event. Later, when it had become used to the sex and its possibilities and limitations, the personal relation might become the motive of much very complicated action; but now it accepted Molly as a bright spot of color on a gray canvas, as a holiday, as a fortuitous bit of music, as an unexpected burst of sunshine in the winter. For all her strong feminine charm, she was to most of them as sexless as a boy. They were too many; and she was alone. The spectacle of one gigantic rivalry for her favor would have been grotesque, and no one has a keener instinctive sense of the ridiculous than the Westerner. They accepted her fascination as a real but impersonal influence. In her they honored the great abstraction, woman; and in himself each individual saw, not his own single personality, but the blended apotheosis of the man of Copper Creek. Molly was held in partnership, each miner making not only his own impression for her good graces, but the camp's as well.
And this without mawkish sentimentality or comic opera delicacy of conduct. It must not be understood that the newcomer became any romantic idol of the camp, or that the men displayed the old-fashioned courtesy affected by the miners in Western romances. These were pioneers. Their lives were rough, and their conduct matched their lives. When angry, they said very emphatic things in inelegant language. When facetious, their jokes were apt to be as broad as the prairies themselves. When at their ease, they chewed tobacco, or ate with their knives, or forgot to wash their shirts that week, or sat in their shirt sleeves with the collars of said garment wide open. But they never equalled the frankness of a Parisian soirée in talking of or joking at some natural but usually unmentioned functions of life; nor were they ever without that solid bedrock of good nature which is the American's saving grace. Molly Lafond led a safe life among them because she trusted them. In the face of that trust no one of them conceived the possibility of harming her. This feeling was personal however. Nobody would have felt called upon to protect her against anyone who did conceive the possibility. In other words, she took just the independent position in the community which would have been accorded to a man coming in from outside. She was a good comrade.
In her elation at finally escaping the restrictions and petty bickerings of her life at the Indian agency, Molly had turned eagerly first of all to the conquest of the masculine heart. This was theory, built up from a long course of romantic reading. The heroine always "ruled her little court." Molly would like to rule her little court also. She felt the genuineness of her fascination, the possession of which she realized to the full degree—that sort of fascination which succeeds where beauty, intellect, spirituality fail. It was a power, great, untried, unmeasured. Naturally her first impulse was to test it, to use it. She luxuriated in it. Nothing could be more delightful than to command and be obeyed; to smile into answering, smiling faces; to frown and see swiftly, as in a mirrored reflection, the countenances about her become dark. That was natural.
But after a little she found herself tiring of it. The game was too easy. Even from the first evening, when she had astounded and subdued the whole community at one fell blow, she had never experienced the slightest difficulty in getting these men to like her. Why should she? She was young and pretty and dainty, and delicately commanding and winsome, and she knew instinctively each man's weak point. One and all gave her unqualified approbation. There is no fun in asserting yourself, if everyone agrees with you; and to be a queen you must maintain your dignity and aloofness. It was a pose. You cannot be hail-fellow with your subjects.
So little by little, as the joy of out door life got into her veins, as it does into the veins of every healthy young creature in the open air of the Hills, she dropped the coquette. Then she first began to appreciate the real charm of things, and she was perfectly happy. Not a tiny cloud of regret veiled the tiniest corner of her skies.
The cabin had been finished within the week, but under the advice of the builders she did not move into it until nearly a month later.
A new shack never dries thoroughly in less than three weeks; and, besides, the sawdust from the new insect borings always pours down from the walls and ceilings in aggravating abundance. A dozen other houses were placed at her disposal. The men were only too glad to double up temporarily. But the summer air was warm, and Molly was by now as used to the narrow confines of her canvas-top, as a yachtsman to the cabin of his boat. She declined their offers and continued to live in the wagon. She was quite content to wait thus. In the meantime she took much delight in fixing up various curtains, chaircovers and tablecloths from light fabrics unearthed at the New York Emporium, and in cultivating carefully boxes of geraniums, almost the only garden flower in the hills. Curiously enough she enjoyed this. Perhaps it was a hereditary bequest from her unsuspected New England ancestry.
Jack Graham lent her many books, which she perused greedily. She had never seen a large city, or a boat, or a trolley car, or a tailor-made gown; but that counted little. Such things are not so much matters of actual experience as of natural aptitude. Some people can go to Europe and get less out of it than do those who read steamer advertisements at home. Molly Lafond was keen of intellect and vivid of imagination, by the aid of which two qualities she constructed for herself a culture—real, in spite of the fact that it was somewhat ill-balanced.
She spent much of her time out of doors, but the road and the gulch saw little of her. Her delight was to strike directly back across the brook, and up the overgrown hill, to the vast pine-clad heights above. There the castellated dikes frowned like mediaeval ramparts; the pine needles were soft and slippery and fragrant underfoot; the breeze swept by on swift wings, humming songs of the distant prairie; the little squirrels chattered and the big squirrels barked; the sun shone silver clear; and below, far down, the summits of other hills dropped away and away like the tiers of some enormous amphitheatre, until the brown prairie suddenly flowed out from underneath and rose to the level of the eye. It was very far from everything up there. And then one could go through the dikes down into Juniper Gulch, where one would find a whole group of claims and one's friends at work on them.
Molly grew to be an expert in the dip of quartz. She was accustomed to perch on a neighboring dikelet, near a claim, where she could enjoy the breeze, and converse without too much effort. There she looked charming, and bothered the workers a little. All workers like to be bothered a little. It is a wise woman who does not bother them too much. The attention is flattering as long as it is not annoying. When the men were below the surface of the ground she shouted down the shaft and insisted on a ride in the bucket. Or she rambled long delicious hours with Peter and the Kid, from whom she learned the philosophy of hindsights and the pregnant possibilities of holes under tree roots. These two adored her beyond all measure. The homely, bristle-whiskered animal was always at her heels; the Kid was ever ready to waste precious cartridges on her behalf.
They did much elaborate stalking after grouse, rabbits, and squirrels. Most of these approaches failed, for the reason that they were too elaborate and too eager. Wild creatures seem to be sensitive to telepathic influences. A stolid Indian, whose fatalism does not permit him to become much excited, can often walk directly up to a flock of ducks, when a white man with a breech-loading gun and a desire for a bag could not sneak within fifty rods. Instance also the well known and uncanny knowledge of the common crow as to your possession of firearms. His proneness to distant flight when you are armed, and his sublime indifference to your approach when you are not, may arise not from a recognition of the instrument, but from a reading of the desire for his slaughter.
Be this as it may, the bagging of game was a rare enough event to throw all three into wild excitement. Usually, a grand rush was made in the direction of the fallen. Peter arrived first, and danced, tip-toed, bristle-backed. Molly and the Kid were not far behind. Then came shouts of proud joy and feminine shrieks at the gore. The story was detailed again and again of just how the shot was made. Peter agonized that he could not talk. Finally the grouse or squirrel was borne proudly down to fierce-moustached Black Jack, the cook, who expostulated and grumbled.
"G' 'way, you two!" he growled. "Git out; don't want you around! Goin' t' bake! Vamoose! Ain't hired t' skin no squirrels or pluck no birds. Cyan't be bothered. G' 'way, you two." Black Jack always talked like this—in short, disconnected sentences.
Then the girl would beg prettily, while the Kid, fully aware in whom dwelt the most effective persuasion, stood by, and Peter snuffed around in the forbidden kitchen. And finally Black Jack would yield, with a vast show of bad grace.
"All right, all right!" he would cry, shaking his great head. "Just this once. Never again, mind you, never again. Cyan't be bothered. Wouldn't do it now, only just t' get rid of that dawg. That's it. Cyan't have no dawg around. Cyan't nohow."
He took the partridge or squirrel, still grumbling.
"Oh, thank you,dear goodMr. Black Jack!" cried Molly. "And you'll save me the wings and tail or the skin, won't you?"
At this point Black Jack always exploded violently and bundled them out, taking a neatly avoided kick at Peter. Then he would watch them quite out of sight, after which he would expend the utmost care in the concoction of wonderful stews or potpies.
These clear, sunshiny, healthy days tanned Molly's skin to a golden brown, brightened her eye and her smile, and filled her strong young body with abounding health and vitality. Even her evenings did not in any way cloud her spirits. They were of bad influence, but why should she know that? She was a delicious little animal, keen, shrewd, of good impulses, though her moral nature was quite untrained. She possessed instincts—strong instincts—which seemed arbitrarily to place a limit beyond which she did not dream of going; but that, she thought, was because she did not care to go. The question of right or wrong, consciously chosen, never entered her calculations. Her only standard was her desire—and, perhaps a little, what Graham would think of her—but she did not bother her head one way or the other. She was happy, and was doing nothing she regretted. That was enough.
And yet the evenings were not good—not good at all. They were bound to exercise a certain deleterious influence.
By habit, Molly spent her time after dark on a corner of the bar at the Little Nugget saloon. There she received attention. The peculiarity of her position lay in the fact that her good comradeship had dissipated constraint. The men talked and drank and gambled about as usual. It must be repeated that the girl was in no sense a romantic "idol of the camp." The miners would have been well enough pleased if she had drunk her whiskey with them as freely as they did with each other. As she did not, they merely put the fact down to personal idiosyncrasy, like Dave Williams' horror of cooked rabbit. Rough men do not demand the finer virtues, and she was treated to the reverse side of this idea. She saw what men call life. She learned the game of faro and how men act who have won or lost at it. She gained a knowledge of the strength of whiskey and what men say who have drunk of it. She heard loose speech; she saw loose conduct. All this is not nice for a young girl.
The men felt especially drawn to her because she smoked paper cigarettes gracefully. About ten o'clock she went to bed.
These few days, between her first triumphant arrival and her establishment in her new cabin, were the most care-free and happy of her stay at Copper Creek. She lived thoughtlessly, conducting herself exactly as she pleased, entertaining no regrets, conscious of no sense of wrongdoing, and therefore of no sense of guilt. Then a little incident stirred into wakefulness that fine-wrought conscience which is an element of so many natures that draw their life from New England.
One morning Molly found herself awakened very early by the sound of whistling just outside. She opened her eyes to discover Peter, who had occupied one end of the wagon, sitting, head and ears up, listening to the same sound. The whistling was young, tuneless. Finally she peered through the crack in the canvas.
Outside, on the wagon tongue, sat the Kid patiently waiting, his little rifle across his knees, one bare foot digging away at the dust, his lips puckered to cheerful sibilance, his wide gray eyes turning every once in awhile to the canvas cover of the schooner. He discovered Molly looking out. The whistle abruptly stopped.
"Come on out, Molly," said he. "I ben waiting for you a long time."
"My! it's so awful early!" yawned Molly. "What do you want to do?"
"I'm going to take you hunting," confided the Kid. "We perhaps can get a squirrel down the gulch, or perhaps a cotton-tail. Come on, hurry up!"
"Why, I ain't dressed yet," objected Molly.
"Well, dress!" said the Kid impatiently.
By this time she was well awake, and the glorious morning was getting into her lungs. Her eye disappeared, and in a few minutes she emerged fully clothed. The Kid looked her over.
"Y' ain't going that way?" he asked incredulously.
"Course not. You wait till I come back."
She stepped down on the whiffletree, her heavy waving hair falling in masses of curls and crinkles over her shoulders.
"Oh, Lord!" cried the Kid pathetically. In the entrance stood Peter, his head on one side. Molly laughed.
"I thought I'd got rid ofhim," complained the Kid, "and here he is!"
"Never mind," said Molly soothingly, "I can make him stand round. Come here, Peter!"
At the pool of the lower creek Molly knelt, turning back the sleeves from her white arms, loosening the dress from about her round young throat. After a little she leaned back against the mosses and piled the strands of her hair, watching the interested Kid with shining eyes.
"My, but you're purty!" he cried. She nodded to him, laughing.
They took their way down the gulch, walking soberly in the road, while Peter skirmished unrestrained among the possibilities of the thickets at either hand. In the judgment of the Kid, this was too near town for the best hunting. The Kid talked.
"You never been down here, have you?"
"No," replied Molly, "I've always been up in the hills, you know; it's more fun, I think. Do you think we'll find anything down here near the road?"
"Not just yet; but after we get by Bugchaser's—Say, you've never seen Bugchaser, then, have you?"
"No," laughed the girl, "I should think not. What in the world is Bugchaser?"
"It isn't a 'what'; it's a 'him.' He's crazy. He has a 'coon, and a bear, and a bobcat. I'd like to go up an' see 'em, but I'm scairt of him."
"Is he dangerous?" asked Molly.
"Pop says he eats little boys. Hoh! that ain't so, of course. But he's crazy, you know."
"What makes you think so?"
"He chases bugs with a fishnet."
"Oh!" cried Molly comprehendingly, and began to laugh.
The Kid looked at her with offended reproach.
"Well," he remarked finally, "you can do what you want; but you betcher life I'm keepin' away from him!"
His eyes were wide with childish wonder, strangely incongruous in this solemn, lonely little creature with his ways of early maturity and his ridiculous cut-down clothes.
"There, there," laughed Molly soothingly. "I wonder what's up with Peter!"
Peter was barking like a bunch of fire crackers.
"Sounds exciting!" said she. "Maybe it's a squirrel up a tree. Let's see!"
The Kid threw his rifle into the position of a most portentous ready, and the two entered the bushes. Peter was discovered, his hair bristling between his shoulders, jumping eagerly around some object which lay, invisible, on the ground. He snapped with excitement. The Kid ran forward with a shout. Molly picked her skirts up and followed with equal rapidity and considerably more grace. They nearly ran over a large coiled rattlesnake.
The Kid yelled and leaped to one side. Molly stopped stock-still and uttered a piercing scream, after which she climbed rapidly to the top of a near-by bowlder, where she perched, her skirts daintily raised, her eyes bright with excitement. Peter leaped madly about. The Kid discharged rapid but ineffectual pea bullets at the reptile.
"I imagine you need a little help," said a voice so unexpected that Molly nearly fell from the rock. The Kid gave one look at the newcomer and fled with a howl of terror. "A most peculiar youth," observed Durand reflectively as he advanced. "Most peculiar—seemingly obsessed of an unwarranted terror for my person. Strange! I have never acted in any way brusquely toward him." He picked up a stick, and, advancing without the slightest hesitation, killed the whirring snake with a single blow. "You may now descend," he assured her, turning with exquisite grace to offer his hand.
He led the way out to the road. Peter followed until within sight of the animals chained to the posts, and then he quietly disappeared in search of the Kid. This was not cowardice on Peter's part, but he had long since tested by experiment the futility of challenging barks.
Molly had recognized the newcomer from the Kid's description; and her first glance assured her that her surmise as to his calling had been true. She had been reading theLife of Wilson, the naturalist, recently; and so knew of the existence of such men. To her they seemed rather romantic.
"Oh!" cried she on catching sight of the chained animals. "Are they tame? Are they tame enough to pet?"
The old man smiled a little at her enthusiasm. He had been looking her over with pleasure, but without surprise. Michaïl Lafond, his new friend, had mentioned his "daughter"; but never, Durand now thought, in fitting terms. This girl was really beautiful. The little interview became an audience to which Durand brought his exquisite court manners.
"Jacques, the little raccoon, certainly is," he replied to Molly's question, "but the others—I do not know—they are tame enough for me—but a stranger——. We can try, cautiously."
Molly had run forward and fallen on her knees before the 'coon. She was delighted with his grizzled, round body, with his bright eyes, his sharp little nose, the stripes across his back, his bare, black hands, almost human, and above all with the clean, fresh woods-smell that is characteristic of such an animal when not too closely confined. Finding him quite gentle, she took him in her arms. Jacques proceeded at once to investigate busily the recesses and folds of her dress.
"He seeks for sweetmeats," explained the old man, who was looking on.
From Jacques they proceeded to Isabeau, the lynx. Isabeau spat a little and looked askance, but under reproof permitted a dainty pat on the tips of his tasselled ears. Patalon, the great clown bear, was good-natured, but rough. He desired to be rubbed here and there, he wished affectionately to return this young lady's attentions with a mighty hug. He smelt rank of the wild beast. Molly returned soon to little Jacques.
"How did you get them?" she asked, tapping the end of Jacques' nose to see him wrinkle his face.
"It is not difficult. One captures them young, when they are mere cubs; and so, although they never will lose their wild instincts, they become as you see them."
"But the mothers——?"
"Ah, that is the pity," replied the old man simply. "Sometimes it becomes necessary that they die."
Molly looked on him with new wonder, this slayer of bears and wild cats, who nevertheless appeared so gentle, whose eye was so mild. It was indeed a marvellous world. She forgot the Kid and the hunting party, and gave herself up to the pleasure of the moment.
From the pets they wandered to the flowers. These interested Molly exceedingly, for she herself was struggling with the boxes of geraniums. It was fully half an hour later when Molly finally said farewell to her host and continued on down the gulch in the direction taken by her little companion.
The Kid was waiting with all the heart-rending impatience of youth. The precious time before breakfast was slipping away in futility. He had made a sacrifice in taking this girl. Never would he do it again! never! never! And then he saw her coming, and forgot everything except his relief.
"Took you long enough to break away," was his only complaint as he rose to conduct the party.
"Have we got time to hunt now? Ain't it 'most breakfast-time?" inquired Molly dubiously. "Don't you think we'd better let it go for this morning?"
"Lord, no! Come on! For heaven's sake don't let's waste any more time!" cried the Kid with a gusty impatience that surprised his companion. She did not realize the humiliated disappointment that had this last hour seethed in the little breast. "I s'pose we might 's well get up on the ridge," suggested the Kid, still grumbling.
They turned sharp to the left, through the thicket, where the birds were already hushing their songs, and the early dew was quite dried away. The Kid pushed ahead with almost feverish rapidity. Here and there in the brush Peter scurried, head down, hind legs well drawn together beneath his flanks. He snuffled eagerly into the holes and forms, doing his dramatic best to create some game, if necessary. Every once in awhile his bristly head, all alert, peered, cock-eared, over a bush, searching the hunter's face for directions, and then plunging away suddenly as his own judgment advised. It was most scienceless and unsportsman-like. The Kid peered eagerly to right and left, holding the muzzle of the little rifle conscientiously at an angle of forty-five degrees, as he had been taught, and vainly striving to avoid dry twigs, although Peter was making enough noise for a circus parade. The girl followed a step or so in the rear. It was breath-taking, this excitement. Every stir of the bushes needed examination, every flutter of wings was a possibility, every plunge of Peter might send a covey whirring into the pine tops, or rouse a squirrel to angry expostulation. As they went on up the side hills, still without result, but therefore with expectation the more sharpened, and as Molly's cheeks became redder and redder under her brown skin and her eyes brighter and brighter, and as she bit her under lip more and more, and as the straight level line of her brows grew straighter and straighter with the concentration of her thoughts, it is to be doubted if the most enthusiastic lover of scenery could have torn his eyes from the pretty picture even for the sake of the magnificent sweep of country below. So at least thought Cheyenne Harry, on his way across the ridge to his claim.
He surveyed the eager three with some slight amusement.
"Hullo!" he called suddenly.
The boy and girl started.
"Hullo!" answered Molly after a moment, when her intent hunting expression had quite fled before her cheerful look of recognition. "That you?"
The Kid too paused, but evidently under protest, and with the idea of moving on again at the earliest polite moment.
"How's hunting?" inquired Harry facetiously. "Killed all the game down below there?"
"All we've seen," replied Molly promptly; "and the hunting's very good." She put ever so slight a stress on the word "hunting." "We're going over the ridge now. Want to come along and help carry the game?"
Harry looked speculatively at the Kid, who was standing first on one bare foot, then on the other. "Naw, guess not," he replied. The Kid brightened at once. "I'm going over to the Gold King for a while. You'd better come along with me."
"Haven't had any breakfast," objected Molly.
"Oh, that's nothing. Neither have I. I'm just out to look around. Come ahead."
Molly did not care a snap of her fingers about the Gold King claim, except that it belonged to Cheyenne Harry; and, owing to the rarity of that individual's visits to his property, she had never seen it. Besides this, she had been a good deal the last few days with Graham. That young man had been interesting her greatly with a most condensed and popularized account of the nebular theory, which seemed to Molly very picturesque and intellectual. She was much taken with the idea of thus improving herself and she gave herself great credit for the effort, but it was so far above the usual plane of her intellectual workings that she had to stand on tiptoe to reach it. The evening before, she had gone to bed keyed up to wonderful resolves. To-day the pendulum had begun ever so slowly to swing back. All the influences of out-door life had drawn her to the earth; the clear freshness of the early morning, the rank smell of the wild beast, the incipient hero-worship in her admiration of the old man's supposed prowess as a slayer of bears, the actual physical contact with the slapping clinging brush through which she had passed. She breathed deep of the crisp air. She broadened her chest, and stretched her muscles, and drank the soft caressing sun warmth. She felt she would like to get down near the grass, to breathe its earthly smell, to kiss it. It was the gladness of just living.
And to her in a subtle manner Cheyenne Harry symbolized these things, just as Graham symbolized that elusive intangible humiliating power of the intellect. He was strong and bold and breezy of manner, and elemental of thought, and primitive in his passions and the manner of their expression. He appealed to that spirit in her which craved the brusque conqueror.
So for the moment the idea of a scramble with him over these rough dike-strewn ridges seemed to her the one idea in perfect tune with the wild Western quality of the newborn day. And therefore, to the consternation of the waiting Kid, she replied—
"Why, yes. I think it would be good fun, though I don't believe thereisany Gold King claim. I believe it's just an excuse for your loafing around, for you certainly never spent much time on it."
"It's the finest thing ever," Harry assured her with a laugh. "I'll show you."
The Kid stood stock-still in consternation.
"Oh!" cried he, when he could get his voice, "and how about our hunt?"
"You come along with us," invited Cheyenne Harry good-naturedly. "It's good hunting all the way."
But the Kid knew better. This heedless climbing and loud talking would be quite different from the careful attention necessary for the destruction of the wily "chicken" or experienced squirrel. He looked very sad.
"Yes, come on," urged Molly; "we'll get something over in 'Teepee.'"
The Kid shook his head, unable to trust himself to speak. Cheyenne Harry turned away a little impatiently.
"I'm sorry," continued Molly with hesitation. "I think you'd like it. But we've had quite a hunt already, haven't we? And we can go another time."
She joined Cheyenne Harry. Peter stood looking first at the Kid, then at the two retreating forms. He was plainly undecided. Molly's gingham dress fluttered for the last time before she turned the corner of a bowlder. Peter suddenly made up his worried mind. The Kid was left alone.
He sat down on a rock, and rested his chin in his hands, and looked away across the valley to the peak of Tom Custer. A tiny white cloud was sailing down the wind. He watched it until, swirling, it dissolved into the currents of air. Far back in the forest of pines a little breeze rustled, faint as a whisper: then it crept nearer, ever waxing in strength, until, with a murmur as of a throng of people, it passed overhead, and vanished with a last sigh in the distance. The Kid listened attentively to the birth and death of the voice. A squirrel directly above him broke into a rattling torrent of chattering rage. The Kid sat, his chin in his hands, looking out over the valley with unseeing eyes, his little rifle resting idly against his knee. The moments passed by, one after the other, distinct, like the ticks of a great clock.
A soft muzzle nosed its way gently between his wrists. He looked down. Peter's homely, gray-whiskered face with the pathetic eyes looked up into his own. The Kid flung both arms about the dog's coarse-furred neck, and burst into a passion of tears.
From the top of the ridge, where she had paused a moment to take breath, Molly saw the whole of this little scene. She suddenly felt very irritated.
That Kid was certainly the most unreasonable of children! Why, she spent three-quarters of her time doing nothing but amuse him. She had got up cheerfully at an unearthly hour, walked several miles without breakfast, followed him uncomplaining through a lot of damp grass and underbrush, and now, because she wouldn't spend the rest of the day with him, he sulked. Forsooth, was she to give up all her friends, her amusements, for the sake of that boy? Molly was most impatient—with the Kid—and she became so preoccupied in pitying herself that she hardly answered Cheyenne Harry's remarks, and was a very poor companion. She deceived herself perfectly; yet in the background of her consciousness was something she did not recognize—something uncomfortable. It was an uneasiness, a heaviness, a slight feeling of guilt for something which she could not specify, quite indefinable, and therefore the more annoying. It made her feel like shaking her shoulders. There seemed no valid reason why she should not be as light-hearted as she had been a few minutes ago, for her reason saw nothing in her conduct to regret. And yet she was uneasy, as though she had done something wrong and was on the point of being found out. She could not understand it, but it was very real, and, because she could see no reason for it, it made her angry, with a sense of injustice.
It was the first manifestation of another phase of heredity—the New England conscience.
Michaïl Lafond made much less of a stir in the life of the camp than had his ward. He fitted in quietly.
Behind the Little Nugget was a room and a shed. Lafond took possession of the room, and relegated Frosty to the shed. His position as proprietor of the saloon sufficiently explained his idleness, if anybody's idleness ever needed explanation in a mining camp. He seemed to do nothing, merely because he was to be seen almost any hour of the day either smoking contemplative pipes near his place or Bill Martin's, or wandering with every appearance of leisure from claim to claim in the Hills, or disappearing in the direction of Durand's cabin in the lower gulch. That was a mistake. He really did a great deal.
For instance, he made himself agreeable in a cool, drawling fashion to anybody who cared to talk to him. He kept his eyes wide open, no matter where he went. He puffed as many speculations into his brain as he did smoke-clouds into the air. That was not much perhaps; yet, by the time the Chicago men came to Copper Creek, the half-breed knew just about everybody's business in that camp. The student of character never needs to ask blunt questions.
He soon discovered that his first surmise as to Billy's peculiarities was correct. The man was above all things spectacular. He liked to fill the stage. If Lafond could strip him of his property—the Great Snake—his prestige as promoter of the camp would be gone. Black Mike could imagine nothing more galling to one of Knapp's temperament.
He soon discovered that it would be no easy matter to do this, however. He had felt sure that he would have no difficulty in taking advantage of the proverbial carelessness of Westerners in general, and Billy Knapp in particular, as to some of the finer points of mining law. There are many technicalities to be observed before a claim belongs indubitably and for all time to the man who occupies it. A "discovery" of certain specification must be made; the measurements and stakes must conform to definite regulations; the development work must be carried on and reported according to the letter of the law; and so in a dozen other trivialities which the miner is like to honor only in the most general fashion. But Billy's requirements were all fulfilled. The claims were undoubtedly his in the fullest sense of the word. At present he could not be deprived of them legally; and as it was no part of Lafond's scheme to allow Billy even the smallest comfort of self-pity when his humiliation came, he did not care even to consider the possibilities of chicanery.
The only glimmer of light he could discern lay in the chance that something might offer at the time of the transference of the property from Billy to the Eastern capitalists. This was the inspiration that had occurred to him in Durand's cabin. He had come to know Billy's sanguine temperament, his enthusiastic predilection for seeing things rose-hued, and he thought it very possible that the Westerner's representations to the capitalists might not bear too searching analysis. Overpraise of property might easily be construed as false representation. Too graphic a description of natural advantages might easily be twisted into an attempt to obtain money under false pretences. A skilful man might be able to discredit Billy so far that the transaction would fall through; and with the failure of this sale, on which the hopes of Billy's companions were built, the promoter's prestige would collapse entirely.
With this sketch of a plan in mind, Lafond applied himself diligently to acquiring a thorough knowledge of the property. That, at least, was not difficult. All he had to do was to go to Billy, and say, "Look here, Knapp, they tell me you've got quite an outfit here. Show me around, won't you?" The Westerner was only too glad of the opportunity to expatiate. He took Lafond down every prospect shaft, over every surface indication. He explained them all minutely. When he had finished, he gave Lafond carefully selected samples from all of the vein fillings. The half-breed told him he wanted them for the purposes of exhibition.
"I got a first class shelf down in the Nugget," he said; "an' I think if we'd jest put a line of samples along it from all the claims, and label 'em, it would be a pretty good 'ad,' don't you?"
Billy did. So the two "sampled" as carefully as for an assay test in the School of Mines at Rapid. About half of the result Lafond exhibited as he had suggested, but the rest he preserved carefully for assay tests of his own.
To be sure, Billy had quite freely shown him his own official tests made at the School of Mines, but Lafond wanted his information more direct. He could not doubt the accuracy of the reports. But there was always a possibility that the sampling had not been fairly done. He was sure of these other "averages," for he had helped take them. He liked to have things under his own eye, and it was for this reason he had first suggested to Durand that he would like to take lessons in the art of assaying.
At first he had intended to use the old entomologist merely as a convenience, but later, as he became more intimate with the man through his work, he actually began to entertain for him a friendship—his first in over fifteen years. With all men he had been friendly; with none had he been friends. Here he proved a really generous emotion, opening his heart to the soft influences of affection and memory, allowing himself in this one instance an intimacy absolutely without ulterior motive. It all dated from the first day, when a chance question of Durand's touched the springs of the half-breed's youth.
They had adjourned that afternoon to the workshop, where Durand built a charcoal fire in a little furnace and gathered about him a choice assortment of curious implements. After the furnace was well heated, he roasted the ore Lafond had brought with him, heating it through and through, until finally the fumes of sulphur, antimony and arsenic ceased to arise from the chalk-lined iron basin. While the process was going forward Durand explained pleasantly the various steps of the chemical change, interspersing much extraneous information—as, for instance, how Winkler, Tcheffkin and Merrick claim that there is here a loss of gold, which Crookes denies—to all of which Michaïl Lafond lent but an inattentive ear. He was little interested in theory; but observing the old man's delight in the scientific aspect of the experiment, he feigned corresponding pleasure on his own part.
Then they spread a flux of granulated lead over a crucible, in appropriate juxtaposition with the roasted ore. For nearly two hours it was fused; and as there was nothing to do until the slag of impurities had formed about the bright metal in the centre, the men talked much to each other while waiting.
When the ore was completely fused, Durand seized the result in a pair of forceps. With a small hammer he broke away the great masses of clotted slag. A small bright metal button remained.
"This is the lead, the silver and the gold," explained Durand, "and it is here that we exercise care. All else is as child's play."
He flattened the button on an anvil, and cut it into several pieces. These he placed in the little porous vessels made of compressed bone ash, called cupels, which had been slowly heating in the furnace. The surface of the lead filmed over. In a moment it turned bright. Then fumes began to arise.
Durand's attention became fixed. His hand was constantly at the furnace valve, admitting or excluding more air according as he desired the temperature to rise or fall.
"It is this which is difficult," he explained from the corner of his mouth. "If the heat is too great, some precious metal escapes with the lead. If the heat is too little, the lead is not all driven away."
Lafond was attentive enough to this. He desired above all the practical knowledge.
"Observe the fumes," said Durand; "that is the true test. When they whirl above the molten metal, then is everything well. When the fumes do creep slowly like the mist on a stream, then the heat is not sufficient. If, on the other hand, they do rise straight upward, then it is necessary to reduce the heat at once."
After a time the remaining impurities, under Durand's skilful manipulation, were absorbed by the cupels. The little vessels were drawn from the furnace and placed to one side to cool. A small yellow button was finally detached with pincers.
"That then is the gold!" cried Lafond.
"And silver," corrected Durand gently. He weighed the button with great care. Then with nitric acid he ate out the silver. The result was weighed. The assay was finished. By comparing the weights of the original ore, the cupelled button and the final product, statistics were obtained.
The men drew a long sigh of relief now that the task was quite finished.
"It is hard work," observed Durand.
"It is very good of you to take so much trouble for me," replied Lafond, for the sake of politeness.
"I like you," explained the old man simply, "because you speak French and because there is something in your face that shows that you too have been wronged, and that perhaps, like myself, in your youth you have been light-hearted and were loved by maid and man with the love that is given the reckless—and foolish," he concluded with a little bitterness.
Inexplicably this appealed to Lafond, so that he almost wept with the sheer joy of it.
"It is true, and you are my brother to have seen it thus," he cried, lapsing unconsciously into the idiom of the Sioux.
They washed their hands and went into the other cabin, where they sat in the chairs made of barrels, and Lafond talked, talked, talked, until the dusk of twilight descended upon them and stole away even the white butterfly cases.
He spoke swiftly and animatedly and with much gesticulation. Men will tell you to-day that his speech was deliberate, scant, reserved.
It was all of his youth. He described with abandon and fire the tall pines, the still darkling river running beneath the cedars and birches; the cabins, antler crowned, and the little gardens of their dooryard. He related tenderly the life of those old days—the dance in winter to the music of a single fiddle, and the snow shoe journey homeward under the white stars, with mayhap a kiss upon a rosy cheek and a slap from a mittened hand at the end of it; the wild exhilarating dangers of log running in the spring; the canoe journey, the camping, the fishing, through all that watered north country of the fir-girdled lakes and trout-haunted streams in summer; the calling of the moose under the round harvest moon, the stalking of the white-tailed deer, the corn frolics whereat were more of the full-blossomed low-voiced chatterers not unwilling to be wooed under that same great moon, through whose shower of silver light the bull moose called to his mate, also not unwilling. These things the half-breed told in that marvellous musical voice which, with his expressive eyes, was now his greatest charm. He told also more personally of his own youth. There had been a time when Michaïl Lafond had been straight and clear-eyed and handsome. At the dances and the corn frolics the fairest of the maidens was not so very coy to him. In the log running Michaïl Lafond was the man always called upon to skim over the bobbing logs under the very imminence of the jam; his was the peavy that moved the bit of timber which locked the whole; his the merry laugh as he had lightly escaped the plunging foaming death. On and still on the voice rolled, until suddenly the room was silent and dark, and the man in the corner had arisen abruptly and gone out, and the white-haired naturalist was left alone, one hand on each arm of his chair, looking straight before him, beyond the cabin walls, beyond the years.
Next day Lafond came again, and the next and the next. The assays were all finished and tabulated. Still he continued to come, as usual, each afternoon, for an hour or so at least. Durand did not smoke himself, but he kept a pipe and a package of tobacco always on the table for his visitor. They clasped each other's hands with fervor when they met and parted. They called each other "mon vieux." And, what is more, they could sit quite silent for hours without embarrassing each other in the least.
The men in the camp noticed this intimacy and commented on it.
"Clar case of millennium," said Bill Martin, "Lion an' th' lamb. Ain't no other way to explain it, fer what good Mike ever gets out of that nutty old Bugchaser is beyond me!"
Not that anyone cared. Everybody was at this moment speculating earnestly on all possible results, good, bad, or indifferent, of the pending visit of the Chicago tenderfeet. Although, strictly speaking, their decision had only to do with the Great Snake, it was well understood that it fixed also the value of every other piece of property within a circumference of fifty miles. Little did those three tenderfeet realize, as they dutifully changed cars at Grand Island, Edgemont and other way stations, how much their holiday jaunt, as it was to them, meant to a whole community of reasonably hard-working men.
Lafond was the most interested of all, because, to his disgust, the assays had been good, so good that the "false pretence" scheme would have to be given up. He found himself, as usual, facing a situation with not much more than luck to depend on. But he always had good luck.