The most important event in the history of Copper Creek was indeed at hand. The long-awaited Easterners were to arrive that very day to look over the property. Billy Knapp had already driven to Rapid to meet them, and their coming was momentarily expected.
The camp had discussed long and heatedly the method of their reception. Billy Knapp, and with him a strong contingent, advocated best clothes, an imported brass band, and a generally festal appearance of evergreens and bunting. But this, Moroney, Lafond and Graham decidedly opposed.
"The way to make men give you things," said the last, "is to pretend you don't want them."
But it was Moroney's eloquence that carried the day. In fervid rhetoric he pointed out that men were more apt to join an already prosperous community than to furnish prosperity to one sadly in need of it. He also pointed out many other things, including the Battle of Bunker Hill and the Bird of Freedom. But that was what he meant.
So when Billy and the buckboard drove dashingly up to Bill Martin's stoop, the white road was to all intents and purposes deserted—unnaturally so, for not a living thing was to be seen from one end of it to the other.
"Look's if your town was dead," remarked one of the Easterners, with a laugh.
"Oh no!" reassured Billy, seized with a sudden anxiety lest the thing had been overdone. "But the boys is all off in th' Hills workin'."
As a matter of fact the boys were doing nothing of the kind. They were behind the cracks of doors and the darkness of windows, watching eagerly every move of the disembarkation, on which they whispered excited comments. Bill Martin was there outside, of course; Lafond sauntered over from the Little Nugget; the gambler sat chair tilted, blowing cigarette rings toward Ragged Top, never even turning his head to see the arrivals, imperturbable, indifferent as ever; Graham and Moroney were on hand by especial request; and of course no one could keep Peter and the Kid away. The men in the cabins were satisfied with their representatives. They need not worry about Graham and Moroney anyway.
JIM PUT UP A GOOD FIGHT.JIM PUT UP A GOOD FIGHT.
JIM PUT UP A GOOD FIGHT.JIM PUT UP A GOOD FIGHT.
The first of the newcomers rolled out over the wheel, stood up on two fat legs, and shook himself in a manner which proclaimed to the dullest that his round face did not belie his good humor. He at once looked about him and laughed. The second was seen to be a tall spare man, gray-faced, deep-lined, but with the wrinkles of laughter about his eyes. He wore a long linen duster and was evidently of the sort that seasons its most serious transactions with a dry and facetious humor. The third was short, small, and irrepressible. He looked as though he should be named Frank, as in fact he was. Although all three were dressed for travelling, they carried with them a solid air of financial responsibility quite foreign to Copper Creek's experience, a certain shrewdness which no new circumstance could ever abash to the extent of forgetting the swiftest means to the main chance. But over this shrewdness now was brushed a film of optimism, the over-abundant hilarity of a business man on a holiday outside his accustomed surroundings, expanding in high spirits, persiflage, and practical jokes. During their stay in Copper Creek this never left them. They were as delighted with the country as children with a new toy, and took it about as seriously.
The concealed onlookers saw the little group stand talking a moment, and then turn into the hotel. Black Jack unloaded from the back of the buckboard several substantial leather-bound valises. Billy drove the horses home and returned on foot. He was pounced upon eagerly. Billy was still glowing with self-induced enthusiasm over Copper Creek.
"It's all right, boys!" he cried exultantly. "They shore has the right idee! They tells me they thinks this is shore the finest kentry they ever see!"
"What to do next?" they inquired anxiously.
"Do? Nothin'! This ain't no circus. When the grub bell rings, mosey on over as usual, and a'ter feedin' we institutes some sort of a game outside."
When the grub bell rang, the miners filed solemnly into the dining-room, darting covert glances at the three visitors, already seated with their entertainers. Some nodded solemnly. The Easterners were laughing and joking each other in the most childish fashion.
"By Jove, there's a girl; only one I've seen!" cried the little man named Frank, as Molly came in and took her seat at another table.
"What of it?" asked Stevens, the tall man, with his mouth full of Black Jack's boiled potatoes.
"But she's a pretty girl."
Murphy, the fat jolly one, carefully removed his butter and soda biscuits, of which the visible supply seemed limited, beyond Frank's reach, and ventured a glance.
"She is pretty," he agreed, firmly thwarting the little man's attempt to steal the butter in spite of his precautions.
He turned to Dan Barker and resumed a labored discussion of the country's game and fishing. The tall man took up his conversation with Billy.
"Yes," said he, "I go through that every morning. I find it invaluable. It keeps me as hard as nails. Feel there!"
He doubled his arm, and Billy placed his huge fingers gingerly over the Easterner's biceps. Down the long table the miners and prospectors ate uneasily, with frequent glances toward the noisy strangers, exchanging rare low-voiced comments, and twisting their feet. Between Molly and the man whom the others called Frank there sprang up an incipient flirtation of glances.
After dinner everybody went outside into the open air, where the gathering relaxed its formality and men breathed mere freely. Murphy conversed with several on the subject of Colt's forty-fives. He expressed a desire for a shooting match, to which end he borrowed Billy's six-shooter, and handled it so recklessly that everybody wanted to duck.
Finally he planted the muzzle firmly between his fat legs, rested both hands on the butt, and looked about him triumphantly.
"What'll I hit?" he asked.
"God knows!" ejaculated the tall man; "but you can shoot at this." He drew an envelope from his pocket, and turned toward a small board box resting against the stump of a tree. Bill Martin started forward in alarm.
"Hol' on!" cried he, "I got some chickens in that thar coop!"
The tall man turned and wrung his hand in a mock access of gratitude. "Thank you! thank you!" he cried fervently. "To think how near I came to having the blood of those innocent chickens on my head! I shall never cease to feel grateful to you, sir!"
He marched over to the coop and pinned the envelope square in the middle of it.
"There," said he, stepping back with an air of satisfaction. "Now the chickens are perfectly safe!"
The proprietor grinned very doubtfully. Several men laughed, one after the other, as the joke penetrated.
"You go to hell, Steve," said the fat man, bubbling all over.
He raised the long six-shooter with an easy gesture.
"They're just as good as meat!" he asserted confidently as he squinted over the sights. A breathless pause ensued.
"Always cock your pistol before shooting," Frank finally admonished in a soft and didactic voice.
Murphy, red-faced, muttered something about self-cockers and tried again. This time the pause was succeeded by a deafening report, and the pistol leaped wildly. From the coop burst a single frightened squawk. Murphy beamed.
All crowded about the box, examining for the bullet hole. On the instant, Frank became wildly and triumphantly excited, dancing about the motionless end of an index finger which pointed toward the unscratched coop. The marksman looked nonplussed for a single instant. Then his face cleared.
"It went right in through that!" he claimed arrogantly, pointing the barrel of the revolver toward a small knot hole. The other two men at once gave vent to snorts of derisive contempt. "Prove that it didn't," insisted the fat one. "Just prove that it didn't, and I'll pay up." He tucked his thumbs into the lower pockets of his waistcoat, supporting the revolver pendent on one forefinger, and smiled broadly.
Billy's straightforward mind saw no diplomacy beyond the inexorable logic of the situation. "Thar ought t' be a bullet hole in th' other side of th' coop then," he suggested in a modest voice.
Murphy cast upon him the glance of reproach.
"I give up," he confessed with grieved dignity, and, without awaiting an investigation, turned toward the saloon. "It means drinks," he observed laconically. "All of you!" he added to the crowd.
Near the door Peter fell in with the procession. The tall man seized upon him before even that experienced animal could escape. After an ineffectual lunge or so backward toward his haunches, the homely dog seemed to realize that no harm was intended, and so became quiet. Stevens passed his hands rapidly down Peter's back and haunches, lifted him first off his fore legs, then off his hind legs, watching carefully the exact position he assumed when he touched the ground again, pushed his gums away from his teeth, and moulded through the fingers the outline of his head.
"It's a genuine Airedale," he asserted with interest. "Who does he belong to, and where did he come from?"
Nobody knew.
"I don't suppose there's another west of the Mississippi," he went on. "It's a peculiar breed, built for scrapping." The men gathered about with a new interest in Peter. "Don't know just what the strain is, but it's bred in the valley of the Aire, in England. The laboring classes there mostly make furniture, and as they work by the piece, they can take all the time off they want. Consequently they're a sporty lot, and go in for cock fighting and racing and badger baiting, but, most of all, dog fighting. They evolved this strain from something or other. A good Airedale can lick anything except a Great Dane, and he falls down there only because the Dane's too big for him."
"I know of a bull terrier—" began Murphy.
"Your bull wouldn't be ace high. Look at the teeth on him! Get on to the thickness of those bones! Do you think teeth would stick on that slippery bristle coat of his? or, if they did, do you think they would get into that tough loose hide very hard?" He suddenly released Peter and stood up. "Frank," said he, "come here and size up this pup."
Peter shook himself and walked gravely into the arms of the adoring Kid. The Kid had listened open-mouthed to every word of the expert's statement.
But Frank had disappeared. The incipient flirtation had developed.
When it is a question of mining, the most cautious business man loses his head.
It is very difficult to realize the fact that the Western property must not be judged by Eastern standards.
These two short paragraphs state the main reasons why, in the first place, so much capital is sown in waste places; and why, in the second place, Western gold mines have so bad a reputation among investors. Nine out of ten of the legitimate mines of our Western States would be good investments if they could be run as carefully and intelligently as is any wholesale grocery. The expectation of big gambling returns seems to render men careless as to the smaller details.
Why this should be so, it would be difficult to say. Of the truth of the statement there is absolutely no doubt in the world, as anyone who knows the history of the West can testify.
During the three days' duration of their stay, the Easterners looked at facts, incomprehensible to the eyes of such as they, through the explanations, honest enough in intention, of Billy Knapp. He led them, perspiring but pleased, from prospect to prospect, from shaft to shaft, from hill to hill. He showed them leads, fissure veins, red quartz, white quartz, water supplies, timberings, hanging walls, country rock, pan tests, and he talked about it all with that easy fluency of eloquence, that flattering assumption of the other man's sophistication, which is so peculiarly a talent—nay, a genius—of the Westerner.
Some trades there are for which all men imagine themselves qualified without especial training—such as horse buying, writing stories, judging pictures, and mining. This is a little strange when one reflects that other things, such as painting, skating, keeping accounts, or making a horseshoe, while not a whit more difficult, are acknowledged to require a certain amount of technical education and practice. Perhaps it is because the initial concept is so simple; as, in this case, the digging of ore from the ground, and the reduction of it. Details come, not from observation, but from actual experience. Anybody, on the other hand, can see, without understanding, the complexity of double-entry bookkeeping.
On the afternoon of the third day, the Easterners, Billy Knapp, and Michaïl Lafond gathered formally to talk it over. The latter contrived to be included because he was a man of experience. After some little preliminary discussion, in which the Easterners showed by their airy familiarity with the topic just how much of the local color had soaked in, Stevens rapped on the table.
"Although this is not strictly a business meeting," he began, "perhaps we can get at what we want better by putting some little formality into its discussions. The question before us is this: Mr. Knapp here possesses certain property which he wishes to dispose of. We have been over it thoroughly in the last few days, we have examined the figures relating to its assays and the gross value of the claims. They have been satisfactory. We have next, as it seems to me, to figure on the probable working expense, in order that we may, with some intelligence, estimate the margin of profit." He sorted over some papers on the table before him. "Let us take up the Great Snake lode first. What, in your idea, would be necessary for its development?"
"Wall," began Billy, rising formally. "They is practically two leads on th' Great Snake; an' if you-all decides to work 'em both, you'd want a shaft on each. A plain-timbered shaft costs you yere about twenty to twenty-five dollars a foot. Then you needs cross-cuts, and drif's at about five or ten a foot besides—that includes everythin'—men, tools, powder. Then yore pump an' hoist is worth about two or three thousan'. includin' minin' expenses for two months. That's all th' actual expense connected with th' Great Snake itself; but of course you has to have yore stamp mill and washer for all the group of claims. A good stamp mill costs you ten thousan' dollars, but it's good forever."
"How much shaft and tunnel would you have to sink before getting to a paying basis?" asked Frank briefly.
"That would depen'. You wants to get to water level, of course, afore yore shore; but it might pay right squar' from th' surface. Count on a hunderd foot."
"And when you get to pay level, what capacity a day would you have?"
Billy laughed. "That depen's too. You can put on more or less men. Call her from fifteen to twenty ton a day."
They bent their heads together over the figures. After a little Stevens read the following tabulation:—
2 shafts of 100 feet each @ 20.00 . . . . . . . $4,000.00Cross-cuts and drifts, say . . . . . . . . . . . 1,200.00Pump and hoist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,000.001-10 of the cost of mill (there were tenclaims) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,000.00--------Initial expense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $8,200.00
"That thar figger," observed Billy, "brings her right up to date without no squealin' whatever. Yere you figgers on taking good hard rock out of four hunderd foot of tunnel an' shaft. Lots of that is pay quartz. You got to figger that you gets some return out of it all. They's a good many ton of ore in four hundred foot of shaft!"
"That is true," said Murphy. "There won't be eight thousand outlay without any return."
"Yore dead right!" agreed Billy.
"Let that go for now," interrupted Stevens. "We can call that 'velvet.' Now what we want to know is, what will be the working expense of converting the ore into gold when the initial expense is over?"
"Call her about five dollars," replied Billy promptly.
Stevens consulted the assay table. "The ore on the Great Snake as shown by samples taken from various spots in the prospect shaft averages $8.55," said he. He figured for a moment. "Allow $3.00 a ton profit at twenty tons a day, it would take only a little over four months to catch the initial expense."
"Of course there's your running expenses of a camp," suggested Frank.
"Oh yes, but look at the margin to cover them."
They went on to the next, and the next, until the ten claims were all figured over. Not all showed as alluring a prospect as the Great Snake, for that was admittedly the banner claim of the group, but all yielded a good margin of profit. It was simple as a proposition in algebra. Assay value minus cost of production equals profits. There was no unknown quantity in sight. Lafond alone saw one, and he held his peace.
One more item the Easterners had to include, and this, falling within their business habits, and out of Billy's, they arranged to their own satisfaction. It was Billy's price for his claims.
"Now what are your ideas on the subject, Mr. Knapp?" asked Stevens briskly.
Billy hesitated. "Mebbe it's funny," he confessed; "but I hadn't settled on a price. I know you gentlemen 'll do what is right. But I would like to stay with her a bit."
"Stay with her?"
"Yes," explained Billy, embarrassed. "Keep a holt; sort to be interested myself, you know." There spoke Billy's vanity.
The three talked together low-voiced for a moment. They had conceived a vast respect for Billy's capacity in the West, however unsophisticated he might appear in the East; and they had long before talked out in anticipation just this point. Stevens voiced their decision.
"We have decided, Mr. Knapp," he began, "to ask you to be our superintendent, provided of course the company is formed. We feel sure that your best efforts will be expended in our behalf, because your interests will be ours." Then he went on briefly to flatter Billy exceedingly, until that individual was ready to weep with joy. "Our proposition is this," he concluded. "We intend to form a stock company of two hundred thousand shares at one dollar a share, non-assessable. Of this amount a majority will be held by the promoters of the company, some other smaller amount will remain in the treasury, and, say, fifty thousand will be floated on the market. Our offer is, to make you superintendent at a nominal salary of five thousand, and to give you in addition thirty thousand promoter's shares as your price of the claims. These shares you may either sell or keep. Thus you may either take a certain sum of money, or you may pool your interests with ours, confident that every good showing made by you as superintendent will increase the value of your holding as participator in the enterprise. In other words it gives you a personal interest in your work here. What do you say?"
"Heads I win, tails you lose," said Lafond over in the corner, but he said it under his breath.
To Billy it was all gorgeous. He saw only that he was offered thirty thousand dollars and five thousand a year, in addition to keeping the position of prominence he coveted. To him the paper dollar shares looked as good as paper dollar bills.
"What do I say?" he cried, "I say 'put her thar,' and thank you. Let's go have a drink!"
So the meeting adjourned, wonderfully inspirited, especially Michaïl Lafond, for at last he saw a chance.
As he looked up at the stars that night before turning in, he made a quaint little sign on high. It was the Indian gesture of worship. "Lafond," he purred to himself, "you are a fool for luck. Rippling Water used to say you were born under a lucky star, and by the Turtle, I believe she was right!"
For though the Easterners thought they had done well in paying Billy with a paper futurity, Lafond saw two sides to the question. The meeting had been conducted, apparently, in the most business-like and painstaking manner, yet it was to be noted that the fundamental facts, the facts on whose accuracy depended the whole value of the subsequent figuring, were accepted on Billy's mere say-so, without an attempt at outside verification. Billy was honest, but he was superficial. His temperament did not force him to search out the little details. Michaïl Lafond was in the habit of searching them out very thoroughly.
He saw that one claim, because of its peculiar situation, would require an ore bin of equally peculiar construction; that it might perhaps be necessary to flume water to another; that a third, though its surface showing was good, gave indications of being nothing but a blow-out; that though the assay of a certain ore was high, the actual working value might be low, because of the refractory character of the rock. In regard to mere externals of camp-building, his experience taught him that the Easterners' estimate would turn out to be superficial. His view from the inside showed him that every last article of equipment for the buildings, and every pound of machinery, would have to be brought in on mules; that men might not always be easy to get in a new country; that hay for horses came from a distant prairie, at prices that corresponded to the distance; that the enthusiastic promoter is rarely or never the careful, painstaking superintendent. And so with a hundred other items, which the Easterners had entirely overlooked. It is marvellous that they should have done so. Translate gold into button hooks, the Hills into a factory, Billy Knapp into an impecunious small proprietor anxious to sell, and not one of the three would have gone into the affair so blindly. But it is true. And more, the history of this operation at Copper Creek is the faithful history of a myriad of exactly similar enterprises in the West. Ask your broker friend, or anyone in a position to watch the floating of schemes on Change; he will tell you.
Having settled the business of the trip, the Easterners spent a few ridiculously juvenile days in pleasure. Billy worked himself nearly blind to get them a shot at deer, but without success. They visited Custer. On their way back to the railroad, they took in the Pine Ridge Reservation, where they saw five thousand Sioux, and bought beaded moccasins and short ill-made arrows. Finally they piled on the Pullman, vastly pleased with their sunburn, and a little inclined to swagger in the presence of these clean-shaven, quietly civilized travellers who had not just left the exciting dangers of a pioneer country.
Billy accompanied them. His presence was necessary in Chicago where the new company was to be "floated" and its final organization brought about.
None of the results of the visit were as yet known officially, but of course a well verified rumor had got about that the Easterners were really going to "take hold" and every man in camp was at the hotel door to bid the visitors farewell. Michaïl Lafond was the last man at the hub of the wheel before the horses started.
"I am glad you came," said he, holding Stevens' hand while he spoke, "and I am glad you are going to invest here. It will help us all, and I sincerely hope it will help you."
Stevens looked at him suddenly, as if to discover whether the lack of confidence in the words was reflected in the man's face. Apparently satisfied, he replied easily, "Course it will."
"Always figure on the safe side," suggested Lafond.
"You're dead right there," responded the other, "and that is just what we've done. We've put down that fifty thousand as dead clear outlay for a starter, without any offsets by way of return, and surely some of that ore will pay something before we get down two hundred feet. Oh, we're all right on that. You'll see us booming before spring!"
Lafond watched the wagon out of sight with a smile in his inscrutable eyes. Then he went down to spend his afternoon with Durand, humming the remnants of a little Canadianchanson.
"A fool for luck," he repeated to himself; "a regular fool for luck, Lafond. All you have to do is to sit right still, and it comes to you without the effort on your part."
Between him and his object there now intervened but fifty thousand dollars. And fifty thousand dollars was not an unlimited sum of money.
Billy was gone almost a month.
During that interim Lafond had absolutely nothing to do but wait, for his affairs, both domestic and foreign, were doing well.
"A fool for luck, a fool for luck," he got into the habit of saying to himself, but with somewhat of a congratulatory ring to it, as though he were a little inclined to attribute fortune's favors to that lady's appreciation of his shrewdness. If luck had not favored him, he would have had to accomplish the same results himself. It was a labor-saving device. Nevertheless, as time went on, the strong underlying mysticism in his nature came to make of this luck of his a fetish of no small power. Lafond went about in a continual state of elation. Things were coming his way. Nothing could stop them. They were fore-ordained. All he had to do was to stay awake so as to take advantage of the circumstances which chance so nicely arranged for him. He had such confidence in the fortuitous moment that he almost ceased to plan ahead, sure that the crisis would bring its own solution.
Fifty thousand dollars stood between Billy's credit and Billy's downfall. Lafond had those fifty thousand dollars to get rid of. The sum was not great, but neither was it small; and to induce another to spend fifty thousand, in a few months, without any encouraging return, might have seemed, to an ordinary man, a project worthy of careful foresight. Not so Lafond. "A fool for luck," he repeated and awaited Billy's reappearance.
There was Molly's affair with Cheyenne Harry, for instance. What could be better? Lafond had known Mortimer by reputation for a great many years. He was acquainted with the details of the transaction of Mulberry Gulch, and how he and a man named Dutch Pete had swindled all Custer City; he knew too of Harry's various wild escapades in the early Indian skirmishes—on both sides some men said; of his wonderful fortitude in enduring hardship, and his equally wonderful periods of relaxation when back again in the towns; and he knew, best of all from his point of view, Harry's reputation as a man among women. Since this flirtation had lasted so long, to Lafond's mind it must already have passed the limits. The natural sequence would be followed out. In time Cheyenne Harry would have a mistress the more.
In other words, without the slightest trouble or encouragement on his part, the girl would be debauched. Then, through artfully colored vague hints, he would let slip the real facts of her breeding. He was student enough of character to know that she would gnaw her heart out with a passionate remorse, the more intense because of that very innate purity of instinct which now made Harry's task a difficult one. Lafond had absolutely nothing to do but congratulate himself, smoke his pipe, and spend long hours with his friend the entomologist.
After the first flutter over the Easterners' visit had subsided, the camp settled back with wonderful celerity into its accustomed habits. At first it expected Billy's reappearance within a few days. The return was postponed to the end of the week. The end of the week gave Copper Creek to understand that it would have to wait a short time longer. Then came another postponement. And so on, until the little community had taken up its usual prospecting, work o' day, play o' night existence, and the return of Billy was looked upon as an inevitable event, but hazily in the future, not imminent enough immoderately to disturb the current of men's thoughts.
Then all at once Billy was among them, splendid, powerful, energetic, in a hurry, whirling the stagnant waters this way and that, until the spirit of enterprise awoke within them, and a nervous atmosphere of progress replaced the old monotony.
Billy had credited to him fifty thousand dollars; Billy sported a new hat and new clothes; Billy had vast enterprises to accomplish before the ground froze up; Billy drew a salary; Billy possessed an engraved certificate of shares, which he displayed; Billy had a new watch; Billy was looking for men; Billy was deep in complicated plans which required above all things haste, haste, haste; until the narrow little cañon rang with the name of Billy, which was esteemed great in the land.
The new superintendent entered at once into the discharge of his duties. His first care was to sink the shafts mentioned at the first informal meeting in his own shack. There were ten claims, on which eleven shafts were planned. The very evening of his return, eleven of the handiest prospectors in the camp were summoned to Billy's cabin, where they found awaiting their signatures eleven contracts to sink on the various claims a specific number of feet at a specified price. Next morning they looked the ground over. Next noon they signed. Next afternoon they hired two helpers each, bought powder and fuse, and sharpened drills. The day after, thirty-five men were busily at work on the new company's group of claims. It looked like business.
The same noon, Billy's effects began to come in from the East. He had received a liberal advance on the account of his salary, and the results were various. Among them were new saddles, a new buckboard, a new rifle, silver-mounted harness, and a quantity of clothes of rather loud pattern. But most marvellous was a clean-limbed, deep-chested, slender running horse, accompanied by a sawed-off English groom. Billy spent a good share of the next week with this individual, constructing a corral of small timber in which the new horse might roll about. Each morning the groom led the animal, astonishingly hooded, blanketed, and leather-banded, up and down the hundred yards or so of level road which was all that strip of rugged country offered fit for such delicate hoofs and fine limbs. The beast always progressed teetering a little sideways, nearly dragging the groom from his feet. The camp speculated that Billy had designs on the next great prairie "fair" in the spring, but the truth is the Westerner had little idea of what his designs were. He had been pleased with the horse, and had bought it, without bestowing a thought on expediency. After the novelty of possessing so thoroughbred a creature had somewhat worn away, he confessed to himself a slight bewilderment as to what to do with it.
Other interests claimed his attention now. The work on the mines themselves no longer needed his care. After the hundred feet of shaft had been quite finished and timbered, he would inspect them in his official capacity. If the job came up to specifications, he would sign its acceptance; if it did not, the contractor would have to remedy the defect. In the meantime he had on hand the building of the camp itself, for which he had already planned largely.
Lafond climbed the gulch and the knoll, after activity had been well under way for about a week. He found Billy paying the freight-bills on several loads of heavy red-painted machinery, while the teamsters spat and swore just outside the little shack, which he now used as an office. Billy was signing slips from his new check book. Until he should have finished, Lafond strolled about examining the grounds.
Around the mouths of the shafts themselves the débris had accumulated astoundingly, showing that the contractors too had been industrious, but Lafond paid little attention to them. He was more interested in the clearing, levelling, trimming and digging which seemed to indicate the undertaking of rather extensive works above ground. Perhaps a dozen men were at work. Some were engaged in "trueing" the four great foundation beams of what was evidently to be a large building. Others squared smaller timbers near at hand. The remainder were measuring and indicating with a shovel the outlines of other and less pretentious structures. In a moment Billy came out ready to dissertate at length.
"That thar is the boardin' house," he explained, "I thought at first I'd only make her big enough for thirty, 'cause that's as big a gang as I starts with; but then I figgers it out, an' it won't be long before I takes on more, so I thinks it jest as well to start where I ends. So she's goin' to accommodate sixty, two-story, you know. Then yere's the cookee's shack. I aims to have th' kitchen separate yere—don't like that Prairie Dog game nohow." (The "Prairie Dog" was the hotel; and the "game" was the inclusion of the kitchen and the dining-room in the same apartment.) "Then yere's to be the office. I uses my old shack for an office now. I aims to have three sleepin'-rooms, an' a dinin'-room and kitchen."
"What for?" asked Lafond, a little puzzled.
"For me."
"For——?"
"I don't aim to eat with the men. And over yander 'll be th' stables; and thar th' blacksmith's shop; and then the powder house is on th' other side of the gulch. The chicken house is beyond th' blacksmith's shop."
"The what?" asked Mike.
"The chicken house."
"Oh," said Mike.
"I ain't got the ground all broke yet," pursued Billy; "but the plans is all ready, and it ain't takin' long when once we git started. The stuff fer th' mill is comin' along slow," he observed, pointing to the red-painted machinery; "but I ain't aimin' to put her up till nex' spring. Can't do much with her till I gets th' shafts sunk."
"No," agreed Lafond.
"But I got th' plans fer that too. Come on in an' I shows them to you."
He led the way into the little shack, and began to rummage in a valise full of papers. Lafond found the place in a litter of confusion. Scattered about in the wildest disorder were clothes, weapons, saddles, harness, knick-knacks and mining tools. Among the latter the half-breed noticed the sections of a pump—an expensive machine used only after a shaft has penetrated below the water level, but which Billy had already purchased. Lying half open among the dusty quartz specimens, empty ink bottles, rusty pens and old pipes, which cumbered the table, Mike perceived a large wooden box.
"What's this?" he asked.
Billy looked up red-faced from his search.
"That?" he replied. "Oh, that's a stamper," and dived back into the valise.
Lafond drew the box toward him. He found it to contain a vast quantity of rubber types of all sizes and styles, figures, ornaments and ornamental rulings. The box itself was perhaps some thirty inches square. It was a most elaborate outfit, whose use is confined almost entirely to large department stores where there is much marking of prices.
Billy now stood upright, having found his roll of plans.
"What did you say this is?" asked Lafond again.
"A stamper."
"What do you do with it?"
"You sticks the types in this rule this way." Billy took out the rule and some of the types, fumbled unskilfully with them for a moment, and threw them impatiently down. "Anyway, they goes in; and then that keeps them in a straight line."
"Yes," persisted Lafond, "but what's it for?"
"Why, to stamp things with, of course."
"What things?"
Billy hadn't thought of that.
But his discomfiture was only momentary. He spread the plans out on the rapidly cleared table, and discoursed concerning them. Lafond lent an attentive ear, but said little. Billy's ideas were comprehensive. They included every adjunct of use or expediency which the prospector remembered to have seen in any of the numerous successful camps which had fallen under his observation. In fact, when finished, the external Great Snake would be a composite of the desirable features of many other camps, including the great "Homestake" itself. It was evident that before Billy's mind's eye, the Great Snake was already as prosperous and as well entitled to its graces of mining luxury as any of the older enterprises. After a little appeared a man who had some horses to sell, so Lafond took his leave and retraced his steps to town. Near the foot of the knoll he happened across still further evidence of Billy's wandering activity in the shape of an ivory-handled clasp knife of five-inch blade. Mike remembered that Billy had shown it about in the Little Nugget the evening before as another example of the Easterners' generosity; and he remembered further the Westerner's delighted laugh over the inscription, "William Knapp."
"Don't know myself that way," he had cried. "I clean forgets that 'Billy' does stand for 'William.'"
Lafond's first impulse was to reclimb the knoll for the purpose of returning his find to its owner, but on second thoughts it hardly seemed worth the trouble. He slipped it into the side pocket of his canvas coat, where, of course, he speedily forgot all about it.
When he reached the Little Nugget, empty at this time of day, he sat down in his chair and laughed aloud, peal on peal, wagging his head and rubbing his eyes. Frosty, happening in, withdrew with celerity, firmly convinced that his master had gone crazy.
"A fool for luck, a fool for luck!" cried Lafond, "Why, the idiot is playing right into my hands!"
The morning when the hunting party had so unhappily terminated on the slope of Tom Custer, proved to be the turning point in Molly's relations with the camp.
The Kid forgave her in two hours, but her troubled conscience would not let her forgive herself. Therefore she was irritated with the Kid. Therefore her old innocent joyful trips into the hills in his company suddenly came to an end. That is good psychology; not good sense.
With the first realization of evil, slight though it was, her moral nature began the inevitable two-sided argument. She was no longer naïve, but responsible. As a consequence her old careless, thoughtless manner of life completely changed. In the beginning she had come full of confidence to subdue a camp. Speedily she had discovered that it was not worth the trouble, and that she infinitely preferred to play out in the open with the winds and sunshine and the diverse influences of nature. Now a subtle, quite unrealized sense of unworthiness, drove her back to a desire for human sympathy, the personal relation. This personal relation took the outward form of an entanglement with Cheyenne Harry, complicated by her intellectual admiration of Graham.
From the first, Cheyenne Harry had possessed for her a certain fascination which had distinguished him from the rest of the men by whom she was surrounded. It had dated from the evening when he had kissed her. At the time he had been shown his place swiftly and decisively enough, but it was a forceful deed, such as women like, and its impression had remained. Besides this, Molly's spirit was independent; she respected independence in others; and he, with the exception of Graham, was now the only man in camp who was to some slight extent indifferent. He showed frankly enough, with the rest, that he liked her company and her good opinion; and yet he showed, too, that if her presence and regard were not freely offered as he demanded them, he could wait, secure in their ultimate possession.
At first this fascination had been weak and unimportant. Now, however, it rapidly took the ascendancy over everything else. The mere chance that its influence had been the one first to touch the girl's moral nature counted for much; as did, curiously enough, the fact that, in her relations with Cheyenne Harry, Molly always felt a little guilty. She resented her imperceptible retrogression, and the resentment took the reckless form of a desire to go a step further. This was mainly because she did not understand herself. She had done nothing wrong, as she saw it; and yet They had put this heavy uneasy feeling into her heart. Very well! If They, the mysterious unthoughtout They, were bound to make her unhappy without her fault, she would enjoy the sweets as well as the bitter of it!
Harry had such a way of forcing her to act against her conscience.
"But I can't do that!" she would object to some proposition of his. "I'd like to. I think it would be great fun. But you know very well I've promised Dave Kelly to go up with him this afternoon to look at his claim."
"That doesn't matter," replied Harry cavalierly.
"But itdoesmatter," she persisted. "I've promised."
"Oh, shake him. Tell him some yarn.Dosomething. It isn't every day I get an afternoon off this way." Though why he did not, it would be difficult to say.
"I know, but I'vepromised."
"Oh, very well," said Cheyenne Harry, with cold finality, and began to whistle as if the question were quite disposed of. This did not suit Molly at all.
"There isn't anything I can do, is there?" she asked after a moment.
"You know best."
"Oh, dear, I don'twantyou to feel like that."
"Why shouldn't I feel like that?" cried Harry in sudden heat. "Here I look forward to a whole afternoon with you, and I'm thrown down just because of a kid. I suppose you'd rather trot around with him than with me. All right. Go ahead."
He began to whistle again. He never said what the result would be if she did "go ahead," and this very mysterious indifference had its effect. Molly, genuinely distressed, knit her brows, not knowing what to do.
"Now look here!" commanded Harry, after a minute, with great decision; "you go find that Kid, and send him up to Kelly's claim to say you can't come this afternoon. You can fix it to suit yourself next time you see him," and then he would himself find the Kid and despatch him.
Molly always acquiesced, but with inward misgivings. She must now do her best to conceal from Dave Kelly the real state of affairs; he must not by any chance see her with Harry; he must not hear from outside sources of her afternoon's excursion with that individual. An element of the clandestine had crept into it. The idea oppressed her, for, in spite of her store of spirits and her independent temper, she was not of a combative nature when she felt herself at all in the wrong. The necessity saddened her, brought to her that guilty feeling against which she so sullenly rebelled. She was uneasy during all the afternoon, and yet she was conscious of an added delicious thrill in her relations with Harry—a thrill that first tingled pleasantly through all her veins, then struck her heart numb with vague culpability. In due course, she came to transfer the emotion from the circumstances to the man. She experienced the same thrill, the same numb culpability, at the sight of his figure approaching her on the street.
This tendency was emphasized, perhaps, by the fact that their walks together—projected so suddenly, undertaken with so strong a feeling of blame on her part—consisted always of continual skirmishes as to whether or not Cheyenne Harry should kiss her. The interest of the argument was heightened by the fact that the girl wanted him to do so. This he was never allowed for a moment to suspect—in fact, by all means in her power she gave him to understand quite the contrary—but he could not help feeling subtly the subconscious encouragement, and so grew always the more insistent. She held him off because her instincts had told her the act would cheapen her. Molly always obeyed her instincts. They were strong, insistent, not to be denied. They came to her suddenly with a great conviction of truth, which she never dreamed of questioning. Among other things they taught her that without love each kiss adds to the woman's regard for the man, but takes away from his desire for her.
Cheyenne Harry used all his arts. He tried force only once, for he found it unsatisfactory and productive of most disagreeable results. Diplomacy and argument in themselves, as eclectics, contained much of the joy of debate. The arguments in such cases were always deliciously ingenuous.
"Now, what harm is there in my just putting my arm around you?" he urged.
"There just is, that's all."
"I'll have it around you when we dance."
"That's different; there's people about then."
"It's just a question of people, then?"
"I s'pose so."
"Will you let me put my arm around you to-night in the Little Nugget?"
"Of course not."
"But there's people there," triumphantly. "Now what's the harm? It's different with us. Of course you ought not to let anyone else, but we're different."
They were sitting near together, and all this time the Westerner's arm was moving inch by inch along the rock behind Molly. As he talked he clasped her waist, gingerly, in order not to alarm. She shivered as she became conscious of the touch, and for one instant gave herself up. Then she sternly ordered Cheyenne Harry to take his distance. The latter tried to temporize by opening an argument. The half-playful struggle always ended in Molly's gaining her point, but the victory was laughing, and so Cheyenne Harry was encouraged to reopen the attack on new grounds.
As one of the inevitable results, the emotion which Molly experienced in at once denying herself and combating Harry was gradually translated into a fascinated sort of passion for him. Then, too, since naturally the interest of these indecisive encounters increased with each, the two came to see each other oftener and oftener, until the habit of companionship was well established. This habit is very real. The approach of the accustomed hour for meeting causes the heart to beat faster, the breath to come quicker, the imagination to kindle; while the foregoing of a single appointment is a dull loss difficult to bear with patience. It counterfeits well many of the symptoms of love, and for a short time is nearly as burning a passion.
Sometimes the attack would be more direct. Cheyenne Harry's stock of sophistry would give out, as well as his stock of patience.
"Oh, come on, Molly," he would cry, "just one! I've been real good, now haven't I? Oh, come on!"
"You've been nothing but a great big brute, Mr. Cheyenne Harry!" she cried in a tone that implied he had not.
Harry advanced a little, holding out his hands, much as one would approach a timid setter dog. She put one finger on her lips, and watched him, bright-eyed. When he was near enough, she boxed his ears, and twisted her slender young body out of reach, laughing mockingly, and wrinkling her nose at him.
But then when they had returned to camp, and once more she found herself alone, the delicious questions always came up; how far did he intend to go? Did he see through such and such a stratagem? Was he really vexed at such and such a speech, or was he merely feigning? In what manner would he dare accost her when next they met? And so another meeting became necessary soon—at once. They saw more and more of each other, to the neglect of many real duties.
For a time the influence of Jack Graham did something to stem the drift of this affair, but that lasted only until he himself fell in love with her.
With him her first emotion had been of eager intellectual awakening; her second, that of piqued curiosity; her third, of reactionary dulness. As time went on she came to pass and repass through those three phases with ever increased rapidity, until at the last their constant reiteration might almost have relegated them to the category of whims. She liked to be with him, because he made her aware of new possibilities in herself. She could not understand him, because his attitude toward her was never that of the lover. She experienced moments of revolt, when she cried out passionately but ineffectually against an influence which would compel her to elevations rarer than the atmosphere of her everyday, easy-going pleasure-taking life. Ineffectually, I say, for something always forced her back.
Not that Graham ever preached. Preaching would have presented something tangible against which to revolt, something orthodox to be cried down. In fact, reformation of Molly Lafond's manners of mind or body was the farthest from Graham's thought. He merely represented to her a state of being to which she must rise. The rise was slight, but it was real. It meant the difference between thinking in the abstract or in the concrete. It meant that she was compelled to feel that to men like him, or to women like her, this animal existence, with its finer pleasures of riding, climbing, flirting and sitting on bars, while well enough in its way, was after all but a small and incidental part of life. If the girl had been requested to formulate it, she would not have been able to do so. She apprehended it more in its result; which was to make her just a little ashamed of her everyday manner of existence, without, however, furnishing her with a strong enough motive to rise permanently above it. This, in turn, translated itself into a certain impotent mental discomfort.
As long as Jack Graham preserved the personally indifferent standpoint, the mere fact that he caused her momentary disquiet did not antagonize Molly Lafond against him. Rather it added a certain piquancy to their interviews. He threw out his observations on men and manners lazily, with the true philosopher's delight in rolling a good thing under his tongue. None of them possessed an easily fitted personal application. And his utter indifference as to whether she talked or listened, went or tarried, always secretly pleased her. She liked his way of looking at her through half-closed lids, in the manner of one examining a strange variety of tree or fern; the utter lack of enthusiasm in the fashion of his greetings when she came, or his farewell when she departed; his quite impersonal manner of pointing truths which might only too easily have been given a personal application. And this was the very reason of it, although again she might not have been able to formulate the idea; that although his methods of thought, his mental stand-points, his ways of life constantly accused hers of inertia, carelessness and moral turpiture, nevertheless his personally indifferent attitude toward her relieved them of too direct an application. She enjoyed the advantages of a mental cold shower, with the added satisfaction that no one saw her bedraggled locks.
But when in time the young man went the way of the rest of the camp and began to show a more intimate interest in her, the conditions were quite altered. We may rejoice in anathema against the sins of humanity, in which we may acknowledge a share; we always resent being personally blamed.
Graham indeed went the way of the rest of the camp. His progress from indifference to love he could not have traced himself, although he might with tolerable accuracy have indicated the landmarks—a look, a gesture, a flash of spirit, revealing by a little more the woman whom he finally came to idealize. That her's was a rich nature he had early discovered. That it was not inherently a frivolous or vicious nature, he saw only gradually, and after many days. Then his self-disguise of philosophic indifference fell. He realized fully that he loved her, not for what she did or said, but for herself; and with the knowledge came an acuter consciousness that, whatever her possibilities, her tendency was now to pervert rather than develop them. For the first time he opened his eyes and examined her environment as well as herself.
She spent half of her day alone with Cheyenne Harry. The other half she was restless. The evening she passed in the Little Nugget saloon, where the men, convinced that she was now the mistress of Cheyenne Harry, took even less pains than formerly to restrain the accustomed freedom of their words and actions. Graham viewed her indifference to all this, and her growing absorption by Cheyenne Harry, with some alarm. He conceived that the state of affairs came about more because of a dormant moral nature than because of moral perversity; and as to this he was partly right. But he could not fail to perceive the inevitable trend of it all, no matter what the permitting motive. He would have been less—or more—than human, if he had let it pass without a protest.
At first the protest took the form of action. He tried to persuade the girl to spend the evening in other ways. While the novelty lasted, this was all very well. He epitomized and peptonized his knowledge on all subjects to suit her intellectual digestion. They called it their "lesson time," and he made the mistake of taking it too seriously. He was very much in earnest himself, so he thought she should be so. They talked of nothing but the matter in hand. After a little, there came an evening when she was a trifle tired. The matter in hand did not interest her as much as it should. She leaned the back of her head against her two clasped hands, and sighed.
"I'm stupid to-night," she confessed. "Let's talk. Tell me a story."
Graham was much in love, and so incapable of readjustments. He had thought out carefully several new and interesting things to say.
"I thought you said you were really in earnest about this," he reproached her. "If you are going to improve yourself, you must work; and work cannot depend on one's mood."
All of which was very true, but Jack Graham could not see that there inheres in truth no imperative demand for its expression.
But when another night came, her enthusiasm was less marked, for she saw no escape. After a time she skipped an evening. Then at last she gave it up altogether.
"I'm afraid I'm not intellectual," she confessed, smiling doubtfully. "I told you I'd be a disappointment. It is all interesting and very improving, but—well, I don't know—it seems to make us both cross. I guess we'd better quit."
Jack Graham seemed to indicate by his manner that he was disappointed. A good deal of his disapproval was because he saw that her renunciation of these "improving" evenings meant not only the loss of the improvement, but her exposure to worse influences; but of course Molly Lafond did not know that. She took the young man's condemnation entirely to herself, and consequently, when in his presence, felt just a little inferior. She concealed the feeling with an extra assumption of flippancy.
Because of these things, as time went on, she came to see more and more of Cheyenne Harry and less and less of Jack Graham. The latter's mere presence made her ashamed of her lack of earnest purpose. He, for his part, viewed with growing uneasiness the augmenting influence of the dashing Westerner; for he knew the man thoroughly, and believed that his attentions meant no good. In that, at least for the present, he did him a wrong. Cheyenne Harry merely amused himself with a new experience—that of entering into relations of intimacy with a woman intrinsically pure. The other sort was not far to seek, should his fancy turn that way. But to Graham these marked attentions could mean but one thing.
His resolve to speak openly was not carried into effect for a number of days. Finally, quite unexpectedly, he found his chance.
Toward evening, as he was returning from a day's exploitation on his three claims in Teepee, he came across her sitting on a fallen log near the lower ford. The shadows of the hills were lying across the landscape, even out on the brown prairie. A bird or so sang in the thicket. A light wind breathed up the gulch. Altogether it was so peaceful; and the girl sitting there idly, her hands clasped over her knees, gazing abstractedly into the waters of the brook, was so pensive and contemplative and sad, that Graham had to spur his resolution hard to induce it to take the leap. But he succeeded in making himself angry by thinking of Cheyenne Harry.
She saw him coming and shrank vaguely. She felt herself in some subtle way, which she could not define, quite in the wrong. What wrong she could not have told. When, however, she saw that plainly his intention was to speak to her, she smiled at him brilliantly with no trace of embarrassment.
They exchanged the commonplaces of such a meeting.
"Why are you so solemn?" she broke in finally. "You look as if you'd lost your last friend."
He looked at her. "That is the way I feel."
"Oh," said she.
They fell silent. She did not like at all the gloomy fashion of his scrutiny. It made her nervous. She felt creeping on her heart that mysterious heaviness, the weight of something unknowable, which she had lately been at such pains to forget. She did not like it. With an effort, she shook it off and laughed.
"What's the matter?" she cried with forced gayety. "Didn't he sleep well? Don't he like my looks, or the freckle on my nose, or the way I wear my cap?"—she tossed the latter rakishly on her curls, and tilted her head sideways.
"What is the matter?" she asked with a sudden return to gravity.
"You are the matter," he answered briefly.
"Oh dear!" she cried with petulance; "has it come to that?"
"No, it has not come to that, not what you mean. But it has come to this: that your conduct has made every true friend of yours feel just as I do."
She stared at him a moment, gasping.
"Heavens! you frighten me! WhathaveI done? Come over here on this log and tell me about it."
Graham's vehement little speech had vented the more explosive portion of his emotion. Whatever he should say now would be inspired rather by conviction than impulse; and the lover's natural unwillingness deliberately to antagonize his mistress made it exceedingly difficult to continue. He hesitated.
"Youmusttell me now," she commanded; "I insist. Now, what have I done?"
"It isn't so much what you have done," began Graham lamely, "as what you might do. You see you are very young, and you don't know the world; and so you might walk right into something very wrong without realizing in the least what you are doing, and without meaning to do wrong at all. Everybody owes it to himself to make the best out of himself, and you must know that you have great possibilities. But it isn't that so much. I wish I knew how to tell you exactly. You ought to have a mother. But if you'd only let us advise you, because we know more about it than you——"
The girl had watched him with gleaming eyes. "That doesn'tmeananything," she interrupted. "What is it, now? Out with it!"
"It's Cheyenne Harry," blurted Graham desperately; "you oughtn't to go around with him so much."
"Now we have it," said the girl with dangerous calm; "I'm not to go around with Harry. Will you tell me why?"
"Well," replied Graham, floundering this side of the main fact; "it isn't a healthy thing for anybody to see any one person to the exclusion of others."
"Yourself, for instance," stabbed the girl wickedly. "Go on."
Graham flushed. "No, it isn't that," he asserted earnestly. "It isn't for the benefit of the others that I speak, but because of the effect on yourself. It isn'thealthy. You are wasting time that might be very much better employed; you get into an abnormal attitude toward other people; you are laying stress on ameansto which there is noend, and that is abnormal. I don't know that you understand what I mean; it's philosophy," he concluded, smiling in an attempt to end lightly.
"No, I do not understand in the least. All I understand is that you object to my seeing a certain man, without giving any particular reason for your objections."
"It isn't especially elevating for you to sit every evening in a bar room crowded with swearing and drinking men who are not at all of your class," suggested Graham. "The language they use ought to teach you that."
"They are my people," cried Molly with a sudden flash of indignation, "and they are honest and brave and true-hearted. They do not speak as grammatically as you or I; but you have been to college, and I have been blessed with a chance to read. And whatever language they speak, they do not use it to talk of other people behind their backs!" She reflected a moment. "But that isn't the question," she went on, with a touch of her native shrewdness. "I understood you to make a request of me."
Graham had not so understood himself, but he had a request ready, nevertheless. "That you be a little more careful in the way you go about with Mortimer, then," he begged.
"And why?" she asked again.
"Because—because he means to do you harm!" cried Jack Graham, driven to the point at last.
She rose from the log. "Ah, that is what I wanted to hear!" she returned in level tones—"the accusation. You will tell him this to his face?"
Graham paused. His anxiety was a tangle of suspicions born of his knowledge of men, his intuitions, and his fears. Looking at it dispassionately from the outside, what right had he to interfere? Graham was much in love, brave enough to carry through the inevitable row, and quite willing as far as himself was concerned, to do so; but he could not fail to see that, however the affair came out, it would irretrievably injure the girl's reputation. No one would believe that he would go to such lengths on suspicion of merely future harm. To the camp it would mean his proved knowledge of present facts. So he hesitated.
"You will not, I see," concluded the girl, moving away; "rest easy, I shall say nothing to Harry about it. I don't know what he would do if he heard of it."
She began to walk toward the ford, every motion expressing contempt. She believed she had proved Graham a coward, and this had rehabilitated her self-respect. She was no longer ashamed before him. At the water's brink she turned back.
"And remember this, Mr. Jack Graham!" she cried, her repressed anger suddenly blazing out; "I may be young, and I may not know much of the world, but I know enough to take care of myself without any of your help."
She picked her way across the stepping-stones and disappeared, without once looking back.