VII
Theautumn days were growing perceptibly shorter when the discoverers of the “Little Jean” lode began to make preparations to be snowed in for the winter in the western mountain fastnesses. By this time they had heard enough about the mountain winters to know what they were facing. With the first heavy snowfall blocking the passes they would be shut off from the world as completely as shipwrecked mariners on a desert island. But hardships which are still only anticipatory hold few terrors for the inexperienced; and with the comforting figures of the assays to inspire them, they thought more of the future spring and its promise than of the lonely and toilsome winter which must intervene.
Since there was still sufficient grass in sheltered coves and forest glades to feed the stock, they postponed the journey which one of them would have to take to find winter quarters for the animals. The delay was partly prudential. Though each added day of non-interference was increasing their hope that their ruse at the shale slide had been completely successful in throwing their pursuers off the track, they had no reason to assume that the Neighbors party would turn back without making an exhaustive search for the new “rich diggings”; and Philip was cannily distrustful of the Neighbors purpose.
“It may be just as you say: that they are merely hungry gold-chasers, breaking their necks to be the earliest stake-drivers in a new district; but then, again, they may not be,” was the way he phrased it for the less apprehensive Bromley. “If they happen to be the other sort—the lawless sort—well, with both of us here to stand up for our rights, they’d be five to our two. We can’t afford to make the odds five to one. I’d rather wait and take the horses and jacks over the range in a snow storm than to run the risk of losing our mine.”
“Meaning that we needn’t lose it if we can muster two to their five?” said Bromley, grinning.
“Meaning that if anybody tries to rob us there’ll be blood on the moon. Get that well ground into your system, Harry.”
“Ho! You are coming on nicely for a sober, peaceable citizen of well-behaved New England,” laughed the play-boy. “But see here, didn’t you tell me once upon a time that you had never fired a gun? If you really believe there is a chance for a row, you’d better waste a few rounds of ammunition finding out what a gun does when you aim it and pull the trigger. It’s likely to surprise you. I’ve shot ducks in the Maryland marshes often enough to know that pretty marksmanship is no heaven-born gift.”
“Thanks,” returned Philip grimly. “That is a sensible idea. Evenings, after we knock off work, we’ll set up a target and you can give me a few lessons.”
Making the most of the shortening days, they had become pioneers, felling trees for the building of a cabin, and breaking the two broncos, in such primitiveharness as they could contrive out of the pack-saddle lashings, to drag the logs to a site near the tunnel mouth. Like the drilling and blasting, axe work and cabin building were unfamiliar crafts, to be learned only at a round price paid in the coin of aching backs, stiffened muscles and blistered palms. Nevertheless, at the end of a toiling fortnight they had a one-room cabin roofed in, chimneyed and chinked with clay, a rude stone forge built for the drill sharpening and tempering, and a charcoal pit dug, filled and fired to provide the forge fuel. And though the working days were prolonged to the sunset limit, Philip, methodically thorough in all things, did not fail to save enough daylight for the shooting lesson, setting up a target in the gulch and hammering away at it until he became at least an entered apprentice in the craft and was able to conquer the impulse to shut both eyes tightly when he pulled the trigger.
They were bunking comfortably in the new cabin when they awoke one morning to find the ground white with the first light snowfall. It was a warning that the time had come to dispose of the animals if they were not to be shut in and starved. In his talk with Bromley, Drew, the Leadville mine owner, had named a ranch near the mouth of Chalk Creek where the borrowed saddle horses could be left, and where winter feeding for the jacks might be bargained for; and after a hasty breakfast Philip prepared to set out on the three-days’ trip to the lower altitudes.
“I feel like a yellow dog, letting this herding job fall on you, Phil,” protested the play-boy, as he helped pack a haversack of provisions for the journey. “I’dmake you draw straws for it if I had the slightest idea that I could find the way out and back by myself.”
“It’s a stand-off,” countered the potential herd-rider. “I feel the same way about leaving you to hold the fort alone. If that Leadville outfit should turn up while I’m away——”
“Don’t you worry about the Neighbors bunch. It’s been three full weeks, now, with no sign of them. They’ve lost out.”
“I’m not so sure of that. Better keep your eye peeled and not get too far away from the cabin. If they should drop in on you——”
“In that case I’ll man the battlements and do my small endeavors to keep them amused until you put in an appearance,” was the lighthearted rejoinder. “But you needn’t run your legs off on that account. They’ve given us up long ago.” Then, as Philip mounted and took the halter of the horse that was to be led: “Are you all set? Where’s that old pistol?”
“I don’t need the pistol. If I’ve got to walk back, lugging my own grub and blankets, I don’t want to carry any more weight than I have to.”
“Just the same, you’re going prepared to back your judgment,” Bromley insisted; and he brought out the holstered revolver and made Philip buckle it on. “There; that looks a little more shipshape,” he approved. “Want me to go along a piece and help you start the herd?”
“Nothing of the kind,” Philip refused; and thereupon he set out, leading the extra horse and driving the jacks ahead of him.
It was his intention to back-track over the trail bywhich they had first penetrated to their valley in the late summer, and being gifted with a fairly good sense of direction, he found his way to the foot of the first of the two enclosing mountain ranges without much trouble. But on the ascent to the pass the difficulties multiplied themselves irritatingly. The trail was blind and the snow was fetlock deep for the animals. The led horse was stubborn and hung back; and wherever a widening of the trail permitted, the jacks strayed and scattered. Philip’s temper grew short, and by the time he had reached the high, wind-blown, boulder-strewn notch which served as the pass over the spur range, he was cursing the scattering burros fluently and fingering the butt of the big revolver in an itching desire to bullet all three of them.
“Damn your fool hides!” he was yelling, oblivious of everything but the maddening impossibility of towing the reluctant bronco astern and at the same time keeping the long-eared stupidities ahead in any kind of marching order; “Damn your fool——”
He stopped short, swallowing the remainder of the shouting malediction and flushing shamefacedly under his summer coat of tan. Seated beside the trail on a flat-topped boulder from which the snow had been brushed was a thick-chested, bearded giant of a man making his much-belated midday meal on a sandwich of pan-bread and bacon; a grinning witness of the outbreak of ill-temper. As Philip drew rein the giant greeted him jovially.
“Howdy, pardner! Yuh must ’a’ had a heap o’ book-learnin’ to be fitten to cuss thataway. Don’tblame yuh, though. It’s one hell-sweatin’ job to herd canaries when they ain’t got no packs on ’em.”
Philip stared hard at the big man, his excellent memory for faces serving him slowly but surely. When he spoke it was to say: “People are always telling us this is a little world, and I’ll believe it, after this. Don’t you remember me?—and the K.P. train last spring?”
The thick-chested giant got upon his feet
“Well, I’ll be dawg-goned! Sure I ricollect! You’re the young feller I told to hump hisself and go sit with the li’l’ black-eyed gal that had the sick daddy. Put ’er there!” and he gave Philip’s hand a grip that made the knuckles crack.
Philip slid from the saddle, smiling a sheepish apology.
“Sorry I had to come on the scene swearing like an abandoned pirate, but these chicken-brained jacks have just about worn me out. Queer we should stumble upon each other in this God-forsaken place. Where do you come from?”
“Hoofed it up from the Aspen diggin’s. Aimin’ to get out o’ the woods afore I get snowed under and can’t. You ain’t had all the bad luck. Yiste’day I lost my canary, pack, blankets and all, in the Roarin’ Fork. Li’l’ cuss slipped and rolled into the creek and I didn’t get to save nothin’ but the old Winchester I was totin’ and a li’l’ bite o’ bread and meat I had in my pockets. Box o’ matches went with the hide and taller, and I’d ’a’ slep’ cold last night if I hadn’t run onto a bunch o’ Leadville men back yonder a piece and hunkered down afore their fire.”
Philip started at the mention of the Leadville men,but he deferred the question that rose instantly to his lips.
“You are going out by way of the pass over the main range at the head of Chalk Creek?” he asked.
“Aimin’ to get out thataway; yes.”
“All right; I’m headed that way, too, and, as you see, I have one more horse than I can ride. I’ll give you a lift, if you say so.”
The big man’s laugh was like the rumbling of distant thunder.
“If I say so? Say, young feller me lad, I ain’t got but one mouth, but I reckon if I had a dozen of ’em they’d all be sayin’ so at once,” he affirmed gratefully. “Want to pitch out right now?”
“No; I’ll eat first. Didn’t want to stop until I got to the top of the pass.”
Philip unslung his provision haversack and spread the contents on the flat rock. Over the meal, which he invited the wayfarer to share with him, he got the story of the bearded man’s summer; weary months of prospecting in the western slope wilderness with nothing to show for it, not even the specimens from the few putative discoveries he had made, since these had gone to the bottom of the Roaring Fork with the drowned burro.
“Hard luck,” Philip commented, when the brief tale of discouragement had been told. “What will you do now?”
“Same as every busted prospector does: hunt me a winter job in a smelter ’r stamp-mill and sweat at it till I get enough spondulix ahead to buy me another grub-stake.”
“Go to work as a day-laborer?”
“You’ve named it. Minin’s the only trade I know; and the mills ain’t payin’ miner’s wages for shovelin’ ore into the stamps.”
“Why don’t you try for a job in one of the big mines?”
The giant’s laugh rumbled again.
“Not me—I ain’t that kind of a miner—ain’t wearing no brass collar for a corp’ration! Gone too long without it. But lookee here, you ain’t told me nothin’ about yerself. I didn’t allow you was aimin’ to turn into a mount’in man when I rid the cars with yuh last spring.”
“I wasn’t,” said Philip; and thereupon he gave a short account of the summer’s wanderings up to, but not including, the discovery of the “Little Jean,” and entirely omitting all mention of Bromley’s part in the wanderings. That his story did not explain his presence on the outward trail with two saddle horses, three jacks and no tools or camp equipment, he was well aware; but the canny traditions were warning him not to betray the carefully guarded secret of the “Little Jean” to a chance travelling companion.
“Tough luck, all round,” said the big man half absently; and Philip saw plainly enough that he was trying to fit the present moment’s inconsistencies into the story. Then: “Still and all, somebody’s had good luck over here in this hell’s back kitchen. I heard about it in the camp o’ them Leadville pardners last night.”
“What did you hear?” Philip asked, and his nerves were prickling.
“They said two young fellers, tenderfoots, both of’em, hoofed it into Leadville two-three weeks ago with some stuff that run away up yonder in the assays—rotten quartz and free gold.”
“Well,” said Philip, still with nerves on edge, “that sort of thing is happening every day, isn’t it? What more did you hear?”
“They was talkin’ ’mongst theirselves—not to me. The news had leaked out, like it always does, and they’d trailed the young fellers, a ridin’ two broncs and herdin’ three loaded jacks, acrosst the range and over here. Then they’d lost the trail somehow. From what I picked up, I allowed they was aimin’ to stay till they found it ag’in, if it took all winter.”
Philip’s tongue was dry in his mouth when he said: “Whereabouts were these Leadville people camped?”
“About ten mile north, at the mouth of a li’l’ creek that runs into the Fork.”
There was one more question to be asked, and Philip was afraid to ask it. Yet he forced himself to give it tongue.
“You say you camped with these fellows last night. What kind of a crowd was it?”
The big prospector was staring at the three jacks and two horses as if he were mentally counting them.
“Jist betwixt you and me and the gate-post, it’s a sort o’ tough outfit. Hank Neighbors is headin’ it, and if half o’ what they tell about him is so, he’s plum bad medicine.”
“Not prospectors, then?”
“W-e-l-l, you might call ’em so; but I reckon they’re the kind that lets other folks do most o’ the hard work o’ findin’ and diggin’.”
“You mean they’re ‘jumpers’?”
“Least said’s soonest mended. But if I had a right likely prospect anywheres in these here hills, I’d shore hate like sin to have ’em run acrosst it.”
Philip’s resolve was taken upon the instant. From what had been said he knew precisely where the Neighbors camp was; it was only a few miles below the gulch of the “Little Jean”; so few that the campers may well have heard the crashes of the evening rifle practice. And Bromley was standing guard alone.
“See here,” he began, suddenly reversing all former resolutions of canny secrecy; “I don’t know you—don’t even know your name. But I believe you are an honest man, and I’m going to tell you something: I’m one of the tenderfoots Neighbors is trying to trail.”
The wayfaring prospector greeted the information with a wide-mouthed smile.
“Yuh didn’t hardly need to tell me that—with them five critturs standin’ there a-hangin’ their heads, and you without any camp stuff ’r tools, and with two saddle hosses where yuh didn’t need only one. What’s yer game?”
Being fairly committed now, Philip went the entire length—with nothing hopeful to build upon save the big miner’s rough chivalry as he had seen it manifested in the Kansas Pacific day-coach months before. Frankly filling the blanks he had left in his earlier account of the summer’s experiences, he wound up with an anxious question:
“What am I to do? I can’t go on and leave my partner to stand off this robber gang alone. They’ll find our claim before I could get back. It’s our own creekthey’re camping on, right now!” Then: “You say you are going out by way of Chalk Creek. I have a little money left; it isn’t much, but it’s all yours if you’ll take these horses and jades out to Nachtrieb’s ranch in the South Park and leave them there. Then I can go back from here and take my share of what’s coming to us.”
The big man got up and brushed the crumbs from his clothes.
“I can beat that all holler, if you’ll say the word. I sort o’ like your looks—liked ’em last spring when I chucked yuh in the seat with the li’l’ black-eyed gal. Yuh say yo’re aimin’ to hole up for the winter and work yer claim. S’pose yuh give me a job along with you and yer pardner and lemme go back with yuh? I can hold steel ’r pound it, and han’le powder. More’n that, I can shoot middlin’ straight when I aim to.”
“You mean you’d stand with us if the Neighbors bunch should try to jump our claim?”
“Why, suree! Yuh don’t reckon I’d go back on my bread and meat, do yuh?”
“But these beasts—what’s to be done with them?”
“I was comin’ to that. There’s a li’l’ ranch six-seven mile in the park ahead of us; it’s the place where I was aimin’ to get enough grub to walk out on. Queer old squatter runs it; li’l’ mite cracked in his upper story on religion, they say. He’ll winter the stock for yuh.”
“Still, that isn’t all,” Philip went on desperately. “We have laid in provisions for the winter, my partner and I; all we could afford to buy. The stake is enough for two, but if there are three of us, we’ll go shortbefore spring. Besides, we haven’t enough money left to pay your wages.”
“Ne’m mind about the wages; they can wait. If half o’ what they’re sayin’ about this here strike o’ yourn is so, there’ll be ore enough on the dump, come spring, to pay all the bills—and then some, I reckon. All I’ll ask’ll be a chance to stake a claim somewheres round next to yourn, maybe.”
“You won’t have to ask anybody’s permission to do that,” Philip put in. “But still there is the question of the short grub-stake.”
The big man grinned cheerfully. “Might trust in the Lord a li’l’ bit, mightn’t we? Maybe He’ll send us a short winter. Anyhow, I’ll take my chance o’ starvin’; it won’t be the first time by a long chalk. Whadda yuh say? Is it a go?”
It was far enough from Philip’s normal promptings to decide anything so momentous without due and thoughtful consideration. But the exigencies had suddenly become urgent. In his mind’s eye he could see the Neighbors gang of desperadoes besieging the log cabin, with its scanty garrison of two untrained defenders. One additional loyal pair of eyes and hands might turn the scale. Hasty decisions, headlong initiative, were the very essence of the time, and of the treasure-seekers’ existence. Impulsively he thrust out a bargain-clinching hand.
“It’s a go, if you want to throw in with us, and I’ll promise you you won’t lose anything by it,” he said. “What may I call you?”
“Name’s Garth—‘Big Jim,’ for short.”
“Mine is Philip Trask. We are strangers to eachother, but that’s an even stand-off. I’m banking on you for what you did for the little girl on the train. Let’s hurry and find that park ranch you speak of. It’s running in my mind that we can’t get back to the claim any too soon.”
It was after they had mounted and were herding the jacks down the descending trail that Garth said: “What about the li’l’ gal with the sick daddy? Ever see her again?”
“Just once,” Philip returned, “five or six weeks after they reached Denver. The family was living in one of the tent colonies, and from what was said, I judged the father was pretty badly off.”
“Uh-huh,” said Garth. “You hear a heap nowadays about what the dry air’ll do for them lungers, but the health boosters tell only half o’ the story. That same old thin air kills ’em swift if they come too late. It shore do.”
By pushing the animals as fast as the hazardous trail would permit, the ranch in the inter-mountain park was reached in the shank of the afternoon. Philip made a hurried bargain with the ranch owner, a white-haired, white-bearded old man who might have figured as a reincarnation of Elijah the Tishbite; and after a consultation with Garth, refused the old man’s offer of a night’s lodging. Garth’s vote was for an immediate return to the “Little Jean.” The skies were clear and there would be a moon for at least the first half of the night.
“We’ve left a trail in the snow that a blind man could back-track on,” he pointed out. “I’m hep for the night tramp, if so be you are.”
Stiff from the long day in the saddle, Philip would have welcomed a blanket bed before the Tishbite’s hearth fire, but the urgencies were still acutely upon him; also, he was beginning to acquire the pride of the outdoor man. If Garth, who had already tramped miles before the afternoon meeting on the high pass, could stand it to keep on going, surely he could.
“We’ll tackle it,” he said shortly; and presently they were taking the steep mountain trail in reverse, slipping and sliding in the dry snow, but doggedly making their way toward the high, wind-swept pass.
Visioning that long night tramp in the moonlight, afterward, Philip knew it would be an enduring memory after many other experiences had faded and gone. The slippery trail; the black shadows of the trees while they were still in the foresting, and the blacker shadows of great rocks and gulch cliffs after they had climbed above timber line; the keen night wind sweeping over the bleak pass where they paused for a short halt in the lee of a sheltering boulder to eat a few mouthfuls of food before hitting the downward trail; the perilous descent to the headwater gulches of the Roaring Fork, where more than once he owed his escape from a sudden plunge into unknown depths to the quick clutch of the silent giant plodding along tirelessly behind him—no detail of the deadening, soul-harrowing fight for endurance, lapsing finally into a sheer effort of the will to thrust one foot before the other, would ever be forgotten.
The moon had long since disappeared behind the uplifted skyline of the western ranges by the time theywere measuring the last of the weary miles in the valley of the lucky strike. At the foot of one of the jutting mountain spurs, Philip broke the slogging monotony to say: “We’re almost there. The next gulch is ours.”
“Good enough,” was the muttered comment from the rear; and then, suddenly: “Hold up—hold your hosses a minute!”
Philip turned and saw Garth stooping with his rifle held in the crook of an arm. He was peering down at the hoof tracks they had been following.
“What is it?” he asked.
Garth pushed his flap-brimmed hat to the back of his head and looked up.
“Thought yuh said a while back that this here was your trail—the one yuh made comin’ out with the cavoyard this mornin’.”
“Well, isn’t it?”
“Not by a jugful—not unless yuh was walking the hull caboodle of ’em back’ards.”
“What’s that?”
“Sure as shootin’. The critters that made this trail was goin’ the same way we are. Get down and take a squint for yerself.”
Philip was about to comply when he saw a spurt of red flame leap out in the up-valley distance, the flash followed quickly by the reverberating echoes of a rifle shot. At the flash and crash Garth leaped afoot with a growled-out imprecation and worked the lever of his repeating rifle to throw a cartridge into the chamber.
“That means business, son! They’ve called the turnon us and got yer pardner in the nine-hole! Limber up that old hoss-pistol o’ yourn and p’int the way to get into your gulch without bustin’ in at the front door. That’s our chance—if we’ve got any. Jump to it!”