CHAPTER XIII.
DEEP down in a narrow gorge echoed the sound of the miner’s pick.
“Mr. Baxter,� said Colonel Lathrop, one of the owners of the Rattlesnake Mine, “this is too hot a place for an old man like you. If you are determined to work as long as you live I’ve got other jobs that are easier for you than swinging a pick-axe in this heat all day. You know you are not obliged to work. I’ll see you and your wife well taken care of as long as you live. You’ve done your share of the world’s work. When a man reaches seventy-five he ought to rest.�
“I enjoy working,� replied “Old Sunshine.� That was the name he was best known by among his fellow-laborers. “It’ll be time enough for me to stop work when I have to. Even if I have done work enough, I have not worked for you so long that you can afford to pension me off.�
“Never mind that. I would enjoypaying you your wages better if you would quit mining. If you are bound to stick to the mines, why not work in the ‘drift’ with the boys, where the sun cannot hit you? It’s fearfully hot out here.�
“Now don’t worry any more about me,� said Old Sunshine, laughing. “Don’t you see I’m only prospecting? I want to find out what is under the face of this cliff.�
“Well, promise me you will quit at four o’clock, anyway, Baxter.�
And Old Sunshine reluctantly promised.
“McDonald,� said the Colonel to the foreman, as he was leaving the mine: “Don’t forget that Old Sunshine is a privileged character. I don’t want him to work, and had rather pay him for resting. He has been in the mines over fifty years,—was a forty-niner,—but if he’s bound to work let him take his own time, and come and go when he pleases. Give him full time, anyway.�
“Aye, aye, sir,� replied the boss. “Nobody will interfere with Old Sunshine.He does more work now than some of the young fellows, if he is seventy-five.�
Old Sunshine had had a checkered career. More than once he had been wealthy, and that wealth, which sometimes comes suddenly in the mines, had flown as suddenly as it came. Had he known the right time to stop, to turn his mining investments into other and more stable securities, he might be living in luxury on his interest money. As it was, he was dependent upon his day’s wages at seventy-five, and partly because of his independent spirit, and partly from his robust health and love of work, he refused to let Colonel Lathrop make life easier for him.
It was two o’clock. Still the clink of Old Sunshine’s pick sounded steadily in the gulch. The other miners were working in the drifts or levels. Still the torrid heat rained down upon the solitary miner, upon the heated rocks, and upon the rattlesnakes, the original settlers and owners of the gulch.
Soon Old Sunshine’s practiced eye told him that he was reaching a richer rock than before. Near the foot of the bank he was gradually uncovering a broad band of dull yellow. He knew what that meant,—one of the richest veins he had ever seen in his half-century of gold-mining. Another man would have dropped his pick and called the other miners to witness his discovery. But not a word from Old Sunshine.
It was three o’clock. He began to wield the pick-axe higher up the bank. The material there was soft or “rotten rock,� and at four o’clock he had his rich find at the base of the cliff completely hidden from sight with the worthless rock which he had loosened from above.
“I promised the Colonel I’d quit at four o’clock,� he said to the boss who passed just then. “I suppose I must keep my word.�
“Aye, aye, that’s all right, Old Sunshine; perfectly right. You’ve had a scorcher here to-day,� replied the boss,without a suspicion of the wealth which lay near him. Old Sunshine never gave him a hint of his find.
Then began the weary climb out of the gorge. This was the point at which Old Sunshine most realized that he was well on the down-hill side of life. He could still do a fair day’s work, but he could not, as formerly, do a day’s work and still have a large reserve of strength left over. He climbed awhile, and then sat down to rest. Then he climbed again. Occasionally a serpent made way for him, shaking his rattles, more as a warning than a threat. He reached his own cabin at last.
“What brings you home so early?� asked his wife.
“The Colonel made me promise to quit early. He don’t like to have me work. He says he would take care of us and I guess he would, but I don’t like to let him. Please get me a lunch and then I must go down and see the Colonel.�
“What? Walk six miles to-night?�
“Yes, I can do it; it may make a bigdifference to the Colonel. After he went home I struck a rich vein, and I want him to know it as soon as possible. The other miners do not know it. Do not tell them. I think the vein runs off across the old ‘Dead Open and Shut’ claim. The Colonel can buy that claim for a few thousand dollars now, but after this strike gets noised abroad he may not be able to buy it at all. If I can give the Colonel warning so he can buy the Dead Open and Shut claim cheap, and if he makes a good thing out of it, then I can accept a pension from him, not as charity, but as my just due. Don’t expect me till morning. Good night.�
Luckily for the old man his journey was almost all down hill. The whole country thereabouts was a desert for the want of water. In those small sections where irrigation had been employed the land was very productive.
Old Sunshine plodded on. The sands were hot. The air was hotter. There was little beside his path to attract attention except here and there a cactusplant. Beyond the distant mountains, across the valley, the sun was setting in glory. The memory of the past years, of fortunes he had made and lost, came to him again. It was because these memories did not make him gloomy and sour, but because his hopeful nature triumphed over them, that he had won the title of Old Sunshine, and none of earth’s monarchs had a grander title.
It began to grow dark in the desert, but the western mountain-tops were still glorious. And then there came to the old man the words which had cheered him so often:
“At evening time it shall be light.�
The day of his life had been full of storms. Would its evening be peaceful and light?
Steady plodding brought him to Emerald Valley, or as it was better known, Lathrop’s Miracle, a desert like the rest until the Colonel’s enterprise had made it a paradise. He had dug a canal, tapping the river miles above, and the water had turned the desert into a very Edenof luxuriance. Everything which the Colonel could grow brought a high price in the near-by mining camps. He had spent many thousands of dollars in this private enterprise of changing the desert into a garden, and his efforts had met the success which they deserved. Every dollar spent by Colonel Lathrop in irrigation had returned to him leading others with it.
The Colonel and his family were at their evening meal.
“If here isn’t Old Sunshine!� exclaimed little Daisy Lathrop.
“Have you walked all the way from the Rattlesnake?� asked the Colonel. “Nothing wrong at the mine, I hope. Make room at the table, children, for Mr. Baxter.�
“Nothing wrong, Colonel—but can I see you alone a few minutes?�
“Certainly. Come this way.� The Colonel led the way to a room which was both office and library to him.
“What’s up?� he asked.
“I struck a rich vein after you left,but I managed to keep it hidden from the other men. I believe the vein runs off across the old Dead Open and Shut claim. I thought perhaps you would like to buy that claim before the public gets wind of the strike.�
Old Sunshine then exhibited specimens of the gold which he had found.
“Of course I can’t say how far the vein extends. You will have to take your chances on that, but it is the richest vein I have ever seen in all my fifty years of mining.�
“You’re a brick, Old Sunshine. I’ll close a bargain for the Dead Open and Shut to-night if I can. Winklereid tried to sell it to me to-day for ten thousand dollars. Here, Martha,� he called to his wife, “please take the best care you can of our friend here. He must be pretty well used up.�
In five minutes the Colonel was astride his best horse and galloping toward the village. He dismounted in front of the real estate office, hitched his horse, stood still a moment to cool down and to brushoff the appearance of hurry and excitement, and then entered. He seated himself leisurely and began exchanging banter with the loungers in the office.
Presently Mr. Winklereid, the real estate dealer, spoke to him:
“Here’s Mr. Hammersley, who has just bought the Coyote Mine. I hope he may make a million out of it. And this man,� continued Winklereid, waving his hand toward Colonel Lathrop, “can make more money out of desert land and river water than anyone else in the state can make out of gold-mining.�
“All joking aside,� replied Colonel Lathrop, “irrigation is a dead sure thing when compared with gold-mining, which is scarcely better than a lottery.�
“The Colonel,� pursued Mr. Winklereid, “is the father of irrigation in this state. For that reason, among others, his name is being pressed upon Governor Brown for appointment to the United States Senate, to succeed Senator Smith, who died the other day.�
The Colonel did not want to talk politics.After wishing Mr. Hammersley success, he said:—
“Now, Winklereid, watch out for a little place for me, near the village. I want a place where a man of seventy-five can spend his remaining days in ease and comfort.�
“I’ve got it now,� replied Winklereid. “The very thing, snug and tidy, in good repair, right in the village, convenient to everything.�
“Hold it for me till we can look at it. I’m in a hurry to-night.� And the Colonel seemed on the point of leaving.
“You’d better take me up on that Dead Open and Shut bargain, Colonel. It’s worth more to you than anyone else.�
“Haven’t I enough invested in desert rocks already?� asked the Colonel. “Besides,� he continued, “Wycliff is my mining partner. I want him to share my chances of making a dollar at mining. But for his bravery I might be poor to-day. How soon do you want your money?�
“Pay me any sum you please to-night, and I’ll give you a bond for a deed before you leave the office.�
“Here’s five hundred dollars I took in for cattle to-day. I’ll pay you the rest in thirty days. Is that satisfactory?�
“Perfectly.�
Half an hour later the Colonel was galloping toward home with the precious bond in his pocket.