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CHAPTER VII
The Hermit’s Warning
As it was now after midday, we concluded to eat our lunch before going any further, so, sitting down on the rocks, we produced the bread and cold bacon we had brought with us and prepared to refresh ourselves. Observing this, Socrates, who had flown up into a tree when Long John threatened him with the hatchet, now flipped down again and took up his station beside us, having plainly no apprehension that we would do him any harm, and doubtless thinking that if there was any food going he might come in for a share.
I was just about to offer him a scrap of bacon, when the bird suddenly gave a croak and flew off up the mountain. Naturally, we both looked up to ascertain the reason for this sudden departure, when we were startled to see a tall, bearded man with a long staff in his hands, skimming down the snow-covered slope of the mountain towards us. One glance showed us that it was our friend, the hermit, though how he could skim over the snow like that without moving his feet was a puzzle to us, until, on approaching to within twenty yards of where we sat, he stuck his staff into the snow and checked his speed, when we perceived that he was traveling on skis.
“How are you, boys?” he cried, shaking hands with us very heartily. “I’m glad to see you again. Much obliged to you, Joe, for interfering on behalf of old Sox. I would not have the bird hurt for a good deal. I saw the whole transaction from where I was standing up there in that grove of aspens. Why did your companion go off so suddenly?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I only just mentioned to him that Sox belonged to you, when he picked up his shovel and skipped.”
Peter laughed. “I understand,” said he. “The gentleman and I have met before, and have no wish to meet again. Our first and only interview was not conducive to a desire for further acquaintance. He is not a friend of yours, I hope.”
“Not at all,” I replied. “We never met him before.”
“Well, I’m glad of that, because he is not one to be intimate with: he is a thief.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Joe, rather startled.
“Because I happen to know it’s so. I’ll tell you how. I had set a bear-trap once up on the mountain back of my house, and going up next day to see if I had caught anything, I found this fellow busy skinning my bear. He had come upon it by accident, I suppose, and the bear being caught by both front feet, and being therefore perfectly helpless, he had bravely shot it, and was preparing to walk off with the skin when I appeared.”
“And what did you say to him?” I asked.
“Nothing,” replied Peter. “I just sat down on a rock near by, with my rifle across my knees, and watched him; and he grew so embarrassed and nervous and fidgety that he couldn’t stand it any longer, and at last he sneaked off without completing his job and without either of us having said a word.”
“That certainly was a queer interview,” remarked Joe, laughing, “and a most effective way, I should think, of dealing with a blustering rogue like Long John.”
“Long John?” repeated the hermit, inquiringly.
“Yes, Long John Butterfield; known also as ‘The Yellow Pup.’”
“Oh, that’s who it is, is it? I’ve heard of him from my friend, Tom Connor.”
“Tom Connor!” we both exclaimed. “Do you know Tom Connor, then?”
“Yes, we have met two or three times in the mountains, and he once spent the night with me in my cabin – he is the ‘one exception’ I told you about, you remember. He seems like a good, honest fellow, and he has certainly been most obliging to me.”
As we looked inquiringly at him, wondering how Tom could have found an opportunity to be of service to one living such a secluded life as the hermit did, our friend went on:
“I happened to mention to him that I had great need of an iron pot, and three days afterwards, on returning home one evening, what should I find standing outside my door but a big iron pot, and in it a chip, upon which was written in pencil, ‘Compliments of T. Connor.’”
“Just like Tom,” said I, laughing. “He has more friends than any other man in the district, and he deserves it, for when he makes a friend he can’t rest easy until he has found some way of doing him a service.”
“And he’s as honest as they make ’em,” Joe continued. “If he’s a friend, he’s a friend, and if he’s an enemy, he’s an enemy – he doesn’t leave you in doubt.”
“Just what I should think,” said the hermit. “Very different from Long John, if I’m not mistaken. That gentleman, I suspect, is of the kind that would shake hands with you in the morning and then come in the night and burn your house down. What were you and he doing, by the way? I’ve been watching you for an hour. First one and then the other would kneel down in the snow and chop a hole in the bed of the creek, then get up, walk a mile, and do it again. If I may be allowed to say so,” he went on, laughing, “it appeared to an outsider like a crazy sort of amusement.”
“I should think it might,” said I, laughing too; and I then proceeded to tell our friend the object of these seemingly senseless actions.
“And do you expect to go prospecting for this vein of galena in the spring?” he inquired, when I had concluded.
“Not we!” I exclaimed. “My father wouldn’t let us if we wanted to. We are doing this work for Tom Connor, whom my father is anxious to serve, he having done us, among others, a very good turn.”
“I see,” said the hermit. “And this man, Yetmore, or, rather, his henchman, Long John, will be coming as soon as the snow is off to hunt for the vein in competition with our friend, Connor.”
“That is what we expect.”
“Well, then, I can help you a little. We will, at least, secure for Connor a start over the enemy.”
“How?” I asked.
“You remember, of course,” said the hermit, “that sulphurous stuff that was cooking on the flat stone outside my door the day you came down to my house through the clouds? That was galena ore.”
“Why, of course!” I exclaimed, slapping my leg. “What pudding-heads we must have been, Joe, not to have thought of it before. I had forgotten all about it. Have you found the vein, then?”
“No, I have not; nor have I ever taken the trouble to look for it, having found a place where I can get a sufficient supply for my purposes to last for years.”
“And what do you use it for?” I asked.
“To make bullets from. I get the powdered ore, roast out the sulphur on that flat stone, and then melt down the residue.”
“And where do you get it?”
“That is what I am going to tell you. You know that deep, rocky gorge where Big Reuben had his den? Well, near the head of that gorge is a basin in the rock in which is a large quantity of this powdered galena, all in very fine grains, showing that they have traveled a considerable distance. That stream is one of the four little rills which make up this creek, and if you tell Connor of this deposit it will save him the trouble of prospecting the other three creeks, as he would otherwise naturally do; and as Long John will pretty certainly do, for the creek coming out of Big Reuben’s gorge is the last of the four he would come to if he took up his search where he left off to-day – which would be the plan he would surely follow. It should save Connor a day’s work at least – perhaps two or three.”
“That’s true,” I responded. “It is an important piece of information. I wonder, though, that nobody else has ever found the deposit you speak of.”
“Do you? I don’t. Considering that Big Reuben was standing guard over it, I think it would have been rather remarkable if any one had discovered it.”
“That’s true enough,” remarked Joe. “But that being the case, how did you come to discover it yourself? Big Reuben was no respecter of persons, that I’m aware of.”
“Ah, but that’s just it. He was. He was afraid of me; or, to speak more correctly, he was afraid of Sox – the one single thing on earth of which he was afraid. Before I knew of his existence, I was going up the gorge one day when Big Reuben bounced out on me, and almost before I knew what had happened I found myself hanging by my finger-tips to a ledge of rock fifteen feet up the cliff, with the bear standing erect below me trying his best to claw me down. My hold was so precarious that I could not have retained it long, and my case would have been pretty serious had it not been for Socrates. That sagacious bird, seeming to recognize that I was in desperate straits, flew up, perched upon the face of the cliff just out of reach of the bear’s claws, and in a tone of authority ordered him to lie down. The astonishment of the bear at being thus addressed by a bird was ludicrous, and at any other time would have made me laugh heartily. He at once dropped upon all fours, and when Socrates flipped down to the ground and walked towards him, using language fit to make your hair stand on end, the bear backed away. And he kept on backing away as Sox advanced upon him, pouring out as he came every word and every fragment of a quotation he had learned in the course of a long and studious career. One of the reasons I have for thinking that he is getting on for a hundred years old is that Sox on that occasion raked up old slang phrases in use in the first years of the century – phrases I had never heard him use before, and which I am sure he cannot have heard since he has been in my possession.
“This stream of vituperation was too much for Big Reuben. He feared no man living, as you know, but a common black raven with a man’s voice in his stomach was ‘one too many for him,’ as the saying is. He turned and bolted; while Socrates, flying just above his head, pursued him with jeers and laughter, until at last he found inglorious safety in the inmost recesses of his den, whither Sox was much too wise to follow him.”
“I don’t wonder you set a high value on old Sox, then,” said I. “He probably saved your life that time.”
“He certainly did: I could not have held on five minutes longer.”
“And did you ever run across Big Reuben again?” asked Joe.
“Yes. Or, rather, I suppose I should say ‘no.’ I saw him a good many times, but he never would allow me to come near him. Whether he thought I was in league with the Evil One, I can’t say, but, at any rate, one glimpse of me was enough to send him flying; and as I was sure I need have no fear of him, I had no hesitation in walking up the gorge if it happened to be convenient; and thus it was that I discovered the deposit of lead-ore up near its head.”
As this piece of information precluded the necessity of our prospecting any further, and as we had by this time finished our meal – which was shared by Peter and his attendant sprite – we informed our friend that it was time for us to be starting back; upon which he remarked that he would go part of the way with us, as, by taking one of the gulches farther on he would find an easier ascent to his house than by returning the way he had come. Hanging his skis over his shoulder, therefore, he trudged along beside us at a pace which made us hustle to keep up with him.
“Do you think you would be able to find my house again?” asked the hermit as we walked along.
“No,” I replied, “I’m sure we couldn’t. When we came down the mountain in the clouds that day we were so mixed up that we did not even know whether we were on Lincoln or Elkhorn, though we had kept away so much to the left coming down that we rather thought we must have got on to one of the spurs of Lincoln.”
“Well, you had. I’ll show you directly what line you took.”
Half a mile farther on, at the point where the stream we were following joined our own creek, our friend stopped, and pointing up the mountain, said:
“If you ever have occasion to come and look me up, all you have to do is to follow your own creek up to its head, when you will come to a high, unscalable cliff, and right at the foot of that cliff you will see the great pile of fallen rocks in which my house is hidden. You can see the cliff from here. When you came down that day you missed the head of the creek you had followed in going up, and by unconsciously bearing to your left all the time you passed the heads of several others as well, and so at length you got into the valley which would have brought you out here if you had continued to follow it.”
“I see. How far up is it to your house?”
“About five miles from where we stand.”
“It must be all under snow up there,” remarked Joe. “I wonder you are not afraid of being buried alive.”
The hermit smiled. “I’m not afraid of that,” said he. “It is true the gulch below me gets drifted pretty full – there is probably forty feet of snow in it at this moment – but the point where my house stands always seems to escape; a fact which is due, I think, to the shape of the cliff behind it. It is in the form of a horseshoe, and whichever way the wind blows, the cliff seems to give it a twist which sends the snow off in one direction or another, so that, while the drifts are piled up all around me, the head of the gulch is always fairly free.”
“That’s convenient,” said Joe. “But for all that, I think I should be afraid to live there myself, especially in the spring.”
“Why?” asked the hermit. “Why in the spring particularly?”
“I should be afraid of snowslides. The mountain above the cliff is very steep – at least it looks so from here.”
“It is very steep, extremely steep, and the snow up there is very heavy this winter – I went up to examine it two days ago. But at the same time I saw no traces of there ever having been a slide. There are a good many trees growing on the slope, some of them of large size, which is pretty fair evidence that there has been no slide for a long time – not for a hundred years probably. For as you see, there and there” – pointing to two long, bare tracks on the mountain-side – “when the slides do come down they clean off every tree in their course. No, I have no fear of snowslides.
“By the way,” he continued, “there is one thing you might tell Tom Connor when you see him, and that is that Big Reuben’s creek heads in a shallow draw on the mountain above my house. If you follow with your eye from the summit of the cliff upward, you will notice a stretch of bare rock, and above it a strip of trees extending downward from left to right. It is among those trees that the creek heads.
“You might mention that to Connor,” he went on, “in case he should prefer to begin his prospecting downward from the head of the creek instead of upward from Big Reuben’s gorge. And tell him, too, that if he will come to me, I shall be glad to take him up there at any time.”
“Very well,” said I, “we’ll do so.”
“Yes, we’ll certainly tell him,” said Joe. “It might very well happen that Tom would prefer to begin at the top, especially if he should find that Long John had got ahead of him and was already working up from below.”
“Exactly. That is what I was thinking of. Well, I must be off. I have a longish tramp before me, and the sunset comes pretty early under my cliff.”
“Won’t you come home with us to-night?” I asked. “We have only two miles to go. My father told me to ask you the next time we met, and this is such a fine opportunity. I wish you would.”
“Yes; do,” Joe chimed in.
But the hermit shook his head. “You are very kind to suggest it,” said he, “and I am really greatly obliged to you, and to Mr. Crawford also, but I think not. Thank you, all the same; but I’ll go back home. So, good-bye.”
“Some other time, perhaps,” suggested Joe.
“Perhaps – we’ll see. By the way, there was one other thing I intended to say, and that is: – look out for Long John! He is a dangerous man if he is a coward; in fact, all the more dangerous because he is a coward. So now, good-bye; and remember” – holding up a warning finger – “look out for Long John!”
With that, he slipped his feet into his skis and away he went; while Joe and I turned our own faces homeward.
CHAPTER VIII
The Wild Cat’s Trail
“He is quite right,” said my father, when, on reaching home again, we related to him the results of our day’s work and told him how the hermit had warned us against Long John. “He is quite right. Your hermit is a man of sense in spite of his reputation to the contrary. Yetmore, of course, will do anything he can to forestall Tom Connor, but, if I am not mistaken, he will not venture beyond the law; whereas Long John, I feel sure, would not be restrained by any such consideration. He would be quite ready to resort to violence, provided always that he could do it without risk to his own precious person. The hermit is right, too, in saying that Long John is all the more dangerous for being the cowardly creature that he is: whatever he may do to head off Tom will be done in the dark – you may be sure of that. We must warn Tom, so that he may be on his guard.”
“I’m afraid it won’t be much use warning Tom,” said I. “He is such a heedless fellow and so chuck full of courage that he won’t trouble to take any precautions.”
“I don’t suppose he will, but we will warn him, all the same, so that he may at least go about with his eyes open. I’ll write to him again to-morrow. And now to our own business. Come into the back room. I want your opinion.”
It had been my father’s custom for some time back – and a very good custom, too, I think – whenever there arose a question of management about the affairs of the ranch, to take Joe and me into consultation with him. It is probable enough that our opinion, when he got it, was not worth much, but the mere fact that we were asked for it gave us a feeling of responsibility and grown-up-ness which had a good effect. Whenever, therefore, any question of importance turned up, the whole male population of Crawford’s Basin voted upon it, and though it is true that nine times out of ten any proposition advanced by my father would receive a unanimous vote, it did happen every now and then that one of us would make a suggestion which would be adopted, much to our satisfaction, thus adding a zest to the work, whatever it might be. For whether the plan originated with my father or with one of us, as we all voted on it we thereby made it our own, and having made it our own; we took infinitely more interest in its accomplishment than does the ordinary hired man, who is told to do this or do that without reason or explanation.
It will be readily understood, too, how flattering it was to a couple of young fellows like ourselves to be asked for our opinion by a man like my father, for whose good sense and practical knowledge we had the greatest respect, and of course we were all attention at once, when, seating himself in his desk chair, he began:
“You remember that when Marsden’s cattle first came they broke a couple of the posts around the hay-corral, and that when we re-set them we found that the butt-ends of the posts were beginning to get pretty rotten?”
He happened to catch Joe’s eye, who replied:
“I remember; and you said at the time that we should have to renew the fence entirely in two years or less.”
“Exactly. Well, now, this is what I’ve been thinking: instead of renewing with posts and poles, why not build a rough stone wall all round the present fence, which, when once done, would last forever? Within a half-mile of the corral there is material in plenty fallen from the face of the Second Mesa; and everything on the ranch being in good working order, you two boys would be free to put in several weeks hauling stones and dumping them outside the fence – the actual building I would leave till next fall. It will mean a long spell of pretty hard work, for you will hardly gather material enough if you keep at it all the rest of the winter. Now, what do you think?”
“It seems to me like a good plan,” Joe answered. “We can take two teams and wagons, help each other to load, drive down together, and help each other to unload; for I suppose you would use stones as big as we can handle by preference.”
“Yes, the bigger the better; especially for the lower courses and for the corners. What’s your opinion, Phil?”
“I agree with Joe,” I replied. “And with such a short haul – for it will average nearer a quarter than half a mile – I should think we might even collect stones enough for the purpose this winter, provided there doesn’t come a big fall of snow and stop us.”
“Then you shall begin to-morrow,” said my father.
“But here’s another question,” he continued. “Should we build the wall close around the present fence, or should we increase the size of the corral while we are about it?”
“I should keep to the present dimensions,” said I. “There is no chance that I see of our ever increasing the size of our hay-crop to any great extent, and the corral we have now has always held it all, even that very big crop we had the summer Joe came. If – ”
“Yes, ‘if,’” my father interrupted, knowing very well what I had in mind. “If we could drain ‘the bottomless forty rods’ we should need a corral half as big again; but I’m afraid that is beyond us, so we may as well confine ourselves to providing for present needs.”
“My wig!” exclaimed Joe – his favorite exclamation – at the same time rumpling his hair, as though that were the wig he referred to. “What a great thing it would be if we could but drain those forty rods!”
“It undoubtedly would,” replied my father. “It would about double the value of the ranch, I think; for, besides diverting the present county road between San Remo and Sulphide – for everybody would then leave the old hill-road and come past our door instead – it would give us a large piece of new land for growing oats and hay. And, do you know, I begin to think it is very possible that within a couple of years we shall have a market for more oats and hay than we can grow, even including the ‘forty rods.’”
“Why?” I asked, in surprise; for, at present, though we disposed of our produce readily enough, it could not be said that there was a booming market.
“It is just guess-work,” my father replied, “pure guess-work on my part, with a number of good big ‘ifs’ about it; but if Tom Connor or Long John, or, indeed, any one else, should discover a big vein of lead-ore up on Mount Lincoln – and the chances, I think, begin to look favorable – what would be the result?”
“I don’t know,” said I. “What?”
“Why, this whole district would take a big leap forward – that is what would happen. You see, as things stand now, the smelters, not being able to procure in the district lead-ores enough for fluxing purposes, are obliged to bring them in by railroad from other camps. This is very expensive, and the consequence is that they are obliged to make such high charges for smelting that any ore of less value than thirty dollars to the ton is at present worthless to the miner: the cost of hauling it to the smelter and the smelter-charges when it gets there eat up all the proceeds.”
“I see,” said Joe. “And the discovery of a mine which would provide the smelters with all the lead-ore they wanted would bring down the charges of smelting and enable the producers of thirty dollar ore to work their claims at a profit.”
“Precisely. And as nine-tenths of the claims in the district produce mainly low-grade ore, which is now left lying on the dumps as worthless, and as even the big mines take out, and throw aside, probably ten tons of low-grade in getting out one ton of high-grade, you can see what a ‘boost’ the district would receive if all this unavailable material were suddenly to become a valuable and marketable commodity.”
“I should think it would!” exclaimed Joe, enthusiastically. “The prospectors would be getting out by hundreds; the population of Sulphide would double; San Remo would take a great jump forward; while we – why, we shouldn’t begin to be able to grow oats and hay enough to meet the demand.”
My father nodded. “That’s what I think,” said he.
“And there’s another thing,” cried I, taking up Joe’s line of prophecy. “If a big vein of lead-ore should be discovered anywhere about the head of our creek, the natural way for the freighters to get down to San Remo would be through here, if – ”
“That’s it,” interrupted my father. “That’s the whole thing. I-f, if.”
Dear me! What a big, big little word that was. To represent it of the size it looked to us, it would be necessary to paint it on the sky with the tail of a comet dipped in an ocean of ink!
After a pause of a minute or two, during which we all sat silent, considering over again what we had considered many and many a time before: whether there were not some possible way of draining off the “forty rods,” Joe suddenly straightened himself in his seat, rumpled his hair once more – by which sign I knew he had some idea in his head – and said:
“I suppose you have thought of it before, Mr. Crawford, but would it be possible to run a tunnel up from the lower edge of the First Mesa, and so draw off the water?”
“I have thought of it before, Joe,” replied my father, “and while I think it might work, I have concluded that it is out of the question. How long a tunnel would it take, do you calculate?”
“Well, a little more than a quarter of a mile, I suppose.”
“Yes. Say twelve hundred feet, at least. Well, to run a tunnel of that length would be cheap at ten dollars a foot.”
“Phew!” Joe whistled, opening his eyes widely. “That is a staggerer, sure enough. It does look as if there was no way out of it.”
“No, I’m afraid not,” said my father. “And as to making a permanent road across the marsh, I have tried everything I can think of including corduroying with long poles covered with brush and earth. But it was no use. We had a very wet season that summer, and the road, poles and all, was covered with water. That settled it to my mind; we could not expect the freighters and others to come our way when, at any time, they might find the road under water.”
“No; that did seem to be a clincher. Well, as there appears to be no more to be said, let’s get to bed, Phil. If we are going to haul rocks to-morrow, we shall need a good night’s sleep as a starter.”
The cliff which bounded the eastern edge of the Second Mesa – at the same time bounding the ranch on its western side – was made up of layers of rock of an average thickness of about a foot, having been evidently built up by successive small flows of lava. The stones piled at the foot of the bluff being flat on both sides were therefore very convenient for wall-building, and so plentiful that we made rapid progress at first in hauling them down to the corral. At the end of three weeks, however, we had picked up all those fragments that were most accessible, and were now obliged to loosen up the great heaps of larger slabs and crack the stones with a sledgehammer. Some of these heaps were so large, and the stones composing them of such great size, that when we came to dislodge them we found that an ordinary crowbar made no impression; but we overcame that difficulty, at Joe’s suggestion, by using a big pine pole as a lever. Inserting the butt-end of the pole between two big rocks, we would tie a rope to the other end and hitch the mules to it. The leverage thus obtained was tremendous, and unless the pole broke, something had to come. In this way we could sometimes bring down at one pull rock enough to keep us busy for a week.
Day after day, without a break, we continued this work, and though it was certainly hard labor we enjoyed it, especially when, by constant practice we found ourselves handling all the time bigger and bigger stones with less and less exertion.
It would seem that there could not be much art in so simple a matter as putting a stone into a wagon, and as far as stones of moderate size are concerned there is not. But when you come to deal with slabs of rock weighing a thousand pounds or more, you will find that the “know how” counts for very much more than mere strength.
Of course, to handle pieces of this size it was necessary to use skids and crowbars, with which, aided by little rollers made of bits of gas-pipe, we did not hesitate to tackle stones which, when we first began, we should have cracked into two or three pieces.
We had been at it, as I have said, for more than three weeks, when it happened one day that while driving down with our last load, we were met face to face by a wildcat, with one of our chickens in its mouth. There were a good many of these animals having their lairs among the fallen rocks at the foot of the mesa, and they caused us some trouble, but this was the first time I had known one to make a raid on the chicken-yard in broad daylight. I suppose rabbits were scarce, and the poor beast was driven to this unusual course by hunger.
I was driving the mules at the moment, but Joe, who was walking beside the wagon, picked up a stone and hurled it at the cat. The animal, of course, bolted – taking his chicken with him, though – and disappeared among the rocks close to where we had just been at work.
“Joe,” said I, “we’ll bring up the shotgun to-morrow. We may stir that fellow out and get a shot at him.”
Accordingly, next day, we took the gun with us, and leaning it against a tree near the wagon, set about our usual work. The first stone we loaded that morning was an extra-large one, and Joe on one side of the wagon and I on the other were prying it into position with our pinch-bars, when my companion, who was facing the bluff, gently laid down his bar and whispered:
“Keep quiet, Phil! Don’t move! I see that wildcat! Get hold of the lines in case the mules should scare, while I see if I can reach the gun.”
Stooping behind the wagon, he slipped away to where the gun stood, came stooping back, and then, straightening up, he raised the gun to his shoulder. Up to that moment the cat had stood so still that I had been unable to distinguish it, but just as Joe raised the gun it bolted. My partner fired a snap-shot, and down came the cat, tumbling over and over.
“Good shot!” I cried. But hardly had I done so when the animal jumped up again and popped into a hole between two rocks before Joe could get a second shot.
“Let’s dig him out, Joe,” I cried. And seizing a crowbar, I led the way to the foot of the cliff.
