AMBITIONS
HALF of the outfit of Demarest, Spruce and Tillou went into permanent
camp on a timbered plateau three miles from the lake, thus establishing
Camp Number One. The other half journeyed on six miles down the
mountain valley that extended in the direction of the coast, where it
became Camp Two.
Joshua Cole remained at Camp One, which grew to a white-tent city
during the several closely following days. This mountain country
thrilled him. The air was light and cool, and the objects of Nature’s
handiwork stood out in bold relief. The pine forests looked as if they
had been newly painted, so bright were the greens, so contrasting the
delicate browns. Lofty peaks covered with untarnished snow looked
down upon the camp, and the placid lake lay like a blue teardrop in
the hollow of a gigantic, caressing hand. Lush meadows surrounded the
lake, and here grazed innumerable cattle, the property of Box-R Ranch,
down on the desert. All winter long they had cropped bunchgrass that
grew under sage bushes on the sandy waste, and had just been driven
into the mountains for the summer pasture of saltgrass and bluejoint.
Occasionally Joshua saw cowpunchers working with them and heard their
shouting from afar.
He had gone to work as soon as the big camp was established, swinging
a striking hammer on a drill head, with three others to complete the
crew. The work was represented by a gigantic cut through solid rock,
and, but for that in the hands of Shanty Madge, was the most difficult
on the entire job.
Joshua had become an artistic hammerman, and, though the youngest man
in his crew, he was a welcome addition. Always quiet and reserved,
he had none of the qualities that often make youth obnoxious to such
old-timers as it fell to his lot to labor with. And as he swung his
striking hammer or turned the drill he thought of Madge Mundy of the
frizzly bronze-gold hair, and wondered if ever he would find courage to
go to her.
He began to realize now, with the girl so close to him, that he had
come upon a wild-goose chase to seek her in the West. Since he had
seen her last she had traveled over the United States and had had many
experiences. While he on the other hand had been shut up behind gray
walls with Clegg and his books and the telescope. His meeting with her
had been a momentous episode in his life, for directly afterward he had
been committed to the House of Refuge, where one lived over and over
the bright spots in his past. But it was doubtful now if Madge even
would remember him. More and more, as the days passed, he shrank from
going to her camp.
California Bill had returned to Spur for more supplies directly after
the first long pull into the mountains. Now, one evening, his six
slick mules rolled into camp ahead of a load of grain and groceries,
and Joshua met him as he came, weary and dusty but wearing his
never-failing smile, from the stable tent.
“I’m goin’ to the Mundys’ camp to-morrow mornin’,” he said. “They’re
gettin’ low on dynamite, an’ the boss says f’r me to hook up my
wheelers an’ take ’em enough to tide ’em over till their freighters
ramble in. To-morrow’s Sunday--better come along, Tony.”
“No, I’m not ready yet,” Joshua replied.
The slate-blue eyes studied him carefully. “Scared, eh?”
“I look so tough,” Joshua evaded. “I’ll wait till I’ve earned enough to
get some halfway-decent clothes.”
“Uh-huh”--and California Bill waddled away to his bunk tent to prepare
for supper.
Joshua did not see him again until Monday morning, and then he was
perched on his high seat behind his long-eared hybrids, on his way to
Spur for more supplies. And that same afternoon, as Joshua was turning
a drill under the ringing blows of his three fellow-workmen, he heard
the thud of horses’ hoofs close by, and the voice of the walking boss
calling to the hammermen:
“Hold ’em a minute, fellas!”
The blows ceased. Joshua gave his drill a twist and looked up at two
mounted figures. One was the walker on his big roan mare, and the other
was a girl on a black gelding. She wore a flannel shirt open at the
neck and riding breeches. From under a man’s broad-brimmed hat her
large eyes, brown as Oriental topaz, looked straight at Joshua. Her
hair was frizzly and bronze-gold where the sunbeams caught it.
“Lady wants to see you, Cole,” said the walker. “Let Bluenose turn the
drill awhile.”
As a little girl Madge Mundy had been outstanding. Her adorably
recalcitrant hair, with its strange gleam of reddish gold, combined
with the blended brown-pink coloring of her flawless skin had made her
so. Now, a young woman rounding to maturity, she would have attracted
instant attention among a hundred girls, all beautiful. Her beauty was
unique, her own, and altogether distracting to mankind because of its
unexpectedness. That amazing, crinkly hair was now gathered simply
at the nape of her neck and held in place by a ribbon, and below the
ribbon it spread fanwise over her back and shoulders, a gleaming,
puffy mass of antique gold. But her eyes, as of old, held the steadfast
gaze of the discomfited hammerman. Their reddish-brown was like the
brown of no other eyes that he had ever seen. The whimsical thought
flashed through his mind that Madge, like the untarnished forests and
mountains all about her, had been newly pumiced and varnished in honor
of his coming.
“Well, Joshua, aren’t you coming to say hello to me?”
Slowly he rose from his seat on a powder can and walked toward the
horses. The walking boss and Joshua’s fellow-hammermen were watching
him narrowly, and his throat felt dry and parched. He put out his hand
as he reached the side of the black horse, and looked up at her with
his grave gray-blue eyes.
“Hello,” he said obediently.
The walker snorted, and the girl’s laughter rang out with a clearness
that somehow seemed to match her eyes and her skin and her even little
teeth. If she had laughed any other way, thought Joshua, the entire
effect of her individuality would have been set at naught.
“How did--California Bill told you I was here, of course.”
“Yes, Bill tells me everything. I have him hypnotized.”
He had taken her strong brown hand and held it until it occurred to him
to pump her arm up and down and release his hold, which he did with
boyish vigor.
“And so you’re West at last. We’ve thought about you a thousand times.
And when are you coming to tell Ma and me all about it? Next Sunday?”
“I--I can come then.”
“I wish you would. We’ve so much to talk about. We know about
your--where you went when you left us in Hathaway that night. Pa meant
to take me to see you, but-- Well, he didn’t get around to it. We left
for the West only a week afterward. But I mustn’t keep you from your
work. You’ll remember that Ma wouldn’t let me have a holiday from my
lessons when you called on me. We’ll expect you down Sunday, then.
Isn’t it funny that you’re here after all these years? Good-by!”
She waved a hand at him and smiled and swung the black about. The
walking boss fell in behind her, and she rode back the way she
had come. Joshua slowly returned to his seat on a powder can and
mechanically took the drill from Bluenose.
“Good-night, kid!” muttered that expert powderman. “Say, you’re it! Dat
dame’s got ’em all crazy. How’d youse make de riffle?”
“I knew her back East when we were kids,” said Joshua simply. “Let’s
go!”
And the music of the hammers began again.
Saturday evening Joshua Cole had charged to his account by the
commissary clerk the following resplendent raiment:
1 Stetson Hat $7.50
1 Pair Shoes 5.00
1 Package Hungarian Hobnails .50
1 Handkerchief .10
1 Leather Belt .50
1 Blue Chambray Shirt 1.25
1 Pair Brown Overalls 2.50
------
Total $17.35
And Bluenose cut his coal-black hair for nothing, for which cruelty
Bluenose should have had the straight-jacket.
Then, next morning, he walked six miles and called on Madge and Mrs.
Mundy.
The camp of the Mundys was on a lowland flat, covered sparsely with
bull pines. Because of the big shots that were being fired day by day
the tents were nearly a quarter of a mile from the work. The task of
Shanty Madge and her mother was, as California Bill Fox had proclaimed,
enormous. It consisted for the most part of a long tunnel through the
bowels of a rounded hill, which jutted out obstinately into the deep
cañon that the right-of-way was trying to follow. The hill had been
without a name until the coming of the construction men, but now it was
known as the Hill of Springs.
Its top was composed of grainy soil and shattered rottenstone, and in
this porous formation frequent springs bubbled up. Some of them were
mud springs, and spurted up blue batter to a height of several feet.
Others spouted soda-and-magnesia water. But all were inconsiderately
moist.
This moisture leaked into the tunnel all the time, and made the
operations there damp and difficult and a constant aid to rheumatism.
But the worst of it was that Madge feared the entire top of the hill
might slide into the tunnel at any unexpected moment, and the work went
ahead cautiously and with the slowness that caution calls for. And
Shanty Madge was worried.
She met Joshua at the door of the tent in which she and her mother
lived. A cluster of lofty pines stood about it, and it was screened
and had a floor of tongue-and-groove. It was white and clean, and the
few furnishings within were tastefully arranged. In the mountain camp,
it was a little oasis in canvas, touched by the magic hand of woman,
which leaves its delicate imprint wherever it is reached forth to make
a habitation.
Mrs. Mundy was graying a little, but she was as wholesome and serene as
ever. As when he was a boy, she talked with Joshua in a sincere manner
and listened to him with that courteous, undivided attention which puts
one at his ease and is the topmost pinnacle of good breeding. Joshua
did not mean to intimate such a thing, but he said something that
morning that proved his puzzlement over Mrs. Mundy’s devotion to a man
of the stamp of Bloodmop. And, showing no offense, she explained it
simply:
“Why, when I was eighteen the man just swept me off my feet with his
irresistible love-making, and after I’d surrendered he kept me off my
feet with his everlasting goodness.”
Madge, trim and neat in her olive-drab shirt and bellows breeches,
sat by and listened to her mother and Joshua talk. She seemed to hear
everything that was being said and to be drawing as many conclusions
as if she were engaging in the conversation, but her clear brown eyes
were faraway and dreamy. She looked almost boyish as she sat there,
hands thrust into trousers pockets, her slim, rounded legs crossed and
stretched out before her.
“And now,” said Elizabeth Mundy, “tell me how you and your friends the
stars are getting on.”
At once Madge’s eyes lost their dreaminess, and she looked at Joshua
alertly, patently interested in what his reply would be.
Then out came the story of life in the House of Refuge and of Beaver
Clegg and his wondrous telescope.
“Why, you’ve accomplished marvels!” Madge finally interrupted. “Here
we’ve been feeling sorry for you, and now you tell us that you’ve been
helped on toward the goal of your ambition in a way that never would
have happened if you’d not been sent to that reformatory.”
“Yes, I learned a lot from Mr. Clegg,” said Joshua. “But now I’ve got
to begin at the beginning again. Science is progressing by leaps and
bounds these days, and unless a fellow is in constant touch with new
developments he’s out of luck. My first payday goes back to Hathaway
for my books and Clegg’s notes and the photographs. If there’s
any left I’ll subscribe to several scientific magazines and try to
catch up. Last Sunday I found a cave about a mile from our camp.
Just stumbled onto it. I’m going to appropriate it as a study and
laboratory, and I’ll spend all of my spare time there. I can give at
least three or four hours every night, and all day of every Sunday, to
study. I’m a hound for work, if I do say it myself, and I’ll be caught
up before this job is finished in the mountains. Then I hope to put
another new idea to work.
“I discovered something else last Sunday. Before I’d stumbled onto
the cave I walked around the lake to the other side, and climbed that
rocky ridge over there to see if I could get a view of the desert.
It’s a steep climb, but I made it--and, say, the view is marvelous.
For miles and miles, far as the eye can reach--and I was told by the
doctor at the House of Refuge that I have particularly good eyes--the
desert sweeps below you, the most magnificent sight on earth. It
seemed that from that particular mountain-top--for it is a miniature
mountain--objects on the desert stood out with a clearness almost
unbelievable. I turned and looked into the range at the forests and
peaks, and they too seemed clearer than I had ever seen them before.
And I got to thinking.
“It strikes me that there is something mighty peculiar over there on
that ridge. To the west of us lies the coast--to the east the desert.
All of the western slopes of the range, they tell me, are covered with
trees--great forests of pine. And on the eastern slopes nothing much
grows but scrubby piñons, cactus, yuccas, and sage. You can almost see
the dividing line at the lake shore. Haven’t you noticed that there
are no pine forests on the other side of the lake, and that they begin
abruptly on this side? So over there we have the influence of the dry
desert in the atmosphere, while at the same time we have an altitude
of over six thousand feet.
“Well, all this seems to make for the clearest atmosphere on top of
that ridge that I have ever seen. And I’m going up there to-night to
see what it’s like after dark. If I’m right, that mountain that I stood
on last Sunday is the most marvelous spot on earth, atmospherically,
for astronomical observations. And if repeated visits prove that I am
right as to the atmosphere’s rare transparency--”
“Yes, go on,” urged Madge.
“Well, then that’s _my_ mountain,” replied Joshua, “and I’ll install a
telescope there and astonish the world of science. That is--perhaps.”
“But where will you get your telescope?” asked Madge’s mother.
Joshua threw out his hands in a gesture of submission. “I’ll have to
earn it,” he told her. “And the one that was given to me cost Mr. Clegg
five hundred dollars. Whew! And I’m only a hammerman for Demarest,
Spruce and Tillou. But that doesn’t discourage me. I’ll earn the money
in time. And while I’m doing that I’ll make a telescope for myself--one
that will do for the time being, anyway.”
“Make one!” exclaimed Madge.
“Yes, I think I can. Among my notes, back in Hathaway, are directions
for making a small home-made glass that will show the mountains,
craters, and plains of the moon, the rings of Saturn, at least four of
the nine satellites of Jupiter, and at certain times the polar caps
of Mars. Also any large spots that may appear on the disk of the sun.
We have a good blacksmith shop in camp, of course, and I know Blacky
will let me use his tools. Then I’ll use that telescope until I can buy
a five-inch one--which is my great ambition in life--and then I’ll--
Oh, well, I’m boring you, I know. I get too enthusiastic over these
things, I guess.”
“I wouldn’t be ashamed of the enthusiasm, Joshua,” Madge said, her
brown eyes dreamy once more. “But tell me this: Is there any money in
it?”
“Money! Who cares for money?”
“But you’ll have to live.”
“Yes, of course. I suppose that’s true. But I can work on the railroad
grade as long as the road is building. That will be six months to a
year, I think. I ought to save some money in that time. And maybe I can
get a job somewhere about here after the outfits have moved on. There’s
work at G-string, in the mines, isn’t there?”
“You couldn’t work in a mine all day and study the stars at night,
could you?” observed Mrs. Mundy. “It seems to me that would soon ruin
your health.”
“I could ruin a lot of that and still have plenty to spare,” he laughed
with boyish assurance.
“I should think,” Madge offered, “that, rather than do that, you would
want to save up for a university education.”
“No, I think not,” he said musingly. “Clegg was against it. He said in
his whimsical way that he entered an Eastern university once, but that
he quit because it took too much time from his studies. No, I want to
observe the stellar bodies, not read about them and look at pictures.”
“But, Joshua, don’t they have enormous telescopes at the universities?”
“Yes, they do,” he conceded. “But right here I’ll tell you something
that you perhaps don’t know. There are difficulties that arise
when an astronomer attempts lunar or Martian observations with
high-powered telescopes that the layman knows nothing about. This is
too involved for me to attempt an explanation, but believe me when I
say that moderate magnifying power, under certain conditions, has
its advantages in the study of Mars and the moon. Why, some of our
greatest discoveries have been made with small instruments. It’s
the transparency of the atmosphere, the ability of the observer to
concentrate and his constant application, coupled with good vision,
that get results. Oh, on that mountain over there--if I’m right--and I
know I am--”
The older woman was smiling at his enthusiasm and sincerity, and she
saw in him now just what she had expected of the queer little boy who
had come courting her daughter at breakfast time, and revealed to her
the wonders of the stars that night. Joshua’s handsome, ascetic face
was aglow with the warmth of his feelings, and his tolerant, gray-blue
eyes mirrored the intensity of his thoughts. “What a lover he’d make,”
she mused, but aloud she said:
“You’re only about twenty-one, aren’t you? But you talk and act like
a man of thirty. Are you all for astronomy? Haven’t you any of the
yearnings that most young men have?”
“Well,” he replied thoughtfully, “there was no use to yearn in the
House of Refuge, and I guess I got out of the habit of it early. But
I’ve always wanted to be a cowboy--honest”--and his eyes twinkled. “I
suppose I am a bit cramped mentally. I don’t know what I would be like
if I hadn’t been a tramp for a year or more. That took a lot of the
Ethelbert stuff out of me, I guess, and put what he-man there is into
me. Now don’t think I’m a freak. Because a man’s a scientist he doesn’t
have to have stooped shoulders and be absent-minded and wear glasses
as big as check-strap rings. I’m human and sinful, head over heels in
love with life, and like to play draw poker. And if The Whimperer did
steal my refractor and almost break my heart, he taught me to smoke
tobacco and drink a glass of hundred-proof without batting an eye--for
the appreciation of which good things of earth I thank him. Just the
same, I’m a born astronomer. I’m not meaning to be boastful--I merely
was fortunate enough, by a rare fluke, to find out early in life what I
was put here for. And I’m just telling you. I know I’m boring you, Mrs.
Mundy.”
Madge did not give her mother time to say yes or no. “But you haven’t
answered my question,” she said. “Is there any money in it, Joshua?”
“I’ve hardly considered that,” he told her. “I don’t want to consider
it. But I may gain fame. For about a year before I left the House of
Refuge I was working on a pet theory of my own. It’s in connection with
Mars, which planet had occupied my interest almost exclusively for some
time before Mr. Clegg died. If I can prove my theory to be fact-- Well,
then I’ll make ’em sit up and take notice. And as for money, why, I can
earn all I’ll need right here in the mountains, I guess. All I want is
a living and a horse to carry me over the mountains and the desert, a
little cabin back from the lake in a clump of sprawling junipers that I
know about--and a five-inch telescope on my hill.”
Madge laughed shortly. “That sounds romantic enough,” she admitted,
“but-- Oh, well, come take a ride with me and I’ll show you what an
eighteen-year-old shanty queen can do. And I warn you right now that
I’m mighty proud of myself, and you must conduct yourself accordingly.
I may never achieve fame, but if we’re reasonably fortunate we’ll get
the money. That’s what counts these days.”
“You don’t mean that at all,” he said hopefully, for the first time a
little disappointed with his Penelope in bronze.
“Humph! Don’t I? ’By, Ma”--and she led the way out into the cool
sunshine and fresh forest smells.