"I'm jest as willin' to play 'horse' as anybody," he said, trying to
find calm utterance; "and if this is a joke, I wishes some
fellow-citizen to let me in. But, damn it!" he cried in a burst,
"don't you get too funny! What the hell does you-all want me to do to
carry out this yere witticism, anyway?"
The coolest and most determined looking man in the group made two steps
across the floor, and confronted Billy squarely. At this evidence of
earnestness, Billy lost his excitement and became deadly cool.
"Oh, it's you, Tony Houston, is it! Do you want your pay too?"
"Yes, I do," replied the man, "and I'm going to have it."
"Well," said Billy, "here's a pretty-lookin' outfit! Snowie was drunk,
but this gang 's sober enough to know better, anyway. You come around
to my office in the mornin', and I pays the bunch, every damn skunk,
and don't you ever any of you show your faces there again. That's all
I got to say."
"It ain't all _I_ got to say," retorted Houston, standing his ground
doggedly, "not by a long shot! You-all talks well, but has you got th'
money?"
"What the----" cried Billy, choking.
"Hol' on thar! I repeats it"--and Houston thrust his face at Billy
evilly--"has you got th' money? That's a fa'r question in business, I
reckons. Has you got th' money? No, you hasn't. You got just an
hundred and fifty-two dollars, and that's every red cent you has got."
Billy's immediate act of homicide was checked by this astounding
knowledge of the total of his bank account. "Damn you, Tony Houston,"
he said slowly, at last, "I believe you're drunk too. You come in the
mornin' and get paid, an' you'll find yore money comes along all right.
This is a hell of a gang," he went on with contempt, "a hell of a gang!
I gets you a job that lasts you all winter, and you wants your damn
money in a dance hall and raises a row because I ain't carryin' a few
thousan' dollars in each pants pocket. Don' think you makes anythin'
by it. I lays myself out from now on to see that yore little two by
four prospect holes ain't worth th' powder to blow 'em up, and I reckon
I has a little influence as superintendent of this game."
"Superintendent?" cried Houston, and the men about laughed loudly.
Billy was plainly even more bewildered than angry. He considered the
crowd all, as he expressed it, "plum' locoed"; but his passions, never
of the most peaceful, were rising. In another moment he would have
knocked Houston down and drawn his gun on the crowd which surrounded
him, but that Michail Lafond shoved his way through the press. Billy
caught sight of him with relief. Besides the plain bare fact of a row,
the situation was complicated by the presence of so great an audience,
before whom Billy naturally wished to conduct the affair correctly.
"What is the trouble? Here, this won't do!" cried Black Mike, as
though in the capacity of proprietor preserving the respectability of
his establishment.
"That's what I wants to know," cried Billy. "This (sulphurous) outfit
of ranikaboo ijits has gone plum' locoed, and they stan's around yere
howlin' for tha'r money as though I carries th' Philadelphy mint in my
clothes!"
Lafond did not reply. He motioned the men aside, and, with the utmost
gentleness, led the wondering Billy to a far corner of the room.
"I'm sorry that I have this to do, Billy," said Lafond. "I don't want
to. It's none of my lay-out. But these men of yours sent them to me
because I am notary public and I must do it."
Billy did not understand, but he caught the apology in Lafond's tone.
"That's all right, old man," he assured the latter, moistening his lips.
Without further preamble, the half-breed drew some papers from his
breast pocket, and handed them to Billy.
The first was a review of the work done on the Great Snake group of
claims, and a detailed analysis of it, carried out with astounding
minuteness of technical knowledge for one so ignorant of mining as
Stevens. It outlined also the work that should have been done; and it
ended with a general conclusion of incompetence. The second contained
his formal dismissal as superintendent. The third returned Billy's
shares as his portion in the Company's dissolution, said Company having
dissolved without assets.
Billy sat very quietly and read the papers over three times, while his
fellow townsmen stood silent and watched him. The first perusal
bewildered him, and turned him sick at heart with disappointment and
recognition of the estimate in which men held him. The second brought
to his consciousness that his companions were regarding him; and that,
in turn, caused him to realize that his prestige was crumbled, his
integrity dishonored, his abilities belittled. The third impressed on
him the desperate straits in which he found himself--without money,
holding a doubtful interest in claims whose bad name was by this
established so firmly that no Eastern capital would ever take hold of
them again, the moral if not legal debtor to these men who had worked
all winter for him. The iron turned in his soul. Michail Lafond,
sitting there in the role of sympathizer, was well satisfied with his
handiwork. For the moment, Billy Knapp was a broken man.
He arose slowly, and passed out of the door in the dead silence of
those about him.
After his exit, the dance was forgotten and an earnest discussion
raged. It was no light matter. Eleven men had invested heavily in
powder, fuse, drills, and windlasses for the purpose of fulfilling
their contract with Knapp; and they, and twenty-two others, had put in
their time for a number of months. Many of them owed for board or
materials. Others, though out of debt, had spent nearly all their
ready cash. They all seemed desperately close to bankruptcy, for
Lafond said nothing whatever respecting his agreement to pay the
contracts himself. And then again, as has been pointed out, the
well-being of the whole camp had depended intimately on the success of
its big mine, for the success of one enterprise like the Great Snake
draws other capital to the district, rendering possible the sale of
claims; while its failure always gives a bad name to a whole section.
So the ensuing discussion had plenty of interest for everybody.
Lafond, as the bearer of the tidings, was besieged with questions. He
was reluctant, but he answered. Besides, the facts were plain, ready
for interpretation. Nobody could help seeing that it was all Billy's
fault. After a time, poor Billy loomed large as a symbol of all the
camp's misfortune. After a little time more, when the bar had more
thoroughly done its work, a number became possessed of a desire to
abate Billy.
They seized torches and a rope, ran up the gulch, and beat in the door
of the office, only to encounter Billy enraged to the point of frenzy.
That individual rushed them out at the muzzle of a pistol, with such a
whirl of impetuous anger that it quite carried them off their feet,
after which he planted his back against the building and stood there in
the full light of the torches, reviling them. Why he was not shot I
cannot tell. Billy was something of a dominant spirit when roused.
That was the reason why, in the old days, he had made such a good
scout. After he had called them all the names he could think of, he
slammed the door on them. They went away without knowing why they did
so.
When they got back to town, they gathered again in the Little Nugget
saloon, drinking, swearing, shouting. The morale of the camp was
broken. It was a debauch. They cried out against Billy, and they
feared him for the moment. They made a stable-boy hide in the brush
with a bottle of whisky, to watch the works, to spy on they knew not
what. Lafond drank with them. He had never done so before. As they
became more noisy, he fell into a sullen fit, and went to sit over
behind the stove where he crooned away to himself an old _chanson_. He
stopped drinking, but the effects remained. It seemed to his befogged
mind that the wave had broken and that he was falling through the air.
Shortly he would be cast up against the beach. "A fool for luck!" he
muttered to himself, trying to rehabilitate his denuded confidence. He
took out the Company's letter to him, saying that the deeds were at
Rapid awaiting his action, and read it. Then he put a stick of wood on
the fire. He shivered and rubbed his eyes. Finally he went over to
the hotel, where he washed his head again and again in cold water.
After a time, he returned to the Little Nugget, feeling somewhat better.
It was now daylight, although the sun was not up. The stable-boy came
in from the upper gulch to say that Billy Knapp was hitching his horses
to the buckboard. The news sobered them somewhat. Ten minutes later,
the stable-boy again returned with the news that Knapp had loaded his
buckboard, and was on the point of driving through town. A dozen men
at once ran out into the street and concealed themselves behind the
corners of buildings.
XXXII
IN WHICH THERE IS SOME SHOOTING
Billy sat in a chair and boiled. He did not calm down until after
daylight, and then he found that his depression had vanished. He was
full of vigor. He went out and looked over the property very
carefully. The entire lay-out, he found, had weighed on his spirits,
and this last ungrateful episode had made him sick of the whole
miserable business. He ought never to be tied down. He could see his
mistake clearly enough now. If he was going to stick to gold hunting,
it ought to be as a prospector, not as a miner. A prospector enjoyed
the delight of new country, of wilderness life, of the chase, and then,
when civilization came too near, he could sell his claims to the miner
and move on to a virgin country. A miner, on the other hand, had to
settle down in one place and attend to all manner of vexatious details.
Billy felt a great impatience to shake himself free. With the thought
came a wave of anger against the men of the town. After all, what had
he to gain by staying? This outfit was a fizzle; nothing could be done
with it in the future. He might save something of the wreck by
grubbing about in the debris, but grubbing was exactly what he wanted
to get away from.
He looked over the works again. He was astonished to find how little
of it he cared for personally. There remained not much more than the
Westerner's outfit, when it was winnowed--four good horses, the
buckboard, his saddle, clothes, his weapons, and the beautiful trotting
horse. Billy could not let that go. The camp outfit they could have
and welcome. He kicked the rubber stamper into space, scattering
potential literature about the landscape. Many things he hesitated
over, but finally discarded. The heap was not very large when all was
told.
He began to experiment with the buckboard. Billy was a master of the
celebrated diamond hitch. After an hour's earnest work, he drew back
triumphantly to observe to himself that all he wished to take with him
was securely packed on the vehicle. Then he coupled in his grays, and
led out the beautiful trotting horse. He was glad that he had lately
paid the English groom his wages; which individual he remembered
seeing, the night before, dead drunk in a corner. Billy made himself
some coffee in the empty cookee's shack, and was ready to start.
He did not know exactly where he would go; that was a matter of detail,
but somewhere West in all probability--somewhere in Wyoming, where Jim
Buckley was hidden up in the mountains, living a sane sort of a life,
removed from the corroding influences of civilization. He did not
realize that in this impatient shaking off of responsibility, he was
little better than a moral coward. Even Billy's worst enemies would
have denied the justice of that epithet.
He climbed in, deliberately unwound the reins from the long brake
handle, clucked to the horses, and took his way, whistling, down the
narrow trail. The beautiful trotting horse followed gingerly, tossing
his head. At the entrance to town, Billy's whistling suddenly ceased.
The street was quite bare and silent. Not even from the Little Nugget
saloon or the new dance hall came the faintest sound of human
occupancy. A tenderfoot might have argued that this was indicative of
deep sleep after last night's festivities, but Billy knew better. At
seven o'clock in the morning, after excitement such as that of a few
hours before, the normal ensuing pow-wow would still be raging
unabated. He reached under the seat for his Winchester, the new 40-82
model of his prosperous days, and laid it softly across his lap, and
caught the end of the long lash in his whip hand. Then he resumed his
tune exactly where it had been broken off, looking neither to right nor
left, and jogging along without the slightest appearance of haste or
uneasiness. No one could have called Billy Knapp a coward at that
moment.
Near the first cabin the whistling broke off again. A little figure
stumbled out into the deserted street, weeping and afraid. Billy
pulled up. It was the Kid.
"They're goin' to shoot you," he sobbed, "from behind the Little
Nugget, without givin' you a chanst! I had to tell you, an' they'll
most kill me!" he wailed. Billy's eyes began to sparkle. The Kid
tried to hold within the other's reach his little 22 calibre rifle, his
most precious possession. "Here, take this!" he begged.
Billy laughed outright, a generous, hearty laugh with just a shade of
something serious in it. "Thank ye," said he, "I got one. And let me
tell ye right yere, you Kid. Yore a white man, you are, and yore jest
about the only white man in the place." He cast his eyes about him in
the buckboard at his feet. "Yere ye be," he said, tugging at a pair of
huge silver-ornamented Mexican spurs and leaning over to give them to
the boy; "jest remember me by them thar; they has my name in 'em; and,
look yere," he went on with a sudden inspiration, "you-all gets up
gulch to my camp and takes what grub you finds and lies low until yo'
paw an' th' rest gits over bein' mad. I don't know but what they
_does_ kill you, if you shows up afore that." And he laughed again to
see the boy's face brighten at this prospect of escaping the immediate
wrath to follow.
The little scene had been enacted in the middle of the silent street,
so silent and so empty that the principal actors in it experienced an
uncomfortable emotion of publicity, perhaps a little like that of an
inexperienced speaker before the glare of footlights. The Kid,
followed friskily by Peter, scuttled up the gulch, Billy stood up in
his buckboard and faced the inscrutable row of houses.
"Yo' damn coyotes!" he yelled, "thar goes the only _man_ in the whole
outfit. Shoot! yo' Siwashes, shoot!" and he brought his long whip like
a figure 8 across the flanks of all four horses at once.
_Bang!_ reverberated a shot between the hills, and a bullet splashed
white against the brake bar.
Billy dropped the reins to the floor of the buckboard, and planted his
foot on them. He steadied his knee against the seat, and threw down
and back the lever of his Winchester for a shot. The beautiful
trotting horse was pulling back in an ecstasy of terror at the end of
his long lariat, shaking his head and planting his forefeet. Billy
cursed savagely, but jerked loose the knot, and the beautiful trotting
horse, with a final snort of terror, turned tail and disappeared in the
direction of the mine.
_Bang! Bang! Bang!_ went other shots from behind puffs of white
smoke. The hills caught up the sound and rolled it back, and then back
again, until it was quite impossible to count the discharges.
There were perhaps a half-dozen men with rifles and a dozen or so with
six-shooters, all pumping away at it as fast as they could. The
buckboard was struck many times. One horse was hit, but only
slightly--not enough to interfere with, but rather to encourage his
speed. Billy fastened his eyes on the spot whence the first bullet had
sped. Suddenly he threw his rifle to his shoulder.
_Crack!_ it spoke, strangely flat out there in the open against the
fuller reports of the other pieces.
The bullets which undershot kicked up little puffs of dust, like
grasshoppers jumping, while those that passed above, ricochetted
finally from rocks and went singing away into the distance. It was a
wonder, with so large a mark, that neither the man nor the horses were
hit. It must be remembered, however, that the marksmen were more or
less drunk, and that Billy's speed was by now something tremendous.
_Crack!_ went his Winchester again.
At the end of the straight road was, as has perhaps been mentioned, a
turn of considerable sharpness, flanked by bold cliff-like rocks. In
the best of circumstances, this bit of road requires careful driving.
With a runaway four and a light buckboard, a smash up was inevitable.
The hidden assailants and spectators of the strange duel realized this
suddenly. In the interest of the approaching catastrophe, the
fusillade ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Billy maintained his
first attitude, one knee on the seat, the other foot braced against the
floor, keenly expectant. The silence became breathless, and one or two
men leaned forward the better to see.
"_Crack!_" spoke Billy's rifle for the third time. The man who had
fired the first shot pitched suddenly forward from behind his
sheltering corner, and lay still.
With one swift motion the scout dropped his Winchester in the seat,
grasped the four reins, and threw his enormous weight against the bits.
The grays had been ranch-bred. They bunched their feet, hunched their
backs, and in three heavy buck jumps had slowed down from a breakneck
run to a lumbering gallop. Billy Knapp gave vent to the wild shrill
war cry of his foster parents, the Oglallah Sioux, and jogged calmly
out of sight around the bend of the road.
A great crowd pressed about Tony Houston, prone on the ground. They
discovered that the ball had passed through the point of the shoulder,
not a dangerous place in itself, but resulting in a serious wound
because of the smashing power of the express rifle.
"Damn fine shooting!" they said, looking at each other with admiration.
"_Damn_ fine."
They began to feel a little more kindly toward Billy on account of this
evidence of his skill. They set about bandaging the wounded man.
XXXIII
FUTILITY
And around that lower bend, half a mile beyond Durand's cabin, Billy
encountered in the person of Jim Buckley the very man he intended to
search for, and that by not so very strange a chance when all is
considered.
After the scouting days were quite over, not long ago, by the way, Jim
Buckley had struck out for Wyoming, where he looked about him and
finally settled in the Crooked Horn district all alone. He was
prospecting. And as he was a great big leisurely sort of fellow, never
in a hurry, and quite unconvinced of the necessity for being so, it
took him a great many years to complete the prospecting to his
satisfaction. In fact it was only recently that he had fully convinced
himself and others of the value of what he had found. At first he had
worked the surface over inch by inch Then he had staked out his more
experimental claims. Then he had burrowed and grubbed and delved,
single-handed, through a network of shafts, tunnels, and drifts. It is
slow work--single-handed. In the morning you make little holes with a
hand drill, and fill them with powder. At noon you blast. In the
afternoon you cart away debris by means of an inadequate little bucket.
This takes time and patience, both of which Jim Buckley possessed.
Once a month he went to town, riding one horse and leading another, for
the purpose of buying supplies. The rest of the time he lived alone.
That is, he lived alone except that directly opposite the window, where
the light always struck it fair, he had carefully fastened a small
colored portrait on ivory. It was the picture of a woman, delicately
tinted, young with laughing blue eyes and a mouth whose corners turned
upward in so droll a manner that you would have sworn its owner had
never known a care in her fresh young life. It was the picture of
another man's wife. She had known care, of the bitterest, blackest
kind, and in her darkest days she had been murdered, mercifully
perhaps. After he had hauled the last little bucket of broken rock up
to the surface of the ground, and had ranged all sorts of utensils in
the open fireplace for the evening meal, Jim Buckley used to light his
pipe and sit looking at this little portrait for a long time. For, you
see, he was simply made, with no complexities--a few simple purposes, a
few simple ideas, a few simple friendships, a few simple passions--but
they were the stronger and deeper and more soul-satisfying for that.
He did not need incident or sorrow or regret to round out his life. It
was well poised and sufficient.
So he used to look upon the face of this other man's wife from under
sombre brows, but through clear eyes. No one could have guessed what
his slow deep thoughts were at such times, nor what he found, whether
of peace or unrest, in his contemplation of a portrait of the past. He
said it made him better. Perhaps it did.
But there came a time when the windlasses over the rabbit-burrow
prospector's shafts had made their last necessary revolution. Jim
Buckley knew the cross section of that country as well as you or I know
the cross section of an apple we have just cut in two. Then, having
satisfied his purposes, he looked to his friendships. He had never had
many. Alfred, Billy Knapp, Hal Townsend, Charley Fanchild--why you
could count them on the fingers of one hand--and two of these were
dead, and another was so far away in the cattle country of Arizona that
he might as well have been so. Jim would have liked well to have
gathered this old band of comrades about him and said, "Here, boys, is
what I have. It is more than enough for me: it is more than enough for
all of us. Let us share it, just as we used to share our bacon or our
coffee in the old days, and so we can grow old together in the way that
suits us best, the way of the pioneer." As he sat in the cabin now, or
stalked the hills with his rifle, this old comradeship took more and
more shape from the mists of the past, and there grew up in his breast
a sharp craving for old times, old faces, old friends. It was a
peculiarity of his nature that his ideas possessed a sort of cumulative
force. They gathered added reasons for their carrying out as a rolling
snowball gathers snow. Toward the end of that month, he packed a
strange old valise with clothes for the journey, strapped on his best
six-shooter, put his cabin in order, and rode his horse down to Crooked
Horn. There he left the animal with Billy Powers and took the train
for Edgemont and thence to Rapid.
He knew that Billy was somewhere in the Hills. At Rapid he learned of
that individual's new importance. His heart sank a little at the
thought that this prosperity might forfend his own scheme of
comradeship, but nevertheless he took Blair's stage for Copper Creek
and Custer.
Near Rockerville the axle gave way. The brake was repaired at a
miner's forge with some difficulty, but the job carried on so late into
the afternoon that Blair refused to go farther that night, and the
party slept at Rockerville. The next morning they pushed on again
about daylight, in order that Blair might start back from Custer before
noon, thus reducing his delay by a few hours. A half mile below
Durand's shack the axle again gave way, this time with a sudden
violence that sent flying the baggage which had been piled on top. Jim
found his valise in the bushes. The catch had snapped when the bag hit
the ground, so that it lay half open; but fortunately its contents had
not emptied. Jim closed it with the two end-clasps, and set it by the
side of the road. He did not notice that the ivory miniature had
dropped out, and now lay face downward at the roots of a _mesquite_.
Blair looked up from his inspection.
"Bad break!" he said, with a string of oaths. "Copper Creek's under a
mile ahead. You'll save time by pushin' on afoot. I'll be in as soon
as I can get this sulphurated axle tied together with a strap."
"No hurry," replied Jim; "I'll help you."
He began to unhitch the horses while Blair went to borrow an axe of
Durand. The driver's intention was to splice the broken axle with a
bit of green wood. In a little time, he and the old man returned
together.