THE GOPHER.
And do you remember the man they called The Gopher? Poor old Gopher! His
was another story. He died before Baboon found his fortune, else they
might have set up together, and behind their bull-dogs and grizzlies
growled at the world a day or two with perfect satisfaction. But fate
said otherwise.
The Gopher had always been misunderstood, even from the first. If the
camp held him at arm's length in the old days, it, as a rule, shunned
him now, when new men came in, and murder began to be a word with a
terrible meaning, and even the good Widow almost forgot him.
The camp went down, and cabins were deserted by hundreds. But there was
one cabin that was never vacant; it stood apart from town, on the brown
hill-side, and as it was one of the first, so it promised to be the last
of the camp. It always had an ugly bull-dog tied to the door--was itself
a low, suspicious-looking structure that year by year sank lower as the
grass grew taller around it, till it seemed trying to hide in the
chaparral. It had but one occupant, a silent, selfish man, who never
came out by day except to bury himself alone in his claim at work.
Nothing was known of him at all, save the story that he had killed his
partner in a gambling-house away back somewhere in '51. He was shunned
and feared by all, and he approached and spoke to no one except the
butcher, the grocer, and expressman; and to these only briefly, on
business. I believe, however, that the old cripple, Baboon, sometimes
sat on the bank and talked to the murderer at work in his claim. It was
even said that Baboon was on fair terms with the dog at the door.
This solitary man of the savage dog was, as you guess, "The Gopher."
That was not the name given him by his parents, but it was the name the
camp had given him a generation before, and it was now the only name by
which he was known. The amount of gold which he had hoarded and hidden
away in that dismal old cabin, through years and years of incessant
toil, was computed to be enormous.
Year after year the grass stole farther down from the hill-tops to which
it had been driven, as it were, in the early settlement of the camp; at
last it environed the few remaining cabins, as if they were besieged,
and it stood up tall and undisturbed in the only remaining trail. Still
regularly three times a day the smoke curled up from the Gopher's cabin,
and the bull-dog kept unbroken sentry at the door.
In the January spring that followed, the grass and clover crept down
strong and thick from the hills, and spread in a pretty carpet across
the unmeasured streets of the once populous and prosperous camp. Little
gray horned toads sunned themselves on the great flat rocks that had
served for hearth-stones, and the wild hop-vines clambered up and across
the toppling and shapeless chimneys.
About this time a closely-contested election drew near. It was a bold
and original thought of a candidate to approach the Gopher and solicit
his vote. His friends shook their heads, but his case was desperate, and
he ventured down upon the old gray cabin hiding in the grass and
chaparral. The dog protested, and the office-seeker was proceeding to
knock his ugly teeth down his throat with a pick-handle, when the door
opened, and he found the muzzle of a double-barrelled shot-gun in his
face. The candidate did not stay to urge his claims, and the Gopher's
politics remained a mystery.
Here in this land of the sun the days trench deep into the nights of
northern countries, and birds and beasts retire before the sunset: a
habit which the transplanted Saxon declines to adopt.
Some idlers sat at sunset on the verandah of the last saloon, looking
down the gulch as the manzanita smoke curled up from the Gopher's cabin.
There is an hour when the best that is in man comes to the surface;
sometimes the outcroppings are not promising of any great inner wealth;
but the indications, whatever they may be, are not false. It is dulse
and drift coming to the surface when the storm of the day is over. Yet
the best thoughts are never uttered; often because no fit words are
found to array them in; oftener because no fit ear is found to receive
them.
How lonesome it looked, that little storm-stained cabin thus alone,
stooping down, hiding away in the long strong grass, as if half-ashamed
of the mournful history of its sad and lonely occupant.
A sailor broke silence: "Looks like a Feejee camp on a South Sea
island."
"Robinson Crusoe--the last man of the original camp--the last rose of
Summer." This was said by a young man who had sent some verses to the
_Hangtown Weekly_.
"Looks to me, in its crow's nest of chaparral, like the lucky ace of
spades," added a man who sat apart contemplating the wax under the nail
of his right fore-finger.
The schoolmaster here picked up the ace of hearts, drew out his pencil
and figured rapidly.
"There!" he cried, flourishing the card, "I put it an ounce a day for
eighteen years, and that is the result." The figures astonished them
all. It was decided that the old miser had at least a mule-load of gold
in his cabin.
"It is my opinion," said the new Squire, who was small of stature, and
consequently insolent and impertinent, "he had ought to be taken up,
tried, and hung for killing his pardner in '51."
"The time has run out," said the Coroner, who now came up, adjusting a
tall hat to which he was evidently not accustomed; "the time for such
cases by the law made and provided has run out, and it is my opinion it
can't be did."
Not long after this it was discovered that the Gopher was not at work.
Then it came out that he was very ill, and that Old Baboon was seen to
enter his cabin.