thing's gittin' in its work. Sorter sickenin' the malaria--and kinder
water-proofin' the insides all to onct and at the same lick! Don't yer
see? Put another in yer vest pocket; you'll be cryin' for 'em like a
child afore ye get home. Thar! Well, how's things agoin' on your claim,
Dick? Boomin', eh?”
The guest raised his head and turned it sufficiently to fling his answer
back over his shoulder at his hosts. “I don't know what YOU'D call'
boomin','” he said gloomily; “I suppose you two men sitting here
comfortably by the fire, without caring whether school keeps or not,
would call two feet of backwater over one's claim 'boomin';' I reckon
YOU'D consider a hundred and fifty feet of sluicing carried away,
and drifting to thunder down the South Fork, something in the way of
advertising to your old camp! I suppose YOU'd think it was an inducement
to investors! I shouldn't wonder,” he added still more gloomily, as a
sudden dash of rain down the wide-throated chimney dropped in his
tin cup--“and it would be just like you two chaps, sittin' there
gormandizing over your quinine--if yer said this rain that's lasted
three weeks was something to be proud of!”
It was the cheerful and the satisfying custom of the rest of the camp,
for no reason whatever, to hold Uncle Jim and Uncle Billy responsible
for its present location, its vicissitudes, the weather, or any
convulsion of nature; and it was equally the partners' habit, for no
reason whatever, to accept these animadversions and apologize.
“It's a rain that's soft and mellowin',” said Uncle Billy gently,
“and supplin' to the sinews and muscles. Did ye ever notice,
Jim”--ostentatiously to his partner--“did ye ever notice that you get
inter a kind o' sweaty lather workin' in it? Sorter openin' to the
pores!”
“Fetches 'em every time,” said Uncle Billy. “Better nor fancy soap.”
Their guest laughed bitterly. “Well, I'm going to leave it to you. I
reckon to cut the whole concern to-morrow, and 'lite' out for something
new. It can't be worse than this.”
The two partners looked grieved, albeit they were accustomed to these
outbursts. Everybody who thought of going away from Cedar Camp used it
first as a threat to these patient men, after the fashion of runaway
nephews, or made an exemplary scene of their going.
“Better think twice afore ye go,” said Uncle Billy.
“I've seen worse weather afore ye came,” said Uncle Jim slowly. “Water
all over the Bar; the mud so deep ye couldn't get to Angel's for a
sack o' flour, and we had to grub on pine nuts and jackass-rabbits. And
yet--we stuck by the camp, and here we are!”
The mild answer apparently goaded their guest to fury. He rose from his
seat, threw back his long dripping hair from his handsome but querulous
face, and scattered a few drops on the partners. “Yes, that's just it.
That's what gets me! Here you stick, and here you are! And here you'll
stick and rust until you starve or drown! Here you are,--two men who
ought to be out in the world, playing your part as grown men,--stuck
here like children 'playing house' in the woods; playing work in your
wretched mud-pie ditches, and content. Two men not so old that you
mightn't be taking your part in the fun of the world, going to balls
or theatres, or paying attention to girls, and yet old enough to have
married and have your families around you, content to stay in this
God-forsaken place; old bachelors, pigging together like poorhouse
paupers. That's what gets me! Say you LIKE it? Say you expect by
hanging on to make a strike--and what does that amount to? What are YOUR
chances? How many of us have made, or are making, more than grub wages?
Say you're willing to share and share alike as you do--have you got
enough for two? Aren't you actually living off each other? Aren't you
grinding each other down, choking each other's struggles, as you sink
together deeper and deeper in the mud of this cussed camp? And while
you're doing this, aren't you, by your age and position here, holding
out hopes to others that you know cannot be fulfilled?”
Accustomed as they were to the half-querulous, half-humorous, but always
extravagant, criticism of the others, there was something so new in this
arraignment of themselves that the partners for a moment sat silent.
There was a slight flush on Uncle Billy's cheek, there was a slight
paleness on Uncle Jim's. He was the first to reply. But he did so with a
certain dignity which neither his partner nor their guest had ever seen
on his face before.
“As it's OUR fire that's warmed ye up like this, Dick Bullen,” he said,
slowly rising, with his hand resting on Uncle Billy's shoulder, “and as
it's OUR whiskey that's loosened your tongue, I reckon we must put up
with what ye 'r' saying, just as we've managed to put up with our own
way o' living, and not quo'll with ye under our own roof.”
The young fellow saw the change in Uncle Jim's face and quickly extended
his hand, with an apologetic backward shake of his long hair. “Hang
it all, old man,” he said, with a laugh of mingled contrition and
amusement, “you mustn't mind what I said just now. I've been so worried
thinking of things about MYSELF, and, maybe, a little about you, that I
quite forgot I hadn't a call to preach to anybody--least of all to you.
So we part friends, Uncle Jim, and you too, Uncle Billy, and you'll
forget what I said. In fact, I don't know why I spoke at all--only I
was passing your claim just now, and wondering how much longer your old
sluice-boxes would hold out, and where in thunder you'd get others when
they caved in! I reckon that sent me off. That's all, old chap!”
Uncle Billy's face broke into a beaming smile of relief, and it was HIS
hand that first grasped his guest's; Uncle Jim quickly followed with
as honest a pressure, but with eyes that did not seem to be looking at
Bullen, though all trace of resentment had died out of them. He walked
to the door with him, again shook hands, but remained looking out in the
darkness some time after Dick Bullen's tangled hair and broad shoulders
had disappeared.
Meantime, Uncle Billy had resumed his seat and was chuckling and
reminiscent as he cleaned out his pipe.
“Kinder reminds me of Jo Sharp, when he was cleaned out at poker by his
own partners in his own cabin, comin' up here and bedevilin' US about
it! What was it you lint him?”
But Uncle Jim did not reply; and Uncle Billy, taking up the cards,
began to shuffle them, smiling vaguely, yet at the same time somewhat
painfully. “Arter all, Dick was mighty cut up about what he said, and I
felt kinder sorry for him. And, you know, I rather cotton to a man that
speaks his mind. Sorter clears him out, you know, of all the slumgullion
that's in him. It's just like washin' out a pan o' prospecting: you pour
in the water, and keep slushing it round and round, and out comes first
the mud and dirt, and then the gravel, and then the black sand, and
then--it's all out, and there's a speck o' gold glistenin' at the
bottom!”
“Then you think there WAS suthin' in what he said?” said Uncle Jim,
facing about slowly.
An odd tone in his voice made Uncle Billy look up. “No,” he said
quickly, shying with the instinct of an easy pleasure-loving nature from
a possible grave situation. “No, I don't think he ever got the color!
But wot are ye moonin' about for? Ain't ye goin' to play? It's mor' 'n
half past nine now.”
Thus adjured, Uncle Jim moved up to the table and sat down, while Uncle
Billy dealt the cards, turning up the Jack or right bower--but WITHOUT
that exclamation of delight which always accompanied his good fortune,
nor did Uncle Jim respond with the usual corresponding simulation of
deep disgust. Such a circumstance had not occurred before in the history
of their partnership. They both played in silence--a silence only
interrupted by a larger splash of raindrops down the chimney.
“We orter put a couple of stones on the chimney-top, edgewise, like Jack
Curtis does. It keeps out the rain without interferin' with the draft,”
said Uncle Billy musingly.
“What's the use if”--
“If what?” said Uncle Billy quietly.
“If we don't make it broader,” said Uncle Jim half wearily.
They both stared at the chimney, but Uncle Jim's eye followed the wall
around to the bunks. There were many discolorations on the canvas, and
a picture of the Goddess of Liberty from an illustrated paper had broken
out in a kind of damp, measly eruption. “I'll stick that funny handbill
of the 'Washin' Soda' I got at the grocery store the other day right
over the Liberty gal. It's a mighty perty woman washin' with short
sleeves,” said Uncle Billy. “That's the comfort of them picters, you kin
always get somethin' new, and it adds thickness to the wall.”
Uncle Jim went back to the cards in silence. After a moment he rose
again, and hung his overcoat against the door.
“Wind's comin' in,” he said briefly.
“Yes,” said Uncle Billy cheerfully, “but it wouldn't seem nat'ral if
there wasn't that crack in the door to let the sunlight in o mornin's.
Makes a kind o' sundial, you know. When the streak o' light's in
that corner, I says 'six o'clock!' when it's across the chimney I say
'seven!' and so 'tis!”
It certainly had grown chilly, and the wind was rising. The
candle guttered and flickered; the embers on the hearth brightened
occasionally, as if trying to dispel the gathering shadows, but always
ineffectually. The game was frequently interrupted by the necessity of
stirring the fire. After an interval of gloom, in which each partner
successively drew the candle to his side to examine his cards, Uncle Jim
said:--
“Say?”
“Well!” responded Uncle Billy.
“Are you sure you saw that third crow on the wood-pile?”
“Sure as I see you now--and a darned sight plainer. Why?”
“Nothin', I was just thinkin'. Look here! How do we stand now?”
Uncle Billy was still losing. “Nevertheless,” he said cheerfully, “I'm
owin' you a matter of sixty thousand dollars.”
Uncle Jim examined the book abstractedly. “Suppose,” he said slowly, but
without looking at his partner, “suppose, as it's gettin' late now, we
play for my half share of the claim agin the limit--seventy thousand--to
square up.”
“Your half share!” repeated Uncle Billy, with amused incredulity.
“My half share of the claim,--of this yer house, you know,--one half of
all that Dick Bullen calls our rotten starvation property,” reiterated
Uncle Jim, with a half smile.
Uncle Billy laughed. It was a novel idea; it was, of course, “all in the
air,” like the rest of their game, yet even then he had an odd feeling
that he would have liked Dick Bullen to have known it. “Wade in, old
pard,” he said. “I'm on it.”
Uncle Jim lit another candle to reinforce the fading light, and the deal
fell to Uncle Billy. He turned up Jack of clubs. He also turned a little
redder as he took up his cards, looked at them, and glanced hastily at
his partner. “It's no use playing,” he said. “Look here!” He laid down
his cards on the table. They were the ace, king and queen of clubs,
and Jack of spades,--or left bower,--which, with the turned-up Jack of
clubs,--or right bower,--comprised ALL the winning cards!
“By jingo! If we'd been playin' four-handed, say you an' me agin some
other ducks, we'd have made 'four' in that deal, and h'isted some
money--eh?” and his eyes sparkled. Uncle Jim, also, had a slight
tremulous light in his own.
“Oh no! I didn't see no three crows this afternoon,” added Uncle Billy
gleefully, as his partner, in turn, began to shuffle the cards with
laborious and conscientious exactitude. Then dealing, he turned up a
heart for trumps. Uncle Billy took up his cards one by one, but when
he had finished his face had become as pale as it had been red before.
“What's the matter?” said Uncle Jim quickly, his own face growing white.
Uncle Billy slowly and with breathless awe laid down his cards, face up
on the table. It was exactly the same sequence IN HEARTS, with the knave
of diamonds added. He could again take every trick.
They stared at each other with vacant faces and a half-drawn smile of
fear. They could hear the wind moaning in the trees beyond; there was a
sudden rattling at the door. Uncle Billy started to his feet, but Uncle
Jim caught his arm. “DON'T LEAVE THE CARDS! It's only the wind; sit
down,” he said in a low awe-hushed voice, “it's your deal; you were two
before, and two now, that makes your four; you've only one point to make
to win the game. Go on.”
They both poured out a cup of whiskey, smiling vaguely, yet with a
certain terror in their eyes. Their hands were cold; the cards slipped
from Uncle Billy's benumbed fingers; when he had shuffled them he passed
them to his partner to shuffle them also, but did not speak. When Uncle
Jim had shuffled them methodically he handed them back fatefully to his
partner. Uncle Billy dealt them with a trembling hand. He turned up a
club. “If you are sure of these tricks you know you've won,” said Uncle
Jim in a voice that was scarcely audible. Uncle Billy did not reply, but
tremulously laid down the ace and right and left bowers.
He had won!
A feeling of relief came over each, and they laughed hysterically and
discordantly. Ridiculous and childish as their contest might have seemed
to a looker-on, to each the tension had been as great as that of the
greatest gambler, without the gambler's trained restraint, coolness, and
composure. Uncle Billy nervously took up the cards again.
“Don't,” said Uncle Jim gravely; “it's no use--the luck's gone now.”
“Just one more deal,” pleaded his partner.
Uncle Jim looked at the fire, Uncle Billy hastily dealt, and threw the
two hands face up on the table. They were the ordinary average cards.
He dealt again, with the same result. “I told you so,” said Uncle Jim,
without looking up.
It certainly seemed a tame performance after their wonderful hands, and
after another trial Uncle Billy threw the cards aside and drew his stool
before the fire. “Mighty queer, warn't it?” he said, with reminiscent
awe. “Three times running. Do you know, I felt a kind o' creepy feelin'
down my back all the time. Criky! what luck! None of the boys would
believe it if we told 'em--least of all that Dick Bullen, who don't
believe in luck, anyway. Wonder what he'd have said! and, Lord! how he'd
have looked! Wall! what are you starin' so for?”
Uncle Jim had faced around, and was gazing at Uncle Billy's
good-humored, simple face. “Nothin'!” he said briefly, and his eyes
again sought the fire.
“Then don't look as if you was seein' suthin'--you give me the creeps,”
returned Uncle Billy a little petulantly. “Let's turn in, afore the fire
goes out!”
The fateful cards were put back into the drawer, the table shoved
against the wall. The operation of undressing was quickly got over,
the clothes they wore being put on top of their blankets. Uncle Billy
yawned, “I wonder what kind of a dream I'll have tonight--it oughter be
suthin' to explain that luck.” This was his “good-night” to his partner.
In a few moments he was sound asleep.
Not so Uncle Jim. He heard the wind gradually go down, and in the
oppressive silence that followed could detect the deep breathing of
his companion and the far-off yelp of a coyote. His eyesight becoming
accustomed to the semi-darkness, broken only by the scintillation of
the dying embers of their fire, he could take in every detail of their
sordid cabin and the rude environment in which they had lived so long.
The dismal patches on the bark roof, the wretched makeshifts of each
day, the dreary prolongation of discomfort, were all plain to him now,
without the sanguine hope that had made them bearable. And when he
shut his eyes upon them, it was only to travel in fancy down the steep
mountain side that he had trodden so often to the dreary claim on the
overflowed river, to the heaps of “tailings” that encumbered it, like
empty shells of the hollow, profitless days spent there, which they
were always waiting for the stroke of good fortune to clear away. He saw
again the rotten “sluicing,” through whose hopeless rifts and holes even
their scant daily earnings had become scantier. At last he arose,
and with infinite gentleness let himself down from his berth without
disturbing his sleeping partner, and wrapping himself in his blanket,
went to the door, which he noiselessly opened. From the position of a
few stars that were glittering in the northern sky he knew that it was
yet scarcely midnight; there were still long, restless hours before the
day! In the feverish state into which he had gradually worked himself it
seemed to him impossible to wait the coming of the dawn.
But he was mistaken. For even as he stood there all nature seemed to
invade his humble cabin with its free and fragrant breath, and invest
him with its great companionship. He felt again, in that breath, that
strange sense of freedom, that mystic touch of partnership with the
birds and beasts, the shrubs and trees, in this greater home before him.
It was this vague communion that had kept him there, that still held
these world-sick, weary workers in their rude cabins on the slopes
around him; and he felt upon his brow that balm that had nightly lulled
him and them to sleep and forgetfulness. He closed the door, turned
away, crept as noiselessly as before into his bunk again, and presently
fell into a profound slumber.
But when Uncle Billy awoke the next morning he saw it was late; for
the sun, piercing the crack of the closed door, was sending a pencil of
light across the cold hearth, like a match to rekindle its dead embers.
His first thought was of his strange luck the night before, and of
disappointment that he had not had the dream of divination that he had
looked for. He sprang to the floor, but as he stood upright his
glance fell on Uncle Jim's bunk. It was empty. Not only that, but his
BLANKETS--Uncle Jim's own particular blankets--WERE GONE!
A sudden revelation of his partner's manner the night before struck him
now with the cruelty of a blow; a sudden intelligence, perhaps the very
divination he had sought, flashed upon him like lightning! He glanced
wildly around the cabin. The table was drawn out from the wall a little
ostentatiously, as if to catch his eye. On it was lying the stained
chamois-skin purse in which they had kept the few grains of gold
remaining from their last week's “clean up.” The grains had been
carefully divided, and half had been taken! But near it lay the little
memorandum-book, open, with the stick of pencil lying across it. A deep
line was drawn across the page on which was recorded their imaginary
extravagant gains and losses, even to the entry of Uncle Jim's half
share of the claim which he had risked and lost! Underneath were
hurriedly scrawled the words:--
“Settled by YOUR luck, last night, old pard.--JAMES FOSTER.”
It was nearly a month before Cedar Camp was convinced that Uncle Billy
and Uncle Jim had dissolved partnership. Pride had prevented Uncle Billy
from revealing his suspicions of the truth, or of relating the events
that preceded Uncle Jim's clandestine flight, and Dick Bullen had gone
to Sacramento by stage-coach the same morning. He briefly gave out that
his partner had been called to San Francisco on important business of
their own, that indeed might necessitate his own removal there later. In
this he was singularly assisted by a letter from the absent Jim, dated
at San Francisco, begging him not to be anxious about his success, as he
had hopes of presently entering into a profitable business, but with no
further allusions to his precipitate departure, nor any suggestion of
a reason for it. For two or three days Uncle Billy was staggered and
bewildered; in his profound simplicity he wondered if his extraordinary
good fortune that night had made him deaf to some explanation of his
partner's, or, more terrible, if he had shown some “low” and incredible
intimation of taking his partner's extravagant bet as REAL and binding.
In this distress he wrote to Uncle Jim an appealing and apologetic
letter, albeit somewhat incoherent and inaccurate, and bristling
with misspelling, camp slang, and old partnership jibes. But to this
elaborate epistle he received only Uncle Jim's repeated assurances of
his own bright prospects, and his hopes that his old partner would be
more fortunate, single-handed, on the old claim. For a whole week or two
Uncle Billy sulked, but his invincible optimism and good humor got the
better of him, and he thought only of his old partner's good fortune.
He wrote him regularly, but always to one address--a box at the San
Francisco post-office, which to the simple-minded Uncle Billy suggested
a certain official importance. To these letters Uncle Jim responded
regularly but briefly.
From a certain intuitive pride in his partner and his affection, Uncle
Billy did not show these letters openly to the camp, although he spoke
freely of his former partner's promising future, and even read them
short extracts. It is needless to say that the camp did not accept Uncle
Billy's story with unsuspecting confidence. On the contrary, a hundred
surmises, humorous or serious, but always extravagant, were afloat in
Cedar Camp. The partners had quarreled over their clothes--Uncle Jim,
who was taller than Uncle Billy, had refused to wear his partner's
trousers. They had quarreled over cards--Uncle Jim had discovered that
Uncle Billy was in possession of a “cold deck,” or marked pack. They had
quarreled over Uncle Billy's carelessness in grinding up half a box
of “bilious pills” in the morning's coffee. A gloomily imaginative
mule-driver had darkly suggested that, as no one had really seen Uncle
Jim leave the camp, he was still there, and his bones would yet be found
in one of the ditches; while a still more credulous miner averred that
what he had thought was the cry of a screech-owl the night previous to
Uncle Jim's disappearance, might have been the agonized utterance of
that murdered man. It was highly characteristic of that camp--and,
indeed, of others in California--that nobody, not even the ingenious
theorists themselves, believed their story, and that no one took the
slightest pains to verify or disprove it. Happily, Uncle Billy never
knew it, and moved all unconsciously in this atmosphere of burlesque
suspicion. And then a singular change took place in the attitude of the
camp towards him and the disrupted partnership. Hitherto, for no reason
whatever, all had agreed to put the blame upon Billy--possibly because
he was present to receive it. As days passed that slight reticence and
dejection in his manner, which they had at first attributed to remorse
and a guilty conscience, now began to tell as absurdly in his favor.
Here was poor Uncle Billy toiling though the ditches, while his selfish
partner was lolling in the lap of luxury in San Francisco! Uncle Billy's
glowing accounts of Uncle Jim's success only contributed to the sympathy
now fully given in his behalf and their execration of the absconding
partner. It was proposed at Biggs's store that a letter expressing the
indignation of the camp over his heartless conduct to his late partner,
William Fall, should be forwarded to him. Condolences were offered to
Uncle Billy, and uncouth attempts were made to cheer his loneliness. A
procession of half a dozen men twice a week to his cabin, carrying their
own whiskey and winding up with a “stag dance” before the premises, was
sufficient to lighten his eclipsed gayety and remind him of a happier
past. “Surprise” working parties visited his claim with spasmodic essays
towards helping him, and great good humor and hilarity prevailed. It was
not an unusual thing for an honest miner to arise from an idle gathering
in some cabin and excuse himself with the remark that he “reckoned he'd
put in an hour's work in Uncle Billy's tailings!” And yet, as before, it
was very improbable if any of these reckless benefactors REALLY believed
in their own earnestness or in the gravity of the situation. Indeed, a
kind of hopeful cynicism ran through their performances. “Like as not,
Uncle Billy is still in 'cahoots' [i. e., shares] with his old pard, and
is just laughin' at us as he's sendin' him accounts of our tomfoolin'.”