ROSS'S "HIRED MAN"
As the door closed on Sandy, Ross beat a hasty retreat. His first thought
was that the brothers were discussing him. The fact that they were in
the valley to watch the progress of work on the Weimer-Grant claims and
that they were interested in his being there and not anxious to have him
remain, all aided in the interpretation of the McKenzies' speeches.
"But who on earth is it that won't come as long as I am here and why
not?" he asked himself as he stumbled back in the direction of the light
in Weimer's cabin.
"Vat's you pack for alreddy?" demanded Weimer from his bunk as Ross
opened the door. "Ist dem McKenzies mit Wilson, hein?"
"No," returned Ross, "but I decided that I am tired enough to turn in
instead of going visiting," and he forthwith "turned in," but did not go
to sleep immediately.
Truth to tell, he was uneasy. He felt that Sandy, behind that
good-natured, friendly exterior, was full of schemes. The McKenzies
wanted the claims, and Ross had unexpectedly interposed himself
between them and their desires. Therefore, their schemes must include
him. What was on foot now?
He tossed restlessly in his bunk assailed with qualms of fear that he
tried to conceal from himself. "Ah, what you afraid of?" he asked himself
disgustedly. "They won't shoot you nor yet tie you hand and foot and
throw you over the Crosby trail. As Steele says, I haven't a thing to
fear personally from 'em. That's not their way. Go to sleep."
This command he issued to himself in an angry mutter and at once
scrambled up in his bunk wider awake than ever. His mental horizon
unexpectedly cleared. "Of course he's the one they meant and not me!"
he exclaimed aloud.
"Vat's dat you say?" asked Weimer sleepily. "Hein?"
"A waking nightmare," returned Ross and lay down again.
Of course it was Leslie. "'He's to be here only a few weeks,'" Waymart
had said. "'Let well enough alone.'" He, Ross, expected to winter
in the valley, and the McKenzies knew it. Yes, they were referring to
Leslie. That calmed Ross, but deepened the mystery.
The following morning he thought over the situation while he was at work.
It was a blind enough situation, but he felt that he ought to repeat to
Leslie the scraps of conversation that he had overheard. They might mean
much to the boy, and in spite of his reserve and his overbearing manners
Ross liked Leslie.
At noon he ate dinner hastily, and telling Weimer that he would be
back in an hour, set out for the upper claims. Snow had fallen the
night before and the trail had filled, making walking tiresome, for
Ross had not yet accustomed himself to the use of snow-shoes. With his
hands in his pockets and his cap drawn down over his eyes he plunged
through the drifts in the teeth of a sharp east wind. Up the side of
the mountains he struggled, through the pass between two peaks where
Meadow Creek had cut a channel and into a hollow sheltered from the wind
and exposed to the sun.
"Hello, Grant!" A voice greeted him from the upper side of the trail.
Ross pushed his cap back and looked up. In the sunshine, his back against
a warm rock, his feet buried in the dry loam and pine needles, sat Leslie
Jones. He had eaten his dinner and wandered along the trail until he
had found a warm spot in which to spend the noon hour. Ross promptly
climbed the steep mountainside and dropped down beside him.
"The McKenzies say," began Leslie curiously, "that you don't stop work
long enough to eat and sleep. Yet here you are two miles from home in
the middle of the day."
"It's because of what the McKenzies have said that I'm here now,"
Ross returned swiftly. "It may not be worth a picayune to you, and then
again, maybe, it will be," and he related the events of the previous
evening.
Leslie bent a troubled face over a stick that he was idly whittling.
"Are you sure, Grant, that they meant me? I haven't an idea who they are
nor who could be so afraid of me that he wouldn't come up here with me
here. I don't know of a soul that's afraid of me, but," with a short,
mirthless laugh, "I do know of some one that I'm afraid of. It's not
the McKenzies, although they might--if they know me----"
Suddenly he flung the stick from him and faced Ross impulsively. "Grant,
did you ever do something that you'd give anything you possessed to
undo--and that you'd just _got_ to undo?"
Ross, startled at the sudden change in his companion, at the latter's
intensity and evident unhappiness, merely shook his head awkwardly,
avoiding the misery-filled eyes. He turned away and began piling up
stones, bits of shining quartz that had been thrown, at some time, out of
a discovery hole above them.
Presently Leslie regained his self-possession. "I say, Grant," he began
again abruptly, "to tell you the truth, I have started to go over to see
you half a dozen times within a week and got this far every time. I'm
going to ask a favor of you."
"All right," said Ross with a gruffness that did not conceal his
sympathy. "Fire ahead!"
"The other day you--you offered me money," Leslie began with difficulty.
"Yes, and I do to-day," Ross interrupted.
Leslie shook his head. "Hold on till I get to it. I can't take your
money--not that way. But the other day I heard the McKenzies tell Wilson
that you tried to hire men in Miners' Camp. Will you hire me?"
"Will I!" Ross leaped to his feet. He grabbed his cap and tossed it in
the air and then fell to pommeling Leslie in pure exuberance of joy.
"Hire you? I wish there were half a dozen of you to hire! Bully for you!
But----"
His exuberance died out. He replaced his cap and looked down on the
other, his lips pursed ready for a whistle.
"Well?"
"See here!" Ross burst out. "What about Wilson?"
"That's all right," Leslie answered quickly. "I told him a couple
of days ago that I'd got to get money. I told him I'd leave him the
grub, of course. I agreed to furnish it, and I'll stick to my word,"
doggedly, "but I must also light out and earn some money. And all I can
do is to work with my hands. I--well, I've always hated to make my head
work, and I've never had to do any other kind until now. You'll find
I'm soft yet, but I'll do my best."
The boy spoke humbly.
Ross sent his cap spinning into the air once more. "I'll risk you!
You're not as soft as you were six weeks ago! Not by half! When can you
come?"
Leslie considered. "Wilson says he'll go below to the coal claims in a
couple of weeks. I'll talk it over with him and let you know."
"Come to-morrow, if you can," Ross shouted back as he slid down to the
trail.
Work went easily for a few days in view of Leslie's coming. The thought
of his companionship robbed the prospective loneliness of Meadow Creek
Valley of its terrors. He whistled and sang about the shack as he hunted
up the material out of which to make a third bunk. He was hammering
away on this the second evening after his talk with Leslie, when the
McKenzies dropped in. They had been over on the Divide hunting and
had been out of Ross's sight and mind since his talk with Leslie. Not
until Sandy pushed the door open unceremoniously and walked in did Ross
recall the comments that had so disturbed him and wondered once more
to whom they had referred, himself or Leslie, and what the reference
meant.
"Hello, Grant!" Sandy exclaimed, stopping abruptly just inside the door.
"What's up? Why another bunk? Goin' t' take boarders? Any relations
droppin' in t' attend our festivities up here?"
Ross looked over his shoulder laughingly. "Nope. Give another guess."
Sandy came nearer. Waymart shut the door and sat down beside the stove.
Weimer turned his back on "dem darned McKenzies," and put on his goggles
that he might not be tormented by a view of their faces. It was a
never-ending source of vexation to him that they came sociably to his
shack.
"I haven't any more guesses in stock," declared Sandy, but the smile on
his face was succeeded by a frown and he bit his red beard restlessly.
"Hired man is coming to-morrow," Ross formed him as the hammer sent
another nail home in the side wall.
"Hired man!" exploded Sandy. "Where the deuce will you get a hired man?"
"Right here in the valley," exulted Ross. "Leslie Jones."
"Leslie Jones!" repeated Sandy.
"Leslie Jones," muttered Waymart.
"By and by," Ross confessed, "when all you fellows go below, it will
seem a little more livable up here to have a third one around. I'd pay a
man wages just to stay here to say nothing of working for me."
Neither Sandy nor Waymart made any comment. Sandy stood watching the
work in silence, while Waymart allowed his pipe to go out. Then both
departed. They said they were going up to see Wilson, but Ross noticed
that they returned to their own cabin instead.
"Something doesn't seem to please our friends the enemy," he chuckled
after their departure. "They see the Weimer-Grant claims getting further
and further from their reach."
"Ve vill peat dem McKenzies yet," gloated Weimer rubbing his hands gently
on his knees. "Ven dot oder poy comes de work vill run und jump!"
Ross did not see the McKenzies again until Leslie was occupying the third
bunk, Wilson having, good-naturedly, sent him down within a week after
the boys had completed their bargain.
"Clear out if ye want to," Wilson had said kindly. "It's white of ye
t' leave the grub. I hain't a cent t' pay fer it. There's a fortune
in these claims of mine, but it's too late t' dig it out this year.
Next summer----" and he was launched on the glowing prospects for the
next season.
Leslie entered on his task with a grim determination which seemed foreign
to his disposition.
"I don't want you to get sick of your bargain the first week," he said
one day in answer to Ross's remonstrance when he refused to stop work
on account of a bruise on his wrist. "You open up that little emergency
chest and I can go on digging just the same. I don't want any delayed
wages in mine!"
With the advent of Leslie, life fell into pleasanter grooves in Weimer's
cabin. Despite the anxiety ever present with the newcomer, and despite
his natural reserve, Ross's exuberance of spirits caused by his presence
and work affected him, and after the supper dishes were washed, the two
boys wrestled, chaffed each other or talked, Ross about his father and
uncle and aunt, Leslie about his school life in Omaha.
"It's a boys' school," he explained one day, "a military academy. I've
had to go there ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper. Discipline
is fierce. I hate it, and this year I made up my mind I'd not stand
it, so I'm here."
"And wish," ventured Ross, "that you were back in school again."
"Yes--almost," Leslie began impulsively and then paused, adding quietly,
"Lots of things I wish, and wish 'em hard."
The following evening after supper, Weimer tumbled into his bunk at
once and began snoring. The two boys washed the dishes, in silence at
first. Outside, snow was falling heavily. Through the drifting flakes
the McKenzies' light shone fitfully. The brothers had been away again
hunting and had just returned.
As Leslie set the dishes on their shelf above the stove he glanced
uneasily out of the window. He had not seen the McKenzies for some time.
Ever since they had crossed the valley that noon on their snow-shoes,
their hunting trophies on their shoulders, he had watched their cabin
with that same air of uneasy abstraction.
"Ross," he broke out at last, "I've got to tell you something. I hate
like a dog to tell it, but it's got to break loose some time and it may
as well be right now."
He turned from the shelf, glanced at the snoring Weimer, lowered his
voice, and, standing beside the stove, worked restlessly at the damper in
the pipe. Ross, without looking at him, slowly scrubbed the dish-pan
and then the table.
"It's like this," Leslie began. "When I met Wilson I had five hundred
dollars in my pocket and a grouch against my father. Always before then,
father had sent the Academy a check to pay for the semester--you have
to pay there in advance for half the year--but this year he had business
on hand that couldn't be interrupted and so he called me into his
office in a great hurry the morning I left home and handed over the
check to me. It was made out to me and it was for five hundred dollars.
That's the price of the half year, you see. Dad handed it over and
just said, 'Here, pay your own bill,' and got out. That's about
all that's ever between us, anyway. Well, I went up to Omaha. We'd
had it out about school all summer. I was bound not to go this year,
and he swore that I should go and go through college if he had to rope
me and tie me and take me himself, as he put it! Father is a whirlwind
of a man. But I was bound not to go, and the money let me out. I took
the check and cashed it at the bank and went to the 'Hill House,'
where I met Wilson. I reasoned that the money was mine because it was
to be spent on me. You see, Ross, I was mad enough to reason anything
my way that I wanted."
Leslie turned the damper absently, sending smoke in gusts into the room,
but neither boy noticed it. Ross wiped out his dish-pan, hung it on its
nail, and sitting down on a box, took his chin between his hands and
stared at the fire.
"I thought," Leslie went on, "that I'd invest that money and surprise
dad. Well," grimly, "he's probably as surprised by this time as I am.
You've heard Wilson tell about my meeting him and agreeing to go with
him. I spent the entire five hundred on our outfit and car-fare in the
expectation that in six weeks I could write to dad and tell him what a
success I'd made of it! I had six weeks' grace."
Ross looked up inquiringly. "What do you mean?"
"Father and I never have corresponded extensively, but he always looks
sharply after my reports. The first report goes out from the Academy in
six weeks after school opens. I reckoned from what Wilson said that we'd
strike it rich up here in a month more or less, and so about the time
father would be looking into the reason why no report was sent from
the Academy, he'd be receiving one from me up here and, you know,
Ross, 'nothing succeeds as well as success,' and success of this sort
would get dad right under the collar. Well, he probably knows by this
time that I've turned up missing at school, and he has not received
a letter from Meadow Creek telling about the discovery of free gold!"
Leslie gave the damper a final twist and sat down on a pile of fire-wood.
"Ross," he exclaimed violently, "I am about seven ways an everlasting
fool!"
Ross grinned cheerfully. "Aunt Anne always says that to find out that
you're a fool 'is the best cure for the disease of foolishness.' So
you see you're headed toward the cure already."
Leslie shook his head. "There's that money, Ross. It wasn't mine, and
you know it and I know it. I can't face dad again without it in my hand.
Why, I wouldn't see him until I'd earned it for--well, wild horses
wouldn't drag me," he concluded passionately. "I tell you, Ross, I've
let myself in for a heap of trouble. I know father."
"Now that he finds out you've skipped, Leslie, won't he be hunting you
up?"
Leslie stirred uneasily and turning stretched up and looked in the
direction of the McKenzies. "That's what I'm expecting, or else he'll
not think me worth while. I tell you, Ross, I've made dad no end of
trouble both at home and in school. Things look sort of different up
here. I've--well--I've never been up against it before."
"Are you going to send your father word?"
"Send him word before I get back that five hundred!" cried Leslie aghast.
"You don't know dad. I can't face him without it. Not much."
"But he'd see that you feel different----" Ross began.
"You don't know dad," Leslie cut in harshly. "With the men it's just
the same. It's 'stand and deliver' or get out, and he'd treat me just
the same."
The coming of the McKenzies put an end to further conversation. They came
to announce their departure on the morrow.
"Any little thing you'd like us t' git fer you?" Sandy asked the boys
lazily. "Want us t' bring ye any biled shirts or one of these here coats
with long handled tails? If you fellers lay out t' stay here all winter
ye better lay in a stock of society rags, 'n' dancin' shoes."
"About the most useful dancing shoes we'll need will be snow-shoes, I
guess," Ross retorted.
Leslie, from the wood-pile, said little but watched the brothers closely.
Neither paid more than a passing attention to him, concentrating their
remarks on Ross. They left early and went up the Creek with the intention
of paying a farewell call on Wilson.
"I don't believe," said Leslie the following morning as he watched them
take the trail leading over Crosby, "that they have ever seen me before.
They don't act as though they have, do they?"
"Haven't seen a sign of it since that first night," declared Ross, "and
yet what I overheard, you know----"
"Must have referred to you," returned Leslie with conviction.
The next three days passed quietly enough. The inhabitants of Weimer's
cabin heard an occasional blast from Wilson's claims, but did not see
Wilson. Steadily the two boys worked and steadily Ross held Weimer to
his labors. Usually it was Weimer who got the meals, either Ross or
Leslie leading him down to the shack, in case the sun shone, about
half-past eleven. In three-quarters of an hour the boys would leave
work and sit down to a substantial meal of hot bread, potatoes and all
sorts of canned meats and vegetables. But the third day after the
McKenzies' departure it chanced that when eleven o'clock came, Weimer
and Leslie were in the far end of the tunnel drilling the "cut in" holes
for a new blast, and Ross, pushing the little car back into the tunnel,
sang out:
"Hey, you fellows, keep on and I'll go down and shake up the grub this
time."
He ran down the trail to the cabin, and soon had a roaring fire in the
heater. A kettle of beans had been left simmering on the back of the
stove. This Ross pulled forward, and then, delving among the canned
goods, he proceeded to set out various edibles, all the while whistling
cheerfully.
"M-m, tomatoes," he interrupted himself to mutter, "we haven't had
tomatoes in two days. And corn--sweet corn. Guess Weimer has overlooked
the corn entirely. We'll have corn. Soup! Jiminy! We haven't had soup
in an age. Vegetable. That means a little of everything, and that taken
boiling hot. Here goes soup."
"Whoa!" came a deep voice from the trail outside the door, then the voice
was raised, "Hello! Who's t' home?"
Ross stepped to the door and faced a middle aged man, clad in leather
"chaps" and short fur coat. A fur cap was drawn down over his ears and
his hands were encased in huge fur gloves. He sat easily on a gray horse
and was leading another, a mottled brown and white. As Ross appeared,
he drew off one glove and slipped the hand carelessly under the tail
of his coat at the same time squaring about in his saddle so that he
faced the doorway.
Ross, in his shirt sleeves, stepped out and greeted the newcomer
hospitably. "Hello! Come in to dinner."
"Had mine down in Miners' Camp," returned the other with a backward jerk
of his head.
He touched his mount with his spur and came close to Ross. The brown and
white horse pulled back obstinately on the leading rope. The animal was
saddled.
"Are you the young chap that's workin' for Weimer?"
"Yes."
"All right." The stranger withdrew his hand from the tail of his coat.
It held a gun. "No monkey-shines now! You're the boy I'm after. I'm
the sheriff of Big Horn County, and I have a warrant here for your
arrest. Your father is honin' to meet up with you and settle a little
account of money taken in Omaha."