MEADOW CREEK VALLEY MISSES LESLIE
ROSS could scarcely believe the evidence of his own senses when he saw
Lon Weston riding along the trail below the dump. The boy had pushed the
car with its load of ore out to the bumper and dumped it before he saw
the horseman in the sheepskin coat, the hairy chaps, and a fur cap drawn
over forehead and ears. The horse shied at the chunks of ore rolling
almost to its feet, and Weston looked up.
"Hello, there!" shouted Ross. "What on earth are you doing here?"
Weston drew in his horse. "Hello, Doc!" he returned with gruff
pleasantness without answering the question.
"Doc" slipped and slid down the snowy path to the trail, and held out a
cordial hand.
"How's your leg?"
"All right." Weston gripped the extended hand heartily. "Almost as good
's new."
His brown eyes above his heavy stubby beard held a pleasanter expression
than Ross had seen in them while nursing their owner. They were deep
eyes, capable of mirroring accurately the varied moods of the man looking
out of them.
"I didn't recognize you in Cody three weeks ago," Ross was beginning
when Weston interrupted him.
Leaning down from his saddle he met the boy's eyes steadily. "Remember,"
he said slowly and meaningly, "that you didn't see me--nor hear from
me--in Cody."
"All right," agreed Ross, embarrassed by the fixity of the other's
stare. "I'll forget it hereafter, but I want to thank----"
"Cut it out," commanded Weston briefly, straightening again in the saddle.
"At least," invited Ross, "you'll come to dinner with me. Uncle Jake
is frying ham and onions. Smell 'em? I got some onions and half a dozen
apples over at Camp Sunday." His voice could not have been more eager had
he been relating the finding of free gold. "Come on in, and have some."
Weston's eyes slipped away from Ross's in a way which reminded the
latter of Waymart's, and rested on the smoke from the cabin a quarter of
a mile away.
"Guess not, to-day. Thank you just the same. The boys are probably
rustlin' grub this minute and they'll be expectin' me. See you again."
Ross stood motionless, looking after him. Weston rode sitting straight,
unlike the usual careless forward droop of the cow puncher. He was a
well-built man, although his shoulders were rather narrow. But the only
characteristic that Ross noticed was the grip of the left knee against
the horse. For the strength of that grip he was responsible, but it was a
responsibility which Lon did not seem to recognize.
Suddenly the boy realized the newcomer's words. So Sandy and Waymart
were expecting him, but had said nothing about it to Ross. And when Ross
had told them about Lon Weston at the stage camp they had made no sign
that they knew him. That was strange.
He turned slowly toward the cabin, where Weimer was frying ham and onions
and boiling coffee. Opening the cabin door he was met by a white gust of
steam mingled with savory smoke. He propped the door open, and brought
in an armful of wood.
Weimer, in his shirt-sleeves, was bending his head over a little stove,
which offered barely room for a small kettle and a skillet with a
coffee-pot sandwiched in between. A sheet-iron oven stood on the floor,
the top answering for a sideboard. When Weimer made biscuits and sour
dough bread, the oven was placed on top of the stove.
Ross threw his wood down on the hard dirt floor, and put a stick into
the stove by way of the wide front door. The pine instantly blazed up,
showing a wide crack which zigzagged across the side of the old stove.
"Uncle Jake,"--Ross sat back on one heel, and looked up at his partner
whose blinking eyes were in the gloom of the cabin unprotected now by
goggles,--"Uncle Jake, a stranger has just come into Meadow Creek City
on the Limited."
Weimer chuckled. Before the advent of his youthful "pard" the old
man--Ross always thought of him as old despite his black hair and great
strength--had not laughed in months.
"He stopped at the second station," pursued Ross.
Weimer's face instantly darkened. "At the McKenzies'? One of dem
consarned gang, he ist?"
"That's what I want to know. It's Lon Weston, the fellow I told you I
took care of at the stage camp."
Weimer dumped ham and onions into an agateware basin, and set it on the
table. "I don't know him, I don't. But he comes to der McKenzies, hein?
Und after all dose days you spen' mit him!" Uncle Jack frowned heavily,
and, sitting down, helped himself to boiled "spuds."
"I tink I knew all dem consarned gang, but dere ist no Veston mit 'em."
Ross dragged to the little bare board table a box marked in big letters,
"Ruford's Canned Tomatoes, The Yellow Brand," and, turning the box on
end, straddled it opposite Weimer.
Weimer, eating and drinking noisily, found time to ask vindictively, "Ist
he for more medicine come mit you?"
Ross shook his head, and bent over his plate.
The plate was tin. The cup out of which he drank his coffee was also tin.
His knife and fork were steel, and his spoon was pewter. The place of the
lacking milk pitcher was usurped by a tin can of condensed milk with the
top bent back and the milk dried all over the sides. But Ross ate--how he
ate! Potatoes followed ham, and coffee followed potatoes, and onions
followed both, and then he began all over again. Never had eating been
such serious work with him. But never, also, had his muscles been so firm
and hard. As for a pickaxe, it was coming to feel no heavier than the
baseball bat which he had always rather scorned.
"I wonder," he began after a pause, "what Lon's up to here, anyway."
The question started Weimer on his favorite topic, the claim jumpers
and the injustice of the mining laws. He could not talk fast enough in
English, and so dropped into his native German.
Ross, accustomed to his tirades, cleared away the dishes, pushed the
table back against the dirt chinked logs, and lay down on the blankets
of his bunk for a few moments, his eyes glued on the little nickel clock.
He broke into the other's scolding monologue. "In ten minutes we must
go back to work."
Weimer scowled darkly. His lids, red and swollen, almost obscured his
pale-blue eyes. "Mine eyes ist too pad to-day," he declared. "I vill not
to go out in de sun again."
A few weeks before, this oft-repeated declaration had alarmed Ross. Now
he made no reply. But, when the hands of the nickel clock indicated one,
he arose and put on his oiled jumper and oilskin cap.
"Come, Uncle Jake," he said in a strong, decided tone. "Here are your
goggles. Get busy, or the McKenzie outfit will have our claims in spite
of us. Now, when there are three to watch instead of two, we must show
the mettle we're made of."
Moved by the magic statement, ever new and ever powerful, that the claims
might be jumped, Uncle Jake, forgetting that in substance he had made
the same objection to work twice a day for weeks and that Ross had
overcome his objections in substantially the same way, "got busy." And
presently Ross led him out, his eyes not only securely goggled, but
covered as well with a black cloth which he pressed fearfully against
the goggles.
The snow was Weimer's evil genius. He lived in dread of the sight of
it. Without assistance he would not move a dozen paces away from the
cabin after the sun had risen on Meadow Creek Valley. But the fear of the
light had made as great an impression on his mind as the light itself
had made on his eyes, and he had fallen into the habit, before Ross came,
of staying in his cabin during cloudy days, lest, if he ventured out, the
sun might break through the clouds.
The old partner and the young went up the steep trail to the tunnel, Ross
leading Weimer up over the side of the dump and into the mouth of the
tunnel. In the shelter of its gloom the latter removed his goggles; and,
stumbling along over the chunks of ore lying beside the narrow track,
he reached the end of the short tunnel which had been blasted from the
solid rock. Lighting a fresh candle, he set it in its socket at the end
of a sharply pointed iron, a miner's candlestick, and, jabbing the
point into a crevice, leisurely surveyed the wall before him. Behind him
the little empty car filled the tunnel with sound as Ross pushed it
rattling and jolting over the rusty rails.
"Ready to drill for another shot, ain't we?" Ross asked. He pushed the
car back out of the way. "Got to hustle to get it done this afternoon,
too."
Under the stimulus of Ross's presence and hustle the older man fell
to work valiantly, but it was slow work. Down in Miners' Camp machinery
performed the task which Weimer was doing laboriously with the aid
of a hand drill. Before him, at the end of the tunnel, was a seamed
and uneven wall of rock a little higher than his head and a little
broader than his reach had he extended his arms on either side. In
this wall he patiently drilled three sets of holes, into which the
"sticks" were placed for the next "shot," as the explosion of dynamite
was called. In mining terms the old man was "putting a shot." Near
the top of the wall he made three holes. Half-way down were two more,
long and inclined toward each other at the top. These were the "cut-in
holes." Lastly, at the foot of the wall were three large holes called
"lifters." The contents of the top holes and the cut-ins were set off
first, splintering and cracking the rock. Then the lifters were
exploded, actually lifting the loosened mass above it and hurling it
into the tunnel.
When quiet reigned again, and Ross had loaded his hand car with the
debris, he pushed it out on the dump again through the moist, freezing
atmosphere of the tunnel. There was water everywhere. Near the mouth
of the tunnel it was frozen on the sides and the top, and carpeted the
floor with slush. Further in it was unfrozen, oozing out of the sides,
dripping from the roof, running along the track. It covered the oiled
garments of the men at work. It put out their candles. It made muck of
the quartz dust on the floor. It often destroyed the lighted fuses.
There was something maddening to Ross in its incessant drip and drizzle,
and he always emerged on the dump with a feeling of relief, especially
when the sun shone as it did that day in dazzling brightness.
He dumped the car, and was about to push it back when his eyes fell on
Weston's horse journeying on the back trail riderless.
"That means," thought Ross, "that he's going to stay. Why?"
A feeling of relief was mixed with uneasiness. The relief was caused
by this further link in the chain of evidence that when the trail to
Miners' Camp was closed it would not close on Weimer and him alone. The
uneasiness had to do with the mission of the McKenzie outfit in Meadow
Creek Valley. Why were they reinforced by Weston?
"Oh!" exclaimed Ross aloud in sudden disgust with himself. "He's come
to hunt, of course! His gun was strapped on behind. I never thought of
that. If he belongs to the McKenzie outfit, he'd rather hunt than eat."
It seemed to him that the "outfit" bore him not the slightest grudge or
ill will. Sandy, indeed, seemed openly to like him, Waymart tolerated him
with a surly good humor, while Weston--here Ross knit his brow--Weston
baffled him completely; still, considering the incident of the note in
Cody, the boy looked on him as a friend albeit one who evidently did
not care to pose in that capacity before the McKenzies.
From his position Ross could look down and across on the claims of
the McKenzies and almost into the "discovery hole" in which they were
supposed to be working. Waymart was leisurely drilling a hole in the
rock to receive a stick of dynamite when Sandy came out of the cabin and
walked rapidly toward him.
The two talked together a moment, and then Weston joined them. In a
moment the three fell apart, and appeared to be talking excitedly.
Presently Waymart dropped the discussion, and turning his back walked
away a few steps with his hands in his pockets and stood in a listening
attitude. Ross watched with absorbing interest. Even at that distance
he could see that the discussion between the other two was not amiable.
The scene lasted but a few moments, and then all three descended to
the cabin together.
That evening after supper, Ross washed the day's dishes, brought in
wood, and put the room to rights, while Weimer alternately smoked and
snored in his bunk. The room was dimly lighted by candles in candlesticks
thrust into logs. Ross, so tired and sleepy he could scarcely keep his
eyes open, hung up the dish-pan on its nail beside the stove, and looked
longingly toward the emergency chest pushed beneath his bunk. Not one
word had he mastered of the contents of the books he had stowed away
there with such high hopes.
"I don't believe the McKenzies are coming over," he told Weimer, as he
filled the stove and wound up the clock. "It's too late for them."
Weimer made no reply. His pipe had fallen on his chest, and his
hair-encircled mouth was wide open in a vacuous sleep. At that moment
the rising wind beat the snow against the window, and Ross uttered an
exclamation. He had forgotten to shut the tool-house door, and, fearing
that with the wind in the south the little log house would be filled with
snow before morning, he went back up the trail to the tunnel. Climbing
noiselessly over the soft snow, he arrived at the ore dump, and was
making for the tool house across the mouth of the tunnel when a light
flickered in his path.
Startled, he looked into the tunnel, and saw three figures at the end
silhouetted against the dim candle-light.
"Lon, Sandy and Waymart," he muttered.
There was no danger of his being discovered, so dark was the night.
Therefore, he sat down on his heels beside the tool house, and watched,
puzzled at first to understand the movements of the men.
"Oh," he muttered suddenly, "they're measuring to see how fast the work
is going."
With a tape line the men were estimating the cubic feet of rock excavated
by Ross and Weimer.
Ross hugged his knees, and exulted. His "friends the enemy" might measure
all they chose, he thought; and every length of the tape line would
reveal to them the futility of waiting to jump the Weimer-Grant claims.
Presently the three started out of the tunnel. Ross, seeking a
hiding-place, found it behind a clump of low spruce trees at the
right of the tunnel's mouth. The intruders blew out their candles as
they came out on the dump.
"At this rate," Ross heard Waymart say, "they're solid on these here
claims."
But, although he strained his ears, he could hear nothing more. After a
brief wait the last sound of twigs breaking under their shoes died away;
and Ross, leaving his hiding-place, shut the tool-house door and went
back to the cabin.
He found Weimer awake and whistling in his bunk. Ross paused at the door,
regarding him curiously. It was the first time he had ever heard the old
man make this cheerful sound, although Steele had said he used to be
called Whistling Weimer as well as Dutch Weimer.
"Hello, Uncle Jake!" cried Ross. "Feeling pretty gay, aren't you?"
Weimer stopped in the middle of his tune, and blinked at Ross. "Nein,"
he denied, "I ain't feelin' gay. If your eyes vas----"
Ross interrupted. "Now, see here, Uncle Jake; you know your eyes are
better since I've taken to doctoring them."
The last few weeks had certainly improved the old man. His eyes were
better, owing to a cooling lotion which Ross had dropped under the lids
twice a day. Weimer's mind was clearer because his growing confidence
in his young partner had quieted his fears. Ross's cheerfulness was
also contagious. Nor did the cleanliness on which the boy insisted lower
Weimer's vitality. Soap became a known quantity to him.
All these favorable circumstances reacted on Weimer's work. He was
becoming more and more efficient, and Ross's spirits had risen as the
days passed; and he saw the growing intelligence manifested by the other
in regard to operations in the tunnel. This change for the better in
Uncle Jake had not passed unnoticed by the McKenzies.
Ross said nothing to the old man about the scene he had just witnessed
in the tunnel. It would do no good, and would only inflame the other's
wrath. Therefore, he snuffed the candles, repeating mechanically:
"Don't believe the McKenzies are coming over to-night."
But at that moment footsteps sounded outside the door. The snow creaked
under the pressure of shoes, and Sandy and Waymart entered.
Sandy was as gay and talkative as ever, but not Waymart. He sat down
on a box, leaned back against the logs, turned up his coat collar to
protect himself from the icy wind, which sought out the dirt-chinked
crevices, and, pulling a mouth-organ from his pocket, began to play. Nor
did he stop until Sandy rose to go. A sombre figure he made back among
the shadows, his eyes resting vacantly on the floor at his feet. One leg
was crossed over the other, the toe moving in time to the discordant
music. Waymart's thoughts did not seem to be cheerful companions.
But Sandy had drawn a box close up beside the roaring fire, and sat with
his elbows on his knees and a pipe in his mouth. He paid no attention to
Weimer nor to his musical brother, but told Ross yarns of the gold-fields
of Montana and Nevada, tales concerning other men, Ross noticed; Sandy
never talked about himself.
The evening passed and the men rose to depart without having mentioned
the newcomer; and Ross, with the thought of their previous reticence
concerning him in mind, waited for them to speak first.
It was Sandy who spoke, but not until his hand was on the door and
Waymart stood outside the cabin. Then he said carelessly, as though Ross
had never seen Weston before, and as though the coming of a relative
was an every-day event in Meadow Creek Valley:
"Cousin hiked it over the mountain to-day. We're goin' t' strike th'
trail over t' the Divide to-morrow, huntin'. He's great on game."
"So," thought Ross, "I'm right. It's hunting that has brought him here."
The next morning at daylight, Ross, eating breakfast, chanced to glance
out of the dirty west window. Up near the summit of Soapweed Ledge, which
met Crosby at right angles, he saw three figures advancing single file.
Each carried a gun, and had a small pack and snow-shoes strapped on his
back.
"Uncle Jake," asked Ross suddenly, "have you ever been over to the
Divide?"
Weimer shook his head. "No, I stay home and attend to pizness."
"Haven't you ever crossed that mountain?" Ross indicated Soapweed Ledge.
"Yes."
"What's beyond?"
"More mountains," answered Weimer vaguely, "und peyond dem more und more."
It was a week before the hunters returned, a long lonely week for Ross.
Each morning he told himself hopefully that before night Leslie might
return, but, to his increasing dismay, no Leslie came.
"Can it be that an accident has happened to him, somewhere, alone, or
has he changed his mind about coming and gone back home?"
Ross asked himself this question as he stood at the mouth of the tunnel
one morning staring in the direction of Soapweed Ledge. A heavy snowstorm
had set in that morning, and in the afternoon the falling snow shrouded
the Ledge in a white veil out of which the three men now emerged, moving
slowly across the little valley. Their snow-shoes were on their feet,
and in place of the light packs with which they had started their
shoulders were bent under loads of venison.
The McKenzies had returned.
That evening Waymart appeared at Weimer's door with a goodly portion
of meat, at which Ross looked dubiously.
"You've given us so much already," he hesitated.
Waymart interrupted. "Jerk it," he directed briefly. "Jerked meat makes
a good stew when ye can't git no fresh meat." He turned sharply to
Weimer in his bunk. "See here, Uncle Jake, have ye forgot how t' jerk
venison?"
Weimer crawled out of his bunk, scowling. "Vell, I haf nicht dat. I guess
I jerk him so gud as anypody."
"Get about it then!" retorted Waymart with rough kindness. "Here's a
meat knife to shred it up with."
He laid a large, sharp knife on the table, and cut Ross's thanks short
by an abrupt departure.
Weimer, grumbling at the interruption to his rest, cut the meat in long,
thin strips, which, he told Ross, were to be nailed to the outside
of the shack after the storm had passed. But in the morning, Ross,
objecting to a process which brought the meat into contact with the
dirty logs, stretched a cord between two trees, and over it, in the
sunshine, folded the strips clothespin fashion, leaving them for the air
to cure and dry.
For two or three days the McKenzies did not visit their neighbors. Ross
saw them outside their shack occasionally, and something in the air and
attitudes spoke, even at that distance, of disagreement.
One evening at six o'clock Weimer stumbled out of the tunnel alone
and down the path, the darkness robbing the snow of its terrors. A few
moments later, Ross, having laid the dry sticks in the drilled holes
in the end wall of the tunnel, lighted the fuses, and, candle in hand,
made for the mouth.
He came out on Lon Weston sitting on a stump which projected above the
dump.
"Hello, Doc," greeted Lon Weston.
"Hello, Weston." Ross was so astonished to see him there that he nearly
forgot to count the explosions that just then thundered in the tunnel
behind him.
"One, two, three, four, five." That accounted for the five sticks.
He leaned against the tool house, and looked at Lon through the dusk.
Lon's cap was pulled down over his eyes. His sheepskin collar was turned
up, meeting the cap. All that was visible of his face was a bit of beard
protruding around the stem of the pipe. But the voice sounded a more
amiable note than it ever had in the stage camp, although his manner
revealed an uneasy embarrassment.
"Well, Doc, how d'ye like minin'?"
"I don't like it at all," replied Ross honestly.
"Seems t' like you all right," returned Lon. "You're in better flesh
and color than you was down on Dry Creek."
"So are you," retorted Ross, laughing.
Lon made no reply. He moved restlessly.
"Done any studyin' in that pile o' books ye had along?" he asked
abruptly after a time.
"No." Ross's tone was crisp. "Haven't studied a word." The subject was
a tender one with him.
There ensued a pause. Ross opened the door of the tool house, and threw
in his pick and shovel. He hitched the legs of his high rubber boots
nearer his body; and then, as Lon made no move toward going, he swung
his numbed hands briskly.
"I thought," Lon began again in a constrained and hesitating way, "that
you was mighty anxious about those books. I thought your goin' to some
college or other depended on your gettin' outside of those books."
Ross struck his hands rapidly together. "I can't study," he answered
briefly. "I get too tired working."
Weston arose and faced toward the cabin of the McKenzies.
"Another storm comin'," he announced. "Get here day after to-morrow."
"That's Christmas," muttered Ross. His heart contracted sharply, and
a homesick pang assailed him. In his ignorance, before leaving home, he
had set Christmas as the date of his return.