end; and he saw nothing there, either to explain or to add to his
fears. But the long tunnel was as black as night. Into that he dared
not go.
He looked once more at the dreary little heap of tools and clothing,
and with an ache that was partly in his heart, partly no doubt in the
empty region of his stomach, he climbed down again into the gulch,
mounted Lollo and rode away.
When he came to the bad place on the trail, he slid down, keeping ahead
of Lollo, who shuffled along cautiously behind him. Lollo would not
have stepped on Jack, but he might have slipped and fallen on him.
However, a cayuse on a bad trail attends strictly to business, and is
quite safe if he can keep but two of his feet on firm ground.
If Jack’s father had known about that place on the trail he never
would have sent Jack by that way; and it was well that his mother had
no notion of it. As it was, they were merely surprised to see the boy
returning about the middle of the hottest part of the afternoon, and
were not a little sorry for his disappointment when they heard the
story of the trip.
Mrs. Gilmour shared the boy’s anxiety about John; and Charley Moy,
while he was giving Jack his dinner, told some very painful stories of
miners done away with on their solitary claims for the sake of their
supposed earnings. Mr. Gilmour said there might be a dozen explanations
of John’s absence; and, moreover, that Jack hadn’t found the camp at
all, and the camp should be there, or some sign of its having been
there must remain to indicate the spot.
Still the boy could not dismiss his fears, until two or three days
later John himself stopped at the cañon, on his way to town, not only
alive but in excellent health and spirits.
He told Jack that he _had_ been at his camp all the time the boy was
searching for him; but the camp was at the mouth of the gulch, close to
the river, where he had found a spring of pure cold water. Very near
the spring was a miner’s shanty, deserted but still quite habitable.
The advantages of house and spring together had decided John to camp
there, instead of higher up and nearer to his ditches. He urged Jack
to make the trip again, and in a week or so the boy repeated his visit.
This time he did not take the upper trail. John said that that trail
was only used at high water in the spring, when the river rose above
the lower trail.
The lower trail along the river bank was safe and pleasant, and not
so hot as the upper one; and this time there were no adventures.
Adventures do very well to tell of afterward, but they do not always
make a happy journey.
John was at home, and seemed very glad to see the boy. He took him
up on the bluffs to show him his workings, and Jack found it very
different, up there by the tunnels,--not at all strange and anxious. He
did not mind the dark tunnel a bit, with John’s company and a candle to
guide him.
John showed him the under surface of the bluffs, exposed where he had
undermined them and scraped away the dirt. These lava bluffs were once
a boiling flood of melted rock. The ground it flowed over and rested
upon after it cooled had been the bed of a river. In its soft state
the lava had taken the impression of the surface of the river-bed,
and after it cooled the forms remained the same; so that the under
surface of these ancient bluffs was like a plaster cast of the ancient
river-bed. The print could be seen of stones smoothed by water, and
some of the stones were still embedded in the lava crust.
Now this river came down from the mountains, where every prospector
in Idaho knows there is plenty of gold for those who can discover it.
John argued that the old river-bed must have had, mixed with its sand,
fine gold for which no one had ever prospected. The new bed which the
river had worn for itself at the foot of the bluffs probably contained
quite as much gold, sunk between stones or lodged in potholes in the
rocks (as it lodges against the riffles in a sluice-box), but no one
could hope to get _that_ gold, for the water which covered it. The old
river-bed was covered only with rock, which “stays put” while you dig
beneath it.
So, on the strength of this ingenious theory, John was digging where
the other theorists had dug before him. He was not getting rich, but
he was “making wages” and enjoying himself in the pleasant camp in the
gulch; and as yet he had not found any of the rich holes.
He made a great feast in the boy’s honor. The chief dish was stewed
grouse, rolled up in paste and boiled like dumplings. Jack said those
grouse dumplings were about the best eating he had ever “struck.” They
also had potatoes, baked in the ashes, and canned vegetables and stewed
apples and baking-powder biscuits and honey; and to crown the feast,
John made a pot of strong black coffee and sweetened it very sweet.
But here the guest was in a quandary. He refused the coffee, because
he was not allowed to drink coffee at home; but he could see that his
refusal made John uncomfortable, for there was no milk; there was
nothing else that he could offer the boy to drink but water, and water
seemed very plain at a feast.
Jack wondered which was worse--for a boy to break a rule without
permission, or to seem to cast reproach upon a friend’s entertainment
by refusing what was set before him. He really did not care for the
coffee; it looked very black and bitter; but he cared so much for John
that it was hard to keep on refusing. Still, he did refuse, but he did
not tell John his reason. Somehow he didn’t think that it would sound
manly for a big boy, nearly twelve years old, to say he was forbidden
to drink coffee.
Afterward he told his mother about it, and asked her if he had done
right. His mother’s opinion was that he had, but that he might have
done it in a better way by telling John his reason for refusing the
coffee. Then there would have been no danger of John’s supposing that
the boy refused because he did not like that kind of coffee.
Jack’s little problem set his mother thinking how often we do what
is right, at some cost to ourselves, perhaps, but do it in such an
awkward, proud way, that we give pain to others and so undo the value
of our honest effort to be good; and how, in the matter of feasts, it
is much easier in our time for a guest to decline anything that does
not suit him in the way of eating and drinking than it used to be long
ago, when a gentleman was thought not to have “dined” unless he had
both eaten and drunk more than was good for him; and how, in the matter
of rules, it is only little silly boys who are ashamed to confess
that they are not their own masters. The bravest and wisest men have
been keepers of simple rules in simple matters, and in greater ones
respecters of a loving Intelligence above their own, whose laws they
were proud to obey.
The courage that displays itself in excesses is happily no longer the
fashion; rather the courage that keeps modestly within bounds, and can
say “no” without offense to others.
NOVEMBER IN THE CAÑON
The long season of fair autumn weather was drawing to a close.
Everybody was tired of sunshine; there had been nearly six months of
it, and the face of nature in southern Idaho was gray with dust. A dark
morning or a cloudy sunset was welcome, even to the children, who were
glad of the prospect of any new kind of weather.
But no rain came. The river had sunk so low in its bed it barely
murmured on the rocks, like a sleeper disturbed in his dream. When the
children were indoors, with windows shut and fire crackling, they could
hear no sound of water; and this cessation of a voice inseparable from
the life of the cañon added to the effect of waiting which belonged to
these still fall days.
The talk of the men was of matters suited to the season. It was said
the Chinamen’s wood-drive had got lodged in Moore’s Creek on its way
to the river, there being so little water in the creek this year, and
might not get down at all, which would be almost a total loss to the
Chinamen. Charley Moy knew the boss Chinaman of the “drive,” and said
that he had had bad luck now two seasons running.
The river was the common carrier between the lumber-camps in the
mountains and the consumers of wood in the towns and ranches below.
Purchasers who lived on the river-bank were accustomed to stop their
winter’s supply of firewood as it floated by. It was taken account
of and paid for when the owners of the drive came to look up their
property.
Every year three drives came down the river. Goodwin’s log-drive came
first, at high water, early in the summer. The logs were from twelve to
twenty feet long. Each one was marked with the letters M H. These were
the first two of Mr. Goodwin’s initials, and were easily cut with an
axe; the final initial, G, being difficult to cut in this rude way,
was omitted; but everybody knew that saw-logs marked M H belonged to
Goodwin’s drive. They looked like torpedo-boats as they came nosing
along with an ugly rolling motion through the heavy current.
The men who followed this first drive were rather a picked lot for
strength and endurance, but they made slow progress past the bend in
the cañon. Here a swift current and an eddy together combined to create
what is called a jam. The loggers were often seen up to their waists in
water for hours, breaking up the jam and working the logs out into the
current. When the last one was off the men would get into their boat--a
black, flat-bottomed boat, high at stem and stern like a whaleboat--and
go whooping down in mid-current like a mob of schoolboys upon some
dangerous sort of lark. These brief voyages between the jams must have
been the most exciting and agreeable part of log-driving.
After Goodwin’s drive came the Frenchmen’s cord-wood drive; and last of
all, when the river was lowest, came the Chinamen’s drive, making the
best of what water was left.
There is a law of the United States which forbids that an alien
shall cut timber on the public domain. A Chinaman, being an alien
unmistakably and doubly held as such in the West, cannot therefore
cut the public timber for his own immediate profit or use; but he can
take a contract to furnish it to a white dealer in wood, at a price
contingent upon the safe delivery of the wood. But if the river should
fail to bring it in time for sale, the cost of cutting and driving, for
as far as he succeeds in getting it down, is a dead loss to the Chinese
contractor, and the wood belongs to whoever may pick it out of the
water when the first rise of the creek in spring carries it out.
The Chinese wood-drivers are singular, wild-looking beings. Often at
twilight, when they camped on the shore below the house, the children
would hover within sight of the curious group the men made around their
fire--an economical bit of fire, sufficient merely to cook the supper
of fish and rice.
All is silence before supper, in a camp of hungry, wet white men, but
the Chinamen were always chattering. The children were amused to see
them “doing” their hair like women,--combing out the long, black,
witch-locks in the light of the fire and braiding them into pigtails,
or twisting them into “Psyche knots.” They wore several layers of
shirts and sleeveless vests, one over another, long waterproof
boots drawn up over their knees, and always the most unfitting of
hats perched on top of the coiled braids or above the Psyche knots.
Altogether, take them wet or dry, on land or in the water, no male or
female of the white race could show anything in the way of costume to
approach them.
The cloudy weather continued. The nights grew sharper, and the men said
it was too cold for rain; if a storm came now it would bring snow.
There was snow already upon the mountains and the high pastures, for
the deer were seeking feeding-grounds in the lower, warmer gulches,
and the stock had been driven down from the summer range to winter in
the valleys.
One afternoon an old man, a stranger, was seen coming down the gulch
back of the house, followed by a pack-horse bearing a load. The gulch
was now all yellow and brown, and the man’s figure was conspicuous for
the light, army-blue coat he wore--the overcoat of a private soldier.
He “hitched” at the post near the kitchen door, and uncovering his load
showed two fat haunches of young venison which he had brought to sell.
No peddler of the olden time, unstrapping his pack in the lonely
farmhouse kitchen, could have been more welcome than this stranger with
his wild merchandise to the children of the camp. They stood around so
as not to miss a word of the conversation while Charley Moy entertained
him with the remnants of the camp lunch. The old buckskin-colored horse
seemed as much of a character as his master. Both his ears were cropped
half off, giving a sullen and pugilistic expression to his bony head.
There was no more arch to his neck than to the handle of a hammer. His
faded yellow coat was dry, matted and dusty as the hair of a tramp who
sleeps in haymows. Without bit or bridle, he followed his master like
a dog. In the course of conversation it appeared that the cropped ears
were not scars of battle nor marks of punishment, but the record of a
journey when he and his master were caught out too late in the season,
and the old horse’s ears had both been frozen.
The children were surprised to learn that their new acquaintance was a
neighbor, residing in a dugout in Cottonwood Gulch, only three miles
away. They knew the place well, had picnicked there one summer day,
and had played in the dugout. Had not Daisy, the pet fawn, when they
had barred him out of the dugout because he filled up the whole place,
jumped upon the roof and nearly stamped it in?--like Samson pulling
down the pillars of the temple? But no one had been living there then.
The old man said he used the dugout only in winter. It was his town
house. In summer he and the old horse took their freedom on the hills,
hunting and prospecting for mineral--not so much in the expectation
of a fortune as from love of the chances and risks of the life. Was
it not lonely in Cottonwood Gulch when the snows came? the children
asked. Sometimes it was lonely, but he had good neighbors: the boys at
Alexander’s (the horse-ranch) were down from the summer range, and they
came over to his place of an evening for a little game of cards, or he
went over to their place. He would be very glad, however, of any old
newspapers or novels that might be lying around camp; for he was short
of reading-matter in the dugout.
There was always a pile of old periodicals and “picture papers” on
Charley Moy’s ironing-table; he was proud to contribute his entire
stock on hand to the evening company in the dugout. The visitor then
modestly hinted that he was pretty tired of wild meat: had Charley such
a thing as the rough end of a slab of bacon lying around, or a ham bone
to spare? A little mite of lard would come handy, and if he could let
him have about five pounds of flour, it would be an accommodation, and
save a journey to town. These trifles he desired to pay for with his
venison; but that was not permitted, under the circumstances.
Before taking his leave the old hunter persuaded Polly to take a
little tour on his horse, up and down the poplar walk, at a slow and
courteous pace. Polly had been greatly interested in her new friend
at a distance, but this was rather a formidable step toward intimacy.
However, she allowed herself to be lifted upon the back of the old
crop-eared barbarian, and with his master walking beside her she paced
sedately up and down between the leafless poplars.
The old man’s face was pale, notwithstanding the exposure of his life;
the blood in his cheek no longer fired up at the touch of the sun. His
blue coat and the yellow-gray light of the poplar walk gave him an
added pallor. Polly was a pink beside him, perched aloft in her white
bonnet and ruffled pinafore.
The old sway-backed horse sulked along, refusing to “take any hand” in
such a trifling performance. He must have felt the insult of Polly’s
babyish heels dangling against his weather-beaten ribs, that were
wont to be decorated with the pendent hoofs and horns of his master’s
vanquished game.
Relations between the family and their neighbor in the dugout continued
to be friendly and mutually profitable. The old ex-soldier’s venison
was better than could be purchased in town. Charley Moy saved the
picture papers for him, and seldom failed to find the half of a pie,
a cup of cold coffee, or a dish of sweets for him to “discuss” on the
bench by the kitchen door. Discovering that antlers were prized in
camp, he brought his very best pair as a present, bearing them upon his
shoulders, the furry skull of the deer against his own, back to back,
so that in profile he was double-headed, man in front and deer behind.
But the young men of the camp were ambitious to kill their own venison.
The first light dry snow had fallen, and deer-tracks were discovered
on the trails leading to the river. A deer was seen by John Brown and
Mr. Dane, standing on the beach on the farther side, in a sort of
cul-de-sac formed by the walls of the lava bluffs as they approached
the shore. They fired at and wounded him, but he was not disabled from
running. His only way of escape was by the river in the face of the
enemy’s fire. He swam in a diagonal line down stream, and assisted by
the current gained the shore at a point some distance below, which his
pursuers were unable to reach in time to head him off.
They followed him over the hills as far and fast as legs and wind could
carry them, but lost him finally, owing to the dog Cole’s injudicious
barking, when the policy of the men would have been to lie quiet and
let the deer rest from his wound. By his track in the snow they saw
that his left hind foot touched the ground only now and then. If Cole
had pressed him less hard the deer would have lain down to ease his
hurt, the wound would have stiffened and rendered it difficult for him
to run, and so he might have met his end shortly, instead of getting
away to die a slow and painful death.
They lost him, and were reproached for it, needlessly, by the women of
the family. One Saturday morning, when Mr. Dane was busy in the office
over his notebooks, and Jack’s mother was darning stockings by the
fire, Jack came plunging in to say that John Brown was trying to head
off a deer that was swimming down the river--and would Mr. Dane come
with his rifle, quick?
Below the house a wire-rope suspension bridge for foot passengers only
spanned the river at its narrowest point, from rock to rock of the
steep shore. Mr. Dane looked out and saw John Brown running to and fro
on this bridge, waving his arms, shouting, and firing stones at some
object above the bridge that was heading down stream. Mr. Dane could
just see the small black spot upon the water which he knew was the
deer’s head. He seized his gun and ran down the shore path. Discouraged
in his attempt to pass the bridge, the deer was making for the shore,
when Mr. Dane began firing at him. A stranger now arrived upon the
scene, breathless with running; he was the hunter who had started
the game and chased it till it had taken to the river. The deer was
struggling with the current in midstream, uncertain which way to turn.
Headed off from the bridge and from the nearest shore, he turned and
swam slowly toward the opposite bank. The women on the hill were nearly
crying, the hunt seemed so hopeless for the deer and so unfair: three
men, two of them with guns, combined against him, and the current so
swift and strong! It was Mr. Dane’s bullet that ended it. It struck
the deer as he lifted himself out of the water on the rocks across the
river.
The venison was divided between the stranger who started the game and
the men of the camp who cut off its flight and prevented its escape.
The women did not refuse to eat of it, but they continued to protest
that the hunt “was not fair;” or, in the phrase of the country, that
the deer “had no show at all.”
THE GATES ON GRANDFATHER’S FARM
Little Eastern children, transplanted in their babyhood to the far
West, have to leave behind them grandfathers and grandmothers, and all
the dear old places associated with those best friends of childhood.
Of our cañon children, Jack was the only one who could remember
grandfather’s house, although Polly had romanced about it so much that
she thought she could remember. Polly was born there, but as she was
taken away only eighteen months afterward, it’s hardly likely that she
knew much about it. And Baby was born in the cañon, and never in her
life had heard the words grandpapa or grandmamma spoken in the second
person.
For the sake of these younger ones, deprived of their natural right
to the possession of grandparents, the mother used to tell everything
she could put into words and that the children could understand about
the old Eastern home where her own childhood was spent, in entire
unconsciousness of any such fate as that which is involved in the words
“Gone West.”
The catalogue of grandfather’s gates always pleased the children,
because in the cañon there were no gates, but the great rock gate of
the cañon itself, out of which the river ran shouting and clapping its
hands like a child out of a dark room into the sunlight, and into which
the sun took a last peep at night under the red curtain of the sunset.
Grandfather’s gates were old gates long before Jack began to kick out
the toes of his shoes against them, or practice with their wooden
latches and latchpins. Most of them had been patched and strengthened
in weak places by hands whose work in this world was done. Each had its
own particular creak, like a familiar voice announcing as far as it
could be heard which gate it was that was opening; and to Jack’s eyes,
each one of the farm gates had a distinct and expressive countenance
of its own, which he remembered as well as he did the faces of the men
who worked in the fields.
Two or three of them were stubborn obstacles in his path, by reason
of queer, unmanageable latches that wouldn’t shove, or weights that
a small boy couldn’t lift, or a heavy trick of yawing at the top and
dragging at the bottom, so that the only way to get through was to
squeeze through a wedge-shaped opening where you scraped the side of
your leg and generally managed to catch some part of your clothing on a
nail or on a splinter. Others fell open gayly on a down-hill grade, but
you had to tug yourself crimson in order to heave them shut again. Very
few of those heavy old field gates seemed to have been intended for the
convenience of boys. The boy on grandfather’s farm who opened a gate
was expected to shut it. If he neglected to do so he was almost sure to
hear a voice calling after him, “Hey, there! Who left that gate open?”
So on the whole it was no saving of time to slip through, besides
being a strain on one’s reputation with the farm hands.
Some of the gates were swinging and creaking every day of the year;
others were silent for whole months together; others, like the road
gate, stood open always and never creaked, and nobody marked them,
except that the children found them good to swing upon when the grass
was not too long.
The road gate had once been a smart one, with pickets and gray paint,
but it had stood open so many years with the grass of summer after
summer cumbering its long stride that no one ever thought of repainting
it, any more than they would of decorating the trunk of the Norway
spruce which stood nearest to it, between it and the fountain that had
ceased to play and had been filled up with earth and converted into a
flower bed.