Tucsony Arizona.
Stuffing the hat into his pocket Tom scrambled on, thinking out the
meaning of the incident; and now he began to notice in this steeper
place that some of the boulders had been misplaced, and here and there
was a broken branch, as, if someone had descended very hastily or
clumsily.
“If that crazy old man came down here, and perhaps caught a second bad
fall, I don't wonder he was used up by the time he reached the lake”
was Tom's mental ejaculation, as he toiled up the acclivity and at last,
panting and leg weary, gained a narrow grassy level at the foot of a
crag “spiked with firs,” which had been conspicuous from the valley not
only by its height and castellated battlements, but because a colossal X
was formed on its face by two broad veins of quartz crossing each other.
With his eyes fixed upon the rocky wall he walked along in the face of
a stiff breeze, until he noticed a pinkish streak upon the dark cliff,
betokening the outcrop of another vein, and turned aside to climb a pile
of fallen fragments at the foot of the crag to reach it. These fragments
were overgrown with low, dense shrubbery. He ducked his head and was
pushing into them, when suddenly he saw a huge brown body rise almost
into his face, heard the tremendous growl of a grizzly, and amid a crash
of bushes and dislodged stones felt himself hurled backward.
Clutching instinctively at one of the shrubs as he fell, he whirled
under its hiding foliage, and the vicious stroke of the bear's paw
came down upon his leg instead of his head, while the released branches
snapped upward into the face of the brute, which, as much surprised
as its victim, paused in its onslaught to collect its wits. An
instant later Shep dashed up, and at the bear's hindquarters. Bruin
spasmodically sank his claws deeper into Tom's thigh, but turned his
head and shoulders with a terrific ursine oath at this new and most
palpable enemy; and ten seconds afterward Tom's revolver, its muzzle
pressed close underneath the bear's ear, had emptied half an ounce of
lead into its brain. A blood-freezing death squeal tore the air, and the
ponderous carcass sank down, stone dead, upon Tom's body and upon the
dwarfed spruce which covered it. It pinned him to the ground with an
almost insupportable weight. Perhaps if the animal alone had lain upon
him he might have wriggled out; but the brute's carcass also held down
the tough and firmly-rooted tree, and the rocks on each side formed a
sort of trough. Turn and strain as he would Tom could not free
himself from the burden which threatened to smother him. Moreover, the
convulsive death throe had forcibly tightened the grip of the claws
in the side of his knee, which felt as if in some horrible torturing
machine of the Inquisition; and had he not been able at last to reach
that paw with his left hand and pull it away from the wound he would
have died under the agony.
Then, as he felt the blood running hot and copious down his leg, a new
fear chilled his heart. Might he not bleed to death? There seemed no end
to the hemorrhage, and what hope had he of succor? He thought of firing
signals of distress, but could not reach the pistol, which had been
knocked out of his hand. He spoke to the dog, which was barking and
worrying at the bear's hind leg, and Shep came and licked his face and
sniffed at his blood-soaked trousers. Then, as if even he realized how
hopeless was the situation, he sat on his haunches and howled until Tom,
hearing him less and less distinctly, imagined himself a boulder slowly
but musically crunching to powder under the resistless advance of a
glacier, and lost consciousness as the cold-blue dream-ice closed over
his dust.
By and by he awoke. It was dark, and something cold and soft was blowing
against his face. He moved and felt the shaggy fur and the horrible
pain in his leg and in his right arm, which was confined in a twisted
position. Then he remembered, but forgot again.
A second time he awoke. It was still dark, but a strange pallor
permeated the air, and all around him was a mist of white.
It was snowing fast. He closed his left hand and grasped a whole fistful
of flakes. The body of the bear was a mound of white--like a new-made
grave over him, he dismally thought. The snow had drifted under and
about his shoulders. Its chill struck the wound in his thigh, which
throbbed as though hit with pointed hammers, keeping time to the
pulsations of his heart; but, thank God! he no longer felt that horrible
warm trickling down his leg. He had been preserved from bleeding to
freeze to death. How long before that would happen; or, if it were not
cold enough for that, how long before the snow would drift clear over
him and cut off the little breath which that ponderous, inert, dead-cold
beast on his chest prevented from entering his lungs? Where was the
dog? He called feebly: “Shep! Shep! Hi-i-i, Sh-e-p!” But no moist nose
or rough tongue responded. He tried to whistle, but his parched mouth
refused. Heavens, how thirsty! He stretched out his hand and gathered
the snow within his reach. Then he closed his eyes and dreamed that two
giants were pulling him asunder, and that a third was pouring molten
lead down his throat.
But it was only Bill Cooper trying to make him drink whiskey.
He understood it after a little and realized that he ought to swallow.
Then life came back, and with the knowledge that he was no longer
alone on the cold, remote, relentless mountain top, but that Cooper was
lifting away the bear, and that Shep was wild with sympathy and gladness
because he had been able to bring help, came courage and forbearance of
his suffering. In the morning new strength came with the sunshine. The
snow rapidly melted. Cooper got breakfast and Tom rebandaged his knee.
“These gashes won't amount to much, unless the claws were poisoned.
You'll have to make me a crutch, and give me a couple of days to get rid
of the stiffness, but then I'll be all right.”
“How did you and the bear get into this scrimmage, anyhow? You surely
didn't go hunting him with that there six shooter?”
“Not I. The wind was blowing hard toward me, so he didn't smell nor hear
me, and I ran right on to him. Shep was not there to warn me, but if he
hadn't come back just as he did, or if I hadn't been able to get at my
revolver, Old Ephraim would ha' used me up in about a minute.”
“I ain't a betting on one pistol shot against a grizzly, anyhow.”
“Of course, the chances were about one in a thousand, but I wasn't going
to die without a shot. I suppose the bullet struck the lower part of the
brain.”
“Yes,” said Bill, who had been probing its track. “Tore it all to
pieces. But what was the bear after in that brush?”
“Give it up--ants, likely. You know--Great Scott! What's that dog got
now?” Shep was coming out of the bushes, dragging a package wrapped in
buckskin which was almost too heavy for him to handle. Cooper went and
took it from him and brought it to the fire. It was a sort of pouch
firmly tied with a thong. Running a knife under this the bundle fell
apart, and a double handful of flakes and nuggets of gold and quartz
rolled out.
“The cache!” Tom shouted, comprehending instantly the meaning of this.
“The bear was tearing it to pieces!”
It was true. His strong feet had displaced the loosely-heaped stones,
and a half-devoured side of bacon lay close by where the animal had been
disturbed.
Evidently the marauder had just begun his work. There remained in the
cache two more pouches of gold--perhaps a quart of the metal pieces in
all, more or less pure, for all of it had been dug out of a vein with
hammer and knife point, none of the fragments showing the water-worn
roundness characteristic of placer gold. Then there were a small
quantity of provisions, some ammunition and a small rosewood box with an
ornamental brass lock having a remarkably small and irregular keyhole.
From an inner pocket of his purse Tom drew the odd little key the dead
prospector had given him. It fitted into the hole and easily turned the
lock. The cover sprang open, revealing a package of letters. He lifted
them out, but did not pause to read them.
Then came an envelope containing a patent to ranch lands in Arizona,
certificates of stock in Mexican and other mines that Burke had never
heard of, and a commission as lieutenant of artillery in the Confederate
army. All these documents were made out to “Arthur F. Pierson,”
establishing the fact that the lost hat was really that worn by the old
man, as his dog had recognized.
At the bottom of the box, however, Tom found what interested him most--a
formal “claim” and description of the lode whence the gold had been
taken, and how to reach it from this cache. It was written in pencil, in
a very shaky hand, on two or three soiled leaves torn from a memorandum
book and eked out with one of the covers.
Then Tom took up the letters. Most of them were recent and of business
importance, but several were old and worn with much handling. One of
these latter was from a lawyer in San Francisco, acknowledging funds
“sent for the support of your infant daughter,” describing her health
and growth, and the care taken of her “at the convent”--all in curt
business phrase, but precious to the father's heart. Then there were
two or three small letters, printed and scratched in a childish hand, to
“dear, dear papa,” and signed “Your little Polly.” One of these spoke of
Sister Agatha and Sister Theresa, showing that it was written while
the child was still in the convent; but the others, a little later,
prattled about a new home with “my new papa and mamma,” but gave no clew
to name or place.
“This baby girl--she must be a young woman now, if she lives,” Tom
mused--“is evidently the person the poor old chap wanted me to divide
with. It ought not to be difficult to trace her from San Francisco, I
suppose the convent Sisters knew where she went to when they gave her
up. But, hello! here's a picture.”
It was an old-fashioned daguerrotype of a handsome woman of perhaps
four-and-twenty, in bridal finery, whose face seemed to him to have
something familiar in its expression. But no name or date was to be
found, and with the natural conclusion that this was probably Pierson's
wife he puzzled a moment more over the pretty face, and then put it
away.
After a few days, when Burke was able to travel, the prospector's
memorandum and their mountain craft together led them almost directly
to the coveted gold vein, which ran across a shoulder of the mountain at
the head of the gulch, like an obscure trail, finally disappearing under
a great talus at the foot of a line of snowcapped crags.
Tracing it along, they presently came upon the old man's claim marks.
The stakes were lettered pathetically with the name of the old man's
choosing--“Polly's Hope.”
Adjoining the “Hope” Tom staked out one claim for himself and another
for his sweetheart, intending to do the proper assessment work on it
himself if Corbitt couldn't or wouldn't; and Cooper used up most of
what remained of the visible outcrop in a claim for himself.
Returning to town their claims were registered in the Crimson Mineral
District, and their report sent a flight of gold hunters in hot haste to
the scene.
Tom Burke, after selling everything he could send to market to turn
into ready money, departed to Denver, carrying with him documents and
specimens of the gold quartz to support his assertions.
Keen men fêted and flattered him, buttonholing him at every corner with
whispered advice, and many proffered schemes. But he was indifferent to
it all, and anxious as yet only to hear what Marion should say.
Not a word had he heard from her directly during all the weeks of
her absence, but indirectly he knew she had been a star in the local
society. He had even to hunt out where she lived, finding it in a
cottage near where the stately court house now stands.
He went there, after tea, with a fastbeating heart. Had she forgotten,
or withdrawn or been turned away by hardhearted parents and friends? He
suspected everything and everybody, yet could give no reasons. And how
absurd these fears looked to him--how _foolish!_--when, sitting in the
little parlor, hand in hand, they talked over the past, and she confided
that the same doubts had worried her now and then--“most of all, Tom,
dear, when I hear of this wonderful success of yours.”
“Bless me! I had forgotten it. By your side all else----”
Here the door opened--not too abruptly--and Mr. Corbitt came in, grimly
hospitable and glad, no doubt for his own sake, to see this young fellow
who was still true to his daughter; while Mrs. Corbitt was more openly
cordial, as became her.
“An' what's this we're hearin' aboot your new mines? They're sayin'
down town that you've struck a regular bonanza, an'll soon be worth your
meellions. But I told 'em 'Hoot! I'd heard the like o' that before!'”
So Tom recounted briefly the story of the prospector's death and his
will; still more briefly his adventure with the grizzly, and how it led
to the curious disclosure of the cache. Then, with no little dramatic
force, seeing how interested was his audience, he described the hunt for
the vein and the finding it, produced his specimens and handed to Miss
Marion a mass of almost solid gold embedded in its matrix.
“I can't promise you,” he said, as she tried to thank him with her eyes
and a timid touch of her fingers, “that the whole ledge will equal that,
but it is a genuine sample from near the surface.”
“Wonderful! Wonderful!” the old Scotchman ejaculated, with gleaming
eyes, as Tom went on to show how regular and secure was the title to
this possession. “But did ye no find out the name of the poor vagabone?”
“Oh, yes. Didn't I mention it? His name was Arthur Pierson.”
Corbitt and his wife both started from their seats.
“Man, did I hear ye aright?--_Arthur F. Pierson?_”
“That was the name exactly. I can show it to you on the letters.”
“An' he charged ye to give the half of all ye found to his daughter
Polly?”
“Yes, and I mean to try to find her.”
“_There she sits!_” cried Mother Corbitt excitedly, before her cautious
husband, could say “Hush!”--pointing at Marion, who gazed from one
to the other, too much amazed to feel grieved yet at this stunning
announcement. “We took the lassie when she was a wee bairn, and she
would never ha' known she wasn't ours really till maybe we were dead and
gone. Her feyther was a cankert, fashious body, but her mother was
guid and bonnie (I knew her well in the auld country) and she died when
Mary--that's you, my dearie--was born.”
“Is this her picture?” Tom asked, showing the daguerrotype.
“Aye, that it is. Puir Jennie!”
The rest is soon told. A company of capitalists was formed to work the
four consolidated claims on the new vein, under the name of the Hope
Mining Company.
[Illustration: 0293]
All the next season was spent by Tom Burke in developing the property
and erecting machinery. Corbitt was there too, much thawed by the sun of
prosperity, but his wife and daughter remained in Denver. In the autumn,
however, the ladies went East, and as the holidays approached Tom and
Corbitt followed them to New York, where, on Christmas eve, my hero and
heroine were married quietly in a little church up town; and his gift
to her was the brooch which had attracted my attention and whose
significance was now plain.
[Illustration: 0293]
[Illustration: 0294]