Mike that they were not talking about crooked sticks ner no kind of
sticks, ner they didn't give a dom what happened in Minnesota fifty
year ago--if it ever had happened, which Murphy doubted. So Mike left
his story in the middle and went off to the water jug under a stubby
cedar, walking bowlegged and swinging his arms limply, palms turned
backward, and muttering to himself as he went.
"A-ah, there goes a liar if ever there was one--him and his crooked
sthick!" Murphy brought out a plug of tobacco the length of his hand
and pried off a corner with his teeth. "Mebby it was a railroad tie, I
dunno, that give him the dint in his head where he should have
brains--but I misdoubt me if iver there was more than the prospect of
a hole there, and niver a color to pay fer the diggin'." He looked at
the professor and winked prodigiously, though Mike was out of earshot.
"Him an' his crooked sthick!" he snorted, nudging the professor with
his elbow. "'S fer me, I'd a dom sight ruther go be yer buke, young
feller--and more I cannot say than thot."
The professor went back to his ledge on the hillside and began to peck
away with his pick, getting a sample for Murphy to look at. He rather
liked Murphy, who had addressed him as young feller--a term sweet to
the ears of any man when he had passed forty-five and was still going.
By George! an old miner like Murphy ought to know a fair prospect when
he saw it! The professor hoped that he might really find gold on his
claim. Gold would not lessen the timber value, and it would magnify
the profits. They expected to make somewhere near six thousand dollars
off each twenty acres; perhaps more, since they were noble trees and
good, honest pine that brought the best price from the mills. Six
thousand dollars was worth while, certainly; but think of the fortune
if they could really find gold. He would have a more honest right to
the claim, then. He wondered what Murphy thought of the shaft he was
sinking over there, where Fred had perfunctorily broken through the
leaf mold with a "prospect" hole, and had ordered Murphy and Mike to
dig to bed-rock, and stop when they had the assessment work finished.
What Murphy thought of it Murphy was succinctly expressing just then
to Mike, with an upward twinkle of his thick, convex glasses, and a
contemptuous fling of his shovelful of dirt up over the rim of the
hole.
"My gorry, I think this mine we're workin' on was located by the
bake," he chuckled. "Fer if not that, will ye tell me why else they
want 'er opened up? There's as much gold here as I've got in me
pocket, an' not a dom bit more."
"Well, that man I knowed in Minnesota, he tuk a crooked sthick,"
gobbled Mike, whose speech, as well as his mind had been driven askew
by the railroad tie; but Murphy impatiently shut him up again.
"A-ah, an' that's about as much as ye iver did know, I'm thinkin',
le's have no more av yer crooked sthick. Hand me down that other pick,
fer this wan is no sharper than me foot."
He worked steadily after that, flinging up the moist soil with an
asperated "a-ah" that punctuated regularly each heave of his shoulder
muscles. In a little he climbed out and helped Mike rig a windlass
over the hole. Mike pottered a good deal, and stood often staring
vacantly, studying the next detail of their work. When he was not
using them, his hands drooped helplessly at his sides, a sign of
mental slackness never to be mistaken. He was willing, and what Murphy
told him to do he did. But it was Murphy who did the hard work, who
planned for them both.
Presently Mike went bowlegging to camp to start their dinner, and
Murphy finished spiking the windlass to the platform on which it
rested. He still whispered a sibilant "a-ah!" with every blow of the
hammer, and the perspiration trickled down his seamed temples in
little rivulets to his chin that looked smaller and weaker than it
should because he had lost so many of his teeth and had a habit of
pinching his lower jaw up against his upper.
The professor came back with his sample of rock--with a pocketful of
samples--just as Murphy had finished and was wiping his thick glasses
on a soiled, blue calico handkerchief with large white polka-dots on
the border and little white polka-dots in the middle. He turned toward
the professor inquiringly, warned by the scrunching footsteps that
some one approached. But he was blind as a bat--so he
declared--without his glasses, so he finished polishing them and
placed them again before his bleared, powder-burned eyes before he
knew who was coming.
"An' it's you back already," he greeted, in his soft Irish voice, that
tilted up at the end of every sentence, so that, without knowing what
words he spoke, one would think he was asking question after question
and never making a statement at all. "An' what have ye dug outy yer
buke now?"
"No, by George, I dug this out of the ground," the professor declared,
going forward eagerly. "I want you to tell me frankly just what you
think of it."
"An' I will do that--though it's many the fight I've been in because
of speakin' me mind," Murphy stated, grinning a little. "An' now le's
see what ye got there. My gorry, I've been thinkin' they're all av
thim buke mines that ye have here," he bantered, peering into the
professor's face, before he took the largest piece of rock and turned
it over critically in his hands. In a minute he handed it back with a
quizzical glance.
"They's nawthin' there," he said softly. "If thot was gold-bearin'
rock, my gorry, we'd all of us be rollin' in wealth, fer the mountains
is made of such. Young feller, ye're wastin' yer time an' ivery dollar
ye're sinkin' in these here claims ye've showed me--and thot's no lie
I'm tellin' ye, but the truth, an' if ye believe it I'll soon be
huntin' another job and ye'll be takin' the train back where ye come
from."
The professor eyed him uncertainly. He looked at the great, singing
pines that laced their branches together high over their heads. Fred,
he thought, had made a mistake when he hired experienced miners to do
this work. It might be better to let Murphy in....
"Still the timber on the claims is worth proving up, and more," he
ventured cautiously, with a sharp glance at Murphy's spectacles.
"A-ah, and there yer right," Murphy assented with the upward tilt to
his voice. "An' if it's the timber ye be wantin', I'll say no more
about the mine. Four thousand acres minin' claims no better than yer
own have I seen held fer the trees on thim--an' ain't it the way some
of these ole fellers thot goes around now wit' their two hands in
their pants pockets an' no more work t' do wit' 'em than to light up
their seegars--ain't it wit' the timber on their minin' claims that
they made their pile? A-ah--but them was the good times fer them that
had brains. A jackass like me an' Mike, here, we're the fellers thot
went on a lookin' fer gold an' givin' no thought to the trees that
stood above. An' thim that took the gold an' the trees, they're the
ones thot's payin' wages now to the likes of Mike an' me."
He straightened his back and sent a speculative glance at the forest
around him. "'Tis long sence the thrick has been worked through," he
mused, turning his plug of tobacco over in his hand, looking for a
likely place to sink his stained old teeth. "Ye'll be kapin' mum about
what's in yer mind, young feller, ef ye don't want to bring the dom
Forest Service on yer trail. Ef it was me, I'd buy me a bag of salt
fer me mines--I would thot."
"Well, by George!" The professor stared. "What has salt--?"
"A-ah, an' there's where ye're ign'rant, young feller, wit' all yer
buke l'arnin'. 'Tis gold I mean--gold thot ye can show t' thim thot
gits cur'us. But if it was me, I'd sink me shaf' in a likelier spot
than what this spot is--I wuddn't be bringing up durt like this, an'
be callin' the hole a mine! I kin show ye places where ye kin git the
color an' have the luke of a mine if ye haven't the gold. There's
better men than you been fooled in these hills. I spint me a winter
meself, cuttin' timbers fer me mine--an' no more than a mile from this
spot it was--an' in the spring I sinks me shaf' an' not a dom ounce of
gold do I git fer me pains!"
"Well, by George! I'll speak to Fred about it. I--I suppose you can be
trusted, Murphy?"
Murphy spat far from him and hitched up his sagging overalls. "Kin any
man be trusted?" he inquired sardonically. "He kin, says I, if it's to
his intrust. I'm gittin' my wages fer the diggin', ain't I? Then it's
to me intrust to kape on diggin'! Sure, me tongue niver wagged me
belly outy a grub-stake yit, young feller! I'm with ye on this, an'
thot's me true word I'm givin' ye."
The professor hurried off to find Fred and urge him to let Murphy
advise them upon the exact sites of their mines. Murphy hung his
hammer up in the forked branches of a young oak, and went off to his
dinner. Arriving there, he straightway discovered that Mike, besides
frying bacon and making a pot of muddy coffee and stirring up a
bannock, had been engaged also in what passed with him for thinking.
"Them fellers don't know nothin' about minin'," he began when he had
poured himself a cup of coffee and turned the pot with the handle
toward Murphy. "They's no gold there, where we're diggin', I know
there's no gold! They's no sign of gold. They can dig a hunnerd feet
down, an' they won't find no gold! Why, in Minnesota, that time--"
"A-ah, now, le's have none av Minnesota," Murphy broke in upon Mike's
gobbling--no other word expresses Mike's manner of speech, or comes
anywhere near to giving any idea of his mushy mouthing of words. "An'
who iver said they was after gold, now?"
Mike's jaw went slack while he stared dully at his partner. "An' if
they ain't after gold, what they diggin' fer, then?" he demanded, when
he had collected what he could of his scattered thoughts.
"A-ah, now, an' thot's a diffrunt story, Mike, me boy." Murphy broke
off a piece of bannock, on the side least burned, and nodded his head
in a peculiarly knowing manner. "Av ye could kape yer tongue quiet
fr'm clappin' all ye know, Mike, I cud tell ye somethin'--I cud thot."
"Wh-why, nobudy ever heard _me_ talkin' things that's tol' in secret,"
Mike made haste to asseverate. "Why, one time in Minnesota, they was a
feller, he tol' _me_, min' yuh, things 't he wouldn't tell his own
mthrrr!" Mike, poor man, could not say mother at all. He just buzzed
with his tongue and let it go at that. But Murphy was used to his
peculiarities and guessed what he meant.
"An' there's where he showed respick fer the auld lady," he commended
drily, and winked at his cup of coffee.
"An' he tol' _me_, mind yuh, all about a mrrer" (which was as close as
he could come to murder) "an' he _knew_, mind ye, who it was, an' he
tol' _me_--an' why, _I_ wouldn't ever say nothin' an' he knew it--I
doctrrrred his eyes, mind ye, mind ye, an' the doctrrrs they couldn't
do nothin'--an' we was with this outfit that was puttin' in a bridge"
(only he couldn't say bridge to save his life) "this was 'way back in
Minnesota--"
"A-ah, now ye come back to Minnesota, ye better quit yer travelin' an'
eat yer dinner," quelled Murphy impatiently. "An' le's hear no more
'bout it."
Mike laid a strip of scorched bacon upon a chunk of scorched bannock
and bit down through the mass, chewed meditatively and stared into the
coals of his camp fire. "If they ain't diggin' fer gold, then what are
they _diggin'_ fer?" he demanded aggressively, and so suddenly that
Murphy started.
"A-ah, now, I'll tell ye what they're diggin' fer, but it's a secret,
mind ye, and ye must nivver spheak a word av it. They're diggin' fer
anguintum, me boy. An' thot's wort' more than gold, an' the likes av
me 'n you wadden't know if we was to wade through it, but it's used in
the war, I dunno, t' make gas-bags t' kill the inimy, and ye're t' say
nawthin' t' nobody er they'll likely take an' hang ye fer a spy on the
government, but ye're sa-afe, Mike, s' long as ye sthick t' me an' yer
job an' say nawthin' t' nobody, d' ye see."
"They'd nivver hang _me_ fer a spy," Mike gobbled excitedly. "They'll
nivver hang me--why I knowed--"
"A-ah, av yer ivver did ye've fergot it intirely," Murphy squelched
him pitilessly.
Mike gulped down a mouthful and took a swallow of muddy coffee. "They
better look out how they come around _me_," he threatened vaguely.
"They can't take me for a spy. I'd git the lawyers after 'em, an' I'd
make 'em trouble. They wanta look out--I'd spend ivvery cent I make
on lawyers an' courts if they took and hung me fer a spy. I'd _lawsue_
'em!"
Murphy laughed. "A-ah, would ye, now!" he cried admiringly. "My gorry,
it takes a brain like yours t' think av things. Now, av they hung me,
I'd be likes to let 'er sthand thot way. I'd nivver a thought t'
lawsue 'em fer it--I wad not!"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A CAVE DWELLER JACK WOULD BE
Smoke-tinged sunlight and warm winds and languorous days held for
another full month in the mountains. Then the pines complained all
through one night, and in the morning they roared like the rush of
breakers in a storm, and sent dead branches crashing down, and sifted
brown needles thick upon the earth below.
"A-ah, but she's goin' t' give us the rain now, I dunno," Murphy
predicted, staring up at the leaden clouds through his thick glasses.
"Ye better git up some firewood, Mike, and make the camp snug agin
foul weather. An' av' the both of ye ain't got yer place tight an'
ready fer a sthorm, ye betther be stirrin' yerselves an' let the
diggin' go fer a day. It's firewood ye'll need, an' in a dry place.
An' while ye're talkin' 'bout wood, have yer got yer wood fer the
winter? An' yer goin' to sthay, ye bin tellin' me."
Fred looked around him at the forest where the oaks and the
cottonwoods and all the trailing vines were fluttering gay red and
yellow leaves in the wind. Fall was slipping on him unaware. He had
thought that there was plenty of time to make ready for winter, but
now he knew that the time was short--too short, maybe, with that wind
booming up from the southwest.
"You and Mike can knock off work here, and when your camp's in shape
you can come over and cut wood for us. Doug, we'll beat it and throw
that woodshed together we've been going to build. Think it'll storm
today, Murphy?"
Murphy stepped out where he could glimpse the southern sky, and eyed
the drift of heavy clouds. "She will not bust loose t'day, I'm
thinkin'," he decided. "She'll be workin' 'erself up to the pint av
shnowin' er rainin' er both. Rain in the valley, shnow up here where
we're at, I'm thinkin'. She'll be a rip when she does bust loose, me
boy, an' ye can't have things too tight an' shnug."
"I believe yuh. Come on, Doug. Murphy, you can take care of the tools
and cover up the hole, will you?"
"I will do that." Murphy grinned after the two tolerantly. "Will I
take care av me tools, an' it buildin' a sthorm?" he sarcastically
asked the swaying bushes around him. "An' do I need a pilgrim to
remind me av that? An' thim wit' no wood, I dunno, whin they shud have
thurrty tier at the very least, sawed an' sphlit an' ricked up under
cover where it can be got at whin they want it--an' they will want it,
fair enough! A-ah, but they'll find they ain't winterin' in Southern
Californy, before they're t'rough with this country. They're not got
their winter grub laid in, an' I'll bet money on't, an' no wood, an'
they're like t' be shnowed in here, whin no rig will come up thot
grade wit' a load an' I don't care how much they'll pay t' have it
hauled, an' them two not able t' pack grub on their backs as I've done
manny's the time, an' them wimmin wantin' all the nicks Lee's got in
his sthores! Cake an' pie, it's likely they must have in the house er
they think they're not eatin'." Murphy talked as he worked, putting
the tools in a pile ready to be carried to camp, picking up pieces of
rope and wire and boards and nails, and laying a plank roof over the
windlass and weighting it with rocks. Mike had gone pacing to camp,
swinging his arms and talking to himself also, though his talk was
less humanly kind under the monotonous grumble. Mike was gobbling
under his breath, something about law-suing anybody that come
botherin' him an' tryin' t' arrest him for nothin'. But Murphy
continued to harp upon the subject of domestic preparedness.
"An' that leanto them men sleep in is no better than nothin' an' if it
kapes the rain off their blankets it'll not kape off the shnow, an'
it won't kape off the wind at all. An' they've not got the beddin'
they'll be needin', an' I'll bet money on it.
"They should have a cellar dug back av the cabin where's the hill the
sun gets to, an' they should have it filled with spuds an' cabbages
an' the like--but what have they got? A dollar's worth av sugar,
maybe, an' a fifty-poun' sack av flour, an' maybe a roll av butter an'
a table full of nicknacks which they could do without--an' winter
comin' on like the lope av a coyote after a rabbit, an' them no better
prepared than the rabbit, ner so, fer the rabbit's maybe got a hole he
can duck inty an' they have nawthin' but the summer camp they've made,
an' _hammicks_, by gorry, whin they should have warrm overshoes an'
sourdough coats! Tenderfeet an' pilgrims they be, an' these mountains
is no place fer such with winter comin' on--an' like to be a bad wan
the way the squrls has been layin' away nuts."
Pilgrims and tenderfeet they were, and their lack of foresight might
well shock an oldtimer like Murphy. But he would have been still more
shocked had he seen what poor amateurish preparations for the coming
winter another young tenderfoot had been making. If he had seen the
place which Jack Corey had chosen for his winter hide-out I think he
would have taken a fit; and if he had seen the little pile of food
which Jack referred to pridefully as his grubstake I don't know what
he would have done.
Under the barren, rock-upended peak of King Solomon there was a narrow
cleft between two huge slabs that had slipped off the ledge when the
mountain was in the making. At the farther end of the cleft there was
a cave the size of a country school-house, with a jagged opening in
the roof at one side, and with a "back-door" opening that let one out
into a network of clefts and caves. It was cool and quiet in there
when Jack discovered the hiding place, and the wind blowing directly
from the south that day, did not more than whistle pleasantly through
a big fissure somewhere in the roof.
Jack thought it must have been made to order, and hastened down to
their meeting place and told Marion so. And the very next day she
insisted upon meeting him on the ridge beyond Toll-Gate basin and
climbing with him to the cave. As soon as she had breath enough to
talk, she agreed with him as emphatically as her vocabulary and her
flexible voice would permit. Made to order? She should say it was!
Why, it was perfect, and she was just as jealous of him as she could
be. Why, look at the view! And the campfire smoke wouldn't show but
would drift away through all those caves; or if it did show, people
would simply think that a new volcano had bursted loose, and they
would be afraid to climb the peak for fear of getting caught in an
eruption. Even if they did come up, Jack could see them hours before
they got there, and he could hide. And anyway, they never would find
his cave. It was perfect, just like a moonshiner story or something.
Speaking of smoke reminded Jack that he would have to lay in a supply
of wood, which was some distance below the rock crest. Manzanita was
the closest, and that was brushy stuff. He also told Marion gravely
that he must do it before any snow came, or his tracks would be a dead
give-away to the place. He must get all his grubstake in too, and
after snowfall he would have to be mighty careful about making tracks
around any place.
Marion thought that snow on the mountain would be "keen," and
suggested that Jack try a pair of her shoes, and see if he couldn't
manage to wear them whenever there was snow. His feet were very small
for a man's, and hers were--well, not tiny for a woman, and she would
spend so much time hiking around over the hills that a person would
think, of course, she had made the tracks. Being an impulsive young
woman who believed in doing things on the spot, she thereupon retired
behind a corner of rock, and presently threw one of her high-lace
boots out to Jack. It crumpled his toes, but Jack thought he could
wear it if he had to. So that point was settled satisfactorily, and
they went on planning impossibilities with a naive enthusiasm that
would have horrified Murphy.
Any man could have told Jack things to dampen his enthusiasm for
wintering on the top of King Solomon. But Jack, for perfectly obvious
reasons, was not asking any man for information or advice upon that
subject. Hank Brown would have rambled along the trail of many words
and eventually have told Jack some things that he ought to know--only
Hank Brown came no more to Mount Hough lookout station. A stranger
brought Jack's weekly pack-load of supplies; a laconic type of man who
held his mind and his tongue strictly to the business at hand. The
other men who came there were tourists, and with them Jack would not
talk at all if he could help it.
So he went blandly on with his camp building, four precious days out
of every month. He chopped dead manzanita bush and carried it on his
back to his hide-out, and was tickled with the pile he managed to store
away in one end of the cave. Working in warm weather, it seemed to be
a great deal of wood.
From the lookout station he watched the slow building of the storm
that so worried Murphy because of the Toll-Gate people. He watched the
circled sweep of the clouds rushing from mountain ridge to mountain
ridge. Straight off Claremont they came, and tangled themselves in the
treetops of the higher slopes. The wind howled over the mountain so
fiercely that he could scarcely force his way against it to the spring
for water. And when he filled his bucket the wind sloshed half of it
out before he could reach the puny shelter of his station. If he had
ever wondered why that station was banked solid to the window-sills
with rocks, he wondered no more when he felt that gale pushing and
tugging at it and shrieking as if it were enraged because it could not
pick the station up bodily and fling it down into the lake below.
"Gee! I'm glad I've got a cave the wind can't monkey with, to winter
in," he congratulated himself fatuously once, when the little boxlike
building shook in the blast.
That night the wind slept, and the mountain lay hushed after the
tumult. But the clouds hung heavy and gray at dark, and in the morning
they had not drifted on. It was as though the mountain tops had
corralled all the clouds in the country and held them penned like
sheep over the valleys. With the gray sunrise came the wind again, and
howled and trumpeted and bullied the harassed forests until dark. And
then, with dark came the stinging slap of rain upon the windows, and
pressed Jack's loneliness deep into the soul of him.
"They'll be shutting up this joint for the winter," he told himself
many times that night, half hopefully, half regretfully. "They won't
pay a man to watch forests that are soaking wet. I guess my job's done
here."
The next morning a thin white blanket of snow fresh sifted from the
clouds lay all over the summit and far down the sides. Beyond its
edges the rain beat steadily upon the matted leaves and branches.
Surely his job was ended with that storm, Jack kept telling himself,
while he stared out at his drenched world capped with white. It was
the nearest he had ever been to snow, except once or twice when he had
gone frolicking up Mount Wilson with snowballing parties. He scooped
up handfuls of it with a dreary kind of gleefulness--dreary because he
must be gleeful alone--he made tracks all around just for the novelty
of it; he snowballed the rocks. He would soon go into a different kind
of exile, without rules and regulations to hamper his movements;
without seventy-five dollars a month salary, too, by the way! But he
would have the freedom of the mountains. He would be snug and safe in
his cave over there, and Marion would climb up to meet him every day
or so and bring him magazines and news of the outside world. And he
would fill in the time hunting, and maybe do a little prospecting, as
he had vaguely hinted to the man who brought his supplies. It would
not be so bad.