A DIME NOVEL HERO.
When their unpleasant guest departed from the cabin of our heroes, he
marched straight down to Bob’s cabin in the village and there found
himself heartily welcomed. Old Bob introduced him to Scotty as “Bill
Stevens--a fellow who knows the San Juan like his own barn-yard.” Scotty
said he was glad to see him, and no doubt he was, for he felt in need of
friends, and this new man, as a chum of Bob’s and evidently training in
the same band, would of course become an ally of his. This Scotty
needed; though he had not been sent out of town a second time, and was
permitted to lounge around the El Dorado and to sit at the
gambling-tables, or join the story-telling circles at the public corral,
he saw that most of the men whom he met were far from cordial toward
him, and that his earnest efforts to be agreeable were of small avail in
making friends. It did not suit his plans to resent this, nor to leave
the camp in search of a more congenial community; so he put up with the
unpopularity as well as he could. It galled him, however, and caused him
to lay up hatred rather than love toward the whole population of the
valley.
As soon as Bill Stevens’ back was turned, Scotty took occasion to
inquire somewhat about him. Bob really knew little of his history,
except that, as he said, they had been “pards” in a little game some
time previous, after which Stevens had thought it prudent to go away.
Scotty pressed Old Bob to know the particulars of this partnership
enterprise, but Bob declined at first to tell them. Finally, however, he
exclaimed:
“Well, I s’pose you might as well know, its only another point against
them dod-rotted young swells up the creek. The fact is, when Brehm and
his partner lived down in that there cabin ’cross the bridge yonder,
Bushwick went off to Denver. By’n bye he came back with a heap o’
cash--don’ know how much--mebbe a thousand or so. ’Bout that time Bill
came over to see me from t’other side the range, and I was telling about
it, you know. Well Bill, he made out ’s how Bushwick didn’t have no
right to the money no how, havin’ stole it from somebody else by some
kind of lawyer’s game, and ’twas as much ours as his’n or anybody’s,
which of course that is true, providin’ he got it by swindlin’, which
like enough he did, you know.”
“So you and Bill held him up, did you?”
“No, we didn’t have no chance to rob him on the road, but we thought we
could get into his cabin easy enough. So we tried it, Stevens climbin’
softly into the winder and I outside a-holdin’ the ladder. He’d got
e’en-a ’most in, when bang went a gun and out tumbled Bill on top o’me.
I thought we was both killed sure, but Bill picked himself up, and we
lit out as though the Old Scratch himself was after us, which the same
he mighty near was.”
“Didn’t hit Stevens, then?” Scotty inquired, with a grin which showed
how well he enjoyed the comical side of the situation, and how little
his conscience was touched by the villainy of the story.
“No, but it was an awful close call. Great Cæsar! But Max Brehm kin
shoot, now you just bet!”
“Does Stevens know that the boys up the creek where he stopped t’other
night are the same fellows?”
“I guess not; he aint said nothin’ about it.”
“If he did know, I reckon there’d be three of us as thought we owed the
fine gentlemen a little debt of honor, which the same we hadn’t ought,
on no account, to fail to pay--eh?”
Scotty’s leer and chuckle were as long as these slow and wicked words,
and Bob’s squinty and bleary eye answered with a distorted,
left-handed, evil grin of comprehension as he snarled out the laconic
assent:
“Bet yer boots!”
And yet this is the kind of men whom so many well-meaning but
romantically inclined eastern boys, knowing the far West only as they
read of it in cheap books of a very poor sort, regard as heroes in
disguise, and long to see and associate with. Thieves and gamblers at
home are justly abhorred by them, yet the same man, perhaps,
transplanted to the Rockies to escape the sheriff at home, becomes in
these flashy books a sort of chivalrous knight whose uncouth ways only
heighten his supposed virtues.
This is the worst of nonsense. A brave, heroic man does not show himself
in this garb. The honest heroes of the Rockies never figure in dime
novels and never will. They are not loud and “chinny” enough for that.
They do not wear long hair, nor carry a big Kentucky rifle, nor appear
and disappear in any mysterious Jack-in-the-box manner. They are not
accustomed to kill six or eight “red-skinned varmints” at a single blow,
and if ever they are engaged in Indian warfare, are far too wise to get
so surrounded by a circle of Indians that they are obliged to take a
standing leap over the heads of their foes, as did Eagle-eye or some
other scout I once read of. If they tried to behave in this way, or to
dress in story-book fashion, they would be hung or driven out by men of
action who have no time to spend watching Bowery-museum foolishness, and
whose business would be harmed by its display.
There is in every mining district a class of men who behave more or less
as these novels portray, going as far toward it, anyhow, leaving out
some of the theatrical foolishness, as they dare; and I suppose they
form the material out of which the writers of the sorry stuff try to
make their heroes. But as a matter of fact they are lawless scamps,
brutal, lowlived, ignorant, unclean men, with whom not one in fifty of
their admirers among the readers of these false and miserable tales
would allow himself to be seen on the streets of the town where he was
born. They are more noisy and more difficult to separate from their
betters in the rough and unarranged surroundings of a new mining camp or
cattle district, than they would be in an eastern village where the
affairs of life are well classified; but they are none the less avoided
and despised by good citizens, and are feared rather than trusted in any
emergency, like an Indian war, which calls for courage and discretion.
I cannot conceive of a more complete disappointment and experience of
fraud, than would meet the romantic reader of the Indian-slaying and
horse-stealing tales in yellow covers, who should go on a search through
the far West for the originals of those thrilling pictures.
Ruffianly men exist and attempt their wicked schemes among honest men,
who, in the absence of regular police protection, and at the great
distance which many mines and ranches lie from courts, are often obliged
to defend themselves as soldiers would in an enemy’s country, or as any
man has a right to do when attacked by robbers. But, boys, for the sake
of all that is fair and square, let us call a ruffian a ruffian, and not
attempt to see glory in the doings of a horse-thief, or a gambler, or a
man who tries by force of rifle and pistol to seize upon property which
does not belong to him.
While Scotty and Bob were discussing the achievements by which Mr.
William Stevens, so called, had made himself distinguished, that worthy
came in, bringing a new bag of cheap black tobacco. Filling their pipes,
the three scallawags sat down in front of the coals smouldering in the
adobe fireplace, and Bob immediately began to tell Stevens the names of
the miners whose hospitality he enjoyed the night before, and how eager
he ought to be to join the other two in a scheme to break them down.
Partly from ignorance, partly by design, they exaggerated to each other
the injury each had suffered, and also the amount of plunder which it
was likely might be obtained from the firm of B. B. & Co. The upshot of
it all, was a compact between them to “get even” with the lads. This
meant to rob them and drive them from the town, or, if it was at all
necessary, to kill them, accounting for their crime by some artful story
of self-defense or the like.
They were in no great hurry, however, to carry out their wicked
purposes, and three or four days passed without their making any
movement, since no plan suggested itself that seemed promising.
One evening Old Bob came home and remarked, as he took the coffee-mill
between his knees and began to fill it from a buckskin bag that hung
against the chimney, that Morris had returned from below, and that he
had talked with him a little.
“Did he say he loved ye?” inquired Scotty, in sarcastic tones, and
betraying a little uneasiness as to what might follow when Morris should
hear of his return in defiance of the order of banishment.
“Wall--no, I reckon he’s soured on me,” was Bob’s candid response. “But
that didn’t phase me. I wanted mighty bad to find out suthin’, and I
played sweet and boned him for the information.”
“Did he play sweet, too, and tell ye?”
“Wall--no. But all the same I found out what I wanted. I let on I’d
heard Jim Bowen was dead, and asked him was it true.”
“What did he say?”
“Oh, he glared at me, as though he was a bull buffalo and I was a
ky-yote, ’n’ just says ‘dead and buried,’ and then he marched off as if
he’d been sent for. I’ll get even with that sardine yet!”
This was a pretty accurate account of what really had passed between
them. In fact, Morris had just been hunting with “Buckeye Jim” Bowen all
that week, and knew he was
[Illustration: SCOTTY AND OLD BOB.
Silver Caves, Page 74.]
as much alive as anybody had need to be; but Morris hated Bob, thought
he had no business to be playing the hypocrite and asking questions
about what was none of his affair, and so sent him off with this short
and reckless answer, not thinking or caring how much Bob might believe
of it.
“So the Terror’s passed in his checks, eh?” was Scotty’s comment. “He
wasn’t a bad sort of a party. I used to know him in Illinoy. They runned
him off because they said he stole some horses,--fine nags they was,
too. But it turned out he wasn’t the feller after all. I could ’a’ told
’em all the time they was wrong, only it wouldn’t a’-been quite
healthy.”
“Why?” asked Stevens, whose wits were not of the quickest. “Did you know
the right man?”
“I should smile! _I_ stole them horses, pardner! But, Bob, what made you
so anxious to know whether Buckeye Jim was dead?”
“Cause it fixes us O. K. The boys up the creek are working his mine. I
don’t know whether they’ve got any show of right about it or not, but
now Jim’s dead I reckon they’d have hard work to keep it if we war to
jump it.”
Do you know what it is to jump a mine? It means simply to seize it
without any right, and hold it by force, a thing very often successful
when the first claimant has no legal title to the property.
Bob’s proposition interested the others at once, and they began to
discuss it eagerly. Stevens asserted that it was the middle one of the
three mines at the head of the creek, namely the Aurora, that the boys
were working. He confessed that he had not gone into it, but was sure
that he was right. There was too much water in the upper tunnel near the
cabin, he assured them, to do anything there.
“Don’t you ’spose Morris knows that these boys have jumped Buckeye’s
mine?” asked Scotty, who remembered that Bowen partly owned the Aurora.
“Tain’t likely,” Bob answered. “But it will be just as well to keep him
from findin’ out they’re in there, if we can, for fear of any
interference. I reckon he feels friendly toward ’em by reason of helpin’
him in your El Dorado scrape.”
The very next morning, therefore, the three conspirators were thrown
into a quiver of alarm, by seeing both Len and Max in town. Bob met them
at the post-office, and loitered around, hoping, even if Morris should
appear, that he might be able by some good chance to prevent their
meeting. He thus heard Max tell the postmaster that they meant to stay
in town until the next day, and took it for granted, from something else
which he overheard, that the Scotchman had come in also, leaving the
mine and cabin alone over-night.
The moment he heard this, Old Bob hastened to find his partners and to
say that now was their opportunity to go up the creek, get a look at the
property, and make a plan for capturing it. Scotty and Stevens agreed
that this was advisable, and borrowing horses, the three rattled up the
road to Panther Creek as fast as possible, since no time ought to be
wasted if they were to get back before sundown, and to travel on those
mountain trails in the darkness is by no means a comfortable or safe
proceeding.
HOW LEN FOOLED THE PROFESSOR.