“Well, here come them darn burros, Cash. Cora's colt ain't with 'em
though. Poor little devils--say, Cash, they look like hard sleddin', and
that's a fact. I'll tell the world they've got about as much pep as a
flat tire.”
“Maybe we better grain 'em again.” Cash looked up from studying the
last assay report of the Burro Lode, and his look was not pleasant. “But
it'll cost a good deal, in both time and money. The feed around here is
played out.”
“Well, when it comes to that--” Bud cast a glum glance at the paper Cash
was holding.
“Yeah. Looks like everything's about played out. Promising ledge, too.
Like some people, though. Most all its good points is right on the
surface. Nothing to back it up.”
“She's sure running light, all right. Now,” Bud added sardonically, but
with the whimsical quirk withal, “if it was like a carburetor, and you
could give it a richer mixture--”
“Yeah. What do you make of it, Bud?”
“Well--aw, there comes that durn colt, bringing up the drag. Say Cash,
that colt's just about all in. Cora's nothing but a bag of bones, too.
They'll never winter--not on this range, they won't.”
Cash got up and went to the doorway, looking out over Bud's shoulder
at the spiritless donkeys trailing in to water. Beyond them the desert
baked in its rim of hot, treeless hills. Above them the sky glared a
brassy blue with never a could. Over a low ridge came Monte and Pete,
walking with heads drooping. Their hip bones lifted above their ridged
paunches, their backbones, peaked sharp above, their withers were lean
and pinched looking. In August the desert herbage has lost what little
succulence it ever possessed, and the gleanings are scarce worth the
walking after.
“They're pretty thin,” Cash observed speculatively, as though he was
measuring them mentally for some particular need.
“We'd have to grain 'em heavy till we struck better feed. And pack
light.” Bud answered his thought.
“The question is, where shall we head for, Bud? Have you any particular
idea?” Cash looked slightingly down at the assayer's report. “Such
as she is, we've done all we can do to the Burro Lode, for a year at
least,” he said. “The assessment work is all done--or will be when we
muck out after that last shot. The claim is filed--I don't know what
more we can do right away. Do you?”
“Sure thing,” grinned Bud. “We can get outa here and go some place where
it's green.”
“Yeah.” Cash meditated, absently eyeing the burros. “Where it's green.”
He looked at the near hills, and at the desert, and at the dreary march
of the starved animals. “It's a long way to green country,” he said.
They looked at the burros.
“They're tough little devils,” Bud observed hopefully. “We could take
it easy, traveling when it's coolest. And by packing light, and graining
the whole bunch--”
“Yeah. We can ease 'em through, I guess. It does seem as though it would
be foolish to hang on here any longer.” Carefully as he made his tests,
Cash weighed the question of their going. “This last report kills any
chance of interesting capital to the extent of developing the claim on
a large enough scale to make it profitable. It's too long a haul to take
the ore out, and it's too spotted to justify any great investment in
machinery to handle it on the ground. And,” he added with an undernote
of fierceness, “it's a terrible place for man or beast to stay in,
unless the object to be attained is great enough to justify enduring the
hardships.”
“You said a mouthful, Cash. Well, can you leave your seven radishes and
three hunches of lettuce and pull out--say at daybreak?” Bud turned to
him with some eagerness.
Cash grinned sourly. “When it's time to go, seven radishes can't stop
me. No, nor a whole row of 'em--if there was a whole row.”
“And you watered 'em copiously too,” Bud murmured, with the corners
of his mouth twitching. “Well, I guess we might as well tie up the
livestock. I'm going to give 'em all a feed of rolled oats, Cash. We
can get along without, and they've got to have something to put a little
heart in 'em. There's a moon to-night--how about starting along
about midnight? That would put us in the Bend early in the forenoon
to-morrow.”
“Suits me,” said Cash. “Now I've made up my mind about going, I can't go
too soon.”
“You're on. Midnight sees us started.” Bud went out with ropes to catch
and tie up the burros and their two saddle horses. And as he went, for
the first time in two months he whistled; a detail which Cash noted with
a queer kind of smile.
Midnight and the moon riding high in the purple bowl of sky sprinkled
thick with stars; with a little, warm wind stirring the parched weeds as
they passed; with the burros shuffling single file along the dim trail
which was the short cut through the hills to the Bend, Ed taking the
lead, with the camp kitchen wabbling lumpily on his back, Cora bringing
up the rear with her skinny colt trying its best to keep up, and with
no pack at all; so they started on the long, long journey to the green
country.
A silent journey it was for the most part. The moon and the starry
bowl of sky had laid their spell upon the desert, and the two men rode
wordlessly, filled with vague, unreasoning regret that they must go.
Months they had spent with the desert, learning well every little
varying mood; cursing it for its blistering heat and its sand storms
and its parched thirst and its utter, blank loneliness. Loving it too,
without ever dreaming that they loved. To-morrow they would face the
future with the past dropping farther and farther behind. To-night it
rode with them.
Three months in that little, rough-walled hut had lent it an atmosphere
of home, which a man instinctively responds to with a certain clinging
affection, however crude may be the shelter he calls his own. Cash
secretly regretted the thirsty death of his radishes and lettuce which
he had planted and tended with such optimistic care. Bud wondered if
Daddy might not stray half-starved into the shack, and find them gone.
While they were there, he had agreed with Cash that the dog must be
dead. But now he felt uneasily doubtful It would be fierce if Daddy did
come back now. He would starve. He never could make the trip to the Bend
alone, even if he could track them.
There was, also, the disappointment in the Burro Lode claim. As Bud
planned it, the Burro was packing a very light load--far lighter than
had seemed possible with that strong indication on the surface. Cash's
“enormous black ledge” had shown less and less gold as they went into
it, though it still seemed worth while, if they had the capital to
develop it further. Wherefore they had done generous assessment work
and had recorded their claim and built their monuments to mark its
boundaries. It would be safe for a year, and by that time--Quien sabe?
The Thompson claim, too, had not justified any enthusiasm whatever. They
had found it, had relocated it, and worked out the assessment for the
widow. Cash had her check for all they had earned, and he had declared
profanely that he would not give his share of the check for the whole
claim.
They would go on prospecting, using the check for a grubstake, That much
they had decided without argument. The gambling instinct was wide awake
in Bud's nature--and as for Cash, he would hunt gold as long as he could
carry pick and pan. They would prospect as long as their money held out.
When that was gone, they would get more and go on prospecting. But
they would prospect in a green country where wood and water were not
so precious as in the desert and where, Cash averred, the chance of
striking it rich was just as good; better, because they could kill game
and make their grubstake last longer.
Wherefore they waited in Gila Bend for three days, to strengthen the
weakened animals with rest and good hay and grain. Then they took
again to the trail, traveling as lightly as they could, with food for
themselves and grain for the stock to last them until they reached
Needles. From there with fresh supplies they pushed on up to Goldfield,
found that camp in the throes of labor disputes, and went on to Tonopah.
There they found work for themselves and the burros, packing winter
supplies to a mine lying back in the hills. They made money at it,
and during the winter they made more. With the opening of spring they
outfitted again and took the trail, their goal the high mountains south
of Honey Lake. They did not hurry. Wherever the land they traveled
through seemed to promise gold, they would stop and prospect. Many a pan
of likely looking dirt they washed beside some stream where the burros
stopped to drink and feed a little on the grassy banks.
So, late in June, they reached Reno; outfitted and went on again,
traveling to the north, to the green country for which they yearned,
though now they were fairly in it and would have stopped if any tempting
ledge or bar had come in their way. They prospected every gulch that
showed any mineral signs at all. It was a carefree kind of life, with
just enough of variety to hold Bud's interest to the adventuring. The
nomad in him responded easily to this leisurely pilgrimage. There was no
stampede anywhere to stir their blood with the thought of quick wealth.
There was hope enough, on the other hand, to keep them going. Cash had
prospected and trapped for more than fifteen years now, and he preached
the doctrine of freedom and the great outdoors.
Of what use was a house and lot--and taxes and trouble with the
plumbing? he would chuckle. A tent and blankets and a frying pan
and grub; two good legs and wild country to travel; a gold pan and a
pick--these things, to Cash, spelled independence and the joy of living.
The burros and the two horses were luxuries, he declared. When they once
got located on a good claim they would sell off everything but a couple
of burros--Sway and Ed, most likely. The others would bring enough for a
winter grubstake, and would prolong their freedom and their independence
just that much. That is, supposing they did not strike a good claim
before then. Cash had learned, he said, to hope high but keep an eye on
the grubstake.
Late in August they came upon a mountain village perched beside a swift
stream and walled in on three sided by pine-covered mountains. A branch
railroad linked the place more or less precariously with civilization,
and every day--unless there was a washout somewhere, or a snowslide,
or drifts too deep--a train passed over the road. One day it would go
up-stream, and the next day it would come back. And the houses stood
drawn up in a row alongside the track to watch for these passings.
Miners came in with burros or with horses, packed flour and bacon and
tea and coffee across their middles, got drunk, perhaps as a parting
ceremony, and went away into the hills. Cash watched them for a day or
so; saw the size of their grubstakes, asked few questions and listened
to a good deal of small-town gossip, and nodded his head contentedly.
There was gold in these hills. Not enough, perhaps, to start a stampede
with--but enough to keep wise old hermits burrowing after it.
So one day Bud sold the two horses and one of the saddles, and Cash
bought flour and bacon and beans and coffee, and added other things
quite as desirable but not so necessary. Then they too went away into
the hills.
Fifteen miles from Alpine, as a cannon would shoot; high up in the
hills, where a creek flowed down through a saucerlike basin under
beetling ledges fringed all around with forest, they came, after much
wandering, upon an old log cabin whose dirt roof still held in spite of
the snows that heaped upon it through many a winter. The ledge showed
the scars of old prospect holes, and in the sand of the creek they found
“colors” strong enough to make it seem worth while to stop here--for
awhile, at least.
They cleaned out the cabin and took possession of it, and the next time
they went to town Cash made cautious inquiries about the place. It was,
he learned, an old abandoned claim. Abandoned chiefly because the old
miner who had lived there died one day, and left behind him all the
marks of having died from starvation, mostly. A cursory examination of
his few belongings had revealed much want, but no gold save a little
coarse dust in a small bottle.
“About enough to fill a rifle ca'tridge,” detailed the teller of the
tale. “He'd pecked around that draw for two, three year mebby. Never
showed no gold much, for all the time he spent there. Trapped some in
winter--coyotes and bobcats and skunks, mostly. Kinda off in the upper
story, old Nelson was. I guess he just stayed there because he happened
to light there and didn't have gumption enough to git out. Hills is full
of old fellers like him. They live off to the'rselves, and peck around
and git a pocket now and then that keeps 'm in grub and tobacco. If you
want to use the cabin, I guess nobody's goin' to care. Nelson never had
any folks, that anybody knows of. Nobody ever bothered about takin' up
the claim after he cashed in, either. Didn't seem worth nothin' much.
Went back to the gov'ment.”
“Trapped, you say. Any game around there now?”
“Oh, shore! Game everywhere in these hills, from weasels up to bear and
mountain lion. If you want to trap, that's as good a place as any, I
guess.”
So Cash and Bud sold the burros and bought traps and more supplies, and
two window sashes and a crosscut saw and some wedges and a double-bitted
axe, and settled down in Nelson Flat to find what old Dame Fortune had
tucked away in this little side pocket and forgotten.