ON THE BORDER LINE.
The long train of gray-coated coaches, filmed with the arid dust of
the desert, rolled into Yuma, the little town at the junction of the
Gila and Colorado River, popularly supposed to be the hottest place in
America. The boys, glad that their long journey had come to an end,
felt that it was living up to its reputation as they alighted and
stood in the blistering heat while their personal baggage was thrown
off.
The professor, however, was quite oblivious to the scorching rays of
the afternoon sun. He darted about seeking specimens, and he had soon
gathered up quite a collection of small rocks. In the meantime Zeb
Cummings, who was quite in his element, had helped the boys get their
things together and see them loaded on a mule wagon which rattled them
off to a small hotel, for they did not want to make themselves any
more conspicuous than was necessary.
The boys wore gray flannel shirts, khaki trousers, stout high boots
and broad-brimmed hats, and had fastened red handkerchiefs round their
throats to keep off the sun from the back of their necks. Zeb had a
similar outfit.
The professor, however, still wore his baggy black garments, his only
concession to the heat being a big green umbrella, which looked like a
gigantic verdant mushroom. As they drove off in a rickety sort of bus,
having with difficulty persuaded the professor to leave off specimen
hunting for a while, the boys did not notice that from the opposite
side of the train three young men had alighted who, from a point of
vantage behind a water tower, watched their movements.
The trio were Bill Masterson and his two cronies, Sam Higgins and Eph
Compton.
"Well, here we are, Eph," said Bill, as they watched the boys drive
off.
"Yes, and here they are, too," grunted Eph.
"I'm glad we've got here at last, though. Keeping out of sight on
that train was beginning to get on my nerves."
"Same here," said Sam Higgins, stretching himself. "But I guess we
succeeded in keeping ourselves hidden all right."
"Sure," rejoined Masterson. "They haven't a notion we are here."
In the meantime the lads found accommodations till the next day at the
small hotel on a back street where Zeb had insisted on their coming so
as to escape observation. Yuma is full of prospectors and miners, and
every stranger in town is suspected of having some sort of a scheme,
he explained, and as a consequence is closely watched.
Zeb's first care, therefore, was to circulate a story that the
professor, a noted savant and geologist, was going into the desert
with his party to collect specimens. This appeared to satisfy the
landlord, who was at first inclined to be curious.
The professor had hardly been shown his room before he was out again
with his hammer and satchel and his attention was almost at once
attracted by a big stone that held up one corner of the barn at the
back of the hotel. The boys knew nothing of what he was doing till
they heard a loud, angry voice crying:
"Hey, you in ther preacher's suit! Quit tryin' ter pull thet thar barn
down, will yer?"
"But, my dear sir," came the professor's voice, in mild expostulation,
"are you aware that you have built your barn on the top of a splendid
specimen of primordial rock?"
"Don't know nuthin' about a prime order of rock," came back the other
voice.
The boys looked out of the window. They saw the landlord of the hotel,
a surly-looking fellow, with a big black mustache and tanned cheeks,
striding across the yard to the professor, who had blissfully resumed
his chipping.
The landlord reached out one brawny hand to grab his guest, when
something happened that made him temporarily cease hostilities. A big
chunk of rock suddenly flaked off under the professor's assault. It
flew in the air and the next instant a yell of pain apprised them that
the landlord had got it right in the eye.
The professor looked round as the man emitted a bellow of rage.
"Bless me, where did that bit of rock go? Ah, there it is! Right at
your feet, sir," and he darted forward with a smile of satisfaction
and, picking up the chunk of rock that had struck the indignant
landlord, placed it in his satchel.
"Thank you very much for stopping it, sir," he said, with a bow, and
then, before the thunderstruck landlord could say anything, the
scientist strolled off under his umbrella in search of more specimens.
The boys fairly choked with laughter.
But the landlord was too dumfounded even to speak for a minute. His
face grew as purple as a plum. He appeared to be about to burst.
"He's locoed," he burst forth at last, "locoed as a horn toad, by the
'tarnal hills."
Then, holding a hand to his eye, he reëntered the hotel and could be
heard shouting for hot water to bathe his injury.
Zeb, who had been out looking for a trustworthy man to take their
effects out to a spot along the river where they could put the
Wondership together without exciting undue curiosity, returned shortly
before supper with news that he had been successful in his search, an
old, wrinkled prospector named Pete McGee, who had learned the secret
of silence during the long years he had spent on the desert.
After the evening meal old McGee put in an appearance and a bargain
was struck. But if he was, as Zeb put it, "close-mouthed" on some
subjects, he was not on others.
"So yer are a'goin' out inter the desert, hey?" he asked the boys.
"That's our intention," said Dick.
The old man shook his head.
"The desert's a tough place," he said. "A mighty tough place. Reckon
it's likely yer are er goin' prospectin', maybe?"
The boys returned an evasive answer. But old McGee rambled on with the
crisscross wrinkles forming and fading round his washed-out blue eyes.
"Wa'al, I had my share on it, ain't I, Zeb?" said the old man to Zeb,
who had just strolled up, smoking a short, black pipe. The professor,
after adjusting his difficulties with the landlord, was sorting and
labeling specimens in his room.
"Reckon you have, Pete," responded the yellow-bearded miner. "You
didn't never find that thar lost Peg-leg Smith mine, did yer?"
"No; but I will some day," declared the old man, a fanatic gleam
shining in his faded optics. "I'll find it some day, Zeb. I never got
to it, but I come mighty close--yes, sir, ole Pete he come mighty
close."
"Tell the boys about Peg-leg Smith's lost mine," suggested Zeb.
"Give me the fillin's, then, an' I will," said old Pete, holding out
a blackened and empty corncob, "though I'm surprised they ain't never
heard on it. Thought everybody had heard of Peg-leg's mine."
"Wa'al, you see they come frum ther East," explained Zeb
apologetically.
"Ah, that accounts fer it," said old Pete indulgently. "You couldn't
'spec Easterners ter know nuthin' 'bout it. 'Wa'al, young sirs,
somewheres out on the desert ter the east uv here thar is three buttes
a stickin' up, and right thar is Peg-leg Smith's lost mine whar they
say the very sands is uv gold.
"Who was Peg-leg? Wa'al, that's in a way not very well known. Anyhow,
his name was Smith, and he was shy an off leg, and so he gets his
name. Back in 1836 Peg-leg he blows inter Yuma with a party of
trappers that hed worked down ther Colorado.
"They decides to quit trapping and go ter gold huntin', and makes
their way up the Gila River and then cuts off inter ther desert. Frum
Yuma they goes southeast and kep' on fer four days across the desert.
At ther end of the fourth day they 'lows that ther water ain' a-goin'
ter hold out a turrible lot longer, and they decides to look fer a
water-hole in a canyon at ther end uv which stands three lone buttes
sticking up, like sentinels against ther sky.
"Wa'al, they hunts ther canyon through but nary a drop of water. In
time they reaches ther buttes. They climbs to ther top ter see what
might lay beyond, but they see nuthin' but ther same God-forgotten
country.
"But Peg-leg, who fer all he was minus a limb, could travel with any
of 'em, he finds at the top of the southernmost butte a lot of chunks
of black rock lying round promiscous, an' some of them has specks an'
chunks of yaller as bright as Zeb's beard on 'em. Peg-leg he opines
ther yaller is nuthin' but copper, or maybe fool's gold.
"That night they camps, feelin' considerable blue, fer ther's mighty
little water left an' they've come too far ter go back. But in ther
distance thar's a big mountain and they make up their minds they'll
find water thar or bust and wither on the desert.
"Ther next evening, more dead than alive, they reaches the mountain
and finds a little spring. It was ther finest thing they'd seen fer a
long time, and in honor of Peg-leg, who suggested going to ther
mountain, they calls it Smith Mountain, and that's its name to this
day. In time they worked round to San Bernardino and then Smith he
hunts up a mineral sharp who tells him that what he had found was
gold.
"Wa'al, Smith was a curious feller, frum all accounts, and it was not
till '49 when ther big gold rush came that he thought much more about
those three buttes with the gold lying round loose as dirt on 'em.
Then he got ther gold fever. He went to 'Frisco and gets up an
expedition to find them three buttes.
"They got down inter ther desert country all right and locates Smith
Mountain. But the dern Indians they had with 'em as guides cleaned
out the camp one fine night, and they had a hard time getting back to
civilization alive. Well, that's where Peg-leg Smith goes out of the
story."
"Wasn't he ever heard of again?" asked Jack.
"No, siree, not hide nor hair on him. Nobody never knows what became
of him arter they got back to San Bernardino. Some says that he went
back alone lookin' fer the three buttes and was lost in the desert and
that his bones is out thar some'eres to-day, an' others says that he
got so plum disgusted he went back home to St. Louis. But nobody
rightly knows.
"The next heard of ther three buttes was many years later when an
Indian, who worked on Governor Downey's ranch, not far from Smith
Mountain, developed a habit of goin' away fer a few days and then
comin' back with bits of black rock chock full of gold which he traded
fer firewater and such. He didn't seem ter care if he got full value
or not.
"'Plenty more where those came from,' he'd say.
"Wa'al, they set a watch on him and found that he always headed off
inter ther desert by way of Smith Mountain, which would be the nat'ul
way of gettin' ter ther three buttes that Peg-leg had described.
"Guv'ner Downey he come to hear about this in course of time, and he
come down frum Sacramento to question ther Injun. But in ther meantime
ther pesky coyote had gone and got himself killed in a quarrel over
cards and so there they was up agains' a blank wall ag'in."
The old prospector paused to fill his pipe.