THE BABES IN THE WOODS
Ever since David went forth and slew Goliath with his sling, youth has
set its puny lance to strike down giants; and history, making much of
the hotspurs who won, draws a veil over the striplings who were slain.
And yet all who know the stern conditions of life must recognize that
youth is a handicap, and if David had but donned the heavy armor of King
Saul he too would have gone to his death. But instead he stepped forth
untrammeled by its weight, with nothing but a stone and a sling, and
because the scoffing giant refused to raise his shield he was struck
down by the pebble of a child. But giant Judson Eells was in a
baby-killing mood when he invited Wunpost and Wilhelmina to his den; and
when they emerged, after signing articles of incorporation, he licked
his chops and smiled.
It developed at the meeting that the sole function of a stockholder is
to vote for the Directors of the Company; and, having elected Eells and
Lapham and John C. Calhoun Directors, the stockholders' meeting
adjourned. Reconvening immediately as a, Board of Directors, Judson
Eells was elected President, John C. Calhoun, Vice-President and Phillip
F. Lapham Secretary-treasurer--after which an assessment of ten cents a
share was levied upon all the stock. Exit John C. Calhoun and Wilhelmina
Campbell, stripped of their stock and all faith in mankind. For even if
by some miracle they should raise the necessary sum Judson Eells and
Phillip Lapham would immediately vote a second assessment, and so on,
_ad finitum_. Holding a majority of the stock, Eells could control
the Board of Directors, and through it the policies of the company; and
any assessments which he himself might pay would but be transferred from
one pocket to the other. It was as neat a job of baby-killing as Eells
had ever accomplished, and he slew them both with a smile.
They had conspired in their innocence to gain stock in the company and
to hawk it about the streets; but neither had thought to suggest the
customary Article: "The stock of said company shall be non-assessable."
The Articles of Incorporation had been drawn up by Phillip F. Lapham;
and yet, after all his hard experiences, Wunpost was so awed by the
legal procedure that he forgot all about the fine print. Not that it
made any difference, they would have trimmed him anyway, but it was
three times in the very same place! He cursed himself out loud for an
ignorant baboon and left Wilhelmina in tears.
She had come down with her mother, her father being busy, and they had
planned to take in the town; but after this final misfortune Wilhelmina
lost all interest in the busy marts of trade. What to her were clothes
and shoes when she had no money to buy them--and when overdressed women,
none too chaste in their demeanor, stared after her in boorish
amusement? Blackwater had become a great city, but it was not for
her--the empty honor of having the Willie Meena named after her was all
she had won from her mine. John C. Calhoun had been right when he warned
her, long before, that the mining game was more like a dog fight than it
was like a Sunday school picnic; and yet--well, some people made money
at it. Perhaps they were better at reading the fine print, and not so
precipitate about signing Articles of Incorporation, but as far as she
was concerned Wilhelmina made a vow never to trust a lawyer again.
She returned to the ranch, where the neglected garden soon showed signs
of her changing mood; but after the weeds had been chopped out and
routed she slipped back to her lookout on the hill. It was easier to
tear the weeds from a tangled garden than old memories from her lonely
heart; and she took up, against her will, the old watch for Wunpost, who
had departed from Blackwater in a fury. He had stood on the corner and,
oblivious of her presence, had poured out the vials of his wrath; he had
cursed Eells for a swindler, and Lapham for his dog and Lynch for his
yellow hound. He had challenged them all, either individually or
collectively, to come forth and meet him in battle; and then he had
offered to fight any man in Blackwater who would say a good word for any
of them. But Blackwater looked on in cynical amusement, for Eells was
the making of the town; and when he had given off the worst of his venom
Wunpost had tied up his roll and departed.
He had left as he had come, a single-blanket tourist, packing his
worldly possessions on his back; and when last seen by Wilhelmina he was
headed east, up the wash that came down from the Panamints. Where he was
going, when he would return, if he ever would return, all were mysteries
to the girl who waited on; and if she watched for him it was because
there was no one else whose coming would stir her heart. Far up the
canyon and over the divide there lived Hungry Bill and his family, but
Hungry was an Indian and when he dropped in it was always to get
something to eat. He had two sons and two daughters, whom he kept
enslaved, forbidding them to even think of marriage; and all his
thoughts were of money and things to eat, for Hungry Bill was an Indian
miser.
He came through often now with his burros packed with fruit from the
abandoned white-man's ranch that he had occupied; and even his wild-eyed
daughters had more variety than Billy, for they accompanied him to
Blackwater and Willie Meena. There they sold their grapes and peaches at
exorbitant prices and came back with coffee and flour, but neither would
say a word for fear of their old father, who watched them with
intolerant eyes. They were evil, snaky eyes, for it was said that in his
day he had waylaid many a venturesome prospector, and while they gleamed
ingratiatingly when he was presented with food, at no time did they show
good will. He was still a renegade at heart, shunned and avoided by his
own kinsmen, the Shoshones who camped around Wild Rose; but it was from
him, from this old tyrant that she despised so cordially, that
Wilhelmina received her first news of Wunpost.
Hungry Bill came up grinning, on his way down from his ranch, and fixed
her with his glittering black eyes.
"You savvy Wunpo?" he asked, "hi-ko man--busca gol'? Him sendum piece of
lock!"
He produced a piece of rock from a knot in his shirt-tail and handed it
over to her slowly. It was a small chunk of polished quartz, half green,
half turquoise blue; and in the center, like a jewel, a crystal of
yellow gold gleamed out from its matrix of blue. Wilhelmina gazed at it
blankly, then flushed and turned away as she felt Hungry Bill's eyes
upon her. He was a disreputable old wretch, who imputed to others the
base motives which governed his own acts; and when she read his black
heart Wilhelmina straightened up and gave him back the stone.
"No, you keepum!" protested Hungry. "Hi-ko ketchum plenty mo'."
But Wilhelmina shook her head.
"No!" she said, "you give that to my mother. Are those your girls down
there? Well, why don't you let them come up to the house? You no good--I
don't like bad Indians!"
She turned away from him, still frowning angrily, and strode on down to
the creek; but the daughters of Hungry Bill, in their groveling way,
seemed to share the low ideals of their father. They were tall and
sturdy girls, clad in breezy calico dresses and with their hair down
over their eyes; and as they gazed out from beneath their bangs a guilty
smile contorted their lips, a smile that made Wilhelmina writhe.
"What's the matter with you?" she snapped, and as the scared look came
back she turned on her heel and left them. What could one expect, of
course, from Hungry Bill's daughters after they had been guarded like
the slave-girls in a harem; but the joy of hearing from Wunpost was
quite lost in the fierce anger which the conduct of his messengers
evoked. He was up there, somewhere, and he had made another strike--the
most beautiful blue quartz in the world--but these renegade Shoshones
with their understanding smiles had quite killed the pleasure of it for
her. She returned to the house where Hungry Bill, in the kitchen, was
wolfing down a great pan of beans; but the sight of the old glutton with
his mouth down to the plate quite sickened her and drove her away.
Wunpost was up in the hills, and he had made a strike, but with that she
must remain content until he either came down himself or chose a more
highminded messenger.
Hungry Bill went on to Blackwater and came back with a load of supplies,
which he claimed he was taking to "Wunpo"; and, after he had passed up
the canyon, Wilhelmina strolled along behind him. At the mouth of
Corkscrew Gorge there was a great pool of water, overshadowed by a rank
growth of willows through whose tops the wild grapevines ran riot. Here
it had been her custom, during the heat of the day, to paddle along the
shallows or sit and enjoy the cool air. There was always a breeze at the
mouth of Corkscrew Gorge, and when it drew down, as it did on this day,
it carried the odors of dank caverns. In the dark and gloomy depths of
this gash through the hills the rocks were always damp and cold; and
beneath the great waterfalls, where the cloudbursts had scooped out
pot-holes, there was a delicious mist and spray. She dawdled by the
willows, then splashed on up the slippery trail until, above the last
echoing waterfall, she stepped out into the world beyond.
The great canyon spread out again, once she had passed the waterworn
Gorge, and peak after peak rose up to right and left where yawning side
canyons led in. But all were set on edge and reared up to dizzying
heights; and along their scarred flanks there lay huge slides of shaley
rock, ready to slip at the touch of a hand. Vivid stripes of red and
green, alternating with layers of blue and white, painted the sides of
the striated ridges; and odd seams here and there showed dull yellows
and chocolate browns like the edge of a crumbled layer-cake. Up the
canyon the walls shut in again, and then they opened out, and so on for
nine miles until Old Panamint was reached and the open valley sloped up
to the summit.
Many a time in the old days when they had lived in Panamint had
Wilhelmina scaled those far heights; the huge white wall of granite
dotted with ball-like pinons and junipers, which fenced them from Death
Valley beyond. It opened up like a gulf, once the summit was reached,
and below the jagged precipices stretched long ridges and fan-like
washes which lost themselves at last in the Sink. For a hundred miles to
the north and the south it lay, a writhing ribbon of white, pinching
down to narrow strips, then broadening out in gleaming marshes; and on
both sides the mountains rose up black and forbidding, a bulwark against
the sky. Wilhelmina had never entered it, she had been content to look
down; and then she crept back to beautiful sheltered Panamint where
father had his mine.
It was up on the ridge, where the white granite of the summit came into
contact with the burnt limestone and schist; and, of all the rich mines,
the Homestake was the best, until the cloudburst came along and spoiled
all of them. Wilhelmina still remembered how the great flood had passed
the town, moving boulders as if they were pebbles; but not until it
reached the place where she stood had it done irretrievable damage. The
roadbed was washed out, but the streambed remained, and the banks from
which to fill in more dirt; but when the flood struck the Gorge it
backed up into a lake, for the narrow defile was choked. Trees and rocks
and rumbling boulders had piled up against its entrance, holding the
waters back like a dam; and when they broke through they sluiced
everything before them, gouging the canyon down to the bedrock. Now
twelve years had passed by and only a hazardous trail threaded the Gorge
which had once been a highway.
Wilhelmina gazed up the valley and sighed again, for since that terrific
cloudburst she had been stranded in Jail Canyon like a piece of
driftwood tossed up by the flood. Nothing happened to her, any more than
to the pinon logs which the waters had wedged high above the stream, and
as she returned home down the Gorge she almost wished for another flood,
to float them and herself away. No one came by there any more, the trail
was so poor, and yet her father still clung to the mine; but a flood
would either fill up the Gorge with debris or make even him give up
hope. She sank down by the cool pool and put her feet in the water,
dabbling them about like a wilful child; but at a shout from below she
rose up a grown woman, for she knew it was Dusty Rhodes.
He came on up the creekbed with his burros on the trot, hurling clubs at
the laggards as he ran; and when they stopped short at the sight of
Wilhelmina he almost rushed them over her. But a burro is a creature of
lively imagination, to whom the unknown is always terrible; and at a
fresh outburst from Dusty the whole outfit took to the brush, leaving
him face to face with his erstwhile partner.
"Oh, hello, hello!" he called out gruffly. "Say, did Hungry Bill go
through here? He was jest down to Blackwater, buying some grub at the
store, and he paid for it with rock that was _half gold_! So git
out of the road, my little girl--I'm going up to prospect them hills!"
"Don't you call me your little girl!" called back Billy angrily. "And
Hungry Bill hasn't got any mine!"
"Oh, he ain't, hey?" mocked Dusty, leaving his burros to browse while he
strode triumphantly up to her. "Then jest look at _that_, my--my
fine young lady! I got it from the store-keeper myself!"
He handed her a piece of green and blue quartz, but she only glanced at
it languidly. The memory of his perfidy on a previous occasion made her
long to puncture his pride, and she passed the gold ore back to him.
"I've seen that before," she said with a sniff, "so you can stop driving
those burros so hard. It came from Wunpost's mine."
"Wunpost!" yelled Dusty Rhodes, his eyes getting big; and then he spat
out an oath. "Who told ye?" he demanded, sticking his face into hers,
and she stepped away disdainfully.
"Hungry Bill," she said, and watched him writhe as the bitter truth went
home. "You think you're so smart," she taunted at last, "why don't you
go out and find one for yourself? I suppose you want to rush in and
claim a half interest in his strike and then sell out to old Eells. I
hope he kills you, if you try to do it--_I_ would, if I were him.
What'd you do with that five thousand dollars?"
"Eh--eh--that's none of your business," bleated Dusty Rhodes, whose trip
to Los Angeles had proved disastrous. "And if Wunpost gave Hungry that
sack of ore he stole it from some other feller's mine. I knowed all
along he'd locate that Black P'int if I ever let him stop--I've had my
eye on it for years--and that's why I hurried by. I discovered it
myself, only I never told nobody--he must have heard me talking in my
sleep!"
"Yes, or when you were drunk!" suggested Wilhelmina maliciously. "I hear
you got robbed in Los Angeles. And anyhow I'm glad, because you stole
that five thousand dollars, and no good ever came from stolen property."
"Oh, it didn't, hey?" sneered Dusty, who was recovering his poise,
"well, I'll bet ye _this_ rock was stolen! And if that's the case,
where does your young man git off, that you think the world and all of?
But you've got to show me that he ever _saw_ this rock--I believe
old Hungry was lying to you!"
"Well, don't let me keep you!" cried Billy, bowing mockingly. "Go on
over and ask him yourself--but I'll bet you don't _dare_ to meet
Wunpost!"
"How come Hungry to tell you?" burst out Dusty Rhodes at last, and
Wilhelmina smiled mysteriously.
"That's none of your business, my busy little man," she mimicked in
patronizing tones, "but I've got a piece of that rock right up at the
house. You go back there and mother will show it to you."
"I'm going on!" answered Dusty with instant decision; "can't stop to
make no visit today. They's a big rush coming--every burro-man in
Blackwater--and some of them are legging it afoot. But that thieving son
of a goat, _he_ never found no mine! I know it--it can't be
possible!"