They crested the last sharp rise, and looked down upon the little cabin
huddling in the spruces--an island of humanity in the beautiful sea of
the wilderness.
It seemed to Jim as if the small house brightened in appearance at the
return of its soul; his heart in turn rose with a home feeling; his
belief in the treasure which lay where the new channel cut across the old
wash--that treasure which would make the world so different--came back to
him like a renewed love. His hands ached for a grip on pick and shovel.
His strong muscles twitched with eagerness to be at work again.
Suddenly a ponderous and gross sound, out of all proportion to the size
of its source, smashed the mountain silence into slivers. It was the
burro's greeting to his companions, and the echoes fluttered it from
cliff to cliff until it faded into the merest tint.
"Kerissmus! How many of dem is dere?" asked Ches, astonished at the
demonstration. At that instant the herd welcomed the returned one.
The canyon was full of brays; colliding, rising, falling and swelling in
a tumult of noise against which the dreadful shouting of the gods at the
fall of Troy would have seemed as the wail of a kitten.
"Say, I don't like dat!" said Ches. "What's loose?"
Jim had watched the growing astonishment of the boy's face with
suppressed emotion, but now he hugged himself and uproariously laughed
his laugh out.
"That, Ches," he replied, "is a matter of fifteen or twenty donkeys and
an echo--did you think it was the end of the world?"
"I t'ought it was gittin' on well past der middle, all right," retorted
Ches. "What 'ud yer expeck of a man dat never heerd der like before?"
"I knew what to expect. I never heard them either till I came out here. I
was digging a hole up the side of that hill yonder, and had begun to feel
that there was something behind me, and that it was almost time to go
home, when old Jack, who has the voice of his family, poured out his soul
about twenty rods away. I was half way home, Ches, before I got sand
enough to go back and investigate. But now listen, and you'll hear
something prettier than that."
He put his fingers to his lips and whistled a bugle call.
"I can't get 'em up,
I can't get 'em up,
I can't get 'em up in the morning,"
sounded Jim. And back came the pretty reveille in a fabric of music,
indescribably interwoven; sharp and staccato from the neighboring walls;
the lightest of whispers from the distance, turning and twisting upon
itself and starting afresh when all seemed still.
"Say, dat _is_ prutty!" said Ches enthusiastically. "Hit her again!"
"Young man, you can come up here whenever you feel like it in the future,
but as for now, I'm for home and grub."
"Dat ain't so bad, neither. Der animile's jumped me up an' down till I
cud hold more'n a man. Dis spook's hang-out business won't quit, will
it?"
"No, sir; that's a fixture. Hang on tight now, and I'll race you to the
cabin--one, two, three!" and away sprinted Jim down the hill trail, the
burro lumbering after.
"No fair! No fair!" yelled Ches. "Yer've got me skate doped! T'row us a
tow!"
Jim wheeled at the doorway and took in the excited, happy little figure
bumping on the burro's back. For once in his life he had the satisfaction
of an indisputable proof that he had done well. With a sudden access of
affection he caught the boy in his arms and stood him on the ground.
"Well, here's our home, Ches," he said.
Home! The street Arab filled his puny chest, took a long, devouring look
about him, and sought a definition of the word to make sound the lift of
pride and hope that rose within him.
"Yer mean nobuddy kin chase us out of dis?"
"Nobody."
"It's our'n!" the boy went on with curious vehemence. "Like dis here,"
snatching an old knife from his pocket and shaking it in his tight fist,
"ter t'row away, ter sell, er ter keep, and nobuddy got nuttin' ter say
about it?"
"Just that, laddybuck. That and nothing else."
"No more slinkin' an' snoopin' aroun' dodgin' der coppers; no more
stallin' fer der push; no more dirt of no kind--say, I can't git dat jus'
in a minute."
He stood grappling with the new idea. In the search an old one came to
the top. His face changed rapidly. The furtive, hunted look returned. In
a tone, the odd quiet of which contrasted with the former heat, he spoke
again. "Yer for _me_, now, ain't yer, Jim? If--if der Gun should happen
ter come here, yer wouldn't t'row me down at dis stage of der game?"
The big man answered him with an equal soberness. He thrust a hand before
the boy's eyes--a splendid hand, massive and corded at the base, running
out to long, shapely, intelligent fingers, and every line in it spoke of
power.
"Do you see that hand, Ches?"
"Yessir."
"If the 'Gun' shows his face where that hand can get a grip on him, it
will do the business for him in one squeeze, and if the hand can't reach,
there's a rifle inside that can. Now get that out of your mind once for
all."
"Well--" said the boy, "well--aw, I'll be damned, dat's all I kin say,
Jim," and rushed into the house.
The miner leaned back and laughed, and blew his nose; and laughed again
and blew his nose again; then he wiped the dust out of his eyes, swore a
few words himself, and followed the boy within.
The next day Jim started on his work in earnest. Before, he had sunk a
hole here or there in the broad smooth surface of the bar of gravel that
he felt certain hid his bonanza.
Now, he determined to begin at the creek bank and drift straight across
the bar. That meant six hundred feet of tunnel at the best, unless
fortune was much kinder than she had hinted at before--quite an
undertaking for one man, considering the timbering and all.
It must have been a miner who wrote, that hope springs eternal in the
human breast. Surely in no place other than the mines is the fact so
manifest. There was once a man seventy-three years old who was sinking
through a cap of cement two hundred feet thick. The stuff was just this
side of powderwork, barely to be loosened with a pick. The old man had to
climb down sixty feet of ladder, fill his bucket, climb up again and dump
it, and so on and so on and so on. Besides, he had to walk thirty miles
and back again with his load, whenever he ran out of provisions. It had
taken him a year to put his shaft down the sixty feet. There was one
hundred and forty more to go, each foot getting harder, the Lord only
knew what would be at the bottom when he got there; yet to sit in that
old man's cabin for an hour was to obtain a complete exposition of the
theory and practice of optimism. It is an unbelievable story and would be
senseless, were it not entirely true.
Beside that effort, Jim's task took on the tint of an avocation, but the
man who runs six hundred feet of tunnel single-handed earns whatever may
be at the end of it.
The tunnel was the one thing that Ches abhorred in his new surroundings.
Whether it was that it reminded him of the dingy holes of his city life,
or whether it was a natural antipathy, Ches was one of those who can
never enter a confined space without the sensation of smothering--at any
rate, neither argument nor coaxing could get him to put a foot within its
dark mouth.
An old miner would have shared his feelings in this instance, for Jim, so
thorough in some things, was a careless workman. Your old miner would
have shaken his head at the weak caps and recklessly driven lagging;
frames out of plumb and made of any stick that came to hand--more
especially as they were to support loose dirt of the most treacherous
sort.
Ches worked outside, dumping the car that Jim had made of four tree
sections for wheels, and sluice-box boards for sides. Jim, the ingenious,
had rigged up a pulley system, whereby Ches could run the car out and in
without interrupting the work on the face.
It was hard labor for Ches at first, but he gritted his teeth and stuck
it out manfully.
"Bime-by," he would say to himself, "I'll have er muscle on me like Jim,
an' den I'll yank dis cussed ol' car right out in der middle of der
crik," and he examined the small bunch on his arm critically a dozen
times every day.
Meanwhile, his hero and idol was outdoing the human in his exertions. The
effort he put forth would have killed an ordinary man. He fought the
stubborn earth as though it were an enemy. Stripped to the waist, bent
over in the low tunnel, hour after hour Jim plied the pick and shovel
with the regularity and power of a machine. There was at once something
fascinating and heroic in the rippling glide of the muscles over his
broad back, and in the supple swing that sent the pick to join the packed
dirt.
It all looked so easy. It was as if the dirt were very soft, and not the
striker very strong. Nevertheless, fourteen hours a day of this, varied
occasionally by cutting timbers and carrying them by hand to the
tunnel--some of them a weight enough for a horse, others not adequate,
"just as they came" being careless Jim's motto--told even on his engines.
They had a certain mark on the canyon side--a wild-cat's hole it was--and
when the sun threw the shadow of the western wall upon the mark, the
day's work was finished.
Ches used to watch this with attention. "Yer move along all right till
yer gits half way up, den yer jus' crawls, yer ol' beggar!" was his
standing remark on the progress of the shadow. Still, he always gave good
measurement.
Toward the last of the month Jim grew an interest in their clock.
"Where's the blame thing now, Ches?" would come hollowly out of the
tunnel.
"Three more cars away, Jim,--jus' tippin' the white rock."
Then the cheery shout of "All over!" and the worker stepping out into the
fresh air, soft and cool in the twilight, hooking the sweat from his
forehead, and wishing that supper would cook itself. Sometimes the
wild-cat looked down upon them from his eyrie.
"Ches," said weary Jim, "if that lad thinks at all, he must think we're
awful fools."
"He wouldn't be so tur'ble off his guess, neider," replied the equally
weary Ches.
After supper, however, the world seemed different. There was Jones's
Hill--(a man of large ideas, was Jones, to call that mass of rock a
hill)--shining red-hot in the last light against a topaz or turquoise
sky, and the gulch that ran up to it in a mystery of dark green gloom
offering up an evening prayer of indescribable odors--those appeals to a
life in former spheres which no other sense remembers; the ceaseless roar
of the wind in the pines, so steady that it formed a background for other
sounds almost as good as silence itself; the evening pipe, and the talk
of what had been done and what was to be done--all these made amends.
And then the sleeping--such sleeping! And waking up in the morning in the
exact attitude one went to sleep the night before! Sleep that washed out
all the former day's fatigue, and started them as eager as hounds for
that of the new day. That is, within limits, for, when a man overworks as
continually as Jim had done, no paradise sleep nor balsam air can turn
him right perpetually.
And for that reason the claim declared a holiday, consisting of a hunting
trip. It was a curious hunting trip. Not one "bang!" went the clean and
polished rifle. They stalked four deer, crawling on their bellies,
quivering with the chase, rounding behind rocks. Then when the game was
within range, up went the rifle, Jim squinted along the sights--then
dropped it.
"What's der matter?" whispered Ches. He had been waiting for a long time
to hear the gun go off.
"They seem to be having a pretty good time by themselves there, Ches."
"Yes--dat's so--but I've heard deer-meat was good." Ches was disappointed
at this manner of hunting.
"So it is," replied Jim, "probably nobody has that notion stronger than
the deer." He followed the four pretty animals below them with tense
eyes. He loved to hunt but he hated to kill.
"See here, boy," he said, sitting down and pulling off his boots, "I
think I can show you some fun--do you notice they're feeding up to that
nose of rock? Well I used to be rather quick on my feet once, and I think
if I can slip down behind there without their winding me, if one gets
close enough I can catch him with my hands--which is a trick I'd like
muchly to accomplish. Now you sit here and watch, and for your life,
don't make a move or sound! By Jiminy! if I could do that!" He trotted
light-footed down the slope out of sight.
The boy soon saw him reappear behind the sharp rock-wall that jutted out
into the valley, rubbing crushed pine-needles upon himself with the idea
of overpowering the human odor, although, whether effective in its
purpose or not, it was not necessary--a strong up-wind from deer to man
making it impossible that they could scent him.
They waited and they waited, a big man crouched like a tiger below, and a
highly excited small boy above, while the deer did every exasperating
thing that animals could do.
They started straight for the rock, grazing along, and then for no reason
in the world beat back on their tracks, or turned to right or left. They
even went so far as to lie down, chewing most contentedly.
One hour went by--two--when suddenly the buck rose and walked straight up
the canyon in a course that would take him within twenty feet of the
rock. Jim heard him snort and prepared for action, laying hold of a
corner of stone to get a spring from all-fours.
The deer's shadow floated black on the grass before him, and Jim
leaped--to the biggest surprise of his life, for instead of making the
least effort to escape, the buck charged, and that with such sudden fury
it was all the man could do to lay hold of him anywhere as they came to
dirt together.
The next ten seconds was delirium, each combatant doing something as
quick as he could without any definite aim. Jim received a painful rake
across the chest from the antlers, and a jab in the leg from the sharp
hoofs, while the deer was the worse for several bangs over the head and
an ear nearly pulled off, as they rolled over together.
It came over Jim with the force of a revelation that he had got into a
very different business from that which he had intended. Instead of the
"timid deer" whose capture was the difficulty, he found himself engaged
with a horned and hoofed demon, and the problem was how to get away.
Meanwhile, Ches had legged it down the hill-side at his best speed,
enthusiastically cheering what he supposed was a prearranged performance.
Jim had promised him fun, and that whirling heap below supplied plenty of
it.
"Hooray!" yelled Ches. "Hooray! Hold him dere, Jim, till I get down!"
Jim heard the shrill voice, as he succeeded, after a desperate effort, in
getting an arm around the deer's neck, so that he could do something in
the choking line, and he smiled grimly in the heat of battle. "All right,
Ches!" he gasped. "Don't--hurry!"
"Keep out of this!" he yelled a moment later as Ches burst out from the
bushes. "You'll get killed!"
But Ches was not to be denied. He danced around the pushing, tugging,
straining storm-center, and the moment opportunity offered, slipped in
and seized the buck by a hind leg.
If he had touched an electric battery, the effect could not have been
more instant. The deer fanned that muscular hind leg, with its boy
attachment, at the rate of seven hundred strokes to the minute. Poor
Ches' head was nearly snapped off his shoulders, and the breath was
literally jerked out of his body, but he hung on, with all the strength
that pulling the car had given him.
It was not much help, but it was a diversion. Jim gulped a lungful of
air, gathered his powers and came down with all his might. Slowly the
stubborn neck, bent--so slowly that Jim feared he would give out before
gaining the mastery. As it yielded, his leverage increased, and at last,
exerting every ounce of strength that was in him, he downed the foe and
held him there, his leg over the front legs whose armament he had felt
before, and was not desirous of feeling again.
But the deer gave up the struggle, and lay quiet, looking up with great
pleading eyes.
"Yes, you devil!" cried Jim, "you look meek enough now, but if you
weren't a handful of hard luck ten seconds ago I never ran across one.
You hurt, Ches?"
"I got a lovely t'ump on me smeller, but I'm in it yet--do I let go or
don't I?"
"Not on your life--wait a moment!" He worked his weight over on the
deer's body. "Now!" he said. "Quick! Jump loose!" Again the deer glanced
up reproachfully, as though to say, "How suspicious you are!"
The instant Ches jumped clear, so did Jim. They watched their late
antagonist, who sprang to his feet and went off with frisky leaps,
apparently as fresh as ever.
Then they looked at each other. Ches was rubbing his stomach with his
left hand, while he wiped the blood from his nose with the right. Jim's
coat and trousers were torn; he had a deep scratch across his chest, a
gouge in his leg, and he trembled from the exertion.
"Well--Ches!" he panted, "we've--had--a--nice--rest--haven't we?"
"Wouldn't it 'a' been tur'ble if yer hadn't caught him?" replied Ches.
And then they simply whooped.
A good incident is an opal among gems in a lonely life. You can turn it
over and over and always get new colors.
On the home trip, as Nimrod Jim stalked along with his follower trotting
beside, they rehearsed every detail of the unexpected encounter. Jim
crouched and leaped again, giving his sensations when the buck did
likewise. Then he waited while Ches ran down a side hill and threw
himself upon a sapling, which for the time was a deer's hind leg.
They were just of an age--any one would have said so, on seeing them
approach the cabin, arms flying, tongues wagging, bruised, tired and
happy.
"Jim," said a very sleepy little boy after supper, gorged like an
anaconda, "yer don't see t'ings like dat in N'york--not much yer don't. If
dat racket had come off in der Bowery, dere'd be head-lines--'dlines--on
der extries--more'n a mile--"
Jim picked him up and tucked him into his bunk. "More'n a mile long--g'
nigh'," sighed Ches.
Jim lit his pipe and went out for an evening smoke. It was some little
time the next morning before he could realize what he was doing out there
under the tree.
He had been in some ways a graver man of late. What he had undertaken as
an experiment, a generous impulse, had been turned into a lasting
responsibility.