BOB TRIES STRATEGY.
"Well, what did you hear this time?" asked Bob, who lay on his blanket
with his hands under his head and a pipe in his mouth. "Everybody kept
still about the haunted mine, I suppose?"
"No, sir; I heard about it to-night for the first time," answered
Claus. "Banta is going up there to-morrow."
"Then we will know something about it when he comes back," remarked
Bob. "I hope the boys have got the better of those ghosts in some way,
and that they are working their mine. Go on, and tell us what you have
heard."
Claus did not have much to tell, for the miners had cut the
conversation short; but what little he did say created great
excitement between those who heard it now for the first time. The boys
had got the better of those unearthly spirits in some way, for if the
ghosts had driven them out and not allowed them to work their mine,
the miners would have found it out long before this time.
"I don't see why Banta put it off for two weeks," said Jake; "I reckon
he was afraid of them spirits."
The next day was one which Claus often remembered. There was much
excitement in the camp, although it did not show itself. There was
none of that singing and whistling going on, but every man worked in
silence. Banta and his partner had got off at daylight, and ten hours
must pass away before they could look for their return; but evening
came on apace, the camp-fire was lighted, and the miners gathered
around it and smoked their pipes without making any comments on the
long delay of Mr. Banta and the man who had gone with him. There was
one thing that troubled them, although no one spoke of it--the mule
which had carried their pack-saddle came home alone, and was now
feeding in company with the old bell-mare. That looked suspicious, but
the men said nothing. For an hour they sat around the fire, and then
one of them broke the stillness. He was an old, gray-headed man,
experienced in mining, and of course all listened to what he had to
say. He spoke in a low tone, as if there had been a patient there and
he was afraid to arouse him.
"Ten miles in ten hours," said he, knocking the ashes from his pipe.
"Boys, something's got the better of those two men. I remember that
several years ago I was waiting for a partner of mine who had gone
away to prospect a mine----"
"What was that?" exclaimed a miner, jumping to his feet.
"I heard something, but I don't know what it was," said another.
It was done quicker than we could tell it. In less than a second two
hundred men sprang to their feet, and two hundred hands slipped behind
them and laid hold of as many revolvers. Of all those men, there was
not one who would have hesitated to fight Indians with the fear of
death before their eyes, but there was not a single instance of a
miner who did not change color at the sound of a noise which seemed
to come upon them from no one could have told where.
"Which way did the noise come from?" asked a miner.
"What did it sound like?" queried another.
"There it is!" said the miner who had at first detected it--"it sounds
like a horse's hoofs on the rocks. There! Don't you hear it?"
And so it proved. The noise was heard plainly enough by this time, and
in a few moments more two men came out of the willows and rode into
the circle of light that was thrown out by the camp-fire. They were
Banta and his partner; and one look at their faces was enough--they
were fairly radiant with joy.
"Halloo! boys," cried Banta. "I declare, you act as though you had
lost your best friend; and some of you have revolvers drawn on us,
too!"
"Say, pard," said one of the miners, shoving his revolver back where
it belonged and extending a hand to each of the newcomers, "where
have you been so long? Your pack-mule has been home all the afternoon,
and has kept the camp in an uproar with her constant braying. She
acted as though she wanted to see your horses. Did you see the boys?"
"Yes, sir, we saw the boys," answered Banta. He did not seem in any
particular hurry to relieve the suspense of his friends, which was now
worked up to the highest degree, but dismounted from his horse very
deliberately and proceeded to turn him loose.
"Well, why don't you go on with it?" asked another miner. "Were the
boys all right?"
"The boys were all right and tight, and digging away as hard as they
could."
"Did they--did they see the ghosts?"
"Of course they did; and the ghosts are now lying up there with their
skins off."
"Were they animals?"
"You are right again. Now, hold on till I light my pipe and I'll tell
you all about it. Tony, you ought to have gone up there; you would be
ten thousand dollars better off than you are this minute."
Tony was a man who was noted far and near for his success in killing
the lions which were so abundant in the mountains. He would rather
hunt them than dig for gold, because he was almost sure to get the
animal he went after. He was filling his pipe when Banta was speaking,
but he dropped it and let it lay on the ground where it had fallen.
"It is the truth I am telling you," declared Banta. "If you don't
believe it, you can go up there to that haunted mine and find out all
about it. The boys killed them with nothing but revolvers."
Banta had his pipe lit by this time, and the miners crowded around
him, all eager for his story. Bob and Jake were there, and no one
seemed to pay the least attention to them; but they were impatient to
learn all the particulars of the case. There was one question they
wanted answered immediately, and that was, Did the boys really have a
bagful of dust, or was Banta merely joking about that? Fortunately
Tony recovered his wits and his pipe at the same time and asked the
question for them.
"Did the boys get ten thousand dollars in two weeks?" he asked.
"Well, they brought a bag out for us to examine, and they thought it
was nothing but iron pyrites," said Banta; and then he went on smoking
his pipe.
"We took one look at the bag," said his partner, "and we took a big
load off the boys' minds when we told them it was gold, and nothing
else. Yes, sir--they have it fair and square."
"The boys are going ahead as though there had never been any ghosts
there," said Banta; and then he went on to tell the miners everything
that had happened during their trip to the haunted mine; and when he
got started, he followed Julian's narrative, and paid no attention to
Jack's. It was certain that the story did not lose anything by passing
through his hands.
"Jack pulled off his shirt," said he, in conclusion, "and he has some
wounds on his back that will go with him through life."
"And is the gold as thick as they say it is--so thick that one can
pick it up with his hands?"
"It is not quite as thick as that," replied Banta, with a laugh. "But
every time one washes out a cradleful he finds anywhere from a
teaspoonful to three or four which he wants to put in his bag. I tell
you, the boys have been lucky."
"I am going up there the first thing in the morning," said a miner.
"Here I have been slaving and toiling for color for six months, and I
can hardly get enough to pay for my provisions, but I'll bet it won't
be that way, now, much longer."
"Wait until I tell you something," answered Banta. "Neely, you can go
up there, if you are set on it; there's no law here that will make you
stay away. There are plenty of places where you can sink a shaft
without troubling the boys any, but whether or not it will pay you is
another question. The boys will be down here themselves in less than
two weeks' time."
"How do you account for that?"
"Their vein is giving out. It will end in a deep ravine that is up
there, and there their color ends."
"Why don't they go back farther and start another?" asked the miner.
"It won't pay. The man who started that shaft upon which they are now
at work was a tenderfoot, sure enough. There is not the first sign of
color about the dirt anywhere. He thought it was a pretty place and so
went to work, and the consequence is, it has panned out sixty thousand
dollars. But go ahead if you want to, Neely."
Neely did not know whether or not he wanted to go ahead with such a
warning in his ears. Banta was an experienced prospector, and he could
almost tell by looking at the ground if there was any gold anywhere
about there. A good many who had been on the point of starting for the
haunted mine with the first peep of day shook their heads, and
concluded they would rather stay where they were than go off to a new
country. There were three, who did not say anything, whose minds were
already made up as to what they would do. They waited until the
miners were ready to go to their blankets, and then Bob attracted the
attention of those nearest him by saying,
"What Banta says throws a damper on me. The haunted mine is going to
play out in a day or two, this place here is not worth shucks, and we
are going off somewhere at break of day to see if we can't do better
than we are doing here."
"Where are you going?" asked one.
"I don't know, and in fact I don't care much. I'll go to the first
good place I hear of, I don't care if it is on the other side of the
Rocky Mountains. I came out here expecting to get rich in a few days,
and I am poorer now than I was ten years ago. These mountains around
here have not any gold in them for me."
"And I say it is good riddance," whispered the miner to some who stood
near him. "If you had acted as you did last year, you would have been
sent out before this time."
Having paved the way for the departure of himself and companions, Bob
joined them and led the way into his own cabin. They seated
themselves close together, for they did not want to talk loud enough
to be heard by anyone who was passing their camp.
"Well, they have it!" exclaimed Claus, who was so excited that he
could not sit still.
"And it is gold, too," declared Jake. "Banta says so, and that is
enough."
"In the morning, after we get breakfast," said Bob, "we'll hitch up
and take the back trail toward Denver. We will go away from the
haunted mine, and that will give color to what I told them a while
ago."
"What if you should chance to miss your way?" asked Claus.
"You can't lose me in these mountains; I have prospected all over
them, and I have seen where the haunted mine is located a hundred
times. What a pity it was that I did not stay there. Sixty thousand
dollars! Jake, if we had that sum of money we would be rich."
Jake did not say anything--that is, anything that would do to put on
paper. He stretched himself out on his blanket and swore softly to
himself, so that nobody but his companions could hear him.
"That will be three thousand three hundred dollars apiece," said
Claus, who did not like the way that Bob and Jake left him out
entirely. "Remember, I am to have a third of it."
"Of course; and it will be more than that. The boys will have some
time to do more digging, and maybe they'll have another bagful. I
understood you to say that the boys were pretty plucky."
"You may safely say that," replied Claus. "The way they stood up
against those lions, when they did not know what was onto them, is
abundant proof of that. You will have to go easy when you tackle them,
or some of you will get more than you want."
The three continued to talk in this way until they grew tired and fell
asleep--that is, all except Claus, who rolled and twisted on his
blanket for a good while before he passed into the land of Nod. But he
was out before daybreak and busy with breakfast, while the others
brought up the animals and packed them for their journey. There was
only one man who came near them, and that was Banta, who wanted to
make sure they were not going toward the haunted mine.
"Well, boys, are you going to leave us?" he inquired. "Where are you
going?"
"Not giving you a short answer, we don't care much _where_ we go,"
replied Bob. "There is nothing here for us, and we will go elsewhere.
We are going to take the back track."
"Are you not deciding on this matter suddenly?"
"We determined on it yesterday. We decided to go up to the haunted
mine if you came back with a favorable report of the condition of
things, but you say the lead is played out, and of course that knocks
us. Wherever we go, we can't find a much worse place than this."
"Well, boys, I wish you luck, and we'll all go away from here before a
great while."
"Why are you so anxious to find out about where we are going?" asked
Bob.
"Because I wanted to remind you to keep away from that mine up the
gully," answered Banta, looking hard at Bob while he spoke. "The boys
have that mine all to themselves, and we are going to stand by them."
"We have no intention of going near that haunted mine," asserted Bob,
rather sullenly. "If those boys have gold, let them keep it."
"All right! Then I have nothing further to say to you."
So saying, Banta turned on his heel and walked away. There was nothing
insulting in what he said, but Bob and his companions knew that he was
in earnest about it. They all kept watch of him as long as he remained
in sight, and then looked at each other with a broad grin on their
faces.
"I guess Banta didn't make anything by trying to pump me," said Bob.
"When we get a mile or two down the gully, we'll save what little
provisions we want, push our horses over the bluff----"
"What do we want to do that for?" exclaimed Claus, in great amazement.
"Can't we turn them loose?"
"Yes, and have them come back here and join the old bell-mare," said
Jake, in disgust. "We have to be in a hurry about what we do, for we
must get a long start of the men here. If our nags appeared among the
other horses here, the miners would know we had been fooling them and
would start for the haunted mine at once."
"Couldn't we tie them up?" asked Claus; "or, we could shoot them. That
would be an easier way than pushing them over the bluff."
"But there's the report our pistols would make," replied Bob, turning
fiercely upon Claus. "The easiest way is the best. Now, if we have
everything we want, let us dig out from here."
The men in the camp saw them when they mounted their horses and
started down the gully toward Denver, but there was not one who
shouted a farewell after them. When they disappeared from view, Banta
drew a long breath of relief.
"It is just as well that they took themselves off before we had a
chance to tell them that their room was better than their company. I
do not like the way they have been acting since they have been here."