"Money was so scarce in that country that the babies had to cut their
teeth on certified checks."
--_Bluebeard for Happiness._
"The cauldrified and chittering truth."
--THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD.
"As I was a-tellin' you, when I got switched off," said Adam, in the
starlit road, "I found gold dust in 'Pache Canyon nigh onto a year ago.
Not much--just a color--but it set me to thinkin'."
"How queer!" said Charlie.
"Yes, ain't it? You see, a long time ago, when the 'Paches were thick
about here, they used to bring in gold to sell--coarse gold, big as
rice, nearly. Never would tell where they got it; but when they wanted
anything right bad they was right there with the stuff; coarse gold.
All sorts of men tried all sorts of ways to find out where it came
from. No go."
"Indians are mighty curious about gold," said Charlie. "Over in the
Fort Stanton country, the Mescaleros used to bring in gold that same
way--only it was fine gold, there. Along about 1880, Llewellyn, he was
the agent; and Steve Utter, chief of police; and Dave Easton, he was
chief clerk; and Dave Pelman and Dave Sutherland--three Daves--and old
Pat Coghlan--them six, they yammered away at one old buck till at last
he agreed to show them. He was to get a four-horse team, harness and
wagon, and his pick of stuff from the commissary to load up the wagon
with. They was to go by night, and no other Indian was ever to know
who told 'em, before or after--though how he proposed to account
for that wagonload of plunder I don't know. I'll say he was a
short-sighted Injun, anyway.
"Well, they started from the agency soon after midnight. They had to
go downstream about a quarter, round a fishhook bend, on account of a
mess of wire fence; and then they turned up through a _cienaga_ on a
corduroy road, sort of a lane cut straight through the swamp, with the
_tules_--cat-tail flags, you know--eight or ten feet high on each
side. They was going single file, mighty quiet, Mister Mescalero-man
in the lead. They heard just a little faint stir in the _tules_, and
a sound like bees humming. Mister Redskin he keels over, shot full of
arrows. Not one leaf moving in the _tules_; all mighty still; they
could hear the Injun pumping up blood, glug--glug--glug! The white men
went back home pretty punctual. Come daylight they go back, police and
everything. There lays their guide with nine arrows through his midst.
And that was the end of him.
"But that wasn't the end of the gobbling gold. Fifteen years after,
Pat Coghlan and Dave Sutherland--the others having passed on or away,
up, down, across or between--they throwed in with a lad called Durbin
or something, and between them they honey-swoggled an old Mescalero
named Falling Pine, and led him astray. It took nigh two months, but
they made a fetch of it. Old Falling Pine, he allowed to lead 'em to
the gold.
"Now as the years passed slowly by, Lorena, the Mescaleros had got
quite some civilized; this old rooster, he held out for two thousand
plunks, half in his grimy clutch, half on delivery. He got it. And
they left Tularosa, eighteen miles below the agency, and ten miles
off the reservation, about nine o'clock of a fine Saturday night.
"Well, sir, four miles above Tularosa the wagon road drops off the
mesa down to a little swale between a sandstone cliff and Tularosa
Creek. They turned a corner, and there was nine big bucks, wrapped up
in blankets, heads and all! There wasn't no arrows, and there wasn't
nothing said. Not a word. Those nine bucks moved up beside Falling
Pine, real slow, one at a time. Each one leaned close, pulled up a
flap of the blanket, and looked old Falling Pine in the eye, nose to
nose. Then he wrapped his blanket back over his face and faded away.
That was all.
"It was a great plenty. The plot thinned right there. Falling Pine, he
handed back that thousand dollars advance money, like it was hot, and
he beat it for Tularosa. They wanted him to try again, to tell 'em
where the stuff was, anyhow; they doubled the price on him. He said
no--not--_nunca_--nixy--_neinte_--he guessed not--_nada_--not
much--never! He added that he was going to lead a better life from
then on, and wouldn't they please hush? And what I say unto you is
this: How did them Indians know--hey?"
"Don't ask me," said Adam. "I've heard your story before,
Charles--only your dead Injun had thirty-five arrows for souvenirs,
'stead of nine. The big idea was, of course, that where gold is found
the white man comes along, and the Indian he has to move. But all this
is neither here nor there, especially here, though heaven only knows
what might have been under happier circumstances not under our
control, as perhaps it was, though we are all liable to make mistakes
in the best regulated families; yet perhaps I could find it in my
heart to wish it were not otherwise, as the case may be."
"Nine arrows!" said Charlie firmly.
"Young fellow!" said Adam severely. "Be I telling this story or be I
not? I been tryin' to relate about this may-be-so gold of mine, ever
since you come--and dad burn it, you cut me off every time. I do wish
you'd hush! Listen now! Of course there's placer gold all round
Hillsboro; most anywheres west of the river, for that matter. But
it's all fine dust--never coarse gold beyond the river--and it runs so
seldom to the ton that no Injun would ever get it. So, thinks I, why
not look in at Apache Canyon? It's the plumb lonesomest place I know,
and I don't believe anybody ever had the heart to prospect it good. So
I went up to Worden's and worked up from the lower end.
"That was last year, and I have been prognosticatin' round, off and
on, ever since, whenever I could get away from my farmin'. I found a
trace, mostly. You can always get a color round here, and no one place
better than another. But when the rains begun this year, so I could
find water to pan with, I tried it again, higher up. And in a little
flat side draw, leadin' from between two miserable little snubby hills
off all alone, too low to send much flood water down--there I begun to
find float, plumb promisin'. I started to follow it up. You know
how--pan to right and left till the stuff fails to show, mark the edge
of the pay dirt, go on up the hill and do the like again. If the gold
you're followin' has been carried down by water the streak gets
narrower as you go up a hillside, and pay dirt gets richer as it gets
narrower. If the hill has been tossed about by the hell fires down
below, all bets is off and no rule works, not even the exceptions.
That's why they say gold is where you find it. But any time you find a
fan-shaped strip of color on a hill that looks like it might have
stayed put, or nearly so, it's worth while to follow it up. If you
find the apex of that triangle you're apt to strike a pocket that will
land you right side up with the great and good. Sometimes the apex has
done been washed away; these water courses have run quite elsewhere
other times. Oh, quite! But there's always a chance. Follow up a
narrowing color and quit one that squanders round casual. Them's the
rules.
"Well, sir, my pay dirt took to the side of that least hill, and she
was shaping right smart like a triangle. Then my water give out. I was
usin' a little tank in the rocks--no other without packing from
MacCleod's Tank, five mile. And I had to get in my last cuttin' of
alfalfa--pesky stuff! I cached my outfit and came on home.
"So there you are. It's been rainin' again; and I'm goin' out and try
another whirl to-morrow, hit or miss. Go snooks with you if you're a
mind to side me. What say?"
"Why, Big Chump, you're not such a bad old hoss thief, are you? Well,
I thank you just as much, and I sure hope you'll make a ten-strike and
everything like that; but, you see, I'm busy. Tell you what, Adam--you
get Hob to go along, and I'll think about it."
"Oh, well, maybe it's a false alarm anyway," said Adam lightly. "I've
known better things to fizzle. I get my fun, whatever happens. I can't
stay cooped up on that measly old farm all the time. I need a little
fresh air every so often. I'm a lot like Thompson's colt, that swum
the river to get a drink."
"Don't like farmin', eh?"
"Why, yes, I do. Beats hellin' round, same as a stack of hay beats a
stack of chips. They're right nice people here, Charlie, mighty
pleasant and friendly and plumb cheerful about the good time coming.
And every last one of 'em is here because this is the very place he
wants to be, and not because he happened to be here and didn't know
how to get away. That makes a power of difference. They're plumb
animated, these folks; if so be they ain't just satisfied any place,
they rise up and depart. So we have no grand old grouches. All the
same, I'm free to admit that I haven't quite the elbowroom I need."
"I know just how you feel," said Charlie; "I've leased a township and
fenced it in. That's why I'm not at some round-up; all my bossies
right at home. And dog-gone if I don't feel like I was in jail. But
you people can't be making much real money, Adam--hauling over such
roads as these. It is forty miles from place to place, in here, while
out in the open it is only thirty or maybe twenty-five. That's on
account of the sand and the curly places. And then you have nothing to
do in the wintertime."
"Well, now, it ain't so bad as you'd think--not near. We raise plenty
eggs, chickens, pork and such truck, and fruit and vegetables. Lots
of milk and butter, too; not like when we didn't have anything but
cows. Some of us have our little bunch of cattle in the foothills yet,
and fat the steers on alfalfa, and get money for 'em when we sell. But
that won't last long, I reckon. We're beginning to grow hogs on
alfalfa and fat 'em on corn, smoke 'em and salt 'em and cross 'em with
T and ship 'em to El Paso. I judge that ham, bacon and pork will be
the main crops presently.
"Then we hurled up a grist mill since you was here, cooperative. Hob,
he got up that. And we got a good wagon road through the mountain, to
Upham. Goes up Redgate and out by MacCleod's Tank. Steepish, but no
sand; when we get a car of stuff to ship we can haul twice as much as
we can take to Rincon. We can't buy nothing at Upham, sure enough, and
sometimes have to wait for our cars. But we can have stuff shipped to
Upham from El Paso, and it's downhill coming back. Also, Hobby allows
this Upham project will ably assist Rincon to wake up and build us a
road up the valley."
"Hobby invented this wagon road, did he?"
"Every bit. We all chipped in to do the work. But Hob furnished the
idea. That ain't all, either. From now on, we're going to have plenty
to do, wintertimes. Mr. See, we got a factory up and ready to start.
Yessir!"
"Easy, Big Chump! You'll strain yourself."
"Straight goods--no joking."
"Must be a hell of a factory!"
"She's all right, son. A home-grown factory. You go look at her
to-morrow. Broom factory. Yessir! Every man jack of us raised a patch
of broom corn. We sell it to ourselves or buy it of ourselves,
whichever way you like it best; and anybody that wants to make brooms
does that little thing. We ship from Upham and divvy up surplus. Every
dollar's worth of broom corn draws down one dollar's share of the net
profit, and every dollar's worth of labor does just that--no more, no
less. It works out--with good faith and fair play."
"Hob?" said Johnny.
"That's the man." Adam Forbes let his hand rest for a moment on the
younger man's shoulder. "Charlie, you and me are all right in our
place--but there ain't goin' to be no such place much longer. I reckon
we ain't keepin' up with the times. So now you know why I wanted you
should go prospectin' with me. Birds of a feather gather no moss."
"I judge maybe you're right. We both of us favor Thompson's colt, and
that's a fact. Well, I am glad old Hob is making good. We had as good
a chance as he did, only he had more sense."
"Always did," said Forbes heartily. "But he ain't makin' no big sight
of money, if that's what you mean. Just making good. He's not working
for Hob Lull especially. He's working for all hands and the cook. Hob
always tries to get us to work together, like on a _'cequia_. There's
other things--a heap of 'em. We've bought a community threshing
machine. Hob has coaxed a lot of 'em into keeping bees. And he's
ribbin' us up to try a cannin' factory in a year or two, for tomatoes
and fruit. And a creamery, later. Hob is one long-headed young
people. We aim to send him to represent for us sometime."