you than me, but the points ain't on the cards. It'll be just like
that Braddock's campaign agin the Injuns. There goes the Britishers
(that's Bill) amblin' gaily through the woods, dressed up in red and
marchin' arm to arm, for fear some careless Injun would miss 'em, and
there's the Injuns (that's that durned ram) off in the woods jumpin' up
and down with pleasure and surprise. 'Oh, Jimmy!' hollers the Injun to
his little boy. 'Run get grandpa, Towser, mama, and the
baby--everybody's goin' to pick one of these and take it home--no Injun
so poor but what he's entitled to at least one Englishman.'"
"That's all right," says Windy. "But where's your Injun now?"
"Well," says Steve, flabbergasted, "that's kind of true, too; he has
vanished some."
"I bet you money," says the Doctor, "that Bill does him."
"I hate to rob the poor in mind," says Steve. "And yet I'd like to
lose that bet--make it a month's wages?"
"I'm for standin' by my friend," says the Doctor. "I'll bet you up to
the first of January."
"Got you," says Steve. "You know where you can borrow chewin', anyhow.
Any other gentleman want part of this?"
Steve had money he'd drew out of his poker game up-town, so the rest of
us stood not to live high until after January first, if Foxey Bill
didn't lick that sheep. We didn't believe he would, but he carried our
money.
Well, sir, it was a tough time waitin' for the combat to come off.
Bill simply despised the sheep. Couldn't stand near to him. The only
time he'd stay by the house was when the sheep was off somewheres.
And, of course, it was strictly against the rules for any person to
aid, abet, or help either warrior, or interfere in any way, shape, or
manner.
I was two mile out from camp one day, when I heard "Ke-bang, ke-bang,
ke-bang-ety, bang-bang-bang-bang!" The Doctor was losin' off all the
guns in the shack to once. I hollered to Steve, him to Windy, and then
we flew for home, leavin' the calves to their own responsibilities for
a while.
The other boys was on hand when we arrived, their faces shinin' with
excitement, and yellin' to us for the love of Moses to shake a leg
before it was too late.
Poor Billy was pickin' himself up, after rollin' over three times, and
the durned ram was prancin' away, wigglin' his tail like little boys
does their fingers, with a thumb to the nose.
[Illustration: "The durned ram was prancin' away"]
The Doctor explained to us, whilst we was waitin' for the next jar.
"There's Bill," says he, "eatin' his meal out of his half-a-barrel as
quiet and decent a citizen as you'll find anywheres. That's his grub
and he don't like grass. Well, what must that quar'lsome hunk of horns
and mutton do, but try to shove him away from there. Mind you, that
ram does like grass, and he's got several hundred thousand square mile
of it to lunch on--but no, sir! What he must have is a hunk of bread
out of Billy's barrel. Now, Billy's no hog--he lets him have the piece
of bread--then the ram wants the hull barrel; hoops, staves, and all.
That's too hootin' goldarn many for anybody to stand, by ninety-nine
per cent., so Bill slams him one. The ram walks off and fetches him a
swat like hittin' a side of beef with a fourteen-foot board. Poor old
Bill rolls three yards. Then he takes after the brute, but the ram
runs away as usual. Billy thinks the fight is over and goes on with
his eatin'. You're just in time to see the end of the second round.
Bill's _goin'_ to lick him, but cuss me if I see _how_. He can't get
_at_ that blaatin', skippin' mess of wickedness. He don't understand
at all. If the sheep would give him one fair hack, he'd show
him--Look! Oh, Lordy! There he goes again! _Damn_ that sheep!"
It was an awful sight for Billy's friends to witness. I'll never tell
you how many times he went rollin' down the hill, only to come back as
game and useless as a rooster fightin' his reflection in a lookin'
glass. He'd chase after the sheep, gruntin' fierce, but pshaw! the
critter'd simply trot right away from him, wigglin' that insultin' tail
in his face. Old Billy's tail was coiled as tight as a watch-spring
with rage.
"He'll _do_ him," says the Doctor. "He sure _will_! Now you wait!"
"I am waitin'," says Steve, at the end of the twentieth round.
"Waitin' and waitin'. The only play that I see Billy makin' is for the
sheep to break his neck buntin' him. You hand me that rifle. I'll now
bet the crowd there's a dead sheep here in five seconds by the watch.
I can't stand this."
But we wouldn't let him cut in. Fair play is fair play.
"Boys," says Wind River soft, "Bill has laid his ropes--I see it in his
eye!"
"G'wan!" says Steve. "You see it in your own eye!"
"Well, you watch," says Windy. "Bill and me has been pretty well
acquainted ever since that day he called me a liar--look at him now!"
Sure enough. Bill was nosin' his barrel away from the house. I
couldn't see the point exactly, but took it on faith.
He was knocked galley-west and crooked three times before he moved the
thing a rod, but whatever he had in his mind, he calmly went on with it
as soon as he got up.
[Illustration: "He was knocked galley-west"]
"Oh, thunder!" says the Doctor. "See him now! Billy, you're an old
fool! You'll get butted plumb into the crik, next pass!" For Bill had
pushed the barrel to within five foot of the edge of the creek. And
when he heard the Doctor talk, I'll take my oath, that pig looked up
and smiled.
[Illustration: "That pig looked up and smiled"]
"He's got him now!" says Wind River. "He's got him now, for all my
next year's salary! I see it in his face!"
And Windy was so dead sure he impressed the rest of us. So there's
silence, whilst old Foxey Bill is chewin' away in the barrel, and the
ram is comin' over the grass--t-r-rmt, t-r-rrmt--as hard as he can
paste her, head down and eyes shut. Bill, he doesn't see anything
either, until there ain't more'n three foot of air between 'em, and
then he jumps aside!
"Swoosh!" goes the ram into the water, and Billy straightens out his
little curly tail and waves it in the air like a flag. And holler! I
wisht you could have heard that pig! Nothing could been more human.
"I've got the deady-deady on you, you hook-nosed, slab-sided, second
cousin of a government mule!" says he. "Oh! I've got you where I want
you and the way I want you, and it's up to you to convert yourself into
cash at the earliest opportunity, for you won't be worth much in the
market when I'm tired of my fun!" This he says as he gallops to the
other side, to head the sheep off, his mild blue eye on fire. I tell
you it's dangerous to rouse up a fat person with a mild blue eye.
[Illustration: "And holler! I wisht you could have heard that pig"]
A sheep don't swim much better than a mowin' machine, and this feller
got desperate--he was for the shore, no matter what broke. And Bill
ripped the wool out of him for fair as he tried to scramble up.
"Our fight, Steve!" says the Doctor. "I _knew_ he'd do him all the
time! You throw up the sponge and we'll yank the critter out!"
"Let him drown," says Steve. "I don't like him, hide nor hair--and,
besides, think what he's cost me."
But that wouldn't do. Hastings would have looked so mournful,
happiness couldn't get along in the same territory with him. So out
comes Mr. Ram. Done. Everlastingly done. All in and the cover
screwed down. We pointed our fingers at him and did a war-dance around
him, sayin': "Agh--hagh! You will, will you? Now, don't you wish
you'd been good!" He hadn't a word to say. And that good old Billy,
he comes up and rubs Wind River's legs out from under him just as
natural as ever, not set up or swell-headed a bit, like the gentleman
he was.
[Illustration: "Done. Everlastingly done"]
The ram eat his grass and minded his own business from that time on.
For Sale, the Golden Queen
This is the story of the great Golden Queen deal, as Hy Smith told it,
after recovering his sanity:
Aggy and me were snug up against it. One undeserved misfortune after
another had come along and swatted us, till it looked as though we'd
have to work for a living. But we plugged along at the Golden Queen,
taking out about thirty cents a day--coarse, gold, fortunately--and at
last we had 'bout an ounce and a half. Then says Aggy:
"We could sell this mine, Hy, if we only put our profits in the right
place."
"Yes," says I. "This is a likely outfit around here to stick a
gravel-bank on, ain't it? Good old Alder Gulch people, and folks from
down Arizony way, and the like of that! Suppose you tried it on Uncle
Peters, for instance--d'ye know what he'd say? Well, this 'ud be about
the size of it: 'Unh, unh! Oh, man! Oh, dear me! That ain't no way
to salt a mine, Ag! No, no! You'd oughter done this, and that--that's
the way we used to do in Californy--nice weather, ain't it? No,
thanks--I don't care to buy no placer mines--lots of country left yet
for the taking up of it--it's a mighty good mine, I admit--you'd better
keep it.' That's what he'd say."
Ag combed his whiskers with his fingers. "I don't think we could close
out to Uncle Peters," says he.
"And if you tried some of the rest of 'em, they'd walk on your frame
for insulting their intelligence. Perhaps you was thinking of inviting
Pioche Bill Williams up to take a look at the ground?"
"Well, no," says Aggy, slowly. "I don't think I'd care to irritate
Bill--he's mighty careless with firearms."
"I should remark. I ain't a cautious man myself in some ways, and I've
met a stack of fellers that was real liberal in their idees, but for a
man that takes no kind of interest in what comes afterward, give me
Pioche Bill. Oh, no, Aggy, we don't sell any placer mines in these
parts."
"I tell you what," says Ag. "Let's go up to town. Stands to reason
there must be a mut or two up there--somebody just dying to go out and
haul wealth out of the soil."
"We're a good advertisement for the business. We look horrible
prosperous, don't we?" says I.
The main deck of Ag's pants was made of a flour sack. I had a pretty
decent pair, but my coat was one-half horse blanket and the other half
odds and ends. Ag had a long-tailed coat he used to wear when he was
doing civil engineering jobs.
"We could fix one man out fairly well," says he.
"Yes; and the other would look like the losing side of a scarecrow
revolution."
"Wait a minute," says he, "I'm thinking." So he sat and twisted his
whiskers and whistled through his teeth.
"I've got it!" says he. "The whole business right down to the dot!
Darned if it ain't the best scheme I ever lit on! Here's what happened
to us: We're two honest prospectors that have been gophering around
this country for years, never touching a colour, grub running low,
and--well, there ain't any use bothering with that part now. I can
think it up when the time comes. Here's the cream of the plant. We've
had such a darn hard time of it that when at last, under the
extraordinary circumstances which I have recounted before, we light on
the almost undiluted gold of the Golden Queen, your mind is so weakened
that you can't stand the strain of prosperity. You're haunted with
delusions that you're still a poor man, and I can't keep any decent
clothes on you--fast as I buy 'em you tear 'em up. Now I'm willing to
sell the Golden Queen for the merely nominal sum of--what shall we
strike 'em for? Five hundred? For five hundred dollars, then, so I
can get out of this country to some place where my poor pardner will
receive good medical treatment."
"And I'm the goat?" says I. "Well, I expected that. But do you expect
anybody's going to swallow that guff? It's good. Ag, it would do fine
in a newspaper, but can you find a man to trade five hundred hard iron
dollars for it?"
Aggy drew himself up mighty proud. "I'll tell you what I've done in my
day," says he, "I've made an intelligent man believe that the first
story I told him wasn't so. Can you beat it?"
"I know you, Ag," says I. Then we had to slide down and see if we
could get a small loan off Uncle Peters, for we didn't have enough dust
to finance salting our sand-bank and pay for a trip to town, too. Ag
would have it that we must do our turn for the old man. "It'll amuse
him," says he, "and he's more likely to come forward." Truth of the
matter was, when Aggy got one of his fine idees, he had to let the
neighbourhood in.
Well, sir, Uncle Peters was that pleased he forked over a cartridgeful
without weighing it. My play was to look melancholy, and tear a slit
in my clothes once in a while. I had to just make believe that part
when we was rehearsing for the old man, as there wasn't enough material
to be extravagant with.
So up to town we goes, and if you ever see a picture of hard luck on
two feet, it was me.
"I'm going to strike for a gambling joint," says Ag. "You take a
tin-horn gam, and he knows everything, and that's just the kind of man
I'm looking for."
So when we hit town, Ag sails into the Palace Dance Emporium, where
they had the games running in the middle of the place between the lunch
counter and the bar. He had nerve, had Agamemnon G. Jones.
"Hy," says he, "you'll have to watch the play a little. Mebbe you'd
ought to change some, just as it happens. I'll have to do my lying
according to the way the circumstances fall, so keep your eye peeled,
and whatever you do, do it from the bottom of your heart. I can fix it
so long as you don't queer me by shacking along too easy."
So saying he fixes the new necktie he'd bought down at the corner,
tilts the new hat a little, and braces ahead. He could look more
dressed up on 20 cents' worth of new clothes than some men could with a
whole store behind 'em.
When we got into the place the folks gazed at us. Aggy was leading me
by the hand.
"There," says he, very gentle. "Now sit down, and I'll tell you a
story by and by."
I tore a hole in the coat, and mumbled to myself, and sat down
according to directions.
Then Aggy walks up to where the stud-poker game was blooming.
"Gentlemen," says he, making them a bow, "I trust it won't
inconvenience you any to have my poor unfortunate pardner in your midst
for awhile? I can't desert him, and I do like to play a little cards
now and then."
"What's the matter with him?" asks the dealer.
Ag taps his head.
"Violent?" asks the dealer.
Now, Ag didn't know just how he wanted to have it, so he didn't commit
himself to nothing.
"Oh, I can always handle him," says he.
"Well, come right in," says the dealer. "They're only a dollar a
stack."
"Well," says Ag, "I'll just invest in $10 worth to pass away the
time--you take dust, don't you?"
"I used to say I wouldn't take anybody's dust," says the dealer, being
funny with such a good customer, "but since I've struck this country
I've found I've gotter."
Ag pulls out the old buckskin sack, that would hold enough to support
quite a family through the winter. It was stuffed with gravel stones.
"Oh, here!" says he, whilst he was fumbling with the strings. "No use
to open that--I've got another package--what you might call small
change." Then he digs up Uncle Peters' cartridge shell.
I want to tell you I had my own troubles keeping my face together while
Ag was doing his work. You never see any such good-natured,
old-fashioned patriarch as he was. When they beat him out of a hand
he'd laugh fit to kill himself.
"You're welcome, boys!" he'd say. "There's plenty more of it."
At the same time, you wouldn't live high on all you could make out of
Aggy on a stud-poker game. He was playing 'em right down to cases, yet
the way he talked, he seemed like the most liberal cuss that ever threw
good money away. Of course, they had to ask him about his pardner and
the rest of it whilst the cards were being shuffled, and a few
inquiring remarks drew the whole sad story out of Ag.
"It's mighty tough," says he; "Hy's a fine-looking feller, when he's
dressed decent; but the sight of new clothes on himself makes him
furious; he foams and rips till he's tore them to gun-wadding."
"Where did you say this here claim of yours was?" asks the dealer.
"Up on Silver Creek--just below Murphy's butte," answers Ag politely.
Then that dealer put in a lot of foxy questions making poor, innocent,
unsuspecting Aggy give himself dead away. He told how there wasn't
time to look for a buyer that would pay the proper price and he
wouldn't know where to look anyhow, so he'd have to take the first man
that offered, even if he didn't get no more than five hundred for the
claim.
The dealer breathed hard and fairly shuffled the spots off the cards.
"Now," says he, "I sympathise with you--I understand just how you feel
about your pardner. I'm the same kind of man myself, that way. If I
had a pardner in difficulties, I wouldn't mind what I lost on it so
long's I could fix him up."
Here's where I nearly choked to death, for if any man could get the
price of a meal off that tinhorn, without sitting on his chest and
feeding him the end of a six-shooter, his face was one of the meanest
tricks a deserving man ever had sprung on him.
"So if I was you," continued the dealer, "I'd get him out of this
country quick, and as for your claim, why, I don't mind if I held you
out on that myself," says he. "I don't want no mines; I wouldn't
bother with it, only I see you're a good, kind-hearted man, and it's my
motto that such people ought to be encouraged. Now, what do you say if
we start for a look at the territory this afternoon? Nothing like
doing things up while you are at it." Aggy kind of scratched his head
as if this hurry surprised him. "I didn't just think of letting it go
so sudden," said he. "You know I'm kind of attached to the place."
"That's all foolishness," says the dealer. "Your poor pardner there
wants attention--you can see that--and I don't believe you're the sort
of man to let him go on suffering when there ain't no need of it."
"No," says Aggy, thoughtfully, "that's so."
"And would you mind," says the dealer, his hand fairly trembling to get
hold of it, "just letting me have a squint at that gunny-sack full of
dust you have in your clothes?" I didn't require any hint from Ag that
it was my place to be violent. With one loud holler I landed on my ear
on the floor and kicked the poker table on top of the dealer. More'n a
half-dozen men hopped on to me, and we had it for fair all over the
place. I gave 'em the worth of their time before they got me in the
corner.
"Whew!" says Aggy, wiping his brow, "this is the worst attack he's had
yet."
"Just what I was telling you," says the dealer, very confidential and
earnest. "You want to get him away from here quick--I've had some
experience in those kinds of cases, and when I see your friend's face,
I knew you wanted to get a move on."
"It's dreadful, ain't it?" says Ag. "I believe you're in the right
about it--but, say, I feel that I'd ought to pay for the lamp he
busted."
"Not at all," says the dealer, as generous as could be. "Not at all!
That's an accident might have happened to any gentleman. Now, I'll
just take a friend along, and we'll sail right out to your place. Can
you drive there?"
"Oh, yes!" said Aggy. "The roads ain't anything extra, but you can
make it all right."
So away goes the four of us that afternoon. Ag and me, we felt leary
of the fourth man at first. He let on to be considerable of a miner,
but after a bit we sized him up.
"Did you ever," says Aggy whilst they was talking this and that about
mines, "did you ever run your pay dirt through a ground-sluice rocker
that was fitted up with double amalgam plates, top and bottom, and had
the apron sewed on to a puddle board that slanted up, instead of down?"
"Why, sure!" says that feller, judging from Aggy's tone of voice that
this was the proper thing to do. "We didn't use to handle our dirt no
other way out in Uckle-Chuckle county."
"Is that so?" cries Aggy, very much surprised. "Well, do you know that
very few people do?"
"It makes me tired," answers the man in a knowing way, "to think of the
way some folks mines. Now that you've called my attention to it, I
don't recollect that I've heard of anybody using a ground-sluice rocker
the way you speak of, since I left old Uckle-Chuckle county." And here
I got a little violent again, because I can't conceal my feelings as
well as Ag. I had to have several attacks on the way out when Ag was
brought to close quarters, but we did pretty well on the trip.
"Well, gentlemen, there's the Golden Queen!" says Aggy when we turned
the bend in the creek. "Seems funny that such an uninteresting-looking
heap of rocks and stuff as that should be a gold mine, don't it?"
He sees by their faces that they was a little disappointed and that
he'd better get in his crack first. Then the question come up of how
we was to get them fellers to dig where we wanted 'em to without
letting 'em see we wanted 'em to. But, Ag, he was able for it.
"Gentlemen," says he, "just stick your pick in anywhere's--one place is
just as good as another. [That was the gospel truth.] But if you don't
know just where to start suppose we try an old miner's trick, that Mr.
Johnson there, I make no doubt, has done a hundred times."
Johnson, he smiled hearty. "Yes, yes! That old game!" says he. "I'd
nearly forgot all about it--let's see--how is it you do it?"
"First you throw up a rock," says Ag.
"Oh, now I remember! Sure!" says Johnson. "You throw up a rock----"
He stopped, smiling feeble and uncertain, waiting to hear the rest of
it.
"Suppose we let Mr. Daggett [that was the tinhorn] do the throwing?"
says Aggy. "He's a new chum, and we fellers always feel they have the
luck. You may think this is all foolish superstition," says he,
turning to the gambler, "but I tell you, honest, there's a good deal in
it," and that was the second true thing Ag said that day.
Daggett, he threw up the rock.
"Now, go and stand over it," says Ag. Daggett's goes over according,
but he ain't pointed in the right direction.
"Now, you turn around three times."
But after he done it we weren't no better oft than before, for the
chump landed just as he had started.
Ag surveyed the ground.
"Now, you walk backward three steps, then four to the left, then back
five more--ain't that it?" turning to Johnson.
"That's it!" says Johnson, slapping his leg. "That's her! The same
old game! Lord! how it all comes back to a feller!"
"And just where you land, you dig," finishes Ag, handing Daggett's pick.
Daggett sinks the pick to the eye the first crack.
"Gosh!" says he. "Seems kind of soft here!"
"Is that so?" cried Aggy, highly excited. "Then you've struck gold for
sure!" Having put it there himself he felt reasonably certain about it.
Well, they scraped up the bedrock, and Aggy offered to let Johnson pan
it, but Johnson said he'd had to quit mining because his hands got so
sore swinging a pan, so Daggett he kind of scrambled the dirt out after
a fashion, and there at the bottom was our ounce and a half of gold!
Well, I want to tell you there was some movement around there. We
weren't in the same fix of a friend of mine who loaded a pan for a
tenderfoot with four solid ounces, and when he slid the water around on
that nice little yeller new moon in the corner of the pan, "Humph!"
says the tenderfoot, "don't you get any more gold than that out of so
much dirt?"
Four ounces to the pan only means about a hundred thousand dollars a
day income.
"Gooramighty!" says my friend, plumb disgusted. "I'd have had to
borrow all the dust there is on the creek to satisfy you--did you think
it was all gold?"
It broke my heart to see the way that man Daggett washed the fine gold
into the creek, but he was familiar enough with handling the dust to
know that an ounce was good money, even if it did look small. He
turned pale, and begun to dig for dear life. There was no prying him
loose. Well, that's a point Aggy hadn't counted on. He managed to
slide over near me.
"For heaven's sake, Hy!" he whispers, "fly down to Uncle Peters' and
get some more dust or we're ruined! I'll put it in the pan somehow, if
you'll only get it here! Hold the old man up if you have to--but get
that dust!"
I begun to holler very melancholy, and prance around. By and by I
pulled my freight loose and careless down creek.
"Say!" says Johnson, "there goes your friend, Mr. Jones! Shall I ketch
him?"
"Oh, no," says Aggy. "Let him alone--he's used to it around
here--he'll be back right away again."
When I got out of sight I humped for Uncle Peters.
"Sure!" says the old man, when I told him our troubles. "Take the
whole blasted clean-up, Hy. We honest men has got to stand by each and
one another--don't let that rascally tinhorn escape."
So I grabbed Uncle Peters' hard-earned savings and hustled back again.
As soon as I got in good view of the outfit, I knew something was
wrong, by the look of Ag's face; but what it was got me, for there was
both them fellers in the hole now, digging dirt like all possessed.
Daggett had busted his supenders, and the other lad's coat was ripped
up the back; but they didn't care; they were mauling the fair face of
nature like genuine lunatics, and cussing and swearing in their hurry.