_THE DICK AND LARRY SERIES_
_BY FRANCIS LYNDE_
THE DONOVAN CHANCE
DICK AND LARRY, FRESHMEN
THE GOLDEN SPIDER
_CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS_
THE GOLDEN SPIDER
[Illustration: While they looked, one paused, appeared to dance for an
instant, and then disappeared.]
_THE DICK AND LARRY SERIES_
THE
GOLDEN SPIDER
BY
FRANCIS LYNDE
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1923
Copyright, 1923, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Printed in the United States of America
Published September, 1923
[Illustration]
TO MY GOOD FRIEND AND MINERALOGICAL
MENTOR, CLARENCE M. CLARK, WITHOUT
WHOSE KINDLY HELP, AND THE FREE USE
OF HIS LIBRARY, SPECIMEN CABINETS AND
LABORATORY, THE TALE OF THE GOLDEN
SPIDER MIGHT NEVER HAVE BEEN WRITTEN,
THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I IN LOST CANYON 1
II THE FROZEN TRAIL 17
III IN WHICH DICK DROPS OUT 35
IV DADDY LONGBEARD 52
V FOOTLOOSE AND FREE 71
VI SHORT RATIONS 87
VII TOMATOES AND PEACHES 104
VIII THE ICE CAVERN 122
IX THE SPIDER’S WEB 137
X NOTICE TO QUIT 156
XI FINDERS KEEPERS 173
XII NO SURRENDER! 192
ILLUSTRATIONS
While they looked, one paused, appeared to dance for an
instant, and then disappeared _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
“Did you ever think that this stuff might be ore of some
kind?” 66
“I wish there were some way of letting those scamps know
that they are barking up the wrong tree” 116
Then the leading man wavered for a second, and ended by
tumbling backward upon his follower 200
THE GOLDEN SPIDER
CHAPTER I
IN LOST CANYON
There wasn’t much suggestion of a canyon, lost or found, in the
handsomely furnished office in the Brewster National Bank building
where three young fellows in flannel shirts, belted corduroys and
hob-nailed lace boots were waiting for the owner of the office to make
his appearance.
Of the three, only the middle-sized one, a good-looking chap whose
rough outing clothes fitted him as if they were tailor-made,
was showing signs of impatience. The biggest of the three, a
square-shouldered young athlete with good gray eyes set wide apart,
and a shock of dark-red, curly hair, was standing at a window which
commanded a magnificent view of the high, forested mountain range
lifting the skyline to the westward, while the other member of the
trio, an undersized fellow with a thin, eager face and pale blue eyes,
was examining the mineral specimens in a corner cabinet.
“Gee! I wish Uncle Billy would come!” said the impatient one, jumping
up to make a restless circuit of the room. “We don’t want to miss that
train.”
The big fellow turned from his window. “You’re sure he got in last
night?” he said.
“Oh, yes; they came in on the Flyer. Aunt Stella called mother over the
’phone after the train got in――just to let us know. But I wish he’d
come. We don’t want to lose another single day of this bully weather.”
Dick Maxwell’s impatience was not altogether unreasonable. Ten days
earlier Mr. William Starbuck――the “Uncle Billy” in question――had made
a short stop in the Middle-Western college town where Dick and his two
companions were just winding up their Freshman year, and had asked Dick
how he was meaning to spend the long vacation. One thing had brought on
another, and the upshot of the talk was an offer on the part of “Uncle
Billy” to send Dick, and any two of his college-mates he might pick
out, on a summer prospecting trip in the Hophra Mountains, the object
in view being the possible discovery, not especially of silver or gold,
but more particularly of new sources of supply of the rare metals,
tungsten, vanadium, molybdenum, and the like, used in the arts and
manufactures.
Dick hadn’t wasted a moment in choosing the first of his companions
for the summer outing. Larry Donovan――the big fellow at the office
window――son of a crippled locomotive engineer on the home railroad, had
been his chum from their grade-school days in Brewster, and the two
had spent the preceding summer together as “cubs” on the engineering
staff of the railroad of which Dick’s father was the general manager,
so Larry was promptly elected as Number Two in the prospecting trip.
For the third member they had both picked upon Charles Purdick――Larry’s
roommate in college――for several reasons: for one thing, “Little Purdy”
was a pretty good plain cook; and for another, he needed the wages that
Mr. William Starbuck was going to pay each member of the prospecting
party irrespective of the success of the trip in the discovery of any
new mineral deposits.
But there was a third reason for Purdick’s invitation which was still
stronger. “Purdy,” who, until he became the beneficiary of a certain
mysterious scholarship in Old Sheddon, had been working his way through
college, was the orphan son of a steel worker, and had grown up in a
mill town, under-fed, neglected, kicked about and overworked. He had
never been West; had never known what it was to have a real vacation in
the open; and both Dick and Larry had decided at once that he was to be
Number Three, even if they should have to knock him down and handcuff
him to bring him along. But Purdy hadn’t needed any handcuffing.
Larry laughed good-naturedly at Dick’s miserly remark about the wasting
of the “bully weather.”
“Don’t you worry about the weather, old scout,” he said. “We’ll take
that as it comes, and you know well enough that we’re likely to have a
lot more good weather than bad, in the summer months.”
“Oh, I guess yes,” was Dick’s rejoinder. “I’m just sweating to be off
to the tall hills, that’s all.” Then to Purdick, who was busily writing
in his notebook at the mineral cabinet: “What are you finding over
there, Purdy?”
Purdick’s answer was forestalled by the entrance of Dick’s uncle by
marriage, a bronzed, upstanding man who looked as if he might be a
retired cattle king, and who really had been a range-rider in his
younger days.
“Well, well! Here you are!” he said, shaking hands with the three.
“Ready to go out and hit the high spots, are you? All right; sit down
and we’ll round up the preliminaries――what few there are. Got your
dunnage kits made up?”
Dick answered for the three.
“The packs are down at the station. Dad told us what we’d need――and
what we wouldn’t need. I guess he hasn’t let us make any tenderfoot
mistakes about loading up with a lot of the luxuries.”
“That’s good. Now for my part of it. I’ve wired ahead to Nophi, and
Mr. Broadwick, the smelter superintendent, is the man you want to see.
He’ll have a couple of burros for you, with your camping outfit and
grub packed and ready on the arrival of your train. All you’ll have to
do when you get there will be to hike out; take your foot in your hand
and go.”
“Right!” said Dick, bubbling over with excitement. And then: “In your
letter from New York you said something about maps, Uncle Billy. Have
you got them here?”
The “grub-staking” uncle got up and took an envelope of folded maps
from a pigeonhole in the office safe.
“Here you are――sections of the Geodetic Survey covering most of the
territory where you are going. From Nophi you head up Lost Canyon to
Mule-Ear Pass. After you cross the first range, the country is all
yours. When, or if, you find any mineral, stake your claims and jot the
locations down on the map. Are you carrying a copy of Dana’s ‘System’?”
“Got it in the dunnage,” Dick answered; “it, and a blowpipe field-test
outfit. We’ve all been boning the ‘Dana’ for a week, and Mr. Ransom,
out at the ‘Little Alice,’ has been showing us how to make tests.”
“Good. The ‘Dana’ will help you in making the simple tests that can
be made in the field, and, of course, when you find anything that
looks right promising, you’ll bring samples of it back with you for a
laboratory assay. That’s about all, I think. If you have a chance to
send us word during the summer, do it; but if not, don’t worry, and we
won’t. I’m betting confidently that you are all able to take care of
yourselves, and of one another. How about arms?”
Again it was Dick Maxwell who answered.
“Dad has made each of us a present of a light Winchester. They’re down
at the station with the packs.”
“You probably won’t need the artillery. It’s the closed season for
game, but it won’t hurt to have the guns along. If you get tired of
carrying them, you can put them in the jack packs.”
Dick was nervously looking at his watch. It still wanted a full
half-hour of train time, but we all know how that is when we are about
to start out upon a wonderful voyage of discovery.
“Well, Uncle Billy,” he said, “I guess we’ll have to be moving along.”
So the handshaking was repeated, and they were heading for the door,
when the grub-staking uncle called them back.
“This is rather a humdrum job you’ve undertaken for the summer――looking
for the industrial metals,” he said, with a twinkle in the shrewd gray
eyes. “I’ve a mind to throw in a bit of romance, just for good measure.
How would you like to keep an eye out for a lost gold mine――a real
bonanza?”
“A lost gold mine?” Dick queried eagerly. “Who lost it?”
The ex-cowboy uncle was smiling quizzically. “It is a pretty long
story, and if you’ve got to hurry to your train――――” he began; but Dick
cut in quickly.
“Tell us about it, Uncle Billy. We’ll catch the train all right.”
“Think you can take time to listen? I’ll make it short. Three years
ago, James Brock, an old prospector whom I knew well, was found at the
mouth of Lost Canyon, dying of hunger and exposure. I had him brought
down to Brewster and taken to the hospital. He lived only a few days,
but during that time he told me his story. He said he had discovered
a fabulously rich gold lode in the Little Hophras, and, staying to
work it, the winter had caught him. He had been snow-bound for weeks
with little or nothing to eat, but had finally made his way out over
Mule-Ear Pass, half starved and with his feet and hands frozen.”
“Poor old duffer!” said Dick sympathetically. “But go on, Uncle Billy.
What became of the mine?”
“Nobody knows. Brock had no maps, and he couldn’t describe the locality
well enough to enable any one to find it. I don’t know how plentiful
the ore is, but it is wonderfully rich, as you can see for yourselves,”
and from a drawer in his desk he took a small piece of disintegrated
quartz, shot through and held together by a wire-like mass of the
precious metal.
As one person, the three boys crowded around the desk to examine the
beautiful specimen, and none of them heard the office door open or
knew that there was an intruder present until Mr. Starbuck suddenly
covered the bit of quartz with his hand and said: “Well, my man――what
can I do for you?”
As one person again, they all three wheeled and saw the man who had
come in so quietly that none of them had heard him. Tramp or beggar, or
whatever he was, he seemed to be an object of pity, dirty, unshaven,
and a cripple, walking with a crutch and with one leg drawn up in a
curiously twisted deformity. And he had a face――as Dick afterward
phrased it――that would scare the rats out of a corn bin.
“I’m lookin’ f’r Mister Bradley, th’ employmint man,” was the way the
intruder accounted for himself.
Mr. Starbuck shook his head. “Mr. Bradley’s office is on the floor
below,” he replied; and at that, the man hobbled out, leaving the door
open when he passed into the corridor.
Dick Maxwell was again consulting his watch. “We have a few minutes
more, Uncle Billy,” he said hurriedly. “Is that all you can tell us
about the lost mine?”
“Not quite all. James Brock told me how he came to discover the vein.
He had camped one evening at the foot of a small cliff with a crevice
in it. The cliff faced the east, and in the morning he saw that the
crevice was curtained with a great wheel of a spider-web, and in the
center of the web was an immense spider with a body that looked, with
the sun shining on it, as if it were made out of pure gold. Brock took
it as an omen. He dug in the crevice and found his mine, which he
called ‘The Golden Spider.’ So there is your bit of romance. Find the
Golden Spider and maybe you will all come back rich.”
“But if we should find it, it wouldn’t be ours,” put in little Purdick,
speaking for the first time.
“I’ll make my right and title over to the three of you,” said the
grub-staking uncle, with the quizzical smile again wrinkling at the
corners of his eyes. “When old Jimmie Brock found he wasn’t going to
live, he made me this little pencil sketch of the place”――taking a
folded paper from the drawer which had held the specimen――“and told me
to go and take his bonanza for my own――made me his heir, in fact.”
“And you never found it?” Dick asked.
The quizzical smile turned itself into a quiet laugh.
“No. I spent a good month of the following summer looking for it;
and after the story got out, others looked for it, too. It has never
been found, and probably never will be unless some prospector just
happens to stumble upon it accidentally. One mountain is very much like
another in the Little Hophras, and Brock couldn’t name his mountain,
or describe it so that it could be recognized. You may take his sketch
map along with you if you like, though it won’t help you any more than
it did me. If I were going to try again, I shouldn’t bother about maps
or mountains; I should look for a crack in a cliff, and a golden-bodied
spider hanging in its web. Now you see what an excellent chance you
have of finding the lost bonanza! But I mustn’t keep you any longer
listening to these old fairy tales. Good-by, and good luck to you.
Don’t forget to send word back any time you happen to meet anybody
coming out of the hills.”
Since the time was now really growing pretty short, the three did not
stand upon the order of their going. As they ran through the corridor
toward the elevators, they saw the crippled man hobbling along in the
same direction, and making as good speed with the long crutch-stride
and hop as they did in a dog-trot. That being the case, the cripple
caught the same descending elevator that they did; but on the sidewalk
they lost him quickly; were a bit astonished to see him climb nimbly
into a waiting taxi and get himself whirled away down the avenue.
“Huh!” said Dick, as they hurried along toward the railroad station.
“‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.’ That fellow looks like
a beggar, but he rides in a taxi, just the same. I wonder where he is
going in such a tearing hurry?”
There was obviously no answer to this, and the incident was presently
forgotten in their arrival at the station. The westbound train was
in, and both the Maxwell and Donovan families were on hand to see the
prospectors off for the summer. Little Purdick, having nobody to see
him off, got the packs and rifles and put them aboard, and when he had
finished this job the leave-takings were over and the train was pulling
out.
“‘Good-by, everybody; good-by, everything!’” Dick sang, hanging out
of the last-left-open vestibule; and when he went in to join his two
companions he was brimming over with enthusiasm.
“Hey, you old stick-in-the-muds!” he cried. “She’s begun at last――the
good old summer out-of-doors! We’re due in Nophi at one o’clock, and
to-night we’ll be sleeping out under the stars! Wouldn’t that jar you,
Purdy――you old factory-town rat!”
But little Purdick did not answer, because, just at that moment,
he had caught sight of a roughly dressed man with a crutch settling
himself in a seat at the far end of the day-coach in which they were
riding, and the singular prevalence of cripples in this part of the Far
West struck him as being so odd that he scarcely heard what Dick was
saying.
The two-hour train rush down the Timanyoni, through Little Butte, and
up a wide mountain valley to the little smelter town of Nophi, nestling
fairly under the shadow of the Greater Hophras, was a journey made
without incident――unless dinner in the dining-car, their last civilized
meal, as Dick named it, could be called an incident. When the boys left
the train they found that a telegram from Brewster had outrun them, and
Uncle Billy’s smelter-superintendent friend was at the platform to meet
them; also, that the two burros, already packed with the provisions,
tools and camping outfit, were waiting under a near-by ore shed.
As they were preparing to start, Mr. Broadwick gave them a hint or two.
“The snow is just breaking up on the main range, and you’ll find the
trail for two or three miles each side of Mule-Ear Pass pretty hard to
negotiate with the jacks unless you can catch it while it is frozen,”
he told them. “Late as it is in the season, it freezes every night on
the range, and if you’ll take my advice, you’ll push as far up toward
the pass as you can this afternoon, camp early, and turn out in the
morning early enough to cross the range before the sun gets a melting
chance at it. If you don’t do that, you’re likely to have a lot of
trouble with the burros. They’re pretty sure-footed little beasts, but
they will slip off a thawing trail once in a while.”
Larry was the only one who was thoughtful enough to ask if anybody had
been over the trail since the thawing began.
“Yes,” said the smelter superintendent, “two men went over yesterday
with supplies for the Little Eagle mine in Dog Gulch. They were
experienced packers, and they told us they had to wait for the freeze
before they could make it, coming out.”
They promised to do as the superintendent advised, and five minutes
later, under a sun that seemed hot enough to make all thoughts of frost
and snow troubles a sheer absurdity, they were trailing out the single
street of the small smelter settlement and heading for the Lost Canyon
portal.
Just as they were leaving the last shacks of the town behind, Purdick,
to whom all this wild western stuff was as strange as a glimpse into
an entirely different world, happened to look back down the street.
What he saw meant nothing to him at first: there were a few stragglers
in the street, workmen returning to the smelter after the noon hour,
some children playing in the dust, and the usual number of stray dogs
foraging for something eatable in the empty tin cans littering the
roadway.
But in front of a tar-papered building labeled “Hotel Nophi” three
horses were hitched, and as Purdick looked back, three men came out
of the hotel to unhitch and mount them. That, in itself, was nothing
remarkable, of course, and Purdick wouldn’t have given it a second
thought if he hadn’t happened to see, or think he saw, one of the three
stick something that looked like a crutch under his saddle leather
before he climbed to the back of his riding animal.
“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” he exclaimed, wholly to himself. But when
Dick said: “What for?” Purdick’s reply was perfectly non-committal.
“Nothing,” he returned, with a laugh. “I guess the altitude’s getting
on my eye nerves and making me see double――or triple.”
As he spoke, the street, which had now dwindled to a rocky bridle path,
turned sharply to the left and entered the narrow mouth of the canyon;
whereupon the brawling stream thundering through the gorge swallowed
up all other sounds, even as the cliff-like walls shut out all sights
save that of the sky overhead. Nevertheless, as the patient little pack
animals plodded steadily on, their tinkling hoofbeats hardly audible
above the noise made by the stream, Purdick fancied he could hear
heavier hoofbeats clinking upon the stones far to the rear.
That first afternoon’s hike up a canyon trail, which at times scarcely
afforded footing for the plodding little beasts under the pack-saddles,
came as near to “getting” Purdick as anything he had ever experienced.
Having never had time――or the spare energy――to do any athletic work in
college, the toiling tramp, with a blanket roll and a gun to carry,
made him realize, as he never had before, the handicap of untrained
muscles and sinews, and as he dragged along at the tail of the little
procession he was chopping out a vow to make the summer outing a
turning point for a fellow named Charles Purdick in one respect at
least: if hard work and grit would do it, the end of the summer should
find him better fitted for man-sized, outdoor work or he’d know the
reason why.
Notwithstanding this fine resolution, he heaved a mighty sincere sigh
of relief when the five-hour trudge up the canyon came to an end in one
of the park-like widenings of the gorge which had been recurring with
increasing frequency during the past hour or so, and Dick called to
Larry: “Well, old sock; how about it? Isn’t this far enough up so that
we can hit the pass in the frosty dawn?”
Larry, who had been leading the foremost burro, stopped and gave the
landscape the once over.
“Couldn’t be much better,” he decided. “Plenty of wood, good water, and
fir boughs for the shake-downs. Alabama!”
“Huh?” said Dick. “What’s Alabama got to do with it?”
Larry gave a wide-mouthed grin.
“Dig up your U. S. History, sonny. ‘Alabama’ means ‘Here we rest.’ All
hands on deck to make camp.”
They went at it like old-timers――or at least two of them did. Though
they hadn’t had much to do with the actual camp-making in their
railroad construction experience of the summer before, Larry and
Dick had learned pretty well how to make themselves at home in the
wilderness. While the setting sun――long since gone behind the towering
western ranges――was still filling the upper air with a flood of golden
radiance, they unpacked the jacks and picketed them to graze on the
lush grass of the little park, built the camp-fire, and chopped enough
of the fragrant fir tips for the beds.
It was after the fire had burned down to a bed of coals that little
Purdick began to shine. Out of the hard experience of his strugglesome
boyhood he had brought a pretty good knowledge of plain cooking, and
in a little time he dished up a supper that made his two camp-mates
pound him on his tired back and bombard him with all sorts of jollying
praise.
“We sure got a gilt-edged prize when we picked you off the limb,
Purdy,” said Dick warmly. “Whatever else you can’t do, you sure can
cook. I see where you’re elected for the whole summer――unless you get
your back up and go on strike and make us two poison ourselves with our
own skillet messes. Pretty tired after the hike?”
“A little,” Purdick admitted.
“All right; after we get over the Pass, we won’t push it so hard. What
say, Larry?”
“There won’t be any need of pushing it,” was Larry’s rejoinder, mumbled
through a mouthful of Purdick’s delicious, skillet-baked corn bread.
“We’re not out to see how many miles we can do in a day.”
With supper eaten and the tin dishes washed in the crystal-clear
stream, and with the last tints of the sun glow gone and the stars
coming out in a black bowl of the heavens that seemed almost near
enough to reach up and touch, the three rolled themselves in their
blankets with their feet to the fire, Dick mumbling something about a
day well spent earning a night’s repose, and falling asleep almost as
soon as he had stretched himself out.
But little Purdick did not find it quite so simple. For one thing, he
was too tired to go to sleep at once, and for another the unfamiliar
surroundings, the black shadows of the trees, the hollow drumming of
the little river among the boulders in its bed, the high-mountain
silence which was otherwise unbroken, the stately procession of the
stars in a sky that was like an arch of black velvet――all these things
conspired to make him wakeful, and after a time he got up, dug out the
mineralogy book from Larry’s pack, stirred the fire to make it give
light enough to read by, and was presently deep in the mysteries of
sylvanite and sphalerite and chalcopyrite, B.B. tests, acid reactions,
and the like.
In a little time he began to realize that even a June night at altitude
eight or nine thousand feet can be pretty chilly, so he wrapped himself
in his blankets and put his back against a tree. In the new position
the firelight wasn’t very good for the reading purpose, and before long
he found his eyes growing heavy and finally the “Dana” slipped from his
grasp and he was asleep.
This was the last he knew until he awoke with a start some time
farther along in the night; came broad awake with a conviction that
a noise, other than that of the brawling stream, had broken into the
high-mountain silence. Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he looked
around. The fire had died down to a pile of white-ashed embers, but the
starlight, as strong in the clear atmosphere of the heights as modified
moonlight, enabled him to see the dim outlines of his surroundings.
While he looked and listened, the noise which had aroused him came
again; a measured tapping alternating with the crunch of slow
footfalls. Straining his eyes, he soon made out a shadowy figure
dodging along from tree to tree and working its way cautiously toward
the dying camp-fire.
Purdick’s first impulse was to call Dick and Larry; his next was to
half close his eyes and pretend to be still asleep. Nearer and nearer
came the tap and shuffle, until at last he was able to get a fair sight
of the midnight intruder. It was a man with a crutch, and the watcher
under the big fir-tree didn’t have to look twice to decide that his
errand wasn’t neighborly. For now the man was down on hands and knees
and was crawling up as noiselessly as a snake.
Thinking it over afterward, Purdick could never tell why he didn’t
immediately raise an alarm. A yell would have awakened his sleeping
camp-mates, and would probably have sent the intruder flying. But
instead of flinging off his blanket and shouting to Larry and Dick,
little Purdick merely tried to give a better imitation of a sleeping
sentinel and let the crippled man come on.
What happened after that was wholly unexplainable to the watcher
under the fir-tree. Creeping silently into the diminished circle of
firelight, the cripple possessed himself first of Larry’s pack and
then of Dick’s, going through them rapidly but painstakingly, as if
in search of something. Next, Purdick saw his own pack going through
the same process. Like a suddenly illuminating flash of lightning, the
explanation blazed into Purdick’s brain. The cripple was the man who
had come into Mr. Starbuck’s office just as they were about to leave.
He had overheard the talk of the Golden Spider, the lost gold mine, and
he was searching for old Jimmie Brock’s map!