A Story Is Told and a Promise Made
An open fire had always been tremendously fascinating to Willis Thornton,
and on winter evenings, when his chores were done and supper over, he
would pile the big fireplace high with maple logs, then sit and dream as
the flames danced and the fire roared. He was a sturdy lad, healthy,
cheerful, wholesome, and tonight he was thinking.
The snow-laden wind was sweeping across the "Flat Bush." At every fresh
gust the fire would crackle and the little blue flames start up along the
none-too-well seasoned logs. Outside the old farmhouse the great dead
limb of a monstrous white oak moaned and sighed, while the usual sounds
from the barnyard were lost in the patter of the icy snowflakes that
rattled against the window pane. From the open door of the kitchen came
faint odors of freshly-popped corn and the monotonous hum of the old
sewing-machine. Willis was hardly aware of any presence in the room save
his own until a warm hand was laid gently on his and a dish of snowy
popcorn set in his lap. He had been so engrossed with his own fancies
that he had not seen his mother enter the firelit room and come toward
him.
"Well, my boy; what are you dreaming of tonight?" she asked, as she
seated herself in her accustomed place on the arm of his chair and placed
her arm gently on his shoulder.
"O, I've just been planning a bit, mother," he said with a smile.
"Sometimes when I sit here by this old fire I forget myself. I travel to
the strangest lands and think the strangest thoughts. Still, they all
seem so very real to me that when I try not to think of them a peculiar
restlessness comes over me. I can hardly wait for summer and the great
big out-of-doors. Did you ever think, mother, what life would be if we
didn't have the birds and the bees and the flowers? Are people in the
cities happy and contented without them? I've often wondered. I suppose
some day I'll be going to the city to live, as all the other boys have
done; but when I think of it it makes me sad. I don't believe I'd ever be
happy in the city, mother, unless--"
He paused long enough to stir up the fire and put on another log.
"Unless what, Willis?" his mother inquired.
"Unless--" he hesitated as if thinking. "I could go West to where father
was."
His mother listened as he went on. "The schoolmaster was telling us today
about the wonderful Rocky Mountains. He was there last summer on his
vacation, you know. We were studying about Pike's Peak and the Garden of
the Gods, so he told us all about his trip there. He went from Colorado
Springs to somewhere away up in the mountains to a great gold camp. He
told us of the queer little shanties the people live in, and of the great
piles of waste ore outside of each mine. He went through one mine, the
Independence, I think he called it, or the Portland--I don't remember
which now; but he said the machinery used in hoisting the ore was
wonderful. It all set me to thinking of father--I've been thinking of him
all day. Mother, it's mighty hard for a fellow like me not to have any
father, only just a dead one."
He arose a second time to replenish the fire, but remained standing,
facing his mother. He was too deeply interested in his own thoughts just
then to notice the tears that were slowly stealing down his mother's
face, and the light was too dim for him to see her sad, care-worn
expression. She was not old, but fate had not been kind to her. She was a
slender little woman, with a heavy mass of what had once been brown hair,
but it was now streaked with gray. Her eyes were large and brown, and the
intermingled expression of love and sadness made her face one of tender
beauty, lighted as it was by the rosy tints from the open fire. As the
boy talked on in his manly way she suddenly became aware of a change in
him. She noticed the well-built and symmetrically developed body, the
broad shoulders, the short, stocky neck, and the head covered with brown
ringlets. She could not see the face, but she knew only too well of whom
it reminded her, for of late she had often found herself saying, "Just
like the father--just like the father."
It was during such winter evenings as this that she had come to know her
son best, as she sat on the arm of his chair and listened with tactful
sympathy to his stories of the big black bass that kept house in the pool
at the end of the lake, or of the downy woodpecker's nest in the old
hickory, or, perhaps, of the big hoot owl that perched on the granary
warm nights to watch for mice. It was with a certain feeling of sadness,
as well as of pride, that she watched him grow older, lose his boyhood
ways, and become more and more of a man--a man just like his father!
"I get so lonely for some one to teach me things, and go with me into the
big woods, and help me skin my rats in season," he was saying, "and to
teach me to use tools and to understand the books and--"
"Yes, my son," she replied. "But haven't you me? Won't I do to read with
you and help you find new wild flowers and gather strange caterpillars in
the spring?"
"Yes, mother, of course you will, and you know how I do care for you. I
couldn't begin to do without you even for a day; but someway you don't
understand. It's because you are a woman. Sometimes I feel as if I would
be the happiest boy in the Clear Creek School if I just had a father I
could look up to and be proud of and--"
"O, but Willis, be careful." Her voice was low and full of feeling. "You
can do all that, my boy, and more. I know you miss him, but you must not
forget we had him once, both of us, and that he was the very best father
in all the world." She stopped, for now the tears were coming fast. "The
only trouble is that he was taken away before you were lad enough to know
him and love him as you would if we had him now. But that is all the more
reason why you should grow into a worthy man, my boy--for his sake and
mine. He loved you dearly, and I've often thought it was that love and
ambition for you that made him determine to make money, so that you might
have the future he planned for you. He left you, my boy, something better
than money--a heritage of clean, noble blood and character. You aren't
old enough just yet to know all that that means, but some day you will
be truly thankful."
"You are right--always right; but you know what I mean, don't you? You
have never told me all about him, have you, mother? Won't you tell me
now? I never wanted to know so badly as I do tonight. He seems to come
near to me sometimes, even if I can't see him, and I want to know more
about him."
The fire burned low; the storm had increased in its fury; it seemed as if
each gust would lift the house from its foundations. Still, to these two,
opening their hearts to each other in the kindly glow of the firelight,
the storm was forgotten.
After a pause she began softly and very slowly to tell the story.
"Your father was a noble man, Willis, such as I am sure you will be if
you are spared to live. His boyhood I do not know much about, only that
it was spent on his father's farm. He went to Kalamazoo for his
schooling, and it was there that I first met him. He worked hard, saved
his money, and went to Ann Arbor for his college work. He was ambitious
to become a great engineer, and was always tinkering at some kind of a
machine. He used to joke with me about becoming a great inventor, and
after we were married he did try his hand at a patent coupler and a
back-firing device for a gas engine. He was just like you, my boy, always
dreaming and seeing things in the out-of-doors. I can remember the
delight he found in rising early on summer mornings to search for
caterpillars, moths, and worms in the nearby woods, and he would put a
strange bug in every bottle I had in the house.
"After our marriage we moved to Lansing, and he became superintendent in
an electrical manufacturing company. He had a little shop of his own in
the basement at home, and during the long winter evenings of the first
year that we were there he built furniture for our little home. The chair
we are sitting in, Willis, is one of his first pieces. We were very happy
together there, and it wasn't long before you came. The summer before you
were born his company sent him West to install mine machinery. It was
then that he became interested in the great gold mines of Colorado.
Everybody seemed to be prospecting and staking gold claims. He thought he
saw his chance to get rich quickly, so he, too, began prospecting. He
very soon developed a great love for the mountains, and while you were a
baby he used to go to Colorado Springs for his vacations. His mind was
very active, and as he became more closely acquainted with the mines he
conceived an idea for a machine to roast gold ore by electricity. In the
winter evenings he would sit sketching its parts and dreaming over his
plans. Sometimes in his boyish enthusiasm he would assure me that he
would yet be a rich man."
"And what about his mine, mother; doesn't that come into the story pretty
soon?" "Yes, yes, but don't hurry me, son. It seems so very strange to be
sitting here telling you all about him, for it seems to have happened so
long, long ago.
"On one of his trips west he fell in with an old mountaineer named
Kieser, Tad Kieser. Tad became interested in his roasting machine, and
they decided to locate claims together. Tad was to put up the 'grub
stakes,' as they called it, for your father had no money except his
salary. All one fall, when he was not installing machinery, they explored
the mountains south of Colorado Springs, especially along the old Stage
Road to Cripple Creek, looking for suitable claims. The old Stage Road
was a steep, rocky mountain road over which they hauled provisions and
passengers into the Cripple Creek district.
"Several miles from the city there was an old log hostelry--'Wright's
Road House' they called it. Here lived a strange old man, a mountaineer
of the oldest type. Daddy Wright, they called him. He and Tad were old
friends, so your father became very well acquainted with him. The stages
to and from the gold camp always stopped at Dad's; sometimes for a meal
and sometimes for all night. It was one of the delights of your father's
business trips to spend an evening with this old man in his rough
mountain cabin, sitting before his crude stone fireplace smoking and
listening to stories of the days of 'forty-nine,' when Dad had hunted for
gold in the mountains of California. Your father and Tad were both in the
old road house the night it was burned and barely escaped with their
lives. He didn't tell me about it until long afterwards.
"Tad and your father finally filed on two claims. One was on Cheyenne
Mountain, near Dad's claims, and the other was somewhere near a mountain
called Cookstove. Your father thought that valley was the most beautiful
spot he had ever seen. He used to write me long letters describing the
beautiful canyon and the falls, which was just a ribbon of water that
trickled down the face of a monstrous granite boulder hundreds of feet in
height. He called it St. Marys Falls. Here, somewhere in a hidden spot of
this canyon, they found a strange outcropping of black rock which your
father believed would lead to an extensive gold vein in the interior
of the mountain. I remember he called the vein an 'iron dyke,' and said
that a compass revolted when placed on it. His great desire was to mine
that strata by means of a tunnel, but he had no money, so he and Tad
decided that they would work during the winter months and save what money
they could, then both work on the tunnel in warm weather. They chose a
spot down in the canyon that was high, but still near the stream, and
there built a log shanty to live in while they worked the claim. He wrote
me how they cut the great spruce on the side of the mountain far above
the chosen spot and rolled them in. Dad let them use his team of donkeys
to pack in the necessary lumber and shingles for the 'shack.' Father came
home, and Tad, with some hired help, erected the first log cabin in the
canyon. My, but he was proud of it.
"The next spring saw them at work on the tunnel. I did so hate to let
father go, for I was afraid some harm would befall him; but he reassured
me and seemed so positive that all our future hopes lay hidden in that
hole that I let him go. The first season they went in thirty feet, and
things looked better every foot. It was very hard for him to close up the
hole and come home to his winter's work. His company in Lansing had
inspected the drawings of his proposed machine and had promised him a
goodly sum for the patent if he proved that it would work. The only
question was the securing of the proper ore for flux. I remember his
hopes ran high when one day they came upon a narrow vein of this
necessary flux stone. He was so sure that they would find more, and the
gold, too, that he made plans to build a great reducing plant, using the
falls for motor power. He had it all worked out on paper, even to
details.
"Meanwhile my sister, your Aunt Lucy, and Uncle Joe went West for her
health, and settled in Colorado Springs. Uncle Joe became a real estate
dealer and also interested in mines and mining properties. He was greatly
interested in the tunnel, and predicted great things for its future.
About this time all the land around the canyon, both north and south,
became a part of the Pike's Peak Forest Reserve, so that your father had
to refile on his claim and prove to the land office that he was working a
real mineral vein. In refiling, his claim was not big enough to include
the shanty, but anticipating no trouble on account of it he neglected to
lease his cabin from the Forest Reserve officials. The news leaked out
that gold had been discovered in Cookstove Gulch, and in a few days the
entire stream was staked from one end of the canyon to the other as
placer claims. Of course the cabin site became the property of another
man, and with it the cabin, as it could not be moved. The new owner was a
little, short, pudgy man with an ever-ready eye for business, so father
and Tad were forced to rent the cabin they had built and paid for. That
winter was the one your sister Mabel was taken from us, and the last year
we were all together."
She stopped and gazed into the fire, seemingly forgetting the boy who sat
by her side. Then she reached forward and placed the last stick on the
slowly-dying embers. As it caught, and the flames leaped into the chimney
in response to the wind outside, she continued:
"The next summer was the last. I never knew just how it happened exactly;
but some way, while making a new side drift in the tunnel, a blast went
off prematurely, and he was caught in the falling rocks and crushed to
death. Uncle Joe wrote me the particulars--all that I ever had.
"He was too badly mangled to be recognized, so even before I knew of the
accident his poor, broken body was laid to rest under the pines in
Evergreen Cemetery. The tunnel was closed and locked, and your uncle
packed father's few belongings in the little old trunk I gave you last
spring for your own and sent it home--all that I ever saw again of your
father.
"Then followed the terrible fever that nearly took my life. How I prayed,
my boy, that I might die, so great was my sorrow and utter loneliness;
but the Great Father saw fit to keep me here, and now I am thankful. He
needed me to help you become a man. When I was so sick grandfather
came and brought us home, and here we have been ever since."
"But, mother, have you never wanted to go to Colorado?"
"Yes, son, I've often thought I would be happier there, but father has
never thought so. I've often promised Aunt Lucy we'd come. I'm afraid she
won't be long for this world, for she has a very serious tubercular
trouble. You must never mention it, son, but your grandfather never had
any use for Uncle Joe, and was very much opposed to Lucy's marrying him,
so they slipped off and were married secretly. She has never felt like
coming home since--not even for a visit. Father gets very lonely for her,
for she was the life of the old home. I would not be surprised, son, if I
should be called to her bedside any time now, for she is very low."
"Mother, if such a thing should happen, you'd take me with you, wouldn't
you?" eagerly asked Willis.
"Of course I would, my son."
"And perhaps I could find father's tunnel. Say, mother, did you ever hear
what became of that Tad Kieser after father's death?" he inquired.
"No, son, I never heard. He wrote me one letter, expressing his sympathy,
and in that letter I remember he said he had abandoned the tunnel because
he was convinced that it was not a safe place to work, and probably it
never would have amounted to anything, anyway."
"Do you suppose he is still prospecting somewhere in the mountains,
mother?"
"I don't know, Willis. Probably not, for that was ten years ago, you
know."
The remains of the last log dropped between the andirons and rolled over.
Mrs. Thornton rose.
"It's time we were in bed, son, long ago." With that she gently bent,
kissed him on the forehead, and slipped off to her own room, leaving him
with the dying fire. He sat still a long time, his eyes wide open and his
fists clenched.
"If I only could," he was saying. "If I only could."