THE QUEST OF PETER BLUNT
The crisp air of summer early morning, so fragrant, so invigorating,
eddied across the plains, wafting new life to the lungs, and increased
vigor to jaded muscles. The sun was lifting above the horizon,
bringing with it that expansion to the mind which only those whose
lives are passed in the open, and whose waking hours are such as
Nature intended, may know.
The rustling grass, long, lean at the waving tops, but rich and
succulent in its undergrowth, spoke of awakening life, obeying that
law which man, in his superiority, sets aside to suit his own
artificial pleasures. The sparkling morning haze shrouding the
foot-hills was lifting, yielding a vision of natural beauty
unsurpassed at any other time of the day. The earth was good--it was
clean, wholesome, purified by the long restful hours of night, and
ready to yield, as ever, those benefits to animal life which Nature so
generously showers upon an ungrateful world.
Peter Blunt straightened up from his camp-fire which he had just set
going. He stretched his great frame and drank in the nectar of the air
in deep gulps. The impish figure of Elia sat on a box to windward of
the fire, watching his companion with calm eyes. He was enjoying
himself as he had rarely ever enjoyed himself. He was free from the
trammels of his sister's loving, guiding hand--trammels which were
ever irksome to him, and which, somewhere inside him, he despised as a
bondage to which his sex had no right to submit. He was with his
friend Peter, helping him in his never-ending quest for gold. Hunting
for gold. It sounded good in the boy's ears. Gold. Everybody dreamed
of gold; everybody sought it--even his sister. But this--this was a
new life.
There were Peter's tools, there was their camp, there was the work in
process. There was his own little A tent, which Peter insisted that he
should sleep in, while, for himself, he required only the starry sky
as a roofing, and good thick blankets, to prevent the heat going out
of his body while he slept. Yes; the boy was happy in his own curious
way. He was living on "sow-belly" and "hardtack," and extras in the
way of "canned truck," and none of the good things which his sister
had ever made for him had tasted half so sweet as the rough cooking of
this wholesome food by Peter. Something like happiness was his just
now; but he regretted that it could only last until his sister
returned to Barnriff. The boy's interest in the coming day's work now
inspired his words.
"We go on with this sinking?" he inquired; and there was a boyish
pride in the use of the plural.
Peter nodded. His eyes were watching the fire, to see that it played
no trick on him.
"Yep, laddie," he said, in his kindly way. "We've got a bully prospect
here. We'll see it through after we've had breakfast. Sleepy?"
Elia returned him an unsmiling negative. Smiling was apparently
unnatural to him. The lack of it and the lack of expression in his
eyes, except when stirred by terror, showed something of the warp of
his mind.
"You aren't damp, or--or anything? There's a heap of dew around." The
man was throwing strips of "sow-belly" into the pan, and the coffee
water was already set upon the flaming wood.
"You needn't to worry 'bout them things for me, Peter," Elia declared
peevishly. "Wimmin folks are like that, an' it sure makes me sick."
The other laughed good-naturedly as he took a couple of handfuls of
the "hardtack" out of a sack.
"You'd be a man only they won't let you, eh? You've the grit, laddie,
there's no denying."
The boy felt pleased. Peter understood him. He liked Peter, only
sometimes he wished the man wasn't so big and strong. Why wasn't he
hump-backed with a bent neck and a "game" leg? Why wasn't he afraid of
things? Then he never remembered seeing Peter hurt anything, and he
loved to hurt. He felt as if he'd like to thrust a burning brand on
Peter's hand while he was cooking, and see if he was afraid of the
hurt, the same as he would be. Then his mind came back to things of
the moment. This gold prospecting interested him more than anything
else.
"How far are we from Barnriff?" he asked abruptly.
"Twenty odd miles west. Why?"
"I was kind o' wonderin'. Seems we've been headin' clear thro' fer
Barnriff since we started from way back there on the head waters. We
sunk nine holes, hain't we? Say, if we keep right on we'll hit
Barnriff on this line?"
"Sure." The man's blue eyes were watching the boy's face interestedly.
"You found the color o' gold, an' the ledge o' quartz in each o' them
holes, ain't you?"
"Yep."
"Well, if we keep on, an' we find right along, we're goin' to find
some around Barnriff."
"Good, laddie," Peter replied, approving his obvious reasoning. "I'm
working on those old Indian yarns, and, according to them, Barnriff
must be set right on a mighty rich gold mine."
The calm eyes of the boy brightened. Barnriff on a gold mine!
"An' when you find it?"
Peter's eyes dropped before the other's inquiring gaze. That was the
question always before him, but it did not apply to material gold. And
when he should find it, what then? Simply his quest would have closed
at another chapter. His work for the moment would be finished; and he
would once more have to set out on a fresh quest to appease his
restless soul. He shook his head.
"We haven't found it yet," he said.
"But when you do?" the boy persisted.
Peter handed him his plate and his coffee, and sat down to his own
breakfast. But the boy insisted on an answer.
"Yes?"
"Well, laddie, it's kind of tough answering that. I can't rightly tell
you."
"But a gold mine. Gee! You'll be like a Noo York millionaire, with
dollars an' dollars to blow in at the saloon."
Again Peter shook his head. His face seemed suddenly to have grown
old. His eyes seemed to lack their wonted lustre. He sighed.
"I don't want the dollars," he said. "I've got dollars enough; so many
that I hate 'em."
Elia gaped at him.
"You got dollars in heaps?" he almost gasped. "Then why are you
lookin' for more?"
Peter buried his face in a large pannikin of coffee, and when it
emerged the questioning eyes were still upon him.
"Folks guess you're cranked on gold, an' need it bad," the puzzled boy
went on. "They reckon you're foolish, too, allus lookin' around where
you don't need, 'cause there ain't any there. I've heerd fellers say
you're crazy."
Peter laughed right out.
"Maybe they're right," he said, lighting his pipe.
But Elia shook his head shrewdly.
"You ain't crazy. I'd sure know it. Same as I know when a feller's
bad--like Will Henderson. But say, Peter," he went on persuasively,
"I'd be real glad fer you to tell me 'bout that gold. What you'd do,
an' why? I'm real quick understanding things. It kind o' seems to me
you're good. You don't never scare me like most folks. I can't see
right why----"
"Here, laddie"--Peter leaned his head back on his two locked hands,
and propped himself against the pack saddle--"don't you worry your
head with those things. But I'll tell you something, if you're quick
understanding. Maybe, if other folks heard it--grown folks--they'd
sure say I was crazy. But you're right, I'm not crazy, only--only
maybe tired of things a bit. It's not gold I'm looking for--that is,
in a way. I'm looking for something that all the gold in the world
can't buy."
His tone became reflective. He was talking to the boy, but his
thoughts seemed suddenly to have drifted miles away, lost in a
contemplation of something which belonged to the soul in him alone. He
was like a man who sees a picture in his mind which absorbs his whole
attention, and drifts him into channels of thought which belong to his
solitary moments.
"I'm looking for it day in day out, weeks and years. Sometimes I think
I find it, and then it's gone again. Sometimes I think it don't exist;
then again I'm sure it does. Yes, there've been moments when I know
I've found it, but it gets out of my hand so quick I can't rightly
believe I've ever had it. I go on looking, on and on, and I'll go on
to my dying day, I s'pose. Other folks are doing much the same, I
guess, but they don't know they're doing it, and they're the luckier
for it. What's the use, anyway--and yet, I s'pose, we must all work
out our little share in the scheme of things. Seems to me we've all
got our little 'piece' to say, all got our little bit to do. And we've
just got to go on doing it to the end. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes
it's so mighty easy it sets you wondering. Ah, psha!"
Then he roused out of his mood, and addressed himself more definitely
to the boy.
"You see, laddie, I don't belong to this country. But I stay right
here till I've searched all I know, and so done my 'piece.' Then I'll
up stakes and move on. You see, it's no use going back where I belong,
because what I'm looking for don't exist there. Maybe I'll never find
what I'm looking for--that is to keep and hold it. Maybe, as I say,
I'll get it in driblets, and it'll fly away again. It don't much
matter. Meanwhile I find gold--in those places folks don't guess it's
any use looking. Do you get my meaning?"
The quizzical smile that accompanied his final question was very
gentle, and revealed something of the soul of the man.
Elia didn't answer for some moments. He was trying to straighten out
the threads of light which his twisted mind perceived. Finally he
shook his head. And when he spoke his words showed only too plainly
how little he was interested in the other's meaning, and how much his
cupidity was stirred.
"And that gold--in Barnriff? When you've found it?"
Peter laughed to think that he had expected the boy to understand him.
How could he--at his age?
"I'll give it to you, laddie--all of it."
"Gee!"
Elia's cold eyes lit with sudden greed.
"But you'd best say nothing to the folks," Peter added slyly. "Don't
let 'em know we're looking for anything."
"Sure," cried the boy quickly, with a cunning painful to behold.
"They'd steal it. Will Henderson would."
Peter thought for a moment, and relit his pipe, which had gone out
while he was talking.
"You don't like Will, laddie," he said presently, and so blundered
into the midst of the boy's greedy reverie.
"I hate him!"
Any joy that the thought of the promised gold might have given him
suddenly died out of the dwarf's vindictive heart, and in its place
was a raging storm of hatred. Such savage passion was his dominating
feature. At the best there was little that was gentle in him.
"You hate him because of that night--about the chickens?"
But no answer was forthcoming. Peter waited, and then went on.
"There's something else, eh?"
But the eyes of the boy were fixed upon the now smouldering fire, nor
could the other draw them. So he went on.
"Will's your sister's husband now. Sort of your--brother. Your
sister's been desperate good to you. You've had everything she could
give you, and mind, she's had to work for it--hard. She loves you so
bad, she'd hate to see you hurt your little finger--she's mighty good
to you. Gee, I wish I had such a sister. Well, now she's got a
husband, and she loves him bad, too. I was wondering if you'd ever
thought how bad she'd feel if she knew you two were at loggerheads?
You've never thought, have you? Say, laddie, it would break her up the
back. It would surely. She'd feel she'd done you a harm--and that in
itself is sufficient--and she'd feel she was upsetting Will. And
between the two she'd be most unhappy. Say, can't you like him? Can't
you make up your mind to get on with him right when he comes back?
Can't you, laddie?"
The boy's eyes suddenly lifted from the fire, and the storm was still
in them.
"I hate him!" he snarled like a fierce beast.
"I'm sorry--real sorry."
"Don't you go fer to be sorry," cried the boy, with that strange
quickening of all that was evil in him. "I tell you Will's bad. He's
bad, an' he sure don't need to be, 'cause it's in him to be good. He
ain't like me, I guess. I'm bad 'cause I'm made bad. I don't never
think good. I can't. I hate--hate--allus hate. That's how I'm made,
see? Will ain't like that. He's made good, but he's bad because he'd
rather be bad. He's married my sister because she's a fool, an' can't
see where Jim Thorpe's a better man. Jim Thorpe wanted to marry her.
He never said, but I can see. An' she'd have married him, on'y fer
Will comin' along. She was kind o' struck on Jim like, an' then Will
butts in, an' he's younger, an' better lookin', an' so she marries
him. An'--an' I hate him!"
"But your sister? What's poor Eve going to do with you always hating
Will? She'll get no happiness, laddie, and you'd rather see her happy.
Say, if you can't help hating Will, sure you can hide it. You needn't
to run foul of him. You go your way, and he can go his. Do you know
I'm pretty sure he'll try and do right by you, because of Eve----"
"Say, Peter, you're foolish." The boy had calmed, and now spoke with a
shrewd decision that was curiously convincing. "Will'll go his way,
and Eve won't figger wuth a cent with him. I know. Eve'll jest have to
git her toes right on the mark, same as me. He's a devil, and I know.
Will'll make Eve hate herself, same as he'll make me. Say, an' I'll
tell you this, Eve'll hev to work for him as well as me. I know. I can
see. You can't tell me of Will, nor of nobody that's bad--'cause I ken
see into 'em. I'm bad, an' I ken see into folks who 're bad."
There was no argument against such an attitude as the boy took.
Besides, Peter began to understand. Here was an unique study in
psychology. The boy either fancied he possessed--or did possess--such
unusual powers of observation that they almost amounted to the
prophetic, where that which was bad was concerned. He saw Will in a
light in which no one else saw him, although already he, Peter, and
Jim had witnessed unpleasant dashes of that side of the man's
character which Elia seemed to read like an open book. However, he
could not abandon his task yet, but he changed his tactics.
"Maybe you're right, laddie," he said. "I was thinking of poor Eve. I
was wondering if you wouldn't like to try and make her happy, seeing
she's always been so good to you. I do believe you'd rather she was
happy."
The boy nodded his head, and an impish light crept into his eyes.
"And you're going to try and make her--happy?"
Peter was smiling with simple eager hope. The impish light deepened in
the boy's eyes.
"Maybe," he said. "Guess I'll do what I ken. When Will treats me fair
I'll treat him fair. I can't do a heap of work, seein' I'm as I am,
but if he wants me to do things I'll do 'em--if he treats me fair.
I'll do what I ken, but I hate him. Maybe you're guessin' that'll be
makin' things fair for Eve. You best guess agin." Then the impish
light left his eyes, and they became quite serious again. "Say, tell
me some more 'bout that gold?"
But Peter laughed and shook his head.
"Time enough, laddie," he said, pleased with the result of his first
essay on behalf of peace between Elia and Will. "You're going to get
that gold when we find it, sure, so come right along and let's get to
work--and find it."