You would have to have seen it to have gathered a true impression—the
stubby roughness of the country, the rocks, the poverty of the soil,
the poorness of the houses, barns, agricultural implements, horses and
cattle and even human beings, in consequence—especially human beings,
for why should they, any more than any other product of the soil,
flourish where all else was so poor?
It was old Judge Blow who first discovered that “Jack,” or zinc, was
the real riches of Taney, if it could be said to have had any before
“Jack” was discovered. Months before the boom began he had stood beside
a smelter in far-off K—— one late winter afternoon and examined with a
great deal of care the ore which the men were smelting, marveling at
its resemblance to certain rocks or boulders known as “slug lumps” in
his home county.
“What is this stuff?” he asked of one of the bare-armed men who came
out from the blazing furnace after a time to wipe his dripping face.
“Zinc,” returned the other, as he passed his huge, soiled palm over his
forehead.
“We have stuff down in our county that looks like that,” said the judge
as he turned the dull-looking lump over and considered for a while.
“I’m sure of it—any amount.” Then he became suddenly silent, for a
thought struck him.
“Well, if it’s really ‘Jack,’” said the workman, using the trade or
mining name for it, “there’s money in it, all right. This here comes
from St. Francis.”
The old judge thought of this for a little while and quietly turned
away. He knew where St. Francis was. If this was so valuable that they
could ship it all the way from southeast B——, why not from Taney? Had
he not many holdings in Taney?
The result was that before long a marked if secret change began to
manifest itself in Taney and regions adjacent thereto. Following the
private manipulations and goings to and fro of the judge one or two
shrewd prospectors appeared, and then after a time the whole land was
rife with them. But before that came to pass many a farmer who had
remained in ignorance of the value of his holdings was rifled of them.
Old Bursay Queeder, farmer and local ne’er-do-well in the agricultural
line, had lived on his particular estate or farm for forty years, and
at the time that Judge Blow was thus mysteriously proceeding to and fro
and here and there upon the earth, did not know that the rocks against
which his pair of extra large feet were being regularly and bitterly
stubbed contained the very wealth of which he had been idly and
rather wistfully dreaming all his life. Indeed, the earth was a very
mysterious thing to Bursay, containing, as it did, everything he really
did not know. This collection of seventy acres, for instance—which
individually and collectively had wrung more sweat from his brow and
more curses from his lips than anything else ever had—contained,
unknown to him, the possibility of the fulfilment of all his dreams.
But he was old now and a little queer in the head at times, having
notions in regard to the Bible, when the world would come to an end,
and the like, although still able to contend with nature, if not with
man. Each day in the spring and summer and even fall seasons he could
be seen on some portion or other of his barren acres, his stubby beard
and sparse hair standing out roughly, his fingers like a bird’s claws
clutching his plough handles, turning the thin and meagre furrows
of his fields and rattling the stony soil, which had long ceased to
yield him even a modicum of profit. It was a bare living now which he
expected, and a bare living which he received. The house, or cabin,
which he occupied with his wife and son and daughter, was dilapidated
beyond the use or even need of care. The fences were all decayed save
for those which had been built of these same impediments of the soil
which he had always considered a queer kind of stone, useless to man
or beast—a “hendrance,” as he would have said. His barn was a mere
accumulation of patchboards, shielding an old wagon and some few scraps
of machinery. And the alleged corn crib was so aged and lopsided
that it was ready to fall. Weeds and desolation, bony horses and as
bony children, stony fields and thin trees, and withal solitude and
occasional want—such was the world of his care and his ruling.
Mrs. Queeder was a fitting mate for the life to which he was doomed.
It had come to that pass with her that the monotony of deprivation was
accepted with indifference. The absence or remoteness of even a single
modest school, meeting house or town hall, to say nothing of convenient
neighbors, had left her and hers all but isolated. She was irascible,
cantankerous, peculiar; her voice was shrill and her appearance
desolate. Queeder, whom she understood or misunderstood thoroughly,
was a source of comfort in one way—she could “nag at him,” as he said,
and if they quarreled frequently it was in a fitting and harmonious
way. Amid such a rattletrap of fields and fences bickering was to be
expected.
“Why don’t yuh take them thar slug lumps an’ make a fence over thar?”
she asked of Queeder for something like the thousandth time in ten
years, referring to as many as thirty-five piles of the best and almost
pure zinc lying along the edges of the nearest field, and piled there
by Bursay,—this time because two bony cows had invaded one of their
corn patches. The “slug lumps” to which she referred could not have
been worth less than $2,000.
For as many as the thousandth time he had replied:
“Well, fer the land sakes, hain’t I never got nuthin’ else tuh do?
Yuh’d think them thar blame-ding rocks wuz wuth more nor anythin’ else.
I do well enough ez ’tis to git ’em outen the sile, I say, ‘thout
tryin’ tuh make fences outen ’em.”
“So yuh say—yuh lazy, good-fer-nuthin’ ole tobacco-chewin’ ——,” here
a long list of expletives which was usually succeeded by a stove lid
or poker or a fair-sized stick of wood, propelled by one party or the
other, and which was as deftly dodged. Love and family affection, you
see, due to unbroken and unbreakable propinquity, as it were.
But to proceed: The hot and rainy seasons had come and gone in
monotonous succession during a period of years, and the lumps still
lay in the field. Dode, the eldest child and only son—a huge, hulking,
rugged and yet bony ignoramus, who had not inherited an especially
delicate or agreeable disposition from his harried parents—might have
removed them had he not been a “consarned lazy houn’,” his father said,
or like his father, as his mother said, and Jane, the daughter, might
have helped, but these two partook of the same depressed indifference
which characterized the father. And why not, pray? They had worked
long, had had little, seen less and hoped for no particular outlet for
their lives in the future, having sense enough to know that if fate
had been more kind there might have been. Useless contention with an
unyielding soil had done its best at hardening their spirits.
“I don’t see no use ploughin’ the south patch,” Dode had now remarked
for the third time this spring. “The blamed thing don’t grow nuthin’.”
“Ef yuh only half ’tended it instid o’ settin’ out thar under them thar
junipers pickin’ yer teeth an’ meditatin’, mebbe ’twould,” squeaked
Mrs. Queeder, always petulant or angry or waspish—a nature soured by
long and hopeless and useless contention.
“No use shakin’ up a lot uv rocks, ez I see,” returned Dode, wearily
and aimlessly slapping at a fly. “The hull place ain’t wuth a hill o’
beans,” and from one point of view he was right.
“Why don’t yuh git off’n hit then?” suggested Queeder in a tantalizing
voice, with no particular desire to defend the farm, merely with an
idle wish to vary the monotony. “Ef hit’s good enough tuh s’port yuh,
hit’s good enough to work on, I say.”
“S’port!” sniffed the undutiful Dode, wearily, and yet humorously and
scornfully. “I ain’t seed much s’port, ez I kin remember. Mebbe ye’re
thinkin’ uv all the fine schoolin’ I’ve had, er the places I’ve been.”
He slapped at another fly.
Old Queeder felt the sneer, but as he saw it it was scarcely his fault.
He had worked. At the same time he felt the futility of quarreling
with Dode, who was younger and stronger and no longer, owing to many
family quarrels, bearing him any filial respect. As a matter of fact
it was the other way about. From having endured many cuffs and blows
in his youth Dode was now much the more powerful physically, and in
any contest could easily outdo his father; and Queeder, from at first
having ruled and seen his word law, was now compelled to take second,
even third and fourth, place, and by contention and all but useless
snarling gain the very little consideration that he received.
But in spite of all this they lived together indifferently. And day
after day—once Judge Blow had returned to Taney—time was bringing
nearer and nearer the tide of mining and the amazing boom that went
with it. Indeed every day, like a gathering storm cloud, it might
have been noted by the sensitive as approaching closer and closer,
only these unwitting holders were not sensitive. They had not the
slightest inkling as yet of all that was to be. Here in this roadless,
townless region how was one to know. Prospectors passed to the north
and the south of them; but as yet none had ever come directly to this
wonderful patch upon which Queeder and his family rested. It was in
too out-of-the-way a place—a briary, woodsy, rocky corner.