GOLD AND ALLOY
The seedling of success planted in rank soil generally develops a
wild, pernicious growth which, until the summer of its life has
passed, is untameable and pollutes all that with which it comes into
contact. The husbandman may pluck at its roots, but the seed is flung
broadcast, and he finds himself wringing his hands helplessly in the
wilderness.
So it was on the banks of Yellow Creek. The seedling was already
flinging its tendrils and fastening tightly upon the life of the
little camp. The change had come within three weeks of the moment when
the Padre had gazed upon that first wonderful find of gold. So rapid
was its development that it was almost staggering to the man who stood
by watching the result of the news he had first carried to the camp.
The Padre wandered the hills with trap and gun. Nothing could win him
from the pursuit which was his. But his eyes were wide open to those
things which had somehow become the care of his leisure. Many of his
evenings were spent in the camp, and there he saw and heard the things
which, in his working moments, gave him food for a disquietude of
thought.
He knew that the luck that had come to the camp was no ordinary luck.
His first find had suggested something phenomenal, but it was nothing
to the reality. A wealth almost incalculable had been yielded by a
prodigal Nature. Every claim into which he, with the assistance of the
men of the camp, had divided the find, measured carefully and balloted
for, was rich beyond all dreams. Two or three were richer than the
others, but this was the luck of the ballot, and the natural envy
inspired thereby was of a comparatively harmless character.
At first the thought of these things was one of a pleasant
satisfaction. These men had waited, and suffered, and starved for
their chance, and he was glad their chance had come. How many had
waited, and suffered and starved, as they had done, and done all those
things in vain? Yes, it was a pleasant thought, and it gave him zest
and hope in his own life.
The first days passed in a perfect whirlwind of joy. Where before had
sounded only the moanings of despair, now the banks of Yellow Creek
rang with laughter and joyous voices, bragging, hoping, jesting. One
and all saw their long-dimmed hopes looming bright in the prospect of
fulfilment.
Then came a change. Just at first it was hardly noticeable. But it
swiftly developed, and the shrewd mind of the watcher in the hills
realized that the days of halcyon were passing all too swiftly. Men
were no longer satisfied with hopes. They wanted realities.
To want the realities with their simple, unrestrained passions, and
the means of obtaining them at their disposal, was to demand them. To
demand them was to have them. They wanted a saloon. They wanted an
organized means of gambling, they wanted a town, with all its means of
satisfying appetites that had all too long hungered for what they
regarded as the necessary pleasures of life. They wanted a means of
spending the accumulations gleaned from the ample purse of mother
Nature. And, in a moment, they set about the work of possessing these
things.
As is always the case the means was not far to seek. It needed but one
mind, keener in self-interest than the rest, and that mind was to
hand. Beasley Melford, at no time a man who cared for the physical
hardships of the life of these people, saw his opportunity and
snatched it. He saw in it a far greater gold-mine than his own claim
could ever yield him, and he promptly laid his plans.
He set to work without any noise, any fuss. He was too foxy to shout
until his purpose was beyond all possibility of failure. He simply
disappeared from the camp for a week. His absence was noted, but no
one cared. They were too full of their own affairs. The only people
who thought on the matter were the Padre and Buck. Nor did they speak
of it until he had been missing four days. Then it was, one evening as
they were returning from their traps, the Padre gave some inkling of
what had been busy in his thoughts all day.
"It's queer about Beasley," he said, pausing to look back over a great
valley out of which they had just climbed, and beyond which the
westering sun was shining upon the distant snow-fields.
Buck turned sharply at the sound of his companion's voice. They were
not given to talking much out on these hills.
"He's been away nigh four days," he said, and took the opportunity of
shifting his burden of six freshly-taken fox pelts and lighting his
pipe.
The Padre nodded.
"I think he'll be back soon," he said. Then he added slowly: "It seems
a pity."
"His coming back?" Buck eyed his companion quickly.
"Yes."
"Wher' d'you reckon he's gone?"
The elder man raised a pair of astonished brows.
"Why, to Leeson Butte," he said decidedly. Then he went on quietly,
but with neither doubt nor hesitation: "There's a real big change
coming here--when Beasley gets back. These men want drink, they are
getting restless for high play. They are hankering for--for the
flesh-pots they think their gold entitles them to. Beasley will give
them all those things when he comes back. It's a pity."
Buck thought for some moments before he answered. He was viewing the
prospect from the standpoint of his years.
"They must sure have had 'em anyway," he said at last.
"Ye--es."
The Padre understood what was in the other's mind.
"You see," he went on presently, "I wasn't thinking of that so much.
It's--well, it amounts to this. These poor devils are just working to
fill Beasley's pockets. Beasley's the man who'll benefit by this
'strike.' In a few months the others will be on the road again, going
through all--that they've gone through before."
"I guess they will," Buck agreed. His point of view had changed. He
was seeing through the older eyes. After that they moved on toward
their home lost in the thoughts which their brief talk had inspired.
In a few days the Padre's prophecy was fulfilled. Beasley returned
from Leeson Butte at the head of a small convoy. He had contrived his
negotiations with a wonderful skill and foresight. His whole object
had been secrecy, and this had been difficult. To shout the wealth of
the camp in Leeson Butte would have been to bring instantly an
avalanche of adventurers and speculators to the banks of Yellow Creek.
His capital was limited to the small amount he had secretly hoarded
while his comrades were starving, and the gold he had taken from his
claim. The latter was his chief asset not from its amount, but its
nature. Therefore he had been forced to take the leading merchant in
the little prairie city into his confidence, and to suggest a
partnership. This he had done, and a plausible tongue, and the sight
of the wonderful raw gold, had had the effect he desired. The
partnership was arranged, the immediate finance was forthcoming, and,
for the time at least, Leeson Butte was left in utter ignorance of its
neighboring Eldorado.
Once he had made his deal with Silas McGinnis, Beasley promptly opened
his heart in characteristic fashion.
"They're all sheep, every one of 'em," he beamed upon his confederate.
"They'll be so easy fleecin' it seems hardly worth while. All they
need is liquor, and cards, and dice. Yes, an' a few women hangin'
around. You can leave the rest to themselves. We'll get the gilt, and
to hell with the dough under it. Gee, it's an elegant proposition!"
And he rubbed his hands gleefully. "But ther' must be no delay. We
must get busy right away before folks get wind of the luck. I'll need
marquees an' things until I can get a reg'lar shanty set up. Have you
got a wood spoiler you can trust?"
McGinnis nodded.
"Then weight him down with money so we don't need to trust him too
much, and ship him out with the lumber so he can begin right away.
We're goin' to make an elegant pile."
In his final remark lay the key-note of his purpose. But the truth of
it would have been infinitely more sure had the pronoun been singular.
Never was so much popularity extended to Beasley in his life as at the
moment of his return to camp. When the gold-seekers beheld his convoy,
with the wagons loaded with all those things their hearts and stomachs
craved, the majority found themselves in a condition almost ready to
fling welcoming arms about his neck. Their wishes had been expressed,
their demands made, and now, here they were fulfilled.
A rush of trade began almost before the storekeeper's marquee was
erected. It began without regard to cost, at least on the purchasers'
parts. The currency was gold, weighed in scales which Beasley had
provided, and his exorbitant charges remained quite unheeded by the
reckless creatures he had marked down for his victims.
In twenty-four hours the camp was in high revelry. In forty-eight
Beasley's rough organization was nearing completion. And long before
half those hours had passed gold was pouring into the storekeeper's
coffers at a pace he had never even dreamed of.
But the first rush was far too strenuous to be maintained for long.
The strain was too great even for such wild spirits as peopled the
camp. It soared to its height with a dazzling rapidity, culminating in
a number of quarrels and fights, mixed up with some incipient
shooting, after which a slight reaction set in which reduced it to a
simmer at a magnificently profitable level for the foxy storekeeper.
Still, there remained ample evidence that the Devil was rioting in the
camp and would continue to do so just as long as the lure of gold
could tempt his victims.
Then came the inevitable. In a few days it became apparent that the
news of the "strike" had percolated abroad. Beasley's attempt at
secrecy had lasted him just sufficiently long to establish himself as
the chief trader. Then came the rush from the outside.
It was almost magical the change that occurred in one day. The place
became suddenly alive with strangers from Leeson Butte and Bay Creek,
and even farther afield. Legitimate traders came to spy out the land.
Loafers came in and sat about waiting for developments. Gamblers,
suave, easy, ingratiating, foregathered and started the ball of high
stakes rolling. And in their wake came all that class of carrion which
is ever seeking something for nothing. But the final brand of
lawlessness was set on the camp by the arrival of a number of jaded,
painted women, who took up their abode in a disused shack sufficiently
adjacent to Beasley's store to suit their purposes. It was all very
painful, all very deplorable. Yet it was the perfectly natural
evolution of a successful mining camp--a place where, before the firm
hand of Morality can obtain its restraining grip, human nature just
runs wild.
The seedling had grown. Its rank tendrils were everywhere reaching out
and choking all the better life about it. Its seeds were scattered
broadcast and had germinated as only such seeds can. It only remained
for the husbandman to gaze regretful and impotent upon his handiwork.
His hand had planted the seedling, and now--already the wilderness was
beyond all control.
Something of this was in the Padre's mind as he sat in his doorway
awaiting Buck's return for the night. The dusk was growing, and
already the shadows within the ancient stockade were black with
approaching night. The waiting man had forgotten his pipe, so deeply
was he engrossed with his thoughts, and it rested cold in his powerful
hand.
He sat on oblivious of everything but that chain of calm reasoning
with which he tried to tell himself that the things happening down
there on the banks of the Yellow Creek must be. He told himself that
he had always known it; that the very fact of this lawlessness pointed
the camp's prosperity, and showed how certainly the luck had come to
stay. Later, order would be established out of the chaos, but for the
moment there was nothing to be done but--wait. All this he told
himself, but it left him dissatisfied, and his thoughts concentrated
upon the one person he blamed for all the mischief. Beasley was the
man--and he felt that wherever Beasley might be, trouble would never
be far----What was that?
An unusual sound had caught and held his attention. He rose quickly
from his seat and stood peering out into the darkness which he had
failed to notice creeping on him. There was no mistaking it. The sound
of running feet was quite plain. Why running?
He turned about and moved over to the arm rack. The next moment he was
in the doorway again with his Winchester at his side.
A few moments later a short, stocky man leapt out of the darkness and
halted before him. As the Padre recognized him his finger left the
trigger of his gun.
"For Gawd's sake don't shoot, Padre!"
It was Curly Saunders' voice, and the other laid his gun aside.
"What's amiss?" demanded the Padre, noting the man's painful gasping
for breath.
For a moment Curly hesitated. Then, finally, between heavy breaths he
answered the challenge.
"I got mad with the Kid--Soapy," he said. "Guess I shot him up. He
ain't dead an' ain't goin' to die, but Beasley, curse him, set 'em on
to lynch me. They're all mad drunk--guess I was, too, 'fore I started
to run--an' they come hot foot after me. I jest got legs of 'em an'
come along here. It's--it's a mighty long ways."
The Padre listened without moving a muscle--the story so perfectly
fitted in with his thoughts.
"The Kid isn't dead? He isn't going to die?" His voice had neither
condemnation nor sympathy in it.
"No. It's jest a flesh wound on the outside of his thigh."
"What was the trouble?"
"Why, the durned young skunk wus jest tryin' to set them--them women
payin' a 'party' call on the gal at the farm, an' they wus drunk
enough to do it. It made me mad--an'--an', wal, we got busy with our
tongues, an' I shot him up fair an' squar'."
"And how about Beasley?"
"Why, it was him set the Kid to git the women on the racket. When he
see how I'd stopped it he got madder than hell, an' went right out fer
lynchin' me. The boys wus drunk enough to listen to his lousy talk."
"Was he drunk?"
"Not on your life. Beasley's too sweet on the dollars. But I guess
he's got his knife into that Golden Woman of ours."
The Padre had no more questions to ask. He dropped back into the room
and lit the oil lamp.
"Come right in, Curly," he said kindly. Then he laid his rifle on the
table and pointed at it. "The magazine's loaded plumb up. Guess no man
has a right to give up his life without a kick. That'll help you if
they come along--which they won't. Maybe Buck'll be along directly.
Don't shoot him down. Anyway he's got Caesar with him--so you'll know.
I'm going down to the camp."
For a second the two men looked into each other's eyes. The Padre read
the suspicion in Curly's. He also saw the unhealthy lines in his
cheeks and round his mouth. Nor could he help feeling disgusted at the
thoughts of the fortune that had come to the camp and brought all
these hideous changes in its wake.
He shook his head.
"I'm not giving you away," he said. "Guess I'll be back in an hour."
Curly nodded and moved over to one of the two chairs.
"Thanks, Padre," he said as the other passed quickly out of the room.