THE OLD GOLD-HUNTER.
"_For the Right! as God has given
Man to see the Maiden Right!"
For the Right, through thickest night,
Till the man-brute Wrong be driven
From high places; till the Right
Shall lift like some grand beacon light._
_For the Right! Love, Right and duty;
Lift the world up, though you fall
Heaped with dead before the wall;
God can find a soul of beauty
Where it falls, as gems of worth
Are found by miners dark in earth._
Old Forty-nine had not cast his life and lot with John Logan at all. Yet
this singular and contradictory old man stood ready to lay down his
seemingly worthless life at a moment's notice for this boy whom he had
almost brought up from childhood. But he was not living with him in the
mountains. He had done all he could to protect him, to shelter and feed
him, all the time. But now the pursuit was so hot and desperate that the
old man, in his sober moments--rare enough, I admit--began to doubt if
it would be possible to save this young man much longer from the
clutches of the Agents. Indeed, it was only by the sweet persuasion of
Carrie that he had this time been induced to go with her and Johnny up
on the spur of the mountain, and there meet John Logan with some
provisions. From there he was persuaded to go with him to his
hiding-place, high up the mountain, where we left him in the last
chapter.
But the poor old man's head was soon under water again, as we have seen.
That keg of California wine and the few bits of bread and meat, which so
suddenly disappeared in the hands of Dosson and Emens, were all he
happened to have in the cabin when the two children came in at dusk. But
these he had snatched up at once and ran with them to Logan.
But the next morning, when his head was once more above water, and he
had been told all that had happened, he pulled his long white beard to
the right and to left, and at last rose up and took the two children and
led them back down the steep and stupendous mountain to his cabin. He
knew that John Logan was now a doomed man. Had he been alone, had there
been no one but himself and this hunted man, he would have stayed by his
side. As it was, it made the old man a year older to decide. And it was
like tearing his heart out by the roots, when he rose up, choking with
agony, grasped Logan's hand, bade him farewell, and led the children
hurriedly away. Once, twice, the old man stopped and turned suddenly
about, and looked sharply and almost savagely up the mountains, as if to
return. And then, each time he sighed, shook his head, and hurried on
down the hill. He held tightly on to the little brown hands of the
children, as if he feared that they, too, like himself, might let their
better natures master them, and so turn back and join the desolate and
hunted man.
That evening, after the old man had returned from his tunnel, and while
he prepared a meager meal from a few potatoes and a heel of bacon found
back in the corner of a shelf, and so hard that even the wood-rats had
refused to eat it, a passing fellow-miner put his heavy head and
shoulders in at the half open cabin and shouted out that a barn had been
burned in the valley, a house fired into, and the tomahawk of John Logan
found hard by. The children glanced at each other by the low fire-light.
But old Forty-nine only went on with his work as the head withdrew and
passed on, but he said never a word. He was very thoughtful all the
evening. He was now perfectly certain that his course had been the wise
one, the only prudent one in fact. Logan he knew was now beyond help. He
must use all his art and address to keep the children from further
peril. He made them promise to remain in his cabin, to never attempt to
reach Logan. He told them that their presence with him would only
greatly embarrass him in his flight; that they might be followed if they
attempted to reach him, and that he and they would then be taken and
sent to the Reservation together. But he told them further--and their
black eyes flashed like fire as he spoke in a voice tremulous with
emotion and earnestness--that if ever Logan came to that cabin hungry,
or for help of any kind, they should help him with every means in their
power.
And so the old man went back to work in his tunnel; and as the autumn
wore away and winter drew on, the children kept close about the little
old cabin, waiting, waiting, waiting; looking up toward the now white,
cold mountain, yet obeying Forty-nine to the letter.
Meantime the man-hunt went on; although the children knew nothing for a
long time of the deadly energy with which it was conducted.
What a strange place for two bright, budding children was this old, old
cabin, with its old, old man, and its dark and miserable interior! How
people shunned the lonely old place, and how it sank down into the earth
and among the weeds and willows, and long strong yellow tangled grass,
as if it wanted to be shunned!
On a dirty old shelf near the fire-place lay a torn and tattered book.
It was thumbed and thrumbed all to pieces from long and patient use.
When the wind blew through the chinks of the cabin, this old book seemed
to have life. It fluttered there like a wounded bird. Its leaves
literally whispered. This old book was a Bible.
More houses had been burned in the little valley, and the crime laid to
John Logan. He had now been proclaimed an outlaw in effect by every
settler. Those two men had made him so odious that many settlers had
vowed to shoot him on sight. Dosson at last went before a magistrate and
swore that John Logan had shot at him while in the performance of his
duty as a sub-agent of the Reservation. By this means he procured a
warrant for his arrest by the civil authorities, to be placed in the
hands of the newly elected sheriff of the newly organized and sparsely
settled country. Things looked desperate indeed. To add to the agony of
the crisis, a sharp and bitter winter now wrapped the whole world in
snow and ice. It was no longer possible for any one to subsist in the
mountains, or survive at all without fire and fire-arms. These the
hunted man did not dare use. They were witnesses that would betray his
presence, and must not be thought of.
All this time the old man and the children could do nothing. The
children hovered over the fire in the wretched old cabin. And what a
cold, cheerless place it was!
But if the interior of this old cabin was gloomy, that of the old tunnel
was simply terrible. Yet in this dark and dreadful place the old man had
spent nearly a quarter of a century.
I wonder if the glad, gay world knows where it gets its gold? Does that
fair woman, or well-clad, well-fed man, know anything about the life of
the gold-hunter? When the gold is brought to the light and given to the
commerce of the world, we see it shining in the sun. It is now a part of
the wealth of the nation. But do not forget that every piece of gold you
touch or see, or stand credited with at your bank, cost some brave man
blood, life!
This old Forty-nine, years before, when the camp was young, had found a
piece of gold-bearing quartz in a ledge on the top of a high, sharp
ridge, that pointed down into the canyon. This was before quartz mining
had been thought of. But the shrewd, thoughtful man saw that from this
source came all the gold in the placer. He could see that it was from
this vein that all the fine gold in the camp had been fed. He resolved
to strike at the fountain head. It was by accident he had made his
discovery. The high, sharp and narrow ridge was densely timbered, and
now that the miners had settled in the canyon below, the annual fires
would not be allowed to sweep over the country, and the woods would soon
be almost impenetrable. So argued Forty-nine. For all his mind was bent
on keeping his secret till he could pierce the mountains from the
canyon-level below, and strike the ledge in the heart of the great
high-backed ridge, where he felt certain the gold must lay in great
heaps and flakes and wedges. And so it was with a full heart and a
strong arm that he had begun his low, dark tunnel--all alone at the
bottom of the ridge.
He had begun his tunnel in a secluded place, under a tuft of dense wood,
on the steep hillside. He made the mouth of the tunnel very low and
narrow. At first he wheeled out the dirt in his wheelbarrow only when
the water in the canyon was high enough to carry off the earth which he
excavated. He worked very hard and kept very sober for a long time. Day
after day he expected to strike the ledge.
But day after day, week after week, month after month, stole away
between his fingers, and still no sign of the ledge. A year went by.
Then he struck a hard wall of granite. This required drills,
fuse-powder, and all the appliance of the quarry. He had to stop work
now and then and wash in the fast failing placers, to get money enough
to continue his tunnel. Besides, he now could make only a few inches
headway each week. Sometimes he would be a whole month making the length
of his pick-handle.
All this was discouraging. The man began to grow heart-sick. Who was
there at home waiting and waiting all this time? No one in the camp
could say. In fact, no one in the camp knew any thing at all about this
silent man, who seemed so superior to them all; and as the camp knew
nothing at all of the man, either his past or his present, as is usually
the case, it made a history of its own for him. And you may be certain
it was not at all complimentary to this exclusive and silent man of the
tunnel.
Two, three, four, five years passed. The camp had declined; miners had
either gone back to the States, gone to new mines, or gone up on the
little hill out of the canyon to rest together; and yet this man held on
to his tunnel. He was a little bit bent now from long stooping, waiting,
toiling, and there were ugly crows-feet about his eyes--eyes that had
grown dim and blood-shot from the five years glare of the single candle
in that tunnel.
And the man was not so exclusive now. The tunnel was now no secret. It
was spoken of now with derision, only to be laughed at.
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten years! The man has grown old. He is bent
and gray. But his faith, which the few remaining miners call a madness,
is still unbroken. Yet it is not in human nature to endure all this
agony of suspense, all this hope deferred from day to day, week to week,
month to month, year to year, and still be human. The man has, in some
sense, become a brute. He now is seen to reel and totter to his cabin,
late at night oftentimes. He has at last fallen into the habit of the
camp. He can drink, gamble, carouse, as late as the latest.
Now and then, it is true, he has his sober spells, and all the good of
his great nature is to the surface. Now he takes up a map and diagram
which is hidden under the broad stone of the hearth, and examines it,
measures and makes calculations by the hour at night, when all the camp
is, or ought to be, asleep.
Maybe it is the placing and displacing of this great stone that has
given rise to the story in the camp that the old man is not so poor as
he pretends. Maybe some of the rough men who hang about the camp have
watched him through the chink-holes in the wretched cabin some night,
and decided that it is gold which he keeps concealed under the great
hearthstone.
Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years! The man's hair is
long and hangs in strings. It is growing gray, almost white. Some men
have been trying to get into the bent old man's cabin at night to find
the buried treasure. The old man's double-barreled shot-gun has barked
in their faces; and there has been a thinly attended funeral. The camp
is low, miserable. The tide is out. Wrecks of rockers, toms, sluices,
flumes, derricks, battered pans, tom-irons, cradles, old cabin, strew
the sandy strand.
This last act has left the old man utterly alone; yet he is seen even
more frequently than before at the "Deadfall." Is he trying to forget
that man had died at his hand?
Now and then you see him leading a tawny boy about, and talking in a
low, tender way of better things than his life and appearance would
indicate. The man is still on the down grade. And yet how long he has
been on this decline! One would say he should be at the bottom by this
time.
When we reflect how very far a man can fall, we can estimate something
of the height in which he stands when fresh from his Maker's hand.
Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one years! The
iron-gray hair is white as the snow on the mountain-tops that environ
him. The tall man is bent as a tree is bent when the winter snow lies
heavily on its branches. The tawny boy is grown a man now. This is John
Logan, the fugitive. The two homeless children have long since taken his
place.
And still the pick clangs on in that dark, damp tunnel that is always
dripping, dripping, dripping, where it looks out at the glaring day, as
if in eternal tears for the wasted life within. Yet now there is hope.
New life has been infused into this old camp of late years. The tide is
flowing in. The placer mines have perished and passed into history. But
there is a new industry discovered. It is quartz mining--the very thing
that this old man has given his life to establish. And it is this that
has kept the old man up, alive, for the past few years. He is now
certain that he will strike it yet.
Is there some one waiting still, far away? We do not know. He does not
know now. Years and years ago, utterly discouraged, yet mechanically
keeping on, he ceased to write.
But now these two new lives here have ran into his. If he could only
strike it now! If he could only strike it for them!
It is mid-winter. The three are almost starving. Old Forty-nine has been
prudent, cautious, careful of the two helpless waifs thrown into his
hands. Could he, old, broken, destitute, friendless, stand up boldly
between the man-hunters and these children? Impossible. And so it is
that Dosson and Emens are not strangers at the old man's cabin now,
hateful as is their presence there to all. They are allowed to come and
go. And Dosson pays court to Carrie. They ply the old man with drink.
The poor, broken, brave old miner, still dreams and hopes that he will
strike it yet--and then! Sometimes he starts up in his sleep and strikes
out with his bony hands--as if to expel them from his cabin and keep
Carrie safe, sacred, pure. Then he sinks back with a groan, and Carrie
bends over him and her great eyes fill with tears.