The Westerners

by Stewart Edward White

  XIX

  THE BROAD WHITE ROAD

  Copper Creek had begun as a half-way house, and had ended as a camp.Thus the hotel was its oldest structure.

  Situated about half way between Rockerville and Custer, on the oldSpring Creek trail, it often happened that the stage running from Rapidto the last-named town would stop for the evening meal, or even for thenight, at the little log structure which Bill Martin had been sagaciousenough to erect there. The soil was good for potatoes, which waslucky, for Bill Martin could never have prospered as a hotel keeperpure and simple; because purity, simplicity, and temperance principleshave nothing to do with a Western inn. Bill cooked, made beds, andraised potatoes. Then a fortuitous "grub staker" discovered the GreatSnake lode. A town sprang up in the night, so Bill Martin hired BlackJack and built additions. And finally, since his food was good andcheap, it came to be the proper thing to eat late dinners at twodollars a week in the long dining-room of Bill Martin's new building.After the Little Nugget, a later but more enterprising venture, BillMartin's Prairie Dog, with its small office, its big eating room, itslittle square bedrooms above the office, and its ancient and mustycopies of distant journals, was acknowledged to be the most importantinstitution of the place.

  From the narrow, roofless stoop its proprietor looked out tranquilly onthe growth of the camp. He was a tall, cadaverous, facetiousindividual, slightly stooped, with thin impassive face, deep eyes, anda beard that seemed always just two days old. He spoke with a drawlthat was at first natural, but later, as the quaint old fellow grew toappreciate its humorous qualities, it took on a faint color ofaffectation. He adopted always the paternal attitude, as was clearlyhis right.

  Bill Martin was probably the only man who could have told you thehistory of Copper Creek, for he had been, through all of its changes ofpopulation, the one stable character. First came the original "grubstaker" and a score more like him--impecunious, giving, many of them,their labor and experience, in exchange for tools and provisionsfurnished them by a speculator in the towns. The speculator took halfof what was found. These men were hardy, bold, enduring, skilful.They grubbed about in the hills with the keen restless instinct of antsover a mould of earth, moving rapidly, pausing often, lighting finally,with an accuracy that to the outsider would have seemed somethingpreternatural, on the one quartz vein of the many, or the onesignificant lead in the multitude of systems that seamed the country inall directions. Thereupon they staked out claims with white pineposts, and blasted little troughs to show milk-white quartz or red orefilling. And finally they disappeared, like bats before daylight,leaving not an echo of themselves to recall their presence to the hillsin which they had toiled.

  Their places were taken by the speculator, the miner with a littlemoney, the small capitalist willing to invest and not unwilling to workwith his own hands. These men paid a certain modest amount to thefirst discoverers for the chance to take chances on the embryo mines.The prospector never had the patience to wait, or scheme, or develop,to the justification of a better price. The excitement of the chasewas his. He was a master who sketched, in bold comprehensive strokes,the design of a work which men patient in the little details must fillin with color and value. Having thus outlined the lifetimes of men,the prosperity of the whole great industry that was to be, he wascontent to move on to where a new and virgin country offered a freshcanvas to his creative genius. He was always poor, but he never pitiedhimself.

  The new owner, then, represented the investor. He expected noimmediate returns. He was willing to wait. Meanwhile he spent as muchtime in going over the fifty thousand square yards of his one claim ashis predecessor had in examining the whole twenty-five hundred squaremiles of the district. He carefully analyzed the lead, its tendencies,its virtues, its defects. When he had fully satisfied his mind, hesank neat, square-timbered shafts, from fifty to two hundred feet indepth, from which ramified tunnels, both across and along the drift.The debris he piled outside, without attempting to save its value. Inthis manner, gradually, he came to possess points of view from whichthe next purchaser of the claim could plainly see its worth andpossibilities.

  For this second proprietor never expected to make his profit from theore. That accrued later, and to another man. When the country becamea little known, the other man would happen along; he, in his turn,would be willing to invest; and the present holder of the property, themiddleman in this queerly constructed industry, could measure thesuccess of his undertaking by the difference between the price he hadpaid to the original "grub staker" and the price he now received fromthe future developer. Meanwhile, he worked hard with his hands.

  Thus the camp presented the phenomenon of a community prospering onnothing more tangible than hope. When the cabins began to crowdthicker and thicker between the walls of the little gulch, Bill Martinhad been forced to give up agriculture because of lack of room; so thatCopper Creek produced absolutely nothing, not even potatoes. Everycent of its present and actual value came from outside, either with themen themselves, or with some investor who brought in the price of wagesfor a contemplated improvement. Only as long as there existed in men'sminds the comparative certainty of a future stamp mill, by which thequartz could be made to give up its treasure, would the machinery oflife run well. Hope depended on confidence.

  The miners built themselves cabins in which to live, and so there cameinto being a town. It was a dusty, new little town; but venerable inits age--old air from the first. The cabins themselves were low anddark, flanking the street closely, a sort of monotone of brown, bywhich the stable, the saloon, and the hotel were thrown into strongerrelief; the one by virtue of its wide-open door, the other two becauseof their porch and painted front respectively. These structures heldthe eye. One noticed the cane chairs on the stoop; the bench outsidethe saloon; the dumped down saddles, the hay dust, the lazy loafersabout the stable. And always one drew aside instinctively to the edgeof the broad, white, dusty street, as if to let pass a horse race, or atrain of cars, or something equally swift and irresistible.

  The camp lived on each side of that river of blinding white; never init. Later, perhaps, when Copper Creek reached the industrial orproducing stage, and became domestic, it would be a Rubicon over whichcontending armies of small boys would dispute the supremacy of thenorth and south side of the town. Now it wore a constant air of beingquite empty. Perhaps nothing was more characteristic, struck the eyemore forcibly, lingered longer in the memory as the dominant note inthe impressionistic picture of the place, than this single silent road;not even the sombre cabins, or the great pine-clad hills, or the clearmountain air imparting a quality of its own to the very appearance ofthings, or the little singing brook that ran behind one row of cabinsand the stable, or the eagles wheeling and screaming so far up in theblue Western sky. The town seemed to draw back on either side of theroad to avoid spoiling its effect, over-awed by it, humbled by itsdignified solemnity. Copper Creek would have been willing to have itshistory recounted by that road, which was primarily, indeed, the causeof its being.

  And Bill Martin, in the cane chair of his stoop, the only man capableof recounting that history, owed most of his unique knowledge of eventsto the ancient thoroughfare. Men came from the lower gulch, abodetheir brief hour, and disappeared into the thin air of the upper curve.From one wing, across the white stage, out by the other wing, theactors changed; the setting remained always the same.

  Now each morning early the old innkeeper saw defile before his windowsthe Optimist, intent on developing his dream. A motley crew, theseOptimists, having little in common with one another but the innerspirit of hope. There was Old Mizzou, short, squat, grizzled,good-natured, with back-sloping, bald forehead, and a seven dollar suitof clothes, from which he suffered severely, because it was "storemade." He owned a little claim over beyond Ragged Top, on which hemade infinitesimal progress. No one seemed to believe it amounted tomuch, Old Mizzou least of all, but he was old, and he had lived thelife, and so he liked
to amuse himself still in playing at the game;contented to chip away a few slivers of rock in order to persuadehimself that he was a miner, to sip a little whiskey so that men mighthonor him as a drinker, to talk so loudly from his warm corner in theLittle Nugget that the sound of his voice might persuade him he was abold bad man; although everyone knew that Old Mizzou had never harmed afly.

  And then again, there was Jack Graham, the Easterner, but never thetenderfoot. His selections of claims had been judicious. He was notafraid of work. He had the good sense of the timely word, so the mentrusted and liked him, even though he was college-bred andquiet-mannered and a little aloof.

  And again, there was Dave Kelly, who was red-cheeked, and blushed, butwas a good man for all that; and Cheyenne Harry, who owned two claimsand never did any work on them; and Houston, the strongest man in thecamp; and, of course, the great Moroney. These, and a hundred likethem, were actual miners, wielding sledge, drill and pick. Besidesthem were others--Frosty, and the faro man, and Bill Martin, and thestable boys, and the proprietor of the New York Emporium, all of whomlived in ministering to the wants of a prosperity that was still in theair.

  Each morning the camp emptied itself into the hills. The claims wereusually held in partnership; when they were not, two of the men "tradedwork," so that they could labor in pairs. At rude forges near theshafts they sharpened their heavy steel drills, resembling crowbars,beating the red-hot point out with the sledges. Then one held, whilethe other struck--crash! Turn, crash! Turn, crash! And so on, inunwearying succession, until the hole became so clogged with thepowdered rock and the water poured in to cool the drill, that it had tobe spooned out with a special T-shaped instrument.

  After a time the hole would be deep enough. The operators would loadit, touch the fuse, scamper for shelter. The earth would becomecumbered with broken vein matter, and this had to be removedlaboriously with pick and shovel. When the shaft grew deeper, the fusewas cut a little longer, and the miners would climb out as fast as theycould on a notched pole. Cases have been known when that was not fastenough; as the time old Brady, the paralytic, was blown out along withthe vein filling, and died almost before the horse was saddled to gofor the doctor at Custer, fifteen miles away.

  The rock was hard and the immediate results invisible. Well earned wasthe title of Optimist, for that these coarse, untrained men should sodevote themselves to a futurity certainly indicated optimism, and of afine sort. If the capitalist should not come! The net result would bea few acres of hilly stony land, a well hole where there was no water,and an exhausted pocket-book.

  At noon some of the miners ate a lunch which they had brought withthem, heating coffee over the little fire used to warm the powder;while others picked up something in their own cabins. Bill Martin'stable entertained only the gambler, Graham, Cheyenne Harry, and twoother men, whom the camp laughingly designated as "proud." About fouror five o'clock, the workers returned from the claims. At six sharpBlack Jack served dinner to the entire camp. Then came the LittleNugget, a quiet smoke, a glass or so of whiskey, and a sound night'ssleep.

  Sometimes there was a celebration. One or two members of the littlecommunity were inclined to become a trifle over joyous too often fortheir health. The standard of humor and manners was not one of themost quiet and delicate. But, on the whole, Copper Creek was no worsenor better than a hundred other similar prospecting camps in the West.

  Naturally, to such a community, in the hobbledehoy stage of itsdevelopment, as it were, the advent of so strange a phenomenon as awoman was in the nature of an event. Later, when it had become used tothe sex and its possibilities and limitations, the personal relationmight become the motive of much very complicated action; but now itaccepted Molly as a bright spot of color on a gray canvas, as aholiday, as a fortuitous bit of music, as an unexpected burst ofsunshine in the winter. For all her strong feminine charm, she was tomost of them as sexless as a boy. They were too many; and she wasalone. The spectacle of one gigantic rivalry for her favor would havebeen grotesque, and no one has a keener instinctive sense of theridiculous than the Westerner. They accepted her fascination as a realbut impersonal influence. In her they honored the great abstraction,woman; and in himself each individual saw, not his own singlepersonality, but the blended apotheosis of the man of Copper Creek.Molly was held in partnership, each miner making not only his ownimpression for her good graces, but the camp's as well.

  And this without mawkish sentimentality or comic opera delicacy ofconduct. It must not be understood that the newcomer became anyromantic idol of the camp, or that the men displayed the old-fashionedcourtesy affected by the miners in Western romances. These werepioneers. Their lives were rough, and their conduct matched theirlives. When angry, they said very emphatic things in inelegantlanguage. When facetious, their jokes were apt to be as broad as theprairies themselves. When at their ease, they chewed tobacco, or atewith their knives, or forgot to wash their shirts that week, or sat intheir shirt sleeves with the collars of said garment wide open. Butthey never equalled the frankness of a Parisian soiree in talking of orjoking at some natural but usually unmentioned functions of life; norwere they ever without that solid bedrock of good nature which is theAmerican's saving grace. Molly Lafond led a safe life among thembecause she trusted them. In the face of that trust no one of themconceived the possibility of harming her. This feeling was personalhowever. Nobody would have felt called upon to protect her againstanyone who did conceive the possibility. In other words, she took justthe independent position in the community which would have beenaccorded to a man coming in from outside. She was a good comrade.

  In her elation at finally escaping the restrictions and pettybickerings of her life at the Indian agency, Molly had turned eagerlyfirst of all to the conquest of the masculine heart. This was theory,built up from a long course of romantic reading. The heroine always"ruled her little court." Molly would like to rule her little courtalso. She felt the genuineness of her fascination, the possession ofwhich she realized to the full degree--that sort of fascination whichsucceeds where beauty, intellect, spirituality fail. It was a power,great, untried, unmeasured. Naturally her first impulse was to testit, to use it. She luxuriated in it. Nothing could be more delightfulthan to command and be obeyed; to smile into answering, smiling faces;to frown and see swiftly, as in a mirrored reflection, the countenancesabout her become dark. That was natural.

  But after a little she found herself tiring of it. The game was tooeasy. Even from the first evening, when she had astounded and subduedthe whole community at one fell blow, she had never experienced theslightest difficulty in getting these men to like her. Why should she?She was young and pretty and dainty, and delicately commanding andwinsome, and she knew instinctively each man's weak point. One and allgave her unqualified approbation. There is no fun in assertingyourself, if everyone agrees with you; and to be a queen you mustmaintain your dignity and aloofness. It was a pose. You cannot behail-fellow with your subjects.

  So little by little, as the joy of out door life got into her veins, asit does into the veins of every healthy young creature in the open airof the Hills, she dropped the coquette. Then she first began toappreciate the real charm of things, and she was perfectly happy. Nota tiny cloud of regret veiled the tiniest corner of her skies.

  The cabin had been finished within the week, but under the advice ofthe builders she did not move into it until nearly a month later.

  A new shack never dries thoroughly in less than three weeks; and,besides, the sawdust from the new insect borings always pours down fromthe walls and ceilings in aggravating abundance. A dozen other houseswere placed at her disposal. The men were only too glad to double uptemporarily. But the summer air was warm, and Molly was by now as usedto the narrow confines of her canvas-top, as a yachtsman to the cabinof his boat. She declined their offers and continued to live in thewagon. She was quite content to wait thus. In the meantime she tookmuch delight in fixing up variou
s curtains, chaircovers and tableclothsfrom light fabrics unearthed at the New York Emporium, and incultivating carefully boxes of geraniums, almost the only garden flowerin the hills. Curiously enough she enjoyed this. Perhaps it was ahereditary bequest from her unsuspected New England ancestry.

  Jack Graham lent her many books, which she perused greedily. She hadnever seen a large city, or a boat, or a trolley car, or a tailor-madegown; but that counted little. Such things are not so much matters ofactual experience as of natural aptitude. Some people can go to Europeand get less out of it than do those who read steamer advertisements athome. Molly Lafond was keen of intellect and vivid of imagination, bythe aid of which two qualities she constructed for herself aculture--real, in spite of the fact that it was somewhat ill-balanced.

  She spent much of her time out of doors, but the road and the gulch sawlittle of her. Her delight was to strike directly back across thebrook, and up the overgrown hill, to the vast pine-clad heights above.There the castellated dikes frowned like mediaeval ramparts; the pineneedles were soft and slippery and fragrant underfoot; the breeze sweptby on swift wings, humming songs of the distant prairie; the littlesquirrels chattered and the big squirrels barked; the sun shone silverclear; and below, far down, the summits of other hills dropped away andaway like the tiers of some enormous amphitheatre, until the brownprairie suddenly flowed out from underneath and rose to the level ofthe eye. It was very far from everything up there. And then one couldgo through the dikes down into Juniper Gulch, where one would find awhole group of claims and one's friends at work on them.

  Molly grew to be an expert in the dip of quartz. She was accustomed toperch on a neighboring dikelet, near a claim, where she could enjoy thebreeze, and converse without too much effort. There she lookedcharming, and bothered the workers a little. All workers like to bebothered a little. It is a wise woman who does not bother them toomuch. The attention is flattering as long as it is not annoying. Whenthe men were below the surface of the ground she shouted down the shaftand insisted on a ride in the bucket. Or she rambled long delicioushours with Peter and the Kid, from whom she learned the philosophy ofhindsights and the pregnant possibilities of holes under tree roots.These two adored her beyond all measure. The homely, bristle-whiskeredanimal was always at her heels; the Kid was ever ready to wasteprecious cartridges on her behalf.

  They did much elaborate stalking after grouse, rabbits, and squirrels.Most of these approaches failed, for the reason that they were tooelaborate and too eager. Wild creatures seem to be sensitive totelepathic influences. A stolid Indian, whose fatalism does not permithim to become much excited, can often walk directly up to a flock ofducks, when a white man with a breech-loading gun and a desire for abag could not sneak within fifty rods. Instance also the well knownand uncanny knowledge of the common crow as to your possession offirearms. His proneness to distant flight when you are armed, and hissublime indifference to your approach when you are not, may arise notfrom a recognition of the instrument, but from a reading of the desirefor his slaughter.

  Be this as it may, the bagging of game was a rare enough event to throwall three into wild excitement. Usually, a grand rush was made in thedirection of the fallen. Peter arrived first, and danced, tip-toed,bristle-backed. Molly and the Kid were not far behind. Then cameshouts of proud joy and feminine shrieks at the gore. The story wasdetailed again and again of just how the shot was made. Peter agonizedthat he could not talk. Finally the grouse or squirrel was borneproudly down to fierce-moustached Black Jack, the cook, whoexpostulated and grumbled.

  "G' 'way, you two!" he growled. "Git out; don't want you around!Goin' t' bake! Vamoose! Ain't hired t' skin no squirrels or pluck nobirds. Cyan't be bothered. G' 'way, you two." Black Jack alwaystalked like this--in short, disconnected sentences.

  Then the girl would beg prettily, while the Kid, fully aware in whomdwelt the most effective persuasion, stood by, and Peter snuffed aroundin the forbidden kitchen. And finally Black Jack would yield, with avast show of bad grace.

  "All right, all right!" he would cry, shaking his great head. "Justthis once. Never again, mind you, never again. Cyan't be bothered.Wouldn't do it now, only just t' get rid of that dawg. That's it.Cyan't have no dawg around. Cyan't nohow."

  He took the partridge or squirrel, still grumbling.

  "Oh, thank you, _dear good_ Mr. Black Jack!" cried Molly. "And you'llsave me the wings and tail or the skin, won't you?"

  At this point Black Jack always exploded violently and bundled themout, taking a neatly avoided kick at Peter. Then he would watch themquite out of sight, after which he would expend the utmost care in theconcoction of wonderful stews or potpies.

  These clear, sunshiny, healthy days tanned Molly's skin to a goldenbrown, brightened her eye and her smile, and filled her strong youngbody with abounding health and vitality. Even her evenings did not inany way cloud her spirits. They were of bad influence, but why shouldshe know that? She was a delicious little animal, keen, shrewd, ofgood impulses, though her moral nature was quite untrained. Shepossessed instincts--strong instincts--which seemed arbitrarily toplace a limit beyond which she did not dream of going; but that, shethought, was because she did not care to go. The question of right orwrong, consciously chosen, never entered her calculations. Her onlystandard was her desire--and, perhaps a little, what Graham would thinkof her--but she did not bother her head one way or the other. She washappy, and was doing nothing she regretted. That was enough.

  And yet the evenings were not good--not good at all. They were boundto exercise a certain deleterious influence.

  By habit, Molly spent her time after dark on a corner of the bar at theLittle Nugget saloon. There she received attention. The peculiarityof her position lay in the fact that her good comradeship haddissipated constraint. The men talked and drank and gambled about asusual. It must be repeated that the girl was in no sense a romantic"idol of the camp." The miners would have been well enough pleased ifshe had drunk her whiskey with them as freely as they did with eachother. As she did not, they merely put the fact down to personalidiosyncrasy, like Dave Williams' horror of cooked rabbit. Rough mendo not demand the finer virtues, and she was treated to the reverseside of this idea. She saw what men call life. She learned the gameof faro and how men act who have won or lost at it. She gained aknowledge of the strength of whiskey and what men say who have drunk ofit. She heard loose speech; she saw loose conduct. All this is notnice for a young girl.

  The men felt especially drawn to her because she smoked papercigarettes gracefully. About ten o'clock she went to bed.

  These few days, between her first triumphant arrival and herestablishment in her new cabin, were the most care-free and happy ofher stay at Copper Creek. She lived thoughtlessly, conducting herselfexactly as she pleased, entertaining no regrets, conscious of no senseof wrongdoing, and therefore of no sense of guilt. Then a littleincident stirred into wakefulness that fine-wrought conscience which isan element of so many natures that draw their life from New England.