CHAPTER VI
LONG JOHN BUTTERFIELD
"Boys," said my father next morning, "I've been thinking over thisdiscovery of ours. It won't do to wait till you've finished theice-cutting to notify Tom Connor. He has been a good friend to us, and Ifeel that we owe him some return for enabling me to get this piece ofland from Yetmore, even though it was, in a manner, accidental; and asTom is sure to go off prospecting in the spring, whether or no, we mayas well give him the chance--if he wants it--to go hunting for thissupposed vein of galena."
"He's pretty sure to want to," said I.
"Yes, I think he is. And as Yetmore will certainly find out the natureof the black sand, and will be sending out a prospector or two himselfas soon as the snow clears off, we must at least give Tom an equalchance. So, instead of waiting for you to finish cutting the ice, I'llwrite him a letter at once, telling him all about it, and send it up bythis morning's coach."
One of the advantages to us of the frosty weather was that the mailcoach between San Remo and Sulphide came our way instead of taking thehill-road, so that during the winter months we received our mail daily,whereas, through the greater part of the year, while the "forty rods"were "bottomless," we had to go ourselves to San Remo to get it. Thecoach, going up, passed our place about ten in the morning, and by it myfather sent the promised letter.
We quite expected that Tom would come flying down at once, but insteadwe received from him next morning a reply, stating that he could notleave his work, and asking my father to allow us boys to do a littleprospecting for him--which, I may say, we boys were ready enough to doif my father did not object.
He did not object; being, indeed, very willing that we should put in aday's work for the benefit of our friend. For, as he said, to undertakeone day's prospecting for a friend was a very different matter fromtaking to prospecting as a business.
It is a fascinating pursuit; men who contract the prospecting diseaseseldom get the fever entirely out of their systems again, and it wasfor this reason my father was so set against it, considering that nogreater misfortune could befall two farmer-boys like ourselves than tobe drawn into such a way of life. Now that we were seventeen years old,however, and might be supposed to have some discretion, he had littlefear for Joe and me, knowing, as he did, that we shared his sentiments.We had seen enough of the life of the prospector to understand that amore precarious way of making a living could hardly be invented.
How many men get rich at it? I have heard it estimated at one man infive thousand; and whether this estimate--or, rather, this guess--isright or wrong, it shows the trend of opinion.
Suppose a prospector does strike a vein of ore: what is the commonresult? By the time he has sunk a shaft ten feet deep he must have awindlass and a man to work it, and being in most cases too poor to hirea miner, his only way of getting help is to take in a partner. The twogo on sinking, until presently the hole is too deep to use a windlassany more--a horse-whim is needed and then a hoisting engine. But it isseldom that the ore dug out of a shaft will pay the expense of sinkingit--for powder and drills, ropes, buckets and timbers, are expensivethings--much less enable the owner to lay by anything, and theprobability is that to buy a hoisting engine he must sell anotherportion of his claim. And so it goes, until, by the time his claim hasbeen turned into a mine--for, as the common and very true saying is,"Mines are made, not found"--his share of it will probably have beenreduced to one-quarter or less; while it is quite within the limits ofprobability that, becoming wearied by long waiting for the slowdevelopment of his prospect, he will have sold out for what he can getand gone back to his old life.
But though I do not advocate the business of prospecting as a way ofmaking a living--I had rather pitch hay or dig potatoes myself--I am farfrom wishing to disparage the prospector himself or to belittle theresults of his work. He is the pioneer of civilization; and personallyhe is generally a fine fellow. At the same time, as in every otherprofession, the ranks of the prospectors include their share of theriff-raff. It was so in our district, and we were destined shortly tocome in contact with one of them.
Tom Connor in his letter instructed us as to what he wished us to do: itwas very simple. He asked us to walk up the little canyon along which ourstream flowed, when it did flow, and to examine the bed of each of itsfeeders as we came to them, to determine, if possible, which of thebranch streams it was that brought down the powdered lead-ore. He alsosuggested that we get out some more of the black sand from the bottom ofthe pool for him to see, and at the same time ascertain, if we could,how much of a deposit there was there.
The last request we performed first. Taking down to the pool a long,pointed iron rod, we lowered it into the water, marking the depth bytying a bit of string round the rod at high-water-mark, and then bored ahole down through the frozen sand until we struck bed-rock. By thismeans we discovered that the deposit was five inches thick at the upperend of the pool. A few feet further from the waterfall, however, thedeposit was thicker, but we noticed at the same time that the ground icewhich came up carried with it more or less yellow sand. The further weretreated from the waterfall, too, the larger became the proportion ofyellow sand, until towards the edge of the pool it had taken the placeof the black sand altogether.
Having done this, we poked up a lot of the ground ice, which wecollected and put into a tin bucket, and taking this home we melted theice, poured off the water, and made a little parcel of the sand thatremained.
A few days later we had finished our ice-cutting and had stowed away thecrop in the ice-house, when we were at length free to go off and makethe little prospecting expedition that Tom had asked us to undertake.
First walking up the bed of the canyon, where the water was nowrepresented by sheets of crackling white ice, we arrived presently atthe first branch creek which came in on the right. This we ascended inturn, going some distance up it before we found a likely patch of sand,into which we chopped a hole with the old hatchet we had brought for thepurpose, disclosing a little of the black material at the bottom; thoughthe amount was so scanty that we could not be sure it was really theblack sand we were seeking.
Going on up this branch creek, much impeded by the snow which becamedeeper and deeper the higher we ascended, we were nearing one of thebends when Joe, who was in advance, suddenly stopped, exclaiming:
"Look there, Phil! Tracks coming down the bank. Somebody is ahead ofus."
"So there is," said I. "What can he be doing, I wonder?"
Following these tracks a short distance, we very soon discovered thereason for their being there. The man was on the same quest asourselves!
In a bend of the stream where the snow lay two feet thick, he had dug ahole down to the sand, and then through the sand itself to bed-rock. Atthe bottom of the hole was a little black sand, showing the marks of ahatchet or knife-blade where it had been gouged out, but all around thehole, between the bed-rock and the yellow sand above, was a black linean inch thick, composed of the shiny, powdered galena ore. There couldbe no doubt that the man ahead of us was hunting the same game as wewere.
"Do you suppose it's Yetmore, Joe?" said I.
"No," Joe answered, emphatically, "I'm sure it isn't. Look at histracks: they are bigger than mine."
"It can't be Tom, himself, can it?"
"No, I'm pretty sure it isn't Tom either. Tom is a big, powerful fellow,all right, but he's not more than five feet ten, while this man, Ithink, is extra-tall--see the length of his stride where he came downthe bank. Whoever he is, though, Phil, he's an experienced prospector.He hasn't wasted his time, as we have, trying unlikely places, but haschosen this spot and gone slap down through snow and everything, just asif he knew that the black sand would be found at the bottom."
"That's true," said I. "I wonder who it is. We must find out if we can,Joe, so that we may be able to tell Tom who his competitor is. Let'sfollow his tracks."
Getting out of the creek-bed again, we walked along the bank for nearlya mile, until Joe, stopping sho
rt, held up his finger.
"Hark!" he whispered. "Somebody chopping."
There was a sound as of metal being struck against stone somewhere aheadof us, so on we went again, making as little noise as possible, untilpresently Joe stopped again, and pointing forward, said softly, "Therehe is, look!"
The man was down in the creek-bed again, and all we could see of himabove the bank was his hat. We therefore went forward once more, timingour steps by the blows of the hatchet, until we could see the man's headand shoulders; but we did not gain much by that, as he had his back tous and was too intent upon his work to turn round. At length, however,he ceased chopping, and gathering the chips of frozen sand in his hands,he cast them to one side. In doing so, he showed his face for a moment,and in that brief glimpse I recognized who it was.
Joe looked at me with raised eyebrows, as much as to say, "Do you knowhim?" to which I replied with a nod, and laying my hand on mycompanion's arm, I drew him back until only the top of the man's hat wasvisible again, when I whispered, "It's Long John Butterfield."
"What! The man they call 'The Yellow Pup'? How do you suppose _he_ cameto hear of the black sand?"
"From Yetmore. He is a prospector whom Yetmore grub-stakes everysummer."
"'Grub-stakes,'" repeated Joe, inquiringly.
"Yes. Some prospectors go out on their own account, you know, but someof them are 'grub-staked.' This man is employed by Yetmore. He sendshim out prospecting every spring, providing him with tools and 'grub'and paying him some small wages. Whether it is part of the bargain thatLong John is to get any share of what he may find, I don't know, butprobably it is--that is the general rule. There is very little doubtthat Yetmore has sent him out now, just as Tom has sent us out, to seewhich stream the lead-ore in the pool came from."
"Not a doubt of it. Well, shall we go ahead and speak to him?"
Before I could reply, the man himself rose up, looked about him, and atonce espied us. At seeing us standing there silently watching him, hegave a not-unnatural start of alarm, but perceiving that he had only twoboys to deal with, even if we were pretty big, he climbed up the bankand advanced towards us with a threatening air.
Standing six feet five inches in his over-shoes, he was a ratherformidable-looking object as he came striding down upon us, a shovel inone hand and a hatchet in the other; but as we knew him by reputationfor a blusterer and a coward, we awaited his coming without any alarmfor our safety.
Long John Butterfield was a well-known character in Sulphide. Though aprospector all summer, he was a bar-room loafer all winter, spending histime hanging around the saloons, and doing only work enough in the wayof odd jobs to keep himself from starving until spring came round again,when Yetmore would provide for him once more.
It had formerly been his ambition to pass for a "bad man," though hefound it difficult to maintain that reputation among the unbelievingcitizens of Sulphide, who knew that he valued his own skin far toohighly to risk it seriously. He had been wont to call himself "TheWolf," desiring to be known by that title as sounding sufficientlyfierce and "bad," and being of a most unprepossessing appearance, withhis matted hair, retreating forehead, long, sharp nose and projectingears, he did represent a wolf pretty well--though, still better, acoyote.
As the people of Sulphide, however, declined to take him at his ownvaluation, greeting his frequent outbreaks of simulated ferocity withderisive jeers--even the small boys used to scoff at him--he was reducedto practising his arts upon strangers, which he always hastened to dowhen he thought it was not likely to be dangerous. Unluckily for him,though, he once tried one of his tricks upon an inoffensive newcomer,with a result so unexpected and unwelcome that his only desirethereafter was that people should forget that he had ever called himself"The Wolf"--a desire in which his many acquaintances, whetherworking-men or loafers, readily accommodated him. But as they playfullysubstituted the less desirable title of "The Yellow Pup," Long Johngained little by the move.
It happened in this way: There came out from New York at one time ayoung fellow named Bertie Van Ness, a nephew of Marsden, the cattle man,some of whose stock we were feeding that winter. He arrived at Sulphideby coach one morning, and before going on to Marsden's he stepped intoYetmore's store to buy himself a pair of riding gauntlets. Long John wasin there, and seeing the well-dressed, dapper little man, with his whitecollar and eastern complexion--not burned red by the Colorado sun, asall of ours are--he winked to the assembled company as much as to say,"See me take a rise out of the tenderfoot," sidled up to Bertie, who wasa foot shorter than himself, leaned over him, and putting on his worstexpression, said, in a harsh, growling voice, "I'm 'The Wolf.'"
It was a trick that had often been successful before: peace-lovingstrangers, not knowing whom they had to deal with, would usually backaway and sometimes even take to their heels, which was all that LongJohn desired. In the present instance, however, the "bad man"miscalculated. The little stranger, seeing the ugly face within a footof his own, withdrew a step, and without waiting for the formality of anintroduction, struck "The Wolf" a very sharp blow upon the end of hisnose, at the same time remarking, "Howl, then, you beast."
Long John did howl. Clapping his hands over his face, he retreated,roaring, from the store, amid the enthusiastic plaudits of thosepresent.
Thus it was that the name of "The Wolf" fell into disuse and the title,"Yellow Pup," was substituted; and if at any time thereafter Long Johnbecame obstreperous or in any way made himself objectionable, it wasonly necessary for some one in company to say "Bow-wow," when theoffender would forthwith efface himself, with promptness and dispatch.
This was the man who came striding down upon Joe and me, looking asthough he were going to eat us up at a mouthful and think nothing of it.Doubtless he supposed that, being country boys, we had not heard thestory of Bertie Van Ness, for, advancing close to us he said fiercely:
"What you doing here? Be off home! Do you know who _I_ am? I'm 'TheWolf'!"
"So I've heard," said I, calmly; a remark which took all the wind out ofthe gentleman's sails at once. He collapsed with ridiculous suddenness,and with a sheepish grin, said, "I was only just a-trying you, boys, tosee if you was easy scart."
"Well, you see we're not," remarked Joe. "What are _you_ doing up here?Pretty early for prospecting, isn't it?"
"Not any earlier for me than it is for you," replied Long John, with aglance at the hatchet in Joe's hand. He was sharp enough.
Joe laughed. "That's true," said he. "I suppose we're both hunting thesame thing. Did you find any of it in that hole up there?"
Long John hesitated. He would have preferred to lie about it, probably,but knowing that we could go and see for ourselves in a couple ofminutes, he made a virtue of necessity and replied:
"Yes, there's some of it there; but it don't amount to much. I guess thevein ain't worth looking for. Come and see."
We walked forward and looked into the hole Long John had chopped, whenwe saw that his prospector's instinct had hit upon the right placeagain. Here also was a black streak an inch thick below the yellow sand.
It was evident that the vein of galena was somewhere up-stream, thoughwe ourselves were unable to judge from the amount of the deposit whetherit was likely to be big or little. Long John might be telling the truthwhen he "guessed" that it was not worth looking for, though, from whatwe knew of him, we, in turn, "guessed" that what he said was most likelyto be the opposite of what he thought.
We could not tell, either, whether our new acquaintance was speakingthe truth when he declared that he was satisfied with his day's work andhad already decided to go home again; I think it rather likely that,being unable to devise any scheme for shaking us off, and not caring toact as prospector for us as well as for Yetmore, he preferred to go backat once and report progress. He was right, at any rate, in saying thatthe drifts ahead were too deep to admit of further prospecting; for themountains began to close in just here, and the snow was becoming prettyheavy.
Nevertheless,
Joe and I thought we would try a little further, if onlyfor the reason that Long John would not, and we were about to partcompany, when we were startled to hear a voice above our heads say,"Good-morning," and, looking quickly up, we saw, seated on a deadbranch, a raven, to all appearance asleep, with his feathers fluffed outand his head sunk between his shoulders.
That it was our friend, Socrates, we could not doubt, and we looked allaround for the hermit, but as there was no one to be seen, Joe,addressing the raven, said:
"Hallo, Sox! Where's your master?"
"Chew o' tobacco," replied the raven.
At this Long John burst out laughing. "Well, you're a cute one," saidhe; and thrusting his hand into his pocket he brought out a piece oftobacco which he invited Socrates to come and get. Sox flew down to aconvenient rock and reached for the morsel, but the moment he perceivedthat it was not anything he could eat, he drew back in disdain, andeying Long John with severity, remarked, "Bow-wow."
Now, as I have intimated, nothing was so exasperating to Long John as tohave any one say "bow-wow" to him, and not considering that the offenderwas only a bird, he raised his hatchet and would have ended Sox's careerthen and there had not Joe stayed his arm.
At being thus thwarted, Long John turned upon my companion, and for amoment I felt a little uneasy lest his temper should for once get thebetter of his discretion; but I need not have alarmed myself, for LongJohn's outbreaks of rage were always carefully calculated when directedagainst any one or anything capable of retaliation in kind, and veryprobably he had already concluded that two well-grown boys likeourselves, used to all kinds of hard work, might prove an awkwardhandful for one whose muscles had been rendered flabby by lack ofexercise.
At any rate, he quickly calmed down again, pretending to laugh at theincident; but though he made some remark about "a real smart bird," Iguessed from the gleam in his little ferrety eyes that if he could layhands on Socrates, that aged scholar's chances of ever celebrating hisone hundredth anniversary would be slim indeed.
"Who's the thing belong to, anyhow?" asked John. "There's no one livingaround here that I know of."
"He belongs to a man who lives somewhere up on this mountain," Ireplied. "You've probably heard of him: Peter the Hermit."
"Him!" exclaimed Long John, looking quickly all around, as though hefeared the owner might make his appearance. "Well, I'm off. I've got toget back to Sulphide to-night, so I'll dig out at once."
So saying, he picked up his long-handled shovel, and using itupside-down as a walking-staff, away he went, striding over the snow ata great pace; while Socrates, seeing him depart, very appropriatelycalled after him, "Good-bye, John."
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