CHAPTER VIII
THE WILD CAT'S TRAIL
"He is quite right," said my father, when, on reaching home again, werelated to him the results of our day's work and told him how the hermithad warned us against Long John. "He is quite right. Your hermit is aman of sense in spite of his reputation to the contrary. Yetmore, ofcourse, will do anything he can to forestall Tom Connor, but, if I amnot mistaken, he will not venture beyond the law; whereas Long John, Ifeel sure, would not be restrained by any such consideration. He wouldbe quite ready to resort to violence, provided always that he could doit without risk to his own precious person. The hermit is right, too, insaying that Long John is all the more dangerous for being the cowardlycreature that he is: whatever he may do to head off Tom will be done inthe dark--you may be sure of that. We must warn Tom, so that he may beon his guard."
"I'm afraid it won't be much use warning Tom," said I. "He is such aheedless fellow and so chuck full of courage that he won't trouble totake any precautions."
"I don't suppose he will, but we will warn him, all the same, so that hemay at least go about with his eyes open. I'll write to him againto-morrow. And now to our own business. Come into the back room. I wantyour opinion."
It had been my father's custom for some time back--and a very goodcustom, too, I think--whenever there arose a question of managementabout the affairs of the ranch, to take Joe and me into consultationwith him. It is probable enough that our opinion, when he got it, wasnot worth much, but the mere fact that we were asked for it gave us afeeling of responsibility and grown-up-ness which had a good effect.Whenever, therefore, any question of importance turned up, the wholemale population of Crawford's Basin voted upon it, and though it is truethat nine times out of ten any proposition advanced by my father wouldreceive a unanimous vote, it did happen every now and then that one ofus would make a suggestion which would be adopted, much to oursatisfaction, thus adding a zest to the work, whatever it might be. Forwhether the plan originated with my father or with one of us, as we allvoted on it we thereby made it our own, and having made it our own; wetook infinitely more interest in its accomplishment than does theordinary hired man, who is told to do this or do that without reason orexplanation.
It will be readily understood, too, how flattering it was to a couple ofyoung fellows like ourselves to be asked for our opinion by a man likemy father, for whose good sense and practical knowledge we had thegreatest respect, and of course we were all attention at once, when,seating himself in his desk chair, he began:
"You remember that when Marsden's cattle first came they broke a coupleof the posts around the hay-corral, and that when we re-set them wefound that the butt-ends of the posts were beginning to get prettyrotten?"
He happened to catch Joe's eye, who replied:
"I remember; and you said at the time that we should have to renew thefence entirely in two years or less."
"Exactly. Well, now, this is what I've been thinking: instead ofrenewing with posts and poles, why not build a rough stone wall allround the present fence, which, when once done, would last forever?Within a half-mile of the corral there is material in plenty fallen fromthe face of the Second Mesa; and everything on the ranch being in goodworking order, you two boys would be free to put in several weekshauling stones and dumping them outside the fence--the actual building Iwould leave till next fall. It will mean a long spell of pretty hardwork, for you will hardly gather material enough if you keep at it allthe rest of the winter. Now, what do you think?"
"It seems to me like a good plan," Joe answered. "We can take two teamsand wagons, help each other to load, drive down together, and help eachother to unload; for I suppose you would use stones as big as we canhandle by preference."
"Yes, the bigger the better; especially for the lower courses and forthe corners. What's your opinion, Phil?"
"I agree with Joe," I replied. "And with such a short haul--for it willaverage nearer a quarter than half a mile--I should think we might evencollect stones enough for the purpose this winter, provided theredoesn't come a big fall of snow and stop us."
"Then you shall begin to-morrow," said my father.
"But here's another question," he continued. "Should we build the wallclose around the present fence, or should we increase the size of thecorral while we are about it?"
"I should keep to the present dimensions," said I. "There is no chancethat I see of our ever increasing the size of our hay-crop to any greatextent, and the corral we have now has always held it all, even thatvery big crop we had the summer Joe came. If----"
"Yes, 'if,'" my father interrupted, knowing very well what I had inmind. "_If_ we could drain 'the bottomless forty rods' we should need acorral half as big again; but I'm afraid that is beyond us, so we may aswell confine ourselves to providing for present needs."
"My wig!" exclaimed Joe--his favorite exclamation--at the same timerumpling his hair, as though that were the wig he referred to. "What agreat thing it would be if we could but drain those forty rods!"
"It undoubtedly would," replied my father. "It would about double thevalue of the ranch, I think; for, besides diverting the present countyroad between San Remo and Sulphide--for everybody would then leave theold hill-road and come past our door instead--it would give us a largepiece of new land for growing oats and hay. And, do you know, I begin tothink it is very possible that within a couple of years we shall have amarket for more oats and hay than we can grow, even including the 'fortyrods.'"
"Why?" I asked, in surprise; for, at present, though we disposed of ourproduce readily enough, it could not be said that there was a boomingmarket.
"It is just guess-work," my father replied, "pure guess-work on my part,with a number of good big 'ifs' about it; but if Tom Connor or LongJohn, or, indeed, any one else, should discover a big vein of lead-oreup on Mount Lincoln--and the chances, I think, begin to lookfavorable--what would be the result?"
"I don't know," said I. "What?"
"Why, this whole district would take a big leap forward--that is whatwould happen. You see, as things stand now, the smelters, not being ableto procure in the district lead-ores enough for fluxing purposes, areobliged to bring them in by railroad from other camps. This is veryexpensive, and the consequence is that they are obliged to make suchhigh charges for smelting that any ore of less value than thirty dollarsto the ton is at present worthless to the miner: the cost of hauling itto the smelter and the smelter-charges when it gets there eat up all theproceeds."
"I see," said Joe. "And the discovery of a mine which would provide thesmelters with all the lead-ore they wanted would bring down the chargesof smelting and enable the producers of thirty dollar ore to work theirclaims at a profit."
"Precisely. And as nine-tenths of the claims in the district producemainly low-grade ore, which is now left lying on the dumps as worthless,and as even the big mines take out, and throw aside, probably ten tonsof low-grade in getting out one ton of high-grade, you can see what a'boost' the district would receive if all this unavailable material weresuddenly to become a valuable and marketable commodity."
"I should think it would!" exclaimed Joe, enthusiastically. "Theprospectors would be getting out by hundreds; the population of Sulphidewould double; San Remo would take a great jump forward; while we--why,we shouldn't _begin_ to be able to grow oats and hay enough to meet thedemand."
My father nodded. "That's what I think," said he.
"And there's another thing," cried I, taking up Joe's line of prophecy."If a big vein of lead-ore should be discovered anywhere about the headof our creek, the natural way for the freighters to get down to San Remowould be through here, if----"
"That's it," interrupted my father. "That's the whole thing. I-F, IF."
Dear me! What a big, big little word that was. To represent it of thesize it looked to us, it would be necessary to paint it on the sky withthe tail of a comet dipped in an ocean of ink!
After a pause of a minute or two, during which we all sat silent,consideri
ng over again what we had considered many and many a timebefore: whether there were not some possible way of draining off the"forty rods," Joe suddenly straightened himself in his seat, rumpled hishair once more--by which sign I knew he had some idea in his head--andsaid:
"I suppose you have thought of it before, Mr. Crawford, but would it bepossible to run a tunnel up from the lower edge of the First Mesa, andso draw off the water?"
"I have thought of it before, Joe," replied my father, "and while Ithink it might work, I have concluded that it is out of the question.How long a tunnel would it take, do you calculate?"
"Well, a little more than a quarter of a mile, I suppose."
"Yes. Say twelve hundred feet, at least. Well, to run a tunnel of thatlength would be cheap at ten dollars a foot."
"Phew!" Joe whistled, opening his eyes widely. "That is a staggerer,sure enough. It does look as if there was no way out of it."
"No, I'm afraid not," said my father. "And as to making a permanent roadacross the marsh, I have tried everything I can think of includingcorduroying with long poles covered with brush and earth. But it was nouse. We had a very wet season that summer, and the road, poles and all,was covered with water. That settled it to my mind; we could not expectthe freighters and others to come our way when, at any time, they mightfind the road under water."
"No; that did seem to be a clincher. Well, as there appears to be nomore to be said, let's get to bed, Phil. If we are going to haul rocksto-morrow, we shall need a good night's sleep as a starter."
The cliff which bounded the eastern edge of the Second Mesa--at the sametime bounding the ranch on its western side--was made up of layers ofrock of an average thickness of about a foot, having been evidentlybuilt up by successive small flows of lava. The stones piled at the footof the bluff being flat on both sides were therefore very convenient forwall-building, and so plentiful that we made rapid progress at first inhauling them down to the corral. At the end of three weeks, however, wehad picked up all those fragments that were most accessible, and werenow obliged to loosen up the great heaps of larger slabs and crack thestones with a sledgehammer. Some of these heaps were so large, and thestones composing them of such great size, that when we came to dislodgethem we found that an ordinary crowbar made no impression; but weovercame that difficulty, at Joe's suggestion, by using a big pine poleas a lever. Inserting the butt-end of the pole between two big rocks,we would tie a rope to the other end and hitch the mules to it. Theleverage thus obtained was tremendous, and unless the pole broke,something had to come. In this way we could sometimes bring down at onepull rock enough to keep us busy for a week.
Day after day, without a break, we continued this work, and though itwas certainly hard labor we enjoyed it, especially when, by constantpractice we found ourselves handling all the time bigger and biggerstones with less and less exertion.
It would seem that there could not be much art in so simple a matter asputting a stone into a wagon, and as far as stones of moderate size areconcerned there is not. But when you come to deal with slabs of rockweighing a thousand pounds or more, you will find that the "know how"counts for very much more than mere strength.
Of course, to handle pieces of this size it was necessary to use skidsand crowbars, with which, aided by little rollers made of bits ofgas-pipe, we did not hesitate to tackle stones which, when we firstbegan, we should have cracked into two or three pieces.
We had been at it, as I have said, for more than three weeks, when ithappened one day that while driving down with our last load, we were metface to face by a wildcat, with one of our chickens in its mouth. Therewere a good many of these animals having their lairs among the fallenrocks at the foot of the mesa, and they caused us some trouble, but thiswas the first time I had known one to make a raid on the chicken-yard inbroad daylight. I suppose rabbits were scarce, and the poor beast wasdriven to this unusual course by hunger.
I was driving the mules at the moment, but Joe, who was walking besidethe wagon, picked up a stone and hurled it at the cat. The animal, ofcourse, bolted--taking his chicken with him, though--and disappearedamong the rocks close to where we had just been at work.
"Joe," said I, "we'll bring up the shotgun to-morrow. We may stir thatfellow out and get a shot at him."
Accordingly, next day, we took the gun with us, and leaning it against atree near the wagon, set about our usual work. The first stone we loadedthat morning was an extra-large one, and Joe on one side of the wagonand I on the other were prying it into position with our pinch-bars,when my companion, who was facing the bluff, gently laid down his barand whispered:
"Keep quiet, Phil! Don't move! I see that wildcat! Get hold of the linesin case the mules should scare, while I see if I can reach the gun."
Stooping behind the wagon, he slipped away to where the gun stood, camestooping back, and then, straightening up, he raised the gun to hisshoulder. Up to that moment the cat had stood so still that I had beenunable to distinguish it, but just as Joe raised the gun it bolted. Mypartner fired a snap-shot, and down came the cat, tumbling over andover.
"Good shot!" I cried. But hardly had I done so when the animal jumped upagain and popped into a hole between two rocks before Joe could get asecond shot.
"Let's dig him out, Joe," I cried. And seizing a crowbar, I led the wayto the foot of the cliff.
Working away with the bar, while Joe stood ready with the gun, I soonenlarged the hole enough to let me look in, but it was so dark inside,and I got into my own light so much that I could see nothing.
I happened to have a letter in my pocket, and taking the envelope Idropped a little stone into it, screwed up the corner, and lighting theother end, threw the bit of paper into the hole. My little fire-brandflickered for a moment, and then burned up brightly, when I saw thewildcat lying flat upon its side, evidently quite dead.
Thereupon we both set to work and enlarged the hole so that Joe couldcrawl in, which he immediately did. I expected him to come out again ina moment, but it was a full minute before he reappeared, and when he didso he only poked out his head and said, in an excited tone:
"Come in here, Phil! Here's the queerest thing--just come in here for aminute!"
Of course I at once crept through the hole, to find myself in a littlechamber about ten feet long, six feet wide and four feet high, built upof great flat slabs of stone, which, falling from above, hadaccidentally so arranged themselves as to form this little room.
At first I thought it was the little room itself to which Joe hadreferred as "queer," but Joe, scouting such an idea, exclaimed:
"No, no, bless you! I didn't mean that. That's nothing. Look here!"
So saying, he struck a match and showed me, along one side of thechamber, a great crack in the ground, three feet wide, extending to theleft an unknown distance--for in that direction it was covered by looserocks of large size--while to the right it pinched out entirely.
It was evident to me that this crevice had existed ever since the greatbreak had occurred which had separated the First from the Second Mesa,but that, being covered by the fragments which had fallen from thecliff--itself formed by the subsidence of the First Mesa from what hadonce been the general level--it had hitherto remained concealed.
"Well, that certainly is 'queer,'" said I. "How deep is it, I wonder?"
"Don't know. Pitch a stone into it."
I did so; judging from the sound that the crevice was probably thirty orforty feet deep.
"That's what I should guess," said Joe. "But there's another thing,Phil, a good deal queerer than a mere crack in the ground. Lie down andput your ear over the hole and listen."
I did as directed, and then at length I understood where the "queerness"came in. I could distinctly hear the rush of water down below!
Rising to my knees, I stared at Joe, who, kneeling also, stared back atme, both keeping silence for a few seconds. At length:
"Where does it come from, Joe?" I asked.
"I don't know," Joe replied. "Mount Li
ncoln, perhaps. But I do knowwhere it goes to."
"You do? Where?"
"Down to 'the forty rods,' of course."
"That's it!" I cried, thumping my fist into the palm of the other hand."That's certainly it! Look here, Joe. I'll tell you what we'll do. We'llquit hauling rock for this morning, go and get a long rope, climb downinto this crack, see how much water there is, and find out if we canwhere it goes to."
"All right," said Joe. "Your father won't object, I'm sure."
"No, he won't object. Though he relies on our doing a good day's workwithout supervision, he relies, too, on our using our common sense, andI'm sure he'll agree that this is a matter that ought to be investigatedwithout delay. It may be of the greatest importance."
"All right!" cried Joe. "Then let us get about it at once!"
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