XIII
For the Sinews of War
Gifford, sitting in the darkness with his back to the windlass and thebig old-fashioned holster revolver across his knees, held us up promptlyand peremptorily when we came over the spur. Seeing Barrett with me, heknew pretty well what the results of the assay were before we told him.At the edge of the shallow pit we held a council of war--the first ofmany. Gifford fully agreed with Barrett that the most profound secrecywas the first requisite. Though he was new to the business ofgold-mining--as new as either the bank teller or myself--he couldprefigure pretty accurately what was before us.
"Here's where we'll have to ride and tie on the snoozing act," was hisdrawling comment. "We mustn't leave her alone for a single minute, afterthis; and it's got to be one of us, at that. We couldn't afford to hirea watchman if we had a million dollars."
Under the ride-and-tie proposal I volunteered to stand watch for theremainder of the night; and after the other two had turned in I tookGifford's place, with the windlass for a back rest and Barrett's shot-gunfor a weapon.
I was not sorry to have a little time to think; to try in some fashion toreadjust the point of view so suddenly snatched from its anchorings inthe commonplace and shot high into the empyrean. It was the night of theninth of June. Three months earlier, to a day, I had been an outcast; amiserable tramp roaming the streets of a great city; broken in mind, bodyand heart; bitter, discouraged, and so nearly ready to fall in withKellow's criminal suggestion as actually to let him give me the moneywhich, if I had kept it or spent it as he directed, would have committedme irretrievably to a life of crime.
Looking back upon it from the vantage point gained by a few hours' toilon a bare Colorado mountain-side, that ninth of March seemed to havewithdrawn into a fathomless past. I was no longer a hunted vagabond; Iwas breathing the free clean air of a new environment, and in the narrowpit beside me a fortune was waiting to be dug out; a fortune for theex-convict no less than for the two who had never by hint or innuendosought to inquire into their partner's past. It was too good to be true;and yet it was true, contingent, as I saw it, only upon our fortitude,discretion and manful courage.
Nevertheless, there was still one small disturbing note in the music ofthe spheres. Barrett's mention of Phineas Everton as one of our nearestneighbors disquieted me vaguely. It was quite in vain that I reasonedthat in all human probability Everton would fail to identify the beardedman of twenty-eight with the schoolboy he had known ten or twelve yearsearlier. He had taught only one year in the Glendale High School, and Iwas not in any of his classes. Polly had known me much better. She hadbeen in one of the grammar grades, and was just at an age to make abig-brother confidant of her teacher's brother--my sister being at thattime a teacher in the grammar school.
Upon this I fell to wondering curiously how Polly, a plain-faced,eager-eyed little girl in short dresses, could have grown into anythingmeriting Barrett's enthusiastic description of her as a "peach." Also, Iwondered how her bookish, studious father had ever contrived to breakwith the scholastic traditions sufficiently to become an assayer for aWestern mine. But I might have saved myself this latter speculation.Cripple Creek, like other great mining-camps, served as a melting-pot formany strange and diverse elements.
At the earliest graying of dawn I roused my partners and took my turnwith the blankets, too tired and drowsy to stay awake while Giffordcooked breakfast. I was sound asleep long before they fired the twoholes Gifford and I had drilled the previous afternoon, and they let mealone until the noonday meal was ready on the rough plank table. Overthe coffee and canned things Barrett brought our bonanza story up to date.
"It's no joke, Jimmie," he said soberly. "We've got the world by theears, if we can only manage to hold on and go on digging. The lead haswidened to over six inches, and we have two more sacks of the stuffpicked out and ready to take to town."
"Any visitors?" I asked.
"Not a soul, as yet. But we'll have them soon enough; there's no doubtabout that. If our guess is right--that the Lawrenceburg people meant tocover this hillside in their later locations--we'll hear from BartBlackwell before we are many hours older."
"Blackwell is the superintendent you spoke of when we were coming up lastnight?"
"The same. I don't know why he hasn't been here before this time. Theymust surely hear the blasting."
We had our visitor that afternoon, while Barrett and I were working inthe hole and Gifford was sleeping. Luckily for us, Barrett never for asingle moment lost sight of the need for secrecy. We were drilling whenBlackwell's shadow fell across the mouth of the pit, but we had taken theprecaution to cover the gold-bearing vein with spalls and chippings ofthe porphyry, and to see to it that none of the gold-bearing materialshowed in the small dump at the pit mouth.
Blackwell was a short man but heavy-set, with a curly black beard andeyes that were curiously heavy-lidded. As he leaned over the windlassand looked down upon us he reminded me of one of the fairy-tale ogres.
"Hello, Bob," he said, speaking to Barrett, whom he knew. "Quit thebanking business, have you?"
"Taking a bit of a lay-off," Barrett returned easily. "We all have toget out and dig in the ground, sooner or later."
Blackwell laughed good-naturedly.
"You'll get enough of it up here before you've gone very far," hepredicted. "Just the same, you might have come by the office and askedpermission before you began to work off your digging fit on Lawrenceburgproperty."
"We're not on Lawrenceburg," said Barrett cheerfully.
"Oh, yes, you are," was the equally cheerful rejoinder. "Our ground runspretty well up to the head of the gulch. I'm not trying to run you off,you know. If you feel like digging a well, it's all right: it amusesyou, and it doesn't hurt us any."
Barrett pulled himself up and sat on the edge of the hole.
"Let's get this thing straight, Blackwell," he argued. "You've got threeclaims in this gulch, but we are not on any one of them. Look at yourmaps when you go back to the office."
"I know the maps well enough. We cover everything up to the head of thegulch, just as I say, joining with the original Lawrenceburg locations onthe other side of the spur." Then, suddenly: "Who's your friend?"
Barrett introduced me briefly as Jim Bertrand, late of the ColoradoMidland construction force. Blackwell nodded and looked toward the shack.
"Any more of you?" he asked.
"One more; a fellow named Gifford. He's asleep just now."
Blackwell straightened up.
"It's all right, as I say, Bob. If you three tenderfoots want to come uphere and play at digging a hole, it's no skin off of us. When you gettired we'll buy the lumber in your shack and what dynamite you happen tohave left, just to save your hauling it away."
"Thanks," said Barrett; "we'll remember that. We haven't much money now,but we'll probably have more--or less--when we quit."
"Less it is," chuckled the square-shouldered boss of the Lawrenceburg."Go to it and work off your little mining fever. But if you shouldhappen to find anything--which you won't, up here--just remember thatI've given you legal notice, with your partner here as a witness, thatyou're on Lawrenceburg ground."
Barrett's grin was a good match for Blackwell's chuckle.
"We're going to sink fifty feet; that's about as far as our presentcapital will carry us. As to the ownership of the ground, we needn'tquarrel about that at this stage of the game. You've given us notice;and you've also given us permission to amuse ourselves if we want to.We'll call it a stand-off."
After the superintendent had gone I ventured to point out to mydrill-mate that the matter of ownership had been left rather indefinite,after all.
"Diplomacy, Jimmie," was the quick reply. "The one thing we can't standfor is to be tied up in litigation before we have contrived to dig a fewof the sinews of war out of this hole. Blackwell's little pop-call warnsus to use about a thousand times as much care and caution as we have beenusing. I
saw him scraping the dump around with his foot as he talked.He is one of the shrewdest miners in Colorado, and if he had got hissleepy eye on a piece of the vein matter as big as a marble, it wouldhave been all over but the shouting. You can see where all this ispointing?"
"It means that we've got to make this hole look like a barren hole, andkeep it looking that way--if we have to handle every piece of rock thatcomes out of it in our fingers," I said.
"Just that," Barrett asserted, and then we went on with the drilling.
We arranged our routine that evening over a supper of Gifford'spreparing. We planned to take out each day as much ore as the watch onduty could dig, to sort it carefully, sacking the best of it and hidingthe remainder under the shack. Then, during the night, one of us wouldcarry what he could of the sacked ore down the mountain to the samplingworks to be assayed and sold on the spot.
The sheer labor involved in this method of procedure was somethingappalling, but we could devise no alternative. To have a wagon haul theore to town would, we were all agreed, be instantly fatal to secrecy; andat whatever cost we must have more money before we could dare face alegal fight with the Lawrenceburg people. Looking back upon it now, ourplan seems almost childish; but the enthusiasm born of the miraculousdiscovery was accountable for the cheerful readiness with which weadopted it.
Gifford took the first turn at the ore-carrying while Barrett and Ishared the night watch, two hours at a time for each of us. Thecarpenter came back just before daybreak, haggard and hollow-eyed, butprofanely triumphant. There had been no questions asked at the samplingworks, and his back-load of ore had been purchased on the strength of theassay--doubtless with a good, round profit to the buyers. He had limitedhis carry to seventy-five pounds, and he brought back the samplingcompany's check for $1355 as the result of the day's work!
Speaking for myself, I can say truly that I lived in the heart of a dreamfor the next few days--the dream of a galley-slave. We worked like dogs.Added to the drilling and shooting and digging, there was the all-nightjob of ore-carrying--at which we took turn and turn about--for one of us.Though I am not, and never have been, save in the parole starvation time,what one would call a weakling, my first trip to town with eighty-fivepounds of ore on my back nearly killed me. A thousand times, it seemedto me, I had to stop and rest; and when I got down it was always an openquestion whether or not I could ever get up again with the back load inposition.
As it came about, in the regular routine, mine was the third turn at thecarrying, and by this time the superintendent of the sampling works wasbeginning to have his curiosity aroused.
"So there are three of you, are there?" he commented, when he hadexamined and recognized the sacked samples. "Any more?"
I shook my head. I was too nearly exhausted to talk.
"At first I thought you fellows were raiding somebody," he went on."There is a mine not a thousand miles from where you're sitting that putsout exactly this same kind of ore, only it's not anywhere near as rich asthese picked samples of yours."
"What made you change your mind?" I queried, willing to see how far hewould go. "How do you know we are not raiding somebody's ore shed?"
"Because I know Bob Barrett," was the crisp reply. Then: "Why are youboys making this night play? Why don't you come out in the open likeother folks--honest folks, I mean?"
"There are reasons," I asserted.
"Afraid somebody will catch on and swamp you with a rush of claimstakers?"
"Call it that, if you like."
"You're plumb foolish, and I told Bob Barrett so last night. You'recarrying this stuff miles; I know by the way you come in here with yourtongues hanging out. It's like trying to dip the ocean dry with a pintcup. One good wagon-load of your ore--if you've got that much--wouldcount for more than you three could lug in a month of Sundays."
I knew this as well as he did, but I was not there to argue.
"I guess we'll have to handle it our own way," I answered evasively; andwhile he was sending my sack out to the testing room I fell sound asleep.
At the end of a week, after we had made two trips apiece, we had nearly$7,000 in bank. Figured as a return for our labor, killing as that was,it was magnificent. But as a war chest it was merely a drop in thebucket. Given plenty of time, we might have won out eventually by thesacked-sample route; but we knew we were not going to be given time.Blackwell had been up twice; and the second time, Gifford, who was actingas hammerman, had to sit in the bottom of the shaft, pretending to loadthe half-drilled hole. Otherwise, the heavy-lidded eyes, peering downover the barrel of the windlass would assuredly have seen the steadilywidening ore body.
On the sixth day Everton came across the spur. I think I should haveknown him anywhere, but he did not recognize me, though I stood andtalked with him at the shaft mouth. His visit, as I took it, was not aspying one. On the contrary it appeared to be merely neighborly. Afterbeating about the bush for a little time, he came down to particulars.We must surely know, he said, that we were on Lawrenceburg ground, and itwas too bad we were throwing away our hard work. To this he added avague warning. Blackwell had been taking our amateur effort as a goodjoke on Barrett, whom he had known only as a bank clerk. But the edge ofthe joke was wearing off, and the superintendent, who, as it seemed, hadbeen watching us more closely than we had supposed, was beginning towonder why we kept at it so faithfully; and why our camp was alwaysguarded at night.
The following day was Sunday, and Everton came again, this timeaccompanied by his daughter. Gifford was windlass winder at the moment,and he let himself down into the shaft, swearing, when he saw them comingover the shoulder of the spur.
I left our carpenter-man busily covering up the lode while I scrambledout to meet and divert the visitors. My first sight of Mary Everton,grown, made me gasp. There had been no promise of her womanlywinsomeness and pulse-quickening beauty in the plain-faced little girlwith large brown eyes--the little girl who used to thrust her hand intomine on the way home from school and tell me about the unforgivablemeanness of the boy who "cribbed" for his examinations.
Everton introduced me as "Mr. Bertrand," and for a flitting instant I sawsomething at the back of the brown eyes that made cold chills run up anddown my spine. And her first words increased rather than diminished theburden of sudden misgiving.
"I knew a Bertrand once," she said, shaking hands frankly after themanner of the West. "It was when I was a little girl in school. OnlyBertrand was his Christian name."
Without knowing that he was doing it, her father came to my rescue. "Wehaven't any near neighbors, Mr. Bertrand, and Polly wanted to see yourmine," he said. And then: "Do you realize that it is Sunday?"
I led the glorified Polly Everton of my school days to the mouth of theshallow shaft. "Our 'mine,' as your father is polite enough to call it,isn't very extensive, as yet," I pointed out. "You can see it at aglance."
She took my word for it and gave the windlass-straddled pit only aglance. Barrett had had his nap out and was showing himself at the doorof the shack. My companion nodded brightly at him and he joined us atonce. "We are quite old friends, Mr. Barrett and I," she hastened tosay, when I would have introduced him; and this left me free to attachmyself to her father.
Phineas Everton had changed very little with the passing years. Iremembered him as a sort of cut-and-dried school-man, bookworm andscientist, and, as I afterward learned, he was still all three of these.Partly because I was telling myself that it was safer for me to keep mydistance from the girl who remembered the boy Bertrand, and partlybecause I wished to draw the assayer away from our dump, I took Evertonover to the shack and we sat together on the door-step. For some littletime I couldn't make out what he was driving at in his talk, but finallyit came out, by inference, at least. Somebody--Blackwell, perhaps--hadstarted the story that we were planning a raid on the Lawrenceburg.
"How could that be?" I asked, remembering that, only the day before,Everton had asserted that we were already
trespassers on Lawrenceburgproperty.
"It is an old trick," he commented, rather sorrowfully, I fancied. "Inall the older locations there have been bits of ground missed in thecriss-crossing of the claims. Some one of you three has been sharpenough to find one of those bits just here."
"Well; supposing we have--what then?" I asked.
He was silent for a half-minute or so. Barrett had led Mary Everton tothe shoulder of the spur where the view of the distant town wasunobstructed, and Gifford was still in the shaft.
"I don't know you, Mr. Bertrand," my seatmate began slowly, "and Ishouldn't venture to set up any standard of right and wrong in yourbehalf. But that young man out yonder with my daughter: I've known him along time, and I knew his people. It is a thousand pities to drag himinto your undertaking."
"There has been no especial 'dragging' that I am aware of; and I don'tknow why you should be sorry for Barrett," I returned rather tartly.
"I am sorry because Robert Barrett has hitherto lived an upright andhonest life. He had excellent prospects in the bank, and it seems agreat pity that he has seen fit to throw them away."
By this time I was entirely at sea. "You will have to make itplainer--much plainer," I told him.
"I have been hoping you wouldn't force me to call it by its ugly name,"was the sober rejoinder. "It is blackmail, Mr. Bertrand; criminalblackmail, as I think you must know."
"That is a pretty serious charge for you to make, isn't it?"
"Not more serious than the occasion warrants. You three have discoveredthis little scrap of unclaimed ground in the middle of the Lawrenceburgproperty. You are digging; and presently, when you are down far enoughso that your operations cannot be observed from the shaft mouth, you willannounce that you have struck the Lawrenceburg ore body. In that event,as you have doubtless foreseen, our company will have no recourse but tobuy you off at your own figure."
"Well?" I challenged.
"Your announcement, when you make it, will be a lie," was the cold-voicedreply. "You are 'salting' the crevices as you go down--and withLawrenceburg ore."
I sighed my relief. His guess was so far from the truth that I was morethan willing to help it along. If the Lawrenceburg people could only bepersuaded that our imaginary coup was to be postponed until the bottom ofour shaft should be out of sight from the surface, we were measurablysafe.
"We may ask you to prove your charge when the proper time comes, Mr.Everton," I suggested.
He took a small fragment of bluish-gray ore from his pocket and showed itto me, saying, quietly, "I can prove it now; this is Lawrenceburg ore: Ihandle and test it every day, and I am perfectly familiar with it. Ipicked this piece up a few minutes ago on your dump."
It is always the impact of the unexpected that sends a man scurrying intothe armory of his past in search of the readiest weapon for theemergency. Recall, once again, if you will, the three years ofassociation with criminals, and the fact that I was at that moment underthe ban of the law as an escaped convict. I could think of nothing savethe gaining of time, precious time, at whatever cost.
I shall always be thankful that the temptation did not reach the lengthof making me offer to buy Everton's silence. That, indeed, would havebeen suicidal. Yet the prompting suggestion came to me, in company withothers still more ruthless. I was telling myself that the situation wassufficiently alarming to warrant almost any expedient. Though he was notyet aware of it, Everton had discovered our real secret; he knew we hadore, which--as yet--he thought we were stealing from the Lawrenceburgbins. If he should take one additional step. . . .
The thought-loom shuttled pretty rapidly for a few short-lived seconds.If Everton should show the bit of ore to Blackwell the superintendentmight believe the charge that we were stealing the Lawrenceburg valuesfor the "salting" purpose; in which case he would doubtless swear outwarrants for us. Or he might see farther than Everton had seen and jumpto the conclusion that we had actually made a strike of our own in theshallow pit. Either way there was sharp trouble ahead.
"You have us down pretty fine, haven't you?" I said, at the end of thereflective pause. "May I ask what use you are going to make of yourdiscovery?"
"I purpose giving you three young men a chance to talk it over seriouslyamong yourselves before I take any further steps. I suppose I shouldhave gone direct to Barrett. I know him, and I know there is plenty ofgood in him to appeal to. But candidly, Mr. Bertrand, I didn't have theheart to--well, to let him know that I knew."
A bitter thought swept across me like a hot wind from the desert. Wasthere never to be any let-up? Were people always going to take it forgranted that _I_ was the criminal? I have known physical hunger andhunger intellectual, but they were as nothing compared with the moralfamine that gripped me just then. I would have pawned my soul for a baremodicum of the commonplace, every-day respectability which is able tolook the world squarely in the face without fear or favor--without askingany odds of it.
Everton was evidently waiting for his reply, and I gave it to him.
"Criminality is largely relative--like everything else in the world,don't you think?" I said, letting him feel the raw edge of the bitternessthat was rasping at me. "In coming to me, as you have, you, yourself,are compounding a felony."
He shrugged his thin shoulders and looked away at the two on the bluff'sedge.
"Properly speaking, Mr. Bertrand, I am only an interested onlooker; and Iam interested chiefly on Barrett's account. What I may feel it my dutyto do if you three remain obdurate will be purely without reference toyour rather sophistical definition of criminality. In any event,Blackwell is the man you will have to reckon with. As I say, I amconcerned only so far as the outcome may involve Robert Barrett."
"I'll tell the others what you have said," I agreed; and with this thematter rested.
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