The Claim Jumpers - Stewart Edward White
In other words, Bennington was to hold the ends of the reins while some
one else drove. But he did not know that. He felt his responsibility.
As to the assessment work, Old Mizzou had already assured him there was
no immediate hurry; men were cheaper in the fall. As to investigating,
he started in on that at once. He and Davidson climbed down shafts, and
broke off ore, and worked the gold pan. It was fun.
In the morning Bennington decided to work from seven until ten on
_Aliris_. Then for three hours he and Old Mizzou prospected. In the
afternoon the young man took a vacation and hunted Wild Western
adventures.
It may as well be remarked here that Bennington knew all about the West
before he left home. Until this excursion he had never even crossed the
Alleghanies, but he thought he appreciated the conditions thoroughly.
This was because he was young. He could close his eyes and see the
cowboys scouring the plain. As a parenthesis it should be noted that
cowboys always scour the plain, just as sailors always scan the
horizon. He knew how the cowboys looked, because he had seen Buffalo
Bill's show; and he knew how they talked, because he had read accurate
authors of the school of Bret Harte. He could even imagine the
romantic mountain maidens.
With his preconceived notions the country, in most particulars, tallied
interestingly. At first Bennington frequented the little town down the
draw. It answered fairly well to the story-book descriptions, but
proved a bit lively for him. The first day they lent him a horse. The
horse looked sleepy. It took him twenty minutes to get on the animal
and twenty seconds to fall off. There was an audience. They made him
purchase strange drinks at outlandish prices. After that they shot
holes all around his feet to induce him to dance. He had inherited an
obstinate streak from some of his forebears, and declined when it went
that far. They then did other things to him which were not pleasant.
Most of these pranks seemed to have been instigated by a laughing,
curly-haired young man named Fay. Fay had clear blue eyes, which seemed
always to mock you. He could think up more diabolical schemes in ten
minutes than the rest of the men in as many hours. Bennington came
shortly to hate this man Fay. His attentions had so much of the
gratuitous! For a number of days, even after the enjoyment of novelty
had worn off, the Easterner returned bravely to Spanish Gulch every
afternoon for the mail. It was a matter of pride with him. He did not
like to be bluffed out. But Fay was always there.
"Tender _foot!_" the latter would shriek joyously, and bear down on the
shrinking de Laney.
That would bring out the loafers. It all had to happen over again.
Bennington hoped that this performance would cease in time. It never
did.
By a mental process, unnecessary to trace here, he modified his first
views, and permitted Old Mizzou to get the mail. Spanish Gulch saw him
no more.
After all, it was quite as good Western experience to wander in the
hills. He did not regret the other. In fact, as he cast in review his
research in Wild West literature, he perceived that the incidents of
his town visits were the proper thing. He would not have had them
different--to look back on. They were inspiring--to write home about.
He recognised all the types--the miner, the gambler, the
saloon-keeper, the bad man, the cowboy, the prospector--just as though
they had stepped living from the pages of his classics. They had the
true slouch; they used the picturesque language. The log cabins squared
with his ideas. The broncos even exceeded them.
But now he had seen it all. There is no sense in draining an agreeable
cup to satiety. He was quite content to enjoy his rambles in the hills,
like the healthy youngster he was. But had he seen it all? On
reflection, he acknowledged he could not make this statement to himself
with a full consciousness of sincerity. One thing was lacking from the
preconceived picture his imagination had drawn. There had been no
Mountain Flowers. By that he meant girls.
Every one knows what a Western girl is. She is a beautiful creature,
always, with clear, tanned skin, bright eyes, and curly hair. She wears
a Tam o' Shanter. She rides a horse. Also, she talks deliciously, in a
silver voice, about "old pards." Altogether a charming vision--in
books.
This vision Bennington had not yet realized. The rest of the West came
up to specifications, but this one essential failed. In Spanish Gulch
he had, to be sure, encountered a number of girls. But they were
red-handed, big-boned, freckled-faced, rough-skinned, and there wasn't
a Tam o' Shanter in the lot. Plainly servants, Bennington thought. The
Mountain Flower must have gone on a visit. Come to think of it, there
never was more than one Mountain Flower to a town.
CHAPTER III
BENNINGTON HUNTS FOR GOLD AND FINDS A KISS
One day Old Mizzou brought him a blue-print map.
"This y'ar map," said he, spreading it out under his stubby fingers,
"shows the deestrict. I gets it of Fay, so you gains an idee of th' lay
of the land a whole lot. Them claims marked with a crost belongs to th'
Company. You kin take her and explore."
This struck Bennington as an excellent idea. He sat down at the table
and counted the crosses. There were fourteen of them. The different
lodes were laid off in mathematically exact rectangles, running in many
directions. A few joined one another, but most lay isolated. Their
relative positions were a trifle confusing at first, but, after a
little earnest study, Bennington thought he understood them. He could
start with the Holy Smoke, just outside the door. The John Logan lay
beyond, at an obtuse angle. Then a jump of a hundred yards or so to the
southwest would bring him to the Crazy Horse. This he resolved to
locate, for it was said to be on the same "lode" as a big strike some
one had recently made. He picked up his rifle and set out.
Now, a blue-print map maker has undoubtedly accurate ideas as to points
of the compass, and faultless proficiency in depicting bird's-eye
views, but he neglects entirely the putting in of various ups and down,
slants and windings of the country, which apparently twist the north
pole around to the east-south-east. You start due west on a bee line,
according to directions; after about ten feet you scramble over a
fallen tree, skirt a boulder, dip into a ravine, and climb a ledge.
Your starting point is out of sight behind you; your destination is,
Heaven knows where, in front. By the time you have walked six thousand
actual feet, which is as near as you can guess to fifteen hundred
theoretical level ones, your little blazed stake in a pile of stones is
likely to be almost anywhere within a liberal quarter of a mile. Then
it is guess-work. If the hill is pretty thickly staked out, the chase
becomes exciting. In the middle distance you see a post. You clamber
eagerly to it, only to find that it marks your neighbour's claim. You
have lost your standpoint of a moment ago, and must start afresh. In an
hour's time you have discovered every stake on the hill but the one you
want. In two hours' time you are staggering homeward a gibbering idiot.
Then you are brought back to profane sanity by falling at full length
over the very object of your search.
Bennington was treated to full measure of this experience. He found the
John Logan lode without much difficulty, and followed its length with
less, for the simple reason that its course lay over the round brow of
a hill bare of trees. He also discovered the "Northeast Corner of the
Crazy Horse Lode" plainly marked on the white surface of a pine stake
braced upright in a pile of rocks. Thence he confidently paced south,
and found nothing. Next trip he came across pencilled directions
concerning the "Miner's Dream Lode." The time after he ran against the
"Golden Ball" and the "Golden Chain Lodes." Bennington reflected; his
mind was becoming a little heated.
"It's because I went around those ledges and boulders," he said to
himself; "I got off the straight line. This time I'll take the straight
line and keep it."
So he addressed himself to the surmounting of obstructions. Work of
that sort is not easy. At one point he lost his hold on a broad, steep
rock, and slid ungracefully to the foot of it, his elbows digging
frantically into the moss, and his legs straddled apart. As he struck
bottom, he imagined he heard a most delicious little laugh. So real was
the illusion that he gripped two handfuls of moss and looked about
sharply, but of course saw nothing. The laugh was repeated.
He looked again, and so became aware of a Vision in pink, standing just
in front of a big pine above him on the hill and surveying him with
mischievous eyes.
Surprise froze him, his legs straddled, his hat on one side, his mouth
open. The Vision began to pick its way down the hill, eyeing him the
while.
That dancing scrutiny seemed to mesmerize him. He was enchanted to
perfect stillness, but he was graciously permitted to take in the
particulars of the girl's appearance. She was dainty. Every posture of
her slight figure was of an airy grace, as light and delicate as that
of a rose tendril swaying in the wind. Even when she tripped over a
loose rock, she caught her balance again with a pretty little uplift of
the hand. As she approached, slowly, and evidently not unwilling to
allow her charms full time in which to work, Bennington could see that
her face was delicately made; but as to the details he could not judge
clearly because of her mischievous eyes. They were large and wide and
clear, and of a most peculiar colour--a purple-violet, of the shade one
sometimes finds in flowers, but only in the flowers of a deep and shady
wood. In this wonderful colour--which seemed to borrow the richness of
its hue rather from its depth than from any pigment of its own, just as
beyond soundings the ocean changes from green to blue--an hundred moods
seem to rise slowly from within, to swim visible, even though the mere
expression of her face gave no sign of them. For instance, at the
present moment her features were composed to the utmost gravity. Yet in
her eyes bubbled gaiety and fun, as successive up-swellings of a
spring; or, rather, as the riffles of sunlight and wind, or the
pictured flight of birds across a pool whose surface alone is stirred.
Bennington realized suddenly, with overwhelming fervency, that he
preferred to slide in solitude.
The Vision in the starched pink gingham now poised above him like a
humming-bird over a flower. From behind her back she withdrew one hand.
In the hand was the missing claim stake.
"Is this what you are looking for?" she inquired demurely.
The mesmeric spell broke, and Bennington was permitted to babble
incoherencies.
She stamped her foot.
"Is this what you're looking for?" she persisted.
Bennington's chaos had not yet crystallized to relevancy.
"Wh-where did you get it?" he stammered again.
"IS THIS WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR?" she demanded in very large capitals.
The young man regained control of his faculties with an effort.
"Yes, it is!" he rejoined sharply; and then, with the instinct that
bids us appreciate the extent of our relief by passing an annoyance
along, "Don't you know it's a penal offence to disturb claim stakes?"
He had suddenly discovered that he preferred to find claim stakes on
claims.
The Vision's eyes opened wider.
"It must be nice to know so much!" said she, in reverent admiration.
Bennington flushed. As a de Laney, the girls he had known had always
taken him seriously. He disliked being made fun of.
"This is nonsense," he objected, with some impatience. "I must know
where it came from."
In the background of his consciousness still whirled the moil of his
wonder and bewilderment. He clung to the claim stake as a stable
object.
The Vision looked straight at him without winking, and those wonderful
eyes filled with tears. Yet underneath their mist seemed to sparkle
little points of light, as wavelets through a vapour which veils the
surface of the sea. Bennington became conscious-stricken because of the
tears, and still he owned an uneasy suspicion that they were not real.
"I'm so sorry!" she said contritely, after a moment; "I thought I was
helping you so much! I found that stake just streaking it over the top
of the hill. It had got loose and was running away." The mist had
cleared up very suddenly, and the light-tipped sparkles of fun were
chasing each other rapidly, as though impelled by a lively breeze. "I
thought you'd be ever so grateful, and, instead of that, you scold me!
I don't believe I like you a bit!"
She looked him over reflectively, as though making up her mind.
Bennington laughed outright, and scrambled to his feet. "You are
absolutely incorrigible!" he exclaimed, to cover his confusion at his
change of face.
Her eyes fairly danced.
"Oh, what a _lovely_ word!" she cried rapturously. "What _does_ it
mean? Something nice, or I'm sure you wouldn't have said it about me.
_Would_ you?" The eyes suddenly became grave. "Oh, please tell me!" she
begged appealingly.
Bennington was thrown into confusion at this, for he did not know
whether she was serious or not. He could do nothing but stammer and get
red, and think what a ridiculous ass he was making of himself. He might
have considered the help he was getting in that.
"Well, then, you needn't," she conceded, magnanimously, after a moment.
"Only, you ought not to say things about girls that you don't dare tell
them in plain language. If you will say nice things about me, you might
as well say them so I can understand them; only, I do think it's a
little early in our acquaintance."
This cast Bennington still more in perplexity. He had a
pretty-well-defined notion that he was being ridiculed, but concerning
this, just a last grain of doubt remained. She rattled on.
"Well!" said she impatiently, "why don't you say something? Why don't
you take this stick? I don't want it. Men are so stupid!"
That last remark has been made many, many times, and yet it never fails
of its effect, which is at once to invest the speaker with daintiness
indescribable, and to thrust the man addressed into nether inferiority.
Bennington fell to its charm. He took the stake.
"Where does it belong?" he asked.
She pointed silently to a pile of stones. He deposited the stake in its
proper place, and returned to find her seated on the ground, plucking a
handful of the leaves of a little erect herb that grew abundantly in
the hollow. These she rubbed together and held to her face inside the
sunbonnet.
"Who are you, anyway?" asked Bennington abruptly, as he returned.
"D' you ever see this before?" she inquired irrelevantly, looking up
with her eyes as she leaned over the handful. "Good for colds. Makes
your nose feel all funny and prickly."
She turned her hands over and began to drop the leaves one by one.
Bennington caught himself watching her with fascinated interest in
silence. He began to find this one of her most potent charms--the
faculty of translating into a grace so exquisite as almost to realize
the fabled poetry of motion, the least shrug of her shoulders, the
smallest crook of her finger, the slightest toss of her small,
well-balanced head. She looked up.
"Want to smell?" she inquired, and held out her hands with a pretty
gesture.
Not knowing what else to do, Bennington stepped forward obediently and
stooped over. The two little palms held a single crushed bit of the
herb in their cup. They were soft, pink little palms, all wrinkled,
like crumpled rose leaves. Bennington stooped to smell the herb;
instead, he kissed the palms.
The girl sprang to her feet with one indignant motion and faced him.
The eyes now flashed blue flame, and Bennington for the first time
noticed what had escaped him before--that the forehead was broad and
thoughtful, and that above it the hair, instead of being blonde and
curly and sparkling with golden radiance, was of a peculiar wavy brown
that seemed sometimes full of light and sometimes lustreless and black,
according as it caught the direct rays of the sun or not. Then he
appreciated his offence.
"Sir!" she exclaimed, and turned away with a haughty shoulder.
"And we've never been introduced!" she said, half to herself, but her
face was now concealed, so that Bennington could not see she laughed.
She marched stiffly down the hill. Bennington turned to follow her,
although the action was entirely mechanical, and he had no definite
idea in doing so.
"Don't you dare, sir!" she cried.
So he did not dare.
This vexed her for a moment. Then, having gone quite out of sight, she
sank down and laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks.
"I didn't think he knew enough!" she said, with a final hysterical
chuckle.
This first impression of the Mountain Flower, Bennington would have
been willing to acknowledge, was quite complicated enough, but he was
destined to further surprises.
When he returned to the Holy Smoke camp he found Old Mizzou in earnest
conversation with a peculiar-looking stranger, whose hand he was
promptly requested to shake.
The stranger was a tall, scraggly individual, dressed in the usual
flannel shirt and blue jeans, the latter tucked into rusty cowhide
boots. Bennington was interested in him because he was so phenomenally
ugly. From the collar of his shirt projected a lean, sinewy neck, on
which the too-abundant skin rolled and wrinkled in a dark red,
wind-roughened manner particularly disagreeable to behold. The neck
supported a small head. The face was wizened and tanned to a dark
mahogany colour. It was ornamented with a grizzled goatee.
The man smoked a stub pipe. His remarks were emphasized by the gestures
of a huge and gnarled pair of hands.
"Mr. Lawton is from Old Mizzou, too, afore he moved to Illinoy,"
commented Davidson. One became aware, from the loving tones in which
he pronounced the two words, whence he derived his sobriquet.
Lawton expressed the opinion that Chillicothe, of that State, was the
finest town on top of earth.
Bennington presumed it might be, and then opportunely bethought him of
a bottle of Canadian Club, which, among other necessary articles, he
had brought with him from New York. This he produced. The old
Missourians brightened; Davidson went into the cabin after glasses and
a corkscrew. He found the corkscrew all right, but apparently had some
difficulty in regard to the glasses. They could hear him calling
vociferously for Mrs. Arthur. Mrs. Arthur had gone to the spring for
water. In a few moments Old Mizzou appeared in the doorway exceedingly
red of face.
"Consarn them women folks!" he grumbled, depositing the tin cups on the
porch. "They locks up an' conceals things most damnable. Ain't a
tumbler in th' place."
"These yar is all right," assured Lawton consolingly, picking up one of
the cups and examining the bottom of it with great care.
"I reckon they'll hold the likker, anyhow," agreed Davidson.
They passed the bottle politely to de Laney, and the latter helped
himself. For his part, he was glad the tin cups had been necessary, for
it enabled him to conceal the smallness of his dose. Lawton filled his
own up to the brim; Davidson followed suit.
"Here's how!" observed the latter, and the two old turtlebacks drank
the raw whisky down, near a half pint of it, as though it had been so
much milk.
Bennington fairly gasped with astonishment. "Don't you ever take any
water?" he asked.
They turned slowly. Old Mizzou looked him in the eye with glimmering
reproach.
"Not, if th' whisky's good, sonny," said he impressively.
"Wall," commented Lawton, after a pause, "that is a good drink. Reckon
I must be goin'."
"Stay t' grub!" urged Old Mizzou heartily.
"Folks waitin'. Remember!"
They looked at Bennington and chuckled a little, to that young man's
discomfort.
"Lawton's a damn fine fella'," said Old Mizzou with emphasis.
Bennington thought, with a shudder, of the loose-skinned, turkey-red
neck, and was silent.
After supper Bennington and Old Mizzou played cribbage by the light of
a kerosene lamp.
"While I was hunting claims this afternoon," said the Easterner
suddenly, "I ran across a mighty pretty girl."
"Yas?" observed Old Mizzou with indifference. "What fer a gal was it?"
"She didn't look as if she belonged around here. She was a slender
girl, very pretty, with a pink dress on."
"Ain't no female strangers yar-abouts. Blue eyes?"
"Yes."
"An' ha'r that sometimes looks black an' sometimes yaller-brown?"
"Yes, that's the one all right. Who is she?"
"Oh, that!" said Old Mizzou with slight interest, "that's Bill
Lawton's girl. Live's down th' gulch. He's th' fella' that was yar
afore grub," he explained.
For a full minute Bennington stared at the cards in his hand. The
patriarch became impatient.
"Yore play, sonny," he suggested.
"I don't believe you know the one I mean," returned Bennington slowly.
"She's a girl with a little mouth and a nose that is tipped up just a
trifle----"
"Snub!" interrupted Old Mizzou, with some impatience. "Yas, I knows.
Same critter. Only one like her in th' Hills. Sasshays all over th'
scenery, an' don't do nothin' but sit on rocks."
"So she's the daughter of that man!" said Bennington, still more
slowly.
"Wall, so Mis' Lawton sez," chuckled Mizzou.
That night Bennington lay awake for some time. He had discovered the
Mountain Flower; the story-book West was complete at last. But he had
offended his discovery. What was the etiquette in such a case? Back
East he would have felt called upon to apologize for being rude. Then,
at the thought of apologizing to a daughter of that turkey-necked old
whisky-guzzler he had to laugh.
CHAPTER IV
THE SUN FAIRY
The next afternoon, after the day's writing and prospecting were
finished, Bennington resolved to go deer hunting. He had skipped
thirteen chapters of his work to describe the heroine, Rhoda. She had
wonderful eyes, and was, I believe, dressed in a garment whose colour
was pink.
"Keep yore moccasins greased," Old Mizzou advised at parting; by which
he meant that the young man was to step softly.
This he found to be difficult. His course lay along the top of the
ridge where the obstructions were many. There were outcrops, boulders,
ravines, broken twigs, old leaves, and dikes, all of which had to be
surmounted or avoided. They were all aggravating, but the dikes
possessed some intellectual interest which the others lacked.
A dike, be it understood, is a hole in the earth made visible. That is
to say, in old days, when mountains were much loftier than they are
now, various agencies brought it to pass that they split and cracked
and yawned down to the innermost cores of their being in such hideous
fashion that chasms and holes of great depth and perpendicularity were
opened in them. Thereupon the interior fires were released, and these,
vomiting up a vast supply of molten material, filled said chasms and
holes to the very brim. The molten material cooled into fire-hardened
rock. The rains descended and the snows melted. Under their erosive
influence the original mountains were cut down somewhat, but the
erstwhile molten material, being, as we have said, fire-hardened,
wasted very little, or not at all, and, as a consequence, stands forth
above its present surroundings in exact mould of the ancient cracks or
holes.
Now, some dikes are long and narrow, others are short and wide, and
still others are nearly round. All, however, are highest points, and,
head and shoulders above the trees, look abroad over the land.
When Bennington came to one of these dikes he was forced to pick his
way carefully in a detour around its base. Between times he found
hobnails much inclined to click against unforeseen stones. The broken
twig came to possess other than literary importance. After a little his
nerves asserted themselves. Unconsciously he relaxed his attention and
began to think.
The subject of his thoughts was the girl he had seen just twenty-four
hours before. He caught himself remembering little things he had not
consciously noticed at the time, as, for instance, the strange contrast
between the mischief in her eyes and the austerity of her brow, or the
queer little fashion she had of winking rapidly four or five times, and
then opening her eyes wide and looking straight into the depths of his
own. He considered it quite a coincidence that he had unconsciously
returned to the spot on which they had met the day before--the rich
Crazy Horse lode.
As though in answer to his recognition of this fact, her voice suddenly
called to him from above.
"Hullo, little boy!" it cried.
He felt at once that he was pleased at the encounter.
"Hullo!" he answered; "where are you?"
"Right here."
He looked up, and then still up, until, at the flat top of the
castellated dike that stood over him, he caught a gleam of pink. The
contrast between it, the blue of the sky, and the dark green of the
trees, was most beautiful and unusual. Nature rarely uses pink, except
in sunsets and in flowers. Bennington thought pleasedly how every
impression this girl made upon him was one of grace or beauty or bright
colour. The gleam of pink disappeared, and a great pine cone, heavy
with pitch, came buzzing through the air to fall at his feet.