The Claim Jumpers - Stewart Edward White
Bennington was deliciously, carelessly, forgetfully happy. Only there
was Jim Fay. That individual was as much of a persecution as ever, and
he seemed to enjoy a greater intimacy with the girl than did the
Easterner. He did not see her as often as did the latter, but he
appeared to be more in her confidence. Bennington hated Jim Fay.
CHAPTER XIII
THE SPIRES OF STONE
One afternoon they had pushed over back of Harney, up a very steep
little trail in a very tiny cleft-like canon, verdant and cool. All at
once the trail had stood straight on end. The ponies scrambled up
somehow, and they found themselves on a narrow open _mesa_ splashed
with green moss and matted with an aromatic covering of pine needles.
Beyond the easternmost edge of the plateau stood great spires of stone,
a dozen in all, several hundred feet high, and of solid granite. They
soared up grandly into the open blue, like so many cathedral spires,
drawing about them that air of solitude and stillness which accompanies
always the sublime in Nature. Even boundless space was amplified at the
bidding of their solemn uplifted fingers. The girl reined in her horse.
"Oh!" she murmured in a hushed voice, "I feel impertinent--as though I
were intruding."
A squirrel many hundreds of feet below could be heard faintly barking.
"There _is_ something solemn about them," the boy agreed in the same
tone, "but, after all, we are nothing to them. They are thinking their
own thoughts, far above everything in the world."
She slipped from her horse.
"Let's sit here and watch them," she said. "I want to look at them, and
_feel_ them."
They sat on the moss, and stared solemnly across at the great spires of
stone.
"They are waiting for something there," she observed; "for something
that has not come to pass, and they are looking for it always toward
the East. Don't you see how they are waiting?"
"Yes, like Indian warriors wrapped each in his blanket. They might be
the Manitous. They say there are lots of them in the Hills."
"Yes, of course!" she cried, on fire with the idea. "They are the Gods
of the people, and they are waiting for something that is
coming--something from the East. What is it?"
"Civilization," he suggested.
"Yes! And when this something, this Civilization, comes, then the
Indians are to be destroyed, and so their Gods are always watching for
it toward the East."
"And," he went on, "when it comes at last, then the Manitous will have
to die, and so the Indians know that their hour has struck when these
great stone needles fall."
"Why, we have made a legend," she exclaimed with wonder.
They stretched out on their backs along the slope, and stared up at the
newly dignified Manitous in delicious silence.
"There was a legend once, you remember?" he began hesitatingly, "the
first day we were on the Rock together. It was about a Spirit
Mountain."
"Yes, I remember, the day we saw the Shadow."
"You said you'd tell it to me some time."
"Did I?"
"Don't you think now is a good time?"
She considered a moment idly.
"Why, yes, I suppose so," she assented, after a pause. "It isn't much
of a legend though." She clasped her hands back of her head. "It goes
like this," she began comfortably:
"Once upon a time, when the world was very young, there was an evil
Manitou named _Ne-naw-bo-shoo_. He was a very wicked Manitou, but he
was also very accomplished, for he could change himself into any shape
he wished to assume, and he could travel swifter than the wind. But he
was also very wicked. In old times the centres of all the trees were
fat, and people could get food from them, but _Ne-naw-bo-shoo_ walked
through the forest and pushed his staff down through the middle of the
trunks, and that is why the cores of the trees are dark-coloured. Maple
sap used to be pure sirup once, too, but _Ne-naw-bo-shoo_ diluted it
with rain water just out of spite. But there was one peculiar thing
about _Ne-naw-bo-shoo_. He could not cross a vein of gold or of silver.
There was some sort of magic in them that turned him back--repelled
him.
"Now, one day two lovers were wandering about on the prairie away east
of here. One of them was named _Mon-e-dowa_, or the Bird Lover, and the
other was _Muj-e-ah-je-wan_, or Rippling Water. And as these two walked
over the plains talking together, along came the evil spirit,
_Ne-naw-bo-shoo_, and as soon as he saw them he chased them, intending
to kill them and drink their blood, as was his custom.
"They fled far over the prairie. Everywhere that _Muj-e-ah-je-wan_
stepped, prairie violets grew up; and everywhere that _Mon-e-dowa_
stepped, a lark sprang up and began to sing. But the wicked
_Ne-naw-bo-shoo_ gained on them fast, for he could run very swiftly.
"Then suddenly they saw in front of them a great mountain, grown with
pines and seamed with fissures. This astonished them greatly, for they
knew there were no mountains in the prairie country at all; but they
had no time to spare, so they climbed quickly up a broad canon and
concealed themselves.
"Now, when the wicked Manitou came along he tried to enter the canon
too, but he had to stop, because down in the depths of the mountain
were veins of gold and silver which he could not cross. For many days
he raged back and forth, but in vain. At last he got tired and went
away.
"Then _Mon-e-dowa_ and _Muj-e-ah-je-wan_, who had been living quite
peacefully on the game with which the mountain swarmed, came out of the
canon and turned toward home. But as soon as they had set foot on the
level prairie again, the mountain vanished like a cloud, and then they
knew they had been aided by _Man-a-boo-sho_, the good Manitou."
The girl arose and shook her skirt free of the pine needles that clung
to it.
"Ever since then," she went on, eyeing Bennington saucily sideways,
"the mountain has been invisible except to a very few. The legend says
that when a maid and a warrior see it together they will be----"
"What?" asked Bennington as she paused.
"Dead within the year!" she cried gaily, and ran lightly to her pony.
"Did you like my legend?" she asked, as the ponies, foot-bunched,
minced down the steepest of the trail.
"Very much; all but the moral."
"Don't you want to die?"
"Not a bit."
"Then I'll have to."
"That would be the same thing."
And Bennington dared talk in this way, for the next day began the
Pioneer's Picnic, and lately she had been very kind.
CHAPTER XIV
THE PIONEER'S PICNIC
The Lawtons were not going to the picnic. Bennington was to take Mary
down to Rapid, where the girl was to stay with a certain Dr. McPherson
of the School of Mines.
An early start was accomplished. They rode down the gulch through the
dwarf oaks, past the farthermost point, and so out into the hard level
dirt road of Battle Creek canon. Beyond were the pines, and a rugged
road, flint-edged, full of dips and rises, turns and twists, hovering
on edges, or bosoming itself in deep rock-strewn cuts. Mary's little
pony cantered recklessly through it all, scampering along like a
playful dog after a stone, leading Bennington's larger animal by
several feet. He had full leisure to notice the regular flop of the Tam
o'Shanter over the lighter dance of the hair, the increasing rosiness
of the cheeks dimpled into almost continual laughter, to catch stray
snatches of gay little remarks thrown out at random as they tore along.
After a time they drew out from the shadow of the pines into the
clearing at Rockerville, where the hydraulic "giants" had eaten away
the hill-sides, and left in them ugly unhealed sores. Then more rough
pine-shadowed roads, from which occasionally would open for a moment
broad vistas of endless glades, clear as parks, breathless descents, or
sharp steep cuts at the bottom of which Spring Creek, or as much of it
as was not turned into the Rockerville sluices, brawled or idled along.
It was time for lunch, so they dismounted near a deep still pool and
ate. The ponies cropped the sparse grasses, or twisted on their backs,
all four legs in the air. Squirrels chattered and scolded overhead.
Some of the indigo-coloured jays of the lowlands shot in long level
flight between the trees. The girl and the boy helped each other,
hindered each other, playing here and there near the Question, but
swerving always deliciously just in time.
After lunch, more riding through more pines. The road dipped strongly
once, then again; and then abruptly the forest ceased, and they found
themselves cantering over broad rolling meadows knee-high with grasses,
from which meadow larks rose in all directions like grasshoppers. Soon
after they passed the canvas "schooners" of some who had started the
evening before. Down the next long slope the ponies dropped cautiously
with bunched feet and tentative steps. Spring Creek was forded for the
last time, another steep grassy hill was surmounted, and they looked
abroad into Rapid Valley and over to the prairie beyond.
Behind them the Hills lay, dark with the everlasting greenery of the
North--even, low, with only sun-browned Harney to raise its cliff-like
front above the rest of the range. As though by a common impulse they
reined in their horses and looked back.
"I wonder just where the Rock is?" she mused.
They tried to guess at its location.
The treeless ridge on which they were now standing ran like a belt
outside the Hills. They journeyed along its summit until late in the
afternoon, and then all at once found the city of Rapid lying below
them at the mouth of a mighty canon, like a toy village on fine velvet
brown.
In the city they separated, Mary going to the McPhersons', Bennington
to the hotel. It was now near to sunset, so it was agreed that
Bennington was to come round the following morning to get her. At the
hotel Bennington spent an interesting evening viewing the pioneers with
their variety of costume, manners, and speech. He heard many good
stories, humorous and blood-curdling, and it was very late before he
finally got to bed.
The immediate consequence was that he was equally late to breakfast. He
hurried through that meal and stepped out into the street, with the
intention of hastening to Dr. McPherson's for Mary, but this he found
to be impossible because of the overcrowded condition of the streets.
The sports of the day had already begun. From curb to curb the way was
jammed with a dense mass of men, women, and children, through whom he
had to worm his way. After ten feet of this, he heard his name called,
and looking up, caught sight of Mary herself, perched on a dry-goods
box, frantically waving a handkerchief in his direction.
"You're a nice one!" she cried in mock reproach as he struggled toward
her. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks flew red signals of enjoyment.
Bennington explained.
"I know. Well, it didn't matter, any way. I just captured this box.
Climb up. There's room. I've lost the doctor and Mrs. McPherson
already."
Two mounted men, decorated with huge tin marshals' badges, rode slowly
along forcing the crowd back to the right and to the left. The first
horse race was on. Suddenly there was an eager scramble, a cloud of
dust, a swift impression of dim ghostlike figures. It was over. The
crowd flowed into the street again.
The two pressed together, hand in hand, on the top of the dry-goods
box. They laughed at each other and everything. Something beautiful was
very near to them, for this was the Pioneer's Picnic, and both
remembered that the Pioneer's Picnic marked the limit of many things.
"What's next? What's next?" she called excitedly to a tall young
cattleman.
The cowboy looked up at her, and his face relaxed into a pleased smile.
"Why, it's a drillin' match over in the next street, miss," he answered
politely. "You'd better run right along over and get a good place." He
glanced at de Laney, smiled again, and turned away, apparently to
follow his own advice.
"Come on, we'll follow him," cried Mary, jumping down.
"And abandon our box?" objected Bennington. But she was already in full
pursuit of the tall cowboy.
The ring around the large boulder--dragged by mule team from the
hills--had just begun to form when they arrived, so they were enabled
to secure good places near the front rank, where they kneeled on their
handkerchiefs, and the crowd hemmed them in at the back. The drilling
match was to determine which pair of contestants could in a given
time, with sledge and drill, cut the deepest hole in a granite boulder.
To one who stood apart, the sight must have been picturesque in the
extreme. The white dust, stirred by restless feet, rose lazily across
the heated air. The sun shone down clear and hot with a certain
wide-eyed glare that is seen only in the rarefied atmosphere of the
West. Around the outer edge of the ring hovered a few anxious small
boys, agonized that they were missing part of the show. Stolidly
indifferent Indians, wrapped close in their blankets, smoked silently,
awaiting the next pony race, the riders of which were skylarking about
trying to pull each other from their horses' backs.
When the last pair had finished, the judges measured the depths of the
holes drilled, and announced the victors.
The crowd shouted and broke for the saloons. The latter had been plying
a brisk business, so that men were about ready to embrace in
brotherhood or in battle with equal alacrity.
Suddenly it was the dinner hour. The crowd broke. Bennington and Mary
realized they had been wandering about hand in hand. They directed
their steps toward the McPhersons with the greatest propriety. It was a
glorious picnic.
The house was gratefully cool and dark after the summer heat out of
doors. The little doctor sat in the darkest room and dissertated
cannily on the strange variety of subjects which a Scotchman can always
bring up on the most ordinary occasions.
The doctor was not only a learned man, as was evidenced by his position
in the School of Mines and his wonderful collections, but was a scout
of long standing, a physician of merit, and an Indian authority of
acknowledged weight. Withal he was so modest that these things became
known only by implication or hearsay, never by direct evidence. Mrs.
McPherson was not Scotch at all, but plain comfortable American,
redolent of wholesome cleanliness and good temper, and beaming with
kindliness and round spectacles. Never was such a doctor; never was
such a Mrs. McPherson; never was such a dinner! And they brought in
after-dinner coffee in small cups.
"Ah, ha! Mr. de Laney," laughed the doctor, who had been watching him
with quizzical eye. "We're pretty bad, but we aren't got quite to
savagery yet."
Bennington hastened to disavow.
"That's all right," the doctor reassured him; "that's all right. I
didn't wonder at ye in this country, but Mrs. McPherson and mysel' jest
take a wee trip occasionally to keep our wits bright. Isn't it so, Mrs.
Mac?"
"It is that," said she with a doubtful inner thought as to the
propriety of offering cream.
"And as for you," went on the doctor dissertatively, "I suppose ye're
getting to be somewhat of a miner yourself. I mind me we did a bit of
assay work for your people the other day--the Crazy Horse, wasn't it? A
good claim I should judge, from the sample, and so I wrote Davidson."
"When was this?" asked the Easterner, puzzled.
"The last week."
"I didn't know he had had any assaying done."
"O weel," said the doctor comfortably, "it may not have occurred to him
to report yet. It was rich."
"Mrs. McPherson, let's talk about dresses," called Mary across the
table. "Here we've come down for a _holiday_ and they insist on talking
mining."
And so the subject was dropped, but Bennington could not get it out of
his mind. Why should Mizzou have had the Crazy Horse assayed without
saying anything about it to him? Why had he not reported the result?
How did it happen that the doctor's assistants had found the ore rich
when the company's assayers East had proved it poor? Why should Mizzou
have it assayed at all, since he was no longer connected with the
company? But, above all, supposing he had done this with the intention
of keeping it secret from Bennington, what possible benefit or
advantage could the old man derive from such an action?
He puzzled over this. It seemed to still the effervescence of his joy.
He realized suddenly that he had been very careless in a great many
respects. The work had all been trusted to Davidson, while he, often,
had never even seen it. He had been entirely occupied with the girl. He
experienced that sudden sinking feeling which always comes to a man
whom neglected duty wakes from pleasure.
What was Davidson's object? Could it be that he hoped to "buy in" a
rich claim at a low figure, and to that end had sent poor samples East?
The more he thought of this the more reasonable it seemed. His
resignation was for the purpose of putting him in the position of
outside purchaser.
He resolved to carry through the affair diplomatically. During the
afternoon he ruminated on how this was to be done. Mary could not
understand his preoccupation. It piqued her. A slight strangeness
sprang up between them which he was too _distrait_ to notice. Finally,
as he tumbled into bed that night, an idea so brilliant came to him
that he sat bolt upright in sheer delight at his own astuteness.
He would ask Dr. McPherson for a copy of the assays. If his suspicions
were correct, these assays would represent the richest samples. He
would send them at once to Bishop with a statement of the case, in that
manner putting the capitalist on his guard. There was something
exquisitely humorous to him in the idea of thus turning to his own use
the information which Davidson had accumulated for his fraudulent
purposes. He went to sleep chuckling over it.
CHAPTER XV
THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN
The next morning the young man had quite regained his good spirits. The
girl, on the other hand, was rather quiet.
Dr. McPherson made no objections to furnishing a copy of the assays.
The records, however, were at the School of Mines. He drove down to get
them, and in the interim the two young people, at Mrs. McPherson's
suggestion, went to see the train come in.
The platform of the station was filled to suffocation. Assuming that
the crowd's intention was to view the unaccustomed locomotive, it was
strange it did not occur to them that the opposite side of the track or
the adjacent prairie would afford more elbow room. They huddled
together on the boards of the platform as though the appearance of the
spectacle depended on every last individual's keeping his feet from the
naked earth. They pushed good-naturedly here and there, expostulating,
calling to one another facetiously, looking anxiously down the
straight, dwindling track for the first glimpse of the locomotive.
Mary and Bennington found themselves caught up at once into the vortex.
After a few moments of desperate clinging together, they were forced
into the front row, where they stood on the very edge, braced back
against the pressure, half laughing, half vexed.
The train drew in with a grinding rush. From the step swung the
conductor. Faces looked from the open windows.
On the platform of one of the last cars stood a young girl and three
men. One of the men was elderly, with white hair and side whiskers. The
other two were young and well dressed. The girl was of our best
patrician type--the type that may know little, think little, say
little, and generally amount to little, and yet carry its negative
qualities with so used an air of polite society as to raise them by
sheer force to the dignity of positive virtues. From head to foot she
was faultlessly groomed. From eye to attitude she was languidly
superior--the impolitic would say bored. Yet every feature of her
appearance and bearing, even to the very tips of her enamelled and
sensibly thick boots, implied that she was of a different class from
the ordinary, and satisfied on "common people" that impulse which
attracts her lesser sisters to the vulgar menagerie. She belonged to
the proper street--at the proper time of day. Any one acquainted with
the species would have known at once that this private-car trip to
Deadwood was to please the prosperous-looking gentleman with the side
whiskers, and that it was made bearable only by the two smooth-shaven
individuals in the background.
She caught sight of the pair directly in front of her, and raised her
lorgnette with a languid wrist.
Her stare was from the outside-the-menagerie standpoint. Bennington was
not used to it. For the moment he had the Fifth Avenue feeling, and
knew that he was not properly dressed. Therefore, naturally, he was
confused. He lowered his head and blushed a little. Then he became
conscious that Mary's clear eyes were examining him in a very troubled
fashion.
Three hours and a half afterward it suddenly occurred to him that she
might have thought he had blushed and lowered his head because he was
ashamed to be seen by this other girl in her company; but it was then
too late.
The train pulled out. The Westerners at once scattered in all
directions. Half an hour later the choking cloud dusts rose like smoke
from the different trails that led north or south or west to the heart
of the Hills.
"The picnic is over," he suggested gently at their noon camping place.
"Yes, thank Heaven!"
"You remember your promise?"
"What promise?"
"That you would explain your 'mystery.'"
"I've changed my mind."
A leaf floated slowly down the wind. A raven croaked. The breeze made
the sunbeams waver.
"Mary, the picnic is over," he repeated again very gently.
"Yes, yes, yes!"
"I love you, Mary."
The raven spread his wings and flew away.
"Do you love me?" he insisted gently.
"I want you to come to dinner at our house to-morrow noon."
"That is a strange answer, Mary."
"It is all the answer you'll get to-day."
"Why are you so cross? Is anything the matter?"
"Nothing."
"I love you, Mary. I love you, girl. At least I can say that now."
"Yes, you can say it--now."
CHAPTER XVI
A NOON DINNER
Bennington did not know what to make of his invitation. At one moment
he told himself it must mean that Mary loved him, and that she wished
him to meet her parents on that account. At the next he tormented
himself with the conviction that she thus merely avoided the issue.
Between these moods he alternated, without being able to abide in
either. He forgot all about Old Mizzou.
Promptly at noon the following day he turned up the little right-hand
trail for the first time.
The Lawton house he found, first of all, to be scrupulously neat. It
stood on a knoll, as do most gulch cabins, in order that occasional
freshets might pass below, and the knoll looked as though it had been
clipped with a pair of scissors. Not a crooked little juniper bush was
allowed to intrude its plebeian sprawl among the dignified pines and
the gracefully infrequent bushes. In front of the cabin itself was a
"rockery" of pink quartz, on which were piled elk antlers. The building
was L-shaped, of two low stories, had a veranda with a railing, and
possessed various ornamental wood edgings, all of which were painted.
The whole affair was mathematically squared and correspondingly neat.
Some boxes and pots of flowers adorned the window ledges.
Bennington's knock was answered by an elderly woman, who introduced
herself at once as Mrs. Lawton. She commenced a voluble and slightly
embarrassed explanation of how "she" would be down in a moment or so,
at the same time leading the way into the parlour. While this
explanation was going forward, Bennington had a good chance to examine
his hostess and her surroundings.
Mrs. Lawton was of the fat but energetic variety. She fairly shone with
cleanliness and with an insistent determination to keep busy. You could
see that all the time her tongue was uttering polite platitudes
concerning the weather, her mind was hovering like a dragon fly over
this or that flower of domestic economy. She was one of the women who
carry their housekeeping to a perfection uncomfortable both to herself
and everybody else, and then delude themselves into the martyrlike
belief that she is doing it all entirely for others. As a consequence,
she exhibited much of the time an aggrieved air that comported but
ludicrously with her tendency to bustle. And it must be confessed that
in other ways Mrs. Lawton was ludicrous. Her dumpy little form was
dressed in the loudest of prints, the figures of which turned her into
a huge flower bed of brilliant cabbage-like blooms. Over this chaos of
colours peered her round little face with its snapping eyes. She
discoursed in sentences which began coherently, but frayed out soon
into nothingness under the stress of inner thought. "I don't see where
that husban' of mine is. I reckon you'll think we're just awful rude,
Mr. de Laney, and that gal, an' Maude. I declare it's jest enough to
try any one's patience, it surely is. You've no idea, Mr. de Laney,
what with the hens settin', and this mis'able dry spell that sends th'
dust all over everything and every one 'way behin' hand on
everythin'----" Her eye was becoming vacant as she wondered about
certain biscuits.