Ross Grant, Tenderfoot
by John Garland · English · Gutenberg #34296 · 458,932 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Ross Grant, Tenderfoot
Author: John Garland
Illustrator: Ralph L. Boyer
Release date: November 12, 2010 [eBook #34296]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34296
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROSS GRANT, TENDERFOOT ***
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[Illustration: SLOWLY HE WAS LET DOWN]
ROSS GRANT
TENDERFOOT
BY
JOHN GARLAND
AUTHOR OF
"Ross Grant, Gold Hunter"
"Ross Grant on the Trail"
Illustrated by R. L. Boyer
THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA
1917
COPYRIGHT 1915 BY
THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY
Ross Grant, Tenderfoot
To
Mr. and Mrs. C. H. Tewksbury
whose life in the Wyoming Mountains has
made Ross Grant, Tenderfoot, possible, I
cordially dedicate this book
INTRODUCTION
WHEN I went over the same route, some time before Ross Grant traveled it,
from Cody eighty miles into the snow-capped Shoshones, I found how
welcome a "Doc Tenderfoot" would be in the gold mining camp at the end
of the route. There was, in camp, the superintendent of one of the mining
companies, a man who had never had any instruction in things medical
or surgical, but who, with a steady hand and a cool head, and an acquired
knowledge of "first aids," was often called on in case of sickness and
accident, as there was no doctor nearer than Cody. Such a state of
affairs greeted Ross Grant when he arrived with his medical "emergency
chest" and his real knowledge of the use to which its contents should be
put.
Also, I found a certain "outfit" of men, not McKenzie in name but in
nature, waiting to "jump" certain valuable "claims" provided the owners
failed in any particular to measure up to the requirements of the law.
Their intention was to do the "jumping" legally and not through "gun
play," which is becoming an obsolete custom in that great state.
Then, too, I discovered over on a real Meadow Creek Valley--exactly
the same place that Ross found--a real "Dutch Weimer" afflicted with
snow-blindness, imprisoned for months at a time in the little valley
because of the danger from snowslides on the mountainsides.
And, by the way, if you should ever follow this same interesting
trail from Cody up into the mountains, you would find "Ross Grant,
Tenderfoot" an accurate guide-book until you reached the end of the
stage route. There you would find that Miners' Camp is a fictitious
name applied to a real place. And if you should chance to be in camp on
the Fourth of July, you would realize fully the difficulties that Ross
had to contend against in the vast snowfalls. For the year I visited
the mountains the glorious Fourth was celebrated by snow-shoe races down
the mountainsides! There are snow-storms every month in the year there,
but Miners' Camp is comparatively free from snow during August and
September.
These are the months, then, when gold hunters, "prospectors," are
most numerous in the mountains. I saw them everywhere with their "pack
outfits" bound on wooden saddles, seeking in the rocks for indications
of a fortune that is as elusive in their business as the proverbial
"pot of gold at the end of a rainbow."
But, although Ross Grant did not immediately find a fortune, he found
what is far more desirable, the development of muscle, quick wit and
nerve in the situations which he was obliged to face and conquer in these
adventure-breeding mountains.
"Ross Grant, Gold Hunter" tells of the hero's further adventures in the
mountains and of his hard won "find."
In "Ross Grant on the Trail" he meets many discouragements, but finally
conquers them.
John Garland.
Contents
I. A BORN SURGEON 13
II. A STEADY HAND 34
III. DOC TENDERFOOT IN ACTION 56
IV. THE FOURTH MAN 78
V. A MAN WHO NEEDED BRACING UP 98
VI. THE MEN OF MEADOW CREEK 121
VII. HALF-CONFIDENCES 140
VIII. ROSS'S "HIRED MAN" 159
IX. SURPRISES 176
X. A NEWCOMER ON MEADOW CREEK 197
XI. MEADOW CREEK VALLEY MISSES LESLIE 216
XII. A CALAMITY BEFALLS ROSS 236
XIII. THE SEARCH 258
XIV. A PERILOUS JOURNEY 277
XV. A NEW CAMP 297
XVI. THE INGRATITUDE OF WESTON 312
XVII. A RANDOM SHOT 330
XVIII. A HUMILIATING DISCOVERY 348
XIX. AN UNEXPECTED VICTORY 363
Illustrations
Page
SLOWLY HE WAS LET DOWN _Frontispiece_
MAP OF THE MEADOW CREEK TRAIL 59
"WHAT'S THE LATEST WORD?" 72
HE STRUCK THE TRAIL 134
BESIDE THE DYNAMITE BOX 203
THE SNOW HID IT FROM VIEW 309
MAP OF THE CROOKED TRAIL 359
"YOU'VE PAID FOR IT" 367
ROSS GRANT, TENDERFOOT
CHAPTER I
A BORN SURGEON
DR. FRED GRANT, recalled in haste from his daily round of professional
visits by a telephone message from his nephew, leaped out of his carriage
over the yet moving wheel, and, stuffing an open letter into his pocket,
rushed up the walk and into his office, which occupied a wing of his
commodious house.
A sight met his eyes which was not uncommon, situated as he was in the
midst of the coal fields of Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania. Stretched
out on the leather couch lay a man from the mines, black and grimy, his
right arm crushed. Two other miners, also blackened with coal-dust, sat
on the edges of their chairs, their eyes following the movements of Ross
Grant, the doctor's nephew and self-constituted assistant.
Those movements had been rapid and effective. Again and again had this
seventeen-year-old boy been brought face to face with such cases as
this, and he handled it promptly and wordlessly. Words, indeed, would
have been wasted, as none of his callers spoke English. He had quieted
the sufferer with a hypodermic injection of morphine, stripped the
injured arm, cleansed it, and treated it with a temporary dressing.
Then, with the bandages firmly in place, he had gone to the telephone
and patiently called up house after house until he found his uncle.
When Dr. Grant entered the office, he found Ross calmly taking the
temperature of the wounded man.
"He must have met with the accident at least an hour before they got him
here," the boy explained, "for he was suffering awfully. I thought I
ought to fix him up before trying to find you."
His uncle nodded with satisfaction, and bent over the man. "All right,"
he commended briefly, but his tone said more. Words were not always
necessary to an understanding between uncle and nephew.
The younger man was an abridged edition of the older in form and feature.
In movements the two were alike only so long as Ross was aiding the
doctor on such an occasion as this. Then there were in both the same
alertness and quiet intentness, the same compression of the lips and
narrowing of the eyes. But when the strain of the hour was past and
the miners gone, the boy's manner changed. The alert quality which
characterized the uncle at all times seemed to desert the nephew, and
his movements became slow. From the born surgeon in embryo he became a
rather awkward, self-conscious boy.
Throwing himself into a chair behind the table, he drew toward him
Gray's "Anatomy," and began reading at a line marked by a paper-cutter,
his closely cropped head grasped in both hands.
The older man moved around the room restlessly, occasionally glancing
with troubled eyes at the figure behind the table. Standing finally in
front of the window, he drew the letter from his pocket, smoothed it out,
and read it again.
In front of him, in the valley, lay Pittston and Wilkes-Barre, with
Scranton in the distance, and beyond, the sun-burned hills, almost hidden
now by the smoke from a hundred coal-breakers, and by the late August
haze.
"Ross," began Dr. Grant abruptly, without turning, "I'm afraid you are
going to meet disappointment--to a certain extent. I have a letter from
your father."
The boy raised his head with a jerk. "Do you mean that he forbids----"
"No,"--the doctor turned slowly,--"not exactly. He expects to send for
you in a few days, and will tell you himself."
Ross's chin came up. "And I shall not be twenty-one for nearly four
years yet!" he exclaimed aggressively.
His uncle looked at him with more sternness than he felt. "Remember,
Ross, that he is your father and that you owe him----"
Ross interrupted hotly, looking longingly at the letter. "I don't owe
him as much as I do you and Aunt Anne."
Dr. Grant made no reply, nor did he share the letter. Putting it into
an inner pocket, he left the office, and presently Ross heard the sound
of wheels on the drive. Dr. Grant was starting again on his interrupted
round of calls.
The boy leaned back and drew a deep breath. His father was going to
send for him, and would then tell him--what? That he could not enter
a medical college? That he could not become a surgeon? That he must
fit himself for a business career? His chin came up again. He looked
around the office lingeringly. It had been the heart of his home for
seven years. It represented to him all that he wished to become. His
father was almost a stranger to him; his uncle had stood in the place
of a father since he, a sickly boy of ten, had been sent from the city
to gain health on the hills which girdle Wyoming Valley.
He had gained health. In so far he had fulfilled his father's wishes.
But, in addition, he had gained a knowledge and been settled in a desire
extremely displeasing to Ross Grant, Senior, who expected to train his
only son to continue his own business.
"Grant & Grant" was the father's ambition; "Dr. Grant" the son's.
Presently Dr. Grant's wife appeared in the doorway of the office. She
was a short, round woman, with a laughing face and a pretty, bustling
air of authority. Stopping abruptly, she shook a chubby forefinger at
Ross.
"All day to-day," she accused, "you have bent over that book."
Ross, his elbows planted on the table and his chin resting on his fists,
shook his head. He did not look up.
"I've been studying Gray on Anatomy, Aunt Anne. Got to master him."
Aunt Anne bobbed energetically across the room, and slammed the volume
shut. "There!" she cried triumphantly. "Get out and walk five miles, and
strengthen your own anatomy!"
Under her light tones and in the affectionate touch of her hand as she
ran her fingers through his hair, Ross detected an undercurrent of
solicitude, which brought forth a counter-accusation. Rising hastily, he
laid both hands on her shoulders, and looked down from an altitude of
five feet ten.
"Aunt Anne, you know what father wrote to uncle, don't you?"
Mrs. Grant's eyes fell. "Better take a good run over the mountain,
Ross," she parried.
Ross's hands slipped from her shoulders. "I see there's no use asking
either of you what he wrote."
Mrs. Grant flecked some dust from the table. "Sometimes, Ross," was her
only reply, "disappointment is the very best and most strengthening tonic
we can take."
She turned away, adding without glancing back as she left the room: "I
do wish, Ross, that you'd get out and exercise more. You would conquer
Gray's 'Anatomy'--and all other difficulties--more quickly if you
would."
"I guess you're right, Aunt Anne," assented Ross.
"Yes," scolded Aunt Anne to her sister in the living-room--but the
scolding rested on a very apparent foundation of love--"Ross always
agrees with me about taking vigorous exercise--and then never takes it.
Now watch him walk, will you?" she fretted, looking out of the window.
Her sister, busily sewing, paused with suspended needle, and glanced
out. Ross was going slowly down the drive, his head bent forward, his
youthful shoulders carelessly sagging, his long arms aimlessly hanging,
giving him a curiously helpless appearance at variance with his large
frame.
"It's Ross's own fault," declared Aunt Anne. "He doesn't like to exert
himself physically. Not that he's lazy," defensively, "for he isn't.
He would work all night over a patient, and never think of himself; but
to get out and exercise for the sake of exercising, and straightening
himself up, and holding himself, somehow--well, I've talked myself
hoarse about it, and then found that he had been reading some medical
book or other all the time I was talking!"
Here Aunt Anne laughed silently, and ran her shears through a length
of gingham, adding, as if the addition were a logical sequence to her
monologue:
"It's a mystery to me how his father can feel so disappointed in him."
"Disappointed in Ross?" exclaimed the sister in a tone of wonder.
Mrs. Grant nodded. "His father sends for him once a year, sees him for a
day or two when Ross is at the greatest disadvantage in unaccustomed
surroundings--you know the stepmother is a woman of fashion; and the
result is that he is so awkward and slow and tongue-tied that his
father--well," Mrs. Grant bit off her thread energetically, "of course,
we feel tender on the subject because we have had Ross now for seven
years, and we think a better boy never lived. But now the time has
come," her voice trembled, "when we must give him up."
"Will his father forbid his going to medical college?" asked the sister.
Mrs. Grant hesitated. "No, I don't think he will forbid it; but he will
prevent it--if he is able," she added significantly.
Two days later the summons from Ross Grant, Senior, arrived in the shape
of a telegram brief and to the point. "Take night-train," it read,
"September first. Reach office at nine."
"Ross," worried Aunt Anne as she straightened his tie and hovered around
him anxiously the afternoon of September first, "you'd better get a new
hat in Scranton. This one is--well, I think you better appear before Mrs.
Grant in a new one."
"All right, aunt."
Dr. Grant extended his hand, and gripped Ross's. "Remember, my boy, that
the telegram appointed nine A. M. as the time for your appearing."
Ross laughed. "Don't you worry, uncle," he returned confidently. "I
shall be at the office before father gets there."
But, despite his confidence, it was nearly ten the morning following
before he stepped out of the elevator of a Broadway office building and
presented himself hesitatingly before the clerk in his father's outer
office.
His hesitation was due to his appearance. His hat, new the afternoon
before, was soiled and pierced by the calk of a horse's shoe. His
shirtfront was also soiled and then smeared over by a wet cloth in a
vain effort to remove the dirt. His right coat-sleeve was wrinkled, and
bore marks of a recent wetting. About his clothes lingered a subtle
"horsy" odor, which caused the clerk to sniff involuntarily as he
curiously looked over the heir to the house of Grant before disappearing
into the inner office.
When he returned he bore the crisp message that Ross was to wait until
his father had time to see him.
Ross waited. He retreated to a window through which the sunshine
streamed, and there sat, industriously drying his wet sleeve. He pulled
it, and smoothed it, and stretched it, only to see it shrivel and shrink
while he waited. The clerk occasionally glanced with no abating of
curiosity from the boy to the clock. Two hours passed. Others waiting
in that outer office grew restless. They read. They took quick turns
about the room. They went out into the corridor, and returned. At
last, one by one, they were ushered into the inner office, while Ross
still waited.
It was past twelve before his father sent for him, and the first glance
the boy encountered was one of displeasure.
"Did you come in on the night-train?" was the elder Grant's greeting.
"Yes, sir."
The father frowned, and looked up at a clock which ticked above their
heads.
"I telegraphed you that I could see you at nine."
Ross sank into a great padded, leather-upholstered chair. All about him
were evidences of luxury, but he was conscious only of his father's
displeasure and of his own disreputable appearance. He studied his hands
awkwardly, and stumbled in his reply.
"I should have been here by nine, sir, but for an accident which occurred
on the ferry----"
"Accident?" His father's tone softened.
Ross looked at his coat-sleeve. "There was a fine horse, a big bay that
stood behind a truckster's cart. He took an apple. It lodged in his
throat, and he nearly choked to death." The boy hesitated and glanced
up. "I got it out," he explained simply, adding apologetically, "I got
awfully mussed up doing it, though."
"You!" Grant burst out, paying no attention to the apology. "You got it
out!" He leaned forward, genuinely interested. "How did you do it?"
Ross warmed under the interest in the tone. "I was standing in the
bow of the boat, just over the rail from the horse, and I saw what
the trouble was. There was no one else who seemed to know what to do."
He spoke modestly. "The horse would have died before we reached the
landing; and so," simply, "I ran my arm down his throat, and got the
apple."
"You did!" ejaculated Grant. He leaned further forward. "And what
prevented the horse from chewing up your arm while you were after the
apple?"
"A bootblack's brush," Ross explained. "A boy was rubbing up a man's
shoes near me; and I grabbed his brushes, and got busy. One of the deck
hands helped me prop the horse's mouth open. I threw off my coat"--here
Ross surveyed himself ruefully, and left the subject of the horse; "and I
got pretty dirty all over. Couldn't help it. There wasn't any time to
think of keeping clean. But after we got over on the New York side
the owner of the horse took me to a stable, and helped me to clean
up; but--I don't think it's much of a success."
Mr. Grant leaned back in his swivel chair, rested his elbows on the arms,
and fitted his finger-tips together. His imagination, country-trained
in his youth, was supplying some of the details which his son had
omitted. He nodded his iron-gray head, and narrowed his eyes, a trick
common to all the Grants when intent on any subject.
"Quick work," he remarked after a pause. His eyes were taking the measure
of his son. "It had to be quick work," he added as if to convince himself
that Ross could act swiftly.
"Where did you get breakfast?" was his next question.
"I haven't had any," Ross replied. "I tried to get here by nine
o'clock."
A low whistle escaped the father. He arose, and reached for his hat,
which lay on the top of a safe behind him. "We'll go out to lunch now."
Ross glanced doubtfully from his father's well-groomed person to his
own dirty coat.
"Perhaps, father, you'd like me to go out alone so long as----"
"Nonsense!" interrupted Grant brusquely.
As they left the room, he took his boy's arm. There was little
resemblance between the two. Ross had his uncle's head with its
high brow and well-shaped chin, lean cheeks, and prominent ears. He was
taller than his father, but wholly lacked his father's energetic
manner and erect carriage.
"You graduated in June from Wyoming Seminary," the father stated as they
entered a large Broadway restaurant and sat down near the door.
"Yes, sir."
"No honors?"
The boy's eyes fell. "No, sir. I stood tenth in a class of thirty-four."
Evasion of the truth was not one of Ross's strong points.
"And," stated his father, "it took you five years to do a four years'
course."
Ross looked his father squarely in the eyes, and lifted his chin a
little. The father noticed for the first time that the boy's chin could
indicate aggression.
"I flunked on mathematics. But I made them up the next summer, and went
on."
Again Grant looked at his son attentively, the son who retrieved his
failure and "went on."
"You're seventeen," he said abruptly. "What's next?" The question, as
both knew, was superfluous.
"Medical college," Ross answered as abruptly as the question had been
put. "I am preparing for the entrance examinations in the University of
Pennsylvania. I want to go down and take them in January, and at the same
time pass upon a couple of subjects in the freshman year."
There was a gleam of curiosity in Grant's deep-set eyes as he put the
next questions.
"Haven't I told you repeatedly that I shall never advance one penny on a
medical education for you?"
"Yes, sir." Ross's eyes met his father's steadily but respectfully.
"And I shall not ask you to advance a cent."
"But haven't I forbidden your uncle, also, to help you out?"
"Yes, sir, and Uncle Fred has no intention of helping me. He'll keep
the letter and the spirit of the law you have laid down."
"Well, then----"
Ross smiled quietly. "But you have never forbidden my getting a medical
education through my own efforts; and that, father, is what I intend to
do."
Ross Grant, Senior, found himself looking into eyes which he recognized
as strangely like his own and shining with the same determination which
in himself had established a thriving business and built up a moderate
fortune. Never had he been so interested in his son. Never had he so
coveted him for a business career. But, as he ate a moment in silence,
young Ross's determined voice seemed to be repeating in old Ross's
ears, "That, father, is what I intend to do."
During the remainder of the meal the elder Grant listened attentively
to the younger's plans. To Ross this was a new experience. After the
first irritation over his tardiness, his father had not once oppressed
him with that sense of disapproval and disappointment which usually sent
him back to his uncle with a buoyant relief at his escape from New York.
Still, he was not deceived. He knew that his father's summons had to do
with the thwarting of his surgical career; and he was prepared to argue,
persuade, do anything short of actual defiance, to gain permission to
work for the object toward which all his inclinations pulled.
As they made their way up Broadway through the noon-hour crowd, a
feminine voice behind them suddenly piped out excitedly:
"There he is, Kate, right ahead of you--that tall, round-shouldered young
man. He's the one I told you about on the ferry this morning. I tell you
what, he made all the men around step lively for a few minutes."
Ross suddenly quickened his pace. His face flushed uncomfortably, but
the voice of "Kate's" companion was still at his heels.
"Why, he grabbed them brushes and was over the rail as quick as a cat,
and had that horse's mouth open before its owner even knew that it was
chokin'----"
Ross, Senior, strode along behind Ross, Junior, now in a vain attempt
to keep up. He chuckled in a sly enjoyment of the boy's embarrassment.
"He certainly can move, I see," he muttered, "when he has something to
move toward--or away from!"
But the mutter was lost on Ross seeking an escape from that voice of
praise by dodging in and out among the crowd until his father lost sight
of him, and found him again only at the entrance to the office building.
When the two were again seated in the private office, the father for
the first time broached the matter which he had called the son from
Pennsylvania to hear; and, had he studied the boy for months, he could
not have overcome his opposition more tactfully and completely.
"Ross," he began quietly, "I am not going to forbid your going to a
medical college this year or any other year. To be honest with you, I
admire your grit. I believe it will bring you success. And so, as I say,
I am not going to forbid your entering the University of Pennsylvania.
But--I am going to ask a favor of you."
Ross's eyes sparkled. His father swung around, and, picking up a pencil,
marked aimlessly on a pad lying on the big mahogany desk.
"Well, father."
"I am going to ask you to help me pay a debt which I owe--and the payment
will certainly spoil this year so far as college is concerned."
Grant paused. He did not look up, but he heard Ross draw a deep breath.
Then there was silence.
"Keep in mind," Grant began again, "that I am not requiring this of
you--I am asking it."
"Yes--sir."
The tone gave the father the uncomfortable impression that he was
assisting at a surgical operation on his son, but he bent his head a
little lower over the pad, and traced figures more carefully as he
began abruptly on a seemingly new subject.
"Have I ever told you about my Western partner, Jake Weimer?"
"No, sir."
"Well, I started business in the West without a cent, and it was Weimer
who gave me my start. He was running a store in Butte, and took me with
him. I have managed to get beyond a start, but Weimer never has. After I
came East he lost his share of our earnings, and turned prospector. Ever
since he has spent his life trying to squeeze gold out of the mountains.
Again and again he has staked out claims, and I've grub-staked him to
the finish. For twenty-five years this has gone on. So far, none of
the properties have amounted to much; still, we hold them; there's
always a chance of a rise in value."
Grant drew straight, heavy lines on the pad as he told the story of
his grub-staked partner. He fell easily into the vernacular of the
gold-fields.
"Four years ago Weimer went prospecting among the Shoshones in Wyoming
over near Yellowstone Park. There he began development work on some
deserted claims, a few miles from Miners' Camp."
Here Grant pulled a letter from his pocket, and consulted it.
"The claims, it seems," he continued, "had been originally worked by two
men named Allen and Waymart McKenzie. They did the required work for
three years, and then threw up their job and left Wyoming. Now they're
back again, wishing, evidently, that they had never left."
Ross nodded. His eyes had not left his father's face.
"Weimer has felt from the first that he would make good on these claims.
He has sent me quartz from time to time, and I've had it assayed.
It carries moderately high values in gold, silver, and lead; but, as
the camp is eighty miles from a railroad, up among almost impassable
mountains, where it's impossible to get the quartz to a smelter, I
confess I have paid but little attention to Weimer's work. It has
seemed a waste of energy, despite his enthusiasm."
Grant suddenly threw himself back in his chair. His manner took on a
keener edge, and his tone became brisker.
"But this year things bid fair to change there because the Burlington
Railroad is surveying a line from Cody, and a boom is in prospect for
next summer. Our claims have suddenly acquired a new importance; they
promise to become valuable."
"Then," commented Ross in a low, constrained tone, "Weimer will get
beyond a 'start' at last."
Grant regarded his son keenly. He did not answer the comment directly.
"According to the law of Wyoming," he continued, "one hundred dollars'
worth of work a year for five years must be done on a claim, or five
hundred dollars' worth all together within five years, before the
tract can be patented, by which I mean before the owners can receive a
clear title to it. Now, Weimer has done four years' work all right;
but this year, the fifth and last in which he can hold the claims without
fulfilling the conditions of work to the full, he is failing because
of snow-blindness. It seems he had an attack last spring, and was obliged
to stay in his cabin for weeks at a time instead of working."
Ross cleared his throat. "And if he fails----"
"We lose the claims, and the McKenzies get them back." Grant again
consulted the letter. "Weimer got a man named Steele to write this--an
Amos Steele in Miners' Camp. He writes that the McKenzies are taking
advantage of some technicalities in the law. They have already filed
a claim on the tract based on their three years' former occupancy.
This will clear the way for them to take possession in case Weimer
fails with the work. Steele goes on to say that, if the claims are
saved, some one must come out and look after them--preferably some one
with a personal interest in the property."
Mr. Grant laid the letter down, adding slowly, "If you go, I shall give
you a substantial personal interest."
There ensued a pause. Ross sat motionless. His gaze had left his
father's face, and was fixed on the rug.
"Now, knowing," Grant continued, "that Weimer has set his heart on these
claims, I can't desert him. That work must be done and the claims
patented."
There was another pause. Grant looked at his son expectantly, but still
Ross neither moved nor spoke.
"Weimer is a good sort," Grant went on tentatively. "You'd like Weimer.
He's a big man and jolly in every pound of his avoirdupois. Great
story-teller--stories worth listening to, what's more. You wouldn't
be dull with him."
Grant leaned forward suddenly, and asked directly the question to which
his son felt there could be but one reply in view of his father's appeal.
"My boy, will you go?"
CHAPTER II
A STEADY HAND
IN the two weeks which elapsed between Ross's visit to his father and
his start for Wyoming he planned hopefully for the year.
"Father has given me a free hand," he told his uncle. "As soon as I can
get the work done and the claims patented I am at liberty to come back
home, and I tell you I shall hustle. I shall hire as many men as are
necessary in Miners' Camp, and take 'em over to Meadow Creek, where
the claims are located, and just rush that work through."
"I wonder," remarked Dr. Grant thoughtfully, "why that man Weimer
doesn't hire it done instead of sending East for some one to manage
the matter."
Ross frowned into the open grate before which the two were sitting.
"Why, uncle, I never thought of that, and father didn't mention it. In
fact, he knows but very little about Miners' Camp or Weimer's work,
and you know he hasn't seen Weimer in years. All he knows about the
business is contained in a letter that Weimer got a man named Amos Steele
to write. Weimer, it seems, can't use his eyes to read or write. The
letter is very short. That man Steele is a mine-superintendent out there.
Father knows about the company which he works for."
"The very idea," cried Aunt Anne a few moments later in tearful
indignation, "of Ross Grant's sending that boy away out West to the
jumping-off place into the wilderness without knowing the conditions
into which he's sending him! It's a shame. He's our boy, and I
don't want him to go."
The doctor made no reply, but retired precipitately to the office, where
he had occupied himself at intervals all day with fitting up an emergency
chest for Ross.
The chest was a little oblong, hair-covered strong trunk, which had held
all of the doctor's worldly possessions when, thirty years before, he
had started to the medical college just as his brother, Ross's father,
had started West for his financial "start." Into this chest uncle and
nephew fitted all sorts of objects medical, from books to bandages.
"When you're eighty miles from a physician, Ross, and shut in by
snow-drifted mountains at that, it's well to have a few remedies
and appliances on hand."
"And, when you're several Sabbath days' journey from civilization,
with time to burn on your hands, it's also well to have some light
literature along," laughed Ross, tucking into the chest Piersol's
"Histology." "I intend to make my time count for myself, as well as
for Weimer and father."
Aunt Anne, meantime, was packing another and more modern chest, her tears
besprinkling the contents.
"I have put your winter shirts and chamois-skin vest right on top of the
tray, Ross," she sobbed as she bade him good-bye. "You better put 'em
on as soon as you reach the mountains, as it will be cold there."
"All right, aunt; I shall." Ross's voice was a little husky as he turned
to his uncle.
Dr. Grant was standing beside the vacated breakfast table absorbed in
filling a glass of water. Carefully he brimmed it drop by drop.
Aunt Anne peered through her tears. "Why, Fred," she exclaimed, "what
are you up to? Don't make Ross miss his train."
Calmly the doctor added a few more drops, and then turned to his nephew.
His eyes narrowed intently as he motioned toward the glass.
"I want to test your nerves, Ross. Hold it out," he directed.
The boy smiled confidently, raised the glass, carried it from him the
length of a long, steady arm, and held it there. Then he returned it to
the table without spilling a drop.
The doctor grasped the hand that had held the glass, looking earnestly
into the boy's eyes.
"Ross, the hand that holds the surgeon's knife successfully must _keep
as steady as this_."
For a long, silent moment uncle and nephew looked into each other's
faces as their hands gripped. Ross made no reply, but in the expression
which leaped to his eyes the older man read the resolution which
satisfied him, and which seemed a part of this slow, steady nephew of his.
An hour later the boy was being borne westward on the way to Chicago and
the "jumping-off place into the wilderness."
At the same time his father sat behind his desk on Broadway reading a
letter postmarked Cody, Wyo., and signed D. H. Leonard. It was written
in reply to a recent communication from Ross Grant, Senior.
"Of course I shall be glad to do anything in my power for your son,"
the letter read, "along the lines you have suggested. I see the wisdom
of your move, too. It doesn't always do to refuse a boy's demands
point-blank. It's far better to turn him from his purpose as you are
doing--or trying to do, I should say, because, if young Ross is anything
like old Ross, he will not be so easily turned. Yet, as you say, a
little stirring up and jostling out of his uncle's beaten tracks may
put some new ideas into his head. This country certainly bids fair to
be stirring enough now to fascinate any young man. It's a good idea
also to give him a half-share in your share of the claims; and I'm
sure, if the railroad makes good its promise of a way up to Miners'
Camp, the claims will be worth working for. And, as a real estate
dealer, I don't need to be urged to do my best to interest him in the
business of this vast land, the country of the future."
In Chicago a telegram overtook Ross. It was from his father. "Stop
overnight at Hotel Irma, Cody," it read. "Leonard will meet you there."
Two days later, early in the morning, the west bound express dropped
Ross Grant and half a dozen other passengers at Toluca, in southern
Montana, a station with a water-tank and some cattle corrals attached.
Here stood the train which by day plied over the branch road to Cody,
and by night returned to Toluca. It was a mixed train consisting of
freight and express cars with a sleeper at the end.
The half dozen passengers, reenforced by others left by the east bound
express, all men, transferred themselves to this coach. Every one
except Ross seemed to be more or less acquainted with every one else.
Ross sat silent, listening and looking out on as much of the great
West as was visible from the slowly moving car. Across the windswept,
sun-cracked plain grumbled the old engine. On either side were herds of
cattle fattening on the dusty dried grass, which looked to Ross dead
and worthless. Not a tree met his eyes, and not a house.
"Got the Western fever yet?" drawled a voice behind him finally, and Ross
looked around into the good-natured face of a man who had boarded the
north bound express at Omaha.
Ross shook his head decidedly. "There's nothing here to give a fellow
the Western fever," he returned, pointing to the flat yellow plain
overlaid by the dull yellow sunshine.
The man lounged forward, his elbows on the back of Ross's seat, and
grinned. He was apparently about thirty, short and fair, with sandy
hair and mustache. He wore corduroy trousers and coat, with a dark
flannel shirt and turn-over collar under which was knotted carelessly a
broad green silk tie. Hanging to the back of his head was a brown,
broad-brimmed hat, the crown encircled with a narrow band of intricately
woven hair dyed in all the colors of the rainbow.
"I'll tell ye what's out there that gives most of us the Western
fever," he declared; "and that's money prospects. Sort of a yellow
fever, ye know, it is, except that no one wants to be cured."
"Then I don't want to catch it in the first place," declared Ross,
looking out of the window again.
Presently some one in the rear of the car lowered a newspaper, and
rumbled over the top of it:
"You fellers rec'lect old man Quinn?"
Some did; some did not. To the latter, the speaker explained.
"Used to live in Cody. Friend of Buffalo Bill, old man Quinn was. Went
down to Oklahomy five years ago, and bought a sheep ranch. He and some
of the cattlemen around him got by the ears over how much of the range
belonged to the sheep----"
Here an inarticulate murmur sounded through the car. There was a "cattle
war" on in Wyoming at that time.
"Wall, one night two years ago about now, after a big round-up at
North Fork, one thousand of old man Quinn's sheep was driven over the
bluffs into North Fork River. All that old man Quinn could find out
was that four men done it. But he kept a-tryin' to find out, and got
a _de_tective down from Kansas City, feller who used to be a cow puncher
himself; and he nabbed three of 'em. They had had the gall to stay right
there on the range all this time."
"Good reason," volunteered some one, "why it took so long to land 'em. I
suppose old man Quinn was lookin' for 'em among the punchers that had
left after the round-up."
"Jest so," declared the informant. "He was tryin' to track up every one
who cleared out after the round-up--jest so."
"How long did they git?" asked some one further up the aisle.
"Two years."
"Sandy," some one across the aisle said to the man behind Ross, "wa'n't
you down t' Oklahomy punchin' two year ago?"
There was a perceptible pause. Then a note of irritation spoke through
Sandy's drawl as he answered briefly, "No, north Texas."
And, while the rest continued the discussion concerning old man Quinn,
he leaned forward and devoted himself to Ross.
Presently they came to the hills whose barrenness and sombreness were
relieved at intervals by the brilliant coloring of the rocks.
"Well," asked Sandy, "what do ye think of this? It ain't every day East
that ye can walk around the crater of an old volcano."
"Is this----" began Ross, his head out of the window.
"This is!" chuckled he of the sandy hair.
The train was crawling slowly around the edge of a wide, shallow well, on
all sides of which the hills frowned darkly, stripped of every vestige
of verdure.
"An extinct volcano!" ejaculated Ross.
"Yep,"--the other sagged forward until his laughing face was close to
Ross's,--"but just let me tell ye right here, young man, that volcanoes
is the only thing in the West that's extinct. Everything else is pretty
lively."
Ross joined in the laugh which greeted this sally all around him. The
man opposite lowered his paper, and looked over his glasses.
"Volcanoes _and_ hopes, Sandy," he amended quickly, instantly retiring
again behind his paper.
Ross did not understand the significance of the retort, but he noticed
that several men around exchanged glances and that Sandy's face lost a
fraction of its good nature. And when Sandy's face lost its humorous
expression, it was not pleasing.
Dusk and Cody drew near together. The train dropped over the "rim," and
steamed along through the Big Horn Basin, coming to a final standstill in
front of another station and water-tank.
"Cody," announced the brakeman. "All out."
Ross, suitcase in hand, his top-coat over his arm, stumbled out of the
train, still swaying with the perpetual motion of the last few days. A
big open wagon with side seats stood beside the platform. At the call of
the driver Ross looked around interrogatively at Sandy, who was still
beside him.
"Oh, we're two miles from the town yet," Sandy replied to the look.
"Pile in. Train can't make it over the shelves between here and
Stinkin' Water."
Ross silently "piled in." Sandy sat down beside him, and the wagon filled
with the other passengers.
Behind them, stretching back into the darkness, their heads sagging
sleepily, was a row of teams, their neck-yokes joined by a chain, their
heads connected by a single rein running through the ring at the left
side of the bit.
"Hey, there," called one of the men in the wagon, "does Grasshopper
strike the trail to-night for Meeteetse?"
"Yep," came a voice beside a lantern which was traveling to and fro.
"There's a lot of freight to pack up to Miners' Camp; and, if it gits
there ahead of the snow, these freighters have got to hit the pike more
rapid than they have been doin'."
A horseman dashed past the wagon and into the circle of light from the
lantern hung in front of the station. Dropping the reins to the ground,
he swung his leather-enveloped legs off the horse, and yelled at the
station agent:
"Have those boxes of apples come yet?"
"Just here," replied the holder of the moving light.
"Can't you start 'em up by the Meeteetse stage to-night?" demanded the
newcomer. "The boys are about famished."
"Them surveyors," complained the agent, "are always hollerin' for more
grub. 'N' no matter how much ye fill 'em, they don't go faster than
molasses in January. Ain't got beyond Sagehen Roost this minute, and
they'll probably be a-quittin' in a month."
Ross pricked up his ears. The same interest was manifested by Sandy.
"Don't you worry about our quitting," the newcomer returned brusquely;
"if the Burlington Railroad starts out to run a track up to Miners'
Camp, why, it will run one, that's all, if the track has to go under
snow-sheds all the way up from the Meadows."
At this point the big open bus rumbled off over the dust-choked "shelf"
toward Cody. An unwieldy swaying coach drawn by four horses passed them
on its way to the station.
"Meeteetse stage is late to-night," remarked Sandy.
On rumbled the wagon. Its brake screamed against the wheel as the horses
plunged down the steep inclines which marked the descent from one "shelf"
to another. Presently a vile odor greeted Ross's nostrils, and at the
same time the wagon struck the bridge over the sulphurated waters of
the Shoshone, and began the climb on the other side.
Ross was keenly alive to this strange new world in which the convenience
of the East met the newness and crudeness of the West. Brilliant
electric lights illuminated dust-deep, unpaved, unsprinkled streets.
Tents stood beside pretentious homes, and stone business blocks were
rising beside offices located in canvas wagons with rounded tops. And
to and fro past the wagon flashed horsemen, cowboys dressed like Sandy
except that their corduroy trousers were incased in leather "chaps."
Sandy, watching Ross out of the corner of his eye, grinned at the boy's
expression.
"Buck up here, tenderfoot," he advised good-naturedly. "This here is
'The Irma'; and, if you've got any better hotels in the East, why,
don't tell Colonel Cody of it, at any rate, for 'The Irma' is the
Colonel's pet."
Then Ross found himself in the foyer of "The Irma," the hotel that
"Buffalo Bill" erected to honor his home town, which bears his name,
a comfortable, modernly equipped house decorated with hundreds of
paintings, water colors, and etchings, all picturing the scenes in
Colonel Cody's life as represented in his "Wild West Show."
Sandy had registered in advance of Ross, and stepped to a swinging door
at the end of the counter. There he stopped and turned back. "Come on
and have a drink, tenderfoot," he invited good-naturedly.
Ross was writing his name, and did not look up. "No, thank you," he
returned quietly. "I don't drink."
Several men lounging about glanced curiously at the boy. Sandy thrust
his hands into his pockets, and, leaning against the counter, looked at
him in open interest.
After Ross had registered, he drew a nickel from his pocket and laid it
on the counter. "A two-cent stamp, please."
The clerk, impatient with the deliberation of his movements, cast the
nickel hurriedly into the cash drawer and handed out a stamp. Ross
waited for the change, while three men behind him pressed forward to
the register.
Sandy grinned broadly. "There's no change comin', tenderfoot," he said
with a chuckle. "You've reached a land where nothin' less'n a nickel
can be got outside a post-office."
"Pennies don't grow in the Rocky Mountains," added the clerk in a tone
which plainly invited the boy to move on.
The tone brought the blood to Ross's cheek. His eyes suddenly narrowed.
His head went up, and his voice quickened and deepened.
"Very well, then," he returned coolly, "give me another two-cent stamp
and a postal card."
Sandy patted his thigh softly. "You'll pass, tenderfoot," he murmured.
"No flies on you--at least, they don't stick there."
Ross took his trophies, and retired to a desk beside the swinging door.
Just as he had finished directing a letter to his Aunt Anne he noticed
that his new friend was waiting again beside the counter.
When the last man had registered, Sandy pulled the book toward him and
leaned over it. Suddenly he bent lower, and jabbed hard on the page with
his forefinger. When he turned, all the good humor had dropped out of
his face. With a glance of keen interest at the boy beside the desk he
passed on into the barroom.
So marked was the change in his manner that Ross paused in the act of
dipping his pen into the ink-well.
"Guess I'll see who Sandy is," he thought, and, dropping his pen,
crossed to the book.
The name stared up at him in big bold letters directly above his own,
but he had not noticed it at the time of registering.
_"Allen McKenzie, Miners' Camp."_
Ross pursed his thin lips, and nearly whistled aloud as he returned to
his desk.
"It's one of the McKenzies who are after our claims," he wrote at
the end of a long letter to his uncle and aunt; "but he is a funny,
good-natured fellow. I partly like him and partly don't. He has no
six-shooter in sight--in fact, I'm told that six-shooters have gone
more or less out of fashion in Wyoming; and he doesn't look a bit as I
had imagined a 'claim-jumper' would. But one thing he may reckon on;
there will be no chance for him or any one else to jump the Weimer-Grant
claims in a few months."
And, sealing this confident declaration, he slipped the letter into the
mail-box, ate a hearty dinner, and went to bed.
The following morning at nine o'clock D. H. Leonard, his father's
old-time friend, appeared, and greeted the son most cordially. Mr.
Leonard was a man of middle age, hale, red-faced, bald-headed, and
wearing a "boiled" shirt and collar. He was a dealer in real estate, with
offices in both Cody and Basin. It was to his office that he first
took Ross.
"We'll go for a drive by and by," he began, throwing himself back in
his chair and tossing a cigar across the desk. "We have the country of
the future here, and I want you to see it. Perfect gold-mine in this land
once it's irrigated."
Ross picked up the cigar, played with it a moment, and laid it again on
the desk, listening attentively.
The older man drew a match across the woodwork beneath his chair, and
lighted his cigar. "It's _the_ place for young men, Grant, a greater
place than it was when Horace Greeley gave his advice to young men to
go West--here's a match," he interrupted himself to say.
Ross accepted the match, bit on the end of it a moment, and laid it
beside the cigar.
"Don't you smoke?" asked Leonard in some surprise.
Before Ross could reply, some one called Mr. Leonard out into the hall.
As the door closed behind him, Ross arose and stood silently in front
of the open window. Beyond the little town and beyond the level stretch
of "shelves" arose the Big Horn Mountains, miles away, but so sharply
outlined in the clear air that they seemed only a short walk distant.
As Ross leaned against the window-casing, some one in the room adjoining
came to the open window. The stub of a cigar was thrown out, and a voice
exclaimed:
"But if Grant realized the situation, he'd never have sent a boy out
here to look after those claims. And it looks as though it was his
son--same initials. But with such a boy and Weimer you ought to be
able----"
The speaker left the window at this point, and Ross lost the rest of the
sentence. In a few moments, however, some one clattered through the
hall and down the stairs, with spurs jingling. A horse stood on the
street below, tethered only by its bridle-reins dangling to the ground.
From the entrance to the building Sandy McKenzie emerged, clad as on
the previous day, except for a colored handkerchief knotted about his
neck. Mounting his pony, he touched a spur to its flank, and galloped
away in a cloud of dust just as Leonard returned.
"Who's in the next room?" asked Ross.
"Over on the right?" asked Leonard carelessly. "Oh, a lawyer has that
office." He crossed to the window, and glanced out just as McKenzie
disappeared. "Evidently Sandy's pulling out for the mountains," he
observed. "Miners' Camp, that is."
"Are there only two McKenzies?" asked Ross.
Leonard shrugged his shoulders. "Two are all that have ever showed up
around here--Sandy and Waymart; but they say there are half a dozen more
brothers and cousins, some figurin' under names not their own; but where
they put up I don't know."
Here he turned and looked curiously at Ross. "I suppose your father told
you that Sandy and Waymart are sitting up on Meadow Creek waiting to jump
the Grant-Weimer claims."
"Yes, he told me," answered Ross, and hesitated. "Do they use guns in
the jumping process?"
Leonard laughed. "Not much! They have other and safer methods of getting
their own way in case Weimer doesn't do the work the law requires this
year."
Then he glanced at the unsmoked cigar, and repeated his question of some
time before. "Don't you smoke?"
Ross shook his head shortly.
"Why not?" Leonard looked at his old friend's son in friendly interest.
Ross stretched out his right arm in an unconscious imitation of the test
his uncle had required of him only a few mornings before. "It's apt to
get on a fellow's nerves," was all the reply he made.
There was much to see during the day and much to hear. Leonard took the
boy for a long drive up the canon of the Shoshone, whose densely green
waters have a background of brilliant reds and yellows in the sandstone
sides of the wall through which the river has cut. Up and yet up the
carriage went, with the walls rising higher and higher on either side,
the road a mere thread blasted out of the rocks, up to the great dam
which was beginning to raise its head across the river bed to hold back
the water and distribute it over Big Horn Basin through irrigating canals.
Ross's interest, however, during the drive was divided. He was glad to
see the vast "Shoshone Project," as the government reservoir is called;
but his most active thoughts were following Sandy McKenzie on his way
to Miners' Camp, and his questions were of the Camp and Wyoming mining
laws and the conditions he would meet in this new and strange land.
But Leonard had never been up to Camp, and was not interested in mining,
but in ranch lands; therefore, Ross got but little enlightenment from
him, and finally, ceasing to question, listened in silence while the
older man, in obedience to the senior Grant's request, did his best to
interest the junior Grant in the business prospects of Wyoming.
"I want you to come down to Basin at Christmas," Leonard said cordially
as host and guest sat down to dinner in the dining-room of "The Irma" at
six o'clock that night. "My home is in Basin. It's the county-seat of
Big Horn County, you know; and I want you to come down there. I want to
show you more of this magnificent country."
Ross was grateful for this friendly invitation, but made no promises; and
presently the two were eating in silence, Ross looking with interest on
some of the contrasts which were too familiar for Leonard even to notice.
Under elaborate and gaudy chandeliers was a bare and not overclean floor.
Looking down on the thickest and heaviest of cracked china were pictures
by well-known artists. Seated around the tables spread in linen, were
bearded men in chaps and overalls, flannel shirts and spurs, together
with those in tan oxfords and broadcloth.
At the table opposite Ross, and facing him, was a man to whom his
glance returned again and again. He sat alone. His square, unexpressive
face was relieved by a pair of fine dark-brown eyes. The lower part of
his face was covered by a stubby reddish beard. His hair was brown, and
fell nearly to his eyes, giving him the appearance of having a low
forehead. He wore a coat,--the first of its kind Ross had seen,--a short,
bulky affair, with a high collar laid over the shoulders and lined
throughout with lambskin, the wool badly worn on the collar. His chaps
were of undressed leather, with the long hair trimmed short save from
the thigh to the ankle. High riding boots, spurs, and a sombrero, which
he wore low over his forehead while eating, completed his costume.
"Who is he?" asked Ross.
Mr. Leonard shook his head. "Man next to me here said he rode in this
afternoon on the Yellowstone trail. Don't know who he is."
As if he felt he was under discussion, the stranger raised his head, and
his eyes met Ross's in a quick furtive glance.
After dinner Leonard gripped Ross's hand in farewell, and left. An hour
later there was a rattle of wheels in front of the hotel, the sound of
horses's hoofs, and a rollicking voice called:
"Meeteetse stage. All aboard!"
Ross, with a glance around the office which he expected to see again
before spring, picked up his bag, and went out on the piazza. Here he
stood while his trunk and the emergency chest were swung up behind the
stage and roped. Then he climbed up beside the driver, who was glad to
have some one near to help him keep awake during the long night ride, and
they were off, only to be stopped almost immediately by a man standing
in the doorway of a store.
"Hold up there!" shouted the man. "Steele is here, and wants to go on
to-night."
The name caught Ross's attention. "Is it Amos Steele?" he asked the
driver.
The driver assented. "Yep--superintendent of the Gale's Ridge Mine up
in Camp."
Ross leaned forward and surveyed with interest the pleasant-faced,
well-dressed, squarely-built young man who came out of the store and
climbed into the stage. In his pocket Ross had the letter Steele had
written his father at Weimer's request.
"Git out of this," the driver requested briefly of his four bronchos as
the stage door slammed to, and the four obligingly "got out" on a run.
Just as they left the last house behind them, a figure on horseback
whirled by in a cloud of dust, and Ross recognized in the sheepskin coat
and hairy chaps the stranger who had attracted his attention during
dinner.
CHAPTER III
DOC TENDERFOOT IN ACTION
BESIDES Steele, there were three other passengers inside the stage
that night. One was the assistant manager of the Embar Ranch, south of
Meeteetse. He had been to Omaha with a car-load of cattle. The remaining
two were miners whom Steele had picked up in Butte. This much Ross
learned from the driver. He learned many other things by listening to
the conversation between Hillis, the manager, and Steele, although
all the while he was keenly observant of his surroundings.
The stage was bowling along smoothly over a road as level as a floor and
flooded by brilliant moonlight. Behind them Cody faded into silvery
mist, guarded by the huge shadowy bulks of the Big Horn Mountains. Ahead,
houseless and treeless, stretched the shelf until the shimmering mist
cut off the sight. And in the distance, so far ahead that sometimes he
blended with the mist, rode the horseman in the sheepskin coat.
"Hi, there, Andy," called the ranch-manager; "who is that fellow ahead?"
Andy, the driver, turned, and looked down through the open flap into the
cavernous darkness of the stage. "Don't know. Didn't find out. I have
seen fellers, though, that can give more information about themselves
per square inch than that same chap ahead there."
"I never saw 'im in these parts before," returned Hillis.
"Nor I." The driver spat over the flank of the right wheeler. "Gid'ep
there, Suke, ye slowmy, you! Hike it, old Blue! Git out of this!" And,
having thus jogged the energy of the leaders, Andy gave his attention
again to Hillis. "Hain't ever set eyes on that brown chap before. I
guessed back there he was bound fer Embar. Looks like a puncher."
"I wish"--the assistant manager of the Embar spoke forcefully--"that he
and seven or eight more were bound for the Embar."
"Short of hands, eh?" questioned Andy, whirling his "black snake" so
skilfully that the lash missed the heads of the wheelers, and touched the
flank of the nigh leader.
"Short of hands?" Steele broke in. "Who isn't short of hands from Butte
to Omaha--especially in Wyoming? I've been out two weeks advertising
and hunting men, and here I am back again with two only."
Ross turned half around in his high seat, and grasped the low back. "Is
labor as scarce as that in Miners' Camp?" he burst out in a brusque,
astonished tone which betrayed a personal interest.
"As scarce as diamonds," returned Steele, adding with a laugh, "and
almost as expensive."
Andy pushed back his hat, and surveyed his young companion with
curiosity. There was a little stir in the coach also.
"It must be"--Amos Steele spoke as if the matter had been debated
before--"that you are related to Ross Grant of New York."
"Yes," returned Ross, "I am his son."
He was conscious of becoming an immediate centre of speculation.
"I wondered," remarked Steele, "when I saw your name on the hotel
register. Going out to Camp, are you?"
"Yes," Ross hesitated. "In answer to that letter you wrote father for
Mr. Weimer."
"Oh!" Steele's tone was edged with astonishment.
"Come out to see to the work, did ye?" asked Andy.
"Yes."
Andy glanced sidewise, and Ross caught the look of incredulity.
[Illustration: "Regular Trail from Miner's Camp to Weimer's, Etc."]
"Expected to hire men to do it, did ye?" That Andy was a general
information bureau was due to his faculty for asking questions.
"Yes, I do," emphatically.
The present tense of the reply did not escape the listener's attention.
"Weimer has tried to hire," volunteered Steele; "but it's no use."
"Why not?" demanded the boy.
"Well, in the first place, as I said, there hain't enough men to supply
the demand; and, in the second place, no man in his senses is going away
over on the Creek, where he'll be shut in for months, when he can just
as well stay down in Camp, and get the same wages."
"Shut in for months?" repeated Ross slowly.
Andy explained. "Along about first of February ye're shut in fer
sartain. Trail fills up, and there's apt to be snowslides any time on
old Crosby."
Ross sat with widening eyes staring out into the moonlight, and wondering
with tightening muscles what he was "up against." The vagueness of his
father's knowledge concerning Weimer's work had not counted in New
York. But here, swinging along toward Miners' Camp with two-thirds
of the width of the continent between himself and his friends, Ross
realized that this vagueness had put him at a disadvantage.
The two men behind him began discussing the cattle market, and the
stage slid down the side of the first mesa of the Wyoming bad lands
and into the coulee, or dry creek, at the bottom. The level road was
left behind. Up hill and down plunged the horses ahead of the rocking,
tipping stage. There was no regular road. A dozen tracks showed the
differing routes of as many drivers. To Ross it seemed as if destruction
were imminent every time they came to the top of one of the short,
steep hills. But Andy jammed on the brake hard, and, giving a peculiar
little whistle, yelled carelessly, "Git out of this."
Presently Andy took advantage of the rattle of wheels and hoofs to say
to Ross: "Steele is boss of the Gale's Ridge work up to Camp. They keep
open all winter; t'other company shuts down."
"Shuts down?" repeated Ross.
"Yep, has to. Men go down t' Cody t' work on the Project. Hard work to
keep men in Camp through the winter. When the railroad goes up there,
'twill be different."
Some one inside the stage struck a match.
"On time, ain't you, Andy?" asked Steele's voice; "it's twelve-thirty."
"Yep," returned the driver. "Here's Dry Creek."
The road, a well-defined track here, was hemmed in between a creek-bed
on one hand and a hill on the other. On top of the hill, silhouetted
against the star-studded sky, appeared a wagon with a white bellying
canvas top. Around it, covering the hilltop and the side clear down
to the track was a soft white moving mass that caused Ross to give a
startled exclamation.
"Why--that looks like--it _is_ sheep!" he ejaculated. "Sheep by the
hundreds."
"Sheep's the word!" returned the driver. "This is Sheepy's layout.
That's his wagon up yon. He herds fer parties in Cody. There's nigh
seven hundred of them sheep. Never seen such a flock before, did ye?"
Before Ross could reply, the stage swung around a corner of the hill
and Andy, with a sharp whistle, drew up the leaders abruptly. They were
in an open space in front of the stage camp, half cabin and half dugout
driven into the hillside. Beside the dugout was a low, stout corral,
outside of which were a haystack and a jumble of bales of hay. As the
stage stopped, the door of the dugout opened, and a man loomed large
against a dim light within.
But all this Ross did not notice at the time. His attention was riveted
on the horse just ahead ridden by the stranger. Around and around it
whirled, unmindful of the quirt and spur of the rider.
"Pretty ridin'," remarked Andy, spitting appreciatively over the wheel.
The men inside the stage clambered out with grunts at their stiffened
limbs, and leaned against the wheels watching. The man in the doorway
stepped out, and thrust his hands into his pockets, and looked calmly
while the horse placed its four feet together and humped its back with a
momentum which sent the rider high in the air.
When he came down, he settled himself in the saddle, drew up on the
reins, and dug his spurs into the horse's flank. The animal, his
nostrils distended and the foam flying from his mouth, without any
warning rose on his hind legs, and threw himself backward. The rider
freed one foot from the stirrup; but the other caught, and horse and
rider went down in a heap. There was a deep groan from both, and then
silence. If the men had seemed indifferent before, they made up in
activity now. With a flying leap Andy was down from his high seat. The
stage-camp man rushed forward, and threw himself on the horse's head,
while the others pulled the unconscious rider from beneath the animal's
body.
"Leg's done for," Ross heard Steele say as they carried the wounded man
into the dugout.
Ross clambered awkwardly down from his seat, and followed. He nearly fell
over an empty chicken-coop and into the one little room of the dugout.
"Put 'im here," directed the stage-camp man, whom the others called
Hank. He pointed to the blankets in the corner from which he had crawled
ten minutes before.
"Here, boy," Steele said with pale-faced absorption, "smooth the blankets
up."
Ross, half dazed by his strange and unexpected surroundings, slowly and
clumsily did as he was directed, and they laid the unconscious stranger
down carefully, his left leg hanging limply from a point half-way
between knee and hip. Then the men straightened up, and looked at one
another.
"A bad job," muttered Hank.
"Take 'im back to Cody?" asked Steele.
Hillis shook his head. "Doctor there went to Thermopolis this morning."
Suddenly the daze which had beclouded Ross's brain cleared away. He woke
up, and his whole attention focused itself on the prostrate man. In a
moment he became alert, resourceful, and active. His boyish hesitation
fell from him. He threw off his top-coat, tossed his cap with it to the
uncovered board table, and, kneeling by the man's side, laid his ear
on the heart.
"Go out," he said authoritatively to the astonished men, "and bring in my
smallest trunk. Hurry, for this chap will be conscious in just a moment."
No one stirred.
Whipping out his jack-knife, Ross cut a strap which secured the chaps,
and caught one leg at the ankle. "Help me pull 'em off," he cried
urgently.
Some one stooped to the other foot, and the chaps were off. Kneeling
beside the wounded leg, with his knife, Ross ripped the trousers from
ankle to thigh, and exposed a bloody wound.
"Compound fracture," he exclaimed after a brief examination.
Then he looked up. "Where's that chest?" he demanded. "I must cleanse
this and bandage it at once."
The cock-sureness of the boy's tone and the sight of the skilful touch
of his fingers on the wound galvanized the two miners into action, and
in a moment the emergency chest was beside Ross.
"Hot water," was his next command, as he fumbled with the key, "and a
small dish"--his eye fell on the table--"that salt cellar, with every
grain of salt washed out. Quick!"
The wounded man had recovered consciousness now, and was groaning, and
clinching his fists, and rolling his head from side to side in agony.
"Are you a doctor?" asked Steele incredulously.
"My uncle is," Ross returned briefly, "and I'm going to be."
The answer, coupled with a view of the contents of the chest and Ross's
manipulation of those contents, brought relief to the men.
He had produced a hypodermic syringe, and with a tiny morphine tablet
dissolved in the salt cellar he began operations which lasted the greater
part of two hours, and employed every man present.
"Bring in that hen-coop," directed Ross; "we can use that for a double
inclined plane to stretch the leg over."
Steele, who had so recently issued orders to a slow and clumsy boy, now
quietly obeyed this embryo surgeon. Hillis was holding bandages, while
Hank and Andy were doing something which filled their souls with wonder,
namely, making long, narrow bags from grain sacks out of which wheat
had been hastily dumped.
"By the great horn spoon, what're these fer?" Andy demanded in an
undertone, running the big needle deep into his thumb. "Jehoshaphat!"
Hank shook his head helplessly. He plumped a stick of wood into his rusty
old stove, and refilled a kettle from a water pail which stood on a box.
Steele dragged in the triangular chicken-coop, and laid it beside the
wounded man, who was moaning mechanically and drowsily now.
Ross arose, and set a bottle of alcohol on the table. He looked
critically at the coop. "The very thing," he muttered with eyes alight.
"How fortunate that I fell over it coming in!" Then he paused in thought.
Miners' Camp and Meadow Creek were forgotten. Forgotten were Weimer and
the neglected work. A "case" lay before him, a man needing the help that
it was life for the boy to give.
When, at last, the belated stage was ready to move on, the men, again
in their overcoats, lined up and looked down at the sleeping patient. He
lay with the knee of the wounded leg over the peak of the chicken-coop,
padded thick and soft with blankets, the leg held secure and motionless
between heavy sand-bags. Down the leg from knee to foot on either side
ran strips of adhesive plaster with loops protruding below the foot. And
attached to the loops was a small bag loaded with stone.
"To reduce the fracture," Ross explained briefly. He was on his knees,
measuring the well leg with a tape measure from the haircloth trunk.
"See, this leg is longer now because the broken parts of the thigh bone
in the other have been driven past each other, and the muscles have
contracted, shortening the leg. The weight on the foot will stretch
the muscles and allow the ends of the bone to meet again."
"Jehoshaphat!" exclaimed Andy softly. "He's lucky to have you come
trailin' down the pike just behind 'im. But see here, fellers," the
driver turned to the others; "yer Uncle Samuel will dock me this time
sure, fer the mail won't reach Meeteetse in time fer the stage up to
Miners' Camp!"
"Miners' Camp!"
The exclamation burst involuntarily from Ross. He arose. The tape measure
dropped from his hands. He drew his hand across his wet forehead. He had
seen the stage load prepare to go on without a thought that he ought
to go also. His one idea had been the care of the nameless man on the
blankets.
"Miners' Camp," he repeated; "why, I ought to go on!"
"Not much," cried Hank in lively alarm. "What 'ud I do with him and all
that toggery?" jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the chicken-coop.
"Of course," was Ross's decision in a low tone, "I can't desert
him--but I ought to go on."
A few moments later, Andy's four bronchos pounded up the hill beyond
the stage camp and disappeared, leaving Ross standing beside the window
watching. The man on the blankets breathed heavily. A big yellow cat
purred around Ross's legs. Hank poked the fire.
"Guess I'll rustle some grub now," the latter said in awkward
solicitude. "Ye're all in, ain't ye, Doc?"
Ross turned from the window wearily without replying, and for the first
time looked about the cabin.
It was roughly boarded, with a hard dirt floor. In addition to the
bench, the only seats were boxes in which "canned goods" had been stored
away. A pile of wood lay behind an old stove propped up on boxes in
lieu of legs. A cupboard containing some tin cups and thick plates, a
few pans and skillets, and a shelf heaped with magazines half a year
old completed the furnishings of the room.
Suddenly Ross's eyes lighted on the wounded man's sheepskin coat, which
had been cast hurriedly aside on the floor. Lifting it, he stepped to
the door, and commenced to shake it energetically. Out of the breast
pocket fell a small object. It hit the stone in front of the door
with a metallic ring. Ross picked it up, and looked down into the
photographed face of a winning girl with smiling eyes, curved lips, and
plump cheeks. The picture was a little oval set in a gilt frame. On the
back in a girlish hand was written the inscription, "To Lon Weston."
"Weston, huh?" came Hank's voice at Ross's elbow. "I never heard of Lon
Weston before. Wonder where he hails from."
Hank glanced speculatively at the sleeper, then took a deep earthenware
dish from the cupboard, beat its contents with a spoon, greased a
skillet, and set it on the fire.
"Men fergot t' eat," he grumbled, "'n' fergot t' feed the horses.
They fergot everything except him. They'll be one hungry lot when they
land in Meeteetse."
He raised the smoking skillet, and gave a deft toss, which sent the
flapjack spinning into the air, turned it over, and settled it back with
the baked side uppermost.
"Nice-looking girl that!" he muttered absently, immediately adding, "Here
ye are--flapjacks 'n' coffee!"
Late in the afternoon the injured man aroused himself groaning. He
stared at Ross with eyes which gradually cleared as a realization of
his environment was borne in on him.
"I say, Doc," he muttered, biting his lips with the pain, "I'm all to
the bad, ain't I?"
"Leg's used up for a few days, that's all, Mr. Weston," returned Ross
cheerfully.
The man turned his head quickly. His eyes widened and he seemed to
forget his pain. For a long moment he lay motionless looking from Ross to
Hank, who grinned hospitably at him from the stove.
"Cheer up down there," said Hank in jovial strain, "the worst is yet
t' come, fer I'm makin' ye some puddin', and even my mother 'ud
say that puddin' ain't one of my strong pints!"
The sick man did not smile. He merely stared at the speaker until Hank
disappeared, a water pail in hand, bound for the spring. Then he threw
out a hand toward Ross and asked abruptly:
"Where did you get it?"
Ross, turning a flapjack awkwardly, looked inquiringly over his shoulder.
"Get what?"
"The name--Weston?"
Ross smiled and then, partly because he was embarrassed and partly
because he thought the injured man would be, turned his back before
answering, "A picture fell out of your coat and I--we--saw the name
written on the back, 'Lon Weston.'"
There was no reply, and presently Ross added, "I put the photo back in
your pocket and hung the coat above your head there on the peg. Guess
you can reach it."
Still no reply, and Ross, looking around, found his patient with head
turned away, eyes closed and lips pressed tightly together in his beard.
Suddenly, in the open doorway appeared a figure that Ross had not seen
before. A shaggy head was advanced cautiously within the cabin and the
owner peered at Weston curiously. Then, evidently understanding his
closed eyes to mean sleep, the stranger backed out precipitately and sat
down on the bench outside the door. From this vantage point he peered
around the jamb from time to time eyeing Ross and his patient in turn.
"Good-evening," said the former as the stranger showed no signs of
speaking.
The shaggy head appeared in the doorway and nodding briefly, was
withdrawn, just as Hank, coming with the water, called, "Well, Sheepy,
what's the latest word up your way?"
It was Luther, otherwise "Sheepy," the herder whose wagon crowned the
adjacent hill. He was Hank's daily caller.
"There ye are, Doc," exclaimed Hank entering with the water. "Puddin'
fer Weston, and flapjacks 'n' coffee fer you and me with cabbage 'n'
spuds thrown in. Fill up."
It was a menu which was not varied to any great extent in the days which
followed, strange days for "Doc Tenderfoot," as Hank called Ross.
[Illustration: "WHAT'S THE LATEST WORD?"]
Every night at midnight one of the two stages plying between Cody and
Meeteetse stopped at the stage camp for supper and horse feed. Every
noon the other stage stopped for dinner on its return trip. Between
times, horsemen came and went, occasionally, men from the ranches on
Wood River and the Grey Bull, miners "packing" their beds behind them,
prospectors going out of the mountains for the winter, and every day
during the first week there was Sheepy. Sheepy usually came toward night
when his flock had been driven in from the range and rounded up by the
faithful shepherd dog near the canvas-topped wagon.
One day, the last of the week, after Ross had had a particularly trying
time with his patient, he left the latter asleep, and going outside, sat
on the bench in the sunshine watching Hank who was repairing the corral.
Presently Sheepy joined him, first refreshing himself, as usual, with a
long look at the snoring Weston.
"Once I seen a feller that rode like him and looked like him, only his
hair and beard," Sheepy announced finally in a hoarse whisper. "I seen
'im ridin' in ahead of th' stage that night, and I thought 'twas
th' other chap."
Ross listened without interest. Sheepy filled a pipe with deliberation
and lighted it. Then, clasping a worn knee in both hands he spoke again
out of the corner of his mouth.
"That feller had hair light as tow and his face clean of beard, but he
rode the same and his eyes was the same. He was a puncher off the cattle
ranges. Used to ride past my wagon alone about once a week headin' fer
town. Went in the edge of the evenin' always."
"And where were you?" asked Ross still without interest.
"Down in Oklahomy. I was herdin' sheep fer old man Quinn."
Ross looked at Sheepy with new interest. "I heard the men on the train
talking about old man Quinn and the sheep that he lost. Were you there
at that time?"
Sheepy nodded. "I sartain was. That's two years gone by."
"And did you see what was going on--driving the sheep into the river,
I mean?" questioned Ross eagerly.
The sheep-herder shook his grizzled head. "It wa'n't off my range that
the sheep was drove, but another feller's called Happy. He seen there
was four men done it. It was night--dark night, and they didn't stop to
say howdy ner make any introductions. They shot Happy's dog and got
away over the bluff with a thousand sheep. They was drunk, all of 'em,
but not too drunk not t' know what they was doin'. Old man Quinn got
three of 'em. He's been after the other ever since."
"Do you think he'll be caught?"
Sheepy moved his shoulders helplessly. "Don't know. Old man Quinn he
never lets up on a thing. Took 'im two years t' find three. Bet he
don't give t'other up."
"Why did they drive the sheep over the bluff?" asked Ross.
Sheepy frowned. "Cattlemen claimed the sheep had crossed the dead line.
Cattlemen are always claimin' that, and they push the line further
and further in on the sheep and claim more of the range every year.
They do here. They did down in Oklahomy. The sheep owners and cattlemen
had a row at the big cattle round-up on the North Fork. It was after
the round-up, when the cow punchers was feelin' pretty gay and let
themselves loose, that them four drove old man Quinn's sheep over
the bluff."
There was a pause, and then Sheepy went back to the original subject.
"The feller that looked like him and rode like him," jerking his thumb
over his shoulder, "used to ride past when I was shakin' grub in my
wagon. He used t' go grinnin' mostly and starin' at his hoss'
ears. And he alus went with his fixin's on, tan chaps and a red silk
'kerchief 'round his neck and Indian gloves with these here colored
gauntlets. Oh, he struck the trail in his good togs all right--bet he
went t' see some girl 'r other!"
This was the last information that Ross received from Sheepy for several
months. The following morning there arrived from Cody a supply wagon
which replenished the sheep-herder's larder, and then, the sheep having
eaten the range bare for miles around the dugout, the canvas-topped
wagon was attached to the supply wagon and drawn to another hilltop
ten miles away. With it went Sheepy only faintly regretting the loss
of companionship at the dugout. The seven hundred sheep that his dog
rounded up and drove in advance of the wagons were the companions with
which he was best acquainted.
"It wouldn't ha' been a bad idee," Hank remarked when the last bleat
died away in the distance, "if Sheepy could ha' stayed all winter. He
ain't generally long on talk--none of them herders be--but he was some
one t' have around, and once in a while his tongue breaks loose."
Ross drew a long breath and thought of Meadow Creek.
In the afternoon Hank resumed his repairs on the corral, leaving Weston
asleep and Ross kneeling beside his medicine chest sorting its contents.
The sorting done, the boy arose noiselessly and closed the lid of the
chest. Then, turning, he looked down on the head of the sleeper. For
the first time he noticed that Weston's hair, thick and unkempt, was
dull in color and had a dead look at variance with its evident health.
Tiptoeing across the floor he bent over the recumbent man and gently
raising a lock of his hair looked wonderingly at the roots. The sight
caused him to utter an exclamation which disturbed the sleeper. He
straightened himself and stepped back precipitately.
The hair was tow-colored at the roots.
CHAPTER IV
THE FOURTH MAN
ROSS stood motionless until Weston, muttering and turning his head from
side to side, gradually came to rest again and fell into a deeper sleep.
Then the boy went outside and sat down on the bench.
"It's easy enough to put two and two together," he muttered.
Leaning forward, he dropped his elbows on his knees and taking his head
between his hands, proceeded to do some adding satisfactory in its
results. He longed for the presence of Sheepy. Now he would question
him with interest on the subject of the puncher whose face was free
from a beard and whose hair was tow color. He wanted more information
on the subject of that cattle round-up and of the process of getting
those three guilty cow punchers. Still, he believed that Sheepy had
told him enough to make it clear that Weston was the fourth that old man
Quinn was after.
"Some one that looked like Weston and rode like him," Ross enumerated
the points in the evidence, "only the man in Oklahoma had no beard and
his hair was tow color."
What was easier than to grow a beard--the hair was already accounted
for--it had been tow-colored before its owner stained it a chestnut
brown. And why should he have colored it unless for purposes of disguise?
And why a disguise unless he was guilty of a crime such as driving old
man Quinn's sheep into the North Fork?
At this point in his reasoning, another fact flashed into the boy's
mind--the strange way in which Weston had acted about his name.
"Ha, ha!" exclaimed Ross aloud and then checked his voice. "Probably he
didn't want us to know his name, his real name," he thought. "How all
that dovetails together. If I could only get hold of Sheepy now!"
On further reflection, however, he decided that Sheepy could throw no
more light on the subject. It was evident that the herder did not know
the name of the puncher who had ridden alone past his wagon, for he had
not connected Weston's name with the other. Nor would Weston, if he
were the same puncher, be likely to recognize Sheepy who, as he himself
said, was in his wagon preparing supper when the puncher, his eyes on
his horse's ears, passed.
That night, when Ross rolled up in his blankets beside Weston he was sure
he was lying beside the fourth cowboy of old man Quinn's search. But
in the cold clear dawn he was not so sure. It might have been vanity that
had led Weston to stain his hair, tow not being a manly color. Then,
too, even if he had been on the North Fork, so were dozens of other
cow punchers. As to his name, Weston would naturally have been astonished
at perfect strangers addressing him rightly where he believed himself
unknown.
Ross, eating his breakfast, and only half listening to Hank, looked down
at the prostrate man speculatively, his mind full of suspicion, but not
so sure as on the previous day that there was no flaw in his reasoning.
He had not had an opportunity, the day before, of speaking to Hank about
the matter, and now he decided to keep his suspicions to himself for
the present.
His suspicions, however, during the two weeks which followed, were
swallowed up in the anxiety that attended this, the first "case"
where he had been obliged to assume all responsibility. The care and
interruptions to his rest wore on him. Never had one of Aunt Anne's
hair mattresses invited sleep as did the blankets laid on the dirt
floor when he found time to lie on them. Often he fell asleep sitting
on the hard bench, his head on his arms crossed on the table, while
Hank was frying flapjacks and boiling thick black coffee.
As for the patient, he accepted Ross's ministrations with but few
remarks. As his thigh bone began to knit, he became querulous, and
finally passively enduring.
"When you goin' to let me out of this?" he asked on the day when Ross
last measured the injured leg.
The boy settled back on his heels. "I have sent for some plaster of
Paris," he explained, "and, by the time it gets here, your leg will be
healed and ready for a cast. Then you can be taken back to Cody and
let the doctor there see you. If it was not for that ugly fracture you
would have been out of here before. If you'd only have the Cody doctor
to look you over now----"
The man grunted, and worked restlessly at the sand-bag, which, on the
outside of his leg, reached his armpit.
"Cody doctor be hanged!" he remarked unaffably. "He don't know half as
much as you do."
It was the nearest approach to thanks or praise he had given Ross.
"That Cody doctor ain't worth shucks," confirmed Hank, who occupied a
box beside the stove. "He tended a feller that I knew, and let 'im die."
The speaker looked from Ross to his patient with an expression which
plainly said that the former could not be guilty of any such charge.
The brown eyes of the patient rolled slowly in their sockets until their
gaze could rest on Ross. Then the lids dropped over them. "The Cody
doctor be hanged!" he remarked again more affably, and fell asleep.
Ross continued to sit on his heels until his patient commenced to snore.
Then he glanced at the occupant of the box seat and asked softly:
"Hank, has Weston ever told you where he came from?"
"Nope," responded Hank absently. "Not where he hails from ner where
he's started fer, ner why, ner what fer. That's nothin' though, Doc."
Here Hank looked sidewise at Ross. "You'll find, if ye stay in these
parts long, that there's lots of men who ain't partin' with every
fact they know within ten minutes after ye're introduced to 'em. And
you'll find, too, that it ain't always healthy to ask questions. Ye
have th' sort of sense who ye can question and who ye can't."
"And this fellow----" Ross jerked his head in the direction of the
sleeper.
Hank yawned and reached for the poker and a stick of wood. "I ain't
aimin' to inquire fer into his history--unless I could inquire of
some one else besides himself, that is. Hello!" he interrupted himself
suddenly with the stick held over the stove. "Who's that hikin' over
the Creek?"
Ross arose with alacrity and went to the door. The first snow had fallen
on the bad lands, but in an hour it had been whisked away by a warm
northwest wind, leaving the ground soft and a little stream of water in
Dry Creek across which rode a man who proved to be a prospector from the
mountains.
"Must have had a bit of snow here," he called as he turned his horse into
the corral. "Up t' Miners' Camp it's two inches deep and driftin'."
As this prospector was eating his dinner, he most unexpectedly gave Ross
his first news of Weimer. The boy, finding Hank both intelligent and
sympathetic, had talked freely concerning his mission in the mountains
and his desire to return East at an early date. To the latter subject,
in all its details of study and college-attendance, Hank listened and
questioned in open interest. But, when Ross touched the subject of
Weimer and the McKenzies, the other was non-committal and guarded,
as became a landlord who might be called upon any day to serve flapjacks
and coffee to all of the parties under discussion.
"I hope," he had observed cautiously on two or three occasions, "that
you'll get on all right with Uncle Jake Weimer."
And, although his tone implied a doubt, Ross could not prevail on him
to explain it.
But the prospector, who had ridden through from the mountains, and knew
nothing of Ross or of his origin, spoke more freely. He had passed along
Meadow Creek but a few days before.
"Dutch Weimer," he told Hank as he bolted boiled cabbage and flapjacks,
"was settin' at the door of his shack, a-smokin' as though his claims
was all patented and secure. He says that Eastern pal of hisn is
a-sendin' some one t' help 'im out."
Hank coughed behind his hand, and motioned toward Ross, busy with his
patient; but at first the prospector was too intent on his food to notice.
"And there," he observed with a chuckle, "are them two McKenzie boys
a-settin' on their claims next door and waitin'." He gave another
chuckle. "Curious how that snow-blindness should have touched Dutch
Weimer."
Then he saw Hank's restraining gesture, and paused. Glancing down, he
met Lon Weston's veiled brown eyes and Ross's wide gray ones; but the
prospector had suddenly become as non-committal as Hank himself, nor did
Ross's persistent questioning wring from him any further details. He
had but passed that way, he assured Ross, had stopped but a moment in
front of Weimer's cabin and that was all.
But what he had said was enough to leave Ross troubled, and impatient
to start for Meadow Creek and his delayed work.
Finally the plaster of Paris came. The stage from Cody brought it one
noon, and Ross's spirits arose at the prospect of release from his
unwelcome charge.
"If it wa'n't fer yer Uncle Samuel's long arm of the law, Doc," the
stage-driver informed him as he was disposing of potatoes and pork, "I'd
leave my stage right here and see ye wind all them stiff rags around
that there leg. I'd like t' see th' finish s' long as I seen the
beginnin'. But the trouble with bein' stage skinner is, ye've got
t' hike along no matter what shows ye come acrost on the trail. Hand
them spuds acrost, Doc, will ye? Hank, if ye'd let 'em smell fire a
minute 'r two mebby I could drive my fork int' 'em."
A few minutes later, he arose from the bench, drew the back of his hand
across his mouth and addressed Weston. "Wall, I suppose you'll be ready
t' be boosted onto the stage when I come back in th' mornin'? S'
long."
Scarcely had his four bronchos topped the hill on the further side of Dry
Creek before a procession, the like of which Ross had never seen,
appeared on the trail the other side of the dugout. It was a pack
outfit on horses accompanied by a man and a boy. It slowly rounded the
shoulder of the hill behind the corral. The man rode ahead whistling
gaily, his sombrero pulled low over his eyes, a purple tie knotted
under the turn-over collar of his flannel shirt. His horse's tail
was tied to a rope which, in turn, was tied loosely about the neck of
the first pack animal. In similar fashion the five bronchos were held
together on the trail, and after them came a horse ridden by a boy about
Ross's height. On the pack animals were wooden saddles piled high
with supplies for a camp, boxes and bags securely roped to the saddles.
Hank, in the act of clearing the dishes from the bare board table,
stopped with a platter of boiled turnip and pork suspended in the air.
"By the great horn spoon!" he yelled, "if there don't come Wishin'
Wilson! And a pack outfit! Is my eyes a-foolin' me? Doc, look out. Is
it a five bronc outfit, or ain't it?"
"It certainly is," confirmed Ross.
He arose from his seat on the floor where he was working in the plaster
and stepped to the door. But Hank was before him holding up the platter
of food.
"Hey, there, Wishin'! Here's some come-backs hot fer ye! Where'd ye
come from? Where ye goin' and what fer and how long and why and all the
rest?" Evidently the newcomer was one of the kind that could safely be
questioned, for Hank turned himself into a great interrogation point as
he set the platter down, and rushing out, pulled the stranger from his
horse, shaking him in familiar bear play.
Ross watched while the train filed slowly up to the dugout, bringing the
boy's mount to rest in front of the door.
The young rider wore a new brown corduroy suit, and a long fur coat, the
skirts of which were drawn up awkwardly above a pair of high riding
boots and tucked under the rider's legs. A pair of shining silver
spurs adorned the heels of the boots, while a sealskin cap crowned a
head covered with closely cropped hair darker than Ross's. His eyes
also were darker and his figure, although of the same height, was more
slender than Ross's. He was also, apparently, a couple of years younger.
The two boys nodded at each other, Ross with awkward cordiality and
interest, the stranger carelessly and with unmistakable condescension.
Swinging himself out of the saddle he said pleasantly but commandingly:
"Take my coat inside, please."
He shed his fur coat and pulled off his fur-lined gloves and tossed both
into Ross's arms, while Hank, watching the proceeding out of the tail
of an amused eye, talked with Wilson.
Ross, biting his lips, backed into the shack and tossed coat and gloves
on the end of the table near Weston. The boy, following his moves from
the doorway, pointed at the prostrate man, asking in a surprised and
subdued voice:
"What ails him?"
"Broke his leg," responded Ross shortly, not relishing the touch of
lordliness in the other's manner.
"How did he do it?" demanded the stranger.
"Horse fell on him," answered Ross, and returned abruptly to his work
with the plaster.
Weston lay with his blanket drawn up to his chin and one arm thrown over
his face and ear, his face turned to the wall. He was breathing regularly
as though in sleep, although Ross knew he was wide awake. This was a
favorite position with him when Hank was entertaining guests. It saved
him the trouble of responding to inquiries, and, as Ross had come to
suspect, might also serve to avert a chance recognition.
Presently Wilson approached the dugout, leaving the boy in the corral
rubbing down his mount. One arm was thrown in rough affection over
Hank's shoulder while the two pulled each other about like two boys
at play.
"I tell you, Hank!" Wilson exclaimed at the door, "this is what ye might
call God's country, and I always have a feelin' of gettin' home in
these parts. But, Jehoshaphat! it didn't look a spell ago as if I'd
ever strike the trail to the mountains again. It looked like as if I'd
have to throw up my claims and----"
"Sh!" interrupted Hank tiptoeing into the shack. "Guess he's asleep,
ain't he?" He explained over his shoulder in a hoarse whisper. "Chap
named Weston that come this way three weeks ago and bust his leg out in
front, here. Hoss fell on him."
Wilson, who followed at Hank's heels, looked Weston over with friendly
but detached interest. "On the mend, is he?" asked the newcomer subduing
his voice with difficulty.
Hank forgot to continue his whisper. "You bet!" he exclaimed heartily.
"Doc here is a-mendin' him t' beat anything I ever seen from a full
sized doctor." He jerked his thumb toward Ross. "Doc's goin' to have
him all plastered up and out of here to-morrow."
Wishing looked at Ross with a pleasant nod, stepped over the bench and
was about to seat himself at the table when he bethought him suddenly
of his riding companion. Leaning forward he looked out of the doorway.
Then with a nod he sat down and forgetting that Weston was supposedly
sleeping, raised his voice again to its normal high key.
"Fetch on them come-backs, Hank. My pard'll be here in a minute. I need
t' git the start of him in eating always, fer he ain't long on grub
such as we shake out here. I expect," with an amused chuckle, "that it
ain't exactly what he's used to."
Hank slapped his knee and leaned forward. "Say, Wishin', how d'ye come
t' be hikin' over the country with Queen Victory's youngest? My eyes!
Ain't he a reg'lar ornament t' th' landscape?"
Wishing Wilson laughed softly and then glancing hastily from Ross to
Weston, shook his head at Hank. "Less is all right!" he declared
cautiously. "He's young yet. Lots of time to learn--more time 'n
you and me have, Hank."
Hank set coffee before his guest, asking, "Who is he and where does he
hail from?"
Wilson squared himself before the table, both arms resting thereon and
began to eat noisily, talking between knifefuls.
"Luckiest thing for me that ever struck the trail, that young feller
is," he began. "I was stranded down in Omaha without a red cent in my
pocket and no way of raisin' one. If you'll believe me I couldn't
find a man in Omaha with brains enough to believe in them claims of
mine, no, not with the ore assay report before their eyes. I tell ye,
Hank, times have changed down in Omaha. There wa'n't no grub-stakers
waitin' around like there used to be fer prospectors to snatch up--no,
not one. And just as I was gettin' plum used up talkin', this young
feller, Less Jones, fell onto me outer a clear sky. It was in a hotel
where I went t' talk with a drummer, but not t' eat. Why, Hank, yer
Uncle Wilson didn't have the price of a hotel dinner handy, and that
drummer never treated me! Well, I stood tryin' to persuade him that his
salary was burning fer investment in my claims, when in comes Less
and lined up 'longside me listenin'. I hadn't any kind of objection
to his hearin', but he looked like such a cub that I never paid no
attention t' 'im, but when the drummer said a final 'Nix,' Less he
stepped up and asked me about the claims, and, t' make a long story
short, before the end of the day I was hikin' over town hot footed on
the trail of supplies with Less at my heels with an open pocketbook."
"Does he stay up t' the Creek with you?" asked Hank wonderingly.
"Says he will," laughed Wilson. "Says he's wanted for years t' try his
luck with quartz!"
"Must 'a' begun wantin' then when he was a baby," remarked Hank
succinctly. "Where's his ma and pa?"
Wishing shrugged his shoulders and balanced a quantity of pork and
potatoes on the blade of his knife. "Search me! He says there's no one
to hender him doin' what he pleases, and so I take it he's dropped
out of some fairy orphanage som'ers where they have gold t' burn.
I'm fallin' on his neck more'n I'm askin' him questions that he
don't want t' answer. Less is an all right sort, you'll find, but
he ain't long on information."
At this point Wishing's garrulity suffered an interruption from the
entrance of his young partner.
Leslie Jones walked with the erect bearing that Aunt Anne coveted for
Ross. Buttoning his short corduroy jacket over a soft flannel shirt,
across the front of which was suspended a large gold chain, he ran his
fingers around inside his collar and looked about impatiently.
Ross, attending strictly to his work, did not look up. Hank, sitting on
a bench opposite Wilson, spread his elbows yet further apart on the table
and indicated a place beside him.
"Set down and fall to, young feller!"
"I'll wash up first," returned Leslie in a tone which had a decided
edge. His manner plainly indicated his desire to be waited on.
Hank raised his eyebrows and waved a hand vaguely toward the stove.
"There's pans 'n' water. Help yerself. Guess there's a towel hikin'
about som'ers in the corner. My dozen best handmade 'uns ain't come
in yet from the laundry!"
Every one laughed except Weston and Leslie. The former breathed
regularly, apparently unconscious of all that was said and done in the
room. The latter flushed, and plunging into the corner tumbled the pans
about angrily like a spoiled child, spilling as much water on the
floor as he could. Then he sat down beside his partner and asked
shortly for some hot coffee, with an emphasis on the adjective.
Hank leisurely pushed the coffee-pot across the table. "Help yerself.
This was hot a spell ago and will be again at supper time." Hank's voice
having acquired an edge by this time, "Victory's youngest" poured the
coffee angrily but wordlessly into his thick cup and ate in silence,
listening to Wilson, who was too much occupied with a vision of riches
to come to allow such scenes to disturb his equanimity.
"As I told Less," he went on, raising his voice to drown opposition,
"we'll leave part of the sticks and the grub up the canon to the coal
claims and then when it comes winter and the mountains are impassable,
we'll just strike the trail over from the Creek to the canon and work
the coal till things open up in the spring. That Creek is a mean place to
drop into this late."
"What Creek?" asked Ross, suddenly awakening to the conversation.
"Meadow Creek," returned Wishing.
"That's where Doc is bound fer, Wishing'," volunteered Hank. "Doc is
come out t' help Jake Weimer."
Wishing surveyed the boy with cordial eyes. "Jake Weimer, hey? We'll be
neighbors, then. My claims ain't two miles up the Creek."
"Doc, he's Grant's boy," supplemented Hank. "But I bet my last year's
hat that he can't mine it as well as he can doctor."
"Doctor!" exclaimed Leslie Jones curiously. "Are you a doctor?"
"He's fixed him up all right," interrupted Hank pointing to Weston.
"Stretched his leg over my best chicken-coop and needled his arm and
made 'im walk a chalk line generally. Oh, I tell ye Doc is better than
the Cody doctor."
Ross laughed. "I know something about medicine and surgery," he
confessed. "I've read and helped my uncle, Dr. Grant. That's all."
"All!" echoed Leslie Jones. His manner was touched with disbelief as he
looked from Weston to Ross. "And did you, alone, set a leg?"
Ross sought to change the subject. "Aw--that's not much--when you know
how. I'm glad I'm to have neighbors up on Meadow Creek. Hope I don't
have to stay there any longer than you do."
"Expect to clean up the title this year, do you?" asked Wilson.
"That's what I came for."
"Well, all I can say now is that you'll be mighty glad you come. I tell
ye what, Doc, Meadow Creek is the mining deestrict of the future,"
whereupon Wishing launched on a glowing account of the future of Meadow
Creek claims as he saw the future. His eyes lighted up and he forgot
to eat as he told of the wonderful value of the gold and silver that he
expected to pull out of the claims he had staked the previous year.
He believed so thoroughly in his own vision that even Ross, whose
interests were far removed from gold mining, felt a thrill of expectancy
as to the outcome of his work in Meadow Creek, while Leslie, whose
appetite was slight for the coarse, ill-cooked food, dropped his fork
to listen although he must have heard the recital many times before.
Shortly after dinner, the two saddled up and departed in the order in
which they had come.
"So long!" yelled Wilson, waving his hat. "We expect t' strike it rich
before a month."
"Good luck!" shouted Hank and Ross together, the latter adding, "I'll
see you again in a few days."
Hank, stuffing his hands into his pockets, pursed up his lips and
whistled shortly as the pack outfit disappeared in a cloud of dust.
"If Wishin' is cal'latin' that he has enough there to last two men all
winter he's about as far off in his cal'lations as--well, as Wishin'
usually is. Wishin' ain't no lightnin' cal'later on any subject, but
he's a mighty likely chap t' have around."
"Judging from the small amount his pard ate to-day he has food enough,
I should say," returned Ross, adding hastily, "but then I realize that I
know nothing about it."
"Huh!" laughed Hank, "he must know that when that there young chap
has been in the mountings a few days he'll eat mulligan 'n' spotted
pup 'n' bacon with the best of 'em. His will be a good, lively
comin' appetite--but huh! I should hate mightily t' have t' feed
'im. Wonder if Wishin' has packed some bibs along 'n' silk socks
'n' hand-warmers! Huh!"
When Ross reentered the cabin he found Weston staring out of the doorway,
his arm stretched by his side.
"Guess you didn't sleep much," remarked Hank noisily gathering up the
dishes.
"All I wanted to," returned Weston shortly.
Hank piled the dishes into a pan and poured boiling water over them.
"M-m," he soliloquized, "all the time I was lookin' at him I was
thinkin' I'd seen that young Jones before. M-m--where, I wonder?"
No one answered, and he washed dishes in silence while Ross returned to
his work and Weston lay staring out-of-doors.
The following day Ross saw his patient depart on the stage headed toward
Cody, and prepared to take the next one himself in the opposite direction.
When he assisted Weston out of the door of the dugout, he knew exactly as
much about him as when he followed his prostrate figure in at the same
door three weeks before--and no more, unless the name be excepted.
Hank watched the stage off with a scowl, and then departed from his usual
custom of cautious speech, where possible customers were concerned.
"Guess that feller must 'a' hailed from som'ers beside Wyoming," he
grumbled. "Now, a Wyoming chap would 'a' paid his bill, or if he was
on the hog's back, he'd owned up and passed his promise. But that
there maverick never even said, 'Thank ye,' to you or me; and here
you're knocked out of three weeks' work along of him, to say nothin'
of the work day and night you've put in on 'im. Well, good riddance;
'tain't no ways likely we'll set eyes on 'im again."
CHAPTER V
A MAN WHO NEEDED BRACING UP
THE road to Miners' Camp from Meeteetse, forty-five miles long, follows
the Grey Bull to its junction with Wood River. Thence it wanders along
through miles of fertile ranch lands; then, rising among the black
foot-hills, up, up, it winds across the precipitous face of Jo-Jo Hill,
and plunges among the snow-crowned Shoshones, crowded nearer and yet
nearer to Wood River until finally there is but room for the narrow
track and the narrow stream at the bottom of the deep canon.
This was the road which Ross traveled the day following Weston's
departure for Cody, and traveled in increasing discomfort. The further
they advanced among the mountains, the colder it became, until, finally,
Ross was obliged to desert the high seat beside Bill Travers, the
driver, and seek shelter inside the stage, but not until he had learned
from Bill that there was no hotel in Miners' Camp.
In talking with Hank he had taken it for granted that there was a lodging
house of some description and so had asked no questions on the subject.
"I pack my grub along," Bill assured him carelessly, "'n' roll up in
a bunk in a shack that some one 'r other has left. If you've packed
yer bed along, stay with me to-night. There's the floor," hospitably,
"and I guess I can rustle grub enough fer both. Anyhow, there's two
eatin'-houses where you could fill up."
At five in the afternoon the stage crawled through the dusk over a
yielding bridge built of hemlock saplings creaking under their coating
of ice and snow, and stopped in front of a shack out of whose open door
glinted a welcome light. Another light appeared high up on the side of
the mountain.
"Hold up there, Bill," was the shout which had brought the stage to a
standstill. "Got a cold, hungry young chap inside there, name of Grant?
Wishin' Wilson went through yesterday and said he'd be along with you
to-day."
Ross recognized the voice as belonging to Steele, and, opening the stage
door, answered for himself in the affirmative.
Steele shook hands cordially. "Better get out here, Grant," he invited in
an offhand way; "I have some beefsteak ready to fry, and the spuds are
bakin' in the oven."
Ross climbed out with as much alacrity as his cold, benumbed limbs would
permit. But no sooner was he on the ground than something queer occurred.
His legs gave every indication of doubling up under him, while his head
felt as large and airy as a balloon. He clutched the wheel, but not
until Steele had clutched him.
"Altitude!" exclaimed Steele. "Being a mile and a half above sea-level
don't agree with most people just at first."
Ross leaned against the wheel, looking up giddily at the strip of sky
corralled between the towering summits of Dundee and Gale's Ridge.
It seemed to him that it was the mountains and not the altitude which
oppressed him, and bore down upon him, and shut off his breath.
"My baggage," he began hesitatingly to the stage-driver, "where--if
there's no hotel----"
But Steele interposed. "Lend a hand here, Bill, with these trunks. I want
Grant to put up at my hotel to-night, bag and baggage."
Bill grinned, and laid hands on the emergency chest. "He'll git a better
layout than at my old shack, I tell ye! Say! Is Uncle Jake in Camp?"
Steele shook his head. "Nope. I'm going to see about packin' Grant over
to the Creek myself in a few days," and a great wave of thankfulness
surged over Ross.
A few moments later Steele waved his hand around the one room of his
little log shack. "This is the only kind of home you'll find up here,
Grant, about the same as Weimer has over on the Creek. Things are rough
and ready here, without any frills."
As he spoke he glanced at the larger of Ross's trunks.
If Amos Steele understood one subject better than mining operations, that
one subject was men. He saw in Ross an overgrown, homesick boy, with a
stout but untested "backbone."
"And I wonder," thought Steele, "how far that backbone is going to take
him when it gets a healthy development, and--how far is he goin' to
develop it?"
Furthermore, Steele concluded, Ross was more accustomed to bending over
a book than over a shovel; and he shrugged his shoulders at the thought
of the Weimer-Grant claims.
"His backbone can't do everything," he decided, "no matter how stout
it grows, especially when Weimer has lost his."
Steele's shack was at the foot of Gale's Ridge. Half-way up the
mountainside was another and larger shack, where his miners, thirty in
number, ate. Above that was the "bunk-house" where they slept. And yet
higher up was the mouth of the tunnel out of which the Gale's Ridge
Mining Company expected to pull vast wealth when the Burlington Road
had done its part.
"I'd rather bach it," Steele explained to Ross as they sat down to
beefsteak and baked potatoes, "than to be with the men. It's pleasanter
for me--and," with a jolly laugh, "for them also, I expect."
Ross liked this frank young superintendent who had so kindly taken him
in. He felt that he must get his bearings in some way, and Steele was
the man to set him right.
Therefore quite early in the evening the boy burst out with:
"Mr. Steele, I've come to the conclusion that I'm the greenest
tenderfoot that ever came to Wyoming. Now, you know the ropes here, and I
don't. Will you advise me?"
"That is exactly what I've been wanting to do," assented Steele swiftly
and heartily. "But I won't do it at all to-night. It'll take you a
few days to get over your light-headedness, and until you do the trail
around Crosby won't be healthy ridin' for you. Anyway, there's a lot
to be done, for Uncle Jake Weimer hasn't laid in any winter supplies
yet."
Ross tipped his chair back against the unhewn logs, and thrust his
hands into his pockets. Ever since the talkative prospector had passed
through the stage camp he had wondered what manner of man Weimer was.
But not until he was jolting along in the stage that day did one sentence
especially recur to him in all its possible significance.
The prospector had said, "'Curious how that snow-blindness should have
touched Dutch Weimer.'"
Therefore, Ross's first question was of the man he had crossed the
continent to help.
The answer reached far into the night; and when at last Ross, wrapped in
his blankets, lay down in a bunk built against the wall, it was a long
time before sleep came, tired as he was.
The following evening, after a full day's work, he sat down beside the
little home-made table to write to Dr. Grant and Aunt Anne while Steele
washed up the supper dishes.
"I should be worse than helpless, were it not for Steele," he wrote;
"and even with him to help me I may as well own up I am in blue funk.
Not a man is there to hire; so the programme for the next few months
seems to be this: Yours truly has got to put on some muscle, and buckle
down to pick and shovel. Where do you think Piersol's 'Histology' is
coming in, uncle, or that man Remsen?
"But that's not the worst. It seems that Weimer isn't as stout in
his head as he was before he was stricken with snow-blindness, and,
although he is as stout as ever in his muscles, he doesn't take kindly
to work any more. Hasn't even taken the winter's supplies of food
and dynamite over to Meadow Creek. He's just smoking his pipe in peace
because of the man father is sending to help him out! But I can tell
you that the peace is all on his side.
"The mountains here are the original packages, all right. They're miles
high, and look as if they'd topple over on a fellow with but half an
excuse. And then the air--or the lack of it, rather! I've not been able
to walk any distance without a cane, so uncertain does this rare air
make me in my motions. But Steele says I'll get over that in a day or
two. So, day after to-morrow he is going with me to Meadow Creek with
the Gale's Ridge Company's horses--we 'pack' over the supplies for
the winter, and the emergency chest just as it is; but, Aunt Anne, only
a small portion of the contents of my big trunk can go. Over on the
Creek Steele can explain to me about the amount of work to be done,
for fear Weimer doesn't tell it straight----"
Suddenly Ross stopped. He leaned back and bit his pencil, his eyes
narrowing frowningly as he glanced over the letter. Then with a gesture
of disdain he caught up the sheets, and tore them into fragments.
Steele paused in the act of placing the dishes in the rough cupboard
which was nailed to the logs behind the stove.
"Well, I'd think twice before I tore up a letter--too hard work to write
'em."
"I have thought twice," returned Ross emphatically. "That's why I tore
it up. No use piling up all my difficulties on them first thing. Aunt
Anne worries enough over my being here, as it is."
"So there's an 'Aunt Anne,' is there?" mused Steele to himself over
the dishes. He glanced at the bits of paper in a heap on the table. "Good
work she and that doctor uncle have done." He surveyed Ross's clean-cut,
clear-eyed face as it bent above a second and brighter letter, one that
ignored or made light of the difficulties oppressing the boy.
In order to divert further the attention of the recipients, Ross also
wrote divers pieces of information that he had learned from Steele.
"I am trying to ferret out this gold mining business from the beginning,"
he wrote. "I never got the hang of it before, and, if Mr. Steele wasn't
everlasting patient with me, I wouldn't be getting much now, because
everything is so new and strange here. I don't half understand the
men's lingo, because they have a strange name for everything.... Well,
it seems that a gold mine up here is started in some such a way as this:
along comes a prospector--quartz crazy, he is called if he's in dead
earnest--with a pick and shovel, a hammer and microscope, and a camp
outfit. If some one else has provided him with food and the outfit he is
'grub-staked' and his 'pard' is entitled to half of the results of
his work. Father, for instance, has grub-staked Weimer for years. This
prospector pegs away at the rocks, getting specimens of ore and
examining them under his microscope. He goes right past rocks that
look to me full of gold they glitter so. No gold in such! But when he
finds some common, dull old stone that doesn't show up much to me but
has all the earmarks of 'a high value' in gold, then he thinks he has
found the outcropping of a good 'lead,' because all the rock that
is behind that rock in the same strata is supposed to have that much
gold in it or more. So there he 'stakes his claim.' You see I've
got the hang of a few of the terms already. First, he drives a stake near
the rock and leaves on it a paper with his name and the date and a
notice that the land is his for so many feet each way. He can't take
possession of more than six hundred feet one way and fifteen hundred
the other in one claim, but he can stake off as many other claims
right beside this first as he wants to. The staking is easy enough,
but the tug of war comes in doing enough work to patent the claims! This
means to get a deed of possession from the state. There is where Weimer
and I are up against it--on the work side! But guess I'd better not
make your heads ache any more with such an accumulation of learned facts.
I'll just say good-bye now and continue the headache in my next."
To his father he wrote a different kind of letter, a defense of his delay
at Dry Creek.
"I couldn't desert a man in that shape," he wrote, "although I have
lost three weeks at exactly the season of the year, I find, when three
weeks count for the most. I'm sorry it happened that way, but I shall
try to put in good time now and make up. Anyway, I guess the delay is
as broad as it is long, because, if that accident hadn't occurred,
I shouldn't have known Steele; and it's his help that's smoothing
things out here for me to begin work."
Ross did not know that the way he had conducted himself at Dry Creek was
the cause of the very practical interest which Steele was taking in him.
But not all of Steele's influence in Camp had secured a single laborer
for Meadow Creek. Ross found that Andy's explanation on the Cody stage
held good. No one cared to go any further out of the world than Miners'
Camp.
"It's bad enough," one of the Mountain Company's men told Ross, "up
here eighty miles from the railroad, with a stage only three times a
week in summer and any time it can get through in the winter. But, when
it comes to workin' on the Creek, _ex_cuse me! Seven mile over Crosby,
and the trail shut up half the year. No, I'm goin' to Cody when the
Mountain works shuts down."
The Gale's Ridge Company worked all winter; but the Mountain Company
dismissed its employees, twenty in number, when the deep snows came.
To the twenty Ross applied in vain. Labor was dear and men scarce "Cody
way," and the miners refused to be mewed up over on the Creek for five
months at any price.
"You see," Steele explained, "I'd be glad to employ all the twenty
during the winter myself; but not many of 'em will ever stay up here
in Camp--too much cut off. I shall run short of hands all winter. Of
course, when the railroad gets up here, it will be different. They'll
be willing to stay then."
Ross checked a groan. "The railroad isn't here, but I am," he observed
grimly.
Steele looked at him curiously. "Why don't you strike the trail back
East," he asked abruptly, "since you started out without understanding
the situation?"
Ross glanced up in surprise. "Why, I never thought of doing that!" he
exclaimed, and dropped the subject.
But Steele continued to look him over with a new interest; for the stage
the previous evening had brought to Steele a letter from the elder Grant
asking for private information concerning the situation Ross, Junior,
was encountering. Ross's brief letters from Dry Creek had shown Ross,
Senior, that he had no real knowledge of the nature of the difficulties
into which he had sent his son.
The morning of the third day, Ross, staggering around uncertainly without
a cane, aided Steele in binding the supplies on the wooden saddles of
the packhorses. From the Gale's Ridge Company's supply-shack they
brought sacks of flour and cornmeal, boxes of canned vegetables and
condensed milk, sides of bacon and hams, bags of coffee and tea, all of
which Steele with many a twist of the rope and "half-hitch" secured to
the clumsy saddles. The trustiest horse carried the emergency chest.
On Ross's own horse, lashed behind his saddle, were his bed blankets
and a bundle from the trunk Aunt Anne had packed with such care.
"All ready?" called Steele, one foot in his stirrup.
He looked back at Ross already mounted, bringing up the rear of the
string of packhorses, standing in front of the company's store.
"All ready," shouted Ross.
Steele, about to swing himself up, hesitated. He glanced again at Ross.
Then, dropping his bridle reins to the ground, he disappeared inside the
store, emerging presently with a short rifle and a cartridge belt.
"Ever use a gun?" he asked.
Ross hesitated. "I've practiced target shooting a little, and gone
hunting a few times; but," candidly, "I don't amount to shucks with a
gun."
Steele grinned, and handed it up. "Take it along," he advised, "and
practice some more. It may bring you fresh meat. Sometimes elk and
mountain sheep come down to the Creek to drink over there--won't come
amiss, anyhow."
Ross accepted the gun; and Steele, going back to the head of the
procession, mounted, and led the way up the canon, which presently
broadened until it formed a snow-flecked valley a few rods wide. Here
were a dozen shacks, another eating house, and the store of the Mountain
Company. The mouth of its tunnel could be seen high on the side of the
mountain above the store.
Immediately beyond this valley the canon was nearly closed by two great
peaks. The one on the left was still Dundee; but on the right Gale's
Ridge gave place to Crosby, behind which lay Meadow Creek Valley.
Zigzagging across the face of this mountain wound a narrow trail
gradually ascending. Up and yet up climbed the horses until Ross clung to
his saddle involuntarily while looking down. Soon Wood River became
a thread, and the shacks became black doll-houses set in patches of snow.
On the trail the snow lay deep in the hollows, but was swept away
wherever the east wind could touch it. But, snow-filled or black,
the trail ever ascended. The peak of Dundee opposite, which had seemed
from the canon narrow and remote, stretched out now immense and so near
that Ross felt he could hurl a stone across and hit it.
He looked ahead. They were approaching the dizzy shoulder of Crosby.
Steele rounded it, and disappeared. One by one the slow packhorses, their
loads hitting against the rocks on the inside of the trail, crawled
cautiously after, and also disappeared. Then before Ross opened a view
of startling grandeur. He was looking out over the top of Gale's Ridge
and down across Big Horn Basin, beyond Cody, eighty miles away and into
the blue heart of the Big Horn Mountains. The sight brought with it a
pang of homesickness. Eighty miles from a railroad! Eighty difficult,
laborious miles! Ross felt helpless and small and decidedly shaky in
this strange new world about which he had so much to learn.
Clinching his teeth hard together, he looked up. Above were bowlders
seemingly glued to the almost upright mountainside. Below--but Ross's
head swam, and he turned his eyes to the inside of the trail, and clung
to the saddle. Below was a sheer drop of a thousand feet down to the
falls of Meadow Creek, which separated Crosby from Gale's Ridge. The
mist came up in clouds rolling thick and frosty in the zero air. This was
the quarter-mile of trail which cut Meadow Creek Valley off from Wood
River Canon for months during the year.
"Well," laughed Steele as they stopped where the trail widened beyond
the dangerous shoulder, "you didn't take a header, did you?"
Ross passed his hand across his forehead. His face was pale. "No, but--I
felt every minute that I'd go over."
"You'll get used to that," returned Steele easily. "You see why that
trail becomes impassable later, don't you? If it was just the snow on
the trail, why, that wouldn't count. You could shovel it off around
the shoulder, and go on snow-shoes the rest of the way. But, when the
snow lodges up over the shoulder something like ten feet deep, and a
chinook or warm wind comes along and loosens it, a footfall or a man
calling might start it, and then----" Steele shrugged his shoulders.
"And there is no other way you can get into the Creek valley?" asked Ross.
"No other way with a horse. You can follow the Creek toward its source,
they say, a few miles and then across. Hunters go that way sometimes,
but on foot; and they have to scramble for it."
On and on they went over a wide trail now beside the clear little Meadow
Creek. Ross began to feel giddy again.
"Of course you do," Steele explained the next time they made a stop,
"because the Creek is half a mile higher than the canon. But you get
over that in a few days."
"I wonder," exclaimed Ross suddenly, "how Leslie Jones stood that trail?"
"About the same as the average and ordinary mortal," rejoined Steele
sarcastically. "But you'll probably have a good many chances of finding
out for yourself. You'll be glad to see anybody, even young Jones!"
At last, after threading their way between spurs and over bowlders and
through valleys, they emerged on the other side of Crosby, and found
themselves in a bowl the sides of which were formed by mountains so high
and grim that Ross gasped for the breath that he felt the peaks would
eventually shut off.
It was a queer and uncomfortable feeling, this which the mountains gave
him, a sense of being shut in and overpowered and helpless.
The peaks on all sides were snow-heaped; but the valley, protected as
it was, showed patches of black earth. Sage-brush with scrub spruce and
hemlock were the only vegetation of the valley visible, but the sides
of the mountains showed a good growth of hemlock and pine trees reaching
to timber line only a few hundred feet up.
On the left at the foot of Crosby--whose back looked as high to Ross
as its face, despite the fact that he was half a mile higher here than
in the canon--two columns of smoke were ascending from two clusters of
hemlocks a quarter of a mile apart. Toward these, Steele, drawing in his
horse, pointed.
"The first is your layout," he called back over his shoulder, "the other
is the McKenzies'!"
"And where is Wilson's?" asked Ross, eagerly.
Steele faced in the opposite direction and indicated a narrow trail that
led to the right, disappearing in a forest of scrub pine which filled the
ravine between two of the mountains that formed the rim of the bowl.
"Follow that trail and you'll reach 'em. But ten to one, before you can
do it they'll follow the trail this way and reach you!"
"I hope so!" exclaimed Ross in a heartfelt tone.
A few moments later he was face to face with Weimer.
The latter stood in the doorway of a low log shack, his great hands
cupped over large blue goggles through which his eyes showed dimly,
the lids screwed together, leaving only slits for the admission of the
dreaded glare of light from the snow. His hands were crusted with
dirt. His face, bearded to the rim of the goggles, was grimy, and the
beard matted. His hair hung uneven and uncombed to his thick rounded
shoulders. He wore a colored flannel shirt, a sheepskin coat, and
corduroy trousers thrust into the knee-high tops of old shoes.
In response to Steele's greeting and introduction Weimer extended his
hand, peered at Ross a moment, and then asked eagerly in a throaty, husky
voice of Steele:
"D'ye pack any tobac' over?"
"Lots of it," cried Steele jovially. "Enough for your use and some for
you to give to your neighbors."
Immediately Weimer's sagging, middle-aged figure became straight and
stiff, and his high forehead wrinkled in a heavy frown.
"Give dem McKenzies anyting! Ven I do, it'll be ven my name ain't Shake
Veimer."
Steele stepped quickly in front of the older man, and spoke forcefully.
"There's one thing, Uncle Jake, that you're givin' 'em as fast as
you can, and that's these claims."
"Nein! Nein!" Weimer shouted. "Das ist nicht so!"
His uneven black hair bobbed wildly about his shoulders. He pumped his
powerful arms up and down as if the McKenzies were beneath them.
Steele thrust his face near that of the agitated man, and demanded
roughly, "How many shots have you put since you were over to Camp to
get me to write to young Grant's father? Say, now!"
Weimer's manner became cringing. He backed into the cabin. "If your
eyes----" he began, but Steele cut him short.
"You know you've not taken one pound of ore out of your tunnel since.
You know you have sat around here waitin' for Grant to send some one to
help you out----"
Weimer put up a great hand, and shrank back as a child would have
retreated before his mother's upraised slipper. Steele followed him
into the cabin, and Ross slowly followed Steele.
"The snow ist come," whimpered Weimer; "und I can't see ven the snow
comes, und the tunnel so far ist to valk----"
But Steele cut short his complaints sternly. "Now," he declared, "all
your excuses must come to an end. Here is some one to help. Young Grant
here is going to put this work through, and you've got to brace up and
help him. I should be ashamed to sit down and let a couple of McKenzies
take away my claims."
At once Weimer became alert and combative. The McKenzies should not take
the claims.
"You see how it is," Steele began as he and Ross were carrying the
cases of dynamite "sticks" up the trail to the tunnel in which Weimer
was doing the assessment work for the four tracts to which he had laid
claim. "Mentally Weimer has become suddenly an old and childish man
while retaining all his physical powers. He can do the work of two
ordinary men if he can be made to work--and it's up to you to compel
him. Otherwise, by the first of next July, at the time when these claims
ought to be patented, you will have to forfeit 'em."
Ross's heart sank. "The first of next July," and it was then but the
middle of October! He laid the case of sticks down on the ore-dump, and,
glancing up at the peaks which held him a prisoner, caught his breath
in a gust of rebellion.
At the mouth of the tunnel, some seven feet high and eight wide, was
the "dump," to the edge of which ran a rusty track with a "bumper" at
the end. The track extended into the tunnel. On it stood a lumbering
vehicle, consisting of the trucks of a hand car, on which was fastened a
home-made box to carry ore.
"This," explained Steele, "is a remnant of Weimer's better days. There
was no way to pack a regular car over here, and he devised this. He was a
smart man until last year."
After dinner, which Weimer prepared,--Ross found him always ready to
prepare food and eat it,--Steele suggested that they "drop in" on the
McKenzies.
"Especially," he added, his eyes scanning Ross's face, "after your
meeting Sandy on the way to Cody."
Ross hesitated. "I don't know about that," he objected, surprised that
Steele should suggest such a thing. "Wouldn't it be a bit queer for me
to call on my 'friends the enemy'?"
Steele laughed, but held strongly to his point. "Not queer at all.
There's no object in not being on a speakin'-footing with 'em," he
said. "There's nothing to be gained and a lot to be lost by openly
recognizing what they're waiting for. You're goin' to get almighty
lonesome up here,"--involuntarily Ross swallowed, and turned his face
away,--"and that Sandy McKenzie is good company--on the surface. I
can't say as much for the other, Waymart, but he'll pass."
The sun was shining warmly when they left Weimer's cabin. The snow above
the narrow loam-paved trail was melting and running in rivulets down to
the creek. Overhead the spruce boughs met, and laced their green fingers
together, sending down a damp, spicy odor.
Near the McKenzie cabin Steele paused and looked up the mountainside.
A few rods away the earth was thrown up around some tree stumps whose
tops had been recently cut off.
"You see," he explained in a low tone to Ross, "the McKenzies are
supposed to be over here working some claims that they staked out last
spring. But look there! They haven't got the discovery hole finished
yet!"
The "discovery hole," as Ross had learned, must be dug within thirty
days after the staking of the claim, and is a name given to the ten
feet of development work required by the law of Wyoming. This ten feet of
digging may mark either the commencement of a tunnel if the claim is
located on the side of a mountain, or, if the claim is on level ground,
the hole takes the form of a shaft driven perpendicularly into the
earth. With a claim thus staked and developed, the owner may rest secure
for one year without further work. Then, in order to hold the claim
against any covetous claim "jumper" he must do one hundred dollars'
worth of development work a year for five years in order to obtain a
patent. If he has staked several adjacent claims, work for all may be
done in one shaft or tunnel.
Ross, merely glancing at the incomplete discovery hole, looked at the
cabin from which the sound of voices issued. His gaze was doubtful, and
his footsteps lagged.
Seeing this, Steele walked on briskly, rapped on the sagging door, threw
it open, and brought Ross reluctantly face to face with his "friends the
enemy."
CHAPTER VI
THE MEN OF MEADOW CREEK
SANDY MCKENZIE sat before a rough board table on which his elbows lazily
rested, supporting half his weight. Sandy needed no gymnasium exercises
to teach him relaxation. Before him were the remains of a hearty dinner,
the chief dish of which smelled to Ross like beefsteak. From this dish
from time to time Sandy forked bits of meat on which he leisurely chewed.
He wore the same garb in which Ross had first seen him; but the corduroy
trousers were much the worse for wear and dirt, and it had been weeks
since his face had felt a razor. His sandy hair also had increased in
length, one thick lock perpetually dangling over his forehead.
Waymart, an older and darker man than Sandy, lay in his bunk smoking,
his knees drawn up and his hands clasped around them. Waymart was clean
shaven, and his black hair was closely clipped.
Both Sandy and Waymart were surprised to see Ross at their cabin door,
but Sandy favored him with a delighted grin. Rising without disturbing
the box on which he had been sitting, he straddled across it, and held
out a cordial hand.
"Hello, Tenderfoot," he shouted. "I hear they've added Doc to that there
name since I see you last."
Waymart crawled slowly out of his bunk. His black eyes met Ross's an
instant, and then slid away, the lids drooping. He held out a hand which,
although larger than Sandy's, lacked its cordial grip.
"Have some chairs," Sandy invited gayly, kicking forward a couple of
boxes. "These here are our second-best plush, upholstered, _ma_hogany
affairs. The best are coming from Chicago when the Burlington Road gets
into Camp."
There was about Sandy such an air of gay irresponsibility and cordiality
that Ross brightened perceptibly. After all, his "friends the enemy"
might not be bad neighbors, and he was glad he had allowed Steele to
persuade him to come.
Pushing his box away from the red-hot stove, he tipped it up on end, and
sat down beside the only window the cabin afforded. Directly outside,
hanging to a tree, were the hind quarters of a beef, as Ross supposed
at first glance. But, chancing to glance down, he found himself looking
at the head of an elk with great branching antlers, a head such as he had
seen at "The Irma" in Cody, credited to the marksmanship of Buffalo Bill.
"Last week," he heard Waymart saying to Steele, "we got him over near the
Divide."
Ross opened his eyes in astonishment. "A week!" he exclaimed, glancing
from the table to the meat hanging uncovered and unprotected outside.
Sandy caught the expression, and slapped his leg gleefully. "Think that
there meat ought to be off color by this time, don't ye, Doc? Well, let
me tell ye we'll be eatin' on it hangin' just where it is until it's
gone; and the last bite will be as good as the first."
Steele explained. "The air up here cures meat, Grant, quite as well as
brine. It takes meat a mighty long time to spoil--in fact, if it's
properly jerked, it never spoils."
"'Jerked'?" interrogated Ross: but Sandy had launched into an account
of their hunt over on the Divide, and no one explained the "jerking"
process then.
As Sandy talked, his manner lost its laziness. He became animated,
laughing and gesticulating constantly, and occasionally running his
fingers through his hair and throwing the stray front lock back among its
fellows.
Waymart had lain back in his bunk again, and unceremoniously elevated
his knees, between which he glanced at Ross from time to time. He said
but little, and smiled less.
The two occupied a cabin similar to Weimer's except that it was cleaner.
In one corner was a heap of supplies, boxes of canned goods, and sacks of
flour. Seeing Steele's eyes on these, Sandy explained easily:
"Hain't packed over our winter's supplies yet except the sticks. Got
a plenty of them, but grub's gettin' pretty low."
"Better hurry up, then," remarked Steele in a careless fashion. "All the
horses in Camp will be sent below in a couple of weeks."
By "below" he meant the ranches of Wood River Valley.
Sandy pushed back his front lock. "Time enough," he returned lightly.
"Everything can wait except game-huntin'. There's a flock of mountain
sheep over on the north side of Crosby, and we're goin' to trail 'em
to-morrow." Then he turned hospitably to Ross. "Want to go along?"
Ross shook his head. "I've--I've got to work," he stammered,
embarrassed at being obliged to introduce the subject of work on the
Weimer-Grant claims.
He might have saved himself all embarrassment, as the subject seemed to
have no personal connection with the gay Sandy.
"What," he cried, "in huntin' season? Wall, I've met other tenderfeet
constituted like ye; but they soon git over the fit, and so will you, I
reckon. Brought a gun?"
"Yes."
"You'll be out with us yet," declared Sandy.
"Sure," came from the bunk in tones of certainty.
Ross said nothing.
"When you bring down your first buck," pursued Sandy, unruffled by the
boy's silence, "you'll begin to git the Western fever that ye said ye
didn't want." Here Sandy chortled. "Guess ye think ye're enough of a
doctor t' cure that fever, but wait and see!"
As he said this, there was in the speaker's manner, or in his blue eyes
or sandy-bearded face, a return of that subtle something which had caused
Ross to decide that he "partly liked him and partly didn't."
"I expect," said Steele laughingly, "that Doc here will get as quartz
crazy as Wishing Wilson is. Of course, you fellows have seen Wishing."
"Wishin' Wilson!" exclaimed Sandy and Waymart in one breath, Sandy
adding, "What do ye mean? Whereabouts is Wishin'?"
"Well! Well! How comes it you didn't know?" exclaimed Steele
wonderingly. "Wishing is right up here in your midst. He's holding
down his claims this minute up yonder," jerking his thumb over his
shoulder.
Sandy sat up and threw the lock out of his eyes. "Back to stay?" he asked
with his forehead puckering into a scowl.
Steele nodded. "Stay till the trail is shut up."
The scowl on Sandy's forehead deepened. "Thought Wishin' was on the
hog's back. Last I knew he was tryin' to sell out to a party in Omaha.
When did he come?"
Waymart crawled out of his bunk again and lighted his pipe. "We've been
hunting'," he explained, "ye know. Didn't git back 'til yesterday.
Place may be full of folks and we none the wiser!"
"I don't think you're crowded up here yet," Steele rejoined. "And
Wishing didn't come until--when was it?--only a few days ago, he and his
new partner."
"Pardner?" cried Sandy.
"Pardner!" echoed Waymart, holding his pipe in his hand. "What pardner?"
"Young chap," replied Steele, "about Doc's height and--what age should
you say, Doc?"
"Probably seventeen," returned Ross. "Not much over," adding, "his name
is Jones, Leslie Jones. He's from Omaha."
"Grub stake?" asked Waymart succinctly.
"More than that," answered Steele. "Jones is going to stay and help."
The scowl on Sandy's forehead smoothed itself out. He grinned genially
at Ross. "I wonder now," he mused, "if there's enough of us old goats
up here in Meadow Greek to round up the kids and take care of 'em!"
"What about the kids taking care of the goats?" laughed Steele.
"Sometimes they're bigger hustlers."
Sandy nodded lightly. "This air'll take the hustle out quick enough.
Such high mountains as these hain't made fer hustlers."
As Ross was returning with Steele to Weimer's shack, the superintendent
glanced at him sidewise.
"I don't believe," he said slowly, "that the McKenzies intend to winter
here. Of course, there's no object in their stayin'. We all know
they're not here to work their claims, and it isn't necessary to
stay in order to watch yours; and they've no winter supplies, nor,"
thoughtfully, "have they mud-chinked their cabin. You can see daylight
anywhere between the logs. No, I don't think they have any intention
of staying."
Ross looked around the tiny valley, with its fringe of windy,
inaccessible peaks, and thought of the long months ahead of him, shut
in among those cruelly cold mountains.
"I hope they stay!" he declared fervently.
An hour later, having talked over the situation with Ross thoroughly,
explained the amount of work necessary to be done in the tunnel, and
given Weimer large chunks of advice, Steele rode away, driving his
packhorses in front of him.
Ross watched him out of sight and then entered the shack whistling to
keep his courage up. Inside he surveyed his temporary home with a shiver
which stopped the whistle. "Uncle Jake," he suggested, "let's clean
house the rest of the day. Willing?"
Weimer, sitting on a box in front of the stove, assented without removing
the pipe from his lips. "Ja, clean up all you vant to. I tink your fader
was alvays vantin' to clean mit der house."
"Think of my father's ever cleaning out a cabin like this!" muttered
Ross.
He stood helplessly in front of the door looking from the complacently
smoking Weimer to the bags and boxes heaped on the floor and then around
the dirt-encrusted room. He thought of Aunt Anne and her perfectly
kept house with a great throb of homesickness. Then he thought of his
father, who had got his "start" under such conditions as these and
suddenly threw off his coat.
"It's got to be done," he said aloud, "and I've got to do it!"
"Vat?" asked Weimer stupidly turning his goggles in Ross's direction.
Weimer was hugging his knees in a state of blissful content, the smoke
from his pipe curling about his head and almost shutting from view the
big young man on whose shoulders he had already shifted all burdens
connected with the Grant-Weimer claims.
During the remainder of the day Ross worked cleaning up the cabin and
packing away their winter supplies. When night came his bunk looked
better to him than the supper which Weimer was preparing, and he dropped
asleep sitting beside the table waiting for the flapjacks. But, instead
of turning in directly after washing the supper dishes, as he had
intended, he was forced to keep awake until nine o'clock entertaining
the denizens of Meadow Creek Valley.
The McKenzies came over first. Weimer, who, when night approached, had
removed his goggles, saw them coming first and raised his voice in
protest.
"Ach! dem McKenzies! See here, poy, dey mustn't come mit my cabin. Dey
ist after dese claims. Vorstehen sie nicht?"
"Yes, yes, Uncle Jake, I understand," Ross returned soothingly. "But they
can't carry the claims away in their pockets to-night, and to-morrow
morning we are going to bone down to work at such a rate that they'll
come up missing on their calculations altogether."
At the mention of work, Weimer groaned and retiring precipitately to his
bunk lay there regarding the doorway hostilely through the smoke from
his pipe. The next minute the doorway framed Sandy with Waymart close
behind.
"Hello, Doc!" Sandy pushed his cap to the back of his head. "Mart and
I, we've started out fer to pay our respects to Wishin' Wilson. Want
t' hike along with us?"
Ross shrugged his shoulders and sat down on one end of the table,
dish-cloth in hand. "Guess I've had hiking enough for one day, McKenzie.
Let's see. It's two miles up there, isn't it?"
"Yep;" Sandy lounged in and sat down on a box. "And by th' same sign
it's two miles back. But, gosh, young man, a matter of four mile ain't
nothin' in this country!" He surveyed Ross curiously. "How d'ye travel
East? In a push cart?"
Ross grinned but flushed. "The trip over from Camp was on rather higher
ground than I've ever seen before and it--well--it winded me," frankly.
"And this afternoon I've been hoeing out here. So I'm not exactly as
fresh as a morning glory to-night."
Waymart came inside and looked around. Ross pushed a box in his direction
and, after a moment's hesitation and a civil nod in the direction of the
bunk, the older McKenzie sat down and pulled his pipe out of his pocket.
"Ha, ha!" laughed Sandy. "When you're a few months further away from
Pennsylvany you'll forgit that a shack needs a hoe, t' say nothin' of
a broom." Then he addressed the bunk without looking toward it. "Uncle
Jake, have you seen Wishin'?"
"Ja," growled Weimer uncivilly, "dat I have."
"How did he look?" smiled Sandy who seemed to enjoy the other's "grouch."
"Look?" violently. "Vy, how should he look but shust like himself!"
Waymart chuckled, and Sandy was about to reply when footsteps were heard
drawing near. Heavy shoes were crunching the stones and pine needles
under foot, and voices sounded louder and louder.
"Must be Wilson and Jones," said Ross going to the door.
The room was lighted by two miner's candlesticks driven into the side
logs. One candle was near the door, and the light fell on the genial
face of Wishing Wilson, who paused in the doorway to wring Ross's hand
and shout his greetings at the other occupants of the room, before
stepping in and allowing his young partner to enter. When Ross finally
held out his hand to Leslie Jones he knew that he was facing a boy as
homesick as himself, rather than "Queen Victory's youngest."
Leslie gripped the other's hand as though its owner were a lifelong
friend. "How do you make it up here?" he asked in a low tone.
"Don't make it yet," responded Ross. "I just got here to-day. Steele
came up with me."
Then he turned to introduce Leslie to the McKenzies and saw a tableau
which puzzled him.
Waymart was staring at Leslie with amazed eyes and a lower jaw that
slightly sagged. He held his pipe in front of his mouth surprised in
the act of adjusting it between his lips. Sandy, rising, came blithely
forward, and, in passing Waymart, stumbled and jostled against him.
Waymart instantly recovered his lost poise. Lowering his pipe he slouched
along behind Sandy and shook hands with Wilson's partner. Wilson
himself was over beside Weimer's bunk telling at the top of his voice
that he had come to a rock wall in his tunnel, and on the other side
there must, without fail, be either a pocket of free gold or a lead
that would make the claims among the most valuable in the Shoshones. To
this optimistic talk Leslie did not listen with the same absorbing
interest he had shown at Sagehen Roost, Ross noticed.
In fact, a week of loneliness, coarse food and hard work had wilted
Leslie Jones both physically and mentally. Abject weariness seemed to
have robbed him of a part of his absorbing self-esteem. Furthermore,
he appeared to Ross to be troubled as well as homesick. He looked at
Sandy and Waymart unrecognizingly and sat down on a bench beneath the
candle by the stove.
"We shall stay," Ross heard Wishing tell the McKenzies, "till the pass
over Crosby threatens. Then we'll hike it below to the coal claims."
"Didn't know you had any," interrupted Sandy. "Where are they?"
"Up Wood River, only about a mile or such a matter from Camp. Fine
outcroppin' of coal. Best in the country. When the Burlington gits
here they've got t' have coal and I says to myself, 'There's where
you come up on top, Wishin', you'll have th' coal t' sell 'em,'
me and my pard now," he added with a glance at Jones.
The boy looked at him vaguely, as though he had not heard, and nodded.
He sat with one knee thrown over the other, his back pressed against the
side logs, his eyes so heavy that the lids kept drooping despite his
efforts to keep awake. His hands were blistered, and his new corduroy
suit dirty and torn. The air of newness which had characterized him when
Ross first met him was gone. His hair had lengthened, and his cheeks
revealed hollows. He said but little, being engaged in the absorbing
effort to keep awake. Besides, Sandy and Wilson gave no one else a chance
to talk. Waymart smoked stolidly staring at the candle above Leslie.
Ross, sitting with his elbows on the table, ceased to struggle against
weariness, and, with his head on his arms, fell asleep. He awakened just
in time to see his callers depart, whereupon he threw himself, dressed,
in his bunk and slept until late the next morning.
During the next few weeks, all days seemed alike to Ross except Sunday.
Early each Sunday morning he struck the trail for Miners' Camp, the
post-office, and Steele's shack. At first he crept shudderingly over
that quarter mile around the shoulder of Crosby. But soon his head
lost every sense of giddiness, and his legs regained their accustomed
strength, and his heart ceased to beat agitatedly at sight of the
thousand-feet fall.
On the third Sunday he came into Steele's shack with a brighter face
than he had worn before.
[Illustration: HE STRUCK THE TRAIL]
"Things are sort of righting themselves," he reported over a hot elk
steak. "I'm getting Weimer down to work in dead earnest," chuckling.
"I hold the McKenzie boys before his mind's eye continually, and roll
that car out, and dump it so quickly that he has to step lively to get
enough ore picked out and blasted out to fill it."
Steele whistled when Ross told him how many cubic feet had been taken
out of the Weimer-Grant tunnel during the week. He took from his pocket
a paper and pencil, and fell to figuring. Ross pushed aside the empty
dishes, and, leaning across the table, looked on with interest. He, too,
had figured extensively since work began on Meadow Creek, but only during
the last week had the figures satisfied him.
"Why, man alive!" cried Steele after a few moments' silent work,
"you'll fetch it, at this rate." He stretched his hand across the
table impetuously, and gripped Ross's, adding, "I thought you could
never do it--even with a backbone."
Ross's shoulders straightened, and his face flushed boyishly. "We _must_
fetch it!"
Steele leaned back, and drummed on the table. "What about the McKenzies?
Of course they must know what progress you've made."
"Well," exclaimed Ross, "I hope I can keep 'em so interested guessing
that they'll stay all winter. They come over as socially as you please
about every evening. Weimer doesn't like it much. He has no use for
'em, but I have, you bet! I'm glad to have 'em around, especially
now when I can estimate that at the present rate of speed the tunnel
will be ready so we can apply for a patent by June."
To Dr. and Mrs. Grant, Ross wrote: "It's going to be a long pull and
a strong pull, but I shall stick to the ship and show father that I can
do something else besides setting a bone.
"And what's more and queerer, I'm in danger of getting interested in
gold mining for itself. Every time I push our little car out to the end
of the dump and unload the ore I wonder how much gold I'm watching
roll away down the incline. Aunt Anne, you said in your last that it
seems such a waste to throw away the ore. Well, if you were here you'd
find it a greater waste of good money to try to get money out of the
quartz under present conditions. You see there are only a few dollars'
worth of gold in a ton of rock. That ton would have to be 'packed,'
as they say here, eighty miles over the roughest of trails to Cody, and
there loaded on cars and sent clear to Omaha, our nearest smelter. And
I guess you know more than I do about the costly process of crushing ore
and extracting gold from it in a smelter. It's not like mining for
'pay dirt,' as the men here call placer mining, where you gather up
sand and wash it out yourself and find the particles of gold in the
bottom of your pan. This quartz digging is the most expensive kind of
mining there is. But when the Burlington gets the branch road up into
Miners' the ore can be loaded at the mines and unloaded in Omaha
without change of cars. Then we'll dig out the dumps and send them
to the smelter, and back will come the gold jingling into our pockets.
But whenever I'm moved to give you information I feel small, for I
believe, in spite of all you write, that you both know more than I do
about it now.
"I haven't had a book in my hand, Uncle Fred. When it comes night, I am
too tired to understand the newspapers that I bring over from Miners',
to say nothing of delving in histology. I expect I shall forget all I
ever knew, but never mind! If I can get those claims patented, and so
satisfy father, then next year I'll begin over again to fit myself
for college--guess what I knew once will come back when I've studied a
little. Anyway, I'm not going to worry about it now."
Ross underscored those last words to convince himself that he was not
worrying, and handed the letter over to Bill Travers to be mailed at
Meeteetse.
To his father Ross proudly wrote of the week's progress in the tunnel,
adding in reply to a rather longer letter than usual, which he found
awaiting him in Camp, "No, I have no intention of throwing up the job."
His father had opened the way wide for him to "throw up the job"
after receiving the letter he had requested Steele to fill with exact
information. That part of the information which stated that Ross must
necessarily be shut up in Meadow Creek Valley for months with a more or
less weak-headed partner had led to the letter which Ross found awaiting
him. But Ross, Junior, was not well enough acquainted with Ross, Senior,
to understand that this letter was an invitation for him to return East.
"He thinks I'm just chicken-hearted enough to be ready to cut and run at
the first obstacle," was Ross's thought when he read what his father had
written. His chin came up, and his eyes narrowed. "I'd stay and work
here a year before I'd show the white feather now."
Ever since his last visit to New York, Ross had dwelt with secret pride
on the respect and confidence that his father had shown him, and the
sensation was so new and pleasant that he had no intention of forfeiting
it.
And thus it happened that, with Grant, Senior, and Dr. Grant and Aunt
Anne all desiring Ross's presence at home, and with Ross's wishes
coinciding exactly with theirs, he remained at the "jumping-off place"
into the wilderness.
In his private office on Broadway, Grant, Senior, read and reread, "No,
I have no intention of throwing up the job." He twisted uneasily in his
swivel-chair. He pulled Steele's last letter out of a pigeonhole, read
it, frowned, and replaced it. Then he leaned back and admitted aloud:
"I wish the boy was safely entered in medical college."
But, even as he considered the matter, "the boy" with a small pack on his
back, candy and a few apples to eat as a relish with the canned stuff,
was plodding through the snow, light and easily brushed aside as yet,
over the trail between Miners' Camp and Meadow Creek. And the boy's
heart was growing as courageous as his muscles were strong.
CHAPTER VII
HALF-CONFIDENCES
IT was dark that night when Ross arrived at the Weimer shack. The
candles were lighted, and as he passed the window, he saw Leslie Jones
within, sitting on a box on the opposite side of the room. His elbows
were on the table, and he was listening to Weimer, or rather, pretending
to listen. At a glance, Ross saw that his thoughts were far afield,
his eyes being fixed on the speaker with an absent stare. He appeared
more unkempt than on the occasion of his first call, and his face was
thinner. There was also about him an air of collapse that made him a
different person from the overbearing young man who had issued lofty
orders at Sagehen Roost.
It was the second time that Ross had seen him since coming into the
valley. The week before he had gone with the McKenzies one evening to
the Jones claims, but the two boys had exchanged few remarks, both being
too tired to talk.
As Ross entered the shack a sudden thought struck him. He stopped in the
doorway and greeted Jones with, "See here! Why haven't I thought to get
your mail Sundays? You haven't been over to Camp at all, have you?"
Leslie moved uneasily. He picked up his cap and pulled at the rim.
"Aw--it's bully of you to think of my mail, but I'm not expecting--why,
yes, you might inquire," he added lamely. Then, "What's going on in
Camp? I'd like to hear something about people once more," with a wry
smile.
Ross unstrapped a pack from his back and threw the contents on the
table. Sorting out the week's papers, he tossed them across the table.
"'Omaha News.' Want to see it?"
The blood came in an unexpected rush to Leslie's face and his hand
trembled as he reached for the papers. Ross watched him as he took them
and scanned the headings, column by column. Then he glanced keenly over
the advertisements, and without reading further threw the papers aside
and rested his elbows despondently on the table.
Weimer, satisfied with the tobacco and candy that Ross had brought,
retired to his bunk, dozing and smoking by turns. Ross had seated himself
at the table opposite Leslie and reread his letters. Now, as the other
cast the papers aside, he looked up and met misery in the eyes leveled
at him from beneath his caller's lengthening hair.
"Say!" ejaculated Ross impulsively, "I bet you find it as awful up in
this country as I do!"
"Awful!" echoed Leslie. "It's----" A sudden working in his throat
stopped him. He turned his face away.
"I wouldn't stay here for all the gold in these mountains if things
weren't just as they are," Ross continued sympathetically, "and I
presume you're caught in some such way, too, or you'd get out."
Leslie hesitated, nodded and again faced Ross, "How are you caught?" he
asked eagerly.
Ross told him briefly about his father's interest in the claims and
Weimer's appeal for help that had led to his, Ross's, coming.
As he talked Leslie's eagerness evaporated. He evidently was looking
for another sort of explanation, and his response was only half-hearted:
"Then your father sent you. That's bad luck when you want to be in
school." He hesitated and added: "It's not every fellow that wants to go
to school. I hate it!"
"You do!" exclaimed Ross. "Well, I can't say I waste any love on
studying myself, that is, in most studies, but I'm after results.
I'm willing to bone down to work because of where the work will take
me. The only thing I really like to study is medicine, anatomy and
all that sort of thing, you know. But in order to get anywhere in the
profession, I have to take a lot of mathematics and language and things
that I detest."
Leslie's shoulders came up. "I won't study what I don't like," he
declared arrogantly, "and I can't be made to--guess they're finding
that out, too!" The last was under his breath.
"Well," Ross began vaguely, "if you want to be a business man it's not
necessary to go through college. Our most successful business men----"
His voice trailed into silence as he saw that the other was not listening.
There ensued a few moments of quiet. In the bunk Weimer snored gently. A
nickel clock suspended on a peg from the side logs ticked loudly. The
pine chunks in the sheet-iron stove cracked and snapped cheerfully.
Leslie stared dejectedly at the table, while Ross, his forehead knit
into a puzzled frown, stared at Leslie. What could have happened, he
asked himself, to rob the other in four weeks of his former desire to
turn prospector? Homesickness? Perhaps, but Ross decided the trouble
lay deeper. If it were mere homesickness, the boy would be haunting
Miners' Camp and the post-office or else clearing out of the mountains.
"Where's Wilson?" Ross asked finally.
Leslie aroused himself with difficulty. "He's over at the McKenzies'.
I came here."
"How's the tunnel going? Are you making headway?"
This question opened the flood-gates of Leslie's misery. "Headway?" he
burst out. "Yes, we're making headway, but toward what, I'd like to
know!"
It was an exclamation rather than a question, and the boy brought his
clenched fist down violently on the table.
"Why," stammered Ross, "toward getting the claims patented, I suppose.
What else did you expect?"
Leslie's excitement subsided. He folded his arms on the table. "I came
expecting to find gold," he confessed. "I could hardly wait to get here
and now--well, I'm here, that's all, and all my money is spent for
supplies."
"But didn't you understand," Ross began, "that the ore up here had to
be smelted in order to release the metal, and that we can never pack the
ore on horseback over these trails and----"
"No," cried Leslie fiercely, "I didn't understand. I understood that I
was coming to work claims that would surely prove a perfect Klondike in a
short time--I thought in a few weeks."
"Oh, that's Wilson," broke in Ross. "He's a perfect promoter, Steele
tells me, because he believes in things himself so intensely that he
makes you see his way in spite of yourself. Steele says he has been
quartz crazy for years. Every claim that he stakes holds his everlasting
fortune in prospect."
"I've found that out," assented Leslie bitterly, "and yet I can't
blame Wilson. I foisted myself on him at Omaha--he didn't get after
me. And he has really been square with me. He simply made me believe in
his claims as thoroughly as he does, and he believes in them yet, but I
don't. You see," Leslie explained, "he keeps expecting to run across a
pocket of free gold, and that he says he'll turn over to me so I can get
back the money I put into the supplies. I've got to get that money
back pretty soon," he added emphatically.
Ross looked at him commiseratingly. "I'm afraid you can't."
For a moment Leslie's lips worked miserably. He took no pains to conceal
his emotion from Ross. Finally he burst out, "I must, Grant. I've
simply got to have that money back." He held out his hands palms up.
They were blistered and sore. "That doesn't matter," he declared.
"I'd work 'em to the bone if the work would bring the gold. And a
month ago I'd never done an hour's work in my life. I tell you,"
in a burst of irrepressible confidence, "everything looks different to
me to-day from what it did five weeks ago. I wish--I wish I could go
back those five weeks--why, I'd almost be willing to go to school----"
Approaching sounds stopped the confidence that Ross was so anxious
to hear. The door opened unceremoniously, and the McKenzies entered,
accompanied by Wilson. The latter was talking excitedly. With a nod
at Ross he finished his speech while helping himself to a seat beside
the stove.
"I tell you there's every sign of free gold. Same kind of stun crops
out there and in the same layers and at the same angle as when I was
working up in Butte. My claims was right next door to a fellow's named
Harrison. One mornin' he bust through a wall rock slam bang right onto
two thousand dollars' worth of the prettiest yellow ye ever see. And I
tell ye I shouldn't be a mite surprised if our next blast showed us a
streak of yellow too."
Sandy laughed unconcernedly. "A streak of yeller in a chap and in a rock
mean two different things, I notice. And I've also seen more of the
yeller in fellers than in rocks," easily dropping on a box and lighting
his pipe.
Young Jones, looking at his partner, brightened visibly, despite the
knowledge he had recently acquired of Wilson's optimism. There was about
the man such a cock-sureness, such simple sincerity and abiding faith in
his own statements that Ross felt that he could not rest content the
following day without knowing the result of that next charge of dynamite.
Steele had told him about these "pockets" that occasionally are concealed
in the heart of the veins or "leads" along which mining tunnels are
driven. They are uncovered unexpectedly by a blast of dynamite. They
consist of small quantities of quartz of such richness that it pays
to transport the ore to the smelter. But every prospector dreams of
uncovering a pocket of "free gold" ore, quartz through which the gold
is scattered in visible particles or streaks and can be extracted in
its pure state with the aid of a hammer and a knife blade.
"Come down to-morrow night," Ross said in a low tone across the table,
"and report."
Leslie nodded, and Ross, going to his emergency chest, brought out a
bottle of liquid and a box of salve. "Here," he said abruptly, "better
take some care of those hands of yours if you don't want blood poisoning
to set in. Soak 'em well in hot water with a teaspoonful of this
added"--he shoved the bottle of liquid across the table--"and then rub
in this salve. And don't work in the dirt without gloves till those
sores are healed."
Humbly and gratefully Leslie took his orders from "Doc Tenderfoot," while
the men looked on with interest and many questions.
"Tell ye what," said Sandy heartily, "if I intended t' winter here I'd
feel easier about the trail bein' closed. If a stick should go off at
the wrong time and blow ye int' pieces, Doc here could put th' pieces
together and patch ye up as good as new. Doc's all right!"
"I wish," thought Ross as he saw his guests depart, "that I could say
the same about Sandy."
But while he had no faith in the friendly pretentions of Sandy, he
dreaded any mention of his leaving the mountains. To feel that he would
be left alone with Weimer for months was maddening. If only Wilson and
his partner were to remain on the Creek--but they too would go as soon
as the trail threatened to become impassable. This careless speech of
Sandy's concerning leaving the valley drove all other ideas out of
Ross's head that night and persisted in the morning. To feel that Weimer
and himself were the only human beings in Meadow Creek Valley, to know
that there was no escape until the sun thawed away the barrier in
the spring was a terrifying thought. It was present that day with Ross
like a waking nightmare. As he pushed the little car out of the tunnel
and dumped it, he looked up at the cold gray peaks with a wild desire to
level them and bring Miners' Camp--Cody--Pennsylvania--nearer. So
absorbing was this desire that he forgot the promised visit from Leslie
and was surprised to see him at the door before he had finished washing
the supper dishes.
"You wanted to hear about that promised vein," explained the newcomer,
reading Ross's surprise in his face.
"Oh--why, yes! That pocket of free gold!" exclaimed Ross hastily picking
up the thread of connection where it had been broken the previous
evening by Sandy's reference to leaving the valley. "Did you uncover it?"
"Uncover nothing!" returned Leslie. He sat on the table and swung
his feet restlessly, adding despondently, "And what's more, we
won't uncover anything in a lifetime up here, either. I've lost all
hope--except," he added with a shrug of his shoulders, "just the
minute that Wilson is talking."
"I never had any hope," said Ross slowly, "but then, I have never given
the ore more than a thought. With me it's simply to get the work done,
satisfy my father and--clear out."
"And with me," responded Leslie, "it's the money now--I've got to have
the money. Only," he added, "I'll say this--that when I left Omaha
there was more in it for me than the money. You see--I'll own up--I
was crazy to get out of school and, well--see things and do 'em! If
I'd gone to some other place, to Goldfield or even down to Miners' Camp
it would be different. But I'm here and all my money's spent."
Continually he came back to that last statement. That fact had evidently
swallowed up all the lust for adventure, for "getting out and seeing
things"--it was the only thing that young Jones could now see in the
situation. Ross wondered why but did not like to ask. Finally he said
hesitatingly, "I say, Jones, if you want to get out of here I'll--that
is--I have enough on hand to let you have your car-fare back to Omaha."
The blood rushed over Leslie's face. His head came up proudly. "See
here, Grant," he exclaimed briskly, sliding off the table and stuffing
his hands into his pockets, "it must sound as if I'm a low-down beggar,
but I never thought of such a thing as getting hold of your money!"
"And I never thought of it, either," declared Ross quickly. "I've made
you the offer on my own hook. Come off your high and mighty perch and
talk sense! Take the money and pay it back when you can. I'm a hundred
dollars to the good here."
Leslie "came off his perch" instantly and held out his hand repentantly.
"Thank you, Grant. That's awfully white of you, but that won't do.
It's not car-fare I want, and Omaha is the last place I want to
strike--or next to the last, at least--without--well, a lot more than
car-fare." After a moment he repeated, "I tell you it's white of you
to offer it, though. It makes a fellow feel as if he'd fallen among
friends."
The latter expression reminded Ross of something about which he had not
thought in three weeks, namely, the behavior of Waymart McKenzie when
he first saw Leslie. With the water still dripping from the dish-pan the
boy hung it against the logs, tossed the dish-cloth on top of the pan
and rolling down his sleeves, asked:
"Jones, do you know the McKenzies?"
Leslie shook his head. "Before coming here, do you mean?"
Ross nodded.
"No, never saw them before. Why?"
"Oh, nothing," returned Ross carelessly, "only when you came in here the
first night I thought they acted as though they'd seen you before, or
Waymart did, rather."
The effect of this simple statement was unexpected. Leslie gripped the
table excitedly. His face paled and he was obliged to clear his throat
before asking: "What made you think that? I didn't--didn't notice
anything. I never thought that they--he----"
"It was just a trifle that made me think that," Ross hastened to assure
his guest in confusion. "Just a little byplay when Waymart first saw
you. Nothing to----"
"Tell me exactly what it was," commanded Leslie, and all the boy's
imperiousness leaped to the front. "I want to know all that you saw."
Ross related the incident haltingly. "Sandy didn't act as though he had
ever seen you before. It was only Waymart," he said consolingly, but it
was plain to be seen that the other was not consoled.
"It's possible, very possible that they may have seen me--I wouldn't
have noticed them," he muttered, "if they were--that is, father hired
any number of men--they might all see me and I not notice them."
"Maybe I can find out," offered Ross promptly. "I'll ask them."
"No, no!" hastily; "don't bother with the matter."
Leslie crossed the room, threw open the door and stood staring across the
valley at the McKenzie shack. When next he spoke he did not look around:
"It will be just as well, Grant, if you don't mention me to 'em
until----" There ensued a long pause. Then, "until I talk with you again."
Just before he left he asked abruptly, "Do you bring the Omaha papers
back with you every Sunday?"
"I can," replied Ross, "if you want 'em. But, see here, Jones, why
don't you go over to Camp with me next Sunday?"
Leslie hesitated. "Guess I will. Good-night."
A few steps from the door he turned back. "See here, Grant, don't wait
for me Sunday. If I go I'll be here by eight o'clock. But if I don't
go, I should like to see the Omaha papers."
"All right, I'll fetch them," returned Ross.
Sunday morning he postponed his start for Miners' Camp until past eight
o'clock, hoping that Leslie would come, but no Leslie appeared. Sandy
did, however. He came freshly shaved and combed, with a new kerchief
knotted about his neck.
"Want some good company over t' Camp?" he inquired jocularly. "If ye do,
here it is, fer I'm goin' out."
"Going to stay long or just for the day?" asked Ross.
"Oh, I dunno how long," carelessly. "I've got t' see Cody again. Little
old town couldn't fetch it if I didn't hang around it about once in
so often."
"Is Waymart going?"
"Nope, Mart will hold the cabin and claims down here. Mart don't
like t' hit th' trail as often as I do. He's fer his pipe and a soft
bunk and a good meal. Mart 'ud be a failure as one of these here
globe-trotters. He's what ye could call domestic in his tastes. The
only thing he lacks," here Sandy chuckled at his own wit, "is a blamed
thing to be domestic about!"
As they were making their way cautiously around the shoulder of Crosby,
Sandy asked suddenly, "Why don't that young Jones go t' Camp ever on
Sunday? Guess they don't work Sundays up t' th' Wilson claims. I
should think he'd be as wild as you be t' git over this side of Crosby
where there's a post-office and newspapers and things."
"I don't know," returned Ross in a general denial of knowledge of all
Sandy had said.
"I wonder about that young feller now," pursued Sandy affably.
"So do I!" thought Ross. He said nothing.
"I wonder how he come t' drop out of nowhere with money enough t'
grub-stake the two of 'em fer six months--and then have nothin' further
t' draw on!"
Sandy, walking now shoulder to shoulder with Ross, looked at him keenly.
"Don't know anything about it," returned Ross shortly, but he could not
rid himself of the insinuation in Sandy's words.
When he returned that night to Meadow Creek, Ross was disappointed at
finding Wilson awaiting him as well as Leslie. He had hoped that Leslie
would come for the papers alone and would continue the conversation of
his previous visit.
In a loud and jovial voice Wilson informed Doc that his pard had started
out in good shape that morning to go over to Camp and had then backed out.
"Must have got clean over here," Wilson added.
Leslie gathered up the newspapers which Ross had brought and fitted them
together without meeting Ross's eyes. "I found I was too tired to go
on," was all the explanation he made. "I slept pretty much all day and
am going to turn in early to-night."
Ross nodded speechlessly, wondering how much Sandy's going had to do
with Leslie's staying. Would the latter avoid the McKenzies now that he
knew they had seemed to recognize him, and why? Before the evening was
far spent Ross began to suspect that Leslie would like to avoid him also,
if it were possible. The boy looked more despondent than ever, but he
shielded his despondency behind a proud reserve that shut Ross out, much
to the latter's disappointment.
"Perhaps," Ross told himself, "if I hadn't been such an idiot as to
offer him money, he wouldn't act so offish now. I never had any more
tact than a goat, anyhow! Wish I had minded my own business and let him
do all the talking!"
"Vas ist de matter mit dot poy?" Weimer asked as soon as the door closed
on their visitors. "He vas such a talker oder time he vas here und now
he talks nicht at all."
"Guess he's homesick."
Weimer rubbed his great hands together thoughtfully. "Und sick of de
mountains, I tink," he added shrewdly. "Ven dot poy come here he fooled
himself!"
The last of the week saw Sandy's return. He came strolling along the
trail one night just as the sunlight was fading from the tops of the
mountains. He was whistling, apparently in high spirits. Stopping at
the door of Weimer's shack he paused to call:
"Hi, in there, Grant! I saw your friend Leonard at Cody. I set you up
in fine shape t' 'im. 'No grass,' says I, 'will turn t' hay while
he's gittin' things done.'"
Ross laughed. Despite the fact that he knew Sandy's praise covered an
abyss of insincerity, it was pleasant, none the less.
After the supper dishes were washed, he decided to visit the McKenzies.
"Want to go along, Uncle Weimer?" he asked, well knowing what the reply
would be.
"Go mit dem McKenzies?" gesticulated Weimer. "Ven I do it vill pe ven my
legs von't carry me avay from dem!"
Ross laughed. "Well, Uncle Weimer, my legs seem to want to carry me where
I can get the Cody news. I want to hear about Mr. Leonard. Perhaps he has
heard from father more recently than I."
There was no moon that night, and the sky had become suddenly overcast
so that Ross faced a dense darkness pierced only by the candle-light
from the window of the McKenzie shack. He stumbled toward this, feeling
his way so slowly along the narrow trail that he unwittingly approached
the cabin silently and surprised an altercation within. Sandy's voice
was raised in vehement assertion and Waymart's lower rumble in protest.
As he was groping for the door, he heard Sandy say:
"I tell ye, Mart, wild hosses won't drag 'im up here s' long as that
young feller is in these mountings, and we may want 'im here."
Then Waymart's response, "Well, what be ye aimin' to do about it?
Don't bite off more'n ye can swaller. Ye do that too often. He'll
be out of here in a few weeks. What's eatin' ye? 'Let well enough
alone.'"
"Yes," scornfully from Sandy. "Ye maverick! They won't go till we----"
Ross, his hand on the door, had stubbed his toe against a stone.
"Sh," came Sandy's warning in lowered tones. "What's that?"
There was a step across the floor. Ross instinctively fell back into the
darkness and slipped behind a tree. The door was jerked open and Sandy's
figure appeared. An instant he looked out and then turning back, said
disgustedly, "Nobudy, but guess we don't need t' yell loud enough t'
be heard up t' Wilson's."
CHAPTER VIII
ROSS'S "HIRED MAN"
As the door closed on Sandy, Ross beat a hasty retreat. His first thought
was that the brothers were discussing him. The fact that they were in
the valley to watch the progress of work on the Weimer-Grant claims and
that they were interested in his being there and not anxious to have him
remain, all aided in the interpretation of the McKenzies' speeches.
"But who on earth is it that won't come as long as I am here and why
not?" he asked himself as he stumbled back in the direction of the light
in Weimer's cabin.
"Vat's you pack for alreddy?" demanded Weimer from his bunk as Ross
opened the door. "Ist dem McKenzies mit Wilson, hein?"
"No," returned Ross, "but I decided that I am tired enough to turn in
instead of going visiting," and he forthwith "turned in," but did not go
to sleep immediately.
Truth to tell, he was uneasy. He felt that Sandy, behind that
good-natured, friendly exterior, was full of schemes. The McKenzies
wanted the claims, and Ross had unexpectedly interposed himself
between them and their desires. Therefore, their schemes must include
him. What was on foot now?
He tossed restlessly in his bunk assailed with qualms of fear that he
tried to conceal from himself. "Ah, what you afraid of?" he asked himself
disgustedly. "They won't shoot you nor yet tie you hand and foot and
throw you over the Crosby trail. As Steele says, I haven't a thing to
fear personally from 'em. That's not their way. Go to sleep."
This command he issued to himself in an angry mutter and at once
scrambled up in his bunk wider awake than ever. His mental horizon
unexpectedly cleared. "Of course he's the one they meant and not me!"
he exclaimed aloud.
"Vat's dat you say?" asked Weimer sleepily. "Hein?"
"A waking nightmare," returned Ross and lay down again.
Of course it was Leslie. "'He's to be here only a few weeks,'" Waymart
had said. "'Let well enough alone.'" He, Ross, expected to winter
in the valley, and the McKenzies knew it. Yes, they were referring to
Leslie. That calmed Ross, but deepened the mystery.
The following morning he thought over the situation while he was at work.
It was a blind enough situation, but he felt that he ought to repeat to
Leslie the scraps of conversation that he had overheard. They might mean
much to the boy, and in spite of his reserve and his overbearing manners
Ross liked Leslie.
At noon he ate dinner hastily, and telling Weimer that he would be
back in an hour, set out for the upper claims. Snow had fallen the
night before and the trail had filled, making walking tiresome, for
Ross had not yet accustomed himself to the use of snow-shoes. With his
hands in his pockets and his cap drawn down over his eyes he plunged
through the drifts in the teeth of a sharp east wind. Up the side of
the mountains he struggled, through the pass between two peaks where
Meadow Creek had cut a channel and into a hollow sheltered from the wind
and exposed to the sun.
"Hello, Grant!" A voice greeted him from the upper side of the trail.
Ross pushed his cap back and looked up. In the sunshine, his back against
a warm rock, his feet buried in the dry loam and pine needles, sat Leslie
Jones. He had eaten his dinner and wandered along the trail until he
had found a warm spot in which to spend the noon hour. Ross promptly
climbed the steep mountainside and dropped down beside him.
"The McKenzies say," began Leslie curiously, "that you don't stop work
long enough to eat and sleep. Yet here you are two miles from home in
the middle of the day."
"It's because of what the McKenzies have said that I'm here now,"
Ross returned swiftly. "It may not be worth a picayune to you, and then
again, maybe, it will be," and he related the events of the previous
evening.
Leslie bent a troubled face over a stick that he was idly whittling.
"Are you sure, Grant, that they meant me? I haven't an idea who they are
nor who could be so afraid of me that he wouldn't come up here with me
here. I don't know of a soul that's afraid of me, but," with a short,
mirthless laugh, "I do know of some one that I'm afraid of. It's not
the McKenzies, although they might--if they know me----"
Suddenly he flung the stick from him and faced Ross impulsively. "Grant,
did you ever do something that you'd give anything you possessed to
undo--and that you'd just _got_ to undo?"
Ross, startled at the sudden change in his companion, at the latter's
intensity and evident unhappiness, merely shook his head awkwardly,
avoiding the misery-filled eyes. He turned away and began piling up
stones, bits of shining quartz that had been thrown, at some time, out of
a discovery hole above them.
Presently Leslie regained his self-possession. "I say, Grant," he began
again abruptly, "to tell you the truth, I have started to go over to see
you half a dozen times within a week and got this far every time. I'm
going to ask a favor of you."
"All right," said Ross with a gruffness that did not conceal his
sympathy. "Fire ahead!"
"The other day you--you offered me money," Leslie began with difficulty.
"Yes, and I do to-day," Ross interrupted.
Leslie shook his head. "Hold on till I get to it. I can't take your
money--not that way. But the other day I heard the McKenzies tell Wilson
that you tried to hire men in Miners' Camp. Will you hire me?"
"Will I!" Ross leaped to his feet. He grabbed his cap and tossed it in
the air and then fell to pommeling Leslie in pure exuberance of joy.
"Hire you? I wish there were half a dozen of you to hire! Bully for you!
But----"
His exuberance died out. He replaced his cap and looked down on the
other, his lips pursed ready for a whistle.
"Well?"
"See here!" Ross burst out. "What about Wilson?"
"That's all right," Leslie answered quickly. "I told him a couple
of days ago that I'd got to get money. I told him I'd leave him the
grub, of course. I agreed to furnish it, and I'll stick to my word,"
doggedly, "but I must also light out and earn some money. And all I can
do is to work with my hands. I--well, I've always hated to make my head
work, and I've never had to do any other kind until now. You'll find
I'm soft yet, but I'll do my best."
The boy spoke humbly.
Ross sent his cap spinning into the air once more. "I'll risk you!
You're not as soft as you were six weeks ago! Not by half! When can you
come?"
Leslie considered. "Wilson says he'll go below to the coal claims in a
couple of weeks. I'll talk it over with him and let you know."
"Come to-morrow, if you can," Ross shouted back as he slid down to the
trail.
Work went easily for a few days in view of Leslie's coming. The thought
of his companionship robbed the prospective loneliness of Meadow Creek
Valley of its terrors. He whistled and sang about the shack as he hunted
up the material out of which to make a third bunk. He was hammering
away on this the second evening after his talk with Leslie, when the
McKenzies dropped in. They had been over on the Divide hunting and
had been out of Ross's sight and mind since his talk with Leslie. Not
until Sandy pushed the door open unceremoniously and walked in did Ross
recall the comments that had so disturbed him and wondered once more
to whom they had referred, himself or Leslie, and what the reference
meant.
"Hello, Grant!" Sandy exclaimed, stopping abruptly just inside the door.
"What's up? Why another bunk? Goin' t' take boarders? Any relations
droppin' in t' attend our festivities up here?"
Ross looked over his shoulder laughingly. "Nope. Give another guess."
Sandy came nearer. Waymart shut the door and sat down beside the stove.
Weimer turned his back on "dem darned McKenzies," and put on his goggles
that he might not be tormented by a view of their faces. It was a
never-ending source of vexation to him that they came sociably to his
shack.
"I haven't any more guesses in stock," declared Sandy, but the smile on
his face was succeeded by a frown and he bit his red beard restlessly.
"Hired man is coming to-morrow," Ross formed him as the hammer sent
another nail home in the side wall.
"Hired man!" exploded Sandy. "Where the deuce will you get a hired man?"
"Right here in the valley," exulted Ross. "Leslie Jones."
"Leslie Jones!" repeated Sandy.
"Leslie Jones," muttered Waymart.
"By and by," Ross confessed, "when all you fellows go below, it will
seem a little more livable up here to have a third one around. I'd pay a
man wages just to stay here to say nothing of working for me."
Neither Sandy nor Waymart made any comment. Sandy stood watching the
work in silence, while Waymart allowed his pipe to go out. Then both
departed. They said they were going up to see Wilson, but Ross noticed
that they returned to their own cabin instead.
"Something doesn't seem to please our friends the enemy," he chuckled
after their departure. "They see the Weimer-Grant claims getting further
and further from their reach."
"Ve vill peat dem McKenzies yet," gloated Weimer rubbing his hands gently
on his knees. "Ven dot oder poy comes de work vill run und jump!"
Ross did not see the McKenzies again until Leslie was occupying the third
bunk, Wilson having, good-naturedly, sent him down within a week after
the boys had completed their bargain.
"Clear out if ye want to," Wilson had said kindly. "It's white of ye
t' leave the grub. I hain't a cent t' pay fer it. There's a fortune
in these claims of mine, but it's too late t' dig it out this year.
Next summer----" and he was launched on the glowing prospects for the
next season.
Leslie entered on his task with a grim determination which seemed foreign
to his disposition.
"I don't want you to get sick of your bargain the first week," he said
one day in answer to Ross's remonstrance when he refused to stop work
on account of a bruise on his wrist. "You open up that little emergency
chest and I can go on digging just the same. I don't want any delayed
wages in mine!"
With the advent of Leslie, life fell into pleasanter grooves in Weimer's
cabin. Despite the anxiety ever present with the newcomer, and despite
his natural reserve, Ross's exuberance of spirits caused by his presence
and work affected him, and after the supper dishes were washed, the two
boys wrestled, chaffed each other or talked, Ross about his father and
uncle and aunt, Leslie about his school life in Omaha.
"It's a boys' school," he explained one day, "a military academy. I've
had to go there ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper. Discipline
is fierce. I hate it, and this year I made up my mind I'd not stand
it, so I'm here."
"And wish," ventured Ross, "that you were back in school again."
"Yes--almost," Leslie began impulsively and then paused, adding quietly,
"Lots of things I wish, and wish 'em hard."
The following evening after supper, Weimer tumbled into his bunk at
once and began snoring. The two boys washed the dishes, in silence at
first. Outside, snow was falling heavily. Through the drifting flakes
the McKenzies' light shone fitfully. The brothers had been away again
hunting and had just returned.
As Leslie set the dishes on their shelf above the stove he glanced
uneasily out of the window. He had not seen the McKenzies for some time.
Ever since they had crossed the valley that noon on their snow-shoes,
their hunting trophies on their shoulders, he had watched their cabin
with that same air of uneasy abstraction.
"Ross," he broke out at last, "I've got to tell you something. I hate
like a dog to tell it, but it's got to break loose some time and it may
as well be right now."
He turned from the shelf, glanced at the snoring Weimer, lowered his
voice, and, standing beside the stove, worked restlessly at the damper in
the pipe. Ross, without looking at him, slowly scrubbed the dish-pan
and then the table.
"It's like this," Leslie began. "When I met Wilson I had five hundred
dollars in my pocket and a grouch against my father. Always before then,
father had sent the Academy a check to pay for the semester--you have
to pay there in advance for half the year--but this year he had business
on hand that couldn't be interrupted and so he called me into his
office in a great hurry the morning I left home and handed over the
check to me. It was made out to me and it was for five hundred dollars.
That's the price of the half year, you see. Dad handed it over and
just said, 'Here, pay your own bill,' and got out. That's about
all that's ever between us, anyway. Well, I went up to Omaha. We'd
had it out about school all summer. I was bound not to go this year,
and he swore that I should go and go through college if he had to rope
me and tie me and take me himself, as he put it! Father is a whirlwind
of a man. But I was bound not to go, and the money let me out. I took
the check and cashed it at the bank and went to the 'Hill House,'
where I met Wilson. I reasoned that the money was mine because it was
to be spent on me. You see, Ross, I was mad enough to reason anything
my way that I wanted."
Leslie turned the damper absently, sending smoke in gusts into the room,
but neither boy noticed it. Ross wiped out his dish-pan, hung it on its
nail, and sitting down on a box, took his chin between his hands and
stared at the fire.
"I thought," Leslie went on, "that I'd invest that money and surprise
dad. Well," grimly, "he's probably as surprised by this time as I am.
You've heard Wilson tell about my meeting him and agreeing to go with
him. I spent the entire five hundred on our outfit and car-fare in the
expectation that in six weeks I could write to dad and tell him what a
success I'd made of it! I had six weeks' grace."
Ross looked up inquiringly. "What do you mean?"
"Father and I never have corresponded extensively, but he always looks
sharply after my reports. The first report goes out from the Academy in
six weeks after school opens. I reckoned from what Wilson said that we'd
strike it rich up here in a month more or less, and so about the time
father would be looking into the reason why no report was sent from
the Academy, he'd be receiving one from me up here and, you know,
Ross, 'nothing succeeds as well as success,' and success of this sort
would get dad right under the collar. Well, he probably knows by this
time that I've turned up missing at school, and he has not received
a letter from Meadow Creek telling about the discovery of free gold!"
Leslie gave the damper a final twist and sat down on a pile of fire-wood.
"Ross," he exclaimed violently, "I am about seven ways an everlasting
fool!"
Ross grinned cheerfully. "Aunt Anne always says that to find out that
you're a fool 'is the best cure for the disease of foolishness.' So
you see you're headed toward the cure already."
Leslie shook his head. "There's that money, Ross. It wasn't mine, and
you know it and I know it. I can't face dad again without it in my hand.
Why, I wouldn't see him until I'd earned it for--well, wild horses
wouldn't drag me," he concluded passionately. "I tell you, Ross, I've
let myself in for a heap of trouble. I know father."
"Now that he finds out you've skipped, Leslie, won't he be hunting you
up?"
Leslie stirred uneasily and turning stretched up and looked in the
direction of the McKenzies. "That's what I'm expecting, or else he'll
not think me worth while. I tell you, Ross, I've made dad no end of
trouble both at home and in school. Things look sort of different up
here. I've--well--I've never been up against it before."
"Are you going to send your father word?"
"Send him word before I get back that five hundred!" cried Leslie aghast.
"You don't know dad. I can't face him without it. Not much."
"But he'd see that you feel different----" Ross began.
"You don't know dad," Leslie cut in harshly. "With the men it's just
the same. It's 'stand and deliver' or get out, and he'd treat me just
the same."
The coming of the McKenzies put an end to further conversation. They came
to announce their departure on the morrow.
"Any little thing you'd like us t' git fer you?" Sandy asked the boys
lazily. "Want us t' bring ye any biled shirts or one of these here coats
with long handled tails? If you fellers lay out t' stay here all winter
ye better lay in a stock of society rags, 'n' dancin' shoes."
"About the most useful dancing shoes we'll need will be snow-shoes, I
guess," Ross retorted.
Leslie, from the wood-pile, said little but watched the brothers closely.
Neither paid more than a passing attention to him, concentrating their
remarks on Ross. They left early and went up the Creek with the intention
of paying a farewell call on Wilson.
"I don't believe," said Leslie the following morning as he watched them
take the trail leading over Crosby, "that they have ever seen me before.
They don't act as though they have, do they?"
"Haven't seen a sign of it since that first night," declared Ross, "and
yet what I overheard, you know----"
"Must have referred to you," returned Leslie with conviction.
The next three days passed quietly enough. The inhabitants of Weimer's
cabin heard an occasional blast from Wilson's claims, but did not see
Wilson. Steadily the two boys worked and steadily Ross held Weimer to
his labors. Usually it was Weimer who got the meals, either Ross or
Leslie leading him down to the shack, in case the sun shone, about
half-past eleven. In three-quarters of an hour the boys would leave
work and sit down to a substantial meal of hot bread, potatoes and all
sorts of canned meats and vegetables. But the third day after the
McKenzies' departure it chanced that when eleven o'clock came, Weimer
and Leslie were in the far end of the tunnel drilling the "cut in" holes
for a new blast, and Ross, pushing the little car back into the tunnel,
sang out:
"Hey, you fellows, keep on and I'll go down and shake up the grub this
time."
He ran down the trail to the cabin, and soon had a roaring fire in the
heater. A kettle of beans had been left simmering on the back of the
stove. This Ross pulled forward, and then, delving among the canned
goods, he proceeded to set out various edibles, all the while whistling
cheerfully.
"M-m, tomatoes," he interrupted himself to mutter, "we haven't had
tomatoes in two days. And corn--sweet corn. Guess Weimer has overlooked
the corn entirely. We'll have corn. Soup! Jiminy! We haven't had soup
in an age. Vegetable. That means a little of everything, and that taken
boiling hot. Here goes soup."
"Whoa!" came a deep voice from the trail outside the door, then the voice
was raised, "Hello! Who's t' home?"
Ross stepped to the door and faced a middle aged man, clad in leather
"chaps" and short fur coat. A fur cap was drawn down over his ears and
his hands were encased in huge fur gloves. He sat easily on a gray horse
and was leading another, a mottled brown and white. As Ross appeared,
he drew off one glove and slipped the hand carelessly under the tail
of his coat at the same time squaring about in his saddle so that he
faced the doorway.
Ross, in his shirt sleeves, stepped out and greeted the newcomer
hospitably. "Hello! Come in to dinner."
"Had mine down in Miners' Camp," returned the other with a backward jerk
of his head.
He touched his mount with his spur and came close to Ross. The brown and
white horse pulled back obstinately on the leading rope. The animal was
saddled.
"Are you the young chap that's workin' for Weimer?"
"Yes."
"All right." The stranger withdrew his hand from the tail of his coat.
It held a gun. "No monkey-shines now! You're the boy I'm after. I'm
the sheriff of Big Horn County, and I have a warrant here for your
arrest. Your father is honin' to meet up with you and settle a little
account of money taken in Omaha."
CHAPTER IX
SURPRISES
FOR a moment Ross was stunned. His hands fell nervelessly at his side,
and he stared up at the stranger with expressionless eyes. Then, as
the situation dawned on him, his eyes suddenly narrowed and into them
leaped a light that caused the other to move the gun suggestively and say
warningly:
"No monkeying allowed, understand. Swallow a bite right now and climb
up here on this other horse."
Ross looked over his shoulder speculatively. From his position he could
see the mouth of the tunnel on the mountainside behind the cabin. The
mouth showed up black and empty and from its depth came the muffled
sound of the hand drills wielded by Weimer and Leslie. The trail leading
over the mountain to Miners' Camp was screened from the mouth of the
tunnel by hemlocks. It could be seen only from the end of the dump.
Ross thought fast.
"All right," he said finally. "I'll go with you now--and quietly.
There's no objection, I suppose, to my leaving a note for--Weimer?"
No doubt existed in his mind as to the legality of the warrant and the
seriousness of purpose in the man before him; therefore, he asked no
further questions. Moreover, he wished above all things to avoid question
and get off before Leslie appeared on the scene.
"Leave a note, yes, or see 'im," assented the sheriff. "I'm willin'.
Where is he?"
"At work," hastily. "I'll just leave a note."
The sheriff dismounted, dropped his bridle reins beside his horse's
head, hitched the second animal's rope about the pommel of his saddle,
and followed Ross into the shack, repeating, "Where at work?"
"In the tunnel," mumbled Ross. "I would rather write a line than call
him."
He picked up some cold biscuits left over from breakfast and stuffed
them into his pockets. Then, drawing a box up to the table, he sat down
with paper and pencil to write a note. To his confusion, the sheriff
stood over him looking on. He moistened the point of his pencil slowly.
What on earth could he say that would make Leslie understand and yet
not give the situation away to the sheriff? To gain time he gnawed on
one of Weimer's hard biscuits.
"Where is my--father?" he asked finally, stumbling guiltily over the word.
The sheriff spat out of the doorway and twirled his gun impatiently.
"You'll see 'im before I leave you, all right," was his ambiguous
reply. "And the sooner that is the better it'll suit me. Git busy,
young man, with that pencil. I don't aim to go int' winter quarters
here. We've got to go on to Cody."
Ross bit his lips and laid the biscuit aside. His eyes narrowed until
they were mere slits. Grasping his pencil with a firmness he was far from
feeling he began to write without preface.
"The sheriff is here arresting me for stealing money from my father in
Omaha. He is taking me to him in Cody now. I don't know when I can get
back. Keep the work going sure, and don't worry. I think I will be
able----"
He paused and moistened the pencil again, then crossed out the last
sentence and substituted:
"I shall try to reason with him and make him see that he had better let
me keep on doing what I am doing and earn the money to pay him back."
Another instant Ross paused and thought. Then he added the singular
explanation which he believed would make the foregoing more lucid to
Leslie:
"As I write the sheriff is standing over me," and t
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