Chapter XIII: For the Sinews of War

Gifford, sitting in the darkness with his back to the windlass and the big old-fashioned holster revolver across his knees, held us up promptly and peremptorily when we came over the spur. Seeing Barrett with me, he knew pretty well what the results of the assay were before we told him. At the edge of the shallow pit we held a council of war--the first of many. Gifford fully agreed with Barrett that the most profound secrecy was the first requisite. Though he was new to the business of gold-mining--as new as either the bank teller or myself--he could prefigure pretty accurately what was before us.

"Here's where we'll have to ride and tie on the snoozing act," was his drawling comment. "We mustn't leave her alone for a single minute, after this; and it's got to be one of us, at that. We couldn't afford to hire a watchman if we had a million dollars."

Under the ride-and-tie proposal I volunteered to stand watch for the remainder of the night; and after the other two had turned in I took Gifford's place, with the windlass for a back rest and Barrett's shot-gun for a weapon.

I was not sorry to have a little time to think; to try in some fashion to readjust the point of view so suddenly snatched from its anchorings in the commonplace and shot high into the empyrean. It was the night of the ninth of June. Three months earlier, to a day, I had been an outcast; a miserable tramp roaming the streets of a great city; broken in mind, body and heart; bitter, discouraged, and so nearly ready to fall in with Kellow's criminal suggestion as actually to let him give me the money which, if I had kept it or spent it as he directed, would have committed me irretrievably to a life of crime.

Looking back upon it from the vantage point gained by a few hours' toil on a bare Colorado mountain-side, that ninth of March seemed to have withdrawn into a fathomless past. I was no longer a hunted vagabond; I was breathing the free clean air of a new environment, and in the narrow pit beside me a fortune was waiting to be dug out; a fortune for the ex-convict no less than for the two who had never by hint or innuendo sought to inquire into their partner's past. It was too good to be true; and yet it was true, contingent, as I saw it, only upon our fortitude, discretion and manful courage.

Nevertheless, there was still one small disturbing note in the music of the spheres. Barrett's mention of Phineas Everton as one of our nearest neighbors disquieted me vaguely. It was quite in vain that I reasoned that in all human probability Everton would fail to identify the bearded man of twenty-eight with the schoolboy he had known ten or twelve years earlier. He had taught only one year in the Glendale High School, and I was not in any of his classes. Polly had known me much better. She had been in one of the grammar grades, and was just at an age to make a big-brother confidant of her teacher's brother--my sister being at that time a teacher in the grammar school.

Upon this I fell to wondering curiously how Polly, a plain-faced, eager-eyed little girl in short dresses, could have grown into anything meriting Barrett's enthusiastic description of her as a "peach." Also, I wondered how her bookish, studious father had ever contrived to break with the scholastic traditions sufficiently to become an assayer for a Western mine. But I might have saved myself this latter speculation. Cripple Creek, like other great mining-camps, served as a melting-pot for many strange and diverse elements.

At the earliest graying of dawn I roused my partners and took my turn with the blankets, too tired and drowsy to stay awake while Gifford cooked breakfast. I was sound asleep long before they fired the two holes Gifford and I had drilled the previous afternoon, and they let me alone until the noonday meal was ready on the rough plank table. Over the coffee and canned things Barrett brought our bonanza story up to date.

"It's no joke, Jimmie," he said soberly. "We've got the world by the ears, if we can only manage to hold on and go on digging. The lead has widened to over six inches, and we have two more sacks of the stuff picked out and ready to take to town."

"Any visitors?" I asked.

"Not a soul, as yet. But we'll have them soon enough; there's no doubt about that. If our guess is right--that the Lawrenceburg people meant to cover this hillside in their later locations--we'll hear from Bart Blackwell before we are many hours older."

"Blackwell is the superintendent you spoke of when we were coming up last night?"

"The same. I don't know why he hasn't been here before this time. They must surely hear the blasting."

We had our visitor that afternoon, while Barrett and I were working in the hole and Gifford was sleeping. Luckily for us, Barrett never for a single moment lost sight of the need for secrecy. We were drilling when Blackwell's shadow fell across the mouth of the pit, but we had taken the precaution to cover the gold-bearing vein with spalls and chippings of the porphyry, and to see to it that none of the gold-bearing material showed in the small dump at the pit mouth.

Blackwell was a short man but heavy-set, with a curly black beard and eyes that were curiously heavy-lidded. As he leaned over the windlass and looked down upon us he reminded me of one of the fairy-tale ogres.

"Hello, Bob," he said, speaking to Barrett, whom he knew. "Quit the banking business, have you?"

"Taking a bit of a lay-off," Barrett returned easily. "We all have to get out and dig in the ground, sooner or later."

Blackwell laughed good-naturedly.

"You'll get enough of it up here before you've gone very far," he predicted. "Just the same, you might have come by the office and asked permission before you began to work off your digging fit on Lawrenceburg property."

"We're not on Lawrenceburg," said Barrett cheerfully.

"Oh, yes, you are," was the equally cheerful rejoinder. "Our ground runs pretty well up to the head of the gulch. I'm not trying to run you off, you know. If you feel like digging a well, it's all right: it amuses you, and it doesn't hurt us any."

Barrett pulled himself up and sat on the edge of the hole.

"Let's get this thing straight, Blackwell," he argued. "You've got three claims in this gulch, but we are not on any one of them. Look at your maps when you go back to the office."

"I know the maps well enough. We cover everything up to the head of the gulch, just as I say, joining with the original Lawrenceburg locations on the other side of the spur." Then, suddenly: "Who's your friend?"

Barrett introduced me briefly as Jim Bertrand, late of the Colorado Midland construction force. Blackwell nodded and looked toward the shack.

"Any more of you?" he asked.

"One more; a fellow named Gifford. He's asleep just now."

Blackwell straightened up.

"It's all right, as I say, Bob. If you three tenderfoots want to come up here and play at digging a hole, it's no skin off of us. When you get tired we'll buy the lumber in your shack and what dynamite you happen to have left, just to save your hauling it away."

"Thanks," said Barrett; "we'll remember that. We haven't much money now, but we'll probably have more--or less--when we quit."

"Less it is," chuckled the square-shouldered boss of the Lawrenceburg. "Go to it and work off your little mining fever. But if you should happen to find anything--which you won't, up here--just remember that I've given you legal notice, with your partner here as a witness, that you're on Lawrenceburg ground."

Barrett's grin was a good match for Blackwell's chuckle.

"We're going to sink fifty feet; that's about as far as our present capital will carry us. As to the ownership of the ground, we needn't quarrel about that at this stage of the game. You've given us notice; and you've also given us permission to amuse ourselves if we want to. We'll call it a stand-off."

After the superintendent had gone I ventured to point out to my drill-mate that the matter of ownership had been left rather indefinite, after all.

"Diplomacy, Jimmie," was the quick reply. "The one thing we can't stand for is to be tied up in litigation before we have contrived to dig a few of the sinews of war out of this hole. Blackwell's little pop-call warns us to use about a thousand times as much care and caution as we have been using. I saw him scraping the dump around with his foot as he talked. He is one of the shrewdest miners in Colorado, and if he had got his sleepy eye on a piece of the vein matter as big as a marble, it would have been all over but the shouting. You can see where all this is pointing?"

"It means that we've got to make this hole look like a barren hole, and keep it looking that way--if we have to handle every piece of rock that comes out of it in our fingers," I said.

"Just that," Barrett asserted, and then we went on with the drilling.

We arranged our routine that evening over a supper of Gifford's preparing. We planned to take out each day as much ore as the watch on duty could dig, to sort it carefully, sacking the best of it and hiding the remainder under the shack. Then, during the night, one of us would carry what he could of the sacked ore down the mountain to the sampling works to be assayed and sold on the spot.

The sheer labor involved in this method of procedure was something appalling, but we could devise no alternative. To have a wagon haul the ore to town would, we were all agreed, be instantly fatal to secrecy; and at whatever cost we must have more money before we could dare face a legal fight with the Lawrenceburg people. Looking back upon it now, our plan seems almost childish; but the enthusiasm born of the miraculous discovery was accountable for the cheerful readiness with which we adopted it.

Gifford took the first turn at the ore-carrying while Barrett and I shared the night watch, two hours at a time for each of us. The carpenter came back just before daybreak, haggard and hollow-eyed, but profanely triumphant. There had been no questions asked at the sampling works, and his back-load of ore had been purchased on the strength of the assay--doubtless with a good, round profit to the buyers. He had limited his carry to seventy-five pounds, and he brought back the sampling company's check for $1355 as the result of the day's work!

Speaking for myself, I can say truly that I lived in the heart of a dream for the next few days--the dream of a galley-slave. We worked like dogs. Added to the drilling and shooting and digging, there was the all-night job of ore-carrying--at which we took turn and turn about--for one of us. Though I am not, and never have been, save in the parole starvation time, what one would call a weakling, my first trip to town with eighty-five pounds of ore on my back nearly killed me. A thousand times, it seemed to me, I had to stop and rest; and when I got down it was always an open question whether or not I could ever get up again with the back load in position.

As it came about, in the regular routine, mine was the third turn at the carrying, and by this time the superintendent of the sampling works was beginning to have his curiosity aroused.

"So there are three of you, are there?" he commented, when he had examined and recognized the sacked samples. "Any more?"

I shook my head. I was too nearly exhausted to talk.

"At first I thought you fellows were raiding somebody," he went on. "There is a mine not a thousand miles from where you're sitting that puts out exactly this same kind of ore, only it's not anywhere near as rich as these picked samples of yours."

"What made you change your mind?" I queried, willing to see how far he would go. "How do you know we are not raiding somebody's ore shed?"

"Because I know Bob Barrett," was the crisp reply. Then: "Why are you boys making this night play? Why don't you come out in the open like other folks--honest folks, I mean?"

"There are reasons," I asserted.

"Afraid somebody will catch on and swamp you with a rush of claim stakers?"

"Call it that, if you like."

"You're plumb foolish, and I told Bob Barrett so last night. You're carrying this stuff miles; I know by the way you come in here with your tongues hanging out. It's like trying to dip the ocean dry with a pint cup. One good wagon-load of your ore--if you've got that much--would count for more than you three could lug in a month of Sundays."

I knew this as well as he did, but I was not there to argue.

"I guess we'll have to handle it our own way," I answered evasively; and while he was sending my sack out to the testing room I fell sound asleep.

At the end of a week, after we had made two trips apiece, we had nearly $7,000 in bank. Figured as a return for our labor, killing as that was, it was magnificent. But as a war chest it was merely a drop in the bucket. Given plenty of time, we might have won out eventually by the sacked-sample route; but we knew we were not going to be given time. Blackwell had been up twice; and the second time, Gifford, who was acting as hammerman, had to sit in the bottom of the shaft, pretending to load the half-drilled hole. Otherwise, the heavy-lidded eyes, peering down over the barrel of the windlass would assuredly have seen the steadily widening ore body.

On the sixth day Everton came across the spur. I think I should have known him anywhere, but he did not recognize me, though I stood and talked with him at the shaft mouth. His visit, as I took it, was not a spying one. On the contrary it appeared to be merely neighborly. After beating about the bush for a little time, he came down to particulars. We must surely know, he said, that we were on Lawrenceburg ground, and it was too bad we were throwing away our hard work. To this he added a vague warning. Blackwell had been taking our amateur effort as a good joke on Barrett, whom he had known only as a bank clerk. But the edge of the joke was wearing off, and the superintendent, who, as it seemed, had been watching us more closely than we had supposed, was beginning to wonder why we kept at it so faithfully; and why our camp was always guarded at night.

The following day was Sunday, and Everton came again, this time accompanied by his daughter. Gifford was windlass winder at the moment, and he let himself down into the shaft, swearing, when he saw them coming over the shoulder of the spur.

I left our carpenter-man busily covering up the lode while I scrambled out to meet and divert the visitors. My first sight of Mary Everton, grown, made me gasp. There had been no promise of her womanly winsomeness and pulse-quickening beauty in the plain-faced little girl with large brown eyes--the little girl who used to thrust her hand into mine on the way home from school and tell me about the unforgivable meanness of the boy who "cribbed" for his examinations.

Everton introduced me as "Mr. Bertrand," and for a flitting instant I saw something at the back of the brown eyes that made cold chills run up and down my spine. And her first words increased rather than diminished the burden of sudden misgiving.

"I knew a Bertrand once," she said, shaking hands frankly after the manner of the West. "It was when I was a little girl in school. Only Bertrand was his Christian name."

Without knowing that he was doing it, her father came to my rescue. "We haven't any near neighbors, Mr. Bertrand, and Polly wanted to see your mine," he said. And then: "Do you realize that it is Sunday?"

I led the glorified Polly Everton of my school days to the mouth of the shallow shaft. "Our 'mine,' as your father is polite enough to call it, isn't very extensive, as yet," I pointed out. "You can see it at a glance."

She took my word for it and gave the windlass-straddled pit only a glance. Barrett had had his nap out and was showing himself at the door of the shack. My companion nodded brightly at him and he joined us at once. "We are quite old friends, Mr. Barrett and I," she hastened to say, when I would have introduced him; and this left me free to attach myself to her father.

Phineas Everton had changed very little with the passing years. I remembered him as a sort of cut-and-dried school-man, bookworm and scientist, and, as I afterward learned, he was still all three of these. Partly because I was telling myself that it was safer for me to keep my distance from the girl who remembered the boy Bertrand, and partly because I wished to draw the assayer away from our dump, I took Everton over to the shack and we sat together on the door-step. For some little time I couldn't make out what he was driving at in his talk, but finally it came out, by inference, at least. Somebody--Blackwell, perhaps--had started the story that we were planning a raid on the Lawrenceburg.

"How could that be?" I asked, remembering that, only the day before, Everton had asserted that we were already trespassers on Lawrenceburg property.

"It is an old trick," he commented, rather sorrowfully, I fancied. "In all the older locations there have been bits of ground missed in the criss-crossing of the claims. Some one of you three has been sharp enough to find one of those bits just here."

"Well; supposing we have--what then?" I asked.

He was silent for a half-minute or so. Barrett had led Mary Everton to the shoulder of the spur where the view of the distant town was unobstructed, and Gifford was still in the shaft.

"I don't know you, Mr. Bertrand," my seatmate began slowly, "and I shouldn't venture to set up any standard of right and wrong in your behalf. But that young man out yonder with my daughter: I've known him a long time, and I knew his people. It is a thousand pities to drag him into your undertaking."

"There has been no especial 'dragging' that I am aware of; and I don't know why you should be sorry for Barrett," I returned rather tartly.

"I am sorry because Robert Barrett has hitherto lived an upright and honest life. He had excellent prospects in the bank, and it seems a great pity that he has seen fit to throw them away."

By this time I was entirely at sea. "You will have to make it plainer--much plainer," I told him.

"I have been hoping you wouldn't force me to call it by its ugly name," was the sober rejoinder. "It is blackmail, Mr. Bertrand; criminal blackmail, as I think you must know."

"That is a pretty serious charge for you to make, isn't it?"

"Not more serious than the occasion warrants. You three have discovered this little scrap of unclaimed ground in the middle of the Lawrenceburg property. You are digging; and presently, when you are down far enough so that your operations cannot be observed from the shaft mouth, you will announce that you have struck the Lawrenceburg ore body. In that event, as you have doubtless foreseen, our company will have no recourse but to buy you off at your own figure."

"Well?" I challenged.

"Your announcement, when you make it, will be a lie," was the cold-voiced reply. "You are 'salting' the crevices as you go down--and with Lawrenceburg ore."

I sighed my relief. His guess was so far from the truth that I was more than willing to help it along. If the Lawrenceburg people could only be persuaded that our imaginary coup was to be postponed until the bottom of our shaft should be out of sight from the surface, we were measurably safe.

"We may ask you to prove your charge when the proper time comes, Mr. Everton," I suggested.

He took a small fragment of bluish-gray ore from his pocket and showed it to me, saying, quietly, "I can prove it now; this is Lawrenceburg ore: I handle and test it every day, and I am perfectly familiar with it. I picked this piece up a few minutes ago on your dump."

It is always the impact of the unexpected that sends a man scurrying into the armory of his past in search of the readiest weapon for the emergency. Recall, once again, if you will, the three years of association with criminals, and the fact that I was at that moment under the ban of the law as an escaped convict. I could think of nothing save the gaining of time, precious time, at whatever cost.

I shall always be thankful that the temptation did not reach the length of making me offer to buy Everton's silence. That, indeed, would have been suicidal. Yet the prompting suggestion came to me, in company with others still more ruthless. I was telling myself that the situation was sufficiently alarming to warrant almost any expedient. Though he was not yet aware of it, Everton had discovered our real secret; he knew we had ore, which--as yet--he thought we were stealing from the Lawrenceburg bins. If he should take one additional step. . . .

The thought-loom shuttled pretty rapidly for a few short-lived seconds. If Everton should show the bit of ore to Blackwell the superintendent might believe the charge that we were stealing the Lawrenceburg values for the "salting" purpose; in which case he would doubtless swear out warrants for us. Or he might see farther than Everton had seen and jump to the conclusion that we had actually made a strike of our own in the shallow pit. Either way there was sharp trouble ahead.

"You have us down pretty fine, haven't you?" I said, at the end of the reflective pause. "May I ask what use you are going to make of your discovery?"

"I purpose giving you three young men a chance to talk it over seriously among yourselves before I take any further steps. I suppose I should have gone direct to Barrett. I know him, and I know there is plenty of good in him to appeal to. But candidly, Mr. Bertrand, I didn't have the heart to--well, to let him know that I knew."

A bitter thought swept across me like a hot wind from the desert. Was there never to be any let-up? Were people always going to take it for granted that _I_ was the criminal? I have known physical hunger and hunger intellectual, but they were as nothing compared with the moral famine that gripped me just then. I would have pawned my soul for a bare modicum of the commonplace, every-day respectability which is able to look the world squarely in the face without fear or favor--without asking any odds of it.

Everton was evidently waiting for his reply, and I gave it to him.

"Criminality is largely relative--like everything else in the world, don't you think?" I said, letting him feel the raw edge of the bitterness that was rasping at me. "In coming to me, as you have, you, yourself, are compounding a felony."

He shrugged his thin shoulders and looked away at the two on the bluff's edge.

"Properly speaking, Mr. Bertrand, I am only an interested onlooker; and I am interested chiefly on Barrett's account. What I may feel it my duty to do if you three remain obdurate will be purely without reference to your rather sophistical definition of criminality. In any event, Blackwell is the man you will have to reckon with. As I say, I am concerned only so far as the outcome may involve Robert Barrett."

"I'll tell the others what you have said," I agreed; and with this the matter rested.