Chapter IV: I Take a Partner

You are wrong. You have jumped at the conclusion when you had read the above chapter heading that I have forgotten tender, winsome, blue-eyed, fair-haired Lena Upton, and had wooed and won some buxom blooming daughter of this cloud-rimmed Utopia of the West. You have already pictured in your imagination the love-sick fancies of two sentimental f---- fairies, for love in a cottage, and drawn your own doleful picture of a bare and cheerless cabin fireside, where poverty enters at the door and love flies out at the window. You have conjured up all these fine-spun imaginings for naught, and fallen into all this fuss and fever, and twitter of excitement over a supposed romance in humble life in the region of the clouds, when in fact I merely took to my bosom as sharer of my bed and board, metaphorically speaking, my hairy friend of the red shirt and elastic hopes, Abner Callaway.

As stated previously June had come before the faithful old knight of the pick and shovel had completed the work upon my late property which had given such golden results or rather such silvery ones. I found great pleasure in being able to remit five thousand of the proceeds of the sale to my kindly old relative as his share in the concern, knowing that it would add substantial comfort to his declining years. As to my own moiety, I had determined that I would devote a small portion of it to outfitting my first Leadville acquaintance for another expedition to the Gunnison country, in search of his Golconda, and in three days from the date of my mining transaction, Abner’s caravan, consisting of a saddle mule and two pack mules, filed out of the town liberally grubstaked for another prospecting trip. As I took his hand to bid him good-by and godspeed, and consigned him for months to his living tomb in the mountains, I felt that here was a man made of the stuff that conquers new worlds and revolutionizes old ones. While I was depressed at the mere thought of my small share in consigning him to his lonely fate, he was chipper as a lark, and waving his hand to me as he spurred southward, he called out cheerily, “Better luck this time, pard, I’m goin’ to strike it rich now, sure.” So I went back to my duties without even having enjoyed the parting luxury of enjoining him to write often, for I knew that in all probability it would be weeks, perhaps months, before I should have any tidings of him, with a still more somber alternative in the background, namely, that I might one day have the mournful pleasure of leading a searching party to find what particular form of solitary death came to him, and what particular family of buzzards had fattened on his vitals.

There was at that time, too, more or less danger to be encountered from roving bands of Piutes, who came to that region in summer in search of game, and who, however friendly they might profess to be in and around the settlements, could scarcely resist the temptation to murder a lone white man found prospecting on their self-allotted hunting grounds, if they were reasonably safe from detection. Callaway was thoroughly acquainted with the Indian character, perfectly conversant with all their treacherous ruses and cunning devices, and the Piutes themselves had learned long since that while it was one thing to have a troop of United States soldiers in pursuit, it was quite another and more serious affair when a very small number of miners and ranch men began to “camp on their trail;” men who were entirely capable of matching them at their own game, who knew every lonely pass and mountain trail as well as they themselves, and whose superior ability as plainsmen and in woodcraft made them objects of dread to marauding bands of Indians at this period. These men were never known to bring in a prisoner, and, in all my intercourse with these hardy frontiersmen, I have never known an instance of an Indian fighter’s accounts of his encounters, where one of them could be induced to describe the last act in any scene of retribution on the Indians in which he had taken a hand. Abner Callaway was one of these brave, hardy pioneers, who had seen the trouble with the Bannocks in Idaho in ’76. He was a walking encyclopedia of incidents of early struggles in the settlement of Boise Valley. He once recounted graphically to me an experience with these troublesome Bannocks that illustrates this point. A settlement on the lower Boise had been raided by a band of Indians and their stock stampeded and driven off. He formed one of a band of settlers hastily collected to pursue and punish the thieving band. The trail led southward toward the Snake and was plainly marked through the sage brush as there was no chance for concealing it, with the considerable number of horses and cattle they were rushing off.

The settlers rode hard and sighted the red devils just as they had driven the stock into the Snake to force them across. They espied their pursuers and plunged their riding ponies into the swift current, and began to swim them across too. “But by this time,” said he, “we had got within gunshot range of them,” and he looked off pensively over the mountains as if his story were ended. Deeply interested in his tale of adventure, I waited for the conclusion, but it did not come, and I ventured to ask, and then what? “Well,” said he, “the saddle ponies all turned and swam back to our side, and we gathered up our stock and went home.”

I have always noticed the same indisposition in old soldiers to dwell on the theme of shedding human blood, and I set it down here as a maxim, that your true soldier or frontiersman, who has really seen active service and participated in scenes of carnage will turn hastily away from recording his experiences, when they lead up to that point, and its converse as being equally true that your boasting warrior, or settler, who tells you how many rebs he has quieted, or how many red varmints he has scalped, you can safely classify as of the genus homo species man, variety liar.

I take it that my reader feels my own deep interest in the welfare of Abner Callaway, and I have thus digressed and delivered this gratuitous, and apparently irrelevant rhapsody on Indian hunters, that you may share the data, on which I calculated the chances of his safety. In his favor were mature experience, familiarity to the verge of contempt with the dangers he was to undergo, trained to read “Indian signs,” and guard against surprises and “lightning with a Winchester” as Abner himself would have expressed it.

June gave place to July, and July in turn to August. I began to have anxious daily thoughts of my absent partner though I had no reason to expect that he would return till his provisions were exhausted, which, with the game he would be likely to kill, he estimated would last him till the rigors of that high altitude began to drive him down to lower altitudes. There was of course the chance that I might have tidings of him from some returning prospector, but it was a chance in a hundred, for the region of country where he was operating was very little traversed by miners, and only a few lonely sheep camps were scattered over the mountains to mark the white man’s dominion of the region. Though no spiritualist, I have often noticed that mind seems to influence mind at times, regardless of intervening distances.

You write to a friend from whom you have not heard in a long time. Your letter on its journey crosses the path of one from that friend expressing some of the very ideas, and in the same words that you used in addressing him. Another friend living at the distance of a three hours’ drive has made no appointment to visit you, and you have no particular reason for expecting him soon, but something tells you that he will come to-day, and for three hours your thoughts keep constantly recurring to that friend, you know not why, and presently he drives up.

The mysterious influences that beget such experiences as these, in the everyday affairs of thousands of responsible people, are those of which unscrupulous people take advantage and give exaggerated and fraudulent exhibitions of spiritualistic manifestations, depending upon this little germ of truth, as the sugar coating of the bitter pill of deception, to enable the public to swallow it.

That mighty philosopher of our own time and country, Joseph Cook, says, “There can be no doubt that in these things there is something superhuman, but nothing supernatural.” Yet, I confess, that after all, when I had been troubled for several days with forebodings of danger to my partner, and had on one particular day been especially anxious, and when toward evening a man in rough frontier dress, bestriding a jaded cayuse, rode up to our office, and I heard him inquire for Thomas Hardman, I felt that I was growing white as a ghost and could scarcely steady my legs to walk to the door, and inform him that I was he.

He eyed me critically to ascertain, as I thought, whether I was capable of standing up under the news he was about to deliver, I could not stand the suspense. “Have you seen Callaway?” I inquired.

“You bet I have,” was his reply, “parted from him six days ago. Was out thar tending to some sheep camps I’ve got out thar.”

“How is the old man?” I inquired, a little impatiently, to clip off an evident intention on his part to give me a complete history of the rise and progress of the sheep industry, and the decline and fall of the price of wool. He drew his countenance down through several distinct stages of change to an expression of one who has important news to impart and rather enjoys the suspense he sees you are suffering; then assuming a confidential air, and a glitter of cunning mingled with pleasure in his eye at being the bearer of important news, he leans toward me over the neck of his tired horse, places both hands on the pommel of his saddle, looks cautiously all around for eavesdroppers and then almost whispers: “The old man’s struck it rich!” The sudden swinging of the mind from its dark forebodings to contemplating sudden and immense wealth was making my legs unmanageable again, but as soon as I could steady myself, I invited the traveler to lodge with me at The Occidental till morning, when he and I would arrange for a private interview in our office after hours, for the privacy of my sleeping apartment was something less than that of a sleeping car.

During our evening meal, I learned from his conversation, coupled with Abner’s note to me that my new acquaintance, Riley Cox, was no other than the same rancher who had stumbled upon the fragment of quartz that had set the old man wild to find the parent ledge, and that the present location of the prospector was made as the direct result of that find, and that therefore Mr. Cox would come in as half owner in the mine by agreement, in consideration of his showing where he had found the specimen that fairly glittered with gold. Far into the night we occupied my employer’s office and talked of the lucky events, and I learned in detail all the circumstances of the discovery.

He was the bearer of a little scrawl of a letter from the old boy himself, who wrote in his characteristic way, as follows:

“GUNNISON COUNTRY,
---- 187-

“MR. THOMAS HARDMAN, Leadville, Colo.

“Glory hallelujah, pard, I’ve struck her at last and she’s richer
than I ever dreamed! Don’t let a whisper of it get around till we git
our choice of location. Bring plenty of provisions and ammunition to
supply another hand or two. Your pard,

“ABNER CALLAWAY.”

I waited upon my employer early next morning, and offered my resignation, explaining to him that business of the most urgent and important nature called me away, and that I should take it as a mark of his confidence in me as an employee if he would for the present, take my statement on faith and let my movements be as quiet as possible, assuring him only that I was acting in good faith, and from honorable motives, and would some day explain the cause of my hasty departure from his employ, where I had received nothing but the most courteous treatment. To all this my employer was good enough to assent, and expressed his regret that our relations could not continue, and said he had not the slightest doubt as to the integrity of my motives and quite outdid me in generous praise. We shook hands cordially, and the waves of time engulfed this phase of my life forever, a phase of existence to which I have ever looked back with pleasure as being not the least happy of my life.

As rapidly as possible, we conducted our outfitting, and with as much secrecy as possible, the next morning we mounted our horses and struck out for the lonely region known as the Gunnison country. My experience as a rider of bronchos had been confined to very narrow limits, and my awkward mode of riding was a great source of amusement to my guide, and traveling companion. “Say, squire,” he would inquire, “where did you learn that ere ornamental kind of ridin’? Maybe you’d better turn your toes in a little more or your spur might catch yer cayuse in the ribs, and you’d be purty sure to hev a circus right away.”

But presently I forgot his caution again and inadvertently pressed my heel to the animal’s flank. The next thing I knew I was holding on to the pommel with both hands, and my steed was rolling himself into the shape of a crescent moon, but his actions had none of the placid spirit of that calm orb. He churned me up and down till I saw stars in countless numbers. It seemed to me that he sprang ten feet clear of the ground, and came down with his feet in a cluster, that would have enabled him to stand with ease on my office stool. But he couldn’t seem to find a resting place for the sole of his foot, and each time he rose in the air he came down with an emphasis that led me to suspect that he might have been used in the early mining days as a stamp mill to reduce refractory ores, and imagined he was again in the field to compete against steam power and wrought iron. For my part I would have been glad to retire from the competitive trial, but was delicate about trying to alight just here as the earth seemed to be particularly hard in this spot, judging from my pony’s experience in alighting. So I held on with might and main to the pommel, and wound my legs, which are a fair length, affectionately around the beast’s waist in a rigid embrace till my companion, who was writhing on his horse’s neck in wild paroxysms of laughter, managed to find breath to yell, “Toes out! You’re spurrin’ him.” Then it dawned on me that the harder he had bucked, the closer I had pressed the rowels toward his vitals, and as soon as I relaxed my muscles he subsided into his usual easy swinging lope.

“Confound the brute,” I said, “you told me he was warranted to be gentle as a kitten.”

“So he was,” said Riley, “but I guess if you’d pay your compliments to a kitten in the same way, you’d feel her claws, but if you’re agoin to take lessons of me as your ridin’ master, I’ll lay this rule down first and foremost, never tamper with a cayuse’s ribs if you don’t want to take part in a sun-dance sudden-like.”

After that practical lesson on the subject of riding, I got on pretty well the first day out. But when we rolled out of our blankets next morning, after my first experience in camping out, I was so sore and stiff that I despaired of being able to go on; but after I had moved around a little, and assisted Riley to make a fire preparatory to slapjacks and coffee, I began to imbibe the spirit of our adventure, and in a measure threw off the effects of my hard day’s breaking-in to a new life.

I found that Riley was no novice at camp cooking. In a twinkling he had mixed a mess of dough for the slapjacks, using only some baking powder and a little fat from the frying pan with the flour and in a few minutes he had removed the meat from the pan and mapped out a cake, whose dimensions were limited only by the rim of the pan. He watched it carefully over the fire till it was baked on one side, then grasping the frying pan by the long handle, he gave it a little shake to make sure that the cake did not adhere to the pan, and then tossed it in the air with a peculiar motion which caused the dainty to turn completely over in the air, and dexterously caught it squarely, or rather roundly, in the pan. I never have forgotten the delicious flavor of that morning’s meal of slapjacks, fat bacon, and black coffee. Delmonico has since entered the field as a rival of Riley Cox in catering to my appetite, but I cannot even remember what dishes constituted the bill of fare, while every feature of that mountain meal is as plain before my eyes as though it had been yesterday. The beautiful nut-brown complexion of the bacon, the innate sweetness of that simple cake, the taste of the inky coffee, are all with me yet, owing, no doubt, to the zest imparted to my appetite by sleeping in the open air of the mountains, that was in itself exhilarating in the highest degree; but many times I have sighed for the enjoyment of that breakfast, over a much more sumptuous one, and reflected, though not a man given to moralizing, that our enjoyment in the world depended a great deal more on our capacity to enjoy the present privilege than in the accidental circumstances attending us.

Our ponies had been picketed out or “lariated,” in Western phrase, to feed upon the bunch grass. This hardy race of horses, probably from old Spanish stock, has challenged the admiration of the world for their endurance and ability to live on coarse, scanty fare, and without them the great Western prairies and the Rocky Mountain mining regions could hardly have been developed so rapidly.

Riley “calcerlated” we had ridden “nigh onter fifty mile,” the day before, and our ponies started off again fresh as when we left Leadville; and we kept up this gait during the whole trip, for he said, “I like to strike a lick and keep it.”

Their noonday repast was what they could nibble in one short hour that we halted, and all day they seemed to feel no weariness or disposition to slacken their speed.

About 3 o’clock on this second day of our journey, we reached the Gunnison River, and our course lay down the stream. We had passed one or two sheep ranches during the day, the only signs of occupation by man; but on some of the open plateaus we had sighted plenty of antelope, and in more wooded part had started several deer, one of which Riley shot for our use in camp.

The direction of our journey now following the windings of the stream, was more westerly, and toward the end of our journey, on the fifth day, we seemed to be traveling almost northward again.

Worn with our long journey, and sunburned till we were as red as Indians, and unkempt as the street-arab, whose dwelling is a stray box or barrel, without the superfluous furniture of combs and brushes; but sublimely indifferent to outward appearance where there was none to offer criticism, we made a flourish of riding into camp with a burst of speed, just as the sun was hiding behind the mountains, and found our senior partner busily engaged in preparing supper. His lurid dress and mass of snowy beard and hair, calling up a vision of an infatuated alchemist, toiling over his crucible to find the hidden mysteries, the process that had turned nature’s baser metals to sterling gold, or a venerable priest of the Druids, performing his evening devotions, and practicing his mysterious incantations.

His alert ears soon caught the sound of our horses’ hoofs, and when he recognized us as friends, he laid down the rifle he had mechanically seized, and with the joy that a Russian exile might feel when he was restored to his home and friends, after years of solitude, he saluted us with a boyish whoop, and came out to meet us with pleasure beaming from his honest face.

“How’dy, pardners! glad to see you. Its been sort a lonesome like sence you went away, but I’ve had plenty to occupy my spare moments.” I knew before he spoke, that he had good news to confirm the first tidings of happy omen I had received, but after greeting him with the warmth of affection that I had from the first hours of our acquaintance begun to feel for this guileless veteran of the frontier, I inquired how the new Ophir was panning out.

“Why, bless the kid’s innocent heart,” said Abner, turning to Riley, “it don’t pan out at all, it’s the pure stuff,” and he took from his pocket a nugget of pure gold as big as an egg. “There boys, how do you like the complexion of that? I found that down by the river, in the gravel, before I struck the ledge up here, and there’s enough of ’em down there yet to make interest in digging; but we can’t afford to waste our time with the gravel beds now. Lariat your horses in that little canyon yander, and I’ll have supper ready in a jiffy.”

His camp was in a grove of evergreen timber, on a little plateau on the side of the mountain. It was sheltered from the north by a ledge of rocks, rising abruptly in the rear of his tent, and from underneath the rock gushed a spring of pure water. The view to the south was a grand stretch of mountain and valley that clothes the rugged heights of Colorado with such sublimity and grandeur, and makes it famous for its dizzy peaks, and awe-inspiring canyons and gorges, beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole fraternity of summer-outing earth are Pike’s Peak, Colorado Springs, South Park, and The Gunnison Country. But the greatest of these, and far exceeding the others in its gold-hued prospects for us, is the Gunnison Country.

The Old Man of the Mountain soon invited us to a supper fit for a king, consisting of venison steak, in addition to the ever-present slapjacks and coffee. He related fully, and to our entire satisfaction, every step of his onward way, which led to the supreme discovery. He told us of panning out free gold on the Gunnison at this point; of finding several small nuggets, among the finer particles, but which were all of the coarse variety, and of how he had one day followed up a little gulch opening into the Gunnison, and how, from the first panful he had taken the nugget he showed us, and afterward several others, a trifle smaller. He related how he had found “blossome quartz” strewed plentifully around here, that were identical in character, and similar in promise of riches untold to him who should discover the home-nest of these stragglers, to the fragment which Riley had found in another gulch not far away.

Foot by foot, and yard by yard, he traced the path to the ledge, from these fragments, and recounted how his labors were impeded as he climbed higher up the mountain, in the almost impenetrable jungle. Forest trees grew so thickly that it was hard enough to make way even over their matted, and arching, and intertwining roots, and these troubles were soon augmented by encountering an area strewn with rocks, and choked with fallen trees, among the standing ones, till he could scarcely make his way through them, much less seem to have a ghost of a chance to take bearings and search for drift ore; but he chopped and scrabbled, and sampled, and fought his way through the wilderness--literally fought--for, with other tribulations, he was suddenly halted one day by a huge grizzly bear in his path; but though the grizzly was larger than he, Abner Callaway was not the man on that account to forgive him, but with his forty-four calibre six-shooter he took a shot at him, though he knew his own life depended on the accuracy of his eye, and the steadiness of his aim, for it is an axiom among mountaineers that there is only one vulnerable spot in a grizzly’s make-up, one place where the bullet can do execution complete and sudden enough to prevent his killing the hunter before he himself yields up his substantial ghost, and that is to reach the neck joint and break it. But the sturdy old man had not endured a lifetime of privation and toil as a mere prelude to this supreme opportunity, to refuse this little test when it came, and he promptly dislocated his neck, and continued on his way. He made his way at last to comparatively open ground, and here he progressed rapidly for the trail was becoming “warm” as the hunters say, and he knew by the character of the specimens he found that he was nearing the main or parent ledge, and his excitement grew in proportion as the signs increased in meaning, till for the two last days he hardly took time for food or rest while daylight lasted, and he assured us that he would have worked all night if he could have accomplished anything by so doing, but darkness mercifully intervened and compelled him to take some rest; but even his dreams were gold-haunted and disquieting. At last the supreme moment arrived when he was able to trace the truant rock that had caused all this trouble, to its home on this elevated mountain peak, and reap in anticipation ample reward for all his toil.

We were too much excited to sleep that night, and discussed ways and means, by the light of a blazing fire before our tent. We commended Callaway for his wise choice of a camp located in this sheltered, snug little park, and decided, first of all, as a measure of common prudence, to build a substantial cabin of spruce logs, which grew straight and smooth, at our tent door.

As we now expected to be at home to callers for some time, we preferred to receive in a structure of more substantial make than of canvas, for there was the possibility that a grizzly might decide to investigate our camp for potato parings, as they sometimes did, and it would be rather rude in bruin to roll us over at midnight, and uncomfortable for us. Besides, as I have hinted, there was the possibility ever before us of being obliged to be polite to a band of Piutes, and nothing gives such force to a white man’s display of hospitalities toward his red brother, as a good show of strength to back it.

We napped in our blankets for an hour or two before daylight, and had drowsy visions of nuggets of gold boiling up from the depths with the water of our spring. Then again our vagrant fancies would rove to the ledge above our heads, and we beheld an avalanche forming and gathering strength as it came tearing its way downward till it was powerful enough to mow a path through the tangled mass that had so completely obstructed Callaway’s upward way, and roaring and growling, deposited its ponderous mass of earth, rocks, and trees on the little plateau, where we camped. Just as we sprang up to claim and appropriate the nuggets of gold that were strewn all around, we were inconsiderate enough to awake, and the reality of our find seemed tame and small, compared with the mine of wealth we had found in the realms of imagination. So, human imagination ever keeps so far in advance of the reality, that we fail to appreciate the blessings within our reach, because they are belittled by a spendthrift fancy.

Behold the tenderly nurtured denizen of the city, who had never wrestled with labor any harsher than an obstreperous conjugation, or an equation that would not equate, transformed by the prevailing frenzy for a yellow worthless metal, valued by barbarians only because it had a rich color and was indestructible, by any ordinary method. Behold him, I say, donning the garb of the miner and preparing with a heart callous to every other consideration to harden his hands with the pick and shovel, his feet with the coarse, heavy, cowhide boots; to conform every part of his anatomy, in fact, not already calloused by the saddle, to the muscular status of an honest laborer, earning his bread by the sweat of his brow, and in fact feeling a lighter conscience in so doing, feeling more in sympathy with the general plan of the Creator than in any other vocation in which he had engaged; I was owing my prosperity to the labors of no living man, and abridging the prosperity of no brother while enhancing my own. I learned to use the ax to some purpose while building our rustic camp and grew to have so ravenous an appetite in the bracing mountain air aided by active exercise, that my companions rallied me on the necessity of our hiring some professional hunter to supply us with meat. I own that I was alarmed for my life, and feared sometimes that I was digging my grave with my teeth, but thanks to the absence of hurtful qualities of wild game, I ate it with impunity, and grew almost as burly of form and fantastic in gear as Uncle Abner.

Our cabin, when finished, was a model of rustic beauty. The logs were uniform in size, straight as nature could make them, and had their natural bark covering. The roof was of cedar clapboards, and not only protected us from the inclement weather, but filled the house with delicious spicy fragrance. A small window-space, but no window glass, a door of cedar, and some rude bunks of the same, completed our domicile. For furniture, we had a pair of antlers fastened to the wall, on which we hung our Winchesters. A cedar table, with poles for legs, a set of rude shelves, to contain our coffee pot, frying pan, and tin dishes. Fireplace we had none, but did our cooking outside by the wall of rock, which rose up a few feet from the cabin, and a spot convenient to water. The logs forming the walls were notched a foot from the end, leaving a handsome double projection at each corner. The roof was also given a liberal share of lap-over, giving our mansion a pretty and cosy appearance. We also put up a tiny portico on natural cedar pillars with a gentler slope of roof than that of the cabin, of which it seemed to be a projection, and put on the finishing touches by making a little rustic bench on either side of the doorway.

Whatever may be said of our prospects, none of us could lay claim to being millionaires at that period; but I doubt if ever a palatial urban residence was viewed with more of the pride of ownership than we lavished upon our skyward dwelling. I have since that period been the happy owner of gold enough to satisfy any reasonable desire, and have built and inhabited several magnificent up-town residences in a region of city splendor, but I often pine for the little brown cabin in the Rockies, and the enthusiastic enjoyment of that rude habitation, that blessed it, and fulfilled all the requirements and definitions of the magic word, home.

“Oh, that mine enemy would write a book!” then would I reap a wholesome and complete revenge, when I beheld him toiling to give voice to the rushing stream of agitation in his bosom. To see him sweating, and tearing his hair in a vain endeavor to express the wild and tumultuous hopes and aspirations of youth; to paint the bright visions of wealth attained, ambition satisfied, and love requited and restored to its object in their fitting trials, and rack his harassed brain for fitting similes of somber hue, to express the depths of despair! I would liken him to myself as my spirits sunk, when I computed the chances in favor of my seeing the adorable Lena again. When I reflected on all that might happen to me, and the misgivings lest she should die, should be persuaded that I was already dead, should be cajoled, coerced into marriage for mercenary considerations, I was sorely tempted to present my interest in the Rocky Mountains to my partners, and fly from these desolate scenes, and break through the barrier of banishment from her presence, imposed by tyrannical parents.

But at last, after my mind had run through all these stages of despondency, desperation, and recklessness of consequences, it would come sullenly back to the question of honor, and conscientious scruples against breaking a sacred promise; then, even though I was not in a position to make anything but Hobson’s choice, my thoughts would subside into tranquility again, and my current of thought turn hopefully again to the work of turning this rugged mountain peak into a castle of gold, with a golden haired divinity to enlighten it.

And now, without any further delay to build rustic cabins in the mountains, or to erect golden castles in the air, we went to work in earnest to develop our claim, and take out the precious ore.

We were well aware that it behooved our mine to be a remarkably rich one in order to give us any immediate returns, situated as it was so far from smelting facilities. It must either yield the precious ore in such quantities, and of such quality as would induce capital to enlist with us, and bring machinery for reducing it to the spot, or it must yield at least a moderate amount of ore so high in grade, that we could afford to transport it to the railroad by pack train. Our plan of action was to make a preliminary test of our find, locate its center as nearly as possible, then explore the mountain around it to get some idea of the extent of the ledge, and get at a basis for forming some sort of intelligent opinion as to what the probable effect of our discovery would be on the public when it was revealed. We also had, as original discoverers, a chance to choose our claim as a company and locate it; then each one of us could stake off an individual claim, and, in addition to all that, we could form new companies to the extent of the combinations, possible by including any two of our trio in each new company. All these projects we worked out when the day’s task was done, and we lounged on our bunks, and smoked our pipes, or sat on our rustic benches by the door.

But while we were working and planning, and building our airy structures, fate was outlining a vastly different line of life for us. But no spirit voice ever whispered to us of any evil doom impending, and we worked cheerfully on, satisfied more fully every day that our scout had not made any mistake, either in his estimate of the block of quartz at the sheep camp, or of the fact of his having tracked it to earth. The ledge showed a great thickness of ore and had all the indications of possessing staying qualities. We calculated that in about three weeks we would get out specimens from a depth that would justify us in forming a judgment. Then we intended to load our pack train with samples, try to engage some wandering prospectors to help, while one of the party went to Leadville to get an assay, and to bring back a supply of provisions. Assays in practical mining life are of two classes, those of quantity and those of quality. An experienced miner can, with rude utensils, make an assay, that will determine, in a general way, the value of his ore, but it requires the skill and appliances of the professional assayer to determine the quantity of gold, or other mineral, in a given weight of rock. My experience in the office, coupled with that of Uncle Abner, which was of the hard, practical sort, tended to satisfy us that in quality we were all right, that we were not mistaking a shadow for the substance, or pyrites of iron, the “fool’s gold,” for the sterling article; but our methods were too crude to even approximate the quantity of the yellow metal per ton, or to determine what other minerals might be found in connection with the gold. Uncle Abner’s faith was implicit as a child’s and his mind as placidly elevated by his good fortune, as though it were already in his coffers. But our knight of the golden fleece was a little skeptical of the intrinsic worth of the ore, and his mind wandered a good deal to his flocks, and he would remark that, “after all, the sheep business is good enough for me, an’ I ortor bin in camp helpin’ the boys through lammin’ time.” But though he might squirm a little under the influence of the gold craze, he was as much a devoted slave to it as any of us, and we could not have driven him to his sheep camp though he knew his sheep would in reality bear golden fleeces this year.

The fragrance of the apple blossom is an agreeable announcement of fruit forthcoming, and inhaling it, we fall into a most delicious state of expectancy, and the apples of imagination are in a moment rosy, ripe, and mellow before the eye, and luscious and delightful to the taste; but there is a time for frosts to nip the blossoms, storms to try the branches, and lawless urchins to snatch the matured fruit from your grasp and dash all your high hopes to earth. We were destined, by outrageous fortune, to be again balked in our projects, and have the hand of the spoiler anticipate our good fortune, and tear it from us.

The Piutes had been reported at the ranches as hunting in the Elk Mountains, south of us, for a week or two, in great numbers, but were said to be peaceably disposed. Within a week Uncle Abner had seen Indian signs while hunting deer for our camp a mile or two southward, and had cautioned us to keep a sharp lookout for them, and directed us to keep our horses and mules in the thick underbrush all day and picket them in the little open canyon only at night, that we might offer no premium to their cupidity, for it is well known that a redskin can hardly resist the temptation to steal a horse on every occasion, even at the risk of bringing swift and terrible retribution upon himself from the ranchmen and miners.

We were progressing finely with our tunnel, and expected to reach the ledge at a depth of a hundred feet or more by drifting into the mountain side in a few days more, and were discussing the question as to which one should go to Leadville, one evening as we came down the mountain from our work, to camp, when all at once Abner stopped suddenly, and pointed to the thicket of fir and cedar saplings where we had tied our horses, and exclaimed: “Holy Moses! boys, our horses are gone.”

And just as he spoke several rifles cracked, the fire coming, apparently, from the ledge above our cabin, and Riley Cox, our faithful partner fell dead before our eyes.

Quick as a flash Uncle Abner seized the form of our luckless partner, and sprang toward our cabin, only a few steps distant, where we were safe from the murderous fire of the demons lying behind the rocks above our heads, for our cabin stood too close to the rock wall to be in range of their rifles. Evidently they had counted upon finishing us before we reached it.

“Curse the red devils,” said Callaway, “It will take a hundred of their worthless scalps to pay up the score on poor Riley. They knew better than to meet him in open fight like men. Many a one of them he has made to bite the dust.” While he talked he was getting our arms and ammunition in order, while I, who had never seen anything harsher than a drunken fisticuff, was too much shaken by the suddenness of the attack to be of much service to anybody. But gradually I became fired by Abner’s fusillade of invectives, with a desire for revenge, and soon found myself wishing for a chance to draw a bead on an Indian’s paint-stained, and feather-decked head.

It was more from long habit than from any real fear that we would be attacked by Indians that led Uncle Abner to select a strong spot for his cabin. The cliff was so precipitous in the rear of our cabin as to render our position inaccessible from that direction, in fact, was so overhung by a rocky ledge halfway up the side that the reds, we believed, could not catch a glimpse of our fort from that direction; and the old man was of the opinion that they would try to crawl up through the fir and pine trees in front of our cabin, hiding behind the rocks and trees, wait for a chance to pick us off without risk to themselves. We had a small porthole in our heavy puncheon door, constructed to command the little canyon, where our horses had fed, to enable us to get a shot at any prowling bear that might haunt our camp to devour the remains of our daily bill of fare thrown out, or endanger the safety of the horses and mules.

With eagle eyes Callaway watched for any movement in this direction, but we could not see or hear anything to indicate what the next move would be, and the suspense of our situation grew terrible, and we were half resolved to break away from our cabin, find refuge behind trees and rocks, and fight till we drove them off or were killed in our tracks, which we felt would be better than dying like rats in a hole, without being able to make a struggle for life.

All at once we heard an indistinct roaring and rushing sound far up the mountain, and even Uncle Abner’s face grew pale at the sound. “My God, pardner, they’re starting an avalanche! You’d better say your prayers now, my boy. Good-by, lad. I’ve been takin’ a likin’ to you all along, but our time has come,” and he grasped my hand as if he would meet his death more contentedly with some nearer human sympathy than he had ever known in his life. The roar had died away again for a moment, and I began to hope that my venerable friend was mistaken as to the cause of the noise; but Abner only remarked, “That one lodged against some trees before it got under headway, but they’ll try it again.” And in another minute, to confirm his opinion, we heard again the dull sound, like distant thunder, growing louder and stronger. We held our breath in terror, expecting that our last moment had come, and that in the next we would be lying crushed and shapeless beneath the ruins of our cabin. The awful storm was increasing in distinctness and volume, and every other sound was drowned. My faithful old friend’s lips moved, but I could hear no sound. My mind flew with lightning wing to the scenes of the past, before I had dreamed of such wild adventures, and reveled for one brief moment once more in the memory of careless youth and guiltless love. I thought of the slow torture of suspense in store for Lena as the years revolved without bringing any tidings of her lover, buried beneath a mountain, his fate unknown, and I had a distinct feeling of the injustice of fate in drawing me to such a death, and Lena to the eternal doubt as to whether I had been lost, or had proven inconstant to my promise and to her. All these thoughts flitted through my mind in one brief moment, while the horrors of a most terrifying death were impending over us, and the next instant the whole mass of rock and earth and huge trees burst with a terrific crash upon us. I believe that in all the mental agonies of dying by violence we suffered death. The light of day suddenly went out, our cabin rocked like a miner’s cradle, and, as the roar subsided, we gazed stupidly at each other, as bewildered creatures entering upon a new world try to fathom the mysteries that surround them.

Surely we were in the spirit land, or in the land of chaos. But no, the light of day was again streaming into our cabin, which stood untouched, and we unscathed. “Thank God, my boy, thank God,” said Abner fervently, “She overleaped us, the ledge threw her off. Look out there!” If the scene in front of our cabin had been before our vision in that moment of fancied death, the illusion would have been complete. What had just been a fine grove, a gentle slope, and a grassy canyon, were now the wildest mass of rock and fine earth, and what had once been heavy trees, were now literally ground into kindling wood, making a mass of the wildest ruin; and we could hardly believe our senses that this chaotic scene was lately occupied by a bit of exquisite pastoral scenery, fit to grace the palatial residence of one of “the four hundred.”

“They’ll try it again,” I said, “let us get out of this trap before we are crushed like gophers.”

“No, my unsophistical kidling, they’ll not try that game again, a redskin has sense enough to see that we are under the wing of the ledge of rock up there, and he doesn’t relish being beaten well enough to invite defeat a second time. They’ll break out in a new place presently, take my word for that.”

The accuracy of his judgment was made apparent a minute later when, pung! came a rifle bullet through the clapboard roof, and buried itself in the floor close to my feet, and a moment later another striking uncomfortably close to us.

“That’s their game is it?” cried Callaway, “They’re up in the top of that old cedar above us; now lad, you stand on our bunk, and push one of the clap boards aside, and I’ll try to answer the red dogs in the same kind of lingo.”

I quickly did as directed, our roof being fastened down by the primitive weight-pole, and it was an easy task to push one aside. The moment an opening was made, another bullet struck the floor through the sky-port, showing their alertness, and their good marksmanship. The moment after the bullet struck, Uncle Abner was standing over the spot where it buried itself in the floor, and casting one keen glance upward, he threw his rifle to his shoulder, his eye came to the level of the barrel and his muscles seemed to grow perfectly rigid for an instant, and the next a puff of smoke, a deafening report in the narrow space of the cabin, and glancing upward we beheld a horrible sight, and one which I would give half my estate to forget. The instant Abner fired, an Indian warrior, with a wild screech of despair, tumbled out of the thick foliage of a scraggy cedar that grew on the rock shelf that had saved us from annihilation, and overhung our cabin sufficiently to give any one perched in its topmost branches, a view of our cabin, which could not be had from the ledge itself. With the creeping horror in every nerve we saw him fall, flinging his arms wildly as he came, till he struck upon the point of a rock fifty or sixty feet below the root of his tree-perch, rebound and fall a lifeless heap through the remaining space with a sickening thud upon the top of the pile that had lately formed the frightful avalanche. “That makes two tricks that we know of that they’ll not be likely to hanker after any more, and now if we can beat them at one or two more, they’ll conclude their medicine isn’t good, and go away and leave us; but we don’t want to count on that, or let them get the drop on us, the sneaking, thieving, red devils. I wish the secretary of infernal affairs was out here, I’d like to put him up on the top of the old shanty and let the devils shoot at him awhile. It would give him good practical views on the Indian question, and help him to ‘revise his humane and politic policy toward our red brother,’ and bring his views to a sudden focus about the time the Piutes focused a dozen or so rifles on him. But Uncle Sam will go on cuddling up the lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing, bloodthirsty heathen, and furnish them with good warm blankets to sleep in while on the warpath, and ration out good beef fit for a white man, and make him supremely independent and comfortable in his diabolical career of scalp-lifting, and let him ride free on all railroad trains, provided he will content himself with a seat in the smoking car, and the obliging conductor of this government barouche, will stop his train at any isolated siding to allow Balky Horse, or Crow Wing, to alight at his convenience, as I have seen them do, and encourage them to regard the western settler as a sort of raw dog, too raw to be eaten, but convenient for scalping purposes. If the people of the East want justice for the red men, let ’em come out here and deal out the parcels to ’em themselves. I’m not denyin’ that the Injuns have been treated meaner ’n rot, but after the east had fleeced them of their land, they told their red brother, that they’re so much concerned about now, to move on to a safer distance, and so they shut themselves conveniently of the penalty of their deeds; and now they set themselve up to judge the white man who has their deviltries toward the Injuns wreaked upon his unlucky head.”

While the old pioneer was delivering himself of this eulogy on the administration, he was keeping a sharp lookout through the ports for the next act in the tragedy to begin. It was now nearly dark and he hoped that if we could keep them at bay for a little longer, they would retire for the night, and at least give us a little respite before finishing us up, and taking our scalps to be salted, smoked, and dried as carefully as their skins and belts. I had no fancy for going through life without my scalp lock, and though the venerable Abner was as cool as if he were cooking his supper, he expressed his determination to preserve his white locks a little longer from their grasp. “Just to let ’em know that Long Breath, as the Bannocks used to call me, counts his scalp worth several dog-eaters’ scalps yet.”

The grim humor of the old man, under such distressing circumstances as ours, was refreshing, and relieved the terrible strain on my nerves, on this, my first experience under fire, as some instance of valor or grotesque humor among the soldiers in battle for the first time diverted their thoughts from their own dangers, and tempered their courage into the tough, reliable, steady article of the veteran.

We were now called upon to face another attack, and from the opposite direction. I detected a savage crawling toward the front of our cabin, over the rubbish and dirt from the mountain top. Abner watched keenly a minute or two, and made out ten reds advancing in a line the same way.

Presently he made out that they were shoving a pole along in advance of themselves, and he knew in a moment that they hoped to take advantage of the dusk, to crawl quite close unobserved, rush for the door with a heavy pole on their shoulders and turn it into a battering ram, and crush in our cabin door; they would in all probability disperse right and left, to give others concealed behind the rubbish, a chance to open fire on us, hoping to kill us at the first onset.

“Quick! pard, get Riley’s rifle all ready, lay the cartridges beside you, have your pistols handy and pass the rifles to me one at a time, when mine is empty, and then, if I need ’em, the pistols. Here they come! I’d advise ’em to say their prayers to their Piute god.”

When within about fifteen paces, they rose to their feet suddenly, and with their demon-inspired war-whoop started on the run for the door, with their assaulting engine borne aloft on their shoulders; but they had hardly taken the second step till two of them in range fell before the first shot, and in less than thirty seconds six of the ten who started on their mission of destruction, were lying on the ground lifeless enough. The other four dropped their ponderous weapon, and beat a rapid retreat for cover, but not rapid enough to escape two shots from Long Breath, and at each shot an Indian fell. Only two of the ten lived to repent of their dangerous experiment.

“Lie low now, lad,” exclaimed Abner, as soon as the two unhurt savages reached cover, and the words had hardly warned me back from the porthole before a volley of bullets rattled on the door or pattered into the thick wall on either side of it. “Poor Riley,” said Abner, “I’ll give him some company to the spirit land anyway; maybe it’ll be better’n none though he never was perticklerly stuck on red society.”

When the leaden shower had subsided, we ventured again to reconnoiter, and Abner’s piercing eye detected a thin haze of smoke rising from the direction of the late attack. “Aha! they’re goin’ to try their old trick of burnin’ us out. They’ll find us still doin’ business at the old stand with one or two new fancy touches added to our line.” He seized an ax, quickly knocked one of the chinking blocks from each end of our cabin, for portholes there, thus giving us a commanding view of the approaches in every direction.

“The body of ’em will make a rush and a whoop toward the front, but look out for three or four devils with firebrands, sneakin’ around the other sides, they are the lads we want to pay our special compliments to. The others won’t dare to do much shootin’ while their mates are cavortin’ round here, for fear of hittin’ ’em and they’ve lost consida’ble many painted dog markets already.”

All at once the most diabolical war-whoop sounded, and about twenty hideously painted braves appeared at some distance from the cabin, flourishing their knives and yelling like furies, but somehow did not make much progress toward the cabin and being in the secret of their game, thanks to a riper experience than mine, we gave them comparatively little attention, and soon saw two indians on either side of the war party separate themselves from their comrades, and sneaking and dodging from one cover to another, gradually work around by a circuitous route to a point where, as they supposed, they could rush unobserved upon the gable ends of the house, and fling the firebrands they carried up on the roof and against the walls; but Callaway soon undeceived this party, and laid them down to reflect on the evidence of the senses, and whether it was not unsafe, as transcendentalists affirm, to trust them; and my two changed their purpose toward us, or were countermanded by their chief, or some other unforeseen contingency arose, and that attempt was given out. “I think they’ve got enough for to-night,” said Abner, “we’ll talk to ’em some other way later on; I’ve been among these western Injuns a good deal, and I never knew one of ’em to favor going into an attack by night; but just as day is breaking is their time. We’ll be far from here by that time. Never mind, lad, we’ll come out all right now; they’ve about run out of tricks; I know ’em all, pat. They may get up courage early to-night to try one or two of their old tricks to coax us out of the cabin where they can finish us safe and sound, but we may refuse to dance to their music.”