Branded Part 16

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 windla.s.s and looked down upon us he reminded me of one of the fairy-tale ogres.

"h.e.l.lo, 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 sc.r.a.ping 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 a.s.serted, 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 a.s.sayed 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 a.s.say--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 a.s.serted.

"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.