Down the Mother Lode Part 10

"They say that Miss Beckey and her mother are going to live in it,"

answered Plug Hat Pete. "I'll raise you ten."

"Handsome Harry's bin a-dancin' round that gal ever since they moved here, six months ago."

"Yes, and the look in her eyes in another direction, is plainly to be read." The implication was lost on Cornish Jack.

"Ol' Bob, he does all he can to throw 'em together. Air ye goin' to the house warmin' tonight?"

"Certainly," said The Senator. "Particularly if we manage to keep old Tommy Norton and Black Joe from getting intoxicated, so there will be a pair of fiddlers on the gulch. Tommy, on such occasions, always has an attack of religion which precludes the possibility of his a.s.sisting at any profane scene of mirth, and Joe falls into a deep sleep from which nothing can rouse him for twenty-four hours."

"There's Antelope back. I hear his roan."

"Well, who do you think I met down around the curve of Blackjack Hill?

That gal o' Bob's on her pinto and that sneakin' Handsome Harry on his black mustang, ridin' full-bent-for-leather!"

The men rushed with one accord to Bob's cabin, where he sat before his fireless hearth.

"We al'ays knew he was a sneakin' thief, but you wouldn't hear nothin'

agin him. Took all the bags of gold dust from your claim, too, didn't he?"

"Now, boys, that isn't fair to call him a thief. He was my partner and what was mine was his, and a man has a right to take his own wherever he finds it."

"But the gal?" asked a chorus of voices.

"That girl wasn't in any way bound to me, and you can't expect a pretty creature like her to care for such a beauty as I am, when there's a fellow like Handsome Harry around. It don't stand to reason."

"Come, fellows," said Poker Bill, "if Bob's satisfied I reckon we ought to be. Time to get into our biled shirts for the house warmin', anyway."

"Sorry to disappoint you, boys, but there won't be a house warming. I built it for them and they're gone. It'll stay locked till they come again. This old cabin is good enough for me."

So they left him. Bob relit his pipe and settled back on his bench. Once he roused a moment to mutter. "But they'd ought to know me better. They needn't have run away from their best friend."

Soon after dark a pinto paced home through the quiet, mourning camp with a very weary bulldog at her heels. Beckey slid from her side saddle and crept to Bob's open door. By the light of a full moon she could see the big lax figure in an att.i.tude of utter despair.

"Bob!"

"You! Girl, I thought you'd gone."

"I went because--because I thought you'd come after me. I'd tried everything else that a woman can do to make you understand * * * He's begged me so many times to run off. When he understood, he was beastly.

He put me off the horse and told me to walk, then. It was the dog who fought him, and then I ran for Pinto and came back." Her low voice failed her, but she controlled herself, and went on, "I thought if I pretended to go you'd see--"

"See! Girl, you've known ever since you came creeping into Snake Gulch that night that you were the very heart and soul of me."

"Yes, yes," she sobbed, "that is not what I would have you know."

"You mean--no, I am a great fool. No woman could bring herself to--A face like mine! Even if you did, it would be from grat.i.tude. I could not permit such a sacrifice," he finished, with a touch of pride.

The girl waited, then when he was silent she turned with a sob to go to her mother's cabin. The soft footfalls died away. Bob stood motionless.

Suddenly a scream rang out on the still night air. Bulldoze scrambled off the door-stone with a snarl of battle-rage and charged for the sound, but he was easily outdistanced by the huge miner, who ran with the lithe grace of an Indian. In an incredibly short time the little form was safe in his arms.

"Oh, there's a terrible animal in the mining ditch. I heard it! It's coming this way! A grizzley, I know!" Bob peered into the ditch.

"Why, girl, it's only drunken old Solly Jake going home holding his jug out of the water. He gets into the ditch so he won't lose the way."

"But how does he know when to get out?"

"Well, when he bangs his head on the overbrace of the first flume, he knows he's home and crawls out." Bob began gently to withdraw his arms.

"If you let me go now," she whispered, "I'll wish that it had been a grizzley."

"I must take you home."

"Oh, you have! I am home," clinging to him desperately, "I want no other in the world than this one."

"But my scarred--"

The girl reached up, drawing down his tall, dark head in her arms. She kissed his mutilated cheek, then pressed it tenderly against her soft, bare throat. It did not stay long, as Bob felt that such kisess should be returned without delay.

"Hu-ray," cheered Solly Jake, waving his whisky jug, "tale ended right!

Time f'r 'nother drink, boys!" and standing up to his middle in water he proceeded to demonstrate his idea.

Curley Coppers the Jack

VII

"On Selby Flat we live in style; We'll stay right here till we make our pile.

We're sure to do it after a while, Then good-bye to Californy!"

--Canfield's "Diary of a Forty-Niner."

The beautiful Casino at Monte Carlo stands in one of the loveliest settings on earth. Facing the blue Mediterranean and enhanced by the exquisitely kept marble villas of Monaco, it may justly be called the acme of gambling inst.i.tutions. It has become an inst.i.tution through the years. Time has brought it stability.

Its absolute ant.i.thesis were the gambling dens of '49. Built over-night, destined to remain if the mines were rich, and to melt away if they pinched out, the gambling h.e.l.ls were sometimes the veriest makeshifts.

Canvas covered, dirt floored, except for the dancing platform, rough red-wood bar and tables; surrounded by all the sordidness of Hurdy Gurdy town in which fortunes, and reputations, and lives were bid, and shuffled, and lost, as indiscriminately as grains of dust blown into the ever-changing sea.

The thirst for gold is universal. In those half-mad days of delirious seeking, the princeling rubbed sleeves with the scoundrel and the clod, and each man's ability was his only protection. Fortune played no favorites. The tale is told of the judge who drove home in his coach through a shallow creek. Ruin faced him for the lack of a few thousand dollars. He took out his derringer and shot himself.

Not half an hour later a Chinaman crossed the creek under his pole between two swinging baskets. He found a nugget there which brought him over $30,000.

This, then, is the tale of what Fortune did to Curly Gillmore.