Overland Red Part 19

They rested for a few minutes, both gazing down on the evening desert.

The reflected light, strong and clear, drew abrupt, keen-edged contrasts between the black, triangular shadows of the peaks and the gray of the range. Something elusive, awesome, unreal was in the air about them. The rugged mountain-side with its chaos of riven boulders, its forest of splintered rocky spires, silver cold in the twilight, its impa.s.sive bulk looming so large, yet a mere segment in the circling range, was as a day-dream of some ancient Valhalla, clothed in the mystic glory of ever-changing light, and crowned with slumbering clouds.

Winthrop sighed as he again faced the range. Overland heard and smiled.

"You said it all," he muttered. "You said it all then."

"You're something of a poet, aren't you?" queried Winthrop.

"You bet! I'm some artist, too. A lady I was figurin' on acceptin' a invite to dinner with, once,--one of them rich kind that always wants to get their money's worth out of anything they do for a poor guy,--happened to come out on the back steps where I was holdin' kind of a coroner's request over a lettuce san'wich. 'My man,' she says, 'I have always been interested to know if you--er--tramps ever think of anything else but food and lodging and loafing. Nothing personal, I a.s.sure you. Merely a general interest in social conditions which you seem so well fitted to explode from experience. For instance, now, what are your favorite colors?'

"I couldn't see what that had to do with it, and I got kind of mad. A lettuce san'wich ain't encouragin' to confidence, so I up and says, 'What are me favorite colors, lady? Well, speakin' from experience, they is _ham_ and _eggs_.'

"She took a tumble to herself and sent me out some of the best--and a bottle of Red Cross beer with it."

On up the slope they toiled, Winthrop half-forgetting his weariness in thinking of Overland's sprightly experiences with what he termed "the hard ole map--this here world."

At the summit they paused again to rest.

"That was the time," began Overland, "when I writ that there pome called 'Heart Throbs of a Hobo.' Listen!"

"Oh, my stummick is jest akein'

For a little bite of bacon, A slice of bread, a little mug of brew.

I'm tired of seein' scenery, Jest lead me to a beanery, Where there's something more than only air to chew."

"The last line sounds like a sneeze," said Winthrop, laughing.

"Speakin' of sneeze," said Overland, "makes me think you ain't coughed so much lately, Billy."

"I had a pretty bad time yesterday morning," replied Winthrop.

"Well, you'll get cured and stay cured, up here," said Overland, hugely optimistic.

"Of course," rejoined Winthrop, smiling. "It's such hard work to breathe up here that I have to keep alive to attend to it."

"That's her! Them little old bellowsus of your'n 'll get exercise--not pumpin' off the effects of booze an' cigarettes, neither, but from pumpin' in clean thin air with a edge to it. Them little old germs will all get dizzy and lose their holt."

"That's getting rather deep into personalities," said Winthrop. "But I think you're correct. I could eat a whole side of bacon, raw."

And he followed Overland silently across the range and down into the cool depths of the hidden canon, where the tramp, ever watchful of the younger man's health, slipped from his coat and made Winthrop put it on, despite the latter's protest that he was hot and sweating.

CHAPTER XIV

"CALL IT THE 'ROSE GIRL'"

"What are you going to do with those things?" asked Winthrop. "Not burn them?"

"Yep; every strap and tie-string," replied Overland, gathering together the dead prospector's few effects. "Cause why? Well, Billy, if this claim ain't filed on,--and I reckon it ain't,--why, we files on her as the original locators. n.o.body gets wise to anything and it saves the chance of gettin' jumped. The bunch over there would make it interestin'

for us if they knowed we was goin' to file on it. They'd put up a fight by law, and mebby one not by law. Sabe?"

"I think so. Going to burn that little--er--cradle arrangement, too?"

"Yep. Sorry, 'cause it's wood, and wood is wood here. That little rocker is a cradle all right for rockin' them yella babies in and then out. The hand that rocks that cradle hard enough rules the world, as the pote says."

"So this is how gold is mined?" queried Winthrop, examining the crude rocker and the few rusted tools.

"One way. Pan, cradle, or sluice for free gold. They's about four other ways. This here's our way."

"Is it a rich claim?"

"Tolerable. I panned some up the branch. She runs about two dollars a pan."

"Is that all?"

Overland smiled as he poked a smouldering corner of blanket into the fire. "It is and it ain't. I reckon you could pan fifty pans a day.

That's a hundred dollars. Then I could do that much and the cookin', too. That's another hundred. Two hundred dollars a day ain't bad wages for two guys. It ought to keep us in grub and postage stamps and some chewin'-gum once in a while."

"Two hundred a day!" And Winthrop whistled. "That doesn't seem much in New York--on the street, but out here--right out of the ground. Why, that's twelve hundred a week."

"Nope--not exactly. She's a rich one, and bein' so rich at the start she'll peter out fast, I take it. I know these here kind. When we come to the end of the canon we're at the end, that's all. Besides, she's so rich we won't work six days every week. If she was half as good, mebby we would. You never done much fancy pick-handle exercise, did you?"

"No, but I'm going to. This beats signing checks all to pieces."

"Never got cramps that way myself," grunted Overland. "But I have from swingin' a pick. Your back'll be so blame stiff in about three days that you'll wish you never seen a pan or a shovel. Then you'll get over the fever and settle down sensible. Three of us could do a heap better than two. I wish Collie was on the job."

"I'm willing," said Winthrop.

"'Course you are, but you get your half of this as agreed. Collie's share comes out of my half. I'm playin' this hand over the table, in plain sight."

Winthrop glanced quickly at Overland's inscrutable face. "Suppose I should tell you that my income, each week, is about equal to what we expect to get from this claim?"

"Makes no difference," growled Overland. "It wasn't your money that stood off the constable--and later out in the desert. It was _you_.

They's some places left on this old map yet where a man is jest what his two fists and his head is worth. This here Mojave is one of 'em. Are you squeak to that?"

"I understand," said Winthrop.

They worked steadily until evening. They staked out their respective and adjoining claims, dropped the rusted tools in a bottomless crevice, and removed the last shred and vestige of a previous occupancy.

"This here's been too easy," said Overland, as he sliced bacon for the evening meal. "When things comes as easy as this, you want to watch out for a change in the weather. We ain't through with the bunch yet."

The Easterner, making the evening fire, nodded. "How are we to get provisions?" he asked.

"First, I was thinkin' of packin' 'em in from Gophertown, over yonder.

She's about thirty miles from here, across the alkali. 'T aint a regular town, but they got grub. But if we got to comin' in regular, they'd smell gold quicker than bees findin' orange-blossoms. They got my number, likewise."