The Man from the Bitter Roots Part 37

"I savvy you, Smaltz! I savvy you!" His voice was a shrill squawk. "I savvy you!" His fingers with their long, sharp nails were opening and shutting like claws.

Smaltz knew that he had seen him from the hill and, watching, had understood. It was too late to run, useless to evade, so he stood waiting while shrieking, screeching at every step, the Chinaman came on.

He flew at Smaltz's face like a wild-cat, clawing, scratching, digging in his nails and screaming with every breath: "I savvy you! I savvy you!"

Smaltz warded him off without striking, trying to get his hand over his mouth; but in vain, and the Chinaman kept up his shrill accusing cry, "I savvy you, Smaltz! I savvy you!" There was little chance, however, of his being heard above the rush of the water through the sluice-boxes and the b.u.mping and grinding together of the rocks and boulders that it carried down.

Then Smaltz struck him. Toy fell among the rocks, sprawling backwards.

He got to his feet and came back. Once more he clawed and clung and once more Smaltz knocked him down. A third time he returned.

"You're harder to kill nor a cat," Smaltz grinned without malice, but he threw him violently against the sluice-box.

Toy lost his balance, toppled, and went over backward, reaching out wildly to save himself as he fell. The water turned him over but he caught the edge of the box. His loose purple "jumper" of cotton and silk ballooned at the back as he swung by one hand in the on-rushing water, thick and yellow with sand, filled with the grinding boulders that came down as, though shot from a catapult, drowning completely his, agonized cry of "Bluce! Bluce!"

It was only a second that he hung with his wild beseeching eyes on Smaltz's scared face while his frail, old body acted as a wedge for the racing water and the rocks. Then he let go and turned over and over tumbling grotesquely in the wide sluice-box while the rocks pounded and ground him, beat him into insensibility. He shot over the tail-race into the river limp and unresisting, like a dead fish.

XXV

THE CLEAN-UP

Toy's disappearance was mysterious and complete. There was not a single clue to show which way he had gone, or how, or why. Only one thing seemed certain and that was that his departure was unpremeditated.

His potatoes were in a bucket of water, peeled and ready for dinner; the bread he had set to raise was waiting to be kneaded; his pipe laid on the window sill while his h.o.a.rded trinkets for the little Sun Loon were still hidden under the pad of the bed in his tent. His fish-pole in its usual place disposed of the theory that he had fallen in the river, and although trained eyes followed every trail there was not a single telltale track. He had vanished as though he had gone straight up.

His disappearance sobered the men. There was something uncanny about it; they lowered their voices When they speculated and all their latent superst.i.tion arose. Porcupine Jim declared that the place was "hoodooed"

and as evidence enumerated the many accidents and delays. Bruce himself wondered if the malignant spirit of Slim was lingering on the river to harry him as he had in life.

Smaltz was now in the power-house doing at last the specific work for which he had been hired. To all Bruce's questions, he replied that the machinery there was "doing fine." Down below, the pump-house motors were far from satisfactory, sparking and heating in a way that Bruce, who did not know the a, b, c's of electricity, could see was not right. While the pumps and sc.r.a.pers were working Banule dared not leave the motors alone.

Then, after a couple of days' unsatisfactory work, the water dropped so low in Big Squaw creek that there was only sufficient pressure to use one sc.r.a.per. Bruce discharged all the crew save Smaltz, Banule, and Porcupine Jim, who labored in the kitchen--a living insult to the Brotherhood of Cooks. While Bruce, by running back and forth between the donkey-engine and the top sluice-box where the sc.r.a.per dumped, managed to do the work of two men ten hours a day.

His nerves were at a tension, for along with the strain of his responsibilities was the constant fear of a serious break-down. Banule made light of the sparking motors but the bearings were heating badly, daily necessitating more frequent stops. When a grounded wire sent the leaking current through the cable that pulled the sc.r.a.per, and knocked Bruce flat, he was not convinced by Banule's a.s.surance that it "didn't amount to much." It was all evidence to Bruce that fundamentally something was wrong.

But in spite of the time lost the cut was deepening and the side walls stood up so that every sc.r.a.per that emptied into the sluice-boxes was from the pay-streak. Bruce fairly gloated over each cubic yard that he succeeded in getting in, for the sample pans showed that it was all he had hoped for, and more.

If only the riffles were saving it and the tables catching the fine gold!

This he could not know until the clean-up and he did not mean to stop until he had brought in the last load he dared before a freeze. So far the weather had been phenomenal, the exceptional open fall had been his one good piece of luck. Under usual weather conditions, to avoid cleaning up through the ice he would have been obliged to have shut down at least a month before.

So the work kept on intermittently until an incredibly late date in November. The leaves of the poison oak had turned crimson, the tall tamaracks in the high mountains were gold, frost crystals glittered each morning on the planks and boards, but Big Squaw creek kept running steadily and the sunshine soon melted the skim ice that formed over night.

By this time Bruce had a fresh worry. It kept him awake hour after hour at night. The mercury was not looking right where it showed behind the riffles. It was too lively. There was something in it, of course, but not enough to thicken it as he had hoped. He could see the flakes of gold sticking to it as though it had been sprinkled with Nepaul pepper but the activity of it where it showed in quant.i.ty alarmed him more than he would confess to himself.

The change of weather came in the night. That day he started to clean-up. A chill wind was blowing from the east and the sky was dark with drab, low-hanging clouds when Bruce put on his hip-boots and began to take up riffles. A thin sheet of water flowed through the boxes, just sufficient to keep the sand and gravel moving down as he took up the riffles one at a time and recovered the mercury each had contained.

Bruce's feet and fingers grew numb working in the icy water with a scrubbing brush and a small scoop but they were no colder than the cold hand of Premonition that lay heavy upon him.

Behind the riffles at the top of the first box the mercury was amalgam--all that he could have wished for--beyond that point it suddenly stopped and all that he recovered as he worked down looked to be as active as when he had poured it from the flask.

What was wrong? He asked himself every conceivable question as he worked with aching hands and feet. Had he given the boxes too much grade? Had he washed too fast--crowded the dirt so that it had not had time to settle? Was it possible that after all the gold was too light and fine to save in paying quant.i.ties?

Hope died hard and he tried to make himself believe that the lower boxes and the tables had caught it--that there was more in the mercury than there looked. But the tension as he took up riffle after rime with the one result was like watching a long-drawn-out race with all one's possessions staked on the losing horse.

He took up riffles until it was a physical impossibility to work longer in the numbing water, his fingers could not hold the scoop. Then he went to the pump-house and told Banule to telephone Smaltz to shut down.

"He wants to know if you'll be pumpin' again?"

"Yes, after awhile. Tell him to stay there. I'm going to squeeze out the 'quick' I've taken up, but I want to get as near finished to-day as I can. You come and help me."

As Bruce walked back to the sluice-boxes with bowed head he was thinking that the day was well suited to the ending of his roseate dreams.

Failure is dull, drab, colorless, and in his heart he had little doubt that for some reason still to be explained, he had failed. Just how badly remained to be seen.

Bruce had scooped the mercury into a clean granite kettle and now, while he held the four corners of a square of chamois skin, Banule poured mercury from the kettle into the centre of the skin until told to stop.

"Looks like you ought to get several hundred dollars out of that,"

Banule said hopefully as Bruce gathered the four corners, twisted them and began to squeeze.

"Yes, looks like I ought to," Bruce replied ironically.

The quicksilver came through the pores of the skin in a shower of shining globules.

Banule's expression of lively interest in the process was gradually replaced by one of bewilderment as with every twist the contents kept squeezing through until it looked as though there would be no residue left. It was a shock even to Bruce, who was prepared for it, when he spread the chamois skin on a rock and looked at the ball of amalgam which it contained.

Banule stared at it, open-mouthed.

"What's the matter? Where's it gone? And out of all that dirt!"

Bruce shook his head; his voice was barely audible:

"I don't know." The sagging clouds were not heavier than his heart--"I wish I did."

Banule stood a moment in silent sympathy.

"Guess you won't work any more to-day," he suggested.

"Yes; tell Smaltz to start," Bruce answered dully.

"I've got to save the mercury anyhow."

Banule lingered.

"Say," he hesitated--obviously he found the confession embarra.s.sing or else he hated to lay the final straw upon the camel's back--"just before you told me to shut down, the motor on the small pump started sparkin' pretty bad."

"Yes?" Bruce knew that if Banule admitted it was "pretty bad" it was bad indeed.