The Mascot Of Sweet Briar Gulch Part 5

"I t'ought it was gittin' on well past der middle, all right," retorted Ches. "What 'ud yer expeck of a man dat never heerd der like before?"

"I knew what to expect. I never heard them either till I came out here. I was digging a hole up the side of that hill yonder, and had begun to feel that there was something behind me, and that it was almost time to go home, when old Jack, who has the voice of his family, poured out his soul about twenty rods away. I was half way home, Ches, before I got sand enough to go back and investigate. But now listen, and you'll hear something prettier than that."

He put his fingers to his lips and whistled a bugle call.

"I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up in the morning,"

sounded Jim. And back came the pretty reveille in a fabric of music, indescribably interwoven; sharp and staccato from the neighboring walls; the lightest of whispers from the distance, turning and twisting upon itself and starting afresh when all seemed still.

"Say, dat _is_ prutty!" said Ches enthusiastically. "Hit her again!"

"Young man, you can come up here whenever you feel like it in the future, but as for now, I'm for home and grub."

"Dat ain't so bad, neither. Der animile's jumped me up an' down till I cud hold more'n a man. Dis spook's hang-out business won't quit, will it?"

"No, sir; that's a fixture. Hang on tight now, and I'll race you to the cabin--one, two, three!" and away sprinted Jim down the hill trail, the burro lumbering after.

"No fair! No fair!" yelled Ches. "Yer've got me skate doped! T'row us a tow!"

Jim wheeled at the doorway and took in the excited, happy little figure b.u.mping on the burro's back. For once in his life he had the satisfaction of an indisputable proof that he had done well. With a sudden access of affection he caught the boy in his arms and stood him on the ground.

"Well, here's our home, Ches," he said.

Home! The street Arab filled his puny chest, took a long, devouring look about him, and sought a definition of the word to make sound the lift of pride and hope that rose within him.

"Yer mean n.o.buddy kin chase us out of dis?"

"n.o.body."

"It's our'n!" the boy went on with curious vehemence. "Like dis here,"

s.n.a.t.c.hing an old knife from his pocket and shaking it in his tight fist, "ter t'row away, ter sell, er ter keep, and n.o.buddy got nuttin' ter say about it?"

"Just that, laddybuck. That and nothing else."

"No more slinkin' an' snoopin' aroun' dodgin' der coppers; no more stallin' fer der push; no more dirt of no kind--say, I can't git dat jus'

in a minute."

He stood grappling with the new idea. In the search an old one came to the top. His face changed rapidly. The furtive, hunted look returned. In a tone, the odd quiet of which contrasted with the former heat, he spoke again. "Yer for _me_, now, ain't yer, Jim? If--if der Gun should happen ter come here, yer wouldn't t'row me down at dis stage of der game?"

The big man answered him with an equal soberness. He thrust a hand before the boy's eyes--a splendid hand, ma.s.sive and corded at the base, running out to long, shapely, intelligent fingers, and every line in it spoke of power.

"Do you see that hand, Ches?"

"Yessir."

"If the 'Gun' shows his face where that hand can get a grip on him, it will do the business for him in one squeeze, and if the hand can't reach, there's a rifle inside that can. Now get that out of your mind once for all."

"Well--" said the boy, "well--aw, I'll be d.a.m.ned, dat's all I kin say, Jim," and rushed into the house.

The miner leaned back and laughed, and blew his nose; and laughed again and blew his nose again; then he wiped the dust out of his eyes, swore a few words himself, and followed the boy within.

The next day Jim started on his work in earnest. Before, he had sunk a hole here or there in the broad smooth surface of the bar of gravel that he felt certain hid his bonanza.

Now, he determined to begin at the creek bank and drift straight across the bar. That meant six hundred feet of tunnel at the best, unless fortune was much kinder than she had hinted at before--quite an undertaking for one man, considering the timbering and all.

It must have been a miner who wrote, that hope springs eternal in the human breast. Surely in no place other than the mines is the fact so manifest. There was once a man seventy-three years old who was sinking through a cap of cement two hundred feet thick. The stuff was just this side of powderwork, barely to be loosened with a pick. The old man had to climb down sixty feet of ladder, fill his bucket, climb up again and dump it, and so on and so on and so on. Besides, he had to walk thirty miles and back again with his load, whenever he ran out of provisions. It had taken him a year to put his shaft down the sixty feet. There was one hundred and forty more to go, each foot getting harder, the Lord only knew what would be at the bottom when he got there; yet to sit in that old man's cabin for an hour was to obtain a complete exposition of the theory and practice of optimism. It is an unbelievable story and would be senseless, were it not entirely true.

Beside that effort, Jim's task took on the tint of an avocation, but the man who runs six hundred feet of tunnel single-handed earns whatever may be at the end of it.

The tunnel was the one thing that Ches abhorred in his new surroundings.

Whether it was that it reminded him of the dingy holes of his city life, or whether it was a natural antipathy, Ches was one of those who can never enter a confined s.p.a.ce without the sensation of smothering--at any rate, neither argument nor coaxing could get him to put a foot within its dark mouth.

An old miner would have shared his feelings in this instance, for Jim, so thorough in some things, was a careless workman. Your old miner would have shaken his head at the weak caps and recklessly driven lagging; frames out of plumb and made of any stick that came to hand--more especially as they were to support loose dirt of the most treacherous sort.

Ches worked outside, dumping the car that Jim had made of four tree sections for wheels, and sluice-box boards for sides. Jim, the ingenious, had rigged up a pulley system, whereby Ches could run the car out and in without interrupting the work on the face.

It was hard labor for Ches at first, but he gritted his teeth and stuck it out manfully.

"Bime-by," he would say to himself, "I'll have er muscle on me like Jim, an' den I'll yank dis cussed ol' car right out in der middle of der crik," and he examined the small bunch on his arm critically a dozen times every day.

Meanwhile, his hero and idol was outdoing the human in his exertions. The effort he put forth would have killed an ordinary man. He fought the stubborn earth as though it were an enemy. Stripped to the waist, bent over in the low tunnel, hour after hour Jim plied the pick and shovel with the regularity and power of a machine. There was at once something fascinating and heroic in the rippling glide of the muscles over his broad back, and in the supple swing that sent the pick to join the packed dirt.

It all looked so easy. It was as if the dirt were very soft, and not the striker very strong. Nevertheless, fourteen hours a day of this, varied occasionally by cutting timbers and carrying them by hand to the tunnel--some of them a weight enough for a horse, others not adequate, "just as they came" being careless Jim's motto--told even on his engines.

They had a certain mark on the canon side--a wild-cat's hole it was--and when the sun threw the shadow of the western wall upon the mark, the day's work was finished.

Ches used to watch this with attention. "Yer move along all right till yer gits half way up, den yer jus' crawls, yer ol' beggar!" was his standing remark on the progress of the shadow. Still, he always gave good measurement.

Toward the last of the month Jim grew an interest in their clock.

"Where's the blame thing now, Ches?" would come hollowly out of the tunnel.

"Three more cars away, Jim,--jus' tippin' the white rock."

Then the cheery shout of "All over!" and the worker stepping out into the fresh air, soft and cool in the twilight, hooking the sweat from his forehead, and wishing that supper would cook itself. Sometimes the wild-cat looked down upon them from his eyrie.

"Ches," said weary Jim, "if that lad thinks at all, he must think we're awful fools."

"He wouldn't be so tur'ble off his guess, neider," replied the equally weary Ches.

After supper, however, the world seemed different. There was Jones's Hill--(a man of large ideas, was Jones, to call that ma.s.s of rock a hill)--shining red-hot in the last light against a topaz or turquoise sky, and the gulch that ran up to it in a mystery of dark green gloom offering up an evening prayer of indescribable odors--those appeals to a life in former spheres which no other sense remembers; the ceaseless roar of the wind in the pines, so steady that it formed a background for other sounds almost as good as silence itself; the evening pipe, and the talk of what had been done and what was to be done--all these made amends.

And then the sleeping--such sleeping! And waking up in the morning in the exact att.i.tude one went to sleep the night before! Sleep that washed out all the former day's fatigue, and started them as eager as hounds for that of the new day. That is, within limits, for, when a man overworks as continually as Jim had done, no paradise sleep nor balsam air can turn him right perpetually.

And for that reason the claim declared a holiday, consisting of a hunting trip. It was a curious hunting trip. Not one "bang!" went the clean and polished rifle. They stalked four deer, crawling on their bellies, quivering with the chase, rounding behind rocks. Then when the game was within range, up went the rifle, Jim squinted along the sights--then dropped it.

"What's der matter?" whispered Ches. He had been waiting for a long time to hear the gun go off.

"They seem to be having a pretty good time by themselves there, Ches."