The Westerners Part 23

There are many technicalities to be observed before a claim belongs indubitably and for all time to the man who occupies it. A "discovery"

of certain specification must be made; the measurements and stakes must conform to definite regulations; the development work must be carried on and reported according to the letter of the law; and so in a dozen other trivialities which the miner is like to honor only in the most general fashion. But Billy's requirements were all fulfilled. The claims were undoubtedly his in the fullest sense of the word. At present he could not be deprived of them legally; and as it was no part of Lafond's scheme to allow Billy even the smallest comfort of self-pity when his humiliation came, he did not care even to consider the possibilities of chicanery.

The only glimmer of light he could discern lay in the chance that something might offer at the time of the transference of the property from Billy to the Eastern capitalists. This was the inspiration that had occurred to him in Durand's cabin. He had come to know Billy's sanguine temperament, his enthusiastic predilection for seeing things rose-hued, and he thought it very possible that the Westerner's representations to the capitalists might not bear too searching a.n.a.lysis. Overpraise of property might easily be construed as false representation. Too graphic a description of natural advantages might easily be twisted into an attempt to obtain money under false pretences. A skilful man might be able to discredit Billy so far that the transaction would fall through; and with the failure of this sale, on which the hopes of Billy's companions were built, the promoter's prestige would collapse entirely.

With this sketch of a plan in mind, Lafond applied himself diligently to acquiring a thorough knowledge of the property. That, at least, was not difficult. All he had to do was to go to Billy, and say, "Look here, Knapp, they tell me you've got quite an outfit here. Show me around, won't you?" The Westerner was only too glad of the opportunity to expatiate. He took Lafond down every prospect shaft, over every surface indication. He explained them all minutely. When he had finished, he gave Lafond carefully selected samples from all of the vein fillings. The half-breed told him he wanted them for the purposes of exhibition.

"I got a first cla.s.s shelf down in the Nugget," he said; "an' I think if we'd jest put a line of samples along it from all the claims, and label 'em, it would be a pretty good 'ad,' don't you?"

Billy did. So the two "sampled" as carefully as for an a.s.say test in the School of Mines at Rapid. About half of the result Lafond exhibited as he had suggested, but the rest he preserved carefully for a.s.say tests of his own.

To be sure, Billy had quite freely shown him his own official tests made at the School of Mines, but Lafond wanted his information more direct. He could not doubt the accuracy of the reports. But there was always a possibility that the sampling had not been fairly done. He was sure of these other "averages," for he had helped take them. He liked to have things under his own eye, and it was for this reason he had first suggested to Durand that he would like to take lessons in the art of a.s.saying.

At first he had intended to use the old entomologist merely as a convenience, but later, as he became more intimate with the man through his work, he actually began to entertain for him a friendship--his first in over fifteen years. With all men he had been friendly; with none had he been friends. Here he proved a really generous emotion, opening his heart to the soft influences of affection and memory, allowing himself in this one instance an intimacy absolutely without ulterior motive. It all dated from the first day, when a chance question of Durand's touched the springs of the half-breed's youth.

They had adjourned that afternoon to the workshop, where Durand built a charcoal fire in a little furnace and gathered about him a choice a.s.sortment of curious implements. After the furnace was well heated, he roasted the ore Lafond had brought with him, heating it through and through, until finally the fumes of sulphur, antimony and a.r.s.enic ceased to arise from the chalk-lined iron basin. While the process was going forward Durand explained pleasantly the various steps of the chemical change, interspersing much extraneous information--as, for instance, how Winkler, Tcheffkin and Merrick claim that there is here a loss of gold, which Crookes denies--to all of which Michal Lafond lent but an inattentive ear. He was little interested in theory; but observing the old man's delight in the scientific aspect of the experiment, he feigned corresponding pleasure on his own part.

Then they spread a flux of granulated lead over a crucible, in appropriate juxtaposition with the roasted ore. For nearly two hours it was fused; and as there was nothing to do until the slag of impurities had formed about the bright metal in the centre, the men talked much to each other while waiting.

When the ore was completely fused, Durand seized the result in a pair of forceps. With a small hammer he broke away the great ma.s.ses of clotted slag. A small bright metal b.u.t.ton remained.

"This is the lead, the silver and the gold," explained Durand, "and it is here that we exercise care. All else is as child's play."

He flattened the b.u.t.ton on an anvil, and cut it into several pieces.

These he placed in the little porous vessels made of compressed bone ash, called cupels, which had been slowly heating in the furnace. The surface of the lead filmed over. In a moment it turned bright. Then fumes began to arise.

Durand's attention became fixed. His hand was constantly at the furnace valve, admitting or excluding more air according as he desired the temperature to rise or fall.

"It is this which is difficult," he explained from the corner of his mouth. "If the heat is too great, some precious metal escapes with the lead. If the heat is too little, the lead is not all driven away."

Lafond was attentive enough to this. He desired above all the practical knowledge.

"Observe the fumes," said Durand; "that is the true test. When they whirl above the molten metal, then is everything well. When the fumes do creep slowly like the mist on a stream, then the heat is not sufficient. If, on the other hand, they do rise straight upward, then it is necessary to reduce the heat at once."

After a time the remaining impurities, under Durand's skilful manipulation, were absorbed by the cupels. The little vessels were drawn from the furnace and placed to one side to cool. A small yellow b.u.t.ton was finally detached with pincers.

"That then is the gold!" cried Lafond.

"And silver," corrected Durand gently. He weighed the b.u.t.ton with great care. Then with nitric acid he ate out the silver. The result was weighed. The a.s.say was finished. By comparing the weights of the original ore, the cupelled b.u.t.ton and the final product, statistics were obtained.

The men drew a long sigh of relief now that the task was quite finished.

"It is hard work," observed Durand.

"It is very good of you to take so much trouble for me," replied Lafond, for the sake of politeness.

"I like you," explained the old man simply, "because you speak French and because there is something in your face that shows that you too have been wronged, and that perhaps, like myself, in your youth you have been light-hearted and were loved by maid and man with the love that is given the reckless--and foolish," he concluded with a little bitterness.

Inexplicably this appealed to Lafond, so that he almost wept with the sheer joy of it.

"It is true, and you are my brother to have seen it thus," he cried, lapsing unconsciously into the idiom of the Sioux.

They washed their hands and went into the other cabin, where they sat in the chairs made of barrels, and Lafond talked, talked, talked, until the dusk of twilight descended upon them and stole away even the white b.u.t.terfly cases.

He spoke swiftly and animatedly and with much gesticulation. Men will tell you to-day that his speech was deliberate, scant, reserved.

It was all of his youth. He described with abandon and fire the tall pines, the still darkling river running beneath the cedars and birches; the cabins, antler crowned, and the little gardens of their dooryard.

He related tenderly the life of those old days--the dance in winter to the music of a single fiddle, and the snow shoe journey homeward under the white stars, with mayhap a kiss upon a rosy cheek and a slap from a mittened hand at the end of it; the wild exhilarating dangers of log running in the spring; the canoe journey, the camping, the fishing, through all that watered north country of the fir-girdled lakes and trout-haunted streams in summer; the calling of the moose under the round harvest moon, the stalking of the white-tailed deer, the corn frolics whereat were more of the full-blossomed low-voiced chatterers not unwilling to be wooed under that same great moon, through whose shower of silver light the bull moose called to his mate, also not unwilling. These things the half-breed told in that marvellous musical voice which, with his expressive eyes, was now his greatest charm. He told also more personally of his own youth. There had been a time when Michal Lafond had been straight and clear-eyed and handsome. At the dances and the corn frolics the fairest of the maidens was not so very coy to him. In the log running Michal Lafond was the man always called upon to skim over the bobbing logs under the very imminence of the jam; his was the peavy that moved the bit of timber which locked the whole; his the merry laugh as he had lightly escaped the plunging foaming death. On and still on the voice rolled, until suddenly the room was silent and dark, and the man in the corner had arisen abruptly and gone out, and the white-haired naturalist was left alone, one hand on each arm of his chair, looking straight before him, beyond the cabin walls, beyond the years.

Next day Lafond came again, and the next and the next. The a.s.says were all finished and tabulated. Still he continued to come, as usual, each afternoon, for an hour or so at least. Durand did not smoke himself, but he kept a pipe and a package of tobacco always on the table for his visitor. They clasped each other's hands with fervor when they met and parted. They called each other "mon vieux." And, what is more, they could sit quite silent for hours without embarra.s.sing each other in the least.

The men in the camp noticed this intimacy and commented on it.

"Clar case of millennium," said Bill Martin, "Lion an' th' lamb. Ain't no other way to explain it, fer what good Mike ever gets out of that nutty old Bugchaser is beyond me!"

Not that anyone cared. Everybody was at this moment speculating earnestly on all possible results, good, bad, or indifferent, of the pending visit of the Chicago tenderfeet. Although, strictly speaking, their decision had only to do with the Great Snake, it was well understood that it fixed also the value of every other piece of property within a circ.u.mference of fifty miles. Little did those three tenderfeet realize, as they dutifully changed cars at Grand Island, Edgemont and other way stations, how much their holiday jaunt, as it was to them, meant to a whole community of reasonably hard-working men.

Lafond was the most interested of all, because, to his disgust, the a.s.says had been good, so good that the "false pretence" scheme would have to be given up. He found himself, as usual, facing a situation with not much more than luck to depend on. But he always had good luck.

XXII

IN WHICH THE TENDERFEET CONDUCT A SHOOTING MATCH AND GLORIFY PETER

The most important event in the history of Copper Creek was indeed at hand. The long-awaited Easterners were to arrive that very day to look over the property. Billy Knapp had already driven to Rapid to meet them, and their coming was momentarily expected.

The camp had discussed long and heatedly the method of their reception.

Billy Knapp, and with him a strong contingent, advocated best clothes, an imported bra.s.s band, and a generally festal appearance of evergreens and bunting. But this, Moroney, Lafond and Graham decidedly opposed.

"The way to make men give you things," said the last, "is to pretend you don't want them."

But it was Moroney's eloquence that carried the day. In fervid rhetoric he pointed out that men were more apt to join an already prosperous community than to furnish prosperity to one sadly in need of it. He also pointed out many other things, including the Battle of Bunker Hill and the Bird of Freedom. But that was what he meant.

So when Billy and the buckboard drove dashingly up to Bill Martin's stoop, the white road was to all intents and purposes deserted--unnaturally so, for not a living thing was to be seen from one end of it to the other.

"Look's if your town was dead," remarked one of the Easterners, with a laugh.

"Oh no!" rea.s.sured Billy, seized with a sudden anxiety lest the thing had been overdone. "But the boys is all off in th' Hills workin'."

As a matter of fact the boys were doing nothing of the kind. They were behind the cracks of doors and the darkness of windows, watching eagerly every move of the disembarkation, on which they whispered excited comments. Bill Martin was there outside, of course; Lafond sauntered over from the Little Nugget; the gambler sat chair tilted, blowing cigarette rings toward Ragged Top, never even turning his head to see the arrivals, imperturbable, indifferent as ever; Graham and Moroney were on hand by especial request; and of course no one could keep Peter and the Kid away. The men in the cabins were satisfied with their representatives. They need not worry about Graham and Moroney anyway.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JIM PUT UP A GOOD FIGHT.]

The first of the newcomers rolled out over the wheel, stood up on two fat legs, and shook himself in a manner which proclaimed to the dullest that his round face did not belie his good humor. He at once looked about him and laughed. The second was seen to be a tall spare man, gray-faced, deep-lined, but with the wrinkles of laughter about his eyes. He wore a long linen duster and was evidently of the sort that seasons its most serious transactions with a dry and facetious humor.

The third was short, small, and irrepressible. He looked as though he should be named Frank, as in fact he was. Although all three were dressed for travelling, they carried with them a solid air of financial responsibility quite foreign to Copper Creek's experience, a certain shrewdness which no new circ.u.mstance could ever abash to the extent of forgetting the swiftest means to the main chance. But over this shrewdness now was brushed a film of optimism, the over-abundant hilarity of a business man on a holiday outside his accustomed surroundings, expanding in high spirits, persiflage, and practical jokes. During their stay in Copper Creek this never left them. They were as delighted with the country as children with a new toy, and took it about as seriously.

The concealed onlookers saw the little group stand talking a moment, and then turn into the hotel. Black Jack unloaded from the back of the buckboard several substantial leather-bound valises. Billy drove the horses home and returned on foot. He was pounced upon eagerly. Billy was still glowing with self-induced enthusiasm over Copper Creek.