They of the High Trails Page 3

  "It's another Cripple Creek!" one man shouted, and the cry struck home. "We're in on it," they all exulted.

  Bidwell did not underestimate his importance in this rush of gold-frenzied men. He was appalled by the depth and power of the streams centering upon him. For weeks he had toiled to the full stretch of his powers without sufficient sleep, and he was deathly weary, emaciated to the bone, and trembling with nervous weakness, but he was indomitable. A long life of camping, prospecting, and trenching had fitted him to withstand even this strain, and to "stay with it" was an instinct with him. Therefore he built a big fire not far from the mine and spread his blankets there; but he did not lie down till after midnight, and only then because he could not keep awake, even while in sitting posture. "I must sleep, anyhow," he muttered. "I can't stand this any longer. I must sleep"—And so his eyes closed.

  He was awakened by a voice he knew calling out: "Is this the way ye watch y'r mine, Sherm Bidwell?" And, looking up, he saw the Widow Delaney sitting astride a mule and looking down at him with tender amusement. "Ye are a pitcher; sure! Ye look like wan o' the holy saints of ould—or a tramp. Help me off this baste and I'll turn to and scorch a breakfast for ye."

  He staggered stiffly to his feet and awkwardly approached her. "I had only just dropped off," he apologized.

  "Ye poor lad!" she said, compassionately. "Ye're stiff as a poker wid cold."

  "How did ye come out with the ore?" he asked.

  "Thrust y'r Maggie! I saw it loaded into a car and sent away. Bedad, I had a moind to go wid it to the mill, but I says, Sherm nor mesilf can be in two places to wanst. So I gave o'er the notion and came home. They'll thieve the half of it, av coorse, but so goes the world, divil catch it!"

  The widow was a powerful reinforcement. She got breakfast while Bidwell dozed again, and with the influence of hot coffee and the genial sun the firm grew confident of holding at least the major part of their monstrous good luck.

  "Thrust no wan but me," said the widow in decisive warning. "The world is full of rogues. From this toime ivery man's hand is agin' y'r gold—schamin' to reach y'r pockets. Rest yersilf and I'll look after the gould. From this toime on we work only wid our brains."

  She did indeed become the captain. On her advice he sent a man for ore-sacks and tools, while other willing hands set to work to build a cabin to shelter them.

  "We're takin' no chances," she said; "we camp right here."

  That day Las Animas, Crestone, Powder Gulch, and Los Gatos emptied themselves upon the hills, and among them were representatives of big firms in Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo. The path past the Maggie Mine was worn deep by the feet of the gold-seekers, and Bidwell's rude pole barrier was polished by the nervous touch of greedy palms.

  About ten o'clock a quiet man in a gray suit of clothes asked Bidwell if he wanted to sell. Bidwell said, "No," short and curt, but Maggie asked, with a smile, "How much?"

  "Enough to make you comfortable for life. If it runs as well as this sample I'll chance fifty thousand dollars on it."

  Maggie snorted. "Fifty thousand! Why, I tuk twoice that to the mill last night."

  "Let me get in and examine the mine a little closer. I may be able to raise my bid."

  "Not till ye make it wan hundred thousand may you even have a luk at it," she replied.

  Other agents came—some confidential, others coldly critical, but all equally unsuccessful. The two "idiots" could not see why they should turn over the gold which lay there in sight to a syndicate. It was theirs by every right, and though the offers went far beyond their conception they refused to consider them.

  All day axes resounded in the firs, and picks were busy in the gullies. Camp goods, provisions, and bedding streamed by on trains of mules, and by nightfall a city was in its initial stages—tent stores, open-air saloons, eating-booths, and canvas hotels. A few of the swarming incomers were skeptical of the find, but the larger number were hilariously boastful of their locations, and around their evening camp-fires groups gathered to exult over their potentialities.

  The sun had set, but the western slope of the hill was still brilliant with light as Bidwell's messenger with his sumpter horse piled high with bales of ore-sacks came round the clump of firs at the corner of Bidwell's claim. He was followed by a tall man who rode with a tired droop and nervous clutching at the rein.

  Bidwell stared and exclaimed, "May I be shot if the preachers aren't takin' a hand in the rush!"

  The widow looked unwontedly rosy as she conclusively said, "I sent for him, man dear!"

  "You did? What for?"

  The widow was close enough now to put her hand in the crook of his elbow. "To make us wan, Sherm darlin'. There's no time like the prisent."

  Bidwell tugged at his ragged beard. "I wish I had time to slick up a bit."

  "There'll be plinty of time for that afterward," she said. "Go welcome the minister."

  In the presence of old Angus Craig and young Johnson they were married, and when the minister gave Mrs. Bidwell a rousing smack she wiped her lips with the back of her hand and said to Bidwell:

  "Now we're ayqul partners, Sherm, and all old scores wiped out."

  And old Angus wagged his head and said, "Canny lass, the widdy!"

  When the news of this marriage reached the camp demons of laughter and disorder were let loose. Starting from somewhere afar off, a loud procession formed. With camp-kettles for drums and aspen-bark whistles for pipes, with caterwaul and halloo, the whole loosely cohering army of prospectors surrounded the little log cabin of the Maggie Mine and shouted in wild discord:

  "Bidwell! Come forth!"

  "A speech! A speech!"

  Bidwell was for poking his revolver out through the unchinked walls and ordering the mob to disperse, but his wife was diplomatic.

  "'Tis but an excuse to get drink," she said. "Go give them treat."

  So Bidwell went forth, and, while a couple of stalwart friends lifted him high, he shouted, sharp and to the point, "It's on me, Clark!"

  The mob, howling with delight, rushed upon him and bore him away, struggling and sputtering, to Clark's saloon, where kegs of beer were broached and the crowd took a first deep draught. Bidwell, in alarm for Maggie, began to fight to get back to the cabin. But cries arose for the bride.

  "The bride—let's see the bride!"

  Bidwell expostulated. "Oh no! Leave her alone. Are you gentlemen? If you are, you won't insist on seeing her."

  In the midst of the crowd a clear voice rang out:

  "The bride, is it? Well, here she is. Get out o' me way."

  "Clear the road there for the bride!" yelled a hundred voices as Maggie walked calmly up an aisle densely walled with strange men. She had been accustomed to such characters all her life, and knew them too well to be afraid. Mounting a beer-keg, she turned a benign face on the crowd. The light of the torches lighted her hair till it shone like spun gold in a halo round her head. She looked very handsome in the warm, sympathetic light of the burning pitch-pine.

  "Oh yiss, Oi'll make a speech; I'm not afraid of a handful of two-by-fours like you tenderfeet from the valley, and when me speech is ended ye'll go home and go to bed. Eleven days ago Sherm, me man, discovered this lode. Since then we've both worked night and day to git out the ore—we're dog-tired—sure we are—but we're raisonable folk and here we stand. Now gaze y'r fill and go home and l'ave us to rest—like y'r dacent mothers would have ye do."

  "Good for you, Maggie!" called old Angus Craig, who stood near her. "Mak' way, lads!"

  The men opened a path for the bride and groom and raised a thundering cheer as they passed.

  Old Angus Craig shook his head again and said to Johnson: "Sik a luck canna last. To strike a lode and win a braw lass a' in the day, ye may say. Hoo-iver, he waited lang for baith."

  * * *

  THE COW-BOSS

  —the reckless cowboy on his watch-eyed bronco still lopes across the grassy foot-hills—or holds his milling herd in the high parks.
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  * * *

  II

  THE COW-BOSS

  I

  The post-office at Eagle River was so small that McCoy and his herders always spoke of the official within as "the Badger," saying that he must surely back into his den for lack of room to turn round. His presentment at the arched loophole in his stockade was formidable. His head was large, his brow high and seamed, his beard long and tangled, and the look of his hazel-gray eyes remote with cold abstraction.

  "He's not a man to monkey with," said McCoy when the boys complained that the old seed had put up a sign, "NO SPITTING IN THIS OFFICE." "I'd advise you to act accordingly. I reckon he's boss of that thing while he's in there. He's a Populist, but he's regularly appointed by the President, and I don't see that we're in any position to presume to spit if he objects. No, there ain't a thing to do but get up a petition and have him removed—and I won't agree to sign it when you do."

  Eagle River was only a cattle-yard station, a shipping-point for the mighty spread of rolling hills which make up the Bear Valley range to the north and the Grampa to the south. Aside from the post-office, it possessed two saloons, a store, a boarding-house or two, and a low, brown station-house. That was all, except during the autumn, when there was nearly always an outfit of cowboys camped about the corrals, loading cattle or waiting for cars.

  On the day when this story opens, McCoy had packed away his last steer, and, being about to take the train for Kansas City, called his foreman aside.

  "See here, Roy, seems to me the boys are extra boozed already. It's up to you to pull right out for the ranch."

  "That's what I'm going to try to do," answered Roy. "We'll camp at the head of Jack Rabbit to-night."

  "Good idea. Get 'em out of town before dark—every mother's son of 'em. I'll be back on Saturday."

  Roy Pierce was a dependable young fellow, and honestly meant to carry out the orders of his boss; but there was so little by way of diversion in Eagle, the boys had to get drunk in order to punctuate a paragraph in their life. There was not a disengaged woman in the burg, and bad whisky was merely a sad substitute for romance. Therefore the settlers who chanced to meet this bunch of herders in the outskirts of Eagle River that night walked wide of them, for they gave out the sounds of battle.

  They could all ride like Cossacks, notwithstanding their dizzy heads, and though they waved about in their saddles like men of rubber, their faithful feet clung to their stirrups like those of a bat to its perch. In camp they scuffled, argued, ran foot-races, and howled derisive epithets at the cook, who was getting supper with drunken gravity, using pepper and salt with lavish hand.

  Into the midst of this hullabaloo Roy, the cow-boss, rode, white with rage and quite sober.

  "I'll kill that old son of a gun one of these days," said he to Henry Ring.

  "Kill who?"

  "That postmaster. If he wasn't a United States officer, I'd do it now."

  "What's the matter? Wouldn't he shuffle the mail fer you?"

  "Never lifted a finger. 'Nothing,' he barked out at me. Didn't even look up till I let loose on him."

  "What did he do then?"

  "Poked an old Civil War pistol out of the window and told me to hike."

  "Which you did?"

  "Which I did, after passing him a few compliments. 'Lay down your badge,' I says, 'come out o' your den, and I'll pepper you so full of holes that your hide won't hold blue-joint hay.' And I'll do it, too, the old hound!"

  "But you got out," persisted Ring, maliciously.

  "I got out, but I tell you right now he's got something coming to him. No mail-sifter of a little two-for-a-cent town like Eagle is goin' to put it all over me that way and not repent of it. I've figured out a scheme to get even with him, and you have got to help."

  This staggered Henry, who began to side-step and limp. "Count me out on that," said he. "The old skunk treated me just about the same way. I don't blame you; a feller sure has a right to have his postmaster make a bluff at shuffling the deck. But, after all—"

  However, in the end the boss won his most trusted fellows to his plan, for he was a youth of power, and besides they had all been roiled by the grizzled, crusty old official, and were quite ready to take a hand in his punishment.

  Roy developed his plot. "We'll pull out of camp about midnight, and ride round to the east, sneak in, and surround the old man's shack, shouting and yelling and raising Cain. He'll come out of his hole to order us off, and I'll rope him before he knows where he's at; then we'll toy with him for a few minutes—long enough to learn him a lesson in politeness—and let him go."

  No one in the gang seemed to see anything specially humorous in this method of inculcating urbanity of manner, and at last five of them agreed to stand their share of the riot, although Henry Ring muttered something about the man's being old and not looking very strong.

  "He's strong enough to wave a two-foot gun," retorted Roy, and so silenced all objection.

  One night as soon as the camp was quiet Pierce rose and, touching his marauders into activity, saddled and rode away as stealthily as the leader of a band of Indian scouts. He made straightway over the divide to the east, then turned, and, crossing the river, entered the town from the south, in order to deceive any chance observer.

  Just below the station, in a little gully, he halted his war-party and issued final orders. "Now I'll ride ahead and locate myself right near the back door; then when I strike a light you fellows come in and swirl round the shack like a gust o' hell. The old devil will come out the back door to see what's doin', and I'll jerk him end-wise before he can touch trigger. I won't hurt him any more than he needs. Now don't stir till I'm in position."

  Silently, swiftly, his pony shuffled along the sandy road and over the railway-crossing. The town was soundless and unlighted, save for a dim glow in the telegraph office, and the air was keen and crisp with frost. As he approached the Badger's shack Pierce detected a gleam of light beneath the curtain of the side windows. "If he's awake, so much the better," he thought, but his nerves thrilled as he softly entered the shadow.

  Suddenly the pony trod upon something which made a prodigious crash. The door opened, a tall young girl appeared in a wide flare of yellow light which ran out upon the grass like a golden carpet. With eager, anxious voice she called out:

  "Is that you, Doctor?"

  The raider stiffened in his saddle with surprise. His first impulse was to set spurs to his horse and vanish. His next was to tear off his disguise and wait, for the voice was sweeter than any he had ever heard, and the girl's form a vision of beauty.

  Alarmed at his silence, she again called out: "Who are you? What do you want?"

  "A neighbor, miss," he answered, dismounting and stepping into the light. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

  At this moment hell seemed to have let loose the wildest of its warriors. With shrill whoopings, with flare of popping guns, Roy's faithful herders came swirling round the cabin, intent to do their duty, frenzied with delight of it.

  Horrified, furious at this breach of discipline, Pierce ran to meet them, waving his hat and raising the wild yell, "Whoo-ee!" with which he was wont to head off and turn a bunch of steers. "Stop it! Get out!" he shouted as he succeeded in reaching the ears of one or two of the raiders. "It's all off—there's a girl here. Somebody sick! Skeedoo!"

  The shooting and the tumult died away. The horsemen vanished as swiftly, as abruptly, as they came, leaving their leader in panting, breathless possession of the field. He was sober enough now, and repentant, too.

  Slowly he returned to the door of the shack with vague intent to apologize. Something very sudden and very terrible must have fallen upon the postmaster.

  After some hesitation he knocked timidly on the door.

  "Have they gone?" the girl asked.

  "Yes; I've scared 'em away. They didn't mean no harm, I reckon. I want to know can't I be of some kind of use?"

  The door opened cautiously and the girl again ap
peared. She was very pale and held a pistol in her hand, but her voice was calm. "You're very good," she said, "and I'm much obliged. Who are you?"

  "I am Roy Pierce, foreman for McCoy, a cattleman north of here."

  "Was it really a band of Indians?"

  "Naw. Only a bunch of cow-punchers on a bat."

  "You mean cowboys?"

  "That's what. It's their little way of havin' fun. I reckon they didn't know you was here. I didn't. Who's sick?"

  "My uncle."

  "You mean the postmaster?"

  "Yes."

  "When was he took?"

  "Last night. They telegraphed me about six o'clock. I didn't get here till this morning—I mean yesterday morning."

  "What's the ail of him?"

  "A stroke, I'm afraid. He can't talk, and he's stiff as a stake. Oh, I wish the doctor would come!"

  Her anxiety was moving. "I'll try to find him for you."

  "I wish you would."

  "You aren't all alone?"

  "Yes; Mrs. Gilfoyle had to go home to her baby. She said she'd come back, but she hasn't."

  Roy's heart swept a wide arc as he stood looking into the pale, awed, lovely face of the girl.

  "I'll bring help," he said, and vanished into the darkness, shivering with a sense of guilt. "The poor old cuss! Probably he was sick the very minute I was bullyragging him."

  The local doctor had gone down the valley on a serious case, and would not be back till morning, his wife said, thereupon Roy wired to Claywall, the county-seat, for another physician. He also secured the aid of Mrs. James, the landlady of the Palace Hotel, and hastened back to the relief of the girl, whom he found walking the floor of the little kitchen, tremulous with dread.

  "I'm afraid he's dying," she said. "His teeth are set and he's unconscious."