CHAPTER XI.

THE FOOL OF FOLLY MOUNTAIN.

Finding the trailing difficult, old Nomad returned to Blossom Range that evening, having accomplished nothing.

He was tremendously excited, when he learned the story told by Vera Bright.

“Waugh! Thet was a ringer!” he cried, commenting on the clever manner in which Tim Benson and Juniper Joe had deceived everybody with their “jubilee.”

Buffalo Bill got out and reread Juniper Joe’s unique invitation to attend the “wedding.”

“I vonder vot Vhite-eyed Moses iss t’inking now?” said the baron.

“Oh, waal, he got paid fer his fiddlin’,” said Nomad; “so what does he keer? I should say thet Jedge Abercrombie Morris, who performed the weddin’ ceremony, was about the wu’st fooled man in town.”

Buffalo Bill laughed.

“Do you think he was fooled any worse,” he said, “than Buffalo Bill, Nick Nomad, and Baron von Schnitzenhauser? It seems to me not.”

“Say, thet was shore the plum limit, wan’t it?” the trapper whooped.

“I t’ink dhose two men shouldt be called Vera Bright, insteadt uff dot voman,” the baron punned. “I am admitting dot idt vos too mooch vor Schnitzenhauser.”

“Waugh! Ther same hyar. We was all fooled complete.”

It was likely that the town would have “the laugh on itself” for a long time, whenever Juniper Joe’s jubilee was mentioned.

The next day, Buffalo Bill and his pards tried to pick up the trail of Tim Benson. But the clever little rascal had a good start; and in the hills north of the town he had so blinded his trail that they could do nothing with it.

Once Buffalo Bill believed he had trailed the fellow right to the edge of Iron Bow’s Ute village, and entered the village to make inquiries. But if Benson had sought concealment there, the Utes would not give up the secret.

At last the chase was given over, and the scout and his party returned to camp.

“Waal, we’ve bagged one o’ the scoundrels, anyhow,” Nomad comforted himself by saying.

It was true enough--Juniper Joe was in jail in Blossom Range.

The woman was being held, too, for she would be needed as a witness against him.

They called on Juniper Joe on their return to the town; but he was in a sullen mood, and would not talk.

“If I’ve done all the things you say I have, I must be mighty clever,” he said to them; then a twinkle came into the corners of his eyes.

It made Nomad laugh.

He laughed again, when they came out of the jail.

“Waugh!” he gurgled. “Whenever I want ter tickle myself half ter death, I’m jest goin’ ter whisper, ‘Juniper Joe’s jubilee.’ But what yer goin’ ter do, Buffler? Let Benson go by the board?”

“No,” replied the scout with determination. “I am going to get Benson, and make a clean round up.”

That night a tall man with a blonde mustache and long hair was closeted for a long time with Buffalo Bill in the latter’s room at the Eagle House.

He came to the Eagle House late at night, and he went away before morning. With the exception of the scout himself, no one saw him come and no one saw him go. Not a servant, not even the night clerk, knew that he had been there.

Sunrise saw him occupying the cabin on top of a hill called Folly Mountain, just north of the town. A tenderfoot had built the cabin, worked furiously for a month in the prospect hole behind it, without taking out enough gold to pay even the blacksmith for sharpening his picks, and was ready to sell out. The tall man made him an offer for the cabin and the mine; then the tenderfoot moved out, and the man with the blond hair took possession.

The first thing apprising Blossom Range of this change of ownership was the small United States flag flying from the pole in front of the house. The stranger had changed the slender aspen growing there from a tree into a flagstaff, and hoisted Old Glory.

Blossom Range knew then that the tenderfoot had either moved out or gone crazy. His habits had been too penurious to admit of the suggestion that he could have bought the flag, and it was not in keeping with his character that he would have flung it to the breeze if he had owned one.

The smoke floating from the rusted stovepipe in the lean-to which, backed against the hill, served as kitchen, suggested that whoever had hoisted the flag was now getting breakfast.

The hour was early, yet curiosity was sufficient warrant for sending a number of men to the cabin to investigate.

When they gained it and looked through the open door, they saw the tall, blond-haired man. He was dressed in miner’s clothing, even to the flaming red shirt, while round his neck was knotted a blue tie with broad white stripes in it. It was not, however, until attention was called to it that any one was likely to see that this blue and white, with the red of the shirt, formed the same colors as those in the flag.

When the stranger turned to the visitors he gave them a broad, pleasant smile, and they saw that he was a handsome, well-set-up fellow, with an attractive face, lighted by dark eyes.

“Howdy!” he cried, seeing them.

They clustered round the door.

“Just bought this shack and moved in, and now I’m getting me something to eat,” he explained. “Step in, if you can find room in here.”

Some of them came in, seating themselves on boxes he pushed out for them. He continued the work of getting his breakfast.

“The tenderfoot I bought this of was kind enough to tell me, after he had my cash, that the mine wouldn’t yield anything; said he’d worked at it until he was tired out, and didn’t get enough out of it to buy his smoking tobacco.”

“I allow he was slingin’ ye the straight truth,” avowed Persimmon Pete, who rested his claim to fame on the fact that he hadn’t shaved since he came into the camp, a year before.

“I reckon you know what this hill is called?” he added, after he had studied the face and figure of his host a minute.

“Well, no; I hadn’t even heard that it had a name.”

“Folly Mountain,” said Persimmon Pete.

The blond-headed stranger turned round, the frying pan in his hand.

“Wherefore and why?” he asked.

“Because every man that’s ever tried to git gold out of it has been compelled to admit, in the end, that he was a fool.”

The stranger laughed lightly, and put the frying pan back on the stove. It was sending up a cheerful odor of bacon fat.

“That sets out a pleasant prospect for me,” he said, smiling.

“So I reckon you’re in to spend yer good money and hard work fer nothin’.”

The stranger stabbed at a slice of the bacon with his fork, turned it over neatly, then looked at Persimmon Pete and the men with him.

“But there’s more ways of killin’ a dog,” he said, “than by chokin’ him to death on bones.”

“Which is what?”

“I’m satisfied that _I_ can get gold where others have failed.”

“Ye can’t git blood out of a turnip,” declared Persimmon Pete.

The man laughed again; he had an easy, gurgling laugh, and his manner was calculated to make him friends.

“Which is saying that there ain’t any blood in this turnip. Mebby so. Time will tell the tale. But I’ll say to ye now that I’ve got a new process which will git all the gold there is, anyway; by that I mean _all_ the gold.”

He leaned back against the wall, with a glance now and then at his frying pan.

“I’ve been lookin’ at that hole in the ground back there since I bought it, and with my new processes I can skin gold out of it in a way to make your eyes bulge out. You’ll see.”

He sat down to his breakfast at last. It was a simple meal, suggesting that the stranger did not expect to live in luxury; but he invited them to share it with him.

“No, we’ll be goin’,” they told him.

“Come up and see me often,” he said to them, and smiled at their backs as he watched them walk away.

Not until they were halfway to the foot of the hill did any of them remember that they had not learned the stranger’s name.

Persimmon Pete came back for this desired information, poking his bushy beard again through the narrow door.

“Beggin’ yer pardin!” he said. “But the boys has delegated me to inquire how you spell it.”

The stranger’s gurgling laugh rang out again.

“Spell what?”

“Why, your name, o’ course.”

The stranger came to the door of the cabin, and swung his sinewy hand up at the flag floating from the top of the trimmed aspen.

“See that?” he said.

“I see the flag, if that’s what you mean.”

“There are a number of things that I’m short on, but I’m long on two things--patriotism and pluck. Ever hear of a hiatus?”

Persimmon Pete shook his puzzled head.

“Never did,” he declared.

“Well, a hiatus is a sort of vacancy between one something and another something. Do you get that? There came a hiatus in my memory--a sort of chink--and my name dropped out through that chink. Find it for me, and I’ll give you good money. So long as I couldn’t remember my own, I’ve taken one that everybody knows and everybody can remember. Call me Uncle Samuel.”

He looked at the flag again.

“N-n-not Uncle Sus-Sam?”

“The same. I see that you recognize the name; so, of course, you can’t forget it. I’m Uncle Sam, and the flag up there is my emblem. What can’t be done under the folds of that flag there ain’t no use trying to do. For which reason I know that I’ll get blood out of this turnip.”

Persimmon Pete turned away.

“Crazy as a bedbug,” he reported to the men who were awaiting him. “He calls himself Uncle Sam, and says that the flag is his emblem.”

Before the day ended the stranger in the tenderfoot’s cabin had been given another name by the amused people of Blossom Range; they called him the Fool of Folly Mountain.

As a usual thing, little attention was paid to the men who delved here and there about the town in search of the elusive metal on which the town based its prosperity. Miners and prospectors came and they went, and no one noted either their coming or going, save the men who sold them grub and outfits.

But it was different with Uncle Sam; because he had given a queer name and achieved another, and because he professed to be able to get gold where none was believed to exist.

He put up a little furnace in the back room, where he heated ores, “roasting” them, to test their value. He brought in a small assayer’s outfit and a blowpipe. Often he was seen toiling far into the night, the light of his window looking like a red eye or a blazing star, shining on the top of Folly Mountain.

The curiosity concerning him was increased by this. If he had sought deliberately to excite the citizens of Blossom Range, the stranger could not have taken means more effective.

The hope that some method might be found to render low-grade ores worth working was in the heart of every man; and the stranger’s oft-repeated assertions that he had such a process, and was perfecting it more and more every day, stirred their imaginations.

Sometimes men crept up in the night to the cabin, and lay close against the walls, watching and listening, hoping, to surprise his secret, if he had one.

But the stranger seemed to possess marvelous intuition. As often as this happened he either ceased his work and remained silent within or came out casually and greeted them. He did not seem surprised when he found them, nor put out; but always spoke to them cheerfully and sometimes invited them in.

Twice he was known to show men of that kind what he was doing, so far as they could understand it; which was just far enough to befog them completely. He talked in learned words which none of them could comprehend; and his explanations, though at the moment seeming marvelously clear, were seen afterward not to explain anything.

When he had been there a week he lugged down to the Wells Fargo Express office a gunny bag that seemed heavily laden.

Some of the loafers before the office doors followed him inside, and saw him plump the heavy bag down before the Wells Fargo agent.

When the stranger opened it, they saw that it held gold; not in nuggets or gold dust, but in solid pieces, which apparently he had fused with his blowpipe.

“Test it and weigh it,” he said; “and then ship it for me.”

“Who’ll I ship it to?” the agent asked, staring at the yellow lumps.

“Ship it to Uncle Sam’s Sister, ’Frisco,” was the answer.

The agent tested and weighed the “stuff,” and found there was five hundred dollars’ worth; it was genuine gold.

“Got it out of that hole up there that I bought of the tenderfoot,” beamed the stranger. “Everybody said there wasn’t anything in it; but they hadn’t seen me work my new and secret process. By and by they will begin to believe.”

“I suppose your sister will get this without any other name than that?”

The stranger had given a street and a number, but no other name for the consignee.

“Just that--Uncle Sam’s Sister. She’ll git it. If not, the company can ship it back to me at my expense.”

Some of the loafers, when outside, expressed their amazement; and if Uncle Sam had been selling stock in his new process the stock would have taken a boom.

Yet as the news spread there were comments of another kind.

“Yes, that’s all right, for him!” remarked a certain Wise One of the camp. “But I don’t go no yarn of that kind. Why, see here, how long’s it been sence Juniper Joe was digging in that hole back of _his_ cabin, and shipping stuff he claimed he got there? Not ten days, has it? Then it was found out that Juniper Joe was doin’ the road-agent act big, and the stuff he shipped he had stole. He’s in the jail right here in this camp now, for that, ain’t he?”

“Then you think this new feller is playin’ the same game?” was asked.

“I’m not saying,” said the Wise One. “But see here: night before last a bullion stage was held up and the cash box emptied by agents. The Wells Fargo wouldn’t take the risk of that shipment, but it was sent by other parties, and the road agents got it. Does any one know who them road agents are?”

No one knew; or, at least, no one was willing to admit that he knew.

“Put two and two together and they make four, don’t they--or do they make five?” said the Wise One. “But remember, I ain’t making no charges against anybody.”

“So you think----”

“No, I don’t think anything; I’m jest trying to make you think.”

The words of the Wise One went flying round town. So that more people visited the tenderfoot’s cabin, to take a look at the tall man with the blond mustache and the long hair; all of whom he greeted genially, and some of whom he showed his “process,” so much, at least, as he wished to show; and he told them about it in words that were more wonderful than any they had ever seen in print.

But the universal judgment was that this party could not be Tim Benson, who was a small man--so small that he had successfully played the rôle of a woman. Neither could he be Juniper Joe, as Juniper Joe was at that blessed moment immured tightly within the walls of the jail at Blossom Range.

Who was the stranger?

“Uncle Sam,” _he_ said, smiling, if any one ventured to ask him.

So the fame of the Fool of Folly Mountain went broadcast throughout the land surrounding the stirring mining camp.