Part 20

So the ensuing discussion had plenty of interest for everybody. Lafond, as the bearer of the tidings, was besieged with questions. He was reluctant, but he answered. Besides, the facts were plain, ready for interpretation. Nobody could help seeing that it was all Billy's fault. After a time, poor Billy loomed large as a symbol of all the camp's misfortune. After a little time more, when the bar had more thoroughly done its work, a number became possessed of a desire to abate Billy.

They seized torches and a rope, ran up the gulch, and beat in the door of the office, only to encounter Billy enraged to the point of frenzy. That individual rushed them out at the muzzle of a pistol, with such a whirl of impetuous anger that it quite carried them off their feet, after which he planted his back against the building and stood there in the full light of the torches, reviling them. Why he was not shot I cannot tell. Billy was something of a dominant spirit when roused. That was the reason why, in the old days, he had made such a good scout. After he had called them all the names he could think of, he slammed the door on them. They went away without knowing why they did so.

When they got back to town, they gathered again in the Little Nugget saloon, drinking, swearing, shouting. The morale of the camp was broken. It was a debauch. They cried out against Billy, and they feared him for the moment. They made a stable-boy hide in the brush with a bottle of whisky, to watch the works, to spy on they knew not what. Lafond drank with them. He had never done so before. As they became more noisy, he fell into a sullen fit, and went to sit over behind the stove where he crooned away to himself an old _chanson_. He stopped drinking, but the effects remained. It seemed to his befogged mind that the wave had broken and that he was falling through the air. Shortly he would be cast up against the beach. "A fool for luck!" he muttered to himself, trying to rehabilitate his denuded confidence. He took out the Company's letter to him, saying that the deeds were at Rapid awaiting his action, and read it. Then he put a stick of wood on the fire. He shivered and rubbed his eyes. Finally he went over to the hotel, where he washed his head again and again in cold water. After a time, he returned to the Little Nugget, feeling somewhat better.

It was now daylight, although the sun was not up. The stable-boy came in from the upper gulch to say that Billy Knapp was hitching his horses to the buckboard. The news sobered them somewhat. Ten minutes later, the stable-boy again returned with the news that Knapp had loaded his buckboard, and was on the point of driving through town. A dozen men at once ran out into the street and concealed themselves behind the corners of buildings.

XXXII

IN WHICH THERE IS SOME SHOOTING

Billy sat in a chair and boiled. He did not calm down until after daylight, and then he found that his depression had vanished. He was full of vigor. He went out and looked over the property very carefully. The entire lay-out, he found, had weighed on his spirits, and this last ungrateful episode had made him sick of the whole miserable business. He ought never to be tied down. He could see his mistake clearly enough now. If he was going to stick to gold hunting, it ought to be as a prospector, not as a miner. A prospector enjoyed the delight of new country, of wilderness life, of the chase, and then, when civilization came too near, he could sell his claims to the miner and move on to a virgin country. A miner, on the other hand, had to settle down in one place and attend to all manner of vexatious details. Billy felt a great impatience to shake himself free. With the thought came a wave of anger against the men of the town. After all, what had he to gain by staying? This outfit was a fizzle; nothing could be done with it in the future. He might save something of the wreck by grubbing about in the debris, but grubbing was exactly what he wanted to get away from.

He looked over the works again. He was astonished to find how little of it he cared for personally. There remained not much more than the Westerner's outfit, when it was winnowed--four good horses, the buckboard, his saddle, clothes, his weapons, and the beautiful trotting horse. Billy could not let that go. The camp outfit they could have and welcome. He kicked the rubber stamper into space, scattering potential literature about the landscape. Many things he hesitated over, but finally discarded. The heap was not very large when all was told.

He began to experiment with the buckboard. Billy was a master of the celebrated diamond hitch. After an hour's earnest work, he drew back triumphantly to observe to himself that all he wished to take with him was securely packed on the vehicle. Then he coupled in his grays, and led out the beautiful trotting horse. He was glad that he had lately paid the English groom his wages; which individual he remembered seeing, the night before, dead drunk in a corner. Billy made himself some coffee in the empty cookee's shack, and was ready to start.

He did not know exactly where he would go; that was a matter of detail, but somewhere West in all probability--somewhere in Wyoming, where Jim Buckley was hidden up in the mountains, living a sane sort of a life, removed from the corroding influences of civilization. He did not realize that in this impatient shaking off of responsibility, he was little better than a moral coward. Even Billy's worst enemies would have denied the justice of that epithet.

He climbed in, deliberately unwound the reins from the long brake handle, clucked to the horses, and took his way, whistling, down the narrow trail. The beautiful trotting horse followed gingerly, tossing his head. At the entrance to town, Billy's whistling suddenly ceased. The street was quite bare and silent. Not even from the Little Nugget saloon or the new dance hall came the faintest sound of human occupancy. A tenderfoot might have argued that this was indicative of deep sleep after last night's festivities, but Billy knew better. At seven o'clock in the morning, after excitement such as that of a few hours before, the normal ensuing pow-wow would still be raging unabated. He reached under the seat for his Winchester, the new 40-82 model of his prosperous days, and laid it softly across his lap, and caught the end of the long lash in his whip hand. Then he resumed his tune exactly where it had been broken off, looking neither to right nor left, and jogging along without the slightest appearance of haste or uneasiness. No one could have called Billy Knapp a coward at that moment.

Near the first cabin the whistling broke off again. A little figure stumbled out into the deserted street, weeping and afraid. Billy pulled up. It was the Kid.

"They're goin' to shoot you," he sobbed, "from behind the Little Nugget, without givin' you a chanst! I had to tell you, an' they'll most kill me!" he wailed. Billy's eyes began to sparkle. The Kid tried to hold within the other's reach his little 22 calibre rifle, his most precious possession. "Here, take this!" he begged.

Billy laughed outright, a generous, hearty laugh with just a shade of something serious in it. "Thank ye," said he, "I got one. And let me tell ye right yere, you Kid. Yore a white man, you are, and yore jest about the only white man in the place." He cast his eyes about him in the buckboard at his feet. "Yere ye be," he said, tugging at a pair of huge silver-ornamented Mexican spurs and leaning over to give them to the boy; "jest remember me by them thar; they has my name in 'em; and, look yere," he went on with a sudden inspiration, "you-all gets up gulch to my camp and takes what grub you finds and lies low until yo' paw an' th' rest gits over bein' mad. I don't know but what they _does_ kill you, if you shows up afore that." And he laughed again to see the boy's face brighten at this prospect of escaping the immediate wrath to follow.

The little scene had been enacted in the middle of the silent street, so silent and so empty that the principal actors in it experienced an uncomfortable emotion of publicity, perhaps a little like that of an inexperienced speaker before the glare of footlights. The Kid, followed friskily by Peter, scuttled up the gulch, Billy stood up in his buckboard and faced the inscrutable row of houses.

"Yo' damn coyotes!" he yelled, "thar goes the only _man_ in the whole outfit. Shoot! yo' Siwashes, shoot!" and he brought his long whip like a figure 8 across the flanks of all four horses at once.

_Bang!_ reverberated a shot between the hills, and a bullet splashed white against the brake bar.

Billy dropped the reins to the floor of the buckboard, and planted his foot on them. He steadied his knee against the seat, and threw down and back the lever of his Winchester for a shot. The beautiful trotting horse was pulling back in an ecstasy of terror at the end of his long lariat, shaking his head and planting his forefeet. Billy cursed savagely, but jerked loose the knot, and the beautiful trotting horse, with a final snort of terror, turned tail and disappeared in the direction of the mine.

_Bang! Bang! Bang!_ went other shots from behind puffs of white smoke. The hills caught up the sound and rolled it back, and then back again, until it was quite impossible to count the discharges.

There were perhaps a half-dozen men with rifles and a dozen or so with six-shooters, all pumping away at it as fast as they could. The buckboard was struck many times. One horse was hit, but only slightly--not enough to interfere with, but rather to encourage his speed. Billy fastened his eyes on the spot whence the first bullet had sped. Suddenly he threw his rifle to his shoulder.

_Crack!_ it spoke, strangely flat out there in the open against the fuller reports of the other pieces.

The bullets which undershot kicked up little puffs of dust, like grasshoppers jumping, while those that passed above, ricochetted finally from rocks and went singing away into the distance. It was a wonder, with so large a mark, that neither the man nor the horses were hit. It must be remembered, however, that the marksmen were more or less drunk, and that Billy's speed was by now something tremendous.

_Crack!_ went his Winchester again.

At the end of the straight road was, as has perhaps been mentioned, a turn of considerable sharpness, flanked by bold cliff-like rocks. In the best of circumstances, this bit of road requires careful driving. With a runaway four and a light buckboard, a smash up was inevitable. The hidden assailants and spectators of the strange duel realized this suddenly. In the interest of the approaching catastrophe, the fusillade ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Billy maintained his first attitude, one knee on the seat, the other foot braced against the floor, keenly expectant. The silence became breathless, and one or two men leaned forward the better to see.

"_Crack!_" spoke Billy's rifle for the third time. The man who had fired the first shot pitched suddenly forward from behind his sheltering corner, and lay still.

With one swift motion the scout dropped his Winchester in the seat, grasped the four reins, and threw his enormous weight against the bits. The grays had been ranch-bred. They bunched their feet, hunched their backs, and in three heavy buck jumps had slowed down from a breakneck run to a lumbering gallop. Billy Knapp gave vent to the wild shrill war cry of his foster parents, the Oglallah Sioux, and jogged calmly out of sight around the bend of the road.

A great crowd pressed about Tony Houston, prone on the ground. They discovered that the ball had passed through the point of the shoulder, not a dangerous place in itself, but resulting in a serious wound because of the smashing power of the express rifle.

"Damn fine shooting!" they said, looking at each other with admiration. "_Damn_ fine."

They began to feel a little more kindly toward Billy on account of this evidence of his skill. They set about bandaging the wounded man.

XXXIII

FUTILITY

And around that lower bend, half a mile beyond Durand's cabin, Billy encountered in the person of Jim Buckley the very man he intended to search for, and that by not so very strange a chance when all is considered.

After the scouting days were quite over, not long ago, by the way, Jim Buckley had struck out for Wyoming, where he looked about him and finally settled in the Crooked Horn district all alone. He was prospecting. And as he was a great big leisurely sort of fellow, never in a hurry, and quite unconvinced of the necessity for being so, it took him a great many years to complete the prospecting to his satisfaction. In fact it was only recently that he had fully convinced himself and others of the value of what he had found. At first he had worked the surface over inch by inch Then he had staked out his more experimental claims. Then he had burrowed and grubbed and delved, single-handed, through a network of shafts, tunnels, and drifts. It is slow work--single-handed. In the morning you make little holes with a hand drill, and fill them with powder. At noon you blast. In the afternoon you cart away debris by means of an inadequate little bucket. This takes time and patience, both of which Jim Buckley possessed. Once a month he went to town, riding one horse and leading another, for the purpose of buying supplies. The rest of the time he lived alone.

That is, he lived alone except that directly opposite the window, where the light always struck it fair, he had carefully fastened a small colored portrait on ivory. It was the picture of a woman, delicately tinted, young with laughing blue eyes and a mouth whose corners turned upward in so droll a manner that you would have sworn its owner had never known a care in her fresh young life. It was the picture of another man's wife. She had known care, of the bitterest, blackest kind, and in her darkest days she had been murdered, mercifully perhaps. After he had hauled the last little bucket of broken rock up to the surface of the ground, and had ranged all sorts of utensils in the open fireplace for the evening meal, Jim Buckley used to light his pipe and sit looking at this little portrait for a long time. For, you see, he was simply made, with no complexities--a few simple purposes, a few simple ideas, a few simple friendships, a few simple passions--but they were the stronger and deeper and more soul-satisfying for that. He did not need incident or sorrow or regret to round out his life. It was well poised and sufficient.

So he used to look upon the face of this other man's wife from under sombre brows, but through clear eyes. No one could have guessed what his slow deep thoughts were at such times, nor what he found, whether of peace or unrest, in his contemplation of a portrait of the past. He said it made him better. Perhaps it did.

But there came a time when the windlasses over the rabbit-burrow prospector's shafts had made their last necessary revolution. Jim Buckley knew the cross section of that country as well as you or I know the cross section of an apple we have just cut in two. Then, having satisfied his purposes, he looked to his friendships. He had never had many. Alfred, Billy Knapp, Hal Townsend, Charley Fanchild--why you could count them on the fingers of one hand--and two of these were dead, and another was so far away in the cattle country of Arizona that he might as well have been so. Jim would have liked well to have gathered this old band of comrades about him and said, "Here, boys, is what I have. It is more than enough for me: it is more than enough for all of us. Let us share it, just as we used to share our bacon or our coffee in the old days, and so we can grow old together in the way that suits us best, the way of the pioneer." As he sat in the cabin now, or stalked the hills with his rifle, this old comradeship took more and more shape from the mists of the past, and there grew up in his breast a sharp craving for old times, old faces, old friends. It was a peculiarity of his nature that his ideas possessed a sort of cumulative force. They gathered added reasons for their carrying out as a rolling snowball gathers snow. Toward the end of that month, he packed a strange old valise with clothes for the journey, strapped on his best six-shooter, put his cabin in order, and rode his horse down to Crooked Horn. There he left the animal with Billy Powers and took the train for Edgemont and thence to Rapid.

He knew that Billy was somewhere in the Hills. At Rapid he learned of that individual's new importance. His heart sank a little at the thought that this prosperity might forfend his own scheme of comradeship, but nevertheless he took Blair's stage for Copper Creek and Custer.

Near Rockerville the axle gave way. The brake was repaired at a miner's forge with some difficulty, but the job carried on so late into the afternoon that Blair refused to go farther that night, and the party slept at Rockerville. The next morning they pushed on again about daylight, in order that Blair might start back from Custer before noon, thus reducing his delay by a few hours. A half mile below Durand's shack the axle again gave way, this time with a sudden violence that sent flying the baggage which had been piled on top. Jim found his valise in the bushes. The catch had snapped when the bag hit the ground, so that it lay half open; but fortunately its contents had not emptied. Jim closed it with the two end-clasps, and set it by the side of the road. He did not notice that the ivory miniature had dropped out, and now lay face downward at the roots of a _mesquite_.

Blair looked up from his inspection.

"Bad break!" he said, with a string of oaths. "Copper Creek's under a mile ahead. You'll save time by pushin' on afoot. I'll be in as soon as I can get this sulphurated axle tied together with a strap."

"No hurry," replied Jim; "I'll help you."

He began to unhitch the horses while Blair went to borrow an axe of Durand. The driver's intention was to splice the broken axle with a bit of green wood. In a little time, he and the old man returned together.

So Billy found them, straining away with an impromptu crowbar. When he and Jim saw each other, they agreed that they'd be tee-totally chawed up! After a time the stage moved doubtfully on toward Copper Creek. Billy and Jim went the other way in the buckboard.

Billy explained that he was going to see Jim; and Jim explained that he had come to get Billy. Billy elaborated on the tale of his doings since their last meeting, and easily persuaded Jim, as well as himself, that he was a most wronged individual. To restore his self-respect it only needed a sympathetic listener, so that he could hear the sound of his own voice. For the moment he had doubted himself. Now he saw plainly that he had been misled by false pretences. If he had understood clearly from the beginning the picayune policy expected of him by these stingy Easterners, he would have graduated his scale of expenditures to suit it; but certainly they had implied at least that they intended to get up a good big mine. Served a man right for going in with such sharpers!

Jim merely said that he had a first-rate thing to share with Billy.

It was a pleasant sight, the bearded solemn miner, fairly glowing with pleasure over finding Billy unfortunate and therefore open to his own kind offices; the eager-faced enthusiastic promoter, elated and high-spirited because of the relief of putting quite behind him a colossal failure; because of the privilege of starting again with a clean slate; because of a hundred new and promising schemes for the future. Michail Lafond's long planning had availed little, after all. With all his shrewdness he did not see that in the personality of Billy Knapp he was attempting to quench the essence of enthusiasm and hope and faith--inextinguishable fires. That is the American frontiersman.

At Rapid they took the train to Crooked Horn. At Crooked Horn they reclaimed the horse from Billy Powers. Then they inaugurated the boom. At this very day, December 24th, 1899, they are still living together in the new town of Knapp City, Wyoming, wealthy and respected citizens. And Billy recounts his Copper Creek experiences, generally with tolerance, as an example of the deceit of his fellow-creatures. They were the fruit of eighteen years of planning and waiting and working by a man who thought he could shape greater destinies than his own.

XXXIV

LOVE'S EYES UNBANDAGED

After the vociferating group had made Houston comfortable with the bandages and rough surgery of the frontier, it again took up the discussion of ways and means. It was a tired crowd, haggard from dissipation and want of sleep. And then, too, it was a cross crowd.

A majority were savage. Their passions were aroused to an unreasoning pitch, as is the manner of mobs. To them it was not a question of discussion, but of destruction. They wanted to burn the Company's buildings, and they were so set on it, and so impatient of even a word of opposition, that Lafond began to be a little frightened for his new property. His attempts at dissuasion were everywhere met with rebuff. Finally, on a sudden inspiration, he sprang to his own window ledge and signed his desire to speak.

Such men as Moroney, Kelly, Graham, and Williams, cooler heads, whose stake in the camp's fate was still heavy, succeeded in obtaining a momentary silence.

"Boys," shouted Mike, "I'll pay you myself!"

They paused in good earnest now, to see what these astounding words might signify.

"I'll pay you myself!" repeated Lafond. Then--for he was too shrewd to promise a thing of such moment without giving a plausible reason for it--he went on, "I can't afford to let this camp bust; I got too much in it. I can afford better that I spend a little to help it along. I don't know what it is that the Company intends; but I will find out; and this I promise to you, if the Company does not pay you, I will make some arrangement for the mine and I will pay you myself!"

Even Graham and Moroney were a little deceived. Both perceived dimly an ulterior motive, but on the surface the offer was generous and there could be no doubt that Lafond's word was perfectly good in such a matter. As for the men, they were more than satisfied.

"But of course," Lafond was saying, "you must not do any injury to the property."

Which went without saying, as every one could see.

Michail Lafond ate his breakfast with many long pauses. He had little appetite. His plans had gone well, and yet in their outcome rested a little remnant of the indecisive that annoyed him out of all proportion. Billy had been discharged from his position as superintendent and driven from camp, yet his exit had been melodramatically brilliant and had somehow done much to leave his memory in good odor. He, Lafond, had the promise of the property; but even yet the deeds were in escrow at Rapid. It was forty-five miles to Rapid--ten hours! Much might happen in ten hours. At the thought, which Lafond instinctively paused to note was not in his usual confident manner, he started up and commanded Frosty to harness his team of bays to the buckboard. He would complete the contract before sunset. While the animals were being harnessed, he tried to smoke a pipe. It went out. He attempted to read a paper. He could not. Finally he went out of doors and strode rapidly up and down. He felt chilled, for the air of the early morning was sharp. He thrust his arm through the open window and took down his old canvas coat from behind the door, and put it on. In spite of its protection he shivered again.