Part 7

“I don’t need the pistol. If I’ve got to walk back, lugging my own grub and blankets, I don’t want to carry any more weight than I have to.”

“Just the same, you’re going prepared to back your judgment,” Bromley insisted; and he brought out the holstered revolver and made Philip buckle it on. “There; that looks a little more shipshape,” he approved. “Want me to go along a piece and help you start the herd?”

“Nothing of the kind,” Philip refused; and thereupon he set out, leading the extra horse and driving the jacks ahead of him.

It was his intention to back-track over the trail by which they had first penetrated to their valley in the late summer, and being gifted with a fairly good sense of direction, he found his way to the foot of the first of the two enclosing mountain ranges without much trouble. But on the ascent to the pass the difficulties multiplied themselves irritatingly. The trail was blind and the snow was fetlock deep for the animals. The led horse was stubborn and hung back; and wherever a widening of the trail permitted, the jacks strayed and scattered. Philip’s temper grew short, and by the time he had reached the high, wind-blown, boulder-strewn notch which served as the pass over the spur range, he was cursing the scattering burros fluently and fingering the butt of the big revolver in an itching desire to bullet all three of them.

“Damn your fool hides!” he was yelling, oblivious of everything but the maddening impossibility of towing the reluctant bronco astern and at the same time keeping the long-eared stupidities ahead in any kind of marching order; “Damn your fool----”

He stopped short, swallowing the remainder of the shouting malediction and flushing shamefacedly under his summer coat of tan. Seated beside the trail on a flat-topped boulder from which the snow had been brushed was a thick-chested, bearded giant of a man making his much-belated midday meal on a sandwich of pan-bread and bacon; a grinning witness of the outbreak of ill-temper. As Philip drew rein the giant greeted him jovially.

“Howdy, pardner! Yuh must ’a’ had a heap o’ book-learnin’ to be fitten to cuss thataway. Don’t blame yuh, though. It’s one hell-sweatin’ job to herd canaries when they ain’t got no packs on ’em.”

Philip stared hard at the big man, his excellent memory for faces serving him slowly but surely. When he spoke it was to say: “People are always telling us this is a little world, and I’ll believe it, after this. Don’t you remember me?--and the K.P. train last spring?”

The thick-chested giant got upon his feet

“Well, I’ll be dawg-goned! Sure I ricollect! You’re the young feller I told to hump hisself and go sit with the li’l’ black-eyed gal that had the sick daddy. Put ’er there!” and he gave Philip’s hand a grip that made the knuckles crack.

Philip slid from the saddle, smiling a sheepish apology.

“Sorry I had to come on the scene swearing like an abandoned pirate, but these chicken-brained jacks have just about worn me out. Queer we should stumble upon each other in this God-forsaken place. Where do you come from?”

“Hoofed it up from the Aspen diggin’s. Aimin’ to get out o’ the woods afore I get snowed under and can’t. You ain’t had all the bad luck. Yiste’day I lost my canary, pack, blankets and all, in the Roarin’ Fork. Li’l’ cuss slipped and rolled into the creek and I didn’t get to save nothin’ but the old Winchester I was totin’ and a li’l’ bite o’ bread and meat I had in my pockets. Box o’ matches went with the hide and taller, and I’d ’a’ slep’ cold last night if I hadn’t run onto a bunch o’ Leadville men back yonder a piece and hunkered down afore their fire.”

Philip started at the mention of the Leadville men, but he deferred the question that rose instantly to his lips.

“You are going out by way of the pass over the main range at the head of Chalk Creek?” he asked.

“Aimin’ to get out thataway; yes.”

“All right; I’m headed that way, too, and, as you see, I have one more horse than I can ride. I’ll give you a lift, if you say so.”

The big man’s laugh was like the rumbling of distant thunder.

“If I say so? Say, young feller me lad, I ain’t got but one mouth, but I reckon if I had a dozen of ’em they’d all be sayin’ so at once,” he affirmed gratefully. “Want to pitch out right now?”

“No; I’ll eat first. Didn’t want to stop until I got to the top of the pass.”

Philip unslung his provision haversack and spread the contents on the flat rock. Over the meal, which he invited the wayfarer to share with him, he got the story of the bearded man’s summer; weary months of prospecting in the western slope wilderness with nothing to show for it, not even the specimens from the few putative discoveries he had made, since these had gone to the bottom of the Roaring Fork with the drowned burro.

“Hard luck,” Philip commented, when the brief tale of discouragement had been told. “What will you do now?”

“Same as every busted prospector does: hunt me a winter job in a smelter ’r stamp-mill and sweat at it till I get enough spondulix ahead to buy me another grub-stake.”

“Go to work as a day-laborer?”

“You’ve named it. Minin’s the only trade I know; and the mills ain’t payin’ miner’s wages for shovelin’ ore into the stamps.”

“Why don’t you try for a job in one of the big mines?”

The giant’s laugh rumbled again.

“Not me--I ain’t that kind of a miner--ain’t wearing no brass collar for a corp’ration! Gone too long without it. But lookee here, you ain’t told me nothin’ about yerself. I didn’t allow you was aimin’ to turn into a mount’in man when I rid the cars with yuh last spring.”

“I wasn’t,” said Philip; and thereupon he gave a short account of the summer’s wanderings up to, but not including, the discovery of the “Little Jean,” and entirely omitting all mention of Bromley’s part in the wanderings. That his story did not explain his presence on the outward trail with two saddle horses, three jacks and no tools or camp equipment, he was well aware; but the canny traditions were warning him not to betray the carefully guarded secret of the “Little Jean” to a chance travelling companion.

“Tough luck, all round,” said the big man half absently; and Philip saw plainly enough that he was trying to fit the present moment’s inconsistencies into the story. Then: “Still and all, somebody’s had good luck over here in this hell’s back kitchen. I heard about it in the camp o’ them Leadville pardners last night.”

“What did you hear?” Philip asked, and his nerves were prickling.

“They said two young fellers, tenderfoots, both of ’em, hoofed it into Leadville two-three weeks ago with some stuff that run away up yonder in the assays--rotten quartz and free gold.”

“Well,” said Philip, still with nerves on edge, “that sort of thing is happening every day, isn’t it? What more did you hear?”

“They was talkin’ ’mongst theirselves--not to me. The news had leaked out, like it always does, and they’d trailed the young fellers, a ridin’ two broncs and herdin’ three loaded jacks, acrosst the range and over here. Then they’d lost the trail somehow. From what I picked up, I allowed they was aimin’ to stay till they found it ag’in, if it took all winter.”

Philip’s tongue was dry in his mouth when he said: “Whereabouts were these Leadville people camped?”

“About ten mile north, at the mouth of a li’l’ creek that runs into the Fork.”

There was one more question to be asked, and Philip was afraid to ask it. Yet he forced himself to give it tongue.

“You say you camped with these fellows last night. What kind of a crowd was it?”

The big prospector was staring at the three jacks and two horses as if he were mentally counting them.

“Jist betwixt you and me and the gate-post, it’s a sort o’ tough outfit. Hank Neighbors is headin’ it, and if half o’ what they tell about him is so, he’s plum bad medicine.”

“Not prospectors, then?”

“W-e-l-l, you might call ’em so; but I reckon they’re the kind that lets other folks do most o’ the hard work o’ findin’ and diggin’.”

“You mean they’re ‘jumpers’?”

“Least said’s soonest mended. But if I had a right likely prospect anywheres in these here hills, I’d shore hate like sin to have ’em run acrosst it.”

Philip’s resolve was taken upon the instant. From what had been said he knew precisely where the Neighbors camp was; it was only a few miles below the gulch of the “Little Jean”; so few that the campers may well have heard the crashes of the evening rifle practice. And Bromley was standing guard alone.

“See here,” he began, suddenly reversing all former resolutions of canny secrecy; “I don’t know you--don’t even know your name. But I believe you are an honest man, and I’m going to tell you something: I’m one of the tenderfoots Neighbors is trying to trail.”

The wayfaring prospector greeted the information with a wide-mouthed smile.

“Yuh didn’t hardly need to tell me that--with them five critturs standin’ there a-hangin’ their heads, and you without any camp stuff ’r tools, and with two saddle hosses where yuh didn’t need only one. What’s yer game?”

Being fairly committed now, Philip went the entire length--with nothing hopeful to build upon save the big miner’s rough chivalry as he had seen it manifested in the Kansas Pacific day-coach months before. Frankly filling the blanks he had left in his earlier account of the summer’s experiences, he wound up with an anxious question:

“What am I to do? I can’t go on and leave my partner to stand off this robber gang alone. They’ll find our claim before I could get back. It’s our own creek they’re camping on, right now!” Then: “You say you are going out by way of Chalk Creek. I have a little money left; it isn’t much, but it’s all yours if you’ll take these horses and jades out to Nachtrieb’s ranch in the South Park and leave them there. Then I can go back from here and take my share of what’s coming to us.”

The big man got up and brushed the crumbs from his clothes.

“I can beat that all holler, if you’ll say the word. I sort o’ like your looks--liked ’em last spring when I chucked yuh in the seat with the li’l’ black-eyed gal. Yuh say yo’re aimin’ to hole up for the winter and work yer claim. S’pose yuh give me a job along with you and yer pardner and lemme go back with yuh? I can hold steel ’r pound it, and han’le powder. More’n that, I can shoot middlin’ straight when I aim to.”

“You mean you’d stand with us if the Neighbors bunch should try to jump our claim?”

“Why, suree! Yuh don’t reckon I’d go back on my bread and meat, do yuh?”

“But these beasts--what’s to be done with them?”

“I was comin’ to that. There’s a li’l’ ranch six-seven mile in the park ahead of us; it’s the place where I was aimin’ to get enough grub to walk out on. Queer old squatter runs it; li’l’ mite cracked in his upper story on religion, they say. He’ll winter the stock for yuh.”

“Still, that isn’t all,” Philip went on desperately. “We have laid in provisions for the winter, my partner and I; all we could afford to buy. The stake is enough for two, but if there are three of us, we’ll go short before spring. Besides, we haven’t enough money left to pay your wages.”

“Ne’m mind about the wages; they can wait. If half o’ what they’re sayin’ about this here strike o’ yourn is so, there’ll be ore enough on the dump, come spring, to pay all the bills--and then some, I reckon. All I’ll ask’ll be a chance to stake a claim somewheres round next to yourn, maybe.”

“You won’t have to ask anybody’s permission to do that,” Philip put in. “But still there is the question of the short grub-stake.”

The big man grinned cheerfully. “Might trust in the Lord a li’l’ bit, mightn’t we? Maybe He’ll send us a short winter. Anyhow, I’ll take my chance o’ starvin’; it won’t be the first time by a long chalk. Whadda yuh say? Is it a go?”

It was far enough from Philip’s normal promptings to decide anything so momentous without due and thoughtful consideration. But the exigencies had suddenly become urgent. In his mind’s eye he could see the Neighbors gang of desperadoes besieging the log cabin, with its scanty garrison of two untrained defenders. One additional loyal pair of eyes and hands might turn the scale. Hasty decisions, headlong initiative, were the very essence of the time, and of the treasure-seekers’ existence. Impulsively he thrust out a bargain-clinching hand.

“It’s a go, if you want to throw in with us, and I’ll promise you you won’t lose anything by it,” he said. “What may I call you?”

“Name’s Garth--‘Big Jim,’ for short.”

“Mine is Philip Trask. We are strangers to each other, but that’s an even stand-off. I’m banking on you for what you did for the little girl on the train. Let’s hurry and find that park ranch you speak of. It’s running in my mind that we can’t get back to the claim any too soon.”

It was after they had mounted and were herding the jacks down the descending trail that Garth said: “What about the li’l’ gal with the sick daddy? Ever see her again?”

“Just once,” Philip returned, “five or six weeks after they reached Denver. The family was living in one of the tent colonies, and from what was said, I judged the father was pretty badly off.”

“Uh-huh,” said Garth. “You hear a heap nowadays about what the dry air’ll do for them lungers, but the health boosters tell only half o’ the story. That same old thin air kills ’em swift if they come too late. It shore do.”

By pushing the animals as fast as the hazardous trail would permit, the ranch in the inter-mountain park was reached in the shank of the afternoon. Philip made a hurried bargain with the ranch owner, a white-haired, white-bearded old man who might have figured as a reincarnation of Elijah the Tishbite; and after a consultation with Garth, refused the old man’s offer of a night’s lodging. Garth’s vote was for an immediate return to the “Little Jean.” The skies were clear and there would be a moon for at least the first half of the night.

“We’ve left a trail in the snow that a blind man could back-track on,” he pointed out. “I’m hep for the night tramp, if so be you are.”

Stiff from the long day in the saddle, Philip would have welcomed a blanket bed before the Tishbite’s hearth fire, but the urgencies were still acutely upon him; also, he was beginning to acquire the pride of the outdoor man. If Garth, who had already tramped miles before the afternoon meeting on the high pass, could stand it to keep on going, surely he could.

“We’ll tackle it,” he said shortly; and presently they were taking the steep mountain trail in reverse, slipping and sliding in the dry snow, but doggedly making their way toward the high, wind-swept pass.

Visioning that long night tramp in the moonlight, afterward, Philip knew it would be an enduring memory after many other experiences had faded and gone. The slippery trail; the black shadows of the trees while they were still in the foresting, and the blacker shadows of great rocks and gulch cliffs after they had climbed above timber line; the keen night wind sweeping over the bleak pass where they paused for a short halt in the lee of a sheltering boulder to eat a few mouthfuls of food before hitting the downward trail; the perilous descent to the headwater gulches of the Roaring Fork, where more than once he owed his escape from a sudden plunge into unknown depths to the quick clutch of the silent giant plodding along tirelessly behind him--no detail of the deadening, soul-harrowing fight for endurance, lapsing finally into a sheer effort of the will to thrust one foot before the other, would ever be forgotten.

The moon had long since disappeared behind the uplifted skyline of the western ranges by the time they were measuring the last of the weary miles in the valley of the lucky strike. At the foot of one of the jutting mountain spurs, Philip broke the slogging monotony to say: “We’re almost there. The next gulch is ours.”

“Good enough,” was the muttered comment from the rear; and then, suddenly: “Hold up--hold your hosses a minute!”

Philip turned and saw Garth stooping with his rifle held in the crook of an arm. He was peering down at the hoof tracks they had been following.

“What is it?” he asked.

Garth pushed his flap-brimmed hat to the back of his head and looked up.

“Thought yuh said a while back that this here was your trail--the one yuh made comin’ out with the cavoyard this mornin’.”

“Well, isn’t it?”

“Not by a jugful--not unless yuh was walking the hull caboodle of ’em back’ards.”

“What’s that?”

“Sure as shootin’. The critters that made this trail was goin’ the same way we are. Get down and take a squint for yerself.”

Philip was about to comply when he saw a spurt of red flame leap out in the up-valley distance, the flash followed quickly by the reverberating echoes of a rifle shot. At the flash and crash Garth leaped afoot with a growled-out imprecation and worked the lever of his repeating rifle to throw a cartridge into the chamber.

“That means business, son! They’ve called the turn on us and got yer pardner in the nine-hole! Limber up that old hoss-pistol o’ yourn and p’int the way to get into your gulch without bustin’ in at the front door. That’s our chance--if we’ve got any. Jump to it!”

VIII

FAIRLY benumbed by the shock of the discovery that a battle for the possession of the “Little Jean” was actually in progress, Philip pointed to the right up a steep ravine.

“We can c-cross at the head of this draw,” he stammered, and it made him furious to find that he could not better control his voice.

“Let’s be moggin’ along, then,” said the man of action, immediately setting a pace up the wooded ravine that left Philip a stumbling straggler at his heels. “They’ve got that pardner o’ yourn holed up somewheres--in yer cabin, most likely. Reckon he’s got sand enough to hang on?”

“Harry?--he--he’ll hang on till they kill him!” Philip panted.

“What-all’s he got for fightin’ tools?”

“Two Winchesters.”

“Good a-plenty. How much furder do we keep to this here draw?”

“Another hundred yards or so; then bear sharp to the left.”

Following directions, the big man presently turned short into the ravine-side forest and began to climb, pulling himself from tree to tree up the steep acclivity with an agility that seemed to take no account of his great size and weight. Breathlessly Philip struggled after him, marvelling at the reserves of energy Garth was able to draw upon after a long day and night of steady tramping and mountain climbing. For himself, he was nearly at the collapsing point when they reached the easier going on the summit of the spur. As they pressed on, the spattering crackle of rifle fire came intermittently from the gulch, and at each fresh outblaze he started nervously and quickened his pace.

“For God’s sake, hurry!” he gasped. “They’ll murder Harry before we get there--if they haven’t already done it!”

But Garth read the story of the ragged firing with shrewder intelligence.

“That there powder-burnin’s a good sign,” he commented calmly. “Hit shows they ain’t got him yet, and ain’t rushin’ him. Keep me steered right. You know the lay o’ the land, and I don’t.”

“To your left again, now,” Philip directed. “There’s a little side gully along here somewhere ... if we can find it in the dark----”

As capably as if the darkness were interposing no obstacle, Garth found the head of the dry arroyo and the descent into the gulch of the mine was begun.

“Right careful, now,” he cautioned; “no slippin’ ’r slidin’ to make a fuss! Got to work Injun medicine on that crowd.”

Silently, the snow serving to deaden their footfalls, they worked their way to the gulch bottom and along its windings until Philip whispered: “Around the next turn ahead ... if there’s light enough, you’ll see our dump and the cabin.”

“Kee-rect,” Garth mumbled. “Stick to the shadders and keep that old hoss-pistol handy. Yuh ain’t no ways back’ard about aimin’ it straight, are yuh?”

“No,” said Philip; but he was promising for the intention rather than for the ability. He was trembling like a leaf in the wind. It was one thing to go into battle on the crest of a wave of berserker rage, and quite another to face the hazards deliberately and in cold blood.

With caution redoubled they turned the last of the jutting promontories obstructing a view of the lower reaches of the gulch. The young moon had long since dropped behind the western ranges, but the reflection of the starlight upon the white mantling of snow made the dump of broken rock and ore marking the tunnel site, and beyond it the larger bulking of the cabin, dimly discernible. Garth thrust a hand backward to signal a halt, and as he did so, a jet of flame shot from a thick graving of young firs on the right-hand slope of the gulch opposite the cabin, and, preceding the jarring report by a fraction of a second, they heard the smack of the bullet as it struck its target.

“Reckon I called the turn,” Garth whispered. “Yer pardner’s holdin’ the cabin ag’in ’em. Ain’t no back door to that shack, is there?”

“No.”

“Well, there ain’t a ghost of a show for us to make a run for the front door; they’ve got that plum’ sewed up. We got to work it some other way. We’d ort to have one o’ them Winchesters o’ youm and a belt o’ ca’tridges. That old hoss-pistol won’t spit far enough to do much good.”

“But if we had the rifle?” Philip queried.

“Then we might work a li’l’ trick that’d be better than breakin’ into the cabin: might make them cusses think the whole U.S. army was after ’em.”

Philip’s heart rose into his throat and threatened to choke him. On the hurried race across the spur his teeth had been chattering, and it was only by the supremest effort that he could keep them from rattling like castanets now. If the extra rifle was to be secured, it was his part to stalk the cabin and get it: Garth couldn’t do it; Bromley wouldn’t surrender the gun to a stranger--if he were still alive it was more than likely that he would mistake Garth for one of the outlaws and kill him if he could find a convenient loophole through which to shoot.