Boys of Crawford's Basin

by John Henry Goldfrap

  CHAPTER II

  CRAWFORD'S BASIN

  You might think, perhaps, as many people in our neighborhood thought,that Joe was my brother. As a matter of fact he was no relation at all;he had dropped in upon us, a stranger, two years before, and had stayedwith us ever since.

  It was in the haying season that he came, at a moment when my father andI were overwhelmed with work; for it was the summer of 1879, the year of"the Leadville excitement," when all the able-bodied men in the districtwere either rushing off to Leadville itself or going off prospecting allover the mountains in the hope of unearthing other Leadvilles. Ranchwork was much too slow for them, and as a consequence it was impossiblefor us to secure any help that was worth having.

  What made it all the more provoking was that we had that year anextra-fine stand of grass--the weather, too, was magnificent--yet,unless we could get help, it was hardly likely that we could take fulladvantage of our splendid hay-crop.

  Nevertheless, as what could not be cured must be endured, my father andI tackled the job ourselves, working early and late, and we were makingvery good progress, all things considered, when we had the misfortune tobreak a small casting in our mowing-machine; a mishap which wouldprobably entail a delay of several days until we could get the piecereplaced.

  It was just before noon that this happened, and we had brought themachine up to the wagon-shed and had put up the horses, when, onstepping out of the stable, we were accosted by a tall, black haired,blue eyed young fellow of about my own age, who asked if he could get ajob with us.

  "Yes, you can," replied my father, promptly; and then, remembering theaccident to the machine, he added, "at least, you can as soon as I getthis casting replaced," holding out the broken piece as he spoke.

  "May I look at it?" asked the young fellow; and taking it in his hand hewent on: "I see you have a blacksmith-shop over there; I think I canduplicate this for you if you'll let me try: I was a blacksmith'sapprentice only a month ago."

  "Do you think you can? Well, you shall certainly be allowed to try. Butcome in now: dinner will be ready in five minutes; you shall try yourhand at blacksmithing afterwards. What's your name?"

  "Joe Garnier," replied the boy. "I come from Iowa. I was going toLeadville, but I met so many men coming back, with tales of what numbersof idle men there were up there unable to get work, that, hearing of aplace called Sulphide as a rising camp, I decided to go there instead.This is the right way to get there, isn't it?"

  "Yes, this is the way to Sulphide. Did you expect to get work as aminer?"

  "Well, I intended to take any work I could get, but if you can give meemployment here, I'd a good deal rather work out in the sun than down ina hole in the ground."

  "You replace that casting if you can, and I'll give you work for amonth, at least, and longer if we get on well together."

  "Thank you," said the stranger; and with that we went into the house.

  The newcomer started well: he won my mother's good opinion at once bywiping his boots carefully before entering, and by giving himself asousing good wash at the pump before sitting down to table. It was plainhe was no ordinary tramp--though, for that matter, the genus "tramp" hadnot yet invaded the three-year-old state of Colorado--for his mannerswere good; while his clear blue eyes, in contrast with his brown faceand wavy black hair, gave him a remarkably bright and wide-awake look.

  As soon as dinner was over, we all repaired to the blacksmith-shop,where Joe at once went to work. It was very evident that he knew what hewas about: every blow seemed to count in the right direction; so that inabout half an hour he had fashioned his piece of iron into the desiredshape, when he plunged it into the tub of water, and then, clapping itinto the vise, went to work on it with a file; every now and thencomparing it with the broken casting which lay on the bench beside him.

  "There!" he exclaimed at last. "I believe that will fit." And, indeed,when he laid them side by side, one would have been puzzled to tellwhich was which, had not the old piece been painted red while the otherwas not painted at all.

  Joe was right: the piece did fit; and in less than an hour from the timewe had finished dinner we were at work again in the hay-field.

  The month which followed was a strenuous one, but by the end of it wehad the satisfaction of knowing that we had put up the biggest crop ofhay ever cut on the ranch.

  Our new helper, who was a tall, stout fellow for his age, and anuntiring worker, proved to be a capital hand, and though at first he wassomewhat awkward, being unused to farm labor, before we had finished hecould do a better day's work than I could, in spite of the fact that Ihad been a ranch boy ever since I had been a boy at all.

  We all took a great liking for Joe, and we were very pleased, therefore,when, the hay being in, it was arranged that he should stay on. Forthere was plenty of work to be done that year--extra work, I mean--suchas building fences, putting up an ice-house and so forth, in which Joe,having a decided mechanical turn, proved a valuable assistant. So, whenthe spring came round again it found Joe still with us; and with us hecontinued to stay, becoming so much one of the family that many people,as I said, who did not know his story, supposed that he and I werebrothers in fact, as we soon learned to become brothers in feeling.

  Long before this, of course, Joe had told us all about himself and howhe had come to leave his old home and make his way westward.

  Of French-Canadian descent, the boy, left an orphan at three years ofage, had been taken in by a neighbor, a kind-hearted blacksmith, andwith him he had lived for the twelve years following, when theblacksmith, now an old man, had decided to go out of business. Just atthis time "the Leadville excitement" was making a great stir in thecountry; thousands of men were heading for the new Eldorado, and Joe,his old friend consenting, determined to join the throng.

  It was, perhaps, lucky for the young blacksmith that he started ratherlate, for, on his approach to the mountains, he encountered files ofdisappointed men streaming in the opposite direction, and hearing theirstories of the overcrowded condition of things in Leadville, hedetermined to try instead the mining camp of Sulphide, when, passing ourplace on the way he was caught by my father, as I have described, andturned into a ranchman.

  Such was the condition of affairs with us when Big Reuben made his finalraid upon our pig-pen.

  The reward of one hundred dollars which the county paid us for ourexploit in ridding the community of Big Reuben's presence came in veryhandily for Joe and me. It enabled us to achieve an object for which wehad long been hoarding our savings--the purchase of a pair of mules.

  For the past two years, in the slack season, after the gathering of ourhay and potato crops, we had hired out during the fine weather remainingto a man whose business it was to cut and haul timbers for the mines inand around the town of Sulphide, which lay in the mountains seven milessouthwestward from our ranch. We found it congenial work, and Joe and I,who were now seventeen years old, hardened to labor with ax, shovel orpitchfork, saw no reason why we should not put in these odd five or sixweeks cutting timbers on our own account. No reason but one, that is tosay. My father would readily lend us one of his wagons, but he could notspare a team, and so, until we could procure a team of our own, we wereobliged to forego the honor and glory--to say nothing of the expectedprofits--of setting up as an independent firm.

  Now, however, we had suddenly and unexpectedly acquired the necessaryfunds, and with the money in our pockets away we went at once to OleJohnson's, from whom we bought a stout little pair of mouse-coloredmules upon which we had long had an eye.

  But though the firm of Crawford and Garnier might now, if it pleased,consider itself established, it could not enter upon the practice of itsbusiness for some time yet. It was still the middle of summer, and therewas plenty to do on the ranch: the hay and the oats would be ready tocut in two weeks, while after that there were the potatoes to gather--avery heavy piece of work.

  All these tasks had to be cleared out of the way before we could move upto Sulphide
to begin on our timber-cutting enterprise. But between theharvesting of the oats and the gathering of the potato-crop thereoccurred an incident, which, besides being remarkable in itself, had avery notable effect upon my father's fortunes--and, incidentally, uponour own.

  To make understandable the ins and outs of this matter, I must pause amoment to describe the situation of our ranch; for it is upon thepeculiarity of its situation that much of my story hinges.

  Anybody traveling westward from San Remo, the county seat, with the ideaof getting up into the mountains, would encounter, about a mile fromtown, a rocky ridge, which, running north and south, extended forseveral miles each way. Ascending this bluff and still going westward,he would presently encounter a second ridge, the counterpart of thefirst, and climbing that in turn he would find himself upon thewide-spreading plateau known as the Second Mesa, which extended, withoutpresenting any serious impediment, to the foot of the range--itself oneof the finest and ruggedest masses of mountains in the whole state ofColorado.

  In a deep depression of the First Mesa--known as Crawford's Basin--layour ranch. This "Basin" was evidently an ancient lake-bed--as one couldtell by the "benches" surrounding it--but the water of the lake havingin the course of ages sawed its way out through the rocky barrier, nowran off through a little canyon about a quarter of a mile long.

  The natural way for us to get from the ranch down to San Remo was tofollow the stream down this canyon, but, curiously enough, for more thanhalf the year this road was impassable. The lower end of Crawford'sBasin, for a quarter of a mile back from the entrance of the canyon, wasso soft and water-logged that not even an empty wagon could pass overit. In fact, so soft was it that we could not get upon it to cut hay andwere obliged to leave the splendid stand of grass that grew there as awinter pasture. In the cold weather, when the ground froze up, it wasall right, but at the first breath of spring it began to soften, andfrom then until winter again we could do nothing with it. It was, infact, little better than a source of annoyance to us, for, until wefenced it off, our milk cows, tempted by the luxuriant grass, werealways getting themselves mired there.

  This wet patch was known to every teamster in the county as "thebottomless forty rods," and was shunned by them like a pestilence. Itsexistence was a great drawback to us, for, between San Remo, where thesmelters were, and the town of Sulphide, where the mines were, therewas a constant stream of wagons passing up and down, carrying ore to thesmelters and bringing back provisions, tools and all the othermultitudinous necessaries required by the population of a busy miningtown. Had it not been for the presence of "the bottomless forty rods,"all these wagons would have come through our place and we should havedone a great trade in oats and hay with the teamsters. But as it was,they all took the mesa road, which, though three miles longer andnecessitating the descent of a long, steep hill where the road came downfrom the First Mesa to the plains, had the advantage of being hard andsound at all seasons of the year.

  My father had spent much time and labor in the attempt to make apermanent road through this morass, cutting trenches and throwing inload after load of stones and brush and earth, but all in vain, and atlength he gave it up--though with great reluctance. For, not only didthe teamsters avoid us, but we, ourselves, when we wished to go with aload to San Remo, were obliged to ascend to the mesa and go down by thehill road.

  The cause of this wet spot was apparently an underground stream whichcame to the surface at that point. The creek which supplied us withwater for irrigation had its sources on Mount Lincoln and falling fromthe Second Mesa into our Basin in a little waterfall some twelve feethigh, it had scooped out a circular hole in the rock about a hundredfeet across and then, running down the length of the valley, found itsway out through the canyon. Now this creek received no accession from anyother stream in its course across the Basin, but for all that the amountof water in the canyon was twice as great as that which came over thefall; showing conclusively that the marsh whence the increase came mustbe supplied by a very strong underground stream.

  The greater part of Crawford's Basin was owned by my father, PhilipCrawford, the elder, but a portion of it, about thirty acres at theupper end, including the pool, the waterfall and the best part of thepotato land, was owned by Simon Yetmore, of Sulphide.

  My father was very desirous of purchasing this piece of ground, for itwould round out the ranch to perfection, but Yetmore, knowing how muchhe desired it, asked such an unreasonable price that their bargainingalways fell through. Being unable to buy it, my father therefore leasedit, paying the rent in the form of potatoes delivered at Yetmore's storein Sulphide--for Simon, besides being mayor of Sulphide and otherwise aperson of importance, was proprietor of Yetmore's Emporium, by far thelargest general store in town.

  He was an enterprising citizen, Simon was, always having many irons inthe fire; a clever fellow, too, in his way; though his way was notexactly to the taste of some people: he drove too hard a bargain. Infact, the opinion was pretty general that his name fitted him to anicety, for, however much he might get, he always wanted yet more.

  My father distrusted him; yet, strange to say, in spite of that fact,and of the added fact that he had always fought shy of all miningschemes, he and Yetmore were partners in a prospecting venture. It was,in a measure, an accident, and it came about in this way:

  The smelter-men down at San Remo were always crying out for morelead-ores to mix with the "refractory" ores produced by most of themines in our district, publishing a standing offer of an extra-goodprice for all ores containing more than a stated percentage of lead. Inspite of the stimulus this offer gave to the prospecting of themountains, north, south and west of us, there had been found but onemine, the Samson, of which the chief product was lead, and this did notfurnish nearly enough to satisfy the wants of the smelter-men.

  Its discovery, however, proved the existence of veins of galena--the orefrom which lead chiefly comes--in one part of the district, and theprospectors became more active than ever; though without result. Thatsection of country where the Samson had been discovered was deeplyoverlaid with "wash," and as the veins were "blanket" veins--lying flat,that is--and did not crop out above the surface, their discovery waspretty much a matter of chance.

  Among the prospectors was one, Tom Connor, who, having had experience inthe lead-mines of Missouri, proposed to adopt one of the methods ofprospecting in use in that country, to wit, the core-drill. But toprocure and operate a core-drill required money, and this Tom Connor hadnot. He therefore applied to Simon Yetmore, who agreed to supply partof the necessary funds--making good terms for himself, you may besure--if Tom would provide the rest. The rest, however, was rather morethan the sum-total of Tom's scanty capital, and so he came to my father,who was an old friend of his, and asked him to make up the difference.

  My father declined to take any share in the enterprise, for, though mostof the ranchmen round about were more or less interested in mining, hehimself looked upon it as being too near akin to gambling; but feelingwell disposed towards Tom, and the sum required being very moderate, helent his friend the money, quite prepared, knowing Tom's optimistic,harum-scarum character, never to see it again.

  In this expectation, however, he was happily deceived. It is true he didnot get back his money, but he received his money's worth, and that in avery curious way.