by Dean Owen
Sandy quickly reloaded, quickly but without obvious haste. He did not return the guns to their holsters and he paid no attention to the admiring comments of the crowd.
“Who is he? Two-gun man! They say his name’s Sandy Bourke.”
“You-all interfered with a friend of mine,” said Sandy. “It ain’t a healthy trick. An’ you ain’t apologized to the lady. I don’t know how Westlake feels about it, but you’ve sure got to apologize to the lady.”
The assayer, bewildered at Sandy’s assumption of friendship, waved his hand deprecatingly. Russell’s eyes rolled from side to side toward his still elevated hands.
“You can lower ’em if you can’t talk with ’em up,” said Sandy. “I’m waitin’ fo’ that apology, but I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
“I didn’t see no woman,” mumbled the bully, crestfallen.
“I told you there was one,” said Sandy. “I don’t lie, even to strangers. You’re sorry you swore, ain’t you?”
“You’re quicker’n I am on the draw with yore two guns,” retorted the goaded Russell. “I c’ud lick you one-handed ’thout guns—or any man in this crowd,” he blustered in an attempt to halt his departing prestige.
“You-all had a gun in yore hand when we stahted in,” said Sandy equably. “You’re sorry you swore—ain’t you?”
The repeated words, backed by the cold gaze, the ready guns, were merciless as probes.
“I apologizes to the lady,” growled Russell.
“Now, that’s fine,” said Sandy. “Fine! Westlake, will you come erlong with me fo’ a spell?”
He made his way through the opening group. Sam followed with the assayer who now began to realize that Sandy’s interference had established a friendship that would continue protective. They met Mormon, almost purple in the face from suppressed feelings. Young Ed Bailey eyed Sandy with awe and new respect. Miranda Bailey’s attempt to learn exactly what had happened was thwarted by Sandy’s presentation of Westlake. During the introduction Mormon slipped away. Roaring Russell was endeavoring to readjust his swagger when the stout cowboy met him.
“I was with the lady,” said Mormon. “Consequent I c’udn’t git here sooner. You said you c’ud lick any one in the camp one-handed, guns barred. Now I don’t like the way you apologized, sabe? It warn’t willin’ enough, nor elegant enough, nor spontaneous enough. Ter-night, after I git through showin’ the lady around the diggin’s, I’ll meet you where you say for fun, money or marbles, an’ argy with you barehanded. Thisaway.”
He slapped Russell on the cheek. The bully roared and the crowd stepped back. Mormon, with the surprising alertness he showed in action, for all his bulk and weight, sprang back, poised for strike or clutch. Miranda Bailey came with a rush and stepped between the two men. Russell foresaw a laugh at his expense and curbed himself, the sooner for his new-found consideration for Sandy’s gunplay.
“You ought to be ashamed of yoreselves, both of you,” exclaimed the spinster. “I’ll have no one fightin’ over me. I can take care of myself.”
“Yes, m’m, I reckon you can. I reckon we are ashamed,” said Mormon meekly, as the crowd roared in laughter that died away before the evenly swung gaze of Sandy, backed by Sam. Russell slipped off and the men dispersed. Miranda addressed Mormon.
“I’ll not have you fighting with that hulkin’ brute on my account,” she said. “Do you understand?”
Mormon gulped. He seemed summoning his courage, gripping it with both hands.
“Marm,” he said desperately, “you can’t stop me.”
The spinster gasped, met his eyes, flushed and turned away. Sam nudged Mormon with elbow to ribs.
“You dog-gone ol’ desperado,” he said in a whisper. “I didn’t think you had it in you. That the way you treated the first three?”
“No, it ain’t,” said Mormon, mopping his forehead. “And she ain’t the same kind they was, neither. Come on, or we’ll lose ’em.”
CHAPTER XII
WHITE GOLD
“It was mighty decent of you to take me under your protection,” said the young engineer to Sandy. He made hard going of the last word but shot it out with a snap that left his jaw advanced. Sandy told himself that he liked the clean-cut, well-set-up Westlake.
“Shucks,” he answered, “I reckon you w’udn’t have much trubble protectin’ yo’self, providin’ terms was any way nigh even. That Roarin’ Russell throwed down on you, figgerin’ you packed no gun, seein’ there was none in sight.
“I sabe that kind of hombre. Since he was knee-high he’s always had an aidge on most folks, ’count of his size an’ weight. But that ain’t enough, he’s got to have somethin’ on the other man ’fo’ he tackles him. He plays all his games with an ace in a hold-out. Which shows him fo’ a man who figgers he ain’t equal to tacklin’ another ’thout he knows he’s got the best of it. He thinks he’s one hell of a wrastler an’ rough-an’-tumble man but, if he ever mixes with Mormon, it’s goin’ to be a bull an’ b’ar affair—an’ Mormon’ll do the tossin’.”
Westlake looked somewhat dubiously at Mormon’s girth.
“Don’t jedge a man by the size of his waistband,” said Sandy. “Mormon’s fooled mo’n one. He’s hog fat, to look at, but if you was to skin him you’d find mighty li’l’ fat an’ a heap of muscle. Got flesh like an Injunrubber ball, has Mormon. Minute Roarin’ Russell finds he ain’t got a walkover he’ll begin to quit. That sort does, ninety-nine out of a hundred. The yaller jest natcher’ly oozes out of ’em. How’d your fuss come to staht?”
“A man was showing Russell and some others a piece of quartz picked up round here. It had nothing in it but some mica and galena, but Russell had given it as his opinion that it was the gold-bearing rock of the region. I told them I thought they would find that in the porphyry and Russell asked me what the hell I knew about it? That’s how it started. I don’t know how it would have finished if you hadn’t taken a hand and said I was a friend of yours. That saved my face. I came to the strike because I thought there would be a chance of getting in on the ground floor in new diggings and I hated to be driven out of it by having to dance for a bully and a bully’s crowd. I don’t know that I would have danced. It’s hard to weigh the odds when a gun has been fired at you, but I figured he wouldn’t shoot to kill.”
“Might have crippled you,” said Sandy. “If I’d been you I’d have danced.”
“You would?”
“I sure would. No sense in argy’in’ with a gun an’ a boozy bluffer at the other end of it. He’d put up his bluff an’, feelin’ sure you c’udn’t hurt him, he’d have carried it through. Any time a man has the drop on me I raise my hands—or my feet, ’cordin’ to orders. I’ve spent a deal of time practisin’ so it’s hahd to beat me to the draw. Trouble was, ef you-all don’t mind my sayin’ so, you horned in. You give out information gratis. You had yore sign up fo’ minin’ engineer. Chahge fo’ what you know, son, an’ yo’ customers’ll be grateful. Give ’em a slug o’ gold free an’ they’ll chuck it at a perairie dawg befo’ they’ve gone fifty yards.”
“Do you know anything about mining, Mr. Bourke?”
“Sandy is my name to my friends. A cowman with a mister to the front of his name seems to me like a hawss with an extry bridle. No, sir, I don’t. Do you?”
Sandy’s eyes twinkled as he put the quiz. Westlake laughed.
“I hope so. I think so. Mining is bound to be more or less of a gamble. A first-class mining engineer could tell you where you ought to find the gold in a certain region, but he couldn’t guarantee that there would be any. Experience counts a lot, of course, but I do know something about sylvanite, or white gold. I’ve seen its big field over in Boulder and Teller Counties, Colorado. They call it graphic gold, sometimes, because the crystals are very frequently set up in twins and branch off so that they look like written characters. The crystals are monoclinic and occur in
porphyry almost exclusively. It is a mixture of gold and silver telluride and it’s also called tellurium. Named after Transylvania where it was first found. There’s some in Australia.”
“I’m much obliged,” said Sandy. “I’ve learned a heap.”
Westlake looked at him suspiciously, but Sandy’s face was grave as that of the sphinx.
“The porphyry dykes here are in syncline,” the engineer went on. “They dip toward each other from both sides of the valley and form loops or folds. If you imagine an onion sliced in half you catch the idea. Call every other layer porphyry, with rock and other dirt between. The bottom of a loop may be deep down or it may be missing altogether, ground away when the valley was gouged out by a glacier. There may be other loops beneath it. Some portions of the loops come to the surface on the hillside and you can guess at their dip. But—the gamble lies in this. The ones that are exposed may or may not carry the gold-bearing veins. You might hit it at grass roots and find a lot of it. Or you might go down deep sinking through the hard porphyry for nothing. Science says that the tellurium crystals are in the porphyry dykes and that these dykes lie in syncline, perhaps two or three, nested one under the other.”
“Gosh,” ejaculated Miranda Bailey. “It sure sounds like a lottery to me. I wonder c’ud we hire you to p’int out a likely place for us to locate?” They had left the one street by this time and were making their way slowly along the western slope of the valley. Men worked at creaky and shaky old windlasses or appeared and disappeared at the mouths of lateral shafts, repairing the ancient timbers, wheeling out rubbish. Once or twice they heard the dull boom of a shot where dynamite was trying to split the rock and uncover a lead. On several of the claims were groups, the members of which made no pretense at mining, but lolled about, playing cards or pitching dollars at a mark. These were speculators, holding to sell. Stakes with papers in clefts, piles of stones at the corners, showed the boundaries of the claims.
“If you think my judgment is any good,” said Westlake, “you’re welcome to it. I could be more certain of helping you when it comes to assaying or developing a mine. Are you-all taking up claims? Do you want to align them, or do you want to pool interests and locate here and there where the chances look good?”
“Miss Bailey an’ her nephew are goin’ to take a chance,” said Sandy. “Me an’ my two partners are lookin’ for claims located by the man who first discovered the camp. They can’t get away an’ we’ll see Miss Mirandy settled first.”
“Me, I aim to take up a claim,” said Mormon. “So does Sam.”
“Who’s goin’ to work it?” asked Sandy. “You-all forget that we agreed when we went into the ranchin’ business together not to go into speculations on the side ’thout mutual consent. From what I can make out from Westlake’s talk speculation is a mild term fo’ lookin’ fo’ gold. I don’t consent, by a long shot. We got Molly’s claims to look after with our interest in ’em, an’ I’ve a hunch that’s goin’ to occupy all our time we got to spare. What does Roarin’ Russell do in the camp,” he asked Westlake, seemingly irrelevantly, “or ain’t he shown yet?”
“He is a sort of bouncer, or capper for that gambling joint run by Plimsoll.”
Sandy nodded. “I ain’t surprised. Plimsoll’s figgerin’ that he’ll get a big chunk of whatever’s dug out, ’thout takin’ any chances on diggin’. W’udn’t wonder but what he figgers to run the camp, mo’ ways than one, with a few bullies like Roarin’ Russell to help him.”
“This Casey,” said Westlake, “who made the original strike, did he take out much?”
“As I understand it,” replied Sandy, “he hits the porphyry where it’s shaller, or worn off, like you said. An’ he finds rich pay stuff right away, enough to start the camp. Quite a few works on that outcrop an’ then it peters out. Casey sabed a bit about synclines, I reckon, fo’ he kept faith in the camp, on’y he realized it ’ud take a heap of money to develop, meanin’ to dig through the porphyry, I suppose. Now they’ve found some mo’ of that float ore that the first crowd overlooked. Reckon that’ll peter out too, after a while. But capital may come in on this second staht. Some eastern folk were lookin’ over the place a while back. Took samples an’ Plimsoll got wise to what they amounted to.”
“And he hasn’t taken up any claims?” said Westlake. “Despite his gambling investment, I should have thought he would.”
“He’s got an interest in one or two, I fancy, or thinks he has,” said Sandy dryly.
Westlake halted and took a small steel hammer from his pocket with which he struck off a fragment of rock protruding from the ground. The cleavage showed purple. He walked slowly along for some fifty feet, kicking the soil with his foot, breaking off other samples to which he put his tongue.
“Taste good?” asked Sam.
“Not bad, if you’re looking for mineral. They’ve got a distinct flavor all their own, but I wetted them to show the color up more plainly. Here is the outcrop of a syncline reef. It may carry gold and it may not, but it’s wide enough, it’s near the surface and it’s as good a place as any. It dips deeper lower down, but I imagine you’ll find it floating out again on the other side of the valley. Runs like the ribs of a ship, with the valley the hull. And the ship’s rail, the gunwale in the rim-rock that outlines the auriferous deposit.”
Sandy, glancing across the valley to where the engineer pointed, nodded his head. “Your judgment goes with Casey’s,” he said. “Right across from here is where he located his claims, I take it. How about it, Mormon? Fits the description to a T.”
“Sure does,” assented Mormon. “Thar’s the notched boulder half-way up the hill, the three-forked dead pine on the ridge. If you locate here, marm,” he said to Miranda, “an’ we-all make a strike, we’ll be on the same vein, I reckon.”
“It’s all Greek to me,” said the spinster. “How do we locate? I’ve come this far, an’ I’ll see the thing through to some sort of finish. Me an’ young Ed’ll camp here. I figger we can git the car up. It’s gone through worse places. There’s water down there in the crick. We’ve got grub. When it’s gone we can buy more. How many claims can we take up an’ what’s the size of ’em, Mr. Westlake?”
The three partners left Miranda and the engineer measuring off and setting up their monuments at the corners of the claim. Young Bailey started for the faithful flivver. They started directly down the sidehill, making for the valley, in silence, like men with business ahead of them that called for action rather than words.
“Figger that tent is on them claims of Molly’s and our’n?” asked Sam, as they paused before they tackled the eastern slope. “Looked like it was to me.”
“Me too,” said Mormon.
“I wouldn’t wonder,” agreed Sandy. “Here’s the situation, as I sabe it. Plimsoll met up with Pat Casey from time to time. Molly said so. There’s other witnesses to that. Plimsoll’ll use some of them to swear that he grubstaked Casey. They’ll be some of his own crowd. No doubt Plimsoll got the location of the claims from the old records an’ these buckaroo pals of his, who are roostin’ on said location, knew jest where to go an’ stahted out well in front with their outfit. I don’t reckon we’ll find Plimsoll up there, though we ain’t seen him so far this mo’nin’, but I’ll bet our best bull ag’in’ a chunk of dogmeat that they’re on his pay-roll.”
“Shucks, it don’t make no difference whose pay-roll they’re on,” said Mormon. “They’re claim-jumpers an’, like you said, Sandy, a jump can be made two ways. Let’s go look ’em over.”
The tent was pitched on the hillside where the grade was too steep to permit of level ground enough for more than the actual floor space. The brown duck erection strained at the guy ropes of its upper side where the stakes had been driven deep into the soil. The chimney of a small stove came through the top of the cloth, guarded by a metal ring. Outside were boxes, saddles, an ax, kettles and pans, a portable grill and other camp
ing equipment. The tent flaps were open and showed cots on which blankets and clothing were roughly spread. On two of these beds men sprawled asleep. Five others were seated on boxes about a boulder that looked like porphyry outcrop. Its surface was flat enough to serve as a table. The five were playing poker. One was bearded and seemed the old-time miner. All boasted stubble on their chins, two wore mustaches. One was bald. Their clothes varied, from the miner’s faded blue overalls, high boots and flannel shirt, to soiled khaki and laced prospector’s footwear. One thing they all had in common, cartridge belts and guns, in plain view. Taken together they were not a prepossessing lot, playing their game in silence, looking up with a scowl and movements toward gun butts at the visitors. Two burros cropped at the scanty herbage above the tent. A demijohn stood between two of the box seats.
“I’ve seen that tent afore,” whispered Sam to Sandy. The latter nodded.
“Campin’ out, gents?” he asked amiably.
“No, we ain’t. These claims are preempted. Trespassers ain’t welcome. You’re invited to move on.”
“That’s a new name fo’ it,” said Sandy pleasantly. “New to me. Preempted.”
“What in hell are you driving at?” asked the other. “This is private property.”
“Property of Jim Plimsoll?”
“None of yore damned business.”
There was a movement in the tent. One of the men got up from his cot and stood yawning in the entrance, one hand on the pole. The other snored on. Sandy, with Mormon and Sam, stood just above the group on the narrow bench that furnished the floor for the tent. They had little doubt that the jumpers knew who they were, though they recognized none of them by sight. There was a hesitancy toward action that might have been born out of respect to Sandy’s two guns or a foreknowledge of his reputation in handling them, aside from the armament of his partners. Sandy’s hands rested lightly on his hips, his thumbs hooked in his belt, fingers grazing the butts of his guns. There was a smile on his lips but none in his eyes. His tone and manner were easy.
