A Century of Great Western Stories

by A Century of Great Western Stories (retail) (epub)

  Nightfall found him by the edge of the stream, his eyes wrestling with the gathering darkness over the washing of a five-dollar pan.

  “Wisht I had an electric light to go on working,” he said.

  He found sleep difficult that night. Many times he composed himself and closed his eyes for slumber to overtake him; but his blood pounded with too strong a desire, and many times his eyes opened and he murmured wearily, “Wisht it was sunup.”

  Sleep came to him in the end, but his eyes were open with the first paling of the stars, and the gray of dawn caught him with breakfast and climbing the hillside in the direction of the secret abiding-place of Mr. Pocket.

  The first crosscut the man made, there was space for only three holes, so narrow had become the pay streak and so close was he to the fountainhead of the golden stream he had been following for four days.

  “Be ca’m, Bill; be ca’m,” he admonished himself, as he broke ground for the final hole where the sides of the V had at last come together in a point.

  “I’ve got the almighty cinch on you, Mr. Pocket, an’ you can’t lose me,” he said many times as he sank the hole deeper and deeper.

  Four feet, five feet, six feet, he dug his way down into the earth. The digging grew harder. His pick grated on broken rock. He examined the rock. “Rotten quartz” was his conclusion as, with the shovel, he cleared the bottom of the hole of loose dirt. He attacked the crumbling quartz with the pick, bursting the disintegrating rock asunder with every stroke.

  He thrust his shovel into the loose mass. His eye caught a gleam of yellow. He dropped the shovel and squatted suddenly on his heels. As a farmer rubs the clinging earth from fresh-dug potatoes, so the man, a piece of rotten quartz held in both hands, rubbed the dirt away.

  “Sufferin’ Sardanopolis!” he cried. “Lumps an’ chunks of it! Lumps an’ chunks of it!”

  It was only half rock he held in his hand. The other half was virgin gold. He dropped it into his pan and examined another piece. Little yellow was to be seen, but with his strong fingers he crumbled the rotten quartz away till both hands were filled with glowing yellow. He rubbed the dirt away from fragment after fragment, tossing them into the gold-pan. It was a treasure hole. So much had the quartz rotted away that there was less of it than there was of gold. Now and again he found a piece to which no rock clung—a piece that was all gold. A chunk where the pick had laid open the heart of the gold glittered like a handful of yellow jewels, and he cocked his head at it and slowly turned it around and over to observe the rich play of the light upon it.

  “Talk about yer too-much-gold diggin’s!” the man snorted contemptuously. “Why, this diggin’ ’d make it look like thirty cents. This diggin’ is all gold. An’ right here an’ now I name this yere canyon All Gold Canyon, b’gosh!”

  Still squatting on his heels, he continued examining the fragments and tossing them into the pan. Suddenly there came to him a premonition of danger. It seemed a shadow had fallen upon him. But there was no shadow. His heart had given a great jump up into his throat and was choking him. Then his blood slowly chilled, and he felt the sweat of his shirt cold against his flesh.

  He did not spring up nor look around. He did not move. He was considering the nature of the premonition he had received, trying to locate the source of the mysterious force that had warned him, striving to sense the imperative presence of the unseen thing that threatened him. There is an aura of things hostile, made manifest by messengers too refined for the senses to know; and this aura he felt, but knew not how he felt it. His was the feeling as when a cloud passes over the sun. It seemed that between him and life had passed something dark and smothering and menacing; a gloom, as it were, that swallowed up life and made for death—his death.

  Every force of his being impelled him to spring up and confront the unseen danger, but his soul dominated the panic, and he remained squatting on his heels, in his hands a chunk of gold. He did not dare to look around, but he knew by now that there was something behind him and above him. He made believe to be interested in the gold in his hand. He examined it critically, turned it over and over, and rubbed the dirt from it. And all the time he knew that something behind him was looking at the gold over his shoulder.

  Still feigning interest in the chunk of gold in his hand, he listened intently and he heard the breathing of the thing behind him. His eyes searched the ground in front of him for a weapon, but he saw only the uprooted gold, worthless to him now in his extremity. There was his pick, a handy weapon on occasion; but this was not such an occasion. The man realized his predicament. He was in a narrow hole that was seven feet deep. His head did not come to the surface of the ground. He was in a trap.

  He remained squatting on his heels. He was quite cool and collected; but his mind, considering every factor, showed him only his helplessness. He continued rubbing the dirt from the quartz fragments and throwing the gold into the pan. There was nothing else for him to do. Yet he knew that he would have to rise up, sooner or later, and face the danger that breathed at his back. The minutes passed, and with the passage of each minute he knew that by so much he was nearer the time when he must stand up, or else—and his wet shirt went cold against his flesh again at the thought—he might receive death as he stooped there over his treasure.

  Still he squatted on his heels, rubbing dirt from gold and debating in just what manner he should rise up. He might rise up with a rush and claw his way out of the hole to meet whatever threatened on the even footing above ground. Or he might rise up slowly and carelessly, and feign casually to discover the thing that breathed at his back. His instinct and every fighting fiber of his body favored the mad, clawing rush to the surface. His intellect, and the craft thereof, favored the slow and cautious meeting with the thing that menaced and which he could not see. And while he debated, a loud, crashing noise burst in his ear. At the same instant he received a stunning blow on the left side of his back, and from the point of impact felt a rush of flame through his flesh. He sprang up in the air but, halfway to his feet, collapsed. His body crumpled in like a leaf withered in sudden heat, and he came down, his chest across his pan of gold, his face in the dirt and rock, his legs tangled and twisted because of the restricted space at the bottom of the hole. His legs twitched convulsively several times. His body was shaken with a mighty ague. There was a slow expansion of the lungs, accompanied by a deep sigh. Then the air was slowly, very slowly, exhaled, and his body as slowly flattened itself down into inertness.

  Above, revolver in hand, a man was peering down over the edge of the hole. He peered for a long time at the prone and motionless body beneath him. After awhile the stranger sat down on the edge of the hole so that he could see into it, and rested the revolver on his knee. Reaching his hand into a pocket, he drew out a wisp of brown paper. Into this he dropped a few crumbs of tobacco. The combination became a cigarette, brown and squat, with the ends turned in. Not once did he take his eyes from the body at the bottom of the hole. He lighted the cigarette and drew its smoke into his lungs with a caressing intake of the breath. He smoked slowly. Once the cigarette went out and he relighted it. And all the while he studied the body beneath him.

  In the end he tossed the cigarette stub away and rose to his feet. He moved to the edge of the hole. Spanning it, a hand resting on each edge, and with the revolver still in the right hand, he muscled his body down into the hole. While his feet were yet a yard from the bottom, he released his hands and dropped down.

  At the instant his feet struck bottom he saw the pocket-miner’s arm leap out, and his own legs knew a swift, jerking grip that overthrew him. In the nature of the jump his revolver hand was above his head. Swiftly as the grip had flashed about his legs, just as swiftly he brought the revolver down. He was still in the air, his fall in process of completion, when he pulled the trigger. The explosion was deafening in the confined space. The smoke filled the hole so that he could see nothing. He struck the bottom on his back, and like a cat the pocket-miner’s body was
on top of him. Even as the miner’s body passed on top, the stranger crooked in his right arm to fire; and even in that instant the miner, with a quick thrust of elbow, struck his wrist. The muzzle was thrown up and the bullet thudded into the dirt of the side of the hole.

  The next instant the stranger felt the miner’s hand grip his wrist. The struggle was now for the revolver. Each man strove to turn it against the other’s body. The smoke in the hole was clearing. The stranger, lying on his back, was beginning to see dimly. But suddenly he was blinded by a handful of dirt deliberately flung into his eyes by his antagonist. In that moment of shock his grip on the revolver was broken. In the next moment he felt a smashing darkness descend upon his brain, and in the midst of the darkness even the darkness ceased.

  But the pocket-miner fired again and again, until the revolver was empty. Then he tossed it from him and, breathing heavily, sat down on the dead man’s legs.

  The miner was sobbing and struggling for breath. “Measly skunk!” he panted, “a-campin’ on my trail an’ lettin’ me do the work, an’ then shootin’ me in the back!”

  He was half crying from anger and exhaustion. He peered at the face of the dead man. It was sprinkled with loose dirt and gravel, and it was difficult to distinguish the features.

  “Never laid eyes on him before,” the minor concluded his scrutiny. “Just a common an’ ordinary thief, hang him! An’ he shot me in the back! He shot me in the back!”

  He opened his shirt and felt himself, front and back, on his left side.

  “Went clean through, and no harm done!” he cried jubilantly. “I’ll bet he aimed all right; but he drew the gun over when he pulled the trigger—the cur! But I fixed ’m! Oh, I fixed ’m!”

  His fingers were investigating the bullet hole in his side, and a shade of regret passed over his face. “It’s goin’ to be stiffer’n hell,” he said. “An’ it’s up to me to get mended an’ get out o’ here.”

  He crawled out of the hole and went down the hill to his camp. Half an hour later he returned, leading his packhorse. His open shirt disclosed the rude bandages with which he had dressed his wound. He was slow and awkward with his left-hand movements, but that did not prevent his using the arm.

  The bight of the pack rope under the dead man’s shoulders enabled him to heave the body out of the hole. Then he set to work gathering up his gold. He worked steadily for several hours, pausing often to rest his stiffening shoulder and to exclaim, “He shot me in the back, the measly skunk! He shot me in the back!”

  When his treasure was quite cleaned up and wrapped securely into a number of blanket-covered parcels he made an estimate of his value.

  “Four hundred pounds, or I’m a Hottentot,” he concluded. “Say two hundred in quartz an’ dirt—that leaves two hundred pounds of gold. Bill! Wake up! Two hundred pounds of gold! Forty thousand dollars! An’ it’s yourn—all yourn!”

  He scratched his head delightedly and his fingers blundered into an unfamiliar groove. They quested along it for several inches. It was a crease through his scalp where the second bullet had ploughed.

  He walked angrily over to the dead man.

  “You would, would you?” he bullied. “You would, eh? Well, I fixed you good an’ plenty, an’ I’ll give you a decent burial, too. That’s more ’n you’d have done for me.”

  He dragged the body to the edge of the hole and toppled it in. It struck the bottom with a dull crash, on its side, the face twisted up to the light. The miner peered down at it.

  “An’ you shot me in the back!” he said accusingly.

  With pick and shovel he filled the hole. Then he loaded the gold on his horse. It was too great a load for the animal, and when he had gained his camp he transferred part of it to his saddle horse. Even so, he was compelled to abandon a portion of his outfit—pick and shovel and gold-pan, extra food and cooking utensils, and diverse odds and ends.

  The sun was at the zenith when the man forced the horses at the screen of vines and creepers. To climb the huge boulders the animals were compelled to uprear and struggle blindly through the tangled mass of vegetation. Once the saddle horse fell heavily and the man removed the pack to get the animal on its feet. After it started on its way again the man thrust his head out from among the leaves and peered up at the hillside.

  “The measly skunk!” he said, and disappeared.

  There was a ripping and tearing of vines and boughs. The trees surged back and forth, marking the passage of the animals through the midst of them. There was a clashing of steel-shod hoofs on stone, and now and again a sharp cry of command. Then the voice of the man was raised in song.

  “Tu’n around an’ tu’n yo’ face

  Untoe them sweet hills of grace

  (D’ pow’rs of sin you’ am scornin’!).

  Look about an’ look aroun’

  Fling yo’sin-pack on d’ groun’

  (To’ will meet wid d’ Lord in d’ mornin’!).”

  The song grew faint and fainter, and through the silence crept back the spirit of the place. The stream once more drowsed and whispered; the hum of the mountain bees rose sleepily. Down through the perfume-weighted air fluttered the snowy fluffs of the cottonwoods. The butterflies drifted in and out among the trees, and over all blazed the quiet sunshine. Only remained the hoof marks in the meadow and the torn hillside to mark the boisterous trail of the life that had broken the peace of the place and passed on.

  B. M. (Bertha Muzzy) Bower (1871–1940) was the first woman to write traditional cowboy stories. Beginning with Chip of the Flying U, she published more than seventy novels of the old and new West, most of them featuring the often humorous adventures of Chip and his comrades on the Flying U ranch. “The Lamb of the Flying U,” which recounts the spectacular and surprising fashion in which a seeming tenderfoot named Pink is initiated into the flock, is one of several shorter works about the ranch and its “Happy Family.” She was extremely popular during the first four decades of this century, but at her best she was more than simply an entertainer. Her depiction of the day-to-day conditions of cowboys provided a vivid and realistic portrayal of life on a large cattle ranch circa the 1880s. She knew whereof she wrote: she herself grew up on just such a ranch.

  The Lamb of the Flying U

  B. M. Bower

  “’Scuse me,” said a voice behind Chip Bennett, foreman of the Flying U. “Lookin’ for men?”

  For two days the Flying U herd had grazed within five miles of Dry Lake waiting for boxcars along the Montana Central line, which had never come. Then two of his men had gone to town on a spree and continued missing. They were not top hands, but every hand is vital in shipping time, so Chip had ridden into town to bring them back, or acquire facsimiles thereof.

  He twisted his head to look down at a dandified little fellow who was staring up at him with bright blue eyes. He wore a silk shirt, neatly pressed gray trousers held up by a russet belt, and gleaming tan shoes. Golden hair, freshly barbered, just showed its edges under an immaculate Panama hat. The foreman was slightly taken aback.

  “Sorry, son,” he muttered. “I want men to work.”

  The fashion plate flashed a pair of dimples that any woman would have envied.

  “My mammy done tol’ me,” he murmured, “never to judge a book by its cover.”

  “We were speakin’ of men,” Chip reminded him. “And work. I can’t quite see you punchin’ cows in them duds. Look me up when you’ve growed a bit, son.”

  A hand on his arm stopped him as he was turning away again. “Say, did you ever hear of Old Eagle Creek Smith of the Cross L?”

  “Why, sure,” said Chip. “I—”

  “—Or of Rowdy Vaughan, or a fellow up on Milk River they call Pink?”

  “I’ll say!” Chip Bennett turned back. “I’ve heard tell of Eagle Creek Smith. And Pink—they say he’s a bronc fighter and a little devil. Why?”

  The blonde shoved his Panama back and grinned into Chip’s face. “Nothin’,” he said. “I’m glad to meet y
uh. I’m Pink.”

  Chip digested that in silence, his suddenly alerted eyes measuring the slender figure from Panama to polished shoe tips. “You travelin’ in disguise?” he asked.

  “It’s a long story,” Pink said, and sighed. He found an empty case, upended it in the shade, and sat down to roll a cigarette. “I helped Rowdy Vaughan trail a herd of Cross L stock across the Canadian line, bein’ a friend of his an’ anxious to do him a favor. But I ain’t long in our friendly neighbor country to the north when one of them boneheaded grangers gets unfriendly and I has to scatter his features around a bit to pound some sense into his thick skull.

  “Then up rises a bunch of redcoats and I fogs it back across the line just about one jump ahead of the Mounties. I headed back to the Upper Milk River, but the old bunch was gone and it was plumb lonesome, so I sold my saddle an’ gatherin’ and reformed from punchin’ cows.”

  He grinned his engaging, dimpled grin. “Well, I took the rattlers back to Minnesota and spent all winter with the home folks chewin’ the fatted calf. It was mighty nice, too, except that the female critters outnumbered the males back there and each one carries a bear trap an’ a pair of handcuffs. I dodged the traps as long as I could, but I seen I was getting’ right gun-shy, so I sloped.

  “Besides, even though I’d swore off cowpunchin’, I was getting plumb mad at all the fences surroundin’ everything, and lonesome to straddle a cayuse again. Seems like cow nursin’ is in my blood after all. For Pete’s sake, old-timer, stake me to a string! You won’t be sorry.”