THE GOLDEN FORTUNE
A little way up from the trail that goes toward Rex Monte, not far fromthe limit of deep snows, there is what looks to be a round dark hole inthe side of the mountain. It is really the ruined tunnel of an old mine.Formerly a house stood on the ore dump at one side of the tunnel, alittle unpainted cabin of pine; but a great avalanche of snow and stonescarried them, both the house and the dump, away. The cabin was built andowned by a solitary miner called Jerry, and whether he ever had anyother name no one in the town below Kearsarge now remembers.
Jerry was old and lean, and his hair, which had been dark when he wasyoung, was now bleached to the color of the iron-rusted rocks about hismine. For thirty years he had prospected and mined through that countryfrom Kearsarge to the Coso Hills, but always in the pay of other men,and at last he had hit upon this ledge on Rex Monte. To all who looked,it showed a very slender vein between the walls of country rock, and theore of so poor a quality that with all his labor he could do no morethan keep alive; but to all who listened, Jerry could tell a remarkablestory of what it had been, and what he expected it to be. Very manyyears ago he had discovered it at the end of a long prospect, when hewas tired and quite discouraged for that time. There was not muchpassing then on the Rex Monte, and Jerry drew out of the trail here inthe middle of the afternoon to rest in the shadow of a great rock. Sowhile he lay there very weary, between sleeping and waking, he gazed outalong the ground, which was all strewn with rubble between the stiff,scant grass. As he looked it seemed that certain bits of broken stonepicked themselves out of the heap, and grew larger, in some way moreconspicuous, until, Jerry averred, they winked at him. Then he reachedout to draw them in with his hand, and saw that they were allbesprinkled with threads and specks of gold. You may guess that Jerrywas glad, then that he sprang up and began to search for more stones,and so found a trail of them, and followed it through the grass stemsand the heather until he came to the ledge cropping out by a dike ofweathered rocks. And in those days the ledge was ah, so rich! Now itseemed that Jerry was to have a mine of his own. So he named it theGolden Fortune, and told no man what he had found, but went down to thetown which lies in a swale at the foot of Kearsarge, and brought back asmuch as was needful for working the mine in a simple way.
It was nearing the end of the summer, when the hills expect the longthunder and drumming rain, and, not many weeks after that, the quietstorms that bring the snow. Jerry had enough to do to make all safe andcomfortable at the Golden Fortune before winter set in. It was too steephere on the hill-slope for the deep snows to trouble him much, so hebuilt his cabin against the rock, with a covered way from it to thetunnel of the mine, that he might work on all winter at no uneasebecause of storms.
It was perhaps a month later, with Jerry as busy as any of the wild folkthereabout, and the nights turning off bitter cold with frost. Ofmornings he could hear the thin tinkle of the streams along fringes ofdelicate ice. It was the afternoon of a day that fell warm and dry witha promise of snow in the air. Jerry was roofing in his cabin, so intentthat a voice hailed him before he was aware that there was a man on thetrail. Jerry knew at once by his dress and his speech that he was astranger in those parts, and he saw that he was not very well preparedfor the mountain passes and the night. He knew this, I say, with theback of his mind, but took no note of it, for he was so occupied withhis house and his mine. He suffered a fear to have any man know of hisgood fortune lest it should somehow slip away from him. So when thestranger asked him some questions of the trail, it seemed that whatJerry most wished was to get rid of him as quickly as possible. He wasa young man, ruddy and blue-eyed, and a foreigner, what was called incareless miners' talk, "some kind of a Dutchman," and could not makehimself well understood. Jerry gathered that he desired to know if hewere headed right for the trail that went over to the Bighorn Mine,where he had the promise of work. So they nodded and shrugged, and Jerrymade assurance with his hands, as much as to say, it is no great way;and when the young man had looked wistfully at the cabin and the bodingsky, he moved slowly up the trail. When he came to the turn where itgoes toward Rex Monte, he lingered on the ridge to wave good-by, soJerry waved again, and the man dropped out of sight. At that moment thesun failed behind a long gray film that deepened and spread over allthat quarter of the sky.
Jerry had cause to remember the stranger in the night and fret for him,for the wind came up and began to seek in the canyon, and the snow fellslanting down. It fell three days and nights. All that while the grayveil hung about Jerry's house; now and then the wind would scoop a greatlane in it to show how the drifts lay on the heather, then shut in tightand dim with a soft, weary sound, and Jerry, though he worked on theGolden Fortune, could not get the young stranger out of his mind.
When the sun and the frost had made a crust over the snow able to bearup a man, he went over the Pass to Bighorn to inquire if the strangerhad come in, though he did not tell at that time, nor until long after,how late it was when the man passed his cabin, how wistfully he turnedaway, nor what promise was in the air. The snow lay all about the Pass,lightly on the pines, deeply in the hollows, so deeply that a man mightlie under it and no one be the wiser. And there it seemed the strangermust be, for at the Bighorn they had not heard of him, but if he wereunder the snow, there he must lie until the spring thaw. Of whateverhappened to him, Jerry saw that he must bear the blame, for, by his ownaccount, from that day the luck vanished from the Golden Fortune; notthat the ore dwindled or grew less, but there were no more of the goldenspecks. With all he could do after that, Jerry could not maintainhimself in the cabin on the slope of Rex Monte. So it came about thatthe door was often shut, and the picks rusted in the tunnel of theGolden Fortune for months together, while Jerry was off earning wages inmore prosperous mines.
All his days Jerry could not quite get his mind away from the earlierpromise of the mine, and as often as he thought of that he thought ofthe stranger whom he had sent over the trail on the evening of thestorm. Gradually it came into his mind in a confused way that the twothings were mysteriously connected, that he had sent away his luck withthe stranger into the deep snow. For certainly Jerry held himselfaccountable, and in that country between Kearsarge and the Coso Hills tobe inhospitable is the worst offense.
Every year or so he came back to the mine to work a little, andsometimes it seemed to promise better and sometimes not. Finally, Jerryargued that the luck would not come back to it until he had made good tosome other man the damage he had done to one. This set him looking foran opportunity. Jerry mentioned his belief so often that he came atlast, as is the way of miners, to accept it as a thing prophesied of oldtime. Afterward, when he grew old himself, and came to live out his lifeat the Golden Fortune, he would be always looking along the trail atevening time for passers-by, and never one was allowed to go on whocould by any possibility be persuaded to stay the night in Jerry'scabin. Often when there was a wind, and the snow came slanting down,Jerry fancied he heard one shouting in the drift; then he would light alantern and sally forth into the storm, peering and crying.
About that time, when he went down into the town below Kearsarge once ina month or so for supplies, the people smiled and wagged their heads,but Jerry conceived that they whispered together about the unkindnesshe had done to the stranger so many years gone, and he grew shyer andwent less often among men. So he companioned more with the wild things,and burrowed deeper into the hill. His cabin weathered to a semblance ofthe stones, rabbits ran in and out at the door, and deer drank at hisspring.
From the slope where the cabin stood, the trail, which led up from thetown, winding with the winding of the canyon, went over the Pass, and sointo a region of high meadows and high, keen peaks, the feeding-groundof deer and mountain sheep. The ravine of Rex Monte was the easiestgoing from the high valleys to the foothills, where all winter the feedkept green. Every year Jerry marked the trooping of the wild kindred tothe foothill pastures when the snow lay heavily on all the higher land,and saw their returning
when the spring pressed hard upon the borders ofthe melting drifts. So, as he grew older and stayed closer by his mine,Jerry learned to look to the furred and feathered folk for news of howthe seasons fared, and what was doing on the high ridges. When thegrouse and quail went down, it was a sign that the snow had covered thegrass and small seed-bearing herbs; the passing of deer--shapely bulksin a mist of cloud--was a portent of deep drifts over the buckthorn andthe heather. Lastly, if he saw the light fleeting of the mountain sheep,he looked for wild and bitter work on the crest of Kearsarge and RexMonte. It was mostly at such times that Jerry heard voices in the storm,and he would go stumbling about with his lantern into the swirl offalling snow, until the wind that played up and down the great canyon,like the draughts in a chimney, made his very bones a-cold. Then hewould creep back to drowse by the warmth of his fire and dream that theblue-eyed stranger had come back and brought the luck of the GoldenFortune. So he passed the years until the winter of the Big Snow. It wasso called many winters after, for no other like it ever fell on the eastslope of Kearsarge.
It came early in the season, following a week of warm weather, when thesky was full of a dry mist that showed ghostly gray against the sun andthe moon; great bodies of temperate air moved about the pines with asound of moaning and distress. The deer, warned by their wild sense,went down before ever a flake fell, and Jerry, watching, shivered insympathy, recalling that so they had run together, and such a spell ofwarm weather had gone before a certain snow, years ago before the luckdeparted from the Golden Fortune. As the fume of the storm closed inabout the cabin, and flakes began to form lightly in the middle air, theold man's wits began to fumble among remembrances of the stranger on thetrail, and he would hearken for voices. The snow began, then increased,and fell steadily, wet and blinding.
The third night of its falling Jerry waked out of a doze to hear hisname shouted, muffled and feebly, through the drift. So it seemed tohim, and he made haste to answer it. There was no wind; on the verysteep slope where the cabin stood was a knee-deep level, soft andclogging; in the hollows it piled halfway up the pines. Jerry's lanternthrew a faint and stifled gleam. There was no further cry, but somethingstruggled on the trail below him; dim, unhuman shapes wrestled in thesmother of the snow. Jerry sent them a hail of assurance cut off shortby the white wall of the storm.
There was a little sag in the hill-front where the trail turned off tothe cabin, and here the moist snow fell in a lake, into which the trailran like a spit, and was lost. Down this trail at the last fierce end ofthe storm came the great wild sheep, the bighorn, the heaviest-headed,lightest-footed, winter-proof sheep of the mountains that God shepherdson the high battlements of the hills. Down they came when there was nomeadow, nor thicket, nor any smallest twig of heather left uncovered onthe highlands, and took the lake of soggy snow by Jerry's cabin in thedark. They had come far under the weight of the great curved hornsthrough the clogging drifts. Here where the trail failed in the whitesmudge they found no footing, floundered at large, sinking belly-deepwhere they stood, and not daring to stand lest they sink deeper. If anycry of theirs, hoarse and broken, had reached old Jerry's dreaming, theyspent no further breath on it. By something the same sense that made himaware of their need, Jerry understood rather than saw them strainthrough the falling veil of snow. It was a sharp struggle without soundas they won out of the wet drift to the firmer ground. They went on likeshadows pursued by the ghost of a light that wavered with the old man'swavering feet. It was no night for a man to be abroad in, but Jerryplowed on in the drift till he found the work that was cut out for him.There where the snow was deepest, yielding like wool, he found theoldest wether of the flock, sunk to the shoulders, too feeble for thestruggle, and still too noble for complaining. How many years had Jerrywaited to do a good turn on the trail where he had done his worst: andin all these years he had lost the sense of distinction which should bebetween man and beast. He put his shoulder under the fore shoulder ofthe sheep, where he could feel the heart pound with certain fear.
Jerry knew the trail, as he knew the floor of his mine, by the feel ofthe ground under him, so as he heaved and guided with his shoulder, thegreat ram grew quieter and lent himself to the effort till they cameclear of the swale, and the sweat ran down from Jerry's forehead. Butthe bighorn could do no more. In the soft fleece of the snow he stoodcowed and trembling. The snow came on faster, and wiped out the trail ofthe flock; he made no motion to go after. Such a death comes to the wildsheep of the mountains often enough: to fail from old age in some suddenstorm, to sink in the loose snow and await the quest of the wolf, or thecolder mercy of the drift. He turned his back to the storm which beganto slant a little with the rising wind, and looked not once at Jerry norat the hills where he had been bred. But Jerry cast his eye upon thesheep, which was full heavier then than he, and then up at the steepwhere his cabin stood, remembering that he had nothing there that mightserve a sheep for food. Then he bent down again, and by dint of pullingand pushing, and by a dim sense that began to filter through the man'sbrain to the beast, they made some progress on the trail. They went overbroken boulders and floundered in the drifts, where Jerry half carriedthe sheep and was half borne up and supported by the spread of the greathorns. They crossed Pine Creek, which ran dumbly under the snow, housedover by the stream tangle. The flakes hissed softly on Jerry's lanternand struck blindingly on his eyes, but ever as they went the sheep waseased of his labor, grew assured, and carried himself courageously.Finally they came where the storm thinned out, and whole hill-slopescovered with buckthorn and cherry warded off the snow by springy arches,and Jerry drew up to rest under a long-leaved pine while the sheep wenton alone, nodding his great horns under the branches of the scrub. Heneither lingered nor looked back, and met the new chance of life with asmuch quietness as the chance of death. Jerry was worn and weary, andthere was a singing in his brain. The pine trees broke the wind and shedoff the snow in curling wreaths. It seemed to the old man most good torest, and he drowsed upon his feet.
"If I sleep I shall freeze," he said; and it seemed on the whole apleasant thing to do. So it went on for a little space; then there camea shape out of the dark, a hand shook him by the shoulder, and a voicecalled him by name. Then he started out of dreaming as he had started atthat other call an hour ago, and it seemed not strange to him, thenight, nor the storm, nor the face of the blue-eyed man that shone outof the dark, but whether by the light of his lantern he could not tell.He shook the snow from his shoulders.
"I have expected you long," he said.
"And now I have come," said the stranger and smiled.
"Have you brought the luck again?"
"Come and see," said the man.
Then Jerry took his hand and leaned upon him, and together they went upthe trail between the drifts.
"You bear me no ill-will for what I did?" said Jerry.
And the stranger answered, "None."
"I have wished it undone many times," said the old man. "I have triedthis night to repay it."
"By what you have done this night I am repaid," said the stranger.
"It was only a sheep."
"It was one of God's creatures," said the man.
So they went on up the trail, and it seemed sometimes to Jerry that hewandered alone in the dark, that he was cold, and his lantern had goneout; and again he would hear the stranger comfort and encourage him. Atlast they came toward the cabin, and saw the light stream out of thewindow and the fire leap in the stove. Then Jerry thought of the mine,and that the stranger had brought back the luck again. It seemed thatthe young man had promised him this, though he could not be sure ofthat, nor very clear in his mind on any point except that he had comehome again. But as he drew near, it seemed a brightness came out of thetunnel of the mine, a warmth and a great light. As he came into ittremblingly, he saw that the light came from the walls, and from thelode at the far end of it, and it was the brightness of pure gold. AndJerry smiled and stretched out his arms to it, making sure that the luckhad co
me again.
After the week of the Big Snow there were people in the town whoremembered Jerry, and wondered how he fared. So when the snow had acrust over it, they came up by the windy canyon and sought him in hishouse, where the door stood open and a charred wick flared feebly in thelamp, and in his mine, where they found him at the far end of thetunnel, and it seemed as if he slept and smiled.
"It is a worthless lode," they said, "but he loved it."
So they took powder and made a blast, and with it a great heap ofstones, shutting off the end of the tunnel from the outer air, and soleft him with his luck and the Golden Fortune.