CHAPTER VIII
HELP FOR THE COW BUSINESS
He had no goldpan of his own, since this was not a mining country, andhis ambition had run in a different channel. He, therefore, took thetin washbasin down to the creek and dumped the sand into it. Then,squatting on his boot-heels at the edge of the stream, he filled thebasin with water and rocked it gently with a rotary motion that provedhim no novice at the work. His eyes were sharper and more intent intheir gaze than Billy Louise had ever seen them, and, though hismovements were unhurried, they were full of eagerness held in leash.
Several times he refilled the basin, and the amount of sand grew lessand less, until there remained only a few spoonfuls of coarse graveland a sediment that clung to the bottom of the basin and movedsluggishly around and around. He picked out the tiny pebbles one byone and threw them in the creek. He peered sharply at a small bit andheld it in his fingers, while he bent his face close to the pan, hiseyes two gimlets boring into the contents.
He got up stiffly, backed, and sat down upon the low bank with his feetfar apart and his shoulders bent, while he stared at the little bit ofmineral in his fingers.
"Coarse gold, and not such a hell of a lot," he pronounced to himselfwith careful impartiality. "But it's pay dirt, and if there's enoughof it, it'll help a lot at this end of the cow business." He sat therea long time, thinking and planning and holding himself sternly to coldreality, rejecting every possibility that had the slightest symptom ofbeing an air-castle. He did not intend to let this thing turn his heador betray him into any foolishness whatsoever. He was going to look atthe thing cold-bloodedly and put his imagination in cold storage forthe present.
His first impulse--to ride straight to the Wolverine and show BillyLouise these three tiny nuggets--he rejected as a bit of foolishness.He was perfectly willing to trust Billy Louise with any secret hepossessed, but he knew that he would be feeding her imagination withdangerous fuel. She would begin dreaming and building castles andprospecting for herself, very likely; and that trail led oftenest toblack disappointment. If he made good, he would tell her--when he toldher something else. And if the whole thing were just a fluke, a straydeposit of a little gold that did not amount to anything, then it wouldbe best for her to know nothing about it. Ward felt in himself, atthat moment, the keen foretaste of bitter disappointment which wouldfollow such a certainty. He did not want Billy Louise exposed to thatpain.
He would tell her about the wolves, of course. It was pretty hard notto tell her everything that concerned himself, but the streak of nativereticence in his nature had been strengthened by the vicissitudes ofthe life he had lived. While Billy Louise had found the sole weakpoint which made that reticence scarcely a barrier to full confidence,still he knew that he would keep this from her if he made up his mindto it.
He would not tell anybody. He raised his head and looked at the hillswhere his cattle would feed, and pictured it cluttered withgold-hunters, greedy, undesirable interlopers doomed to disappointmentin the long run. Ward had seen the gold fever sweep through acommunity and spoil life for the weak ones who took to chasing thewill-o'-the-wisp of sudden wealth. Tramps of the pick-and-panbrigade--they should not come swarming into these hills on anywild-goose chase, if he could help it. And he could and should. Thiswas not, properly speaking, a gold country. He knew it. The rockformations did not point to any great deposit of the mineral, and if hehad found one, it was a fluke, an accident. He resolved that his firstconsideration should be the keeping of his secret for the mentalwell-being of his fellows.
Ward did not put it quite so altruistically. His thoughts formed intosentences.
"This is cattle country. If men want to hunt gold, they can do theirhunting somewhere else. They can't go digging up the whole blamedcountry just on the chance of finding another pocket like this one.I'm in the cattle business myself. If I find any gold, it'll go intocattle and stay there; and there won't be any long-haired freakspestering around here if I can help it, and I reckon maybe I can, allright.
"I'd sure like to talk it over with Billy, but what she don't knowwon't worry her; and I don't know yet what I've gone up against. Maybeold Dame Fortune's just played another joke on me--played me for a foolagain. I'll take a chance, but I won't give that little girl downbelow there anything to spoil her sleep."
Ward's memory was like glue, and while it held things he would givemuch to forget, still it served him well. He had ridden past a tiny,partly caved-in dugout, months ago, where some wandering prospector hadcamped while he braved the barrenness of the bills and streamshereabout. Ward had dismounted and glanced into the cavelike hut.Now, after he had eaten a few mouthfuls of dinner, he rode straightover to that dugout and got the goldpan he remembered to have seenthere. It was not in the best condition, of course. It was batteredand bent, but it would do for the present.
By the time he reached the wolf den, the sun was nearing the westernrim of hills, but Ward had time to examine the locality more carefullythan he had done at first and to wash a couple of pans of gravel. Thetest elated him perceptibly; for while there did not seem to be themakings of a millionaire in that gravel bank, he judged roughly that hecould make a plumber's wages if he worked hard enough--and that lookedpretty good to a fellow who had worked all his life for forty dollars amonth. "Two-bits a pan, just about," he put it to himself. "And I'llhave to pack the dirt down here to the creek; but I'll dig a nicelittle bunch of cattle out of that gravel bank before snow flies, or Imiss my guess a mile."
As nearly as he could figure, he had chanced upon a split channel. Forages, he judged, the water had run upon that ledge, leaving the streakof gravel and what little gold it had carried down from the mountains.Then some freshet had worn over the edge of the break in the rock untilthe ledge and its deposit was left high and dry on the side of thegulch, while the creek flowed through the gully it had formed below.It might not be the correct explanation, but it satisfied Ward andencouraged him to believe that the streak of pay gravel lay along theledge within easy reach.
He tried to trace the ledge up and down the gulch and to estimate theprobable extent of that pay streak. Then he gave it up inself-defense. "I've got to watch my dodgers," he admonished himself,"or I'll go plumb loco and imagine I'm a millionaire. I'll pan what Ican get at and let it go at that. And I've got to count what goldshows up in the sack--and no more. Good Lord! I can't afford to makea fool of myself at this stage of the game! I've got to sit right downon my imagination and stick to hard-boiled facts."
He went home in a very good humor with himself and the world, for allthat. So far as he could see, the thing that had been bothering himwas settled most satisfactorily. He had wanted to spend the summer onhis claim, making improvements and watching over his cattle. There wasfence to build and some hay to cut; and he would like to build anotherroom on to the cabin. Ward had certain fastidious instincts, and herebelled inwardly at eating, sleeping, and cooking all in one smallroom. But he had not been able to solve the problem of earning aliving while he did all this--to say nothing of buying supplies. Andhe really needed a team and tools, if he meant to put up any hay.
Now, with that pay gravel within reach, and the gold runningtwenty-five cents to the pan, and the occasional tiny nuggets jumpingup the yield now and then, he could go ahead and do the things hewanted to do. And he could dream about having a certain gray-eyed girlfor his wife, without calling himself names afterward.
So he set to work the next morning in dead earnest with pick, shovel,and pan, to make the most of his little find. He shoveled the dirt andgravel into a gunny sack, threw the sack as far as he could over theledge at the end, where it was not hidden and cluttered with thecherry-trees and service berries below, and when it stopped rolling, hecarried it the rest of the way. Then he panned it in the little creek,watching like a hawk for nuggets and the finer gold. It wasback-breaking work, and he felt that he earned every cent he got. Butthe cents were there, in good gold, and he was perfe
ctly willing towork for what he received in this world.
After a couple of weeks he stopped long enough to make a hurried tripto Hardup, a little town forty miles farther up in the hills. In thelittle bank there he exchanged his gold harvest for coin of the realm,and he was well satisfied with the result. It was not a fortune, norwas he likely to find one in the hills. But he bought a team, wagon,and harness with the money, and he had enough left over for atwo-months' grubstake and plenty of Durham and papers and a fewmagazines. That left him just enough silver to pay Rattler's bill atthe livery stable. Nothing startling, but still not bad--that wolf-denfind.
He had a lot of trouble getting his wagon to his claim, but byjudicious driving and the liberal use of a log-chain for a rough lock,he managed to land the whole outfit in the little flat before the cabinwithout any mishap. After that he settled down to work the thingsystematically.
One day he would pan the sandy gravel, and the next day he would resthis back digging post-holes or something comparatively easy. He workedfrom daybreak until it was too dark to see, and he never left his claimexcept when he went to wash gold up in the gulch. The world moved on,and he neither knew nor cared how it moved; for the time being hisworld had narrowed amazingly. If Billy Louise had not been down therein that other world, he would scarcely have given it a thought, soabsorbed was he in the delightful task of putting a good, solidfoundation under his favorite air-castle. That fascinated him, heldhim to his work in spite of his hunger to see her and talk with her andwatch the changing lights in her eyes and the fleeting expressions ofher face.
Some day he hoped he would have her with him always. He put itstronger than that: Some day he would have her with him, there in thatlittle valley he had chosen; riding with him over those hills thatsmiled and seemed to stand there waiting for their invasions, with theechoes ready to fling back his exultant voice when he called to her orsang for her or laughed at her; ready to imitate enviously her voicewhen she laughed back at him. He wanted that day to come soon, and sowith days and hours and minutes he became a miser and would not spendthem in the luxury of a visit to her. It seemed to him that hislonging for her measured itself by the enormous appetite he had forwork, that summer.
Week followed week as he followed that thin, fluctuating streak of paygravel along the ledge. Sometimes it was rich enough to set the pulsepounding in his temples; sometimes it was so poor that he was disgustedto the point of abandoning the work. But every day he worked, ityielded him something--though there was a week when he averaged aboutfifty cents a day and lived with a scowl on his face--and he kept at it.
He went out in June and bought a mower and rake and then spent preciousdays getting them into his valley. There was no road, you see, and hewas compelled to haul them in a wagon, through country where naturenever meant four wheels to pass. He hired a man for a month--one ofthose migratory individuals who works for a week or a month in oneplace and then wanders on till his money is spent--and he drove thatman as relentlessly as he drove himself. Together they accomplishedmuch, while the goldpan lay hidden under a buck brush and Ward's wakingmoments were filled with an uneasy sense of wasted time. Still, it wasfor the good of his ranch and his cattle and his air-castle that hetoiled in the gulch, and it was necessary that he should put up whathay he could. There would be calves to feed next winter, he hoped; andwhen the hardest storms came, his horse would need a little. The restof the stock would have to rustle; and that was why he had chosen thisnook among the hills, where the wind would sweep the high slopes bareof snow, and the gulches would give shelter with their heavy thicketsof quaking aspens and willow and alder.
He was thankful when the creek bottom was shaved clean of grass, andthe stack beside his corral was of a satisfying length and height. Thesummer had been kind to the grass-growth, and his hay crop was largerthan he had expected. A few days had remained of the month, and Wardhad used them to extend his fence so as to give more pasturage to hiscalves in mild weather. After that he paid the man, directed him tothe nearest point on the stage road, and breathed thanks that he wasalone again, and could go back to his plan of digging a nice littlehunch of cattle out of that bank before snow flew.