H. A. Cody – The Major Collection

Chapter 11

"But good gracious! if you saw her only once you would know what she's like; the most wonderful creature in the whole world. Heaven and earth must have combined in bestowing upon her their choicest graces."

"When did ye see her like that?" and Samson again motioned to the sketch.

"Yesterday; out in the hills."

"On horseback?"

"Yes, and face to face with a grizzly."

"A grizzly!"

"It certainly was, and a monster, too. My! you should have seen the way she handled her horse when the brute was coming toward her. Some day I am going to sketch her as she looked when the horse was rearing backward. This drawing merely shows her in repose when last I saw her."

"An' what happened to the grizzly?" the old man queried.

"Oh, a bullet hit him, that was all, and he took a header into the ravine below."

"It did! An' whar did the bullet come from? Jist dropped down by accident at the right moment, I s'pose."

Reynolds merely smiled at the prospector's words, and offered no explanation.

"Modest, eh?" and Samson chuckled. "No more trouble to knock over a grizzly than it was to smash three whiskey bottles without winkin'. I like yer coolness, young man. Now, some fellers 'ud have blatted it all over camp in no time. An' that happened yesterday, so ye say?"

"Yes; toward evening."

"An' the gal was thar all alone?"

"It seems so. I wanted to go home with her, but she would not let me."

"She wouldn't! An' why not?"

"She said it wasn't safe for me to go beyond the Golden Crest."

"Did she give any reason?"

"None at all, and that's what makes me curious."

"About what?"

"What lies beyond the Golden Crest. The spirit of adventure is on me, and I intend to make the attempt to find out for myself about the mystery surrounding that place."

"Ye do! Didn't the gal say it wasn't safe?"

"All the greater reason, then, why I should go. If that girl will not come to me, I am going to her. Death is the worst that can happen to me, and I would rather die than live without Glen Weston."

"Ye've got it bad, haven't ye?" and Samson smiled. "But mebbe she's got the fever, too, since yesterday, an' has been back to the ravine to see if you was thar."

"Perhaps she did, but I was too late. I was there this afternoon, and saw no one except an Indian on horseback. The bear, too, was gone."

"Ye saw an Injun, ye say? What was he doin'?"

"Merely sitting upon his horse at the top of the trail. But he vanished just as soon as I glimpsed him."

"An' the bear was gone, too, did ye say?"

"Yes; nothing left of it. I suppose the Indians came for it. Perhaps Glen was with them, and so I missed another chance of seeing her."

During this conversation Frontier Samson had been standing. But now he sat down upon the ground, and remained for some time in deep thought. He filled and lighted his pipe, and smoked in silence, while Reynolds continued his work upon the sketch.

"When d'ye expect to leave camp?" Samson at length asked.

But Reynolds made no reply. He went on steadily with his work, while the old man watched him with twinkling eyes.

"Completely gone," he mused. "Deaf to the world. Can't hear nuthin'. It's a sure sign."

"What's that? Were you speaking?" Reynolds suddenly asked.

"Speakin'! Sure. Why, me tongue's been goin' like a mill-clapper, though ye never heard a word I said."

"I was lost, I guess," and Reynolds smiled as he turned toward the sketch.

"So I imagined. But, then, I fergive ye, fer I was young once meself, an' in love, too, so I know all the signs. I only wanted to know when ye expect to hit the trail on yer great adventure?"

"To-morrow," was the emphatic reply. "This place won't keep me an hour longer than I can help. I am sick of it."

"How d'ye expect to travel?"

"On foot, of course; straight over the mountains."

"D'ye realise the dangers?"

"Dangers are nothing to me; I am used to them."

"But s'pose I should tell ye it's impossible to git behind the Golden Crest?"

"Then, I like to do the impossible. There are plenty to do the ordinary things. I want to do the extraordinary, the so-called impossible. Did you ever hear the song that the Panama Canal diggers used to sing to cheer them up?"

"No; what is it?"

"I only know four lines; they go this way:

"'Got any rivers they say are uncrossable? Got any mountains you can't tunnel through? We specialize on the wholly impossible, Doing the things that no man can do.'

"I like those words, and they have heartened me more than once."

"They're sartinly stirrin', an' I like the spirit of 'em," the prospector replied. "But it seems to me that ye've got to use common sense as well as spirit. Now reason tells me that ye need someone to help ye in this undertakin' of yours, an' why shouldn't that someone be me?"

"You! Could you help me?" Reynolds eagerly asked. "Will you go with me?"

"I might on a sartin condition."

"And what is that?"

"Nuthin' much, 'cept you'll go with me."

"And why shouldn't I?"

"That's jist the pint about which I ain't sure. Though you've got the feet of a man, yit from what I gather yer heart an' yer head have eagle's wings, which'll make ye impatient to foller an old feller like me, who ain't as spry as he once was, an' whose jints are somewhat stiff."

"Oh, you needn't worry about that," Reynolds laughingly told him. "I hope I have a little sense left yet, although it's quite true what you say about my heart and my head having eagle's wings. You lead on and I'll follow like a dog."

"Now, look here, young man, thar's something else I want to put to ye. 'Twixt two things, one sartin an' t'other unsartin, which will ye choose?"

"I do not understand. Explain what you mean."

"Wall, ye see, it's this way: The findin' that gal on which ye've set yer heart is a mighty unsartin proposition. But thar's another which is as sure as the sun, an' about which all the men here in camp, an' the hull world fer that matter, would go crazy over if they knew about it."

"What is it?'

"It's gold; that's what it is, an' plenty of it, too."

"Where?" Reynolds' eyes were big with excitement.

"Oh, back in the hills. I discovered it over a year ago, an' nobody knows of it but me."

"Why didn't you report it?"

"H'm, what would be the good of doin' that? Haven't I seen too many gold strikes already, an' what have they amounted to? Look at this camp, fer instance. The men have come here an' ruined this place. They may git some gold, but what good will it do 'em? They'll gamble it, or waste it in other ways. Oh, I know, fer I've seen it lots of times."

"Why, then, are you willing to reveal the secret of your mine to me?" Reynolds asked.

"Did I say I was willin'?"

"That is what I inferred from your words."

"I merely asked ye 'twixt which would ye choose: the findin' that gal, which is an unsartin proposition, or gittin' the gold, which is as sure as the sun. That's all I asked."

"But if I choose the gold, then your secret will be known, and there will be a wild stampede into the place. You don't want that to happen, do you? It would be the same story of other camps, and perhaps worse."

"No, I don't want it to happen, that's a fact. But, ye see, it's bound to come sooner or later. Thar are so many men pokin' thar noses into every hole an' corner, that they are sure to find my mine before long. Now, I want someone to my likin' to be first on the ground, an' that someone is you. Ye kin then make yer choice an' stake two claims as discoverer. Tharfore, which will ye choose, that gal proposition or the gold? It's up to you. Is it hard to decide?"

"Not at all," was the reply. "I shall take the girl. One might run across gold any time, but a girl like that one won't find again. And, besides, what good would the gold be to me without her? I, therefore, take the girl proposition."

Samson looked at his companion in surprise, as if he had not heard aright. Here was a phase of character beyond the bounds of his experience.

"An' ye don't want the gold?" he asked.

"Certainly I want the gold, who wouldn't? But you told me I had to choose it or the girl, didn't you?"

"I surely did, though I never imagined ye'd throw down the gold. Now, all the fellers I ever met up here would have taken the gold first."

"Feeling sure of getting the girl later; is that it?"

"That's about the gist of it. They'd tackle what's sartin first, but you're willin' to try the unsartin."

"I am, and when can we start?"

"In the morning if it's all the same to you. We'll need some extry grub, which we kin git from Shorty. We won't want much, as we'll find plenty of meat along the way. We'll hit out before the camp's astir, so nobody'll know what's become of us."

"How long will it take us to cross the Golden Crest?" Reynolds asked.

"That depends upon many things. We might do it in three or four days by the way we're goin', or, again, it might take six months, an' mebbe longer. In fact, we might never git thar at all."

"I planned to do it in a couple of days," Reynolds declared.

"I s'pose ye did. But things don't allus turn out as ye plan, 'specially if ye undertake to cross the Golden Crest. Ye see, things happen thar quick as lightnin' sometimes, an' if yer lucky enough to git off alive, the patchin'-up process might take a long time. See?"

"I see," Reynolds replied, as he took the sketch from the improvised easel, "I have a number of patches on my body already, so a few more won't make much difference."

CHAPTER IX

THE OUTER TRAIL

A profound silence lay over Big Draw mining camp as Frontier Samson and Tom Reynolds slipped quietly away among the hills. The sun had not yet lifted itself above the horizon, but the speediness of its coming was heralded in the eastern sky, and the tallest mountain peaks had already caught the first shafts of its virgin glory. The valleys were still robed in semi-darkness, and the two wayfarers seemed like mere spectres as they sped forward.

"My, this is great!" Reynolds exclaimed as he at length stopped to readjust his pack. "I believe I should live to be a hundred or over if I could breathe air like this all the time. It's a fine tonic."

"It sure is," Samson agreed, as he laid aside his rifle and pulled out his pipe. "Not much like the smell of yer city streets, whar ye swaller hundreds of disease germs every second."

"Have you ever lived there?" Reynolds asked, curious to learn something of the old man's history.

"Long enough to know what they're like. I've poked me nose into a good many cities, an' they're all the same, to my way of thinkin'. It's a wonder to me why so many people live in sich places, crowded, together like sheep, when thar's all this, an' millions of places like it, whar ye kin breathe the air as the Lord made it, an' not fouled by the work of human bein's."