II
"PARDNERS"
"Looks like you'd say somethin' about them pancakes instead of settin'there shovelin'."
"Haven't I told you regular every morning for six months that they wasgreat pancakes? Couldn't you let me off for once?"
The two partners glared at each other across the clumsy table of hewnpine. They looked like two wild men, as black eyes flashed anger, evenhate, into black eyes. Their hair was long and uneven, their featuresdisguised by black beards of many weeks' growth. Their miners' bootswere but ludicrous remnants tied on with buckskin thongs. Their clotheshung in rags, and they ate with the animal-like haste and carelessnessof those who live alone.
The smaller of the two men rose abruptly, and, with a vicious kick atthe box upon which he had been sitting, landed it halfway across theroom. His cheeks and nose were pallid above his beard, his thin nostrilsdilated, and his hand shook as he reached for his rifle in the gun rackmade of deer horns nailed above the kitchen door. He was slender andwiry of build, quick and nervous in his movements, yet they were almostnoiseless, and he walked with the padded soft-footedness of the preyinganimal.
Bruce Burt lounged to the cabin door and looked after "Slim" Naudain ashe went to the river. Then he stepped outside, stooping to avoidstriking his head. He leaned his broad shoulder against the door jamband watched "Slim" bail the leaky boat and untie it from the willows.While he filled and lighted his pipe, Bruce's eyes followed his partneras he seated himself upon the rotten thwart and shoved into the riverwith home-made oars that were little more than paddles. The river caughthim with the strength of a hundred eager hands, and whirled him,paddling like a madman, broadside to the current. It bore him swiftly tothe roaring white rapids some fifty yards below, and the fire died inBruce's pipe as, breathless, he watched the bobbing boat.
"Slim'll cross in that water-coffin once too often," he muttered, andBruce himself was the best boatman the length of the dangerous river.
There were times when he felt that he almost hated Slim Naudain, andthis was one of them, yet fine lines of anxiety drew about his eyes ashe watched the first lolling tongue of the rapids reach for the tinyboat. If it filled, Slim was gone, for no human being could swim in theroaring, white stretch where the great, green river reared, curled back,and broke into iridescent foam. The boat went out of sight, rose, bobbedfor an instant on a crest, then disappeared.
Bruce said finally, in relief:
"He's made it again."
He watched Slim make a noose in the painter, throw it over a bowlder,wipe the water from his rifle with his shirt sleeve, and start toscramble up the steep mountainside.
"The runt of something good--that feller," Bruce added, with sombereyes. "I ought to pull out of here. It's no use, we can't hit it off anymore."
He closed the cabin door against thieving pack rats, and went down tothe river, where his old-fashioned California rocker stood at thewater's edge. He started to work, still thinking of Slim.
Invariably he injected the same comment into his speculations regardinghis partner: "The runt of something good." It was the "something good"in Slim, the ear-marks of good breeding, and the peculiar fascination ofblue blood run riot, which had first attracted him in Meadows, themountain town one hundred and fifty miles above. This prospecting triphad been Bruce's own proposal, and he tried to remember this when thefriction was greatest.
Slim, however, had jumped at his suggestion that they build a barge andwork the small sand bars along the river which were enriched with finegold from some mysterious source above by each high water. They were tolabor together and share and share alike. This was understood betweenthem before they left Meadows, but the plan did not work out becauseSlim failed to do his part. Save for an occasional day of desultorywork, he spent his time in the mountains, killing game for which theyhad no use, trapping animals whose pelts were worthless during thesummer months. He seemed to kill for the pleasure he found in killing.Protests from Bruce were useless, and this wanton slaughter added day byday to the dislike he felt for his partner, to the resentment which nowwas ever smoldering in his heart.
Bruce wondered often at his own self-control. He carried scars of knifeand bullet which bore mute testimony to the fact that with his childhoodhe had not outgrown his quick and violent temper. In mining camps, fromMexico to the Stikine and Alaska in the North, he was known as a"scrapper," with any weapon of his opponent's choice.
Perhaps it was because he could have throttled Slim with his thumb andfinger, have shaken the life out of him with one hand, that Bruceforbore; perhaps it was because he saw in Slim's erratic, surly moods asomething not quite normal, a something which made him sometimes wonderif his partner was well balanced. At any rate, he bore his shirking, hisinsults, and his deliberate selfishness with a patience that would havemade his old companions stare.
The bar of sand and gravel upon which their cabin stood, and where Brucenow was working, was half a mile in width and a mile and a half or so inlength. He had followed a pay streak into the bank, timbering the tunnelas he went, and he wheeled his dirt from this tunnel to his rocker in acrude wheelbarrow of his own make.
He filled his gold pan from the wheelbarrow, and dumped it into thegrizzly, taking from each pan the brightest-colored pebble he could findto place on the pile with others so that when the day's work was done hecould tell how many pans he had washed and so form some idea as to howthe dirt was running per cubic yard.
His dipper was a ten-pound lard can with a handle ingeniously attached,and as he dipped water from the river into the grizzly, the steady,mechanical motion of the rocker and dipper had the regularity of amachine. If he touched the dirt with so much as his finger tips hewashed them carefully over the grizzly lest some tiny particle be lost.Bruce was as good a rocker as a Chinaman, and than that there is nohigher praise.
When the black sand began to coat the Brussels-carpet apron, Brucestooped over the rocker frequently and looked at the shining yellowspecks.
"She's looking fine to-day! She's running five dollars to the cubic yardif she's running a cent!" he ejaculated each time that he straightenedup after an inspection of the sand, and the fire of hope and enthusiasm,which is close to the surface in every true miner and prospector, shonein his eyes. Sometimes he frowned at the rocker and expressed hisdisapproval aloud, for years in isolated places had given him the habitof loneliness, and he talked often to himself. "It hasn't got slopeenough, and I knew it when I was making it. I don't believe I'm savingmore than seventy per cent. I'll tell you, hombre, grade is everythingwith this fine gold and heavy sand."
While he rocked he lifted his eyes and searched the sides of themountains across the river. It seemed a trifle less lonely ifoccasionally he caught a glimpse of Slim, no bigger than an insect,crawling over the rocks and around the peaks. Yet each time that he sawhim Bruce's heavy black eyebrows came together in a troubled frown, forthe sight reminded him of the increasing frequency of their quarrels.
"If he hadn't soldiered," he muttered as he saw Slim climbing out of agulch, "he could have had a good little grub-stake for winter. Winter'sgoing to come quick, the way the willows are turning black. Let it come.I've got to pull out, anyhow, as things are going. But"--his eyeskindled as he looked at the high bank into which his tunnel ran--"Icertainly am getting into great dirt."
It was obvious that the sand bar where he was placering had once beenthe river bed, but when the mighty stream, in the course of centuries,cut into the mountain opposite it changed the channel, leaving bed rockand bowlders, which eventually were covered by sand and gravel depositedby the spring floods. In this deposit there was enough flour-gold toenable any good placer miner to make days' wages by rocking the richstreaks along the bars and banks.
This particular sand bar rose from a depth of five feet near the water'sedge to a height of two hundred feet or more against the mountain at theback. There was enough of it carrying fine gold to inflame theimagination of the most conservative and set the least speculative tocal
culating. A dozen times a day Bruce looked at it and said to himself:
"If only there was some way of getting water on it!"
For many miles on that side of the river there was no mountain stream toflume, no possibility of bringing it, even from a long distance, througha ditch, so the slow and laborious process he was employing seemed theonly method of recovering the gold that was but an infinitesimalproportion of what he believed the big bar contained.
While he worked, the sun came up warm, and then grew dim with a kind ofhaze.
"A storm's brewing," he told himself. "The first big snow is longoverdue, so we'll get it right when it comes."
His friends, the kingfishers, who had lived all summer in a hole at thetop of the bank, had long since gone, and the camp-robbers, who scoldedhim incessantly, sat silent in the tall pine trees near the cabin. Henoticed that the eagle that nested in an inaccessible peak across theriver swooped for home and stayed there. The redsides and the bulltrout in the river would no longer bite, and he remembered now that thecoyote who denned among the rocks well up the mountain had howled lastnight as if possessed: all signs of storm and winter.
By noon a penetrating chill had crept into the air, and Bruce lookedoftener across the river.
"It's just like him to stay out and sleep under a rock all night with astorm coming," he told himself uneasily.
This would be no new thing for Slim in one of his ugly moods, andordinarily it did not matter, for he kept his pockets well filled withstrips of jerked elk and venison, while in the rags of his heavy flannelshirt he seemed as impervious to cold as he was to heat.
Chancing to glance over his shoulder and raise his eyes to the side ofthe mountain, which was separated from the one at the back of the bar bya canyon, a smile of pleasure suddenly lighted Bruce's dark face, and hestopped rocking.
"Old Felix and his family!" he chuckled. Whimsically he raised both armsaloft in a gesture of welcome. "Ha--they see me!"
The band of mountain sheep picking their way down the rough side stoppedshort and looked.
"It's all of a month since they've been down for salt." Then his facefell. "By George, we're shy on salt!"
He turned to his rocker, and the sheep started down again, with OldFelix in the lead, and behind him two yearlings, two ewes, and thespring lamb.
Their visits were events in Bruce's uneventful life. He felt asflattered by their confidence as one feels by the preference of achild. His liking for animals amounted to a passion, and he had beenabsurdly elated the first time he had enticed them to the salt, which hehad placed on a flat rock not far from the cabin door. For the first fewvisits their soft black eyes, with their amber rims, had followed himtimorously, and they were ready to run at any unusual movement. Then,one afternoon, they unexpectedly lay down in the soft dirt which bankedthe cabin, and he was so pleased that he chuckled softly to himself allthe time they stayed.
Now he laid down his dipper, and started toward the house.
"I'll just take a look, anyhow, and see how much there is."
He eyed uncertainly the small bag of table salt which he took from thesoap-box cupboard nailed to the wall.
"There isn't much of it, that's a fact. I guess they'll have to wait."He slammed the door of the improvised cupboard hard upon its leatherhinges made of a boot-top, and turned away.
"Aw, dog-gone it!" he cried, stopping short. "I haven't got the heart todisappoint the poor little devils." He turned back and took the salt.
The sheep were just coming out of the canyon between the mountains whenBruce stepped through the cabin door. Old Felix stopped and stood like astatue--Old Felix, the Methuselah of the Bitter Roots, who wore the mostmagnificent pair of horns that ever grew on a mountain sheep. Solid andperfect they were, all of nineteen and three-quarters inches at the baseand tapering to needle points. Of incredible weight and size, he carriedthem as lightly on his powerful neck as though they were but the shellsof horns. Now, as he stood with his tremulous nozzle outstretched,sniffing, cautious, wily, old patriarch that he was, he made a picturewhich, often as Bruce had seen it, thrilled him through and through.Behind Old Felix were the frisking lamb and the mild-eyed ewes. Theywould not come any closer, but they did not run.
"It wouldn't have lasted but a few days longer anyhow," Bruce murmuredhalf apologetically as he divided the salt and spread it on the rock. Headded: "I suppose Slim will be sore."
He returned to his work at the river, and the sheep licked the rockbare; then they lay down in leisurely fashion beside the cabin, theirnarrow jaws wagging ludicrously, their eyelids drooping sleepily, securein their feeling that all was well.
Bruce had thrust a cold biscuit in the pocket of his shirt, and this hecrumbled for the little bush birds that twittered and chirped in thethicket of rosebushes which had pushed up through the rocks near thesand bank.
They perked their heads and looked at him inquiringly when it was gone.
"My Gawd, fellers," he demanded humorously, "don't you ever get filledup?"
As he rocked he watched the water ouzel teetering on a rock in theriver, joyously shaking from its back the spray which deluged it atintervals. Bruce observed.
"I'd rather you'd be doing that than me, with the water as cold as it isand," with a glance at the fast-clouding sky, "getting colder everyminute."
The sheep sensed the approaching storm, and started up the gulch totheir place of shelter under a protecting rim rock close to the peak.
When they were no longer there to watch and think about, Bruce'sthoughts rambled from one subject to another, as do the minds of lonelypersons.
While the water and sand were flowing evenly over the apron he fell towishing he had a potato. How long had it been--he threw back his head tocalculate--how many weeks since he had looked a potato in the eye?Ha!--not a bad joke at that. He wished he might have said that aloud tosome one. He never joked with Slim any more.
He frowned a little as he bent over the grizzly and crushed a small lumpbetween his thumb and finger. He wandered if there was clay coming intothe pay streak. Clay gathered up the "colors" it touched like so muchquicksilver. Dog-gone, if it wasn't one thing it was another. If thetunnel wasn't caving in, he struck a bowlder, and if there wasn't abowlder there was----
"Bang! bang! Bang! bang!" Then a fusillade of shots. Bruce straightenedup in astonishment and stared at the mountainside.
"Boom! boom!" The shots were muffled. They were shooting in the canyon.Who was it? What was it? Suddenly he understood. The _sheep_! _His_sheep! They were killing Old Felix and the rest! Magnificent OldFelix--the placid ewes--the frisking lamb! What a bombardment! Thatwasn't sport; 'twas slaughter!
His dark skin reddened, and his eyes blazed in excitement. He flung thedipper from him and started toward the cabin on a run. They were killingtame sheep--sheep that he had taught to lose their fear of man. Thenhis footsteps slackened and he felt half sick as he remembered that thebig-game season was open and he had no legal right to interfere.
Bruce had not seen a human face save Slim's since the end of May, and itnow was late in October, but he had no desire to meet the hunters andhear them boast of their achievement. Heavy-hearted, he wondered whichones they got.
The hunters must have come over the old trail of the Sheep-eaterIndians--the one which wound along the backbone of the ridge. Roughgoing, that. They were camped up there, and they must have a big packoutfit, he reasoned, to get so far from supplies at this season of theyear.
He tried to work again, but found himself upset.
"Dog-gone," he said finally. "I'll slip up the canyon and see whatthey've done. They may have left a wounded sheep for the cougars tofinish--if they did I can pack it down."
Bruce climbed for an hour or more up the bowlder-choked canyon before hisexperienced eye saw signs of the hunters in two furrows where a pair ofheels had plowed down a bank of dirt. The canyon, as he knew, endedabruptly in a perpendicular wall, and he soon saw that the frightenedsheep must have run headlong into the trap. He f
ound the prints of theirtiny, flying hoofs, the indentations where the sharp points had dug deepas they leaped. Empty shells, more shells--they must have been bumshots--and then a drop of blood upon a rock. The drops came thicker, astream of blood, and then the slaughter pen. They had been shot downagainst the wall without a single chance for their lives. The entireband, save Old Felix, had been exterminated. Their limp andstill-bleeding carcasses, riddled and torn by soft-nosed bullets, layamong the rocks. Wanton slaughter it was, without even the excuse of thenecessity of meat, since only a yearling's hind quarters were gone. Noteven the plea of killing for trophies could be offered, since the headsof the ewes were valueless.
Bruce straightened the neck of a ewe as she lay with her head doubledunder her. It hurt him to see her so. He looked into her dull, glazedeyes which had been so soft and bright as they had followed him at worka little more than an hour before. He ran his hand over a sheep's white"blanket," now red with blood, and stood staring down into the innocentface of the diminutive lamb.
Then he raised his eyes in the direction in which he fancied the huntershad gone. They shone black and vindictive through the mist of tearswhich blinded him as he cried in a shaking voice:
"You butchers! You game hogs! I hope you starve and freeze back there inthe hills, as you deserve!"
A snow cloud, drab, thick, sagging ominously, moved slowly from thenortheast, and on a jutting point, sharply outlined against the sky,motionless as the rock beneath him, stood Old Felix, splendid, solitary,looking off across the sea of peaks in which he was alone.