The Lookout Man Part 14

rock, my gorry, we'd all of us be rollin' in wealth, fer the mountains is made of such. Young feller, ye're wastin' yer time an' ivery dollar ye're sinkin' in these here claims ye've showed me--and thot's no lie I'm tellin' ye, but the truth, an' if ye believe it I'll soon be huntin' another job and ye'll be takin' the train back where ye come from."

The professor eyed him uncertainly. He looked at the great, singing pines that laced their branches together high over their heads. Fred, he thought, had made a mistake when he hired experienced miners to do this work. It might be better to let Murphy in....

"Still the timber on the claims is worth proving up, and more," he ventured cautiously, with a sharp glance at Murphy's spectacles.

"A-ah, and there yer right," Murphy a.s.sented with the upward tilt to his voice. "An' if it's the timber ye be wantin', I'll say no more about the mine. Four thousand acres minin' claims no better than yer own have I seen held fer the trees on thim--an' ain't it the way some of these ole fellers thot goes around now wit' their two hands in their pants pockets an' no more work t' do wit' 'em than to light up their seegars--ain't it wit' the timber on their minin' claims that they made their pile? A-ah--but them was the good times fer them that had brains. A jacka.s.s like me an' Mike, here, we're the fellers thot went on a lookin' fer gold an' givin' no thought to the trees that stood above. An' thim that took the gold an' the trees, they're the ones thot's payin' wages now to the likes of Mike an' me."

He straightened his back and sent a speculative glance at the forest around him. "'Tis long sence the thrick has been worked through," he mused, turning his plug of tobacco over in his hand, looking for a likely place to sink his stained old teeth. "Ye'll be kapin' mum about what's in yer mind, young feller, ef ye don't want to bring the dom Forest Service on yer trail. Ef it was me, I'd buy me a bag of salt fer me mines--I would thot."

"Well, by George!" The professor stared. "What has salt--?"

"A-ah, an' there's where ye're ign'rant, young feller, wit' all yer buke l'arnin'. 'Tis gold I mean--gold thot ye can show t' thim thot gits cur'us. But if it was me, I'd sink me shaf' in a likelier spot than what this spot is--I wuddn't be bringing up durt like this, an'

be callin' the hole a mine! I kin show ye places where ye kin git the color an' have the luke of a mine if ye haven't the gold. There's better men than you been fooled in these hills. I spint me a winter meself, cuttin' timbers fer me mine--an' no more than a mile from this spot it was--an' in the spring I sinks me shaf' an' not a dom ounce of gold do I git fer me pains!"

"Well, by George! I'll speak to Fred about it. I--I suppose you can be trusted, Murphy?"

Murphy spat far from him and hitched up his sagging overalls. "Kin any man be trusted?" he inquired sardonically. "He kin, says I, if it's to his intrust. I'm gittin' my wages fer the diggin', ain't I? Then it's to me intrust to kape on diggin'! Sure, me tongue niver wagged me belly outy a grub-stake yit, young feller! I'm with ye on this, an'

thot's me true word I'm givin' ye."

The professor hurried off to find Fred and urge him to let Murphy advise them upon the exact sites of their mines. Murphy hung his hammer up in the forked branches of a young oak, and went off to his dinner. Arriving there, he straightway discovered that Mike, besides frying bacon and making a pot of muddy coffee and stirring up a bannock, had been engaged also in what pa.s.sed with him for thinking.

"Them fellers don't know nothin' about minin'," he began when he had poured himself a cup of coffee and turned the pot with the handle toward Murphy. "They's no gold there, where we're diggin', I know there's no gold! They's no sign of gold. They can dig a hunnerd feet down, an' they won't find no gold! Why, in Minnesota, that time--"

"A-ah, now, le's have none av Minnesota," Murphy broke in upon Mike's gobbling--no other word expresses Mike's manner of speech, or comes anywhere near to giving any idea of his mushy mouthing of words. "An'

who iver said they was after gold, now?"

Mike's jaw went slack while he stared dully at his partner. "An' if they ain't after gold, what they diggin' fer, then?" he demanded, when he had collected what he could of his scattered thoughts.

"A-ah, now, an' thot's a diffrunt story, Mike, me boy." Murphy broke off a piece of bannock, on the side least burned, and nodded his head in a peculiarly knowing manner. "Av ye could kape yer tongue quiet fr'm clappin' all ye know, Mike, I cud tell ye somethin'--I cud thot."

"Wh-why, n.o.budy ever heard _me_ talkin' things that's tol' in secret,"

Mike made haste to a.s.severate. "Why, one time in Minnesota, they was a feller, he tol' _me_, min' yuh, things 't he wouldn't tell his own mthrrr!" Mike, poor man, could not say mother at all. He just buzzed with his tongue and let it go at that. But Murphy was used to his peculiarities and guessed what he meant.

"An' there's where he showed respick fer the auld lady," he commended drily, and winked at his cup of coffee.

"An' he tol' _me_, mind yuh, all about a mrrer" (which was as close as he could come to murder) "an' he _knew_, mind ye, who it was, an' he tol' _me_--an' why, _I_ wouldn't ever say nothin' an' he knew it--I doctrrrred his eyes, mind ye, mind ye, an' the doctrrrs they couldn't do nothin'--an' we was with this outfit that was puttin' in a bridge"

(only he couldn't say bridge to save his life) "this was 'way back in Minnesota--"

"A-ah, now ye come back to Minnesota, ye better quit yer travelin' an'

eat yer dinner," quelled Murphy impatiently. "An' le's hear no more 'bout it."

Mike laid a strip of scorched bacon upon a chunk of scorched bannock and bit down through the ma.s.s, chewed meditatively and stared into the coals of his camp fire. "If they ain't diggin' fer gold, then what are they _diggin'_ fer?" he demanded aggressively, and so suddenly that Murphy started.

"A-ah, now, I'll tell ye what they're diggin' fer, but it's a secret, mind ye, and ye must nivver spheak a word av it. They're diggin' fer anguintum, me boy. An' thot's wort' more than gold, an' the likes av me 'n you wadden't know if we was to wade through it, but it's used in the war, I dunno, t' make gas-bags t' kill the inimy, and ye're t' say nawthin' t' n.o.body er they'll likely take an' hang ye fer a spy on the government, but ye're sa-afe, Mike, s' long as ye sthick t' me an' yer job an' say nawthin' t' n.o.body, d' ye see."

"They'd nivver hang _me_ fer a spy," Mike gobbled excitedly. "They'll nivver hang me--why I knowed--"

"A-ah, av yer ivver did ye've fergot it intirely," Murphy squelched him pitilessly.

Mike gulped down a mouthful and took a swallow of muddy coffee. "They better look out how they come around _me_," he threatened vaguely.

"They can't take me for a spy. I'd git the lawyers after 'em, an' I'd make 'em trouble. They wanta look out--I'd spend ivvery cent I make on lawyers an' courts if they took and hung me fer a spy. I'd _lawsue_ 'em!"

Murphy laughed. "A-ah, would ye, now!" he cried admiringly. "My gorry, it takes a brain like yours t' think av things. Now, av they hung me, I'd be likes to let 'er sthand thot way. I'd nivver a thought t'

lawsue 'em fer it--I wad not!"

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A CAVE DWELLER JACK WOULD BE

Smoke-tinged sunlight and warm winds and languorous days held for another full month in the mountains. Then the pines complained all through one night, and in the morning they roared like the rush of breakers in a storm, and sent dead branches cras.h.i.+ng down, and sifted brown needles thick upon the earth below.

"A-ah, but she's goin' t' give us the rain now, I dunno," Murphy predicted, staring up at the leaden clouds through his thick gla.s.ses.

"Ye better git up some firewood, Mike, and make the camp snug agin foul weather. An' av' the both of ye ain't got yer place tight an'

ready fer a sthorm, ye betther be stirrin' yerselves an' let the diggin' go fer a day. It's firewood ye'll need, an' in a dry place.

An' while ye're talkin' 'bout wood, have yer got yer wood fer the winter? An' yer goin' to sthay, ye bin tellin' me."

Fred looked around him at the forest where the oaks and the cottonwoods and all the trailing vines were fluttering gay red and yellow leaves in the wind. Fall was slipping on him unaware. He had thought that there was plenty of time to make ready for winter, but now he knew that the time was short--too short, maybe, with that wind booming up from the southwest.

"You and Mike can knock off work here, and when your camp's in shape you can come over and cut wood for us. Doug, we'll beat it and throw that woodshed together we've been going to build. Think it'll storm today, Murphy?"

Murphy stepped out where he could glimpse the southern sky, and eyed the drift of heavy clouds. "She will not bust loose t'day, I'm thinkin'," he decided. "She'll be workin' 'erself up to the pint av shnowin' er rainin' er both. Rain in the valley, shnow up here where we're at, I'm thinkin'. She'll be a rip when she does bust loose, me boy, an' ye can't have things too tight an' shnug."

"I believe yuh. Come on, Doug. Murphy, you can take care of the tools and cover up the hole, will you?"

"I will do that." Murphy grinned after the two tolerantly. "Will I take care av me tools, an' it buildin' a sthorm?" he sarcastically asked the swaying bushes around him. "An' do I need a pilgrim to remind me av that? An' thim wit' no wood, I dunno, whin they shud have thurrty tier at the very least, sawed an' sphlit an' ricked up under cover where it can be got at whin they want it--an' they will want it, fair enough! A-ah, but they'll find they ain't winterin' in Southern Californy, before they're t'rough with this country. They're not got their winter grub laid in, an' I'll bet money on't, an' no wood, an'

they're like t' be shnowed in here, whin no rig will come up thot grade wit' a load an' I don't care how much they'll pay t' have it hauled, an' them two not able t' pack grub on their backs as I've done manny's the time, an' them wimmin wantin' all the nicks Lee's got in his sth.o.r.es! Cake an' pie, it's likely they must have in the house er they think they're not eatin'." Murphy talked as he worked, putting the tools in a pile ready to be carried to camp, picking up pieces of rope and wire and boards and nails, and laying a plank roof over the windla.s.s and weighting it with rocks. Mike had gone pacing to camp, swinging his arms and talking to himself also, though his talk was less humanly kind under the monotonous grumble. Mike was gobbling under his breath, something about law-suing anybody that come botherin' him an' tryin' t' arrest him for nothin'. But Murphy continued to harp upon the subject of domestic preparedness.

"An' that leanto them men sleep in is no better than nothin' an' if it kapes the rain off their blankets it'll not kape off the shnow, an'

it won't kape off the wind at all. An' they've not got the beddin'

they'll be needin', an' I'll bet money on it.

"They should have a cellar dug back av the cabin where's the hill the sun gets to, an' they should have it filled with spuds an' cabbages an' the like--but what have they got? A dollar's worth av sugar, maybe, an' a fifty-poun' sack av flour, an' maybe a roll av b.u.t.ter an'

a table full of nicknacks which they could do without--an' winter comin' on like the lope av a coyote after a rabbit, an' them no better prepared than the rabbit, ner so, fer the rabbit's maybe got a hole he can duck inty an' they have nawthin' but the summer camp they've made, an' _hammicks_, by gorry, whin they should have warrm overshoes an'

sourdough coats! Tenderfeet an' pilgrims they be, an' these mountains is no place fer such with winter comin' on--an' like to be a bad wan the way the squrls has been layin' away nuts."

Pilgrims and tenderfeet they were, and their lack of foresight might well shock an oldtimer like Murphy. But he would have been still more shocked had he seen what poor amateurish preparations for the coming winter another young tenderfoot had been making. If he had seen the place which Jack Corey had chosen for his winter hide-out I think he would have taken a fit; and if he had seen the little pile of food which Jack referred to pridefully as his grubstake I don't know what he would have done.

Under the barren, rock-upended peak of King Solomon there was a narrow cleft between two huge slabs that had slipped off the ledge when the mountain was in the making. At the farther end of the cleft there was a cave the size of a country school-house, with a jagged opening in the roof at one side, and with a "back-door" opening that let one out into a network of clefts and caves. It was cool and quiet in there when Jack discovered the hiding place, and the wind blowing directly from the south that day, did not more than whistle pleasantly through a big fissure somewhere in the roof.

Jack thought it must have been made to order, and hastened down to their meeting place and told Marion so. And the very next day she insisted upon meeting him on the ridge beyond Toll-Gate basin and climbing with him to the cave. As soon as she had breath enough to talk, she agreed with him as emphatically as her vocabulary and her flexible voice would permit. Made to order? She should say it was!

Why, it was perfect, and she was just as jealous of him as she could be. Why, look at the view! And the campfire smoke wouldn't show but would drift away through all those caves; or if it did show, people would simply think that a new volcano had bursted loose, and they would be afraid to climb the peak for fear of getting caught in an eruption. Even if they did come up, Jack could see them hours before they got there, and he could hide. And anyway, they never would find his cave. It was perfect, just like a moons.h.i.+ner story or something.

Speaking of smoke reminded Jack that he would have to lay in a supply of wood, which was some distance below the rock crest. Manzanita was the closest, and that was brushy stuff. He also told Marion gravely that he must do it before any snow came, or his tracks would be a dead give-away to the place. He must get all his grubstake in too, and after snowfall he would have to be mighty careful about making tracks around any place.

Marion thought that snow on the mountain would be "keen," and suggested that Jack try a pair of her shoes, and see if he couldn't manage to wear them whenever there was snow. His feet were very small for a man's, and hers were--well, not tiny for a woman, and she would spend so much time hiking around over the hills that a person would think, of course, she had made the tracks. Being an impulsive young woman who believed in doing things on the spot, she thereupon retired behind a corner of rock, and presently threw one of her high-lace boots out to Jack. It crumpled his toes, but Jack thought he could wear it if he had to. So that point was settled satisfactorily, and they went on planning impossibilities with a naive enthusiasm that would have horrified Murphy.