CHAPTER XXI
"Casey Ryan," the Little Woman began with her usual abruptness oneevening, when she was able to walk as far as the mine and back withoutfeeling; the effect of the exercise, but was still nursing a bandagedright hand; "Casey Ryan, tell me again just what old Injun Jim lookedlike."
Casey laughed and shifted Babe to a more secure perch on his shoulder, anddrew his head to one side in an effort to slacken Babe's terrific pull onhis hair. "Him? Mean an' ornery as the meanest thing you can think of.Sour as a dough can you've went off an' left for a coupla weeks in July."
"Oh, yes; very explicit, I admit. But just what did he look like? Height,weight, age and chief characteristics. I have," she explained, "avery-good reason for wanting a description of him."
"What yuh want a description of him for? He's good an' dead now." You see,Casey had reached the point of intimacy where he could argue with theLittle Woman quite in his everyday Irish spirit of contention.
The Little Woman had spirit of her own, but she was surprisingly meek withCasey at times. "It struck me quite suddenly, to-day, that I may knowwhere that gold mine is; or about where it is," she said, with a hiddenexcitement in her voice. "I've been thinking all day about it, and puttingtwo and two together. I merely need a fair description now of Injun Jim,to feel tolerably certain that I do or do not know something about thelocation of that mine."
"How'd _you_ come to know anything about it?" Casey stopped to move Babeto his other shoulder. He had put in a long hard day in the tunnel, andBabe was a husky youngster for four-and-a-half. Also she had developed aburr-like quality toward Casey, and she liked so well to be carried homefrom the mine that she would sit flat on the ground and rock her smallbody and weep until she was picked, up and placed on Casey's shoulder."Set still, now, Babe, or Casey'll have to put yuh down an' make yuh walkhome. Le'go my ear! Yuh want Casey to go around lop-sided, with only oneear?"
"Yes!" assented Babe eagerly, kicking Casey in the stomach. "Give me yourknife, Casey Wyan, so I can cut off one ear an' _make_ you lop-sided!"
"An' you'd do it, too!" Casey exclaimed admiringly.
"Baby Girl, you interrupted mother when mother was speaking of somethingimportant. You make mother very sad."
Babe's mouth puckered, her eyelids puckered, and she give a small wail."Now Baby's sad! You hurt--my--_feelin's_ when you speak to me cross!"She shook her yellow curls into her eyes and wept against them.
There was no hope of grown-ups talking about anything so foolish as a goldmine when Babe was in that mood. So Casey cooked supper, washed the dishesand helped Babe into her pyjamas; then he let her kneel restively in hislap while she said her prayers, and told her a story while he rocked herto sleep--it was a funny, Caseyish story about a bear, but we haven't timefor it now--before he attempted to ask the Little Woman again what shemeant by her mysterious curiosity concerning Injun Jim. Then, when he hadhis pipe going and the stove filled with pinon wood, he turned to her withthe question in his eyes.
The Little Woman laughed. "Now, if that terrible child will kindly consentto sleep for fifteen minutes, _I'll_ tell you what I meant," she said. "Ithad slipped my mind altogether, and it was only to-day, when Babe wasscratching out a snake's track--so the snake couldn't find the way backhome, she said--that I chanced to remember. Just a small thing, you know,that may or may not mean _something_ very large and _important_--like agold mine, for instance."
"I don't have to go to work 'til sunup," Casey hinted broadly, "and I'veset up many a night when I wasn't havin' half as much fun as I gitlistenin' to you talk."
Again the Little Woman laughed. I think she had been rambling along justto bait Casey into something like that."
"Very well, then, I'll come to the point. Though it is such a luxury totalk, sometimes! For a woman, that is.
"Three years ago we had two burros to pack water from your gulch, wherethere were too many snakes, to this gulch where there never seemed to beso many. We hadn't developed this spring then. One night something orother frightened the burros and they disappeared, and I started out tofind them, leaving Babe of course with her father at the tunnel.
"I trailed those burros along the mountain for about four miles, I shouldthink. And by that time I was wishing I had taken a canteen with me,though when I started out from camp I hated the thought of being burdenedwith the weight of it. I thought I could find water in some of thegulches, however, so I climbed a certain ridge and sat down to rest andexamine the canyon beneath with that old telescope Babe plays with. It hasbeen dropped so many times it's worthless now, but three years ago youcould see a lizard run across a rock a mile away. Don't you believe that?"she stopped to demand sternly.
"Say! You couldn't tell me nothin' I wouldn't believe!" Casey retorted,fussing with his pipe to hide the grin on his face.
"This is the truth, as it happens. I merely speak of the lizard toconvince you that a man's features would show very distinctly in thetelescope. And please observe, Casey Ryan, that I am very serious at themoment. This may be important to you, remember.
"I was sitting among a heap of boulders that capped the ridge, and ithappened that I was pretty well concealed from view because I was keepingin the shade of a huge rock and had crouched down so that I could steadythe telescope across a flat rock in front of me. So I was not discoveredby a man down in the canyon whom I picked up with the telescope while Iwas searching the canyon side for a spring.
"The man was suddenly revealed to me as he parted the branches of a largegreasewood and peered out. I think it was the stealthiness of his mannerthat impressed me most. He looked up and down and across, but he did notsee me. After a short wait, while he seemed to be listening, he crept outfrom behind the bush, turned and lifted forward a bag which hadn't much init, yet appeared quite heavy. He went down into the canyon, picking hisway carefully and stepping on rocks, mostly. But in one place where hemust cross a wash of deep sand, he went backward and with a dead branch hehad picked up among the rocks he scratched out each track as he made it.Babe reminded me of that to-day when she scratched out the snake's trackin the sand up by the mine."
Casey was leaning toward her, listening avidly, his pipe going cold in hishand. "Was he--?"
"He was an Indian, and very old, and he walked with that bent, totterywalk of old age. He had one eye and--"
"Injun Jim, that was--couldn't be anybody else!" Casey knocked his pipeagainst the front of the little cookstove, emptying the half-burnedtobacco into the hearth. The Little Woman probably wondered why he seemedso unexcited, but she did not know all of Casey's traits. He put away hispipe and almost immediately reached for his plug of tobacco, taking a chewwithout remembering where he was. "If you feel able to ride," he said,"I'll ketch up the mule in the morning, and we'll go over there."
"So your heart is really set on finding it, after all. I've been wonderingabout that. You haven't seemed to be thinking much about it, lately."
"A feller can prospect," Casey declared, "when he can't do nothin' else."And he added rather convincingly, "Good jobs is scarce, out this way. I'dbe a fool to pass up this one, when I'd have the hull winter left ferprospectin'."
"And what about those partners of yours?"
"Oh, them?" Casey hesitated, tempted perhaps to tell the truth. "Oh,they've quit on me. They quit right away after I went to work. We--we hada kinda fuss, and they've went back to town." He stopped and added with asigh of relief, "We can just as well count them out, fr'm now on--an'fergit about 'em."
"Oh," said the Little Woman, and smiled to herself. "Well, if you areanxious about that patch of brush in the canyon, we'll go and see what'sbehind it. To-morrow is Sunday, anyway."
"I'd a made up the time, if it wasn't," Casey assured her with dignity."I've been waitin' a good many years for a look at that Injun Jim gold."
"And it's just possible that I have been almost within reach of it for thepast four years and didn't know it! Well, I always have believed that Fateweaves our destinies for us; and a curious pattern is
the weaving,sometimes! I'll go with you, Casey Ryan, and I hope, for your sake, thatIndian Jim's mine is behind that clump of bushes. And I hope," she added,with a little laugh whose meaning was not clear to Casey, "I hope you geta million dollars out of it! I should like to point to Casey Ryan, themining millionaire and say, 'That plutocratic gentleman over there onceknocked me down with a hammer, and washed my dishes for two weeks, andreally, my dears, you should taste his sour-dough biscuits!'"
Casey went away to his camp and lay awake a long time, not thinking aboutthe Injun Jim mine, if you please, but wondering what he had done to makethe Little Woman give him hell about his biscuits. Good Lord! Did shestill blame him for hitting her with that double-jack?--when he knew andshe knew that she had made him do it!--and if she didn't like hissour-dough biscuits, why in thunder had she kept telling him she did?
He tucked the incident away in the back of his mind, meaning to watch herand find out just what she did mean, anyway. Her opinion of him had becomevital to Casey; more vital than the Injun Jim mine, even.
He saddled the buckskin mule next morning and after breakfast the threeset out, with a lunch and two canteens of water. The Little Woman was in avery good humor and kept Casey "jumpin' sideways," as he afterwardsconfessed to me, wondering just what she meant or whether she meantnothing at all by her remarks concerning his future wealth and dignity andhow he would forget old friends.
She even pretended she had forgotten the place, and was not at all surethat this was the right canyon, when they came to it. She studiedlandmarks and then said they were all wrong and that the place was markedin her mind by something entirely different and not what she first named.She deviled Casey all she could, and led him straight to the spot andsuggested that they eat their lunch there, within twenty feet of thebushes from which she had seen the Indian creep with the sack on his back.
She underrated Casey's knowledge of minerals; or perhaps she wanted totest it,--you never can tell what a woman really has in the back of hermind. Casey sat there eating a sour-dough biscuit of his own making, andstaring at the steep wall of the canyon because he was afraid to stare atthe Little Woman, and so his uncannily keen eye saw a bit of rock nolarger than Babe's fist. It lay just under that particular clump ofbushes, in the shade. And in the shade he saw a yellow gleam on the rock.
He looked at the Little Woman then and grinned, but he didn't say anythinguntil he had taken the coffeepot off the fire, and had filled her cup.
"This ain't a bad canyon to prospect in. You can brush up your memorywhilst I take a look around. Mebby I can find Jim's mine myself," he saidimpudently. Then he got up and went poking here and there with hisprospector's pick, and finally worked up to the brush and disappearedbehind it. In five minutes or less he came back to her with a littlenugget the size of Babe's thumb.
"If yuh want to see something pretty, come on up where I got this here,"he told her. "I'll show yuh what drives prospectors crazy. This ain't nofree gold country, but there's a pile uh gold in a dirt bank I can showyuh. Mebby you forgot the place, and mebby yuh didn't. I've quit guessin'at what yuh really do mean an' what yuh don't mean. Anyway, this is wherewe headed for."
"Well, you really are a prospector, after all. I just wondered." TheLittle Woman did not seem in the least embarrassed. She just laughed andtook Babe by the hand, and they went up beyond the clump of bushes to whatlay hidden so cunningly behind it.
Cunning--that was the mood Nature must have been in when she planted freegold in that little wrinkle on the side of Two Peak, and set the bushes inthe mouth of the draw, and piled an iron ledge across the top and spreadbarren mountainside all around it. In the hiding Injun Jim had done hisshare, too. He had pulled rubble down over the face of the bank ofrichness, and eyes less keen than Casey's would have passed it by withouta second glance.
The Little Woman knelt and picked out half a dozen small nuggets and stoodup, holding them out to Casey, her eyes shining. "Casey Ryan, here's theend of your rainbow! And you're luckier than most of us; you've got yourpot o' gold."
Casey looked down at her oddly. "It's mebby the end of one," he said. "Butthey's another one, now, 't I can see plainer than this one. I dunno'sI'll ever git to where that one points."
"A man's never satisfied," scoffed the Little Woman, turning the preciouslittle yellow fragments over thoughtfully in her palm. "I should thinkthis ought to be enough for you, man alive."
"Mebby it had. But it ain't." He looked at her, hesitating,--and I thinkthe Little Woman waited and held her breath for what he might say next.But Casey was scarcely himself in her presence. He turned away withoutanother glance at the nuggets.
"You'n the kid can gopher around there whilst I go step off the lines of aclaim an' put up the location notice," he said, and left her standingthere with the gold in her palm.
That night it was the Little Woman who planned great things for Casey, andit was Casey who smoked and said little about it. But once he shook hishead when she described the gilded future she saw for him.
"Money in great gobs like that ain't much use to me," he demurred. "Once Iblew into Lund, over here, with twenty-five thousand dollars in my pocketthat I got outa silver claims. All I ever saved outa that chunk was twopairs of socks. No need of you makin' plans on my being a millionaire. Itain't in me. I guess I'm nothin' but a rough-neck stagedriver an'prospector, clear into the middle of my bones. If I had the sense of arabbit I never'd gone hellin' through life the way I've done. I'd amountto somethin' by now. As it is I ain't nothin' and I ain't nobody--"
"You're Casey Wyan! You make me sad when you say that!" Babe protestedsleepily, lifting her head from his shoulder and spatting him reprovinglyon the cheek. "You're my bes' friend and you've got a lots more sense thana wabbit!"
"And your rainbow, Casey Ryan?" the Little Woman asked softly. "What aboutthis other, new rainbow?"
"It's there," said Casey gloomily. "It'll always be there--jest over theridge ahead uh me. I c'n see it, plain enough, but I got more sense 'n tothink I'll ever git m'hands on it."
"I'll go catch your wainbow, Casey Wyan. I'll run fas' as I can, an' I'llcatch it for you!"
"Will yuh, Babe?" Casey bent his head until his lips touched her curls.And neither Casey nor the Little Woman spoke of it again.
CHAPTER XXII
Oddly enough, it was Lucy Lily who unconsciously brought Casey to hisrainbow. Lucy Lily did not mean to do Casey any favor, I can assure you,but Fate just took her and used her for the moment, and Lucy Lily hadnothing to say about it.
Don't think that a squaw who wants to live like a white princess willforget to go hunting a gold mine whose richness she had seen,--in a lardbucket, perhaps. Lucy Lily did not abandon her bait. She used it again,and a renegade white man snapped at it, worse luck. So they went huntingthrough the Tippipahs for the mine of Injun Jim. What excuses the squawmade for not being able to lead the man directly to the spot, I can't say,of course; but I suppose she invented plenty.
She did one clever thing, at least. In their wanderings she led the wayinto the old camp of Injun Jim. There had been no storm to dim the tracksCasey had made, and Lucy Lily, Indian that she was, knew that these werethe tracks of Casey Ryan and guessed what was his errand there. So she andher white man trailed him across the valley to Two Peak.
They came first to the camp, and there the Little Woman met them, and bysome canny intuition knew who they were and what they wanted,--thanks toCasey's garrulous mood when he told her of Lucy Lily. They said that theywere hunting horses, and presently went on over the ridge; not followingCasey's plain trail to the tunnel, but riding off at an angle so that theycould come into the trail once they were hidden from the house.
Casey, as it happened, was not at the tunnel at all, but over at the goldmine, doing the location work. Doing it in the side hill a good twohundred feet away from the gold streak, too, I will add.
The Little Woman watched until the squaw and her man were out of sight,and then she took a small canteen and filled it, got her r
ifle, pocketedher automatic revolver, and tied Babe's sunbonnet firmly under Babe'sdouble chin. She could not take the mule, because Casey had ridden him, soshe walked, and carried Babe most of the way on her back. She kept to thegulches until she was too far away to be seen in the sage, even when asquaw was squinting sharp-eyed after her.
She came, in the course of two hours or so, to the lip of the canyon, andwho-whooed to Casey, mucking out after a shot he had put down in thelocation hole. Casey looked up, waved his hand and then came running. Nowhim would send the Little Woman on a four-mile walk with a heavy childlike Babe to carry, and Casey was as white as he'll ever get when he mether halfway to the bottom of the canyon.
"Take Babe and let's get back to the claim," she panted. "I came to tellyou that squaw is on your trail with a white man in tow, and it'll be acase of claim-jumping if they can see their way tolerably clear. He's amate for the two you helped me haul out of camp, and I think, Casey Ryan,the squaw would kill you in a minute if she gets the chance."
Casey did rather a funny thing, considering how scared he was usually ofthe Little Woman. "You pack that kid all the way over here?" he grunted,and picked up the Little Woman and carried her, and left Babe to walk. Ofcourse he helped Babe, holding her hand over the roughest spots, but itwas the Little Woman whom he carried the rest of the way. And Babe, if youplease, was quite calm about it and never once became "sad" so that shemust sit down and cry.
"All the claim-jumpin' they'll do won't hurt nobody," Casey observedunexcitedly, when he had set the Little Woman down on a rock beside hislocation "cut" in the canyon's side. "She likely picked on a white manso's he could locate under the law, but this claim's located a'ready." Hewaved a hand toward the monument, a few rods up the canyon. "And CaseyRyan ain't spreadin' no rich gold vein wide open for every prowlin' desertrat to pack off all he kin stagger under. I'm callin' it the Devil'sLantern. You c'n call a mine any name yuh darn want to. And if it wasn'tfer the Devil's Lantern, I wouldn't be here. That name won't mean nothin'to 'em. Let 'em come." His eyes turned toward the hidden richness anddwelt there, studying the tracks, big and little, that led up to it, anddeciding that tracks do not necessarily mean a gold mine, and that itwould be better to leave them as they were and not attempt to cover them.
"You just say it's your claim, if they come snoopin' around here. I'msupposed to be workin' for yuh," he said abruptly, giving her one of hisquick, steady glances.
"They can go and read the location notice," the Little Woman pointed out.Casey did not make any reply to that, but picked up his shovel and went towork again, mucking out the dirt and broken rocks which the dynamite hadloosened in the cut.
"She's a bird, ain't she?" he grinned over his shoulder, his mindreverting to Lucy Lily. "Did she have on her war paint?"
"She will have, when she sees you," the Little Woman retorted, watchingthe farther rim of the canyon. Then she remembered Babe and called to her.That youngster was always prospecting around on her own initiative, andshe answered shrilly now from up the canyon. The Little Woman stood up,looking that way, never dreaming how wishfully Casey was watching her,--and how reverently.
"Baby Girl, you must not run off like that! Mother will be compelled totie a rope on you."
"I was jes' getting--Casey Wyan's--'bacco. Poor Casey Wyan forgot--his'bacco! He's my frien'. I have to give him his 'bacco," Babe defendedherself, coming down from the location monument in small jumps andscrambles. Close to her importantly heaving chest she clutched a small,red tobacco can of the kind which smokers carelessly call "P.A." "CaseyWyan lost it up in the wocks," Babe explained, when her mother met herdisapprovingly and caught her by the hand.
"Why, Babe! You've been naughty. This must be Casey Ryan's locationnotice. It must be left in the rocks, Baby Girl, so people will know thatCasey Ryan owns this claim."
"It's his 'bacco!" Babe insisted stubbornly. "Casey Wyan needs his'bacco."
The Little Woman knew that streak of stubbornness of old. There was justone way to deal with it, and that was to prove to Babe that she wasmistaken. So she opened the red can and pulled out a folded paper,unfolded the paper and began to read it aloud. Not that Babe wouldunderstand it all, but to make it seem very convincing and important,--andI think partly to enjoy for herself the sense of Casey's potential wealth.
"'Notice of Location--Quartz,'" she read, and glanced over the paper ather listening small daughter. "'To Whom it May Concern: Please takenotice that: The name of this claim is the Devil's Lantern Quartz MiningClaim. Said Claim is situated in the--Unsurveyed--Mining District, Countyof Nye, State of Nevada. Located this twenty-fifth day of September, 19--.This discovery is made and this notice is posted this twenty-fifth day ofSeptember,19--.
"'2. That the undersigned locators are citizens of he United States or havedeclared their intention to become such, and have discoveredmineral-bearing rock--!'"
"What's mineral-bearing wock, mother?"
"That's the gold, Baby Girl. '--in place thereon and do locate and claimsame for mining purposes.
"'3. That the number of linear feet in length along the course of the veineach way from the point of discovery whereon we have erected a monument--'That's the monument, up there, and Babe must not touch it-- '--isEasterly 950 feet; Westerly 550 feet; that the total length does notexceed 1500 feet. That the width on the Southerly side is 300 feet; thatthe width on the Northerly side is 300 feet; that the end lines areparallel; that the general course of the vein or lode as near as may be isin an Easterly and Westerly direction; that the boundaries of this claimmay be readily traced and are defined as follows, to-wit:--!'"
She skipped a lot of easterly and westerly technique in Casey's clear,uncompromising handwriting--done in an indelible pencil--and came down tothe last paragraph:
"'That all the dips, variations, spurs, angles and all veins, ledges, ordeposits within the lines of said claim, together with all water andtimber and any other rights appurtenant, allowed by the law of this Stateor of the United States are hereby claimed.
"'Locators Jack I. Gleason, Margaret Sutten.'
"Why--why-y--Good Lord!"
"Here they come," Casey called at that moment. "Put 'er back in themonument and don't let on like we think they're after this claim at all.It's a darn sight harder to start a fuss when the other fellow don't actlike he knows there's any fuss comin'. You ask anybody that ever had afight."
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