Branded

  XVI

  In the Open

  Though there was between twenty and thirty thousand dollars' worth ofhigh-grade ore lying unguarded in the broken-down wagon two milesbelow, we promptly forgot it. Losing no minute of the precious time,we hastened to restake our claim, marking the boundaries plainly andputting up "No Trespass" notices to let the coming invaders know thatwe were alive and on the job. We knew very well that our boundarylines would be disregarded; that in striving to cover every foot of theunclaimed fragments of the original triangle, the excited gold-seekerswould overlap us in all directions. But we meant to have the law onour side.

  Our next move was a hurried covering of the shaft mouth with planksprovided for just such an emergency; this and a barricading of theshack against a possible rush to loot it. By working fast we wereready by the time the vanguard of the rush appeared as a line oftoiling climbers at the foot of the gulch. Barrett glanced at hiswatch.

  "The early trolley will be just about leaving Bennett Avenue with theday-shift for the Ohio," he announced. "One of us must catch that carback to town to start a string of freight teams up here with men andmaterial. Minutes now are worth days next week. I'm the freshest oneof the bunch, and I'll go, if you two fellows think you can hold yourown against this mob that is coming. You won't have to do anyfighting, unless it's to keep them out of our shaft. Let them drivetheir stakes wherever they like, only, if they get on our ground, makeyour legal protest--the two of you together, so you can swear straightwhen it comes into the courts."

  We both said we would do or die, and Barrett struggled into his coatand fled for the trolley terminal a mile away. He was scarcely out ofsight over the crest of the spur when the advance guard of the mob cameboiling up out of the gulch. A squad of three outran the others, andits spokesman made scant show of ceremony.

  "We want to see what you got in that shaft," he panted. "Yank themboards off and show us."

  "I guess not," said Gifford, fingering the lock of Barrett's shot-gun.Then, suddenly taking the aggressive: "You fellers looking for a mine?Well, by cripes, you get off of our ground and stay off, or you'll findone startin' up inside of you in a holy minute! We mean business!"

  The three men cursed us like pickpockets, but they backed away untilthey stood on the other side of our boundary, where they were presentlyjoined by half a dozen others. We had one point in our favor. In sucha rush it is every man for himself, with a broad invitation to thedevil to take the hindmost. Somebody called the fellow who wanted tobreak into our shaft for the needful evidence a much-emphasizedjackass, and pointed to the wagon-tracks leading straight to our shack.

  "What more do you want than them tracks?" bellowed this caller of hardnames. And then: "Anybody in this crowd got a map?"

  Nobody had, as it seemed; whereupon the bellower turned upon us.

  "You fellers 've got one, it stands to reason. If you've got anysportin' blood in you at all, you'll be sort o' half-way human and giveus a squint at it."

  Again Gifford took the words out of my mouth. "Not to-day," he refusedcoolly. "If you want to know right bad, I'll tell you straight thatthere isn't anything like a whole claim left in this gulch. Now goahead and do your stakin' if you want to, but keep off of us. You cansee all our lines; they're as plain as the nose on your ugly face.I've got only one thing to say, and that is, the man that stakes insideof 'em is goin' to stop a handful of blue whistlers."

  Following this there was a jangling confab which was almost a riot.Two or three, and among them the man who wanted us to show our map,openly counseled violence. We were but two, and there were by thistime a dozen against us, with more coming up the gulch. They couldhave rushed us easily--at some little cost of life, maybe--but againthe every-man-for-himself idea broke the charm. Already a number ofstragglers were dropping out to skirt our boundaries, and in anotherminute they were fighting among themselves, each man striving to be thefirst to get his stakes down parallel with ours.

  In such a struggle there was necessarily much reckless crisscrossingand overlapping. Claims were stepped off on all sides of us and inevery conceivable direction. The law requires only the driving ofcorner stakes and the posting of a notice prior to the preliminaryentry; and as soon as a man got his stakes driven and his noticedisplayed, he became a vanishing point on the horizon, joining a madrace for town and the land office.

  The assault upon the harmless mountain-side did not last as long as weboth feared it might, and there was no occasion for gun-play. Giffordand I patrolled the boundaries of our claim and made due protest whenit became evident that anybody was overlapping us. Before the sun wasan hour high the last of the locators had tailed off in the townfoot-race; and though there were more coming, the most of theselaggards turned back at once at sight of the forest of new stakes.

  It was not until after our guard duties had ceased to press upon usthat we remembered the wagon-load of precious stuff left at the mercyof a robber world on the bare hillside two miles away. Gifford ran tothe shoulder of the over-looking spur with Barrett's field-glass, and Icould tell by his actions that the strain was off.

  "Dixon is back with another wagon, and he and a helper are transferringthe ore sacks," he reported when he came in. "I told him when he leftthat he might get help wherever he could; that it was no use trying tokeep it dark any longer."

  There being nothing to prevent it now, we cooked breakfast on the campstove, sitting afterward to eat it on the shack door-step, with theweapons handy. I think Gifford had quite forgotten that he had raidedthe shack chuck-box at daybreak. Anyway, his appetite appearedundiminished. He seemed to think that the worst of our troubles wereover, and I did not undeceive him. The later stragglers were stilltramping over the ground and reading the lately posted notices. A fewof them came up to ask questions, and one, a grizzled old fellow whomight have posed as "One-eyed Ike" in Western melodramas, stopped totalk a while.

  "You boys shore have struck it big," he commented. "How come?"

  We explained briefly the finding of the unoccupied ground and thetaking of the average Cripple Creek prospector's chance, and he noddedsagely.

  "Jest lit down 'twixt two days and dug a hole and struck hit rightthere at grass-roots, did ye? That's tenderfoots' luck, ever' time.Vein runnin' bigger?"

  Gifford admitted that it was, and the one-eyed man begged a bit oftobacco for the filling of his blackened corn-cob pipe.

  "Here's hopin'," he said, with true Western magnanimity; then, with ajerk of his head toward the thin column of stack smoke rising on thestill morning air from the Lawrenceburg: "I know this here ground, upone side and down the other. Them fellers down yander 'll be grabbin'fer ye, pronto, soon as they know you've struck pay."

  "Why should they?" I asked, scenting a possible source of information.

  "They own the ground on t' other side of ye, and ever'body allowed theyowned this."

  "But their vein runs the other way--southeast and northwest," Giffordinterposed.

  The old man winked his single eye.

  "Ever been in their workin's?"

  Gifford shook his head.

  "N'r nobody else that could 'r would talk," said our ancient. "Youcan't tell nothin' about which-a-way a vein runs in this here hell'shalf-acre. Bart Blackwell's the whole show on the Lawrenceburg, andhe's a hawg. He's the one that ran them Nebraska farmers off'm theMary Mattock down yander: give 'em notice that he was goin' to sink onthem upper claims o' his'n at the gulch head, and that his sump water'dhave to be turned loose to go where it had a mind to--which'd bestraight down the gulch, o' course. The farmers they allowed that'dswamp 'em worse'n they was already swamped--ez it would--so they up andquit. Blackwell, he's a cuss, with a snoot like a hawg. He don't wantno neighbors."

  I had been observing the old man's face as he talked. It wasvillainous only in its featurings.

  "Which are you; a prospector or a miner?" I asked.

  "A little b'ilin' o' both, I reckon," was his rejoinder. "I driv'
thefirst tunnel in the Buckeye, and they made me boss on thetwo-hundred-foot level. I kin shoot rock with any of 'em's long as Ikin make out to let the bug-juice alone."

  "Are you out of work?"

  "Sure thing."

  I caught Gifford's eye and the carpenter nodded. We were going to needmen and more men, and here was a chance to begin on a man who knew theLawrenceburg, or at least some of the history of it.

  "You're hired," I told him; and it was thus that we secured the mostfaithful and efficient henchman that ever drew pay; a man who knewnothing but loyalty, and who was, besides, a practical miner and askilful master of men.

  Hicks--we carried him thus on the pay-roll, though he himself spelledit "Hix," for short, as he said--left us to go back to town for hisdunnage, and Gifford, knowing that I had been on watch all night, urgedme to turn in. But that was a game that two could play at.

  "I'm no shorter on sleep than you are," I told him. "You were up allnight with the wagon."

  We wrangled over it a bit and I finally yielded. But first I toldGifford about the Lawrenceburg threat for the day, omitting nothing butthe source of my information.

  "So they're going to jump us, are they?" he said. "All right; thequicker the sooner. Does Barrett know?"

  "Not yet. I thought we'd all get together on it this morning. Tellhim when he comes back; and if anything develops before he gets here,sing out for me." And with that I made a dive for the blankets.

  Between the two of them, Gifford and Barrett let me sleep until themiddle of the afternoon. I could scarcely believe the evidence of mysenses when I turned out and saw the miracles that had been wrought ina few short hours. While I slept, the transformation of the LittleClean-Up from a three-man prospect hole to a full-fledged mine hadtaken giant strides. Machinery and material were arriving in aprocession of teams laboring up the gulch; a score of carpenters wereraising the frame of the shaft-house; masons were setting thefoundations for the engine and hoist. I had slumbered peacefullythrough all the din and hammering and the coming and going of theteams; would doubtless have slept longer if the workmen had not putskids and rollers under the shack to move it out of their way.

  Gifford, now thirty-odd hours beyond his latest sleep, was too busy totalk; but Barrett took time to bridge the progress gap for me.

  "There was nothing you could do," he explained, at my protest for beingleft for so many hours out of the activities. "Gifford will have toknock off pretty soon, but the work will go on just the same. Take alook around, Jimmie, and pat yourself on the back. You are no longer aminer; you are a mine owner."

  "Tell me," I said shortly.

  "There isn't much to tell. I caught that first car to town thismorning and got busy. You're seeing some of the results, and the readymoney in bank is what produced them. But we've got to dig some more ofit, and dig it quick. Blackwell has begun suit against us fortrespassing upon Lawrenceburg property, and as you know, every foot ofground all around us was relocated by the early-morning mob thattrailed up from our broken-down wagon."

  "I ought to have told you about the Blackwell move this morning beforeyou got away, but there was so much excitement that I lost sight ofit," I cut in. "I knew about it last night."

  "How was that?"

  "Somebody who knew about it before I did came here and told me."

  "In the night?"

  "In the early part of the night; yes."

  "Was it Everton?"

  "Not on your life. It was some one who thinks a heap more of you thanPhineas Everton does."

  "You don't mean----"

  "Yes; that's just who I do mean. She came over expecting to find you.She wanted to ask you if we had a sure-enough, fire-proof, legal rightto be here. She asked me, when she found you were in bed and asleep.I told her we had, and succeeded in making her believe it. Then shetold me what was coming to us--what Blackwell had up his sleeve."

  "That explains what Gifford was trying to tell me, but he didn't tellme where it came from," said Barrett.

  "He couldn't, because I didn't tell him. It's between you and PollyEverton, and it'll never go any farther. I shall forget it--I'vealready forgotten it."

  In his own way Barrett was as scrupulous as an honest man ought to be."I wish she hadn't done it, Jimmie. It doesn't ring just right, youknow; while her father is still on the Lawrenceburg pay-rolls."

  Right there and then is when I came the nearest to having a quarrelwith Robert Barrett.

  "You blind beetle!" I exploded. "Don't you see that she did it foryou? But beyond that, she was perfectly right. She saw that an unjustthing was about to be done, and she tried to chock the wheels. The mandoesn't live who can stand up and tell me that her motives are notalways exactly what they ought to be. I know they are!"

  Barrett was smiling good-naturedly before I got through. "I like yourloyalty," said he; adding: "and I shan't quarrel with you over MissEverton's motives; she is as good as she is pretty; and that is puttingit as strong as even you could put it."

  It was time to call a halt on this bandying of words about Mary Evertonand her motives. I had already said enough to warrant a cross-fire ofquestions as to how I came to know so much about her.

  "We're off the track," I threw in, by way of making a needed diversion."You began to tell me about the Blackwell demonstration. I see we'restill here."

  "You bet we're here; and we're going to stay. It may take all themoney we can dig out of that hole in the next six months to pay courtcosts, but just the same, we'll stay. Blackwell tried the bullyinggame first; came over here this forenoon with a bunch of his men andtried to scare Gifford out. Gifford stood the outfit off with theshotgun; was still standing it off when I came up with the first gangof workmen. I had bought a few Winchesters against just such anemergency, and I passed them out to the boys and told them to stand by.That settled it and Blackwell backed down, threatening us with thelaw--which he had already invoked."

  "Can he get an injunction and hang us up?"

  "It's a cinch that he'll try. But we have the best lawyers in CrippleCreek, and they're right on the job. There will be litigation a miledeep and two miles high, but we'll get delay--which is all we areplaying for, right now. If the lawyers can stand things off until wehave had one month's digging, we'll have money enough to fight a dozenLawrenceburgs."

  "We are going to be terribly crowded in this little space," I lamented,with a glance at the building chaos which was already overflowing ournarrow limits.

  Barrett slapped me on the back. "There was one time when your UncleBob had the right hunch," he bragged exultantly. "Our attorneys,Benedict & Myers, have succeeded in buying the Mary Mattock for us,which gives us room for the dump. It cost us twenty thousand dollarsyesterday, when the deal was closed, and to-day it would cost a hundredthousand--or as much more as you like. To-morrow morning there will bea syndicate of farmers back in Nebraska reading their newspapers andkicking themselves all over the barnyard."

  "Even the Mattock ground won't give us any too much room," I suggested.

  "No; but we can acquire the outer corners of our triangle, sooner orlater. We can buy of these new stakers after they find that theyhaven't room enough to swing a cat on their little garden patches. Thebig fight is going to be with the Lawrenceburg. Benedict has beendigging into that, and he says we are up against a bunch that willfight to the last ditch. The mine is backed by Eastern capital, andthe claim the owners will make is that their upper ground here in thegulch joins the original location, and that we are trespassers."

  "Give me something to do," I begged. "I can't stand around here,looking on."

  "Your job is waiting for you," Barrett rejoined tersely. "You havenever told me much about yourself, Jimmie, but I know you are abusiness man, with a good bit of experience. Isn't that so?"

  "It was, once," I admitted.

  "All right. You're going to handle the money end of this job in town.When you're ready, pull your freight for the camp, open an office
,organize your force, and get busy with the machinery people, the banks,and the smelters. We'll be shipping in car-load lots within a week."

  Two hours later I boarded a car on the nearest trolley line. On thelong, sweeping rush down the hills I put in the time trying, as anybewildered son of Adam might, to find myself and to rise in somemeasure to the stupendous demands of the new task which lay before me.

  But at the car-stopping in Bennett Avenue it was the escaped convict,rather than the newly created business manager of the Little Clean-Up,who slipped into the nearest hardware shop and purchased a revolver.