I headed back to the claim with a head full of problemation. If Pap and Morg got out of the mountains safe they’re likely around Sacramento someplace by now, and when they head for the diggings they might just pick the same as we done and one of these days come face to face with me and Jim. Maybe we’d just pretend we never seen each other and go our different ways, but that’s mighty wishful. And there’s Bulldog Barrett too. He’ll be going from camp to camp till he finds me I reckon, but it’ll take him awhile, there’s so many, and maybe me and Jim will strike it rich and be on our way someplace else by the time he reaches hereabouts. Jim and Obadiah was both asleep when I got back and I rolled up in my blanket and done the same, but it was hours till I got my brain cleared and was able to sleep.
Sure enough, Frank was with us come morning, but so sick he never had the strength to be waspish, just nursed his head all day while Jim and me panned and panned and growed our humps all over again. Then around evening Frank got well enough to be cranky.
“Why am I here?” he wants to know. “You two have abducted me again, have you not?”
We warn’t in no mood for argument, both in considerable torment like we are, so I launched a broadside, as they say.
“No we never, and if you don’t like it here you can go drown yourself, you danged ungrateful useless sap-head!”
“What’s that you say?…”
“You heard it de firs’ time,” says Jim. “You ain’t nothin’ but a millstone aroun’ our necks, so you jest better watch out or we ain’t feedin’ you no mo’ an’ pickin’ you off’n de groun’ like we done till now.”
“What’s that?… What!… How dare you address me that way, you darkie, you!… I am Frank Jennings of Springfield, Illinois.…”
“We know it, and it’s a shame we do,” says I. “You been nothing but trouble to us ever since we run into you and you ain’t showed no gratitude for it even once, just all the time complain and sulk like a baby and complain some more, and before you ask where’s your invention book we ain’t got it, and you ain’t got it neither on account of you proberly lost it last time you got drunk, so don’t you go telling us we stole it or we’ll put your fool head under the creek and keep it there till you get some sense inside of you!”
He looked at us like we just cut his nose off or something, then he kind of slumped inside his clothes, just shrunk away into a skinny little man with a baldy head and yeller teeth and starts to cry. I disbelieved it first off and figured he’s just after sympathetical treatment, but them tears was the genuine thing and got bigger and heavier and rolled down his face in floods, cleaning it some. He sobbed and sobbed and never seen fit to quit till we talked gentle to him and fetched some food over. Feeding and sobbing together give him the hiccups and he never shook them all night. Just when me and Jim was sliding into the land of Nod there comes another hiccup from Frank and we’re back in California, weary and wore out. In the end we made him take his blanket and go sleep under a tree, which got him upset but he done it and we got some rest. It’s a pesky business being a Samaritan.
We panned three days more and washed every inch of the bank on our side, then seeing there ain’t no one staked a claim on the other side yet we done that too, and near killed ourselfs for nothing. Frank give us a hand when the mood come on him, which ain’t often, but it don’t matter how many hands you got if there ain’t no gold on your claim. One night we talked it over and figured we may as well try somewhere else. Frank says:
“Thus far you have only worked the banks of the creek.”
“Well that’s where you find gold,” says I. “Everyone knows that.”
“An educated mind would ask how the gold came to be there in the first place,” he says, “but since I possess the only mind of such type here I must answer the question for you. The gold is washed by erosion from further up the slopes which confine the creek to its course.”
“You mean there’s gold up the hill?”
“Possibly. I suggest you find out before you desert the claim.”
“Wait on,” says Jim. “How we goin’ to wash de dirt if’n it halfway up de hill?”
“You must dig it out and bring it down to the creek for washing. I further suggest you purchase a cradle for this purpose. A pan holds too little soil and is too slow, in addition to which a cradle can be operated from an upright position.”
That last part was all it took to make us change our way of doing things. Next day I went to the store and laid out fifty dollars each for a pick and shovel that ordinarily would of cost five, and a hundred dollars for a wheelbarrow that should of cost ten to take the dirt down to the creek, and another hundred and fifty for a cradle, and it ain’t nothing but a fancy wooden box! Including the money I paid for supplies it means my race winnings is practickly gone, so Frank better be right with his notion or we’re busted.
If you never done no cradling I best tell you how it works. There’s the box, around the same size and shape as a baby’s cradle and with rockers underneath, and on top of that you got a littler box with holes in the bottom and no top on it which is called a hopper, and it’s got a handle on one side which you grab to rock it back and forth. But before you start rocking you fill the hopper with dirt and pour water over it, and as it gets washed through the holes the rocks and such get catched and the rest slops along the bottom of the cradle where there’s little wood slats called riffles that snag the nuggets and let the sand and water flow out the front. It’s real clever, but it ain’t worth no hundred and fifty dollars, not unless you get one with gold already in it.
We started using it next day. Jim dug out a pile of dirt from the hill behind the shelter and I brung it down to the creek in the wheelbarrow and emptied it into the hopper a little at a time. Frank used a pan to slop water over it and while he done that I rocked the cradle. The water and dirt run through all right but never left no nuggets behind. It took awhile to wash that first load and I seen we had to speed things up some if Jim ain’t going to lean on his pick most of the day waiting for us to catch up. We traded jobs now and then but it never made much difference; working a cradle is a two-man job. Whichever Frank was doing, digging or hauling or dumping or rocking, he done it slow and made things worse. He says he ain’t got the brawn to do muscle work, but I reckon he’s disinclined to anyway. It was real annoying, but what can you do with a lunatic?
In the afternoon two men come along and staked the other side of the creek then went away a little while and come back again with their tools.
“Pardon me, gents,” says I. “We already panned that side and there warn’t no gold.”
“You done what?” says one with a ginger beard.
“We already panned along that side twenty yards and more.”
The other one puts his hands on his hips and says:
“I suppose you done it before you moved over yonder.”
“No, sir, we done it after, then come back here.”
“You was still living over that side when you worked this side?”
“Yessir. It never seemed worthwhile to shift the shelter when all you need to do is jump across the creek.”
They looked at each other and the ginger one says:
“Don’t you know you ain’t supposed to occupy more’n one claim at a time?”
“Why not?” says I.
“Why not! It’s against the rules, that’s why not! You can only work one claim at one time, jackass!”
“Oh. Well we never knowed that rule, honest. I reckon it’s just as well we never struck no gold over there.”
Ginger turns to the other one and says:
“Do you believe anyone could be so dangblasted stupid?”
“No I don’t,” says number two. “I bet he ain’t half so stupid as he looks. It’s all acting, that’s what I reckon. Their side’s a no-gooder and they was fixing to jump across here and give this side a try. Well we ain’t stupid neither. This side’s ours now so just you keep your boots over there. We catch you trying to s
neak over here and you’ll get a shovel across your head, you hear me, boy?”
“I ain’t acting.”
“The hell you ain’t, you little claim jumper. What’s your name?”
“Jeff Wilson.”
“You try any fancy tricks and we’ll give your name to the mining office and they’ll run you clear across the Sierras.”
“That’s if they don’t lynch you first,” says Ginger.
“Mining office?” says I, and they looked at each other again, then back at me.
“You mean you ain’t registered your claim?”
“I never knowed you have to.”
“I was wrong,” says number two. “He’s even stupider than he looks.”
“You better get yourself down there right now, boy,” says Ginger. “You ain’t got no legal claim to that ground you’re stood on.”
“Thank you, sir,” says I. “I’ll do it this minute. Where’s the mining office located?”
“Sacramento,” he says.
“But that’s two days’ ride away.”
“Well you should of done the right thing before you come all this way. You better get, boy.”
“Yessir,” says I, but I knowed they’re trying to fool me because how can you register a claim in Sacramento before you even get out to the diggings and stake one. Says I:
“Is that where you gents registered yours?”
“That’s right, boy. We always do the right thing.”
“Thank you for setting me straight, sirs.”
I saddled up Jupiter real fast and pretended I never seen them both laughing behind their hands. Jim and Frank heard the whole thing and stopped work to tell me what I already guessed, namely that the mining office must be where the store and saloon is, because Ginger and his partner warn’t gone all that long between staking the claim and coming back with their tools. I whispered for them to play along and they done it, and I rode off along the creek looking real worried.
When I got to the store I seen a sign outside a tent a little way off and give myself a kick for never paying it no mind before this. It says clear and simple:
MINING OFFICE
Register Your Claim Here
I went in and done it and paid five dollars. On the front page of the register book is the name of our creek, Sandy Creek, which is something else I never knowed, and just above my name is the names of the two jokers, Jake Wells and Patrick Riley. I bet Riley is the one with ginger hair. I got give a sheet of regulations, printed in a rush so the letters is smudged and the readableness just awful, but I ciphered it out on the way back to the claim. Most of it is about only having one claim like the jokers told and not jumping no one else’s or taking up more than thirty yards of creek, and down at the bottom it says you ain’t allowed to kill no one to get their claim neither.
When they seen me coming Wells and Riley fell over theirselfs laughing, and Riley says:
“What’s the matter, boy, lose your way?”
“No, sir,” says I, all innocent, “but they must of set up a local mining office just recent. It’s downstream with the store and saloon and such.”
“Well, ain’t that handy,” he says, grinning.
“Are you gentlemen Mr. Wells and Mr. Riley?” I ask.
“What if we are?”
“The man in the mining office says can you go see him real quick, sir. He says he put you down for Juniper Creek by mistake, not Sandy Creek, so you ain’t truly registered. He’s real upset over it.”
“Hell,” says Riley. “I figured that dangblasted bookkeeper for a fool soon as I laid eyes on him. We better go see what he done to us.”
“I’ll stay here,” says Wells. “I don’t trust them over there not to jump our claim while we’re gone.”
“They can’t do nothing while we got our stuff lying around, that’s the rules. You hear that, boy? No claim jumping while there’s tools lying around.”
“Yessir, I hear you, only please hurry. You ain’t got no legal right to be where you are.”
They both legged it downstream and I unsaddled Jupiter and told Jim and Frank the joke, only Frank never seen the funny side of it, not even when I went over the creek and hid their cradle and pans and shovels under some bushes. When they come back they looked mean and all set to argue with me over the time they wasted, then they seen their tools is all gone.
“Holy Mother!” screeches Riley. “They’ve stole our stuff!…”
“It warn’t us, sirs,” says I. “It was a little old lady come along and says she’s Mr. Riley’s mother and she ain’t ever seen such untidiness on the ground since little Patrick was crawling around the house creating mess and disruption underfoot.”
Riley started across the creek with blood in his eye and I waved the regulation sheet at him.
“Don’t do it, Mr. Riley. It says here you can’t set foot on another claim without you been invited, and you ain’t. I don’t want to report you to the mining office for breaking no rules, but I reckon they was drawed up to get kept.”
He stopped in midstream with water running into his boots and I say:
“That’s a certain way to catch your death of pneumonia, Mr. Riley.”
His ginger beard kind of bristled and practickly catched fire he’s so angersome, then Frank says:
“I believe you will find your implements beneath yonder bushes.”
Riley turned around and they set up their camp without even looking at us the rest of the day. After supper Frank give me a lecture.
“Never antagonize men of inferior intellect,” he says. “They will invariably respond in a violent manner.”
“Well, I reckon you should know,” says I. “You get folks’ backs up every time you open your mouth, you and Obadiah both.”
“Obadiah?… I have told you never to mention that name in my presence,” he says, getting all fidgety. “You know it causes me distress, yet you continue to persecute me. Why, why do you do it? Am I not your friend? Are my hands not blistered? Have I not toiled alongside you in sweaty partnership?”
“If you reckon the amount of work you done so far is what partnership is all about then we ain’t even barely acquainted,” says I. “You can just quit all that heartbreak stuff with me. It don’t work no more, and it won’t ever do till you work hard as me and Jim … I mean Goliath, and don’t bother crying none neither; we got all the water we need right handy.”
He looked at me for a moment then stood up and walked away into the dark. We never tried to stop him, but after he went Jim says:
“Huck, you a diff’rent man, das a fac’, an’ I ain’t so sure you changin’ for de betterment.”
“I ain’t in no mood for riddles,” says I, real snippy.
“Den I reckon to tell it simple. You gettin’ de hard shell aroun’ you like a turtle, an’ I means de snappin’ kind. You ain’t de man I knowed when we’s on de raft las’ year, not nohow.”
“I reckon a body can change in a year. There ain’t no law against it.”
“Dere’s changes an’ changes, Huck. You actin’ mighty tough jest recent.”
“Well, so have you. You even held a rifle to my own Pap’s head awhile back. What’s that if it ain’t acting tough?”
“I ain’t denyin’ I done it, but I come over wid pure shame later on jest recollectin’ what I done. I never had de right, not wid yo’ Pap de way he be. He ain’t a regular man no mo’, if’n he ever was after hittin’ de bottle all dem years back. Now he jest be a sad pathetical man like Frank’n’Obadiah, only not so smart talkin’. I shoulder jest let him be. All dat wid de rifle never fixed nothin’. My ol’ woman an’ de chillern ain’t goin’ to come back on accounter what I done. You keep up de backtalkin’ wid Frank an’ one day you goin’ to say somethin’ you wished you never had of. I reckon he went off to where dey sellin’ liquor, an if’n he don’ come home drunk an’ turn hisself into dat crazy brother by mornin’ you kin whomp me wid de shovel. I knows we figured on givin’ him whiskey if’n Frank wore out
de welcome, but dat man drunk a whole river of de stuff in his life an’ one more drop kin maybe kill him. Lessen we wants to take de blame for it we got to keep him happy an’ sober.”
“Keep him happy? I recollect you told him he ain’t nothing but a millstone around our necks just a little while back.”
“I knows it, an’ I regrets it even if’n he needed de tellin’ den on accounter bein’ uppity wid us, but he been mighty polite lately an’ don’ need no tonguewhippin’ like you give him jest now.”
I stuck out my lip so he’ll see I ain’t happy to get criticalized that way, but only for show. Deep down I knowed he’s right. I seen the same things in myself he’s talking about, but it ain’t a situation you can set on the table and work out, too complexified I reckon, so I just say:
“He ain’t got no money for whiskey.”
“Huck, you knows dere’s always someone das free wid money dat’ll buy a sad face’ man a drink. Whyn’t you go fetch him back befo’ it happen?”
“I ain’t his nursemaid. He’s three times older’a me,” says I, getting peevish out of guilt. “And you ain’t my nursemaid neither.”
He give me a long look that spoke books, as they say, then he says:
“How come you took de risk on rescuin’ de bulldog das out to get you hanged an’ you don’ even wanter get on yo’ feet for de saker Frank das in needer lookin’ after? Dat don’ make no kinder sense, Huck.”
It’s a good question but I ain’t got no answer. Like Jim says, all I got to do is go fetch him back and apologize, but I never done it, I don’t know why. Says I:
“If you don’t want him to get drunk you can go fetch him yourself.”
“I’se wastin’ my time conversifyin’ wid you,” says Jim. “Dere ain’t a body alive das closer’n you to me, Huck, an’ I jest don’ like to see you gettin’ change for de worse, das all. I ain’t about to say no mo’ on it.”
And he walked off a little way and sat and smoked his pipe. Seeing him there by the creek with his back to me give me the double guilts and I went over and says:
“Jim, mind the store while I go get Frank.”