When their unpleasant guest departed from the cabin of our heroes, he marched straight down to Bob’s cabin in the village and there found himself heartily welcomed. Old Bob introduced him to Scotty as “Bill Stevens—a fellow who knows the San Juan like his own barn-yard.” Scotty said he was glad to see him, and no doubt he was, for he felt in need of friends, and this new man, as a chum of Bob’s and evidently training in the same band, would of course become an ally of his. This Scotty needed; though he had not been sent out of town a second time, and was permitted to lounge around the El Dorado and to sit at the gambling-tables, or join the story-telling circles at the public corral, he saw that most of the men whom he met were{66} far from cordial toward him, and that his earnest efforts to be agreeable were of small avail in making friends. It did not suit his plans to resent this, nor to leave the camp in search of a more congenial community; so he put up with the unpopularity as well as he could. It galled him, however, and caused him to lay up hatred rather than love toward the whole population of the valley.
As soon as Bill Stevens’ back was turned, Scotty took occasion to inquire somewhat about him. Bob really knew little of his history, except that, as he said, they had been “pards” in a little game some time previous, after which Stevens had thought it prudent to go away. Scotty pressed Old Bob to know the particulars of this partnership enterprise, but Bob declined at first to tell them. Finally, however, he exclaimed:
“Well, I s’pose you might as well know, its only another point against them dod-rotted young swells up the creek. The fact is, when Brehm and his partner lived down in that{67} there cabin ’cross the bridge yonder, Bushwick went off to Denver. By’n bye he came back with a heap o’ cash—don’ know how much—mebbe a thousand or so. ’Bout that time Bill came over to see me from t’other side the range, and I was telling about it, you know. Well Bill, he made out ’s how Bushwick didn’t have no right to the money no how, havin’ stole it from somebody else by some kind of lawyer’s game, and ’twas as much ours as his’n or anybody’s, which of course that is true, providin’ he got it by swindlin’, which like enough he did, you know.”
“So you and Bill held him up, did you?”
“No, we didn’t have no chance to rob him on the road, but we thought we could get into his cabin easy enough. So we tried it, Stevens climbin’ softly into the winder and I outside a-holdin’ the ladder. He’d got e’en-a ’most in, when bang went a gun and out tumbled Bill on top o’me. I thought we was both killed sure, but Bill picked himself up,{68} and we lit out as though the Old Scratch himself was after us, which the same he mighty near was.”
“Didn’t hit Stevens, then?” Scotty inquired, with a grin which showed how well he enjoyed the comical side of the situation, and how little his conscience was touched by the villainy of the story.
“No, but it was an awful close call. Great C?sar! But Max Brehm kin shoot, now you just bet!”
“Does Stevens know that the boys up the creek where he stopped t’other night are the same fellows?”
“I guess not; he aint said nothin’ about it.”
“If he did know, I reckon there’d be three of us as thought we owed the fine gentlemen a little debt of honor, which the same we hadn’t ought, on no account, to fail to pay—eh?”
Scotty’s leer and chuckle were as long as these slow and wicked words, and Bo{69}b’s squinty and bleary eye answered with a distorted, left-handed, evil grin of comprehension as he snarled out the laconic assent:
“Bet yer boots!”
And yet this is the kind of men whom so many well-meaning but romantically inclined eastern boys, knowing the far West only as they read of it in cheap books of a very poor sort, regard as heroes in disguise, and long to see and associate with. Thieves and gamblers at home are justly abhorred by them, yet the same man, perhaps, transplanted to the Rockies to escape the sheriff at home, becomes in these flashy books a sort of chivalrous knight whose uncouth ways only heighten his supposed virtues.
This is the worst of nonsense. A brave, heroic man does not show himself in this garb. The honest heroes of the Rockies never figure in dime novels and never will. They are not loud and “chinny” enough for that. They do not wear long hair, nor carry a big Kentucky rifle, nor appear and disappear{70} in any mysterious Jack-in-the-box manner. They are not accustomed to kill six or eight “red-skinned varmints” at a single blow, and if ever they are engaged in Indian warfare, are far too wise to get so surrounded by a circle of Indians that they are obliged to take a standing leap over the heads of their foes, as did Eagle-eye or some other scout I once read of. If they tried to behave in this way, or to dress in story-book fashion, they would be hung or driven out by men of action who have no time to spend watching Bowery-museum foolishness, and whose business would be harmed by its display.
There is in every mining district a class of men who behave more or less as these novels portray, going as far toward it, anyhow, leaving out some of the theatrical foolishness, as they dare; and I suppose they form the material out of which the writers of the sorry stuff try to make their heroes. But as a matter of fact they are lawless scamps, brutal, lowlived, ignorant, unclean men, with whom{71} not one in fifty of their admirers among the readers of these false and miserable tales would allow himself to be seen on the streets of the town where he was born. They are more noisy and more difficult to separate from their betters in the rough and unarranged surroundings of a new mining camp or cattle district, than they would be in an eastern village where the affairs of life are well classified; but they are none the less avoided and despised by good citizens, and are feared rather than trusted in any emergency, like an Indian war, which calls for courage and discretion.
I cannot conceive of a more complete disappointment and experience of fraud, than would meet the romantic reader of the Indian-slaying and horse-stealing tales in yellow covers, who should go on a search through the far West for the originals of those thrilling pictures.
Ruffianly men exist and attempt their wicked schemes among honest men, who, in{72} the absence of regular police protection, and at the great distance which many mines and ranches lie from courts, are often obliged to defend themselves as soldiers would in an enemy’s country, or as any man has a right to do when attacked by robbers. But, boys, for the sake of all that is fair and square, let us call a ruffian a ruffian, and not attempt to see glory in the doings of a horse-thief, or a gambler, or a man who tries by force of rifle and pistol to seize upon property which does not belong to him.
While Scotty and Bob were discussing the achievements by which Mr. William Stevens, so called, had made himself distinguished, that worthy came in, bringing a new bag of cheap black tobacco. Filling their pipes, the three scallawags sat down in front of the coals smouldering in the adobe fireplace, and Bob immediately began to tell Stevens the names of the miners whose hospitality he enjoyed the night before, and how eager he ought to be to join the other two in a scheme{73} to break them down. Partly from ignorance, partly by design, they exaggerated to each other the injury each had suffered, and also the amount of plunder which it was likely might be obtained from the firm of B. B. & Co. The upshot of it all, was a compact between them to “get even” with the lads. This meant to rob them and drive them from the town, or, if it was at all necessary, to kill them, accounting for their crime by some artful story of self-defense or the like.
They were in no great hurry, however, to carry out their wicked purposes, and three or four days passed without their making any movement, since no plan suggested itself that seemed promising.
One evening Old Bob came home and remarked, as he took the coffee-mill between his knees and began to fill it from a buckskin bag that hung against the chimney, that Morris had returned from below, and that he had talked with him a little.
“Did he say he loved ye?” inquired Scotty,{74} in sarcastic tones, and betraying a little uneasiness as to what might follow when Morris should hear of his return in defiance of the order of banishment.
“Wall—no, I reckon he’s soured on me,” was Bob’s candid response. “But that didn’t phase me. I wanted mighty bad to find out suthin’, and I played sweet and boned him for the information.”
“Did he play sweet, too, and tell ye?”
“Wall—no. But all the same I found out what I wanted. I let on I’d heard Jim Bowen was dead, and asked him was it true.”
“What did he say?”
“Oh, he glared at me, as though he was a bull buffalo and I was a ky-yote, ’n’ just says ‘dead and buried,’ and then he marched off as if he’d been sent for. I’ll get even with that sardine yet!”
This was a pretty accurate account of what really had passed between them. In fact, Morris had just been hunting with “Buckeye Jim” Bowen all that week, and knew he was
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SCOTTY AND OLD BOB.
Silver Caves, Page 74.
{75}
as much alive as anybody had need to be; but Morris hated Bob, thought he had no business to be playing the hypocrite and asking questions about what was none of his affair, and so sent him off with this short and reckless answer, not thinking or caring how much Bob might believe of it.
“So the Terror’s passed in his checks, eh?” was Scotty’s comment. “He wasn’t a bad sort of a party. I used to know him in Illinoy. They runned him off because they said he stole some horses,—fine nags they was, too. But it turned out he wasn’t the feller after all. I could ’a’ told ’em all the time they was wrong, only it wouldn’t a’-been quite healthy.”
“Why?” asked Stevens, whose wits were not of the quickest. “Did you know the right man?”
“I should smile! I stole them horses, pardner! But, Bob, what made you so anxious to know whether Buckeye Jim was dead?”
“Cause it fixes us O. K. The boys up{76} the creek are working his mine. I don’t know whether they’ve got any show of right about it or not, but now Jim’s dead I reckon they’d have hard work to keep it if we war to jump it.”
Do you know what it is to jump a mine? It means simply to seize it without any right, and hold it by force, a thing very often successful when the first claimant has no legal title to the property.
Bob’s proposition interested the others at once, and they began to discuss it eagerly. Stevens asserted that it was the middle one of the three mines at the head of the creek, namely the Aurora, that the boys were working. He confessed that he had not gone into it, but was sure that he was right. There was too much water in the upper tunnel near the cabin, he assured them, to do anything there.
“Don’t you ’spose Morris knows that these boys have jumped Buckeye’s mine?” asked Scotty, who remembered that Bowen partly owned the Aurora.{77}
“Tain’t likely,” Bob answered. “But it will be just as well to keep him from findin’ out they’re in there, if we can, for fear of any interference. I reckon he feels friendly toward ’em by reason of helpin’ him in your El Dorado scrape.”
The very next morning, therefore, the three conspirators were thrown into a quiver of alarm, by seeing both Len and Max in town. Bob met them at the post-office, and loitered around, hoping, even if Morris should appear, that he might be able by some good chance to prevent their meeting. He thus heard Max tell the postmaster that they meant to stay in town until the next day, and took it for granted, from something else which he overheard, that the Scotchman had come in also, leaving the mine and cabin alone over-night.
The moment he heard this, Old Bob hastened to find his partners and to say that now was their opportunity to go up the creek, get a look at the property, and make a plan for {78}capturing it. Scotty and Stevens agreed that this was advisable, and borrowing horses, the three rattled up the road to Panther Creek as fast as possible, since no time ought to be wasted if they were to get back before sundown, and to travel on those mountain trails in the darkness is by no means a comfortable or safe proceeding.