CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“STEVE CARSON—POOR DEVIL!”
Gary went down ten feet at an incline so sharp he could not carry the muck up in the buckets he had expected to use for the purpose. He knew, because he spent two perspiring hours in the attempt. Could he have done it, it would have been slow, toilsome work. But at least he could have gone down. He would not take the time to experiment with a ladder. To carry the necessary material up the bluff and build a thing would consume the best part of a day, and the richness of the vein bred impatience that could not brook delay.
He therefore decided to crosscut on the side where the vein showed the highest values and continue throwing out the muck. It would be slow, but Gary was thankful that he could make headway working by himself. So he drilled a round of holes in the left wall of the shaft, with the quartz and porphyry in the center of the face of the proposed crosscut. The vein on that side was wider, and the values were fully as high as on the other. He was pleased with his plan and tried to remember all he had learned about mining, so that he would waste neither time, effort, nor ore.
It takes practice to handle dynamite to the best advantage, and Gary did not always shoot the gangue cleanly away from the ore, but mixed some of his richest values with the muck. To offset that, he used the pick as much as possible and sorted the ore carefully at the bottom of the incline shaft, before he threw it to the surface.
Any experienced miner would have made better footage in a day, but it is doubtful if any man would have put in longer shifts or worked harder. And it is a great pity that Patricia could not have watched him for a day and appreciated the full strength of his devotion to her interests.
At the end of ten days, Gary had gone five feet into his crosscut, and was hoping to make better footage now that his muscles had adjusted themselves somewhat to the labor. His hands, too, had hardened amazingly. Altogether, Gary felt that he was justified in thinking mighty well of himself. There were so many things for which he was thankful, and there were so few for which he felt regret.
He did not even worry about Patricia, now that he was accomplishing something really worth while for her. It amused him to picture Patricia’s astonishment when he returned to Los Angeles and told her that he had investigated Johnnywater ranch very carefully, and that she could not expect to make a nickel running cattle over there. He would tell her that his hunch had been a bird. He dramatized for himself her indignation and chuckled at the way she would fly at him for daring to convince her that she had made a foolish investment.
Then, when she had called him a lot of names and argued and squared her chin—then he would tell her that he had found the makings of a wedding ring at Johnnywater, and that he would expect her finger to be ready for it the minute it was cool enough to wear. After he had teased her sufficiently, he would tell her how he and the pinto cat had located “The Pat Connolly” mine; he would ask her for the job of general manager, because he would want to make sure that half of Patricia’s millions were not being stolen from her.
Now that the cañon held a potential fortune, Gary could appreciate its picturesque setting and could contemplate with pleasure the prospect of spending long summers there with Patricia. He would locate sufficient claims to protect the cañon from an influx of strangers, and they would have it for their own special little corner of the world. It is astonishing how prosperity will change a man’s point of view.
Six feet into the crosscut, Gary’s round of holes shot unexpectedly through hard rock into a close-packed mass of broken malapi. The stuff had no logical right to be there, breaking short off the formation and vein. Had the vein pinched out and the malapi come in gradually, he might have seen some geologic reason for the change. But the whole face of his crosscut opened up malapi bowlders and “nigger-heads.”
Gary filled his two buckets and carried them out into the shaft, dumping them disgustedly on the floor. It was like being shaken out of a blissful dream. He would have given a good deal just then for the presence of his old field boss, who was wise in all the vagaries of mineral formations. But there was ore still in the loosened muck, and Gary went back after it, thinking that he would make a clean job of that side before he started crosscutting the vein to the right of the shaft.
He filled one bucket. Then his shovel struck into something tough and yielding. Gary stooped, holding his candle low. He groped with his hand and pulled out a shapeless, earth-stained felt hat, with part of a skull inside it.
He dropped the gruesome thing and made for the opening, took the steep incline like a scared centipede and sat down weakly on a rock, drawing the back of his hand again and again across his clammy forehead. His knees shook. The flesh of his entire body was all aquiver with the horror of it.
Some time elapsed before Gary could even bring himself to think of the thing he had uncovered. He moved farther away, pretending that he was seeking the shade; in reality, he wanted to push a little more sunlight between the shaft and himself.
Faith came and mewed suddenly at his elbow, rubbing herself against his arm, and Gary jumped as if some one had struck him from behind. The contact of the cat set him quivering again, and he pushed her away from him with a backward sweep of his arm. Faith retreated to another rock and stood there with her back arched, regarding him fixedly in round-eyed amazement. Gary slid off the bowlder and started down the bluff, his going savoring strongly of retreat. He was not particularly squeamish, nor had he ever been called a coward; nevertheless the grisly discovery drove him from the spot with the very unexpectedness of the disinterment.
At the cabin he stopped and looked back up the bluff, ashamed of his flight.
“Steve Carson—the poor devil!” he muttered under his breath. “A cave-in caught him, I reckon. And nobody ever knew what became of him.”
He walked aimlessly to the corral, perhaps seeking the small comfort of even the horse’s presence. He gave Jazz an extra forkful of hay and stood leaning his elbows upon the top rail of the corral, watching Jazz nose the heap for the tenderest morsels. The phlegmatic content of the old horse steadied him. He could think of the horror now, without shaking inside like joggled jelly.
He looked at his watch and saw that it lacked half an hour until noon. There would be time enough to do what he knew must be done, if he were to have any future peace in Johnnywater Cañon.
He found an extra pick, shouldered the long-handled irrigating shovel and set out to find a suitable spot—not too close to the house—where he might give the shattered bones of Steve Carson decent burial. He chose the tiny knoll crowned with the thick-branched juniper and dug the grave there that afternoon. For the time being he must leave the body where it was, crushed under the cave-in.
“But he stayed there for five years,” Gary excused the seeming slight. “One more night shouldn’t hurt him.”
It was an uncomfortable night, however, for Gary. Even in his sleep the thought of that broken body would not leave him. It overshadowed all his hopes and dreams, and even Patricia seemed very far away, and life seemed very short and uncertain.
The next day Gary devoted to moving what little was left of Steve Carson from under the mass of broken rock and burying the remains in the grave under the juniper. The mottled cat walked solemnly behind him all the way; and it seemed to Gary that the unseen yet sentient spirit of the man walked beside him.