The Twins of Suffering Creek

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE REASON WHY

When Scipio turned his back upon the valley it was with the intention of resting his old mule at the place of the friendly farmer whom he had encountered on his first memorable visit to James’ secret abode. From thence, after a night’s rest, he would start late next day, and make the creek soon after sundown. For the sake of Jessie he had no desire to make a daylight entry into the camp.

The old mule certainly needed rest. And, besides, it was pleasant to prolong the journey. Moments such as the present were scarce enough in life. And though Jessie was with him for all time now, he greedily hugged to himself these hours alone with her, when there was nothing but the fair blue sky and waving grass, the hills and valleys, to witness his happiness, none of the harshness of life to obtrude upon his perfect joy; nothing, not even the merest duties of daily life, to mar the delicious companionship which his wife’s long-desired presence afforded him. The whole journey was to be a sort of honeymoon, a thousand times sweeter for the misery and unhappiness through which they had both passed.

He thought of nothing else. The very existence of James and his gang had passed from his recollection. He had no mind for dangers of any sort. He had no mind for anything or anybody but his Jessie, his beautiful Jessie–his wife.

Had he had the least curiosity or interest in other matters, there were many things, strange things, about the recovery of his wife which might have set him wondering. For instance, he might have speculated as to the desertion of the ranch–the absence of dogs, the absence of all those signs which tell of a busy enterprise–things which could not be adequately accounted for by the mere absence of the head of it, even though he were accompanied by his fighting men. He might have glanced about among the barns and corrals, or–he might even have questioned his Jessie.

Had he done either of these things a certain amount of enlightenment would undoubtedly have penetrated to his unsuspicious mind. He must inevitably have detected the hand or hands of his earthly guardian angels in the manner in which his path had been cleared of all obstructions.

Had he been less occupied with his own happiness, with the joy of having Jessie once more beside him, and chanced to look back into the valley as he left it forever, he would certainly have received enlightenment. But he never knew what had been done for him, he never knew the subtle working for his welfare.

Thus it was, all unobserved by him, the moment he was at sufficient distance from the ranch, three horsemen suddenly appeared from amidst the most adjacent point of the forest on the far side of the valley and galloped across to the house. They ran their horses to cover amongst the buildings and dismounted, immediately vanishing into one of the barns.

And as they disappeared a good deal of laughter, a good deal of forceful talk, came from the place which had swallowed them up. Then, after awhile, the three reappeared in the open, and with them came an old choreman, whose joints ached, and whose villainous temper had seriously suffered under the harsh bonds which had held him secure from interference with Scipio for so long.

The men herded him out before them, quite heedless of his bitter vituperation and blasphemy. And when they had driven him forth Sunny Oak pointed out to him the retreating buckboard as it vanished over the far hillside.

“Ther’ they go, you miser’ble old son of a moose,” he cried with a laugh. “Ther’ they go. An’ I guess when James gits around ag’in you’ll likely pay a mighty fine reck’nin’. An’ I’ll sure say I won’t be a heap sorry neither. You’ve give me a power o’ trouble comin’ along out here. I ain’t had no sort o’ rest fer hours an’ hours, an’ I hate folks that sets me busy.”

“You’re a pizenous varmint, sure,” added Sandy, feeling that Sunny must not be allowed all the talk. “An’ your langwidge is that bad I’ll need to git around a Bible-class ag’in to disinfect my ears.”

“You sure will,” agreed Toby, with one of his fatuous grins. “I never see any feller who needed disinfectin’ more.” Then he turned upon the evil-faced choreman and added his morsel of admonition. “Say, old man, as you hope to git buried yourself when James gits around ag’in, I guess you best go an’ dig that miser’ble cur o’ yours under, ’fore he gits pollutin’ the air o’ this yer valley, same as you are at the moment. He’s cost me a goodish scrap, but I don’t grudge it him noways. Scrappin’s an elegant pastime, sure–when you come out right end of it.”

After that, cowed but furious, the old man was allowed to depart, and the three guardians of Scipio’s person deliberately returned to their charge. Their instructions were quite clear, even though they only partially understood the conditions making their work necessary. Scipio must be safeguarded. They were to form an invisible escort, clearing his road for him and making his journey safe. So they swung into the saddle and rode hot-foot on the trail of their unconscious charge.

For the most part they rode silently. Already the journey had been long and tiresomely uneventful, and Sunny Oak particularly reveled in an impotent peevishness which held him intensely sulky. The widower, too, was feeling anything but amiable. What with his recent futile work on a claim which was the ridicule of the camp, and now the discomfort of a dreary journey, his feelings towards Wild Bill were none too cordial. Perhaps Toby was the most cheerful of the three. The matters of the Trust had been a pleasant break in the daily routine of dispossessing himself of remittances from his friends in the East. And the unusual effort made him feel good.

They had reached the crown of the hill bordering the valley, where the trail debouched upon the prairie beyond, and the effort of easing his horse, as the struggling beast clawed its way up the shelving slope, at last set loose the tide of the loafer’s ill-temper. He suddenly turned upon his companions, his angry face dirty and sweating.

“Say,” he cried, “of all the blamed fules I’d say we three was the craziest ever pupped.”

Sandy turned inquiring, contemptuous eyes in his direction. He always adopted a defensive attitude when Sunny opened out. Toby only grinned and waited for what was to come.

“Meanin’?” inquired Sandy in his coldest manner.

“Meanin’? Gee! it don’t need a mule’s intellec’ to get my meanin’,” said the loafer witheringly. “Wot, in the name o’ glory, would I mean but this doggone ride we’re takin’? Say, here’s us three muttons chasin’ glory on the tail o’ two soppy lambs that ain’t got savvee enough between ’em to guess the north end of a hoss when he’s goin’ south. An’, wot’s more, we’re doin’ it like a lot o’ cluckin’ hens chasin’ a brood o’ fule chicks. I tell you it jest makes me sick. An’ ef I don’t git six weeks’ rest straight on end after this is thro’ I’ll be gettin’ plumb ‘bug,’ or–or the colic, or suthin’ ornery bum. I’ve done. Sufferin’ Creek ain’t no place fer a peace-lovin’ feller like me, whose doin’ all he knows to git thro’ life easy an’ without breakin’ up a natterally delicate constitootion. I’m done. I quit.”

Sandy’s face was a study in sneers. Not because he did not agree with the sentiments, but Sunny always irritated him. But Toby only grinned the harder, and for once, while the widower was preparing an adequate retort, contrived to forestall him.

“Seems to me, Sunny, you ain’t got a heap o’ kick comin’ to you,” he said in his slow way. “I allow you come in this racket because you notioned it. Mebbe you’ll say why you did it, else?”

This unexpected challenge from Toby had the effect of diverting the widower’s thoughts. He left the consideration of the snub he had been preparing for the loafer for some future time, and waited for the other’s reply. But Sunny was roused, and stared angrily round upon the grinning face of his questioner.

“Guess that ain’t no affair of yours, anyway,” he snorted. “I don’t stand fer questions from no remittance guy. Gee! things is gittin’ pretty low-down when it comes to that.”

“Maybe a remittance man ain’t a first-class callin’,” said Toby, his grin replaced by a hot flush. “But if it comes to that I’d say a lazy loafin’ bum ain’t a heap o’ credit noways neither. Howsum, them things don’t alter matters any. An’ I, fer one, is sick o’ your grouse–’cos that’s all it is. Say, you’re settin’ ther’ on top o’ that hoss like a badly sculptured image that needs a week’s bathin’, an’ talkin’ like the no-account fule most fellers guess you to be. Wal, show us you ain’t none o’ them things, show us you got some sort of a man inside your hide, an’ tell us straight why you’re out on this doggone trail when you’re yearnin’ fer your blankets.”

The attack was so unexpected that for once Sunny had no reply ready. And Sandy positively beamed upon the challenger. And so they rode on for a few moments. Then Toby broke the silence impatiently.

“Wal?” he inquired, his face wreathed in a grin that had none of the amiability usual to it.

Sunny turned; and it was evident all his good-nature was restored. He had suddenly realized that to be baited by the fatuous Toby was almost refreshing, and he spoke without any sort of animosity. It would certainly have been different had the challenge come from the hectoring widower.

“Why for do I do it–an’ hate it? Say, that’s jest one o’ them things a feller can’t tell. Y’see, a feller grouses thro’ life, a-worritin’ hisself ’cos things don’t seem right by his way o’ thinkin’. That’s natteral. He guesses he wants to do things one way, then sudden-like, fer no reason he ken see, he gits doin’ ’em another. That’s natteral, too. Y’see, ther’s two things, it seems to me, makes a feller act. One’s his fool head, an’ the other–well, I don’t rightly know what the other is, ’cep’ it’s his stummick. Anyways, that’s how it is. My head makes me want to go one way, an’ my feet gits me goin’ another. So it is with this lay-out. An’ I guess, ef you was sure to git to rock-bottom o’ things, I’d say we’re all doin’ this thing ’cos Wild Bill said so.”

He finished up with a chuckle that thoroughly upset the equilibrium of the widower, and set him jumping at the chance of retort.

“Guess you’re scairt to death o’ Wild Bill,” he sneered.

“Wal,” drawled Sunny easily, “I guess he’s a feller wuth bein’ scairt of–which is more than you are.”

Sandy snorted defiantly. But a further wordy war was averted by the remittance man.

“Ther’s more of a man to you than I allowed, Sunny,” he said sincerely. “There sure is. Bill’s a man, whatever else he is. He’s sure the best man I’ve seen on Sufferin’ Creek. But you’re wrong ’bout him bein’ the reason of us worritin’ ourselves sick on this yer trail. It ain’t your head which needs re-decoratin’, neither. Nor it ain’t your stummick, which, I allow, ain’t the most wholesome part of you. Neither it ain’t your splay feet. You missed it, Sunny, an’ I allus tho’t you was a right smart guy. The reason you’re on this doggone trail chasin’ glory wot don’t never git around, is worryin’ along in a buckboard ahead of us, behind ole Minky’s mule, an’ he’s hoofin’ to home at an express slug’s gait. That’s the reason you’re on the trail, an’ nothin’ else. You’re jest a lazy, loafin’, dirty bum as ’ud make mud out of a fifty-gallon bath o’ boilin’ soapsuds if you was set in it, but you was mighty sore seein’ pore Zip kicked to death by his rotten luck. An’ feelin’ that always you kind o’ fergot to be tired. That’s why you’re on this doggone trail. ’Cos your fool heart ain’t as dirty as your carkis.”

And as he fired his last word Toby dashed his spurs into the flanks of his jaded horse, and galloped out of reach of the tide of vituperation he knew full well to be flowing in his wake.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE LUCK OF SCIPIO

Suffering Creek was again in a state of ferment. It seemed as if there were nothing but one excitement after another in the place now. No sooner was the matter of the gold-stage passed than a fresh disturbance was upon them. And again the established industry of the place was completely at a standstill. Human nature could no more withstand the infection that was ravaging the camp than keep cool under a political argument. The thing that had happened now was tremendous.

Staid miners, old experienced hands whose lives were wedded to their quest of gold, whose interest in affairs was only taken from a standpoint of their benefit, or otherwise, to the gold interest, were caught in the feverish tide, and sent hurtling along with the rushing flood. Men whose pulses usually only received a quickening from the news of a fresh gold discovery now found themselves gaping with the wonder of it all, and asking themselves how it was this thing had happened, and if, indeed, it had happened, or were they dreaming.

The whole thing was monstrous, stupendous, and here, happening in their midst, practically all Suffering Creek were out of it. But in spite of this the fever of excitement raged, and no one was wholly impervious to it. Opinions ran riot–opinions hastily conceived and expressed without consideration, which is the way of people whose nerves have been suddenly strung tight by a matter of absorbing interest. Men who knew nothing of the nature of things which could produce so astonishing a result found themselves dissecting causes and possibilities which did not exist, and never could exist. They hastily proceeded to lay down their own law upon the subject with hot emphasis. They felt it necessary to do this to disguise their lack of knowledge and restore their personal standing. For the latter, they felt, had been sorely shaken by this sudden triumph of those whom they had so lately ridiculed.

And what was this wonderful thing that had happened? What was it that had set these hardened men crazy with excitement? It had come so suddenly, so mysteriously. It had come during the hours of darkness, when weary men hugged their blankets, and dreamed their dreams of the craft which made up their whole world.

There was no noise, no epoch-making upheaval, no blatant trumpetings to herald its coming. And the discovery was made by a single man on his way to his work just after the great golden sun had risen.

He was trailing his way along the creek bank over the road which led eventually to Spawn City. He was slouching along the wood-lined track at that swinging, laborious gait of a heavy-booted man. And his way lay across the oozy claim of Scipio.

But he never reached the claim. Long before he came in view of it he found himself confronted with a sluggish stream progressing slowly along the beaten sand of the trail. For a moment he believed that the creek had, for some freakish reason, suddenly overflowed its banks. But this thought was swiftly swept aside, and he stood snuffing the air like some warhorse, and gaping at the stream as it lapped about his feet.

It came on slowly but irresistibly. And ahead of him, and amongst the trailside bush, he beheld nothing but this rising flood. Then of a sudden something of its meaning penetrated his dazed comprehension, and, turning abruptly, he started to run for the higher ground. He sped swiftly through the surrounding bush, dodging tree-trunks, and threading his way circuitously in the direction where stood the great cut bank of quartz which backed Scipio’s claim. The smell of the air had told him its tale, and he knew that he had made a wonderful, an astounding discovery. And with this knowledge had come the thought of his own possible advantage. Eagerly he began to seek the source of the flood.

But his hopes were completely dashed the moment he reached the bank overlooking Scipio’s claim. There lay the source of the flood, right in the heart of the little man’s despised land. A great gusher of coal-oil was belching from the mouth of the shaft which Sandy Joyce had been at work upon, and the whole clearing, right from the oozy swamp beyond to the higher ground of the river bank, stealing its way along trail and through bush, lay a vast shallow lake of raw coal-oil.

The disappointed man waited just sufficiently long to realize the magnitude of Scipio’s luck, and then set off at a run for the camp.

And in half-an-hour the camp was in a raging fever. In half-an-hour nearly the whole of Suffering Creek had set out for the claim, that they might see for themselves this wonderful thing that had happened. In half-an-hour the whole thing was being explained in theory by everybody to everybody else. In half-an-hour everybody was inquiring for Scipio, and each and all were desirous of being first to convey the news.

And when it was discovered that Scipio was from home, and knew nothing of his good fortune, a fresh thought came to every mind. What had become of him? They learned that he had borrowed Minky’s buckboard, and had driven away. And immediately in the public mind crept an unexpressed question. Had Zip abandoned the place in the face of his ill-luck, and, if so, what about this gigantic oil find?

However, there was nothing to be done at present but wait. The flow of oil could not be checked, and the tremendous waste must go on. The gusher would flow on until the pressure below lessened, and after that it would die down, and require pumps to further exhaust it.

So the camp resigned itself to a contemplation of this wonderful new industry that had sprung up unsought in their midst; and the luck of Scipio was upon everybody’s lips. Nor was there only the wonder of it in every mind, for, after the first feelings of envy and covetousness had passed away, the humor of the thing became apparent. And it was Joe Brand, in the course of discussing the matter with Minky, who first drew attention to the queer pranks which fortune sometimes plays.

“Say, don’t it lick creation?” he cried. “Can you beat it? No, sirree. It’s the best ever–it sure is. Say, here’s the worstest mule-head ever got foothold on this yer continent sets out to chase gold in a place no one outside a bug-house would ever find time to git busy, an’ may I be skinned alive an’ my bones grilled fer a cannibal’s supper if he don’t find sech a fortune in ile as ’ud set all the whole blamed world’s ile market hatin’ itself. Gee!”

And Minky nodded his head. He also smiled slyly upon those who stood about him.

“Ther’ sure is elegant humor to most things in this yer life,” he said dryly. “Which ’minds me Wild Bill bo’t ha’f o’ that claim o’ Zip’s ’fore he set out fer Spawn City.”

And at his words somehow a curious thoughtfulness fell upon his hearers. Nor was there any responsive smile among them. The humor he spoke of seemed to have passed them by, leaving them quite untouched by its point. And presently they drifted away, joining other groups, where the reminder that Bill had been derided by the whole camp for his absurd purchase had an equally damping effect.

But the day was to be more eventful even than the promise of the morning had suggested. And the second surprise came about noon.

Excitement was still raging. Half the camp was down at Zip’s claim watching the miracle of the oil gusher, and the other half was either on their way thither or returning from it. Some of them were gathering the raw oil in cans and tubs, others were hurrying to do so. And none of them quite knew why they were doing it, or what, if any, the use they could put the stuff to. They were probably inspired by the fact that there was the stuff going to waste by the hundreds of gallons, and they felt it incumbent upon them to save what they could. Anyway, it was difficult to tear themselves away from the fascinations of Nature’s prodigal outburst, and so, as being the easiest and most pleasurable course, they abandoned themselves to it.

So it was that Minky found his store deserted. He lounged idly out on to the veranda and propped himself against one of the posts. And, standing there, his thoughtful eyes roamed, subtly attracted to the spot where Zip’s luck had demonstrated itself.

He stood there for some time watching the hurrying figures of the miners as they moved to and fro, but his mind was far away. Somehow Zip’s luck, in spite of the excessive figures which extravagant minds had estimated it at, only took second place with him. He was thinking of the man who had journeyed to Spawn City. He was worrying about him, his one and only friend.

He had understood something of that self-imposed task which the gambler had undertaken, though its full significance had never quite been his. Now he felt that in some way he was responsible. Now he felt that the journey should never have been taken. He felt that he should have refused to ship his gold. And yet he knew full well that his refusal would have been quite useless. Wild Bill was a man whom opposition only drove the harder, and he would have contrived a means of carrying out his purpose, no matter what barred his way.

However, even with this assurance he still felt uncomfortably regretful. His responsibility was no less, and for the life of him he could not rise to enthusiasm over this luck of Scipio’s. It would have been different if Bill had been there to discuss the matter with him.

And as the moments passed his spirits fell lower and lower, until at last a great depression weighed him down.

It was in the midst of this depression, when, for the hundredth time, he had wished that his friend had never started out on his wild enterprise, that he suddenly found himself staring out across the river at the Spawn City trail. He stared for some moments, scarcely comprehending that at which he looked. Then suddenly he became aware of a horseman racing down the slope towards the river, and in a moment mind and body were alert, and he stood waiting.

Minky was still standing on his veranda. But he was no longer leaning against the post; he was holding a letter in his hand which he had just finished reading. It was a painful-looking document for all its neat, clear writing. It was stained with patches of dark red that were almost brown, and the envelope he held in his other hand was almost unrecognizable for the same hideous stain that completely covered it.

The man who had delivered it was resting on the edge of the veranda. He had told his story; and now he sat chewing, and watching his weary horse tethered at the hitching-post a few yards away.

“An’ he drove that cart fer six hours–dead?” Minky asked, without removing his eyes from the blood-stained letter.

“That’s sure how I sed,” returned the messenger, and went stolidly on with his chewing. The other breathed deeply.

Then he read the letter over again. He read it slowly, so as to miss no word or meaning it might contain. And, curiously, as he read a feeling of wonder filled him at the excellence of the writing and composition. He did not seem to remember having seen Bill’s writing before. And here the rough, hard-living gambler was displaying himself a man of considerable education. It was curious. All the years of their friendship had passed without him discovering that his gambling friend was anything but an illiterate ruffian of the West, with nothing but a great courage, a powerful personality and a moderately honest heart to recommend him.