A man was lounging astride of a fallen pine log. His lean shoulders were propped against the parent stump. All about him were other stumps left by those who had made the clearing in the woods. Beyond this the shadowy deep of the woods ranged on every side, except where the red sand of a trail broke the monotony of tone.
Near by two horses stood tethered together by a leading rein. One was a saddle-horse, and the other was equipped with a well-loaded pack-saddle. It was no mean burden of provisions. The carcass of a large, black-tailed deer sprawled across the back of the saddle, while on one side were secured three bags of flour, and on the other several jack-rabbits were strung together. But the powerful beast remained unconcernedly nibbling at the sparse green peeping here and there through the carpet of rotting pine cones and needles which covered the ground.
The man’s eyes were half-closed, yet he was by no means drowsing. On the contrary, his mind was essentially busy, and the occasional puckering of his dark brows, and the tightening of his strong jaws, suggested that his thoughts were not always pleasant.
After a while he sat up. But his movement was only the restlessness caused by the worry of his thought. And the gaze he turned upon his foraging horses was quite preoccupied.
A change, however, was not long in coming. Simultaneously both horses threw up their heads, and one of them gave a sharp, comprehensive snort. Instantly the man’s large brown eyes lit, and a pleasant expectancy shone in their depths. He was on his feet in an instant, and his tall figure became alert and vibrant with the lithe activity which was so wonderfully displayed in his whole poise. He, too, had become aware of a disturbing element in the silent depths of the woods.
He moved across to the trail, and, glancing down it, from out of the silence reached him the distant, soft plod of hoofs in its heavy covering of sand. His look of satisfaction deepened as he turned back to his horses and tightened the cinchas of the saddles, and replaced the bits in their mouths. Then he picked up the Winchester rifle propped against a tree stump and turned again to the trail.
A moment later another horseman appeared from beyond the fringe of pines and drew up with an exclamation.
“Why, Buck, I didn’t reckon to find you around here!” he cried cordially.
“No.” The young man smiled quietly up into the horseman’s face. The welcome of his look was unmistakable. No words of his could have expressed it better.
The Padre sprang from his saddle with the lightness of a man of half his years, and his eyes rested on the pack-saddle on Buck’s second horse.
“For the – folks?” he inquired.
“Guess so. That’s the last of the flour.”
For a moment a shadow passed across the Padre’s face. Then it as suddenly brightened.
“How’s things?” he demanded, in the stereotyped fashion of men who greet when matters of importance must be discussed between them.
“So,” responded Buck.
The Padre glanced quickly round, and his eyes fell on the log which had provided the other with a seat.
“Guess there’s no hurry. Let’s sit,” he said, indicating the log. “I’m a bit saddle weary.”
Buck nodded.
They left the horses to their own devices, and moved across to the log.
“Quite a piece to Leeson Butte,” observed Buck casually, as he dropped upon the log beside his friend.
“It surely is,” replied the Padre, taking the young man in with a quick, sidelong glance.
Buck was good to look at, so strong, so calmly reliant. Every glance of his big brown eyes suggested latent power. He was not strikingly handsome, but the pronounced nose, the level, wide brows, the firm mouth and clean-shaven chin, lifted him far out of the common. He was clad simply. But his dress was perfectly suitable to the life of the farmer-hunter which was his. His white moleskin trousers were tucked into the tops of his Wellington boots, and a cartridge belt, from which hung a revolver and holster, was slung about his waist. His upper covering was a simple, gray flannel shirt, gaping wide open across his sunburnt chest, and his modest-hued silk handkerchief tied loosely about his neck.
“Leeson Butte’s getting quite a city,” Buck went on presently.
“That’s so,” replied the Padre, still bent upon his own thoughts.
After that it was quite a minute before either spoke. Yet there seemed to be no awkwardness.
Finally it was the Padre who broached the matters that lay between them.
“I got ten thousand dollars for it!” he said.
“The farm?” Buck’s interrogation was purely mechanical. He knew well enough that the other had purposely gone to Leeson Butte to sell the farm on which they had both lived so long.
The Padre nodded.
“A fancy price,” he said. “The lawyers closed quick. It was a woman bought it. I didn’t see her, though she was stopping at the hotel. I figured on getting seven thousand five hundred dollars, and only asked ten thousand dollars as a start. Guess the woman must have wanted it bad. Maybe she’s heard they’re prospecting gold around. Well, anyway she ought to get some luck with it, she’s made it easy for us to help the folks.”
Buck’s eyes were steadily fixed on the horses.
“It makes me feel bad seeing those fellers chasin’ gold, and never a color to show – an’ all the while their womenfolk an’ kiddies that thin for food you can most see their shadows through ’em.”
The eyes of the elder man brightened. The other’s words had helped to hearten him. He had felt keenly the parting with his farm after all those years of labor and association. Yet, to a mind such as his, it had been impossible to do otherwise. How could he stand by watching a small community, such as he was surrounded with, however misguided in their search for gold, painfully and doggedly starving before his very eyes? For the men perhaps his sympathy might have been less keen, but the poor, long-suffering women and the helpless children – the thought was too painful. No, he and Buck had but their two selves to think of. They had powerful hands with which to help themselves. Those others were helpless – the women and children.
There was compensation in his sacrifice when he remembered the large orders for edible stores he had placed with the merchants of Leeson Butte before leaving that town.
“There’s a heap of food coming along for them presently,” he said after a pause.
Buck nodded.
“I’ve been settin’ that old fur fort to rights, way up in the hills back ther’,” he said, pointing vaguely behind them. “Guess we’d best move up ther’ now the farm’s – sold. We’ll need a few bits of furniture from the farm. That right – now you’ve sold it?”
“Yes. I made that arrangement. She didn’t seem to mind anything I suggested. She must be a bully sort of woman. I’m sorry I didn’t see her. The lawyer says she comes from St. Ellis.”
“Young?” suggested Buck.
The Padre shook his head.
“I wouldn’t say so. A young woman with money wouldn’t be likely to hide herself in these hills.”
“That’s so. Guess it’s the gold fetching her – the gold that isn’t here.”
“Gold’s a cursed thing,” said the Padre reflectively.
“Yet none of ’em seem to shy at the curse.” Buck smiled in his slow way.
“No. Not without experiencing it.” The Padre’s eyes were still serious. Then he went on, “We shan’t farm any up there – at the fur fort?”
Buck shook his head.
“It means clearing every inch of land we need. Guess we best hunt, as we said. We’ll make out with pelts. There’s the whole mountains for traps.”
The other stared over at the horses, and his face was very grave. After a while he turned directly to his companion, and his eyes were mildly anxious.
“See here, Buck,” he said, with what seemed unnecessary emphasis. “I’ve thought a heap on the way back – home. It seems to me I’m not acting square by you. And I’ve made up my mind.” He paused. Buck did not change his position, and his eyes were carefully avoiding those of his companion. Then the Padre went on with a decision that somehow lacked confidence. “You must take half the money, and – and get busy your own way. We’ve done farming, so there’s no reason for you to hang around here. You’re a man now, and you’ve your way to make in the world. You see, when we had the farm I thought it was good for you. It would be yours when I died, and then who knows, in time, how valuable it might become? Now it’s all different. You see the hills are best for me.” He smiled strainedly. “They’ve always been good friends to me. But – ”
“Yes, you don’t fancy leavin’ the hills.” Buck’s eyes wore a curious expression. They were half-smiling, half-angry. But the other could not see them. The Padre jumped eagerly at his words.
“Just so. I’ve known them so long now that there doesn’t seem to be any other world for me. Even Leeson Butte makes me feel – er – strange.”
Buck nodded. Then he changed the subject.
“Say, we don’t sleep at the farm to-night,” he said. “The blankets are up at the old fort. That’s why I got around here. When’s she comin’ along?”
“In two or three days.” The Padre had no choice but to follow the younger man’s lead. “She’s sending along a farm woman first. She’s going to run the place herself.”
“Ther’s no man comin’?” Buck half turned to his friend.
“I don’t think so.”
“They can’t do it – hereabouts,” Buck retorted quickly. “That farm needs a man.”
“Yes.”
Buck rose abruptly and went over to the horses.
“Going?” inquired the Padre.
“I’ll get along with the vittles, and hand ’em over to the boys. Guess I’ll git back to the fort in a few hours.”
The Padre sat hesitating. He watched the movements of his companion without observing them.
“Buck!”
The other paused as he was about to put his foot into the stirrup. He glanced over his shoulder.
“Yes?”
“About that money. There’s five thousand of it yours.”
“Not on your life, Padre!”
The elder man sighed as he stood up, and his look changed so that it almost seemed as if a weight had been lifted from his mind. Their eyes met as Buck swung himself into the saddle.
“Then we’re going to the hills – together?” he said smilingly.
“Sure,” responded Buck promptly. Then he added, “But we’re goin’ to hunt – not farm.”
His decisive manner left no room for doubt, and the Padre, moving over to him, held out his hand. They gripped till the elder man winced.
“I’m glad I found you on the trail that time,” he said, looking squarely into the steady brown eyes. “I’ve always been glad, but – I’m gladder still now.”
“Me, too,” said Buck, with a light laugh. “Guess I’d have hated to ha’ fed the coyotes.”
Buck swung round to the trail, leading his packhorse, and the Padre went back to his horse. Just as he was about to mount the younger man’s voice reached him again. He paused.
“Say, what’s the woman’s name?” Buck inquired.
“Eh?” The Padre looked startled. “The woman that bought the farm?”
“Yes – sure.”
The elder man’s face flushed painfully. It was a curious sight. He looked as stupidly guilty as any schoolboy.
“I – I can’t say. I never asked.” He felt absurdly foolish and tried to explain. “You see, I only dealt with the lawyer.”
Buck shook his head, and smiled in his slow fashion.
“Sold the farm, an’ don’t know who to! Gee!”
It was good to hear his laugh as he rode away. The Padre watched him till he was out of sight.
CHAPTER V
THE STEEPS OF LIFE
Buck leant over his horse’s withers as the laboring creature clawed tenaciously up the face of the rugged hill. His whole poise was that of sympathetic straining. Nor were his eyes a whit less eager than those of the faithful animal under him.
He was making the last twenty yards of the climb up Devil’s Hill from the side on which lay the new home adopted by the Padre and himself. Hitherto this point of approach had been accepted as inaccessible for a horseman, nor, until now, had Buck seen reason to dispute the verdict. But, to-day, a sudden impulse had constrained him to make the attempt, not from any vainglorious reason, or from the recklessness which was so much a part of his nature, but simply that somewhere high up on the great table-land at the summit of the hill he hoped to find an answer to a riddle that was sorely puzzling him.
It had been a great struggle even on the lower and more gradual slopes, for the basaltic rocks were barren, and broken, and slippery. There was no gripping soil, or natural foothold. Just the weather-worn rocks which offered no grip to Cæsar’s metal-shod hoofs. Yet the generous-hearted beast had floundered on up to the last stretch, where the hill rose abruptly at a perilous angle.
It was a terrible scramble. As he looked above, at the point where the sky-line was cut by the broken rocks, even the reckless heart of the man quailed. Yet there was no turning back. To do so meant certain disaster. No horse, however sure-footed, could ever hope to make the descent by the way they had come. Buck had looked back just for one brief second, but his eyes had instantly turned again for relief to the heights above. Disaster lay behind him. To go on – well, if he failed to reach the brow of the blackened hill it would mean disaster anyway. And a smile of utter recklessness slowly lit his face.
So, with set jaws and straining body, he urged Cæsar to a last supreme effort, and the great black creature responded gallantly. With head low to the ground, his muscles standing out like ropes upon his shoulders, his forelegs bent like grappling-hooks, his quarters tucked beneath him, he put his giant heart into the work. Step by step, inch by inch he gained, yawing and sliding, stumbling and floundering, making way where all way seemed impossible. Slowly they crept up, slowly, slowly they neared that coveted line. Buck was breathing hard. Cæsar was blowing and had thrown his mouth agape, a sign that beyond this he could make no further effort. Five yards – two yards. The jagged line seemed to come down to meet them. At last, with a final spring, the great horse trampled it under foot.
Buck heaved a sigh of relief.
“Gee!” he murmured. Then with the wide, black plain stretching before him, its limits lost in a strange mist, he flung out of the saddle.
He stared about him curiously. Devil’s Hill was in no way new to him. Many a time he had visited its mysterious regions, but always had he approached it from the prospecting camp, or his own farm, both of which lay away on the northern side of it.
A wide plateau, nearly two miles in extent, stretched out before him. It was as flat as the proverbial board, with just one isolated rock towering upon its bosom. This was the chief object of interest now. Away in the distance he beheld its ghostly outline, almost lost in the ruddy atmosphere which, just now, seemed to envelop the whole of that Western world.
It was a desolate scene. So desolate as to carry a strange sense of depression to the heart of the horseman. There was not a tree in sight – nor a single blade of grass. There was nothing but the funereal black of basaltic rock, of which the hill seemed to be one solid mass. Such was its desolation that even the horse seemed to be drooping at the sight of it. It was always the same with Buck. There was an influence about the place which always left him feeling rather hopeless. He knew the old Indian stories of superstition. He knew the awe in which the more ignorant among the white folk held this hill. But these things left him unaffected. He only regarded it from his own personal observations, which were not very enlivening.
Apart from the fact that not one atom of vegetation would grow either upon the surface or slopes of Devil’s Hill, no snows in winter had ever been known to settle upon its uninviting bosom. Long before the snow touched its surface, however low the temperature of the atmosphere, however severe a blizzard might be raging – and the Montana blizzards are notorious for their severity – the snow was turned to water, and a deluge of rain hissed upon its surface.
Then, too, there was that mystery rock in the distance of the great plateau. It was one of Nature’s little enigmas with which she loves to puzzle the mind of man. How came it there, shot up in the midst of that wide, flat stretch of rock? It stood within a few hundred yards of the eastern brink of the hill which, in its turn, was another mystery. The eastern extremity was not a mere precipice, it was a vast overhang which left Yellow Creek, upon whose banks the mining camps were pitched, flowing beneath the roof of a giant tunnel supported by a single side.
The rock on the plateau reared its misshapen head to the heavens at a height of something over two hundred feet, and its great base formed a vast cavern out of which, fanwise, spread a lake of steaming water, which flowed on to the very brink of the hill where it overshadowed the creek below. Thus it was, more than half the lake was held suspended in mid-air, with no other support than the parent hill from which its bed projected. It was an awesome freak of nature, calculated to astonish even eyes that were accustomed to the sight of it.
But Buck was not thinking of these things now. He was looking at the view. He was looking at the sky. He was looking from this great height for an explanation of the curious, ruddy light in the sunless sky, the teeming haze which weighted down the brain, and, with the slightest movement, opened the pores of the skin and set the perspiration streaming.
In all his years of the Montana hills he had never experienced such a curious atmospheric condition. Less than an hour ago he had left the Padre at the fur fort under a blazing summer sky, with the crisp mountain air whipping in his nostrils. Then, quite of a sudden, had come this change. There were no storm-clouds, and yet storm was in every breath of the superheated air he took. There was no wind, nor anything definite to alarm except this sudden blind heat and the purple hue which seemed to have spread itself over the whole world. Thus it was, as he neared the mysterious mountain, he had made up his mind to its ascent in the hope of finding, there upon the unwholesome plateau, the key to the atmospheric mystery.
But none seemed to be forthcoming, so, turning at last to the patient Cæsar, he once more returned to the saddle and rode on to the barren shores of Devil’s Lake.
The lake was a desolate spot. The waters stretched out before him, still, and silent, and black. There was not even a ripple upon its steaming surface. Here the haze hung as it always hung, and the cavern was belching forth deep mists, like the breathing of some prehistoric monster. He glanced up at the birdless rock above, and into the broken outlines of it he read the distorted features of some baleful, living creature, or some savage idol. But there was no answer here to the questions of his mind, any more than there had been on the rest of the plateau, so he rode on along the edge of the water.
He reached the extreme end of the lake and paused again. He could go no farther, for nothing but a rocky parapet, less than twenty feet wide, barred the waters from tumbling headlong to the depths below.
After a moment Cæsar grew restless, his equine nerves seemed to be on a jangle, and the steadying hand of his master had no effect. His eyes were wistful and dilated, and he glanced distrustfully from side to side, snorting loudly his evident alarm. Buck moved him away from his proximity to the water, and turned to a critical survey of the remoter crests of the Rocky Mountains.
The white snowcaps had gone. The purple of the lesser hills, usually so delicate in their gradings, were lost in one monotony of dull red light. The nearer distance was a mere world of ghostly shadows tinged with the same threatening hue, and only the immediate neighborhood was in any way clean cut and sharp to the eye. His brows drew together in perplexity. Again, down there in the valley, beyond the brink of the plateau, the dull red fog prevailed, and yet through it he could see the dim picture of grass-land, of woods, of river, and the rising slopes of more hills beyond.
No, the secret of the atmospheric phenomenon was not up here, and it was useless to waste more time. So he moved off, much to his impatient horse’s relief, in a direction where he knew a gentle slope would lead him from the hilltop to the neighborhood of the old farm and the ford across Yellow Creek.
But even this way the road required negotiation, for the same bald rocks and barrenness offered no sure foothold. However, Cæsar was used to this path, and made no mistakes. His master gave him his head, and, with eyes to the ground, the sure-footed beast moved along with almost cat-like certainty. At last the soft soil of the valley was reached again, and once more the deepening woods swallowed them up.
The end of Buck’s journey lay across Yellow Creek, where a few miserable hovels sheltered a small community of starving gold-seekers, and thither he now hastened. On his way he had a distant view of the old farm. He would have preferred to have avoided it, but that was quite impossible. He had not yet got over the parting from it, which had taken place the previous day. To him had fallen the lot of handing it over to the farm-wife who had been sent on ahead from Leeson Butte to prepare it for her employer’s coming. And the full sense of his loss was still upon him. Wrong as he knew himself to be, he resented the newcomer’s presence in his old home, and could not help regarding her as something in the nature of a usurper.
The camp to which he was riding was a wretched enough place. Nor could Nature, here in her most luxuriant mood, relieve it from its sordid aspect. A few of the huts were sheltered at the fringe of the dark woods, but most were set out upon the foreground of grass, which fronted the little stream.
As Buck approached he could not help feeling that they were the most deplorable huts ever built. They were like a number of inverted square boxes, with roofs sloping from front to back. They were made out of rough logs cut from the pine woods, roofed in with an ill-laid thatch of mud and grass, supported on the lesser limbs cut from the trees felled to supply the logs. How could such despairing hovels ever be expected to shelter men marked out for success? There was disaster, even tragedy, in every line of them. They were scarcely even shelters from the elements. With their broken mud plaster, their doorless entrances, their ill-laid thatch, they were surely little better than sieves.
Then their surroundings of garbage, their remnants of coarse garments hanging out upon adjacent bushes, their lack of every outward sign of industrial prosperity. No, to Buck’s sympathetic eyes, there was tragedy written in every detail of the place.
Were not these people a small band of regular tramp gold-seekers? What was their outlook? What was their perspective? The tramp gold-seeker is a creature apart from the rest of the laboring world. He is not an ordinary worker seeking livelihood in a regular return from his daily effort. He works under the influence of a craze that is little less than disease. He could never content himself with stereotyped employment.
Besides, the rot of degradation soon seizes upon his moral nature. No matter what his origin, what his upbringing, his education, his pursuit of gold seems to have a deadening effect upon all his finer instincts, and reduces him swiftly to little better than the original animal. Civilization is forgotten, buried deep beneath a mire of moral mud, accumulated in long years, and often in months only of association with the derelicts and “hard cases” of the world. Rarely enough, when Fortune’s pendulum swings toward one more favored individual, a flickering desire to return to gentler paths will momentarily stir amidst the mire, but it seldom amounts to more than something in the nature of a drunkard’s dream in moments of sobriety, and passes just as swiftly. The lustful animal appetite is too powerful; it demands the sordid pleasures which the possession of gold makes possible. Nor will it be satisfied with anything else. A tramp gold-seeker is irreclaimable. His joy lies in his quest and the dreams of fortune which are all too rarely fulfilled Every nerve centre is drugged with his lust, and, like all decadents, he must fulfil the destiny which his own original weakness has marked out for him.
Buck understood something of all this without reasoning it out in his simple mind. He understood with a heart as reckless as their own, but with a brain that had long since gathered strength from the gentle wisdom of the man who was a sort of foster-father to him. He did not pity. He felt he had no right to pity, but he had a deep sympathy and love for the strongly human motives which stirred these people. Success or failure, he saw them as men and women whose many contradictory qualities made them intensely lovable and sometimes even objects for respect, if for nothing else, at least for their very hardihood and courage.
He rode up to the largest hut, which stood beyond the shadow of a group of pine-trees, and dropped out of the saddle. With careful forethought he loosened the cinchas of Cæsar’s saddle and removed the bit from his mouth. Then, with one last look at the purpling heavens, he pushed aside the tattered blanket which hung across the doorway and strode into the dimly-lit apartment.
It was a silent greeting that welcomed him. His own “Howdy” met with no verbal response. But every eye of the men lying about on blankets outspread upon the dusty floor was turned in his direction.
The scene was strange enough, but for Buck it had nothing new. The gaunt faces and tattered clothing had long since ceased to drive him to despairing protest. He knew, in their own phraseology, they were “up against it” – the “it” in this case meaning the hideous spectre of starvation. He glanced over the faces and counted seven of them. He knew them all. But, drawing forward an upturned soap-box, he sat down and addressed himself to Curly Saunders, who happened to be lying on his elbow nearest the door.
“Say, I just came along to give you word that vittles are on the way from Leeson Butte,” he said, as though the fact was of no serious importance.
Curly, a short, thick-set man of enormous strength and round, youngish face, eased himself into a half-sitting position. But before he could answer another man, with iron-gray hair, sat up alertly and eyed their visitor without much friendliness.
“More o’ the Padre’s charity?” he said, in a manner that suggested resentment at the benefit he had no intention of refusing. Curiously enough, too, his careless method of expression in no way disguised the natural refinement of his voice.
Buck shook his head, and his eyes were cold.
“Don’t guess there’s need of charity among friends, Beasley.”
Beasley Melford laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh.
“Guess it makes him feel good dopin’ out stuff to us same as if we was bums,” he said harshly.
“Shut up!” cried a voice from a remote corner. Buck looked over and saw a lean, dark man hugging his knees and smoking a well-burnt briar pipe. The same voice went on: “Guess you’d sicken most anybody, Beasley. You got a mean mind. Guess the Padre’s a hell of a bully feller.”
“He sure is,” said Montana Ike, lolling over on to his side and pushing his canvas kit-bag into a more comfortable position. “You was sayin’ there was vittles comin’ along, Buck? Guess ther’ ain’t no ‘chawin’’ now?”
“Tobacco, sure,” responded Buck with a smile.
One by one the men sat up on their frowsy blankets. The thought of provisions seemed to have roused them from their lethargy. Buck’s eyes wandered over the faces peering at him out of the murky shadows. The squalor of the hut was painful, and, with the knowledge that help was at hand, the sight struck him even more forcibly.
“Quit work?” he asked a moment later, in his abrupt fashion.
Somebody laughed.
Buck looked round for an answer. And again his eyes caught the steely, ironical gleam in the man Beasley’s.
“The last o’ Slaney’s kids ‘passed in’ last night. Guess we’re goin’ to bury her.”
Buck nodded. He had no words. But he carefully avoided looking in the direction of Slaney Dick, who sat in a far corner smoking his pipe and hugging his great knees.
Beasley went on in the same half-mocking tone —
“Guess it’s up to me to read the service over her.”
“You!”
Buck could not help the ejaculation. Beasley Melford was an unfrocked Churchman. Nor was it known the reason of his dismissal from his calling. All Buck knew was that Beasley was a man of particularly low morals and detestable nature. The thought that he was to administer the last rites of the Church over the dead body of a pure and innocent infant set his every feeling in active protest. He turned to Slaney.
“The Padre buried the others?” he said questioningly.
It was Dick’s partner, Abe Allinson, who took it upon himself to answer.
“Y’ see the Padre’s done a heap. Slaney’s missis didn’t guess we’d orter worrit him. That’s how she said.”
Buck suddenly swung round on Beasley.
“Fix it for to-morrow, an’ the Padre’ll be right along.”
He looked the ex-Churchman squarely in the eye. He was not making a request. His words were an emphatic refusal to allow the other the office. It was Slaney who answered him.
“I’m glad,” he said. Then, as an afterthought, “an’ the missis’ll be glad, too.”
After that nobody seemed inclined to break the silence. Nor was it until somebody hawked and spat that the spell was broken.
“We bin holdin’ a meetin’,” said Curly Saunders heavily. “Y’ see, it ain’t no good.”
Buck nodded at the doorway.
“You mean – ?”
“The prospect,” Beasley broke in and laughed. “Say, we sure been suckers stayin’ around so long. Ther’ ain’t no gold within a hundred miles of us. We’re just lyin’ rottin’ around like – stinkin’ sheep.”
Curly nodded.
“Sure. That’s why we held a meeting. We’re goin’ to up stakes an’ git.”
“Where to?”
Buck’s quick inquiry met with a significant silence, which Montana Ike finally broke.
“See here,” he cried, with sudden force. “What’s the use in astin’ fool questions? Ther’ ain’t no gold, ther’ ain’t nuthin’. We got color fer scratchin’ when we first gathered around like skippin’ lambs, but ther’s nuthin’ under the surface, an’ the surface is played right out. I tell you it’s a cursed hole. Jest look around. Look at yonder Devil’s Hill. Wher’d you ever see the like? That’s it. Devil’s Hill. Say, it’s a devil’s region, an’ everything to it belongs to the devil. Ther’ ain’t nuthin’ fer us – nuthin’, but to die of starvin’. Ah, psha’! It’s a lousy world. Gawd, when I think o’ the wimminfolk it makes my liver heave. Say, some of them pore kiddies ain’t had milk fer weeks, an’ we only ke’p ’em alive thro’ youse two fellers. Say,” he went on, in a sudden burst of passion, “we got a right, same as other folk, to live, an’ our kids has, an’ our wimmin too. Mebbe we ain’t same as other folks, them folks with their kerridges an’ things in cities, mebbe our kiddies ain’t got no names by the Chu’ch, an’ our wimmin ain’t no Chu’ch writin’ fer sharin’ our blankets, but we got a right to live, cos we’re made to live. An’ by Gee! I’m goin’ to live! I tell youse folk right here, ther’s cattle, an’ ther’s horses, an’ ther’s grain in this dogone land, an’ I’m goin’ to git what I need of ’em ef I’m gettin’ it at the end of a gun! That’s me, fellers, an’ them as has the notion had best foller my trail.”