“A true fissure vein, or I never saw one,” he proclaimed softly.
And as the old hunting instincts had aroused that day in the
wolf-dog, so in him recrudesced all the old hot desire of
gold-hunting. Dropping the hammer and pipe-wrench, but retaining
pick and shovel, he climbed up the slide to where a vague line of
outputting but mostly soil-covered rock could be seen. It was
all but indiscernible, but his practised eye had sketched the
hidden formation which it signified. Here and there, along this
wall of the vein, he attacked the crumbling rock with the pick
and shoveled the encumbering soil away. Several times he
examined this rock. So soft was some of it that he could break
it in his fingers. Shifting a dozen feet higher up, he again
attacked with pick and shovel. And this time, when he rubbed the
soil from a chunk of rock and looked, he straightened up
suddenly, gasping with delight. And then, like a deer at a
drinking pool in fear of its enemies, he flung a quick glance
around to see if any eye were gazing upon him. He grinned at his
own foolishness and returned to his examination of the chunk. A
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slant of sunlight fell on it, and it was all aglitter with tiny
specks of unmistakable free gold.
“From the grass roots down,” he muttered in an awestricken voice,
as he swung his pick into the yielding surface.
He seemed to undergo a transformation. No quart of cocktails had
ever put such a flame in his cheeks nor such a fire in his eyes.
As he worked, he was caught up in the old passion that had ruled
most of his life. A frenzy seized him that markedly increased
from moment to moment. He worked like a madman, till he panted
from his exertions and the sweat dripped from his face to the
ground. He quested across the face of the slide to the opposite
wall of the vein and back again. And, midway, he dug down
through the red volcanic earth that had washed from the
disintegrating hill above, until he uncovered quartz, rotten
quartz, that broke and crumbled in his hands and showed to be
alive with free gold.
Sometimes he started small slides of earth that covered up his
work and compelled him to dig again. Once, he was swept fifty
feet down the canon-side; but he floundered and scrambled up
again without pausing for breath. He hit upon quartz that was so
rotten that it was almost like clay, and here the gold was richer
than ever. It was a veritable treasure chamber. For a hundred
feet up and down he traced the walls of the vein. He even
climbed over the canon-lip to look along the brow of the hill for
signs of the outcrop. But that could wait, and he hurried back
to his find.
He toiled on in the same mad haste, until exhaustion and an
intolerable ache in his back compelled him to pause. He
straightened up with even a richer piece of gold-laden quartz.
Stooping, the sweat from his forehead had fallen to the ground.
It now ran into his eyes, blinding him. He wiped it from him
with the back of his hand and returned to a scrutiny of the gold.
It would run thirty thousand to the ton, fifty thousand, anything
–
-he knew that. And as he gazed upon the yellow lure, and
panted for air, and wiped the sweat away, his quick vision leaped
and set to work. He saw the spur-track that must run up from the
valley and across the upland pastures, and he ran the grades and
built the bridge that would span the canon, until it was real
before his eyes. Across the canon was the place for the mill,
and there he erected it; and he erected, also, the endless chain
of buckets, suspended from a cable and operated by gravity, that
would carry the ore across the canon to the quartz-crusher.
Likewise, the whole mine grew before him and beneath him-tunnels,
shafts, and galleries, and hoisting plants. The blasts of the
miners were in his ears, and from across the canon he could hear
the roar of the stamps. The hand that held the lump of quartz
was trembling, and there was a tired, nervous palpitation
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apparently in the pit of his stomach. It came to him abruptly
that what he wanted was a drink–whiskey, cocktails, anything, a
drink. And even then, with this new hot yearning for the alcohol
upon him, he heard, faint and far, drifting down the green abyss
of the canon, Dede’s voice, crying:–
“Here, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick! Here, chick, chick,
chick!”
He was astounded at the lapse of time. She had left her sewing
on the porch and was feeding the chickens preparatory to getting
supper. The afternoon was gone. He could not conceive that he
had been away that long.
Again came the call: “Here, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick!
Here, chick, chick, chick!”
It was the way she always called–first five, and then three. He
had long since noticed it. And from these thoughts of her arose
other thoughts that caused a great fear slowly to grow in his
face. For it seemed to him that he had almost lost her. Not
once had he thought of her in those frenzied hours, and for that
much, at least, had she truly been lost to him.
He dropped the piece of quartz, slid down the slide, and started
up the trail, running heavily. At the edge of the clearing he
eased down and almost crept to a point of vantage whence he could
peer out, himself unseen. She was feeding the chickens, tossing
to them handfuls of grain and laughing at their antics.
The sight of her seemed to relieve the panic fear into which he
had been flung, and he turned and ran back down the trail. Again
he climbed the slide, but this time he climbed higher, carrying
the pick and shovel with him. And again he toiled frenziedly,
but this time with a different purpose. He worked artfully,
loosing slide after slide of the red soil and sending it
streaming down and covering up all he had uncovered, hiding from
the light of day the treasure he had discovered. He even went
into the woods and scooped armfuls of last year’s fallen leaves
which he scattered over the slide. But this he gave up as a vain
task; and he sent more slides of soil down upon the scene of his
labor, until no sign remained of the out-jutting walls of the
vein.
Next he repaired the broken pipe, gathered his tools together,
and started up the trail. He walked slowly, feeling a great
weariness, as of a man who had passed through a frightful crisis.
He put the tools away, took a great drink of the water that again
flowed through the pipes, and sat down on the bench by the open
kitchen door. Dede was inside, preparing supper, and the sound
of her footsteps gave him a vast content.
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He breathed the balmy mountain air in great gulps, like a diver
fresh-risen from the sea. And, as he drank in the air, he gazed
with all his eyes at the clouds and sky and valley, as if he were
drinking in that, too, along with the air.
Dede did not know he had come back, and at times he turned his
head and stole glances in at her–at her efficient hands, at the
bronze of her brown hair that smouldered with fire when she
crossed the path of sunshine that streamed through the window, at
the promise of her figure that shot through him a pang most
strangely sweet and sweetly dear. He heard her approaching the
door, and kept his head turned resolutely toward the valley. And
next, he thrilled, as he had always thrilled, when he felt the
caressing gentleness of her fingers through his hair.
“I didn’t know you were back,” she said. “Was it serious?”
“Pretty bad, that slide,” he answered, still gazing away and
thrilling to her touch. “More serious than I reckoned. But I’ve
got the plan. Do you know what I’m going to do?–I’m going to
plant eucalyptus all over it. They’ll hold it. I’ll plant them
thick as grass, so that even a hungry rabbit can’t squeeze
between them; and when they get their roots agoing, nothing in
creation will ever move that dirt again.”
“Why, is it as bad as that?”
He shook his head.
“Nothing exciting. But I’d sure like to see any blamed old slide
get the best of me, that’s all. I’m going to seal that slide
down so that it’ll stay there for a million years. And when the
last trump sounds, and Sonoma Mountain and all the other
mountains pass into nothingness, that old slide will be still