It was sundown when I reached my shanty, but I didn’t stop, I rode on into the settlement. The first person I saw was the Welshman. He was smiling from ear to ear, and beside him was the baker woman.
“Married!” he said cheerfully. “Just the woman I’ve been looking for!”
And off down the street they went, arm in arm.
Only now it didn’t matter anymore.
For two days then I was busy as all get-out. I was down to the settlement and back up above the narrows of the canyon, and then I was down again.
Putting my few things into a pack, and putting the saddle on that old mule of mine, I was fixing to leave the claim and shanty for the last time when who should show up but Frank Popley.
He was riding his brown mule with Griselda riding behind him, and they rode up in front of the shack. Griselda slid down off that mule and ran up and threw her arms around me and kissed me right on the lips.
“Oh, Tell! We heard the news! Oh, we’re so happy for you! Pa was just saying that he always knew you had the stuff, that you had what it takes!”
Frank Popley looked over at me and beamed. “Can’t keep a good man down, boy! You sure can’t! Griselda, she always said, ‘Pa, Tell is the best of the lot’ an’ she was sure enough right!”
Suddenly a boot crunched on gravel, and there was Arvie, looking mighty mean and tough, and he was holding a Walker Colt in his fist, aimed right at me.
Did you ever see a Walker Colt? Only thing it lacks to be a cannon is a set of wheels.
“You ain’t a-gonna do it!” Arvie said. “You can’t have Griselda!”
“You can have Griselda,” I heard myself say, and was astonished to realize that I meant it.
“You’re not fooling me! You can’t get away with it.” And his thumb came forward to cock that pistol.
Like I said, Arvie wasn’t too smart or he’d have cocked his gun as he drew it, so I just fetched out my six-shooter and let the hammer slip from under my thumb as it came level.
Deliberately, I held it a little high, and the .44 slug smashed him in the shoulder. It knocked him side-wise and he let go of that big pistol and staggered back two steps and sat down hard.
“You’re a mighty disagreeable man, Arvie,” I said, “and not much account. When the boys down at the settlement start finding the marks you put on those cards you’ll have to leave the country, but I reckon you an’ Griselda deserve each other.”
She was looking at me with big eyes and pouty lips because she’d heard the news, but I wasn’t having any.
“You-all been washing gold along the creek,” I said, “but you never stopped to think where those grains of gold started from. Well, I found and staked the mother lode, staked her from Hell to breakfast, and one day’s take will be more than you’ve taken out since you started work. I figure now I’ll dig me out a goodly amount of money, then I’ll sell my claims and find me some friends that aren’t looking at me just to see what I got.”
They left there walking down that hill with Arvie astride the mule making pained sounds every time it took a step.
When I had pulled that wild onion up there on that ledge overlooking the deer run, there were bits of gold in the sand that clung to the roots, and when I scraped the dirt away from the base of that outcrop, she was all there … wire gold lying in the rock like a jewelry store window.
Folks sometimes ask me why I called it the Wild Onion Mining Company.