more ants than sugar. So I gave up and went hunting. I hunted for two days and
couldn’t find a deer, nor anything else but wild onions.
Down to the settlement they had a fandango, a real old-time square dance, and I
had seen nothing of the kind since my brother Orrin used to fiddle for them back
to home. So I brushed up my clothes and rubbed some deer grease on my boots, and
I went to that dance.
Sure enough, Griselda was there, and she was with Arvie Wilt.
Arvie was all slicked out in a black broadcloth suit that fit him a little too
soon, and black boots so tight he winced when he put a foot down.
Arvie spotted me and they fetched to a halt right beside me. “Sackett,” Arvie
said, “I hear you’re scraping bottom again. Now my baker woman needs a helper to
rev up her pots and pans, and if you want the job—”
“I don’t.”
“Just thought I’d ask,”—he grinned maliciously—”seein’ you so good at woman’s
work.”
He saw it in my eyes so he grabbed Griselda and they waltzed away, grinning.
Thing that hurt, she was grinning, too.
“That Arvie Wilt,” somebody said, “there’s a man will amount to something.
Popley says he has a fine head for business.”
“For the amount of work he does,” somebody else said, “he sure has a lot of
gold. He ain’t spent a day in that shaft in a week.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Ask them down to the settlement. He does more gambling than mining, according
to some.”
That baker woman was there, waltzing around like she was light as a feather, and
seeing her made me think of a Welshman I knew. Now you take a genuine Welshman,
he can talk a bird right out of a tree … I started wondering … how would he
do with a widow woman who was a fine baker?
That Welshman wasn’t far away, and we’d talked often, the year before. He liked
a big woman, he said, the jolly kind and who could enjoy making good food. I sat
down and wrote him a letter.
Next morning early I met up with Griselda. “You actually marrying that Arvie?”
Her pert little chin came up and her eyes were defiant. “A girl has to think of
her future, Tell Sackett! She can’t be tying herself to a — a ne’er-do-well! Mr.
Wilt is a serious man. His mine is very successful,” her nose tilted, “and so is
the bakery!”
She turned away, then looked back, “And if you expect any girl to like you,
you’d better stop eating those onions! They’re simply awful!”
And if I stopped eating wild onions, I’d starve to death. Not that I wasn’t
half-starved, anyway.
That day I went further up the creek than ever, and the canyon narrowed to high
walls and the creek filled the bottom, wall to wall, and I walked ankle deep in
water going through the narrows. And there on a sandy beach were deer tracks,
old tracks and fresh tracks, and I decided this was where they came to drink.
So I found a grassy ledge above the pool and alongside an outcropping of rock,
and there I settled down to wait for a deer. It was early afternoon and a good
bit of time remained to me.
There were pines on the ridge behind me, and the wind sounded fine, humming
through their needles. I sat there for a bit, enjoying the shade, and then I
reached around and pulled a wild onion from the grass, lifting it up to brush
away the sand and gravel clinging to the roots …
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.