_ CHAPTER XVI. GOLD AND ALLOY
The seedling of success planted in rank soil generally develops a wild, pernicious growth which, until the summer of its life has passed, is untameable and pollutes all that with which it comes into contact. The husbandman may pluck at its roots, but the seed is flung broadcast, and he finds himself wringing his hands helplessly in the wilderness.
So it was on the banks of Yellow Creek. The seedling was already flinging its tendrils and fastening tightly upon the life of the little camp. The change had come within three weeks of the moment when the Padre had gazed upon that first wonderful find of gold. So rapid was its development that it was almost staggering to the man who stood by watching the result of the news he had first carried to the camp.
The Padre wandered the hills with trap and gun. Nothing could win him from the pursuit which was his. But his eyes were wide open to those things which had somehow become the care of his leisure. Many of his evenings were spent in the camp, and there he saw and heard the things which, in his working moments, gave him food for a disquietude of thought.
He knew that the luck that had come to the camp was no ordinary luck. His first find had suggested something phenomenal, but it was nothing to the reality. A wealth almost incalculable had been yielded by a prodigal Nature. Every claim into which he, with the assistance of the men of the camp, had divided the find, measured carefully and balloted for, was rich beyond all dreams. Two or three were richer than the others, but this was the luck of the ballot, and the natural envy inspired thereby was of a comparatively harmless character.
At first the thought of these things was one of a pleasant satisfaction. These men had waited, and suffered, and starved for their chance, and he was glad their chance had come. How many had waited, and suffered and starved, as they had done, and done all those things in vain? Yes, it was a pleasant thought, and it gave him zest and hope in his own life.
The first days passed in a perfect whirlwind of joy. Where before had sounded only the moanings of despair, now the banks of Yellow Creek rang with laughter and joyous voices, bragging, hoping, jesting. One and all saw their long-dimmed hopes looming bright in the prospect of fulfilment.
Then came a change. Just at first it was hardly noticeable. But it swiftly developed, and the shrewd mind of the watcher in the hills realized that the days of halcyon were passing all too swiftly. Men were no longer satisfied with hopes. They wanted realities.
To want the realities with their simple, unrestrained passions, and the means of obtaining them at their disposal, was to demand them. To demand them was to have them. They wanted a saloon. They wanted an organized means of gambling, they wanted a town, with all its means of satisfying appetites that had all too long hungered for what they regarded as the necessary pleasures of life. They wanted a means of spending the accumulations gleaned from the ample purse of mother Nature. And, in a moment, they set about the work of possessing these things.
As is always the case the means was not far to seek. It needed but one mind, keener in self-interest than the rest, and that mind was to hand. Beasley Melford, at no time a man who cared for the physical hardships of the life of these people, saw his opportunity and snatched it. He saw in it a far greater gold-mine than his own claim could ever yield him, and he promptly laid his plans.
He set to work without any noise, any fuss. He was too foxy to shout until his purpose was beyond all possibility of failure. He simply disappeared from the camp for a week. His absence was noted, but no one cared. They were too full of their own affairs. The only people who thought on the matter were the Padre and Buck. Nor did they speak of it until he had been missing four days. Then it was, one evening as they were returning from their traps, the Padre gave some inkling of what had been busy in his thoughts all day.
"It's queer about Beasley," he said, pausing to look back over a great valley out of which they had just climbed, and beyond which the westering sun was shining upon the distant snow-fields.
Buck turned sharply at the sound of his companion's voice. They were not given to talking much out on these hills.
"He's been away nigh four days," he said, and took the opportunity of shifting his burden of six freshly-taken fox pelts and lighting his pipe.
The Padre nodded.
"I think he'll be back soon," he said. Then he added slowly: "It seems a pity."
"His coming back?" Buck eyed his companion quickly.
"Yes."
"Wher' d'you reckon he's gone?"
The elder man raised a pair of astonished brows.
"Why, to Leeson Butte," he said decidedly. Then he went on quietly, but with neither doubt nor hesitation: "There's a real big change coming here--when Beasley gets back. These men want drink, they are getting restless for high play. They are hankering for--for the flesh-pots they think their gold entitles them to. Beasley will give them all those things when he comes back. It's a pity."
Buck thought for some moments before he answered. He was viewing the prospect from the standpoint of his years.
"They must sure have had 'em anyway," he said at last.
"Ye--es."
The Padre understood what was in the other's mind.
"You see," he went on presently, "I wasn't thinking of that so much. It's--well, it amounts to this. These poor devils are just working to fill Beasley's pockets. Beasley's the man who'll benefit by this 'strike.' In a few months the others will be on the road again, going through all--that they've gone through before."
"I guess they will," Buck agreed. His point of view had changed. He was seeing through the older eyes. After that they moved on toward their home lost in the thoughts which their brief talk had inspired.
In a few days the Padre's prophecy was fulfilled. Beasley returned from Leeson Butte at the head of a small convoy. He had contrived his negotiations with a wonderful skill and foresight. His whole object had been secrecy, and this had been difficult. To shout the wealth of the camp in Leeson Butte would have been to bring instantly an avalanche of adventurers and speculators to the banks of Yellow Creek. His capital was limited to the small amount he had secretly hoarded while his comrades were starving, and the gold he had taken from his claim. The latter was his chief asset not from its amount, but its nature. Therefore he had been forced to take the leading merchant in the little prairie city into his confidence, and to suggest a partnership. This he had done, and a plausible tongue, and the sight of the wonderful raw gold, had had the effect he desired. The partnership was arranged, the immediate finance was forthcoming, and, for the time at least, Leeson Butte was left in utter ignorance of its neighboring Eldorado.
Once he had made his deal with Silas McGinnis, Beasley promptly opened his heart in characteristic fashion.
"They're all sheep, every one of 'em," he beamed upon his confederate. "They'll be so easy fleecin' it seems hardly worth while. All they need is liquor, and cards, and dice. Yes, an' a few women hangin' around. You can leave the rest to themselves. We'll get the gilt, and to hell with the dough under it. Gee, it's an elegant proposition!" And he rubbed his hands gleefully. "But ther' must be no delay. We must get busy right away before folks get wind of the luck. I'll need marquees an' things until I can get a reg'lar shanty set up. Have you got a wood spoiler you can trust?"
McGinnis nodded.
"Then weight him down with money so we don't need to trust him too much, and ship him out with the lumber so he can begin right away. We're goin' to make an elegant pile."
In his final remark lay the key-note of his purpose. But the truth of it would have been infinitely more sure had the pronoun been singular.
Never was so much popularity extended to Beasley in his life as at the moment of his return to camp. When the gold-seekers beheld his convoy, with the wagons loaded with all those things their hearts and stomachs craved, the majority found themselves in a condition almost ready to fling welcoming arms about his neck. Their wishes had been expressed, their demands made, and now, here they were fulfilled.
A rush of trade began almost before the storekeeper's marquee was erected. It began without regard to cost, at least on the purchasers' parts. The currency was gold, weighed in scales which Beasley had provided, and his exorbitant charges remained quite unheeded by the reckless creatures he had marked down for his victims.
In twenty-four hours the camp was in high revelry. In forty-eight Beasley's rough organization was nearing completion. And long before half those hours had passed gold was pouring into the storekeeper's coffers at a pace he had never even dreamed of.
But the first rush was far too strenuous to be maintained for long. The strain was too great even for such wild spirits as peopled the camp. It soared to its height with a dazzling rapidity, culminating in a number of quarrels and fights, mixed up with some incipient shooting, after which a slight reaction set in which reduced it to a simmer at a magnificently profitable level for the foxy storekeeper. Still, there remained ample evidence that the Devil was rioting in the camp and would continue to do so just as long as the lure of gold could tempt his victims.
Then came the inevitable. In a few days it became apparent that the news of the "strike" had percolated abroad. Beasley's attempt at secrecy had lasted him just sufficiently long to establish himself as the chief trader. Then came the rush from the outside.
It was almost magical the change that occurred in one day. The place became suddenly alive with strangers from Leeson Butte and Bay Creek, and even farther afield. Legitimate traders came to spy out the land. Loafers came in and sat about waiting for developments. Gamblers, suave, easy, ingratiating, foregathered and started the ball of high stakes rolling. And in their wake came all that class of carrion which is ever seeking something for nothing. But the final brand of lawlessness was set on the camp by the arrival of a number of jaded, painted women, who took up their abode in a disused shack sufficiently adjacent to Beasley's store to suit their purposes. It was all very painful, all very deplorable. Yet it was the perfectly natural evolution of a successful mining camp--a place where, before the firm hand of Morality can obtain its restraining grip, human nature just runs wild.
The seedling had grown. Its rank tendrils were everywhere reaching out and choking all the better life about it. Its seeds were scattered broadcast and had germinated as only such seeds can. It only remained for the husbandman to gaze regretful and impotent upon his handiwork. His hand had planted the seedling, and now--already the wilderness was beyond all control.
Something of this was in the Padre's mind as he sat in his doorway awaiting Buck's return for the night. The dusk was growing, and already the shadows within the ancient stockade were black with approaching night. The waiting man had forgotten his pipe, so deeply was he engrossed with his thoughts, and it rested cold in his powerful hand.
He sat on oblivious of everything but that chain of calm reasoning with which he tried to tell himself that the things happening down there on the banks of the Yellow Creek must be. He told himself that he had always known it; that the very fact of this lawlessness pointed the camp's prosperity, and showed how certainly the luck had come to stay. Later, order would be established out of the chaos, but for the moment there was nothing to be done but--wait. All this he told himself, but it left him dissatisfied, and his thoughts concentrated upon the one person he blamed for all the mischief. Beasley was the man--and he felt that wherever Beasley might be, trouble would never be far----What was that?
An unusual sound had caught and held his attention. He rose quickly from his seat and stood peering out into the darkness which he had failed to notice creeping on him. There was no mistaking it. The sound of running feet was quite plain. Why running?
He turned about and moved over to the arm rack. The next moment he was in the doorway again with his Winchester at his side.
A few moments later a short, stocky man leapt out of the darkness and halted before him. As the Padre recognized him his finger left the trigger of his gun.
"For Gawd's sake don't shoot, Padre!"
It was Curly Saunders' voice, and the other laid his gun aside.
"What's amiss?" demanded the Padre, noting the man's painful gasping for breath.
For a moment Curly hesitated. Then, finally, between heavy breaths he answered the challenge.
"I got mad with the Kid--Soapy," he said. "Guess I shot him up. He ain't dead an' ain't goin' to die, but Beasley, curse him, set 'em on to lynch me. They're all mad drunk--guess I was, too, 'fore I started to run--an' they come hot foot after me. I jest got legs of 'em an' come along here. It's--it's a mighty long ways."
The Padre listened without moving a muscle--the story so perfectly fitted in with his thoughts.
"The Kid isn't dead? He isn't going to die?" His voice had neither condemnation nor sympathy in it.
"No. It's jest a flesh wound on the outside of his thigh."
"What was the trouble?"
"Why, the durned young skunk wus jest tryin' to set them--them women payin' a 'party' call on the gal at the farm, an' they wus drunk enough to do it. It made me mad--an'--an', wal, we got busy with our tongues, an' I shot him up fair an' squar'."
"And how about Beasley?"
"Why, it was him set the Kid to git the women on the racket. When he see how I'd stopped it he got madder than hell, an' went right out fer lynchin' me. The boys wus drunk enough to listen to his lousy talk."
"Was he drunk?"
"Not on your life. Beasley's too sweet on the dollars. But I guess he's got his knife into that Golden Woman of ours."
The Padre had no more questions to ask. He dropped back into the room and lit the oil lamp.
"Come right in, Curly," he said kindly. Then he laid his rifle on the table and pointed at it. "The magazine's loaded plumb up. Guess no man has a right to give up his life without a kick. That'll help you if they come along--which they won't. Maybe Buck'll be along directly. Don't shoot him down. Anyway he's got Caesar with him--so you'll know. I'm going down to the camp."
For a second the two men looked into each other's eyes. The Padre read the suspicion in Curly's. He also saw the unhealthy lines in his cheeks and round his mouth. Nor could he help feeling disgusted at the thoughts of the fortune that had come to the camp and brought all these hideous changes in its wake.
He shook his head.
"I'm not giving you away," he said. "Guess I'll be back in an hour."
Curly nodded and moved over to one of the two chairs.
"Thanks, Padre," he said as the other passed quickly out of the room. _