David Lannarck, Midget Part 5

Besides hay, a lot of oats and barley was produced.

"But thar's Jim's patent," Landy was showing Davy over the premises.

"Jim keeps everything offen that big medder, en the gra.s.s comes on, en cures itse'f. Then hit snows, and the gra.s.s lays down like a carpet. Then hit blows the snow off en around, en stock can graze thar until near Christmas. Hit's a great savin' on hay. En a great saving on the hay feeder," Landy added with a grin.

Besides three score cows with their calves, a dozen horses and colts, turkeys, chickens, ducks, and geese galore, the Gillis ranch had three dogs, two collies, and a short-tailed sheep dog. The dogs followed Davy around like they had found a friend.

"They think I am a kid," Davy said. "Dogs sure like children."

After another sumptuous meal, Welborn went out to tinker with the Ford. Mrs. Gillis called Davy to the kitchen. "I want you to speak to Welborn," she said. "He works too hard. From daylight to dark, he does two men's work at that old mine. He'll kill himself before he gets the money out of it. You can talk to him--he likes you. Why, he sat up all night, the night before he went to Cheyenne after you, pressing his pants, making your chair, tying his tie, tinkering on the Ford. He cautioned all of us not to talk about your being smaller than common, being a midget. He said you were coming out here to get away from "the mob," the people who stared and commented. He wanted everything here to be different. He likes you, would do anything for you, but he's got something pus.h.i.+ng him, driving him, faster and harder than one man can stand. He'll break if he don't stop and take things easier. If you get a chance, talk to him, tame him down, make him rest, change his mind to something different. He's a fine man, big and rugged and a gentleman. He never hints at what's eating his life out, and we don't know. But it ought to stop."

"I think you are right, Mrs. Gillis. Sam does work too hard and too long. I know nothing about his past, and I'll never ask him until he gets ready to tell it all. This I know, he's well educated, has trained in big business and is used to good society. I think he is rather hot-headed and maybe stubborn, if he thinks he's right. It will be a delicate thing to do, to try to switch him off from what he's doing and the way he's doing it, but I'll try, because I think it ought to be done."

Landy did not go in the return trip to "Pinnacle P'int" as he termed the mine and its environments. He had some "cipherin' around" to do.

"With that pump a-goin' and the water a-flowin', hit don't resemble a place of rest to me," he said.

Mrs. Gillis brought a loaf of bread out to the car. "There's enough for your supper and breakfast, and you folks come back here for dinner tomorrow."

"En say, Jim, you bring the kid's little saddle back with yer," called Landy. "I want to lengthen the cinches to fit old Frosty. Me en the kid are aimin' to do a lot of romancin' eround--mebbe tomorry."

Arriving at the cabin, Welborn took a can of gasoline through the opening out to the pump. He tinkered with the engine and presently a steady "chug-chug-chug" reverberated down the valley. Mechanical mining was on at the Silver Falls Project.

Welborn laid the hose at a favorable place on a gravel-bar and scooped up a pan of dirt and sand that he held under the stream while he whirled it around in the pan. The contents took up the motion and spilled over the pan-brim until there was little left. The miner examined the remainder and then gave it more water and more swirling around in the pan. This process he repeated several times. Presently he held the pan where Davy and Jim could see a fifth of a thimble full of tiny flakes and two small dots not much larger than pinheads.

"That's the object of the meeting, gentlemen," Welborn said grimly.

"That's gold.... Tomorrow," he added, "we will get the old rocker going, but just now, I want to 'sample around' for good locations."

All this was nothing to Davy. He watched the men awhile and went back to the cabin to arrange his personal belongings. Pinnacle Point was a place of sudden sunsets and prolonged twilights. At near five o'clock, Davy built a fire in the little cook-stove and put several slices of bacon on to fry. He "set the table" as best he could and broke several eggs in the bacon grease. He set out a jar of jam, sliced the bread.

Then he went to the tunnel and called: "Supper."

"Say, Laddie, I don't want you to do this," said Welborn as he surveyed the supper. "You are my guest, you know, and I'll do what cooking there's to be done. We'll eat our dinners at Gillis', we'll sleep here, and I will get breakfast and supper. The fine dinners will offset my poor cooking, and besides you ought to stay outdoors and look around as much as you can, before we get snowed in for the whole winter."

"Well, I do plan to go with Landy over to see about that colt," said Davy, "and I thought maybe you would want to go along."

Welborn laughed. "Not for me! If you and Landy can't skin those B-line people out of one little horse, you are no traders. I've got to get that rocker going tomorrow. Look what we did today!" Welborn showed a little canvas bag that he took out of his pocket. "There is fully an ounce of dust in there, and we didn't try, just sampled around. With the rocker going, I can take out ten ounces a day by myself. It's fairly well distributed all over the tract, but better if you can hit the potholes right in the old stream bed."

"And when you get it all out, then what?"

Welborn looked rather perplexed. He studied a moment. "Then what?" he asked slowly, "Why we'll stock that ranch, lay out a flying field, and visit a lot of places. Truly, I had never planned so far ahead as to get to the place where I wouldn't be doing anything excepting clipping coupons."

"Yes, the mine is a fine thing," Davy said earnestly. "Why, there is enough gold there to make a great fortune. But what's the use in taking it all out at once? It will keep. You can work awhile, rest awhile, play awhile, and still be just as rich as if you had worked yourself to death. You are young, strong, and healthy, just right to enjoy life. Why work so hard now?"

"Yes, I am healthy, feel pretty strong, but not so young. Right now, I would like to take a few thousand dollars out of that gulch before snow flies, for we are going to have a lot of enforced loafing. We are in good shape to loaf however, all bills are paid and I still have thirty-five dollars of your money!"

"That's fine. I have been wondering how I would pay for the colt, in the event we bought him. The B-line folks might not want to take my check, and it might take more cash than I have on me."

"Mrs. Gillis will take care of that, she has money, plenty of it. She will tell Landy what to do, and Landy's word is like a bond. They do a lot of trading with the B-line. Buy cows, sell calves, and trade paper back and forth. Mrs. Gillis is better than a bank. Since the banking situation went bad, she has been acc.u.mulating government bonds. She hardly ever comes back from town without at least a hundred-dollar bond. She's a wonder, that woman. She's not an isolated hill billy that goes to town on Sat.u.r.days and anchors herself in the doorway of the five-and-ten-cent store to visit and gawk around. She's full of business. Sells her stuff, buys what she needs, and hits the trail for home. I expect Mrs. Gillis has seven or eight thousand dollars in bonds and cash stowed around in their cabin."

"Now that's my notion of living," cried Davy as he edged his chair back from the cracking sticks that Welborn had added to the smouldering embers in the fireplace. "Own a fine little ranch, a decent run of livestock and poultry, raise plenty of feed, and have something to sell right along. They don't have to meet a daily schedule, don't have to spread canvas in the rain or look at a mob t.i.ttering yokels all the time. That's the life for me and the Gillis outfit is my pattern."

"They are fine people," said Welborn. "We will keep in close contact with them. We need them now. The time may come when they will need us."

5

"Jim stayed to milk the cows," Landy explained as he rode up to Pinnacle Point the next morning leading Frosty, a rangy bay with a diminutive new saddle on his back. "Alice don't like my milkin'

methods. I jist turn the calves in with the cows and let nature take her course, so she lets Jim do the milkin'. Put on yer jacket, son, hit's crimpy around the edges, and let's git goin'."

Seated on Ole Gravy, a st.u.r.dy gray horse, Landy Spencer was like a picture page out of the book of the old west. His stubby, gray mustache, standing out under an aquiline nose and squinting eyes, failed to conceal a mouth much given to smiles and laughter. He had cautioned the little man that it was cool, yet his blue s.h.i.+rt was open at the neck. He wore a slouch hat, dented and battered to unconventional shape, a dingy knitted waistcoat, unb.u.t.toned of course, gray jeans, tucked into high boots with long, pointed heels, and spurs of ancient pattern. Hung to the horn of his old, but generous saddle was a lariat.

The chuck-chuck-chuck of the gas engine told that Welborn was already on the job at the mine. Davy ran into the house and returned wearing his mackinaw and boots. "My, he's a giraffe," he said, as he looked over Frosty and his equipment.

Landy dismounted and lifted Davy to his saddle. "Did ye ever ride a hoss, son?"

"Sure, I've ridden some of the big fat ring-horses, but I either had to lie down or stand up, they were too big around for my legs. Once I was to ride a shetland in the Grand Entry, but they had a monkey on another pony and I walked out on 'em." Davy picked up the reins and Frosty began tiptoeing around and arching his back.

"Jist turn him loose, son," called Landy. "The old simpleton was expectin' some weight when ye got on, and he's disapp'inted."

Landy led the way down the hill and Frosty followed like a pack horse.

The sun had pushed above the clouds. Frost was flying in the air. It jeweled the gra.s.s of the table land and sparkled amid the green of the conifers along Ripple Creek. Farther down the indistinct path they met Jim in the car.

"Are you fellers goin' to git back in time for dinner," he called to the hors.e.m.e.n.

"Mebbe not," replied Landy. "We are aimin' to bring back that little hoss, en he may not want to come."

Landy turned from the path and rode down a coulee that led to Brushy Fork. It was a winding way through brush and stunted hemlocks.

Presently they came to the creek. "Thar's Steelheads en Rainbows up in them pools," said the leader. "These streams have been stocked en hit's good fis.h.i.+n', if ye know how."

They followed down the stream bed for a distance and then Landy turned up a draw on the left bank, that finally led out to level land. At first it was a narrow way between the stream and foothill, but presently the landscape broadened to a meadow similar to that on the right bank of the creek. At one place, where the way was narrow, there was the crumbling remnant of rough walls of rock.

"That's a relic of them ole wars in here, but I never could git the hang of the tale. Ole Jim Lough knows all about it but he's too shut-mouthed and contrary to tell the tale.

"Ye see, I'm not a native son," explained Landy, as they rode abreast on the widened road. "I got started in the cattle game over to the north on Crazy Woman Creek en the range betwixt that en Sun Dance on the Belle Fourche. I was romancin' round when Teddy Roosevelt made camp up thar. Teddy liked to listen in on some of them Paul Bunyans of the cattle game, en they sh.o.r.e told some tall ones. I think he encouraged 'em in their romancin' jist to git a line on their capacity. Ye see, we were located jist betwixt ole Fort Fetterman and the Little Big Horn, sorta betwixt Red Cloud en Sittin' Bull, en one ma.s.sacre en another. Ours was a period jist follerin' these history-makin' times en every man had a right to tell hit his way as they were all unhampered by airy lick of facts.

"Therefore, I didn't git up here in the headwaters of the Platte until years after, but from what I ketch they had some right stirrin' time in here, 'twixt cattle rustlin' and sheep crowdin'. Ole Jim knows the whole story, but he don't broadcast none." Topping a swell of the meadow lands another stream basin was encountered. "Hit's a little Ranty," explained Landy. "That's a dam downstream aways en the B-line waters a couple o' hundred acres." In these meadows there were cattle--cows and calves and some scrub yearlings. Crossing the Ranty, the hors.e.m.e.n mounted to the levels again. Here, there were fences.

Farther on, stables, sheds, and a cl.u.s.ter of houses. The B-line ranch.

Landy maneuvered the horses through the gates without dismounting and rode up to the central stable. "Whar's yer reception committee eround here?" he yelled. "Call out the guard en parade them colors," he commanded as he dismounted and a.s.sisted Davy down. He threw the reins over the horses' heads. A man came out of the stable-room, two more came from back of a shed.

"Well, if it haint the ole buzzard from Ripple Creek, a sailin' around lookin' fer his dinner. Nothin' dead around here Landy," said the short, stubby man that came from the stable room.

"Howdy, Potter. 'Lo, Flinthead. Howdy, Hickory. All you cimarrons wipe yer hands real clean en shake with my friend Mister Lannarck. We jist took time outen our busy lives to come over here en watch you birds loaf eround," said Landy after introductions had been acknowledged. "En my pardner here has a broken handled knife that he would trade for a little hoss."

"Well, it's a shame, Mister Lannarck," said Potter thoughtfully, "that ye have to carry sich a load as bein' introduced by sich a double-barreled, disreputable ole renegade of a crook like this. But we understand and will try to he'p ye live it down. Now, as to that little hoss. He belongs to Miss Adine. She's at the house. Flinthead, you move them hosses in here! Hickory, go tell Adine that the circus party that Landy told her about is here to see the colt."

Both men set about their tasks. Flinthead led out a horse, mounted and rode down a lane, propping the gates open as he went. From a corral back of the stables came a drove of horses, mares, colts, and yearlings. Trotting, prancing, and snorting as they came down the lane, they settled down once they were in the stable lot.

Davy was between two fires. He sought a safe place from being run down by the drove and yet he wanted to catch a glimpse of any kind of horse suitable to his size. He noted plenty of small ones but their short, bushy tails revealed colthood. The others were too large. As the drove settled down a colt came from out the center of the milling herd and walked up to Potter, extending his muzzle as if expecting something.