The Boys of Crawford's Basin Part 27

Making our way up the spur, we again skirted along between the upper edge of the slide and the foot of the cliff, and ascending once more to the ridge, we retraced our steps down it until we presently arrived at the dead tree with the hawk's nest in it.

Here, after a careful inspection of the ground, we went to work, Joe with the pick, and I, following behind him, throwing out the loose stuff with the shovel and searching through each shovelful for bits of galena.

In this way we worked, cutting a narrow trench across the line where we supposed the vein ought to run, until presently Joe himself gave a great shout which brought me to his side in an instant.

With the point of his pick he had hooked out a lump of galena as big as his head!

My! How excited we were! And how we did work! We just flew at it, tooth and nail--or, rather, pick and shovel. If our lives had depended on it we could not have worked any harder, I firmly believe. The consequence was that at the end of an hour we had uncovered a vein fifteen feet wide, disclosing a porphyry wall on one side and a limestone wall on the other.

The vein was not, of course, a solid body of ore. Very far from it.

Though there were bits of galena scattered pretty thickly all across it, the bulk of the vein-matter was composed of sc.r.a.ps of quartz mixed with yellow earth--the latter, as we afterwards learned, being itself decomposed lead-ore--to say nothing of gra.s.s-roots, tree-roots and other rubbish which helped to make up the ma.s.s.

But that we had found a real, genuine vein, even we, novices as we were at the business, could not doubt, and very heartily we shook hands with each other when our trenching at length brought us up against the limestone foot-wall. With the discovery of this foot-wall, Joe called a halt.

"Enough!" he cried. "Enough, Phil! Let's stop now. We've got the vein, all right, and a staving good vein it is, and all we have to do for the present is to set up our location-stake. To-morrow Tom will come up here, when he can make his camp and get to work at it regularly, sinking his ten-foot prospect-hole. What are we going to name it? The 'Hermit'?

The 'Raven'? The 'Socrates'?"

"Call it the 'Big Reuben,'" I suggested.

"Good!" exclaimed Joe. "That's it! The 'Big Reuben' it shall be."

This, therefore, was the t.i.tle we wrote upon our location-notice, by which we claimed for Tom Connor a strip of ground fifteen hundred feet in length along the course of the vein and one hundred and fifty feet wide on either side of it; and thus did our old enemy, Big Reuben, lend his name to a "prospect" which was destined later to take its place among the foremost mines of our district.

CHAPTER XVI

THE WOLF WITH WET FEET

We had been so expeditious, thanks largely to Joe's good judgment in tumbling into the right hole at the start when he slid down the shale, that we reached home well before sunset, when, according to the arrangement we had made as we rode down, Joe started again that same evening for Sulphide. This time he made the trip without interruption, and when at eight o'clock next morning he drove up to our house, Tom Connor was with him.

"How are you, old man?" cried the latter, springing to the ground and shaking hands very heartily with our guest. "That was a pretty narrow squeak you had."

"It certainly was," replied Peter. "And if it hadn't been for these boys, I'd have been up there yet. What's the news, Connor? Any clue to your ore-thieves?"

"Not much but what you and the boys have furnished. But ask Joe, he'll tell you."

"Well," said Joe, "in the first place, Long John has disappeared. He has not been seen since the evening before the robbery. No one knows what's become of him."

"Is that so?" I cried. "Then I suppose the robbery is laid to him."

"Yes, to him and another man. I'll tell you all about it. After I had been to the mine and given Tom our news, I went down town to Yetmore's and had a long talk with him. That was a good idea of your father's, Phil, that we should go and tell Yetmore: he took it very kindly, and repeated several times how much obliged he felt. He seems most anxious to be friendly."

"It's my opinion," Tom Connor cut in, "that he got such a thorough scare that night of the explosion, and is so desperate thankful he didn't blow you two sky-high, that he can't do enough to make amends."

"That's it, I think," said Joe. "And I believe it is a great relief to him also to find that we are not trying to lay the blame on him. Anyhow, he couldn't have been more friendly than he was; and he told me things which seem to throw some light on the matter of the ore-theft. There _was_ seemingly a second man concerned in it; a man with a club-foot, Peter."

"Ah, ha!" said Peter. "Is that so?"

"Yes. There used to be a man about town known as 'Clubfoot,' a crony of Long John's," Joe continued. "He was convicted of ore-stealing about three years ago, and was sent to the penitentiary. A few days ago he escaped, and it is Yetmore's opinion that he ran straight to Long John for shelter. On the night after the explosion he--Yetmore, I mean, you know--went to John's house 'to give the blundering numskull a piece of his mind,' as he said--we can guess what about--and John wouldn't let him in; so they held their interview outside in the dark. I gathered that there was a pretty lively quarrel, which ended in Yetmore telling Long John that he had done with him, and that he needn't expect him to grub-stake him this spring.

"It is Yetmore's belief that the reason John wouldn't let him into his house--it's only a one-roomed shanty, you know--was that Clubfoot was then inside; and he further believes that John, finding himself deprived of his expected summer's work, and no doubt incensed besides at Yetmore's going back on him, as he would consider it, then and there planned with Clubfoot the robbery of the ore; both of them being familiar with the workings of the Pelican."

"That sounds reasonable," remarked Peter; "though, when all is said and done, it amounts to no more than a guess on Yetmore's part. But, look here!" he went on, as the thought suddenly occurred to him. "If Long John is not prospecting for Yetmore or himself either, being supposedly in hiding, what was he doing on the 'bubble' yesterday?"

"But perhaps he is prospecting for himself," Tom Connor broke in. "Here we are, theorizing away like a house afire on the idea that he is the thief, when maybe he had nothing to do with it. And if he is prospecting for himself, the sooner I get up to that claim the better if I don't want to be interfered with. I reckon I'll dig out right away. If you boys," turning to us, "can spare the time and the buckboard you can help me a good bit by carrying up my things for me."

"All right, Tom," said I. "We can do so."

Starting at once, therefore, with a load of provisions, tools and bedding, we carried them up the mountain as far as we could on wheels, and then packed them the rest of the way on horseback, when, having seen Tom comfortably established in camp near the Big Reuben--with the look of which he expressed himself as immensely pleased--Joe and I turned homeward again about four in the afternoon.

We were driving along, skirting the rim of our canon, and were pa.s.sing between the stream and the little treeless "bubble" upon which Joe had, as he believed, seen Long John standing the day before, when my companion remarked:

"I should very much like to know, Phil, what Long John was doing up there. Do you suppose----Whoa! Whoa, there, Josephus! What's the matter with you?"

This exclamation was addressed to the horse; for at this moment the ordinarily well-behaved Josephus s.h.i.+ed, snorted, and standing up on his hind feet struck out with his fore hoofs at a big timber-wolf, which, springing out from the shelter of some boulders on the margin of the canon and pa.s.sing almost under his nose, ran off and disappeared among the rocks.

"He must have been down to the stream to get a drink," suggested Joe.

"He couldn't," said I; "the canon-wall is too steep; no wolf could scramble up."

"Well, if he didn't," remarked my companion, "how did he get his feet wet? Look here at his tracks."

As he said this, Joe pointed to the bare stone before us, where the wolf's wet tracks were plainly visible.

"Well," said I, "then I suppose there must be a way up after all. Wait a moment, Joe, while I take a look."

Jumping from the buckboard, I stepped over to the boulders whence the wolf had appeared, where, to my surprise, I found a pool, or, rather, a big puddle of water, which, overflowing, dripped into the canon.

Where the water came from I could not at first detect, but on a more careful inspection I found that it ran, a tiny thread, along a crack in the lava not more than a couple of inches wide, which, on tracing it back, I found we had driven over without noticing. Apparently the water came down from the "bubble" through a rift in the crater-wall.

As I have stated before, several of the little craters contributed small streams of water to our creek, but this was not one of them, so, turning to my companion, I said:

"Joe, this is the first time I have ever seen any water come down from that 'bubble.' Let us climb up to the top and take a look inside."

Away we went, therefore, scrambling up the rocky slope, when, having reached the rim, we looked down into the little crater. The area of its floor was only about an acre in extent, but instead of being grown over with gra.s.s and sagebrush, as was the case with most of them, this one was covered with blocks of stone of all sizes, some of them weighing several tons. It was evident that the walls, which were only about thirty feet in height, had at one time been much higher, but that in the course of ages they had broken down and thus littered the little bowl-shaped depression with the fragments.

The thread of water which had drawn us up there came trickling out from among these blocks of stone, and we set out at once to trace it up to its source while we still had daylight. But this, we found, was by no means easy, for, though the stream did not dodge about much, but ran pretty directly down to the crack in the wall, its course was so much impeded by rocks, under and around which it had to make its way--while over and around them we had to make _our_ way--that it was ten or fifteen minutes before we discovered where it came from.

We had expected to find a pool of rain-water, more or less extensive, seeping through the sand and slowly draining away. What we actually did find was something very different: something which filled us with wonder and excitement!

About the middle of the little crater there came boiling out of the ground a strong spring, which, running along a deep, narrow channel it had in the course of many centuries worn in the solid stone floor of the crater, disappeared in turn beneath the litter of rocks. A short distance below the spring the channel was half filled for some distance with fragments of stone of no great size, which, checking the rush of the water, caused it to lap over the edge. It was this slight overflow which supplied the driblet we had followed up from the canon below.

"Joe!" I exclaimed, greatly excited. "Do you know what I think?"

"Yes, I do," my companion answered like a flash. "I think so, too. Come on! Let's find out at once!"

Following the channel, we went clambering over the rocks, which just here were not quite so plentiful, until, at a distance from the spring of about fifty yards, we came upon a large circular pool in which the water flowed continuously round and round as though stirred with a gigantic spoon, while in the centre it spun round violently, a perfect little whirlpool, and sank with a gurgle into the earth.