Snowdrift Part 4

"Jepson fired you, did he! Well, you should worry. I've heard 'em talkin' in here, now an' then--some of the big guns--an' they all claim you're one of the best engineers in Montana. They say if you'd buckle down to business you'd have 'em all skinned."

"Buckle down to business, eh! The trouble with them is that when they hire a man they think they buy him. It's none of their d.a.m.n business what I do evenings. If I'm sober when I'm on the job--and on the job six days a week, and sometimes seven--they're getting all they're paying for."

"They sure are," agreed the other with emphasis, "Have another shot," he shoved the decanter toward the younger man and leaned closer: "Say Mr.

Brent, you ain't--er, you don't need a little change, do you? If you do just say so, you're welcome to it." The man drew forth a roll of bills, but Brent shook his head:

"No thanks. You can cash this check for me though. Jepson was square enough about it--paid me in full to date and threw in a month's salary in advance. I don't blame him any. We quit the best of friends. When he hired me he knew I liked a little drink now and then, so I took the job with the understanding that if the outfit ever lost a dollar because of my boozing, I was through right then."

"What was it flooded the tunnels?"

"Water," grinned Brent.

"Oh," laughed the bartender, "I thought maybe it was booze."

"You'd have thought so all the more if you'd been there this morning to hear the temperance lecture that old Jepson threw in gratis along with that extra month's pay. About the tunnels--we get our power from Anaconda, and something happened to the high tension wire, and the pumps stopped, and there wasn't any light, and Number Four and Number Six are wet tunnels anyway so they filled up and drowned two batteries of drills. Then, instead of rigging a steam pump and pumping them out through Number Four, one of the s.h.i.+ft bosses rigged a fifteen inch rotary in Number Six and started her going full tilt with the result that he ran the water down against that new piece of railroad grade and washed about fifty feet of it into the river and left the track hanging in the air by the rails."

"The d.a.m.n fool!"

"Oh, I don't know. He did the best he could. A s.h.i.+ft boss isn't hired to think."

"What did old Jepson fire _you_ for? He didn't think you clim up an' cut the high tension wire did he? Or, did he expect you to set around nights an' keep the juice flowin'?"

Brent laughed: "Not exactly. But they tried to find me and couldn't. So when I showed up this morning old Jepson sent for me and asked me where I was last night. I could have lied out of it easy enough. He would have accepted any one of a half a dozen excuses--but lying's poor business--so I told him I was out having a h.e.l.l of a good time and wound up about three in the morning with a pretty fair snootful."

"Bet he thinks a d.a.m.n sight more of you than if you'd of lied, at that.

But they's plenty of jobs fer you. You've got it in your noodle--what they need--an' what they've got to pay to get. You might drop around an'

talk to Gunnison, of the Little Ella. He was growlin' in here the other night because he couldn't get holt of an engineer. Goin' to do a lot of cross tunnel work or somethin'. Said he was afraid he'd have to send back East an' get some pilgrim or some kid just out of college. Hold on a minute there's a bird down there, among them hard rock men, that looks like he was figgerin' on startin' somethin'. I'll just step down an' put a flea in his ear."

Brent's eyes followed the other as he made his way toward the rear of the long bar where three or four bartenders were busy serving drinks to a crowd of miners. He noticed casually that the men were divided into small groups and that they seemed to be talking excitedly among themselves, and that the talk was mostly in whispers.

"The Ore Dump" was essentially a mining man's saloon. Its proprietor, Patsy Kelliher, was an old time miner who, having struck it lucky with pick and shovel, had started a modest little saloon, and later had opened "The Ore Dump," in the fitting up of which he had gone the limit in expensive furnis.h.i.+ngs. It was his boast that no miner had ever gone out of his door hungry or thirsty, nor had any man ever lost a cent by unfair means within his four walls. Rumor had it that Patsy had given away thousands. Be that as it may, "The Ore Dump" had for years been the mecca of the mining fraternity. Millionaire mine owners, managers, engineers, and on down through the list to the humblest "hunk," were served at its long bar, which had, by common usage become divided by invisible lines of demarkation. The mine owners, the managers, the engineers, and the independent contractors foregathered at the front end of the bar; the hunks, and the wops, and the guineas at the rear end; while the long s.p.a.ce between was a sort of no-man's-land where drank the s.h.i.+ft bosses and the artisans of the mines--the hard-rock men, the electricians, and the steam-fitters. Combinations of capital running into millions had been formed at the front end, and combinations of labor at the rear, while in no-man's-land great mines had been tied up at the crooking of a finger.

On this particular morning Carter Brent was the only customer at the front end of the bar. He poured another drink and watched it glow like a thing of life with soft amber lights that played through the crystal clear gla.s.s as a thin streak of sunlight struck aslant the bar. The liquor in his stomach was taking hold. He felt warm, with a glowing, tingling warmth that permeated to his finger tips. In his mind was a vast sense of well being. The world was a great old place to live in. He drank the whisky in his gla.s.s and refilled it from the cut gla.s.s decanter. Poor old Jepson--fired the best engineer in Montana--that's what his friend, the bartender, had just told him, and he got it from the big guns. Well, it was Jepson's funeral--he and the S. & R. would have to stagger along as best they could. He would go and see Gunnison--no, to h.e.l.l with Gunnison! Brent's fingers closed about the roll of bills in his trousers pocket. He had plenty of money, he would wait and pick out a job. He needn't worry. He always was sure of a good job. Hadn't he had five in the two years since he graduated from college? There were plenty of mines and they all needed good engineers.

Brent smiled as his thoughts drifted lazily back to his four years in college. He wished some of the fellows would drop in. "They were a bunch of d.a.m.ned good sports," he muttered to himself, "And we sure did roll 'em high! Speedy Bennet was always the first to go under--about two drinks and we'd lay him on the shelf to call for when needed. Then came McGivern, then Sullivan, and about that time little Morse would begin flapping his arms around and proclaiming he could fly. Then, after a while there wouldn't be anyone left but Morey and me--good old Morey--they canned him in his senior year--and they've been canning me ever since."

Brent paused in his soliloquy and regarded the men who had been whispering among themselves toward the rear of the room. There were no small groups now, and no whispering. With tense faces they were crowding about a man who stood with hands palm down upon the bar. He wondered what it was all about. From his position at the head of the bar he could see the man's face plainly. Also he could see the faces of the others--the lined, rugged faces of the hard rock and the vapid, loose-lipped faces of the wops--and of all the faces only the face of the man who stood with his hands on the bar betrayed nothing of tense expectancy. Why were these others crowding about him, and why was he the only man of them all who was not holding in check by visible effort some pent up emotion? Brent glanced again into the weather-lined face with its drooping sun-burned mustache, and its skin tanned to the color of old leather--a strong face, one would say--the face of a man who had battled long against odds, and won. Won what? He wondered. For an instant the man's eyes met his own, and it seemed to Brent as though he had read the question for surely, behind the long drooping mustache, the lips twisted into just the shadow of a cynical grin.

The head bartender stepped to the back bar and, from beside a huge gilded cash register, he lifted a set of tiny scales which he carried to the bar and set down directly before the man with the sun-burned mustache.

In front of the bar men crowded closer, craning their necks, and elbowing one another, as their feet made soft shuffling sounds upon the hardwood floor. One of the man's hands slipped into a side pocket of his coat and when it came out something thudded heavily upon the bar. Brent saw the object plainly as the bartender reached for it, a small buckskin pouch, its surface glazed with the grease and soot of many campfires. He had seen men carry their tobacco in just such pouches, but this pouch held no tobacco, it had thumped the bar heavily and lay like a sack of sand.

The bartender untied the strings and stood with the pouch poised above the scales while his eyes roved over the eager, expectant faces of the crowd. Then he placed a small weight upon the pan of the scales and poured something slowly from the pouch into the small scoop upon the opposite side. From his position Brent could see the delicate scales oscillate and finally strike a balance. The bartender closed the pouch and handed it back to the owner. Then he picked up the scales and returned them to their place beside the cash register, while in front of the bar men surged about the pouch owner clawing and shoving to get next to him, and all talking at once, n.o.body paying the slightest attention to the bartenders who were vainly trying to serve a round of drinks.

The head bartender returned to his position opposite Brent, and reaching for the decanter, poured himself a drink. "Drink up and have one on the stranger--he just set 'em up to the house."

Brent swallowed the liquor in his gla.s.s and refilled it: "What's the excitement?" he asked, "A man don't ordinarily get as popular as he seems to be just because he buys a round of drinks, does he?"

"Didn't you see it? It ain't the round of drinks, it's--wait--" He stepped to the back bar and lifting the scoop from the scales set it down in front of Brent, "That's what it is--_gold_! Yes sir, pure gold just as she comes from the sand--nuggets and dust. It's be'n many a year since any of that stuff has been pa.s.sed over this bar for the drinks.

I've be'n here seven years and it's the first _I've_ took in, except now and then a few colors that some _hombre's_ washed out of some dry coulee or creek bed--fine dust that's cost him the shovelin' an' pannin' of tons of gravel. Patsy keeps the scales settin' around for a curiosity--that, an' because the old-timers likes to see 'em handy. Kind of reminds 'em of the early days an' starts 'em ga.s.sin'. But this here's the real stuff. Look at that boy." He poked with his finger at an irregular nugget the size of a navy bean, "Looks like a chunk of slag--an' that ain't all! He's got a bag full of 'em. I held it in my hand, an' it weighed _pounds_!"

As Brent stood looking down at the grains of yellow metal in the little scoop a strange uneasiness stirred deep within him. He picked up the nugget and held it in the palm of his hand. One side of it was flat, as though polished by a thousand years of water-wear, and the other side was rough and fire-eaten as though fused by a mighty heat. Brent had seen plenty of gold--coined gold, gold fas.h.i.+oned by the goldsmith's art, and gold in bricks and ingots, in the production of which he himself had been a factor. Yet never before had the sight of gold moved him. It had been merely a valuable metal which it was his business to help extract from certain rocks by certain processes of chemistry and expensive machinery. Yet here in his hand was a new kind of gold--gold that seemed to reach into the very heart of him with a personal appeal. Raw gold--gold that had known the touch of neither chemicals nor machinery, but that had been wrested by the bare hands of a man from some far place where the fires of a glowing world and the glacial ice-drift had fas.h.i.+oned it. The vague uneasiness that had stirred him at sight of the yellow grains, flamed into a mighty urge at its touch. He, too, would go and get gold--and he would get it not by process of brain, but by process of brawn. Not by means of chemicals and machinery, but by slas.h.i.+ng into the sides of mountains, and ripping the guts out of creeks! Carefully he returned the nugget to the scoop, and as he raised his eyes to the bartender's, he moistened his lips with his tongue.

"Where did he get it?" he asked, huskily.

"G.o.d, man! If I know'd that I wouldn't be standin' here, would I?" He jerked his thumb toward the rear of the room where men were frenziedly crowding the stranger. "That's what they all want to know. Lord, if he'd let the word slip what a stampede there'd be! Every man for himself an'

the devil take the hindmost. Out of every hundred that's in on a stampede, about one makes a stake, an' ten gets their ante back, an' the rest goes broke. They all know what they're going up against--but the d.a.m.ned fools! Every one of 'em would stake all they've got, an' their life throw'd in, to be in on it."

"It's the lure of gold," muttered Brent, "I've heard of it, but I never felt it before. Are they d.a.m.ned fools? Wouldn't you?"

"Wouldn't I--what?"

"Wouldn't you go--along with the rest?"

"_h.e.l.l--yes!_ An' so would anyone else that had any red guts in 'em!"

Brent poured himself a drink, and shoved the decanter toward the other, "Let's liquor," he said, "and then maybe if we can get that fellow away from the crowd where we can talk----"

The bartender interrupted the thought before it was expressed; "No chance. Take a look at him. Believe me, there's one _hombre_ that ain't goin' to spill nothin' he don't want to. An' when a man makes a strike like that he don't hang around bars runnin' off at the chin about it--not what you could notice, he don't. Far as I can see we got just one chance. It's a d.a.m.n slim one, but you can't always tell what's runnin' in these birds' heads. He asked me if Patsy Kelliher was runnin'

this dump, an' when I told him he was, he had me send for him. Said he wanted to see him _p.r.o.nto_. An' then he kind of throw'd his eyes around over the faces of the boys an' he says: 'You're all friends of Patsy's?'

He seen in a minute how Patsy stood acehigh with them all, an' then he says; 'Well, just kind of stick around 'till Patsy gets down here an' it might be I'll explode somethin' amongst his friends that'll clean this dump out.' Now, you might take that two ways, but he don't look like one of these, what you might call, anarchists, does he? An' when he said that he laughed, an' he says: 'Belly up to the bar an' I'll buy a little drink--_an' I'll pay for it with coa.r.s.e gold!_' Well, you seen how much drinkin' they done, an'--Here's Patsy, now!"

Brent turned and nodded greeting as the proprietor of "The Ore Dump"

entered the door.

"Is it yersilf that sint fer me, Mister Brint, ye spalpeen?" he grinned, "Bein' a gintleman yersilf, ye'll be knowin' Oi'd still be at me newspaper an' seegar. Whut's on yer mind thot ye'll be dhraggin' a mon from the bossom of his family befoor lunch?"

"It ain't him," explained the bartender, "It's the stranger, I told him you didn't never show up till after dinner, but----"

"_Lunch! d.a.m.n it! Lunch!_" Kelliher's fist smote the bar, and as he scowled into the face of his head bartender, Brent detected a twinkle in the deep-set blue eyes. "Didn't the owld woman beat that same into me own head a wake afther we'd moved into the big house? An' she done ut wid a tree-calf concoordance to Shakspere wid gold edges thot sets on the par--livin' room table? 'Tis a handy an' useful weapon--a worthy subst.i.tute, as the feller says, to the pleebeen rollin' pin an' fryin'

pan. Thim tree calves has got a hide on 'em loike the bottom av a sluice-box. Oi bet they could make anvils out av the hide av a full-grow'd tree-bull. G'wan now an' trot out this ill-fared magpie that must be at his chatterin' befoor the break av day!"

At a motion from the bartender the crowd parted to allow the stranger to make his way to the front, surged together behind him, and followed, ranging itself in a semicircle at a respectful distance. Thus with the two princ.i.p.als, Brent found himself included within this semicircle of excited faces.

The two eyed each other for a moment in silence, the stranger with a smile half-veiled by his sun-burned mustache, and Kelliher with a frankly puzzled expression upon his face as his thick fingers toyed with the heavy gold chain that hung cable-like from pocket to pocket of his gaily colored vest.

"I figured you wouldn't know me." The stranger's grin widened as he noted the look of perplexity.

"An' no more I don't," retorted the other, unconsciously tilting his high silk hat at an aggressive angle over his right eye. "Let's git the cards on the table. Who are ye? An' what ye got in ye're head that ye couldn't kape there till afther lunch?"

"I'm McBride."

Brent saw that the name conveyed nothing to the other, whose puzzled frown deepened. "Ye're McBride!" The tone was good-naturedly sarcastic, "Well, ye'd av still be'n McBride this afthernoon, av ye'd be'n let live that long. But who the divil's McBride that Oi shud come tearin' down to look into the ugly mug av um?"

The stranger laughed: "Nine years ago McBride was the night telegraph operator over in the yards. That was before you moved up here. You was still in the little dump over on f.a.gin street an' you done most of the work yerself--used to open up mornings. There wasn't no big diamon's s.h.i.+nin' in the middle of yer bald-face s.h.i.+rt them days--I doubt an' you owned a bald-face s.h.i.+rt, except, maybe, for Sundays. Anyhow, you'd be openin' up in the mornin' when I'd be goin off trick, an' I most generally stopped in for a couple of drinks or so. An' one mornin' when I'd downed three or four, I noticed you kind of givin' me the once-over.

There wasn't no one else in the place, an' you come over an' leaned yer elbows on the bar, an' you says: 'Yer goin' kind of heavy on that stuff, son,' you says.

"'What the h.e.l.l's the difference?' I says, 'I ain't got only six months to live an' I might's well enjoy what I can of it.'