Stepsons of Light Part 7

"That was last year, and I have been prognosticatin' round, off and on, ever since, whenever I could get away from my farmin'. I found a trace, mostly. You can always get a color round here, and no one place better than another. But when the rains begun this year, so I could find water to pan with, I tried it again, higher up. And in a little flat side draw, leadin' from between two miserable little snubby hills off all alone, too low to send much flood water down--there I begun to find float, plumb promisin'. I started to follow it up. You know how--pan to right and left till the stuff fails to show, mark the edge of the pay dirt, go on up the hill and do the like again. If the gold you're followin' has been carried down by water the streak gets narrower as you go up a hillside, and pay dirt gets richer as it gets narrower. If the hill has been tossed about by the h.e.l.l fires down below, all bets is off and no rule works, not even the exceptions.

That's why they say gold is where you find it. But any time you find a fan-shaped strip of color on a hill that looks like it might have stayed put, or nearly so, it's worth while to follow it up. If you find the apex of that triangle you're apt to strike a pocket that will land you right side up with the great and good. Sometimes the apex has done been washed away; these water courses have run quite elsewhere other times. Oh, quite! But there's always a chance. Follow up a narrowing color and quit one that squanders round casual. Them's the rules.

"Well, sir, my pay dirt took to the side of that least hill, and she was shaping right smart like a triangle. Then my water give out. I was usin' a little tank in the rocks--no other without packing from MacCleod's Tank, five mile. And I had to get in my last cuttin' of alfalfa--pesky stuff! I cached my outfit and came on home.

"So there you are. It's been rainin' again; and I'm goin' out and try another whirl to-morrow, hit or miss. Go snooks with you if you're a mind to side me. What say?"

"Why, Big Chump, you're not such a bad old hoss thief, are you? Well, I thank you just as much, and I sure hope you'll make a ten-strike and everything like that; but, you see, I'm busy. Tell you what, Adam--you get Hob to go along, and I'll think about it."

"Oh, well, maybe it's a false alarm anyway," said Adam lightly. "I've known better things to fizzle. I get my fun, whatever happens. I can't stay cooped up on that measly old farm all the time. I need a little fresh air every so often. I'm a lot like Thompson's colt, that swum the river to get a drink."

"Don't like farmin', eh?"

"Why, yes, I do. Beats h.e.l.lin' round, same as a stack of hay beats a stack of chips. They're right nice people here, Charlie, mighty pleasant and friendly and plumb cheerful about the good time coming.

And every last one of 'em is here because this is the very place he wants to be, and not because he happened to be here and didn't know how to get away. That makes a power of difference. They're plumb animated, these folks; if so be they ain't just satisfied any place, they rise up and depart. So we have no grand old grouches. All the same, I'm free to admit that I haven't quite the elbowroom I need."

"I know just how you feel," said Charlie; "I've leased a towns.h.i.+p and fenced it in. That's why I'm not at some round-up; all my bossies right at home. And dog-gone if I don't feel like I was in jail. But you people can't be making much real money, Adam--hauling over such roads as these. It is forty miles from place to place, in here, while out in the open it is only thirty or maybe twenty-five. That's on account of the sand and the curly places. And then you have nothing to do in the wintertime."

"Well, now, it ain't so bad as you'd think--not near. We raise plenty eggs, chickens, pork and such truck, and fruit and vegetables. Lots of milk and b.u.t.ter, too; not like when we didn't have anything but cows. Some of us have our little bunch of cattle in the foothills yet, and fat the steers on alfalfa, and get money for 'em when we sell. But that won't last long, I reckon. We're beginning to grow hogs on alfalfa and fat 'em on corn, smoke 'em and salt 'em and cross 'em with T and s.h.i.+p 'em to El Paso. I judge that ham, bacon and pork will be the main crops presently.

"Then we hurled up a grist mill since you was here, cooperative. Hob, he got up that. And we got a good wagon road through the mountain, to Upham. Goes up Redgate and out by MacCleod's Tank. Steepish, but no sand; when we get a car of stuff to s.h.i.+p we can haul twice as much as we can take to Rincon. We can't buy nothing at Upham, sure enough, and sometimes have to wait for our cars. But we can have stuff s.h.i.+pped to Upham from El Paso, and it's downhill coming back. Also, Hobby allows this Upham project will ably a.s.sist Rincon to wake up and build us a road up the valley."

"Hobby invented this wagon road, did he?"

"Every bit. We all chipped in to do the work. But Hob furnished the idea. That ain't all, either. From now on, we're going to have plenty to do, wintertimes. Mr. See, we got a factory up and ready to start.

Yessir!"

"Easy, Big Chump! You'll strain yourself."

"Straight goods--no joking."

"Must be a h.e.l.l of a factory!"

"She's all right, son. A home-grown factory. You go look at her to-morrow. Broom factory. Yessir! Every man jack of us raised a patch of broom corn. We sell it to ourselves or buy it of ourselves, whichever way you like it best; and anybody that wants to make brooms does that little thing. We s.h.i.+p from Upham and divvy up surplus. Every dollar's worth of broom corn draws down one dollar's share of the net profit, and every dollar's worth of labor does just that--no more, no less. It works out--with good faith and fair play."

"Hob?" said Johnny.

"That's the man." Adam Forbes let his hand rest for a moment on the younger man's shoulder. "Charlie, you and me are all right in our place--but there ain't goin' to be no such place much longer. I reckon we ain't keepin' up with the times. So now you know why I wanted you should go prospectin' with me. Birds of a feather gather no moss."

"I judge maybe you're right. We both of us favor Thompson's colt, and that's a fact. Well, I am glad old Hob is making good. We had as good a chance as he did, only he had more sense."

"Always did," said Forbes heartily. "But he ain't makin' no big sight of money, if that's what you mean. Just making good. He's not working for Hob Lull especially. He's working for all hands and the cook. Hob always tries to get us to work together, like on a _'cequia_. There's other things--a heap of 'em. We've bought a community thres.h.i.+ng machine. Hob has coaxed a lot of 'em into keeping bees. And he's ribbin' us up to try a cannin' factory in a year or two, for tomatoes and fruit. And a creamery, later. Hob is one long-headed young people. We aim to send him to represent for us sometime."

Charlie See laughed. "Gos.h.!.+ I wish you'd hurry up about it, then."

But there was no bitterness in his mirth.

V

"Never pray for rain on a rising barometer."

--_Naval Regulations._

"Married men always make the worst husbands."

--_The Critic on the Hearth._

"Although, contrary to his custom, he had a lady on his knee, he instructed the young prince in his royal duties."

--ANATOLE FRANCE.

Lyn Dyer lived with Uncle Dan in a little crowded house. Across the way stood a big lonesome house; there Edith Harkey lived with Daddy Pete.

Pete Harkey was a gentle, quiet and rather melancholy old man; Dan Fenderson was a fat, jolly and noisy youth of fifty. In relating other circ.u.mstances within the knowledge of the Border it would have been in no degree improper to have put the emphasis on the names of those two gentlemen. But this is "another story"; it is fitting that the youngsters take precedence; Lyn Dyer and Uncle Dan, Edith and her father.

Lyn Dyer--Carolyn, Lyn--had known no mother but Aunt Peg. The crowding of the little house was well performed by Lyn's three young cousins, Danjunior, Tomtom and Peggy. The big house had been lonesome for ten years now. Edith's sisters and her one brother were all her seniors, all married, and all living within eye flight; two at Hillsboro, a scant twenty-five miles beyond the river--but the big house was not less lonesome for that.

The little crowded house and the big lonesome house were half way between Garfield post office and Derry. Both homes were in Sierra County, but they were barely across the boundary; the county line made the southern limit of each farm. This was no chance but a choosing, and that a pointed one; having to do with that other story of those two old men.

In Dona Ana County taxes were high and life was cheap. Since the Civil War, Dona Ana had been bedeviled by the rule of professional politicians. Sierra--aside from Lake Valley and Hillsboro--had very little ruling and needed less; commonly enough there was only one ticket for county officers, and that was picked by a volunteer committee from both parties. Sierra was an American county, and took pride that she had kept free from feuds and had no bandits within her borders. Not that Mexicans were such evildoers. But where there was an overwhelming Mexican vote there was a large purchasable vote; which meant that purchasers took office. Unjust administration followed--oppression, lawsuits and lawlessness, revenge, bloodshed, feuds, anarchy. Result: More expense, more taxes, more bribing, more bribers, more oppression to recoup the cost of officeholding. _Caveat pre-emptor_--let the homesteader beware!

That unhappy time is now past and done with.

"Lyn! Lyn! Edith! Do come here and see what Adam Forbes has brought in," grumbled Uncle Dan. "Another cowboy, and you just got rid of Tom Bourbonia. It does beat all!"

Mr. Fenderson, uttering the above complaint, stood on his porch in the light from his open door and struck hands with two men there; after which he slapped them violently on the back.

"Come in!" cried Lyn from the doorway. Her eyes were s.h.i.+ning. She dropped a curtsy. "'Come in, come in--ye shall fare most kind!'"

"Don't you believe Uncle Dan," said Edith. "We tried every way to make Tommy stay over--didn't we, Lyn?"

The story is not able to give an exact record of the next minutes. Of the five young people--for Mr. Hobby Lull was there, as prophesied--of the five young people, five were talking at once; and Uncle Dan, above them all, boomed directions to Danjunior as to the horses of his visitors.

"Daniel! Stop that noise!" said Aunt Peg severely. "You boys come on in the house. Mr. Charlie, I'm glad to see you."

"Now, here!" protested Forbes. "Isn't anybody going to be glad to see me?"

"But, Adam, we can see you any time," explained Edith. "While Mr.

See--"

"Her eyes went twinkle, twinkle, but her nose went 'Sniff! Sniff!'"

said Adam dolefully. "Excuse me if I seem to interrupt."

"But Mr. See--"

"Charlie," said See.

"But Charlie makes himself a stranger. We haven't seen you for six months, Mr. See."