Well, I rode purty tol'able slow. Some way I didn't want to go back to the Lion Head Ranch. I knew 'at Jim would be glad to see me, but I knew I'd be lonesomer there than among total strangers; so I just floated, punchin' cows most o' the time, but not runnin' very long over the same range.
It was just about this period that I begun to lose my serious view o' life and get more man-like. The usual idea is that a boy is a careless, happy, easy-goin' sort of a creature, and a man is a steady, serious minded, thoughtful kind of an outfit; but just the reverse. A boy starts out believin' most o' what's told him an' thinkin' that it's his duty to reform the world; an' about the only thing he is careless of is human life—his own or any one else's. Fact o' the matter is that if you watch him close enough you'll find out that even in his games a boy is about the solemnest thing on earth, an' you have to know the game purty thorough to tell when it drifts into a real fight. That's why all wars have been fought by boys. They believe in any cause 'at looks big enough to lay down their lives for, an' that's their chief ambition. A man, though; gets to see after a time that the' 's most generally somebody up behind who's working the wires, an' he gets so 'at he don't want to lay down ANYBODY's life, except as a last resort. He looks favorable upon amusement, an' after a while he kind o' sort o' gets hardened to the fact that the whole thing's a joke and he'd rather laugh than shoot. Why, I'd be more afraid of a boy with a popgun than I 'd be of a man with a standin' army.
So as I said, it was just about this time in my life that I begun to hunt up pleasant places to eat and sleep; an' if I heard of trouble in the next county I turned out an' went around. I did a little of everything; even lugged a chain in a surveyor outfit, but the' wasn't enough chance in that. I got to have a trace of gamblin' in anything I do; so the first thing I knew I was down in Nevada lookin' for the treasure 'at Bill Brophy had buried there. The last of his gang had tried to describe the place, but his description would have done for 'most any place in Nevada—she not bein' what you might call free-handed in the way of variety.
Well, I ragged around in the mountains between Nevada and California, lookin' for a flat-shaped rock with a mountain-peak on each side of it, an' a cold wind sweepin' up the canon—I don't know just how the cold wind got included, but the dyin' outlaw dwelt upon that cold wind something particular. I stayed out puny late in the season, an' if cold winds was identifyin', Brophy had his treasure buried purty unpartially all over the West.
I reckon I'd have died if I had it fallen in with Slocum. Slocum was a queer lookin' speciment when you first came upon him. His skin didn't fit him very well, bein' a trifle too big, an' wrankled an' baggy in consequence; his eyes was kind of a washy blue, an' they stuck out from his face, givin' him the most sorrowful expression I ever see. You just couldn't be suspicious of a man with such eyes as that; he seemed to have throwed himself wide open an' invited the whole world to come an' look inside. Why, a perfect stranger would have trusted Slocum with his last plug of tobacoo, and like as not he'd have gotten part of it back. Well, as I said, I was headin' for warmer weather, but I got overtook an' had about given up all hope when I noticed the smell of smoke in the air. I was walkin' on foot an' pullin' a burro with a pack behind me, an' after a time I located that smoke comin' right up through the snow.
I yelled and shouted around for a while without gettin' any response. Night and the snow was both fallin' fast, an' that smoke was exceeding temptin'. Finally I took a piece of burlap off the pack, put it over the hole where the smoke was comin' up through, an' piled snow on top of it. I was curious to see what would happen. I waited—perhaps it was only five minutes, but it seemed that many hours—an' then a low, calm voice, down somewhere beneath me, sez, "Get off that chimney!"
"I will," sez I, "when you tell me how to get to the fire."
I waited again, an' then a man with a lantern emerged into the cut about forty feet below me, an' told me how I could wind around and come down to him. Well, me an' the burro finally worked it out, an' there was a man with long whiskers standin' in his shirt-sleeves in front of a hole in the snow.
"You like to 'a' smothered me," he grumbled. "Don't you know better'n to stop up a chimney that's workin'?"
"I wanted the chimney to work double," sez I, "an' that was the only way I could think up to attract your attention."
"Do you live around here?" sez he. "Not very much," sez I, "but I 'm minded to try it a while, if there 's room in your burrow for two."
"Got any tobacco?" sez he.
"Plenty," sez I.
"You're welcome," sez he.
We took the burro over to a clump of pine woods an' turned him loose, an' then I crawled in through the tunnel to Slocum's fire. It was in a cave which had a natural chimney runnin' up the hill, an' it looked considerable much like Paradise to me. We ate an' smoked together for a week, an' then one day our fire went out an' a flood of water poured down through the chimney. We worked like beavers for a while, gettin' our stuff outdoors, an' it was as hot as summer outside.
"That's the only drawback to this cave," said Slocum. "It will be all to the good when the winter settles in earnest, but it will be some bother while it's still snowin' an' thawin'."
I told him that I agreed with him to such an extent that if I could locate the burro I'd rather risk gettin' back to humanity than to dyin' there of rheumatiz. I was wringin' wet through.
"Nobody can't die of rheumatiz around me," sez Slocum, an' he went to one of his packs an' got out a piece of root.
"Chew this," sez he, "an' it will drive the rheumatiz out of your system."
Anybody would have trusted those eyes, so I chewed the root for about a minute, an' then I chewed snow an' mud an' tobacco an' red pepper for an hour, tryin' to get rid of the taste. Drive the rheumatiz out of your system? Why, the blame stuff would drive out your system too if you chewed it long enough. It was the tarnationest stuff 'at ever a human man met up with.
"It's most too strong to take pure," sez Slocum, "but if you grind it an' put a shall pinch in a quart of alcohol it makes a fine remedy. Don't throw the rest o' that root away. There is enough there to do you a lifetime."
"Yes," sez I, "there is, an' more."
A feller once told me that man was a slave to his envirament—envirament is anything around you, scenery, books, evil companions, an' sech; well, a burro ain't no slave to his envirament 'cause he generally eats it. My burro was fat, an' the clump of pine trees had mostly disappeared. I loaded up my stuff, shook hands with Slocum, and started down the mountain. Just as I got fully started Slocum sez to me, "I 'm sure sorry to see you go. I don't generally get much friendly with folks any more, but I took to you from the first, an' any time I can do you a favor, all you got to do is to wink."
"What's your general plan of occupation, Slocum?" sez I.
"All that I ever expect to do for the remainder of my days," sez he, "is to search for my Rheumatiz Remedy."
"Well," sez I, "any time you get to do me a favor in that line, it'll be when I'm too weak to wink." So we parted the best o' friends, an' I went on to a lumber camp where I put in the winter bossin' a gang. I didn't know much about lumber, but the men there was just the same as anywhere else, an' we got along fine.
I was bossin' a little ranch up in Idaho next June when I heard tell of a big strike in the Esmeralda range—not such a great distance from where I had spent the week with Slocum. The report had it that a feller named Slocum had located the big ace of gold mines, an' I was some et up with curiosity to see if it was the same Slocum; but I was needed at the ranch that winter, an' as I took a likin' for the young feller who was tryin' to make it go, I stuck to him, an' it wasn't until the followin' July that I pulled out an' floated down that way.
Well, it was the same old Slocum sure enough. He was the most onlucky cuss 'at ever breathed, I reckon. Every time he had made up his mind to do something, Fate had stepped up an' voted again it. He had wasted the best part of his life locatin' gold mines 'at wouldn't hang out, until at last even he got disgusted an' went to huntin' for his Injun root to cure rheumatiz with. First thing he knew, he had stumbled on a bonanza lode in the Esmeralda range. This here lode was a peach. Ten-foot face on top, just soggy with gold an' silver, an' copper an' tin enough to pay expenses. It just looked as if they's said, "Now then, there's Slocum; he been hammered so long he's got callous to it. Let's jus' see how he'd act if we switched his luck on him." An' they sure done it.
Slocum, he scratched around until he see that it wasn't no joke, an' then he set bait for a couple o' capitalists. He trapped two beauties, an' they put up the assets an' went in, equal partners. They sunk shafts an' built stamp mills an' smelters an' retorts; oh, they sure made plans to get the metal wholesale. As soon as it began to flow in they built stores an' shacks an' a big hotel—they wasn't timorous about puttin' their coin into circulation, you bet your life, an' it looked as if they was going to flood the market.
Well, Slocum, he owned a third of everything, mind, an' his expression flopped square over like a dry moon, an' stayed points up. He forgot all those years 'at he'd been havin' the muddy end of it, an' after a time he got 'em to call the mine "Slocum's Luck." The' wasn't no call to hurl such an insult as that into the mouth of an honest, hard-workin' mine, an' naturally, as soon as it was done, the mine laid down in its tracts an' refused to give up another ounce.
They came to a break in the lode an' couldn't find the beginnin' again. The same twist that had hove one edge out of the ground had unjointed the other. But they had got out a tidy sum already, an' they knew the' must be a loose end somewhere, so they was anxious to keep their outfit in good order.
Slocum hadn't swelled clear out of shape with his new fortune, an' when I made myself known to him he had give me a purty tol'able decent sort of a job, where there was more bossin' an' responsibility than brute labor; an' I felt kindly toward him. Winter lasted full four months out there. It was a good ninety miles to the railroad, an' so when the mornin's begun to get frosty every one else scooted for humanity, an' I, bein' more or less weak-minded, took the job o' watchman, at forty a month an' my needin's. I always was a hog for litachure, so I got a bushel o' libraries an' started in to play it alone.
The' wasn't a blessed thing to do, so I read 'em through by New Years, an' got out of tobacco by the first of February. From that on I begun to think in a circle, an' my intellect creaked like a dry axle before the bluebirds began to sing. Quiet? I could hear the shadows crawlin' along the side of the house. The snow was seventy-five feet deep in the canyons, so you might say I was duty bound to stay there. As a general rule, I don't shirk breakin' a path, but when the snow is more than fifty feet higher than my head, I'd rather walk fourth or fifth.
When the outfit came back in the spring I was the entire reception committee; but I bet the' never was one more able to do its part.
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