The Golden Ford

________________________________________________
Title:     The Golden Ford
Author: Henry Wallace Phillips [More Titles by Phillips]

Reddy was on the station platform, walking up and down, looking about him anxiously. We caught sight of each other at the same time.

"Hi, there!" said he and jumped for me. "Gad-dog your little hide!" he cried as he put my right hand in line for a pension. "I thought I was booked to go without saying good-bye to you--you got the note I pinned on your shack?"

"Sure."

"Well, there's time for a chin before the choo-choo starts--thought I'd be early, not savvying this kind of travelling a great deal. Darned if you ain't growed since I saw you--getting fat, too! Well, how's everything? I didn't say nothing to the other boys about pulling my freight, as I wanted to go sober for once. You explain to 'em that old Red's head ain't swelled, will you? Seems kind of dirty to go off that way, but I'm bound for God's country and the old-time folks, and somehow I feel that I must cut the budge out of it. 'Nother thing is I'm superstitious, as you may or may not have noticed, and I believe if you try the same game twicet you'll get just as different results as can be the second time--you heard how I hit it in the mines, didn't you? No? Well, that's so; you dint seen many people out on the flat, have you? Hum. I don't know principally where to begin. You remember Wind-River Smith's pardner that the boys called Shadder, because he was so thin? Nice feller, always willing to do you a favour, or say something comical when you least expected it--had kind of a style with him, too. Yes, sir, that's the man. Well him and me was out in the Bend one day, holding a mess of Oregon half-breeds that was to be shipped by train shortly, when old Smithy comes with the mail. 'Letter for you, Shadder,' says Smith, and passes over a big envelope with wads of sealing wax all over it. Shadder reads his letter, and folds it up. Then he takes a look over the county--the kind of a look a man gives when he's thinking hard. Then says he, 'Red, take off your hat.' I done it. 'Smithy, take off your hat.' 'All right,' says Smith; 'but you tell me why, or I'll snake the shirt off you to square things.'

"'Boys,' says Shadder, 'I'm Lord Walford.'

"'Lord Hellford;' hollers Smithy. 'You'd better call somebody in to look at your plumbing--what you been drinkin', Shadder?'

"'Read for yourself,' says Shadder, and he handed him the letter.

"Wish't you could have seen old Smithy's face as he read it! He thought his pardner had been cut out of his herd for ever.

"'It's the God's truth, Red,' says he slowly, and he had a sideways smile on his face as he turned to Shadder. 'Well, sir,' says he, 'I suppose congratulations are in order?'

"Shadder's hand stopped short on its way to the cigarette, and he looked at Smithy as if he couldn't believe what he saw.

"'To hell with 'em!' says he, as savage as a wildcat, and he jabbed the irons in and whirled his cayuse about on one toe, heading for the ranch.

"'Now you go after him, you jealous old sore-head,' says I. 'Go on!' I says, as he started to argue the point, 'or I'll spread your nose all the way down your spinal column!' The only time to say 'no' to me is when I'm not meaning what I say, so away goes Wind-River, and they made it up all right in no time. Well, Shadder had to pull for England to take a squint at the ancestral estates, and all of us was right here at this station to see him off--Lord! it seems as if that happened last world!--well, it took a little bit the edge off any and all drunks a ranch as an institution had ever seen before. There was old Smithy crying around, wiping his eyes on his sleeve, and explaining to a lot of Eastern folks that it wasn't Shadder's fault--gad-hook it all! He was the best, hootin', tootin' son-of-a-sea-cook that ever hit a prairie breeze, in spite of this dum foolishness.

"'They can't make no "lord" of Shadder!' hollers Smithy. 'That is, not for long--he's a _man_, Shadder is--ain't cher, yer damned old gangle-legged hide-rack?'

"And Shadder never lost his patience at all, though it must have been kind of trying to be made into such a holy show before the kind of people he used to be used to. All he'd say was 'Bet your life, old boy!' Well, it was right enough too, as Smithy had nursed him through small-pox one winter up in the Shoshonee country, and mighty near starved himself to death feeding Shadder out of the slim grub stock, when the boy was on the mend; still some people would have forgot that.

"But did your uncle Red get under the influence of strong drink? DID he? Oh _my_! Oh MY! I wish I could make it clear to you. The vigilantes put after a horse thief once in Montana, and they landed on him in a butt-end canon, and there was all the stock with the brands on 'em as big as a patent medicine sign, as the lad hadn't had time to stop for alterations.

"'Well,' says they, 'what have you got to say for yourself?' He looked at them brands staring him in the face, and he bit off a small hunk of chewing 'Ptt-chay!' Says he, 'Gentlemen, I'm at a loss for words!' And they let him go, as a good joke is worth its price in any man's country. I'm in that lad's fix; I ain't got the words to tell you how seriously drunk I was on that occasion. I remember putting for what I thought was the hotel, and settling down, thinking there must be a lulu of a scrap in the barroom from the noise; then somebody gave me a punch in the ribs and says, 'Where's your ticket?' and I don't know what I said nor what he said after that, but it must have been all right. Then it got light and I met a lot of good friends I never saw before nor since; then more noise and trouble and at last I woke up.--in a hotel bedroom, all right, but not the one I was used to. I went to the window, heaved her open and looked out. It was a bully morning and I felt A1. There was a nice range of mountains out in front of me that must have come up during' the night. 'I'd like to know where I am,' I thinks. 'But somebody will tell me before long, so there is no use worrying about that--the main point is, have I been touched?' I dug down into my jeans and there wasn't a thing of any kind to remember me by. 'No,' I says to myself, 'I ain't been touched--I've been grabbed--they might have left me the price of a breakfast! Well, it's a nice looking country, anyhow!' So down I walks to the office. A cheerful-seeming plump kind of a man was sitting behind the desk. 'Hello!' says he, glancing up and smiling as I came in. 'How do you open up this morning?'

"'Somebody saved me the trouble,' says I. 'I'm afraid I'll have to give you the strong arm for breakfast.'

"He grinned wide. 'Oh, it ain't as bad as that, I hardly reckon,' says he. He dove into a safe and brought out a cigar-box.

"'When a gentleman's in the condition you was in last night,' he says, 'I always make it a point to go through his clothes and take out anything a stranger might find useful, trusting that there won't be no offence the next morning. Here's your watch and the rest of your valuables, including the cash--count your money and see if it's right.'

"Well, sir! I was one happy man, and I thanked that feller as I thumbed over the bills, but when I got up to a hundred and seventy I begun to feel queer. Looked like I'd made good money on the trip.

"'What's the matter?' says he, seeing my face. 'Nothing wrong, I hope!'

"'Why, the watch and the gun, and the other things is all right,' says I. 'But I'm now fifty dollars to the good, even figuring that I didn't spend a cent, which ain't in the least likely, and here's ten-dollar bills enough to make a bed-spread left over.'

"'Pshaw!' says he. 'Blame it! I've mixed your plunder up with the mining gentleman that came in at the same time. You and him was bound to fight at first, and then you both turned to to lick me, and what with keeping you apart and holding you off, and taking your valuables away from you all at the same time, and me all alone here as it was the night-man's day-off, I've made a blunder of it. Just take your change out of the wad, and call for a drink on me when you feel like it, will you?'

"I said I would do that, and moreover that he was an officer and a gentleman, and that I'd stay at his hotel two weeks at least to show my appreciation, no matter where it was, but to satisfy a natural curiosity, I'd like to know what part of the country I was at present inhabiting.

"'You're at Boise, Idaho,' says he, 'one of the best little towns in the best little Territory in the United States of America, including Alaska.'

"'Well . . .' says I. 'Well . . .' for again I was at a loss for words. I had no idea I'd gone so far from home. 'I believe what you say,' says I. 'What do you do around these parts?'

"'Mining,' says he. 'You're just in time--big strike in the Bob-cat district. Poor man's mining. Placer, and durned good placer, right on the top of the ground. The mining gentleman I spoke about is having his breakfast now. Suppose you go in and have a talk with him? Nice man, drunk or sober, although excitable when he's had a little too much, or not quite enough. He might put you onto a good thing. I'm not a mining person myself.'

"'Thanks,' says I, and in I went to the dining room.

There was a great, big, fine-looking man eating his ham and eggs the way I like to see a man eat the next morning. He had a black beard that was so strong it fairly jumped out from his face.

"'Mornin',' says I.

"'Good morning', sir!' says he. 'A day of commingled lucent clarity and vernal softness, ain't it?'

"'Well, I wouldn't care to bet on that without going a little deeper into the subject,' says I; 'but it smells good at least--so does that ham and eggs. Mary, I'll take the same, with coffee extra strong.'

"'You have doubtless been attracted to our small but growing city from the reports--which are happily true--of the inexhaustible mineral wealth of the surrounding region?' says he.

"'No-o--not exactly,' says I; 'but I do want to hear something about mines. Mr. Hotel-man out there (who's a gentleman of the old school if ever there lived one) told me that you might put me on to a good thing.'

"'Precisely,' says he. 'Now, sir, my name is Jones--Agamemnon G. Jones--and my pardner, Mr. H. Smith, is on a business trip, selling shares of our mine, which we have called "The Treasury" from reasons which we can make obvious to any investor. The shares, Mr. ------'

"'Saunders--Red Saunders--Chantay Seeche Red.'

"'Mr. Saunders, are fifty cents apiece, which price is really only put upon them to avoid the offensive attitude of dealing them out as charity. As a matter of fact, this mine of ours contains a store of gold which would upset the commercial world, were the bare facts of its extent known. There is neither sense nor amusement in confining such enormous treasure in the hands of two people. Consequently, my pardner and I are presenting an interest to the public, putting the nominal figure of fifty cents a share upon it, to save the feelings of our beneficiaries.'

"'What the devil do I care?' says I. 'I'm looking for a chance to dig--could you tell a man where to go?'

"'Oh!' says he, 'when you come to that, that's different. Strictly speaking, my pardner Hy hasn't gone off on a business trip. As a matter of fact, he left town night before last with two-thirds of the money we'd pulled out of a pocket up on Silver Creek, in the company of two half-breed Injuns, a Chinaman, and four more sons-of-guns not classified, all in such a state of beastly intoxication that their purpose, route, and destination are matters of the wildest conjecture. I've been laying around town here hating myself to death, thinking perhaps I could sell some shares in a mine that we'll find yet, if we have good luck. If you want to go wild-catting over the hills and far away, I'm your huckleberry.'

"'That hits me all right,' says I. 'For, what I don't know about mining, nobody don't know. When do we start?'

"'This, or any other minute,' says he, getting up from the table.

"'Wait till I finish up these eggs,' says I. 'And there's a matter of one drink coming to me outside--I may as well put that where it won't harm any one else before we start.'

"'All right!' says he, waving his hand. 'You'll find me outside--at your pleasure, sir.'

"I swallered the rest of my breakfast whole and hustled out to the bar, where my friend and the Hotel-man was waiting. 'Now I'll take that drink that's coming, and rather than be small about it, I'll buy one for you too, and then we're off,' says I.

"'You won't do no such thing,' says the Hotel-man. 'It's a horse on me, and I'll supply the liquor. Mr. Jones is in the play as much as anybody.'

"So the Hotel-man set 'em up, and that made one drink. Then Jones said he'd never let a drink suffer from lonesomeness yet when he had the price, and that made two drinks. I had to uphold the honour of the ranch, and that made three drinks. Hotel-man said it was up-sticks now, and he meant to pay his just debts like an honest man, and that made four drinks, then Jones said--well, by this time I see I needn't have hurried breakfast so much. More people came in. I woke up the next morning in the same old bedroom. Every breakfast Aggy and me got ready to pull for the mines, and every morning I woke up in the bedroom. I should like to draw a veil over the next two weeks, but it would have to be a pretty strong veil to hold it. I tried to keep level with Aggy, but he'd spend three dollars to my one, and the consequence of that was that we went broke within fifteen minutes of each other.

"Well, sir, we were a mournful pair to draw to that day. We sat there and cussed and said, 'Now, why didn't we do this, that, and t'other thing instead of blowing our hard earned dough?'--till bimeby we just dripped melancholy, you might say. Howsomever, we weren't booked for a dull time just yet. That afternoon there was a great popping of whips like an Injun skirmish and into town comes a bull train half-a-mile long. Twelve yoke of bulls to the team; lead, swing, and trail waggons for each, as big as houses on wheels. You don't see the like of that in this country. Down the street they come, the dust flying, whips cracking and the lads hollering 'Whoa haw, Mary--up there! Wherp! whoa haw.'

"And those fellers had picked up dry throats, walking in the dust. Also, they had a month's wages aching in their pockets. We hadn't much mor'n got the thump of their arrival out of our ears, when who comes roaring into town but the Bengal Tiger gang, and they had four months' wages. Owner of the mine got on a bender and paid everybody off by mistake. You can hardly imagine how this livened up things. There ain't nobody less likely to play lame-duck than me, but there was no dodging the hospitality. The only idea prevailing was to be rid of the money as soon as possible. The effects showed right off. You could hear one man telling the folks for their own good that he was the Old Missouri River, and when he felt like swelling his banks, it was time for parties who couldn't swim to hunt the high ground; whilst the gentleman on the next corner let us know that he was a locomotive carrying three hundred pounds of steam with the gauge still climbing and the blower on. When he whistled three times, he said, any intelligent man would know that there was danger around.

"Well, sir, I put the Old Missouri River to bed that night, and he'd flattened out to a very small streamlet indeed, while the locomotive went lame before supper, and had to be put in the round-house by a couple of pushers. That's the way with fine ideas. Cold facts comes and puts a crimp in them. Once I knew a small feller I could have stuck in my pocket and forgot about, but when we went out and took several prescriptions together on a day, he spoke to me like this. 'Red,' says he, 'put your little hand in mine, and we'll go and take a bird's-eye view of the Universe.' Astonishin' idea, wasn't it? And him not weighing over a hundred pound. Howsomever, he didn't take any bird's-eye view of the Universe--he only become strikingly indisposed.

"Well, to get back to Boise, you never in all your life saw so many men and brothers as was gathered there that day, and old Aggy, he was one of the centres of attraction. That big voice and black beard was always where the crowd was thickest, and the wet goods flowing the freest. 'Gentlemen!' says he, 'Let's lift up our voices in melody!' That was one of Ag's delusions--he thought he could sing. So four of 'em got on top of a billiard table and presented 'Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep' to the company, which made me feel glad that I hadn't been brought up that way. After Ag had hip-locked the last low note, another song-bird volunteered.

"This was a little fat Dutchman, with pale blue eyes and a mustache like two streaks of darning cotton. He had come to town to sell a pair of beef-steers, but got drawn into the general hilarity, and now he didn't care a cuss whether he, she, or it ever sold another steer. He got himself on end and sung 'Leeb Fadderlont moxtrue eckstein' in a style that made you wonder that the human nose could stand the strain.

"'Aw, cheese that!' says a feller near the door. 'Come get your steers, one of 'em's just chased the barber up a telegraph pole!'

"So then we all piled out into the street to see the steers. Sure enough, there was the barber, sitting on the cross-piece, and the steer pawing dirt underneath.

"'He done made me come a fast heat from de cohner,' says the barber. 'I kep' hollerin' "next!" but he ain't pay no 'tention--he make it "next" fur me, shuah! Yah, yah, yah! You gents orter seen me start at de bottom, an' slide all de way up disyer telegraft pole!'

"One of the bull-whackers went out to rope the steers, and Ag gave directions from the sidewalk. He wasn't very handy with a riata, and that's a fact, but the way Ag lit into him was scandalous. When he'd missed about six casts of his rope, Ag opened up on him:

"'Put a stamp on it and send it to him by mail,' says Aggy, in his sourcastic way. 'Address it, "Bay Steer, middle of Main St., Boise, Idaho. If not delivered within ten days, return to owner, who can use it to hang himself." Blast my hide if I couldn't stand here and throw a box-car nearer to the critter! Well, _well_, WELL! How many left hands have you got, anyhow? Do it up in a wad and heave it at him for general results--he might get tangled in it.'

"It rattled the bull-whacker, having so much attention drawn to him, and he stepped on the rope and twisted himself up in it and was flying light generally.

"'Say!' says Ag, appealing to the crowd, 'won't some kind friend who's fond of puzzles go down and help that gentleman do himself?'

"That made the whacker mad. He was as red in the face as a lobster.

"'You come down and show what _you_ can do," says he. 'You've got gas enough for a balloon ascension, but that may be all there is to you.'

"'Oh, I ain't so much,' says Aggy, 'although I'm as good a man to-day as ever I was in my life--but I have a little friend here who can rope, down, and ride that critter from here to the brick-front in five minutes by the watch; and if you've got a twenty-five dollar bill in your pocket, or its equivalent in dust, you can observe the experiment.'

"'I'll go you, by gosh!' says the bull-whacker, slapping his hat on the ground and digging for his pile.

"'Say, if you're referring to me, Ag,' I says, 'it's kind of a sudden spring--I ain't what you might call in training, and that steer is full of triple-extract of giant powder.'

"'G'wan!' says Ag. 'You can do it--and then we're twenty-five ahead.'

"'But suppose we lose?'

"'Well . . . It won't be such an awful loss.'

"'Now you look here, Agamemnon G. Jones,' says I, 'I ain't going to stand for putting up a summer breeze ag'in' that feller's good dough--that's a skin game, to speak it pleasantly.'

"Then Aggy argues the case with me, and when Aggy started to argue, you might just as well 'moo' and chase yourself into the corral, because he'd get you, sure. Why, that man could sit in the cabin and make roses bloom right in the middle of the floor; whilst he was singing his little song you could see 'em and smell 'em; he could talk a snowbank off a high divide in the middle of February. Never see anybody with such a medicine tongue, and in a big man it was all the stranger. 'Now,' he winds up, 'as for cheating that feller, _you_ ought to know me better, Red--why, I'll give him my note!'

"So, anyhow, I done it. Up the street we went, steer bawling and buck-jumping, my hair a-flying, and me as busy as the little bee you read about keeping that steer underneath me, 'stead of on top of me, where he'd ruther be, and after us the whole town, whoopin', yellin', crackin' off six-shooters, and carryin' on wild.

"Then we had twenty-five dollars and was as good as anybody. But it didn't last long. The tin-horns come out after pay-day, like hop-toads after a rain. 'Twould puzzle the Government at Washington to know where they hang out in the meantime. There was one lad had a face on him with about as much expression as a hotel punkin pie. He run an arrow game, and he talked right straight along in a voice that had no more bends in it than a billiard cue.

"'Here's where you get your three for one any child may do it no chance to lose make your bets while the arrow of fortune swings all gents accommodated in amounts from two-bits to double-eagles and bets paid on the nail,' says he.

"'Red,' says Aggy, 'I can double our pile right here--let me have the money. I know this game.' You'd hardly believe it, but I dug up. 'Double-or-quits?' says he to the dealer.

"'Let her go,' says the dealer; the arrow swung around. 'Quits,' says the dealer, and raked in my dough. It was all over in one second.

"I grabbed Aggy by the shoulder and took him in the corner for a private talk. 'I thought you knew this game?' says I.

"'I do,' says he. 'That's the way it always happens.' And once more in my life I experienced the peculiar feeling of being altogether at a loss for words.

"'Aggy,' says I at last, 'I've got a good notion to lay two violent hands on you, and wind you up like an eight-day clock, but rather than make hard feelings between friends, I'll refrain. Besides you are a funny cuss, that's sure. One thing, boy, you can mark down. We leave here to-morrow morning.'

"'All right,' says Ag. 'This sporting life is the very devil. I like out doors as well as the next man, when I get there.'

"So the morrow morning, away we went. All we had for kit was the picks, shovels, and pans; the rest of our belongings was staying with the Hotel-man until we made a rise.

"Ag said he'd be cussed if he'd walk. A hundred and fifty miles of a stroll was too many.

"'But we ain't got a cent to pay the stage fare,' says I.

"'Borrow it of Uncle Hotel-keep,' says he.

"'Not by a town site,' says I. 'We owe him all we're going to, at this very minute--you'll have to hoof it, that's all.'

"'I tell you I won't. I don't like to have anybody walk on my feet, not even myself. I can stand off that stage driver so easy, that you'll wonder I don't take it up as a profession. Now, don't raise any more objections--please don't,' says he. 'I can't tell you how nervous you make me, always finding some fault with everything I try to do. That's no way for a hired man to act, let alone a pardner.'

"So, of course, he got the best of me as usual, and we climbed into the stage when she come along. Now, our bad luck seemed to hold, because you wouldn't find many men in that country who wouldn't stake two fellers to a waggon ride wherever they wanted to go, and be pleasant about it, I'd have sure seen that the man got paid, even if Aggy forgot it, but the man that drove us was the surliest brute that ever growled. When you'd speak to him, he'd say, 'Unh'--a style of thing that didn't go well in that part of the country. I kept my mouth shut, as knowing that I didn't have the come-up-with weighed on my spirits; but Aggy gave him the jolly. He only meant it in fun, and there was plenty of reason for it, too, for you never seen such a game of driving as that feller put up in all your life. The Lord save us! He cut around one corner of a mountain, so that for the longest second I've lived through, my left foot hung over about a thousand feet of fresh air. I'd have had time to write my will before I touched bottom if we'd gone over. I don't know as I turned pale, but my hair ain't been of the same rosy complexion since.

"'Well!' says Aggy in a surprised tone of voice when we got all four wheels on the ground again. 'Here we are!' says he. 'Who'd have suspected it? I thought he was going to take the short cut down to the creek.'

"The driver turned round with one corner of his lip h'isted--a dead ringer of a mean man--Says he to Aggy, 'Yer a funny bloke, ain't yer?'

"'Why!' says Ag, 'that's for you to say--wouldn't look well coming from me--but if you press me, I'll admit I give birth to a little gem now and then.'

"Our bold buck puts on a great swagger. 'Well yer needn't be funny in this waggon,' says he. 'The pair of yer spongin' a ride! Yer needn't be gay--yer hear me, don't cher?'

"'Why, I hear you as plain as though you set right next me,' says Ag. 'Now, you listen and see if I'm audible at the same range--You're a blasted chump!' he roars, in a tone of voice that would have carried forty mile. Did _you_ hear that, Red?' he asks very innocent. I was so hot at the driver's sass--the cussed low-downness of doing a feller a favour and then heaving it at him--that you could have lit a match on me anywheres, but to save me I couldn't help laughing--Ag had the comicallest way!

"At that the driver begins to larrup the horses. I ain't the kind to feel faint when a cayuse gets what's coming to him for raising the devil, but to see that lad whale his team because there wasn't nothing else he dared hit, got me on my hind legs. I nestled one hand in his hair and twisted his ugly mug back.

"'Quit that!' says I.

"'You let me be--I ain't hurting _you_,' he hollers.

"'That ain't to say I won't be hurting you soon,' says I. 'You put the bud on them horses again, and I'll boot the spine of your back up through the top of your head till it stands out like a flag-staff. Just one more touch, and you get it!' says I.

"He didn't open his mouth again till we come to the river. Then he pulled up. 'This is about as far as I care to carry you two gents for nothin',' he says. 'Of course you're two to one, and I can't do nothing if you see fit to bull the thing through. But I'll say this: if either one or both of you roosters has got the least smell of a gentleman about him, he won't have to be told his company ain't wanted twice.'

"Now, mind you, Ag and me didn't have the first cussed thing--not grub, nor blankets, nor gun, nor nothing; and this the feller well knew.

"'Red,' says Aggy, 'what do you say to pulling this thing apart and seeing what makes it act so?'

"'No,' says I, 'don't touch it--it might be catching. Now, you whelp!' says I to the driver, 'you tell us if there's a place where we can get anything to eat around here?' We'd expected to go hungry until we hit the camp some forty mile further on, where we knew there'd be plenty for anybody that wanted it.

"'Yes,' says he; 'there's a man running a shack two mile up the river.'

"'All right,' says I. 'Drive on. You've played us as dirty a trick as one man can play another. If we ever get a cinch on you, you can expect we'll pull her till the latigoes snap.'

"He kept shut till he got across the river, where he felt safe.

"'It's all right about that cinch!' he hollers back, grinning. 'Only wait till you get it, yer suckers! Sponges! Beats! Dead-heads! Yah!'

"Well, a man can't catch a team of horses, and that's all there is about it, but I want to tell you he was on the anxious seat for a quarter of a mile. We tried hard.

"When we got back to where we started and could breathe again, we held a council of war.

"'Now Aggy,' says I, 'we're dumped--what shall we do?'

He sat there awhile looking around him, snapping pebbles with his thumb.

"'Tell you what it is, Red,' he says at last, 'we might as well go mining right here. This is likely gravel, and there's a river. If that bar in front of you had been further in the mountains, it would have been punched full of holes. It's only because it's on the road that nobody's taken the trouble to see what was in it. This road was made by cattle ranchers, that didn't know nothing about mining, and every miner that's gone over the trail had his mouth set to get further along as quick as possible--just like us. Do you see that little hollow running down to the river? Well you try your luck there. I give you that place as it's the most probable, and you as a tenderfoot in the business will have all the luck. I'll make a stab where I am.'

"Well, sir, it sounds queer to tell it, and it seems queerer still to think of the doing of it, but I hadn't dug two feet before I come to bed rock, and there was some heavy black chunks.

"'Aggy,' says I, 'what's these things?' throwing one over to him. He caught it and Stared at it.

"'Where did you get that?' says he, in almost a whisper.

"'Why, out of the hole, of course!' says I, laughing. 'Come take a look!'

"Aggy wasn't the kind of man to go off the handle over trifles, but when he looked into that hole he turned perfectly green. His knees give out from under him and he sat on the ground like a man in a trance, wiping the sweat off his face with a motion like a machine.

"'What the devil ails you?' says I astonished. I thought maybe I'd done something I hadn't ought to do, through ignorance of the rules and regulations of mining.

"'Red,' says he dead solemn, 'I've mined for twenty year, and from Old Mexico to Alaska, but I never saw anything that was ace-high to that before. Gold laying loose in chunks on top of the bed-rock is too much for me--I wish Hy could see this.'

"'Gold!' says I. 'What you talking about? What have those black hunks to do with gold?'

"The only answer he made was to lay the one I had thrown to him on top of a rock and hit her a crack with a pick. Then he handed it to me. Sure enough! There under the black was the yeller. Of course, it I'd known more about the business I could have told it by the weight, but I'd never seen a piece of gold fresh off the farm before in my life. I hadn't the slightest idea what it looked like, and I learned afterward it all looks different. Some of it shines up yaller in the start; some of it's red, and some is like ours, coated black with iron-crust.

"So I looked at Ag, and Ag looked at me, neither one of us believing anything at all for awhile. I simply couldn't get hold of the thing--I ain't yet, for that matter. I expect to wake up and find it a pipe dream, and in some ways I wouldn't mind if it was. I never was so completely two men as I was on that occasion. One of 'em was hopping around and hollering with Ag, yelling 'hooray!' and the other didn't take much interest in the proceedings at all. And it wasn't until I thought, 'Now I can pay that cussed cayote of a stage driver what I owe him!' that I got any good out of it. That brought it home to me. When I spoke to Ag about paying the driver, he says, 'That's so,' then he takes a quick look around. 'We can pay him in full, too, old horse!' he hollers, and there was a most joyful smile on his face.

"'Red,' say he, 'do you know this is the only ford on the river for--I don't know how many miles--perhaps the whole length of her?'

"'Well?' says I.

"'Our little placer claim,' says Aggy slowly, rubbing his hands together, 'covers that ford; and by a judicious taking up of claims for various uncles and brothers and friends of ours along the creek on the lowlands, we can fix it so they can't even bridge it.'

"'Do you mean they can't cross our claim if we say they can't?'

"'Sure thing!' says Aggy. 'There's you and me and the law to say "no" to that--I wish I had a gun.'

"'You don't need any gun for that skunk of a driver.'

"'Of course not, but there'll be passengers, and there's no telling how excited them passengers will be when they find they've got to go over the hills ford-hunting.'

"'Are you going to send 'em all around, Ag?'

"'The whole bunch. Anybody coming back from the diggings has gold in his clothes, so it won't hurt 'em none, and I propose to give that stage line an advertising that won't do it a bit of good. Come along, Red; let's see that lad that has the shack up the river. We need something to eat, and maybe he's got a gun. If he's a decent feller, we'll let him in on a claim. Never mind about the hole!--it won't run away, and there's nobody to touch anything--come on.'

"So we went up the river. The man's name was White, and he was a white man by nature, too. He fed us well, and was just as hot as us when we told him about the stage driver's trick. Then we told him about the find and let him in.

"'Now,' says Aggy, 'have you got a gun?'

"'I have _that_,' says the man. 'My dad used to be a duck-hunter on Chesapeake bay. When you say "gun," _I'll_ show you a gun.' He dove in under his bunk and fetched out what I should say was a number one bore shot gun, with barrels six foot long.

"'Gentlemen,' says he, holding the gun up and patting it lovingly, 'if you ram a quarter-pound of powder in each one of them barrels, and a handful of buck-shot on top of that, you've got an argument that couldn't be upset by the Supreme Court. I'll guarantee that when you point her anywheres within ten feet of a man not over a hundred yards away, and let her do her duty, all the talent that that man's fambly could employ couldn't gather enough of him to recognise him by, and you won't be in bed more'n long enough to heal a busted shoulder.'

"'I hope it ain't going to be my painful line of performance to pull the trigger,' says Aggy. 'I think the sight of her would have weight with most people. When's the stage due back?'

"'Day after to-morrow, about noon.'

"'That gives us lots of time to stake, and to salt claims that can't show cause their own selves,' says Aggy. 'I think we're all right.'

"The next day we worked like the Old Harry. We had everything fixed up right by nightfall, and there was nothing to do but dig and wait.

"Curious folks we all are, ain't we? I should have said my own self that if I'd found gold by the bucketful, I'd be more interested in that, than I would be in getting even with a mut that had done me dirt, but it wasn't so. Perhaps it was because I hadn't paid much attention to money all my life, and I had paid the strictest attention to the way other people used me. Living where there's so few folks accounts for that, I suppose.

"Getting even on our esteemed friend the stage driver was right in your Uncle Reddy's line, and Aggy and our new pard White seemed to take kindly to it, also.

"If ever you saw three faces filled with innocent glee, it was when we heard the wheels of that stage coming--why, the night before I was woke up by somebody laughing. There was Aggy sound asleep, sitting up hugging himself in the moonlight.

"'Oh, my! Oh, MY!' says he. 'It's the only ford for four thousand miles!'

"We planted a sign in the middle of the road with this wording on it in big letters, made with the black end of a stick.

NOTICE!!

THIS AND ADJOINING CLAIMS ARE THE
PROPERTY OF AGAMEMNON G. JONES,
RED SAUNDERS, JOHN HENRY WHITE,
ET AL.

TRESPASSING DONE AT YOUR OWN
RISK. OWNERS WILL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE
FOR THE REMAINS.

"There was a stretch of about a mile on the level before us. When the stage come in plain sight Aggy proceeds to load up 'Old Moral Suasion,' as he called her, so that the folks could see there was no attempt at deception. They come pretty fairly slow after that. At fifty yards, Ag hollers 'Halt!' The team sat right down on their tails.

"'Now, Mr. Snick'umfritz,' says Aggy, 'you that drives, I mean, come here and read this little sign.'

"'Suppose I don't?' says the feller, trying to be smart before the passengers.

"'It's a horrible supposition,' says Aggy, and the innocent will have to suffer with the guilty.' Then he cocks the gun.

"'God sakes! Don't shoot!' yells one of the passengers. 'Man, you ought to have more sense than to try and pick him out of a crowd with a shot-gun! Get down there, you fool, and make it quick!'

"So the driver walked our way, and read. He never said a word. I reckon he realized it was the only ford for four thousand miles, more or less, just as Aggy had remarked. There he stood, with his mouth and eyes wide open.

"'I'd like to have you other gentlemen come up and see our first clean up, so you won't think we're running in a windy,' says Aggy. They wanted to see bad, as you can imagine, and when they did see about fifteen pound of gold in the bottom of my old hat, they talked like people that hadn't had a Christian bringing up.

"'Oh Lord!' groans one man. 'Brigham Young and all the prophets of the Mormon religion! This is my tenth trip over this line, and me and Pete Hendricks played a game of seven-up right on the spot where that gent hit her, not over a month ago, when the stage broke down! Somebody just make a guess at the way I feel and give me one small drink.' And he put his hand to his head. 'Say, boys!' he goes on, 'you don't want the whole blamed creek, do you? Let _us_ in!'

"'How's that, fellers?' says Ag to me and White. We said we was agreeable.

"'All right, in you come!' says Aggy. 'There ain't no hog about our firm--but as for you,' says he, walking on his tip-toes up to the driver, 'as for you, you cock-eyed whelp, around you go! Around you go!' he hollers, jamming the end of Moral Suasion into the driver's trap. 'Oh, and WON'T you go 'round, though!' says he. 'Listen to me, now: if any one of your ancestors for twenty-four generations back had ever done anything as decent as robbing a hen-coop, it would have conferred a kind of degree of nobility upon him. It wouldn't be possible to find an ornerier cuss than you, if a man raked all hell with a fine-toothed comb. Now, you stare-coated, mangey, bandy-legged, misbegotten, out-law coyote, fly!--fly!' whoops Aggy, jumping four foot in the air, 'before I squirt enough lead into your system to make it a paying job to melt you down!'

"The stage driver acted according to orders. Three wide steps and he was in the waggon, and with one screech like a p'izened bob-cat, he fairly lifted the cayuses over the first ridge. Nobody never saw him any more, and nobody wanted to.

"So that's the way I hit my stake, son, just as I'd always expected--by not knowing what I was doing any part of the time--and now, there comes my iron-horse coughing up the track! I'll write you sure, boy, and you let old Reddy know what's going on--and on your life, don't forget to give it to the lads straight why I sneaked off on the quiet! I've got ten years older in the last six months. Well, here we go quite fresh, and damned if I altogether want to, neither--too late to argue though--by-bye, son!"

[The end]
Henry Wallace Phillips's short story: The Golden Ford

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN