"Why, it is a two-weeks" journey," said Tom, who suddenly became aware that he would have to go over that long tramp again. "I never could find my way back there in the world."
"Who sent you into the mountains to dig for my nugget?"
"Your nugget?"
"Them"s my very words, stranger."
"Why, who are you?"
"I am Elam Storm, the man who lost the nugget twenty years ago, and who intends to have it back if he has to kill every man this side of the country you came from; and where"s that?"
Tom, who had arisen from his rock at the same time the stranger began to put on his coat, stared fixedly at the speaker, and then sat down again.
So this was Elam Storm, the man who had a better right to the nugget than anybody else in the world! He was a boy, not more than nineteen or twenty years of age, but he had a face on him which expressed the utmost resolution. And he had the physical power, too, to carry out his determination, for, as he moved around his camp, putting away his tools where he could readily find them, he showed muscles which said that it would not be a safe piece of business for anyone to interfere with that nugget.
"Where did you come from, I asked you?"
"I came from down in Mississippi, where my uncle owns a plantation and a heap of n.i.g.g.e.rs," answered Tom, who did not like the way the boy eyed him when he spoke.
"And right there is where you ought to have stayed," said Elam. "Did you hear anything about the nugget down there?"
"Of course not," replied Tom, surprised at the proposition. "I started to go to Texas, but got on the wrong boat and was brought up here. I couldn"t do anything else, and so Mr. Parsons grub-staked me and sent me into the mountains. He lives out that way a short distance."
"How far do you call a short distance?"
"Fifteen or twenty miles, maybe."
"Haw-ha! Man, you"re just about a hundred miles from where he lives."
Tom caught his breath, but could say nothing in reply.
"You have been going further and further away from him ever since you lost your horse," continued Elam. "Come on; let"s go and get your rifle."
"You say that nugget of yours was lost twenty years ago," said Tom, as he fell in behind Elam, being afraid to do anything else. "You are not that old, are you?"
"Well, not so long as that!" laughed Elam. "It is a long story and will take you a good portion of the evening to listen to it. I will tell it to you to-night. Now, then, which canyon did you come down?"
Tom looked up and found himself confronted by three gullies, which came down and met at that one point. He said he didn"t know, but Elam, after looking around a little, started up one with as much confidence as though he had seen Tom when he came out. After some questioning from Tom he showed him a little twig, not larger than a needle, which he had brushed off in his hurried flight after he had thrown down his gun; and a short distance farther on he found the weapon, which Tom, in his excitement, had tossed clear across the creek. Tom was surprised when Elam stepped across the stream and picked up the weapon, and relieved when it was handed over to him with the a.s.surance that it had suffered no injury in its collision with the rocks.
"Now, we will let the bundle go," said he. "There is nothing in it that will pay us to go back after it, and I am too tired to go a step farther. I hope your camp isn"t a great ways from here."
Elam replied that for him it was "just a jump," but he would walk slowly so as not to tire the pilgrim. He stopped at his camp where he had been digging, and gave Tom a small supply of the corn bread and bacon which he had left over from his dinner, and while Tom was eating it he sat by on a rock with his elbows resting on his knees. Tom ate as though he hadn"t had anything for a month, and when his repast was ended, Elam took his spade and pick under one arm, shouldered his rifle with the other, and set off in a way that was calculated to tire any man, no matter how well equipped he might be for travelling. But Tom did not care for that. He wanted to get home,--any place was better than the bare canyon,--where he could lie down and sleep with nothing to bother him. Once in a while Elam turned around and said to him:
"To think that I have been wasting my time for the last month in digging in such places as this! I ought to have been fifty miles from here, for I know about where that canyon of yours is."
"Do you think that that Red Ghost, or whatever you call it----"
Tom happened to look up and saw that Elam was facing him, and was astonished at the expression that came upon his countenance. He would not have believed that one who was so sensible on every other point should be willing to admit that the apparition that had visited him in the pocket and robbed him of his horse was not due to superhuman agency.
"I know how you, Tender-foot, feel about this, but wait until you have a chance to shoot it plumb through the head, and it gets away with it all, and then tell me what you would think," said Elam sullenly. "You probably don"t have such things in the settlements, but that"s no sign that they aint found out here."
"I had as fair a shot at it as anybody could have," said Tom, "and it wasn"t over ten feet from me. I saw the blood spurt out from a hole in its neck, and it flung the horse away from it, broke the lariat, and went into the bushes. But do you think it is guarding that treasure?"
"I know it, and n.o.body can"t make me believe differently. I have seen it often enough, and it has got the mark of three of my bullets on it."
Elam faced about and went on his way at a faster gait than before, and Tom let him go. As eager as he was to learn something about the Red Ghost, he was still more eager to reach a permanent camp where he could lie down and rest. He found that he was pretty nearly barefooted. His sheep"s-gray pants hung in tatters about his worn shoes, and Elam had a way of jumping from one stone to another and coming down on top of a log in a manner that he did not like. At length, when the sun began to go down, and Tom experienced some difficulty in finding a place for his feet, Elam stopped on the edge of a natural prairie, and pointed out something a short distance off.
"There"s my horse," said he. "And yonder, where that little grove of trees comes down into the prairie, is where my shanty is located. Can you stand it till we get there?"
Oh, yes, Tom could stand it that far. He fell in behind Elam, paying no attention to the horse, which came up and followed along in their rear, pushed his way along the evergreens, and was finally brought to a stand by a door in a substantial log house. It was fastened by a bolt on the inside, but as the string was out, Elam easily opened it.
"You are welcome to the cabin of Elam, the wolfer," said he, leading the way in and pointing to a pile of skins which served him for a bed.
"Tumble in there, and don"t get up till you get ready."
"Thank you," said Tom, handing his rifle to Elam and throwing himself at length on the couch. "I never was so tired in my life."
Elam had hardly time to set the rifle up in a corner and shut the door before Tom was fast asleep. How long he slept he did not know, but during the whole of it he felt that he was under the care of somebody who could protect him. If there were any ghosts to visit that camp, they would have to strike Elam first.
The first thing he became aware of when he got his eyes fairly opened was that he was so full of aches and pains that he could scarcely move, and the next, that he did not recognize a thing about the establishment.
Gradually he raised himself on his elbow, and then Elam Storm came into his mind. He could not remember much of what he had said to Elam during their first meeting,--he must have been about half crazy, he thought, when he talked to him,--but he had said enough to bring him a good bed and a sound sleep besides. He found that his feet had been interfered with--that they felt easier than they did before; and on removing the blanket that had been thrown over them he discovered that his tattered shoes and stockings had been removed; that they had been wiped dry and moved closer to the fire, which had evidently been going at a great rate before it died down to its present bed of ashes. There was plenty of wood right there, and with much extra exertion Tom managed to crawl to it, and by the persistent blowing of a coal into flame he succeeded in starting a fair blaze. Then he contrived to get up. There was a big hunk of johnny cake on the table, a slice of bacon with a knife handy to cut it, and a bag which proved to contain coffee. A further examination showed him that Elam had not gone about his business without leaving a letter behind him to tell where he was. The first was a chunk of bark on which was rudely traced a picture of a man gathering traps. He knew that he was taking the game in, for there was a representation of game in the trap. A second piece of bark lay under the first, and Tom could not for a long time make sense of what it contained. It was blurred, and was intended to represent a man going into camp. In other words, if Elam did not get home by daylight, Tom need not worry about it. The pictures were rudely traced in charcoal, but the drawing was perfect.
"If I had not been tolerably well posted in backwoods lore, I could not have made head or tail out of these pictures," said Tom; and as he spoke he thought over all the lessons he had learned from the Indians and darkies in the swamp. "Elam is going out to gather his traps, and if he does not come home before to-morrow, I need not bother my head about it.
What is he going to gather up his traps for? I shall have to wait till he comes home to have that explained, and now I"ll go to work and get some breakfast."
Tom had used up nearly all the wood to replenish the fire, and he began casting his eyes about the shanty to see if Elam had another pair of shoes in waiting to be put on when his own boots became wet, and found some moccasons with a pair of stockings neatly folded and hung beside them. Elam had worn them once, but that did not matter. He put them on, and, seeing Elam"s axe resting in one corner, caught it up and went out to renew his supply of fire-wood. Hearing the blows of the axe, the horse came up and snorted at him, but could not be induced to come near.
This made it plain that the man who attempted to rob Elam would have to leave his horse behind.
Tom chopped until his appet.i.te began to get the better of him, and then went in and busied himself about his breakfast. He left the door open (for all the light that was admitted to the cabin came through a s.p.a.ce in the roof over the fireplace through which the smoke escaped), and told himself that for one who had never seen the comforts of civilized life Elam was able to copy pretty close to them. There was a table whose top was made of boards hewed out of a log and smoothed with an axe, and one or two three-legged stools without any backs, which proved that Elam sometimes had company. The clothing he had worn was neatly hung up at one corner of the cabin, and underneath was something which Tom had not noticed before: two bundles of skins, nicely tied up and waiting to be shipped. They were wolf-skins, and close by them lay half a dozen skins of the beaver and otter, not enough to be tied up.
"I know what he meant when he said that I was welcome to the cabin of Elam, the wolfer," said Tom. "Somebody has either grub-staked him and sent him out here to catch wolves or else he is working for himself.
Now, where"s the spring? I must have some water for my coffee."
Tom easily found the pail of which he was in search, and, going out behind the cabin, he followed the path he had noticed while cutting wood. It ran through a quiet grove of evergreens, and finally ended in a little pool in which Elam found his water. Coming back to the cabin, he could not find any coffee-pot, but he found a pan which seemed to have been used for nothing but coffee, filled it with water, placed it on coals he had raked off to one side, and covered it with one of Elam"s pictures. With his breakfast fairly going, with his coffee and bacon on the coals, and his johnny cake and clean dishes on the table by his elbow, he settled back on his stool as complacently as though he had never known anything better.
"I don"t know what sort of a conscience Elam"s got, but if he"s got a tolerably fair one, it seems to me that he ought to be well contented with this life," said Tom. "He was born to this thing, and, consequently, don"t know anything better; but as for me, there isn"t money enough in it. But, then, he thinks he is going to find that nugget. Well, I"d like to find it myself, but I am not going to bother with it with such a fellow as Elam in the way. I don"t want to test those muscles."
Tom had come to that country to make money; he wasn"t going to test anybody"s muscle in order to make it, but he was going to make it. In spite of all the obstacles that were thrown in his way--and he met with no greater loss than any tender-foot is likely to meet--he carried back to his uncle half as much money as he stole from him, and his uncle was glad to see him, too. This was all in the future, and Tom knew nothing of it. He ate his breakfast with great satisfaction, getting up from the table once in a while to examine something new in Elam"s outfit, and when it was done, he washed the dishes and put everything back just as he had found it. Then there was nothing left for him to do but to cut wood until Elam came. The latter would be cold and wet from handling those muddy traps, and there would be nothing wanting but a fire for him to get up to. Every once in a while he dropped his axe and went out to the edge of the evergreens to see if he could discover Elam returning, but always came away disappointed. One thing he continually marvelled at, and that was the scarcity of game. If anyone had told him that he could leave his gun and wander away by himself, he would have thought him foolish; and here he had been alone in the mountains nearly a month and had not seen anything--not even a jack-rabbit--to shoot at. Had it not been for that Red Ghost, or whatever it was, that visited him the night he stayed in the pocket, his gun would have been as clean when he took it back as when he came out with it. At last, when everything began to grow indistinct, and Tom had put away his axe and piled up the wood, he looked for Elam again, resolved if he could not see him to go into the cabin, haul in the string, and get his supper; but there was Elam half-way across the prairie, and, furthermore, he was struggling under a weight about as heavy as he could well carry.
"They are wolf-skins," said he, as Tom hurried up to him and took his rifle from his grasp. "I"ve got eighteen, and two otters. How are you, Tender-foot? Got over your sleep yet?"
Tom replied that he had got all the slumber he wanted, and then went on to tell Elam that he knew where he had gone, and if he did not return that night, he would not have been at all worried about it, and that he had got the knowledge from the pictures he had left on the table, and Elam seemed very much pleased.
"You can"t read or write, can you?" asked Tom. "I thought not, but you drew those pictures as though you had taken lessons in drawing. I have got a good warm fire for you."
Although there were many things that he was anxious to question Elam about, Tom did not trouble him until he had had his supper and had shaken up the skins preparatory to enjoying his after-supper smoke. Tom followed his example and stretched himself out beside him, pulling off his moccasons so that he could have the full benefit of the fire.
"Now, Tender-foot, what brought you out to this country?" said Elam, pulling up a bundle of wolf-skins so that he could rest his head upon it. "Tell me the truth and don"t stick at nothing."
Tom replied that there wasn"t very much to tell, and went on and revealed to Elam as much of his story as he was willing that a stranger should know; but he didn"t tell him a word about his fuss with Our Fellows, or of his stealing five thousand dollars, or of his a.s.sociation with gamblers. In short, he gave him to understand that he was hard up, that he wanted to go to Texas and had got on to the wrong boat and been brought up there. He told him the truth about his meeting with Mr.