Kelley and his two cowboys, for he did not know but that Elam might see them some day.
"I didn"t know a thing about this country," said Tom, in conclusion, "and Mr. Parsons grub-staked me and sent me out to find a gold mine."
"Haw-ha! You had about as much chance of finding gold here as you would in New Orleans," said Elam, as soon as his merriment would allow him to speak. "The only gold here is my nugget, and that was buried two years ago. Didn"t he tell you about that?"
"Yes, he told me about the nugget, but he also told me that by digging after it I might strike another gold mine, as some others had done before me. But if I ever go again, I don"t want to follow such a man as went before me."
"Who was it? Was it somebody who was working on Parsons" place?"
"Yes. He was an elderly man, who seemed to take more interest in me than anybody else. He told me that the only reason he didn"t strike the nugget was because he didn"t dig in the right place."
"Haw-ha!" laughed Elam.
"And the only reason he didn"t dig in the right place was because the nugget couldn"t be thrown out with two or three spadefuls of earth,"
continued Tom. "I followed along after him for two weeks, and in every camping-place there were two shovelfuls of dirt flung out. If a hen had been scratching for that nugget, she would have made better headway."
"He was on the right track, anyhow," said Elam. "If he had kept on till he came to that pocket, he would have found it. That would have given me a job, for I would a heap sooner find it in the dirt than take it out of a man"s pack."
"If a man was to find that nugget----"
"Yes, sir, I would," said Elam savagely. "It is mine, and I"m a-going to have it, I don"t care who unearths it. Do you suppose you could find your way back to that pocket?"
"No, sir; I couldn"t," said Tom, drawing a long breath of dismay. "In the first place, there"s the Red Ghost. If you had seen it----"
"Haven"t I seen it?" demanded Elam. "It has got the marks of some of my bullets."
"It must bear the marks of a good many bullets, and I don"t see why some of them did not hit it in the proper place. What do you suppose it is, anyway?"
"Why, it"s a ghost, I tell you. If it wasn"t, some of those bullets would have struck it in the proper spot, I bet you."
"If it"s a ghost, you can"t kill it."
"Can"t, hey? I"ll bet you that I can."
"It looked to me just like a camel," said Tom, who did not like the way Elam glared at him every time he struck on this subject.
"A camel! What"s them?"
"An animal they make use of in foreign countries to carry heavy burdens for them. But, Elam, how came it to appear to you? It don"t show itself to anybody else who hunts in these mountains, does it?"
"Certainly it does. The history of this nugget is known all over the country, and if any man has it on his mind, he may be a hundred miles from here, but that makes no difference; it appears to that fellow and scares him off. Now, wait till I tell you."
This brought Elam to his story, and he entered upon it a good deal as Uncle Ezra did, beginning with the ma.s.sacre of the soldiers who were sent out to pay the garrison at Grayson, and ending with the fight between the two miners in the mountains. He seemed to know right where the nugget had been ever since it was unearthed. At any rate, he told a pretty straight story, and when it was ended filled up his pipe and looked at Tom to see what he thought about it.
CHAPTER XI.
UNWELCOME VISITORS.
"I did think for a time that I should find my father and the nugget together, and even gave it out among the sheep-and cattle-growers who would listen to me," continued Elam, taking a few long pulls at his pipe. "But I have since given that idea up. I didn"t say anything to the men hereabouts, for it kinder ran in my head after a while that they thought I was luny on the subject; so I just kept my ideas to myself.
You see, the thing couldn"t have gone through so many hands without my hearing something of my father, but, search high or low, I never heared a word about him. The old man is dead. He was killed when the robbers made their a.s.sault on the train, and the nugget has been doing all this of itself."
"All what of itself?" asked Tom.
"Why, it has been bobbing up and bobbing down," replied Elam. "One day you know where it is, and by the time you get on the track of it it has gone up, n.o.body knows where."
For a long time Tom did not say anything. The story seemed so real--as real as that he was sitting on his couch of furs, with his feet tucked under him, gazing hard into the fire. It did not seem possible that the story could get abroad, and so many men believe it, and here this one was known two hundred miles away. There must be something in it.
"Well," said Elam, "do you think I am crazy?"
"I don"t know what to think," said Tom. "Such a story never got wind in the settlements."
"Of course it didn"t. There"s a heap more things that happen out here than you think for. There isn"t one man in ten who would believe about that ghost."
"No, sir," said Tom emphatically. "And I don"t know what to believe about it, either, and I have seen it. Are you going up there to that pocket?"
"I am going to start day after to-morrow if you will show me the way.
When I strike the nugget, I will give you half."
The proposition almost took Tom"s breath away. All that amount of money for facing the Red Ghost! Now that he had got safely out of reach of it and had heard so much about its going everywhere it pleased, here to-day and a hundred miles away to-morrow, Tom was obliged to confess that there was more of a ghost about it than he was at first willing to suppose. But there was his horse with the broken lariat! No ghost could do a thing like that.
"You see, I shall spend to-morrow in gathering in my traps," said Elam.
"I may not come back, you know, and I don"t want to leave them out where everybody can steal them, and when they are all in, I shall be ready to start."
When Elam said this, Tom picked up a burned chunk, threw it on the fire, and laid down again. If Elam thought he wasn"t going to come back, what was the use of his visiting the pocket? Tom had about concluded that he would not go.
"No, I may not come back," said Elam, anxious that Tom should learn just how desperate the undertaking was, "and while I don"t want to have my traps stolen, I want to leave them where someone can use them. Then I will pack my spelter on my horse and go to the nighest post--it is just a jump from here--and trade it off for provisions. We can easy get them as far as here."
"Yes; but what will you do from here on? You won"t have any bronco to carry them for you."
"We will pack it on our backs. It"s a poor hunter who can"t go into the woods and carry provisions enough for two weeks."
"And what if the Red Ghost appears? The first thing it will pitch into will be ourselves. I don"t think I will go. I have got all over prospecting for gold, and wish that summer might come so that I can go to work herding cattle."
"Well, I know what will happen to you then," said Elam.
"Well, what will happen to me then?" said Tom, after waiting for his companion to finish what he had on his mind.
"You"ll go plumb crazy; that"s what will happen to you. You will be set to riding the line----"
"What"s that?" interrupted Tom.
"Why, riding up and down a fence, or rather where the fence ought to be, to see that none of your cattle break away. It will take you two days to make a trip, and you will get so tired of it that you will finally skip out and leave the line to take care of itself. But all right. You go to bed and sleep on it, and if it doesn"t look better in the morning, I"ll say no more about it. I will go by myself."
With something like a sigh of regret Elam turned over and prepared to go to sleep. There was no undressing, no handling of blankets, but just as he was he was all ready to go to slumber. Tom felt sorry for him, and, besides, he knew how Mr. Parsons and the cowboys would look upon such a proceeding if it should once get to their ears. And he didn"t see any way to prevent it. If Elam"s story was able to travel for two hundred miles, the idea that he was afraid to face the Red Ghost would travel, too, and then what would be his prospect of getting employment with Mr.
Parsons? And, besides, there was a chance for him to go "plumb crazy"