while riding the line and seeing that the cattle did not break through.
That was another thing that was against Tom.
"I am afraid I am unlucky, after all," thought he, once more arranging his bunch of furs. "I am sent out into the mountains to prospect for gold, when there isn"t any gold in sight except what belongs to Elam, here, and have the promise that when summer comes I shall be given a chance." Then aloud: "Say, Elam, does a fellow have to ride this line at first, and before he can call himself a full-fledged cowboy?"
"Sure," said Elam; "he must get used to everything that is done on the ranch. He must begin at the lowest round of the ladder and work his way up."
"Well," said Tom to himself, "I just aint a-going to do it. I"ll just go to sleep on it now, and if the thing looks better to me to-morrow than it does to-night, I"ll stick to your heels."
While Tom was thinking about it, he fell asleep. When he awoke the next morning, it was broad daylight, but he was alone. Elam must have moved with stealthy footsteps while he was getting breakfast; but there was everything on the table just as he found it on the previous morning, and the pictures which Elam had drawn, and which Tom had placed on the wall so that they could be easily seen, had been taken down and put where he had seen them the day before.
"I hope to goodness that I will get through with my sleep after a while," thought Tom, as he proceeded to put on his moccasons. "He has gone out to gather the rest of his traps, and I am left to decide whether or not I will go with him. Well, I will go. If that fellow is not afraid of the ghost, I"m not, either. I know it isn"t a ghost, but he thinks it is, and we"ll see who will show the most pluck."
Tom went about his business with alacrity, and in an hour the breakfast was eaten and the dishes put away. Then he had nothing to do but to cut a supply of wood for Elam, though he didn"t know how it was going to be of any use to him, seeing that he was going to the mountains; but it was better than sitting idle all day, and so Tom went at it, throwing the wood as fast as he cut it in under the eaves of the cabin, where it would be protected from the weather. At last the wood that was down was all cut, and Tom, leaning on his axe with one hand, and scratching his head with the other, was looking around to determine what tree ought to come down next, when he happened to glance toward the path where it emerged from the evergreens and ran up to the door of the house, and discovered two men standing there with their arms at a ready. If they had tried to come up under cover of his chopping they had succeeded admirably. They might have approached close to him, and even laid hold upon him, and Tom never would have known it until he found himself in their grasp.
Of all the sorry-looking specimens that Tom had ever seen since he came West these were the beat. Elam would have been ashamed to be seen in their company. His clothes were whole and clean, while these men had scarcely an article between them that was not in need of repairs. Their hats, coats, and trousers ought long ago to have gone to the ragman; and as for their boots--they had none, wearing moccasons instead. Tom felt that something was going to happen. He knew he was growing pale, but leaned with both hands upon his axe and tried not to show it.
"Howdy, pard?" said one of the men, looking all around.
"How are you?" said Tom.
He would have been glad to step into the cabin and get his rifle, but he noticed that the men stood between him and the doorway.
"Whar"s your pardner?" asked the man.
"He is around here somewhere," said Tom, shouldering his axe and starting for the door. "What do you want?"
"I want to know if you have anything to eat? We have been out looking for some steers that have broke away, and we"ve got kinder out of our reckonin"."
"Who are you working for?"
"For ole man Parsons. Our horses got away from us, too, and didn"t leave us so much as a hunk of bacon."
"I don"t believe a word of your story," said Tom, who knew from the start that the man was lying. "But come in. I reckon Elam would give you something if he was here, though, to tell you the truth, we haven"t got much."
"So Elam is your pardner, is he?"
"You seem to know him pretty well."
"Oh, yes. Elam and I have been hunting many a time."
"He"s liable to come back at any minute," returned Tom, who wished there was some truth in what he was saying. "He has just stepped out to look at some traps. I don"t see what keeps him so long, for of course you will be glad to see him."
Tom had by this time got inside the cabin, closely followed by the two men, who, he noticed, did not go very far from the door. One of them hauled a stool up beside it and sat down where he could keep a close watch on everything that went on outside, and the other kept so close to Tom that the latter could not have used his axe if he had tried it. Tom wanted to get his hands on his rifle, but one of the men had placed himself directly in front of it so that his broad shoulders were between him and the weapon. The men pushed back their hats and took a survey of the interior of the cabin while Tom was getting down the side of bacon, and finally one of them discovered the pile of wolf-skins which Elam had tied up and left in the corner. With a smile and a muttered e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n he walked over and examined it.
"Elam"s at his ole tricks, aint he?" said he, after he had tested the skins and tried to determine by the weight of them how many there were in the package. "How many do you reckon he"s got here? So many skins at forty-five dollars apiece would be--how much would it be, Tender-foot?"
Tom was rather taken aback by this style of address. He had tried to play himself off on the men as one to the manor born, but his language, his dress, or something had given him away entirely. The man spoke to him as if he was as well acquainted with his history as Elam was.
"I don"t reckon we want anything to eat do we, Aleck?" continued the man, lifting the bundle and carrying it back to the door with him. "If you see anybody else coming along here that"s hard up for grub----"
"Here--you!" exclaimed Tom, throwing down his axe and making an effort to take the bundle from the man. "Put that down, if you know when you are well off."
"If you know when you are well off, you will keep your hands to yourself and sit down thar," said the man, and at the same time the one who had been addressed as Aleck arose to his feet, c.o.c.king his rifle as he did so. "Oh, you needn"t call for Elam, "cause we know where he is as well as you do," he continued, as Tom thrust both men aside and started post haste for the door. "Now, Tender-foot, just go and behave yourself. We know that Elam has gone out to attend to his traps and won"t be back before night, and so we"ve got all the time we want. Sit down."
Tom saw it all now. The men had evidently watched Elam from the time he started out, until they saw him pick up one trap and set out for another, and had then made up their minds to rob him. They little expected to find a tender-foot behind to watch his cabin, and had consequently made up their story on the spur of the moment.
"Aleck, you will find your bundle over thar," said the man, "and there are some otter-skins you can take, too. This rifle I will just take with me and leave it agin some rocks out here whar you can easy find it. Mind you, we haint done you no harm so far, but don"t come nigh this rifle under an hour. You hear me?"
Tom said nothing in reply. He watched Aleck as he picked up the other bundle and otter-skins (he left the eighteen Elam had brought in the night before, because they were not cured), flung them over his shoulder, and joined his companion at the door, where the latter had already taken charge of the rifle.
"You haint disremembered what I"ve told you?" he said, in savage tones.
"You come out in one hour and you can find the rifle; but you come out before that time expires and ten to one but you will get a ball through your head."
Tom still made no reply, and the robbers went out as noiselessly as they had come in. He listened, but did not hear the snapping of a twig or the swishing of bushes to prove that they had worked their way through the thicket of evergreens to the natural prairie along which Elam was to come.
"Well, now, I am beat," drawing a long breath of relief, thrusting his feet out in front of him, and putting his hands into his pockets. "So it seems that Elam isn"t so very happy, after all, and that, no matter where one gets, he"s going to have trouble. Here he"s been working like a nailer for--I don"t know how long he"s been out here--until it seems to me----What"s that?" he added, as his feet came in contact with a small buckskin bag which one of the robbers had dropped.
Tom bent over and saw that one side of the string was broken. The bag had been tied around the man"s neck, and had worked its way down until it found an opening at the bottom of his trousers above his moccasons.
The man had never noticed it, and this was the first Tom had seen of it.
It was small, but it was well filled, and Tom began to look about for a place to hide it.
"Let him take the skins if he wants to, and I"ll take this," said he, getting up and looking first into one place and then into another, and making up his mind each time that that was a poor spot to hide things.
"He may miss it before he has gone a great ways, and I don"t want him to know that he has left that much behind. Just as soon as he goes away I"ll take it out and examine it."
Tom, who was not so badly frightened as some boys would have been, made his way toward the door and finally went out, but could hear no signs of the robbers. He removed some sticks from the pile of wood he had cut and there placed the bag, covering it over as if nothing had been disturbed, and then struck up a lively whistle and started down the path. The robbers were not in sight, but there was Elam"s horse just quenching his thirst at the brook, and that proved that his companion had not been stolen afoot, anyway.
"I"ll be perfectly safe if I try to find the rifle now," said Tom, as he began beating around through the bushes. "By George! I hope they haven"t carried the gun off with them. They couldn"t, for their packs were too heavy."
Here was a new apprehension, and it started Tom to work with increased speed; and it was only after an hour"s steady search that he found the gun hidden where n.o.body would have thought of looking for it. It was uninjured, and this made it plain that the only object the robbers had in view was to rob Elam.
"They"ve got just sixteen skins or I"m mistaken," said Tom, shouldering his recovered rifle and retracing his steps to camp. "Sixteen skins at forty-five dollars would be worth seven hundred dollars and better.
That"s quite a nice little sum to rake out before dinner. Now, my next care is to examine that bag."
Arriving at the wood-pile, the bag was taken out and carried into the cabin. Tom caught it by the bottom and emptied its contents on the table, first taking care, however, to place his rifle across his knees, where it could be seized in case of emergency. He was surprised at the contents of the little bag. In the first place there was some money tightly wrapped up in folds of buckskin, and when Tom unfolded it to see how much there was, two yellow-boys rolled out.
"Hurrah! Here"s something to pay for the stolen skins," said Tom, and, hastily putting the money into his pocket, he caught up his rifle and hastened out of doors to listen for some sounds of the returning robbers. Everything was silent. The men were gone, and Tom had nothing to do but to examine the bag in peace.
"I am glad they didn"t do anything more," thought he, as he went in and seated himself at the table. "If they had wanted to do mischief, they might have pulled a chunk from the fire and set the whole thing to going, but instead of doing that they just contented themselves with robbing us. Forty dollars. Where did they get it? Two gold eagles and bills enough to make up the balance. Here"s tobacco enough to last both of them a week; needles and thread, so it don"t seem to me that they ought to have been satisfied to go around with their jackets full of holes, as I saw them, and----What"s this? It"s something pretty precious, I guess, because it is wrapped up tightly."
It was a small parcel tied up in buckskin that caught Tom"s eye just then. It was so neatly wrapped up in numerous folds that by the time Tom got them unfolded he fully expected to find some quartz or some more gold pieces; but when he brought it to light, there was nothing but a little piece of paper, with ordinary lines drawn upon it. Did he throw it away? He spread it out upon the table as smoothly as he could, and set to work to study out the problem presented to him. One thing was plain to him: the line which ran up the middle, paying no attention to other lines which came into it at intervals, was a gully. Right ahead it went until it branched off in two places, and there it stopped. What did it mean?
"It means something, as sure as I am a foot high," said Tom, settling back in his chair and holding the paper up before him. "There is something buried there, and how did these people come by it? I guess that Elam had better see that."
Filled with excitement, Tom bundled the things back into the bag, and put the bag into his pocket, wondering what sort of history those two men had pa.s.sed through. Did they know anything about the nugget? The idea was ridiculous, simply because there were some marks on a paper which he did not understand.
"There was only one of them who escaped with the nugget, and he buried it within ten miles of the fort," said Tom. "And Elam says, further, that he was so sick and tired when he was relieved that he could not draw a map to lead anyone to it. No matter; there"s something there, and I am in hopes it will----By George! they are coming back."
There was no doubt about it, and he might have heard them before if he had not been so busy with his reflections. He listened and could hear them tramping through the bushes, and all on a sudden one raised his voice and called out to the other, who was evidently behind him: