Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew.
by Robert McReynolds.
I.
UNDER THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES.
We built our cabin high on the slopes of the Sangre de Christo range, overlooking the broad, level San Luis Valley, in Colorado. At the rear of the cabin rose a towering cliff or rather a huge slab of rock standing edgewise more than two hundred feet high, apparently the upheaval of some mighty convulsion of nature in ages gone. Near the base of this cliff flowed a clear crystal spring.
Some hundred yards west of the cabin was the mouth of a tunnel into which we had drifted with pick, shovel and giant powder, a distance of 300 feet in five months of hard toil. A trail led from the tunnel to the cabin along the mountain side, which was thickly studded with tall pines. Another trail led down the mountain slopes in a winding way to the valley, almost a mile below. Above, reaching far into the blue dome of the sky, rose the peaks of the snow-capped Sangre de Christo, glistening in the morning sunlight, which threw gaunt, fantastic shadows in canon and deep ravine.
It was a wild, weird scene, where man, in strength and vigor, seems to imbibe a portion of the divine essence that lives, and moves, and has its being in the vast solitudes.
We struck pay rock at the first thirty feet of tunneling, so Amos"
a.s.say showed, and the rock had gradually increased in value, week by week. Buchan would take samples of the ore every week or ten days and walk a distance of twenty-five miles to Saguache, where old man Amos, expert geologist and a.s.sayer, would for two dollars and fifty cents make out a clean printed slip with figures in red ink, showing so many ounces of lead, copper, silver and gold to the ton.
The ore had not yet reached a value which would pay to ship it, but the increase of values was so steady, and Amos was so extravagantly encouraging, that we were always in buoyant expectation of rich ore.
He would say, "You boys have a wonderful prospect. Keep right on with your work; it is getting richer with every stroke of your pick and you are likely to uncover a million dollar drift any day."
Buchan would bring the a.s.say certificate back to the cabin, where we would sit late by the light of the pine knots in the fire place and talk of the golden millions which capitalists would yet gladly pay for a half interest in the "Aberdeen."
That was the name Buchan had given the mine, after his home town in Scotland, of which he always spoke with a fond tenderness.
Winter had come and we, John Buchan, Will Carson, and myself, had chipped in almost our last dollar and brought a wagon load of flour, bacon and canned goods from Saguache to the foot of the mountains, then carried them on our backs to the cabin. We quit work on the mine for ten days and chopped firewood, which we corded at the rear of our house. All hands felt that we were as snugly housed for the winter as the big grizzly bears in their lairs among the rocks.
Snow had been falling for several days and it lay deep on the mountain slopes and in the wide expanse of the valley below. We had not had an a.s.say for two weeks and all were anxious for another report from Amos.
Buchan wanted his mail also, and he took a small bag of the rock and tramped the twenty-five miles to Saguache. It was a three days" trip wading through the unbroken snow drifts, and it was night when he returned, weary, footsore and angry.
I can see him yet, tears trickling down his honest face, as he tried to tell something about Amos. He spoke of "the scamp, the villain, and robber," and then choked with rage. Like all Scotchmen, the more he thought of the wrong done him, the angrier he became; he would be more angry tomorrow and it would be the day after that his anger would reach the climax, and begin to subside. This was not a peculiarity of Buchan. It is a characteristic of the Scotch.
We made him a cup of coffee and seated him comfortably before the fire. When he calmed down somewhat, he explained.
"The first thing I did the next morning after reaching Saguache, was to eat breakfast, and then I took the samples of ore to Amos" a.s.say office. He was garrulous as usual, and said to come in two hours and he would have the certificate of the a.s.say ready for me. When I again called he handed me the certificate and I paid him the usual two dollars and fifty cents. It showed nine dollars and ninety cents to the ton. The usual increase of ten per cent. over the last a.s.say.
"I crossed over to the postoffice, and while waiting for my mail, I noticed the snow standing ten inches high on the cap of the flue of Amos" a.s.say furnace. I thought, how in the deuce did he a.s.say our ore without melting the snow on the cap of the flue? The more I thought about it the more I was mystified. I went across to his office and said, "Amos, I suppose you gave us the usual fire test on this ore?"
"Yep," he answered. "Then tell me," I cried, "how in the devil did you make the fire test without melting the snow off the cap of your furnace flue?" "Too cold to melt," he replied.
"Then I rushed past him into the back room. The furnace was cold and the frost had gathered on the iron door. I don"t suppose there had been a fire in it for a week. I took Amos by the whiskers and told him to own up that he had not made a fire test of our ore. Then he acknowledged that he had been guessing at it all along."
"You don"t mean there is a doubt about us having pay rock?" we yelled in a chorus.
"All kinds of doubt," said Buchan. "I am told there is a suspicion that Amos gives everybody an a.s.say showing values, where there are no values--this for the purpose of keeping up work in the district--and to those who have found values, he gives them an a.s.say showing nothing. At the same time he gives Rayder, the Denver capitalist, a tip and he buys up the property for a song, giving Amos a fat commission for his part in the deal. The chances are that we have no more gold in our rock than there is in that jug handle."
The news was astounding. We sat for a while by the fire like men stricken dumb. There was no doubting Buchan"s statement. Deception was no part of his nature. He was nearly twenty-six years of age, athletic, strong and quick of perception. He had seen much of the world and knew men. No, there could be no doubt; he was not mistaken.
We were heartsick. Almost our last dollar had gone to pay for the bogus a.s.say. Our golden dream of months was vanishing. Carson broke the silence.
"I will go to Saguache tomorrow. I shall pulverize that jug handle and take it to Amos; he does not know me; I shall have him a.s.say it, and if he gives me gold values there will be trouble!"
I was awakened the next morning by the sound of a hammer. Carson was pulverizing the jug handle. After a hasty breakfast, he buckled on his cartridge belt with a Colt 44-six shooter in his holster, and was soon wading through the snow-drifts down the trail towards Saguache. I watched him through the window until he was lost to view.
The sun rose in a clear sky; the glistening peaks of the Sangre de Christo shone white against a turquoise blue; clumps of snow melted from the branches of the pines and made hollows in the smooth banks of white where they fell.
I turned to Buchan. He was tossing restlessly in his bunk.
"I would hate to be Amos if he gives Carson an a.s.say of values from that jug handle.
"Yes, yes," he muttered incoherently. "The day of reckoning comes to all. I have seen it. I have seen the sky turn black, the waves rise mountain-high out of the sea, the earth rock and reel, the dead roll out of their coffins in the cerements of their graves, the living fall upon their faces to hide from the wrath of Almighty G.o.d! I have seen it just as Paul tells about it. I have heard the roar of the winds, seen palaces crumble and fall--like John of Patmos, I lift up my voice--I, John."
I was at his side in a moment, and saw that he was delirious. The exertion through the snow the day before, the loss of sleep and intense anger, had made him ill. I knew of a few simple remedies at hand, and in a little while I had him sleeping soundly.
The sun became warmer as the day advanced. The snow melted on the cabin roof and froze in drooping icicles at the eaves. All day I went noiselessly about the cabin, letting Buchan sleep. A premonition of impending danger crept over me. I tried to throw off the dread feeling by reading, but I could not concentrate my thoughts on the pages of the book. Strange thoughts came like they did to the man who was being taken to the guillotine and begged time of his captors to put his thoughts on paper. I thought I would write mine that day, or remember them at least, but I cannot recall them. I only know they were strange and fascinating, as if I was living another life, on another planet.
I brought in wood and water for the night. The sound of the door slamming awoke Buchan. He arose and sat by the fire, which blazed up brightly from its fresh supply of pine logs.
"Better, I see," I observed, "but heavens you were locoed this morning! talking about the resurrection, the quaking earth, and the dead rolling out from their graves!"
"All true," he said, quietly. "I have seen those things, and what has happened once may happen again."
I was standing by the window, looking out over the snow covered San Luis valley, when even as he spoke I felt the ground tremble. There was a rush of air and the cabin became filled with a fine snow that was stifling, then a thunderous roar, and all was utter darkness.
I was choking with the snow particles. I groped to the door and opened it and felt a solid bank of snow.
I realized then that we were buried beneath a snow slide.
We worked for hours, in silence and darkness, digging our way through the snow and shoveling it back into the cabin as we tunneled toward the cliff. It was early morning when we saw the light of day.
Once in the open where we could breathe the pure air we beheld a sight that would appall the strongest heart. The great flat rock, that had stood on edge at the back of the cabin, was now slanting at a sharp angle above our heads. The avalanche from near the summit of the Sangre de Christo had struck the cliff and with its incalculable tons tilted it, piling itself hundreds of feet in the depth about us. The cliff might fall at any moment and blot us out of existence.
Reaching a point of sight near the open s.p.a.ce at the edge of the base of the cliff we could see something of the awful havoc wrought by the avalanche. Huge rocks had been loosened from their foundations and with the speed of a meteor dashed to the valley below. Great pines one hundred feet in height had been torn up by their roots and hurled down the mountain side by the tremendous weight of the avalanche.
The cliff had sheltered our cabin and saved our lives.
We cleared the snow away from the chimney and out of the cabin. Our wood was dry and we soon had a cheerful fire blazing and the tea kettle boiling. But living under that slanting cliff, from which we could not escape, we felt, indeed that the sword of Damocles hung by a spider web above our heads.
When we had rested some and refreshed ourselves with coffee, we tunneled from the open s.p.a.ce under the cliff to near the entrance of the mine, intending to live in the tunnel until the melting snows of the spring released us from our prison. But when we had tunneled through the snow to near the entrance of the mine, we found our way blocked by a debris of rock and trees which would require weeks of labor to remove. Tunnels in other directions gave us no better results, and we became resigned to our fate, returning to the cabin to while away the dreary hours until the hanging cliff above should become our grave stone.
Days of gloom and monotony came and went. We dug the snow away from our windows and tunneled a hole to the top which gave us a glare of reflected light.
Buchan had hitherto been silent as to his past life. By a few stray remarks we had caught glimpses of his romantic career, but now he began relating in detail incidents of his early life in Scotland, or on the high seas, and later in Peru. His stories were so full of human interest and replete with love and romance, that I became more than ever interested in him. But my hearing was bad, and it had been getting worse since the day of the avalanche, so I prevailed upon him to write. I could read better than listen, besides he would write his better thoughts and n.o.bler sentiments when he would not speak them.
It was writing these memoirs of his eventful life that furnished him pastime and I was employed in reading them, during the two months of our imprisonment in our snow bound cabin.
By the dim light of the window by day and the blaze of a pine log at night, he wrote upon the sc.r.a.ps of paper found about the cabin. As I now review the pile I find it made up of paper bags, margins of newspapers, fly leaves from a few old books, and much of it on strips of a yellow window shade, also on the backs of fancy calendars with which Carson had adorned our cabin, and almost a whole chapter I find penciled finely on a pair of lady"s cuffs that were strangely out of place in a miner"s hut.
Buchan does not know that I am going to give his story to the public and I shall have to take chances and risk his displeasure. In that event I have the defence of pleading that no man has the right to withhold so good a tale from the world.