Elam Storm, the Wolfer: or, The Lost Nugget

"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 nobody 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 appetite 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 space 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 association 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. 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 massacre 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 assault 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, nobody 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" 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?"