'And it just might be,' I said, and watched them walk off together.
There went Griselda. Right out of my life, and with Arvie Wilt, too.
Two days later I was out of business and broke. Two days later I had a barrel of doughnuts I couldn't give away and my private gold rush was over. Worst of all, I'd put all I'd made back into the business and there I was, stuck with it. And it was Arvie Wilt who did it to me.
As soon as he washed the blood off his face he went down to the settlement. He had heard of a woman down there who was a baker, and he fetched her back up the creek. She was a big, round, jolly woman with pink cheeks, and she was a first-rate cook. She settled down to making apple pies three inches thick and fourteen inches across and she sold a cut of a pie for two bits and each pie made just four pieces.
She also baked cakes with high-grade all over them. In mining country rich ore is called high-grade, so miners got to calling the icing on cake high-grade, and there I sat with a barrel full of bear-sign and everybody over to the baker woman's buying cake and pie and such-like.
Then Popley came by with Griselda riding behind him on that brown mule, headed for the baker woman's. 'See what a head for business Arvie's got? He'll make a fine husband for Griselda.'
Griselda? She didn't even look at me. She passed me up like a pay-car passing a tramp, and I felt so low I could have walked under a snake with a high hat on.
Three days later I was back to wild onions. My grub gave out, I couldn't peddle my flour, and the red ants got into my sugar. All one day I tried sifting red ants out of sugar; as fast as I got them out they got back in until there was more ants than sugar.
So I gave up and went hunting. I hunted for two days and couldn't find a deer, nor anything else but wild onions.
Down to the settlement they had a fandango, a real old-time square dance, and I had seen nothing of the kind since my brother Orrin used to fiddle for them back to home. So I brushed up my clothes and rubbed some deer grease on my boots, and I went to that dance.
Sure enough, Griselda was there, and she was with Arvie Wilt.
Arvie was all slicked out in a black broadcloth suit that fit him a little too soon, and black boots so tight he winced when he put a foot down.
Arvie spotted me and they fetched to a halt right beside me. 'Sackett,' Arvie said, 'I hear you're scraping bottom again. Now my baker woman needs a helper to rev up her pots and pans, and if you want the job '
'I don't.'
'Just thought I'd ask,' he grinned maliciously 'seein' you so good at woman's work.'
He saw it in my eyes so he grabbed Griselda and they waltzed away, grinning. Thing that hurt, she was grinning, too.
'That Arvie Wilt,' somebody said, 'there's a man will amount to something. Popley says he has a fine head for business.'
'For the amount of work he does,' somebody else said, 'he sure has a lot of gold. He ain't spent a day in that shaft in a week.'
'What do you mean by that?'
'Ask them down to the settlement. He does more gambling than mining, according to some.'
That baker woman was there, waltzing around like she was light as a feather, and seeing her made me think of a Welshman I knew. Now you take a genuine Welshman, he can talk a bird right out of a tree ... I started wondering ... how would he do with a widow woman who was a fine baker?
That Welshman wasn't far away, and we'd talked often, the year before. He liked a big woman, he said, the, jolly kind and who could enjoy making good food. I sat down and wrote him a letter.
Next morning early I met up with Griselda. 'You actually marrying that Arvie?'
Her pert little chin came up and her eyes were defiant. 'A girl has to think of her future, Tell Sackett! She can't be tying herself to a a ne'er-do-well! Mr. Wilt is a serious man. His mine is very successful,' her nose tilted, 'and so is the bakery!'
She turned away, then looked back, 'And if you expect any girl to like you, you'd better stop eating those onions! They're simply awful!'
And if I stopped eating wild onions, I'd starve to death.
Not that I wasn't half-starved, anyway.
That day I went further up the creek than ever, and the canyon narrowed to high walls and the creek filled the bottom, wall to wall, and I walked ankle deep in water going through the narrows. And there on a sandy beach were deer tracks, old tracks and fresh tracks, and I decided this was where they came to drink.
So I found a grassy ledge above the pool and alongside an outcropping of rock, and there I settled down to wait for a deer. It was early afternoon and a good bit of time remained to me.
There were pines on the ridge behind me, and the wind sounded fine, humming through their needles. I sat there for a bit, enjoying the shade, and then I reached around and pulled a wild onion from the grass, lifting it up to brush away the sand and gravel clinging to the roots ...
It was sundown when I reached my shanty, but I didn't stop, I rode on into the settlement. The first person I saw was the Welshman. He was smiling from ear to ear, and beside him was the baker woman.
'Married!' he said cheerfully. 'Just the woman I've been looking for!'
And off down the street they went, arm in arm.
Only now it didn't matter anymore.
For two days then I was busy as all get-out. I was down to the settlement and back up above the narrows of the canyon, and then I was down again.
Putting my few things into a pack, and putting the saddle on that old mule of mine, I was fixing to leave the claim and shanty for the last time when who should show up but Frank Popley.
He was riding his brown mule with Griselda riding behind him, and they rode up in front of the shack. Griselda slid down off that mule and ran up and threw her arms around me and kissed me right on the lips.
'Oh, Tell! We heard the news! Oh, we're so happy for you! Pa was just saying that he always knew you had the stuff, that you had what it takes!'
Frank Popley looked over at me and beamed. 'Can't keep a good man down, boy! You sure can't! Griselda, she always said, 'Pa, Tell is the best of the lot,' an' she was sure enough right!'
Suddenly a boot crunched on gravel, and there was Arvie, looking mighty mean and tough, and he was holding a Walker Colt in his fist, aimed right at me. *
Did you ever see a Walker Colt? Only thing it lacks to be a cannon is a set of wheels.
'You ain't a-gonna do it!' Arvie said. 'You can't have Griselda!'
'You can have Griselda,' I heard myself say, and was astonished to realize that I meant it.
'You're not fooling me! You can't get away with it.' And his thumb came forward to cock that pistol.
Like I said, Arvie wasn't too smart or he'd have cocked his gun as he drew it, so I just fetched out my six- shooter and let the hammer slip from under my thumb as it came level.
Deliberately, I held it a little high, and the .44 slug smashed him in the shoulder. It knocked him sidewise and he let go of that big pistol and staggered back two steps and sat down hard.
'You're a mighty disagreeable man, Arvie,' I said, 'and not much account. When the boys down at the settlement start finding the marks you put on those cards you'll have to leave the country, but I reckon you an' Griselda deserve each other.'
She was looking at me with big eyes and pouty lips because she'd heard the news, but I wasn't having any.
'You-all been washing gold along the creek,' I said, 'but you never stopped to think where those grains of gold started from. Well, I found and staked the mother lode, staked her from Hell to breakfast, and one day's take will be more than you've taken out since you started work. I figure now I'll dig me out a goodly amount of money, then I'll sell my claims and find me some friends that aren't looking at me just to see what I got.'
They left there walking down that hill with Arvie astride the mule making pained sounds every time it took a step.
When I had pulled that wild onion up there on that ledge overlooking the deer run, there were bits of gold in the sand that clung to the roots, and when I scraped the dirt away from the base of that outcrop, she was all there ... wire gold lying in the rock like a jewelry store window.
