Chapter I
'You meanin' to call me a liar'?' The voice was high-pitched, immature, but it carried an underlying threat of violence. The speaker, a lanky boy of twenty, dressed in the rough garb of the frontier, stood glowering at the man who had dared to doubt him. This was an older fellow, more than twice his age, with a gnarled face upon which the challenge evoked a disarming grin.
'Aw, Tim, I got drunk with yore dad the day you was born,' he said, and the roar of laughter which followed the naive confession relieved the tension. 'All I'm sayin' is, if the stuff is there, why are you here?'
'I'll tell you, Preedy,' the boy replied. 'I come back to get the fixin's--tools, supplies, an' help--it ain't no one-man proposition.'
'I'll say it ain't,' another agreed. 'The scum o' the country'll be there.'
'We'll be sorry to lose you, Dabbs,' the saloon-keeper said gravely. 'You did oughta buy a farewell round.' His chuckle started another burst of merriment, in which, after a moment's hesitation, the victim joined.
'That's a good idea,' he grinned. 'Set 'em up, ol'-timer, an' charge 'em to me.' The landlord's cheery face fell--Dabbs was already in debt to him, and the Pioneer Saloon--though the only one in the settlement--was hardly a gold-mine. However, he had brought it on himself, and with dexterous turns of the wrist he sent glasses spinning along the bar, one stopping before each customer. The bottle followed, gyrating dizzily until it reached the end of the line; the thirsty ones poured and passed it. The trick produced the applause the performer expected.
'Never seen it done so slick,' Preedy commented. 'Reg'lar bloomin' conjurer, of Bixby.'
'He'll shore have to be to git the coin outa Dabbs,' his neighbour grinned.
The founder of the feast heard the remark and joined in the grin. 'I'll pay him when I come back with the other scum from the Black Hills,' he said.
Some months previously vague rumours of gold discoveries in Dakota had come to Wayside and a few of the more optimistic of the settlers had departed westwards. When no news of them arrived, those who had remained behind nodded knowingly and mentally patted themselves on the back. The reappearance of young Welder, the blacksmith's son, had revived the excitement and though it was not yet noon, brought every male in the place to the saloon, the common centre for the receipt and distribution of news. Sceptical as some of them might be, the boy's story had aroused the appetite, dormant in every human, for easily-gotten gains.
'What do you think o' this, Welder?' the saloon-keeper asked the blacksmith.
'I'm stayin' put,' was the reply. 'Tim is gain' back an' I'm stakin' him. He sez it's good.'
'Good?' the youth echoed. 'It'll be the '49 over again.'
'Huh! What you know o' the '49? You warn't pupped then.' The interruption came from a small man whose white hair and beard lent an appearance of age which the black eyes beneath the bushy bleached eyebrows, and the activity of his spare form, belied. His shrill cracked tones contained a jeer which brought a flush to young Welder's face.
'Mebbe not, Snowy, but I've heard of it,' he replied.
The little man cackled derisively. 'Yeah, from fellas who was never within five hundred miles o' California,' he sneered. 'If you wanta know 'bout them days, come to me, son; I was there, from start to finish. Gold? the place was lousy with it. Why, you could pull up a tuft o' grass an' shake the yeller stuff outa the roots in the pan. One fella I knowed cleaned up fifteen thousand dollars in less'n a fortnight just doin' that, an' the men who washed the ground he was too lazy to put a shovel into got five times as much.'
'That was when you made yore pile, Snowy, eh?' a listener put in slyly.
The prospector whirled on him. 'Pile?' he shrilled. 'I made three, an' spent 'em--what else is gold for? an' I'll make another when I'm good an' ready.' They laughed at this, for Snowy--regarded as a little mad--was the butt of the settlement. Nothing was known of him, not even his real name. He did no work, and disappeared at intervals for months, but always had money for liquor, of which he consumed an inordinate quantity. He was reputed to possess a secret hoard, but all attempts to trail him on his excursions had proved futile, and a search of the dug-out in which he lived revealed only the sordid poverty of its interior.
'I heard Deadwood is getting to be a biggish place.'This from a tall, dark man, not yet forty, with a sallow, thin face, aquiline nose, and slumberous eyes, in which lurked a cold passion. His long-skirted black coat, 'boiled shirt,' and neatly tied cravat might have been worn by a minister, lawyer, 'or card-sharp, and the fact that his hands were carefully tended pointed to the latter. So Wayside guessed and missed the mark only by a little, for although Paul Lesurge--thus he named himself--was not a professional gambler in the Western sense of the term, he was an adventurer, willing to take a chance in any enterprise which promised profit, and utterly indifferent as to the means by which that profit was to be obtained.
Suave, confident, able to cloak his callous nature with a thin veneer of culture, he had already, in the two weeks of his stay, impressed Wayside with a sense of his superiority.
His remark, in effect a question, was addressed to young Welder, and appeared to embarrass him. He had not visited Deadwood; in fact, he had but penetrated a few miles into Dakota and knew little more about it than his hearers; all the information he had so boastfully retailed respecting the diggings had been obtained from others who claimed to have been there. This 'slick stranger'--as he inwardly dubbed him --had guessed it.
'I didn't get so fur,' he said sulkily. 'When I see how things was I hit the home trail pretty lively; no use agoin' on without tools an' the rest of it.'
'Cripes, you don't want no tools to pull up grass roots,' bantered a boy of about his own age. 'I'm bettin' you never see any gold-dust.' Tim flushed again, hesitated, and then burst out angrily, 'Didn't, eh? What d'you make o' that?' Thrusting a hand into a pocket he flung something on a nearby table. It proved to be a small doeskin sack which many of them knew to be a miner's 'poke.' Snowy elbowed his way through the jostling crowd and snatched up the bag, hefting it in his hand.
'Three ounces, near enough,' he decided, and with a grin added, 'O' course, it might be brass filin's.' The ruse was successful. 'Open it,' the owner said savagely. 'S'pose you do know gold when you see it?'
'Boy, I've handled more than you'll ever live to put yore peepers on,' Snowy boasted.
With trembling fingers he untwisted the thong which closed the mouth of the 'poke' and, cupping one palm, tipped out a little of the contents. There it lay, a tiny mound of shining particles, glittering in the sunshlne which filtered through the grimy window of the saloon. A feverish excitement burned in the old man's eyes as he almost caressingly touched the yellow heap.
'It's gold, shore as shootin',' he murmured hoarsely. 'The on'y thing that makes life worth livin'.'
'Waal, it'll certainly buy most anythin',' drawled one of the bystanders.
Snowy looked at him disgustedly. 'Who the hell cares what it'll buy?' he snorted. 'It's just searchin' for an' findin' it. Yes, gents, game-huntin', woman-huntin', an' man-huntin'--I've tried 'em all, but going after gold has 'em skinned. You can get tired o' the others but once catch the gold-fever an' it'll never leave you.' He poured the dust back into the bag and passed it to the owner. 'I reckon you ain't tellin' us where you got it,' he said dryly.
Welder looked at him suspiciously. Did the hoary-headed old madman divine that he had not even gone as far as the diggings and that his specimen ounces had been won at poker? He decided it was not possible.
'Would you?' he retorted. 'All I'm sayin' is that there's plenty more where that came from.' Snowy chuckled. 'You think you know it all,' he said. 'Wait till the stuff has served you as many dirty tricks as it has me an' you won't be so brash.' The chatter continued, incessant, still on the one topic. The sight of that pinch of dust had fired the imagination of the younger men and stirred the memories of the older. Stories of past gold booms were retailed and listened to eagerly.
The only member of the company who seemed to be unaffected by the excitement was a young, black-haired cowboy, who, leaning lazily against the bar with one high heel negligently hooked in the foot-rail, regarded the scene with amused indifference. He too was a stranger to Wayside, having ridden in on a big black horse, which he called 'Nigger' and appeared to value highly, a week earlier; so far, he had neglected to state his business.
He had not been asked to do so. The tall, lean, but wide-shouldered supple frame, firm jaw, deeply tanned face and level grey-blue eyes did not suggest that liberties might be taken, especially when reinforced by a brace of
