Henry Wallace Phillips

“ When a man is alone, and thinks things are wrong, optimism comes down on the run, the shades of pessimism gather fast and furious—more especially if a man does his own cooking, and the raw material is limited, at that.
The sun had not moved the shadows three inches before Jim had reached the conclusion that this world was all a practical joke, of so low an order that no sensible man would even laugh at it, and he drew a letter from his pocket in proof thereof. ”

“ They cried, too, which is excusable in a child, but not in two big men. Men don’t cry. It is the monopoly of women. Nevertheless, Bud and Jim and Ches cried and swore, and shook hands and cried again until it was a pitiful thing to see. ”

“ The deer’s shadow floated black on the grass before him, and Jim leaped—to the biggest surprise of his life, for instead of making the least effort to escape, the buck charged, and that with such sudden fury it was all the man could do to lay hold of him anywhere as they came to dirt together. ”

“ He looked at the hollow of the gulch and cursed it manfully and bitterly. The gold should be there—Jim had figured it all out. The old wash cut at right angles to the creek, and at the turn was where its freight of yellow metal should have been deposited, but when you got down to the bed-rock, the blasted stuff was either slanted so nothing could stay on it, or was rotten—crumbling in your fingers, and that kind of bed will hold nothing. ”

“ It was the knowledge that Anne, the boy, and all he wished to do for both depended on the pay-streak which had urged him to such a fury of effort.
His carelessness of his own life, that led him to slap his timbering up any way, was born of that same fury. And the consequences came like most consequences, without a moment’s warning. ”

“ A small hand reached timidly around until it found the man’s and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “Good night, sir,” said Ches.
Jim lay awake, thinking dreamily, 53 long after the boy’s regular breathing showed that he was at peace again. The man felt a tenderness for the waif so abruptly put in his care that only a lonely man can feel. He speculated about the boy’s future; he wondered what kind of a man he would make. Surely, with a foundation of such courage, the better part could be brought out. ”

“ He caught Ches up and threw him across the saddle. “You’ll only have to tell ’em what’s happened—the Lord send nothing happens to you! Good-by, you brave 123 little devil—we’ll win out yet. Go it, Buck!”
And while one of Jim’s friends plied pick and shovel like a mad man, the other was swaying on top of a galloping horse, gripping the pommel of the saddle with all the strength he had, and shutting his eyes when he came to the high places.
Captain Hanrahan’s party were miners of substance. They were working their way out to a new country to suit their inclinations. ”

“ A good incident is an opal among gems in a lonely life. You can turn it over and over and always get new colors.
On the home trip, as Nimrod Jim stalked along with his follower trotting beside, they rehearsed every detail of the unexpected encounter. Jim 99 crouched and leaped again, giving his sensations when the buck did likewise. Then he waited while Ches ran down a side hill and threw himself upon a sapling, which for the time was a deer’s hind leg. ”

“ One look at him froze the man; he said no more, but waited, watching the working face of the child, who was 118 mastering himself once more, in order to tell a quick, straight story, that no time might be lost.
“Der tunnel’s fell in, Bud; Jim’s in dere where der frame’s held. He’s livin’ yet, but he’s got a tur’ble cut in his head.”
The mail-rider drew out paper and tobacco, and rolled a cigarette. It was his method of biting his hand. He loved the man inside that dark blotch on the hill-side with an affection only known where men are few and strong. ”

“ A little farther on Jim noticed a piece of quartz outcrop with a metal stain on it. Now, a miner can no more pass such a thing than some others could refuse to pick up the pin shining at their feet, so he took a stone and hammered off a specimen for future reference. In the meantime Ches, on 65 the burro, got around the turn of the trail.
Suddenly the boy set up a shout of excitement. “Oh, Mister!” he yelled, with a string of profanity, his promise forgotten in his heat. “Come quick, an’ look at der cat! Come quick, quick, quick! What a cat! You never see sich a cat!” ”

“ Ches climbed to the top and thrust his head into the gloom. “Jim!” he called, “Jim!” No answer.
Before him lay the ruin of his pardner’s work. It was over this that his path lay, as deadly dangerous a path as could be found. The slightest disturbing of the roof above might bring down a thousand tons of dirt upon the one who ventured, slowly and hideously to crush his life out, there in the dark, beyond sight and sound of the cheerful 113 world without. ”

“ The boy soon saw him reappear behind the sharp rock-wall that jutted out into the valley, rubbing crushed pine-needles upon himself with the idea of overpowering the human odor, although, whether effective in its purpose or not, it was not necessary—a 91 strong up-wind from deer to man making it impossible that they could scent him. ”

“ Bud sucked in his breath. “If you weren’t the sandy little man to try it!” he said. He stood a moment in silence going over it all.
“Ches,” he said, “there ain’t any time to lose. If Jim’s cut like that he may bleed to death in there when we could save him all right if we had him outside.
“There’s a party of miners down the 121 road eight mile. They was having their grub as I went by. Chances are they’ll be there yet. They’ve got four men and a team. I could ride back, but I ought to be here working. Do you think you could stick on old Buck and ride there?” ”

“ It seemed to him that the man was quite capable of keeping a small animal at hand, for the fun of torturing it, and as for the woman—well, if there was her like in hell, Jim determined to be good for the rest of his days. ”

“ Meanwhile, his hero and idol was outdoing the human in his exertions. The effort he put forth would have killed an ordinary man. He fought the stubborn earth as though it were an enemy. Stripped to the waist, bent over in the low tunnel, hour after hour Jim plied the pick and shovel with the regularity and power of a machine. There was at once something fascinating and 84 heroic in the rippling glide of the muscles over his broad back, and in the supple swing that sent the pick to join the packed dirt. ”

“ As you render it, through the 61 nose, and with the wail at the end, it is a thing to make a strong man lie down and give up the ghost in sheer disgust. Ches, does it really make you feel good to sing it?”
“Yessir—kinder,” replied Ches hesitatingly.
“Lord!” thought Jim. “What a life, to make a song like that a recreation!” Then aloud: “It’s bad luck to sing before breakfast, Ches. I’ll teach you a livelier song than that when we hit the trail again.” ”

“ S’pose you ain’t got any real friends for the trip? Rotten, I say. You go ahead and rip Plattsburg up the back. Wisht I could be there with you. Don’t you mind consequences. So long, old man! Hike! You beggar!” The buckskin pony was off with a snort and a splashing of gravel as the irons touched his sides, and Bud vanished down the road without a look behind him.
The next day Jim was in Plattsburg. 21 One does not know what an alluring quality, what a hazy enchantment can linger around even a small town, until an absence in a real wilderness has given man’s work a new flavor. ”

“ What you’ve done there is a help all right, but it might easy have meant that we’d had two men instead of one to hunt for.”
“You’re dead right,” said Bud. “Tell me what I’m to do.”
The captain took hold as only a man can who has the genius for it. He knew by long practice what size of a relief tunnel meant real speed of progress—the least dirt to be removed to make it 134 possible that men could work to advantage. And his tunnel, safely rough-ceiled, went in at the rate of a foot a minute. ”

“ In the Garden of Eden you would be the most delightful of companions, but in this world as it is, you will not fight for your own. You would risk your life to save a dog, but you couldn’t stay at a continued grind—I mean it would kill you, actually, physically, dead, dead—to 6 save all of us. ”

“ Go up town. Get loaded. Get horribly loaded. Break somebody’s window, and tell the folks you’re a Sweet Briar zephyr come to blow out their lights. Go ahead and do it. When your hair stops pulling you’ll feel like a new man.”
Jim thought the advice sound, yet a strange feeling had developed in him, in his isolation; it was that the eye of Anne was always on him. He had fallen into a habit, which becomes a superstition when a man is alone, of acting as though she were there in person.
However, he didn’t feel called upon 14 to offer Bud that explanation of his refusal. ”

“ They played a new interesting dice-game, 44 in which the figure of a pig drawn in chalk upon the bar furnished the “lay-out.” It is a game which increases in interest to the last throw. They stuck the saloon-keeper, and were gleeful.
“We ought to name the boy,” said Felton, under the inspiration of the second refreshment. “My name’s Jim, and I want something else to call him by. I’ll make him a present of my last name.”
“Gad, that’s so!” replied the agent.
“Call him Chescheela Jim,” put in a cow-man. “That’s Injun for ‘little Jim.’ ‘Ches’ ain’t a bad nickname.” ”

“ Down comes what looked like the whole side a-top of us. It weren’t though. It was only a cinnamon had lost his balance, leaning over too far to see what we was. That bear landed right agin brother inspector’s horse, and brother inspector’s horse tried to climb a tree. Inspector himself fell a-top of the bear. I dassent shoot, for the devil himself couldn’t have told which was inspector and which bear. Finally bear shakes himself loose and telescopes himself up the cañon, the worst scared animile in the country. ‘If you’ll ketch my horse, I’ll amble back again,’ says the inspector. ”

“ Two miles out of town we ran into a wild-eyed gang from somewhere, 106 who was going to make us dance. We didn’t dance, and I’ll say for that inspector that he stood by me like a man, but he was awful sick at his stomach later on from the excitement.
“Next thing, the bridge was down at Squaw Creek, and we swum her. He’d have gone down the flume, if I hadn’t got hold of his bridle. ‘Nice mail route, this,’ says he, as he got ashore. ‘Oh, you’d like it,’ says I, ‘if you got used to it.’ I’d begun to wonder what was next myself. Ain’t many people swimming Squaw Creek, as you perhaps know. ”

“ Jim spanked the burro, and they flew out of the Paha-Sahpedon at a canter.
They camped that night in the 49 spruces of Silver Creek, in one of the prettiest little places that ever lay out of doors. As they prepared the supper and ate it, sharing plate, cup and spoon, the boy was fairly ecstatic.
“Dis is der bulliest ol’ time dat ever I had,” said he. “I didn’t know dere was places like dis ’tall, ’cept Cintral Park. Yer can run aroun’ here all yer like, can’t yer, Mister? Nobuddy’ll stop yer?”
“Not if you ran a thousand miles, Ches. This is the free land, boy. You can do what you like.” ”

“ Sometimes der gun callt himself ‘Darragh,’ an’ sometimes ‘Mullen,’ an’ sometimes ‘Smit.’ Aggh! He callt himself the foist t’ing dat come to his tongue—he didn’t have no real name.”
The agent talked to him a bit more, winding up by saying kindly: “You’ve had a pretty rough time of it, Jimmy, and we’d all like to give you a lift—now, just say what you’d like to do, and maybe we can fix it.”
“I’d like to go along wid dat feller, ’f he’ll take me,” replied the boy, tossing a thumb toward Jim Felton. There was a becoming access of shyness in his 40 manner ”

“ Felton broke the neck off the bottle with a tack-hammer and poured the wine on the boy’s head. “I christen thee Chescheela James Felton—may you become a good seaworthy craft, and not fill your skin with this stuff when you grow up,” said he dramatically.
The small boy squinted up his eyes to keep the wine out; then he shook the liquid from his hair, looked up and grinned.
“Youse fellers is reg’lar kids,” said he. 45
“Lord, that’s a great boy!” said the agent. “He’s the oldest man in the crowd. Say, let’s give him a white man’s start, beginning with a bath.” ”

“ That is, within limits, for, when a man overworks as continually as Jim had done, no paradise sleep nor balsam air can turn him right perpetually.
And for that reason the claim declared a holiday, consisting of a hunting trip. It was a curious hunting trip. Not one “bang!” went the clean and polished rifle. They stalked four deer, crawling on their bellies, quivering with the chase, rounding behind rocks. Then when the game was within range, up went the rifle, Jim squinted along the sights—then dropped it.
“What’s der matter?” whispered 89 Ches. ”

“ The boy wiped his eyes on his sleeve and went over to him. “Say, don’t yer holt nothin’ ag’in me fur der word,” said he. “Dey’ve got me looney—dat’s wot—yer’ve used me liker fren’; and if it hoits yer, yer can kick me pants fur me, and I won’t say nuthin’.”
“Well, there’s two-pound-and-a-half of dead game sport for you, all right!” cried Benny. “Good eye, kid!”
Happy Jack smiled a mollified smile eight inches wide. “You is all right, beau,” said he. “An’ as fur as my bein’ 38 a nigger’s concerned, I’ll admit my kerplection ain’t light.” ”

“ Jim never forgot the utter undauntedness, impudence and malice of that face. “Yer allus goin’ to do sumpin’, Pete!” she retorted. “Yer’ll be a man yet.”
A more amiable man than “Pete” might have been provoked by such conduct. He strode forward with white-knuckled fists and a very unpleasant expression on his face. Several men 31 started to interfere, but it wasn’t necessary.
The woman quietly looked at her bully, chewing a straw with the utmost nonchalance. “Give us a kiss,” said she. The man’s crest dropped. He said something in an undertone, and got on the car. ”