Olive Harper

“ Morris Goldberg had left his humble store in charge of Dora and a little semi-idiotic boy, whom he had rescued from the streets. The little fellow was thin and white, and dressed in a medley of garments purchased for him from a second-hand store nearby. The child was trying to sew a shoe while seated upon the vacant bench. Dora sat beside him, trying to guide the clumsy fingers, with infinite patience.
“Now, this way, Loney; both ends at the same time. One this way and one that way. Oh, you will succeed if you keep on. You’ll be as good a shoemaker as father some day.” ”

“ Go, Dora!”
“Good-bye, dear Muriel. God bless and keep you safe!” And Dora mingled with the crowd, none of whom took more than casual notice of the squaw, for squaws were common about there.
Shoshone came by the box, hoping to find the shoemaker. Helen was with him, but the boy was not. “And,” he said, continuing a conversation they had had:
“Don’t worry about the boy, Helen. He is safer with the boys than with you.”
They did not notice Muriel, who looked at Helen for a moment with tears in her eyes and then slipped away unseen by Helen, whose sorrows she had caused in a great measure. ”

“ There being no money to purchase food with, and no handy market, it fared badly with the novices in mining. Helen went out early every morning and returned late at night with her gun, but it would seem as if all the game in the mountains had left for another State, for she found next to nothing, and the little camp was rapidly becoming the abode of hunger—gaunt and grim. ”

“ Loney tried to slip out unobserved, to find Mr. Goldberg, but Dopey, saying “Naw, you don’t,” struck the child a heavy blow on the head with a murderous “billy.” The child gave a gasp and fell into Dopey’s arms. Dopey dragged him to the inner door and out of sight.
Dora stood white and speechless with terror until John Pierson turned to her, saying:
“Don’t be afraid. I won’t harm you. You are too young and beautiful to die just yet.” ”

“ I am out here, alone, with the mountains, the sky, the birds and flowers, and the wild creatures. I live close—oh, very close—to Nature, in a little shack. I never come down, except when there is sickness or accident—some one that needs care and devotion. ”

“ Helen come, but he failed to look upward. Had he done so, he might have seen the evil faces of John Pierson and Dopey Mack as they crouched behind the rock looking down at the mouth of the tunnel. They had found a cavern several miles away and had left Dora and Muriel there, while they came back to this place. John had known of this claim, but had not known its location, and now—to see such a chance for wealth pass from his hands into that of the old shoemaker was too much, and he determined that the man must die, so that he could step in and possess the claim. ”

“ His shoes looked as though in urgent need of the services of the [10] shoemaker. His face was dirty, and one of his eyes was blackened and swollen. And, over it all, there showed something so depraved and sinister, such a drawn look of pallor and decay, in spite of his youth, a stranger would not have known how to classify this strange output of city life, but the initiated would have summed it all up in one word—dope. This means the unutterable depravity of opium-smoking. ”

“ Dora was kept in school when other girls of her age had worked in factories. She kept house for him in the room above the shop, and she was a good, sweet, obedient daughter. What more could a man ask? A business that kept them from want, and something left over every month. No wonder the honest shoemaker sang as he worked in his little shop as he listened to the steps of his daughter above. ”

“ As Dan and Snakes started for the lamb, Helen called them and told them the place was at the head of the small gulch on Bald Knob. Then she hurried Shoshone and Mike along, her own feet seeming tireless, although she had been tramping over the mountains all day long, and hungry.
“Whenever the Injuns come around as thick as they have been lately,” said Mike, “the game gits scarce at once. I think as how the critters has a way of telling each other that it ain’t healthy for them to stay. Animals know lots more than we think. ”

“ He’s all right. Say, kid, who is your friend, anyway, and what brought him here. Come, now, tell me the truth.”
“I always tell the truth, sir. His name is Mr. Morris Goldberg, and he is a shoemaker from New York. A man came there—Mr. ‘Cactus Bill’—and another man shot him in the back. I saw him, and the bad man took Dora away. The bad man had another bad man along and that man hit me here—see—and they carried Dora away; and Bennie—that’s Dora’s steady company—don’t know where we are.” ”

“ The way to this lonely hamlet was long, and bordered by ranges and mines, and the men along the route had made him believe that unless he wished to be killed as a tenderfoot he must dress and act like a cowboy. At their last stopping-place the boys on a ranch joined in the fun, and fitted the poor shoemaker out with a pair of long-haired “chaps,” or leggings, and these they made him put on the wrong way. ”

“ There is not a man from Cheyenne to the Gulch who would not fight for the Angel,” returned Mike.
“She is IT, I say. She sure is IT. She is white and gold. That is what she is. White outside and gold within. Set ’em up to the Angel, Snakes.”
“My treat,” declared Snakes.
“Naw, it’s mine,” declared Dan.
“In your mind it is. It’s mine,” said Mike, aggressively, as though he was seeking for an opportunity to fight for the Angel’s honor.
“Here, here!” cried Shoshone. “Who spoke first. Are you a set of highway robbers trying [60] to hold me up? Set ’em up, Snakey, and here’s your dust. ”

“ With a glad and resonant voice the happy shoemaker shouted down the steps as he made his appearance then:
“Dora, Dora, I have de nice present for you—from de Bennie. Your ring of betrothal. I tellet him I wouldn’t let you vear it now, and it is all fixet. Now, you get merrit on your eighteenth birthday, eh? Vot you say! Vy, vot is dot? De man mit de ‘stickers’! Yust deat drunk! Dot Bowery booze vos too much for him—efen him. Vake up, Mister; vake up! You can’t sleep here. Vat’s dot—ploot! Mein Gott! he is hurted!” ”