Roy Norton

“ Annie regularly joined the pack-train for the summer season. Men on the trail would hear the “Tink-tank” of a bell, and then around a sharp curve, maybe, would come a solemn-looking old burro, more careful now than ever to find sure footing, and on his back would be a very little girl in a very big sunbonnet, sometimes weaving wild-flower chains, or, again, singing little baby songs. Sometimes, too, Baldy came trudging along without her. ”

“ No one spoke for an instant and the whole scene was like a picture; two men standing there in the light of the night with their hands above their heads, while in front of them, with the glow bringing out the grimness of his face and the steady, cold glare of his eyes, was a man who leaned slightly forward with poised pistol ready for instant action. ”

“ WHEN a man associates with burros for eight or ten years he gets the burro habit, and, like drinking or smoking, so they say, it's hard to break off. It was pretty well fixed on Jim Tipton when first he came to the Sierra Madres along with Baldy and three or four other pack-mules; but Baldy was his intimate friend, and the others didn't count.
It was when Holcomb Valley, away up in the tops of the hills, was a real camp, where every one was busy getting gold, or sure he was going to get it, and it was nobody's business who anybody else was or where he came from. ”

“ It's strange how, when men know they are doing wrong, they get as alert as wild animals. Jim had hardly climbed to his feet and started warily toward them, when one of the men sighted him and swung a gun into view, shouting, as he did so: “Stop, or I'll shoot!” ”

“ But the Lord Almighty's too busy to. measure men by words. It's what they do. Be sure of that! So most men believe Jim stood pretty well with Him, and others don't matter.
Baldy was a wise old chap, who had lived with Jim a long time. In fact, they must have become acquainted somewhere out on the desert before they came to the new camp. Baldy was rather a benevolent-looking burro, having a white face and whiskers and a pair of philanthropic ears much bigger around than any of his trim little legs which a hand could girdle. ”

“ Throughout the day they went on, and on, and as he went Jim kept thinking and worrying over the turn that might go against Annie and her property. He believed he would be ahead of any others on the land, unless they had already been sent, and had waited for him to start the down-trip when they could put up their notices. He felt the need of reaching, in the very shortest time, the little cabin in the mountain's hollow, and when darkness fell once more there was small rest. ”

“ Everything in the camp was the same, but in the city, in the valley far below, there was great excitement and stir. Capitalists had come who were going to build a big dam across the cañon below Jim's home, send their ditches over the valley below, and make the land worth something. ”

“ He wasn't strong enough to work in the hills, so made one of the first land entries in that country. It was almost the last thing any one else would have thought of, but the place was pretty enough, being a little valley through which a stream rambled along until it came to an edge where it fell off into a cañon and made its bed out to the sage-brush flats, many miles below. Bill built him a cabin from the big logs around the valley's edge, and went into a sort of farming business, selling vegetables to the miners over at Holcomb for camp prices. ”

“ From the very first Jim wouldn't allow any one to have any hand in the care of Annie, and it was a trifle awkward at times. There wasn't even a “Chink” laundryman in the camp in those days, every man being his own washerwoman. Jim had always got along the way every one else did. ”

“ And while a doctor worked over Jim in the dance-hall, Baldy gazed solemnly through the open door, and no one disturbed him.
It was a good many months before Jim took to the trail again, and when he made his first trip he was pretty white and wan. He came to camp where the trees were thick and where he had so often stopped before, and, like many other times, a little girl huddled down between his knees and a big solemn head was at his shoulder.
“Annie,” he said, “you're goin' to be rich some time, because some men have agreed to pay you for every gallon of water that runs over their dam ”