"Old Harmless"

By Roy Norton
Author of “David and Goliath,” “The Box,” Etc.
Uncle Bill loved his gulch, and David and Goliath loved Uncle Bill. When trouble came they promised to stick by him to the bitter end—which wasn't so bitter, after all.
It was a long distance from the beaten roads to where “Old Harmless” had his cabin; quite over the top of ridges, down across intervening valleys, around mountain shelves where a pack burro might not slip with impunity, and with now and then a gurgling little stream to ford that became a dangerous place when spring freshets ran high and filled a gulch. It was not a place that any one other than a recluse might have chosen for permanent domicile, but to Old Harmless it was Heaven. He was convinced that somewhere within its borders there was wealth.
“Yes, sir, I reckon that some place in these here hills, right about the rim of this gulch, thar’s a ledge of gold that orter go about ten thousand dollars a ton!” he was wont to explain to the partners, David and Goliath, when they visited him by climbing to a high, steep ridge, traversing the crest of a rugged, barren range, and then dropping down long, steep hills into the valley where Old Harmless dwelt and strove with infinite and inexhaustible patience and optimism. “And that ain’t exactly all of it, either. You see, I diskivered this gulch in ’fifty-eight, and I took a right-smart lot of pay outen this flat, and there was some other fellers came, and they called it Harmon’s Camp. Named it arter me, you see. An’ they built some stores and—by Matildy!—they was a post office here oncet, where a feller could go and git his mail. If he had any to git.”
Always at this point he would shake his head with an air of melancholy. And always the partners would appear sympathetic, and interested, as if this were the first, rather than the hundredth or so, time they had heard this tale. Always one of them politely said, “Psho! What happened to her, Uncle Bill?” And always Old Harmless brightened up, and rambled on.