CHAPTER VII
A HUNT FOR A SILVER MINE
One morning, early in June, Nelly was sitting out by the old mill, with her lap full of blue anemones and white daisies: the anemones were hardly out of their gray cloaks. The anemones in Colorado come up out of the ground like crocuses; the buds are rolled up tight in the loveliest little furry coverings almost like chinchilla fur. I think this is to keep them warm, because they come very early in the spring, and often there are cold storms after they arrive, and the poor little anemones are all covered up in snow.
Nelly heard steps and voices and the trampling of hoofs. She sprang up, and saw that a large blue wagon, drawn by eight mules, had just turned in from the road, towards the brook, and the driver was making ready to camp. He came towards Nelly, and said, very pleasantly:—
"Little girl, do your folks live in yonder?" pointing to the house.
"Yes, sir," said Nelly.
"Do they ever keep folks?"
"What, sir?" said Nelly.
"Do they ever keep folks,—keep 'em to board?"
"Oh, no! never," replied Nelly.
The man looked disappointed. "Well," he said, "I've got to lie by here a day or two, anyhow. I was in hopes I could get took in. I'm clean beat out; but I can sleep in the wagon."
"My mamma will be glad to do all she can for you if you're sick, I'm sure," said Nelly; "but we haven't any spare room in our house."
The driver looked at Nelly again. He had once been a coachman in a gentleman's family at the East, and he knew by Nelly's voice and polite manner that she was not the child of any of the common farmers of the country.
"Have you lived here long?" he said.
"Oh, no!" replied Nelly: "only since last spring. We came because my papa was sick. He has the asthma."
"Oh!" said the man: "I thought so."
Nelly wondered why the man should have thought her papa had the asthma; but she did not ask him what he meant. In a few minutes, the man lay down in his wagon and fell fast asleep, and Nelly went into the house. After dinner, she told Rob about the man, and they went out together to see him. They peeped into the wagon. It was loaded full of small bits of gray rock: the man was rolled up in a buffalo robe, lying on top of the stones, still fast asleep. His face was very red, and he breathed loud.
"Oh, dear!" said Nelly, "how uncomfortable he must be! He looks real sick."
"I bet he's drunk!" said Rob, who had unluckily seen a good deal of that sort of sickness since he had lived on a thoroughfare for mule-wagons.
"Is he?" said Nelly, horror-stricken. "No, Rob, he can't be, because he talked with me real nice this morning. Let's go and tell mamma."
Mr. March went out, looked at the man, and woke him up. He found that he was indeed ill, and not drunk. The poor fellow had been five days on the road, with a very heavy cold; and had taken more cold every night, sleeping in the open air. Walking all day long in the hot sun had also made him worse, and he was suffering severely.
"Come right into the house with me, my man," said Mr. March; "my wife'll make you a cup of hot tea."
"Oh, thank you!" said the man. "I've been thinkin' I'd give all the ore in this 'ere wagon for a first-rate cup of tea. I don't never carry tea: only coffee; but I've turned against coffee these last two days;" and he followed Mr. March into the house.
"What'd you say you had in your wagon?" asked Rob, who had been standing by.
"Ore," said the man.
The only word Rob knew which had that sound was "oar."
"Oar!" he said. "Why, I didn't see any thing but rocks."
Mr. March and the man both laughed.
"Not 'oar,' to row with, Rob," said Mr. March; "but 'ore,' to make money out of."
"Silver ore, I suppose," he added, turning to the man.
"Yes," he said; "from the Moose mine, up on Mount Lincoln."
Rob's eyes grew big. "Oh! tell me about it," he said. And Nelly, coming up closer, exclaimed, in a tone unusually eager for her, "And me too. Is the mountain made of silver, like the mountains in fairy stories?"
The man was drinking his tea, and did not answer. He drank it in great mouthfuls, though it was scalding hot.
"Oh, ma'am," he said, "I haven't tasted any thing that went right to the spot's that does, for months; if it wouldn't trouble ye too much, I'd like one more cup." He drank the second cup as quickly as he had the first; then he leaned his head back in the chair, and said: "I feel like a new man now. I guess that was the medicine I needed. I reckon I can go on this afternoon."
"No," said Mr. March: "you ought to stay here till to-morrow. There is an old leather-covered settee in the barn you're welcome to sleep on. It will be better than the ground; and we'll doctor you with hot tea, night and morning."
"You're very kind," said the man: "I don't know but I'd better stay."
"Oh, do! do!" said Rob; and "do do!" said Nelly. "Stay and tell us all about the mountain of silver and the Moose; does the Moose draw out the silver?"
You see Rob and Nelly couldn't get it out of their heads that it was all like a fairy tale. And so it is when you think of it, more wonderful than almost any fairy tale, to think how great mountains are full of silver and of gold, and men can burrow deep down into them, and get out all the silver and gold they need.
"Oh, there isn't any real Moose," said the man. "That's only the name of the mine. I don't know why they called the mine the Moose mine. They give mines the queerest kind o' names."
"What is a mine, anyhow?" asked Rob.
"Oh," said the man, "I forgot you didn't know that. A mine's a hole in the ground, or in the side of a mountain, where they dig out gold or silver. There's mines that's miles and miles big, underground, with passages running every way like streets."
"How do they see down there?" said Rob.
"They carry lanterns, and there are lanterns fastened up in the walls."
"Is your wagon all full of silver?" asked Nelly, in a low tone.
"Not exactly all silver yet," the man said, laughing; "there's a good deal of silver in it: it's very good ore."
"It looked just like gray rock," said Rob.
"Well, that's what it is," replied the man; "it's gray rock. It's got to be all pounded up fine in a mill, and then it's got to be roasted with salt in a great oven, and then it's got to be mixed with chemicals and things. I don't rightly know just what it is they do to it; it's a heap of work I know, before it ever gets to be the pure silver."
"Some day I will take you, Rob," said his father, "where you can see all this done: I want to see it myself. Run out, now, you and Nelly, and play, and let the driver rest. He is too tired to talk any more."
Rob and Nelly went back to the wagon. All Nelly's anemones and daisies were lying on the ground, withered. Even this one short hour of hot sun had been enough to kill them.
"Oh, my poor, dear flowers!" said Nelly, picking them up. "How could I forget you!" and she looked at them as sorrowfully as if they were little babies she had neglected.
"Pooh, Nell," cried Rob. "They're no good now. Throw them in the brook, and come look at the silver."
They both climbed up on the tongue of the wagon and looked in at the front.
"I can't see any silver about it," said Nelly; "it don't look like any thing but little gray stones, all broken up into bits."
"No," said Rob: "it don't shine much;" and he picked up a bit and held it out in the sun.
"Oh, take care! take care, Rob!" cried Nelly. "Don't lose it; it might be as much as a quarter of a dollar, that bit."
"Nell, said Rob, earnestly, "don't you wish papa had a mine, and we could dig up all the money we wanted? oh, my!" and Rob drew in his breath in a long whistle.
"Yes," said Nelly: "I mean to look for one. Do you find the holes already dug, do you suppose? Perhaps that place where old Molly tumbled in was a mine."
Old Molly was one of their cows, who had tumbled one day into a hole made by a slide of earth; and Zeb had had to go down and tie ropes around her to pull her up.
"Yes," said Rob: "I bet you any thing it is. Let's go right up there now, and see if we can find some rock like this. I'll carry this piece in my pocket to tell by. I'll only borrow it: I'll put it back."
"Let me carry it then," said Nelly. "I'm so afraid you'll lose it."
So Nelly tied the little bit of gray rock in a corner of her pocket-handkerchief, and then crammed her handkerchief down tight in her pocket, and they set off at a swift pace, towards the ravine where Molly had had her unlucky fall.
When dinner-time came, the children were nowhere to be found. Zeb went up and down the brook for a mile, looking and calling aloud. Watch and Trotter had both disappeared also.
"Ye needn't worry so long's the dogs is along, ma'am," said Zeb, when he returned from his bootless search. "If they get into any trouble, Watch'll come home and let us know. He's got more sense'n most men, that dog has."
But Mrs. March could not help worrying. Never since they had lived in the Pass had Nelly and Rob gone away for any long walk without coming and bidding her good-by, and telling her where they were going. The truth was, that this time they had entirely forgotten it: they were so excited by the hopes of finding a mine. They had walked nearly a mile when Nelly suddenly exclaimed: "Oh, Rob! we didn't say good-by to mamma! She won't know where we are."
"So we didn't!" said Rob. "What a shame! But we can't go back now, Nell: it's too late; we've come miles and miles; we'd better keep on; she'll know we're all right; we always are. We're most there now."
It was the middle of the afternoon before Rob and Nelly got home. Mrs. March had been walking up and down the road anxiously for an hour, when she saw the two little figures coming down the very steepest of the hills. They walked very slowly; so slowly that she felt sure one of them must be hurt. The dogs were bounding along before them. As soon as the children saw their mother, Rob took off his hat, and Nelly her sun-bonnet, and waved them in the air. This relieved Mrs. March's fears, and the tears came into her eyes, she was so glad. "Oh, Robert, there they are!" she exclaimed to Mr. March, who had just joined her. "See! there they are, way up on that steep hill. Thank God, they are safe!"
Mr. and Mrs. March both stood in the road, shading their eyes with their hands, and looking up at the children.
As they drew nearer, Mrs. March exclaimed: "Why, what are they carrying?" Mr. March burst out laughing, and said: "They look like little pack mules." In a few minutes, the hot, tired, dusty little wanderers reached the road, and ran breathlessly up to their father and mother:
"Oh, mamma!" cried Rob; and "Oh, papa!" cried Nelly. "We've found a mine; we've got lots of ore; now we can get all the money we want. You see if this isn't almost exactly like the stuff in the man's wagon!" and Nelly emptied her apron on the ground, and Rob emptied his jacket; he had taken it off and carried it by the sleeves so as to make a big sack of it. Mr. and Mrs. March could hardly keep from laughing at the sight: there were the two piles of little bits of stone, and the children with red and dirty faces and the perspiration rolling down their cheeks, getting down on their knees to pick out the choicest specimens. Nelly was fumbling deep down in her pocket; presently she drew out her handkerchief all knotted in a wisp, and out of the last knot she took the little bit of ore which they had borrowed from the wagon for a sample. This she laid in her father's hand: "There, papa," she said, "that's the man's: we borrowed it to carry along to tell by."
"They don't look so much like it as they did," she added, turning sorrowfully back to the poor little pile of stones. Rob was gazing at them too, with a crest-fallen face.
"Why, they don't shine a bit now," he said; "up there they shone like every thing."
Mr. March picked up a bit of the stone and looked closely at it.
"Ah, Rob," he said, "the reason it doesn't shine now, is because the sun has gone under a cloud. There are little points of mica in these stones, and mica shines in the sun; but there isn't any silver here, dear. Did you really think you had made all our fortunes?"
Rob did not speak. He had hard work to keep from crying. He stood still, slowly kicking the pile of stones with one foot. His father pitied him very much.
"Never mind, Rob," he said; "you're not the first fellow that has thought he had found a mine, and been mistaken."
Rob stooped down and picked up two big handfuls of the stones and threw them as far as he could throw them.
"Old cheats!" he said.
"Yes, real old cheats!" said Nelly; and she began to scatter the stones with her foot. "And they were awful heavy. Oh, mamma, I'm so hungry!"
"So'm I," said Rob. "Isn't it dinner-time?"
"Dinner-time!" exclaimed their mother. "Did you really not have any more idea of the time than that! Why, it is three o'clock! Where have you been?"
"Not very far, mamma," answered Nelly; "only up where old Molly tumbled in. Rob thought perhaps that hole was a mine. It's all full of these shining stones. Isn't it too bad, mamma?"
"Isn't what too bad, Nell?" said Mrs. March.
"Why, too bad that they ain't silver," replied Nelly. "We thought we could all have every thing we wanted."
Mrs. March laughed.
"What do you want most of all this minute?" she said.
"Something to eat, mamma," said Nelly.
"Well, that you can have; and that I hope we can always have without any silver mine: and to-day we have something very good to eat."
"Oh! what, mamma, what? say, quick!" said Rob.
"Chicken pie," said Mrs. March, in a very comical, earnest tone.
"Chicken pie!" shouted Rob. "Hurrah! hurrah!" and both he and Nelly ran toward the house as hard as they could go.
"There is a wish-bone drying for you on the mantelpiece," called out Mr. March.
"They'll both wish for a silver mine, I expect," laughed Mrs. March, as she and her husband walked slowly along. "What a queer notion that was to come into such children's heads!"
"I don't know," said Mr. March, reflectively; "I think it's a very natural notion to come into anybody's head. I'd like a silver mine myself, very much."
"We mightn't be any happier if we had one, nor half so happy," replied Mrs. March. "I'd rather have you well, and the children well, than have all the silver mines in Colorado."
"If you had to choose between the two things, I dare say," answered Mr. March; "but I suppose a person might have good health and a silver mine besides. How would that do?"
"Well, I'll make sure of the health first," said Mrs. March, laughing. "I'm not in so much hurry for the silver mine."
After Rob and Nelly had eaten up all the chicken pie which had been saved for them, they took down the wish-bone from the mantelpiece, and prepared to "wish."
"It's so dry, it'll break splendidly," said Rob. "I know what I'm going to wish for."
"So do I," said Nelly, resolutely; "I'm going to wish hard."
They both pulled with all their might. Crack went the wish-bone,—no difference in the length of the two pieces.
"Pshaw!" cried Rob; "how mean! one or the other of us might have had it."
Nelly drew a long sigh. "Rob," said she, "What did you wish for?"
"A silver mine," said he, "both times."
"So did I," said Nell. "I thought you did, too. I guess we sha'n't either of us ever have one."
"I don't care," said Rob; "there's plenty of money besides in mines. I'm going to have a bank when I'm a man."
"Are you, Rob?" said Nell. "What's that?"
"Oh, just a house where you can go and get money," replied Rob, confidently. "I used to go with papa often at home. They gave him all he wanted."
Nelly looked somewhat perplexed. She did not know any thing about banks: still she thought there was a loose screw somewhere in Rob's calculations; but she did not ask him any more questions.
After tea, Mr. March walked away with the driver of the mule team. They did not come back until it was dark. Mr. March opened the door of the sitting-room, and said, "Sarah, I wish you'd come out here a few minutes." When she had stepped out and closed the door, he said, "I want you to come up where the wagon is: there's a nice bonfire up there, and it isn't cold; I want this man to tell you all he's been telling me about a place down south,—a hundred miles below this. If it's all's he says, that's the place we ought to go to. But I wanted you to hear all about it before I said any thing to the Deacon."
The driver's name, by the way, was Billy; he was called "Long Billy" on the roads where he drove, because his legs were so long, and his body so short. He had made a splendid bonfire on the edge of the brook, and Mr. March and he had been sitting there for an hour, on a buffalo robe spread on the ground. Mrs. March sat down with them, and Long Billy began his story over again. It seemed that he had formerly been a driver of a mule team on another route, much farther south than this one. He had "hauled ore," as he called it, from a little town called Rosita, to another town called Canyon City. There the ore was packed on cars and sent over the little narrow-gauge railroad up to Central City, where the silver was extracted from the rock, and moulded into little solid bricks of silver ready to be sent to the mint at Philadelphia to be made into half dollars and quarters.
This town of Rosita lay among mountains: was built on the sides of two or three narrow gulches, in the Wet Mountain range; at the foot of these mountains was the beautiful Wet Mountain Valley,—a valley thirty miles long, and only from five to eight miles wide; on the side farthest from Rosita this valley was walled by another high mountain range, the Sangre di Christo range. This means "The blood of Christ." The Spaniards gave this name to the mountains when they first came to the country. All the mountains in the Sangre di Christo range are over eight thousand feet high, and many of them are over twelve thousand; their points are sharp like the teeth of a saw, and they are white with snow the greater part of the year. The beautiful valley lying between these two long lines of mountains was the place about which Long Billy had been telling Mr. March, and now began to tell Mrs. March.
"Why, ma'am," he said, "I tell ye, after coming over these plains, it is jest like lookin' into Heaven, to get a look down into that valley; it's as green as any medder land ye ever laid your eyes on; I've seen the grass there higher'n my knee, in July."
"Oh!" said Mrs. March, with a sigh of satisfaction at the very thought of it, "I would like to see tall grass once more."
"Yes, indeed wife," said Mr. March; "but think what a place that would be for cattle, and for hay. Farming would be something worth talking about; and Billy says that the farmers in the valley can have a good market in Rosita for all they can raise. There are nearly a thousand miners there; and it is also only a day's journey from Pueblo, which is quite a city. It really looks to me like the most promising place I've heard any thing about here."
"It's the nicest bit of country there is anywhere in Colorado," said Billy, "'s fur's I've seen it. Them mountains's jest a picture to look at all the time; 'n' there's a creek,—Grape Creek, they call it, because it's just lined with wild grape-vines, for miles,—runs through the valley; 'n' lots o' little creeks coming down out o' the mountains, 'n' empties into't. I wouldn't ask nothin' more o' the Lord than that He'd give me a little farm down in Wet Mountain Valley for the rest o' my life. I know that."
"Do you think there are any farms there that could be bought?" asked Mr. March, anxiously. "I should think such desirable lands would be all taken up."
"Well, they're changin' round there a good deal," said Billy. "Ye wouldn't think it; but men they git discontented a hearing so much talk about silver. They're always a hoping to get hold on a mine 'n' make a big fortin all in a minnit; but I hain't seen so many of these big fortins made off minin' 'n this country. For one man thet's made his fortin, I've known twenty that's lost it. Now I think on't I did hear, last spring, that Wilson he wanted to sell out; 'n' if you could get his farm, you'd jest be fixed first rate. There's the best spring o' water on his place there is in all the valley; and it ain't more'n four miles 'n' a half from his place up into Rosita: ye'd walk it easy."
Mr. March looked at his wife. Her face was full of excitement and pleasure.
"It sounds perfectly delightful, Robert," she said; "but you know we thought just so about this Pass. The pictures were so beautiful, and all they told us sounded attractive."
Billy made a scornful sound almost like a snort.
"H'm!" he said, "anybody that recommended ye to settle this low down in the Ute Pass for stock-raisin' or farmin' must ha' been either a knave or a fool: that's certain."
"A knave, I think," said Mrs. March. "He tried very hard to sell us the whole place."
"I'll be bound he did," sneered Billy; "cheap enough he'll sell it, too, afore ever he gets anybody to buy."
"Say, mister," he continued, "you jest come along with me to-morrow: I'd like to take a run down to Rosita, first rate; 'n' I've got to lay by a few days anyhow. I'll get this load o' ore board the cars at the Springs, 'n' then I'll jest quit work for a week; 'n' I'll go down with yer to Rosita. There's somebody there I'm wantin' to see putty bad." And Billy's burnt face grew a shade or two deeper red.
"Ah, Billy, is that it?" said Mr. March.
"Well, yes, sir. We're a calculatin' to be married one o' these days soon's I get a little ahead. It's slow work, though, layin' up money teamin', 'n' I won't take her out of a good home till I can give her one o' her own's good. Her father he's foreman 'n one o' the mines there; 'n' he's always been a real forehanded man. She's well off: she's got no occasion to marry anybody to be took care of." And Billy smiled complacently at the thought that it must have been for pure love that the Rosita young lady had promised to marry him.
"Sarah, what do you think of my going?" said Mr. March.
"Go, by all means!" said Mrs. March. "The little journey will do you good, even if nothing comes of it. We need not say any thing about the reason for your going, till you get back. If you decide to move down there, that will be time enough to explain."
"And Mrs. Plummer will say that it was all 'providential,'" laughed Mr. March.
"And so shall I, Robert," said Mrs. March, very earnestly.
The next morning Mr. March and Long Billy set off together at seven o'clock. It was the first time Mrs. March had been separated from her husband in this new country, and she dreaded it.
"Good-by! good-by!" called the children, in their night-gowns, at the bedroom window; "good-by, papa."
"Good-by!" said the Deacon; "reckon your bones'll ache some, before ye get to the Springs, a ridin' that wheeler." Mr. March was riding the rear wheeler, and Long Billy was walking by his side.
"Not if he don't walk any faster than this," said Mr. March. "And I shall walk half of the time."
"Ye needn't walk a step if ye'd rather ride," said Billy. "I'm all right this mornin'. 'Tain't only about ten miles down to Colorado Springs. I don't think nothin' o' walkin' that fur, especially when I've got company to talk to. Mules is dreadful tiresome critters. Now a hoss's real good company; but a mule ain't no company, 't all."