FUTILITY
And around that lower bend, half a mile beyond Durand's cabin, Billy encountered in the person of Jim Buckley the very man he intended to search for, and that by not so very strange a chance when all is considered.
After the scouting days were quite over, not long ago, by the way, Jim Buckley had struck out for Wyoming, where he looked about him and finally settled in the Crooked Horn district all alone. He was prospecting. And as he was a great big leisurely sort of fellow, never in a hurry, and quite unconvinced of the necessity for being so, it took him a great many years to complete the prospecting to his satisfaction. In fact it was only recently that he had fully convinced himself and others of the value of what he had found. At first he had worked the surface over inch by inch Then he had staked out his more experimental claims. Then he had burrowed and grubbed and delved, single-handed, through a network of shafts, tunnels, and drifts. It is slow work—single-handed. In the morning you make little holes with a hand drill, and fill them with powder. At noon you blast. In the afternoon you cart away débris by means of an inadequate little bucket. This takes time and patience, both of which Jim Buckley possessed. Once a month he went to town, riding one horse and leading another, for the purpose of buying supplies. The rest of the time he lived alone.
That is, he lived alone except that directly opposite the window, where the light always struck it fair, he had carefully fastened a small colored portrait on ivory. It was the picture of a woman, delicately tinted, young with laughing blue eyes and a mouth whose corners turned upward in so droll a manner that you would have sworn its owner had never known a care in her fresh young life. It was the picture of another man's wife. She had known care, of the bitterest, blackest kind, and in her darkest days she had been murdered, mercifully perhaps. After he had hauled the last little bucket of broken rock up to the surface of the ground, and had ranged all sorts of utensils in the open fireplace for the evening meal, Jim Buckley used to light his pipe and sit looking at this little portrait for a long time. For, you see, he was simply made, with no complexities—a few simple purposes, a few simple ideas, a few simple friendships, a few simple passions—but they were the stronger and deeper and more soul-satisfying for that. He did not need incident or sorrow or regret to round out his life. It was well poised and sufficient.
So he used to look upon the face of this other man's wife from under sombre brows, but through clear eyes. No one could have guessed what his slow deep thoughts were at such times, nor what he found, whether of peace or unrest, in his contemplation of a portrait of the past. He said it made him better. Perhaps it did.
But there came a time when the windlasses over the rabbit-burrow prospector's shafts had made their last necessary revolution. Jim Buckley knew the cross section of that country as well as you or I know the cross section of an apple we have just cut in two. Then, having satisfied his purposes, he looked to his friendships. He had never had many. Alfred, Billy Knapp, Hal Townsend, Charley Fanchild—why you could count them on the fingers of one hand—and two of these were dead, and another was so far away in the cattle country of Arizona that he might as well have been so. Jim would have liked well to have gathered this old band of comrades about him and said, "Here, boys, is what I have. It is more than enough for me: it is more than enough for all of us. Let us share it, just as we used to share our bacon or our coffee in the old days, and so we can grow old together in the way that suits us best, the way of the pioneer." As he sat in the cabin now, or stalked the hills with his rifle, this old comradeship took more and more shape from the mists of the past, and there grew up in his breast a sharp craving for old times, old faces, old friends. It was a peculiarity of his nature that his ideas possessed a sort of cumulative force. They gathered added reasons for their carrying out as a rolling snowball gathers snow. Toward the end of that month, he packed a strange old valise with clothes for the journey, strapped on his best six-shooter, put his cabin in order, and rode his horse down to Crooked Horn. There he left the animal with Billy Powers and took the train for Edgemont and thence to Rapid.
He knew that Billy was somewhere in the Hills. At Rapid he learned of that individual's new importance. His heart sank a little at the thought that this prosperity might forfend his own scheme of comradeship, but nevertheless he took Blair's stage for Copper Creek and Custer.
Near Rockerville the axle gave way. The brake was repaired at a miner's forge with some difficulty, but the job carried on so late into the afternoon that Blair refused to go farther that night, and the party slept at Rockerville. The next morning they pushed on again about daylight, in order that Blair might start back from Custer before noon, thus reducing his delay by a few hours. A half mile below Durand's shack the axle again gave way, this time with a sudden violence that sent flying the baggage which had been piled on top. Jim found his valise in the bushes. The catch had snapped when the bag hit the ground, so that it lay half open; but fortunately its contents had not emptied. Jim closed it with the two end-clasps, and set it by the side of the road. He did not notice that the ivory miniature had dropped out, and now lay face downward at the roots of a mesquite.
Blair looked up from his inspection.
"Bad break!" he said, with a string of oaths. "Copper Creek's under a mile ahead. You'll save time by pushin' on afoot. I'll be in as soon as I can get this sulphurated axle tied together with a strap."
"No hurry," replied Jim; "I'll help you."
He began to unhitch the horses while Blair went to borrow an axe of Durand. The driver's intention was to splice the broken axle with a bit of green wood. In a little time, he and the old man returned together.
So Billy found them, straining away with an impromptu crowbar. When he and Jim saw each other, they agreed that they'd be tee-totally chawed up! After a time the stage moved doubtfully on toward Copper Creek. Billy and Jim went the other way in the buckboard.
Billy explained that he was going to see Jim; and Jim explained that he had come to get Billy. Billy elaborated on the tale of his doings since their last meeting, and easily persuaded Jim, as well as himself, that he was a most wronged individual. To restore his self-respect it only needed a sympathetic listener, so that he could hear the sound of his own voice. For the moment he had doubted himself. Now he saw plainly that he had been misled by false pretences. If he had understood clearly from the beginning the picayune policy expected of him by these stingy Easterners, he would have graduated his scale of expenditures to suit it; but certainly they had implied at least that they intended to get up a good big mine. Served a man right for going in with such sharpers!
Jim merely said that he had a first-rate thing to share with Billy.
It was a pleasant sight, the bearded solemn miner, fairly glowing with pleasure over finding Billy unfortunate and therefore open to his own kind offices; the eager-faced enthusiastic promoter, elated and high-spirited because of the relief of putting quite behind him a colossal failure; because of the privilege of starting again with a clean slate; because of a hundred new and promising schemes for the future. Michaïl Lafond's long planning had availed little, after all. With all his shrewdness he did not see that in the personality of Billy Knapp he was attempting to quench the essence of enthusiasm and hope and faith—inextinguishable fires. That is the American frontiersman.
At Rapid they took the train to Crooked Horn. At Crooked Horn they reclaimed the horse from Billy Powers. Then they inaugurated the boom. At this very day, December 24th, 1899, they are still living together in the new town of Knapp City, Wyoming, wealthy and respected citizens. And Billy recounts his Copper Creek experiences, generally with tolerance, as an example of the deceit of his fellow-creatures. They were the fruit of eighteen years of planning and waiting and working by a man who thought he could shape greater destinies than his own.