The Black Lion Inn

by Alfred Henry Lewis

While Pike’s Peak Martin expounded this aversion on the part of Chicken Bill, as well as the latter’s refusal to pick and dig and drill and blast in the Timberline mines, as mere laziness, public feeling, though it despised the culprit, was inclined to tolerate him in his shiftlessness. American independence in the Southwest is held to be inclusive of the personal right to refuse all forms of labor. Wherefore Chicken Bill was safe even from criticism as he hung about the saloons and faro rooms and lived his life of chosen vagabondage.

Our low-flung hero made shift in various ways. Did he find a tenderfoot whom he could cheat at cards, he borrowed a stake—sometimes, when the subject was uncommonly tender, from the victim himself—and therewith took a small sum at poker or seven-up. Another method of trivial fraud, now and then successful with Chicken Bill, was to plant a handful of brass nuggets, each of about an ounce in weight, under a little waterfall that broke into the canyon just below the windmill. There was a deal of mineral in this feeble side-stream, and the brass nuggets became coated and queer of color.

One of these Chicken Bill was able at intervals to impose at a profit upon a stranger, by swearing doughtily that it was virgin gold.

It came to pass, however, that Chicken Bill, despairing of fortune by the cheap processes of penny-ante and spurious nuggets, decided on a coup. He would stake out a claim, drift it and timber it, and then salt it to the limit of all that was possible in the science of claim-salting. Then would he sell it to the first Christian with more money than sagacity who came moved to buy a mine.

Chicken Bill was no amateur of mines. He knew the business as he knew the cow trade, and avoided it for the same reason of indolence. In his time, and after some windfall at faro-bank, Chicken Bill had grub-staked prospectors who were to “give him half” and who never came back. In his turn Chicken Bill was grub-staked by others, in which event he never came back. But it went with other experiences to teach him the trade, and on the morning when with pick and paraphernalia Chicken Bill pitched camp in Arizona Gulch a mile beyond the farthest, and where it was known to all no mineral lurked, he brought with him a knowledge of the miner’s art, and began his digging with intelligent spirit. Moreover, the heart of Chicken Bill was stout for the work; for was he not planning a swindle? and did not that thought of itself swell his bosom with a mighty peace?

Once upon a time Chicken Bill had had a partner.

This partner was frequently on the lips of Chicken Bill, especially when our hero was in his cups. He was always mentioned with a gush of tears, this partner, and his name as furnished by Chicken Bill was Flim Flam Murphy. Flim Flam had met death somewhere in the Gunnison country while making good his name, and passed with the smoke of the Colt’s-44 that dismissed him. But Chicken Bill reverenced the memory of this talented man and was ready to honor him, and, having staked out his claim with the fraudulent purpose aforesaid, filed on it appropriately as “The Flim Flam Murphy.”

It would be unjust to the intelligence of Timberline to permit one for a moment to suppose that the dullest of her male citizenry lived unaware of the ignoble plans of Chicken Bill. That he proposed to salt a claim and therewith ensnare the stranger within the local gates were truths which all men knew. But all men cared not; and mention of the enterprise when the miracle of Chicken Bill at work found occasional comment over the bars, aroused nothing save a sluggish curiosity as to whether Chicken Bill would succeed. No thought of warning the unwary arose in the Timberline heart.

“It’s the proper play,” observed Pike’s Peak Martin, representative of Timberline feeling, “to let every gent seelect his own licker an’ hobble his own hoss. If Chicken Bill can down anybody for his bankroll without making a gun play to land the trick, thar’s no call for the public to interfere.”

It was about this time that Chicken Bill added to his ornate scheme of claim-salting—a plain affair of the heart. The lady to thus cast her spell over Chicken Bill was known as Deadwood Maggie and flourished a popular waitress in the Belle Union Hotel. Timberline thought well of Deadwood Maggie, and her place in general favor found suggestion in a remark of Pike’s Peak Martin.