Smokestack Bill studied the plan thoughtfully for a few moments.
“It’s tarnation vague,” he said at length: “‘Forkt pine, Red Peak, blarsted tree, and the creek where half-buried rock.’ Why, there’s parks of forked pines, and as for the blasted tree it’s like enough to be some stem against which one o’ them chaps was squelched by his mule, and known only to them. And the creek’s just chock full of half-buried rocks.”
“Ha, ha, ha! Bill, my boy, I’ve located them all—all but the half-buried rock, that is. The tree’s a scathed pine all right, close to where the two fellows were scalped. I was just going to locate the creek part of the business, when that unhung skulker ‘jumped’ me. You may just bet your bottom dollar we’ll light upon something rich.”
“Well, well, I’ll see you through it,” said the other in a tone as if he began to think there might be something in it. “But seems to me we shan’t be much the better for a lot of gold even if we find it. You’re bent on a rush to Great Britain, Vipan, I can see that. Well, my boy, if we light on a find, you can take the bigger half, and go and pay off old scores with the party that’s tricked you. I’ve not much use for the stuff, I reckon.”
“Bill, old friend, you’re an extraordinary production of your day and species—a thoroughly unselfish specimen of humanity to wit. Now, do you think it in the least likely that I should agree to any such arrangement? No, no; share and share alike is the motto between partners. If we make a good thing of it we’ll take our jaunt together.”
“’M, p’raps. Cities don’t like me, and I don’t like cities. If it were otherwise I should be jingling my tens of thousands of dollars to-day, instead of owning nought but a good rifle, a good horse, and a cache full of pelts. There’s mighty mean tricks done in cities, and those done in a lawyer’s office ain’t the least mean. My old dad was in that line, and though a good chap in other ways, I saw queer things done in that office of his. I couldn’t stand it, and I couldn’t stand the life, so I kicked over the stool and struck out West. I got blown up in a Missouri steamboat first thing, and came down on a chunk of the smokestack into the mud on the Nebraska side—leastways, that’s what the boys declared, and that’s why they call me Smokestack Bill, though I reckon I must have got astride of the smokestack while I was half drowning. And now my brother Seth, who took kindly to lawyering, is the richest man in Carson County.”
“But that you are thoroughly happy as a plainsman, Bill, I should say you had made a mistake,” answered Vipan, in whom the other’s story seemed to have touched a sympathetic chord. “Otherwise the man who sacrifices wealth—beggars himself for a principle—is a consummate ass, and deserves all he condemns himself to; that is, a lifetime spent in regretting it,” he added, with an unwonted bitterness. “But never mind that,” resuming his normal tone. “When the snow melts we’ll go down and prospect Burntwood Creek, and as it’s unlucky—deuced unlucky—to discount one’s successes beforehand, we’ll just dismiss the subject out of hand until then. Meanwhile, life being uncertain, we’ll cache the cipher in some snug place in case anything should happen to me.”
Three months went by. All the rigours of winter had set in upon the Black Hills. Everywhere the snow lay in an unbroken sheet, attaining in many places such prodigious depths as almost to bury the brakes and thickets of a shorter growth. The dark foliage of the great pines afforded some relief from the dazzling whiteness around, but even that was almost concealed by the huge masses of snow which had there effected lodgment. And here and there a mighty cliff of red sandstone stood forth from the surrounding snow, its face half draped with glistening icicles. But the weather was glorious, and the air as exhilarating as champagne. The peaks, shining like frosted silver, rearing their heads to the ever-cloudless blue—that marvellous combination of subtle shades of the richest azure, tempered with green, which is produced by contrast with a snow-enshrouded earth—the smooth face of each great precipice, frowning beneath its brow of dark and bristling pines; the muffled roar of the mountain torrent struggling for freedom, far down under its successively imprisoning layers of ice; the wild cry of bird or beast, even more at fault in the icebound rigours of its native waste than its artificial enemy, man—all this went to make up an engraving from the scenes of Nature in her winter magnificence, in all her savage primeval beauty, in her unsurpassable and most stately grandeur.
In the midst of it all our two friends were thoroughly comfortable. They trapped a good deal and hunted occasionally. Many a valuable fur of silver fox and marten and beaver were added to their stores, and the thick coat of the great white wolf, and the tawny one of the cougar, or mountain lion. Two grizzlies of gigantic size also bit the dust—the redoubted “Old Ephraim” standing no chance whatever before the rifles of two such dead shots—while deer, both black-tailed and red, unable to make much running in the deep snow, fell an easy prey.
The entrance to their cabin was all but buried in snow, but within it was thoroughly warm and snug. Here, before a blazing fire, they would lounge at night. Stores of every kind were plentiful—flour, coffee, and sugar, whisky, warm furs, and abundance of tobacco—and surrounded by every creature comfort they would sit and smoke their long pipes, after a day of hard and healthful exercise, while the wind shrieked without, and all the voices of the weird wilderness were abroad, and the great mountains reverberated ever and anon the thunderous boom of some mighty mass of snow which, dislodged by the wind or its own weight, roared down the slopes, perchance to plunge with a crash over a huge cliff. Now and then old Shanks would lift his shaggy head and growl as the dismal yell of a cougar would be borne upon the night, but he was well-used to the sounds of the forest, and quickly subsided again. And the ghostly hooting of owls, and the shrill barking of foxes, in the dark pine forest mingled with the ravening howl of the wolves in ceaseless chorus from the frozen and wind-swept slopes.