The autumn days were growing perceptibly shorter when the discoverers of the “Little Jean” lode began to make preparations to be snowed in for the winter in the western mountain fastnesses. By this time they had heard enough about the mountain winters to know what they were facing. With the first heavy snowfall blocking the passes they would be shut off from the world as completely as shipwrecked mariners on a desert island. But hardships which are still only anticipatory hold few terrors for the inexperienced; and with the comforting figures of the assays to inspire them, they thought more of the future spring and its promise than of the lonely and toilsome winter which must intervene.
Since there was still sufficient grass in sheltered coves and forest glades to feed the stock, they postponed the journey which one of them would have to take to find winter quarters for the animals. The delay was partly prudential. Though each added day of non-interference was increasing their hope that their ruse at the shale slide had been completely successful in throwing their pursuers off the track, they had no reason to assume that the Neighbors party would turn back without making an exhaustive search for the new “rich diggings”; and Philip was cannily distrustful of the Neighbors purpose.
“It may be just as you say: that they are merely hungry gold-chasers, breaking their necks to be the earliest stake-drivers in a new district; but then, again, they may not be,” was the way he phrased it for the less apprehensive Bromley. “If they happen to be the other sort—the lawless sort—well, with both of us here to stand up for our rights, they’d be five to our two. We can’t afford to make the odds five to one. I’d rather wait and take the horses and jacks over the range in a snow storm than to run the risk of losing our mine.”
“Meaning that we needn’t lose it if we can muster two to their five?” said Bromley, grinning.
“Meaning that if anybody tries to rob us there’ll be blood on the moon. Get that well ground into your system, Harry.”
“Ho! You are coming on nicely for a sober, peaceable citizen of well-behaved New England,” laughed the play-boy. “But see here, didn’t you tell me once upon a time that you had never fired a gun? If you really believe there is a chance for a row, you’d better waste a few rounds of ammunition finding out what a gun does when you aim it and pull the trigger. It’s likely to surprise you. I’ve shot ducks in the Maryland marshes often enough to know that pretty marksmanship is no heaven-born gift.”
“Thanks,” returned Philip grimly. “That is a sensible idea. Evenings, after we knock off work, we’ll set up a target and you can give me a few lessons.”
Making the most of the shortening days, they had become pioneers, felling trees for the building of a cabin, and breaking the two broncos, in such primitive harness as they could contrive out of the pack-saddle lashings, to drag the logs to a site near the tunnel mouth. Like the drilling and blasting, axe work and cabin building were unfamiliar crafts, to be learned only at a round price paid in the coin of aching backs, stiffened muscles and blistered palms. Nevertheless, at the end of a toiling fortnight they had a one-room cabin roofed in, chimneyed and chinked with clay, a rude stone forge built for the drill sharpening and tempering, and a charcoal pit dug, filled and fired to provide the forge fuel. And though the working days were prolonged to the sunset limit, Philip, methodically thorough in all things, did not fail to save enough daylight for the shooting lesson, setting up a target in the gulch and hammering away at it until he became at least an entered apprentice in the craft and was able to conquer the impulse to shut both eyes tightly when he pulled the trigger.
They were bunking comfortably in the new cabin when they awoke one morning to find the ground white with the first light snowfall. It was a warning that the time had come to dispose of the animals if they were not to be shut in and starved. In his talk with Bromley, Drew, the Leadville mine owner, had named a ranch near the mouth of Chalk Creek where the borrowed saddle horses could be left, and where winter feeding for the jacks might be bargained for; and after a hasty breakfast Philip prepared to set out on the three-days’ trip to the lower altitudes.
“I feel like a yellow dog, letting this herding job fall on you, Phil,” protested the play-boy, as he helped pack a haversack of provisions for the journey. “I’d make you draw straws for it if I had the slightest idea that I could find the way out and back by myself.”