The Lost Cabin Mine

by Frederick Niven

sense of exhilaration filled me, as I strolled down town that evening, which I can only ascribe to the rare atmosphere of that part of the world. It was certainly not due to any improvement in my financial condition, nor to any hope of "making my pile" speedily, and to "make a pile" is the predominating thought in men's minds there, with an intensity that is known in few other lands. I was pondering the story of the Lost Cabin Mine as I went, and in my own mind had come to the decision that Apache Kid and his comrade knew the whereabouts of that bonanza. Canlan, I argued, if he knew its locality at all, must have come by his news before he fell in with his rivals on the waggon road, for after that, according to the hotel-keeper's narrative, he had had no speech with the dying man.

I was in the midst of these reflections when I turned into Baker Street, the main street of Baker City. There was a wonderful bustle there; men were coming and going on either sidewalk thick as bees in hiving time; the golden air of evening was laden with the perfume of cigars; indeed, the blue of the smoke never seemed to fly clear of Baker Street on the evenings; and the sound of the many phonographs that thrust their trumpets out from all the stores on that thoroughfare, added to the din of voices and laughter, rose above the sounds of talk, to be precise, with a barbaric medley of hoarse songs and throaty recitations. So much for the sidewalks. In the middle of the street, to cross which one had to wade knee-deep in sand, pack-horses were constantly coming and going and groaning teams arriving from the mountains. To add to the barbarous nature of the scene, now and again an Indian would go by, not with feathered head-dress as in former days, but with a gaudy kerchief bound about his head, tinsel glittering here and there about his half-savage, half-civilised garb, and a pennon of dust following the quick patter of his pony's hoofs. I walked the length of Baker Street and then turned, walking back again with a numb pain suddenly in my heart, for as I turned right about I saw the great, quiet hills far off, and beyond them the ineffable blue of the sky. And there is something in me that makes me always fall silent when amidst the din of men I see the enduring, uncomplaining, undesiring hills. So I went back to the hotel again, and without passing through the bar but going around the house, found the rear verandah untenanted, with its half dozen vacant chairs, and there I sat down to watch the twilight change the hills. But I had not been seated long when a small set man, smelling very strongly of whisky, came out with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and, leaning against one of the verandah props, looked up at the hills, spitting at regular intervals far out into the sand and slowly ruminating a chew of tobacco.

"Canlan, for a certainty," I said to myself, when he, looking toward the door from which he had emerged, attracted by a sudden louder outbreak of voices and rattling of chairs within, revealed to me a face very sorely pock-marked, as was easily seen with the lamplight streaming out on him from the bar. On seeing me he made some remark on the evening, came over and sat down beside me, and asked me why I sat at the back of the hotel instead of at the front.

"Because one can see the hills from here," said I.

He grunted and remarked that a man would do better to sit at the front and see what was going on in the town. Then he rose and, walking to and fro, flung remarks to me, in passing, regarding the doings in the city and the mines and so forth, the local gossip of the place. He had just reverted to his first theme of the absurdity of sitting at the rear of the house when out came Apache Kid and Donoghue and threw themselves into the chairs near me, Donoghue taking the one beside me which Canlan had just vacated. If Canlan thought a man a fool for choosing the rear instead of the front, he was evidently, nevertheless, content to be a fool himself, for after one or two peregrinations and expectorations he drew a chair to the front of the verandah and seated himself, half turned towards us, and began amusing himself with tilting the chair to and fro like a rocker. The valley was all in shadow now, and as we sat there in the silence the moon swam up in the middle of one of the clefts of the mountains, silhouetting for a brief space, ere it left them for the open sky, the ragged edge of the tree-tops in the highest forest.

Apache Kid muttered something, Donoghue growled, "What say?" And it surprised me somewhat to hear the reply: "O! I was only saying 'with how sad steps, O moon, thou climb'st the skies.' It's lonesome-like, up there, Larry."

"Aye! Lonesome!" replied Larry with a sigh.

A fifth man joined us then, and, hearing this, remarked: "A man thinks powerful up there."

"That's no lie," Donoghue growled, and so the conversation, if conversation you can call it, went on, interspersed with long spaces of silence, broken only by the gurgling of the newcomer's pipe and Canlan's "spit, spit" which came quicker now. Men are prone in such times as these to sit and exchange truisms instead of carrying on any manner of conversation. Yet to me, not long in the country, there was a touch of mystery in even the truisms.