"Let her blow," retorted Davy. "I've been in two circus blow-downs, and we had to stake the elephants down to keep 'em from blowing over into Texas."
Landy was a good loser. He grinned, and began wrestling the trunks. All of Davy's plunder was moved into the fireplace room.
"We will live in here this winter, and when spring comes, we can expand into the other room or out on the porch," explained Welborn. "And now, before you begin to unpack, I want you to see what Jim and I have been doing this last week. Let's take a look at the pump and engine before a snow comes and covers it all." Welborn led the way down near the brink of the canyon. "Over on the other side of the creek, you can see a shack. I headquartered there for several months and panned out some dust. From there I could see this opening here that looked like it had a floor, and maybe some prospects. Well, I climbed those trees down by the creek, but could not quite see what I wanted. As the madman was working over here, I climbed and slipped, and cut steps in the rock face of the cliff, on yon side. I wormed and twisted around until I got up to that coulee, and sure enough, it was what I thought. The floor of the old stream bed that had been thrown out of line and out of use, by some secondary action in mountain-making.
"Ripple Creek has been noted for its placer workings. It has been panned and panned, many times, and always yields something. But here was a part of the stream bed that was virgin, that had never seen a miner or a pan. I walked over it and tested it. It stood the test. When it was the bed of the stream, gold was being ground out, washed out and carried down stream from the quartz-gold veins above. There it was! I couldn't get to it—couldn't work it without an entrance from this side of the creek. Landy has told you how I acquired the entrance, and a farm and a house with it." Still talking, Welborn led his guest back in the ravine back of the house, then through a tunnel in the razor-edge cliff, the party walked out on the floor of the old stream bed. "Jim and I made that tunnel. We dragged those logs through it, to make a foundation for the engine and pump. Now all we have to do, is blast out a sort of well-hole down at the creek so that the intake will be on the claim, and we are all set for production. We can do this today. Tomorrow, we will have water back on this old stream bed. Jim and I will take a hand drill, dynamite, fuse and caps into the gorge, and bust out a space about as big as a washtub, while you and Landy are unpacking your plunder. Build a fire, Landy, to take the chill off."
Unpacking suited Davy. While Landy brought in some pine knots and lighted a fire against the charred backlog, Davy wrestled the dufflebag open and began to take out the contents. It was a hodge-podge of parts of every old costume he had ever used. The trunks and suitcases yielded good property. "There," he pointed to a separate pile, "there is my notion of where I was going, without seeing the place. That's a sleeping bag and these are a pair of Hudson Bay blankets. You see, I didn't know if I was to sleep out of doors or sleep in a barn—surely, I didn't plan that it was a place like this! Here's my mackinaw, boots, and mittens, and here's my hardware." He produced a small rifle that had been packed between the blankets and handed it to Landy for his inspection. "She's a thirty caliber, carries two hundred yards at point blank and won't kick over a little fellow like me.
"And this is what I want you to see in particular." Davy fumbled in the keyster and brought out a small saddle with a fair leather bridle, to match. It was not a pad saddle such as jockey's ride, nor yet a civilian outfit without horn and only one web. It was a genuine western, with high horn and high cantle and two cinches, but much reduced in every dimension. "Will that fit the pony you saw over at the B-line?"
Landy looked the saddle over carefully. "Hit's made by a saddle-maker all right, and will fit that hoss to a tee. They used to have some fancy saddles back in the early days. I've seen 'em that cost a thousand—Chauchaua—made and covered with silver do dads, en maybe they'd have 'em flung on a hoss that wasn't wuth his feed. I mind the time when ole Lem Hawks made a right smart lot of change, a-sellin' ole saddles that he swore come out'n the Custer massacre. Lem finally got to believin' that he was a survivor of that carnage.
"They finally caught up with Lem however. He had sold more saddles than Custer had men, and the old cow saddles with their big horns and high cantles didn't look like an army saddle nohow. But Lem kept right on a-bein' a survivor—him en about a thousand others. Hit's like Lincoln's bodyguards—thar's been more of them folks died than Grant had in his whole army. Yer saddle is all right, son, and we shore ort to talk the B-line folks outa that little hoss."
"I want to take the saddle over when we go," said Davy enthusiastically. "They could see how it fit, and that might influence their decision. I could put it on one of the burros and ride it over."
Landy laughed uproarously. "Why son, ye wouldn't git thar by Febwary. A burro ain't geared to ride en go places. He will foller ye right up the side of a glacier, but he ain't mentally constructed to take the lead. Why, if ye was on one of 'em, backward, en paddlin' him with a clapboard, he'd back right up agin hit."