Claim Number One

by George W. Ogden

The lowest elevation on the doctor’s claim was several hundred feet above the river, from which he hauled the water which he drank and used for culinary purposes. If there was wealth in the land and rocks, nature had masked it very well indeed. The pick and the hammer revealed nothing; long hours of prying and exploring yielded no gleam of metal to confirm his fast-shrinking belief that he had pitched on something good.

His only comfort in those first days was the thought of the money which he had taken from Shanklin, with the aid of the gambler’s own honest little die. That cash was now safe in the bank at Meander. There was enough of it, everything else failing, to take him–and somebody–back to his own place when she was ready to go; enough to do that and get the automobile, take the world on its vain side, and pull success away from it. He was able for it now; no doubt of his ability to climb over any obstacle whatever remained after his wrestling match with the river in the Buckhorn Cañon. There was no job ahead of him that he could even imagine, as big as that.

Nobody had come forward to make him an offer for his place. Jerry Boyle had not appeared, nothing had been seen of the man who accosted him at the window the morning he filed. Although he had remained in Meander two days after that event, nobody had approached him in regard to the land which so many had seemed anxious to get before it came into 211 his ownership. Boyle he had not seen since the evening Dr. Slavens and Agnes met him in the gorge riding in such anxious haste.

Perhaps the value of the claim, if value lay in it, was the secret of a few, and those few had joined forces to starve out his courage and hope. If nobody came forward with a voluntary offer for the land, it never would be worth proving up on and paying the government the price asked for it. All over that country there was better land to be had without cost.

As the days slipped past and nobody appeared with ten thousand dollars bulging his pockets, Slavens began to talk to himself among the solitudes of his desert. He called himself a foremost example of stupidity and thick-headedness for not giving ear to the man who wanted to talk business the day he filed on that outcast corner of the earth. Then, growing stubborn, he would determine to pay the government the purchase price, clean up on it at once, and take title to it. Then, if it had the stuff in it, they might come around with some sort of offer in time.

No matter; he would stick to it himself until winter. That always was his final conclusion, influenced, perhaps, by a hope that the roughness of winter would speedily convince “somebody” that roses and dreams of roses belonged to the summer. He would have nothing more to pay on the homestead for a year. And much could happen in a year, in a day; even an hour. 212

Slavens had a good tent in a sheltered place, which he believed he could make comfortable for winter, and he meant to send for some books. Meantime, he had tobacco to smoke and a rifle to practice with, and prospects ahead, no matter which way the cat might jump.

The doctor’s target practice was a strong contributing force to the general belief among his neighbors that he was deranged. They said he imagined that he was repelling invaders from his claim, which would be valuable, maybe, to a man who wanted to start a rattlesnake farm. But Slavens had a motive, more weighty than the pastime that this seemingly idle pursuit afforded. There was a time of settlement ahead between him and Jerry Boyle for the part the Governor’s son had borne in his assault. When the day for that adjustment came, Slavens intended to seek it.

Concerning Shanklin, he was in a degree satisfied with what he had done. The loss of that much money, he believed, was a greater drain on the old crook than a gallon of blood. Slavens felt that it hurt Shanklin in the gambler’s one sensitive spot. There was a great deal owing to him yet from that man, in spite of what he had forced Shanklin to pay, and he meant to collect the balance before he left that state.

So the rifle practice went ahead, day by day, supplemented by a turn now and then with Hun Shanklin’s old black pistol, which Mackenzie had turned over to Slavens as part of his lawful spoil.