There was an added heartiness in their welcome, therefore, when Joe proudly introduced him; and though Peter threw out hints about sleeping in the hay-loft that night and taking himself off the first thing in the morning, my mother scouted the idea, telling him how she had long desired to make his acquaintance, and intimating that she should take it as a very poor compliment to herself if he should run off the moment she got home.
So Peter, set quite at his ease, said no more about it, but went back into the kitchen, whence he presently issued again to announce that supper was ready.
A very hearty and a very merry supper it was, too, and long and animated was the talk which followed, as we sat before the open fire that evening.
“I feel almost bewildered,”said my father, “when I think of the amount and the variety of the work we have before us; it is astonishing that the turning of that stream should carry with it so many consequences, as I foresee it will—that and Tom Connor’s strike.”
“There’s no end to it!”cried Joe, jumping out of his chair, striding up and down the room, and, for the last time in this history, rumpling his hair in his excitement. “There’s no end to it! There’s the hay-corral to enlarge—rock hauling all winter for you and me, Phil! We shall need a new ice-pond; for this new water-supply won’t freeze up in winter like the old one did! Then, when the ‘forty rods’ dries up, there will be the extension of our ditches down there; besides making a first-class road to bring all the travel our way—plenty of work in that, too! Then, when we bring the old lake-benches under cultivation, there will be new headgates needed and two new ditches to lay out, besides breaking the ground! Then——Oh, what’s the use? There’s no end to it—just no end to it!”
Joe was quite right. There was, and there still seems to be, no end to it.
The effect of Tom Connor’s strike on Mount Lincoln was just what my father had predicted: our whole district took a great stride forward; the mountains swarmed with prospectors; the town of Sulphide hummed with business; our new friend, Yetmore, doing a thriving trade, while our old friend, Mrs. Appleby, followed close behind, a good second.
As for Tom, himself, he is one of our local capitalists now, but he is the same old Tom for all that. Just as he used to do when he was poor, so he continues to do now he is rich: any tale of distress will empty his pocket on the spot. Though my father remonstrates with him sometimes, Tom only laughs and remarks that it is no use trying to teach old dogs new tricks; and moreover he does not see why he should not spend his money to suit himself. And so he goes his own way, more than satisfied with the knowledge that every man, woman and child in the district counts Tom Connor as a friend.
The fate of those two poor ore-thieves was so horrible that I hesitate to mention it. It was six months later that a prospector on one of the northern spurs of Lincoln came upon two dead bodies. One, a club-footed man, had been shot through the head; the other, unmistakably Long John, was lying on his back, an empty revolver beside him, and one foot caught in a bear-trap. Though the truth will never be known, the presumption is that, setting the stolen trap in a deer run in the hope of catching a deer, they had got into a quarrel; Clubfoot, striking at his companion, had caused him to step backward into the trap, when, in his pain and rage, Long John had whipped out his revolver and shot the other. What his own fate must have been is too dreadful to contemplate.