But no! There was no hope for him. The men hated him because of his maimed and distorted face. They despised him, possibly because he did not permit himself to resent their conduct with his revolver, and thus give them an excuse for killing him. He could not leave the camp and make his way without supplies to the nearest civilized community. There was nothing for him to do but to work his miserable claim, and bear the immense and awful loneliness of his lot. As Monty thought over the situation and saw the hopelessness of it, his breath came in quick gasps until he broke into a sob, and the tears flowed down his scarred and grimy cheeks.
A low, inquiring mew drew his attention for a moment from his woes. The camp cat—a ragged, disreputable animal, who owned no master, and rejected all friendly advances—stood in the door of Monty's cabin, with an interrogative tail pointing to the zenith and a friendly arch in his shabby back.
Monty had often tried to make friends with the cat, but Tom had repulsed him as coldly as the miners themselves. Now in his loneliness the man was glad to be spoken to, even by the camp cat; and he called it to him, though without any expectation that the animal would come to him. But Tom, stalking slowly into the cabin, sprang after a moment's hesitation into Monty's bunk, and purring loudly in a hoarse voice, as one by whom the accomplishment of purring had long been neglected, gently and tentatively licked the man's face, and kneaded his throat with two soft and caressing paws. A vast sob shook both Monty and the cat. The man put his arms around the animal, and hugging him closely, kissed his head. The cat purred louder than ever, and presently laying his head against Monty's cheek, he drew a long breath and sank into a peaceful slumber.
Monty was himself again. He was no longer alone. Tom, the cat, had come to him in the hour of his agony and had brought the solace of a love that did not heed his ugliness. Henceforth he would never be wholly alone, no matter how strictly the men might enforce their boycott against him. He no longer cared what they might do or say. He felt the warm breath of the friendly animal on his cheek. The remnant of its right ear twitched from time to time and tickled his lip. The long sinewy paws pressed against his neck trembled nervously, as the cat dreamed of stalking fat sparrows, or of stealing fried fish. Its hoarse croupy purr sounded like the sweetest music to the lonely man. "There's you and me, and me and you, Tom!" said Monty, stroking the cat's ragged and crumpled fur. "We'll stick together, and neither of us won't care a cuss what them low-down fellows says or does. You and me'll be all the world to one another. God bless you forever for coming to me this night."
From that time onward, Monte Carlo and Tom were the most intimate of friends. Wherever the man went the cat followed. When he was working in the shallow trench, where the sparse gold dust was found, Tom sat or slept on the edge of the trench, and occasionally reminded Monty of the presence of a friend, by the soft crooning sound which a mother cat makes to her newborn kittens. The two shared their noon meal together; and it was said by those who professed to have watched them that the cat always had the first choice of food, while the man contented himself with what his comrade rejected. In the evening Monty and Tom sat together at the door of the cabin, and conversed in low tones of any subject that happened to interest them for the time being. Monty set forth his political and social views, and the cat, listening with attention, mewed assent, or more rarely expressed an opposite opinion by the short, sharp mew, or an unmistakable oath.
Once or twice a week Monty was compelled to visit the saloon for groceries and other necessities. He always made these visits when the men of the camp were working in their claims; and he was invariably accompanied by Tom, who trotted by his side, and sprang on his shoulder while he made his purchases. The saloon keeper declared that when once by accident he gave Monty the wrong change, Tom loudly called his friend's attention to the error and insisted that it should be rectified. "That there cat," said the saloon keeper to his assembled guests on the following evening, "ain't no ordinary cat, for it stands to reason that if he was he wouldn't chum with Monty. A cat that takes up with such a pal, and that talks pretty near as well as you or me, or any other Christian is, according to what I learned at Sunday School, possessed with the devil. You mark my word, Monty sold his soul to that pretended cat, and presently he'll be shown a pocket chuck full of nuggets, and will go home with his ill-gotten gains while we stay here and starve."
The feeling that there was something uncanny in the relations that existed between Monte Carlo and the cat gradually spread through the camp. While no man condescended to speak to the boycotted Monty, a close watch was kept upon him. Slippery Jim asserted that he had heard Monty and Tom discuss the characters of nearly every man in the camp, while he was concealed one evening in the tall grass near Monty's cabin.
"First," said Jim, "Monty asked kind o' careless like, 'What may be your opinion of that there Big Simpson?' The cat, he just swears sort of contemptuous, and then Monty says, 'Jest so! That's what I've always said about him; and I calculated that a cat of your intelligence would say the same thing.' By and by Monty says, 'What's that you're saying about Red-haired Dick? You think he'd steal mice from a blind cat, and then lay it on the dog? Well! my son! I don't say he wouldn't. He's about as mean as they make 'em, and if I was you I wouldn't trust him with a last year's bone!' Then they kept on jawing to each other about this and that, and exchanging views about politics and religion, till after a while Tom lets out a yowl that sounded as if it was meant for a big laugh. Monty, he laughed too; and then he says, 'I never thought you would have noticed it, but that's exactly what Slippery Jim does every time he gets a chance.'
"I don't know," continued Jim, "what they were referring to, but I do know that Monty and the cat talk together just as easy as you and me could talk, and I say that if it's come to this, that we're going to allow an idiot of a man and a devil of a cat to take away the characters of respectable gentlemen, we'd better knuckle down and beg Monty to take charge of this camp and to treat us like so many Injun squaws."
Other miners followed Slippery Jim's example, in watching and listening to his conversations with the cat, and the indignation against the animal and his companion grew deep and bitter. It was decided that the scandal of an ostentatious friendship between a boycotted man and a cat that was unquestionably possessed by the devil must be ended. The suggestion that the cat should be shot would undoubtedly have been carried out, had it not been that Boston, who was a spiritualist, asserted that the animal could be hit only by a silver bullet. The camp would gladly have expended a silver bullet in so good a cause, but there was not a particle of silver in the camp, except what was contained in two or three silver watches.