The golden crocodile

Contents

Chapter Page

I. A Confidential Communication 7

II. Into the Whirl 25

Chapter I. A Confidential Communication

MINER’S cabin, built of rude pine logs drawn from the primeval forest of a neighboring gulch, nestles in a sheltered nook of Grizzly Hollow, near the head of Roaring Fork Canyon, up amongst the summits of the great mountains over in the west, beyond the prairies.

The evening shadows have settled deep upon the little mining-camp, whose buildings are congregated on the flat down there, near the bottom of the Hollow, where rush the tumbling waters of Roaring Fork Creek, here the joint volume of a dozen smaller streams meeting at the upper end of the Hollow, after pouring down the steep mountain-sides from the melting snows of the peaks above.

While darkness creeps rapidly over the valley below, the mountain-tops, towering like sentinels into the blue sky, thousands of feet above the little hamlet, are still basking in the glorious crimson rays of a typical sunset of this high, clear atmosphere; and the remnant of winter’s snows, which, even at this late summer-time, still lingers on the

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northern slopes of the higher levels, is now more plainly in view than even in full daylight.

A sound as of the breeze sighing through the pine-trees alone breaks the pleasing stillness of Nature; but, in truth, the air is a perfect calm.

The sound we hear — a dreamy, murmuring sound — is the voice of falling waters. It comes to us from a score of hidden streamlets gurgling down the steep, rocky mountain-sides, beneath the shadows of the dense pine-woods from their sources far up the peaks, where, in deep gulches, and by shady northern slopes, there still lie remnants of mighty snowdrifts piled by the fierce whirling blasts of winter, now slowly defying the midsummer sun’s relentless rays. Those burning rays which there, on the very edge of the snowbank, have nourished into life the beauties of Nature’s mountain flowergarden ; the lovely columbine with pale lavender tint, the brilliant scarlet Indian Head, the sweet primrose, and last, but not least, nestling closest to the snow, the modest violet.

Amidst the tangled depths of the woods, fallen giants of the forest, stretching their mighty lengths athwart the downward-rushing waters, damming them back, create the gentle falls whose music reaches us. The voice of these thousand tiny cataracts is now but a whisper of the dying season; of well-nigh exhausted Nature. With the awakening vigor of spring, the loosening of the icy bands of winter, the dancing cataracts made merry company with the

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grand music of their rushing, foaming volume ; but with the ripening of Nature, at this later season, they have still kept faithful tune, and slowly hushed to softer airs.

Whoever read the signs sculptured by the hand of Nature on the mountains round, knew that once this Hollow was the crater of a vast volcano; that the burning fires deep down within the earth there had found an outlet, and when the fires died low, and lower still, they left this sunken hollow, their deserted workshop, — not quite deserted, though ; for even now there still gushed forth, with clouds of steam as well, from a deep, dark cavern in the mountain-side near by, a mighty, bubbling, boiling spring; a remnant of the earth’s past youthful vigor.

And reading still from other signs one learned of other happenings in the eons past. That when the fires of the earth in her young life had thus smouldered low, the snows from the great mountains around had formed in the Hollow a beautiful lake. That there came a time when the waters of the lake, rising slowly, slowly, had trickled over the edge of the crater, and started for the far-off ocean ; as though bidden by some master-mind to do their share of work, instead of idly staying in the Beautiful Lake.

So the trickling of the rivulet, through millions of years, had carved out the dark canyon with its steep walls, and the waters of the lake had all gone through it to the ocean, leaving as dry land the bed

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of the Lake for the miner’s cabin, whenever he should penetrate through the canyon from the plains far down below, to search for the glittering prize, forced here to the sunlight through the cracks and fissures of the quaking earth, from dark mysterious chaldrons miles beneath, in days when yet the universe was young.

This was the scene.

“ Good-evening, Doctor, you’re just in time. I was going to close up in another two minutes. You ’ve come after letters, I suppose. There are some here for you, and some papers, too. They ’re in the back office. If you ’ll wait one minute, while I fasten the front door, I ’ll go with you and get them; we can go out the other way.”

The speaker is Mr. George Davis, the leading storekeeper of Grizzly Hollow. Mr. Davis, or George, as he is familiarly known in the place, is seated in the front part of his store, enjoying a quiet cigar by himself after the work of the day, every one else having already gone, and, as he says, about to go himself also.

Scattered about on shelves and on the floor, in what to the eye of a stranger appears to be a state of almost hopeless confusion, is the usual stock-intrade of a mining-camp general store; the articles ranging from hairpins to blasting powder.

The person he is addressing as Doctor is Harry Singleton, a young Englishman of perhaps two-andtwenty, but certainly not older, dressed in a wellfitting, though far from new, suit of rough tweed. A shady, wide-brimmed felt hat covers a head of curly brown hair, and his trousers, below the knees, are tucked away into a pair of long, heavy, miner’s boots.

The expression of youthful earnestness on the young Englishman’s face, taken together with the light-gray eyes and clear complexion, contrast very strongly with the stained and weather-beaten, though somewhat philosophic countenance of the other man. The professional title is one of those mining-camp diplomas which such communities are fond of conferring, sometimes only at random, and then again, for some reason considered to be good and sufficient. In Harry Singleton’s case, the fact of his having been a medical student in a London hospital, though temporarily compelled to abandon his work and seek a dry climate for a few years, which matter he had casually mentioned in the camp, had promptly conferred the full honors of his still uncompleted course upon him.

“You might as well sit down and rest for a few minutes,” the storekeeper said, again addressing him, after handing over the letters. “I wasn’t going anywhere myself. I was coming back here to do some writing after closing up. Here’s some cigars; you smoke, don’t you? That’s a pretty good easy-chair, Doctor,” he went on. “Take that and smoke here awhile. It ’s comfortable in here.”

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They smoked on for some minutes in silence, and then the storekeeper started the conversation again.

“ Say, Doctor, I heard you was going to do some work mining soon; that you and old Joe Shelby was taking up the old Silver Ledge claim, what ’s been abandoned so long. How is it? Is that so? ”

The visitor laughed. “ We ’ve re-located the old claim, if you like to call that mining. ”

“ Say, but you ’re going to do some work there, ain’t you? I ’m asking for several reasons, and one of them is because I want to sell you some powder and other stuff for the men. You ’ll want some tools, too, unless the men has them themselves.”

“ Yes, that ’s one of the things I came down about. I ’ve got a list of things in my pocket somewhere. Here it is. Shelby made it out.”

“ Joe Shelby ’s a good man for a partner, Doctor, — a good, square man. I ’ve known Joe a long time. Him and me was together on some of them roaring camps years ago. I suppose now Joe ’s going to put up his share of expenses, ain’t he? Joe’s got money, I know; but he ’s pretty close about it. He ’s made more money at that lumber cutting than he did in mining, though.”

Presently a pause came again in the conversation, and it seemed as if the exchange of ideas had been exhausted, until the storekeeper’s visitor suddenly re-opened the subject.

“By the way, Davis, you were here in the early

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days, weren’t you, when the Silver Ledge was causing so much excitement ? ”

“ You bet I was,” he replied with emphasis, and, as if welcoming an opportunity to recount some of his old experiences to an interested listener, quickly went on.

“Them was times to live in, too; we had a live little camp here then. Of course it warn’t one of them roaring camps like the big ones further west, but a pretty good little town,” and the last words were said in a tone which was meant to convey much more meaning than the words themselves expressed.

“Were you mining at all then? ”

“Yes, and no. That is, I thought I was, but the mine never turned out to be no more than just a hole in the ground; never found no ore.” His companion laughed, and the storekeeper continued, “ I was running store, too, then, just as I am now, but not in this building. I was way over on the other side of the street, next to where Donovan’s saloon is now. After the big fire burned out that side, I moved here. There was barrels of money in my business then; we got way-up prices for everything. But it didn’t do me and my partner much good, for we sunk all we made in the mining I was telling of.”

“Were you working anywhere about here? ” asked his listener.

“Why, yes, you know where them old workings is in Ruby Gulch, as you turn the corner from the

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Ida Elmore? Well, right there. We just made sure we had the extension of the main lode of the big Spread Eagle Mine, and was going to strike it every day for a year, so we thought; and nothing made us change our opinions ’cept our money all giving out. And you was asking about the Silver Ledge. Them was just the best days for the Silver Ledge. They was getting the silver out in whole chunks. One time the manager got so excited when they struck a terrible rich pocket, that they say he telegraphed to parties in London and New York he know’d, that he guessed he ’d struck the Bank of England.”

The visitor laughed.

“Well, I believe that's a true story, though,” the storekeeper added, as if he thought his visitor suspected him of a little exaggeration; “any way the stock boomed away up all of a sudden; just went out of sight. But,” and here he assumed a somewhat confidential air, “that there was just about the last pocket as ever they found in the old Silver Ledge. I heard all about the boom in that stock from a man what came out here from New York, and stayed a couple of weeks. He bought in at top prices, and then come to see why she ’d petered out so sudden. I guess, though, he did n’t know much more when he left than when he came.”

“But they didn’t stop working at that time; I mean, after the rich pockets came to an end, did they?”

“O Lord, no! Why, them as knows says the owners spent half as much money looking for more of them rich spots as was ever took from the mine before she played out.

“ Oh, you can’t ever tell how much they was supposed to have took out,” explained the storekeeper, presently, in answer to further questioning. “ Maybe a million and a half, or p’raps two millions. You see the Company had other claims besides the Silver Ledge, and the returns was all made together.

“Mining’s a queer business, ain’t it?” observed Mr. Davis, with a meditative air, and not as if asking a question, after there had been again a little pause in the conversation. “P’raps, now, after spending all that money looking for more of them rich spots, them workings might have stopped just the length of a pick-handle from what they was after.” And Davis looked at his companion as if this last observation was intended as a question, but, getting no answer, went on to put the matter plainer. “ P’raps that ’s what you and Joe Shelby ’s been figuring out, Doctor, is it? Joe’s a pretty good miner, and I guess you know something about it, don’t you? ”

“I’ve not had any practical experience; but I learned a little at the Mining School in California, when first I came out from England. I was there for about a year. I ’ve heard, though,” he added, laughing, “you don’t think much of what one picks up that way. ”

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“ Oh, I did n’t know before as you ’d learned assaying and that. Then did you and Joe find anything in the old workings what would make you think something’s left there still?”

“Oh, no, nothing at all,” he answered; “but we ’ve got the plans, showing the old workings and where the rich ore came out, and as I ’m all theory, I explained some ideas I had to Shelby, and he said he ’d risk a little along with me in some places which the old workings had passed by. The old owners never got any title to the ground, so we ’ve taken it up again. And, ” — he concluded ; speaking with an air of youthful enthusiasm, which the quick glance of the storekeeper promptly noted, — “ it makes me feel much more interested in the camp to be actually doing something, like everybody else.”

“I’m very glad to hear this, Doctor. And while we ’re talking about it, just let me give you a word of advice, though, maybe, you don’t need it, having Joe Shelby for a partner. An old partner of mine used always to say, there was only one way to hold a mine what had anything in it, and that was to marry the daughter of the biggest lawyer in the next town, and buy out a gun-store at the same time. But I guess he was talking about some tough place he was in, where they had fights and disputes all the time. ’T ain’t that way here, not very much, anyway; still, there always will be disputes in the business, and even just now there ’s things coming up here. Now you ’re going into mining yourself,” — and here Mr. Davis lowered his voice, as if this was something confidential he was about to say, — “you ’ll learn some things you ’d never know of when you was only just an outsider in the camp. Right now,” and he dropped his voice still lower, “there ’s a bit of trouble coming on here, and I think I ought to tell you.”

“Trouble? What about?” asked the visitor, quickly, and in a tone indicating great surprise, at the same time lowering his voice as the other had done.

The storekeeper drew his chair very close.

“ It ’s this way,” — the words were but little above a whisper now, — “there’s always been some disputes up there to Ruby Gulch, about the lines for the claims. The miners agreed not to go fighting about it in court, but to settle it among theirselves. Some of the boys — poor men, too — as has a claim in there, and been working for over a year without getting pay, last month got on to rich ground, and it looks as if they ’d get something back at last for their work. Then up comes a sneak of a fellow what ’s been run out of camps before, and they find him a-nosing round. He ’s been up there about two weeks, they say, — I don’t know him myself, but only what I ’m told. Seems he ’s just trying a game to rob those poor boys.”

Harry Singleton had followed the storekeeper with very close interest, and by the time the end had come, his feelings, it seemed, were roused to a i8

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pitch of indignation, for he broke out with what really seemed to be unnecessary vigor.

“ What a blanked shame ! ” he exclaimed, the enthusiasm of youth, and a feeling of sympathy created by his own recent advent into an actual mining adventure, probably combining to stimulate his feelings.

“ Hush ! don’t talk too loud, Doctor!” protested the storekeeper, with a cautioning gesture; for the visitor’s roused feelings had caused him to forget the previous injunctions. “ Walls is thin in these buildings, and there’s always some sneaks in every camp; men as perhaps you ’d never think of.”

“ But what can they do about it ? ” asked the young Englishman, in a whisper, as he adopted the caution.

Mr. Davis did not answer for a few moments. Then he rose from his seat, went to an iron safe standing in one corner of the office they were sitting in, and, turning the combination for a few seconds, opened the heavy door, and, taking from an inner drawer a bundle of papers, selected one. “This,” he said, returning to his seat, laying the paper unopened, but pointing to it on the table, speaking slowly and deliberately, “is the secret rules of this camp, as has been made to preserve order and square dealing.”

His companion looked at the paper as if to ask if he might see the inside.

Davis appeared to read his thoughts. “No, I

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1 9 can’t show the inside to you; only members of the order knows them. You ’ll be qualified to join after being the owner of a claim for three months, and you ’ll have to join. We don’t let every one in, but only them as the rest feels can be trusted.”

“ Could n’t I join now without waiting for three months ? ”

“ Never could be done,” the storekeeper replied with a shake of the head. “ Must go by the rules ; and though I ’m the president, I can’t do nothing without consulting the committee. But I ’ll tell you what I can do, maybe,” — and here he dropped his voice almost out of hearing, — “I can invite you to the meeting to be held to-morrow evening.”

“What meeting? ” he asked eagerly.

“The meeting about this Ruby Gulch trouble; the boys is so fired up they want something done right away, and I expect they ’re right. Delays is dangerous. This ain’t a meeting of the regular society,” Mr. Davis went on to explain, “but just gotten up in a hurry by the Ruby Gulch parties. I don’t know who ’ll be there except Ed Watson; but I just promised to go, because Ed wanted me. He knows the men up there; I ain’t well acquainted with them.”

“Where is it to be? ”

“Under Mike Donovan’s saloon. If you say you’ll come, why, I ’ll give you the pass-words.”

“Of course I’d like to come,” he answered, now completely in earnest.

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“ Maybe you won’t know any of the boys there; but there ’ s some of ’ em knows who you are. There ’ 11 only be about fifteen. We like to keep these things quiet, and then, whatever happens, why, there ’s fewer to say they didn’t know nothing about it.” And here Mr. Davis nodded his head significantly. “That’s all there is to say about it now. But,” — speaking now in very low tones indeed, — “I didn’t tell you how to get in, though. You just go into the yard from the gate at the rear end of the lot ; walk up to the building, and to the left of the back door you ’ll see steps leading downstairs. There ain’t no door at the top of the stairs, only a little gate, but that ’ll be open. Follow down the steps until you meet a man what asks for the pass-word. It ’ll be quite dark on the stairs, but they ’re easy to get down. This is the pass-words.” The storekeeper whispered them in his ear.

They were simple enough; just these: Nineteen, twenty-nine. He repeated them to himself several times to fix them in his memory.

“There’s another thing; the time’s ten sharp; don’t be late. And one thing more I want to tell you particular about, — I don’t want you to say nothing to Joe Shelby about this. He ’s a kind of a crank in some things, and though the boys likes him first-rate, they ’d rather not have him know what we was doing. You can tell him you ’re down-town having a game of pool. You do play once in a while, don’t you?”

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“Oh, I needn’t say anything to him about it; there’s no reason why I should tell him.” And Harry Singleton spoke with a touch of youthful feeling, a tinge of resentment, perhaps, at the suggestion which Mr. Davis’s words seemed to convey, that he, Harry Singleton, should think necessary to make a confidant of his old partner in mere personal matters.

“Well, that’s all right, then. And now it’s getting pretty late, so p’raps you ’ll want to be going. You haven’t forgotten them pass-words, have you ? ”

He showed that he had not, and passing out through the back-door, the two were soon in the street.

“I guess you take the .opposite way to me, don’t you ? ” said Davis.

“Yes, I go across the bridge.”

“Well, then, good-night.”

“Good-night,” he replied, and they parted.

The hour was late, that is, late for being out in the street; the stores were all closed, but as Harry Singleton passed along, every now and then his steps crossed a stream of light blazing out of some gambling den or gaudy drinking saloon. The clink of glasses and rattle of the dice-box were the music of those hours, and on, perhaps, until daylight. Those sounds, however, had become familiar to his ear, and did not distract him, for he confined his share of them to an

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occasional game of billiards in one of the quieter resorts.

He came to the end of the little street, crossed the rustic bridge over the Roaring Fork, and, turning to the right, struck the trail leading to the house he and his partner had bought, to be nearer the claim than the town. The distance was something over a mile.

As he walked along he mused on the events of the evening, his confidential interview with Davis, and the meeting to be held to-morrow evening. He felt an unusual elation of spirits, as if the camp had suddenly become partly his own, and he responsible for things going aright.

“It ’s a good system, this, ,, he said to himself; “these miners know how to do things. It’s a — ” and here he used a word which the state of his feelings made too strong to be written. “It’s a shame,” he said, “trying to do these men out of what they ’ve slaved for so long. A hint from this committee to-morrow night may make the fellow clear out. Davis is a good fellow; I suppose he wants to make me feel interested in everything in the camp. What the deuce, though, made him think I ’d want to tell Shelby for, after he had said the thing was to be kept quiet. I suppose there might be a row if the fellow liked to make one, and if he knew who the men were. But I suspect a man who gets run out like that thinks it best to stay away altogether. ”

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As he neared the irregular-shaped log-cabin he and his partner had bought, he noticed the light go out in the room where his partner slept. “ It looks as if Shelby had just gone to his room,” he remarked to himself. “I suppose the front door won’t be locked, for I haven’t any key with me, or I shall have to wake up the Chinaman. And, by Jove! I forgot all about that list of stores for the kitchen that he wanted. Hang it ! that comes of talking so much with Davis about other things. We ’ll have to do without the stores till to-morrow.”

The key had been left in the front door for him ; so there was no necessity to awaken any one. The small reading lamp was left lighted in the front room.

“I ’ll look over these letters I got before I turn in,” he said. “Ah! by Jove!” and then he read aloud a scrap from one of them. “Sissy ’s engaged to be married in Bombay. Ernest thinks it ’s an awful shame, as this will break up his bachelor household. But his regiment ’s ordered to Peshawur in three months, so that Sissy will be married before he leaves. Girls at home both well. They all want me to be sure and come back in the spring. Dr. Hopkins says I must be careful of the night air in the mountains, and if there are any pine-trees I ought to sit under them as much as possible when the sun’s out. It ’s the new cure for weak lungs! Very much interested, too, in what I write about mining in the mountains.”

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There were other things in the letter as well. Something, too, about the money being sent he had written for, part of the little fortune he had come into when of age. He needed some of this now for the enterprise he was just entering upon.

Chapter II. Into The Whirl

H IS enthusiasm of last evening had abated nothing as Harry Singleton rode in the dark down the trail to keep the appointment at ten o’clock on the following evening.

He turned quietly into the back-yard of Mike Donovan’s saloon, and tied up his horse. The entrance to the yard was in a good place to escape notice from passers-by, for the land ran back to a part of the street which had not been built upon, and was deserted at night.

Apparently others had already arrived, for several horses were tied up, and even while he was fastening his, two men rode in, eyeing him closely as they proceeded to secure theirs. He walked on towards the back of the building, and taking the direction given by Davis last evening, was soon carefully moving, step by step, down the stairway. He turned a comer, and saw a light glimmering some distance off ; he was at the bottom of the stairs.

A rough voice hailed him, and a figure stepped into the passage-way between himself and the distant light.

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“ Nineteen, twenty-nine,” he promptly answered.

“Pass on, right ahead to the light,” the answer came, and the figure stepped aside.

He moved on, and when he had gone only a few paces he heard the same challenge and answer repeated behind him. Probably, he thought, the other men who rode into the yard as he did were following. He kept on towards the light, and on reaching it found that he was in a large underground store-room, with thick, heavy walls, and the floor above supported by rows of pillars. Between these pillars, at the far end of the room, he could see a small knot of men were gathered. This was evidently the meeting. The room was so large that the light made only a faint glimmer. He thought he remembered now where he was; this was the basement of what had formerly been a large building erected during the palmy days, as he had heard, and afterwards being burned down, only inferior wooden buildings had been put up. This basement now went with Mike Donovan’s saloon, and he used what little of it he required. The rest was almost vacant, except that barrels and kegs were scattered round. The place was well suited for such a meeting.

“Speak quietly,” said Davis, in a lowered tone of voice, as they met, the storekeeper having come forward on seeing him enter.

Singleton glanced round the room to see if there was any one else he knew; and the storekeeper, notic-

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ing this, whispered, “ You know Watson over there,’’ pointing out one of those already present.

He looked in the direction indicated, and thought he recognized the person whose name had been mentioned; but the light from the candle, stuck in an empty bottle, was very faint.

Most of the men, of whom about a dozen were already there, were standing or sitting round in twos and threes, whispering to each other, or speaking in undertones, and using expressions which, taken together with the gestures accompanying the words, seemed to indicate threats of some sort.

Seating himself upon an empty box, he supposed they must be waiting for others to come, as the eyes of those present were being turned, every few minutes, towards the light at the other end of the room opposite the passage.