CHAPTER XX
THE GOBLET SURRENDERS ITS SECRET
A TOWN had grown and was called Summit City because Beatrice Corliss, with unlimited wealth at her beck and call, had willed it. Two other settlements began to materialize and take form at the ends of Sunrise Pass because Bill Steele, with large plans in his head, willed them into being. And now a third town of which no one thought yesterday, a town at Hell's Goblet, sprang almost overnight into existence, a feverish, clamouring, strident town, insistent upon crowding its way into the world because omnipotent circumstance shouted for it and beckoned it in. A certain word went echoing through the woods, from the Goblet to Camp Corliss and the Junction; to White Rock and the railroad towns up and down the transcontinental line; across the mountains to Grey Horse and Copperville and Gridley, and wherever it went men laid down their work and listened to it and felt it sweep through their imaginations even as it had swept through the forests, electrifying them. And the word was Gold.
Bill Steele suddenly was no longer the mad Steele, a fool and a busybody. He was a man to cultivate, a man whose slightest word should be caught and brooded over, a man to point out gravely and in envy. Bill Steele had found gold at the Goblet where from the first he had known it was waiting for him.
Gold, and Bill Steele had found it. The man who finds gold is no fool in the eye of his neighbour. And Bill Steele had known it was here all of the time, had known it for full five years! That was the incredible thing to those who did not know the man. But such as Ed Hurley, mine superintendent now at the Royal Flush, as Steele had named his strike, understood. Five years ago Steele had not needed money, his pockets being sufficiently plump at the time. Furthermore, just as he had come to be rather sure that he had made a discovery of considerable importance, he had a telegram from a friend down in Mexico. That friend was in trouble and Bill Steele, heeding the call, caught the first train for the Southland.
"Which," said Hurley, "is just exactly Bill's way of doing business."
Beatrice herself had word … not of the town which already was taking form temporarily and very crudely … but of the discovery of gold from Steele himself.
"It's a sure bonanza," he had chuckled at her over his telephone line. "The prettiest thing you ever saw unless it be the dainty colouring at times mounting to your majesty's cheek, in honour of which, by the way, I've named it the Royal Flush. A sure winner, eh, Trixie?"
"Puns are hideous!" said Beatrice, for the first time, so considerable was her emotion, replying to Steele's voice along the wire.
Boom Town, it grew to be named, this sudden human swarm on an upland above Steele's eighty acres. It sprang into being full fledged and noisy, complete and self-sufficient, the instant materialization of a word. It might have drawn its own characteristics from the turbulent stream on whose banks it stood, impatient of restraint, rebellious minded, lawlessly inclined but yielding with fierce grumblings to that which kept it in its rugged channel. Almost in the first hour of its existence Boom Town saw one of its denizens killed by another who later was to hang for the deed. Born from tumultuous blood it was to be in its joys as well as in its struggles violent. Good men came into it and remained and with them came other men, who also remained. In one thing only were all alike: each sought to come before the others to other gold.
"It's been washing down the river for a thousand years," they said, and their haste knew no bounds to come to the higher lands, to search eager eyed for other veins or pockets, to drive a triumphant pick fair and square down into the heart of the mother lode. And they were not without their quota of success; here in the wildest of the wild lands of the Thunder River country, claims were staked out, quarrelled over, held by right of might. The law had come with Jim Banks, sheriff … and Jim Banks was staking out his own claim.
Here came Flash Truitt, the gambler, and a ranger from Dutton Cañon and many a fire-blooded timber-jack whose knowledge of the ways of gold were infinitely less than his imaginings; here came men of most sorts and ages, lightly and sensibly equipped or heavily and ridiculously encumbered. Many went away, disgusted and disappointed; many stayed; many more came after them.
An old man named Roberts made a strike three miles above the Goblet and news of it drew a scurry after him. Another, a negro from no man knew where, found colour and rich promise in a tributary of the upper river not a quarter of a mile from Boom Town. Roberts sold out the first day to a cool stranger from Reno, joyous with five thousand dollars. Other claims reported success and Boom Town was not only born but assured of lusty life.
Where there was a little open flat these men builded their town. The forest ranger, a leathery, quick eyed fellow named Greene, informed them that they were on Uncle Samuel's land and cautioned them against the destruction of the big, upstanding timber. So the brush was cleared here and there, a few saplings went down under swinging axes and the taller trees remained looking down upon the strange houses which grew up at their bases. There was to be little enough discussion as to just what spot Boom Town was to honour and disfigure with its presence ; haste commanded that that site be merely the most convenient.
From the neighbouring mills came six horse teams, mounting circuitously and laboriously, bringing lumber over roads which were in the making under the slow turning wheels of the big wagons, the teamsters turning this way and that to avoid rocks and trees, coming up over the ridge from the south. In an almost incredibly short time Boom Town had its store, a long, low, rough-board shack with a sturdy roof bespeaking its owner's intention to return to his mart after the passing of the coming winter: necessary articles and provisions went over a fresh pine counter demanding and getting those prices which men do not question in a mining camp. Bradshaw was the storekeeper's name; no one knew him or of him. He, like all other necessities for communal existence, seemed to have materialized at Boom Town's need.
Through the trees was a crooked, brush-cleared track which was called a street, and facing the store another squat building went up wherein, long before roof or walls were completed, much whiskey was dispensed by Flash Truitt and his aide. The floor was the main thing here, it appeared, and true enough, while the Boom Town Saloon was still noisy with hammer and saw a fiddler and an accordeon player had arrived and the new settlement had its dance hall, a place destined to win much ill fame as days went by and more men and women came.
The men of the mountains in the Thunder River country have been always hard men, will always be hard men until the earth has given up its final fleck of yellow metal and the last of the big timber has gone down under a vigorous attack, men who worked hard and played hard, who were violent in wrath, scarcely less than violent in their amusements. And, always and always, those who come first to the shout of gold are the restless spirits, the adventurers of these later days, those many types which are one in their disregard of convention and their contempt for the orderly prescribed "outside." So Boom Town, from the first day, was quite what was to be expected … perhaps the single epithet "boisterous" befits it as well as any other. Little isolated clump of humanity as it was, straggled far out of the way of cities, shut in by the silences of mountain and forest, composed of unsightly houses and tattered tents, with here and there a clean, new, white interloper, it made a name for itself which reached out across the country far in advance of the names of Summit City and Indian City and Bear Town. Like an untoward youngster it commanded attention, thrusting itself noisily forward.
Where Jim Banks went there also went the law … theoretically. But from the beginning it was rather more than obvious that the sheriff was disposed to let Boom Town alone as long as it did not molest him. The new mining camp must be a law unto itself; so has it ever been, so perhaps will it always be. Banks came and looked on and went; he occasionally appeared among the throngs which congregated at the long bar and about the little tables of the saloon; he took a mild interest in games which ran high and in the open; he watched the dancers; he went his way thereafter. The law was violated, but with the common consent of the entire community; it seemed a slight and negligible thing here in the heart of the Sierra that down among city dwellers laws had been passed against gambling. Presently or in due course those laws would thrust their heads in here, demanding attention; until that time came, let the ball roll! It is safe to say that if Jim Banks were thinking of votes to be desired at the next election he secured more than he lost by "attendin' to his own business."
And all this … and more … because Bill Steele had found gold. He had known that there was a rich vein uncovered in the cave which later came to be known as Steele's Cache and he had set men to work there. Then in due time and without haste, to test a theory and to quiet an eager curiosity, he did the other thing which gave colour to the rumour that he was here not merely to mine, but to "do somethin'" with Thunder River water power. He put his men to digging and constructing a monster flume above the Goblet to deflect the stream from its ancient rock bed, carrying it about the Goblet, letting it thunder back into the old channel just below. And, while men had wondered, he had constructed a big syphon, utilizing the only serviceable makeshift to be had within a radius of fifty miles, namely, many joints of stove pipe. With these and the services of a plumber brought for the job from White Rock, the syphon was built and Bill Steele, standing upon the rim of Hell's Goblet, watched the rock-pool being drained of its contents.
It was a long task and in despair of achieving anything through the flimsy joints of stove pipe, Steele had telephoned to San Francisco for more satisfactory material when his plumber, having resorted again to solder, informed him that his syphon was working "fine." Thereafter it was long before the great cup was emptied. But before his shipment had arrived from the city, Steele, making his way down the steep sides of the Goblet, stood at last in the ooze and sand of the bottom. And when, after a few moments of groping elbow deep in the muck about his boots, he lifted his head and stood upright, it appeared to the men lining the rim above him that the bronze cheeks of Big Bill Steele had gone suddenly pale.
Five years ago, fishing above the Goblet, he had found in a shallow pool from which the summer stream was subsiding a small nugget of almost pure gold. It was worn very smooth, indicating countless years of water action. This had been one day, and the next, searching high and low for a vein, he had discovered the Cache. Then he had gone to Mexico. During the passing of the five years his theory had formed. And that theory had been merely that Thunder River, beating at its banks in its age-long fury, had torn out other bits of gold, had dragged them in its triumphant miserliness down into its breast, had hidden them and borne them … Where? Always had the vision of the Goblet risen to answer him; everything that the river found it carried downstream. Leaves and sticks it would whip out again, hurling them over the rim. If its raging spring torrents clutched at gold, nugget or fine particles, it would carry none of it beyond the Goblet, which thus was destined to become the hiding place of the wealth of Thunder River. There it would be safe through the centuries, from the day when these old mountains were young until the day when Bill Steele came.
And he had come, he had guessed the secret which Thunder River had hidden under its volleying roar, he had emptied the Goblet. And now, as he looked up, men marked that even the face of Bill Steele had gone tense.
"Turk!" he shouted, as he saw Wilson's ruddy face among the others above him. "Come down here! Rice," as Turk's partner peered down after him, "get the men busy all along the flume, making sure it's safe. I don't want the water rushing back in here while I'm here."
Bill Rice obeyed wordlessly and withdrew his men, feeling just as they did, that they were being removed because Steele didn't care to be watched just now. Turk, his big hands upon the rope down which Steele had slid over the smooth, water-worn sides of the Goblet, made his swift descent.
"What's up?" he demanded. "Headin' for Chiny, Bill?"
"Know what you're standing on, Turk?" asked Steele quickly.
Turk looked disdainfully down at the sand and mud which had risen high about his boots. A particular man about his footwear was Turk Wilson, and these boots were not a week old.
"The damnedest, wettest slush I ever dropped into," he grunted disgustedly. "What's the game, anyway, Bill? If you was wantin' water power to do somethin' with …"
"You are standing," Steele told him sharply, "on solid gold, man! I don't know how deep it is, but by the Lord, I believe it's ten feet through! Figure it out; the Goblet down here at the bottom is about twelve feet in diameter. Say the deposit is ten feet deep …
Turk very naturally stared at him, startled. Seeing the mud on Steele's arm, the seeming pebbles in his hand, Turk stooped and thrust down his own arm. He brought up a lump of some hard substance the size of a goose egg, which he rubbed against his overalls. And, as luck would have it, for not even Steele hoped that every rock in this giant's catch-all was precious, the lump in Turk's hand was shot through with soft, crumbling gold.
"Good Gawd!" whispered Turk. And had the men still been above, peering down, there would have been no doubt of his sudden pallour. His face went chalky white, his eyes bulged suddenly. It might have been a ghost and not gold that he was looking upon.
"Free gold!" cried Steele triumphantly. "Gold that doesn't even need to be mined. Why, old Thunder River has been mining it since Cain and Abel's time, piling it down here, hoarding it away. A man can scoop it up with a tin dipper."
Turk stared and nodded, stared and nodded.
"Yes, sir," he said shakily. "It's like that. In a tin dipper, by Gawd! … Let's tell ol' Bill Rice. …"
"There are pockets and broken veins of gold all through these mountains," Steele was saying thoughtfully. "The Little Giant picked up one of them that ran full blast all last year and now has pinched out as clean as a whistle. Thunder River found another and has gouged at it and torn it loose and tumbled it down here. Where it's just waiting, ready to pack out; where all a man's got to do is come take it."
Turk lifted his frowning brows.
"Eh?" he said. "Come an' take it? An' with the tough crowd that's swarmin' all over Boom Town right now. … Why, Bill Steele, man, with this much clean gold layin' loose …"
He broke off abruptly, Steele's steady eyes met his unwinkingly.
"You've got the idea, Turk," he said quietly. "Also you've got a rifle in camp. There's a chance of my needing two men I can tie to. Crawl out now and get Rice to one side and talk with him. I want to look around a bit. I'll come up presently."
And when Turk, scrambling back up out of Hell's Goblet, heard a faint sound in the bushes on the further edge and, looking, saw nothing but a fleeing chipmunk, he scowled and grunted to himself:
"There you go, Turk, you ol' fool! Imaginin' things already."
And he promptly forgot both suspicion and chipmunk as he glanced at the nugget he was taking to stick under the eyes of Bill Rice.