Elam Storm, the Wolfer: or, The Lost Nugget

CHAPTER I.

SOMETHING ABOUT THE NUGGET

"Yes, sir; it's just like I tell you. Every coyote on this here ranch, mean and sneaking as he is, is worth forty dollars to the man who can catch him."

"Then what is the reason Carlos and I can't make some money this winter?"

"You mout, and then again you moutn't. It aint everybody who can coax one of them smart prowlers to stick his foot in a trap. If that was the case, my neighbors would have had more sheep, and Elam Storm would be worth a bushel of dollars."

"And you are going to grub-stake him again this winter, are you, Uncle Ezra?"

"Sure. I always do."

"What is the reason you won't let us go with him to the mountains?"

"'Cause I know that your folks aint so tired of you that they are ready to lose you yet awhile; that's why."

"Only just a few days. We'll come back at the end of the week if you say so, won't we, Carlos?"

"'Taint no use of talking, Ben; not a bit. Man alive! what would I say to the major if anything should happen to you? And going off with Elam Storm! That would be the worst yet."

"But Elam is honest and reliable. You have said so more than once, Uncle Ezra."

"Oh, he's honest enough, as far as that goes, but shiftless – mighty shiftless. And I never said he was reliable except in one way. He's reliable enough to go to the mountains every fall and come back every spring with a hoss-back load of peltries, and that's all he is reliable for. I did make out to hold him down to the business of sheep-herding for a couple of years, but then the roaming fever took him again and nobody couldn't do nothing with him. He just had to go, and so he asked for a grub-stake and lit out."

"You think that while he is in the mountains he looks for something besides wolf-skins, don't you?"

"I know he does. He's got a fool notion that will some day be the death of him, just as it has been the death of a dozen other men who tried to follow out the same notion."

"You promised to tell me all about it some day, and about Elam, too; and what better time can we have than the present? We are here by ourselves, and there is no one to break in on your story."

"Well, then, I'll tell you if it will ease your minds any. It won't be long, so you needn't go to settling yourself as though you had an all-night's job before you to listen. And perhaps when I am done you will know why I don't want you to go piking about the country with such a fellow as Elam Storm."

It was just the night for story-telling and pipes. The blizzard, which had been brewing for a week or more, had burst forth in all its fury, and the elements were in frightful commotion. The wind howled mournfully through the branches of the evergreens that covered the bluff behind the cabin; the rain and sleet, freezing as they fell, rattled harshly upon the bark roof over our heads; and the whole aspect of nature, as I caught a momentary glimpse of it when I went out to gather our evening's supply of fire-wood, was cheerless and desolate in the extreme. Our party consisted of three (or I should say four, for the Elam Storm whose name has so often been mentioned was to have shown up two days before) – Uncle Ezra Norton, who was a sheep-herder in a small way during the summer, and an untiring hunter and trapper in winter; Ben Hastings, whose father, an officer of rank in the regular army, was stationed at the fort fifty miles away; and myself, Carlos Burton, a ne'er-do-well, who – but I will say no more on that point, as perhaps you will find out what sort of a fellow I am as my story progresses. We were comfortably sheltered in our valley home, but we heard all the noise of the tempest and felt a good deal of its force; and accustomed as I had become to such things during my wild life in the far West, I did not forget to breathe a silent but heart-felt prayer for any unfortunate who might be overtaken by the storm before he had time to reach the shelter of his cabin.

Under our humble roof there were warmth, comfort, and supreme contentment. The single room of which the cabin could boast was brilliantly lighted by the fire on the hearth, which roared back a defiance to the storm outside; its rough walls of unhewn logs were heavily draped with the skins of the elk, blacktail, and mountain sheep that had fallen to our rifles during the hunt, completely shutting out all the cold and damp and darkness; and Ben and I, with our moccasoned feet thrust toward the cheerful blaze, reclined luxuriously upon a pile of genuine Navajo blankets, while our guide, friend, and mentor, Uncle Ezra Norton, sat upon his couch of balsam sending up from his pipe clouds of tobacco incense that broke in fleecy folds against the low roof over our heads. Our minds were in the dreamy, tranquil state that comes after a good dinner and a brief season of repose following a period of toil and hard tramping that had been rewarded beyond our hopes.

Uncle Ezra was a typical borderman, strong as one of his own mules, and grizzly as any of the numerous specimens of Ursus ferox that had fallen before his big-bored Henry. Although he took no little pride in recounting Ben's exploits to the officers of the garrison, he was very strict with the boy when the latter was under his care, and never permitted him to wander far out of his sight if he could help it.

Uncle Ezra was my particular friend, and had won my undying gratitude by his kindness to me. I was in trouble and he helped me out of the deepest hole I ever was in. When I struck his ranch one dreary day, two years before this story begins, afoot and alone, almost ready to drop with fatigue, and told him that every hoof and horn I had in the world had been rounded up by a gang of cattle thieves who had driven them into the Bad Lands to be slaughtered for their hides – when I told him this he not only expressed the profoundest sympathy for my forlorn condition, but grub-staked me and sent me into the foot-hills to find a gold mine.

Judging from what I know now there was about as much chance of finding gold in the region to which he sent me as there was of being struck by lightning, and, more than that, I couldn't have distinguished the precious metal from iron pyrites; but I had to do something to pay for my outfit, and so I went, glad to get away by myself and brood over my great loss. For I had been pretty well off for a boy of fifteen, I want you to remember, and every dollar I had made was made by the hardest kind of knocks.

When I first came out West, I began working on a ranch, taking my pay in stock at twelve dollars a month. My wages soon grew as my services increased in value, and as I took to riding like an old timer, I learned rapidly, because I liked the business; and it was not long before I was the proud possessor of a herd of cattle worth six thousand dollars. But it was precarious property in those days, – as uncertain as the weather. You might be fairly well off when you rolled yourself up in your blanket at night, and as poor as Job's turkey when you awoke in the morning; and that's the way it was with me. I was moving my herd to another section of the country in search of better pasturage, and was passing through a narrow canyon within two days' journey of the new range that one of my cowboys had selected for me, when all on a sudden there was a yell of charging men, whom I at first thought to be Indians, a rifle shot which killed my horse and injured my leg so badly that I could scarcely crawl into the nearest thicket out of sight, a hurried stampede of frightened cattle, and I was a beggar or the next thing to it. My three cowboys disappeared when the cattle did, and that was all the evidence I wanted to satisfy me that they were in league with the robbers. Ever since that time I had lived in hopes that it might be my good fortune to meet them again under different circumstances. When I learned that two of their number had been hanged somewhere in Arizona for horse-stealing, I was sorry to hear it, and hoped the other would mend his ways and so escape lynching, for I wanted to settle with him myself.

At the time my story begins, however, I was on my feet again, as anyone can be in that Western country who is suffering from reverses. I had a home ranch and perhaps ten thousand dollars' worth of cattle ranging near the Bad Lands, into which my small herd had been driven to be killed for their hides; but I was poor enough and miserable enough when Uncle Ezra sent me off to hunt up a gold mine. I didn't find it, of course, but I took back to old Norton's ranch some specimens of quartz that made him open his eyes. They looked like chunks of granite, with little pieces of different-colored glass scattered through them. I had no idea of the value of my find, but so certain was Uncle Ezra that I had struck it rich that he took the specimens to Denver himself, and some expert there assured him that he was a millionnaire. But he wasn't, by a long shot, and neither was I. Uncle Ezra knew no more about business outside of sheep-herding and trapping than an Apache knows about astronomy, and the fifteen-year-old boy who was his only counsellor knew less, and the usual results followed. We were euchred out of our find, which meant the loss of bushels of dollars to us. During my prospecting tour I camped on the banks of a little stream, following through a secluded valley a hundred miles deep in the mountains, and stumbled upon a rich deposit of rubies and sapphires. Although there were no true red rubies nor true blue sapphires among them, they were beautiful gems and worth money. The Denver expert told Uncle Ezra that there was a sprinkling of fire opals among them, but this I am inclined to doubt, for I never heard of those stones being found together. Anyhow, that deposit, whose wealth was first presented to my inexperienced eyes, covered sixteen acres of ground, and is being worked by a syndicate with a cash capital of two million dollars. Uncle Ezra and I saved a small stake for old age; but you bet I will know a good thing the next time I see it.

Ben Hastings, as I have said, was the son of an army officer who was stationed at the fort a few miles away, and this was the first time he had ever been west of the Mississippi. He had the good sense to acknowledge that he was a tender-foot, and perhaps that made me take to him from the start. He could ride and shoot a little, and had camped in small patches of timber like to Adirondacks and up about Moosehead Lake; but he did not pretend to know it all, as the majority of Eastern men do when they come out here, and so he had plenty of friends among men who were willing to assist him. He fairly overflowed with delight when I took him an invitation from Uncle Ezra to spend a month on his sheep-ranch. His father was glad to let him accept, for old Ezra was a particular friend of his, and often acted as guide when the major went scouting. This hunt to Wind River Mountains had been undertaken for Ben's especial benefit, and as we pushed him to the front as often as the opportunity was presented, he shot more elk and blacktail than we did.

I have spoken of Elam Storm, a particular friend of all of us. He was somewhere in the mountains now and ought to have joined us two days ago, but, seeing that it was Elam, we did not pay any attention to it. He was a professional wolfer whom Uncle Ezra had befriended. Old Ezra said he was shiftless; but he certainly was not lazy, for he would work harder at doing nothing than any fellow I ever saw. He was game, too. He had some sort of a notion in his head that governed all his actions, and although I was as intimate with him as anybody in the country, I never could find out what it was. But I did not push my enquiries, I want you to understand, for Elam had a sharp tongue, which he did not hesitate to use when he thought occasion demanded it, and, besides, he was handy with his gun. I had often asked Uncle Ezra to tell me what he knew of Elam's history, but could never get him started on the subject; so I was glad to hear him say in response to Ben's importunities that he would tell the story.

"How long ago was it since Elam came to you?" enquired Ben Hastings, with a view of hurrying Uncle Ezra, who was refilling his pipe, gazing with great deliberation the while into the fire, as if he there saw the incidents he was about to describe.

"He never came to me at all," replied the old man. "I fetched him to my ranch, and he's been there off and on ever since. He's a different boy from Carlos, here," – with a nod in my direction, – "the most improvidentest fellow you ever saw, and always dead broke, so that I have to grub-stake him every fall. I have offered more than once to take him right along and give him his pay in stock, so that he could get a start with some sheep of his own, but he won't hear to it. That's what makes me mad at Elam. It's all along of that fool notion that will some day be the death of him like I told you."

"But what is that fool notion?" asked Ben, as Uncle Ezra paused to light his pipe with a brand from the fire.

"Wait till I tell you. You see, Elam's history, so far as I know anything about it, begins with that treasure train that was lost up the country years ago. An army paymaster started for Grayson with three government wagons, a guard of twelve soldiers, and thirty thousand dollars that was to be paid to the garrison at that place. Report says and always did say that there was one private wagon with the train, and Elam Storm he sticks to it that that there wagon was his father's. I don't dispute that part of his history, but I do dispute all the rest, for it won't hold water. He allows that there was a nugget into that there wagon, and that it was worth eight thousand dollars; and that's right where the history of Elam begins.

"Well, sir, none of them men that went out with them wagons was ever seen or heard of after they left Martin's. When the time came for them to show up at Grayson and they didn't do it, scouting parties were sent out to look for them, and I was with the party that found the wreck of one of the wagons. And there's where I found Elam; but not a live man or critter or a cent of money did we discover."

"What do you suppose became of them?" enquired Ben.

"Carried off by the robbers that jumped down on the train," replied Uncle Ezra. "But whether they was Injuns or white men aint known for certain to this day. There wasn't nothing except hoof-prints and a few dried spots of blood to show where the attack was made on the train; but there was a dim trail leading from it, and by following that trail through the chaparral and down a rocky canyon that was hemmed in on all sides by mountains we found the wrecked wagon I spoke of. When one of the axles broke and let the wagon down so that it could not be hauled any further, the robbers took every blessed thing out of it and went on, and we never did catch up with them – everything, I say, except Elam. He was no doubt left in the wagon for dead, for when we came up he was just alive and that was all. He hadn't been hurt at all. He was scared and starved almost to the bounds of endurance, but with such care as we rough men could give him, and being naturally tough and strong, he managed to worry through. After he got so that he could talk he had sense enough to remember that his name was the same as his father's, Elam Storm, and that was everything he did know. He couldn't tell the first thing about the soldiers who composed the escort, or whether the men who made the attack were whites or Injuns, or what went with the money; and the worst of it was when he grew older none of these things didn't come into his mind, like we hoped and believed they would.

"Seeing that the little waif was friendless and alone, and none of us didn't know whether he had kith or kin in the world, I offered to take him and bring him up as if he were my own son, and the rest of the boys they agreed to it. Although he has always been known around these diggin's as 'Ezra Norton's kid,' he aint no more relation to me than you be, and no more use neither, I might say, so far as helping on the ranch is concerned. He always was a shiftless sort of chap, and liked best to get away by himself and 'mope,' as I called it, though I believe now that he was doing a power of thinking, and trying to remember who he was, where he had once lived, and what happened to him before the train was lost. I wasn't much surprised when he took to wolfing as a means of getting his grub and clothes, for that solitary business just suited his solitary disposition; but I was teetotally dumfoundered and mad, too, when he told me that his father was alive, and that he would some day find him and his big nugget together. Mind you, he didn't say this as though he hoped and believed it might be true, but as positive as though he knew it was true."

"Where do you suppose they – I mean his father and the nugget – are now?" asked Ben.

"Pshaw! His father is dead long ago," replied Uncle Ezra, in a very decided tone. "Leastwise the men who went with the wagons are dead, and so old Elam must be dead, too. Don't stand to reason that only one man out of the whole outfit should turn up alive, does it? These things happened thirteen year ago, and Elam is nigh about twenty now, I should say. As for his nugget – well, I don't know what to think about that. When I first come to this country, there was a nugget of that description in existence, which had been dug up somewhere in those very mountains, and the finding of it created a rush that reminded old timers of California and Deadwood. I jined in with the rest, but never dug out more than enough to pay my expenses; and that's what set me to raising sheep."

When Uncle Ezra said this, he tipped me a wink, and settled back on his couch of fragrant boughs, nursing his left leg for company.

CHAPTER II.

TOM MASON AGAIN

"Well," said Ben interrogatively, "the nugget that Elam had to do with wasn't any relation to this one, was it?"

"Wait till I tell you. I don't reckon there is any one thing in the world that has been the cause of so much misery and mischief of all kinds as that there nugget," continued Uncle Ezra reflectively. "The man who found it, whose name was Morgan, and who was working with two pardners, share and share alike, was about as honest as a man ever gets to be, but the sight of the small fortune which he unearthed one day by a single stroke of his pick, while working a little apart from the others, was too much for him. He was as poor as a man ever gets to be, and, worse than all, he had a sweetheart off in the States who was waiting for him to raise a stake and come home and marry her. He didn't like the idea of dividing with his two pardners, who would drop their roll at the faro table as soon as they got the chance, and so he took and buried his find and worked on as if nothing had happened. That is to say, he tried to; but with a big chunk of gold within easy reach of his hand it don't stand to reason that he could act just as he did before. He was uneasy all the time, and his pardners noticed it and suspected something. He took to visiting his nugget's hiding-place every night, to make sure that no one had dug it up, and his pardners found it out on him; and when at last he grew desperate and tried to carry it away secretly, there was some shooting done, and Morgan and one of his pardners were killed."

"That left the survivor a rich man!" exclaimed Ben, who was deeply interested.

"Now, just wait till I tell you. That left the survivor a tolerable rich man, but his sudden accession of wealth scared him so badly that he buried the nugget in a new place and put for 'Frisco, where he took sick and died. When the medical sharps warned him that he had not long to live, he told one of the nurses about the nugget, and gave him a map of the locality in which it was hidden. A month or so afterward the nurse organized a small expedition and went to the mountains to hunt for the treasure; but he hired for a guide a treacherous Greaser, who went ahead, dug up the nugget, and brought it to Brazos City, a small mining town in which I was located at the time.

"Pierto – that was the Greaser's name – hadn't any more than got his nugget into the Gold Dollar saloon, which was kept by a countryman of hisn, and put it into a glass case and set it up on the table so that everybody could see and admire it, before he was offered eight thousand dollars for his find; but Pierto wouldn't sell. He thought he could make more money by putting it up at a raffle, and when the raffle was over, he would go back to the mountains and try for another nugget, taking some of us along if we wanted to go. Three thousand shares at ten dollars a share was what he thought would be about right, and I put my name down for ten shares then and there.

"The Gold Dollar did a custom-house business after that. Crowds of miners from every camp for miles around came there to look at Pierto's find, take shares in the raffle, and drink forty-rod whiskey. Pierto and the eight countrymen of hisn whom he employed to guard the nugget night and day were armed with pepper-boxes and machetes, and were as sassy and stuck up as so many bantam chickens, and the lordly way in which they ordered us Gringos to stand back and not crowd the nugget too close was laughable to see. They were a surly gang and looked able to whip their weight in wild-cats; but in reality they were the most harmless lot of cowards that Pierto could have got together.

"Like all mining towns, Brazos City could boast of some tough citizens, and among them was Red Jimmy Murphy, a noted desperado, and as smart a rough as ever pulled a gun. He and two of his pals were in the Gold Dollar every day and night, and after looking the ground over they concluded that the plant could be raised. No sooner had this been settled to their satisfaction than they set to work to get things ready.

"The night before the raffle was to come off the Gold Dollar was packed as full as it could hold, – so full that there was scarcely room for the fiddlers to work their elbows, – and Pierto's guard had to use some little muscular strength to keep the crowd from pushing over the table on which lay the nugget in its glass case. Red Jimmy's gang was there, ready to grab the chunk at the critical moment, and finally Jimmy himself rode into the saloon on a kicking, plunging bronco. The closely packed men cursed and threatened and ordered him out, but gave way all the same, and when the bronco heard the squawking of the fiddles and felt the jab of his rider's spurs, he slewed around and backed toward the table. Pierto saw the danger, and made a desperate rush to save his nugget, but was just a second too late. Jimmy raised a yell to put his pals on the watch, and spurred up the bronco, which at once sent his heels into the air as high as the ceiling. Down went the table, and the glass flew into a thousand pieces. The nugget went sailing over the heads of the crowd and into the hands of one of the gang, who, in spite of every effort that was made to stop him, succeeded in tossing it to Jimmy; and Jimmy he headed for the door, riding over everybody that got in his way. Then there was fun, I tell you. I never saw lead fly so thickly before nor since. Everybody had a gun out, and Red Jimmy ought by rights to have been riddled like a sieve."

"Uncle Ezra, did you shoot?" asked Ben.

"I presume to say that I made as much noise as the rest," answered the old man, with a chuckle. "You know, I held some chances in that chunk, and didn't want to lose them. Of course Pierto had to shell out the money we paid him for the tickets, for the raffle could not now be brought off; we kept him right there under our guns till he gave back the last dollar, but he never set eyes on his nugget, and neither did we. Red Jimmy, desperately wounded as he was, got away to the mountains with his prize, and although a strong posse headed by the sheriff followed on his trail and finished him the next day, they did not find the nugget. One of his gang made off with it."

"And you lost it all?"

"Cer'n'y," said the old man.

"And never got a chance to raffle for any of it?" asked Ben. "It has probably been fixed up into ornaments of some description by this time. An article worth eight thousand dollars isn't going to be left around loose."

"It wasn't so two years ago."

"Two years?"

"Wait till I tell you. That nugget has travelled as much as five hundred miles from here, but somehow it always manages to come back. Here it was born, and right here it is going to stay until it has its rights. Mind you, that is Elam's way of looking at it, but it aint mine, by a long shot. We didn't none of us hear of the nugget again for nearly a year, and then one of the boys happened to strike a pardner who had got dissatisfied with the money he was making and went off to Pike's Peak, and there he learned that two of the gang who had stolen it were seen and killed for the part they had taken in the enterprise; for you will remember that several miners in the country had knocked off work and come in to catch a glimpse of Pierto's find, and of course they didn't feel very friendly toward the robbers.