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.
