The Helpers

"It's a good ten mile 'r so, yet. If we get a move on, we'll make it by sundown, maybe."

They tramped on in silence, the singing silence of the crystalline heights, measuring mile after mile at the heels of the patient burro, and reaching the scattering outposts of the western suburb while yet the sun hung hesitant above the peaks of the main range. The nearer aspect of the great mining-camp was inexpressibly depressive to Jeffard. The weathered buildings, frankly utilitarian and correspondingly unbeautiful; the harsh sterility of the rocky soil; the ruthless subordination of all things to the sordid purposes of money-getting; these were the stage-settings of a scene which moved him curiously, like the fumes of a mingled cup, intoxicating, but soul-nauseating, withal. The nausea was a consequent of the changed point of view, and he knew it; but it was no whit less grievous. Wherefore he groped in the pool of indifference until he found a small stone of protest.

"Let us do what we have to do and get away from here quickly, Garvin," he said, flinging the stone with what precision there was in him.

They had turned into the principal street, and the burro became reluctant. Garvin smote the beast from behind, and took a turn of the halter around its jaw.

"Goin' to gig back for the crowd, ain't you?" he growled, apostrophizing the jack; and then to Jeffard: "Makes you sort o' town-sick, I reckon. I know the feel of it; used to catch it, reg'lar, ever' time I'd get in from the range. It'll wear off after a day 'r so; but, as you say, the quick way to do it up is to light out ag'in, suddint."

"The sooner the better," said Jeffard. "The atmosphere of the place is maddening."

Garvin took the word literally and laughed. "'T ain't got no atmosphere to speak of, – that's what's the matter with it; too blame' high up for any use."

They were in the thick of the street traffic by this time, and it required their united malisons joined to what of energy and determination the long day's march had left them to keep the ass from planting itself monument-wise in the middle of the street.

"Dad burn a canary, anyhow!" grumbled the man of the wilderness, when they were resting a moment in front of a shackly building on the corner of a cross street. "For ornerary, simon-pure, b'iled-down, soul-killin'" – His vocabulary of objurgatory expletives ran short, and he wrought out the remainder of the malediction with a dumb show of violence.

Jeffard smiled in spite of his mood, which was anything but farcical, and pointed to the haversack of specimens dangling from the loosened pack.

"We're about to lose the samples," he said.

Garvin regained his wonted good-humor at a plunge.

"That'd be too blame' bad, wouldn't it, now; they're so blazin' precious! S'pose you lug 'em acrost yonder to that there assay-shop whilst I toll the canary down to the corral. When you get shut o' the rocks, come on round to the boardin'-house, – 'Miner's Rest,' – a block furder along and two to your right. I'll meet you there bime-by, if there's anything left o' me after I get through with this dad-burned, lop-eared totin'-machine."

Jeffard shouldered the bag of samples, but before he could reply the opportunity fled clamorous. The lop-eared one, finding itself free for the moment, gave heed to a foolish bee buzzing in its atomic brain, and went racing down the cross street, with the big miner in hot pursuit.

"Exit James Garvin," quoth Jeffard, moved to smile again; and he crossed the avenue to the shackly building with the sign of the assayer besprent upon the windows.

When he tried the door and found it locked, and the littered room beyond it empty, he was minded to go on to the rendezvous while daylight served. But when he reflected that Garvin would be sure to await an assayer's verdict on the samples, and so prolong their stay in the city of banality, he decided to conclude the business affair first. So he went up and down and around and about, and found all the assay offices closed for the day save one, whose occupant, a round-bodied little German, with the face of a cherub, martialized by the huge mustachios of a cuirassier, was still at his bench. Jeffard guessed at the little man's nationality, and made a shrewd bid for celerity.

"Guten abend, mein Herr," he said, unslinging his haversack.

The cherubic face of the expatriated one responded quickly to the greeting in the loved mother-tongue.

"Wie geht's, wie geht's, mein guter Herr," he rejoined; and then in broken English: "I haf not dot Cherman before heard spoken in dis Gott-forsaken blaces. You haf some sambles gebracht?"

"Ja, mein Herr."

"Gut! I vill of dem de tests maig. Nicht wahr?"

"Gefälligst, mein lieber Herr;" and quickly, – "we must go on our way again to-morrow."

"So qvick? Ach! das ist nicht sehr gut. You vill der poor olt assay-meister maig to vork on der nide. But because you haf der goot Cherman in your moud I vill it do. Vat you haf?"

Jeffard unwrapped the samples one by one, and the assayer examined them with many dubious head-shakings. The amateur made haste to anticipate the preliminary verdict.

"I know they're valueless," he admitted, "but I have a partner who will require your certificate before he will be convinced. Can you let us know to-morrow?"

"Because you haf der Cherman, yes. But it vill be no goot; der silwer iss not dere" – including the various specimens in a comprehensive gesture.

Jeffard turned to go, slinging the lightened haversack over his shoulder. At the door he bethought him of the curious fragment of quartz picked up on the dump of the abandoned tunnel. It was in his pocket, and he rummaged till he found it.

"Can you tell me anything about this?" he asked. "It seems to be a decomposed quartzite, matted on a base of some sort, – a metal, I should say."

The little German snatched the bit of quartz, and ogled it eagerly through his eye-glass.

"Mein Gott im Himmel!" he cried; and the eye-glass fell to the floor and rolled under the bench. "Iss it possible dot you know him not? Dot iss golt, mein lieber freund, – vire golt, reech, reech! Vere you got him? Haf you got some more von dis?"

Jeffard took it in vaguely, and tried to remember what he had done with the handful of similar fragments gathered at the same time. It came to him presently. He had emptied his pocket into the haversack on the morning of the departure from the valley what time Garvin was seeking the strayed burro.

He unslung the canvas bag and poured the handful of gravel on the bench. The assayer, trembling now with repressed excitement, examined the snuff-colored quartz, bit by bit, with a guttural ejaculation for each. "Donnerwetter! He gifs me feerst der vorthless stones to maig of dem de assay, und den he vill ask me von leedle qvestion about dis – dis maknificend bonansa! Ach! mein freund! haf you got viel of dis precious qvartz?"

"Why, yes; there's a good bit of it, I believe," replied Jeffard, still unawake to the magnitude of the discovery.

"Und you can find der blaces again? Dink aboud it now – dink hardt!"

Jeffard smiled. "Don't get excited, mein Herr. I know the place very well, indeed; I left it only three days since."

"Gut; sehr gut! Now go you; go und leef me to mein vork. Come you back in der morgen, und I vill tell you dot you are reech, reech! Go, mein freund, mit der goot Cherman in your moud – und Gott go mit you."

Jeffard felt his way down the dark stair, and so on out into the lighted street, still only in the middle ground between realization and the bare knowledge of the fact. He was conscious of some vague recurrent effort to surround the incredible thing; and conscious, too, that it grew and spread with each succeeding attempt to measure it until no mere human arms could girdle it.

Not yet did it occur to him to place himself at the nodus of discovery and possession. The miraculous thing was for him quite a thing apart; and when he had advanced far enough into the open country of realization to look a little about him, his thought was wholly for Garvin and the effect upon him of this sudden projection into the infinite. He tried to imagine the simple-hearted prospector as a man of affluence, and laughed aloud at the grotesque figure conjured up by the thought. What would Garvin do with his money? Squander it royally, like a loyal son of fortune, and think the world well lost, Jeffard decided.

The hissing gasoline torch of a street fakir flared gustily in the keen night wind sweeping down from the Mosquito, and the scintillant arc-stars at the corners began to take on frosty aureoles of prismatic hues. The crowds on the resonant plank sidewalks streamed boisterous and masterful, as if the plangent spirit of time and place were abroad. Jeffard came to earth again in the rude jostling of the throng. While he speculated, Garvin – Garvin the inexpectant – was doubtless awaiting him at the place appointed. He must hasten thither to be the bearer of the good news to the unspoiled one.

Looking about him to get his bearings, he found himself in front of the deserted assay office on the spot where he had parted from Garvin. "One square down and two to the right," he said, repeating Garvin's directions; and he set out to trudge them doggedly, lagging a little from honest leg-weariness. In the last half of the third square there was a screened doorway, and the click of celluloid counters came to his ears from the brilliantly lighted room beyond. At the sound the embers of the fire kindled months before glowed afresh and made his heart hot.

"Ah, you're there yet, are you?" he said, speaking to the stirring passion as if it were a sentient entity within him. "Well, you'll have to lie down again; there's no meat on the bone."

At the designated corner he found the rendezvous. It was a hostelry of the baser sort, with a bar-room dominant, and eating and sleeping conveniences – or inconveniences – subsidiary. The clatter of knives and forks on ironstone china came from the ill-smelling dining-room in the rear, and the bar-room held but one occupant. It was Garvin; he was sitting at one of the card-tables with his head in his arms. He looked up when Jeffard entered, and his smile was of fatigue.

"Hello, there; thought you'd gone and got lost in the shuffle. Get shut of 'em?"

Jeffard nodded.

"No good, I reckon?"

"No; nothing that we've found this summer. But you're a rich man, just the same, Garvin."

"Yes; I've cashed in on the outfit, and I've got twenty dollars in my inside pocket. Let's go in and chew before them fellers eat it all up."

"Don't be in a hurry; the kind of supper we'll get here can wait. I said you are a rich man, and I meant it. You remember the old hole up in the hillside above the camp, – the one you struck a 'dike' in two years ago?"

"Reckon I ain't likely to forget it."

"Well, that 'dike' was decomposed quartz carrying free gold. I was curious enough to put a handful of the stuff into my pocket and bring it out. The assayer's at work on it now, and he says it'll run high – up into the hundreds, I imagine. Is there much of it?"