The Helpers

The effect of the announcement on the unspoiled one was like that of an electric shock. He staggered to his feet, went white under the bronze, and flung his arms about Jeffard.

"Hooray!" he shouted; "that old hole – that same derned old hole 'at I've cussed out more'n a million times! Damn my fool soul, but I knew you was a Mascot – knew it right from the jump! Come on – let's irrigate it right now, 'fore it's a minute older!"

It was out of the depth of pure good-fellowship that Jeffard went to the bar with the fortune-daft miner. Not all the vicissitudes of the breathless rush down the inclined plane had been sufficient to slay the epicure in him; and the untidy bar reeked malodorous. But the occasion was its own excuse.

Garvin beat upon the bar with his fist, and the roar of his summons drowned the clatter of knives and forks in the adjacent dining-room. The bartender came out, wiping his lips on the back of his hand.

"What'll it be, gents?"

"The best you've got ain't good enough," said Garvin, with unwitting sarcasm. "Trot her out – three of a kind. It's on me, and the house is in it."

The man spun two glasses across the bar, and set out a black bottle of dubious aspect. Knowing his own stock in trade, he drew himself a glass of Apollinaris water.

Jeffard sniffed at the black bottle and christened his glass sparingly. The bouquet of the liquor was an entire round of dissipation with the subsequent headache thrown in. Garvin tilted the bottle with trembling hand, and filled his glass to the brim. The object-lesson was not thrown away upon the epicure.

"Here's to the derned old hole with a cold million in it," said the miner, naming the toast and draining his glass in the same breath. And then: "Come again, barkeep'; drink water yourself, if you want to, but the red likker's good enough for us. What do ye say, pardner? We're in it at last, plum up to the neck, and all on account o' that derned old hole 'at I've cussed out a mil – Here's lookin' at ye."

Jeffard merely moistened his lips the second time, and the object-lesson exemplified itself. Garvin had brimmed his glass again, and the contents of the black bottle were adulterant poisons. Wherefore he cut in quickly when Garvin would have ordered again.

"That'll do, old man; a little at a time and often, if you must, but not on an empty stomach. Let's get the money before we spend it."

The latter part of the warning had special significance for the bartender, who scowled ominously.

"Lemme see the color o' yer money," he commanded. "If youse fellies are runnin' futures on me" —

Now Garvin had been living the life of an anchoret for many weeks, and the fumes of the fiery liquor were already mounting to his brain. For which cause the bartender's insinuation was as spark to tow.

"Futures?" he yelled, throwing down a ten-dollar bill with a mighty buffet on the bar; "them's the kind o' futures we're drinkin' on right now! Why, you thick-lipped, mealy-mouthed white nigger, you, I'll come down here some day and buy the floor out from in under your feet; see? Come on, pardner; let's mog along out o' here 'fore I'm tempted to mop up his greasy floor with this here" —

There was hot wrath in the bartender's eyes, and Jeffard hustled the abusive one out of the place lest a worse thing should follow. On the sidewalk he remembered what Garvin had already forgotten, and went back for the change out of the ten-dollar bill, dropping it into his pocket and rejoining his companion before the latter had missed him. Thereupon ensued a war of words. The newly belted knight of fortune was for making a night of it; and when Jeffard would by no means consent to this, Garvin insisted upon going to the best hotel in the city, where they might live at large as prospective millionaires should.

Jeffard accepted the alternative, and constituted himself bearward in ordinary to the half-crazed son of the wilderness. He saw difficulties ahead, and the event proved that he did not overestimate them. What a half-intoxicated man, bent upon becoming wholly intoxicated, may do to make thorny the path of a self-constituted guardian Garvin did that night. At the hotel he scandalized the not too curious clerk, and became the centre of an appreciative group in the rotunda what time Jeffard was pleading the mitigating circumstances with the hesitant deputy proprietor. In the midst of the plea, when Jeffard had consented to assume all responsibility for his companion's vagaries, Garvin broke cover in the direction of the bar-room, followed by a tail of thirsty ones.

"You say you know him?" said the clerk tentatively.

"Know him? Why, yes; he is my partner. We are just in from the range, and he has struck it rich. It's a little too much for him just now, but he'll quiet down after a bit. He is one of the best fellows alive, when he's sober; and this is the first time I've ever seen him in liquor. Two drinks of bad whiskey did it."

"Two drinks and a surfeit of good luck," laughed the clerk. "Well, we'll take him; but you must keep him out of the way. He'll be crazy drunk in less than an hour. Been to supper?"

"No."

"Better have it sent to your room. He isn't fit to go to the dining-room."

"All right; have a bell-boy ready, and I'll knock him down and drag him out, if I can."

That was easier said than done. Jeffard found the foolish one in the bar-room, drinking ad libitum, and holding forth to a circle of interested hearers. Garvin had evidently been recounting the history of the abandoned claim, and one of the listeners, a hawk-faced man, with shifty black eyes, was endeavoring to draw him aside. He succeeded just as Jeffard thrust his way into the circle, and the self-elected bearwarden caught the whispered question and its answer.

"You say you located her two years ago?" queried the hawk-faced one.

"No; that's the joke o' the whole shootin'-match, – thess like I was a-tellin' ye." Garvin's speech ran back to its native Tennessee idiom at the bidding of intoxication. "She ain't nev' been located yit; and if it hadn't 'a' been for that derned little sharp-eyed pardner o' mine" —

The questioner turned quickly to the bar.

"Drinks all round, gentlemen – on me." Then to Garvin in the cautious undertone: "You said she was over in Stray Horse Valley, didn't you?"

Garvin fell into the trap headlong. "Not much I didn't! She's a-snugglin' down under one o' the bigges' peaks in the Saguache, right whar she can listen to the purlin' o' the big creek that heads in" —

There was no time for diplomatic interference. Jeffard locked his arm about Garvin's head, and dragged the big man bodily out of the circle.

"You fool!" he hissed. "Will you pitch it into the hands of the first man that asks for it? Come along out of this!"

Garvin stood dazed, and a murmur of disapproval ran through the group of thirsters. The hand of the hawk-faced one stole by imperceptible degrees toward his hip pocket. Jeffard stopped it with a look.

"You have had fun enough with my partner for one evening, gentlemen," he said sternly. "Come on, Jim; let's go to supper."

And the thirsters saw them no more.

CHAPTER XVII

It was midnight and worse before the lately belted knight of fortune had outworn the hilarious and entered upon the somnolent stage of the little journey insensate, and when the thing could be done, Jeffard put him to bed with a pæan of thanksgiving which was none the less heartfelt for being unvocalized.

Having thus set his hand to Garvin's plough, there was no alternative but to turn the furrow to the end; wherefore, to guard against surprises, he hid the boots of the bottle-mad one, barricaded the door with his own bed, and lay down to doze with eyelids ajar. At least that was the alert determination; but the event proved that he was weary enough to sleep soundly and late, and it was seven o'clock, and the breakfast caller was hammering on the door, when he opened his eyes on the new day. Naturally, his first thought was for his companion, and the sight of the empty bed in the farther corner of the room brought him broad awake and afoot at the same saltatory moment. The son of fortune was gone, and an open door into the adjoining room accounted for the manner of his going.

Five minutes later, picture an anxious brother-keeper making pointed inquiries of the day-clerk below stairs. Instant question and answer fly back and forth shuttle-wise, one may suppose, weaving suspicion into a firm fabric of fact. Two men whose names, or whose latest aliases, were Howard and Lantermann, had occupied the room next to Jeffard's, – quite chancefully, the clerk thinks. They had left at an early hour; their call was for – one moment, and he (the clerk) will ascertain the exact time.

Whereupon one may fancy an exasperated bearwarden cursing exactnesses and beating with impatient fist upon the counter for the major fact. The fact, extorted at length, is simple and conclusive. The two men had come down some time between five and six o'clock, with a third as a middle link in a chain of locked arms. One of the two had paid the bill, and they had all departed; by way of the bar-room and the side entrance, as the clerk remembers.

Whereat Jeffard is moved to swear strange oaths; is swearing them, in point of fact, when the omnibus from an early train shunts its cargo of arrivals into the main entrance. Among the incomers is a big fellow with a drooping mustache and square-set shoulders, who forthwith drops his handbag and pounces upon Jeffard with greetings boisterous.

"Well, I'll be shot! – or words to that effect" (hand-wringings and shoulder-clappings). "Now where on top of God's green earth did you tumble from? Begin away back yonder and give an account of yourself; or, hold on, – let me write my name in the book and then you can tell me while we eat. By Jove, old man! I'm foolishly glad to see you!"

Jeffard cut in quickly between the large-hearted protest and the signing of the register.

"Just a second, Bartrow; let the breakfast wait, and listen to me. I'm in no end of a tangle, and you're the man of all others to help me out if any one can. Do you happen to know a fellow named Garvin?"

"Don't I? 'Tennessee Jim, P. P.,' – that stands for perennial prospector, you know. Sure. He's of the salt of the earth; rock salt, but full flavored. I know him like a book, though I hadn't seen him for a dog's-age until – but go on."

Jeffard did go on, making the occasion one of the few which seemed to justify the setting aside of indirection.

"We were partners; we have been out together all summer. He has struck it rich, and has gone clean daft in the lilt of it. I can't get him sober long enough to do what may be necessary to secure the claim. The sharks are after him hot foot, and if they can succeed in soaking the data out of him, they will jump the claim before he can get it located and recorded."

Bartrow laughed. "That's just like Jim: ordinarily, he doesn't drink as much whiskey in a year as most men do in a week. But if that's your only grief you can come to breakfast with me and take your time about it. Later on, when we've smoked a few lines and brought up the arrears of gossip, we'll hold a council of war and see what you're to do about the potential bonanza."

"But I can't do anything; it's Garvin's, I tell you."

"Well, you are partners in it, aren't you?"

Jeffard had another fight with an ingrained reserve which was always blocking the way to directness and prompting him to leave the major fact unstated.