The gold of Ophir

By D. Howard Gwinn

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The gold of Ophir
    
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The gold of Ophir

Author: D. Howard Gwinn

Release date: February 16, 2026 [eBook #77959]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: F. Tennyson Neely, 1898

Credits: Hendrik Kaiber, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLD OF OPHIR ***
  THE GOLD OF OPHIR

  BY D. HOWARD GWINN.

  [Illustration]

  F. TENNYSON NEELY,

  PUBLISHER,

  LONDON.      NEW YORK.




  Copyright, 1898,
  by
  F. TENNYSON NEELY
  in
  United States
  and
  Great Britain.

  All Rights Reserved.




  CONTENTS.


                                                       PAGE

  CHAPTER I.
  Salaam                                                 5

  CHAPTER II.
  Leadville                                             14

  CHAPTER III.
  A Brace of Mining Experts                             33

  CHAPTER IV.
  I Take a Partner                                      60

  CHAPTER V.
  Flying from the Piutes                               100

  CHAPTER VI.
  Castle Safety                                        118

  CHAPTER VII.
  Shooting the Rapids                                  134

  CHAPTER VIII.
  In Stone                                             160

  CHAPTER IX.
  Gold                                                 173

  CHAPTER X.
  The Lost Tribes                                      185

  CHAPTER XI.
  Bricks Without Straw                                 201

  CHAPTER XII.
  Story of the Tablets                                 213

  CHAPTER XIII.
  Temple of the Sun                                    227

  CHAPTER XIV.
  The Chariots of Israel and the Horsemen Thereof      245

  CHAPTER XV.
  Children of the Sun                                  266

  CHAPTER XVI.
  Farewell to Ophir                                    287

  CHAPTER XVII.
  Thornless Roses                                      313




THE GOLD OF OPHIR.




CHAPTER I.

SALAAM.


Have you, average American reader, ever paused in the midst of your
journey by the Rapid Transit Line through the jostling crowd of
humanity to the somber terminus of Life, paused long enough to consider
what startling vicissitudes attend some brief human experiences? Do you
realize that men now living remember Chicago as a hamlet of a dozen
shops and dwellings located, or more properly sunken, in quagmire? Are
you aware that men who are still pursuing the phantom Hope, by active
efforts in practical everyday occupations, remember it many years
before Long John Wentworth was dreamed of, or Phil Armour had seen the
light of an Illinois day?

Yet such is the case, and though I, Thomas Hardman, Jr., can lay claim
to no such venerable years in my own right, some strange and not
altogether untoward circumstances in my life have brought about these
reflections in my mind with startling force.

I am a native of Chicago, and my school life from the time that I
entered the primary department of the public school until I finished
the curriculum prescribed by the University of Chicago, was all
encompassed by a matter of a few blocks of the city, including my home,
which was with my paternal uncle. Fortune I had none; but educational
privileges second to none. My observation has taught me that such
advantages, coupled with the knowledge that these advantages and the
resulting mental and moral stamina are to constitute the sole equipment
for the struggle in the world, are in themselves an independent fortune
to any young man deserving of success.

It is true that the atmosphere of school life is apt to develop the
ideal faculties unduly, and has a tendency to exalt our ideas of life
and exaggerate our own importance in the world, and induce in the
young and imaginative student that state of mind denominated “walking
on air.” But if, when the valedictorian has made his bow, thrilled
the hearts of his fond friends and relatives by his eloquence, been
the recipient of flowers and compliments to his heart’s content, and
as the finished product of a great and grand institution, succeeds
in alighting from his airy perch on _terra firma_, plain and simple,
without breaking his neck, there is yet hope for him that he is made
of the tough genuine fiber of the type of manhood known in polite
language as the successful variety.

So having in my own person proven the correctness of these theories,
and run the educational gauntlet and found myself still alive, I
determined to make the best of it, though I found myself growing
cynical in my views of life and almost ready at times to give up in
despair.

While in the confessional I may as well make a clean breast of
it, and own that to add to my despair and intensify my melancholy
reflections on the unequal gifts of life, I was madly in love. Yes,
even in the practical city of the young West, there was at least one
young man completely given over to the pleasing yet painful, the
poetical yet contradictory and deliciously bitter-sweet sense of
yearning and pining, and hoping and fearing, that marks the condition
of the hopelessly distraught lover. Not that the adored one did not
reciprocate the feelings of her inamorata, for she had long since
yielded her affections to my soft persuasions, and we had framed our
own philosophy of life into which love was to enter so largely as to
exclude all disagreeable minor themes; and as we were schoolmates
and classmates, I knew beyond a peradventure that in all social and
intellectual acquirements as well as gifts, I was her peer. Beyond this
no troublesome questions of inequality had intruded, believing as we
did with Charles Dickens that “there is no disparity in marriage so
great as unsuitableness in thought and feeling.” Our interests from
childhood had been on the same horizon; the same form of religious
belief was ours. The same social status had been thus far given no hint
of the chasm that was to open between us. What was the Griffin that
stood in our path to happiness? Ah! the only disparity in our lives was
the disparity in the number of paltry dollars we possessed.

Lena Upton was the child of wealthy parents, while I was the almost
penniless ward of an indulgent but impecunious uncle. Lena’s ancestors
had settled upon a section of swamp land adjoining a like tract owned
by my ancestors. Her family acres were not one whit less productive of
frog-spawn, mosquitoes, and miasma than were those of my progenitors.
The city was as densely populous on the tract that should have been my
patrimony as on that which made Lena’s father a multi-millionaire. But
strange to say, all this divergence of results was brought about by a
trifling superiority of liver on the part of Lena’s grandfather over
that of mine, or perhaps the whiskey and quinine that he employed as a
remedial agent was a _bona fide_ brand, while my worthy grandsire was
a victim of the spurious article. Be that as it may, my grandfather
died of malarial fever at a critical time in the history of his
possessions and a slight flaw in the title was examined with a lens of
high magnifying power, by the sharks of the law, till it appeared as a
blotch on the land large enough to obscure and alienate it.

Great was my wrath and towering my impotent rage when I learned that
this trifling circumstance was regarded by Lena’s parents as an
impassable barrier between us. And while a schoolboy and schoolgirl
friendship between us was smiled upon as quite the correct thing,
the knowledge that an engagement existed between Lena and myself was
the signal for an explosion of wrath against me, and, from being an
innocent, agreeable, and suitable companion for Lena Upton, I became
at a bound, in the sight of her parents, a dangerous charmer and
cold-blooded fortune hunter, who would contaminate Lena’s morals by my
presence, and if allowed to carry out my plotting programme, would make
complete shipwreck of her happiness.

This was what I gathered to be the sum and substance of the politely
worded interview with which Mr. Upton favored me. In my ignorance of
worldly wisdom, I made my plea of an unsullied life, undying lofty
Platonic affection for Lena, and ventured to quote from Scripture that
a good name was rather to be chosen than great riches.

But to my surprise, for Mr. Upton is a very prominent worker in the
---- Street Baptist church, he ignored all these arguments, as not
applying to this case in the least, though certainly very true in a
general sense.

I was sanguine that with my splendid health, and with such an
all-impelling motive, I could, in a few years, achieve wealth, and as
for position socially, was not mine already on an equal footing with
hers?

He shook his head incredulously at my first proposition, and as to the
second, he said, “You think so now, my boy, but you will speedily find
your mistake.”

I was forced to own that the tropical warmth of my pleadings was
powerless against his glacial coldness, and I soon found myself reduced
to the dire extremity of asking leave to see Lena for five minutes,
to say good-by, which was grudgingly granted, on my promising on my
sacred honor not to make any effort to communicate in any way with her
clandestinely. Lena’s distress at parting--strange contradiction--was
all that I could desire. She agreed that we must keep sacredly the
promise I had made, not to see her again, but with a woman’s unerring
instinct in such matters, fixed upon the only possible source of
comfort in the situation, by assuring me that she could and would
wait. For she said, “I am sure something will yet happen to bring us
back to each other.”

So with all the tenderness of an ardent nature toward Lena, and all the
bitterness, I fear, of a somewhat resentful one toward her parents, I
was forced to a parting that was fully understood and believed by her
parents to be a final one, but brightened by her loving assurance that
time could not change her feelings toward me.

I resolved then and there that I would rest neither day nor night till
I had secured a situation in the city where I might begin to climb,
even if it were from the lowest round. I naturally turned first to
those with whom I had been on terms of friendship socially, among the
business men of my acquaintance. I found to my disgust that there
were no vacancies here and I imagined that I was dismissed a trifle
superciliously by the men whom I had called friends.

I haunted the streets and business houses like a ghost and I soon came
to resemble one as compared to my former self. I was compelled to plead
guilty to the charge of inexperience, which seemed to be considered an
unpardonable one in the eyes of many, while I was politely dismissed to
wander on again with a somewhat dazed and perplexed inner questioning
as to how I was to gain experience without opportunity. I began to envy
the very bootblacks who had a settled calling and with every boot they
polished were gaining what lacked. I, too, was gaining experience,
but it was of that painful kind that turns to wormwood the spirit of
benevolence that sweetens human intercourse. I saw young men, whom I
knew to have enjoyed not a tithe of the advantages which I had not only
enjoyed but improved, holding positions of trust and profit because
they had a friend at court; and others who had enjoyed equal advantages
with me, but had despised them and had merely drifted through the
prescribed course, studying to evade rather than master the task of
to-day, heedless and ambitionless of to-morrow, succeeding without an
effort on their part to a partnership in a lucrative business with
their fathers or other near relatives.

All these things, with my failure to find work, preyed as a moral
gangrene on my happiness, I found myself harboring wild thoughts of
ending it all by a plunge in the waters of the harbor.

My uncle, ever kindly solicitous for my welfare, at last seeing my
desperate state of mind and knowing my straightened circumstances
better than I, at last came to my rescue with a suggestion which was
the means of changing the whole drift of my life into new channels.
Knowing my partiality for chemistry, mineralogy, and kindred studies,
he suggested a trip to Leadville, then beginning to create quite a
sensation by its great mineral wealth, with a view of utilizing my
technical knowledge of minerals primarily in investigating the worth of
that one of the various groups of mines known as The Little Pittsburg
in which my uncle and I each owned some shares, which we had bought for
a song of a disgusted eastern gold seeker on his way home from Colorado
a year or two before. Afterward, he said, “You may be able to qualify
yourself by practical experience as a mining expert and do a thriving
business.”

I was in just the reckless frame of mind to act on such a suggestion,
and adding his slender resources to mine, my uncle gave me a hearty
handshake and “God bless you, my boy,” and saw me on board a train with
a ticket for Leadville.




CHAPTER II.

LEADVILLE.


At the time when America was celebrating the centennial of her
independence at Philadelphia the present site of Leadville was an
elevated sage brush valley skirting the headwaters of the Arkansas
at an altitude of many thousand feet above the sea level. The whole
population of the valley would not exceed a score or so of souls, but
in three years from that time a city of twenty-five thousand souls had
sprung up.

This is a summary of my knowledge of the place for which I was bound,
bent on making my fortune. In a little over forty-eight hours after
leaving my native city I alighted on the platform of the Leadville
station. I doubt if anything in the annals of the famous forty-niners
in California, could equal this seething chaotic mass of humanity or
rival the wildly grotesque appearance of this city of instantaneous
growth.

Pandemonium let loose was the only comparison that seemed adequate to
the situation. Houses there were none. Of sheds, shanties, tents,
covered wagons and dens in the earth there were legions. The movements
of the inhabitants of this outlandish city bore no resemblance to
the earnest hurry and life of my native city, but resembled rather a
universal desire on their part to catch a vanishing train or the wild
effort to escape an avalanche or such a conflagration as had visited
Chicago a few years before, some of the scenes of which were stamped
ineffaceably on my mind.

I could scarcely keep my feet, much less any stable position where I
might pause to view the ludicrous scene, but was borne irresistibly on
toward the principal street of the city. I was, I protest, in no such
hurry as the dog trot I was compelled to adopt would seem to indicate.
Every one of the presumptuous builders of Babel were represented
there and the scene struck me as being in a marked degree like the
one my imagination had always pictured as immediately following the
confusion of tongues. Men of different nationalities were endeavoring
to make themselves intelligible to each other, gabbling, gesticulating,
able often only to comprehend the choice store of profanity poured
out on their stolid neighbor’s head because he could not interpret
this jargon. Assay offices whose walls could not wholly exclude the
daylight; stores whose shelves could be reached almost equally well
from the outer as the inner side; saloons in endless reach, some of
them consisting simply of a barrel and a few glasses in the open air
with a board announcing its character nailed upon a post, beside the
barrel--were everywhere in evidence. Passing along this street in the
human current, I find residence buildings taking the place of the
business block or board, as the case may be, and boarding houses taking
the place of saloons. To one of the more respectable looking of these
I applied for board and lodging, and found that for the modest sum of
forty dollars a week I could be sumptuously boarded and luxuriously
lodged. The proprietor, a big, red-faced fellow, in top boots and
cowboy hat, assured me that their accommodations were strictly
first-class, and conducted me to the sleeping apartment in the rear,
which was a big lean-to shed, walled and roofed with a single course
of unplaned boards, leaving little lines of daylight where the lumber
purported to join. Bunks wide enough for two ran around the walls tier
on tier; each pair of occupants were supplied with a pair of blankets,
which, he assured me, was a luxury that no other place afforded,
and which, later, I found to be correct, most of the lodgings being
simply a spot of earth enclosed, where the lodger had the privilege
of spreading his blankets on the ground, where saint and sinner, Yale
College graduate and Mexican greaser lay down together to shiver the
night away, having--as incongruous as were their former lives--one
opinion in common, namely, that never before in their lives would they
have considered it a fit enclosure for swine.

But the all-leveling mania for gold reconciled them to any kind of
fare, and any or no shelter, just as circumstances might direct. The
class of boarders at mine host’s inn was mainly of those who were
engaged in ordinary business pursuits in the rickety, ridiculous
segregation and exaggeration of the “wharf-rat” district of
Chicago, called the city; merchants bent on doing business on the
buy-for-a-dollar-and-sell-for-five-plan, lawyers scenting the battle
of contending claimants from afar, assayers, surveyors, wet goodsmen,
proprietors of faro banks and roulette wheels--a striking mass of
humanity, representing every nation and affecting a style of dress
that was a hybrid of the Spanish bull-fighters and Western cowboy
cross--all were here. The supper hour, which was not far off when I
arrived, brought all this motley group with a rush like the stampede
of a Texas herd to feed voraciously on a meal of plain substantial
mountain fare. Bread and butter, black coffee, fat bacon, and fried
potatoes constituted the _menu_, which was regarded, I was told, as a
great modern improvement on the rations provided before the railroad
was completed, when provisions were freighted a long distance.

The landlord, disposed to be friendly and talkative, informed me that
in those good old days flour had sold in camp as high as a dollar per
pound, potatoes fifty cents per pound, eggs five dollars per dozen,
meat five dollars per pound, and hay five hundred dollars per ton.
Board was to be had at the low rate of ten to twenty-five dollars per
meal, or three hundred and fifty to five hundred dollars per week.
But the fabulous yield of silver on the Mosquito Range, he said,
“wuz payin’ the fiddler,” when the New Discovery, the Vulture, and
Carboniferous were yielding ore that ran two thousand and sometimes
upward of three thousand ounces of silver to the ton, and there were a
dozen mines in the camp that were putting out ore day after day, and
week after week, estimated to be worth five dollars per shovelful. “How
do they hold out at present?” I inquired, feeling my way toward a more
vital question.

“Oh, purty fair, purty fair,” he said. “The Long Hannah and the
Mosquito Belle, and the Vulture air all runnin’ smelters of thear own
an’ cleanin’ up two or three thousand a day apiece. But,” he added,
with a tremendous sigh, “we’ll never see sich rattlin’ times agin’.”

I then ventured to ask him if he happened to know anything of The
Little Pittsburg Mine.

“To be sure, to be sure, up on Prayer Hill, must be ten thousand feet
above the sea. Air up thar thinner ’n a snipe, mine no good, started
in purtier ’n a picter, clean petered out, now, hardly raise the color
any more. On the assessment list for some time, still workin’ her
feeble-like. Any interest in her? Sorry. One of the bluest on the range
at present. Belong in Chicago, did you say? Great place.”

So he rattled on in accompaniment to my supper, till a man who sat next
me, attracted by the name of Chicago, began to pay his addresses to me.

“Mabbe you think I’m lyin’, young feller, but I see Chicago when there
was only three stores, one blacksmith shop and one drug store there.
I’m seventy year old last February, but I can remember like it was
yesterday how she looked squatten there in the mud, and the shakes in
the air so thick you could cut um with a knife. I was workin’ for Widdy
Simpson on her claim that run up chuck to the town. I didn’t like the
style of atmosphere they furnished there, so I began to get ready to go
West. The widdy was anxious fur me to stay an’ work fur her, fur hands
was mighty skeerce thar, and she showed me another government claim
that was vacant and laid in the same delightful, stagnatin’ condition
as hern, and mighty nigh as close to town. She advised me to stop an’
work fur her an’ build a shanty on the claim an’ hold it down, but I
couldn’t see no policy in shakin’ my sides when I wuzn’t tickled, and
had no faith in that bloomin’ pollywog pond no way, so I sloped; but it
was a great mistake, for the widdy lived to see herself a millionaire
an’ I might a’ bin a close second, but sich is life. Here I’ve bin a
prospectin’ all my life and haven’t made enough to take me beck to
Chicago. But,” he added, turning toward me, “I’m goin’ to strike her
rich one of these days and don’t you furgit it.”

And he proceeded forthwith to inform me with a mysterious shake of
his head that he knew where lay a ledge of gold-bearing quartz that
was rich enough to make up for all the disappointment of missing his
fortune at Chicago. A sheep herder, he said, whom he encountered in
one of his prospecting trips in the Gunnison country, had showed him
a block of quartz that he had picked up in a gulch while seeking to
quench his thirst from a spring that burst out from its head. As he
stooped over to drink he noticed the peculiar shape of the rock first,
and picking it up, he found it still more peculiar in formation. So he
had carried it with him to camp and produced it in evidence. The old
prospector’s eyes had no sooner fallen upon the sample than he knew
that it was fabulously rich in the yellow metal, and at once proposed
to go halvers and look up the vein, if his herder-friend would conduct
him to the spot where he had picked up the quartz. The proposition
was accepted and my new acquaintance entertained me during the evening
with a minute description of his search for the lead, luring him to
the top of a high range, densely covered with fallen and standing
trees and rocks, in such wild confusion that he could scarcely make
his way through them. Sometimes he was just on the verge of success;
then the trail would grow indistinct and be lost again. So he climbed
the highest neighboring peaks looking for the lost trail, and invaded
deep and almost inaccessible gorges to view the place from which he
had started so hopefully in quest of the parent ledge, from which had
been wrenched this potent declaration of its surpassing richness. But
the ledge was so cunningly hidden that it eluded his keen scent day
after day and throughout lengthening weeks, as he pursued the phantom
through mountain fastnesses and lonely defiles, till his supplies were
all gone, and he was forced to return to camp and seek employment. He
was at present working out an assessment for The Little Pittsburg Mine.
He said, “And just as soon as I can make a little raise I’ll strike
her again, I’m bound to find her, that chunk of the yallar didn’t get
there by no accident. Its just as certain to be there as the sun is
to rise to-morrow, and I am just as certain to find her as soon as I
can get the dust. Say boss,” he suddenly asked in a confidential tone,
“you don’t want to grub-stake me for the half do you?” I looked at
him in blank amazement; that was a term entirely new to me, and might
mean anything from staking a game of cards for him, to burning with him
at the stake as an offering to the gold divinity. “Don’t ketch on to
minin’ camp lingo, hey? Well, you are a precious tenderfoot to be sure.”

Then he explained that in many cases prospectors spent nearly their
whole time in remote mountain regions searching for gold and, of
course, when they were unsuccessful, their means would soon become
exhausted and then, returning to the nearest camp, they would propose
to some merchant or mining expert that if provisions were furnished
them to enable them to go on without interruption, they would give a
half interest in any mine which they might find while the store of
provisions lasted. There was something strikingly pathetic to me in
the spectacle of an old man such as he, still lured on by the hope of
suddenly amassing unlimited wealth. All the discouragements of a long
life of failure were powerless to keep down the elastic hopes which
inspired him; all the failures counted for nothing, all the privations
and exposure were forgotten as he talked of the wealth almost in
sight for both of us, if he could but spend a few weeks more in the
Gunnison country. I was more interested at present, however, in gaining
what information I could regarding my own forlorn hope, The Little
Pittsburg, especially as he had mentioned that he was working upon it.
I have since learned by experience and observation that few people
come within the seductive influence of the mining camp without sooner
or later absorbing the fever to discover the richest and most famous
mine yet known, and during the progress of that hallucination he is
as literally stark mad as a victim of mountain fever in his wildest
ravings.

I felt the thrill of the old man’s words, but did not then know that
it was the characteristic first symptoms of the disease, and till near
the hour of midnight I listened as he discoursed of mines and mining
operations, of life in Leadville, the crudest and wildest stages of
life in the mountains, for months with no other companion than his
pack mule, of narrow escapes from Indians, of not less blood-curdling
accounts of losing his way in the mountains when provisions were almost
exhausted, and the winter closing in on the higher altitudes; of winter
life in Leadville, and other camps among the most motley, the most
reckless, and withal, the most generous class of people on the face of
the earth. He now indicated that it was his bedtime, and, as I had all
the experience that one day could well utilize, our landlord filed us
away by number on the shelves of his human mercantile establishment
like legal documents, and left us to wink and blink at the stars that
twinkled through the roof at us. But the first keen delight of inhaling
the pure mountain air of the Rockies at such an elevation compensates
for all minor inconveniences, and every breath was a new delight, and
sleep was a repetition of boyhood’s perfect rest undisturbed by ugly
dreams. Morning opens anew at each awakening; the bounding pulse and
rosy hopes of a new world, the weariness, the discouragements, are
all gone, and I can now understand something of the source of that
wonderful buoyancy that keeps the poor prospector from despair.

After breakfasting on hot biscuit, fat bacon and coffee, I accompanied
my venerable friend to inspect our valuable possessions, The Little
Pittsburg. The old gentleman, to whom I will now, indulgent reader,
if you will pardon the rudeness of delay, present you, my friend of a
night, Abner Callaway, prospector and practical miner; by nativity a
child of Illinois; by circumstances and training a cosmopolitan; in
thought and intent, simple as a child; by creed, a follower of the
golden rule. Short of stature, sturdy of build, limbs encased in the
picturesque blue overalls tucked into high-top boots, supported by
buckskin suspenders, flaming red flannel shirt with sleeves habitually
rolled up to the elbows, and folded back from his burly chest at the
neck in the shape of a V, showing a bosom hairy as Esau’s; cowboy hat
with leathern band sheltering a good-natured, rubicund countenance in
which you could but believe, the venerable expression heightened by a
long white beard and locks of the same hue, falling to the shoulders,
complete the picture of the man with whose destiny mine was to be
wonderfully blended. But hold! I have given you his picture as he
appears at rest. To prepare himself for action he produces a clay
pipe, fills and lights it, and then the little human engine puffs away
in active motion toward the theater of action for the day. Between
puffs, he informs me, as we climb up and up till a queer feeling as
if a heavy weight were attached to each foot begins to be noticed,
and you realize that you are getting beyond the natural habitation of
the animal known as man, that he had a few days’ work yet to perform
on this claim, when he would be at liberty to pursue his own projects
once more, the only hindrance being the want of sufficient means to
make an extended prospecting trip, and as it was already June and the
summer-time of opportunity, but brief in those elevated regions, he
felt great anxiety to be at his labor of love again. You felt as he
talked that he spoke with all the earnestness of strong conviction
and persuaded you because he himself felt strongly, and not because
of any element of the shark in his arguments. He might himself be
deluded, but he was not seeking to delude you, but to convert you
to the truth. He explained that his golden field of quest lay to the
southward, well toward the mouth of the Gunnison in the Elk Mountains
where the severities of the climate were not so great, nor the winters
of enforced idleness so long. He waived all my efforts to turn the
conversation upon our mine as a subject of not a moment’s importance
compared with the one which dominated his life by day, and gave the
text for glorious treasure-haunted dreams by night, so that by the
time we reached our superb property in the region of the clouds, my
mind was beginning to yield to the reasonings with which he besieged
it, and I began to regard The Pittsburg as being, after all, of rather
secondary importance. It is well that my mind had been thus prepared
for the utter revulsion of feeling which took possession of it when I
beheld what had been represented as valuable property, lacking only
development. But it still lacked a good deal of that subtle fancy that
enables one to see in a possession like ours anything more than an
unsightly hole in the ground, upon which so much excavating must be
done from time to time, to fulfill the law. I stood upon the brink of
the pit and looked down into its unpromising depths with much the same
feelings, I imagine, with which I should inspect the work of digging my
own grave.

The old man cut off my bitter reflections by observing impressively,
“Look ’e here, pard, I’m an old man an’ you’re but a kid. Let me take
an old man’s privilege an’ advise you never again while you have
breath in you, never put a dollar into a paper mine.” He showed me
some specimens taken out the day before, and declared they were all
right, way up ore in fact, but not enough of them. “Pinched right out;
if she’d held out as she started you would be a millionaire now. Of
course, there’s a ghost of a chance that she’ll come in agin’ all OK,
but not likely.”

So I left him at his work, and went in search of the resident owners of
the concern, whose whereabouts he pointed out. They were two brothers,
Wilson by name, and they were at present working another claim of the
same group on Prayer Hill. When I had introduced myself, and satisfied
them, by recommendations which I carried, of my identity, and of the
fact of my interest in the property, I was received very kindly.
They had struck a rich vein in the claim they were working and were
sanguine that The Little Pittsburg would yet come out all right. I
paid my assessments to date, and got all the information possible in
regard to the mine, which, when summed up, was that, if it failed to
pan out, it would be the first and only one of that particular group
that had done so. That the depth to which the shaft had reached was
not yet sufficient for a final opinion on its value, and that in their
judgment I would do well not to be in a hurry about disposing of my
shares. This somewhat restored my spirits, and I began to consider
what I should do pending a final test on our property, and I set about
getting practical information to supplement my theoretical stock,
which I found was a rather useless commodity without the ability to
turn it to successful account. I had a wholesome horror of the task of
looking for a job in the light of past experiences, but I had already
learned enough of matters here to show me that conditions here were
somewhat different from those I had encountered. Men stood but little
on the formality of introductions or references, but accepted with easy
philosophy the people and conditions that surrounded them. I had been
encouraged by hearing, every working hour since my arrival, inquiries
for help in various lines, and on returning to my boarding house at
noon, my landlord said he had just had an inquiry for a clerk in one
of the assay offices, and that he would introduce me at dinner to the
proprietor, which he did, with the result that I obtained the position
which was much to my present mind as it afforded the opportunities I
desired for reducing my knowledge of minerals to practice.

Next morning I assumed my new duties, which I found interesting and
agreeable, for they brought me in contact with the best mining ability,
both practical and theoretical, that the world afforded, and I was
eager to improve them and impatient to make my fortune, and return to
my Mecca, toward which I worshiped day and night. Doubtless I committed
the usual lover-like weakness of “sighing like a furnace,” but never
the kindred one of writing a ballad to my mistress’ eyebrow, owing to
the fact that in spite of my yearning passion I found it impossible
to be poetical, and never in my life had been known to turn a single
rhyme. I made but few acquaintances among the conglomerate population,
where ex-ministers of the gospel lay down to rest, side by side, with
blacklegs and professional gamblers, and that still more degraded
specimen in his line of business, the “sure thing” man. He it was who
blackened the fair fame of the professional in the latter’s opinion,
and brought his honorable(?) profession into disrepute, and himself
into unsavory prominence because an undiscriminating public insisted
upon writing them down in the same category. His protest to me had much
the same ring as that which the keepers of apothecary shops in Western
States send forth, because some thoughtless and illogical persons
insist on thinking of them when saloonists are mentioned, not because
they ever stoop to the degrading business of selling a glass of liquor
over the bar or counter--begging his pardon--but because they as good
and law-abiding citizens choose to enjoy the legal right to sell it by
the quart, gallon and jugful. While my city training had not made me
over nice in moral distinctions, yet I confess to a somewhat creeping
sensation when I saw a prominent druggist in Leadville kneeling at the
altar in a prominent evangelical church to receive the solemn rites of
ordination as an elder in said church, on a Sabbath morning, rise and
hurry through with his noonday meal and away to his place of business
to prepare several demijohns of whiskey for the outgoing stage bound
for some mining camp beyond the railroad facilities.

But I have already stated that my researches into human nature since
leaving the genial, exhilarating atmosphere of the schoolroom had
tended to make me somewhat cynical; so I beg my readers not to mind
me in the least, to merely regard this spleeny digression as another
evidence that my mind has become soured by want of success, and that my
present position on morals is owing rather to an abnormal condition of
the liver than to firm principles.

Speaking of acquaintances, however, there was one whose influence had
grown upon me, day by day, and who had seemed as assiduously bent on
cultivating my friendship as I was flattered by his; for I had from
the first hour I met him placed implicit confidence in our old friend
of the flaming garment, nor have I to this hour found the smallest
reason to change my opinion. Neither is this intended as a tribute to
my acumen in reading human nature, but rather as a tribute to his open
nature that presented no difficulties to the dullest reader. Of course,
I inquired regularly as to the prospects of our mine, as he penetrated
into the ledge, but the answers were rather unsatisfactory though on
the whole he said the prospects were a little more cheering than when I
first viewed my Golconda.

So the month of June had almost slipped away, and he would complete
his job in two days more, when, one evening, he said the ledge was
opening up again in fine shape and if she kept on as she promised now
she would yet be a hummer. The next evening the reports were still more
favorable, and The Little Pittsburg began again to become one of the
themes among the knowing ones.

One day now remained of his allotted test work, and I waited in
feverish anxiety for the old miner’s final report. As soon as office
hours were over I hastened to our hotel to learn the results. Abner had
not yet returned, but I did not have long to wait in suspense, and when
he came he assured me with fatherly pleasure that I had struck it rich!

But my faith had been too rudely shattered once to soar very high on
the subject of the strike. I began to have some offers for my interest
that night, and the next morning I was waited upon by the Wilson
brothers, who offered me ten thousand dollars for the shares owned by
myself and uncle. I had been clothed with full power to negotiate and
transfer his stock with mine in case I saw fit to sell, and, without
waiting to seek the advice of my old friend, or hesitating a moment,
I accepted the offer of what appeared to me quite a fortune. When I
advised my old friend of my deal he rated me roundly, and called me
some rather uncomplimentary names; said I needed a guardian, and that I
could just as well have pocketed a cool hundred thousand as the paltry
ten thousand. I tried to feel badly over my foolish transaction, but
failed to feel any compunction at parting with a possession that had
been from the first somewhat of a white elephant on my hands.




CHAPTER III.

A BRACE OF MINING EXPERTS.


Out of the chaos of the world, beyond our orbits of which we know so
little in our circumscribed limits of thought and action, there was
about this time evolved two typical characters of the mining camp.
Diametrically different in methods, and working in entirely distinct
departments of the mining industry each was an expert in his own
particular line. The first was a dapper little Frenchman, of pleasing
appearance and address, sprightly of tongue and limb, neat of dress and
rejoicing in the appellation of Captain De Vere. He had spent his whole
life since the famous days of forty-nine in California in the study of
mines and mining, in all their details from the standpoint, first of
a practical miner, and later as a diligent student of metallurgy, and
it was said, made a good thing by virtue of his knowledge, of which
even the oldest prospector who depended upon his experience with pick
and shovel alone, had little conception. He took lodgings with mine
host, and cultivated the acquaintance of everybody with the ease of
an old stager, and in a way to bear out the natural reputation of
his countrymen for social graces. His time was spent in wandering
about among the mines gathering specimens of ore from many sources,
and in assaying them and recording the result in the office which he
established ostensibly to do test work for the public; but he spent
so much of each day in field work that his business did not seem to
be a very flourishing one, which fact seemed to cause him very little
concern. The Little Pittsburg had now come into prominence and the
Wilson Brothers decided to work it vigorously, so one of them took
charge of the property, erected a shanty close to the shaft, and
employed a force of men to operate it. One day as Captain De Vere was
making his rounds he strolled to the shanty of the Wilson mine and
began to examine the earth thrown out in a heap upon the dump. One
variety of clay thrown up was of a soft putty-like appearance, dull
white in color with a bluish tinge. The cabin had been banked all
around with this substance to shelter the nightly occupants from the
chilly winds. The captain examined this carefully, compared it with
that in the heap, found them identical in quality, and in that simple
fact made an important discovery to him, namely, the owner’s estimate
of its value in putting it to this homely use. There was a bright
glitter in the Frenchman’s eye as he carefully pocketed a specimen,
then strolled carelessly away till sure of being well out of sight,
when he fairly flew to his office, locked himself in, and in great
excitement began to test his morning’s supply of specimens. Whatever
the results, when he appeared at noon among his associates no one could
have suspected from his manner that he cared a fig for all the silver
in Leadville. He was gay and talkative, even more jovial than usual,
but his interest seemed to be anywhere else than in mining. A day or
two after this he loafed again into the dominion of white clay and
asked for Mr. Wilson, who soon appeared, when Captain De Vere asked him
carelessly, after some conversation, if he wished to sell The Little
Pittsburg. “That depends,” said Mr. Wilson; “we all have our price, you
know. My brother and I are satisfied that we have a good thing here,
and are in no hurry to part with it; still we will sell if we get what
she’s worth.”

“Could I look her over?” asked the captain.

“Why, yes, certainly, but I don’t believe I can show you through
to-day, as I have an appointment below; but I should be happy to show
you all there is to be seen at any time after to-day. I will be here at
two o’clock to-morrow.”

The captain took his departure for his office, and the astute owner
of the promising mine hastened to keep his appointment below, which
did not happen to mean one in the town at the foot of the hill, but
below the surface of a little square of the earth’s surface to which he
had laid claim with all the leads, spurs, dips, and angles that might
underlay it, and during the rest of the day he was, indeed, a very much
engaged man, preparing, like a prudent housewife, for the coming visit.

At the appointed time the two gentlemen were lowered away by the
miner’s windlass, to the depths below. As many men as could be utilized
had been kept busily at work since her late development of riches, and
several drifts had been started in various directions and different
levels to fully develop the wealth supposed to lie there and form a
basis on which a miner could glibly tell you, to the fraction of an
ounce, how many thousands were “in sight.”

The captain inspected each tunnel minutely, making a few inquiries,
probing some weak points in the make-up of the ledge, until they came
to, and passed, what appeared to have been, to the Frenchman’s keen
eyes, the beginning of another drift tunnel that had been abandoned,
and barricaded with rocks and clay. “Halloo!” said Captain De Vere,
“what’s this?”

“Oh, that’s a drift we run there a little way, but she showed up
nothing, so we quit her and made her a dump for this worthless white
clay.”

“By the way,” said the captain, “this white clay is going to take your
mine yet, isn’t it?”

“Oh, no, I guess not,” said Wilson, trying to conceal any show of
annoyance that he might feel, “that will run out when we get down a
little further.”

“But doesn’t it grow thicker in the vein at present there?” asked the
captain.

“Well, yes,” replied Wilson, reluctantly, “but we think that it will
peter out presently.”

Next morning a little wizened old miner in regulation attire presented
himself at Wilson’s cabin and asked for a job. As the work was extended
in different directions it gave a constantly widening field for work,
and he was told to go below and clean out room number five. Three hours
later Wilson himself went below to inspect the work of his men, and
on coming to the spot where he had erected his barricade he found it
partly removed and the new hand was busily at work in it, clearing away
the rubbish.

“What the devil are you doing in there?” demanded Wilson.

“Why this is number five, isn’t it, boss?”

“H--l, no!” roared Wilson, “get out of there and out of this mine;
here’s your day’s wages; I don’t want any such stupid jackasses about
the works;” and the crestfallen miner went his way, leaving the angry
proprietor to repair the damage done to his defenses, and sputtering
away about the folly of hiring green hands who made more extra work
than their necks were worth.

The magician of the retort was again at his work in his little office
and his labors seemed to exert a strange spell over him, for his
countenance worked in a sort of time-keeping spasm to the changes in
the ores undergoing analysis. He laughed satirically to himself, he
paced the floor in half-suppressed excitement, composed himself to
make some entries in a little private record, and to the figures he
added a few words of annotation in cipher, closed the book and thrust
it into his inner pocket; and, like a man changing his workaday coat
for evening dress, he assumed again the beaming, careless, happy
countenance of a contented philosopher who has enough to meet the
demands of his everyday life and would not go out of his way for more.
By merest chance (?) he sauntered into the post office a few days later
as Wilson came out. Greeting him cordially he inquired jocosely, “How’s
the potter’s clay panning out?”

“That’s all right, captain, but she’s doing a little better to-day than
she did yesterday, and she’s been going that gait now for a good many
days. The Little Pittsburg is all OK.”

The captain was passing on, but had a second thought, and stopping,
he asked: “Well, how much less will you take than you gave for those
shares you bought of Hardman the other day?”

“Rats, rats,” said Wilson, “you know she’s worth all we gave for her,
and a handsome sum to boot; I’ll tell you what, captain, it’ll just
take a hundred thousand dollars to buy The Little Pittsburg. Say the
word, captain, and she’s yours for that money, but not a penny less.”

“I’ll take her,” said the captain coolly, “I may as well make a fool
of myself as anybody, I haven’t any family to suffer if I do go broke.
Come to Hobson’s notarial office with your brother, this evening,
and we’ll fix it up,” and the captain tripped away as serenely as
though his heart was not beating like a triphammer, and his emotions
threatening to choke him. Wilson, with less perfect training, hurried
away, excitement plainly written on every feature and expressed in
every action. He hardly dared to believe that the captain meant what
he said, or would stand to his bargain through the day. But when, in
company with his brother, he presented himself at the appointed time
and place, the little captain seemed to be still laboring under the
strong delusion that impelled him to regard the mine as a bonanza.
The transfer was speedily made, and the evening express bore to
Denver a package bearing the address of Wilson Brothers’ bankers,
and containing a hundred thousand dollars in gold. It also bore the
little captain on his bland way to London, where he must have produced
some convincing arguments of the worth of his property, for he was
accompanied on his return by one of the trusted representatives of a
rich London firm who dealt in mines and mining stocks. Once more the
various galleries of The Little Pittsburg were swept and garnished in
preparation for a visitor. Once more the impressionable putty clay
was to take a plaster cast of a foreign-made boot, but this time the
barricade of rocks in room number five was removed and everything done
to invite the visitor to enter.

And now John Bull and Skye Terrier pant up the mountain, scarcely able
to breathe enough oxygen in this thin atmosphere to support the living
flame in the lusty Englishman. Arrived at the cabin, they inspected
the clay on the dump and the captain is telling his companions that
there are thousands of dollars lying right there on that heap of white
clay. “It is the richest ore of the kind I’ve ever seen taken from the
earth, but these mummies know no more of its value than if it had been
aluminum; but come below, there’s a prettier sight there I want to show
you.” They descend to the level of room number five, and make their way
there at once. “Look here,” said the captain pointing triumphantly to
a dark streak of mineral about an inch in width, running zigzag down
the face wall of the ledge. “There she is, the pure stuff! Some of the
lumps I gathered the day I went to work for Wilson as a miner tested
eighty to eighty-five per cent. of silver, and these looneys who have
been mining all their lives pronounced it a vein of iron, and tried to
smuggle it over for fear it would injure the sale of their property.
Ha, ha! I like to be injured that way, though I didn’t make a great
success working for Wilson, blundered into the wrong stall you know,
and got fired. Now we’ll see the other levels and inspect the vein of
putty in its native state. Too bad it got worse on them all the time,
expensive stuff to handle, ate up all the profits. I’ll convince you
that at each level where the ledge is tapped this rich silver-bearing
but innocent-looking white clay grows steadily thicker, and when we get
our drift through from the bottom of the hill, we’ll show you one of
the greatest bonanzas in the history of Leadville or any where else.”

And undoubtedly De Vere made good his word as far as bringing
convincing proofs of what he claimed for the ledge is concerned, for,
before another week had elapsed, the town was all a-twitter with the
news that Captain De Vere had sold a half interest in The Little
Pittsburg to a London syndicate, for the handsome sum of one million
dollars in good yellow gold. I had thus the pleasure of seeing my
property increase in value tenfold; each time it changed hands but, I
alas, was at the wrong end of the progression. Still, I can sincerely
and honestly aver that I have never yet seen a day, or an hour, when I
regretted the part I had taken. I felt as if I were not yet ripe for
such a blow of prosperity and one that would most probably have knocked
me off my pegs entirely. I felt, too, that my destiny and fortune lay
in another direction from the time I first knew my flambeau friend, Dad
Callaway, as the boys, with a touch in the rough, of feeling for his
venerable years, had named him.

I was deeply interested in all his plans and ambitions and resolved in
due time to tender my assistance; but at present my great concern was
to learn how to make a footprint that would not be instantly recognized
as that of a tenderfoot. I could already discern clearly enough a
wide field of profitable employment for those who were competent to
cultivate it, and the experience of Captain De Vere, I felt, was almost
as valuable to me as though I, and not he, had realized the million
from our mine. I could but own that it was but a just price paid for
knowledge; what little information I possessed had sold readily enough
for ten thousand, Wilson’s a grade higher for practical purposes sold
for a correspondingly higher price, while Captain De Vere’s expert
knowledge on the subject brought its adequate reward.

Encouraged by his example I felt that in years to come, I, too, could
combine the knowledge derived from college life with that of the
everyday life of a miner, and become a two-fisted fellow ready to cope
successfully with all classes of men and mines that I should come in
contact with, but I confess I had not the slightest conception, or
prophetic ken, of the job in store for me.

But the other type of mining expert, what of him? We must beg his
pardon for having left him all this time standing on one leg waiting
for an introduction, like a big, awkward schoolboy, while we went into
rhapsodies over the fortune-getting that was interesting to us chiefly
as a spectacular entertainment, or, if valuable as an experience in
life, we bought the same at a good round price. If the example of the
other acquaintance to whom we are about to present you should prove of
any value, and it is with this earnest hope in view that I record it,
it will be chiefly as an example to be avoided, and lest, by assuming
the responsibility of presenting him I should also incur the guilt of
aiding and abetting in fraud and illicit practices, I shall plainly
label him and present him to you, my readers, as Jim Mitchel, P.M.S.,
professional mining shark. He is a strapping, coarsely-framed fellow
with swarthy complexion and a sneering cast of countenance, and, as to
nationality, that might pass for any foreign, or home-bred progeny of
the villain type; while his speech proves that by habit of life he is
legitimately of the mining-camp breed.

He appeared at our camp about the same time that Captain De Vere made
his appearance. He belonged to what might be termed the night shift of
our boarding-house community, for he seldom took time for sleep during
the natural hours for such repose, but was to be seen frequenting the
saloons, faro-games, and roulette wheels, especially during the harvest
time of those flourishing institutions, which was from Saturday evening
till Monday morning. Thousands of the miners worked claims that lay at
some distance from the city in the surrounding mountains. It is the
testimony of all old miners and inhabitants of mining towns, confirmed
by a not ungenerous range of observance by myself, that ninety-nine of
every one hundred men, whose sturdy labor produces the mineral wealth
of the land, fail to realize any material benefit from their labors
beyond a bare living. When the labors of the week are ended they all
flock to town to enjoy their holiday, hear the latest mine gossip, lay
in provisions for the coming week, and last, but uppermost in their
minds, enjoy the privileges, the delights of the saloon and gaming
table. Wholly indescribable to the uninitiated were these scenes in the
palmy days of Leadville. Every saloon was filled to overflowing with
rough miners drinking and jesting, and around the rows of gaming tables
were gaping crowds of infatuated spectators, anxious for a chance to
try their luck. Huge piles of gold and silver lay on the tables, and
heavy stakes were played for. There was one feature of the scene that
appeared inconsistent with its general character, which was a notable
absence of wrangling and wordy disputes that were the invariable
accompaniment of such scenes in Eastern cities. In fact the scene was
one of armed neutrality, for almost every man carried a heavy revolver
at his side, and in that fact was found the solution of the problem;
for it was well understood that epithets sown broadcast would speedily
reap a harvest of bullets, and the drunken sot, who, in an Eastern city
felt privileged to thrust his maudlin visage into your face or apply
lightly decorative word-painting to your cognomen, never so far forgot
himself here as to take such offensive liberties, knowing that they
would not be tolerated for a moment, and proving that in his boldest
flights of imprudence the toper is still responsible and capable of
distinguishing between good and evil, but is possessed by a reckless
spirit of deviltry, which he will wreak upon you if he knows it is
entirely safe to do so, knowing that when he meets you next day, and
you venture to remonstrate with him he has the convenient scapegoat,
“the drink,” to bear his sins away.

But when trouble did arise which was not seldom, “The devil and Tom
Walker,” was to pay, guns were drawn by the principals in the dispute,
and as there seems to be no possible question that can arise in life
but has its votaries on both sides, the sympathizers of both parties
promptly drew theirs, lights were blown out, or shot out, a regular
fusillade in the dark resulted in the death of perhaps half a score of
poor fellows, quite as likely to be of those who had no part whatever
in the quarrel, as not. Their comrades would carry them out when the
scrimmage was over, and the room relighted, after which everything
went on again as before, with only a little estrangement between the
contending parties. In the midst of such scenes as those Jim Mitchel
was perfectly at home; he staked his money freely, and bore his varying
fortunes with sneering good humor. He was better posted on the nerve
and weakness of the different players in camp than, perhaps, any man in
it, so that his stakes were wagers of his superiority of judgment of
human nature. In that sense Jim was a sure thing man, for he generally
managed to foot up a balance in his favor after each night’s play.
If a horse race was to be run on a Sunday on the main thoroughfare,
which was the staple Sunday amusement, and the main street the regular
racecourse, Jim was a prominent character, going about with a handful
of twenty-dollar pieces held aloft and calling out the odds on his
favorite horse, till he found a taker. All these sports were with Jim
the mere by-play, to amuse and while away the present moment, while he
waited for the curtain to rise on his five-act drama. Jim was a fisher
of men, but in the waters where we have seen him, casting hook and
line, he caught only what he considered minnows, which he intended to
use for bait to attract game worthy of his attention.

Jim had a claim on one of the remote peaks of Prayer Hill group, but
judging from appearance he valued it mainly as it gave him standing
as a miner among the boys, and occasioned healthful exercise in doing
necessary assessment work. He was no indifferent on-looker at the
prosperity of The Little Pittsburg, and he drew his own conclusions,
being careful to cultivate a natural feeling in the public mind, of
expectancy that other mines in this group might prove equally valuable.

Meanwhile, no doubt, his mental eye was scanning the financial horizon
of Leadville for a star of the first magnitude, before which he might
perform his devotions. His affections suddenly centered upon an object
to all human appearance the most unpromising imaginable. Good old Dr.
Maxwell, a practicing physician, who had amassed a comfortable fortune
before coming to Leadville, and had increased it to a decidedly
handsome one by judicious investment in city real estate, was opposed
to all mining speculation, and boasted that he had been around mining
camps since the days of the forty-niners’ paradise and had never yet
been attacked by the “buck fever,” or mania for speculation in mines.

“Mitch” was too astute a student of human nature not to observe that an
element of weakness cropped out in that very declaration of strength,
and proceeded in the practice of his profession on the principle that
every man who came in contact with mining affairs would have his turn
at the disease as surely as he was subject, in earlier life, to the
measles and whooping cough.

He was too good an artist to attempt to interest the venerable doctor
by any commonplace method or argument, but from the moment the latter
made his confident assertion, Mitchel set him down in his list of
eligibles and patiently awaited the opportunity to lure him into his
parlor, with the winding stair, when he should convince him, that
according to the doctor’s complacent explanatories of contagious
diseases, “Humanity is rendered immune from contagious diseases only by
experiencing that disease in a more or less violent form.”

Variety theaters, horse races, faro dens, and jag shops were vastly
more congenial to Mitch as places of amusement, but the frequenters
of these places were not favorable subjects for his manipulations, for
they, as a rule, had been thoroughly inoculated with every form of
mental epidemic and fanciful fever, till they had become dulled to such
influences and far too _blasé_ to make desirable converts.

He resolved that if ever he should be sick, none but Dr. Maxwell should
prescribe for him. Fortune would not have been doing her share toward
aiding this general in fighting his battles, if she had not come to his
rescue now. He had the good fortune, while toying with a gun, to have
the little finger of his left hand shot off, and sought the doctor’s
office to have it properly dressed, and proceed forthwith to “call”
him softly. Fumbling in his pocket for a stray gold piece to pay his
fee, he, by the merest accident in the world, drew out with the twenty
dollar piece a little nugget of silver an inch square, such as we have
seen taken from the “iron seam” in the Little Pittsburg, and remarked
casually, as he separated it from the coin: “Doc, here’s a nice little
specimen for your cabinet, take a look at it. About ninety per cent.
pure silver, I should say. Nothing small about that, hey?”

He noted carefully, as ever did this knight of the pill, every
circumstance entering into the diagnosis of a difficult case, the look
of interest in the old doctor’s eye, as he examined the innocent
little piece of mineral that was to produce a greater tumult in his
quiet bosom than his favorite dose of calomel could produce in his
patients.

“That’s a beauty, Mitchel, much obliged; where did such a specimen as
that come from?”

“Oh, that’s from my little property, The Queen, upon Prayer Hill. Lots
more like it there. I’ll bring you some more next time I’m down if you
like it.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and develop your mine, Jim? You might have a
good thing there.”

“Might have, I know I have, without any ifs or ands about it, but I can
make all the money I need without digging for it; that’s hardly in my
line; I do enough work on her to clear the law, and that’s all I care
for at present.”

And Jim, having seen his patient swallow the first dose, dropped the
subject as if of little interest to him, and soon went away. He came
daily to have his finger dressed, but took care to forget all about
his promise to bring some more specimens, till the doctor had reminded
him of it once or twice; then he finally produced another of the same
kind as the first one brought, but a still larger and finer specimen,
some lumps of putty clay, rich with blue streaks of silver, and several
different kinds of quartz, specimens all rich in their way, for sly
Jim Mitchel knew that they would go, not into the doctor’s cabinet,
but into the assayer’s hands; then he remarked lazily that they were
precisely similar to the ore found in The Little Pittsburg, at the same
stage of development, and furthermore, that his lead would one day cut
The Little Pittsburg out, and make them answer for every dollar they
were taking out.

Then he loafed away again, leaving his little lump of blue clay to
leaven the whole lump of mercenary meal in the white-haired physician.

Long he sat in his office pondering on many things. He had succeeded
beyond his expectations in his profession, had reaped a comfortable
harvest of professional honor and a goodly store of wealth, but he had
a large and ambitious family, sons and daughters, anxious to obtain the
best educational advantages Europe and America could afford. He had
learned by costly experience that youthful ambitions were expensive.
To be sure, he had always inveighed against such speculations, but
this was an exceptional case. Here was a mine owned by a profligate
who would rather make his money by gambling than by digging, and who,
even if he did develop and realize a fortune from his mine, would only
squander it shortly, and reap no permanent benefits, but rather injury,
for it would only give him a new impetus in dissipation.

Then he reviewed his whole business and professional career and
concluded that his success had entitled him to a fair opinion of his
own judgment, and made up his mind, that if, after investigating,
he found as promising an investment as surface views indicated, he
might possibly invest a little money in The Queen. He promptly turned
over his samples to be tested, and, as you and I are well aware,
they were no bogus samples, and, therefore, it does not surprise us
in the least to learn that they made a remarkably good record, duly
attested and certified to by the responsible and bonded firm of Krupp
& Golden. So Jim went on his way, only a poor, ignorant fool, beneath
the notice, ordinarily, of a professional gentleman of Dr. Maxwell’s
caliber. He could not relate a single college incident, or converse
intelligently on the subject of college boating, and football clubs,
of secret societies for the promotion of the dignity of the seniors,
and the holding in check of the rising imprudence and conceit of the
“Freshies,” and “Sophs;” knew nothing whatever of coaching and hazing,
while all these were pleasing, everyday themes of conversation with
the doctor and his companions, even though they might seem, at times,
a little heedless of the courtesy due some friend present who had
never known such a seventh heaven of delight. But, after all, could
such an one have the fine sensitive nature that could feel neglected
by being ignored in this feast of the little American gods? The
ultimate conclusion arrived at in his cogitations was that he had
good grounds for believing in himself as a very prudent, careful, and
eminently capable sort of a person and he sometimes prayed with himself
consciously, or unconsciously, “Lord, I thank Thee that I am not as
other men, or even as this poor profligate who wastes his substance in
riotous living, like the unfaithful steward of whom Thou hast said,
even that which he hath shall be taken from him,” but out of native
politeness, and a refined and classical nature he refrained from
hinting to the Throne of Grace that he was eminently the proper person
on whom the confiscated goods should be bestowed.

But the doctor had his own private opinion on that subject and began to
think that he would like to take a look at the property known as The
Queen.

He regarded it as almost a providential bit of information on a subject
that was deeply interesting to him, but of which no human being had
heard him breathe a word, that one of his patients who was suffering
from an ugly flesh wound received in one of the free-for-all fights in
a saloon the night before, had remarked while being cared for, “That
was a lucky shot for me that it’s no worse; but it was an unlucky
scrimmage for Jim Mitchel.”

“Why so?” asked the physician.

“Well, you see, Jim was just arranging a deal with some of the boys
who had had a streak of luck to bond The Queen for a hundred thousand
dollars, but they quarreled about fixin’ the papers an’ he lost the
whole deal for what didn’t amount to four bits.”

Reflecting when alone on this information the doctor concluded that
the time had come for him to investigate this matter, and that it was
advisable to act decisively before the game went entirely out of his
hands. So he sought the haunts of Mitchel, and told him he should like
a few more specimens from his mine for a friend, for he reasoned that
it would not be policy for him to show his hand at this early stage in
the game, when his partner was an ignoramus who could not understand
his motive, or appreciate the business sagacity that suggested such a
course.

They went together to the incipient bonanza, Queen, armed with a pick,
with which to loosen the specimens. There was to be no chance for any
trickery here, the doctor had soliloquized, and at any rate a man who
is foolish enough to be duped with his eyes open, ought to have his eye
teeth cut. He superintended the work of knocking down a good supply of
samples from the ledge, and saw them gathered up and put into a sack.
Any one could see with half an eye that these specimens were genuine
without the possibility of mistake. Was not the ledge bristling with
the same kind of ore, was not the earth beneath their feet strewn with
the same sort of samples from the parent ledge? It would require an
expert to determine which pieces were broken off now, and which ones
had been detached at an earlier period.

Entirely satisfied that he had in his grasp a sack containing a fair
sample of the ledge before them, and a little inclined to blame himself
for distrusting his companion, who, after all, was guilty of no worse
crime than that of dense ignorance of many things in the world that
were patent to himself, the doctor returned to the city, and delivered
them to his “friend” Krupp, of the firm of Krupp & Golden, who put them
into his cabinet of curiosities in the shape of a record of silver
ore, bearing at the rate of so many ounces of pure silver to the ton.
The sagacious doctor then consulted his “friend’s” cabinet to find the
value of these specimens compared with those of The Little Pittsburg,
which also adorned his “friend’s” extensive collection, and found that
in quality they were identical, confirming Mitchel’s view of the case
that he had the same lay-out as his prosperous neighbors. He quietly
posted himself as to what The Little Pittsburg was doing, and found
that it was yielding more than was generally supposed, an amount to
make his pulse perceptibly quicken and he felt something of the thrill
that youthful hopes and plans used to yield.

He consulted his attorney on the legal aspect of a case in which a
“friend” was interested, in which the ledge dipped toward an adjoining
claim, and found that here, too, Mitchel had been correctly informed;
though it was something of a mystery to him how a rude, untutored
intellect like Mitchel’s could pick up and retain so many fragments
of correct information. The result of all these business-like and
methodical steps was a little talk with Mitch, in his private office,
in which he explained suavely that he was looking for a little
investment for a friend, who wanted to engage in mining speculations,
and though he had tried to dissuade him from it, he was determined,
and the doctor had consented to do his best to find a little property
that might yield small and steady returns as the party was too old to
wish to dabble in anything in the wild-cat line, nor did he expect
to strike a bonanza; but he had thought that perhaps The Queen would
fill the bill at a low figure, otherwise he could not invest. Jim, the
stolid and ignorant, heard all this without the changing of a muscle,
and replied that he would consider an offer of seventy-five thousand
dollars as a very low figure indeed, but he was undecided as to whether
he ought to sell her as she was bound in time to become a bonanza, and
so forth. The pious doctor was almost paralyzed by the mere mention of
so large a sum.

“But, my dear sir, that is out of sight; you ask more money than my
friend ever thought of owning in one batch, to say nothing of putting
it into a wild speculation like that.”

“Well,” said Mitch, “I’m not pertickeler about sellin’ her, but I’ve
named the price that ’ud take her, and that’s the bottom notch.”

“How would you like to trade her for some city real estate? I’ve got
some lots that are hard to beat for location and value.”

“I’ll take anything that’s capable of bein’ turned into dust,” said
Mitchel, “only I must know she’s got the intrinsic value, dollar for
dollar.”

Thus they played their little game at cross purposes till far into the
night, and a few days later it was announced by the official organ of
the city, the saloon keeper, to his patrons, that Mitch had closed out
his mining claim to Dr. Maxwell for real estate, valued in the deal
at sixty-five thousand dollars. And a few days later it was further
stated that Mitch had “cleaned up” fifty thousand in the clear stuff
from the sale of his real estate, and was treating everybody who
could be induced to eat or drink, for a day or two, and drinking huge
potations to Dr. Maxwell’s health and prosperity, after which, with a
particularly diabolical leer on his smirking countenance, he boarded an
eastbound train and our little world knew him no more.

Nor, in fact, has our little world, or any other, that we know of,
for that matter, ever known anything more of The Queen, except that
there is still the mound of earth where a test shaft was begun by
the claimant, one James Mitchel, ignoramus, and afterward continued
by right of acquisition by the well-known and highly respected Dr.
Maxwell, and last of all was abandoned by him and turned over right,
title, interest, and estate, to the owls and the bats.

Dr. Maxwell is still a prominent figure in Leadville. He is still
the same cultured gentleman and able physician. He still delights in
reminiscences of his college days, and has still, perhaps, a weakness
for desiring to set all the world right on the fact that he is a
college man, and he is both able and willing to give his children
the best of educational and social advantages, and talks of removing
soon to Chicago where he can enjoy more fully, with his family, the
society of quiet, genial, and congenial men of wealth and refinement;
and he is regarded as a happy, successful man, with a well-balanced
mind capable of getting out of life all that is worth the seeking. He
is a man who will go away from Leadville followed by the esteem and
respect of his fellow-citizens, and leave behind him a character for
sterling honesty, and unqualified contempt for petty schemes and dodges
in business transactions. He will also leave behind him a certain
piece of real estate that is not his own, and another certain piece
of mining property on Prayer Hill where he rarely goes nowadays, and
in all the wide range of his conversation there is one little nook he
never invades, and only one or two of his friends are on sufficiently
intimate terms of friendship with the doctor to venture, occasionally,
on the innocent inquiry, “When did you hear from Jim Mitchel last?”




CHAPTER IV.

I TAKE A PARTNER.


You are wrong. You have jumped at the conclusion when you had read the
above chapter heading that I have forgotten tender, winsome, blue-eyed,
fair-haired Lena Upton, and had wooed and won some buxom blooming
daughter of this cloud-rimmed Utopia of the West. You have already
pictured in your imagination the love-sick fancies of two sentimental
f---- fairies, for love in a cottage, and drawn your own doleful
picture of a bare and cheerless cabin fireside, where poverty enters
at the door and love flies out at the window. You have conjured up all
these fine-spun imaginings for naught, and fallen into all this fuss
and fever, and twitter of excitement over a supposed romance in humble
life in the region of the clouds, when in fact I merely took to my
bosom as sharer of my bed and board, metaphorically speaking, my hairy
friend of the red shirt and elastic hopes, Abner Callaway.

As stated previously June had come before the faithful old knight of
the pick and shovel had completed the work upon my late property which
had given such golden results or rather such silvery ones. I found
great pleasure in being able to remit five thousand of the proceeds of
the sale to my kindly old relative as his share in the concern, knowing
that it would add substantial comfort to his declining years. As to my
own moiety, I had determined that I would devote a small portion of it
to outfitting my first Leadville acquaintance for another expedition
to the Gunnison country, in search of his Golconda, and in three days
from the date of my mining transaction, Abner’s caravan, consisting
of a saddle mule and two pack mules, filed out of the town liberally
grubstaked for another prospecting trip. As I took his hand to bid him
good-by and godspeed, and consigned him for months to his living tomb
in the mountains, I felt that here was a man made of the stuff that
conquers new worlds and revolutionizes old ones. While I was depressed
at the mere thought of my small share in consigning him to his lonely
fate, he was chipper as a lark, and waving his hand to me as he spurred
southward, he called out cheerily, “Better luck this time, pard, I’m
goin’ to strike it rich now, sure.” So I went back to my duties without
even having enjoyed the parting luxury of enjoining him to write often,
for I knew that in all probability it would be weeks, perhaps months,
before I should have any tidings of him, with a still more somber
alternative in the background, namely, that I might one day have the
mournful pleasure of leading a searching party to find what particular
form of solitary death came to him, and what particular family of
buzzards had fattened on his vitals.

There was at that time, too, more or less danger to be encountered from
roving bands of Piutes, who came to that region in summer in search of
game, and who, however friendly they might profess to be in and around
the settlements, could scarcely resist the temptation to murder a lone
white man found prospecting on their self-allotted hunting grounds,
if they were reasonably safe from detection. Callaway was thoroughly
acquainted with the Indian character, perfectly conversant with all
their treacherous ruses and cunning devices, and the Piutes themselves
had learned long since that while it was one thing to have a troop
of United States soldiers in pursuit, it was quite another and more
serious affair when a very small number of miners and ranch men began
to “camp on their trail;” men who were entirely capable of matching
them at their own game, who knew every lonely pass and mountain trail
as well as they themselves, and whose superior ability as plainsmen and
in woodcraft made them objects of dread to marauding bands of Indians
at this period. These men were never known to bring in a prisoner, and,
in all my intercourse with these hardy frontiersmen, I have never known
an instance of an Indian fighter’s accounts of his encounters, where
one of them could be induced to describe the last act in any scene of
retribution on the Indians in which he had taken a hand. Abner Callaway
was one of these brave, hardy pioneers, who had seen the trouble
with the Bannocks in Idaho in ’76. He was a walking encyclopedia of
incidents of early struggles in the settlement of Boise Valley. He
once recounted graphically to me an experience with these troublesome
Bannocks that illustrates this point. A settlement on the lower Boise
had been raided by a band of Indians and their stock stampeded and
driven off. He formed one of a band of settlers hastily collected to
pursue and punish the thieving band. The trail led southward toward the
Snake and was plainly marked through the sage brush as there was no
chance for concealing it, with the considerable number of horses and
cattle they were rushing off.

The settlers rode hard and sighted the red devils just as they had
driven the stock into the Snake to force them across. They espied their
pursuers and plunged their riding ponies into the swift current, and
began to swim them across too. “But by this time,” said he, “we had got
within gunshot range of them,” and he looked off pensively over the
mountains as if his story were ended. Deeply interested in his tale
of adventure, I waited for the conclusion, but it did not come, and I
ventured to ask, and then what? “Well,” said he, “the saddle ponies all
turned and swam back to our side, and we gathered up our stock and went
home.”

I have always noticed the same indisposition in old soldiers to dwell
on the theme of shedding human blood, and I set it down here as a
maxim, that your true soldier or frontiersman, who has really seen
active service and participated in scenes of carnage will turn hastily
away from recording his experiences, when they lead up to that point,
and its converse as being equally true that your boasting warrior, or
settler, who tells you how many rebs he has quieted, or how many red
varmints he has scalped, you can safely classify as of the genus homo
species man, variety liar.

I take it that my reader feels my own deep interest in the welfare
of Abner Callaway, and I have thus digressed and delivered this
gratuitous, and apparently irrelevant rhapsody on Indian hunters,
that you may share the data, on which I calculated the chances of his
safety. In his favor were mature experience, familiarity to the verge
of contempt with the dangers he was to undergo, trained to read “Indian
signs,” and guard against surprises and “lightning with a Winchester”
as Abner himself would have expressed it.

June gave place to July, and July in turn to August. I began to have
anxious daily thoughts of my absent partner though I had no reason
to expect that he would return till his provisions were exhausted,
which, with the game he would be likely to kill, he estimated would
last him till the rigors of that high altitude began to drive him down
to lower altitudes. There was of course the chance that I might have
tidings of him from some returning prospector, but it was a chance in
a hundred, for the region of country where he was operating was very
little traversed by miners, and only a few lonely sheep camps were
scattered over the mountains to mark the white man’s dominion of the
region. Though no spiritualist, I have often noticed that mind seems to
influence mind at times, regardless of intervening distances.

You write to a friend from whom you have not heard in a long time.
Your letter on its journey crosses the path of one from that friend
expressing some of the very ideas, and in the same words that you used
in addressing him. Another friend living at the distance of a three
hours’ drive has made no appointment to visit you, and you have no
particular reason for expecting him soon, but something tells you that
he will come to-day, and for three hours your thoughts keep constantly
recurring to that friend, you know not why, and presently he drives up.

The mysterious influences that beget such experiences as these, in
the everyday affairs of thousands of responsible people, are those
of which unscrupulous people take advantage and give exaggerated and
fraudulent exhibitions of spiritualistic manifestations, depending upon
this little germ of truth, as the sugar coating of the bitter pill of
deception, to enable the public to swallow it.

That mighty philosopher of our own time and country, Joseph Cook,
says, “There can be no doubt that in these things there is something
superhuman, but nothing supernatural.” Yet, I confess, that after all,
when I had been troubled for several days with forebodings of danger
to my partner, and had on one particular day been especially anxious,
and when toward evening a man in rough frontier dress, bestriding a
jaded cayuse, rode up to our office, and I heard him inquire for Thomas
Hardman, I felt that I was growing white as a ghost and could scarcely
steady my legs to walk to the door, and inform him that I was he.

He eyed me critically to ascertain, as I thought, whether I was capable
of standing up under the news he was about to deliver, I could not
stand the suspense. “Have you seen Callaway?” I inquired.

“You bet I have,” was his reply, “parted from him six days ago. Was out
thar tending to some sheep camps I’ve got out thar.”

“How is the old man?” I inquired, a little impatiently, to clip off an
evident intention on his part to give me a complete history of the rise
and progress of the sheep industry, and the decline and fall of the
price of wool. He drew his countenance down through several distinct
stages of change to an expression of one who has important news to
impart and rather enjoys the suspense he sees you are suffering; then
assuming a confidential air, and a glitter of cunning mingled with
pleasure in his eye at being the bearer of important news, he leans
toward me over the neck of his tired horse, places both hands on the
pommel of his saddle, looks cautiously all around for eavesdroppers
and then almost whispers: “The old man’s struck it rich!” The sudden
swinging of the mind from its dark forebodings to contemplating sudden
and immense wealth was making my legs unmanageable again, but as soon
as I could steady myself, I invited the traveler to lodge with me at
The Occidental till morning, when he and I would arrange for a private
interview in our office after hours, for the privacy of my sleeping
apartment was something less than that of a sleeping car.

During our evening meal, I learned from his conversation, coupled with
Abner’s note to me that my new acquaintance, Riley Cox, was no other
than the same rancher who had stumbled upon the fragment of quartz
that had set the old man wild to find the parent ledge, and that the
present location of the prospector was made as the direct result of
that find, and that therefore Mr. Cox would come in as half owner in
the mine by agreement, in consideration of his showing where he had
found the specimen that fairly glittered with gold. Far into the night
we occupied my employer’s office and talked of the lucky events, and I
learned in detail all the circumstances of the discovery.

He was the bearer of a little scrawl of a letter from the old boy
himself, who wrote in his characteristic way, as follows:


                    “GUNNISON COUNTRY,
                             ---- 187-

  “MR. THOMAS HARDMAN, Leadville, Colo.

  “Glory hallelujah, pard, I’ve struck her at last and she’s richer
  than I ever dreamed! Don’t let a whisper of it get around till we git
  our choice of location. Bring plenty of provisions and ammunition to
  supply another hand or two. Your pard,

                       “ABNER CALLAWAY.”


I waited upon my employer early next morning, and offered my
resignation, explaining to him that business of the most urgent and
important nature called me away, and that I should take it as a mark of
his confidence in me as an employee if he would for the present, take
my statement on faith and let my movements be as quiet as possible,
assuring him only that I was acting in good faith, and from honorable
motives, and would some day explain the cause of my hasty departure
from his employ, where I had received nothing but the most courteous
treatment. To all this my employer was good enough to assent, and
expressed his regret that our relations could not continue, and said he
had not the slightest doubt as to the integrity of my motives and quite
outdid me in generous praise. We shook hands cordially, and the waves
of time engulfed this phase of my life forever, a phase of existence
to which I have ever looked back with pleasure as being not the least
happy of my life.

As rapidly as possible, we conducted our outfitting, and with as much
secrecy as possible, the next morning we mounted our horses and struck
out for the lonely region known as the Gunnison country. My experience
as a rider of bronchos had been confined to very narrow limits, and my
awkward mode of riding was a great source of amusement to my guide, and
traveling companion. “Say, squire,” he would inquire, “where did you
learn that ere ornamental kind of ridin’? Maybe you’d better turn your
toes in a little more or your spur might catch yer cayuse in the ribs,
and you’d be purty sure to hev a circus right away.”

But presently I forgot his caution again and inadvertently pressed my
heel to the animal’s flank. The next thing I knew I was holding on
to the pommel with both hands, and my steed was rolling himself into
the shape of a crescent moon, but his actions had none of the placid
spirit of that calm orb. He churned me up and down till I saw stars in
countless numbers. It seemed to me that he sprang ten feet clear of
the ground, and came down with his feet in a cluster, that would have
enabled him to stand with ease on my office stool. But he couldn’t seem
to find a resting place for the sole of his foot, and each time he
rose in the air he came down with an emphasis that led me to suspect
that he might have been used in the early mining days as a stamp mill
to reduce refractory ores, and imagined he was again in the field to
compete against steam power and wrought iron. For my part I would have
been glad to retire from the competitive trial, but was delicate about
trying to alight just here as the earth seemed to be particularly
hard in this spot, judging from my pony’s experience in alighting.
So I held on with might and main to the pommel, and wound my legs,
which are a fair length, affectionately around the beast’s waist in a
rigid embrace till my companion, who was writhing on his horse’s neck
in wild paroxysms of laughter, managed to find breath to yell, “Toes
out! You’re spurrin’ him.” Then it dawned on me that the harder he had
bucked, the closer I had pressed the rowels toward his vitals, and as
soon as I relaxed my muscles he subsided into his usual easy swinging
lope.

“Confound the brute,” I said, “you told me he was warranted to be
gentle as a kitten.”

“So he was,” said Riley, “but I guess if you’d pay your compliments to
a kitten in the same way, you’d feel her claws, but if you’re agoin to
take lessons of me as your ridin’ master, I’ll lay this rule down first
and foremost, never tamper with a cayuse’s ribs if you don’t want to
take part in a sun-dance sudden-like.”

After that practical lesson on the subject of riding, I got on pretty
well the first day out. But when we rolled out of our blankets next
morning, after my first experience in camping out, I was so sore and
stiff that I despaired of being able to go on; but after I had moved
around a little, and assisted Riley to make a fire preparatory to
slapjacks and coffee, I began to imbibe the spirit of our adventure,
and in a measure threw off the effects of my hard day’s breaking-in to
a new life.

I found that Riley was no novice at camp cooking. In a twinkling he
had mixed a mess of dough for the slapjacks, using only some baking
powder and a little fat from the frying pan with the flour and in a few
minutes he had removed the meat from the pan and mapped out a cake,
whose dimensions were limited only by the rim of the pan. He watched it
carefully over the fire till it was baked on one side, then grasping
the frying pan by the long handle, he gave it a little shake to make
sure that the cake did not adhere to the pan, and then tossed it in the
air with a peculiar motion which caused the dainty to turn completely
over in the air, and dexterously caught it squarely, or rather roundly,
in the pan. I never have forgotten the delicious flavor of that
morning’s meal of slapjacks, fat bacon, and black coffee. Delmonico
has since entered the field as a rival of Riley Cox in catering to
my appetite, but I cannot even remember what dishes constituted the
bill of fare, while every feature of that mountain meal is as plain
before my eyes as though it had been yesterday. The beautiful nut-brown
complexion of the bacon, the innate sweetness of that simple cake, the
taste of the inky coffee, are all with me yet, owing, no doubt, to
the zest imparted to my appetite by sleeping in the open air of the
mountains, that was in itself exhilarating in the highest degree; but
many times I have sighed for the enjoyment of that breakfast, over a
much more sumptuous one, and reflected, though not a man given to
moralizing, that our enjoyment in the world depended a great deal more
on our capacity to enjoy the present privilege than in the accidental
circumstances attending us.

Our ponies had been picketed out or “lariated,” in Western phrase, to
feed upon the bunch grass. This hardy race of horses, probably from old
Spanish stock, has challenged the admiration of the world for their
endurance and ability to live on coarse, scanty fare, and without them
the great Western prairies and the Rocky Mountain mining regions could
hardly have been developed so rapidly.

Riley “calcerlated” we had ridden “nigh onter fifty mile,” the day
before, and our ponies started off again fresh as when we left
Leadville; and we kept up this gait during the whole trip, for he said,
“I like to strike a lick and keep it.”

Their noonday repast was what they could nibble in one short hour that
we halted, and all day they seemed to feel no weariness or disposition
to slacken their speed.

About 3 o’clock on this second day of our journey, we reached the
Gunnison River, and our course lay down the stream. We had passed one
or two sheep ranches during the day, the only signs of occupation
by man; but on some of the open plateaus we had sighted plenty of
antelope, and in more wooded part had started several deer, one of
which Riley shot for our use in camp.

The direction of our journey now following the windings of the stream,
was more westerly, and toward the end of our journey, on the fifth day,
we seemed to be traveling almost northward again.

Worn with our long journey, and sunburned till we were as red as
Indians, and unkempt as the street-arab, whose dwelling is a stray box
or barrel, without the superfluous furniture of combs and brushes; but
sublimely indifferent to outward appearance where there was none to
offer criticism, we made a flourish of riding into camp with a burst
of speed, just as the sun was hiding behind the mountains, and found
our senior partner busily engaged in preparing supper. His lurid dress
and mass of snowy beard and hair, calling up a vision of an infatuated
alchemist, toiling over his crucible to find the hidden mysteries, the
process that had turned nature’s baser metals to sterling gold, or a
venerable priest of the Druids, performing his evening devotions, and
practicing his mysterious incantations.

His alert ears soon caught the sound of our horses’ hoofs, and when he
recognized us as friends, he laid down the rifle he had mechanically
seized, and with the joy that a Russian exile might feel when he was
restored to his home and friends, after years of solitude, he saluted
us with a boyish whoop, and came out to meet us with pleasure beaming
from his honest face.

“How’dy, pardners! glad to see you. Its been sort a lonesome like sence
you went away, but I’ve had plenty to occupy my spare moments.” I knew
before he spoke, that he had good news to confirm the first tidings of
happy omen I had received, but after greeting him with the warmth of
affection that I had from the first hours of our acquaintance begun to
feel for this guileless veteran of the frontier, I inquired how the new
Ophir was panning out.

“Why, bless the kid’s innocent heart,” said Abner, turning to Riley,
“it don’t pan out at all, it’s the pure stuff,” and he took from his
pocket a nugget of pure gold as big as an egg. “There boys, how do you
like the complexion of that? I found that down by the river, in the
gravel, before I struck the ledge up here, and there’s enough of ’em
down there yet to make interest in digging; but we can’t afford to
waste our time with the gravel beds now. Lariat your horses in that
little canyon yander, and I’ll have supper ready in a jiffy.”

His camp was in a grove of evergreen timber, on a little plateau on the
side of the mountain. It was sheltered from the north by a ledge of
rocks, rising abruptly in the rear of his tent, and from underneath
the rock gushed a spring of pure water. The view to the south was a
grand stretch of mountain and valley that clothes the rugged heights
of Colorado with such sublimity and grandeur, and makes it famous for
its dizzy peaks, and awe-inspiring canyons and gorges, beautiful for
situation, the joy of the whole fraternity of summer-outing earth are
Pike’s Peak, Colorado Springs, South Park, and The Gunnison Country.
But the greatest of these, and far exceeding the others in its
gold-hued prospects for us, is the Gunnison Country.

The Old Man of the Mountain soon invited us to a supper fit for a king,
consisting of venison steak, in addition to the ever-present slapjacks
and coffee. He related fully, and to our entire satisfaction, every
step of his onward way, which led to the supreme discovery. He told
us of panning out free gold on the Gunnison at this point; of finding
several small nuggets, among the finer particles, but which were all
of the coarse variety, and of how he had one day followed up a little
gulch opening into the Gunnison, and how, from the first panful he
had taken the nugget he showed us, and afterward several others, a
trifle smaller. He related how he had found “blossome quartz” strewed
plentifully around here, that were identical in character, and similar
in promise of riches untold to him who should discover the home-nest
of these stragglers, to the fragment which Riley had found in another
gulch not far away.

Foot by foot, and yard by yard, he traced the path to the ledge, from
these fragments, and recounted how his labors were impeded as he
climbed higher up the mountain, in the almost impenetrable jungle.
Forest trees grew so thickly that it was hard enough to make way even
over their matted, and arching, and intertwining roots, and these
troubles were soon augmented by encountering an area strewn with
rocks, and choked with fallen trees, among the standing ones, till
he could scarcely make his way through them, much less seem to have
a ghost of a chance to take bearings and search for drift ore; but
he chopped and scrabbled, and sampled, and fought his way through
the wilderness--literally fought--for, with other tribulations, he
was suddenly halted one day by a huge grizzly bear in his path; but
though the grizzly was larger than he, Abner Callaway was not the
man on that account to forgive him, but with his forty-four calibre
six-shooter he took a shot at him, though he knew his own life depended
on the accuracy of his eye, and the steadiness of his aim, for it is
an axiom among mountaineers that there is only one vulnerable spot
in a grizzly’s make-up, one place where the bullet can do execution
complete and sudden enough to prevent his killing the hunter before he
himself yields up his substantial ghost, and that is to reach the neck
joint and break it. But the sturdy old man had not endured a lifetime
of privation and toil as a mere prelude to this supreme opportunity,
to refuse this little test when it came, and he promptly dislocated
his neck, and continued on his way. He made his way at last to
comparatively open ground, and here he progressed rapidly for the trail
was becoming “warm” as the hunters say, and he knew by the character
of the specimens he found that he was nearing the main or parent
ledge, and his excitement grew in proportion as the signs increased in
meaning, till for the two last days he hardly took time for food or
rest while daylight lasted, and he assured us that he would have worked
all night if he could have accomplished anything by so doing, but
darkness mercifully intervened and compelled him to take some rest; but
even his dreams were gold-haunted and disquieting. At last the supreme
moment arrived when he was able to trace the truant rock that had
caused all this trouble, to its home on this elevated mountain peak,
and reap in anticipation ample reward for all his toil.

We were too much excited to sleep that night, and discussed ways and
means, by the light of a blazing fire before our tent. We commended
Callaway for his wise choice of a camp located in this sheltered,
snug little park, and decided, first of all, as a measure of common
prudence, to build a substantial cabin of spruce logs, which grew
straight and smooth, at our tent door.

As we now expected to be at home to callers for some time, we preferred
to receive in a structure of more substantial make than of canvas, for
there was the possibility that a grizzly might decide to investigate
our camp for potato parings, as they sometimes did, and it would be
rather rude in bruin to roll us over at midnight, and uncomfortable for
us. Besides, as I have hinted, there was the possibility ever before us
of being obliged to be polite to a band of Piutes, and nothing gives
such force to a white man’s display of hospitalities toward his red
brother, as a good show of strength to back it.

We napped in our blankets for an hour or two before daylight, and had
drowsy visions of nuggets of gold boiling up from the depths with the
water of our spring. Then again our vagrant fancies would rove to the
ledge above our heads, and we beheld an avalanche forming and gathering
strength as it came tearing its way downward till it was powerful
enough to mow a path through the tangled mass that had so completely
obstructed Callaway’s upward way, and roaring and growling, deposited
its ponderous mass of earth, rocks, and trees on the little plateau,
where we camped. Just as we sprang up to claim and appropriate the
nuggets of gold that were strewn all around, we were inconsiderate
enough to awake, and the reality of our find seemed tame and small,
compared with the mine of wealth we had found in the realms of
imagination. So, human imagination ever keeps so far in advance of the
reality, that we fail to appreciate the blessings within our reach,
because they are belittled by a spendthrift fancy.

Behold the tenderly nurtured denizen of the city, who had never
wrestled with labor any harsher than an obstreperous conjugation, or an
equation that would not equate, transformed by the prevailing frenzy
for a yellow worthless metal, valued by barbarians only because it had
a rich color and was indestructible, by any ordinary method. Behold
him, I say, donning the garb of the miner and preparing with a heart
callous to every other consideration to harden his hands with the pick
and shovel, his feet with the coarse, heavy, cowhide boots; to conform
every part of his anatomy, in fact, not already calloused by the
saddle, to the muscular status of an honest laborer, earning his bread
by the sweat of his brow, and in fact feeling a lighter conscience in
so doing, feeling more in sympathy with the general plan of the Creator
than in any other vocation in which he had engaged; I was owing my
prosperity to the labors of no living man, and abridging the prosperity
of no brother while enhancing my own. I learned to use the ax to some
purpose while building our rustic camp and grew to have so ravenous an
appetite in the bracing mountain air aided by active exercise, that my
companions rallied me on the necessity of our hiring some professional
hunter to supply us with meat. I own that I was alarmed for my life,
and feared sometimes that I was digging my grave with my teeth, but
thanks to the absence of hurtful qualities of wild game, I ate it with
impunity, and grew almost as burly of form and fantastic in gear as
Uncle Abner.

Our cabin, when finished, was a model of rustic beauty. The logs were
uniform in size, straight as nature could make them, and had their
natural bark covering. The roof was of cedar clapboards, and not only
protected us from the inclement weather, but filled the house with
delicious spicy fragrance. A small window-space, but no window glass, a
door of cedar, and some rude bunks of the same, completed our domicile.
For furniture, we had a pair of antlers fastened to the wall, on which
we hung our Winchesters. A cedar table, with poles for legs, a set of
rude shelves, to contain our coffee pot, frying pan, and tin dishes.
Fireplace we had none, but did our cooking outside by the wall of
rock, which rose up a few feet from the cabin, and a spot convenient
to water. The logs forming the walls were notched a foot from the end,
leaving a handsome double projection at each corner. The roof was also
given a liberal share of lap-over, giving our mansion a pretty and cosy
appearance. We also put up a tiny portico on natural cedar pillars with
a gentler slope of roof than that of the cabin, of which it seemed to
be a projection, and put on the finishing touches by making a little
rustic bench on either side of the doorway.

Whatever may be said of our prospects, none of us could lay claim to
being millionaires at that period; but I doubt if ever a palatial
urban residence was viewed with more of the pride of ownership than we
lavished upon our skyward dwelling. I have since that period been the
happy owner of gold enough to satisfy any reasonable desire, and have
built and inhabited several magnificent up-town residences in a region
of city splendor, but I often pine for the little brown cabin in the
Rockies, and the enthusiastic enjoyment of that rude habitation, that
blessed it, and fulfilled all the requirements and definitions of the
magic word, home.

“Oh, that mine enemy would write a book!” then would I reap a wholesome
and complete revenge, when I beheld him toiling to give voice to the
rushing stream of agitation in his bosom. To see him sweating, and
tearing his hair in a vain endeavor to express the wild and tumultuous
hopes and aspirations of youth; to paint the bright visions of wealth
attained, ambition satisfied, and love requited and restored to its
object in their fitting trials, and rack his harassed brain for fitting
similes of somber hue, to express the depths of despair! I would liken
him to myself as my spirits sunk, when I computed the chances in favor
of my seeing the adorable Lena again. When I reflected on all that
might happen to me, and the misgivings lest she should die, should be
persuaded that I was already dead, should be cajoled, coerced into
marriage for mercenary considerations, I was sorely tempted to present
my interest in the Rocky Mountains to my partners, and fly from these
desolate scenes, and break through the barrier of banishment from her
presence, imposed by tyrannical parents.

But at last, after my mind had run through all these stages of
despondency, desperation, and recklessness of consequences, it would
come sullenly back to the question of honor, and conscientious
scruples against breaking a sacred promise; then, even though I was
not in a position to make anything but Hobson’s choice, my thoughts
would subside into tranquility again, and my current of thought turn
hopefully again to the work of turning this rugged mountain peak into
a castle of gold, with a golden haired divinity to enlighten it.

And now, without any further delay to build rustic cabins in the
mountains, or to erect golden castles in the air, we went to work in
earnest to develop our claim, and take out the precious ore.

We were well aware that it behooved our mine to be a remarkably rich
one in order to give us any immediate returns, situated as it was so
far from smelting facilities. It must either yield the precious ore
in such quantities, and of such quality as would induce capital to
enlist with us, and bring machinery for reducing it to the spot, or it
must yield at least a moderate amount of ore so high in grade, that we
could afford to transport it to the railroad by pack train. Our plan of
action was to make a preliminary test of our find, locate its center
as nearly as possible, then explore the mountain around it to get some
idea of the extent of the ledge, and get at a basis for forming some
sort of intelligent opinion as to what the probable effect of our
discovery would be on the public when it was revealed. We also had, as
original discoverers, a chance to choose our claim as a company and
locate it; then each one of us could stake off an individual claim,
and, in addition to all that, we could form new companies to the extent
of the combinations, possible by including any two of our trio in each
new company. All these projects we worked out when the day’s task was
done, and we lounged on our bunks, and smoked our pipes, or sat on our
rustic benches by the door.

But while we were working and planning, and building our airy
structures, fate was outlining a vastly different line of life for us.
But no spirit voice ever whispered to us of any evil doom impending,
and we worked cheerfully on, satisfied more fully every day that our
scout had not made any mistake, either in his estimate of the block
of quartz at the sheep camp, or of the fact of his having tracked it
to earth. The ledge showed a great thickness of ore and had all the
indications of possessing staying qualities. We calculated that in
about three weeks we would get out specimens from a depth that would
justify us in forming a judgment. Then we intended to load our pack
train with samples, try to engage some wandering prospectors to help,
while one of the party went to Leadville to get an assay, and to bring
back a supply of provisions. Assays in practical mining life are of
two classes, those of quantity and those of quality. An experienced
miner can, with rude utensils, make an assay, that will determine, in
a general way, the value of his ore, but it requires the skill and
appliances of the professional assayer to determine the quantity of
gold, or other mineral, in a given weight of rock. My experience in
the office, coupled with that of Uncle Abner, which was of the hard,
practical sort, tended to satisfy us that in quality we were all right,
that we were not mistaking a shadow for the substance, or pyrites of
iron, the “fool’s gold,” for the sterling article; but our methods were
too crude to even approximate the quantity of the yellow metal per ton,
or to determine what other minerals might be found in connection with
the gold. Uncle Abner’s faith was implicit as a child’s and his mind as
placidly elevated by his good fortune, as though it were already in his
coffers. But our knight of the golden fleece was a little skeptical of
the intrinsic worth of the ore, and his mind wandered a good deal to
his flocks, and he would remark that, “after all, the sheep business is
good enough for me, an’ I ortor bin in camp helpin’ the boys through
lammin’ time.” But though he might squirm a little under the influence
of the gold craze, he was as much a devoted slave to it as any of us,
and we could not have driven him to his sheep camp though he knew his
sheep would in reality bear golden fleeces this year.

The fragrance of the apple blossom is an agreeable announcement of
fruit forthcoming, and inhaling it, we fall into a most delicious state
of expectancy, and the apples of imagination are in a moment rosy,
ripe, and mellow before the eye, and luscious and delightful to the
taste; but there is a time for frosts to nip the blossoms, storms to
try the branches, and lawless urchins to snatch the matured fruit from
your grasp and dash all your high hopes to earth. We were destined, by
outrageous fortune, to be again balked in our projects, and have the
hand of the spoiler anticipate our good fortune, and tear it from us.

The Piutes had been reported at the ranches as hunting in the Elk
Mountains, south of us, for a week or two, in great numbers, but were
said to be peaceably disposed. Within a week Uncle Abner had seen
Indian signs while hunting deer for our camp a mile or two southward,
and had cautioned us to keep a sharp lookout for them, and directed us
to keep our horses and mules in the thick underbrush all day and picket
them in the little open canyon only at night, that we might offer no
premium to their cupidity, for it is well known that a redskin can
hardly resist the temptation to steal a horse on every occasion, even
at the risk of bringing swift and terrible retribution upon himself
from the ranchmen and miners.

We were progressing finely with our tunnel, and expected to reach
the ledge at a depth of a hundred feet or more by drifting into the
mountain side in a few days more, and were discussing the question
as to which one should go to Leadville, one evening as we came down
the mountain from our work, to camp, when all at once Abner stopped
suddenly, and pointed to the thicket of fir and cedar saplings where we
had tied our horses, and exclaimed: “Holy Moses! boys, our horses are
gone.”

And just as he spoke several rifles cracked, the fire coming,
apparently, from the ledge above our cabin, and Riley Cox, our faithful
partner fell dead before our eyes.

Quick as a flash Uncle Abner seized the form of our luckless partner,
and sprang toward our cabin, only a few steps distant, where we were
safe from the murderous fire of the demons lying behind the rocks above
our heads, for our cabin stood too close to the rock wall to be in
range of their rifles. Evidently they had counted upon finishing us
before we reached it.

“Curse the red devils,” said Callaway, “It will take a hundred of
their worthless scalps to pay up the score on poor Riley. They knew
better than to meet him in open fight like men. Many a one of them he
has made to bite the dust.” While he talked he was getting our arms
and ammunition in order, while I, who had never seen anything harsher
than a drunken fisticuff, was too much shaken by the suddenness of the
attack to be of much service to anybody. But gradually I became fired
by Abner’s fusillade of invectives, with a desire for revenge, and
soon found myself wishing for a chance to draw a bead on an Indian’s
paint-stained, and feather-decked head.

It was more from long habit than from any real fear that we would be
attacked by Indians that led Uncle Abner to select a strong spot for
his cabin. The cliff was so precipitous in the rear of our cabin as
to render our position inaccessible from that direction, in fact, was
so overhung by a rocky ledge halfway up the side that the reds, we
believed, could not catch a glimpse of our fort from that direction;
and the old man was of the opinion that they would try to crawl up
through the fir and pine trees in front of our cabin, hiding behind
the rocks and trees, wait for a chance to pick us off without risk
to themselves. We had a small porthole in our heavy puncheon door,
constructed to command the little canyon, where our horses had fed, to
enable us to get a shot at any prowling bear that might haunt our camp
to devour the remains of our daily bill of fare thrown out, or endanger
the safety of the horses and mules.

With eagle eyes Callaway watched for any movement in this direction,
but we could not see or hear anything to indicate what the next move
would be, and the suspense of our situation grew terrible, and we were
half resolved to break away from our cabin, find refuge behind trees
and rocks, and fight till we drove them off or were killed in our
tracks, which we felt would be better than dying like rats in a hole,
without being able to make a struggle for life.

All at once we heard an indistinct roaring and rushing sound far up the
mountain, and even Uncle Abner’s face grew pale at the sound. “My God,
pardner, they’re starting an avalanche! You’d better say your prayers
now, my boy. Good-by, lad. I’ve been takin’ a likin’ to you all along,
but our time has come,” and he grasped my hand as if he would meet his
death more contentedly with some nearer human sympathy than he had
ever known in his life. The roar had died away again for a moment, and
I began to hope that my venerable friend was mistaken as to the cause
of the noise; but Abner only remarked, “That one lodged against some
trees before it got under headway, but they’ll try it again.” And in
another minute, to confirm his opinion, we heard again the dull sound,
like distant thunder, growing louder and stronger. We held our breath
in terror, expecting that our last moment had come, and that in the
next we would be lying crushed and shapeless beneath the ruins of our
cabin. The awful storm was increasing in distinctness and volume, and
every other sound was drowned. My faithful old friend’s lips moved, but
I could hear no sound. My mind flew with lightning wing to the scenes
of the past, before I had dreamed of such wild adventures, and reveled
for one brief moment once more in the memory of careless youth and
guiltless love. I thought of the slow torture of suspense in store for
Lena as the years revolved without bringing any tidings of her lover,
buried beneath a mountain, his fate unknown, and I had a distinct
feeling of the injustice of fate in drawing me to such a death, and
Lena to the eternal doubt as to whether I had been lost, or had proven
inconstant to my promise and to her. All these thoughts flitted through
my mind in one brief moment, while the horrors of a most terrifying
death were impending over us, and the next instant the whole mass of
rock and earth and huge trees burst with a terrific crash upon us. I
believe that in all the mental agonies of dying by violence we suffered
death. The light of day suddenly went out, our cabin rocked like a
miner’s cradle, and, as the roar subsided, we gazed stupidly at each
other, as bewildered creatures entering upon a new world try to fathom
the mysteries that surround them.

Surely we were in the spirit land, or in the land of chaos. But no, the
light of day was again streaming into our cabin, which stood untouched,
and we unscathed. “Thank God, my boy, thank God,” said Abner fervently,
“She overleaped us, the ledge threw her off. Look out there!” If the
scene in front of our cabin had been before our vision in that moment
of fancied death, the illusion would have been complete. What had
just been a fine grove, a gentle slope, and a grassy canyon, were
now the wildest mass of rock and fine earth, and what had once been
heavy trees, were now literally ground into kindling wood, making a
mass of the wildest ruin; and we could hardly believe our senses that
this chaotic scene was lately occupied by a bit of exquisite pastoral
scenery, fit to grace the palatial residence of one of “the four
hundred.”

“They’ll try it again,” I said, “let us get out of this trap before we
are crushed like gophers.”

“No, my unsophistical kidling, they’ll not try that game again, a
redskin has sense enough to see that we are under the wing of the
ledge of rock up there, and he doesn’t relish being beaten well enough
to invite defeat a second time. They’ll break out in a new place
presently, take my word for that.”

The accuracy of his judgment was made apparent a minute later when,
pung! came a rifle bullet through the clapboard roof, and buried itself
in the floor close to my feet, and a moment later another striking
uncomfortably close to us.

“That’s their game is it?” cried Callaway, “They’re up in the top of
that old cedar above us; now lad, you stand on our bunk, and push one
of the clap boards aside, and I’ll try to answer the red dogs in the
same kind of lingo.”

I quickly did as directed, our roof being fastened down by the
primitive weight-pole, and it was an easy task to push one aside. The
moment an opening was made, another bullet struck the floor through
the sky-port, showing their alertness, and their good marksmanship.
The moment after the bullet struck, Uncle Abner was standing over the
spot where it buried itself in the floor, and casting one keen glance
upward, he threw his rifle to his shoulder, his eye came to the level
of the barrel and his muscles seemed to grow perfectly rigid for an
instant, and the next a puff of smoke, a deafening report in the narrow
space of the cabin, and glancing upward we beheld a horrible sight,
and one which I would give half my estate to forget. The instant Abner
fired, an Indian warrior, with a wild screech of despair, tumbled
out of the thick foliage of a scraggy cedar that grew on the rock
shelf that had saved us from annihilation, and overhung our cabin
sufficiently to give any one perched in its topmost branches, a view
of our cabin, which could not be had from the ledge itself. With the
creeping horror in every nerve we saw him fall, flinging his arms
wildly as he came, till he struck upon the point of a rock fifty
or sixty feet below the root of his tree-perch, rebound and fall a
lifeless heap through the remaining space with a sickening thud upon
the top of the pile that had lately formed the frightful avalanche.
“That makes two tricks that we know of that they’ll not be likely to
hanker after any more, and now if we can beat them at one or two more,
they’ll conclude their medicine isn’t good, and go away and leave us;
but we don’t want to count on that, or let them get the drop on us,
the sneaking, thieving, red devils. I wish the secretary of infernal
affairs was out here, I’d like to put him up on the top of the old
shanty and let the devils shoot at him awhile. It would give him
good practical views on the Indian question, and help him to ‘revise
his humane and politic policy toward our red brother,’ and bring his
views to a sudden focus about the time the Piutes focused a dozen
or so rifles on him. But Uncle Sam will go on cuddling up the lazy,
shiftless, good-for-nothing, bloodthirsty heathen, and furnish them
with good warm blankets to sleep in while on the warpath, and ration
out good beef fit for a white man, and make him supremely independent
and comfortable in his diabolical career of scalp-lifting, and let him
ride free on all railroad trains, provided he will content himself
with a seat in the smoking car, and the obliging conductor of this
government barouche, will stop his train at any isolated siding to
allow Balky Horse, or Crow Wing, to alight at his convenience, as I
have seen them do, and encourage them to regard the western settler as
a sort of raw dog, too raw to be eaten, but convenient for scalping
purposes. If the people of the East want justice for the red men, let
’em come out here and deal out the parcels to ’em themselves. I’m not
denyin’ that the Injuns have been treated meaner ’n rot, but after the
east had fleeced them of their land, they told their red brother, that
they’re so much concerned about now, to move on to a safer distance,
and so they shut themselves conveniently of the penalty of their deeds;
and now they set themselve up to judge the white man who has their
deviltries toward the Injuns wreaked upon his unlucky head.”

While the old pioneer was delivering himself of this eulogy on the
administration, he was keeping a sharp lookout through the ports for
the next act in the tragedy to begin. It was now nearly dark and he
hoped that if we could keep them at bay for a little longer, they would
retire for the night, and at least give us a little respite before
finishing us up, and taking our scalps to be salted, smoked, and dried
as carefully as their skins and belts. I had no fancy for going through
life without my scalp lock, and though the venerable Abner was as cool
as if he were cooking his supper, he expressed his determination to
preserve his white locks a little longer from their grasp. “Just to let
’em know that Long Breath, as the Bannocks used to call me, counts his
scalp worth several dog-eaters’ scalps yet.”

The grim humor of the old man, under such distressing circumstances as
ours, was refreshing, and relieved the terrible strain on my nerves,
on this, my first experience under fire, as some instance of valor
or grotesque humor among the soldiers in battle for the first time
diverted their thoughts from their own dangers, and tempered their
courage into the tough, reliable, steady article of the veteran.

We were now called upon to face another attack, and from the opposite
direction. I detected a savage crawling toward the front of our cabin,
over the rubbish and dirt from the mountain top. Abner watched keenly a
minute or two, and made out ten reds advancing in a line the same way.

Presently he made out that they were shoving a pole along in advance of
themselves, and he knew in a moment that they hoped to take advantage
of the dusk, to crawl quite close unobserved, rush for the door with
a heavy pole on their shoulders and turn it into a battering ram, and
crush in our cabin door; they would in all probability disperse right
and left, to give others concealed behind the rubbish, a chance to open
fire on us, hoping to kill us at the first onset.

“Quick! pard, get Riley’s rifle all ready, lay the cartridges beside
you, have your pistols handy and pass the rifles to me one at a time,
when mine is empty, and then, if I need ’em, the pistols. Here they
come! I’d advise ’em to say their prayers to their Piute god.”

When within about fifteen paces, they rose to their feet suddenly,
and with their demon-inspired war-whoop started on the run for the
door, with their assaulting engine borne aloft on their shoulders; but
they had hardly taken the second step till two of them in range fell
before the first shot, and in less than thirty seconds six of the ten
who started on their mission of destruction, were lying on the ground
lifeless enough. The other four dropped their ponderous weapon, and
beat a rapid retreat for cover, but not rapid enough to escape two
shots from Long Breath, and at each shot an Indian fell. Only two of
the ten lived to repent of their dangerous experiment.

“Lie low now, lad,” exclaimed Abner, as soon as the two unhurt savages
reached cover, and the words had hardly warned me back from the
porthole before a volley of bullets rattled on the door or pattered
into the thick wall on either side of it. “Poor Riley,” said Abner,
“I’ll give him some company to the spirit land anyway; maybe it’ll be
better’n none though he never was perticklerly stuck on red society.”

When the leaden shower had subsided, we ventured again to reconnoiter,
and Abner’s piercing eye detected a thin haze of smoke rising from
the direction of the late attack. “Aha! they’re goin’ to try their old
trick of burnin’ us out. They’ll find us still doin’ business at the
old stand with one or two new fancy touches added to our line.” He
seized an ax, quickly knocked one of the chinking blocks from each end
of our cabin, for portholes there, thus giving us a commanding view of
the approaches in every direction.

“The body of ’em will make a rush and a whoop toward the front, but
look out for three or four devils with firebrands, sneakin’ around the
other sides, they are the lads we want to pay our special compliments
to. The others won’t dare to do much shootin’ while their mates
are cavortin’ round here, for fear of hittin’ ’em and they’ve lost
consida’ble many painted dog markets already.”

All at once the most diabolical war-whoop sounded, and about twenty
hideously painted braves appeared at some distance from the cabin,
flourishing their knives and yelling like furies, but somehow did
not make much progress toward the cabin and being in the secret of
their game, thanks to a riper experience than mine, we gave them
comparatively little attention, and soon saw two indians on either side
of the war party separate themselves from their comrades, and sneaking
and dodging from one cover to another, gradually work around by a
circuitous route to a point where, as they supposed, they could rush
unobserved upon the gable ends of the house, and fling the firebrands
they carried up on the roof and against the walls; but Callaway soon
undeceived this party, and laid them down to reflect on the evidence
of the senses, and whether it was not unsafe, as transcendentalists
affirm, to trust them; and my two changed their purpose toward us, or
were countermanded by their chief, or some other unforeseen contingency
arose, and that attempt was given out. “I think they’ve got enough for
to-night,” said Abner, “we’ll talk to ’em some other way later on; I’ve
been among these western Injuns a good deal, and I never knew one of
’em to favor going into an attack by night; but just as day is breaking
is their time. We’ll be far from here by that time. Never mind, lad,
we’ll come out all right now; they’ve about run out of tricks; I know
’em all, pat. They may get up courage early to-night to try one or two
of their old tricks to coax us out of the cabin where they can finish
us safe and sound, but we may refuse to dance to their music.”




CHAPTER V.

FLYING FROM THE PIUTES.


We sat for sometime listening and watching, as far as the darkness
would permit, for some new form of attack to be made; but not a sound
was to be heard but the dismal cackling of a cuckoo owl which I had
mistaken at first, on coming to my mountain residence for the evidence
of settlers near, by its somewhat remote resemblance to the cackle of a
hen. We were, to say the least, in an unenviable situation. Our horses
were all gone, we were three hundred miles from our base of supplies,
and the Indians on the warpath in earnest, as Callaway had been able to
determine by their gorgeously ugly style of paint.

To attempt to make our way back to Leadville on foot, through a region
beset by mounted hostiles, would be to invite destruction. To stay in
the cabin might serve to prolong our lives a few hours, but it was
only a matter of time till they would succeed in crushing, burning, or
starving us out, and we preferred to die fighting for life, while there
was a chance, to being cooped up where we would eventually be at their
mercy.

But where could we go? That was the question that vexed our meditation.
How could we subsist in a hostile country when our guns were our only
providers and to fire one would be to announce to the enemy that we
were courting their company? We munched a slapjack as we talked, and
wondered where our next meal would come from. The old man had fallen
into a brown study, and, when he straightened himself up and spoke, I
knew by his decided gestures that he had decided on a line of action.

“I have it, by St. Nicholas!” he exclaimed. “Four years ago, I and my
pard went down the Gunnison on a raft to its mouth, and on down the
Grand into Colorado as far as the southern end of the Elk Range, and
done some prospectin’ down thar. Just after we got into the Colorado
we saw a number of caves dug out of the solid rocks along the bluffs
like the ones I’ve often seen in the canyons in New Mexico; but who
built them, or for what, I’m dead sure I don’t know. But it strikes
me that just at this pertickler minit in the history of the Mountain
Spring mine up thar in the hill above us, a little buryin’ alive in one
o’ them rocky sepulchers would beat bein’ devoured or mashed here, and
buried permanently minus our scalp locks and the decent rites of burial
in this blessed Christian, Injun-polluted, God-forsaken country, whar
yallar gold, and redskin humans is considerations of the first water.
And if we live long enough to see the next paper after these bodies is
found, we’ll read a hair stiffenin’ article from some pertickler friend
of the Piutes in the East, tellin’ how some border ruffins had pitched
into a handful of peaceable Injuns in the wilds of the Elk Mountain
regions of the young and struttin’ state of Colorado, and butchered
’em in cold blood because they wouldn’t dance a pleasin’ jig fur the
fassechus white savages. But damn ’em, if the fine-haired hypocrites
won’t take care of their precious pets and convert ’em to Joe Smithism
and shirts, or some other modern style of hypocrisy, we’ll take the job
off their hands, and serve ’em with some Christianizing literatoor from
the Winchester magazine, and a substantial breakfast of lead pellets
served with saltpeter sass. What do you think, my lad?”

I had never seen the old man’s profane anger soar so high or his
store of grammar run so low, for he was by no means lacking in a fair
elementary education; but when he was greatly agitated, the later
accumulation of mining slang bubbled out much more naturally.

“Well, Uncle Abner,” I replied, “since you have asked my advice, which
you know is not very valuable on the present subject, I think that the
sooner we get out of this dead-fall and out of the Piute country in any
direction that offers a chance to escape, by fire, water, or air, we’d
better embrace it; and I’m with you, general,” said I, saluting him,
“and I am confident that you’ll lead your little army to victory.”

“All right, my boy, much obliged to you for your handsome compliment to
my ability, which is nothin’ extra at all; but whatever I’ve learned
about Injuns has been learned by hard knocks through a long life among
them, when, if you failed to learn your lesson, you had to pay it with
your life. I take it, there isn’t as much difference in the size of
men’s brainpans as there is in the disposition to keep peggin’ away
at the same idea till it’s got to come. Just now my idea’s to peg
away till we’ve got a lot of poles pegged together for a raft, and
let’er glide down the river, out of the range of these birds. I know
how far their happy hunting ground goes south, and we can do a little
prospecting down there to amuse ourselves till they go back across the
Grand River to their winter quarters; then we can come back by our
claim and maybe fall in with some sheep men or prospectors, and get
back to Leadville with our samples before winter sets in.”

“But how are you going to make a raft with these Piutes lurking around
here?” I asked; “they want no better opportunity to sneak upon us,
and pick us off, as they intended to do this evening before we got
shelter.”

“I’ve thought about all that; we’ll sneak down to the river after an
hour or so and take our arms, axes, and some grub with us, to the mouth
of the canyon, whar I started to trail up the ledge, yonder; I cut a
lot of poles there and made me a little shelter for cool nights. We’ll
take them and make our raft and then we’ll make another trip up here
and get everything that we can use or take along with us, and bid the
Mountain Spring Mine farewell for a while; but the first painful duty
we have to perform is to bury our poor unlucky pardner, so that it will
take a keener scent than a Piute’s to nose him out.”

“How do you propose to do that?” said I.

“Well,” said he, “did you notice how that pile of rubbish balanced
itself on that big rock like a circus rider on a flying trapeze? I
propose to lay his poor carcus close under that rock, and then topple
about forty tons of rock and dirt over on it, and we can defy Injuns or
wolves to disturb Riley’s long sleep.”

He proceeded to carry out his idea, picking up the form of our dead
comrade from the floor, and with my help, carried him to his resting
place.

Abner tried to speak bravely and keep down any show of emotion, but
his hot tears fell on my hands as we laid him carefully by the base
of the rock, without even the poor privilege of looking once more
upon his inanimate features. Then whispering to me to go back to the
cabin, he made his way around where he had noticed a small tree trunk
sticking out of the mass he wished to precipitate, and using this as
a lever, as he told me afterward, I soon heard it fall with a heavy
report in the still air, and knew that the funeral obsequies of our
faithful, honest friend were completed. Few people have so rude a
burial in our land, it is true, but few die more sincerely regretted
by those left behind than did Riley Cox. Only a poor sheep rancher in
the wildest mountains of the West, isolated from human companionship,
but enduring the hardships of his lonely life with manly fortitude and
true heroism. No decorations of the star and garter gleamed from his
funeral pile, but the stars of heaven witnessed his sepulture, and keep
watch and ward till the sunlight of Eternal Morning shall call him to
the companionship of kindred pure souls, and the cold and loneliness of
the “sheep walks” be forever forgotten in the new loves and pleasures
of fields elysian. After about another hour’s painful suspense in
the darkness, we deemed it safe to strike a light, after carefully
screening all the openings, and made our brief preparations for our
abrupt and disastrous departure from a region that had awakened for us
dazzling visions of fabulous wealth; but the day of our final triumph
seemed as far off as ever. Our little capital was swallowed up in the
outfit necessary to develop our mine, and now swept away entirely from
us, while a summer’s efforts were rendered fruitless, for we could
scarcely expect to get back to our mine again this season, as it was
now well advanced, and the hostile Indians would, in all probability,
occupy this territory till winter drove them back to their camp. A
dozen things might happen to our mine, even though we were fortunate
enough to escape the dangers that beset us. If my partner should become
disabled for active work, as most men at his age are apt to be, it was
doubtful if any man beside him could again locate the mine. I felt
that I could not, and now that Riley was gone, we two alone possessed
the knowledge of its existence and location. Again prospectors might
stumble upon it and take possession of it in our absence, and give us
no end of trouble, and so my mind conjured up one ill after another,
that might befall us and our financial prospects, lately so brilliant,
but now so obscured by portentous clouds.

We _cachéd_ our stock of provisions that we could not take along,
which was quite a liberal one; but decided to take all that we could
possibly accommodate on our raft. To guard against possible invasion
in our absence of several hours that we expected to be occupied in
constructing our raft, we carried our provisions intended for the
journey to some distance from the cabin toward the river, and hid them
carefully in some leaves and underbrush, till we should return. Then we
took all our little store of tools and our rather respectable arsenal,
consisting of three Winchester rifles and six heavy pistols, with a
good supply of ammunition, which, with axes and augers, made a heavy
load. We crept along as stealthily as panthers, Callaway leading and
I following him closely, feeling wild thrills of excitement like the
mental intoxication experienced by a boy when taking a daring leap from
a cross-beam in a barn to the heap of straw below, or his dizzy flight
down an icy hillside on a sled.

With a degree of accuracy that seemed to me like the workings of a
sixth sense, Uncle Abner shaped his course in the dark so well that
we found our destination without trouble, and proceeded to light a
lantern within the hut he had made, and fell to work in earnest to
prepare our rude craft by laying the poles together and fastening them
by cross-timbers, to which each pole was pinned. We agreed that if our
raft could just be got to hold together till we were safely afloat, and
out of range of the hostiles, we could further strengthen it later on,
by more crossties and doweling pins.

We worked as rapidly as the disadvantages of darkness, and as
stealthily as the nature of our task allowed, till we judged by the
constellations of the heavens that it was about an hour past midnight,
when our crude float was ready to be launched. Then we climbed again
to the region of our late abiding place, where we had concealed our
provisions, and found them undisturbed. I could hardly resist an
impulse to visit the cabin once more, but prudence forbade it, for our
time was precious, to say nothing of taking the additional risk, and I
hastened away with the unerring guide, who conducted us to our place
of embarking, made such provision as we could for the safety of our
cargo, shoved our raft into the stream, and stepped upon it, and began
a voyage that in eventfulness was to cast all our former exploits, and
present difficulties in deep shade.

Abner had provided a rude steering oar or rudder, and propelling oars,
but for the present he advised that we should simply drift noiselessly
with the tide, rather than run the chances of attracting the attention
of the Indians by the splash of our oars, for, said he, “they’ll more’n
likely be campin’ along the river here. It’s lucky for us there’s no
moon.”

It was a clear night, and the stars afforded just enough light to
enable us to dimly discern the outlines of the shore on either hand,
and Callaway steered our raft as close to the farther shore as he might
venture to do in the dark, to guard against detection. We had floated
down perhaps a mile, when a dog set up a loud barking on the hostile
shore, right opposite to us. “Sh!” whispered Abner, “that’s the camp of
the Piute fiends now.”

The dog continued to bark furiously, and we heard, or imagined we
heard, a murmur of guttural voices and expected every moment to hear
their diabolical yell, and to be greeted with a volley of rifle balls.
We were so still that our hearts seemed to rebel against the decree of
silence and kept up a terrible thumping. “If they see us now we have a
pretty narrow chance,” whispered Abner. “We are in a strange country,
and they know every nook and corner in it. I’ve often thought that when
they do take a notion to prowl in the dark, they can expand their eyes
like a cougar, and see objects that are as impossible to our vision as
their camp is now.”

But as we drifted on and no outcry was made except the persistent
yelping of the cur, we began to hope that we had passed unobserved, and
presently the dog seemed himself to despair of attracting any attention
and gave over the attempt. Silence and darkness were again our only
companions. “Two o’clock and all’s well!” I whispered. “We are safely
past their camp by this time, are we not?”

“Yes,” replied Abner, “they didn’t hear us. We gave ’em enough exercise
to make ’em sleep sound, but there may be other hunting squads down
below farther, and it stands us in hand to keep a sharp lookout.” But
nothing further occurred to give us alarm during the little space
that darkness continued. When day dawned we were rowing lustily down
the Gunnison for we knew that if the Indians returned to the attack
in the morning they would soon discover that we had decamped, and, as
the Piutes are expert trailers, they would have no trouble in tracking
us to the shore where they would read as an open book, the signs of
our departure, the method of our conveyance, and be able even to tell
almost to the hour how long it had been since we had embarked; and
being mounted, they would gallop down the river after us and employ our
own horses in overtaking and destroying us.

The only form of attack we feared particularly in case they did follow
us, was that of an ambuscade. To be haunted by the uncomfortable
suggestion that you may be gliding right into their trap, that at any
moment, from behind a tree or rock along the shore may come a volley of
leaden death, sends a cold chill through the spinal marrow, and awakens
a vague impulse to leap from the raft, and take refuge from the hidden
enemy beneath the surface of the river. To guard against surprise, we
now kept our boat in mid-current and urged her on with the oars till
we reached a speed that we knew would tax the speed of the mounted
Indians, through a broken country, to overtake us with our leeway.

But no further indications of Indians disturbed us, and our appetites
were sharpened by an all-night’s effort to turn night into day; but
we were compelled to content ourselves with munching a cold slapjack,
promising ourselves, that if no enemy appeared by noon, we would land
and cook a sumptuous meal and enjoy a more elaborate _menu_.

The wild scenery through which we were passing was a source of
wondering pleasure to me, whose ideas of natural scenery were gained
from city parks, pretty enough in their way, but tame, absolutely flat,
compared with nature’s exhibition of her power and grandeur here. This
was to me an entirely new class of scenery, the element of sublimity
being strongest.

For three days we drifted down the river, tying up at night and camping
on the shore, and after the first day we ventured to kill a deer, which
animals were plentiful, and forgot our late privations in feasting on
venison, which Abner was an expert at broiling on the embers of a camp
fire.

On the third day he began to recognize familiar objects along the
river, and announced that we should arrive at the place he had in mind
before night, and be able to sleep in a castle that would relieve us
of all uneasiness on account of Indians. The river banks began to be
precipitous and rocky, and to be suggestive of caverns and freebooters,
or the natural home of the Cliff Dwellers, and when Abner, the son
of Ner, at last pointed out our prospective stronghold, it seemed
the realization of all that I had read and imagined of the lost race
that had been driven away by pressure of circumstances, apparently
to adopt these dismal but impregnable rock dwellings that perforate
like swallows’ nests the walls of the canyons and river bluffs of the
southwest.




CHAPTER VI.

CASTLE SAFETY.


“Here we are pard!” chirped the general, as he turned the forward
end of our raft shoreward, where a clump of scraggy pines grew by
the water’s edge and underneath the open door of our lately acquired
brownstone front, which appeared to have been excavated in solid
sandstone rock, some thirty to forty feet from the water’s edge and
chiseled in a face wall so nearly perpendicular that I was puzzled to
know how the commander in chief intended to conduct his army into the
new barracks, and said as much to him.

“Oh ho! have you never heard of the advantages of a good, healthy,
elevated moral tone in home life? Well, I’ll show you in half a
wink how to elevate the working man of Colorado beyond the reach of
evil--Piutes.”

And he began to run up a thick-branched pine like a kitten. I followed
suit and soon found myself on a level with a ledge that jutted out so
close to our rustic ladder that it was but a step from the one to
the other. From this point our cave was reached by a winding zigzag
path which had at some time been cut into the rocky mountain side, and
was flanked here and there by a scrawny cedar or spruce with a meager
foothold in the rocky wall.

If I had cherished any romantic dreams of finding a primitive, but
once elegant rock dwelling that had been inhabited by a luxurious,
intelligent people, who should prove their right to be called such by
leaving their cavern bestrewn and behung with profuse and unmistakable
evidence of their wealth and culture, I was soon disenchanted by actual
contact in broad daylight with a rudely constructed, dark, chilly,
rock chamber hewn in the sandstone rock, intended apparently to solve
a problem of direst need of shelter from inclement wintry storms, and
protection against some relentless, terror-inspiring foe. The only
tokens of former occupation were a few remains of charred wood, and a
few ashes where some miner, probably Abner himself, had prepared his
anchorite repast, intent upon his own reflections, not of the mouldy
past and the hands that had driven this incipient tunnel into the
mountain or what had been the need that prompted the work, only so far
as to wonder if he were some poor prospector, braving the fury of the
savages in the hope of unearthing riches as fabulous as these within
our very grasp at Mountain Spring, and if he, too, was driven away
at the supreme moment of success, or tomahawked and scalped while he
was yet gloating over his newly-found treasure. Vain speculation and
echoless inquiries of past decades, perhaps of past centuries. The
rudely cut walls gave no clew to the kind of implement employed or the
complexion of the hand that had wielded it. The very absence of any
distinctive marks or characteristic relics, tantalized the antiquarian
instinct, and piqued my curiosity, convincing me that, under favorable
circumstances, I might soon become a fully equipped and matured
relic fiend, with more pleasure than I ever felt for the pursuit
of gold-hunting, or any mere wealth-getting pursuit. No reasonable
hypothesis of settlement based on the agricultural advantages of this
region could ever be formed, for of all inducements to the former it
was barren and even a sheepman would hardly deem it possible for his
flocks to crop a living on this rocky height, for the Elk Mountains
presented a spectacle suggesting nature’s wildest frolics to produce
chaotic and grotesque effects.

Here the geologist’s theory of successive stratification is demolished
and flung to the winds. Granite and sandstone capped the carboniferous
limestone at one point. All three intermingled in confused
conglomerate, and again the various strata carefully placed side by
side, on edge, or overlapped each other in successive folds, altogether
forming an object lesson fit for pandemonium, but one to drive a
student of geology to distraction.

No less fruitful field opened to the student of anthropology. Was this
an outpost of the lines of fortresses of the Cliff Dwellers, who had
lived and loved and worshiped here? Aztec, Toltec, worshiper of the
sun, the fire, or more modern devotee at the shrine of the Golden Calf?

But to return from our airy flight of fancy into far realms of space,
to our unromantic, but very real dwelling in the rock with the coney,
we were grateful for a safe resting place, and with slow pains carried
aloft all our little store of food and weapons together with our
axes, and, having done so, we proceeded to relax our strained nerves
and indulge to the full our physical desire for rest. We did little
else for two or three days, beyond watching for signs of pursuit.
Abner, however, gave it as his opinion that the reds stood too much in
dread of the wild Colorado and its sources to venture very far upon
the current of the Gunnison, which we had found swift and turbulent
and exceedingly capricious in its channel, but not a circumstance,
said the general, to what it is below us. “It’s built on the same
higgledy-piggledy plan as this ere mountain, where the rocks are
tumbled around so promiscuous-like that a prospector has to stand on
his head to get his bearings.”

When we were rested and recruited a little, we began to prospect on
the mountainous banks of the river, rather listlessly on my part, I
confess, for I had been too near the clouds for a few feverish days to
relish the idea of being an earthworm again; but my brave old comrade
went to work with as much apparent good humor and hopeful earnestness
as ever, encouraging me by relating numerous incidents that had come
within his knowledge of parties who had endured all sorts of disaster
and ill luck in their attempts to locate a paying mine, and had at last
been rewarded beyond expectation, and found ample indemnity for all
that they had suffered.

His philosophy comforted me greatly, not because I was at all sanguine
now that we should ever be among that fortunate class, for I recognized
the fact that for every instance of adequate success, whose recipients
were the talk and envy of their fellows, a hundred miners might have
perished unknown and unrewarded in the wild mountains of the Rockies.
But his philosophy was sublime to me, because of the sublime faith
which prompted it.

A wild spirit of adventure, nurtured by its legitimate surroundings,
began to stir in my breast. A desire to know more of this mysterious
river system, that had been as a myth to me in my schooldays, and in
fact the sum total of the knowledge gained or professed to be gained of
it was little short of mythical.

Until now I had been acting as high private in this exploring party,
and had merely acquiesced in and seconded all the plans proposed by my
leader; now I had the hardihood to propose a plan of my own.

Since we were prospecting in a region that was as much a sealed book
to Abner as to myself, on account of the wildly irregular geological
arrangement of all the various stratifications, I argued that we might
as well waste a little of our time of enforced exile in exploring the
lower Gunnison, and perhaps a part of the Grand, as to waste it in
monotonous, unprofitable labor here.

To my delight the old man fell in with my view of it, after some
hesitation, thinking perhaps that a little show of disapproval was due
his superior years; but once enlisted he was as enthusiastic as a boy.
Beyond our present location he had never explored, and consequently it
was to him an unknown land of possible wonders as well as to me, and
his unspoiled, ardent, cheerful temper caused him to enter as heartily
into the project as I could desire. But his riper judgment was apparent
in many ways while we planned our expedition, and I fear that if it had
not been so, the tale of our wonderful voyage would never have been
written, or if it had, would have been as limited as the narrative of
the Three Wise Men of Gotham, spoken of in the classical writings of
Mrs. Goose. My plans would have been simply like that of the wise Mr.
Sherman, statesman and financier, who, when asked, after the Rebellion
had closed, how resumption of specie payment could be brought about,
replied, with a pardonable show of philosophic pride on delivering
himself of so profound and patriotic a statement, that “the way to
resume is to resume.”

My plan of embarkation on our voyage would have been to embark
forthwith, and leave the rest to luck and Abner, for I had learned to
lean on Abner as being an own cousin to luck, but he was inclined to
trust more to plain everyday common sense preparation, and less to luck
and Abner.

He pointed out two important particulars in which I should have acted
indiscreetly had I embarked at once, first that we should need a much
better constructed raft than our present one to weather all the gales
of misfortune we were likely to encounter, and second, that it behooved
us to make substantial additions to our larder before passing from the
known to the unknown. I did not attempt to question the wisdom of his
plans, but set about to assist him in carrying them out. A mariner’s
first care is to secure a seaworthy vessel, afterwards to provision and
man her; so we occupied a few days in building a boat, and afterward
several days in killing and jerking a liberal supply of venison, which
was very plentiful here, so that even with my lack of skill in hunting
I had no trouble to kill several deer each day, the meat of which we
cut in thin slices and dipped for a moment in boiling brine and then
hung on poles in the sun to dry. The pure mountain air and the sun’s
rays did the rest, and we soon had a fine store of concentrated food,
not so attenuated in bulk, perhaps, as the wonderful food-tablets that
scientists begin to tell us about at present, when a quarter of beef
may be slipped into the vest pocket and an equivalent of a barrel of
flour stored in a common pill box; but still in compact form, and in a
state of preservation to tempt any honest appetite.

Our boat or raft, for it was little more, was constructed “specially
for our trade,” was long and narrow, to give it better facilities for
shooting between rocks, or leaping down the rapids we expected to
encounter, was provided with cross trusses, or platforms one above
another to prevent our provision deck from shipping water. Our cargo
was transferred laboriously from the stronghold in the wall to our
craft and securely lashed in place. Our steering oar was shipped, our
paddles stowed away as a part of the cargo, for a possible time of
need, and our fantastic craft headed down stream, her captain and crew
as gayly hopeful of the future and as undisturbed by thoughts of peril
as though we had launched a tiny “egg shell” upon a shallow artificial
park lake, instead of a roaring torrent whose dangers had hitherto
deterred the most courageous from braving the rapids and whirlpools and
shooting the cataracts of this wild branch of a wilder stream.

Our plan embraced only a mild part of such a program; we only meant to
play with the monster a little, not to come within reach of his jaws,
to float down some of the lesser rapids by day and camp by some of her
less stupendous canyon walls at night, to feel our way along cautiously
and end our voyage where the Grand Canyon of the Gunnison began, or at
least to use our best judgment as to where our exploring voyage should
end. We were soon swinging along at a good rate and all our cares were
needed to avoid rocks and sudden curves and freaks in the current, even
now, but we got used to the wild ways of the frisky Gunnison after
a few hours, and were less alarmed at her exhibitives of untamable
temper, and enjoyed the wild scenery about us to the limit of our
capacity for appreciating the sublime in nature, but without exhausting
the subject.

The stream was as capricious as the traditional feminine shrew. For
some distance the channel would widen out and the current move as
placidly as a Sister of Charity; and again it would suddenly contract
its bounds to one-fourth its former width, and rush its waters through
the gorge as furiously as the Sister of Charity is followed about the
street on her hallowed mission by the society butterfly chasing social
bubbles. We knew before the close of the first day’s voyage that for us
was no return by water. No human being could stem the current of those
wild, rocky stretches of channel where the waters raged and foamed and
rushed forward and downward with the speed of a racehorse. It was like
the closing of the gate of mercy behind a poor mortal, while he was
whirled forward resistlessly by the cumulative forces of evil habits
until he realized that


  “There is a line by us unseen,
    That crosses every path,
  The hidden boundary between
    God’s patience and his wrath.”


We judged that we were within two days’ run of the Grand Canyon from
our cavern home, and the fast increasing wildness both of the river
and its surroundings convinced us that we had not overestimated
the distance. The shore walls grew so precipitous that we had some
difficulty in finding a suitable landing place to camp for the night;
but presently the cliffs receded a little, leaving a few feet of level
shore where we made our bivouac, and except for the oppressive sense
of solitude that bore down upon our spirits, we passed a comfortable
night.

Then, after a hearty breakfast, we again launched upon our exciting
voyage. During the morning we encountered a state of things similar to
that of the day before, but before noon we were whirling along at so
rapid a rate and the rock walls closed in so relentlessly upon us that
at times the light of day was shut out overhead, and the roar of the
mad current in the hollow cavernous depths was so deafening that it was
impossible to converse and we could only look in each other’s faces and
read the confirmation of our own convictions there, that we were in the
power of an unchained element, and flying at break-neck speed through
the Grand Canyon of the Gunnison. Now we shot down a cataract with the
speed of the wind gasping for breath and immersed in spray, clinging
to the ropes that held our traps in place, Abner still grasping the
steering oar, guiding our bark when possible to see our course, and
holding her steadily before the current when the dashing spray from
the menacing rocks blinded us. Then our craft would be caught in the
maelstrom at the foot of these rapids and be whirled around and around,
until at last it would be projected by the current beyond the caldron
and dash on again into calmer waters, where we would have a brief
breathing space before being again immersed in the boiling, eddying
water, deafened by the roar and almost stupefied by the swiftness with
which we were borne along as if nature were mercifully deadening our
senses against the time of the final catastrophe, as a lion is said to
toss a man in the air till his senses are so dulled to pain that it is
only a sort of dreamy pleasure to be eaten.

When we had just passed one of these wild rapids which was a little
more terror inspiring than anything we had yet encountered, and came
out upon a stretch of comparatively quiet water, Abner delivered
himself of his opinion of the situation in his characteristic style:
“I’ll tell you, my little bantling, if you’ve got any words to say
now’s your time to say ’em, for when we get into another of them sheep
dips the Almighty himself couldn’t hear your little petition, and if
the next one grows worse along of the rest of ’em we’ve passed this
morning, I wouldn’t give poor Riley’s chances to get out from under the
little forty-ton coverlid we lapped around him, for ours to come out
alive.”

It is needless to say that I had been doing some intensely sober
thinking about my past life, the mere privilege of living seeming
more precious as the probabilities of its being suddenly and forever
snatched away from me increased. The recollection of my dear old uncle
and foster parent added a decided pang to the thought of dying without
being able as I had hoped, one day, to give him substantial proof of
my gratitude for his care. But all these considerations were but as
added sparks to the flames of torment that racked me at the thought
of being apparently so near to success and Lena, and now--delivered
from the bloodthirsty Piutes, only to be reserved for a fate quite as
horrible and affording even smaller chances that the story of our fate
would ever be told. We might better have been swallowed in the rush
of the avalanche or met our death at the first volley when Riley was
killed; then we would have escaped the second horror, for we suffered
all of death itself in our momentary anticipation of it in the mountain
shanty. So I ran on in my train of bitter reflections, my heart
rebelling with all the force of love-lorn youth against the decree
that death seemed to have pronounced against it. I had never spoken of
my love affair to any one and it was too sacred a subject to broach
to Abner even now; but I hastily penciled a few words to Lena, on a
scrap of paper, folded and directed it and gave it to Abner, telling
him that if he should be saved and I was lost, to mail it as directed.
Even this slender thread of chance that I might apprise her of my fate
and of my unaltered affection for her in my last moments was a grain
of comfort and I thought that, perhaps, even though we might both be
lost there was a chance that our bodies might be recovered and the
writing be legible and find its way to Lena, at once relieving her from
the horrors of suspense concerning my fate and emancipating her from a
compact that I fully believe would never be broken by any voluntary act
of hers.

The cheery voice of Abner recalled me from my morbid speculations,
and bitter self-denunciations for ever having embarked in any such
business, much less on such a voyage.

“Chirk up, my tender kidling, don’t you see the old Gunnison is
giving herself a little spread room and us a chance to hear ourselves
think? We’re past the canyon, I think, and from now on we’ll have
smooth sailin’ accordin’ to the best information I could get about
the Gunnison, and you’ll see yor sweetheart sure, and all your native
fields.”

I looked above me and sure enough the rocky shores had receded, the
racing current had subsided to a sober gait, and we were suddenly
transformed from terrified wretches expecting instant death to a pair
of quiet voyagers on a quiet stream that bore us upon a smooth current,
free from obstruction, and treated us to a tamer variety of scenery.

Will you oblige me, reader, by pausing here and trying to reason
out from your general knowledge of human nature what was my first
thought on realizing that our worst dangers were past? I remark your
vacant gaze into space as you try to solve the problem and make haste,
a little slowly, perhaps, some over-curious feminine reader may be
so unkind as to suggest--but still with all the haste of which my
slow brain is capable, to inform you that the wild desire that a few
moments ago had prompted me to write and entrust to Abner an epistle
to my friends in Chicago--well then to a particular friend there, if
you insist on putting it that way--had changed to as wild a desire to
re-possess myself of that little piece of paper.

No, it was not that I remembered having omitted to punctuate it
properly with a comma here, and a semicolon there, or had neglected
to add a postscript or to sign myself, “Yours in haste,” but if there
were more intrinsic reasons why I wished to regain my jewels before
they should be cast before swine, or if the words that seemed feeble
and utterly powerless to express my dying sentiments to one of my
particular friends did seem now a little--just a little--gushing, or
might be so regarded by a matter-of-fact old duffer like my beloved old
Abner, what is that to thee, guileless reader?

But Abner was inclined to be frisky, and intimated that the sacred
trust bequeathed to him with my dying blessing could not be so lightly
given up; that my passionate appeal to him to be faithful in my
efforts to deliver the message could not be so easily ignored, and he
added with a twinkle of merriment in his weather-worn eye, “besides, if
I should deliver it in person and figure as your faithful friend to the
last, and your sincere mourner, I might ‘stand in’ on her sympathies,
see?”

So far as I had been able to ascertain, the merry old stager had never
had a touch of a love affair in his life, and it was refreshing to
hear his badgerings, especially as I knew that Chesterfield himself
would break the first commandment in etiquette as soon as chivalrous
Abner Callaway would take any liberties with my missive, or withhold
it from me longer than it should serve his turn for a little amusement
at my expense. So I fell in with his view of it, and offered to
give him a letter of introduction, and advised him to procure a red
necktie to match his shirt before he rung the bell at her fine, up-town
residence, and hinted that his chances of success would be improved if
he should scrape some of the pay-dirt from his cowhide boots before
appearing before my inamorata, and take a few lessons in doffing his
broad-brimmed white hat. I saw the terror that walketh in the boulevard
and the spirit of the metropolitan belle that wasteth in the midnight
ball, with her glances, alight upon him at the very mention of such
laborious gallantries, and I knew that what the Indians could not
accomplish by ruse or valor or ambuscade, I had accomplished by mere
allusion--I had found his vulnerable spot.

“I surrender laddie, here’s your billy-doo; but you can stake her heavy
on one card and that is, Abner don’t. And remember one thing, my boy,
if ever we strike it rich and go back to Chicago to paint the town red,
and you should invite me to dine with you and your filigreed friends,
or to attend a fandango where your female beauties unbosom themselves
to their admiring, simpering, high-dressed, and low-moraled bilks whose
dads has a million dollars, you’ll ask a harder job of me than the
one we’ve just finished up.” And I had no reason to doubt the entire
sincerity of his statement.

“I promise you, my father in Israel,” said I, “that when we do the
town together it shall be in our mining garb, or you shall suggest the
change; and, as to dining, if ever I should be so fortunate as to be a
diner-at-home, I’ll have a corner reserved especially for you, and a
wife to do the honors who shall be as straight-laced and puritanical
in all her ways as your own grandmother. But where do you propose to
commence operations to secure the glittering fortune we’ve been chasing
up the mountains and down this bowel of the earth?

“Oh, we may as well run down to the mouth of the Gunnison, seein’ how
we can ride back this far anyway. I had an old pard once, the poor
old fellow gave his scalp to the Bannocks in ’76; he was down in this
country once, and we had planned to take the very identical wild goose
chase we’re takin’ now. He used to keep me awake nights to tell me
about the nuggets that could be picked up at the mouth of the Gunnison,
if you only knew where to look; and then he’d pucker up his mouth and
whistle knowingly to himself, but if he knew where to look, he died
with the seed of his secret remainin’ in him unsprouted. But since
we’ve been on this lonesome voyage of discovery, I’ve had plenty of
spare time to think of my old pard and since we were obliged to start
on this here little pleasure trip against our will, I propose that we
become an explorin’ expedition on our own hook, and so make a virtue of
necessity like the little snarlin’ puppy the widdy I used to work for
at Chicago owned; when his mongrelship was ordered out of the house,
he’d bounce across the porch, out of the yard, and down the lane with
his bristles raised and a-barkin’ furiously, what the old lady used
to call his ‘person bark,’ all to pretend that he went out of his own
accord, and was just about to tree a tramp, or smell out a burglar in
ambush.”

So we beguiled the tedious hours of the long days and grew into close
companionship, my respect for the general growing daily, and his
fatherly affection for me, I can account for it by no other name,
seeming to thrive quite as well. Our voyage to the mouth of the
Gunnison henceforth was uninterrupted, and our arrival there created no
stir in mining circles except that which we created with our spades.
That was to very little purpose, though I have never yet panned out a
bushel of sand and gravel on the bars of these Rocky Mountain rivers
without finding more or less gold, or in mining phrases “raising the
color.”

But its fineness and a persistent tendency to sift down to bed rock
often made it impossible to secure more than enough to tantalize the
imagination for bed rock along these sand bars meant under water and
the fine gold, known as “flour gold” had so far resisted all efforts to
secure it by any process known to science, to a paying extent.

We continued to drift down stream a few miles almost daily and did a
little half-hearted prospecting, adding at every opportunity to our
store of dried venison against a possible time of need, till we found
ourselves in the turbulent Colorado itself and in the dominions of
Brigham Young, Joe Smith, and Ann Eliza. But if the Latter Day Saints
had any title, right, or estate in the untamed mountain torrent that
furrowed the southern part of Utah, they had made no effort to come
into actual possession. The wild freaks of nature indulged in various
directions here amid the perfect solitude gave it an air of almost
awful wildness that oppressed the spirits, and our minds reflected
some of the gloom of the dark, deep rifts in the rocks that the river
had claimed as its channel. But the sunshine, when we found it again,
was all the brighter for having been obscured, and our Bedouin manner
of life was giving us an appetite for adventures from which we would
have shrunk in fear at first. Fate, apparently, was fitting us for the
strange predicament in which we were to find ourselves presently.

Perhaps we realized more fully the perils of our undertaking now that
we had experienced them, and our realization of the facts and figures
that are familiar to everybody was quickened by contact with the
stupendous facts themselves. Do you realize that the Colorado falls in
many places two hundred feet in one mile; that the channel is merely
a seam in the solid rock; that while it expands in some places to
hundreds in width it suddenly contracts to twenty yards in others, and
forces its waters through this choked outlet with terrific force; that
what would be banks or bluffs on ordinary rivers are here perpendicular
walls of granite, sandstone, and limestone rock, towering upward from
two thousand to seven, and even ten, thousand feet above your head,
so that at midday the light in the depths of these gorges is that of
late twilight; that the sights and sounds that greet your rocket-like
passage remind one of all sorts of grewsome subjects, and suggests all
sorts of stygian comparisons, and Hadean similes?

There were two mortals to whom all this Plutonian scenery was a fearful
reality, for we toyed with the cub of old Neptune till she learned her
power over us, and hurled us into her secret caverns, and roared and
lashed herself into an ecstasy of delight at our helplessness.




CHAPTER VII.

SHOOTING THE RAPIDS.


Excepting the little exploring party headed by Professor Powell in
1869, we were probably the first and only white men to voluntarily
undertake the navigation of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. The
purpose had gradually grown upon us and strengthened as we proceeded.
Ours was not laid on scientific lines, nor yet on merely idle
advantages, but in pursuance of our desire to know more of a country
that was as thoroughly a myth and a mystery to the world as that region
of the globe which was represented on the maps of ancient geographers
by hideous monsters lying in wait for unwary voyagers.

We found just as cruel and ravenous monsters lying in wait for us at
every turn in the Colorado; but they were very matter-of-fact dragons,
composed of half-submerged rocks and furious whirlpools, threatening
life and limb no less than the most hideous creation of a bookwise
geographer or superstitious navigator.

For several days our voyage was not so exciting as that of the Gunnison
had been, and we began to think that, perhaps, after all, the Colorado,
like his “brimstone devilship,” was not so black as it was painted,
though, in its most placid aspect, it was in no danger of breeding the
ills of stagnation, or subjecting her passengers to the disease called
monotony.

However we may have built on this foundation of hope it proved to be
one of sand. The canyon began again to contract and writhe and rage as
the Gunnison had done, but on a scale of magnificence that belittled
the grandest efforts of the tributary.

We began to realize that the course of the Colorado from its source to
the foot of the canyon at least, was simply one grand cataract, that we
tumbled down its current rather than floated, that we were day by day
the subjects of special miracles of preservation from the horrors of
shipwreck in a current where the stoutest swimmer would be as helpless
as a leaf against the plunging tide, a tide that tumbled and drove
seaward through Arizona at a rate that brought the level of its waters
three thousand feet lower at the point where it left that territory
than where it entered upon it.

These may seem mildly sensational statements to my conservative
readers, but they were terrific object lessons in some of nature’s
startling facts to us, though we did not stop on our voyage to take our
bearing or climb to the top of the river’s banks to drop the plummet
line on these walls, nor did we keep a log-book of our course and
variations; but all these figures, obtained by Professor Powell in the
employ of the United States, have for us a vital meaning, and are not
in our ears as a far-away tale of the Arabian Nights.

We would gladly have given over the expedition when we came to brave
the dangers of the canyon, but to land at most points was impossible,
and even if we could have had room to stand on _terra firma_ we would
still have had only the barren choice between starving on the narrow
strand or taking to the water again. It had grown so serious again that
Abner was once more his brother’s keeper, or at least the keeper of his
brother’s message to the outer world, and I was trying to take Abner’s
advice about some final words of preparation for departure, when our
affairs took a decidedly new turn.

We had just shot down a dizzy cataract that deluged us with spray, and
caused Abner to close his lips a little more firmly. We had the usual
maelstrom to clear at its foot, and then we shot out into a stretch
of water that was good to behold. The channel, as it must needs be to
relieve the pressure of the current, was quite wide and the current was
so gentle that we could have stemmed it without difficulty; and just
ahead of us the prison walls that had so long frowned over and around
us gave way, giving us a glimpse of what seemed to be a branch canyon
or “pocket,” as they were termed, and we could catch a glimpse of the
bright verdure of some sort of plants or trees nearly on a level with
the stream.

“Land ho!” I cried, and we promptly guided our craft toward the cove
that seemed to be inviting us to find harbor there; but as we drifted
down to a point more nearly opposite the entrance to the pocket, we
were disappointed to find that the mouth of the pocket was obstructed
by a mass of earth and rock that had fallen from the cliffs above and
effectually closed the harbor to navigation. This dam rose to the
height of only ten or twelve feet, however, and we were soon landed
and tying up our raft to a cedar sapling growing upon the embankment;
we scrambled up the side and looked over into our promised land. It
did not seem to contain over an acre of land, but that one acre was
a veritable Garden of Eden to us and we rushed down the inner slope,
and took possession of our discovery in the name of the King of
Cosmopolitan Rovers, and hoisted the colors of the United Brethren of
Freebooters and Adventurers.

The miniature park was intended by nature, seemingly, to represent
a circle, of which the river had cut away one side, and as it was
smooth, and appeared to be on a level with the river bed, it was
plainly redeemed from the river by the dyke thrown across it from the
overhanging cliffs, and its soil derived moisture enough to render it
wonderfully fertile by sub-irrigation from the waters of the river,
which were higher than the surface. We gazed around us in stupid
amazement partly because we were so unexpectedly granted a respite from
the hardships to which we had been exposed, to the point of exhaustion,
and partly at the extraordinary appearance and profusion of the
vegetation around us.

Said Abner: “By the beard of Joe Smith, we’ve got into old Brigham’s
private garden! Here’s fig trees and date trees, or I’m the devil’s
uncle;” and here I said, “are some oranges and limes for supper.”

“Well, I used to have some trouble with the story of Moses poundin’
water outen the rock with his gold-headed cane that Aaron stole to make
the golden calf, but I dunno as it’s any harder on the constitution
to swallow that little tale than to believe our own senses, that a
little patch of Californy should be picked up and set down here in this
howlin’ wilderness.”

Pushing our way through the thick growth, we found still other
varieties of semi-tropical fruits. A huge grapevine climbed over
the tops of the trees and displayed huge bunches of luscious grapes
temptingly in our very faces, a temptation to which we readily
yielded, and no grouping of words can convey an idea of their delicious
flavor to us, deprived as we had been for weeks of fruits and
vegetables.

Olives, apples, pears, quinces and plums, all laden to breaking with
their respective fruits, dazzled our eyes, and turned our brains dizzy
in their efforts to realize our good fortune. Some of the fruits were
already past their prime, and gone to decay, but other varieties were
ripe for the harvest, and though the laborers were rather few in
number, they made amends for that deficiency by being willing. It must
be borne in mind that this cliff-walled retreat was as different in
climate from the regions of that latitude, usually, as the tropics are
different from the temperate zones. It was like a hot-house at noonday,
the rays of the sun being reflected downward upon it from the vast
upward stretch of rocks, while no cold winds could chill the tender
plants, or check the tropical growth of the trees.

The task of exploring our island was not a long one, for the rocky
walls were of the same character, and had the same precipitous form as
these that had inclosed us for several days, and clearly defined the
boundaries of our possessions. We found a spring of pure water gushing
from a crevice in the rocks and trickling away again among the fissures
and seams, until lost again in a few yards; but it was as great a
blessing to us as though it had continued on the surface, for our
water privileges had been more extended in quantity than excellent in
quality, while we journeyed on the bosom of the boisterous Colorado.

We regaled our senses with the fragrance of the blossoms, and our
appetites with the juicy, delicious fruits, and, spreading our blankets
in the shadow of the western wall, we slept long and profoundly, the
dreamless, careless sleep of childhood, for we were utterly exhausted
and the sense of relief was too powerful to admit any nightmares born
of our recent dangers--these were reserved for the later stages of
reaction. Physically and mentally, we often live over again the scenes
of danger and trial with sensations almost as vivid as the reality.

We slumber on through the evening hours and those of night. Morning
is well advanced when I hear some one calling to me that breakfast
is ready. I rub my eyes and have a confused remembrance of running
the gauntlet of at least two of the folds of the baleful rivers that
surround the nether world seven times, but as I look around on the
pleasing vision before me, I conclude that I have been misshipped,
and have dropped anchor on the shores of Elysium instead, and hasten
to respond to the invitation of the genius of the place to taste
the viands of this realm of bliss. But on advancing a little and
looking around I discover only grizzled, grotesque Abner, waving
his bloody shirt to and fro over the fire--with Abner himself inside
of it--putting the last touches to a meal fit for kings, or even for
commercial travelers. Breakfast bacon, garnished with hot apple sauce,
steaming slapjacks and coffee, and a great display of fresh fruits
piled in the shape of a pyramid, grapes, apricots, peaches, and pears
were before me in such profusion that I was constrained to ask the
hoary cook if he were arranging an exhibit for a world’s fair.

“That’s right, my boy, and the premium is to the one that can devour
the most of it at one settin’,” was his reply; and we fell to with
generous appetites, and made so good a record, and so uniform in
results, that we decided to share equally the honors of the table, and
voted each of the contestants the freedom of the country.

Our spirits rose after such perfect repose and such generous
refreshment, and we prepared to make a thorough exploration of our
little haven of rest from the storms and dangers of the outer world,
happy in the thought of escape from the raging current, not stopping
to consider how we were to escape from this refuge itself, or to wish
as yet to escape. We asked each other again and again what hand had
planted this Eden, or what foot had trodden these solitudes; what
intelligence had done its work in this isolated spot, and left behind
the undeniable record of its work? Deep as the mysteries of the Cliff
Dwellers, unfathomable as the secret of the worshipers of the sun,
unanswerable as the query of the origin and purposes of Incas and
Aztec, was the question, so constantly uppermost in our minds, so
persistently recurring, but having for its answer no echo from the
eternity of the past.

Plenty of evidence existed all around us that this work was of no
recent doing. Trunks of trees in all stages of decay lay about among
the living trees, indicating that the trees had propagated themselves
from the seed, until they had become a tangled wilderness of tree
and vine. The extremely favorable nature of their location preserved
them from deterioration in quality or extinction of their kind. Here
might be a thread that would help to unravel the tangled web of facts
regarding the race that had once reared and ruled, built and worshiped
in America, of which no human being had been able to give an authentic
account.

What if we--tremendous thought--should enjoy the proud distinction
of giving to the world a plain solution of the race problem that
had profoundly agitated the minds of scholars for generations, and
tantalized the efforts of the most diligent and enthusiastic students
of American antiquities?

Such thoughts as these chased each other through my brain as we made
our way through the thicket, and took careful note of everything around
us. We were a little sobered in our effusive delight with our new-found
possession when we had made a laborious circuit of “our acre” through
the tangle of fruit and flowers, to find, as far as we could determine
from such a preliminary survey, that there was no possible method of
escape from our retreat except by water, and that in the end, if we
wished to escape from a situation which, even though it had to us the
semblance of a paradise, still was rather a circumscribed one (and
we could easily foresee that a time would come when our palace would
become a prison); we should be compelled to resume our perilous voyage
till a point was reached where we could scale the banks of the river
and retrace our toilsome journey by land.

I could not accept as final the decree of the rocks, that we should
not pass. It seemed improbable that the former inhabitants should have
brought this nook to such a high state of productiveness without some
better facilities of ingress and egress than the river afforded. It
was unreasonable to suppose that they should come by our late route,
prepared to improve and cultivate this spot, and it was equally
improbable that having once lighted upon it as we had done, that they
should ever care to repeat the experiment after having escaped from it
by running the remaining two hundred or more miles of seething rapids
in the Grand Canyon.

“What do you think could ever have brought men to this place, and
induced them to plant this great variety of fruit?” said I.

“What do I think, laddie?” he said, “I think that just what brought
you and me gallivantin’ in these living tombs, brought them here to
be sure. They came a lookin’ for mines, only they came from the West,
while we came from the North, and another triflin’ difference between
them and us is that we haven’t found any yet.”

“Why, do you mean to say that you think they found gold here?” I asked.

“I don’t think anything about it youngster, _I know it_. While you wuz
a dreamin’ and noddin’ to yourself over them old rotten tree trunks and
a settin’ up some fine-spun theory that you got in your head in your
schoolin’ days at Chicago, I was usin’ my eyes. Come here.” I followed
him a little distance to the southwestern extremity of the park, and he
pointed out a place in the wall where mining tools had been used, and
a closer inspection showed that there was a distinctly marked seam of
quartz cropping out. “Not much account,” commented Abner. “They soon
left it, but it proves their business.”

The work had the appearance of having been pushed only far enough to
make a test of the vein, which had probably been unsatisfactory.

“Now, Abner,” said I, “what proof have you that these wanderers came
from the West instead of from any other direction?”

“Why any fool ought to know that; here is a little corner of southern
California, or north Mexico taken up bodily and set down here; if you
had ever been in that country you’d see the earmarks here sure.”

The symptoms that some time previously threatened to develop a mania
for antiquarian research in me were upon me again, and this time the
archæologist was in a fair way to run away with the gold hunter, I
resolved to bend every energy to the work of unearthing some further
traces of the people who had been in this strange, wild, beautiful
garden of the gods, so carefully hidden by nature. While Abner, armed
with his mining tools, was disposed to do some prospecting, I secured
my pick and shovel, and started on a prospecting tour also, though
with a different end in view. I had marked one thing that appeared
strange and inconsistent, namely, that while here were evidences on
every hand that some human being or beings, had made this place a home
for a length of time--else why all this fruit planting--or at least
they had planned to make it an abiding place of some prominence; yet
here was not the first clew to the remains of any sort of a human
habitation, and I was starting out on the presumption that a people who
gave so much attention to the cultivation of fruits must surely have
bestowed some careful thought and labor upon a dwelling of a style to
compare with the state of civilization indicated by their agricultural
advancement.

My attention was drawn to the walls of the pocket, rather than to the
level spot of tree-covered earth, on the supposition that there might
very probably be some connection between this little settlement and
the houses of the rock dwellers, whose cavernous retreats have been
found all over this southwestern region of North America. Beginning at
the point where Abner was investigating the ancient prospect hole, I
worked my way around to the western side, narrowly scanning the ledge
as I went, for any sign of excavation or rock hewn apartment that might
answer the needs of human beings for shelter and safety. The light at
best was none too brilliant in this recess in the mountain, but was
especially gloomy till the sun had climbed well toward the zenith;
and, to render my efforts more difficult, a few tall cottonwood trees
grew close together, and in close proximity to the wall, hindering my
view and shutting out the little light to be had, and leaving hardly
sufficient room for a person to squeeze through between their trunks
and the cliff. Laboriously making way against these difficulties I
came to a point about midway of the western segment of the semicircle,
when I saw some sort of marks upon the rocks that seemed to have been
made by man, but so overgrown with moss that it conveyed as yet no
intelligence. Falling to work in great excitement, I scraped away the
covering that ages had been at work to provide, and made out the form
of a human figure cut in the granite and pointing with the index finger
in the direction of the north, and slightly downward.

I studied the figure long and intently, but it spoke no word to relieve
my suspense, only pointed steadily and stolidly toward some object,
to me invisible. I scanned the walls for other figures or characters,
but this one seemed to be the lone guard of the place. I passed on
in the direction indicated by the clammy finger of the rock genius,
and about twenty yards further on espied a similar figure which in
size, attitude, and constancy of purpose might have been a twin of
the former, but instead of pointing northward, its taper finger was
stretched out toward the south, and depressed toward the earth in the
same degree as the other.

There is undoubtedly a motive in all this, I thought, and I began to
feel as if I were in the presence of the ghost of an interesting,
intensely fascinating past. The figures were life size and in position
to indicate that the person who had executed them had stood upon the
ground where I now stood, but accumulations of rubbish had buried them
to the knees. I ran my eye along the line in which the second figure
pointed, marked the spot, walked to the first one, ranged its course
also, and discovered with a thrill that it indicated exactly the same
spot. Visions of ancient Captain Kidd and Tom Walker flitted through
my excited brain. I walked back and forth several times, and squinted
and ranged, but each time these cold-blooded monitors referred me back
to the same spot I had first fixed upon as their common choice, and,
trembling in every limb, I began to ply the pick and shovel like a mad
man, anxious to have the honor of making one discovery as the result of
my “book larnin’,” of which Abner always spoke a little contemptuously.
I had not sunk my shaft more than two feet till my pick struck the
traditional “something hard,” and my heart beat the usual triphammer
accompaniment.

But when uncovered it proved to be only a very solid rock, and I was on
the point of concluding that it was imbedded there by nature herself,
when I observed that it bore the marks of tools, and continuing my
labors, I soon found that its extent toward the wall was not great;
I thought to dig underneath it, but after sinking about a foot beside
it, I again encountered rock, and on clearing away a space down to this
level, I perceived with renewed palpitations that I was descending a
stone stairway.

In the wildest frenzy of mental excitement I continued the excavations,
this being, as I estimated, the third step from the top, as I judged
that I had at first struck the second one from the distance it was
found below the surface; and continuing, I unearthed successively a
fourth, fifth, and finally a sixth, which brought me close to the
cliff wall. But though here was the stairway sufficient for descent
far enough to admit an ordinary-sized man to apartments entirely
“below stairs,” there appeared to be no entrance to such an apartment,
and my further progress was stayed by the unflinching decree of the
rocks. My closest scrutiny failed to detect the least sign that the
hand of man had ever been laid in violence upon the virgin rock that
formed the canyon wall. Reason and the senses were in conflict. Surely
this laboriously formed stairway was designed to lead somewhere, said
reason. Be that as it may, it is just as plainly apparent that it does
not, said the outer senses of sight and touch.

The plaintiff in the case urged that it was an absurdity to suppose the
stairway to have been constructed that man might butt his head against
a stone wall. I bethought me of another available witness in the case,
who might give valuable testimony, so I struck the wall directly in
front of the stairway a smart blow with my pick, and called hearing
into action to decide on the nature of the sound. The blow produced a
hollow sound, and proved, in spite of all evidence to the contrary,
that a chamber of some sort existed beyond the stone barrier, but how
to remove the barrier was now the absorbing question. I carefully
cleared away the dirt and rubbish that still clung to the supposed door
and examined it closely for some indications of the plan upon which it
was built and operated.

I noticed at last a faint crack like a frost seam in the wall just
above my head as I stood at the foot of the stairway, and by the
closest scrutiny, and frequent resort to brushing and scraping, I was
able to follow the seam, and define the outline of a door so cunningly
fitted to the aperture as to defy any but the closest search.

Slowly and painfully, but in great inward tumult, I traced the form
of the door completely around to the starting point, but the sharpest
vision could not penetrate the secret of its fastenings, or detect the
slightest show of hinge or lock that might prove the sesame to the
vaulted dwelling beyond. I fumed and capered about in my impatience to
be taken into this dark secret of the Old Man of The Mountain, but I
failed to find even enough of a clew to enable me to form an opinion as
to which side of the door was hinged, or as to whether it was hinged
at all, for that matter, but at last, in desperation, I threw my whole
weight against one side of the door which yielded with such ease and
suddenness that I made my entrance to the dark precincts within this
strange portal, in a way that sent a thrill something very nearly
akin to terror to my heart, through the lighting of the brain which
flashed the caution to the central office of mind, through the electric
highway of the grand trunk line of nerves: “Beware of being caught by a
trapdoor!”

Recovering myself from falling, I caught at the door to prevent its
being closed by possible hidden automatic agencies, but no such forces
existed, or if so, had forgotten to execute their office, for the
door stood wide open without any apparent intent to defeat the law of
inertia--but what a door!

What human ingenuity and Job-like patience had wrought the rough
slab of stone into a mechanism that of perfect symmetry and absolute
joining to the native wall would render foolish any attempt of a
modern carpenter and joiner with all his varied collection of perfect
tools. The method of hanging the door was as unique as the fitting was
perfect. The doorway was about four feet wide and the hinges were not
on one jamb or door-post, as we are accustomed to see them, but were
in the middle of the doorway. Could you have stood on the threshold,
exactly in the center of the aperture, one hinge would have been
immediately over your head and the other between your feet; but as
a matter of fact this was exactly the position occupied by the open
door, standing sidewise or at right angles to the opening half of the
door, therefore opening inward and half outward, being pivoted by such
a curious feat of skill above and below, that, ponderous as it was, a
touch of the finger almost would swing it. But while I entertain you,
my reader, with a description to the best of my ability, of a wondrous
product of skill and point out its many claims to admiration and
wonder, I perceive that you cast wistful, sidewise glances toward the
mysteries within the door, and to which its opening has admitted us,
and begging your pardon if I have kept you standing on the threshold
longer than courtesy would suggest, and having satisfied my ambition
to be in my own person the Columbus of this exploring expedition, I
will detain you but a moment, while I call to my partner to come,
and together we will enter this abode of the dim and misty past. To
tell the truth, however anxious I might have been to be the sole
discoverer of this subterranean habitation, I confess to a somewhat
eerie feeling at the thought of venturing alone into this stronghold
of a long-forgotten people, to stumble perhaps over the utensils and
implements that had been used by them hundreds of years ago, and not
improbably encounter the grinning skeletons of the former inhabitants
themselves, and be haunted by an uncomfortable conviction that it was a
sort of sacrilege to invade the dominions of the dead who had in life
labored so long and patiently to prevent just such intruders as myself
from disturbing their dust, or prying with too much idle curiosity into
the secrets of their life and labors; I felt that I was almost setting
up my feeble opposition against the decree of death that here they
should rest till the resurrection.

But companionship easily dispels such somber ideas, and eagerly I lead
the way, and conduct the hero of a hundred adventures into the castle
of the island, and invite him to take up his quarters here, forthwith.

The room is a low one, not more than seven feet in height and about
twenty feet square, and bare of any particular object of interest,
except that in one corner are some charred remains of wood, where
cooking had evidently been done, and directly over it a round hole cut
through the ceiling slantwise toward the outer world and gave issue
to the smoke, as I found on later investigation, through a fissure of
the rock and concealed the source from which it came. There were a few
earthen vessels for domestic use, this room being probably used as a
storeroom and cooking room.

The walls were rudely cut and no effort had been made at adornment;
but our interest was toward a point in the rear wall where were plain
indications of another doorway, but seemingly constructed without the
effort at concealment, that had been a prominent thought in the mind of
the artisan who had shaped the outer door. This second door we found to
yield to pressure as easily as the other, and admitting us to a dark
corridor whose extent we could not conjecture, and whose dark, unknown
space we did not care to penetrate without light, so we returned to
daylight and prepared bundles of dry fagots for torches, and lighting
one, we started once more to trace the windings and explore the
mysteries of the passage.

The torch burned brightly, and the air seemed fresh and wholesome.
The tunnel bore directly into the mountain for some distance and
then branched in a sharp bend northward. We decided to explore this
passage first, and found it soon changed into a perpendicular or
spiral stairway hewn in the rock, the center being left to form a
huge monolithic pillar around which the course revolved. Up and up
we toiled for a hundred generous steps till a queer pulling down
sensation affected the calves of our legs, and came out at last upon
a narrow landing, and a door opening into an apartment which we knew
at a glance had been the true home of these ghostly inhabitants of the
rocks. We had no further need of our fagots at present, for this room
was well lighted from without--being directly over the one we had first
entered--with ingenious arrangements to admit light and air without
attracting notice from without, although being so high up the cliff
made the liability to detection very small.

The room was forty feet square, cut with the greatest exactness, and
the ceiling, which was in the form of a hip roof, pyramidal in shape,
was, according to our best means of calculating, exactly forty feet
to the apex. And the whole of the walls and ceiling were ornamented
with a network of grooves in the red sandstone, which gave it quite an
imposing appearance. Some ornamental vases of brass were resting in
niches in the wall, and a great many more similar niches were empty. A
low shelf of rock or divan was left running around the wall which must
have been used as couches at night, as we found no other substitutes
for any kind of beds whatever. But day was fast declining and we must
retrace our steps to the camp and leave the exploring of the other
branch of the gallery for the morrow.

Here was food for thought; enough to engage our attention till we could
resume our work in unearthing and unraveling mystery and history,
for I had cherished a firm belief from the time that we landed on the
shores of this miniature world, that we should be the humble means of
giving some facts that had been heretofore, for ages, mere speculation
and hypothesis.

Sleep cannot always erase the grooves of care worn in the brain by
the ceaseless grinding of our waking hours. The alluring phantoms,
hope and ambition, stalk through the stoutest barriers we may rear
at the portals of dreamland, lift our souls to the dizziest heights
of success; then, as suddenly as they came, leave us on the pinnacle
as a brood of the dark-hued spirits take their places to bedim our
bright hopes, and instead of a pinnacle of glory, we seem suddenly to
be standing on a precipice that is the verge of destruction, to be
toppling over and falling into horrible depths till overwrought nerves
can endure no more, and we startle into wakefulness only to doze off
into Somno-land again to go through all the stages of human experience
from exuberant bounding hope and joy to the blackest and bleakest
despair.

So were my dreams, vision-haunted and fever-stirred. I seemed to be
climbing again the weary flight of winding stairs to the chamber of
state above. Now I wandered through that silent apartment with its
unwritten history of human life! I came suddenly face to face with a
grim and ghastly skeleton of one of the former prospectors of the
place. He waved me from the premises with a horrid leer from his
grinning teeth, now he lays a bony hand upon me; powerless to resist, I
follow him while he clatters and rattles in every joint as he conducts
me along a dark and moldy corridor full of noisome odors, and pauses at
the brink of a well-like pit hewn in the solid rock, and striking his
ghastly hands together, he throws off balls of phosphorescent fire from
his finger tips, and exhaling a puff of sulphurous air from between
his lipless teeth, he sends the uncanny will-o’-the-wisps waving and
glimmering down, down to the bottom of an almost bottomless pit, that
by their diabolical light I may see the companionship to which he has
consigned me.

Then the scene is completely changed. I wander again in the familiar
haunts of my boyhood, along the busy streets of the city, and up the
well-remembered walk to the door of Lena Upton’s home. We are walking
hand in hand in a beautiful garden where semi-tropical fruits grow
in profusion, and I am plucking them for her, and she is filling
her basket. All at once I recognize the garden as that of the Grand
Canyon. Then the terror of the path by which we must escape rises
before me, and we are on an open raft battling with a cataract, and I
laugh derisively in Lena’s ear when she appeals to me for protection.
We approach a wild cataract where rocks beset every foot of the way,
the waters go mad and leap from their bed and lash themselves into
foam, and we are caught in pitiless rapids, whirled over and into
the maelstrom below. In a whirling racecourse, faster and faster we
go, till all sense of fear is gone and a delicious sense of pleasure
thrills me. I try to shout in rapture at the sport and mercifully
wake from the nightmare to a blessed relief of reality and rest and
serenity. I dare not trust myself again to such hideous phantasies,
so I rise quietly, and walk about in the serene moonlight night. Many
crowding, anxious thoughts, made up of hopes and fears in nearly
equal quantities, had wrought up my nerves to the proper tension for
such visitations, and in waking I could hardly divest myself of some
superstitious thoughts, scruples against our ruthless desire to break
into every secret of this place, and disregard the universal wish
among civilized man for burial that shall be safe from vandalism. I
was satisfied that to-morrow we should find evidences of death as we
had to-day of life in the grotto, but after this realistic seance with
the baleful spirits who guard, or are supposed to guard the forms
and secrets of the dead from violations, I felt a little dubious
about rushing in too hastily where it might be better to pause and
consider. But the burning question that agitated my whole frame was,
who were these people, whence came they, whither went they, what was
their mission here? Was Abner’s theory of mining interests correct,
or were they driven here by stress of circumstances for safety from
human enemies, or by love of adventure as we had been, and stayed till
deliverance came in some form from without? Had pestilence frightened
them from the haunts of their fellows and induced them to take up their
abode here, content to be accounted as dead by the outside world? So
I speculated and dreamed my waking dreams, scarcely more coherent or
probable than those of my fevered sleep; but it added firmness to my
purpose to push my search on the morrow with all my energy, and poke
and prod in every nook and cranny for records of the past whether it
should be written in blood or in ink, whether the evidence should be in
bone or stone, I determined to find it, and about daybreak I lay down
again, and wrapped in my blankets, enjoyed a cool, refreshing sleep for
two or three hours.




CHAPTER VIII.

IN STONE.


Abner shared my enthusiasm to some extent, and we soon dispatched
breakfast and began our day’s work by providing ourselves with a
quantity of fagots for torches, and filling our pockets with matches
and arming ourselves with pick and shovel, we made our way to the
entrance of the kitchen, admiring the fitness of its arrangement in
relation to the garden, which opened from it very conveniently to
serve its plainly intended use of a kitchen garden. Pursuing the
plan of action we had fixed upon, we paid no further heed, for the
present, to the upper chamber with its winding staircase, but followed
the horizontal gallery toward the heart of the bluffs, proceeding
cautiously in the darkness by the little gleam of light from our torch,
fearful that we might tumble into some pitfall, or become entangled in
a maze of diverging passages; for, as we proceeded, a number of rooms
opened to the right and left, but so far as we could observe from a
hasty inspection there was nothing of interest in them. A hundred
yards from the starting point our gallery began to descend rapidly,
soon dipping at an angle of about thirty degrees, making it difficult
to keep our footing on the slippery rock floor. The slant passage was
about thirty-five yards in length, and came to a sudden end against the
solid wall.

We held our torches aloft and scanned the walls for any trace of a
doorway, but there was none. We sounded it with our picks but it gave
no hint of any opening beyond. But our minute examination resulted
in our discovering some more picture writings on the wall; figures
of men in every respect similar to those I had found on the previous
day which pointed toward the floor. Beside one of the figures was the
representation of something like a well from which a hand had removed a
covering, while another index finger pointed into its depths. Searching
the floor with our light, we found a circular block of stone which
seemed to be fitted into the surrounding rock so perfectly as to offer
not the least chance to fasten upon it, so as to lift it from its bed.

Presently we found, close to the circle described, another and much
smaller one, and within it another not more than six inches in
diameter, and on one side of the stone was a notch large enough to
admit a finger. We succeeded in loosening this small one, and lifted
it from its place, disclosing a strong ring of brass, fastened to the
larger circle by a staple as a means of lifting this cover. Together we
were able easily to move it from its place, and the opening revealed a
cedar beam which seemed to be as sound as on the day on which it had
been taken from the tree.

Here was another mystery over which we puzzled a long time, trying to
raise the beam aloft, but it resisted all our attempts, and finally we
were about to give up, breathless, and in despair, when I sat down upon
the stone floor to rest and dangled my feet in the opening, and finally
rested them upon the beam which seemed to sink away from them, and at
the same time Abner, who was standing on the larger circle stepped from
it as though disturbed by some new difficulty, exclaiming: “Jerusalem,
lad, the floor’s arisin’ up!” The removal of his weight made one part
of it rise all the more easily, and to my astonishment, as the beam
settled away from my feet, the circular block of stone in the center
of the passage that we found first, rose, and letting myself down by
my arms into the small opening beneath me, I pushed the lever down
with my feet, and the ponderous cover of the mysterious well rose till
it was higher than Abner’s head but refused to go any farther. It was
hoisted and supported by three cedar poles working in grooves cut into
the side of the well and covered religiously with the beam, forming a
system of compound leverage. The passage, as it proved to be, was a
spiral staircase, again, which stood invitingly open to us. The cover
was a perfect circle whose edges were beveled off, and the mouth of the
passage was countersunk to receive it, the whole fitting together most
admirably, indicating that workmanship skilled in the highest degree
had been employed upon it.

Neither of us seemed over-anxious to take the lead in our descent into
what might easily prove to be our sepulcher. I suggesting that my
knight of the red shirt should be the pillar of fire to go before me
to this promised land, but Abner said: “No, no, my unsophistical lad
with the tender foot, you’re the capting-general of this here branch of
the expedition, you go ahead laddie, and I promise you I’ll be a close
second whatever has to come of this goin’ down into Egypt.”

Leaving our cumbrous tools here, and each of us bearing a lighted
torch, we proceeded to feel our way down this extraordinary stairway.
It seemed tenfold more strange to us than the ascent of a similar one
the day before, but this was going down, down toward the bowels of
earth and every step seemed to deepen the mystery.

The steps were fully a foot in depth each, and winding slowly around
the huge center pillar, and downward we counted one hundred steps
before we encountered any change in the plan or direction; then a
sound caught our ear which caused us to pause suddenly and listen. It
was the sound of running water! A few steps more and it was rippling
at our feet. Not a feeble spring or little brook, but a placid, gentle
river flowing on its way to the sea, at least a hundred feet below the
level of the Colorado.

Again our journey seemed to be ended, but we had been tricked too
often in these intricate passages and hidden chambers to believe
that all this vast amount of labor had been expended merely to reach
water. While we were considering this proposition, we noticed all at
once that our light wavered and flickered as if in a current of air,
and now that our attention was directed that way, we could distinctly
feel the cool air rising from the water and stooping down and looking
in the direction that the river was flowing, we could perceive a dim
appearance of daylight in the distance, and that the cavern through
which the river flowed was considerably higher and wider than the bed
of the stream which was itself about twenty yards wide and seemed to be
quite deep. A natural shelf ran along the side of the cave and stooping
low, we found we could manage to walk along in a cramped position,
coming at times dangerously near to the brink of the river, but able by
great care to find passage.

The light from without grew more distinct as we proceeded, and when
we had traversed perhaps five hundred yards, we were able to dispense
with our torches, and in another hundred we emerged into open air and
daylight and liberty. The caldron of the Colorado was frustrated of
its purpose to entomb us in its ungentle depths. We stood once more at
large in the known and outer dominions of The Latter Day Saints. There
were still plenty of hills around us, but they were not so stupendous
in height or precipitous in form. The river whose privacy we had so
rudely broken in upon seemed to be but little ruffled in her temper by
our lapse of courtesy, but flowed down another deep canyon gradually
wheeling into line parallel with the Colorado. But it was as mild
mannered and gentle in current as the Colorado was the reverse, and the
banks rose in a gradual slope so that it was approachable at any point
within range of our vision. But now that we had regained our liberty,
what should we do with it? We decided to go back to voluntary durance
for a few days yet at least, and further explore the galleries and
chambers we had barely noticed while on our way here. So we retraced
our steps to the foot of the spiral staircase, slowly climbed up to the
level of the kitchen, and threaded the labyrinth of passages between
the mouth of the well-staircase, and the kitchen, and passing through
its sacred precincts stood again in our little grove of luscious
fruits and fragrant blossoms, hungry and tired, but not begrudging
the efforts we had made to get knowledge from the voiceless rocks and
wisdom from the echoless past; ready for dinner, and after that for
another peep into the subterranean curiosity shop. Callaway would not
have been a true prospector if this work had not been of almost as
much interest to him as poking about on the mountain, scenting out
“float” here, or striking a “lead” there. The pleasant excitement born
of being always just on the eve of discovering something comes to be
an every day necessity with his kith; it is more that feature of the
work that lures them on, year after year, than mere love of money, for
Abner was far from being one of those who were influenced entirely by
mercenary motives. In fact the money instinct in him was not strong,
and I am quite sure that to his class of mind the pleasure of pursuit
is fully as great as that of possession, and he was beginning to be as
enthusiastic an antiquarian as myself.

As we cooked and ate our frugal meal we discussed the situation. “Look
here, sonnie,” said Abner, “do you believe for a holy minute that that
’ere measley well we clattered down was the very way them fellows had
of gettin’ into this place? I don’t for one, by a large majority, and
I’ll bet my interest in the Mountain Spring Mine (my blessings on them
Piutes), that there’s a straight passage leadin’ from where we started
down the well. That might have been very useful to them once in time of
danger, and I noticed there had once been a door between the bottom of
the well and the river path, but to start out on the supposition that
they lugged themselves and all their stores up and down such a gopher
trap as that, is like starting on a lonesome journey with a lame nag.”

“I have been thinking dimly on that line myself, pard,” said I, “but
you penetrated the question first; and another thing, I have been
thinking that we have not really found the secret rooms of that
dwelling yet, and that when we do find them we shall find plenty of
clews as to what sort of folks they were, and what holiday freak ever
sent them this way to spend their lives in such profound solitude.”

Preparing more fagots and having refreshed ourselves, we went
enthusiastically to work to utilize the knowledge already gained in
getting more.

We followed out every side passage from the main gallery, sounded every
suspicious wall, and fumbled about the floors of every rude chamber in
the row. But it seemed as if we had reached the limit of our powers to
ferret out mysteries and unlock hidden doors.

All the afternoon we raged up and down the dark corridors, or haunted
the rooms to which they formed the entrance. We came back at last
to the outer room, which we have named the kitchen, in despair of
any further success, when Abner’s eyes were attracted by a peculiar
marking on the rear wall of the room, which had escaped us before.
Upon shining our lights fully upon it we discovered that it was
undoubtedly a system of hieroglyphics more ample than anything in that
line we had yet discovered, and intended to express in connected form
some idea or ideas. The first was a flaming censer in the hand of a
priest before an altar, with a representation, beyond, of another room
separated from it by a curtain which was partly drawn aside, revealing
within the appointments of a place of sacred worship; and near this
altar, on which was a smoking sacrifice, was a carefully draped stand
or table from which projected four staves or handles, and, hovering
over all, the figure of an angel. This seemed to complete the first
representation. A line was drawn underneath, and an entirely different
series of symbols formed a second reading.

A figure of a man with some sort of a tool distinctly resembling a
miner’s pick, was toiling in the mountain, and in the next he was
leaning over his tool casting something from his hand into a vessel
beside him. Above the vessel were cut three delicate rings, and in
close juxtaposition, as if to receive the rings, were the delicate
fingers of what was, no doubt, intended for a feminine hand. Then
came the figure of a woman beating some musical instrument like a
tambourine, next a fox or similar animal with cunning expressed in
every outline, bearing a vessel in his mouth like that which the
laborer had been filling in the first figure, and making toward a
cavern in the rocks. Following it was a stairway and passage, and a
door to the right at the end of the passage, opening into a large room
from which others opened in the rear.

The last figure represented a man in the act of spreading some kind
of plaster or cement upon a wall. Four feet to the right of the point
where these picture writings ended, was another inscription entirely
distinct in character from either of the other lines. It was indeed a
written language and--Holy Mother Mary! if my brain was not on fire, or
my senses running wild it was in Hebrew.

Yes, my labors in this elective study of my curriculum was of no
service to me if this was not a Hebrew inscription; but though I could
read it tolerably well when legibly printed on good paper, to cope
with this by a feeble flickering torchlight was a distinctly different
matter, and besides, my excitement ran too high to allow any rational
examination of it, or to allow me to tell whether the first letter in
the Hebrew were A or Beelzebub.

Abner spoke: “Come away, lad, come away, you’ll be as crazy as a loon
before a week at this rate; let the goose-tracks rest till morning,
and you’ll be in better trim to scent ’em out after you’ve slept over
it.” The fact that it was already night and our last torch was almost
consumed, compelled me to take his wholesome advice, and we went into
camp once more, without having our curiosity satisfied, though it had
been ground to a keen edge by the discoveries of the day.

We talked long and earnestly around the embers of our campfire among
the orange and apple trees, and theorized upon the information
we had unearthed and speculated as to the interpretations of the
hieroglyphics. Abner’s lack of a classical education was made up
largely by his wide experience in many States and territories of the
union; he having been in New Mexico and California, seen something
of such picture writings, so that he had much better general ideas
of the art of picture writing than I. He gave it as his opinion that
the first line was intended to symbolize the form of worship of which
those people were the votaries, and perhaps to convey the intelligence
to people of their own nation who might come after them that a temple
where these rites might be practiced was to be found near at hand, by
those who could understand this language.

As to the second series, we were agreed that without doubt it was
meant to indicate the finding of treasure and the rejoicings it called
forth, and to hint that it was hidden in some of these grottoes, the
record of the fact being written there as a matter of precaution
among themselves as we would not think of banking large sums of money
without an accurate account of it. What the last figure of the man and
trowel meant we could not even conjecture, but concluded to rest the
question here till another day. But to assume the posture of repose,
and to enjoy the repose were two propositions! Though Abner soon snored
peacefully beside me, I could not sleep, and images of sanctimonious
priests and humble penitents doing religious acts in this somber place
haunted me. And the Hebrew writing; what could it mean? What untoward
circumstances could have brought people of that far-away race here?
For surely to infer for a moment that they came in the exercise of
volition was too preposterous an idea to be entertained for a moment.
Then, too, if Hebrews, why should they record part of their story, or
warning, or bank account, in semi-barbarous characters when they could
as well have been recorded in a classical language? So my mind ran up
and down the scale of thought in great perplexity. I could not down
the oft-recurring problem of the varied language, but, all at once, the
thought occurred to me, that perhaps, even though they were all Hebrews
and could as easily have made plain their meaning as to obscure it by
symbols, they might not have wished to make it plain to others than
themselves. It might have been intended to suppress rather than convey
intelligence to any but the initiated. Why not? Were not the Hebrews
long in bondage to the Egyptians, who were the best known examples of
picture writers? In fact it is well known that Moses was acquainted
with the form of hieroglyphics in use in Egypt, and it is natural to
suppose that the Israelites brought away with them the knowledge of
this as well as of the other arts of their captors.

So I wrestled with the mighty problem till nature kindly interposed,
relieving my tired nerves, and I slept fitfully till morning.




CHAPTER IX.

GOLD!


Hardly waiting for breakfast or daylight, we were at the kitchen
door next morning, with tools and torches, eager to renew the
investigations. One thought had ripened in my mind, by the unexplained
mental process, that even while we sleep, labors ceaselessly upon the
problems that perplex us while we wake. The mystic wielder of the
trowel who had a place in the picture writing, but who to our minds,
“but little relevancy bore,” now played an important and logical part
in this crystallized pantomime. I now remembered that the impression
made in the writing of the hieroglyphics was rather in appearance that
of an instrument in a soft substance which had afterward hardened,
leaving the curled edges of the mortar plainly visible; but in the rush
of thought following the discovery, this idea had not been evolved.

Therefore my first act was to try the wall without picks, and we found
that there was indeed a layer of some sort of stucco or cement on the
wall in which the letters had been traced. “Here, youngster,” said
Abner, “you’d better cipher out your gibberish on the wall! I forgot
to go to the ’varsity when I was at Chicago, so it’s all upstairs
German to me. The only good the most of the young fellers get by goin’
there is to learn by experience the scientific meanin’ of a line, the
shortest distance from the front door to the rear one, with a practical
application by the toe of the old professor’s boot; or if they didn’t
learn it that way they ought to have before they got to be professional
sluggers, or human racehorses with the water for a track and an oar for
legs.”

“I suppose you’ll take it all back if I cipher out the meaning of this
inscription?” I said.

“Why, as to that, lad, I’m not doubtin’ that you improved _your_ time
and made it a payin’ investment to put you to school, and if you’ll
make those jackrabbit tracks talk I’ll be sartin and sure of it. You’ve
taken hold of this here business all the way through since we got to be
partners as though you meant business, and an old man knows a likely
young feller when he sees him.” Then he added, as if he had indulged in
too much flattery for my good, “So you see, it proves the good judgment
of old Abner.”

I lighted my torch and began a careful, systematic investigation of the
inscription, copying the letters with a pencil in a memorandum book,
and by the time I had done so I had also translated it into English
which read, following as literally as possible the original:

“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide
under the shadow of the Almighty.”

I was disappointed, but when I had read my translation to Abner,
he merely nodded and said: “Yes, we’ll find some sort of religious
mummery in here that’s to admonish them to get their sanctimonious
countenances on.” He had cleared away a small space between the two
series of writings, revealing the outline of the upper half of a
door, and as soon as we chipped away a portion of cement in a narrow
strip following the seam or joint, we were able as easily to open it
as we had the outer door, and found it to be hung precisely the same
way as the other. Entering we found the flight of stairs symbolized
and descending, some five or six in number. We followed along the
passage, feeling as though we had been there before, and knew just
where to turn. There at the end of the passage on our right hand was
the door just as we expected to find it. It yielded to our touch and
we stood--awed into silence and agitated by conflicting feelings
and swayed more or less by a superstitious fear of the place--in a
veritable Temple of Solomon in miniature.

Abner was not over-squeamish on religious subjects, and, therefore,
was the first to recover himself, exclaiming, “Hurra, laddie! this
suits my taste better than a gold mine, for here’s the gold already
refined.” There was a plentiful show of it sure enough. The place was
superbly fitted up as a place of worship with its altar and golden
censer and shovels and flesh hooks of brass, and the snuffers and
basins and spears of pure gold, all the rich and costly trappings
described in the scriptural account of Solomon’s Temple were imitated
in miniature here, the utensils of perfect gold, the wood overlaid
with pure gold, and there was the curtain separating the holy place
from the Holy of Holies. The curtain was of fine material, beautifully
woven and dyed an exquisite purple, and within the cherubim of gold and
all the accompanying paraphernalia, and under its protecting wings was
the ark of the covenant whose staves projected beyond the separating
curtain, “that the ends of the staves were seen out in the holy place.”
Within the ark, which was hewn from solid rock, was a copy of the Old
Testament on parchment, written in Hebrew, as if with a reed dipped in
purple ink of the same shade as the curtain.

What further evidence could be wanting that here was a genuine Jewish
Temple locked for ages in the “secret caves of the earth?” Here were
the nets of checkered work on the walls spoken of in the scripture
narrative of Solomon’s wondrous architectural achievements, and the
wreaths of chain work and lily work engraved upon the pillars that
supported the center of this immense temple which was a hundred feet in
length and thirty-three feet in width. All the dimensions of the room
and furnishings bore the exact proportions to the size of the temple as
compared with that of King Solomon.

Truly, “the sons of a woman of the daughter of Dan had been there with
skill to work in gold, in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone, and in
timber, in purple and fine linen and in crimson.”

But its glory had departed. The finger of time had written its
resistless decree there. The dust of centuries was over all and the
purple curtains were moth eaten and falling to pieces. The gold was
tarnished and only the wonderful hue of the Tyrean purple was unchanged.

Here was gold to satisfy the wildest dream of wealth. But feelings
stronger than the lust for gold restrained us and quenched all desire
to vandalize the sacred place by appropriating a single ornament, or
touch an ounce of the gold dedicated to the solemn worship of the
Almighty.

But we still had another world to conquer. The symbols on the outer
wall indicated that another excavation existed in the rear of this one,
and we proceeded to investigate. The door was of the usual form and
opened, without hindrance, into a long passage, on either side of which
were cut little cells or sepulchers in which we found many bodies of
their dead.

Here at last the cunning hand that had wrought out those wonders was
probably moldering to dust, and the brain that had been so fertile
in ingenious devices was but a ramification of dried tissues that
once formed the gray matter of the battery where human thought was
generated, but now crumbling into dust indistinguishable from that
which had settled upon it. The bodies had been embalmed imperfectly,
and the hand of decay was upon them, rendering it impossible to
distinguish form or sex, but there were remains of both children and
adults.

Only one cell along the corridor was closed and in this effort to
baffle discovery all their cunning and ingenuity had culminated. It
was situated between two of the ordinary cells to discourage the idea
of its having any special interest. It was to the first view, only a
smaller cell or narrow shelf cut into the rock, affording room for one
body laid across and barely within the doorway, which was the reverse
of the posture of all the other sarcophagi whose cells were long and
narrow, the bodies being laid with their feet toward the corridor.

Sounding the wall behind this mummy, we thought we could detect a
hollow sound, and carefully removing the crumbling mummy to another
cell we fell to work to find entrance. But we found we had a task of
greater magnitude before us than anything we had yet undertaken in the
antiquarian line. Though a faint echo seemed to come from within when
we struck our picks against the walls, it was so faint as to give room
for doubt as to its existence; but by sounding it from the adjoining
cells our theory was strengthened, and with the keen scent of expert
archæologists for mystery, we grew more anxious to solve this one in
proportion as it grew deeper.

The sarcophagus, or stone coffin in which this body had rested,
suggested at first an unexplained problem, too, as it was fully six
feet long, and while the doorway was barely six and a half in height
by three feet in width, the niche in which it rested crosswise of the
doorway was just barely sufficient in length and breadth to admit the
coffin. Was it possible that it had been hewn from the rock where
it lay? Possible, but not probable; and we determined to remove it,
believing that concealed beneath it we should find some catchword to
aid us in solving the problem.

It was massive and hard as granite could make it. But we attacked it
with our picks, and in half an hour or so we succeeded in breaking it
in two in the middle, and then we began to roll it out piecemeal,
hampered by the smallness of the place and the ponderous nature of the
substance we were handling. By using our picks as levers we raised one
part at the point where we had broken it and drew it upon the other
half, until one of us could get behind it and overturn it into the
corridor. It made a deafening report in the close air of the tombs as
it landed in the passage. The other half was quickly disposed of in the
same way and rolling them aside we returned to inspect the place it had
occupied when, to our great astonishment, an open door invited us to
enter the secret grotto of the Cliff Dwellers of the Colorado. Where
the coffin had stood a slab of rock had shot up to the level of the top
of the coffin as it stood in the niche. The slab was supported on two
cedar beams running in grooves in the rock to the depth below. Here
was the whole wily device laid bare to our eyes. The door was arranged
to rise and fall in a slide and manipulated by levers upon the ends of
which the coffin had acted as a counterpoise to keep the door in its
place, but when the weight was removed the door had sunk out of sight
in its groove, leaving a level threshold so neatly joined that it was
hard to detect the work of the artisan.

We scrambled upon the slab, trimmed our fagots, grasped our picks more
firmly, and with agitated hearts stepped within the low portal which
was on a level with the sarcophagus. Now we knew that our toils and
anxieties were about to be rewarded. The feverish labor of days into
which had entered the cares of years were ended. The heart of this
great system of veins and arteries extending through the mountain in
every direction, its network of human skill, was reached. The most
cherished secrets of the Cliff Dwellers were about to be made plain
as the day before us, for we stood in the treasure vault of The Lost
Tribes of Israel.

No architectural labors had been wasted here beyond the mere idea of
hollowing out a small chamber for the reception of their valuables.
Secrecy was the one problem upon which they had expended all their
skill and to what good purpose we could testify through all these weary
days when all our powers were bent upon circumventing the cunning
and skill of the designers of this receptacle of wealth, for wealth
there surely was, wealth in abundance without question of sacrilege
or superstitious dread in possessing it. Vessels of brass exactly
resembling those represented in the picture writing on the kitchen wall
were disposed around the vault in niches, and the first one we examined
was full of gold coin bearing the image and superscription of Solomon!

We were strangely silent, almost oppressed by the tremendous wealth
suddenly revealed to us. Gold ingots filled some of the pans and gold
earrings and ornaments others. Silver still others, and in the last
of a dozen or more pans we examined were nuggets of pure gold, from
the size of an egg and upward, some of them weighing twenty to thirty
pounds troy. The labors and dangers that had seemed of late to have
stamped their weight of care on me were as naught. The remembrance of
all my bitter struggles flew away on the buoyant wings of youth. But
it was pathetic to witness the effect of our good fortune on faithful
Abner. On neither of us, if I may judge, was there present any of that
miserly love for gold which gloats over it for love of it in itself.
My caperings were much like those of a schoolboy when he finds a long
cherished plan about to succeed; but to Abner it meant success at last,
after weary years of disheartening failures and incredible hardships;
not only ample provision for old age but the realization of ideal
hopes, the carrying out at last of a lifetime purpose which he had come
to regard as his mission, as an artist dreams of the hour when he shall
be able to fix his highest ideal upon canvas, not because of the gold
it will bring him, but because he is an artist.

So Abner was of that sanguine, hopeful temperament that can ever
see the gleam of the yellow gold before its eyes, and is frightened
by no disasters nor deterred by any dangers from following out the
natural bent of its mind. He seemed half-stunned by his good fortune,
as if he were already wondering how he could content himself without
prospecting, and felt a sense of loss as if he had spent a long life
in faithful service to his employer and had suddenly, without warning,
been discharged.

I rallied him upon his solemn visage in the face of a princely fortune.
He roused himself and replied in his old, hearty way: “That’s all
right, laddie, but I was just thinkin’ of my old mother that I left
back East and how I’d like, if she could be alive now, to share some of
this stuff. I used to send her a trifle when I’d make a little raise,
but all the gold in creation can’t be of any service to her now; but
I’ll tell you what I’m going to do with the first dollar of this money
that I spend after we get back to Chicago, I’m goin’ to order her the
best monument in the shop, and see that it is put up over her dear old
grave.” And he wiped a tear from his eye and blew his nose vociferously
to hide his emotion.

“Well, how much do you think we have here, Uncle Abner?” I asked. He
sized up our pile carefully with his eye and replied, “Well, I think as
near as I can calkerlate, about a bushel and a half.”

“And how, for heaven’s sake are we going to get the stuff all back to
Chicago without being robbed?” I said, feeling for the first time in
my life the novel sensation of anxiety as to how I should care for my
riches. This subject was one on which for several days we held long
and anxious consultations. But meantime we must finish our work of
exploration, though we were now rather indifferent as to what further
treasure might be stowed away here, having all that any rational being
could desire.

The only nook or cranny that we had not ransacked in the vault was
what appeared to be one of the little niches in the wall closed up by
cement which we broke away, and removed a stone very nicely fitted into
the opening; and where had lain hermetically sealed for centuries the
records that were to reveal the story of a long-lost people and prove
of more importance to the world a thousand fold than all the gold we
had discovered.

We brought forth a tube of brass with a tightly fitting cap over the
end. On removing this we came to a neat roll of fine cloth of the same
beautiful purple as the drapery of the temple without, and within its
folds was a parchment tightly rolled and covered thickly with Hebrew
characters written in crimson ink with a blunt reed pen or something
similar. The story of the Cliff Dwellers with the history of their
perilous voyage in search of a refuge from oppression will be recited
in the following chapters.




CHAPTER X.

THE LOST TRIBES.


King Solomon, or in oriental vernacular Suleiman, had the honor of
elevating the Jewish nation to the pinnacle of wealth and glory among
the inhabitants of the earth.

His was the proudest name throughout the world, not only as a wise and
moderate ruler, not only as a just and upright judge, but in literary
attainments, in which he had no rival.

In the midst of all his official duties wherein he found time to hear
the case even of two poor harlots, he found time to become a prolific
writer on natural science. He spoke three thousand proverbs and his
songs were a thousand and five. And he spoke of trees from the cedar
tree that is in Lebanon, to “the hyssop that springeth out of the wall.”

He spoke also of beasts and of fowl and of creeping things and of
fishes. But in the midst of the luxuriant foliage of this green bay
tree of power lurked the worm of human frailty. The man of wisdom came
at last to worship at the shrine of self. The vast riches that poured
in upon him blunted his powers to discriminate between good and evil,
and the blandishments of his princesses weakened the fiber of his moral
integrity, and led him away after strange gods.

The reckless extravagance of his splendid court drained the wealth of
toiling subjects. Laying the yoke of servitude at first only on his
subjugated enemies, he soon drained the resources of those nations,
and, in order to maintain the splendor of his royal dissipations
on their former scale of magnificence, he began to lay the hand of
oppression upon his own people. Murmurs began to swell into roars of
discontent; but the name of Suleiman was almost omnipotent in his realm
and beyond it wherever it was known. It almost became the word in
every known tongue to give expression to regal wisdom, and the mighty
prestige of that name was able to overrule every objection and every
murmur against his authority. The fires of discontent were smoldering
through all the substructure of his kingdom, but they did not burst
into flame till the messengers went throughout the kingdom with the
intelligence that Suleiman the mighty, the rich, the powerful, the
wise, the wonder of his age, the envy of the world, was dead.

The humblest and most oppressed of his subjects would not now accept
his fate though all the wealth and power of a score of Suleimans were
attached to it. There remained for him but the pomp and pageantry of
a magnificent burial to console him for the loss of human delights.
Henceforth he could partake of his pristine glory only in the
immortality of fame. He climbed to the proudest heights of ambition
only to fall ignominiously to the depths of weakness and folly.

Hope sprang up fresh in the heart of the Hebrew subjects. Alarming
and general revolt broke out in all but the two tribes of Judah and
Benjamin, and the ten tribes acknowledged allegiance to the house
of David no more forever. But Salmanasser, King of Assyria, carried
the adhering tribes of Judah and Benjamin as well as the revolting
ten tribes away into captivity. Seven hundred and fifty years later,
Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem and carried away the better
population which had been reorganized since the Assyrian captivity
into Babylon. Cyrus in turn overthrew the Babylonian empire and gave
the Jewish people full liberty to return to their beloved Jerusalem;
Judah and Benjamin, nursing the memory of past glory and cherishing the
hope of a deliverer and Messiah “as foretold by their prophets” gladly
availed themselves of the privilege to return to their native country.

But here the world’s record of the remaining ten tribes breaks off
abruptly, and for twenty-five centuries no word or token has come
across the chasm of years to indicate the fate of Israel. But as
Babylon has recently yielded up her secrets to the demand of modern
search and learning, so the beetling cliffs of the Colorado were to
be robbed of the dark and mysterious records of the lost tribes of
Israel, lying concealed so long in their bosom. The captivity of
Israel in Babylon was a tolerable one, being allowed as they were to
preserve their tribal relations and to govern themselves in their own
way, which was in the form of a theocracy, each tribe governing itself
as a separate republic, all being united under the invisible rule of
Jehovah. They came in contact daily with the Accadians, an element in
the Assyrian nation, originating in the mountains of Elon east of the
river Tigris. They were a highly educated and refined people, bringing
with them the knowledge of many fine arts unknown to their captors,
such as the recording of events by a system of characters stamped upon
tablets of brick.

Their mountain home gave them sturdy frames and lithe muscles, and the
maidens of this comely, intelligent people might well be supposed to
have been lovely in form and feature, and what is better, the sparkle
of their eyes was that of intellectual fire, and the glow on their
cheeks was of health. The young men of the ten tribes were not slow to
perceive the superior gifts and attainments of the Accadian damsels,
and intermarriage was the natural result. But while in skilled arts
they were in a position to become their husbands, teachers, in religion
the maids of Elim became their tempters; for their ideas on this
subject were far behind those of the Jews, they being worshipers of
Baal, closely allied to, if not identical with the worship of the sun,
pure and simple.

Thus far history attends and supports us in the narrative, but from
this point the burden of proof devolves upon our humble agency to prove
the subsequent history of the lost ten tribes, and here our parchment
steps into the breach and points out the circumstances surrounding them
in their captivity that induced them to try the fortunes of unknown
lands, preferably to going to Palestine once more.

The parchment is written in the form of a narrative of Israelitish
events from the time of embarkation from the land of their serfdom till
the time when they were about ready to leave the cliff dwellings for
more permanent ones farther southward, and bears the simple signature
of “Elib the scribe.” The writing is substantially as follows:

The blending of Accadian and Israelitish blood had awakened the
highest activity and ambitions in the tribes of Israel. The cunning
skill of the Accadians to work in brick and stone with the graver’s
tools roused the national pride once more to emulate the magnificent
architecture of King Suleiman’s reign, and their advanced intelligence
in religious matters supplied them with a worthy object upon which to
employ their constructive skill. Their education and prestige as a
nation had taught them to associate the idea of rich stores of gold and
silver for adornment of temples of worship, in their minds, as being
necessary to complete a dwelling acceptable to the Most High.

They resolved that they would once more set up the kingdom of Israel as
an independent government, and to do this they must needs seek a new
country where they should be safe from their old enemies until their
kingdom should be firmly established. Naturally their thoughts turned
toward Ophir as a country rich in treasures, and isolated enough to be
a safe refuge from Judah and Assyria. Their knowledge of this country
had been preserved from the time of Suleiman by the seamen who were the
successors and pupils of those furnished to Solomon by Hiram, King of
Tyre. But the knowledge of this mine had inured to the benefit of their
captors, the Babylonians.

Now they resolved to reap some of these benefits of knowledge
themselves, and availing themselves of the generosity of Cyrus in
granting leave to depart, and in supplying them with a passport among
all people who owed allegiance to Cyrus, King of Persia, and few
in that day would care to ignore his friendly admonitions “to give
comfort and succor to these, my former subjects, wherever their lot
may fall among you,” they made ready their merchantmen and many of
their Accadian allies and kindred by intermarriage secretly prepared to
embark with them, freely furnishing their ships and supplies.

Stratagem or artifice was employed to account for their departure
in the opposite direction from that of Palestine. They expressed a
reluctance to leave a country where they had enjoyed many privileges,
and avowed their intentions of going to the Java Islands on a trading
expedition, thence, with their families and their stuff, they would
sail northward by way of the Red Sea, and build a city on its shores
to the northeastward where their seafaring men could carry on their
commerce both on the great Southern Sea and on the Mediterranean. The
Accadians obtained a commission from Cyrus to accompany the expedition
on their own behalf, and when all was ready their fleet of merchantmen,
which in those days were also warships, for merchantmen on the high
seas were little more or less than privateers, with some of their
ships built with a sharp and powerful brass-shod prow to be used as a
battering ram, also others built for running alongside of an enemy and
boarding her--set sail.

Dropping down the Euphrates to the Persian Gulf they skirted the coasts
of India, doubled the Malay Peninsula, and skirting the coast of China
they reached a latitude about twenty degrees north, which their former
voyages had taught them was the point at which they struck out straight
to the eastward on the Great Sea, guided in their course by Tyrean
and Jewish seamen, skilled in knowledge of the stars, and familiar
with the various constellations of the heavens, the wisest astronomer,
necessity, having been their teacher.

The Tyrean seamen, who were descended from those whom Hiram had so
generously tendered Solomon for his voyage to Ophir were also learned
in the use of the “magician’s hand,” which is believed by scholars
to have been a rude form of the mariner’s compass, and could compute
rudely the problems of latitude and longitude which enabled them with
tolerable accuracy to reach the point for which they had started
out, the land of Ophir, which was no other than the southwestern
coast of North America, to which the port of entrance was the Gulf of
California, thus proving the almost universal fact that men who are
seeking a country turn their eyes east or west, and follow closely
their own native lines of latitude, instead of crossing them. Palestine
has elsewhere no such exact counterpart of climate and products as
California and Mexico. The list of fruits and cereals that grow in
one is almost an exhaustive treatise on those of the other, and it is
natural that these sailors should mark the similarity and bring back to
their people glowing accounts of the fertility of soil, salubrity of
climate, and fabulous mineral wealth of Ophir.

Their perilous voyage was accomplished without the loss of a single
vessel which, though small and able to accommodate only four score
souls each, were of exceedingly sturdy build and buffeted the waves
of the Pacific heroically and triumphantly, the fleet consisting of a
hundred of these little vessels.

Here the narrator diverges to inform us that this small number was the
flower of the ten tribes, they having been winnowed by Nebuchadnezzar
who carried away only the most comely of their maidens, and the wisest
of their men, and their families. What Nebuchadnezzar had effected by
arbitrary power was repeated in their embarkation to Ophir, many of
those who were “faint hearted” remaining at Babylon or joining the
tribes of Judah and Benjamin to return with them to Jerusalem; so that
the colony was made up of the stout-hearted young men and their wives
and little ones, and the most learned and ambitious of their Accadian
allies. Continuing, the scribe relates how they entered the “haven of
Ophir” (the Gulf of California) with songs of praise to Jehovah for
his mercies in delivering them from the angry waves, and with joyful
hearts went forward to possess this new Canaan, “sailing up the River
of Ophir.”

Landing upon the shores of the gulf they found a country so similar in
climate and products to their own, that they were charmed and delighted
with the prospect, and set up their temporary dwellings, tents, covered
with the skins of their domestic animals, and prepared to feast their
flocks and herds upon the unlimited extent of verdure all around them,
and rejoiced in the shadow of cedars as stately and comely as those of
the Lebanon of their native land.

Wild grapes hung in dense profusion from the vine-covered trees, and
coffee trees bloomed luxuriantly, and wild oranges and lemons testified
that they had touched upon no desert coast. The climate was such a
salubrious one that they found no urgent reason for more substantial
dwellings and, added to the pleasure of liberty, they enjoyed the happy
freedom of a pure pastoral life.

In solemn conference it was unanimously agreed that henceforth the God
of Israel alone should be their ruler, each tribe forming a separate
republic connected by the invisible rule of Jehovah--a pure theocracy,
which all the tribes entered into a solemn covenant to support, and
judges were appointed from each tribe to act as lawyers, priests were
ordained to administer their holy religion, and a temporary place of
worship or tabernacle was set up.

These weighty matters being decided and settled thus satisfactorily,
“a company of ten men from each tribe, who were valiant and skilled in
the finding of paths in the wilderness, and learned in all the symbols
and images on parchment by which King Suleiman had perpetuated the
knowledge of the mines of Ophir, were appointed to journey to Ophir
which was in the mountains of Ophir northward and eastward, and bring
back treasures of gold, that they might begin to build a temple for
the worship of Jehovah. Another company of ten men from each of the
ten tribes was sent forth to the southward to spy out the country and
choose a place where they might establish Israel once more. But the
remainder of the people, with the women and children, remained in camp
till all the men of the two companies should return.

“So the companies that were sent out into Ophir journeyed by water
toward Ophir, partly sailing and partly rowing, till they came into
the ‘great whirlpool and cataracts in the river that cometh down from
Ophir,’ and there they took every man a store of provisions and his
tools to work withal and journeyed on foot to the westward of the river
that floweth from Ophir, for its waters were too strong for them, and
came at last to the entrance of the caves of Ophir, according to the
symbols on parchment, delivered unto the fathers by the servants of
King Solomon, and the testimony of some of our company who had sailed
from Babylon in the fleet of Nebuchadnezzar. And behold we found
the secret caverns of King Solomon as they were in the days of King
Solomon, for the most secret caves and the richest gold of Ophir were
hidden to King Nebuchadnezzar and his servants so that they brought
back a report that the gold of Ophir was exhausted; for Solomon had
guarded the most secret places with cunning doors, and divers passages
too hard for the servants of Babylon. And we found the holy temple of
King Solomon that he had hewn in the rock that his servants who dwelt
here to dig the gold of Ophir might worship the God of their fathers,
and the treasures of King Solomon in the secret chamber of the temple
were as in the days of King Solomon, and behold the servants of King
Solomon were left to themselves when Solomon died, and behold their
bodies we found in the tombs of the temple, for they perished while
they waited for succor which came not, and for the ships of Solomon
which returned not again, for the wise King of Israel was no more.

“And we opened the chamber of pure gold in the mountain and digged
plentiful treasure therefrom; and we took of the treasures therefrom,
and we took of the treasure that we had digged, and every man bearing
of the gold according to his strength, we prepared to return to our
tribes. But I, Elib the scribe, who have written all these things
concerning the voyage of Israel and the landing of Israel in the land
of Ophir--a pleasant land of grass and pure water and of bountiful
fruits and tall cedars of Lebanon--am commanded by the judges appointed
from among the ten tribes to make all this writing and to place it
in the secret chamber of the treasures of King Solomon, even in the
chamber which opened from the Holy of Holies, and to seal it privately
with cement that it may abide secretly in the shelf of the rock forever.

“And now I, Elib the scribe, am prepared to fulfill all these things
faithfully and truly as I am commanded, and will now, by the blessing
of Jehovah and the grace of our judges, establish these writings
together with the symbols of the mines of Ophir in the shelf of the
rock, and do secretly seal it with cement so that none of our company
are privy to its hiding or know aught of the secret shelf of the rock
for so I am commanded to do.”

This was the substance of the writing on the parchment. A very lame
and broken version of which I reproduced in Abner’s ears in the Garden
of Ophir as we lolled in the shade of the semi-tropical foliage
overshadowing us, and shielding us from the heat which was almost
unendurable at high noon, and for a brief time afterward. Not a breath
of air stirred in the high-walled area, and but for the great height
of the walls which effectually broke the sun’s rays during the greater
part of the day, the heat would have been greater than flesh and blood
could endure.

But these former inhabitants had, as also had we, a convenient refuge
from the heat in the cool recesses of the rocks, which were singularly
free from dampness, the arid climate of that region making itself felt
even in the bowels of the mountains, and in all our researches we had
found no sign of mold or decay in any of the remains of fabrics in the
temple or in the records in the niche in the wall of the “treasure
chamber of the temple.”

Within the larger parchment whose contents we have just described,
was a smaller one which we knew on sight must be the “symbols of the
mines of Ophir,” referred to by Elib the scribe in the records of their
people.

It was a system of picture writing or hieroglyphics, together with
a complete diagram or ground plan of all the vaults, passages,
galleries, and stairways that we have already described, of which the
hieroglyphics seemed to be further descriptive, and with the help of
the information already gained from the record we had no trouble to
recognize in it a complete ideographic guide to the various apartments
of the mine itself, and also a rough draft of the country along the
Mexican and Californian coast with the configuration of the gulf and a
diagram of the Colorado and its branches between the mine and the gulf,
and minute information to the initiated to enable them to find the
outer entrance to the mine, which was the same one we had discovered
along the cavernous bed of the subterranean river. Even the method
of transporting the gold to the coast was typified as being by rafts
or rude boats down the current of the stream we had followed from
its underground source to the outer surface which was represented as
a placid stream emptying into the Colorado at the foot of the Grand
Canyon, near the “great whirlpool,” utilizing all its tremendous fall
and recompensing itself for its placid current by leaping down a sheer
precipice hundreds of feet into the Colorado.

Here the raft voyage ended and a portage of a few furlongs brought
them to their ships at anchor in the Colorado, whence they sailed with
the current to the ocean. The plan of the mine showed us, however,
that our exploring labors were far from being ended, for in addition
to the apartments we had discovered, the plan showed that many more,
especially the ledge, or the miner’s drifts or rooms where their gold
was found, remained to be explored. It also proved the sagacity of
Abner’s judgment in declaring that another passage than that of the
spiral stairway to the underground river existed. It was shown that a
straight ascending gallery, beginning near the open-air passage, led
along the river, terminating in a branched passage, one fork of which
led to the mines and one to a vault in the rear of the treasure vault,
and which was marked “The Chamber of Records;” thence it was shown to
connect with the treasure chamber itself.

It is needless to say that we were fired anew with a greater zeal
than ever for exploring “The Chamber of Records,” but we had been
stretching every nerve and straining every faculty to circumvent the
skill and cunning of hands and brains that had bestowed their records
so safely and we were obliged to own that we must rest and refresh
ourselves until the morrow before entering upon any new discoveries, or
unraveling any new mysteries.




CHAPTER XI.

BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW.


We are astir with the dawning of day on the morrow, eager as children
in some of childhood’s butterfly pursuits, and soon we swing back
another hewn-rock-pivoted door and are in a chamber similar in detail
to the others explored, but the walls are bare of any trace of ornament
and are even unfurnished in some places; but in the center of the room
is a square column of red granite, as we suppose, supporting the roof,
but there is not a sign of any openings in the wall, or any receptacle
for the records we expected to find here. We are dumbfounded for a
little, and know not where to begin to unearth the secrets that plainly
enough repose here.

While we are at a standstill and are racking our brains to find a
solution of the new enigma we mechanically strike our picks into
the granite column--Eureka! the granite column is a column of brick
tablets, and instead of supporting the roof (they are built in very
nicely to suggest that idea) they slip from their places in layers
easily. What the records are, or in what form we shall find them,
are sealed books to us, but within this column undoubtedly lies the
secret. It is built of a single tier of bricks which are a cubit long,
half a cubit wide, and half the thickness of a common brick, but are
exceedingly hard, giving forth a metallic ring when struck together.
Our care was bestowed upon removing the brick, one by one in the hope
of finding a hollow in the column containing the records, but no such
hollow appeared, and when we had displaced the brick nearly to the
floor of the vault we noticed that the underside was covered with
peculiar looking characters and we began to realize that the bricks
themselves were the tablets upon which the records were impressed while
they were “green.” The wedge was a prominent character in the writing
and suggested that this set of inscriptions belonged to the class of
writings on rocks and tablets known as cuneiform, and a line dividing
the brick into two squares separated this picture writing from an
explanatory version of its contents in Hebrew.

What at first we had mistaken for a mere filigree style of ornament,
or sort of trade mark, was in reality the characters that went to make
up the regularly numbered tablets of a connected and complete though
brief history of the tribe from the time of leaving Babylon down to
the beginning of the seventh century of the Christian era, and told
a story of the life-struggles of a nation too intensely interesting
to be disposed of in a word, and therefore too long to be admitted to
this chapter. We promise that we will, in due time, lay bare the secret
of past centuries and show a glimpse of the loves and jealousies, the
ambitions and strifes of this most notable of all the earthly tribes.
Meanwhile we must finish our work as mapped out for us by the chart of
Solomon’s “man of cunning devices, who could search out all secrets and
all manner of cunning work.”

All that remained for us to explore, according to the diagram, that was
of any vital interest to us and to the world, was the mine itself from
which all this treasure had been taken.

Accordingly we sought out the door of communication from this vault to
the branch of the main corridor in the whole system leading directly
to the ledge of gold quartz or of whichever of the multifarious forms
of rock gold is found in. This door was of the same old pivot pattern,
and we quickly gained the passage which led us into the depths of the
mountain for about fifty yards and, like some of the others, seemed
to terminate in nothing but solid granite walls. Working from the
standpoint of our previous experience we could not detect the evidence
of a door with our usual facility. The artful son of the Woman of Tyre
had varied his plans and exerted his best skill to outwit any intruder
who might by accident grope his way thus far in this granite labyrinth
and baffle all attempts to vandalize the mine of its rich treasure. How
well he had succeeded the tablets and parchment bore witness, and but
for their aid and directions we might have labored for years without
penetrating to the sacred precincts of Solomon’s Ophir.

Our firm convictions that a door existed here alone prevented our
giving up in utter despair; but, putting the evidence of reason against
that of sight, we labored over the probable location of the door, inch
by inch, but no opening to admit a needle point could we find.

Just overhead in the roof of the passage was a handsome fresco ornament
cut into the rock, with a gorgeous brass pendent as a center. Easily
within reach my hand wandered aimlessly to the bauble and grasped it
as I called Abner’s attention to the tarnished and tawdry gimcrack.
Unconsciously I rested my weight upon it as we turned away from it
again to renew the perplexing search, when I felt it yield to the
pressure of my weight, and as it descended, the end wall before our
eyes rose slowly in grooved bearings till its lower edge was on a level
with the roof, and the underground river was once more before us,
but several feet below our level. A flight of steps led down to the
brink, and another led up to the passage again on the farther side.
As we stepped down to the water’s edge we began to speculate as to how
we should cross the Styx, when, to our amazement, the water began to
recede from our feet, disclosing another step rounded and worn by the
action of the current, and then another, till, as we gazed in utter
amazement the stream ran dry before our eyes.

What witchery was here at work to defeat our plans, what spirit of evil
was haunting our footsteps and warning us to desist from our unholy
pursuit of secrets consecrated by the dust of so many centuries? I own
that a superstitious chill came over me for a moment, a feeling that
vengeful spirits were following us in our sacrilegious attempts to
force the confidence of the beings who had lived and died here, who had
worshiped in these chilly grottoes and labored day and night that their
secrets should die with them.

I read the expression of similar thoughts in my companion’s sober face
for a moment, but his somewhat irreverent nature soon rallied from its
feeling of awe, inspired by thoughts of the supernatural inhabitants
of the place, and waving his torch he led the way down the slippery
staircase across the slimy channel, and ascending the opposite side we
found ourselves in a winding gallery, ascending rapidly toward a point
directly above the grooved doorway. A hundred feet we toiled upward
and came to the channel of the stream once more, where it had poured
headlong down a well-like passage in the rock to the level of the
grooved doorway. Following our passage which was a few feet higher than
the channel, and parallel to it, we soon came out upon the banks of
the Colorado itself. And here was a partial solution of this problem.
The underground stream had its source in the Colorado by artificial
means. Here was a neat channel hewn in the rock far enough below the
level of the river to divert a small stream from it, whence it was
led along for some distance on an easy grade to prevent the action
of the current from wearing away the channel too rapidly; and their
skill in accomplishing this end was further shown by the fact that the
channel was exactly at right angles to the river, a correct principle
recognized in modern hydrostatic engineering.

The water stood in the channel to its accustomed depth, as proven by
the marks of the current on the sides everywhere; but there was no
current in the stream that had so long poured its tireless waters
through the dark passage opened for it by man; it was stagnant for
the first time in decades of centuries. No doubt we would find on our
return to the lower level that the same mechanism which opened our
grooved door closed a floodgate at the bottom of the well. Anxious
to explore this new mystery we retraced our steps to the slippery
stairway, and traversing the channel with uncertain steps in the ooze
and slime for a few yards, we found what was beyond a doubt the bottom
of the shaft or well, with another grooved door or floodgate from
beneath which a little stream of water trickled down. Considering the
great lapse of time since it was fitted for its present purpose, it was
a marvel of joining wrought by hands that did not spare for weariness
or rest content with less than perfection of workmanship.

Not a sign of any mechanism connecting these two doorways was visible
if, indeed, any such contrivance existed, except that the same sort of
brass globe as the center piece of another fresco overhung the channel
close to the door.

Abner proposed that he should go back to the inner side of the other
doorway ready to reopen it should it close and that I should then
attempt to reopen the floodgate standing on a shelf or landing above
the water mark. A little shaky at the thought of what might happen
should we become separated in those cells, I hesitated, but finally
agreed, stipulating that in case we failed to reopen the first door
after it should close, we should use our picks to force an entrance
through it. At his signal I pulled lustily at the knob above me and
with a deafening roar the waters burst out at my feet, again following
their old channel toward the outlet. Connected with the brass knob
was a ponderous brass chain which was the only visible part of the
contrivance by which these doors acted as a counterpoise to each other.
For a few moments I watched the foaming current as it swirled from the
confining walls of the perpendicular passage, and then as suddenly as
it broke forth its waters were dried again, the roaring of the awful
cataract was hushed and Abner’s torch appeared in the grooved doorway.

Consulting our diagrams again we found that the passage indicated as
the way to the mine was in the direction of the floodgate, and as
nothing appeared to indicate that there were two parallel passages,
the most natural conclusion was that the channel itself was the secret
avenue of access to the treasures in the ledges of the rock, and the
stream’s real use was to terrify invaders from attempting its swift
current, or braving its frightful roaring cataract.

Pursuing this theory, we picked our steps on the slimy bottom of the
whirling stream to the floodgate at the bottom of the well and prepared
our minds once more to cope with determined resistance in the shape
of intelligent inertia, and tireless gravitation. The only sign of an
opening anywhere within sight was a low arched passage underneath the
well and floodgate into which we crept, obliged to stoop almost double
in a passage that was barely three feet in height, and from whose
sides and roof dripped incessant showers of murky water that chilled
us to the bone as we made our way tortuously along the circumscribed
passage, till, after traversing perhaps fifty yards in that manner, we
ascended three or four steps, and holding our torches aloft for better
illumination as our vision penetrated the gloom, we had no hesitancy in
deciding that at last we had unraveled the tangled thread of mystery
overhanging the history and fate of a long-lost people and stood in
the midst of the Gold of Ophir with its crowding associations in the
lives of all people in the Christian world. Here was wealth to sate
the greed of a Crœsus and add brilliancy to the regal glory of a King
Solomon. There was no longer any cause for doubt that we had got at the
heart and center of the grand purpose behind all the untiring industry
that had honeycombed the mountain walls of the Colorado, and elaborated
intricate passages, and invented ingenious barriers against discovery,
that looked from the outer view like the labors of a demented hermit
who worked for mere pastime, or of hopeless slaves who toiled at the
bidding of some tyrant master.

But as we now viewed the whole system explored by patient research and
explained by the records unearthed, who could fail at least to admire
the energy and skill of a people who had planned and executed all this
subterranean network to secure at their will, and in their absence the
riches that had added no small share of glory to the luster of King
Solomon’s name?

Self glory doubtless came to be the actuating motive of his latter
life, but the prestige of his wisdom could not be easily eradicated
from the earth and the fame of his marvelous abilities could not,
during his reign, nor, indeed, throughout all time, be forgotten, even
though he fell into voluptuous habits, and vainglorious pursuits. The
world forgives his human lapses and remembers only the transcendent
wisdom that marked all his official acts while in the youthtime of
his power, and takes all these acts to make up the man, ascribing the
latter weaknesses to the time of dotage and as evidence merely that he
lacked that much of being Solomon, a name that will always be accepted
for, and interchangeable with, that of wisdom.

No voice has been heard and no record has been found to portray the
circumstances attending the discovery of this mine of inexhaustible
wealth in a remote corner of a remote continent, but having been
discovered, one ceases to wonder that its ledges were diligently worked
and zealously guarded from pilfering natives, or plundering foes among
the great commercial nations of that day who went down into the sea in
ships; for here was not merely a ledge of gold-bearing quartz, but
in many places it was a ledge of pure gold a foot in width running up
and down the face wall of the mine and of such fabulous richness that,
notwithstanding all the millions of gold that had been taken from here
to adorn the Temple of Solomon, and maintain a corresponding degree of
splendor in every department of his kingdom, in spite of the fact that
for ages and ages, succeeding the coming of the ten tribes to these
shores, a similar state of grandeur in temples of worship, in palaces,
and works of art had drawn their supply of gold from this spot, only
a small area had been depleted of its treasure; and to-day as we
stood in the midst of the one room of the mine, its dimensions barely
reaching to the modest limit of a vault eighteen by one hundred feet,
the appetite for gold was cloyed by the sight of such masses of it, and
doubtless the same effect was produced in the Kingdom of Israel when
Solomon “made gold and silver as the stones.”

All around us were evidences of the abiding lust for gold that had
outlived all those who strove for it. The walls bore the marks of the
tools used by the miner in his eagerness to mine the golden metal,
and here in the soft clay of the floor was the print of a sandal as
distinct as though ages had not waxed and waned since that human foot
had indented its form there as an exquisite satire upon human ambition,
a fitting elegy to sum up the conclusion of the “whole matter” of
human existence.

We were past feeling any exhilaration at our vast discovery of mere
gold. We were oppressed by great object lessons presented to us more
forcibly than by standing in the burial chamber itself.

Our labors were ended; and picking off a few lumps of the precious
metal as souvenirs of our memorable adventures, we slowly turned away
from this, the richest storehouse of Nature’s treasure in existence,
and humbling ourselves to the demands of the low passageway, we
retraced our steps to the grooved doorway and through the treasure
vault, along the narrow street of the city of the dead, and through
the temple with its tarnished glory and faded draperies, out into the
sunlight of the luxuriant garden of the Colorado.




CHAPTER XII.

THE STORY OF THE TABLETS.


The designers and executors of the picture writing were of the
Accadians, as indicated by the names affixed to the tablets, as was
also Elib the scribe of the inhabitants of Elim, and so in a long line
of writers on the tablets could be discerned the Accadian origin of
the names. It was they who brought from their homes to the eastward
of the Tigris the knowledge of their system of hieroglyphics, half
ideographic, half phonetic, that helped to make Babylon the seat of
learning and power, and preserved for the world the story of their
development and glorious civilization.

The story was taken up where it was left off by Elib the scribe as
recorded on the parchment.

For many long years after the landing of the ten tribes upon the
Western continent, they led a simple pastoral life, growing rich in
flocks and herds and gradually drifting to the southward, but fitting
out yearly an expedition to Ophir for gold with which they purposed in
due time to build a temple that should rival Solomon’s. The beautiful
and fertile valley of Mexico allured them at last to permanent
settlement where they could, in their scriptural language, water the
ground with the foot, typifying the ease with which irrigation could
be practiced there, and a settled purpose grew upon them to make this
region the center of their dominion and the site of a temple of worship
for all their people.

I have since traveled over this interesting region, finding abundant
evidence to corroborate that of the tablets, and I have no doubt that
at Palenque in the State of Chiapas, Mexico, is the site of their
settlement, and of the first great temple on the Western continent
devoted to the worship of the living God.

I have also visited Palestine and gleaned all the information possible
from that source; and a glance at the Temple of Palenque suggests the
oriental style of architecture, and further investigation proves it
to have been an almost perfect imitation of Solomon’s temple, with
its various consecrated places of worship, its courts, cloisters, and
cells for the priests, with magnificent porches supported by pillars,
ornamented in stucco work.

The inner walls had been once elaborately decorated with inscriptions
cut in hieroglyphic characters in the rock, and there were ruins of
a great altar, with the figure of a wedge (a prominent figure on the
brick tablets as well as on the rock pictures, appearing to have been
an object of worship).

For twenty-three miles the country was strewn with the ruins of
splendid palaces, temples, and dwellings, richly decorated with
ornaments of gold and silver in the likeness of flowers so perfect in
form as to rival the natural ones represented; and the walls of many of
the finer structures were ornamented with the very net work or basket
work that Solomon used in the palace of cedar that he builded for
Pharaoh’s daughter. Subterranean chambers underlay the palaces, used
seemingly as sepulchers. In one was discovered large quantities of gold
and silver, supposed to be the public storehouse, used in the building
of the temple.

But to return to the narrative.

“In the land of Ophir to the southward toward the sea, was builded
the temple of the living God,” and here it was stated they dedicated
themselves together with this earthly temple to allegiance to Jehovah,
solemnly binding themselves to eschew forever all kings but Jehovah,
and reinstating all their tribal usages and laws as delivered to them
by Moses, to resume the tribal and patriarchal government, and to
acknowledge God alone as the Supreme Ruler of their temporal as well as
spiritual affairs.

Here in the city of Ophir, which they had founded, they began to build
the magnificent temple the ruins of which to-day possess far more
absorbing interest to the archæologist than those of Egypt or Babylon;
so that Americans need no longer cross oceans and continents to pursue
the study of the cuneiform picture writings. But the tribes were
weakened by desertion at Babylon, and three generations passed away
before the temple was completed in all its details of substantiality,
and decorated with vases and scrolls, and gold and silver flowers among
foliage of emeralds and other precious stones. Insects and bees poised
above the flowers so life-like in form and position that one could
almost imagine they heard the hum of their wings, and serpents seemed
actually to glide among the lilies in the pools of Solomon.

Luxury and learning grew apace in the young city of the West. Numbers
and knowledge increased in equal ratio, and public works of a permanent
and beneficial character were undertaken and carried to a successful
issue. Stone aqueducts were built to conduct the water from the
foothills, spanning valleys and gorges, and built so strongly as almost
to defy the ravages of time. Public baths and walks were built, parks
and groves and amphitheaters sprang up to satisfy the demand of the
Elimites among them for amusements, whose skill in architecture and
picture writing, as well as their capacity as scribes upon parchment,
gave them great and growing influence in the affairs of the tribes.

Generation succeeded generation, and centuries multiplied upon
centuries marking the progress of an active, aggressive, and
intellectual people toward the climax of human power. The Accadians
or Elimites were tenacious of their influence, tireless in their zeal
in all the pursuits of learning and advancement. The priesthood came
to be recruited largely from their ranks. The tribal judges were many
of them either of the Elimites or closely allied to them by marriage.
In letters and architecture they were the superiors of their adopted
people.

But in matters of religion the Israelites were their tutors, competent
to lead and instruct. The religion of the Elimite was the worship of
Belus or Baal closely allied to, if not identical with, the worship of
the sun, and while so far advanced in other lines of knowledge their
attainments in religion were so meager as to class them as a nation of
idolaters, with all the difference that is implied in the respective
terms, between them and the worshipers of a Supreme Ruler whose
followers did not limit his dwelling to a temple of human building, or
ascribe to him the malevolent as well as the beneficent attributes.
Their historians, as they succeeded each other, as they chronicled the
main events of their times, drew unconsciously a picture of great
vividness, showing how boundless for good was the influence of the
Elimites in all intellectual affairs, and how baleful their examples
and precepts in morals. So while the crafty priests and ambitious
judges outwardly conformed to the Jewish form of worship with great
apparent devoutness, they secretly despised the religion of Moses and
merely bided their time, cultivating meanwhile all the voluptuous
passions of highly civilized life, encouraging the finer arts and
sciences, bringing the decorative arts especially to such perfection as
set the city of Ophir on the pinnacle of glory among the nations of the
world, from which they had so completely isolated themselves.

Gradually the number of the judges was increased, the priesthood
swarmed with devotees to sacerdotal orders, and as the offices of
emolument and honor increased, a corresponding increase was made in the
number of scribes and doctors of the law. All these officers came to be
recruited almost entirely from the ranks of Elim, and natural tastes
and interests drew them together socially, so that they soon formed a
distinct and privileged class.

The wily priests gradually insinuated new ideas of the Supreme Being,
and the form of worship most pleasing to him, beginning by inspiring in
the minds of the Israelites a feeling of awe for the fiery orb of day,
until at length as their ideas began to be received they grew bolder,
and taught that the sun was the all-seeing eye of Divinity, taking note
of the actions of men by day, and delegating his power to the lesser
gods whose twinkling eyes watched over the world by night.

The lawyers and judges being in full sympathy with this doctrine,
construed the Mosaic law to suit it, and slowly but surely Israel was
growing to be a nation of worshipers at the shrine of Belus or Baal.
False religions and despotic power go hand in hand, and at the end of
the tenth century of national existence since the Babylonian captivity,
the ten tribes were not only worshipers of Baal with all the revolting
and licentious orgies that marked it as the vilest form of religion
in the known world, but the restless ambitions of the Accadian rulers
were already set upon making Israel an absolute monarchy. Religious
frenzy is a powerful factor in ruling the world. It can rock kingdoms
like toys and shake nations like aspens. But to overturn and destroy
it needs but to combine forces with another passion more subtle, more
powerful, and of more universal application than the wild frenzy of
creed.

And the name of that passion that sways the world like a leaf is Love.

Voluptuous and effeminate as the splendid city of Ophir had become,
cringing as the masses of Israel were to the more accomplished
Elimites, the latter might not brave the fierce opposition that existed
against monarchy without appealing to the baser passions of the people.
The plan by which they hoped to gain complete ascendency in creed and
government was to introduce the last sensual step into the rites of
their worship, and so make religion to pander to lust, and lust in turn
to bind men more closely to their worship of the sun.

The judges deliberately planned to make Jokim, a Jewish Accadian, King
of Israel, because in all essentials necessary to their purpose he was
an Elimite, and also because of his Jewish origin he had long wielded
practically unlimited influence over the Jews. Jokim, who was an
artful, ambitious, self-contained man, had looked forward for years to
such a consummation and had diligently courted the favor of all classes
of people in Israel, by a show of great interest in their humble
affairs, and great apparent sympathy for the traditions of the nation.
But he knew full well that the slightest hint of his aspirations would
be fatal to his power with the people, and he cast about him for means
to bring about, in his time and for his benefit, the union of two human
passions that would overrule all opposition, and place him upon the
throne with power as absolute as that of Solomon, and as he dreamed,
with circumstances of glory that might even transcend that of the Wise
Man.

The plan, which was carefully discussed among the patrician classes,
was to introduce into their worship the office of a feminine deity, the
wife of the sun whom they called Metyta, or the Goddess of Generation.
The patricians boldly determined to work upon the credulity and
superstitions of the people through the agency of a beautiful woman
whom they resolved to clothe in the eyes of the people, with all the
majesty and power of deity, to represent her as the goddess of the
moon descended directly from that silvery orb, to teach truth to the
children of men.

With their knowledge of astronomy and the art of magic it was an easy
task for the blind leaders to lead the blind.

Jokim was not at a loss for a fit person to carry out his plans of
perfidy. Corinthia was a young woman of Ophir whose dazzling beauty of
form and feature has given her a fame upon the Western continent as
great as ever was enjoyed by the innocent cause of the Trojan war, or
by the Egyptian queen whose allurements caused Mark Antony to forget
all his ambitious plans and sacrifice all his glorious career to the
consuming passion which lured him to her feet.

As the mistress of Jokim, Corinthia’s career had been public enough
to excite the greatest admiration of the lordly class, shameless
enough to school her for acting such a part as was proposed for her,
and gorgeous enough in her natural beauty, decked out in the costliest
wardrobes that skill and wealth could provide, to completely blind
the Israelites themselves to her unscrupulous character. Besides,
the cunning of their choice was shown in the fact that the Elimites
foreswore their national prejudice, that they might carry out their
infamous scheme, by choosing this same Corinthia, whose mother was well
known to have been a Jewess, and thus had a strong claim upon both
classes of people. In order to give prestige to her name, and insure
obedience to her mandates, the judges determined to induct her into
regal power by a series of supernatural events or miracles that should
fill the minds of the Jews with superstitious fear of her power and
overawe all opposition that might arise.

Accordingly it was given out by the priests that visions had been seen
by them at various times, and with increasing frequency admonishing
them that the time had come when it pleased heaven to give the people
of Israel a ruler who should bring light and joy to the face of the
earth, but whose departure from the moon where she had long dwelt as
the wife of the sun, should cause that placid orb to hide her face in
bitter anguish.

It was expressly revealed to the priests that on a certain day, she,
upon whom heaven decreed the queenly spirit should fall, should see
her name in flaming letters on the wall of the temple, and she was to
be crowned queen of Israel and the goddess of the moon by the most
impressive and solemn rites. It was found on consultation that all
the priests had received such instructions, there being but little
difference in their versions of the vision, except that one or two of
them understood themselves as being pointed out as spiritual advisers
and confidential agents to the queen.

The day set for the selection and coronation of a queen by high
heaven was not far distant, and great excitement prevailed, and great
speculation as to whom the scepter should be given to. All Israel
thronged the city of Ophir on the day appointed, which was also a
Sabbath day, and at the hour of worship the temple gates were choked
with an eager crowd that filled the outer court to suffocation and
overflowed far back upon the adjacent streets.

The solemn rites of the Jewish worship were observed with unusual
unction. An air of subdued piety marked the ministrations of the
priests, and a hush of expectancy was over all the throng as the
services drew to a close, and at last when they were finished an
oppressive, brooding silence fell upon all.

Suddenly it began to grow dark, though the afternoon was but half
spent. Expectation gave way to fear in the minds of the ignorant
multitude, and they cowered and trembled in abject terror at this, as
they supposed, direct intervention of Providence.

Deeper and more deeply fell the gloom until the terror-stricken faces
of the crowd were hardly discernible to each other, when a pious
ejaculation from a priest who stood near the altar gazing upward,
attracted universal attention to a pale glow upon the draperies
overhanging the altar, and, as they all gazed, it brightened and took
form until it resembled live coals of fire, forming with fearful
distinctness the word “Corinthia.”

The priests prostrated themselves before the altar, and gave fervent
thanks for the signal favors bestowed by a kind Providence in thus
signifying his will so plainly to his people, and then harangued the
people on their happy lot to be thus led by the hand in the green
pastures of divine love, and exhorted them to beware of disobeying the
heavenly vision, or of being unfaithful to the duties that it involved
upon them as subjects of the lovely, wise, and virtuous queen whom the
will of heaven proclaimed at once as the daughter of heaven, the wife
of the sun, and queen of Israel.

As timely as the entangling of Abram’s ram for a sacrifice, by
providential coincidence, Corinthia, in her loveliest attire but deeply
veiled, was discovered among the throng, and all the wild thrills of
awe and all the hush of expectancy in the crowd reacted in vociferous
clamors of “God save Queen Corinthia.” The fickle mind of the rabble
full of deep-seated prejudice against a monarchy was turned in a
moment, and now flowed at flood tide in the channel carefully prepared
for it as the mold for the molten metal and as plastic in the hands
of the artful sons of Elim as is sand in the hands of the artisan who
shapes the mold.

Corinthia was hastily led forward by a high priest, her veil removed,
that her beauty might have its due effect upon the assembly; there she
was made to kneel down by the altar, and a crown was placed upon her
head, fitting it as perfectly as though molded to her temples, and
glorifying her wondrous beauty till exclamations of admiration fell
from every lip.

The ten judges advanced to the altar, and laying their hands upon hers
invested her with the scepter of power over Israel, acknowledged their
joyful allegiance to her in the name of their respective tribes. The
high priests besieged heaven in her behalf that wisdom and moderation
might be hers, and in behalf of Israel, that they might see clearly
in this demonstration of the Divine will that His pleasure would
follow their dutiful allegiance to the young queen and His heaviest
displeasure be visited upon those who should dishonor or disobey him in
her person.

Then as mysteriously as the crown was evolved from nonentity came a
gorgeous gold-clothed chair of state in the semblance of a throne;
the ten judges ranged themselves beside it, and Jokim, as the most
venerable and influential of them all, bowing himself humbly before
her, conducted the paragon of maiden beauty and virtue, and the plain
choice of heaven to the throne, seated her upon it, and did himself the
honor of being the first to prostrate himself before the first Queen of
the Ten Tribes of Israel.

He was quickly followed by the other nine judges, who likewise paid
their respects to the queen. Jokim and the others, now bowing low, and
facing the throne, gradually withdrew from the immediate presence. The
priests invoked anew the blessings of Providence upon their nation,
the ceremonies were done and the assembled multitudes broke forth into
wild shouts of enthusiastic professions of eternal allegiance to Queen
Corinthia.




CHAPTER XIII.

THE TEMPLE OF THE SUN.


Their tricks of legerdemain, coupled with a thorough and accurate
knowledge of astronomy, of which they made as great a mystery to
the common people as a modern doctor of medicine does of the art of
healing, enabled the Elimites, by taking advantage of a solar eclipse,
and calling on the resources of a first-class juggler, to gain
complete control of the Jewish government, and opened a plain highway
to a complete revolution in the national religion as well as in the
political aspect of things.

Corinthia, accompanied by her paramour Jokim, who thus found himself
virtually a king, made a splendid progress through the land by chariot,
driving with her own hand as the feminine representative of the firm of
solar and lunar deities, and receiving the obeisance little short of
worship indeed of her subjects. Her first official act on her return to
Ophir was to issue a decree that tribute should be levied upon every
male citizen of Israel for the purpose of building a magnificent Temple
of the Sun where that glorious luminary and divine deputy might be
worshiped with due respect to his greatness. Nothing was now too hard
for the subjects of the bewitching queen to believe when proclaimed
from her lips; and gold and silver flowed into the public treasury in
abundance. New and larger expeditions than ever before were fitted out
to the mines of Ophir for material with which to make the projected
temple shine with the splendor of the sun himself. Workmen in vast
armies began actively to prepare brick, stone and mortar, cedar and
spruce, from the mountains, and skilled artisans fashioned costly and
beautiful vases, enriched with scroll work of gold, and others modeled
flowers and vines of silver and gold till the nation presented the
appearance of a hive of bees intensely earnest in the work of laying up
winter stores.

Slowly the dream of beauty evolved from the chaos of brick and stone,
lime and mortar, cement and stucco. The mason’s trowel and the
engraver’s chisel wrought unceasingly to make the airy castle that
existed as a mental picture only become a substantial fact and the
measure of its growth was the measure of the growth of the young queen
into the affections of her people. They went wild over her wit and
beauty, forgot her moral lapses, and unconsciously fell into a state of
feeling toward her that was closely allied to the reverence we have for
deity.

The enthusiasm among the deluded Jews was a molten sea of precious
metals which the Accadian rulers directed into the mold of human
designs and crystallized it into the magnificent Temple of the Sun.
It was the record of spontaneous growth of national life, an era in
national progress, the insignia of civic pride, pardonable in that
its object was a worthy one, in the minds of the masses of the people
who were led insensibly away from the religion and traditions of
their fathers. As the religious fervor and physical energy of the
nation culminated in this stupendous aggregation of wall and arch,
roof and dome, as it was the expression of their highest ideal in
their artists’, their architects’, and the engravers’ arts, so its
completion was to make possible the last and highest step in the
carefully matured plans of Jokim and his associates. It is not to be
supposed that the motives of the judges in exalting Corinthia to the
rulership of Israel were purely unselfish ones. They knew full well
that the beauty and sex of Corinthia could overcome prejudices and
difficulties that would for them be insurmountable, that would require
decades, perhaps generations, of patient tutoring to smooth away.
Power and position were of use to them only while they lived, and to
die with the consciousness that their efforts had prepared the way for
their posterity to reap glory and honor was but a poor incentive, for,
according to their teachings, as of all other wise men of the world,
was not human power a weariness to the flesh, and all human greatness
vanity and vexation of spirit, and why should they wish to make so
unsubstantial a bequest to their children?

Besides, troublesome questions as to a choice between many aspirants
might arise to perplex and distract their offspring, and it was so
plainly their duty to ward off trouble from their household that the
ten wise judges, consulting with the almost equally wise, learned
professions of the scribes or doctors of the law, and the priesthood,
thought that at the dedication of the temple they should signalize that
event, and by coupling it with that of instituting in full the system
of worship taught them by their fathers in the land of Elim, namely the
worship of the sun with all its accompanying rites; and as the wife of
this solar deity was embodied in the person of Corinthia, they should
have a deified representation of the sun himself, who should be supreme
ruler as well as standing at the head of the priesthood.

Queen Corinthia, who doubtless understood this as the final step in the
movement, and mindful of the fact that her power came from this source,
made no objection, especially as every eye turned upon Jokim as the
most suitable person to sacrifice his personal feelings for the common
good.

So as the temple grew to perfection of symmetry, a day was proclaimed
when it would be fittingly dedicated to the worship of Jehovah. The
dedication was to be preceded by seven days of feasting and sport;
races were to be run by footmen, trials of skill at archery were to
take place, and on the seventh day a great chariot race was to occur
as the culmination of a series of races during each day preceding.
The winners of the six days’ trial should on the seventh have the
honor of contending with the beautiful queen herself, who would drive
the favorite royal equipage, a team of four milk-white horses of
such docility, and so perfectly trained that they were the wonder
and admiration of the City of Ophir. Corinthia herself was a daring,
successful horsewoman, and had trained them largely with her own
hand, and had achieved her first notoriety in the city by her superb
horsemanship, driving at a furious rate through the crowded streets
where collisions seemed impossible to avoid, when, at a word from her,
the intelligent creatures would stop with astonishing suddenness,
standing perfectly still until the crowd had scattered away, when at
the given signal they would dash away again.

Three months’ notice was given to prepare for the festival, and the
races and chariot driving at once became the absorbing topic of the
day, and also the chief occupation of all who were fortunate enough to
be able to possess horses and a vehicle.

It happened that among all the judges, Jokim had only one formidable
rival, and he was formidable only because of the sinister methods he
was capable of employing to accomplish his purpose. The hooked nose
and eagle eye, somewhat hooded by heavy eyebrows, showed his Jewish
origin and fiery ambition. He had ever viewed the advancement of Jokim,
his superior in everything but the cunning of the jackal, with bitter
jealousy and hatred, for a very good and sufficient reason, namely,
that he had cherished plans of his own very similar to those of Jokim,
their very similarity aiding him to interpret the motives that governed
his opponent. His illicit affections had been lavished upon a young
Jewess who was as noted for beauty and accomplishments in the city of
license and luxury as Corinthia herself, until the latter had been
exalted suddenly to a station far above hers, when crowned queen of
Israel.

Her lover was as strictly an Elimite as Jokim, by birth and education,
but being blessed with a cast of features more resembling the Jewish
and possessed of the far-seeing wiles of a demagogue, he had upon
coming to Ophir from a remote part of the country always proclaimed
himself as an Accadian Jew, and changed his Accadian name to the Jewish
one of Levi.

His infatuation for the fair Jewess, Rebecca, was largely prompted by
motives of policy to enable him to curry favor with the preponderating
element in the kingdom.

When the question of crowning a high priestess of the sun had been
discussed by the judges, his manipulations had almost secured the
nomination of Rebecca, instead of Corinthia, and on failing to do
so, had nearly caused an insurrection among some of the Jews, when
Corinthia, the Elimite, was enthroned.

If the hatred of Levi toward Jokim was cordial, what rancorous jealousy
and intense hatred must have been engendered in the feminine heart
of Rebecca toward her rival, whom she regarded as an alien whose
unscrupulous mind had been so fortunate as to inhabit a beautiful body,
enabling her to exert powerful fascination over all men with whom she
came in contact, so that all she had to do was to look about her and
choose her victim according to his political influence.

Corinthia did not make any pretense of loving her enemy or trying to
heap coals of fire on her head, though she would have done so gladly if
she could have been certain that it would have caused baldness on that
head where the beautiful shining tresses of Rebecca reposed, or have
dimmed the sparkle of the Jewish maiden’s eye.

The most potent cause of jealousy between men is political rivalry. The
hatred of one woman toward another is a feminine instinct. But when
women are found to add the political motives to their natural tendency
to hate each other, we have a combination that nothing can withstand.

While Rebecca could have encircled the white neck of Corinthia with her
lily fingers with an energy that would have wrenched bone and sinew
asunder, Corinthia considered that she had already broken the neck of
Rebecca, politically speaking, by her coronation; but she felt none of
the pity that a generous victor feels for the vanquished, but only wild
demoniacal exultation over her, and she failed not to remind her enemy
of the fact on all occasions by a disdainful smile and a toss of her
head, which would send her fallen foe off in a frenzy of baffled rage
that boded no good for Corinthia or her kingdom should opportunity ever
cross hands with her.

Among the Elimites it had come to be too much as it was in the
effeminate latter days of the Grecian and Roman glory; the wives and
mothers were the instruments of toil and drudgery, and the brilliant,
beautiful, and accomplished mistresses, those exquisitely-whited
sepulchers, were the companions of the lordly rulers and citizens of
wealth. Theirs was the companionship with which they enjoyed the public
walks and places of amusements. It was their gayety and sprightliness
that charmed their leisure hours, and for them they bought costly
chariots and high-bred horses. With their own hands they taught their
temptresses to manage the mettled horses, and lavished their praises
and flatteries upon the sodden mass of corruption, and laughed gayly at
sallies of wit from the lips of her whose glory was her shame, of her
whose footsteps take hold on hell, as the people of Israel were shortly
to learn to their cost.

As Rebecca and Queen Corinthia had been instinctively rivals in social
and political affairs, so feats of horsemanship were no exception
to the rule. Rebecca’s lover, Levi, though not a willing charioteer
himself, was driving a desperate race in which the prize was a kingdom
and the forfeit chagrin bitter as death itself. Therefore, he was in
no position to heed lightly Rebecca’s sly hints that Jokim’s mistress
drove a splendid chariot, and showy team, and was likely to outshine
the daughters of Israel and steal the affections of the people.
Ruefully the niggardly Levi had set about finding a team as snowy,
and a chariot as showy as that of his rival, and had succeeded so
well that his identity had come near being swallowed in that of his
hated rival, for the chariot of Jokim was a familiar sight on the
streets of Ophir, and distinguishable at a glance from any other.
But Levi’s purchase was destined in the end to change all this, for
they so closely resembled Jokim’s horses that none but the closest
observation could distinguish one from the other, and the presence of
both vehicles in plain sight upon the street at once was necessary to
convince spectators that there were two instead of one, and even then
some of the ignorant and superstitious ones among them half-believed
the newcomer to be a double of the other.

All this occurred some time prior to the coronation, when the rivals
were on equal social footing, and it was a hotly-contested question
among the adherents of the two beauties as to which of them was the
better horsewoman.

Rebecca determined to contest the championship with all comers, and
secretly she had almost begun to feel the thrill of triumph and hear
the shouts of the populace that were to emphasize her success. Isidor
was her trusted keeper and assistant as trainer of the horses for the
momentous race; a burly Jew with neither the fear of man nor God before
his eyes, subtle as the serpent of Eden, devoted to his employer;
nothing of scruple in his nature stood in the way of his serving her
to the utmost, and he added to this cast of character a wonderful
knowledge of, and dominion over, the dumb creatures.

Long and earnest consultations between Rebecca and Isidor took place
after the announcement of the festivities of the temple dedication. The
first fruit of these consultations was that Abram, a brother of Isidor,
who was at a distance from the city, was sent for. He had in common
with Isidor the gift of mastery over the horse kingdom, and had made
even better use of his gift for his own advantage, and was reported
a very wizard in his power to handle and subdue vicious animals, and
develop the intelligence of tractable ones.

A day or two after he was sent for, Abram met accidentally (?) on the
street Jokim, whose agent he had been a year before in the selection
and training of Corinthia’s famous team.

“Ah! thou art the man who was in my thoughts at this moment, Abram the
wizard. I know that no other man in all Ophir can match thee in skill
with chariot horses, and I am in need of thee just now. Where hast thou
been all these months past? Hast thou not then heard of the famous race
to be run on the seventh month in which our gracious queen will drive
the horses that thou didst train so well?”

Abram disclaimed all knowledge of city events, having been on the
plains, he said, helping to stay a dangerous distemper among the horses
of the Israelites to the northward, and having but just come to Ophir
for remedies with which he must hasten back to the plains.

“Say not so, Abram,” said Jokim, “I have urgent need of thee for some
weeks, even to the time of our glorious festival of dedication. You
must tarry with us and breathe your witcheries anew into the ears of
our queen’s snowy beauties; our queen must win the race, and I have no
fear with your faithful services to aid us.”

“It may not be, Father Jokim,” said Abram, “for mine honor I may not
tarry. My word, which is ever my bond, has been given that not later
than the hour of sunset, next day but one hence, I would return with
more of the great remedy for the suffering animals.”

“Then will I relieve thy faithful mind of the responsibility of failing
to keep thy word, for the queen has but just now sent me forth to put
on foot inquiry concerning the whereabouts of the wizard horseman,
Abram of Ophir, and commanded that a message should be sent with haste
requiring his immediate presence before her.”

“Then is there none in all our new land of Canaan that will obey more
joyfully than her humble servant Abram,” said that exceedingly suave
equine healer; and forthwith he called one of his caravan and sent a
message to his imaginary anxious patrons in the distant foothills of
the condition of affairs, and then accompanied his employer-by-proxy to
the presence of the lovely young ruler of Israel herself.

There was that in Abram’s obeisance before Corinthia which suggested
that he blamed himself greatly for cumbering the ground, or encroaching
upon the air with his presence and sordid needs, but also an earnest
hint that if allowed the meanest corner in the barren desert he would
like to continue in the cumbering business a little longer, not so much
on his own account, but to show his gratitude to the woman to whom he
had once been almost a companion when he had the matchless matches in
training, and she was but a prospective queen.

But the adulatory posture of the horse-training Jew was of a kind of
sweets none too highly seasoned for the taste of the queen but lately
permitted to taste the draughts of power. She received him graciously,
and urged upon his attention the fact that the cares of her present
situation would render it impossible for her to give to her favorites
the personal care that she had formerly bestowed upon them; therefore
she had sent for him that as he knew her method of managing her horses,
and as they too had succeeded so wonderfully in the past, she should
be glad to submit her chances of success entirely to his keeping, and
there must be no peradventure as to the final results, as she could
not afford to be beaten in the presence of half the kingdom, and
hinted that she had one rival in particular who would doubtless be a
contestant in the race, and by whom she would not be beaten for half
of Ophir.

Abram assured the queen that the kingdom did not contain the equals
of her four docile animals, and that there was no possibility of
defeat; and grovelling from the royal presence he betook himself to
the royal stables, where he evened the account with nature by making
his animals feel that they cumbered the ground only by his indulgence,
and went to work upon his task with such vigor that though the chariot
horses of Corinthia were already celebrated throughout the kingdom
for wonderful intelligence and trained ability, he daily added some
new horsely virtue to their already long list. Daily, too, or rather
nightly, he might have been seen like a dark shadow of evil, flitting
through the night from the palace grounds toward the quarters of his
brother Isidor, with whom he held long and earnest consultations upon
affairs that presumably were purely those of a brotherly nature, and
not infrequently, when the ties of consanguinity had thus been cemented
afresh by these dutiful conferences, Levi himself, accompanied by the
beautiful black-eyed Rebecca, would honor them with a visit to inquire
how the work of training went forward, if all the conditions of diet
and quarters were perfect, and to ask with friendly concern how Abram’s
work was progressing.

To be sure there were some business transactions of a purely
confidential character between Levi, the wealthy and dignified
ex-ruler, the first party, and Isidor and his brother Abram, second
party, in which a bond was entered into by the first party, binding
himself by a forfeit of one-half of his vast estate to give unto Isidor
and Abram, upon the fulfillment of certain stipulations on their part,
two certain “palaces of cedar in the outer part of the city of Ophir,
as thou goest westward, and furthermore a forest of cedar and fir in
the mountains of Ophir, as thou goest across the land to the westward,
and the pastures that reach into the valley therefrom with their
springs of living water, and all the flocks and herds that feed upon
that pasture or lie beneath that forest of fir and cedar, to thee are
they covenanted and to thy seed after thee.”

To Isidor and Abram this simple piece of parchment which they hid
away very carefully seemed to speak a charmed language. Its various
combinations of monotonous characters seemed to exert an exhilarating
influence over their actions.

The days passed on, and the time of the great religious festival drew
near. The streets were daily gay with the procession of chariots
wending their way to and from the great racecourse just without the
city. Excitement grew intense in anticipation of excitement, and
speculation as to who should win was active, and feverish desire to
know what was to be the meed to the victorious charioteer, for it
was announced that upon the first day of the festival the terms and
conditions to be observed, and the reward that was to crown the efforts
of the victor would be made known. Meanwhile they were compelled to be
content with the assurance from the queen that a reward adequate to the
importance of the event and commensurate with the love of the queen
for her dutiful subjects should fall to each of the winners of the
series that was to end upon the sixth day; and that upon the seventh
day to show her interest in the welfare of her people, and her cordial
approval of their sports, the royal chariot driven by herself would
enter the lists against the victors for the grand prize.

Isidor and Abram were as ignorant as the street rabble as to what the
prize should be, and as indifferent as the little band of lepers who
dwelt upon the hillside overlooking the city in a few miserable hovels,
and were daily supplied from the queen’s table with food which was
placed in a convenient spot at a safe distance from the little city,
where hope was never known to enter, and whose inhabitants dragged out
their miserable lives in plain view of the pleasure and grandeur, the
vanities and excess of pleasures indulged in by the great city of the
living world, while they were practically viewing the pageant from the
grave.

The prize set before the two loving brothers was a more dazzling one
than the wildest dreams of the contestants could conjure up as possible
to be offered from the hand of Corinthia.

Meanwhile she was more than satisfied with the progress of Abram’s
milky pupils. She condescended graciously to ride with him in his
training course, which was attached to the palace grounds and walled in
by a massive brick wall high and wide enough to exclude all the danger
of interference or eavesdropping upon the secrets of Abram’s art, and
was highly delighted with the progress in speed and tractability; and
in her enthusiasm had one day increased the wages of Abram which were
very meager, to the magnificent extent of one-twentieth part to be
added to his daily pittance, and promised that should she win the race,
Abram might expect to drive a chariot of his own some day.

This was a very hazy and indefinite promise, but a very safe one which
the virtuous queen imagined would be amply sufficient to set on fire
his most ardent ambitions. Abram was griped with pangs of deepest
humility apparently, at the spontaneous overflowing generosity of his
sovereign, and none but those who might have caught the light of a
vicious gleam that flashed for a moment from beneath his eyebrows,
could imagine that he was not overjoyed by her kindness and pained anew
only on account of his cumbersome presence.




CHAPTER XIV.

THE CHARIOTS OF ISRAEL AND THE HORSEMEN THEREOF.


The rich yellow sunlight that shone so constantly and so beautifully
through the pure air of the Land of Ophir, as it shone nowhere else,
not even at Jerusalem, was rising upon the proud city of Ophir on what
her inhabitants deemed her proudest day.

The preliminary pleasures, festivals, and contests had been concluded.
The terms of the chariot races had been made known to the people, and
accepted by them as most just and liberal. All persons so desiring
might enter the first day’s contest.

The ten wise ex-judges should award the palm to the victor. From one
wing of the royal stable, containing stalls for fifty horses, the
winners might choose four horses to which the queen would add the gift
of the most splendid chariot that could be built by the workmen of
Ophir.

Loud applause greeted this announcement from the queen; but as the
prize for each succeeding day was named the populace was wild with
enthusiasm. The second day’s prize was to be a talent of pure silver,
and that of the third day ten talents of pure gold. Each day’s prize
was a fresh token of thoughtfulness in the queen, and a substantial
proof of her liberality to her people. One should receive a fine flock
of sheep from the royal pasture, another a generous herd of cattle,
and so the occasion was ushered in joyously and everything proceeded
hilariously.

Each successful contestant was debarred from the contest on the
following days, and together were to hold themselves in readiness for
the grand contest on the final day of the joyous games. To the six
contestants thus made eligible to enter this race the queen would add
the name of herself as the seventh, to strive for the championship of
all the land. Should the queen be so fortunate as to succeed, as she
had no wish to do further than to add zest to their sports, she should
as her most valued guerdon beg the continual love and obedience of her
people. Should one of the others be successful, as she had no doubt
they would, and as she most earnestly desired they should be, the prize
should be one befitting him who should prove himself so consummate
a horseman, and it would give their humble sovereign great pleasure
to give to the fortunate one the care of all the royal stables and
equipages, which her feminine highness knew would be a very desirable
prize in the eyes of the contestants, those who entered the race from
love of horses and horsemanship, while she knew equally well that it
would be a stab to the heart at Rebecca’s ambitions, whom she regarded
as the one most likely to succeed, should she herself fail. If this
last prize was offered from a desire to enrage and chagrin her rival
she would have thought she had succeeded could she have heard her
furious enemy rave when she was safe in the privacy of her apartments,
and Isidor alone was her listener.

“The she-dog of Elim!” she hissed through her teeth, “how long will our
people swallow her flatteries and be blind to her devilish intrigues?
See to it, Isidor, that not a hair of our horses but is in order for
the morrow’s trial. Dost thou trust thy brother Abram entirely, or will
he fail us at the critical moment?”

“Nay, beloved mistress, I lay my life on his faithfulness; and if thou
and Father Levi will come to the stables at midnight thou shalt see for
thyself that he is faithful as the moon in the heavens, and as prompt
to the moment.”

“It is well, then,” said Rebecca, somewhat assured, “for as sure as the
sun has set this night, neither he nor thee will ever see it rise again
if you play me false,” she added, thrusting a hand in her bosom, and
drawing from her girdle a gleaming little diamond-hilted dagger, which
she toyed with lovingly a moment, felt its keen edge, and then replaced
it without noticing the sullen look that came into the eyes of Isidor a
moment, as he assured her:

“Then I have no fear for my life, for it is devoted only to yours.”

He descended to his quarters muttering a curse on the heart of a woman
who should doubt a devotion so entire as his, but laughed hoarsely to
himself at the idea of failing when such a price was offered for his
successful efforts.

The only additional condition attached to this offer was that where,
as in the preliminary contests on the five days preceding the grand
ultimatum, each charioteer was permitted to guide his steeds with bit
and bridle, in this final test only the word of command to guide and
control should be used.

This rather exacting condition, sprung upon them, as some asserted, at
the eleventh hour, was, however, accepted cheerfully by the majority of
the contestants, for the example the queen had set in that direction
had been largely followed by all the owners of chariots in Ophir, and
the murmur of discontent came mostly from those who with their flocks
and herds were obliged to seek pasturage remote from the city, and had,
therefore, not been aware of the progress made by the dwellers of Ophir
in horsemanship.

Six ambitious and elated charioteers appeared upon the great public
racecourse built by order of Corinthia, and nominally at her expense,
though it was only a pittance returned to her people with one hand,
while the other was receiving fabulous amounts of “royal treasure,” the
results of toil, but not hers.

The morning was as bright and fresh as the fabled climate of their
home at Jerusalem could have been where away down the dim vista of the
centuries their ancestors had lived and worshiped, and followed out
their ambitious plans of life, as if the scattered dust of Jerusalem of
to-day, that had once been the high-beating heart of some Israelitish
king swelling with the pride of place and power, was more alive to
sensations of joy and sorrow, successes and failures, than the native
dust of Ophir in the midst of the sagebrush and cactus of Ophir’s
plains.

Corinthia’s chariot soon joined the others, moving to the sound of wild
applause from the greatest throng that had ever assembled in these new
days of Israel’s glory. Around the magnificent course that in modern
vernacular was full eight furlongs in circumference was a substantial
wall of sun-dried brick covered with cement, and within this, and
attached to it were seats that rose tier on tier, and extended entirely
around it, giving comfortable seating to the vast throng.

Abram had forgotten no trifle that would make Corinthia’s equipage
complete. At his suggestion the horses were covered on that eventful
morning with richly-embroidered cloths, wrought in gold and silver
threads into gay flowers and scrolls and studded with precious stones,
for which a fabulous price was paid first, as the thoughtful trainer
said, that the faithful but high-mettled creatures might be mercifully
protected from the stinging insects that tortured unprotected horses,
and second, that her devoted people might thus distinguish the royal
chariot, and mark its progress, which would be very gratifying to their
feeling of affectionate concern.

If Corinthia had been deemed beautiful before, her admirers were now
beside themselves with extravagant adulation of her supreme loveliness.
Her robe of the famous Tyrean purple hue was glittering with precious
stones, and her shapely head bore a beautiful golden crown surmounted
by a delicate silver crescent typifying and blending in her lovely
person of temporal and spiritual power, the crown in itself the
insignia of royalty to all the world, the gold an emblem of that yellow
luminary whom the Elimites worshiped as the God of the universe, and
the silver crescent being a badge of her relationship with the moon, of
which she was the goddess, and to whom the people were beginning to pay
homage as such.

As she guided her prancing chargers lightly with the rein to the point
where the ten judges sat to award the palm of victory to one of the
seven candidates for the great prize, the people rent the air with
their shouts, and many of the poor ignorant Jews, led by the designing
influence of the Elimites, fell on their knees and worshiped at the
shrine of beauty, mistaking the color for the substance, forgetting
that the spotless exterior of the sepulcher but rendered more repulsive
the rottenness of the dead men’s bones within.

Groveling servants ran before her chariot to clear the way, and Abram
sat on a low seat in the rear of the carriage ordering his animals here
and there in a tone that commanded their greatest efforts; he scowled
sullenly on the crowd as if he resented their fond gaze upon the queen,
so zealous a servant, so devoted a slave was he.

They drew up by the other chariots, and by chance, close to that of
Rebecca and her chief horseman, Isidor. Corinthia greeted her rival
with a sneer that might have dispelled the illusion from the minds
of the rabble, could they have caught its full import of hate and
defiance, and Rebecca’s strong gaze in return was proof enough that
she did not share the belief of her deluded countrymen in Corinthia’s
divinity, but might easily have been interpreted to disclose that she
thought her the arch Princess Diabolis.

Isidor busied himself in the care of his mistress’ team which were
champing their bits impatiently and moving uneasily a little closer
to Corinthia’s. While he stood by their heads on the side nearest to
Corinthia’s equipage one of the latter’s horses began pawing the earth
and raised a cloud of dust that almost suffocated him. He turned in a
rage and struck the beast with the palm of his hand, cursing it roundly
for an awkward brute, when Abram sprang toward him and drawing a dagger
as he ran and exclaiming: “Dog of a hell-born Jew, dost thou presume
to strike the queen’s horse? By the wisdom of Solomon, I’ll disembowel
thee here in the sight of all Ophir.”

The voice of Corinthia recalled Abram to his calmer self, and soothed
the plunging and rearing horse.

“A shame on thee, Abram, to so belittle thyself and companion before
Israel. Are there not many ways in which you and I can take sweet
vengeance on yonder stone image and her plebeian horseman? What ails my
beauteous little mare Vidella to-day? Never has she shown such fiery
spirit.”

Abram walked to the head of the excited mare, and patted her on the
neck and spoke to her very low, and stilled her as if by magic.

When the tumult caused by this incident had subsided the judges sent
a trumpeter around the course to warn the vast throng that they must
now look to their safety, as the race would begin. The chariots were
ranged side by side, the attendants busied themselves in removing rein
and bit and bridle, under the supervision of the judges, and after the
usual parley, and the usual impatience on the part of the rabble who
blackened all the great stretch of the raised pavilion, the word was
given to go.

Abram’s eyes watched like a hawk for the signal, and it was hardly
uttered before he sprang toward his mistress and uttered the cry used
by Corinthia to halt her team; but they sprang away like an arrow from
a bow, along with the others, but in a direction diagonal slightly, to
the general course; Corinthia sought to turn them to the left with her
wonted signal, but they veered sharply to the right instead, and neck
and neck with Rebecca’s flying steeds they soon cleared themselves of
the other competitors.

But Rebecca’s position was the inner one, and the advantage was on her
side, for the closer they crowded upon her the closer she hemmed the
inner limit of the course, and gradually drew past her opponent, who
was so disconcerted by her misfortunes on starting that she sat with
set teeth and closed lips in a kind of lethargy of horror to see her
opponent steadily leaving her behind, which fact she noted at the same
time was all that could save her from a collision with her enemy and a
frightful ending of all her dreams of triumph.

Rousing herself with a mighty resolve yet to retrieve her fortunes, she
urged her horses to the left, but in vain. They swerved again to the
right, and were now directly behind the other chariot and within a few
feet of it.

She screamed angrily to her excited team again, to turn back, but they
had gone mad, and only turned still further from her chosen course till
they left the course itself. In her wild fury and embarrassment, she
struck Vidella, the inner mare, a savage blow with the whip, causing
her to spring forward madly, and turn the course of the other somewhat
toward the right one. Again, encouraged to take desperate chances, she
applied the whip again and again, till the horses were maddened beyond
all hope of control, heedless of their driver’s voice they flew toward
the western gate of the course which was open.

Seeing this, Corinthia with white set face and grinding rage, gave
reluctantly the signal to halt, hoping by her voice to quiet and
control them, but iteration and reiteration seemed only to arouse them
anew, and the queen sank back upon her luxurious cushions in helpless
fright.

Out into the streets of the city they flew, away toward the plains they
carried the helpless representative of regal power. God of Abram! they
approach the hovels of the lepers’ quarters. They are in the midst of
them; lift up thy voice to the God of Elim now, fair Corinthia, call
upon the sun and moon in thine extremity. Exalt the worship of the
Incas, and put thy graceful foot upon the neck of Judaism, for thy time
is brief among the powers of earth. O Golden Image of Palenque! what a
sight is that. See! a miserable leper lies sweltering in the loathsome
virus upon the ground. His disease-dimmed eye sees the danger, his
shredded limbs attempt to flee from it, but alas too late. He totters
to his feet as the hot breath of the panting horses smites him. They
snort and spring aside, but too late again. Vidella tries to spring
past him, but strikes him down with her hoofs, and veers savagely as
the stench of the leprosy rises to her nostrils. The chariot cannot
follow the sharp curve described by the frightened horse; it overturns,
and Corinthia the adored, to whom but a few moments ago thousands
kneeled as to deity himself, is saved from death by being flung
mercifully upon the prostrate form of the miserable leper. Mercifully?
Flung at least into merciful unconsciousness of the horror of darkness
that had fallen upon her.

All is commotion and consternation in the surging crowd of
pleasure-seekers. Rebecca has triumphed; but there is none to grace her
triumph, unless, indeed, it be the venerable and unselfish servant of
the people, Levi, who sees in the light of her present success a gleam
of the future glory.

But what of Jokim? What are the feelings of exquisite pain that racks
his ambitious heart to see his patron queen utterly defeated, and
perhaps, mangled, bleeding, dying by the roadside? From his commanding
position he watches with care-strained eyes in the direction where
a cloud of dust alone indicates the direction and progress of the
runaways. Now they are in sight once more, on the rising ground. “Now
may all the gods of Israel and Elim protect her,” he exclaims, as he
sees, with a gasp of fear that the horses are in the midst of the
lepers. “Jehovah, have mercy, she is thrown into the very midst of
them!” is his next cry. “Quick Isidor! Here slaves! my chariot! Now
Isidor, drive as though the fiends pursued, and angels beckoned,” he
commanded. They were off like a flash, but even then with all their
haste, with all the speed of their fresh spirited horses there was one
chariot that was a hundred paces in the lead. The foam was flying from
their flanks and the froth from their mouths.

’Tis the victor’s chariot, but Abram drives alone. Is it concern for
the fate of his queen and employer that urges him onward? Is it the
tender feelings of humanity in the beautiful Jewess that sends him on
this mission?

He was the first in all that throng to act in the presence of appalling
disaster. Scarcely has Rebecca driven triumphantly beneath the arch
that proclaimed her the victor, and checked the headlong speed of her
chargers, before Abram is at her side and mutters: “Quick, and the game
is ours.” Assisting her, as he spoke, to alight, and springing into the
chariot, he dashed away as we have seen, the leader of a wild stampede
toward the scene of disaster.

How can Abram be supposed to know that his mistress has been so
ruthlessly dethroned from her flying seat of power? What more natural
than for him to rivet his eye upon the receding dust cloud, and to
expect to find his beloved mistress in the wreckage of the chariot when
the final disaster shall come?

It has come! Away on the plains yonder he sees with distinctness
the horses and chariot suddenly collapse apparently, into an
undistinguishable heap.

Wings were too slow to bear him to the spot. Rays of light could not
keep pace with his burning desire to reach that goal. Far in advance
of the crowd, yet it seemed to him that time must end, and eternity
dawn ere the panting horses drew up beside the heap of ruin made up of
struggling horses and fragments of a royal chariot. Did he pause to
seek for the body of his queen among the _débris_? Not he. He springs
to the ground, draws from his girdle a package of subtle powder, and a
keen pointed little lance. Some of the horses are dead, or dying; some
of them are struggling to free themselves from the trammel of harness,
and dead carcasses. They threaten every moment to free themselves.
Abram springs like a panther upon the neck of Vidella who is neighing
in affright, and making a desperate fight for freedom.

A dexterous thrust of the lancet, a skillful injection of a tiny bit
of the powder, and in a moment the struggles of the mare began to grow
feebler. One more survivor of the catastrophe is treated to a similar
dose, and by that time Vidella ceases to struggle.

“Dead horses tell no lies,” he muttered, deliberately remounting
the chariot and driving backward to the City of Lepers, coolly and
smilingly, until he sees a crowd collected in the distance a little
way from the hovels of lepers, when he again urges his horses to their
utmost, again distorts his countenance with anguished concern for the
fate of Corinthia.

As he drew nearer his woes broke forth in a wail: “Where is the glory
of Israel? Where is the wise queen and gentle friend of Ophir?”

He was the picture of distress, the ideal of a distracted and devoted
servant in an agony of suspense as to the fate of one he regarded more
than his own worthless life.

Troubled eyes note his distraught figure and pitying voices cry
alas! alas! while trembling fingers point to the center of the
plague-inhabited village. His grief broke out more wildly than ever at
the sight. There, standing in the middle of a group of wonder-struck
lepers, is Corinthia, wringing her hands, tearing her hair, and rending
the royal robe, beating her head against the wall of a hovel, and
shrieking hysterically in a tone of the wildest horror.

Is there none to comfort her in the tenfold death that has befallen
her? Yes, one. A manly form approaches. It is that of the most
dignified of all the late judges of Israel--it is Jokim, her lover. His
chariot stands at a distance in the midst of the crowd that greeted
Abram. There Isidor halted and refused to drive another foot toward the
plague spot.

Jokim commanded, threatened dire punishment, which he would have
executed then and there, but for the interference of the excited crowd,
who laid hold of Jokim himself, and would have handled him roughly,
but for their curiosity to witness what transpired to Corinthia, who
was recovering consciousness, and Jokim had broken away from the mob,
pursued only by curses and jeers, some crying “kill the scheming knave
of a Gentile,” and others, “let him go to the harlot who calls herself
queen of Israel, and together they can reign over the city of lepers.”

But Jokim heeded neither threats nor taunts, but hastened to the side
of Corinthia as we have seen, just as the full realization of her
misfortunes had dawned upon her. Who so heartless as not to respect
such a friend as he? Who so utterly forlorn as not to be cheered by the
coming of a friend at such a time of direst need?

Her mind was so preoccupied by her woes that she saw him not, nor
suspected his presence until he spoke her name. Then she turned
toward him with a world of surprise and joy gushing from her eyes. He
supported her tenderly in his arms and eagerly questioned her whether
or no she was hurt.

“Hurt? dost thou ask? Is the bird that falls by the snare of the
fowler hurt? Ah! Jokim, I am hurt to the death. I am as a sparrow
alone upon the housetop. Henceforth my palace will be my prison, for
dost thou think that our people will brook the presence of one who is
contaminated?”

Jokim heard her in pained surprise. He knew that she but reveled in
a day-dream when she talked of returning to the palace. He had heard
enough in the crowd he just left to know something of their temper, but
he could not plunge her heart into greater depths of misery by telling
her that a more horrible fate awaited her, that she would never be
allowed to leave the companionship of the pitiable, loathsome wretches
who stood a little apart and watched them.

“Come,” said Corinthia, “wilt thou lend me thy assistance to thy
chariot which I see yonder in care of Isidor?”

He moved not, but regarded her with a fixed look in which pity was
the dominant feeling. “Why dost thou linger?” she said, “my strength
faileth me, I must return to the palace.”

For reply Jokim lent a supporting arm, and together they started toward
the crowd of spectators, and toward refuge from the ills of life,
toward comfort, toward hope and love, toward the place combining these
and a thousand other attractions which we have gathered into that
bouquet of joys we call home.

But scarcely do they clear themselves of the immediate presence of the
leprous wretches, barely have they progressed far enough toward the
camp of the clean to indicate their purpose, when the crowd broke into
a wild tumult of yells and curses, execrating Jokim and Corinthia as
dogs of Elim, accusing him of leading away the people after strange
gods, and her of all the abominations that Ophir had attained to, of
being in league with the devil to deceive them, warning them to go
back to the city of the lepers on pain of instant death, and many of
the men drew their bows ready to make good their threat. Corinthia,
distressed and bewildered by this demonstration, still, in her shaken
and agitated condition, failed to read the true meaning of the mob’s
demands.

“Ah! Jokim,” she said, “I am punished. The hearts of the people are
fickle as water. They have turned thus quickly to Rebecca, because
she was the conqueror and I the vanquished in the race. If these be
the sweets of royalty I will fling the scepter to Rebecca gladly, and
rejoice that my great misfortune hath shown me one royal friend which
is better than a kingdom of fickle followers.”

She stood undecided what to do, as she spoke, and Jokim at last in pity
exclaimed: “Ah! sweet Corinthia, thou understandest not the diabolical
passions of this rabble. They are fickle as the wind, it is true, but
they are also cruel as the grave. You will nevermore see your beautiful
palace, never again wander in the beautiful groves, or lave thy lovely
form in the wholesome baths of the royal gardens. Its birds will dress
their gay plumage for thee no more or time their melodious harp to
charm thine ear.

“The Rose of Sharon will shed its fragrance for others, and the
spotless lily will lift its pure petals to other eyes than thine.”

“What dost thou mean, Jokim?” she said. “Thou speakest in riddles, and
though thou hast not always found me so dull to their meaning, my brain
is too sadly shaken to understand thee.”

“I mean,” said Jokim, “that we are outcasts from our beloved Ophir. We
are in the eyes of all Israel already lepers.”

All the life blood fled away from the fair features of Corinthia,
leaving them as white as the face of one of her snowy steeds. She
pushed Jokim from her and urged him to leave her to her fate. “Away,
Jokim, thou at least art surely not contaminated in the sight of
Israel. Why should we both die in misery? Why didst thou come within
these accursed limits?”

“I came because I loved thee, Corinthia.”

“And didst thou then realize and know the consequence when thou didst
come to my rescue?”

“I knew,” said Jokim briefly.

“Then,” said Corinthia, “is my sorrow not unmixed with joy. I am
content to accept the decree of heaven that denies me temporal power,
but gives me love instead. Perhaps Rebecca in her happier lot will
remember us, and send us a morsel of food from the palace as I used to
do to these poor wretches, little thinking that I should ever be to
them a companion in woe.”

The crowd was growing impatient to return to the city, but, fearful
that Jokim and Corinthia would follow them and spread contagion
everywhere, a herald was sent to warn them from a safe distance that
the decree of leprosy had been passed upon them by the eight judges
present, and who had once more found themselves invested with the regal
power to act for Israel.

Jokim replied that they accepted the decree, and Corinthia threw down
her regal headdress as a token that she resigned all claim to the
kingdom, Jokim asking only that he should be allowed with Corinthia
to seek a lonely place in the mountains where he had some flocks, and
that Abram might be sent to the city for some of their raiment, and a
few of their utensils, and that a proclamation might be made in all the
kingdom warning the people that their camp was unclean. Abram at first
refused to do the bidding of his old master, but what he would not be
persuaded to do for common humanity’s sake he was readily induced to
undertake for the sake of a goodly sum of gold which he was assured by
Jokim and Corinthia he should find in the palace on his return to them
with the desired articles, which he promptly brought, and on obtaining
the coveted information as to where he should find his reward he was
off again to the city.

Corinthia threw off all her outer garments for fear of the plague, and
donned others that Abram had brought, and together they turned their
backs upon the city of ease and luxury with the dread of a dark and
dreadful calamity hanging over them. But Corinthia, the beautiful young
queen, though exchanging riches and power for poverty and weakness,
was not entirely the loser in the transaction. She exchanged the purple
robe of a paramour for the plain garment of a loved wife. Jokim,
esteemed in all the city an illicit lover, in that sudden critical test
became the honest, true-hearted lover and protector by the severest
trial of love and fidelity. He deliberately chose almost sure death
from a loathsome, hateful disease, rather than forsake one to whom he
had been accused of being bound by ties the most sordid, bestial.

As the visions of human exaltation and human indulgence failed from
the picture she had drawn and called life, and in its place saw in the
foreground only a dusty sagebrush plain, stretching away to distant
mountains, and for a background a magnificent city resplendent with
palaces and pavements shining like silver, and dazzlingly beautiful
over all, towered the glorious Temple of the Sun, reflecting back
the glory of the sinking orb of day, a picture dear to her heart,
but receding, fading before her eyes, she turned back toward it, and
stretched out her hands helplessly, imploringly toward it. Even as she
gazed with tear-dimmed vision the glory faded, the sunlight departed;
another dream of mortal greatness faded away.




CHAPTER XV.

THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN.


Slowly the crowd surged back to the city, sobered by the scenes they
had just witnessed, bewildered by the sudden loss of a ruler whom they
began to really love, and who, after all, was by no means so great a
wretch as some believed. Have we not protested from the beginning,
by inference, that the proverbially good are not always angels to
the core? Have we not tried to insinuate delicately and gracefully
the opinion that the wayward and apparently wholly evil man or woman
develops sudden traits of heroism in the presence of great danger or
disaster that forever separates them in the human mind from the company
of cowards, the association of poltroons?

And some of those who constantly put forth the motive of pious devotion
to duty wear that kind of virtue merely as a mask behind which repose
arrant cowards and hypocrites.

Did you mention the names of Isidor and Abram as examples? Let us hear
them discourse to each other after the exciting scenes of the day are
past, after the accident, after the crowning of Rebecca as queen, and
Levi king, of Israel, a ceremony somewhat hastily performed lest the
people should recover from that state of bewilderment into which events
had thrown them, and after Abram had been appointed keeper of the
royal stables with more gold for salary than he had ever dreamed of,
and more honor shown him than his present capacity for adulation could
comfortably support.

“Bring forth the bond, Isidor,” said Abram gayly, “and let us compute
if we can, how much it is worth per day to work for a king. Our blessed
queen has given me a fine chariot and team, and when we drive abroad we
shall wish to locate our possessions.”

“She has remembered me bountifully, too,” said Isidor, “but in none of
thy kind, for mine is the yellow gold; but tell me, brother Abram, thou
sayest two of the noble beasts were alive when thou foundest them, why
then didst thou not spare them?”

“Why did I not spare them, fool, in exchange for our necks? Suppose
these Elimites were to learn of our little exploit, they would overturn
everything.”

“Thy training was indeed perfect, Isidor; in time thou wilt come to be
as expert in the dark art as I. Didst thou see how proudly Corinthia
viewed the new mantles upon her team, which were yet, _not_ for her
team, and how impossible it made detection even with her?”

“’Twas a marvelous thought, Abram, that sprouted in thy fertile brain,
but tell me how didst thou exchange Corinthia’s team for Rebecca’s last
night, without being seen by the minions at the royal stables?”

“That was easy,” replied Abram. “A trifle of the same power that was
so convenient to rid us of the horses to-day, made every one of the
worthless curs sleep long and deeply.”

“Thou art my elder brother, indeed Abram,” replied Isidor, “and I
reverence thy glorious talents; but how very strange to see how easily
so vast a crowd could be deceived into thinking it purely an accident.”

“It may have seemed easy to thee, my unspoiled Isidor, but if thou
couldst have seen the sleepless nights and anxious days I endured in
planning everything to work with the smoothness thou observed, it would
have seemed less simple; but together we did in a few weeks what no
other Israelite has ever accomplished, namely, undo the teachings of
years in a beast, and teach him to obey the opposite sign in a few days
so that when our beauteous queen Corinthia urged her team to stop, they
ran the more furiously, and when she would have them go to the right
by the old familiar word, they turned quickly to the left; and now we
have our reward, we shall be honorable in Israel with our palaces, in
which we shall dwell, and our chariots in which to visit the pleasant
places of the city, and we shall be as far removed from the groveler
who used to call us brother as our Queen Rebecca is above us; but
I must away to discharge the duties of that honorable office which
Corinthia the Elimite intended should fall as a prize to Rebecca, if to
any, as a stab to her pride.

“All this but yesterday, and to-day Rebecca is queen, and Corinthia
a wandering, hopeless leper, as the result of a cross training of
the horses, and a timely exchange of Rebecca’s team for Corinthia’s.
Farewell, Isidor, don’t forget thy prayers,” said Abram sneeringly,
“and remember to swear by thy elder brother who taught thee how to
drive a horse upon the highway of fortune.”

Life soon settled to its wonted groove after unwonted excitement, and
the populace shouting a moment ago for Corinthia were now just as
energetic in their demonstrations of undying fealty to Rebecca and Levi.

Although Levi had ever posed as an Israelite indeed, in whom there was
no guile, and though Rebecca was a good old Jewish name, the policy
of their reign did not appear to differ from that of their unhallowed
predecessors.

The Elimites were still the trusted advisers of the king and queen,
and the incumbents of the places of honor and emolument. The priesthood
still continued the Accadian form of worship in the temple of the sun.

But wedge and golden image, being thus associated in the minds of the
people with ideas of devotion, they gradually, as the Elimites designed
they should, came to look upon them as objects of worship themselves,
and soon a golden wedge was laid upon the altar, and the people of
Israel bowed down to the image of the sun and worshiped at sight of the
golden wedge.

Wealth was increasing rapidly in Ophir, of which the Accadians managed
to own a goodly share. Taxes were increased, rigid enforcement of the
laws to collect them followed. Tax gatherers and tithing men were given
princely salaries so that these offices were sought and obtained by the
Elimites.

Discontent began to work in the public mind, sullen murmurs were heard
and dark hints of revolt began to be dropped by the Jews themselves,
who not only saw themselves ignored in matters of government, but
their hatred toward Elim was ten times more intense by reason of the
odious offices that they occupied, for in what age or country have tax
gatherers not been regarded with something of spleen by the people?

But the favored class heeded not the tokens of a rising storm. Drunk
with prosperity, created by the labor of others, the longer they
enjoyed the ease and luxury of the present the less they cared for
the future, the more they respected but slightly the rights of their
fellows, whose ruder life rendered them repulsive to the more refined
Accadian, and the harder the toilers were oppressed the more repulsive
they became to the parasites who were at once sucking their blood for
subsistence and swearing openly at their want of spirit and refinement.

But religious superstitions interwoven with political influences are
the strongest safeguards of a ruler whether the religion be a false one
or the political bias a pernicious one or not.

In proportion as the people became restless and stricken with poverty
and their rulers rich and arrogant, the priests increased their zeal in
warning the people against the sin of not submitting to the powers that
be, and roused their patriotism by pointing with pride to the immense
public improvements, and reminded them of their glory as a nation.
In progress in all the cunning arts of the world, there were none to
surpass them, while in palaces and dwellings, in temples and gardens of
pleasure, there were none to contest with them.

So the ferment of human life went on for a year, since that day when
Rebecca and Levi had come so unexpectedly to the throne. Unexpectedly,
at least, to the outside rabble, who dreamed not of the artifices
being practiced within the charmed circle of power. It was again the
time of the great festival which has been established as a fixed
institution wherein the high rites of the sun worship were celebrated
within the most sacred and secret precincts of the temple, rites in
which lust and immorality joined hands with religion to dishonor
themselves and all human decency.

The queen became the high priestess of these orgies and the low sensual
instrument of national shame.

Again the multitude filled the streets of Ophir to choking. Again
the approaches to the outer courts of the temple of the sun were
packed. The queen was already at her altar in the temple prepared to
offer herself as a spectacle of shame before the gaze of thousands,
who trampled upon each other in their eagerness to witness this new
ceremony in their religion of which they had heard only vague rumors
and gained dim ideas.

Suddenly there seemed to be a diversion in the outer circle of the
crowd near the street. Some one whom the people called Abram the
magician staggered forward with a muttered curse, and almost fell, but
recovered himself and stood gazing down the street with fear-haunted
eyes, and with trembling lips, and sunken jaw, he exclaimed: “By the
rod of Moses! it is none other than the dogs of Elim.” Thus admonished
the crowd turned its gaze toward the spot where his was riveted, and
beheld a faded, dust-covered chariot drawn by two jaded horses and
bearing two persons whose attire was so extraordinary as to arouse
curiosity in the beholder.

These two were a man and a woman; the former was clothed in a suit
of sheepskin from head to foot, had an unkempt, bushy beard and hair
flowing in great ringlets over his shoulders. His clothes were rudely
fashioned and his headgear a sort of cap made of the skin of some wild
creature.

His companion was clad in a fashion not less striking. A jacket of fine
soft fur, dyed blue, and a skirt of equally delicate fur and white as
snow. Delicate slippers of brown, trimmed with fringe of white around
the top, and a jaunty headgear of the same kind of material made up a
costume that might make a woman of these modern days proud.

Her dress was forgotten, however, when a glimpse of her face was
obtained. It was beautiful and radiant behind its border of white furs
as the face of an houri, and the crowds through which they were making
their way gazed in undisguised admiration, mingled with a stirring of
memory that seemed to struggle for mastery, suggesting vaguely that she
was not unknown to them.

Suddenly a cry was raised by a man in the crowd! His cry had the effect
of an electric shock. Every tongue took up the word and every throat
was strained to vocalize that word. Rebecca, thrilling with triumph
in the zenith of her power, heard the commotion, and glanced into the
street to learn why she was no longer the center of all eyes, and
astounded sees the smiling countenance, and hears the resounding name
of one in whose praises the streets were vociferous. Why did she turn
pale as the ivory image beside her? Why did she shudder at the mention
of that name? Guilt was in her bosom, and Corinthia was the name in the
street that caused her to quake like an aspen.

The rabble crowded upon the chariot with the wildest demonstrations of
joy, weeping and laughing, and blessing the God of Elim that he had
brought again the beloved queen. What! their queen? What traitorous
words were these! There was no queen but Rebecca. Where was the
magician Abram with ready device in time of peril? He was not far
away, and as he was the first to act on that disastrous day one year
ago, so now he was the first to lift his voice for Rebecca, the lawful
queen. He struggled frantically toward the chariot, using all his burly
strength to push aside or trample down whoever came in his way, and
when he reached a favorable position he lifted a stentorian voice, and
a commanding hand to still the roar of voices.

As soon as he could make himself heard he cried: “Back, fools of
Ophir! Beware of these dogs of Elim. Hast thou forgotten that they are
condemned lepers? Back if ye would not have rottenness in your bones.”
Then turning, frothing and furious in his hatred toward the occupants
of the chariot, he waved them back exclaiming: “And ye, dogs of
Elimites, begone. Yonder is your home in the city of lepers. Begone or
die. Dare ye to bring your carrion flesh to the city of Ophir to be a
stench and a plague in the nostrils of our people? Beware, cursed seed
and follower of a harlot!”

Consternation struck the clamoring multitude mute for a moment, and
standing in the chariot, Jokim addressed them: “Men and women of Ophir,
ye know well who we are. Full well ye know that only twelve months ago
we celebrated with you this sacred festival. Ye know too that at that
time the queen of all Ophir was none other than she who is by my side.
The circumstances which suddenly drove us from your presence and made
us outcasts are familiar to your memory. It is true that the great
disaster of that day exposed us to the danger of the taint of leprosy.
We went forth into the mountains, looking only for a place where we
might die in peace without spreading the plague among you. For weeks
we lived in daily expectation of its coming, but thanks be to the God
of Elim, we are pure. We are in your hands and we are willing to be
tried by the law of Israel for leprosy, for we know that we are as free
from its touch as yourselves.”

Again a great shout went up from the people, but Jokim lifted up his
hand as a sign that he would speak further, and silence oppressive as
death reigned in an instant. He spoke once more: “Men and women of
Ophir; we have lived in sadness apart from our native city for many
weary weeks. To return to our people and our home has been our thought
by day and our dream by night. We shall be content to dwell among you
as the humblest citizens of all Ophir; but first, O men of Ophir! we
would make plain to you and explain the cause of disaster on that
almost fatal day.

“You had among you at that time a certain man called Abram the
magician, for he was a magician in his power over beasts of burden.”
Here a confusion arose and a man was observed trying to make his way
through the crowd from the vicinity of the chariot. “Nay, Abram the
wizard, do not slink away yet, I have something more to say to thee.”

Thus detected, Abram turned toward the chariot a countenance in which
fear, hate, and fury worked fearful contortions. “A curse on thy lying
tongue, thou dog of a Gentile,” he muttered.

Jokim continued: “This man was employed by your queen, Corinthia, to
train her team for the chariot race, and his brother Isidor was also
employed by one Rebecca, to train her team likewise. I now appeal to
your understanding and ask you why on that great day of the chariot
races did the queen’s horses refuse to obey her commands? Do ye not
remember that whenever she commanded them to go to the right they
turned to the left, and that when she commanded them to stay their
running, they ran the more madly?”

Here again Abram made a wild attempt to force a way through the crowd,
but Jokim cried out: “Whoever is for justice and Queen Corinthia, stop
him, till I have done, then ye may do with him as seems good.”

A hundred hands were ready to tear him in pieces if need be, and Abram
subsided into sullenness again.

“Do ye believe, inhabitants of Ophir, that the chariot horses of
Corinthia disobeyed her in so doing? Canst ye give any cause why they
should so forget the voice of their mistress in a day? This son of
perdition who slinks from our presence like the jackal of the plains
can tell you the reason thereof. Isidor, Rebecca, and Levi can tell why
a wicked plot was laid to kill your own beloved queen, and doubtless
seeing the present inhabitant of the throne, ye can make a guess as
to why. These four wicked people planned the murder and almost carried
it out. Isidor trained the team of Rebecca to heed the contrary sign
of command, and when the lesson was well learned under the direction
of Abram the magician, and by the knowledge of Rebecca and Levi, Abram
stole away the queen’s docile horses and put in their places the horses
of Rebecca on the night before the great chariot race, and covered them
with new mantles that the queen should not know them. That ye may know
we speak the truth, but read the evidence of guilt in the countenance
of yon sneaking jackal. We have proofs of all we say, and if ye are
for Corinthia, seize yon monster and bind him hand and foot, advance
to yonder temple and do likewise with Rebecca and Levi, and proclaim
Corinthia again queen and dethroned only by the wickedness of these
people.”

The rabble again burst into wild cheering. They seized Abram, whose
bravado melted away into contemptible cringings and pleadings for mercy
at the hands of the mob, who were near fulfilling the wishes of Jokim,
that cords and bands would have been unnecessary.

Meanwhile, Rebecca and Levi left alone in the temple with the priests,
with suspicions sharpened by guilt, mistrusted the cause of the
commotion, and hastily dispatching a priest to the palace for the
royal guard which the usurpers had found it necessary, or thought it
necessary, to provide; they then sent a second priest to the street to
ascertain what was the cause of the commotion. He soon returned, pale
as a ghost, and almost speechless. When he found words to deliver his
message he exclaimed: “It is Corinthia, O queen, and the people have
gone mad after her. They are coming toward the temple, fly, or your
lives will be less than straws before these madmen.”

“We will fight them,” said Levi, trembling and pale in spite of his
declaration of war. “Where are our fighting men?”

“I see them even now, O king, with their bows and arrows and
battleaxes; they will meet Jokim and his dogs by the temple here, and
then we shall see how long honeyed words will stand against arrows, or
the beauty of a white sepulcher against spears. It is plain that the
crisis will come when the soldiers and the followers of Corinthia meet,
which will be near the temple.”

Levi and Rebecca watched the progress of events from the eastern portal
of the great temple, nor had they long to wait. The shouting populace
advanced, led by the chariot of the travelers, until the bowmen were
within easy arrow-shot of them, and halted directly before the eastern
portal and made humble obeisance to their sovereigns, with perhaps a
trace of mockery in their salutations.

The king made as if he would address the crowd, but the people drowned
his voice by hooting and jeering, and flinging vile epithets at
Rebecca; and Levi shrank back cowed by the just wrath of the people.

Emboldened by his cowardice, one or two cries of “bring him out,”
were heard, and he hastily betook himself to the inner temple to hide
him among the sacred emblems of his chosen religion; but Rebecca came
boldly forth upon the porch of the temple and essayed to answer the
mob. Her voice was drowned in a wilder chorus than ever, and oaths and
blasphemies filled the air. Cries of harlot and murderess were freely
used, and the more frantically she strove to be heard, the louder
swelled the din of disorder. Seeing her efforts were futile, she turned
like a tigress at bay and beckoned the soldiers to discharge a flight
of arrows into the mob. But they too, standing there in the presence
of Corinthia for a few minutes, had caught the contagion of her lovely
presence, and instead of obeying the order, a few straggling arrows
were shot at Rebecca, striking the wall of the temple beside her.

Mad with rage against her rebellious subjects, and jealous hatred of
her rival, she ran to the captain of the guard and seizing a spear
from his hand she bounded like a tigress upon Corinthia, and aimed
a blow with all her might at her heart. But retribution was swift
upon her track; a man sprang forward from the crowd, and grasping the
weapon from her hand, drove it completely through her body, piercing
her heart. With a fiendish curse upon the “she-dog of Elim,” and such
a look of diabolical hatred upon her face as haunted those who saw it,
she fell to the ground a corpse, and her slayer kicked her dead body
aside exclaiming: “May the devil roast thy soul, and buzzards fatten
on thy carcass.” It was Isidor who dared to become the avenger of the
wrongs which he himself had helped to heap upon Corinthia.

But a mob is not a nice discriminator between consistent and
inconsistent justice, and the narrative of the tablets forces me,
though much against my personal wishes and feelings, to write it down
that his act was wildly applauded by the raging flood of humanity, and
as the taste of blood had whetted their appetites they began to shout
hoarsely for Levi, the false king, who had by foul measures come to
rule over them. The queen’s archers had witnessed her death without
betraying any emotion, but now they flung down their arrows and joined
in the cry of “Corinthia our Queen, God bless her forever.” Some one
shouted for a volunteer to bring out the skulking Levi, and Isidor
sprang forward, seized a spear from the ground and disappeared within
the portals. In a few moments he came forth, driving the terrified
Levi before him down to the very spot where Rebecca’s body lay in the
dust and filth of the street. Did he throw himself upon her body and
willingly share her fate? Not he. He grew so white with fear as to be
ghastly in his cowardice and starting back, he cried with an oath, “My
people, will you kill me for this harlot’s foul deeds? You have done
well to rid the earth of such scum, but I swear by Abraham, the just,
that I had nothing whatever to do with the plot of this sorceress and
her two fiendish confederates.”

Public opinion is rash, public judgment is harsh, but standing there
and witnessing the cowardly and slanderous lies of this man against
one who was at least as innocent, as guileless, as pure as he, but
who alas, could not lift up her voice to fling back with scorn the
accusations made by one who should have been bitterly upbraiding his
own folly and wickedness instead of hers, whose greatest fault had been
in trusting a craven, this surging, seething mass of excited humanity
in their fury compared this with another scene only a few moons agone
when another unfortunate woman had been hooted at, and jeered by the
same people, and whose lover, esteemed also an illicit lover, had
shared her horrible fate gladly and without a murmur, asking no greater
happiness than to die with her?

Ignorant as was the rabble, dimly as reason shone upon their feeble
intellects, they yet comprehended the vast difference in the degrees of
manhood that marked the two men, and also of womanly virtue that marked
the two women.

The pitiful cries of Levi for mercy only awakened their contempt; but
Jokim, who now perceived that in the heart of the people Corinthia
reigned supreme, and acting for her, commanded the archers to take up
again their bows, and conduct Levi to prison until his case could be
heard. Then there was another joyful coronation in which Corinthia
again was made queen of all Ophir, and speaking for her Jokim made a
great speech to the people in which he told them of all that he and
Corinthia had suffered in anticipation of death, and in hardships in
the mountains; how they had realized as scarcely to be believed, at
last, that they were safe from the taint of leprosy; and how their
experience had caused them to humble themselves greatly in the sight
of the God of the universe; how he had shown them that they had been
too much taken up with their ambitions and had thought too little of
the people of Ophir; but that they were determined by the grace of the
eternal Creator to rule more justly and to regard their own ends less.

Then a festival was proclaimed to last fourteen days, to celebrate the
return of Corinthia, and during the festival Jokim and Corinthia were
by solemn rites of the Elimites made man and wife, and so the scribes
recorded on the little brick tablets that Ophir prospered as it had
never prospered before; that a happier queen, or one more beloved
or admired, never lived; and that Jokim was the happiest and most
unselfish man in the kingdom, wholly devoted to the lovely Corinthia,
caring not in the least for power which he could have shared with her
for the asking, as she urged him to do; but he was perfectly contented
in seeing a loving and loyal people look up to one whom to praise and
love was greater happiness to Jokim than to have received the adulation
of Ophir himself.

Many other scribes took up the tablet account after the time of
Corinthia, who passed away as do all things earthly, after a long and
happy reign, but not one of them failed to speak of the glory, the
prosperity, the peacefulness and felicity, of the reign of Corinthia,
or to extol her beauty and her wisdom and her humility and to deplore
the fact that they should never again see a ruler so gifted, so fair,
and so blest as the first Queen of the Ten Tribes of Israel.

Human nature presents as many varieties as there are specimens. Some
men and women who strive with the most selfish and sordid ardor for
power, are sobered and purified by its responsibilities when they
attain it. Others who exhibit themselves before the public as pure,
high-minded beings, who accept power only because the good of their
fellows demands it, develop into monsters of haughtiness and tyranny.
Can we trust such evidence to prove that these two oppressed creatures
really underwent such a magic change, or is it proof merely that in
the first, good and benevolent qualities under favorable circumstances
would always rule, but may have been hidden and dwarfed by the evil in
his surroundings, the hardening influences of his associates against
which he could not rise to the level of his better self? And in case
of the nice moralist who nibbled delicately at the official bait,
subsequent acts of his suggest the bare possibility that he was merely
acting this part of the Christian gentleman because of the approval
it won him, and continued in his self-satisfied career only while he
deemed it policy to do so. But as soon as he rose to be the head and
ruler of a nation he could afford to ignore the opinions of his pious
associates and indulge the cold-blooded propensities that he had been
starving so long. So we see that you or I have need of nothing so much
in this world as a broad Christian charity by which to regulate our own
acts, and to judge the actions of others.

If we take pains to ferret out the cause of all the sickening bloodshed
recorded in the history of the world we shall find that much of it was
caused by religious intolerance; which means when reduced to practical
language, “Believe as I do in religion or burn.”

Unless we shall emancipate our intellects from the prejudices that
prevent our seeing a brother’s right to investigate, formulate, and
crystallize his own creed--until we admit that with equal light and
knowledge his chances of being right are at least equal to ours, we are
nothing but refined barbarians.

When we recollect that there are about one thousand different forms of
religions professed in the world, we can see that possibly on some of
the microscopic non-essential points of our religion there might by
the rarest possibility be a shade of error. Believing in the universal
fatherhood of God, and the universal motherhood of nature, why can we
not live at least so that the example of the Arctic Highlander shall
not be a standing reproof to our higher civilization, and a constant
reminder that when we reach a state of society as innocent of courts of
justice as theirs, as perfectly free from religious strife, it will be
when we shall, apparently, have progressed backward.

Many subsequent scribes recorded the story of their own time upon the
succeeding tablets; it was a history uninterrupted for a long period
by civil feuds, or foreign molestation; but not one of them failed to
celebrate the name and reign of the good, the wise, the transcendently
beautiful and beloved Queen Corinthia.




CHAPTER XVI.

FAREWELL TO OPHIR.


This is the story, the outlines of which I have worked out by years
of incessant labor upon the tablets, assisted by the most expert
antiquarians of the age. A work of historical truths interwoven with
a weft of romance, but who can imagine scenes of real human life
unflavored by romantic incidents and unsalted with the savor of love?
All nature is fashioned in love, and all love inherent in nature.

Meanwhile Abner and I--two plain American citizens of the modern
republic of America, untrammeled by the superstitions of the ancient
Incas and untainted with the bestial rites of the worship of the sun
were still lingering in the cool grottoes of Solomon’s treasure house.
We wandered by “cool Siloam’s shady rill,” set its current gurgling
and boiling at pleasure, and stilled its murmurs in a moment. We have
glutted our desire for the figs and the grapes and the pomegranates of
Palestine the younger, and wandered by moonlight through the gardens
where the servants of Solomon dreamed of their native rose of Sharon,
their lily of the valley, and cheered the tedium of their toilsome
efforts in the subterranean chamber by dreaming of the coming of a
ship that never sailed, of a respite which never came, and weary and
worn with watching for the morning star of deliverance, drew out their
existence of enforced celibacy till age and care had done their work.

But we may no longer dream of the past or ruminate on the sad edict
that limits all mortal life. We may no longer indulge our fancies in
a spot full of morbid suggestions and associations. We must rouse
ourselves from our day-dreams, and away to love and Lena. What a
thumping of the heart at the thought! Even Abner is pawing the valley
in his impatience to see Chicago once more, “not having,” as he said,
“sich a powerful sight of days left any more to do his goin’ around
in.” We had knotted our brows for many an anxious hour over the problem
of how we were to escape with our treasures to civilization, or with
a reasonable amount of it, for we had no idea of losing sight of our
mine, or of bidding it a final adieu.

Our plan was to make a smaller raft from parts of our old one and
float down the artificial stream to the Colorado again, hoping that it
would be near the end of the canyon, and then make a portage to the
navigable part of the Colorado, float on down its waters to the ranch
country below. Here we might find some pack horses to carry ourselves
and our “specimens,” for we were to pose as two votaries of science
on a prospecting trip, and so meet the Southern Pacific, and away for
Chicago.

And now what tumult of emotion and exuberance of association shake
us as we prepare to say farewell to the scene of our wonderful
discoveries. Brief in time, but closely crowded by events, it was as
if we had been in the home of King Solomon’s vassals for years instead
of days. “We count our lives by experience, not years, in deeds, not
days.” We bring ourselves at last to the commonplace task of lading our
little craft, having built it in the dry channel of the underground
river by the slippery stairway where at our will we could perfect the
lading on dry land, and when ready to launch we could bring the sea to
our vessel, reversing the usual order of things.

At last everything is in readiness. Our gold is in strong bags in which
we brought food, securely lashed to the cross timber; provisions,
for which many a traveler would gladly have given bulk for bulk in
gold, equally well secured. Pickaxes, emblematical of our occupation,
loved for old aquaintance sake, and our rifles, the bosom friends of
backwoodsmen, and a few odd articles of apparel were encompassed by
bounds much smaller than those of a Saratoga trunk, and we take a last
survey of the gallery and garden, temple, and tomb, and prepare for the
last act in the Comedy of Errors that has landed us in the very lap of
fortune, namely, to open the floodgates and set in motion again the
forces which Solomon had harnessed to do his bidding. To accomplish
this is but the work of a moment; Abner standing upon our water-steed,
reins in hand to guide or restrain, while I pick my way on the rocky
path to the floodgate, clamber upon the shelf, seize the brazen globe,
while in answer to my efforts the sullen roar of the fretted waters
sounds again, and springing back down the narrow footway, descending
the granite stairway, mount our raft as it begins to throb and rise
like a large tropical turtle, and in a moment glides down the dark
incline toward daylight and hope.

Abner gazed back dreamily at the receding, familiar objects, as one who
realizes that he is probably gazing back upon an interesting phase of
his life, that was about to drop out of it forever. Satisfied in the
acquisition of wealth which opened a new life to him, there was yet a
tinge of sadness in leaving the old for the new that was like saying
good-by and God bless you to an old friend whom we expect never to see
again.

If we analyze the faculty of reverence for old age we find that it is
made up in part of much the same feeling of pity with which I regarded
his leave-taking, feeling that it was final.

Mine might be final, but hope intervened as a cushion to break the
concussion upon the brain. Good-by to the pursuit of a project, and
a greeting to the possession. The pleasures of the one are purely
distinct from those of the other.

We drift very gently down a placid little stream, whose quiet current
occasions our surprise, when we contrast it with that of the Colorado,
and it becomes a puzzle to us when we remember that from the general
trend of the country it must re-empty its waters into old Turbulence
herself.

But the comfortable fact remains, and all day we drift lazily or
paddle slowly southward and at night make our camp on a pleasant bit
of tree-covered shore. Next day finds us pursuing our journey, which
passed without any more exciting incident than the killing of another
deer, for our store of food began to run low. At night when we landed
and made our camp on a little rising knoll back from the water’s
edge where the noises of the stream were left behind, we noticed as
we prepared our sylvan bed of green boughs that a dull roaring sound
seemed to come in waves from a southerly direction, which I at first
supposed to mean the coming of a thunder storm. But Abner, being a
better plainsman, rejected this theory as entirely unreasonable, as
a thunder storm was unknown in that region, he said, and was himself
inclined to the opinion that it was an earthquake; but after listening
intently for some time as the sound seemed to rise and fall in regular
cadences, he confessed that he was unable to offer any explanation of
the phenomenon. Whatever the cause, it continued unchanged while we lay
on our camp bed looking up at the over-twinkling stars, and at last
lulled us to sleep and greeted us when we woke.

We had not traveled far on our way on that morning before the sound
seemed to penetrate through the ripple of the current and the gentle
swish-swash of the water against our craft. Louder and still louder as
we advanced it became, till we were satisfied that it was caused by a
cataract or some sort of volcanic action.

It was becoming apparent that our course was leading us toward the
channel of the Colorado, as we could determine by the contour of the
hills, and soon the current quickened its pace, warning us by our
past hazardous experience that we had no time to lose in shunning the
current, and seeking the quieter waters along the western shore, where
we drifted along as far as we thought it safe, then drew ashore, and
prepared to do some scouting before we made another decisive move.

Concealing our craft in a thicket along the bank, we took our rifles
and started on an exploring expedition. As we descended the stream the
banks became more precipitous, and the current more turbulent.

About a mile from our landing we climbed a series of ragged bluffs, and
standing at last on the crest, we had the Colorado at our feet again,
and a spectacle of superlative magnificence beside us, where Solomon’s
rill flowed into the parent stream. It was no rill in appearance here
as it tumbled in sheer descent over the brow of the cliffs beside us to
the channel of the Colorado far below us, sending back from its depths
a terrific, hoarse, bellowing roar, deadened and deflected by the
deep-mouthed gorge that greedily swallowed it, and still gaped for more.

We had no means of estimating the distance through which the water
plunged, but it was hundreds, perhaps thousands of feet, and in
sublimity far outshone Niagara. As we stood close to the brink and
watched the sheet that seemed to twist itself farther down into a
huge rope, and farther still fly into infinitely small particles of
spray, I reflected that here was one of the glories of Solomon’s reign
for which he had never received the homage of the world; and so from
remembering with a start that this was an artificial cataract, the
thought electrified me, why not divert half the river into Solomon’s
rill, and make the grandest spectacle of its kind in the known world?
And as we went back toward our boat, we discussed the plans which we
should carry out when next we came to our mine, though there was still
in my mind a feeling of delicacy about trying to enlist Abner in my
youthful schemes, for the same dreamy expression as before would soften
his honest, rugged features, and remind me with a feeling of almost
tearful sadness that youth and old age might not always abide together.
In deep silence we plodded back to our raft and began preparations for
a portage which we saw by the extended view obtained from the bluffs
would not be very far below the cataract.

It proved to be at least a mile and a half, however, from our landing
place, and with our budget of heavy metal it took two days to
accomplish the portage and re-embark on the river to begin the last
stage of our river voyage.

We had heard that a band of cattle men held the country to the
southward in the teeth of Piutes and Comanches, and on this knowledge
we based our hopes of deliverance.

Another day’s journey down the stream, and we noticed cattle in
scattered groups feeding along the river or winding down by the deeply
worn trails to drink at the water’s edge, and in three or four hours
more we were in sight of a long rambling “doby” house with small
windows set high in the wall, and with its outlying sheds and corrals
bespoke the southern ranch.

We hailed the sight with delight, and drawing our raft upon the
sand we approached this house of the Mexican air, and found two or
three cowboys in the characteristic and picturesque attire of the
semi-American vaquero, who were amusing themselves at target practice
with heavy caliber revolvers and piercing the center which was the size
of a dime with perfect ease and moderate certainty at fifty yards.

They seemed to adopt a covert posture of defense toward us, but when we
addressed them in English and told them our story, and showed them a
number of specimens which we considered very valuable from a scientific
point of view, their sentiments toward us underwent an instant change.
To these practical roamers of the Western range such specimens might
amuse boys for a moment; but to see men absorbed in collecting and
preserving such gewgaws relieved them of all apprehension on our
account, and enabled them at once to classify us as of the harmless
type of idiot entitled to pity rather than any other sentiment.

We were received, when once we were properly catalogued in their minds,
very hospitably, and treated, at evening, to a sumptuous repast of
slapjacks and beefsteak, accompanied by strong black coffee. We were
assigned sleeping apartments in the middle of the one room, while our
entertainers plunged into trough-like bunks on the walls, and lulled by
the wailing cry of the coyote and the barking of the wolfish-looking
half-Spanish dogs, we slept.

In the morning after a hearty breakfast of baking powder biscuit,
breakfast bacon and black coffee, for your cattle ranch can seldom
afford the luxuries of butter and milk, we soon made a bargain with
our hosts to escort us to the railroad. On pretext of reassorting and
washing our specimens, we conveyed them to a little brook flowing by
the ranch, and making a sort of paint of a tough clay we had noticed
there, we immersed each piece of gold in this mixture of clay and water
effectively veiling the glittering color of our treasure, which excited
nothing more dangerous than an expression of contempt in our caravan
drivers.

The chief source of our feeling of security lay in this estimate put
upon us by our cowboy escort, and we did not try to dispel the illusion
in their minds. The only other source of danger that caused us much
anxiety was that of the Comanches, or other warlike Indians who roved
over this region, and never let slip an opportunity to prove themselves
covetous, bloodthirsty poltroons as ever dogged an emigrant caravan or
mining outfit, till they had them in a position that made resistance on
the white man’s part utterly useless, and the attack on the part of
the reds simply a cold-blooded murder, involving no personal risk to
themselves.

The long and tedious days of heat, hardship, and weariness were
forgotten by us when we at last rode into the little rude,
temporary-looking town that stood for the present terminus of the
Southern Railway and the future metropolis of the southwest.

Here we found a hotel where there were actually private rooms for
guests, and appliances for cleansing and laving that aroused queer,
thumping sensations at my heart as though they were messengers
whispering to me of home. We shipped our specimens by express, or
expressed our desire to do so, to a dreamy agent who stood by the
window of the bare station house looking out over the prairie, and
who was far too much preoccupied with his day-dreams of a future
metropolitan city that was to cover all this plain, and convert the
sand atoms of his homestead on the edge of the town into gold, to mind
us.

We respected the greatness of the vision seen by his mental eye, and
patiently waited till he should return to the earth from his airy
flight which he did in the course of an hour or so, and turning to us,
inquired if we wished to send the stuff East. We replied that such
was indeed our earnest desire, and heaving a great sigh to denote how
burdensome were his official duties, he proceeded deliberately to wait
upon us, and informed us that in one hour and twenty minutes we should
have an opportunity to proceed on our way eastward.

And the journey--when it was at last begun--how impossible to describe
my feelings or even give a guess at those of my friend of the red
flannel shirt and the big loyal heart! The only thing that remains to
me of that journey is the recollection of the impatience to arrive
at our destination that so filled my thoughts that all notice of
commonplace things was swallowed up.

Less than a year’s absence from my native city had been so filled with
strange fortunes and shifting adventures that it seemed as though
years had flown. Abner himself could not be more surprised at the
transformation in Chicago than I expected to be. And when at last we
rolled into the Garden City of the West, it was hard to tell which,
Abner or I, was the more completely lost in wonder; Abner at the
stupendous change that had taken place since his departure from the
city, and I that it had changed so little. We kept our precious freight
in sight while it was being transferred to a safe deposit vault in the
city, and that weight rolled away, our spirits rose to exuberance as
we journeyed by horse car toward my uncle’s residence. Abner seemed
a little depressed by the change in his surroundings and muttered
once, as he noticed that he was the center of attraction, that “he’d
rather face an old bear and her cubs than such a parcel of precious
gaping idiots.” I gave him all the comfort in my power, which was not
much, for my habiliments were not much better; but I despised the
vapid, sneering crowd, who regarded him as a rare specimen, knowing as
I did that Abner was every vein and fiber a hero in the world he had
just left behind, and as such, quite independent of the adulation or
ridicule of this modern beehive of humanity.

Arrived at the familiar street and number we were soon in my old home,
exchanging greetings with my aged uncle, whose joy at my return, all
unconscious as he was of my good fortune, added a hundred-fold to the
pleasant anticipation on which I had fondly dwelt of gladdening his
remaining days, and freeing them from all care.

He warmly seconded my desire to make Abner feel that this was a home in
which he was entirely welcome, in a fashion to suit his own fancy, not
a social straight-jacket into which he was invited to thrust himself,
but a home which “vindicated the name and fulfilled the praise of home.”

Only waiting long enough to satisfy the claims of consanguinity that
bound me to my dear uncle, I hastened to renovate and transform the
greasy miner and traveler into a respectable Chicagoan, and ransacked
my wardrobe left behind for the best it would afford. Then followed an
expedition to the barber, the furnisher, and the hatter. Arrayed in my
best, I stood before Abner, who did not for several seconds recognize
his companion of the Mountain Spring Mine.

Leaving him to the mercies of my foster-father, from whom I had already
learned that Lena was well, I hastened away to announce my right to
claim her as my reward for having endured, as a good soldier, all
the trials of a genuine backwoodsman. I rang the bell, as I had so
often done before, and expected to meet the familiar face of the same
faithful domestic that used to admit me, but presently the door opened,
and I stood looking down into the startled eyes of Lena herself. My
vanity could not have desired a prettier softening of the surprised
expression in her lovely face into one of delighted recognition.
Barber and tailor alike were powerless to erase the effects of sun and
exposure on my countenance, but it took my gazelle but a moment to
pierce the disguise, to give me such a welcome as relegated the painful
experiences of my mountain life far into the background of memory.
There was in Lena’s expressive features a new and more womanly charm
that puzzled me, a new fountain of tenderness welling from her soft
eyes, and dropping from her lips with every word of her soft, gentle
speech. I had gone away hopelessly, forlornly in love, and now I had
returned to fall into a still greater depth of distraction.

She questioned me so closely and rapidly as to my life and surroundings
in the West, chided so energetically that I had not communicated
in some way with her during the long period during which I was
buried alive in the mountains, and beamed upon me with such evident
satisfaction at beholding me again, that I could not doubt for a moment
that her affection was of that type found in true womanhood, that time
cannot efface or circumstances change.

But when I began to tell her that I had removed the ban that her
father had placed upon our intercourse, she started as though she had
forgotten a very painful phase of our past in the joy of our meeting.
Red and white, blushed and paled alternately on her cheeks, and a
glistening teardrop in the eye hinted of some secret cause of trouble
that impended over our future. I tried to comfort her by telling her
that the wealth of myself and gallant old partner was uncounted and
practically unlimited in amount. Instead of being comforted, as I had
hoped, she grew still more distressed, and put out her little hand in
a gesture imploring me to stop, and in a voice unsteady with feeling,
she exclaimed: “Oh, don’t, don’t. Please don’t say anything more about
it. Oh, you don’t know what a wide chasm you are opening between us by
your words, nor how they sting me to the heart.”

I looked at her in unfeigned and extreme astonishment. “Why, Lena
dear,” I said, “what is it? I meant that every nugget should add luster
to your happiness, and every ounce of the gold we gathered from the
mine of Ophir should solace instead of pain you. I cannot understand
you.”

“But have you not heard,” she rejoined, “how our affairs have gone
since your going away? Our fortune is all gone, and of all our former
wealth and grandeur, this home alone is left to us.”

“Oh, if that is all,” I said, laughing, “don’t shed another tear over
it, for it makes not the least difference to me, I have plenty for all.”

“Ah, yes,” she pleaded very gently but very earnestly, “it does make a
vast difference to me, as you must known upon reflecting a little.” I
perceived that her sensitive little soul was racked with the thought
that since her parents had in so mercenary a spirit forbidden me her
presence, on account of my poverty, she should be equally mercenary, in
my estimation, should she accept, now that I had fortune and she had
none.

Cold logic failed to make any impression upon her mind, but when I
brought to bear the weapon of Love’s logic, she blushingly yielded,
and the crowning joy of my home-coming was complete.

The meeting with Lena’s parents was somewhat awkward, and Mr. Upton’s
manners somewhat constrained. He listened quietly to the story of my
adventures, and grew mournful in proportion as I enlarged upon the
incidents of my good fortune, complained brokenly and bitterly of the
injustice and hardness of the world that would not come to the rescue
of an old business man whose whole life had been governed by the
strictest rules of integrity, when a few thousands would have saved him
from ruin.

“And would a few thousands save you yet?” I asked.

“Certainly,” said he, “this crisis has only come on during the last ten
days.”

“My dear sir,” said I, “if that is all that stands in the way of your
continued prosperity, have no further uneasiness on that subject; you
can have the money to-morrow morning to the extent of one hundred
thousand dollars.”

Had my mind been spiteful, I could have wished for no greater revenge
than that which my words inflicted upon him; he started and colored
and squirmed in his chair as though he had been stung by an adder,
but necessity is a cruel teacher, and he could not afford to refuse
even from me, under circumstances the most painful, to accept such an
offer, and he therefore said in a tone of manly resolve: “I will accept
it as a loan in the spirit in which it is offered, and I hope you will
feel that I have been sufficiently punished for the heartless conduct
of which I was guilty toward you.”

It was not for me to keep him upon the rack, for his gray hairs were
a sufficient title to my respect; and hastily dismissing the subject,
I sought Lena’s congenial presence, more happy in the outcome of
the last-mentioned incident than I could express, though my beaming
countenance was a telltale message to her eyes, and my tongue was
obliged to confirm what my features had confessed.

Who need attempt to describe the overflowing happiness of the days that
followed?

Together Abner and I roamed the city, I acting as guide and interpreter
of many things which of needs must be mysterious to him, but I am
obliged to confess that even to Abner I begrudged the time spent away
from the center around which, in my eyes, Chicago revolved.

I would be more than human did I not feel gratified by the honor
bestowed upon me by my fellow-men.

While it seemed to me that in the closing year of my school life I
had suffered a culmination of woes almost unbearable it seemed now
that events conspired to make me a thoroughly happy and successful
man. The story of my strange discoveries in the cliffs of the Colorado
spread like wildfire throughout the civilized world, beginning at my
home university, my Alma Mater, at whose feet I had laid my trophies
on coming home. She had responded generously by bestowing the honors
of the institution upon me. I have been accorded like distinctions by
several Eastern colleges, and have received decorations from several
of the ancient and honorable orders of Europe. Doubtless the story of
the fabulous wealth, which accompanied the scientific discovery, added
a romantic tinge to the whole in the public mind, but to the credit of
mankind and to my great gratification the world seemed to regard, as I
did, the mine of knowledge unearthed as being of vastly more real worth
to humanity than all the gold of Ophir.

I am a quiet man, and hate fuss and noise. I enjoyed in a quiet way
the respect and admiration accorded me on all hands, on account of
my valuable contributions to science, but I also squirmed under the
would-be admiring terms showered upon me by a certain class of sickly
sentimental sycophants who follow the public scent and strive to bask
in a little cheap popularity by association with those who are supposed
to have a stock of that commodity on hand.

I was pursued by a few such characters steadily and relentlessly, was
obliged to listen with what courtesy I could summon to extravagant
tributes to the splendor of my mental equipment, while I was forced
to admit to myself that my abilities were of a very ordinary kind and
could not therefore believe in their sincerity and their discrimination
both at once.

However much I enjoyed the hearty congratulations of my real friends,
I felt that I was far too young a man to think of retiring upon the
strength of one or two chance achievements, and my ambition was
stimulated to greater efforts in the direction of archæology.

Lena grew as enthusiastic as I in her loyalty to me and all that could
interest me, and the upshot of it all was that dear, loving little
Lena promised that an early day next June should be named for our
wedding, provided I should make her my companion on my next exploring
expedition, and turn it into a wedding tour.

Who could refuse such a companion to beguile the long hours of
banishment such as I had endured at the Garden of Ophir, and to chase
the hard lines of care and weariness from my workaday brow? In fact who
could be unselfish enough to refuse to ratify a bargain whose terms
were all in one’s favor?

Misgivings as to the hardships to which Lena should be subjected were
lightly brushed aside as straws by Lena herself who stoutly maintained
that no hardships of the frontier could be so trying as the period
of waiting for tidings of me through which she had passed, that no
solitude of the wilderness where we two might roam could ever impress
her with the spirit of utter loneliness that had weighed down upon her
in my absence, and consulting my own preferences I could but admit with
a thrill of delight that her logic was that of a true, affectionate,
womanly woman, and so everything was settled.

Abner, domiciled cosily in my uncle’s house, fell easily into the new
mode of life like the true philosopher that he was, and his enjoyment
of everything relating to our great city enhances every day. He is
enjoying himself far too well, he announces, to think of giving up
his present comforts for the pleasure of shooting the rapids of the
Colorado, or “liftin’ the har offin’ a Piute Injun. No more of that for
me, thankee,” said our hero of many a wild fracas in the peaks of the
Rocky Mountains, or the valleys of the Sierras.

As for myself, I am happy in the loving favor of Lena, and comfortably
secure in the possession of enough wealth to smooth my path through
life. Beyond this my desire for wealth ceases.

Naturally my mind turns to thoughts of benevolent schemes to better the
condition of my fellows.

I shall build and endow no colleges. I shall lay no hand in oppression
upon the wages of the poor that I may rear a splendid monument to my
memory like the Pullman Satire upon benevolence. I shall not present
my native city with a Carnegie library whose shelves are packed with
quartos, folios, and octavos, and the exterior of whose resting place
is a dream of lovely architecture, wall and portico and arch, vieing
with each other for the palm of costliness and beauty, and whose
surmounting graceful spire points to heaven in mocking apostrophe to
the Goddess of Charity, while the men who have produced all this wealth
swelter and toil in the melting heat of furnace and forge, accompanied
in their work by the clamor of iron, the din of labor, forming a weird
scenic effect, powerfully reminding the workers of Plutonian fires,
while their wages decline, and cares increase, that the cool index
finger of the great library may be reared toward heaven.

My investigations into the cause of humanity have brought me, now that
I have leisure to devote to the subject, nausea and disgust at the
so-called benevolence of the world. Do the coal barons hold a splendid
feast at Delmonico’s? The price of coal must needs go up, and the poor
shivering tenant of the rookeries of our city must shiver a little
harder and burn a little less coal.

Is the tariff upon garments slightly reduced? Immediately the miserable
price of three pennies that were paid our sweaters for making a shirt
must go down to two, and the dry loaf that kept the breath of life
within the starving body must be reduced correspondingly in size, lest
the fat margin of the clothier should suffer, or the luxurious plans of
his fashionable lady be curtailed.

Hard times from all these causes make many applicants for clerkships,
and down goes the salary of the frail girls who stand behind the
counter till one swoons away, and is carried home only to find that
her place is supplied when she returns, at a reduced salary, “for
competition is the life of trade, and business is business, you know.”

Yes, we know business is business, and we begin to know that hardness
is hardness, and that the heart and life of business is the adamantine
monster, self.

Our faculties, at first feebly stirred by these considerations, become
powerfully alive to the fact that “Man’s inhumanity to man makes
countless thousands mourn,” and with the knowledge comes the desire
to counteract these direful effects in the world, to the limit of our
power.

Here again we bless the quiet, tactful, uplifting hand of woman; for I
found that Lena’s invariable habit of life had been, when her fortunes
were smiling, to spend many hours of every week ministering to the
afflicted and poverty-stricken creatures around her, and when she was
no longer sure that her own daily bread would be forthcoming on the
morrow, she still bestowed her gentle ministrations upon these poor
mortals from whose hearts hope had fled.

Not till I knew this chapter in Lena’s life could I understand the new
well-spring of tenderness in her bonnie blue eyes, or fully appreciate
the broader human sympathy that swayed her actions. She began at once
the work of enlisting my sympathies in the work of restoring “these
defaced images of the Creator,” as she was pleased to call them, and no
spectacle of wretchedness, poverty, and filth, could disguise in her
eyes the fact that they were his images, warped and wrecked though they
might be, but still bearing the imprint of a benevolent, all-pitying
Over-soul.

Some of the tales of suffering she related to me seemed incredible,
even from Lena’s lips, and so, as much from curiosity as from any
better motive, I began to accompany her in her capacity as ministering
angel, and the sly Lena knew that my tender susceptibilities all unused
to such scenes of utter woe among the children of men, would do the
rest. I soon adopted the plan of acting as sort of private detective,
and asking all sorts of questions and recording them together with the
answers in my memorandum. The result arrived at was startling in its
industrial significance.

“Poverty, hunger, and rags; suffering, sorrow, and sin.”

Can the Christian womanhood of my native city revel in luxury and
wealth, while within sound of their gay laughter and gleeful converse,
“A woman sits in unwomanly rags, plying her needle and thread?” Does
she believe vitally that God is no respecter of persons, or is it a
sort of hazy abstract truth in the moral job-lot delivered to her
weekly by her sleek, well-groomed pastor?

I am perfecting an industrial project by which I hope to reach a
helping hand to my unfortunate brother. I propose to build large
factories for the production of articles necessary to the world in its
plain, everyday requirements.

No day-dreams as to methods and management are to be indulged, but
stern men of experience will conduct the business on conservative
business principles.

The work done will range from that which taxes the strength of
the strongest man to that which is suitable for feeble women, not
physically capable of enduring heavy work, and yet compelled to work
for a livelihood. The wages paid for all classes of work will be
liberal for satisfactory service, enabling all the operatives and their
families to live in wholesome plenty, and build a snug fortification
against the encroachments of old age. In addition to this a premium
wage rate will be paid each operative at the end of the month for
those whose industry has been unflagging and have not lost a day during
the month unnecessarily, and a regular physician attached to the
concern will dictate as to what is necessary in sickness.

This latter will not be paid in cash, however, but in stock in the
concern at its actual par value; and thus every operative may, in
time, become a partner in the business, the plan being so drawn as to
preclude all possibility of any individual’s owning an undue share of
the whole.

Thus while ministering to their self-respect, by inducing honest
effort, and rousing their highest ability as skilled operatives, their
interest in the prosperity of the whole project will be intensified by
the sense of partial ownership.

Into all my plans for bettering humanity Lena enters with the heartiest
enthusiasm; and if my scheme is successful, I have no doubt, it will
owe much to her valuable suggestions as a result of her lifelong
devotion to the cause of the


  “Lowly and humble, the weary and broken in heart,
  Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and desperate
    part.”




CHAPTER XVII.

THORNLESS ROSES.


So the days were flitting by, made happily evanescent by a busy round
of planning and purring, a judicious intermixture of lovers’ delights
and practical preparation for carrying out our industrial project.

Disliking the vulgar curiosity to which a public marriage would subject
us, we decided that our nuptials should be celebrated very quietly
at Lena’s home, and immediately afterward we should depart on our
very practical wedding tour, or else our rather romantic exploring
expedition. All these plans in due time were carried out, and one
delightfully fresh June morning found Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Hardman,
at your service, steaming westward to revisit on my part the mine
discovered by Abner and myself, and having enjoyed the exquisite
pleasure of showing Lena through labyrinth and hall, and feasted her
eyes upon greater wealth than ever Crœsus dreamed of, and interpreted
for her ear the strange story of the picture writing on the wall and
tablet, we determined to visit the splendid ruins of Mexico, Central
America, and Peru, for I had already formed my theory as to how these
two latter countries were peopled, and with my present knowledge of
the hieroglyphic records, I felt that I could either dissolve my misty
theory with the cold touchstone of fact, or confirm it with hard
unanswerable reasons.

In one thought I took great comfort, namely, that Lena need run no such
gauntlet of river and mountain, flood and fall, as that which Abner and
I had been compelled to do in order to reach our modernized Ophir.

We traveled by rail directly to Leadville, and registered our names at
the Occidental Hotel, which stood upon the site of The Starlight Roost,
where only a little more than a year before I had found a partial
shelter from the elements. Now a splendid edifice of modern pattern and
costly workmanship occupied its place, and as I trod the marble floor
of the palatial home for weary travelers I was almost in doubt as to
my own identity, and as to whether this was really the identical spot
occupied by the rough board shanty where I lodged, until I recognized
one familiar object in the strange surroundings which was no other
than my former landlord of The Starlight Roost, who accosted me in his
old familiar, hearty way: “Struck it rich, I hear. Luckiest man in the
camp. Read all about your great strike in the Chicago papers. Where’s
old Ab? Not planted yet I hope. Oh, glad to hear he’s all right;
regular old trump.”

My old employer, too, was hearty in his congratulations on the success
of the Abner-Hardman partnership, and expressed a hope neatly turned
that the new partnership, with a glance Lena-ward, would prove happy,
and rallied me slyly on my secretiveness in leaving camp, but professed
now to have found the key to my eccentric actions. I assured him that
no such airy motives as he insinuated had influenced my departure
from Leadville, and gave him a running description of our experiences
after leaving him, in which he was greatly interested. Indeed, I felt
that, after all, these rough frontiersmen were more sincere in their
friendship and more generous than their more highly polished Eastern
brothers.

Many old acquaintances crowded around me at our hotel, and all
expressed their satisfaction at my streak of luck, and many a poor,
forlorn fellow heaved a sigh of regret for homes left behind at the
sight of Lena’s fresh, rosy countenance; hungry for the home-love of
mothers, sisters, wives, and sweethearts, all left behind at the touch
of the contagion called gold-fever.

I learned from the miners that The Mountain Spring Mine, as we had
called our first discovery, and where our unfortunate partner, Riley
Cox, had lost his life, had been appropriated by some of the miners
and ranchers sent out to chastise the Piutes, who had killed several
settlers and prospectors. Abner and I had for some time been supposed
to be included among their victims, until the Eastern papers announced
our wonderful discovery on the Colorado. Our informants stated also
that the very cabin which we had occupied was now inhabited by our
successors. Under other circumstances I might have been inclined to
dispute the ownership of The Mountain Spring with them, but it was of
small importance to me, since we had already secured, and carefully
invested, enough gold to satisfy any rational being, and had also the
means of replenishing our stock at pleasure; for I had small fear of
any interference with our treasure house, as we had, while giving out
the main results of our discovery, been careful not to locate our mine
or mention the manner of approach to it.

But our discovery of The Mountain Spring had brought us some good
results; for the usual rush had followed the news that a rich lead had
been struck, and, as if by magic, a branch railroad had been built to
the Gunnison country, and southward toward our secret mine, so that we
were relieved of making a very long journey by pack train.

All was novelty and pleasure to Lena, who bore all the hardship of our
horseback journey, in the last stage of our journey to Ophir, without
a murmur. We were, of course, ostensibly merely honeymooning in the
mountains, and when we reached the region of the mine of Ophir we sent
our attendants forward several miles to establish a camp, while we
proposed to turn aside and view some scenery which I wished to show
madam, where we would camp that night, and rejoin our party next day.
I had no trouble in locating the stream which Abner and I had known
as the underground river, and riding leisurely up its banks, we soon
came to its apparent source as it gushed, a full-blown river, from
underneath the mountain.

Picketing our horses beside the stream, we proceeded to equip ourselves
for the subterranean journey which we began by clambering along the
narrow shelf bordering the waters, till we reached the grooved doorway
connecting with the floodgate, where the waters were once more turned
back from their course, and together we re-explored all the vaulted
halls and ample chambers both of the living and the dead. Then, as the
final test of Lena’s spirit as a backwoodsman, she fearlessly followed
me through the cramped passage beneath the floodgate, to the chamber
where reposed enough gold to strike panic to the hearts of those wise
men of the earth who aver that gold alone is a fit substance for money,
and to start up a school of economists who would speedily prove beyond
a peradventure by the letters on a locust’s wing, and the ruddy glow
of the wart on the face of the man in the moon, that gold had become
so plentiful as to be useless as money, and henceforth would be sought
after only by barbarians for nose ornaments, because it did not poison
the flesh, or for filling the teeth of more polished natives, because
it did not corrode.

However, Lena and I took it more quietly, and she merely expressed her
satisfaction that we had so substantial a footing on which to base
our benevolent plans. Then as happily as Adam and Eve reveled in the
beauteous and delicious products of Eden, we spent the evening hours
in the Garden of Ophir, feasting eye and palate upon the semi-tropical
fruits, and slept beneath the fragrant boughs as securely as the birds
that sought shelter in this oasis of delights set in the midst of
barrenness.

Next morning we regaled ourselves again upon the fine-flavored fruits,
looked longingly and regretfully toward the perfect little park, as we
entered the rock doorway of the mines, and closing it carefully after
us, I carefully instructed Lena in the working of the various doors,
and the perplexing angles of the various branching passages, that in
case anything should happen to cut short the uncertain earthly career
of Abner and myself, Lena might not be shut out from her rightful
inheritance, and gave to her, as a sort of last will and testament
from me, a carefully prepared chart drawn by me at Chicago, of the
course of the underground river from its deflection from the Colorado,
the mouth of the mine, and a plan of the mines and vaults themselves,
so that by its aid, in connection with her knowledge of the place, it
formed a complete guide to every apartment; while to the uninstructed
it would be as unintelligible as Sanskrit or Modoc.

With Lena’s cheery, ringing laughter at thought of our queer
surroundings echoing through the dark uncanny vaults and aisles, where
the bones of ancient Israelites moldered, the artfully contrived
doorways again shutting in the secrets of Solomon from the world, we
return to our horses and the outer world, mount and ride through the
bracing mountain air to join our attendants in camp, satisfied with our
adventure, and ready to retrace our way to Leadville, whence we intend
to travel by rail to San Francisco, and thence by ship to Mexico, to
visit the scene of Corinthia’s sorrows and triumphs, to ponder by the
ruins of her palace, and reflect upon the folly of human strife, and
the wickedness of human jealousy; where I hope to point a sly moral
for the benefit of the feminine world in general, and a solemn warning
to Lena in particular, to eschew that unreasonable and direful form of
hatred toward her sister woman called jealousy.

Having thus, like a wise man, foreseen the evil and hidden myself
behind the bulwark of admonition, I shall laugh at the calamity of the
simple man who passes on, and is punished.

Our next objective point was reached in due time, partly by rail,
partly by steamer, and partly by burro express. Here on Mexican soil we
lingered, exploring the ruins of vast buildings devoted to worship, and
magnificent palaces and places of pleasure, ruined baths, fragments of
cemented aqueducts, all indicating the high degree of perfection in the
arts of civilization to which they had attained.

Stupendous piles of masonry, in the form of pyramids, spoke of Egyptian
influences. The beautiful adornment of the inner walls of their temples
with images of scroll work and basket work seemed but a rehearsal of
the story of the building and adorning of Solomon’s temple, and the
picture writings on wall and arch, indicating the movements of the
planets, the occurrence of eclipses at a precise future date predicted
by symbols with the knowledge of astronomy that it involved, and the
undoubted proofs of the worship of the sun in a secondary sense, all
pointed to Accadian learning and superior mental acumen.

To the archæologists who had been here before me these three classes
of ruins had been a puzzle and a perplexity. Facts apparently in
direct contradiction to each other, which they strove to reconcile
by murmuring Aztec, Toltec, Egyptian. But to me, in the light of the
knowledge I had drunk from the tablets, it was as plain and simple
as the day; each fragment over which my brother studied, fumed, and
sweated in vain endeavor to harmonize them into a whole, came together
at the bidding of the Accadian historian, like the separate parts of
King Solomon’s temple, where the sound of the hammer was not heard. To
me there was no question of Aztec and Toltec.

It was simply Israelitish and Accadian. The blending of the genius of
two gifted peoples into a harmonious whole, yet preserving distinctly
marked individuality of the two nations.

The bias toward a pyramidal form of building was the natural result of
centuries of bondage on the part of Israel in Egypt. Here, too, they
gained some knowledge of picture writing, as it is known that Moses was
familiar with this form of records, which was taken up, and improved
by the Accadians as being in line with their taste for intellectual
pursuits, particularly of astronomy.

From my vantage ground of absolute knowledge on the subject, I could
see the sublime leadings of Providence in all these changes of the
Israelites, which seemed in themselves great hardships, but were,
in reality, merely natural steps in the evolution of a learned and
polished nation from crude ancestry.

The bondage in Egypt gave them new views upon many subjects.
Architecture, astronomy, and in the art of symbol writing, or
ideographic writing. Under the tyranny and selfish ambition of the
latter years of Solomon’s reign their energies began to yield to
oppression, and their powers began to wane. Then came the Babylonian
captivity, bringing them into close contact with the superior Accadians
from the mountains of Elim, and by intermarriage the infusion of new
energy was brought about, and with the thorough blending of their
nationalities promised to become the most powerful, the most pious, and
the most learned nation of earth.

But before that happy climax was reached, sinister forces arose, as we
have seen, and divorced the almost united scions of the two distinct
branches, causing blight and disease to attack the fresh, bleeding
wound, until it had destroyed the whole tree.

We lingered contentedly by the ruins of proud cities of the past,
and feasted amid the world of knowledge unlocked by the golden key
of Ophir. Here was a city builded of shining white limestone, whose
streets were laid in various-colored cement, reflecting from wall and
street the splendor of solar light and diffusing the knowledge of an
interesting people to succeeding generations.

Again we walked in the ruined gardens and parks of other cities, where
fountains had gurgled forth their liquid music and flowers had lent
their charms to the senses where semi-tropical trees had shed their
wealth of beauty and fragrance in bloom and verdure.

But above all these sights that charmed us and beguiled the passing
moments, one class of objects had power to wholly absorb our interest
and fascinate for hours together, at one point, and that which so
bewitched us as to render us oblivious of all else beside, was the
picture writings we found on the ruins of temple and tomb.

I now had an assistant in my linguistic labors who threatened to become
my tutor by her aptness and earnestness in deciphering difficult
passages. The language was the same as that which I found upon the
walls of Ophir, and on the tablets in the vault, though there were
continually occurring new symbols and characters which kept us
constantly in the rôle of students; and the information we gained from
them rounded out our meagre knowledge gleaned from the tablets until
we had the history of the ten tribes from the period of their coming
to the shores of the new Canaan, with tolerable clearness, down to the
close of the beauteous Corinthia’s reign, where it seemed to break off
abruptly as though some great upheaval had interrupted their national
life, and brought disaster upon the head of national progress, decay
upon the brightness of their proud civilization.

At Palenque we wandered over the remains of a splendid temple of
worship that must have resembled the Temple of Solomon very closely.
I hired some workmen here, after obtaining leave of the proper
authorities, and made extensive excavations around this interesting
relic, and was more and more impressed with the resemblance that it
bore to the great temple at Jerusalem with its cloisters and courts,
sepulchers, and subterranean galleries.

Here again we found the thread of the historian’s narrative and traced
it through the same succession of events and incidents, the same
abandon of admiration for their Cleopatra of the West, and finally the
same abrupt ending of the annals of this people.

A summer of genuine pleasure passed away and found us still lingering
to enjoy the feast of intellect spiced by “gentle dalliance” with
connubial love and Platonic affinity.

All our efforts failed to wring any further information from the
unfeeling brick and stone, and we were obliged at last to conclude that
the finis of Ophir’s history, as a people, had been written, perhaps in
blood and violence, possibly by pestilence, hardly by gradual decline
and decay, else why should the historians break off so suddenly and so
completely. One other field still lured us on to delve in its rich
stores of antiquities in the hope that the thread of the narrative
might be resumed. A country more intensely interesting if possible
than that of Ophir, namely Peru, the land of the Incas, of fabulous
wealth pounced upon by the pitiless and mercenary Spaniards, while they
butchered mercilessly whoever stood between them and their coveted
booty.

Our journey to Peru involved the necessity of an ocean voyage which was
a pleasant incident in our wedding tour, except that during a severe
gale encountered by our ship we seemed to have the honey of our bridal
moon somewhat mixed with bile, menacing the stability of our gastric
institutions, and almost shaking the constancy of our purpose to
continue in the flesh any longer.

Arrived at Cuzco, we were struck at once with the similarity of the
ruins to those of Ophir, and our zeal was as fierce, and our appetites
for hieroglyphics as unsatisfied, as ever.

At first we found apparently a large addition to the system of
picture writing in vogue at Ophir, but a few days’ hard work and
brain-splitting comparisons showed us that it was in reality two
distinct systems, and was inscribed upon two systems of architecture as
distinct as the language themselves.

The new element, or as we learned, the new language, was doubtless
that of the aboriginal dwellers in Peru, before the coming of the
Incas, and its study, therefore, nothing to our present purpose.

Ignoring it then we began again to make some progress in deciphering
the writings of the worshipers of the sun. Strangely familiar too
were the ornamental scrolls and vases with which the inner walls of
the temples of worship were decorated. The gold and silver vessels
were seemingly as common in the palaces of Cuzco as are those of the
commonest china with us.

Surrounding these palaces were the ruins of costly and exquisitely
artistic gardens, containing once, no doubt, the most beautiful natural
flowers, and to bridge over the chasm between their ephemeral yearly
stay, art had mingled with the living plants imitations in gold and
silver so perfect in form, and so just in proportion, as to excite
the sense of smell in expectation of the accompanying fragrance, and
deceive the eye and provoke the sense of touch to substantiate the
evidence of the other sense only to expose the clever deception upon
nature.

Spanish historians have recorded the glories of the temple at Cuzco,
dedicated to the worship of the sun, with its image of the sun upon the
inner wall opposite the eastern portal of the temple, where the first
rays of its prototype might kiss into life at morning, and reflect its
dazzling rays throughout the temple flooding it with glory.

It remained for us to unearth the golden image that had figured so
conspicuously in the Spanish revelries and excesses under Pizarro.

A Peruvian legend runs, that during the night following the possession
of Cuzco by the invaders, the cavaliers gave themselves up to unbridled
license and bacchanalian rioting and plundering, securing many rich
trophies of gold and silver from the public places of worship. One of
the troopers had obtained possession of this now famous image of the
sun, a human face with golden rays, in imitation of the sun’s rays,
emanating in all directions from it.

His elation at his sudden good fortune took the form of a desire to
double his store of gold at gaming; so he staked it and lost it.
Half-crazed with grief and strong drink he swore vengeance on his
lucky opponent and stealthily followed him through the darkened street
at midnight, ran him through with his poniard, regained possession
of his treasure, and his comrade’s portion also, and fled. But now
that he had recovered his prize, he was in sore perplexity to know
how to retain it, and escape the wrath of his commander, should his
crime be discovered; for however meritorious it might be to slay an
innocent, defenseless Peruvian, it might be a bad night’s job for him
to deprive Pizarro of one of his adventurous followers when his force
was already so small, and the need of more plunderers so great. At last
he bethought him of a device by which he hoped to escape with both his
head and his golden image.

Having first carefully concealed his booty, and in doing so, as he
found to his sorrow, “builded better than he knew,” he dragged the
lifeless body of his victim to the latticed doorway of one of the
vaults beneath the temple, where a number of the submissive Peruvians
were confined as hostages for the delivering of an immense treasure
promised the cruel Spaniard as the price of their liberty when
captured; the cavaliers being thus able to carry on in a smaller way a
business as diabolical as that of Pizarro toward Atahualpa, the ruling
Inca, whom Pizarro murdered in cold blood after he had paid the ransom
of a room full of gold as high as Atahualpa could reach, according to
the terms of a solemn agreement between the guileless Inca and the
fiendish Spaniard.

The cavalier then slipped his bloody poniard through the bars into
the cell of the prisoners, and then running breathless with haste and
simulated fright to Pizarro, called on him for vengeance against the
treacherous Peruvians, saying that as he and his comrade stood just
outside the bars of the vault where their prisoners were confined,
proposing terms of liberation, one of the Peruvians crept up to the
bars, screened by his mates, and reaching through the lattice, snatched
his own poniard from its scabbard and plunged it into the heart of his
comrade, who chanced at that moment to move a little nearer the door.

Such an outrage could not of course be overlooked by Pizarro, the pious
soldier of the cross, so he promptly ordered that every one of the
prisoners should be burned at the stake forthwith, and our cavalier was
commissioned to carry out the righteous sentence, which he did with
great alacrity, not one of the poor fellows living to see the morning
light.

But whether it is possible that some twinges of remorse could have
entered a heart so cold and pitiless as the cavalier had shown his to
be, and so disturbed his mind as to impair his memory, or whether, as
seems more in keeping with his revealed character of miser, murderer,
and conspirator, his over-anxiety to secrete it safely got the better
of him, will never be known; but certain it is, so the legend goes,
that when Pizarro had accomplished all his nefarious work of ruin and
bloodshed upon a happy and innocent people, and prepared to move his
forces toward the seacoast, that our cavalier could not find the place
where he had hidden the image of the sun, and after searching earnestly
for several hours unsuccessfully, he became frantic, and raved and
routed up and down the street in the region of the great temple,
uttering imprecations too horrible to repeat, and tearing his hair for
very fury.

At last he was seen to take a little powder from his pocket, and in
a few moments his raidings and ravings, his lurid profanity, and his
all-devouring cruelty and greed, were things of the past forever with
him, for he died as the fool dieth, by his own hand.

And to-day the Peruvians say that the spot which he profaned is haunted
by his restless spirit, that at every phase of the moon corresponding
with that of the night when he died, his ghost walks and talks,
searches and gesticulates in vain endeavor to find the lost treasure.
While some venturous spirits declared that they had approached near
enough to the airy being to distinguish the haggard, grief-stricken
features of his distorted countenance, and to plainly mark him in the
act of tearing his hair in impotent ghostly rage that the object of his
search still eluded his grasp and kept the worn and disquieted spirit
ever in a ceaseless round of fruitless wanderings.

Some of the more timorous ones aver that when the wind moans dismally
through the trees and avenues, they can hear his mournful sighs as he
wanders wearily up and down from midnight until dawn begins to flush
the east, and when the tempest rages wildly, they even believe that
they can distinguish the sound of his voice in wild blasphemy, and
blood-curdling oaths borne on the wings of the blast.

Perhaps you and I can understand partly why they never hear his voice
in calm, fair weather; but the traditions and superstitions of these
people are as deeply rooted in their lives as other, and perhaps as
unreasonable ones, dear reader, are inseparably fixed in our beings in
this highly favored land that we all love so well.

A great shout went up from my workmen when, in one of the vaults
beneath the old temple, they unearthed the famous image, perfect yet in
every particular, and wrapped carefully in the tattered remains of a
Spanish cloak.

None of the trophies brought away from Peru as the result of my
labors in antiquarian fields can compare in value with this one in my
estimation, and as I look at its burnished countenance, seeming to
beam forth peace and good will, it typifies to me that hapless people
who perished in such numbers at the hands of the foreign hordes of
adventurers and gold-seekers, while those who were spared were reduced
to straits so pitiable that they had reason to weep, not for their
slaughtered friends, but for themselves, because of the miseries that
had come like a clap of thunder from a serene sky upon their lives.

They were a happy example of a people working and planning in common
for the common good, and their contented, happy national and individual
life shamed the boasted civilization of Europe, so that a Spanish
writer while attempting to describe the condition of comfort, plenty,
and even luxury, of their surroundings, disclaimed the power to make
a comparison that would convey a just idea of the people to his
countrymen at home, from the fact that there was nothing in all the
range of his knowledge to which it was comparable.

But I had a more serious task to perform in Cuzco than merely
trophy-hunting. I had a deep conviction borne in upon my mind that here
was the missing link in the chain of evidence that was to answer the
question so often asked, but never heretofore answered in the world.
What was the fate of the ten tribes, and in what far off land have they
found a home to become changed by climatic adoption, and the great law
of evolution that forbids stagnation in nature, and decrees that man
shall progress either forward or backward?

While humbly mindful of my human weakness, I yet take a very human
pride in the fact that it was reserved for Lena and myself, of all the
millions of mortals who have trodden this earth in the centuries that
are already numbered by decades since the Babylonian captivity, to
answer that question intelligently and finally.

A story more fascinating than those of Arabian Nights or fairies, the
tale of real beings of flesh and blood with all our own ambitions and
hopes and desires is here written legibly and unmistakably when once
the tangled thread of narrative is unwound.

The story of the engrafting of the Inca scion upon the Peruvian stock,
under circumstances that proved the identity of the Incas as a remnant
of the people of Ophir, is very complete and satisfactory.

The coming of the first Inca among the people of Peru with his golden
wedge and mysterious religion, which he claimed to have received
directly from heaven, and to have come himself directly from the sun,
is clearly explained by the picture writings of Ophir and Peru.

The wedge was an ever present symbol about the altars and temples
in Mexico, until it became gradually an object of worship among the
Hebrews and Elimites alike. Should circumstances permit, perhaps I
shall some day write the sequel to the story of Ophir, and detail the
circumstances under which Corinthia’s kingdom was rent asunder after
her reign was finished, and how all that were left of the Israelites
wandered to the southward, and amalgamated with the Peruvians, and
again grew to be powerful and prosperous, only to be swallowed by
the bloodthirsty Spaniards. The happy circles of friends that were
broken and shattered by avarice, and the mournfully romantic story
of Atahualpa, the reigning Inca when Pizarro came, and the grief and
despair of his young sweetheart who was bereaved, and who narrowly
escaped a fate worse than bereavement or death.

But now we must turn our faces homeward again, for we have work to
do for humanity there. Richly laden with the trophies of our sojourn
among the moldering ruins of the past, we re-embark for our own shores
and, favored by wind and tide, we stand in due time upon our native
soil once more, and in a few hours’ travel overland we annihilate the
stretch of miles that lies between us and home.

The first familiar face to greet us as we alight from the comfortable
parlor on wheels, is that of our picturesque disciple of the red shirt,
Abner, who greets us with his old hearty good will and makes us feel
that it is good to be among friends again. He is quickly followed by my
revered uncle and Lena’s parents, who escort us in triumph to our own
quarters. Age seemed to have toyed with our relatives very gently, and
as for Abner, he appeared still to be engaged in the pleasant task of
growing younger, and in the art of enjoying himself every hour of the
day.

Leaving our friends to enjoy the calm afternoon of life, with reason
sitting serenely enthroned to guide their bark to the haven, and the
fiercer passions that warp human judgment cooled, and the prejudices
of youth somewhat modified by universal benevolence born of experience
among men, we soon begin active preparations for carrying out our great
industrial co-operative plan to stimulate honest industry, and curb, in
some measure, the tendency of wealth to encroach upon the sacred rights
of poverty, and relieve poverty from the necessity of truckling to
wealth.

To our surprise and gratification we learned on our return that several
of the wealthiest manufacturers of Chicago and New York had expressed a
desire to adopt our plan extensively, and only awaited our experiment
to prove its practicability. We now have our plan in operation; it has
been thoroughly tested, and it has been successful beyond our highest
hopes.

Not only that, but it is being adopted all over our country, and we
hope to live to see a time when it will be in universal use throughout
the world. It has gone far toward furnishing a solution of the
difficult problem of harmonizing labor and capital; and, as Abner and
I smoke our evening cigar together, we feel that we toiled in the
mountains, ventured amid the perils of Indian warfare, and tempted the
dangerous current not wholly in vain.


THE END.




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

  - Clear typos and wrong punctuation were corrected.

  - New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
  public domain.

  - Some inconsistent hyphenated words have been normalized.

  - Text between _underscores_ represents italics.


*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLD OF OPHIR ***


    

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.


START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
    other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
    whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
    of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
    at www.gutenberg.org. If you
    are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
    of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
  
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:

    • You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
        the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
        you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
        to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
        agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
        Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
        within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
        legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
        payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
        Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
        Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
        Literary Archive Foundation.”
    
    • You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
        you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
        does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
        License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
        copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
        all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
        works.
    
    • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
        any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
        electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
        receipt of the work.
    
    • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
        distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
    

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™

Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.