Between him and his object there now intervened but fifty thousand dollars. And fifty thousand dollars was not an unlimited sum of money.

XXIV

BILLY STARTS IN ON HIS FIFTY THOUSAND

Billy was gone almost a month.

During that interim Lafond had absolutely nothing to do but wait, for his affairs, both domestic and foreign, were doing well.

"A fool for luck, a fool for luck," he got into the habit of saying to himself, but with somewhat of a congratulatory ring to it, as though he were a little inclined to attribute fortune's favors to that lady's appreciation of his shrewdness. If luck had not favored him, he would have had to accomplish the same results himself. It was a labor-saving device. Nevertheless, as time went on, the strong underlying mysticism in his nature came to make of this luck of his a fetish of no small power. Lafond went about in a continual state of elation. Things were coming his way. Nothing could stop them. They were fore-ordained.

All he had to do was to stay awake so as to take advantage of the circ.u.mstances which chance so nicely arranged for him. He had such confidence in the fortuitous moment that he almost ceased to plan ahead, sure that the crisis would bring its own solution.

Fifty thousand dollars stood between Billy's credit and Billy's downfall. Lafond had those fifty thousand dollars to get rid of. The sum was not great, but neither was it small; and to induce another to spend fifty thousand, in a few months, without any encouraging return, might have seemed, to an ordinary man, a project worthy of careful foresight. Not so Lafond. "A fool for luck," he repeated and awaited Billy's reappearance.

There was Molly's affair with Cheyenne Harry, for instance. What could be better? Lafond had known Mortimer by reputation for a great many years. He was acquainted with the details of the transaction of Mulberry Gulch, and how he and a man named Dutch Pete had swindled all Custer City; he knew too of Harry's various wild escapades in the early Indian skirmishes--on both sides some men said; of his wonderful fort.i.tude in enduring hardship, and his equally wonderful periods of relaxation when back again in the towns; and he knew, best of all from his point of view, Harry's reputation as a man among women. Since this flirtation had lasted so long, to Lafond's mind it must already have pa.s.sed the limits. The natural sequence would be followed out. In time Cheyenne Harry would have a mistress the more.

In other words, without the slightest trouble or encouragement on his part, the girl would be debauched. Then, through artfully colored vague hints, he would let slip the real facts of her breeding. He was student enough of character to know that she would gnaw her heart out with a pa.s.sionate remorse, the more intense because of that very innate purity of instinct which now made Harry's task a difficult one. Lafond had absolutely nothing to do but congratulate himself, smoke his pipe, and spend long hours with his friend the entomologist.

After the first flutter over the Easterners' visit had subsided, the camp settled back with wonderful celerity into its accustomed habits.

At first it expected Billy's reappearance within a few days. The return was postponed to the end of the week. The end of the week gave Copper Creek to understand that it would have to wait a short time longer. Then came another postponement. And so on, until the little community had taken up its usual prospecting, work o' day, play o'

night existence, and the return of Billy was looked upon as an inevitable event, but hazily in the future, not imminent enough immoderately to disturb the current of men's thoughts.

Then all at once Billy was among them, splendid, powerful, energetic, in a hurry, whirling the stagnant waters this way and that, until the spirit of enterprise awoke within them, and a nervous atmosphere of progress replaced the old monotony.

Billy had credited to him fifty thousand dollars; Billy sported a new hat and new clothes; Billy had vast enterprises to accomplish before the ground froze up; Billy drew a salary; Billy possessed an engraved certificate of shares, which he displayed; Billy had a new watch; Billy was looking for men; Billy was deep in complicated plans which required above all things haste, haste, haste; until the narrow little canon rang with the name of Billy, which was esteemed great in the land.

The new superintendent entered at once into the discharge of his duties. His first care was to sink the shafts mentioned at the first informal meeting in his own shack. There were ten claims, on which eleven shafts were planned. The very evening of his return, eleven of the handiest prospectors in the camp were summoned to Billy's cabin, where they found awaiting their signatures eleven contracts to sink on the various claims a specific number of feet at a specified price.

Next morning they looked the ground over. Next noon they signed. Next afternoon they hired two helpers each, bought powder and fuse, and sharpened drills. The day after, thirty-five men were busily at work on the new company's group of claims. It looked like business.

The same noon, Billy's effects began to come in from the East. He had received a liberal advance on the account of his salary, and the results were various. Among them were new saddles, a new buckboard, a new rifle, silver-mounted harness, and a quant.i.ty of clothes of rather loud pattern. But most marvellous was a clean-limbed, deep-chested, slender running horse, accompanied by a sawed-off English groom. Billy spent a good share of the next week with this individual, constructing a corral of small timber in which the new horse might roll about. Each morning the groom led the animal, astonishingly hooded, blanketed, and leather-banded, up and down the hundred yards or so of level road which was all that strip of rugged country offered fit for such delicate hoofs and fine limbs. The beast always progressed teetering a little sideways, nearly dragging the groom from his feet. The camp speculated that Billy had designs on the next great prairie "fair" in the spring, but the truth is the Westerner had little idea of what his designs were. He had been pleased with the horse, and had bought it, without bestowing a thought on expediency. After the novelty of possessing so thoroughbred a creature had somewhat worn away, he confessed to himself a slight bewilderment as to what to do with it.

Other interests claimed his attention now. The work on the mines themselves no longer needed his care. After the hundred feet of shaft had been quite finished and timbered, he would inspect them in his official capacity. If the job came up to specifications, he would sign its acceptance; if it did not, the contractor would have to remedy the defect. In the meantime he had on hand the building of the camp itself, for which he had already planned largely.

Lafond climbed the gulch and the knoll, after activity had been well under way for about a week. He found Billy paying the freight-bills on several loads of heavy red-painted machinery, while the teamsters spat and swore just outside the little shack, which he now used as an office. Billy was signing slips from his new check book. Until he should have finished, Lafond strolled about examining the grounds.

Around the mouths of the shafts themselves the debris had acc.u.mulated astoundingly, showing that the contractors too had been industrious, but Lafond paid little attention to them. He was more interested in the clearing, levelling, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and digging which seemed to indicate the undertaking of rather extensive works above ground. Perhaps a dozen men were at work. Some were engaged in "trueing" the four great foundation beams of what was evidently to be a large building. Others squared smaller timbers near at hand. The remainder were measuring and indicating with a shovel the outlines of other and less pretentious structures. In a moment Billy came out ready to dissertate at length.

"That thar is the boardin' house," he explained, "I thought at first I'd only make her big enough for thirty, 'cause that's as big a gang as I starts with; but then I figgers it out, an' it won't be long before I takes on more, so I thinks it jest as well to start where I ends. So she's goin' to accommodate sixty, two-story, you know. Then yere's the cookee's shack. I aims to have th' kitchen separate yere--don't like that Prairie Dog game nohow." (The "Prairie Dog" was the hotel; and the "game" was the inclusion of the kitchen and the dining-room in the same apartment.) "Then yere's to be the office. I uses my old shack for an office now. I aims to have three sleepin'-rooms, an' a dinin'-room and kitchen."

"What for?" asked Lafond, a little puzzled.

"For me."

"For----?"

"I don't aim to eat with the men. And over yander 'll be th' stables; and thar th' blacksmith's shop; and then the powder house is on th'

other side of the gulch. The chicken house is beyond th' blacksmith's shop."

"The what?" asked Mike.

"The chicken house."

"Oh," said Mike.

"I ain't got the ground all broke yet," pursued Billy; "but the plans is all ready, and it ain't takin' long when once we git started. The stuff fer th' mill is comin' along slow," he observed, pointing to the red-painted machinery; "but I ain't aimin' to put her up till nex'

spring. Can't do much with her till I gets th' shafts sunk."

"No," agreed Lafond.

"But I got th' plans fer that too. Come on in an' I shows them to you."

He led the way into the little shack, and began to rummage in a valise full of papers. Lafond found the place in a litter of confusion.

Scattered about in the wildest disorder were clothes, weapons, saddles, harness, knick-knacks and mining tools. Among the latter the half-breed noticed the sections of a pump--an expensive machine used only after a shaft has penetrated below the water level, but which Billy had already purchased. Lying half open among the dusty quartz specimens, empty ink bottles, rusty pens and old pipes, which c.u.mbered the table, Mike perceived a large wooden box.

"What's this?" he asked.

Billy looked up red-faced from his search.

"That?" he replied. "Oh, that's a stamper," and dived back into the valise.

Lafond drew the box toward him. He found it to contain a vast quant.i.ty of rubber types of all sizes and styles, figures, ornaments and ornamental rulings. The box itself was perhaps some thirty inches square. It was a most elaborate outfit, whose use is confined almost entirely to large department stores where there is much marking of prices.

Billy now stood upright, having found his roll of plans.

"What did you say this is?" asked Lafond again.

"A stamper."

"What do you do with it?"

"You sticks the types in this rule this way." Billy took out the rule and some of the types, fumbled unskilfully with them for a moment, and threw them impatiently down. "Anyway, they goes in; and then that keeps them in a straight line."

"Yes," persisted Lafond, "but what's it for?"

"Why, to stamp things with, of course."

"What things?"

Billy hadn't thought of that.

But his discomfiture was only momentary. He spread the plans out on the rapidly cleared table, and discoursed concerning them. Lafond lent an attentive ear, but said little. Billy's ideas were comprehensive.

They included every adjunct of use or expediency which the prospector remembered to have seen in any of the numerous successful camps which had fallen under his observation. In fact, when finished, the external Great Snake would be a composite of the desirable features of many other camps, including the great "Homestake" itself. It was evident that before Billy's mind's eye, the Great Snake was already as prosperous and as well ent.i.tled to its graces of mining luxury as any of the older enterprises. After a little appeared a man who had some horses to sell, so Lafond took his leave and retraced his steps to town. Near the foot of the knoll he happened across still further evidence of Billy's wandering activity in the shape of an ivory-handled clasp knife of five-inch blade. Mike remembered that Billy had shown it about in the Little Nugget the evening before as another example of the Easterners' generosity; and he remembered further the Westerner's delighted laugh over the inscription, "William Knapp."

"Don't know myself that way," he had cried. "I clean forgets that 'Billy' does stand for 'William.'"

Lafond's first impulse was to reclimb the knoll for the purpose of returning his find to its owner, but on second thoughts it hardly seemed worth the trouble. He slipped it into the side pocket of his canvas coat, where, of course, he speedily forgot all about it.