The Grand Reunion

by Roy Norton

 

The Grand Reunion

By Roy Norton

WITH seventy years of life, well and cleanly spent, behind them, Abner and Ezra were “Lookin' for a job.” Not whiningly, or with a hard-luck story, but with cheerfulness and a childlike trust that, inasmuch as their whole lives had been honest and true, the way would not be found closed in their hour of need.

And it was this trust that led them across ten miles of timber-clad divide-a very long way from home for them—to Mariposa Creek, of which Hugh McCarthy, their old friend, was almost sole owner, and in his way a king. Somewhat out of breath, they slowly climbed the trail to the riven bank whereon McCarthy stood.

McCarthy, a stocky giant with iron-gray hair, was contentedly watching the work below. The years had gone well with him. Time, knowing his kindly heart, had dealt nothing but caresses. The Ahpalino, whereon for many years he had neighbored with the two old partners, had yielded well, and now for five years this new find had added wealth and promise.

Twenty men worked in the cut below, directing great streams of water that in the sunlight showed as stream of molten silver, smiting with terrific force the red banks, uprooting stumps, tossing boulders, and sending muddy torrents through sluices which caught and held the heavy gold.

A voice, ringing with the thin sweetness of an aged bell, high pitched, broke in upon McCarthy's reverie:

“Howdy, Hugh! We're lookin' for a job.”

Before its echo had begun, another voice, in equal pitch of plaintiveness, reiterated: “Yes, we're lookin' for a job.”

McCarthy, startled, pivoted on the heel of his rubber boot, and in astonishment looked at the two old men who, bearded, dressed, and statured alike, had addressed him. His dark eyes twinkled from beneath his gray thatch of eyebrows, and his hands came from his pockets to grasp theirs, which they simultaneously proffered.

Abner and Ezry, as I'm livin',” he said, his face melting into a great smile; “and lookin' for a job! Well, you've got it.”

That was about all that was said. The partners, like automatons pulled by the same string, took off their coats, carefully folded and laid them on the bank. Then they rolled their shirt-sleeves to the elbow, took prodigious chews of tobacco, started their jaws and white beards to work, and in five minutes were “hard at it.”

The work was very old to them, because in their thirty-five years of partnership this had most always been their lot. True, it was one of the first times in all their lives wherein they had worked for wages and drawn pay for the toil of their hands. Most would have felt, in commencing life all over again at seventy years, that fate had dealt harshly, but not so with them. To them the hills and forests were home, the good God in heaven a very close friend, and to work was natural.

In this same simple way they had always worked, or passed their days on desert and plain, in the mountain's depths or the forest's shelter; had fought side by side when in brave hearts lay their only hope; had loved the same woman when love came to them; had together buried and sorrowed over her when death interposed, and now that fortune had turned her face were glad to be together in toil, where they could share each other's weariness.

It isn't for any one to know how bitterly they must have suffered in leaving the quiet little cabin on the Ahpalino, with its truck path, its flowers, and the little cross on the hill beneath which rested their dead. Even the worked-out ground, which for more than twenty years had held them to the only home they had ever known, must have been very dear, and the outer world very cold.

Hugh, who better than any one knew their joys and sorrows, was now wealthy, and would have gladly given them dust enough to pave with ease all the remaining days of their lives; but he understood them too well for that. Knew that such an offer would be sturdily declined.

Now, as he stood on the bank above and watched them steadily handling their sluice-forks and dumping smaller rubbish from the sluices, he was perplexed. He knew that the lightest work he had to give was all too heavy. At seventy the heart may be young and the toil-worn hands willing, but youth's store of strength is gone.

That day witnessed McCarthy's first falsehood, and he loved the truth. After he had made an excuse that they might quit work earlier, knowing how tired they must be, he told them there wasn't room for them to sleep in the mess-house, so had cots placed for them in his own cabin. It was pretty bold, because there were ten empty bunks. It only proved, though, that Hugh was planning other arrangements, and when he planned, as his foreman once said: “Something always happened.”

After supper they all sat out in front of the cabin, where, when the day's work with the big hydraulics was done, everything seemed strangely quiet. None of these three was of the garrulous kind, so there wasn't much said. They watched the stars come out, heard the men in the mess-house in roaring chorus sing the same old songs of the border that they themselves had sung fifty years before, and smoked.

“It's gittin' real late, Hugh,” said Abner, knocking a golden shower from the end of the bench.

“Yes,” piped Ezra's voice in the same high treble, “it's gittin' real late.”

McCarthy wanted them to stay longer. Said he wanted company, but, as no one had said anything for an hour, his ideas of companionship must have been of the quiet sort.

“No, Hugh,” came Abner's voice in answer. “It's most nine o'clock, and we're just workin' men now.”

“Yes, just workin' men now,” came the echo.

They all arose and turned toward the cabin door. It was quite dark, and they couldn't see each other very plainly, so it was less embarrassing to say things from the heart. That is probably the reason why Abner, in his fine old way, said tremulously, as if offering thanks was very hard work:

“Hugh, me and Ezry is gittin' a trifle old, p'raps, to do as much work as some men. We're mighty thankful to the Lord and you, and feels we must do our share. We decided to-day you'd better call us an hour earlier than the others, because them that can't work as fast as some must work longer.”

“Yes, must work longer,” repeated Ezra.

“And we want to tell you, Hugh, that we think you're mighty good to us to try to make us feel at home, because it's hard to get used to the new things when you think so much of the old.”

That was the time when Ezra didn't answer, but Hugh heard a big gulp in the darkness, and knew that these two old chaps were wiping their eyes when they went inside, all because they were homesick as two boys, and bubbling over with gratitude for what, after all, was only a little kindness and understanding. Maybe Hugh had kind of a clutch in his own throat, so couldn't say anything, but just kept quiet.

So they went to work earlier than the other men. This caused a fellow—one of those big, hulking chaps—to poke fun at them. There aren't many ever saw McCarthy angry, because he knows how to keep his temper, but this fellow had a chance. Hugh had come along unobserved. There were little forks of fire in his eyes when he seized the joker by the throat and shook him as if he were six inches instead of six feet high.

“They'll hold their jobs longer than you,” he said, as he dropped the man in a heap. “You're fired! Now hike!”

There were no more jokes at the partners' expense, and the man wasn't fired, after all, because Abner and Ezra talked Hugh out of it. And pretty soon no one wanted to hurt the partners' feelings, because to know them was to love them.

Now, the real secret of their working at all was that Hugh was finding a way to help them out without making them feel bad. He owned a claim above, and without any one knowing what it was for, built on it the finest cabin that ever went up on the Mariposa. It's there yet.

It had four rooms, and fine floors, and a window in each room. Greatest of all, it had real, beautiful store furniture, brought in with a heap of trouble from the nearest railway-station. But Hugh didn't mind. He never did things by halves. He even went so far as to have flowers—the old-style kind—planted around the doorway, and was as happy as a boy while watching the work.

One afternoon he took Ezra and Abner up there. They stood around awkwardly, and admired all this magnificence, and kept repeating: “It's a mighty fine place, a mighty fine place, and must of cost a pile of dust.”

“Boys,” Hugh said—they were always “boys” together—“Boys, here's a deed for this claim and cabin. It's all yours. Now we're neighbors again, just as we used to be on the Ahpalino; so we'll call this claim The Grand Reunion.”

Abner and Ezra didn't want to take it, but Hugh explained that probably the claim wouldn't pay more than day wages, and therefore the house was really the only present he was giving them. Then they all had supper together, and that ended the partners' “job.”

As they watched Hugh go down the trail that night he was so happy he tried to sing, but he couldn't sing much. Hugh was an awful bad singer!

Then they took their boots off outside, for fear of spoiling the carpet, and gingerly went in.

Well, the partners went to work on their new ground, cut their trenches, and turned the water through the new pipes and giant which Hugh had “loaned” them. And they lived in their new house with all its store furniture, but they really weren't as happy as they apparently should have been.

They took care of the flowers, and did all those little chores they had been in the habit of doing, but the fact was that when dusk dropped down and they sat together on the little bench they had made outside the door, they didn't have much to say. Each one was homesick for the old log cabin away over across the divide, the home they had known for nearly thirty years, and for the little wooden cross on the hillside.

But they were so considerate of each other that neither would mention the matter; first because he didn't want to wound his partner, and second because he didn't want to appear childish or ungrateful. True, the Mariposa murmured its way in a cañon, with the kind of trees on the edges, and big, high, solemn hills back of it all; but the brook didn't sing the same songs, and the cañon didn't have the same sky-line, and the trees were different shaped, and the hills unfamiliar. All nature seemed to look at them and say: “What are you two old fellows doing over here, when you really belong in Ahpalino gulch?” And for the life of them they couldn't answer.

Again, a big cabin, and store furniture, and a carpet were all very nice—much nicer than a one-roomed old shack, with a hewn floor and home-made furniture and a double bunk; but with them always was the sense of strangeness. They felt ill at ease with all this, and constantly afraid of breaking “some of the fixin's.”

Hugh used to come up to see them quite often. It would be just about dusk when they would see something lumbering up the trail for all the world like a big black bear, only this one smoked a pipe. He would sit down by them on a chair, which they always politely brought, and then the three of them would watch the stars come out.

Sometimes they would sit a whole hour in one of these visits without saying a word. All you would hear beside the croon of the Mariposa below and the sighing of the big trees above, would be the “puff-puff” of the pipes or the scratching of a match. Then Hugh would say: “Good night, boys,” and the two old voices, so sweetly tuned by fine old age, would say in unison: “Good night, Hugh. Lord bless and keep you.” Be sure they never forgot that!

Try as he would, McCarthy couldn't quite make out what was the matter with the two old partners. He knew there was something that kept them from being quite as happy as they once were. So he decided The Grand Reunion wasn't paying much, after all. He asked them one night, and found it was only doing fairly well. Just a little better than day wages.

Salting a claim is about the meanest thing a man can do in a mining country. It's a sneak's work. But Hugh, much as he hated it, decided there was but one way, and that was to turn “salter.”

One night when it rained, and the skies were black, and the big trees dripping water, a big, burly man in rubber boots and rubber coat worked over the sluice-boxes on The Grand Reunion. He was very methodical, because he knew how it must be done, and that lack of care would show the partners that something was wrong.

It took a long time, out there in the rain and the darkness. He went from riffle to riffle, stooped over until, in the flashes, he looked like a black boulder; and wherever he went the dust was added in a little thin trail of gold that crept in a tiny stream seeking freedom from the heavy buckskin “poke” he carried.

That was only part of his work. With an idle shovel he made trip after trip distributing dirt along the string of sluices. After that he let the water run very gently, so as to smooth out all trace. It seemed almost as though the Lord was in the conspiracy with him, because through it all the rain fell so heavily that it washed away the prints of his feet; but he felt like a thief, just the same.

“It's the first time I ever salted a claim,” he said to himself, with half a grin, as he slouched away down the gulch, his rubber boots singing a little “squich-squich-squich” with each step he took.

“But I reckon there's enough pay in the boxes now to make Abner and Ezra contented.”

It had been repugnant to him, this underhanded work, but he couldn't give them anything outright.

The next evening Hugh made the partners a visit, but they didn't have anything to say, not having “cleaned up” the sluices. In those days it wasn't customary in small pay-diggings to lift the riffles every night. Civilization hadn't arrived to make daily clean-ups and locks on windows and doors necessary.

On the following evening McCarthy was tired, and went to his own cabin early. He was just filling his pipe when he heard a noise at the door. He turned round, and there stood Abner and Ezra looking happier than he had ever seen them. They were all smiles, and had changed their clothing to come down, showing it to be a gala occasion. Had on clean overalls and clean shirts, all made of blue denim and faded to whiteness by washing in the creek. No stray spots of clay in their white beards or on their smooth-shaven cheeks.

“Hugh,” said Ezra, “we got great news for you.”

“Yes—got great news,” said Abner.

“Lookie here,” they said together exultantly, as though one voice were speaking, and laid on McCarthy's table a heavy buckskin bag of still damp dust.

Hugh tried to look astonished, and kept saying: “Well, I'm mighty glad of it—mighty glad!” Then, still trying to show great surprise, tested its weight in his hands, and asked: “How much?”

“A hunderd and sixty ounces—nigh on to three thousand dollars' worth,” the partners yelled jubilantly, in high quavers.

“Whe-e-ew!” whistled McCarthy, in simulated astonishment.

Then the two old men fidgeted a little, and stood awkwardly, looking at Hugh and each other. Neither wanted to speak.

Abner broke silence. “We brung it down because we think it's too much, Hugh, and ought to belong to you.”

“Yes, belongs to you,” said Ezra, with many shakes of his white beard.

McCarthy refused strenuously, without giving them time to reply. Roughly told them to “sit down and wait for grub,” and ended by seizing his old white hat and bolting on the excuse that he had to watch his men clean up.

“Beats the devil,” he muttered, as he went over the trail to the cut. “Can't do anything for 'em! Here I've gone and turned crooked for the first time in my life to help 'em, and I'll hanged if they don't come luggin' back all the dust I took up there, and a few more ounces with it. Humph!”

After supper, when darkness came and they had smoked, Abner and Ezra cleared their throat

“Hugh,” Ezra said from the darkness, quietly but with great determination, “me and Abner have got somethin' more to say to you. It's kind of hard work, because we ain't the unappreciative sort.” He hesitated, as if seeking words, then hurried on. “We both knows you've done your damdest, and thar ain't been a night since we came that we ain't looked into each other's eyes, then got down by them nice new beds, and said: 'Dear Lord! do watch over that young feller; because, Lord, excuse us for remindin' You of it, but he's been mighty good to us.”

McCarthy twisted in his seat while Abner reiterated the last sentence. Then Ezra continued:

“When you gave The Grand Reunion to us, you thought it was jest a day-wage claim, and we was mighty glad to get it. You see, you didn't know it was so rich, and we didn't, either. Now it's turned out to be wuth so much more'n you or we thought, we've come to give it back, together with its only big clean-up.”

This was the last blow. McCarthy didn't usually swear, but this time he did a fair job—that is, for a really religious man. After that he argued. Told them he didn't think the claim was much good, and that all that had happened was that they had struck a little pocket.

They almost parted bad friends. McCarthy angry because they wouldn't keep the clean-up and the claim, and they because he wouldn't take it back. And really the truth of it was, you see, that neither understood what the other wanted most.

Then Hugh got to thinking maybe he had talked too sharply when he called them a pair of “cantankerous old fools,” and decided he would go up through the darkness, the trail being fairly well worn, and apologize. As he was coming round the corner of the cabin he heard them talking, and stopped.

“We jest can't explain,” Abner was saying very gently. “But he don't know how bad I feel, and how bad I know you feel, Ezry. This is a wonderful cabin, and it's a mighty rich claim; but it ain't right for us to keep it, and, besides—besides, it ain't home, somehow.”

At last McCarthy understood.

“I've falsified, salted a claim, and now I'm gettin' to be an eavesdropper,” he muttered, as he slipped quietly away in the darkness. “If these two old cusses don't get off my mind, the Lord knows what other sneakin' sort of a crime I'll be committin' next.”

There were three sleepless ones on Mariposa Creek that night, and all because they wanted to find a way to make it easier for each other.

McCarthy found the way. Bright and early next morning he was at their door. They were washing the dishes, Ezra doing the drying with an old salt sack, while Abner, with a piece of rubber blanket tied round him for an apron, was loudly splashing the soap and water, and both were smoking industriously.

“Well, boys,” said McCarthy, carefully letting his bulk settle down on a spindly-legged, yellow-plush covered hair which he dragged into the kitchen with him. “I guess you're right. This is a mighty rich claim, and no mistake

He wadded some freshly cut tobacco in the palm of his hand, while both the partners said: “Yes, Hugh, it's mighty rich.”

“Now, we all got to be fair and honest with each other, ain't we? Well, I thought it was no good till you proved it up. If you went away I'd have the cabin left, and I've come to buy you out. I'll give you three thousand for The Grand Reunion back, and you keep the last clean-up.”

That was “a powerful sight” of money, and Hugh had to fairly bully them into taking it. They didn't want it because they didn't think it fair, although it was enough to make them independent, with what little they could take from the Ahpalino and what they had saved, for the rest of their lives.

And so the Mariposa knew them no more but the partners don't know to his day that The Grand Reunion has never been considered worth working, and that the cabin built with such care is sealed with cobwebs.

The partners made two little packs of the things brought with them when they came, shook hands with and bade a courteous good-by to every man on Hugh's claim, and laboriously climbed the other side of the gulch to the crest of the divide, where twenty men below spied them, and gave a cheer that sounded out its farewell above the roar of the waters. They waved their hands and disappeared.

It was night when they came to that other little cabin, which from its loneliness and desertion greeted them in unchanged homeliness. Save for the dust and the creaking voice of its stiffened hinges, it was all the same. The time-worn stools with their shiny faces, the bunks with their mats of fir boughs, and the wheezy little stove with its long-dead ashes. They groped for the kindling stick, which was where they had left it those many months ago; found the candles on the shelf as of old, and prepared their evening meal.

Then, when the moon came up through the same gap in the hillside, where for so many years they had watched it come before, and stared at them with a smile of welcome, they climbed the hill. Climbed up to where the flowers were now running in unkempt wildness, and with trembling hands patted the weather-beaten cross above the grave of the only woman they had ever claimed as their own.

They looked out across the great gulch, with its splendid sentinel trees silhouetted against the glory of the night, over the singing stream which threw silver sparks at the moon, and then at the homely little cabin, with its shaft of light streaming through a long-unused window.

With a great sigh of untold thankfulness and content they murmured to each other, and to the night: “It all looks jest like it uster. Yes, jest like it uster.”

They were back with their hills, their cabin, their flowers, and their cross, where the God they knew seemed a little closer than anywhere else in all the wide, wide world.