Through the Snows

ES, sir, I reckon there never was a finer man borned in this whole world than Mister Heald,” declared Old Harmless to the partners, David and Goliath, when feeling that they had neglected him for four weeks they made a visit to his cabin. “And, although I wa'n't exactly hankerin' for company, seein' as how I got that fine phonygraft and all them nice records you boys bought me, I'm right thankful to the Lord Almighty and you for persuadin' of me to let him build a addition on to my shack. And ain't she some palace? Look at her!”

The patriarch swung his head with its massive mane of white hair and framing of white beard, and waved with his pipestem at the “Palace.” To him it doubtless seemed that; for it was the most pretentious and commodious log cabin in all that unfrequented wilderness of the Big Divide. It had features that “Uncle Bill” Harmon had never seen before, such as a partitioned bathroom with a commodious porcelain tub; a lean-to kitchen with a real iron range, and an adjoining extension where, when Mr. Heald ran away from civilization and came to rest, fish, or hunt, a Chinese cook was installed.

It had real rugs on its floors, a real fire-place and what Uncle Bill called “real store-boughten funnyture.” It had a veranda along two sides with a real floor and real rustic balustrade, and it was so large that two or three hammocks could have been slung in it. Inside, also were more books than Uncle Bill had ever before seen outside a bookshop—whole shelves of them. “Clar' ter goodness,” he said. 'Don't see how a man can find time ter read all them. Me? I've got along with my old Bible for more'n fifty years, an—damn it, they ain't nobody called me a fool yet and got away with it! No, siree! And look at them fancy rifles and guns of hisn. I've seen him cuddle 'em and nuss 'em, as if they was his own flesh and blood. Thinks the world of 'em, I reckon—maybe more'n he does of his books.”

But on one point he stood firm, that nobody was permitted to deride either Heald or any of his belongings, because, after but one summer they had spent together, Old Harmless had elevated Heald upon a pedestal and was as proud of him as if he were his own son.

“That there boy,” he said, reckless of the fact that Heald, the financier, was nearly sixty years of age, “has just got to have his fling. And I never seen a kid yet that didn't blow in his money on somethin' or another. Talk ter him? I've spent hours tryin' to get him ter save up; but all he ever does is ter grin and say 'Goin' ter, some time, Uncle Bill; but just now let me kind of throw my heels my own way.' When he left he sys, 'Uncle Bill, you better move into my side of the cabin and live when I ain't here, just ter look after things and so's youll be more cumfatable.' ”

The old man relighted his pipe and chuckled:

“Says I to him, 'Cumfatable, hell! I'll look after them things of yourn all right, son, but I reckon a cabin that's been hame to me for more'n fifty year is good enough for me ter stay in yet. And as far as that there fancy bathtub of yourn is consarned, I've washed my hide in the Stream down there whenever I though it was dirty enough ter need it, for more'n fifty year—even in winter when I had ter bust the ice! And if I do say it myself, I reckon it's a better bathtub than yourn, because the water keeps clean all the time. Anyhow, it's been good enough for me and all my birds outdoors here ter wash in.”

Old Harmless stopped his kindly drawl and shook his head, and for the hundredth time voiced an apology.

“I reckon you boys must have thought I was a cantankerous old cuss when I hung fire so long about lettin' Mister Heald come up and build himself what he calls his den here in my gulch, and if it hadn't been for your pesterin' me so long and havin' been so all-fired good ter me, I don't think I'd have done it. You see it's because I didn't like this gulch of mine, that I diskivered gold in and saw a camp grow in and then die away, ter be mucked about by anybody.

“But I ain't sorry now that I give in ter you. Heald's an awful lot of company ter me, and minds what I tell him, too! Never catches no more trout than we kin eat, never shoots as much as a quail or a partridge in my gulch, and, by crackey, he likes my birds most as well as I do myself! And they like him. He's a powerful sight of company for me, too, because you boys is so busy, and I don't blame you for not wantin' ter walk the five mile across the Divide very often. Nope, that boy ain't hurt my gulch none at all.”

The partners smiled, knowing that it was Heald that owned the gulch and all its bordering lands, and that, entirely ignorant of that ownership, Old Harmless in reality was merely a squatter on the financier's land, and that it was Heald's determination that he should be permitted to reside there, unmolested, considering himself a landed proprietor, and the owner of the gulch he had discovered in the “'fifties,” until his life came to an end. They knew of the rugged financier's affection for the old patriarch, for Heald himself had told them, laughing at the old man's sturdy innocence, his great love for the gulch and all living things therein.

“Uncle Bill Harmon—Old Harmless, as they call him—is too fine and clean and rare to be annoyed by anything or anybody on this earth and—what's more, he shan't be, if I can help it. I can afford to protect him, and, by jingoes, I will!” Thus had Heald declared his determination when they had last seen him, as he was on his way out to the busy world from which he came. “I want you fellows to look after him, for me. I can't get him to accept anything that will make life easier for him—not so much as a sack of flour! Independent old cuss he is, and no cadger. I like him for it. He's—he's sort of adopted me for a son, I think, and so I'm adopting him.

“I suppose there are very few men in the world who have ever really loved me. He does. It's genuine and honest love. No question about it. And I'd be a dirty dog if I didn't appreciate it. Look after him as if he were a mine of pure gold, for he is all of that and more. There are very few men such as Uncle Bill in this world. He believes, honestly and completely, that the Lord God Almighty is his partner. I'm not certain but that it's true. I can't let a faith like that die for lack of help or attention.”

It was in the fall season when Heald reluctantly went away, annoyed because some of his numerous projects demanded his personal attention; and to Goliath, who accompanied him to the main road where he could get conveyance, he voiced his regret.

“I had made up my mind to stay up there with Uncle Bill until the open season came on, when I could take to the hills and get a deer or two. I promised myself that. And now I've got to pull out again. But you can bet on this, Goliath, that, if I can, I shall be back with the snowfall. So long!”

Goliath recalled this when the first snowflakes fell and told Old Harmless; but the patriarch of the hills shook his head.

“Nope, I shan't have that young feller with me ag'in before summer. I reckon he's an awful busy man when he's on ter his job. You'd orter see the batch of mail me and him gits when he's here. Why, do you know, they's days when me and him gits as many as twenty letters all in one batch. I uster count 'em when I tuk 'em outen the box over on the road.

“Me and him uster take turns goin' over there ter git 'em. And the way that young feller'd go through 'em, with my help, were a caution. He'd just open the batch, read em, scribble somethin' on a corner, and then me and him would do 'em up in one passel and next time we went ter the box we'd just chuck that passel in.”

“How'd you help him, Uncle Bill?” David asked dryly.

“Me? How'd I help him? You think I didn't, don't you? Well, I did, because he said so. He uster say, 'Come on now, Uncle Bill, and we'll git this offn our hands, me and you will. You just sit down there and give me moral support. I kin work a lot faster when you're sittin' there smokin', and thinkin'; but it won't be necessary for you to talk till after I git done.'”

The snows fell heavily that year; so deeply that to any but one on snowshoes the upper country was impassable. A wandering timber cruiser blazed his trail with an ax on the trees and, when spring returned, the white slashes were found to be twelve feet above the surface of the ground. The deer in their winter coats sensed it and recklessly fought their way through drifts to lower levels on the inaccessible side, where the wilderness offered better food and shelter. Even the blue jays seemed to croak complaints and nature took on a chill and motionless pose as if the winds themselves were frozen and discouraged.

Old Harmless prepared to plod through the trail he had kept open to his latest drift into the hillside, where, he was confident, despite a hundred previous failures, he would strike the ledge that had thrown the placer gold that had once enriched the gulch. That he had tunneled, molelike, a hundred yards beneath the mountain, following a seam that had never broadened and never thrown much gold, did not at all discourage him. He banked the fire in his fireplace, pulled on his cap, and started for the door before he remembered a most important part of each day's routine, and muttering aloud, “Humph! Gittin' old, I am! Most forgot ter mark my calendar.”

He walked across to where, suspended by an old shoe lace, hung a gaudy picture of a most startling if not entrancing young lady, took the stub of a pencil from the shelf above it, licked the point of it with his tongue, and carefully crossed off a red number “30.”

“By Heck!” he ruminated. “Day after to-morrer's the fust of next month, and it's always on the fust of the month that David and Goliath comes ter stop overnight with me. And to-morrer's the day I got ter go over ter the main road and look in the mail box ter see if that young feller Heald has wrote me anything. Said in his last letter he sort of hoped ter be out this way this month. Humph! He ain't goin' ter find no deer on this side of the Divide if he does come, and I don't give a cuss neither; because I don't like ter have folks shootin' of 'em. Purty little fellers that never does no harm ter nobody unless it's one of them dam ranchers. Ranchers ain't no good nohow by my way of thinkin'!”

That night he was still considering the next two red-letter days in his monthly toll, and before retiring to bed he went out on the porch to scan the weather, which was always his final act for each day's activities. A big full moon had just edged over the tens of the hills, and he watched it climb upward until it had cleared the ridge in safety and wrought great black shadows beneath the pines upon the white snow below. He hummed an ancient tune in his cracked voice, and gently closed the cabin door, as if loath to shut out the glories ef that wonderful gulch of his, in whose adoration he had become almost pagan.

“Goin' ter be clear and a right good day to-morrer, for goin' over for the mail, if there is any.”

And when he awoke his prophecy had been fulfilled. He worked, as was his custom, all the forenoon; had his meager lunch, and then, slipping on his snowshoes and taking a final look at the cabin, trudged away through the woods for his journey that in its round would necessitate eight miles of travel. In the mail box beside the road, with its crown of piled snow, he found his monthly letter from Heald, and scanned the postmark before opening it, as if to prolong the anticipation of what might be real within,

“Humph! Mailed her in Denver nearly two weeks ago. Reckon it's been in this here box for nigh on ter six days.”

He opened the envelope and got out his steel-bowed spectacles to read the letter, after which he reread it, and put it in his pocket.

“Hopes ter be out this way, but aint dead sure he can come, eh? Still hankerin' and honin' ter shoot a deer, because he's promised a friend of his some hawns! Um-m-m! Reckon it's a good thing David and Goliath's comin' to-morrer night so's it gives me an excuse ter keep his room fired up and warm for him, if he do come.”

With his long, ungainly stride he slipped back over the snow following his own trail, save in one place where he diverged long enough to watch two jays quarreling and scolding until they flew away. He paused, as he always did, when he came to the sharp edge of the steep hill that gave him his first view of the gulch and the great cabin that lay far beneath in the hollow, with its roof blanketed with snow, and then across at the black spot on the hillside where he had dumped the waste from his prospecting tunnel.

Then leisurely, and with a sense of home-coming, he took the zigzag trail down the side and stepped up on the end of the porch and bent over preparatory to slipping the thongs of the snowshoes from his ankles. Suddenly he stopped in that bent posture, as if arrested by sight of something, and his keen old eyes opened widely. With an exclamation he took a step or two more, and stared at little splotches of snow on the floor that he kept so scrupulously clean. They tracked across to a window, at which he frowned angrily, and then with trembling hands tested.

The window had been forced up and the catch was broken. With a shout of alarm and anger Old Harmless rushed into his own cabin which was never locked, took the key to Heald's abode from the place where he kept it concealed at the bottom of the clock, and, rushing outward again, opened Heald's door. For but a minute he stared around, and then suddenly lifted his clenched fists above his head and shook them angrily.

“They've stole them two rifles! Them rifles what I've kept oiled and clean! Them rifles that Mister Heald told me he spent two hundred dollars for and had made special. The ones he was so fond of. Stole 'em! And he trusted me ter look after his things!”

For a few minutes his anger was supplanted by despair, and he wandered round the comfortable room, almost aimlessly scrutinizing it to learn whether anything else of value had been taken; but finally concluded that the rifles alone were missing. He was dazed and bewildered by what to him was a tragedy, and then his characteristic resolution returned as if from some recess where it had been deposited in his youth, and hastily he went outside to scan the snow. Its story was plain to his experienced old eyes. There had been but one man, who had, first of all, made certain that the patriarch was neither in his side of the cabin, nor up at the tunnel, and had then returned, lifted the window with an ax blade, taken the rifles, slipped on his snowshoes, and gone.

Harmon, old as he was, had not passed the age of action. He went deliberately into his own humble side of the cabin, took his worn pack straps from a wooden peg, laid out two blankets from his bed, apportioned food sufficient to last him, with abstemiousness, for two full days, put matches and tobacco in his pocket, rolled the pack and tied thereon a little pan and tin cup that must serve for all culinary operations, and, when this was done, took down the rifle that had never killed in his hands, save for food. Then, almost by afterthought, he recklessly tore from his precious calendar a sheet; jerked loose the stub of a pencil, licked it by force of habit, and wrote:

He took a look at the fire to assure himself that it was long dead, shut his door, nailed the note thereon, and slipped out to the edge of the porch where his snowshoes with their long heel bows were stuck in the snow as if waiting for his feet, slipped them on, shifted his pack to a more comfortable position, drew a long breath, and struck the trail. It led boldly up the gulch, and then into the spaces beneath the climbing forest.

Away off in the distance across a magnificent valley lay Baldy Peak, standing like a stone sentinel, with its crest aflame in the sunset, a landmark for all the country round. The trail, after following the ridge, turned that way.

“I reckon I got a long way ter go,” muttered Old Harmless as he followed the trail marks where they dipped into the valley, and then, “Hello! He come this way in the first place. He's back-trackin' all right. Damn fool! Thinks he can go carelesslike, and that I'm too old ter catch him!”

The trail was still distinct and easy to follow, but the winter sun waned, went down, and twilight followed. In the cold, high spaces the trees were still, the snow a blank and mystifying evenness of dull white. The patriarch, now and then, had to pause and bend low to catch the marks scratched upon its surface. His progress was rendered more slow. In the darker hour when the light reached its lowest ebb of dimness awaiting the moon, he stopped, made a tiny fire, melted snow, boiled tea, and poured it into his cup, after which he fried some strips of bacon, took a cold flapjack from his pocket, and dined. He was refreshed from his weariness, and thankful that the moon had now arisen in full brilliance. In its light he could catch tiny drifts on the sheen of the snow, where the snowshoes of his quarry had skirted them in ceaseless progress. They were like little waves upon a still sea save that their shadows were fixed.

The legs of Old Harmless began to feel weak and tottering. Regretfully he noted that it took two of his strides to equal one of the man ahead. He struggled to step longer.

“Dang it all!” he muttered. “There was a time when I'd 'a' bet that Piute couldn't have gone as fast as me on the laces. But I'm gittin' awful old for a job like this. Got ter ketch him though. Them rifles is”

His mind drifted to the distressing thought that he had proved recalcitrant, and he shut his teeth and thrust doggedly ahead. A rime of white gathered on his long, white beard; snow frost congealed on his eyebrows and his patient, gray eyes, old but keen, felt strained until now and then he blinked them widely to drive away the unemotional tears produced by the cold. His steps grew constantly more slow. His snowshoes weighed tons. When he began the long ascending miles on the far side of the valley they seemed endless planes stretched upward toward the moon.

When, panting, he stopped, and glared at the traces in the snow, the pressure of foot through mesh was still strong, the distance between marks as regular as the spacings on a tape, indicating the tirelessness of a machine. No novice to the webs was this who trailed ahead somewhere in the distance with two precious rifles thrown carelessly across his back.

“You cain't keep it up forever, drat ye!” Uncle Bill muttered. “I'll git you yet, if I have to chase you plumb up into the moon! You're travelin' stronger'n I am, but—by heck, I'm still comin' along!”

It was one o'clock in the morning and long after he had taken to counting steps between rests, before Old Harmless sat down with his back against a tree, and felt that his sturdy old heart was whimpering with despair. He looked up at the distant stars, and slowly removed his cap upon which the frost of his breath had congealed into a fantastic binding.

“Lord,” he said appealingly, “I ain't no quitter. You know that. I hates ter bother You, but—I'm in a hell of a fix! I need You. I don't see how I'm ever goin' ter ketch that thief that's got them rifles, if You don't just naturally come down and help me out. You see, I ain't as young as I uster was. You ain't a-goin' to shake me now, are You? Me that ain't done nothin' wrong he could help in all his borned days, and has tried ter play the game fair and square? But if I've done anything ter deserve all this orful trouble, please, Lord, let me die here in the snow; because if You cain't help me some, I just cain't go on no more!”

His irresistible faith healed his fatigue, and, after a time, he got to his feet and staggered onward, contented in the thought that now he could continue forever, and that his feet were endowed with a Mercury's wings. After a time he sang, in his cracked old voice, wavering broken tunes; but they were to him songs of triumph. And then urging his weary feet ahead, ever on the trail, he began to discern off in the distance a black shadow that he was outstripping in his terrible race. He shouted aloud his defiance. He ordered the thief to stop and wait for him. Once he took the old rifle from his shoulder, fumbled for the catch with trembling fingers, and was preparing to fire on that figure of his phantasma when he stopped and thought, “No, I ain't never shot a man for more'n forty year and never at any other time, if it could be helped, so I'll try ter ketch him without that.”

He slung the rifle back over his shoulder and staggered on. Nothing but the innate woodlore and experience of long years in observation of tiny, inconsequential things, enabled him to cling to the trail; but the trail, white, immaculate, moved ever ahead, sweeping downhill and up, over frozen brooks, beneath long glades of trees, and across bare ridges, in an endless continuity. He wove sidewise now and then and began to rub the back of his hand across his eyes to clear his vision. The moon had crossed all that wonderful path of stars and was dipping into the far and vague southwestern pall of mysterious purple, that deep, quiet place into which she crept at the end of each night's work.

The moon, Old Harmless thought, must be very tired, after such a journey, and—so was he. He strove to revive himself with ancient marching tunes, and they became confused. He was giddy with the ceaseless strain. His ears brought drumming noises and strange symphonies and distant shouts. Perhaps it was the fugitive ahead, hurling back his defiance. Uncle Bill raised his own voice and cried his determination.

“Ef you don't drap them rifles purty soon, I'll draw a bead and shoot! Ain't no use in your tryin' ter git away. I'm on your trail. It's me, Bill Harmon, that's after you, and I'll keep on follerin' you ef I have ter build a raft ter float me over the scaldin' waters of hell!” he roared.

To his delirious and overwrought imagination the fugitive replied with taunts, and, forgetting the religious part of his spirit, and reverting to the callous days of the argonauts, Uncle Bill swore with long-forgotten oaths. Now he was certain that he was gaining on that flying figure ahead. He panted, raced for a final desperate spurt, was unaware that he was bumping from tree to tree, and then upon the moonlight trail there was a splotch of black that lay very still, grotesque in its sprawling shape, and a rifle, long and quaint, was still clutched in an outflung hand as if, to the end, there had been determination evolved by a great injustice.

Old Harmless opened his eyes part way only, because the lids were so tired that it required persistent effort to open them at all. For a long time he studied the rough poles of a roof and tried to think that they were those of his own cabin, and that he had only suffered a trying dream. No, these weren't the familiar shapes.

Then he looked for the sight of trees lifted with imperturbable dignity above vast fields of snow, and for the austere light of a cold and vanishing moon. But—surely this was sunlight! Slowly his bewildered senses came to realize and interpret sound. Some one was talking, quite as if repeating something relative to which his auditor was concerned. The voice sounded like that of David's, and away off in that misty distance, it said:

“No, you ain't got it yet. You see, it was this way: Goliath and me come a day sooner than usual, and when we got to Uncle Bill's cabin, along in the evening, we finds a note. Stuck on the door it was. That's it—there in your hand. And we couldn't make her out at first, then we saw the trails, and Goliath says, 'Pardner, I reckon it's up to us to join in, ain't it?' and I says, 'Sure. Uncle Bill may git himself in a pretty tough fix.' So we hit the trail.

“We follered it and follered it, until I thought it wasn't ever goin' to end. Then, just about when I was for givin' up and goin' back, we see's something away off up on the top of a ridge. It was weavin' sideways, this way and that, but it kept goin', and so we went on. Then we finds something lyin' there in the snow, all doubled up, with a pack on its back—and it's Uncle Bill.

“We takes turns totin' him, Goliath, him bein' the biggest, doin' most of it, and we follered the trail, knowin' that it must end somewhere, some time—and it brung us to this here cabin, and we didn't expect to find you here nohow.”

There was a minute's lapse, and then Uncle Bill heard vaguely another voice that said, “Don't suppose you did. I wanted to shoot a buck. Heard they were on this side of the Divide—run downward from the snow and cold. Came up here with the chap that owns it, and sent his Indian guide across with a note to Uncle Bill telling him to give this redskin my two rifles. But the fool loses the note, finds Uncle Bill gone, breaks in and gets the rifles because he wants to make it back over here before daybreak. Hang it all! I wouldn't have had this happen to Uncle Bill for all the rifles in the world!”

And at that Old Harmless, who had finally identified the voice as that of Heald's, over whose property he kept such jealous ward, choked a trifle, opened one eye, felt a big lump in his throat, didn't know whether to sit up and swear through sheer emotion, or to laugh with joy. He finally decided to lie still and quiet.

“Lord,” he murmured between his tired lips, “I'm right thankful ter You; because if anything had happened ter them rifles, I reckon I couldn't never have faced You again. But if You'll forgive me for it, when I git rested and strong enough to pile out of this here bunk, I reckon I'll just naturally kick hell out of that careless, no-account, triflin' Injun for losin' of that there note. Yours truly, Amen!”