THE B O N N E V I L L E DAM C H R O N I C L E
FOURTEEN
POOR MAN’S GOLD
© Courtney Ryley Coop«r.
COURTNEY RYLEY COOPER
CHAPTER VIII—Continued
—l i ­
lt availed nothing. McKenzie Joe
Was moving forward; Bruce Ken­
ning attempted to run. A drunken
miner shoved him back into the
open. Then Joe shouted:
“ You double - crossing hound!”
With a lunge, he shot forward. Wild­
ly Bruce Kenning struck out and
then, with a cry, strove to dodge
him. It was impossible; McKenzie
Joe had caught him, one huge arm
around his neck, blocking off all
resistance *ave short arm blows,
which struck the prospector’ s huge
chest and iron-muscled torso with
no more result than if they had
been pounding against the trunk of
a giant fir. Suddenly the geologist
was spun about, impelled by the
force of McKenzie Joe’s giant mus­
cles. Jack Hammond, now literal­
ly throwing celebrants out of his
way as he fought to get to his part­
ner, saw the face of the man, green-
gray with horror. Then McKenzie
Joe began to beat at Kenning’ s fea­
tures—almost instantly they seemed
to become mis-shapen, swollen,
spurting red from a dozen lacera­
tions as the triphammer blows cut
deep into his flesh. Bruce Ken­
ning cried out, an agonized appeal.
“ Help me! Help me, som ebody!”
“ Get to him,” Hammond shout­
ed. “ Haven’ t you any sense? Mc­
Kenzie will kill h im !”
It awoke the men about him; they
stirred; Hammond broke through,
plunging forward that he might leap
upon his partner’ s back, and, with a
heavy forearm under his chin, pull
him backward, momentarily stop­
ping the assault. Then a stagger­
ing miner lurched forward.
“ Don’ t jump on a man from be­
hind!’ ’ he commanded, attempting
to break the younger man’ s hold.
Around the World Annie swept into
action.
“ Keep out of this!” she shouted
and swung a blackjack. The man
fell. Instantly a roar sounded from
a dozen equally drunken pals; all
in an instant, Hammond found him­
self surrounded by milling forms
and the wildly flailing fist of a free-
for-all fight.
Desperately Jack held his grasp
on his struggling partner. With a
feeling of great relief, he saw the
half-conscious Kenning slip from the
loosening hold of the prospector
and, buffeted by the fighters about
him, stagger into the mass of tan­
gled forms.
Shortly afterward, Hammond felt
a terrific wrench as McKenzie Joe
exerted his full strength and broke
free. After that, the room became
a vague conglomeration of noise and
conflict, above which Annie’ s shrill
voice sounded again and again as,
her bunting costume torn, her tri­
corn a wreck and her yellow hair
streaming, she swung her blackjack
and gave blasphemous comments
for quiet.
Finally the turmoil
calmed.
The orchestra started
again, blaring its loudest. Ham­
mond disentangled himself from the
grasp of a 200-pound Swede and
looked about him for his partner.
McKenzie Joe had disappeared.
Jack Hammond went forth into
the bush to search for him, although
he knew it was useless. Somewhere
in this dense forest of stunted
spruce and high-flung fir, tangled
creepers and matted junipers, Mc­
Kenzie Joe had gone to his hideout
and there was safe. Nevertheless,
Hammond kept up the search for
the better part of two days. At
least here he had freedom from
the barbs of Kay Joyce.
The story of the fight at Whoopee
had swept Lake Sapphire like a
hard wind.
Beyond that, Bruce
Kennings’s swollen eyes, his lac­
erated cheeks and bruised lips had
told their story all too plainly to
K ay.- Now, all her pent-up dislike
for McKenzie Joe had surged to
the surface. For the first time Jack
Hammond found solace away from
her. He had found it impossible to
answer amicably her vilifications of
McKenzie Joe. To Jack's view­
point, Joe’ s attack had been the
result of brooding, resentful dis­
trust born of no foundations, it is
true, but certainly not deserving of
the murderous instincts which Kay
had attributed to him. The de­
fense, however, and met only a mul­
ti-sided barrage, both from the girl
and the geologist.
Now, at last, there was a truce. It
was the morning of the third day;
Jack and the girl stood together near
his cabin. Kay had sought him
out excitedly, her left hand extend­
ed, and in its palm a dozen or more
particles of thin gold, the result,
she said somewhat jerkily, of the
last clean-up. Hammond bent to
examine them, only as quickly to
turn. Out cA a corner of his eye
he had caught sight of an approach­
ing figure. It was McKenzie Joe.
Gaunt, gray-featured, but sober,
he was approaching from Loon
creek. Silently they watched him
come nearer; finally Jack said, in a
voice tensely laconic:
“ Hello, Joe.”
“ Hello,” he said briefly and
looked at Kay. “ Waiting to tell me
what you think of me, eh?”
Kay Joyce whitened. She said
nothing. Hammond attempted to
cover the situation with a laugh.
“ No. Of course not. She’ s just
had a clean-up down at her claim.
She’ s gotten into pay dirt.”
“ So?” The older man strode
abruptly forward and stared into
her cupped hand. “ Washed that
out of the gravel, eh?”
“ Yes.” She bit out the word. M c­
Kenzie Joe fixed her with his blood­
shot eyes.
“ The hell you did!” he snapped.
“ That’ s sniper gold.”
Kay flung her hand angrily down­
ward, scattering the gold in deep
WNU Service.
“ Joe! Take that back!"
“ Never mind doubling your fists,
Jack,” the older man said. “ I could
kill you the best day you ever lived.
But I wouldn’ t. And I’m going—
gettin’ out of here.”
“ One of us has got to go.”
“ Sure,” the older man said. “ I
thought that all out—over there in
the bush. But before I go, here’ s
something for you. That gold find’s
a come-on—”
“ You’ ve said enough, Joe.”
“ Sure. I know it. But remember
—you dangle just a little hay in
front of a horse to make him follow
you into a corral. You’re bein’ led
into something.”
Jack Hammond lunged angrily to­
ward his partner, only to be con­
fronted by Jeanne Towers, a queer,
desperate expression in her face.
Kay Joyce merely stood still, her
lips livid, her eyes strangely nar­
rowed. The Northern girl braced
herself.
“ Get hold of yourself, Jack,” she
commanded.
Slowly, Jack Hammond moved
back. There was a long silence.
Then the younger man asked:
“ Well, Joe, do I buy you out—or
do you take my share?”
“ He can’ t have your share!” Kay
snapped. “ He’ s got to go.”
McKenzie Joe looked about him.
Uneasily he wiped a shaking hand
across his lips.
“ I guess the young lady answered
for m e,” he said. Jack stamped
into the cabin, to return almost as
quickly. He held in his arms four
heavy moosehide pouches, lumpy
with gold nuggets.
“ It’ s everything I’ ve got,” he said
shortly. “ Sign up and get out.”
Jeanne Towers straightened.
“ Jack!” she cried. “ You fool—
you fool!” Then with a half sob,
she whirled and ran back to her
cabin.
CHAPTER IX
More than two months had passed
since that morning when Jack had
walked drearily back from the lake,
gaunt with the weight of strange,
foreboding sadness. Once the heat
of their quarrel had begun to cool,
memory had, to a degree, at least,
brought about a truce in the bitter­
ness between McKenzie Joe and
himself. The signing over of the
necessary papers which had put
Jack in possession of all the claims
had been done in silence, it is
true, but not taciturnity.
“ Write to me sometime, Joe?”
Jack had asked as the older man
took his departure.
“ Sure—I’ ll be glad to do that,
Jack. If there’s anything to write
about. And say—”
“ Y es?”
“ Don’ t hold it against Jeanne for
what she said. Me’n’ Jeanne have
always thought a lot of each other.
It was kind of natural that she’d
take up for m e.”
“ Of course, Joe.”
The older man had looked far
down the lake, glassy smooth, and
“ You Double-Crossing Hound.”
with drifting, imaginary islands
grass. Her blue eyes gleamed with floating in mirage.
rage.
“ For that matter, she’s always
“ It isn’ t enough that you should thought an awful lot of you. A lot
jump on Bruce. Now you include more’n she did of m e.”
m e !”
“ I know it, Joe.”
“ I ain’t jumping on you.” said
The older man had looked at him
Joe. “ I’m just telling Jack that keenly, his eyes sparkling, as if he
gold never came from your claim !” were about to say that this was
“ Watch what you're saying!” just the trouble, that Jack didn't
know it. But he only replied:
Jack exclaimed.
“ Well, I guess I’d better be get­
McKenzie Joe eyed him.
“ Pick up that gold if you can find tin’ on—better be takin’ advantage
it,” he answered coldly. “ You’ll find 0* this calm. Old Sapphire gets
it’ s flat, with old scratches on it— pretty nasty sometimes.”
scraped out from ledge riffles in the
“ Yes—it does, Joe.” Impetuously
main body of the stream. It never he had put forth his hand. “ Shake
came from gravel.”
! with me, Joe?”
“ Then I was lying?” asked Kay.
The prospector had shifted his
She swept her glance suddenly to canoe paddle suddenly and turned
include another figure; Jeanne Tow­ to his former partner. Then had
ers had rounded the side of the , come silence, except for the faint
cabin.
Kay glared at her then grind of callus against callus, the
turned back to McKenzie Joe. “ An­ jerky intake of heightened breath.
swer me, was I lying?”
There had been no other sound; on­
“ Yes, you were lying,'’ Joe an­ ly the swish of Joe's moccasins
swered quietly.
j as he had centered his weight in
the canoe, and the soft dip of his
paddle. After a long time, the rip­
ples had rolled smoothly into glassi­
ness again; and Joe was only a tiny
silhouette rounding a faraway bend.
So now, two months had gone
by. It was early September, with
the nights beginning to be sharp
with frost, the foliage of poplar
splashing the deeper green, - heav­
ier growths with floods of gold, the
grizzly wandering the berry patches
on the rock slides, and night com ­
ing out of the hills more quickly
and for longer duration. Yet time
had only brought Jack the deeper
conviction that McKenzie Joe had
been wrong in his suspicions.
He was frenzied these days for
gold. Early morning found him at
his placer workings on Loon C*eek,
with an extra man engaged to help
his two other employees with the
grueling work of raising the gravel
from the pit which ran down to
the bedrock gravels, and himself
laboring hour after hour to shovel
the piled-up earth into the cease­
less flow of water of the sluice
boxes. There was something in his
efforts which amounted almost to
desperation; big work was going
on above, where he and Kenning
were testing out the geologist’ s the­
ories, and men must be paid, es­
pecially up here, north of ’58, where
labor brought a dollar an hour.
Jack and Bruce Kenning were part­
ners now.
Only two things could break the
continuity of Hammond’ s labors
—a trip to the upper workings or
the announcement of a clean-up
from Kay’ s claim.
She had just
called to him that the flow of the
sluices had been halted.
Jack Hammond dropped his shov­
el and went upstream. Kay ap­
peared excited as usual, herself tak­
ing a pan and filling it with a part
of the scrapings. Hammond bent
beside her at the stream, where,
dipping water, she began the work
of reducing the conglomerated resi­
due of the riffles to tangible loss
or gain. There beside her, as the
pan slowly twisted and dipped and
raised and circled, it came to Jack
that Kay had learned much of min­
ing in the short time ihe had been
here. Now she spoke casually of
po< kets and faults, of pay gravel
and sedimentation — suddenly he
halted. The pan had been cleared,
the girl had given an exclamation
and was bending over it, point­
ing by a nod to a nubbin of gold
which lay there.
“ It’s a knock-out,” Hammond ex­
claimed, picking out the serrated
piece of mineral. Then, as though
the better to appraise its worth, he
reached into a pocket for his pros­
pector’ s magnifying glass.
Beside him, Kay talked on of her
hopes. She couldn’t understand, she
said, why this claim didn’ t pan out
more values. Day after day, the
output seemed the same — enough
for expenses, enough to keep the
cottage going and to pay Mrs. Car-
ewe, the woman of all work—but
little more. Hammond hardly heard
her. Again he was confirming what
he had confirmed every day since
McKenzie Joe had pulled out—the
fact this was true nugget gold and
that there was not the slightest in­
dication of sniper material.
That had been a serious charge.
It had meant that Kay was pre­
tending to find gold when such
had not been the case. Why she
should do this, Joe Britten had not
fully explained. He had only in­
sisted that the tiny flakes and nug­
gets were “ sniper gold,” gleaned by
scraping along the flat, ledgelike
rocks of the true current of Loon
Creek, where, acting in the same
manner as the riffles of a flume,
these ledges had picked up stray
bits of new metal, washed down
from the hills by spring freshets.
The old prospector had insisted that
they were not true nuggets, that the
force of water, driving them be­
tween thin ledges of stone, had to
a degree flattened them and so
marked them that the eyes of his
deep experience could identify
them, thus making it impossible for
them to have come from Kay’ s
gravel bar claim. Hammond him­
self had not been given a chance to
look; Kay, in her anger, had thrown
them away.
But here was no doubt that Kay’ s
acquisition was true gravel gold.
FRID AY, MAY 7, 1937
The same had been true on two-
score other surreptitious investi­
gations. It was as though Jack
Hammond had put Joe Britton on
trial, and day after day was re­
peatedly proving him guilty.
“ Pretty good nugget,” he said at
last. “ It must be about a penny­
weight."
“ All of which helps,” the girl an­
swered, with a casual shrug of her
shoulders. “ Maybe I’ll get down
to real money some day—you never
can tell.”
“ Nobody can, with gold mining,”
Hammond answered. After a time
he returned to his own labors, again
feverish, again driving in his inten­
sity. He knew that this claim of
“ Pretty Good Nugget,” He Said
at Last.
his was beginning to weaken; the
nuggets were not as large or as fre­
quent as when he and Joe first had
slashed into it. Doggedly he told
himself that it could not, must
not, flash out. There must be money
to keep that work going above, and
he knew that Kenning could not
furnish it. In truth, Kenning was
providing little in the form of funds;
they had thrown their holdings into
one pot, share for share. But the
cash to keep development going
must come from Hammond. Ken­
ning made up for his lack of it by
his advice.
Late afternoon arrived. Abstract­
edly, as he worked, Hammond be­
came aware that there was a great
deal of loud conversation of a joy­
ous type from upstream, where Ol­
son seemed to find a new pocket
only that he might dig into another.
Several of the more successful
placer miners from more distant
claims were there, poking about.
Mrs. Joyce also was present; for
that matter, it was seldom that
Hammond looked toward Olson’s
claim without finding her some­
where in the picture.
It was not a new strike, he knew
that—there was no shouting and
running about, no concerted move­
ment of curious miners from other
diggings. After a time Jack forgot
the matter. Then the work day end­
ed and his men made the clean-up.
Hammond pouched the nuggets
therefrom, walked a bit with Kay on
the trail to the cottage, and finally
cut away from her that he might
lead upstream and find Kenning at
the new development—some dozen
shafts, driving deep into the earth
upon a broad front, far from the
last test pit which McKenzie Joe
had dug, over against the slope, in
the forest. This was abandoned now
and covered with logs. Jack had
not been near it since the day Mc­
Kenzie Joe went away. At last,
sighting Kenning on the flat, be
shouted:
“ Anything good today?”
The geologist shook his head.
Then as Hammond approached:
“ Can’t expect much yet. We're
still twenty or twenty-five feet
above where the stuff ought to be.’'
Hammond laughed.
“ It’ s got to turn out.”
ITO BE CONTINUED)