laughed a little as if anxious to relieve an embarrassing situation, and went out to the street together. Jim knew in his heart he had been outclassed; he had shown his whole hand, the other not one single card.
“All right,” Rankin finally said, as if an invitation had been extended to him. “All right, I’ll jist loiter along with yer over to’rd the hotel.”
“At another time,” observed Roderick, “we will talk further about my father’s errand into this western country.”
“That’s the dope that sure ‘nuff suits me, Mr. War-field,” replied Rankin. “Whatever you say goes. Yer can unbosom yerself to me any time to the limit. I’ve got a dozen good mining deals to talk to you about; they’re dandies—a fortune in every one uv ‘em—’a bird in every shell,’ I might say,” and Rankin laughed heartily at his happy comparison. “Remember one thing, Warfield,”—he stopped and took hold of the lapel of Roderick’s coat, and again spoke in a whisper—“this yere town is full uv ‘hot air’ merchants. Don’t have nuthin’ to do with ‘em—stand pat with me and I’ll see by the great horn spoon the worst you get will be the best uv everythin’ we tackle. Well, so long until after breakfast; I’ll see you later.” And with this Rankin turned and walked briskly back to his stables, whistling a melody from the “Irish Washerwoman” as he went along.
Arriving at his stables he lighted a fire in a drumshaped stove, threw his cud of tobacco away and said: “Hell, I wish this young Warfield had money. I’ve got a copper prospect within three mile uv this here town that’ll knock the spots out uv the Ferris-Haggerty mine all holler. Geewhillikins, it’ll jist nachur-ally make all the best mines in Wyomin’ look like small-sized Shetland ponies at a Perch’ron draft horse show. You bet that’s what I’ve got.”
After feeding his horses he came back to the livery barn office, now quite warm and comfortable, pulled up an old broken backed chair, sat down and lit his pipe. After a few puffs he muttered half aloud: “Expect I’m the only man in Wyomin’ who remembers all the early hist’ry and traditions about that cussed lost mine. I’ve hunted the hills high and low, north, south, east and west, and dang my buttons if I can imagine where them blamed nuggets came from. And my failure used to make me at times a plenty hostile and peevish. John Warfield brought three of ‘em out with him on his last trip. He gave Tom one, Boney one and me one.”
Thrusting his hand into his pocket Rankin produced a native nugget of gold, worn smooth and shiny, and looked at it long in silent meditation. It was a fine specimen of almost pure gold, and was worth perhaps five and twenty dollars.
Presently the old frontiersman brought his fist down with a startling thump on his knee and said aloud: “I’ll be blankety-blanked if I don’t believe in that dangnation fairy story yet. You bet I do, and I’ll help John Warfield’s boy find it, by the great horn spoon I will, if it takes every horse in the stable.”
Jim Rankin relit his pipe, smoked vigorously and thought. The power of silence was strong upon him. The restless spirit of the fortune hunter was again surging in his blood and awaking slumbering half-forgotten hopes—yes, tugging at his heart-strings and calling to him to forsake all else and flee to the hills.
Rankin was a character, a representative of the advance band of sturdy trail-blazers of the West—tender-hearted as a child, generous to a fault, ready to divide his last crust with a friend, yet quick to resent an injury, and stubborn as a bullock when roused to self-defense. There was nothing cunning about him, nothing of greed and avarice, no spirit of envy for the possession of things for the things’ sake. But for him there was real joy in the mad pursuit of things unattainable—a joy that enthralled and enthused him with the fervor of eternal youth. His was the simple life of the hills, loving his few chums and turning his back on all whom he disliked or mistrusted.
Other men and greater men there may be, but it was men of Jim Rankin’s type that could build, and did build, monuments among the wild western waste of heat-blistered plains and gaunt rock-ribbed mountains, men who braved the wilderness and there laid the first foundation stones of a splendid civilization—splendid, yet even now only in its first beginnings, a civilization that means happy homes and smiling fields where before all was barrenness and desolation.
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