“Old Harmless”

Uncle Bill loved his gulch, and David and Goliath loved Uncle Bill. When trouble came they promised to stick by him to the bitter end—which wasn't so bitter, after all.

It was a long distance from the beaten roads to where “Old Harmless” had his cabin; quite over the top of ridges, down across intervening valleys, around mountain shelves where a pack burro might not slip with impunity, and with now and then a gurgling little stream to ford that became a dangerous place when spring freshets ran high and filled a gulch. It was not a place that any one other than a recluse might have chosen for permanent domicile, but to Old Harmless it was Heaven. He was convinced that somewhere within its borders there was wealth.

“Yes, sir, I reckon that some place in these here hills, right about the rim of this gulch, thar’s a ledge of gold that orter go about ten thousand dollars a ton!” he was wont to explain to the partners, David and Goliath, when they visited him by climbing to a high, steep ridge, traversing the crest of a rugged, barren range, and then dropping down long, steep hills into the valley where Old Harmless dwelt and strove with infinite and inexhaustible patience and optimism. “And that ain’t exactly all of it, either. You see, I diskivered this gulch in ’fifty-eight, and I took a right-smart lot of pay outen this flat, and there was some other fellers came, and they called it Harmon’s Camp. Named it arter me, you see. An’ they built some stores and—by Matildy!—they was a post office here oncet, where a feller could go and git his mail. If he had any to git.”

Always at this point he would shake his head with an air of melancholy. And always the partners would appear sympathetic, and interested, as if this were the first, rather than the hundredth or so, time they had heard this tale. Always one of them politely said, “Psho! What happened to her, Uncle Bill?” And always Old Harmless brightened up, and rambled on.

“Well, you see in them days nobody stuck around a flat after what was easiest ter git was worked out. Everybody jest naturally went somewhere else ter find somethin’ else that was easy ter git and so, bimeby, thar wan’t nobody left here at Harmon’s but me. Yes, sir, nobody but me. An’ bein’ young an’ foolish, bimeby I went, too. Shook her. But—I allers kept comin’ back. Then, when it seemed as if thar wan’t nothin’ left anywhere, and all them railroads kem to Californy, and there wan’t no other place left to go, I come back here to stay. An’ so—here I be. Right here. An’—I reckon I’ll stay here till I die. It ain’t so much the findin’ gold, with me, as it is that I’m so used ter this here place. Seems like I know every tree in this here flat, and they’re all friends of mine. Why, I talk ter ’em, I do. They was one blow down, last spring, one that I always called ‘Old Sam,’ because he was so big and husky and had been here so long before I came, and he looked ter me like he might be the granddaddy of all trees, and I got ter sort of love him.

“It sounds mighty foolish, but on the mornin’ after the big storm when I saw that Old Sam was done, I sat down on him an’ felt like cryin’ and was sort of deespirited, because it was as if I, too, was a-gitin’ old and some day all the other trees, these friends of mine, would wake up in the mornin’ and find that I’d gone, too, and wasn’t never goin’ ter be seen around, or heard talkin’ ter ’em any more.”

Invariably, at this finish, as if suddenly aware of his loquacity; his betrayal of sentiment; his slipped confession, he would recover, cackle, pretend to make a joke, and hide his abashment. And invariably the partners joined in his laugh, but it was never a laugh that reached their eyes, for always they knew that he had voiced his heart. Each of them, shy, outwardly rough, inwardly sentimental, had known hills and trees they had loved. They, too, lived in the world of outdoors, where everything of life has its characteristics, its entity, its individuality, its struggle to live. They, too, sometimes believed that trees observe, confide, or perhaps love comrades.

“I kin always scratch up enough dust for bacon and beans, by workin’ the old dumps with my old Long Tom or a string of sluices,” Old Harmless once explained. “Nobody bothers me here. Nobody ever comes to see me but you two young fellers; but I ain’t lonesome. And some day, maybe I’ll find the ledge that throwed the gold in this here gulch, and——”

When he stopped and stared at the crests of the hills, as if thinking of such an achievement, David asked impulsively: “And—and what’ll you do then, Bill?”

The patriarch rubbed a hand across his eyes as if disturbed and perplexed, and then said, “do then? Do then? I’ll—I’ll—why, I don’t just know what I’ll do. I wouldn’t want a lot of people here in this camp of mine. They might spoil things. But—I’d like one of them talkin’ machines that sings songs and makes bands play, and all that. If I was rich, I’d git me one of them things and git some feller ter learn me how ter run it. Then I’d take her out under the trees on nice days and play all them tunes, and—— Do you fellers reckon trees hears things like that and likes ’em?”

The partners gravely admitted that they had never considered such matters, and humored his whimsies, by admitting that they hoped trees did hear, and that Old Harmless might find the ledge, and buy the phonograph.

On a certain Christmas Eve they made their trip in the moonlight, when the great shield of snow beneath the still and motionless trees lay pale, or patterned with the infinite beauty of lacework wrought by shadow in nature’s inimitable, delicate intricacy. Their snowshoes squeaked crisply. The exalations of their breathing thrust tiny clouds of gray vapor ahead of them; but of all these physical manifestations they were oblivious, because the giant carried under his arm, as tenderly as if it were an infant, a square box, and behind him came the sturdy, squat figure of David, his partner, taking two steps to the giant’s one, panting, and with equal care clutching across his shoulder in a sling another box filled with records.

“I reckon,” David panted, “that he’ll be tickled to death with that tune called Clementiner, seein’ as it’s about an old cuss who mined hereabouts in ’forty-nine.”

“Humph! Met my love on the Alamo suits me better,” Goliath grunted.

“Sh’d think you’d had enough of wimmen,” said David scornfully.

“They ain’t got nothin’ whatever to do wih tunes,” Goliath replied with such emphasis that his partner read the danger signs and made no further comment. And preference for tunes meant nothing when they witnessed the joy of Old Harmless, for it amounted almost to stupefaction.

“As fur as I kin see now,” he said, after listening to the entire collection of records, “they ain’t much else on this earth that I specially hanker fur. If I don’t never strike that there ledge—and she’s sure here somewheres!—I kin always scratch up enough dust ter buy grub and what clothes I need, and I live in the all-firedest purtiest place in the whole gosh-dinged world, and now I got somethin’ to sort of keep me company, in that box you boys has brought me! Yes, sire-e-e! I reckon I’m about the happiest man on this earth.”

At intervals the partners brought fresh records across the ridge to the abode of happiness, and the gratitude and contentment of Old Harmless seemed never to wane, although the wonderful ledge was no nearer discovery than it had been for twenty years. Sometimes they questioned him, curious as to his complacency. Themselves determined and persevering men, they yet knew that even to any persistence there is an end; but here was one who had for more than fifty years dreamed a dream, and worked to bring it to reality, with a courage that was undismayed by failure.

“You beat me, Uncle Bill,” David declared, with a shake of his head. “I should think that by this time you’d be about ready to give up findin’ that ledge.”

“Give up? Me give up? Why, son, I’m as positeeve there’s a ledge here as I am that I’m alive!” exclaimed Old Harmless, emphasizing his assertion with a slap of his gnarled hand on his lank and bony knee. “Spring’s a-comin’ ag’in, and when the rain washes off the dust and top layers, and shows the rocks in bright colors and marks out the formations, I’ll find her, all right! Yes, sir-ee! I’ll find her.”

“But why ain’t you found it before this—in some of all the other springs when it rained, Uncle Bill?” David persisted, eying him shrewdly from beneath his thatch of red eyebrows.

“One man cain’t look at every foot of all the hillsides, in one spring, or a dozen of ’em, kin he?” Old Harmless snorted as if derisive of the younger man’s sagacity. “I’m workin’ them hillsides by sections, I am. And—by Matildy Ann!—I don’t seem able ter do as much as I uster; but I’m pluggin’ along. I’ll git her yet!”

“But you don’t seem to git nowhere and the——”

“Git nowhere? Me? By heck! I’ve gotten farther’n most men. I’ve got one whole side of a gulch prospected. I’ve paid all my bills. I got grub enough right now ter run me for more’n a year. I got the finest cabin in the world. I ain’t never done a human bein’ any wrong in all my life. I ain’t never harmed a woman and—when I had money I eddicated two nevvies and a niece. I ain’t never spoke ill of no man. And if you think, son, that the Lord Almighty’s goin’ to let a feller like that down, you’re a damn fool. That ain’t the way He does things. No, sir-ee! He’s a pardner of mine, the Lord is, and I got an old book here what proves it!”

And flurriedly, indignantly, he jumped to his feet, grabbed a battered old Bible from a shelf, and banged it down on the table in front of the skeptical David; banged it so hard that the tin dishes thereon rattled and danced and gyrated. The partners could not but respect his unbending faith.

“David, you shut up!” growled Goliath, admonishingly, and scowling at his partner until his heavy black eyebrows met above the bridge of his high, thin nose.

“Maybe we had better quit argifyin’, and hear them new tunes Goliath and me brought over,” said David, sagaciously changing the subject. And immediately thereafter Old Harmless was mollified, and sat with open mouth, distorted fingers combing his long, white beard, and one hand cupped behind his ear as if intent upon assisting that very acute organ, attuned to great silences and tiny sounds, to drink in all the magic that issued through a huge tin horn. No further reference was made to their discussion until just before the partners departed when the old man said, as if ashamed of his vehemence, “Davy, you did git me riled up a while ago, and—and—I’m right sorry I talked so hot. It ain’t befittin’ a man of my years ter git his mad up that a way, and if I said anything ter hurt your feelin’s, son, I takes it that you understand that I’m an awful quick-tempered man.”

And all the way over the trail David chuckled as if greatly amused over what to him had been nothing more than a joke.

“You shouldn’t have argued with that old cuss that way,” Goliath rumbled, as if sensing his partner’s thoughts. “He believes the Lord’s his partner, and he don’t like to have nobody thrownin’ stones at Him.”

And David’s face softened and his eyes became thoughtful and he said in a highly hushed voice, “Goliath, I reckon you’re right. And—I ain’t so damn certain but what the Lord is a partner to a man like old Uncle Bill, after all. I’d orter be ashamed, and—I am!”

The spring season came as usual, with nature’s immutability. The snows wilted and sogged, and gave way to gurgling rivulets that trickled in innumerable hidden channels, until moist bare spots broke black and open, as if fighting to find the sun. The trees began to throw out shoots of green and migratory birds returned after their winter’s absence. The partners found the trail more difficult to Harmon’s cabin, and less idle time upon their hands.

Their attention was returned to Old Harmless in a peculiar way. It was when the county sheriff rode into their clearing one afternoon, dismounted, and called them from the pay dump on which they stood.

“Great Scott, Jim, what’s up? What brings you here?” David said, shaking his hand.

The sheriff grinned, as if amused, shook hands with Goliath, and said, “That old patriarch over the ridge—old Harmon. He’s—he’s gone loco. Got anything to eat? I’m hungry as a wolf. Haven’t had a mouthful since five o’clock this morning. If you can spare me a snack, I’ll tell you all about it, while I’m sponging off of you two fellers.”

It was while David cooked the bacon and Goliath mixed flapjacks that he explained.

“It seems,” he said, “that old Uncle Bill ain’t got any more title to that ground up there than a man has to something he never saw before, or heard of before, in all his life. That land was patented more than forty years ago, and the taxes have been paid regularly by the heirs of the original owner. Must have been that they didn’t know that Bill Harmon was livin’ on it, or —maybe they didn’t care a cuss seein’ as they wasn’t using it. Anyhow, they sold her out, lock, stock, and barrel, to Hiram Newport, down in Placerville. You know him, I reckon. Lawyer. Lends money on mortgages, and owns a bank of his own.”

“Dirty old skinflint!” David exclaimed.

“Course we knows him. Pirate!” Goliath rumbled.

“Well, it seems old Newport had a scheme up his sleeve, and he goes back East somewheres and gets some feller that makes a specialty of buildin’ reservoirs and power plants, interested in this land. And Uncle Bill’s place being in a big gulch with a narrow outlet that could be dammed easily, is a sort of key to the whole blamed thing. Feller that Hiram goes to takes an option. Sends out some engineer experts of his to pass on it. They goes up with a few men to make a survey. Old Harmless is at first sort of dazed, then when these engineer fellers tells him what’s up, he tells ’em he owns that gulch and for them to get to hell out of there. When they don’t hike the old man gets his dander up and it’s sure up all right —just as if bein’ peaceful and quiet for longer’n any one can remember had sort of bottled it up for fair, and now he’s got the cork out.

“Uncle Bill goes into his cabin and shows up with his Winchester and—you know how that old feller can shoot. Well, he shoots the hat off one engineer’s head, takes a second shot at a mighty costly theodolite they’d planted, and scores a bull, then with a few shots just above their heads sort of hastens their gallop as they’re takin’ down the trail. They come down to me and demand the protection of the law. I laughed. It seemed so foolish for anybody to be afraid of Old Harmless who’d never fought anybody or anything for more’n forty years. I thought I’d have to go up and see about it, however, so off I goes, all alone.”

He stopped, scratched his head, and grinned as if amused with his own experience.

“By heck!” he exclaimed, slapping his hand on his knee. “That old cuss was plumb full of fight! A catamount hadn’t nothing at all on him. I tell you, boys, Uncle Bill’s gone mad. I rode up to his clearing and toward his cabin, and then the door opened and there he stood with that gun of his in his hand, and he yells, ‘No need ter come any farther, sheriff. I been expectin’ you. Me and you’s been good friends—up ter now, and I’d hate like sin ter have to draw a bead on you. But I ain’t goin’ ter let you come no closer. This land is mine. I’m goin’ ter keep it. I’m goin’ ter fight fer it. Maybe in the end you’ll git the best of it, but it won’t be so long as I can twist the fust finger of my right hand over a trigger. You go back and tell the fellers that sent you that all I ask is to be left alone ter gyard what’s my own. It’s mine, and they ain’t nobody at all can take it away from me without a fight.’

“Well, I didn’t quite know what to do. I was so surprised like. I didn’t even have a shootin’ iron on me, and I saw he meant business. I tried to argue with him. No good! Uncle Bill is gone loco! And the hell of it is that I ain’t got no use for that old scoundrel Newport, and that I wouldn’t hurt Old Harmless for all California, because I like him, and—yet—I’m sheriff. Wish I wasn’t!”

With an air of dejection he bent forward and twisted his hands together between outspread knees, thought for an instant, and then looked up at the partners.

“So,” he said, “I come away—right fussed up. Then I happened to recollect that Uncle Bill’s awfully fond of you two fellers. He’s always shootin’ off his mouth about how good you been to him, and how you give him a phonograf, and—one time he told Mike Kelly, who runs the saloon, that he didn’t care so much about discoverin’ that ledge he’s always hoping for on his own account, but that he’d be willing to croak if he could find it and make you two a present of it!”

He straightened up and became seriously intent on his business again.

“I’m the sheriff,” he said. “I swore I’d enforce the law. Uncle Bill’s got to get out of there, if I have to take a posse and shoot him out. I won’t do that until everything else has been tried, and found no good. You two have just naturally got to go up there and tell him so, and show him how he’s got to go, because he can’t fight the law. He’ll listen to you two men, and he won’t listen to nobody else. You got to show him that he ain’t got a leg to stand on, and that I’ve got to do my duty what I swore to do, and that I’m goin’ to do it no matter how much it hurts. Get me?”

The sheriff stared inquiringly at the two partners, who shook doubtful heads, consulted each other with their eyes, and appeared distressed. It was David, who, as usual, did the talking for both, who spoke first.

“We’ll go, willin’ enough, sheriff, because we see just how it is; but—I’m awfully afraid you’ve put a job up to us that we can’t get away with. Honest, I am! You see, it’s this way. Uncle Bill’s a funny old feller. Got queer notions about things. He loves that place up there, not so much for what it’s worth, because money couldn’t buy it at all; but because he talks to the trees, and has a notion that the same birds come to ’im every year, and all that. They’re all like children to him, and they’re all the family he’s got. Uncle Bill told me one time that his place up there was his idea of heaven, and that if he died and the Lord Almighty’d let him, all he would ask would be to just come back there and keep on livin’ and workin’. Said he wouldn’t mind it even in spite of his rheumatiz, which he gets most awfully bad in wet seasons.

“You got to look at that from his viewpoint, and put yourself in his place. Well, if you was to get to heaven, and the place suited you mighty fine, and you’d got sort of used to it after livin’ there for about fifty years, and along came some big, husky angel with a nickel-plated star on his chest and undertook to chuck you out, when you thought you hadn’t done nothin’ wrong, I reckon—I reckon, sheriff—you’d fight, too —wouldn’t you?”

The sheriff somberly admitted that he “Reckoned he would.”