"Old Harmless"

Author of “David and Goliath,” “The Box,” Etc.

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.