The gold of Ophir
Date: 2026-02-16T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: American fiction -- 19th century

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Title: The gold of Ophir

Author: D. Howard Gwinn

Release date: February 16, 2026 [eBook #77959]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: F. Tennyson Neely, 1898

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77959

Credits: Hendrik Kaiber, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLD OF OPHIR ***

The Gold of Ophir

By D. Howard Gwinn.

F. Tennyson Neely,
Publisher,
London. New York.

Copyright, 1898,
by
F. Tennyson Neely
in
United States
and
Great Britain.

All Rights Reserved.

Contents.

| Page
Chapter I.
Salaam | 5
Chapter II.
Leadville | 14
Chapter III.
A Brace of Mining Experts | 33
Chapter IV.
I Take a Partner | 60
Chapter V.
Flying from the Piutes | 100
Chapter VI.
Castle Safety | 118
Chapter VII.
Shooting the Rapids | 134
Chapter VIII.
In Stone | 160
Chapter IX.
Gold | 173
Chapter X.
The Lost Tribes | 185
Chapter XI.
Bricks Without Straw | 201
Chapter XII.
Story of the Tablets | 213
Chapter XIII.
Temple of the Sun | 227
Chapter XIV.
The Chariots of Israel and the Horsemen Thereof | 245
Chapter XV.
Children of the Sun | 266
Chapter XVI.
Farewell to Ophir | 287
Chapter XVII.
Thornless Roses | 313

The Gold of Ophir.

Chapter I.

Salaam.

Have you, average American reader, ever paused in the midst of your journey by the Rapid Transit Line through the jostling crowd of humanity to the somber terminus of Life, paused long enough to consider what startling vicissitudes attend some brief human experiences? Do you realize that men now living remember Chicago as a hamlet of a dozen shops and dwellings located, or more properly sunken, in quagmire? Are you aware that men who are still pursuing the phantom Hope, by active efforts in practical everyday occupations, remember it many years before Long John Wentworth was dreamed of, or Phil Armour had seen the light of an Illinois day?

Yet such is the case, and though I, Thomas Hardman, Jr., can lay claim to no such venerable years in my own right, some strange and not altogether untoward circumstances in my life have brought about these reflections in my mind with startling force.

I am a native of Chicago, and my school life from the time that I entered the primary department of the public school until I finished the curriculum prescribed by the University of Chicago, was all encompassed by a matter of a few blocks of the city, including my home, which was with my paternal uncle. Fortune I had none; but educational privileges second to none. My observation has taught me that such advantages, coupled with the knowledge that these advantages and the resulting mental and moral stamina are to constitute the sole equipment for the struggle in the world, are in themselves an independent fortune to any young man deserving of success.

It is true that the atmosphere of school life is apt to develop the ideal faculties unduly, and has a tendency to exalt our ideas of life and exaggerate our own importance in the world, and induce in the young and imaginative student that state of mind denominated “walking on air.” But if, when the valedictorian has made his bow, thrilled the hearts of his fond friends and relatives by his eloquence, been the recipient of flowers and compliments to his heart’s content, and as the finished product of a great and grand institution, succeeds in alighting from his airy perch on terra firma, plain and simple, without breaking his neck, there is yet hope for him that he is made of the tough genuine fiber of the type of manhood known in polite language as the successful variety.

So having in my own person proven the correctness of these theories, and run the educational gauntlet and found myself still alive, I determined to make the best of it, though I found myself growing cynical in my views of life and almost ready at times to give up in despair.

While in the confessional I may as well make a clean breast of it, and own that to add to my despair and intensify my melancholy reflections on the unequal gifts of life, I was madly in love. Yes, even in the practical city of the young West, there was at least one young man completely given over to the pleasing yet painful, the poetical yet contradictory and deliciously bitter-sweet sense of yearning and pining, and hoping and fearing, that marks the condition of the hopelessly distraught lover. Not that the adored one did not reciprocate the feelings of her inamorata, for she had long since yielded her affections to my soft persuasions, and we had framed our own philosophy of life into which love was to enter so largely as to exclude all disagreeable minor themes; and as we were schoolmates and classmates, I knew beyond a peradventure that in all social and intellectual acquirements as well as gifts, I was her peer. Beyond this no troublesome questions of inequality had intruded, believing as we did with Charles Dickens that “there is no disparity in marriage so great as unsuitableness in thought and feeling.” Our interests from childhood had been on the same horizon; the same form of religious belief was ours. The same social status had been thus far given no hint of the chasm that was to open between us. What was the Griffin that stood in our path to happiness? Ah! the only disparity in our lives was the disparity in the number of paltry dollars we possessed.

Lena Upton was the child of wealthy parents, while I was the almost penniless ward of an indulgent but impecunious uncle. Lena’s ancestors had settled upon a section of swamp land adjoining a like tract owned by my ancestors. Her family acres were not one whit less productive of frog-spawn, mosquitoes, and miasma than were those of my progenitors. The city was as densely populous on the tract that should have been my patrimony as on that which made Lena’s father a multi-millionaire. But strange to say, all this divergence of results was brought about by a trifling superiority of liver on the part of Lena’s grandfather over that of mine, or perhaps the whiskey and quinine that he employed as a remedial agent was a bona fide brand, while my worthy grandsire was a victim of the spurious article. Be that as it may, my grandfather died of malarial fever at a critical time in the history of his possessions and a slight flaw in the title was examined with a lens of high magnifying power, by the sharks of the law, till it appeared as a blotch on the land large enough to obscure and alienate it.

Great was my wrath and towering my impotent rage when I learned that this trifling circumstance was regarded by Lena’s parents as an impassable barrier between us. And while a schoolboy and schoolgirl friendship between us was smiled upon as quite the correct thing, the knowledge that an engagement existed between Lena and myself was the signal for an explosion of wrath against me, and, from being an innocent, agreeable, and suitable companion for Lena Upton, I became at a bound, in the sight of her parents, a dangerous charmer and cold-blooded fortune hunter, who would contaminate Lena’s morals by my presence, and if allowed to carry out my plotting programme, would make complete shipwreck of her happiness.

This was what I gathered to be the sum and substance of the politely worded interview with which Mr. Upton favored me. In my ignorance of worldly wisdom, I made my plea of an unsullied life, undying lofty Platonic affection for Lena, and ventured to quote from Scripture that a good name was rather to be chosen than great riches.

But to my surprise, for Mr. Upton is a very prominent worker in the —— Street Baptist church, he ignored all these arguments, as not applying to this case in the least, though certainly very true in a general sense.

I was sanguine that with my splendid health, and with such an all-impelling motive, I could, in a few years, achieve wealth, and as for position socially, was not mine already on an equal footing with hers?

He shook his head incredulously at my first proposition, and as to the second, he said, “You think so now, my boy, but you will speedily find your mistake.”

I was forced to own that the tropical warmth of my pleadings was powerless against his glacial coldness, and I soon found myself reduced to the dire extremity of asking leave to see Lena for five minutes, to say good-by, which was grudgingly granted, on my promising on my sacred honor not to make any effort to communicate in any way with her clandestinely. Lena’s distress at parting—strange contradiction—was all that I could desire. She agreed that we must keep sacredly the promise I had made, not to see her again, but with a woman’s unerring instinct in such matters, fixed upon the only possible source of comfort in the situation, by assuring me that she could and would wait. For she said, “I am sure something will yet happen to bring us back to each other.”

So with all the tenderness of an ardent nature toward Lena, and all the bitterness, I fear, of a somewhat resentful one toward her parents, I was forced to a parting that was fully understood and believed by her parents to be a final one, but brightened by her loving assurance that time could not change her feelings toward me.

I resolved then and there that I would rest neither day nor night till I had secured a situation in the city where I might begin to climb, even if it were from the lowest round. I naturally turned first to those with whom I had been on terms of friendship socially, among the business men of my acquaintance. I found to my disgust that there were no vacancies here and I imagined that I was dismissed a trifle superciliously by the men whom I had called friends.

I haunted the streets and business houses like a ghost and I soon came to resemble one as compared to my former self. I was compelled to plead guilty to the charge of inexperience, which seemed to be considered an unpardonable one in the eyes of many, while I was politely dismissed to wander on again with a somewhat dazed and perplexed inner questioning as to how I was to gain experience without opportunity. I began to envy the very bootblacks who had a settled calling and with every boot they polished were gaining what lacked. I, too, was gaining experience, but it was of that painful kind that turns to wormwood the spirit of benevolence that sweetens human intercourse. I saw young men, whom I knew to have enjoyed not a tithe of the advantages which I had not only enjoyed but improved, holding positions of trust and profit because they had a friend at court; and others who had enjoyed equal advantages with me, but had despised them and had merely drifted through the prescribed course, studying to evade rather than master the task of to-day, heedless and ambitionless of to-morrow, succeeding without an effort on their part to a partnership in a lucrative business with their fathers or other near relatives.

All these things, with my failure to find work, preyed as a moral gangrene on my happiness, I found myself harboring wild thoughts of ending it all by a plunge in the waters of the harbor.

My uncle, ever kindly solicitous for my welfare, at last seeing my desperate state of mind and knowing my straightened circumstances better than I, at last came to my rescue with a suggestion which was the means of changing the whole drift of my life into new channels. Knowing my partiality for chemistry, mineralogy, and kindred studies, he suggested a trip to Leadville, then beginning to create quite a sensation by its great mineral wealth, with a view of utilizing my technical knowledge of minerals primarily in investigating the worth of that one of the various groups of mines known as The Little Pittsburg in which my uncle and I each owned some shares, which we had bought for a song of a disgusted eastern gold seeker on his way home from Colorado a year or two before. Afterward, he said, “You may be able to qualify yourself by practical experience as a mining expert and do a thriving business.”

I was in just the reckless frame of mind to act on such a suggestion, and adding his slender resources to mine, my uncle gave me a hearty handshake and “God bless you, my boy,” and saw me on board a train with a ticket for Leadville.

Chapter II.

Leadville.

At the time when America was celebrating the centennial of her independence at Philadelphia the present site of Leadville was an elevated sage brush valley skirting the headwaters of the Arkansas at an altitude of many thousand feet above the sea level. The whole population of the valley would not exceed a score or so of souls, but in three years from that time a city of twenty-five thousand souls had sprung up.

This is a summary of my knowledge of the place for which I was bound, bent on making my fortune. In a little over forty-eight hours after leaving my native city I alighted on the platform of the Leadville station. I doubt if anything in the annals of the famous forty-niners in California, could equal this seething chaotic mass of humanity or rival the wildly grotesque appearance of this city of instantaneous growth.

Pandemonium let loose was the only comparison that seemed adequate to the situation. Houses there were none. Of sheds, shanties, tents, covered wagons and dens in the earth there were legions. The movements of the inhabitants of this outlandish city bore no resemblance to the earnest hurry and life of my native city, but resembled rather a universal desire on their part to catch a vanishing train or the wild effort to escape an avalanche or such a conflagration as had visited Chicago a few years before, some of the scenes of which were stamped ineffaceably on my mind.

I could scarcely keep my feet, much less any stable position where I might pause to view the ludicrous scene, but was borne irresistibly on toward the principal street of the city. I was, I protest, in no such hurry as the dog trot I was compelled to adopt would seem to indicate. Every one of the presumptuous builders of Babel were represented there and the scene struck me as being in a marked degree like the one my imagination had always pictured as immediately following the confusion of tongues. Men of different nationalities were endeavoring to make themselves intelligible to each other, gabbling, gesticulating, able often only to comprehend the choice store of profanity poured out on their stolid neighbor’s head because he could not interpret this jargon. Assay offices whose walls could not wholly exclude the daylight; stores whose shelves could be reached almost equally well from the outer as the inner side; saloons in endless reach, some of them consisting simply of a barrel and a few glasses in the open air with a board announcing its character nailed upon a post, beside the barrel—were everywhere in evidence. Passing along this street in the human current, I find residence buildings taking the place of the business block or board, as the case may be, and boarding houses taking the place of saloons. To one of the more respectable looking of these I applied for board and lodging, and found that for the modest sum of forty dollars a week I could be sumptuously boarded and luxuriously lodged. The proprietor, a big, red-faced fellow, in top boots and cowboy hat, assured me that their accommodations were strictly first-class, and conducted me to the sleeping apartment in the rear, which was a big lean-to shed, walled and roofed with a single course of unplaned boards, leaving little lines of daylight where the lumber purported to join. Bunks wide enough for two ran around the walls tier on tier; each pair of occupants were supplied with a pair of blankets, which, he assured me, was a luxury that no other place afforded, and which, later, I found to be correct, most of the lodgings being simply a spot of earth enclosed, where the lodger had the privilege of spreading his blankets on the ground, where saint and sinner, Yale College graduate and Mexican greaser lay down together to shiver the night away, having—as incongruous as were their former lives—one opinion in common, namely, that never before in their lives would they have considered it a fit enclosure for swine.

But the all-leveling mania for gold reconciled them to any kind of fare, and any or no shelter, just as circumstances might direct. The class of boarders at mine host’s inn was mainly of those who were engaged in ordinary business pursuits in the rickety, ridiculous segregation and exaggeration of the “wharf-rat” district of Chicago, called the city; merchants bent on doing business on the buy-for-a-dollar-and-sell-for-five-plan, lawyers scenting the battle of contending claimants from afar, assayers, surveyors, wet goodsmen, proprietors of faro banks and roulette wheels—a striking mass of humanity, representing every nation and affecting a style of dress that was a hybrid of the Spanish bull-fighters and Western cowboy cross—all were here. The supper hour, which was not far off when I arrived, brought all this motley group with a rush like the stampede of a Texas herd to feed voraciously on a meal of plain substantial mountain fare. Bread and butter, black coffee, fat bacon, and fried potatoes constituted the menu, which was regarded, I was told, as a great modern improvement on the rations provided before the railroad was completed, when provisions were freighted a long distance.

The landlord, disposed to be friendly and talkative, informed me that in those good old days flour had sold in camp as high as a dollar per pound, potatoes fifty cents per pound, eggs five dollars per dozen, meat five dollars per pound, and hay five hundred dollars per ton. Board was to be had at the low rate of ten to twenty-five dollars per meal, or three hundred and fifty to five hundred dollars per week. But the fabulous yield of silver on the Mosquito Range, he said, “wuz payin’ the fiddler,” when the New Discovery, the Vulture, and Carboniferous were yielding ore that ran two thousand and sometimes upward of three thousand ounces of silver to the ton, and there were a dozen mines in the camp that were putting out ore day after day, and week after week, estimated to be worth five dollars per shovelful. “How do they hold out at present?” I inquired, feeling my way toward a more vital question.

“Oh, purty fair, purty fair,” he said. “The Long Hannah and the Mosquito Belle, and the Vulture air all runnin’ smelters of thear own an’ cleanin’ up two or three thousand a day apiece. But,” he added, with a tremendous sigh, “we’ll never see sich rattlin’ times agin’.”

I then ventured to ask him if he happened to know anything of The Little Pittsburg Mine.

“To be sure, to be sure, up on Prayer Hill, must be ten thousand feet above the sea. Air up thar thinner ’n a snipe, mine no good, started in purtier ’n a picter, clean petered out, now, hardly raise the color any more. On the assessment list for some time, still workin’ her feeble-like. Any interest in her? Sorry. One of the bluest on the range at present. Belong in Chicago, did you say? Great place.”

So he rattled on in accompaniment to my supper, till a man who sat next me, attracted by the name of Chicago, began to pay his addresses to me.

“Mabbe you think I’m lyin’, young feller, but I see Chicago when there was only three stores, one blacksmith shop and one drug store there. I’m seventy year old last February, but I can remember like it was yesterday how she looked squatten there in the mud, and the shakes in the air so thick you could cut um with a knife. I was workin’ for Widdy Simpson on her claim that run up chuck to the town. I didn’t like the style of atmosphere they furnished there, so I began to get ready to go West. The widdy was anxious fur me to stay an’ work fur her, fur hands was mighty skeerce thar, and she showed me another government claim that was vacant and laid in the same delightful, stagnatin’ condition as hern, and mighty nigh as close to town. She advised me to stop an’ work fur her an’ build a shanty on the claim an’ hold it down, but I couldn’t see no policy in shakin’ my sides when I wuzn’t tickled, and had no faith in that bloomin’ pollywog pond no way, so I sloped; but it was a great mistake, for the widdy lived to see herself a millionaire an’ I might a’ bin a close second, but sich is life. Here I’ve bin a prospectin’ all my life and haven’t made enough to take me beck to Chicago. But,” he added, turning toward me, “I’m goin’ to strike her rich one of these days and don’t you furgit it.”

And he proceeded forthwith to inform me with a mysterious shake of his head that he knew where lay a ledge of gold-bearing quartz that was rich enough to make up for all the disappointment of missing his fortune at Chicago. A sheep herder, he said, whom he encountered in one of his prospecting trips in the Gunnison country, had showed him a block of quartz that he had picked up in a gulch while seeking to quench his thirst from a spring that burst out from its head. As he stooped over to drink he noticed the peculiar shape of the rock first, and picking it up, he found it still more peculiar in formation. So he had carried it with him to camp and produced it in evidence. The old prospector’s eyes had no sooner fallen upon the sample than he knew that it was fabulously rich in the yellow metal, and at once proposed to go halvers and look up the vein, if his herder-friend would conduct him to the spot where he had picked up the quartz. The proposition was accepted and my new acquaintance entertained me during the evening with a minute description of his search for the lead, luring him to the top of a high range, densely covered with fallen and standing trees and rocks, in such wild confusion that he could scarcely make his way through them. Sometimes he was just on the verge of success; then the trail would grow indistinct and be lost again. So he climbed the highest neighboring peaks looking for the lost trail, and invaded deep and almost inaccessible gorges to view the place from which he had started so hopefully in quest of the parent ledge, from which had been wrenched this potent declaration of its surpassing richness. But the ledge was so cunningly hidden that it eluded his keen scent day after day and throughout lengthening weeks, as he pursued the phantom through mountain fastnesses and lonely defiles, till his supplies were all gone, and he was forced to return to camp and seek employment. He was at present working out an assessment for The Little Pittsburg Mine. He said, “And just as soon as I can make a little raise I’ll strike her again, I’m bound to find her, that chunk of the yallar didn’t get there by no accident. Its just as certain to be there as the sun is to rise to-morrow, and I am just as certain to find her as soon as I can get the dust. Say boss,” he suddenly asked in a confidential tone, “you don’t want to grub-stake me for the half do you?” I looked at him in blank amazement; that was a term entirely new to me, and might mean anything from staking a game of cards for him, to burning with him at the stake as an offering to the gold divinity. “Don’t ketch on to minin’ camp lingo, hey? Well, you are a precious tenderfoot to be sure.”

Then he explained that in many cases prospectors spent nearly their whole time in remote mountain regions searching for gold and, of course, when they were unsuccessful, their means would soon become exhausted and then, returning to the nearest camp, they would propose to some merchant or mining expert that if provisions were furnished them to enable them to go on without interruption, they would give a half interest in any mine which they might find while the store of provisions lasted. There was something strikingly pathetic to me in the spectacle of an old man such as he, still lured on by the hope of suddenly amassing unlimited wealth. All the discouragements of a long life of failure were powerless to keep down the elastic hopes which inspired him; all the failures counted for nothing, all the privations and exposure were forgotten as he talked of the wealth almost in sight for both of us, if he could but spend a few weeks more in the Gunnison country. I was more interested at present, however, in gaining what information I could regarding my own forlorn hope, The Little Pittsburg, especially as he had mentioned that he was working upon it. I have since learned by experience and observation that few people come within the seductive influence of the mining camp without sooner or later absorbing the fever to discover the richest and most famous mine yet known, and during the progress of that hallucination he is as literally stark mad as a victim of mountain fever in his wildest ravings.

I felt the thrill of the old man’s words, but did not then know that it was the characteristic first symptoms of the disease, and till near the hour of midnight I listened as he discoursed of mines and mining operations, of life in Leadville, the crudest and wildest stages of life in the mountains, for months with no other companion than his pack mule, of narrow escapes from Indians, of not less blood-curdling accounts of losing his way in the mountains when provisions were almost exhausted, and the winter closing in on the higher altitudes; of winter life in Leadville, and other camps among the most motley, the most reckless, and withal, the most generous class of people on the face of the earth. He now indicated that it was his bedtime, and, as I had all the experience that one day could well utilize, our landlord filed us away by number on the shelves of his human mercantile establishment like legal documents, and left us to wink and blink at the stars that twinkled through the roof at us. But the first keen delight of inhaling the pure mountain air of the Rockies at such an elevation compensates for all minor inconveniences, and every breath was a new delight, and sleep was a repetition of boyhood’s perfect rest undisturbed by ugly dreams. Morning opens anew at each awakening; the bounding pulse and rosy hopes of a new world, the weariness, the discouragements, are all gone, and I can now understand something of the source of that wonderful buoyancy that keeps the poor prospector from despair.

After breakfasting on hot biscuit, fat bacon and coffee, I accompanied my venerable friend to inspect our valuable possessions, The Little Pittsburg. The old gentleman, to whom I will now, indulgent reader, if you will pardon the rudeness of delay, present you, my friend of a night, Abner Callaway, prospector and practical miner; by nativity a child of Illinois; by circumstances and training a cosmopolitan; in thought and intent, simple as a child; by creed, a follower of the golden rule. Short of stature, sturdy of build, limbs encased in the picturesque blue overalls tucked into high-top boots, supported by buckskin suspenders, flaming red flannel shirt with sleeves habitually rolled up to the elbows, and folded back from his burly chest at the neck in the shape of a V, showing a bosom hairy as Esau’s; cowboy hat with leathern band sheltering a good-natured, rubicund countenance in which you could but believe, the venerable expression heightened by a long white beard and locks of the same hue, falling to the shoulders, complete the picture of the man with whose destiny mine was to be wonderfully blended. But hold! I have given you his picture as he appears at rest. To prepare himself for action he produces a clay pipe, fills and lights it, and then the little human engine puffs away in active motion toward the theater of action for the day. Between puffs, he informs me, as we climb up and up till a queer feeling as if a heavy weight were attached to each foot begins to be noticed, and you realize that you are getting beyond the natural habitation of the animal known as man, that he had a few days’ work yet to perform on this claim, when he would be at liberty to pursue his own projects once more, the only hindrance being the want of sufficient means to make an extended prospecting trip, and as it was already June and the summer-time of opportunity, but brief in those elevated regions, he felt great anxiety to be at his labor of love again. You felt as he talked that he spoke with all the earnestness of strong conviction and persuaded you because he himself felt strongly, and not because of any element of the shark in his arguments. He might himself be deluded, but he was not seeking to delude you, but to convert you to the truth. He explained that his golden field of quest lay to the southward, well toward the mouth of the Gunnison in the Elk Mountains where the severities of the climate were not so great, nor the winters of enforced idleness so long. He waived all my efforts to turn the conversation upon our mine as a subject of not a moment’s importance compared with the one which dominated his life by day, and gave the text for glorious treasure-haunted dreams by night, so that by the time we reached our superb property in the region of the clouds, my mind was beginning to yield to the reasonings with which he besieged it, and I began to regard The Pittsburg as being, after all, of rather secondary importance. It is well that my mind had been thus prepared for the utter revulsion of feeling which took possession of it when I beheld what had been represented as valuable property, lacking only development. But it still lacked a good deal of that subtle fancy that enables one to see in a possession like ours anything more than an unsightly hole in the ground, upon which so much excavating must be done from time to time, to fulfill the law. I stood upon the brink of the pit and looked down into its unpromising depths with much the same feelings, I imagine, with which I should inspect the work of digging my own grave.

The old man cut off my bitter reflections by observing impressively, “Look ’e here, pard, I’m an old man an’ you’re but a kid. Let me take an old man’s privilege an’ advise you never again while you have breath in you, never put a dollar into a paper mine.” He showed me some specimens taken out the day before, and declared they were all right, way up ore in fact, but not enough of them. “Pinched right out; if she’d held out as she started you would be a millionaire now. Of course, there’s a ghost of a chance that she’ll come in agin’ all OK, but not likely.”

So I left him at his work, and went in search of the resident owners of the concern, whose whereabouts he pointed out. They were two brothers, Wilson by name, and they were at present working another claim of the same group on Prayer Hill. When I had introduced myself, and satisfied them, by recommendations which I carried, of my identity, and of the fact of my interest in the property, I was received very kindly. They had struck a rich vein in the claim they were working and were sanguine that The Little Pittsburg would yet come out all right. I paid my assessments to date, and got all the information possible in regard to the mine, which, when summed up, was that, if it failed to pan out, it would be the first and only one of that particular group that had done so. That the depth to which the shaft had reached was not yet sufficient for a final opinion on its value, and that in their judgment I would do well not to be in a hurry about disposing of my shares. This somewhat restored my spirits, and I began to consider what I should do pending a final test on our property, and I set about getting practical information to supplement my theoretical stock, which I found was a rather useless commodity without the ability to turn it to successful account. I had a wholesome horror of the task of looking for a job in the light of past experiences, but I had already learned enough of matters here to show me that conditions here were somewhat different from those I had encountered. Men stood but little on the formality of introductions or references, but accepted with easy philosophy the people and conditions that surrounded them. I had been encouraged by hearing, every working hour since my arrival, inquiries for help in various lines, and on returning to my boarding house at noon, my landlord said he had just had an inquiry for a clerk in one of the assay offices, and that he would introduce me at dinner to the proprietor, which he did, with the result that I obtained the position which was much to my present mind as it afforded the opportunities I desired for reducing my knowledge of minerals to practice.

Next morning I assumed my new duties, which I found interesting and agreeable, for they brought me in contact with the best mining ability, both practical and theoretical, that the world afforded, and I was eager to improve them and impatient to make my fortune, and return to my Mecca, toward which I worshiped day and night. Doubtless I committed the usual lover-like weakness of “sighing like a furnace,” but never the kindred one of writing a ballad to my mistress’ eyebrow, owing to the fact that in spite of my yearning passion I found it impossible to be poetical, and never in my life had been known to turn a single rhyme. I made but few acquaintances among the conglomerate population, where ex-ministers of the gospel lay down to rest, side by side, with blacklegs and professional gamblers, and that still more degraded specimen in his line of business, the “sure thing” man. He it was who blackened the fair fame of the professional in the latter’s opinion, and brought his honorable(?) profession into disrepute, and himself into unsavory prominence because an undiscriminating public insisted upon writing them down in the same category. His protest to me had much the same ring as that which the keepers of apothecary shops in Western States send forth, because some thoughtless and illogical persons insist on thinking of them when saloonists are mentioned, not because they ever stoop to the degrading business of selling a glass of liquor over the bar or counter—begging his pardon—but because they as good and law-abiding citizens choose to enjoy the legal right to sell it by the quart, gallon and jugful. While my city training had not made me over nice in moral distinctions, yet I confess to a somewhat creeping sensation when I saw a prominent druggist in Leadville kneeling at the altar in a prominent evangelical church to receive the solemn rites of ordination as an elder in said church, on a Sabbath morning, rise and hurry through with his noonday meal and away to his place of business to prepare several demijohns of whiskey for the outgoing stage bound for some mining camp beyond the railroad facilities.

But I have already stated that my researches into human nature since leaving the genial, exhilarating atmosphere of the schoolroom had tended to make me somewhat cynical; so I beg my readers not to mind me in the least, to merely regard this spleeny digression as another evidence that my mind has become soured by want of success, and that my present position on morals is owing rather to an abnormal condition of the liver than to firm principles.

Speaking of acquaintances, however, there was one whose influence had grown upon me, day by day, and who had seemed as assiduously bent on cultivating my friendship as I was flattered by his; for I had from the first hour I met him placed implicit confidence in our old friend of the flaming garment, nor have I to this hour found the smallest reason to change my opinion. Neither is this intended as a tribute to my acumen in reading human nature, but rather as a tribute to his open nature that presented no difficulties to the dullest reader. Of course, I inquired regularly as to the prospects of our mine, as he penetrated into the ledge, but the answers were rather unsatisfactory though on the whole he said the prospects were a little more cheering than when I first viewed my Golconda.

So the month of June had almost slipped away, and he would complete his job in two days more, when, one evening, he said the ledge was opening up again in fine shape and if she kept on as she promised now she would yet be a hummer. The next evening the reports were still more favorable, and The Little Pittsburg began again to become one of the themes among the knowing ones.

One day now remained of his allotted test work, and I waited in feverish anxiety for the old miner’s final report. As soon as office hours were over I hastened to our hotel to learn the results. Abner had not yet returned, but I did not have long to wait in suspense, and when he came he assured me with fatherly pleasure that I had struck it rich!

But my faith had been too rudely shattered once to soar very high on the subject of the strike. I began to have some offers for my interest that night, and the next morning I was waited upon by the Wilson brothers, who offered me ten thousand dollars for the shares owned by myself and uncle. I had been clothed with full power to negotiate and transfer his stock with mine in case I saw fit to sell, and, without waiting to seek the advice of my old friend, or hesitating a moment, I accepted the offer of what appeared to me quite a fortune. When I advised my old friend of my deal he rated me roundly, and called me some rather uncomplimentary names; said I needed a guardian, and that I could just as well have pocketed a cool hundred thousand as the paltry ten thousand. I tried to feel badly over my foolish transaction, but failed to feel any compunction at parting with a possession that had been from the first somewhat of a white elephant on my hands.

Chapter III.

A Brace of Mining Experts.

Out of the chaos of the world, beyond our orbits of which we know so little in our circumscribed limits of thought and action, there was about this time evolved two typical characters of the mining camp. Diametrically different in methods, and working in entirely distinct departments of the mining industry each was an expert in his own particular line. The first was a dapper little Frenchman, of pleasing appearance and address, sprightly of tongue and limb, neat of dress and rejoicing in the appellation of Captain De Vere. He had spent his whole life since the famous days of forty-nine in California in the study of mines and mining, in all their details from the standpoint, first of a practical miner, and later as a diligent student of metallurgy, and it was said, made a good thing by virtue of his knowledge, of which even the oldest prospector who depended upon his experience with pick and shovel alone, had little conception. He took lodgings with mine host, and cultivated the acquaintance of everybody with the ease of an old stager, and in a way to bear out the natural reputation of his countrymen for social graces. His time was spent in wandering about among the mines gathering specimens of ore from many sources, and in assaying them and recording the result in the office which he established ostensibly to do test work for the public; but he spent so much of each day in field work that his business did not seem to be a very flourishing one, which fact seemed to cause him very little concern. The Little Pittsburg had now come into prominence and the Wilson Brothers decided to work it vigorously, so one of them took charge of the property, erected a shanty close to the shaft, and employed a force of men to operate it. One day as Captain De Vere was making his rounds he strolled to the shanty of the Wilson mine and began to examine the earth thrown out in a heap upon the dump. One variety of clay thrown up was of a soft putty-like appearance, dull white in color with a bluish tinge. The cabin had been banked all around with this substance to shelter the nightly occupants from the chilly winds. The captain examined this carefully, compared it with that in the heap, found them identical in quality, and in that simple fact made an important discovery to him, namely, the owner’s estimate of its value in putting it to this homely use. There was a bright glitter in the Frenchman’s eye as he carefully pocketed a specimen, then strolled carelessly away till sure of being well out of sight, when he fairly flew to his office, locked himself in, and in great excitement began to test his morning’s supply of specimens. Whatever the results, when he appeared at noon among his associates no one could have suspected from his manner that he cared a fig for all the silver in Leadville. He was gay and talkative, even more jovial than usual, but his interest seemed to be anywhere else than in mining. A day or two after this he loafed again into the dominion of white clay and asked for Mr. Wilson, who soon appeared, when Captain De Vere asked him carelessly, after some conversation, if he wished to sell The Little Pittsburg. “That depends,” said Mr. Wilson; “we all have our price, you know. My brother and I are satisfied that we have a good thing here, and are in no hurry to part with it; still we will sell if we get what she’s worth.”

“Could I look her over?” asked the captain.

“Why, yes, certainly, but I don’t believe I can show you through to-day, as I have an appointment below; but I should be happy to show you all there is to be seen at any time after to-day. I will be here at two o’clock to-morrow.”

The captain took his departure for his office, and the astute owner of the promising mine hastened to keep his appointment below, which did not happen to mean one in the town at the foot of the hill, but below the surface of a little square of the earth’s surface to which he had laid claim with all the leads, spurs, dips, and angles that might underlay it, and during the rest of the day he was, indeed, a very much engaged man, preparing, like a prudent housewife, for the coming visit.

At the appointed time the two gentlemen were lowered away by the miner’s windlass, to the depths below. As many men as could be utilized had been kept busily at work since her late development of riches, and several drifts had been started in various directions and different levels to fully develop the wealth supposed to lie there and form a basis on which a miner could glibly tell you, to the fraction of an ounce, how many thousands were “in sight.”

The captain inspected each tunnel minutely, making a few inquiries, probing some weak points in the make-up of the ledge, until they came to, and passed, what appeared to have been, to the Frenchman’s keen eyes, the beginning of another drift tunnel that had been abandoned, and barricaded with rocks and clay. “Halloo!” said Captain De Vere, “what’s this?”

“Oh, that’s a drift we run there a little way, but she showed up nothing, so we quit her and made her a dump for this worthless white clay.”

“By the way,” said the captain, “this white clay is going to take your mine yet, isn’t it?”

“Oh, no, I guess not,” said Wilson, trying to conceal any show of annoyance that he might feel, “that will run out when we get down a little further.”

“But doesn’t it grow thicker in the vein at present there?” asked the captain.

“Well, yes,” replied Wilson, reluctantly, “but we think that it will peter out presently.”

Next morning a little wizened old miner in regulation attire presented himself at Wilson’s cabin and asked for a job. As the work was extended in different directions it gave a constantly widening field for work, and he was told to go below and clean out room number five. Three hours later Wilson himself went below to inspect the work of his men, and on coming to the spot where he had erected his barricade he found it partly removed and the new hand was busily at work in it, clearing away the rubbish.

“What the devil are you doing in there?” demanded Wilson.

“Why this is number five, isn’t it, boss?”

“H—l, no!” roared Wilson, “get out of there and out of this mine; here’s your day’s wages; I don’t want any such stupid jackasses about the works;” and the crestfallen miner went his way, leaving the angry proprietor to repair the damage done to his defenses, and sputtering away about the folly of hiring green hands who made more extra work than their necks were worth.

The magician of the retort was again at his work in his little office and his labors seemed to exert a strange spell over him, for his countenance worked in a sort of time-keeping spasm to the changes in the ores undergoing analysis. He laughed satirically to himself, he paced the floor in half-suppressed excitement, composed himself to make some entries in a little private record, and to the figures he added a few words of annotation in cipher, closed the book and thrust it into his inner pocket; and, like a man changing his workaday coat for evening dress, he assumed again the beaming, careless, happy countenance of a contented philosopher who has enough to meet the demands of his everyday life and would not go out of his way for more. By merest chance (?) he sauntered into the post office a few days later as Wilson came out. Greeting him cordially he inquired jocosely, “How’s the potter’s clay panning out?”

“That’s all right, captain, but she’s doing a little better to-day than she did yesterday, and she’s been going that gait now for a good many days. The Little Pittsburg is all OK.”

The captain was passing on, but had a second thought, and stopping, he asked: “Well, how much less will you take than you gave for those shares you bought of Hardman the other day?”

“Rats, rats,” said Wilson, “you know she’s worth all we gave for her, and a handsome sum to boot; I’ll tell you what, captain, it’ll just take a hundred thousand dollars to buy The Little Pittsburg. Say the word, captain, and she’s yours for that money, but not a penny less.”

“I’ll take her,” said the captain coolly, “I may as well make a fool of myself as anybody, I haven’t any family to suffer if I do go broke. Come to Hobson’s notarial office with your brother, this evening, and we’ll fix it up,” and the captain tripped away as serenely as though his heart was not beating like a triphammer, and his emotions threatening to choke him. Wilson, with less perfect training, hurried away, excitement plainly written on every feature and expressed in every action. He hardly dared to believe that the captain meant what he said, or would stand to his bargain through the day. But when, in company with his brother, he presented himself at the appointed time and place, the little captain seemed to be still laboring under the strong delusion that impelled him to regard the mine as a bonanza. The transfer was speedily made, and the evening express bore to Denver a package bearing the address of Wilson Brothers’ bankers, and containing a hundred thousand dollars in gold. It also bore the little captain on his bland way to London, where he must have produced some convincing arguments of the worth of his property, for he was accompanied on his return by one of the trusted representatives of a rich London firm who dealt in mines and mining stocks. Once more the various galleries of The Little Pittsburg were swept and garnished in preparation for a visitor. Once more the impressionable putty clay was to take a plaster cast of a foreign-made boot, but this time the barricade of rocks in room number five was removed and everything done to invite the visitor to enter.

And now John Bull and Skye Terrier pant up the mountain, scarcely able to breathe enough oxygen in this thin atmosphere to support the living flame in the lusty Englishman. Arrived at the cabin, they inspected the clay on the dump and the captain is telling his companions that there are thousands of dollars lying right there on that heap of white clay. “It is the richest ore of the kind I’ve ever seen taken from the earth, but these mummies know no more of its value than if it had been aluminum; but come below, there’s a prettier sight there I want to show you.” They descend to the level of room number five, and make their way there at once. “Look here,” said the captain pointing triumphantly to a dark streak of mineral about an inch in width, running zigzag down the face wall of the ledge. “There she is, the pure stuff! Some of the lumps I gathered the day I went to work for Wilson as a miner tested eighty to eighty-five per cent. of silver, and these looneys who have been mining all their lives pronounced it a vein of iron, and tried to smuggle it over for fear it would injure the sale of their property. Ha, ha! I like to be injured that way, though I didn’t make a great success working for Wilson, blundered into the wrong stall you know, and got fired. Now we’ll see the other levels and inspect the vein of putty in its native state. Too bad it got worse on them all the time, expensive stuff to handle, ate up all the profits. I’ll convince you that at each level where the ledge is tapped this rich silver-bearing but innocent-looking white clay grows steadily thicker, and when we get our drift through from the bottom of the hill, we’ll show you one of the greatest bonanzas in the history of Leadville or any where else.”

And undoubtedly De Vere made good his word as far as bringing convincing proofs of what he claimed for the ledge is concerned, for, before another week had elapsed, the town was all a-twitter with the news that Captain De Vere had sold a half interest in The Little Pittsburg to a London syndicate, for the handsome sum of one million dollars in good yellow gold. I had thus the pleasure of seeing my property increase in value tenfold; each time it changed hands but, I alas, was at the wrong end of the progression. Still, I can sincerely and honestly aver that I have never yet seen a day, or an hour, when I regretted the part I had taken. I felt as if I were not yet ripe for such a blow of prosperity and one that would most probably have knocked me off my pegs entirely. I felt, too, that my destiny and fortune lay in another direction from the time I first knew my flambeau friend, Dad Callaway, as the boys, with a touch in the rough, of feeling for his venerable years, had named him.

I was deeply interested in all his plans and ambitions and resolved in due time to tender my assistance; but at present my great concern was to learn how to make a footprint that would not be instantly recognized as that of a tenderfoot. I could already discern clearly enough a wide field of profitable employment for those who were competent to cultivate it, and the experience of Captain De Vere, I felt, was almost as valuable to me as though I, and not he, had realized the million from our mine. I could but own that it was but a just price paid for knowledge; what little information I possessed had sold readily enough for ten thousand, Wilson’s a grade higher for practical purposes sold for a correspondingly higher price, while Captain De Vere’s expert knowledge on the subject brought its adequate reward.

Encouraged by his example I felt that in years to come, I, too, could combine the knowledge derived from college life with that of the everyday life of a miner, and become a two-fisted fellow ready to cope successfully with all classes of men and mines that I should come in contact with, but I confess I had not the slightest conception, or prophetic ken, of the job in store for me.

But the other type of mining expert, what of him? We must beg his pardon for having left him all this time standing on one leg waiting for an introduction, like a big, awkward schoolboy, while we went into rhapsodies over the fortune-getting that was interesting to us chiefly as a spectacular entertainment, or, if valuable as an experience in life, we bought the same at a good round price. If the example of the other acquaintance to whom we are about to present you should prove of any value, and it is with this earnest hope in view that I record it, it will be chiefly as an example to be avoided, and lest, by assuming the responsibility of presenting him I should also incur the guilt of aiding and abetting in fraud and illicit practices, I shall plainly label him and present him to you, my readers, as Jim Mitchel, P.M.S., professional mining shark. He is a strapping, coarsely-framed fellow with swarthy complexion and a sneering cast of countenance, and, as to nationality, that might pass for any foreign, or home-bred progeny of the villain type; while his speech proves that by habit of life he is legitimately of the mining-camp breed.

He appeared at our camp about the same time that Captain De Vere made his appearance. He belonged to what might be termed the night shift of our boarding-house community, for he seldom took time for sleep during the natural hours for such repose, but was to be seen frequenting the saloons, faro-games, and roulette wheels, especially during the harvest time of those flourishing institutions, which was from Saturday evening till Monday morning. Thousands of the miners worked claims that lay at some distance from the city in the surrounding mountains. It is the testimony of all old miners and inhabitants of mining towns, confirmed by a not ungenerous range of observance by myself, that ninety-nine of every one hundred men, whose sturdy labor produces the mineral wealth of the land, fail to realize any material benefit from their labors beyond a bare living. When the labors of the week are ended they all flock to town to enjoy their holiday, hear the latest mine gossip, lay in provisions for the coming week, and last, but uppermost in their minds, enjoy the privileges, the delights of the saloon and gaming table. Wholly indescribable to the uninitiated were these scenes in the palmy days of Leadville. Every saloon was filled to overflowing with rough miners drinking and jesting, and around the rows of gaming tables were gaping crowds of infatuated spectators, anxious for a chance to try their luck. Huge piles of gold and silver lay on the tables, and heavy stakes were played for. There was one feature of the scene that appeared inconsistent with its general character, which was a notable absence of wrangling and wordy disputes that were the invariable accompaniment of such scenes in Eastern cities. In fact the scene was one of armed neutrality, for almost every man carried a heavy revolver at his side, and in that fact was found the solution of the problem; for it was well understood that epithets sown broadcast would speedily reap a harvest of bullets, and the drunken sot, who, in an Eastern city felt privileged to thrust his maudlin visage into your face or apply lightly decorative word-painting to your cognomen, never so far forgot himself here as to take such offensive liberties, knowing that they would not be tolerated for a moment, and proving that in his boldest flights of imprudence the toper is still responsible and capable of distinguishing between good and evil, but is possessed by a reckless spirit of deviltry, which he will wreak upon you if he knows it is entirely safe to do so, knowing that when he meets you next day, and you venture to remonstrate with him he has the convenient scapegoat, “the drink,” to bear his sins away.

But when trouble did arise which was not seldom, “The devil and Tom Walker,” was to pay, guns were drawn by the principals in the dispute, and as there seems to be no possible question that can arise in life but has its votaries on both sides, the sympathizers of both parties promptly drew theirs, lights were blown out, or shot out, a regular fusillade in the dark resulted in the death of perhaps half a score of poor fellows, quite as likely to be of those who had no part whatever in the quarrel, as not. Their comrades would carry them out when the scrimmage was over, and the room relighted, after which everything went on again as before, with only a little estrangement between the contending parties. In the midst of such scenes as those Jim Mitchel was perfectly at home; he staked his money freely, and bore his varying fortunes with sneering good humor. He was better posted on the nerve and weakness of the different players in camp than, perhaps, any man in it, so that his stakes were wagers of his superiority of judgment of human nature. In that sense Jim was a sure thing man, for he generally managed to foot up a balance in his favor after each night’s play. If a horse race was to be run on a Sunday on the main thoroughfare, which was the staple Sunday amusement, and the main street the regular racecourse, Jim was a prominent character, going about with a handful of twenty-dollar pieces held aloft and calling out the odds on his favorite horse, till he found a taker. All these sports were with Jim the mere by-play, to amuse and while away the present moment, while he waited for the curtain to rise on his five-act drama. Jim was a fisher of men, but in the waters where we have seen him, casting hook and line, he caught only what he considered minnows, which he intended to use for bait to attract game worthy of his attention.

Jim had a claim on one of the remote peaks of Prayer Hill group, but judging from appearance he valued it mainly as it gave him standing as a miner among the boys, and occasioned healthful exercise in doing necessary assessment work. He was no indifferent on-looker at the prosperity of The Little Pittsburg, and he drew his own conclusions, being careful to cultivate a natural feeling in the public mind, of expectancy that other mines in this group might prove equally valuable.

Meanwhile, no doubt, his mental eye was scanning the financial horizon of Leadville for a star of the first magnitude, before which he might perform his devotions. His affections suddenly centered upon an object to all human appearance the most unpromising imaginable. Good old Dr. Maxwell, a practicing physician, who had amassed a comfortable fortune before coming to Leadville, and had increased it to a decidedly handsome one by judicious investment in city real estate, was opposed to all mining speculation, and boasted that he had been around mining camps since the days of the forty-niners’ paradise and had never yet been attacked by the “buck fever,” or mania for speculation in mines.

“Mitch” was too astute a student of human nature not to observe that an element of weakness cropped out in that very declaration of strength, and proceeded in the practice of his profession on the principle that every man who came in contact with mining affairs would have his turn at the disease as surely as he was subject, in earlier life, to the measles and whooping cough.

He was too good an artist to attempt to interest the venerable doctor by any commonplace method or argument, but from the moment the latter made his confident assertion, Mitchel set him down in his list of eligibles and patiently awaited the opportunity to lure him into his parlor, with the winding stair, when he should convince him, that according to the doctor’s complacent explanatories of contagious diseases, “Humanity is rendered immune from contagious diseases only by experiencing that disease in a more or less violent form.”

Variety theaters, horse races, faro dens, and jag shops were vastly more congenial to Mitch as places of amusement, but the frequenters of these places were not favorable subjects for his manipulations, for they, as a rule, had been thoroughly inoculated with every form of mental epidemic and fanciful fever, till they had become dulled to such influences and far too blasé to make desirable converts.

He resolved that if ever he should be sick, none but Dr. Maxwell should prescribe for him. Fortune would not have been doing her share toward aiding this general in fighting his battles, if she had not come to his rescue now. He had the good fortune, while toying with a gun, to have the little finger of his left hand shot off, and sought the doctor’s office to have it properly dressed, and proceed forthwith to “call” him softly. Fumbling in his pocket for a stray gold piece to pay his fee, he, by the merest accident in the world, drew out with the twenty dollar piece a little nugget of silver an inch square, such as we have seen taken from the “iron seam” in the Little Pittsburg, and remarked casually, as he separated it from the coin: “Doc, here’s a nice little specimen for your cabinet, take a look at it. About ninety per cent. pure silver, I should say. Nothing small about that, hey?”

He noted carefully, as ever did this knight of the pill, every circumstance entering into the diagnosis of a difficult case, the look of interest in the old doctor’s eye, as he examined the innocent little piece of mineral that was to produce a greater tumult in his quiet bosom than his favorite dose of calomel could produce in his patients.

“That’s a beauty, Mitchel, much obliged; where did such a specimen as that come from?”

“Oh, that’s from my little property, The Queen, upon Prayer Hill. Lots more like it there. I’ll bring you some more next time I’m down if you like it.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and develop your mine, Jim? You might have a good thing there.”

“Might have, I know I have, without any ifs or ands about it, but I can make all the money I need without digging for it; that’s hardly in my line; I do enough work on her to clear the law, and that’s all I care for at present.”

And Jim, having seen his patient swallow the first dose, dropped the subject as if of little interest to him, and soon went away. He came daily to have his finger dressed, but took care to forget all about his promise to bring some more specimens, till the doctor had reminded him of it once or twice; then he finally produced another of the same kind as the first one brought, but a still larger and finer specimen, some lumps of putty clay, rich with blue streaks of silver, and several different kinds of quartz, specimens all rich in their way, for sly Jim Mitchel knew that they would go, not into the doctor’s cabinet, but into the assayer’s hands; then he remarked lazily that they were precisely similar to the ore found in The Little Pittsburg, at the same stage of development, and furthermore, that his lead would one day cut The Little Pittsburg out, and make them answer for every dollar they were taking out.

Then he loafed away again, leaving his little lump of blue clay to leaven the whole lump of mercenary meal in the white-haired physician.

Long he sat in his office pondering on many things. He had succeeded beyond his expectations in his profession, had reaped a comfortable harvest of professional honor and a goodly store of wealth, but he had a large and ambitious family, sons and daughters, anxious to obtain the best educational advantages Europe and America could afford. He had learned by costly experience that youthful ambitions were expensive. To be sure, he had always inveighed against such speculations, but this was an exceptional case. Here was a mine owned by a profligate who would rather make his money by gambling than by digging, and who, even if he did develop and realize a fortune from his mine, would only squander it shortly, and reap no permanent benefits, but rather injury, for it would only give him a new impetus in dissipation.

Then he reviewed his whole business and professional career and concluded that his success had entitled him to a fair opinion of his own judgment, and made up his mind, that if, after investigating, he found as promising an investment as surface views indicated, he might possibly invest a little money in The Queen. He promptly turned over his samples to be tested, and, as you and I are well aware, they were no bogus samples, and, therefore, it does not surprise us in the least to learn that they made a remarkably good record, duly attested and certified to by the responsible and bonded firm of Krupp & Golden. So Jim went on his way, only a poor, ignorant fool, beneath the notice, ordinarily, of a professional gentleman of Dr. Maxwell’s caliber. He could not relate a single college incident, or converse intelligently on the subject of college boating, and football clubs, of secret societies for the promotion of the dignity of the seniors, and the holding in check of the rising imprudence and conceit of the “Freshies,” and “Sophs;” knew nothing whatever of coaching and hazing, while all these were pleasing, everyday themes of conversation with the doctor and his companions, even though they might seem, at times, a little heedless of the courtesy due some friend present who had never known such a seventh heaven of delight. But, after all, could such an one have the fine sensitive nature that could feel neglected by being ignored in this feast of the little American gods? The ultimate conclusion arrived at in his cogitations was that he had good grounds for believing in himself as a very prudent, careful, and eminently capable sort of a person and he sometimes prayed with himself consciously, or unconsciously, “Lord, I thank Thee that I am not as other men, or even as this poor profligate who wastes his substance in riotous living, like the unfaithful steward of whom Thou hast said, even that which he hath shall be taken from him,” but out of native politeness, and a refined and classical nature he refrained from hinting to the Throne of Grace that he was eminently the proper person on whom the confiscated goods should be bestowed.

But the doctor had his own private opinion on that subject and began to think that he would like to take a look at the property known as The Queen.

He regarded it as almost a providential bit of information on a subject that was deeply interesting to him, but of which no human being had heard him breathe a word, that one of his patients who was suffering from an ugly flesh wound received in one of the free-for-all fights in a saloon the night before, had remarked while being cared for, “That was a lucky shot for me that it’s no worse; but it was an unlucky scrimmage for Jim Mitchel.”

“Why so?” asked the physician.

“Well, you see, Jim was just arranging a deal with some of the boys who had had a streak of luck to bond The Queen for a hundred thousand dollars, but they quarreled about fixin’ the papers an’ he lost the whole deal for what didn’t amount to four bits.”

Reflecting when alone on this information the doctor concluded that the time had come for him to investigate this matter, and that it was advisable to act decisively before the game went entirely out of his hands. So he sought the haunts of Mitchel, and told him he should like a few more specimens from his mine for a friend, for he reasoned that it would not be policy for him to show his hand at this early stage in the game, when his partner was an ignoramus who could not understand his motive, or appreciate the business sagacity that suggested such a course.

They went together to the incipient bonanza, Queen, armed with a pick, with which to loosen the specimens. There was to be no chance for any trickery here, the doctor had soliloquized, and at any rate a man who is foolish enough to be duped with his eyes open, ought to have his eye teeth cut. He superintended the work of knocking down a good supply of samples from the ledge, and saw them gathered up and put into a sack. Any one could see with half an eye that these specimens were genuine without the possibility of mistake. Was not the ledge bristling with the same kind of ore, was not the earth beneath their feet strewn with the same sort of samples from the parent ledge? It would require an expert to determine which pieces were broken off now, and which ones had been detached at an earlier period.

Entirely satisfied that he had in his grasp a sack containing a fair sample of the ledge before them, and a little inclined to blame himself for distrusting his companion, who, after all, was guilty of no worse crime than that of dense ignorance of many things in the world that were patent to himself, the doctor returned to the city, and delivered them to his “friend” Krupp, of the firm of Krupp & Golden, who put them into his cabinet of curiosities in the shape of a record of silver ore, bearing at the rate of so many ounces of pure silver to the ton. The sagacious doctor then consulted his “friend’s” cabinet to find the value of these specimens compared with those of The Little Pittsburg, which also adorned his “friend’s” extensive collection, and found that in quality they were identical, confirming Mitchel’s view of the case that he had the same lay-out as his prosperous neighbors. He quietly posted himself as to what The Little Pittsburg was doing, and found that it was yielding more than was generally supposed, an amount to make his pulse perceptibly quicken and he felt something of the thrill that youthful hopes and plans used to yield.

He consulted his attorney on the legal aspect of a case in which a “friend” was interested, in which the ledge dipped toward an adjoining claim, and found that here, too, Mitchel had been correctly informed; though it was something of a mystery to him how a rude, untutored intellect like Mitchel’s could pick up and retain so many fragments of correct information. The result of all these business-like and methodical steps was a little talk with Mitch, in his private office, in which he explained suavely that he was looking for a little investment for a friend, who wanted to engage in mining speculations, and though he had tried to dissuade him from it, he was determined, and the doctor had consented to do his best to find a little property that might yield small and steady returns as the party was too old to wish to dabble in anything in the wild-cat line, nor did he expect to strike a bonanza; but he had thought that perhaps The Queen would fill the bill at a low figure, otherwise he could not invest. Jim, the stolid and ignorant, heard all this without the changing of a muscle, and replied that he would consider an offer of seventy-five thousand dollars as a very low figure indeed, but he was undecided as to whether he ought to sell her as she was bound in time to become a bonanza, and so forth. The pious doctor was almost paralyzed by the mere mention of so large a sum.

“But, my dear sir, that is out of sight; you ask more money than my friend ever thought of owning in one batch, to say nothing of putting it into a wild speculation like that.”

“Well,” said Mitch, “I’m not pertickeler about sellin’ her, but I’ve named the price that ’ud take her, and that’s the bottom notch.”

“How would you like to trade her for some city real estate? I’ve got some lots that are hard to beat for location and value.”

“I’ll take anything that’s capable of bein’ turned into dust,” said Mitchel, “only I must know she’s got the intrinsic value, dollar for dollar.”

Thus they played their little game at cross purposes till far into the night, and a few days later it was announced by the official organ of the city, the saloon keeper, to his patrons, that Mitch had closed out his mining claim to Dr. Maxwell for real estate, valued in the deal at sixty-five thousand dollars. And a few days later it was further stated that Mitch had “cleaned up” fifty thousand in the clear stuff from the sale of his real estate, and was treating everybody who could be induced to eat or drink, for a day or two, and drinking huge potations to Dr. Maxwell’s health and prosperity, after which, with a particularly diabolical leer on his smirking countenance, he boarded an eastbound train and our little world knew him no more.

Nor, in fact, has our little world, or any other, that we know of, for that matter, ever known anything more of The Queen, except that there is still the mound of earth where a test shaft was begun by the claimant, one James Mitchel, ignoramus, and afterward continued by right of acquisition by the well-known and highly respected Dr. Maxwell, and last of all was abandoned by him and turned over right, title, interest, and estate, to the owls and the bats.

Dr. Maxwell is still a prominent figure in Leadville. He is still the same cultured gentleman and able physician. He still delights in reminiscences of his college days, and has still, perhaps, a weakness for desiring to set all the world right on the fact that he is a college man, and he is both able and willing to give his children the best of educational and social advantages, and talks of removing soon to Chicago where he can enjoy more fully, with his family, the society of quiet, genial, and congenial men of wealth and refinement; and he is regarded as a happy, successful man, with a well-balanced mind capable of getting out of life all that is worth the seeking. He is a man who will go away from Leadville followed by the esteem and respect of his fellow-citizens, and leave behind him a character for sterling honesty, and unqualified contempt for petty schemes and dodges in business transactions. He will also leave behind him a certain piece of real estate that is not his own, and another certain piece of mining property on Prayer Hill where he rarely goes nowadays, and in all the wide range of his conversation there is one little nook he never invades, and only one or two of his friends are on sufficiently intimate terms of friendship with the doctor to venture, occasionally, on the innocent inquiry, “When did you hear from Jim Mitchel last?”

Chapter IV.

I Take a Partner.

You are wrong. You have jumped at the conclusion when you had read the above chapter heading that I have forgotten tender, winsome, blue-eyed, fair-haired Lena Upton, and had wooed and won some buxom blooming daughter of this cloud-rimmed Utopia of the West. You have already pictured in your imagination the love-sick fancies of two sentimental f—— fairies, for love in a cottage, and drawn your own doleful picture of a bare and cheerless cabin fireside, where poverty enters at the door and love flies out at the window. You have conjured up all these fine-spun imaginings for naught, and fallen into all this fuss and fever, and twitter of excitement over a supposed romance in humble life in the region of the clouds, when in fact I merely took to my bosom as sharer of my bed and board, metaphorically speaking, my hairy friend of the red shirt and elastic hopes, Abner Callaway.

As stated previously June had come before the faithful old knight of the pick and shovel had completed the work upon my late property which had given such golden results or rather such silvery ones. I found great pleasure in being able to remit five thousand of the proceeds of the sale to my kindly old relative as his share in the concern, knowing that it would add substantial comfort to his declining years. As to my own moiety, I had determined that I would devote a small portion of it to outfitting my first Leadville acquaintance for another expedition to the Gunnison country, in search of his Golconda, and in three days from the date of my mining transaction, Abner’s caravan, consisting of a saddle mule and two pack mules, filed out of the town liberally grubstaked for another prospecting trip. As I took his hand to bid him good-by and godspeed, and consigned him for months to his living tomb in the mountains, I felt that here was a man made of the stuff that conquers new worlds and revolutionizes old ones. While I was depressed at the mere thought of my small share in consigning him to his lonely fate, he was chipper as a lark, and waving his hand to me as he spurred southward, he called out cheerily, “Better luck this time, pard, I’m goin’ to strike it rich now, sure.” So I went back to my duties without even having enjoyed the parting luxury of enjoining him to write often, for I knew that in all probability it would be weeks, perhaps months, before I should have any tidings of him, with a still more somber alternative in the background, namely, that I might one day have the mournful pleasure of leading a searching party to find what particular form of solitary death came to him, and what particular family of buzzards had fattened on his vitals.

There was at that time, too, more or less danger to be encountered from roving bands of Piutes, who came to that region in summer in search of game, and who, however friendly they might profess to be in and around the settlements, could scarcely resist the temptation to murder a lone white man found prospecting on their self-allotted hunting grounds, if they were reasonably safe from detection. Callaway was thoroughly acquainted with the Indian character, perfectly conversant with all their treacherous ruses and cunning devices, and the Piutes themselves had learned long since that while it was one thing to have a troop of United States soldiers in pursuit, it was quite another and more serious affair when a very small number of miners and ranch men began to “camp on their trail;” men who were entirely capable of matching them at their own game, who knew every lonely pass and mountain trail as well as they themselves, and whose superior ability as plainsmen and in woodcraft made them objects of dread to marauding bands of Indians at this period. These men were never known to bring in a prisoner, and, in all my intercourse with these hardy frontiersmen, I have never known an instance of an Indian fighter’s accounts of his encounters, where one of them could be induced to describe the last act in any scene of retribution on the Indians in which he had taken a hand. Abner Callaway was one of these brave, hardy pioneers, who had seen the trouble with the Bannocks in Idaho in ’76. He was a walking encyclopedia of incidents of early struggles in the settlement of Boise Valley. He once recounted graphically to me an experience with these troublesome Bannocks that illustrates this point. A settlement on the lower Boise had been raided by a band of Indians and their stock stampeded and driven off. He formed one of a band of settlers hastily collected to pursue and punish the thieving band. The trail led southward toward the Snake and was plainly marked through the sage brush as there was no chance for concealing it, with the considerable number of horses and cattle they were rushing off.

The settlers rode hard and sighted the red devils just as they had driven the stock into the Snake to force them across. They espied their pursuers and plunged their riding ponies into the swift current, and began to swim them across too. “But by this time,” said he, “we had got within gunshot range of them,” and he looked off pensively over the mountains as if his story were ended. Deeply interested in his tale of adventure, I waited for the conclusion, but it did not come, and I ventured to ask, and then what? “Well,” said he, “the saddle ponies all turned and swam back to our side, and we gathered up our stock and went home.”

I have always noticed the same indisposition in old soldiers to dwell on the theme of shedding human blood, and I set it down here as a maxim, that your true soldier or frontiersman, who has really seen active service and participated in scenes of carnage will turn hastily away from recording his experiences, when they lead up to that point, and its converse as being equally true that your boasting warrior, or settler, who tells you how many rebs he has quieted, or how many red varmints he has scalped, you can safely classify as of the genus homo species man, variety liar.

I take it that my reader feels my own deep interest in the welfare of Abner Callaway, and I have thus digressed and delivered this gratuitous, and apparently irrelevant rhapsody on Indian hunters, that you may share the data, on which I calculated the chances of his safety. In his favor were mature experience, familiarity to the verge of contempt with the dangers he was to undergo, trained to read “Indian signs,” and guard against surprises and “lightning with a Winchester” as Abner himself would have expressed it.

June gave place to July, and July in turn to August. I began to have anxious daily thoughts of my absent partner though I had no reason to expect that he would return till his provisions were exhausted, which, with the game he would be likely to kill, he estimated would last him till the rigors of that high altitude began to drive him down to lower altitudes. There was of course the chance that I might have tidings of him from some returning prospector, but it was a chance in a hundred, for the region of country where he was operating was very little traversed by miners, and only a few lonely sheep camps were scattered over the mountains to mark the white man’s dominion of the region. Though no spiritualist, I have often noticed that mind seems to influence mind at times, regardless of intervening distances.

You write to a friend from whom you have not heard in a long time. Your letter on its journey crosses the path of one from that friend expressing some of the very ideas, and in the same words that you used in addressing him. Another friend living at the distance of a three hours’ drive has made no appointment to visit you, and you have no particular reason for expecting him soon, but something tells you that he will come to-day, and for three hours your thoughts keep constantly recurring to that friend, you know not why, and presently he drives up.

The mysterious influences that beget such experiences as these, in the everyday affairs of thousands of responsible people, are those of which unscrupulous people take advantage and give exaggerated and fraudulent exhibitions of spiritualistic manifestations, depending upon this little germ of truth, as the sugar coating of the bitter pill of deception, to enable the public to swallow it.

That mighty philosopher of our own time and country, Joseph Cook, says, “There can be no doubt that in these things there is something superhuman, but nothing supernatural.” Yet, I confess, that after all, when I had been troubled for several days with forebodings of danger to my partner, and had on one particular day been especially anxious, and when toward evening a man in rough frontier dress, bestriding a jaded cayuse, rode up to our office, and I heard him inquire for Thomas Hardman, I felt that I was growing white as a ghost and could scarcely steady my legs to walk to the door, and inform him that I was he.

He eyed me critically to ascertain, as I thought, whether I was capable of standing up under the news he was about to deliver, I could not stand the suspense. “Have you seen Callaway?” I inquired.

“You bet I have,” was his reply, “parted from him six days ago. Was out thar tending to some sheep camps I’ve got out thar.”

“How is the old man?” I inquired, a little impatiently, to clip off an evident intention on his part to give me a complete history of the rise and progress of the sheep industry, and the decline and fall of the price of wool. He drew his countenance down through several distinct stages of change to an expression of one who has important news to impart and rather enjoys the suspense he sees you are suffering; then assuming a confidential air, and a glitter of cunning mingled with pleasure in his eye at being the bearer of important news, he leans toward me over the neck of his tired horse, places both hands on the pommel of his saddle, looks cautiously all around for eavesdroppers and then almost whispers: “The old man’s struck it rich!” The sudden swinging of the mind from its dark forebodings to contemplating sudden and immense wealth was making my legs unmanageable again, but as soon as I could steady myself, I invited the traveler to lodge with me at The Occidental till morning, when he and I would arrange for a private interview in our office after hours, for the privacy of my sleeping apartment was something less than that of a sleeping car.

During our evening meal, I learned from his conversation, coupled with Abner’s note to me that my new acquaintance, Riley Cox, was no other than the same rancher who had stumbled upon the fragment of quartz that had set the old man wild to find the parent ledge, and that the present location of the prospector was made as the direct result of that find, and that therefore Mr. Cox would come in as half owner in the mine by agreement, in consideration of his showing where he had found the specimen that fairly glittered with gold. Far into the night we occupied my employer’s office and talked of the lucky events, and I learned in detail all the circumstances of the discovery.

He was the bearer of a little scrawl of a letter from the old boy himself, who wrote in his characteristic way, as follows:

“Gunnison Country,
—— 187‑

“Mr. Thomas Hardman, Leadville, Colo.

“Glory hallelujah, pard, I’ve struck her at last and she’s richer than I ever dreamed! Don’t let a whisper of it get around till we git our choice of location. Bring plenty of provisions and ammunition to supply another hand or two. Your pard,

“Abner Callaway.”

I waited upon my employer early next morning, and offered my resignation, explaining to him that business of the most urgent and important nature called me away, and that I should take it as a mark of his confidence in me as an employee if he would for the present, take my statement on faith and let my movements be as quiet as possible, assuring him only that I was acting in good faith, and from honorable motives, and would some day explain the cause of my hasty departure from his employ, where I had received nothing but the most courteous treatment. To all this my employer was good enough to assent, and expressed his regret that our relations could not continue, and said he had not the slightest doubt as to the integrity of my motives and quite outdid me in generous praise. We shook hands cordially, and the waves of time engulfed this phase of my life forever, a phase of existence to which I have ever looked back with pleasure as being not the least happy of my life.

As rapidly as possible, we conducted our outfitting, and with as much secrecy as possible, the next morning we mounted our horses and struck out for the lonely region known as the Gunnison country. My experience as a rider of bronchos had been confined to very narrow limits, and my awkward mode of riding was a great source of amusement to my guide, and traveling companion. “Say, squire,” he would inquire, “where did you learn that ere ornamental kind of ridin’? Maybe you’d better turn your toes in a little more or your spur might catch yer cayuse in the ribs, and you’d be purty sure to hev a circus right away.”

But presently I forgot his caution again and inadvertently pressed my heel to the animal’s flank. The next thing I knew I was holding on to the pommel with both hands, and my steed was rolling himself into the shape of a crescent moon, but his actions had none of the placid spirit of that calm orb. He churned me up and down till I saw stars in countless numbers. It seemed to me that he sprang ten feet clear of the ground, and came down with his feet in a cluster, that would have enabled him to stand with ease on my office stool. But he couldn’t seem to find a resting place for the sole of his foot, and each time he rose in the air he came down with an emphasis that led me to suspect that he might have been used in the early mining days as a stamp mill to reduce refractory ores, and imagined he was again in the field to compete against steam power and wrought iron. For my part I would have been glad to retire from the competitive trial, but was delicate about trying to alight just here as the earth seemed to be particularly hard in this spot, judging from my pony’s experience in alighting. So I held on with might and main to the pommel, and wound my legs, which are a fair length, affectionately around the beast’s waist in a rigid embrace till my companion, who was writhing on his horse’s neck in wild paroxysms of laughter, managed to find breath to yell, “Toes out! You’re spurrin’ him.” Then it dawned on me that the harder he had bucked, the closer I had pressed the rowels toward his vitals, and as soon as I relaxed my muscles he subsided into his usual easy swinging lope.

“Confound the brute,” I said, “you told me he was warranted to be gentle as a kitten.”

“So he was,” said Riley, “but I guess if you’d pay your compliments to a kitten in the same way, you’d feel her claws, but if you’re agoin to take lessons of me as your ridin’ master, I’ll lay this rule down first and foremost, never tamper with a cayuse’s ribs if you don’t want to take part in a sun-dance sudden-like.”

After that practical lesson on the subject of riding, I got on pretty well the first day out. But when we rolled out of our blankets next morning, after my first experience in camping out, I was so sore and stiff that I despaired of being able to go on; but after I had moved around a little, and assisted Riley to make a fire preparatory to slapjacks and coffee, I began to imbibe the spirit of our adventure, and in a measure threw off the effects of my hard day’s breaking-in to a new life.

I found that Riley was no novice at camp cooking. In a twinkling he had mixed a mess of dough for the slapjacks, using only some baking powder and a little fat from the frying pan with the flour and in a few minutes he had removed the meat from the pan and mapped out a cake, whose dimensions were limited only by the rim of the pan. He watched it carefully over the fire till it was baked on one side, then grasping the frying pan by the long handle, he gave it a little shake to make sure that the cake did not adhere to the pan, and then tossed it in the air with a peculiar motion which caused the dainty to turn completely over in the air, and dexterously caught it squarely, or rather roundly, in the pan. I never have forgotten the delicious flavor of that morning’s meal of slapjacks, fat bacon, and black coffee. Delmonico has since entered the field as a rival of Riley Cox in catering to my appetite, but I cannot even remember what dishes constituted the bill of fare, while every feature of that mountain meal is as plain before my eyes as though it had been yesterday. The beautiful nut-brown complexion of the bacon, the innate sweetness of that simple cake, the taste of the inky coffee, are all with me yet, owing, no doubt, to the zest imparted to my appetite by sleeping in the open air of the mountains, that was in itself exhilarating in the highest degree; but many times I have sighed for the enjoyment of that breakfast, over a much more sumptuous one, and reflected, though not a man given to moralizing, that our enjoyment in the world depended a great deal more on our capacity to enjoy the present privilege than in the accidental circumstances attending us.

Our ponies had been picketed out or “lariated,” in Western phrase, to feed upon the bunch grass. This hardy race of horses, probably from old Spanish stock, has challenged the admiration of the world for their endurance and ability to live on coarse, scanty fare,and without them the great Western prairies and the Rocky Mountain mining regions could hardly have been developed so rapidly.

Riley “calcerlated” we had ridden “nigh onter fifty mile,” the day before, and our ponies started off again fresh as when we left Leadville; and we kept up this gait during the whole trip, for he said, “I like to strike a lick and keep it.”

Their noonday repast was what they could nibble in one short hour that we halted, and all day they seemed to feel no weariness or disposition to slacken their speed.

About 3 o’clock on this second day of our journey, we reached the Gunnison River, and our course lay down the stream. We had passed one or two sheep ranches during the day, the only signs of occupation by man; but on some of the open plateaus we had sighted plenty of antelope, and in more wooded part had started several deer, one of which Riley shot for our use in camp.

The direction of our journey now following the windings of the stream, was more westerly, and toward the end of our journey, on the fifth day, we seemed to be traveling almost northward again.

Worn with our long journey, and sunburned till we were as red as Indians, and unkempt as the street-arab, whose dwelling is a stray box or barrel, without the superfluous furniture of combs and brushes; but sublimely indifferent to outward appearance where there was none to offer criticism, we made a flourish of riding into camp with a burst of speed, just as the sun was hiding behind the mountains, and found our senior partner busily engaged in preparing supper. His lurid dress and mass of snowy beard and hair, calling up a vision of an infatuated alchemist, toiling over his crucible to find the hidden mysteries, the process that had turned nature’s baser metals to sterling gold, or a venerable priest of the Druids, performing his evening devotions, and practicing his mysterious incantations.

His alert ears soon caught the sound of our horses’ hoofs, and when he recognized us as friends, he laid down the rifle he had mechanically seized, and with the joy that a Russian exile might feel when he was restored to his home and friends, after years of solitude, he saluted us with a boyish whoop, and came out to meet us with pleasure beaming from his honest face.

“How’dy, pardners! glad to see you. Its been sort a lonesome like sence you went away, but I’ve had plenty to occupy my spare moments.” I knew before he spoke, that he had good news to confirm the first tidings of happy omen I had received, but after greeting him with the warmth of affection that I had from the first hours of our acquaintance begun to feel for this guileless veteran of the frontier, I inquired how the new Ophir was panning out.

“Why, bless the kid’s innocent heart,” said Abner, turning to Riley, “it don’t pan out at all, it’s the pure stuff,” and he took from his pocket a nugget of pure gold as big as an egg. “There boys, how do you like the complexion of that? I found that down by the river, in the gravel, before I struck the ledge up here, and there’s enough of ’em down there yet to make interest in digging; but we can’t afford to waste our time with the gravel beds now. Lariat your horses in that little canyon yander, and I’ll have supper ready in a jiffy.”

His camp was in a grove of evergreen timber, on a little plateau on the side of the mountain. It was sheltered from the north by a ledge of rocks, rising abruptly in the rear of his tent, and from underneath the rock gushed a spring of pure water. The view to the south was a grand stretch of mountain and valley that clothes the rugged heights of Colorado with such sublimity and grandeur, and makes it famous for its dizzy peaks, and awe-inspiring canyons and gorges, beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole fraternity of summer-outing earth are Pike’s Peak, Colorado Springs, South Park, and The Gunnison Country. But the greatest of these, and far exceeding the others in its gold-hued prospects for us, is the Gunnison Country.

The Old Man of the Mountain soon invited us to a supper fit for a king, consisting of venison steak, in addition to the ever-present slapjacks and coffee. He related fully, and to our entire satisfaction, every step of his onward way, which led to the supreme discovery. He told us of panning out free gold on the Gunnison at this point; of finding several small nuggets, among the finer particles, but which were all of the coarse variety, and of how he had one day followed up a little gulch opening into the Gunnison, and how, from the first panful he had taken the nugget he showed us, and afterward several others, a trifle smaller. He related how he had found “blossome quartz” strewed plentifully around here, that were identical in character, and similar in promise of riches untold to him who should discover the home-nest of these stragglers, to the fragment which Riley had found in another gulch not far away.

Foot by foot, and yard by yard, he traced the path to the ledge, from these fragments, and recounted how his labors were impeded as he climbed higher up the mountain, in the almost impenetrable jungle. Forest trees grew so thickly that it was hard enough to make way even over their matted, and arching, and intertwining roots, and these troubles were soon augmented by encountering an area strewn with rocks, and choked with fallen trees, among the standing ones, till he could scarcely make his way through them, much less seem to have a ghost of a chance to take bearings and search for drift ore; but he chopped and scrabbled, and sampled, and fought his way through the wilderness—literally fought—for, with other tribulations, he was suddenly halted one day by a huge grizzly bear in his path; but though the grizzly was larger than he, Abner Callaway was not the man on that account to forgive him, but with his forty-four calibre six-shooter he took a shot at him, though he knew his own life depended on the accuracy of his eye, and the steadiness of his aim, for it is an axiom among mountaineers that there is only one vulnerable spot in a grizzly’s make-up, one place where the bullet can do execution complete and sudden enough to prevent his killing the hunter before he himself yields up his substantial ghost, and that is to reach the neck joint and break it. But the sturdy old man had not endured a lifetime of privation and toil as a mere prelude to this supreme opportunity, to refuse this little test when it came, and he promptly dislocated his neck, and continued on his way. He made his way at last to comparatively open ground, and here he progressed rapidly for the trail was becoming “warm” as the hunters say, and he knew by the character of the specimens he found that he was nearing the main or parent ledge, and his excitement grew in proportion as the signs increased in meaning, till for the two last days he hardly took time for food or rest while daylight lasted, and he assured us that he would have worked all night if he could have accomplished anything by so doing, but darkness mercifully intervened and compelled him to take some rest; but even his dreams were gold-haunted and disquieting. At last the supreme moment arrived when he was able to trace the truant rock that had caused all this trouble, to its home on this elevated mountain peak, and reap in anticipation ample reward for all his toil.

We were too much excited to sleep that night, and discussed ways and means, by the light of a blazing fire before our tent. We commended Callaway for his wise choice of a camp located in this sheltered, snug little park, and decided, first of all, as a measure of common prudence, to build a substantial cabin of spruce logs, which grew straight and smooth, at our tent door.

As we now expected to be at home to callers for some time, we preferred to receive in a structure of more substantial make than of canvas, for there was the possibility that a grizzly might decide to investigate our camp for potato parings, as they sometimes did, and it would be rather rude in bruin to roll us over at midnight, and uncomfortable for us. Besides, as I have hinted, there was the possibility ever before us of being obliged to be polite to a band of Piutes, and nothing gives such force to a white man’s display of hospitalities toward his red brother, as a good show of strength to back it.

We napped in our blankets for an hour or two before daylight, and had drowsy visions of nuggets of gold boiling up from the depths with the water of our spring. Then again our vagrant fancies would rove to the ledge above our heads, and we beheld an avalanche forming and gathering strength as it came tearing its way downward till it was powerful enough to mow a path through the tangled mass that had so completely obstructed Callaway’s upward way, and roaring and growling, deposited its ponderous mass of earth, rocks, and trees on the little plateau, where we camped. Just as we sprang up to claim and appropriate the nuggets of gold that were strewn all around, we were inconsiderate enough to awake, and the reality of our find seemed tame and small, compared with the mine of wealth we had found in the realms of imagination. So, human imagination ever keeps so far in advance of the reality, that we fail to appreciate the blessings within our reach, because they are belittled by a spendthrift fancy.

Behold the tenderly nurtured denizen of the city, who had never wrestled with labor any harsher than an obstreperous conjugation, or an equation that would not equate, transformed by the prevailing frenzy for a yellow worthless metal, valued by barbarians only because it had a rich color and was indestructible, by any ordinary method. Behold him, I say, donning the garb of the miner and preparing with a heart callous to every other consideration to harden his hands with the pick and shovel, his feet with the coarse, heavy, cowhide boots; to conform every part of his anatomy, in fact, not already calloused by the saddle, to the muscular status of an honest laborer, earning his bread by the sweat of his brow, and in fact feeling a lighter conscience in so doing, feeling more in sympathy with the general plan of the Creator than in any other vocation in which he had engaged; I was owing my prosperity to the labors of no living man, and abridging the prosperity of no brother while enhancing my own. I learned to use the ax to some purpose while building our rustic camp and grew to have so ravenous an appetite in the bracing mountain air aided by active exercise, that my companions rallied me on the necessity of our hiring some professional hunter to supply us with meat. I own that I was alarmed for my life, and feared sometimes that I was digging my grave with my teeth, but thanks to the absence of hurtful qualities of wild game, I ate it with impunity, and grew almost as burly of form and fantastic in gear as Uncle Abner.

Our cabin, when finished, was a model of rustic beauty. The logs were uniform in size, straight as nature could make them, and had their natural bark covering. The roof was of cedar clapboards, and not only protected us from the inclement weather, but filled the house with delicious spicy fragrance. A small window-space, but no window glass, a door of cedar, and some rude bunks of the same, completed our domicile. For furniture, we had a pair of antlers fastened to the wall, on which we hung our Winchesters. A cedar table, with poles for legs, a set of rude shelves, to contain our coffee pot, frying pan, and tin dishes. Fireplace we had none, but did our cooking outside by the wall of rock, which rose up a few feet from the cabin, and a spot convenient to water. The logs forming the walls were notched a foot from the end, leaving a handsome double projection at each corner. The roof was also given a liberal share of lap-over, giving our mansion a pretty and cosy appearance. We also put up a tiny portico on natural cedar pillars with a gentler slope of roof than that of the cabin, of which it seemed to be a projection, and put on the finishing touches by making a little rustic bench on either side of the doorway.

Whatever may be said of our prospects, none of us could lay claim to being millionaires at that period; but I doubt if ever a palatial urban residence was viewed with more of the pride of ownership than we lavished upon our skyward dwelling. I have since that period been the happy owner of gold enough to satisfy any reasonable desire, and have built and inhabited several magnificent up-town residences in a region of city splendor, but I often pine for the little brown cabin in the Rockies, and the enthusiastic enjoyment of that rude habitation, that blessed it, and fulfilled all the requirements and definitions of the magic word, home.

“Oh, that mine enemy would write a book!” then would I reap a wholesome and complete revenge, when I beheld him toiling to give voice to the rushing stream of agitation in his bosom. To see him sweating, and tearing his hair in a vain endeavor to express the wild and tumultuous hopes and aspirations of youth; to paint the bright visions of wealth attained, ambition satisfied, and love requited and restored to its object in their fitting trials, and rack his harassed brain for fitting similes of somber hue, to express the depths of despair! I would liken him to myself as my spirits sunk, when I computed the chances in favor of my seeing the adorable Lena again. When I reflected on all that might happen to me, and the misgivings lest she should die, should be persuaded that I was already dead, should be cajoled, coerced into marriage for mercenary considerations, I was sorely tempted to present my interest in the Rocky Mountains to my partners, and fly from these desolate scenes, and break through the barrier of banishment from her presence, imposed by tyrannical parents.

But at last, after my mind had run through all these stages of despondency, desperation, and recklessness of consequences, it would come sullenly back to the question of honor, and conscientious scruples against breaking a sacred promise; then, even though I was not in a position to make anything but Hobson’s choice, my thoughts would subside into tranquility again, and my current of thought turn hopefully again to the work of turning this rugged mountain peak into a castle of gold, with a golden haired divinity to enlighten it.

And now, without any further delay to build rustic cabins in the mountains, or to erect golden castles in the air, we went to work in earnest to develop our claim, and take out the precious ore.

We were well aware that it behooved our mine to be a remarkably rich one in order to give us any immediate returns, situated as it was so far from smelting facilities. It must either yield the precious ore in such quantities, and of such quality as would induce capital to enlist with us, and bring machinery for reducing it to the spot, or it must yield at least a moderate amount of ore so high in grade, that we could afford to transport it to the railroad by pack train. Our plan of action was to make a preliminary test of our find, locate its center as nearly as possible, then explore the mountain around it to get some idea of the extent of the ledge, and get at a basis for forming some sort of intelligent opinion as to what the probable effect of our discovery would be on the public when it was revealed. We also had, as original discoverers, a chance to choose our claim as a company and locate it; then each one of us could stake off an individual claim, and, in addition to all that, we could form new companies to the extent of the combinations, possible by including any two of our trio in each new company. All these projects we worked out when the day’s task was done, and we lounged on our bunks, and smoked our pipes, or sat on our rustic benches by the door.

But while we were working and planning, and building our airy structures, fate was outlining a vastly different line of life for us. But no spirit voice ever whispered to us of any evil doom impending, and we worked cheerfully on, satisfied more fully every day that our scout had not made any mistake, either in his estimate of the block of quartz at the sheep camp, or of the fact of his having tracked it to earth. The ledge showed a great thickness of ore and had all the indications of possessing staying qualities. We calculated that in about three weeks we would get out specimens from a depth that would justify us in forming a judgment. Then we intended to load our pack train with samples, try to engage some wandering prospectors to help, while one of the party went to Leadville to get an assay, and to bring back a supply of provisions. Assays in practical mining life are of two classes, those of quantity and those of quality. An experienced miner can, with rude utensils, make an assay, that will determine, in a general way, the value of his ore, but it requires the skill and appliances of the professional assayer to determine the quantity of gold, or other mineral, in a given weight of rock. My experience in the office, coupled with that of Uncle Abner, which was of the hard, practical sort, tended to satisfy us that in quality we were all right, that we were not mistaking a shadow for the substance, or pyrites of iron, the “fool’s gold,” for the sterling article; but our methods were too crude to even approximate the quantity of the yellow metal per ton, or to determine what other minerals might be found in connection with the gold. Uncle Abner’s faith was implicit as a child’s and his mind as placidly elevated by his good fortune, as though it were already in his coffers. But our knight of the golden fleece was a little skeptical of the intrinsic worth of the ore, and his mind wandered a good deal to his flocks, and he would remark that, “after all, the sheep business is good enough for me, an’ I ortor bin in camp helpin’ the boys through lammin’ time.” But though he might squirm a little under the influence of the gold craze, he was as much a devoted slave to it as any of us, and we could not have driven him to his sheep camp though he knew his sheep would in reality bear golden fleeces this year.

The fragrance of the apple blossom is an agreeable announcement of fruit forthcoming, and inhaling it, we fall into a most delicious state of expectancy, and the apples of imagination are in a moment rosy, ripe, and mellow before the eye, and luscious and delightful to the taste; but there is a time for frosts to nip the blossoms, storms to try the branches, and lawless urchins to snatch the matured fruit from your grasp and dash all your high hopes to earth. We were destined, by outrageous fortune, to be again balked in our projects, and have the hand of the spoiler anticipate our good fortune, and tear it from us.

The Piutes had been reported at the ranches as hunting in the Elk Mountains, south of us, for a week or two, in great numbers, but were said to be peaceably disposed. Within a week Uncle Abner had seen Indian signs while hunting deer for our camp a mile or two southward, and had cautioned us to keep a sharp lookout for them, and directed us to keep our horses and mules in the thick underbrush all day and picket them in the little open canyon only at night, that we might offer no premium to their cupidity, for it is well known that a redskin can hardly resist the temptation to steal a horse on every occasion, even at the risk of bringing swift and terrible retribution upon himself from the ranchmen and miners.

We were progressing finely with our tunnel, and expected to reach the ledge at a depth of a hundred feet or more by drifting into the mountain side in a few days more, and were discussing the question as to which one should go to Leadville, one evening as we came down the mountain from our work, to camp, when all at once Abner stopped suddenly, and pointed to the thicket of fir and cedar saplings where we had tied our horses, and exclaimed: “Holy Moses! boys, our horses are gone.”

And just as he spoke several rifles cracked, the fire coming, apparently, from the ledge above our cabin, and Riley Cox, our faithful partner fell dead before our eyes.

Quick as a flash Uncle Abner seized the form of our luckless partner, and sprang toward our cabin, only a few steps distant, where we were safe from the murderous fire of the demons lying behind the rocks above our heads, for our cabin stood too close to the rock wall to be in range of their rifles. Evidently they had counted upon finishing us before we reached it.

“Curse the red devils,” said Callaway, “It will take a hundred of their worthless scalps to pay up the score on poor Riley. They knew better than to meet him in open fight like men. Many a one of them he has made to bite the dust.” While he talked he was getting our arms and ammunition in order, while I, who had never seen anything harsher than a drunken fisticuff, was too much shaken by the suddenness of the attack to be of much service to anybody. But gradually I became fired by Abner’s fusillade of invectives, with a desire for revenge, and soon found myself wishing for a chance to draw a bead on an Indian’s paint-stained, and feather-decked head.

It was more from long habit than from any real fear that we would be attacked by Indians that led Uncle Abner to select a strong spot for his cabin. The cliff was so precipitous in the rear of our cabin as to render our position inaccessible from that direction, in fact, was so overhung by a rocky ledge halfway up the side that the reds, we believed, could not catch a glimpse of our fort from that direction; and the old man was of the opinion that they would try to crawl up through the fir and pine trees in front of our cabin, hiding behind the rocks and trees, wait for a chance to pick us off without risk to themselves. We had a small porthole in our heavy puncheon door, constructed to command the little canyon, where our horses had fed, to enable us to get a shot at any prowling bear that might haunt our camp to devour the remains of our daily bill of fare thrown out, or endanger the safety of the horses and mules.

With eagle eyes Callaway watched for any movement in this direction, but we could not see or hear anything to indicate what the next move would be, and the suspense of our situation grew terrible, and we were half resolved to break away from our cabin, find refuge behind trees and rocks, and fight till we drove them off or were killed in our tracks, which we felt would be better than dying like rats in a hole, without being able to make a struggle for life.

All at once we heard an indistinct roaring and rushing sound far up the mountain,and even Uncle Abner’s face grew pale at the sound. “My God, pardner, they’re starting an avalanche! You’d better say your prayers now, my boy. Good-by, lad. I’ve been takin’ a likin’ to you all along, but our time has come,” and he grasped my hand as if he would meet his death more contentedly with some nearer human sympathy than he had ever known in his life. The roar had died away again for a moment, and I began to hope that my venerable friend was mistaken as to the cause of the noise; but Abner only remarked, “That one lodged against some trees before it got under headway, but they’ll try it again.” And in another minute, to confirm his opinion, we heard again the dull sound, like distant thunder, growing louder and stronger. We held our breath in terror, expecting that our last moment had come, and that in the next we would be lying crushed and shapeless beneath the ruins of our cabin. The awful storm was increasing in distinctness and volume, and every other sound was drowned. My faithful old friend’s lips moved, but I could hear no sound. My mind flew with lightning wing to the scenes of the past, before I had dreamed of such wild adventures, and reveled for one brief moment once more in the memory of careless youth and guiltless love. I thought of the slow torture of suspense in store for Lena as the years revolved without bringing any tidings of her lover, buried beneath a mountain, his fate unknown, and I had a distinct feeling of the injustice of fate in drawing me to such a death, and Lena to the eternal doubt as to whether I had been lost, or had proven inconstant to my promise and to her. All these thoughts flitted through my mind in one brief moment, while the horrors of a most terrifying death were impending over us, and the next instant the whole mass of rock and earth and huge trees burst with a terrific crash upon us. I believe that in all the mental agonies of dying by violence we suffered death. The light of day suddenly went out, our cabin rocked like a miner’s cradle, and, as the roar subsided, we gazed stupidly at each other, as bewildered creatures entering upon a new world try to fathom the mysteries that surround them.

Surely we were in the spirit land, or in the land of chaos. But no, the light of day was again streaming into our cabin, which stood untouched, and we unscathed. “Thank God, my boy, thank God,” said Abner fervently, “She overleaped us, the ledge threw her off. Look out there!” If the scene in front of our cabin had been before our vision in that moment of fancied death, the illusion would have been complete. What had just been a fine grove, a gentle slope, and a grassy canyon, were now the wildest mass of rock and fine earth, and what had once been heavy trees, were now literally ground into kindling wood, making a mass of the wildest ruin; and we could hardly believe our senses that this chaotic scene was lately occupied by a bit of exquisite pastoral scenery, fit to grace the palatial residence of one of “the four hundred.”

“They’ll try it again,” I said, “let us get out of this trap before we are crushed like gophers.”

“No, my unsophistical kidling, they’ll not try that game again, a redskin has sense enough to see that we are under the wing of the ledge of rock up there, and he doesn’t relish being beaten well enough to invite defeat a second time. They’ll break out in a new place presently, take my word for that.”

The accuracy of his judgment was made apparent a minute later when, pung! came a rifle bullet through the clapboard roof, and buried itself in the floor close to my feet, and a moment later another striking uncomfortably close to us.

“That’s their game is it?” cried Callaway, “They’re up in the top of that old cedar above us; now lad, you stand on our bunk, and push one of the clap boards aside, and I’ll try to answer the red dogs in the same kind of lingo.”

I quickly did as directed, our roof being fastened down by the primitive weight-pole, and it was an easy task to push one aside. The moment an opening was made, another bullet struck the floor through the sky-port, showing their alertness, and their good marksmanship. The moment after the bullet struck, Uncle Abner was standing over the spot where it buried itself in the floor, and casting one keen glance upward, he threw his rifle to his shoulder, his eye came to the level of the barrel and his muscles seemed to grow perfectly rigid for an instant, and the next a puff of smoke, a deafening report in the narrow space of the cabin, and glancing upward we beheld a horrible sight, and one which I would give half my estate to forget. The instant Abner fired, an Indian warrior, with a wild screech of despair, tumbled out of the thick foliage of a scraggy cedar that grew on the rock shelf that had saved us from annihilation, and overhung our cabin sufficiently to give any one perched in its topmost branches, a view of our cabin, which could not be had from the ledge itself. With the creeping horror in every nerve we saw him fall, flinging his arms wildly as he came, till he struck upon the point of a rock fifty or sixty feet below the root of his tree-perch, rebound and fall a lifeless heap through the remaining space with a sickening thud upon the top of the pile that had lately formed the frightful avalanche. “That makes two tricks that we know of that they’ll not be likely to hanker after any more, and now if we can beat them at one or two more, they’ll conclude their medicine isn’t good, and go away and leave us; but we don’t want to count on that, or let them get the drop on us, the sneaking, thieving, red devils. I wish the secretary of infernal affairs was out here, I’d like to put him up on the top of the old shanty and let the devils shoot at him awhile. It would give him good practical views on the Indian question, and help him to ‘revise his humane and politic policy toward our red brother,’ and bring his views to a sudden focus about the time the Piutes focused a dozen or so rifles on him. But Uncle Sam will go on cuddling up the lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing, bloodthirsty heathen, and furnish them with good warm blankets to sleep in while on the warpath, and ration out good beef fit for a white man, and make him supremely independent and comfortable in his diabolical career of scalp-lifting, and let him ride free on all railroad trains, provided he will content himself with a seat in the smoking car, and the obliging conductor of this government barouche, will stop his train at any isolated siding to allow Balky Horse, or Crow Wing, to alight at his convenience, as I have seen them do, and encourage them to regard the western settler as a sort of raw dog, too raw to be eaten, but convenient for scalping purposes. If the people of the East want justice for the red men, let ’em come out here and deal out the parcels to ’em themselves. I’m not denyin’ that the Injuns have been treated meaner ’n rot, but after the east had fleeced them of their land, they told their red brother, that they’re so much concerned about now, to move on to a safer distance, and so they shut themselves conveniently of the penalty of their deeds; and now they set themselve up to judge the white man who has their deviltries toward the Injuns wreaked upon his unlucky head.”

While the old pioneer was delivering himself of this eulogy on the administration, he was keeping a sharp lookout through the ports for the next act in the tragedy to begin. It was now nearly dark and he hoped that if we could keep them at bay for a little longer, they would retire for the night, and at least give us a little respite before finishing us up, and taking our scalps to be salted, smoked, and dried as carefully as their skins and belts. I had no fancy for going through life without my scalp lock, and though the venerable Abner was as cool as if he were cooking his supper, he expressed his determination to preserve his white locks a little longer from their grasp. “Just to let ’em know that Long Breath, as the Bannocks used to call me, counts his scalp worth several dog-eaters’ scalps yet.”

The grim humor of the old man, under such distressing circumstances as ours, was refreshing, and relieved the terrible strain on my nerves, on this, my first experience under fire, as some instance of valor or grotesque humor among the soldiers in battle for the first time diverted their thoughts from their own dangers, and tempered their courage into the tough, reliable, steady article of the veteran.

We were now called upon to face another attack, and from the opposite direction. I detected a savage crawling toward the front of our cabin, over the rubbish and dirt from the mountain top. Abner watched keenly a minute or two, and made out ten reds advancing in a line the same way.

Presently he made out that they were shoving a pole along in advance of themselves, and he knew in a moment that they hoped to take advantage of the dusk, to crawl quite close unobserved, rush for the door with a heavy pole on their shoulders and turn it into a battering ram, and crush in our cabin door; they would in all probability disperse right and left, to give others concealed behind the rubbish, a chance to open fire on us, hoping to kill us at the first onset.

“Quick! pard, get Riley’s rifle all ready, lay the cartridges beside you, have your pistols handy and pass the rifles to me one at a time, when mine is empty, and then, if I need ’em, the pistols. Here they come! I’d advise ’em to say their prayers to their Piute god.”

When within about fifteen paces, they rose to their feet suddenly, and with their demon-inspired war-whoop started on the run for the door, with their assaulting engine borne aloft on their shoulders; but they had hardly taken the second step till two of them in range fell before the first shot, and in less than thirty seconds six of the ten who started on their mission of destruction, were lying on the ground lifeless enough. The other four dropped their ponderous weapon, and beat a rapid retreat for cover, but not rapid enough to escape two shots from Long Breath, and at each shot an Indian fell. Only two of the ten lived to repent of their dangerous experiment.

“Lie low now, lad,” exclaimed Abner,as soon as the two unhurt savages reached cover, and the words had hardly warned me back from the porthole before a volley of bullets rattled on the door or pattered into the thick wall on either side of it. “Poor Riley,” said Abner, “I’ll give him some company to the spirit land anyway; maybe it’ll be better’n none though he never was perticklerly stuck on red society.”

When the leaden shower had subsided, we ventured again to reconnoiter, and Abner’s piercing eye detected a thin haze of smoke rising from the direction of the late attack. “Aha! they’re goin’ to try their old trick of burnin’ us out. They’ll find us still doin’ business at the old stand with one or two new fancy touches added to our line.” He seized an ax, quickly knocked one of the chinking blocks from each end of our cabin, for portholes there, thus giving us a commanding view of the approaches in every direction.

“The body of ’em will make a rush and a whoop toward the front, but look out for three or four devils with firebrands, sneakin’ around the other sides, they are the lads we want to pay our special compliments to. The others won’t dare to do much shootin’ while their mates are cavortin’ round here, for fear of hittin’ ’em and they’ve lost consida’ble many painted dog markets already.”

All at once the most diabolical war-whoop sounded, and about twenty hideously painted braves appeared at some distance from the cabin, flourishing their knives and yelling like furies, but somehow did not make much progress toward the cabin and being in the secret of their game, thanks to a riper experience than mine, we gave them comparatively little attention, and soon saw two indians on either side of the war party separate themselves from their comrades, and sneaking and dodging from one cover to another, gradually work around by a circuitous route to a point where, as they supposed, they could rush unobserved upon the gable ends of the house, and fling the firebrands they carried up on the roof and against the walls; but Callaway soon undeceived this party, and laid them down to reflect on the evidence of the senses, and whether it was not unsafe, as transcendentalists affirm, to trust them; and my two changed their purpose toward us, or were countermanded by their chief, or some other unforeseen contingency arose, and that attempt was given out. “I think they’ve got enough for to-night,” said Abner, “we’ll talk to ’em some other way later on; I’ve been among these western Injuns a good deal, and I never knew one of ’em to favor going into an attack by night; but just as day is breaking is their time. We’ll be far from here by that time. Never mind, lad, we’ll come out all right now; they’ve about run out of tricks; I know ’em all, pat. They may get up courage early to-night to try one or two of their old tricks to coax us out of the cabin where they can finish us safe and sound, but we may refuse to dance to their music.”

Chapter V.

Flying From the Piutes.

We sat for sometime listening and watching, as far as the darkness would permit, for some new form of attack to be made; but not a sound was to be heard but the dismal cackling of a cuckoo owl which I had mistaken at first, on coming to my mountain residence for the evidence of settlers near, by its somewhat remote resemblance to the cackle of a hen. We were, to say the least, in an unenviable situation. Our horses were all gone, we were three hundred miles from our base of supplies, and the Indians on the warpath in earnest, as Callaway had been able to determine by their gorgeously ugly style of paint.

To attempt to make our way back to Leadville on foot, through a region beset by mounted hostiles, would be to invite destruction. To stay in the cabin might serve to prolong our lives a few hours, but it was only a matter of time till they would succeed in crushing, burning, or starving us out, and we preferred to die fighting for life, while there was a chance, to being cooped up where we would eventually be at their mercy.

But where could we go? That was the question that vexed our meditation. How could we subsist in a hostile country when our guns were our only providers and to fire one would be to announce to the enemy that we were courting their company? We munched a slapjack as we talked, and wondered where our next meal would come from. The old man had fallen into a brown study, and, when he straightened himself up and spoke, I knew by his decided gestures that he had decided on a line of action.

“I have it, by St. Nicholas!” he exclaimed. “Four years ago, I and my pard went down the Gunnison on a raft to its mouth, and on down the Grand into Colorado as far as the southern end of the Elk Range, and done some prospectin’ down thar. Just after we got into the Colorado we saw a number of caves dug out of the solid rocks along the bluffs like the ones I’ve often seen in the canyons in New Mexico; but who built them, or for what, I’m dead sure I don’t know. But it strikes me that just at this pertickler minit in the history of the Mountain Spring mine up thar in the hill above us, a little buryin’ alive in one o’ them rocky sepulchers would beat bein’ devoured or mashed here, and buried permanently minus our scalp locks and the decent rites of burial in this blessed Christian, Injun-polluted, God-forsaken country, whar yallar gold, and redskin humans is considerations of the first water. And if we live long enough to see the next paper after these bodies is found, we’ll read a hair stiffenin’ article from some pertickler friend of the Piutes in the East, tellin’ how some border ruffins had pitched into a handful of peaceable Injuns in the wilds of the Elk Mountain regions of the young and struttin’ state of Colorado, and butchered ’em in cold blood because they wouldn’t dance a pleasin’ jig fur the fassechus white savages. But damn ’em, if the fine-haired hypocrites won’t take care of their precious pets and convert ’em to Joe Smithism and shirts, or some other modern style of hypocrisy, we’ll take the job off their hands, and serve ’em with some Christianizing literatoor from the Winchester magazine, and a substantial breakfast of lead pellets served with saltpeter sass. What do you think, my lad?”

I had never seen the old man’s profane anger soar so high or his store of grammar run so low, for he was by no means lacking in a fair elementary education; but when he was greatly agitated, the later accumulation of mining slang bubbled out much more naturally.

“Well, Uncle Abner,” I replied, “since you have asked my advice, which you know is not very valuable on the present subject, I think that the sooner we get out of this dead-fall and out of the Piute country in any direction that offers a chance to escape, by fire, water, or air, we’d better embrace it; and I’m with you, general,” said I, saluting him, “and I am confident that you’ll lead your little army to victory.”

“All right, my boy, much obliged to you for your handsome compliment to my ability, which is nothin’ extra at all; but whatever I’ve learned about Injuns has been learned by hard knocks through a long life among them, when, if you failed to learn your lesson, you had to pay it with your life. I take it, there isn’t as much difference in the size of men’s brainpans as there is in the disposition to keep peggin’ away at the same idea till it’s got to come. Just now my idea’s to peg away till we’ve got a lot of poles pegged together for a raft, and let’er glide down the river, out of the range of these birds. I know how far their happy hunting ground goes south, and we can do a little prospecting down there to amuse ourselves till they go back across the Grand River to their winter quarters; then we can come back by our claim and maybe fall in with some sheep men or prospectors, and get back to Leadville with our samples before winter sets in.”

“But how are you going to make a raft with these Piutes lurking around here?” I asked; “they want no better opportunity to sneak upon us, and pick us off, as they intended to do this evening before we got shelter.”

“I’ve thought about all that; we’ll sneak down to the river after an hour or so and take our arms, axes, and some grub with us, to the mouth of the canyon, whar I started to trail up the ledge, yonder; I cut a lot of poles there and made me a little shelter for cool nights. We’ll take them and make our raft and then we’ll make another trip up here and get everything that we can use or take along with us, and bid the Mountain Spring Mine farewell for a while; but the first painful duty we have to perform is to bury our poor unlucky pardner, so that it will take a keener scent than a Piute’s to nose him out.”

“How do you propose to do that?” said I.

“Well,” said he, “did you notice how that pile of rubbish balanced itself on that big rock like a circus rider on a flying trapeze? I propose to lay his poor carcus close under that rock, and then topple about forty tons of rock and dirt over on it, and we can defy Injuns or wolves to disturb Riley’s long sleep.”

He proceeded to carry out his idea, picking up the form of our dead comrade from the floor, and with my help, carried him to his resting place.

Abner tried to speak bravely and keep down any show of emotion, but his hot tears fell on my hands as we laid him carefully by the base of the rock, without even the poor privilege of looking once more upon his inanimate features. Then whispering to me to go back to the cabin, he made his way around where he had noticed a small tree trunk sticking out of the mass he wished to precipitate, and using this as a lever, as he told me afterward, I soon heard it fall with a heavy report in the still air, and knew that the funeral obsequies of our faithful, honest friend were completed. Few people have so rude a burial in our land, it is true, but few die more sincerely regretted by those left behind than did Riley Cox. Only a poor sheep rancher in the wildest mountains of the West, isolated from human companionship, but enduring the hardships of his lonely life with manly fortitude and true heroism. No decorations of the star and garter gleamed from his funeral pile, but the stars of heaven witnessed his sepulture, and keep watch and ward till the sunlight of Eternal Morning shall call him to the companionship of kindred pure souls, and the cold and loneliness of the “sheep walks” be forever forgotten in the new loves and pleasures of fields elysian. After about another hour’s painful suspense in the darkness, we deemed it safe to strike a light, after carefully screening all the openings, and made our brief preparations for our abrupt and disastrous departure from a region that had awakened for us dazzling visions of fabulous wealth; but the day of our final triumph seemed as far off as ever. Our little capital was swallowed up in the outfit necessary to develop our mine, and now swept away entirely from us, while a summer’s efforts were rendered fruitless, for we could scarcely expect to get back to our mine again this season, as it was now well advanced, and the hostile Indians would, in all probability, occupy this territory till winter drove them back to their camp. A dozen things might happen to our mine, even though we were fortunate enough to escape the dangers that beset us. If my partner should become disabled for active work, as most men at his age are apt to be, it was doubtful if any man beside him could again locate the mine. I felt that I could not, and now that Riley was gone, we two alone possessed the knowledge of its existence and location. Again prospectors might stumble upon it and take possession of it in our absence, and give us no end of trouble, and so my mind conjured up one ill after another, that might befall us and our financial prospects, lately so brilliant, but now so obscured by portentous clouds.

We cachéd our stock of provisions that we could not take along, which was quite a liberal one; but decided to take all that we could possibly accommodate on our raft. To guard against possible invasion in our absence of several hours that we expected to be occupied in constructing our raft, we carried our provisions intended for the journey to some distance from the cabin toward the river, and hid them carefully in some leaves and underbrush, till we should return. Then we took all our little store of tools and our rather respectable arsenal, consisting of three Winchester rifles and six heavy pistols, with a good supply of ammunition, which, with axes and augers, made a heavy load. We crept along as stealthily as panthers, Callaway leading and I following him closely, feeling wild thrills of excitement like the mental intoxication experienced by a boy when taking a daring leap from a cross-beam in a barn to the heap of straw below, or his dizzy flight down an icy hillside on a sled.

With a degree of accuracy that seemed to me like the workings of a sixth sense, Uncle Abner shaped his course in the dark so well that we found our destination without trouble, and proceeded to light a lantern within the hut he had made, and fell to work in earnest to prepare our rude craft by laying the poles together and fastening them by cross-timbers, to which each pole was pinned. We agreed that if our raft could just be got to hold together till we were safely afloat, and out of range of the hostiles, we could further strengthen it later on, by more crossties and doweling pins.

We worked as rapidly as the disadvantages of darkness, and as stealthily as the nature of our task allowed, till we judged by the constellations of the heavens that it was about an hour past midnight, when our crude float was ready to be launched. Then we climbed again to the region of our late abiding place, where we had concealed our provisions, and found them undisturbed. I could hardly resist an impulse to visit the cabin once more, but prudence forbade it, for our time was precious, to say nothing of taking the additional risk, and I hastened away with the unerring guide, who conducted us to our place of embarking, made such provision as we could for the safety of our cargo, shoved our raft into the stream, and stepped upon it, and began a voyage that in eventfulness was to cast all our former exploits, and present difficulties in deep shade.

Abner had provided a rude steering oar or rudder, and propelling oars, but for the present he advised that we should simply drift noiselessly with the tide, rather than run the chances of attracting the attention of the Indians by the splash of our oars, for, said he, “they’ll more’n likely be campin’ along the river here. It’s lucky for us there’s no moon.”

It was a clear night, and the stars afforded just enough light to enable us to dimly discern the outlines of the shore on either hand, and Callaway steered our raft as close to the farther shore as he might venture to do in the dark, to guard against detection. We had floated down perhaps a mile, when a dog set up a loud barking on the hostile shore, right opposite to us. “Sh!” whispered Abner, “that’s the camp of the Piute fiends now.”

The dog continued to bark furiously, and we heard, or imagined we heard, a murmur of guttural voices and expected every moment to hear their diabolical yell, and to be greeted with a volley of rifle balls. We were so still that our hearts seemed to rebel against the decree of silence and kept up a terrible thumping. “If they see us now we have a pretty narrow chance,” whispered Abner. “We are in a strange country, and they know every nook and corner in it. I’ve often thought that when they do take a notion to prowl in the dark, they can expand their eyes like a cougar, and see objects that are as impossible to our vision as their camp is now.”

But as we drifted on and no outcry was made except the persistent yelping of the cur, we began to hope that we had passed unobserved, and presently the dog seemed himself to despair of attracting any attention and gave over the attempt. Silence and darkness were again our only companions. “Two o’clock and all’s well!” I whispered. “We are safely past their camp by this time, are we not?”

“Yes,” replied Abner, “they didn’t hear us. We gave ’em enough exercise to make ’em sleep sound, but there may be other hunting squads down below farther, and it stands us in hand to keep a sharp lookout.” But nothing further occurred to give us alarm during the little space that darkness continued. When day dawned we were rowing lustily down the Gunnison for we knew that if the Indians returned to the attack in the morning they would soon discover that we had decamped, and, as the Piutes are expert trailers, they would have no trouble in tracking us to the shore where they would read as an open book, the signs of our departure, the method of our conveyance, and be able even to tell almost to the hour how long it had been since we had embarked; and being mounted, they would gallop down the river after us and employ our own horses in overtaking and destroying us.

The only form of attack we feared particularly in case they did follow us, was that of an ambuscade. To be haunted by the uncomfortable suggestion that you may be gliding right into their trap, that at any moment, from behind a tree or rock along the shore may come a volley of leaden death, sends a cold chill through the spinal marrow, and awakens a vague impulse to leap from the raft, and take refuge from the hidden enemy beneath the surface of the river. To guard against surprise, we now kept our boat in mid-current and urged her on with the oars till we reached a speed that we knew would tax the speed of the mounted Indians, through a broken country, to overtake us with our leeway.

But no further indications of Indians disturbed us, and our appetites were sharpened by an all-night’s effort to turn night into day; but we were compelled to content ourselves with munching a cold slapjack, promising ourselves, that if no enemy appeared by noon, we would land and cook a sumptuous meal and enjoy a more elaborate menu.

The wild scenery through which we were passing was a source of wondering pleasure to me, whose ideas of natural scenery were gained from city parks, pretty enough in their way, but tame, absolutely flat, compared with nature’s exhibition of her power and grandeur here. This was to me an entirely new class of scenery, the element of sublimity being strongest.

For three days we drifted down the river, tying up at night and camping on the shore, and after the first day we ventured to kill a deer, which animals were plentiful, and forgot our late privations in feasting on venison, which Abner was an expert at broiling on the embers of a camp fire.

On the third day he began to recognize familiar objects along the river, and announced that we should arrive at the place he had in mind before night, and be able to sleep in a castle that would relieve us of all uneasiness on account of Indians. The river banks began to be precipitous and rocky, and to be suggestive of caverns and freebooters, or the natural home of the Cliff Dwellers, and when Abner, the son of Ner, at last pointed out our prospective stronghold, it seemed the realization of all that I had read and imagined of the lost race that had been driven away by pressure of circumstances, apparently to adopt these dismal but impregnable rock dwellings that perforate like swallows’ nests the walls of the canyons and river bluffs of the southwest.

Chapter VI.

Castle Safety.

“Here we are pard!” chirped the general, as he turned the forward end of our raft shoreward, where a clump of scraggy pines grew by the water’s edge and underneath the open door of our lately acquired brownstone front, which appeared to have been excavated in solid sandstone rock, some thirty to forty feet from the water’s edge and chiseled in a face wall so nearly perpendicular that I was puzzled to know how the commander in chief intended to conduct his army into the new barracks, and said as much to him.

“Oh ho! have you never heard of the advantages of a good, healthy, elevated moral tone in home life? Well, I’ll show you in half a wink how to elevate the working man of Colorado beyond the reach of evil—Piutes.”

And he began to run up a thick-branched pine like a kitten. I followed suit and soon found myself on a level with a ledge that jutted out so close to our rustic ladder that it was but a step from the one to the other. From this point our cave was reached by a winding zigzag path which had at some time been cut into the rocky mountain side, and was flanked here and there by a scrawny cedar or spruce with a meager foothold in the rocky wall.

If I had cherished any romantic dreams of finding a primitive, but once elegant rock dwelling that had been inhabited by a luxurious, intelligent people, who should prove their right to be called such by leaving their cavern bestrewn and behung with profuse and unmistakable evidence of their wealth and culture, I was soon disenchanted by actual contact in broad daylight with a rudely constructed, dark, chilly, rock chamber hewn in the sandstone rock, intended apparently to solve a problem of direst need of shelter from inclement wintry storms, and protection against some relentless, terror-inspiring foe. The only tokens of former occupation were a few remains of charred wood, and a few ashes where some miner, probably Abner himself, had prepared his anchorite repast, intent upon his own reflections, not of the mouldy past and the hands that had driven this incipient tunnel into the mountain or what had been the need that prompted the work, only so far as to wonder if he were some poor prospector, braving the fury of the savages in the hope of unearthing riches as fabulous as these within our very grasp at Mountain Spring, and if he, too, was driven away at the supreme moment of success, or tomahawked and scalped while he was yet gloating over his newly-found treasure. Vain speculation and echoless inquiries of past decades, perhaps of past centuries. The rudely cut walls gave no clew to the kind of implement employed or the complexion of the hand that had wielded it. The very absence of any distinctive marks or characteristic relics, tantalized the antiquarian instinct, and piqued my curiosity, convincing me that, under favorable circumstances, I might soon become a fully equipped and matured relic fiend, with more pleasure than I ever felt for the pursuit of gold-hunting, or any mere wealth-getting pursuit. No reasonable hypothesis of settlement based on the agricultural advantages of this region could ever be formed, for of all inducements to the former it was barren and even a sheepman would hardly deem it possible for his flocks to crop a living on this rocky height, for the Elk Mountains presented a spectacle suggesting nature’s wildest frolics to produce chaotic and grotesque effects.

Here the geologist’s theory of successive stratification is demolished and flung to the winds. Granite and sandstone capped the carboniferous limestone at one point. All three intermingled in confused conglomerate, and again the various strata carefully placed side by side, on edge, or overlapped each other in successive folds, altogether forming an object lesson fit for pandemonium, but one to drive a student of geology to distraction.

No less fruitful field opened to the student of anthropology. Was this an outpost of the lines of fortresses of the Cliff Dwellers, who had lived and loved and worshiped here? Aztec, Toltec, worshiper of the sun, the fire, or more modern devotee at the shrine of the Golden Calf?

But to return from our airy flight of fancy into far realms of space, to our unromantic, but very real dwelling in the rock with the coney, we were grateful for a safe resting place, and with slow pains carried aloft all our little store of food and weapons together with our axes, and, having done so, we proceeded to relax our strained nerves and indulge to the full our physical desire for rest. We did little else for two or three days, beyond watching for signs of pursuit. Abner, however, gave it as his opinion that the reds stood too much in dread of the wild Colorado and its sources to venture very far upon the current of the Gunnison, which we had found swift and turbulent and exceedingly capricious in its channel, but not a circumstance, said the general, to what it is below us. “It’s built on the same higgledy-piggledy plan as this ere mountain, where the rocks are tumbled around so promiscuous-like that a prospector has to stand on his head to get his bearings.”

When we were rested and recruited a little, we began to prospect on the mountainous banks of the river, rather listlessly on my part, I confess, for I had been too near the clouds for a few feverish days to relish the idea of being an earthworm again; but my brave old comrade went to work with as much apparent good humor and hopeful earnestness as ever, encouraging me by relating numerous incidents that had come within his knowledge of parties who had endured all sorts of disaster and ill luck in their attempts to locate a paying mine, and had at last been rewarded beyond expectation, and found ample indemnity for all that they had suffered.

His philosophy comforted me greatly, not because I was at all sanguine now that we should ever be among that fortunate class, for I recognized the fact that for every instance of adequate success, whose recipients were the talk and envy of their fellows, a hundred miners might have perished unknown and unrewarded in the wild mountains of the Rockies. But his philosophy was sublime to me, because of the sublime faith which prompted it.

A wild spirit of adventure, nurtured by its legitimate surroundings, began to stir in my breast. A desire to know more of this mysterious river system, that had been as a myth to me in my schooldays, and in fact the sum total of the knowledge gained or professed to be gained of it was little short of mythical.

Until now I had been acting as high private in this exploring party, and had merely acquiesced in and seconded all the plans proposed by my leader; now I had the hardihood to propose a plan of my own.

Since we were prospecting in a region that was as much a sealed book to Abner as to myself, on account of the wildly irregular geological arrangement of all the various stratifications, I argued that we might as well waste a little of our time of enforced exile in exploring the lower Gunnison, and perhaps a part of the Grand, as to waste it in monotonous, unprofitable labor here.

To my delight the old man fell in with my view of it, after some hesitation, thinking perhaps that a little show of disapproval was due his superior years; but once enlisted he was as enthusiastic as a boy. Beyond our present location he had never explored, and consequently it was to him an unknown land of possible wonders as well as to me, and his unspoiled, ardent, cheerful temper caused him to enter as heartily into the project as I could desire. But his riper judgment was apparent in many ways while we planned our expedition, and I fear that if it had not been so, the tale of our wonderful voyage would never have been written, or if it had, would have been as limited as the narrative of the Three Wise Men of Gotham, spoken of in the classical writings of Mrs. Goose. My plans would have been simply like that of the wise Mr. Sherman, statesman and financier, who, when asked, after the Rebellion had closed, how resumption of specie payment could be brought about, replied, with a pardonable show of philosophic pride on delivering himself of so profound and patriotic a statement, that “the way to resume is to resume.”

My plan of embarkation on our voyage would have been to embark forthwith, and leave the rest to luck and Abner, for I had learned to lean on Abner as being an own cousin to luck, but he was inclined to trust more to plain everyday common sense preparation, and less to luck and Abner.

He pointed out two important particulars in which I should have acted indiscreetly had I embarked at once, first that we should need a much better constructed raft than our present one to weather all the gales of misfortune we were likely to encounter, and second, that it behooved us to make substantial additions to our larder before passing from the known to the unknown. I did not attempt to question the wisdom of his plans, but set about to assist him in carrying them out. A mariner’s first care is to secure a seaworthy vessel, afterwards to provision and man her; so we occupied a few days in building a boat, and afterward several days in killing and jerking a liberal supply of venison, which was very plentiful here, so that even with my lack of skill in hunting I had no trouble to kill several deer each day, the meat of which we cut in thin slices and dipped for a moment in boiling brine and then hung on poles in the sun to dry. The pure mountain air and the sun’s rays did the rest, and we soon had a fine store of concentrated food, not so attenuated in bulk, perhaps, as the wonderful food-tablets that scientists begin to tell us about at present, when a quarter of beef may be slipped into the vest pocket and an equivalent of a barrel of flour stored in a common pill box; but still in compact form, and in a state of preservation to tempt any honest appetite.

Our boat or raft, for it was little more, was constructed “specially for our trade,” was long and narrow, to give it better facilities for shooting between rocks, or leaping down the rapids we expected to encounter, was provided with cross trusses, or platforms one above another to prevent our provision deck from shipping water. Our cargo was transferred laboriously from the stronghold in the wall to our craft and securely lashed in place. Our steering oar was shipped, our paddles stowed away as a part of the cargo, for a possible time of need, and our fantastic craft headed down stream, her captain and crew as gayly hopeful of the future and as undisturbed by thoughts of peril as though we had launched a tiny “egg shell” upon a shallow artificial park lake, instead of a roaring torrent whose dangers had hitherto deterred the most courageous from braving the rapids and whirlpools and shooting the cataracts of this wild branch of a wilder stream.

Our plan embraced only a mild part of such a program; we only meant to play with the monster a little, not to come within reach of his jaws, to float down some of the lesser rapids by day and camp by some of her less stupendous canyon walls at night, to feel our way along cautiously and end our voyage where the Grand Canyon of the Gunnison began, or at least to use our best judgment as to where our exploring voyage should end. We were soon swinging along at a good rate and all our cares were needed to avoid rocks and sudden curves and freaks in the current, even now, but we got used to the wild ways of the frisky Gunnison after a few hours, and were less alarmed at her exhibitives of untamable temper, and enjoyed the wild scenery about us to the limit of our capacity for appreciating the sublime in nature, but without exhausting the subject.

The stream was as capricious as the traditional feminine shrew. For some distance the channel would widen out and the current move as placidly as a Sister of Charity; and again it would suddenly contract its bounds to one-fourth its former width, and rush its waters through the gorge as furiously as the Sister of Charity is followed about the street on her hallowed mission by the society butterfly chasing social bubbles. We knew before the close of the first day’s voyage that for us was no return by water. No human being could stem the current of those wild, rocky stretches of channel where the waters raged and foamed and rushed forward and downward with the speed of a racehorse. It was like the closing of the gate of mercy behind a poor mortal, while he was whirled forward resistlessly by the cumulative forces of evil habits until he realized that

“There is a line by us unseen,
That crosses every path,
The hidden boundary between
God’s patience and his wrath.”

We judged that we were within two days’ run of the Grand Canyon from our cavern home, and the fast increasing wildness both of the river and its surroundings convinced us that we had not overestimated the distance. The shore walls grew so precipitous that we had some difficulty in finding a suitable landing place to camp for the night; but presently the cliffs receded a little, leaving a few feet of level shore where we made our bivouac, and except for the oppressive sense of solitude that bore down upon our spirits, we passed a comfortable night.

Then, after a hearty breakfast, we again launched upon our exciting voyage. During the morning we encountered a state of things similar to that of the day before, but before noon we were whirling along at so rapid a rate and the rock walls closed in so relentlessly upon us that at times the light of day was shut out overhead, and the roar of the mad current in the hollow cavernous depths was so deafening that it was impossible to converse and we could only look in each other’s faces and read the confirmation of our own convictions there, that we were in the power of an unchained element, and flying at break-neck speed through the Grand Canyon of the Gunnison. Now we shot down a cataract with the speed of the wind gasping for breath and immersed in spray, clinging to the ropes that held our traps in place, Abner still grasping the steering oar, guiding our bark when possible to see our course, and holding her steadily before the current when the dashing spray from the menacing rocks blinded us. Then our craft would be caught in the maelstrom at the foot of these rapids and be whirled around and around, until at last it would be projected by the current beyond the caldron and dash on again into calmer waters, where we would have a brief breathing space before being again immersed in the boiling, eddying water, deafened by the roar and almost stupefied by the swiftness with which we were borne along as if nature were mercifully deadening our senses against the time of the final catastrophe, as a lion is said to toss a man in the air till his senses are so dulled to pain that it is only a sort of dreamy pleasure to be eaten.

When we had just passed one of these wild rapids which was a little more terror inspiring than anything we had yet encountered, and came out upon a stretch of comparatively quiet water, Abner delivered himself of his opinion of the situation in his characteristic style: “I’ll tell you, my little bantling, if you’ve got any words to say now’s your time to say ’em, for when we get into another of them sheep dips the Almighty himself couldn’t hear your little petition, and if the next one grows worse along of the rest of ’em we’ve passed this morning, I wouldn’t give poor Riley’s chances to get out from under the little forty-ton coverlid we lapped around him, for ours to come out alive.”

It is needless to say that I had been doing some intensely sober thinking about my past life, the mere privilege of living seeming more precious as the probabilities of its being suddenly and forever snatched away from me increased. The recollection of my dear old uncle and foster parent added a decided pang to the thought of dying without being able as I had hoped, one day, to give him substantial proof of my gratitude for his care. But all these considerations were but as added sparks to the flames of torment that racked me at the thought of being apparently so near to success and Lena, and now—delivered from the bloodthirsty Piutes, only to be reserved for a fate quite as horrible and affording even smaller chances that the story of our fate would ever be told. We might better have been swallowed in the rush of the avalanche or met our death at the first volley when Riley was killed; then we would have escaped the second horror, for we suffered all of death itself in our momentary anticipation of it in the mountain shanty. So I ran on in my train of bitter reflections, my heart rebelling with all the force of love-lorn youth against the decree that death seemed to have pronounced against it. I had never spoken of my love affair to any one and it was too sacred a subject to broach to Abner even now; but I hastily penciled a few words to Lena, on a scrap of paper, folded and directed it and gave it to Abner, telling him that if he should be saved and I was lost, to mail it as directed. Even this slender thread of chance that I might apprise her of my fate and of my unaltered affection for her in my last moments was a grain of comfort and I thought that, perhaps, even though we might both be lost there was a chance that our bodies might be recovered and the writing be legible and find its way to Lena, at once relieving her from the horrors of suspense concerning my fate and emancipating her from a compact that I fully believe would never be broken by any voluntary act of hers.

The cheery voice of Abner recalled me from my morbid speculations, and bitter self-denunciations for ever having embarked in any such business, much less on such a voyage.

“Chirk up, my tender kidling, don’t you see the old Gunnison is giving herself a little spread room and us a chance to hear ourselves think? We’re past the canyon, I think, and from now on we’ll have smooth sailin’ accordin’ to the best information I could get about the Gunnison, and you’ll see yor sweetheart sure, and all your native fields.”

I looked above me and sure enough the rocky shores had receded, the racing current had subsided to a sober gait, and we were suddenly transformed from terrified wretches expecting instant death to a pair of quiet voyagers on a quiet stream that bore us upon a smooth current, free from obstruction, and treated us to a tamer variety of scenery.

Will you oblige me, reader, by pausing here and trying to reason out from your general knowledge of human nature what was my first thought on realizing that our worst dangers were past? I remark your vacant gaze into space as you try to solve the problem and make haste, a little slowly, perhaps, some over-curious feminine reader may be so unkind as to suggest—but still with all the haste of which my slow brain is capable, to inform you that the wild desire that a few moments ago had prompted me to write and entrust to Abner an epistle to my friends in Chicago—well then to a particular friend there, if you insist on putting it that way—had changed to as wild a desire to re-possess myself of that little piece of paper.

No, it was not that I remembered having omitted to punctuate it properly with a comma here, and a semicolon there, or had neglected to add a postscript or to sign myself, “Yours in haste,” but if there were more intrinsic reasons why I wished to regain my jewels before they should be cast before swine, or if the words that seemed feeble and utterly powerless to express my dying sentiments to one of my particular friends did seem now a little—just a little—gushing, or might be so regarded by a matter-of-fact old duffer like my beloved old Abner, what is that to thee, guileless reader?

But Abner was inclined to be frisky, and intimated that the sacred trust bequeathed to him with my dying blessing could not be so lightly given up; that my passionate appeal to him to be faithful in my efforts to deliver the message could not be so easily ignored, and he added with a twinkle of merriment in his weather-worn eye, “besides, if I should deliver it in person and figure as your faithful friend to the last, and your sincere mourner, I might ‘stand in’ on her sympathies, see?”

So far as I had been able to ascertain, the merry old stager had never had a touch of a love affair in his life, and it was refreshing to hear his badgerings, especially as I knew that Chesterfield himself would break the first commandment in etiquette as soon as chivalrous Abner Callaway would take any liberties with my missive, or withhold it from me longer than it should serve his turn for a little amusement at my expense. So I fell in with his view of it, and offered to give him a letter of introduction, and advised him to procure a red necktie to match his shirt before he rung the bell at her fine, up-town residence, and hinted that his chances of success would be improved if he should scrape some of the pay-dirt from his cowhide boots before appearing before my inamorata, and take a few lessons in doffing his broad-brimmed white hat. I saw the terror that walketh in the boulevard and the spirit of the metropolitan belle that wasteth in the midnight ball, with her glances, alight upon him at the very mention of such laborious gallantries, and I knew that what the Indians could not accomplish by ruse or valor or ambuscade, I had accomplished by mere allusion—I had found his vulnerable spot.

“I surrender laddie, here’s your billy-doo; but you can stake her heavy on one card and that is, Abner don’t. And remember one thing, my boy, if ever we strike it rich and go back to Chicago to paint the town red, and you should invite me to dine with you and your filigreed friends, or to attend a fandango where your female beauties unbosom themselves to their admiring, simpering, high-dressed, and low-moraled bilks whose dads has a million dollars, you’ll ask a harder job of me than the one we’ve just finished up.” And I had no reason to doubt the entire sincerity of his statement.

“I promise you, my father in Israel,” said I, “that when we do the town together it shall be in our mining garb, or you shall suggest the change; and, as to dining, if ever I should be so fortunate as to be a diner-at-home, I’ll have a corner reserved especially for you, and a wife to do the honors who shall be as straight-laced and puritanical in all her ways as your own grandmother. But where do you propose to commence operations to secure the glittering fortune we’ve been chasing up the mountains and down this bowel of the earth?

“Oh, we may as well run down to the mouth of the Gunnison, seein’ how we can ride back this far anyway. I had an old pard once, the poor old fellow gave his scalp to the Bannocks in ’76; he was down in this country once, and we had planned to take the very identical wild goose chase we’re takin’ now. He used to keep me awake nights to tell me about the nuggets that could be picked up at the mouth of the Gunnison, if you only knew where to look; and then he’d pucker up his mouth and whistle knowingly to himself, but if he knew where to look, he died with the seed of his secret remainin’ in him unsprouted. But since we’ve been on this lonesome voyage of discovery, I’ve had plenty of spare time to think of my old pard and since we were obliged to start on this here little pleasure trip against our will, I propose that we become an explorin’ expedition on our own hook, and so make a virtue of necessity like the little snarlin’ puppy the widdy I used to work for at Chicago owned; when his mongrelship was ordered out of the house, he’d bounce across the porch, out of the yard, and down the lane with his bristles raised and a-barkin’ furiously, what the old lady used to call his ‘person bark,’ all to pretend that he went out of his own accord, and was just about to tree a tramp, or smell out a burglar in ambush.”

So we beguiled the tedious hours of the long days and grew into close companionship, my respect for the general growing daily, and his fatherly affection for me, I can account for it by no other name, seeming to thrive quite as well. Our voyage to the mouth of the Gunnison henceforth was uninterrupted, and our arrival there created no stir in mining circles except that which we created with our spades. That was to very little purpose, though I have never yet panned out a bushel of sand and gravel on the bars of these Rocky Mountain rivers without finding more or less gold, or in mining phrases “raising the color.”

But its fineness and a persistent tendency to sift down to bed rock often made it impossible to secure more than enough to tantalize the imagination for bed rock along these sand bars meant under water and the fine gold, known as “flour gold” had so far resisted all efforts to secure it by any process known to science, to a paying extent.

We continued to drift down stream a few miles almost daily and did a little half-hearted prospecting, adding at every opportunity to our store of dried venison against a possible time of need, till we found ourselves in the turbulent Colorado itself and in the dominions of Brigham Young, Joe Smith, and Ann Eliza. But if the Latter Day Saints had any title, right, or estate in the untamed mountain torrent that furrowed the southern part of Utah, they had made no effort to come into actual possession. The wild freaks of nature indulged in various directions here amid the perfect solitude gave it an air of almost awful wildness that oppressed the spirits, and our minds reflected some of the gloom of the dark, deep rifts in the rocks that the river had claimed as its channel. But the sunshine, when we found it again, was all the brighter for having been obscured, and our Bedouin manner of life was giving us an appetite for adventures from which we would have shrunk in fear at first. Fate, apparently, was fitting us for the strange predicament in which we were to find ourselves presently.

Perhaps we realized more fully the perils of our undertaking now that we had experienced them, and our realization of the facts and figures that are familiar to everybody was quickened by contact with the stupendous facts themselves. Do you realize that the Colorado falls in many places two hundred feet in one mile; that the channel is merely a seam in the solid rock; that while it expands in some places to hundreds in width it suddenly contracts to twenty yards in others, and forces its waters through this choked outlet with terrific force; that what would be banks or bluffs on ordinary rivers are here perpendicular walls of granite, sandstone, and limestone rock, towering upward from two thousand to seven, and even ten, thousand feet above your head, so that at midday the light in the depths of these gorges is that of late twilight; that the sights and sounds that greet your rocket-like passage remind one of all sorts of grewsome subjects, and suggests all sorts of stygian comparisons, and Hadean similes?

There were two mortals to whom all this Plutonian scenery was a fearful reality, for we toyed with the cub of old Neptune till she learned her power over us, and hurled us into her secret caverns, and roared and lashed herself into an ecstasy of delight at our helplessness.

Chapter VII.

Shooting the Rapids.

Excepting the little exploring party headed by Professor Powell in 1869, we were probably the first and only white men to voluntarily undertake the navigation of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. The purpose had gradually grown upon us and strengthened as we proceeded. Ours was not laid on scientific lines, nor yet on merely idle advantages, but in pursuance of our desire to know more of a country that was as thoroughly a myth and a mystery to the world as that region of the globe which was represented on the maps of ancient geographers by hideous monsters lying in wait for unwary voyagers.

We found just as cruel and ravenous monsters lying in wait for us at every turn in the Colorado; but they were very matter-of-fact dragons, composed of half-submerged rocks and furious whirlpools, threatening life and limb no less than the most hideous creation of a bookwise geographer or superstitious navigator.

For several days our voyage was not so exciting as that of the Gunnison had been, and we began to think that, perhaps, after all, the Colorado, like his “brimstone devilship,” was not so black as it was painted, though, in its most placid aspect, it was in no danger of breeding the ills of stagnation, or subjecting her passengers to the disease called monotony.

However we may have built on this foundation of hope it proved to be one of sand. The canyon began again to contract and writhe and rage as the Gunnison had done, but on a scale of magnificence that belittled the grandest efforts of the tributary.

We began to realize that the course of the Colorado from its source to the foot of the canyon at least, was simply one grand cataract, that we tumbled down its current rather than floated, that we were day by day the subjects of special miracles of preservation from the horrors of shipwreck in a current where the stoutest swimmer would be as helpless as a leaf against the plunging tide, a tide that tumbled and drove seaward through Arizona at a rate that brought the level of its waters three thousand feet lower at the point where it left that territory than where it entered upon it.

These may seem mildly sensational statements to my conservative readers, but they were terrific object lessons in some of nature’s startling facts to us, though we did not stop on our voyage to take our bearing or climb to the top of the river’s banks to drop the plummet line on these walls, nor did we keep a log-book of our course and variations; but all these figures, obtained by Professor Powell in the employ of the United States, have for us a vital meaning, and are not in our ears as a far-away tale of the Arabian Nights.

We would gladly have given over the expedition when we came to brave the dangers of the canyon, but to land at most points was impossible, and even if we could have had room to stand on terra firma we would still have had only the barren choice between starving on the narrow strand or taking to the water again. It had grown so serious again that Abner was once more his brother’s keeper, or at least the keeper of his brother’s message to the outer world, and I was trying to take Abner’s advice about some final words of preparation for departure, when our affairs took a decidedly new turn.

We had just shot down a dizzy cataract that deluged us with spray, and caused Abner to close his lips a little more firmly. We had the usual maelstrom to clear at its foot, and then we shot out into a stretch of water that was good to behold. The channel, as it must needs be to relieve the pressure of the current, was quite wide and the current was so gentle that we could have stemmed it without difficulty; and just ahead of us the prison walls that had so long frowned over and around us gave way, giving us a glimpse of what seemed to be a branch canyon or “pocket,” as they were termed, and we could catch a glimpse of the bright verdure of some sort of plants or trees nearly on a level with the stream.

“Land ho!” I cried, and we promptly guided our craft toward the cove that seemed to be inviting us to find harbor there; but as we drifted down to a point more nearly opposite the entrance to the pocket, we were disappointed to find that the mouth of the pocket was obstructed by a mass of earth and rock that had fallen from the cliffs above and effectually closed the harbor to navigation. This dam rose to the height of only ten or twelve feet, however, and we were soon landed and tying up our raft to a cedar sapling growing upon the embankment; we scrambled up the side and looked over into our promised land. It did not seem to contain over an acre of land, but that one acre was a veritable Garden of Eden to us and we rushed down the inner slope, and took possession of our discovery in the name of the King of Cosmopolitan Rovers, and hoisted the colors of the United Brethren of Freebooters and Adventurers.

The miniature park was intended by nature, seemingly, to represent a circle, of which the river had cut away one side, and as it was smooth, and appeared to be on a level with the river bed, it was plainly redeemed from the river by the dyke thrown across it from the overhanging cliffs, and its soil derived moisture enough to render it wonderfully fertile by sub-irrigation from the waters of the river, which were higher than the surface. We gazed around us in stupid amazement partly because we were so unexpectedly granted a respite from the hardships to which we had been exposed, to the point of exhaustion, and partly at the extraordinary appearance and profusion of the vegetation around us.

Said Abner: “By the beard of Joe Smith, we’ve got into old Brigham’s private garden! Here’s fig trees and date trees, or I’m the devil’s uncle;” and here I said, “are some oranges and limes for supper.”

“Well, I used to have some trouble with the story of Moses poundin’ water outen the rock with his gold-headed cane that Aaron stole to make the golden calf, but I dunno as it’s any harder on the constitution to swallow that little tale than to believe our own senses, that a little patch of Californy should be picked up and set down here in this howlin’ wilderness.”

Pushing our way through the thick growth, we found still other varieties of semi-tropical fruits. A huge grapevine climbed over the tops of the trees and displayed huge bunches of luscious grapes temptingly in our very faces, a temptation to which we readily yielded, and no grouping of words can convey an idea of their delicious flavor to us, deprived as we had been for weeks of fruits and vegetables.

Olives, apples, pears, quinces and plums, all laden to breaking with their respective fruits, dazzled our eyes, and turned our brains dizzy in their efforts to realize our good fortune. Some of the fruits were already past their prime, and gone to decay, but other varieties were ripe for the harvest, and though the laborers were rather few in number, they made amends for that deficiency by being willing. It must be borne in mind that this cliff-walled retreat was as different in climate from the regions of that latitude, usually, as the tropics are different from the temperate zones. It was like a hot-house at noonday, the rays of the sun being reflected downward upon it from the vast upward stretch of rocks, while no cold winds could chill the tender plants, or check the tropical growth of the trees.

The task of exploring our island was not a long one, for the rocky walls were of the same character, and had the same precipitous form as these that had inclosed us for several days, and clearly defined the boundaries of our possessions. We found a spring of pure water gushing from a crevice in the rocks and trickling away again among the fissures and seams, until lost again in a few yards; but it was as great a blessing to us as though it had continued on the surface, for our water privileges had been more extended in quantity than excellent in quality, while we journeyed on the bosom of the boisterous Colorado.

We regaled our senses with the fragrance of the blossoms, and our appetites with the juicy, delicious fruits, and, spreading our blankets in the shadow of the western wall, we slept long and profoundly, the dreamless, careless sleep of childhood, for we were utterly exhausted and the sense of relief was too powerful to admit any nightmares born of our recent dangers—these were reserved for the later stages of reaction. Physically and mentally, we often live over again the scenes of danger and trial with sensations almost as vivid as the reality.

We slumber on through the evening hours and those of night. Morning is well advanced when I hear some one calling to me that breakfast is ready. I rub my eyes and have a confused remembrance of running the gauntlet of at least two of the folds of the baleful rivers that surround the nether world seven times, but as I look around on the pleasing vision before me, I conclude that I have been misshipped, and have dropped anchor on the shores of Elysium instead, and hasten to respond to the invitation of the genius of the place to taste the viands of this realm of bliss. But on advancing a little and looking around I discover only grizzled, grotesque Abner, waving his bloody shirt to and fro over the fire—with Abner himself inside of it—putting the last touches to a meal fit for kings, or even for commercial travelers. Breakfast bacon, garnished with hot apple sauce, steaming slapjacks and coffee, and a great display of fresh fruits piled in the shape of a pyramid, grapes, apricots, peaches, and pears were before me in such profusion that I was constrained to ask the hoary cook if he were arranging an exhibit for a world’s fair.

“That’s right, my boy, and the premium is to the one that can devour the most of it at one settin’,” was his reply; and we fell to with generous appetites, and made so good a record, and so uniform in results, that we decided to share equally the honors of the table, and voted each of the contestants the freedom of the country.

Our spirits rose after such perfect repose and such generous refreshment, and we prepared to make a thorough exploration of our little haven of rest from the storms and dangers of the outer world, happy in the thought of escape from the raging current, not stopping to consider how we were to escape from this refuge itself, or to wish as yet to escape. We asked each other again and again what hand had planted this Eden, or what foot had trodden these solitudes; what intelligence had done its work in this isolated spot, and left behind the undeniable record of its work? Deep as the mysteries of the Cliff Dwellers, unfathomable as the secret of the worshipers of the sun, unanswerable as the query of the origin and purposes of Incas and Aztec, was the question, so constantly uppermost in our minds, so persistently recurring, but having for its answer no echo from the eternity of the past.

Plenty of evidence existed all around us that this work was of no recent doing. Trunks of trees in all stages of decay lay about among the living trees, indicating that the trees had propagated themselves from the seed, until they had become a tangled wilderness of tree and vine. The extremely favorable nature of their location preserved them from deterioration in quality or extinction of their kind. Here might be a thread that would help to unravel the tangled web of facts regarding the race that had once reared and ruled, built and worshiped in America, of which no human being had been able to give an authentic account.

What if we—tremendous thought—should enjoy the proud distinction of giving to the world a plain solution of the race problem that had profoundly agitated the minds of scholars for generations, and tantalized the efforts of the most diligent and enthusiastic students of American antiquities?

Such thoughts as these chased each other through my brain as we made our way through the thicket, and took careful note of everything around us. We were a little sobered in our effusive delight with our new-found possession when we had made a laborious circuit of “our acre” through the tangle of fruit and flowers, to find, as far as we could determine from such a preliminary survey, that there was no possible method of escape from our retreat except by water, and that in the end, if we wished to escape from a situation which, even though it had to us the semblance of a paradise, still was rather a circumscribed one (and we could easily foresee that a time would come when our palace would become a prison); we should be compelled to resume our perilous voyage till a point was reached where we could scale the banks of the river and retrace our toilsome journey by land.

I could not accept as final the decree of the rocks, that we should not pass. It seemed improbable that the former inhabitants should have brought this nook to such a high state of productiveness without some better facilities of ingress and egress than the river afforded. It was unreasonable to suppose that they should come by our late route, prepared to improve and cultivate this spot, and it was equally improbable that having once lighted upon it as we had done, that they should ever care to repeat the experiment after having escaped from it by running the remaining two hundred or more miles of seething rapids in the Grand Canyon.

“What do you think could ever have brought men to this place, and induced them to plant this great variety of fruit?” said I.

“What do I think, laddie?” he said, “I think that just what brought you and me gallivantin’ in these living tombs, brought them here to be sure. They came a lookin’ for mines, only they came from the West, while we came from the North, and another triflin’ difference between them and us is that we haven’t found any yet.”

“Why, do you mean to say that you think they found gold here?” I asked.

“I don’t think anything about it youngster, I know it. While you wuz a dreamin’ and noddin’ to yourself over them old rotten tree trunks and a settin’ up some fine-spun theory that you got in your head in your schoolin’ days at Chicago, I was usin’ my eyes. Come here.” I followed him a little distance to the southwestern extremity of the park, and he pointed out a place in the wall where mining tools had been used, and a closer inspection showed that there was a distinctly marked seam of quartz cropping out. “Not much account,” commented Abner. “They soon left it, but it proves their business.”

The work had the appearance of having been pushed only far enough to make a test of the vein, which had probably been unsatisfactory.

“Now, Abner,” said I, “what proof have you that these wanderers came from the West instead of from any other direction?”

“Why any fool ought to know that; here is a little corner of southern California, or north Mexico taken up bodily and set down here; if you had ever been in that country you’d see the earmarks here sure.”

The symptoms that some time previously threatened to develop a mania for antiquarian research in me were upon me again, and this time the archæologist was in a fair way to run away with the gold hunter, I resolved to bend every energy to the work of unearthing some further traces of the people who had been in this strange, wild, beautiful garden of the gods, so carefully hidden by nature. While Abner, armed with his mining tools, was disposed to do some prospecting, I secured my pick and shovel, and started on a prospecting tour also, though with a different end in view. I had marked one thing that appeared strange and inconsistent, namely, that while here were evidences on every hand that some human being or beings, had made this place a home for a length of time—else why all this fruit planting—or at least they had planned to make it an abiding place of some prominence; yet here was not the first clew to the remains of any sort of a human habitation, and I was starting out on the presumption that a people who gave so much attention to the cultivation of fruits must surely have bestowed some careful thought and labor upon a dwelling of a style to compare with the state of civilization indicated by their agricultural advancement.

My attention was drawn to the walls of the pocket, rather than to the level spot of tree-covered earth, on the supposition that there might very probably be some connection between this little settlement and the houses of the rock dwellers, whose cavernous retreats have been found all over this southwestern region of North America. Beginning at the point where Abner was investigating the ancient prospect hole, I worked my way around to the western side, narrowly scanning the ledge as I went, for any sign of excavation or rock hewn apartment that might answer the needs of human beings for shelter and safety. The light at best was none too brilliant in this recess in the mountain, but was especially gloomy till the sun had climbed well toward the zenith; and, to render my efforts more difficult, a few tall cottonwood trees grew close together, and in close proximity to the wall, hindering my view and shutting out the little light to be had, and leaving hardly sufficient room for a person to squeeze through between their trunks and the cliff. Laboriously making way against these difficulties I came to a point about midway of the western segment of the semicircle, when I saw some sort of marks upon the rocks that seemed to have been made by man, but so overgrown with moss that it conveyed as yet no intelligence. Falling to work in great excitement, I scraped away the covering that ages had been at work to provide, and made out the form of a human figure cut in the granite and pointing with the index finger in the direction of the north, and slightly downward.

I studied the figure long and intently, but it spoke no word to relieve my suspense, only pointed steadily and stolidly toward some object, to me invisible. I scanned the walls for other figures or characters, but this one seemed to be the lone guard of the place. I passed on in the direction indicated by the clammy finger of the rock genius, and about twenty yards further on espied a similar figure which in size, attitude, and constancy of purpose might have been a twin of the former, but instead of pointing northward, its taper finger was stretched out toward the south, and depressed toward the earth in the same degree as the other.

There is undoubtedly a motive in all this, I thought, and I began to feel as if I were in the presence of the ghost of an interesting, intensely fascinating past. The figures were life size and in position to indicate that the person who had executed them had stood upon the ground where I now stood, but accumulations of rubbish had buried them to the knees. I ran my eye along the line in which the second figure pointed, marked the spot, walked to the first one, ranged its course also, and discovered with a thrill that it indicated exactly the same spot. Visions of ancient Captain Kidd and Tom Walker flitted through my excited brain. I walked back and forth several times, and squinted and ranged, but each time these cold-blooded monitors referred me back to the same spot I had first fixed upon as their common choice, and, trembling in every limb, I began to ply the pick and shovel like a mad man, anxious to have the honor of making one discovery as the result of my “book larnin’,” of which Abner always spoke a little contemptuously. I had not sunk my shaft more than two feet till my pick struck the traditional “something hard,” and my heart beat the usual triphammer accompaniment.

But when uncovered it proved to be only a very solid rock, and I was on the point of concluding that it was imbedded there by nature herself, when I observed that it bore the marks of tools, and continuing my labors, I soon found that its extent toward the wall was not great; I thought to dig underneath it, but after sinking about a foot beside it, I again encountered rock, and on clearing away a space down to this level, I perceived with renewed palpitations that I was descending a stone stairway.

In the wildest frenzy of mental excitement I continued the excavations, this being, as I estimated, the third step from the top, as I judged that I had at first struck the second one from the distance it was found below the surface; and continuing, I unearthed successively a fourth, fifth, and finally a sixth, which brought me close to the cliff wall. But though here was the stairway sufficient for descent far enough to admit an ordinary-sized man to apartments entirely “below stairs,” there appeared to be no entrance to such an apartment, and my further progress was stayed by the unflinching decree of the rocks. My closest scrutiny failed to detect the least sign that the hand of man had ever been laid in violence upon the virgin rock that formed the canyon wall. Reason and the senses were in conflict. Surely this laboriously formed stairway was designed to lead somewhere, said reason. Be that as it may, it is just as plainly apparent that it does not, said the outer senses of sight and touch.

The plaintiff in the case urged that it was an absurdity to suppose the stairway to have been constructed that man might butt his head against a stone wall. I bethought me of another available witness in the case, who might give valuable testimony, so I struck the wall directly in front of the stairway a smart blow with my pick, and called hearing into action to decide on the nature of the sound. The blow produced a hollow sound, and proved, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that a chamber of some sort existed beyond the stone barrier, but how to remove the barrier was now the absorbing question. I carefully cleared away the dirt and rubbish that still clung to the supposed door and examined it closely for some indications of the plan upon which it was built and operated.

I noticed at last a faint crack like a frost seam in the wall just above my head as I stood at the foot of the stairway, and by the closest scrutiny, and frequent resort to brushing and scraping, I was able to follow the seam, and define the outline of a door so cunningly fitted to the aperture as to defy any but the closest search.

Slowly and painfully, but in great inward tumult, I traced the form of the door completely around to the starting point, but the sharpest vision could not penetrate the secret of its fastenings, or detect the slightest show of hinge or lock that might prove the sesame to the vaulted dwelling beyond. I fumed and capered about in my impatience to be taken into this dark secret of the Old Man of The Mountain, but I failed to find even enough of a clew to enable me to form an opinion as to which side of the door was hinged, or as to whether it was hinged at all, for that matter, but at last, in desperation, I threw my whole weight against one side of the door which yielded with such ease and suddenness that I made my entrance to the dark precincts within this strange portal, in a way that sent a thrill something very nearly akin to terror to my heart, through the lighting of the brain which flashed the caution to the central office of mind, through the electric highway of the grand trunk line of nerves: “Beware of being caught by a trapdoor!”

Recovering myself from falling, I caught at the door to prevent its being closed by possible hidden automatic agencies, but no such forces existed, or if so, had forgotten to execute their office, for the door stood wide open without any apparent intent to defeat the law of inertia—but what a door!

What human ingenuity and Job-like patience had wrought the rough slab of stone into a mechanism that of perfect symmetry and absolute joining to the native wall would render foolish any attempt of a modern carpenter and joiner with all his varied collection of perfect tools. The method of hanging the door was as unique as the fitting was perfect. The doorway was about four feet wide and the hinges were not on one jamb or door-post, as we are accustomed to see them, but were in the middle of the doorway. Could you have stood on the threshold, exactly in the center of the aperture, one hinge would have been immediately over your head and the other between your feet; but as a matter of fact this was exactly the position occupied by the open door, standing sidewise or at right angles to the opening half of the door, therefore opening inward and half outward, being pivoted by such a curious feat of skill above and below, that, ponderous as it was, a touch of the finger almost would swing it. But while I entertain you, my reader, with a description to the best of my ability, of a wondrous product of skill and point out its many claims to admiration and wonder, I perceive that you cast wistful, sidewise glances toward the mysteries within the door, and to which its opening has admitted us, and begging your pardon if I have kept you standing on the threshold longer than courtesy would suggest, and having satisfied my ambition to be in my own person the Columbus of this exploring expedition, I will detain you but a moment, while I call to my partner to come, and together we will enter this abode of the dim and misty past. To tell the truth, however anxious I might have been to be the sole discoverer of this subterranean habitation, I confess to a somewhat eerie feeling at the thought of venturing alone into this stronghold of a long-forgotten people, to stumble perhaps over the utensils and implements that had been used by them hundreds of years ago, and not improbably encounter the grinning skeletons of the former inhabitants themselves, and be haunted by an uncomfortable conviction that it was a sort of sacrilege to invade the dominions of the dead who had in life labored so long and patiently to prevent just such intruders as myself from disturbing their dust, or prying with too much idle curiosity into the secrets of their life and labors; I felt that I was almost setting up my feeble opposition against the decree of death that here they should rest till the resurrection.

But companionship easily dispels such somber ideas, and eagerly I lead the way, and conduct the hero of a hundred adventures into the castle of the island, and invite him to take up his quarters here, forthwith.

The room is a low one, not more than seven feet in height and about twenty feet square, and bare of any particular object of interest, except that in one corner are some charred remains of wood, where cooking had evidently been done, and directly over it a round hole cut through the ceiling slantwise toward the outer world and gave issue to the smoke, as I found on later investigation, through a fissure of the rock and concealed the source from which it came. There were a few earthen vessels for domestic use, this room being probably used as a storeroom and cooking room.

The walls were rudely cut and no effort had been made at adornment; but our interest was toward a point in the rear wall where were plain indications of another doorway, but seemingly constructed without the effort at concealment, that had been a prominent thought in the mind of the artisan who had shaped the outer door. This second door we found to yield to pressure as easily as the other, and admitting us to a dark corridor whose extent we could not conjecture, and whose dark, unknown space we did not care to penetrate without light, so we returned to daylight and prepared bundles of dry fagots for torches, and lighting one, we started once more to trace the windings and explore the mysteries of the passage.

The torch burned brightly, and the air seemed fresh and wholesome. The tunnel bore directly into the mountain for some distance and then branched in a sharp bend northward. We decided to explore this passage first, and found it soon changed into a perpendicular or spiral stairway hewn in the rock, the center being left to form a huge monolithic pillar around which the course revolved. Up and up we toiled for a hundred generous steps till a queer pulling down sensation affected the calves of our legs, and came out at last upon a narrow landing, and a door opening into an apartment which we knew at a glance had been the true home of these ghostly inhabitants of the rocks. We had no further need of our fagots at present, for this room was well lighted from without—being directly over the one we had first entered—with ingenious arrangements to admit light and air without attracting notice from without, although being so high up the cliff made the liability to detection very small.

The room was forty feet square, cut with the greatest exactness, and the ceiling, which was in the form of a hip roof, pyramidal in shape, was, according to our best means of calculating, exactly forty feet to the apex. And the whole of the walls and ceiling were ornamented with a network of grooves in the red sandstone, which gave it quite an imposing appearance. Some ornamental vases of brass were resting in niches in the wall, and a great many more similar niches were empty. A low shelf of rock or divan was left running around the wall which must have been used as couches at night, as we found no other substitutes for any kind of beds whatever. But day was fast declining and we must retrace our steps to the camp and leave the exploring of the other branch of the gallery for the morrow.

Here was food for thought; enough to engage our attention till we could resume our work in unearthing and unraveling mystery and history, for I had cherished a firm belief from the time that we landed on the shores of this miniature world, that we should be the humble means of giving some facts that had been heretofore, for ages, mere speculation and hypothesis.

Sleep cannot always erase the grooves of care worn in the brain by the ceaseless grinding of our waking hours. The alluring phantoms, hope and ambition, stalk through the stoutest barriers we may rear at the portals of dreamland, lift our souls to the dizziest heights of success; then, as suddenly as they came, leave us on the pinnacle as a brood of the dark-hued spirits take their places to bedim our bright hopes, and instead of a pinnacle of glory, we seem suddenly to be standing on a precipice that is the verge of destruction, to be toppling over and falling into horrible depths till overwrought nerves can endure no more, and we startle into wakefulness only to doze off into Somno-land again to go through all the stages of human experience from exuberant bounding hope and joy to the blackest and bleakest despair.

So were my dreams, vision-haunted and fever-stirred. I seemed to be climbing again the weary flight of winding stairs to the chamber of state above. Now I wandered through that silent apartment with its unwritten history of human life! I came suddenly face to face with a grim and ghastly skeleton of one of the former prospectors of the place. He waved me from the premises with a horrid leer from his grinning teeth, now he lays a bony hand upon me; powerless to resist, I follow him while he clatters and rattles in every joint as he conducts me along a dark and moldy corridor full of noisome odors, and pauses at the brink of a well-like pit hewn in the solid rock, and striking his ghastly hands together, he throws off balls of phosphorescent fire from his finger tips, and exhaling a puff of sulphurous air from between his lipless teeth, he sends the uncanny will-o’-the-wisps waving and glimmering down, down to the bottom of an almost bottomless pit, that by their diabolical light I may see the companionship to which he has consigned me.

Then the scene is completely changed. I wander again in the familiar haunts of my boyhood, along the busy streets of the city, and up the well-remembered walk to the door of Lena Upton’s home. We are walking hand in hand in a beautiful garden where semi-tropical fruits grow in profusion, and I am plucking them for her, and she is filling her basket. All at once I recognize the garden as that of the Grand Canyon. Then the terror of the path by which we must escape rises before me, and we are on an open raft battling with a cataract, and I laugh derisively in Lena’s ear when she appeals to me for protection. We approach a wild cataract where rocks beset every foot of the way, the waters go mad and leap from their bed and lash themselves into foam, and we are caught in pitiless rapids, whirled over and into the maelstrom below. In a whirling racecourse, faster and faster we go, till all sense of fear is gone and a delicious sense of pleasure thrills me. I try to shout in rapture at the sport and mercifully wake from the nightmare to a blessed relief of reality and rest and serenity. I dare not trust myself again to such hideous phantasies, so I rise quietly, and walk about in the serene moonlight night. Many crowding, anxious thoughts, made up of hopes and fears in nearly equal quantities, had wrought up my nerves to the proper tension for such visitations, and in waking I could hardly divest myself of some superstitious thoughts, scruples against our ruthless desire to break into every secret of this place, and disregard the universal wish among civilized man for burial that shall be safe from vandalism. I was satisfied that to-morrow we should find evidences of death as we had to-day of life in the grotto, but after this realistic seance with the baleful spirits who guard, or are supposed to guard the forms and secrets of the dead from violations, I felt a little dubious about rushing in too hastily where it might be better to pause and consider. But the burning question that agitated my whole frame was, who were these people, whence came they, whither went they, what was their mission here? Was Abner’s theory of mining interests correct, or were they driven here by stress of circumstances for safety from human enemies, or by love of adventure as we had been, and stayed till deliverance came in some form from without? Had pestilence frightened them from the haunts of their fellows and induced them to take up their abode here, content to be accounted as dead by the outside world? So I speculated and dreamed my waking dreams, scarcely more coherent or probable than those of my fevered sleep; but it added firmness to my purpose to push my search on the morrow with all my energy, and poke and prod in every nook and cranny for records of the past whether it should be written in blood or in ink, whether the evidence should be in bone or stone, I determined to find it, and about daybreak I lay down again, and wrapped in my blankets, enjoyed a cool, refreshing sleep for two or three hours.

Chapter VIII.

In Stone.

Abner shared my enthusiasm to some extent, and we soon dispatched breakfast and began our day’s work by providing ourselves with a quantity of fagots for torches, and filling our pockets with matches and arming ourselves with pick and shovel, we made our way to the entrance of the kitchen, admiring the fitness of its arrangement in relation to the garden, which opened from it very conveniently to serve its plainly intended use of a kitchen garden. Pursuing the plan of action we had fixed upon, we paid no further heed, for the present, to the upper chamber with its winding staircase, but followed the horizontal gallery toward the heart of the bluffs, proceeding cautiously in the darkness by the little gleam of light from our torch, fearful that we might tumble into some pitfall, or become entangled in a maze of diverging passages; for, as we proceeded, a number of rooms opened to the right and left, but so far as we could observe from a hasty inspection there was nothing of interest in them. A hundred yards from the starting point our gallery began to descend rapidly, soon dipping at an angle of about thirty degrees, making it difficult to keep our footing on the slippery rock floor. The slant passage was about thirty-five yards in length, and came to a sudden end against the solid wall.

We held our torches aloft and scanned the walls for any trace of a doorway, but there was none. We sounded it with our picks but it gave no hint of any opening beyond. But our minute examination resulted in our discovering some more picture writings on the wall; figures of men in every respect similar to those I had found on the previous day which pointed toward the floor. Beside one of the figures was the representation of something like a well from which a hand had removed a covering, while another index finger pointed into its depths. Searching the floor with our light, we found a circular block of stone which seemed to be fitted into the surrounding rock so perfectly as to offer not the least chance to fasten upon it, so as to lift it from its bed.

Presently we found, close to the circle described, another and much smaller one, and within it another not more than six inches in diameter, and on one side of the stone was a notch large enough to admit a finger. We succeeded in loosening this small one, and lifted it from its place, disclosing a strong ring of brass, fastened to the larger circle by a staple as a means of lifting this cover. Together we were able easily to move it from its place, and the opening revealed a cedar beam which seemed to be as sound as on the day on which it had been taken from the tree.

Here was another mystery over which we puzzled a long time, trying to raise the beam aloft, but it resisted all our attempts, and finally we were about to give up, breathless, and in despair, when I sat down upon the stone floor to rest and dangled my feet in the opening, and finally rested them upon the beam which seemed to sink away from them, and at the same time Abner, who was standing on the larger circle stepped from it as though disturbed by some new difficulty, exclaiming: “Jerusalem, lad, the floor’s arisin’ up!” The removal of his weight made one part of it rise all the more easily, and to my astonishment, as the beam settled away from my feet, the circular block of stone in the center of the passage that we found first, rose, and letting myself down by my arms into the small opening beneath me, I pushed the lever down with my feet, and the ponderous cover of the mysterious well rose till it was higher than Abner’s head but refused to go any farther. It was hoisted and supported by three cedar poles working in grooves cut into the side of the well and covered religiously with the beam, forming a system of compound leverage. The passage, as it proved to be, was a spiral staircase, again, which stood invitingly open to us. The cover was a perfect circle whose edges were beveled off, and the mouth of the passage was countersunk to receive it, the whole fitting together most admirably, indicating that workmanship skilled in the highest degree had been employed upon it.

Neither of us seemed over-anxious to take the lead in our descent into what might easily prove to be our sepulcher. I suggesting that my knight of the red shirt should be the pillar of fire to go before me to this promised land, but Abner said: “No, no, my unsophistical lad with the tender foot, you’re the capting-general of this here branch of the expedition, you go ahead laddie, and I promise you I’ll be a close second whatever has to come of this goin’ down into Egypt.”

Leaving our cumbrous tools here, and each of us bearing a lighted torch, we proceeded to feel our way down this extraordinary stairway. It seemed tenfold more strange to us than the ascent of a similar one the day before, but this was going down, down toward the bowels of earth and every step seemed to deepen the mystery.

The steps were fully a foot in depth each, and winding slowly around the huge center pillar, and downward we counted one hundred steps before we encountered any change in the plan or direction; then a sound caught our ear which caused us to pause suddenly and listen. It was the sound of running water! A few steps more and it was rippling at our feet. Not a feeble spring or little brook, but a placid, gentle river flowing on its way to the sea, at least a hundred feet below the level of the Colorado.

Again our journey seemed to be ended, but we had been tricked too often in these intricate passages and hidden chambers to believe that all this vast amount of labor had been expended merely to reach water. While we were considering this proposition, we noticed all at once that our light wavered and flickered as if in a current of air, and now that our attention was directed that way, we could distinctly feel the cool air rising from the water and stooping down and looking in the direction that the river was flowing, we could perceive a dim appearance of daylight in the distance, and that the cavern through which the river flowed was considerably higher and wider than the bed of the stream which was itself about twenty yards wide and seemed to be quite deep. A natural shelf ran along the side of the cave and stooping low, we found we could manage to walk along in a cramped position, coming at times dangerously near to the brink of the river, but able by great care to find passage.

The light from without grew more distinct as we proceeded, and when we had traversed perhaps five hundred yards, we were able to dispense with our torches, and in another hundred we emerged into open air and daylight and liberty. The caldron of the Colorado was frustrated of its purpose to entomb us in its ungentle depths. We stood once more at large in the known and outer dominions of The Latter Day Saints. There were still plenty of hills around us, but they were not so stupendous in height or precipitous in form. The river whose privacy we had so rudely broken in upon seemed to be but little ruffled in her temper by our lapse of courtesy, but flowed down another deep canyon gradually wheeling into line parallel with the Colorado. But it was as mild mannered and gentle in current as the Colorado was the reverse, and the banks rose in a gradual slope so that it was approachable at any point within range of our vision. But now that we had regained our liberty, what should we do with it? We decided to go back to voluntary durance for a few days yet at least, and further explore the galleries and chambers we had barely noticed while on our way here. So we retraced our steps to the foot of the spiral staircase, slowly climbed up to the level of the kitchen, and threaded the labyrinth of passages between the mouth of the well-staircase, and the kitchen, and passing through its sacred precincts stood again in our little grove of luscious fruits and fragrant blossoms, hungry and tired, but not begrudging the efforts we had made to get knowledge from the voiceless rocks and wisdom from the echoless past; ready for dinner, and after that for another peep into the subterranean curiosity shop. Callaway would not have been a true prospector if this work had not been of almost as much interest to him as poking about on the mountain, scenting out “float” here, or striking a “lead” there. The pleasant excitement born of being always just on the eve of discovering something comes to be an every day necessity with his kith; it is more that feature of the work that lures them on, year after year, than mere love of money, for Abner was far from being one of those who were influenced entirely by mercenary motives. In fact the money instinct in him was not strong, and I am quite sure that to his class of mind the pleasure of pursuit is fully as great as that of possession, and he was beginning to be as enthusiastic an antiquarian as myself.

As we cooked and ate our frugal meal we discussed the situation. “Look here, sonnie,” said Abner, “do you believe for a holy minute that that ’ere measley well we clattered down was the very way them fellows had of gettin’ into this place? I don’t for one, by a large majority, and I’ll bet my interest in the Mountain Spring Mine (my blessings on them Piutes), that there’s a straight passage leadin’ from where we started down the well. That might have been very useful to them once in time of danger, and I noticed there had once been a door between the bottom of the well and the river path, but to start out on the supposition that they lugged themselves and all their stores up and down such a gopher trap as that, is like starting on a lonesome journey with a lame nag.”

“I have been thinking dimly on that line myself, pard,” said I, “but you penetrated the question first; and another thing, I have been thinking that we have not really found the secret rooms of that dwelling yet, and that when we do find them we shall find plenty of clews as to what sort of folks they were, and what holiday freak ever sent them this way to spend their lives in such profound solitude.”

Preparing more fagots and having refreshed ourselves, we went enthusiastically to work to utilize the knowledge already gained in getting more.

We followed out every side passage from the main gallery, sounded every suspicious wall, and fumbled about the floors of every rude chamber in the row. But it seemed as if we had reached the limit of our powers to ferret out mysteries and unlock hidden doors.

All the afternoon we raged up and down the dark corridors, or haunted the rooms to which they formed the entrance. We came back at last to the outer room, which we have named the kitchen, in despair of any further success, when Abner’s eyes were attracted by a peculiar marking on the rear wall of the room, which had escaped us before. Upon shining our lights fully upon it we discovered that it was undoubtedly a system of hieroglyphics more ample than anything in that line we had yet discovered, and intended to express in connected form some idea or ideas. The first was a flaming censer in the hand of a priest before an altar, with a representation, beyond, of another room separated from it by a curtain which was partly drawn aside, revealing within the appointments of a place of sacred worship; and near this altar, on which was a smoking sacrifice, was a carefully draped stand or table from which projected four staves or handles, and, hovering over all, the figure of an angel. This seemed to complete the first representation. A line was drawn underneath, and an entirely different series of symbols formed a second reading.

A figure of a man with some sort of a tool distinctly resembling a miner’s pick, was toiling in the mountain, and in the next he was leaning over his tool casting something from his hand into a vessel beside him. Above the vessel were cut three delicate rings, and in close juxtaposition, as if to receive the rings, were the delicate fingers of what was, no doubt, intended for a feminine hand. Then came the figure of a woman beating some musical instrument like a tambourine, next a fox or similar animal with cunning expressed in every outline, bearing a vessel in his mouth like that which the laborer had been filling in the first figure, and making toward a cavern in the rocks. Following it was a stairway and passage, and a door to the right at the end of the passage, opening into a large room from which others opened in the rear.

The last figure represented a man in the act of spreading some kind of plaster or cement upon a wall. Four feet to the right of the point where these picture writings ended, was another inscription entirely distinct in character from either of the other lines. It was indeed a written language and—Holy Mother Mary! if my brain was not on fire, or my senses running wild it was in Hebrew.

Yes, my labors in this elective study of my curriculum was of no service to me if this was not a Hebrew inscription; but though I could read it tolerably well when legibly printed on good paper, to cope with this by a feeble flickering torchlight was a distinctly different matter, and besides, my excitement ran too high to allow any rational examination of it, or to allow me to tell whether the first letter in the Hebrew were A or Beelzebub.

Abner spoke: “Come away, lad, come away, you’ll be as crazy as a loon before a week at this rate; let the goose-tracks rest till morning, and you’ll be in better trim to scent ’em out after you’ve slept over it.” The fact that it was already night and our last torch was almost consumed, compelled me to take his wholesome advice, and we went into camp once more, without having our curiosity satisfied, though it had been ground to a keen edge by the discoveries of the day.

We talked long and earnestly around the embers of our campfire among the orange and apple trees, and theorized upon the information we had unearthed and speculated as to the interpretations of the hieroglyphics. Abner’s lack of a classical education was made up largely by his wide experience in many States and territories of the union; he having been in New Mexico and California, seen something of such picture writings, so that he had much better general ideas of the art of picture writing than I. He gave it as his opinion that the first line was intended to symbolize the form of worship of which those people were the votaries, and perhaps to convey the intelligence to people of their own nation who might come after them that a temple where these rites might be practiced was to be found near at hand, by those who could understand this language.

As to the second series, we were agreed that without doubt it was meant to indicate the finding of treasure and the rejoicings it called forth, and to hint that it was hidden in some of these grottoes, the record of the fact being written there as a matter of precaution among themselves as we would not think of banking large sums of money without an accurate account of it. What the last figure of the man and trowel meant we could not even conjecture, but concluded to rest the question here till another day. But to assume the posture of repose, and to enjoy the repose were two propositions! Though Abner soon snored peacefully beside me, I could not sleep, and images of sanctimonious priests and humble penitents doing religious acts in this somber place haunted me. And the Hebrew writing; what could it mean? What untoward circumstances could have brought people of that far-away race here? For surely to infer for a moment that they came in the exercise of volition was too preposterous an idea to be entertained for a moment. Then, too, if Hebrews, why should they record part of their story, or warning, or bank account, in semi-barbarous characters when they could as well have been recorded in a classical language? So my mind ran up and down the scale of thought in great perplexity. I could not down the oft-recurring problem of the varied language, but, all at once, the thought occurred to me, that perhaps, even though they were all Hebrews and could as easily have made plain their meaning as to obscure it by symbols, they might not have wished to make it plain to others than themselves. It might have been intended to suppress rather than convey intelligence to any but the initiated. Why not? Were not the Hebrews long in bondage to the Egyptians, who were the best known examples of picture writers? In fact it is well known that Moses was acquainted with the form of hieroglyphics in use in Egypt, and it is natural to suppose that the Israelites brought away with them the knowledge of this as well as of the other arts of their captors.

So I wrestled with the mighty problem till nature kindly interposed, relieving my tired nerves, and I slept fitfully till morning.

Chapter IX.

Gold!

Hardly waiting for breakfast or daylight, we were at the kitchen door next morning, with tools and torches, eager to renew the investigations. One thought had ripened in my mind, by the unexplained mental process, that even while we sleep, labors ceaselessly upon the problems that perplex us while we wake. The mystic wielder of the trowel who had a place in the picture writing, but who to our minds, “but little relevancy bore,” now played an important and logical part in this crystallized pantomime. I now remembered that the impression made in the writing of the hieroglyphics was rather in appearance that of an instrument in a soft substance which had afterward hardened, leaving the curled edges of the mortar plainly visible; but in the rush of thought following the discovery, this idea had not been evolved.

Therefore my first act was to try the wall without picks, and we found that there was indeed a layer of some sort of stucco or cement on the wall in which the letters had been traced. “Here, youngster,” said Abner, “you’d better cipher out your gibberish on the wall! I forgot to go to the ’varsity when I was at Chicago, so it’s all upstairs German to me. The only good the most of the young fellers get by goin’ there is to learn by experience the scientific meanin’ of a line, the shortest distance from the front door to the rear one, with a practical application by the toe of the old professor’s boot; or if they didn’t learn it that way they ought to have before they got to be professional sluggers, or human racehorses with the water for a track and an oar for legs.”

“I suppose you’ll take it all back if I cipher out the meaning of this inscription?” I said.

“Why, as to that, lad, I’m not doubtin’ that you improved your time and made it a payin’ investment to put you to school, and if you’ll make those jackrabbit tracks talk I’ll be sartin and sure of it. You’ve taken hold of this here business all the way through since we got to be partners as though you meant business, and an old man knows a likely young feller when he sees him.” Then he added, as if he had indulged in too much flattery for my good, “So you see, it proves the good judgment of old Abner.”

I lighted my torch and began a careful, systematic investigation of the inscription, copying the letters with a pencil in a memorandum book, and by the time I had done so I had also translated it into English which read, following as literally as possible the original:

“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”

I was disappointed, but when I had read my translation to Abner, he merely nodded and said: “Yes, we’ll find some sort of religious mummery in here that’s to admonish them to get their sanctimonious countenances on.” He had cleared away a small space between the two series of writings, revealing the outline of the upper half of a door, and as soon as we chipped away a portion of cement in a narrow strip following the seam or joint, we were able as easily to open it as we had the outer door, and found it to be hung precisely the same way as the other. Entering we found the flight of stairs symbolized and descending, some five or six in number. We followed along the passage, feeling as though we had been there before, and knew just where to turn. There at the end of the passage on our right hand was the door just as we expected to find it. It yielded to our touch and we stood—awed into silence and agitated by conflicting feelings and swayed more or less by a superstitious fear of the place—in a veritable Temple of Solomon in miniature.

Abner was not over-squeamish on religious subjects, and, therefore, was the first to recover himself, exclaiming, “Hurra, laddie! this suits my taste better than a gold mine, for here’s the gold already refined.” There was a plentiful show of it sure enough. The place was superbly fitted up as a place of worship with its altar and golden censer and shovels and flesh hooks of brass, and the snuffers and basins and spears of pure gold, all the rich and costly trappings described in the scriptural account of Solomon’s Temple were imitated in miniature here, the utensils of perfect gold, the wood overlaid with pure gold, and there was the curtain separating the holy place from the Holy of Holies. The curtain was of fine material, beautifully woven and dyed an exquisite purple, and within the cherubim of gold and all the accompanying paraphernalia, and under its protecting wings was the ark of the covenant whose staves projected beyond the separating curtain, “that the ends of the staves were seen out in the holy place.” Within the ark, which was hewn from solid rock, was a copy of the Old Testament on parchment, written in Hebrew, as if with a reed dipped in purple ink of the same shade as the curtain.

What further evidence could be wanting that here was a genuine Jewish Temple locked for ages in the “secret caves of the earth?” Here were the nets of checkered work on the walls spoken of in the scripture narrative of Solomon’s wondrous architectural achievements, and the wreaths of chain work and lily work engraved upon the pillars that supported the center of this immense temple which was a hundred feet in length and thirty-three feet in width. All the dimensions of the room and furnishings bore the exact proportions to the size of the temple as compared with that of King Solomon.

Truly, “the sons of a woman of the daughter of Dan had been there with skill to work in gold, in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone, and in timber, in purple and fine linen and in crimson.”

But its glory had departed. The finger of time had written its resistless decree there. The dust of centuries was over all and the purple curtains were moth eaten and falling to pieces. The gold was tarnished and only the wonderful hue of the Tyrean purple was unchanged.

Here was gold to satisfy the wildest dream of wealth. But feelings stronger than the lust for gold restrained us and quenched all desire to vandalize the sacred place by appropriating a single ornament, or touch an ounce of the gold dedicated to the solemn worship of the Almighty.

But we still had another world to conquer. The symbols on the outer wall indicated that another excavation existed in the rear of this one, and we proceeded to investigate. The door was of the usual form and opened, without hindrance, into a long passage, on either side of which were cut little cells or sepulchers in which we found many bodies of their dead.

Here at last the cunning hand that had wrought out those wonders was probably moldering to dust, and the brain that had been so fertile in ingenious devices was but a ramification of dried tissues that once formed the gray matter of the battery where human thought was generated, but now crumbling into dust indistinguishable from that which had settled upon it. The bodies had been embalmed imperfectly, and the hand of decay was upon them, rendering it impossible to distinguish form or sex, but there were remains of both children and adults.

Only one cell along the corridor was closed and in this effort to baffle discovery all their cunning and ingenuity had culminated. It was situated between two of the ordinary cells to discourage the idea of its having any special interest. It was to the first view, only a smaller cell or narrow shelf cut into the rock, affording room for one body laid across and barely within the doorway, which was the reverse of the posture of all the other sarcophagi whose cells were long and narrow, the bodies being laid with their feet toward the corridor.

Sounding the wall behind this mummy, we thought we could detect a hollow sound, and carefully removing the crumbling mummy to another cell we fell to work to find entrance. But we found we had a task of greater magnitude before us than anything we had yet undertaken in the antiquarian line. Though a faint echo seemed to come from within when we struck our picks against the walls, it was so faint as to give room for doubt as to its existence; but by sounding it from the adjoining cells our theory was strengthened, and with the keen scent of expert archæologists for mystery, we grew more anxious to solve this one in proportion as it grew deeper.

The sarcophagus, or stone coffin in which this body had rested, suggested at first an unexplained problem, too, as it was fully six feet long, and while the doorway was barely six and a half in height by three feet in width, the niche in which it rested crosswise of the doorway was just barely sufficient in length and breadth to admit the coffin. Was it possible that it had been hewn from the rock where it lay? Possible, but not probable; and we determined to remove it, believing that concealed beneath it we should find some catchword to aid us in solving the problem.

It was massive and hard as granite could make it. But we attacked it with our picks, and in half an hour or so we succeeded in breaking it in two in the middle, and then we began to roll it out piecemeal, hampered by the smallness of the place and the ponderous nature of the substance we were handling. By using our picks as levers we raised one part at the point where we had broken it and drew it upon the other half, until one of us could get behind it and overturn it into the corridor. It made a deafening report in the close air of the tombs as it landed in the passage. The other half was quickly disposed of in the same way and rolling them aside we returned to inspect the place it had occupied when, to our great astonishment, an open door invited us to enter the secret grotto of the Cliff Dwellers of the Colorado. Where the coffin had stood a slab of rock had shot up to the level of the top of the coffin as it stood in the niche. The slab was supported on two cedar beams running in grooves in the rock to the depth below. Here was the whole wily device laid bare to our eyes. The door was arranged to rise and fall in a slide and manipulated by levers upon the ends of which the coffin had acted as a counterpoise to keep the door in its place, but when the weight was removed the door had sunk out of sight in its groove, leaving a level threshold so neatly joined that it was hard to detect the work of the artisan.

We scrambled upon the slab, trimmed our fagots, grasped our picks more firmly, and with agitated hearts stepped within the low portal which was on a level with the sarcophagus. Now we knew that our toils and anxieties were about to be rewarded. The feverish labor of days into which had entered the cares of years were ended. The heart of this great system of veins and arteries extending through the mountain in every direction, its network of human skill, was reached. The most cherished secrets of the Cliff Dwellers were about to be made plain as the day before us, for we stood in the treasure vault of The Lost Tribes of Israel.

No architectural labors had been wasted here beyond the mere idea of hollowing out a small chamber for the reception of their valuables. Secrecy was the one problem upon which they had expended all their skill and to what good purpose we could testify through all these weary days when all our powers were bent upon circumventing the cunning and skill of the designers of this receptacle of wealth, for wealth there surely was, wealth in abundance without question of sacrilege or superstitious dread in possessing it. Vessels of brass exactly resembling those represented in the picture writing on the kitchen wall were disposed around the vault in niches, and the first one we examined was full of gold coin bearing the image and superscription of Solomon!

We were strangely silent, almost oppressed by the tremendous wealth suddenly revealed to us. Gold ingots filled some of the pans and gold earrings and ornaments others. Silver still others, and in the last of a dozen or more pans we examined were nuggets of pure gold, from the size of an egg and upward, some of them weighing twenty to thirty pounds troy. The labors and dangers that had seemed of late to have stamped their weight of care on me were as naught. The remembrance of all my bitter struggles flew away on the buoyant wings of youth. But it was pathetic to witness the effect of our good fortune on faithful Abner. On neither of us, if I may judge, was there present any of that miserly love for gold which gloats over it for love of it in itself. My caperings were much like those of a schoolboy when he finds a long cherished plan about to succeed; but to Abner it meant success at last, after weary years of disheartening failures and incredible hardships; not only ample provision for old age but the realization of ideal hopes, the carrying out at last of a lifetime purpose which he had come to regard as his mission, as an artist dreams of the hour when he shall be able to fix his highest ideal upon canvas, not because of the gold it will bring him, but because he is an artist.

So Abner was of that sanguine, hopeful temperament that can ever see the gleam of the yellow gold before its eyes, and is frightened by no disasters nor deterred by any dangers from following out the natural bent of its mind. He seemed half-stunned by his good fortune, as if he were already wondering how he could content himself without prospecting, and felt a sense of loss as if he had spent a long life in faithful service to his employer and had suddenly, without warning, been discharged.

I rallied him upon his solemn visage in the face of a princely fortune. He roused himself and replied in his old, hearty way: “That’s all right, laddie, but I was just thinkin’ of my old mother that I left back East and how I’d like, if she could be alive now, to share some of this stuff. I used to send her a trifle when I’d make a little raise, but all the gold in creation can’t be of any service to her now; but I’ll tell you what I’m going to do with the first dollar of this money that I spend after we get back to Chicago, I’m goin’ to order her the best monument in the shop, and see that it is put up over her dear old grave.” And he wiped a tear from his eye and blew his nose vociferously to hide his emotion.

“Well, how much do you think we have here, Uncle Abner?” I asked. He sized up our pile carefully with his eye and replied, “Well, I think as near as I can calkerlate, about a bushel and a half.”

“And how, for heaven’s sake are we going to get the stuff all back to Chicago without being robbed?” I said, feeling for the first time in my life the novel sensation of anxiety as to how I should care for my riches. This subject was one on which for several days we held long and anxious consultations. But meantime we must finish our work of exploration, though we were now rather indifferent as to what further treasure might be stowed away here, having all that any rational being could desire.

The only nook or cranny that we had not ransacked in the vault was what appeared to be one of the little niches in the wall closed up by cement which we broke away, and removed a stone very nicely fitted into the opening; and where had lain hermetically sealed for centuries the records that were to reveal the story of a long-lost people and prove of more importance to the world a thousand fold than all the gold we had discovered.

We brought forth a tube of brass with a tightly fitting cap over the end. On removing this we came to a neat roll of fine cloth of the same beautiful purple as the drapery of the temple without, and within its folds was a parchment tightly rolled and covered thickly with Hebrew characters written in crimson ink with a blunt reed pen or something similar. The story of the Cliff Dwellers with the history of their perilous voyage in search of a refuge from oppression will be recited in the following chapters.

Chapter X.

The Lost Tribes.

King Solomon, or in oriental vernacular Suleiman, had the honor of elevating the Jewish nation to the pinnacle of wealth and glory among the inhabitants of the earth.

His was the proudest name throughout the world, not only as a wise and moderate ruler, not only as a just and upright judge, but in literary attainments, in which he had no rival.

In the midst of all his official duties wherein he found time to hear the case even of two poor harlots, he found time to become a prolific writer on natural science. He spoke three thousand proverbs and his songs were a thousand and five. And he spoke of trees from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon, to “the hyssop that springeth out of the wall.”

He spoke also of beasts and of fowl and of creeping things and of fishes. But in the midst of the luxuriant foliage of this green bay tree of power lurked the worm of human frailty. The man of wisdom came at last to worship at the shrine of self. The vast riches that poured in upon him blunted his powers to discriminate between good and evil, and the blandishments of his princesses weakened the fiber of his moral integrity, and led him away after strange gods.

The reckless extravagance of his splendid court drained the wealth of toiling subjects. Laying the yoke of servitude at first only on his subjugated enemies, he soon drained the resources of those nations, and, in order to maintain the splendor of his royal dissipations on their former scale of magnificence, he began to lay the hand of oppression upon his own people. Murmurs began to swell into roars of discontent; but the name of Suleiman was almost omnipotent in his realm and beyond it wherever it was known. It almost became the word in every known tongue to give expression to regal wisdom, and the mighty prestige of that name was able to overrule every objection and every murmur against his authority. The fires of discontent were smoldering through all the substructure of his kingdom, but they did not burst into flame till the messengers went throughout the kingdom with the intelligence that Suleiman the mighty, the rich, the powerful, the wise, the wonder of his age, the envy of the world, was dead.

The humblest and most oppressed of his subjects would not now accept his fate though all the wealth and power of a score of Suleimans were attached to it. There remained for him but the pomp and pageantry of a magnificent burial to console him for the loss of human delights. Henceforth he could partake of his pristine glory only in the immortality of fame. He climbed to the proudest heights of ambition only to fall ignominiously to the depths of weakness and folly.

Hope sprang up fresh in the heart of the Hebrew subjects. Alarming and general revolt broke out in all but the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and the ten tribes acknowledged allegiance to the house of David no more forever. But Salmanasser, King of Assyria, carried the adhering tribes of Judah and Benjamin as well as the revolting ten tribes away into captivity. Seven hundred and fifty years later, Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem and carried away the better population which had been reorganized since the Assyrian captivity into Babylon. Cyrus in turn overthrew the Babylonian empire and gave the Jewish people full liberty to return to their beloved Jerusalem; Judah and Benjamin, nursing the memory of past glory and cherishing the hope of a deliverer and Messiah “as foretold by their prophets” gladly availed themselves of the privilege to return to their native country.

But here the world’s record of the remaining ten tribes breaks off abruptly, and for twenty-five centuries no word or token has come across the chasm of years to indicate the fate of Israel. But as Babylon has recently yielded up her secrets to the demand of modern search and learning, so the beetling cliffs of the Colorado were to be robbed of the dark and mysterious records of the lost tribes of Israel, lying concealed so long in their bosom. The captivity of Israel in Babylon was a tolerable one, being allowed as they were to preserve their tribal relations and to govern themselves in their own way, which was in the form of a theocracy, each tribe governing itself as a separate republic, all being united under the invisible rule of Jehovah. They came in contact daily with the Accadians, an element in the Assyrian nation, originating in the mountains of Elon east of the river Tigris. They were a highly educated and refined people, bringing with them the knowledge of many fine arts unknown to their captors, such as the recording of events by a system of characters stamped upon tablets of brick.

Their mountain home gave them sturdy frames and lithe muscles, and the maidens of this comely, intelligent people might well be supposed to have been lovely in form and feature, and what is better, the sparkle of their eyes was that of intellectual fire, and the glow on their cheeks was of health. The young men of the ten tribes were not slow to perceive the superior gifts and attainments of the Accadian damsels, and intermarriage was the natural result. But while in skilled arts they were in a position to become their husbands, teachers, in religion the maids of Elim became their tempters; for their ideas on this subject were far behind those of the Jews, they being worshipers of Baal, closely allied to, if not identical with the worship of the sun, pure and simple.

Thus far history attends and supports us in the narrative, but from this point the burden of proof devolves upon our humble agency to prove the subsequent history of the lost ten tribes, and here our parchment steps into the breach and points out the circumstances surrounding them in their captivity that induced them to try the fortunes of unknown lands, preferably to going to Palestine once more.

The parchment is written in the form of a narrative of Israelitish events from the time of embarkation from the land of their serfdom till the time when they were about ready to leave the cliff dwellings for more permanent ones farther southward, and bears the simple signature of “Elib the scribe.” The writing is substantially as follows:

The blending of Accadian and Israelitish blood had awakened the highest activity and ambitions in the tribes of Israel. The cunning skill of the Accadians to work in brick and stone with the graver’s tools roused the national pride once more to emulate the magnificent architecture of King Suleiman’s reign, and their advanced intelligence in religious matters supplied them with a worthy object upon which to employ their constructive skill. Their education and prestige as a nation had taught them to associate the idea of rich stores of gold and silver for adornment of temples of worship, in their minds, as being necessary to complete a dwelling acceptable to the Most High.

They resolved that they would once more set up the kingdom of Israel as an independent government, and to do this they must needs seek a new country where they should be safe from their old enemies until their kingdom should be firmly established. Naturally their thoughts turned toward Ophir as a country rich in treasures, and isolated enough to be a safe refuge from Judah and Assyria. Their knowledge of this country had been preserved from the time of Suleiman by the seamen who were the successors and pupils of those furnished to Solomon by Hiram, King of Tyre. But the knowledge of this mine had inured to the benefit of their captors, the Babylonians.

Now they resolved to reap some of these benefits of knowledge themselves, and availing themselves of the generosity of Cyrus in granting leave to depart, and in supplying them with a passport among all people who owed allegiance to Cyrus, King of Persia, and few in that day would care to ignore his friendly admonitions “to give comfort and succor to these, my former subjects, wherever their lot may fall among you,” they made ready their merchantmen and many of their Accadian allies and kindred by intermarriage secretly prepared to embark with them, freely furnishing their ships and supplies.

Stratagem or artifice was employed to account for their departure in the opposite direction from that of Palestine. They expressed a reluctance to leave a country where they had enjoyed many privileges, and avowed their intentions of going to the Java Islands on a trading expedition, thence, with their families and their stuff, they would sail northward by way of the Red Sea, and build a city on its shores to the northeastward where their seafaring men could carry on their commerce both on the great Southern Sea and on the Mediterranean. The Accadians obtained a commission from Cyrus to accompany the expedition on their own behalf, and when all was ready their fleet of merchantmen, which in those days were also warships, for merchantmen on the high seas were little more or less than privateers, with some of their ships built with a sharp and powerful brass-shod prow to be used as a battering ram, also others built for running alongside of an enemy and boarding her—set sail.

Dropping down the Euphrates to the Persian Gulf they skirted the coasts of India, doubled the Malay Peninsula, and skirting the coast of China they reached a latitude about twenty degrees north, which their former voyages had taught them was the point at which they struck out straight to the eastward on the Great Sea, guided in their course by Tyrean and Jewish seamen, skilled in knowledge of the stars, and familiar with the various constellations of the heavens, the wisest astronomer, necessity, having been their teacher.

The Tyrean seamen, who were descended from those whom Hiram had so generously tendered Solomon for his voyage to Ophir were also learned in the use of the “magician’s hand,” which is believed by scholars to have been a rude form of the mariner’s compass, and could compute rudely the problems of latitude and longitude which enabled them with tolerable accuracy to reach the point for which they had started out, the land of Ophir, which was no other than the southwestern coast of North America, to which the port of entrance was the Gulf of California, thus proving the almost universal fact that men who are seeking a country turn their eyes east or west, and follow closely their own native lines of latitude, instead of crossing them. Palestine has elsewhere no such exact counterpart of climate and products as California and Mexico. The list of fruits and cereals that grow in one is almost an exhaustive treatise on those of the other, and it is natural that these sailors should mark the similarity and bring back to their people glowing accounts of the fertility of soil, salubrity of climate, and fabulous mineral wealth of Ophir.

Their perilous voyage was accomplished without the loss of a single vessel which, though small and able to accommodate only four score souls each, were of exceedingly sturdy build and buffeted the waves of the Pacific heroically and triumphantly, the fleet consisting of a hundred of these little vessels.

Here the narrator diverges to inform us that this small number was the flower of the ten tribes, they having been winnowed by Nebuchadnezzar who carried away only the most comely of their maidens, and the wisest of their men, and their families. What Nebuchadnezzar had effected by arbitrary power was repeated in their embarkation to Ophir, many of those who were “faint hearted” remaining at Babylon or joining the tribes of Judah and Benjamin to return with them to Jerusalem; so that the colony was made up of the stout-hearted young men and their wives and little ones, and the most learned and ambitious of their Accadian allies. Continuing, the scribe relates how they entered the “haven of Ophir” (the Gulf of California) with songs of praise to Jehovah for his mercies in delivering them from the angry waves, and with joyful hearts went forward to possess this new Canaan, “sailing up the River of Ophir.”

Landing upon the shores of the gulf they found a country so similar in climate and products to their own, that they were charmed and delighted with the prospect, and set up their temporary dwellings, tents, covered with the skins of their domestic animals, and prepared to feast their flocks and herds upon the unlimited extent of verdure all around them, and rejoiced in the shadow of cedars as stately and comely as those of the Lebanon of their native land.

Wild grapes hung in dense profusion from the vine-covered trees, and coffee trees bloomed luxuriantly, and wild oranges and lemons testified that they had touched upon no desert coast. The climate was such a salubrious one that they found no urgent reason for more substantial dwellings and, added to the pleasure of liberty, they enjoyed the happy freedom of a pure pastoral life.

In solemn conference it was unanimously agreed that henceforth the God of Israel alone should be their ruler, each tribe forming a separate republic connected by the invisible rule of Jehovah—a pure theocracy, which all the tribes entered into a solemn covenant to support, and judges were appointed from each tribe to act as lawyers, priests were ordained to administer their holy religion, and a temporary place of worship or tabernacle was set up.

These weighty matters being decided and settled thus satisfactorily, “a company of ten men from each tribe, who were valiant and skilled in the finding of paths in the wilderness, and learned in all the symbols and images on parchment by which King Suleiman had perpetuated the knowledge of the mines of Ophir, were appointed to journey to Ophir which was in the mountains of Ophir northward and eastward, and bring back treasures of gold, that they might begin to build a temple for the worship of Jehovah. Another company of ten men from each of the ten tribes was sent forth to the southward to spy out the country and choose a place where they might establish Israel once more. But the remainder of the people, with the women and children, remained in camp till all the men of the two companies should return.

“So the companies that were sent out into Ophir journeyed by water toward Ophir, partly sailing and partly rowing, till they came into the ‘great whirlpool and cataracts in the river that cometh down from Ophir,’ and there they took every man a store of provisions and his tools to work withal and journeyed on foot to the westward of the river that floweth from Ophir, for its waters were too strong for them, and came at last to the entrance of the caves of Ophir, according to the symbols on parchment, delivered unto the fathers by the servants of King Solomon, and the testimony of some of our company who had sailed from Babylon in the fleet of Nebuchadnezzar. And behold we found the secret caverns of King Solomon as they were in the days of King Solomon, for the most secret caves and the richest gold of Ophir were hidden to King Nebuchadnezzar and his servants so that they brought back a report that the gold of Ophir was exhausted; for Solomon had guarded the most secret places with cunning doors, and divers passages too hard for the servants of Babylon. And we found the holy temple of King Solomon that he had hewn in the rock that his servants who dwelt here to dig the gold of Ophir might worship the God of their fathers, and the treasures of King Solomon in the secret chamber of the temple were as in the days of King Solomon, and behold the servants of King Solomon were left to themselves when Solomon died, and behold their bodies we found in the tombs of the temple, for they perished while they waited for succor which came not, and for the ships of Solomon which returned not again, for the wise King of Israel was no more.

“And we opened the chamber of pure gold in the mountain and digged plentiful treasure therefrom; and we took of the treasures therefrom, and we took of the treasure that we had digged, and every man bearing of the gold according to his strength, we prepared to return to our tribes. But I, Elib the scribe, who have written all these things concerning the voyage of Israel and the landing of Israel in the land of Ophir—a pleasant land of grass and pure water and of bountiful fruits and tall cedars of Lebanon—am commanded by the judges appointed from among the ten tribes to make all this writing and to place it in the secret chamber of the treasures of King Solomon, even in the chamber which opened from the Holy of Holies, and to seal it privately with cement that it may abide secretly in the shelf of the rock forever.

“And now I, Elib the scribe, am prepared to fulfill all these things faithfully and truly as I am commanded, and will now, by the blessing of Jehovah and the grace of our judges, establish these writings together with the symbols of the mines of Ophir in the shelf of the rock, and do secretly seal it with cement so that none of our company are privy to its hiding or know aught of the secret shelf of the rock for so I am commanded to do.”

This was the substance of the writing on the parchment. A very lame and broken version of which I reproduced in Abner’s ears in the Garden of Ophir as we lolled in the shade of the semi-tropical foliage overshadowing us, and shielding us from the heat which was almost unendurable at high noon, and for a brief time afterward. Not a breath of air stirred in the high-walled area, and but for the great height of the walls which effectually broke the sun’s rays during the greater part of the day, the heat would have been greater than flesh and blood could endure.

But these former inhabitants had, as also had we, a convenient refuge from the heat in the cool recesses of the rocks, which were singularly free from dampness, the arid climate of that region making itself felt even in the bowels of the mountains, and in all our researches we had found no sign of mold or decay in any of the remains of fabrics in the temple or in the records in the niche in the wall of the “treasure chamber of the temple.”

Within the larger parchment whose contents we have just described, was a smaller one which we knew on sight must be the “symbols of the mines of Ophir,” referred to by Elib the scribe in the records of their people.

It was a system of picture writing or hieroglyphics, together with a complete diagram or ground plan of all the vaults, passages, galleries, and stairways that we have already described, of which the hieroglyphics seemed to be further descriptive, and with the help of the information already gained from the record we had no trouble to recognize in it a complete ideographic guide to the various apartments of the mine itself, and also a rough draft of the country along the Mexican and Californian coast with the configuration of the gulf and a diagram of the Colorado and its branches between the mine and the gulf, and minute information to the initiated to enable them to find the outer entrance to the mine, which was the same one we had discovered along the cavernous bed of the subterranean river. Even the method of transporting the gold to the coast was typified as being by rafts or rude boats down the current of the stream we had followed from its underground source to the outer surface which was represented as a placid stream emptying into the Colorado at the foot of the Grand Canyon, near the “great whirlpool,” utilizing all its tremendous fall and recompensing itself for its placid current by leaping down a sheer precipice hundreds of feet into the Colorado.

Here the raft voyage ended and a portage of a few furlongs brought them to their ships at anchor in the Colorado, whence they sailed with the current to the ocean. The plan of the mine showed us, however, that our exploring labors were far from being ended, for in addition to the apartments we had discovered, the plan showed that many more, especially the ledge, or the miner’s drifts or rooms where their gold was found, remained to be explored. It also proved the sagacity of Abner’s judgment in declaring that another passage than that of the spiral stairway to the underground river existed. It was shown that a straight ascending gallery, beginning near the open-air passage, led along the river, terminating in a branched passage, one fork of which led to the mines and one to a vault in the rear of the treasure vault, and which was marked “The Chamber of Records;” thence it was shown to connect with the treasure chamber itself.

It is needless to say that we were fired anew with a greater zeal than ever for exploring “The Chamber of Records,” but we had been stretching every nerve and straining every faculty to circumvent the skill and cunning of hands and brains that had bestowed their records so safely and we were obliged to own that we must rest and refresh ourselves until the morrow before entering upon any new discoveries, or unraveling any new mysteries.

Chapter XI.

Bricks Without Straw.

We are astir with the dawning of day on the morrow, eager as children in some of childhood’s butterfly pursuits, and soon we swing back another hewn-rock-pivoted door and are in a chamber similar in detail to the others explored, but the walls are bare of any trace of ornament and are even unfurnished in some places; but in the center of the room is a square column of red granite, as we suppose, supporting the roof, but there is not a sign of any openings in the wall, or any receptacle for the records we expected to find here. We are dumbfounded for a little, and know not where to begin to unearth the secrets that plainly enough repose here.

While we are at a standstill and are racking our brains to find a solution of the new enigma we mechanically strike our picks into the granite column—Eureka! the granite column is a column of brick tablets, and instead of supporting the roof (they are built in very nicely to suggest that idea) they slip from their places in layers easily. What the records are, or in what form we shall find them, are sealed books to us, but within this column undoubtedly lies the secret. It is built of a single tier of bricks which are a cubit long, half a cubit wide, and half the thickness of a common brick, but are exceedingly hard, giving forth a metallic ring when struck together. Our care was bestowed upon removing the brick, one by one in the hope of finding a hollow in the column containing the records, but no such hollow appeared, and when we had displaced the brick nearly to the floor of the vault we noticed that the underside was covered with peculiar looking characters and we began to realize that the bricks themselves were the tablets upon which the records were impressed while they were “green.” The wedge was a prominent character in the writing and suggested that this set of inscriptions belonged to the class of writings on rocks and tablets known as cuneiform, and a line dividing the brick into two squares separated this picture writing from an explanatory version of its contents in Hebrew.

What at first we had mistaken for a mere filigree style of ornament, or sort of trade mark, was in reality the characters that went to make up the regularly numbered tablets of a connected and complete though brief history of the tribe from the time of leaving Babylon down to the beginning of the seventh century of the Christian era, and told a story of the life-struggles of a nation too intensely interesting to be disposed of in a word, and therefore too long to be admitted to this chapter. We promise that we will, in due time, lay bare the secret of past centuries and show a glimpse of the loves and jealousies, the ambitions and strifes of this most notable of all the earthly tribes. Meanwhile we must finish our work as mapped out for us by the chart of Solomon’s “man of cunning devices, who could search out all secrets and all manner of cunning work.”

All that remained for us to explore, according to the diagram, that was of any vital interest to us and to the world, was the mine itself from which all this treasure had been taken.

Accordingly we sought out the door of communication from this vault to the branch of the main corridor in the whole system leading directly to the ledge of gold quartz or of whichever of the multifarious forms of rock gold is found in. This door was of the same old pivot pattern, and we quickly gained the passage which led us into the depths of the mountain for about fifty yards and, like some of the others, seemed to terminate in nothing but solid granite walls. Working from the standpoint of our previous experience we could not detect the evidence of a door with our usual facility. The artful son of the Woman of Tyre had varied his plans and exerted his best skill to outwit any intruder who might by accident grope his way thus far in this granite labyrinth and baffle all attempts to vandalize the mine of its rich treasure. How well he had succeeded the tablets and parchment bore witness, and but for their aid and directions we might have labored for years without penetrating to the sacred precincts of Solomon’s Ophir.

Our firm convictions that a door existed here alone prevented our giving up in utter despair; but, putting the evidence of reason against that of sight, we labored over the probable location of the door, inch by inch, but no opening to admit a needle point could we find.

Just overhead in the roof of the passage was a handsome fresco ornament cut into the rock, with a gorgeous brass pendent as a center. Easily within reach my hand wandered aimlessly to the bauble and grasped it as I called Abner’s attention to the tarnished and tawdry gimcrack. Unconsciously I rested my weight upon it as we turned away from it again to renew the perplexing search, when I felt it yield to the pressure of my weight, and as it descended, the end wall before our eyes rose slowly in grooved bearings till its lower edge was on a level with the roof, and the underground river was once more before us, but several feet below our level. A flight of steps led down to the brink, and another led up to the passage again on the farther side. As we stepped down to the water’s edge we began to speculate as to how we should cross the Styx, when, to our amazement, the water began to recede from our feet, disclosing another step rounded and worn by the action of the current, and then another, till, as we gazed in utter amazement the stream ran dry before our eyes.

What witchery was here at work to defeat our plans, what spirit of evil was haunting our footsteps and warning us to desist from our unholy pursuit of secrets consecrated by the dust of so many centuries? I own that a superstitious chill came over me for a moment, a feeling that vengeful spirits were following us in our sacrilegious attempts to force the confidence of the beings who had lived and died here, who had worshiped in these chilly grottoes and labored day and night that their secrets should die with them.

I read the expression of similar thoughts in my companion’s sober face for a moment, but his somewhat irreverent nature soon rallied from its feeling of awe, inspired by thoughts of the supernatural inhabitants of the place, and waving his torch he led the way down the slippery staircase across the slimy channel, and ascending the opposite side we found ourselves in a winding gallery, ascending rapidly toward a point directly above the grooved doorway. A hundred feet we toiled upward and came to the channel of the stream once more, where it had poured headlong down a well-like passage in the rock to the level of the grooved doorway. Following our passage which was a few feet higher than the channel, and parallel to it, we soon came out upon the banks of the Colorado itself. And here was a partial solution of this problem. The underground stream had its source in the Colorado by artificial means. Here was a neat channel hewn in the rock far enough below the level of the river to divert a small stream from it, whence it was led along for some distance on an easy grade to prevent the action of the current from wearing away the channel too rapidly; and their skill in accomplishing this end was further shown by the fact that the channel was exactly at right angles to the river, a correct principle recognized in modern hydrostatic engineering.

The water stood in the channel to its accustomed depth, as proven by the marks of the current on the sides everywhere; but there was no current in the stream that had so long poured its tireless waters through the dark passage opened for it by man; it was stagnant for the first time in decades of centuries. No doubt we would find on our return to the lower level that the same mechanism which opened our grooved door closed a floodgate at the bottom of the well. Anxious to explore this new mystery we retraced our steps to the slippery stairway, and traversing the channel with uncertain steps in the ooze and slime for a few yards, we found what was beyond a doubt the bottom of the shaft or well, with another grooved door or floodgate from beneath which a little stream of water trickled down. Considering the great lapse of time since it was fitted for its present purpose, it was a marvel of joining wrought by hands that did not spare for weariness or rest content with less than perfection of workmanship.

Not a sign of any mechanism connecting these two doorways was visible if, indeed, any such contrivance existed, except that the same sort of brass globe as the center piece of another fresco overhung the channel close to the door.

Abner proposed that he should go back to the inner side of the other doorway ready to reopen it should it close and that I should then attempt to reopen the floodgate standing on a shelf or landing above the water mark. A little shaky at the thought of what might happen should we become separated in those cells, I hesitated, but finally agreed, stipulating that in case we failed to reopen the first door after it should close, we should use our picks to force an entrance through it. At his signal I pulled lustily at the knob above me and with a deafening roar the waters burst out at my feet, again following their old channel toward the outlet. Connected with the brass knob was a ponderous brass chain which was the only visible part of the contrivance by which these doors acted as a counterpoise to each other. For a few moments I watched the foaming current as it swirled from the confining walls of the perpendicular passage, and then as suddenly as it broke forth its waters were dried again, the roaring of the awful cataract was hushed and Abner’s torch appeared in the grooved doorway.

Consulting our diagrams again we found that the passage indicated as the way to the mine was in the direction of the floodgate, and as nothing appeared to indicate that there were two parallel passages, the most natural conclusion was that the channel itself was the secret avenue of access to the treasures in the ledges of the rock, and the stream’s real use was to terrify invaders from attempting its swift current, or braving its frightful roaring cataract.

Pursuing this theory, we picked our steps on the slimy bottom of the whirling stream to the floodgate at the bottom of the well and prepared our minds once more to cope with determined resistance in the shape of intelligent inertia, and tireless gravitation. The only sign of an opening anywhere within sight was a low arched passage underneath the well and floodgate into which we crept, obliged to stoop almost double in a passage that was barely three feet in height, and from whose sides and roof dripped incessant showers of murky water that chilled us to the bone as we made our way tortuously along the circumscribed passage, till, after traversing perhaps fifty yards in that manner, we ascended three or four steps, and holding our torches aloft for better illumination as our vision penetrated the gloom, we had no hesitancy in deciding that at last we had unraveled the tangled thread of mystery overhanging the history and fate of a long-lost people and stood in the midst of the Gold of Ophir with its crowding associations in the lives of all people in the Christian world. Here was wealth to sate the greed of a Crœsus and add brilliancy to the regal glory of a King Solomon. There was no longer any cause for doubt that we had got at the heart and center of the grand purpose behind all the untiring industry that had honeycombed the mountain walls of the Colorado, and elaborated intricate passages, and invented ingenious barriers against discovery, that looked from the outer view like the labors of a demented hermit who worked for mere pastime, or of hopeless slaves who toiled at the bidding of some tyrant master.

But as we now viewed the whole system explored by patient research and explained by the records unearthed, who could fail at least to admire the energy and skill of a people who had planned and executed all this subterranean network to secure at their will, and in their absence the riches that had added no small share of glory to the luster of King Solomon’s name?

Self glory doubtless came to be the actuating motive of his latter life, but the prestige of his wisdom could not be easily eradicated from the earth and the fame of his marvelous abilities could not, during his reign, nor, indeed, throughout all time, be forgotten, even though he fell into voluptuous habits, and vainglorious pursuits. The world forgives his human lapses and remembers only the transcendent wisdom that marked all his official acts while in the youthtime of his power, and takes all these acts to make up the man, ascribing the latter weaknesses to the time of dotage and as evidence merely that he lacked that much of being Solomon, a name that will always be accepted for, and interchangeable with, that of wisdom.

No voice has been heard and no record has been found to portray the circumstances attending the discovery of this mine of inexhaustible wealth in a remote corner of a remote continent, but having been discovered, one ceases to wonder that its ledges were diligently worked and zealously guarded from pilfering natives, or plundering foes among the great commercial nations of that day who went down into the sea in ships; for here was not merely a ledge of gold-bearing quartz, but in many places it was a ledge of pure gold a foot in width running up and down the face wall of the mine and of such fabulous richness that, notwithstanding all the millions of gold that had been taken from here to adorn the Temple of Solomon, and maintain a corresponding degree of splendor in every department of his kingdom, in spite of the fact that for ages and ages, succeeding the coming of the ten tribes to these shores, a similar state of grandeur in temples of worship, in palaces, and works of art had drawn their supply of gold from this spot, only a small area had been depleted of its treasure; and to-day as we stood in the midst of the one room of the mine, its dimensions barely reaching to the modest limit of a vault eighteen by one hundred feet, the appetite for gold was cloyed by the sight of such masses of it, and doubtless the same effect was produced in the Kingdom of Israel when Solomon “made gold and silver as the stones.”

All around us were evidences of the abiding lust for gold that had outlived all those who strove for it. The walls bore the marks of the tools used by the miner in his eagerness to mine the golden metal, and here in the soft clay of the floor was the print of a sandal as distinct as though ages had not waxed and waned since that human foot had indented its form there as an exquisite satire upon human ambition, a fitting elegy to sum up the conclusion of the “whole matter” of human existence.

We were past feeling any exhilaration at our vast discovery of mere gold. We were oppressed by great object lessons presented to us more forcibly than by standing in the burial chamber itself.

Our labors were ended; and picking off a few lumps of the precious metal as souvenirs of our memorable adventures, we slowly turned away from this, the richest storehouse of Nature’s treasure in existence, and humbling ourselves to the demands of the low passageway, we retraced our steps to the grooved doorway and through the treasure vault, along the narrow street of the city of the dead, and through the temple with its tarnished glory and faded draperies, out into the sunlight of the luxuriant garden of the Colorado.

Chapter XII.

The Story of the Tablets.

The designers and executors of the picture writing were of the Accadians, as indicated by the names affixed to the tablets, as was also Elib the scribe of the inhabitants of Elim, and so in a long line of writers on the tablets could be discerned the Accadian origin of the names. It was they who brought from their homes to the eastward of the Tigris the knowledge of their system of hieroglyphics, half ideographic, half phonetic, that helped to make Babylon the seat of learning and power, and preserved for the world the story of their development and glorious civilization.

The story was taken up where it was left off by Elib the scribe as recorded on the parchment.

For many long years after the landing of the ten tribes upon the Western continent, they led a simple pastoral life, growing rich in flocks and herds and gradually drifting to the southward, but fitting out yearly an expedition to Ophir for gold with which they purposed in due time to build a temple that should rival Solomon’s. The beautiful and fertile valley of Mexico allured them at last to permanent settlement where they could, in their scriptural language, water the ground with the foot, typifying the ease with which irrigation could be practiced there, and a settled purpose grew upon them to make this region the center of their dominion and the site of a temple of worship for all their people.

I have since traveled over this interesting region, finding abundant evidence to corroborate that of the tablets, and I have no doubt that at Palenque in the State of Chiapas, Mexico, is the site of their settlement, and of the first great temple on the Western continent devoted to the worship of the living God.

I have also visited Palestine and gleaned all the information possible from that source; and a glance at the Temple of Palenque suggests the oriental style of architecture, and further investigation proves it to have been an almost perfect imitation of Solomon’s temple, with its various consecrated places of worship, its courts, cloisters, and cells for the priests, with magnificent porches supported by pillars, ornamented in stucco work.

The inner walls had been once elaborately decorated with inscriptions cut in hieroglyphic characters in the rock, and there were ruins of a great altar, with the figure of a wedge (a prominent figure on the brick tablets as well as on the rock pictures, appearing to have been an object of worship).

For twenty-three miles the country was strewn with the ruins of splendid palaces, temples, and dwellings, richly decorated with ornaments of gold and silver in the likeness of flowers so perfect in form as to rival the natural ones represented; and the walls of many of the finer structures were ornamented with the very net work or basket work that Solomon used in the palace of cedar that he builded for Pharaoh’s daughter. Subterranean chambers underlay the palaces, used seemingly as sepulchers. In one was discovered large quantities of gold and silver, supposed to be the public storehouse, used in the building of the temple.

But to return to the narrative.

“In the land of Ophir to the southward toward the sea, was builded the temple of the living God,” and here it was stated they dedicated themselves together with this earthly temple to allegiance to Jehovah, solemnly binding themselves to eschew forever all kings but Jehovah, and reinstating all their tribal usages and laws as delivered to them by Moses, to resume the tribal and patriarchal government, and to acknowledge God alone as the Supreme Ruler of their temporal as well as spiritual affairs.

Here in the city of Ophir, which they had founded, they began to build the magnificent temple the ruins of which to-day possess far more absorbing interest to the archæologist than those of Egypt or Babylon; so that Americans need no longer cross oceans and continents to pursue the study of the cuneiform picture writings. But the tribes were weakened by desertion at Babylon, and three generations passed away before the temple was completed in all its details of substantiality, and decorated with vases and scrolls, and gold and silver flowers among foliage of emeralds and other precious stones. Insects and bees poised above the flowers so life-like in form and position that one could almost imagine they heard the hum of their wings, and serpents seemed actually to glide among the lilies in the pools of Solomon.

Luxury and learning grew apace in the young city of the West. Numbers and knowledge increased in equal ratio, and public works of a permanent and beneficial character were undertaken and carried to a successful issue. Stone aqueducts were built to conduct the water from the foothills, spanning valleys and gorges, and built so strongly as almost to defy the ravages of time. Public baths and walks were built, parks and groves and amphitheaters sprang up to satisfy the demand of the Elimites among them for amusements, whose skill in architecture and picture writing, as well as their capacity as scribes upon parchment, gave them great and growing influence in the affairs of the tribes.

Generation succeeded generation, and centuries multiplied upon centuries marking the progress of an active, aggressive, and intellectual people toward the climax of human power. The Accadians or Elimites were tenacious of their influence, tireless in their zeal in all the pursuits of learning and advancement. The priesthood came to be recruited largely from their ranks. The tribal judges were many of them either of the Elimites or closely allied to them by marriage. In letters and architecture they were the superiors of their adopted people.

But in matters of religion the Israelites were their tutors, competent to lead and instruct. The religion of the Elimite was the worship of Belus or Baal closely allied to, if not identical with, the worship of the sun, and while so far advanced in other lines of knowledge their attainments in religion were so meager as to class them as a nation of idolaters, with all the difference that is implied in the respective terms, between them and the worshipers of a Supreme Ruler whose followers did not limit his dwelling to a temple of human building, or ascribe to him the malevolent as well as the beneficent attributes. Their historians, as they succeeded each other, as they chronicled the main events of their times, drew unconsciously a picture of great vividness, showing how boundless for good was the influence of the Elimites in all intellectual affairs, and how baleful their examples and precepts in morals. So while the crafty priests and ambitious judges outwardly conformed to the Jewish form of worship with great apparent devoutness, they secretly despised the religion of Moses and merely bided their time, cultivating meanwhile all the voluptuous passions of highly civilized life, encouraging the finer arts and sciences, bringing the decorative arts especially to such perfection as set the city of Ophir on the pinnacle of glory among the nations of the world, from which they had so completely isolated themselves.

Gradually the number of the judges was increased, the priesthood swarmed with devotees to sacerdotal orders, and as the offices of emolument and honor increased, a corresponding increase was made in the number of scribes and doctors of the law. All these officers came to be recruited almost entirely from the ranks of Elim, and natural tastes and interests drew them together socially, so that they soon formed a distinct and privileged class.

The wily priests gradually insinuated new ideas of the Supreme Being, and the form of worship most pleasing to him, beginning by inspiring in the minds of the Israelites a feeling of awe for the fiery orb of day, until at length as their ideas began to be received they grew bolder, and taught that the sun was the all-seeing eye of Divinity, taking note of the actions of men by day, and delegating his power to the lesser gods whose twinkling eyes watched over the world by night.

The lawyers and judges being in full sympathy with this doctrine, construed the Mosaic law to suit it, and slowly but surely Israel was growing to be a nation of worshipers at the shrine of Belus or Baal. False religions and despotic power go hand in hand, and at the end of the tenth century of national existence since the Babylonian captivity, the ten tribes were not only worshipers of Baal with all the revolting and licentious orgies that marked it as the vilest form of religion in the known world, but the restless ambitions of the Accadian rulers were already set upon making Israel an absolute monarchy. Religious frenzy is a powerful factor in ruling the world. It can rock kingdoms like toys and shake nations like aspens. But to overturn and destroy it needs but to combine forces with another passion more subtle, more powerful, and of more universal application than the wild frenzy of creed.

And the name of that passion that sways the world like a leaf is Love.

Voluptuous and effeminate as the splendid city of Ophir had become, cringing as the masses of Israel were to the more accomplished Elimites, the latter might not brave the fierce opposition that existed against monarchy without appealing to the baser passions of the people. The plan by which they hoped to gain complete ascendency in creed and government was to introduce the last sensual step into the rites of their worship, and so make religion to pander to lust, and lust in turn to bind men more closely to their worship of the sun.

The judges deliberately planned to make Jokim, a Jewish Accadian, King of Israel, because in all essentials necessary to their purpose he was an Elimite, and also because of his Jewish origin he had long wielded practically unlimited influence over the Jews. Jokim, who was an artful, ambitious, self-contained man, had looked forward for years to such a consummation and had diligently courted the favor of all classes of people in Israel, by a show of great interest in their humble affairs, and great apparent sympathy for the traditions of the nation. But he knew full well that the slightest hint of his aspirations would be fatal to his power with the people, and he cast about him for means to bring about, in his time and for his benefit, the union of two human passions that would overrule all opposition, and place him upon the throne with power as absolute as that of Solomon, and as he dreamed, with circumstances of glory that might even transcend that of the Wise Man.

The plan, which was carefully discussed among the patrician classes, was to introduce into their worship the office of a feminine deity, the wife of the sun whom they called Metyta, or the Goddess of Generation. The patricians boldly determined to work upon the credulity and superstitions of the people through the agency of a beautiful woman whom they resolved to clothe in the eyes of the people, with all the majesty and power of deity, to represent her as the goddess of the moon descended directly from that silvery orb, to teach truth to the children of men.

With their knowledge of astronomy and the art of magic it was an easy task for the blind leaders to lead the blind.

Jokim was not at a loss for a fit person to carry out his plans of perfidy. Corinthia was a young woman of Ophir whose dazzling beauty of form and feature has given her a fame upon the Western continent as great as ever was enjoyed by the innocent cause of the Trojan war, or by the Egyptian queen whose allurements caused Mark Antony to forget all his ambitious plans and sacrifice all his glorious career to the consuming passion which lured him to her feet.

As the mistress of Jokim, Corinthia’s career had been public enough to excite the greatest admiration of the lordly class, shameless enough to school her for acting such a part as was proposed for her, and gorgeous enough in her natural beauty, decked out in the costliest wardrobes that skill and wealth could provide, to completely blind the Israelites themselves to her unscrupulous character. Besides, the cunning of their choice was shown in the fact that the Elimites foreswore their national prejudice, that they might carry out their infamous scheme, by choosing this same Corinthia, whose mother was well known to have been a Jewess, and thus had a strong claim upon both classes of people. In order to give prestige to her name, and insure obedience to her mandates, the judges determined to induct her into regal power by a series of supernatural events or miracles that should fill the minds of the Jews with superstitious fear of her power and overawe all opposition that might arise.

Accordingly it was given out by the priests that visions had been seen by them at various times, and with increasing frequency admonishing them that the time had come when it pleased heaven to give the people of Israel a ruler who should bring light and joy to the face of the earth, but whose departure from the moon where she had long dwelt as the wife of the sun, should cause that placid orb to hide her face in bitter anguish.

It was expressly revealed to the priests that on a certain day, she, upon whom heaven decreed the queenly spirit should fall, should see her name in flaming letters on the wall of the temple, and she was to be crowned queen of Israel and the goddess of the moon by the most impressive and solemn rites. It was found on consultation that all the priests had received such instructions, there being but little difference in their versions of the vision, except that one or two of them understood themselves as being pointed out as spiritual advisers and confidential agents to the queen.

The day set for the selection and coronation of a queen by high heaven was not far distant, and great excitement prevailed, and great speculation as to whom the scepter should be given to. All Israel thronged the city of Ophir on the day appointed, which was also a Sabbath day, and at the hour of worship the temple gates were choked with an eager crowd that filled the outer court to suffocation and overflowed far back upon the adjacent streets.

The solemn rites of the Jewish worship were observed with unusual unction. An air of subdued piety marked the ministrations of the priests, and a hush of expectancy was over all the throng as the services drew to a close, and at last when they were finished an oppressive, brooding silence fell upon all.

Suddenly it began to grow dark, though the afternoon was but half spent. Expectation gave way to fear in the minds of the ignorant multitude, and they cowered and trembled in abject terror at this, as they supposed, direct intervention of Providence.

Deeper and more deeply fell the gloom until the terror-stricken faces of the crowd were hardly discernible to each other, when a pious ejaculation from a priest who stood near the altar gazing upward, attracted universal attention to a pale glow upon the draperies overhanging the altar, and, as they all gazed, it brightened and took form until it resembled live coals of fire, forming with fearful distinctness the word “Corinthia.”

The priests prostrated themselves before the altar, and gave fervent thanks for the signal favors bestowed by a kind Providence in thus signifying his will so plainly to his people, and then harangued the people on their happy lot to be thus led by the hand in the green pastures of divine love, and exhorted them to beware of disobeying the heavenly vision, or of being unfaithful to the duties that it involved upon them as subjects of the lovely, wise, and virtuous queen whom the will of heaven proclaimed at once as the daughter of heaven, the wife of the sun, and queen of Israel.

As timely as the entangling of Abram’s ram for a sacrifice, by providential coincidence, Corinthia, in her loveliest attire but deeply veiled, was discovered among the throng, and all the wild thrills of awe and all the hush of expectancy in the crowd reacted in vociferous clamors of “God save Queen Corinthia.” The fickle mind of the rabble full of deep-seated prejudice against a monarchy was turned in a moment, and now flowed at flood tide in the channel carefully prepared for it as the mold for the molten metal and as plastic in the hands of the artful sons of Elim as is sand in the hands of the artisan who shapes the mold.

Corinthia was hastily led forward by a high priest, her veil removed, that her beauty might have its due effect upon the assembly; there she was made to kneel down by the altar, and a crown was placed upon her head, fitting it as perfectly as though molded to her temples, and glorifying her wondrous beauty till exclamations of admiration fell from every lip.

The ten judges advanced to the altar, and laying their hands upon hers invested her with the scepter of power over Israel, acknowledged their joyful allegiance to her in the name of their respective tribes. The high priests besieged heaven in her behalf that wisdom and moderation might be hers, and in behalf of Israel, that they might see clearly in this demonstration of the Divine will that His pleasure would follow their dutiful allegiance to the young queen and His heaviest displeasure be visited upon those who should dishonor or disobey him in her person.

Then as mysteriously as the crown was evolved from nonentity came a gorgeous gold-clothed chair of state in the semblance of a throne; the ten judges ranged themselves beside it, and Jokim, as the most venerable and influential of them all, bowing himself humbly before her, conducted the paragon of maiden beauty and virtue, and the plain choice of heaven to the throne, seated her upon it, and did himself the honor of being the first to prostrate himself before the first Queen of the Ten Tribes of Israel.

He was quickly followed by the other nine judges, who likewise paid their respects to the queen. Jokim and the others, now bowing low, and facing the throne, gradually withdrew from the immediate presence. The priests invoked anew the blessings of Providence upon their nation, the ceremonies were done and the assembled multitudes broke forth into wild shouts of enthusiastic professions of eternal allegiance to Queen Corinthia.

Chapter XIII.

The Temple of the Sun.

Their tricks of legerdemain, coupled with a thorough and accurate knowledge of astronomy, of which they made as great a mystery to the common people as a modern doctor of medicine does of the art of healing, enabled the Elimites, by taking advantage of a solar eclipse, and calling on the resources of a first-class juggler, to gain complete control of the Jewish government, and opened a plain highway to a complete revolution in the national religion as well as in the political aspect of things.

Corinthia, accompanied by her paramour Jokim, who thus found himself virtually a king, made a splendid progress through the land by chariot, driving with her own hand as the feminine representative of the firm of solar and lunar deities, and receiving the obeisance little short of worship indeed of her subjects. Her first official act on her return to Ophir was to issue a decree that tribute should be levied upon every male citizen of Israel for the purpose of building a magnificent Temple of the Sun where that glorious luminary and divine deputy might be worshiped with due respect to his greatness. Nothing was now too hard for the subjects of the bewitching queen to believe when proclaimed from her lips; and gold and silver flowed into the public treasury in abundance. New and larger expeditions than ever before were fitted out to the mines of Ophir for material with which to make the projected temple shine with the splendor of the sun himself. Workmen in vast armies began actively to prepare brick, stone and mortar, cedar and spruce, from the mountains, and skilled artisans fashioned costly and beautiful vases, enriched with scroll work of gold, and others modeled flowers and vines of silver and gold till the nation presented the appearance of a hive of bees intensely earnest in the work of laying up winter stores.

Slowly the dream of beauty evolved from the chaos of brick and stone, lime and mortar, cement and stucco. The mason’s trowel and the engraver’s chisel wrought unceasingly to make the airy castle that existed as a mental picture only become a substantial fact and the measure of its growth was the measure of the growth of the young queen into the affections of her people. They went wild over her wit and beauty, forgot her moral lapses, and unconsciously fell into a state of feeling toward her that was closely allied to the reverence we have for deity.

The enthusiasm among the deluded Jews was a molten sea of precious metals which the Accadian rulers directed into the mold of human designs and crystallized it into the magnificent Temple of the Sun. It was the record of spontaneous growth of national life, an era in national progress, the insignia of civic pride, pardonable in that its object was a worthy one, in the minds of the masses of the people who were led insensibly away from the religion and traditions of their fathers. As the religious fervor and physical energy of the nation culminated in this stupendous aggregation of wall and arch, roof and dome, as it was the expression of their highest ideal in their artists’, their architects’, and the engravers’ arts, so its completion was to make possible the last and highest step in the carefully matured plans of Jokim and his associates. It is not to be supposed that the motives of the judges in exalting Corinthia to the rulership of Israel were purely unselfish ones. They knew full well that the beauty and sex of Corinthia could overcome prejudices and difficulties that would for them be insurmountable, that would require decades, perhaps generations, of patient tutoring to smooth away. Power and position were of use to them only while they lived, and to die with the consciousness that their efforts had prepared the way for their posterity to reap glory and honor was but a poor incentive, for, according to their teachings, as of all other wise men of the world, was not human power a weariness to the flesh, and all human greatness vanity and vexation of spirit, and why should they wish to make so unsubstantial a bequest to their children?

Besides, troublesome questions as to a choice between many aspirants might arise to perplex and distract their offspring, and it was so plainly their duty to ward off trouble from their household that the ten wise judges, consulting with the almost equally wise, learned professions of the scribes or doctors of the law, and the priesthood, thought that at the dedication of the temple they should signalize that event, and by coupling it with that of instituting in full the system of worship taught them by their fathers in the land of Elim, namely the worship of the sun with all its accompanying rites; and as the wife of this solar deity was embodied in the person of Corinthia, they should have a deified representation of the sun himself, who should be supreme ruler as well as standing at the head of the priesthood.

Queen Corinthia, who doubtless understood this as the final step in the movement, and mindful of the fact that her power came from this source, made no objection, especially as every eye turned upon Jokim as the most suitable person to sacrifice his personal feelings for the common good.

So as the temple grew to perfection of symmetry, a day was proclaimed when it would be fittingly dedicated to the worship of Jehovah. The dedication was to be preceded by seven days of feasting and sport; races were to be run by footmen, trials of skill at archery were to take place, and on the seventh day a great chariot race was to occur as the culmination of a series of races during each day preceding. The winners of the six days’ trial should on the seventh have the honor of contending with the beautiful queen herself, who would drive the favorite royal equipage, a team of four milk-white horses of such docility, and so perfectly trained that they were the wonder and admiration of the City of Ophir. Corinthia herself was a daring, successful horsewoman, and had trained them largely with her own hand, and had achieved her first notoriety in the city by her superb horsemanship, driving at a furious rate through the crowded streets where collisions seemed impossible to avoid, when, at a word from her, the intelligent creatures would stop with astonishing suddenness, standing perfectly still until the crowd had scattered away, when at the given signal they would dash away again.

Three months’ notice was given to prepare for the festival, and the races and chariot driving at once became the absorbing topic of the day, and also the chief occupation of all who were fortunate enough to be able to possess horses and a vehicle.

It happened that among all the judges, Jokim had only one formidable rival, and he was formidable only because of the sinister methods he was capable of employing to accomplish his purpose. The hooked nose and eagle eye, somewhat hooded by heavy eyebrows, showed his Jewish origin and fiery ambition. He had ever viewed the advancement of Jokim, his superior in everything but the cunning of the jackal, with bitter jealousy and hatred, for a very good and sufficient reason, namely, that he had cherished plans of his own very similar to those of Jokim, their very similarity aiding him to interpret the motives that governed his opponent. His illicit affections had been lavished upon a young Jewess who was as noted for beauty and accomplishments in the city of license and luxury as Corinthia herself, until the latter had been exalted suddenly to a station far above hers, when crowned queen of Israel.

Her lover was as strictly an Elimite as Jokim, by birth and education, but being blessed with a cast of features more resembling the Jewish and possessed of the far-seeing wiles of a demagogue, he had upon coming to Ophir from a remote part of the country always proclaimed himself as an Accadian Jew, and changed his Accadian name to the Jewish one of Levi.

His infatuation for the fair Jewess, Rebecca, was largely prompted by motives of policy to enable him to curry favor with the preponderating element in the kingdom.

When the question of crowning a high priestess of the sun had been discussed by the judges, his manipulations had almost secured the nomination of Rebecca, instead of Corinthia, and on failing to do so, had nearly caused an insurrection among some of the Jews, when Corinthia, the Elimite, was enthroned.

If the hatred of Levi toward Jokim was cordial, what rancorous jealousy and intense hatred must have been engendered in the feminine heart of Rebecca toward her rival, whom she regarded as an alien whose unscrupulous mind had been so fortunate as to inhabit a beautiful body, enabling her to exert powerful fascination over all men with whom she came in contact, so that all she had to do was to look about her and choose her victim according to his political influence.

Corinthia did not make any pretense of loving her enemy or trying to heap coals of fire on her head, though she would have done so gladly if she could have been certain that it would have caused baldness on that head where the beautiful shining tresses of Rebecca reposed, or have dimmed the sparkle of the Jewish maiden’s eye.

The most potent cause of jealousy between men is political rivalry. The hatred of one woman toward another is a feminine instinct. But when women are found to add the political motives to their natural tendency to hate each other, we have a combination that nothing can withstand.

While Rebecca could have encircled the white neck of Corinthia with her lily fingers with an energy that would have wrenched bone and sinew asunder, Corinthia considered that she had already broken the neck of Rebecca, politically speaking, by her coronation; but she felt none of the pity that a generous victor feels for the vanquished, but only wild demoniacal exultation over her, and she failed not to remind her enemy of the fact on all occasions by a disdainful smile and a toss of her head, which would send her fallen foe off in a frenzy of baffled rage that boded no good for Corinthia or her kingdom should opportunity ever cross hands with her.

Among the Elimites it had come to be too much as it was in the effeminate latter days of the Grecian and Roman glory; the wives and mothers were the instruments of toil and drudgery, and the brilliant, beautiful, and accomplished mistresses, those exquisitely-whited sepulchers, were the companions of the lordly rulers and citizens of wealth. Theirs was the companionship with which they enjoyed the public walks and places of amusements. It was their gayety and sprightliness that charmed their leisure hours, and for them they bought costly chariots and high-bred horses. With their own hands they taught their temptresses to manage the mettled horses, and lavished their praises and flatteries upon the sodden mass of corruption, and laughed gayly at sallies of wit from the lips of her whose glory was her shame, of her whose footsteps take hold on hell, as the people of Israel were shortly to learn to their cost.

As Rebecca and Queen Corinthia had been instinctively rivals in social and political affairs, so feats of horsemanship were no exception to the rule. Rebecca’s lover, Levi, though not a willing charioteer himself, was driving a desperate race in which the prize was a kingdom and the forfeit chagrin bitter as death itself. Therefore, he was in no position to heed lightly Rebecca’s sly hints that Jokim’s mistress drove a splendid chariot, and showy team, and was likely to outshine the daughters of Israel and steal the affections of the people. Ruefully the niggardly Levi had set about finding a team as snowy, and a chariot as showy as that of his rival, and had succeeded so well that his identity had come near being swallowed in that of his hated rival, for the chariot of Jokim was a familiar sight on the streets of Ophir, and distinguishable at a glance from any other. But Levi’s purchase was destined in the end to change all this, for they so closely resembled Jokim’s horses that none but the closest observation could distinguish one from the other, and the presence of both vehicles in plain sight upon the street at once was necessary to convince spectators that there were two instead of one, and even then some of the ignorant and superstitious ones among them half-believed the newcomer to be a double of the other.

All this occurred some time prior to the coronation, when the rivals were on equal social footing, and it was a hotly-contested question among the adherents of the two beauties as to which of them was the better horsewoman.

Rebecca determined to contest the championship with all comers, and secretly she had almost begun to feel the thrill of triumph and hear the shouts of the populace that were to emphasize her success. Isidor was her trusted keeper and assistant as trainer of the horses for the momentous race; a burly Jew with neither the fear of man nor God before his eyes, subtle as the serpent of Eden, devoted to his employer; nothing of scruple in his nature stood in the way of his serving her to the utmost, and he added to this cast of character a wonderful knowledge of, and dominion over, the dumb creatures.

Long and earnest consultations between Rebecca and Isidor took place after the announcement of the festivities of the temple dedication. The first fruit of these consultations was that Abram, a brother of Isidor, who was at a distance from the city, was sent for. He had in common with Isidor the gift of mastery over the horse kingdom, and had made even better use of his gift for his own advantage, and was reported a very wizard in his power to handle and subdue vicious animals, and develop the intelligence of tractable ones.

A day or two after he was sent for, Abram met accidentally (?) on the street Jokim, whose agent he had been a year before in the selection and training of Corinthia’s famous team.

“Ah! thou art the man who was in my thoughts at this moment, Abram the wizard. I know that no other man in all Ophir can match thee in skill with chariot horses, and I am in need of thee just now. Where hast thou been all these months past? Hast thou not then heard of the famous race to be run on the seventh month in which our gracious queen will drive the horses that thou didst train so well?”

Abram disclaimed all knowledge of city events, having been on the plains, he said, helping to stay a dangerous distemper among the horses of the Israelites to the northward, and having but just come to Ophir for remedies with which he must hasten back to the plains.

“Say not so, Abram,” said Jokim, “I have urgent need of thee for some weeks, even to the time of our glorious festival of dedication. You must tarry with us and breathe your witcheries anew into the ears of our queen’s snowy beauties; our queen must win the race, and I have no fear with your faithful services to aid us.”

“It may not be, Father Jokim,” said Abram, “for mine honor I may not tarry. My word, which is ever my bond, has been given that not later than the hour of sunset, next day but one hence, I would return with more of the great remedy for the suffering animals.”

“Then will I relieve thy faithful mind of the responsibility of failing to keep thy word, for the queen has but just now sent me forth to put on foot inquiry concerning the whereabouts of the wizard horseman, Abram of Ophir, and commanded that a message should be sent with haste requiring his immediate presence before her.”

“Then is there none in all our new land of Canaan that will obey more joyfully than her humble servant Abram,” said that exceedingly suave equine healer; and forthwith he called one of his caravan and sent a message to his imaginary anxious patrons in the distant foothills of the condition of affairs, and then accompanied his employer-by-proxy to the presence of the lovely young ruler of Israel herself.

There was that in Abram’s obeisance before Corinthia which suggested that he blamed himself greatly for cumbering the ground, or encroaching upon the air with his presence and sordid needs, but also an earnest hint that if allowed the meanest corner in the barren desert he would like to continue in the cumbering business a little longer, not so much on his own account, but to show his gratitude to the woman to whom he had once been almost a companion when he had the matchless matches in training, and she was but a prospective queen.

But the adulatory posture of the horse-training Jew was of a kind of sweets none too highly seasoned for the taste of the queen but lately permitted to taste the draughts of power. She received him graciously, and urged upon his attention the fact that the cares of her present situation would render it impossible for her to give to her favorites the personal care that she had formerly bestowed upon them; therefore she had sent for him that as he knew her method of managing her horses, and as they too had succeeded so wonderfully in the past, she should be glad to submit her chances of success entirely to his keeping, and there must be no peradventure as to the final results, as she could not afford to be beaten in the presence of half the kingdom, and hinted that she had one rival in particular who would doubtless be a contestant in the race, and by whom she would not be beaten for half of Ophir.

Abram assured the queen that the kingdom did not contain the equals of her four docile animals, and that there was no possibility of defeat; and grovelling from the royal presence he betook himself to the royal stables, where he evened the account with nature by making his animals feel that they cumbered the ground only by his indulgence, and went to work upon his task with such vigor that though the chariot horses of Corinthia were already celebrated throughout the kingdom for wonderful intelligence and trained ability, he daily added some new horsely virtue to their already long list. Daily, too, or rather nightly, he might have been seen like a dark shadow of evil, flitting through the night from the palace grounds toward the quarters of his brother Isidor, with whom he held long and earnest consultations upon affairs that presumably were purely those of a brotherly nature, and not infrequently, when the ties of consanguinity had thus been cemented afresh by these dutiful conferences, Levi himself, accompanied by the beautiful black-eyed Rebecca, would honor them with a visit to inquire how the work of training went forward, if all the conditions of diet and quarters were perfect, and to ask with friendly concern how Abram’s work was progressing.

To be sure there were some business transactions of a purely confidential character between Levi, the wealthy and dignified ex-ruler, the first party, and Isidor and his brother Abram, second party, in which a bond was entered into by the first party, binding himself by a forfeit of one-half of his vast estate to give unto Isidor and Abram, upon the fulfillment of certain stipulations on their part, two certain “palaces of cedar in the outer part of the city of Ophir, as thou goest westward, and furthermore a forest of cedar and fir in the mountains of Ophir, as thou goest across the land to the westward, and the pastures that reach into the valley therefrom with their springs of living water, and all the flocks and herds that feed upon that pasture or lie beneath that forest of fir and cedar, to thee are they covenanted and to thy seed after thee.”

To Isidor and Abram this simple piece of parchment which they hid away very carefully seemed to speak a charmed language. Its various combinations of monotonous characters seemed to exert an exhilarating influence over their actions.

The days passed on, and the time of the great religious festival drew near. The streets were daily gay with the procession of chariots wending their way to and from the great racecourse just without the city. Excitement grew intense in anticipation of excitement, and speculation as to who should win was active, and feverish desire to know what was to be the meed to the victorious charioteer, for it was announced that upon the first day of the festival the terms and conditions to be observed, and the reward that was to crown the efforts of the victor would be made known. Meanwhile they were compelled to be content with the assurance from the queen that a reward adequate to the importance of the event and commensurate with the love of the queen for her dutiful subjects should fall to each of the winners of the series that was to end upon the sixth day; and that upon the seventh day to show her interest in the welfare of her people, and her cordial approval of their sports, the royal chariot driven by herself would enter the lists against the victors for the grand prize.

Isidor and Abram were as ignorant as the street rabble as to what the prize should be, and as indifferent as the little band of lepers who dwelt upon the hillside overlooking the city in a few miserable hovels, and were daily supplied from the queen’s table with food which was placed in a convenient spot at a safe distance from the little city, where hope was never known to enter, and whose inhabitants dragged out their miserable lives in plain view of the pleasure and grandeur, the vanities and excess of pleasures indulged in by the great city of the living world, while they were practically viewing the pageant from the grave.

The prize set before the two loving brothers was a more dazzling one than the wildest dreams of the contestants could conjure up as possible to be offered from the hand of Corinthia.

Meanwhile she was more than satisfied with the progress of Abram’s milky pupils. She condescended graciously to ride with him in his training course, which was attached to the palace grounds and walled in by a massive brick wall high and wide enough to exclude all the danger of interference or eavesdropping upon the secrets of Abram’s art, and was highly delighted with the progress in speed and tractability; and in her enthusiasm had one day increased the wages of Abram which were very meager, to the magnificent extent of one-twentieth part to be added to his daily pittance, and promised that should she win the race, Abram might expect to drive a chariot of his own some day.

This was a very hazy and indefinite promise, but a very safe one which the virtuous queen imagined would be amply sufficient to set on fire his most ardent ambitions. Abram was griped with pangs of deepest humility apparently, at the spontaneous overflowing generosity of his sovereign, and none but those who might have caught the light of a vicious gleam that flashed for a moment from beneath his eyebrows, could imagine that he was not overjoyed by her kindness and pained anew only on account of his cumbersome presence.

Chapter XIV.

The Chariots of Israel and the Horsemen Thereof.

The rich yellow sunlight that shone so constantly and so beautifully through the pure air of the Land of Ophir, as it shone nowhere else, not even at Jerusalem, was rising upon the proud city of Ophir on what her inhabitants deemed her proudest day.

The preliminary pleasures, festivals, and contests had been concluded. The terms of the chariot races had been made known to the people, and accepted by them as most just and liberal. All persons so desiring might enter the first day’s contest.

The ten wise ex-judges should award the palm to the victor. From one wing of the royal stable, containing stalls for fifty horses, the winners might choose four horses to which the queen would add the gift of the most splendid chariot that could be built by the workmen of Ophir.

Loud applause greeted this announcement from the queen; but as the prize for each succeeding day was named the populace was wild with enthusiasm. The second day’s prize was to be a talent of pure silver, and that of the third day ten talents of pure gold. Each day’s prize was a fresh token of thoughtfulness in the queen, and a substantial proof of her liberality to her people. One should receive a fine flock of sheep from the royal pasture, another a generous herd of cattle, and so the occasion was ushered in joyously and everything proceeded hilariously.

Each successful contestant was debarred from the contest on the following days, and together were to hold themselves in readiness for the grand contest on the final day of the joyous games. To the six contestants thus made eligible to enter this race the queen would add the name of herself as the seventh, to strive for the championship of all the land. Should the queen be so fortunate as to succeed, as she had no wish to do further than to add zest to their sports, she should as her most valued guerdon beg the continual love and obedience of her people. Should one of the others be successful, as she had no doubt they would, and as she most earnestly desired they should be, the prize should be one befitting him who should prove himself so consummate a horseman, and it would give their humble sovereign great pleasure to give to the fortunate one the care of all the royal stables and equipages, which her feminine highness knew would be a very desirable prize in the eyes of the contestants, those who entered the race from love of horses and horsemanship, while she knew equally well that it would be a stab to the heart at Rebecca’s ambitions, whom she regarded as the one most likely to succeed, should she herself fail. If this last prize was offered from a desire to enrage and chagrin her rival she would have thought she had succeeded could she have heard her furious enemy rave when she was safe in the privacy of her apartments, and Isidor alone was her listener.

“The she-dog of Elim!” she hissed through her teeth, “how long will our people swallow her flatteries and be blind to her devilish intrigues? See to it, Isidor, that not a hair of our horses but is in order for the morrow’s trial. Dost thou trust thy brother Abram entirely, or will he fail us at the critical moment?”

“Nay, beloved mistress, I lay my life on his faithfulness; and if thou and Father Levi will come to the stables at midnight thou shalt see for thyself that he is faithful as the moon in the heavens, and as prompt to the moment.”

“It is well, then,” said Rebecca, somewhat assured, “for as sure as the sun has set this night, neither he nor thee will ever see it rise again if you play me false,” she added, thrusting a hand in her bosom, and drawing from her girdle a gleaming little diamond-hilted dagger, which she toyed with lovingly a moment, felt its keen edge, and then replaced it without noticing the sullen look that came into the eyes of Isidor a moment, as he assured her:

“Then I have no fear for my life, for it is devoted only to yours.”

He descended to his quarters muttering a curse on the heart of a woman who should doubt a devotion so entire as his, but laughed hoarsely to himself at the idea of failing when such a price was offered for his successful efforts.

The only additional condition attached to this offer was that where, as in the preliminary contests on the five days preceding the grand ultimatum, each charioteer was permitted to guide his steeds with bit and bridle, in this final test only the word of command to guide and control should be used.

This rather exacting condition, sprung upon them, as some asserted, at the eleventh hour, was, however, accepted cheerfully by the majority of the contestants, for the example the queen had set in that direction had been largely followed by all the owners of chariots in Ophir, and the murmur of discontent came mostly from those who with their flocks and herds were obliged to seek pasturage remote from the city, and had, therefore, not been aware of the progress made by the dwellers of Ophir in horsemanship.

Six ambitious and elated charioteers appeared upon the great public racecourse built by order of Corinthia, and nominally at her expense, though it was only a pittance returned to her people with one hand, while the other was receiving fabulous amounts of “royal treasure,” the results of toil, but not hers.

The morning was as bright and fresh as the fabled climate of their home at Jerusalem could have been where away down the dim vista of the centuries their ancestors had lived and worshiped, and followed out their ambitious plans of life, as if the scattered dust of Jerusalem of to-day, that had once been the high-beating heart of some Israelitish king swelling with the pride of place and power, was more alive to sensations of joy and sorrow, successes and failures, than the native dust of Ophir in the midst of the sagebrush and cactus of Ophir’s plains.

Corinthia’s chariot soon joined the others, moving to the sound of wild applause from the greatest throng that had ever assembled in these new days of Israel’s glory. Around the magnificent course that in modern vernacular was full eight furlongs in circumference was a substantial wall of sun-dried brick covered with cement, and within this, and attached to it were seats that rose tier on tier, and extended entirely around it, giving comfortable seating to the vast throng.

Abram had forgotten no trifle that would make Corinthia’s equipage complete. At his suggestion the horses were covered on that eventful morning with richly-embroidered cloths, wrought in gold and silver threads into gay flowers and scrolls and studded with precious stones, for which a fabulous price was paid first, as the thoughtful trainer said, that the faithful but high-mettled creatures might be mercifully protected from the stinging insects that tortured unprotected horses, and second, that her devoted people might thus distinguish the royal chariot, and mark its progress, which would be very gratifying to their feeling of affectionate concern.

If Corinthia had been deemed beautiful before, her admirers were now beside themselves with extravagant adulation of her supreme loveliness. Her robe of the famous Tyrean purple hue was glittering with precious stones, and her shapely head bore a beautiful golden crown surmounted by a delicate silver crescent typifying and blending in her lovely person of temporal and spiritual power, the crown in itself the insignia of royalty to all the world, the gold an emblem of that yellow luminary whom the Elimites worshiped as the God of the universe, and the silver crescent being a badge of her relationship with the moon, of which she was the goddess, and to whom the people were beginning to pay homage as such.

As she guided her prancing chargers lightly with the rein to the point where the ten judges sat to award the palm of victory to one of the seven candidates for the great prize, the people rent the air with their shouts, and many of the poor ignorant Jews, led by the designing influence of the Elimites, fell on their knees and worshiped at the shrine of beauty, mistaking the color for the substance, forgetting that the spotless exterior of the sepulcher but rendered more repulsive the rottenness of the dead men’s bones within.

Groveling servants ran before her chariot to clear the way, and Abram sat on a low seat in the rear of the carriage ordering his animals here and there in a tone that commanded their greatest efforts; he scowled sullenly on the crowd as if he resented their fond gaze upon the queen, so zealous a servant, so devoted a slave was he.

They drew up by the other chariots, and by chance, close to that of Rebecca and her chief horseman, Isidor. Corinthia greeted her rival with a sneer that might have dispelled the illusion from the minds of the rabble, could they have caught its full import of hate and defiance, and Rebecca’s strong gaze in return was proof enough that she did not share the belief of her deluded countrymen in Corinthia’s divinity, but might easily have been interpreted to disclose that she thought her the arch Princess Diabolis.

Isidor busied himself in the care of his mistress’ team which were champing their bits impatiently and moving uneasily a little closer to Corinthia’s. While he stood by their heads on the side nearest to Corinthia’s equipage one of the latter’s horses began pawing the earth and raised a cloud of dust that almost suffocated him. He turned in a rage and struck the beast with the palm of his hand, cursing it roundly for an awkward brute, when Abram sprang toward him and drawing a dagger as he ran and exclaiming: “Dog of a hell-born Jew, dost thou presume to strike the queen’s horse? By the wisdom of Solomon, I’ll disembowel thee here in the sight of all Ophir.”

The voice of Corinthia recalled Abram to his calmer self, and soothed the plunging and rearing horse.

“A shame on thee, Abram, to so belittle thyself and companion before Israel. Are there not many ways in which you and I can take sweet vengeance on yonder stone image and her plebeian horseman? What ails my beauteous little mare Vidella to-day? Never has she shown such fiery spirit.”

Abram walked to the head of the excited mare, and patted her on the neck and spoke to her very low, and stilled her as if by magic.

When the tumult caused by this incident had subsided the judges sent a trumpeter around the course to warn the vast throng that they must now look to their safety, as the race would begin. The chariots were ranged side by side, the attendants busied themselves in removing rein and bit and bridle, under the supervision of the judges, and after the usual parley, and the usual impatience on the part of the rabble who blackened all the great stretch of the raised pavilion, the word was given to go.

Abram’s eyes watched like a hawk for the signal, and it was hardly uttered before he sprang toward his mistress and uttered the cry used by Corinthia to halt her team; but they sprang away like an arrow from a bow, along with the others, but in a direction diagonal slightly, to the general course; Corinthia sought to turn them to the left with her wonted signal, but they veered sharply to the right instead, and neck and neck with Rebecca’s flying steeds they soon cleared themselves of the other competitors.

But Rebecca’s position was the inner one, and the advantage was on her side, for the closer they crowded upon her the closer she hemmed the inner limit of the course, and gradually drew past her opponent, who was so disconcerted by her misfortunes on starting that she sat with set teeth and closed lips in a kind of lethargy of horror to see her opponent steadily leaving her behind, which fact she noted at the same time was all that could save her from a collision with her enemy and a frightful ending of all her dreams of triumph.

Rousing herself with a mighty resolve yet to retrieve her fortunes, she urged her horses to the left, but in vain. They swerved again to the right, and were now directly behind the other chariot and within a few feet of it.

She screamed angrily to her excited team again, to turn back, but they had gone mad, and only turned still further from her chosen course till they left the course itself. In her wild fury and embarrassment, she struck Vidella, the inner mare, a savage blow with the whip, causing her to spring forward madly, and turn the course of the other somewhat toward the right one. Again, encouraged to take desperate chances, she applied the whip again and again, till the horses were maddened beyond all hope of control, heedless of their driver’s voice they flew toward the western gate of the course which was open.

Seeing this, Corinthia with white set face and grinding rage, gave reluctantly the signal to halt, hoping by her voice to quiet and control them, but iteration and reiteration seemed only to arouse them anew, and the queen sank back upon her luxurious cushions in helpless fright.

Out into the streets of the city they flew, away toward the plains they carried the helpless representative of regal power. God of Abram! they approach the hovels of the lepers’ quarters. They are in the midst of them; lift up thy voice to the God of Elim now, fair Corinthia, call upon the sun and moon in thine extremity. Exalt the worship of the Incas, and put thy graceful foot upon the neck of Judaism, for thy time is brief among the powers of earth. O Golden Image of Palenque! what a sight is that. See! a miserable leper lies sweltering in the loathsome virus upon the ground. His disease-dimmed eye sees the danger, his shredded limbs attempt to flee from it, but alas too late. He totters to his feet as the hot breath of the panting horses smites him. They snort and spring aside, but too late again. Vidella tries to spring past him, but strikes him down with her hoofs, and veers savagely as the stench of the leprosy rises to her nostrils. The chariot cannot follow the sharp curve described by the frightened horse; it overturns, and Corinthia the adored, to whom but a few moments ago thousands kneeled as to deity himself, is saved from death by being flung mercifully upon the prostrate form of the miserable leper. Mercifully? Flung at least into merciful unconsciousness of the horror of darkness that had fallen upon her.

All is commotion and consternation in the surging crowd of pleasure-seekers. Rebecca has triumphed; but there is none to grace her triumph, unless, indeed, it be the venerable and unselfish servant of the people, Levi, who sees in the light of her present success a gleam of the future glory.

But what of Jokim? What are the feelings of exquisite pain that racks his ambitious heart to see his patron queen utterly defeated, and perhaps, mangled, bleeding, dying by the roadside? From his commanding position he watches with care-strained eyes in the direction where a cloud of dust alone indicates the direction and progress of the runaways. Now they are in sight once more, on the rising ground. “Now may all the gods of Israel and Elim protect her,” he exclaims, as he sees, with a gasp of fear that the horses are in the midst of the lepers. “Jehovah, have mercy, she is thrown into the very midst of them!” is his next cry. “Quick Isidor! Here slaves! my chariot! Now Isidor, drive as though the fiends pursued, and angels beckoned,” he commanded. They were off like a flash, but even then with all their haste, with all the speed of their fresh spirited horses there was one chariot that was a hundred paces in the lead. The foam was flying from their flanks and the froth from their mouths.

’Tis the victor’s chariot, but Abram drives alone. Is it concern for the fate of his queen and employer that urges him onward? Is it the tender feelings of humanity in the beautiful Jewess that sends him on this mission?

He was the first in all that throng to act in the presence of appalling disaster. Scarcely has Rebecca driven triumphantly beneath the arch that proclaimed her the victor, and checked the headlong speed of her chargers, before Abram is at her side and mutters: “Quick, and the game is ours.” Assisting her, as he spoke, to alight, and springing into the chariot, he dashed away as we have seen, the leader of a wild stampede toward the scene of disaster.

How can Abram be supposed to know that his mistress has been so ruthlessly dethroned from her flying seat of power? What more natural than for him to rivet his eye upon the receding dust cloud, and to expect to find his beloved mistress in the wreckage of the chariot when the final disaster shall come?

It has come! Away on the plains yonder he sees with distinctness the horses and chariot suddenly collapse apparently, into an undistinguishable heap.

Wings were too slow to bear him to the spot. Rays of light could not keep pace with his burning desire to reach that goal. Far in advance of the crowd, yet it seemed to him that time must end, and eternity dawn ere the panting horses drew up beside the heap of ruin made up of struggling horses and fragments of a royal chariot. Did he pause to seek for the body of his queen among the débris? Not he. He springs to the ground, draws from his girdle a package of subtle powder, and a keen pointed little lance. Some of the horses are dead, or dying; some of them are struggling to free themselves from the trammel of harness, and dead carcasses. They threaten every moment to free themselves. Abram springs like a panther upon the neck of Vidella who is neighing in affright, and making a desperate fight for freedom.

A dexterous thrust of the lancet, a skillful injection of a tiny bit of the powder, and in a moment the struggles of the mare began to grow feebler. One more survivor of the catastrophe is treated to a similar dose, and by that time Vidella ceases to struggle.

“Dead horses tell no lies,” he muttered, deliberately remounting the chariot and driving backward to the City of Lepers, coolly and smilingly, until he sees a crowd collected in the distance a little way from the hovels of lepers, when he again urges his horses to their utmost, again distorts his countenance with anguished concern for the fate of Corinthia.

As he drew nearer his woes broke forth in a wail: “Where is the glory of Israel? Where is the wise queen and gentle friend of Ophir?”

He was the picture of distress, the ideal of a distracted and devoted servant in an agony of suspense as to the fate of one he regarded more than his own worthless life.

Troubled eyes note his distraught figure and pitying voices cry alas! alas! while trembling fingers point to the center of the plague-inhabited village. His grief broke out more wildly than ever at the sight. There, standing in the middle of a group of wonder-struck lepers, is Corinthia, wringing her hands, tearing her hair, and rending the royal robe, beating her head against the wall of a hovel, and shrieking hysterically in a tone of the wildest horror.

Is there none to comfort her in the tenfold death that has befallen her? Yes, one. A manly form approaches. It is that of the most dignified of all the late judges of Israel—it is Jokim, her lover. His chariot stands at a distance in the midst of the crowd that greeted Abram. There Isidor halted and refused to drive another foot toward the plague spot.

Jokim commanded, threatened dire punishment, which he would have executed then and there, but for the interference of the excited crowd, who laid hold of Jokim himself, and would have handled him roughly, but for their curiosity to witness what transpired to Corinthia, who was recovering consciousness, and Jokim had broken away from the mob, pursued only by curses and jeers, some crying “kill the scheming knave of a Gentile,” and others, “let him go to the harlot who calls herself queen of Israel, and together they can reign over the city of lepers.”

But Jokim heeded neither threats nor taunts, but hastened to the side of Corinthia as we have seen, just as the full realization of her misfortunes had dawned upon her. Who so heartless as not to respect such a friend as he? Who so utterly forlorn as not to be cheered by the coming of a friend at such a time of direst need?

Her mind was so preoccupied by her woes that she saw him not, nor suspected his presence until he spoke her name. Then she turned toward him with a world of surprise and joy gushing from her eyes. He supported her tenderly in his arms and eagerly questioned her whether or no she was hurt.

“Hurt? dost thou ask? Is the bird that falls by the snare of the fowler hurt? Ah! Jokim, I am hurt to the death. I am as a sparrow alone upon the housetop. Henceforth my palace will be my prison, for dost thou think that our people will brook the presence of one who is contaminated?”

Jokim heard her in pained surprise. He knew that she but reveled in a day-dream when she talked of returning to the palace. He had heard enough in the crowd he just left to know something of their temper, but he could not plunge her heart into greater depths of misery by telling her that a more horrible fate awaited her, that she would never be allowed to leave the companionship of the pitiable, loathsome wretches who stood a little apart and watched them.

“Come,” said Corinthia, “wilt thou lend me thy assistance to thy chariot which I see yonder in care of Isidor?”

He moved not, but regarded her with a fixed look in which pity was the dominant feeling. “Why dost thou linger?” she said, “my strength faileth me, I must return to the palace.”

For reply Jokim lent a supporting arm, and together they started toward the crowd of spectators, and toward refuge from the ills of life, toward comfort, toward hope and love, toward the place combining these and a thousand other attractions which we have gathered into that bouquet of joys we call home.

But scarcely do they clear themselves of the immediate presence of the leprous wretches, barely have they progressed far enough toward the camp of the clean to indicate their purpose, when the crowd broke into a wild tumult of yells and curses, execrating Jokim and Corinthia as dogs of Elim, accusing him of leading away the people after strange gods, and her of all the abominations that Ophir had attained to, of being in league with the devil to deceive them, warning them to go back to the city of the lepers on pain of instant death, and many of the men drew their bows ready to make good their threat. Corinthia, distressed and bewildered by this demonstration, still, in her shaken and agitated condition, failed to read the true meaning of the mob’s demands.

“Ah! Jokim,” she said, “I am punished. The hearts of the people are fickle as water. They have turned thus quickly to Rebecca, because she was the conqueror and I the vanquished in the race. If these be the sweets of royalty I will fling the scepter to Rebecca gladly, and rejoice that my great misfortune hath shown me one royal friend which is better than a kingdom of fickle followers.”

She stood undecided what to do, as she spoke, and Jokim at last in pity exclaimed: “Ah! sweet Corinthia, thou understandest not the diabolical passions of this rabble. They are fickle as the wind, it is true, but they are also cruel as the grave. You will nevermore see your beautiful palace, never again wander in the beautiful groves, or lave thy lovely form in the wholesome baths of the royal gardens. Its birds will dress their gay plumage for thee no more or time their melodious harp to charm thine ear.

“The Rose of Sharon will shed its fragrance for others, and the spotless lily will lift its pure petals to other eyes than thine.”

“What dost thou mean, Jokim?” she said. “Thou speakest in riddles, and though thou hast not always found me so dull to their meaning, my brain is too sadly shaken to understand thee.”

“I mean,” said Jokim, “that we are outcasts from our beloved Ophir. We are in the eyes of all Israel already lepers.”

All the life blood fled away from the fair features of Corinthia, leaving them as white as the face of one of her snowy steeds. She pushed Jokim from her and urged him to leave her to her fate. “Away, Jokim, thou at least art surely not contaminated in the sight of Israel. Why should we both die in misery? Why didst thou come within these accursed limits?”

“I came because I loved thee, Corinthia.”

“And didst thou then realize and know the consequence when thou didst come to my rescue?”

“I knew,” said Jokim briefly.

“Then,” said Corinthia, “is my sorrow not unmixed with joy. I am content to accept the decree of heaven that denies me temporal power, but gives me love instead. Perhaps Rebecca in her happier lot will remember us, and send us a morsel of food from the palace as I used to do to these poor wretches, little thinking that I should ever be to them a companion in woe.”

The crowd was growing impatient to return to the city, but, fearful that Jokim and Corinthia would follow them and spread contagion everywhere, a herald was sent to warn them from a safe distance that the decree of leprosy had been passed upon them by the eight judges present, and who had once more found themselves invested with the regal power to act for Israel.

Jokim replied that they accepted the decree, and Corinthia threw down her regal headdress as a token that she resigned all claim to the kingdom, Jokim asking only that he should be allowed with Corinthia to seek a lonely place in the mountains where he had some flocks, and that Abram might be sent to the city for some of their raiment, and a few of their utensils, and that a proclamation might be made in all the kingdom warning the people that their camp was unclean. Abram at first refused to do the bidding of his old master, but what he would not be persuaded to do for common humanity’s sake he was readily induced to undertake for the sake of a goodly sum of gold which he was assured by Jokim and Corinthia he should find in the palace on his return to them with the desired articles, which he promptly brought, and on obtaining the coveted information as to where he should find his reward he was off again to the city.

Corinthia threw off all her outer garments for fear of the plague, and donned others that Abram had brought, and together they turned their backs upon the city of ease and luxury with the dread of a dark and dreadful calamity hanging over them. But Corinthia, the beautiful young queen, though exchanging riches and power for poverty and weakness, was not entirely the loser in the transaction. She exchanged the purple robe of a paramour for the plain garment of a loved wife. Jokim, esteemed in all the city an illicit lover, in that sudden critical test became the honest, true-hearted lover and protector by the severest trial of love and fidelity. He deliberately chose almost sure death from a loathsome, hateful disease, rather than forsake one to whom he had been accused of being bound by ties the most sordid, bestial.

As the visions of human exaltation and human indulgence failed from the picture she had drawn and called life, and in its place saw in the foreground only a dusty sagebrush plain, stretching away to distant mountains, and for a background a magnificent city resplendent with palaces and pavements shining like silver, and dazzlingly beautiful over all, towered the glorious Temple of the Sun, reflecting back the glory of the sinking orb of day, a picture dear to her heart, but receding, fading before her eyes, she turned back toward it, and stretched out her hands helplessly, imploringly toward it. Even as she gazed with tear-dimmed vision the glory faded, the sunlight departed; another dream of mortal greatness faded away.

Chapter XV.

The Children of the Sun.

Slowly the crowd surged back to the city, sobered by the scenes they had just witnessed, bewildered by the sudden loss of a ruler whom they began to really love, and who, after all, was by no means so great a wretch as some believed. Have we not protested from the beginning, by inference, that the proverbially good are not always angels to the core? Have we not tried to insinuate delicately and gracefully the opinion that the wayward and apparently wholly evil man or woman develops sudden traits of heroism in the presence of great danger or disaster that forever separates them in the human mind from the company of cowards, the association of poltroons?

And some of those who constantly put forth the motive of pious devotion to duty wear that kind of virtue merely as a mask behind which repose arrant cowards and hypocrites.

Did you mention the names of Isidor and Abram as examples? Let us hear them discourse to each other after the exciting scenes of the day are past, after the accident, after the crowning of Rebecca as queen, and Levi king, of Israel, a ceremony somewhat hastily performed lest the people should recover from that state of bewilderment into which events had thrown them, and after Abram had been appointed keeper of the royal stables with more gold for salary than he had ever dreamed of, and more honor shown him than his present capacity for adulation could comfortably support.

“Bring forth the bond, Isidor,” said Abram gayly, “and let us compute if we can, how much it is worth per day to work for a king. Our blessed queen has given me a fine chariot and team, and when we drive abroad we shall wish to locate our possessions.”

“She has remembered me bountifully, too,” said Isidor, “but in none of thy kind, for mine is the yellow gold; but tell me, brother Abram, thou sayest two of the noble beasts were alive when thou foundest them, why then didst thou not spare them?”

“Why did I not spare them, fool, in exchange for our necks? Suppose these Elimites were to learn of our little exploit, they would overturn everything.”

“Thy training was indeed perfect, Isidor; in time thou wilt come to be as expert in the dark art as I. Didst thou see how proudly Corinthia viewed the new mantles upon her team, which were yet, not for her team, and how impossible it made detection even with her?”

“’Twas a marvelous thought, Abram, that sprouted in thy fertile brain, but tell me how didst thou exchange Corinthia’s team for Rebecca’s last night, without being seen by the minions at the royal stables?”

“That was easy,” replied Abram. “A trifle of the same power that was so convenient to rid us of the horses to-day, made every one of the worthless curs sleep long and deeply.”

“Thou art my elder brother, indeed Abram,” replied Isidor, “and I reverence thy glorious talents; but how very strange to see how easily so vast a crowd could be deceived into thinking it purely an accident.”

“It may have seemed easy to thee, my unspoiled Isidor, but if thou couldst have seen the sleepless nights and anxious days I endured in planning everything to work with the smoothness thou observed, it would have seemed less simple; but together we did in a few weeks what no other Israelite has ever accomplished, namely, undo the teachings of years in a beast, and teach him to obey the opposite sign in a few days so that when our beauteous queen Corinthia urged her team to stop, they ran the more furiously, and when she would have them go to the right by the old familiar word, they turned quickly to the left; and now we have our reward, we shall be honorable in Israel with our palaces, in which we shall dwell, and our chariots in which to visit the pleasant places of the city, and we shall be as far removed from the groveler who used to call us brother as our Queen Rebecca is above us; but I must away to discharge the duties of that honorable office which Corinthia the Elimite intended should fall as a prize to Rebecca, if to any, as a stab to her pride.

“All this but yesterday, and to-day Rebecca is queen, and Corinthia a wandering, hopeless leper, as the result of a cross training of the horses, and a timely exchange of Rebecca’s team for Corinthia’s. Farewell, Isidor, don’t forget thy prayers,” said Abram sneeringly, “and remember to swear by thy elder brother who taught thee how to drive a horse upon the highway of fortune.”

Life soon settled to its wonted groove after unwonted excitement, and the populace shouting a moment ago for Corinthia were now just as energetic in their demonstrations of undying fealty to Rebecca and Levi.

Although Levi had ever posed as an Israelite indeed, in whom there was no guile, and though Rebecca was a good old Jewish name, the policy of their reign did not appear to differ from that of their unhallowed predecessors.

The Elimites were still the trusted advisers of the king and queen, and the incumbents of the places of honor and emolument. The priesthood still continued the Accadian form of worship in the temple of the sun.

But wedge and golden image, being thus associated in the minds of the people with ideas of devotion, they gradually, as the Elimites designed they should, came to look upon them as objects of worship themselves, and soon a golden wedge was laid upon the altar, and the people of Israel bowed down to the image of the sun and worshiped at sight of the golden wedge.

Wealth was increasing rapidly in Ophir, of which the Accadians managed to own a goodly share. Taxes were increased, rigid enforcement of the laws to collect them followed. Tax gatherers and tithing men were given princely salaries so that these offices were sought and obtained by the Elimites.

Discontent began to work in the public mind, sullen murmurs were heard and dark hints of revolt began to be dropped by the Jews themselves, who not only saw themselves ignored in matters of government, but their hatred toward Elim was ten times more intense by reason of the odious offices that they occupied, for in what age or country have tax gatherers not been regarded with something of spleen by the people?

But the favored class heeded not the tokens of a rising storm. Drunk with prosperity, created by the labor of others, the longer they enjoyed the ease and luxury of the present the less they cared for the future, the more they respected but slightly the rights of their fellows, whose ruder life rendered them repulsive to the more refined Accadian, and the harder the toilers were oppressed the more repulsive they became to the parasites who were at once sucking their blood for subsistence and swearing openly at their want of spirit and refinement.

But religious superstitions interwoven with political influences are the strongest safeguards of a ruler whether the religion be a false one or the political bias a pernicious one or not.

In proportion as the people became restless and stricken with poverty and their rulers rich and arrogant, the priests increased their zeal in warning the people against the sin of not submitting to the powers that be, and roused their patriotism by pointing with pride to the immense public improvements, and reminded them of their glory as a nation. In progress in all the cunning arts of the world, there were none to surpass them, while in palaces and dwellings, in temples and gardens of pleasure, there were none to contest with them.

So the ferment of human life went on for a year, since that day when Rebecca and Levi had come so unexpectedly to the throne. Unexpectedly, at least, to the outside rabble, who dreamed not of the artifices being practiced within the charmed circle of power. It was again the time of the great festival which has been established as a fixed institution wherein the high rites of the sun worship were celebrated within the most sacred and secret precincts of the temple, rites in which lust and immorality joined hands with religion to dishonor themselves and all human decency.

The queen became the high priestess of these orgies and the low sensual instrument of national shame.

Again the multitude filled the streets of Ophir to choking. Again the approaches to the outer courts of the temple of the sun were packed. The queen was already at her altar in the temple prepared to offer herself as a spectacle of shame before the gaze of thousands, who trampled upon each other in their eagerness to witness this new ceremony in their religion of which they had heard only vague rumors and gained dim ideas.

Suddenly there seemed to be a diversion in the outer circle of the crowd near the street. Some one whom the people called Abram the magician staggered forward with a muttered curse, and almost fell, but recovered himself and stood gazing down the street with fear-haunted eyes, and with trembling lips, and sunken jaw, he exclaimed: “By the rod of Moses! it is none other than the dogs of Elim.” Thus admonished the crowd turned its gaze toward the spot where his was riveted, and beheld a faded, dust-covered chariot drawn by two jaded horses and bearing two persons whose attire was so extraordinary as to arouse curiosity in the beholder.

These two were a man and a woman; the former was clothed in a suit of sheepskin from head to foot, had an unkempt, bushy beard and hair flowing in great ringlets over his shoulders. His clothes were rudely fashioned and his headgear a sort of cap made of the skin of some wild creature.

His companion was clad in a fashion not less striking. A jacket of fine soft fur, dyed blue, and a skirt of equally delicate fur and white as snow. Delicate slippers of brown, trimmed with fringe of white around the top, and a jaunty headgear of the same kind of material made up a costume that might make a woman of these modern days proud.

Her dress was forgotten, however, when a glimpse of her face was obtained. It was beautiful and radiant behind its border of white furs as the face of an houri, and the crowds through which they were making their way gazed in undisguised admiration, mingled with a stirring of memory that seemed to struggle for mastery, suggesting vaguely that she was not unknown to them.

Suddenly a cry was raised by a man in the crowd! His cry had the effect of an electric shock. Every tongue took up the word and every throat was strained to vocalize that word. Rebecca, thrilling with triumph in the zenith of her power, heard the commotion, and glanced into the street to learn why she was no longer the center of all eyes, and astounded sees the smiling countenance, and hears the resounding name of one in whose praises the streets were vociferous. Why did she turn pale as the ivory image beside her? Why did she shudder at the mention of that name? Guilt was in her bosom, and Corinthia was the name in the street that caused her to quake like an aspen.

The rabble crowded upon the chariot with the wildest demonstrations of joy, weeping and laughing, and blessing the God of Elim that he had brought again the beloved queen. What! their queen? What traitorous words were these! There was no queen but Rebecca. Where was the magician Abram with ready device in time of peril? He was not far away, and as he was the first to act on that disastrous day one year ago, so now he was the first to lift his voice for Rebecca, the lawful queen. He struggled frantically toward the chariot, using all his burly strength to push aside or trample down whoever came in his way, and when he reached a favorable position he lifted a stentorian voice, and a commanding hand to still the roar of voices.

As soon as he could make himself heard he cried: “Back, fools of Ophir! Beware of these dogs of Elim. Hast thou forgotten that they are condemned lepers? Back if ye would not have rottenness in your bones.” Then turning, frothing and furious in his hatred toward the occupants of the chariot, he waved them back exclaiming: “And ye, dogs of Elimites, begone. Yonder is your home in the city of lepers. Begone or die. Dare ye to bring your carrion flesh to the city of Ophir to be a stench and a plague in the nostrils of our people? Beware, cursed seed and follower of a harlot!”

Consternation struck the clamoring multitude mute for a moment, and standing in the chariot, Jokim addressed them: “Men and women of Ophir, ye know well who we are. Full well ye know that only twelve months ago we celebrated with you this sacred festival. Ye know too that at that time the queen of all Ophir was none other than she who is by my side. The circumstances which suddenly drove us from your presence and made us outcasts are familiar to your memory. It is true that the great disaster of that day exposed us to the danger of the taint of leprosy. We went forth into the mountains, looking only for a place where we might die in peace without spreading the plague among you. For weeks we lived in daily expectation of its coming, but thanks be to the God of Elim, we are pure. We are in your hands and we are willing to be tried by the law of Israel for leprosy, for we know that we are as free from its touch as yourselves.”

Again a great shout went up from the people, but Jokim lifted up his hand as a sign that he would speak further, and silence oppressive as death reigned in an instant. He spoke once more: “Men and women of Ophir; we have lived in sadness apart from our native city for many weary weeks. To return to our people and our home has been our thought by day and our dream by night. We shall be content to dwell among you as the humblest citizens of all Ophir; but first, O men of Ophir! we would make plain to you and explain the cause of disaster on that almost fatal day.

“You had among you at that time a certain man called Abram the magician, for he was a magician in his power over beasts of burden.” Here a confusion arose and a man was observed trying to make his way through the crowd from the vicinity of the chariot. “Nay, Abram the wizard, do not slink away yet, I have something more to say to thee.”

Thus detected, Abram turned toward the chariot a countenance in which fear, hate, and fury worked fearful contortions. “A curse on thy lying tongue, thou dog of a Gentile,” he muttered.

Jokim continued: “This man was employed by your queen, Corinthia, to train her team for the chariot race, and his brother Isidor was also employed by one Rebecca, to train her team likewise. I now appeal to your understanding and ask you why on that great day of the chariot races did the queen’s horses refuse to obey her commands? Do ye not remember that whenever she commanded them to go to the right they turned to the left, and that when she commanded them to stay their running, they ran the more madly?”

Here again Abram made a wild attempt to force a way through the crowd, but Jokim cried out: “Whoever is for justice and Queen Corinthia, stop him, till I have done, then ye may do with him as seems good.”

A hundred hands were ready to tear him in pieces if need be, and Abram subsided into sullenness again.

“Do ye believe, inhabitants of Ophir, that the chariot horses of Corinthia disobeyed her in so doing? Canst ye give any cause why they should so forget the voice of their mistress in a day? This son of perdition who slinks from our presence like the jackal of the plains can tell you the reason thereof. Isidor, Rebecca, and Levi can tell why a wicked plot was laid to kill your own beloved queen, and doubtless seeing the present inhabitant of the throne, ye can make a guess as to why. These four wicked people planned the murder and almost carried it out. Isidor trained the team of Rebecca to heed the contrary sign of command, and when the lesson was well learned under the direction of Abram the magician, and by the knowledge of Rebecca and Levi, Abram stole away the queen’s docile horses and put in their places the horses of Rebecca on the night before the great chariot race, and covered them with new mantles that the queen should not know them. That ye may know we speak the truth, but read the evidence of guilt in the countenance of yon sneaking jackal. We have proofs of all we say, and if ye are for Corinthia, seize yon monster and bind him hand and foot, advance to yonder temple and do likewise with Rebecca and Levi, and proclaim Corinthia again queen and dethroned only by the wickedness of these people.”

The rabble again burst into wild cheering. They seized Abram, whose bravado melted away into contemptible cringings and pleadings for mercy at the hands of the mob, who were near fulfilling the wishes of Jokim, that cords and bands would have been unnecessary.

Meanwhile, Rebecca and Levi left alone in the temple with the priests, with suspicions sharpened by guilt, mistrusted the cause of the commotion, and hastily dispatching a priest to the palace for the royal guard which the usurpers had found it necessary, or thought it necessary, to provide; they then sent a second priest to the street to ascertain what was the cause of the commotion. He soon returned, pale as a ghost, and almost speechless. When he found words to deliver his message he exclaimed: “It is Corinthia, O queen, and the people have gone mad after her. They are coming toward the temple, fly, or your lives will be less than straws before these madmen.”

“We will fight them,” said Levi, trembling and pale in spite of his declaration of war. “Where are our fighting men?”

“I see them even now, O king, with their bows and arrows and battleaxes; they will meet Jokim and his dogs by the temple here, and then we shall see how long honeyed words will stand against arrows, or the beauty of a white sepulcher against spears. It is plain that the crisis will come when the soldiers and the followers of Corinthia meet, which will be near the temple.”

Levi and Rebecca watched the progress of events from the eastern portal of the great temple, nor had they long to wait. The shouting populace advanced, led by the chariot of the travelers, until the bowmen were within easy arrow-shot of them, and halted directly before the eastern portal and made humble obeisance to their sovereigns, with perhaps a trace of mockery in their salutations.

The king made as if he would address the crowd, but the people drowned his voice by hooting and jeering, and flinging vile epithets at Rebecca; and Levi shrank back cowed by the just wrath of the people.

Emboldened by his cowardice, one or two cries of “bring him out,” were heard, and he hastily betook himself to the inner temple to hide him among the sacred emblems of his chosen religion; but Rebecca came boldly forth upon the porch of the temple and essayed to answer the mob. Her voice was drowned in a wilder chorus than ever, and oaths and blasphemies filled the air. Cries of harlot and murderess were freely used, and the more frantically she strove to be heard, the louder swelled the din of disorder. Seeing her efforts were futile, she turned like a tigress at bay and beckoned the soldiers to discharge a flight of arrows into the mob. But they too, standing there in the presence of Corinthia for a few minutes, had caught the contagion of her lovely presence, and instead of obeying the order, a few straggling arrows were shot at Rebecca, striking the wall of the temple beside her.

Mad with rage against her rebellious subjects, and jealous hatred of her rival, she ran to the captain of the guard and seizing a spear from his hand she bounded like a tigress upon Corinthia, and aimed a blow with all her might at her heart. But retribution was swift upon her track; a man sprang forward from the crowd, and grasping the weapon from her hand, drove it completely through her body, piercing her heart. With a fiendish curse upon the “she-dog of Elim,” and such a look of diabolical hatred upon her face as haunted those who saw it, she fell to the ground a corpse, and her slayer kicked her dead body aside exclaiming: “May the devil roast thy soul, and buzzards fatten on thy carcass.” It was Isidor who dared to become the avenger of the wrongs which he himself had helped to heap upon Corinthia.

But a mob is not a nice discriminator between consistent and inconsistent justice, and the narrative of the tablets forces me, though much against my personal wishes and feelings, to write it down that his act was wildly applauded by the raging flood of humanity, and as the taste of blood had whetted their appetites they began to shout hoarsely for Levi, the false king, who had by foul measures come to rule over them. The queen’s archers had witnessed her death without betraying any emotion, but now they flung down their arrows and joined in the cry of “Corinthia our Queen, God bless her forever.” Some one shouted for a volunteer to bring out the skulking Levi, and Isidor sprang forward, seized a spear from the ground and disappeared within the portals. In a few moments he came forth, driving the terrified Levi before him down to the very spot where Rebecca’s body lay in the dust and filth of the street. Did he throw himself upon her body and willingly share her fate? Not he. He grew so white with fear as to be ghastly in his cowardice and starting back, he cried with an oath, “My people, will you kill me for this harlot’s foul deeds? You have done well to rid the earth of such scum, but I swear by Abraham, the just, that I had nothing whatever to do with the plot of this sorceress and her two fiendish confederates.”

Public opinion is rash, public judgment is harsh, but standing there and witnessing the cowardly and slanderous lies of this man against one who was at least as innocent, as guileless, as pure as he, but who alas, could not lift up her voice to fling back with scorn the accusations made by one who should have been bitterly upbraiding his own folly and wickedness instead of hers, whose greatest fault had been in trusting a craven, this surging, seething mass of excited humanity in their fury compared this with another scene only a few moons agone when another unfortunate woman had been hooted at, and jeered by the same people, and whose lover, esteemed also an illicit lover, had shared her horrible fate gladly and without a murmur, asking no greater happiness than to die with her?

Ignorant as was the rabble, dimly as reason shone upon their feeble intellects, they yet comprehended the vast difference in the degrees of manhood that marked the two men, and also of womanly virtue that marked the two women.

The pitiful cries of Levi for mercy only awakened their contempt; but Jokim, who now perceived that in the heart of the people Corinthia reigned supreme, and acting for her, commanded the archers to take up again their bows, and conduct Levi to prison until his case could be heard. Then there was another joyful coronation in which Corinthia again was made queen of all Ophir, and speaking for her Jokim made a great speech to the people in which he told them of all that he and Corinthia had suffered in anticipation of death, and in hardships in the mountains; how they had realized as scarcely to be believed, at last, that they were safe from the taint of leprosy; and how their experience had caused them to humble themselves greatly in the sight of the God of the universe; how he had shown them that they had been too much taken up with their ambitions and had thought too little of the people of Ophir; but that they were determined by the grace of the eternal Creator to rule more justly and to regard their own ends less.

Then a festival was proclaimed to last fourteen days, to celebrate the return of Corinthia, and during the festival Jokim and Corinthia were by solemn rites of the Elimites made man and wife, and so the scribes recorded on the little brick tablets that Ophir prospered as it had never prospered before; that a happier queen, or one more beloved or admired, never lived; and that Jokim was the happiest and most unselfish man in the kingdom, wholly devoted to the lovely Corinthia, caring not in the least for power which he could have shared with her for the asking, as she urged him to do; but he was perfectly contented in seeing a loving and loyal people look up to one whom to praise and love was greater happiness to Jokim than to have received the adulation of Ophir himself.

Many other scribes took up the tablet account after the time of Corinthia, who passed away as do all things earthly, after a long and happy reign, but not one of them failed to speak of the glory, the prosperity, the peacefulness and felicity, of the reign of Corinthia, or to extol her beauty and her wisdom and her humility and to deplore the fact that they should never again see a ruler so gifted, so fair, and so blest as the first Queen of the Ten Tribes of Israel.

Human nature presents as many varieties as there are specimens. Some men and women who strive with the most selfish and sordid ardor for power, are sobered and purified by its responsibilities when they attain it. Others who exhibit themselves before the public as pure, high-minded beings, who accept power only because the good of their fellows demands it, develop into monsters of haughtiness and tyranny. Can we trust such evidence to prove that these two oppressed creatures really underwent such a magic change, or is it proof merely that in the first, good and benevolent qualities under favorable circumstances would always rule, but may have been hidden and dwarfed by the evil in his surroundings, the hardening influences of his associates against which he could not rise to the level of his better self? And in case of the nice moralist who nibbled delicately at the official bait, subsequent acts of his suggest the bare possibility that he was merely acting this part of the Christian gentleman because of the approval it won him, and continued in his self-satisfied career only while he deemed it policy to do so. But as soon as he rose to be the head and ruler of a nation he could afford to ignore the opinions of his pious associates and indulge the cold-blooded propensities that he had been starving so long. So we see that you or I have need of nothing so much in this world as a broad Christian charity by which to regulate our own acts, and to judge the actions of others.

If we take pains to ferret out the cause of all the sickening bloodshed recorded in the history of the world we shall find that much of it was caused by religious intolerance; which means when reduced to practical language, “Believe as I do in religion or burn.”

Unless we shall emancipate our intellects from the prejudices that prevent our seeing a brother’s right to investigate, formulate, and crystallize his own creed—until we admit that with equal light and knowledge his chances of being right are at least equal to ours, we are nothing but refined barbarians.

When we recollect that there are about one thousand different forms of religions professed in the world, we can see that possibly on some of the microscopic non-essential points of our religion there might by the rarest possibility be a shade of error. Believing in the universal fatherhood of God, and the universal motherhood of nature, why can we not live at least so that the example of the Arctic Highlander shall not be a standing reproof to our higher civilization, and a constant reminder that when we reach a state of society as innocent of courts of justice as theirs, as perfectly free from religious strife, it will be when we shall, apparently, have progressed backward.

Many subsequent scribes recorded the story of their own time upon the succeeding tablets; it was a history uninterrupted for a long period by civil feuds, or foreign molestation; but not one of them failed to celebrate the name and reign of the good, the wise, the transcendently beautiful and beloved Queen Corinthia.

Chapter XVI.

Farewell to Ophir.

This is the story, the outlines of which I have worked out by years of incessant labor upon the tablets, assisted by the most expert antiquarians of the age. A work of historical truths interwoven with a weft of romance, but who can imagine scenes of real human life unflavored by romantic incidents and unsalted with the savor of love? All nature is fashioned in love, and all love inherent in nature.

Meanwhile Abner and I—two plain American citizens of the modern republic of America, untrammeled by the superstitions of the ancient Incas and untainted with the bestial rites of the worship of the sun were still lingering in the cool grottoes of Solomon’s treasure house. We wandered by “cool Siloam’s shady rill,” set its current gurgling and boiling at pleasure, and stilled its murmurs in a moment. We have glutted our desire for the figs and the grapes and the pomegranates of Palestine the younger, and wandered by moonlight through the gardens where the servants of Solomon dreamed of their native rose of Sharon, their lily of the valley, and cheered the tedium of their toilsome efforts in the subterranean chamber by dreaming of the coming of a ship that never sailed, of a respite which never came, and weary and worn with watching for the morning star of deliverance, drew out their existence of enforced celibacy till age and care had done their work.

But we may no longer dream of the past or ruminate on the sad edict that limits all mortal life. We may no longer indulge our fancies in a spot full of morbid suggestions and associations. We must rouse ourselves from our day-dreams, and away to love and Lena. What a thumping of the heart at the thought! Even Abner is pawing the valley in his impatience to see Chicago once more, “not having,” as he said, “sich a powerful sight of days left any more to do his goin’ around in.” We had knotted our brows for many an anxious hour over the problem of how we were to escape with our treasures to civilization, or with a reasonable amount of it, for we had no idea of losing sight of our mine, or of bidding it a final adieu.

Our plan was to make a smaller raft from parts of our old one and float down the artificial stream to the Colorado again, hoping that it would be near the end of the canyon, and then make a portage to the navigable part of the Colorado, float on down its waters to the ranch country below. Here we might find some pack horses to carry ourselves and our “specimens,” for we were to pose as two votaries of science on a prospecting trip, and so meet the Southern Pacific, and away for Chicago.

And now what tumult of emotion and exuberance of association shake us as we prepare to say farewell to the scene of our wonderful discoveries. Brief in time, but closely crowded by events, it was as if we had been in the home of King Solomon’s vassals for years instead of days. “We count our lives by experience, not years, in deeds, not days.” We bring ourselves at last to the commonplace task of lading our little craft, having built it in the dry channel of the underground river by the slippery stairway where at our will we could perfect the lading on dry land, and when ready to launch we could bring the sea to our vessel, reversing the usual order of things.

At last everything is in readiness. Our gold is in strong bags in which we brought food, securely lashed to the cross timber; provisions, for which many a traveler would gladly have given bulk for bulk in gold, equally well secured. Pickaxes, emblematical of our occupation, loved for old aquaintance sake, and our rifles, the bosom friends of backwoodsmen, and a few odd articles of apparel were encompassed by bounds much smaller than those of a Saratoga trunk, and we take a last survey of the gallery and garden, temple, and tomb, and prepare for the last act in the Comedy of Errors that has landed us in the very lap of fortune, namely, to open the floodgates and set in motion again the forces which Solomon had harnessed to do his bidding. To accomplish this is but the work of a moment; Abner standing upon our water-steed, reins in hand to guide or restrain, while I pick my way on the rocky path to the floodgate, clamber upon the shelf, seize the brazen globe, while in answer to my efforts the sullen roar of the fretted waters sounds again, and springing back down the narrow footway, descending the granite stairway, mount our raft as it begins to throb and rise like a large tropical turtle, and in a moment glides down the dark incline toward daylight and hope.

Abner gazed back dreamily at the receding, familiar objects, as one who realizes that he is probably gazing back upon an interesting phase of his life, that was about to drop out of it forever. Satisfied in the acquisition of wealth which opened a new life to him, there was yet a tinge of sadness in leaving the old for the new that was like saying good-by and God bless you to an old friend whom we expect never to see again.

If we analyze the faculty of reverence for old age we find that it is made up in part of much the same feeling of pity with which I regarded his leave-taking, feeling that it was final.

Mine might be final, but hope intervened as a cushion to break the concussion upon the brain. Good-by to the pursuit of a project, and a greeting to the possession. The pleasures of the one are purely distinct from those of the other.

We drift very gently down a placid little stream, whose quiet current occasions our surprise, when we contrast it with that of the Colorado, and it becomes a puzzle to us when we remember that from the general trend of the country it must re-empty its waters into old Turbulence herself.

But the comfortable fact remains, and all day we drift lazily or paddle slowly southward and at night make our camp on a pleasant bit of tree-covered shore. Next day finds us pursuing our journey, which passed without any more exciting incident than the killing of another deer, for our store of food began to run low. At night when we landed and made our camp on a little rising knoll back from the water’s edge where the noises of the stream were left behind, we noticed as we prepared our sylvan bed of green boughs that a dull roaring sound seemed to come in waves from a southerly direction, which I at first supposed to mean the coming of a thunder storm. But Abner, being a better plainsman, rejected this theory as entirely unreasonable, as a thunder storm was unknown in that region, he said, and was himself inclined to the opinion that it was an earthquake; but after listening intently for some time as the sound seemed to rise and fall in regular cadences, he confessed that he was unable to offer any explanation of the phenomenon. Whatever the cause, it continued unchanged while we lay on our camp bed looking up at the over-twinkling stars, and at last lulled us to sleep and greeted us when we woke.

We had not traveled far on our way on that morning before the sound seemed to penetrate through the ripple of the current and the gentle swish-swash of the water against our craft. Louder and still louder as we advanced it became, till we were satisfied that it was caused by a cataract or some sort of volcanic action.

It was becoming apparent that our course was leading us toward the channel of the Colorado, as we could determine by the contour of the hills, and soon the current quickened its pace, warning us by our past hazardous experience that we had no time to lose in shunning the current, and seeking the quieter waters along the western shore, where we drifted along as far as we thought it safe, then drew ashore, and prepared to do some scouting before we made another decisive move.

Concealing our craft in a thicket along the bank, we took our rifles and started on an exploring expedition. As we descended the stream the banks became more precipitous, and the current more turbulent.

About a mile from our landing we climbed a series of ragged bluffs, and standing at last on the crest, we had the Colorado at our feet again, and a spectacle of superlative magnificence beside us, where Solomon’s rill flowed into the parent stream. It was no rill in appearance here as it tumbled in sheer descent over the brow of the cliffs beside us to the channel of the Colorado far below us, sending back from its depths a terrific, hoarse, bellowing roar, deadened and deflected by the deep-mouthed gorge that greedily swallowed it, and still gaped for more.

We had no means of estimating the distance through which the water plunged, but it was hundreds, perhaps thousands of feet, and in sublimity far outshone Niagara. As we stood close to the brink and watched the sheet that seemed to twist itself farther down into a huge rope, and farther still fly into infinitely small particles of spray, I reflected that here was one of the glories of Solomon’s reign for which he had never received the homage of the world; and so from remembering with a start that this was an artificial cataract, the thought electrified me, why not divert half the river into Solomon’s rill, and make the grandest spectacle of its kind in the known world? And as we went back toward our boat, we discussed the plans which we should carry out when next we came to our mine, though there was still in my mind a feeling of delicacy about trying to enlist Abner in my youthful schemes, for the same dreamy expression as before would soften his honest, rugged features, and remind me with a feeling of almost tearful sadness that youth and old age might not always abide together. In deep silence we plodded back to our raft and began preparations for a portage which we saw by the extended view obtained from the bluffs would not be very far below the cataract.

It proved to be at least a mile and a half, however, from our landing place, and with our budget of heavy metal it took two days to accomplish the portage and re-embark on the river to begin the last stage of our river voyage.

We had heard that a band of cattle men held the country to the southward in the teeth of Piutes and Comanches, and on this knowledge we based our hopes of deliverance.

Another day’s journey down the stream, and we noticed cattle in scattered groups feeding along the river or winding down by the deeply worn trails to drink at the water’s edge, and in three or four hours more we were in sight of a long rambling “doby” house with small windows set high in the wall, and with its outlying sheds and corrals bespoke the southern ranch.

We hailed the sight with delight, and drawing our raft upon the sand we approached this house of the Mexican air, and found two or three cowboys in the characteristic and picturesque attire of the semi-American vaquero, who were amusing themselves at target practice with heavy caliber revolvers and piercing the center which was the size of a dime with perfect ease and moderate certainty at fifty yards.

They seemed to adopt a covert posture of defense toward us, but when we addressed them in English and told them our story, and showed them a number of specimens which we considered very valuable from a scientific point of view, their sentiments toward us underwent an instant change. To these practical roamers of the Western range such specimens might amuse boys for a moment; but to see men absorbed in collecting and preserving such gewgaws relieved them of all apprehension on our account, and enabled them at once to classify us as of the harmless type of idiot entitled to pity rather than any other sentiment.

We were received, when once we were properly catalogued in their minds, very hospitably, and treated, at evening, to a sumptuous repast of slapjacks and beefsteak, accompanied by strong black coffee. We were assigned sleeping apartments in the middle of the one room, while our entertainers plunged into trough-like bunks on the walls, and lulled by the wailing cry of the coyote and the barking of the wolfish-looking half-Spanish dogs, we slept.

In the morning after a hearty breakfast of baking powder biscuit, breakfast bacon and black coffee, for your cattle ranch can seldom afford the luxuries of butter and milk, we soon made a bargain with our hosts to escort us to the railroad. On pretext of reassorting and washing our specimens, we conveyed them to a little brook flowing by the ranch, and making a sort of paint of a tough clay we had noticed there, we immersed each piece of gold in this mixture of clay and water effectively veiling the glittering color of our treasure, which excited nothing more dangerous than an expression of contempt in our caravan drivers.

The chief source of our feeling of security lay in this estimate put upon us by our cowboy escort, and we did not try to dispel the illusion in their minds. The only other source of danger that caused us much anxiety was that of the Comanches, or other warlike Indians who roved over this region, and never let slip an opportunity to prove themselves covetous, bloodthirsty poltroons as ever dogged an emigrant caravan or mining outfit, till they had them in a position that made resistance on the white man’s part utterly useless, and the attack on the part of the reds simply a cold-blooded murder, involving no personal risk to themselves.

The long and tedious days of heat, hardship, and weariness were forgotten by us when we at last rode into the little rude, temporary-looking town that stood for the present terminus of the Southern Railway and the future metropolis of the southwest.

Here we found a hotel where there were actually private rooms for guests, and appliances for cleansing and laving that aroused queer, thumping sensations at my heart as though they were messengers whispering to me of home. We shipped our specimens by express, or expressed our desire to do so, to a dreamy agent who stood by the window of the bare station house looking out over the prairie, and who was far too much preoccupied with his day-dreams of a future metropolitan city that was to cover all this plain, and convert the sand atoms of his homestead on the edge of the town into gold, to mind us.

We respected the greatness of the vision seen by his mental eye, and patiently waited till he should return to the earth from his airy flight which he did in the course of an hour or so, and turning to us, inquired if we wished to send the stuff East. We replied that such was indeed our earnest desire, and heaving a great sigh to denote how burdensome were his official duties, he proceeded deliberately to wait upon us, and informed us that in one hour and twenty minutes we should have an opportunity to proceed on our way eastward.

And the journey—when it was at last begun—how impossible to describe my feelings or even give a guess at those of my friend of the red flannel shirt and the big loyal heart! The only thing that remains to me of that journey is the recollection of the impatience to arrive at our destination that so filled my thoughts that all notice of commonplace things was swallowed up.

Less than a year’s absence from my native city had been so filled with strange fortunes and shifting adventures that it seemed as though years had flown. Abner himself could not be more surprised at the transformation in Chicago than I expected to be. And when at last we rolled into the Garden City of the West, it was hard to tell which, Abner or I, was the more completely lost in wonder; Abner at the stupendous change that had taken place since his departure from the city, and I that it had changed so little. We kept our precious freight in sight while it was being transferred to a safe deposit vault in the city, and that weight rolled away, our spirits rose to exuberance as we journeyed by horse car toward my uncle’s residence. Abner seemed a little depressed by the change in his surroundings and muttered once, as he noticed that he was the center of attraction, that “he’d rather face an old bear and her cubs than such a parcel of precious gaping idiots.” I gave him all the comfort in my power, which was not much, for my habiliments were not much better; but I despised the vapid, sneering crowd, who regarded him as a rare specimen, knowing as I did that Abner was every vein and fiber a hero in the world he had just left behind, and as such, quite independent of the adulation or ridicule of this modern beehive of humanity.

Arrived at the familiar street and number we were soon in my old home, exchanging greetings with my aged uncle, whose joy at my return, all unconscious as he was of my good fortune, added a hundred-fold to the pleasant anticipation on which I had fondly dwelt of gladdening his remaining days, and freeing them from all care.

He warmly seconded my desire to make Abner feel that this was a home in which he was entirely welcome, in a fashion to suit his own fancy, not a social straight-jacket into which he was invited to thrust himself, but a home which “vindicated the name and fulfilled the praise of home.”

Only waiting long enough to satisfy the claims of consanguinity that bound me to my dear uncle, I hastened to renovate and transform the greasy miner and traveler into a respectable Chicagoan, and ransacked my wardrobe left behind for the best it would afford. Then followed an expedition to the barber, the furnisher, and the hatter. Arrayed in my best, I stood before Abner, who did not for several seconds recognize his companion of the Mountain Spring Mine.

Leaving him to the mercies of my foster-father, from whom I had already learned that Lena was well, I hastened away to announce my right to claim her as my reward for having endured, as a good soldier, all the trials of a genuine backwoodsman. I rang the bell, as I had so often done before, and expected to meet the familiar face of the same faithful domestic that used to admit me, but presently the door opened, and I stood looking down into the startled eyes of Lena herself. My vanity could not have desired a prettier softening of the surprised expression in her lovely face into one of delighted recognition. Barber and tailor alike were powerless to erase the effects of sun and exposure on my countenance, but it took my gazelle but a moment to pierce the disguise, to give me such a welcome as relegated the painful experiences of my mountain life far into the background of memory. There was in Lena’s expressive features a new and more womanly charm that puzzled me, a new fountain of tenderness welling from her soft eyes, and dropping from her lips with every word of her soft, gentle speech. I had gone away hopelessly, forlornly in love, and now I had returned to fall into a still greater depth of distraction.

She questioned me so closely and rapidly as to my life and surroundings in the West, chided so energetically that I had not communicated in some way with her during the long period during which I was buried alive in the mountains, and beamed upon me with such evident satisfaction at beholding me again, that I could not doubt for a moment that her affection was of that type found in true womanhood, that time cannot efface or circumstances change.

But when I began to tell her that I had removed the ban that her father had placed upon our intercourse, she started as though she had forgotten a very painful phase of our past in the joy of our meeting. Red and white, blushed and paled alternately on her cheeks, and a glistening teardrop in the eye hinted of some secret cause of trouble that impended over our future. I tried to comfort her by telling her that the wealth of myself and gallant old partner was uncounted and practically unlimited in amount. Instead of being comforted, as I had hoped, she grew still more distressed, and put out her little hand in a gesture imploring me to stop, and in a voice unsteady with feeling, she exclaimed: “Oh, don’t, don’t. Please don’t say anything more about it. Oh, you don’t know what a wide chasm you are opening between us by your words, nor how they sting me to the heart.”

I looked at her in unfeigned and extreme astonishment. “Why, Lena dear,” I said, “what is it? I meant that every nugget should add luster to your happiness, and every ounce of the gold we gathered from the mine of Ophir should solace instead of pain you. I cannot understand you.”

“But have you not heard,” she rejoined, “how our affairs have gone since your going away? Our fortune is all gone, and of all our former wealth and grandeur, this home alone is left to us.”

“Oh, if that is all,” I said, laughing, “don’t shed another tear over it, for it makes not the least difference to me, I have plenty for all.”

“Ah, yes,” she pleaded very gently but very earnestly, “it does make a vast difference to me, as you must known upon reflecting a little.” I perceived that her sensitive little soul was racked with the thought that since her parents had in so mercenary a spirit forbidden me her presence, on account of my poverty, she should be equally mercenary, in my estimation, should she accept, now that I had fortune and she had none.

Cold logic failed to make any impression upon her mind, but when I brought to bear the weapon of Love’s logic, she blushingly yielded, and the crowning joy of my home-coming was complete.

The meeting with Lena’s parents was somewhat awkward, and Mr. Upton’s manners somewhat constrained. He listened quietly to the story of my adventures, and grew mournful in proportion as I enlarged upon the incidents of my good fortune, complained brokenly and bitterly of the injustice and hardness of the world that would not come to the rescue of an old business man whose whole life had been governed by the strictest rules of integrity, when a few thousands would have saved him from ruin.

“And would a few thousands save you yet?” I asked.

“Certainly,” said he, “this crisis has only come on during the last ten days.”

“My dear sir,” said I, “if that is all that stands in the way of your continued prosperity, have no further uneasiness on that subject; you can have the money to-morrow morning to the extent of one hundred thousand dollars.”

Had my mind been spiteful, I could have wished for no greater revenge than that which my words inflicted upon him; he started and colored and squirmed in his chair as though he had been stung by an adder, but necessity is a cruel teacher, and he could not afford to refuse even from me, under circumstances the most painful, to accept such an offer, and he therefore said in a tone of manly resolve: “I will accept it as a loan in the spirit in which it is offered, and I hope you will feel that I have been sufficiently punished for the heartless conduct of which I was guilty toward you.”

It was not for me to keep him upon the rack, for his gray hairs were a sufficient title to my respect; and hastily dismissing the subject, I sought Lena’s congenial presence, more happy in the outcome of the last-mentioned incident than I could express, though my beaming countenance was a telltale message to her eyes, and my tongue was obliged to confirm what my features had confessed.

Who need attempt to describe the overflowing happiness of the days that followed?

Together Abner and I roamed the city, I acting as guide and interpreter of many things which of needs must be mysterious to him, but I am obliged to confess that even to Abner I begrudged the time spent away from the center around which, in my eyes, Chicago revolved.

I would be more than human did I not feel gratified by the honor bestowed upon me by my fellow-men.

While it seemed to me that in the closing year of my school life I had suffered a culmination of woes almost unbearable it seemed now that events conspired to make me a thoroughly happy and successful man. The story of my strange discoveries in the cliffs of the Colorado spread like wildfire throughout the civilized world, beginning at my home university, my Alma Mater, at whose feet I had laid my trophies on coming home. She had responded generously by bestowing the honors of the institution upon me. I have been accorded like distinctions by several Eastern colleges, and have received decorations from several of the ancient and honorable orders of Europe. Doubtless the story of the fabulous wealth, which accompanied the scientific discovery, added a romantic tinge to the whole in the public mind, but to the credit of mankind and to my great gratification the world seemed to regard, as I did, the mine of knowledge unearthed as being of vastly more real worth to humanity than all the gold of Ophir.

I am a quiet man, and hate fuss and noise. I enjoyed in a quiet way the respect and admiration accorded me on all hands, on account of my valuable contributions to science, but I also squirmed under the would-be admiring terms showered upon me by a certain class of sickly sentimental sycophants who follow the public scent and strive to bask in a little cheap popularity by association with those who are supposed to have a stock of that commodity on hand.

I was pursued by a few such characters steadily and relentlessly, was obliged to listen with what courtesy I could summon to extravagant tributes to the splendor of my mental equipment, while I was forced to admit to myself that my abilities were of a very ordinary kind and could not therefore believe in their sincerity and their discrimination both at once.

However much I enjoyed the hearty congratulations of my real friends, I felt that I was far too young a man to think of retiring upon the strength of one or two chance achievements, and my ambition was stimulated to greater efforts in the direction of archæology.

Lena grew as enthusiastic as I in her loyalty to me and all that could interest me, and the upshot of it all was that dear, loving little Lena promised that an early day next June should be named for our wedding, provided I should make her my companion on my next exploring expedition, and turn it into a wedding tour.

Who could refuse such a companion to beguile the long hours of banishment such as I had endured at the Garden of Ophir, and to chase the hard lines of care and weariness from my workaday brow? In fact who could be unselfish enough to refuse to ratify a bargain whose terms were all in one’s favor?

Misgivings as to the hardships to which Lena should be subjected were lightly brushed aside as straws by Lena herself who stoutly maintained that no hardships of the frontier could be so trying as the period of waiting for tidings of me through which she had passed, that no solitude of the wilderness where we two might roam could ever impress her with the spirit of utter loneliness that had weighed down upon her in my absence, and consulting my own preferences I could but admit with a thrill of delight that her logic was that of a true, affectionate, womanly woman, and so everything was settled.

Abner, domiciled cosily in my uncle’s house, fell easily into the new mode of life like the true philosopher that he was, and his enjoyment of everything relating to our great city enhances every day. He is enjoying himself far too well, he announces, to think of giving up his present comforts for the pleasure of shooting the rapids of the Colorado, or “liftin’ the har offin’ a Piute Injun. No more of that for me, thankee,” said our hero of many a wild fracas in the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, or the valleys of the Sierras.

As for myself, I am happy in the loving favor of Lena, and comfortably secure in the possession of enough wealth to smooth my path through life. Beyond this my desire for wealth ceases.

Naturally my mind turns to thoughts of benevolent schemes to better the condition of my fellows.

I shall build and endow no colleges. I shall lay no hand in oppression upon the wages of the poor that I may rear a splendid monument to my memory like the Pullman Satire upon benevolence. I shall not present my native city with a Carnegie library whose shelves are packed with quartos, folios, and octavos, and the exterior of whose resting place is a dream of lovely architecture, wall and portico and arch, vieing with each other for the palm of costliness and beauty, and whose surmounting graceful spire points to heaven in mocking apostrophe to the Goddess of Charity, while the men who have produced all this wealth swelter and toil in the melting heat of furnace and forge, accompanied in their work by the clamor of iron, the din of labor, forming a weird scenic effect, powerfully reminding the workers of Plutonian fires, while their wages decline, and cares increase, that the cool index finger of the great library may be reared toward heaven.

My investigations into the cause of humanity have brought me, now that I have leisure to devote to the subject, nausea and disgust at the so-called benevolence of the world. Do the coal barons hold a splendid feast at Delmonico’s? The price of coal must needs go up, and the poor shivering tenant of the rookeries of our city must shiver a little harder and burn a little less coal.

Is the tariff upon garments slightly reduced? Immediately the miserable price of three pennies that were paid our sweaters for making a shirt must go down to two, and the dry loaf that kept the breath of life within the starving body must be reduced correspondingly in size, lest the fat margin of the clothier should suffer, or the luxurious plans of his fashionable lady be curtailed.

Hard times from all these causes make many applicants for clerkships, and down goes the salary of the frail girls who stand behind the counter till one swoons away, and is carried home only to find that her place is supplied when she returns, at a reduced salary, “for competition is the life of trade, and business is business, you know.”

Yes, we know business is business, and we begin to know that hardness is hardness, and that the heart and life of business is the adamantine monster, self.

Our faculties, at first feebly stirred by these considerations, become powerfully alive to the fact that “Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn,” and with the knowledge comes the desire to counteract these direful effects in the world, to the limit of our power.

Here again we bless the quiet, tactful, uplifting hand of woman; for I found that Lena’s invariable habit of life had been, when her fortunes were smiling, to spend many hours of every week ministering to the afflicted and poverty-stricken creatures around her, and when she was no longer sure that her own daily bread would be forthcoming on the morrow, she still bestowed her gentle ministrations upon these poor mortals from whose hearts hope had fled.

Not till I knew this chapter in Lena’s life could I understand the new well-spring of tenderness in her bonnie blue eyes, or fully appreciate the broader human sympathy that swayed her actions. She began at once the work of enlisting my sympathies in the work of restoring “these defaced images of the Creator,” as she was pleased to call them, and no spectacle of wretchedness, poverty, and filth, could disguise in her eyes the fact that they were his images, warped and wrecked though they might be, but still bearing the imprint of a benevolent, all-pitying Over-soul.

Some of the tales of suffering she related to me seemed incredible, even from Lena’s lips, and so, as much from curiosity as from any better motive, I began to accompany her in her capacity as ministering angel, and the sly Lena knew that my tender susceptibilities all unused to such scenes of utter woe among the children of men, would do the rest. I soon adopted the plan of acting as sort of private detective, and asking all sorts of questions and recording them together with the answers in my memorandum. The result arrived at was startling in its industrial significance.

“Poverty, hunger, and rags; suffering, sorrow, and sin.”

Can the Christian womanhood of my native city revel in luxury and wealth, while within sound of their gay laughter and gleeful converse, “A woman sits in unwomanly rags, plying her needle and thread?” Does she believe vitally that God is no respecter of persons, or is it a sort of hazy abstract truth in the moral job-lot delivered to her weekly by her sleek, well-groomed pastor?

I am perfecting an industrial project by which I hope to reach a helping hand to my unfortunate brother. I propose to build large factories for the production of articles necessary to the world in its plain, everyday requirements.

No day-dreams as to methods and management are to be indulged, but stern men of experience will conduct the business on conservative business principles.

The work done will range from that which taxes the strength of the strongest man to that which is suitable for feeble women, not physically capable of enduring heavy work, and yet compelled to work for a livelihood. The wages paid for all classes of work will be liberal for satisfactory service, enabling all the operatives and their families to live in wholesome plenty, and build a snug fortification against the encroachments of old age. In addition to this a premium wage rate will be paid each operative at the end of the month for those whose industry has been unflagging and have not lost a day during the month unnecessarily, and a regular physician attached to the concern will dictate as to what is necessary in sickness.

This latter will not be paid in cash, however, but in stock in the concern at its actual par value; and thus every operative may, in time, become a partner in the business, the plan being so drawn as to preclude all possibility of any individual’s owning an undue share of the whole.

Thus while ministering to their self-respect, by inducing honest effort, and rousing their highest ability as skilled operatives, their interest in the prosperity of the whole project will be intensified by the sense of partial ownership.

Into all my plans for bettering humanity Lena enters with the heartiest enthusiasm; and if my scheme is successful, I have no doubt, it will owe much to her valuable suggestions as a result of her lifelong devotion to the cause of the

“Lowly and humble, the weary and broken in heart,
Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and desperate part.”

Chapter XVII.

Thornless Roses.

So the days were flitting by, made happily evanescent by a busy round of planning and purring, a judicious intermixture of lovers’ delights and practical preparation for carrying out our industrial project.

Disliking the vulgar curiosity to which a public marriage would subject us, we decided that our nuptials should be celebrated very quietly at Lena’s home, and immediately afterward we should depart on our very practical wedding tour, or else our rather romantic exploring expedition. All these plans in due time were carried out, and one delightfully fresh June morning found Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Hardman, at your service, steaming westward to revisit on my part the mine discovered by Abner and myself, and having enjoyed the exquisite pleasure of showing Lena through labyrinth and hall, and feasted her eyes upon greater wealth than ever Crœsus dreamed of, and interpreted for her ear the strange story of the picture writing on the wall and tablet, we determined to visit the splendid ruins of Mexico, Central America, and Peru, for I had already formed my theory as to how these two latter countries were peopled, and with my present knowledge of the hieroglyphic records, I felt that I could either dissolve my misty theory with the cold touchstone of fact, or confirm it with hard unanswerable reasons.

In one thought I took great comfort, namely, that Lena need run no such gauntlet of river and mountain, flood and fall, as that which Abner and I had been compelled to do in order to reach our modernized Ophir.

We traveled by rail directly to Leadville, and registered our names at the Occidental Hotel, which stood upon the site of The Starlight Roost, where only a little more than a year before I had found a partial shelter from the elements. Now a splendid edifice of modern pattern and costly workmanship occupied its place, and as I trod the marble floor of the palatial home for weary travelers I was almost in doubt as to my own identity, and as to whether this was really the identical spot occupied by the rough board shanty where I lodged, until I recognized one familiar object in the strange surroundings which was no other than my former landlord of The Starlight Roost, who accosted me in his old familiar, hearty way: “Struck it rich, I hear. Luckiest man in the camp. Read all about your great strike in the Chicago papers. Where’s old Ab? Not planted yet I hope. Oh, glad to hear he’s all right; regular old trump.”

My old employer, too, was hearty in his congratulations on the success of the Abner-Hardman partnership, and expressed a hope neatly turned that the new partnership, with a glance Lena-ward, would prove happy, and rallied me slyly on my secretiveness in leaving camp, but professed now to have found the key to my eccentric actions. I assured him that no such airy motives as he insinuated had influenced my departure from Leadville, and gave him a running description of our experiences after leaving him, in which he was greatly interested. Indeed, I felt that, after all, these rough frontiersmen were more sincere in their friendship and more generous than their more highly polished Eastern brothers.

Many old acquaintances crowded around me at our hotel, and all expressed their satisfaction at my streak of luck, and many a poor, forlorn fellow heaved a sigh of regret for homes left behind at the sight of Lena’s fresh, rosy countenance; hungry for the home-love of mothers, sisters, wives, and sweethearts, all left behind at the touch of the contagion called gold-fever.

I learned from the miners that The Mountain Spring Mine, as we had called our first discovery, and where our unfortunate partner, Riley Cox, had lost his life, had been appropriated by some of the miners and ranchers sent out to chastise the Piutes, who had killed several settlers and prospectors. Abner and I had for some time been supposed to be included among their victims, until the Eastern papers announced our wonderful discovery on the Colorado. Our informants stated also that the very cabin which we had occupied was now inhabited by our successors. Under other circumstances I might have been inclined to dispute the ownership of The Mountain Spring with them, but it was of small importance to me, since we had already secured, and carefully invested, enough gold to satisfy any rational being, and had also the means of replenishing our stock at pleasure; for I had small fear of any interference with our treasure house, as we had, while giving out the main results of our discovery, been careful not to locate our mine or mention the manner of approach to it.

But our discovery of The Mountain Spring had brought us some good results; for the usual rush had followed the news that a rich lead had been struck, and, as if by magic, a branch railroad had been built to the Gunnison country, and southward toward our secret mine, so that we were relieved of making a very long journey by pack train.

All was novelty and pleasure to Lena, who bore all the hardship of our horseback journey, in the last stage of our journey to Ophir, without a murmur. We were, of course, ostensibly merely honeymooning in the mountains, and when we reached the region of the mine of Ophir we sent our attendants forward several miles to establish a camp, while we proposed to turn aside and view some scenery which I wished to show madam, where we would camp that night, and rejoin our party next day. I had no trouble in locating the stream which Abner and I had known as the underground river, and riding leisurely up its banks, we soon came to its apparent source as it gushed, a full-blown river, from underneath the mountain.

Picketing our horses beside the stream, we proceeded to equip ourselves for the subterranean journey which we began by clambering along the narrow shelf bordering the waters, till we reached the grooved doorway connecting with the floodgate, where the waters were once more turned back from their course, and together we re-explored all the vaulted halls and ample chambers both of the living and the dead. Then, as the final test of Lena’s spirit as a backwoodsman, she fearlessly followed me through the cramped passage beneath the floodgate, to the chamber where reposed enough gold to strike panic to the hearts of those wise men of the earth who aver that gold alone is a fit substance for money, and to start up a school of economists who would speedily prove beyond a peradventure by the letters on a locust’s wing, and the ruddy glow of the wart on the face of the man in the moon, that gold had become so plentiful as to be useless as money, and henceforth would be sought after only by barbarians for nose ornaments, because it did not poison the flesh, or for filling the teeth of more polished natives, because it did not corrode.

However, Lena and I took it more quietly, and she merely expressed her satisfaction that we had so substantial a footing on which to base our benevolent plans. Then as happily as Adam and Eve reveled in the beauteous and delicious products of Eden, we spent the evening hours in the Garden of Ophir, feasting eye and palate upon the semi-tropical fruits, and slept beneath the fragrant boughs as securely as the birds that sought shelter in this oasis of delights set in the midst of barrenness.

Next morning we regaled ourselves again upon the fine-flavored fruits, looked longingly and regretfully toward the perfect little park, as we entered the rock doorway of the mines, and closing it carefully after us, I carefully instructed Lena in the working of the various doors, and the perplexing angles of the various branching passages, that in case anything should happen to cut short the uncertain earthly career of Abner and myself, Lena might not be shut out from her rightful inheritance, and gave to her, as a sort of last will and testament from me, a carefully prepared chart drawn by me at Chicago, of the course of the underground river from its deflection from the Colorado, the mouth of the mine, and a plan of the mines and vaults themselves, so that by its aid, in connection with her knowledge of the place, it formed a complete guide to every apartment; while to the uninstructed it would be as unintelligible as Sanskrit or Modoc.

With Lena’s cheery, ringing laughter at thought of our queer surroundings echoing through the dark uncanny vaults and aisles, where the bones of ancient Israelites moldered, the artfully contrived doorways again shutting in the secrets of Solomon from the world, we return to our horses and the outer world, mount and ride through the bracing mountain air to join our attendants in camp, satisfied with our adventure, and ready to retrace our way to Leadville, whence we intend to travel by rail to San Francisco, and thence by ship to Mexico, to visit the scene of Corinthia’s sorrows and triumphs, to ponder by the ruins of her palace, and reflect upon the folly of human strife, and the wickedness of human jealousy; where I hope to point a sly moral for the benefit of the feminine world in general, and a solemn warning to Lena in particular, to eschew that unreasonable and direful form of hatred toward her sister woman called jealousy.

Having thus, like a wise man, foreseen the evil and hidden myself behind the bulwark of admonition, I shall laugh at the calamity of the simple man who passes on, and is punished.

Our next objective point was reached in due time, partly by rail, partly by steamer, and partly by burro express. Here on Mexican soil we lingered, exploring the ruins of vast buildings devoted to worship, and magnificent palaces and places of pleasure, ruined baths, fragments of cemented aqueducts, all indicating the high degree of perfection in the arts of civilization to which they had attained.

Stupendous piles of masonry, in the form of pyramids, spoke of Egyptian influences. The beautiful adornment of the inner walls of their temples with images of scroll work and basket work seemed but a rehearsal of the story of the building and adorning of Solomon’s temple, and the picture writings on wall and arch, indicating the movements of the planets, the occurrence of eclipses at a precise future date predicted by symbols with the knowledge of astronomy that it involved, and the undoubted proofs of the worship of the sun in a secondary sense, all pointed to Accadian learning and superior mental acumen.

To the archæologists who had been here before me these three classes of ruins had been a puzzle and a perplexity. Facts apparently in direct contradiction to each other, which they strove to reconcile by murmuring Aztec, Toltec, Egyptian. But to me, in the light of the knowledge I had drunk from the tablets, it was as plain and simple as the day; each fragment over which my brother studied, fumed, and sweated in vain endeavor to harmonize them into a whole, came together at the bidding of the Accadian historian, like the separate parts of King Solomon’s temple, where the sound of the hammer was not heard. To me there was no question of Aztec and Toltec.

It was simply Israelitish and Accadian. The blending of the genius of two gifted peoples into a harmonious whole, yet preserving distinctly marked individuality of the two nations.

The bias toward a pyramidal form of building was the natural result of centuries of bondage on the part of Israel in Egypt. Here, too, they gained some knowledge of picture writing, as it is known that Moses was familiar with this form of records, which was taken up, and improved by the Accadians as being in line with their taste for intellectual pursuits, particularly of astronomy.

From my vantage ground of absolute knowledge on the subject, I could see the sublime leadings of Providence in all these changes of the Israelites, which seemed in themselves great hardships, but were, in reality, merely natural steps in the evolution of a learned and polished nation from crude ancestry.

The bondage in Egypt gave them new views upon many subjects. Architecture, astronomy, and in the art of symbol writing, or ideographic writing. Under the tyranny and selfish ambition of the latter years of Solomon’s reign their energies began to yield to oppression, and their powers began to wane. Then came the Babylonian captivity, bringing them into close contact with the superior Accadians from the mountains of Elim, and by intermarriage the infusion of new energy was brought about, and with the thorough blending of their nationalities promised to become the most powerful, the most pious, and the most learned nation of earth.

But before that happy climax was reached, sinister forces arose, as we have seen, and divorced the almost united scions of the two distinct branches, causing blight and disease to attack the fresh, bleeding wound, until it had destroyed the whole tree.

We lingered contentedly by the ruins of proud cities of the past, and feasted amid the world of knowledge unlocked by the golden key of Ophir. Here was a city builded of shining white limestone, whose streets were laid in various-colored cement, reflecting from wall and street the splendor of solar light and diffusing the knowledge of an interesting people to succeeding generations.

Again we walked in the ruined gardens and parks of other cities, where fountains had gurgled forth their liquid music and flowers had lent their charms to the senses where semi-tropical trees had shed their wealth of beauty and fragrance in bloom and verdure.

But above all these sights that charmed us and beguiled the passing moments, one class of objects had power to wholly absorb our interest and fascinate for hours together, at one point, and that which so bewitched us as to render us oblivious of all else beside, was the picture writings we found on the ruins of temple and tomb.

I now had an assistant in my linguistic labors who threatened to become my tutor by her aptness and earnestness in deciphering difficult passages. The language was the same as that which I found upon the walls of Ophir, and on the tablets in the vault, though there were continually occurring new symbols and characters which kept us constantly in the rôle of students; and the information we gained from them rounded out our meagre knowledge gleaned from the tablets until we had the history of the ten tribes from the period of their coming to the shores of the new Canaan, with tolerable clearness, down to the close of the beauteous Corinthia’s reign, where it seemed to break off abruptly as though some great upheaval had interrupted their national life, and brought disaster upon the head of national progress, decay upon the brightness of their proud civilization.

At Palenque we wandered over the remains of a splendid temple of worship that must have resembled the Temple of Solomon very closely. I hired some workmen here, after obtaining leave of the proper authorities, and made extensive excavations around this interesting relic, and was more and more impressed with the resemblance that it bore to the great temple at Jerusalem with its cloisters and courts, sepulchers, and subterranean galleries.

Here again we found the thread of the historian’s narrative and traced it through the same succession of events and incidents, the same abandon of admiration for their Cleopatra of the West, and finally the same abrupt ending of the annals of this people.

A summer of genuine pleasure passed away and found us still lingering to enjoy the feast of intellect spiced by “gentle dalliance” with connubial love and Platonic affinity.

All our efforts failed to wring any further information from the unfeeling brick and stone, and we were obliged at last to conclude that the finis of Ophir’s history, as a people, had been written, perhaps in blood and violence, possibly by pestilence, hardly by gradual decline and decay, else why should the historians break off so suddenly and so completely. One other field still lured us on to delve in its rich stores of antiquities in the hope that the thread of the narrative might be resumed. A country more intensely interesting if possible than that of Ophir, namely Peru, the land of the Incas, of fabulous wealth pounced upon by the pitiless and mercenary Spaniards, while they butchered mercilessly whoever stood between them and their coveted booty.

Our journey to Peru involved the necessity of an ocean voyage which was a pleasant incident in our wedding tour, except that during a severe gale encountered by our ship we seemed to have the honey of our bridal moon somewhat mixed with bile, menacing the stability of our gastric institutions, and almost shaking the constancy of our purpose to continue in the flesh any longer.

Arrived at Cuzco, we were struck at once with the similarity of the ruins to those of Ophir, and our zeal was as fierce, and our appetites for hieroglyphics as unsatisfied, as ever.

At first we found apparently a large addition to the system of picture writing in vogue at Ophir, but a few days’ hard work and brain-splitting comparisons showed us that it was in reality two distinct systems, and was inscribed upon two systems of architecture as distinct as the language themselves.

The new element, or as we learned, the new language, was doubtless that of the aboriginal dwellers in Peru, before the coming of the Incas, and its study, therefore, nothing to our present purpose.

Ignoring it then we began again to make some progress in deciphering the writings of the worshipers of the sun. Strangely familiar too were the ornamental scrolls and vases with which the inner walls of the temples of worship were decorated. The gold and silver vessels were seemingly as common in the palaces of Cuzco as are those of the commonest china with us.

Surrounding these palaces were the ruins of costly and exquisitely artistic gardens, containing once, no doubt, the most beautiful natural flowers, and to bridge over the chasm between their ephemeral yearly stay, art had mingled with the living plants imitations in gold and silver so perfect in form, and so just in proportion, as to excite the sense of smell in expectation of the accompanying fragrance, and deceive the eye and provoke the sense of touch to substantiate the evidence of the other sense only to expose the clever deception upon nature.

Spanish historians have recorded the glories of the temple at Cuzco, dedicated to the worship of the sun, with its image of the sun upon the inner wall opposite the eastern portal of the temple, where the first rays of its prototype might kiss into life at morning, and reflect its dazzling rays throughout the temple flooding it with glory.

It remained for us to unearth the golden image that had figured so conspicuously in the Spanish revelries and excesses under Pizarro.

A Peruvian legend runs, that during the night following the possession of Cuzco by the invaders, the cavaliers gave themselves up to unbridled license and bacchanalian rioting and plundering, securing many rich trophies of gold and silver from the public places of worship. One of the troopers had obtained possession of this now famous image of the sun, a human face with golden rays, in imitation of the sun’s rays, emanating in all directions from it.

His elation at his sudden good fortune took the form of a desire to double his store of gold at gaming; so he staked it and lost it. Half-crazed with grief and strong drink he swore vengeance on his lucky opponent and stealthily followed him through the darkened street at midnight, ran him through with his poniard, regained possession of his treasure, and his comrade’s portion also, and fled. But now that he had recovered his prize, he was in sore perplexity to know how to retain it, and escape the wrath of his commander, should his crime be discovered; for however meritorious it might be to slay an innocent, defenseless Peruvian, it might be a bad night’s job for him to deprive Pizarro of one of his adventurous followers when his force was already so small, and the need of more plunderers so great. At last he bethought him of a device by which he hoped to escape with both his head and his golden image.

Having first carefully concealed his booty, and in doing so, as he found to his sorrow, “builded better than he knew,” he dragged the lifeless body of his victim to the latticed doorway of one of the vaults beneath the temple, where a number of the submissive Peruvians were confined as hostages for the delivering of an immense treasure promised the cruel Spaniard as the price of their liberty when captured; the cavaliers being thus able to carry on in a smaller way a business as diabolical as that of Pizarro toward Atahualpa, the ruling Inca, whom Pizarro murdered in cold blood after he had paid the ransom of a room full of gold as high as Atahualpa could reach, according to the terms of a solemn agreement between the guileless Inca and the fiendish Spaniard.

The cavalier then slipped his bloody poniard through the bars into the cell of the prisoners, and then running breathless with haste and simulated fright to Pizarro, called on him for vengeance against the treacherous Peruvians, saying that as he and his comrade stood just outside the bars of the vault where their prisoners were confined, proposing terms of liberation, one of the Peruvians crept up to the bars, screened by his mates, and reaching through the lattice, snatched his own poniard from its scabbard and plunged it into the heart of his comrade, who chanced at that moment to move a little nearer the door.

Such an outrage could not of course be overlooked by Pizarro, the pious soldier of the cross, so he promptly ordered that every one of the prisoners should be burned at the stake forthwith, and our cavalier was commissioned to carry out the righteous sentence, which he did with great alacrity, not one of the poor fellows living to see the morning light.

But whether it is possible that some twinges of remorse could have entered a heart so cold and pitiless as the cavalier had shown his to be, and so disturbed his mind as to impair his memory, or whether, as seems more in keeping with his revealed character of miser, murderer, and conspirator, his over-anxiety to secrete it safely got the better of him, will never be known; but certain it is, so the legend goes, that when Pizarro had accomplished all his nefarious work of ruin and bloodshed upon a happy and innocent people, and prepared to move his forces toward the seacoast, that our cavalier could not find the place where he had hidden the image of the sun, and after searching earnestly for several hours unsuccessfully, he became frantic, and raved and routed up and down the street in the region of the great temple, uttering imprecations too horrible to repeat, and tearing his hair for very fury.

At last he was seen to take a little powder from his pocket, and in a few moments his raidings and ravings, his lurid profanity, and his all-devouring cruelty and greed, were things of the past forever with him, for he died as the fool dieth, by his own hand.

And to-day the Peruvians say that the spot which he profaned is haunted by his restless spirit, that at every phase of the moon corresponding with that of the night when he died, his ghost walks and talks, searches and gesticulates in vain endeavor to find the lost treasure. While some venturous spirits declared that they had approached near enough to the airy being to distinguish the haggard, grief-stricken features of his distorted countenance, and to plainly mark him in the act of tearing his hair in impotent ghostly rage that the object of his search still eluded his grasp and kept the worn and disquieted spirit ever in a ceaseless round of fruitless wanderings.

Some of the more timorous ones aver that when the wind moans dismally through the trees and avenues, they can hear his mournful sighs as he wanders wearily up and down from midnight until dawn begins to flush the east, and when the tempest rages wildly, they even believe that they can distinguish the sound of his voice in wild blasphemy, and blood-curdling oaths borne on the wings of the blast.

Perhaps you and I can understand partly why they never hear his voice in calm, fair weather; but the traditions and superstitions of these people are as deeply rooted in their lives as other, and perhaps as unreasonable ones, dear reader, are inseparably fixed in our beings in this highly favored land that we all love so well.

A great shout went up from my workmen when, in one of the vaults beneath the old temple, they unearthed the famous image, perfect yet in every particular, and wrapped carefully in the tattered remains of a Spanish cloak.

None of the trophies brought away from Peru as the result of my labors in antiquarian fields can compare in value with this one in my estimation, and as I look at its burnished countenance, seeming to beam forth peace and good will, it typifies to me that hapless people who perished in such numbers at the hands of the foreign hordes of adventurers and gold-seekers, while those who were spared were reduced to straits so pitiable that they had reason to weep, not for their slaughtered friends, but for themselves, because of the miseries that had come like a clap of thunder from a serene sky upon their lives.

They were a happy example of a people working and planning in common for the common good, and their contented, happy national and individual life shamed the boasted civilization of Europe, so that a Spanish writer while attempting to describe the condition of comfort, plenty, and even luxury, of their surroundings, disclaimed the power to make a comparison that would convey a just idea of the people to his countrymen at home, from the fact that there was nothing in all the range of his knowledge to which it was comparable.

But I had a more serious task to perform in Cuzco than merely trophy-hunting. I had a deep conviction borne in upon my mind that here was the missing link in the chain of evidence that was to answer the question so often asked, but never heretofore answered in the world. What was the fate of the ten tribes, and in what far off land have they found a home to become changed by climatic adoption, and the great law of evolution that forbids stagnation in nature, and decrees that man shall progress either forward or backward?

While humbly mindful of my human weakness, I yet take a very human pride in the fact that it was reserved for Lena and myself, of all the millions of mortals who have trodden this earth in the centuries that are already numbered by decades since the Babylonian captivity, to answer that question intelligently and finally.

A story more fascinating than those of Arabian Nights or fairies, the tale of real beings of flesh and blood with all our own ambitions and hopes and desires is here written legibly and unmistakably when once the tangled thread of narrative is unwound.

The story of the engrafting of the Inca scion upon the Peruvian stock, under circumstances that proved the identity of the Incas as a remnant of the people of Ophir, is very complete and satisfactory.

The coming of the first Inca among the people of Peru with his golden wedge and mysterious religion, which he claimed to have received directly from heaven, and to have come himself directly from the sun, is clearly explained by the picture writings of Ophir and Peru.

The wedge was an ever present symbol about the altars and temples in Mexico, until it became gradually an object of worship among the Hebrews and Elimites alike. Should circumstances permit, perhaps I shall some day write the sequel to the story of Ophir, and detail the circumstances under which Corinthia’s kingdom was rent asunder after her reign was finished, and how all that were left of the Israelites wandered to the southward, and amalgamated with the Peruvians, and again grew to be powerful and prosperous, only to be swallowed by the bloodthirsty Spaniards. The happy circles of friends that were broken and shattered by avarice, and the mournfully romantic story of Atahualpa, the reigning Inca when Pizarro came, and the grief and despair of his young sweetheart who was bereaved, and who narrowly escaped a fate worse than bereavement or death.

But now we must turn our faces homeward again, for we have work to do for humanity there. Richly laden with the trophies of our sojourn among the moldering ruins of the past, we re-embark for our own shores and, favored by wind and tide, we stand in due time upon our native soil once more, and in a few hours’ travel overland we annihilate the stretch of miles that lies between us and home.

The first familiar face to greet us as we alight from the comfortable parlor on wheels, is that of our picturesque disciple of the red shirt, Abner, who greets us with his old hearty good will and makes us feel that it is good to be among friends again. He is quickly followed by my revered uncle and Lena’s parents, who escort us in triumph to our own quarters. Age seemed to have toyed with our relatives very gently, and as for Abner, he appeared still to be engaged in the pleasant task of growing younger, and in the art of enjoying himself every hour of the day.

Leaving our friends to enjoy the calm afternoon of life, with reason sitting serenely enthroned to guide their bark to the haven, and the fiercer passions that warp human judgment cooled, and the prejudices of youth somewhat modified by universal benevolence born of experience among men, we soon begin active preparations for carrying out our great industrial co-operative plan to stimulate honest industry, and curb, in some measure, the tendency of wealth to encroach upon the sacred rights of poverty, and relieve poverty from the necessity of truckling to wealth.

To our surprise and gratification we learned on our return that several of the wealthiest manufacturers of Chicago and New York had expressed a desire to adopt our plan extensively, and only awaited our experiment to prove its practicability. We now have our plan in operation; it has been thoroughly tested, and it has been successful beyond our highest hopes.

Not only that, but it is being adopted all over our country, and we hope to live to see a time when it will be in universal use throughout the world. It has gone far toward furnishing a solution of the difficult problem of harmonizing labor and capital; and, as Abner and I smoke our evening cigar together, we feel that we toiled in the mountains, ventured amid the perils of Indian warfare, and tempted the dangerous current not wholly in vain.

The End.

Transcriber’s Notes

- Clear typos and wrong punctuation were corrected.

- New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

- Some inconsistent hyphenated words have been normalized.

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Table of Contents

- The Gold of Ophir

- Contents.

- The Gold of Ophir.

- Chapter I.

- Chapter II.

- Chapter III.

- Chapter IV.

- Chapter V.

- Chapter VI.

- Chapter VII.

- Chapter VIII.

- Chapter IX.

- Chapter X.

- Chapter XI.

- Chapter XII.

- Chapter XIII.

- Chapter XIV.

- Chapter XV.

- Chapter XVI.

- Chapter XVII.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE