Jack the Young Explorer

AS the train drew slowly into the Helena station Jack's eyes searched the platform, looking for Hugh, and in a moment he recognized the tall form, standing well back from the crowd and looking at the platform of each car as it passed.

"Hurrah, Hugh!" called Jack, as he waved his hand frantically; but he had to jump down to the platform and elbow his way through the crowd before Hugh's eye caught his.

"Well, son," said Hugh, as he grasped his hand in a firm clasp, "I sure am glad to see you. I only got here last night myself, but it's been a long day waiting around here alone, and I was afraid that maybe you wouldn't come on this train."

"Well," replied Jack, "I'm mighty glad to get here. I was a little afraid that maybe something might have happened to keep you, and that I should have to do the waiting. It's all right now though, and I hope we can get off to-morrow. I don't want to stop in towns any more than you do, and I guess we shall both be glad to get into camp."

"Sure, we will," said Hugh. "Now, what have you in the way of baggage? Of course you've got your bed, and I see your gun and bag in your hand. I've got a room at the Merchants' Hotel, and I reckon we might as well go up there, and then after you've eaten we can see the sights."

"Well," said Jack, "I've got a small trunk and my bed, and we can pack those up to the hotel, and then I'll put the stuff I need in my bed and my war bag and we'll be all ready for the stage whenever it goes."

"All right," said Hugh, "I reckon we better take one of these hacks here, and the man can put your things on top, while we ride inside. It isn't much of a walk up to the hotel, only about a mile, but maybe we'd better get there as quick as we can and have our dinner and attend to our business, and then we won't have anything on our minds."

Before long they were rolling rapidly over the smooth road toward the town, which stands at some distance from the railroad. As they passed along, Jack saw, to the right, enormous piles of cobblestones extending for half a mile or more toward the town. For some time he looked at them with curiosity, and then asked Hugh what they were.

"Why, don't you know?" Hugh replied. "That's the old placer ground that they used to work over when this camp was first settled. Last Chance Gulch they called it. That gravel and rock that you see there came out of the sluice boxes. Every little while, I'm told, a man comes down here now and works over some of that gravel, and they say that to-day there's fair wages to be made mining right here in the town. I've heard that there are some Chinamen that work these gravels right along. There's a heap of gold been taken out of that gulch, but, of course, just how much nobody knows. Every now and then, in digging the foundations of a house in town, some man will turn up a little nugget of gold, and then all the workmen quit digging and begin to pan out the foundations."

"That seems queer, Hugh, doesn't it? I suppose the same thing happens in lots of places along the Rocky Mountains, because a great many of the big towns now stand where old mining camps used to be."

"Yes," said Hugh, "that's surely true. There's lots of gold left in the sides of these hills yet, even after the miners have been over the dirt."

"What kind of a trip did you have coming up, Hugh?" asked Jack. "Did anything happen on the road?"

"No," replied Hugh; "nothing of any account. Joe drove me in to the railroad with my stuff. He had to come in for a load of groceries and a keg of nails, and I took the train west to Ogden, and that little narrow gauge road up to Garrisons, and then came east on the main line. I was kind of scared that maybe I'd get lost, making so many changes; but everybody I met was mighty pleasant spoken, and I didn't have a mite of trouble. Of course you know what I saw on the road, for you and I went back that same way two years ago, when we came back from the coast."

By this time they were climbing the hills of the town, and a moment later the hack stopped in front of the Merchants' Hotel. Jack got a room, in which his things were put, and the two friends went down to dinner.

After this was over, it took Jack but half an hour to get from his trunk and pack in his bag the few things that he needed for his trip, and then he and Hugh sallied out and took a long walk out of town, into the high hills which overlook Helena and the great flat through which the river flows.

On the way back they passed the stage office and arranged for two seats on the box of the stage that left the next morning.

"It ain't much use for you to engage these seats," said the man in the office; "I don't believe there's ary person going out to-morrow morning except you two, still I'll put your names down for the two seats on the box if you like. It can't do no harm, anyhow. You have your stuff down here to-morrow morning any time after seven o'clock and we'll take care of it and see that it goes on the stage."

Their long walk had given Hugh and Jack a good appetite and they heartily enjoyed their supper. After they had eaten they started out again and walked through the brilliantly lighted streets, looking in at the windows of shops and saloons, each of which seemed to be full of customers. The air was mild and balmy and the beautiful night had brought many people into the street.

As they passed an open door, from which shone a bright light, Jack looked in and saw people sitting at tables playing cards, while toward the back of the room was a long narrow table surrounded by men who seemed greatly interested in what was going on.

"What are they doing in there, Hugh?" said Jack.

"Why, I reckon that's a gambling house," was the reply. "You know there's no law against gambling in most of these Montana towns, the way I hear there is in towns back East. Everybody is free to go in and play if he wants to."

"I've never been in a gambling house, Hugh. Can't we go in and look on? I'd like to see what they are doing."

"Why, yes," said Hugh; "there's no harm in going in and looking on. That isn't the sort of thing that I would do for fun, but there's no harm in it and you may see something that will teach you a good lesson. I never was much on gambling myself. I never had much money to lose, and I never wanted to win anybody else's. It never seemed to me quite square to take money without you worked for it. I never could see the sense of betting, either; but, come on; let's go in."

Hugh led the way into the room, and Jack followed. The people playing at the various tables and those overlooking the game paid no attention to them. All were intent on their own affairs. Hugh walked around to one end of the long table and gradually edged his way into the crowd, gently pushing men this way and that in so good-natured a fashion that no one objected to it. Jack kept close behind him, and presently, when Hugh had reached a point where he had a good view of the table, he squeezed back a little and let Jack pass in and stand in front of him.

Behind the table sat a man smoking a long cigar, while in front of him was a little silver box about the size of a playing card, from which at short intervals the man drew two cards, one after another, which he placed on two little piles by the box. In the middle of the table was a long frame on which were painted representations of cards, and on these cards, in various positions, were placed circular disks, white, red, and blue. The players placed these disks on the cards, and then when two cards came out of the box, sometimes the dealer took over to his side of the table the chips that were on a particular card, or else put on that card as many more chips as were already on it. Then the player usually removed these chips and put some or all of them on another card. Most of the people about the table appeared to be acquainted with each other, and those who spoke to the dealer seemed to know him, calling him by his first name. For some minutes Jack watched the game intently and began to have a glimmering idea of how it was played. Once or twice he whispered a question to Hugh, but Hugh shook his head for silence, and one or two of the people near by looked frowningly at the speaker. "Evidently," Jack thought, "this is not a place for conversation."

As they stood there, the crowd in the room increased; more and more people gathered around the faro table; the smoke in the air grew thicker, and there was the sound of more or less hum and bustle. Presently Jack felt a hand on his shoulder, and looking back at Hugh saw him move his head toward the door, and the two pushed their way through the crowd and out again into the street.

"Might as well get away from there," said Hugh; "they are playing pretty heavy. Two or three men came in that were full of liquor, and it looks to me as if there might be trouble in there to-night. There's no special reason why we should be there if there's going to be any shooting."

"No," said Jack, "I should say not. It's about the last place in which I'd want to be shot, a gambling house."

"Yes," said Hugh, "you're dead right about that. I don't know as I'd mind about being killed if I had to be killed, but I'd like to have it done in the right sort of a place."

"Is there much of that thing going on in town, Hugh?" asked Jack.

"Right smart," said Hugh. "I reckon from what I saw last night and from what I hear that there must be twenty-five or thirty places like that, and maybe a good many more that are not as decent as that one."

"Well," said Jack, "do men lose much money there?"

"I reckon they do," answered Hugh. "A whole lot more than they can afford, even if the game is straight. There's quite a percentage in favor of the dealer and a good many of the games are not straight."

"How do you mean, Hugh?" said Jack. "Do the gamblers cheat?"

"Yes," said Hugh, "I reckon they do. Some of those fellows are awful slick at dealing and shuffling. They can shuffle the cards just about the way they want them, so that they know just what card is coming out next, and if they see the bets are going against them they can slip two cards out of the box instead of one and make themselves win instead of lose."

"But," said Jack, "I should think they would get caught at it."

"No," said Hugh, "scarcely ever; and if a man does see anything crooked, it's only his word against the dealer's, and the dealer is apt to have two or three friends around the table who will talk for him. If the worst comes to worst, why, of course, the dealer has got to draw quick, and usually he is a man who can do that."

"Do you mean shoot, Hugh?" said Jack.

"Well, yes," said Hugh; "sometimes it comes to that, though generally the dealer can bluff it out, especially if he's got two or three men to wrangle and shout for him."

"Well," said Jack, "that seems pretty rough."

"It is rough," said Hugh; "but that's the way it is in a good many of these towns."

Soon after seven o'clock next morning Jack and Hugh were at the stage office with their beds, their bags, and their rifles. For a time they sat on their rolls of bedding talking, but at length a man came out from a stable near by and spoke to Hugh, and the beds were carried into the stable and lashed on to the rack behind the stage and the bags thrown into the boot under the driver's seat. A little later the four horses were brought out and hitched to the vehicle, and presently the driver, carrying his long whip, came from the office. The stage was led out into the street before the stable, the driver mounted, and Jack and Hugh followed him, all three sitting on the front seat. Then a clerk came from the office and spoke to the driver, telling him that there were no other passengers that morning, and with a parting nod the team started off and trotted swiftly out of town.

"Hugh," said Jack, "is this the sort of stage that they use everywhere in the mountains?"

"No," replied Hugh, "I reckon not. This is the old-fashioned stage, such as they used to drive in crossing the plains away back before the railroad was built, but stage-driving is pretty near over now and the old stages are laid on the shelf. Usually for these short little mountain trips most any kind of a jerky or even a lumber wagon is used. This stage here is one of the real old kind."

It was a high, large vehicle hung on C springs, with abundant room inside and two or three seats without. Back of the seats the roof of the coach was strengthened with slats of wood running lengthwise, and all about this roof was a high iron railing, so that a good lot of baggage might be piled there and lashed firmly to the top.

"I have seen coaches like this more than once," said Jack. "Up in Massachusetts, where my grandfather lives, they have just such a coach as this to send around the village to gather passengers for the train in the morning, and it takes away the passengers that come by the train and leaves them at their homes. Once, too, when I went to the Catskill Mountains, they had a stage like this to take us from the landing at the river up to the hotel, a long drive."

"Well," said Hugh, "these coaches are easy to ride in, but by the time a man's been on the stage about twenty-four hours he is generally in the frame of mind where he is willing to fight with his best friend. You see, the trouble is, he can't get any sleep, and without sleep a man's temper shortens up pretty fast."

"Well," said Jack, "we have got to go more than twenty-four hours without sleep, haven't we? We travel right along, don't we?" he asked, turning to the driver, who nodded in reply and added that it would take in the neighborhood of twenty-four hours to get to Benton. "Of course," he remarked, "we could go faster if there was any reason for it. We change teams about every fifteen miles, but there is no reason why we should hurry the horses. It doesn't make any difference to you, I reckon, whether yet get in at four o'clock in the morning or six, does it?"

"Not a bit," said Jack. "I like this riding on a stage, but I don't know just how long I'll continue to like it."

They had now turned from the flat prairie, over which the smooth road ran straight, and were entering a wide valley of the mountains, which gradually closed in on them until there seemed hardly room for more than the river that flowed through it and the road.

"That's Wolf Creek," said the driver, motioning toward the stream with his whip. "And this here canyon that we are going through is called Prickly Pear Canyon."

On either side of the stream the hills rose sharply, sometimes in steep grassy slopes, shaggy with clumps of small pines and spruces, at others, in a sheer rocky precipice, or yet again in steep slopes covered with small shrubbery through which great knobs of rock showed here and there.

"Any game on these hills?" asked Hugh of the driver.

"Plenty of deer," was the reply, "and some elk; lots of bear, too. Not many people travel over these hills, except prospectors, and they don't do any hunting to amount to anything."

As he finished speaking, Jack, who had been scanning the hillside ahead of the team, suddenly grasped Hugh's arm and said, "There's a deer now, Hugh."

"Sure enough," said Hugh, and all hands looking, a black-tail was seen feeding alone on the hillside, not eating the grass, but walking from one clump of weeds or brush to another and biting a mouthful of food from each. As they drew nearer, the animal heard the trotting of the horses or the rattle of the coach and stood for a few moments looking innocently at the team as it approached. The deer was a young buck, his horns, of course, in the velvet, for it was but the last of June. He studied the team with his huge ears turned forward to catch the sound which it made, and every now and then lifted his head higher, and seemed to feel the air with his nose.

At last, when the coach was fairly close to him, the driver said, "Do either of you want to take a shot at him?"

"Not I," said Hugh.

"Nor I," said Jack.

"Well," said the driver, "I'm glad you don't, for it would take us some time to butcher him, and I don't like to loaf much just after starting out. The end of the day is the better time to drive slowly."

Presently the buck seemed to have satisfied himself that there was possible danger in this great object approaching him, and turning, he bounded lightly along the hillside, gradually working up until at last he passed out of sight.

"Wasn't it fine, Hugh," said Jack, "to see him use his nose. That is what a deer depends on, isn't it? He doesn't trust his eyes very much, nor his ears, but his nose never lies to him."

"Well," replied Hugh, "that's so. And it isn't so only about deer, but about all sorts of game animals. I've had deer walk right straight up to me. So long as I kept still they didn't pay any attention to me, and likely thought I was a stump or a rock, but just as soon as they passed along near enough to catch the wind of me they never stopped to look or listen, but got up and dusted the best they knew how; and yet you can come on a bunch of deer and they'll hear you and jump to their feet and look at you, and maybe you can fire three or four shots at them and kill two or three before they'll run away."

"Yes," said the driver, "that's sure enough true; but you mustn't say that it's only deer or game that acts that way. Take a dog now--"

"Yes," said Hugh, "that's right enough, too."

"Why," said the driver, "I have seen dogs-owned 'em, too-that didn't seem to get any satisfaction at all out of their eyes; they couldn't trust them. I have seen the time when I'd be walking along with my dog, and maybe I'd get a little ahead or a little behind him and I'd stop to talk with three or four fellows, and the dog would start to look for me; and even if he saw me right plain, he wouldn't be sure it was me until he had come up behind me and stuck the end of his nose against my leg so that he could smell me. I remember once standing with three or four men in front of the Bella saloon in Benton when my dog did a trick like that. One of the men I was talking to didn't like dogs; in fact, he was awful scared of them. The dog came up to us and smelt of each man, and when he shoved his nose hard against the leg of the man who was afraid of dogs, the man felt the dog's nose and looked down and saw the dog, and he thought he'd been bit. He jumped about four feet into the air and reached for his gun to try to kill the dog that had bit him, but the others of us got hold of him and held him until we'd explained matters.

"Curious how scared some people are over a little thing, and yet maybe all the time they've got good sand and wouldn't run away in the worst kind of a scrap."

"Yes," said Hugh, "that's one of the queer things about human nature; you never can tell what it is that is going to scare a man. I've seen men that would run a mile to get away from some little bug like a spider or a hornet, and yet I know those men weren't cowards, because I've seen them in tight places and they were always willing to take as many risks as anybody. Why, once I even saw a man that was afraid of a mouse."

"No?" exclaimed the stage driver.

"Fact," said Hugh. "He was afraid of a mouse, and when one ran over his face, just after he had gone to bed, he got up and sat by the fire all night for fear it would do it again."

"Why, Hugh," said Jack, "don't you remember that the great Napoleon was afraid of a cat. It would make him sick if there was one in the room, even though he didn't see it and didn't know that it was there. And Napoleon was one of the greatest soldiers that ever lived, and, I suppose, a brave man."

"Yes," said Hugh, "I reckon he was."

"I have known lots of people," Jack went on, "who were afraid of snakes. It didn't make any difference whether they were venomous snakes or not. Just as long as they were snakes, they scared these people."

"That's so," said Hugh. "I've known one man that was afraid of snakes, and, what's more, he could tell if there was one around, whether he saw it or not. He said he smelled them. That seems queer, too."

"It does for a fact," remarked the driver.

Before they had passed through the Prickly Pear Canyon they reached the stage station where the horses were to be changed. There all hands got down and walked about a little to stretch their legs; but in a very few minutes four fresh horses had been harnessed and they recommenced their journey.

"Do you ever have trouble with road agents on this line?" Hugh asked of the driver.

"No," said he, "we've never been stopped but once. The fact is, we scarcely ever carry anything that makes it worth while for anyone to stop the stage. Early this spring, though, my partner was held up just as he was coming over the Bird Tail Divide. There had been some talk of sending out some dust from Benton by the stage, but it was given up and the gold went out another way. Of course none of us knew that it was going, but the news must have got out somehow, for that night, just as the stage reached the top of the Bird Tail Divide and the two leaders had got up onto the level, two men stepped out in the moonlight and told Buck-that's my partner-to stop. He started to lay the whip on his horses, but they were all walking, and the men brought down their guns and called to him again that if he started they'd kill the leaders. So he pulled up and asked the men what they wanted, and they said they wanted the treasure chest and told him to throw it down. He said there wasn't any treasure chest, and if they didn't believe him they could come and search the coach. With that a third man that Buck hadn't seen before popped up from the side of the road and climbed up and looked through the boot and searched Buck, and then went through the whole stage. They were a pretty mad lot when they let Buck go on."

"Was it ever known who they were?"

"No," said the driver. "I always had an idea that Buck knew who the little fellow was that searched the stage, but as they didn't get anything and didn't bother Buck any, I reckon he didn't want to say much about it."

All through the day they trotted briskly forward changing horses at regular intervals, so that the teams were always fresh and progress rapid. They had dinner and supper at the stage stations which they passed, and about ten o'clock at night reached Fort Shaw.

By this time both Hugh and Jack were tired and sleepy, but the driver seemed as fresh as ever.

While the horses were being changed, Hugh sat down on the front steps of the building and smoked his pipe, and Jack, trying to get the sleep out of his eyes, walked up and down on the boardwalk. As he was doing this he was joined by a little Irishman, who conversed pleasantly.

"Are you working now?" said the little man, as he puffed at his short pipe.

"No," said Jack, "not now. I'm just going up to Benton."

"Do yez want work?" asked the stranger. "I need a couple more hands on me ranch down below here and I'd like to hire yez. Thirty dollars and board is what I pay; good wages for the time and for the country."

"Well," said Jack, "I'd like the work and I'd like the money, but I'm just traveling through the country and I've got to meet a man in Benton, and couldn't stop now to take even a good job."

"Well," said the man, "I'm sorry. If ever yez come through Shaw again, maybe ye'd be needin' work, and ye'd better come to my place and see if I can't give yez a job. Maloney is me name, on Sun River, five miles below the post."

Jack was quite tickled at this offer, and when they started again, told Hugh about it.

"Yes," said Hugh, "you are getting to be a man now, and ought to be able to do a man's work, and I reckon you are."

All through the night the stage rattled and swung over the prairie, and soon after the sun rose the next morning trotted swiftly across Benton bottom and drew up at the end of its journey.