Elam Storm, the Wolfer: or, The Lost Nugget. Castlemon Harry

in the world that has been the cause of so much misery and mischief of all kinds as that there nugget," continued Uncle Ezra reflectively. "The man who found it, whose name was Morgan, and who was working with two pardners, share and share alike, was about as honest as a man ever gets to be, but the sight of the small fortune which he unearthed one day by a single stroke of his pick, while working a little apart from the others, was too much for him. He was as poor as a man ever gets to be, and, worse than all, he had a sweetheart off in the States who was waiting for him to raise a stake and come home and marry her. He didn't like the idea of dividing with his two pardners, who would drop their roll at the faro table as soon as they got the chance, and so he took and buried his find and worked on as if nothing had happened. That is to say, he tried to; but with a big chunk of gold within easy reach of his hand it don't stand to reason that he could act just as he did before. He was uneasy all the time, and his pardners noticed it and suspected something. He took to visiting his nugget's hiding-place every night, to make sure that no one had dug it up, and his pardners found it out on him; and when at last he grew desperate and tried to carry it away secretly, there was some shooting done, and Morgan and one of his pardners were killed."

      "That left the survivor a rich man!" exclaimed Ben, who was deeply interested.

      "Now, just wait till I tell you. That left the survivor a tolerable rich man, but his sudden accession of wealth scared him so badly that he buried the nugget in a new place and put for 'Frisco, where he took sick and died. When the medical sharps warned him that he had not long to live, he told one of the nurses about the nugget, and gave him a map of the locality in which it was hidden. A month or so afterward the nurse organized a small expedition and went to the mountains to hunt for the treasure; but he hired for a guide a treacherous Greaser, who went ahead, dug up the nugget, and brought it to Brazos City, a small mining town in which I was located at the time.

      "Pierto – that was the Greaser's name – hadn't any more than got his nugget into the Gold Dollar saloon, which was kept by a countryman of hisn, and put it into a glass case and set it up on the table so that everybody could see and admire it, before he was offered eight thousand dollars for his find; but Pierto wouldn't sell. He thought he could make more money by putting it up at a raffle, and when the raffle was over, he would go back to the mountains and try for another nugget, taking some of us along if we wanted to go. Three thousand shares at ten dollars a share was what he thought would be about right, and I put my name down for ten shares then and there.

      "The Gold Dollar did a custom-house business after that. Crowds of miners from every camp for miles around came there to look at Pierto's find, take shares in the raffle, and drink forty-rod whiskey. Pierto and the eight countrymen of hisn whom he employed to guard the nugget night and day were armed with pepper-boxes and machetes, and were as sassy and stuck up as so many bantam chickens, and the lordly way in which they ordered us Gringos to stand back and not crowd the nugget too close was laughable to see. They were a surly gang and looked able to whip their weight in wild-cats; but in reality they were the most harmless lot of cowards that Pierto could have got together.

      "Like all mining towns, Brazos City could boast of some tough citizens, and among them was Red Jimmy Murphy, a noted desperado, and as smart a rough as ever pulled a gun. He and two of his pals were in the Gold Dollar every day and night, and after looking the ground over they concluded that the plant could be raised. No sooner had this been settled to their satisfaction than they set to work to get things ready.

      "The night before the raffle was to come off the Gold Dollar was packed as full as it could hold, – so full that there was scarcely room for the fiddlers to work their elbows, – and Pierto's guard had to use some little muscular strength to keep the crowd from pushing over the table on which lay the nugget in its glass case. Red Jimmy's gang was there, ready to grab the chunk at the critical moment, and finally Jimmy himself rode into the saloon on a kicking, plunging bronco. The closely packed men cursed and threatened and ordered him out, but gave way all the same, and when the bronco heard the squawking of the fiddles and felt the jab of his rider's spurs, he slewed around and backed toward the table. Pierto saw the danger, and made a desperate rush to save his nugget, but was just a second too late. Jimmy raised a yell to put his pals on the watch, and spurred up the bronco, which at once sent his heels into the air as high as the ceiling. Down went the table, and the glass flew into a thousand pieces. The nugget went sailing over the heads of the crowd and into the hands of one of the gang, who, in spite of every effort that was made to stop him, succeeded in tossing it to Jimmy; and Jimmy he headed for the door, riding over everybody that got in his way. Then there was fun, I tell you. I never saw lead fly so thickly before nor since. Everybody had a gun out, and Red Jimmy ought by rights to have been riddled like a sieve."

      "Uncle Ezra, did you shoot?" asked Ben.

      "I presume to say that I made as much noise as the rest," answered the old man, with a chuckle. "You know, I held some chances in that chunk, and didn't want to lose them. Of course Pierto had to shell out the money we paid him for the tickets, for the raffle could not now be brought off; we kept him right there under our guns till he gave back the last dollar, but he never set eyes on his nugget, and neither did we. Red Jimmy, desperately wounded as he was, got away to the mountains with his prize, and although a strong posse headed by the sheriff followed on his trail and finished him the next day, they did not find the nugget. One of his gang made off with it."

      "And you lost it all?"

      "Cer'n'y," said the old man.

      "And never got a chance to raffle for any of it?" asked Ben. "It has probably been fixed up into ornaments of some description by this time. An article worth eight thousand dollars isn't going to be left around loose."

      "It wasn't so two years ago."

      "Two years?"

      "Wait till I tell you. That nugget has travelled as much as five hundred miles from here, but somehow it always manages to come back. Here it was born, and right here it is going to stay until it has its rights. Mind you, that is Elam's way of looking at it, but it aint mine, by a long shot. We didn't none of us hear of the nugget again for nearly a year, and then one of the boys happened to strike a pardner who had got dissatisfied with the money he was making and went off to Pike's Peak, and there he learned that two of the gang who had stolen it were seen and killed for the part they had taken in the enterprise; for you will remember that several miners in the country had knocked off work and come in to catch a glimpse of Pierto's find, and of course they didn't feel very friendly toward the robbers.

      "Well, everybody for miles around kept open eyes for that nugget for years, until at last I forgot all about it until I heard that a couple of worthless Greasers had somehow got hold of it, and had been found done to death with that nugget by their side. Then I gave up all hopes, for if the nugget had fallen into the hands of honest men, that was the last of it; but it seems it hadn't, and that gave me another show," said Ezra, tipping me another wink, which was as near to a laugh as he ever got. "The two Greasers were about as tough specimens as you see, and they finally got into a fight to see which was the better man. When they were found, the victor had the nugget hugged closely to his breast, as if he did not want to part with it even in death. Not only that, but these two had scarcely found the nugget till they got into a row over who should carry it, and one of them got so badly whipped that he dropped and fainted right there. The other had strength enough to travel ten miles nearer the fort, and there he hid the nugget; but where he hid it he don't know. He raved about it while he was sick, and somebody told Elam of it (you see, everybody around here knows the history of that nugget), and every fall and winter he asks for a grub-stake and lights out, and I don't see any more of him till I drive my sheep down on the prairie. That happened two years ago, and every fall you'll see three or four fellows in the edge of Death Valley, saying nothing to each other, but ostensibly hunting coyotes, and all the while looking for that nugget, which is the thing they most want to find."

      "Then the nugget is really here?" exclaimed Ben.

      "It's here or hereabouts. It may be within ten miles of this place or it may be a hundred; for nobody knows where that fellow hid it. Mind you, I shouldn't like to be the fellow that finds it."

      "Why not?"

      "Because Elam will go for him. It's his nugget, and he knows it and he's bound to have it. Mind you, Elam doesn't