“Old Harmless”
By Roy Norton
Author of “David and Goliath,” “The Box,” Etc.
Uncle Bill loved his gulch, and David and Goliath loved Uncle Bill. When trouble came they promised to stick by him to the bitter end—which wasn't so bitter, after all.
It was a long distance from the beaten roads to where “Old Harmless” had his cabin; quite over the top of ridges, down across intervening valleys, around mountain shelves where a pack burro might not slip with impunity, and with now and then a gurgling little stream to ford that became a dangerous place when spring freshets ran high and filled a gulch. It was not a place that any one other than a recluse might have chosen for permanent domicile, but to Old Harmless it was Heaven. He was convinced that somewhere within its borders there was wealth.
“Yes, sir, I reckon that some place in these here hills, right about the rim of this gulch, thar’s a ledge of gold that orter go about ten thousand dollars a ton!” he was wont to explain to the partners, David and Goliath, when they visited him by climbing to a high, steep ridge, traversing the crest of a rugged, barren range, and then dropping down long, steep hills into the valley where Old Harmless dwelt and strove with infinite and inexhaustible patience and optimism. “And that ain’t exactly all of it, either. You see, I diskivered this gulch in ’fifty-eight, and I took a right-smart lot of pay outen this flat, and there was some other fellers came, and they called it Harmon’s Camp. Named it arter me, you see. An’ they built some stores and—by Matildy!—they was a post office here oncet, where a feller could go and git his mail. If he had any to git.”
Always at this point he would shake his head with an air of melancholy. And always the partners would appear sympathetic, and interested, as if this were the first, rather than the hundredth or so, time they had heard this tale. Always one of them politely said, “Psho! What happened to her, Uncle Bill?” And always Old Harmless brightened up, and rambled on.
“Well, you see in them days nobody stuck around a flat after what was easiest ter git was worked out. Everybody jest naturally went somewhere else ter find somethin’ else that was easy ter git and so, bimeby, thar wan’t nobody left here at Harmon’s but me. Yes, sir, nobody but me. An’ bein’ young an’ foolish, bimeby I went, too. Shook her. But—I allers kept comin’ back. Then, when it seemed as if thar wan’t nothin’ left anywhere, and all them railroads kem to Californy, and there wan’t no other place left to go, I come back here to stay. An’ so—here I be. Right here. An’—I reckon I’ll stay here till I die. It ain’t so much the findin’ gold, with me, as it is that I’m so used ter this here place. Seems like I know every tree in this here flat, and they’re all friends of mine. Why, I talk ter ’em, I do. They was one blow down, last spring, one that I always called ‘Old Sam,’ because he was so big and husky and had been here so long before I came, and he looked ter me like he might be the granddaddy of all trees, and I got ter sort of love him.
“It sounds mighty foolish, but on the mornin’ after the big storm when I saw that Old Sam was done, I sat down on him an’ felt like cryin’ and was sort of deespirited, because it was as if I, too, was a-gitin’ old and some day all the other trees, these friends of mine, would wake up in the mornin’ and find that I’d gone, too, and wasn’t never goin’ ter be seen around, or heard talkin’ ter ’em any more.”
Invariably, at this finish, as if suddenly aware of his loquacity; his betrayal of sentiment; his slipped confession, he would recover, cackle, pretend to make a joke, and hide his abashment. And invariably the partners joined in his laugh, but it was never a laugh that reached their eyes, for always they knew that he had voiced his heart. Each of them, shy, outwardly rough, inwardly sentimental, had known hills and trees they had loved. They, too, lived in the world of outdoors, where everything of life has its characteristics, its entity, its individuality, its struggle to live. They, too, sometimes believed that trees observe, confide, or perhaps love comrades.