“I kin always scratch up enough dust for bacon and beans, by workin’ the old dumps with my old Long Tom or a string of sluices,” Old Harmless once explained. “Nobody bothers me here. Nobody ever comes to see me but you two young fellers; but I ain’t lonesome. And some day, maybe I’ll find the ledge that throwed the gold in this here gulch, and——”
When he stopped and stared at the crests of the hills, as if thinking of such an achievement, David asked impulsively: “And—and what’ll you do then, Bill?”
The patriarch rubbed a hand across his eyes as if disturbed and perplexed, and then said, “do then? Do then? I’ll—I’ll—why, I don’t just know what I’ll do. I wouldn’t want a lot of people here in this camp of mine. They might spoil things. But—I’d like one of them talkin’ machines that sings songs and makes bands play, and all that. If I was rich, I’d git me one of them things and git some feller ter learn me how ter run it. Then I’d take her out under the trees on nice days and play all them tunes, and—— Do you fellers reckon trees hears things like that and likes ’em?”
The partners gravely admitted that they had never considered such matters, and humored his whimsies, by admitting that they hoped trees did hear, and that Old Harmless might find the ledge, and buy the phonograph.
On a certain Christmas Eve they made their trip in the moonlight, when the great shield of snow beneath the still and motionless trees lay pale, or patterned with the infinite beauty of lacework wrought by shadow in nature’s inimitable, delicate intricacy. Their snowshoes squeaked crisply. The exalations of their breathing thrust tiny clouds of gray vapor ahead of them; but of all these physical manifestations they were oblivious, because the giant carried under his arm, as tenderly as if it were an infant, a square box, and behind him came the sturdy, squat figure of David, his partner, taking two steps to the giant’s one, panting, and with equal care clutching across his shoulder in a sling another box filled with records.
“I reckon,” David panted, “that he’ll be tickled to death with that tune called Clementiner, seein’ as it’s about an old cuss who mined hereabouts in ’forty-nine.”
“Humph! Met my love on the Alamo suits me better,” Goliath grunted.
“Sh’d think you’d had enough of wimmen,” said David scornfully.
“They ain’t got nothin’ whatever to do wih tunes,” Goliath replied with such emphasis that his partner read the danger signs and made no further comment. And preference for tunes meant nothing when they witnessed the joy of Old Harmless, for it amounted almost to stupefaction.
“As fur as I kin see now,” he said, after listening to the entire collection of records, “they ain’t much else on this earth that I specially hanker fur. If I don’t never strike that there ledge—and she’s sure here somewheres!—I kin always scratch up enough dust ter buy grub and what clothes I need, and I live in the all-firedest purtiest place in the whole gosh-dinged world, and now I got somethin’ to sort of keep me company, in that box you boys has brought me! Yes, sire-e-e! I reckon I’m about the happiest man on this earth.”