The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch

Excerpt

THE MASCOT OF SWEET BRIAR GULCH

The gulch ran in a trough of beauty to the foot of Jones’s Hill, which rose in a sweeping curve into the clouds.

Wild flowers, trees in profuse leaf, and mats of vines covered the scarred earth, and the sky was as limpid as spring water; the air carried a weight of heart-stirring odors, yet Jim Felton, sitting on the door-step of his cabin in the brilliant sunshine, was not a happy man.

He looked at the hollow of the gulch and cursed it manfully and bitterly. The gold should be there—Jim had figured it all out. The old wash cut at right angles to the creek, and at the turn was where its freight of yellow metal should have been deposited, but when you got down to the bed-rock, the blasted stuff was either slanted so nothing could stay on it, or was rotten—crumbling in your fingers, and that kind of bed will hold nothing.

Therefore Jim had sunk about fifty prospect holes; got colors under the grass-roots, as evidence that pay should be there—and nothing but ashy wash beneath it.

When a man is alone, and thinks things are wrong, optimism comes down on the run, the shades of pessimism gather fast and furious—more especially if a man does his own cooking, and the raw material is limited, at that.

The sun had not moved the shadows three inches before Jim had reached the conclusion that this world was all a practical joke, of so low an order that no sensible man would even laugh at it, and he drew a letter from his pocket in proof thereof. It was a thin letter, written on delicate paper in a delicate hand, and it showed much wear. He read for the thousandth time:

Dearest Jim—And again I must say “no.” Of course you will not understand, for which foolish reason I like you all the better, but you must try to take my point of view. You say that we can be married on nothing and take our chances.

So we can, old simple-heart—but aren’t those chances all against us? Would you like to be forced to work in some office for just enough to live on? You know you would not, and you know how you would suffer in such slavery.

Nevertheless we can not live on air, and I doubt if I would stand transplanting to the wild life you love, better than you to a clerk’s desk. You have that fancy which gilds the tin cans in the back yard; I have that unfortunate eye which would multiply their number by three, and their unsightliness by ten. I don’t want riches, dear; I only want a modest assurance that I can have enough to live on.

Really, is your way of doing a guarantee of even bread and butter? In the Garden of Eden you would be the most delightful of companions, but in this world as it is, you will not fight for your own. You would risk your life to save a dog, but you couldn’t stay at a continued grind—I mean it would kill you, actually, physically, dead, dead—to save all of us. At first I thought that a fault in you, but now, being older, having compared you to other men, I see it is merely a missing faculty.

I could stick to the desk, and would gladly, if you would let me, yet I could not even fancy behaving as you did at the factory fire, which is still the symbol in the town for manly courage and presence of mind....