It had come to be arranged this way quite accidentally almost the first day when there had been any earnings.
Curtin was the man who had suggested it one day during the second week after the gains had begun to accumulate.
“Okay with me,” Howard agreed without arguing. “Better for me. Then I won’t have to be the dragon to guard your pennies any longer. I haven’t liked it too much, acting as your safety box.”
Both his partners rose. “Who made you our banker? We never asked you yet to hold our well-earned money.”
“Which means, in other words, that you wouldn’t trust me?”
“That’s exactly what it means in plain English.” Dobbs left no doubt of how he judged his partner.
Howard smiled at them. “It’s right, you never asked me. Only I thought I might be the most trustworthy among us three.”
“You? How come?” Dobbs could at times be nasty.
Howard kept on smiling. He had had too many similar experiences in his life to feel offended. “Perhaps you’re just waiting to ask me in what pen I grew up. Well, I’ve never been in any pen yet. I hope I never shall be. I can’t expect you to believe this. Besides, never having been in jail doesn’t mean that a feller plays straight and honest. Out here there’s no sense in lying to each other. After a few weeks we’ll know one another better than we ever could from a police record or a jail-warden’s report. Where We are now you can’t save yourself by tricks, no matter how Smart you may think yourself in town. Here you may tell the truth or you may lie as much as you wish; everything will come out sooner or later. So, whatever you may think of me, of us three I’m the most trustworthy. As for being the most honest, no one can say.”
Dobbs and Curtin only grinned at him for an answer.
Howard seemed not to mind. “You may laugh at what I say. It’s true none the less. Why? Because here only plain facts count. We might charge you, Dobby, with taking care of the goods. Suppose I’m somewhere deep in the bush to get timber, and suppose, at the same time, Curtin is on his way to the village for provisions; wouldn’t that be your big chance to pack up and leave us in the cold?”
“Only a crook like you would think me likely to do that.” Dobbs felt hurt.
“It may be crooked to say what I said, but it’s surely more crooked to have such thoughts and not admit them. You’d be the first guy I can imagine who wouldn’t occasionally nourish the idea of robbing when given a chance. To make off with all the goods, dirty trick as it would be against your partners, would seem, out here and under these conditions, rather the natural thing to do. You think and you have thought many times of doing it; but you’re too yellow to admit frankly that you’ve had such thoughts and that you wouldn’t mind carrying them out. Right now it wouldn’t pay. That’s the reason why you think of it only vaguely. Some day, though, when the goods will amount to, let’s say, three hundred ounces, you may get such ideas more dearly fixed in your heads. I know my fellow-men and you don’t. That’s the difference. If some pretty day you caught me, tied me to a tree, took all I have, and walked out on me, leaving me here in the wilderness to my fate, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, because I know what gold can do to men.”
“And what about yourself, you wiseacre?” asked Curtin.
“It’s different with me. I’m no longer quick enough on my feet. I couldn’t do it, hard as I might try. You’d get me by the collar in no time and string me up and even forget to bark the tree. I can’t escape you. I have to depend on you in more ways than one. I can’t run as easily as either of you can. And so you have the plain reason why I think I’m the most trustworthy in this outfit.”
“Looking at it your way, I feel sure you’re right,” Curtin said. “Anyway, and perhaps for your own good, Howy, it would be better to cut the proceeds every night and each partner be responsible for his own goods. That would give each of us the greatest freedom, as each could go whenever he wished to.”
“Right by me,” the old man agreed. “Only then everybody has to be careful that the hiding-place of his fortune is not found out by one of the others.”
“Hell, what a dirty mind you must have, you old scoundrel!” Dobbs cursed at him.
“Not dirty, baby. No, not dirty. Only I know whom I am sitting here with by the fire and what sort of ideas even supposedly decent people can get into their heads when gold is at stake. Most people are only afraid of getting caught, and that makes them, not better, but only more careful and more hypocritical; makes them work their brains so that it would be difficult to catch them once they’ve run off. Here it’s no use to be a hypocrite, no use to lie. In cities it’s different. There you can afford to use all the tricks known under heaven, and your own mother won’t recognize them as tricks. Here there is only one obstacle—the life of your partner. And easy as it may seem to remove this obstacle, it may, in the end, prove very costly.”
“Police would find him out sooner or later—isn’t that what you mean?” asked Dobbs.
“I wasn’t thinking of police. Police and judges may never butt in, and most likely never would. Yet while dirty acts may never burden the conscience of a man, his mind and soul may not allow him to forget his deeds. The crime he committed may not burden him, but the memory of happenings before the crime may make his life a hell on earth and rob him of all the happiness he tried to gain by his foul act. But—well, what’s the use talking about it? All right, have it your way. Every night the profits are cut and each of us hides it as best as he can. It would be hard anyway, as soon as we have made two hundred ounces, to carry it in a little bag hanging day and night from your neck.”
Chapter 8
Through ingenious labor the fellows had succeeded in hiding their mine. Nature had already made this place difficult to approach and to find. A wanderer passing by would never suspect that this rock, lying in a little cuplilce valley on the top of a high rocky mountain, was anything but a peak. Two passes led into this small valley, and it took all the strength of man to reach those passes by climbing. The rock was bare of any plants save low bushes. An Indian hunter from the village far below would never go up to this rock to look for any sort of game, for there is enough in the great valley at the base of the mountains to make it silly for a hunter to climb this mountain. The villagers have sufficient tillable land to work on near the village, so there is no need to look for new or better land on the slope of the mountains.
The passes were so well closed in by the miners with shrubs, rocks, and trunks of trees that even if by accident a man should come near, he would never think that these shrubs, so naturallooking, were pure camouflage to hide the passes. When bringing up water for the washings, the passes had to be opened, but they were closed as soon as the burros had passed.
The ground on which the men pitched the camp was left open to view to anybody that might come along. This camp was quite a distance away from the mine, and it was located lower than the mine. In the village below, the Indians knew that up here there was an American hunting, because Curtin came to the village whenever provisions were needed. Hardly any human being would come this way save an Indian from the village. This was bound to be a rare occurrence because a villager going up to this camp would have to be away from his home not only for the whole day, but for the greater part of the night, provided he did not stay overnight in the camp. None of these Indians had any business here, and to go out of pure curiosity to see what the stranger was doing would have been impolite. To be polite in their own way is unwritten law with these natives.