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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79295 ***
+
+HOWDY!
+
+By Murray Leinster
+
+Author of “Fog,” etc.
+
+
+    They had hated for years, these old-timers, and the habit
+    clung. Twice each day they met in the deserted gold camp,
+    spoke, and parted. But the winters grew long and the rock
+    more barren; their hate, one day, took an unrecognizable form.
+
+
+Once upon a time—as all good stories should begin—Eyrie was a town. A
+real town, with a full complement of dance-halls, saloons, gambling
+houses and a jail. Champagne came in cases over the mountain trails, to
+be drunk out of tin cups or, more informally, from the bottle itself.
+Ostrich feathers and pink spangled gowns, once a piano, even carefully
+crated paintings for the Eyrie House, came upon the backs of burros or
+in huge, lumbering wagons.
+
+It was named by a young Easterner and it sprang up as by magic. The
+first girl baby in the camp could have gone to college in the East on
+the dust and nuggets showered upon her as gifts. The first court in the
+county, and the county was as large as many New England states, was held
+in Eyrie. For a space, while the placer workings held good, it was a
+whirlwind. Then came a period of decay, with the more prosperous
+elements drifting to newer and consequently more alluring spots.
+
+For perhaps five years, perhaps ten, it slumbered. Only a few of the
+more patient worked their cradles beside its swift stream. Here and
+there a Chinaman frugally earned riches by panning the sands the
+superior white man considered beneath his notice. Eyrie was a half
+deserted mining camp.
+
+But then came the hardrock men. They came, they saw—and Eyrie was
+reborn. Its earlier grandeur was forgotten in the magnificence of its
+new youth. A thousand shafts dotted the hills about it. Plumes of steam
+drifted from a thousand hoist engines. Again a whirlwind of activity.
+Again came the champagne and the pictures and the brightly painted
+ladies and the immaculate, imperturbable gentlemen who wielded
+pasteboards instead of picks, and juggled chips instead of blasting
+powder for their fortunes.
+
+And again it died. Even the Chinamen deserted it this time, having
+discovered the charm of payment in gold for definite work in another’s
+diggings. It died completely, now. The doors of the log cabins sagged
+upon their leathern hinges. Grass grew again in its streets. Saplings
+sprang up close beside the porch of the Eyrie House, thrusting aside the
+rotted planking for space in which to grow. A deathly silence fell again
+upon the town and all the hills about it. Its day was done, its glory
+departed. Even its history was forgotten, utterly. There was nothing but
+decaying, blank-windowed cabins and a sagging board building that had
+once been the prideful Eyrie House to tell of the ancient times. All
+else was vanished.
+
+And somewhere, far back in the haze of unremembered days, lay the
+beginning of the enmity between Jake Trotter and Bill Weaver. No one
+remains to tell the story of its beginning. Soon it will be useless to
+recall it, and therefore it is wise to record it before oblivion smears
+across the page. For it was a peculiar enmity.
+
+Alone of all the population, they remained behind. Jake Trotter was
+perhaps fifty when he was left alone with his enemy. He watched the last
+belated hardrock man pull out, glumly loading his worldly goods upon a
+single burro.
+
+“Leavin’ the town to me?” he queried, with a feeble attempt at levity.
+
+The one who was departing, cursed.
+
+Jake chuckled. “No use swearin’,” he said. “The main lode ain’t been hit
+yet.”
+
+The other turned quickly. “You got any signs?”
+
+Jake chuckled again. “Think I’d ha’ said anything if I had?” he queried
+in his turn.
+
+The hardrock man grunted, cinched his last knot, and trudged away. He
+was a lonely figure, making off down the valley that seemed a chasm
+between its confining hills, and yet gave upon a two thousand foot drop
+at its further end. Jake watched him out of sight and then grinned,
+somewhat unconvincingly. It was not altogether pleasant to be completely
+alone.
+
+He was congratulating himself, though, as he turned away. He had said
+just the right thing to disarm the suspicions of the last man. He went
+slowly up the deserted street. It was unspeakably desolate. Every house
+empty. Doors yawning open. Posters still flaunting bright colors,
+calling everyone to the High Jinks Dance Hall. And the dance hall was
+empty. Already dust was gathering thickly upon its floors and the once
+so brightly polished bar. Jake was alone.
+
+He came to a sudden halt and his eyes narrowed. A man was looking at
+him, very nearly the counterpart of himself. Bushy, straggling beard,
+already beginning to show a speckling of gray. Mud stained clothes.
+Rough work shirt. Heavy boots. Holster at his side. Bill Weaver, the
+only man in all the world Jake had despised wholeheartedly.
+
+“Howdy, Jake,” drawled Bill. “Looks like we got to run the town.”
+
+Jake spat deliberately, and looked at his sole fellow townsman with
+hostile eyes. “I reckon,” he said slowly, “you’re figurin’ on spyin’ on
+me.”
+
+Bill shook his head. “I was thinkin’ the same about you,” he meditated.
+“Just thought I’d tell you I shoot awful quick if I find anybody
+trailin’ me.”
+
+Jake’s whole body trembled a little with his hatred. “An’ I reck’n I’d
+better tell you,” he said evenly, “that I’m puttin’ trap guns around my
+workin’s.”
+
+Bill grunted. “You leave me alone, an’ I’ll leave you alone. But I’d
+feel a lot better if I saw you mornin’s, so’s I’d know you wasn’t layin’
+out to watch where I go.”
+
+Jake nodded. “I was goin’ to say that myself,” he said grimly. “An’ you
+keep to your end o’ town!” He stalked away, seething.
+
+Then a little comedy began, which, rather oddly, did not seem to stale
+with age. At sunrise, Jake arose. He cooked his breakfast silently, and
+ate it morosely. He washed his dishes with meticulous care. Then he took
+down an antiquated but perfectly oiled rifle from the wall.
+
+He walked out of his cabin. Going to meet the man he hated. Making sure
+Bill was not lying in wait to mark, each day, a little more of the path
+to his workings. Glowering, he made his daily progress.
+
+Bill was waiting. He always was. Grinning a little, perhaps. But the
+grin vanished when Jake drew near. Jake would stand no nonsense.
+
+Sourly, the two regarded each other. Booted, armed, whiskered,
+bristling.
+
+Bill spoke first. “Howdy.”
+
+It held an intonation of purest sarcasm. Jake replied in kind. “Howdy.”
+
+He glared at Bill. The glare was returned. Jake turned upon his heel and
+walked away. He made his way deviously to his workings. Twice he paused
+to search the hills behind him, exhaustively, for any sign that Bill was
+spying upon his route. At last he dived below ground.
+
+At night they met again. This time they did not speak. Simply stared,
+hostilely, and went into their respective cabins.
+
+Summer passed. Fall arrived. The snow line above them crept down and
+down. In two weeks it would reach the valley. Jake considered it
+gloomily.
+
+The next morning he jerked his thumb at the encroaching blanket of
+white. “Supplies,” he said grudgingly. “Go down tomorrow.”
+
+Bill grunted. “Yep. Was goin’ to say that myself.”
+
+They went down, two silent figures, bristling, avoiding all speech. All
+the long day they trudged without talk. At night they camped,
+wordlessly. Each cooked his own supper and ate alone. In the morning
+they rolled out of their blankets at the same time. Bill blinked. Then,
+“Howdy.”
+
+The word held an intonation of purest sarcasm. Jake replied in kind.
+“Howdy.”
+
+He glared at Bill. The glare was returned. They loaded their burros
+again and went on.
+
+They made their purchases separately. They spent three days in the tiny
+village. Each morning, shortly after sunrise, they found each other.
+Each morning they regarded each other with unwavering distaste. Each day
+they avoided each other thereafter.
+
+They went back up in the hills.
+
+Winter came, and banked the valley with snowdrifts. Work was impossible.
+Jake regarded a blanketed universe with completest gloom. Bill
+unlimbered a mouth organ and played, alone in his cabin. The thin music,
+drifting through the icy, still air, was weird in the wilderness. It was
+barely audible where Jake sat listening, more like the wraith of past
+gaiety in the High Jinks Dance Hall than music of the moment.
+
+One night it stopped. It did not come again that night, or the night
+after.
+
+On the third day Bill was waiting, as usual. “Howdy.” The word was
+friendly enough, but it was spoken in a tone calculated to give offense.
+
+Jake glared at him. “Mouth organ broken?”
+
+Bill grunted. “Yep.”
+
+“Let’s see.”
+
+Bill tossed it over. They never approached nearer than fifteen feet.
+Jake picked it up and gazed hostilely at Bill. The gaze was returned.
+They parted.
+
+It was very late that night that thin strains of music came from Jake’s
+cabin. Very late, indeed. The unaccustomed noise woke Bill. Next morning
+they met in the street as usual.
+
+Bill’s greeting held its invariable bite. Jake tossed the mouth organ
+back. His own word had a sting.
+
+Bill picked up the mouth organ. They parted in mutual dislike. Arrived
+at his cabin, Bill tried the instrument. It worked.
+
+Spring came again, with a rush of melted snow and mud. The stream was a
+turbid torrent. Summer arrived. They went down for supplies. Each day
+they exchanged precisely two words. They came back, unwavering in their
+hostility. Summer passed. Then fall. Winter came once more.
+
+Cumbersomely, the seasons passed in their appointed course. Twin shafts,
+each carefully hidden, grew deeper and deeper but no more productive.
+Twin citizens of Eyrie, Jake and Bill grew somewhat more lined, and
+somewhat more bent. The speckles of gray in Bill’s beard grew white, and
+the black grew gray. Jake’s steps grew just a shade slower, and on the
+long climb to his hidden shaft he paused more frequently to search the
+hillsides behind him for a trace of Bill’s spying. If, as an incident,
+the pauses made the climb easier, it was purely an incident. Jake was
+not old yet. Oh, no.
+
+He had contrived an ingenious windlass with two ropes, by which he could
+hoist his bucket and swing it away from the shaft, then dump it. It made
+the work easier, but at best it was slow. Still, well worth doing. The
+mother lode was below, thick, rich quartz, with the gold in speckles,
+here and there even a nugget. It would run, oh, three hundred a ton,
+anyway. Maybe four, or even five. Riches. Life. Like Eyrie used to be.
+
+But the occasional tiny fragments of riches he was able to accumulate
+grew less and less. He had had a stake. Not too much, but enough to run
+him for a while. Now and then he ran into a tantalizing incrop of worth
+while ore—not enough to be worth mining, but ore which he could crush
+himself in a makeshift mortar and wash, wastefully, for the
+infinitesimal flakes of uncombined gold. For a hard day’s work he could
+sometimes, with luck, get two or even three dollars’ worth of glittering
+dust.
+
+At last even that failed him. Shamefacedly, he abandoned his workings
+for a space. Far off, through the hills, there was a brooklet which even
+the thrifty Chinaman had not bothered with. With deep blushes, Jake
+built a cradle there. He washed out the sands, manfully, though ashamed
+to be doing placer work—he, who was a hardrock man. A steady four
+dollars, sometimes five. Supplies were secure. He went back, joyfully,
+to his shaft. The rock was barren, here, but it was a layer overlaying
+the mother lode, of course. Everyone knows just such things happen. One
+must have faith. Much faith.
+
+They went down for supplies. Hostilely. They came back. Enemies. Fall,
+winter, spring, summer. Fall, winter, spring, summer. Time passed. Eyrie
+went back, more and more, to the forest from which it had been torn.
+
+Only once in all the years did the two hold any other converse than
+their morning salutation. That was after they had been working for five
+years.
+
+Jake had felt premonitory twinges. Snow was deep on the ground outside.
+Clouds presaged a storm. The preliminary winds were whistling dismally
+through the saplings among the cabins and the larger trees beyond. They
+moaned creepily among the empty houses. Voices of the past. That
+rustling, not the last, reluctant, ash dry leaves, but the movement of
+people. That whining noise, not the wind, but music from the High Jinks.
+The streets are alive with shades. They walk up and down, laughing
+uproariously, though the sound is whispers. Red shirts. High boots.
+Holsters and all too ready guns. Women, laughing shrilly. Gaiety——Queer
+that a rabbit should scurry through the throng, unseeing and unseen. A
+rabbit on Main Street! And those trees, saplings, growing before the
+door of the Eyrie House. They closed the entrance, yet people do not
+seem to notice. They walk through them. Bubbles bursting. Mist. Lonely,
+sick pain in a cooling room. Then darkness, darkness, until the windows
+grow slowly gray.
+
+Bill found him. He banged on the door, angrily. Jake croaked an
+indistinguishable word and Bill thrust open the door and came in. Snow
+whirled thickly in behind him.
+
+He glared at Jake, lying upon his bunk, with frost crystals from his
+breath upon his blanket. “Howdy,” said Bill, with elaborate irony.
+
+He cast one comprehensive glance around, then went out again. He came
+back in, bringing wood. He made a fire. Looked at Jake. Muttered in his
+beard and flung out into the storm again. Came back with an unsavory
+dose he forced upon the sick man. He cooked, for one. He fed Jake.
+Without speech.
+
+For three days he nursed Jake in a hostile silence. Then Jake was able
+to sit up. He glared at Bill’s blankets in one corner. Bill had been
+forced to move in while Jake was disabled, but he had ostentatiously
+brought his own food.
+
+“Thought you’d gone off,” said Bill, offensively, “to spy on my
+workings. That’s why I came.”
+
+A lie. A damned lie. Even a particularly damned lie. No man in or out of
+his senses would have tried to go prospecting in six feet of snow, more
+or less. Jake accepted it.
+
+“An’ I been staying here,” concluded Bill, defiantly, “so you’d know I
+ wasn’t hiking off after yours. You’re the sort of son of a gun who’d
+ try shootin’ if you thought it.”
+
+Jake turned his face to the wall, and slept.
+
+Later, Bill produced a greasy pack of cards. “Play,” he said
+offensively. “Take my mind off wanting to choke you.”
+
+They played cards in strict silence. For a week. Then Jake brought in an
+armful of wood. Within ten minutes Bill’s blankets were gone. He, also.
+That night his mouth organ sounded thinly in the solitude.
+
+Time—— Time—— The sun rolled overhead, dizzily. Now its path diverged to
+the south, and the wild birds made haste to overtake it. It swung to the
+north again and they made haste to return, joyfully. Trees put forth
+green, which turned again to yellow and red and gold. The saplings
+before the Eyrie House became young trees. Twin hidden shafts grew
+deeper.
+
+Jake washed gold for his supplies and dug manfully, but a little more
+slowly, through the barren rock. It was a wide streak of barren, but the
+mother lode would be worth it. Never give up. Never. Bill ought to.
+Digging like a fool over yonder in the hills somewhere. Washing a
+stream, too. Jake had seen wet mud on his shoulders, surface mud, one
+evening when there had been no rain. Fool!
+
+They went out for supplies. Jake was getting tired now, but he still
+hated Bill. Old men, both of them. He stopped much more often on his way
+to his shaft. Eyes bothering him a little, too. Had to look very
+carefully to be sure Bill wasn’t spying on him. Take a good, long look.
+If it rested him, too, no harm in that. He wasn’t stopping for rest,
+though. Oh, no.
+
+The packs were slim, as they came back. Jake concealed the size of his
+pack as well as he could, but it was undeniably not as full a list of
+staples as he could have wished. Even beans were sort of short. He’d
+only bought half his usual supply of bacon. Have to go hunting for meat.
+He shouldn’t have got in that poker game. He used to play a good stiff
+hand, too. Foolish. Foolish.
+
+But Bill’s pack was slimmer. Bill was a fool. Hadn’t been washing
+enough. Spending too much time in that crazy shaft of his. Nothing under
+it. Silly to dig. Not like Jake’s shaft. The mother lode was under that.
+Bill would be hard put, all summer. Worse, in winter.
+
+Summer. Glamorous green. Rippling water. Then fall again. Jake took down
+his rifle and went out hunting. More time lost from his mining. He got
+two deer. He would jerk them. Wouldn’t have to buy any bacon, this time.
+A plan was forming in his mind, dimly. Bill was a fool. He couldn’t wash
+out enough to buy supplies for winter. Jake could. He had just enough.
+His stream was panning less, now. Somehow, he didn’t seem to put as much
+through the rocker. Had to rest so much—probably from eating fish
+instead of meat. Not age. Certainly not.
+
+He heard a shot, dimly. Two days later, he heard another. Bill. What was
+he hunting for? Thought he was bent on sinking that crazy shaft of his——
+
+Jake broke the tacit compact. He spied on Bill. And Bill was jerking
+meat for the winter. Jerking a lot of it. Too much. He probably hadn’t
+got enough dust to pay even for a good supply of flour. Fool.
+
+There was much meditation. Jake hated Bill, certainly. Hated him like
+poison. But you couldn’t let a man starve right in your own town, no
+matter how much you hated him. And Bill would certainly starve before he
+would accept anything from Jake.
+
+Jake spied again. He found Bill’s placer works. A cradle, so arranged
+that a part of the stream flowed through it. Wooden riffles at the
+bottom. A spill at the lower end. The heap of sand and clay that Bill
+was planning to wash out.
+
+Carefully, Jake spilled a little pile of gleaming yellow over the heap.
+When Bill washed that out, he’d find enough dust in the clean-up to give
+him beans and flour for the winter. He’d think it was a pocket he’d
+struck. Something like that. You couldn’t let a man starve, even if you
+hated him. He, Jake, was all right. He’d have plenty of jerked meat.
+
+He erased his footsteps carefully and returned to the deserted town.
+Bill came in a little later. They looked at each other, the picture of
+hostility personified. They went each into his separate cabin. Night
+fell.
+
+It was a long distance to Jake’s placer stream. Jake had kept out a
+little, of course, but most of his dust had gone to keep Bill from
+starving, during the winter. They would be starting down for supplies in
+a week or so, now, though, and if he could get a little extra to buy
+some more blankets—! Somehow, winters seemed to get colder, these past
+few years.
+
+He walked painfully the last yards and saw his rocker and cradle, and
+his gravel heap to be washed. He was a hardrock man, but one had to have
+supplies, to get down to the mother lode. He’d wash out a little more
+dust——
+
+He suddenly stiffened. Some woodsman’s sixth sense told him that
+something was wrong. Someone had been here. He searched, and found
+tell-tale scratches upon the ground. He searched further, and found
+footprints, incompletely erased. Bill!
+
+Jake raged. Spying on him! He’d always hated Bill. Spying!
+
+He worked that day in a fury. There would be a reckoning when they met
+that night. Spying! He’d shoot the liver out of the son of a gun!
+
+And at nightfall he drained the cradle, picked out the last lumps of
+larger gravel, carefully swept off the remaining sand—and blinked. His
+clean up was huge, for him. Five, six ounces or more! Maybe he’d struck
+a pocket, or the stream was going to be a bonanza or— He remembered the
+morning’s discoveries. Bill——
+
+The long hike home was a time of meditation. Bill, his enemy, salting
+his gravel pile to give him dust. Bill, who hated him. Bill, who had
+insulted him, whom he had insulted, every day for years.
+
+He was walking firmly when he got to the place where he would meet Bill.
+He understood it all, now. Bill had seen his slim pack of supplies. Bill
+had thought, as he had thought of Bill, that he was unable to wash out
+enough dust to outfit himself for the winter. Bill had jerked meat for
+his own use, to spare the dust for a winter’s supply of beans and flour
+and bacon for Jake, whom he hated.
+
+Hated! They’d hated each other for years. Funny how they’d looked out
+for each other. Bill nursing him, defiantly. He mending Bill’s mouth
+organ, venomously.
+
+Bill was waiting. Bill was looking at him queerly.
+
+Jake’s eyes blazed. “You son of a gun!” he cried furiously. “Spying on
+me! Salting my gravel heap!” The fury suddenly died out of his voice.
+“Bill, what’d you do that for?”
+
+And Bill, his enemy; Bill, with deep lines and weather marks upon his
+features; Bill, whose hair was white save that in a few narrowing spaces
+it was streaked with gray—— Bill flushed a fiery, bricky red. He looked
+like a schoolboy, ashamed at having been caught.
+
+He stammered, and then suddenly he burst out. “What’d you salt mine for?
+I’d a mind to kill you for it!”
+
+Jake stared at him, helpless. His enemy—“I thought—” He stopped. “I
+lost most o’ my dust in a poker game, last trip out. That’s why my packs
+were light.”
+
+“So did I,” Bill told him, defiantly. “I thought you weren’t pannin’
+out.”
+
+They stared at each other, two old men, who had hated each other for
+years. Presently, Jake said slowly, “Bill, what’d we fuss about,
+anyway?”
+
+“Durned if I know,” said Bill angrily.
+
+Silence again. After a long time Jake spoke once more. “Say, Bill,” he
+said diffidently, “supposin’ we both move in the Eyrie House? Needn’t
+keep but one fire, then. Save time.”
+
+“I was thinkin’ that myself,” Bill grinned. “Say,” he added suddenly.
+“Remember them card games we had when you were sick?”
+
+Jake nodded. Bill rubbed his hands.
+
+The next morning Bill rolled out of his blankets. Jake had just wakened
+and was staring up at the ceiling, happily. They were in the Eyrie
+House. Bill looked over at his ancient enemy.
+
+“Howdy,” he said maliciously.
+
+Jake gazed at him. It was a tense moment.
+
+“You go to hell,” he said recklessly, “you old son of a gun!”
+
+And happiness, at that sign of amity, began to reign.
+
+
+[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in West Magazine,
+January 20, 1926. It is believed to be in the public domain in the
+United States; copyright status may differ in other countries.]
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79295 ***
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+<html lang="en">
+  <meta charset="utf-8">
+<title>Howdy! | Project Gutenberg</title>
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79295 ***</div>
+
+<figure style="text-align:center; width:60%; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto">
+<img src="images/illus-fpc.jpg" alt="" style="max-width:100%; height:auto" aria-hidden="true">
+</figure>
+
+<div style="text-align:center">
+<h1>HOWDY!</h1>
+<div style='font-size:1.2em'>By Murray Leinster</div>
+<div style='margin-bottom:1.4em'><i>Author of “Fog,” etc.</i></div>
+</div>
+
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+They had hated for years, these old-timers, and the habit clung. Twice
+each day they met in the deserted gold camp, spoke, and parted. But the
+winters grew long and the rock more barren; their hate, one day, took an
+unrecognizable form.
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="ni">Once upon a time—as all good stories should begin—Eyrie was a town. A
+real town, with a full complement of dance-halls, saloons, gambling
+houses and a jail. Champagne came in cases over the mountain trails, to
+be drunk out of tin cups or, more informally, from the bottle itself.
+Ostrich feathers and pink spangled gowns, once a piano, even carefully
+crated paintings for the Eyrie House, came upon the backs of burros or
+in huge, lumbering wagons.</p>
+
+<p>It was named by a young Easterner and it sprang up as by magic. The
+first girl baby in the camp could have gone to college in the East on
+the dust and nuggets showered upon her as gifts. The first court in the
+county, and the county was as large as many New England states, was held
+in Eyrie. For a space, while the placer workings held good, it was a
+whirlwind. Then came a period of decay, with the more prosperous
+elements drifting to newer and consequently more alluring spots.</p>
+
+<p>For perhaps five years, perhaps ten, it slumbered. Only a few of the
+more patient worked their cradles beside its swift stream. Here and
+there a Chinaman frugally earned riches by panning the sands the
+superior white man considered beneath his notice. Eyrie was a half
+deserted mining camp.</p>
+
+<p>But then came the hardrock men. They came, they saw—and Eyrie was
+reborn. Its earlier grandeur was forgotten in the magnificence of its
+new youth. A thousand shafts dotted the hills about it. Plumes of steam
+drifted from a thousand hoist engines. Again a whirlwind of activity.
+Again came the champagne and the pictures and the brightly painted
+ladies and the immaculate, imperturbable gentlemen who wielded
+pasteboards instead of picks, and juggled chips instead of blasting
+powder for their fortunes.</p>
+
+<p>And again it died. Even the Chinamen deserted it this time, having
+discovered the charm of payment in gold for definite work in another’s
+diggings. It died completely, now. The doors of the log cabins sagged
+upon their leathern hinges. Grass grew again in its streets. Saplings
+sprang up close beside the porch of the Eyrie House, thrusting aside the
+rotted planking for space in which to grow. A deathly silence fell again
+upon the town and all the hills about it. Its day was done, its glory
+departed. Even its history was forgotten, utterly. There was nothing but
+decaying, blank-windowed cabins and a sagging board building that had
+once been the prideful Eyrie House to tell of the ancient times. All
+else was vanished.</p>
+
+<p>And somewhere, far back in the haze of unremembered days, lay the
+beginning of the enmity between Jake Trotter and Bill Weaver. No one
+remains to tell the story of its beginning. Soon it will be useless to
+recall it, and therefore it is wise to record it before oblivion smears
+across the page. For it was a peculiar enmity.</p>
+
+<p>Alone of all the population, they remained behind. Jake Trotter was
+perhaps fifty when he was left alone with his enemy. He watched the last
+belated hardrock man pull out, glumly loading his worldly goods upon a
+single burro.</p>
+
+<p>“Leavin’ the town to me?” he queried, with a feeble attempt at levity.</p>
+
+<p>The one who was departing, cursed.</p>
+
+<p>Jake chuckled. “No use swearin’,” he said. “The main lode ain’t been hit
+yet.”</p>
+
+<p>The other turned quickly. “You got any signs?”</p>
+
+<p>Jake chuckled again. “Think I’d ha’ said anything if I had?” he queried
+in his turn.</p>
+
+<p>The hardrock man grunted, cinched his last knot, and trudged away. He
+was a lonely figure, making off down the valley that seemed a chasm
+between its confining hills, and yet gave upon a two thousand foot drop
+at its further end. Jake watched him out of sight and then grinned,
+somewhat unconvincingly. It was not altogether pleasant to be completely
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>He was congratulating himself, though, as he turned away. He had said
+just the right thing to disarm the suspicions of the last man. He went
+slowly up the deserted street. It was unspeakably desolate. Every house
+empty. Doors yawning open. Posters still flaunting bright colors,
+calling everyone to the High Jinks Dance Hall. And the dance hall was
+empty. Already dust was gathering thickly upon its floors and the once
+so brightly polished bar. Jake was alone.</p>
+
+<p>He came to a sudden halt and his eyes narrowed. A man was looking at
+him, very nearly the counterpart of himself. Bushy, straggling beard,
+already beginning to show a speckling of gray. Mud stained clothes.
+Rough work shirt. Heavy boots. Holster at his side. Bill Weaver, the
+only man in all the world Jake had despised wholeheartedly.</p>
+
+<p>“Howdy, Jake,” drawled Bill. “Looks like we got to run the town.”</p>
+
+<p>Jake spat deliberately, and looked at his sole fellow townsman with
+hostile eyes. “I reckon,” he said slowly, “you’re figurin’ on spyin’ on
+me.”</p>
+
+<p>Bill shook his head. “I was thinkin’ the same about you,” he meditated.
+“Just thought I’d tell you I shoot awful quick if I find anybody
+trailin’ me.”</p>
+
+<p>Jake’s whole body trembled a little with his hatred. “An’ I reck’n I’d
+better tell you,” he said evenly, “that I’m puttin’ trap guns around my
+workin’s.”</p>
+
+<p>Bill grunted. “You leave me alone, an’ I’ll leave you alone. But I’d
+feel a lot better if I saw you mornin’s, so’s I’d know you wasn’t layin’
+out to watch where I go.”</p>
+
+<p>Jake nodded. “I was goin’ to say that myself,” he said grimly. “An’ you
+keep to your end o’ town!” He stalked away, seething.</p>
+
+<p>Then a little comedy began, which, rather oddly, did not seem to stale
+with age. At sunrise, Jake arose. He cooked his breakfast silently, and
+ate it morosely. He washed his dishes with meticulous care. Then he took
+down an antiquated but perfectly oiled rifle from the wall.</p>
+
+<p>He walked out of his cabin. Going to meet the man he hated. Making sure
+Bill was not lying in wait to mark, each day, a little more of the path
+to his workings. Glowering, he made his daily progress.</p>
+
+<p>Bill was waiting. He always was. Grinning a little, perhaps. But the
+grin vanished when Jake drew near. Jake would stand no nonsense.</p>
+
+<p>Sourly, the two regarded each other. Booted, armed, whiskered,
+bristling.</p>
+
+<p>Bill spoke first. “Howdy.”</p>
+
+<p>It held an intonation of purest sarcasm. Jake replied in kind. “Howdy.”</p>
+
+<p>He glared at Bill. The glare was returned. Jake turned upon his heel and
+walked away. He made his way deviously to his workings. Twice he paused
+to search the hills behind him, exhaustively, for any sign that Bill was
+spying upon his route. At last he dived below ground.</p>
+
+<p>At night they met again. This time they did not speak. Simply stared,
+hostilely, and went into their respective cabins.</p>
+
+<p>Summer passed. Fall arrived. The snow line above them crept down and
+down. In two weeks it would reach the valley. Jake considered it
+gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning he jerked his thumb at the encroaching blanket of
+white. “Supplies,” he said grudgingly. “Go down tomorrow.”</p>
+
+<p>Bill grunted. “Yep. Was goin’ to say that myself.”</p>
+
+<p>They went down, two silent figures, bristling, avoiding all speech. All
+the long day they trudged without talk. At night they camped,
+wordlessly. Each cooked his own supper and ate alone. In the morning
+they rolled out of their blankets at the same time. Bill blinked. Then,
+“Howdy.”</p>
+
+<p>The word held an intonation of purest sarcasm. Jake replied in kind.
+“Howdy.”</p>
+
+<p>He glared at Bill. The glare was returned. They loaded their burros
+again and went on.</p>
+
+<p>They made their purchases separately. They spent three days in the tiny
+village. Each morning, shortly after sunrise, they found each other.
+Each morning they regarded each other with unwavering distaste. Each day
+they avoided each other thereafter.</p>
+
+<p>They went back up in the hills.</p>
+
+<p>Winter came, and banked the valley with snowdrifts. Work was impossible.
+Jake regarded a blanketed universe with completest gloom. Bill
+unlimbered a mouth organ and played, alone in his cabin. The thin music,
+drifting through the icy, still air, was weird in the wilderness. It was
+barely audible where Jake sat listening, more like the wraith of past
+gaiety in the High Jinks Dance Hall than music of the moment.</p>
+
+<p>One night it stopped. It did not come again that night, or the night
+after.</p>
+
+<p>On the third day Bill was waiting, as usual. “Howdy.” The word was
+friendly enough, but it was spoken in a tone calculated to give offense.</p>
+
+<p>Jake glared at him. “Mouth organ broken?”</p>
+
+<p>Bill grunted. “Yep.”</p>
+
+<p>“Let’s see.”</p>
+
+<p>Bill tossed it over. They never approached nearer than fifteen feet.
+Jake picked it up and gazed hostilely at Bill. The gaze was returned.
+They parted.</p>
+
+<p>It was very late that night that thin strains of music came from Jake’s
+cabin. Very late, indeed. The unaccustomed noise woke Bill. Next morning
+they met in the street as usual.</p>
+
+<p>Bill’s greeting held its invariable bite. Jake tossed the mouth organ
+back. His own word had a sting.</p>
+
+<p>Bill picked up the mouth organ. They parted in mutual dislike. Arrived
+at his cabin, Bill tried the instrument. It worked.</p>
+
+<p>Spring came again, with a rush of melted snow and mud. The stream was a
+turbid torrent. Summer arrived. They went down for supplies. Each day
+they exchanged precisely two words. They came back, unwavering in their
+hostility. Summer passed. Then fall. Winter came once more.</p>
+
+<p>Cumbersomely, the seasons passed in their appointed course. Twin shafts,
+each carefully hidden, grew deeper and deeper but no more productive.
+Twin citizens of Eyrie, Jake and Bill grew somewhat more lined, and
+somewhat more bent. The speckles of gray in Bill’s beard grew white, and
+the black grew gray. Jake’s steps grew just a shade slower, and on the
+long climb to his hidden shaft he paused more frequently to search the
+hillsides behind him for a trace of Bill’s spying. If, as an incident,
+the pauses made the climb easier, it was purely an incident. Jake was
+not old yet. Oh, no.</p>
+
+<p>He had contrived an ingenious windlass with two ropes, by which he could
+hoist his bucket and swing it away from the shaft, then dump it. It made
+the work easier, but at best it was slow. Still, well worth doing. The
+mother lode was below, thick, rich quartz, with the gold in speckles,
+here and there even a nugget. It would run, oh, three hundred a ton,
+anyway. Maybe four, or even five. Riches. Life. Like Eyrie used to be.</p>
+
+<p>But the occasional tiny fragments of riches he was able to accumulate
+grew less and less. He had had a stake. Not too much, but enough to run
+him for a while. Now and then he ran into a tantalizing incrop of worth
+while ore—not enough to be worth mining, but ore which he could crush
+himself in a makeshift mortar and wash, wastefully, for the
+infinitesimal flakes of uncombined gold. For a hard day’s work he could
+sometimes, with luck, get two or even three dollars’ worth of glittering
+dust.</p>
+
+<p>At last even that failed him. Shamefacedly, he abandoned his workings
+for a space. Far off, through the hills, there was a brooklet which even
+the thrifty Chinaman had not bothered with. With deep blushes, Jake
+built a cradle there. He washed out the sands, manfully, though ashamed
+to be doing placer work—he, who was a hardrock man. A steady four
+dollars, sometimes five. Supplies were secure. He went back, joyfully,
+to his shaft. The rock was barren, here, but it was a layer overlaying
+the mother lode, of course. Everyone knows just such things happen. One
+must have faith. Much faith.</p>
+
+<p>They went down for supplies. Hostilely. They came back. Enemies. Fall,
+winter, spring, summer. Fall, winter, spring, summer. Time passed. Eyrie
+went back, more and more, to the forest from which it had been torn.</p>
+
+<p>Only once in all the years did the two hold any other converse than
+their morning salutation. That was after they had been working for five
+years.</p>
+
+<p>Jake had felt premonitory twinges. Snow was deep on the ground outside.
+Clouds presaged a storm. The preliminary winds were whistling dismally
+through the saplings among the cabins and the larger trees beyond. They
+moaned creepily among the empty houses. Voices of the past. That
+rustling, not the last, reluctant, ash dry leaves, but the movement of
+people. That whining noise, not the wind, but music from the High Jinks.
+The streets are alive with shades. They walk up and down, laughing
+uproariously, though the sound is whispers. Red shirts. High boots.
+Holsters and all too ready guns. Women, laughing shrilly. Gaiety——Queer
+that a rabbit should scurry through the throng, unseeing and unseen. A
+rabbit on Main Street! And those trees, saplings, growing before the
+door of the Eyrie House. They closed the entrance, yet people do not
+seem to notice. They walk through them. Bubbles bursting. Mist. Lonely,
+sick pain in a cooling room. Then darkness, darkness, until the windows
+grow slowly gray.</p>
+
+<p>Bill found him. He banged on the door, angrily. Jake croaked an
+indistinguishable word and Bill thrust open the door and came in. Snow
+whirled thickly in behind him.</p>
+
+<p>He glared at Jake, lying upon his bunk, with frost crystals from his
+breath upon his blanket. “Howdy,” said Bill, with elaborate irony.</p>
+
+<p>He cast one comprehensive glance around, then went out again. He came
+back in, bringing wood. He made a fire. Looked at Jake. Muttered in his
+beard and flung out into the storm again. Came back with an unsavory
+dose he forced upon the sick man. He cooked, for one. He fed Jake.
+Without speech.</p>
+
+<p>For three days he nursed Jake in a hostile silence. Then Jake was able
+to sit up. He glared at Bill’s blankets in one corner. Bill had been
+forced to move in while Jake was disabled, but he had ostentatiously
+brought his own food.</p>
+
+<p>“Thought you’d gone off,” said Bill, offensively, “to spy on my
+workings. That’s why I came.”</p>
+
+<p>A lie. A damned lie. Even a particularly damned lie. No man in or out of
+his senses would have tried to go prospecting in six feet of snow, more
+or less. Jake accepted it.</p>
+
+<p>“An’ I been staying here,” concluded Bill, defiantly, “so you’d know I
+ wasn’t hiking off after yours. You’re the sort of son of a gun who’d
+ try shootin’ if you thought it.”</p>
+
+<p>Jake turned his face to the wall, and slept.</p>
+
+<p>Later, Bill produced a greasy pack of cards. “Play,” he said
+offensively. “Take my mind off wanting to choke you.”</p>
+
+<p>They played cards in strict silence. For a week. Then Jake brought in an
+armful of wood. Within ten minutes Bill’s blankets were gone. He, also.
+That night his mouth organ sounded thinly in the solitude.</p>
+
+<p>Time—— Time—— The sun rolled overhead, dizzily. Now its path diverged to
+the south, and the wild birds made haste to overtake it. It swung to the
+north again and they made haste to return, joyfully. Trees put forth
+green, which turned again to yellow and red and gold. The saplings
+before the Eyrie House became young trees. Twin hidden shafts grew
+deeper.</p>
+
+<p>Jake washed gold for his supplies and dug manfully, but a little more
+slowly, through the barren rock. It was a wide streak of barren, but the
+mother lode would be worth it. Never give up. Never. Bill ought to.
+Digging like a fool over yonder in the hills somewhere. Washing a
+stream, too. Jake had seen wet mud on his shoulders, surface mud, one
+evening when there had been no rain. Fool!</p>
+
+<p>They went out for supplies. Jake was getting tired now, but he still
+hated Bill. Old men, both of them. He stopped much more often on his way
+to his shaft. Eyes bothering him a little, too. Had to look very
+carefully to be sure Bill wasn’t spying on him. Take a good, long look.
+If it rested him, too, no harm in that. He wasn’t stopping for rest,
+though. Oh, no.</p>
+
+<p>The packs were slim, as they came back. Jake concealed the size of his
+pack as well as he could, but it was undeniably not as full a list of
+staples as he could have wished. Even beans were sort of short. He’d
+only bought half his usual supply of bacon. Have to go hunting for meat.
+He shouldn’t have got in that poker game. He used to play a good stiff
+hand, too. Foolish. Foolish.</p>
+
+<p>But Bill’s pack was slimmer. Bill was a fool. Hadn’t been washing
+enough. Spending too much time in that crazy shaft of his. Nothing under
+it. Silly to dig. Not like Jake’s shaft. The mother lode was under that.
+Bill would be hard put, all summer. Worse, in winter.</p>
+
+<p>Summer. Glamorous green. Rippling water. Then fall again. Jake took down
+his rifle and went out hunting. More time lost from his mining. He got
+two deer. He would jerk them. Wouldn’t have to buy any bacon, this time.
+A plan was forming in his mind, dimly. Bill was a fool. He couldn’t wash
+out enough to buy supplies for winter. Jake could. He had just enough.
+His stream was panning less, now. Somehow, he didn’t seem to put as much
+through the rocker. Had to rest so much—probably from eating fish
+instead of meat. Not age. Certainly not.</p>
+
+<p>He heard a shot, dimly. Two days later, he heard another. Bill. What was
+he hunting for? Thought he was bent on sinking that crazy shaft of his——</p>
+
+<p>Jake broke the tacit compact. He spied on Bill. And Bill was jerking
+meat for the winter. Jerking a lot of it. Too much. He probably hadn’t
+got enough dust to pay even for a good supply of flour. Fool.</p>
+
+<p>There was much meditation. Jake hated Bill, certainly. Hated him like
+poison. But you couldn’t let a man starve right in your own town, no
+matter how much you hated him. And Bill would certainly starve before he
+would accept anything from Jake.</p>
+
+<p>Jake spied again. He found Bill’s placer works. A cradle, so arranged
+that a part of the stream flowed through it. Wooden riffles at the
+bottom. A spill at the lower end. The heap of sand and clay that Bill
+was planning to wash out.</p>
+
+<p>Carefully, Jake spilled a little pile of gleaming yellow over the heap.
+When Bill washed that out, he’d find enough dust in the clean-up to give
+him beans and flour for the winter. He’d think it was a pocket he’d
+struck. Something like that. You couldn’t let a man starve, even if you
+hated him. He, Jake, was all right. He’d have plenty of jerked meat.</p>
+
+<p>He erased his footsteps carefully and returned to the deserted town.
+Bill came in a little later. They looked at each other, the picture of
+hostility personified. They went each into his separate cabin. Night
+fell.</p>
+
+<p>It was a long distance to Jake’s placer stream. Jake had kept out a
+little, of course, but most of his dust had gone to keep Bill from
+starving, during the winter. They would be starting down for supplies in
+a week or so, now, though, and if he could get a little extra to buy
+some more blankets—! Somehow, winters seemed to get colder, these past
+few years.</p>
+
+<p>He walked painfully the last yards and saw his rocker and cradle, and
+his gravel heap to be washed. He was a hardrock man, but one had to have
+supplies, to get down to the mother lode. He’d wash out a little more
+dust——</p>
+
+<p>He suddenly stiffened. Some woodsman’s sixth sense told him that
+something was wrong. Someone had been here. He searched, and found
+tell-tale scratches upon the ground. He searched further, and found
+footprints, incompletely erased. Bill!</p>
+
+<p>Jake raged. Spying on him! He’d always hated Bill. Spying!</p>
+
+<p>He worked that day in a fury. There would be a reckoning when they met
+that night. Spying! He’d shoot the liver out of the son of a gun!</p>
+
+<p>And at nightfall he drained the cradle, picked out the last lumps of
+larger gravel, carefully swept off the remaining sand—and blinked. His
+clean up was huge, for him. Five, six ounces or more! Maybe he’d struck
+a pocket, or the stream was going to be a bonanza or— He remembered the
+morning’s discoveries. Bill——</p>
+
+<p>The long hike home was a time of meditation. Bill, his enemy, salting
+his gravel pile to give him dust. Bill, who hated him. Bill, who had
+insulted him, whom he had insulted, every day for years.</p>
+
+<p>He was walking firmly when he got to the place where he would meet Bill.
+He understood it all, now. Bill had seen his slim pack of supplies. Bill
+had thought, as he had thought of Bill, that he was unable to wash out
+enough dust to outfit himself for the winter. Bill had jerked meat for
+his own use, to spare the dust for a winter’s supply of beans and flour
+and bacon for Jake, whom he hated.</p>
+
+<p>Hated! They’d hated each other for years. Funny how they’d looked out
+for each other. Bill nursing him, defiantly. He mending Bill’s mouth
+organ, venomously.</p>
+
+<p>Bill was waiting. Bill was looking at him queerly.</p>
+
+<p>Jake’s eyes blazed. “You son of a gun!” he cried furiously. “Spying on
+me! Salting my gravel heap!” The fury suddenly died out of his voice.
+“Bill, what’d you do that for?”</p>
+
+<p>And Bill, his enemy; Bill, with deep lines and weather marks upon his
+features; Bill, whose hair was white save that in a few narrowing spaces
+it was streaked with gray——&nbsp;Bill flushed a fiery, bricky red. He looked
+like a schoolboy, ashamed at having been caught.</p>
+
+<p>He stammered, and then suddenly he burst out. “What’d you salt mine for?
+I’d a mind to kill you for it!”</p>
+
+<p>Jake stared at him, helpless. His enemy—“I thought—” He stopped. “I
+lost most o’ my dust in a poker game, last trip out. That’s why my packs
+were light.”</p>
+
+<p>“So did I,” Bill told him, defiantly. “I thought you weren’t pannin’
+out.”</p>
+
+<p>They stared at each other, two old men, who had hated each other for
+years. Presently, Jake said slowly, “Bill, what’d we fuss about,
+anyway?”</p>
+
+<p>“Durned if I know,” said Bill angrily.</p>
+
+<p>Silence again. After a long time Jake spoke once more. “Say, Bill,” he
+said diffidently, “supposin’ we both move in the Eyrie House? Needn’t
+keep but one fire, then. Save time.”</p>
+
+<p>“I was thinkin’ that myself,” Bill grinned. “Say,” he added suddenly.
+“Remember them card games we had when you were sick?”</p>
+
+<p>Jake nodded. Bill rubbed his hands.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning Bill rolled out of his blankets. Jake had just wakened
+and was staring up at the ceiling, happily. They were in the Eyrie
+House. Bill looked over at his ancient enemy.</p>
+
+<p>“Howdy,” he said maliciously.</p>
+
+<p>Jake gazed at him. It was a tense moment.</p>
+
+<p>“You go to hell,” he said recklessly, “you old son of a gun!”</p>
+
+<p>And happiness, at that sign of amity, began to reign.</p>
+
+<div class="transcriber-note">
+  <div class="transcriber-note-title">Transcriber’s Note</div>
+  <div>This story appeared in <i>West Magazine</i>, January 20, 1926. It is
+  believed to be in the public domain in the United States; copyright
+  status may differ in other countries.</div>
+</div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79295 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+
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+[Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook [#79295](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79295)