But his crowning effort was his search for gold. There are well-established geological laws governing the prospector’s craft which no experienced gold-seeker ever departs from. These were all carefully explained to him by willing tongues. Then, after poring over all he had learned, and thought and searched for two days and two nights, he finally discovered a spot where no other prospector had staked the ground.
It was a curious, gloomy sort of patch, nearly half-a-mile up the creek from the camp, and further in towards the mountains. Just at this spot the banks of the creek were high, there was an unusual blackness about the soil, and it gave out a faint but unrecognizable odor, that, in the bright mountain air, was quite pleasant. For several hundred yards the ground of this flat was rankly spongy, with an oozy surface. Then, beyond, lay a black greasy-looking marsh, and further on again the hills rose abruptly with the facets of auriferous-looking soil, such as the prospector loves to contemplate.
Scipio pondered. And though the conditions outraged all he had been told of the craft he was embarking upon, he plunged his pick into this flat, and set to work with characteristic good-will.
The men of the camp when they discovered his venture shook their heads and laughed. Then their laugh died out and their hard eyes grew serious. But no one interfered. They were all seeking gold.
This was Scipio’s position on Suffering Creek, but it does not tell half of what lay somewhere in the back of his quaintly-poised mind. No one who knew him failed to realize his worship for his wife. His was a love such as rarely falls to the lot of woman. And his devotion to his girl and boy twins was something quite beyond words. These things were the mainspring of his life, and drove him to such superlative degrees of self-sacrifice that could surely only have been endured by a man of his peculiar mind.
No matter what the toil of his claim, he always seemed to find leisure and delight in saving his wife from the domestic cares of their home. And though weary to the breaking-point with his toil, and consumed by a hunger that was well-nigh painful, when food was short he never seemed to realize his needs until Jessie and the children had eaten heartily. And afterwards no power on earth could rob him of an hour’s romp with the little tyrants who ruled and worshiped him.
Now, as he stood before the littered table, he glanced out at the sun. The morning was advancing all too rapidly. His eyes drifted across to his wife. She was still reading. A light sigh escaped him. He felt he should be out on his claim. However, without further thought he took the boiler of hot water off the stove and began to wash up.
It was the clatter of the plates that made Jessie look up.
“For goodness’ sake!” she exclaimed, with exasperation. “You’ll be bathing the children next. Say, you can just leave those things alone. I’ve only got a bit more to read to the end of the chapter.”
“I thought maybe it ’ud help you out some. I–”
“You give me a pain, you sure do,” Jessie broke in. “You get right out and hustle gold, and leave things of that sort to others.”
“But I don’t mind doing it, truth I don’t,” Scipio expostulated mildly. “I just thought it would save you–”
Jessie gave an artificial sigh.
“You tire me. Do you think I don’t know my work? I’m here to do the chores–and well I know it. You’re here to do a man’s work, same as any other man. You get out and find the gold, I can look after the house–if you can call it a house,” she added contemptuously.
Her eyes were quite hopeless as she let them wander over the frowsiness in the midst of which she sat. She was particularly discontented this morning. Not only had her thoughts been rudely dragged back from the seductive contemplation of the doings of the wealthy ones as the dime fiction-writer sees them, but there was a feeling of something more personal. It was something which she hugged to her bosom as a priceless pearl of enjoyment in the midst of a barren, rock-bound life of squalor.
The sight of him meandering about the room recalled these things. Thoughts, while they troubled her, yet had power to stimulate and excite her; thoughts which she almost dreaded, but which caused her exquisite delight. She must get rid of him.
But as she looked about the room something very like dismay assailed her. There were the hated household duties confronting her; duties she was longing to be free of, duties which she was tempted to abandon altogether, with everything else that concerned her present sordid life.
But Scipio knew none of this. His unsuspicious nature left him utterly blinded to the inner workings of her indolent, selfish spirit, and was always ready to accept blame for her ill-humors. Now he hurriedly endeavored to make amends.
“Of course you can, Jess,” he said eagerly. “I don’t guess there’s another woman around who can manage things like you. You don’t never grumble at things, and goodness knows I couldn’t blame you any, if you did. But–but ther’ seems such a heap to be done–for you to do,” he went on, glancing with mild vengefulness at the litter. “Say,” he cried, with a sudden lightening and inspiration, “maybe I could buck some wood for you before I go. You’ll need a good fire to dry the kiddies by after you washened ’em. It sure wouldn’t kep me long.”
But the only effect of his persistent kindliness was to further exasperate his wife. Every word, every gentle intention on his part made her realize her own shortcomings more fully. In her innermost heart she knew that she had no desire to do the work; she hated it, she was lazy. She knew that he was far better than she; good, even noble, in spite of his mental powers being so lamentably at fault. All this she knew, and it weakly maddened her because she could not rise above herself and show him all the woman that was so deeply hidden under her cloak of selfishness.
Then there was that other thought, that something that was her secret. She had that instinct of good that made it a guilty secret. Yet she knew that, as the world sees things, she had as yet done no great harm.
And therein lay the mischief. Had she been a vicious woman nothing would have troubled her, but she was not vicious. She was not even less than good in her moral instincts. Only she was weak, hopelessly weak, and so all these things drove her to a shrewish discontent and peevishness.
“Oh, there’s no peace where you are,” she cried, passionately flinging her book aside and springing to her feet. “Do you think I can’t look to this miserable home you’ve given me? I hate it. Yes, I hate it all. Why I married you I’m sure I don’t know. Look at it. Look round you, and if you have any idea of things at all what can you see but a miserable hog pen? Yes, that’s it, a hog pen. And we are the hogs. You and me, and–and the little ones. Why haven’t you got some ‘get up’ about you? Why don’t you earn some money, get some somehow so we can live as we’ve been used to living? Why don’t you do something, instead of pottering around here trying to do chores that aren’t your work, an’ you can’t do right anyway? You make me mad–you do indeed. But there! There’s no use talking to you, none whatever!”
“I’m sorry, Jess. I’m real sorry you feel like this.”
Scipio left the table and moved to the cupboard, into which he mechanically began to stow the provender. It was an unconscious action and almost pathetic in its display of that kindly purpose, which, where his wife was concerned, was never-failing. Jessie saw, angry as she was, and her fine eyes softened. Perhaps it was the maternal instinct underlying the selfishness that made her feel something akin to a pitying affection for her little husband.
She glanced down at the boiler of water, and mechanically gathered some of the tin plates together and proceeded to wash them.
“I’m kind of sorry, Zip,” she said. “I just didn’t mean all that. Only–only it makes me feel bad seeing all this around, and you–you always trying to do both a man’s and a woman’s work. Things are bad with us, so bad they seem hopeless. We’re right here with two kiddies and–and ourselves, and there’s practically no money and no prospects of there being