The Tenderfoots by Francis Lynde

THE beginning of the week after the clash with the claim jumpers found the routine which the owners of the "Little Jean" hoped to maintain through the winter catching its stride. True, Bromley was out of the activities for the time being; but even as a cripple he contributed his part by refusing to let Philip or Garth make a trip afoot to Leadville on the slender chance of being able to persuade a doctor to cross the ranges in the perilous edge of the closed season. As to this, however, a second snowfall, coming almost upon the heels of the first, shut them off conclusively from the outer world, and their isolation was complete.

"It's perfectly all right," Bromley maintained cheerfully. "I'm doing fine -- couldn't be doing any better if I had all the doctors in Leadville. The only thing that nags me is the fact that I'm tied down and can't pull my weight in the boat."

"You have good and well earned all the time you have to lose," was Philip's retort to this plaint; and with Garth as an able team-mate he completed the preparations for the winter, cutting down trees for firewood, setting up a third bunk in the cabin, and building a small lean-to for the storing of the provisions and explosives.

When it came to a resumption of the mining operations, Philip found that they had acquired much more than a mere day-laborer in the experienced mining man. Quite apart from his great strength and apparently unlimited capacity for hard work, Garth's practical knowledge of development processes proved invaluable, and it was at his suggestion that the tunnel was straightened and enlarged, its future drainage and ventilation provided for, and a rough-and-ready process of hand-picked ore-sorting made a part of each day's task.

"You got to look ahead a mile 'r so in this here minin' game," was the experienced one's business-like argument. "You let on like you boys ain't got the spondulix to buy a stamp-mill and tote it in over the mount'ins, so you either got to make a stock comp'ny o' this bonanza o' yourn 'r else lease it. Either way the cat jumps, it's a-goin' to pay big if yuh've got a sure-enough mine, with rich ore on the dump, to show up next spring."

For two tenderfoots to whom, as yet, all things mining-wise were unknown quantities, this practical advice was as water to the thirsty, so the development work was planned accordingly. By the time Bromley's wound had healed and he was able to take his shift as third man in the heading, the work of drilling and blasting had been expertly systematized, and the stock of selected ore was growing day by day.

Speculations as to what had become of the would-be jumpers died out after the first heavy snowfall, which blocked, not only the mountain passes, but the high-lying valley as well. Garth had argued from the first that, with at least one wounded man in the party, Neighbors would not try to hold his footing in the snowbound western wilderness through the winter.

"Now that he knows whereabouts them high-grade assays o' yourn come from, he'll know how to beat the rush that's shore goin' to come chargin' in here the minute the passes are open in the spring," was Garth's answer to the speculations; and since the snow blockade, daily added to, shut all intrusion out, no less effectually than it shut the occupants of the lonely log cabin in, the stirring incidents of the night of battle became only a memory, and the day's work filled the cup of the days to overflowing for the three who had elected to brave the winter in the solitudes.

The severity of the winter of 1880-81 in the mountains of Colorado had -- and still has -- for its reminiscent chroniclers all those who endured the rigors of that Arctic season. The trio in the high-pitched valley of the Saguache were not the only mineral-mad gold-hunters who, deliberately or in tenderfoot hardihood, disregarded the warnings of the old-timers and stayed afield, many of them without adequate supplies, and lacking the skill and experience necessary to successful pioneering in a snowbound wilderness. As a consequence, the hard winter took its toll on many a mountain side and in many an isolated gulch. Snow slides swept precariously situated log cabins from bare slopes, or buried them fathoms deep in débris in the gulches. In the ill-provided camps starvation stalked abroad; and though there was game to be had, it could not be pursued without snow-shoes; and few, indeed, were the neophytes who had had the foresight to include snow-shoes in their winter camp kits.

As for the three burrowing in the gulch of the "Little Jean," the hardships played no favorites, though Garth's fund of experience stood them in good stead, tiding them over many of the exigencies. Before they became entirely shut in, the big man stalked and shot a deer: the meat was smoke-cured and added to the store of provisions, and the skin, Indian-tanned, served for an extra bunk cover in the cold nights. But with the coming of the heavier snows deer-stalking became impossible, so that source of food supply was cut off for the future.

Fortunately, by the middle of December, by which time zero-and-below temperatures were clamping the western slope wilderness in an icy vise, they had driven the mine tunnel to a depth to which the outdoor frigidities only partly penetrated; hence they were still able to carry on the mining operations. But the deepening drifts in the gulch were now threatening to bury the small cabin, chimney and all, and no little of their daylight time was spent in keeping the snow shovelled from the roof, and the paths open to the tunnel, to the woodpile and to the creek from which they were still obtaining their drinking water.