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Title: Howdy!

Author: Murray Leinster


        
Release date: August 7, 2026 [eBook #79295]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1926

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79295

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOWDY! ***

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.]



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