The Claim Jumpers: A Romance | Page 5

full his ability to swing gorgeous involved
sentences, phrase after phrase, down the long arc of rhetoric, without a
pause, without a quiver, until they rushed unhasting up the other slope
to end in beautiful words, polysyllabic, but with just the right number
of syllables. Interspersed were short sentences. He counted the words in
one or the other of these two sorts, carefully noting the relations they
bore to each other. On occasions he despaired because they did not bear
the right relations. And he also dragged out, squirming, the
Anglo-Saxon and Latin derivations, and set them up in a row that he
might observe their respective numbers. He was uneasily conscious that
he ought, in the dread of college anathema, to use the former, but he
loved the many-syllabled crash or modulated music of the latter. Also,
there was the question of getting variety into his paragraph lengths. It
was all excellent practice.
And yet this technique, absorbing as it was, counted as nothing in

comparison with the subject-matter.
The method was talent; the subject-matter was Genius; and Genius had
evolved an Idea which no one had ever thought of before--something
brand new under the sun. It goes without saying that the Idea
symbolized a great Truth. One department, the more impersonal, of
Bennington's critical faculty, assured him that the Idea would take rank
with the Ideas of Plato and Emerson. Emerson, Bennington worshipped.
Plato he also worshipped--because Emerson told him to. He had never
read Plato himself. The other, the more personal and modest, however,
had perforce to doubt this, not because it doubted the Idea, but because
Bennington was not naturally conceited.
To settle the discrepancy he began to write. He laid the scene in Arabia
and decided to call it _Aliris: A Romance of all Time_, because he
liked the smooth, easy flow of the syllables.
The consciousness that he could do all this sugar-coated his Wild
Western experiences, which otherwise might have been a little
disagreeable. He could comfort himself with the reflection that he was
superior, if ridiculous.
In spots, he was certainly the latter. The locality into which his
destinies had led him lay in the tumultuous centre of the Hills, about
thirty miles from Custer and ten from Hill City. Spanish Gulch was
three miles down the draw. The Holy Smoke mine, to which
Bennington was accredited, he found to consist of a hole in the ground,
of unsounded depth, two log structures, and a chicken coop. The log
structures resembled those he had read about. In one of them lived
Arthur and his wife. The wife did the cooking. Arthur did nothing at all
but sit in the shade and smoke a pipe, and this in spite of the fact that he
did not look like a loafer. He had no official connection with the place,
except that of husband to Mrs. Arthur. The other member of the
community was Davidson, alias Old Mizzou.
The latter was cordial and voluble. As he was blessed with a long white
beard of the patriarchal type, he inspired confidence. He used
exclusively the present tense and chewed tobacco. He also played

interminable cribbage. Likewise he talked. The latter was his strong
point. Bennington found that within two days of his arrival he knew all
about the company's business without having proved the necessity of
stirring foot on his own behalf. The claims were not worth much,
according to Old Mizzou. The company had been cheated. They would
find it out some day. None of the ore assayed very high. For his part he
did not see why they even did assessment work. Bennington was to
look after the latter? All in good time. You know you had until the end
of the year to do it. What else was there to do? Nothing much; The
present holders had come into the property on a foreclosed mortgage,
and weren't doing anything to develop it yet. Did Bennington know of
their plans? No? Well, it looked as though the two of them were to
have a pretty easy time of it, didn't it?
Old Mizzou tried, by adroit questioning, to find out just why de Laney
had been sent West. There was, in reality, not enough to keep one man
busy, and surely Old Mizzou considered himself quite competent to
attend to that. Finally, he concluded that it must be to watch him--Old
Mizzou. Acting on that supposition, he tried a new tack.
For two delicious hours he showed up, to his own satisfaction,
Bennington's ignorance of mining. That was an easy enough task.
Bennington did not even know what country-rock was. All he
succeeded in eliciting confirmed him in the impression that de Laney
was sent to spy on him. But why de Laney? Old Mizzou wagged