E-text prepared by Roger Frank
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch
The Mascot of
Sweet Briar Gulch
By
Henry Wallace Phillips
Author of Red Saunders
Plain Mary Smith
etc.
With Illustrations by
F. Graham Cootes
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Copyright 1908
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
October
The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch
The gulch ran in a trough ofbeauty to the foot of Jones’sHill, which rose in a sweeping curveinto the clouds.
Wild flowers, trees in profuse leaf,and mats of vines covered the scarredearth, and the sky was as limpid asspring water; the air carried a weightof heart-stirring odors, yet Jim Felton,sitting on the door-step of his cabin inthe brilliant sunshine, was not a happyman.2
He looked at the hollow of the gulchand cursed it manfully and bitterly.The gold should be there—Jim hadfigured it all out. The old wash cut atright angles to the creek, and at theturn was where its freight of yellowmetal should have been deposited, butwhen you got down to the bed-rock, theblasted stuff was either slanted so nothingcould stay on it, or was rotten—crumblingin your fingers, and thatkind of bed will hold nothing.
Therefore Jim had sunk about fiftyprospect holes; got colors under thegrass-roots, as evidence that pay shouldbe there—and nothing but ashy washbeneath it.3
When a man is alone, and thinksthings are wrong, optimism comesdown on the run, the shades of pessimismgather fast and furious—moreespecially if a man does his own cooking,and the raw material is limited, atthat.
The sun had not moved the shadowsthree inches before Jim had reachedthe conclusion that this world was alla practical joke, of so low an order thatno sensible man would even laugh at it,and he drew a letter from his pocketin proof thereof. It was a thin letter,written on delicate paper in a delicatehand, and it showed much wear. Heread for the thousandth