It was a long distance from the beaten roads to where “Old Harmless” had his cabin; quite over the top of ridges, down across intervening valleys, around mountain shelves where a pack burro might not slip with impunity, and with now and then a gurgling little stream to ford that became a dangerous place when spring freshets ran high and filled a gulch. It was not a place that any one other than a recluse might have chosen for permanent domicile, but to Old Harmless it was Heaven. He was convinced that somewhere within its borders there was wealth.
“Yes, sir, I reckon that some place in these here hills, right about the rim of this gulch, thar’s a ledge of gold that orter go about ten thousand dollars a ton!” he was wont to explain to the partners, David and Goliath, when they visited him by climbing to a high, steep ridge, traversing the crest of a rugged, barren range, and then dropping down long, steep hills into the valley where Old Harmless dwelt and strove with infinite and inexhaustible patience and optimism. “And that ain’t exactly all of it, either. You see, I diskivered this gulch in ’fifty-eight, and I took a right-smart lot of pay outen this flat, and there was some other fellers came, and they called it Harmon’s Camp. Named it arter me, you see. An’ they built some stores and—by Matildy!—they was a post office here oncet, where a feller could go and git his mail. If he had any to git.”
Roy Norton, born 1869 and died 1942, American Newspaperman and author of pulp fiction, including those in the western and science fiction genres. Was a regular contributor to magazines like Cosmopolitan, The Popular Magazine, etc. Sometimes wrote as Roy E. Norton.
In public Domain
First Published 1920
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