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Show iVl WE CAME UPON A GRAVE. m Half way up the mountain vc came H upon a grave. The spot was romantic lW enough, but so lonely. At the head IM was a rude cross which was fast fal-'! fal-'! ling to decay. At the foot the ground .B had caved in, and the hollow thus ujB made, was filled with water left there B from a recent shower. Along the IJS sides a clump of rosin weeds were inf growing rank and lusty, while a sin- Ill tj'e flower, like a tear of pity, strove MM to show its head among them. To if the right and above the spot, was ill a thick and tangled grove of moun- Itain pines to which the morning - breeze gave a voice low, soft and m, mourn ful, which mingled with the lighter music of a nearby brook in a manner indiscribably sad. A sausy magpy was perched upon a lower limb of a nearby Cottonwood, and at our approach, scolded in the impish manner his kind alone can scold. Besides ourselves he was the only living thing in the neighborhood neighbor-hood We paused and looked at the grave and then at each other. There was a history here which wc fain would unravel. un-ravel. No name was carved upon the cross. There was nothing to tell who slept beneath the rudely made mound. Wc only knew that human hands had laid him away in the lonely lone-ly lowly bed, and that they had gone away and left him to his rest. Wc spoke to each other with subdued sub-dued voices, as if wc feared to break the slumbers of the sleeper below, 1 and then taking a long look at the spot, went on our way. Upon rounding a ridge which came down the mountain side like the rib of an enormous umbrella, wc came ; upon the opening of a tunnel ;nto j whofe mouth the weeds were growing and just beyond it a log cabin with its roof caved in and the rude stone chimney half tumbled over. "A prospector!" said my compan- iion, pointing down the path to the grave. "The story is told." Just then a smothered boom as of a distant cannon came from beneath the ground, which told that others had discovered what the sleeper had vainly strove to find. ' That evening at the mine office of the great Liberty mining company, wc spoke of running upon the grave ,. and the unused tunnel far up on the I mountain side. "Yes," said a grizzcled old miner, "That is the grave of old Emerson, 1 helped to bury him. lie had lived for years alone in the cabin you saw near the tunnel which he was diiv-ing diiv-ing to catch the ledge which crops just above. It was five miles away from the nearest prospect, and I don't suppose j fj he saw a human being for months ,' at a time. One day Sam Trcssel, and II happened to come that way from doing assessment work on the Sal Bcnso.ii. Things looked awful quiet around the place, and though a rain had fallen in the night wc could not see any tracks about the house. J There was no one in the cabin and wc thought that the old man had gone down to the camp for supplies. 1 don't know why wc went into the tunnel, but I suppose that we wanted want-ed to sec how he had been getting along. Well, a few feet from the breast we found Emerson as dead as a door nail. "Killed by a missed shot?" wc quer-ricd. quer-ricd. "No, just died," he continued. "There were no marks on his body or anything to show that he had been hurt. A barrow half filled with rock was standing just where he lay It looked that he had fallen in his tracks. Must have been heart failure." fail-ure." "Did anyone ever do any more work in his tunnel?" we asked. "Did they? well rather. Four or five years afterwards, Mr. Nichols who is now the president of the .'liberty, .'lib-erty, thought he would put in a few shots. He had only gone in a short way, when he broke into the ore You know what that means. He is now a millionaire." Who was Emerson, did anyone ever enquire after him?" "He came from the east," was the reply, "down around York state somewhere, some-where, and when the Liberty panned out so big that it became known all over the country a man came out here who said he was his nephew, and tried to get a portion of the property. proper-ty. He didn't get any though, as old Emerson's title had lapsed. He said that the old man had left home years before to make bis fortune in the west, and that the family had lost sight of him. There was some girl connected with his going away, but she had married years ago and had died too." And thus the story was told. Filled Fil-led with high hopes he had left the old home, determined to make his fortune and return for some loved one. The years had passed and she had rown weary of waiting, and while, he had been delving in the mountain, another had wooed and won her. Still, dreaming of her, lit kept on at his lonely work, until death had overtaken him In the drakness Another had reaped the benefit of his years of toil. His was only the quiet sleep in that lonely and unfrequented unfre-quented grave on the mountain side where only the soughing of the wind through the pines sang requcum to his memory. But after all his life in vain? A great mine had been discovered through his unrequited labors. The nation had been made richer, and some city had been made more beautiful beauti-ful because he had lived and toiled. His life and death is but one of tha tragedies which mark the winning of the West. |