The Hardin tribune-herald. [volume] (Hardin, Mont.) 1925-1973, 1935-10-04
SandoW the Dream Tree
Bv G0uverneur Morris

or other a black pipe came out Of 9
hillside and the year round dripped
water into a square concrete tank where
his father had been accustomed to pan
dirt when the brook failed. He re-
membered also that nearby was q dense
fig tree which bore excellent fruit ana
beneath which when a small boy ne
and his father had found a dry ref
uge during a cloudburSt.
There was not much else that he
could remember. He would have to get
some one to show him the boundaries
of his property. It consisted mostly,
he thought, of the long, low, softly
rounded hill back Of the cabin.
The nearest neighbors, he remember
ed, had lived a mile or more down the
road and on the other side Of the
brook. His father had sent him once
with a message. There had been q mar
and his wife and a very little girl who
her mothers skirts, o an occasional
peep at him. He could not remember
the message or the mans name. II
might be amusing to look him up. It
might not.
The cabin door was not locked. In
the mother lode country there has
never been any need of locked doors.
In the old days those who had no res
pect for private property were promptly
Shot or hanged and left behind them
an aftermath of scrupulous honesty.
Nothing had been taken. There were
the two cot beds which he remember
ed, the kitchen chair, and the easy
chair. The ak was in its place n n
corner behind the stove. Even n
lantern had oil in it.
Night fell. He built a roaring fire
in the rustic, stone fireplace, ate raw,
enously and slept presently n a PED
made of two blankets two steamer
rugs and an automobile robe.
At the end of a month he had stop
ped aching from head to foot and was
banning in the neighborhood of three
dollars a day. It was unlikely that ne
would ever strike a rich pocket but he
preferred to believe the opposite. II
made life so much more interesting.
He had located his boundaries. Half a
mile of the level ridge back Of the p
brook for an equal distance. Inc en-
tire property was mildly a~uriferous.
Even the dirt which chung to the roots
of the grass yielded color. Color a
streak of bright gold set in a residue
of fine black sand was only worth a
few cents. But washed soil from n
banks and bed of the brook sometimes
enriched him by as much as a quarter.
One day he found a nugget which
was worth a dollar and on another oc-
casion he found a piece of white quartz
with a thin leaf of gold growing Out OF
it like seaweed from a rock which was
! too pretty to sell. Meanwhile he was
living a life of gorgeous independence
and putting money in the bank.
Because of its independence and be-
cause of the bright, hot, resinous days
and because of the cold, soporific
nights the life vas gorgeous. But it was
also SO solitary that it was sometimes
necessary to stiffen the lip against
the ache for companionship.
Planning for gold soon becomes a
/ habit. The muscles themselves soon
master all the motions and tricks OF
the process and leave the mind free to
roam.
Sometimes when the loneliness be-
came a little too bitter he sought com,
panionship in Jim Town. He had
scraped acquaintance with a number OF
old timers and he never Wearied OF the
stories they told him. Sometimes these
were stories of violence, but mostly
they were of foretunes missed or won
by strange freaks of fortune.
They told, for instance, of the SWede
who was new to the diggings and who,
when he asked where he had better
SGdIU ulSS11lS, Wdo CO1o oAAoo oo ohAS
roots of yonder tree might be a good
place. And so it proved to be. With
the first thrust of his shovel the Swede
opened a pocket which Melted him
nearly thirty thousand dollars. There
were many variations of this story and
there were stories of men who had
been told where to dig in dreams. If
dreams are the children of suggestion
then it was this last family OF stories
which deeply affected Johnnie Brink
ley's future life.
He began to dream. At first the
dream seemed merely to assure him
that somewhere on his property there
was a rich pocket of gold. But they did
not tell him where it was, even vaguely.
Then, and probably the story of the
Swede had a hand in this, he dreamed
that the rich pocket was all deeply
mixed up with the roots of a tree.
It was not to be mistaken for any other
tree. 1t was a white oak and it had
one main branch which doubled back
on itself as a mans arm doubles when
he shows off his biceps. Even after
the stuff of dreams had been swept
away by the clear morning light and
he was wide awake the image of the
tree remained fixed in his memory.
But even this fact did not at once
SCd1U 1l1lll O1l q WIN SOooC SAlooS ifSAJ
one was agreed that a dream before it
could amount to a row of pins had to be
dreamed three times.
Nevertheless, the gold fever of which
he was by no means cured flared up
with renewed force and hope.
Johnnie was not in the least greedy.
The thought of finding something rare,
something which two generations of
miners had overlooked, excited him
much more than the thought of find
ing something valuable. 1t vas a sport
ing proposition. If the pocket did eX-
ist he simply had to find it. Just so it
is possible to conceive of a. man who
should gradually work himself into a
passion of determination to find the
needle that has been lost in the hay
stack.
After Johnnie Brinkley had once