HEN a man associates with burros for eight or ten years he gets the burro habit, and, like drinking or smoking, so they say, it's hard to break off. It was pretty well fixed on Jim Tipton when first he came to the Sierra Madres along with Baldy and three or four other pack-mules; but Baldy was his intimate friend, and the others didn't count.
It was when Holcomb Valley, away up in the tops of the hills, was a real camp, where every one was busy getting gold, or sure he was going to get it, and it was nobody's business who anybody else was or where he came from. Curiosity starts lots of cemeteries, so it didn't pay to want to know too much. All that any one ever really cared about was whether the other fellow was on the square, and Jim Tipton was all of that. So was Baldy. When Jim gave his word it was a certainty, whether he was only to bring in a sack of flour or take a mule-load of gold out, it would be done on time. And there isn't much of anything finer than always keeping your word and making good.
Jim had been a civilian teamster and packer with the army when things were lively along the desert, at a time in which a man didn't make any heavy bets, when he rolled in his blankets, that he would get up in the morning with his scalp. When the noble red man, as a reward for having tortured and murdered all he could, was finally pensioned into fat and lazy peace, Jim naturally drifted into packing, and the drifting and the packing brought him to Holcomb.
That's all any one knew of him, and more than anybody cared. But before long every one was glad he was there because packing wasn't a thing that most men tackled, particularly when the trail ran away off into the high-back hills, through passes, along shelves by waterfalls, and over places where the ledge tried to lose itself in the face of the cliffs. It was no pygmy's job.
Even for a packer, Jim wasn't handsome, being that kind of a man that the desert makes, or makes the desert—tall, lean, and leathery, sunburned to a red, and with little wrinkles around his eyes from much peering over hot sands. He was more liberal with everything than talk, of which he was miserly, perhaps through lack of practise. But the Lord Almighty's too busy to. measure men by words. It's what they do. Be sure of that! So most men believe Jim stood pretty well with Him, and others don't matter.
Baldy was a wise old chap, who had lived with Jim a long time. In fact, they must have become acquainted somewhere out on the desert before they came to the new camp. Baldy was rather a benevolent-looking burro, having a white face and whiskers and a pair of philanthropic ears much bigger around than any of his trim little legs which a hand could girdle. He seemed to think he had a right to go into any cabin where Jim was welcomed, and, come to think of it, most everybody else thought so. He was just like a good-natured dog that's always hanging around a table or a camp-fire and looking so longingly for a little attention or a scrap of something to eat that no one can refuse out of mere politeness. Baldy was real polite, too, because he never took anything without asking for it in his way. Jim said Baldy got his honesty from a preacher who raised him, but the boys thought it was really from associating with Jim himself.
Life with them was just about the same one day as another. Break camp in the morning, swing the pack-trees on, get the loads up and throw the hitches and plod away over the trail, Baldy's bell calling “Tink-tank; tink-tank” as he led the way. Soft spots in the trail would stop the ringing until Jim came front and fixed it up. It was the same way with a bridge. Baldy would go up on it and tap it with his feet before putting his weight down until he got clear across, while the whole train would watch him go over, feeling sure of his judgment. And very day of his judgment. And so every day they did the same, life beginning and ending with the trail. Always the trail.