Max Brand

The Seventh Man Max Brand

A man under thirty needs neighbors and to stop up the current of his life with along silence is like obstructing a river-eventually the water either sweeps away thedam or rises over it, and the stronger the dam the more destructive is that finalrush to freedom. Vic Gregg was on the danger side of thirty and he lived alone inthe mountains all that winter. He wanted to marry Betty Neal, but marriage meansmoney, therefore Vic contracted fifteen hundred dollars' worth of mining for theDuncans, and instead of taking a partner he went after that stake single handed. Heis a very rare man who can turn out that amount of labor in a single season, butGregg furnished that exception which establishes the rule: he did the assessmentwork on fourteen claims and almost finished the fifteenth, yet he paid the price. Week after week his set of drills was wife and child to him, and for conversation hehad only the clangor of the four-pound single-jack on the drill heads, with thecrashing of the "shots" now and then as periods to the chatter of iron on iron. Hekept at it, and in the end he almost finished the allotted work, but for all of it hepaid in full.