The Mystery of The Barranca

by Herman Whitaker

  CHAPTER X

  "Done--at last!"

  Sprawled on the flat of his back, with his curly head propped on hishands and his lime-eaten boots spread at a comfortable angle, Billygazed upon their completed labor. The "well"--into which the liquidcopper matte would presently be flowing--crucible, slag spout, blastpipes, or tuyeres, and canvas blowers, even the inclined way that led upto the platform over the loading trap, all were finished, and from thesolid bed to the tip top of the brick chimney shaft Billy's visionembraced it all. Including the tons of charcoal that Caliban had burnedand brought in from the woods, and the piles of ore which Seyd andCalixto had broken into smelting size with "spalling" hammers, all stoodready for the match that Seyd scratched while echoing Billy'sobservation.

  "Done--at last!"

  When the shavings and wood were fairly started under the mixed charge ofcharcoal and ore Seyd also lay down to watch the first smoke. Under thevigorous blast it quickly appeared--a thin blue spiral which waxed involume and blackness. In thirty minutes it laid a sooty finger halfwayacross the Barranca above the hills, a sinister portent to the rancherosand peons, one that found a dark reflection in Don Luis's frown as helooked out from the upper patio of San Nicolas, far away.

  Unconscious, however, of alien observation, Seyd watched thefluctuations of the black smoke with lazy enjoyment. He permitted hisfancy to float with the waving pennon out over the valley down theriver, where it set him aboard a log raft with his first shipment ofcopper matte and set him drifting down to the coast, where he couldeither sell to the United Metals Company or ship by sea to Californiasmelters. There was nothing impractical about his musings. Independentof the gold values it carried, one smelting would transmute theirthirty-dollar ore into copper matte worth a hundred and twenty dollars aton. At a liberal estimate the extra twenty would pay expenses, and witha profit of a hundred dollars on an output of sixty or seventy a weekduring the two months before the rains, there was a small fortune in it.Next year they could both import their labor and put in a regular plant.Thereafter they would be in a position to deliver "blister" copperinstead of matte to the market. Why, flaming under the breath of thisfirst success, fancy leaped out to all sorts of possibilities, raisedwharves, bunkers, storehouses in the jungle below, set a fleet offlat-bottomed sternwheelers on the river. And never was there such ariver! He was traveling its long reaches in thought when fancy suddenlysteered his argosy of dreams into the San Nicolas landing.

  The next second he was sitting again in the shaded gallery of the upperpatio, its flowers and bird song, sunshine and fountain splash in hiseyes and ears. As on the other day, he watched Francesca bending overher godchild, and while he was contrasting her air of tender solicitudewith the cold hauteur of her face a month ago he thought she looked upwith a smile. He was answering it when the smiling eyes were wiped outby the intrusion of some unpleasant thought.

  "You fool!" he chided himself. Then, sitting suddenly up, he smote Billyon the thigh with force that drew a yell of anguish. "It's a mint, boy!A blooming mint! I wouldn't trade my share for the best gold mine inTonopah. Next year we'll put in a big plant--"

  "Reverberatories with water jackets!" Billy enthusiastically took up thetale.

  "Sure, and we'll build down on the flat by the river and deliver the oreby--"

  "Gravity. Aerial cable--self-dumping buckets--"

  "We'll refine our own matte--"

  "Market our own copper and gold." His blue eyes shining, Billy ran on:"In five years we'll be rich, then for a rest and a trip. New York,London, Paris, with Nice and Monte Carlo thrown in. Europe in atouring-car, by golly! Egypt and the Pyramids! A steam yacht and a triparound the world! Hurray for us!"

  "In the mean time"--Seyd led him gently back to earth--"remember,please, that this is your trick. Go and stoke up, or there'll be noParis in yours."

  And surely their days of ease lay a long way off. Long and hard as theyhad labored, the completion of the smelter merely marked the beginningof still more strenuous tasks. Upon them and the two peons would restthe entire weight of running the smelter at its full capacity. Besidesthe breaking of the ore, tapping of the slag, continuous firing, theywould have to burn their own charcoal after the first supply ran out.Though they had spread the strain by dividing day and night into shifts,it would have been work enough for four times their number.

  Seyd's first shift ended at twelve that night, but, though he sentCaliban off to his sleep, he himself sat up to wait for the first matte,which was due to come trickling from the spouts at any moment. Reclininghis head, propped on his hand, he watched Billy and Calixto, both now ofone color, each at his task, one working the blowers while the otherdumped fresh ore and charcoal into the loading trap. At such times theblast would send a burst of flame high over the chimney top, lightingthe house, stables, green ore mounds, showing ghostly trees beyond asunder a calcium glare. Though the roar of the blast fell like a lullabyon his tired ears, excitement kept him awake till the first matte flowedin a red stream out of the tap.

  "She'll go a hundred and fifty to the ton!" Billy exclaimed, after acareful examination of a cooled sample. Then, waving his hand at thehuge ore mounds, he groaned: "What a shame that we hadn't enough laborand capital. We could have run it all through before the rains."

  "Pig! Hog!" Seyd found a vent for his own surplus feelings by punchingBilly in the chest. "Think how much worse off we should have been if wehad had to mine it. Go down on your American knee bones and thank yourlucky stars for the English Johnnies."

  Still smiling, he lay again to watch the glowing matte as Billy ladledit out of the well. It was the culmination of their long labor, but hewas too tired even to think, and, giving himself up to a dim luxuriousfeeling, he insensibly passed into sleep.

  * * * * *

  "Wake up, Bob, and go to bed. You still have four hours."

  Only half aroused, he arose and stumbled across to the adobe, threwhimself down on the bunk without waiting to remove even his boots, andfell into slumber at once so dead and dreamless that it seemed as if hishead had no more than touched the pillow before Billy's voice againrang in his ear.

  "Seven o'clock, Bob. I gave you an extra hour."

  "Oh, quit your joshing." He murmured it, rolling over, and was againalmost asleep when a sudden report, louder than thunder, but with apeculiar vibrant note, brought him swiftly to his feet. A second laterthe door banged to and stuck, but not before they had caught a glimpseof a huge cloud plume, densely yellow, shooting upward above thesmelter.

  During the moment required to wrench the door from its frame the adoberocked under the concussion and scattered mud bricks, and there was arain of stores from the shelves to the floor. It did not requireCaliban's frightened yell on the outside, "_Explosion! Una explosion_,senores!" to tell them what had happened. The first glance, as theyrushed out over the broken door, merely filled in the details of thevivid mental picture each had formed for himself. Hundreds of feet inmid air, the explosion cloud floated like a yellow balloon above thestump of a stack, the half-fused bricks of which were scattered over thebench. A cavity had been torn downward through the solid brick bed tothe clay beneath, and, looking down into it, Seyd read the sign.

  "Dynamite! What was the last thing you did?"

  "Stoked up and sent Calixto to call Caliban while I came for you.Luckily for him that I did."

  The charcoal piles were also leveled and spread over half an acre, and,walking to and fro, Seyd began to pick up and break the larger pieces.And it was only a few minutes before he called out: "Look here! Stickdynamite, broken in two and gummed over with charcoal dust--a bushel ofit right here."

  "Do you suppose--" Billy glanced toward the peons, who stood close by.

  Seyd shook his head. "No, they had nothing to gain by it, and everythingto lose. It was the easiest thing in the world for anybody to steal intothe woods at night and slip a ton of this into the charcoal piles."

  "Man, why didn't we think of it?" Billy
groaned.

  In moments of stress no two natures will express themselves in quite thesame way. As they stood looking gloomily over the wreck big tears slowlyforced themselves out of Billy's inflamed eyes and washed white runnelsdown the soot. Heartbroken, he looked up in sudden fright as Seyd burstout laughing.

  "Bob! Bob!" he pleaded. "Have you gone crazy? Get a grip on yourself,there's a good fellow!"

  But his pathetic anxiety merely caused Seyd to laugh the more. It wasnot that he was hysterical. Somehow the thought of the pain andtravail, trouble, anxiety, and discomforts they had endured during thepast three months touched his sense of humor.

  "We have to allow that they made a pretty clean job," he said, wipinghis eyes. "Let's be thankful that you were out of the way."

  "Where are you going?" Billy called out, as he began to walk away.

  "To finish my sleep and catch up a few hours on all that I have lost inthe last three months. Take a nap yourself."

  "Oh, I couldn't."

  He undoubtedly thought so, yet when Seyd came out again, having sleptthe clock round, it was to find Billy curled up and snoring hard underthe shade of the palm mat that Caliban had stretched between him and thesun. "Quit your fooling," he broke in severely on Seyd's chaffing."Don't you know that we are down to our last dollar?"

  "Thirty-three dollars and sixty cents Mex," Seyd gravely corrected.Kicking a chunk of cooled matte, he added: "But we now have this. Itought to stake us for a new start."

  Billy, however, was not to be so easily separated from his grief. "Whereare you going to raise capital," he demanded, "with every spare dollarin California locked up in the Nevada gold fields? If this had happeneda year ago, before the Tonopah rush, we might have done it. But now?" Heshook a doleful head.

  "Well--New York?"

  "Worse and more of it. The New Yorkers want all the bacon for killingthe pig. Might as well give them the mine at once. No, Bob, it's alloff. We're done--cooked a lovely brown in our own grease. Why _didn't_we guard those piles! Who do you suppose did it? Don Luis?"

  Seyd shrugged. "_Quien sabe?_ Doesn't look like his style. Of one thing,however, we can be certain. Your common peon doesn't habitually walkaround with dynamite in his jeans. If I was going to lay any money, I'dplace it on your friend Sebastien. But we haven't any time to fool ondetective work. The question is--what's to be done?"

  It was no light problem. As Billy had said, every dollar of Westernmining capital was invested in Nevada, and Mexican projects, howevergood, would have to wait till the new gold fields were completelyexploited. A canvass of moneyed friends yielded no results, for, whilethe wreck lay there under their eyes to emphasize the possibility ofsimilar future troubles, they could not but feel it to be a hazardousventure for any person of limited means. Night brought no conclusion.But, having slept on it again, they arose and began once more,unconscious of the fact that while they lay in the heavy shade of a wildfig tree, proposing, debating, rejecting various plans, the solution wasfast approaching upon its own legs.

  Obviously, neither of them recognized the solution in the person of DonLuis when, about the middle of the forenoon, his horse lifted him upover the edge of the grade. On the contrary, it is doubtful whethersmiling fortune was ever met with a blacker scowl than Billy's.Growling, "He's come up for a huge gloat," he would undoubtedly havereturned some insult to the old man's greeting but for Seyd's stealthykick on the shins.

  Prepared as he was by the reports that charcoal-burners had brought toSan Nicolas, Don Luis's face expressed his utter astonishment at theextent of the ruin. "We but heard of it last night," he told them. "Itwas, I suppose, accidental? I understand that these furnaces--dynamite?_Senor?_" He glanced with an interrogative frown at the peons asleep inthe shade of the adobe. "It was not they?"

  Reassured on that point, he nodded in confirmation of Seyd's statementthat it would be foolish to hunt for the culprit. "As well try to singleout a flea on a peon's dog. I warned you, senor, to expect an enemy inevery stone of the Barranca. It would have been well had you listened.But"--his eyes, hands, and shoulders expressed his acceptance offate--"it is done. And now?"

  "We shall rebuild--as soon as we can raise the money."

  Turning to survey the destruction, Don Luis hid a sudden gleam that wasevenly compounded of admiration and irritation. When he spoke again,shrewd calculation peered from his half-closed eyes. "This time you willbuild a larger--"

  "--Plant?" Seyd supplied the word. "No."

  "But I am told, senor, that the larger the plant the greater theprofits."

  Seyd raised comical brows. "Fifty thousand dollars, senor--gold?"

  "A small sum to your rich American capitalists."

  "But we are not capitalists. No, we shall have to get along with a smallfurnace."

  The calculation deepened in the old man's brown eyes. After a pause, totheir utter astonishment, it took form in words. "But if you could raisethe money?"

  "What's the use of talking; we can't."

  "If I were to lend it to you?"

  "_You!_" It was Billy who expressed their wonder. Seyd added, after apause, "But we have no security to offer--that is, nothing but themine."

  "And if we ran away?" Billy suggested, grinning. "Took your money andnever came back?"

  For the first time in their acquaintance a touch of humor lightened theheavy bronzed face. "There are some in this valley, senor, who might notcount it too high a price. But as you say"--he bowed to Seyd--"the mineis security enough. Now that you have shown how, I might even work itmyself. To put in a complete--"

  "--Plant." Billy supplied the strange word.

  "How long?"

  "Between six and nine months. We should then require a little time tosmelt some ore and realize. We could not--"

  "_Si, si!_" In his impatience Don Luis relapsed into Spanish. "_Si_, onewould not expect immediate repayment. Perhaps five thousand pesos at theend of a year--"

  "Oh, we could do better than that. Ten thousand of a first payment,fifteen for the second, the remainder at a third with interest--"

  "Interest? I had not thought of that." But he yielded to theirinsistence. "Very well, if you will have it! Shall we say fiveper-cent.? _Bueno!_ You will, of course, have to make a trip to theUnited States to buy your material. If you will call at San Nicolas onyour way the administrador will have letters prepared to my bankers inCiudad, Mexico."

  With a shrug that expressed relief at the conclusion he changed thesubject. Riding forward to obtain a closer view of the furnace, he againclucked his surprise at the complete destruction, wagged a grave headover the half bushel of dynamite that the peons had picked out of thecharcoal, curiously examined a piece of copper matte, lifting heavybrows over the statement of its values, then rode quietly away, leavingSeyd and Billy to recover as best they could from this fortunatestroke.

  "Am I dreaming?" Billy's exclamation defined their mental condition."Hit me, Bob. I want to make sure that I'm awake."

  Convinced, he gasped with his first breath: "Fifty thousand dollars!By golly! Why, we can put in a complete outfit."

  "Reverberatories with water jackets." Seyd took up the tale again."We'll build down in the valley."

  "Aerial cable--"

  "--With iron self-dumping buckets--"

  "--A flat-bottomed sternwheeler to--"

  "--Take our copper down to the coast."

  Blinded by the sudden light that had flashed out of their black despairthey stood for some time looking out over the Barranca with shining eyeswhich saw a small mining town rising out of the jungle's tangles. It wasfully ten minutes before Seyd came back to earth.

  "I wonder what is behind all this? Seems rather funny that the old chapshould come to our help?"

  "Not knowing, can't say and don't care a darn! So far as I am concerned,at fifty thousand a throw he can be just as inconsistent as he jollywell likes."

  "Nevertheless," Seyd mused, "I'd give three cents to know."

  Meanwhile, Don Luis pursued his quiet way, no
w at a heavy canter, againon a stately trot, through the jungle out to the first village beyondthe forks of the trail. As he passed the little _fonda_ Sebastien Rocharode out from a group of rancheros who stood drinking at the rough bar.

  "They told me of the passing," he said, nodding backward. "And I waited.What news? Did the gringos go up with their furnace? No? Still they willnow have their bellies full of Guerrero?"

  But his face dropped at Don Luis's answer. "No, they are to buildagain."

  "But I thought--was it not the agent at the station who said they had nomoney?"

  "Neither had they." It was always difficult to read the massive face,but now it expressed just a shade of malicious amusement. "I have lentthem fifty thousand pesos."

  "_Thou!_" For once the man's usual cynical calm was completelydisrupted. In his vast astonishment he whispered it: "_Thou? Fiftythousand pesos?_"

  "_Yo._" Smiling slightly, he went on: "Now listen, Sebastien. Not tomention thy little attempt on their virtue, this is the third on theirlives, and all badly bungled. So do not wonder that I thought it time totake them into my own hand. Now that they are there, let there be nomistake--the meddling finger is likely to be badly pinched. From thistime--they are _mine_."

  "But--why give them money?"

  "To forestall others." Had he been there to hear, the following wordswould fully have answered Seyd's question. "The elder of these lads isno common man. By hook or by crook he would have raised a company--if hehad to rope and tie down his men on the run. Then, instead of these two,we should have a dozen gringos, with Porfirio and his rurales to back uptheir charter. But do not fear."

  From the cleared fields through which they were riding it was possibleto see Santa Gertrudis, and, turning in his saddle, he extended hisquirt toward its green scar.

  "Do not fear."