XII
A Cast for Fortune
The incident of the frustrated safe robbery was an incident closed, sofar as any difference in Dorgan's attitude toward me was concerned, atthe moment when he disappeared through the open window of thepay-office. For the next two or three weeks I saw him only as hechanced to drop into the commissary of an evening; and upon suchoccasions he ignored me absolutely.
Only once more while the work of branch-line building continued did wehave speech together. It was in the evening of a day when the newline, then nearly completed, had been honored with visitors; a car-loadof them up from Denver in some railway official's privatehotel-on-wheels. It so happened that my duties had taken me up to theactual end-of-track--by this time some miles beyond our headquarterscamp at Flume Gulch--and I was there when the special, with itsobservation platform crowded with sightseers, came surging andstaggering up over the uneven track of the new line.
I paid little attention to the one-car train as it passed me, save tonote that there were women among the railroad official's guests. Thesightseers were quite outside of my purview--or within it only astemporary hindrances to a job we were all pushing at top speed. Ashort distance beyond me the train came to a stand in the midst ofDorgan's crew and I saw some of the people getting off the car. Justthen a construction engine came along on the siding, and, my errand tothe front being accomplished, I flagged it and went back toheadquarters.
As I have said, Dorgan dropped into the commissary that evening. Hisostensible errand was to buy some tobacco, but after he had filled hispipe he lingered until the sleepy commissary clerk began to turn theloiterers out preparatory to closing the place for the night. It wasthen that Dorgan gave me a sign which I rightly interpreted; when Ireleased the catch of the pay-office door he slipped in and sat down onthe cot where he would be out of sight of those in front. Here hesmoked in sober silence until Crawford, the commissary man, had goneout and locked the door on the empty storeroom.
"I was wantin' to tip yez off," was the way he began, after we had theneedful privacy. "You'd be after seein' that kid-glove gang up at thefront this mornin'?"
I nodded.
"Know anybody in that bunch?"
"I didn't notice them particularly," I replied. "I understood theywere Denver people--friends of somebody in the railroad management."
"There was women," he said significantly.
"I know; I saw some of them."
"Yes; and be the same token, there was one of them lamped yous off. Ilistened at her askin' one o' the men who you was; d'ye see?"
Instantly I began to ransack my brain for the possibilities, and almostat once the talk on the train with Horace Barton, the wagon salesmanager, flashed into the field of recollection.
"Could you describe the woman for me?" I asked.
Dorgan made hard work of this, though it was evident that he was tryinghis best. His description would have fitted any one of a round millionof American women, I suppose; yet out of it I thought I could draw somefaint touches of familiarity. The stumbling description, coupled withBarton's assertion that Agatha Geddis was living in Colorado, fittedtogether only too well.
"Did you hear what she said to the man?" I inquired, and my mouth wasdry.
"On'y a bit of it. She says, says she: 'Who is that man wit' a Frenchbeard--the young man in his shirt-sleeves?' The felly she t'rowed thisinto was one o' the kid-gloves, and he didn't know. So he went toShelton, who was showin' the crowd around on the job. When he comesback, he tells her your name is Jim Bertrand, and that you makes anoise like the camp paymaster."
"Well?" I prompted. "Go on."
"She laughs when he says that. 'Jim Bertrand, is it?' says she. 'Willyou do me a favor, Mister Jullybird'--'r some such name. 'Go and askthat young man how did he leave all the folks in Glendale. I want tosee him jump,' says she. He didn't do it because at that same minuteyous was walkin' down the track to flag Benson's ingine."
The bolt had fallen. The woman could have been no other than AgathaGeddis. Once more I stood in critical danger of losing all that I hadgained. There was only one faint hope, and that was that she had notheard of the broken parole. I had to go to the water jug in theCommissary and get a drink before I could thank Dorgan for telling me.
"'Tis nothin'," he said shortly. Then, after a protracted pause: "Whatcan she do to yous, pally?"
"She can send me up for two years; and then some--for the penalties."
Again a silence intervened.
"'Twas in the back part o' my head to take a chance and ditch thatdamn' special when she was comin' back down the gulch," said Dorgan, atlength, as coolly as if he were merely telling me that his pipe hadgone out. "But if I'd done it, it would have been just my crooked luckto 'a' killed everybody on it but that woman. What'll ye be doin'?"
"Nothing at present. We shall finish here in a week or so more, andthen I'll see."
That ended it. After Dorgan had got another match for his pipe, I lethim out at the side door of the commissary, and he went his way acrossto the sleeping shacks on the other side of the tracks.
Two weeks later it was this story of the inquisitive young woman,weighing in the balance with some other things, that determined myimmediate future course. The work on the branch line was completed,and my employers had taken a dam-building contract in Idaho. I wasoffered the job of bookkeeper and paymaster, combined, on the new work,with a substantial raise in salary, and the temptation to accept wasvery strong. But I argued, foolishly, perhaps, that so long as Iremained in the same service as that in which she had discovered me,Agatha Geddis would always be able to trace me; that my best chance wasto lose myself again as speedily as possible.
The "losing" opportunity had already offered itself. By this time Ihad made a few acquaintances in town and was beginning to be bitten bythe mining bug. Though I was a late comer in the district, and CrippleCreek had fully caught its stride as one of the greatest gold-producingcamps in the world some time before my advent, "strikes" were stilloccurring frequently enough to keep the gold seekers' excitement fromdying out. With the greater part of my Hadley-and-Shelton earnings inmy pocket, and with muscles camp-hardened sufficiently to enable me tohold my own as a workingman, I decided to take a chance and become aprospector.
We went at it judiciously and with well-considered plans, three of us:the bank teller, Barrett, a young carpenter named Gifford, and myself.Altogether we could pool less than a thousand dollars of capital, butwe determined to make the modest stake suffice. By this time theentire district had been plotted and replotted into mining claims;hence we did our preliminary prospecting in the records of the landoffice. A careful search revealed a number of infinitesimally smallareas as yet uncovered by the many criss-crossing claims; and amongthese we chose a triangular-shaped bit of mountain side on the fartherslope of Bull Mountain, with a mine called the "Lawrenceburg," a fairlylarge producer, for our nearest neighbor.
There was a good bit of discussion precedent to the making of thisdecision. Barrett thought that we stood but a slight chance of findingmineral in the over-prospected area. The Lawrenceburg was a fullquarter of a mile distant from our triangle, and its "pay-streak" wassaid to dip southward, while our gulch slope lay on the other side of aspur and due northeast. It was a further examination of theland-office records that turned the scale. Among the numerous unworkedclaims lying higher up the gulch, beyond and adjoining our proposedlocation, we found three whose ownership we traced, through a number oftransfers apparently designed to hide something, to the Lawrenceburg.
Barrett, a fine, keen-witted young fellow whose real name, if I mightgive it, would be familiar to everybody in the West, was the first todraw the probable inference.
"Jimmie, you've got the longest head in the bunch," was his comment;this because I had chanced to be the one to make the discovery of thewell-concealed ownership. "At some period in the history of theLawrenceburg, which is one of the oldest mines on Bull Mountain, itsow
ners have had reason to believe that their pay streak was going torun the other way--to the northeast. They undertook to cover thechance by making these locations quietly, and through 'dummy' locators,on the other side of the spur."
"But how did they come to overlook this patch we're figuring on?" askedGifford, the carpenter.
"That was somebody's blunder," Barrett offered. "These section platswe have been studying may have been made after the locations werestaked out; in all probability that was the case. That sort of thinghappens easily in a new country like this. It was an oversight; youcan bet to win on that. If those Lawrenceburg people had any goodbusiness reason for locating these claims beyond us, they had preciselythe same reason for covering this intervening bit of ground that we aregoing to grab."
Gifford took fire at once; and if I didn't it was only because we werenot yet in possession, and I thought there might be many chances for aslip between the cup and the lip. This talk took place at night inBarrett's room in town, and before we separated our plans were fullymade. Gifford and I were to start at once--that night, mind you--forBull Mountain to locate a claim which should cover as completely aspossible the entire area of the irregular triangle. The location made,the carpenter and I were to work the claim as a two-man proposition.Barrett was to retain his place in the bank, so that the savings fromhis salary might add more capital. We even went so far as to christenour as yet unborn mine. Since we were picking up--or were going topick up--one of the unconsidered fragments after the big fellows hadtaken their fill of the loaves and fishes, we proposed to call ourventure "The Little Clean-Up."
I shall always remember Barrett's good-natured grin when the meetingwas adjourned.
"You two will have the hot end of it," he remarked. "You're going todo the hard work, and all you've left me is a chance to do the starvingact. Right here is where I see myself giving up this palatialapartment and going into a boarding-house. For heaven's sake, eatlight, you two. We may have to sink a hundred feet in solid rockbefore we find anything."
We went in light marching order, Gifford and I; and the early dawn ofthe following morning found us driving our location stakes and pacingoff the boundaries of the new claim. I like to remember that we wereneither too new to the business, nor too much excited, to be carefuland methodical. The triangular patch of unclaimed ground lay along theslope, with the apex of the triangle pointing toward the hill-hiddenLawrenceburg. Ignoring any vein directions which might develop lateron, we laid off our location to fit the ground, taking in all the spacewe could legally hold; which would be, of course, only the triangle,though our staking necessarily overlapped this area on all sides. Ifwe should be lucky enough to make a strike, ground space for ouroperations was going to be at a premium, and at the very best therewasn't an inch of room to spare.
I don't know just why we should have been afraid that anybody wouldhave been foolish enough to try to "jump" an unworked claim; but wewere, and we decided at once that we would not leave the groundunwatched now that our stakes were driven and our notice duly posted.Accordingly, Gifford went back to town to make the needful land-officeentry and to bring out the supplies, tools, and a wagon-load of lumberfor a shack, leaving me to stand guard with an old horse-pistol ofGifford's for a weapon. It was after dark when I heard the wagontrailing up the gulch, and I had had nothing to eat since morning. ButI was free and hopeful--and happy; with the nightmare past becomingmore and more a thing to be pushed aside and comfortably ignored.
Looking back at it now, I can see that our venture was haphazard to thetenderfoot degree. Having built a sleeping shack out of the lumber, wepicked a place for the prospect shaft solely with reference to itsconvenience on the hillside. But for this we had plenty of precedents.What the miners of any other district would have called sheer miraclesof luck were the usual thing in the Cripple Creek region. From theearliest of the discoveries the region had been upsetting all thewell-established mining traditions, and the tenderfoot was quite aslikely to find mineral as was the most experienced prospector; morelikely, in fact, since the man with everything to learn would not behampered by the traditions.
The top layer of fine gravel which answers for soil in the districtcarries gold "float"--"color," a Californian would say,--in numberlesslocalities over an area of many square miles; a fact which was wellknown long before any one knew of the underlying treasures which havesince been taken out of the deep workings. But there are no veinoutcroppings on the surface, and the prospector's first task is touncover the bed-rock by sinking one or more test pits through thegravel. In some one of these shallow shafts he may--or may not--makehis discovery. If successful, he will find, on some well-cleanedsurface of the bed-rock, a fine broken line; a minute vein in manyinstances so narrow as to be discoverable only by the use of amagnifying-glass; and that discolored line will be his invitation todig deeper.
By the morning of the second day Gifford had built our rude windlass,and the work of shaft sinking was begun. The gravel layer varies inthickness in different parts of the district, ranging from a few inchesin some places to many feet in others. In our case we were less thanwaist-deep in the hole, and had not yet set up the windlass, when wereached the upper surface of the bed-rock.
Generally speaking, the Cripple Creek district is a dry region as toits surface, but we were lucky enough to have a trickling rivulet inour gulch. It was dark before we had carried water in sufficientquantity to wash off the uncovered bed-rock bottom in our hole, so weturned in without knowing what we had found, or whether or not we hadfound anything.
I was cooking the bacon and pan-bread the next morning when Gifford,who had gone early into the hole with a bucket of water and ascrubbing-brush, came running up to the shack with his eyes bulging.
"We--we've got it!" he gasped. "Where's that magnifying-glass?"
I left the bacon to burn if it wanted to and ran with him to theshallow shaft. He had scrubbed the solid rock of the pit bottom untilit was as bare as the back of a hand, and across the cleaned stone,running from southwest to northeast, there was a thin line ofdiscoloration showing plainly enough as a fissure vein. Gifford dug alittle of the crack-filling out with the blade of his pocket-knife andwe examined it under the magnifier. We were both ready to swear thatwe could see flecks and dust grains of free gold in the bluish-browngangue-matter; but that was purely imagination.
I think neither of us knew or cared that the bacon was burned to ablackened crisp when we got back to it. The breakfast was bolted likea tramp's hand-out, and before the sun was fairly over the shoulder ofthe eastern mountain we were back in the hole with hammer and drills.The frantic haste was entirely excusable. While it was true that agreater number of the Cripple Creek discoveries had widenedsatisfactorily from the surface down, becoming more and more profitableat increasing depths, it was also true that some of them had begun as"knife-blades" and had so continued. What Gifford and I did not knowabout drilling and shooting rock would have filled a library ofvolumes; none the less, by noon we had succeeded in worrying a coupleof holes in the solid shaft bottom, had loaded them, and were ready forthe blast.
If any real miner should chance to read this true and unvarnished taleof our beginnings he will smile when I confess that we cut the fusesfour feet long and retreated a good quarter of a mile up the gulchafter they were lighted. In our breathless eagerness it seemed as ifwe waited a full half-hour before the shallow hole vomited a mouthfulof broken rock and dust, and a dull double rumble told us that bothshots had gone off. Gifford was a fairly good sprinter, but I beat himon the home run. The hole was half full of shattered rock and loosenedgravel and we went at it with our bare hands. After a few minutes ofthis senseless dog-scratching, Gifford sat down on the edge of the pitand burst out laughing.
"I guess there ain't any manner o' need for us to go plumb locoed," hesaid. "We've got all the time there is, and a shovel will last a heaplonger than our fingers."
I may say, in passing, that this attitude was characteri
stic of ourcarpenter partner. He was a country boy from Southern Indiana; anatural-born mechanic, with only a common school education. But he hadinitiative and a good gift of horse sense and balance, and in thetroublous times that followed he was always our level-headed stand-by.
Acting upon his most sensible suggestion, we took our time, spellingeach other in shoveling out the debris. The two shots driven inopposite corners had deepened the shaft over two feet. When the newbottom of the hole was uncovered we nearly had a return of thefrenzies. The discolored line of the vein had widened to four inchesor more, and the last of the broken rock shoveled out was freely mixedwith fragments of the bluish-brown gangue-matter.
A hasty estimate assured us that we had a sufficient quantity of thelode matter for a trial assay, and we spent the better part of theafternoon picking out pieces of the ore on the small dump and inchipping more of them from the exposed face of the seam. It wasarranged that one of us should take the samples to town after dark, forthe sake of secrecy, and we put in what daylight there was left afterour sample was prepared drilling another set of holes--though we didnot fire them.
Leaving Gifford to stand guard over what now might be something wellworth guarding, I made my way down the mountain after supper with thetwo small sacks of selected samples. True to his promise, I foundBarrett already established in a rather cheap boarding-house. He wassurprised to see me so soon, and more than surprised when I showed himthe specimens of bluish rock.
"Say--by George!" he exclaimed; "that sure does look like the realstuff, Jimmie; though of course you can't tell. Have you roasted anyof it?"
I was so green a miner at that time that I did not know what "roasting"meant. Barrett had a tiny coal-stove in his room with a bit of fire init. Even the June nights are sometimes chilly at the Cripple Creekaltitude. Selecting a bit of the stone he put it upon the fire-shovelamong the coals and while it was heating listened to my recounting ofthe short and exciting story of the "find."
When the piece of bluish stone had been roasted and cooled we did notneed the magnifying-glass. It was covered with a dew of fine pin-pointyellow globules. Barrett went up in the air as if his chair hadexploded under him. "My God, Jimmie!" he choked, "it's--it's a_bonanza_!"
The next step was to have authoritative assays made, and together wetook the two small sacks of ore to the sampling works, which, at thattime, were running day and night. We waited in the office while thetests were being made. The result, which came to us well pastmidnight, was enough to upset the equanimity of a wooden Indian. Someof the selected samples carried values as high as twenty-five dollarsin gold--not to the ton; oh, no; nothing like that: _to the pound_!
Barrett had the situation firmly by the neck when we left the samplingworks.
"I have a sort of provisional arrangement with Mr. Conaughy, ourpresident, and I can quit the bank without notice and explainafterward," he said. "I'm going right back with you to-night. Threeof us will be none too many to handle this thing when the news getsout."
We went to his room first and loaded up with blankets, working clothes,a shot-gun and a generous supply of fixed ammunition. On the longtramp up the mountain, Barrett, who was older in the district thaneither Gifford or myself, told me what we might expect.
"You needn't think we are going to be allowed to dig that hole withoutthe toughest kind of a fight, Jimmie," he predicted. "The minute thenews gets loose, we shall be swamped with 'interferences,' relocations,law-suits, process servers and constables, to say nothing of thestrong-hands and claim-jumpers. The Lawrenceburg people will doubtlessclaim that mistakes were made in their surveys, as perhaps there were.They've got a first-class fighting man for a superintendent; as Ihappen to know: a man who won't stick at anything to carry his end."
"But it's our strike," I urged.
"It's ours if we can hold it," was the sober reply. "Our best play isto keep the thing absolutely dark until we can dig out enough money togive us a fighting fund. That's where we're lame. Our bit of capitalwon't go anywhere when they drag us into the courts."
Our shortest way to the new claim led us in sight of the Lawrenceburgworkings. They were running night shifts, and though it was now wellalong in the small hours, the plant was in full swing. Like most ofthe mines within trolley distance of the towns, it had no miners'village, the men going back and forth at the shift-changing hours. Butthe superintendent lived at the plant, and there were a few bunk housesand one other detached cottage.
There was a light in one room of this cottage as we passed, and Barrettcalled my attention to it.
"There's a man in that shack that I hope we may be able to get, if weever grow big enough to hire him," he said. Then he added, quiteirrelevantly: "He has a daughter, and I'm telling you right now,Jimmie, she's a peach."
I let the reference to the daughter go by default.
"Who is this gentleman that we ought to be able to hire?" I asked.
"He is the best, or at least one of the best, metallurgical chemists inthe district, and it goes without saying that an honest assayer countsfor everything in this mining game. Without one, the smelters willskin you alive."
I laughed. "I didn't ask what he was; I asked who he was--or is."
"He is a school-teacher, or college professor, and I'm told he hastaught in High Schools and freshwater colleges all over the MiddleWest," said Barrett, as we topped the hill to our side of the mountainshoulder. And then I got my bucketing of cold water. "His name isPhineas Everton, and his daughter's name is Mary--though everybodycalls her Polly."
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