without especial training--such as horse buying, writing stories,
judging pictures, and mining. This is a little strange when one
reflects that other things, such as painting, skating, keeping
accounts, or making a horseshoe, while not a whit more difficult, are
acknowledged to require a certain amount of technical education and
practice. Perhaps it is because the initial concept is so simple; as,
in this case, the digging of ore from the ground, and the reduction of
it. Details come, not from observation, but from actual experience.
Anybody, on the other hand, can see, without understanding, the
complexity of double-entry bookkeeping.
On the afternoon of the third day, the Easterners, Billy Knapp, and
Michail Lafond gathered formally to talk it over. The latter contrived
to be included because he was a man of experience. After some little
preliminary discussion, in which the Easterners showed by their airy
familiarity with the topic just how much of the local color had soaked
in, Stevens rapped on the table.
"Although this is not strictly a business meeting," he began, "perhaps
we can get at what we want better by putting some little formality into
its discussions. The question before us is this: Mr. Knapp here
possesses certain property which he wishes to dispose of. We have been
over it thoroughly in the last few days, we have examined the figures
relating to its assays and the gross value of the claims. They have
been satisfactory. We have next, as it seems to me, to figure on the
probable working expense, in order that we may, with some intelligence,
estimate the margin of profit." He sorted over some papers on the
table before him. "Let us take up the Great Snake lode first. What,
in your idea, would be necessary for its development?"
"Wall," began Billy, rising formally. "They is practically two leads
on th' Great Snake; an' if you-all decides to work 'em both, you'd want
a shaft on each. A plain-timbered shaft costs you yere about twenty to
twenty-five dollars a foot. Then you needs cross-cuts, and drif's at
about five or ten a foot besides--that includes everythin'--men, tools,
powder. Then yore pump an' hoist is worth about two or three thousan'.
includin' minin' expenses for two months. That's all th' actual
expense connected with th' Great Snake itself; but of course you has to
have yore stamp mill and washer for all the group of claims. A good
stamp mill costs you ten thousan' dollars, but it's good forever."
"How much shaft and tunnel would you have to sink before getting to a
paying basis?" asked Frank briefly.
"That would depen'. You wants to get to water level, of course, afore
yore shore; but it might pay right squar' from th' surface. Count on a
hunderd foot."
"And when you get to pay level, what capacity a day would you have?"
Billy laughed. "That depen's too. You can put on more or less men.
Call her from fifteen to twenty ton a day."
They bent their heads together over the figures. After a little
Stevens read the following tabulation:--
2 shafts of 100 feet each @ 20.00 . . . . . . . $4,000.00
Cross-cuts and drifts, say . . . . . . . . . . . 1,200.00
Pump and hoist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,000.00
1-10 of the cost of mill (there were ten
claims) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,000.00
--------
Initial expense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $8,200.00
"That thar figger," observed Billy, "brings her right up to date
without no squealin' whatever. Yere you figgers on taking good hard
rock out of four hunderd foot of tunnel an' shaft. Lots of that is pay
quartz. You got to figger that you gets some return out of it all.
They's a good many ton of ore in four hundred foot of shaft!"
"That is true," said Murphy. "There won't be eight thousand outlay
without any return."
"Yore dead right!" agreed Billy.
"Let that go for now," interrupted Stevens. "We can call that
'velvet.' Now what we want to know is, what will be the working
expense of converting the ore into gold when the initial expense is
over?"
"Call her about five dollars," replied Billy promptly.
Stevens consulted the assay table. "The ore on the Great Snake as
shown by samples taken from various spots in the prospect shaft
averages $8.55," said he. He figured for a moment. "Allow $3.00 a ton
profit at twenty tons a day, it would take only a little over four
months to catch the initial expense."
"Of course there's your running expenses of a camp," suggested Frank.
"Oh yes, but look at the margin to cover them."
They went on to the next, and the next, until the ten claims were all
figured over. Not all showed as alluring a prospect as the Great
Snake, for that was admittedly the banner claim of the group, but all
yielded a good margin of profit. It was simple as a proposition in
algebra. Assay value minus cost of production equals profits. There
was no unknown quantity in sight. Lafond alone saw one, and he held
his peace.
One more item the Easterners had to include, and this, falling within
their business habits, and out of Billy's, they arranged to their own
satisfaction. It was Billy's price for his claims.
"Now what are your ideas on the subject, Mr. Knapp?" asked Stevens
briskly.
Billy hesitated. "Mebbe it's funny," he confessed; "but I hadn't
settled on a price. I know you gentlemen 'll do what is right. But I
would like to stay with her a bit."
"Stay with her?"
"Yes," explained Billy, embarrassed. "Keep a holt; sort to be
interested myself, you know." There spoke Billy's vanity.
The three talked together low-voiced for a moment. They had conceived
a vast respect for Billy's capacity in the West, however
unsophisticated he might appear in the East; and they had long before
talked out in anticipation just this point. Stevens voiced their
decision.
"We have decided, Mr. Knapp," he began, "to ask you to be our
superintendent, provided of course the company is formed. We feel sure
that your best efforts will be expended in our behalf, because your
interests will be ours." Then he went on briefly to flatter Billy
exceedingly, until that individual was ready to weep with joy. "Our
proposition is this," he concluded. "We intend to form a stock company
of two hundred thousand shares at one dollar a share, non-assessable.
Of this amount a majority will be held by the promoters of the company,
some other smaller amount will remain in the treasury, and, say, fifty
thousand will be floated on the market. Our offer is, to make you
superintendent at a nominal salary of five thousand, and to give you in
addition thirty thousand promoter's shares as your price of the claims.
These shares you may either sell or keep. Thus you may either take a
certain sum of money, or you may pool your interests with ours,
confident that every good showing made by you as superintendent will
increase the value of your holding as participator in the enterprise.
In other words it gives you a personal interest in your work here.
What do you say?"
"Heads I win, tails you lose," said Lafond over in the corner, but he
said it under his breath.
To Billy it was all gorgeous. He saw only that he was offered thirty
thousand dollars and five thousand a year, in addition to keeping the
position of prominence he coveted. To him the paper dollar shares
looked as good as paper dollar bills.
"What do I say?" he cried, "I say 'put her thar,' and thank you. Let's
go have a drink!"
So the meeting adjourned, wonderfully inspirited, especially Michail
Lafond, for at last he saw a chance.
As he looked up at the stars that night before turning in, he made a
quaint little sign on high. It was the Indian gesture of worship.
"Lafond," he purred to himself, "you are a fool for luck. Rippling
Water used to say you were born under a lucky star, and by the Turtle,
I believe she was right!"
For though the Easterners thought they had done well in paying Billy
with a paper futurity, Lafond saw two sides to the question. The
meeting had been conducted, apparently, in the most business-like and
painstaking manner, yet it was to be noted that the fundamental facts,
the facts on whose accuracy depended the whole value of the subsequent
figuring, were accepted on Billy's mere say-so, without an attempt at
outside verification. Billy was honest, but he was superficial. His
temperament did not force him to search out the little details.
Michail Lafond was in the habit of searching them out very thoroughly.
He saw that one claim, because of its peculiar situation, would require
an ore bin of equally peculiar construction; that it might perhaps be
necessary to flume water to another; that a third, though its surface
showing was good, gave indications of being nothing but a blow-out;
that though the assay of a certain ore was high, the actual working
value might be low, because of the refractory character of the rock.
In regard to mere externals of camp-building, his experience taught him
that the Easterners' estimate would turn out to be superficial. His
view from the inside showed him that every last article of equipment
for the buildings, and every pound of machinery, would have to be
brought in on mules; that men might not always be easy to get in a new
country; that hay for horses came from a distant prairie, at prices
that corresponded to the distance; that the enthusiastic promoter is
rarely or never the careful, painstaking superintendent. And so with a
hundred other items, which the Easterners had entirely overlooked. It
is marvellous that they should have done so. Translate gold into
button hooks, the Hills into a factory, Billy Knapp into an impecunious
small proprietor anxious to sell, and not one of the three would have
gone into the affair so blindly. But it is true. And more, the
history of this operation at Copper Creek is the faithful history of a
myriad of exactly similar enterprises in the West. Ask your broker
friend, or anyone in a position to watch the floating of schemes on
Change; he will tell you.
Having settled the business of the trip, the Easterners spent a few
ridiculously juvenile days in pleasure. Billy worked himself nearly
blind to get them a shot at deer, but without success. They visited
Custer. On their way back to the railroad, they took in the Pine Ridge
Reservation, where they saw five thousand Sioux, and bought beaded
moccasins and short ill-made arrows. Finally they piled on the
Pullman, vastly pleased with their sunburn, and a little inclined to
swagger in the presence of these clean-shaven, quietly civilized
travellers who had not just left the exciting dangers of a pioneer
country.
Billy accompanied them. His presence was necessary in Chicago where
the new company was to be "floated" and its final organization brought
about.
None of the results of the visit were as yet known officially, but of
course a well verified rumor had got about that the Easterners were
really going to "take hold" and every man in camp was at the hotel door
to bid the visitors farewell. Michail Lafond was the last man at the
hub of the wheel before the horses started.
"I am glad you came," said he, holding Stevens' hand while he spoke,
"and I am glad you are going to invest here. It will help us all, and
I sincerely hope it will help you."
Stevens looked at him suddenly, as if to discover whether the lack of
confidence in the words was reflected in the man's face. Apparently
satisfied, he replied easily, "Course it will."
"Always figure on the safe side," suggested Lafond.
"You're dead right there," responded the other, "and that is just what
we've done. We've put down that fifty thousand as dead clear outlay
for a starter, without any offsets by way of return, and surely some of
that ore will pay something before we get down two hundred feet. Oh,
we're all right on that. You'll see us booming before spring!"
Lafond watched the wagon out of sight with a smile in his inscrutable
eyes. Then he went down to spend his afternoon with Durand, humming
the remnants of a little Canadian _chanson_.
"A fool for luck," he repeated to himself; "a regular fool for luck,
Lafond. All you have to do is to sit right still, and it comes to you
without the effort on your part."
Between him and his object there now intervened but fifty thousand
dollars. And fifty thousand dollars was not an unlimited sum of money.
XXIV
BILLY STARTS IN ON HIS FIFTY THOUSAND
Billy was gone almost a month.
During that interim Lafond had absolutely nothing to do but wait, for
his affairs, both domestic and foreign, were doing well.
"A fool for luck, a fool for luck," he got into the habit of saying to
himself, but with somewhat of a congratulatory ring to it, as though he
were a little inclined to attribute fortune's favors to that lady's
appreciation of his shrewdness. If luck had not favored him, he would
have had to accomplish the same results himself. It was a labor-saving
device. Nevertheless, as time went on, the strong underlying mysticism
in his nature came to make of this luck of his a fetish of no small
power. Lafond went about in a continual state of elation. Things were
coming his way. Nothing could stop them. They were fore-ordained.
All he had to do was to stay awake so as to take advantage of the
circumstances which chance so nicely arranged for him. He had such
confidence in the fortuitous moment that he almost ceased to plan
ahead, sure that the crisis would bring its own solution.
Fifty thousand dollars stood between Billy's credit and Billy's
downfall. Lafond had those fifty thousand dollars to get rid of. The
sum was not great, but neither was it small; and to induce another to
spend fifty thousand, in a few months, without any encouraging return,
might have seemed, to an ordinary man, a project worthy of careful
foresight. Not so Lafond. "A fool for luck," he repeated and awaited
Billy's reappearance.
There was Molly's affair with Cheyenne Harry, for instance. What could
be better? Lafond had known Mortimer by reputation for a great many
years. He was acquainted with the details of the transaction of
Mulberry Gulch, and how he and a man named Dutch Pete had swindled all
Custer City; he knew too of Harry's various wild escapades in the early
Indian skirmishes--on both sides some men said; of his wonderful
fortitude in enduring hardship, and his equally wonderful periods of
relaxation when back again in the towns; and he knew, best of all from
his point of view, Harry's reputation as a man among women. Since this
flirtation had lasted so long, to Lafond's mind it must already have
passed the limits. The natural sequence would be followed out. In
time Cheyenne Harry would have a mistress the more.
In other words, without the slightest trouble or encouragement on his
part, the girl would be debauched. Then, through artfully colored
vague hints, he would let slip the real facts of her breeding. He was
student enough of character to know that she would gnaw her heart out
with a passionate remorse, the more intense because of that very innate
purity of instinct which now made Harry's task a difficult one. Lafond
had absolutely nothing to do but congratulate himself, smoke his pipe,
and spend long hours with his friend the entomologist.
After the first flutter over the Easterners' visit had subsided, the
camp settled back with wonderful celerity into its accustomed habits.
At first it expected Billy's reappearance within a few days. The
return was postponed to the end of the week. The end of the week gave
Copper Creek to understand that it would have to wait a short time
longer. Then came another postponement. And so on, until the little
community had taken up its usual prospecting, work o' day, play o'
night existence, and the return of Billy was looked upon as an
inevitable event, but hazily in the future, not imminent enough
immoderately to disturb the current of men's thoughts.
Then all at once Billy was among them, splendid, powerful, energetic,
in a hurry, whirling the stagnant waters this way and that, until the
spirit of enterprise awoke within them, and a nervous atmosphere of
progress replaced the old monotony.
Billy had credited to him fifty thousand dollars; Billy sported a new
hat and new clothes; Billy had vast enterprises to accomplish before
the ground froze up; Billy drew a salary; Billy possessed an engraved
certificate of shares, which he displayed; Billy had a new watch; Billy
was looking for men; Billy was deep in complicated plans which required
above all things haste, haste, haste; until the narrow little canyon
rang with the name of Billy, which was esteemed great in the land.
The new superintendent entered at once into the discharge of his
duties. His first care was to sink the shafts mentioned at the first
informal meeting in his own shack. There were ten claims, on which
eleven shafts were planned. The very evening of his return, eleven of
the handiest prospectors in the camp were summoned to Billy's cabin,
where they found awaiting their signatures eleven contracts to sink on
the various claims a specific number of feet at a specified price.
Next morning they looked the ground over. Next noon they signed. Next
afternoon they hired two helpers each, bought powder and fuse, and
sharpened drills. The day after, thirty-five men were busily at work
on the new company's group of claims. It looked like business.
The same noon, Billy's effects began to come in from the East. He had
received a liberal advance on the account of his salary, and the
results were various. Among them were new saddles, a new buckboard, a
new rifle, silver-mounted harness, and a quantity of clothes of rather
loud pattern. But most marvellous was a clean-limbed, deep-chested,
slender running horse, accompanied by a sawed-off English groom. Billy
spent a good share of the next week with this individual, constructing
a corral of small timber in which the new horse might roll about. Each
morning the groom led the animal, astonishingly hooded, blanketed, and
leather-banded, up and down the hundred yards or so of level road which
was all that strip of rugged country offered fit for such delicate
hoofs and fine limbs. The beast always progressed teetering a little
sideways, nearly dragging the groom from his feet. The camp speculated
that Billy had designs on the next great prairie "fair" in the spring,
but the truth is the Westerner had little idea of what his designs
were. He had been pleased with the horse, and had bought it, without
bestowing a thought on expediency. After the novelty of possessing so
thoroughbred a creature had somewhat worn away, he confessed to himself
a slight bewilderment as to what to do with it.
Other interests claimed his attention now. The work on the mines
themselves no longer needed his care. After the hundred feet of shaft
had been quite finished and timbered, he would inspect them in his
official capacity. If the job came up to specifications, he would sign
its acceptance; if it did not, the contractor would have to remedy the
defect. In the meantime he had on hand the building of the camp
itself, for which he had already planned largely.
Lafond climbed the gulch and the knoll, after activity had been well
under way for about a week. He found Billy paying the freight-bills on
several loads of heavy red-painted machinery, while the teamsters spat
and swore just outside the little shack, which he now used as an
office. Billy was signing slips from his new check book. Until he
should have finished, Lafond strolled about examining the grounds.
Around the mouths of the shafts themselves the debris had accumulated
astoundingly, showing that the contractors too had been industrious,
but Lafond paid little attention to them. He was more interested in
the clearing, levelling, trimming and digging which seemed to indicate
the undertaking of rather extensive works above ground. Perhaps a
dozen men were at work. Some were engaged in "trueing" the four great
foundation beams of what was evidently to be a large building. Others
squared smaller timbers near at hand. The remainder were measuring and
indicating with a shovel the outlines of other and less pretentious
structures. In a moment Billy came out ready to dissertate at length.
"That thar is the boardin' house," he explained, "I thought at first
I'd only make her big enough for thirty, 'cause that's as big a gang as
I starts with; but then I figgers it out, an' it won't be long before I
takes on more, so I thinks it jest as well to start where I ends. So
she's goin' to accommodate sixty, two-story, you know. Then yere's the
cookee's shack. I aims to have th' kitchen separate yere--don't like
that Prairie Dog game nohow." (The "Prairie Dog" was the hotel; and
the "game" was the inclusion of the kitchen and the dining-room in the
same apartment.) "Then yere's to be the office. I uses my old shack
for an office now. I aims to have three sleepin'-rooms, an' a
dinin'-room and kitchen."
"What for?" asked Lafond, a little puzzled.
"For me."
"For----?"
"I don't aim to eat with the men. And over yander 'll be th' stables;
and thar th' blacksmith's shop; and then the powder house is on th'
other side of the gulch. The chicken house is beyond th' blacksmith's
shop."
"The what?" asked Mike.
"The chicken house."
"Oh," said Mike.
"I ain't got the ground all broke yet," pursued Billy; "but the plans
is all ready, and it ain't takin' long when once we git started. The
stuff fer th' mill is comin' along slow," he observed, pointing to the
red-painted machinery; "but I ain't aimin' to put her up till nex'
spring. Can't do much with her till I gets th' shafts sunk."
"No," agreed Lafond.
"But I got th' plans fer that too. Come on in an' I shows them to you."
He led the way into the little shack, and began to rummage in a valise
full of papers. Lafond found the place in a litter of confusion.
Scattered about in the wildest disorder were clothes, weapons, saddles,
harness, knick-knacks and mining tools. Among the latter the
half-breed noticed the sections of a pump--an expensive machine used
only after a shaft has penetrated below the water level, but which
Billy had already purchased. Lying half open among the dusty quartz
specimens, empty ink bottles, rusty pens and old pipes, which cumbered
the table, Mike perceived a large wooden box.
"What's this?" he asked.
Billy looked up red-faced from his search.
"That?" he replied. "Oh, that's a stamper," and dived back into the
valise.
Lafond drew the box toward him. He found it to contain a vast quantity
of rubber types of all sizes and styles, figures, ornaments and
ornamental rulings. The box itself was perhaps some thirty inches
square. It was a most elaborate outfit, whose use is confined almost
entirely to large department stores where there is much marking of
prices.
Billy now stood upright, having found his roll of plans.
"What did you say this is?" asked Lafond again.
"A stamper."
"What do you do with it?"
"You sticks the types in this rule this way." Billy took out the rule
and some of the types, fumbled unskilfully with them for a moment, and
threw them impatiently down. "Anyway, they goes in; and then that
keeps them in a straight line."
"Yes," persisted Lafond, "but what's it for?"
"Why, to stamp things with, of course."
"What things?"
Billy hadn't thought of that.