COPPER COLESON
If Tommy Beals found the open-air gymnasium impracticable, the same was
not true of Dick Somers, whose slim, wiry body took most kindly to the
various hanging rings and flying trapezes that adorned the limbs of the
old apple tree. Only in such stunts as depended upon sheer muscular
strength could Ned Blake greatly excel this new friend, who had accepted
with enthusiasm the invitation to make himself at home in the Blake
back-yard.
“Let’s go for a swim,” suggested Tommy from the soap box, where he sat
fanning himself with his hat and watching the two young acrobats do
their stuff.
“That’s a good idea, Fatty,” agreed Ned. “Where’ll we go?”
“Oh, most anywhere,” wheezed Tommy. “It’s ninety right here in the
shade!” and he glared reproachfully at a rusty thermometer, which was
nailed to the tree trunk.
“Let’s get Dave Wilbur to run us out to Coleson’s in his flivver,”
suggested Ned. “I’ll go in and phone him.”
“Where’s Coleson’s—and what is it?” asked Dick, when Ned had returned
with the information that Wilbur would be over in a few minutes.
“It’s an old copper mine on the shore of the lake about ten miles out
from town,” explained Ned. “It used to be just a third-rate farm where
Eli Coleson lived and grubbed a scanty living out of his few acres. The
story is that one day he started to dig a well in his back-yard and down
about ten feet he came upon a vein of almost pure copper ore. They say
he quit farming that very minute and went to mining copper. For awhile
he made money hand over fist, but, like lots of people who strike it
rich, Eli Coleson couldn’t stand prosperity.”
“Here comes Dave,” interrupted Tommy Beals, as a battered car came into
sight around the corner. “He’s brought Charlie Rogers with him. Hey
there, Red!” he shouted to a boy on the front seat, who by reason of his
fiery locks had been given that expressive nickname. “Who asked _you_ to
the party?”
“Nobody asked me, Fatty. I just horned in,” grinned Rogers. “I figured
that if four of us sat on the front seat there’d be room for you in
back.”
“Tell me some more about this Eli Coleson,” urged Dick, when the seating
arrangements had been settled and the car was again in motion.
“Well,” resumed Ned, “the old man just naturally lost his head when he
saw the dollars rolling in so fast. The first thing he did was to rip
down his old farmhouse, which job he accomplished with a couple of
sticks of dynamite, and right on the old foundation he began a great
house of brick and stone.”
“Yes, and if he’d ever finished it, he’d have had one of the swell
places of the state,” declared Rogers.
“There’s no doubt of that,” agreed Ned. “Every dollar old Eli got for
his copper he spent on the house. The vein of ore was only about ten
feet wide and extended toward the lake. They followed it out under the
lake bottom as far as they dared; then they started digging in the other
direction and tunneled back under the cellar of the house, but soon
afterward the vein petered out and so did Eli’s fortune. The workmen had
just got the roof on the new house when they had to stop. Eli was
broke.”
“What became of him?” asked Dick.
“Oh, he’s still hanging around out there, living in one of the partly
finished rooms and pecking away with pick and shovel trying to get a few
more dollars out of the mine,” explained Ned. “Maybe we’ll see him. He’s
got a long white beard streaked with green stains from copper ore he’s
always handling. Copper Coleson, they call him.”
“I hear he’s got a fellow named Latrobe working for him,” remarked
Beals. “I never saw him, but they say he’s an _ugly_ guy.”
“Ugly is right,” declared Rogers. “Since Latrobe’s been out there,
nobody’s allowed to go down into the mine, but I guess he won’t object
if we take a swim off the beach.”
Eight miles from town the car turned sharply from the main highway to
follow a narrow road which wound through a desolate stretch of scrubby
woodland for some three miles and emerged upon the shore of Lake Erie.
Here on a slight elevation dotted with thickets of scrub oak and birch
stood the unfinished mansion known locally as Copper Coleson’s Folly.
“It surely started out to be a grand place,” exclaimed Dick, as he gazed
up at the tall brick front with its rows of windows, in none of which
glass had ever been placed.
“We’ll leave the car out here in the road,” decided Wilbur. “We can walk
around the house and get down to the beach without bothering anybody.”
Beyond the house the land sloped to the water’s edge, ending in a sandy
shore which afforded fine bathing, and here the boys disported
themselves for an hour, swimming and diving in the cool water.
“I’d like to get a look at this copper mine,” remarked Dick. “I never
saw a mine or anything like one—except an old limestone quarry, and that
was only a big hole in the ground.”
“There isn’t a whole lot to see in this mine,” replied Ned; “just a
vertical shaft about fifteen feet deep, which is nothing more than the
old well Coleson was digging when he struck the copper ore. It’s right
behind the house. We can go up there and look down it, if you want to,
but it’s hardly worth the trouble.”
Getting into their clothes the boys followed a footpath up the slope and
crossed a sandy stretch to the rear of the house. Nobody appeared to
oppose their progress, and in a moment they were grouped about the mouth
of the shaft staring down into the blackness below.
“The tunnel runs both ways from the bottom of this shaft,” explained
Ned. “One end is right under the house but the other is some distance
out under the lake-bottom—I don’t know just how far it extends, although
I’ve been down through it several times. Probably Coleson is down there
now with his pick and shovel. He fills a dump car with ore, hauls it to
the bottom of the shaft and hoists it with this rigging,” and Ned
indicated a rusty windlass which stood at the edge of the pit.
“Some job turning that crank,” murmured Dave Wilbur, as he eyed the
dilapidated mechanism.
“Yeah, it would be a lot wors’n turning a grindstone,” chuckled Tommy
Beals. “By the way, Weary, when are you going to finish that job on
Ned’s axe?”
“D’j’ever hear about the man who ‘always had an axe to grind’?” drawled
Wilbur.
“What does Coleson do with the ore after he gets it to the surface?”
asked Dick, who was still staring down into the mine.
“He loads it onto a truck and runs it up to the smelter at Cleveland,”
explained Rogers. “There’s only about one load a week, because it’s
mighty slow work knocking chunks off the walls of the tunnel, and they
don’t dare fire a blast for fear of bringing down the roof of the mine
and the lake with it. There’s no money in this kind of mining, and I
don’t see how Coleson makes enough to keep him from starving.”
“You’re right!” exclaimed Tommy Beals, with an expression of genuine
concern on his plump features. “And speaking of starvation reminds me
that—”
“That you’ve been dieting for almost four hours and are about to pass
out of the picture,” laughed Ned. “All right, boys,” he continued, “if
Dick has seen enough, let’s save Fatty’s life right now by heading back
for home and supper.”