“It’s a proposition called ‘Two Bright Eyes.” I tried to seem
indifferent, but my heart was only about an inch below my larynx and I
could hardly get the words out.
I thought he would never speak. He scratched his nose and fiddled
with his ear. I wanted to reach in and shake him so that he would say
something, even if he would only say that I had been nicely fooled.
“The property had rather a promising outlook at one time, sir. It was
located by good prospectors and afterward two or three other claims were
taken in. The section is first-rate!”
Not wildly encouraging.
“But the stock hasn’t been much thought of in these parts--it has been
footballed around a lot. Still”--he twisted his mustache and waited a
few moments--“well, I’ll tell you this confidentially, if I wasn’t a
bank man--and you know we have to move in grooves of caution--if I could
afford to do a little gambling I think I would have picked up a small
bunch of this loose stock. I got a flicker of a hint from a mining
engineer who banks here. Nothing definite--they can’t talk much. But I
know they have been running new leads. The first development wasn’t very
scientific, I understand.”
“Does a--When they make a real strike--do prices run up pretty sudden?”
I managed to ask.
He smiled. “I see you have never been in a mining town when a bonanza
toots. Everybody goes crazy. They’ll climb over one another to buy
stock. Those who can’t buy stock go racing off to see what they can grab
in the way of adjacent claims. Very exciting, sir! Wish we might show
you a circus of that kind while you’re in town.”
When I went out on the street I found Mr. Flye waiting around the
corner.
“You traded?” he gasped. “He’s over there tossing away twenty-dollar
gold pieces!”
“I’ve got twenty thousand shares,” I said, dolefully.
“Then I’m going to let ‘Dirty-shirt’ loose. He’ll swell up and bust if I
don’t get that gag out of his mouth.”
“But will anybody believe what he says?”
Honestly, a gold-mine was unreal to me! I had Eastern prejudices.
“You go over there and stand on the hotel porch, sir! You’ll see
almighty sudden how news hits a mining town. ‘Dirty-shirt’ Maddox don’t
have to bring a gold-mine down into Breed City. He’s the bulletin,
that’s all. There’ll be proof enough pretty close on his heels.”
So I went over on the tavern porch. Five minutes later I realized
that the bulletin was loose. “It” came whooping around a corner of the
street.
Mr. Maddox’s nickname fitted him perfectly; in fact, he was well caked
with mud from head to feet. Plainly he had not stopped to pick dry spots
in his rush down to Breed City. He was shaking a canvas bag over his
head with one hand and in the other flourished a handful of stock
certificates.
“Who’s got ‘Bright Eyes’? They’ve hit it! High grade from Buffalo Hump
clear through the earth to Chiny! Whoosh! Who wants ‘Bright Eyes’?
Here’s some that’s loose. And there ain’t much loose, gents! They have
been picking it up! High grade and pockets full of crumble!”
He shook the canvas bag and opened it when men went crowding about him.
“There he is,” announced Mr. Flye at my side.
“Looks the part,” said I.
“After I had rubbed his jaws where the gag had hurt,” confided my
friend, “he told me that he ain’t more’n four jumps ahead of the boss
engineer expert who is bringing out the samples for the report. All
you’ve got to do now, sir, is to sit tight and look wise!”
My unlucky friend could not do much looking for his part; his eyes were
swelled so badly that he could hardly open them.
“Look here, Mr. Flye,” I said, with a lot of repentance, “I must seem to
you like pretty much of a crab. I don’t know how--”
“It was only a gold-mine guess, according to your notion, sir. And I
know how an Easterner must feel on that point. But when I have a friend
and make up my mind to let him in on a good thing I propose to do it,
even if I have to apologize to him afterward for being almighty fresh.
So I--”
“Don’t make me feel worse than I am feeling!”
There was a crowd in the street of Breed City by that time and Mr.
Maddox, in the center of it, had worked himself into a frenzy of
excitement and was offering “Bright Eyes” stock at a million dollars a
share.
“Don’t mind that kind of talk,” advised Mr. Flye. “He’s half tight, and
his coco ain’t just right when he gets to talking in a crowd, but
you needn’t worry but what his news is all right. And you can see for
yourself!”
Several men were larruping cayuses up the street, bags dangling from
saddle-bows.
“It’s the first of the rush for the ‘Bright Eyes’ section. Some of the
critters out this way can beat firemen for quick action,” stated Mr.
Flye. Perhaps to emphasize the fact that now at last he felt himself
on a footing of intimate friendship with me, he plucked a cigar from my
vest pocket and lighted up.
“I see you don’t smoke--you probably chaw,” he suggested, and he handed
his plug to me.
When I state here that I promptly took the plug, whittled off a chunk,
palmed it, and put some gum into my mouth, the depth of my esteem for
Mr. Flye may be understood. I would rather have chewed that tobacco than
hurt his feelings by refusing a friendly offer.
While we stood there a bearded man rode down the street, mud-covered.
“And there’s the man who will back me up!” squealed Maddox. “There comes
the boss engineer! He knows what’s under cover in ‘Bright Eyes’!”
But the bearded man rode right through the crowd without answering
questions. He alighted in front of the bank and went in, tugging
something in his hand.
As a new, and somewhat heavy, stockholder in “Bright Eyes” gold-mine, I
reckoned I’d try to get a little information from that engineer--I was
quite sure that an Eastern capitalist who wore a silk hat and had a
friend in the bank cashier might expect a little more attention than a
street bystander. Therefore, with a word to my friend Flye I went over
to find out the best or the worst.