|THROUGHOUT the slow, tortuous journey, while the train crept up
and ever upward into the hills, Don Juan entertained his patron with
alternate snatches of the song closest to his heart (or rather his
stomach)--“The Cruiskeen Lawn,” which, liberally translated for the
benefit of those not familiar with the Gaelic, means “the morning's
morning.” Between verses the outcast suggested the advisability of a
drink to ward off approaching faintness or discoursed most learnedly on
the roadbed, which was a tribute to his efficiency as a section-boss in
his other incarnation.
Arrived at San Miguel de Padua about midnight, Webster found the climate
temperate, in fact, decidedly cool. Billy was waiting for them and was
properly amazed, but not scandalized when Don Juan Cafetéro, abusing
the station hands in a horrible hodgepodge of English and Spanish,
superintended the landing of the baggage on the platform.
“I had to bring him with me,” Webster explained. “I'm going to wean him,
and after that baby quits crying for his bottle, believe me, Bill, we'll
have the prince of a foreman for our Mine. Quite a character, is Don
Juan, when you dig down into him.”
“Dig far enough into that ruin and you'll find firecrackers,” Billy
admitted. “However, John, I'm afraid he won't explode. The powder's
damp. How did you leave Dolores?”
“Fit as a fiddle, Bill.”
“How does she stack up on better acquaintance, Johnny?”
“She's a skookum lass. She sent her love and I promised to send you back
to her P. D. Q. So don't bother me with talk about her. If you think
you're going to sit by my bed half the night and talk about your heart's
desire, you've another guess coming. You'll see her again in a week or
ten days, I hope.”
“No? Is that so, Johnny? Bully for you, you old wampus cat. Tell Don
Juan to steer you over to the Globo de Oro. He knows the place. I've got
to go and hire a mule or some other quadruped for, Don Juan if we're to
avoid a late start in the morning. Good-night, old fellow.”
They were up at daybreak, and with three heavily laden pack-mules in
charge of two semi-naked _mozos_, while the cook jogged comfortably
along on his big splay feet in the rear, they set out for Billy's
concession. From San Miguel de Padua they turned west on a splendid
highway paved with limestone blocks and vending up into the hills on an
easy gradient.
“Government built, this, I dare say,” Webster suggested as they trotted
along side by side.
Billy nodded. “It is the only evidence I have observed of an inclination
on the part of President Sarros to give the lowly peon a run for his
taxes. This highway stretches from San Miguel de Padua to the western
national boundary; I imagine Sarros built it with some idea of enabling
him to get there first with the most guns in the event of war with his
neighbours on the Pacific side. Quite a rare plucked 'un, is Sarros--to
quote Mother Jenks.”
“Are you acquainted with him, Bill? What kind of a bird is he?”
“Oh, yes, indeed, I know him. We're great _amigos_. I'm the man that
taught him the folly of betting too heavily on two pair after the draw.
He has Indian blood in him--quite a little of it, in fact; but he is
well educated. Speaks French, Spanish, and English very fluently. He's
a short man and wears high-heeled boots to make himself look taller than
he really is. He is crafty, suspicious, sensitive, and possessed of a
sense of humour--only his humour is tinged with cruelty. He'd steal a
cross off a grave and kill his best friend as quickly, should political
expediency demand it, as you or I would kill a rattlesnake. He has a
rattling good intelligence-department, pays liberally for information,
and keeps down rebellion by the simple process of locating the
ringleaders and shooting them. He bumped off old General Morelos some
six weeks ago--did it on mere suspicion, too.”
“You must have come to Sobrante mighty well recommended to get into the
good graces of the scoundrel.”
“Not at all! Sarros is a peculiar man. It pleases him to pose as a
democrat and mingle freely with the proletariat--accompanied, however,
by a strong bodyguard. Frequently he visits the cafés in Buenaventura
and fraternizes with all and sundry. I met him first in a joint known
as The Frenchman's, where he used to come to watch the drawing for the
lottery. I was there matching another American for half-dollars, and
Sarros edged up, all interest, and homed in on the game. Before the
session was over we'd swapped cards, and the instant he learned I was a
mining man and down here to give Sobrante the onceover, he invited me
up to the palace for dinner. Our acquaintance quickly ripened into
friendship--on his part. It seems he likes to have enterprising
Americans come to Sobrante and exploit the country, because experience
has demonstrated that if the visitors develop a good thing, there is
always a rake-off in it for Sarros.”
Webster nodded. “Same old game anywhere you go south of the Rio Grande,”
he replied.
“I had a couple of thousand dollars I'd saved on a job I had down in
Rhodesia, so I was enabled to put up a big front. I received government
permission to prospect government lands, and--”
“Do you pay a royalty to the government, Bill?”
“Five per cent.”
“How about the president's rake-off?”
“Oh, that's unofficial, of course, but it's understood we pay him 5 per
cent, of our output.”
“Anybody else to take care of?”
“No, that cleans up the gang. Loaiza, the Minister of the Interior,
wanted in, but I kicked like a bay steer and Sarros shooed him off.”
“A fine lot of bandits to do business with!” Webster declared
disgustedly. “Still, it's their way of doing business, and much as we
dislike that kind of business, we'll have to do it that way or not at
all. The government ought to get 10 per cent, of our gross output,
and Sarros ought to be shot. However, I dare say we can stand for the
blackmail if, as you say, you have twelve-dollar ore.”
“Wait and assay it yourself,” Billy assured him. For thirty miles they
followed the government highway, and then debouched to the southwest
along a neglected road just wide enough to accommodate the clumsy
oxcarts of the peons. The country was sparsely settled and evidently
given over to stockraising. By degrees the road lost itself in the tall,
dry grass, and became a faint trail which led into a forest of fir
and other woods, with a good deal of mahogany and with very little
underbrush. Billy rode in front, following through the timber a trail
of his own blazing; and on the afternoon of the third day they
dropped swiftly into a bare brown valley lying between timbered hills,
displaying here and there the red stain of oxide of iron, from which
evidence Webster knew he was in a mineral country. Billy pointed to a
yellow mound at the base of one of the toes of the range flanking the
valley on the south.
“There's the claim,” he announced. “You can see the dump from here.”
A ribbon of green ran down a canon from the south and out into the
brown, parched valley, where it suddenly disappeared.
“Sink,” Billy elucidated, following the direction of his friend's
gaze and divining his thoughts. “That creek lies entirely on our
concession--about thirty miner's inches of water, I should judge. It
disappears in the sands out there at the end of the green streak, but
the irrigation along its banks has been sufficient to insure plenty of
good feed for our stock.”
Darkness had descended on the valley by the time they had pitched camp
and eaten supper. They were up at dawn the following morning, however,
and immediately after breakfast Jack Webster went to his duffle-bag and
brought forth a dozen little canvas sacks and a prospector's hammer.
“Now then, William, my son,” he announced, “light the lantern and we'll
see if you've forgotten all I taught you about mining.”
They clambered up the dump to a point where two v light steel rails
projected over the edge. On top of the dump, lying beside the rails,
were two small, rusty, steel ore cars; the rails led from the edge
of the dump to the mouth of a tunnel in the hillside and disappeared
therein.
Webster stood a moment, looking round him. “How did you happen to locate
this ledge?” he demanded. “Was it grass-root stuff, with an out-cropping
here at the foot of the hill? No, of course it wasn't. You haven't
enough ore on the dump. What the devil were you driving at?”
“Only a small portion of that dump is mine, Jack, and I didn't locate
the ground originally. I came into this valley from the south, and as I
worked up the range, I found a bald spot close to the top of the hill,
and a gallows-frame over an abandoned shaft. Naturally, I went down
the shaft to see why it had been abandoned. To my surprise, I found a
twelve-foot vein of free-milling ore, on a contact between andesite and
Silurian limestone. The ledge stood straight up and down, which seemed
to argue great depth.”
“Somebody had found an outcropping on top of that hill,” Webster
declared with conviction, “and sunk a shaft on the vein to open it up
and determine its width and direction. How deep was this old shaft?
Thirty or forty feet?”
“Thirty-two feet. I figured it out just that way, too. After determining
approximately which way the ledge was pitching, I made up my mind I'd
have a tunnel driven to cut the ledge at right angles at the foot of the
hill, since no practical man would mine from the top of a hill and hoist
his ore through a shaft, when he could mine from the bottom and haul
his ore out on cars through a tunnel. So I came prowling down into the
valley and found this tunnel. The work had been abandoned for a couple
of years, and after examining the tunnel I thought I knew why. They had
failed to cut the ledge as they expected.”
“Hum-m! And what did you do, Bill?”
“I got my transit and ran a line from the shaft on the hill, following
the direction in which the ledge was running, and marked out the exact
point toward the base of the hill where I would start my tunnel to cut
the ledge. To my surprise, I discovered my predecessor had selected that
identical spot. So I verified my calculations and then sat down to think
it over.”
“You should have suspected a fault immediately.” Webster chided the
younger man. “This is a volcanic country-----”
“Well,” Billy interrupted, “I suspected a fault, but not immediately.
Remember I'm fifteen years your junior, professor. I remembered that
frequent and violent earthquakes occur in this country, and it seemed
to me a reasonable hypothesis to blame some ancient and particularly
violent seismic disturbance, which had faulted the vein and set it over
a considerable distance. According to my calculation, that other man
should have cut the vein at eighty-three feet--yet he had gone on one
hundred and two before quitting. So I got half a dozen peons and drove
ahead nineteen feet on the other fellow's tunnel; and by Heck, Johnny, I
cut the vein!”
“Bully boy! And then?”
“I drifted ten feet on the vein, and the ore suddenly gave out. It
stopped just like that, proving I'd come to the upper end of the vein
where it had faulted; so I just worked up and around, stoping and
sinking a winze here and there, until just about the time my cash
reserve was getting pretty low I picked up the true vein and opened it
up for the full width. Come in, and I'll show you.”
They entered the tunnel, to the signal dismay of dozens of large bats.
When they reached the vein, Webster broke off samples of the ore every
three or four feet, crawled after Billy up through the stope and back
to the true vein, from the face of which he also took numerous samples;
then he crawled out into the sunshine again, hot, dirty, and perspiring.
“Billy, you'll be a real miner yet; see if you won't,” was all the
praise he tendered his youthful partner, standing beside him in
anticipation of a compliment, as Webster got out his portable assay
outfit.
For three days Webster worked, determining the values of each sample,
only to find that his assays confirmed Billy's. Then he visited the old
shaft on top of the hill, assayed samples procured there, roamed the
range in the immediate vicinity, marking with expert eye the timber he
would find so useful and close at hand when stulls and lagging for the
tunnel should be needed; then he selected a site where the waters of
the stream could be impounded in a little draw far up the hillside, and
returned to camp to render his final report.
“You were right, son,” he announced. “This mine is a humdinger and no
mistake; if you and I live ten years we'll be worth ten millions between
us--maybe more.”
Billy's jaundiced eyes glowed hungrily. “We'll put in a hundred
stamps----”
“Well, we'll try ten for a starter,” Webster interrupted dryly, “and add
more as the mine pays its way. Our first consideration is the building
of about ten miles of road through that timber, and repairs to that old
dirt road connecting with the Grand Highway. I noticed there isn't much
hard rock work to do, however, and we'll shoot the trees out of our way
with dynamite. After we have a passable trail broken into this valley it
won't take long to haul in our freight from the railroad at San Miguel
de Padua. We'll cut all our frame- and foundation-timbers for the
stamp-mill right here on the ground, and our other buildings will all
be adobe. We'll have to put in a concrete dam up there on the hill and
build a flume to the stamps. Oh, yes, my son, we'll run the stamps by
water power. We'll have a five-hundred-foot drop at an ample angle, with
the last hundred feet almost perpendicular; believe me, when the water
comes through the penstock, anything in front will have to get out of
the way. The same power will operate a little electric-light plant to
light the grounds and buildings and workings, run the drills, and so
on. Yes, it's the sweetest mining proposition on earth--only, like all
high-class goods, it has one flaw when you examine it closely.”
“You're crazy,” Billy challenged. “Name the flaw!”
“Sarros!” Webster replied smilingly. “That scoundrel makes a gamble
out of an otherwise sure thing. However,” he added, recalling the note
received from Ricardo Ruey just before his departure from Buenaventura
and reflecting that to be forewarned is to be forearmed, “we'll accept
the gamble. That rascal can't live forever, and he may be eliminated
before he causes us any trouble.”
“What will it cost us to get this mine on a paying basis, Johnny*”
“Well, back home, I'd figure on spending at least hundred thousand
dollars; but I dare say, taking consideration the low cost of labour in
Sobrante and the raw, natural resources of power and timber right on
the ground, we ought to put this deal over for fifty thousand at the
outside. Praise be, I have cash enough to do the trick without calling
in any help, and such being the case, we'll not waste any time but hop
to the job in a hurry and make the fur fly.”
“All right, Jack. What's the programme?”
“Well, first off, son, I'm not going to stay in this country and lose
myself managing this mine. That's your job, because you're young and
unimportant in your profession and have the ability to get away with the
job. You can afford to spend the next fifteen years here, but I cannot.
I can only afford to come down here every couple of years and relieve
you for a vacation.”
“That's the way I figured it, Jack.”
“All right then, Bill, let us start in by giving you your first
vacation. If you're going to dig in here and make the fur fly, you've
got to be in tip-top physical condition--and you are thin and gaunted
and full of chills and fever. Just before I left Buenaventura I cashed
a draft for five thousand dollars on my letter of credit at the Banco
Nacional, and placed it to the credit of your account there.
“To-morrow morning you will take your horse, one pack-mule, and one
_mozo_ and ride for San Miguel de Padua, where you will take the train
for Buenaventura. In Buenaventura you may do what you blame please, but
if I were you, boy, I'd try to get married and go back to the U. S.
A. for my honeymoon. And when I finally hit a town that contained some
regular doctors I'd let them paw me over and rehabbit me and overhaul
my bearings and put me in such nice running order I'd be firing on all
twelve cylinders at once.
“And when I was feeling tip-top once more I'd wire old John Stuart
Webster and tell him so, after which I'd stand by for a cable from the
said sourdough inviting me to return and take up my labours.” Billy's
wan yellow face lighted up like a sunrise on the desert. “I guess that
plan's kind of poor,” he announced feelingly. “You're right, Jack. I'm
in rotten condition and I ought to be right before I start. Still, if
I should arrange to get married before I leave, I'd like mighty well to
have a good man and true see me safely over the hurdles.”
“That's nice, son, but I haven't time to be your best man. Arranging the
honeymoon lets me out, Bill. I'm in a hurry to finish here and get
back, so the sooner we both start our prospective jobs the sooner we'll
finish. Have a quiet little marriage, Bill, without any fuss or feathers
or voices breathing o'er Eden. What are the odds, provided you
get hitched properly? Besides, I'm in mortal dread of that town of
Buenaventura, The sewer system is bad; it's rotten with fever; and you'd
better get that girl out of it P. D. Q., and the quicker the better.
Myself, I prefer to stay up here in these mountains in a temperate
climate where there are no mosquitoes.”
Billy saw that Webster was serious and would resent any interference in
his plans. “All right, Jack,” he assented. “You're the boss.”
“Fine. Now, Bill, you listen to father and be guided accordingly.
When you get to Buenaventura, wire the Bingham Engineering Company, of
Denver, using my name, and tell them to add to my order given them last
month and held for shipping directions, twelve dozen picks, twelve dozen
shovels, twelve dozen mattocks, say, six dozen axes, brush knives, a big
road plow, and whatever other things you happen to think of and which
would come in handy when building our road. Also, when you get to
New Orleans, buy a ton of dynamite and an adequate supply of fuse and
fulminating caps, pay for it and ship it to me at Buenaventura. Further,
look around in New Orleans and buy a stanch three ton motor truck. We'll
need it for getting in supplies from San Miguel de Padua. Pay for the
truck also, and if you go broke and cannot reach me by cable, wire
Neddy Jerome at the Engineers' Club in Denver and kick his eye out in my
honoured name.
“I guess that's about all of your job, Bill. As for me, I'll camp right
here. I'll have a deal of surveying to do and I plan to sweat the booze
out of that Cafferty person. I'll make Don Juan my chain man and run the
tail off him. Then I'll be busy with preliminary plans, arranging for
labour and so on, and when I'm idle I'll go hunting.”
In conformity with this plan, therefore, Billy said good-bye to his
friend and packed out for San Miguel de Padua bright and early next
morning. During the following ten days Webster managed to keep himself
fairly busy around the camp at the mine; then for a week he hunted and
fished, and finally, when that began to pall on him, his agile mind
returned to business and the consideration of the possibility of a flaw
in Billy's title to the claim; whereupon he suddenly decided to return
to Buenaventura and investigate that title fully before proceeding to
throw dollars right and left. While socially he was wildly prodigal with
his dollars, in business matters no Scotchman was more canny or more
careful of his baubees.
At the head of his little cavalcade, therefore, he rode out one morning
for the railroad, whereat Providence, in its inscrutable wisdom,
ordained that en route he should fall in with no less a personage than
Don Ricardo Luiz Ruey, _ne_ Andrew Bowers. Ricardo was mounted, armed,
and alone, and at sight of Webster he shouted with delight and spurred
toward him.
“What the devil! You, Rick, the government cut-up. What are you doing in
these parts?” Webster rode up and shook hands.
“Oh, I'm Robin Hooding it around this part of the country. It is so
secluded, you know, and Sarros hasn't any friends or any telegraph lines
or any garrisons up this way. I heard in San Miguel de Padua that you
were camped yonder, and I was on my way over to confer with you on
matters of state.”
“You'll have to confer as we ride along. How does your business
progress, Rick?”
“Beyond my wildest expectations. By the way, I need your help, friend
Webster.”
“I'll do anything within reason, Rick.”
“I figured you would, so I have already imposed on your good nature to a
slight extent. Met your friend Geary at El Buen Amigo a couple of weeks
ago, just before he sailed for the United States. He was telling me you
had to have a lot of tools for road building, so I cabled in a secret
cipher to the So-brantean revolutionary junta in New Orleans to ship
these tools to you immediately. They arrived on the last trip of the
_Atlanta_ and now repose in Leber's warehouse waiting for you to call
and remove them.”
“You scoundrel! What have you sent me?”
“A couple of hundred rifles and three machine-guns, branded axes, picks,
shovels, plows, and so on. I also ran in three cases of ammunition,
labelled grindstones, two more cases disguised as bolts, and quite
several thousand labelled nails in kegs. I should feel rather sorry for
you if my friend Sarros should get suspicious and investigate, but
I haven't any fear that he will. You see, he knows you're here on
legitimate business. He has investigated and learned that you are a bona
fide mining engineer of considerable reputation--and then, you know,
your friend Geary dickered with him for the concession. The mining
property you are about to develop belongs to the people, not to Sarros;
yet he has bartered it away and will divert the royalty to his own
pocket instead of the public treasury.”
“Hum-m-m! What do you want me to do with all those munitions consigned
to me?”
“Arrange with Leber to keep them there until you get ready to build
your road into the mine. I want them there when my American mercenaries
arrive in Buenaventura. By the way, you are going to import these
mercenaries for me. They are American miners and road-builders in the
employ of the Honda Mining & Development Company, which is to be the
name of your enterprise. I hope you'll like the name, Webster. I picked
it out myself.”
“You cool scoundrel! You're making a cat's paw out of me.”
“That is because you happen to be so handy for my purpose. You see
my plan, do you not? I'm going to attack Buenaventura from within and
without. I'm going to come down on Sarros like a wolf on the fold, and
the job is scheduled for next Saturday night a week.”
“Look here, Rick, my boy, I have no desire to mix in the politics of
this country.”
“You have some desire, however, to mix in its wealth,” Ricardo reminded
him.
“Well?”
“I'm the only man that can help you. By the way, do not order your
machinery shipped until after I am seated firmly on the throne of my
fathers.”
“Why?”
“It's been framed with Sarros to let you spend your money on that
concession and get the mine in running order; then a fake suit, alleging
an error in the government survey, will be filed. It will be claimed
that the concession given your friend Geary is, by virtue of erroneous
government surveys, the property of a citizen of Sobrante. The courts
here do as Sarros tells them. You are to be kicked out, busted, and
despairing, and your nicely equipped little mine will be taken over as
a government monopoly and run for the benefit of the government, to wit,
Sarros and his satellites. We had to cook up a dirty deal like that to
save your life. Of course, now that I have warned you in time, you
are safe. We schemed a proposition, however, that worked both ways. It
enabled us to save you and to save us, by permitting the shipment, free
of suspicion, of arms for the rebels that are to attack the city from
within. Naturally I had to cache their arms within the city--and
that was a hard problem until you happened along. Thank you, fairy
godfather.”
“My thanks are due you, Ricardo. I'm for you, first, last, and all the
time, and against this Sarros outfit. By the way, how do you purpose
moving your machine-guns?”
“We'll have to carry them, I guess.”
“Well, I'll have a small auto-truck delivered in Buenaventura by that
time. You might arrange to armour it with sheet steel; and with a couple
of machine-guns mounted in it, and a crew of resolute Americans behind
the machine-guns, you could caper from one end of the city to the other
and clear a path for your infantry.”
“Thank you, my friend. I'll borrow the motor truck and arrange to armour
it. That's a bully idea. Are you bound for Buenaventura now?” Webster
nodded. “Then,” Ricardo suggested, “I'll meet you in my room at El Buen
Amigo next Wednesday night at eleven and explain the details of my plans
to you if you care to hear them. I think they're air-tight myself, but
somehow I think I'd feel more certain of them if you approve them.”
“I'll be there, Rick, and the day you run that outlaw Sarros off the
grass you'll know why I am for you.”
“Good-bye, old man. You will never know how grateful you have made me.”
Ruey shook hands with Webster and rode off through the timber, leaving
John Stuart Webster to pursue the even tenor of his way, until at length
he arrived once more in Buenaventura and sought accommodations at the
Hotel Mateo. And there, as he entered the lobby and gazed through a
glass door across the _patio_ and into the veranda, he saw that which
disturbed him greatly. In a big wicker rocker Dolores Ruey sat, rocking
gently and busily stitching on a piece of fancy work!
Billy Geary gone back to the United States, and Dolores was still in
Buenaventura! Amazing! Why, what the devil did Billy mean by letting her
have her own way like that? Of course they hadn't been married, or she
would not now be out there on the veranda, and of course they hadn't
quarrelled, because that was an impossibility, and of course Billy had
departed alone for the U. S. A., else he would have returned to their
camp in the hills back of San Miguel de Padua.
“Well, I know what I'm going to do,” Webster decided. “I'm not going to
be led into temptation while Billy's not on the job--so I'll not put up
at the Hotel Mateo after all. I'll just sneak around to El Buen Amigo
and fix it with that old Mother Jenks not to tip off my presence in town
to Dolores Ruey until I can get the lay of the land and see what the
devil has happened to all my well-laid plans.”
He retreated out the front door and called a carriage, into which he was
about to step, bag and baggage, when Don Juan Cafetéro came rushing up
in great excitement. “Sure, where are ye goin' now, sor. Is there no
room for ye in the Hotel Mateo?”
“Their beds have jiggers in them, and I just remembered that,” Webster
fibbed. “Hop in, John, and we'll drive around to Mr. Geary's lodgings in
El Buen Amigo.”
“But I come t'rough the _patio_ just now,” Don Juan explained, “an' who
should I meet but the young leddy.”
“You infernal scoundrel! Did you tell her I was in town?”
“Sure I did, sor. An' why not?”
“None of your infernal business. You've spoiled everything. You're a
muddle-headed monkey and I've a great notion to let you get drunk again.
Take the baggage back into the hotel.”
Don Juan Cafetéro, greatly humbled and rebuffed, stepped aside and
watched Webster stride back into the hotel. “God love ye, sor,” he
mumbled, “know-in' what I know, is it likely I'd let ye make a monkey
out av her or yerself? Ye made yer plans wit' Misther Geary wit'out
consultin' her. Now go, ye grrand big divil, an' find out why she kicked
yer schame to smithereens.” And with a solemn and knowing wink at the
duffle-bag, Don Juan picked that article up and followed after his
master.