The Silver Canyon, A Tale of the Western Plains, by George Manville
Fenn.
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This book is by an author who revels in putting his heroes into tense
and dangerous situations, and never more so than in the Western plains
of North America in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Indians
were armed with rifles, and had immense prowess at creeping up unseen
upon their enemies. In addition there are rattlesnakes, bears, and
other nasty things.
The young hero, Bart for short, is out there with his uncle, seeking for
a new life. And they all but got the next life out of it! After
enduring these and other privations, they find a massive rocky eminence,
which they find to have a good lode of silver in it, one which had been
mined before, perhaps thousands of years before. It is also fairly
difficult to get up to the summit of this great hill, which makes it
easier to defend, but when you do get up there you find a large area of
good grazing for their cattle and horses. So they make their home
there, but of course the Indian attacks continue right up to almost the
end of the book.
Though the mine had been worked before there was still plenty of good
ore in it, so they start to mine it commercially.
Eventually a railway is made up to the mine, thousands of workers settle
there, and our heroes are heard bemoaning that their way of life is no
longer as dangerous and thrilling as once it was. They'll just have to
put up with the boredom, I'd say.
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