COMMERCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
_Showing Wonders of the Thirst of McGinnis, and the Faith of Whiteman
the Jew_
There was a barber at Heart's Desire, a patient though forgotten man,
who had waited some years in the belief that eventually a patron would
come into his shop in search of professional services. No one did
come, but still the barber hoped. He was one of those who had clamored
most loudly for Eastern Capital. After the town meeting the courage of
the barber failed him. He declared himself as at length ready to
abandon his faith in Heart's Desire, and to depart in search of a
community offering conditions more encouraging. In this determination
he was joined by Billy Hudgens of the Lone Star, a man also patient
through long years of adversity, who now admitted that he might be
obliged to close up and move to Arizona.
The news of these impending blows fell upon a community already gloomy
and despondent. Some vague, intangible change had come over Heart's
Desire. The illusion of the past was destroyed. Men rubbed their
eyes, realizing that they had been asleep, that they had been dreaming.
There dawned upon them the conviction that perhaps, after all, the old
scheme of life had not been sufficient. The lotus plant was robbed of
its potency.
It was at this time that McGinnis came to town. His advent was the
most fortunate thing that could have happened. Certainly, it was
hailed with joy and accepted as an omen; for, as was known of all men
over a thousand miles of mining country in the Rockies, McGinnis was
the image and emblem of good luck.
Not that this meant prosperity for McGinnis himself, for that gentleman
continued in a very even condition as to worldly goods, being steadily
and consistently broke,--a sad state of affairs for one who had brought
so much happiness to others. History proved to the point of proverb
that whenever McGinnis visited a camp,--and he had followed scores of
strikes and stampedes in all the corners of the metalliferous
world,--that camp was destined to witness a boom at no distant day.
McGinnis was not actually a newcomer at Heart's Desire, but upon the
contrary one of the autochthones of that now decadent community. He
was a friend and former bunk-mate of old Jack Wilson, discoverer of the
Homestake mine. Five years ago, however, at the breaking of the
Heart's Desire boom, he had silently stolen away, whether for Alaska or
the Andes no one knew nor asked. Returning now as though from
temporary absence, he punched an ancient and subdued burro into town,
and unrolled his blankets behind Whiteman's corral, treating his
return, as did every one else, entirely as a matter of course. Seeing
these things, a renewed cheerfulness came to the lately despondent.
Whiteman the Jew, ever a Greatheart, openly exulted, and voiced again
his perennial confession of commercial faith in Heart's Desire.
"Keep your eye on Viteman," said he. "Der railroat may go, der barber
may go, der saloon may go, but not Viteman. My chudgment is like it
vas eight years ago. Dis stock of goots is right vere I put it. If no
one don't buy it, I keeps it. I know my pizness. Should I put in
twenty thousand dollars' vort of goots, and make a mistake of der blace
vere a town should be? I guess not! Viteman stays. By and by der
railroat comes to Viteman. You vatch. Keep your eye on Viteman."
He stood in the door of his long log store building, squat, stocky,
bristling, blue shirted like the rest, and cast his eye down counters
and shelves piled with clothing and hats, boots and gloves, pick-axes,
long-handled shovels, saddles, spurs, wagon bows, flour, bacon, and all
manner of things which come in tin cans. Dust was over all; but above
the dust was expectancy and not despair. The Goddess of Progress had
her choicest temple in the frontier store.
"I toll you poys years ago," Whiteman went on, "you should blat der
town. Ve blat it oursellufs now. Ve don't act like childrens no more.
Ve meet again. Ve holt a election. Ve make Viteman gounty dreasurer.
Dan Anderson should be mayor, and McGinney glerk. Ve make a town
gouncil, and ve go to vork like ve should ought to did. Ve move
Nogales City over here and make dis der gounty seat. Ve bedition for a
new gounty--ve don't vant to belong to dot Becos River gow outfit. Ve
make a town for oursellufs. Viteman didn't put in dis stock of goots
for noddings. You vatch Viteman."
This speech turned the tide, coming as it did with the arrival of
McGinnis. Billy Hudgens decided to wait for a few more days, although
for the time he was out of business for lack of liquids. It was
fortunate that McGinnis did not know this latter fact.
The capital of McGinnis, aside from his freckles and his thirst, was
somewhat limited. His blankets were thin and ragged, his pistol minus
the most important portion of a revolver--to wit, the cylinder--and
withal so rusted that even had it boasted all the component parts of a
six-shooter, it could not have been fired by any human agency. He had
a shovel, a skillet, and a quart tin cup. He had likewise a
steel-headed and long-handled hammer, in good condition; this being,
indeed, the only item of his outfit which seemed normal and in perfect
repair. McGinnis was a skilled mechanic and a millwright and could use
a hammer as could but few other men.
On the morning after his arrival McGinnis rolled early out of his
blankets, ate his breakfast of flapjacks and water, and put his hammer
in his hip pocket, where some men put a gun who do not know how to
carry a gun. McGinnis spoke to no one in particular, but headed up
into the mouth of the curving valley where stood the silent works of
the New Jersey Gold Mills Company. He was not cast down because he
found no one whom he could ask for work. He whistled as he walked
through the open and barn-like building, looking about him with the eye
of a man who had seen gold mills before that time.
"They've got their plates fixed at a lovely angle!" said he; "and
there's about enough mercury on 'em to make calomel for a sick cat.
There's been _talent_ in this mill, me boy!"
He crawled up the ore chute into the bin, and cast a critical gaze upon
the rock heaped up close to the crusher. Then he examined the battery
of stamps with silent awe. "This," said McGinnis, softly to himself,
"is the end of the whole and intire earth! Is it a confectionery shop
they've got, I wonder? They do well to mash sugar with them lemon
squeezers, to say nothing of the Homestake refractories."
He passed on about the mill in his tour of inspection, still whistling
and still critical, until he came to the patent labor-saving ore
crusher, which some inventor had sold to the former manager of the New
Jersey Gold Mills Company, along with other things. McGinnis drifted
to this instinctively, as does the born mechanician, to the gist of any
problem in mechanics.
"Take shame to ye fer this, me man, whoivver ye were," said McGinnis,
and the blood shot up under his freckles in indignation. "This is so
bad it's not only unmechanical and unprofissional--it's absolutely
unsportsmanlike!"
His ardor overcame him, and, hammer in hand, he swung down into the ore
bin underneath the crusher. "Here's where it is," said he to himself.
"With the jaw screwed that tight, how cud ye hope to handle this
stuff--especially since the intilligent and discriminatin' mine-boss
was sendin' down quartz that's more'n half porphyry! Yer little donkey
injin, and yer little sugar mashers, and yer little lemon squeezer of a
crusher--yah! It's a grocery store ye've got, and not a stamp mill.
Loose off yer nut on the lower jaw, man; loose her off!"
McGinnis was a man of action. In a moment he was tapping at the
clenched bolt with the head of his bright steel hammer. Slowly at
first, and sullenly, for it had long been used to treatment that
McGinnis called "unsportsmanlike"; then gently and kindly as it felt
the hand of the master, the head of the bolt began to turn, until at
length the workman was satisfied. Then he turned also the
corresponding nut on the opposite face of the jaw, swung the great
steel jaw back to the place where he fancied it, and made all fast
again. "She's but a rat-trap," said he to himself, "but it's only fair
to give the rat-trap its show."
McGinnis went out and sat down upon a pile of ore. It was a bright and
cloudless morning, such as may be seen nowhere in the world but in
Heart's Desire. The Patos Mountains, across the valley, seemed so
close that one might lay his hand upon them. The sun was bright and
unwinking, and all the air so golden sweet that McGinnis pushed back
his hat and gloried simply that he was alive. He did not even note the
cottontail that came out from behind a bush to peer at him, nor mark
the sweeping shadow of a passing eagle that swung high above the little
valley. His eye now and again fell upon the abandoned mill, gaunt,
idle and silent; yet he regarded it lazily, the spell of the spot and
the languor of the air filling all his soul.
But at last the sun grew more ardent, and McGinnis, knowing the secret
of the dry Southwest, sought shade in order that he might be cool. He
rose and strolled again into the mill, looking about him as before,
idly and critically. "Av ye was all me own, it's quite a coffee mill I
cud make of ye, me dear," said he, familiarly. And at this moment a
thought seemed to strike him.
"It has always been me dream to be a captain of industhry,"
soliloquized McGinnis. "I've always longed to hear the busy hum of me
own wheels, and to feel that I was the employer and not merely the
employeed." He mused for a few moments, too lazy to think far at one
flight.
"It wud be nice," he resumed later, "to see the smoke of your own
facthory ascendin' to the sky, and to feel that yerself 'uz the whole
affair, cook and captain bold, ore shoveller, head ingineer,
amalgamator and main squeeze."
"All capital," continued McGinnis, "is too much depindent upon labor.
The only real solution--" he paused to feel his pockets for a
match--"the only real solution is to be _both_ capital and labor.
Then, av ye've anny kick, take it to yourself, and settle it fair fer
both!" He paused again, and again the light of his idea showed upon
his countenance. "This," said McGinnis, "is Accajyun!"
He wandered over to the little boiler which drove the engine, and took
inventory of the pile of crooked piñon wood that lay heaped up near by.
He sounded the tank on top of the engine house, and found that it was
half full. Then, calmly and methodically, he took off his coat, folded
it, and laid it across a bench. He picked up a piece of board,
whittled a little pile of shavings, thrust them into the ashy grate,
and piled some wood above them. Then he scraped a match, and turning a
cock or so to satisfy himself that the boiler would not go out through
the roof in case he did get up steam, sat down to await developments.
"She'll steam for sure," he ruminated. "She'll steam as much as wud do
for a peanut wagon, av ye give her time."
Before the morning was gone the little boiler began to thump and churn
and threaten. McGinnis ran the belt on to the stamp shaft. He went up
and connected the crusher and shovelled a few barrows of ore into the
hopper. Not long afterwards there was a dull and creaking rumble. The
shaft of the stamps turned half around, slipped and stopped with a
rusty squeak. Then came further creaks, groans, and rumbles. McGinnis
walked calmly from place to place, tightening, loosening, shaking,
testing, shovelling, and watching.
"It's wonderful," said he to himself, softly. "It's just wonderful
what human bein's can do! If I, hadn't ever seen this mill, I wuddn't
have believed it! But I'll say at this point meself, that I'm not
looking a gift mill in the mouth. Moreover, this runnin' of your own
mill, not bein' beholden to any sordid capitalist, nor yet depindent on
anny inefficient labor, is what I may call a truly ijeel situation in
life. I'll stay here till the wood runs out. Not that I'll cut wood
for annybody. Capital must draw the line somewhere!"
No one noticed the smoke from the abandoned gold mill. McGinnis ran it
by himself and undisturbed until his woodpile waned. Then he
disconnected, blew off, and set to work to scrape his plates, whereon
to his experienced eye there now appeared a gratifying roughness in the
coating. He got off a lump of amalgam as big as his fist, and was
content. "It's ojus there's no retort here," said he, "but like enough
I'll find some way to vollituize this mercury."
He crossed the _arroyo_, and went to the cabin which had once been the
office of the assayer. The latter was now an _emigré_, but he had left
his crucibles and his furnace behind him; because it is not convenient
to carry such things when one is afoot. McGinnis found a retort,
adjusted it, set it going, volatilized the mercury from his amalgam,
and in time had his button of dirty but quite valid gold. It lay heavy
in his hand and rested heavy in his pocket. "As a captain of
industhry," said he, "I must see what I can do for poor sufferin'
humanity." He chuckled, and passed out into the street.
"As capital," said McGinnis to himself, walking on in the moonlight, "I
am entitled to the first drink meself, and after that to one or two as
a laborer. Then, if there's anny left, after treatin' all round, I'll
buy the town a public liberry, pervidin' the town'll make it
sufficiently and generally understood that I'm a leadin' and
public-minded citizen that has reached success by the grace of God and
a extraordinary brain."
But McGinnis in his philanthropic intentions met difficulty. He
wandered into the Lone Star, and placing his crude bullion upon the
counter, swept about him a comprehensive hand. To his wonder there was
no response. A few of the assembled populace shifted uneasily in their
seats, but none arose. "Do you take this for a low-down placer camp?"
asked Billy Hudgens, with a dull show of pride, when McGinnis demanded
the gold scales.
"No," said McGinnis, "it's a quartz camp right enough, and all it needs
is developin'. At this speakin', I'm capital and labor both, and crew
of the _Nancy Brig_. What's the matter?"
A sigh escaped from the audience, as Billy Hudgens made reply. "Not a
drop," said he; "all gone. Nothing till Tom Osby gets back from Vegas,
and maybe not then. I owe Gross & Blackwell over two hundred now."
McGinnis's voice dropped into a low, intent whisper. "Do you mean to
tell me that?" he said. "Me, with my thirst?" He laid a hand on
Billy's shoulder. "Friend," said he, "I've walked two hundred miles.
I've developed your place. I'm in a position to give this town a
public liberry worth maybe forty dollars. Now, do you mean to say to
me--do you mean--" He gulped, unable to proceed. Hudgens nodded.
McGinnis let fall his hand from the counter, turned and silently left
the place.
He moved up the street to the adobe where the barber had his shop. The
barber was gloomily sitting inside, waiting. McGinnis entered, and
looked about him with the ease of one revisiting familiar scenes.
In a case upon the wall were rows of shaving mugs, now dusty and
abandoned, mute witnesses of a former era of glory. Indeed, they
remained an historical record of earlier life in Heart's Desire.
Once there had been rivalry between McGinnis and Tom Redmond for the
affections of a widow who kept a boarding-house in Heart's Desire, the
same long since departed. There came by express one day, addressed to
Tom Redmond, a shaving mug of great beauty and considerable size,
whereon the name of Tom Redmond, handsomely emblazoned, led all the
rest. The fame of this work of art so spread abroad that Tom Redmond,
as befitted one who had attained social distinction, became the
recipient of increased smiles from the widow aforesaid. McGinnis bided
his time. Thirty days later, there arrived by stage for him a shaving
mug of such stature and such exceeding art as cast that of Tom Redmond
completely in the shade! Thenceforth the widow smiled upon McGinnis.
Tom Redmond, unable to endure this humiliation, and in the limitation
of things wholly unable to raise the McGinnis ante in shaving mugs, was
obliged to leave the town. McGinnis hung upon the handle of the
Redmond mug a goodly card bearing the legend, "Gone, but not
forgotten." Shortly after that McGinnis himself left town. Alas! at
the instance of the widow the barber hung upon the McGinnis mug a
similar card; it having appeared that McGinnis had emigrated without
paying either his board bill or his barber's bill.
This evidence of his early delinquency now confronted McGinnis as he
stepped into the shop for the first time in these years. He regarded
it with displeasure. "Take it off," said he to the barber, sternly.
"I paid the widdy in Butte, two years ago. As for yourself, I have
come six hundred miles to pay my bill to you. Take it out of that."
He presented his heavy button of gold.
The barber protested that he could not make change on this basis, but
cheerfully extended the credit. He was glad to see McGinnis back
again, for he was most promisingly hairy.
"I am back, but I'll not be stayin' long," said McGinnis. "Have ye
annything to drink?"
The barber mournfully shook his head, even as had Billy Hudgens.
McGinnis, refusing to believe such heavy news, walked up to the mantle,
picked up a tall bottle labelled "Hair tonic," smelled of it, and
without asking leave, raised it to his lips and drained it to the
bottom.
"For industhrial purposes, friend," said he. In twenty minutes he was
lying in a deep and dreamless sleep.
"In some ways this fellow has talent," said Billy Hudgens, as he looked
in on McGinnis later; "but like enough he's come to a show-down now."
Until noon the next day McGinnis slept soundly. Then he sat up on the
floor. "How're you feelin' now, man?" asked Billy Hudgens.
"Friend," said McGinnis, "I'm feelin' some dark and hairy inwardly; but
I'm a livin' example of how a man can thriumph over circumstances."
Wherewith he smiled gently, sank back, and slept again till dark.
"It wud have been too bad," said McGinnis to the barber when he awoke,
"if you had left this town before I came. What ye've all been needin'
is some one to give ye a lesson in not gettin' discouraged.
"As for combinin' hair tonic and strong drink into one ingradyint, if
anny one tells you it's a good thing, you may say for me the report
lacks confirmashun. But we'll not despair. Aside from the proverb
about the will and the way, 'tis well known that no disgrace can come
to a real captain of industhry through a timporary change in the
industhrial conditions. I'm sayin' to you, get in a new chair, and get
ready for the boom."