"Done--at last!"
Sprawled on the flat of his back, with his curly head propped on his
hands and his lime-eaten boots spread at a comfortable angle, Billy
gazed upon their completed labor. The "well"--into which the liquid
copper matte would presently be flowing--crucible, slag spout, blast
pipes, or tuyeres, and canvas blowers, even the inclined way that led up
to the platform over the loading trap, all were finished, and from the
solid bed to the tip top of the brick chimney shaft Billy's vision
embraced it all. Including the tons of charcoal that Caliban had burned
and brought in from the woods, and the piles of ore which Seyd and
Calixto had broken into smelting size with "spalling" hammers, all stood
ready for the match that Seyd scratched while echoing Billy's
observation.
"Done--at last!"
When the shavings and wood were fairly started under the mixed charge of
charcoal and ore Seyd also lay down to watch the first smoke. Under the
vigorous blast it quickly appeared--a thin blue spiral which waxed in
volume and blackness. In thirty minutes it laid a sooty finger halfway
across the Barranca above the hills, a sinister portent to the rancheros
and peons, one that found a dark reflection in Don Luis's frown as he
looked out from the upper patio of San Nicolas, far away.
Unconscious, however, of alien observation, Seyd watched the
fluctuations of the black smoke with lazy enjoyment. He permitted his
fancy to float with the waving pennon out over the valley down the
river, where it set him aboard a log raft with his first shipment of
copper matte and set him drifting down to the coast, where he could
either sell to the United Metals Company or ship by sea to California
smelters. There was nothing impractical about his musings. Independent
of the gold values it carried, one smelting would transmute their
thirty-dollar ore into copper matte worth a hundred and twenty dollars a
ton. At a liberal estimate the extra twenty would pay expenses, and with
a profit of a hundred dollars on an output of sixty or seventy a week
during the two months before the rains, there was a small fortune in it.
Next year they could both import their labor and put in a regular plant.
Thereafter they would be in a position to deliver "blister" copper
instead of matte to the market. Why, flaming under the breath of this
first success, fancy leaped out to all sorts of possibilities, raised
wharves, bunkers, storehouses in the jungle below, set a fleet of
flat-bottomed sternwheelers on the river. And never was there such a
river! He was traveling its long reaches in thought when fancy suddenly
steered his argosy of dreams into the San Nicolas landing.
The next second he was sitting again in the shaded gallery of the upper
patio, its flowers and bird song, sunshine and fountain splash in his
eyes and ears. As on the other day, he watched Francesca bending over
her godchild, and while he was contrasting her air of tender solicitude
with the cold hauteur of her face a month ago he thought she looked up
with a smile. He was answering it when the smiling eyes were wiped out
by the intrusion of some unpleasant thought.
"You fool!" he chided himself. Then, sitting suddenly up, he smote Billy
on the thigh with force that drew a yell of anguish. "It's a mint, boy!
A blooming mint! I wouldn't trade my share for the best gold mine in
Tonopah. Next year we'll put in a big plant--"
"Reverberatories with water jackets!" Billy enthusiastically took up the
tale.
"Sure, and we'll build down on the flat by the river and deliver the ore
by--"
"Gravity. Aerial cable--self-dumping buckets--"
"We'll refine our own matte--"
"Market our own copper and gold." His blue eyes shining, Billy ran on:
"In five years we'll be rich, then for a rest and a trip. New York,
London, Paris, with Nice and Monte Carlo thrown in. Europe in a
touring-car, by golly! Egypt and the Pyramids! A steam yacht and a trip
around the world! Hurray for us!"
"In the mean time"--Seyd led him gently back to earth--"remember,
please, that this is your trick. Go and stoke up, or there'll be no
Paris in yours."
And surely their days of ease lay a long way off. Long and hard as they
had labored, the completion of the smelter merely marked the beginning
of still more strenuous tasks. Upon them and the two peons would rest
the entire weight of running the smelter at its full capacity. Besides
the breaking of the ore, tapping of the slag, continuous firing, they
would have to burn their own charcoal after the first supply ran out.
Though they had spread the strain by dividing day and night into shifts,
it would have been work enough for four times their number.
Seyd's first shift ended at twelve that night, but, though he sent
Caliban off to his sleep, he himself sat up to wait for the first matte,
which was due to come trickling from the spouts at any moment. Reclining
his head, propped on his hand, he watched Billy and Calixto, both now of
one color, each at his task, one working the blowers while the other
dumped fresh ore and charcoal into the loading trap. At such times the
blast would send a burst of flame high over the chimney top, lighting
the house, stables, green ore mounds, showing ghostly trees beyond as
under a calcium glare. Though the roar of the blast fell like a lullaby
on his tired ears, excitement kept him awake till the first matte flowed
in a red stream out of the tap.
"She'll go a hundred and fifty to the ton!" Billy exclaimed, after a
careful examination of a cooled sample. Then, waving his hand at the
huge ore mounds, he groaned: "What a shame that we hadn't enough labor
and capital. We could have run it all through before the rains."
"Pig! Hog!" Seyd found a vent for his own surplus feelings by punching
Billy in the chest. "Think how much worse off we should have been if we
had had to mine it. Go down on your American knee bones and thank your
lucky stars for the English Johnnies."
Still smiling, he lay again to watch the glowing matte as Billy ladled
it out of the well. It was the culmination of their long labor, but he
was too tired even to think, and, giving himself up to a dim luxurious
feeling, he insensibly passed into sleep.
* * * * *
"Wake up, Bob, and go to bed. You still have four hours."
Only half aroused, he arose and stumbled across to the adobe, threw
himself down on the bunk without waiting to remove even his boots, and
fell into slumber at once so dead and dreamless that it seemed as if his
head had no more than touched the pillow before Billy's voice again
rang in his ear.
"Seven o'clock, Bob. I gave you an extra hour."
"Oh, quit your joshing." He murmured it, rolling over, and was again
almost asleep when a sudden report, louder than thunder, but with a
peculiar vibrant note, brought him swiftly to his feet. A second later
the door banged to and stuck, but not before they had caught a glimpse
of a huge cloud plume, densely yellow, shooting upward above the
smelter.
During the moment required to wrench the door from its frame the adobe
rocked under the concussion and scattered mud bricks, and there was a
rain of stores from the shelves to the floor. It did not require
Caliban's frightened yell on the outside, "_Explosion! Una explosion_,
senores!" to tell them what had happened. The first glance, as they
rushed out over the broken door, merely filled in the details of the
vivid mental picture each had formed for himself. Hundreds of feet in
mid air, the explosion cloud floated like a yellow balloon above the
stump of a stack, the half-fused bricks of which were scattered over the
bench. A cavity had been torn downward through the solid brick bed to
the clay beneath, and, looking down into it, Seyd read the sign.
"Dynamite! What was the last thing you did?"
"Stoked up and sent Calixto to call Caliban while I came for you.
Luckily for him that I did."
The charcoal piles were also leveled and spread over half an acre, and,
walking to and fro, Seyd began to pick up and break the larger pieces.
And it was only a few minutes before he called out: "Look here! Stick
dynamite, broken in two and gummed over with charcoal dust--a bushel of
it right here."
"Do you suppose--" Billy glanced toward the peons, who stood close by.
Seyd shook his head. "No, they had nothing to gain by it, and everything
to lose. It was the easiest thing in the world for anybody to steal into
the woods at night and slip a ton of this into the charcoal piles."
"Man, why didn't we think of it?" Billy groaned.
In moments of stress no two natures will express themselves in quite the
same way. As they stood looking gloomily over the wreck big tears slowly
forced themselves out of Billy's inflamed eyes and washed white runnels
down the soot. Heartbroken, he looked up in sudden fright as Seyd burst
out laughing.
"Bob! Bob!" he pleaded. "Have you gone crazy? Get a grip on yourself,
there's a good fellow!"
But his pathetic anxiety merely caused Seyd to laugh the more. It was
not that he was hysterical. Somehow the thought of the pain and
travail, trouble, anxiety, and discomforts they had endured during the
past three months touched his sense of humor.
"We have to allow that they made a pretty clean job," he said, wiping
his eyes. "Let's be thankful that you were out of the way."
"Where are you going?" Billy called out, as he began to walk away.
"To finish my sleep and catch up a few hours on all that I have lost in
the last three months. Take a nap yourself."
"Oh, I couldn't."
He undoubtedly thought so, yet when Seyd came out again, having slept
the clock round, it was to find Billy curled up and snoring hard under
the shade of the palm mat that Caliban had stretched between him and the
sun. "Quit your fooling," he broke in severely on Seyd's chaffing.
"Don't you know that we are down to our last dollar?"
"Thirty-three dollars and sixty cents Mex," Seyd gravely corrected.
Kicking a chunk of cooled matte, he added: "But we now have this. It
ought to stake us for a new start."
Billy, however, was not to be so easily separated from his grief. "Where
are you going to raise capital," he demanded, "with every spare dollar
in California locked up in the Nevada gold fields? If this had happened
a year ago, before the Tonopah rush, we might have done it. But now?" He
shook a doleful head.
"Well--New York?"
"Worse and more of it. The New Yorkers want all the bacon for killing
the pig. Might as well give them the mine at once. No, Bob, it's all
off. We're done--cooked a lovely brown in our own grease. Why _didn't_
we guard those piles! Who do you suppose did it? Don Luis?"
Seyd shrugged. "_Quien sabe?_ Doesn't look like his style. Of one thing,
however, we can be certain. Your common peon doesn't habitually walk
around with dynamite in his jeans. If I was going to lay any money, I'd
place it on your friend Sebastien. But we haven't any time to fool on
detective work. The question is--what's to be done?"
It was no light problem. As Billy had said, every dollar of Western
mining capital was invested in Nevada, and Mexican projects, however
good, would have to wait till the new gold fields were completely
exploited. A canvass of moneyed friends yielded no results, for, while
the wreck lay there under their eyes to emphasize the possibility of
similar future troubles, they could not but feel it to be a hazardous
venture for any person of limited means. Night brought no conclusion.
But, having slept on it again, they arose and began once more,
unconscious of the fact that while they lay in the heavy shade of a wild
fig tree, proposing, debating, rejecting various plans, the solution was
fast approaching upon its own legs.
Obviously, neither of them recognized the solution in the person of Don
Luis when, about the middle of the forenoon, his horse lifted him up
over the edge of the grade. On the contrary, it is doubtful whether
smiling fortune was ever met with a blacker scowl than Billy's.
Growling, "He's come up for a huge gloat," he would undoubtedly have
returned some insult to the old man's greeting but for Seyd's stealthy
kick on the shins.
Prepared as he was by the reports that charcoal-burners had brought to
San Nicolas, Don Luis's face expressed his utter astonishment at the
extent of the ruin. "We but heard of it last night," he told them. "It
was, I suppose, accidental? I understand that these furnaces--dynamite?
_Senor?_" He glanced with an interrogative frown at the peons asleep in
the shade of the adobe. "It was not they?"
Reassured on that point, he nodded in confirmation of Seyd's statement
that it would be foolish to hunt for the culprit. "As well try to single
out a flea on a peon's dog. I warned you, senor, to expect an enemy in
every stone of the Barranca. It would have been well had you listened.
But"--his eyes, hands, and shoulders expressed his acceptance of
fate--"it is done. And now?"
"We shall rebuild--as soon as we can raise the money."
Turning to survey the destruction, Don Luis hid a sudden gleam that was
evenly compounded of admiration and irritation. When he spoke again,
shrewd calculation peered from his half-closed eyes. "This time you will
build a larger--"
"--Plant?" Seyd supplied the word. "No."
"But I am told, senor, that the larger the plant the greater the
profits."
Seyd raised comical brows. "Fifty thousand dollars, senor--gold?"
"A small sum to your rich American capitalists."
"But we are not capitalists. No, we shall have to get along with a small
furnace."
The calculation deepened in the old man's brown eyes. After a pause, to
their utter astonishment, it took form in words. "But if you could raise
the money?"
"What's the use of talking; we can't."
"If I were to lend it to you?"
"_You!_" It was Billy who expressed their wonder. Seyd added, after a
pause, "But we have no security to offer--that is, nothing but the
mine."
"And if we ran away?" Billy suggested, grinning. "Took your money and
never came back?"
For the first time in their acquaintance a touch of humor lightened the
heavy bronzed face. "There are some in this valley, senor, who might not
count it too high a price. But as you say"--he bowed to Seyd--"the mine
is security enough. Now that you have shown how, I might even work it
myself. To put in a complete--"
"--Plant." Billy supplied the strange word.
"How long?"
"Between six and nine months. We should then require a little time to
smelt some ore and realize. We could not--"
"_Si, si!_" In his impatience Don Luis relapsed into Spanish. "_Si_, one
would not expect immediate repayment. Perhaps five thousand pesos at the
end of a year--"
"Oh, we could do better than that. Ten thousand of a first payment,
fifteen for the second, the remainder at a third with interest--"
"Interest? I had not thought of that." But he yielded to their
insistence. "Very well, if you will have it! Shall we say five
per-cent.? _Bueno!_ You will, of course, have to make a trip to the
United States to buy your material. If you will call at San Nicolas on
your way the administrador will have letters prepared to my bankers in
Ciudad, Mexico."
With a shrug that expressed relief at the conclusion he changed the
subject. Riding forward to obtain a closer view of the furnace, he again
clucked his surprise at the complete destruction, wagged a grave head
over the half bushel of dynamite that the peons had picked out of the
charcoal, curiously examined a piece of copper matte, lifting heavy
brows over the statement of its values, then rode quietly away, leaving
Seyd and Billy to recover as best they could from this fortunate
stroke.
"Am I dreaming?" Billy's exclamation defined their mental condition.
"Hit me, Bob. I want to make sure that I'm awake."
Convinced, he gasped with his first breath: "Fifty thousand dollars!
By golly! Why, we can put in a complete outfit."
"Reverberatories with water jackets." Seyd took up the tale again.
"We'll build down in the valley."
"Aerial cable--"
"--With iron self-dumping buckets--"
"--A flat-bottomed sternwheeler to--"
"--Take our copper down to the coast."
Blinded by the sudden light that had flashed out of their black despair
they stood for some time looking out over the Barranca with shining eyes
which saw a small mining town rising out of the jungle's tangles. It was
fully ten minutes before Seyd came back to earth.
"I wonder what is behind all this? Seems rather funny that the old chap
should come to our help?"
"Not knowing, can't say and don't care a darn! So far as I am concerned,
at fifty thousand a throw he can be just as inconsistent as he jolly
well likes."
"Nevertheless," Seyd mused, "I'd give three cents to know."
Meanwhile, Don Luis pursued his quiet way, now at a heavy canter, again
on a stately trot, through the jungle out to the first village beyond
the forks of the trail. As he passed the little _fonda_ Sebastien Rocha
rode out from a group of rancheros who stood drinking at the rough bar.
"They told me of the passing," he said, nodding backward. "And I waited.
What news? Did the gringos go up with their furnace? No? Still they will
now have their bellies full of Guerrero?"
But his face dropped at Don Luis's answer. "No, they are to build
again."
"But I thought--was it not the agent at the station who said they had no
money?"
"Neither had they." It was always difficult to read the massive face,
but now it expressed just a shade of malicious amusement. "I have lent
them fifty thousand pesos."
"_Thou!_" For once the man's usual cynical calm was completely
disrupted. In his vast astonishment he whispered it: "_Thou? Fifty
thousand pesos?_"
"_Yo._" Smiling slightly, he went on: "Now listen, Sebastien. Not to
mention thy little attempt on their virtue, this is the third on their
lives, and all badly bungled. So do not wonder that I thought it time to
take them into my own hand. Now that they are there, let there be no
mistake--the meddling finger is likely to be badly pinched. From this
time--they are _mine_."
"But--why give them money?"
"To forestall others." Had he been there to hear, the following words
would fully have answered Seyd's question. "The elder of these lads is
no common man. By hook or by crook he would have raised a company--if he
had to rope and tie down his men on the run. Then, instead of these two,
we should have a dozen gringos, with Porfirio and his rurales to back up
their charter. But do not fear."
From the cleared fields through which they were riding it was possible
to see Santa Gertrudis, and, turning in his saddle, he extended his
quirt toward its green scar.
"Do not fear."