I NOW come to a curious
episode--the most curious, I think, that had yet accented
my slothful, valueless, heedless career. Out of a hillside
toward the upper end of the town, projected a wall of
reddish looking quartz-croppings, the exposed comb of a
silver-bearing ledge that extended deep down into the
earth, of course. It was owned by a company entitled the
"Wide West." There was a shaft sixty or seventy feet deep
on the under side of the croppings, and everybody was
acquainted with the rock that came from it--and tolerably
rich rock it was, too, but nothing extraordinary. I will
remark here, that although to the inexperienced stranger
all the quartz of a particular "district" looks about
alike, an old resident of the camp can take a glance at a
mixed pile of rock, separate the fragments and tell you
which mine each came from, as easily as a confectioner can
separate and classify the various kinds and qualities of
candy in a mixed heap of the article.
All at once the town was thrown into a state of
extraordinary excitement. In mining parlance the Wide West
had "struck it rich!" Everybody went to see the new
developments, and for some days there was such a crowd of
people about the Wide West shaft that a stranger would have
supposed there was a mass meeting in session there. No
other topic was discussed but the rich strike, and nobody
thought or dreamed about anything else. Every man brought
away a specimen, ground it up in a hand mortar, washed it
out in his horn spoon, and glared speechless upon the
marvelous result. It was not hard rock, but black,
decomposed stuff which could be crumbled in the hand like a
baked potato, and when spread out on a paper exhibited a
thick sprinkling of gold and particles of "native" silver.
Higbie brought a handful to the cabin, and when he had
washed it out his amazement was beyond description. Wide
West stock soared skywards. It was said that repeated
offers had been made for it at a thousand dollars a foot,
and promptly refused. We have all had the "blues"--the mere
sky-blues--but mine were indigo, now--because I did not own
in the Wide West. The world seemed hollow to me, and
existence a grief. I lost my appetite, and ceased to take
an interest in anything. Still I had to stay, and listen to
other people's rejoicings, because I had no money to get
out of the camp with.
The Wide West company put a stop to the carrying away of
"specimens," and well they might, for every handful of the
ore was worth a sun of some consequence. To show the
exceeding value of the ore, I will remark that a
sixteen-hundred-pounds parcel of it was sold, just as it
lay, at the mouth of the shaft, at one dollar a
pound; and the man who bought it "packed" it on mules a
hundred and fifty or two hundred miles, over the mountains,
to San Francisco, satisfied that it would yield at a rate
that would richly compensate him for his trouble. The Wide
West people also commanded their foreman to refuse any but
their own operatives permission to enter the mine at any
time or for any purpose. I kept up my "blue" meditations
and Higbie kept up a deal of thinking, too, but of a
different sort. He puzzled over the "rock," examined it
with a glass, inspected it in different lights and from
different points of view, and after each experiment
delivered himself, in soliloquy, of one and the same
unvarying opinion in the same unvarying formula:
"It is not Wide West rock!"
He said once
or twice that he meant to have a look into the Wide West
shaft if he got shot for it. I was wretched, and did not
care whether he got a look into it or not. He failed that
day, and tried again at night; failed again; got up at dawn
and tried, and failed again. Then he lay in ambush in the
sage brush hour after hour, waiting for the two or three
hands to adjourn to the shade of a boulder for dinner; made
a start once, but was premature--one of the men came back
for something; tried it again, but when almost at the mouth
of the shaft, another of the men rose up from behind the
boulder as if to reconnoitre, and he dropped on the ground
and lay quiet; presently he crawled on his hands and knees
to the mouth of the shaft, gave a quick glance around, then
seized the rope and slid down the shaft. He disappeared in
the gloom of a "side drift" just as a head appeared in the
mouth of the shaft and somebody shouted "Hello!"--which he
did not answer. He was not disturbed any more. An hour
later he entered the cabin, hot, red, and ready to burst
with smothered excitement, and exclaimed in a stage
whisper:
"I knew it! We are rich! IT'S A BLIND
LEAD!"
I thought the very earth reeled under me.
Doubt--conviction--doubt again--exultation--hope,
amazement, belief, unbelief--every emotion imaginable swept
in wild procession through my heart and brain, and I could
not speak a word. After a moment or two of this mental
fury, I shook myself to rights, and said:
"Say it again!"
"It's blind lead!"
"Cal., let's--let's burn the house--or kill somebody!
Let's get out where there's room to hurrah! But what is the
use? It is a hundred times too good to be true."
"It's a blind
lead, for a million!--hanging wall--foot wall--clay
casings--everything complete!" He swung his hat and gave
three cheers, and I cast doubt to the winds and chimed in
with a will. For I was worth a million dollars, and did not
care "whether school kept or not!"
But perhaps I ought to explain. A "blind lead" is a lead
or ledge that does not "crop out" above the surface. A
miner does not know where to look for such leads, but they
are often stumbled upon by accident in the course of
driving a tunnel or sinking a shaft. Higbie knew the Wide
West rock perfectly well, and the more he had examined the
new developments the more he was satisfied that the ore
could not have come from the Wide West vein. And so had it
occurred to him alone, of all the camp, that there was a
blind lead down in the shaft, and that even the Wide West
people themselves did not suspect it. He was right. When he
went down the shaft, he found that the blind lead held its
independent way through the Wide West vein, cutting it
diagonally, and that it was enclosed in its own
well-defined casing-rocks and clay. Hence it was public
property. Both leads being perfectly well defined, it was
easy for any miner to see which one belonged to the Wide
West and which did not.
We thought it well to have a strong friend, and
therefore we brought the foreman of the Wide West to our
cabin that night and revealed the great surprise to him.
Higbie said:
"We are going to take possession of this blind lead,
record it and establish ownership, and then forbid the Wide
West company to take out any more of the rock. You cannot
help your company in this matter--nobody can help them. I
will go into the shaft with you and prove to your entire
satisfaction that it is a blind lead. Now we propose
to take you in with us, and claim the blind lead in our
three names. What do you say?"
What could a man say who had an opportunity to simply
stretch forth his hand and take possession of a fortune
without risk of any kind and without wronging any one or
attaching the least taint of dishonor to his name? He could
only say, "Agreed."
The notice was put up that night, and duly spread upon
the recorder's books before ten o'clock. We claimed two
hundred feet each--six hundred feet in all--the smallest
and compactest organization in the district, and the
easiest to manage.
No one can be
so thoughtless as to suppose that we slept, that night.
Higbie and I went to bed at midnight, but it was only to
lie broad awake and think, dream, scheme. The floorless,
tumble-down cabin was a palace, the ragged gray blankets
silk, the furniture rosewood and mahogany. Each new
splendor that burst out of my visions of the future whirled
me bodily over in bed or jerked me to a sitting posture
just as if an electric battery had been applied to me. . .
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