. . . It was a little after one o'clock. As I entered
the cabin door, tired but jolly, the dingy light of a
tallow candle revealed Higbie, sitting by the pine table
gazing stupidly at my note, which he held in his fingers,
and looking pale, old, and haggard. I halted, and looked at
him. He looked at me, stolidly. I said:
"Higbie, what--what is it?"
"We're ruined--we didn't do the work--THE BLIND LEAD'S RELOCATED!"
It was
enough. I sat down sick, grieved--broken-hearted, indeed. A
minute before, I was rich and brimful of vanity; I was a
pauper now, and very meek. We sat still an hour, busy with
thought, busy with vain and useless self-upbraidings, busy
with "Why didn't I do this, and why didn't I
do that," but neither spoke a word. Then we dropped into
mutual explanations, and the mystery was cleared away. It
came out that Higbie had depended on me, as I had on him,
and as both of us had on the foreman. The folly of it! It
was the first time that ever staid and steadfast Higbie had
left an important matter to chance or failed to be true to
his full share of a responsibility.
But he had never seen my note till this moment, and this
moment was the first time he had been in the cabin since
the day he had seen me last. He, also, had left a note for
me, on that same fatal afternoon--had ridden up on
horseback, and looked through the window, and being in a
hurry and not seeing me, had tossed the note into the cabin
through a broken pane. Here it was, on the floor, where it
had remained undisturbed for nine days:
"Don't fail to do the work before the ten days expire. W.
has passed through and given me notice. I am to join him
at Mono Lake, and we shall go on from there to-night. He
says he will find it this time, sure. CAL."
"W." meant Whiteman, of course. That thrice accursed
"cement!"
That was the
way of it. An old miner, like Higbie, could no more
withstand the fascination of a mysterious mining excitement
like this "cement" foolishness, than he could refrain from
eating when he was famishing. Higbie had been dreaming
about the marvelous cement for months; and now, against his
better judgment, he had gone off and "taken the chances" on
my keeping secure a mine worth a million undiscovered
cement veins. They had not been followed this time. His
riding out of town in broad daylight was such a
common-place thing to do that it had not attracted any
attention. He said they prosecuted their search in the
fastnesses of the mountains during nine days, without
success; they could not find the cement. Then a ghastly
fear came over him that something might have happened to
prevent the doing of the necessary work to hold the blind
lead (though indeed he thought such a thing hardly
possible), and forthwith he started home with all speed. He
would have reached Esmeralda in time, but his horse broke
down and he had to walk a great part of the distance. And
so it happened that as he came into Esmeralda by one road,
I entered it by another. His was the superior energy,
however, for he went straight to the Wide West, instead of
turning aside as I had done--and he arrived there about
five or ten minutes too late! The "notice" was already up,
the "relocation" of our mine completed beyond recall, and
the crowd rapidly dispersing. He learned some facts before
he left the ground. The foreman had not been seen about the
streets since the night we had located the mine--a telegram
had called him to California on a matter of life and death,
it was said. At any rate he had done no work and the
watchful eyes of the community were taking note of the
fact. At midnight of this woful tenth day, the ledge would
be "relocatable," and by eleven o'clock the hill was black
with men prepared to do the relocating. That was the crowd
I had seen when I fancied a new "strike" had been
made--idiot that I was. [We three had the same right to
relocate the lead that other people had, provided we were
quick enough.] As midnight was announced, fourteen men,
duly armed and ready to back their proceedings, put up
their "notice" and proclaimed their ownership of the blind
lead, under the new name of the "Johnson." But A. D. Allen
our partner (the foreman) put in a sudden appearance about
that time, with a cocked revolver in his hand, and said his
name must be added to the list, or he would "thin out the
Johnson company some." He was a manly, splendid, determined
fellow, and known to be as good as his word, and therefore
a compromise was effected. They put in his name for a
hundred feet, reserving to themselves the customary two
hundred feet each. Such was the history of the night's
events, as Higbie gathered from a friend on the way
home.
Higbie and I cleared out on a new mining excitement the
next morning, glad to get away from the scene of our
sufferings, and after a month or two of hardship and
disappointment, returned to Esmeralda once more. Then we
learned that the Wide West and the Johnson companies had
consolidated; that the stock, thus united, comprised five
thousand feet, or shares; that the foreman, apprehending
tiresome litigation, and considering such a huge concern
unwieldy, had sold his hundred feet for ninety thousand
dollars in gold and gone home to the States to enjoy it. If
the stock was worth such a gallant figure, with five
thousand shares in the corporation, it makes me dizzy to
think what it would have been worth with only our original
six hundred in it. It was the difference between six
hundred men owning a house and five thousand owning it. We
would have been millionaires if we had only worked with
pick and spade one little day on our property and so
secured our ownership!
It reads like a wild fancy sketch, but the evidence of
many witnesses, and likewise that of the official records
of Esmeralda District, is easily obtainable in proof that
it is a true history. I can always have it to say that I
was absolutely and unquestionably worth a million dollars,
once, for ten days.
A year ago my esteemed and in every way estimable old
millionaire partner, Higbie, wrote me from an obscure
little mining camp in California that after nine or ten
years of buffetings and hard striving, he was at last in a
position where he could command twenty-five hundred
dollars, and said he meant to go into the fruit business in
a modest way. How such a thought would have insulted him
the night we lay in our cabin planning European trips and
brown stone houses on Russian Hill!
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