Branded Part 21

Hicks--we carried him thus on the pay-roll, though he himself spelled it "Hix," for short, as he said--left us to go back to town for his dunnage, and Gifford, knowing that I had been on watch all night, urged me to turn in. But that was a game that two could play at.

"I'm no shorter on sleep than you are," I told him. "You were up all night with the wagon."

We wrangled over it a bit and I finally yielded. But first I told Gifford about the Lawrenceburg threat for the day, omitting nothing but the source of my information.

"So they're going to jump us, are they?" he said. "All right; the quicker the sooner. Does Barrett know?"

"Not yet. I thought we'd all get together on it this morning. Tell him when he comes back; and if anything develops before he gets here, sing out for me." And with that I made a dive for the blankets.

Between the two of them, Gifford and Barrett let me sleep until the middle of the afternoon. I could scarcely believe the evidence of my senses when I turned out and saw the miracles that had been wrought in a few short hours. While I slept, the transformation of the Little Clean-Up from a three-man prospect hole to a full-fledged mine had taken giant strides. Machinery and material were arriving in a procession of teams laboring up the gulch; a score of carpenters were raising the frame of the shaft-house; masons were setting the foundations for the engine and hoist. I had slumbered peacefully through all the din and hammering and the coming and going of the teams; would doubtless have slept longer if the workmen had not put skids and rollers under the shack to move it out of their way.

Gifford, now thirty-odd hours beyond his latest sleep, was too busy to talk; but Barrett took time to bridge the progress gap for me.

"There was nothing you could do," he explained, at my protest for being left for so many hours out of the activities. "Gifford will have to knock off pretty soon, but the work will go on just the same. Take a look around, Jimmie, and pat yourself on the back. You are no longer a miner; you are a mine owner."

"Tell me," I said shortly.

"There isn't much to tell. I caught that first car to town this morning and got busy. You're seeing some of the results, and the ready money in bank is what produced them. But we've got to dig some more of it, and dig it quick. Blackwell has begun suit against us for trespa.s.sing upon Lawrenceburg property, and as you know, every foot of ground all around us was relocated by the early-morning mob that trailed up from our broken-down wagon."

"I ought to have told you about the Blackwell move this morning before you got away, but there was so much excitement that I lost sight of it," I cut in. "I knew about it last night."

"How was that?"

"Somebody who knew about it before I did came here and told me."

"In the night?"

"In the early part of the night; yes."

"Was it Everton?"

"Not on your life. It was some one who thinks a heap more of you than Phineas Everton does."

"You don't mean----"

"Yes; that's just who I do mean. She came over expecting to find you.

She wanted to ask you if we had a sure-enough, fire-proof, legal right to be here. She asked me, when she found you were in bed and asleep.

I told her we had, and succeeded in making her believe it. Then she told me what was coming to us--what Blackwell had up his sleeve."

"That explains what Gifford was trying to tell me, but he didn't tell me where it came from," said Barrett.

"He couldn't, because I didn't tell him. It's between you and Polly Everton, and it'll never go any farther. I shall forget it--I've already forgotten it."

In his own way Barrett was as scrupulous as an honest man ought to be.

"I wish she hadn't done it, Jimmie. It doesn't ring just right, you know; while her father is still on the Lawrenceburg pay-rolls."

Right there and then is when I came the nearest to having a quarrel with Robert Barrett.

"You blind beetle!" I exploded. "Don't you see that she did it for you? But beyond that, she was perfectly right. She saw that an unjust thing was about to be done, and she tried to chock the wheels. The man doesn't live who can stand up and tell me that her motives are not always exactly what they ought to be. I know they are!"

Barrett was smiling good-naturedly before I got through. "I like your loyalty," said he; adding: "and I shan't quarrel with you over Miss Everton's motives; she is as good as she is pretty; and that is putting it as strong as even you could put it."

It was time to call a halt on this bandying of words about Mary Everton and her motives. I had already said enough to warrant a cross-fire of questions as to how I came to know so much about her.

"We're off the track," I threw in, by way of making a needed diversion.

"You began to tell me about the Blackwell demonstration. I see we're still here."

"You bet we're here; and we're going to stay. It may take all the money we can dig out of that hole in the next six months to pay court costs, but just the same, we'll stay. Blackwell tried the bullying game first; came over here this forenoon with a bunch of his men and tried to scare Gifford out. Gifford stood the outfit off with the shotgun; was still standing it off when I came up with the first gang of workmen. I had bought a few Winchesters against just such an emergency, and I pa.s.sed them out to the boys and told them to stand by.

That settled it and Blackwell backed down, threatening us with the law--which he had already invoked."

"Can he get an injunction and hang us up?"

"It's a cinch that he'll try. But we have the best lawyers in Cripple Creek, and they're right on the job. There will be litigation a mile deep and two miles high, but we'll get delay--which is all we are playing for, right now. If the lawyers can stand things off until we have had one month's digging, we'll have money enough to fight a dozen Lawrenceburgs."

"We are going to be terribly crowded in this little s.p.a.ce," I lamented, with a glance at the building chaos which was already overflowing our narrow limits.

Barrett slapped me on the back. "There was one time when your Uncle Bob had the right hunch," he bragged exultantly. "Our attorneys, Benedict & Myers, have succeeded in buying the Mary Mattock for us, which gives us room for the dump. It cost us twenty thousand dollars yesterday, when the deal was closed, and to-day it would cost a hundred thousand--or as much more as you like. To-morrow morning there will be a syndicate of farmers back in Nebraska reading their newspapers and kicking themselves all over the barnyard."

"Even the Mattock ground won't give us any too much room," I suggested.

"No; but we can acquire the outer corners of our triangle, sooner or later. We can buy of these new stakers after they find that they haven't room enough to swing a cat on their little garden patches. The big fight is going to be with the Lawrenceburg. Benedict has been digging into that, and he says we are up against a bunch that will fight to the last ditch. The mine is backed by Eastern capital, and the claim the owners will make is that their upper ground here in the gulch joins the original location, and that we are trespa.s.sers."

"Give me something to do," I begged. "I can't stand around here, looking on."

"Your job is waiting for you," Barrett rejoined tersely. "You have never told me much about yourself, Jimmie, but I know you are a business man, with a good bit of experience. Isn't that so?"

"It was, once," I admitted.

"All right. You're going to handle the money end of this job in town.

When you're ready, pull your freight for the camp, open an office, organize your force, and get busy with the machinery people, the banks, and the smelters. We'll be shipping in car-load lots within a week."

Two hours later I boarded a car on the nearest trolley line. On the long, sweeping rush down the hills I put in the time trying, as any bewildered son of Adam might, to find myself and to rise in some measure to the stupendous demands of the new task which lay before me.

But at the car-stopping in Bennett Avenue it was the escaped convict, rather than the newly created business manager of the Little Clean-Up, who slipped into the nearest hardware shop and purchased a revolver.

XVII

Aladdin's Lamp

It is no part of my purpose to burden this narrative with the story of the development of our mine. Let it be sufficient to say that it speedily proved to be one of the most phenomenal "producers" among the later discoveries in the Cripple Creek district. The stories of such spectacular successes have been made commonplace by the newspapers, and that of the "Little Clean-Up" would--if I should give the real name of our bonanza--be remembered and recognized by many who saw it grow by leaps and bounds from a mere prospect hole to a second "Gold Coin."

To summarize briefly. Within a month we had settled down to business and were incorporated, with Barrett as president, and Gifford, who chose his own job, resident manager and superintendent. The secretary-treasurership, combined under one office head, fell to me.

With a modern mining plant in operation, the sinking and driving paused only at the hours of shift-changing; and after we began shipping in quant.i.ty our bank balances grew like so many juggler's roses--this though we had to spend money like water in the various lawsuits which sprang up from day to day.

Many of these suits were based upon cross-claims--contentions that we were overlapping other properties--and most of these we were able to compromise by buying off the litigants. By this means we acquired the entire area of the original triangle. When the news of our strike reached Nebraska, the owners of the Mary Mattock sought to break their sale to us on the ground that we had stacked the cards against them.