CHAPTER VIII GOLD IN THE “JIGGER”
“It’s nearly time for us to know ’bout where we stand,” remarked Mundon, as he flung several shovelfuls of mortar, brickdust, and soot into the “jigger.” He then added some quicksilver to the mass. “There, I guess that’ll do fur this time. Now, we’ll churn the cream and see if we kin git any butter.”
“Perhaps it isn’t cream,” Ben suggested, more to hear Mundon reassure him than anything else.
“No; p’raps it ain’t,—p’raps it’s only skim milk. Well, in that case we won’t git any butter. But I’m a-bettin’ on it’s bein’ cream.”
When Mundon took some of the amalgam from the dirty water and washed it clean, Ben knew that the time of reckoning had arrived.
“Ain’t feelin’ faint, are you, Ben?” Mundon facetiously inquired. “I orter brought some smellin’-salts along. Well, I’ve got a ticklish sort of feelin’ myself.”
He placed the amalgam in a piece of buckskin. This he squeezed until the larger part of the quicksilver had been pressed through the skin.
He did not tell Ben, but he knew from long experience that the result was satisfactory. Ben read his thoughts in his face.
“Tell me it’s all right, Mundon! I can see by your face that it is, but I’d like to hear you say it! Tell me!”
“There’s gold in this ball—or I’m not alive,” the other replied.
“Wo-o-w!” Ben flung his cap among the rafters, and, seizing the ball of amalgam, he sent it after the cap.
“Here, young feller, don’t you go plumb crazy! That’s heavy! Want ter kill us? Give me that ball—I ain’t through with it yet.”
Ben returned the ball. “I had to let off steam or bust!” he said.
“Now, we’ll see what we’ll see,” said Mundon, as he repeated the process he had followed with the first handful of amalgam, until he had three good-sized lumps.
“The gold’s inside of them?” Ben asked.
“Course it is,—that is, we’ve reason to s’pose so.”
“How ever are we going to get it out! I say, Mundon, I’d have made a pretty fizzle of this business without you.”
“You’d have had to found somebody else, that’s all,” Mundon modestly replied.
“Next, I take the retort,—see that it’s cold,—and chalk it well. Watch me, Ben,—most anybody can set an egg on end after they’ve seen it done. Next, I wrap these here baseballs—base is good!—in paper and put ’em in the retort,—so. Then I jam the cover down tight. Now, give me a lift, Ben. This here’s pretty heavy, I reckon.”
The retort did not seem heavy to Ben as they lifted it to the furnace; and he concluded that Mundon had asked him to help him, in order that he might feel that he was more than a spectator.
“He’s got the finest feelings,” Ben said to himself. “He’s always trying to make a fellow feel comfortable.”
They built a roaring fire in the furnace.
“Now, you kin tend that fire fur two hours, Ben,” said Mundon, “while I go down-town and see ’bout gittin’ some more coal and a few little things we need. I’ll be right back. Don’t forget—you got to keep that there retort red-hot the whole time.”
“Yes, yes. And then what do we do?”
“Well, you got to keep the retort red-hot for two hours, as I told you, just a dull red-hot; but at the last you pile on the coal till it’s a reel cherry-red.”
“And after that?”
“O, I’ll be here to show you what to do afterwards.”
During the following two hours Ben watched the furnace and plied it with coal. A rap on the doors attracted his attention, and he admitted Beth and little Sue.
“Mother asked us to tell her when you got the first gold from your Golconda. Have you got any yet?” Sue asked. “I know what that means, too, for Beth told me the story.”
“Not yet, Sue,” Ben replied. “Maybe you’re just in time to see some, though. We’re nearly ready to open the retort.” He flung in a shovelful of coal. “I’m glad you came down, Beth, to see it; for if we get any it’ll be the result of your idea.”
“Nonsense, Ben! O, Sue,” she exclaimed as she looked up the long funnel of the chimney to where it pierced the blue sky, “think of any one’s sitting on those little sticks and being hoisted up that frightful distance! It makes me dizzy to think of it. How did you ever get the rope over the top?” she inquired of Ben.
“Mundon did it,” Ben explained, “one day, when he sent me off to buy the mule.”
“Did he climb up on the outside?”
“No, goosey; of course not. He built a rough scaffolding inside, somehow, as he went along, until he could throw a rope over the top. The rest was easy.”
“And is he going to chip off the whole inside? O-o-h! How can he bear to sit on that thing and let you haul him to the top?”
“O, he doesn’t mind it; he’s been a sailor. He says it’s safer than lots of high places he’s been in, because there’s no wind.”
So interested had all three been in peering up the chimney that they had not noticed the entrance of several men who were curiously inspecting the interior.
Sydney Chalmers was one of them; and while Ben was annoyed by his presence at this particular time, he did not like to ask him to leave.
Syd walked about with a supercilious stare which so irritated Ben that he relieved his feelings by flinging shovelfuls of coal into the furnace.
The two hours were nearly up, and Mundon must soon return.
One of the self-invited visitors proved to be a reporter who walked about, notebook in hand, scanning the surroundings.
When Mundon returned, Ben suggested that the strangers be asked to leave; but Mundon did not approve of this.
“It never did anybody any harm to be on the good side of the newspapers, and it gen’rally does a body heaps of harm to be on the bad side of ’em,” he sagely remarked. “Let him get his scoop. That’s a real cherry-red,” he added as he looked at the retort. “Give us a hand, Ben.”
They lifted the retort from the furnace.
“It’s got to chill now,” said Mundon, and he turned his attention to the reporter, whom he regaled with such Munchausen tales that that experienced gentleman had hard work to separate fiction from fact.
“S’pose you think your fortune’s in sight?” Syd contemptuously looked at the retort.
“I hope so, Syd; and I know all my friends do, too,” Ben replied.
“Hoping’s cheap.”
Ben turned away. “Isn’t it cool enough yet?” he called to Mundon.
“Reckon it is,” said Mundon. “Now, when I knock off the cover, we got to jump back quick as lightnin’. The fumes of quicksilver’s deadly, you know.”
“All right. Knock her off!” Ben responded.
“You folks better stand well back,” Mundon said to the others.
He struck the cover a few hard blows, and as it flew off they sprang back to a place of safety.
“Whew! This is being an alchemist with a vengeance! Fancy our turning that old rubble into gold!” Ben said to Mundon, who was holding him by the arm. “O, I say, isn’t it time to see, now?”
“I guess so. Come along.”
Visitors and workmen eagerly crowded around the retort. A little sponge of gold was all that remained in it.
Mundon took it out and weighed it while the others curiously watched him.
Ben was visibly horribly disappointed. He had a sickening conviction that the whole thing was a failure. He could read the triumph in Syd’s face, and it cost him an effort to put on a bold front and see them all through the gates.
“It’s no go, I’m afraid,” he whispered to Beth. For answer she pressed his hand. He closed the gates and turned to Mundon.
“Well,—it’s a failure. You needn’t tell me—I know it.”
“Failure? No, ’tain’t a failure.”
“Are you saying that to let me down easy?”
“Before God, I ain’t! Why, boy, what you got tears in your eyes fur? Brace up and be a man!”
“I’m trying to, Mundon.” Ben’s voice shook.
“I dunno what’s this all about? Did you expect that there crucible’d be half-full of gold? Mebbe you thought ’twould be plumb full.” There was no reply. “Why, on a rough calculation, I reckon this undertakin’ ’s goin’ to come out all right.”
“You mean that it’s going to pay?”
“’Course I do. What ails you?”
“It seems such a small quantity,” Ben faltered.
“It’ll seem smaller yet, when it’s cast in a bar. I’ve got to melt this again to git it into shape. Besides, I reckon ’bout half of it’s silver.”
“Silver! And silver’s worth only fifty cents an ounce!” Ben sat down on some lumber and gloomily watched Mundon melt the gold in a crucible.
“Yes, so ’tis; but gold’s worth twenty dollars an ounce. Didn’t expect ’twould be all gold, did you? I’m a-figurin’ roughly on the tons of stuff you’ve got in sight and the amount of gold you’ve got out of one jiggerful, and—you’ve got a good thing all right, Ben. But you’re just like all kids,—beggin’ pardon,—onreasonable.”