HOW A MINE WAS HAUNTED.
"Well, boys," said Mr. Fay, when they had reached the street and were walking toward their hotel, "I have somehow taken a great interest in you, and I am anxious to see you come out all right. It is the most remarkable thing I ever heard of. You did not know what was in that box when you bought it, did you?"
"No, sir," replied Julian; "it was all sealed up. The auctioneer said something about a miner having hidden the secret of a gold-mine in it, and I bought it for thirty cents."
"The auctioneer happened to hit the matter right on the head. I will go with you in search of a cheaper boarding-house than the one at which you are now stopping, and you had better remain there until Mr. Gibson hears from those people in St. Louis. That will be two weeks, probably. If, at any time, you grow weary of walking about our city, looking at what little there is worth seeing, come down to the office, and we'll sit there and swap a few lies."
Mr. Fay continued to talk in this way while they were walking along the streets, meanwhile turning several corners, and the longer he talked the more the boys saw the traits of his Western character sticking out all over him. He talked like a gentleman, and then spoiled it all by remarking that they would "swap a few lies" when they came around to his office. He had probably been out West so long that he had become accustomed to Western ways of conversation.
At length Mr. Fay turned off from the sidewalk, ascended the steps that led to the door of a house, saying, as he did so, "Now we will go in here and see what we can do," and rang the door-bell. It was a very different-looking house from the one they had been in the habit of living in when in St. Louis. There were no broken-down doors to be opened before they went in, nor any rickety steps to be climbed, but everything was neat and trim, and kept in perfect order. A motherly-looking old lady answered Mr. Fay's pull at the bell.
"Ah! good-morning, Mrs. Rutherford," was the way in which Mr. Fay greeted her. "Let me introduce Julian Gray and John Sheldon. They are looking around for a cheap boarding-house,—not too cheap, mind you,—and I have called to see if you have any place in which to hang them up for the night."
Mrs. Rutherford was glad to meet Julian and Jack, invited them into the parlor, and asked them if they wanted a room together. The boys replied that they did, and she conducted them upstairs, to show them a room that was vacant. They were gone not more than five minutes, and when they came downstairs again Mrs. Rutherford was putting some bills away in her pocket-book, and the boys acted as though they were well satisfied.
"Well, you have found a place, have you?" said Mr. Fay. "Have you jotted down the street and number?"
No, the boys had not thought of that, and Julian quickly pulled his note-book from his pocket.
"Your city is somewhat larger than we expected to find it," began Julian.
"You don't find many wigwams around here now," answered Mr. Fay. "We keep spreading out all the time. Can you boys find the way back to your hotel?"
Julian and Jack thought they could find it if they were given time enough, but Mr. Fay thought he had better go with them. It was right on the road to his office, and he walked off so rapidly that his young companions were obliged to increase their speed in order to keep up with him. Before they had gone a great way, Julian, who was anxious to learn all he could about their surroundings, asked how far it was to the mountains behind them. Mr. Fay had evidently answered such questions before, for all he said in reply was,
"How far do you think it is?"
"I think two miles would cover the distance," he answered, for he was determined he would guess enough while he was about it.
"How far do you say it is, John?" said Mr. Fay, turning to Jack.
"I would rather be excused from expressing an opinion, but I think we could walk out there in two hours."
"And come back the same day?"
"Why, yes; certainly."
"Now, let me tell you," said Mr. Fay: "If you have made up your minds to go out to the mountains, hire a good, fast walking-horse, and go out one day and come back the next."
"Is it as far as that?" exclaimed the boys, looking at each other with amazement.
"It is all of twelve miles. You must take into consideration that the air is very rare up here, and that things appear nearer than they are. You are 5135 feet above the level of the sea."
"My goodness! I didn't think we were so far out of the world!"
"We have awfully uncertain weather here," continued Mr. Fay, "but still we regard our climate as healthy. Our thermometer sometimes changes as much as forty degrees in twenty-four hours. Since Professor Loomis took charge of the matter, the mercury has changed forty-five times in one day. What sort of a place did you expect to find Denver, anyway?"
"Well, I did not know what sort of a place it was," said Julian. "We thought we should find more wigwams here than houses, and you can't imagine how surprised we were when we found ourselves in a depot full of people."
"Denver used to be full of wigwams, but it is not so now. Until the year 1858 the Indians lived in peace; but in that year gold was discovered by W. G. Russell, a Georgian, on the banks of the river Platte, which is but a little way from here, and that settled the business of the Indians in a hurry. Denver, Black Hawk, Golden City, and many other cities that I can't think of now, were founded in 1859, and a host of immigrants appeared. Since that time we have been spreading out, as I told you, until we have a pretty good-sized city."
"It shows what Western men can do when they once set about it," said Jack. "Now, answer another question while you are about it, if you please. If the mercury changes forty degrees in twenty-four hours, working in the mines must be dangerous business."
"That depends upon where you are working," said Mr. Fay. "If you are at work in a placer-mine, you stand a good chance of leaving your bones up there for somebody to bring home; but if you are working under the ground, it does not make any difference. Are you thinking of going out to Dutch Flat to try your hand at it? I don't know where that is, but you can find plenty of men here who can tell you."
"I have not said anything to Julian about it, but I think that would be one of the best things we could do. You see, we are not settled in that property yet."
"I see," said Mr. Fay. "Gibson may get word from those fellows in St. Louis that you are impostors, and that you stole that box instead of buying it at a sale of 'old horse.' That would be rough on you."
The boys did not know how to take this remark. They looked at Mr. Fay, but he was walking along as usual, with his hands in his pockets, bowing right and left to the many persons he met on the streets, and did not seem to think anything of it. Perhaps it was his ordinary style of talking.
"I am not at all afraid of that," remarked Jack. "If he finds us impostors, we are willing to go to jail."
Mr. Fay threw back his head and laughed heartily.
"I have no idea of anything of the kind," said he, as soon as he could speak. "I was just wondering what you would think of it. But what were you going to say?"
"This property is not settled on us yet," replied Jack, "and we may want something to keep us in grub while we are here. We have a perfect right to work that mine, have we not?"
"If you can find it—yes. Go up there, and if nobody else is working it, pitch in and take fifty thousand dollars more out of it."
"And what will we do if somebody else is working it?"
"You had better give up to them, unless you think you are strong enough to get the better of them. But you need not worry about that. The mine is haunted, and you won't catch any of the miners going around where ghosts are."
"Who do you suppose are haunting it?" asked Julian. "That letter says the writer worked the mine alone, and took lots of money out of it, and never saw a thing to frighten him."
"Perhaps somebody has been murdered up there; I don't know. You won't see anything until you get down in the mine, and then you want to look out. I heard of a mine up at Gold Cove that was haunted in that way. There were a dozen miners tried it, and each one came away without getting anything, although the gold was lying on top of the ground. As often as a miner went below (it was about thirty feet down to the bottom), he was sure to see somebody at work there before him. He was picking with a tool at the bottom of the shaft in order to loosen it up, accompanying every blow he made with a sonorous 'whiz!' which showed that he was an Irishman. Some of the miners retreated to their bucket and signaled to their helper to pull them up, and you couldn't hire them to go into the mine again. Others, with a little more bravery than they had, went up to put their hands on the man, but as fast as they advanced he retreated; and when they got to the end of the shaft, the phantom miner was still ahead, and picking away as fast as ever."
"Then the mine is deserted?"
"Yes, and has been for years. It is one of the richest mines around here, too."
"Why, I should think somebody would shoot him," said Jack.
"Shoot him! He has been shot at more times than anybody could count; but he pays no attention to it. He is a ghost, and he knows you can't hurt him. I never saw it, and, what is more, I don't want to; but I would not go down into that mine for all the gold there is in the hills."
"Did anybody think a murder had been committed somewhere around there?" said Julian.
"I never heard that there was."
"Well, I just wish our mine would be haunted with something like that," said Jack. "I would find out what he was, and what business he had there, or I would know the reason why."
"Well, you may have a chance to try it. Does this look like your hotel? Now I will bid you good-bye, and I will see you again to-morrow, if you come around."
Mr. Fay departed, taking with him the hearty thanks of the boys for all his kindness and courtesy, and then they slowly ascended the steps to the office. They had secured one thing by his attentions to them—a boarding-house at which the money they had in their pockets would keep them safely for a month, if it took Mr. Gibson that long to hear from St. Louis; but, on the whole, Jack wished Mr. Fay had not used his Western phraseology so freely.
"Does he want us to work that mine or not?" asked Jack.
"I don't know. He talked pretty readily, did he not?"
"I wonder if that is the way all Westerners talk? Did he scare you out of going up there to that mine?"
"No, sir," replied Julian, emphatically. "Do you know that I rather like that man? He reminds me of Mr. Wiggins, and talks exactly like him."
"What do you suppose it was that those fellows saw in that mine?"
"I give it up. Some of these Western men are good shots with a revolver, and it seems to me they might have struck the fellow if they had had a fair chance at him."
"But he was a ghost, you know."
"Oh, get out! If they saw him there, you can bet that there was somebody there. Some of the miners had their minds all made up to see something, and of course they saw it."
"But how do you account for that 'whiz!' that he uttered every time he struck with his pick?"
"They never heard any 'whiz!' coming from that man; they only imagined it."
"Do you think their ears could be deceived, as well as their eyes?"
"Jack, I am surprised at you. You are big enough and strong enough to whip any ghost that I ever saw, and yet you are afraid to go down in that mine!"
"Wait until we find it, and then I'll show you whether I am afraid or not. Now, if you will go on and pay our bill and have our trunk brought down, I'll go and get a carriage."
In five minutes this was done, and the boys were soon on their way to their boarding-house.