The Westerners

by Stewart Edward White

LAFOND GOES EAST

About the middle of February Lafond varied the monotony of his daily programme. He ceased to visit the Great Snake camp, on which work was proceeding as rapidly as ever, and took to writing letters. He wrote a great many, and always mailed them himself with Blair, the driver of the stage. He announced one evening in the middle of March that he was about to leave for a short trip.

"I have the round to make," he said resignedly. "There are many places which each year I must visit. I go to Deadwood, Spearfish, Custer, Sheridan, Edgemont, Rapid, Buffalo Gap, many others. I may be gone a month."

"But yore comin' back, ain't you?" asked someone.

"But yes," assured the half-breed. "Have we not the opening of the dance hall?"

So the very next morning he boarded the stage for Rapid. At Rapid he bought a return ticket to Chicago. This was one of the results of the correspondence he had been carrying on for a month past. His first letter had run about as follows:

"Mr. Frederick Stevens, Chicago.

"DEAR SIR—You will perhaps remember me as one of your hosts during your late visit to this camp. If you do, you will remember also that I am interested financially, and so the good of the camp is my good. You will further recollect that I was present at the meeting held in Knapp's shack for the purpose of settling with him. For that reason I happen to know your plans and expectations. The expectations were that your first investment of fifty thousand dollars would complete the works to a paying basis. I have no means of knowing the exact amount of Knapp's expenditures to now, but they must be considerable, and I feel that my interests and yours require that you know just what the returns are.

"The results you should get with your fifty thousand dollars are, that you should have, on each claim, shafts to below water level with cross-cuts and drifts, a mill set up and ready, a pump and hoist on each shaft, a month's fuel, a month's wages for men with food and expenses and a camp in good working order.

"The shafts are almost done, but they are sunk on contract and are not paid for yet. The mill is half up; there is one pump and two hoists not up yet. That is all that is done. It seemed to me Knapp has not spent his money well, because there is much about camp which he does not need.

"I tell you this because I am interested."

Here Black Mike paused and tapped his teeth thoughtfully with the end of his penholder. Then he smiled cynically to himself and went on—"To speak plainly, I think the waste has gone beyond what you can afford. Only a man living here and knowing mining well could make it pay. I do not ask you to believe this, but see for yourself how you stand, and I may be able to make you an offer."

By return of post Lafond was frantically called upon to explain. He did so. Billy had been wasteful and extravagant. It was not Billy's fault perhaps, but he was evidently not the man for the place. Lafond had had but a vague idea of how things were going, but lately he had been at more pains to gain an accurate knowledge of affairs. He had found things as above stated. He did not write at all as a friend of the Company, but because he believed he could perhaps make something by taking the property himself. Instinctively the half-breed knew that an insistence on his own selfishness was the surest way of impressing these Easterners with his sincerity. For that reason he demanded his expenses when he was asked to go East for consultation.

The Chicago men were badly frightened. Lafond repeated clearly at greater length what he had told them in his letters. It had been a case of a man unused to the handling of money. He insisted that in actual value there existed not one quarter of the sum Knapp had expended; and he further claimed that affairs were in such shape West that as much more would have to be invested before the mine could be put on a paying basis.

"Then," said he, "you have your cost of production and your camp expenses always. From your profits above them you have to make up what Knapp has spent and what you will have to spend. That takes your close attention and many years. For that I think you will not wish to go ahead; and for that I come to make you an offer that will make it for you not an entire loss. I do not ask that you believe me. Investigate."

"Would you be willing to wait here while we investigate?" asked Murphy.

"Always, for my expenses," replied Lafond calmly.

The Easterners consulted.

"Very well," said Stevens. "Call it that."

Lafond in the little room at his hotel looked at himself closely in the glass.

"A fool for luck! a fool for luck!" he cried at the imaged reflection, repeating his old formula.

Stevens was gone just ten days. Of course he said nothing of Lafond's presence in Chicago. He had merely dropped in to look over the property, as was natural. Most of the men wondered why he had not done so before. He was cordial to Billy, looked over what had been done, asked many questions, listened attentively to all Billy had to say and departed in the most friendly spirit. When he arrived in Chicago, he went directly to his office in the Monadnock Building, where he had already assembled his associates by telegraph.

Stevens was brief, business-like and coldly impartial. In a man of his sort that indicated that he was very angry and chagrined.

"I have the following figures to submit," said he, taking up a paper. "They are accurate, as I consulted with an expert as to the items of future expense before leading Rapid.

10 horses at 105.00 . . . . . . . $1,050.00
10 sets harness at 60.00 . . . . . 600.00
Mill machinery . . . . . . . . . . 6,500.00
Pumps, hoists . . . . . . . . . . 1,250.00
4 months' wages at 4.00 a day . . 4,800.00
2 1/2 months' boarding expenses . 610.00
Hay, tools, implements . . . . . . 1,165.00
Wagons, household goods . . . . . 2,560.00
Miscellaneous . . . . . . . . . . 2,112.00
Building roads . . . . . . . . . . 829.00
----------
$21,476.00

"That is what has been spent up to date according to Knapp's accounts."

"But hold on!" interjected Murphy; "he has drawn six drafts. That makes thirty thousand. Has he eight thousand in hand? Why did he have to draw the last draft?"

"He doesn't know," replied Stevens grimly. "His bank balance," he declared, consulting the paper again, "is just $1,126.40. He says he doesn't know where the balance is."

"Do you think——?"

"Not at all. He is perfectly honest. That is the way he does things."

"Here," went on Stevens after a moment, "is what remains to be done before we can even start to work. It is an estimate, but it is a close one; for, as I told you, I had assistance in making it out:

Mills, pumps, hoists . . . . . . . $12,000.00
Sheds, ore-dumps, etc . . . . . . 1,500.00
20 horses and harness . . . . . . 3,200.00
Men, etc. . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,000.00
Wagons and tools . . . . . . . . . 5,000.00
----------
$26,700.00

That is to bring us up to the efficient working point. Now here are our liabilities:

Miscellaneous bills . . . . . . . $850.00
Contract on 1,100 feet of shaft and tunnel
at 20 a foot . . . . . . . . . 22,000.00
----------
$22,850.00

That is what we owe, gentlemen," concluded Stevens, slapping his papers on the table and looking about him. "Now if you want to throw good money after bad, you can do so," he continued after a moment; "but this is a limited liability company and I am done. I am strongly in favor of pulling out some way to save our names as promoters of such a fool enterprise, but I think we should pull out. This man Lafond thinks he can do something with the property if he has a fair show, and perhaps we can save something through him. Our fifty thousand is gone—and more, after we've paid our debt to those men—and anything we can save out of such a mess seems to me clear gain."

And so with equal haste they scrambled out.

The first inexplicable phenomenon is the sanguine blindness such men show in going into mining; the second is the headlong thoughtlessness with which they draw out. Anything to get back to daylight apparently.

Again the parallel of the button-hook factory. In case of failure these men would have first looked the ground over well for possible retrenchment along the old lines of expenditure: that failing, they would have examined closely for a possible new plan. But in the present case they never even conceived the possibility of any scale of operation different from that grand vision of eleven contiguous mines all going at full blast which Billy's vivid imagination had called into being. Lafond saw it clearly enough. Had he been so minded, he could have set the whole matter right; just as, if he had been so minded, he could have turned the trend of Billy Knapp's extravagance with a little timely advice.

"Gentlemen," he could have said, "has it ever occurred to you to start on a small scale and work up gradually to a larger? You can mine one shaft on one claim with one cheap five-stamp mill. In that way you could at least pay expenses from the very surface. After a little you can pay more. Then you might open up another claim. That would take time to be sure; but what business does not take time?"

His actual speech was of quite different tenor. When called before the meeting by a special messenger, and asked to name the terms he was willing to offer, he replied quite simply—

"Fifteen thousand dollars."

This was, of course, quite unthinkable. An animated discussion ensued.

"We have spent over twenty thousand dollars," said Stevens, "and we owe twenty-six thousand more. Then the claims are worth something, surely. It would be better to hold the property just as it stands, on the chance of some future sale."

"Of the twenty thousand you have spent," retorted Lafond, "fifteen has been spent uselessly. I mean not that it was all waste, but that if I had been running the mine I could have bought all I would need for five thousand. And as for the twenty-six thousand you owe, what with bonuses for fast work and contracts at a high price, it ought all to have been completed for fifteen thousand. And besides, if it was I who had developed the property, I would not have sunk all these shafts before making the mill to work. I would have my mine to pay before. I am making you the offer of five thousand for the mine and ten thousand for the works."

This argument carried some weight. It availed to induce an acceptance of Lafond's final offer of five thousand cash, and the assumption of the twenty-six thousand debt. A man in his position and in his business could easily reduce the latter item.

"Of course this is merely informal," explained Stevens. "We have to call a directors' meeting yet to take official action."

"We hold controlling interest," added Murphy, for the purpose of reassuring Lafond.

"I understand," said the latter. "And now another thing. What are you going to do about the camp itself?"

Stevens hesitated. "I suppose we'll shut down and give Knapp his walking papers," he answered at last.

"That is just it. I want that you look out for my interests in that. If you shut down, that gives the camp a bad name, and a bad name is of all things in the West the worst. And you know not that man Knapp. You discharge him. Eh, well? He is angry; he is without law; he is reckless. He is able to do that which he wishes. He can burn the buildings, break the machinery. Who is it that will stop him? No, when Knapp is discharged, it must be that the deeds are in my hands, so that I can protect my property."

All saw the justice of this argument.

"What would you suggest then?" asked the chairman.

"How is it that you intend to discharge him?" returned Lafond.

"What do you mean?"

"What is the formality? Do you just write and tell him he is discharged?"

"Oh! No; we call a directors' meeting, and pass resolutions to that effect, a copy of which we send him. We will do that at the same time we authorize the sale to you."

Lafond drummed for a moment on the polished table near his hand.

"Eh, well," he announced at last, "let it be like this. When it is that you have had your directors' meeting and have passed your resolutions, then you send your copy to me, and I will give it to Knapp. Thus I will be on the ground to see that he makes no trouble. And at the same time you send the deeds to this man"—he rapidly scribbled an address—"he is a notary public at Rapid. You will have time to look up his reliability. He can hold the deeds until I pay to him the five thousand dollars and sign a contract to take the debt we spoke of. Is that satisfactory?"

"Quite," they agreed.

"How long will it be before you finish your meetings?"

"Ten days. It takes a week's notice for a special meeting."

On the way to South Dakota again Lafond stared out of the windows with unseeing eyes in which lurked laughter. "Ten days," said he to himself, passing the fingers of one hand softly over the palm of the other. His dark bearded face in the twilight lost its outlines against the upholstery of the Pullman. A nervous little bride on her wedding trip to California grasped her husband's arm.

"What is it, dear?" inquired the latter.

"Foolishness," she laughed, a little forcedly. "But see that man's eyes. Aren't they uncanny?"

"Looks a bit like a maniac," admitted the groom, "but it's this queer light. Odd fellow. Looks as if he might have one of those interesting Western histories you read about."

"A fool for luck! A fool for luck!" Black Mike was repeating to himself. "Ten days! I can fix the date for that dance-hall opening now!"