The general feeling of expectation and suspense which is the natural result of recent mineral discoveries near to any mining town, is still prevalent. If possible it is on the increase, and all the prevailing indications of profound mystery are visible everywhere. There is a general air of knowing something that other people do not. Almost every man is hugging to his bosom a ponderous secret which is slowly crushing him, while all his fellow men are trying to hold down the same secret.
Occasionally a man comes to me, takes my ear and wrapping it around his arm two or three times so that I can't get away, he tells me that he knows where there is the richest thing in America. Only he and his wife and another man and his wife know where this wonderful wealth is to be found.
He asks me to come into it so that capital will then be interested. I agree to it and on the way to the camp I overtake the able-bodied men of Wyoming, all of whom are trying in their poor, weak way to keep the same secret.
Such is life.
Sometimes I think that perhaps I had better give up mining. I do not seem to get the hang of the thing, somehow. All the claims I get hold of are rich in nothing but assessments, while less deserving men catch on to the bonanzas.
Once I located a vein which showed what I called good indications of a permanent vein, staked it out under the United States law and went to work on it. I paid out $11 for sharpening picks alone, in going down ten feet to hold it. It was mighty hard quartz, but the lead grew wider and better defined all the time till I got down ten feet and had an assay.
The assayer said that I had struck a marble quarry, but it was very inferior marble after all. Besides I found afterward that it was owned by Jay Gould and some other tender feet from New York.
Then I relocated the claim and called it The Marble-Top Cemetery Lode, and went away. Probably if I had gone down on it, the ore would have shown free milling tombstones and Power's Greek slaves and all that kind of business, but I felt kind of depressed all the time while I was at work on it. There was a kind of "Hark from the tombs a doleful sound," air about the whole mine.
Cummins City still booms. Building lots have gone up to $100 each. This for a place where a few weeks ago the song of the coyote was heard in the land, and where the valley of the river, and bald sides of the rugged mountains were unscarred, is a good showing.
The magical power of a mineral excitement to transform the bleak prairie and the rocky canyon into a thriving village at once, is something to command our admiration and wonder.