"Why, Jack," was the reply, "that would be a dead give-away. He would never present such an order at the bank. It would be a notice to every man in the bank and every friend of every man in the bank, and that would mean everybody in town, that the miners who were kept down in the deeps were trying to buy the stock of the mine. I would rather risk it this way."
"All right, everything goes," said Browning, and both signed the order.
Then they talked for a long time. They had known each other slightly for a couple of years, having met first in the Belcher lower levels, and being thrown together in work on the face of the drift from the G. & C. shaft, they had, during the previous few days, each found that the other was a good and bright man, and had grown more and more intimate, and a warm friendship had sprung up between them. As they lay down again, Browning said to Sedgwick, "How did you come to be here, Jim?"
"Fate arranged it, I guess," was the reply. "You see, my home was in Ohio, in the valley of the Miami. My father had a big farm—400 acres—but there were two boys older than myself, and they needed the land. I took to books naturally, and the plan was to give me an education, and then add a learned profession, or set me up in some little business. So I went to school, and after awhile was sent to Oberlin College. Queer old place, that! Great place for praying and for teaching the universal brotherhood of man! The result, I used to think, was that a colored man commanded a premium over a white man there. I worried the thing through for three years and a half. There was a young mulatto student in the school named Deering, who was a great deal too big for his clothes. He was inclined to force himself into places where he was not wanted, and at anything like the manifestation of a desire to dispense with his society, he grew saucy in a moment. I did not mind him, but he was vinegar and brimstone to a young student from Tennessee, a slight, weakly lad, but as brave a little chap as you ever saw, named Thorne. Well, one day, for some impertinence, Thorne struck him. Deering was an athlete; he weighed twenty pounds more than I did, fifty more than Thorne, I guess; he was quick as lightning, was most handy with his props, and in an instant he smashed poor Thorne's face with a blow which knocked him half senseless.
"I sprang to Thorne, at the same time telling Deering it was a cowardly act for one like him to strike a little fellow like Thorne. He answered something to the effect that for a trifle he would smash me a good deal worse than he had Thorne, and—well, in a minute more there were lively times in that neighborhood.
"It was a tough scrap. It was out on the green; the students gathered around us, and while some cried out to stop us, others shouted, 'Fair play!' and so we were not interfered with. I remember saying to myself, 'If I win, it must be a triumph of race and mind over matter;' but, Jack, that was mighty lively matter. We both had been rowing and practicing in the gymnasium; we were both as hard as iron. Deering was as supple as a boa-constrictor, and had a fist like a twelve-pound hammer. Later, the boys told me the fight lasted twenty minutes. The last I saw was Deering knocked out on the ground, and then my eyes closed, and the boys led me to my room. They swathed my eyes with raw beefsteaks and raw oysters, rubbed me down, and put me to bed. It was ten days before I got out; it was two weeks before Deering did. Then there was an investigation. It was shown that I took up a fight that Thorne commenced; that Thorne had gone for a gun in case I should get the worst of it. So Deering was reinstated, and Thorne and myself expelled. At the time I had a silver watch and four dollars in money. I sold the watch for fourteen dollars. I wrote the facts to my father, and told him I was going West, for he is a straight-laced Presbyterian; I knew he would feel eternally disgraced by my expulsion, and I did not want to hear his reproaches. Thorne wanted to give me money, but I told him I had plenty.
"I worked my way to Texas, and stopped one night at the house of a big cattle man named Thomas Jordan. I had just $1.50 left. He worked out of me my history, and when I explained why I was expelled from school, he laughed until he cried, and said: 'And yo' licked the coon!' and then went off again into a mighty fit of laughter.
"He was a man about thirty years of age, spare built, but wiry as an Indian. He had black hair and eyes; he was not educated, but was naturally a bright man; was brave as a lion; could ride like a Comanche; was a splendid shot, and had been West; took up a gold mine in Arizona, opened it, and sold it three years before I met him for $25,000, and with that bought the ranch and stock. He was originally from Tennessee; when a boy was in the Confederate army; had been knocked about until he was a perfect man of affairs, and the heart within him was simply just royal.
"Next morning, as we went out from breakfast, his vaqueros were trying to ride a vicious horse. He was a big buckskin stallion, six years old, and strong and fierce as a grizzly. The horse tossed three of them, one after the other, out of the saddle; neither one lasted a minute on his curved back. I was watching the performance when Jordan came up to me and, laughing, again said: 'But yo' licked the coon!'
"I said, 'Yes, but that was not much to brag about.'