There was just one thing that remained for Bruce to do. He could use the amount he had saved from his small salary as general manager and continue the work as long as the money lasted. When this was gone he was done. In any event it meant that he must face the winter there alone. If the machinery was still not in working order when he came to the end of his resources it meant that he was stranded, flat broke, unable even to go outside and struggle.
In his desperation he sometimes thought of appealing to his father. The amount he required was insignificant compared to what he knew his father’s yearly income must be. He doubted if even Harrah’s fortune was larger than the one represented by his father’s land and herds; but just as often as he thought of this way out just so often he realized that there were some things he could not do—not even for Helen Dunbar—not even to put his proposition through.
That humiliation would be too much. To go back begging after all these years—no, no, he could not do it to save his life! He would meet the pay-roll with his own checks so long as he had a cent, and hope for the best until he knew there was no best.
The end of his rope was painfully close the day Banule announced, after frequent testings, that they might start.
During short intervals of pumping, Bruce had been able by ground-sluicing to work off a considerable area of top soil and now that the machinery was declared to be ready for a steady run he could set the scrapers at once in the red gravel streak that contained the “pay.”
The final preparation before starting was to pour the mercury behind the riffles in the sluice-boxes. When it lay quivering and shining behind each block and bar Bruce felt that his gargantuan bread-crumb had been dragged almost to the goal. It was well, too, he told himself with indescribable relief, for, not only his money, but his courage, his nerves, were well-nigh gone.
Bruce would trust no one but himself to pour the mercury in the boxes.
“That looks like good lively ‘quick’,” Smaltz commented as he watched him at the task.
“It should be; it was guaranteed never to have been used.” He added with a smile: “Let’s hope when we see it again it won’t be quite so lively.”