Well-meaning but tactless, Abe Cone expressed the general feeling, when he observed:
“I been stung once, already, and I ain’t lookin’ for it again.”
To everyone’s surprise Abe got off unscathed. In fact Mr. Sprudell laughed good-naturedly.
“Stung, Abe—that’s the word. And why?” He answered himself. “Because you were investing in something you did not understand.”
“It looked all right,” Abe defended. “You could see the gold stickin’ out all over the rock, but I was ‘salted’ so bad I never got enough to drink since. I don’t understand this placer-mining either, when it comes to that.”
Adolph Gotts, who had been a butcher, specializing in sausage, before he became a city contractor, was about to say the same thing, when Sprudell interrupted triumphantly:
“Ah, but you will before I’m done.” It was the moment for which he had waited. “Follow me, gentlemen.”
He threw open the door of the adjoining room with a wide gesture, his face radiant with elation.
The company stared, and well it might, for at a signal a miniature placer mine started operation.
The hotel porter shovelled imported sand into a sluice-box through which a stream of water ran and at the end was the gold-saving device invented by Mr. Sprudell which was to revolutionize placer-mining!