“Wait a bit, son,” advised his father. “There are one or two matters to be explained. You did not hear, did you, that your friend Mr. Brill expects to buy a valuable piece of mining property near the one you are interested in, out in Arizona?”
“No, he didn’t tell us,” said Jerry.
“Well it’s true,” said the prospector. “I didn’t mention it because I had so much else on my mind. But I got a chance to secure an option on a mine not far from yours. I can get it cheap, for the owners are getting discouraged about it, but Jim and I figured on a new way to handle the ore. But I’m afraid, unless I can locate my sixty nuggets of gold, that I’ll have to let the proposition go.”
“Why?” inquired Ned.
“Because I haven’t the money to take it up. I paid out two hundred dollars—nearly all the money I had in the world except my sixty nuggets—for a mere chance to buy an option inside of a month.
“The option itself will cost me ten thousand dollars, and if I get that it means that I have the right, within another month, to buy the mine for forty thousand dollars. Now I can swing half of that, for my nuggets are easily worth twenty thousand.”
“And I promised to take the other half interest,” said Jim. “But just at present my money is all tied up, and so I can’t advance Harvey the necessary ten thousand to get the option.”
“And if I don’t close, and take that option in a few days, I’ll lose the mine,” went on Mr. Brill. “And I hate to do that for I know it will pay. I did think I could get to my nuggets in time, but now I see I can’t, and so I guess the mine will have to go to somebody else.”
“Unless you can raise the rest of the ten thousand dollars,” put in Mr. Slade.