He patted him on the back and a look of indecision crept into Charley’s drink-dimmed eyes, but in the end he shook his head.
186“Nope,” he muttered, “the Colonel is dead!” And Wiley threw up his hands.
“Well, then here,” he ran on, “you know me Charley; and you know I’m not trying to steal that mine. Now here’s what I want you to do. You tell Virginia I want to see her; and then some night you bring her over and–well, maybe that will do just as well.”
“Will you give her back her mine?” inquired Charley pointedly, and Wiley rose up in a rage.
“Yes!” he yelled, “for cripes’ sake, what’s the matter with you? You talk like everybody was a crook. Didn’t I give her back her stock? Well then, I’ll give her back her mine! But she’s got to accept it, hasn’t she?”
“That was her I heard coming,” answered Charley simply, but when Wiley looked out she was gone.
187CHAPTER XXI
The Dragon’s Teeth
It is the curse of success that it raises up enemies as Jason’s dragon teeth brought forth armed men. When he was skating around the country, examining mines and taking out options, Wiley could safely count every man his friend; but now that he had made his big coupon the Paymaster they were against him, from Virginia down. If he went to her politely with a thousand-dollar bill and asked her to take it as a gift she would refuse to so much as look at him. And yet, as a matter of fact, he was the same old laughing Wiley–only now he did not laugh. It was not right, but it could not be helped.
A long and weary month, full of vexatious delays and nerve-racking demands from his creditors, left its mark on Wiley’s face; but in six weeks the mine and mill were running. Three shifts of men broke the ore at the face and sent it up the shaft to the grizzly and from there it was fed down through the enormous rock-crusher and then on through the ball-mills and rollers to the concentrating tables below. It was crushed and sorted and crushed again and ground fine in the revolving tubes, and 188then it was screened and washed and separated on vanners until nothing but the concentrates remained. The tail sluicings were sluiced off down the gulch, to add to the mighty dump that the Paymaster had left there in its prime. But even at its best, when it was working in gold ore that ran three or four thousand to the ton, even then the famous Paymaster had not turned out treasure like this.