The shrill toots of a dummy engine came suddenly from down below and a mantle of black smoke rose majestically against the sky—then, at a turn of the trail, they topped the last hill and Fortuna lay before them.
In that one moment they were set back again fifty miles—clear back across the line—for Fortuna was American, from the power-house on the creek-bank to the mammoth concentrator on the hill.
All the buildings were of stone, square and uniform. First a central plaza, flanked with offices and warehouses; then behind them barracks and lodging-houses and trim cottages in orderly rows; and over across the cañon loomed the huge bulk of the mill and the concentrator with its aërial tramway and endless row of gliding buckets.
Only on the lower hills, where the rough country rock cropped up and nature was at its worst, only there did the real Mexico creep in and assert itself in a crude huddle of half-Indian huts; the dwellings of the care-free natives.
"Well, by Jove!" exclaimed De Lancey, surveying the scene with an appraising eye, "this doesn't look very much like Mexico—or a revolution, either!"
"No, it don't," admitted Bud; "everything running full blast, too. Look at that ore-train coming around the hill!"
"Gee, what a burg!" raved Phil. "Say, there's some class to this—what? If I mistake not, we'll be able to find a few congenial spirits here to help us spend our money. Talk about a company town! I'll bet you their barroom is full of Americans. There's the corral down below—let's ride by and leave our horses and see what's the price of drinks. They can't faze me, whatever it is—we doubled our money at the line."
Financially considered, they had done just that—for, for every American dollar in their pockets they could get two that were just as good, except for the picture on the side. This in itself was a great inducement for a ready spender and, finding good company at the Fortuna hotel bar, Phil bought five dollars' worth of drinks, threw down a five-dollar bill, and got back five dollars—Mex.
The proprietor, a large and jovial boniface, pulled off this fiscal miracle with the greatest good humor and then, having invited them to partake of a very exquisite mixture of his own invention, propped himself upon his elbows across the bar and inquired with an ingenuous smile:
"Well, which away are you boys traveling, if I may ask?"