As enterprising dabblers in real estate and mining, and with the Palmas Valley Bank behind them, the Trennor brothers were constantly being approached by people with schemes for making millions. Such persons, though almost invariably as poor as Mar, were not often, the Trennor brothers agreed, ready with propositions so fantastic.
Alaska was in those days further away from men’s imaginations than Patagonia. The few people who had anything to say about the newly acquired territory, used it only as a club to belabor the then secretary of state. What had he been thinking of to advise his foolish country to pay seven millions for the barren rocks and worthless ice-fields that astute Russia, after one hundred and twenty-six years’ attempt at occupation, was so ready to abandon!
“Worthless!” retorted Secretary Seward’s friends. “Why, the Seal Islands alone—”
“Yes, yes, the Seal Islands are alone on the credit side of the transaction. Seward gave those seven millions for the two little Pribyloffs, and the value of Alaska may be gaged by the fact that it was just thrown in.”
Was it to be believed, the Trennors asked, was it likely there was gold in a place where fellows with such keen noses as the Russians—they shook their heads. Both of them shook their heads, for the Trennor brothers always did everything together. Who could believe it had been left for a man like Mar—besides, that gold should be up there was dead against the best geologic opinion of the day. The precious metal had never been found under these conditions. There were reasons, scientific reasons, as anybody but Mar would know, why gold couldn’t exist in just that formation (they spoke as if the vast new realm boasted but one). And, finally, even if there was gold in such a place, how the dickens was it going to be got out?
It was in the talk about mining facilities that Mar’s own faith suffered the first of many hurts.
He was obliged to concede that these astute young men were well-informed as regards the difficulties and disappointments of mining, even in a land where transport was easy, food cheap, and labor plentiful—a land blessed by running water and perpetual summer. No less was Mar constrained to admit that this gold he believed he had found was hidden in a barren corner of the uttermost North, where not even an occasional tree promised timber for sluice boxes, where the winter was nine months long, and where, even in summer, the soil six inches below the surface was welded with the frost of ages.
They were surprised, the Trennors said, that any one should expect them to take stock in such a—
Oh, he didn’t (Mar hastened to defend himself), he didn’t at all expect—it was only that his wife had begged him to come to them first.
And they smiled. They always smiled when Mar’s mad notion was mentioned. Even after it ceased to be actually mentioned, they had for his mere name a particular kind of tolerant, distant-cousin-by-marriage smile that said “poor Mar,” with an accent on the adjective.