“I think, if you will let me sit down here a moment, I will write a letter to him,” said Lennox.
“Certainly,” the agent replied, and gave him pen and paper.
His letter was a short one. It merely recalled Max Brehm and himself to Mr. Anderson’s recollection, stated that they had opened a prospect tunnel wherein they believed they had discovered good indications of a new and valuable sort of gold ore in paying quantities, and begged him to come and see it as soon as he could, with a view of buying a part of it, or otherwise helping them to develop the mine.
This done, Len lost no time in leaving town.
Not a sign of either of the three blacklegs had he seen all day, and when on his way out he passed Old Bob’s cabin, it was dark and silent.
In fact these worthies were not in town, but early in the morning had gone up the creek with two pack-loads of tools, provisions, and so on, which they cached at Bob’s old prospect-hole, the Cardinal, in order to have them convenient after they had jumped the Aurora and had driven B. B. & Co., dead or alive, out of the cañon.
A new moon was just holding its sickle over the notch in the mountains toward which the cañon opened, when Len reached the cabin, where his tired partners were getting supper; and he was glad to learn, a little later, that they approved his course in writing the letter to Mr. Anderson.
Two days remained before the expected attack, and the firm agreed that out of these must be squeezed all possible advantage, by double work. This was a time when, if their fortune was to be made, or even if the results already achieved were to be saved, every effort must be put forth. They had wit enough to see that whether the Last Chance held a fortune, or contained nothing, it would never do to relinquish it at this stage of trial.
Men who were on the threshold of success have failed to attain it often because of the want of sagacity to understand, and of energy and self-sacrifice to work hard, at just such a crisis as this. The next man, seizing with a firm grip, and holding his chances at every risk until the opposition has vanished, finds a great reward.
But in order that our friends might hold on to their property it was necessary to put it on a war footing. Their way of operating the mine through the Aurora’s tunnel must be abandoned, of course, unless they proposed to defend that, too, which they could not do, as they had no legal rights there. The plan proposed, then, was to enlarge the waterway through their own vein into a tunnel of serviceable size, and at the same time to turn the stream of water into the Aurora, and drain the whole of the remoter part of the mine out that way.