"Let me consider. I shall have to arrange for other lawyers to appear for me in cases now pending, which will imply lengthy consultations and crowded days. It will be very inconvenient and may not have the happiest results. But I will do the best I can to meet your wishes, and will stretch a point in your favor, hoping it may be remembered when we come to discuss final terms with each other. Shall we say a week?" He tapped his knuckles with the folded letter and added carelessly: "And, of course, I shall have to pack, and all that. You must advise me as to suitable clothing for roughing it. How far is your mine from the railroad?"
"Oh, not far. About forty mile. Yes, I guess I can wait a week. I stand the hotel grub pretty well."
"Where are you staying, Mr. Johnson?"
"The Algonquin. Pretty nifty."
"Good house. And how many days is it by rail to—Bless my soul, Mr. Johnson—here am I, upsetting my staid life, deserting my business on what may very well prove, after all, but a wild-goose chase! And I do not know to what place in Arizona we are bound, even as a starting-point and base of supplies, much less where your mine is! And I don't suppose there's a map of Arizona in town."
"Oh, I'll make you a map," said Pete. "Cobre—that's Mexican for copper—is where we'll make our headquarters. You give me some paper and I'll make you a map mighty quick."
Pete made a sketchy but fairly accurate map of Southern Arizona, with the main lines of railroad and the branches.
"Here's Silverbell, at the end of this little spur of railroad. Now give me that other sheet of paper and I'll show you where the mine is, and the country round Cobre."
Wetting his pencil, working with slow and painstaking effort, making slight erasures and corrections with loving care, poor, trustful, unsuspecting Pete mapped out, with true creative joy, a district that never was on land or sea, accompanying each stroke of his handiwork with verbal comments, explaining each original mountain chain or newly invented valley with a wealth of descriptive detail that would have amazed Münchausen.
Mitchell laughed in his heart to see how readily the simple-minded mountaineer became his dupe and tool, and watched, with a covert sneer, as Pete joyously contrived his own downfall and undoing.