“You mean that the digging out of the rock between the two coal seams would eat up all the profits?”
“Just that.”
Tregarvon was pulling ineffectually at his short pipe. When he stooped to pluck a spear of grass for a stem-cleaner he said: “Wasn’t it the notion of the earliest promoters that the two veins would merge into one, farther back in the mountain?”
The expert waved his hand toward the long and costly inclined tramway running straight up the steep slope of the mountain to the two black openings at the foot of the cliff-line.
“Ye’d think they believed in it—wouldn’t ye now—to build that tramway on the strength of it? Two hunner’ thousand and better they put in here, first and last; on the tramway and the coke-ovens, the miners’ houses, and this fine office-building that’s crum’ling down behind our backs! And with every practical coal man in the country telling them that such a thing as two veins—two separate veins, mind ye—coming into one was a geological impossibeelity. Parker—the man who set the trap and caught everybody—he knew, I’m thinking; but Judge Birrell and all the rest of ’em were crazy—fair crazy!”
“But is it a geological impossibility, Captain Duncan? That is one of the questions I got you up here to answer for me,” Tregarvon put in.
The Scotch engineer was too cautious to be definitely oracular.
“It’s never been h’ard of yet,” he replied shrewdly, “and there’s a many to tell ye that the day o’ merricles is past. But that isn’t all, Mr. Tregarvon. Besides being a sow’s ear that ye canna hope to make into a silk purse, the Ocoee has another handicap. If ye had your coal in profitable shape and quantity, ye’d never be allowed to mine and coke and market it; never in this warld.”
“Who would stop me?”
“The C. C. & I. Company, which is another name in this part o’ the warld for Consolidated Coal—the trust. The combine owns all the producing mines hereabouts; they’ve got one in full blast at Whitlow, five miles above this. If you should develop into anything worth while, it would be another case of the lion and the lamb lying down in peace together—with the Ocoee lamb inside of the trust lion. They couldn’t afford to lat ye operate. Your coke, for as much of it as ye could make, would drive theirs out o’ the market.”