“Ne’m mind; hit done the business, all the same.” A pause, and then: “I took a li’l’ squint at yer strike afore I clim up here. You two boys’ve sure had a chunk o’ tenderfoot luck! You’ve got the world by the horns if that streak o’ pay rock don’t play out on yuh too soon. Hit’s richer’n Billy-be-damn, right from grass-roots. Time she’s had a winter’s work put in on ’er, there’ll be money enough on the dump to buy yuh a whole raft o’ farms in God’s country. Reckon that bumped head’ll let yuh drill down to the cabin? Or shall I h’ist yuh onto my back and tote yuh?”
“I can walk,” said Philip, struggling to his feet. And after the descent was begun, with Garth’s arm to steady him: “Harry’s leg—how badly is he hurt?”
“Clean hole, and no bones broke. It’ll lay him out for a spell, but that’s all.” Then, with the approving chuckle that Philip was learning to anticipate: “Lordy-goodness! you couldn’t kill that nervy li’l’ pardner o’ yourn with a axe! And a while back I was foolish enough in my head to ask yuh if he had sand enough to hold them pirates till we got to him! Why, say; he’s all sand—that li’l’ rat is! Just laughed like I was ticklin’ him when I was diggin’ in that hole in his laig to clean it out—he did, for a fact! Yuh needn’t never worry yore head a minute about that boy.”
IX
The beginning of the week after the clash with the claim jumpers found the routine which the owners of the “Little Jean” hoped to maintain through the winter catching its stride. True, Bromley was out of the activities for the time being; but even as a cripple he contributed his part by refusing to let Philip or Garth make a trip afoot to Leadville on the slender chance of being able to persuade a doctor to cross the ranges in the perilous edge of the closed season. As to this, however, a second snowfall, coming almost upon the heels of the first, shut them off conclusively from the outer world, and their isolation was complete.
“It’s perfectly all right,” Bromley maintained cheerfully. “I’m doing fine—couldn’t be doing any better if I had all the doctors in Leadville. The only thing that nags me is the fact that I’m tied down and can’t pull my weight in the boat.”
“You have good and well earned all the time you have to lose,” was Philip’s retort to this plaint; and with Garth as an able team-mate he completed the preparations for the winter, cutting down trees for firewood, setting up a third bunk in the cabin, and building a small lean-to for the storing of the provisions and explosives.
When it came to a resumption of the mining operations, Philip found that they had acquired much more than a mere day-laborer in the experienced mining man. Quite apart from his great strength and apparently unlimited capacity for hard work, Garth’s practical knowledge of development processes proved invaluable, and it was at his suggestion that the tunnel was straightened and enlarged, its future drainage and ventilation provided for, and a rough-and-ready process of hand-picked ore-sorting made a part of each day’s task.
“You got to look ahead a mile ’r so in this here minin’ game,” was the experienced one’s business-like argument. “You let on like you boys ain’t got the spondulix to buy a stamp-mill and tote it in over the mount’ins, so you either got to make a stock comp’ny o’ this bonanza o’ yourn ’r else lease it. Either way the cat jumps, it’s a-goin’ to pay big if yuh’ve got a sure-enough mine, with rich ore on the dump, to show up next spring.”
For two tenderfoots to whom, as yet, all things mining-wise were unknown quantities, this practical advice was as water to the thirsty, so the development work was planned accordingly. By the time Bromley’s wound had healed and he was able to take his shift as third man in the heading, the work of drilling and blasting had been expertly systematized, and the stock of selected ore was growing day by day.