I was trying on a little something. I have found that when you bluster and shout, the blusterer usually recognizes his own kind and blusters back. But the blowhard hasn’t any weapon when a man fights with a look and a quiet word.
“It’s the mud. It’s getting on to my nerves,” whined the man after he had driven a short distance.
“Have a smoke—it’s good for the nerves,” I invited. The driver’s hands were full of reins and whip and pebbles, so I set the end of a cigar to the drooping mouth and the driver bit off the end. Then I held a match while he sucked. And when the cigar was going he turned an appreciative grin on me.
“A fellow can’t bluff you much, can he, mister?” he remarked. “I didn’t have you sized up right at the start-off, I reckon. Why, I couldn’t lick a prairie-dog with a hammer. But I bluff out most of the dudes who travel with me. I get a lot of innocent enjoyment that way. It helps pass the time for me on this jodiggered trip.”
Out of his cocoon of grouchiness he broke as a real butterfly of chatter. I got a lot of good stuff from him, for I learned the name of the mayor of Breed City and what sort of a man he was—a dry-goods merchant who took his job seriously and hollered about the development of the new place and loved those who said a good word for the municipality.
I also learned that many miners and prospectors from the Buffalo Hump region were mudbound, on their annual spree, in Breed—the nearest town where they could find all the rum and roulette they demanded. The driver stated that one or two of his friends who had a little spare cash for speculation made it a practice to loaf around the gambling-places and buy in from busted players any mining shares that a man wanted to realize on in a hurry. Most of these shares thus offered for sale were shares in undeveloped prospects, the driver explained, but one could never tell when a share bought for a cent would be worth a hundred. That driver certainly liked the sound of his voice when he got started! He offered the confidential tip that the Blacksnake Gully region would develop into the howler of the season. It wasn’t being talked of much. Nothing real definite was known outside. He guessed they hadn’t opened up anything to prove the hunch some folks had—but mining is like betting on the races. A tip floats in from somewhere—if a hunch goes with it, play it, that was his motto. He had been able to pick up a few loose shares.
The mine in which he was most interested had been located for a long time. Shares had been out for some years, scattered around. He couldn’t tell for sure who had started the new stories, but he did know that a friend of his—an humble friend called “Dirty-shirt” Maddox—was up in this section, nosing around, and he reckoned he’d get some inside information when “Dirty-shirt” returned to Breed.
Of course I wasn’t surprised. My idea of the West was a place where every man was trying to unload mining stock on an Eastern sucker.
“The particular claim in the Blacksnake that I’m speaking of is ‘Her Two Bright Eyes,’” stated the gossiper. “Mebbe that name is a hunch that it’s worth looking into,” he added, with a cackle to point his little joke.
I thought of a couple of bright eyes, and felt homesick when the driver drawled the name of the mine.