The cashier peered through the wicket and beamed with new respect on a man who could speak of two thousand dollars as spare change.
“There are mines—and then there are mines,” he suggested.
I thought I might as well try my new tune over on this piano.
“It’s a proposition called ‘Two Bright Eyes.” I tried to seem indifferent, but my heart was only about an inch below my larynx and I could hardly get the words out.
I thought he would never speak. He scratched his nose and fiddled with his ear. I wanted to reach in and shake him so that he would say something, even if he would only say that I had been nicely fooled.
“The property had rather a promising outlook at one time, sir. It was located by good prospectors and afterward two or three other claims were taken in. The section is first-rate!”
Not wildly encouraging.
“But the stock hasn’t been much thought of in these parts—it has been footballed around a lot. Still”—he twisted his mustache and waited a few moments—“well, I’ll tell you this confidentially, if I wasn’t a bank man—and you know we have to move in grooves of caution—if I could afford to do a little gambling I think I would have picked up a small bunch of this loose stock. I got a flicker of a hint from a mining engineer who banks here. Nothing definite—they can’t talk much. But I know they have been running new leads. The first development wasn’t very scientific, I understand.”
“Does a—When they make a real strike—do prices run up pretty sudden?” I managed to ask.
He smiled. “I see you have never been in a mining town when a bonanza toots. Everybody goes crazy. They’ll climb over one another to buy stock. Those who can’t buy stock go racing off to see what they can grab in the way of adjacent claims. Very exciting, sir! Wish we might show you a circus of that kind while you’re in town.”