When I went out on the street I found Mr. Flye waiting around the corner.
“You traded?” he gasped. “He’s over there tossing away twenty-dollar gold pieces!”
“I’ve got twenty thousand shares,” I said, dolefully.
“Then I’m going to let ‘Dirty-shirt’ loose. He’ll swell up and bust if I don’t get that gag out of his mouth.”
“But will anybody believe what he says?”
Honestly, a gold-mine was unreal to me! I had Eastern prejudices.
“You go over there and stand on the hotel porch, sir! You’ll see almighty sudden how news hits a mining town. ‘Dirty-shirt’ Maddox don’t have to bring a gold-mine down into Breed City. He’s the bulletin, that’s all. There’ll be proof enough pretty close on his heels.”
So I went over on the tavern porch. Five minutes later I realized that the bulletin was loose. “It” came whooping around a corner of the street.
Mr. Maddox’s nickname fitted him perfectly; in fact, he was well caked with mud from head to feet. Plainly he had not stopped to pick dry spots in his rush down to Breed City. He was shaking a canvas bag over his head with one hand and in the other flourished a handful of stock certificates.
“Who’s got ‘Bright Eyes’? They’ve hit it! High grade from Buffalo Hump clear through the earth to Chiny! Whoosh! Who wants ‘Bright Eyes’? Here’s some that’s loose. And there ain’t much loose, gents! They have been picking it up! High grade and pockets full of crumble!”