XXIII—THE CLEAN-UP
AFTER I had been properly indorsed by the cashier, the mining engineer gave me some mighty comforting information, though I did not understand the technical lingo very well. He was conservative; he was not at all excited. We could hear “Dirty-shirt” still orating.
“Of course that old lunatic doesn’t know what he is talking about,” said the engineer. “There are always some of that sort to run and rant and stir up excitement and start poor fools off on a wild-goose chase.”
He opened a sack and showed me ore and hunks of crumbly rock which looked like nothing special. I had rather expected to see nuggets. He explained that the crumbly stuff was high grade, very much so, but there were only scattered pockets of it in the “Bright Eyes” claim.
“The parties who first located the property,” said he, “simply skim in for what pockets they were able to open. They had to pack all their ore out on cayuses and ship it to Tacoma, and there was no profit to speak of unless the ore yielded over a couple hundred dollars a ton. So when they quit the job the mine seemed to be played out.” Then he went on with his technical talk, and about all I could do was to blink and try to look wise.
“You can be sure that Newell knows what he is talking about,” put in the cashier.
I wished I knew. I wanted to butt in with some excited questions. ‘But I did understand that the men who had gathered up most of the stock of the mine were going to build a smelter and tackle the thing right end to. There was plenty of ore and the mine would pay after development was the comforting information handed to me at last.
“I beg your pardon, but how many shares went to you in that trade you just made?” asked the cashier. “That is, if you’re willing to tell me.”
“Twenty thousand—I bought for ten cents a share.” The engineer showed some surprise.
“I didn’t think so much of the loose stuff was corralled in one bunch; we thought what we hadn’t picked up was scattered so wide that we wouldn’t bother to chase it,” said he. “How did you happen to grab in on it?”