“Jim Slack, the toughest cuss in all Mono diggin’s.”
“This here don’t go, I tell yer,” said big Bill Hall, the hotel man, “and this is what I’ll do with sich a board,” and seizing it threw it over the Geiger grade, where it went clankety, clankety, clankety, down 2,000 feet to the creek below.
“Who can sing a hymn in this here crowd?” enquired Bill.
“I used ter know a couple of hymns when I went to Sunday School,” ventured Dick Byzicks, and one or two others owned up that they, too, knew a hymn or two and the volunteers stepped to the side of the woods to rehearse.
It was an unusually quiet day in Lundy. The bar room was closed, the first time in its history. Heads were uncovered as the little cortege proceeded slowly from the hotel to the newly made grave. Jack Hamlin walked with the little mother. A quartette of pretty fair voices sang “Rock of Ages,” and “Nearer My God to Thee.” Hamlin read a few passages from the only Bible in camp and the body was laid at rest.
A representative from the May Lundy mine, whose stockholders lived in Calais, Maine, called on Mrs. Slack, offering her $10,000 for her son’s prospects, and after a little negotiation, the deal, was consummated, Jack Hamlin generously waiving his partnership rights in favor of Mrs. Slack.
A little marble monument marks the last resting place of Jim Slack, which bears the following legend and no mark of disrespect has ever been shown the grave:
“Sacred to the memory of James Slack, who died July 15th, A. D. 18—. Erected by his mother, who always loved her son.”