“Now,” said David, my innocent-faced friend, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. I’ll jest bore some holes in this brick, and I’ll get you to take the shavings and get ’em melted into a button. Then nobody’ll suspect. Don’t you see? Then take it to some place down town and have ’t tested. A feller told me out in the mines that he couldn’t tell how fine it was, but he knew it was over 18 karats.”
So he bored a dozen holes into this mass of treasure, and collected the golden shavings into a fragment of the Globe-Democrat. As he came out of the darkened chamber Davis grasped my hand with deep emotion, and said: “This is the only chance I’ve had in nigh thirteen years; if this don’t go through, it jest seems as if I’ll lose my grip.”
I tried to cheer him with a word of sympathy, and hurried to my friend Witt, of the Eugene Jaccard Company, and giving him a portion of the metal, begged him to have it tested. We went together to the workroom of the establishment, where the foreman of the melting department tested the specimen and declared it to be as fine as coin. It nearly took my breath away! The long and weary pilgrimage of my humble and sad-faced friend of the wild woods was about to come to a golden end. He stood on the threshold of a splendid future! In one of his bursts of generous trust he had confided to me the secret that the half-breed owned and had secreted seventy-three other lumps of the virgin metal not counting the one upon which my eyes had feasted and the two safely hidden in the hillside at Kansas City. Seventy-six golden bricks, each weighing over thirty pounds! Let anybody make the calculation and see what prospects the confiding Davis and the untutored half-breed had in store.
Then I sought out my friend, the United States Assayer, and told him the brilliant story. I told him of the sweet and Raphael-like countenance of my friend, of the melancholy sickness and sad distrusts of the lonely half-breed, who was longing for the sight of his native woods. I showed him the coin-fine precious metal I held in my hand, and consulted him about the readiest means of helping the two “babes in the wood,” who, in their ignorance, were the custodians of this uncounted wealth. He listened with unflecked courtesy, and then responded in a voice not musical with tearful sympathy:
“Doctor, I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.”
I told him that financially, the pole—so to speak—would have to be considerably more than “ten foot” to enable me to touch it, even if I was so disposed. In other words, I was not momentarily fixed to engage in such enterprises, even if they were endorsed by the angel-faced backwoodsman, and re-inforced by my own sympathy.
“It looks,” he said, “like a gold brick. It seems to me that I recognize the not unfamiliar features of an auriferous brick. Why doesn’t he bring the priceless treasure here? I will pay him the highest price for it. If he doesn’t want to sell I will advance the money they require for burros, wagons and Indians.”
I meekly presented the picture of the half-breed, whose lungs were evidently affected and who could not endure the rigors of the St. Louis climate. He was still obdurate, and refused to invest even intellectually in this hidden treasure. I said that all the symptoms were undoubtedly gold-bricky. That there were unquestionably parts of the story that would not “hold water,” to use the vernacular. That the suspiciousness of the half-breed was certainly over-strained and phenomenal in its excess. That the confidence that my friend of the infantile face was willing to repose in myself, a perfect stranger, was not marked by those periods of slow evolution by which confidence is proverbially brought to fruition. Still, I said, that gentle, guileless, St. John-like face haunted the chamber of my soul’s sympathy. I would as soon expect to see the wondrous Madonna leave its frame in the Sistine Chapel and try to cheat me with a dozen semi-decayed peaches at the street corner as to look for deceit lurking behind the bland and child-like smile of John Davis, the miner. My friend, the assayer, suggested that the sad smile and Madonna face of John were part of his stock in trade. “At any rate, Doctor,” said he, “let him bring the brick here. When I melt it and run it over I will believe it is solid gold; not till then.”
I sought out Davis and told him that Zamora’s confidence would have to bear an additional strain; that if it was a necessity he could be carried on a stretcher to the assay office, bearing the precious nugget in his bosom if he chose, but that nobody would advance money on a gold brick of which they had seen nothing but shavings. A mist of tears seemed to spring into his handsome eyes, and he replied broken-heartedly:
“I’m afraid that I can’t bring him to it. He had to get the doctor to see him this morning ’cause he was spitting blood, and he’s sure he’ll die if he don’t get out of this big town. I can’t help him any longer than to-night, I know. He don’t know the difference, ye know, between a hundred dollar bill and a one dollar bill, an’ if I could only get some money jest to show him and let him see that the parties meant fair, ye see, he’d let the stuff go out of his sight. Then we could sell it or raise the rest of the money on it, and inside o’ two months I could have the rest o’ that pile here in St. Louis. I tell ye, it jest breaks me up to think o’ losing this chance”—and his words were broken with a heavy sigh.