Green Campbell then settled down to a game of waiting. Thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the times, he told himself—and rightly, too—that he had only to await the coming of Byram to jump in and win. But, without further word from Byram and the final day of the option drawing near, he became very nervous. New developments had caused the owners to look for some chance to void the option, and Campbell sensed danger in delay. Then came the awful blow that set all his emotions to working at high speed.
August Byram, on his way out to the mine, had stopped over in Salt Lake City and there he was discouraged by designing individuals who wanted to pluck the mine for themselves. Developments had increased, its value fourfold. But this fact was kept from Byram by his Salt Lake acquaintances—indeed, they stressed the fact that the claim had but recently been optioned for $1,500, and that the option had been allowed to lapse. The result was August sent word to Green that he would have nothing more to do with it.
However, Campbell managed somehow to get Byram over to the property on the last day of the option, but up to the eleventh hour he was filled to the brim with nerve-wracking suspense. For hours he had kept his gaze constantly fixed on the sage-fringed road leading out across the broad valley to the east, where was open to the eye a twenty mile sweep of sun-baked waste, looking for that distant dust cloud which might mean that relief for his tired nerves was on the way. Then, late in the afternoon, as the last golden tints lingered along the ragged edges of the mountains, the stage bearing Byram, full four hours late, was sighted far out on the road—a mere speck in a great cloud of dust.
There was yet time for speedy action. For a brief ten minutes the two men faced each other—Campbell full of words, Byram deep in meditation. It could hardly be expected that after floundering in a bog of indecision and doubt for so long, that understanding would come to Byram in a flash. But Campbell’s great anxiety in the matter caused him to believe, for the moment, that Byram’s resolutions were still wavering, while his own thoughts whirled like leaves in an autumn blast. Byram’s final words, however, kept Campbell’s spirits from suffering further.
I was not there at that particular time, of course, but this minute accounting, the reactions of those men, is as I caught it from Elwood Thomas. “If it hadn’t been such a serious matter with Green,” said Elwood, amid chuckles that sent ripples all over the old miner’s weathered face, “it would have been downright amusing.”
The transfer of the Horn Silver claim took place in the shadow of the mountain as the sun dropped out of sight on February 17, 1876. And it was a joyous occasion for the little group of interested men—except, possibly, the two original locators who were now beginning to realize the true worth of that little piece of ground. Fate dealt a mean hand to the locators of the Horn Silver claim. After sinking a shaft thirty feet on ore, Samuel Hawkes and James Ryan bartered away millions on the belief that the ore would not last.
And I might say here that the Horn Silver lode, the main ore body, was found by sheer accident. Jimmy Calvering, a young Irishman employed to do the location work, following the custom of the shiftless miner, went away a considerable distance from the outcrop to find “soft ground” in which to dig his ten-foot hole, as required by law. Jimmy was not looking for ore, but in doing that ten foot of work he opened up the main lode. And nowhere else did it come that near the surface. Jimmy was ever after that proclaimed “A man with a great nose for ore.”
The Horn Silver mine was operated by Campbell, Cullen & Co., for three years, with a gross production of nearly three million dollars. The mine was then sold in 1879 for six million dollars, and title passed to the Horn Silver Mining Co. An interest equivalent to about one-sixth of the mine previously had been given to an eastern promoter for securing a railroad to the mine.
Green Campbell had other interests at Frisco, the camp which had sprung up about the Horn Silver mine. It was a town peopled with all kinds of characters known to frontier life. It had all the mining-camp trappings—dance halls, saloons, and what not. This camp had caught the overflow from the older mining camp of Pioche, in Nevada, where the boast was, “A man for breakfast every morning!” And in lawlessness Frisco flourished like the green bay tree! Life at the high tide was almost as cheap as water! But Green Campbell’s personality was such as to keep him out of harm’s way. Green was a good mixer. He drank some, but in moderation. In no sense was he a dissipated man. And here at Frisco he made more money! Lots of it! The Carbonate mine alone gave him five hundred thousand dollars in profits! He was classed with other mining moguls of that day. Hearst, Tabor, Walsh—he knew them all.
Green Campbell’s rise in the financial world was spectacular. Within the brief span of a few years he could have returned to his old home and to his family with enough money to live in luxury. But friend Green had other notions. Like the noble beast of burden of the Sahara bearing his name, Campbell was now a permanent fixture of the desert.