“How about the president's rake-off?”
“Oh, that's unofficial, of course, but it's understood we pay him 5 per cent, of our output.”
“Anybody else to take care of?”
“No, that cleans up the gang. Loaiza, the Minister of the Interior, wanted in, but I kicked like a bay steer and Sarros shooed him off.”
“A fine lot of bandits to do business with!” Webster declared disgustedly. “Still, it's their way of doing business, and much as we dislike that kind of business, we'll have to do it that way or not at all. The government ought to get 10 per cent, of our gross output, and Sarros ought to be shot. However, I dare say we can stand for the blackmail if, as you say, you have twelve-dollar ore.”
“Wait and assay it yourself,” Billy assured him. For thirty miles they followed the government highway, and then debouched to the southwest along a neglected road just wide enough to accommodate the clumsy oxcarts of the peons. The country was sparsely settled and evidently given over to stockraising. By degrees the road lost itself in the tall, dry grass, and became a faint trail which led into a forest of fir and other woods, with a good deal of mahogany and with very little underbrush. Billy rode in front, following through the timber a trail of his own blazing; and on the afternoon of the third day they dropped swiftly into a bare brown valley lying between timbered hills, displaying here and there the red stain of oxide of iron, from which evidence Webster knew he was in a mineral country. Billy pointed to a yellow mound at the base of one of the toes of the range flanking the valley on the south.
“There's the claim,” he announced. “You can see the dump from here.”
A ribbon of green ran down a canon from the south and out into the brown, parched valley, where it suddenly disappeared.
“Sink,” Billy elucidated, following the direction of his friend's gaze and divining his thoughts. “That creek lies entirely on our concession—about thirty miner's inches of water, I should judge. It disappears in the sands out there at the end of the green streak, but the irrigation along its banks has been sufficient to insure plenty of good feed for our stock.”
Darkness had descended on the valley by the time they had pitched camp and eaten supper. They were up at dawn the following morning, however, and immediately after breakfast Jack Webster went to his duffle-bag and brought forth a dozen little canvas sacks and a prospector's hammer. “Now then, William, my son,” he announced, “light the lantern and we'll see if you've forgotten all I taught you about mining.”