The Copperhead Claim and Copperhead City subsided quietly. The shareholders became tired of mining for coin to pay assessments out of their own pockets. They came at last to doubt the ever-glowing hopeful assertion of the Enthusiast that from indications he knew the “ore was forming.” The inevitable came. Copperhead City was deserted by its human inhabitants. The skunk, the snake, the squirrel, the woodpecker, and the buzzard came again into full possession, and I bitterly regretted that I had not sold more at ten dollars a foot when I found the stock a drug at ten cents.
CHAPTER XXV.
PROSPECTING.
The failure of the Copperhead Claim and the collapse of Copperhead City did not discourage me. The flame only burned the brighter to go forth and unearth the veins of mineral wealth which imagination showed me lying far and near in this land still of such recent settlement.
This was in 1863-64. The great silver leads of Nevada had but recently been discovered. The silver excitement was at its height. People were thinking that barely the threshold of the mineral richness of the Pacific slope had been reached and that untold treasure underground awaited the prospector’s exploration north, south, and east, so far as he could go.
Fired with this all-pervading thought I projected one of the grandest of my failures. I organized the “Mulford Mining, Prospecting, and Land Company,” whose intent was to take up and hold all the mineral veins I found and secure all desirable locations I might come upon for farms, town sites, and other purposes.
“Holding” a mineral vein, or whatever I might imagine to be a mineral vein, could be done after the proper notices were put up, by performing on such veins one day’s work a month, and such “day’s work” was supposed to be done by turning up a few shovelfuls of dirt on the property.
My Company consisted of thirty members, who lived at varying distances apart, within and without the county of Tuolumne. For my services as general prospector, discoverer, and holder of all properties accumulated (by myself) I was to receive from each member three dollars per month.
I fixed this princely stipend myself, being then ever in fear that I should overcharge others for services rendered.
By dint of great exertion, I succeeded in getting one-third of the members together one hot summer afternoon in a Montezuma grocery. I unfolded then the Company’s Constitution and By-Laws, written by myself at great length on several sheets of foolscap pasted together. I read the document. It provided for the Company a President, Secretary, Treasurer, and Board of Directors. It set forth their duties and my duties as “General Prospector.” I was particularly stringent and rigid regarding myself and my responsibilities to the Company.
The fragment of the new Company present assented to everything, paid in their first installment of three dollars, and bade me go forth and “strike something rich” as quickly as possible.