When dreams come true

by Ritter Brown

The scalped and mutilated remains of men, women and children lay scattered over the plain where they had fallen. It was a melancholy sight; one with which the Colonel had long become familiar during years of campaigning against the Red man. His scouts had picked up the trail and just as he was about to start in pursuit of the depredators, he fancied he heard a cry, causing him to pause and listen.

Presently the cry was repeated, and riding in the direction whence the sound proceeded, he came upon a little child of about two and a half years of age sitting on the ground among the sage-brush; the sole survivor of the disaster. It was a pretty, rosy-cheeked, dark-eyed baby—a boy. He was frightened at being left alone so long and was crying bitterly. But when he saw the Colonel looking down at him from the back of his horse, the little fellow brightened up. He forgot his troubles, and ceasing to cry, began to laugh and stretch out his tiny hands, and in his incoherent baby way, began to babble.

"Horsie, horsie, widie!" he cried, in the most beseeching, irresistible manner, just as he must have been accustomed to ask the men of the camp for a ride whenever they appeared with a horse. In an instant the Colonel was on the ground and had the little fellow in his arms. As no clew to the child's parents or relatives was ever found, the Colonel adopted him, giving him his own name.

Dick received an excellent schooling up to his sixteenth year and probably would have entered West Point had not his benefactor suddenly died. Strange to say, the life of a soldier with which he had become familiar during the years spent at the different posts assigned to the Colonel, did not appeal to him. The restraint and routine of the life appeared irksome, and a year later the then great undeveloped West numbered him among her sons.

Indeed, as subsequent events proved, it was fortunate that he had renounced the life of a soldier. The success which later attended his efforts in the search for wealth far overshadowed that which he probably would have attained in the army, especially as his heart was not in the life.

Dick was a born miner and prospector, and passed successively through New Mexico, Arizona and California in his search for the precious metals, finally drifting into old Mexico where he met with his first important success.

It seemed as though he were directed by an invisible power. For weeks and months at a time he would idle—read and smoke and ride or travel. Then suddenly the spirit would move him, and without saying a word to any one, he would quietly slip away into the mountains by himself in whichever direction he seemed most impelled to go. Where other men paused and lingered in the hope of finding gold, he passed on and discovered the metal where others least expected to find it.

Perhaps one of the chief reasons for his success lay in the fact that he did not assert his own will by planning a systematic search for the metal, but allowed himself to be drawn by that mysterious, attractive affinity that existed between him and the precious metals. Dick became aware of the existence of this strange affinity early in his career and acted upon it. Already at the age of thirty he possessed two of the greatest gold and silver mines in the world and began to find it difficult to know what to do with his income.

The fact that he cared nothing for money beyond the simple comforts of life which it afforded, was perhaps another inscrutable reason why he was permitted during the course of the next eight years to add two more rich mines to his possessions.

At thirty-eight he owned four mines, the possession of any one of which would have caused the average man to see visions. For example, Dick would have regarded Colonel Van Ashton's fortune, handsome though it was, as mere loose change in his pocket.