The girl looked up quickly at this sudden change of subject, and once more John fell under the fascination of those enchanting eyes.
“My father? He is in Chicago.”
“Then, Miss Fuller, the best plan will be to have him call upon me, and we can discuss the mine together.”
“Alas!” said the young woman, with a mournful droop of the head, “if that had been possible, I should not have been here. My father at the present moment is very ill and quite unable to discuss business with anyone. You are going from the city to the mountains in search of health. He has come from the mountains to the city on the same quest. The gold-mine is at once our hope and our despair. If it can be properly worked, we are certain it will produce riches incalculable; but it takes money to make money, and my father knows no wealthy people nor does he possess the necessary capital for the preliminary outlay. We are somewhat like King Midas, in danger of starving with gold all around us.”
“Has the mine been opened, or is it only a prospective claim?”
“At the present moment there are from sixteen to twenty miners working upon it. The shaft, I believe, is something like a hundred feet deep, and one or two short galleries have been run. The ore assay is extremely rich; I have not the figures with me, but can easily bring them; and the reports are better and better as the miners proceed.”
“If that be the case, Miss Fuller, I see no reason why you should lack for capital.”
“There are a hundred reasons, but one is sufficient. Every capitalist shuns a gold-mine. They speak just as you spoke a moment ago. Then, you see, our lives having been spent in the West, we know very few Eastern people, and those few have no money. The great difficulty is not in proving the wealth of the mine, but in getting a capitalist to listen. If you promise to listen, I shall undertake to prove to you that this is one of the most valuable properties in the world.”
“Well, Miss Fuller, I am listening; but, as I told you, I know nothing whatever about gold-mines, and, indeed, am rather afraid of them. If the mine is producing ore in paying quantity, why does not your father have that ore crushed?—I suppose they could do that in the neighbourhood, or at Denver, or wherever the nearest mining town is—and with the product keep himself and pay his men?”
“That is exactly what he has done, Mr. Steele, and a ruinous thing it is to do. If it were not for that, we should have had to give up the struggle long ago. But there are no mines within miles of us, and we are two days and a half’s journey from the nearest railway. Ore is bulky and heavy, and the transport alone over those mountain roads, which are not roads at all, and scarcely even paths, is at once slow and expensive. Railway freight is high, and when the ore gets to the reducing-plant, we have to take exactly what is given us, because beggars cannot be choosers. We need machinery at the mouth of the pit, and whoever will furnish the money for that machinery is sure to reap a rich reward.”