“You went out there as a rank greenhorn,” Farson translated, “and come back as the chief representative on this earth of his satanic majesty,—the Sulfur King.”
“The Sulfur King!” Brainard repeated with an appreciative chuckle. “That’s good. Are you going to write me up for Bunker’s as the Sulfur King?”
“You had rather have me do that than play you up as a successful safe-breaker?”
Farson looked at the miner with admiration mixed with a little envy, perhaps, as one to whom splendid chances of living had come. From the professional point of view Brainard would make excellent material for eulogy as type of “the man who does things,” so ardently beloved by magazine editors.
“Do whatever you like with me,” Brainard remarked slowly. “You couldn’t make it too wonderful,—nor explain it all. . . . Do you know that four years ago, just at nightfall like this, I stood out there in the crowd, wondering how I could best spend my last quarter for a meal? I never dreamed I should be looking down from this window some day!”
He chuckled quietly to himself over the picture. The magazine man pricked his ears for “the human interest note,” divining a life story, and hinted broadly:
“What really put you into mining, after you left Frisco?”
“How did I get to Arizona? Oh, that’s a long story. I went by way of Mexico and Paris and New York. Help yourself to another cigar.”
After a few moments he added in a less joking tone,—“I went out there in search of an heir to Krutzmacht’s property. I didn’t find her—instead I found the Melody mine!”
“I’d like to hear that story,” Farson said quickly, with the keen scent of the old newspaper man.