“There is one favor you can do me, Plum. If you will lend me money enough to buy a pair of oxen I will begin to team a cargo of nitrate down myself. I do not feel you will take much risk in letting me have that amount.”
“I only wish you would take more, Jack.”
“I think I have hit on a better plan this time,” said Jack, as he took the loan. “I am going to draw enough for a shipload down on the Bolivian coast and house it there until an American ship comes into harbor.
“I may have to wait a long time, but it will be best in the end.”
With his oldtime vivacity Jack set out on his new undertaking. He soon found a yoke of oxen to his liking, and finding he had money enough he bought a second pair. Then he started for the mountain ridge where he had so unceremoniously left his two loads of nitrate so long before.
He did not expect to recover the one that had gone over the precipice, though it had not moved from its singular position. To his joy he found the other just where he had left it. The rust had gathered on the iron-work and the sun had discolored the wood, but the wagon was in running order, and as the path from this point was generally descending he had no trouble in drawing the load, though his team consisted of one yoke of oxen less than before.
It would be tedious to follow him in his long, lonely journeys to Cobija, on the coast of Bolivia, where he stored his nitrate until he had there enough for a ship’s cargo. During the time his cattle lived by feeding on the grass that grew on the more fertile places along the route, while he lived on whatever food he could pick up, sleeping at night under his cart.
He had no further use for his oxen, so he sold them at the first favorable opportunity, realizing enough for them to pay back the money he had borrowed of his friend, with a fair rate of interest. Surely he had made a more auspicious beginning this time.