“Enough!”he cried. “Enough, Phil! Let’s stop now. We’ve got the vein, all right, and a staving good vein it is, and all we have to do for the present is to set up our location-stake. To-morrow Tom will come up here, when he can make his camp and get to work at it regularly, sinking his ten-foot prospect-hole. What are we going to name it? The ‘Hermit’? The ‘Raven’? The ‘Socrates’?”
“Call it the ‘Big Reuben,’”I suggested.
“Good!”exclaimed Joe. “That’s it! The ‘Big Reuben’ it shall be.”
This, therefore, was the title we wrote upon our location-notice, by which we claimed for Tom Connor a strip of ground fifteen hundred feet in length along the course of the vein and one hundred and fifty feet wide on either side of it; and thus did our old enemy, Big Reuben, lend his name to a “prospect”which was destined later to take its place among the foremost mines of our district.
CHAPTER XVI
The Wolf With Wet Feet
We had been so expeditious, thanks largely to Joe’s good judgment in tumbling into the right hole at the start when he slid down the shale, that we reached home well before sunset, when, according to the arrangement we had made as we rode down, Joe started again that same evening for Sulphide. This time he made the trip without interruption, and when at eight o’clock next morning he drove up to our house, Tom Connor was with him.
“How are you, old man?”cried the latter, springing to the ground and shaking hands very heartily with our guest. “That was a pretty narrow squeak you had.”