"The results you should get with your fifty thousand dollars are, that you should have, on each claim, shafts to below water level with cross-cuts and drifts, a mill set up and ready, a pump and hoist on each shaft, a month's fuel, a month's wages for men with food and expenses and a camp in good working order.
"The shafts are almost done, but they are sunk on contract and are not paid for yet. The mill is half up; there is one pump and two hoists not up yet. That is all that is done. It seemed to me Knapp has not spent his money well, because there is much about camp which he does not need.
"I tell you this because I am interested."
Here Black Mike paused and tapped his teeth thoughtfully with the end of his penholder. Then he smiled cynically to himself and went on—"To speak plainly, I think the waste has gone beyond what you can afford. Only a man living here and knowing mining well could make it pay. I do not ask you to believe this, but see for yourself how you stand, and I may be able to make you an offer."
By return of post Lafond was frantically called upon to explain. He did so. Billy had been wasteful and extravagant. It was not Billy's fault perhaps, but he was evidently not the man for the place. Lafond had had but a vague idea of how things were going, but lately he had been at more pains to gain an accurate knowledge of affairs. He had found things as above stated. He did not write at all as a friend of the Company, but because he believed he could perhaps make something by taking the property himself. Instinctively the half-breed knew that an insistence on his own selfishness was the surest way of impressing these Easterners with his sincerity. For that reason he demanded his expenses when he was asked to go East for consultation.
The Chicago men were badly frightened. Lafond repeated clearly at greater length what he had told them in his letters. It had been a case of a man unused to the handling of money. He insisted that in actual value there existed not one quarter of the sum Knapp had expended; and he further claimed that affairs were in such shape West that as much more would have to be invested before the mine could be put on a paying basis.
"Then," said he, "you have your cost of production and your camp expenses always. From your profits above them you have to make up what Knapp has spent and what you will have to spend. That takes your close attention and many years. For that I think you will not wish to go ahead; and for that I come to make you an offer that will make it for you not an entire loss. I do not ask that you believe me. Investigate."
"Would you be willing to wait here while we investigate?" asked Murphy.
"Always, for my expenses," replied Lafond calmly.
The Easterners consulted.