"Do you think——?"
"Not at all. He is perfectly honest. That is the way he does things."
"Here," went on Stevens after a moment, "is what remains to be done before we can even start to work. It is an estimate, but it is a close one; for, as I told you, I had assistance in making it out:
Mills, pumps, hoists . . . . . . . $12,000.00
Sheds, ore-dumps, etc . . . . . . 1,500.00
20 horses and harness . . . . . . 3,200.00
Men, etc. . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,000.00
Wagons and tools . . . . . . . . . 5,000.00
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$26,700.00
That is to bring us up to the efficient working point. Now here are our liabilities:
Miscellaneous bills . . . . . . . $850.00
Contract on 1,100 feet of shaft and tunnel
at 20 a foot . . . . . . . . . 22,000.00
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$22,850.00
That is what we owe, gentlemen," concluded Stevens, slapping his papers on the table and looking about him. "Now if you want to throw good money after bad, you can do so," he continued after a moment; "but this is a limited liability company and I am done. I am strongly in favor of pulling out some way to save our names as promoters of such a fool enterprise, but I think we should pull out. This man Lafond thinks he can do something with the property if he has a fair show, and perhaps we can save something through him. Our fifty thousand is gone—and more, after we've paid our debt to those men—and anything we can save out of such a mess seems to me clear gain."
And so with equal haste they scrambled out.
The first inexplicable phenomenon is the sanguine blindness such men show in going into mining; the second is the headlong thoughtlessness with which they draw out. Anything to get back to daylight apparently.
Again the parallel of the button-hook factory. In case of failure these men would have first looked the ground over well for possible retrenchment along the old lines of expenditure: that failing, they would have examined closely for a possible new plan. But in the present case they never even conceived the possibility of any scale of operation different from that grand vision of eleven contiguous mines all going at full blast which Billy's vivid imagination had called into being. Lafond saw it clearly enough. Had he been so minded, he could have set the whole matter right; just as, if he had been so minded, he could have turned the trend of Billy Knapp's extravagance with a little timely advice.