Better days; or, A Millionaire of To-morrow

by Thomas Fitch; Anna M. Fitch

Robert Steel was designated by those who knew him best as “a true fissure vein.” With hair that was unmistakably red, and eyes that were blue as the sky, with the upper part of his face covered with tan and freckles, and the lower part disguised by a heavy brick-red beard, his personal appearance was not entirely prepossessing to the casual observer. But under the husk of roughness was a heart both tender and true, a loyalty that would never tire, a thorough knowledge of his business as a miner, and a tried and dauntless courage that, in the performance of duty, would, to quote the vernacular of the Arizonian, “have fought a rattlesnake, and given the snake the first bite.”

He carried his forty years with the vigor of a boy, and his occasional impecuniosity, which he accounted for incorrectly by saying that he “had been agin faro,” was in fact the result of continued investments in giving an education to his two young brothers, and furnishing a comfortable home and support for his parents and sisters in Wisconsin.

There are many Robert Steels to be found among the prospectors of the far West. They are the brightest, bravest, most generous, enterprising, and energetic men on earth. They are the Knights Paladin, who challenge the brute forces of nature to combat, the soldiers who, inspired by the aura sacra fames, face the storm and the savage, the desert and disease. They crawl like huge flies upon the bald skulls of lofty mountains; they plod across alkaline deserts, which pulse with deluding mirages under the throbbing light; they smite with pick and hammer the adamantine portals of the earth’s treasure chambers, and at their “open sesame” the doors roll back and reveal their stores of wealth.

They are readier with rifle or revolver than with scriptural quotation, and readier yet with “coin sack” at the call of distress, and they are not always unaccustomed to the usages of polite society, though they scorn other than their occasional exercise. Under the gray shirts may be found sometimes graduates from Yale, and sometimes fugitives from Texas, but always hearts that pulse to the appeals of friendship or the cries of distress, even “as deeps answer to the moon.”

Among these pioneers no one man assumes to be better than another, and no man concedes his inferiority to anybody. In the last forty years they have carried the civilization, the progress, and the power of the nineteenth century to countries which were beforetime unexplored. In their efforts some have found fortune and some have found unmarked graves upon the hillside. Some with whitened locks but spirits yet aflame continue the search for wealth, and some, wearied of the search, patiently await the summons to cross the ridge. Wherever they roam, and whether they spin the woof of rainbows upon this or upon the other side, they will be happy, for they will be busy and hopeful, and labor and hope carry their heaven with them evermore.

Two days after the arrival of David Morning at Tucson he left for the Santa Catalinas. The party consisted of Morning and Steel and two miners who were employed for the expedition. A wagon drawn by four serviceable mules was loaded with tools, tents, camp equipages, saddles and bridles, provisions, and grain for the animals sufficient for a week’s use. Late in the afternoon of the second day the site of the copper locations was reached, and a camp made upon the mesa a few hundred feet from and above the bed of the stream.

A cursory examination of the copper locations made before nightfall satisfied Morning that before he could form any judgment upon which he would be willing to act in making a purchase, it would be necessary to clean out one of the old shafts, which had, since the mines were abandoned, been partially filled with loose rock and earth. This work it was estimated could be performed by Robert Steel and his two miners in about three days, and while it was being done Morning proposed to explore, or at least visit, the source of the stream, near the summit of the range ten miles away. Assuring Steel that he was an old mountaineer, and that no apprehensions need be felt for his safety if he did not return until the end of two or three days, Morning saddled one animal, and, loading another with blankets, camp equipage, a pick, a fowling-piece, and three days’ provisions, he departed next morning, after an early breakfast, for the trip up the cañon.

Above the old copper camp the wagon road came to an end, and only a rough trail running along and often in the creek took its place. Following the trail, Morning proceeded, driving his pack mule ahead, until, at a point about six miles from where he had left his companions, further progress with animals was found to be impossible.

One hundred feet above the bed of the stream, which here emerged with a rush from a narrow gorge, was a plateau of probably ten acres in extent, on which were a number of large oak trees, and the ground of which was at this season covered with a heavy growth of alfilaria, or native clover. Here Morning unloaded and tethered his mules, and made for himself a temporary camp under a huge live oak tree.

After eating his luncheon, he buckled a pistol about his waist, that he might not be altogether unprepared for a possible deer, and, using a pole-pick for a walking staff, he climbed out of the cañon and commenced the ascent of the mountain to the southward. It appeared to be about a thousand feet in height, and upon its summit towered, one thousand feet higher, the basaltic wall which Morning recognized as that which was visible from Tucson, and which formed the southern and western rim of the Santa Catalina Mountains. His purpose was to reach at least the base of this wall, and ascertain if there were any means of ascending it to its summit, from which it might be possible to obtain an extended view of the country.