Better days; or, A Millionaire of To-morrow

by Thomas Fitch; Anna M. Fitch

Two Indians were to be left at the copper-camp, with directions if anyone appeared there to run up the cañon and inform Steel or Morning. Two Indians were to be placed in charge of the permanent camp and the animals, four Indians were to carry water in kegs to the top of the wall for the use of the main party there, two Indians to procure firewood and prepare food and attend to the camp at the summit, and thirty Indians to work at drilling holes in the basalt at the summit on both sides of the rift, and at a distance of about ten feet from the edge of it.

The squaws were to be suffered to make such disposition of their time as their social and domestic duties and inclinations might suggest. Steel and Morning would keep the drills sharpened at the portable forge, which, with a supply of charcoal, would be transported to the summit camp, and as often as the drill holes were ready they would place and explode the blasts.

It was intended thus to throw rocks from the summit down into the gorge, and this was to be repeated until its bottom should be covered to a depth of many feet, and all signs of the existence of the quartz lode obliterated. From the height of one thousand feet the lode could not be seen at all, unless one were to crawl to and look over the edge of the precipice, and then its nature could not—except by an experienced miner or geologist—be discerned from that of the neighboring rock. The Indians below would not be apt to disobey orders, leave their posts, and go into the cañon amid tumbling rocks, and the general stolidity and lack of interest of the Papagoes would lead them to attribute the entire work to the eccentricity of their white employer.

The plan formed by Morning was carried into effect. Drills of different length had been provided, and the work was systematized. At six o’clock each morning the Indians commenced work; from eleven to twelve they were allowed for dinner and rest. At five o’clock drilling was suspended, and the work of preparing the blasts was performed. The Indians then retired to a distance, and Morning and Steel would explode the blasts.

At the end of two months’ hard labor the rift was filled with rock and débris to a depth of thirty feet, and the lode completely covered from view. Morning then made a relocation of the mine on the basalt wall above and on the mountain side below. He located extensions, side locations, and tunnel locations in every direction for a mile or more, so as to completely appropriate all approaches to the original location, and prevent others from obtaining any vantage-ground from which drifts might be run under his property. He also located the necessary mill sites, the waters of Rillito Creek, and the timber upon the mountains.

The plateau where he had tethered his horses on his first visit was, with the available adjacent slopes, chosen as a site for buildings he intended to have constructed for the use of the miners and their families, and a rock and earth dam was built in the Rillito several hundred feet above, from whence the water should be piped to the buildings. The Indians were then set to work constructing a wagon road to the mouth of the Rillito.

The work being completed, the entire party now journeyed to Tucson, and the Indians were paid off and returned to the reservation, where they doubtless regaled their tribe with an account of the work they had performed at the instance of the white lunatic who had paid them over four thousand “pesos” in silver to tumble rock into a hole. Yet it is doubtful if such information ever extended beyond members of their tribe, for, on parting with them, Morning presented each worker with a high silk hat, and each squaw with red calico for a gown, and Bob Steel made a speech to them in the Papago tongue, and asked them to agree not to tell the Indian agent, or any white man, where they had been working or what doing, beyond the statement that they had been “building wagon road.” The Indians—naturally secretive—readily gave the required promise.

Having recorded his new location notices, Morning telegraphed to San Francisco for a portable sawmill. He loaded the wagons with a fresh supply of provisions and tools and sent them with a gang of wood-choppers in charge of Steel to the upper camp on the Rillito, with directions to get out logs and haul them to the site of the proposed sawmill.

While awaiting the arrival of the sawmill, Morning visited the neighboring mining camps of Tombstone, Globe, and Bisbee, and selected with great care—after watching them at work and informing himself as to their habits and antecedents—one hundred miners, to whom he agreed to give a steady job for several years, working in eight-hour shifts, at $4.00 per day. He preferred and obtained married men, each man being promised a comfortable cabin, with transportation for his family and effects from Tucson.

In ten days the portable sawmill arrived, and with it and a full outfit of building material, tools, and pipe, Morning, accompanied by a gang of carpenters, was again en route for the mine.