Better days; or, A Millionaire of To-morrow

by Thomas Fitch; Anna M. Fitch

The mills were built on the side of the mountain below the tunnel, and were inclosed—as was the entrance to the tunnel—with a high fence, within which none were permitted except workmen on duty.

A light narrow-gauge road was built from the mill yard at Waterspout down the cañon, past the copper smelters, to the mouth of the Rillito. The wagon road was destroyed, and the stream dammed in several places, so that the only means of reaching Waterspout was by rail; and, without a pass from Superintendent Steel, no person was permitted to ride on the cars. Tourists, prospectors, and seekers for information who should overcome these difficulties, and walk, climb, or swim to Waterspout, would need to carry also their own provisions and bedding, for they would find neither shelter, food, nor welcome, and could not gain access to mine or mill.

These discouragements stained the reputation of Morning for hospitality, but they helped to keep his secret, and proved effective against everybody except a special reporter of a San Francisco journal, who, disguised as a Papago Indian, journeyed to Waterspout, and remained there several days. He might have made a longer stay, but a Papago squaw, hearing of his presence, sought him with a view to connubial felicity. The reporter would have faced death for his journal, but he drew the line at matrimony and fled. He did not gain access to mine or mill while there, but he picked up considerable information, the publication of which might have proved damaging to Morning’s plans.

It happened that the sagacious manager of the great daily, before ordering publication, frankly communicated with Morning—who happened to be in San Francisco—and, being persuaded by that gentleman that the public interest would be subserved by silence concerning the great gold mine in the Santa Catalinas, the notes of the reporter were not sent to the composing room.

At last all was in readiness. The men whose duties ended with the construction of mills, furnaces, railroad, and buildings, were sent with the teams to Tucson and paid off. All idle, dissatisfied, and unsatisfactory men were discharged, and their places supplied with others. The best mining and milling machinery obtainable was in place and ready to run. Supplies of all kinds, sufficient for months, were in the storehouses, five crosscuts, twenty feet apart, had been run to within one foot of the ledge, and the doors of the treasure caverns were ready to open, when the owner of the mine directed that all the men assemble on the little plaza at Waterspout in front of the company’s offices.

“My friends,” said David Morning, “I have called you together that we may have a more perfect understanding before entering upon the most important part of the labor that lies before us. You have doubtless felt surprised at the extent of the work which has been done in this cañon without there being any ore, or indications of ore, in sight. But your surprise will change to astonishment when you know, as you soon must know, how extensive and rich a body of gold quartz is here. It has been and still is my desire to withhold from the world any knowledge, or, at least, any accurate knowledge, of the amount of gold that will be produced. I conclude that the best method for securing secrecy is to make it in the interest of all concerned to keep the secret, and I desire to say now that each one of you, whether miner, millman, mechanic, laborer, teacher, clerk, clergyman, or physician, every man who is or who may be on the pay-rolls, who shall faithfully discharge the duties for which he was employed, and shall remain in such employment for one year, without in the meantime leaving this cañon, and who shall not by letter, or otherwise, communicate any information concerning the working or yield of the mine, will be presented by me at the end of the year with the sum of $5,000 in addition to his pay. Those who remain until the end of the second year will receive a further present of $10,000, and those who remain until the end of the third year will receive a still further present of $15,000. Those who choose to go, or who may be compelled to leave here because of either misconduct or misfortune, will receive nothing but their pay. Should any die, the present for that year will, at the expiration of the year, be paid to his family—if here. If strangers visit this cañon, I shall expect you not to entertain them or converse with them. Those of you who correspond with friends will please say nothing whatever as to any facts concerning this property, or any opinions you may have about it or about me. It is only with your co-operation and good faith that the secrets of this mine can be kept. Any one of you may, to a certain extent, betray those secrets. Should he do so, he will not only defeat my plans but deprive himself of the fortune which I expect to pay each of you as the price of three years of work and reticence.”

The proposition of Morning was agreed to with unanimity, and with an enthusiasm and gratitude which can be comprehended when it is understood that even the sum of $5,000 represented to the most industrious and frugal workman the savings of from five to twenty years.

Three days afterwards the crosscuts were in ore, cars loaded with the yellow-seamed quartz began to discharge into the chutes and feeders, and the music of two hundred stamps resounded in the Santa Catalinas.

Morning’s estimate of the value of the ore, which he made from the specimens taken by him at the time of the discovery, proved singularly accurate. The quartz contained $10,000 in gold per ton, of which amount ninety-five per cent was saved in the mill. The reduction power was two tons to each stamp per diem, and the yield of the mine was quite $4,000,000, or eight tons of gold, each day. The necessity of resting one day in seven was observed at Waterspout, both as a sanitary measure and because of the suggestions of the race germs that Morning had received from his Connecticut ancestors.

The disposition of the gold bars produced was made in accordance with Morning’s plans previously made. Each day the product of the copper furnaces, cast in hollow moulds, was brought upon the railroad, to the lower part of the mill yard, where were situated the gold-melting furnaces. Under the personal supervision of Steel, assisted by a few men specially selected for the work, a gold bar was placed inside each copper mould, the slight spaces filled with dry sand, a half inch of dry sand placed upon the end of the gold bar, and the mould then filled with melted copper.