“Listen, pard. About a year ago I had a notion I’d like to get rich out of this mining game. Riding range was my long suit, but gold mines seemed to offer better prospects. I had five hundred saved up and to my credit in the Tucson bank. The colonel got next to it, and he told me about the ‘Pauper’s Dream’ claim, which needed only a fifty-foot shaft to make it show up a bonanza. I gave the colonel my five hundred, and he got a lot more fellows to chip in. Then the colonel went ahead, built a ten-stamp mill, and started digging the shaft. When that shaft got down fifty feet, ore indications had petered out complete; and when it got down a hundred feet, there wasn’t even a limestone stringer—nothing but country rock, with no more yellow metal than you’d find in the sand at Far Rockaway. I bade an affectionate farewell to my five hundred, and asked my friends to rope-down and tie me, and snake me over to the nearest asylum for the feeble-minded if I ever dropped so much as a two-bit piece into another hole in the ground. After that, I forgot about the colonel and the ‘Pauper’s Dream.’ But things have been happening since I’ve been away from Tucson. Read the letter for yourself, pard. It will explain the whole situation to you. After you read it, tell me what you think. You might go over it out loud, while I sit back here, drink in your words, and try to imagine myself the big high boy with a brownstone front on Easy Street.”
Matt took the sheet which McGlory handed to him, and read aloud, as follows:
“My Dear Young Friend: I knew the ‘Pauper’s Dream’ was all right, and I said all along it was the goods, although there were some who doubted me. Within the last three months we have picked up a vein of free milling ore which assays one thousand dollars to the ton—and there’s a mountain of it. Your stock, just on this three months’ showing, is worth, at a conservative estimate, five hundred dollars a share—and you paid only five dollars a share for it! You’re worth fifty thousand now, but you’ll be worth ten times that if the deal I have on with certain New York parties goes through.
“Now, from an item I read in the papers, I find you are at Catskill, New York, with that young motor wonder, Matt King, so I am hustling this letter right off to you. By express, to-day, I am sending, consigned to the Merchants’ & Miners’ National Bank, for you, two gold bars which weigh-up five thousand dollars each. Inclosed herewith you will find an order on the bank to deliver the bars to you. On Wednesday evening, the twenty-fourth, there will be a meeting of the proposed Eastern Syndicate in the offices of Random & Griggs, No. — Liberty Street. You can help the deal along by taking the bullion to these capitalists, along with my affidavit—which is with the bars—stating that the gold came out of a week’s run at the ‘Pauper’s Dream’ with our little ten-stamp mill. That will do the business. Random & Griggs have had an expert here looking over the mine. After you show the bullion at the syndicate’s meeting, return it to the bank.
“I am not sure that this letter will reach you. If it doesn’t, I shall have to get some one else to take the gold to the meeting. Would come myself, but am head over heels in work here, and can’t leave the ‘Dream’ for a minute. Wire me as soon as you get this letter. I hope that you are in a position to attend to this matter, my lad, because there is no one else I could trust as I could you, with ten thousand dollars’ worth of gold bullion.
“Catskill is only a little way from New York City, and you can run down there and attend to this. Let me know at once if you will.
“Sincerely yours,
“M. A. Billings.”
“Fine!” cried Matt heartily, grabbing his chum’s hand as he returned the letter.
“It sounds like a yarn from the ‘Thousand and One Nights,’” returned the cowboy, “and I’m not going to call myself Gotrox until the ‘Pauper’s Dream’ is sold, and the fortune is in the bank, subject to Joe McGlory’s check.”
“This is Monday,” went on Matt, “and the meeting of the syndicate is called for Wednesday evening.”
“Plenty of time,” said McGlory. “I’m not going to let the prospect of wealth keep me from enjoying the sights for the next three days.”
“Well,” returned Matt, “there’s one thing you’ve got to do, and at least two more it would be wise for you to do, without delay.”
“The thing I’ve got to do, Matt, is to wire the colonel that I’m on deck and ready to look after the bullion. What are the two things it would be wise for me to do?”
“Why, call at the bank and see whether the bullion is there.”