XXII
THEREFORE was he in no mood to fight another temptation; rather to take a sardonic pleasure in succumbing. An hour later, in overalls, and assisted by two of his labourers, outwardly more excited than he, for they had worked underground and vowed they smelt ore, he was running an open cut along the line of the float. As there was no outcropping it was mere guesswork; it might be weeks before he struck any definite sign of an ore body, but he was prepared to level the hill if necessary. Until he did come upon indications that would justify the expense, however, he was resolved not to sink a shaft nor drive a tunnel.
They used pick and shovel until at the depth of eight feet they struck rock. Gregory had been prepared for this and sent the unwilling but interested Oakley into Pony for drills and powder. For two days more they drilled and blasted; then—Gregory took out his watch and noted the hour, twenty-three minutes after four—one of the men gave a shout and tossed a fragment into the air.
“Stringer, by jinks!” he cried. “And it’s copper carbonate or I’m a dead ’un.”
Gregory frowned, but laid the bit of ore gently on his palm and regarded it with awe. He wanted gold, but at least this was his, and the first of his treasure to be torn from its sanctuary. For a moment the merely personal longing was lost in the enthusiasm of the geologist, for the fragment in his hand was very beautiful, a soft rich shaded green flecked with red; the vugs, or little cells, looked as if lined with deep green velvet.
But he turned and stared at the mining camp beyond his boundary line. One of the bits of float he had found last year had been gold quartz. Had it travelled, a mere chip, from the original body to this distant point, or danced here on the shoulders of an earthquake? Float, even under a layer of soil was often found so far fromthe ore body, that it was a more fallible guide than a prospector’s guess. He walked to the end of the hill, while his miners shrugged their shoulders and resumed the drilling.
The great vein of the Primo mine was dipping acutely to the right. Might it not be wise for him to abandon his present position and sink a shaft close to the line, trusting to his practical knowledge and highly organized faculty to strike the vein?
He stood for half an hour debating the question, listening to the intermittent roar of the engine, the rattle of ore dumped from the buckets. Then he walked back to the red gash in his own land. It would be the bitterest disappointment of his life if he failed to find gold in his hill, but the dominant voice in his brain was always practical, and it advised him to follow the willing metal for the present instead of incurring the expense of a shaft and possible litigation.
“’Nother stringer!” announced one of the men, as Gregory arrived at the long deep cut. “Guess it’s time for a windlass.”
“Guess it is. Go down to the house and get some lumber.”
He descended into the cut and looked at the unmistakable evidence of little veins. Were they really stringer, tentacles of a great ore body climbing toward the surface, or a mere series of independent and insignificant veins not worth exploiting? He was in a pessimistic mood, but laughed suddenly as he realised how disappointed he would be should further excavation demonstrate there was no chamber of copper ore below.
Four hours later the windlass was finished and four men were at work. At the end of the fortnight the windlass had been discarded in favor of a gasoline hoist, and twenty-five men in three shifts were employed upon a chamber of copper carbonate ore. The nearest of the De Smet hills began to take on the appearance of a mining camp; a mess-house and a number of cabins were building. Trees were falling, not only to make room for the new “town” but to timber the mine when the time came to sink or drift. At present those of the miners that could not be housed by the disgusted Oakley occupied tents or rude shacks. Oakley spent the greater part of his timeescorting the great six-horse teams from the ranch to the public road, as their drivers showed an indifference to his precious crops only rivalled by Gregory Compton’s.
Mark took a week’s vacation after the first carload of ore had been shipped from Pony to the sampling works in Butte and netted $65 a ton. Gregory, who was working with his men, far too impatient and surcharged with energy to walk about as mere manager, paid scant attention to him during the day; but Mark was content to sit on the edge of the cut and smoke and calculate, merely retreating in haste when the men lit the fuses.
On the third morning, as he was approaching the mine at dawn with his host, Gregory suddenly announced his intention of sending for a manager; he purposed to sink a shaft on the edge of the chamber in order to determine if the present lode was the top of a vein.
“Better take off your coat and go to work,” he added. “Do you good. You’re getting too fat.”
“Getting? Thanks. But I don’t mind. You’ve got several hundred thousand dollars in that chamber by the looks of things, but I suppose that wouldn’t satisfy you?”
“Lord, no. That is merely the necessary capital to mine the entire hill—or fight the powers that be when they get on to the fact that I’ve got another Anaconda.”
“Do you believe it? Big pockets have been found in solitary splendor before this.”
“This hill is mineral from end to end,” said Gregory with intense conviction. “And I want to get to the main lode as quickly as possible.”
“By the way,” said Mark abruptly, “why don’t you locate your claim?”
“Locate? Why, the land’s mine. Patent is all right. My father even patented several placer claims——”
“Mining laws are fearful and wonderful things. Judges, with a fat roll in their pockets, have been known to make fearful and wonderful interpretations before this. If you’ve struck a new copper belt—well, the enemy has billions. Better stake off the entire hill, and apply for patents. You may be grey before you get them, but the application is enough——”
“It would cost a lot of money, and I don’t like the idea of paying twice over. This is costing thousands——”
“And you’ll soon be taking out thousands a week. But if you need it all I’ll lend you the money. It would be a good investment for Ora. You can pay me four per cent. I’ve a mind to go ahead today and begin staking off.”
Gregory stood still with his head inclined at the angle which indicated that he was concentrating his mind. “Very well,” he said curtly. “Go ahead. And I don’t need your money. Stake off every inch of the hill and have a good map made. See that the side lines are flush with the boundary. Of course I’d never have any trouble with you, but Mrs. Blake might take it into her head to sell. Get out a surveyor when you’re ready for him. Don’t bother me until the thing is done.”
Mark took a longer vacation and worked off some twenty pounds. He wished ruefully that Ora would return suddenly, for he doubted that his love of good living would undo the excellent work when he was once more in Butte. He employed a U. S. deputy mineral surveyor, the map was made, Gregory applied for his patents; the lawyers’s mind was at rest for the present, although he kept his ears open in Butte.
Gregory sank his shaft ostensibly to determine the dip and width of the vein leading from the chamber, but secretly with the hope of meeting the body of ore already uncovered in the Primo Mine. He was elated with his splendid “find” and sudden wealth, but his old dream never left him for a moment. Indeed he would have been more than willing to miss the pyroxenite if he could come upon a lode of quartz containing free gold. That was what he had visualised all his life. He wanted to stand in his own stopes and flash his lantern along glittering seams, not merely send masses of decomposed grey-black ore to the sampling works and await returns. If he found a vein worth the outlay he would erect his own stamp mill and listen to its music. Such is the deathless boy that exists in all men. Mere wealth meant far less to him than the beautiful costly toy to play with for a while.
The shaft at the end of a month had gone down eighty feet; but had revealed only a lean vein of copper carbonates which made him forget his dreams in the fear that his mine was pinching out. But he persisted, and one morning when he went to the bottom of the shaft after the smoke of the blast had cleared away, and lit hiscandle, he picked up a lump of yellow ore that glittered like quartz packed with free gold. For a moment his head swam. He knelt down and brushed the shattered rock from several other bits of what looked like virgin gold; and he caressed them as gently as if they had been the cheek of his first born. But he was a geologist. He stepped into the ascending bucket a prey to misgivings. As soon as he examined his treasure in the sunlight he knew it at once for chalcopyrite—the great copper ore of the sulphide zone.
After he had assayed it he philosophically dismissed regret. It ran $26 in copper with slight values of gold and silver. Chalcopyrite ore, as a rule, runs about five per cent. in copper, its commercial value lying in the immense quantities in which it may be found, although it is necessary to concentrate at the mine. If he had struck one of the rare veins of massive chalcopyrite, averaging $25 a ton, he would take out, after it was sufficiently developed, several thousand dollars a day; and, like the carbonates, it could go straight to the smelter. As a matter of fact the vein when uncovered proved to be six feet wide and grew slightly broader with depth. The miners were jubilant over their “fool’s gold”, and a number of people came out and asked for the privilege of looking at what the foreman, Joshua Mann, declared to be the prettiest pay streak in Montana.
Gregory found his chalcopyrite during the third month after he began to investigate the hill. The chamber already had netted him over a hundred thousand dollars and grew richer with depth. He put an extra force at work on the promising shoot.
In the Primo Mine the luck varied. The two engineers, Osborne and Douglas, exhausted the first lode, struck a poor vein, averaging ten dollars a ton, then ran into a body of the ore netting as high as four hundred dollars. Two months later they came up suddenly against a wall of country rock. Undaunted, they drove through the mass, and struck a lean shoot of chalcopyrite.