As Ben approached
“As Ben approached he saw Ng Quongleaning against the iron balustrade.”
In this he was mistaken, for the man would not talk upon the public street, where the very gutters might have ears.
He conducted Ben through several corridors and stairways to an upper room where a number of Chinese were seated at a repast of rice and tea. Ben did not like to broach the object of his visit before such an audience, and waited until the meal was finished and the others had departed.
“You wish to rent part of your house?” his host blandly inquired.
“I haven’t any house to rent at present,” Ben replied. “I want to find out what you mean when you say Mr. Fish make me plenty trouble—you sabe?” The language used by the man was a rebuke.
“Ah, that man make you trouble already?”
“Yes, trouble enough. Come, tell me what you know about him?”
“For what object should I tell you? Perhaps, it might make me trouble.”
“You say when I have trouble come and see you. I have trouble,—I come. You tell me what you know,—I give you ten dollars.”
The Chinese regarded him with a sphinx-like stare. “O, ten dollars is not much money to me,” he remarked, indifferently. “I like to rent from you; that’s all. On that day I speak to you I go with the crowd to see what you do. I hear Mr. Fish talk to old man.”
“Old man with a big gray hat and a cane?” Ben eagerly inquired.
“Yes. I suppose those men think I not understand much English, for they not pay much attention to me. Mr. Fish say to old man that it too bad to lose so much money. They mean yourgold—they watch it. Then they talk about a lease; and old man say it not good any more. Mr. Fish say he will fix book at City Hall, then stop you and work for gold himself. He say he will give the old man some.”
“I can’t understand,” said Ben, “why, if the lease has expired, he should need to fix the record? Did he say anything else?”
“No; that’s all I hear.”
“Well, that’s helped me some, perhaps. Here’s your ten dollars.”
Ben paid him the money with some regret. It seemed a good deal for the information; still it might be a clue to ravel the tangle.
Suddenly there was a loud knock at the door, followed by a noisy pounding. Ben had not noticed that the door had been locked after him, and he turned to Ng Quong in surprise.
The Chinese did not respond to the summons, but hurried with an ashenface through the inner door, which he closed and locked behind him. Ben heard some heavy bolts shot into place and realized that he was in a very unpleasant position.
The pounding increased, and he saw that the door could not withstand the assault much longer. Alone in a locked room, into which the police were forcing an entrance! Suddenly, it flashed into his head that his visit to the house might have been noticed; that his connection with the opium found at the Works might have strengthened the suspicions of the police and caused the raid. If this were the case, he knew it was better for him to have remained where he was than to have followed the Chinaman, even if he had been given the opportunity. In a few moments the door gave way with a crash and two policemen and several Customs officials burst into the room. Ben recognized one of the men who had been stationed to watch the Works.
“O, it’s you, is it?” the man triumphantly exclaimed. “They thought you were too innocent-looking to be in with the gang; but I knew better all the time! We’ve caught you now.”
“Caught me!” Ben indignantly repeated. “At what, I’d like to know! I came here to get some information from the proprietor of this fruit-canning factory.”
“Information! Fruit factory!” the man sneered. “That’s a likely story! This place has been under suspicion for some time as being one of the biggest opium-dens and smuggler’s storehouses in town.”
During this conversation the other men had turned everything in the room topsy-turvy. They found nothing to reward their search in the front room, and turned their attention to the door which led to the inner room. It took some little time to demolish this, and when at length they gained entrance nota Chinese was to be found. One inmate they dragged forth from one of the rooms; but as there was no evidence against him, no charge could be preferred.
Ben took him by the arm. “Come home, Syd,” he said. “It’s all right,—I haven’t told a soul.”
They pushed their way through the curious crowd which had invaded the house. When they were quite away from the neighborhood, Sydney broke down.
“You’re mighty good to me, Ben,—I don’t deserve it!”
“It’s nothing at all,” Ben replied. “Isn’t your good name worth a little forbearance from one who’s known you all your life? How’d you come to be in that place?” he sharply questioned.
“I didn’t know where else to hide. I was afraid I’d killed you and I got Ng Quong to let me stay there and make out some bills and accounts for him.”
“Then, you’ve earned your keep—honestly?”
Syd looked him squarely in the face. “Yes,” he said.
Ben gave a sigh of relief. “It might have made a fuss,” he remarked.
“Why,—did they try to find me?”
“No; because your mother said she felt sure you had gone to San Jose.”
“To San Jose?” Syd repeated in surprise. After a pause he added, “Mothers are queer—sometimes.”
Ben did not reply, for he knew that Syd thought that his mother suspected the truth.
“I meant to venture out to-night, to try to find out how you were and give you your gold,” Syd continued. “Here it is.” He held out the vial. “I hope I’ll never pass such a week of torture again!”
“It has been a mean experience for us both,” Ben replied as he took the vial, “but maybe it’s done us bothgood. I’ll keep a nugget or a lump out of this,” he held up the vial containing the amalgam, “for the scarf-pin I promised you once.”
“No, thank you, Ben; I’d rather not take it,” Syd replied.
“Just as you say,” Ben put out his hand, for they had reached the foot of the hill. Syd took the proffered hand with such a hearty grasp that Ben felt that the experience had made them better friends than they had ever been.
“That’s over, I’m thankful to say,” said Ben to himself, as he rapidly walked down the street. “And now for Mr. Hale.”
Mr. Hale was in his office, when Ben reached there; but the latter concluded that he would hear the result of the lawyer’s investigation first, reserving his bit of information until afterwards.
“Well, my boy,” said Mr. Hale, whirling around in his chair, “I’m sorry not to have better news for you.” A kind light shone in his eyes. “We’ve got a hard old customer to deal with, I’m afraid. I’ve had the records searched and the entries of the lease were found to have been duly and properly made.” He tilted back in his revolving chair and put the tips of his fingers together. “I don’t see what we’re going to do about it. We’ve run up against a stone wall, without,apparently, a cranny in it. I sayapparently, because one never knows what developments may turn up. It’s a case of manifest injustice, but such cases are of daily occurrence.”
“Something has turned up,” Ben said, when Mr. Hale had finished.
“Ah, so you’ve got some news. Let’s have it.”
Ben related his conversation with the Chinese.
Mr. Hale was astonished. “I can scarcely believe that that old miser would meddle with the records,” he exclaimed. “It looks very like it. Yes—if what Ng Quong says is true, Fish is a grasping old shark; but—what object could he have?” he mused.
“I’ll tell you!” exclaimed Ben. “The lease is just as he says it is. But there must have been some mistake in placing the dates on the record, and that mistake was in our favor.”
“It may be so. And the old fellowwas so angered in being baffled after he’d made sure that the law was on his side,—he was so angered that he went to the length of changing the figures.”
“That sounds like the truth, Mr. Hale.”
“I think you’ve struck it, Ben; but it’s such an amazing thing that it seems incredible. He’s shrewd, but he’s overreached this time. Yes. For a man of his means to tamper with the records for the sake of the money you expect to make! To what length will not money-grasping take a man!”
“What are you going to do about it, Mr. Hale?” Ben could not resist asking the question.
“I’m going to have a microscopic examination made of the records, and if what we think is so, he shall pay dearly”—he brought his fist down on the desk in front of him—“for his bad work. I’ve got several old scores to his account that I’d like to settle.”
“How long will it take?”
“To make the examination? About five minutes.”
“What a weapon it will be!”
“Exactly. But you must cultivate patience when you have anything to do with the law.”
“Do you think he’s alone in the matter? I mean do you think he did it himself?”
“No. Undoubtedly he hired some one to do it. We must find his tool.” Mr. Hale was as eager as a sportsman when he has caught sight of his game. “We can get the Grand Jury after him—if it’s true,” he gleefully added.
Ben rose.
“Then there is nothing to do at present but—”
“Wait,” supplied Mr. Hale, smiling. “Come in to-morrow at this time. I may have some news.”
Ben resolved not to tell Mundon of the new developments in the case untilhe knew the result of Mr. Hale’s investigation. It was hard work keeping the new hope to himself. Mundon was so depressed that Ben longed to brighten him with the story of the day’s events.
On the afternoon of the following day Ben found himself impatiently awaiting Mr. Hale’s return from court.
When he caught sight of the latter’s beaming face he knew that the result was favorable.
“It’s all right, my boy,” the lawyer exclaimed. “It’s just as we thought. I’ll have you mining again, before you’re many days older.”
“The dates had been changed?” Ben’s voice was a little uncertain.
“Yes—and a bad, bungling job they made of it, too. I’m surprised my clerk didn’t notice it in the first place. But, of course, he wasn’t looking for such sharp work as that. By the way, I told a reporter on theGazette—you know they keep a man aroundthe City Hall on the lookout for news—who came to see what my expert was about.”
“Then it’ll be in the papers.”
“Well, I told him all he wanted to know. You’re not afraid of the papers, are you?”
“No,—I’ve done nothing that I’m ashamed of.”
“Exactly. To-morrow morning Mr. Fish’s large circle of enemies will read with pleasure that he has been caught at last.”
“There’s another reason why I’m glad the whole story’s going into print.”
“About that opium business?”
“Yes. I think it will clear me from any suspicion of being connected with the ring. I’d like the real reason to be known for my being in Ng Quong’s house.”
“Well, ’twill be now.”
Ben went straight from the lawyer’s office to Mundon. The latter waslooking more disconsolate than ever. Even the mule seemed to have caught his state of abject misery.
“I’ve just ben thinkin’ how I could get out of this old town,” Mundon said. “If I could manage to get to Cripple Creek, I’d be able to get on my feet again.”
Ben did not reply, and Mundon glanced at his face.
“Why, Ben, you look as you’d heard some good news.”
“So I have, partner, mighty good news. Wo-o-w!” He flung his cap above their heads. “We’re going to beat that muckery pair, Fish and Madge, sure’s you’re born!”
“Either you’ve gone plumb crazy, Ben, or else— Tell me ’bout it, boy! How’d you down ’em?”
During the recital of the story, Mundon gave Ben a keen glance when he came to the part relating to Ng Quong.
It was an awkward moment for both;and Ben regretted his silence at the time the incident occurred.
“You forgot to mention the Chinaman’s visit at the time,” Mundon remarked. “But time’ll tell, Ben, and I ain’t never ben afraid of time.”
On the day following the investigation, theGazettepublished the story of the “Smelting Works Claim.”
Ben read the account aloud to Mundon, sitting on the fence outside the Works. Of course, in the tale, Ben was made a hero and Mr. Fish a double-dyed villain.
“They haven’t got him black enough to suit me,” said Mundon, fiercely whittling the stick he held. “I hope they’ll paint him blacker and blacker every day for a year.”
There were two items of news in the article, however, that Ben had not foreseen,—the simultaneous disappearanceof Mr. Fish and one of the clerks in the City Hall.
“Now that there’s no one here to stop us, I’d like to smash open those gates and finish our work.”
Mundon shook his fist at the gates, which glowered back at him. “I’ve ben turnin’ over in my mind all that there slag that’s under the old wharf. I b’lieve there’s heaps of copper and lead buried there.”
“No wonder you’ve been depressed—with all that on your mind,” commented Ben. “I’m to know to-day just how long it will be before the injunction can be raised. Mr. Hale says this hard-luck story of ours will hurry things—it’s going to create sympathy for our case.”
“Well, it oughter. Say, Ben, just let me drop through that hole in the roof and do a little work on the quiet?” Ben shook his head. “’Twon’t do no harm. You kin set here and watch.”
“No, Mundon, not for a million!”
“How easy it is to talk about refusin’ a million—when you’re young!”
“This thing’s going to be square on my part. I’ve made up my mind to stick to that,” Ben answered. “Hello! That boy looks like Mr. Hale’s office boy.”
He sprang down from the fence and tore open the envelope which the boy gave him.
“Hurrah! Mundon—we’ve won!” Ben cried. “It’s ours, and you can smash those gates as soon as you please!”
Mundon slid down from his perch and, seizing a piece of scantling, struck the old gates a mighty blow that started the nails from the wood.
“There!” he said. “That does me good! I’ve wanted to smash ’em ever since those smarties came and nailed ’em up.”
Within the Works they found everything, with the exception of the amalgam which Syd had taken, exactly as they had left it. Mundon was particularly pleased to find the “jigger” undisturbed.
“Here’s the slag I mean, Ben. I’ve dreamt about that there identical lump fur three nights runnin’.” Mundon pointed to the rugged top of a lava-like bowlder, which reared itself from a corner of the earthen floor.
“I guess you’re right about the metals there are in it,” said Ben; “but it might be an aerolite for all I know.”
“What’s that? Say it again.”
“An aerolite? It’s the lump of metal they find when a meteor falls and it’s unlike anything found on this earth.”
“O, a fallin’ star. I knew a man who wrote some poetry about one that fell in Australia. He called it ‘stardust,’ but I s’pose a hard-as-nails professor would call it—by the name that you do.” While speaking, Mundon was surveying the ground.
“I’ve got a scheme, Ben, to grade all this stuff ’cordin’ to its value.”
“How do mean?”
“Why we’ve had ’sperience enough to see that’d be the best way to economize our time and labor. We’ll assay it and grade it till we know ’bout where we stand.”
“It’ll be an awful lot of work to do it.”
“Yes, it’ll be tejus, but it’ll pay better in the end. We’ll—if you say so, Ben, ’course it’s your own business; but I’m jest tellin’ you how I’d do if ’twere mine—we’ll sep’rate the stuff ’cordin’ to size first, and then ’cordin’ to value.”
“It’s a good plan. Don’t defer to me any more—you idiot! It makes me feel so mean when you do it. You know as well as I do that I don’t know the first thing about this business.”
“You’re the boss, Ben,” Mundon laconically replied.
“I don’t doubt that the slag and muck and all the rest of it are valuable,” said Ben; “but the chimney—our golden chimney—is the thing we’re sure of now. Maybe the day’s cleanup ’ll be more, or maybe it’ll be less, but we know it’ll be gold!”
“You’re right—we’ve tested that and we’re sure of it. But we mustn’t despise the rest, on that account. Now, here’s where the roaster stood—it must hev stood here, ’cause it couldn’t hev stood any place else. Well, I’m goin’ to sink a shaft here.” Mundon stooped as he spoke, and with his pocket-knife he dug a small hole, from which he unearthed several small lumps of metal.
“Just as I thought,” he said as he weighed them in his hand,—“lead ore that’ll assay heavy in silver.”
“Then, there are those dumps,—made when the furnaces were put in, you thought. We haven’t touched those yet.”
“You mean outside, where the old fence stood?”
“Yes. Why, just look here.” Ben drew Mundon outside the gates to where some mounds rose from the beach. “It’s my opinion that this board that’s nailed on the fence here, opposite these heaps, was put here to mark them.”
“They’re heaps of waste, most likely. Somethin’ ’s ben scratched into the wood. Let’s see what it is.”
They carefully examined the board, and Ben deciphered the inscription, “Waste Bullion.”
“Just think!” he cried, “that old Madge has let this pile of stuff that’sone third solid silver, maybe, stay here all these years! And Mr. Fish, close as he is, too,” he added. “It’s awfully funny!”
“It ain’t funny that Fish didn’t do nothin’ with it, ’cause he’s the kind that just collects rents and forecloses mortgages. He wouldn’t put up a cent in any venture like this; he’d call it oncertain. But old Madge is a born miner. Well, it is funny. He’ll be wild.”
“There used to be a shed inside the old fence, in a sort of an outside yard,” Ben remarked, “but they both fell down years ago.”
“That so?” Mundon replied, as he stooped and carefully examined the ground. “Yes, here’s the posts the shed rested on. We’ll excavate five or six feet deep here, on the site of the old shed. It’s bound to pay us fur our trouble.”
“After it’s been all these years on the open beach?”
“What’s that got to do with it? Nobody’s ever mined here. It stands to reason that they’d hev stored more val’able stuff in the shed than they would in the open. And there’s the signboard, a-tellin’ us that these dumps are waste bullion.”
During the weeks that followed their return to their claim the partners worked industriously. They sifted the result of their labors in three dumps, graded according to value. The first was coarse base bullion, which assayed at two hundred dollars a ton. One piece, the largest, weighed about twenty pounds; the smallest pieces were the size of peas. The second pile consisted of fine bullion, its component particles ranging in size from a pea to a pinhead. This assayed at one hundred and fifty dollars a ton. A third pile averaged fromseventy-five dollars to one hundred dollars a ton. The total product of this, representing a week’s work, they estimated to be about seventeen hundred dollars.
The site of the old shed was excavated, and water was brought to the spot in a flume; for Mundon thought best to wash the ground in a rocker before putting it through the “jigger.”
The result amply repaid them for their trouble.
“This beats me! Rockin’ on the beach of San Francisco and makin’ our two and three hundred dollars a day,” said Mundon, one day as they were digging several feet below the surface.
Rockin on the beach of San Francisco
“‘Rockin’ on the beach of San Francisco and makin’our two and three hundred a day,’ said Mundon.”
“It beats anything I ever heard of,” Ben replied; “but I’m willing it should.”
Ben worked so hard during the day that he was too tired when night came to do anything but go to bed as quickly as possible.
One Sunday afternoon he paid a visit to Beth. He had not seen her for some time, and was anxious to know what progress she was making at school. She saw him coming and came running to meet him.
“Will you walk out to the Point, Ben?”
“Yes. We don’t do any work on Sunday.”
“Well, it’s come true, Beth,” he said when they were well away from the house; “most of it has, at any rate.”
“O, I’m so glad!”
“We’re far enough along now to form a pretty correct figure of what there is in sight, and we’ve got four weeks more to work in.”
“How much will you make?”
“Well, how much do you guess?”
“O, I don’t know,” the girl earnestly replied. “You say it’s come true, and you must mean your fortune we used to talk about; so I guess you’re notdisappointed. Everybody’s so curious to know what you’re making.”
“They can keep on being curious. I had enough of people’s curiosity before,” he grimly added. “The work on the beach we have to do outside, but we don’t allow a soul inside the gates now.”
“I know you don’t; and they say the reason is that you’re not cleaning up anything and don’t want any one to know it.”
Ben gave a dry laugh. “Or else we don’t want any one to know how much we’re making. Why wouldn’t it work that way?”
“It would,” said Beth. “Do tell me, Ben; I’m just dying to know! How much will it be?”
“From ten to twelve thousand dollars.”
“What! You don’t really mean it?”
“Indeed I do. But you mustn’t tell yet a while.”
When they reached the house on their return, Mrs. Hodges awaited them in the doorway.
“Found any nuggets, Ben?” she facetiously remarked.
“No,” he laughed. “That yarn about finding them in chimneys was a fairy tale, I think. But we’ve found the stuff to make them out of, which answers our purpose quite as well.”
Her husband looked over her shoulder.
“If the lease was never recorded, or was done wrong, Ben, couldn’t Fish oust you if he wanted to?”
“I suppose he could, strictly speaking,” Ben replied. “But, you see, he overreached. He played a mean, dishonest trick in having a false entry made in the record, and now he doesn’t dare to come back for fear of being arrested.”
“But he’ll come back some time when the thing’s blown over.”
“Well, I’ll be through with the Works by that time,” Ben remarked as he bade them good-night.
When the last day came it was with considerable regret that the partners made preparations to leave the Works forever.
“I don’t want to stay one day longer than the time I’m entitled to,” said Ben. “It’s paid us well for our work, but I wouldn’t care to go through it all again.”
“It has been sort of a worrisome job,” Mundon replied. “Still it’s big pay. Seven thousand dollars for a boy like you to make in three months! Besides, there’s worry in all sorts of business, and a man’s jest got to make the best out of it,” he philosophically added. “Do you know, Ben,—now that it’s all over, I kin tell you,—I know there was a time when you mistrusted me; not exactly mistrusted, either, butyou had the thoughts out of which mistrust is made. O, you needn’t say you didn’t,” he exclaimed as Ben made a gesture of dissent. “I knew jest as well as if you’d told me so that you did. I ain’t a-holdin’ it up agin you, neither. I know how many there was to put sech things into your head agin a stranger, like I was.”
“Well, I didn’t let them stay there, Mundon. I trusted you all through.”
They heartily shook hands.
“I b’lieve you did, boy; I b’lieve you did. It’s ben a tough job, though, in places. What with the smugglin’ business, and your gettin’ cut, and the injunction, too. But takin’ it all through, jest lumpin’ it, you don’t regret it, do you?”
“No,” Ben replied. “We got through by the skin of our teeth, in places,” he continued. “It was a chance, though, that I didn’t lose every cent I had in the world. It was just the merestaccident that that Chinaman overheard those two rascals and put us on their track. Besides, we weren’t dead sure—we couldn’t be—that there was any gold in the old ramshackle Works when I bought them. It’s too much like gambling to suit me. I’m not saying a word against your going into whatever you want to, but, for myself, I’m going to choose something that’s slower and surer.”
“Made up your mind, yet, what it’ll be?”
“Yes,—I’m going to Berkeley,—to college—to fit myself to be a mining engineer.”
“That’s the very best thing you can do.”
“I’m glad that you approve. You see, I’ve got money enough to carry me through; and if I’ve got brains enough, too, I’m all right.”
“Goin’ to stick to minin’—I see.”
“Yes, Mundon, but with this difference, I’m going to equip myself to mine for others—I needn’t mine for myself unless I choose to.”