Part 16 (1/2)
Huff put her head to one side.
”Let's see,” she said, ”forty dollars a unit--that's one hundredth of a ton. Oh, pshaw, it can't be that. Let's see, twenty pounds at forty dollars--that's two dollars a pound; and two thousand pounds, that's--oh, I don't believe it! I never even heard of tungsten!”
”No, it's a new metal,” replied Wiley ever so softly, ”or rather, it's an acid. The technical magazines are full of articles that tell you all about it. It's found in wolframite, and hubnerite and so on; but this is calcium tungstate, where it is found in connection with lime. The others are combined variously with iron or manganese----”
”Yes, manganese,” broke in Charley importantly. ”I know that well--and wolfite and all the rest. It certainly is wonderful how they build them big cannons that will shoot for twenty-two miles. But it's tungsden that does it, tungsden in connection with electricity and the invisible rays of raddium.”
”Oh, shut up!” burst out the Widow, thrusting him rudely aside and seizing a fresh handful of the rock. ”I just can't hardly believe it.”
She gazed at the glossy fragments and then at the muckers, industriously loading the trucks; and then she c.o.c.ked her head on one side.
”Let's see--two times twenty--that's forty dollars a ton. No--four hundred! Why, no--four thousand!” She stopped short and made a hurried re-calculation, while a murmur ran through the crowd, and then Death Valley Charley gave a whoop.
”Four thousand!” he shouted. ”I told ye! I knowed it! I claimed she was rich, all the time!”
”You did not!” snapped the Widow, putting her hand under his jaw and forcibly stifling his whoops. ”You poor, crazy fool, you knew nothing of the kind--you sold out for five thousand dollars!” She pushed him away with a swift, disdainful shove that sent him reeling through the crowd and then she whirled on Wiley. ”And I suppose,” she accused, ”that you knew all the time that this dump here was nothing but tungsten?”
”Well, I had a good idea,” he admitted deprecatingly, ”although it's yet to be tested out. This is just a sample s.h.i.+pment----”
”Yes, a sample s.h.i.+pment; and at two dollars a pound how much will it bring you in? Why, nothing, hardly; a mere bagatelle for a gentleman and a scholar like you; but what about me and poor Virginia, slaving around to cook your meals? What do we get for all our pains? Oh, I could kill you, you scoundrel! You knew it all the time, and yet you let me sell those shares!”
She choked and Wiley s.h.i.+fted uneasily on the ore-pile, for of course he had done just that. To be sure he had urged her to sell them to his father for the sum of ten cents a share; but the mention of that fact, in her heated condition, would probably gain him nothing with the Widow.
She was gasping for breath and, if nothing intervened, he was in for the scolding of his life. But it was all in the day's work and he glanced about for Virginia, to seek comfort from her smiling eyes. She would understand now why he had given her back her stock, and advised her from the start not to sell; but--he looked again, for her dark orbs were blazing and her lips were moving as with threats.
”You knew it all the time!” screamed the Widow in a frenzy, but Wiley barely heard her. He heard her words, for they a.s.saulted his ears in a series of screeching crescendos, but it was the unspoken message from the lips of Virginia that cut him to the quick. He had expected nothing else from the abusive Widow; but certainly, after all the kindnesses he had done her, he was ent.i.tled to something better from Virginia. Not only had he warned her to hold on to her stock, at a time when one word might ruin him; but he had bought it from Charley and then given it back, to show how he valued her friends.h.i.+p. And yet now, while the others were shouting with joy or rus.h.i.+ng to stake out more claims, she stood by the Widow and with cruel, voiceless words added her burden to this paean of hate. And she looked just like her mother!
”You shut up, you old cat!” he burst out fiercely, as the Widow rushed in to a.s.sault him. ”Shut your mouth and get off my ground!” He drew back his palm to launch a swift blow and then his hand fell slack. ”Well, holler then,” he said, ”what do I give a dam' whether you like the deal or not? You'd be yammering, just the same. But it's lucky for you you're a woman.”
CHAPTER XV
THE G.o.d OF TEN PER CENT
It was the nature of the Widow to resort to violence in every crisis of her life and at each fresh memory of the effrontery of Wiley Holman she searched the empyrean for words. From the very start he had come to Keno with the intention of stealing her mine. First it was his father, who pitied her so much he was willing to buy her shares; then it was the tax sale, and he had sneaked in at night and tried to jump the Paymaster; then he had deceived her and stood in with Blount to make her sell all her stock for a song; and then, oh hateful thought, he had actually sold out to Blount for a hundred dollars, cash; only to put Blount in the hole and buy the mine back again for the price of the ore on the dump!
The Widow poured forth her charges without pausing for breath or noticing that her audience had fled, and as Wiley went on about his business she raised her voice to a scream. The rest of the Kenoites, and some of the workmen, were out staking the nearby hills; but whenever she stopped she thought of some fresh duplicity which made reason totter on its throne. He had refused half the mine from Blount as a gift and then turned around and bought it all. He had refused to buy her shares, time and again, when he knew they were worth a million; and then, to cap the climax, he had let her sell to Blount and bought them for nothing from him. And even Death Valley Charley--poor, crazy, brain-sick Charley--he had robbed him of all ten of his claims!
It was a d.a.m.ning arraignment, and Wiley's men listened grimly, but he only twisted his lip and nodded his head ironically. With one eye on his accuser, who was becoming hysterical, he hustled the ore into the empty trucks and started them off down the road; and then, as Virginia led her mother away, he re-engaged his cook. They had supper that night in the old, abandoned cook-house; and, so wonderfully do great minds work, that a complete bill of grub was discovered among the freight. Not only flour and beans and canned goods and potatoes, but baking powder and matches and salt; and the cook observed privately that you'd think Mr. Holman had intended to make camp all the time. It is thus that foresight leaps ahead into the future and robs life of half its ills; and the Widow Huff, still unpacking plates and saucers, was untroubled by clamorous guests. She had had her say and, as far as Wiley was concerned, there were no more favors to be expected.
Yet the Widow was wise in the ways of mining camps and she prepared to feed a horde--and the next day they came, by automobile and motor-truck, until every table was filled. The rush was on, for four-thousand dollar ore will bring men from the ends of the world.
Before the sun had set in the red glow of a sandstorm the desert was staked for miles. From the chimneys of old houses, long abandoned to the rats, rose the smokes of many fires and the rush and whine of pa.s.sing automobiles told of races to distant grounds. All the old mines in the district, and of neighboring districts where the precious ”heavy spar” occurred, were re-located--or jumped, as the case might be--and held to await future developments. The first thing was to stake. They could prospect the ground later. Tungsten now was king.
Men who had never heard the name, or p.r.o.nounced it haltingly, now spoke learnedly of tungsten tests; and he was a poor prospector indeed who lacked his bottle of hydrochloric acid and his test-tubes and strip of s.h.i.+ny tin. They swarmed about the base of the old Paymaster dump like bees around a broken pot of honey and when, pounded up and boiled in the hydrochloric acid, the solution bit the tin and turned bright blue, there was many a hearty curse at the fickle hand of fortune which had led Wiley Holman to that treasure.
It had lain there for years, trampled down beneath their feet. Now this kid, this mining-school prospector, had come back and grabbed it all.
Not only the Paymaster with its tons of mined ore, but the ten claims to the north, all showing good scheelite, which Death Valley Charley had located--he had held them down as well. Two hundred dollars down and a carefully worded option had tied them up for five thousand dollars, and there were tungsten-mad men in that crowd of boomers who would have given fifty thousand apiece. They came up to the mine where Wiley was working and waved their money in his face, and then went off grumbling as he refused all offers and went busily about his work. So they came, and went, until at last the great wave brought Samuel J. Blount himself.
He came up the trail smiling, for there was nothing to be gained by making belated complaints; but when he saw the pile of precious white rock the smile died away in spite of him. It was the boast of Blount that, buying or selling, he always held out his ten per cent; but that pile of ore had cost him dear and he had sold it out for next to nothing. And it was his other boast that he could read men's hearts when they came to buy or sell, but here was a young man who had seen him coming twice and gained the advantage both times. So the smile grew longer in spite of his best efforts and when at last he found Wiley Holman in the office of the company it was perilously near a sulk.