The Story of a Mine

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THE STORY OF A MINE


By Bret Har



UDO BRACHVOGEL, Esq.,

Whose clever translations of my writings have helped to introduce me
to the favor of his countrymen, both here and in Germany, this little
volume is heartily dedicated.

BRET HARTE.

New York, December, 1877.




THE STORY OF A MINE




PART--I.



CHAPTER I

WHO SOUGHT IT


It was a steep trail leading over the Monterey Coast Range. Concho was
very tired, Concho was very dusty, Concho was very much disgusted.
To Concho's mind there was but one relief for these insurmountable
difficulties, and that lay in a leathern bottle slung over the machillas
of his saddle. Concho raised the bottle to his lips, took a long
draught, made a wry face, and ejaculated:

"Carajo!"

It appeared that the bottle did not contain aguardiente, but had lately
been filled in a tavern near Tres Pinos by an Irishman who sold had
American whisky under that pleasing Castilian title. Nevertheless Concho
had already nearly emptied the bottle, and it fell back against the
saddle as yellow and flaccid as his own cheeks. Thus reinforced Concho
turned to look at the valley behind him, from which he had climbed since
noon. It was a sterile waste bordered here and there by arable fringes
and valdas of meadow land, but in the main, dusty, dry, and forbidding.
His eye rested for a moment on a low white cloud line on the eastern
horizon, but so mocking and unsubstantial that it seemed to come and go
as he gazed. Concho struck his forehead and winked his hot eyelids. Was
it the Sierras or the cursed American whisky?

Again he recommenced the ascent. At times the half-worn, half-visible
trail became utterly lost in the bare black outcrop of the ridge, but
his sagacious mule soon found it again, until, stepping upon a loose
boulder, she slipped and fell. In vain Concho tried to lift her from
out the ruin of camp kettles, prospecting pans, and picks; she
remained quietly recumbent, occasionally raising her head as if to
contemplatively glance over the arid plain below. Then he had recourse
to useless blows. Then he essayed profanity of a secular kind, such as
"Assassin," "Thief," "Beast with a pig's head," "Food for the Bull's
Horns," but with no effect.

Then he had recourse to the curse ecclesiastic:

"Ah, Judas Iscariot! is it thus, renegade and traitor, thou leavest
me, thy master, a league from camp and supper waiting? Stealer of the
Sacrament, get up!"

Still no effect. Concho began to feel uneasy; never before had a mule of
pious lineage failed to respond to this kind of exhortation. He made one
more desperate attempt:

"Ah, defiler of the altar! lie not there! Look!" he threw his hand into
the air, extending the fingers suddenly. "Behold, fiend! I exorcise
thee! Ha! tremblest! Look but a little now,--see! Apostate!
I--I--excommunicate thee,--Mula!"

"What are you kicking up such a devil of row down there for?" said a
gruff voice from the rocks above.

Concho shuddered. Could it be that the devil was really going to fly
away with his mule? He dared not look up.

"Come now," continued the voice, "you just let up on that mule, you
d----d old Greaser. Don't you see she's slipped her shoulder?"

Alarmed as Concho was at the information, he could not help feeling to a
certain extent relieved. She was lamed, but had not lost her standing as
a good Catholic.

He ventured to lift his eyes. A stranger--an Americano from his dress
and accent--was descending the rocks toward him. He was a slight-built
man with a dark, smooth face, that would have been quite commonplace and
inexpressive but for his left eye, in which all that was villainous in
him apparently centered. Shut that eye, and you had the features and
expression of an ordinary man; cover up those features, and the eye
shone out like Eblis's own. Nature had apparently observed this too, and
had, by a paralysis of the nerve, ironically dropped the corner of the
upper lid over it like a curtain, laughed at her handiwork, and turned
him loose to prey upon a credulous world.

"What are you doing here?" said the stranger after he had assisted
Concho in bringing the mule to her feet, and a helpless halt.

"Prospecting, Senor."

The stranger turned his respectable right eye toward Concho, while his
left looked unutterable scorn and wickedness over the landscape.

"Prospecting, what for?"

"Gold and silver, Senor,--yet for silver most."

"Alone?"

"Of us there are four."

The stranger looked around.

"In camp,--a league beyond," explained the Mexican.

"Found anything?"

"Of this--much." Concho took from his saddle bags a lump of greyish iron
ore, studded here and there with star points of pyrites. The stranger
said nothing, but his eye looked a diabolical suggestion.

"You are lucky, friend Greaser."

"Eh?"

"It IS silver."

"How know you this?"

"It is my business. I'm a metallurgist."

"And you can say what shall be silver and what is not."

"Yes,--see here!" The stranger took from his saddle bags a little
leather case containing some half dozen phials. One, enwrapped in
dark-blue paper, he held up to Concho.

"This contains a preparation of silver."

Concho's eyes sparkled, but he looked doubtingly at the stranger.

"Get me some water in your pan."

Concho emptied his water bottle in his prospecting pan and handed it to
the stranger. He dipped a dried blade of grass in the bottle and then
let a drop fall from its tip in the water. The water remained unchanged.

"Now throw a little salt in the water," said the stranger.

Concho did so. Instantly a white film appeared on the surface, and
presently the whole mass assumed a milky hue.

Concho crossed himself hastily, "Mother of God, it is magic!"

"It is chloride of silver, you darned fool."

Not content with this cheap experiment, the stranger then took Concho's
breath away by reddening some litmus paper with the nitrate, and then
completely knocked over the simple Mexican by restoring its color by
dipping it in the salt water.

"You shall try me this," said Concho, offering his iron ore to the
stranger;--"you shall use the silver and the salt."

"Not so fast my friend," answered the stranger; "in the first place
this ore must be melted, and then a chip taken and put in shape like
this,--and that is worth something, my Greaser cherub. No, sir, a man
don't spend all his youth at Freiburg and Heidelburg to throw away his
science gratuitously on the first Greaser he meets."

"It will cost--eh--how much?" said the Mexican eagerly.

"Well, I should say it would take about a hundred dollars and expenses
to--to--find silver in that ore. But once you've got it there--you're
all right for tons of it."

"You shall have it," said the now excited Mexican. "You shall have it of
us,--the four! You shall come to our camp and shall melt it,--and show
the silver, and--enough! Come!" and in his feverishness he clutched the
hand of his companion as if to lead him forth at once.

"What are you going to do with your mule?" said the stranger.

"True, Holy Mother,--what, indeed?"

"Look yer," said the stranger, with a grim smile, "she won't stray far,
I'll be bound. I've an extra pack mule above here; you can ride on her,
and lead me into camp, and to-morrow come back for your beast."

Poor honest Concho's heart sickened at the prospect of leaving behind
the tired servant he had objurgated so strongly a moment before, but
the love of gold was uppermost. "I will come back to thee, little
one, to-morrow, a rich man. Meanwhile, wait thou here, patient
one,--Adios!--thou smallest of mules,--Adios!"

And, seizing the stranger's hand, he clambered up the rocky ledge until
they reached the summit. Then the stranger turned and gave one sweep of
his malevolent eye over the valley.

Wherefore, in after years, when their story was related, with the
devotion of true Catholic pioneers, they named the mountain "La Canada
de la Visitacion del Diablo," "The Gulch of the Visitation of the
Devil," the same being now the boundary lines of one of the famous
Mexican land grants.


CHAPTER II

WHO FOUND IT


Concho was so impatient to reach the camp and deliver his good news to
his companions that more than once the stranger was obliged to command
him to slacken his pace. "Is it not enough, you infernal Greaser, that
you lame your own mule, but you must try your hand on mine? Or am I to
put Jinny down among the expenses?" he added with a grin and a slight
lifting of his baleful eyelid.

When they had ridden a mile along the ridge, they began to descend again
toward the valley. Vegetation now sparingly bordered the trail, clumps
of chemisal, an occasional manzanita bush, and one or two dwarfed
"buckeyes" rooted their way between the interstices of the black-gray
rock. Now and then, in crossing some dry gully, worn by the overflow of
winter torrents from above, the grayish rock gloom was relieved by dull
red and brown masses of color, and almost every overhanging rock bore
the mark of a miner's pick. Presently, as they rounded the curving flank
of the mountain, from a rocky bench below them, a thin ghost-like
stream of smoke seemed to be steadily drawn by invisible hands into
the invisible ether. "It is the camp," said Concho, gleefully; "I
will myself forward to prepare them for the stranger," and before his
companion could detain him, he had disappeared at a sharp canter around
the curve of the trail.

Left to himself, the stranger took a more leisurely pace, which left him
ample time for reflection. Scamp as he was, there was something in the
simple credulity of poor Concho that made him uneasy. Not that his moral
consciousness was touched, but he feared that Concho's companions might,
knowing Concho's simplicity, instantly suspect him of trading upon it.
He rode on in a deep study. Was he reviewing his past life? A vagabond
by birth and education, a swindler by profession, an outcast by
reputation, without absolutely turning his back upon respectability, he
had trembled on the perilous edge of criminality ever since his boyhood.
He did not scruple to cheat these Mexicans,--they were a degraded
race,--and for a moment he felt almost an accredited agent of
progress and civilization. We never really understand the meaning of
enlightenment until we begin to use it aggressively.

A few paces further on four figures appeared in the now gathering
darkness of the trail. The stranger quickly recognized the beaming smile
of Concho, foremost of the party. A quick glance at the faces of the
others satisfied him that while they lacked Concho's good humor, they
certainly did not surpass him in intellect. "Pedro" was a stout vaquero.
"Manuel" was a slim half-breed and ex-convert of the Mission of San
Carmel, and "Miguel" a recent butcher of Monterey. Under the benign
influences of Concho that suspicion with which the ignorant regard
strangers died away, and the whole party escorted the stranger--who had
given his name as Mr. Joseph Wiles--to their camp-fire. So anxious were
they to begin their experiments that even the instincts of hospitality
were forgotten, and it was not until Mr. Wiles--now known as "Don
Jose"--sharply reminded them that he wanted some "grub," that they came
to their senses. When the frugal meal of tortillas, frijoles, salt pork,
and chocolate was over, an oven was built of the dark-red rock brought
from the ledge before them, and an earthenware jar, glazed by some
peculiar local process, tightly fitted over it, and packed with clay and
sods. A fire was speedily built of pine boughs continually brought from
a wooded ravine below, and in a few moments the furnace was in full
blast. Mr. Wiles did not participate in these active preparations,
except to give occasional directions between his teeth, which were
contemplatively fixed over a clay pipe as he lay comfortably on his
back on the ground. Whatever enjoyment the rascal may have had in their
useless labors he did not show it, but it was observed that his left
eye often followed the broad figure of the ex-vaquero, Pedro, and often
dwelt on that worthy's beetling brows and half-savage face. Meeting that
baleful glance once, Pedro growled out an oath, but could not resist a
hideous fascination that caused him again and again to seek it.

The scene was weird enough without Wiles's eye to add to its wild
picturesqueness. The mountain towered above,--a heavy Rembrandtish
mass of black shadow,--sharply cut here and there against a sky so
inconceivably remote that the world-sick soul must have despaired of
ever reaching so far, or of climbing its steel-blue walls. The stars
were large, keen, and brilliant, but cold and steadfast. They did not
dance nor twinkle in their adamantine setting. The furnace fire painted
the faces of the men an Indian red, glanced on brightly colored blanket
and serape, but was eventually caught and absorbed in the waiting
shadows of the black mountain, scarcely twenty feet from the furnace
door. The low, half-sung, half-whispered foreign speech of the group,
the roaring of the furnace, and the quick, sharp yelp of a coyote on
the plain below were the only sounds that broke the awful silence of the
hills.

It was almost dawn when it was announced that the ore had fused. And it
was high time, for the pot was slowly sinking into the fast-crumbling
oven. Concho uttered a jubilant "God and Liberty," but Don Jose Wiles
bade him be silent and bring stakes to support the pot. Then Don Jose
bent over the seething mass. It was for a moment only. But in that
moment this accomplished metallurgist, Mr. Joseph Wiles, had quietly
dropped a silver half dollar into the pot!

Then he charged them to keep up the fires and went to sleep--all but one
eye.

Dawn came with dull beacon fires on the near hill tops, and, far in the
East, roses over the Sierran snow. Birds twittering in the alder fringes
a mile below, and the creaking of wagon wheels,--the wagon itself a
mere cloud of dust in the distant road,--were heard distinctly. Then
the melting pot was solemnly broken by Don Jose, and the glowing
incandescent mass turned into the road to cool.

And then the metallurgist chipped a small fragment from the mass and
pounded it, and chipped another smaller piece and pounded that, and then
subjected it to acid, and then treated it to a salt bath which became
at once milky,--and at last produced a white something,--mirabile
dictu!--two cents' worth of silver!

Concho shouted with joy; the rest gazed at each other doubtingly and
distrustfully; companions in poverty, they began to diverge and suspect
each other in prosperity. Wiles's left eye glanced ironically from the
one to the other.

"Here is the hundred dollars, Don Jose," said Pedro, handing the gold to
Wiles with a decidedly brusque intimation that the services and presence
of a stranger were no longer required.

Wiles took the money with a gracious smile and a wink that sent Pedro's
heart into his boots, and was turning away, when a cry from Manuel
stopped him. "The pot,--the pot,--it has leaked! look! behold! see!"

He had been cleaning away the crumbled fragments of the furnace to get
ready for breakfast, and had disclosed a shining pool of QUICKSILVER!

Wiles started, cast a rapid glance around the group, saw in a flash that
the metal was unknown to them,--and then said quietly:

"It is not silver."

"Pardon, Senor, it is, and still molten." Wiles stooped and ran his
fingers through the shining metal.

"Mother of God,--what is it then?--magic?"

"No, only base metal." But here, Concho, emboldened by Wiles's
experiment, attempted to seize a handful of the glistening mass, that
instantly broke through his fingers in a thousand tiny spherules, and
even sent a few globules up his shirt sleeves, until he danced around in
mingled fear and childish pleasure.

"And it is not worth the taking?" queried Pedro of Wiles.

Wiles's right eye and bland face were turned toward the speaker, but
his malevolent left was glancing at the dull red-brown rock on the hill
side.

"No!"--and turning abruptly away, he proceeded to saddle his mule.

Manuel, Miguel, and Pedro, left to themselves, began talking earnestly
together, while Concho, now mindful of his crippled mule, made his way
back to the trail where he had left her. But she was no longer there.
Constant to her master through beatings and bullyings, she could not
stand incivility and inattention. There are certain qualities of the sex
that belong to all animated nature.

Inconsolable, footsore, and remorseful, Concho returned to the camp
and furnace, three miles across the rocky ridge. But what was his
astonishment on arriving to find the place deserted of man, mule,
and camp equipage. Concho called aloud. Only the echoing rocks grimly
answered him. Was it a trick? Concho tried to laugh. Ah--yes--a good
one,--a joke,--no--no--they HAD deserted him. And then poor Concho bowed
his head to the ground, and falling on his face, cried as if his honest
heart would break.

The tempest passed in a moment; it was not Concho's nature to suffer
long nor brood over an injury. As he raised his head again his eye
caught the shimmer of the quicksilver,--that pool of merry antic metal
that had so delighted him an hour before. In a few moments Concho was
again disporting with it; chasing it here and there, rolling it in his
palms and laughing with boy-like glee at its elusive freaks and fancies.
"Ah, sprightly one,--skipjack,--there thou goest,--come here. This
way,--now I have thee, little one,--come, muchacha,--come and kiss me,"
until he had quite forgotten the defection of his companions. And even
when he shouldered his sorry pack, he was fain to carry his playmate
away with him in his empty leathern flask.

And yet I fancy the sun looked kindly on him as he strode cheerily down
the black mountain side, and his step was none the less free nor light
that he carried with him neither the brilliant prospects nor the crime
of his late comrades.


CHAPTER III

WHO CLAIMED IT


The fog had already closed in on Monterey, and was now rolling, a white,
billowy sea above, that soon shut out the blue breakers below. Once
or twice in descending the mountain Concho had overhung the cliff and
looked down upon the curving horse-shoe of a bay below him,--distant yet
many miles. Earlier in the afternoon he had seen the gilt cross on the
white-faced Mission flare in the sunlight, but now all was gone. By
the time he reached the highway of the town it was quite dark, and he
plunged into the first fonda at the wayside, and endeavored to forget
his woes and his weariness in aguardiente. But Concho's head ached, and
his back ached, and he was so generally distressed that he bethought him
of a medico,--an American doctor,--lately come into the town, who had
once treated Concho and his mule with apparently the same medicine, and
after the same heroic fashion. Concho reasoned, not illogically, that if
he were to be physicked at all he ought to get the worth of his
money. The grotesque extravagance of life, of fruit and vegetables,
in California was inconsistent with infinitesimal doses. In Concho's
previous illness the doctor had given him a dozen 4 grain quinine
powders.

The following day the grateful Mexican walked into the Doctor's
office--cured. The Doctor was gratified until, on examination, it
appeared that to save trouble, and because his memory was poor, Concho
had taken all the powders in one dose. The Doctor shrugged his shoulders
and--altered his practice.

"Well," said Dr. Guild, as Concho sank down exhaustedly in one of the
Doctor's two chairs, "what now? Have you been sleeping again in the tule
marshes, or are you upset with commissary whisky? Come, have it out."

But Concho declared that the devil was in his stomach, that Judas
Iscariot had possessed himself of his spine, that imps were in his
forehead, and that his feet had been scourged by Pontius Pilate.

"That means 'blue mass,'" said the Doctor. And gave it to him,--a bolus
as large as a musket ball, and as heavy.

Concho took it on the spot, and turned to go.

"I have no money, Senor Medico."

"Never mind. It's only a dollar, the price of the medicine."

Concho looked guilty at having gulped down so much cash. Then he said
timidly:

"I have no money, but I have got here what is fine and jolly. It is
yours." And he handed over the contents of the precious tin can he had
brought with him.

The Doctor took it, looked at the shivering volatile mass and said, "Why
this is quicksilver!"

Concho laughed, "Yes, very quick silver, so!" and he snapped his fingers
to show its sprightliness.

The Doctor's face grew earnest; "Where did you get this, Concho?" he
finally asked.

"It ran from the pot in the mountains beyond."

The Doctor looked incredulous. Then Concho related the whole story.

"Could you find that spot again?"

"Madre de Dios, yes,--I have a mule there; may the devil fly away with
her!"

"And you say your comrades saw this?"

"Why not?"

"And you say they afterwards left you,--deserted you?"

"They did, ingrates!"

The Doctor arose and shut his office door. "Hark ye, Concho," he said,
"that bit of medicine I gave you just now was worth a dollar, it was
worth a dollar because the material of which it was composed was made
from the stuff you have in that can,--quicksilver or mercury. It is one
of the most valuable of metals, especially in a gold-mining country.
My good fellow, if you know where to find enough of it, your fortune is
made."

Concho rose to his feet.

"Tell me, was the rock you built your furnace of red?"

"Si, Senor."

"And brown?"

"Si, Senor."

"And crumbled under the heat?"

"As to nothing."

"And did you see much of this red rock?"

"The mountain mother is in travail with it."

"Are you sure that your comrades have not taken possession of the
mountain mother?"

"As how?"

"By claiming its discovery under the mining laws, or by pre-emption?"

"They shall not."

"But how will you, single-handed, fight the four; for I doubt not your
scientific friend has a hand in it?"

"I will fight."

"Yes, my Concho, but suppose I take the fight off your hands. Now,
here's a proposition: I will get half a dozen Americanos to go in with
you. You will have to get money to work the mine,--you will need funds.
You shall share half with them. They will take the risk, raise the
money, and protect you."

"I see," said Concho, nodding his head and winking his eyes rapidly.
"Bueno!"

"I will return in ten minutes," said the Doctor, taking his hat.

He was as good as his word. In ten minutes he returned with six original
locaters, a board of directors, a president, secretary, and a deed of
incorporation of the 'Blue Mass Quicksilver Mining Co.' This latter
was a delicate compliment to the Doctor, who was popular. The President
added to these necessary articles a revolver.

"Take it," he said, handing over the weapon to Concho. "Take it; my
horse is outside; take that, ride like h--l and hang on to the claim
until we come!"

In another moment Concho was in the saddle. Then the mining director
lapsed into the physician.

"I hardly know," said Dr. Guild, doubtfully, "if in your present
condition you ought to travel. You have just taken a powerful medicine,"
and the Doctor looked hypocritically concerned.

"Ah,--the devil!" laughed Concho, "what is the quicksilver that is IN
to that which is OUT? Hoopa, la Mula!" and, with a clatter of hoofs and
jingle of spurs, was presently lost in the darkness.

"You were none too soon, gentlemen," said the American Alcalde, as
he drew up before the Doctor's door. "Another company has just been
incorporated for the same location, I reckon."

"Who are they?"

"Three Mexicans,--Pedro, Manuel, and Miguel, headed by that d----d
cock-eyed Sydney Duck, Wiles."

"Are they here?"

"Manuel and Miguel, only. The others are over at Tres Pinos lally-gaging
Roscommon and trying to rope him in to pay off their whisky bills at his
grocery."

"If that's so we needn't start before sunrise, for they're sure to get
roaring drunk."

And this legitimate successor of the grave Mexican Alcaldes, having thus
delivered his impartial opinion, rode away.

Meanwhile, Concho the redoubtable, Concho the fortunate, spared neither
riata nor spur. The way was dark, the trail obscure and at times
even dangerous, and Concho, familiar as he was with these mountain
fastnesses, often regretted his sure-footed Francisquita. "Care not,
O Concho," he would say to himself, "'tis but a little while, only a
little while, and thou shalt have another Francisquita to bless thee.
Eh, skipjack, there was a fine music to thy dancing. A dollar for an
ounce,--'tis as good as silver, and merrier." Yet for all his good
spirits he kept a sharp lookout at certain bends of the mountain trail;
not for assassins or brigands, for Concho was physically courageous, but
for the Evil One, who, in various forms, was said to lurk in the Santa
Cruz Range, to the great discomfort of all true Catholics. He recalled
the incident of Ignacio, a muleteer of the Franciscan Friars, who,
stopping at the Angelus to repeat the Credo, saw Luzbel plainly in the
likeness of a monstrous grizzly bear, mocking him by sitting on his
haunches and lifting his paws, clasped together, as if in prayer.
Nevertheless, with one hand grasping his reins and his rosary, and the
other clutching his whisky flask and revolver, he fared on so rapidly
that he reached the summit as the earlier streaks of dawn were outlining
the far-off Sierran peaks. Tethering his horse on a strip of tableland,
he descended cautiously afoot until he reached the bench, the wall of
red rock and the crumbled and dismantled furnace. It was as he had left
it that morning; there was no trace of recent human visitation. Revolver
in hand, Concho examined every cave, gully, and recess, peered behind
trees, penetrated copses of buckeye and manzanita, and listened. There
was no sound but the faint soughing of the wind over the pines below
him. For a while he paced backward and forward with a vague sense of
being a sentinel, but his mercurial nature soon rebelled against this
monotony, and soon the fatigues of the day began to tell upon him.
Recourse to his whisky flask only made him the drowsier, until at last
he was fain to lie down and roll himself up tightly in his blanket. The
next moment he was sound asleep.