_ CHAPTER XIII. SWEDE LUCK
As the sun set that evening in a trailing blaze of glory Denver Russell came out and sat with bared arms, looking lazily down at the town. The news of his strike had roused them at last, these easy-going, do-nothing old-timers; and now, from an outcast, a crack-brained hobo miner, he was suddenly accepted as an equal. They spoke to him, they recognized him, they rushed up to his mine and stared at the ore he had dug; and even the Professor had purloined a specimen to take over and show to Murray. And all because, while the rest of them loafed, he had drifted in on his vein until he cut the stringer of copper. It was Swede luck again--the luck of that great people who invented the wheel-barrow, and taught the Irish to stand erect and run it.
Denver could smile a little, grimly, as he recalled Old Bunker's stories and his fleering statement that a mule could work; but, now that he had struck copper at the breast of his tunnel, the mule was suddenly a gentleman. He was good enough to speak to, and for Bunker's daughter to speak to, and for his wife to invite to supper; and all on account of a vein of copper that was scarcely two inches thick. It was rich and it widened out, instead of pinching off as a typical gash-vein would; and while it would take a fortune to develop it, it was copper, and copper was king. Silver and gold mines were nothing now, for silver was down and gold was losing its purchasing power; but the mining journals were full of articles about copper, and it had risen to thirty cents a pound.
Thirty cents, when a few years ago it had dropped as low as eleven! And it was still going up, for the munition factories were clamoring for it and the speculators were bidding up futures. Even Bible-Back Murray, who had a reputation as a pincher, had suddenly become prodigal with his money and was working day and night, trying to tap a hidden copper deposit. He had caught the contagion, the lure of tremendous profits, and he was risking his all on the venture. What would he have to say now if his diamond drill tapped nothing and a hobo struck it rich over at Queen Creek? Well, he could say what he pleased, for Denver was determined not to sell for a million dollars. He had come there with a purpose, in answer to a prophecy, and there yet remained to win the golden treasure and the beautiful woman who was an artist.
Every little thing was coming as the seeress had predicted--good Old Mother Trigedgo with her cards and astrology--and all that was necessary was to follow her advice and the beautiful Drusilla would be his. He must treat her at first like any young country girl, as if she had no beauty or charm; and then in some way, unrevealed as yet, he would win her love in return. He had schooled himself rigidly to resist her fascination, but when she had looked up at him with her beseeching blue eyes and asked him to sell back the mine, only a miracle of intercession had saved him from yielding and accepting back the five hundred dollars. He was like clay in her hands--her voice thrilled him, her eyes dazzled him, her smile made him forget everything else--yet just at the moment when he had reached out for the money the memory of the prophecy had come back to him. And so he had refused, turning a deaf ear to her entreaties, and scoffing at her easy-going father; and she had gone off down the trail without once looking back, promising Bunker she would become a great singer.
Denver smiled again dreamily as he dwelt upon her beauty, her hair like fine-spun gold, her eyes that mirrored every thought; and with it all, a something he could not name that made his heart leap and choke him. He could not speak when she first addressed him, his brain had gone into a whirl; and so he had sat there, like a great oaf of a miner, and refused to give her anything. It was rough, yet the Cornish seeress had required it; and doubtless, being a woman herself, she understood the feminine heart. At the end of his long reverie Denver sighed again, for the ways of astrologers were beyond him.
In the morning he rose early, to muck out the rock and clear the tunnel for a new round of holes; and each time as he came out with a wheel-barrow full of waste he cocked his eye to the west. Bible-Back Murray would be coming over soon, if he was still at his camp around the hill. Yet the second day passed before he arrived, thundering in from the valley in his big, yellow car; and even then he made some purchases at the store before he came up to the mine.
"Good morning!" he hailed cheerily, "they tell me you've struck ore. Well, well; how does the vein show up?"
"'Bout the same," mumbled Denver and glanced at him curiously. He had expected a little fireworks.
"About the same, eh?" repeated Murray, flicking his rebellious glass eye, which had a tendency to stare off to one side, "is this a sample of your ore? Well, I will say, it looks promising--would you mind if I go into the tunnel?"
"Nope," returned Denver; and then, after a moment's pause: "How's that gun-man of yours getting along?"
"Oh, Dave? He's all right. I'll ask you over sometime and let you get better acquainted."
"Never mind," answered Denver, "I know him all I want to. And if I catch him on my ground I'll sure make him jump--I don't like the way he talked to me."
"Well, he's rough, but he's good hearted," observed Murray pacifically. "I'm sorry he spoke to you that way--shall we go in now and look at the vein?"
Denver grunted non-committally and led Murray into the tunnel, which had turned now to follow the ore. Whatever his game was it was too deep for Denver, so he looked on in watchful silence. Murray seemed well acquainted with mining--he looked at the foot-wall and hanging-wall and traced out the course of both veins; and then, without offering to take any samples, he turned and went out to the dump.
"Yes, very good," he said, but without any enthusiasm, "it certainly looks very promising. Well, good day, Mr. Russell; much obliged."
He started down the trail, leaving Denver staring, and then he turned hurriedly back.
"Oh, by the way," he said, "I buy and sell ore. When you get enough sacked you might send it down by McGraw and I'll give you a credit at the store."
"Yes, all right," assented Denver and stood looking after him till he cranked up and went roaring away. Not a word about the title, nothing said about his warning; and no mention made of his well-known ability to break any man in the county. The facts, apparently, were all that interested him then--but he might make an offer later. When the vein was opened up and he had made his first shipment, when it began to look like a mine! Denver went back to work and as he drove in day by day he was careful to save all the ore.
He hadn't had it assayed, because assaying is expensive and his supplies had cost more than he expected, but from the size of the button when he made his rough fire-tests, he knew that it ran high in silver. Probably eight hundred ounces, besides the lead; and he had sorted out nearly a ton. About the time he was down to his bottom dollar he would ship and get another grub-stake. Then, when that was gone, if his vein opened up, he would ship to the smelter direct; but the first small shipment could be easier handled by a man who made it a business. Of course Murray would gouge him, and overcharge him on everything, but the main idea was to get Denver to start an account and take that much trade away from Hill. Denver figured it all out and then let it pass, for there were other things on his mind.
On the evening of his strike the house below had been silent; but early the next morning she had begun again, only this time she was not singing scales. It was grand opera now, in French and Italian; with brilliant runs and trills and high, sustained crescendos that seemed almost to demand applause; and high-pitched, agitato recitatives. She was running through the scores of the standard operas--"La Traviata," "Il Trovatore," "Martha"--but as the week wore along she stopped singing again and Denver saw her down among the sycamores. She paid no attention to him, wandering up and down the creek bed or sitting in gloomy silence by the pools; but at last as he stood at the mouth of his tunnel breaking ore with the great hammer he loved, she came out on the trail and gazed across at him wistfully, though he feigned not to notice her presence. He was young and vigorous, and the sledge hammer was his toy; and as Drusilla, when she was practicing, gloried in the range of her voice and her effortless bravuras and trills, so Denver, swinging his sledge, felt like Thor of old when he broke the rocks with his blows. Drusilla gazed at him and sighed and walked pensively past him, then returned and came back up his trail.
"Good evening," she said and Denver greeted her with a smile for he saw that her mood was friendly. She had resented, at first, his brusque refusal and his rough, straight-out way of speaking; but she was lonely now, and he knew in his heart that all was not well with her singing.
"You like to work, don't you?" she went on at last as he stood sweating and dumb in her presence, "don't you ever get tired, or anything?"
"Not doing this," he said, "I'm a driller, you know, and I like to keep my hand in. I compete in these rock-drilling contests."
"Oh, yes, father was telling me," she answered quickly. "That's where you won all that money--the money to buy the mine."
"Yes, and I've won other money before," he boasted. "I won first place last year in the single-handed contest--but that's too hard on your arm. You change about, you know, in the double-handed work--one strikes while the other turns--but in single jacking it's just hammer, hammer, hammer, until your arm gets dead to the shoulder."
"It must be nice," she suggested with a half-concealed sigh, "to be able to make money so easily. Have you always been a miner?"
"No, I was raised on a ranch, up in Colorado--but there's lots more money in mining. I don't work by the day, I take contracts by the foot where there's difficult or dangerous work. Sometimes I make forty dollars a day. There's a knack about mining, like everything else--you've got to know just how to drive your holes in order to break the most ground--but give me a jack-hammer and enough men to muck out after me and I can sink from sixteen to twenty feet a day, depending on the rock. But here, of course, I'm working lone-handed and only make about three feet a day."
"Oh," she murmured with a mild show of interest and Denver picked up his hammer. Mother Trigedgo had warned him not to be too friendly, and now he was learning why. He set out a huge fragment that had been blasted from the face and swung his hammer again.
"Did you ever hear the 'Anvil Chorus'?" she asked watching him curiously. "It's in the second act of 'Il Trovatore.'"
"Sure!" exclaimed Denver, "I heard Sousa's band play it! I've got it on a record somewhere."
"No, but in a real opera--you'd be fine for that part. They have a row of anvils around the back of the stage and as the chorus sing the gypsy blacksmiths beat out the time by striking with their hammers. Back in New York last year there was a perfectly huge man and he had a hammer as big as yours that he swung with both hands while he sang. You reminded me of him when I saw you working--don't you get kind of lonely, sometimes?"
"Too busy," replied Denver turning to pick up another rock, "don't have time for anything like that."
"Well, I wish I was that way," she sighed after a silence and Denver smote ponderously at the rock.
"Why don't you work?" he asked at last and Drusilla's eyes flashed fire.
"I do!" she cried, "I work all the time! But that doesn't do me any good. It's all right, perhaps, if you're just breaking rocks, or digging dirt in some mine; but I'm trying to become a singer and you can't succeed that way--work will get you only so far!"
"'S that so!" murmured Denver, and at the unspoken challenge the brooding resentment of Drusilla burst forth.
"Yes, it is!" she exclaimed, "and, just because you've struck ore, that doesn't prove that you're right in everything. I've worked and I've worked, and that's all the good it's done me--I'm a failure, in spite of everything."
"Oh, I don't know," responded Denver with a superior smile, "you've still got your five hundred dollars. A man is never whipped till he thinks he's whipped--why don't you go back and take a run at it?"
"Oh, what's the use of talking?" she cried jumping up, "when you don't know a thing about it? I've tried and I've tried and the best I could ever do was to get a place in the chorus. And there you simply ruin your voice without even getting a chance of recognition. Oh, I get so exasperated to see those Europeans who are nothing but big, spoiled children go right into a try-out and take a part away from me that I know I can render perfectly. But that's it, you see, they're perfectly undisciplined, but they can throw themselves into the part; and the director just takes my name and address and says he'll call me up if he needs me."
Denver grunted and said nothing and as he swung his hammer again the leash to her passions gave way.
"Yes, and I hate you!" she burst out, "you're so big and self-satisfied. But I guess if you were trying to break into grand opera you wouldn't be quite so intolerant!"
"No?" commented Denver stopping to shift his grip and she stamped her foot in fury.
"No, you wouldn't!" she cried half weeping with rage as she contemplated the wreck of her hopes, "don't you know that Mary Garden and Schumann-Heink and Geraldine Farrar and all of them, that are now our greatest stars, had to starve and skimp and wait on the impresarios before they could get their chance? There's a difference between digging a hole in the ground and moving a great audience to tears; so just because you happen to be succeeding right now, don't think that you know it all!"
"All right," agreed Denver, "I'll try to remember that. And of course I'm nothing but a miner. But there's one thing, and I know it, about all those great stars--they didn't any of them quit. They might have been hungry and out of a job but they never
quit, or they wouldn't be where they are."
"Oh, they didn't, eh?" she mocked looking him over with slow scorn. "And I suppose that
you never quit, either?"
"No, I never did," answered Denver truthfully. "I've never laid down yet."
"Well, you're young yet," she said mimicking his patronizing tones, "perhaps that will come to you later."
She smiled with her teeth and stalked off down the trail, leaving Denver with something to think about. _