before the servant returned with the time-tables. He glanced through them. “Henry,” he announced, “your name is Henry, isn't it?”
“No, sir—George, sir.”
“Well, August, you go out to the desk, like a good fellow, and ask the secretary to arrange for a compartment for me to New Orleans on the Gulf States Limited, leaving at ten o'clock to-morrow night.” He handed the servant his card. “Now wait a minute until I write something.” He seized the cable blank, helped himself, uninvited, to Neddy Jerome's fountain pen, and wrote:
William H. Geary,
Calle de Concordia No. 19,
Buenaventura,
Sobrante, C. A.
Salute, you young jackass! Just received your letter. Cabling thousand for emergency roll first thing to-morrow. Will order machinery. Leaving for New Orleans to-morrow night, to arrive Buenaventura first steamer. Your letter caught me with a hundred thousand. We cut it two ways and take our chances. Keep a light in the window for your old Jack Pardner.
“That's a windy cablegram,” Neddy Jerome remarked as the servant bore it away. “Why all this garrulity? A cablegram anywhere generally costs at least a dollar a word.”
“'That's my delight of a shiny night, in the season of the year,'” quoted John Stuart Webster; “and why the devil economize when the boy needs cheering up?”
“What boy?”
“Billy Geary.”
“Broke?”
“I should say so. Rattles when he walks.”
“Where is he?”
“Central America.”
Neddy Jerome was happy. He was in an expansive mood, for he had, with the assistance of a kindly fate, rounded up the one engineer in all the world whom he needed to take charge of the Colorado Consolidated. So he said:
“Well, Jack, just to celebrate the discovery of your old pal, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll O. K. your voucher for the expense of bringing young Geary back to the U. S. A., and when we get him here, it will be up to you to find a snug berth for him with Colorado Consolidated.”
“Neddy,” said John Stuart Webster, “by my hali-dom, I love thee. You're a thoughtful, kindly old stick-in-the-mud, but——”
“No ifs or but's. I'm your boss,” Jerome interrupted, and waddled away to telephone the head waiter at his favourite restaurant to reserve a table for two.
Mr. Webster sighed. He disliked exceedingly to disappoint old Neddy, but—— He shrank from seeming to think over-well of himself by declining a twenty-five-thousand-dollar-a-year job with the biggest mining company in Colorado, but——
“Rotten luck,” he soliloquized. “It runs that way for a while, and then it changes, and gets worse!”
CHAPTER IV
WHEN Jerome returned to his seat, the serious look in Webster's hitherto laughing eyes challenged his immediate attention. “Now what's gone and broken loose?” he demanded.
“Neddy,” said John Stuart Webster gently, “do you remember my crossing my fingers and saying, 'King's X' when you came at me with that proposition of yours?”
“Yes. But I noticed you uncrossed them mighty quick when I told you the details of the job. You'll never be offered another like it.”
“I know, Neddy, I know. It just breaks my heart to have to decline it, but the fact of the matter is, I think you'd better give that job to your brother after all. At any rate, I'm not going to take it.”
“Why?” the amazed Jerome demanded. “Johnny, you're crazy in the head. Of course you'll take it.”
For answer Webster handed his friend the letter he had just received.
“Read that, old horse, and see if you can't work up a circulation,” he suggested.
Jerome adjusted his spectacles and read:
Calle de Concordia 19, Buenaventura,
Sobrante, C. A.
Dear John:
I would address you as “dear friend John,” did I but possess sufficient courage. In my heart of hearts you are still that, but after three years of silence, due to my stupidity and hardness of heart, it is, perhaps, better to make haste slowly.
To begin, I should like to be forgiven, on the broad general grounds that I am most almighty sorry for what I went and done! Am I forgiven? I seem to see your friendly old face and hear you answer “Aye,” and with this load off my chest at last I believe I feel better already.
I did not know until very recently what had become of you, and that that wretched Cripple Creek business had been cleared up at last. I met a steam-shovel man a month or two ago on the Canal. He used to be a machine-man in the Portland mine, and he told me the whole story.
Jack, you poor, deluded old piece of white meat, do you think for a moment that I held against you your testimony for the operators in Cripple Creek? You will never know how badly it broke me up when that Canal digger sprung his story of how you went the limit for my measly reputation after I had quit the company in disgrace. Still, it was not that which hurt me particularly. I thought you believed the charges and that you testified in a firm belief that I was the guilty man, as all of the circumstantial evidence seemed to indicate. I thought this for three long, meagre years, old friend, and I'm sorry. After that, I suppose there isn't any need for me to say more, except that you are an old fool for not saying you were going to spend your money and your time and reputation trying to put my halo back on straight! I doubt if I was worth it, and you knew that; but let it pass, for we have other fish to fry.
The nubbin of the matter is this: There is only one good gold mine left in this weary world—and I have it. It's the sweetest wildcat lever struck, and we stand the finest show in the world of starving to death if we tackle it without sufficient capital to go through. (You will notice that I am already—and unconsciously—employing the plural pronoun. How rapidly the old habits return with the old friendships rehabilitated!) It will take at least thirty thousand dollars, and we ought to have double that to play safe. I do not know whether you have, or can raise, sixty cents, but at any rate I am going to put the buck up to you and you can take a look.
Here are the specifications. Read them carefully and then see if there is anybody in the U. S. A. whom you can interest to the tune mentioned above. We could probably get by with thirty thousand, but I would not jeopardize anybody's money by tackling it with less.
Jack, I have a mining concession. It is low-grade—a free-milling gold vein—twelve feet of ore between good solid walls on a contact between Andesite and Silurian limestone. The ore is oxidized, and we can save ninety per cent, of the values on amalgamating
