H. De Vere Stacpoole

“ I took up this wreck business on the off-chance, but silver is what I came for and what I'm going to get if I can find a partner with two dollars and the pluck of a sand-flea,' he says, getting up and walking the cabin like a chap with a toothache. ”

“ I said to him, Billy, if this thing got about, if a whisper of it went to the world, every archæological society in the United States, to say nothing of the uplift clubs, the reading societies, young women's associations, and so on, would be on their feet. You'd have a procession of five million people hiking to here.'
"'I reckon that's true,' says he, 'but where's the trouble? No one can touch an ounce of the stuff if we once get our concession.'
"I left it at that. ”

“ There was no wind and no sound, the whole world was dead asleep as the mules, till, of a sudden, came the noise of a shot a great way off. It might have been Billy's Lugger automatic or it mightn't.
"Nearly an hour later he returned. 'I reckon we can get to sleep now,' he said. 'Billy,' I said, 'won't they find the mule? What have you done with her?' 'Hove her traps over a precipice,' said he, 'and gave her a whack on the rump. She'll run wild in the mountains—Get to sleep.'
"There was no one following us next day. ”

“ I know, we set watches, tossing a coin for who'd turn in first. I won and turned in, but couldn't get to sleep thinking of that chap behind us, maybe on us, any moment; then when my four hours was up Billy took the straw and began to snore directly he lay down.
"That was the sort of man he was, without education and without all the frills that education gives to the imagination; he'd never read stories of Red Indians on the war-path or vendettas and so on, he had no worries about a future life, and as for dying he had never studied on the matter ”

“ I began to wish I hadn't come, but I wasn't going to back out now I'd put my foot into the thing, and next day, seeing no more of the chap with the jewellery, we got our mules and grub for three weeks and put out.
"From there we reached Passo, a village in the foothills, and from there Madelion, a place high up in the mountains, and from there the trail led south by thousand-foot precipices and down dips that nothing but a mule could have taken, the big birds watching us and nothing else. ”

“ Give us the story, but first say, if you've known of this stuff all this while and can find it in the dark, why haven't you found it?"
"'Picking up a silver mine isn't exactly like picking up a pin,' he says; 'you want capital to work it and you want a partner to trust.'
"Then he began his yarn. I've told you he was ignorant; that chap didn't know the difference between Julius Cæsar and Judas Iscariot, but he could talk.
"'St. Miguel Bay lies near due west of where we are lying now,' said he, 'and there I put in Christmas day three years ago with a chap by name of Ramon Gomez. ”

“ There hasn't been a revolution bigger than a child's Catherine wheel in donkeys' years, and every stake worth taking in Mexico has been put in the kitty by the chap Diaz. I tell you, times is bad, all the yeggs that haven't grabbed seats in Washington are on their uppers or joined the Salvation Army, and on top of the lot where's the minerals? ”

“ It wanted nothing of that, no more than the name of Napoleon or Alexander would have done.
"It took maybe ten seconds for the thing to sink into me and then up came from the back of my memory the words of the Immortal poet John Keats about brave Cortez and his men standing on a peak in Darien gazing upon the Pacific in a wild surmise——
"'What are you going on like that for?' says Billy, watching my face. 'We're safe enough. You can't stake a claim by writing your name on it ”

“ Billy happy and beaming, but I wasn't happy. That name was following me worse than Ramon had done.
"Well I knew that once we'd got our concession and started our company it would have to come down. The whole face of that hill would come down.
"I said this to Billy, and he agreed. I was saying at the start off that the amount of bottled ignorance in the world has never been taken stock of, and that a man may be happier if he's one of the bottles. It was so with Billy ”