CHAPTER VI.
“No man can tell what he does not know.”
“Bob,” said Morning, as they lighted their cigars, and seated themselves after supper upon the piazza of the railroad hotel at Tucson, “the copper assays are not up to your expectations, still I am inclined to buy the property if I can arrange to employ men at rates that will enable me to work it. What are miners’ wages hereabouts?”
“Three dollars and a half a day for ten hours,” replied Steel.
“And how much for unskilled laborers for road building, wheeling, and aboveground work?” said Morning.
“Two dollars and a half; but for work of that kind you can get Chinamen at $1.50 a day, Mexicans at $1.25, and Papago Indians for $1.00, if you wish to employ them, though I reckon you would have trouble about getting white men to work with either.”
“I don’t wish to cut wages on miners, Bob, for they earn all they get, but if I buy that property, there will be a lot of road building, and grading for furnace sites, and wheeling, and other work of the same nature, and unless such work can be done cheaply, it will not pay to hire miners for underground work, or, indeed, to work the copper mines at all. I shall want these unskilled laborers for only a short time, and I have especial reasons for not hiring either white men or Mexicans, neither do I care to employ Chinamen if I can avoid it. Could I, think you, obtain enough Indians for this preliminary work?”
“Plenty of them at the San Xavier reservation, nine miles from here. I patter their lingo a little and can get you a gang if you want them.”
“I may want to drill and blast down a lot of basalt rock to build the foundations of furnaces and ballast the road with,” said Morning. “Will they do that kind of work?”
“Yes, until it comes to firing the blasts. You will need a white man for that. You will also need a white man for blacksmith work—sharpening picks and drills. The Indians cannot work at a forge, and they are nervous about ‘big shoots,’ as they call them.”
“Bob, if I take those copper prospects of you at your price, will you hire a gang of Papagoes for me, and take them up there and work them for two or three months under my direction, you and I sharpening the tools and preparing and firing the blasts, I paying you say $10 a day for your services?”
“Well, Mr. Morning, I don’t quite like such a job as that, but I am anxious to sell those copper prospects, and I will do it. But if you are going to hire Indian labor, I advise you to do first all the work that you intend to do with it. I mean, it will be best to get through with the Papagoes before you take any white men in there, or else there may be a row, and the white men will drive away the Indians.”
“All right, Bob, I will take your advice. You may consider the trade made. I will take your deed for the copper locations and give you a check to-morrow for $10,000 on the First National Bank at Denver, or I will arrange to get you the coin from the bank here if you desire it.”
“Your check is good enough for me, Mr. Morning.”
“Very well. Then you can go to the San Xavier reservation early in the morning and make a bargain with the Papagoes for three months. Obtain forty good men and agree to furnish them with rations and pay them $1.25 a day. They have ponies, I suppose, and can take their squaws along if they choose. It will make them more contented to stay. You might contract with them also to furnish enough cattle to supply themselves with fresh meat. They can drive them along, and there is now plenty of grass in the ravines. Don’t let them come to Tuscon, for I don’t wish the people here to know what I am doing. The Indians can strike across from San Xavier by Fort Lowell and meet us, or wait for us at the mouth of the Rillito. You can return here as soon as you start them, and we will buy teams and load them with supplies, and drive them out ourselves. We will do all the blacksmith work and blasting ourselves. And, Bob, keep your own counsel strictly about everything. I have reasons for secrecy which I will explain to you later.”
“All right, Mr. Morning. I don’t clearly see what you are driving at. It’s a queer way to open a copper mine, but you are the captain, and I’ve known you a long time, and whatever you say goes with Bob Steel.”
It was three o’clock the next afternoon before Steel returned from San Xavier. He was well known to the Papagoes, having often purchased grain and animals from them for mining companies with which he had been connected as superintendent. His mission was successful, and Manuel Pacheco, a leader among the Indians, had agreed to have the necessary force at the place designated on the third “sun up.”
Tuscon, although not a mining town, is a commercial center for a dozen mining camps, and there was nothing in the outfitting of a party of miners calculated to attract especial notice. Two wagons and twelve mules were purchased, with all needed supplies, and Morning and Steel drove away to their destination, where they met the Indians and proceeded to the old copper-camp. After supper Morning opened the conversation which he had determined to have with Steel.
“Bob,” said he, “to tell the truth, I do not intend to work this copper property at present, though I shall need it by and by for a purpose I will not now explain. I bought it mainly because I knew you intended to sell it to somebody, and I wished to keep others away from this vicinity. I have another use for the powder and the Indians, and, if you will accept the offer I am about to make, I have another service for you. I selected you because I know you are as true and as bright as your name. If you will work with me and for me in this cañon as I require, I will give you a salary of $1,000 a month for three years, and at the end of that time I will pay you—don’t think I am crazy—I will pay you $1,000,000. What do you say to my proposition?”
“You take away my breath,” rejoined Steel. “If I did not know you so well, I should say that you had been boozing on mescal, or were otherwise off your nut. But you don’t talk usually without meaning what you say, and I reckon you are in earnest. But there is nothing that I can do to earn $1,000,000, or $1,000 a month either.”
“Oh, yes, there is,” said Morning, “as you will agree when you know all, or at least all that I intend to tell you! Listen: When I was up the cañon while we were here last week, I discovered and located a rich gold quartz lode that was uncovered by the waterspout. It is very rich and extensive—indeed, there are many millions in sight in the croppings. It was through my coming here to look at your copper lodes that I was led to its discovery, and in a certain way I consider you have a right to some profit from it, and I can well afford to give you a million dollars for your services and your silence, or several millions, if you want that much. The ledge is so rich that the first thing to do is to conceal it. No person but myself knows its extent or value, and I shall not disclose these even to you. When I commence working it and turning out bullion, people will be curious, and they will badger you to tell them all about. The elder Rothschild is credited with the aphorism that no man can tell what he does not know, and if you really don’t know the extent of the Morning mine, it will be a good deal easier for you to baffle the curious. I propose that you shall not look at the ledge or go into the box cañon where it is. Will you agree to that?”
“Oh, I am agreeable!” said Steel. “I appreciate your reasons, and, anyway, it’s none of my business.”
Morning then explained to Steel the situation of the cañon where he had found the lode, and the manner of its discovery, but was silent as to its dimensions or the quantity of gold contained in the rock. He informed him as to his plan of operations, which was to pack all the supplies and tools on the backs of the animals as far up the cañon as it was possible thus to go, and there make a permanent camp. The Indians were then to carry the tools, powder, and a supply of provisions upon their backs up to the summit of the basalt wall near the rift, where another camp would be made.
Two Indians were to be left at the copper-camp, with directions if anyone appeared there to run up the cañon and inform Steel or Morning. Two Indians were to be placed in charge of the permanent camp and the animals, four Indians were to carry water in kegs to the top of the wall for the use of the main party there, two Indians to procure firewood and prepare food and attend to the camp at the summit, and thirty Indians to work at drilling holes in the basalt at the summit on both sides of the rift, and at a distance of about ten feet from the edge of it.
The squaws were to be suffered to make such disposition of their time as their social and domestic duties and inclinations might suggest. Steel and Morning would keep the drills sharpened at the portable forge, which, with a supply of charcoal, would be transported to the summit camp, and as often as the drill holes were ready they would place and explode the blasts.
It was intended thus to throw rocks from the summit down into the gorge, and this was to be repeated until its bottom should be covered to a depth of many feet, and all signs of the existence of the quartz lode obliterated. From the height of one thousand feet the lode could not be seen at all, unless one were to crawl to and look over the edge of the precipice, and then its nature could not—except by an experienced miner or geologist—be discerned from that of the neighboring rock. The Indians below would not be apt to disobey orders, leave their posts, and go into the cañon amid tumbling rocks, and the general stolidity and lack of interest of the Papagoes would lead them to attribute the entire work to the eccentricity of their white employer.
The plan formed by Morning was carried into effect. Drills of different length had been provided, and the work was systematized. At six o’clock each morning the Indians commenced work; from eleven to twelve they were allowed for dinner and rest. At five o’clock drilling was suspended, and the work of preparing the blasts was performed. The Indians then retired to a distance, and Morning and Steel would explode the blasts.
At the end of two months’ hard labor the rift was filled with rock and débris to a depth of thirty feet, and the lode completely covered from view. Morning then made a relocation of the mine on the basalt wall above and on the mountain side below. He located extensions, side locations, and tunnel locations in every direction for a mile or more, so as to completely appropriate all approaches to the original location, and prevent others from obtaining any vantage-ground from which drifts might be run under his property. He also located the necessary mill sites, the waters of Rillito Creek, and the timber upon the mountains.
The plateau where he had tethered his horses on his first visit was, with the available adjacent slopes, chosen as a site for buildings he intended to have constructed for the use of the miners and their families, and a rock and earth dam was built in the Rillito several hundred feet above, from whence the water should be piped to the buildings. The Indians were then set to work constructing a wagon road to the mouth of the Rillito.
The work being completed, the entire party now journeyed to Tucson, and the Indians were paid off and returned to the reservation, where they doubtless regaled their tribe with an account of the work they had performed at the instance of the white lunatic who had paid them over four thousand “pesos” in silver to tumble rock into a hole. Yet it is doubtful if such information ever extended beyond members of their tribe, for, on parting with them, Morning presented each worker with a high silk hat, and each squaw with red calico for a gown, and Bob Steel made a speech to them in the Papago tongue, and asked them to agree not to tell the Indian agent, or any white man, where they had been working or what doing, beyond the statement that they had been “building wagon road.” The Indians—naturally secretive—readily gave the required promise.
Having recorded his new location notices, Morning telegraphed to San Francisco for a portable sawmill. He loaded the wagons with a fresh supply of provisions and tools and sent them with a gang of wood-choppers in charge of Steel to the upper camp on the Rillito, with directions to get out logs and haul them to the site of the proposed sawmill.
While awaiting the arrival of the sawmill, Morning visited the neighboring mining camps of Tombstone, Globe, and Bisbee, and selected with great care—after watching them at work and informing himself as to their habits and antecedents—one hundred miners, to whom he agreed to give a steady job for several years, working in eight-hour shifts, at $4.00 per day. He preferred and obtained married men, each man being promised a comfortable cabin, with transportation for his family and effects from Tucson.
In ten days the portable sawmill arrived, and with it and a full outfit of building material, tools, and pipe, Morning, accompanied by a gang of carpenters, was again en route for the mine.
It was busy times at Waterspout, for such was the name given to the new camp, for the next six weeks. By that time the sawmill and shingle machine had turned out sufficient material, and with the carpenters and a number of the wood-choppers who were drafted for the purpose, eighty comfortable board houses had been constructed, with large buildings for shops and offices, and a suitable edifice for a schoolhouse. Water was piped to the little plaza about which the buildings were gathered, and all was ready for the miners.
The sawmill was now set to work getting out timbers for a mill, and for timbering tunnels. The men were all alive with curiosity to know where was the mine for the working of which all these preparations were made, but both Morning and Steel were reticent, and those who were too pressing in their inquiries were quietly given to understand that a continuation of questioning might cause their services to be dispensed with.
All being ready, the teams were sent to Tucson at the appointed time and returned with the miners and their household effects, a number of wagons chartered for the purpose bringing the women and children. Twenty or more adventurers on horseback and in wagons accompanied the party, as by this time curiosity was all ablaze at the proceedings of Morning, whose location notices had been read by hundreds, and been made the subject of frequent comment in the Tucson papers.
Numerous prospecting parties were dispatched to the Santa Catalinas during the next few months, and their members climbed all over the mountains, examined Morning’s location monuments, and returned to Tucson with the report that the Colorado man was clean crazy, that there was not a sign of quartz, or any place where quartz could exist, and that Morning’s friends—if he had any—would do well to appoint a guardian for him.
The plan of production upon which Morning had settled was to extract sufficient gold to gradually substitute that metal for paper, or to make it instead of bonds or credits the basis for paper money in all the civilized world, and to increase the circulation of all countries to the volume per capita of the country having the largest amount.
He learned from the statistics with which he had supplied himself that the money circulation of France, the most prosperous and the most commercially active nation in Europe, was $42.15 per capita, of the United States $24.10, of Great Britain $20.40, of Italy $16.31, of Spain $14.44, and of Germany, $14.23. In the Asiatic, semi-Asiatic and South American countries the money circulation was still less, being but $5.20 per capita in Russia, $3.18 in Turkey, $4.02 in British India, $4.90 in Mexico, $4.29 in Peru, $1.79 in Central America, and $1.29 in Venezuela.
Morning noticed that the greater the money circulation of a country, the greater the civilization, prosperity, and refinement of the people; and metallic money, or paper currency calling for metallic money, being the best money, it would be sure wherever obtainable to drive out all other currency. He proposed, therefore, to increase, as rapidly as was possible, the metallic money of the United States and Europe to the standard per capita of France, beginning with the United States, following with England, and then proceeding to the Continent.
The process of accomplishing this was to be exceedingly simple. He would ship gold bars to the mints of the country whose currency he proposed to increase, and ask that they be coined into the money of the country. The coin received he proposed to deposit in the banks of that country for investment or use therein.
The one danger against which he had to provide was demonetization of gold by the nations. He could only effectually guard against this by withholding all knowledge of the extent of his mine until he should have accumulated a vast deposit of gold bars—say $2,000,000,000 worth—and then deposit these for coinage suddenly and simultaneously at the mints of the world before any law could be enacted depriving gold of its quality as a money metal. Yet it would take several years for the mints to coin so large a sum, and in the meantime gold might be demonetized. In order for Morning to place his gold beyond the reach of such legislation, it was essential to have it coined, or put in form of money having a legal tender value. A slight change in the currency and coinage laws would effect this. In the United States it might be accomplished by an act of Congress requiring the government to receive gold bars, and to issue legal tender gold notes thereon, without actually coining the gold at all. The mints of the United States, working to their full capacity on gold alone, could not turn out more than $50,000,000 in coin per month, while a government printing press could issue $500,000,000 in a day.
Morning concluded that one of his earliest duties would be to visit Washington while Congress was in session, and promote the necessary legislation.
Of the gold which he produced he could ship to the mints openly about one bar in twenty-five. The other twenty-four bars he could keep at the mine until he could build a smelting furnace and manufacture pigs of copper, which should be hollow, and in which gold bars should be concealed, and thus shipped to financial centers, where they could be stored ready for any occasion.
Morning estimated that the production of $100,000,000 per month would require the activity of two hundred stamps, and that with the aid of improved machinery he could reach the ledge and commence the production of gold in about three months. He had now expended for labor, machinery, and supplies about $25,000, and as much more would be required to meet the labor expenses of the next sixty days, while the quartz mills he proposed erecting would require nearly $200,000 more. As the business methods of the railroad company prevented him from keeping his secret, and at the same time realizing any money by shipping ore, he determined to obtain the necessary funds by a sale of his mortgage securities, and, leaving Robert Steel in charge of the work, David Morning departed for Denver.