The Mystery of The Barranca

“Do you suppose – ” Billy glanced toward the peons, who stood close by.

Seyd shook his head. “No, they had nothing to gain by it, and everything to lose. It was the easiest thing in the world for anybody to steal into the woods at night and slip a ton of this into the charcoal piles.”

“Man, why didn’t we think of it?” Billy groaned.

In moments of stress no two natures will express themselves in quite the same way. As they stood looking gloomily over the wreck big tears slowly forced themselves out of Billy’s inflamed eyes and washed white runnels down the soot. Heartbroken, he looked up in sudden fright as Seyd burst out laughing.

“Bob! Bob!” he pleaded. “Have you gone crazy? Get a grip on yourself, there’s a good fellow!”

But his pathetic anxiety merely caused Seyd to laugh the more. It was not that he was hysterical. Somehow the thought of the pain and travail, trouble, anxiety, and discomforts they had endured during the past three months touched his sense of humor.

“We have to allow that they made a pretty clean job,” he said, wiping his eyes. “Let’s be thankful that you were out of the way.”

“Where are you going?” Billy called out, as he began to walk away.

“To finish my sleep and catch up a few hours on all that I have lost in the last three months. Take a nap yourself.”

“Oh, I couldn’t.”

He undoubtedly thought so, yet when Seyd came out again, having slept the clock round, it was to find Billy curled up and snoring hard under the shade of the palm mat that Caliban had stretched between him and the sun. “Quit your fooling,” he broke in severely on Seyd’s chaffing. “Don’t you know that we are down to our last dollar?”

“Thirty-three dollars and sixty cents Mex,” Seyd gravely corrected. Kicking a chunk of cooled matte, he added: “But we now have this. It ought to stake us for a new start.”

Billy, however, was not to be so easily separated from his grief. “Where are you going to raise capital,” he demanded, “with every spare dollar in California locked up in the Nevada gold fields? If this had happened a year ago, before the Tonopah rush, we might have done it. But now?” He shook a doleful head.

“Well – New York?”

“Worse and more of it. The New Yorkers want all the bacon for killing the pig. Might as well give them the mine at once. No, Bob, it’s all off. We’re done – cooked a lovely brown in our own grease. Why didn’t we guard those piles! Who do you suppose did it? Don Luis?”

Seyd shrugged. “Quien sabe? Doesn’t look like his style. Of one thing, however, we can be certain. Your common peon doesn’t habitually walk around with dynamite in his jeans. If I was going to lay any money, I’d place it on your friend Sebastien. But we haven’t any time to fool on detective work. The question is – what’s to be done?”

It was no light problem. As Billy had said, every dollar of Western mining capital was invested in Nevada, and Mexican projects, however good, would have to wait till the new gold fields were completely exploited. A canvass of moneyed friends yielded no results, for, while the wreck lay there under their eyes to emphasize the possibility of similar future troubles, they could not but feel it to be a hazardous venture for any person of limited means. Night brought no conclusion. But, having slept on it again, they arose and began once more, unconscious of the fact that while they lay in the heavy shade of a wild fig tree, proposing, debating, rejecting various plans, the solution was fast approaching upon its own legs.

Obviously, neither of them recognized the solution in the person of Don Luis when, about the middle of the forenoon, his horse lifted him up over the edge of the grade. On the contrary, it is doubtful whether smiling fortune was ever met with a blacker scowl than Billy’s. Growling, “He’s come up for a huge gloat,” he would undoubtedly have returned some insult to the old man’s greeting but for Seyd’s stealthy kick on the shins.

Prepared as he was by the reports that charcoal-burners had brought to San Nicolas, Don Luis’s face expressed his utter astonishment at the extent of the ruin. “We but heard of it last night,” he told them. “It was, I suppose, accidental? I understand that these furnaces – dynamite? Señor?” He glanced with an interrogative frown at the peons asleep in the shade of the adobe. “It was not they?”

Reassured on that point, he nodded in confirmation of Seyd’s statement that it would be foolish to hunt for the culprit. “As well try to single out a flea on a peon’s dog. I warned you, señor, to expect an enemy in every stone of the Barranca. It would have been well had you listened. But” – his eyes, hands, and shoulders expressed his acceptance of fate – “it is done. And now?”

“We shall rebuild – as soon as we can raise the money.”

Turning to survey the destruction, Don Luis hid a sudden gleam that was evenly compounded of admiration and irritation. When he spoke again, shrewd calculation peered from his half-closed eyes. “This time you will build a larger – ”

“ – Plant?” Seyd supplied the word. “No.”

“But I am told, señor, that the larger the plant the greater the profits.”

Seyd raised comical brows. “Fifty thousand dollars, señor – gold?”

“A small sum to your rich American capitalists.”

“But we are not capitalists. No, we shall have to get along with a small furnace.”

The calculation deepened in the old man’s brown eyes. After a pause, to their utter astonishment, it took form in words. “But if you could raise the money?”

“What’s the use of talking; we can’t.”

“If I were to lend it to you?”

“You!” It was Billy who expressed their wonder. Seyd added, after a pause, “But we have no security to offer – that is, nothing but the mine.”

“And if we ran away?” Billy suggested, grinning. “Took your money and never came back?”

For the first time in their acquaintance a touch of humor lightened the heavy bronzed face. “There are some in this valley, señor, who might not count it too high a price. But as you say” – he bowed to Seyd – “the mine is security enough. Now that you have shown how, I might even work it myself. To put in a complete – ”

“ – Plant.” Billy supplied the strange word.

“How long?”

“Between six and nine months. We should then require a little time to smelt some ore and realize. We could not – ”

“Si, si!” In his impatience Don Luis relapsed into Spanish. “Si, one would not expect immediate repayment. Perhaps five thousand pesos at the end of a year – ”

“Oh, we could do better than that. Ten thousand of a first payment, fifteen for the second, the remainder at a third with interest – ”

“Interest? I had not thought of that.” But he yielded to their insistence. “Very well, if you will have it! Shall we say five per-cent.? Bueno! You will, of course, have to make a trip to the United States to buy your material. If you will call at San Nicolas on your way the administrador will have letters prepared to my bankers in Ciudad, Mexico.”

With a shrug that expressed relief at the conclusion he changed the subject. Riding forward to obtain a closer view of the furnace, he again clucked his surprise at the complete destruction, wagged a grave head over the half bushel of dynamite that the peons had picked out of the charcoal, curiously examined a piece of copper matte, lifting heavy brows over the statement of its values, then rode quietly away, leaving Seyd and Billy to recover as best they could from this fortunate stroke.

“Am I dreaming?” Billy’s exclamation defined their mental condition. “Hit me, Bob. I want to make sure that I’m awake.”

Convinced, he gasped with his first breath: “Fifty thousand dollars! By golly! Why, we can put in a complete outfit.”

“Reverberatories with water jackets.” Seyd took up the tale again. “We’ll build down in the valley.”

“Aerial cable – ”

“ – With iron self-dumping buckets – ”

“ – A flat-bottomed sternwheeler to – ”

“ – Take our copper down to the coast.”

Blinded by the sudden light that had flashed out of their black despair they stood for some time looking out over the Barranca with shining eyes which saw a small mining town rising out of the jungle’s tangles. It was fully ten minutes before Seyd came back to earth.

“I wonder what is behind all this? Seems rather funny that the old chap should come to our help?”

“Not knowing, can’t say and don’t care a darn! So far as I am concerned, at fifty thousand a throw he can be just as inconsistent as he jolly well likes.”