The Story of a Mine | Page 6

the ground. Whatever enjoyment the rascal
may have had in their useless labors he did not show it, but it was
observed that his left eye often followed the broad figure of the
ex-vaquero, Pedro, and often dwelt on that worthy's beetling brows and
half-savage face. Meeting that baleful glance once, Pedro growled out
an oath, but could not resist a hideous fascination that caused him again
and again to seek it.
The scene was weird enough without Wiles's eye to add to its wild
picturesqueness. The mountain towered above,--a heavy Rembrandtish
mass of black shadow,--sharply cut here and there against a sky so
inconceivably remote that the world-sick soul must have despaired of
ever reaching so far, or of climbing its steel-blue walls. The stars were
large, keen, and brilliant, but cold and steadfast. They did not dance nor
twinkle in their adamantine setting. The furnace fire painted the faces
of the men an Indian red, glanced on brightly colored blanket and
serape, but was eventually caught and absorbed in the waiting shadows
of the black mountain, scarcely twenty feet from the furnace door. The
low, half-sung, half- whispered foreign speech of the group, the roaring
of the furnace, and the quick, sharp yelp of a coyote on the plain below
were the only sounds that broke the awful silence of the hills.
It was almost dawn when it was announced that the ore had fused. And
it was high time, for the pot was slowly sinking into the fast- crumbling
oven. Concho uttered a jubilant "God and Liberty," but Don Jose Wiles
bade him be silent and bring stakes to support the pot. Then Don Jose
bent over the seething mass. It was for a moment only. But in that
moment this accomplished metallurgist, Mr. Joseph Wiles, had quietly

dropped a silver half dollar into the pot!
Then he charged them to keep up the fires and went to sleep--all but
one eye.
Dawn came with dull beacon fires on the near hill tops, and, far in the
East, roses over the Sierran snow. Birds twittering in the alder fringes a
mile below, and the creaking of wagon wheels,--the wagon itself a
mere cloud of dust in the distant road,--were heard distinctly. Then the
melting pot was solemnly broken by Don Jose, and the glowing
incandescent mass turned into the road to cool.
And then the metallurgist chipped a small fragment from the mass and
pounded it, and chipped another smaller piece and pounded that, and
then subjected it to acid, and then treated it to a salt bath which became
at once milky,--and at last produced a white something,--mirabile
dictu!--two cents' worth of silver!
Concho shouted with joy; the rest gazed at each other doubtingly and
distrustfully; companions in poverty, they began to diverge and suspect
each other in prosperity. Wiles's left eye glanced ironically from the
one to the other.
"Here is the hundred dollars, Don Jose," said Pedro, handing the gold to
Wiles with a decidedly brusque intimation that the services and
presence of a stranger were no longer required.
Wiles took the money with a gracious smile and a wink that sent
Pedro's heart into his boots, and was turning away, when a cry from
Manuel stopped him. "The pot,--the pot,--it has leaked! look! behold!
see!"
He had been cleaning away the crumbled fragments of the furnace to
get ready for breakfast, and had disclosed a shining pool of
QUICKSILVER!
Wiles started, cast a rapid glance around the group, saw in a flash that
the metal was unknown to them,--and then said quietly:

"It is not silver."
"Pardon, Senor, it is, and still molten." Wiles stooped and ran his
fingers through the shining metal.
"Mother of God,--what is it then?--magic?"
"No, only base metal." But here, Concho, emboldened by Wiles's
experiment, attempted to seize a handful of the glistening mass, that
instantly broke through his fingers in a thousand tiny spherules, and
even sent a few globules up his shirt sleeves, until he danced around in
mingled fear and childish pleasure.
"And it is not worth the taking?" queried Pedro of Wiles.
Wiles's right eye and bland face were turned toward the speaker, but his
malevolent left was glancing at the dull red-brown rock on the hill side.
"No!"--and turning abruptly away, he proceeded to saddle his mule.
Manuel, Miguel, and Pedro, left to themselves, began talking earnestly
together, while Concho, now mindful of his crippled mule, made his
way back to the trail where he had left her. But she was no longer there.
Constant to her master through beatings and bullyings, she could not
stand incivility and inattention. There are certain qualities of the sex
that belong to all animated nature.
Inconsolable, footsore, and remorseful, Concho returned to the camp
and furnace, three miles