“Or five hundred. Isn’t that what you mean?” Howard found it hard to open his mouth, which seemed to dry out. Dobbs and Curtin were without speech.
“Or five hundred. Right, partner. But here is at least an easy million, if you ask me and my grandfather.”
“A million?” Dobbs and Curtin shouted, and with this they were fully home again, color, breath, wet lips, moisture in the eyes, and all that they had lost during the last two minutes.
“Yes, a full uncut million. If you haven’t found it yet, it’s your fault, not the mountain’s. I know you haven’t got the rich pot yet, although you have been hanging around here eight months or nine. The Indians down in the valley told me that only one man was up here. If you had come upon the right entrance and knocked at the door behind which the treasure is open to view, you would have had so much that you would have left long ago, because you couldn’t carry all that’s here without arousing suspicion and being waylaid on your road home. Or you would have sent back just one man to get the claim legally registered and then have formed a regular mining company, with all the machinery and a hundred men working for you.”
“That so?” Dobbs said scoffingly. “Well, you may as well know facts. We haven’t got anything, nothing. See?”
The stranger could not be talked off. “You may tell me what you like. I don’t believe a word anyhow. I don’t care what you have, how much you have, whether you have anything at all, or what you are doing here. I’m not a baby. If I see three men living up here for eight months, then I know without a Bible that they are not staying for pleasure or for an ordinary fishing-trip. You can’t put this one over on me, partners. You’d better lay the cards on the table and then let’s see who has buried away the four jacks. What’s the use playing hide-and-seek? I’m not a criminal, not a crook, not a spy. I’m just as decent as any one of you three fellers is. Better than you I don’t want to be. It suits me all right to be just the kind you are. We all are Out here to make money. If we were looking for pleasure, we wouldn’t select this godforsaken region full of mosquitoes, yellow fever, typhoidal Water, scorpions, tarantulas, and even hungry tigers sniffing around the camp by night. I know quite well you can bump me off any minute you wish. But that could happen to me any place, even in Chicago walking quietly down the street. You always have to risk something if you want to make money. If you bump me off you can’t be sure but that tomorrow another guy may show up whom you’ll have to give the final works. Or instead of one guy popping up, there may be a full dozen any day. Then you stop bumping off, and you are worse off than you are right now.”
“All right, stranger,” Howard said, “what’s above your shoulders? Spit it out. We are at least willing to tune in.”
“Let’s make a clean breast,” the stranger suggested.
“We might.” Howard filled his cup with fresh coffee. “Now, of course we don’t know who you are or what you are. You may be a spy and you may not. If you are, all that we can lose is our labor of eight months and what we have invested in cold cash. But I tell you it would be expensive for you should you squeal. We’d get you even if we had to look for you in China or on a ranch in the pampas of the Argentine. There would be no quarter. I think you have that clear.”
“Yes, I have. I know I could not get away with it forever. Since I know this, I think we are now on equal terms, so I want to make it plain to you that I don’t want to share in what you have so far, not a cent. I won’t even work near you. We’ll stake our mines and work them as we think best, each party for himself. Right?”
“Right by me. What do you think of that proposition, partners?” Howard asked.
Dobbs and Curtin waited for some time before they answered. Then Curtin said: “Would you mind, stranger, letting us three thresh this out alone among ourselves?”
“Not at all. Go ahead. I’ll have to look after my mules anyway.” He stood up and walked off in the direction in which his mules had gone the night before.
He returned after two hours.
“Found them?” Curtin asked.
“Yes, they are all right. Fine pasture you’ve got around here.”
“Now, let’s all sit down and have this over.” Howard filled his pipe. Having lighted it, he said: “Yep, we’ve got something. Matter of fact, all taken together it’s just good pay for eight months of hard work.”
“That’s what I thought. Now, down in the village I was not just hanging around. I looked about. I noted from sand washed down from these mountains by the heavy rains that there is quite a lot of metal up here.”
Howard interrupted: “I think I know something about prospecting. Not much perhaps, not as much as you seem to know. If there were, as you say, a million here, we sure would have seen it. We haven’t, and that’s that.”
“I’m convinced it is here.” The stranger was very insistent. “It must be here. I simply couldn’t be mistaken. Alone I can’t do it. I need you three fellows. You’ve got all the tools, you’ve got the technical experience, and I have the better knowledge. I’ve studied this line, you haven’t. Now the thing is to find the thick deposit, the lode. I know I could never interest a bank or a mining company in my project, because I’m working only on a hunch which would be extremely difficult to explain to a banker or to a board of directors who want to see things plain and clear. All right, my proposition is this: You keep what you have so far as your well-earned property, but all that is coming to us after we have started to work my plan is cut two fifths my way and three fifths your way.”
The three partners looked at each other and then they laughed right in his face.
“Shavings we can get ourselves; for that we don’t need any help from the outside,” Howard said. “And fairy-tales we had forgotten long before we reached the fourth grade. What you say, partners?”
“We’ve got along fine without you so far arid I think we can do for the rest of our stay here,” Dobbs answered with a smile. “What’s your opinion, Curty?” he added, turning to his partner.
“If you ask me, I’d say we haven’t much to lose if we give this feller’s proposition a chance, at least for a few days. Since we are here anyway, and since we have decided to make off inside of a week, we might just as well have a look at what he offers.”
“Count me out,” Howard said. “These are old magazine stories, nothing new about them. I’m through with this living like wild beasts. I want to have a real bed under my hams; that’s what I want. I’m fully satisfied with what I’ve got now.”
Dobbs had been stirred up by Curtin’s idea. “Why, Howdy, I think Curty isn’t so dumb after all. Let’s stick just a week more. It may bring us something better than we have had during all the eight months of chain-gang life we’ve spent here.”
“You guys win. I can’t make the trip back to Durango all by myself. I know what I can do and what not when alone with pack-burros. So for this reason and for no other I have to stick with you for another week. All right.”
“Understand, stranger,” Curtin began to make clear how he meant his agreement, “we’ve no intention of staying long. I’ve got somebody waiting for me. A dame, if you must know. I need her badly, so let’s say one week more. If we find inside of a week a fair trace of what you tell us is here, then I’ll be willing to hang on longer. If we don’t and it’s just so much more baloney, I’m off with you, old man,” he ended, addressing Howard.
“Who agrees say: ‘Ay!’” Dobbs mocked.
“Now, stranger, since we’re partners, what’s your name?” Howard asked. “And if it’s a secret, then tell us what you wish to be called. We can’t call you mug or stranger or what have you all the time.”