Show the prospector L and his burro I 1 f 9 4 p 1 P you seem to be sleeping on your rights said the prospector to his burro when you let that disreputable lop eared jack drive you away from i that scrap heap in the rear of the hot dog restaurant you have been sorting over for it was yours by right of discovery yes I 1 know the piebald pie bald robber is a roughneck rough neck and that he bites and kicks like a re dlight tough when being run in by a city marshal and yet you should not submit to b eing ousted without putting up some kind of a scrap even if you have to pit your wits against his brutal strength for instance might tie a can to his tall tail sometime when he looking or entice him to stick his head into a saloon window just as a gun play is being pulled off either of these methods if properly applied would most likely drive the intruder out of the camp at a red hot pace leaving you the undisputed possessor of the coveted dump and with a whole skirt skin on your carcas the scheme I 1 see seems to appeal to you and to such an extent that you want to know if I 1 ever canned anyone who tried to take possession of property in which I 1 was interested or if an exhibition of fireworks ever frightened away intruders bent upon claim jumping expeditions of course continued the prospect prospector oi 1 I have had some experience along the lines you mention but in defending my rig rights lits I 1 have never killed a man or inflicted serious injury none whatever but I 1 have had occasion to use brains brai ns instead of muscle and brawn in holding my own on oil more than one occasion one of which I 1 will relate to you if you will turn your head the other way as your breath smells more of garlic and slop barrel odors than it does of sweet sagebrush sage brush perfume a condition that always characterizes a burro who haunts the back baal door of an eating house rather than the cliffs and canyons surrounding a mini mining camp ten or fifteen years ago I 1 took a working lease and a bond and option on the limping jack mine in the trilby range about twenty five miles south of la jora this was an old property that had been profitably worked many years before but which had been practically abandoned because a fault had displaced the ore body which had never been found again or recovered I 1 had visited the mine the month before and had employed a week in a careful examination of its underground workings in these I 1 found a stringer that had probably been overlooked over looked by former operators on each side the formation was considerably sider ably decomposed and a little work convinced me that the throw of the vein had been in the direction taken by the stringer after securing my lease and bond I 1 took in a load of supplies and provisions and was soon at work in my endeavor to find the missing lode and I 1 found that my calculations were correct for I 1 broke into ore inside of a week and after I 1 had squared up the face found I 1 had a breast of three feet of rock that looked good enough to tat eat while ten inches of the ledge was a sugar quartz that was literally literacy bound together by wire gold of course I 1 knew that such ore could not exist in any great quantity and so I 1 handled it with care and as fast as I 1 took it out I 1 cached it in a cave I 1 accidentally ci dentally found about halt half a mile from my camp I 1 tried to keep my find a secret but a strange miner in passing came upon me one day while I 1 was busily engaged in breaking down the ore being taken unawares I 1 hardly knew what to do at first but the light was dim in the face and I 1 soon gathered my wits together and with a bold front told the int intruder fader r that I 1 had C cut ut into a little pocket but I 1 did not know chat it carried then I 1 grabbed a sample from the lower grade stuff and we went out of the tunnel together however he must have secured a piece of the picture rock unbeknown to me but if he did he never let on and after examining the stuff I 1 brought out with me expressed essed the opinion that it was of too low grade to be of shipping value and that he did not care to look at the face again he took dinner with me and left soon after but his actions were so peculiar and he seemed to take e such careful notice of my surroundings that I 1 became suspicious and made up my mind that some night I 1 would receive a predatory visit from him hilm possibly accompanied by companions that night I 1 worked worded like a fiend in taking Z out the rich ore and packing it to my cache then I 1 filled the face with waste rock and vein matter I 1 also filled a dozen sacks with low grade ore and waste and piled them up near the mouth of the tunnel later on during tile the afternoon I 1 rigged up a contrivance at tile the face whereby a loaded revolver was so placed that when discharged the fire would be directed into about two pounds of common black powder I 1 had placed in a cavity in the rock I 1 than ran a cord across the face connecting 1 it 4 1 with the trigger and practically hid tha jhb trap with debris and waste that night 1 took my blankets and bunked on a ledge overhung by a tall cliff but I 1 did not sleep any sometime after ml nud night I 1 heard the footsteps of three or four foul men coming up the trail in the dini dim moonlight I 1 could sl see ee that they approached with caution and that they were heavily armed and I 1 realized how vain it would have been for me to try to defend my treasure by physical effort against such an overwhelming force I 1 could see tha dump and tunnel mouth plainly from my place of concealment and noticed how they gathered about the sacks I 1 had placed there as a decoy in the dim light the rock looked as if it were lousy with ith gold and each man laboring under two sacks carried them down the trail to the canyon below this was repeated until the whole lot had been packed off then the marauders returned to investigate the tunnel leaving one man to guard the entrance the other three went in and had been underground about fifteen minutes when an explosion occurred soon after the three men amen rushed out clothed in tatters and rags and bleeding profusely in a perfect riot they hiked down the trail ad and I 1 saw no more of them I 1 was never bothered after that although the men never suspected I 1 had put a job up on them this I 1 learned two or three years afterwards when I 1 met one of the men comprising the midnight party from him I 1 learned that the man who had visited me so unexpectedly in the tunnel had managed to get hold of a piece of extremely high grade ore with this he excited the cupidity of three others of his kind and the raid was planned with the expectation of getting 0 possession of the mine under pretext of a former and what would be claimed was a valid location it was expected I 1 would make a fight but as everything was serene and peaceful and assuming I 1 was sound asleep it was wag decided to remove the sacked ore as a kind of a nest besl egg in case anything went wrong with the enterprise this done the three entered the kuhnel to investigate the rich find leaving the fourth man to guard the entrance and to keep me off in case I 1 should make appearance pe arance one of the men in the tunnel struck his pick into the face of my side drift hitting the string and pulling the trigger of the cocked revolver this of course ignited the powder and the explosion occurred the men always thought that the pick had struck into a missed hole and were thankful to escape with their lives down the canyon after daylight they examined the sacked ore of course it was all low grade and the three three confederates of the fourth man argued that the latter had played them a mean trick and they beat him almost into insensibility after that I 1 worked in security marketing my high t grade rade which soon played out although I 1 afterwards ter wards mined thousands of tons of fine milling ore which formed the basis for a sale of the property and now a big plant is turning out the gold bars in a most satisfactory manner 1 I want to tell you old long ears concluded the prospector pros a little strategy and a little brain work now and then beats physical force to a frazzle it should be exercised by every mine manager and even by burros and there you are and then some |