Show the prospector and his burro you seem to think said the prospector to his burro that only a rough neck has any show in prospecting the hills and the canyons for the precious metals and that if a man comes among us wearing a white shirt and who removes the fuzzy from his chin now and then that he is a sissy boy but none whatever for the stranger may have that in his mental makeup make up which is vastly superior to the equipment of the man who is born in the hills and who has very set and determined ter mined ideas as to where ore should be found and where it cannot exist 1 I know that you think it is the proper thing to spend at least half of the time in the bucket of blood saloon down in camp yonder and that the buzz of the roulette wheel and the clicking of the chips is the very essence of refined society and that the call of all toughs to the bar is an evidence of good fellowship that should cheer the heart of every veteran in the district but you fail to distinguish the fact that this sociability keeps the prospector in from the hills too much of the time and that the money he spends in maintaining his standing with the boys might much better be spent in the purchase of provisions and supplies or in the development of prospects and claims I 1 notice too that you have a sneer on your somewhat expressionless onless face when the tenderfoot comes in and takes his seat in a distant corner of the room and that you are inclined to give him the merry haw haw when he loads his camp outfit on the back of a burro and starts out into the canyon while the rough necks are still in a most hilarious condition but do not be too previous in ill your condemnation of the tenderfoot der foot for he will deliver the goods before lie he has been in the hills for more than a year and in the end he will vill be the owner of a producing and paying mine while the boys will still be having a good time down at the bucket of blood without enough in their pockets for the makings 1 I see that you are ignorant of the fact continued the prospector but the tenderfoot is a live wire although he look it and possibly is unaware of the fact himself to you he looks dead but his grey matter is at work all the time and he is apt to astonish old and veteran mining men by doing things which had long thought to be impossible for as dr acheson says its generally the fellow who know any better who does the thing that cant be done you see the blamed fool know it cant be done and so he goes ahead and does it which all goes to show that it is a mighty good thing for a camp or district to have a few ten derfert in their midst for they do things that cant be done and find gold where the old prospector claims it cannot exist and this reminds me of an experience a few of us once had with a tenderfoot out in the range into this almost inaccessible region a tenderfoot wandered one day he was fresh from the east and knew about as much about mining as a mohave indian does of eating a mulligan stew with a fork but he was as full of hope as an old ham is of skippers and full of ambition and vigor he was inquisitive too and asked so many silly questions and some that the boys could not answer that they began to think he was nutty but he was so cheerful and such good company that we were glad to have him in camp AV we e had been working away on some prospects in the porphyry near a lime contact for this was where we believed gold should exist over the divide there was a serpentine formation which looked almost like lava and as hungry looking as a burro that had been in a corral for a week without food or water we had never prospected it any for we knew that to do this would be foolish as well as useless and so just to razzle bazzle dazzle the tenderfoot we told him to go over oven there when he asked our advice as to good prospecting ground and we thought he might as well put in his time there as any other place for what could one expect from a tenderfoot anyway so he started out in the morning as gay as a lark with pick and shovel on his shoulders while his bobbed tailed fox terrier tore out oft and in among the rocks like mad after squirrels and chipmunks we were too busy to think much about him but he returned at sundown with the statement that lie he believed the mother lode of the district ran through ta the serpentine and we all laughed at him and said that if this was the case it must also outcrop in alkali lake out in the desert the tenderfoot was a little sore the next morning I 1 but lie he went over to the serpentine as full of hope as ever and did not return until it was almost dark what do you think of this he asked as lie he handed us a chunk of queer looking rock weighing five or six pounds that said one of the boys will assay 50 per cent country rock and 50 per cent of chloride of assessments V and then he threw the chunk into the fire on which we had been getting supper the next morning g in ill raking over the ashes I 1 pulled out the rock lock and as the sun struck it fairly I 1 was almost struck dumb with astonishment for gold in chunks and nodules stood out upon it as thick as flies on a dead burro I 1 called to the other boys and when they saw it they were wild with excitement but the tenderfoot took the matter with the utmost coolness for he said he knew that gold was in it for he had made a test the day before with a ways pocket smelter the advertisement ti of which lie he had seen in the salt lake mining alining review well to be brief we gulped down our breakfast like a tramp at a ten cent lunch counter and were over the hill to the serpentine as quick as our legs could carry us here we found that the tenderfoot had sunk a hole on a seam showing on the surface and at a depth of two feet had uncovered a true fissure vein the content of which had no more tile the appearance pe arance of pay ore than a rough neck looked like a fifth avenue swell but it carried the gold all tile the same lots of it and what was better still the tenderfoot like the good fellow he was let us in ill on his find on oil which we located a group of ten tell claims and a mill site we moved our camp over there and at a depth of afif fifty ty feet had five feet of ore between walls that was as full of gold as a cactus plant is of stickers although it was not visible until submitted to fire that fall we took out nearly in ill ore and that winter we formed an incorporated company that worked the mine for years and which has paid over a million in dividends 1 I want to tell you old long ears I 1 concluded the prospector you cannot tell what is in a man by the clothes he wears or from the section he comes from he may liay not know ore when he sees it or a contact from a gash fissure he probably has some new ideas however and good ones at that and so good in the long run that he produces results while the veteran with his dyed in the wool theories stays poor all his life while the tenderfoot soon has a big bank account and gives the police a chase in his big six cylinder auto it is i s never safe to monkey with a tenderfoot for he is more likely to do things that cant be done than he is to follow in old ruts and there you are and then some |