Show the prospector and his burro by will C higgins 1 I see said the pro prospector to his burro that you seem to be overcome with admiration when you gaze on the rough necks who gather around the roulette wheel in baldy murphys Murp hys joint at the mouth of the canyon but that you take scant notice of the quiet sturdy and clean looking man who sits A the corner reading the latest number of the mining review and that you think the loudmouthed loud mouthed boisterous fellows who put their chips on the 00 with the green to win would make great records out in the hills when they get ready to hunt for the elusive prospect but none whatever for they would never get more than a mile up the canyon before they would look like a ragged shirt out on the bashline wa Is for the quiet man however who is only down the canyon for a new lot of supplies and who seems to be improving his mind by carefully going over one of the most reliable and up to date mining publications in this intermountain region you will find nd that he knows all of the formations hereabout as thoroughly as a coyote knows the trails and by paths of the desert country below us and that he has more good prospects staked out between here and thunder mountain wash than the whole bunch at the wheel ever thought of having for he is a hard worker both with his brains and his hands and believes dame fortune can be won to better advantage with pick and shovel than she can with blue and white chips at the roulette wheel these roughnecks rough necks that you admire so much 12 continued the prospector glare are most all of them dreamers and are only ambitious during their hours of sleep in the morning they get up and are full of enthusiasm for they have been dreaming of wonders performed and they set out for the canyons with glowing visions of the wealth they will uncover during the day and of the great mines they will find in fact they feel as if they could push over a precipice or topple a young and s sprightly ly mountain over so they can see if its roots penetrate babu bously rich deposits of gold but halt half way up the rugged trail they become weak in the knees and their newborn new born ambition begins to wear on the edges and run down at atthe the heel and so they turn back cursing the feeble remains of the erstwhile frolick some and sprightly ambition which is now black in the face and in need of a galvanic vattey in order to bring back even a mere trace of 1 liap and so it goes with people of thi s cla ss they have great dreams of what they will ill accomplish but believe me they hardly ever get out of sight of baldys joint and in their hearts they really never intend to the other man however who is as choice with his words as he is with the company he keeps is the man who will cultivate his ambition and gl give ive it a chance to do things he will take it out into the mountains with him give it a chance at the mulligan stew and then set it to work the face of the drift and mucking out the tunnel and he stays right with it day and night and is not aged if he does not succeed in turning up something big within a week a month or a year for he knows he is on the right track and that eventually with his this ambition he will be having the best there is in the land while the fellows at the joint are still filling up on boarding house hash you say that you have always thought that a big noise was indicative of wonderful results to follow but in this you are mistaken for it is usually the quiet man whose ambition is trained to silence that wins out in the long run I 1 know it is hard to denion demonstrate strate to your feeble intellect the difference between hilarious boasting and a determined intensified purpose but it is as great as that which separates a stroke of lightning and the thunder that follows the lightning is effective the thunder is nothing more than a big noise A few years ago over in the bizzard pass country j I 1 met with two men who were prospecting on the hot pot range both were young and husky one was always telling what great things he was going to accomplish while the other was as quiet as a freckled faced girl at a picnic one would think to hear the loudmouthed loud mouthed fellow that he had a pass key to the vaults of the bank of england and that one had only to follow him in order to get rich while as for the other man he was so silent and unobtrusive that it was a question if he be really knew what he was in the hills for the first prospector would start out in the morning under a full head of steam and looked as if he was fired up for an allday all day run but go back to his shack any time before 10 a m anu and he would be found snoozing oozing sn in his bunk or reading such literature as canyon pete and the bullion crime of fifty three the other however would rarely return before 6 in the evening and after supper he would be busy panning rock or examining pieces of float he had found during the day for two weeks I 1 camped near these two prospectors nearly every other night the one of the big noise would go down to the thirst parlor near the mouth of the canyon returning late and always somewhat wobbly in his underpinning and making a great spoil spell about the big ambition he carried around with him the quiet man however turned in at an early hour and was up with the lark it was easy for me to see by this time which of the two was destined to win out and before I 1 left the quiet persistent prospector had discovered one of the most promising prospects I 1 have ever seen while the other whom I 1 had dubbed the great joke found as much as a piece of tenderfoot gold to show for the prospecting he had done 1 I want to tell you old long ears concluded the prospector ambition is a peculiar thing and there are several varieties and even imitations some brands become bowlegged bow legged and prematurely sway backed through misuse other varieties are mis mated and never reach maturity but the genuine blown in the bottle article although sometimes hidden by its wrapping is the one which wins out in the long run when I 1 meet with the different breeds up in the hills it takes but a few days to classify them all discard the ones with the big noise and form a partnership with the silent one and nd there you are and then some 0 |