Show THE prospector AND HIS BURRO wa 1 V 14 by will C higgins As I 1 was telling you in our last conversation said the prospector to his burro jack and his helper had bad been left high and dry as a result of the landslide caused by the great boulder as it rolled down the face of the cliff and landed on the dump in front of the strata mine where they were at work they had only an insecure footing aside from the tunnel opening and were without food and water still they were in good spirits and if they had only known the latest songs of today would have been singing where do we go from here As it was we could hear the refrain of the girl I 1 left behind me as they made themselves comfortable in the mouth of the tunnel and the chorus echoed up and down the canyon as the opposite cliffs took up the melody from our nearest ap to their place of refuge it was too far for me to throw anything up to the boys and they were without rope of any kind they could not climb up and the situation was really becoming serious when jack with his ready wit took off one of his wool stockings and began to unravel the yarn with which it was made tt it was a good stunt and when he had reduced the sock to a mass of string he tied a piece of rock to one and and tossed it down to me holding to the other end to my end I 1 attached a strong cord and jack drew this up to him then I 1 fastened a quarter inch rope to the cord and when this was safely in jacks hands I 1 hitched on an inch rope which was duly hauled up to the mounth of the tunnel where it was securely anchored to a studding in the face of the workings when all was ready jack let himself over the base of the cliff wound his legs around the rope and slid down to I 1 where I 1 stood the descent was swift notwithstanding the leg hold and both of his hands were blistered to a fare you well when he landed at my feet B but ut he be was tickled and bubbling over with good feeling just the same and when his man also came down by the same jitney line our pleasure knew no measure and we were as happy as kings the two boys were nearly famished however and we soon had a smoking dinner spread out on our crude pine table and we had a hilarious time in reciting the incidents of the day af after ter dinner we buried our dead and then began an investigation of the disclosures made by the shearing of the cliff shelf down to the margin of the little stream and believe me we were so excited over what we found that an outsider not knowing the circumstances would have been led to the belief that we were a bunch of lunatics if he could have seen us 1 I have already told you how the boulder in crashing through the little plateau had exposed a blind ledge that looked good to me when I 1 first saw it upon a more careful examination we were surprised to find how rich the quartz was for it fairly glistened with the yellow metal the tour four of us were mighty busy picking up samples and were so deeply wound up in individual efforts to get some fancy pieces that we were startled as well Is as surprised when jack broke the silence with a whoop that would have been creditable to an apache indian on the warpath karpath war path and he had good reason to shout and danco dance around for he had picked up a fragment as large as his hand that was nearly half pure gold of course we were greatly excited and became as chesty as a bullfrog calling to its mate on the banks of the mill pond at home for we felt as if we had the world by the tail on a downhill down hill pull as all we needed to do was to work our find in order to get enough gold out to more than pay the national debt and you may be sure that we did but little work during the remainder of the day the next morning continued tho the prospector we got busy gathering up the shattered quartz and proceeded to run it through our much to the disappointment of your mother who thought she should be exempted from hard labor after having cleared the canyon of 0 the last of our late antagonists and she grumbled and belched belched like a tramp chopping wood for his breakfast as she pulled the sweep around for a week we worked the little mill and when we at last made a cleanup clean up tip we had made a recovery of something like which we stored in tin cans and hid away under a grain sack in one corner of my tent then we began clearing away for a tunnel site and resumed regular regula shifts again in running a tunnel in on the ledge in doing this work we soon found that there was a two inch streak in I 1 the th 0 vein which was four feet in width that was fabulously rich in its gold content while the balance of the layrock would run 0 ver over to the ton sometimes up to and this streak as the ore was brok en down in the performance of development we carefully sorted and sacked for future treatment while the bulk of the vein was stored on the dump it being our ultimate intention to equip the mine with a twenty stamp mill and we were going to buy our equipment with the gold taken from the after running through the high grade stuff and so we worked away all summer building air castles in our after supper talks and dreaming at night of the great times we would have when we finally emerged from our seclusion and startled the world with our wealth and we were as happy as larks fearing no evil or even imagining that further trouble could befall us until one day the joy of living was snatched from us by an unusual occurrence that happened to jack on my shift I 1 had been working in the tunnel with my helper and had put in a round of holes which were fired as we finished work for the night in the morning jack and his man went up to muck out and careless like he neglected to light his candle before going to the face depending upon the feeble light from the outside to guide his steps his helper followed behind with a wheelbarrow he had a light but this gave no illumination worth mentioning and so he did not see jack when he yelled out in terror as he disappeared from view as he reached the face of the workings the man dropped his wheelbarrow and hastened cautiously on and he was surprised when he found that the last shot had exposed a big crevice in the vein through which jack had fallen to an unknown depth the man called down the opening but received no answer and then he hastened to the outside to inform us of the catastrophe of course we were much alarmed and hurried to the scene of the disappearance the crevice was about two feet in width and its walls were as smooth as a floor we hollered and yelled but could get no response from jack and we hardly knew what to do until jacks helper offered to go down if we would get him a rope this was quickly put into service and tying the rope under the arms of the rescuer the two of us let him gently down until we had nearly reached the length of the rope which was something over a hundred feet long then the man up that he had secured a footing in a sort of cave and that lie he had found jack unconscious but not dead as we had expected then we lowered a bucket of water and were delighted to hear that jack was reviving after what seemed to us up in the tunnel to be almost a lifetime the man called up again he could hardly talk because of his excitement exciter nent but from his incoherent speech we gleaned that in fit making an examination of the cave he had found what he believed to be precious stones possibly diamonds and that they existed there in great quantities of ca course r I 1 was excited also and called to the nian mac to come up if he could and we would make an examination of his treasure trove out in the broad daylight and he made the effort to do so but he had not gained more than two feet in his ascent before the rope broke and he fell to the bottom without injury just how we rescued the two imprisoned men and just what it was the man had found I 1 will tell you in our next fireside chat and I 1 know you wili will find it interesting 1 I want to tell you old long ears concluded the prospector that after the really wonderful discoveries we had already made in the shell hole range it began to look as if we had been set apart by the gods for some particular purpose and that eventually we would be able to solve some of the wonderful secrets of nature and there you are and then some |