Take the case of Corona Jewel. There was a good mine, simply going to ruin for lack of common sense.

“She ain’t been developed,” Jeff would say. “There’s silver enough in her so you could dig it out with a shovel. She’s full of it. But they won’t get at her and work her.”

Then he’d take a look at the pink and blue certificates of the Corona Jewel and slam the drawer on them in disgust.

Worse than that was the Silent Pine,—a clear case of stupid incompetence! Utter lack of engineering skill was all that was keeping the Silent Pine from making a fortune for its holders.

“The only trouble with that mine,” said Jeff, “is they won’t go deep enough. They followed the vein down to where it kind o’ thinned out and then they quit. If they’d just go right into her good, they’d get it again. She’s down there all right.”

But perhaps the meanest case of all was the Northern Star. That always seemed to me, every time I heard of it, a straight case for the criminal law. The thing was so evidently a conspiracy.

“I bought her,” said Jeff, “at thirty-two, and she stayed right there tight, like she was stuck. Then a bunch of these fellers in the city started to drive her down and they got her pushed down to twenty-four, and I held on to her and they shoved her down to twenty-one. This morning they’ve got her down to sixteen, but I don’t mean to let go. No, sir.”

In another fortnight they shoved her, the same unscrupulous crowd, down to nine cents, and Jefferson still held on.

“They’re working her down,” he admitted, “but I’m holding her.”

No conflict between vice and virtue was ever grimmer.

“She’s at six,” said Jeff, “but I’ve got her. They can’t squeeze me.”

A few days after that, the same criminal gang had her down further than ever.

“They’ve got her down to three cents,” said Jeff, “but I’m with her. Yes, sir, they think they can shove her clean off the market, but they can’t do it. I’ve boughten in Johnson’s shares, and the whole of Netley’s, and I’ll stay with her till she breaks.”

So they shoved and pushed and clawed her down—that unseen nefarious crowd in the city—and Jeff held on to her and they writhed and twisted at his grip, and then—

And then—well, that’s just the queer thing about the mining business. Why, sudden as a flash of lightning, it seemed, the news came over the wire to the Mariposa Newspacket, that they had struck a vein of silver in the Northern Star as thick as a sidewalk, and that the stock had jumped to seventeen dollars a share, and even at that you couldn’t get it! And Jeff stood there flushed and half-staggered against the mirror of the little shop, with a bunch of mining scrip in his hand that was worth forty thousand dollars!

Excitement! It was all over the town in minutes. They ran off a news extra at the Mariposa Newspacket, and in less than no time there wasn’t standing room in the barber shop, and over in Smith’s Hotel they had three extra barkeepers working on the lager beer pumps.

They were selling mining shares on the Main Street in Mariposa that afternoon and people were just clutching for them. Then at night there was a big oyster supper in Smith’s caff, with speeches, and the Mariposa band outside.

And the queer thing was that the very next afternoon was the funeral of young Fizzlechip, and Dean Drone had to change the whole text of his Sunday sermon at two days’ notice for fear of offending public sentiment.

But I think what Jeff liked best of it all was the sort of public recognition that it meant. He’d stand there in the shop, hardly bothering to shave, and explain to the men in the arm-chairs how he held her, and they shoved her, and he clung to her, and what he’d said to himself—a perfect Iliad—while he was clinging to her.

The whole thing was in the city papers a few days after with a photograph of Jeff, taken specially at Ed Moore’s studio (upstairs over Netley’s). It showed Jeff sitting among palm trees, as all mining men do, with one hand on his knee, and a dog, one of those regular mining dogs, at his feet, and a look of piercing intelligence in his face that would easily account for forty thousand dollars.

I say that the recognition meant a lot to Jeff for its own sake. But no doubt the fortune meant quite a bit to him too on account of Myra.

Did I mention Myra, Jeff’s daughter? Perhaps not. That’s the trouble with the people in Mariposa; they’re all so separate and so different—not a bit like the people in the cities—that unless you hear about them separately and one by one you can’t for a moment understand what they’re like.

Myra had golden hair and a Greek face and would come bursting through the barber shop in a hat at least six inches wider than what they wear in Paris. As you saw her swinging up the street to the Telephone Exchange in a suit that was straight out of the Delineator and brown American boots, there was style written all over her,—the kind of thing that Mariposa recognised and did homage to. And to see her in the Exchange,—she was one of the four girls that I spoke of,—on her high stool with a steel cap on,—jabbing the connecting plugs in and out as if electricity cost nothing—well, all I mean is that you could understand why it was that the commercial travellers would stand round in the Exchange calling up all sorts of impossible villages, and waiting about so pleasant and genial!—it made one realize how naturally good-tempered men are. And then when Myra would go off duty and Miss Cleghorn, who was sallow, would come on, the commercial men would be off again like autumn leaves.

It just shows the difference between people. There was Myra who treated lovers like dogs and would slap them across the face with a banana skin to show her utter independence. And there was Miss Cleghorn, who was sallow, and who bought a forty cent Ancient History to improve herself: and yet if she’d hit any man in Mariposa with a banana skin, he’d have had her arrested for assault.

Mind you, I don’t mean that Myra was merely flippant and worthless. Not at all. She was a girl with any amount of talent.