“Doctor,” said the professor, “I am silenced but not convinced. The sun is getting too high for further fishing. Come, let us go to luncheon.” CHAPTER VI. “No man can tell what he does not know.” “Bob,” said Morning, as they lighted their cigars, and seated themselves after supper upon the piazza of the railroad hotel at Tucson, “the copper assays are not up to your expectations, still I am inclined to buy the property if I can arrange to employ men at rates that will enable me to work it. What are miners’ wages hereabouts?” “Three dollars and a half a day for ten hours,” replied Steel. “And how much for unskilled laborers for road building, wheeling, and aboveground work?” said Morning. “Two dollars and a half; but for work of that kind you can get Chinamen at $1.50 a day, Mexicans at $1.25, and Papago Indians for $1.00, if you wish to employ them, though I reckon you would have trouble about getting white men to work with either.” “I don’t wish to cut wages on miners, Bob, for they earn all they get, but if I buy that property, there will be a lot of road building, and grading for furnace sites, and wheeling, and other work of the same nature, and unless such work can be done cheaply, it will not pay to hire miners for underground work, or, indeed, to work the copper mines at all. I shall want these unskilled laborers for only a short time, and I have especial reasons for not hiring either white men or Mexicans, neither do I care to employ Chinamen if I can avoid it. Could I, think you, obtain enough Indians for this preliminary work?” “Plenty of them at the San Xavier reservation, nine miles from here. I patter their lingo a little and can get you a gang if you want them.” “I may want to drill and blast down a lot of basalt rock to build the foundations of furnaces and ballast the road with,” said Morning. “Will they do that kind of work?” “Yes, until it comes to firing the blasts. You will need a white man for that. You will also need a white man for blacksmith work—sharpening picks and drills. The Indians cannot work at a forge, and they are nervous about ‘big shoots,’ as they call them.” “Bob, if I take those copper prospects of you at your price, will you hire a gang of Papagoes for me, and take them up there and work them for two or three months under my direction, you and I sharpening the tools and preparing and firing the blasts, I paying you say $10 a day for your services?” “Well, Mr. Morning, I don’t quite like such a job as that, but I am anxious to sell those copper prospects, and I will do it. But if you are going to hire Indian labor, I advise you to do first all the work that you intend to do with it. I mean, it will be best to get through with the Papagoes before you take any white men in there, or else there may be a row, and the white men will drive away the Indians.”