Silver and Gold: A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining CampCoolidge, Dane
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Silver and Gold: A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp
Coolidge, Dane
Gold mines and mining -- Fiction; Silver mines and mining -- Fiction; Western stories
"That's the story," admitted Bunker, "but say, here's another one--did
you ever hear of the hobo Mark Twain? Well, he was a well-known
character in the old days around Globe--kinder drifted around from one
camp to the other and worked all his friends for a dollar. That was his
regular graft, he never asked for more and he never asked the same man
twice, but once every year he'd make the rounds and the old-timers kind
of put up with him. Great story-teller and all that and one day I was
sitting talking with him when a mining man came into the saloon. He
owned a mine, over around Mammoth somewhere, and he wanted a man to herd
it. It was seventy-five a month, with all expenses paid and all you had
to do was to stick around and keep some outsider from jumping in. Well,
when he asked for a man I saw right away it was just the place for old
Mark and I began to kind of poke him in the ribs, but when he didn't
answer I hollered to the mining man that I had just the feller he
wanted. Well, the mining man came over and put it up to Mark, and
everybody present began to boost. He was such an old bum that we wanted
to get rid of him and there wasn't a thing he could kick on. There was
plenty of grub, a nice house to live in and he didn't have to work a
tap; but in spite of all that, after he'd asked all kinds of questions,
Old Mark said he'd have to think it over. So he went over to the bar and
began to figger on some paper and at last he came back and said he was
sorry but he couldn't afford to take it.
"'Well, why not?' we asks, because we knowed he was a bum, but he says:
'Well gentlemen, I'll tell ye, it's this way. I've got twelve hundred
friends in Arizona that's worth a dollar apiece a year; but this danged
job only pays seventy-five a month--I'd be losing three hundred a year."
"Huh, huh," grunted Big Boy, picking up some folded tarts, "your mind
seems to be took up with hoboes."
"Them's my wife's pay-streak biscuits," grinned Bunker Hill, "or at
least, that's what I call 'em. The bottom crust is the foot-wall, the
top is the hanging-wall, and the jelly in the middle is the pay streak."
"Danged good!" pronounced the hobo licking the tips of his fingers and
Old Bunk tapped him on the knee.
"Say," he said, "seeing the way you whipped that jasper puts me in mind
of a feller back in Texas. He was a big, two-fisted hombre, one of these
Texas bad-men that was always getting drunk and starting in to clean up
the town; and he had all the natives bluffed. Well, he was in the saloon
one day, telling how many men he'd killed, when a little guy dropped in
that had just come to town, and he seemed to take a great interest. He
kept edging up closer, sharpening the blade of his jack-knife on one of
these here little pocket whetstones, until finally he reached over and
cut a notch in the bad man's ear.
"There," he says, "you're so doggoned bad--next time I see you I'll know
you!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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