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  “Umm–good!” responded Wiley and, shrugging his shoulders, he led the way on to the mine. There were other faces that he would as soon have seen as the Widow’s fighting mien, and he had brought his own cook along; but Mrs. Huff was a lady and as such it was her privilege to claim her woman’s place in the kitchen. The town was part hers and the restaurant was her livelihood; and then, of course, there was Virginia. Having bidden her good-by, and taken care of her cats, he had reconciled himself to her loss, but not even the smile in her welcoming dark eyes could make him quite forget the Widow. She was an uncertain quantity, like a stick of frozen dynamite that will explode if it is thawed too soon; and there was a bombshell to come which gave more than even promise of producing spontaneous combustion. So Wiley sighed as he fired his cook, and told his men that they would board with the Widow.

  The first dinner was not so much, consisting largely of ham and eggs with the chickens out on a strike; but there was plenty of canned stuff and the Widow promised wonders when she got all her boxes unpacked. Yet with all her work before her and the dishes unwashed, she followed the crowd to the mine. That was the day of days, from which Keno would date time if Wiley made his promise good; and every man in town, and woman and child, went over to watch them begin. Up the old, abandoned road the auto trucks crept and crawled, and the shed and the houses that had been prepared by Blount now gave shelter to his hated successor. Only one man was absent and he sat on the hill-top, looking down like a lonely coyote. It was Stiff Neck George, that specter at the feast, the harbinger of evil to come; but as Wiley ordered the empty trucks to back up against the dump he glanced at the hill-top and smiled.

  “We’ll take back a load of tungsten,” he announced to the drivers and the crowd of onlookers stared.

  “Just load on that white stuff,” he explained to the muckers and there was a general rush for the dump.

  “What did you say that stuff was?” inquired Death Valley Charley, after a hasty look at his specimen; and Keno awaited the answer, breathless.

  “Why, that’s scheelite, Charley,” replied Wiley confidentially, “and it runs about sixty per cent tungsten. It comes in pretty handy to harden those big guns that you hear shooting over in France.”

  “Oh, tungsten,” muttered Charley, blinking wisely at the rock while everyone else grabbed a sample. “Er–what do you say they use it for?”

  “Why, to harden high-speed steel for guns and turning-tools–haven’t you read all about it in the papers?”

  “How much did you say it was worth?” asked the Widow cautiously, and Wiley knew that the bombshell was ignited.

  “Well, that’s a question,” he began, “that I can answer better when I get a report on this ore. It’s all mixed up with quartz and ought to be milled, by rights, before I even ship it; but since the trucks are going back–well, if it turns out the way I calculate it might bring me forty dollars a unit.”

  “A unit!” repeated the Widow, her voice low and measured. “Well, I’d just like to know how much a unit is?”

  “A hundredth of the standard of measure–in this case a ton of ore. That would come to twenty pounds.”

  “Twenty pounds! What, of this stuff? And worth forty dollars! Well, somebody must be crazy!”

  “Yes, they’re crazy for it,” answered Wiley, “but it’s just a temporary rage, brought on by the European war. The market is likely to break any time.”

  “Why–tungsten!” murmured the Widow. “Who ever heard of such a thing? And it’s been lying here idle all the time.”

  “How much would that be a ton?” piped up someone in the crowd, and Mrs. Huff put her head to one side.

  “Let’s see,” she said, “forty dollars a unit–that’s one hundredth of a ton. Oh, pshaw, it can’t be that. Let’s see, twenty pounds at forty dollars–that’s two dollars a pound; and two thousand pounds, that’s–oh, I don’t believe it! I never even heard of tungsten!”

  “No, it’s a new metal,” replied Wiley ever so softly, “or rather, it’s an acid. The technical magazines are full of articles that tell you all about it. It’s found in wolframite, and hubnerite and so on; but this is calcium tungstate, where it is found in connection with lime. The others are combined variously with iron or manganese─”

  “Yes, manganese,” broke in Charley importantly. “I know that well–and wolfite and all the rest. It certainly is wonderful how they build them big cannons that will shoot for twenty-two miles. But it’s tungsden that does it, tungsden in connection with electricity and the invisible rays of raddium.”

  “Oh, shut up!” burst out the Widow, thrusting him rudely aside and seizing a fresh handful of the rock. “I just can’t hardly believe it.” She gazed at the glossy fragments and then at the muckers, industriously loading the trucks; and then she cocked her head on one side.

  “Let’s see–two times twenty–that’s forty dollars a ton. No–four hundred! Why, no–four thousand!” She stopped short and made a hurried re-calculation, while a murmur ran through the crowd, and then Death Valley Charley gave a whoop.

  “Four thousand!” he shouted. “I told ye! I knowed it! I claimed she was rich, all the time!”

  “You did not!” snapped the Widow, putting her hand under his jaw and forcibly stifling his whoops. “You poor, crazy fool, you knew nothing of the kind–you sold out for five thousand dollars!” She pushed him away with a swift, disdainful shove that sent him reeling through the crowd and then she whirled on Wiley. “And I suppose,” she accused, “that you knew all the time that this dump here was nothing but tungsten?”

  “Well, I had a good idea,” he admitted deprecatingly, “although it’s yet to be tested out. This is just a sample shipment─”

  “Yes, a sample shipment; and at two dollars a pound how much will it bring you in? Why, nothing, hardly; a mere bagatelle for a gentleman and a scholar like you; but what about me and poor Virginia, slaving around to cook your meals? What do we get for all our pains? Oh, I could kill you, you scoundrel! You knew it all the time, and yet you let me sell those shares!”

  She choked and Wiley shifted uneasily on the ore-pile, for of course he had done just that. To be sure he had urged her to sell them to his father for the sum of ten cents a share; but the mention of that fact, in her heated condition, would probably gain him nothing with the Widow. She was gasping for breath and, if nothing intervened, he was in for the scolding of his life. But it was all in the day’s work and he glanced about for Virginia, to seek comfort from her smiling eyes. She would understand now why he had given her back her stock, and advised her from the start not to sell; but–he looked again, for her dark orbs were blazing and her lips were moving as with threats.

  “You knew it all the time!” screamed the Widow in a frenzy, but Wiley barely heard her. He heard her words, for they assaulted his ears in a series of screeching crescendos, but it was the unspoken message from the lips of Virginia that cut him to the quick. He had expected nothing else from the abusive Widow; but certainly, after all the kindnesses he had done her, he was entitled to something better from Virginia. Not only had he warned her to hold on to her stock, at a time when one word might ruin him; but he had bought it from Charley and then given it back, to show how he valued her friendship. And yet now, while the others were shouting with joy or rushing to stake out more claims, she stood by the Widow and with cruel, voiceless words added her burden to this pæan of hate. And she looked just like her mother!

  “You shut up, you old cat!” he burst out fiercely, as the Widow rushed in to assault him. “Shut your mouth and get off my ground!” He drew back his palm to launch a swift blow and then his hand fell slack. “Well, holler then,” he said, “what do I give a dam’ whether you like the deal or not? You’d be yammering, just the same. But it’s lucky for you you’re a woman.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER XV

  The God of Ten Per Cent

  It was the nature of the Widow to resort to violence in every crisis of her life and at eac
h fresh memory of the effrontery of Wiley Holman she searched the empyrean for words. From the very start he had come to Keno with the intention of stealing her mine. First it was his father, who pitied her so much he was willing to buy her shares; then it was the tax sale, and he had sneaked in at night and tried to jump the Paymaster; then he had deceived her and stood in with Blount to make her sell all her stock for a song; and then, oh hateful thought, he had actually sold out to Blount for a hundred dollars, cash; only to put Blount in the hole and buy the mine back again for the price of the ore on the dump!

  The Widow poured forth her charges without pausing for breath or noticing that her audience had fled, and as Wiley went on about his business she raised her voice to a scream. The rest of the Kenoites, and some of the workmen, were out staking the nearby hills; but whenever she stopped she thought of some fresh duplicity which made reason totter on its throne. He had refused half the mine from Blount as a gift and then turned around and bought it all. He had refused to buy her shares, time and again, when he knew they were worth a million; and then, to cap the climax, he had let her sell to Blount and bought them for nothing from him. And even Death Valley Charley–poor, crazy, brain-sick Charley–he had robbed him of all ten of his claims!

  It was a damning arraignment, and Wiley’s men listened grimly, but he only twisted his lip and nodded his head ironically. With one eye on his accuser, who was becoming hysterical, he hustled the ore into the empty trucks and started them off down the road; and then, as Virginia led her mother away, he re-engaged his cook. They had supper that night in the old, abandoned cook-house; and, so wonderfully do great minds work, that a complete bill of grub was discovered among the freight. Not only flour and beans and canned goods and potatoes, but baking powder and matches and salt; and the cook observed privately that you’d think Mr. Holman had intended to make camp all the time. It is thus that foresight leaps ahead into the future and robs life of half its ills; and the Widow Huff, still unpacking plates and saucers, was untroubled by clamorous guests. She had had her say and, as far as Wiley was concerned, there were no more favors to be expected.

  Yet the Widow was wise in the ways of mining camps and she prepared to feed a horde–and the next day they came, by automobile and motor-truck, until every table was filled. The rush was on, for four-thousand dollar ore will bring men from the ends of the world. Before the sun had set in the red glow of a sandstorm the desert was staked for miles. From the chimneys of old houses, long abandoned to the rats, rose the smokes of many fires and the rush and whine of passing automobiles told of races to distant grounds. All the old mines in the district, and of neighboring districts where the precious “heavy spar” occurred, were re-located–or jumped, as the case might be–and held to await future developments. The first thing was to stake. They could prospect the ground later. Tungsten now was king. Men who had never heard the name, or pronounced it haltingly, now spoke learnedly of tungsten tests; and he was a poor prospector indeed who lacked his bottle of hydrochloric acid and his test-tubes and strip of shiny tin. They swarmed about the base of the old Paymaster dump like bees around a broken pot of honey and when, pounded up and boiled in the hydrochloric acid, the solution bit the tin and turned bright blue, there was many a hearty curse at the fickle hand of fortune which had led Wiley Holman to that treasure.

  It had lain there for years, trampled down beneath their feet. Now this kid, this mining-school prospector, had come back and grabbed it all. Not only the Paymaster with its tons of mined ore, but the ten claims to the north, all showing good scheelite, which Death Valley Charley had located–he had held them down as well. Two hundred dollars down and a carefully worded option had tied them up for five thousand dollars, and there were tungsten-mad men in that crowd of boomers who would have given fifty thousand apiece. They came up to the mine where Wiley was working and waved their money in his face, and then went off grumbling as he refused all offers and went busily about his work. So they came, and went, until at last the great wave brought Samuel J. Blount himself.

  He came up the trail smiling, for there was nothing to be gained by making belated complaints; but when he saw the pile of precious white rock the smile died away in spite of him. It was the boast of Blount that, buying or selling, he always held out his ten per cent; but that pile of ore had cost him dear and he had sold it out for next to nothing. And it was his other boast that he could read men’s hearts when they came to buy or sell, but here was a young man who had seen him coming twice and gained the advantage both times. So the smile grew longer in spite of his best efforts and when at last he found Wiley Holman in the office of the company it was perilously near a sulk.

  “Well, good morning, Wiley,” he began with unction, and then he looked grievously about. The expensive gas engine which he had bought and installed was already unwatering the mine; spare timbers were going down, the new blacksmith-shop was running and Wiley was sitting at his desk. Everything was there, just the way he had left it, except that it belonged to Wiley. Blount heaved a heavy sigh and then set his features resolutely, for the battle was not over yet. To be sure the mine was bonded for a measly fifty thousand dollars, and his stock was tied up under an option; but many things can happen in six months’ time and Wiley was only a boy. Granted that he was a miner and understood ore, there is such a thing as an “Act of God.” Cables break without reason, mines cave and timbers fall; and certainly if there is a God of Ten Per Cent his just wrath would be visited upon Wiley. Blount knew that great god and worshipped him continually and he felt certain that something would happen, for when boys out of college take money away from bank presidents it comes dangerously close to sacrilege.

  “Well, well,” murmured Blount, “quite a change, quite a change. Are you sure that stuff is tungsten, Wiley?”

  “Yes,” responded Wiley, affecting a becoming modesty to cover up his youthful smirk. “Would you like to see it tested?”

  “Very much,” answered Blount, and followed after him to the assay office, which Wiley had hurriedly fitted up. Wiley took a piece of scheelite and pounded it in a mortar until it was fine as flour, then dropped it into a test-tube and boiled it over a flame in a solution of hydrochloric and nitric acids.

  “Now,” he said, when the tungstic acid had been dissolved, and he had dropped a small bar of tin into the solution. It turned a dark blue and Blount sighed again, for he had looked up the test in advance. “If it turns blue,” a prospector had told him, “like the color of me overalls, then, sure as hell, it’s tungsten.”

  “Well, well,” commented Blount, gazing mildly about, for great men do not stop to repine, “and what do you use these big scales for?”

  “That’s for the quantitative test,” explained Wiley importantly. “By weighing the sample first and extracting the tungsten we get the percentage, when it’s been filtered and dried and weighed again, of the tungstic acid in the ore. But it’s quite an elaborate process.”

  “Yes, yes,” assented Blount, still managing to smile pleasantly. “Rather out of my line, I guess. What per cent do your samples average?”

  “Oh, between sixty and seventy when I pick my specimens. I’m rigging up a jigger to separate the ore until I can get capital to start up the mill. It ought to be milled, by rights, and only the concentrates shipped; but while I’m getting started─”

  “Oh, draw on me–any time,” broke in Blount, smiling radiantly. “I’d be only too glad to accommodate you. That’s my business, you know; loaning out money on good security, and you’re good up to fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Do you mean it?” demanded Wiley after a startled silence, and Blount slapped him heartily on the back.

  “Just try me,” he said. “I’ve been looking up the market and tungsten is simply booming. It’s quoted at forty-five for sixty per cent concentrates, and you must have tons and tons on the dump.”

  “Yes, lots of it,” admitted Wiley, “and say, now that you mention it, I believe I’ll take you up. I need a little
money to install some machinery and get the old mill to running. How about ten thousand dollars?”

  “Why–all right,” assented Blount, after a moment’s thought. “Of course you’ll give some security?”

  “Oh, sure,” agreed Wiley. “My option on the mine–I suppose that’s what you’re after?”

  Blount blinked for a moment, for such plain speaking was surprising from one as shrewd as Wiley, but he summoned up his smile and nodded. “Why–why, yes, that’s all right. Say one per cent a month–payable monthly–those are our ordinary short-time terms.”

  “Suits me,” said Wiley. “But no cut-throat clauses–none of this Widow Huff line of stuff. If I forget to pay my interest that doesn’t make the principal due and the security forfeit and so on, world without end.”

  “Oh, no; no, certainly,” cried Blount with alacrity. “We’ll make it a flat loan, if you like, and endeavor to treat you right. Of course you’ll start a checking account and─”

  “No,” said Wiley, “if I borrow the money I’ll take it out of your bank and put it in another, right away. I never let friendship interfere with business or warp my business judgment.”

  “Yes, but Wiley,” protested Blount, “what difference does it make? Isn’t my bank perfectly safe and sound?”

  “Undoubtedly,” returned Wiley, “but–do you happen to remember a little check for four hundred dollars? It was made out by me in favor of Death Valley Charley and they cashed it through your bank–Virginia Huff, you know–in payment for Paymaster stock. Well, if you’re going to keep track of my business like that─”

  “Oh, no, no,” exclaimed Blount, suddenly remembering the means by which he had detected Wiley’s purchase of Virginia’s stock, “you misunderstand me, entirely. If you want to wait a few days for the money you are welcome to put it anywhere.”

  “Well, hold on,” began Wiley. “Now maybe I’d better go to the other bank─”