United States or Comoros ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They had it all doped out how they could make sundry clean-ups irrespective of the mine's actual product. That was the first thing that made me dubious. They were stock-market gamblers, manipulators pure and simple. But I might have let it go at that, seeing it was their game and not one that I or anybody I cared about would get fleeced at. I didn't approve of it, you understand.
I don't mean that, quite literally, I thought one man or one generation could accomplish the feat. But I did truly think I could make a beginning. Miss Allen, in spite of the beautiful fights I had, in spite of the spectacular clean-ups we made, I did nothing for the boys that my successor did not wipe out with a single stroke of his pen, his first week in office." Diana drew a long breath.
"Guess that looks good to you." Austin slightly stressed the pronoun. He had taken a reasonless liking for the young man, who from the first had smiled into his frowning face, and treated him as he treated others. Or perhaps Austin liked him because, although the Boy did a good deal of "gassin' with the gang," he had never hung about at clean-ups.
The Aurora Borealis, as the mine was now called, had been working all winter, and gigantic dumps of red pay-dirt stood as monuments to the industry of its workmen. Rumor had it that the "streak" was rich, and that Doctor Slayforth, the owner, would be in on the first boat to personally oversee the clean-ups.
The R. S. P. mine was run rather irregular. The boys took the clean-ups for wages, and the owner took the proceeds from stock he sold as dividends. I may mention there was less in clean-ups than there was in stock, so the future Mrs. P. Douglass was buckin' fate in the shape of a brace game.
Every week or so Baldy, with Irish and Rover and some of the Wild Goose dogs from the Grand Central Ditch House near, would be hitched to a flat car belonging to the place, and would have a trip into town with Moose to take the gold dust from the "clean-ups" to the bank. The car coasted down all the hills, for there was a strong brake to keep it safe.
I knew that: also that I could get after him better single-handed at Skunk's Misery, where he would not expect me; or I would have been gone already. But I didn't air that to Macartney as I followed him into the partitioned-off corner he called his room. He had the last two clean-ups in his safe there, and he nodded to it as he hauled off his shirt for me to bind up his arm.
FAIRBANKS was a different place in 1910 from the centre of feverish trade and feverish vice of 1904-5, when the stores were open all day and half the night and the dance-halls and gambling dens all night and half the day; when the Jews cornered all the salt and all the sugar in the camp and the gamblers all the silver and currency; when the curious notion prevailed that in some mysterious way general profligacy was good for business, and the Commercial Club held an indignation meeting upon a threat of closing down the public gaming and refusing liquor licences to the dance-halls, and voted unanimously in favour of an "open town"; when a diamond star was presented to the "chief of police" by the enforced contributions of the prostitutes; when the weekly gold-dust from the clean-ups on the creeks came picturesquely into town escorted by horsemen armed to the teeth.
Meanwhile, McNamara hired every idle man he could lay hand upon, and ripped the placers open with double shifts. Every day a stream of yellow dust poured into the bank and was locked in his vaults, while those mine-owners who attempted to witness the clean-ups were ejected from their claims.
"Regulars" are permanent sources of news, like courts, bullion returns, "clean-ups" at the quartz mills, and inquests. Inasmuch as everybody went armed, we had an inquest about every day, and so this department was naturally set down among the "regulars." We had lively papers in those days. My great competitor among the reporters was Boggs of the Union. He was an excellent reporter.
Word Of The Day