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For six months I toiled in the mines and in the counting-rooms, for I wished to know every minute detail of the business. Then Perry interested me in his invention. He was an old fellow who had devoted the better part of a long life to the perfection of a mechanical subterranean prospector. As relaxation he studied paleontology.
"Wall, all I kin say is this," the prospector replied, as he rose slowly to his feet, "that ye'd better be mighty keerful, young man. That Giberalter, as ye call it, is guarded by a lion that ain't to be fooled with. He's got claws that reach from sun-up to sun-down as several smarter ones than you have found out to their sorrow. Leave him alone, an' he'll bother nobody.
I thought that there could be little doubt that he would be successful in so far as we were concerned, and I feared for the revenge that he might take upon us should the battle go against his force, as I was sure it would; for I knew that Perry and his Mezops must have brought with them all the arms and ammunition that had been contained in the prospector.
"Well, there's a feller makin' a speech about me down by the landing." "Wat he say?" "It ain't nothin' to fight over. He says I'm another Dan'l Boom, leadin' the march of empire westward." "Dat's nice, for sure." "Certainly sounds good, but is it on the level?" "Wal, I guess so," admitted Poleon. The prospector swelled with indignation. "Then, why in hell didn't you fellers tell me long ago?"
There was a town down the road which I had first heard discussed nigh twenty years ago by a broken-down prospector in a box-car. 'Young feller, said he, after he had made a professional prophecy, you'll hear of that town if you live. She's born lucky.
Among the other things which I sent to Innes was over five hundred miles of double, insulated wire of a very fine gauge. I had it packed on a special reel at his suggestion, as it was his idea that he could fasten one end here before he left and by paying it out through the end of the prospector lay a telegraph line between the outer and inner worlds.
We followed the "float" up and they followed us. What the trapper was to the fur trade, the prospector was to the mining era that ushered civilization into the wilds with a blare of dance-halls and wine and wassail and greed. Ragged, poor, roofless, grubstaked by 'pardner' or outfitter on a basis of half profit, the prospector stands as the eternal type of the trail-maker for finance.
Each hillock, ledge, or ravine holds a possible fortune, and no hardship and peril is too great for the prospector lured by the hope of a rich find. The prosperous desert mining town, first built of canvas and rough lumber, is soon replaced by a better class of buildings, and water is brought through long miles of pipe from the nearest available source.
For months I have been waiting here for a white man to come. I dared not leave the prospector for fear I should never be able to find it again the shifting sands of the desert would soon cover it, and then my only hope of returning to my Dian and her Pellucidar would be gone forever.
The prospector is forbidden to exceed five hundred feet up and down a stream, following the course of the valley, but the width may run from base to base of the mountains. Thus a miner's claim is one of the few things that is often broader than it is long. Should the stream have no other claims located upon it, the one thus made is known as "the discovery claim," and the stakes used are marked 0.
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