Fame and Fortune Weekly
STORIES OF BOYS WHO MAKE MONEY

Issued Weekly—By Subscription $2.50 per year.   Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1905, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C., by Frank Tousey, Publisher, 24 Union Square, New York.

A Copper Harvest;
OR,
THE BOYS WHO WORKED A DESERTED MINE.

By A SELF-MADE MAN.

CHAPTER I.

BACK TO LIFE.

“He’s the most lifelike corpse I ever saw in my life, and I’ve seen several in my time,” said Jack Howard, a stalwart, bronze-featured boy of seventeen. He looked down at the body stretched out on a slate slab in the center of the little surgery at the rear of Dr. Phineas Fox’s drugstore in the town of Sackville, Neb.

“He certainly does look natural—not at all like the usual run of subjects that find their way in here occasionally,” admitted his friend and chum, Charlie Fox, the doctor’s son, holding the kerosene lamp he carried in his hand well up, so as to bring the dead man into full relief.

“What would you imagine he died of?”

“Want of breath,” snickered Charlie, raising one of the corpse’s arms and then letting it fall back on the slab with a flop.

“Funny boy,” grinned Jack.

“Well, he dropped dead up at Mugging’s farm, where he stopped this morning and asked for something to eat. Of course he was sent here for father to hold a post-mortem on to determine the cause of death.”

Charlie’s father was the leading physician in Sackville.

He also officiated as coroner in all cases of sudden death occurring in the county.

At the present time he was absent on a similar kind of a case at a village some distance away, and was not expected back until late that night.

The doctor and his family lived in a neat little cottage, divided from his drugstore by the garden, and he was generally considered well-to-do.

Sackville was a town of some three or four thousand inhabitants, with outlying farms and farmhouses.

It was the county seat, and, being the largest place in the county, country people for miles around traded at its stores.

A good-sized river skirted its northern boundary, and the traffic in that direction made Sackville quite a lively place, and consequently of some local importance.

Jack Howard was a lad of good family whose people lived in New York.

A close student, too intense application to his studies had undermined his general health, and the family physician recommended that he be sent out West to rough it awhile on the large farm of a distant relative in Nebraska.

This farm was about three miles outside of Sackville.

Jack had already lived and worked like an ordinary farmhand on his relative’s place for the best part of a year, and his new life had made an altogether different looking boy of him—so much so, indeed, that his parents and friends in the East could hardly recognize the photograph of himself which he had lately sent them.

He often came to Sackville; and, being a genial, whole-souled kind of a boy, had made himself popular with all with whom he came in contact.

This was particularly the case with Charlie Fox, who instantly took an uncommon fancy to him, and the consequence was that they became chums.

Charlie had just graduated at the Sackville high school.

He had taken up the study of medicine under his father a year or so before, as the old gentleman intended his son should be his successor, and Charlie rather liked the profession.

His father proposed to send him to a medical school at Omaha soon, where he would get hospital practice.

Jack had come in to visit Charlie that afternoon, and as a matter of course he stayed to supper.

Mrs. Fox and her daughter Flora had received him with their usual hospitality, and after the meal the ladies and the two boys had put in a very pleasant evening.

About the time Howard was thinking of mounting his horse to ride back to the farm a fierce thunder and lightning storm had swooped down on the town, and so Jack was easily persuaded to postpone his departure until morning, to Charlie a great satisfaction, for he never tired of the society of his friend.

As soon as Charlie’s sister and mother went upstairs for the night the budding medicus proposed to his chum that they visit the surgery and inspect the corpse.

This gruesome suggestion meeting Jack’s approbation, they put on their hats and made a dash across the garden through the rain.

Charlie lit the surgery lamp and then turned down the sheet which had hidden the body from view.

It was then that Jack made the remark with which this chapter opens.

“Does your mother and sister know that this body is here?” asked Jack.

“No,” replied Charlie, shaking his head.

“Would it bother them any?”

“Well, they’re rather delicate about having dead ones so close at hand. Pop always keeps these things a secret; they never have the least idea there’s going to be an inquest till the jurors come—and not always then.”

“Put the lamp on that bracket, Charlie.”

“You don’t mind staying in here awhile, then?” said his friend, in a tone of satisfaction, as he placed the lamp on its rest, where the rays diffused a soft light around the little room and upon the various bottles and packages with their strange and peculiarly smelling contents.

“Not in the least,” answered Jack, heartily, pulling out a small briar-root pipe and a package of short cut and preparing to have a smoke.

“Glad to hear it. Some fellows would have the creeps at the idea of staying in this place with a corpse.”

“It doesn’t worry me in the least,” said Jack. “As for you, I suppose you are used to such things.”

“I see ’em occasionally, but not often enough to suit me,” replied Charlie, with professional enthusiasm. “In the last three months, however, I helped Mold, the undertaker, to lay out half a dozen of his cases, just to get used to handling dead bodies. I don’t want to be at all squeamish when I come to cut up parts of subjects on the dissecting table at Omaha. The old-timers there always have the joke on the newcomers, and as my father is a surgeon, I don’t want to disgrace the family, you know.”

“That’s right. Gee, what a crash!”

Jack walked over to the window, drew the curtain aside, and glanced out into the storm, which was now getting in its fine work with a vengeance.

“I’ll bet that bolt struck a house or barn not far away,” nodded the embryo medical student.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” replied Jack, as he came back to the center of the room and viewed the face of the dead man meditatively, as if he was wondering what sort of a character he had been in life.

The corpse was that of an apparently well-nourished man of about fifty years of age; the bearded features were coarse and rugged, as if he had roughed it upon the plains or in the mountains of the West.

“Looks as if he might have been a miner, eh, Charlie?” suggested Jack.

“Yes, or a prospector, or something of that sort.”

“Or maybe a ranchman.”

“Sure; or a bad man from Piute Flat, or some other tough joint in the wild and woolly.”

“Hardly that,” objected his chum. “It is not a bad face, by any means. I don’t think I should be afraid to trust a fellow with his physiognomy.”

“You have more confidence in his face than I have, then. I prefer the civilized man every day in the year.”

“For looks, yes; but as for character—well, there are a good many undesirable individuals walking the streets of our big cities in fine linen and broadcloth to whom, I dare say, this poor fellow could give cards and spades in a lesson in morality. You can’t always judge a book by its cover, old chap.”

“That isn’t any lie, either,” admitted Charlie.

The young medical student had produced a cigarette from a flat, square box he kept hidden away in some mysterious pocket in his jacket, and lighting it, began to fill the surgery with the odor of Turkish tobacco.

“I see you smoke coffin-nails occasionally,” said Jack, beaming upon his friend. “Does the old gentleman stand for that sort of thing?”

“Hardly,” answered Charlie, with a sly wink. “I have to keep ’em out of sight when he’s around. I only tackle one once in awhile.”

Both boys smoked in silence for a moment or two, listening to the steady downpour of the rain on the tin roof, and the intermingled peals of thunder.

The vivid glare of the lightning was apparent in spite of the glow of the lamp.

“You’d have caught it in the neck if you had gone home to-night.”

“I’d have caught it all over, you mean,” grinned Jack. “By the way, you have a galvanic battery handy?”

“Yes. What do you want to do with it?” asked his chum, in some surprise.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Howard, confidentially. “This corpse looks so confounded lifelike that I can’t quite get it out of my head that maybe he isn’t as dead as he appears to be. It might be a case of suspended animation, for all you know.”

“I never thought of that,” replied Charlie, in a startled tone. “I’ll test him right away, though I guess he’s dead, all right. Father would do that before he used the knife on him.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to apply a stethoscope over his heart. Then I’ll try the eye test.”

“Better get the battery and try that. If it doesn’t produce results I’ll believe this man is as dead as a door-nail.”

Charlie stepped to the door leading to the boxlike room at the rear of the place.

“Meyer,” he called.

A short, round-faced German boy answered the hail.

“Vell, Sharlie, vot is der trouble mit you?”

“You know where our galvanic battery is, don’t you?”

“I ped you,” grinned the boy.

“Is it ready for use?”

“Yaw, I dink so.”

“Fetch it into the surgery.”

“So. I bed me your friend Yack is by the surgery, too, ain’d it?”

“Yes, he’s there, all right.”

“Und you vants der battery? You blay some shokes upon dot dead mans, ain’d it?”

“Never mind about that. Just do as I tell you,” and Charlie closed the door.

In a couple of minutes Meyer Dinkelspeil, Dr. Fox’s boy of all work in the shop, came in with the box containing the battery.

“Put it down here, Meyer,” said Jack. “You connect the wire, Charlie, while I turn the battery. Put the handles in the hands of the corpse.”

“They are rigid.”

“Place them between the fingers, then, and hold them tight,” said Jack.

“Chimmnay cribs!” exclaimed Meyer, looking on with wide open eyes. “You dink dot you voke him up mit dot foolishness?”

“Well, if we don’t we’ll try it on you afterwards,” grinned Charlie.

“You vill I don’d t’ink,” replied the German boy.

The apparatus being in place, Jack turned the electric current on.

Every moment the friction became brisker and the power stronger.

All at once the supposed corpse opened its eyes, which rolled in a strange manner.

Then a convulsive movement shook the body, the hands and feet twitched, and the jaw moved slightly.

“B’gee!” exclaimed Jack, “the man isn’t dead at all.”

“Shumping Moses!” ejaculated Meyer, almost frightened out of his skin. “Let me ouid!” and he made a rush for the door and disappeared.

“What a chump I was not to have tried that this morning when they fetched him in here,” said Charlie, as his chum stopped turning the crank of the galvanic battery. “It was a partial failure of the heart’s action, producing a trancelike state. Wait; I’ll get some brandy.”

He rushed into the store, measured out a gill of it, returned, and poured it down the man’s throat.

The effect was instantaneous.

He who but five minutes before had been considered a corpse had actually come back to animation.

CHAPTER II.

THE COPPER SPECIMENS.

The man sat up on the slab, where, like many other unfortunate wretches, he had been placed preparatory to a post mortem.

He stared wildly around him, not comprehending the circumstances in which he was placed.

There was a little of the brandy left in the graduating glass, and Charlie held it to his lips.

He gripped the boy’s hands with his two great, rough fists, almost crushing the glass, and eagerly drained the liquor off.

Then he coughed, blinked his eyes, and sliding off the table, stood up.

He would have fallen, for he was as helpless as a scarecrow. But Charlie caught and supported him.

“Feel better now, do you?” asked the doctor’s son.

“Yes, kinder so; only I feel plaguey weak, and I’m stone cold.”

Charlie assisted him to the only chair in the surgery.

“What’s been the matter with me, and where am I? This is a doctor’s shop, isn’t it?” he added, looking around and observing the bottles and instruments.

“You were brought here this morning,” explained Charlie.

“This morning!” exclaimed the man, looking up at the lamp in its bracket. “And is it night now?”

“That’s what it is.”

“I must have been a long time out of my head, then, youngster,” he said, with a look of perplexity on his features.

“You were more than that.”

“How’s that?”

“You fell down—to all appearance dead—at the Mugging’s farm, three miles outside of town, and you were brought here to await an inquest.”

“Fell down dead!” gasped the stranger, with a look of blank dismay.

“That’s right. If you hadn’t come to under the influence of that battery—which my chum suggested applying to you because you looked so lifelike—my father would have carved you up in the morning to find out what caused your death.”

“By the great hornspoon!” cried the man, who had apparently been snatched from the grave by the experiment of Jack Howard. “I knowed it would come to this some day. I’m subject to epileptic fits. I’ve always been afeard I’d be buried alive in one of them.”

“You’ve had a narrow escape,” chipped in Jack, highly pleased at the success of his galvanic treatment.

“I guess I had,” admitted the man, breathing hard and looking around him with a fearsome expression. “I’m very grateful to you young chaps for what you’ve done for me.”

“Don’t mention it,” replied Jack. “We’re mighty glad we were able to pull you around. If you don’t mind, we should be pleased to know who you are.”

“My name is Gideon Prawle. I’m a prospector and miner by occupation, but just at present I guess I ain’t much better’n a tramp. I’m out of luck, that’s all. But I’ve seen the time when I was worth a cool hundred thousand. But I spent it in drink, at the gaming table, and I was robbed of a good bit of it, and that’s the whole story. I’ve been a blamed fool, but I hope to do better yet afore I die. I know something that ought to be worth another hundred thousand to me, and when I realize on it I shan’t forget you young fellows, not by a jugful.”

“You needn’t worry about us,” said Charlie, cheerfully, winking at Jack, as if it was his opinion the man had wheels in his head. “We don’t expect to be paid for what we did for you.”

The man saw the wink, and was evidently offended.

“Look here, my lads,” he said gruffly; “you think because I look like a tramp that I’m a regular hobo—maybe that I’m talking through my hat. I reckon I kin prove what I say.”

Then he began looking around the room.

“I had a grip with me this morning. Do you know what became of it?”

“I guess that’s it over in the corner,” said Charlie, pointing. “I took hold of it awhile ago, and I must say it’s precious heavy. What have you got in it—gold?” he concluded, with a grin.

“Fetch it here and I’ll show you,” said Prawle.

Charlie brought it forward and laid it at the man’s feet.

The stranger started to bend down to undo the straps, but fell back in the chair with a groan.

“Give me another drink!” he gasped, plaintively, while the perspiration indicative of physical weakness appeared on his forehead.

Charlie rushed into the shop for more brandy and returned in a moment.

Gideon Prawle gulped it down at a draught, and it brought him instant relief.

“That’s good stuff, and it warms me innards nicely,” he said, smacking his lips with a sigh of satisfaction.

“It’s the best in Sackville,” said Charlie. “It’s none of your common saloon firewater. No, sir; that is kept exclusively for the sick.”

“I believe you,” said the Westerner. “Now, if I might ask you another favor, it would be in the shape of something to eat. I’m most famished. Ain’t had a mouthful since yesterday afternoon.”

“Sure thing,” replied Charlie, with alacrity. “I ought to have thought of that myself. Meyer,” he called, stepping to the surgery door.

The German boy poked his head into the room in fear and trepidation.

“Vat haf you done mit der corpse?” he asked, seeing the slab vacant.

Then, as his eyes roved to the chair, his hair almost stood on end with fright.

“Mein Gott! Vot is dot?”

“Don’t be a fool, Meyer,” said Charlie impatiently, grabbing him in time to prevent him making a bolt. “The man was not dead. He was only in a trance, and we brought him out of it with the battery.”

“So,” replied the German boy, gazing at the stranger in fearful wonderment, “he been in dose transes under dot sheets der whole lifelong day, ain’t it? Vot a great dings dose battery vos, I ped you.”

“Go into the house, Meyer, and see what you can pick up in the pantry in the way of a cold bite. Fetch a jug of milk from the cellar.”

Meyer opened the door leading to the garden and looked out.

The storm had passed over the town by this time and was receding in a northwesterly direction.

“You’ll find the entry door unlocked, Meyer,” added Charlie. “See that you don’t make any unnecessary noise.”

“I vill look oud, I ped you,” replied Dinkelspeil. “Off I voke der cook ub I vouldn’t heard der last off it purty soon I dink.”

Then he vanished into the night.

Gideon Prawle, feeling better after the reaction, began undoing the straps of his grip.

Then he fumbled in his pocket for the key.

After taking out a somewhat rumpled shirt, a suit of underclothes and a couple of pair of socks, Prawle said:

“Now, young gents, I’m going to show you some of the finest specimens of real virgin copper ever dug out of mother earth.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Charlie, a slight shade of disappointment in his voice, “I thought it was gold or silver quartz you had there. But copper——”

“Young man,” said Prawle, diving one hairy paw into his grip and fishing out a magnificent specimen of raw copper, “look at that and hold your breath. There is ninety per cent of copper in that hunk. Think of that! It has only to be separated from its rocky matrix, when it is ready for market. That chunk, just as I took it from the mine, where there are thousands and thousands of tons of it waiting to be dug out, is almost chemically pure copper. That mine, young gentlemen, is a marvel. There’s millions in it. Nothing in this country to match it outside of the great Calumet and Hecla mine of Michigan, which has an annual production of 50,000,000 pounds.”

Jack Howard examined the specimen with great interest.

“Where is this mine you speak of?”

Gideon Prawle winked one eye expressively and moistened his lips with his tongue.

“It’s in Montana,” he said, with a significant grin.

“That’s a pretty big State,” said Jack. “Whereabouts in Montana?”

“That’s my secret,” said Prawle, “and I’m going to Chicago to sell it.”

“Then you have really located a valuable copper deposit?” asked Jack with kindling eyes, for he had a strong enthusiasm for anything connected with mines and minerals.

“That’s the size of it, young gent. It’s an old, deserted surface copper mine that was originally worked after a rude fashion by the Injuns, or some other folks who didn’t know its value. There’s millions of pounds there waiting for modern methods to bring it up to the light of day.”

Jack and Charlie looked at the several rich specimens Prawle laid out for their inspection, and then at one another.

Evidently this tramplike man, whom they had so strangely brought back to life, had stumbled on to a good thing.

Both of the boys had read stories of similar good things having been discovered by the merest accident, and the tales had excited their imagination at the time.

But this was different.

Here was evidence of a thrilling fact, and this prospect of sudden wealth, as it were, could not fail to have its effect on the two lads.

At this point Meyer made his appearance with an abundant cold repast, which, being placed before the stranger, he attacked like a famished wolf.

CHAPTER III.

THE FACE AT THE WINDOW.

“Then you actually own the mine you have been speaking of?” said Jack Howard, regarding Gideon Prawle with a fresh interest.

Had the boy at that moment looked toward the window of the surgery, which had been raised a couple of inches a few moments before by Charlie Fox, he might have noticed that there was an uninvited listener outside.

This eavesdropper was Otis Clymer, late dispensing clerk for Dr. Fox, who had been discharged for his irregular habits and pilfering propensities.

The man had made himself unpopular in Sackville, and, but for the softness of the doctor’s heart, would have long since been sent away.

He had an evil heart, and instead of leaving town, where he could not hope to get suitable employment, he had hung about the lowest drinking resorts in the place and meditated upon revenge.

At this moment he was somewhat under the influence of liquor, and had made his way to the rear of the drugstore for the purpose of setting it on fire if he could find the chance to put his dastardly project into effect.

He was somewhat surprised to find that the little surgery was occupied, and he hung about and listened, hoping the coast would soon be clear.

What he heard through the opening at the bottom of the window, however, completely changed his purpose.

“Yes, siree, bob! I own the ground that there mine is located on,” said Prawle, with his mouth full of food, in answer to Jack Howard’s question. “At least I’ve a sixty-day option on it, which amounts to the same thing.”

“Then you didn’t have the money to buy it out and out?” asked Jack.

“No, I didn’t. Didn’t I tell you I’ve been in hard luck? I had just $100 in my clothes when I discovered that there ground was worth the buying, so I gave it up on account to the feller that owned the diggings. He wanted to sell so bad that he chucked in his shanty with it; not that it’s worth a sight more’n so much kindling wood.”

“How much ground did you buy?”

“I should think he had about four acres staked out.”

“And what did the whole thing cost you, Mr. Prawle?” asked Jack, full of curiosity.

“Well, it cost me $100 down, with $200 to come when I get back with the dust.”

“Pretty cheap for a real copper mine,” spoke up Charlie.

“You don’t s’pose he’d have sold it for that if he’d known as much about it as I did? Not by a jugful.”

“Was he a prospector, too?” inquired Jack.

“Jim Sanders wasn’t much of anything that I know. An old pard of his owned the ground and turned it over to Jim when he died. Sanders thought more of his booze than anything else; that’s why he wanted to realize. He had no use for the ground, and as it hadn’t cost him anything it was like finding money to sell it for anything at all.”

“And you’re going to Chicago to raise money to work the mine—is that your plan?”

“That’s the idea exactly. And I shan’t forget you two chaps in the deal, neither. You saved my life. If I had petered out here on that there table I shouldn’t have got any good out of the Pandora.”

“The Pandora!” exclaimed Charlie.

“Exactly. That’s the name I’ve given to the mine. It’ll look good on the engraved certificates when the company is formed: ‘The Pandora Copper Mining Company,’ Gideon Prawle, president. Maybe you’d like to be secretary, young man?” and he looked keenly at Jack Howard.

“I should rather enjoy the sensation of being secretary to a successful enterprise of that kind.”

“Would you? Well, perhaps you shall, for I’ve taken a liking to you. That reminds me you haven’t either of you told me your names.”

“Mine is Jack Howard, and this is my friend and chum, Charlie Fox. His father owns this store, and is the doctor who was going to hold the inquest on you when he got back to town.”

“I’m afraid he’ll be disapp’inted,” chuckled Gideon Prawle, taking a long drink at the milk jug.

“He’ll be rather pleased than otherwise,” ventured Charlie.

“Is that a fact?” said the stranger from the West. “I always thought doctors enj’yed cutting folks up so as to get at their innards.”

“There are exceptions,” replied Charlie, grinning at Jack.

“What’s the name of this town?”

“Sackville.”

“S’pose you get me a piece of paper, so’s I can put that down along with your names. I want to do what’s right by you young gents.”

Charlie got him a sheet of note-paper and a pencil.

Prawle set to work to jot down what he wanted to preserve for future reference; but it was easy to see that he was more used to handling a shovel or a pick, or something of that sort, than a pen or pencil, though he seemed to be a fairly well educated man, for his language was uncommonly good for a man of his appearance.

“If you were only going west now instead of east I should be tempted to go along with you,” said Jack, with a new-born enthusiasm for the great Northwest.

“Would you now?” replied Prawle, laying down his pencil and regarding Jack attentively.

“Yes. I came out West for my health, and have made myself a new man in a year. My people, who live in New York, look for me to return soon, but I’d rather rough it awhile longer, though not at farming, which is the way I’ve been putting in my time since I came out here. I always had a liking for mining. And I should fancy nothing better than getting an interest in a mine and putting in some big licks, if they would pan me out a fortune. Such things come to some people; why not to me?”

“That’s right, young man. I calculate you’re the man for my money. I’m going to give you an interest in my mine.”

“I’m willing to work for my share,” said Jack, earnestly.

“Oh, there’ll be plenty of work for you, I dare say, by and by when the company’s formed.”

“And how about my chum here?”

“He shall have an interest, too.”

“By shinger!” interrupted Meyer Dinkelspeil from the background, where he had been an interested listener and observer of the proceedings, “vhere don’t I come in in dose deals? Off Yack und Sharley pulled you togedder wit der battery, I put someding better as dot in your stomyack.”

“Haw, haw, haw!” roared the man from the West as he looked at the full-moon countenance of the German boy.

“Haw, haw, haw, yourseluf!” snorted Meyer indignantly. “I don’t see nottings funny in dot. Vot’s der madder mit you, any vay?”

“Would you like to rough it out in the mines, Meyer?” asked Jack, with a wink at his chum.

“Off dere vos plenty off moneys in dot I rough it yust as well as der next fellow, I ped you.”

“Why, they wouldn’t do a thing to you out there,” grinned Charlie.

“Is dot so?” retorted Meyer, incredulously. “Don’d you dink dot I took care off mineseluf yust so well as you or Yack?”

“S’pose you ran up against a bad man with a gun, what would you do?” asked Jack, with a wink at Prawle.

“Vot vould I done? I toldt you petter after I found me one off dose kind of snoozers.”

“I’m thinking if you acted as sassy as you do to us he’d fill you full of lead.”

“Is dot so-o-. He vould I don’d dink.”

“Well,” laughed Prawle, “I guess I’ll take you in with us—that is, if you’ll agree to go out to the mine and make yourself useful.”

“I done dot purty quick, I ped you,” said Meyer, eagerly. “I’m dot sick of dese places dot I shump der ranch so soon as now off you spoke der vord.”

“Why, I thought you wanted to become a doctor, Meyer?” grinned Jack.

“Vell, you know vot thought done, ain’d it?”

“My father wouldn’t want to lose so valuable an assistant as you, Meyer,” said Charlie.

“Off I vos you I vould forget id,” retorted the German boy, a bit crustily, for he could see that the doctor’s son was chaffing him.

“I tell you what,” said Jack, enthusiastically, “why couldn’t we go out to this place in Montana and take a look at the mine? This is your vacation, Charlie. You have more than four weeks yet ahead of you before you have to be in Omaha. We can let Mr. Prawle have the money to complete the purchase of the ground, so there won’t be any hitch about that. Then we could pay his way on to Chicago after that, and I would go with him to see that the mining promoter he picks out doesn’t do him up.”

“B’gee!” exclaimed Charlie, alive at once to the proposal, “it will be just the thing. If I represent the matter right to my father, he won’t object.”

“What do you say to that, Mr. Prawle? Will you go back with Charlie, myself——”

“Und dis shicken, don’d forget dot, off you blease,” piped Meyer.

“And Meyer Dinkelspeil,” continued Jack. “We’ll put up the $200 and all expenses; and afterward I’ll see you through to Chicago.”

“Do you mean it, young gentlemen?” said Gideon Prawle, interested in the proposal.

“Certainly we mean it,” replied Jack.

“Then it’s a bargain. I look on you now as my partners in the enterprise. Now, I’ll show you the paper by which I hold claim to the mine.”

Whereupon Prawle took out an old red pocketbook, extracted a not overclean bit of paper, which he unfolded and spread out on the slab which had lately been his bed.

“There’s my option on the ground,” he said, complacently. “The mine is situated at the head of Beaver Creek, three miles southeast of Rocky Gulch mining camp, and a mile eastward of the trail. The creek runs into the north branch of the Cheyenne River, which flows past Trinity, a railroad town, so that the copper can be easily shipped by rail East. Here’s a map, with all the points named, which I drew up to show its location in the State. Young gentlemen, it was a lucky day for you that you came to know Gideon Prawle.”

“And it was a lucky thing for you, Mr. Prawle, that I thought of applying the galvanic battery to your body,” replied Jack Howard, with a significant smile.

“Well, you shan’t never regret it,” answered the prospector heartily.

At that moment the clock in the surgery struck midnight.

Hardly had the last stroke died away when Meyer Dinkelspeil suddenly started to his feet and, pointing toward the window, exclaimed excitedly:

“By shinger! Look, vunce by der vinder—quick! Somepody vos looking in.”

CHAPTER IV.

A FIENDISH ACT.

Meyer’s sudden exclamation rather startled the group, and every eye was turned to the window.

If any one had been looking in, he had taken immediate alarm and vanished, for there wasn’t the sign of an eavesdropper to be seen.

Jack, however, rushed to the window and threw it up.

He looked up and down the street.

No one was in sight at that hour.

It was possible though for an active person to have sneaked around in front of the closed drugstore and made his escape by way of the cross street.

“I guess you imagined you saw somebody, Meyer,” said Jack, as he closed the window.

“I don’d dink,” asserted the German boy, stoutly. “Off I didn’t see der faces off dot Otis Clymer, I’m a liar.”

“Otis Clymer!” exclaimed Charlie Fox, blankly.

“Dot’s vot I said, I bed you.”

“What could he want around here at this hour of the night?”

“Nottings goot, off you took mine vord for id,” said Meyer, wagging his head sagely. “Dot rooster vos a bad egg.”

“That’s no lie, Meyer,” nodded Charlie, as if that fact had been patent to him for some time.

Just then a buggy drove up and turned into the yard of the Fox home.

Dr. Fox had returned, and, noting the unusual feature of a light in the surgery, he lost no time in making an investigation.

He opened the back door and walked into the room.

“What is the meaning of this gathering?” he asked a bit severely of his son. “Why aren’t you in bed, Charlie?”

Then he noticed Jack Howard, and nodded to him.

“Meyer, go to the stable and put the rig up,” he said to the German boy, who was the only one he had expected to find up waiting his return.

It was up to Charley to explain matters, and he hastened to do so.

Dr. Fox was amazed to find that the subject whom he had expected to hold an inquest on had come back to life in so astonishing a way.

He looked the man over with not a little curiosity, felt of his pulse, and then intimated that he guessed he didn’t stand in need of any treatment.

“I don’t wish to unnecessarily alarm you, sir,” he said to Gideon Prawle, “but it is probable you will die in one of those fits some day.”

“Then I hope that day may not be soon,” replied the man from the West.

“You may not have another one in years, and then again you may have one in a month. It is impossible to say,” was all the consolation Dr. Fox could offer him.

“If you wouldn’t mind, I’ll turn in here on the floor for the night,” said the Western man. “I’m used to roughing it. If you had a blanket, it’s all I ask.”

“I’d offer you a bed, if I had a spare one,” said the doctor; “but since you’re contented to stay here I’ll send you a blanket.”

This arrangement being quite satisfactory to Prawle, a blanket was presently brought to him by Meyer Dinkelspeil, and fifteen minutes later all was dark and silent in the surgery.

For a full hour there was no movement in the vicinity of the drugstore or the Fox cottage, yet all this time a form was hidden in the shadow of a big bush in the garden.

The intruder was Otis Clymer.

The night air had somewhat cleared his brain of the effects of the liquor he had imbibed early in the evening, and now his thoughts were busy with what he had seen and overheard in the surgery.

“If I could get hold of that paper—the option that fellow has on the ground where he discovered that valuable copper deposit—as well as the map and directions for locating the place, I should be a made man for life. I must manage it somehow. The man is doubtless asleep in the surgery long before this, and I have a duplicate key to the door which will readily admit me. Perhaps the fellow is a light sleeper and might hear me come in. That would be awkward for me, for he looks like a strong customer. Well, nothing venture, nothing win. It’s the chance of a lifetime. Then I shall want more money than I’ve got to get out there, not speaking of the $200 due on the ground. I must get a partner in with me, and who better than Dave Plunkett, who runs the joint where I’m stopping? He’ll back me in a good thing for half of the pickings. So, those boys propose going to the mine, do they? Ho, ho, ho! Not if I get my finger in the pie first. It must be one o’clock by this time. I’ll wait a while longer, and then I’ll make the attempt.”

Otis Clymer waited till half-past one o’clock, and then he left his damp berth under the big bush and approached the surgery door.

The moonshine projected his shadow across the turf, but for all the noise he made he might have passed for a ghost.

He cautiously inserted the key he had stolen into the lock and softly turned it.

Then he passed into the building like a shadow, and the door closed behind him.

The sound of deep breathing in one corner of the surgery located the sleeping man from the West, although Clymer could not distinguish his form very well in the darkness.

But the discharged drug clerk had planned what he would do, and, now that he was inside, he started to put his scheme in practice.

“I may as well kill two birds with one stone while I’m about it,” he muttered, moving softly toward the door leading into the shop.

The place was so familiar to him that he had no difficulty in finding his way about in the gloom.

He lit a small night lamp on the prescription counter; then he took down the bottle containing chloroform, and, not finding a rag suitable for his purpose, pulled out his handkerchief and soaked it with the stuff.

Then, taking the lamp with him, he re-entered the surgery.

Gideon Prawle lay curled up like a tired man close to the window overlooking the street.