The golden spider

There wasn’t much suggestion of a canyon, lost or found, in the handsomely furnished office in the Brewster National Bank building where three young fellows in flannel shirts, belted corduroys and hob-nailed lace boots were waiting for the owner of the office to make his appearance.

Of the three, only the middle-sized one, a good-looking chap whose rough outing clothes fitted him as if they were tailor-made, was showing signs of impatience. The biggest of the three, a square-shouldered young athlete with good gray eyes set wide apart, and a shock of dark-red, curly hair, was standing at a window which commanded a magnificent view of the high, forested mountain range lifting the skyline to the westward, while the other member of the trio, an undersized fellow with a thin, eager face and pale blue eyes, was examining the mineral specimens in a corner cabinet.

“Gee! I wish Uncle Billy would come!” said the impatient one, jumping up to make a restless circuit of the room. “We don’t want to miss that train.”

The big fellow turned from his window. “You’re sure he got in last night?” he said.

“Oh, yes; they came in on the Flyer. Aunt Stella called mother over the ’phone after the train got in――just to let us know. But I wish he’d come. We don’t want to lose another single day of this bully weather.”

Dick Maxwell’s impatience was not altogether unreasonable. Ten days earlier Mr. William Starbuck――the “Uncle Billy” in question――had made a short stop in the Middle-Western college town where Dick and his two companions were just winding up their Freshman year, and had asked Dick how he was meaning to spend the long vacation. One thing had brought on another, and the upshot of the talk was an offer on the part of “Uncle Billy” to send Dick, and any two of his college-mates he might pick out, on a summer prospecting trip in the Hophra Mountains, the object in view being the possible discovery, not especially of silver or gold, but more particularly of new sources of supply of the rare metals, tungsten, vanadium, molybdenum, and the like, used in the arts and manufactures.

Dick hadn’t wasted a moment in choosing the first of his companions for the summer outing. Larry Donovan――the big fellow at the office window――son of a crippled locomotive engineer on the home railroad, had been his chum from their grade-school days in Brewster, and the two had spent the preceding summer together as “cubs” on the engineering staff of the railroad of which Dick’s father was the general manager, so Larry was promptly elected as Number Two in the prospecting trip. For the third member they had both picked upon Charles Purdick――Larry’s roommate in college――for several reasons: for one thing, “Little Purdy” was a pretty good plain cook; and for another, he needed the wages that Mr. William Starbuck was going to pay each member of the prospecting party irrespective of the success of the trip in the discovery of any new mineral deposits.

But there was a third reason for Purdick’s invitation which was still stronger. “Purdy,” who, until he became the beneficiary of a certain mysterious scholarship in Old Sheddon, had been working his way through college, was the orphan son of a steel worker, and had grown up in a mill town, under-fed, neglected, kicked about and overworked. He had never been West; had never known what it was to have a real vacation in the open; and both Dick and Larry had decided at once that he was to be Number Three, even if they should have to knock him down and handcuff him to bring him along. But Purdy hadn’t needed any handcuffing.

Larry laughed good-naturedly at Dick’s miserly remark about the wasting of the “bully weather.”

“Don’t you worry about the weather, old scout,” he said. “We’ll take that as it comes, and you know well enough that we’re likely to have a lot more good weather than bad, in the summer months.”

“Oh, I guess yes,” was Dick’s rejoinder. “I’m just sweating to be off to the tall hills, that’s all.” Then to Purdick, who was busily writing in his notebook at the mineral cabinet: “What are you finding over there, Purdy?”

Purdick’s answer was forestalled by the entrance of Dick’s uncle by marriage, a bronzed, upstanding man who looked as if he might be a retired cattle king, and who really had been a range-rider in his younger days.

“Well, well! Here you are!” he said, shaking hands with the three. “Ready to go out and hit the high spots, are you? All right; sit down and we’ll round up the preliminaries――what few there are. Got your dunnage kits made up?”

Dick answered for the three.

“The packs are down at the station. Dad told us what we’d need――and what we wouldn’t need. I guess he hasn’t let us make any tenderfoot mistakes about loading up with a lot of the luxuries.”

“That’s good. Now for my part of it. I’ve wired ahead to Nophi, and Mr. Broadwick, the smelter superintendent, is the man you want to see. He’ll have a couple of burros for you, with your camping outfit and grub packed and ready on the arrival of your train. All you’ll have to do when you get there will be to hike out; take your foot in your hand and go.”

“Right!” said Dick, bubbling over with excitement. And then: “In your letter from New York you said something about maps, Uncle Billy. Have you got them here?”

The “grub-staking” uncle got up and took an envelope of folded maps from a pigeonhole in the office safe.

“Here you are――sections of the Geodetic Survey covering most of the territory where you are going. From Nophi you head up Lost Canyon to Mule-Ear Pass. After you cross the first range, the country is all yours. When, or if, you find any mineral, stake your claims and jot the locations down on the map. Are you carrying a copy of Dana’s ‘System’?”

“Got it in the dunnage,” Dick answered; “it, and a blowpipe field-test outfit. We’ve all been boning the ‘Dana’ for a week, and Mr. Ransom, out at the ‘Little Alice,’ has been showing us how to make tests.”

“Good. The ‘Dana’ will help you in making the simple tests that can be made in the field, and, of course, when you find anything that looks right promising, you’ll bring samples of it back with you for a laboratory assay. That’s about all, I think. If you have a chance to send us word during the summer, do it; but if not, don’t worry, and we won’t. I’m betting confidently that you are all able to take care of yourselves, and of one another. How about arms?”

Again it was Dick Maxwell who answered.

“Dad has made each of us a present of a light Winchester. They’re down at the station with the packs.”

“You probably won’t need the artillery. It’s the closed season for game, but it won’t hurt to have the guns along. If you get tired of carrying them, you can put them in the jack packs.”

Dick was nervously looking at his watch. It still wanted a full half-hour of train time, but we all know how that is when we are about to start out upon a wonderful voyage of discovery.

“Well, Uncle Billy,” he said, “I guess we’ll have to be moving along.” So the handshaking was repeated, and they were heading for the door, when the grub-staking uncle called them back.

“This is rather a humdrum job you’ve undertaken for the summer――looking for the industrial metals,” he said, with a twinkle in the shrewd gray eyes. “I’ve a mind to throw in a bit of romance, just for good measure. How would you like to keep an eye out for a lost gold mine――a real bonanza?”

“A lost gold mine?” Dick queried eagerly. “Who lost it?”

The ex-cowboy uncle was smiling quizzically. “It is a pretty long story, and if you’ve got to hurry to your train――――” he began; but Dick cut in quickly.

“Tell us about it, Uncle Billy. We’ll catch the train all right.”

“Think you can take time to listen? I’ll make it short. Three years ago, James Brock, an old prospector whom I knew well, was found at the mouth of Lost Canyon, dying of hunger and exposure. I had him brought down to Brewster and taken to the hospital. He lived only a few days, but during that time he told me his story. He said he had discovered a fabulously rich gold lode in the Little Hophras, and, staying to work it, the winter had caught him. He had been snow-bound for weeks with little or nothing to eat, but had finally made his way out over Mule-Ear Pass, half starved and with his feet and hands frozen.”

“Poor old duffer!” said Dick sympathetically. “But go on, Uncle Billy. What became of the mine?”

“Nobody knows. Brock had no maps, and he couldn’t describe the locality well enough to enable any one to find it. I don’t know how plentiful the ore is, but it is wonderfully rich, as you can see for yourselves,” and from a drawer in his desk he took a small piece of disintegrated quartz, shot through and held together by a wire-like mass of the precious metal.

As one person, the three boys crowded around the desk to examine the beautiful specimen, and none of them heard the office door open or knew that there was an intruder present until Mr. Starbuck suddenly covered the bit of quartz with his hand and said: “Well, my man――what can I do for you?”

As one person again, they all three wheeled and saw the man who had come in so quietly that none of them had heard him. Tramp or beggar, or whatever he was, he seemed to be an object of pity, dirty, unshaven, and a cripple, walking with a crutch and with one leg drawn up in a curiously twisted deformity. And he had a face――as Dick afterward phrased it――that would scare the rats out of a corn bin.

“I’m lookin’ f’r Mister Bradley, th’ employmint man,” was the way the intruder accounted for himself.

Mr. Starbuck shook his head. “Mr. Bradley’s office is on the floor below,” he replied; and at that, the man hobbled out, leaving the door open when he passed into the corridor.

Dick Maxwell was again consulting his watch. “We have a few minutes more, Uncle Billy,” he said hurriedly. “Is that all you can tell us about the lost mine?”

“Not quite all. James Brock told me how he came to discover the vein. He had camped one evening at the foot of a small cliff with a crevice in it. The cliff faced the east, and in the morning he saw that the crevice was curtained with a great wheel of a spider-web, and in the center of the web was an immense spider with a body that looked, with the sun shining on it, as if it were made out of pure gold. Brock took it as an omen. He dug in the crevice and found his mine, which he called ‘The Golden Spider.’ So there is your bit of romance. Find the Golden Spider and maybe you will all come back rich.”

“But if we should find it, it wouldn’t be ours,” put in little Purdick, speaking for the first time.