Argosy and Railroad Man's Magazine — page 142: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

484 ARGOSY AND RAILROAD MAN’S MAGAZINE. _from Foley, and, poising his brush over the B. Burns sign outside the saloon, changed the letter “s” to “t.” | “*B, Burnt’ is right,” conceded even the staidest among the Dry Gulchers. il. Doc Yarp smote his guitar and lifted his voice in a quavering falsetto. From the ‘opposite angle of the same window-seat, where Curley Q. likewise nested on the small of his back among the pillows, came the palpitant bleat of a ukulele in accom- paniment. Neither tried to brighten the corner where he was. Even the doc’s crisply waxed mustache seemed-to droop—blighted by the lugubrious air wailing forth beneath it: “We found his bones ’mid the prickly pears, With the gold he left behind him; He’d got his and the crows got theirs— We laughed ho! ho! to find him.” He slurred into the chorus, and the un- couth refrain was taken up perfunctorily and dolefully by the assembled Dry Gulch- ers: “ Q-0-0-h— Let ill winds blow (if blow they must!) Some miner’s dust for me— Should the dust be gold; for gold’s the dust T spend so glad and free.” There was neither “pep” nor grace to these pseudo chorus men. They did their job lying down: prone on Navajo rugs, or draped over wicker chairs or leather-up- holstered benches round the professor’s liv- ing-hall. After Saturday’s revelry at the B. Burns, they always saw clearly the spir- itual and economic wisdom of a day of complete rest. They awaited the professor, knowing that in due season he would stir from his audible slumbers in the adjoining room. In unvarying order he would bawl for his bracing draft of forty-rod, cuss classically the imported Chinee who would bear in the cup, and eat with undisguised relish his imported breakfast herring and his por- ridge. Some men would have shuddered at the thought of food so early on Sunday— and did. But as they watched the -heat waves shimmer through the room, piping hot from alkaline dust and volcanic rock, their in- creasing morbidness had scant connection with the nauseating fumes of Ting Ling’s cooking. Mandy-Swatt—squinting moodi- ly through his slanting eyes, and feebly stroking.his drooping, mandarinlike mus- tachios—touched drawlingly on a phase of Dry Gulch’s present problem: “This here Mr. Jenks, new official man- ager for the B. Burns, I calcoolate made the usooal killin’ for Pluto the fust Sat’day he’s been on the job.” Jenks was the fourth incumbent of the managerial chair, None of the morose miners had energ or incentive to dispute this assertion. The doc began to twang tentatively on his gui- tar when the mat curtaining the doorway was thrust aside, and the professor shuffled into the room. His grizzled beard kept him well under cover, although, where his face was cleared of whiskers, there rose a bul- bous nose—like a glowing, crimson sun, as perceived through a thicket. The professor sank into the armchair re- served for him, and these abrupt, oracular words rumbled out amid a dense cloud of pipe-smoke: ‘Men o’ Dry Gulch, we have been toil- ing many a year. What have we to show for it? Nothing! And we shall have noth- ing so long as we spend our all in that sink of iniquity, the B. Burns Saloon and Casino. “This situation is by no‘means new. I mention it now only because we must do something, and that quickly. There’s no use blinding ourselves to the fact that the gold in the alluvial deposits which form our claims is running thin. When we shut up shop, will it be as bankrupts, or as men with fortunes in our belts? I have a plan to set before ye. “We've all prospected on both sides of the river-bed, but have found no trace of gold. Despite this, I have a feeling that there must be some rich vein or mother lode hereabouts. I mentioned my belief to the B. Burns’s former manager, and Curry suggested that we have a competent mining engineer look the ground over. ‘a by, COMMIGEIOOKS.eOnn