The Argosy — page 40: what you’re looking at

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

232 THE ARGOSY. time he had uncovered enough of the platform to bring completely into view a trap door, two feet square, built like the rest of the structure, of solid timbers. By the heavy iron ring in the center, he lifted the door from its place, revealing a dark, well-like hole going down to unseen depths. From it uprose the damp chill of a large underground excavation. ‘The top of a notched pole rested against the casing, and, raising the pole and poking about with it, Campthorne found that its foot rested on a solid bottom, twenty five feet below. From a dead pifion pine Campthorne broke off an armful of branches, dry and resinous, to serve as torches, dropped them into the shaft and climbed down the notched pole to the foot. By the light of his torch he looked about him. From the bottom of the shaft a gallery, between two walls of hard rock, led under the cliff that bounded the valley on that side. ‘This gallery he followed for a distance of several hundred feet from the shaft to where it ended, against a face of such ore as prospectors dream of but have rarely seen. It was a decomposed quartz stuffed with nuggets and fine gold which gleamed yellow in the light of the torch. He broke off a fragment of quartz with his hammer, but it still held to.the main mass by the wires of gold that threaded it, and he recognized in the color of the rock the character- istic tint of the specimen that Don Albino had shown him.. Campthorne dropped his torch and leaned for a few minutes against the side of the gallery to compose himself lest he go wild with joy in the dawn of his fortune—for he knew that he had found the Cincha Larga mine. On the floor of the gallery, against the face of the vein, was a pile of the precious ore lying as old Pedro Sanchez had left it, twenty years before, on going forth from the mine for the last time. . Campthorne climbed out of the shaft, got two stout canvas bags from his pack, came back and filled them with choice specimens from the ore heap. ‘These he brought out of the mine, one at a time up the notched ladder. Then he shut down the trap door, covered the platform with earth as it had been covered before, and was ready now to start for Los Majones. — | But first he dug a-grave and in it laid the bones of Pedro Sanchez; and he made two crosses of pine branches and stuck one at the head and the other at the foot of the grave. Then with the two sacks of ore safely packed, he and Mulato started out of the valley ; and when they had passed through the opening he let the old mule take his head, for he knew that he would pick the shortest route to Los Majones. Mulato knew well the road over which in years long past he had borne many a load of Cincha Larga ore, and now, homeward bound, his feet moved so nimbly that nightfall found him and his master clear of the Diablos. Over the plain, through the Mimbres Mountains, and across another plain to the eastward Campthorne kept his way, notching his stick day by day, and hoping that he had not dropped a notch in his reckoning. He had cut the last notch in the morning of the day which, at dusk, found him and Mulato trudging into the outskirts of Los Majones. ‘There were lights in the houses and the fires glowed cheerfully in the round, out of door ovens where the poorer Mexicans were cooking their suppers. Campthorne Eomichook (S@)