as, once," I admitted.

"All right. You're going to handle the money end of this job in town.
When you're ready, pull your freight for the camp, open an office,
organize your force, and get busy with the machinery people, the banks,
and the smelters. We'll be shipping in car-load lots within a week."

Two hours later I boarded a car on the nearest trolley line. On the
long, sweeping rush down the hills I put in the time trying, as any
bewildered son of Adam might, to find myself and to rise in some
measure to the stupendous demands of the new task which lay before me.

But at the car-stopping in Bennett Avenue it was the escaped convict,
rather than the newly created business manager of the Little Clean-Up,
who slipped into the nearest hardware shop and purchased a revolver.

XVII

Aladdin's Lamp

It is no part of my purpose to burden this narrative with the story of
the development of our mine. Let it be sufficient to say that it
speedily proved to be one of the most phenomenal "producers" among the
later discoveries in the Cripple Creek district. The stories of such
spectacular successes have been made commonplace by the newspapers, and
that of the "Little Clean-Up" would--if I should give the real name of
our bonanza--be remembered and recognized by many who saw it grow by
leaps and bounds from a mere prospect hole to a second "Gold Coin."

To summarize briefly. Within a month we had settled down to business
and were incorporated, with Barrett as president, and Gifford, who
chose his own job, resident manager and superintendent. The
secretary-treasurership, combined under one office head, fell to me.
With a modern mining plant in operation, the sinking and driving paused
only at the hours of shift-changing; and after we began shipping in
quantity our bank balances grew like so many juggler's roses--this
though we had to spend money like water in the various lawsuits which
sprang up from day to day.

Many of these suits were based upon cross-claims--contentions that we
were overlapping other properties--and most of these we were able to
compromise by buying off the litigants. By this means we acquired the
entire area of the original triangle. When the news of our strike
reached Nebraska, the owners of the Mary Mattock sought to break their
sale to us on the ground that we had stacked the cards against them.
But our lawyers were too shrewd to be caught in such a flimsy net as
this. At Benedict'