Therefore we need fret and fume and worry and doubt no more, but just lie still and put up with privation for six months.  Perhaps 3 months will “let us out.”  Then, if government refuses to pay the rent on your new office we can do it ourselves.  We have got to wait six weeks, anyhow, for a dividend—­maybe longer—­but that it will come there is no shadow of a doubt.  I have got the thing sifted down to a dead moral certainty.  I own one-eighth of the new “Monitor Ledge, Clemens Company,” and money can’t buy a foot of it; because I know it to contain our fortune.  The ledge is six feet wide, and one needs no glass to see gold and silver in it....

When you and I came out here we did not expect ’63 or ’64 to find us rich men—­and if that proposition had been made we would have accepted it gladly.  Now, it is made.  I am willing, now, that “Neary’s tunnel” or anybody else’s tunnel shall succeed.  Some of them may beat us a few months, but we shall be on hand in the fullness of time, as sure as fate.  I would hate to swap chances with any member of the tribe . . . .

It is the same man who twenty-five years later would fasten his faith and capital to a type-setting machine and refuse to exchange stock in it, share for share, with the Mergenthaler linotype.  He adds: 

But I have struck my tent in Esmeralda, and I care for no mines but those which I can superintend myself.  I am a citizen here now, and I am satisfied, although Ratio and I are “strapped” and we haven’t three days’ rations in the house....  I shall work the “Monitor” and the other claims with my own hands.  I prospected 3/4 of a pound of “Monitor” yesterday, and Raish reduced it with the blow-pipe, and got about 10 or 12 cents in gold and silver, besides the other half of it which we spilt on the floor and didn’t get....

I tried to break a handsome chunk from a huge piece of my darling “Monitor” which we brought from the croppings yesterday, but it all splintered up, and I send you the scraps.  I call that “choice”—­any d—–­d fool would.

    Don’t ask if it has been assayed, for it hasn’t.  It don’t need it. 
    It is simply able to speak for itself.  It is six feet wide on top,
    and traversed through with veins whose color proclaims their worth.

    What the devil does a man want with any more feet when he owns in
    the invincible bomb-proof “Monitor”?

There is much more of this, and other such letters, most of them ending with demands for money.  The living, the tools, the blasting-powder, and the help eat it up faster than Orion’s salary can grow.

“Send me $50 or $100, all you can spare; put away $150 subject to my call—­we shall need it soon for the tunnel.”  The letters are full of such admonition, and Orion, more insane, if anything, than his brother, is scraping his dollars and pennies together to keep the mines going.  He is constantly warned to buy no claims on his own account and promises faithfully, but cannot resist now and then when luring baits are laid before him, though such ventures invariably result in violent and profane protests from Aurora.