That was the way of it.  An old miner, like Higbie, could no more withstand the fascination of a mysterious mining excitement like this “cement” foolishness, than he could refrain from eating when he was famishing.  Higbie had been dreaming about the marvelous cement for months; and now, against his better judgment, he had gone off and “taken the chances” on my keeping secure a mine worth a million undiscovered cement veins.  They had not been followed this time.  His riding out of town in broad daylight was such a common-place thing to do that it had not attracted any attention.  He said they prosecuted their search in the fastnesses of the mountains during nine days, without success; they could not find the cement.  Then a ghastly fear came over him that something might have happened to prevent the doing of the necessary work to hold the blind lead (though indeed he thought such a thing hardly possible), and forthwith he started home with all speed.  He would have reached Esmeralda in time, but his horse broke down and he had to walk a great part of the distance.  And so it happened that as he came into Esmeralda by one road, I entered it by another.  His was the superior energy, however, for he went straight to the Wide West, instead of turning aside as I had done—­and he arrived there about five or ten minutes too late!  The “notice” was already up, the “relocation” of our mine completed beyond recall, and the crowd rapidly dispersing.  He learned some facts before he left the ground.  The foreman had not been seen about the streets since the night we had located the mine—­a telegram had called him to California on a matter of life and death, it was said.  At any rate he had done no work and the watchful eyes of the community were taking note of the fact.  At midnight of this woful tenth day, the ledge would be “relocatable,” and by eleven o’clock the hill was black with men prepared to do the relocating.  That was the crowd I had seen when I fancied a new “strike” had been made—­idiot that I was.

[We three had the same right to relocate the lead that other people had, provided we were quick enough.] As midnight was announced, fourteen men, duly armed and ready to back their proceedings, put up their “notice” and proclaimed their ownership of the blind lead, under the new name of the “Johnson.”  But A. D. Allen our partner (the foreman) put in a sudden appearance about that time, with a cocked revolver in his hand, and said his name must be added to the list, or he would “thin out the Johnson company some.”  He was a manly, splendid, determined fellow, and known to be as good as his word, and therefore a compromise was effected.  They put in his name for a hundred feet, reserving to themselves the customary two hundred feet each.  Such was the history of the night’s events, as Higbie gathered from a friend on the way home.