When his guests were properly impressed by the wide range of his reading, he skillfully brought the subject down to modern mines and methods, and at last to his own incredible good fortune, after hardships of which perhaps they already had heard, in securing one hundred and sixty acres of valuable placer-ground in the heart of a wild and unexplored country--a country so dangerous and inaccessible that he doubted very much if it had ever been trod by any white foot beside his own and old "Bill" Griswold's.
The climax came when he dramatically announced his intention of making a stock company of his acquisition and permitting Bartlesville's leading citizens to subscribe!
Mr. Sprudell's guests received the news of the privilege which was to be accorded them in an unenthusiastic silence. In fact his unselfish kindness seemed to inspire uneasiness rather than gratitude in Bartlesville's leading citizens. They could bring themselves to swallow his dinners, but to be coerced into buying his mining stock was a decidedly bitter dose.
Well-meaning but tactless, Abe Cone expressed the general feeling, when he observed: "I been stung once, already, and I ain't lookin' for it again."
To everyone's surprise Abe got off unscathed. In fact Mr. Sprudell laughed good-naturedly.
"Stung, Abe--that's the word. And why?" He answered himself. "Because you were investing in something you did not understand."
"It looked all right," Abe defended. "You could see the gold stickin' out all over the rock, but I was 'salted' so bad I never got enough to drink since. I don't understand this placer-mining either, when it comes to that."
Adolph Gotts, who had been a butcher, specializing in sausage, before he became a city contractor, was about to say the same thing, when Sprudell interrupted triumphantly: "Ah, but you will before I'm done." It was the moment for which he had waited. "Follow me, gentlemen."
He threw open the door of the adjoining room with a wide gesture, his face radiant with elation.
The company stared, and well it might, for at a signal a miniature placer mine started operation.
The hotel porter shovelled imported sand into a sluice-box through which a stream of water ran and at the end was the gold-saving device invented by Mr. Sprudell which was to revolutionize placer-mining!
The sand contained the gold-dust that represented half of Bruce's laborious summer's working and when Sprudell finally removed his coat and cleaned up the sluice boxes and the gold-saving machine, the residue left in the gold-pan was enough to give even a "'49'er" heart failure.
His triumph was complete. There was a note of awe even in Old Man "Gid" Rathburn's voice, while Abe Cone fairly grovelled as he inquired: "Is it all like that? Where does it come from? How did it git into that dirt?"