n 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.

Higbie and I cleared out on a new mining excitement the next morning,
glad to get away from the scene of our sufferings, and after a month or
two of hardship and disappointment, returned to Esmeralda once more.
Then we learned that the Wide West and the Johnson companies had
consolidated; that the stock, thus united, comprised five thousand feet,
or shares; that the foreman, apprehending tiresome litigation, and
considering such a huge concern unwieldy, had sold his hundred feet for
ninety thousand dollars in gold and gone home to the States to enjoy it.
If the stock was worth such a gallant figure, with five thousand shares
in the corporation, it makes me dizzy to think what it would have been
worth with only our original six hundred in it. It was the difference
between six hundred men owning a house and five thousand owning it. We
would have been millionaires if we had only worked with pick and spade
one little day on our property and so secured our ownership!

It reads like a wild fancy sketch, but the evidence of many witnesses,
and likewise that of the official records of Esmeralda District, is
easily obtainable in proof that it is a true history. I can always have
it to say that I was absolutely and unquestionably worth a million
dollars, once, for ten days.

A year ago my esteemed and in every way estimable old millionaire
partner, Higbie, wrote me from an obscure little mining camp in
California that after nine or ten years of buffetings and hard striving,
he was at last in a position where he could command twenty-