ly:

"John, Warren's back."

"Yes?" I answered. "Did he make a strike?"

"He found a copper mine," said Stevens.

"Oh, only copper!" I laughed. "That hunch system of his must have got
tarnished by this time, then!"

You see, copper at that time was worth next to nothing. There was no big
smelter in the Territory and it was almost impossible to sell the ore.
So it was natural enough that neither myself nor Stevens should feel
particularly jubilant over Warren's strike. One day I thought to ask
Warren whether he had christened his mine yet, as was the custom.

"I'm going to call it the 'Copper Queen,'" he said.

I laughed at him for the name, but admitted it a good one. That mine
today, reader, is one of the greatest copper properties in the world. It
is worth about a billion dollars. The syndicate that owns it owns as
well a good slice of Arizona.

"Syndicate?" I hear you ask. "Why, what about Warren, the man who found
the mine, and Stevens, the man who grub-staked him?"

Ah! What about them! George Stevens bet his share of the mine against
$75 at a horse race one day, and lost; and George Warren, the man with
the infallible hunch, died years back in squalid misery, driven there by
drink and the memory of many empty discoveries. The syndicate that
obtained the mine from Warren gave him a pension amply sufficient for
his needs, I believe. It is but fair to state that had the mine been
retained by Warren the probabilities are it would never have been
developed, for Warren, like other old prospectors, was a genius at
finding pay-streaks, but a failure when it came to exploiting them.

That, reader, is the true story of the discovery of the Copper Queen,
the mine that has made a dozen fortunes and two cities--Bisbee and
Douglas. If I had gone in with Stevens in grub-staking poor Warren would
I, too, I wonder, have sold my share for some foolish trifle or
recklessly gambled it away? I wonder!... Probably, I should.

A FRONTIER BUSINESS MAN

"_The chip of chisel, hum of saw,
The stones of progress laid;
The city grew, and, helped by its law,
Men many fortunes made._"

--Song of the City, by T. BURGESS.

A Phoenix man was in Patagonia recently and--I don't say he was a
typical Phoenix man--commented in a superior tone on the size of the
town.

"Why," he said, as if it clinched the argument, "Phoenix would make ten
Patagonias."

"And then some," I assented, "but, sonny, I