OUBLE

The next two weeks of Wiley Holman's life were packed so full of trouble
that there were those who almost pitied him, though the word had been
passed around to lay off. It was Samuel J. Blount who was making the
trouble, and who notified the rest to keep out, and so great was his
influence in all the desert country that no one dared to interfere. What
he did was all legal and according to business ethics, but it gloved the
iron hand. Blount was reaching for the mine and he intended to get it,
if he had to crush his man. The attachments and suits were but the
shadow boxing of the bout; the rough stuff was held in reserve. And
somehow Wiley sensed this, for he sat tight at the mine and hired a
lawyer to meet the suits. His job was mining ore and he shoveled it out
by the ton.

The distressing accidents had suddenly ceased since he began to board
his own men at the mine and, while his lawyer stalled and haggled to
fight off an injunction, he rushed his ore to the railroad. It was too
precious to ship loose, for at eighty-four dollars a unit it was worth
over four dollars a pound; he sent it out sacked, with an armed guard on
each truck to see that it was delivered and receipted for. As the checks
came back he paid off all his debts, thus depriving Blount of his
favorite club; and then, while Blount was casting about for new weapons,
he began to lay aside his profits.

They rolled up monstrously, for each five-ton truck load added several
thousand dollars to his bank account, but the time was getting short.
Less than three weeks remained before the bond and lease expired, and
still Wiley was playing to win. He crammed his mine with men, snatching
the ore from the stopes as the bonanza leasers had done at Tonopah, and
doubling the miner's pay with bonuses. Every truck driver received his
bonus, and night and day the great motors went thundering across the
desert. The ore came up from below and was dumped on a jig, where it was
sorted and hastily sacked; and after that there was nothing to do but
sent it under guard to the railroad. There was no milling, no smelting,
no tedious process of reduction; but the raw picked ore was rushed to
the East and the checks came promptly back.

Blount was fully informed now of the terms of his contract and of the
source of his sudden wealth, but there was no way of reaching the buyer.
A great war was on, every minute was precious--and every ounce of the
tungsten was needed. The