Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1898-02-17
The OLD SILVER TRAIL.
BY MARY E. sncKH.
copyright 1896. by J. B. LlppIneoss Col
CHAPTER I.-CoNrINUED.


as a rayening monster crying: "Give,
yiYe!" its discoverer had been permit
ted to do with it as he would. He
might cast into the mines insatiate
NAV his money, his hopes, his very
life, and there was no man to claim the
right to share the venture, none to med
die with the method of his immolation.
So long as Windy Gulch had been
accounted one of the deadest camps
in all Colorado, its peace had been I'M
disturbed; but now that an era of pros
perity had dawned, walking delegate
appeared to organize n branch of the
Miners union, and Harvey Neil was
first of all waited upon by the COM
mittee deputed to request that thence
forth the mine-owners would employ
none but union men, while certain de-
tails as to wages and hours of work
were peremptoriIy insisted upon. The
majority of the mine-owners, believing
discretion the better part of valor, con-
coded the dema' = after brief parley;
but Neil, with Il spirit ill equipped to
brook undue interference in what he
considered his private business, sent
the deputatiOn to the right-about with
such singing speech that the union
was reused to immediate retaliation,
and for the first time in all its history
Windy Gulch was treated to the spec
tacle of strike that BODIED no good to
any man.
1t was time of general business de-
preston, and hundreds of needy work
ingmen were eager to take the places
vacated by the strikers; but the IN
happy ''scabs" came but to suffer
martyrdom. Threats and excavations
pursued them through the streets of the
camp; and some who were caught out
after dark were SO mishandled that
they were glad to cry enough and es-
cape to the minor evils of wagelessness
and want. Neil, so far from being
brought to terms by such methods,
grew but the more obstinately in
.trenched in his position with contem-
plation of each new outrage. Such nom
union men as had stood by him he
would protect by every means in his
power, upholding their rights as we'll
as his own, come what would. He would
listen to no talk of compromise; not
one iota would he yield, although
a sympathetic strike had now been or
dered, and every mine in the camp that
depended upon hired labor stood still
for his determination. Deep shafts
filed with water, and costly machinery
rusted in idleness; and Windy Gulch,
but the other day as law-abiding and
sleepily plodding as any New England
village, was now alive with throng of
boozing idlers, nursing bitterness
against the mine-owners, and especially
casting curses upon the name of Harvey
Neil, whose plutocratic Indifference to
the rights of labor was held to be the
cause &C all the trouble. Appeals for
protection were made to the authorities
in vain, until at length, the strikers
souls infamed to frenzy by non-success
and want, that towards ally dynamite
was invoked to bring to terms the Mas
cot mine, while had not Harvey Neil
been summarily hustled out of sight
by frightened friends, the chances
seemed that even murder might have
been added TO the horrors of that night.
The county authorities were now
aroused to take summary action, and
peace was after time restored. But
capital which might have been tempted
. had been frightened back from field
which lawlessness could so dominate;
Windy Gulch, poorer by far than it had
ever been before, had ceased to dream of
: any boom; while Neil, all the costly i'm |
provements upon his property de- |
q stroyed, with no possibility of redress,
found himself practically at the foot of |
the ladder once more. More disheart- |
ened than he had ever been, the young |
man, who now felt old, borrowed money |
to get his mine in working shape once |
more; and when that was done he be- |
took himself to the east for the rest and /
change he so sorely needed after the |
s long strain that had been upon him.
And now up by the old trail the
Grubstake mine was presently wing |
with the Mascot in outward showing of
prosperity. Buildings went up and de-
velopment work proceeded at such
rate as only unlimited command of
g., capital could bring to pass, while all the
camp wondered. The Grubstake had
been located years before by couple of
credulous youths who were directed in
their operations altogether by the pre-
tended revelations of n so-called pro-
fessor of spiritualism In Denver. AL
though they had carried their tunnel
some sixty feet into the mountainside
IUSS lOSl 1dIlAl III IAlCAA VI tlSAS
sold out to the colonel for a song, no
mineral had been discovered, while the
camp was generally of the opinion that
none ever would be, until the new
owners operations stirred doubts as to
the soundness of that judgment. Some
there were to opine that the colonel
might be preparing new bait for ore of
the English syndicates of the type that
SC often had been his gudgeon; others,
who thought themselves equally well
informed as to the great promoters pc
culiar methods, argued that he was
more probably plotting mischief which
would presently be apparent in the
ground where the two claims crossed,
prophesying that Neil would be forced
for his own peace eventually to pur-
chase the Grubstake at its owners own
figure; while others still, more full of
charity toward gentleman who, so far
as reputation went, seemed generally in
the position of the under dog, contended
thta the work upon the property meant
only that there was mineral to be uncov-
cred there, since, whatever his faults,
there was no man who could see farther
through a stone than Col. Randolph
Meredith. And these last could take
unetiOn.t to their souls when one day the