The Adair County news., 1922-01-24

formed a small dam which Kept the
little reservoir full.
Without a word, Daddy Hiram and
the Angelic marshal plunged reckless
" into the stream and with their bare
hands tore away the lOOse-rOck dam.
With the removal of the slight barrier
and the consequent clearing Of the
course of the stream, the pocket reser-
voir Immediately sucked dry, the inlet
of the cataracting pipe was exposed,
and the secret of the flooded Cinnabar
was a secret no longer.
The scheme which had been elab-
grated and set in motion to "soak"
Grandfather Jasper was a premedi-
tated "hOldup." The Cinnabar, in Op-
Grafton and producing to it's capacity,
was worth, so Beasley asserted all
that my grandfather had paid for it,
and more. But with the branch rail-
road built to it's very door, its value
would be doubled. Two alternatives
had thus presented themselves to the
owners, who were Cripple Creek
mining SPECTATORS who had bought in
the stock at a low figure while the
main vein was as yet unexpected: they
could go on mining the ore and stOr-
ing it against the time when the rail-
road, with its cost-reducing advan-
tages, should come along; or they
could suspend operations for the same
length of time, setting the losses Of
shutdown over against the increased
profits when they should start up
again.
With our discoveries of the morning
the plan of the robbery became per-
fectly plain. Some giant of finance
among the spectators had evolved a
scheme by which the mine not only
might be shut down during the inter
val of waiting for the railroad to build
over the bench, but at the same time
be made to yield a bumper crop of
profits.
Taking its various steps in their or
der, the first move in the game was to
sell the mine to Grandfather Jasper
while it was still a going proposition !;
and this was done. But one of the
conditions of the sale (Beasley told us
this) was that the selling corporation
should continue to operate the mine,
not as a lessee, but under a contract
by which the operating company
should receive a certain percentage Of
the output; an arrangement which
gave the holdup artists ample oppor-
tunity to prepare for the coup de main.
How these preparations were made.
and the secret of them kept from leak
ing out, still remained one of the I'M
solved mysteries, though Beasley sug-
gested that probably imported work.
men were employed and that the work
had been done under jealous super
vision with all the needful precautions
taken against publicity. The tight
wooden bOX-which would figure as
part of the shaft lining-had been
built, and into the box the creek had
been diverted by means of the small
dam and the underground conduit.
With the water admitted, to rise in
the box to the level of its intake in
the creek reservoir. the trap was set
and was ready to be sprung.
Beyond this point there was a gap
we were obliged to bridge by cOnjec-
ture, but the differences were all plausi-
BILE enough. Doubtless the plotters
had notified my grandfather that his
mine was flooded and was no longer
workable Doubtless, again, he had
authorized them to buy the needful
pumping machinery and to install it
which they did.
In this barefaced impOsture the plot
tiers had cOnceivably buuded some
thing upon Grandfather Jasper's adj
vanced age as an insurance against
any toO-searching investigation but
beyond this they had carefully dis
armed any suspicion that he might
! otherwise have harbOred by encOurag-
| ing HMM the actual purchase of the
| prOperty-tO take expert advice, and
by craftily printing him, by under
statements of the facts, to trust them.
Only rumOrs of what had occurred
at this visit reached Angels; but Beas-
ley could testify that my grandfather
had come and returned alone, and that
after the pumping demonstration had
| been made he had seemed disposed to
pocket his huge loss and to call it a
bad days work.
The later developments were not
hard to figure out. Beasley was able
to tell us that the proposed railroad
branch to run to the new copper prop
critics in Little Cinnabar gulch was
now a certainty for the very near flu
ture. Hence the time was fully ripe
for the recovery of the Cinnabar by
the plOtters. No doubt they had con-
fidently assumed that a repurchase of
the prOperty-not directly by them
selves, of course, but by an agent who
would figure as a disinterested third
party-would be easy. Beasley said
that there had been some talk of an
undermining drainage tunnel, such as
Daddy and 1 had figured upon-this al
the time of the springing Of the flood
trap-and that the cost had been esti
mated.at half a million. Unquestion