The Bottineau courant. (Bottineau, Bottineau County, N.D.) 1895-1929, 1922-03-09


HANDS tore away tlle looserpck aaIs.
With the removal On THE slight barrier
and the consequent clearing ~ the
course of the stream, the pocket resers
soir Immediately sucked dry. the inlet
of the c~ataracting pipe was exposed,
and the secret Dc the flooded Cinnabar
was 4 secret 10 longer.
The scheme which had been elab-
Grated and set iii motion % soak
Grandfather Jasper was q premedI-
tated ''holdup." The Clnnabar. Ia op-
Grafton and producing to Its capacity,
was worth, 10 Beasley asserted. all
that my grandfather had paid for It.
and more. But with the branch rail-
road built to It's very door, It's value
would be doubled. Tive alternatives
had thus presented themselves to the
owners, who were Cripple Creek
mining spectators who had bought In
the stock at d low figure while the
main vein was as vet unexpected they
could 10 on mining the ore and stor-
ing 1t against the time when the rail-
road, with Its c~ost-reducing adyan-
tages. should come along; or they
could suspend operations for the anne
length Of time, setting the losses aof d
shutdown over against the increased
profits when they should start up
again. H.
With our discoveries OF the morning
the plan of the robbery became per-
Efeetly plain. Some giant OF finance
among the Spectators had evolved q
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 ut the same time
be made to yield d 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 q 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 a
part of the shaft iining-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 it's 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 c~onjec-
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 builded 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
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-
ASy Noohu kUoAl1y tIiuS NY tGllOlaAINL
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 We're 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 fu-
ture. Hence the time was fully ripe
for the recovery of the Cinnabar by
the plotters. No doubt they had On
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 I had figured upon--this at
the time of the s%pringing Of the flood
trap-and that the cost had been esti-
mated at. half a million. Unauestion-
ably the robbers had assumed that an
old man who had already charged his
venture up to profit and loss would
sell for a song rather than to venture
again; and In this they were probably
we'll within the truth.
But dit the moment when they were
ready TO complete the circle OF inn
AZ 49,. t4EIN III -. ". :. 49, =