The Story of a Mine

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Bret Harte. The Story of a Mine

PART—I

CHAPTER I. WHO SOUGHT IT

CHAPTER II. WHO FOUND IT

CHAPTER III. WHO CLAIMED IT

CHAPTER IV. WHO TOOK IT

CHAPTER V. WHO HAD A LIEN ON IT

PART II.—IN THE COURTS

CHAPTER VI. HOW A GRANT WAS GOT FOR IT

CHAPTER VII. WHO PLEAD FOR IT

CHAPTER VIII. OF COUNSEL FOR IT

CHAPTER IX. WHAT THE FAIR HAD TO DO ABOUT IT

PART III.—IN CONGRESS

CHAPTER X. WHO LOBBIED FOR IT

CHAPTER XI. HOW IT WAS LOBBIED FOR

CHAPTER XII. A RACE FOR IT

CHAPTER XIII. HOW IT BECAME FAMOUS

CHAPTER XIV. WHAT CULTURE DID FOR IT

CHAPTER XV. HOW IT BECAME UNFINISHED BUSINESS

CHAPTER XVI. AND WHO FORGOT IT

Отрывок из книги

It was a steep trail leading over the Monterey Coast Range. Concho was very tired, Concho was very dusty, Concho was very much disgusted. To Concho’s mind there was but one relief for these insurmountable difficulties, and that lay in a leathern bottle slung over the machillas of his saddle. Concho raised the bottle to his lips, took a long draught, made a wry face, and ejaculated:

It appeared that the bottle did not contain aguardiente, but had lately been filled in a tavern near Tres Pinos by an Irishman who sold had American whisky under that pleasing Castilian title. Nevertheless Concho had already nearly emptied the bottle, and it fell back against the saddle as yellow and flaccid as his own cheeks. Thus reinforced Concho turned to look at the valley behind him, from which he had climbed since noon. It was a sterile waste bordered here and there by arable fringes and valdas of meadow land, but in the main, dusty, dry, and forbidding. His eye rested for a moment on a low white cloud line on the eastern horizon, but so mocking and unsubstantial that it seemed to come and go as he gazed. Concho struck his forehead and winked his hot eyelids. Was it the Sierras or the cursed American whisky?

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“You shall try me this,” said Concho, offering his iron ore to the stranger;—“you shall use the silver and the salt.”

“Not so fast my friend,” answered the stranger; “in the first place this ore must be melted, and then a chip taken and put in shape like this,—and that is worth something, my Greaser cherub. No, sir, a man don’t spend all his youth at Freiburg and Heidelburg to throw away his science gratuitously on the first Greaser he meets.”

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