Lord bless you, it is a common practice with Orion
to go about town stealing little things that happen to be lying
around loose. And I don't remember having heard him speak the truth
since we have been in Nevada. He even tries to prevail upon me to
do these things, Ma, but I wasn't brought up in that way, you know.
You showed the public what you could do in that line when you raised
me, Madam. But then you ought to have raised me first, so that
Orion could have had the benefit of my example. Do you know that he
stole all the stamps out of an 8-stamp quartz-mill one night, and
brought them home under his overcoat and hid them in the back room?
XXXV
THE MINER
He had about exhausted his own funds by this time, and it was necessary
that Orion should become the financier. The brothers owned their
Esmeralda claims in partnership, and it was agreed that Orion, out of his
modest depleted pay, should furnish the means, while the other would go
actively into the field and develop their riches. Neither had the
slightest doubt but that they would be millionaires presently, and both
were willing to struggle and starve for the few intervening weeks.
It was February when the printer-pilot-miner arrived in Aurora, that
rough, turbulent camp of the Esmeralda district lying about one hundred
miles south of Carson City, on the edge of California, in the Sierra
slopes. Everything was frozen and covered with snow; but there was no
lack of excitement and prospecting and grabbing for "feet" in this ledge
and that, buried deep under the ice and drift.
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