Out at once they hurried with picks and shovels to the Tombstone ledge. Gird the expert soon determined that, though the ore was rich, the pocket was shallow and would quickly be exhausted. This was a blow to Gird and Brother Al. Deep gloom settled upon them that night at the Brunckow house. Gird regretted his resignation at Signal; Brother Al mourned over his lost $4 a day. Gird talked of going on into Mexico; Brother Al wondered plaintively if there wasn’t a mine somewhere around there where he could find a job. But Ed Schieffelin remained cheerfully confident. The silver was here in these hills—he knew it. These two disconsolate ones might do as they pleased; he would stay.
Followed meagre, disappointing weeks. The silver hills, it appeared, were not to be taken by quick assault but must be besieged. The three partners settled down into systematic routine, with Ed Schieffelin as prospector, Gird as assayer, Brother Al as cook. No longer was Ed Schieffelin in doubt as to the value of his finds; every evening he brought in ore, and Gird determined its richness in his furnace.
Brother Al, riding out one morning after deer, encountered Ed in the hills, elated over a piece of float.
“Here, Al, look at this,” said Ed in a glow of excitement. “This is the best-looking piece of ore I’ve found yet.”
But Brother Al was not to be bothered. “I’m looking for a deer,” he said, and rode on.
Ed Schieffelin was building a monument when Brother Al rode back with a fat buck slung across his saddle.
“I’ve struck it rich this time,” Ed called out joyously.
“You’re a lucky cuss,” Brother Al flung back indifferently over his shoulder as he moved off toward camp dreaming of venison steaks for supper.
So the Lucky Cuss mine got its name. The ore samples Gird assayed that night ran $15,000 to the ton.
No more gloom or despondency now. Gird was full of enthusiasm. Brother Al showed a flash of optimism. Bonanza dreams were on the verge of fulfilment. Off to Tucson, Gird and Brother Al hurried to stock up on provisions for a long stay, dropping there incidentally a hint of the richness of the new treasure field. A few days after their return, Hank Williams and John Oliver were exploring the Tombstone hills. While Gird and Brother Al were building a cabin on the Lucky Cuss claim, Ed Schieffelin discovered the Tough Nut lode, rich in horn silver.
Ed Schieffelin laid off prospecting for three days to help move camp from the Brunckow house to the Lucky Cuss cabin, forever afterward blaming these lost three days for his failure to discover the Grand Central mine. Two mules belonging to Williams and Oliver, who were camped over a hill from the Lucky Cuss, broke loose at night and wandered off on a hunt for water. Searching for the animals next morning, Williams spied the gleam of metal in the trail left by the dragging halter chains, and lost no time in staking a claim. Gird contended this claim infringed upon a prior claim of the three partners. After a wrangle, Williams and Oliver agreed to divide the location; the part they retained, they named the Grand Central; the part that fell to the share of Gird and the Schieffelins was christened, because of the quarrel, the Contention. These two mines, discovered through vagrant mules, turned out to be the richest ever found in the district.
The period of discovery was drawing to a close; the time of consolidation and development was at hand. News of the strike spread abroad; crowds of adventurers took the trail for the hills; the town of Tombstone evolved overnight, as if out of thin air, to become one of the greatest silver camps of the West. Mining machinery was freighted in, stamp mills for reducing ore sprang up, bullion began to flood out across the desert to world markets.
Gird and the Schieffelins jumped at the first chance to sell the Contention for $10,000; the purchasers took millions from it. The three partners sold a half interest in the Lucky Cuss, but the other half, retained for years, poured a steady stream of money into their coffers. The two Schieffelins sold their two thirds of the Tough Nut group for a million dollars; Gird sold his one third later for an equal sum. Gird long remained in the country building his fortune to greater proportions; the Schieffelins took their departure. The two brothers had come into the hills almost penniless; they went out millionaires.
Flushed with achievement, rich, famous, still young, Ed Schieffelin turned to civilization to prospect for new adventures. Civilization to him was little more than a name; he had glimpsed its peaks only from far off; he might find misery there or strike it rich in happiness; he would see what it held for him. He went to New York and lived there for a time; passed on to Chicago, Washington, other cities; travelled extensively; met many distinguished people. Everywhere this picturesque young plutocrat with his background of romance was lionized.
But fortune and adulations made no change in him; he remained always the same simplehearted, kindly, sympathetic soul, helping poor relations and old friends generously, responding to every appeal for charity, his hand forever in his pockets. For a summer, he flitted to the Yukon in a steamer built at his own expense, on an unsuccessful hunt for gold. On his return, he married Mrs. Mary E. Brown and built a mansion for his bride in Alameda on San Francisco Bay. He purchased a residence in Los Angeles later, and, with his wife, father, and Brother Al to share its comforts, relaxed into tranquil domesticity, Brother Al dying here in .
But civilization had failed to drug his memories of
