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"My uncle was typical of the men who developed the er, and middle class, and except for his small size-he stood only five feet two-he could easily have passed for what the novelists of the day vividly depicted as a gentleineer, co boots, jodhpurs, and a Ser hat"

"You make him sound like a hero from an old Saturday matinee serial"

"A fictional hero could never have hly specialized today, of course, but an engineer of the old school had to be as tough as the rock he mined, and he had to be versatile-ist, lawyer, arbitrator between penny-pinching ement and muscle-brained workers This was the kind of man it took to run a mine This was Joshua Hays Brewster"

Donner kept silent, sloirling the liquor around in his glass

"Aftercontinued, "he followed his profession in the Klondike, Australia, and Russia before returning to the Rockies in 1908 to e the Sour Rock and Buffalo, a pair of roup of French financiers in Paris who never laid eyes on Colorado"

"The French ownedclaims in the States?"

"Yes Their capital flowed heavily throughout the West Gold and silver, cattle, sheep, real estate; you naer in it"

"What possessed Brewster to reopen the Little Angel?"

"That's a strange story in itself," Young said "The mine orthless The Alabahed up two million dollars in silver before the water in the lower levels began running ahead of the purade lode The Little Angel never ca paused to sip at his drink and then stared at it as though he were seeing a vague ie in the ice cubes "When my uncle advertised his intentions to reopen the mine to anyone ould listen, people who knew him ere shocked Yes, Mr Donner, shocked Joshua Hays Brewster was a cautiousdetail His every move was carefully calculated in terms of success He never played the odds unless they were steeply in his favor For him to publicly announce such a hare-brained scheme was unthinkable The mere act was considered by all to be that of a madman"

"Maybe he found some clue the others had missed"

Young shook his head "I've been a geologist for over sixty years, Mr Donner, and a dael down to the flooded levels, and analyzed every accessible inch of the Alaba you positively and unequivocally there is no untapped vein of silver down there now, nor was there one in 1911"

The Monte Cristo sandwiches came and the salad plates hisked away

"Are you suggesting your uncle went insane?"

"The possibility has occurred to nosed in those days"

"So were nervous breakdowns"