Longarm and the Colorado gundown

_{“No, sir, an’ I’ll tell you why. The veins here run vertical. Takes a lotta gear an’ a lotta money to mine straight up an’ down. Whole lot more expensive than horizontal digging because you got to lift everything out a bit at a time. That makes it slow as well as hard. Worse, there’s a lotta water seepage in the deep shafts, so that has t’ be pumped out too, an’ it’s no easier to lift water than it is t’ lift gold ore. It takes heavy equipment t’ mine this country, neighbor. Big pumps, steam engines, fast hoists... all that stuff is easy enough t’ move on a railroad car, but damn difficult t’ carry on a mule’s back.”}

_{“You sound like a man who knows what he’s talking about.”}

_{The brakeman nodded solemnly and accepted the cheroot Longarm offered. He struck his own light and inhaled the smoke with obvious pleasure, holding it deep for a moment and smiling before he spoke again. “Thanks. That’s fine. An’ yessir, I know a thing or two ’bout hauling and ’bout mining too. I been a bullwhacker an’ a freighter an’ a powder monkey above ground an’ below it too. I’ve hauled light rails by mule train, an’ then turned right around an’ laid those rails inside mine adits t’ make track for ore carts. Then even hired on t’ work in one of those same mines an’ filled carts on track I’d just got done layin’ down. Yessir, I expect I do know a few things ’bout this country an’ what it takes to make a living in it.”}

_{“And you don’t think Snowshoe or any of these other camps will make it?”}

_{“That ain’t exactly what I said. Any of ’em can make it, I think. If they get the rails through so’s they can bring the proper equipment in an’ get their ores out at a reasonable cost. That’s one o’ the things about these camps, see. The ones farthest out get the shit end o’ the stick every way possible. Can’t get equipment in t’ set up mills an’ refineries that’d reduce the raw ore to something light an’ manageable. Can’t afford to haul raw ore out to have it refined elsewhere. That’s ’cause it costs, say, ten dollars t’ haul a ton of ore. Costs, say, another ten dollars to get}

_{that ore outta the ground. And on top of everything else you got to pay to have your ore processed. An’ if a ton o’ ore is only yielding, say, fifteen dollars, well, you tell me how long a man can stay in business that way.”}

_{“But if a railroad comes in .. . ?”}