Psychology and Copper and four more stories (ePub)

Western novelette by W C Tuttle, published in Adventure magazine. Excerpt: '"Scientific prospectin' has its merits," announced Ike Harper, as he climbed out of the gopher-hole and sat down beside me on a boulder and filled his pipe, "but fool luck has uncovered more bonanzas than science. "Now, there was ol' Jerry Sullivan's burro went skatin' down th' hill off th' trail one day and slid th' coverin' off th' Silver Cross, which made uh millionaire outa Jerry. Hen Berry accidentally fired his six-shooter into th' ground oncet and uncovered one of th' richest gold veins in th' State. Yuh can talk science till yer tongue hangs out, but if yuh ain't lucky yuh never hit it rich. Do yuh happen to know uh elongated person named Magpie Simpkins?" I replied that I had never had that pleasure. "Pleasure!" he snorted. "No, I reckon nobody ever did. Let me tell yuh why. "Magpie was uh scientific prospector. He could take uh piece uh rock and tell yuh jist what it contained and why it contained said constituents. Mineralogy was an open book to that jasper, and because of it he never made uh strike. "But he didn't merely go in fer prospectin'. That person was loco on anything except work. I reckon he had tried nearly everything. First he went in fer hypnotism. Not havin' uh likely subject, he tried it on uh wildcat. I reckon he forgot to tell th' cat what it meant. He got loose from th' cat and th' hypnotism thing at th' same time.'