The Gold Miner's Wife: A Young Woman's Story of Romance, Passion and Murder Read Free

themselves. 
                  His first break came in the spring of 1870 in the form of one Whiskers McGee, a scruffy, old, weather beaten prospector.  When Sprague chanced to sit next to him at the bar in a Denver saloon, McGee had already been partaking in ‘the cup that cheers’ for quite some time.  A jaw-jacker by nature, his embellished ramblings about gold found in the nearby mountains and references to an area known as Russell Gulch sounded at first like an improbable fairy tale.  Then McGee produced a small poke sack from beneath his belt and dumped five little nuggets on the bar.  Sprague was suddenly following the story with keener interest.
                  “My little beauties,” McGee said quietly as he gently fingered each one.  “Everything frittered away, the years I spent, and all for you.”  He turned to Sprague.  “Should have stuck with farming,” he said gruffly.  “It’s what I know.”  Then he asked, “You read the papers?”
                  “Some,” Sprague answered.
                  “Well, don’t,” McGee admonished.  “It’s all a foul pack of lies – there ain’t no gold.  And even if there was, you ain’t never gonna find yourself enough to make yourself rich.”
                  “Shouldn’t you be putting those away, stranger?” Sprague wisely counseled.  The old man was taking a terrible chance openly displaying such valuables, and in a bar no less.  It was nothing short of foolhardy.  McGee slid the glittery treasures back into the pouch which disappeared under his belt. 
                  “Never really thought much about prospecting,” Sprague commented.  “But I’ve heard of a few who’ve made it big.”
                  “I know it’s out there somewhere,” McGee admitted bitterly.  “Found some nice little stones in Russell Gulch, but never the source.  Ten years is a long time to dig in the dirt with a pick ax.  I’ve quit looking.  Waste of time, prospecting.  No future in it.”
                  As the old man talked about his disappointment, Sprague was forming a different opinion about what he had hitherto thought of as a speculative venture.  Maybe there was gold in the area McGee had described.  He risked nothing by taking a look himself.  McGee’s parting words delivered a message of hope along with a warning.
                  “It may be out there, but you’ll waste half your life lookin for it,”  he said grimly.  And with that, Whiskers McGee shuffled out the door.
                  Thomas Sprague never saw McGee again, but he always remembered him.  Years later, Sprague would name the gold mine near Russell Gulch, in which he owned a half interest, ‘The Five Nuggets’.
                  As events unfolded, Thomas Sprague’s second stroke of good fortune came in the spring of 1871 when he chanced to meet Jack Simmons at a Denver horse auction.  Both men were keenly interested in the same superior horseflesh.  It soon became clear that Simmons held all the cards as he seemed to have nearly inexhaustible financial resources at his disposal.  A Yale man, Simmons had traveled west and established an accounting business in Denver in 1869.  He sought adventure, dabbled in cattle ranching and desired to make his mark in the business world.
      Rather than becoming adversaries over such a trifle as a horse, the two soon became friends.  A genuine camaraderie developed between them – they seemed as two kindred spirits, similar in age and temperament and both of them thrifty, law-abiding and industrious.  In Jack Simmons, Sprague had found the financial backing he needed to stake a claim and open a mine.  Their shared enterprise was fraught with uncertainty, but in the end a partnership was finalized.  They sealed the deal with a gentlemanly hand shake.  By 1873, Sprague and Simmons had