Chapter 4: The Raider of the Copper Hill
Dates: 1884-1885
The end of the cattle boom in The Wild West means yet another career change for Scrooge: prospecting. He likes his chances with copper mining since he strikes his claim just when some new-fangled invention called electricity causes a demand for copper. While working his homestead near the Anaconda Hill Copper Works ("the richest hill on Earth"), he meets millionaire Self-Made Man Howard Rockerduck, who, to the disdain of his wife and Spoiled Brat son (one John D. Rockerduck) who have forgotten his humble beginnings, teaches him the art of prospecting. But Wait, There's More!
Rockerduck: This man has a homestead on land where the Anaconda copper vein is only five feet deep! The Law of Apex of 1849 says that whoever owns the land where an ore vein is closest to the surface owns the entire vein! Scrooge McDuck owns the Anaconda Copper Mine!
After a wild fight with claim jumpers (the first of many in his life), Scrooge believes he has finally found the key to his fortune, until he gets a telegram from home urgently asking him to bring money to help with a crisis. Unable to wait to turn a limitless profit from the copper mine, he sells it back to the original owners and returns to his family with the money, taking away one important lesson from his experience:
"Get lost, Mr. Big-Shot-Copper-King!"
Scrooge: They were my friends! What did I do?
Rockerduck: You got rich, son. Best get used to it like -sigh I did. You'll have their respect, but no longer their love.
Scrooge: They were my friends! What did I do?
Rockerduck: You got rich, son. Best get used to it like -sigh I did. You'll have their respect, but no longer their love.
This chapter provides examples of:
- Amusing Injuries: Scrooge is sent to cut off barbed wires off-screen, but when he appears, he is covered in sharp barbed wires. Although Scrooge explicitely says it hurts like hell, it is Played for Laughs. Another instance is Scrooge getting electrocuted.
- Easily-Overheard Conversation: Everyone in town somehow overhears Howard saying to Scrooge that he needs to put the claim on his land to get rich.
- End of an Age: The age of migrating great cow herds has ended as more people have claimed for themselves the lands on which cows feed.
- Most people believe that the day of the mineral rushes is over as well, but as this story will show, those days aren't quite over just yet.
- Foreshadowing: Scrooge isn't that choked up that his (Brief) ownership of the Anaconda Mine has cost his friendship with the other prospectors, hinting that his quest for money will embitter him towards his family...
- Green-Eyed Monster: All of Scrooge's friends in the town immediately turn on him for striking it rich. It is one of many bitter lessons that Scrooge will have to learn.
- Hard Work Hardly Works: Scrooge works hard to mine for copper, but with no skill or luck, his attempts at finding copper are unsuccessful. Howard Rockerduck later notes that Scrooge lacks training, and offers the younger man some tips.
- Hilariously Abusive Childhood: John Roderduck is a spoiled and unpleasant brat, no wonder the prospect of his father whipping him with a horsewhip comes off as hilarious, instead of shocking.
- Idle Rich: Howard Roderduck's wife and son are this. They actually look down on him for daring to *gasp*, work with his hands. Having apparently forgotten that he earned his fortune in this way.
- Loophole Abuse: Howard tries to get Scrooge a claim to a very rich copper vein, due to an obscure rule stipulating that the person who owns land where the vein is closest to the surface gets the whole vein.
- Mentor Archetype: Howard Roderduck becomes a mining teacher to Scrooge, and teaches him everything down to how to swing his pickaxe the good way.
- One-Man Army: Scrooge proves himself worthy of this trope, by fighting hundreds of miners to the last.
- Passed-Over Inheritance: In a round-about way. Howard actually owns the copper mine that Scrooge and the others fought over, but deliberately told Scrooge about the Loophole Abuse that allow other people to steal his claim. When Scrooge asks him about this, Howard replies that he's rich enough and that it'll do his son more good to receive less inheritance.
- Please Shoot the Messenger: Played for Laughs. Howard Rockerduck expresses that his Spoiled Brat of a son should be beaten with a horsewhip. After Scrooge has to give up his claim to the copper mine to help his family, John Rockerduck starts berating his father for mingling with peasants, and the next panel shows John buying a horse whip from a store on his father's order.Storekeeper: Your father sent you over here to buy him a horsewhip?
John: (imperiously waving a banknote) Yes, and you'd better snap to it, lackey! He's a rich man! - Rule of Symbolism: According to
Word of God, Scrooge having to give up the Anaconda Mine so soon is to symbolize how he won't be able to keep his fortune if he doesn't earn it. - Sadistic Choice: Scrooge is offered $10,000 for his copper vein, a ridiculously low price. However a telegram from his family urging him to come back home forces him to either abandon his family to get rich in the long term or take the $10,000 he needs to travel right now, at the cost of his future fortune. Scrooge chooses the latter.
- Schmuck Bait: Scrooge baits a bunch of miners who want his claim into his cabin by taunting them from seemingly inside. They are all trapped inside by Scrooge, who kicks the cabin into a nearby river.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After being shocked by a live wire Scrooge was swinging on, faithful steed Hortense has this thought before marching off in a huff.Hortense: (Thinking) I quit! Effective immediately!
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: After literally having to fight off an army of people, Scrooge must abandon his claim to wealth and return to Scotland because his family needs him at the moment.
- Spoiled Brat: Rockerduck's son, John. Little does Scrooge know that the annoying little twerp will one day become his number two ival, though unlike Glomgold, they remain business rivals only, rather than bitter enemies.
- Telegraph Gag STOP"Son - Terrible crisis for the clan McDuck stop need cash stop come home at once stop don't stop stop"
- Vine Swing: Scrooge tries to go ahead of a mob of people by swinging above them with an electrical wire.
- With Friends Like These...: Scrooge describes his friends in Butte as "kind and generous to a fault." These same people instantly rush to jump Scrooge's claim when it becomes apparent he might own the Anaconda Mine. And after Scrooge prevails, they jeer and insult him.
- Worthless Yellow Rocks: In this case, Scrooge discovering copper is at first treated with contempt. However the news about electricity and the subsequent explosion in copper's value triggers a town-wide copper rush.
