"No, it ain't," said Mormon, mopping his forehead. "And she ain't the same kind they was, neither. Come on, or we'll lose 'em."

CHAPTER XII

WHITE GOLD

"It was mighty decent of you to take me under your protection," said the young engineer to Sandy. He made hard going of the last word but shot it out with a snap that left his jaw advanced. Sandy told himself that he liked the clean-cut, well-set-up Westlake.

"Shucks," he answered, "I reckon you w'udn't have much trubble protectin' yo'self, providin' terms was any way nigh even. That Roarin'

Russell throwed down on you, figgerin' you packed no gun, seein' there was none in sight.

"I sabe that kind of hombre. Since he was knee-high he's always had an aidge on most folks, 'count of his size an' weight. But that ain't enough, he's got to have somethin' on the other man 'fo' he tackles him.

He plays all his games with an ace in a hold-out. Which shows him fo' a man who figgers he ain't equal to tacklin' another 'thout he knows he's got the best of it. He thinks he's one h.e.l.l of a wrastler an'

rough-an'-tumble man but, if he ever mixes with Mormon, it's goin' to be a bull an' b'ar affair--an' Mormon'll do the tossin'."

Westlake looked somewhat dubiously at Mormon's girth.

"Don't jedge a man by the size of his waistband," said Sandy. "Mormon's fooled mo'n one. He's hog fat, to look at, but if you was to skin him you'd find mighty li'l' fat an' a heap of muscle. Got flesh like an Injunrubber ball, has Mormon. Minute Roarin' Russell finds he ain't got a walkover he'll begin to quit. That sort does, ninety-nine out of a hundred. The yaller jest natcher'ly oozes out of 'em. How'd your fuss come to staht?"

"A man was showing Russell and some others a piece of quartz picked up round here. It had nothing in it but some mica and galena, but Russell had given it as his opinion that it was the gold-bearing rock of the region. I told them I thought they would find that in the porphyry and Russell asked me what the h.e.l.l I knew about it? That's how it started. I don't know how it would have finished if you hadn't taken a hand and said I was a friend of yours. That saved my face. I came to the strike because I thought there would be a chance of getting in on the ground floor in new diggings and I hated to be driven out of it by having to dance for a bully and a bully's crowd. I don't know that I _would_ have danced. It's hard to weigh the odds when a gun has been fired at you, but I figured he wouldn't shoot to kill."

"Might have crippled you," said Sandy. "If I'd been you I'd have danced."

"You would?"

"I sure would. No sense in argy'in' with a gun an' a boozy bluffer at the other end of it. He'd put up his bluff an', feelin' sure you c'udn't hurt him, he'd have carried it through. Any time a man has the drop on me I raise my hands--or my feet, 'cordin' to orders. I've spent a deal of time practisin' so it's hahd to beat me to the draw. Trouble was, ef you-all don't mind my sayin' so, you horned in. You give out information gratis. You had yore sign up fo' minin' engineer. Chahge fo' what you know, son, an' yo' customers'll be grateful. Give 'em a slug o' gold free an' they'll chuck it at a perairie dawg befo' they've gone fifty yards."

"Do you know anything about mining, Mr. Bourke?"

"Sandy is my name to my friends. A cowman with a mister to the front of his name seems to me like a hawss with an extry bridle. No, sir, I don't. Do you?"

Sandy's eyes twinkled as he put the quiz. Westlake laughed.

"I hope so. I think so. Mining is bound to be more or less of a gamble.

A first-cla.s.s mining engineer could tell you where you ought to find the gold in a certain region, but he couldn't guarantee that there would be any. Experience counts a lot, of course, but I do know something about sylvanite, or white gold. I've seen its big field over in Boulder and Teller Counties, Colorado. They call it graphic gold, sometimes, because the crystals are very frequently set up in twins and branch off so that they look like written characters. The crystals are monoclinic and occur in porphyry almost exclusively. It is a mixture of gold and silver telluride and it's also called tellurium. Named after Transylvania where it was first found. There's some in Australia."

"I'm much obliged," said Sandy. "I've learned a heap."

Westlake looked at him suspiciously, but Sandy's face was grave as that of the sphinx.

"The porphyry d.y.k.es here are in syncline," the engineer went on. "They dip toward each other from both sides of the valley and form loops or folds. If you imagine an onion sliced in half you catch the idea. Call every other layer porphyry, with rock and other dirt between. The bottom of a loop may be deep down or it may be missing altogether, ground away when the valley was gouged out by a glacier. There may be other loops beneath it. Some portions of the loops come to the surface on the hillside and you can guess at their dip. But--the gamble lies in this.

The ones that are exposed may or may not carry the gold-bearing veins.

You might hit it at gra.s.s roots and find a lot of it. Or you might go down deep sinking through the hard porphyry for nothing. Science says that the tellurium crystals are in the porphyry d.y.k.es and that these d.y.k.es lie in syncline, perhaps two or three, nested one under the other."

"Gosh," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Miranda Bailey. "It sure sounds like a lottery to me.

I wonder c'ud we hire you to p'int out a likely place for us to locate?" They had left the one street by this time and were making their way slowly along the western slope of the valley. Men worked at creaky and shaky old windla.s.ses or appeared and disappeared at the mouths of lateral shafts, repairing the ancient timbers, wheeling out rubbish.

Once or twice they heard the dull boom of a shot where dynamite was trying to split the rock and uncover a lead. On several of the claims were groups, the members of which made no pretense at mining, but lolled about, playing cards or pitching dollars at a mark. These were speculators, holding to sell. Stakes with papers in clefts, piles of stones at the corners, showed the boundaries of the claims.

"If you think my judgment is any good," said Westlake, "you're welcome to it. I could be more certain of helping you when it comes to a.s.saying or developing a mine. Are you-all taking up claims? Do you want to align them, or do you want to pool interests and locate here and there where the chances look good?"

"Miss Bailey an' her nephew are goin' to take a chance," said Sandy. "Me an' my two partners are lookin' for claims located by the man who first discovered the camp. They can't get away an' we'll see Miss Mirandy settled first."

"Me, I aim to take up a claim," said Mormon. "So does Sam."

"Who's goin' to work it?" asked Sandy. "You-all forget that we agreed when we went into the ranchin' business together not to go into speculations on the side 'thout mutual consent. From what I can make out from Westlake's talk speculation is a mild term fo' lookin' fo'

gold. I don't consent, by a long shot. We got Molly's claims to look after with our interest in 'em, an' I've a hunch that's goin' to occupy all our time we got to spare. What does Roarin' Russell do in the camp,"

he asked Westlake, seemingly irrelevantly, "or ain't he shown yet?"

"He is a sort of bouncer, or capper for that gambling joint run by Plimsoll."

Sandy nodded. "I ain't surprised. Plimsoll's figgerin' that he'll get a big chunk of whatever's dug out, 'thout takin' any chances on diggin'.

W'udn't wonder but what he figgers to run the camp, mo' ways than one, with a few bullies like Roarin' Russell to help him."

"This Casey," said Westlake, "who made the original strike, did he take out much?"

"As I understand it," replied Sandy, "he hits the porphyry where it's shaller, or worn off, like you said. An' he finds rich pay stuff right away, enough to start the camp. Quite a few works on that outcrop an'

then it peters out. Casey sabed a bit about synclines, I reckon, fo' he kept faith in the camp, on'y he realized it 'ud take a heap of money to develop, meanin' to dig through the porphyry, I suppose. Now they've found some mo' of that float ore that the first crowd overlooked. Reckon that'll peter out too, after a while. But capital may come in on this second staht. Some eastern folk were lookin' over the place a while back. Took samples an' Plimsoll got wise to what they amounted to."

"And he hasn't taken up any claims?" said Westlake. "Despite his gambling investment, I should have thought he would."

"He's got an interest in one or two, I fancy, or thinks he has," said Sandy dryly.

Westlake halted and took a small steel hammer from his pocket with which he struck off a fragment of rock protruding from the ground. The cleavage showed purple. He walked slowly along for some fifty feet, kicking the soil with his foot, breaking off other samples to which he put his tongue.

"Taste good?" asked Sam.

"Not bad, if you're looking for mineral. They've got a distinct flavor all their own, but I wetted them to show the color up more plainly. Here is the outcrop of a syncline reef. It may carry gold and it may not, but it's wide enough, it's near the surface and it's as good a place as any.

It dips deeper lower down, but I imagine you'll find it floating out again on the other side of the valley. Runs like the ribs of a ship, with the valley the hull. And the ship's rail, the gunwale in the rim-rock that outlines the auriferous deposit."

Sandy, glancing across the valley to where the engineer pointed, nodded his head. "Your judgment goes with Casey's," he said. "Right across from here is where he located his claims, I take it. How about it, Mormon?

Fits the description to a T."

"Sure does," a.s.sented Mormon. "Thar's the notched boulder half-way up the hill, the three-forked dead pine on the ridge. If you locate here, marm," he said to Miranda, "an' we-all make a strike, we'll be on the same vein, I reckon."

"It's all Greek to me," said the spinster. "How do we locate? I've come this far, an' I'll see the thing through to some sort of finish. Me an'

young Ed'll camp here. I figger we can git the car up. It's gone through worse places. There's water down there in the crick. We've got grub.

When it's gone we can buy more. How many claims can we take up an'

what's the size of 'em, Mr. Westlake?"

The three partners left Miranda and the engineer measuring off and setting up their monuments at the corners of the claim. Young Bailey started for the faithful flivver. They started directly down the sidehill, making for the valley, in silence, like men with business ahead of them that called for action rather than words.

"Figger that tent is on them claims of Molly's and our'n?" asked Sam, as they paused before they tackled the eastern slope. "Looked like it was to me."

"Me too," said Mormon.

"I wouldn't wonder," agreed Sandy. "Here's the situation, as I sabe it.