nobody, of course, would ever deliberately have purchased a piece of mining property about which he knew so little as these lads did about the last chance claim. but it must be remembered, that they did not buy after selection, but that the mine was forced quickly upon them, taken, like hobson’s choice of a horse in the stable which held but one animal, because there was no other pay to be got. now it was their business to explore the property thoroughly and see what could be made out of it. they knew that many a mine had been abandoned by one owner and yielded a fortune to his successor; it was possible some good might have been overlooked in this one. “no man,” wrote the wise philosopher, francis bacon, “prospers so suddenly as by other’s errors.”{34}

at any rate, they proposed to find out all they could about the prospect-hole, and not run away without at least loudly knocking at fortune’s door. a man can endure failure with much composure when he feels that it has been through no lack of diligence on his part, and if success follows, it is all the more satisfactory for having been earned by good judgment and hard work.

putting into their pockets some pieces of cold bread and a handful apiece of dried fruit, for they did not know how far their search might lead them, they began to climb the steep rocks which formed the wall of the valley, and after a few moments worked their way up to where a less steeply inclined slope stretched onward to the summit of the range. here, after some difficulty, they were able to discover the crest or outcrop of their vein, and to trace it two or three hundred yards by its occasional appearance at ledges and bare spots among the herbage and heather of short, thick, huckleberry-like bushes, which clothed{35} the mountain-side. at the farther border of this plateau, a huge land-slide, in some long-past spring, had come thundering down from the cliffs above, burying under it all further trace of the vein, no outcropping of which was visible in the rocks again exposed a quarter of a mile beyond, so far as they could make out after a wearisome tramp of investigation.

it was evident that they had not been the first to go over this ground, for nigh under the foot of the land-slide, which was now a bank of richest flowers, some nodding on tall stems in the splendor of purple, scarlet and gold, others equally gaudy but more lowly, bearing blossoms modestly beautiful in white and brown, they found a pit ten or twelve feet deep, sunken into the rock.

the stone which had been thrown out of this pit was examined with great care, and max even scrambled down to its bottom and flaked off more specimens, which he tossed up with exclamations of rejoicing. they cer{36}tainly showed a far larger proportion of the brown mineral, in which our prospectors were taking so much interest, than anything that had yet been seen, and strengthened the notion that it increased in plenty the farther the vein was followed.

“now let us see if we were right about the bending,” max remarked, when he had climbed out of the prospect-hole.

“all right,” len answered, his tongue hampered by bunches of the acrid purple berries of the oregon grape, which not only filled his mouth, but puckered his lips. “can you trace the outcrop all the way?”

“no, but i’m going to climb up on this slide a little ways, and then have you go back and stand at the edge of the cliff, while sandy stands midway between us. i can see then whether the vein curves.”

“why, of course it does,” called out the scotchman, who had quietly mounted the broken face of the land-slide, until he could overlook the ground. “the vein just fol{37}lows along the base o’ this low ridge here, and i can see that it curves quite decidedly.”

“what ridge?”

“you can scarcely glint it, i dare say, where you stan’, but come up here, and you will see it plainly. it’s lang and narrow.”

the others mounted to his side, and then could easily discern that a narrow ridge, like the ruins of a big wall which had been made of white rock but now was fallen and overgrown with weeds and briers, stretched in a gentle curve from the brink of the gulch to the foot of the land-slide, where it seemed a trifle narrower than at the cliff.

“and look there,” said max, pointing with his finger straight across the gulch to the gray wall of the opposite mountain, which seemed to rise almost plumb from the bed of panther creek. “look! do you see that whitish upright patch, with the darker streaks on each side of it, extending up and down the face of the cliff?”{38}

“ay,” they assented together, lennox adding, “it’s like a kensington panel.”

“plainly that panel is the continuation of this ridge and the vein, which have been cut through by the creek.

“but there’s another vein on the other side apparently.”

“yes, that must be the extension of the aurora lead. and if i am not mistaken this ridge is a wedge of porphyry, what geologists call a dyke, thrust up between these two veins. probably it narrows in or pinches, as they say, just here, and further on would thicken again.”

“do you mean that it split what was originally one vein,” len asked, “and pried the halves apart?”

“no, i should say not, for, as you know, the rock in the last chance is different from that in the aurora. probably the dyke was formed first, and the lodes came afterward by forcing themselves between it and the trachyte-body of the mountain.”{39}

“that’s a’ vera interesting,” was sandy’s dry remark, “but, in my eegnorance, permeet me to ask how it affects our eenterests practically? a blind man’s nae judge o’ colors, ye ken.”

“i am not sure that it affects our interests at all, and yet i have an idea it may.”

“trot out your little idea!” exclaimed len, with characteristic impatience; and with equally characteristic caution max declined to do so until he had thought more about it. whereupon, with good-natured compliance, his questioners departed and busied themselves in hunting for more of the tart berries of the oregon grape, which grew purple among the lichen-printed stones.

returning half an hour later they found max pacing slowly down the crest of the ridge like a sentinel on a rampart.

“i want you fellows to help me get the breadth or thickness of this dyke here as nearly as we can come at it.”

“how?” asked len.{40}

“oh, by pacing over the ridge and estimating it carefully.”

they decided after a close examination that it was about one hundred feet in thickness at that point, or, at any rate, considerably less than the distance between the last chance and aurora lodes, at the mouths of their respective tunnels.

then they strolled back to their cabin, where sandy busied himself in mixing raised bread for the evening meal, while max stuck a lamp in his cap and disappeared within the aurora tunnel.

when, that evening, the trio were ready to sit down together again around a cheerful fire outside the house, max threw off his reserve and began to talk.

“i suppose you fellows think i’ve been a running things in a high-handed sort of a way this afternoon, but i had to do a bit of studying over my idea before i could get it into such a shape that i could explain it to you, and get your help intelligently. see?”

[image unavailable.]

situation of the two mines.

silver caves, page 41.

{41}

“ay,” sandy answered for both. “ilka bird must hatch its ain egg.”

“well, this is the egg i have been incubating. i am convinced that there is nothing to be got out of the aurora; it’s just a dead quartz-lode all through. but our mine will show more and more of the stuff we want the deeper we go, or else i am greatly mistaken.”

“but it will take all the fall to clean that tunnel out and timber it up so as to be safe!” len grumbled.

“exactly! now the aurora is open and has a firm roof. she runs right alongside of ours, with only that dyke between them like a stone partition, and goes about one hundred feet further into the hillside. my notion is to go to the end of the aurora, cut through the dyke into the last chance lode, and so get quickly at new rock, beyond any reached by our old drift, where i believe the mineral will be found richer, since all that we can learn goes to show that the lode improves steadily{42} in the quantity of that brown stuff which it carries. what do you think of it?”

“it sounds very reasonable indeed,” len agreed instantly, and went on to elaborate the plan with his customary enthusiasm, but the more cautious nature of mckinnon asserted itself in questions.

“d’ ye ken whether the dyke-rock is haird or saft?” he inquired, among other things.

“not certainly,” max answered. “it’s easy enough to work at the surface, but it may be much tougher down below. it appears to be coarse porphyry all through, however, and that usually does not make very hard digging.”

“should we have to blast?”

“i suppose so, now and then.”

“do you know how?”

“oh yes, that is not a difficult matter when one has cartridges of giant powder.”

“how long do you suppose it will take to dig through the partition?”

“can’t say. if we work hard and have{43} good luck, i should think we ought to cross-cut the dyke in from two to three weeks.”

these objections, and all the obstacles likely to be encountered, as well as the probable success of the venture, having been thoroughly discussed and a favorable decision reached, no time was lost, next day, in beginning upon their plan of opening at the farthest end a cross-cut through the porphyry dyke separating the aurora from their own vein.

the whole of the first day’s toil, however, was expended in setting the broken car (of which i have already spoken) in good shape upon its wheels; in dragging it over to the other mine, a work of no little difficulty, and in clearing the floor of the tunnel of fallen fragments, so that the car could be pushed along the rails without impediment.

on the second day, however, digging could be done in earnest. as only two could work to advantage at once, and as they did not{44} care to labor for ten or twelve hours at a stretch, they arranged a series of watches by which each one had about two hours in the tunnel and then two hours outside, when he could be attending to the house, preparing meals, or, as presently became necessary, stand guard over the defenses.

the rock of the dyke proved to be a pinkish quartzose porphyry, containing crystals of felspar, garnets,—many of which were very perfect, and these were carefully saved by the miners,—hornblende and several other minerals. though in many places so tough that they were obliged to drill holes and blast it, much of the time the rock could be knocked down with the pick, and at one point proved to be so soft and spongy that it fairly crumbled under their blows, and they made as much progress in one morning as had before cost two whole days of labor.

as fast as the rock was tumbled down from the breast it was shoveled into a wheelbarrow and taken to the mouth of the cross-{45}cut, where it was reloaded into the little car which ran on rails in the old aurora. as soon as this had been filled, it was pushed out to the mouth of the tunnel and its cargo thrown down the side of the mountain, over the front of the great dump of waste rock already built out from the mouth of the cave.

thus two weeks of hard and systematic work with shovel, pick and barrow, carried them through the dyke, and on the morning of the fifteenth day their tools struck into the darker and wholly different vein-rock of their own lode, a hundred feet or so beyond the breast, or interior end, of the last chance tunnel.