“I suspect so, Jack. Perhaps he has even stumbled onto a rich vein in that pit mine. Let’s find out.”
Making certain the old prospector had not doubled back on his trail, the two dropped down into the hole.
The mine was a shallow one, bolstered with crudely cut timber. Water dripped from above, making the floor slippery and slimy. Warner’s flashlight came to rest on a box of dynamite.
“Watch it!” he advised sharply, as Jack would have investigated. “That stuff’s old—and dangerous.”
A little farther on they came to a pile of mined ore. Warner picked up one of the chunks of rock, studying the dull-looking metal under the flashlight.
“This looks like rich stuff!” he exclaimed. “It’s hand sorted!”
“Then Stony was right!” Jack cried. “He did find a fortune, only to lose it.”
“Hard to tell until the stuff is assayed, but this ore looks rich to me. Almost pure gold, Jack.”
“And there’s a lot of it! Piles and piles! Old Joe Hansart must have been mining it here for years.”
Warner went on to a second and third pile of ore, but his enthusiasm began to die.