"Bitch?"
"Haven't you got a condensed milk can with some bacon grease in it, and a rag wick? Makes a good enough light."
But the fire had been poked up, and the cabin was full of dancing lights and shadows. Besides that, the Boy was holding a resinous stick alight over the table, and they all bent down as before.
"It was passin' a bank in 'Frisco wid a windy full o' that stuff that brought me up here," said O'Flynn.
"It was hearin' about that winder brought me" added Potts.
Everyone longed to touch and feel about in the glittering pile, but no one as yet had dared to lay a finger on the smallest grain in the hoard. An electrical shock flashed through the company when the General picked up one of the biggest nuggets and threw it down with a rich, full-bodied thud. "That one is four ounces."
He took up another.
"This is worth about sixty dollars."
"More like forty," said Dillon.
They were of every conceivable shape and shapelessness, most of them flattened; some of them, the greenhorn would swear, were fashioned by man into roughly embossed hearts, or shells, or polished discs like rude, defaced coins. One was a perfect staple, another the letter "L," another like an axe-head, and one like a peasant's sabot. Some were almost black with iron stains, and some were set with "jewels" of quartz, but for the most part they were formless fragments of a rich and brassy yellow.