Max recounted how Lennox had secured an entirely unbiased judgment from the old miner, who had assured them positively that the brown stuff which had been so long the object of their attention was certainly a telluride ore of gold, and apparently a rich one.
“Ay, that sounds well,” Sandy assented, “but can you be quite certain this Professor, as you dub him, kens well what he’s talkin’ aboot?”
“I think he does,” Max assured his friend, and gave his reason.
“But how has it escaped notice heretofore?” the Scotchman persisted.
“It’s an extremely uncommon ore in northern Colorado, where most of the mining has been done up to this time, and few of our citizens have ever seen it. Moreover, I suppose the early prospectors here were looking wholly for chlorides, or sulphurets, or ruby silver, or some other well known ores of that sort, and this is like none of these, or any other silver indication I know of. But if they had gone a little deeper, I am inclined to think they’d have found plenty of that, too, and consequently, that we would never have got possession of this prospect hole.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Oh, I judge so from the way the rock looks.”
“Then you think we may strike a silver ore in addition to this telluride of gold?”
“Don’t know, can’t see into the ground further’n your pick-point. Sorry I didn’t get a letter from the Denver assayer, to whom we sent our specimens for analysis. I expected to have heard from him by this time.”
As they neared the house they fell to discussing what it would be best to do toward preparing for their unwelcome visitors. Sandy asked why they could not have Old Bob and his crew arrested, whereupon Max explained the loose condition of legal matters in that country, and that they had no ground to stand a trial upon. Sandy had no witnesses to threats he had heard. They could not legally prevent any one from going on the Aurora dump, or into the Aurora tunnel, or even from staying in it, since it was not their property, and they themselves were there only by permission. This gave them no rights which they could defend without blame.