“You’re elected,” said Dick; “that is, if you don’t mind being the goat.”
Purdick’s smile broadened into a grin.
“You fellows will have to call the shots—say where you want ’em placed. That’ll put the responsibility on you.”
It was about four o’clock in the afternoon when they made ready to fire the first round of blasts on the gold vein. Larry, the careful one of the three, did the fuse fixing and tamping of the holes, and when all was ready he applied the match and they all retreated to safety in the upper part of the natural cavern. There was the usual thunder burst of noise, or rather four of them coming in quick succession, the queer sensation which every deep-shaft miner knows; a feeling as if one’s neck were suddenly pulled out to goose-neck length and then snapped back like a retracting rubber band; the rush of compressed air forced inward by the expanding gases, followed by the suction of the reaction; and the thing was over.
Having had considerable experience with dynamite during the summer, they waited for the air to clear. As soon as it became breathable, they crept forward to see what the explosive had done. The round of shots was a handsome success. The little tunnel was filled with the broken rock and vein matter, and the heading, or tunnel end, had been advanced the length of the deepest drill hole.
“That’s business,” said Dick. “We can walk her back into the hill any old distance we want to—give us time. Now let’s see if the racket has stirred up anything exciting on the outside.”
Apparently it hadn’t. Looking out of the cave mouth, they saw no change in the surroundings; no indication that there had been any ears but their own to hear the roar of the dynamite. Dick wanted to go to work at once, clearing away and sorting the ore thrown down while there was still daylight enough to enable them to see, but Larry counseled patience.
“Let’s give those sneak thieves time enough to come, if they’re going to come,” he advised, so they all three stood guard at the mouth of the cave for a full quarter of an hour, six eager eyes searching every detail of the gulch for signs of an approaching enemy and finding none at all.
“False alarm,” said Dick at last. “We’d better get busy before we have to light candles to see by. With the sun over behind the mountain, it’s going to get dark early in this hole.”
Not to miss any of the precautions they had so firmly agreed upon, it was decided that two of them should sort the ore from the rock while the other stood guard at the crevice mouth. This arrangement functioned all right until Dick, who was one of the two sorters, began to go into hilarious ecstasies over the prodigious richness of some of the “lenses” that had been shot down, shattered bits of the rotten quartz held together by wire-like lacings of native gold. After a time, his ravings got to be too much even for Larry, who was doing the guard stunt. Again and again he was tempted away from his place at the cave mouth by Dick’s, “Oh, gee-whiz, Larry! Duck in here just for a second and see this piece! There never was anything like it in this world!”