“Nothing like that!” said Dick. “We’ll open the packs and the supper will be on me. We’re grub-staked for a good long time.”
That was the beginning of a real, old-time, sociable evening. Over the supper which was presently cooked, Dick told his old entertainer all about the plans for the summer outing, what the three were going to look for—and hoped they might be able to find.
“Jest listen!” said the patriarch musingly, after Dick had rattled off the names of half a dozen of the rare metals, tungsten, molybdenum, vanadium, chromium and so on. “All them there minerals that I never even heerd the names of. Us old back numbers don’t know nothin’ but gold and silver, and maybe copper and lead. The world shore do move. How are ye aimin’ to tell these here what-you-may-call-’em minerals when you find ’em?”
At this, Dick gave a little class-room lecture on field tests; how one examined a specimen by its lustre, hardness, color, streak and weight, and how a few simple blowpipe tests could also be made with no more apparatus than any prospector might easily carry with him.
To all of this the old man listened with a sort of wistful curiosity. Though he had said little about himself, Dick knew, of course, that he must be either a miner or a prospector; there could be no other reason for his living a hermit life in the mountains. From his earliest childhood Dick had been hearing stories of men who buried themselves in the wilds, digging year after year in some prospect shaft or tunnel, and coming out to the towns only when the “grub-stake” was exhausted and money had to be earned to buy more. The interior of the little log cabin had every appearance of age and long occupancy. The rafters were smoke-begrimed and the fireplace showed the wear and tear of many fires.
“Ye shore are tellin’ me a heap o’ things I never knowed, son,” said the old man, when Dick paused, “and I jest been a-wonderin’. Are ye too nigh wore out to take a li’l’ climb up the hill?”
“Not at all,” said Dick; then, with his own good-natured grin: “Want to show me your mine?”
“Huh!” said the patriarch; “how’d ye know I got a mine?”
“That’s easy,” Dick laughed. “You wouldn’t be living out here alone if you hadn’t.”