“Good goodness!” he exclaimed, catching his breath; then, forgetting his grammar completely: “Is that all the thicker it is?”
“Right now it is,” said the old man. “But it’s been a heap thicker’n that sometimes; been as much as a half-inch in two-three places.”
“But see here!” Dick exploded; “a half-inch of ore isn’t anything! Why, good gracious—it would have to be all pure gold or silver to pay with that thickness!”
“Shore; I know,” said the patriarch serenely. “But I’m hopin’ she’s a true fissure. I allowed maybe, with your book-learnin’, ye could tell me for certain shore if she is a true fissure.”
“I can’t,” said Dick; “but what difference does it make whether it is or isn’t a true fissure?”
“Huh!” said the old man patiently. “Hain’t yer schoolin’ teached ye that? Don’t ye know that a true fissure allus widens out if ye go down deep enough on it?”
True enough, Dick did know; not, indeed, the fact as the old miner stated it, but the other fact that a great many of the older prospectors firmly believed it. But he hadn’t the heart to say that modern mining studies had proved that the “widening” didn’t always follow as a necessity.
“Black sulphuret of silver—argentite—isn’t it?” he said, digging a bit of the vein matter from the seam with the point of his pocket knife.
“You named her right, son. And she’s all-fired rich, what there is of her. Some o’ these days, maybe, one o’ the holes I’m drillin’ ’ll bring her down a foot wide, and then——”
Dick, born and brought up in a region where mines and mining were as the daily bread, knew well the picture of ease and comfort and luxury the “and then” was bringing up in the old man’s mind. Taking the candle, he passed it up and down the face of the heading. At no point was the vein of argentite much thicker than the back of his knife blade.