[“Did you ever think that this stuff might be ore of some kind?”]
The old miner wagged his beard in denial.
“There ain’t nothin’ in it,” he replied. “It’s just crack-fillin’.”
Dick went over to where the packs had been placed, opened one of them and got out the box containing the blowpipe set.
“Huh!” said the old prospector. “Tote your assayin’ outfit right along with ye, do ye?”
“Oh, no,” Dick qualified; “only a few things to help us make field tests. I can’t tell you anything about quantities—values—because it takes a real assay to do that, but we can at least find out whether or not there is any metal in this stuff, which seems too heavy to be just common rock.”
Getting out the blowpipe, its alcohol-turpentine lamp, the small porcelain mortar and pestle, and the little hammer, he proceeded to break a few chips from the specimen and grind them in the mortar, with the old prospector looking on curiously while he worked. Adding a little borax for a flux, Dick put the tiny sample on the block of prepared charcoal, lighted the lamp and began to blow.
In a short time the sample fused to a dark-gray globule and the charcoal around it was covered with a white coating. Carefully withdrawing the tip of the blowpipe so as to make the blast produce the reducing flame, Dick saw the white coating disappear, giving a bluish color to the flame. Filling his cheeks again, he kept on blowing, and, after quite a prolonged heating, the dark-gray globule turned to a tiny yellow metallic button, and at this Dick put the blowpipe down and blew out the lamp flame.