“It says that vanadates, in the absence of other colored metallic compounds, may be detected by their reaction with borax and salt of phosphorus before the blowpipe—and goes on to describe just what we’ve been looking at.”
“Hooray!” Dick applauded, “a vanadium mine! This begins to look like business. Think you could find the place again, Purdy?”
“I’m sure I can,” was the ready answer. “It’s about a mile back over our trail of to-day. You remember when we were coming along on that little mesa bench above the creek, and I scrambled down the slope to get a drink and joined you again about a quarter of a mile farther along? Well, that was the place—right along the creek.”
“We’ll go back there to-morrow morning, shan’t we, Larry?” Dick asked. “If this stuff is there in any workable quantity we ought at least to stake off a claim. What’s vanadium worth as an alloy for tool steel and such?”
Larry took a well-thumbed little note-book from the pocket of his shirt and consulted it.
“Don’t know what it’s worth now; but a while back, ferrovanadium, carrying thirty-five to fifty per cent. of vanadium, ran from two dollars and a half to five and a half a pound—some valuable little metal, I’ll say!”
“It sure is!” exclaimed Purdick, with his eyes widening. “If we can only find enough of it to make it worth while.... I wish I’d had sense enough to look around a little when I found that bit. But I didn’t.”
“Never mind; there’s another day coming,” said Larry, “or if there isn’t, all the vanadium in the world won’t make any difference to us or to anybody,” and he began to fix the fire for the night and to unroll the blankets, while Dick put the testing apparatus away in its leather carrying case.
Their camping place for that night was in a small pocket gulch rimming in a little flat watered by a trickling rill that dripped over a low cliff at the back of the pocket. The flat afforded good grazing for the pack animals, there was wood on the rocky slopes for the fire, and red-fir tips for the beds.
In the morning, while Purdick was getting breakfast, Larry and Dick prepared the notices to post on the vanadium claim, leaving blanks in which to write in the boundaries and landmarks when they should determine what they were. As Larry was sharpening the stakes to be driven to mark the claim, Dick called attention to the narrow entrance to the pocket gulch, and said, “Say, Larry; what’s the matter with cutting one of those lodge-pole pines out of that clump up there and letting it fall across this doorway? That’ll make a corral out of the gulch, and we can leave the burros and the camp dunnage when we go back to stake off the claim. Everything will be perfectly safe here.”