"Oh, you be hanged!" laughed Garvin, with the emphasis heartening. "You're off your feed a few lines yet and your blood needs thickenin', that's all. I'll risk but what you'll assay up to grade in the mill-run."
Silence came and sat between them for a little space, holding its own until Jeffard's eye lighted upon the débris-bearded tunnel-opening in the opposite hillside.
"What is that?" he asked, pointing the query with an emaciated finger.
"That's my old back number that I was tellin' you about on the way in," Garvin explained. "I thought I'd struck a lead o' tellurides up there, sure, but it petered out on me."
"When was that?" Jeffard's recollection of all things connected with the fever-haunted jornada across the ranges was misty and fragmentary.
"Two year ago this summer," rejoined the miner; and filling his pipe afresh he retold the story of his earlier visit to the valley.
"It's a dead horse," he added, by way of conclusion. "I ought to knowed better. I'm old enough at the business to savvy tellurides when I see 'em, and that lead never did look right from the start."
"Did you ever locate it?" asked Jeffard.
"Not much! I never got any furder along that-a-way than to stake it off and make a map of it." Garvin found a pack of thumbed and grimy papers in his pocket and worked his way through it till he came upon the map. "You're an engineer," he said: "how's that for a jack-leg entry map?"