“Then it isn’t——” she commenced.
He ceased to laugh as he probed the dust in the pan. The whole thing was so miraculous to him, he could scarcely find expression.
“You’ve found it, Angela,” he said. “It’s gold—real high-grade ore. You’ve dealt a straight flush at the last hand.”
“But it doesn’t look like gold!”
“That black stuff ain’t gold, it’s magnetic ore. 299 Gee, wash some more dirt. This looks like Eldorado!”
He flung down his pack and started shoveling out more gravel from the hole. In the meantime Angela washed the pay-dirt and placed the residue in a handkerchief. Excitement grew as the work went forward. Lower down, the yield was enormous. The pile in the handkerchief grew to an enormous size. Taking no heed of time, the work went on until the declining sun called them from their labors.
Jim poured a pound or so of mercury into a tub of water, and submerged the results of their toil in it.
“You think it is gold?” she queried.
“Gold! Tons of it. I’ll show you later. Come along and have some food.”
An hour or two later Jim brought from the tub the amalgam formed by the combination of the pan gold-dust with the mercury. This was squeezed through a bearskin, the process segregating the gold and depositing the mercury back into the tub.