“I could do it,” cried Chris—“if I might.”
“Try, then,” said Wilton, who hastily threw the long skin down, his hands being wet with excitement, which showed in a deck upon his forehead.
Chris eagerly snatched up the belt from where it lay, and then dropped it, startled by the warning uttered loudly by Griggs.
“Take care!” he cried. “That’s a rattler’s skin, with the head complete. P’r’aps there’s both poison-fangs in the skull still.”
“Ugh!” cried Chris.
“There, pick it up again, young un,” cried Griggs, laughing. “There’s nothing there but skin. The poison-fangs went along with the flesh and bones.”
“Of course,” said Chris shortly. “How stupid! Here, catch hold of the tail, Ned.”
The next moment the round belt was stretched out between them, and Chris’s hand as he passed it along the middle felt within it so many hard round pieces of something about as large as marbles. While confining his attention to the one nearest the head, he worked it along to the mouth, and let it fall with a sharp rap upon the table, to lie shining dully in the light shed by the hanging spirit-lamp.
“Quartz with gold in it, and no mistake,” cried Griggs eagerly.
“Gold, with some specks of quartz in it,” cried the doctor, raising the heavy roughly-rounded and hammered fragment nearer the lamp.