Gregory, who was still excited, felt an impulse to confide his discovery to his friend. But his natural secretiveness overcame him and he turned abruptly away. “When I have finished at the School,” he said, “no doubt I’ll begin gophering again, but not before. What are you going to do about this? Let them have it?”
“I’ll let them have a piece of my mind first. What do you advise?—that I work the mine, myself? I could easily form a company if the ore is as rich as you think.”
“I wouldn’t take the chances. Lease the claim to them for a year. They’ll take it for that time with all this ore in sight. If they’ve hit a large chamber they’ll soon be netting several thousand dollars a day. If it’s only a pocket, let them find it out. At the end of a year you’ll know a good deal more about the mine than you do now. But keep an eye on them so that they don’t gouge, and make them pay you twenty per cent. royalty.”
“They’ll pay it through the nose,” said Mark emphatically.
Gregory laughed. “You feel as virtuously indignant as if you had never tried to do anybody yourself. It’s do or be done out West as well as back East, and precious few mines have a clean history. Marcus Daly never would have got the best part of Butte Hill if he hadn’t kept his mouth shut.”
“It isn’t that I’m so virtuous,” said Mark ingenuously, “but I don’t like the idea that anybody so nearly got the best of me. And just look at the way they covered it up.”
Gregory had kicked aside the greater part of a pile of grey ore, and revealed quite a hillock of the pyroxenite. He put several pieces in his pocket, discarding the first specimens. “I’ll get to work on this tonight,” he said, “and let you know first thing in the morning. But I’m willing to wager that it runs from sixty to a hundred dollars a ton.”
“And not a fleck of gold to be seen!” Mark, who, like all intelligent men of mining localities, had some knowledge of ores, examined the dark rock attentively. “They’re some geologists,” he added with unwilling admiration. “This would fool any ordinary mining engineer. Say!” he cried, “I’ll not tell Ora until she’s ready to leave—she’s figuring on going to Europe in the fall. It will be the surprise of her life, for I led her to think she’d get only a hundred or so a month. Don’t say a word about it to Ida.”
Gregory turned away to hide a curl of his lip. “I suppose we’d better go over and see Oakley, as we’re so close,” he said. “He’ll probably talk for an hour on his hobby, but any knowledge comes in useful to a lawyer.”
“What’s he done.”