David tried again. This time he broke away a larger piece of rock and threw it aside to peck at a crevice. Presently he laid down the axe and came to Avery, holding something in his hand.
They crowded close to him. He held out his hand, disclosing a shining, dark-green mineral with little white cracks on its grained surface.
“That’s her!” said Axel.
Avery took the piece of mineral from David and looked at it curiously, turning it over and over in his hand.
“Thet green stuff!” he exclaimed skeptically. “Thet green stuff! And thet’s what they was a’ter. Wal, I’ll be henpoggled! What’s it good fur? What d’you call it?”
“Asbestos,” said David.
“That’s her,” assented Barney.
David picked a sliver from the mineral and shredded it to a white fibre. “Got a match?”
Avery handed him one. He lit it, and, holding the white shreds in the flame, watched them grow red, then pale to a grayish white ash, but the substance was unconsumed.
“That’s her!” said Barney. “And there’s miles of it strung along this here creek. Drillin’ and dinnimite ’ll show more. Fisty set a blast in up there,” he said, pointing above them, “but I promised him I’d never squeak about there bein’ asbestos on your land—and I hain’t nuther. I never told you they was asbestos here. I said they was suthin’ wuth comin’ a’ter, and you come and found it. I reckon I’m square with Fisty Harrigan now—and mebby with you,” he added, turning to David, “fur diggin’ me out of the snow.”