“Draw er diagram o’ et fer him, somebody. He’s got ter hev et pictered out.”
“It’s this way, Mr. Bingham,” proceeded the scout. “Lawless and his friends went to the mine and filled the rocks in the end of the level with gold. Understand? When you go there to get your samples, you will find rock that has been doctored. It will assay way up, but the assays will fool you. It’s a case of plain robbery, and nothing more.”
“Dear me!” said Alonzo Bingham, looking worried.
“Look here, Cody,” said Wild Bill, dropping his voice and taking something out of his pocket. “You’re telling friend Bingham the truth about the salting, but you’re wide of your trail when you say the Forty Thieves is worthless. Cast your eyes over that.”
Wild Bill rolled upon the table a piece of ore as big as an egg. It was the sort of ore occasionally described as “gold with some quartz in it.”
Little wires of yellow metal covered it all over, encasing it like a spider-web.
“Jumpin’ cougars!” breathed Nomad.
“What in the world!” piped Alonzo Bingham.
“Great Scott!” exclaimed Buffalo Bill, picking up the ore-sample. “Where did you get that, Hickok?”
“I found the pay-streak that the original owners of the Forty Thieves must have lost,” chuckled Wild Bill. “That bit of ore almost cost me my life, Cody. It came from that walled-off end of the stub-drift. The explosion at the entrance jarred down some rock and uncovered the pay-streak. I struck a match, when I first found myself with hands and feet free, and that pay-streak was the first thing I saw. When I realized that burning matches consumed oxygen, and that oxygen was the only thing to keep me alive, I quit striking lights, and, almost mechanically, dropped that bit of ore into my pocket.”