It was too late to attempt to return to the copper-camp that night, and, indeed, daylight was needed for the journey, for the trail had been in many places washed away by the flood.
After a supper, which made havoc with the three days’ rations, a large fire was built, more for cheerfulness than for warmth, blankets were divided, and all retired.
Morning slept less soundly than his fellows, for his quick and accurate brain was filled with an idea of the colossal fortune and the mighty trust that the events of that day had placed in his hands.
CHAPTER IV.
“Gold is the strength of the world.”
Morning concluded it would be unwise to make another trip to his location, lest suspicion might be excited and discovery follow, so, breaking camp early the next day, he returned with his comrades to the copper-lodes, which they reached before noon.
Work was resumed by Steel and his two miners in clearing the old shaft, and Morning, taking a fowling-piece, avowed his purpose to look for quail down the ravine. Having reached a point where he felt secluded from observation, he began a critical examination of the quartz specimens, which until now he had not dared to withdraw from his pockets.
As with his microscope he scrutinized piece after piece, he grew pale with excitement and astonishment. With the habit of a mining expert, he had sampled the ledge as for an average, and the average value of the twenty different specimens of quartz, taken from twenty different localities, enabled him to determine the true value of the property with great accuracy. He discovered that the amount of gold in each one of the twenty specimens would not vary materially from the amount of gold in proportion to the quartz in each and all of the others. In other words, the entire body of quartz was uniformly impregnated with gold, and, therefore, of uniform richness and value.
There was no better judge of quartz in all Colorado than David Morning. He had been accustomed, after careful inspection, to estimate within ten or twenty percent of the value per ton of free milling gold quartz, and his accuracy had often been the subject of amicable wagers among his friends. He was able in this instance to say that each one of the ore specimens carried not less than five hundred ounces of gold to the ton of quartz, or that the entire lode would yield, under the stamps, an average of $10,000 per ton.
This was marvelous! unprecedented! phenomenal! No such deposit for richness and extent had ever been found in the history of the world.
Ten thousand dollars in gold, distributed through two thousand pounds of quartz, may not make much of a showing in the quartz, for in bulk there is fifty times as much quartz as gold; but one hundred tons of such quartz would yield a million dollars, and the ledge uncovered by the waterspout was forty feet in width and thirteen hundred and sixty feet in length to where it ran under the basalt wall. It cropped twelve feet above the ground, and extended to unknown depths below the surface. Thirteen feet of rock in place will weigh a ton. In that rift in the mountain there was now in sight above the surface, all ready to be broken down and sent to the stamps, six hundred and fifty thousand cubic feet, or fifty thousand tons, of quartz, containing gold of the value of $500,000,000.