an hoist it out.
I know! I've seen the cars come up out of the shaft with a man
standin' on the hundred foot to slush 'em over with muddy sump water
so the gold wouldn't show until the car men could swipe the stuff and
dump it out of the tram to be picked up at night. It ain't the rich
streaks that pays. It's the four-foot ledge that runs profit from two
bits to a couple of dollars a ton. That's what showed on the
six-hundred level. Get it?"

The partners by this time were leaning eagerly forward, half-inclined
to believe all that had been told them, yet willing to discount the
gabbling of the old man and find content. Until bedtime he went on,
and they listened to him the next morning, when the slow dawn crept
up, and decided to take the plunge. And so it was that Dick wrote a
long statement of the findings to his backer in New York and told him
that he was going to chance it and open the Croix d'Or again until he
was satisfied, either that it would not pay to work, or would merit
larger expenditure.

Once again the smoke belched from the hoisting house of the Cross, and
the throb of the pumps came, hollow and clanking, from the shaft
below. A stream of discolored water swirled into the creek from the
waste pipes, and the rainbow trout, affrighted and disgusted, forsook
its reaches and sought the pools of the river into which it emptied.

Slowly they gained on its depths, and each day the murk swam lower,
and the newly oiled cage waited for its freshly stretched cable,
one which had happened to be coiled in the store-house. The
compressor shivered and vibrated as the pistons drove clean, sweet
air through the long-disused pipes, and at last the partners knew
they could reach the anticipated six-hundred-foot level and form
their own conclusions.

"Well, here goes," said Bill, grinning from under his sou'wester as
they entered the cage with lamps in hand. "We'll see how she looks if
the air pipes aren't broken."

They saw the slimy black sides of the shaft slip past them as Bells
Park dropped them into the depths, and felt the cage slow down as he
saw his pointer above the drum indicate the approach of the
six-hundred-foot level. They stepped out cautiously, whiffed the air,
and knew that the pipes, which had been protected by the water, were
intact, and that they had no need to fear foul air. The rusted rails,
slime-covered, beneath their rubber boots, glowed a vivid red as they
inspected the timbering above, and