oloration showing plainly enough as a fissure vein. Gifford dug a
little of the crack-filling out with the blade of his pocket-knife and
we examined it under the magnifier. We were both ready to swear that
we could see flecks and dust grains of free gold in the bluish-brown
gangue-matter; but that was purely imagination.

I think neither of us knew or cared that the bacon was burned to a
blackened crisp when we got back to it. The breakfast was bolted like
a tramp's hand-out, and before the sun was fairly over the shoulder of
the eastern mountain we were back in the hole with hammer and drills.
The frantic haste was entirely excusable. While it was true that a
greater number of the Cripple Creek discoveries had widened
satisfactorily from the surface down, becoming more and more profitable
at increasing depths, it was also true that some of them had begun as
"knife-blades" and had so continued. What Gifford and I did not know
about drilling and shooting rock would have filled a library of
volumes; none the less, by noon we had succeeded in worrying a couple
of holes in the solid shaft bottom, had loaded them, and were ready for
the blast.

If any real miner should chance to read this true and unvarnished tale
of our beginnings he will smile when I confess that we cut the fuses
four feet long and retreated a good quarter of a mile up the gulch
after they were lighted. In our breathless eagerness it seemed as if
we waited a full half-hour before the shallow hole vomited a mouthful
of broken rock and dust, and a dull double rumble told us that both
shots had gone off. Gifford was a fairly good sprinter, but I beat him
on the home run. The hole was half full of shattered rock and loosened
gravel and we went at it with our bare hands. After a few minutes of
this senseless dog-scratching, Gifford sat down on the edge of the pit
and burst out laughing.

"I guess there ain't any manner o' need for us to go plumb locoed," he
said. "We've got all the time there is, and a shovel will last a heap
longer than our fingers."

I may say, in passing, that this attitude was characteristic of our
carpenter partner. He was a country boy from Southern Indiana; a
natural-born mechanic, with only a common school education. But he had
initiative and a good gift of horse sense and balance, and in the
troublous times that followed he was always our level-headed stand-by.

Acting upon his most sensible suggestion, we took our tim