he watch on
duty could dig, to sort it carefully, sacking the best of it and hiding
the remainder under the shack. Then, during the night, one of us would
carry what he could of the sacked ore down the mountain to the sampling
works to be assayed and sold on the spot.

The sheer labor involved in this method of procedure was something
appalling, but we could devise no alternative. To have a wagon haul the
ore to town would, we were all agreed, be instantly fatal to secrecy; and
at whatever cost we must have more money before we could dare face a
legal fight with the Lawrenceburg people. Looking back upon it now, our
plan seems almost childish; but the enthusiasm born of the miraculous
discovery was accountable for the cheerful readiness with which we
adopted it.

Gifford took the first turn at the ore-carrying while Barrett and I
shared the night watch, two hours at a time for each of us. The
carpenter came back just before daybreak, haggard and hollow-eyed, but
profanely triumphant. There had been no questions asked at the sampling
works, and his back-load of ore had been purchased on the strength of the
assay--doubtless with a good, round profit to the buyers. He had limited
his carry to seventy-five pounds, and he brought back the sampling
company's check for $1355 as the result of the day's work!

Speaking for myself, I can say truly that I lived in the heart of a dream
for the next few days--the dream of a galley-slave. We worked like dogs.
Added to the drilling and shooting and digging, there was the all-night
job of ore-carrying--at which we took turn and turn about--for one of us.
Though I am not, and never have been, save in the parole starvation time,
what one would call a weakling, my first trip to town with eighty-five
pounds of ore on my back nearly killed me. A thousand times, it seemed
to me, I had to stop and rest; and when I got down it was always an open
question whether or not I could ever get up again with the back load in
position.

As it came about, in the regular routine, mine was the third turn at the
carrying, and by this time the superintendent of the sampling works was
beginning to have his curiosity aroused.

"So there are three of you, are there?" he commented, when he had
examined and recognized the sacked samples. "Any more?"

I shook my head. I was too nearly exhausted to talk.

"At first I thought you fellows were raiding somebody," he went on.
"There is a mine not a th