wouldn't have been fooled. The formation is
entirely different from the Bonanza locality and any miner, let alone a
professional mining engineer as I happen to be, would have tumbled to
the salting at first sight of the stuff the fool scattered about the
place. And that apex controls the vein that this came from!" He fished
a bit of rock from his pocket and passed it to Red, whose eyes bulged
out as he looked. Through its center, from side to side, ran a ribbon of
dull yellow metal as wide as one's finger. Even to Red's unmetallurgical
eyes its identity was plain.

"Gold! Pure gold!" he murmured with respectful awe. Then his big paw
went out congratulatingly. "Shake! Gawd, ole man, but I'm shore glad!"

"What's a 'apex'?" he inquired of Douglass, some six hundred dollars
winner for the night, as he left the faro table and walked arm in arm
with him to the hotel. Douglass was very explicit in his explanation.

"Nearly all true fissure veins in these mountains are to all practical
intents and purposes vertical; that is, they run straight up and down
instead of lying horizontal. It naturally follows that, if they don't
pinch out before they get there, they come to the surface at or near the
top of the hill. The courts have decided that a claim located on the top
or 'apex' of such veins controls them to whatever depth they may run;
that is, an 'apex' claim holds all the veins under it clean down to
China! So the fellow who owns the 'apex' practically owns the whole
mountain for a space as long as the length of his claim. To make sure of
catching the apex of any veins in the hill I took up two extensions--one
on each side of the claim I bought from Matlock and his partner, so that
my holdings are fifteen hundred feet long by nine hundred feet wide; as
the hill crest is almost a knife-edge in sharpness I cover every vein
in it. And somewhere under the loose slide-rock on that hill lies the
lode from which this comes! Do you _sabe_ now?"

Red gurgled his full comprehension. "Why yuh damned ole foxy gran'pa! I
orter knowed thet yuh wouldn't let thet swab do yuh! But howd' yuh come
to be dealin' with Matlock? I been a heap oneasy in my mind about that."

"Well, it was this way: Two years ago his partner, old Eric Olsen, the
big Swede that Coogan bought the Palace from, you know, saw me
prospecting on that mountain and naturally figured that I had found some
good indications of mineral there or I would not be fooling around. S