Twenty minutes later a satisfactory boring had been made.
"Bring up the dynamite," called Tom.
"Are you going to pack the charge?" Harry inquired.
"Yes," nodded Tom, and received the stick of dynamite from the miner who brought it.
While this was being made ready, Hazelton superintended the laying of the wires to the magneto battery. All was soon in readiness.
"The red flag is up," Tom shouted.
The dynamite had been rather loosely tamped home, for young Reade wanted to begin with light rending force and work up, through successive blasts, to just the proper amount of force.
"Get back, everybody!" Reade called, and there was a flying of feet. Tom was last to leave the spot. He ran over to where Harry stood at a safe distance.
"Pump her up, Harry," nodded the young chief engineer.
"You watch me, and see just how I run this magneto," Hazelton said to one of their men who stood near by. "This will be your job after we"ve fired a few charges. I want you to get the hang of the trick."
Harry worked the handle of the magneto up and down.
Bang! Over where the drilling had been done a ma.s.s of dirt and rock was shot up into the air.
"What are you running so fast for, Harry?" laughed Tom, as he pursued his chum back to the scene of the blast.
"I want to see if we stirred up any real ore. I want to know if our claim is worth the grub it takes to feed the men," was Hazelton"s almost breathless response.
CHAPTER XIV
THE COOK LEARNS A LESSEN
Arrived on the spot it took Tom only a moment to estimate that considerably less than a quarter of a ton of ore had been loosened from the rock bed by the blast.
"We"ll drill six inches deeper next time, and put in fifty per cent. more dynamite," Reade decided.
The men brought up the drill and set it, after which the engineer was signaled.
Harry, in the meantime, was down on his hands and knees, curiously turning over the small, loose bits of rock.
"Stung, if this stuff proves anything," sighed Hazelton.
"You can"t judge by one handful, Harry," Tom told him. "Besides, we may have to get down twenty, or even fifty feet below surface before we strike any pay-stuff. Don"t look for dividends in the first hour. I"ve been told that gold-mining calls for more sporting blood than any other way in which wealth can be pursued."
"But I don"t find a bit of color in this stuff," Harry muttered.
"If we"re on the top of a vein of gold it seems to me that we ought to find a small speck of yellow here and there."
A dozen blasts were made that morning. When the men knocked off at noon Harry Hazelton"s face bore a very serious expression.
"Tom," he murmured to his partner, "I"m afraid we have a gold brick of a gold mine."
"It"s an even chance," nodded Reade.
"And think of all the money---out of our savings---we"ve sunk in this thing."
"I hope you"re not going to get scared as early as this," protested Tom. "Why, before we even get in sight of pay-rock we may have to sink every dollar of our savings."
"Then hadn"t we better get out of it early, and go to work for some one who pays wages?" questioned Hazelton.
"Yes," Tom shot out, quickly, "if that"s the way you feel about it."
"But do you feel differently, Tom?"
"I"m willing to risk something, for the sake of drawing what may possibly turn out to be the big prize in the mining lottery."
"But all our savings," cried Harry, aghast. "That seems like a foolish risk, doesn"t it?"
"If you say so, I"ll draw out now," Tom proposed.
"What do you think about it?"
"If all the money at stake were mine," Reade said slowly, "then I"d hang on as long as I had a penny left to invest."
"Tom Reade, I believe you"re turning gambler at heart!"
"I intend to be a good, game business man, if that"s what you mean by gambling. But see here, Harry, I don"t want to pull your money into this scheme if you feel that you"d rather hold on to what you have."
"If you"re going to stay in, Tom, then so am I. I"m not the kind of fellow to go back on a chum"s investment."
"But if we lose all we"ve saved then you"ll feel-----"
"Don"t argue any more, Tom," begged Hazelton. "I"m going to be game. You"ve voted, old fellow, to stay by this claim as long as you can, and that"s enough for me."
"But if we lose all our savings," Tom urged. He had now become the cautious one.
"If we lose them, we lose them," declared Hazelton. "And we"re both of us young enough to be able to save more before we"re seventy-five or eighty years old. Go ahead, Tom. I"m one of the investors here, but the whole game is in your hands. Go as far as you like and I"ll stand back of you."
"But-----"
"Say no more. Tom, I shall try never again to be a quitter.
Whoop! Let the money slip! We"ll make the old mine a dividend payer before we are through with it."
That afternoon about a dozen and a half more blasts were laid and fired. Some five hundred feet of the surface of the vein had been lightly blasted, and several tons of ore thrown up.
"I wouldn"t call it ore, though," muttered Harry to himself.