an' a boozy bluffer at
the other end of it. He'd put up his bluff an', feelin' sure you c'udn't
hurt him, he'd have carried it through. Any time a man has the drop on
me I raise my hands--or my feet, 'cordin' to orders. I've spent a deal
of time practisin' so it's hahd to beat me to the draw. Trouble was, ef
you-all don't mind my sayin' so, you horned in. You give out information
gratis. You had yore sign up fo' minin' engineer. Chahge fo' what you
know, son, an' yo' customers'll be grateful. Give 'em a slug o' gold
free an' they'll chuck it at a perairie dawg befo' they've gone fifty
yards."

"Do you know anything about mining, Mr. Bourke?"

"Sandy is my name to my friends. A cowman with a mister to the front of
his name seems to me like a hawss with an extry bridle. No, sir, I
don't. Do you?"

Sandy's eyes twinkled as he put the quiz. Westlake laughed.

"I hope so. I think so. Mining is bound to be more or less of a gamble.
A first-class mining engineer could tell you where you ought to find the
gold in a certain region, but he couldn't guarantee that there would be
any. Experience counts a lot, of course, but I do know something about
sylvanite, or white gold. I've seen its big field over in Boulder and
Teller Counties, Colorado. They call it graphic gold, sometimes, because
the crystals are very frequently set up in twins and branch off so that
they look like written characters. The crystals are monoclinic and occur
in porphyry almost exclusively. It is a mixture of gold and silver
telluride and it's also called tellurium. Named after Transylvania where
it was first found. There's some in Australia."

"I'm much obliged," said Sandy. "I've learned a heap."

Westlake looked at him suspiciously, but Sandy's face was grave as that
of the sphinx.

"The porphyry dykes here are in syncline," the engineer went on. "They
dip toward each other from both sides of the valley and form loops or
folds. If you imagine an onion sliced in half you catch the idea. Call
every other layer porphyry, with rock and other dirt between. The bottom
of a loop may be deep down or it may be missing altogether, ground away
when the valley was gouged out by a glacier. There may be other loops
beneath it. Some portions of the loops come to the surface on the
hillside and you can guess at their dip. But--the gamble lies in this.
The ones that are exposed may or may not carry the gold-bearing veins.
You might hit it at grass roots and find a