Captain Skinner and his miners were quickly at the head of that ravine again, but the gold ledge stopped them all as if it had been a high fence.

"Cap," said the man called Bill, "of course them two fellers lit onto this mine. They couldn't ha' helped it. But they haven't done a stroke of work on it. Reckon we kin set up marks of our own."

"'Twont pay."

"We can't leave a claim like this."

Every man of the party was of the same opinion, and Captain Skinner said,

"Go ahead, boys. Only I can tell you one thing. We're going to move out of this, through that western gap, before daylight to-morrow morning. We're too near those red-skins down there to suit me. There's no telling how many there may be of them."

The men sprung to their work with a will. The first thing they did was to set up a "discovery monument" right in the middle of the ledge, at the head of the chasm.

Large flat stones were laid down, others carefully set upon them, and so up and up, till a pretty well shaped, four-sided pyramid had been made, six feet square and as many high.

Then two more, nearly as large, were set up at the ends of the ledge, where the gold vein disappeared in the high cliffs.

Seven strong men can do a great deal in a short time when they are in a hurry and all understand exactly what to do.

"Now we'll go for supper, and send out the rest."

"Must have a shaft begun and a blast fired."

The miners have a law of their own among themselves that a man who finds a mine must do some work on it and set up "marks," or else his claim to it is of no value.

These miners only paid no attention to another "law," that a man like Steve Harrison, for instance, is entitled to all the time required to do his work and set up his monuments. One part of the law is just as good as another.

The return to camp was quickly made, and there was news to tell all around, for the hunters not only brought in game but also the information that they "reckoned an army train could be hauled down that gap to the westward. It's almost as good as a road."

"We'll try it to-morrow," said the Captain.

He went out with all the men he could spare from camp as soon as supper was eaten, and they carried with them pickaxes, crow-bars, mining drills, and shovels. All the tools were pretty well worn, but they would answer for the work in hand.

It was getting dark when they reached the ledge; but that was of less consequence after two huge bonfires had been built near the central monument, and heaped with fragments of fallen pine-trees. Then the work began.

"Gangs of three," said Captain Skinner—"one on each side. We'll have two shafts started. Bill, drill your blast right there."

The shafts would not have been needed for a long time in actually working out ore from a ledge like that, but two such holes would make a very deep mark that could not be wiped out, and the "blast" would make another.

It was hard work, but as fast as the men who were prying and picking loosened a piece of quartz, it was lifted away by their comrades, and it was a wonder how those two shafts did go down.

All the while Bill was tapping away with his hammer and drill on the spot pointed out to him, and was making a hole in the rock about the size of a gun-barrel.

"Two feet, Cap," he shouted at last. "That's as far as I can go with this drill, and it's the longest there is in camp."

"That'll do. Charge it. Our job's 'most done."

The night was cool, but the miners had kept themselves warm enough. They were not sorry to quit when their hard-faced little Captain ordered them out of the two holes; but it was odd to see such great, brawny fellows obeying in that way a man who looked almost like a dwarf beside them.

"Got her charged, Bill?"

"All right, Cap."

"Stand back, boys. Touch yer fuse, Bill."

That was a slow-match that stuck out of the hole he had drilled in the rock, and it led down to the charge of powder he had skilfully rammed in at the bottom.

"We can hardly afford to waste so much powder," the Captain had muttered, "but it won't do for me to cross 'em too much on such a thing."

Back they went for a hundred yards, while the fuse burnt its slow, sputtering way down through the "tamping" Bill had rammed around it.

They had not long to wait. The blazing fires lit up the whole ledge and the bordering cliffs, and the miners could see distinctly everything that happened on it. Suddenly there came a puff of smoke from the drill-hole. Then the rock outside of it, toward the chasm, rose a............