Early the next morning he and another man walked down the gulch through the sarvis bushes for half a mile, turned abruptly to the right, climbed the uneven length of a zigzag trail, and at last halted near the top of a ridge. The pine trees, slim and tall, grew out of the unevenly carpeted ground, through which cropped irregular slices of a red-brown, crumbling rock. At the very crest was a dark-gray “dike” of quartzite, standing up steep and castellated for a height of thirty feet or more. This was the “hanging wall” of the prospective mine. Down through the trees were glimpses of vast, breathless descents to other ridges and other pines far below. Over the dike was nothing but the blue sky. The two men had stopped within a hundred feet of the top. The old hand went over to a rough lean-to of small trees covering a rude forge, from beneath which he drew several steel drills of various lengths and a sledge-hammer, which he carried to a scar in the face of a huge outcropping rock. After dumping these he returned and got a can of water and a long T-shaped implement of iron. The two men then set to work. McCann held firmly while the other struck. After each blow he would half-turn the drill. When a dozen strokes had been given, he poured a little water in the hole, and thrust the drill through a bit of sacking to keep it from splashing. The other man jammed his hat down closely over his forehead and struck fiercely, alternately breathing in and grunting in rhythmical succession. When the hole became clogged with fine, gray mud, McCann carefully spooned it out with the T-shaped instrument, wiping the latter each time on his trousers. While he did this his companion leaned on his sledge or threw chunks of rock, with wonderful accuracy, at the squirrels that ran continually back and forth on the ridge. As the hole grew deeper, longer drills were used, until at last the longest of all left barely enough above the surface of the rock to afford a hand-hold. With that the miner expressed himself satisfied. He then brought three cylindrical packages wrapped in greasy paper. “What’s them?” McCann inquired. The miner grunted contemptuously. “Hercules powder,” he replied. He pronounced the proper name in two syllables. With a sharp knife he cut these into lengths of about three inches each, and dropped them one by one into the hole in the rock. He then rammed them home with a hickory ramrod, just as all old miners will insist on doing. Because of this a large percentage of old miners have no fore and middle fingers on their right hands. The last piece he split, inserted in the crack a bit of fuse, on the end of which was a copper cap, dropped it in, and then carefully chinked-in with the wet grit which had been spooned out of the hole. “Mosey for cover, Irish!” he said, and touched it off.