Presently the two boys rode the bucket to the top again; and after Bill Brown and Bright Star had had their turn, they all strode off with Hamilton to view a smelter. This proved to be a rock structure, built against a hillside. Large oak logs, about four feet long, rested on ledges near the bottom of this smelting furnace. On top of these the crude ore was piled. Other logs were then packed around, top and sides, completely enclosing the mineral. “It takes about twenty-four hours of steady firing to smelt out the lead,” their host explained. “As fast as the hot lead flows out from the door at the bottom of the furnace, we ladle it with metal dippers into iron pig lead moulds.” “Is this quite a rich vein?” asked Tom Gordon. “Just average,” Hamilton replied. “Has a normal yield of about one hundred fifty pounds per worker each day. But let me tell you about a really rich vein! Old John Bonner over at Hazel Green blundered onto an ancient Indian diggings, back in 1824. A few feet down he struck “block mineral.” Imagine it, pure lead in solid chunks.” The Colonel’s face shone with enthusiasm; and his deep voice trembled with excitement, as he continued: “The very first day Bonner took out seventeen thousand pounds, and in a short time had one hundred thousand pounds piled on the bank near his shaft. Great Jupiter, what a find!” CHAPTER 17 With Dodge’s Rangers When Colonel Dodge had examined the dispatches brought up from General Atkinson at Dixon’s Ferry by the four scouts, he at once sent out fast riders far and wide, throughout the surrounding lead district, summoning his frontier rangers to rendezvous at Hamilton’s Diggings within forty-eight hours. These men, gathered from the mines and fields, and numbering slightly more than two hundred, were a free-and-easy set of dare-devils, imbued with the spirit of adventure and an intense hatred of the Indian race. While disciplined to the extent of always obeying orders when sent into the teeth of danger, they swung through the country with little regard to the rules of the military manual, and presented a striking contrast to the habits and appearance of the regulars. “Yes, they look like a rough lot,” observed Dodge, “but they’ll fight like demons, and that’s what counts. You should have seen them at our first rendezvous, early in May. They came in all manner of form. Some with hats and some without; some had shirts on, and some hadn’t; and armed with all sorts of weapons from sticks upward. As to maneuvers and lines of battle, they knew nothing.” By the evening of the 29th of June, the rendezvous of the Wisconsin rangers was complete. Also, much to Dodge’s satisfaction, Alec Posey, a famous frontier fighter, had come up from Kellogg’s Grove with thirty men; while Captain Jack Stephenson had raced into camp that afternoon with his company of fifty hardy lead-miners, from the renowned Galena Diggings to the southwest. All told, Dodge’s squadron now numbered about three hundred.