"You bet. Shot an antelope. Killed him first crack. He was mighty good eating, too. But there wasn't much game. Too many people on the trail." "Did you kill any bear?" "No. Didn't even see one. We were in too big a hurry to stop to hunt much, anyway, and when we needed meat the worst, we couldn't find it. That was on the desert between Salt Lake and these mountains. Where are we going now? Do you know?" "Over to a camp called Rough and Ready, in Grass Valley, I guess." "What's there?" "It's dry diggin's, mostly, but it's more of a quartz country than this. We're on the track of a big quartz claim. You remember that sick man I found in St. Louis?" Billy nodded. "Well, he told us about a claim of his; he sort of gave it to dad and me. We aren't telling anybody else, but now you're a partner, I can tell you that much." "Jiminy!" exclaimed Billy. "Hope we find it." "Well, if we don't we can wash out a lot of gold, anyhow." "What are dry diggings, Charley?" "They're diggin's in dry ground, where you have to bring in the water some way. Wet diggin's are placers in the beds of streams where you're in the water already. Shirt-tail was wet diggin's. They're the hardest because your feet are soaked and get sore, and you catch rheumatism and fever and everything. "What's quartz diggin's, then?" "Aw, those aren't diggin's, exactly," informed the wise Charley. "Quartz is a rock that helps form a lode where the gold is carried, first, before it's crumbled out by the weather and is washed down with gravel and sand to make the placer beds. You dig the placer bed, but you have to use a crow-bar and powder on lodes, and break them to pieces. Then you have to crush the pieces and wash the gold out or unite it with mercury and get it that way. Lode mining takes machinery, if it's done right, and it's expensive; but it lasts longer, if it's any good, because you can follow the lode for miles. Placer mining is sort of luck." "If we find a lode, what'll we do with it, I wonder," pursued Billy. "We haven't any machinery, or much powder, either." "We'll get the machinery, all right, if we find the spot," asserted Charley. "My father and Mr. Grigsby are going into this thing scientifically; that's the only way to make a success; your father's no slouch, either. "I should say not," agreed Billy, loyally. "I guess we all together can make a mine pay, if anybody can." "This is awful rough traveling, isn't it!" remarked Charley, suddenly. And Billy answered: "Kind of; but we were over worse. Had to haul the oxen and horses up and down by ropes." Nevertheless, the going was, as Charley had said, "awful." Steep slope after steep slope blocked the way; the brush and timber grew thick; sometimes large rocks interposed; and when the party weren't sliding they were climbing, dragging the puffing pack animals. But the trail that had been taken always led on.