"Don't you worry about my soaking, old-timer. He'll talk even more disrespectfully of himself about this time next year. That claim lies lengthwise along the top of the ridge, on both sides of it, and so constitutes the 'apex' of every vein below it throughout its full length. I am perfectly aware that he salted it for my benefit with ore taken from the Bonanza mine. I saw him doing it! But even if I hadn't known all about it I wouldn't have been fooled. The formation is entirely different from the Bonanza locality and any miner, let alone a professional mining engineer as I happen to be, would have tumbled to the salting at first sight of the stuff the fool scattered about the place. And that apex controls the vein that this came from!" He fished a bit of rock from his pocket and passed it to Red, whose eyes bulged out as he looked. Through its center, from side to side, ran a ribbon of dull yellow metal as wide as one's finger. Even to Red's unmetallurgical eyes its identity was plain. "Gold! Pure gold!" he murmured with respectful awe. Then his big paw went out congratulatingly. "Shake! Gawd, ole man, but I'm shore glad!" "What's a 'apex'?" he inquired of Douglass, some six hundred dollars winner for the night, as he left the faro table and walked arm in arm with him to the hotel. Douglass was very explicit in his explanation. "Nearly all true fissure veins in these mountains are to all practical intents and purposes vertical; that is, they run straight up and down instead of lying horizontal. It naturally follows that, if they don't pinch out before they get there, they come to the surface at or near the top of the hill. The courts have decided that a claim located on the top or 'apex' of such veins controls them to whatever depth they may run; that is, an 'apex' claim holds all the veins under it clean down to China! So the fellow who owns the 'apex' practically owns the whole mountain for a space as long as the length of his claim. To make sure of catching the apex of any veins in the hill I took up two extensions--one on each side of the claim I bought from Matlock and his partner, so that my holdings are fifteen hundred feet long by nine hundred feet wide; as the hill crest is almost a knife-edge in sharpness I cover every vein in it. And somewhere under the loose slide-rock on that hill lies the lode from which this comes! Do you _sabe_ now?" Red gurgled his full comprehension. "Why yuh damned ole foxy gran'pa! I orter knowed thet yuh wouldn't let thet swab do yuh! But howd' yuh come to be dealin' with Matlock? I been a heap oneasy in my mind about that."