That night, before their camp fire, they held a council of war. Though it seemed more than likely that the lode was a rich one, they were now brought face to face with the disheartening fact that the mere ownership of a potential gold mine is only the first step in a long and uphill road to fortune. In the mining regions it is a common saying that the owner of a silver prospect needs a gold mine at his back to enable him to develop it, and the converse is equally true. “Well,” Bromley began, after the pipes had been lighted, “it seems we’ve got something, at last. What do we do with it?” “I wish I knew, Harry,” was the sober reply. “If the thing turns out to be as good as it looks, we’ve got the world by the tail--or we would have if we could only figure out some way to hold on. But we can’t hold on and develop it; that is out of the question. We have no capital, and we are a good many mountain miles from a stamp-mill. Unless the lode is richer than anything we’ve ever heard of, the ore wouldn’t stand the cost of jack-freighting to a mill.” “That says itself,” Bromley agreed. “But if we can’t develop the thing, what is the alternative?” “There is only one. If our map is any good, and if we have figured out our location with any degree of accuracy, we are about thirty miles, as the crow flies, from Leadville--which will probably mean forty or fifty the way we’d have to go to find a pass over the range. We have provisions enough to stake us on the way out, but not very much more than enough. I cut into the last piece of bacon to-night for supper.” “All right; say we head for Leadville. We’d have to do that anyway, to record our discovery in the land office. What next?” “Assays,” said Philip. “We’ll take a couple of sacks of the quartz along and find out what we’ve got. If the assays make a good showing, we’ll have something to sell, and it will go hard with us if we can’t find some speculator in the big camp who will take a chance and buy our claim.” “What?--sell out, lock, stock and barrel for what we can get, and then stand aside and see somebody come in here and make a million or so that ought to be ours?” Bromley burst out. “Say, Philip--that would be death by slow torture!” “I know,” Philip admitted. “It is what the poor prospector gets in nine cases out of ten because, being poor, he has to take it. If we had a mine, instead of a mere prospect hole, we might hope to be able to capitalize it; but as it is--well, you know what’s in the common purse. My savings are about used up; we came in on a shoe-string, in the beginning.” “Yes, but, land of love, Philip!--to have a thing, like this may turn out to be, right in our hands, and then have to sell it, most likely for a mere song! ... why, we’d never live long enough to get over it, neither one of us!” Philip shook his head. “It’s tough luck, I’ll admit; but what else is there to do?” Bromley got up and kicked a half burnt log into the heart of the fire.