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And with all this the traffic returns of the Consolidated Company's railway leaped up, and Fisette, who was in charge of a dozen men stripping his find of roots and earth and moss, began to hear all round him, both near and far, the dull thud of blasting and the faint clink of hammer on steel.
Here and there were more definite ridges that took a general trend, but for the most part it was a chaos of rock and timber, slope and swamp, the refuse from the construction of a more attractive country which had been assembled elsewhere. Presently Fisette took out his compass, balanced it in the palm of his sinewy hand and glanced at the needle.
He came on, leaning a little forward, his great knotted hands twitching, his shoulders curved in a slow segment of power. When he was within six feet, Fisette screamed like a cat and darted at his throat. They fought silently with bare hands.
Fisette had found it and was on his way to report and prove the discovery. "I often wonder," he remarked casually, "what keeps you fellows going. I never met a prospector yet who gave in that he was licked, and mighty few of them found anything. They always claim they would have had it if they could have stayed out a bit longer. Take iron, for instance.
He had seen it all so often before. A little later a knock sounded at his door and Fisette entered, stepping up to the desk, one brown hand in his pocket. Clark glanced at him. "Well, mon vieux?" The half-breed laid on the desk half a dozen pieces of bluish gray rock. They were sharp, angular and freshly broken.
Even my friend Fisette down there," he pointed to the halfbreed's cabin that lay between the See House and the river "even my friend Fisette has electric light in his house." "Ah! Is that where Fisette lives?" "You know him?" "He works for me." "Then he's like most of my friends in St. Marys. The pulp mills are doing well?" "Their capacity will shortly be doubled."
There was a little pause while Fisette sheared thin shavings of tobacco from a dog-eared plug. He rolled them into a ball between his tawny palms, thoughtfully unpicked the ball, re-rolled it more loosely, abstracted a match from the inside band of his tattered hat and began to suck wetly at a gurgling pipe. "What's that?" he said presently. "I asked you did you come far?"
You swear that or I kill you here." The constable's brain began to rock giddily. Fisette in his present condition would not hesitate to kill. He knew that. "I swear it," he panted unsteadily, "on my honor." Fisette bared his white teeth. "Your honor no good. You swear by God and the Mother of God." Manson repeated it, his breath coming more steadily.
The Philadelphians were too lost in fatigue and astonishment. After a little Riggs commandeered the rest and the four began to roll back great blankets of moss, just as Fisette had done the week before, and everywhere beneath lay iron ore. Clark watched them with a suggestive smile till, after a little, Birch sat down panting, his hands stained with soil. "Well?" he demanded, "how about it?"
Fisette picked up samples from time to time, at which his patron glanced, and finally, taking mortar and pan, crushed a fist full of ore and washed it delicately, till a long tapering tail of yellow metal clung to the rounded angle of the pan.
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