The final preparation before starting was to pour the mercury behind the riffles in the sluice-boxes. When it lay quivering and shining behind each block and bar Bruce felt that his gargantuan bread-crumb had been dragged almost to the goal. It was well, too, he told himself with indescribable relief, for, not only his money, but his courage, his nerves, were well-nigh gone.
Bruce would trust no one but himself to pour the mercury in the boxes.
"That looks like good lively 'quick'," Smaltz commented as he watched him at the task.
"It should be; it was guaranteed never to have been used." He added with a smile: "Let's hope when we see it again it won't be quite so lively."
"Looks like it orter be as thick as mush if you can run a few thousand yards of that there pay-streak over it." There was a mocking look in Smaltz's yellow-brown eyes which Bruce, stooping over, did not see. He only heard the hopeful words.
"Oh, Smaltz--Smaltz--if it only is! Success means so much to me!" Unaccountably, such a tide of feeling rose within him that Bruce bared his heart to the man he did not like.
Smaltz looked at him with a curious soberness.
"Does it?" he responded after a pause.
"And I've tried so hard."
"You've sure worked like a horse." There was a look that was half pity, half grudging admiration on Smaltz's impudent face.
Banule was to run the power-house for the day and complete some work inside, so when Bruce had finished with the mercury he told Smaltz to telephone Banule from the pump-house that they were ready to start. Therefore while Bruce took his place at the lever on the donkey-engine enclosed in a temporary shed to protect the motor from rain and dust, Smaltz went to the pump-house as he was bid.
When Banule answered his ring he shouted: "Let her go in about two minutes--two minutes--d'ye hear?" The telephone receiver was shaking in Smaltz's hand and he was breathing hard.
"Yes," Banule answered irritably, "but don't yell so in my ear."
Smaltz already had slammed the receiver back on the hook. With a swift movement he threw in the switch and jumped for the outside. He dropped from the high platform and fell among the rocks some ten feet below. Instantly he scrambled to his feet and crouching, dodging among the boulders that strewed the river bank, he ran at top speed until he reached the sluice-boxes. The carpenter came out from his shop to take a leisurely survey of the world and Smaltz threw himself flat until he had turned inside again.