Seth looked up at the women who were almost jumping around the room. He smiled and said, “Where did you find this? I had been planning to see if I could find some small flakes in the dust but I never dreamed I could find quartz with wire gold and flakes in it this size.”
Tasha smiled and said, excitedly, “You remember where the cave in was? When you showed me the tunnel remember I said I thought I saw something shine in the light on the far end? Charity and I were bored earlier this week and decided to explore. We still saw the glow at the far end of the tunnel cave in so decided to see if we could find out what it was. I know you said the mine could be dangerous and we were careful honey. We moved enough of the cave in to get to the far end. When we got there this is what we found. I don’t know how much there is there honey. We can see some more up in the ceiling and there is a lot laying on the floor. It looks like there is a lot mixed in with the rocks. Is it really gold?”
“Yeah I think its gold. Why don’t we see if we can clean this up some then I’ll take it out to the shop tomorrow and see if I can melt it in the crucible out there. I don’t have any way to see how pure it is but the old acetylene torch will melt it fine. Depending on purity it melts from a little under to a little over 2000 degrees. We have moulds to pour the melted metal into also. After we get a little ahead we will take it to Denver and get it assayed and see what it will sell for. When I moved out here I wanted to see if I could find some gold so I did some research on it. I even bought some flux to use in the melting process and some nitric acid to see if we have the real thing.”
The women took Seth into the tunnel first thing the next morning. He was no mining engineer and was afraid the mine was unsafe but he could find nothing that looked horribly dangerous. He agreed to let the women crawl into the shaft and pick up the ore lying on the floor but he made them promise not to do any digging in the ceiling or shaft walls. The next two days the three worked from morning to evening getting gold out of the old mine.
While the women brought buckets of ore out of the shaft Seth cleaned the quartz from it and melted it down. The first three buckets yielded what Seth estimated to be an ounce and a half of melted metal. They had decided to work on the ore until they had the floor cleaned of the metal then they would make the trip to Denver.
By the time they had picked up all the ore that had fallen from the ceiling Seth had thirteen small bars. They had not dug into the pile of rock to get that. As they had promised the girls only picked up what was easily found on top of the cave in and that had rolled down into the shaft. Seth had no idea how pure the gold was but estimating the purity at 90% and the bars weight at one ounce each he had almost $19000.00 in gold. He was scared to have that much ore lying around even though he had done his best to hide it.
Ten days after the girls showed him their first three buckets of gold Seth decided it was time to go to Denver and sell it if they could. He needed more flux to melt more ore and he wanted to get rid of the ore also. If he didn’t sell it he was going to put it in a safe deposit box for safe keeping. All three of the young people were excited the day they left. It felt like the trip was taking forever. Seth had placed the gold in an old ammunition can behind his truck seat and was almost afraid to leave the truck when they stopped.
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