With this sketch of a plan in mind, Lafond applied himself diligently to acquiring a thorough knowledge of the property. That, at least, was not difficult. All he had to do was to go to Billy, and say, "Look here, Knapp, they tell me you've got quite an outfit here. Show me around, won't you?" The Westerner was only too glad of the opportunity to expatiate. He took Lafond down every prospect shaft, over every surface indication. He explained them all minutely. When he had finished, he gave Lafond carefully selected samples from all of the vein fillings. The half-breed told him he wanted them for the purposes of exhibition.
"I got a first class shelf down in the Nugget," he said; "an' I think if we'd jest put a line of samples along it from all the claims, and label 'em, it would be a pretty good 'ad,' don't you?"
Billy did. So the two "sampled" as carefully as for an assay test in the School of Mines at Rapid. About half of the result Lafond exhibited as he had suggested, but the rest he preserved carefully for assay tests of his own.
To be sure, Billy had quite freely shown him his own official tests made at the School of Mines, but Lafond wanted his information more direct. He could not doubt the accuracy of the reports. But there was always a possibility that the sampling had not been fairly done. He was sure of these other "averages," for he had helped take them. He liked to have things under his own eye, and it was for this reason he had first suggested to Durand that he would like to take lessons in the art of assaying.
At first he had intended to use the old entomologist merely as a convenience, but later, as he became more intimate with the man through his work, he actually began to entertain for him a friendship--his first in over fifteen years. With all men he had been friendly; with none had he been friends. Here he proved a really generous emotion, opening his heart to the soft influences of affection and memory, allowing himself in this one instance an intimacy absolutely without ulterior motive. It all dated from the first day, when a chance question of Durand's touched the springs of the half-breed's youth.
They had adjourned that afternoon to the workshop, where Durand built a charcoal fire in a little furnace and gathered about him a choice assortment of curious implements. After the furnace was well heated, he roasted the ore Lafond had brought with him, heating it through and through, until finally the fumes of sulphur, antimony and arsenic ceased to arise from the chalk-lined iron basin. While the process was going forward Durand explained pleasantly the various steps of the chemical change, interspersing much extraneous information--as, for instance, how Winkler, Tcheffkin and Merrick claim that there is here a loss of gold, which Crookes denies--to all of which Michaïl Lafond lent but an inattentive ear. He was little interested in theory; but observing the old man's delight in the scientific aspect of the experiment, he feigned corresponding pleasure on his own part.