Oh, Rapaire, you are really messing with it now. I spent months in the dry mountains north of Placerville working claims, shifting quartz veins with pickaxe and shifting iron, grinding samples down and panning them out, and crawling through 19th century drifts that threatened to come down on our heads if we sneezed, assaying with acid and tong, always looking for better color. We damn built a flume from scratch, me bucko, so I know whereof I speak. But how could you know that?


A