"But I'd 'a' gone in under that iron capping, if I'd been doing it.

The outcropping you followed in from the surface never has been in place, ma'am.

It's what I'd call a wild stringer.

It pinched out forty foot back of where we're diggin' now.
That's just an iron stain we're following, and the pocket of high grade don't mean nothin'.

You went in on the strength of indications--" He stopped there and chuckled to himself, in a way that I'd come to know as the "indications" of a story,--which usually followed.
The Little Woman probably guessed.