Gold Part 20

Finally Yank approached one of the busy miners.

"Stranger," said he, "we're new to this. Maybe you can tell us where we can dig a little of this gold ourselves."

The man straightened his back, to exhibit a roving humorous blue eye, with which he examined Yank from top to toe.

"If," said he, "it wasn't for that eighteen-foot cannon you carry over your left arm, and a cold gray pair of eyes you carry in your head, I'd direct you up the sidehill yonder, and watch you sweat. As it is, you can work anywhere anybody else isn't working. Start in!"

"Can we dig right next to you, then?" asked Yank, nodding at an unbroken piece of ground just upstream.

The miner clambered carefully out of his waist-deep trench, searched his pockets, produced a pipe and tobacco. After lighting this he made Yank a low bow.

"Thanks for the compliment; but I warn you, this claim of mine is not very rich. I'm thinking of trying somewhere else."

"Don't you get any gold?"

"Oh, a few ounces a day."

"That suits me for a beginning," said Yank decidedly. "Come on, boys!"

The miner hopped back into his hole, only to stick his head out again for the purpose of telling us:

"Mind you keep fifteen feet away!"

With eager hands we slipped a pick and shovels from beneath the pack ropes, undid our iron bucket, and without further delay commenced feverishly to dig.

Johnny held the pail, while Yank and I vied with each other in being the first to get our shovelfuls into that receptacle. As a consequence we nearly swamped the pail first off, and had to pour some of the earth out again. Then we all three ran down to the river and took turns stirring that mud pie beneath the gently flowing waters in the manner of the "pot panners" we had first watched. After a good deal of trouble we found ourselves possessed of a thick layer of rocks and coa.r.s.e pebbles.

"We forgot to screen it," I pointed out.

"We haven't any screen," said Johnny.

"Let's pick 'em out by hand?" suggested Yank.

We did so. The process emptied the pail. Each of us insisted on examining closely; but none of us succeeded in creating out of our desires any of that alluring black sand.

"I suppose we can't expect to get colour every time?" observed Johnny disappointedly. "Let's try her again."

We tried her again; and yet again; and then some more; but always with the same result. Our hands became puffed and wrinkled with constant immersion in the water, and began to feel sore from the continual stirring of the rubble.

"Something wrong," grunted Johnny into the abysmal silence in which we had been carrying on our work.

"We can't expect it every time," I reminded him.

"All the others seem to."

"Well, maybe we've struck a blank place; let's try somewhere else,"

suggested Yank.

Johnny went over to speak to our neighbour, who was engaged in tossing out shovelfuls of earth from an excavation into which he had nearly disappeared. At Johnny's hail, he straightened his back, so that his head bobbed out of the hole like a prairie dog.

"No, it doesn't matter where you dig," he answered Johnny's question.

"The pay dirt is everywhere."

So we moved on a few hundred feet, picked another unoccupied patch, and resumed our efforts. No greater success rewarded us here.

"I believe maybe we ought to go deeper," surmised Yank.

"Some of these fellows are taking their dirt right off top of the ground," objected Johnny.

However, we unlimbered the pickaxe and went deeper; to the extent of two feet or more. It was good hard work, especially as we were all soft for it. The sun poured down on our backs with burning intensity; our hands blistered; and the round rocks and half-cemented rubble that made the bar were not the easiest things in the world to remove. However, we kept at it. Yank and I, having in times past been more or less accustomed to this sort of thing, got off much easier than did poor Johnny. About two feet down we came to a mixed coa.r.s.e sand and stones, a little finer than the top dirt. This seemed to us promising, so we resumed our washing operations. They bore the same results as had the first; which was just the whole of nothing.

"We've got to hit it somewhere," said Johnny between his teeth. "Let's try another place."

We scrambled rather wearily, but with a dogged determination, out of our shallow hole. Our blue-eyed, long-bearded friend was sitting on a convenient boulder near at hand, his pipe between his teeth, watching our operations.

"Got any tobacco, boys?" he inquired genially. "Smoked my last until to-night, unless you'll lend."

Yank produced a plug, from which the stranger shaved some parings.

"Struck the dirt?" he inquired. "No, I see you haven't." He stretched himself and arose. "You aren't washing this stuff!" he cried in amazement, as his eye took in fully what we were about.

Then we learned what we might have known before--but how should we?--that the gold was not to be found in any and every sort of loose earth that might happen to be lying about, but only in either a sort of blue clay or a pulverized granite. Sometimes this "pay dirt" would be found atop the ground. Again, the miner had to dig for it.

"All the surface diggings are taken up," our friend told us. "So now you have to dig deep. It's about four feet down where I'm working. It'll probably be deeper up here. You'd better move back where you were."

Yank, stretched himself upright.

"Look here," he said decidedly; "let's get a little sense into ourselves. Here's our pore old hosses standing with their packs on, and we no place to stay, and no dinner; and we're scratchin' away at this bar like a lot of fool hens. There's other days comin'."

Johnny and I agreed with the common sense of the thing, but reluctantly.

Now that we knew how, our enthusiasm surged up again. We wanted to get at it. The stranger's eyes twinkled sympathetically.

"Here, boys," said he, "I know just how you feel. Come with me."

He s.n.a.t.c.hed up our bucket and strode back to his own claim, where he filled the receptacle with some of the earth he had thrown out.

"Go pan that," he advised us kindly.

We raced to the water, and once more stirred about the heavy contents of the pail until they had floated off with the water. In the bottom lay a fine black residue; and in that residue glittered the tiny yellow particles. We had actually panned our first gold!

Our friend examined it critically.

"That's about a twelve-cent pan," he adjudged it.

Somehow, in a vague way, we had unreasonably expected millions at a twist of the wrist; and the words, "twelve cents," had a rankly penurious sound to us. However, the miner patiently explained that a twelve-cent pan was a very good one; and indubitably it was real gold.

Yank, being older and less excitable, had not accompanied us to the waterside.