The Furnace of Gold Part 34

"You old son of a gun!"

Van thought the storms had raged sufficiently.

"Is work unpopular, or did the wind blow the water from the creek?"

"I like to work," admitted Gettysburg, "but it's fun to watch you epicures eatin'."

Beth felt embarra.s.sed.

"Epicures?" echoed Napoleon. "You don't know what an epicure is?

That's a vulgar remark when you don't know no meaning of a word."

"Epicure? Me not know what an epicure is?" replied old Gettysburg aggressively. "You bet I do. An epicure's a feller which chaws his fodder before he swallers it."

Napoleon subsided. Then he arose and sauntered out to work, Dave and Gettysburg following. Van hastily drank his cup of coffee, which, as he had predicted, was not particularly good, and started for the others. He halted in the door.

"Make yourself comfortable, if you can here, Kent," he said. "You had an exhausting experience yesterday. Perhaps you had better lie down."

Beth merely said: "Thank you." But her smile was more radiant than sunshine.

CHAPTER XXVIII

WORK AND SONG

Having presently finished her breakfast, Beth joined the group outside, curious to behold the workings of a placer mine in actual operation.

There was not much to see, but it was picturesque. In their lack of funds the partners had constructed the simplest known device for collecting the gold from the sand. They had built a line of sluices, or troughs of considerable length, propped on stilts, or supports about knee high, along the old bed of the canyon. The sluices were mere square flumes, set with a fairly rapid grade.

Across the bottom of all this flume, at every yard or less of its length, small wooden cleats had been nailed, to form the "riffles."

Into the hoses the water from the creek was turned, at the top. The men then shoveled the sand in the running stream and away it went, sluicing along the water-chute, its particles rattling down the wooden stairway noisily. The gold was expected to settled behind the riffles, owing to its weight.

All the flume-way dripped from leakages. The sun beat down upon the place unshaded. Water escaped into all the pits the men were digging as they worked, so that they slopped around in mud above their ankles.

Dave wore rubber boots and was apparently protected. As a matter of fact the boots promptly filled with water. Napoleon and Gettysburg made no effort to remain dry shod, but puddled all day with soused footgear.

Van rode off to the "reservation town," a mile below the hill, to bargain for a tent reported there for sale. Sleeping quarters here on the claim were far too crowded. Until lumber for a cabin could be purchased they must make what shifts they might.

It had taken but the briefest time for the miners to go at their work.

Beth stood near, watching the process with the keenest interest. It seemed to her a back-breaking, strenuous labor. These st.u.r.dy old fellows, grown gray and stooped with toil--grown also expectant of hardship, ill-luck, and privations--were pathetic figures, despite their ways of cheer.

That Van had attached them to himself in a largeness of heart by no means warranted by their worth was a conviction at which anyone must promptly arrive. They were lovable old scamps, faithful, honest, and loyal to the man they loved--but that was all that could be stated.

Perhaps it was enough. As partners with whom to share both life and fortune they might have seemed impossible to many discerning men.

Beth sat down on a rock, near Gettysburg. Someway she, too, liked the three old chaps of whom work had made three trademarks. Old Gettysburg began to sing. The words of his song, halted by grunts as he shoveled, were, to say the least, unexpected:

The frog he swore he'd have a ride, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo; Sword and pistols by his side, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo.

For lunch he packed a beetle bug, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo; Tucked inside his tummy snug, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo.

Kimo, karo, pito, garo, Kimo, bolly mitty kimo.

(Shovel) Shing-shang hammyriddle, allibony, ringtang, Folderolli bolly mitty kimo.

(Three shovelings and some meditation)

The frog he rode a slimy eel, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo.

The sun made his complexion peel, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo.

The frog's legs went to join a fry, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo.

The eel became a juicy pie, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo.

(Chorus)

Napoleon looked up at the end of the song and spat upon his hands.

"Gett," he said placidly, "I think that's a lie--metaphorical speakin'.

Ain't mad, are you?"

Gettysburg made no response. He merely shoveled.

One of the sluices, weakened by a leak that had undermined its pinning, fell from place, at the farther end of the line. Old Dave went down to repair it. Napoleon took advantage of his absence to come to Beth, with an air of imparting something confidential.

"Splice my main brace," said he, with his head on one side, quaintly, "wasn't that a blasphermous yarn old Dave was givin' us about the wind blowing that log chain away a link at a time? Old son of a gun!"

Beth was inquisitive.

"Why do you call him a son of a gun?"

Napoleon scratched his head.

"Well, you see, Dave's mother held up his father with a Colt forty-five and makes him marry her. Then along comes Dave. I reckon that makes him a sure enough son of a gun."

Beth said: "Oh." She turned a little red.

"Yep, good old cuss, Dave is, though. No good for a seafearing man, however. He could never learn to swear--he ain't got no ear for music."

He returned to his shovel. He and Gettysburg worked in silence for fifteen minutes. Old Dave returned and joined them. Gettysburg tuned up for another of his songs, the burden of which was the tale of a hen-pecked man.

Once more at its end Napoleon looked up and spat on his hands.

"There ain't nothing that can keep some women down 'cept a gravestone--and I've seen some gravestones which was tilted."

Despite the interest and amus.e.m.e.nt she felt in it all, Beth was becoming sleepy as she sat there in the sun. She shook off the spell and arose, approaching closer to the bank and flume where Gettysburg was toiling. He labored on, silently, for several minutes, then paused, straightened up by degrees, as if the folds in his back were stubborn, and looked at their visitor steadily, his gla.s.s eye particularly fixed. One of his hands pulled down his jaw, and then it closed up with a thump.

"Guess this kind of a racket is sort of new to you, Mr. Kent," he ventured. "Ever seen gold washin' before?"

"No," Beth confessed, "and I don't see where the gold is to come from now."

Gettysburg chuckled. "Holy toads! Miners do a heap of work and never see it neither. Me and Van and Napoleon has went through purg and back, many's the time, and was lucky to git out with our skeletons, sayin' nuthin' about the gold."