The Pike's Peak Rush Part 25

CHAPTER XIII

READY FOR BIG BUSINESS, BUT * * * !

When after breakfast they started out, "for (as Harry said) the latest wrinkles in getting rich quick," the gulch was already astir and at work. And a busy, inspiring sight it was, alive from side to side and apparently from end to end with cabins, completed or begun, some plank-roofed, some roofed with pine boughs; with dug-outs, tents, wagons, oxen, mules, and with men digging, burrowing, toiling at spade and pick, squatting over gold-pans, or manipulating the boxes set on rockers, while the few women were attending to dishes or hanging out the family washing.

"Washing $3 a dozen," announced a sign in front of one tent.

The gulch was long and broken, and of course not half the sights were to be seen from any one point.

"Let's walk up a piece, first," suggested Harry.

So they did, in confident manner. Only day before yesterday they had come in as tenderfeet--not knowing a thing and not owning a foot of ground. Now they were regular residents, actual miners, with a paying claim and a cabin, and might hold up their heads. The very dirt on their clothes proclaimed their rank. Terry felt like a wealthy citizen.

The man who evidently owned the claim next above theirs paused to greet them. He was another young man, with a blond beard, and a smile that disclosed white even teeth, and although he was roughly dressed in ragged red flannel shirt, belted trousers and heavy cow-hide boots, his chest, showing under his shirt, which was open at the throat, was very white, and now as he rested his foot upon his spade and shoved back his slouch hat, his forehead also was very white.

"How are you, neighbors?" he accosted. "Made your pile yet?"

"No, sir," promptly responded Harry. "But it's right there waiting for us. All we've done is a little panning, and with proper development work we've got a bonanza."

"We sure have," supported Terry. "We panned out five dollars in color, first thing. But that's too slow."

The man smiled good-humoredly.

"You're in luck, then." He wiped his brow. "I haven't seen my color yet, but I suppose it's around in here somewhere. Anyway, I'm getting plenty of exercise. We're all crazy together. I expect I'm as crazy as the rest. You know what Virgil says--_facilis decensus Averni_, eh?" and he eyed Harry inquiringly. "Did you find that so?"

"'Easy is the descent to Avernus,' eh?" translated Harry. "Hum! Well, we did come down in here at a good gait. How we'll get out again is a question. But you must be a college man."

"Yes, and also a preacher. 'Whom the G.o.ds destroy they first make mad'

is another favorite reflection of mine, among these diggin's. Are you a college man, too?"

"Yes; University of Virginia."

"I'm Yale. Glad to meet you. Well, it's a great place--all kinds of us jumbled and digging and sweating, talking gold and eating gold and dreaming gold, when most of us could accomplish more and make more where we came from."

"I reckon the thing we don't know how to do always looks easier than the thing we do know how to do," reasoned Harry.

"Exactly. But where are you bound for?"

"We're going to put in improvements," spoke Terry. "Do you know where we can get a sluice?"

"Make it, if you can buy the lumber. But you'll have to stand in line and grab the boards as fast as they fall from the saw. By the way, you don't object to my using that water, do you? I'm not certain whether it's on your land or mine; it's pretty nearly between, as I figure."

"We thought it was on our side, but use all you want, certainly,"

replied Harry.

They left the preacher to his digging and proceeded.

The farther they went up the gulch, the more intense seemed the fever for work, and the thicker the camps and people. Yes, and there was gold, too! Three men were operating a "rocker." This was one of those wooden boxes on rockers like a cradle; one man shoveled in dirt, another poured in water, a third rocked the box from side to side, and the water and dirt flowed out through a slot at the lower end.

The Golden Prize proprietors halted to watch. When the water and dirt had escaped, in the bottom of the box were to be seen several cleats nailed across, and caught against these cleats was gold! The men figured that there was eight dollars' worth right there!

Up here were a few sluices, too: the long troughs, also with cleats nailed across the bottom inside, to catch the gold as the water and dirt flowed over. Into some of the sluices water had to be poured by hand, but others led from streams and the water flowed through without having been dipped. The shorter sluices were called "Long Toms."

"That's what we want," decided Harry. "A regular sluice, running right across our claim."

"There's the wheel-barrow man!" exclaimed Terry.

And so it was, standing in front of a tent which bore the sign, "W. N.

Byers. The Rocky Mountain News," and nearby was a stake and a sign: "Central City."

They shook hands with the wheel-barrow man.

"What's this?" demanded Harry. "A town?"

"Yes, sir! Mr. Byers has named it. It's the best location. Right in the middle of the Gulch."

"Is he going to stay here?"

"Nope; but he's pushing things along. What's happened to you boys? You look as if you'd been prospecting."

"We have," laughed Harry. "Haven't you?"

"Yes, a little." And he suddenly called: "h.e.l.lo, John. What's the matter down there?"

"They've got wind of another strike," answered the man, striding on. He was a black-bearded man, and seemed very busy.

"That's John Gregory himself," explained the wheel-barrow man. "The original boomer of this gulch. But watch the people pile out, will you!"

"Yes; there's a big strike south of here, I understand," from the doorway of his tent spoke Mr. Byers himself: a stocky, pleasant-faced man, with a close-trimmed brown beard. The diggin's had as great a variety of beards and whiskers as it had of people.

So he was the pioneer newspaper man, was he--the man who had brought a printing-press, and a stock of paper already printed on one side at Omaha, clear from the Missouri River to Cherry Creek. But Terry was given scant opportunity to stare. Harry clutched him by the sleeve:

"Come on, quick! I've got an idea."

Away they hastened, back down the gulch. Before, at the lower end, the confusion was increasing. Outfits were hurrying away--drivers swinging their lashes, men footing fast; camps were breaking, and on their claims miners and prospectors were shouldering pick and spade and pack and hastening after the procession now crossing the creek.

The movement spread up the gulch, communicated from camp to camp and claim to claim.

"What'll we do? Get more land?" puffed Terry.

"No, no."

But the lower end of the gulch was not by any means deserted, as they arrived. It was mainly the frothy overflow that had bubbled out, and when the eddy had settled there appeared to be almost as many people as before. Even the claims which had been abandoned were being quickly re-occupied. However, Harry dashed to one man who had packed up and on his cabin was tacking a sign: "Keep Off!" while his partner waited.

"Going to leave?"