The Pike's Peak Rush Part 27

"Some."

"Waal," and the giant picked up his sack, "you'll have most of your work for nothin'. May strike an occasional pocket, an' may not. You've got one o' them pore locations. Mostly rock." With that he stumped on into the little draw down which flowed the side rivulet. Once he paused, to cast a glance behind at the stream and the waiting sluice; and then he disappeared around a shoulder up the draw.

"We're no better off for _his_ opinion," quoth the preacher. "Don't believe he's quite the style of a man I'd cater to, anyway. But our bargain holds, does it? I'll make you out a bill of sale."

"Sure," manfully a.s.sented Terry, trying not to regret that this was the one big pan.

Harry presently arrived, laden with purchases.

"Meat's fifty cents a pound," he panted. "We may have to eat Shep or Jenny. Flour's snapped up at $15 a sack, and milk's fifty cents a quart from the cows of some of the emigrants. Whew! Couldn't find any gold-scales; we'll do our weighing at the grocery store till the express office or post office is opened. Everything's payable in dust. But I invested in a treat for us; see?" and he produced a can of oysters!

"That's our bank. The groceryman says oyster-cans are the popular things for holding gold, in the diggin's. It cost two dollars, but it'll be worth a heap more than that when it's full. I'm nearly strapped, though.

Have you added much to our pile?"

"Added the preacher's claim," blurted Terry, and 'fessed up. "It was a big pan, too," he concluded. "I've found only a little color since."

"Color helps," encouraged Harry. "That will be a claim for George. Good!

We can work both with the same water."

The preacher brought the bill of sale of the "True Blue" claim, as he had named it; and that evening they had him in to join them in making merry over the can of oysters. Harry thoroughly washed out the emptied can and set it aside to dry, for the "bank."

The "improvements" on the True Blue claim consisted of merely a few holes and a lean-to of pine boughs covered with a piece of ragged canvas. The preacher jovially carried away his personal belongings on his back; he was, as he expressed it, "traveling light."

Left in possession of both claims, the two partners decided to fill their oyster-can from the Golden Prize first, and they jumped into the work of setting up the sluice.

This proved to be a bigger job than it had appeared before being tackled. The sluice was heavy and had to be moved about by sections; and to place it conveniently and yet give it the proper slant, the ground had to be leveled or mounded or lowered; and a little dam had to be made, with a race or ditch to supply the water to the upper end of the sluice: and what with disconnecting, and shifting hither-thither, and re-connecting, and all that, two days were consumed.

There had been no time for panning, but now, at last, they might start in washing by wholesale, so to speak.

They lugged the dirt on gunny sacking to the sluice, dumped the dirt into the running water, and while Harry stirred it Terry followed down along the sluice to throw out the rocks and clear the riffles or cross cleats. A back-breaking and also muddy job this sluicing was, for the sackings of dirt were heavy and the sluice of course leaked at the seams and joints, so that the ground underneath was speedily soaked and made slippery by the constant trudging.

By noon the riffles were filled with gravelly mud, and Harry decided that they should be cleaned. So the water was turned off.

Now for the test!

"I see yellow! I see yellow!" a.s.serted Terry, running from cleat to cleat, and eyeing the deposits against each; and indeed it did seem to him that the little dikes glistened roguishly.

"You see more than I do, then," retorted Harry, rubbing his long nose.

"What I see is more panning, after all, to sort that stuff."

They dug the lodged stuff out with their knives, and panned several cleatsful at a time. Harry found a nugget (small one); little by little the gold left in the pans increased (hurrah!), until, at the wind-up----

"How much, do you think?" demanded Terry, excitedly.

"Mighty near an ounce, and the nugget besides; say $40." Harry's dirty face was abeam. "And we've washed as much dirt in half a day as we could pan by hand in a week. At this rate we'll soon have both claims skinned to the rock, and'll need others. But I reckon we can find 'em, or buy 'em."

"Looks as though we were going to be powerful rich, doesn't it?" said Terry, awed by the very thought. "We'll fill our oyster can."

"Shucks!" remarked Harry. "I saw one sluice where they'd cleaned up $138 in a day--but there were four men working it, and they had more loose dirt than we've got. Our dirt's mostly rock. Anyway, we'll lay aside that $100 we owe Father Richards and have something to show extra before he and mother and the Stantons come in."

However, the afternoon clean-up netted them, although they had dug the dirt from a deeper place which looked very promising, scarcely color!

And when early, before breakfast, in the morning, Terry sallied out to survey about and plan for a big day, to his astonishment the rivulet was dry, except for a dribble!

CHAPTER XIV

PAT CASEY HELPS OUT

He hastened back to the cabin with his eyes popping.

"Our water's gone!"

"What!"

"It is. There's not enough to fill a tin cup!"

"Great Scotland!" And setting aside the skillet and dropping his fork, Harry rushed out to see for himself.

"Wonder if the blamed thing's drying up," he hazarded. "Well, we've got a pailful for drinking and cooking, anyway. And after breakfast we'll try to find out what's happened."

They had not yet explored the little draw down which the water drained; it was shallow and uninteresting; but they did not need to go far to find out "what had happened." Around the shoulder of the first bend they arrived at a branch draw on the other side of their low hill, and were in the midst of some more claims.

Water from a spring had been feeding the little draw and the branch draw both; but now a sluice had been set up, taking away so much that there was none left for the little draw.

Several men were at work with the sluice. They paid no attention to their visitors until Harry interrupted the nearest.

"Look here. You men have taken our water."

The man turned around short. He was the giant who had commented on Terry's big pan and on the condition in general of the Golden Prize prospect.

"What you talkin' about?" he growled. "Who are you an' where you come from? Oh, it's you, is it?" he added, to Terry--and Terry had the notion that he had known perfectly well who they were and where they were from, before speaking.

"Yes," answered Terry. "And this is my partner. You aren't leaving us any water for our own sluice."

"You have all that comes, haven't you?"

"We haven't all that ought to come, though," answered Harry, a bit sharply because the giant's tone was decidedly rough. "You've dug the ditch to your sluice higher up than necessary, and it lowers the level of the spring so much that no water enters our gulch at all. The stream used to split, didn't it?"

"Split nothin'. Trouble is, your gulch is runnin' dry. You ought to've figgered on that, now that the snow's all melted off and sunk in. Most of those little gulches dry up, come toward summer."

"The stream used to split, and feed through this gulch, just the same,"

insisted Harry. "You can see the channel. I hold that we're ent.i.tled to a share of this spring. And if you'd move your ditch a foot or two we'd get enough, and you'd have plenty yourselves."

"You're ent.i.tled to just what drains into your gulch, an' we're ent.i.tled to what drains into ours," growled the giant. "This water's in our gulch, ain't it--spring and all?"

"I don't know that it is, by rights," retorted Harry. "The spring's pretty close to being at the dividing point. And anyway, we're not asking you for your water; we're asking for ours."