"Well, boys," he drawled, "that twelve cents is highly satisfactory, of course; but in the meantime we"ve lost about six hundred dollars" worth of hoss and grub."
Surely enough, our animals had tired of waiting for us, and had moved out packs and all. We hastily shouldered our implements.
"Don"t you want to keep this claim next me?" inquired our acquaintance.
We stopped.
"Surely!" I replied. "But how do we do it?"
"Just leave your pick and shovel in the hole."
"Won"t some one steal them?"
"No."
"What"s to prevent?" I asked a little skeptically.
"Miners" law," he replied.
We almost immediately got trace of our strayed animals, as a number of men had seen them going upstream. In fact we had no difficulty whatever in finding them for they had simply followed up the rough stream-bed between the canon walls until it had opened up to a gentler slope and a hanging garden of gra.s.s and flowers. Here they had turned aside and were feeding. We caught them, and were just heading them back, when Yank stopped short.
"What"s the matter with this here?" he inquired. "Here"s feed, and water near, and it ain"t so very far back to the diggings."
We looked about us, for the first time with seeing eyes. The little up-sloping meadow was blue and dull red with flowers; below us the stream brawled foam flecked among black rocks; the high hills rose up to meet the sky, and at our backs across the way the pines stood thick serried. Far up in the blue heavens some birds were circling slowly.
Somehow the leisurely swing of these unhasting birds struck from us the feverish hurry that had lately filled our souls. We drew deep breaths; and for the first time the great peace and majesty of these California mountains cooled our spirits.
"I think it"s a bully place, Yank," said Johnny soberly, "and that little bench up above us looks flat."
We clambered across the slant of the flower-spangled meadow to the bench, just within the fringe of the pines. It proved to be flat, and from the edge of it down the hill seeped a little spring marked by the feathery bracken. We entered a cool green place, peopled with shadows and the rare, considered notes of soft-voiced birds. Just over our threshold, as it were, was the sunlit, chirpy, buzzing, bright-coloured, busy world. Overhead a wind of many voices hummed through the pine tops.
The golden sunlight flooded the mountains opposite, flashed from the stream, lay languorous on the meadow. Long bars of it slanted through an unguessed gap in the hills behind us to touch with magic the very tops of the trees over our heads. The sheen of the precious metal was over the land.
CHAPTER XVI
THE FIRST GOLD
We arose before daylight, picketed our horses, left our dishes unwashed, and hurried down to the diggings just at sun-up carrying our gold pans or "washbowls," and our extra tools. The bar was as yet deserted. We set to work with a will, taking turns with the pickaxe and the two shovels.
I must confess that our speed slowed down considerably after the first wild burst, but we kept at it steadily. It was hard work, and there is no denying it, just the sort of plain hard work the day labourer does when he digs sewer trenches in the city streets. Only worse, perhaps, owing to the nature of the soil. It has struck me since that those few years of hard labour in the diggings, from "49 to "53 or "54, saw more actual manual toil accomplished than was ever before performed in the same time by the same number of men. The discouragement of those returning we now understood. They had expected to take the gold without toil; and were dismayed at the labour it had required. At any rate, we thought we were doing our share that morning, especially after the sun came up. We wielded our implements manfully, piled our debris to one side, and gradually achieved a sort of crumbling uncertain excavation reluctant to stay emptied.
About an hour after our arrival the other miners began to appear, smoking their pipes. They stretched themselves lazily, spat upon their hands, and set to. Our friend of the day before nodded at us cheerfully, and hopped down into his hole.
We removed what seemed to us tons of rock. About noon, just as we were thinking rather dispiritedly of knocking off work for a lunch--which in our early morning eagerness we had forgotten to bring--Johnny turned up a shovelful whose lower third consisted of the pulverized bluish clay.
We promptly forgot both lunch and our own weariness.
"Hey!" shouted our friend, scrambling from his own claim. "Easy with the rocks! What are you conducting here? a volcano?" He peered down at us.
"Pay dirt, hey? Well, take it easy; it won"t run away!"
Take it easy! As well ask us to quit entirely! We tore at the rubble, which aggravatingly and obstinately cascaded down upon us from the sides; we sc.r.a.ped eagerly for more of that blue clay; at last we had filled our three pans with a rather mixed lot of the dirt, and raced to the river. Johnny fell over a boulder and scattered his panful far and wide. His manner of scuttling back to the hole after more reminded me irresistibly of the way a contestant in a candle race hurries back to the starting point to get his candle relighted.
We panned that dirt clumsily and hastily enough; and undoubtedly lost much valuable sand overside; but we ended each with a string of colour.
We crowded together comparing our "pans." Then we went crazy. I suppose we had about a quarter of a dollar"s worth of gold between us, but that was not the point. The long journey with all its hardships and adventures, the toil, the uncertainty, the hopes, the disappointments and reactions had at last their visible tangible conclusion. The tiny flecks of gold were a symbol. We yapped aloud, we kicked up our heels, we shook hands, we finally joined hands and danced around and around.
From all sides the miners came running up, dropping their tools with a clatter. We were a.s.sailed by a chorus of eager cries.
"What is it, boys?" "A strike?" "Whereabouts is your claim?" "Is it "flour" or "flake"?" "Let"s see!"
They crowded around in a dense mob, and those nearest jostled to get a glimpse of our pans. Suddenly sobered by this interest in our doings, we would have edged away could we have got hold of our implements.
"Wall, I"ll be durned!" snorted a tall state of Maine man in disgust.
"This ain"t no strike! This is an insane asylum."
The news slowly penetrated the crowd. A roar of laughter went up. Most of the men were hugely amused; but some few were so disgusted at having been fooled that they were almost inclined to take it as a personal affront that we had not made the expected "strike."
"You"d think they was a bunch of confounded Keskydees," growled one of them.
The miners slowly dispersed, returning to their own diggings. Somewhat red-faced, and very silent, we gathered up our pans and slunk back to the claim. Our neighbour stuck his head out of his hole. He alone had not joined the stampede in our direction.
"How do you like being popular heroes?" he grinned.
Johnny made as though to shy a rock at him, whereupon he ducked below ground.
However, our spirits soon recovered. We dumped the black sand into a little sack we had brought for the purpose. It made quite an appreciable bulge in that sack. We did not stop to realize that most of the bulge was sack and sand, and mighty little of it gold. It was something tangible and valuable; and we were filled with a tremendous desire to add to its bulk.
We worked with entire absorption, quite oblivious to all that was going on about us. It was only by accident that Yank looked up at last, so I do not know how long Don Gaspar had been there.
"Will you look at that!" cried Yank.
Don Gaspar, still in his embroidered boots, his crimson velvet breeches, his white linen, and his sombrero, but without the blue and silver jacket, was busily wielding a pickaxe a hundred feet or so away. His companion, or servant, was doing the heavier shovel work.
"Why, oh, why!" breathed Johnny at last, "do you suppose, if he must _mine_, he doesn"t buy himself a suit of dungarees or a flannel shirt?"
"I"ll bet it"s the first hard work he ever did in his life," surmised Yank.
"And I"ll bet he won"t do that very long," I guessed.
But Don Gaspar seemed to have more sticking power than we gave him credit for. We did not pay him much further attention, for we were busy with our own affairs; but every time we glanced in his direction he appeared to be still at it. Our sack of sand was growing heavier; as indeed were our limbs. As a matter of fact we had been at harder work than any of us had been accustomed to, for very long hours, beneath a scorching sun, without food, and under strong excitement. We did not know when to quit; but the sun at last decided it for us by dipping below the mountains to the west.
We left our picks and shovels in our pit; but carried back with us our pans, for in them we wished to dry out our sand. The horses were still at their picket ropes; and we noticed near the lower end of the meadow, but within the bushes, three more animals moving slowly. A slim column of smoke ascended from beyond the bushes. Evidently we had neighbours.
We were dog tired, and so far starved that we did not know we were hungry. My eyes felt as though they must look like holes burned in a blanket. We lit a fire, and near it placed our panful of sand. But we did not take time to cook ourselves a decent meal; we were much too excited for that. A half-made pot of coffee, some pork burned crisp, and some hard bread comprised our supper. Then Yank and I took a handful of the dried sand in the other two pans, and commenced cautiously to blow it away. Johnny hovered over us full of suggestions, and premonitions of calamity.
"Don"t blow too, hard, fellows," he besought us; "you"ll blow away the gold! For heaven"s sake, go easy!"
We growled at him, and blew. I confess that my heart went fast with great anxiety, as though the stakes of my correct blowing were millions.
However, as we later discovered, it is almost impossible to blow incorrectly.