For just below the prayer-meeting a man was standing in an open wagon and addressing another crowd. He was talking fast, the listeners jostled and craned, and the flare of the pitch-pine torch planted on the wagon lighted their hairy, up-turned faces.
"We"ll have to go and see," uttered George; who, as a tenderfoot, was eager to see everything.
Presently the words of the man in the wagon-box could be heard above the refrain of the Lord"s Prayer around the platform. He was somebody whom Terry never had noticed before in the gulch--a thin, slab-sided man with carroty hair and beard and dressed in prospector"s clothes; wore a revolver; no preacher, he. Certainly not, for----
"Yes, gentlemen," he was saying, "not more"n fifty miles from here there"s a place where every one o" you can wash your pound o" gold dust to a man per day. Me and my partners are the first white men in there; we"ve made our locations and our laws and have started a new camp that"ll be a world-beater. Tarryall, we"ve named it; in the big South Park: the best and richest country on the face o" the earth. As soon as I get provisions here I"m goin" back in, and I"ll take any o" you who want to go with me, on the understandin" you"ll respect our rights as first locators. There"s plenty room, gentlemen--and a pound o" gold a day per man waitin" to be dug. It"s yours, gentlemen, if you want it.
We"ll welcome you to Tarryall. Only fifty miles to fortune, remember.
I"ll show you the way, but I start early in the mornin"."
The crowd jostled excitedly. On the outskirts George clutched Terry hard by the sleeve.
"Let"s go!" he exclaimed. "Did you hear? A pound a day! That beats these diggin"s. Cracky! I knew there was some place where a fellow could dig his pound a day. We can go and make our strike, and then "twon"t matter whether we sell these claims in here or not."
"All right; let"s," agreed Terry, fired with the same idea. "We"ll locate for ourselves and Harry, too; or if they won"t allow boys to locate in their own names we"ll locate in Harry"s name and my dad"s and your dad"s! Harry"d never go to any of those other big strikes--the Bobtail, or the one in Russell Gulch, or a lot more. We"ve stuck here, when we might have been getting rich somewhere else."
"Come on back to the cabin and pack up," urged George.
They turned, when a voice at their elbow stayed them.
"Got the fever again, have you?"
He was the "Root Hog or Die" professor.
"Guess so," grinned Terry. "You"ve been away, haven"t you? Did Green Russell find you a mine? Do you know that man in the wagon? Has he made a big strike?"
"Never saw him before and don"t know anything about him," answered the professor. "Yes, I"ve got a few prospects, but I"m holding them for more water. Just now I"m recorder for this district. They elected me only the other day. How are you doing? Where"s Harry?"
"We"re waiting for water, too. He"s down at Denver, but he"s coming back. Will you record our claims? Do we have to record them?"
"No, you don"t have to. It might be safer, though. But I can"t record them tonight. The books are locked up. What are they?"
"The Golden Prize and the True Blue. They"re over there."
"I know. You look me up at the office first thing in the morning and we"ll record them."
"We won"t have time. We"re going to follow that man in the wagon to the new strike," explained Terry. "n.o.body"d said anything about recording until this evening. But we"ll be back."
"Well, I"ll make a memorandum, then," proposed the professor, "so you"ll be safer. n.o.body"s liable to jump your claims while you"re gone, if they can"t be worked. The gulch is full of such claims. But you look me up as soon as you can."
"All right. Much obliged," replied Terry. "Maybe we won"t want those claims after we"ve been to the new strike."
"We"d better be going. We"ve got to find Jenny and pack our stuff,"
urged George, impatient.
"Good luck to you," called the professor, as they hastened away.
"I"d like to surprise Harry with a regular gold mine, by the time he sees us again," uttered Terry.
"Sure. We"ll leave a note in the cabin saying we"ve gone to get rich,"
enthused George.
CHAPTER XIX
TO THE POUND-A-DAY
There was very little time to be lost. When in the morning they had eaten breakfast and had packed Jenny (who did not seem to object to a change from doing nothing all day) with a buffalo robe and a blanket and the picks and spades and cooking stuff and some provisions, and had placed a note for Harry--"Gone to get rich. Will see you later"--and sallied down the gulch, Terry with his shot-gun on his shoulder and George with his wooden-hammer revolver at his belt, and each with a gold-pan slung on his back, the procession for the new diggin"s already had started.
It looked quite like business, too--a long file composed of men riding horses or mules, and of men driving pack animals, and of other men afoot and carrying their packs, pressing south, out of the gulch, evidently following the lead of the Tarryall man.
"Once we locate our pound of gold a day, these other diggin"s can go hang, can"t they?" puffed George, as they hurried.
"I should say!" concurred Terry. "All we"ll do will be to come back and get Harry and sell to that Pine Knot Ike crowd, and then we"ll light out again. Glad we didn"t say where we"re bound for. When we sell we can pretend to Ike that we"re plumb disgusted."
"Sure. Let"s push up in front."
They were fast-footed and Jenny was long-legged, and they pa.s.sed one after another of their rivals, until they were well toward the van. The wagon-man guide could be seen in the advance, guiding up a steep divide between the North Clear Creek and the South Clear Creek. The route appeared to be by an old Indian trail; and the divide itself grew into a mountain. Higher and higher led the trail--a tough climb that made the procession straggle.
It was a great relief when the trail conducted down again, on the other side, to South Clear Creek, and crossed, and turned up, through a beautiful country, to a couple of lonely lakes. But presently it began to climb over another mountain!
Terry limped, George limped, everyone afoot limped, no stop had been made for lunch. Everybody was afraid that somebody else would get to the pound-a-day first.
"Wonder how far we"ve come now?" panted George.
"You"re a tenderfoot. You"re petered out already!" accused Terry. "We aren"t half there."
"I don"t limp any worse than you do," retorted George.
"Keep a-going."
"Keep a-going."
On top of this mountain they all in the advance ran into a snowstorm, while the people lower down, behind, evidently were warm and comfortable. Then night fell--a real January night--and camp had to be made.
However, George was game. He proved to be a good campaigner, for a tenderfoot; and as an old-timer Terry of course needs must pretend that this kind of camping was nothing at all. So they pitched in together and cooked supper like the rest of the crowd, and went early to bed on top of the blanket and underneath the buffalo robe.
"Jenny won"t thank us any for bringing her from summer right into winter, I reckon," murmured George, as he and Terry spooned against each other, to keep warm.
"No," replied Terry. "This "pound of gold a day" song doesn"t mean anything to her yet. But it"ll be warm down in Tarryall, they say--just like back at the Gregory diggin"s."
"We ought to get there tomorrow."
"Depends on how many more of these mountains there are," reasoned Terry.
"Without that Tarryall man to guide us we"d all be lost, sure."
On and on and on, into the south and southwest, continued the march: down and up, across more creeks, across more mountains, into canyons and out again; and when night arrived, no South Park and Tarryall diggin"s were yet in sight. Nothing was in sight but thick timber and wild rocky ridges extending to snow-line. Near or distant, before, behind, on either side, the landscape was the same.