Gold

by White, Stewart Edward

  “All the surface diggings are taken up,” our friend told us. “So now you have to dig deep. It’s about four feet down where I’m working. It’ll probably be deeper up here. You’d better move back where you were.”

  Yank, stretched himself upright.

  “Look here,” he said decidedly; “let’s get a little sense into ourselves. Here’s our pore old hosses standing with their packs on, and we no place to stay, and no dinner; and we’re scratchin’ away at this bar like a lot of fool hens. There’s other days comin’.”

  Johnny and I agreed with the common sense of the thing, but reluctantly. Now that we knew how, our enthusiasm surged up again. We wanted to get at it. The stranger’s eyes twinkled sympathetically.

  “Here, boys,” said he, “I know just how you feel. Come with me.”

  He snatched up our bucket and strode back to his own claim, where he filled the receptacle with some of the earth he had thrown out.

  “Go pan that,” he advised us kindly.

  We raced to the water, and once more stirred about the heavy contents of the pail until they had floated off with the water. In the bottom lay a fine black residue; and in that residue glittered the tiny yellow particles. We had actually panned our first gold!

  Our friend examined it critically.

  “That’s about a twelve-cent pan,” he adjudged it.

  Somehow, in a vague way, we had unreasonably expected millions at a twist of the wrist; and the words, “twelve cents,” had a rankly penurious sound to us. However, the miner patiently explained that a twelve-cent pan was a very good one; and indubitably it was real gold.

  Yank, being older and less excitable, had not accompanied us to the waterside.

  “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 cañon walls until it had opened up to a gentler slope and a hanging garden of grass 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 débris 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 scraped 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 assailed 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.

  There is something really a little awing about pure gold new-born from the soil. Gold is such a stable article, so strictly guarded, so carefully checked and counted, that the actual production of metal that has had no existence savours almost of the alchemical. We had somewhat less than an ounce, to be sure; but that amount in flake gold bulks considerably. We did not think of it in terms of its worth in dollars; we looked on it only as the Gold, and we stared at the substantial little heap of yellow particles with fascinated awe.

  *

  CHAPTER XVII

  THE DIGGINGS

  The following days were replicas of the first. We ate hurriedly at odd times; we worked feverishly; we sank into our tumbled blankets at night too tired to wiggle. But the buckskin sack of gold was swelling and rounding out most satisfactorily. By the end of the week it contained over a pound!

  But the long hours, the excitement, and the inadequate food told on our nerves. We snapped at each other impatiently at times; and once or twice came near to open quarrelling. Johnny and I were constantly pecking at each other over the most trivial concerns.

  One morning we were halfway to the bar when we remembered that we had neglected to picket out the horses. It was necessary for one of us to go back, and we were all reluctant to do so.

  “I’ll be damned if I’m going to lug ’way up that hill,” I growled to myself. “I tied them up yesterday, anyway.”

  Johnny caught this.

  “Well, it wasn’t your turn yesterday,” he pointed out, “and it is to-day. I’ve got nothing to do with what you chose to do yesterday.”

  “Or any other day,” I muttered.

  “What’s that?” cried Johnny truculently. “I couldn’t hear. Speak up!”

  We were flushed, and eying each other malevolently.

  “That’ll do!” said Yank, with an unexpected tone of authority. “Nobody will go back, and nobody will go ahead. We’ll just sit down on this log, yere, while we smoke one pipe apiece. I’ve got something to say.”

  Johnny and I turned on him with a certain belligerency mingled with surprise. Yank had so habitually acted the part of taciturnity that his decided air of authority confused us. His slouch had straightened, his head was up, his mild eye sparkled. Suddenly I felt like a bad small boy; and I believe Johnny was the same. After a moment’s hesitation we sat down on the log.

  “Now,” said Yank firmly, “it’s about time we took stock. We been here now five days; we ain’t had a decent meal of vittles in that time; we ain’t fixed up our camp a mite; we ain’t been to town to see the sights; we don’t even know the looks of the man that’s camped down below us. We’ve been too danged busy to be decent. Now we’re goin’ to call a halt. I should jedge we have a pound of gold, or tharabouts. How much is that worth, Johnny? You can figger in yore head.”

  “Along about two hundred and fifty dollars,” said Johnny after a moment.

  “Well, keep on figgerin’. How much does that come to apiece?”

  “About eighty dollars, of course.”

  “And dividin’ eighty by five?” persisted Yank.

  “Sixteen.”

  “Well,” drawled Yank, his steely blue eye softening to a twinkle, “sixteen dollars a day is fair wages, to be sure; but nothin’ to get wildly excited over.” He surveyed the two of us with some humour. “Hadn’t thought of it that way, had you?” he asked. “Nuther had I until last night. I was so dog tired I couldn’t sleep, and I got to figgerin’ a little on my own hook.”

  “Why, I can do better than that in San Francisco–with half the work!” I cried.

  “Maybe for a while,” said Yank, “but here we got a chance to make a big strike most any time; and in the meantime to make good wages. But we ain’t going to do it any quicker by killin’ ourselves. Now to-day is Sunday. I ain’t no religious man; but Sunday is a good day to quit. I propose we go back to camp peaceable, make a decent place to stay, cook ourselves up a squar’ meal, wash out our clothes, visit the next camp, take a look at town, and enjoy ourselves.”

  Thus vanished the first and most wonderful romance of the gold. Reduced to wages it was somehow no longer so marvellous. The element of uncertainty was always there, to be sure; and an inexplicable fascination; but no longer had we any desire to dig up the whole place immediately. I suppose we moved nearly as much earth, but the fibres of our minds were relaxed, and we did it more
easily and with less nervous wear and tear.

  Also, as Yank suggested, we took pains to search out our fellow beings. The camper below us proved to be Don Gaspar, velvet breeches and all. He received us hospitably, and proffered perfumed cigarettos which we did not like, but which we smoked out of politeness. Our common ground of meeting was at first the natural one of the gold diggings. Don Gaspar and his man, whom he called Vasquez, had produced somewhat less flake gold than ourselves, but exhibited a half-ounce nugget and several smaller lumps. We could not make him out. Neither his appearance nor his personal equipment suggested necessity; and yet he laboured as hard as the rest of us. His gaudy costume was splashed and grimy with the red mud, although evidently he had made some attempt to brush it. The linen was, of course, hopeless. He showed us the blisters on his small aristocratic-looking hands.

  “It is the hard work” he stated simply, “but one gets the gold.”

  From that subject we passed on to horses. He confessed that he was uneasy as to the safety of his own magnificent animals; and succeeded in alarming us as to our own.

  “Thos’ Indian,” he told us, “are always out to essteal; and the paisanos. It has been tole me that Andreas Amijo and his robbers are near. Some day we loose our horse!”

  Our anxiety at this time was given an edge by the fact that the horses, having fed well, and becoming tired of the same place, were inclined to stray. It was impossible to keep them always on picket lines–the nature of the meadow would not permit it–and they soon learned to be very clever with their hobbles. Several mornings we put in an hour or so hunting them up and bringing them in before we could start work for the day. This wasted both time and temper. The result was that we drifted into partnership with Don Gaspar and Vasquez. I do not remember who proposed the arrangement; indeed, I am inclined to think it just came about naturally from our many discussions on the subject. Under the terms of it we appointed Vasquez to cook all the meals, take full care of the horses, chop the wood, draw the water, and keep camp generally. The rest of us worked in couples at the bar. We divided the gold into five equal parts.