THE STRIKE
". . . that precious yellow metal sought by men
In regions desolate.
Pursued in patient hope or furious toil;
Breeder of discord, wars, and murderous hate;
The victor's spoil."
So Hazel quoted, leaning over her husband's shoulder. In the bottom of
his pan, shining among a film of black sand, lay half a dozen bright
specks, varying from pin-point size to the bigness of a grain of wheat.
"That's the stuff," Bill murmured. "Only it seems rather far-fetched
for your poet to blame inanimate matter for the cussedness of humanity
in general. I suppose, though, he thought he was striking a highly
dramatic note. Anyway, it looks as if we'd struck it pretty fair.
It's time, too--the June rise will hit us like a whirlwind one of these
days."
"About what is the value of those little pieces?" Hazel asked.
"Oh, fifty or sixty cents," he answered. "Not much by itself. But it
seems to be uniform over the bar--and I can wash a good many pans in a
day's work."
"I should think so," she remarked. "It didn't take you ten minutes to
do that one."
"Whitey Lewis and I took out over two hundred dollars a day on that
other creek last spring--no, a year last spring, it was," he observed
reminiscently. "This isn't as good, but it's not to be sneezed at,
either. I think I'll make me a rocker. I've sampled this bend quite a
lot, and I don't think I can do any better than fly at this while the
water stays low."
"I can help, can't I?" she said eagerly.
"Sure," he smiled. "You help a lot, little person, just sitting around
keeping me company."
"But I want to work," she declared. "I've sat around now till I'm
getting the fidgets."
"All right; I'll give you a job," he returned good-naturedly.
"Meantime, let's eat that lunch you packed up here."
In a branch of the creek which flowed down through the basin. Bill had
found plentiful colors as soon as the first big run-off of water had
fallen. He had followed upstream painstakingly, panning colors always,
and now and then a few grains of coarse gold to encourage him in the
quest. The loss of their horses precluded ranging far afield to that
other glacial stream which he had worked with Whitey Lewis when he was
a free lance in the North. He was close to his base of supplies, and
he had made wages--with always the prospector's lure of a rich strike
on the next bar.
And now, with May well advanced, he had found definite indications of
good pay dirt. The creek swung in a hairpin curve, and in the neck
between the two sides of the loop the gold was sifted through wash
gravel and black sand, piled there by God only knew how many centuries
of glacial drift and flood. But it was there. He had taken panfuls at
random over the bar, and uniformly it gave up coarse gold. With a
rocker he stood a fair chance of big money before the June rise.
"In the morning," said he, when lunch was over, "I'll bring along the
ax and some nails and a shovel, and get busy."
That night they trudged down to the cabin in high spirits. Bill had
washed out enough during the afternoon to make a respectable showing on
Hazel's outspread handkerchief. And Hazel was in a gleeful mood over
the fact that she had unearthed a big nugget by herself. Beginner's
luck, Bill said teasingly, but that did not diminish her elation. The
old, adventurous glamour, which the long winter and moods of depression
had worn threadbare, began to cast its pleasant spell over her again.
The fascination of the gold hunt gripped her. Not for the stuff
itself, but for what it would get. She wondered if the men who dared
the impassive solitudes of the North for weary, lonesome years saw in
every morsel of the gold they found a picture of what that gold would
buy them in kindlier lands. And some never found any, never won the
stake that would justify the gamble. It was a gamble, in a sense--a
pure game of chance; but a game that took strength, and nerve, a sturdy
soul, to play.
Still, the gold was there, locked up in divers storing places in the
lap of the earth, awaiting those virile enough to find and take. And
out beyond, in the crowded places of the earth, were innumerable
gateways to comfort and pleasure which could be opened with gold. It
remained only to balance the one against the other. Just as she had
often planned according to her opportunities when she was a wage slave
in the office of Bush and Company, so now did she plan for the future
on a broader scale, now that the North promised to open its treasure
vault to them--an attitude which Bill Wagstaff encouraged and abetted
in his own whimsical fashion. There was nothing too good for them, he
sometimes observed, provided it could be got. But there was one
profound difference in their respective temperaments, Hazel sometimes
reflected. Bill would shrug his wide shoulders, and forget or forego
the unattainable, where she would chafe and fume. She was quite
positive of this.
But as the days passed there seemed no question of their complete
success. Bill fabricated his rocker, a primitive, boxlike device with
a blanket screen and transverse slats below. It was faster than the
pan, even rude as it was, and it caught all but the finer particles of
gold. Hazel helped operate the rocker, and took her turn at shoveling
or filling the box with water while Bill rocked. Each day's end sent
her to her bed healthily tired, but happily conscious that she had
helped to accomplish something.
A queer twist of luck put the cap-sheaf on their undertaking. Hazel
ran a splinter of wood into her hand, thus putting a stop to her
activities with shovel and pail. Until the wound lost its soreness she
was forced to sit idle. She could watch Bill ply his rocker while she
fought flies on the bank. This grew tiresome, particularly since she
had the sense to realize that a man who works with sweat streaming down
his face and a mind wholly absorbed in the immediate task has no desire
to be bothered with inconsequential chatter. So she rambled along the
creek one afternoon, armed with hook and line on a pliant willow in
search of sport.
The trout were hungry, and struck fiercely at the bait. She soon had
plenty for supper and breakfast. Wherefore she abandoned that
diversion, and took to prying tentatively in the lee of certain
bowlders on the edge of the creek--prospecting on her own initiative,
as it were. She had no pan, and only one hand to work with, but she
knew gold when she saw it--and, after all, it was but an idle method of
killing time.
She noticed behind each rock and in every shallow, sheltered place in
the stream a plentiful gathering of tiny red stones. They were of a
pale, ruby cast, and mostly flawed; dainty trifles, translucent and
full of light when she held them to the sun. She began a search for a
larger specimen. It might mount nicely into a stickpin for Bill, she
thought; a memento of the Klappan Range.
And in this search she came upon a large, rusty pebble, snuggled on the
downstream side of an over-hanging rock right at the water's edge. It
attracted her first by its symmetrical form, a perfect oval; then, when
she lifted it, by its astonishing weight. She continued her search for
the pinkish-red stones, carrying the rusty pebble along. Presently she
worked her way back to where Roaring Bill labored prodigiously.
"I feel ashamed to be loafing while you work so hard, Billy-boy," she
greeted.
"Give me a kiss and I'll call it square," he proposed cheerfully. "Got
to work like a beaver, kid. This hot weather'll put us to the bad
before long. There'll be ten feet of water roaring down here one of
these days."
"Look at these pretty stones I found," she said. "What are they, Bill?"
"Those?" He looked at her outstretched palm. "Garnets."
"Garnets? They must be valuable, then," she observed. "The creek's
full of them."
"Valuable? I should say so," he grinned. "I sent a sample to a
Chicago firm once. They replied to the effect that they would take all
I could deliver, and pay thirty-six dollars a ton, f. o. b., my nearest
railroad station."
"Oh!" she protested. "But they're pretty."
"Yes, if you can find one of any size. What's the other rock?" he
inquired casually. "You making a collection of specimens?"
"That's just a funny stone I found," she returned. "It must be iron or
something. It's terribly heavy for its size."
"Eh? Let me see it," he said.
She handed it over.
He weighed it in his palm, scrutinized it closely, turning it over and
over. Then he took out his knife and scratched the rusty surface
vigorously for a few minutes.
"Huh!" he grunted. "Look at your funny stone."
He held it out for her inspection. The blade of his knife had left a
dull, yellow scar.
"Oh!" she gasped. "Why--it's gold!"
"It is, woman," he declaimed, with mock solemnity. "Gold--glittering
gold!
"Say, where did you find this?" he asked, when Hazel stared at the
nugget, dumb in the face of this unexpected stroke of fortune.
"Just around the second bend," she cried. "Oh, Bill, do you suppose
there's any more there?"
"Lead me to it with my trusty pan and shovel, and we'll see," Bill
smiled.
Forthwith they set out. The overhanging bowlder was a scant ten
minute's walk up the creek.
Bill leaned on his shovel, and studied the ground. Then, getting down
on his knees at the spot where the marks of Hazel's scratching showed
plain enough, he began to paw over the gravel.
Within five minutes his fingers brought to light a second lump, double
the size of her find. Close upon that he winnowed a third. Hazel
leaned over him, breathless. He sifted the gravel and sand through his
fingers slowly, picking out and examining all that might be the
precious metal, and as he picked and clawed the rusty, brown nuggets
came to light. At last he reached bottom. The bowlder thrust out
below in a natural shelf. From this Bill carefully scraped the
accumulation of black sand and gravel, gleaning as a result of his
labor a baker's dozen of assorted chunks--one giant that must have
weighed three pounds. He sat back on his haunches, and looked at his
wife, speechless.
"Is that truly _all_ gold, Bill?" she whispered incredulously.
"It certainly is--as good gold as ever went into the mint," he assured.
"All laid in a nice little nest on this shelf of rock. I've heard of
such things up in this country, but I never ran into one before--and
I've always taken this pocket theory with a grain of salt. But there
you are. That's a real, honest-to-God pocket. And a well-lined one,
if you ask me. This rusty-colored outside is oxidized iron--from the
black sand, I guess. Still, it might be something else. But I know
what the inside is, all right, all right."
"My goodness!" she murmured. "There might be wagonloads of it in this
creek."
"There might, but it isn't likely." Bill shook his head. "This is a
simon-pure pocket, and it would keep a graduate mineralogist guessing
to say how it got here, because it's a different proposition from the
wash gold in the creek bed. I've got all that's here, I'm pretty sure.
And you might prospect this creek from end to end and never find
another nugget bigger than a pea. It's rich placer ground, at
that--but this pocket's almost unbelievable. Must be forty pounds of
gold there. And you found it. You're the original mascot, little
person."
He bestowed a bearlike hug upon her.
"Now what?" she asked. "It hardly seems real to pick up several
thousand dollars in half an hour or so like this. What will we do?"
"Do? Why, bless your dear soul," he laughed. "We'll just consider
ourselves extra lucky, and keep right on with the game till the high
water makes us quit."
Which was a contingency nearer at hand than even Bill, with a firsthand
knowledge of the North's vagaries in the way of flood, quite
anticipated.
Three days after the finding of the pocket the whole floor of the creek
was awash. His rocker went downstream overnight. To the mouth of the
cañon where the branch sought junction with the parent stream they
could ascend, and no farther. And when Bill saw that he rolled himself
a cigarette, and, putting one long arm across his wife's shoulders,
said whimsically:
"What d'you say we start home?"