As I made no comment on his remark, Yetmore walked away, remounted his horse and rode off; while Joe and I went briskly to work again.
We had been at it some time, when Joe stopped sawing, and straightening up, said:
“It’s queer about those bits of ground ice, Phil. Do you notice how they all float clean side up? Wait a bit and I’ll show you.”
Taking the ice-hook, he turned over one of the bits with its point, showing its soiled side, but the moment he released it, the bit of ice “turned turtle” again.
“Do you see?” said he. “The sand acts like ballast. It must be heavy stuff.”
“Yes,” said I. “Hook a bit of it out and let’s look at it.”
This was soon done, when, on examining it, we found the under side to be crusted with very black sand, which, whatever might be its nature, was evidently heavy enough to upset the balance of a small fragment of ice.
“What is it made of, I wonder?” said Joe.
“I don’t know,” I replied, “but perhaps it is that black sand which the prospectors are always complaining of as getting in their way when they are panning for gold.”
“That’s what it is, Phil, I expect,” cried Joe. “And what’s more, that’s what Yetmore thought, too, or else why should he throw that bit of ice back into the water so quickly when you held out your hand for it? He didn’t want you to see it.”
“It does look like it,” I assented. “Poke up a few more, Joe, and we will take them home and show them to my father: perhaps he’ll know what the stuff is.”
Joe took the ice-hook and prodded about on the bottom, every prod bringing up one or two bits of ice, each one as it bobbed to the surface showing its sandy side for a moment and then turning over, clean side up. Drawing these to the edge of the ice, we picked them out, laying them on a gunny-sack we had with us, and when, towards sunset, we had carried home and housed our last load, and had stabled and fed the mules, we took our scraps over to the blacksmith-shop, where the tinkle of a hammer proclaimed that my father was at work doing some mending of something.
He was much interested in hearing of the ground ice and of the way it brought up the black sand with it, and still more so in our description of Yetmore’s action.
“Let me look at it,” said he; and taking one of our specimens, he stepped to the door to examine it, the light in the shop being too dim. He came back smiling.
“Queer fellow, Yetmore!” said he. “One would think that the lesson of the lead-boulder might have taught him that a man may sometimes be too crafty. I think this is likely to prove another case of the same kind. I believe he has made a genuine discovery here—though what it may lead to there is no telling—and if he had had the sense to let you look at that piece of dirty ice, instead of throwing it back into the water, thus arousing your curiosity, he would probably have kept his discovery to himself. As it is, he is likely to have Tom Connor interfering with him again—that is to say, if this sand is what I think it is. I don’t think it is the ‘black sand’ of the prospectors—it is too shiny, and it has a bluish tinge besides—I think it is something of far more value. We’ll soon find out. Give me that piece of an iron pot, Phil; it will do to melt the ice in.”
Having broken up some of our ice into small pieces, we placed it in a large fragment of a broken iron pot, and this being set upon the forge, Joe took the bellows-handle and soon had the fire roaring under it. It did not take long to melt the ice, when, pouring off the water, we added some more, repeating the process until there was no ice left. The last of the water being then poured away, there remained nothing but about a spoonful of very fine, black, shiny sand.
The receptacle was once more placed upon the fire, and while my father kept the contents stirred up with a stick, Joe seized the bellows-handle again and pumped away. Presently he began to cough.
“What’s the matter, Joe?” asked my father, laughing.
“Sulphur!” gasped Joe.
“Sulphur!” cried I. “I don’t smell any sulphur.”
“Come over here, then, and blow the bellows,” replied Joe.
I took his place, but no sooner had I done so than I, too, began to cough. The smell of sulphur evidently came from our spoonful of sand, and as I was standing between the door and the window the draft blew the fumes straight into my face. On discovering this, I pulled the bellows-handle over to one side, when I was no more troubled.
The iron pot, being set right down on the “duck’s nest” and heaped all around with glowing coals, had become red-hot, when my father, peering into it, held up his hand.
“That’ll do, Phil. That’s enough,” he cried. “Give me the tongs, Joe.”
My father removed the melting-pot, and making a hole with his heel in the sandy floor of the shop, he poured the contents into it.
“Lead!” we both cried, with one voice.
“Yes, lead,” my father replied. “Galena ore, ground fine by the action of water.”
“Do you mean,” I asked, “that there is a lead-mine in the bottom of the pool?”
“No, no. But there is a vein of galena, size and value unknown, somewhere up on Lincoln Mountain. The fine black sand sticking to the ground ice was brought down by our stream, being reduced to powder on the way, and deposited in the pool, where its weight has kept it from being washed out again.”
“I see. And do you suppose Yetmore recognized the sand as galena ore? Would he be likely to know it in the form of sand?”
“I expect so. He’s a sharp fellow enough. He must have seen pulverized samples of galena many a time in the assayers’ offices. I’ve seen them myself: that was what gave me my clue.”
“And what do you suppose he’ll do?”
“He is pretty certain, I think, to try to get hold of some of the stuff, so that he may test it and make sure; though how he will go about it there’s no telling. It will be interesting to see how he manages it.”
“And what shall you do, father? Go prospecting?”
My father laughed, knowing that this was a joke on my part; for I was well aware that he would not think of such a thing.
“Not for us, Phil,” he answered. “We have our mine right here. Raising oats and potatoes may be a slow way of getting rich, but it is a good bit surer than prospecting. No, we’ll tell Tom Connor about it and let him go prospecting if he likes. You shall go up to Sulphide the first Saturday after the ice-cutting is finished and give him our information. There’s no hurry about it: he can’t go prospecting while the mountains are all under snow. Come along in to supper now. You’ve fed the mules, I suppose.”
It was a snapping cold night that night, and about half-past eight I went into the kitchen to look at the thermometer which hung outside the door. As I came back, I happened to glance out of the west window, when, to my surprise, I thought I saw a glimmer of light up by the pool. Stepping quickly into the house again, I went to the front door and looked out. Yes, there was a light up there!
“Father,” I called out, “there’s somebody up at the pool with a light.”
My father sprang out of his chair. “Is there?” he cried. “Then it’s Yetmore, up to some of his tricks. Get into your coats, boys, and let’s go and see what he’s about.”
As we went out I took down the unlighted stable-lantern and carried it with me in case we might need it, and shutting the door softly behind me, ran after the others. We had not covered half the distance to the pool, however, when the light up there suddenly went out, and a minute later we heard the sound of galloping hoofs, muffled by the thin carpet of snow, going off in the direction of Sulphide. Our visitor, whoever he was, had departed.
“Well, come on, anyhow,” said my father. “Let us see what he was doing.”
As the thermometer was then standing at three degrees below zero, we knew that the sheet of clear water we had left in the afternoon should have been solidly frozen over again by this time. What was our surprise, therefore, to find that such was not the case: there was only a thi
n film of ice; it was but just beginning to form.
“That is easily explained,” remarked my father. “The ice did form, but some one has chopped it out and thrown it to one side there. See?”
“Yes,” replied Joe, “and then he took the ice-hook, which I know I left standing upright against the rocks, and poked up the ground ice. See, there are several bits floating about, and I remember quite well that we cleared out every one of them this afternoon. Didn’t we, Phil?”
“Yes,” said I, “I’m sure we did, because I remember that those two or three bits that had no sand in them we threw into that corner instead of pitching them into the water again. I suppose it’s Yetmore, father.”
“Oh, not a doubt of it. Did he leave any tracks?”
By the light of the lantern we searched about, and though there were no tracks to be seen on the smooth ice, there were plenty in the snow below the pool. They were the foot-prints of a smallish man, for his tracks, in spite of his wearing over-shoes, were not so big as the prints made by Joe’s boots—though, as Joe himself remarked, that was not much to go by, he being a six-footer with feet to match, “and a trifle over,” as his friends sometimes considerately assured him.
Following these foot-prints, we were led to the south gate, where, it was easy to see, a horse had been standing for some time tied to the gate-post.
“Well, he’s got off with his samples all right,” remarked my father. “He’s a smart fellow, and enterprising, too. He would deserve to win, if only he were not so fond of taking the crooked way of doing things. Come along. Let’s get back to the house. There’s nothing more to be done about it at present.”
* * *
CHAPTER VI
Long John Butterfield
“
Boys,” said my father next morning, “I’ve been thinking over this discovery of ours. It won’t do to wait till you’ve finished the ice-cutting to notify Tom Connor. He has been a good friend to us, and I feel that we owe him some return for enabling me to get this piece of land from Yetmore, even though it was, in a manner, accidental; and as Tom is sure to go off prospecting in the spring, whether or no, we may as well give him the chance—if he wants it—to go hunting for this supposed vein of galena.”
“He’s pretty sure to want to,” said I.
“Yes, I think he is. And as Yetmore will certainly find out the nature of the black sand, and will be sending out a prospector or two himself as soon as the snow clears off, we must at least give Tom an equal chance. So, instead of waiting for you to finish cutting the ice, I’ll write him a letter at once, telling him all about it, and send it up by this morning’s coach.”
One of the advantages to us of the frosty weather was that the mail coach between San Remo and Sulphide came our way instead of taking the hill-road, so that during the winter months we received our mail daily, whereas, through the greater part of the year, while the “forty rods” were “bottomless,” we had to go ourselves to San Remo to get it. The coach, going up, passed our place about ten in the morning, and by it my father sent the promised letter.
We quite expected that Tom would come flying down at once, but instead we received from him next morning a reply, stating that he could not leave his work, and asking my father to allow us boys to do a little prospecting for him—which, I may say, we boys were ready enough to do if my father did not object.
He did not object; being, indeed, very willing that we should put in a day’s work for the benefit of our friend. For, as he said, to undertake one day’s prospecting for a friend was a very different matter from taking to prospecting as a business.
It is a fascinating pursuit; men who contract the prospecting disease seldom get the fever entirely out of their systems again, and it was for this reason my father was so set against it, considering that no greater misfortune could befall two farmer-boys like ourselves than to be drawn into such a way of life. Now that we were seventeen years old, however, and might be supposed to have some discretion, he had little fear for Joe and me, knowing, as he did, that we shared his sentiments. We had seen enough of the life of the prospector to understand that a more precarious way of making a living could hardly be invented.
How many men get rich at it? I have heard it estimated at one man in five thousand; and whether this estimate—or, rather, this guess—is right or wrong, it shows the trend of opinion.
Suppose a prospector does strike a vein of ore: what is the common result? By the time he has sunk a shaft ten feet deep he must have a windlass and a man to work it, and being in most cases too poor to hire a miner, his only way of getting help is to take in a partner. The two go on sinking, until presently the hole is too deep to use a windlass any more—a horse-whim is needed and then a hoisting engine. But it is seldom that the ore dug out of a shaft will pay the expense of sinking it—for powder and drills, ropes, buckets and timbers, are expensive things—much less enable the owner to lay by anything, and the probability is that to buy a hoisting engine he must sell another portion of his claim. And so it goes, until, by the time his claim has been turned into a mine—for, as the common and very true saying is, “Mines are made, not found”—his share of it will probably have been reduced to one-quarter or less; while it is quite within the limits of probability that, becoming wearied by long waiting for the slow development of his prospect, he will have sold out for what he can get and gone back to his old life.
But though I do not advocate the business of prospecting as a way of making a living—I had rather pitch hay or dig potatoes myself—I am far from wishing to disparage the prospector himself or to belittle the results of his work. He is the pioneer of civilization; and personally he is generally a fine fellow. At the same time, as in every other profession, the ranks of the prospectors include their share of the riff-raff. It was so in our district, and we were destined shortly to come in contact with one of them.
Tom Connor in his letter instructed us as to what he wished us to do: it was very simple. He asked us to walk up the little cañon along which our stream flowed, when it did flow, and to examine the bed of each of its feeders as we came to them, to determine, if possible, which of the branch streams it was that brought down the powdered lead-ore. He also suggested that we get out some more of the black sand from the bottom of the pool for him to see, and at the same time ascertain, if we could, how much of a deposit there was there.
The last request we performed first. Taking down to the pool a long, pointed iron rod, we lowered it into the water, marking the depth by tying a bit of string round the rod at high-water-mark, and then bored a hole down through the frozen sand until we struck bed-rock. By this means we discovered that the deposit was five inches thick at the upper end of the pool. A few feet further from the waterfall, however, the deposit was thicker, but we noticed at the same time that the ground ice which came up carried with it more or less yellow sand. The further we retreated from the waterfall, too, the larger became the proportion of yellow sand, until towards the edge of the pool it had taken the place of the black sand altogether.
Having done this, we poked up a lot of the ground ice, which we collected and put into a tin bucket, and taking this home we melted the ice, poured off the water, and made a little parcel of the sand that remained.
A few days later we had finished our ice-cutting and had stowed away the crop in the ice-house, when we were at length free to go off and make the little prospecting expedition that Tom had asked us to undertake.
First walking up the bed of the cañon, where the water was now represented by sheets of crackling white ice, we arrived presently at the first branch creek which came in on the right. This we ascended in turn, going some distance up it before we found a likely patch of sand, into which we chopped a hole with the old hatchet we had brought for the purpose, disclosing a little of the black material at the bottom; though the amount was so scanty that we could not be sure it was really the black sand we were seeking.
Going on up this branch creek, much impeded
by the snow which became deeper and deeper the higher we ascended, we were nearing one of the bends when Joe, who was in advance, suddenly stopped, exclaiming:
“Look there, Phil! Tracks coming down the bank. Somebody is ahead of us.”
“So there is,” said I. “What can he be doing, I wonder?”
Following these tracks a short distance, we very soon discovered the reason for their being there. The man was on the same quest as ourselves!
In a bend of the stream where the snow lay two feet thick, he had dug a hole down to the sand, and then through the sand itself to bed-rock. At the bottom of the hole was a little black sand, showing the marks of a hatchet or knife-blade where it had been gouged out, but all around the hole, between the bed-rock and the yellow sand above, was a black line an inch thick, composed of the shiny, powdered galena ore. There could be no doubt that the man ahead of us was hunting the same game as we were.
“Do you suppose it’s Yetmore, Joe?” said I.
“No,” Joe answered, emphatically, “I’m sure it isn’t. Look at his tracks: they are bigger than mine.”
“It can’t be Tom, himself, can it?”
“No, I’m pretty sure it isn’t Tom either. Tom is a big, powerful fellow, all right, but he’s not more than five feet ten, while this man, I think, is extra-tall—see the length of his stride where he came down the bank. Whoever he is, though, Phil, he’s an experienced prospector. He hasn’t wasted his time, as we have, trying unlikely places, but has chosen this spot and gone slap down through snow and everything, just as if he knew that the black sand would be found at the bottom.”
“That’s true,” said I. “I wonder who it is. We must find out if we can, Joe, so that we may be able to tell Tom who his competitor is. Let’s follow his tracks.”
Getting out of the creek-bed again, we walked along the bank for nearly a mile, until Joe, stopping short, held up his finger.
The Boys of Crawford's Basin Page 6
