THE LUCK OF DICKSON
The next morning, a good hour before sunrise, Thure and Bud found themselves suddenly tumbled out of their blankets and the grinning face of Ham bending over them.
"Sleepyheads!" and, reaching down, he gripped each boy by his coat collar, the night had been chilly and both had slept in their coats, jerked him to his feet and shook him violently, "Wake up!" and, suddenly letting go, he sent both boys staggering from him. "Thar, them's my patented double-j'inted yunk-wakers," and he shook both of his big fists in the faces of the two boys, "warranted tew wake th' soundest sleepin' yunk that ever rolled himself up in a blanket, in seven an' three-quarters seconds by th' watch, or money refunded. For testimonials, see Bud Randolph and Thure Conroyal," and the grin broadened on his face, until it threatened to engulf all his features.
"It sure does the waking all right," laughed Thure; "and you can have my testimony to that effect any time you wish it."
For an hour all hands were busy, getting the breakfast, eating, packing and saddling and bridling the horses; and then, just as the sun, like a great globe of gold, rose above the gold-filled mountains of their hopes to the east and shone down on the waters of the Sacramento, Ham gave the word to start, and, leading one of his well-loaded pack-horses on either side of him, he strode off, headed for the rough trail to Hangtown, followed by Thure and Bud, driving their pack-horses before them.
As they passed along by the various camps in the outskirts of the town, a man, holding a long-handled frying-pan over the coals of his camp-fire, looked up and then remarked casually:
"Queer shootin' scrap that down on the levee last night!"
"Heer'd th' shootin', but that's all I heer'd," answered Ham, halting for a moment. "What might thar be queer 'bout it?"
"Both on 'em bosum friends 'til they gits a lot of French Ike's whiskey down 'em. Then one calls t'other a liar, an' both on 'em pulls their guns an' shoots; an' both on 'em falls dead, th' bullets goin' through th' heart of each one on 'em," answered the man.
"Hump! Nuthin' queer 'bout that!" grunted Ham. "That's a common thing for whiskey tew dew. Git up!" and he continued on his way.
The trail to Hangtown, after leaving the Sacramento Valley, entered the rough and picturesque regions of the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where the traveling was slow and difficult, especially with heavily loaded pack-horses; and, although the distance from Sacramento City, as the crow flies, was scarcely more than forty miles, yet it was not until near the middle of the afternoon of the third day that our friends came in sight of the rude log cabins and tents of Hangtown. They had climbed to the summit of a particularly rough hill and had just rounded a huge pile of rocks, when Ham brought his pack-horses to a sudden halt.
"Thar's Hangtown," he said, and pointed down the steep side of the hill into what was little more than a wide ravine, where a number of rudely built log houses and dirty-looking tents lay scattered along the sides and the bottom of the declivity and men could be seen at work with picks and shovels, digging up the hard stony ground, or, with gold-pans in their hands, washing the dirt thus dug in the waters of the little creek that flowed through the bottom of the ravine.
"Hurrah!" yelled both boys, taking off their hats and swinging them around their heads the moment their eyes caught sight of the houses and the tents.
"At last we are where gold is being actually dug up out of the ground!" exclaimed Thure enthusiastically, a moment later, as he sat on the back of his horse, watching, with glowing face and eyes, the men of the pick and the shovel toiling below.
"It shore does have tew be dug up out of th' ground, at least th' most on it," agreed Ham, grinning. "More diggin' than gold, th' most on us find."
"Oh, come! Let's hurry. I want to get to dad," and Bud started off down the hill excitedly, with Thure and Ham hurrying along behind him.
The side of the hill was seamed with small water worn gulches and strewn with rocks and the logs of fallen trees; and the trail down to the bottom wound and twisted and turned to avoid these obstructions, until it seemed to the impatient boys, that, for every step downward, they had to go a dozen steps to get around some gulch or huge rock or fallen tree; but, at last, they reached the bottom, and were actually on the very ground where men were digging gold out of the dirt.
"Now, where are our dads and the rest?" and Thure looked curiously and excitedly around him at the various groups of miners hard at work with their picks or shovels or pans or other washing machines. "I can't see anybody in sight that looks like them—Oh, there is Dick Dickson!" and he jumped excitedly off his horse and ran up to a miner at work near by, who was about to wash a pan of dirt, followed by Bud.
"Hello, Dick! Didn't know you in them clothes," and Thure held out his hand to the miner, whose only dress was a broad-brimmed hat, a red woollen shirt, and a pair of trousers.
"Glad to see you," and the miner set down the pan of dirt and gripped the hands of both the boys. "Had to come to the diggings with the rest, did you? Well, it's hard work; but the gold is here!" and his eyes sparkled.
"Are you going to wash that pan of dirt, Dick?" and the eyes of Thure turned excitedly to the pan full of dirt that the miner had placed on the ground at the sudden appearance of the boys.
"Yes," answered Dickson, grinning; "and it's the first pan that looks like pay-dirt that I've taken out of my new mine over yonder alongside of that big rock," and he pointed to a huge rock that jutted up above the ground a couple of rods away, where the boys could see a pile of dirt that had been thrown out of a hole dug down close to the upper side of the rock; "and so I am just a little anxious to see how it pans out."
"Don't—don't let us keep you from washing it," and Bud's face flushed with excitement. "We, too, would like to see how it pans out, wouldn't we Thure?"
"You bet!" was Thure's emphatic rejoinder. "I hope we bring you good luck, Dick. Now, let's see how you do it."
"All right. I sure need some good luck. Well, here goes," and with hands that trembled a little with excitement, for the washing of that pan full of dirt might mean a small fortune, he bent and picked up the gold-pan.
The creek was only a few feet away and Dickson hurried thither, followed by the two eager boys, while Ham, a good-natured grin on his face, stood guard over the horses.
Dickson first submerged the pan in the water and held it there until the dirt was thoroughly soaked, while with one hand he crushed and broke the larger lumps and stirred the mass with his fingers, until all the dirt was dissolved, and a great deal of it had been borne away, in a thick muddy cloud, by the current of the stream. He then tipped the pan a little, at the same time giving it a slight whirling motion, holding it with both his hands, which soon caused all the remaining dirt to float away in the water, except a little coarse black gravel that covered the bottom of the pan in a thin layer.
"Now," and Dickson straightened up, the pan in his hands, his face flushed with excitement, for already his eyes had caught the yellow glitter of gold, shining amongst the coarse grains of gravel, "we'll see how hard I've struck it," and he thrust his fingers down into the wet black gravel that covered the bottom of the pan, and moved them slowly about in it, bending his head down close to the pan, so that his eyes could catch every gleam of gold.
"Is there any? Is there any?" and Thure, in his anxiety to see, almost bunted his head into the head of Dickson.
"Is there any! Whoop!" and Dickson let out a yell that nearly startled both boys off their feet. "Is there any! Just look there! And there! And there!" and with a trembling finger he pointed, as he spoke, to little rough bits of gold, a little larger than pin-heads, that fairly flecked with yellow the bottommost layer of black gravel.
