“‘Speak. Edmond!’ gasped Cameron. ‘What have you behind your back?
It’s gold! gold!—I know it!’”
Thus Cameron argued as he sat upon the wood block before the cabin stirring the fire, cooking the evening meal. He had thrown upon the coals some dry branches, and through the gray smoke which enveloped him he saw the figure of his companion coming toward him up the hill. “He is early,” thought Andy, and he looked again, stepping aside out of the blinding smoke. Edmond had paused down the hill a few rods from the cabin, his right hand behind him, his head thrown back and eyes wide open, glaring with excitement.
“Speak, Edmond!” gasped Cameron. “Speak to me, boy. My God, speak! What have you behind your back? It’s gold! gold!—I know it!” Rushing together, the two companions sobbed in each other’s arms.
“Look, Andy!” cried LeClare, through his tears of joy. “There are two of them,” and he held up nuggets of gold larger than their combined fists, “and there are plenty more of them in the same spot where these came from.”
Poor Andy sobbed in his happiness upon the shoulder of his mining partner, and then, clutching him by the arm as though awakening from a dream, he half sobbed, half cried: “He won’t get them now, Edmond; he won’t get them now! Laughing Donald stays on where he is, and his invalid wife will have a servant to wait on her. And Barbara—my wife, Edmond, my wife, do you hear?—she shall have a new silk dress, a new straw bonnet, Edmond, with red posies in it, and a new yarn carpet to put in the parlor, my boy. And you shall come and live at The Nole. You and Dan can go fishing, rain or shine, and I will get my lawyer friend from the village to come out and see us; I’ll hire a carriage for him, too, Edmond. And Nick Perkins, the tax collector——” Then, at the mention of that name, Cameron slowly regained his composure, and a stern, cold look passed over his features. “What day of the month did you say it was, Edmond?” He had lowered his voice almost to a whisper. Then, as LeClare answered, he continued: “The time will soon be up. To-morrow, Edmond, to-morrow we must start for home—to-morrow we must go.”
LeClare half carried his companion, who was exhausted by the excitement over the discovery, to the seat by the cabin door. The sun had now gone down behind the mountain opposite, and in the autumn glow of this golden sunset, alone with their Maker, they offered a silent prayer over their evening meal.
The miners sat facing each other at their scant repast. Their menu, at all times limited, had now become stale and unappetizing. The salted meats and hard, dried breadstuffs, to which was added the badly mixed coffee, would no longer suffice.
“We are rich, Andy,” laughed LeClare. “We haven’t much to boast about on top of the table, but there’s a hundred thousand beneath it, old fellow, and in the morning I will show you a crevice in the rocks down there on the side hill where there’s twice as much more as we have here waiting for you to take it out.”