“Well, promise me you will quit at four o’clock, anyway, Baxter.�
And Old Sunshine reluctantly promised.
“McDonald,� said the Colonel to the foreman, as he was leaving the mine: “Don’t forget that Old Sunshine is a privileged character. I don’t want him to work, and had rather pay him for resting. He has been in the mines over fifty years,—was a forty-niner,—but if he’s bound to work let him take his own time, and come and go when he pleases. Give him full time, anyway.�
“Aye, aye, sir,� replied the boss. “Nobody will interfere with Old Sunshine. He does more work now than some of the young fellows, if he is seventy-five.�
Old Sunshine had had a checkered career. More than once he had been wealthy, and that wealth, which sometimes comes suddenly in the mines, had flown as suddenly as it came. Had he known the right time to stop, to turn his mining investments into other and more stable securities, he might be living in luxury on his interest money. As it was, he was dependent upon his day’s wages at seventy-five, and partly because of his independent spirit, and partly from his robust health and love of work, he refused to let Colonel Lathrop make life easier for him.
It was two o’clock. Still the clink of Old Sunshine’s pick sounded steadily in the gulch. The other miners were working in the drifts or levels. Still the torrid heat rained down upon the solitary miner, upon the heated rocks, and upon the rattlesnakes, the original settlers and owners of the gulch.
Soon Old Sunshine’s practiced eye told him that he was reaching a richer rock than before. Near the foot of the bank he was gradually uncovering a broad band of dull yellow. He knew what that meant,—one of the richest veins he had ever seen in his half-century of gold-mining. Another man would have dropped his pick and called the other miners to witness his discovery. But not a word from Old Sunshine.
It was three o’clock. He began to wield the pick-axe higher up the bank. The material there was soft or “rotten rock,� and at four o’clock he had his rich find at the base of the cliff completely hidden from sight with the worthless rock which he had loosened from above.
“I promised the Colonel I’d quit at four o’clock,� he said to the boss who passed just then. “I suppose I must keep my word.�
“Aye, aye, that’s all right, Old Sunshine; perfectly right. You’ve had a scorcher here to-day,� replied the boss, without a suspicion of the wealth which lay near him. Old Sunshine never gave him a hint of his find.