“Oh, we aren’t worrying,” said Jerry. “Only it rather surprised us to see you here East, when we thought you were in Arizona.”
“I don’t blame you a bit,” spoke Jim. “And I’ll tell you how it happened. One afternoon, following a fine clean-up, and when I had the gold safely put away and was wondering what I’d have for supper, there come a cloud of dust up the trail, and I thinks to myself here’s someone in a hurry. I unlimbered my shooting iron, having some notion it might be a raid, and I was just going to call to the boys to get ready when I seen it was only one man. Then I knew it was all right, but I was sure some surprised when I recognized my old side partner, Harvey Brill, with whom I used to prospect years ago. I seen Harvey was some excited, and I was, too, when he told me his yarn.
“And here’s where I relinquish the stage and spot light to him,” went on the mine foreman; “them being the proper terms, as I understand ’em. Now, Harvey, spin your yarn.”
“It won’t take long,” said the man who had brought the news of the sixty nuggets of gold. “To begin with, I’m a miner and prospector, and have been ever since I was able to handle a pick and shovel.
“I can’t say that I ever had much luck until lately, and then I sure did strike it rich. I’d gone to Helena, Montana, with a party of other prospectors, and we got so low that we had to be grub-staked. Even that didn’t pan out, and then I cut loose from the others and struck off to the northwest, in the mountains.
“I won’t tell you all the trouble I had, nor what I suffered before I made my strike, as it hasn’t much to do with the story. But one afternoon, when I was plumb discouraged, I happened to dig my pick in a certain place, and when I turned out a stone I saw the yellow gleam. I knew it was gold at once, and I went at the spot like a dog after a rabbit.
“Again, to shorten things up, I kept on digging until I turned out just sixty nuggets of gold—some of good size, and some small, but the lot was easily worth twenty thousand dollars—maybe more.”
“Twenty thousand dollars!” gasped Jerry.
“Whew!” echoed Bob and Ned.
“That’s what,” resumed the miner. “Sixty nuggets of almost pure gold I found.”