It was a favourite resting-place for the white-breasted dipper on his way up stream; the fish used to lie in the shelter of it, where their struggle against the water need not be so severe, or to wait for the food which was washed off its piers and buttresses: and sometimes even the deer would come and stand knee-deep in the stream, to rub the velvet off their horns against its angles.
But Phon the Chinaman had guessed a secret which the old rock had kept for centuries—a secret which neither the birds nor the fish nor the deer, nor even those wise white-bearded patriarchs, the goats, had ever heard a whisper of.
That rock was set in gold, and Phon knew it.
Year by year the pebbles and the gravel and disintegrated rock were washed lower and lower down the bed of the stream, and all the while the gold kept sinking and staying, whilst the gravel and sand went on. But even gold must move, however slowly, in the bed of a rapid stream, and at last golden sand and flakes and nuggets all came to the bend where Phon's rock stood. Here the gold stopped. Gravel might rest for a while, and then rattle on again; pebbles and boulders might be torn away from their anchorage under the lee of the rock by the eager waters, but gold never. Once there Phon knew it would stay, clinging to the bottom, and even working under the rock itself. Knowing this Phon looked at the rock, and greed and discontent tortured him beyond endurance. He had already amassed far more gold than he could possibly spend upon the paltry pleasures he cared for; but he loved the yellow metal for itself, not for the things it can purchase, and this being so, he proceeded to match his cunning against the strength of the rock.
First he gathered great piles of quick burning wood from the banks and piled them upon his victim as if he would offer a sacrifice to mammon, and this he set fire to, bringing fresh supplies of wood as his fire burnt low. After a while the rock beneath the fire grew to a white heat, and then by means of a wooden trough which he had made, Phon turned a stream of cold water from the creek upon the place where the fire had been, and these things he continued to do for many days, until at last the giant yielded to the pigmy, and the great boulder, which for centuries had withstood the force of the stream in flood-time and the grinding ice in winter, began to break up and melt away before the cunning of a wizened, yellow-skinned imp from China.
About this time, and before the rock was finally split up and removed, Phon suggested that it would be better to try to divert the stream from its bed at some point just above the rock, so that they might be able to get at the gold when the boulder had been removed. To do this flumes had to be made, and axes were in request to hew them out. At the first mention of axes Steve became uneasy. There had been two axe-heads in the outfit originally, and he had been intrusted with one of them, and had lost it.
"I know I had it in the last camp," he asserted.
"Then you had better go back for it; the last camp is only about five hours' tramp from here. Or if you think that you can't find your way to it, I will go," remarked Corbett.
"I can find my way all right," replied Chance in an injured tone, nettled at the implied slur upon his woodcraft; "but do you think it is worth while going back for it?"
"Certainly. You could no doubt make a hundred dollars here in the time it will take you to get that axe, but a hundred dollars would not buy us an axe-head at Pete's Creek."