CHAPTER XXII
THE COMING OF SPRING
Slowly the winter wore away to the three boys, each anxious for spring to arrive, that they might hunt for gold. There was a good deal of snow, and some biting cold weather, and then it began to moderate slowly but surely, until the ice in the river broke away and the snow disappeared from the valley as if by magic.
"Hurrah! Spring at last!" cried Mark, one day when the sun came out extra strong. "I am not sorry for it."
"Sorry?" cried Bob. "Why, I could dance a jig for joy." And he did a few steps in front of the cabin.
The boys had already decided upon where to try their luck first—up the valley on the opposite side of the river, which soon began to flow swiftly, as the snow in the mountains melted.
"If you don't find anything in one place we can easily try another," said Si. "We can go where we please, so long as we don't work on some staked-out claim." They had already learned that to work on another person's claim was considered a great crime in the gold country.
Maybe Dixon was going to stick with them, "through thick or thin," as he expressed it. He had taken a strong liking to all three youths and could not think of separating from them.
The Sockets were going further down the valley,—to the Feather River,—and soon they parted from their friends.