The dirt from the pocket had been cleaned up, and it had yielded over twenty ounces of gold. They were now working on the regular sand and gravel scraped from the bedrock of the gulch, and though this did not pay so well, yet it brought in enough to make them all satisfied. There was a good deal of excitement, too, when it came to cleaning out the sluice boxes, for almost every day one or another found a nugget, sometimes small, and then again as large as a walnut.
"How much do you think we are averaging?" asked Randy, one day, and his uncle replied that he could not figure very closely, but he would put it down as over a hundred dollars per day. This meant twenty-five dollars a day as the boy's share, and he felt more content than ever to slave along in the gulch.
For it was slaving along, this constantly picking and digging and carting the dirt, sand, and gravel to the sluice boxes and throwing it in. Every night Randy's back ached, and sometimes he would come in with feet that were sopping wet, and covered up to his waist with mud and muck. And then he took a touch of the chills and fever, and was down on his back for a week with only Fred to wait on him. The chills and fever went the rounds, and Foster Portney and Earl were stricken at the same time. Fred was the last to catch it; and by the time he had recovered, winter was at hand.
The first indication was a rawness in the air, which made them shiver when they turned out in the morning. Then the bushes and the trees quickly lost their leaves, and three days later ice formed in the marshes back of the gulch. The sun came up as usual, but it seemed to have lost its warmth, and all were glad enough to keep on their coats even when working.
"Two more weeks will fetch it," observed Foster Portney. "We had better wash out as much dirt as possible before the water stops running."
Ten days later the thermometer went down with a rush, dropping from fifty-six to but twenty above zero. Going down to the gulch, they found the stream covered with ice, which was half an inch thick. By the next day there was no water to be found, only ice, and even the piles of sand, gravel, and dirt were frozen stiff. A heavy dulness, which oppressed them greatly, hung in the air. Winter had come, and gold washing for that season was a thing of the past.