“I didn’t, but I do now. Just got back from Omaha. Boys, I saw six quills full of gold there from the Pike’s Peak country. Everybody up at Omaha is wild about it. They’re all going. The newspapers from my home town in Massachusetts are full of gold stories. The whole East is excited. By spring you’ll see the biggest crowd starting on the Overland Trail since the days of Forty-nine and the California boom. Leavenworth won’t be big enough to hold the people outfitting here.”
“Hurrah for Cherry Creek, then!” cried Billy. “Reckon we’ll have to go, Davy!”
“I’ll go,” agreed Davy eagerly.
“We’ll all go,” said Mr. Baxter. “Everybody’ll go.”
A lean, sallow, unshaven man in jeans and flannel shirt and boots and a huge muffler around his neck and a round fur cap on his head had been standing near. He nodded.
“Right you are, pards,” he put in. “That’s the place.”
“How do you know?” queried Billy, quickly.
“I’ve been thar, an’ now I’ve come back to tell my friends. Why, boys, out thar all you’ve got to do is to pull up the grass by the roots an’ shake out the gold. Pike’s Peak is solid gold, ’most. A feller can make a flat-bottom boat an’ set knives in the hull an’ slide down, scraping up the gold in slivers.”
“Did you ever see that done?” demanded Mr. Baxter.
“Not exac’ly, stranger. But I’m goin’ to do it.”