"Yes; that's the Greeley. Mr. Richardson represents the Boston Journal and some other Eastern papers. All we newspaper fellows will write the truth about the gold fields."
"How near is the gold?" eagerly asked Terry. "Can you show us where to dig? Have you dug?"
"Not very much. Not for a dollar and a half a day—and that's the most anybody is getting hereabouts. The whole creek bed is being turned upside down. But you see that line of pilgrims trailing out into the mountains, west across the Platte?"
"Yes."
"That's a rush to some new diggin's. They're following a new strike. It's reported on good authority that a Georgian named John Gregory has found the mother vein, as they call it, about forty miles out. It's a pound-a-day strike, according to the say, and the gold down below has been washed from that vein. The people are flocking in by the five hundred at a time. I haven't been up there myself yet, but I hope the news is true. Another month and we'd have had a riot in these Cherry Creek diggin's. As it is, about half the in-comers have pulled out for California, or home—and there's been talk of hanging D. C. Oakes, who issued a 'Pike's Peak Guide' last winter, and Editor Byers, of the News."
"Are those new diggin's on the Platte?" asked Harry, keenly.
"No. There're up Clear Creek, and nowhere near the Platte."
"Oh, jiminy!" sighed Terry. "Aren't there mines closer than that? My father was out here last summer and found one just a few miles away, up the Platte River."
"A Fifty-eighter, is he? Is he here now, and where's his mine?"
"No, sir; he came home sick, at Christmas; and he doesn't remember. But he had some dust."