[pg 318]
"How, Greenwood! What brings ye here so late?" demanded his erstwhile crony, Jim Bridger, advancing, tin cup in hand, to meet him. "Light. Eat. Special, drink. How--to the old times!"
"Old times be damned!" exclaimed Old Greenwood. "These is new times."
He lifted from above the chafed hips of his trembling horse two sacks of something very heavy.
"How much is this worth to ye?" he demanded of Bridger and the trader. "Have ye any shovels? Have ye any picks? Have ye flour, meal, sugar--anything?"
"Gold!" exclaimed Jim Bridger. "Kit Carson did not lie! He never did!"
And they did not know how much this was worth. They had no scales for raw gold, nor any system of valuation for it. And they had no shovels and no pickaxes; and since the families had come they now had very little flour at Fort Hall.
[pg 319]
But now they had the news! This was the greatest news that ever came to old Fort Hall--the greatest news America knew for many a year, or the world--the news of the great gold strikes in California.