CHAPTER VIII
THE GREAT BONANZA
"You certainly started young enough in the prospecting game," said Owens, when Jim told of his birth in a mining camp, "and have you been at it all your life?"
"Ever since I was big enough to twirl a pan or rock a cradle!"
"How do you mean rock a cradle?" queried Clem. "I thought you were in the cradle!"
"Not that kind, boy," Jim answered, "what I'm meanin' is a miner's cradle, or a rocker, as some calls it. I gradooated from one to t'other."
"What's a miner's cradle, then?"
"It's a scheme to make pannin' easier. Pannin' is durn hard work, Clem. You're squattin' on your hams beside a river all the day long, you got to hold a pan full o' earth an' water at arm's length an' down at an angle what nigh tears your arms out o' their sockets, an' then keep revolvin' the mixture with a circular twist that wrenches the muscles somethin' cruel. I've seen big men, tough uns, too, fair cryin' from the pain, at first.
"Not only that, but you got to work the sodden lumps o' dirt soft wi' your fingers, so's the grit gets right into the skin. Your hands are wet nigh all the time. The grit an' the constant washin' o' the water, in all weathers, cracks the skin all over, so's it's bleedin' most o' the time. You got to have hands like a bit o' rawhide to stand it.
"The cradle does the work quicker'n' easier, but it takes three men to work it right. It looks like a child's cradle from the outside, though most o' them I've seen was made pretty rough. About six inches from the top there's a drawer, or sometimes jest a tray, with a bottom o' iron, punched wi' holes o' different sizes, accordin' to the kind o' dirt you're workin' in. If your pannin' out don't show no big grains o' gold-dust, why, you keep the holes o' the cradle small, otherwise, you got to have 'em bigger. Below that drawer is another one, slopin' like. It hasn't got no holes. It has cross-bars or cleats, what we call 'riffles,' to keep the gold from washin' away.