“What’s up?” he asked.
“I was trying to account for such deep mud in the bed of a mountain stream. I am certain this mud is the year’s deposit of the dirt that is separated from the gold in the sluices above at Placer Notch.”
“Well, what of it?”
“It simply flashes across me that this silt must be very rich in the waste gold that is washed out with the dirt from the sluices.”
“Are you thinking of staking out a mud claim?”
“Not quite as bad as that. A man might scoop mud out and wash it till doomsday without getting enough to keep his pipe alight from year to year. But just fancy how many millions must have passed down this stream! You heard what the miner said up in the Notch—twenty per cent of the gold product was washed away from the sluices. If they have panned out fifty million dollars there, that would make ten million swept away into the big river below, with more constantly going the same way.”
“That’s all very well in theory, but what does it amount to any way? We can’t get hold of any of these millions.”
“No, of course not. But this I do believe: if any one could afford to turn this stream into a reservoir and wait ten years he would have enough gold silt to tackle in a wholesale sort of way that would pay. It would be only a question of devising a cheap system of washing the silt from the gold more thoroughly than they do at the mines. I’d take the contract to invent the process, too. But come! We won’t waste any more time over it. No one is going to wait ten years to get his good money back.”
They took up their journey again, and had not walked five minutes when a turn in the trail and the stream brought them in sight of the tidy establishment of Sol Brunt. Sol was one of those who came into the hills with the rush when gold was discovered, but had seen fit to find his fortune in trade while others tramped the hills for paying claims. Those who thus went into business invariably had a sure fortune before them. Sol’s place had grown up from a shanty store to a tidy house that in time had received additions, making it a very considerable establishment. The trail had been much used in the past, but besides what he made out of the casual traffic over it, he supplied all the Placer Notch wants by contract, and turned a pretty penny out of it, too.
No man had ever come into sight of Sol Brunt’s while the sun was up and failed to find the Star Spangled Banner flying at the staff head.