"For the hole!" exclaimed Julian. "And there was not a sign of gold about it?"
"Now, hold on till I tell you," returned Banta. "There was a little sign of gold about it, but there was not enough to pay Pete and me for digging. We snapped him up quicker'n a flash, and what does that man do? He went down to Dutch Flat, brought up his tools, and set in to working the hole, and before he had gone two feet farther he struck the richest vein you ever clapped your eyes on. He took sixty thousand dollars out of it. Now, some of you fellows talk about hard luck. If any of you can beat that story, I'll give you what little I made on Dutch Flat this summer."
"That was hard luck, I must say," said Julian. "And you lacked only two feet of being rich?"
"Only just two feet," returned Banta, "We might have been running around now with two niggers to drive the team—one dressed as a coachman and the other as a footman. Pete didn't get over pulling his hair for a month after that."
"But we are going to stake ourselves next summer," said Julian. "If we lose, it will come out of our own pockets. Have you been anywhere near this mine that we are going to work?"
"What do you think of that, Pete?" exclaimed Banta. "He wants to know if we have been near his mine. Not much! I'll bet there are two hundred miners on Dutch Flat this minute, and not one of them has ever seen that mine. They have heard about it, they know there is plenty of gold up there, but nobody has ever been near it. The last two that went up there came away so badly frightened that they packed up and left the country so quick that you could not see them for the dust they kicked up along the trail. They saw something down there in the pit, and it took all the pluck out of them."
"What did they see?" asked Julian.
"Well, perhaps I was a little too fast in saying that they saw something," said Banta. "They heard something, and that was as good as though they had seen it. It first began with a scurrying on the ground, as if somebody was hurrying over it. Where it came from nobody knew; it seemed to fill the air all around them. Before they had time to get frightened at this there was a shriek that made it appear as if the pit was full of unearthly spirits, and then all was still; but the fellows had heard enough. The man down below yelled to his partner to pull him up, and when he found himself safe on top he laid down on the ground and swore he would never go down there again. Oh, you boys have something to face, if you are going up there!"
"Could not the sound they heard have been occasioned by bats that had been disturbed while trying to take a rest?" asked Julian. "He had a light, of course."
"Bats!" exclaimed Banta, with deep disgust; "it was a great deal larger than bats. And he could have seen them if he had a light, could he not?"