"And is the gold as thick as they say it is—so thick that one can pick it up with his hands?"
"It is not quite as thick as that," replied Banta, with a laugh. "But every time one washes out a cradleful he finds anywhere from a teaspoonful to three or four which he wants to put in his bag. I tell you, the boys have been lucky."
"I am going up there the first thing in the morning," said a miner. "Here I have been slaving and toiling for color for six months, and I can hardly get enough to pay for my provisions, but I'll bet it won't be that way, now, much longer."
"Wait until I tell you something," answered Banta. "Neely, you can go up there, if you are set on it; there's no law here that will make you stay away. There are plenty of places where you can sink a shaft without troubling the boys any, but whether or not it will pay you is another question. The boys will be down here themselves in less than two weeks' time."
"How do you account for that?"
"Their vein is giving out. It will end in a deep ravine that is up there, and there their color ends."
"Why don't they go back farther and start another?" asked the miner.
"It won't pay. The man who started that shaft upon which they are now at work was a tenderfoot, sure enough. There is not the first sign of color about the dirt anywhere. He thought it was a pretty place and so went to work, and the consequence is, it has panned out sixty thousand dollars. But go ahead if you want to, Neely."
Neely did not know whether or not he wanted to go ahead with such a warning in his ears. Banta was an experienced prospector, and he could almost tell by looking at the ground if there was any gold anywhere about there. A good many who had been on the point of starting for the haunted mine with the first peep of day shook their heads, and concluded they would rather stay where they were than go off to a new country. There were three, who did not say anything, whose minds were already made up as to what they would do. They waited until the miners were ready to go to their blankets, and then Bob attracted the attention of those nearest him by saying,
"What Banta says throws a damper on me. The haunted mine is going to play out in a day or two, this place here is not worth shucks, and we are going off somewhere at break of day to see if we can't do better than we are doing here."