“I get your drift, as the hill said to the snowbank!” broke in Roy, with a chuckle. “You mean—”
“If you say ‘girls’ I’ll attack you with this!” and Teddy held up a slippery cake of soap he had just been using at the wash basin.
“Let it go at that!” wisely rejoined the other.
“I’ll stay one more week,” was Teddy’s final decision.
That last week the prospectors worked as they had never worked before. They dug until far into the night, taking advantage of the bright moon, and excavated by means of lanterns lowered into the shaft. They built new sluice-boxes with closer cleats and panned their clean-up every other day with great care.
Yet the little pile of yellow grains remaining after all the gravel and dirt had been washed away, was pitifully small compared with the terrible exertions that went into that shaft and the tunnels.
“Well, this is the end of the week,” remarked Teddy one evening after the routine clean-up, and he looked at the small quantity of gold that resulted. “I’m through!”
“Yes, I guess we might as well call it a finished job and quit,” agreed his brother grimly. “Old One Eleven didn’t pan out as expected. Oh, well, we’re not out much—only our time and trouble.”
“That’s all,” agreed Teddy. “And we cleaned up that gang and got back a lot of gold for others, if we couldn’t wash out any for ourselves. Well, we’ll pack up in the morning and hit the trail for home.”