“Hooray!” shouted Seth, attempting to rise and wave his hat as he was wont to do in moments of triumph, but quickly quieting down again as the pain of his foot reminded him of having been wounded. “Didn’t I say so—ask any a one in camp if I didn’t—that we’d find the gold at last? Hooray!” he repeated aloud at the pitch of his voice, his cheer being taken up instantly by the main body of the miners, who were gossiping in front of Josh’s caboose, with a heartiness that resounded through the valley and even made the hills echo again; while Jasper, who had been under a sort of cloud ever since his cowardly conduct on the prairie, joined Josh in an exciting pas à deux before the latter’s culinary sanctum, and repeating ever and anon his jubilant song, “Golly, massa, um told yer so!”
“And you are not through the vein yet?” asked Ernest Wilton when he was able to speak calmly, he and Mr Rawlings hurrying towards the head of the new workings in company with Noah Webster and the first discoverers of the ore; the rest of the miners following after at a distance; eager to set to work again at once as soon as their leaders should give orders to that effect. Seth, seeing himself thus deserted, and not wishing to be “left out in the cold,” therefore requisitioned the aid of the two darkeys, and made them carry him in the rear of the procession, which put a summary stop to their dancing, but delighted them equally as well, for they were thus enabled to learn all that was going on without the annoyance of having their ears perchance boxed for listening without permission: consequently there was a general move all round.
“No sign of the other wall,” said Tom Cannon as spokesman, “we’re nigh four feet in from the bottom of the shaft. The richest is that near the river.”
“That is just what we expected from the statement of Mr Rawlings’ original discoverer. He found it rich in the little shaft he sank there, and that is at the point where the two lodes run into each other. I expect we shall find it richer every foot we go in that direction. If so, it will be one of the richest finds we know of.”
So saying, Ernest, full of eagerness and expectation, was lowered away into the mine by the men. He did not stop very long below the surface; and on his return his face seemed to glow with the goods news he brought.
“It’s all right,” he gasped out, almost before he got out of the shaft; “you’ve hit on the richest lode I ever saw in my experience. We ought to get tons of gold out of that quartz. We have just struck the centre of a pocket, I think, which must extend to the old workings of your cousin Ned. Mr Rawlings, I congratulate you; your luck has changed at last, and if all turns out as I expect, you’ll be the wealthiest man in Dakota!”
“Hooray, b’ys!” shouted out Seth, almost choking poor Josh and Jasper by gripping their necks with his muscular arms in his excitement, the darkeys supporting him, as if in a chair with their hands clasped beneath him, on which he sat with his arms resting on their shoulders, although he now shifted his hold unwittingly to their necks. “Hooray! I sed the Britisher were the b’y for us; an’ so he air!”