Incredulous and not in the least excited, he drew a small glass from has pocket and held it on the specks. There could be no doubt of their nature. They were gold.
Interested, but doubting the importance of his find, Van pawed up half a pan full of gravel and dipped the receptacle full of water. Then stirring the sand and stuff with his hand, he panned it carefully.
The result at the end was such a string of colors as he had never washed in all his wide experience. To make a superficial prospect of the claim he proceeded to pan from a dozen different places in the cove, and in every instance got an exceptional showing of coarse, yellow gold, with which the gravel abounded.
He knelt motionless at last, beside the stream, singularly unperturbed, despite the importance of his find. Briggs had slipped up, absolutely, on the biggest thing in many miles around, by salting and selling a quartz claim here to a man with a modest sum of money.
The cove was a placer claim, rich as mud in gold, and with everything needed at hand.
Then and there the name of the property was changed from the "See Saw" to the "Laughing Water" claim.
CHAPTER XI
ALGY STIRS UP TROUBLE
Bostwick arrived in Goldite at three in the afternoon, dressed in prison clothes. He came on a freight wagon, the deliberate locomotion of which had provided ample time for his wrath to accumulate and simmer. His car was forty miles away, empty of gasolene, stripped of all useful accessories, and abandoned where the convicts had compelled him to drive them in their flight.