Into this new and strange dwelling the household goods were carried, a fire was built, and in a short while the place began to assume the appearance of a home. While this was being done, the men looked up their own habitations, and found that other dug-outs, not so large or well finished, but fairly comfortable, were all ready for occupancy. The mine had been opened already, and the workmen had previously constructed these huts, half caves, half houses, for themselves and for the "boss's" family.
It was all a new experience for the boys, and they investigated everything with great interest. The idea of living in a hole in the ground struck them for quite a while as very funny, and they made jokes without end about it to each other.
The wagons had been placed in the wide creek "bottom"—the space cut out of the bank by the current, which had since retreated to its present narrower channel. This "bottom," for years and years the stream's bed, was well supplied with rich alluvial soil, and was in consequence luxuriantly covered with fresh grass and vegetation of all kinds.
"I tell you, Jack," called Ben, when the boys scrambled down the steep path to the creek, "this is something like. Why, I can see bottom—and I declare, if I didn't see a fish sneak out of that rooty place there."
He hopped on one foot and then on the other in his excitement, and then, somehow—neither he nor John could ever explain it—he suddenly found himself splashing in the clear stream. John caught hold of his heels and dragged him out face down. His head had scraped the soft bottom and his nose had made a beautiful furrow in the mud.
"What were you trying to do?" inquired John, as soon as he could get his breath. "Catch the fish in your mouth?"
When Ben turned, spitting mud and digging it out of his nostrils, John almost exploded with laughter. "Maybe you think it's funny," spurted the younger boy, "but wait till you come to make a mud scow of yourself; then you won't laugh quite so much."
John struggled to suppress his mirth, and after a while succeeded—as long as his brother's mud-be-plastered visage was not in sight.
Instantaneous sketches of the positions in slipping and diving.