“Let’s pick ’em out by hand?” suggested Yank.
We did so. The process emptied the pail. Each of us insisted on examining closely; but none of us succeeded in creating out of our desires any of that alluring black sand.
“I suppose we can’t expect to get colour every time?” observed Johnny disappointedly. “Let’s try her again.”
We tried her again: and yet again; and then some more; but always with the same result. Our hands became puffed and wrinkled with constant immersion in the water, and began to feel sore from the continual stirring of the rubble.
“Something wrong,” grunted Johnny into the abysmal silence in which we had been carrying on our work.
“We can’t expect it every time,” I reminded him.
“All the others seem to.”
“Well, maybe we’ve struck a blank place; let’s try somewhere else,” suggested Yank.
Johnny went over to speak to our neighbour, who was engaged in tossing out shovelfuls of earth from an excavation into which he had nearly disappeared. At Johnny’s hail, he straightened his back, so that his head bobbed out of the hole like a prairie dog.
159“No, it doesn’t matter where you dig,” he answered Johnny’s question. “The pay dirt is everywhere.”