The stagecoach mounted out of the valley—which might, Hunt said, have been fittingly described by Ezekiel—and followed a winding trail through the minor range of hills that divided Crescent City and its purlieus from the Canyon Pass country. The coach pitched and rocked as though it was a sea-going hack.
In time they crossed the small divide and came down the watershed into the valley of the East Fork.
Borne to their ears on the breeze at last, through the sound of the rumbling coach-wheels and the rattling trace-chains, was another noise. A throbbing rhythm of sound with the dull swish of intermittent streams of water.
“The hydraulic pumps at the Eureka Washings,” explained Hurley. “We’ll be in sight of them—and of Canyon Pass—before very long.”
The stagecoach lurched around a corner, and the raw, red bench of the riverbank came into view. Steam pumps were noisily at work and men were busy at the sluices into which the gold-bearing earth and gravel were washed down from the high bank.
Three great, brass-nozzled hydraulic “guns” were at work—each machine straddled by a man in oil-skins and hip boots, who manipulated the heavy stream of water that ate into the bank and crumbled it in sections.
At the moment of their sighting the hydraulic washings across the river, there was raised a wild, concerted shout from a point ahead. Out of a hidden cove galloped a cavalcade of a dozen or more mounted men, who swept up the road to meet the coach.
For an instant Betty thought of the shotgun at Dan’s feet and of highwaymen. These coming riders waved guns and yelled like wild Indians. But she saw a broad grin on Joe Hurley’s face.
“Here come some of the Great Hope boys,” he explained. “Their idea of ‘welcome to our city’ may be a little noisy, but they mean you well, Hunt.”
They came “a-shootin’,” and Lizard Dan threw the long lash of his whip over the backs of his six mules to force them through the cavalcade on the gallop.