Lucky Jim did not work like an ordinary man; he was as tireless as a machine. And he worked intelligently. During every day of the next three weeks he worked eighteen hours a day. Worked and slept.
At the end of that time his bedrock drain was completed. It was five feet deep and on bedrock from one end to the other. He had struck good, even rich pay. He spent two days making sluice-boxes, another making riffles for them out of three-inch poles, and still another fitting the whole into his trench.
The ice in the river moved downstream that night. Beginning next morning he worked thirty-six hours, steady, on a wing dam. The last of the ice passed down the river. He pulled the gate in the dam and let the water into the boxes, picked down some pay dirt from the sides. It worked like a charm. He was ready to sluice. He staggered to his cabin, curled up in his blankets and was sound asleep in no time.
Out of a hundred men Lucky Jim would have been the only one to go to all this trouble. The remaining ninety-nine would have contented themselves with rocking, and let it go at that. The high water might last no longer than a week. But in that week's sluicing Lucky Jim would shove more pay dirt through the boxes than three men could rock all summer long.
Shortly after midnight—though almost as clear as day at this time—the dogs began to bark, but Lucky Jim did not hear them. A few moments later Chenoa Pete shoved the barrel of his rifle through the open window, then cautiously raised his head. In that moment Mike Haggart entered by way of the door and covered Lucky Jim. Chenoa Pete then climbed in by way of the window.
Like a jack-in-the-box Lucky Jim suddenly raised himself to a sitting posture, and mechanically reached for his rifle which hung on the wall just above his bunk.
"Quit that and put them up!" ordered Mike Haggart.
Lucky Jim rubbed his eyes and glanced from one to the other.
"What's the idea?" he asked, raising his hands above his head.