Lucky Jim collected his wits for the final rush. Carefully he selected two rocks from the tail-race that exactly fitted his capable hands, stepped into channel number three and up the tail-race into the sluice-boxes.
Mike Haggart never knew what struck him. He fell back into the boxes and the water raced over him. Five minutes afterward, tied hand and foot and with the collar of his own shirt in his mouth as a gag, Lucky Jim dumped him among the willows of bar number two.
He then hastened to the head of the sluice-string and almost but not quite, shut off the water. Here he also discovered Mike Haggart's rifle, which he removed to a handier location. He began to pull the nails driven in the sides of the boxes which held the riffles in place. That done he washed the bottoms of them carefully. The gold dust lay on them like sawdust.
"It's goin' to be a fine clean-up," he declared.
He turned on a little more water and began to work down the residue with a shovel. Later he laid that aside and pulled two wooden paddles from his hip pocket; reduced the water, produced a homemade whisk-broom.
By and by a nice pile of clean gold lay against one side of the head box.
"Ten or twelve thousand dollars anyway," he assured himself. "Dad Manslow goes to Sitka, I guess!"
He scooped the gold into a panning pan that lay handy, and with this under one arm and Mike Haggart's rifle under the other he crossed the log bridge to the mainland and started up the hillside. Lucky Jim was taking no chances of losing the clean-up.
He returned fifteen minutes later, strode into the cabin and poked Chenoa Pete in the ribs with his rifle.