At a considerable distance from the base, the Indian halted, while the boys, eager and excited, surrounded him.
"Great Scott! to think it's actually here!" murmured Bob.
"Wow! Isn't it grand?" piped Tom, with an almost irresistible desire to break into a wild fit of laughter.
After a few moments' rest, Wanatoma raised his pick, and began the attack. Soon quartz was disclosed. Under the vigorous blows, several pieces were broken off, and rattled downward.
But none got very far—eager hands pounced upon them.
"Gold—gold!" yelled Jack, hilariously, as he held up a chunk and waved it back and forth, to show a number of gleaming specks. "Gold! See, fellows—gold! an' piles of it!"
In a wild burst of enthusiasm, he seized the pick from the Indian's hands, and attacked the ground with furious strokes. Every blow sent a shower of earth and stones and small pieces of quartz flying in the air and over the slope.
With the perspiration standing out on his face, Jack worked away; and when he presently flung aside his pick and knelt beside a pile of quartz which the others had collected, Tim seized it.
As the boys saw outcroppings of gold, they gave vent to their feelings in sibilant shouts. They scrambled still higher up the slope, where the rocks rose in miniature cliffs, tufted with weeds and vegetation, or crowned by bristling prickly pears.
Those who hadn't picks or shovels dug at the surface with stones and sticks, exposing in places the underlying strata of quartz. Small landslides whizzed continuously down. Tom slipped, and rolled until a jutting rock stopped his progress. Jack, too, in a reckless attempt to scale an almost perpendicular wall, lost his footing, and went sliding and bumping in another direction, to pick himself up with a hilarious shout.